What is cyberpunk? While it is hardly as problematic a term like steampunk, which is a tempest in a teapot in of itself, it is a genre that gets plastered on quite a few series for mostly cosmetic reasons that often miss the point of the purest essence of the classification.
Therefore I am going to say that to be a full cyberpunk series you need to simultaneously fulfill two requirements. The first is the proliferation of cyber-technology. Cybernetics and Cyberspace should be fairly ubiquitous in the setting. While in many ways we are living in parts of the cyberpunk future laid out in things like the Sprawl Trilogy any contemporary cyberpunk work should be set in the not too distant future where our present information technology infrastructure is even more omnipresent. There should be more advanced augmented reality, more complex and sometimes totally cosmetic integration of man and machine, and a totally ubiquitous internet. The technology should advance with the march of science.
The second part is there should be a fairly oppressive divide between haves and the have-nots with a distinct air of dystopia. The rich should live in luxury and decadence with a technological regime that supports them. At the same time the down and out live in a paradox. While they have progressed a good deal with the ubiquitous nature of technology their lives should actually be worse since they have lost so much freedom and security. Also the gap between the poor and the rich should be astronomical with the resentment on both sides being equally intense.
You see that in all the classic cyberpunk novels like Neuromancer and Snow Crash, RPGs like Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020, and anime like Serial Experiments Lain and Ghost in the Shell. So our question here today is how much does PSYCHO-PASS fit into this two-part model. Does it have a cyberpunk flavor or is it full-immersed in the genre?
