Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System
Psycho-Pass: Sinners of the System, also shortened to Psycho-Pass SS, is a trilogy of Japanese anime films based on characters who appear in the "Psycho-Pass" television series. The trilogy was first announced in 2018 and the films were released by Production I.G in Japan in early 2019 full under direction of Naoyoshi Shiotani. The films stars the talents of Ayane Sakura, Hiroki Touchi, Kana Hanazawa, Kenji Nojima, Kinryū Arimoto, Tomokazu Seki among others. The first film, , focuses on Reinforcer Nobuchika Ginoza and Inspector Mika Shimotsuki as they investigate a prison filled  with people living in cheerful life. The second film, "Case.2 First Guardian", focuses on Tomomi Masaoka and Teppei Sugo as how they met following the death of Sugo's friends. The third and final film, focuses on the mercenary Shinya Kogami as he continues his life in Eastern countries while training a young girl seeking for revenge. While different writers handled the three films, director Naoyoshi Shiotani worked on the three as he planned this trilogy with hints about the narrative for the third season, "Psycho-Pass 3". Anime Limited released the trilogy in English regions. Critical response to the  movies have been generally positive based on the narrative's focus on the main character's minds, most notably Shimotsuki's growth in the first, the tragic elements in the second and Kogami's reflections in the third. The trilogy earned ¥378,636,200 in box office and the home media release also achieved good sales. Two novels and three manga adaptations were also published by Mag Garden. Plot. The three films feature backstories to characters who appear in "Psycho-Pass" television series. Section::::"Crime and Punishment". Enforcer Nobuchika Ginoza and inspector Mika Shimotsuki from Unit 1 find a traumatised woman and  it is quickly apparent that a drug has altered her state of mind, Akane Tsunemori's team is directed to return her to a special experimental prison - the place where the woman worked as a therapist. Akane dispatches fellow inspector Shimotsuki along with two enforcers, Ginoza and Kunizuka, to investigate the prison while she and the rest of the team investigate the case in Tokyo. Through a new combination of drugs, therapy, and work, the prison has produced a different kind of society where latent criminal prisoners act in harmony with one another - keeping their criminal coefficients under 90 in  most cases and carry out work valuable to society at large. Mika sees the woman as a criminal worthy of being killed but she and Ginoza realize that the woman used herself as bait to seek protection for a small child. Mika and Ginoza discover the warden is exploiting the prisoners to harvest nuclear waste that was buried beneath the prison, causing the prisoners to die of radiation. Mika records the warden's confession of her actions and reveals it to the prisoners. Mika then kills the warden, but the prisoners riot. Mika and Ginoza hunt down the rest of  the complicit staff then begin working to protect the prisoners. They later find out the Sybil System knew of the warden's motive since the prison is located above the former dumping ground of the System's nuclear waste. Section::::"First Guardian". Enforcer Teppei Sugo, is a former respected military officer. He acted as the eye-in-the-sky air support for a ground squad of marines alongside Itsuki Otomo, another pilot and a communications officer. Together, they formed a tight military family, including Itsuki's wife Rin who was the squad's ground commander. The squad was sent on a  military strike outside Japan, but Sugo loses Itsuki during the fight. Sugo is devastated by this loss and tortured over why he was ordered to abandon his squad mates. He is confronted by MWPSB officers Aoyanagi and Masaoka who inform him that he is a suspect in a terrorist attack that is apparently been performed by his MIA squad commander, Itsuki. They discover that the military was testing a bio weapon against the enemy, which also killed the rest of the strike team. Itsuki knew about the attack beforehand and left his memories in an android to extract vengeance, but  it is stopped by the Bureau forces. Rin attempts to assassinate the military commander but he kills her instead. However, the Bureau marks the commanding officer for high psycho-pass and terminates him. Following these events, Sugo's level of stress increases and he eventually becomes an enforcer in the MWPSB. Section::::"On the Other Side of Love and Hate". Shinya Kogami travels the Tibet-Himalaya region as a free-lance mercenary. He saves a bus-load of refugees from guerrillas, including a young part-Japanese girl, Tenzing Wangchuk. She asks him to teach her fighting skills so she can take  revenge on the murderer of her parents. Kogami