Forum - View topicREVIEW: Psycho-Pass 2 BD+DVD
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SquadmemberRitsu
 Posts: 1391 |
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As I said, despite being a big fan of Urobuchi, I was not that big a fan of Psycho Pass. I actually quite liked the movie but I felt the series went downhill in the second half. As a whole the show felt very... familiar. Thematically the show is a mix of well worn cyberpunk conventions and the usual Urobuchi shtick that doesn't really bring much new to the table. Though I will say overall the series was competently written. Psycho Pass 2 is anything but competent. It's a mess. A mind numbingly stupid ultraviolent mess. It's not even comparable to Urobuchi's works. It's more like Future Diary or one of those dumb OVAs from the 90s. Now why I can't say I hated it nearly enough to rate it an F (I'd say a D- at worst) I still firmly believe that Psycho Pass 2 is a bad, bad series and I totally understand why a fan of the series would curse its existence. |
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One-Eye
 Posts: 2261 |
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Sure if someone looks at his scrambled egg movies and sees shock for shock's sake and looks at PP1 on the surface it seems like a good match.
Again its like someone said do what you did in Mardock Scramble! I'm not a big fan of Ubukata. I thought Chevalier de Eon was ok, I felt that his GITS:Arise was him being JJ Abrahams which is just about recycling previous ideas in an inferior way, and I sold my Mardock Scramble BDs because while I thought there was a decent story there it was buried under the shock value and mediocre direction. The only thing I enjoy of his in a guilty pleasure way is Fafner but that is no Eva, PMM, GITS, or PP1 for that matter. I think this shows a track record of him maybe not being a good fit for PP aside from the rushed production. I'm not sure even without the other challenges he would have been able to pull it off. This is a bad show in may ways as articulated by the review. I'm not sure I'd quite give it an F a D yes, mainly because I think there's stuff out there that is worse. I have to say there are fair number of people who viewing the show will see dystopian society+action= entertainment. For those people that don't pay attention to the themes and don't notice how poorly it fits with the previous installment it may rate higher. |
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Notorious_P.I.G.
 Posts: 6 |
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Great review. I was worried this would get a good score to be honest, seems to be a decent amount of people in the community that find this good along with Aldonoah zero.
Was really sad about this show since the first season was so good. But this season was so unbearable. All the characters sucked and some I wonder why they even exist. Akane became obnoxious and couldn't carry the show as the lead. As you stated the plot was just really bad. The music was pretty good though. |
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endallchaos
 Posts: 213 Location: Sin City |
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The same dubbed VA's that voiced the characters in S1 are the same for S2, no? If so, did they just do a bad job? I say this because I thought the dub for S1 was great. I have not seen the dub for S2.
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CoreSignal
 Posts: 727 Location: California, USA |
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Triple F!, ouch. While I've seen one or two ANN reviews with a 'F' for story only, three Fs is a first. As a big PP fan, I definitely agree that PP2 was a huge step down from the first. On top of all the issues Nick mentioned, two other big problems I had with PP2:
-A complete waste of the returning cast. Yayoi, Ginoza, and Shion were pretty much a waste. After episode 5, all three characters probably had a total of 20 lines of dialogue combined and even less screen time. Even the new enforcer, Hinakawa, barely has anything to his character. To be fair, with 11 episodes, you have to pick and choose but still, they could have done a better job of it. -Most of the detective and procedural elements are essentially gone. The first season was never a super realistic portrayal of detective work, but at least you saw Akane and co. doing some stuff like asking witnesses, examining crime scenes, following leads, etc. In PP2, everybody's running to the crime scene guns blazing (see episode 4) with little detective work.
Yeah, as soon as they announced that Motohiro, Urobuchi, and Fukami would not be involved that should've been a bad sign, not to mention having Ubukata handling all the writing. But most PP fans still had hope season 2 would work out. Boy, were we wrong. I still remember Motohiro's "moe is banned" remark too and how the heated the discussion thread got. Also, I remember hearing somewhere that Urobuchi purposedly did not write the episode about Yayoi's backstory because he felt Fukami could do a better job than him with LGBT issues. Credit to Urobuchi for that move. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1434 |
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That episode was written by Aya Takaha, while Urobuchi and Fukami co-wrote every other episode. |
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CoreSignal
Posts: 727 Location: California, USA |
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^my bad. Still a good gesture to let someone more knowledgeable write it.
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SquadmemberRitsu
Posts: 1391 |
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I do recommend watching PP 2 as long as you go into it expecting a trainwreck.I wasn't interested enough in the original series to get deeply invested in it but even I could get entertainment watching Ubukata completely misunderstand not only the core themes but some really basic rules of their world that should be common sense to anyone who paid attention. In terms of dumb ultraviolence I still thought it was a lot better (And all around less offensive) than Future Diary but all things considered it's still a bad series. |
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endallchaos
Posts: 213 Location: Sin City |
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I've seen S2, but with subs. I agree it wasn't good. I may watch the dub just for the dub, though. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3785 Location: Montreal |
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I usually like Nick's reviews, his perceptiveness. But this review is really disappointing. How could he so completely miss the point? Sure, PP2 is not executed quite as well as the first season, but the themes explored are fascinating and build logically upon the ideas of the first season. Having learned that a "crowd intelligence" is judging people, the natural question to ask is who is watching the watchmen, who is judging the judges? And the second season answers this superbly. From judging individuals to judging entire groups, the scale and the stakes are an order of magnitude bigger.
And what to say of the underlying theme of subservience to authority. Just like nazis that unquestioningly followed Hitler, we have an entire enforcement agency (in particular exemplified by Mika Shimotsuki) that set aside their own morals and personal judgment, and blindly follow the decrees of the Sibyl system, no matter how obviously crazy they are, like shooting up a bunch of running civilians. That may not make for a very pleasant characterization, but is it so hard to look at unpleasant truths? |
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DangerMouse
Posts: 3984 |
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Like SquadmemberRitsu said, the dub cast is really good. It's a very solid dub. |
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He definitely had an impact on the tone/style/direction of season 1.
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