As a follow-up, Psycho-Pass 2 serves little to no purpose.

This season does not lead to anything, it doesn't present any new ideas and worst of all, it tries to copy many things that are good about the first one, but fails miserably.

This could mainly be the fault of the staff being switched. The first season was made by Gen Urobuchi, Shiotani Naoyoshi and Production I.G. While they went off to make the upcoming film, another studio and staff went on to create this season in the meantime.

In the first season: The pair of Urobuchi and Production I.G was a match made in heaven. Since Urobuchi is known for his grim and dark stories that include many twists and lots of exposition (I.e Madoka Magica & Fate/Zero) & Production I.G are a studio that are famous for making cyberpunk shows with tons of world-building like Ghost In The Shell & Eden Of The East, while also being involved with other classics such as Evangelion & FLCL. So, a writer of grim and dark stories and a studio famous for their cyberpunk with tons of worldbuilding and action was a great choice. But what sold Psycho-Pass for me was having Hana Hanazawa as the main role, who is one of my all-time favorite seiyuu!

Anyways, Psycho-Pass 2 is made by a completely different team, which already dismisses the originals show’s vision. This is noted clearly in terms of it lacking things that made the first one so awesome, shittier characters, a boring plot, and a much, MUCH worse villain.

First of all, the villain is a Makishima-Lite. They’re both eerily calm villains who had been outlined by the sibyl system, thus wanting to destroy it, but what this new guy lacks is the charm or even intellect as Makishima had. What made Makishima so scary compared to Mr.school shooter was that Makishima wanted to see the splendor of human souls. Nothing about the new villain stand out. He just feels so vanilla and plain and also what a coincidence that his name is Kirito.

Secondly, speaking of the characters, most of them were really bad and poorly written. When they are presented to us, they have no characterization like f.ex a backstory, quirks, and motives. Many of them fill in the role of characters that are absent this season like f.ex Kogami who is replaced by Togane or Makishima who is replaced by Kirito. However, the characters that aren’t a replacement are either completely boring or so dislikable that you want them out of the show. Those that are boring are not apart of the narrative like all of the characters in season 1 where. F.ex a boring one was this guy who is a read head and all that we get to know about him is that he’s shy but actually really smart. We don’t get a backstory as to why this might be, we the viewers have to just accept this. And an example of someone who was dislikable was Mika, who I rooted for at first. But with her arrogant and naive attitude and her at first, holding a grudge against Tsunemori and then trying to help her only to fail miserably was disappointing to see.

Togane was, however, an exception and he was one of my favorites from this season, I thought that he had the most interesting progression and I thought that the way he hides his true intentions was interesting because he is quite an enigma. But still, one of the reasons why I liked him was because he was similar to a character that isn’t in this season.

With many of these characters, they lack some flesh to the bone with the characters. What made the characters in the first season so interesting was that most of them used to have a motive, but over time lost it, like f.ex Kogami became jaded and lost his purpose for being a detective since his college buddy got slaughtered. Masaoka had similarly to Tsunemori, the instinct of justice but lost it when he realized that he didn't have control over who was or wasn't a criminal. Ginoza became stressed out after an incident that happened and has been frustrated ever since then. The only one who still had a purpose was Yayoi, who wanted to be an enforcer because her girlfriend had become a latent criminal, but that was still revealed later.

Thirdly, there are no new questions that have been raised like f.ex Is the Sibyl System moral and who counts as a criminal? These questions got risen up in the very first episode of S1. But here, no new questions have appeared. One of my favorite things about the first season was all of the ideas that it presented and questions like “What is law”, “What makes someone happy”, “What is moral and immoral” while showcasing many different sides to the spectrum.

First, we had the MWPSB where everyone had great intentions and carried out them with hoping to serve good, while usually doing so. Then, we had the critic of the Sibyl System, Shogo Makishima and his crew. He and his crew were totally against the idea of the Sibyl System and only wanted people to make sure that they were right. Then, we had the main sibyl system, which used criminals' minds to govern people and their crime coefficient. These people were outliers, who had strange ideas and ambitions while also being criminals themselves and criminally asymptomatic, meaning that they are unreadable. What’s so great about this is that if any of these are good or evil is completely up to the viewer. My view is that even though the Sibyl System may not be perfect and a bit immoral, it’s fucking awesome since it makes sure that most people are happy with only a tiny fraction of outliers.

Fourthly, the very first 3 episodes were all TERRIBLE! We are immediately rushed into a situation where they are trying to arrest a criminal who's bombing different locations for Kamui. But we get absolutely no information about what's happening, why there even arresting him and why we should care. We just seem to have to figure that out ourselves. Which in some cases might be understandable and even necessary, but doing that in the FIRST episode of a NEW season just feels useless and out of place.

The missions that appear in the first couple of episodes lack the excitement that the first season delivered. Since none of the new characters question the system, the stakes are incredibly low and the criminals are just crazy lunatics compared to in S1, where the criminals were more or fewer puppeteers by Makishima. And yes, the criminals here also seem to be that as well, but he feels like he controls them extremely poorly. Like f.ex he just lets his buddy die without any reason. Whereas in S1, Makishima disposed of his pawns for a REASON.

Conclusion: Psycho-Pass 2 is a really bad follow-up, even the things that it does well are things that were common in earlier episodes.