PorkyMcPork

First off: yes, it's rushed. Yes, compared to the manga/anime, it lacks the buildup of both protagonists and antagonists and their relationships. Yes, therefore it lacks depth and proper pacing in some places. Yes, no Dark Tournament. And, finally yes, all that sucks.

Still, I felt this is an admirable effort because of two reasons. Firstly, Yusuke's, Kuwabara's and Toguro's actors are cast almost perfectly. Hiei's and Kurama's don't really fall short. The chemistry they have in the manga is transported well. Secondly, the fights carry the series. And boy do they do well. The raw power, the intensity, the brutality, the choreography, the camera. You'll "feel" every hit, you'll try to evade punches in front of the screen, you'll be immersed, in one word. Fantastic!

If you can get over the fact that the makers needed to fit the arcs that define the Yu Yu Hakusho anime experience, into a 5-episode "pilot", you are in for a treat. And again yes, that is a bitter pill to swallow but in my opinion worth it in this case.

Now, to the producers out there, give it a good budget, redo the series from the start with the same cast but give it 20 episodes, pretty please!

In a dystopian Japan, the so-called "Sybil System", an autarkic omnipresent surveillance framework, controls the lives of the country's population in the pursuit of optimal happiness. It monitors aptitude, potential, and psychic health of its inhabitants. By means of the Psycho-Pass, an individual psychological fingerprint, stress levels are measured and preemptive measures are taken, should a citizen display anomalous behavior such as depression or the intent/latency to commit a crime. The latter finds expression in a number called the "Crime Coefficient", a characteristic showing the latent criminal potential of a person. Once this number surpasses a certain threshold, this person is branded since there is virtually no chance of reducing this number again. Set against this background, a crime unit investigates into a series of murders that set the stage for what I find to be one the most compelling and complex Anime series in recent years.

What begins as a well-executed alteration of Orwell and Dick, soon turns out to touch so many additional topics that I was actually surprised and happy to see that the shear audacity to put all this into one show did neither ruin the flow nor the arc of suspense. On the contrary, all the references to literature, the philosophical discourse, the sociological aspects are woven astoundingly well into the plot. Name it, it's there: Kantian ethics, Max Weber's sociology of domination, Sartre's existentialism, Foucault, etc. All this is combined with contemporary phenomena such as the loss of privacy, alienation in urban areas, and the boundlessness of human beings that are overwhelmed by an overly complex reality.

The show is action-packed and VERY graphic, has brilliant character development and is emotionally very demanding to say the least.

Watch it and be blown away!