Psycho Pass Season 3 takes place few years after previous events of the show which now focuses on a new group of inspectors and enforcers. It is highly recommended to watch the previous seasons of Psycho Pass if you really want to fully understand the series and enhance your enjoyment of a great series. Characters from the previous seasons do reappear, notably Shinya Kogami after his absence in season 2 and reappearance in the movie.
Arata Shindo is a mentalist who is working as an inspector. His friend Kei Ignatov is also an inspector and the duo uncover a mysterious plot that will alter their lives. The season opener starts off with Arata and Kei investigating a crashed drone but discover a boat filled with immigrants and further investigation leads to a much bigger conspiracy. Arata Shindo has a belief that people should not rely on the Sybil system for judgement and he believes in using other methods. Kei Igatov is more practical and he’s generally by the book. He relies more on physical strength in comparison to Arata but Kei is still an intelligent character.
The new main protagonists were pretty interesting and the new cast get the most screen time. The new cast was really a hit or a miss. Mika is the new chief of The Bureau and she is still as incredibly annoying and insufferable as before and her main purpose of this season is to just be nag and complain. The new enforcers were carbon copy of each other and unoriginal. Karina Komiya is a new character and is totally unneccessary. She is a one time mentalist and now governor of Japan who wants to make politics fun but appears more as an online influencer than someone who should be taken seriously. Her actions are beyond stupid.
The new villain Bitfrost felt totally different then the last 2 seasons but their main aim was to take over the world and their totally evil nature did not fit in with the morally grey nature of the Psycho Pass series. Bitfrost in the anime, is a criminal organization that has its own in house AI that’s similar to the Sybil system which predicts the outcomes of individual actions and how likely they are to act on said impulse. The Bifrost System is an AI and created as a vital part of the Sibyl System in its early stages to assist in evolving the multi-brain intelligence by confronting it with challenges. They also use a game called “Roundrobin” which is used to bet on the outcome of real-world events in the anime.
Congressmen are players chosen by Bifrost to play Roundrobin. The Inspectors are subordinate members and consist of members from all aspects of society, including latent criminals. The role of First Inspector additionally acts a judge to prevent the other Inspectors from abusing their authority. It is also possible for Inspectors to be promoted to Congressmen. Bifrost prioritizes family members of current Congressmen first. Foxes are the lowest rank. They consist of civilians from all aspects of society who unknowingly help Inspectors commit their crimes. The foxes each do favours for inspectors but all these seemingly small acts have tremendous impacts.
Akane is the driving force behind the scenes in this season and she is currently in prison for “Endangering the public safety” and she mainly observes the events unfolding while awaiting judgement. The anime doesn’t go into depth on how she ended up in prison. The cast of the old seasons was really put on the backburner throughout season 3 and their appearances could really feel tacked on times like they were only just there just to keep veteran fans happy.
The length of the episodes has increased to 45 minutes each which allows for more character development and interpersonal moments. The writers include Makoto Fukami, Tow Ubakata and Ryo Yoshigami. Production I.G does the animation and it's as good as ever and the art style is the perfect mix of shadowy and brooding visuals, and a highly detailed background design and really good character art. It was too reliant on CGI which was not seamlessly rendered. It is way more lighthearted than any entry in the Psycho Pass series but the comedy seems forced. As much as I really like the dialogue of the Psycho Pass series, here its heavily reliant on cheesy comedy and not funny one liners. The violence is toned down which is very unusual for Psycho Pass especially given that Gen Urobuchi and the production team made it very clear that this was never a wholesome happy show in the first place and it doesn’t fit the overall tone of the series.
The new story themes are mainly focused on current events such as immigration, genetic manipulation, corporate mismanagement and corruption. The action in the show is contrast of mind vs violence on how Kei and Arata work together to solving cases and achieving goals. Some the action scenes could actually be avoided as seen in episode 2 where Shinya and Ginoza were after the same target as the public safety bureau but all they need to do was just introduce themselves as agents for foreign affairs instead of just going after the enforcers and the inspectors. The dominators, an important part of the series is heavily downplayed and underutilized in favor of hand to hand combat. Action in the show is lacking and the episodes suffer for it.
The musical score and audio quality are both superb. A major problem in the writing of the series is the unresolved plotholes from previous seasons and this season and there are many story threads where a lot of things happen behind the scenes without any further exploration. A lot of subplots and plot points appear all at once and could be dropped in a few episodes.
It never really explores why Akane ended up in prison it was just said that she was arrested for “Endangering the public”. The way the show handles Arata’s mentalist abilities is farfetched and confusing. He uses his powers, gets knocked out and this is repeated. There is a sequel movie that serves as a conclusion to season 3 and I'll get to that soon.
Season 3 is not as bad as season 2 but its nowhere to the quality as in the first season.
It gets 3 out of 5 stars.
The current writing team of Psycho Pass hasn’t learned much of anything and this show was really ruined by its focus on current world events instead of storytelling. Only a hardcore Psycho Pass fan will like this.
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