Series Review – Persona 4 the Animation

Persona 4 the Animation

Persona 4’s source material is actually a PS2 video game that goes by the same name, and it was actually quite popular amongst RPG players. The issue that this detail should immediately trigger in your mind is that video games rarely translate well to anime counterparts, with rare exceptions such as Valkyria Chronicles (and even that is debatable). The problems usually come from how to integrate battles, the repetitive nature to video game dungeons, and character interactions, in the anime format. Unfortunately, it seems that Persona 4’s anime adaptation suffered from all these flaws, with the added problem of a bad pacing that worked against the story.

One thing to note here is that the experience derived from this anime will vary depending on if you’ve played the original video game or not. If you played the original you’ll notice a bunch of story changes, as well as a lack of emphasis on the mystery that defined much of the video game’s story. On the other hand, as a newcomer to the franchise you’ll notice that the story has more of an emphasis on slice-of-life/comedy, and the mystery feels rather lacking. There are also various little details such as personas and social links that will be a bit confusing to newcomers.

The inherent flaws to this anime actually stem from the original source material, mainly because what’s okay in a video game isn’t necessarily good in an anime. For instance, the main premise of the original video game is to rescue students that are thrown into a “TV world”, with each character being rescued in a similar manner. There’s a warning on the midnight channel, the victim gets thrown into the TV world, and you go in and fight through a vicious dungeon to save the said victim. In a video game this is all fine and dandy, but in a story-centric anime, it becomes blatantly obvious that each rescue arc is practically a carbon copy of the previous one, with only a scant few changes and new details revealed with each iteration. The result is a repetitive story that spans the entire show, though it seems that the anime studio tried to change it up with some anime-original ideas later on.

The various moments of silly slice of life interspersed in this murder-mystery story didn’t exactly help with the main plot either, defusing whatever tensions that were previously building up. The peaceful moments were fun and goofy, but they made it very difficult to care for the serious overarching plot at all. The super-serious final arc, in particular, was too bland and boring in comparison to the silly tone that previous episodes had taken.

The pacing for the story itself is also rather questionable, where character development is crammed into one or two episodes for side characters that aren’t even important. Yes, I realize that many of these side characters are social links in the original video game, but the key thing to note here is that the side characters play absolutely no role at all in the main story. There were entire episodes devoted to these unimportant side characters, and our main cast consequently got very little indepth development that is worth mentioning.

The one good aspect to this series would probably be it’s music and relatively faithful portrayal of the Persona 4 story. Though the story might have been a mess at times, nobody will deny that it tried to be as faithful tot he original game as possible (and suffered a bit as a result). Then there’s the music, which was done by Shoji Meguro. There was a ton of recycled music from the video game, but the music itself was solid (and at times fitting) in this anime.

Animation/Art: 7.5/10

Music: 8.0/10

Setting: 7.0/10

Characters: 6.5/10

Story: 7.0/10

Overall Enjoyment: 7.4/10

Quick Impressions – Persona 4 – 11

Episode 11 –

Go figure, just as I’m starting to approach this series without expecting anything serious, the series decides to get all serious with it’s plot. The murder mystery elements are finally getting more of the spotlight here, but at this point, I think the merits to the murder mystery have practically been lost. And after seeing how goofy it’s been up till this point, it’s easy to see why. There’s no way I could take the murder mystery very seriously at this point because of all the ridiculous gags in the show. Persona 4 went out of it’s way to make comedy it’s foundation, so the sudden focus on the serious murders is a very unnecessary changeup.

In other words, a comedy series can’t suddenly be serious without softening the seriousness to the story. It’d be as if Ika musume tried to seriously plot to take over the world, which we would never take seriously because of the gag-nature to her story. The same applies here; after all the ridiculous over-the-top gags in P4 so far, a serious plot twist just doesn’t fit with it’s atmosphere.

Alright, at this point, I might as well make this official; I am completely dropping coverage for this series. This series has done a terrible job at trying to maintain balance between it’s serious and light-hearted sides, where almost everything up until this point has been biased towards a more goofy atmosphere. And now it suddenly wants to change to super-serious mode? I’m sorry, if you wanted to do that, you should’ve done that weeks ago.

Screenshots are later in the post.

P.S. But hey, all of you P4 video game fans, as usual this episode was a treat. Even if there was some anime original stuff that wasn’t in the original game.

