Roving Thoughts archives

Two views of Gatchaman Crowds' Joe

Thomas Zoth (note spoilers disclaimer):

And Joe? Always so cool with his smoking and drinking and apparent disinterest in his attractive young co-workers? He’s actually suicidal. His self-destructive impulses were, somewhat surprisingly, self-destructive.

My view of Joe is less grim and dark than this one. What I think is that Joe is living in a dream.

In real life Joe is a Toudai graduate who has somehow wound up in what is basically a relatively unimportant and certainly unimpressive civil service job. Outside of the office he has a second life as the classical heroic badass, too cool for words to contain; he hangs out drinking in bars looking suave and acting mysterious, for example. One way to interpret this based on the information the show has given us so far is to view Joe as Walter Mitty with actual powers. His oh so cool life as a Gatchaman is fundamentally an illusion and an act, an escape from the mundanity of his day to day drudge and something that gives his life importance and meaning. He acts the way he does because this is how heroic badasses are supposed to act; he is deliberately living out the cliche whether he admits it to himself or not. His entire self is defined and sustained by being the hero, not the civil servant.

(Spoiler warning.)

In this reading, Joe collapses against Berg-Katze in episode 7 because Berg-Katze systematically destroys Joe's dream life by shattering the illusion. There is a really revealing dialog at the end of the fight; after Joe has been unable to do anything to Berg-Katze, Berg-Katze plays the voice of Joe's inner self and digs in to Joe with the following:

[...] I can't possibly win. It's impossible. I acted tough until now, but in the end, I'm just a civil servant. I wanted to make it big, but I knew my limitations from the beginning, really. Oh, well. I guess I'll just keep trailing on in life. Not like there's a whole lot I can do, anyway. I should just give up on my dreams and resign myself to being a nobody. [...]

This is Joe's secret and soul-destroying terror: that his daytime life is the reality and his nighttime cool heroism is the illusion. Forced to face it, Joe lacks the strength to go on anyways and his doubts consume him.

(The translation I'm using comes from Commie's fansubs.)

The Railgun and her friends in Railgun S

One of the criticisms I've seen leveled at Railgun S is that Mikoto passes up involving her friends. Evirus says:

For example, Mikoto spends most of the first cour of Railgun S sneaking around rather than enlisting the help of her roommate, the teleporter.

I can't say that Evirus is wrong because it's up to the show itself to convince its audience that events make sense and clearly the show hasn't sold Evirus on this. But what I can say is that the show did sell me on Mikoto's actions.

(There are about to be spoilers.)

First off, let's note that Mikoto does hardly any sneaking around in the first cour. She does about 90% of her work in a phone booth (and might have managed to do all of it if she wasn't impatient, but then if she had there wouldn't be much of a show) and much of the rest of it seems to have been less 'sneaking around' and more 'walking in casually'. In short, for almost all of the time she steamrollers everything in sight. The only time she actually needs any help happens when actual opponents appear (in the only actual fight) and this catches Mikoto completely by surprise when it happens.

(The show doesn't bother spending much time showing her steamroller stuff because it kind of lacks excitement.)

Beyond this, the show has sold me on a collection of reasons that Mikoto doesn't and can't involve her friends, especially Kuroko. In no particular order:

• Mikoto repeatedly talks about this being her fault and her problem to deal with. This is somewhat irrational but the show sells me on it being her heartfelt attitude, due in part to the horror of the situation.

• The situation is genuinely horrible (and it only gets worse as it goes along). Mikoto sees someone die in front of her and finds out that thousands of people have been systematically killed, with more happening every day. This is a huge trauma to dump on your middle school friends who are enjoying an innocent life in the sunshine. I can completely see not wanting to drag them into the nightmare.

• Kuroko is effectively a member of the police and Mikoto is busy doing all sorts of lawbreaking. It's at least uncool to ask your police buddy to help you commit a crime; you've put them in a really awkward spot no matter what they choose.

