What's p/p?
Ah, I meant to say, pp, Psycho-Pass. I usually add slashes to avoid unprompted rambles to show up in main tags, sorry if that resulted confusing.
I love Psycho-Pass. I already made a post about why bsd fans might find it enjoyable, but honestly, there's so much more to it beyond what it has in common with bsd.
The prompts for reflection this series offers are just wonderful: on the relationship between citizens and government, on pervasive systems, on freedom of choice and free will, on safety vs. freedom, on discrimination of minorities and creation of scapegoats, on propaganda and brainwashing, on the increasing and treacherous presence of technology in everyday life, on how government uses technology to control and manipulate people, on fighting the system from the inside vs. fighting the system from the outside. I should watch it again too. It's crazy good.
Akane Tsunemori - the coprotagonist of the first season, the protagonist of the second season and overall the true core and heart of the franchise - is one of the most complex and beautiful characters I ever met. Her growth and character development is truly amazing: the way she starts off as unknowing and naïve, and grows so so much from there; how her writing finds this perfect balance between becoming more mature / hardening and staying true to her beliefs - even when everyone, the system, the people she relies to, the people she looks up to - tell her that there's no other way, that it can't be. It's breathtaking. She is a breathtaking character. The way alone that no matter how conscious and aware she becomes of how cruel the world is, how unredeemable people are, how beyond saving the system is, she still keeps believing in humans… It may sound cliché by itself, but believe me, it's wonderfully executed, and her character is truly amazing. Not to mention, the way she mirrors the coprotagonist Kougami is fabulous, but this is not really about him; she's an amazing character of her own right, and I will die on this hill.
The female cast in general is all amazing honestly. Don't get me wrong, the male characters are just as complex and multilayered (and I LOVE Gino and Kou, how couldn't I), but that's… Something we're more accustomed to, while finding well written female characters is objectively much harder. Female characters in Psycho-Pass aren't written as female characters, they're written as people, just as much as their male counterparts are. They have their fears and hopes and strengths and weaknesses just like any other character. I love Yayoi for being strong and coolheaded. I love (LOVE) Shion for being her fabulous self, kind and flirty and confident and with an heart so big, and for her subverting the trope of guy in the chair by being a glamorous woman who's also incredibly competent at her job of analyst. I love Akane's friends and I don't like season 3 but Mai is genuinely awesome and a joy every time she's on screen. I love Risa so much I could die, I love how strong and independent she is, I love the dilemmas she had to face, I love her choices and how they might have been the wrong ones and how it still haunts her, I love the tragedy of her character in general, I love the doomed friendship that used to be between her Gino and Kou. I love love love Fredrica, I love her being bossy and confident, diligent and determined. There's just a lot of… Strong and independent women in Psycho-Pass, and it's not just a way of saying, they really are.
I LOVE women loving other women, canonly, on screen. The confirmation may be delegated to a small moment in the last episode of the first season, but the fact that it's still there nonetheless, and how it confirms that all the previous moments and exchanges were indeed moments and didn't leave it to ambiguity… It's nice, to say that the first season of Psycho-Pass came out in 2012. And you might have to wait eight years, three seasons, five movies for it, but the phrase “I just want to go outside, dine somewhere nice, and go for walks with someone I love” may make it worth it.
And I LOVE how all the leader positions are filled by women. It's a little funny, honestly, in the best way– despite what I made it look like so far, the Psycho-Pass cast is still men-dominated (or at least a pretty equally split 50/50?); yet all the leader positions are always filled by women: Akane and Mika and Kasei and Frederica and Karina, it's always women.
Also, Mika is a brilliant character. Of course I love her. I'm so so sorry for how much hate and criticism she gets (over being a purposely annoying character! Insane! When Dazai exists!), when she does really and excellent job at conveying “look! A fucked up brainwashed individual in a fucked up brainwashing environment! I wonder how that could have happened!”. Not to mention that her growth, her long and devious way to admitting that the system is flawed, is truly well made, too. Unpopular opinion, characters with big flaws, characters who are unsufferable and make lives impossible to everyone around them, characters who mess up again and again, are actually great to watch.
Again, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Gino and Kou too ahah. They're both great!! But that you can probably see by your own. Gino in particular used to be my favourite, how his character does a total 180° turn. I love to see men admit their mistakes and make the choice to be better tomorrow.
About that, the relationships between the characters are AMAZING. Especially the main trio Akane / Kou / Gino, all the combinations within it are beautiful and deep and brilliant, so so enjoyable to explore and with their fair share of canon content, while still never straying to romantic territory (I mean, Akane/Kou may be going in that direction, but if that's true, that's the slowest slow burn I've ever witnessed in my life).