Quick Impressions – Persona 4 the Animation – 09 + 10

Episode 09 + 10 –

I’ve been saying this quite a bit, but at this point I won’t even bother taking the anime adaptation to Persona 4 seriously. Because if I do, I know I’ll rage out on the stupidly fast pacing, the cramming in of little details, and rushed character development. And not to mention, the very repetitive arc format. As you might have noticed, this series is much more for those who know the source material.

That being said, it’s always amusing to see how certain moments in the game translate out to it’s anime counterpart. I certainly didn’t imagine the Glowing Teddy part the way it showed up here, and shadow Rise was a tad bit more provocative with her language than I remember. The action sequences themselves were decent, though it feels like they were cut way too short due to the introduction of Shadow Teddy. And I do remember there being an actual battle against Shadow teddy, so seeing the fight end without too much effort does seem a bit strange to me. What exactly was that ball that Izanagi cut up anyways?

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that I sorely miss the english dubbing for the cast. The Japanese casting is great so far (aside from Teddy), but I do feel the english voices did give the original game’s dialogue more of a bite. But hey, it’s not like the possibility of an English Dub is zero. But it’s probably very, very close.

Screenshots are later in the post.

Quick Impressions – Persona 4 the Animation – 08

Episode 08 –

Hah, you know what? I think I know what my problem with this series is. I’m being way too serious with the show, where at this point it’s quite obvious that it’s meant to be a simple comedy anime. Yea, the video game was at least ten times more serious than this show, so I did start this show with different expectations. But heck, if you think of this show in terms of a comedy, it’s pretty brilliant in it’s own little ways. As a serious murder-mystery oriented anime? Nope, totally fails.

Thinking of it that way, this episode did have those stereotypical jokes that we’ve seen in anime before. Girls being bad cooks? Check. Girls overreacting to guys acting all pervy, and slapping guys with nosebleeds around? Check. Random swimsuits? check. Yea, there’s plenty of stuff here we’ve seen in other comedy series.

And yet, while there were stereotypical jokes in there, some of them were actually quite hilarious. There are the gags with Kanji being rejected by the fat girl, how King Moron was throwing up into the waterfall upstream, and both Chie and Yukiko’s rather stern reactions to their swimsuits. Yea, I busted my gut over a few gags in this episode.

Yet, there was actually a somewhat serious purpose hidden here. Mainly, it was briefly developing Konishi’s younger brother, as well as slightly pushing Yu’s relationship forward with both Yukiko and Chie. Yea, the serious vibes are pretty much lost in all the comedy, but it is there. I’d actually say that the super-fast pacing is what’s killing any attempt at seriousness, where certain events just feel too random and unnecessary. Or at least, there isn’t a very good flow to everything that’s going on. For instance, what’s up with the random scenes with Nanako at the beginning of the episode? While I know what the purpose of the scenes are, the way in which we transition to those moments makes the scene feel completely pointless.

Yea, at this point I’m not going to even bother writing seriously about this series anymore. It’s meant to be a silly comedy, and while I can’t say it’s the best I’ve ever seen, it’s not particularly terrible either. Or at least, it’s certainly very different from many of the other comedies we’ve been seeing (both in terms of setting and plot).

Screenshots are later in the post.

Quick Impressions – Persona 4 the Animation – 07

Episode 07 –

…Yea, uhh, I guess those that haven’t played the video game wouldn’t know what the big issue here is. As a comedy, Persona 4 has actually been relatively entertaining (especially for me since I’m aware of the original story). However, that does also prove a huge problem here; this series is just too focused on the comedy, and all the more serious elements to the story are pretty much being sidelined. I guess Seiji Kishi is a director who specializes in comedic series, but I never anticipated the anime to ignore the serious aspects of the story to this extent.

That being said, I’ll openly admit now that I thought this episode was entertaining in terms of humor. I got more than my fair share of laughs, especially with the Naoto-Kanji jokes the series has been repeatedly using. The bits with Kanji in the sauna area were ridiculous enough to get me laughing too; or at least, they were definitely absurd enough to get me to facepalm on more than one occasion.

That being said, the huge problem to this series right now is how it’s not taking anything seriously at all. I mean, the story was originally about investigating why somebody is attempting to kill people by throwing them into the TV. So where are the scenes where the characters brainstorm and put together clues? Where’s the deduction behind solving the mystery happening? Does the mystery even really matter at this point? Because seriously, this series has been a joke at trying to get a proper plot going; instead we’re just getting a mish mash of gags and jokes with no focus or strong direction to the plot. And for a series with a premised based upon solving a mystery, that is a critical flaw.