• Mikoto is not actually a member of Judgment and Kuroko has been shown as repeatedly trying to keep her from getting involved in Judgment operations (generally unsuccessfully, which results in Kuroko sighing a lot). It thus seems very likely that if Mikoto brought the whole problem to Kuroko officially she would immediately get sidelined (quite possibly very firmly, as Anti-Skill moved in). Mikoto is not exactly a sideline girl.

  (Of course, what we know in the first cour and what Mikoto finds out later is that going to the authorities wouldn't help anyways. Academic City is fundamentally corrupt and brutal.)

• If confronted by a choice between friendship (to Mikoto) and duty (to Judgment), Kuroko would probably choose duty. I say this because shortly after the end of the first cour (if I remember episode numbers right) the situation actually gets so bad that Mikoto probes Kuroko about this (phrased as a hypothetical) and Kuroko gives an unhesitating answer. Mikoto doesn't seem surprised.

(Mikoto actually seemed relieved, which felt right for me. Kuroko's answer meant that Mikoto didn't have to even consider dragging her friend into the darkness with her. Of course Kuroko might have made a different choice in a non-hypothetical situation.)

Brief early impressions of the Summer 2013 anime season

As before this is my (slow, delayed) impressions of the summer's crop of new shows, or at least those that I've watched so far. I will skip trying to explain why these 'early impressions' are in fact rather late.

Things I am enthused about (so far):

• Uchouten Kazoku (aka Eccentric Family): If this was a western work I'd call it urban fantasy (of the old fashioned Charles de Lint sort, not the new variety with vampire romance) and as it happens I'm quite fond of that (sub-)genre. Other people have lots of interesting things to say about the show's themes and stuff. I'm too distracted enjoying all of the characters bouncing off each other and the setting.

  (A resigned frog down a well. How could I not love it?)

• Gatchaman Crowds: So far this is fast-moving, weird, and decidedly playing against cliche and genre expectations in all sorts of nice ways. Hajime is an excellent character in a cast of good ones and I can't wait to see what happens next. Oh, by fast-moving I mean that this show gets stuff done; more happened in the first three episodes than some shows manage in a season (although mostly in the second and especially third episodes).

  (GC is a show that probably can be analyzed a lot but I'm not going to attempt that right now. I'd rather watch and enjoy cheerfully.)

By the way, as a general rule the more I'm enjoying a show the less I have to say about it in the beginning. Like many people I find it easier to write useful criticism than interesting and coherent praise.

Okay (so far) but not enthused:

• Monogatari Series Second Season: I think that the appeal of the Monogatari series is fading for me (the love story of Bakemonogatari was my personal highlight). It's okay, but I keep kind of thinking that it's too clever for its own good and that it could be more tightly edited. Still I'm invested in it so I'm going to keep watching for now.

  The absence of Araragi improves the show.

On the edge:

• Stella Jogakuin Koutouka C3-bu: This is not Girls und Panzer by any stretch of the imagination but it's decently okay. I'm not sure it's going to sustain my interest over its entire run if it stays with just the themes of the first three episodes. One of the ways that it's not Garupan is that so far there is a lot less of a focus on the action and tactics and much more on character issues (which I find less interesting).

  (The climax of the fourth episode could be the start of a significant pivot that would make the show much more interesting. On the other hand it could equally be a one-time 'ghost story' with the show returning to standard form. My usual use of Occam's razor here biases me towards the latter view.)

• Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya: This is a perfectly decent modern self aware magical girl series aimed primarily at adult fans. But I don't think there's going to be anything substantial here and I'm not enough of a Type-Moon fan to enjoy it for the injokes. I don't know if the show will have a good enough execution to keep me amused and watching for much longer.

Not watched yet but hopefully soon:

• Rozen Maiden Zurückspulen: Although I enjoyed the first two seasons of Rozen Maiden, I wasn't initially planning to watch this for various fuzzy reasons. I've been hearing quite good things about it, though, and I'm now going to watch at least enough of it to form an opinion. But I haven't yet and I'm four episodes behind and if I wait to watch it, these 'early' impressions will be even less early.

  Check back later.

Shows where I'm going to try the manga instead:

• Silver Spoon and Watamote.