What's more. The world building / general premise - a dystopian world, where your predisposition to do crime can be measured and the government makes use of such technology to monitor and control the population and guarantee everyone's safety - is genuinely interesting and compelling. The aesthetic is genuinely cool (AH, now that I think about it, I've got my unfair bias for people in suits, and pp has a LOT of people in suits… ). The opening and endings feature great artists like Egoist, Ryo, Who-ya Extended and Cö shu Nie, so you're sure to love them!!
(Also, Psycho-Pass is something I used to spend entire nights talking about with a friend, and I'm always thinking about her and hold her tight to my heart in every moment so. That's worth mentioning for me, pfffttt. I love my friend so much.)
Finally, because the other Psycho-Pass post I made here keeps haunting me for the lack of trigger warnings, please be aware: Psycho-Pass DOES have trigger warnings. Pretty much for eveything you can think of. Sexual assault and gore and body horror on the top of my mind, but it's quite dark and gritty at parts in its entirety, so please please keep that in mind if you decide to pick it up.
Well, this is the end of my Psycho-Pass love letter for now. Please give it a chance if you can! I'll go rewatch it now. General watch order, in order of release, is season 1 → season 2 → movie → Sinners of the System movie trilogy → season 3 → First Inspector movie → Providence movie. I don't really like the third season or First Inspector movie (the characters are still great tho, even the newly introduced ones), and I've yet to watch Providence. The first season later came out with an extended edition of added scenes between episodes, and they're quite nice, so if you can't get ahold of it, you might want to look up for a compilation of the missing scenes still.
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"Percy villain arc", does Aglovale mean nothing to you people
You're right though, it would be funny to see Percy go truly evil. The fire association is super common in villains. Making it hot in several senses. You're completely valid
LIKE I SAID -- it's about a different type of villainy!! the brothers may look alike but they're not interchangeable!!!!
Aglovale's villainy came from an hatred of all of humanity, a desire to control people out of fear, and a desire to get his family back, including his mother.
Lamorak's villainy came from selflessness, a desire to help absolutely everyone who ever experienced massive heart pain that can only be solved by revenge, a savior complex so big he ends up helping the most dangerous of people, while putting himself in danger and therefore also keeping his family as far away as possible from him so he doesn't get swayed into going back on his words.
A Percival's villainy arc would never be like Aglovale's because Percival never let go of his desire to see good in people, and he wouldn't keep his family away like Lamorak.
Like i said i do think it's a bit hard to see a path to villainy Percival can take when his brothers went to both different extreme to start with. I think what makes Percival's arc strong is that he's not tempted by snapping, and that he is holding strong despite the fact he sees how his brothers are torn apart by the same trauma they all share.
I personally love the fact Percival doesn't seem to be in any situation to snap, but i like thinking about what if he did actually go apeshit. What if he got tired of fixing his brothers' shit. He's constantly having to clean up after them because they mishandled their trauma while he is trying so hard to make it something productive.
And it's not like Percival doesn't have a mean edge. Remember when he insulted Lancelot when they found him in a cell after he's been tortured, because Lancelot "only had himself to blame" for turning a blind eye to the wrongs of the King? and that it essentially came from how he's been hurt that Lancelot abandonned him during the Siegfried's debacle and the fact Lancelot blindly supporting people in position of power rather than getting to the bottom of something was something Percival found reprehensible. (i have many thoughts about this).
That's why i think two componants to break Percival is if the weight of his brothers' sins get lifted off his back, so he's less alert to his own shortcomings as he's no longer in this state of survival about holding his family together, and losing MC, which would set him in a situation of thinking "despite everything i do i still lose the people i care about."
(especially, once again, because MC is the only person who never disappointed Percival, which is why Percival always was so unconditional in his way to be attached to MC, in ways even the Dragon Knights nor his Brothers can live up to.)
It's like "you can do everything right and still lose", in comparaison to his brothers who just did things wrong.
how do you deal? how do you cope? this grief was supposed to stay in the past, yet whatever you do it still comes back to catch up on you.
there's a potential there that is completely unlike what Aglovale and Lamorak went through in their own villain arcs, and it's what i'd personally explore if we give Percival an evil arc.
It'd be hot! especially if it's about MC which i have totally neutral reasons to want personally obviously.
But as it is i just really like the idea of him being the only one to keep things together while the familial trauma is destroying the rest of his family. Feels nice feels organic and i'm just genuinely invested in this storyline, is all!
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