At this point, I think I’m just going to drop blogging Persona 4 altogether. It’s an entertaining watch for somebody who’s played the video game, but it’s also absolutely terrible at getting the appeal of the main story across in a reasonable manner. I’m thinking about it now, and Persona 4 is definitely one of those games that would need at least a 50 episode anime adaptation to cram in the entire story.

Screenshots are later in the post.

Persona 4 the Animation – 05

Episode 05 –

And with this episode, I’m strongly debating about not writing about this series anymore. As to why, at this point it’s painfully obvious that this anime is just a huge advertisement for the video game, all with a terrible pacing and a very improper focus in terms of plot. I did play the game though, so I do have fun with this series and it’s energetic gags. But that doesn’t quite stop me from facepalming at the blunders that this series has made so far.

The biggest issues here boil down to two things; improperly focusing on the comedy rather than the murder mystery elements, as well as the fast pacing. Honestly speaking, it almost feels as if the murder mystery elements to this anime are something that was just tacked onto the story. In other words, the mystery elements feel like an extra, but obviously that’s not the case. The murder mystery elements are central to the overarching story, and is what links everything together. The extreme focus on the goofy character interactions is entertaining, but does a terrible job at getting the more important points of the story across.

And not to mention, the fast pacing makes it impossible for any of those important facts to really sink in. Really, right now it’s probably only the video game players that can have a strong appreciation of just how complex the unfolding situation can get. This just serves to reinforce the issue where this series is purely fanservice for the video game players. Admittingly, this series does preserve a lot of what the video game players came to expect from Persona 4, but the execution of the murder-mystery elements is what’s really poorly done.

I did enjoy the episode though, such as the heavily implied homo gags about Kanji, as well as the brief scene where Yukiko was alone with Narukami at the shrine. He definitely didn’t have enough courage points for to straight up ask her for her number (lol); I’m glad they kept that video game reference in there. The social links certainly aren’t being ignored here, which is nice to see, yet at the same time it’s going to be really hard to fit in the entire story into a measly 24 episode anime.

Overall Enjoyment: 2.9/5

Screenshots are later in the post.

Quick Impressions – Persona 4 the Animation – 05

Episode 05 –

Yep, and with this episode, it’s pretty obvious that Persona 4 is a series meant for fans of the video game. The pacing for this episode was ridiculously fast, and the character development was not done well. Also, this episode feels very random because there is absolutely no explanation for why we suddenly had an entire episode devoted to Kou and Ebihara.

Of course, for you video game players, it’s quite obvious what this episode is all about; establishing social links. However, if you look at it from the perspective of someone not familiar with the series, there are a few critical questions worth noting.

The most important issue is on what happened to the murder mystery story. After the initial bit of hints towards the beginning of the series, it practically disappeared up until this episode. And even when it does pop up this episode, it barely got 2-3 minutes of screentime. This TV series is doing a terrible job with creating a proper mystery, with the super-fast pacing the culprit. There’s no time to let facts sink in and leave an impact, which is hurting the overall premise to this series.

There are other issues here for newcomers, but for game fans this episode was probably loads of fun. I know I had a lot of fun watching Yosuke being goofy, as well as laughed at just how ridiculously crammed this episode felt. I mean, it managed to cram in two entire social links into a single episode.

But do you know what my complaints pretty much say? Persona 4 should have been much longer than a 24 episode series; 50+ would’ve been more suitable.

Screenshots are later in the post.

Quick Impressions – Persona 4 the Animation – 04

Episode 04 –

Wow, well this episode went into Yukiko’s background in much more detail than I had anticipated. For Chie and Yosuke, their episodes in question had rather quick, short bits of exposition on their backgrounds, as well as fast resolutions. Here, they stretched out Yukiko’s past across an entire episode, all while keeping things reasonably paced. The one thing I really appreciated about this episode is how it went about telling Yukiko’s backstory. For a vast majority of her flashbacks, we saw her story in complete silence. Silence in itself is a great way to “show and not tell”, and added a lot more strength to Yukiko’s issues at hand.

And yet, even with this excellent character development, the actual conclusion ended up just as cheesy and predictable as it has been for previous victims. While I do appreciate how this series tries to explore all the characters in more depth, doing it in a formulaic “victim thrown into TV, rescued, gets Persona” process can get a bit too redundant and overused. Nonetheless, while it’s almost always obvious that the good guys here won’t lose, it’s interesting to see how AIC goes through the trouble of showing just how difficult some of these boss fights are. They certainly aren’t pushovers, and at some points it even looked like the main cast would lose the battle.

Now I only wish we could get an english dub here. As good as the Japanese seiyu are for this series, the english voice actors for the video game were superb as well. :3

Screenshots are later in the post.