  While widely praised, both of these shows are in settings and genres that almost never click with me regardless of how good the show is. After thinking about it for a while I think I'm much more likely to enjoy their manga versions so I'm going to try those; among other things, I'm much more tolerant of several of their elements in manga form. I also find that manga generally goes by faster.

  (I tried to watch the first episode of SS but slammed to a halt less than a minute in. Having skimmed the whole episode, I think there's a bunch of things that would work in manga but that are too time-wasting or annoying for me to watch animated. Also, I've actually read a bit of the Silver Spoon manga in passing and found it decently interesting.)

Possibly excellent but I can't watch:

• Senki Zesshou Symphogear G: People say good things about this season of Symphogear but I never finished watching the first season so I'd have to do that first.

Miss:

• Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi (aka Sunday Without God): As I basically put it on Twitter, the first episode was only interesting because it was mysterious and then the second episode was rather a letdown. The show is also based on an as-yet-unfinished light novel series which suggests that we are extremely unlikely to have any major aspects of the story resolved in a satisfying way. All in all, no.

On continuing series, I'm actively watching Majestic Prince and still theoretically watching Railgun S (but I don't expect to watch the last arc of the latter, which is apparently going to be an anime-original segment of basically fanservice to increase Blu-ray sales).

Looking back at the Spring 2013 anime season

It's time and past time for another one of these post-season looks back, to go with my early impressions. I didn't do a midterm view this season because, frankly, my anime viewing flagged a lot in the middle of this season (that's also why this retrospective is delayed).

For this season, in order:

• Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2012): This is so good that paradoxically I only watch it sporadically (partly because I spent a bunch of the season hammered by my usual spring allergies). It continues to be excellent. I don't really have anything coherent to say about it apart from that.

  Oh wait, yes I do: this is epic in an excellent way. This is (lovingly produced) space opera and I cannot help but love it for that.

• Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince: The show has gone from strength to strength, having a heart and being quietly serious without losing its goofy charm and weirdness. Chunks of the story are kind of silly and over the top but MJP makes them work by taking them seriously but not too seriously. I'm really enjoying it as it continues.

  Let me summarize it this way: MJP paints in broad strokes and then quietly goes back to fill in little subtle details here and there.

• Valvrave the Liberator: The show spent most of the season being utterly crazy, dipped into unpleasant territory at the end of the infamous episode ten (see Evirus), and in the end did manage to convince me to sort of care about some of the characters. I've wound up looking forward to when it resumes in the fall season.

  (I actually think that this show is crazier than Aquarion EVOL, which is quite an accomplishment. In EVOL most of the stuff sort of makes sense within the context of the show, where Valvrave comes across as simply piling escalation on escalation.)

• To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S: I stalled on this for most of the season (and I'm still behind). I've found this very erratic because I'm not really interested in anything except the action and action-related bits. The character interaction, goofing around, and much of the angst isn't terribly exciting but the Mikoto fights have been good. When the show focuses on action it's nice; when people are standing around talking we get into the Railgun cycle.

  Despite stalling out on it much more than I did on Gargantia, I'm more fond of Railgun S because I like it more on the whole. Our cast of characters continues to be great, I just wish that most of them had more substantial things to do with the story (as opposed to either being excluded entirely or nattering away on side things).

• Suisei no Gargantia: My feelings on Gargantia aren't amenable to easy summaries. On the whole I think the show was emotionally satisfying and well made at a technical level (some of the battle sequences were great and the animation always felt decent). Unlike a lot of shows it's willing to shut up and let things speak for themselves, which lends it a certain air of subtlety; sadly, that air is misleading because the overall plot often uses a sledgehammer. And while the show is emotionally satisfying, any number of things don't actually make much sense if you look at them at all closely. The plot sledgehammer meant that I felt very unenthused about the low points of the show (the latter parts of episode 9 through much of episode 11) and stalled out on it for a significant amount of time.

  (But those low bits are actually a great illustration of how it's hard to call this show: with a few exceptions, Ledo's emotional turmoil and ultimate decision was handled subtly and much more gracefully than, say, Mikoto's angst in Railgun S. The overall plot used a sledgehammer but the execution had a light touch.)

