PSYCHO-PASS

Psycho-Pass is an original Production I.G anime that began on Fuji TV's Noitamina slot in October 2012: a cop show set in 2112 Japan, where the state scores your criminal potential before you act. The Sibyl System turns every citizen's scanned psyche into a Crime Coefficient, and the Public Safety Bureau's Dominator pistols stay locked unless that number passes 100. Rookie Inspector Akane Tsunemori supervises Enforcers, detectives who are latent criminals themselves, among them Shinya Kogami, an Inspector until his own reading climbed. Their quarry is Shogo Makishima, who engineers other people's crimes while Sibyl keeps scoring him as harmless.

Gen Urobuchi, fresh from Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero, wrote Season 1, and Naoyoshi Shiotani directed under chief director Katsuyuki Motohiro of the live-action Bayside Shakedown police films. That pedigree shows: early episodes play as self-contained cases, then the bookish Makishima knits them into one argument about whether a society that hands judgement to a machine still has a conscience. Yugo Kanno scored it, and Ling Tosite Sigure's jittery opening sets a nervy tone. Fair warning: the Dominator's lethal setting makes bodies burst.

Season 1 is the entry fans and critics hold up. Season 2 (October to December 2014, 11 episodes) swapped Urobuchi for Tow Ubukata as head writer and moved animation to Tatsunoko Production, hence the two studios in the stat box above; several reviewers dismissed it as a gorier rehash of Season 1's ideas. Urobuchi returned to co-write the 2015 film.

The franchise, as of October 2026, runs to three TV seasons (41 episodes) and six films, the newest being the tenth-anniversary Providence (May 2023); no new anime has been announced since. Watch in release order: Season 1, Season 2, Psycho-Pass: The Movie (2015), the three Sinners of the System films (2019, the last following Kogami), Season 3 (late 2019), Psycho-Pass 3: First Inspector (2020) and Providence. Season 3's eight double-length episodes hand the lead to new Inspectors Arata Shindo and Kei Mikhail Ignatov, and First Inspector concludes their story. In story order, Providence (set in 2118) comes before Season 3.

It suits viewers who like crime stories that interrogate the system their heroes serve. If Death Note's justice debate hooked you, our guide to anime like Death Note ranks Psycho-Pass third for exactly that, and it sits fifth in our ranking of the best psychological anime.