Persona 4 – 03

Episode 03 –

For those that are familiar with the original video game, there’s a lot of stuff straight from the video game that I never thought would be brought into this anime adaptation. It’s certainly a way to appeal towards previous fans, that’s for sure. Aside from that though, once again this episode of Persona 4 maintains a very fast pacing. It seems that with each passing episode, the story is adjusting better to the pacing. It’s even more noticable this episode, with the comedy blending in rather well with the action.

The gags this episode were spot on, especially the bit with the police arrests and Narukami’s reaction to Yukiko on TV. I’ll admit it, I laughed when Narukami said that “I should’ve recorded that” with an expression of disbelief. There are little details to the gags that add a fun spin to the jokes, though I guess I’m also laughing because these little details weren’t in the video game.

As for the serious parts, I do like how this series has managed to blend in the action with the character focus. This time, as expected, there is a focus on Chie and her darker “shadow”. Yosuke also faced off against a similar shadow in the previous episode, so at this point it’s pretty safe to assume that Yukiko will also have to face off against her “shadow”.

The inner conflicts are explored rather well in each of these episodes, but there is the risk that these episodes will get too formulaic. I mean, random victim gets thrown into tv, and leads to the gang going to try and save the said person. They end up running into the said victim, who is facing off against his/her shadow, and they defeat the shadow. As a result, the victim receives a persona. While the whole murder mystery aspect is great, the method in which characters are being developed could turn out to be a bit repetitive.

The really fast pacing makes it somewhat tough to fully understand the depth to the mystery too. It’s not really explained in depth here (or was slightly touched upon in a previous episode), but it’s implied that somebody is throwing people into the TV, and the people in the TV die whenever there is fog in the real world. They briefly mention such, but the fast pacing makes it difficult to let these mystery-murder aspects really sink in. This feels more like a fast paced shounen in some ways, as opposed to an actual murder-mystery series.

In the end, the fast pacing once again does hurt this episode, but it was still a fun episode. The pacing issues could prove to be problematic in the future, but as of now the series is doing a decent job at both developing the characters while pushing the mystery forward.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.7/5

Screenshots are later in the post.

Persona 4 the Animation – 02

Episode 02 –

This is a much welcomed improvement from the first episode last week. While the pacing was still a bit fast, it was still a huge improvement over the extremely rushed pacing last week. There was more time for proper buildup and character development, which was pretty much lacking for the entirety of the first episode. That being said, the strongest point to P4’s story as of now is the buildup surrounding the mysterious murders. The pacing does make it difficult for to let things sink in, but it nevertheless does manage to get the general message across; that is, the murders are explicitly associated with the ability to enter the TV, as well as the mysterious “shadows” in the TV world.

That being said, this episode certainly wasn’t very subtle with it’s conflict involving Yosuke. The peek into Yosuke’s problems with regards to his status as the manager’s son, as well as the negative stigmas that come with that status, was handled in a very straightforward manner. The involvement of the mysterious shadows here further emphasized his problems, especially with all those flashbacks about how people treat him. His development was handled well for the most part, though I do wish that the fight was a little more quiet moments for to let Yosuke’s backstory really sink in and leave a stronger impression.

The revelations about the TV world, on the other hand, are getting increasingly more intriguing. The most notable issue would be how people are being thrown into the TV, only to somehow end up dead on the other side (aka the real world). Obviously not everybody has access to the TV world, so somebody has to be pushing the victims into the TV. So who is this culprit? Or to be more specific, why is the culprit targeting these people? What are his motivations, his goals, his ideals, that is pushing him to do this? And what is the exact mechanism in which the TV world kills the victims?

In the end, the pacing continues to feel rushed, though much less so than the first episode. There’s a certain lack of subtlety that would work great for certain scenes, but that’s not a terribly huge flaw here. The mystery itself is being built up quite well, and is pointing towards a rather interesting mystery-murder. Of course, it’ll probably end up that the main cast will end up trying to solve this mystery, but how exactly will they track down someone who simply throws people into TVs? There’s potential in the premise here, so seeing how the story evolves in the next 22 or so remaining episodes should prove to be something worth watching.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.7/5

P.S. I don’t know how valid the rumors about AIC’s bad treatment of animators for this series, but power to the animators if there really is some abuse going on. Shame on AIC.

P.S.S. I have fully played the video game, so I do know what will happen in the story. Nonetheless, I will try my best to stay as spoiler-free and objective as possible.

Screenshots are later in the post.