In most respects, this was an excellent first episode.
Stylish, gritty, ballsy, generally good "cop drama". Rock solid dialogue. The grimdark, crapsack world setting is leavened a bit by the sheer stylish beauty of a lot of it as well as by the perkiness, naivety, and idealism of the female lead. All in all, it's a superb total package.
The problem is though that this Psycho-Pass is almost
too flawed for its own good, as many other people have already alluded to. I think we were all pretty confident that the flaws of this Psycho-Pass system would be explored in this anime, and that it would really grapple with the ethics of it all.
With this in mind, I recall an old sci-fi movie from the 90s (the name of which unfortunately escapes me right now) that had a somewhat similar system in place. Basically, the movie focused a lot on a time traveling police force who stopped crimes before they happened, by going back in time to arrest the person who was going to commit the crime before they'd have a chance to commit it.
This raised a decidedly thought-provoking ethical issue - At a societal level, this time traveling cop system made sense. It would definitely mean fewer crimes, and fewer victims of crime. But it would also mean that people are technically getting arrested for crimes they haven't (yet) committed. There's something a little bit disturbing about that. Still, the broader societal benefits to this time traveling cop system was clear.
Psycho-Pass is somewhat similar, except in place of using time travel to stop "potential" criminals it uses quantified psychiatric measurements of sorts. This too could raise some decidedly thought-provoking ethical issues - But the overall execution of the system just seems too immensely flawed for a serious defense of it to be raised.
I can see some merit in stopping likely criminals before they can commit a crime. I can even kind of buy the idea of a futuristic psychiatric measuring device coming to the determination of "Yep, this guy/gal is totally beyond any real hope of rehabilitation". What I have a harder time buying is the system seemingly not accounting
at all for its self-fulfilling prophecy risk. Hell, the system even exacerbates that risk beyond what you'd expect, what with killing people in the most needlessly gruesome and bloody ways imaginable (meaning that any innocent people who catch sight of that are naturally going to get
extremely traumatized by it, no doubt throwing off their Psycho-Pass score).
Most of all, though, I found it pretty incredible that one minute the Psycho-Pass gun is saying "This woman is beyond all hope, kill her", and just a minute or two later its saying "This woman is now safe to take in, just paralyze her". If a few reassuring words from a raw Inspector is all it takes to shift someone from "beyond rehabilitation, kill her" to "please paralyze and take in" then that is one abysmally flawed system.
So, yeah, this episode could have hardly been any more forceful in hammering home the idea of "This Psycho-Pass system is seriously effed up!"
Now, I guess Gen might pull an interesting twist here, making you think that in spite of its glaring flaws this system is worth it anyway. But I'm admittedly a bit skeptical of that, just because it's a very tall order on the face of it.
So I think that maybe the theme of this show is that you really can go too far in "getting tough on crime". Maybe that's the social commentary here - If you're too hard on crime, you actually create more criminals out of normal people who become fearful of the police
because they're too harsh/strict/dangerous. And if that's part of the theme of this show, it is an interesting one.
In any event, this was still an excellent first episode. For me, it had almost as much style as K, but with way more substance.
9/10 for Psycho-Pass Episode 1.