agrees, but warns her against walking down the path of revenge as he did in the past. He encounters Frederica Hanashiro of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ostensibly looking for "kimin", Japanese who have been stranded outside the country with the aim of returning them home if they have a good hue. She assists Kogami to protect the refugees, but he is wounded and is saved by Garcia, a mercenary who formerly worked for UN peacekeepers. As Kogami recovers, he reflects on his past actions, of taking revenge by killing the  criminal Shogo Makishima when abandoning Sybil. During peace negotiations, Tenzing tracks her father’s killer to a meeting with Garcia who is secretly sabotaging the negotiations. He badly wounds her, but she informs Kogami of Garcia’s plan. Frederica assists Kogami on the condition he works with her, so after he kills Garcia, he returns with her to Japan. Production. Naoyoshi Shiotani came up with the idea of making "Sinners of the System" after productions of the series' 2015 film, "", was made. The director claimed the franchise should use new characters for the sequel "Psycho-Pass 3" and "Sinners of  the System" was created to fill gap between the movie and the third television series. The trilogy was also a test case for "Psycho-Pass 3" in terms of production. For "Psycho-Pass", Shiotoani tried to portray the human drama thoroughly with an hour-long episode each, to make it like a live-action overseas drama. Each "Sinners of the System" was about 60 minutes each episode, but it was a hard challenge for the staff to make it instead of the usual 30 minute-episode of the television anime series. Production I.G had to put a lot of stuff  together in terms of story composint the films, but despite the difficulties they had, they felt it was doing all the work since they moved forward on two sides at the same time by also using its production as a test case for third television series. The films were first announced in Japan by Fuji TV in March 2018. Shiotani returned as the film's director, having already worked in the previous "Psycho-Pass" series. Novelist Ryō Yoshigami wrote the first film's script while the second one was written by Makoto Fukami. Shiotani spent time on pre-production. He  wanted to combine the drama that the scriptwriter Fukami and Yoshigami wanted to draw with the drama that he had envisioned, so Shiotani asked them to write a lot of plots and screenplays. Since all previous "Psycho-Pass" series were written from Akane Tsunemori's point of view, Shiotani wanted a new take on the franchise through to the trilogy. Through this, Shiotani wanted to explore relationships not seen before like Kogami's and Ginoza's as well as introduce characters who would play a major role. Additionally, the television series primarily focused on the Sybil System themes so Shiotani  wanted to create stories perimarily centered around the characters. From the beginning, Shitoani decided not to make a drama in Tokyo for the stage of each episode. Each of the three dramas is a complete drama, with variations. The director also wanted to change the overall color that colors the episode. In regards to the first film, Shiotani picked Nobuchika Ginoza and Mika Shimotsuki as the main characters due to their similarities to the protagonists from the first television series, Shinya Kogami and Akane Tsunemori, respectively. Nevertheless, he noted these duo employed a different dynamic from Kogami and Tsunemori while  noting how Ginoza has undergone a notable character arc across the previous projects related to "Psycho-Pass" mainly due to his relationship with Masaoka and Kogami. While "Case 1" was not difficult to create since Shimotsuki and Ginoza already interacted several times in the past, "Case 2" had more issues since Masaoka and Sugo had no such connections in previous works. The film was meant to how Sugo volunteered to become a Reinforcer despite his good nature. Meanwhile, the character of Kogami was conceptualized as progressive hero by Shiotani due to how different is his first personality in contrast to  his traits from the first television series. Through "Sinners of the System", the director envisioned him as the main character who often interacts while showing the aftermath of his actions from "Psycho-Pass: The Movie". Tsunemori was noted by the fanbase to be noticeably absent from the films despite her high importance in the previous works. Shiotani joked that while "Sinners of the System" uses other characters as protagonist, he still decided to use Tsunemori's image instead to make a crossover collaboration with the 2018 film "". The first two movies had a prescreen in the Film Festival from late  2018 where Shiotani explained to the fans that the third title was still in development. Seki explained the voice acting for the