Forum - View topicREVIEW: Psycho-Pass 2 BD+DVD
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11536 |
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Lol, now you've got me picturing a mob of Great Danes set loose on a single bowl of dog chow. 
I agree PP2 was a trainwreck, even from a superficial standpoint of just figuring out what was going on. The storytelling was completely incoherent to me, but maybe that's partly because it managed to alienate me so from the early episodes that I found it hard to pay attention to the scattered plot points and sort them out in my head. |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
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Shenl742
Posts: 1524 |
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Yeah I meant the first season. The first episode has probably the single worst instance of "As you know" exposition and setup I've ever seen. I know that's not uncommon (especially in anime!), but just the way it was structured here just set me on edge. I just felt like, "No you are not going to introduce this world and this character to me this way, My mind is rejecting this".
And the my memories of episode two are kind of hazy. I think it involved a holographic animal mascot costume? Whatever it was, it kind of sealed the deal for me that this show just wasn't for me. |
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3991 |
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Oh? That's kind of good to read, not that it excuses it but that's good to read because I agree some of the ideas were interesting but it was surprisingly messy even down to breaking too many of the rules and themes of S1, as mentioned in the review (even little things started snowballing like Dominators suddenly having ammo limits), and the new supporting cast (ie. not Akane and Ginoza) could have been interesting. So while I enjoyed some of it I can't really argue with the review. The first season was utterly fantastic though. Only thing I disagree with on with the review, is the dub, I thought the dub cast was great in S1 (the sub cast was great too), and this seems to be pretty common in most opinion comments I've read about the show's dub, and I thought the new voice cast additions were good so I think they would have done an equally good job with proper material. I also don't agree on the complaint made about Kate Oxley's Akane, I've liked her since the first season. |
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Venus_Angel9
 Posts: 55 |
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At first, I accepted S2 for what it was, or what I thought it was: a cyber punk action anime. I knew from the reviews I'd read it wasn't going to be super deep or thought provoking but it could still be interesting and fun. And I liked it at the beginning, Akane was pretty much a bad ass, much more capable and less naive that in S1. I was happy, she then proceeded to be thwarted by absolutely everyone who was supposed to work with her, making it impossible for her to do anything resembling her job, specially the rookie girl who had a 180 degree turn from her previous personality in S1.
For me, the worst thing was the asinine conclusion and the villain reveal. He could have been very interesting, I liked the idea of him but when it is revealedspoiler[he was several people, and he was also the psychologist from S1, it made absolutely no sense. Why then was he helping Ginoza clean his hue, or giving him advice about Shogo? Why would he help at all? And why wasn´t he attacking then? Was he waiting for Shogo to finish his arc because it's bad manners for villains to interrupt one another? Did he not raliaze that if he attacked during Shogo's attack, he could have very well gotten away with his plan? Because everyone would be too busy with Shogo at the moment and no one was even paying attention to him. NO, it was because in S1, the psychologist was just that, a psychologist and while I appreciate the attempt to link both seasons, this was a really terrible way to do it. Also, while I have liked Tow Ubakata's work in the past, i feel as though he didn´t even watch the first season. The rules for Sybil or its very nature kept changing to make it convenient for this plot.-not-plot. ] I did get a chuckle when Ginoza saw WC and suggested water closet because that is exactly what I thought as soon as I saw it. |
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Mad_Scientist
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 3011 |
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Interesting to hear in this thread about how little time Ubukata had to write the second season. I'd be curious to read those interviews. It seems like Psycho-Pass season 2 was kind of a lost cause from the start.
Not only did they lose Urobuchi, not only was it a rushed writing job, not only was it being written at the same time as the movie and basically forced to be nothing but a filler season as a result, but in addition to that all there were also two other important people that had a notable influence on season 1 that were completely absent from season 2. Chief Director Katsuyuki Motohiro is one. He's actually the person who first set the project in motion, as he wanted to do an anime series (he had a fair amount of experience in live action directing but not anime) and specifically sought out Urobuchi to work with him on Psycho-Pass. You may remember Motohiro from when everyone was screaming about his "moe was a banned word" comment on the development of Psycho-Pass.  He definitely had an impact on the tone/style/direction of season 1.