  I believe that I've seen Gargantia called a well-executed collection of cliches designed to appeal to the fans. This is not a bad way to put it and goes well with how almost all of the female characters are designed to be (overly) fanservice-y. Unlike Evirus I have no desire to see more. This story is done and nothing about the show makes me interested in seeing the same sort of execution of any others.

  I'm not convinced that Gargantia was ultimately worth my time. I don't really think I would have missed anything I'd regret much if I hadn't watched it and if I'm being honest I only finished it out of some sense of completeness given that people were saying that the last few episodes were quite good (which they mostly are).

Stalled:

• Hataraku Maou-sama!: I stalled out on this immediately after writing my early impressions for fuzzy reasons. I theoretically intend to try picking this up again because people praise it but I just haven't had the energy.

Excluding Yamato as a special case I genuinely enjoyed MJP and Valvrave and sort of slogged my way through Railgun S and Gargantia. At my low and slow points in the season I was watching only MJP and Valvrave; only after the end of the season am I catching up on the other two.

Brief impressions of the anime of the Spring 2013 season

As before this is my early impressions of the spring's crop of new shows, or at least the small number of them that I've bothered to watch. This time around I've been unusually selective about the shows that I've tried out, so I've rejected any number of things sight unseen based purely on premise descriptions and so on. This may have caused me to miss gems but I haven't really seen any sign of that so far.

(In particular there's a number of action and adventure series that I might normally have auditioned but that I'm actively skipping due to bad reports.)

Hits (so far):

• Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (2012): A well produced incarnation of one of the classic stories of the genre. It's high time I watched some version of this classic and this is by all accounts a good one. I'm quite enjoying it after two episodes and I expect to keep on going.

  (Yes, I know, episodes have been out on Blu-ray for some time. I'm counting it as part of this season because it starting to air now is a large part of what's prompted me to start watching it. I was hoping that one of the regular subtitling groups would take the airing as their cue to give it a go-over, but apparently not.)

• Suisei no Gargantia: The adventures of a castaway soldier and his very powerful, nicely deadpan mecha in a somewhat silly world. I don't have much to say about this besides that it's interesting and amusing. The male protagonist is no Sagara Sousuke but he'll do.

• Ginga Kikoutai Majestic Prince: This is managing to be both goofy and serious at the same time without fumbling things. The goofiness predominates, which is one reason I find it fun to watch; the show is frequently painting with a relatively broad brush. As takes on the 'war is hell and so is what people do in it' genre go, I think this approach is much more interesting than the grim Gundam one.

• To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S: My mixed feelings about the first season of Railgun came roaring back when I saw the first episode of this, but I remain determinedly optimistic. It'll probably be worthwhile on the whole once the dust settles. Apart from that I don't really have anything to say; it's Railgun. I did rather enjoy the second episode and I kind of wish they'd started the show with it rather than spend almost all of the first one reintroducing us to the important characters (as if we could have forgotten them).

  (See NovaJinx on the Railgun cycle, because he's right about it.)

• Valvrave the Liberator: After two episodes this is a glorious, epic trainwreck that's utterly impossible to take seriously. Of course it could be serious about itself and become boring, but hope springs eternal.

  (Now I kind of understand people's feelings for Code Geass, which was apparently also this kind of epic crazy trainwreck.)

On the edge:

• Hataraku Maou-sama!: The comedy doesn't work for me but the plot that's developed at the end of the second episode is just holding my interest for now. With that said this may not last long.

  (I know, I'm an episode behind right now. This may be a bad sign.)

Miss:

• Devil Survivor 2 The Animation: My first draft of these impressions contained what was in retrospect a bunch of excuses for this show to explain why I was still watching it. If I have to make excuses for a show, it's not good and I should admit it to myself (even if I did watch three episodes sort of in hope).

  One of the several strikes against it is that it is trying too hard to have a steampunk Evangelion feel. The result is more bemusing than the creators probably intended.

