With the iconic 1995 Ghost in the Shell in their locker, Japan’s Production IG studio has been a long way ahead of the curve on the now-inescapable AI and cybernetics front. This high-minded, operatic conspiracy-thriller anime, released for the Psycho-Pass franchise’s 10th anniversary, won’t do their reputation any harm. Often insightful about the dark impulses behind humankind’s need to delegate and cede to technology, it does a better job than most concept-drunk anime of parsing these philosophical musings into something semi-intelligible.
In the dystopia of 2118, the Psycho-Pass is a Chinese-style social-credit chit given to every Japanese citizen assessing their psychological state and likelihood of breaking bad, all overseen for the good of social order by a benign AI called the Sibyl System. Inspector Tsunemori (voiced by Kana Hanazawa) is called in after the murder at sea of a researcher who is developing datasets related to ethnic conflicts abroad. With technologically quelled Japan debating how much it should intervene in chaotic countries outside its borders – hence the data’s value – a host of other government departments want to weigh in on the incident. Especially when the finger for the killing points to the Peacebreakers, a rogue covert ops unit led by a Kurtz-style fanatic.
As Tsunemori and her partner Kogami (Tomokazu Seki) juggle these competing interests, director Naoyoshi Shiotani – a Psycho-Pass stalwart – ensures this noirish affair resonates with a packed zeitgeist tick-list: Japan’s historical isolation, current rearmament discussions, the interplay of determinism and free will in choosing how much tech should be incorporated into daily life. It is thought-provoking, but, to be honest, never deeply engaging as the hastily characterised central duo are subsumed into a horde of powerbrokers and apparatchiks.
Whether 22nd-century gumshoe, sinister G-man or renegade cyborg, everyone in Psycho-Pass Providence looks noble, pallid and fabulous – and the action, mixing in CGI elements, has self-assurance. But, amid all the long gun battles in institutional hallways, there is no really outstanding set piece, and Shiotani turns in circles a bit too much around his obvious influence, Blade Runner (and, to a lesser extent, Minority Report). One highlight though is how his team draw hand-to-hand combat: precise, methodical and bristling, as if supporting the film’s message that the human touch is still worth something.