Also, Urobuchi had a writing partner, Makoto Fukami. I don't know too much about Fukami, but they're apparently a fairly prolific writer (though they only got into anime/manga relatively recently) and according to Erica Friedman, they have a long history of including decent lesbian characters in pretty much everything they write. (To the point that when she heard about Psycho-Pass, she couldn't give a hoot about Urobuchi, but became very excited when she heard Fukami's name was attached.) And both Fukami and Motohiro were completely uninvolved in season 2. Like Urobuchi, they were working on the movie. The entire core creative team of the first season was gutted for season 2. It was just a disaster waiting to happen, and it did. |
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Engineering Nerd
 Posts: 902 Location: Southern California |
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Not to mention the animation production of season 2 is given to Tatsunoko instead of Production IG, although that is also part of reasons why that movie (produced by IG) quality is absolutely jaw-dropping.
The movie made more than 800 million yen in box office and DVD/BD sale of movie are also extraordinary. so season 2 did not hurt the franchise that much as some claimed. That being said...season 2 is downright awful. I dropped the season2 at ep 6, hopefully I didn't miss much |
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Doodleboy
Posts: 296 |
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Even with the lack of time I still found Ubukata's ideas to be a bit lacking. Some of the things in his proposal were, basing characters off colours. White being Mika, black being Tougane, Kamui being clear. The rationale behind Tougane's "gaming the system" was that Makishima gave the appearance of a Fallen Angel, so Kamui was going to be a devil. Angels have no plans, Devils obsessively plan to fight god. Tougane is a replica of an Asymptomatic and Kamui a replica of the Sybil. So essentially a lot of random ideas, but nothing that has anything thematically to do with the first series. It would work if there was some kind of thematic or character underpinning (I remember early episodes speculation of Kamui being Akane's Makishima) but in the end we get stuff like "patchwork brains vs patchwork bodies". Anyways the interview is here but it has movie spoilers so at your peril. http://kairosity.tumblr.com/post/126512937334/psycho-pass-official-profiling-2-interviews |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6896 Location: Kazune City |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2298 |
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Furthermore, shouldn't Ubukata have known what he was getting into? It sounds to me like the guy is just trying to excuse crappy ideas instead of just saying "eh, things happen" and moving on. |
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Ambimunch
 Posts: 2012 |
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I watched it
I liked it I bought the blu ray I watched it again I still liked it (still a better show than future diary) |
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Brian_FTP
 Posts: 88 |
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I'd like to think that every series has something that you can latch onto to make it enjoyable, but yeah, season 2 deserved those F's. Yikes.
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Ashen Phoenix
 Posts: 2930 |
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Indeed. I couldn't agree with this review any harder if I was paid to, but thankfully I've heard good things about the movie so I'll be keeping an eye out for it. Thank you for such an in-depth breakdown of why this season just didn't work. Two good things I could take away from it? 1) I never had to waste any of my life on it, 2) I might enjoy the music from the season.
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LightYapper
 Posts: 131 Location: Somewhere on Earth |
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I started watching S2 when I just started getting into anime. It didn't seem terrible to me back then but now when I think about it, it really is something worse than crap for all reasons Nick mentioned. Tow Ubukata really is at it for meaninglessly gory sci-fi ideas which lead to nothing, and despite haven't watched Ghost in the Shell, I can't see him being good at character writing in particular. Guess hardly anyone would pick him for scripting anymore.
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LetsEatRamen
 Posts: 30 |
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I have never seen an F before.
In all fairness PP2 is really bad, but I personally think it only looks worse when you compare it to the first season. The first season makes the sequel look way worse. |
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