Sadly a miss:

• Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san: This is probably a fine comedy but sadly and as usual I didn't find it really funny. It makes me smile every so often and it's watchable, but without laughs it's not really compelling. For what it's worth it strikes me as well executed and well paced; if its humour clicks with you, I suspect that you'll enjoy it a fair bit.

  (I actually feel a bit frustrated that I'm not laughing at Muromi's rapid-fire humour. I'd like to be enjoying it.)

Not for me:

• Aku no Hana: I am completely and utterly uninterested in the story, no matter how impressive or well executed it is.

• Shingeki no Kyojin: Everything I've heard says that it's bleak, bloody, grim, and so on. I've decided that I'm simply not interested in that sort of thing right now, regardless of how good it is or how much it might be my kind of thing with less blood and bleakness.

Just no:

• Haiyore! Nyaruko-san W: I eventually found the first season to be (boringly) ordinary so I'm not getting sucked into the second season.

• Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Bride: Just no, because sometimes I'm smart enough to not get caught in the same trap twice.

Other shows probably fall into the 'I read bad things about them' category mentioned above.

(This specifically includes Karneval, Mushibugyou, Crime Edge, Red Data Girl, and Arata Kangatari. As always, I may wind up checking out some or all of them out later due to future good reports, boredom with the shows I'm watching, or both.)

Some words on Shin Sekai Yori's Squealer

It turns out that I have more to say about Shin Sekai Yori than I've already written. Today is some things about Squealer (aka Yakomaru).

(There are spoilers here for SSY's final arc.)

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Looking back at the Winter 2013 anime season

It's time (and past time) for another look back at another season, following up on my early impressions and my midway views. In fact this is kind of a retrospective on two seasons, since so many of the Fall 2012 shows continued into this season; as such I'm splitting into two parts, one for a handful of this season's shows and the other for the big four heavyweights from last season.

For this season, in order:

• Sasami-san@Ganbaranai: This was the clear success of the season for me, delivering entertainment and surprise turns right up to the final episode. I quite enjoyed it, including all its references to Japanese mythology and vague randomness.

• Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo: This delivered exactly the popcorn entertainment that I wanted from it. I've got nothing to say about it that I didn't cover in my midway views.

• Yama no Susume: What this show really is is another 'cute girls doing cute things' show, just with a different framing premise and a certain amount of geekery about mountaineering equipment. I misled myself about its real nature based on the early episodes and then felt let down by the later ones (which is not the show's fault). On the whole it was okay but I'm left with no more than vague feelings of affection for it.

  (If I'd known at the start what I know now, I'm not certain that I'd have watched it at all. If you're going to, it's probably best watched all in one batch.)

• Vividred Operation: There are shows that are actively bad and then there are shows that are just empty somehow. VO is the latter; it goes through the motions but nothing ever really engaged. Despite what I wrote in my midway views, I watched all of it for no clear reason (perhaps partly stubbornness). For more, see Evirus's lovely summary of the show in his season wrapup (he is more charitable than I am).

  Given VO's excessive levels of fanservice and general emptiness, I think that people should give it a miss. If you want to watch something with this level of twitch-inducing fanservice, my understanding is that Strike Witches is actually much more interesting and emotionally involving. See also my early impressions.

In the end I tacitly dropped Hakkenden Touhou Hakken Ibun because I just felt no particular urge to watch any more. This is less a commentary on the show than a commentary on me; my understanding is that it was actually decently good, and it's getting a second season later on.

The fall shows, in order:

• Shin Sekai Yori: I wrote about it at some length but the short version is that I love it and think it's a great show. It is the best show from both this season and last season and it had the best ending. See also my Fall 2012 retrospective.

• Girls und Panzer: The delayed last two episodes totally delivered on the promise of the first ten episodes. They were a satisfying and exciting sports action capstone on an excellent and fun show. All I can possibly really say is PANZER VOR!

• Psycho-Pass: The show is far from perfect (for a start, it's far too much in love with violence to women) but after a terrible start it managed to turn itself into a pretty good show by dint of trying hard and having Akane. I've already written a bunch of words on Sibyl and on the ending so I don't have anything else to say here.

