Japanese studio Production IG’s conspiracy noir is a fabulous-looking tale influenced by Blade Runner

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.