Anybody else watched this series?

Watched it on Netflix earlier this month and it went way past my expectations. I was very surprised to see an anime series of this caliber on the service as I find the Japanese are very conservative with their distribution channels and I sort of expected only series that were failures to make it on Netflix as a last ditch attempt to recoup some cash.

Usually, I'm quite skeptical of the genre because I find it either too gamish (ie, "I'm going to beat this monster and unlock technique X!"), corny with foreign cultural cliches I'm not into or downright sappy (characters acting over the top emotionally as a vehicle to convey mood).

While this series had a bit of the later (especially, with Anake), I find it held quite well overall and created a compelling narrative and universe.

Only other anime series I got into as an adult was Inuyasha (also got into Avatar: The Last Airbender / Legend of Korra, though I'm not sure they qualify as anime). So yeah, this is uncommon for me. Thought I'd share it here.

this is why (as a former manga artist back in the late 90s / early 00s) the internet broke anime for me almost permentantly.

It is because discussing it with more people brought those criticisms to light or because you got to see more anime online and witnessed trends in the genre?

I'm currently watching it, and I'm still quite skeptical... Of course, I haven't watched all the episodes, so it might make sense later, but so far, at episode 13 the plot only starts to unfold, to be a little more complex than the first 12 episodes let me think.

I'm still irked by the animation (but I know TV series can't be the quality of Mamoru Oshii or Ghibli, of course), but most, the scenario sometimes doesn't make sense. I can't talk about it without spoiling it, but I wonder of the Sybil system is possible in the first place and how it can lead to executions without trial. I mean, when you have to deal with a network of criminals, when you don't have discovered them all you generally don't kill the ones you catch, you usually try to make them speak first, right?

It's not a bad anime, and I wish the final episodes will have a clever twist, but so far i'm a bit unimpressed.

Psycho Pass 2 is currently being aired ;)

Anime is like any other media. Which means 90% of all the published stuff is crap.

The trick to enjoying Anime is to find the 10% that are good. And Psycho-Pass definitely falls into the 10% category.

I don't know, I watched S1 some time ago and I wasn't so impressed.
I'm not a super anime fan as many others, however, because the media in general seems still quite immature for me (plot-wise and for characters, compared at least to good movies). Nope, they aren't.

Made by the same person that did Cowboy Bebop. So the quality it's over what is generally thrown at us in the last 5-6 years. I'm kind of fed up with all the coming of age, teenage stuff....

I see this argument very often and yet I didn't find a good explanation. As far as I know Japanese don't discriminate western animation shows from theirs (I was told it even uses the same denomination).


Edit : and on topic, me who enjoys everything sci-fi related, I found Psycho Pass quite weak in spite of all the good echoes around it.

The cool Anidb site states that:
"An anime is an animated, professionally produced, feature film created by a Japanese company for the Japanese market."
I just trust them ; )

Ok that's a first. I usually see explanations around art-style, which could be fine if it wasn't so subjective. Your definition has the merit of being very clear, but I still think it doesn't make sense to differentiate artforms based on origin.

I agree a bit with that, but maybe the term has been adopted by the fans to separate its style\target\importance vs cartoons and for the big cultural differences vs western countries.
Anyway, I'm not expert at all on the matter, so it's just speculations on the fly XD

P.S: for movies, I still tend to separate old eastern productions from the rest, because of their style\themes\budget\maturity.
Maybe nowadays it's less needed as they have reached the same level overall (for those that arrive to us, at least).

I enjoyed some of the detective work they were making as well as the overall implications that are draw by the Sybil system (for example that you don't really need actual detectives anymore or that being a good detective and thinking like a criminal might flag you as one) and the antagonist.

I thought at times, the show was interestingly philosophical in tone.

I also liked some of the deviation from the narrative standards you find in that type of story. I couldn't go into too much detail without giving spoilers away here. Well, it's actually a bit of a personal theory of mine that given sufficient research, we'll be able to perform early diagnosis on certain criminals (murderers, rapists, etc).

Of course, they go to the far end of that theory by assuming that a biological scan will give sufficient information to make the diagnosis (my personal assumption is that you would have to examine and interact with the individual for a few hours at least).

Overall, though, I like the concept. The twist was interesting, but it's not that jaw dropping. You're probably right on that. Hollywood movies often fail as well, just in different ways. I'm sorry to hear that. I guess I'll find out for myself when I finally watch it. Yeah, me too.

Watching two teenagers marry and adopt a daughter in a virtual world (all the while not being ready for sex) was the last nail in the coffin of Sword Art Online for me.

Guess I'll have to take a peak at Cowboy Bebop then :).

I liked the first season until the ending, which was very disappointing for me. If it weren't for that, I'd say it's a decent anime. Haven't watched the 2nd season yet.