• Zetsuen no Tempest: This was an excellent show pretty much from start to end, almost without a fumble or a misstep (the bait and switch at the end of the second last episode costs it style points). It lacks the power (and the brutality) of Psycho-Pass, which is why I'm reluctantly ranking it below PP; I suspect that people will remember and talk about PP much longer than they will ZnT.

  (One problem for ZnT is that Aika is clearly the best character and she's dead for the entire show. Not that the other characters are bad, several of them are great, but they can't measure up to Aika.)

If I look only at the Winter 2013 shows, this was a good but not great season. If I throw in the four powerhouses that started in the fall, this is a stunningly excellent season, one that I have no complaints about at all.

Some words on Shin Sekai Yori

My overall summary of Shin Sekai Yori is that it's an ambitious show of an ambitious story that succeeded at delivering on both (although as an ambitious show and story there are bits that people feel didn't work). As a whole the show is a powerful, affecting work with a wide emotional range and a lot of things to think about. My personal view is that the show is very well directed and animated and that its periodic experiments don't take away from that, but I'm not a stickler for traditional animation.

(Shin Sekai Yori also had a great ending episode, one of the best that I've seen. It was surprising, powerful, and well directed all throughout, with pieces that people were quoting and alluding to from the moment it aired.)

I can summarize my overall views this way: if Shin Sekai Yori is not at the top of my 'best N in 2013' list, I'll be very happy because I'll have seen something even better than it in the rest of this year.

Liked: very much.
Rewatch: Possibly. This is one of the rare shows where I can imagine myself enjoying it a second time around.

(There are spoilers from now on.)

One of the things that the show excelled at was taking people doing horrible things and showing us why they had to do them. Pretty much everyone in the show is trapped in situations with no easy or good answers. The result is that, as I wrote on Twitter (spoilers in that conversation), a lot of people in SSY deserve death to some degree and don't to some degree. There are no shining heroes, just people doing the best that they can in a terrible situation. To me this made the characters feel more like people than, well, the protagonists of an anime. Call it a feeling of realism.

One part of this realism is that Saki and Satoru never particularly overcame the fundamental prejudices of their society, even when they were slapped in the face about them. Here I'm thinking particularly about their attitudes towards the bakenezumi (aka the queerats). Even Saki never really treats them as equals or fully people; to me this is particularly striking in what she unhesitatingly and more or less casually asks of Kiromaru in the last episode. Although other people may read the situation differently, to me Saki acted as if she was entitled to Kiromaru's sacrifice.

(I tweeted a version of this thought: 1, 2, 3.)

One of the things I believe about the setting is that Cantus users are dying out over the long term because of what they're doing to their own population level (this may be good news). While their raw birthrate is probably at or above their replacement rate, the problem is that they kill a significant number of their children in childhood. There's no sign that they make up for this with either unusually large families or unusually long lives; if anything, things seem to tilt the other way. I can't remember many mentions of (surviving) siblings in the whole show and the primary cast all seem to be single children.

(In Saki's case it's a plot point that her older sister didn't surive and that this put a great deal of stress on her parents; they didn't seem inclined to have a third child under pretty much any circumstances. My best evidence for people's lives not being unusually long is that Saki initially guessed that the elderly-looking Tomiko was 62.)

Other people have said more about Shin Sekai Yori and done it more coherently than I. See, for example, shibireru darou on episodes 24 and 25 and their roundup. The Cart Driver has a somewhat different take because Inushinde sees more flaws in the show than I do (the flaws may be there, but if so they didn't bother me next to everything else the show was doing).

(I've written less about Shin Sekai Yori than I have about Psycho-Pass because SSY is a better and clearer show.)

Update: I wound up with some more things to say about Squealer, which I put in ShinSekaiYoriSquealer.

Some rambling thoughts on Psycho-Pass and its ending

Almost from the start Psycho-Pass was clearly a show where the ending was pretty crucial and a bad ending would be a real problem for the show as a whole. Did Psycho-Pass come through in the end? My view is yes, although there are people who disagree. On the whole I consider the last episode a good ending although not a great one; to put it one way it was a well done and periodically exciting presentation of the last act of a play that we had all seen coming. There were no big surprises, no last minute shocks, simply well delivered story beats that we had already been (mostly) expecting.

