Index:
- Acting for Two:
- Takahiro Sakurai in Japanese as Sho Hinakawa and Shogo Makishima.
- Kate Oxley in English as Aoi and Akane Tsunemori.
- Anime First: A manga adaptation of the anime, titled Kanshikan Tsunemori Akane, debuted shortly after the series premiered.
- Banned in China: In June 2015, Chinese censors banned Psycho-Pass for politically questionable content. Probably because of how the Sibyl System is mirroring the Chinese government
. - B-Team Sequel: For the second season, there was change in the animation studios (Production I.G to Tatsunoko Production* ) and main writer (Gen Urobuchi to Tow Ubukata). The end result became a Contested Sequel as Ubukata revealed that he had to "fill in the blanks" when he was told of the movie's plot. The movie had the original studio and writer back and was better received than Season 2 was.
- The Danza: Hiroko Fuji, a victim who was murdered, shared the first name with her voice actress.
- Defictionalization: The PSB jackets including Shinya's winter jacket, Yayoi's coat and Ginoza's glasses are part of the show's merchandises though they're sold out, though they're produced on a limited basis once in a while. There's also the actual Dominator which you still buy.
- Directed by Cast Member: Zack Bolton who was the English ADR director for Seasons 1, 2 and the Movie also plays Sho Hinakawa.
- Distanced from Current Events: Episode 4 of the New Edit rebroadcast was pulled from Japanese TV because of a shocking murder case in Nagasaki that strongly resembled the episode's plot, only being available online.
- Enforced Method Acting: Lydia Mackay comments that in her role as Shion, she had to place an unlit cigarette between her lips in order to realistically portray Shion speaking with a cigarette in her mouth.
- He Also Did: The anime's animation character designer, Kyoji Asano, would also go on to do the animation character designs for Attack on Titan.
- Invisible Advertising: Season 3 wasn't promoted much on the Western market despite being simulcasted by Amazon Prime. Hence, many English viewers, including long-time fans, were surprised that there's a third season.
- No Dub for You:
- The Psycho-Pass New Edit extended episodes never got dubbed.
- The third season debuting on Amazon Prime Video has killed any chances of a simuldub; anime that get released on Amazon almost never get dubbed, the few exceptions that do only happen after their license expires on Amazon and some other company snaps it up. When Crunchyroll took over the North American distribution for the Sinners of the System trilogy and Providence movie, many are hoping that they would also acquire the license for the third season and the First Inspector movie which they eventually did on July 12, 2023.
- No Export for You:
- This franchise has a lot of Expanded Universe material including light novels, manga, drama CDs and more that really flesh out a lot of the side characters. These include a drama CD that covers the Specimen Case and lots of novels detailing almost everyone's backstory, such as Masaoka's background with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Too bad none of this has ever gotten officially translated, and fan translations are few and far between.
- Playing Against Type: Lindsay Seidel mentions in a commentary that Yayoi is this because she was told by the production team to use a lower voice than her normal one, which surprised those who follow her work.
- Reality Subtext: Each episode of the first season was making an effort to be set almost exactly 100 years ahead of the present day. To wit: the show began airing in October 2012, and the first episode occurred on November 4, 2112 note Another example would be episodes 10 and 11, which take place on December 24, 2112; these episodes aired on December 14 and 21, 2012 respectively. This pattern began to break with the second half of the show, which featured events taking place in very close proximity to each other (such as episodes 18-22 which occur within a five-day timespan). The fact that there was a two month Time Skip in the last episode, though, may hint the show's timeframe got back on track with the 100-year "real time" gap.
- The second season premiere has a moment where Mika mentions she's been an Inspector for a year and a half. Mika became an Inspector in the final scene of the first season which aired at the end of March 2013. The second season began in October 2014, which is just a few days over a year and a half.
- The series does away with this after that though. The feature film released in January 2015 takes place in July 2116, Sinners of the System was released throughout January to March 2119 but takes place across 2116 and 2117, and the third season began airing in October 2019 but starts in November 2120.
- Recycled Script: The second season is in many ways a shorter version of the first, down to several of the plot beats.
- The main plots of both seasons are that of Akane facing off against a mysterious antagonist who is bent on bringing down the the Sibyl System by using its own core infrastructure against it, and also has a special trait that allows them to go undetected by the System, and both antagonists try to achieve this goal by recruiting several followers to their cause and share their ability to operate outside the system with them, as well as exploiting the ways people interfaces with normal and seemingly innocuous technology for their own sinister purposes.
- Akane eventually confronts both antagonists with a real gun at one point as way to work around the system.
- In both seasons, Akane's idealism brings her into conflict with another Inspector (Nobuchika in season 1, Mika in season 2) who believes that the Sibyl System's directives should be followed closely, but eventually said Inspector is forced to reevaluate their beliefs as they come to the realization that the System is actually much more flawed than they originally perceived it to be.
- Akane is also faced with similar personal challenges in both seasons, firstly regarding a member of Unit 1 going more or less rogue due to an obsession with seeking personal revenge against the antagonist, and secondly when her resolve is severely by tested by one of her close friends ending up getting murdered by the antagonist.
- Schedule Slip: The English release of the Inspector Shinya Kogami manga by Dark Horse Comics stalled after releasing Volume 4. While the first four volumes came out at a somewhat steady pace of 4-6 months between volumes from November 2016 to March 2018, Volume 5 would then take over four and a half years to release in October 2022, followed by the finale Volume 6 four months later in February 2023.
- Screwed by the Network: Season 3 ran into a series of problems being hosted on Amazon Prime USA (oddly enough, most other Amazon regions were fine):
- The first sign of trouble came from the fact that there was literally no advertising on English networks or social media for the season. Weeks into the season's airing, even very devoted Psycho-Pass fans were still finding themselves surprised that a third season actually existed.
- The biggest problem by far is that Amazon USA, in a sloppy typo, listed the series as "Psycho-Pass3" [sic]. This made the show impossible to find using the search engine because of the missing space (viewers must enter the title exactly as it is with the typo), and it took a week for people on the Psycho-Pass subreddit to discover the mistake and finally start spreading the news of the typo.
- Some viewers reported that the show was impossible to watch using a Fire Stick because "Psycho-Pass 3" is merged with "Psycho-Pass (SUB)" which breaks the app.
- Episode 3 was uploaded with no subtitles. Once again, this was only an issue with Amazon USA, other regions had English subtitles available. It took over 24 hours for the subtitles to finally become available.
- Fully averted with First Inspector, as the movie was released subtitled internationally on Amazon Prime Video the same day it was released in Japanese theaters without any problems.
- Sequel Gap: The third season were released on 2019 which was 4 years after the release of the 2015 movie.
- She Also Did: The anime's original character designer, Akira Amano, also the manga artist for Reborn!, would also go on to start her next manga.
- Studio Hop: At first, Funimation handled the North American streaming and home video releases, before switching to Amazon Prime Video for the third season. Later, Crunchyroll (though now technically a merged and rebranded Funimation) took over for distribution of the Sinners of the System trilogy and Providence movie. They also included the third season and First Inspector on their catalog.
- Troubled Production: The second season had shades of this, as admitted by the writer himself. The production schedule was extremely tight, with scripts having to be rewritten while voice recording was happening, and the plot was limited by what would already be revealed in The Movie, meaning he had less creative freedom than normal.
