I just finished watching the first episode of Psycho-Pass third season. Whoa, things have changed so much, and we haven't really received much explanation so far. I heard there is a movie (released in 2023, long after Season 3) that covers what happened in between, but I wasn't expecting the entire organization to be this different already.
Mika is the new Chief of the Bureau, while Akane appears to be in isolation. This makes me wonder if she is now a Latent Criminal, even though that feels weird considering she maintained a perfect Psycho-Pass hue even in extremely tense situations, like the one with her grandmother.
Kougami is nowhere to be seen and is only mentioned briefly at the very beginning. There is a new pair of Inspectors who appear to be the new protagonists of the story. There is also currently an immigration crisis going on in the country, which I am guessing is part of the whole "we skipped over the previous chapter with Akane and Kougami" situation.
The new Inspectors are Arata Shindo and Kei Mikhail Ignatov, and they both seem to have their own plans that are very different from those of the Bureau. Arata Shindo also seems to have a strange power called Mental Trace, where he can induce self-hypnosis to the point that he can experience what the victim suffered and easily see through various machinations.
Honestly, it is an extremely convenient power, and I am not sure I like it as a narrative device, as it kind of waters down the mystery elements. I will wait a bit longer to see if they explain it further and how much they actually use it before passing judgment.
On the positive side, they have a completely different approach compared to Kougami and Akane when it comes to investigating cases (as seen in this initial episode). It could be interesting to see how they face the Sibyl System's unnatural power and restrictions.
Also, there seems to be an entire organization called Bifrost that works in the shadows and is able to easily hide from the eyes of the Sibyl System. What they are up to is unknown at the moment, but they seem to have virtually unfettered access to society with unlimited resources.
They are almost certainly the current "Makishima" of the season and the recurring target for the investigators to chase. In the first season, it was a Criminally Asymptomatic human; in the second season, it was about a Collective Psycho-Pass. What will be the third deviation that needs to be addressed?
I am looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. It could be great, or it could fail miserably. The bar is set quite high considering how interesting both the first and second seasons were.