(I'm now about to get into spoiler territory.)

The surface story of Psycho-Pass is the hunt for Makishima; apart from the first episode (which mostly serves as an introduction to the setting and the characters) the entire storyline is driven by his actions and revolves around them. But that's not really what the show's about and I think that how people feel about the ending (and thus the show) will depend on what they think the real story of Psycho-Pass is and that in turn depends on one's view of Sibyl. One view is that Sibyl is an inherently evil system and that the show should be about overthrowing it; this makes the ending at least a depressing one since the system survives and indeed co-opts Akane despite her knowing its terrible secrets. But I don't feel that way about Sibyl. Instead I've come around to seeing Psycho-Pass as fundamentally Akane's character arc, the story of Akane really growing up, maturing, and making her own decisions. This view makes the ending a powerful conclusion to the series because we see Akane come full circle to be a competent character and confident leader.

(I'll be honest; I'm biased towards this view partly because it makes the ending make sense.)

Having said that I don't know what the show really feels about Sibyl by the end. Is it evil but necessary? Flawed but necessary? There's certainly a lot of argument (tacit and explicit) in the latter parts of the show that Sibyl is now a necessity and society will fall apart without it. Also, part of my confusion is that the show and I clearly have rather different opinions on how horrifying the truth of Sibyl's deep secret is.

(This is serious spoiler territory now; I'm about to be explicit.)

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My view of Psycho-Pass's Sibyl System

(There are spoilers here.)

The Sibyl System is at the heart of Psycho-Pass and so I think that how people view it will be at the heart of how they react to the ending of the show. Because of this I want to write up my thoughts.

There is no question that the Sibyl System is flawed; the show goes out of its way to show us that in the first episode. Nor is there any question that it's tacitly oppressive; again, the show makes that clear with things like pervasive surveillance, mandatory treatment if your psycho-pass becomes cloudy, and potential imprisonment if the (flawed) system thinks that you've become merely potentially dangerous. One character has lived his entire life from childhood onwards as what is basically a non-person prisoner simply because the Sibyl System thought he was too much of a latent criminal.

But this brings us to the big question: is the Sibyl System an actively evil thing, something built and operated with malign intent or as a conscious tool for oppression? My view is that it is not.

I feel that Sibyl is fundamentally benevolent and well intentioned. Its flaws are not the result of active evil but (mostly) from being built with imperfect and limited technology; these make it both simplistic and overly rigid and thus inherently flawed. While the system is dishonest about how well Sibyl works and its limitations (and exactly how it works), this stems from good intentions. And generally Sibyl actually works. For the most part it delivers on what it claims to and does so without abuse, and as a result it's welcomed by people. You can argue about whether or not this is wise of them, but to the extent that Sibyl reduces people's free will it's not because Sibyl takes free will from people but because people voluntarily relinquish their free will to something that will do their thinking for them.

(You can argue that some of Sibyl's goals are inherently bad, eg that even if it had certainty that someone would commit crimes in the future they should not be imprisoned now.)

We never see Sibyl make a clear false positive diagnosis of (dangerous) criminality; its bad judgements of that (starting in the first episode) are always rational and driven by clearly limited and rigid views (eg 'too much stress makes people dangerous'). I maintain that we also never see strong evidence that Sibyl is corrupt and is being used to enrich and empower particular people.

(Yes, Sibyl covertly holds important and powerful positions. But there is no evidence that these positions are being abused for personal or group gain; instead, they are simply being used as part of making the whole Sibyl system work.)

To me this makes Psycho-Pass a much more interesting show than if Sibyl was a clear tool for evil and oppression. As it is you can have a real disagreement over whether Sibyl is a good thing and whether its benefits are worth its drawbacks.

(It also gives the show a different perspective, less about outside oppression and more about what people voluntarily do to themselves both individually and as a society.)