Yea it's probably not a budget issue but it's ridiculously striking when you compare it to Robotics;Notes which just looks all around better. Admittedly R;N looks more generic as well but it still looks a lot better. I mean when you look at Wit's prior work in Guilty Crown, PP looks like shit in comparison. The show shouldn't look as bad as it does and I guess I'm just trying to figure out why. Chances are I'll never know though.
I have a few ideas why it looks kinda bad, but I don't agree that Robotics;Notes looks much better at all. After all, part of the reason I dropped R;N is because of how bland and uninteresting it looks. Terrible character designs, boring visual composition, etc. But ymmv, so whatever.
In the case of Psycho-Pass, I would say they're clearly going for a Fate/Zero sort of visual look, but IG either doesn't have the time or the capability (or both?) to match that quality on the composite level.
The characters in Fate/Zero aren't particularly detailed either on the key animation level, but what elevates the entire visual tone in the series is the strong composite and finishing. The color design, the way the frames are colors, the lighting in the final composite, the shadows, various the digital effects, etc. The amount of effort Ufotable puts into the post-animation process results in a very cohesive image, and the detailed backgrounds blend well with the less detailed 2D animated characters. Characters have various color tones which accurately convey the setting, the time of day, the mood of the scene, etc, without making them look like flat zombies.
In contrast, Psycho-Pass looks mostly flat, the characters stand out from the backgrounds, and the colors are often washed out and makes everyone look like an albino zombie. That's not an attractive visual look. The more characters stand out in this way, the more attention is also drawn to how they're not very detailed to begin with, and in some cases how they're just badly drawn. It doesn't help that the layouts in Psycho-Pass just aren't very interesting either, and so the characters feel like cut outs pasted onto a pre-made background, instead of characters moving and inhabiting a natural 3D space with an active camera on them.
tl;dr: I think IG's composite department really kinda sucks these days. Some of their shows still look good, but it's getting less common. Either shoddy workmanship because of more deadlines, or some staff are much less capable than others.
So you're saying it's all Kyoji Asano's fault.
I don't think it's fair to blame just one person, especially if the person is an artist and animator who is working in a larger company and probably under instructions to create a certain style which ended up looking unappealing. A quick glance at IG's character design output in the last few years will reveal a similar trend in some other shows by other animation character designers as well... especially in their noitaminA output.