third movie was completed in June 2018 though but still told the audience from the festival that he could break their expectations. Seki felt honored when reading the script from his movie, something which Nojima agreed with. The staff explained an idea they wanted to explore in the films was the long distanced friendship between Ginoza and Kogami as the two have been friends before the events of the first television series. The opening theme song for all  films is remix of "Abnormalize" by Ling tosite Sigure which is the opening theme for episodes 1 to 11 of the first season of the TV anime. The three respective ending themes for the three films are remixes of "Fallen", "All Alone With You" and which were originally made by the band Egoist. Masayuki Nakano was in charge of these remixes. Natsuo Sai also wrote a manga based on the first two films. A concert, "Psycho-Pass", was made in January 2019 in Shibyua in order to promote the trilogy while featuring tracks from Yugo Kanno and portrayal of the  franchise's characters by the original voice actors. Two novels were also written in 2019, adapting the story from the trilogy. Release. At the Japanese box office, "Case 1" grossed ¥189,833,400, "Case 2" grossed ¥90,801,400, and "Case 3" grossed ¥98,001,400, adding up to a total of ¥378,636,200 for the trilogy. The three movies were released all on September 18, 2019 in Japan in DVD and Blu-ray. Each home media release has appeared in Oricon for bestselling volume in their releases. In Hong Kong, it was released by NeoFilms in theaters with the first movie shown  on August 1, 2019. In Singapore, the trilogy was shown in Japanese with English subtitles on November 2, 2019. The film was also released in Western regions. Selecta Vision has released the trilogy in Blu-Ray and DVD for Spanish-speaking countries. Kaze Germany has released the trilogy in German-speaking countries. Kana Home Video has released the trilogy in Blu-Ray and DVD for French-speaking countries. In June 2021, Anime Limited licensed the trilogy aiming to release them in August in English regions. It was releasead on October 18. Reception. The first film of the trilogy earned positive  responses. Anime News Network scored the first film a "B+" based on the further characterization of the returning leads Shimotsuki and Ginoza, which is effective when seeing the need for help potential criminals have, but criticized the fight scenes as too overthetop. Similar response was given by All Time Anime due to the handling of the returning cast, most notably Shimotsuki, as this last character felt portrayed better than in the previous anime series. The reviewer praised the themes explored in the first movie without regarding dystopia While "Medium" also enjoyed the character development of Shimotsuki and Ginoza, the reviewer  found the antagonists to be quite one-dimensional which highly contrast the first series' villain, Shogo Makishima, who was far more interesting. Both the second and third film received an "A-" by the same site, praising the way Production I.G handled the narrative not only of each individual episode but also of the "Psycho-Pass" franchise in general. "Medium" felt that while Masaoka's handling helps to entertain more the audience, "First Guardian" was the most boring title of all, finding the story "dull" and Sugo as not interesting. All Anime said while the second instead focused on thriller elements  while comparing with director Mamoru Oshii's most famous works, referencing "Patlabor 2" and enjoyed the handling of mytery involving the criminal featured in the movie. The third film attracted more positive reviews. Blog All Anime commented on Kogami's dilemma in the third movie. He concluded the reviewer positively stating in regards to the director as "the evidence of these new absorbing, enjoyable films, Shiotani isn't hidebound by PSYCHO-PASS’s guignol heritage; he believes all it really needs are solid, interesting stories." "Medium" claimed that the third movie had the most entertaining story for hidden depths and  appealing nature give to Kogami when training Tenzing and having the most original narrative as a result of exploring more the characters than the Sybil System which contrasts the previous films. "Anime News Network" praised not only the interactions between Kogami and Tenzing but also Frederica as she is given more complex role in the story in regards to how she often sees Kogami and needs him to return to Japan in an elabrote plot rather than a simple plot device to promote the upcoming sequel, "Psycho-Pass 3". In October 2019, the trilogy took the seventh place in the  Newtype film awards of the year. In retrospective, Shiotani believes the early screening of the first two movies were a success. "Sumikai" recommended the movies to the series' fans for having consistent quality.