Ranked #1836

Persona -trinity soul-

How cool is it when you put a gun to your head, close your eyes, pull the trigger... and out comes a mask of your personality, a figure of your other self, a being of great power that you can summon...a Persona?

Very cool indeed.
That's the theme of the quite popular Persona 3, an Atlus game for the Playstation 2. Persona: Trinity Soul, is a spin-off to the awesome RPG. Sadly, it turns out to be a disgrace to Persona 3, and all of its fans.

Trinity Soul has absolutely no relation to the game whatsoever (thankfully). Save one recurring character from the RPG, the rest of the series is unrelated to the original game's plot. It's not a sequel, but an independent anime based on the theme of Personas stolen from the game.

The only excuse I found for watching this series (as i'm sure is also the case with the other persona 3 fans) is solely because it followed the theme from my all time favourite RPG.
What I did not expect was the complete butchering of Personas, their summoning, their power and the over all story in Trinity Soul.


Story
The story, if it can be called a story, takes place 10 years after the occurences in persona 3 and centers around the young 17 year old Shin. A normal highschool student who gets transferred along with his younger brother, to live with their older brother who works in the police force. Strange things seemed to be happening in the city, and as Shin becomes aware of them and gets involved, he awakens his other self, his Persona.
That is all which is notable in the series, the rest is crap.
There's no actual plot, just a gang of bandits experimenting with persona users. The plot, at times, becomes difficult to follow and I can honestly say that I still didn't completely comprehend the ending.

Art
The art was somehwat decent. The characters were built nicely but they look like a mixture of the old 'cute' anime faces and the new 'real' looking ones. The eyes somewhat disturbed me. Apart from that, the backgrounds and sceneries were quite impressive I admit and the city highlights were heart warming and the only pleasure I could derive from the series.

Sound
The OP and ED themes were actually very good. But I never noticed the background music much (which are extremely important and if used correctly, can make the moment 10 times more enjoyable). Either because they never used anything decent (or maybe none at all) or maybe because I was desperately waiting for the series to finish quickly.

Character
This was just...bearable. Shin always exaggerated his feelings and sometimes, didn't show them at all. The characters never expressed at the right places and behaved very abnormally. I feel that one of the side characters, Yuki, was barely necessary but the series has stressed quite much on her. Then the way a few characters die was just plain PATHETIC. A moment which was supposed to make the viewer feel sad and depressed brought a reaction of 'WTF!?'

Enjoyment
Need I say more? You might be able to relax your eyes on the sceneries and on one of my favourite characters who made a return in this (why HIM of all the people?). But forget about the main theme: Personas. They are designed like personas but are almost transparent and their summoning is bull. No backstory on personas or their history. They are more like giant colourful flying robots. YES. EXACTLY like that. Utterly obliterated. And what's with the whale and the feathers?

Overall
Fellow fans of the Persona RPGs, expect nothing from this. I highly recommend you ignore this series if you don't want to see the lovable and awesome personas turned into garbage right in front of your eyes. Continue enjoying the awesomeness of the games Persona 3 and 4 and their brilliant story lines, characters and plots. Don't indulge yourself into this nightmare like I did, thinking that it's worth watching since it's related to Atlus' Persona 3. You might enjoy this series more if you were unaware of the original games, but you wouldn't understand anything to begin with.

Very Poor. Nothing like the Persona brilliance, which is in a whole different league. A big let down for Persona fans. read more

Persona -Trinity Soul- is a nice addition to the Persona story, and like Persona 3 before it, focuses a lot on character develpment. Even though this anime is considered a sequal to Persona 3, besides having a supporting character from the game, and the occasional mention of the "event 10 years ago," it doesn't entirely connect with the game, and is better considered a story of it's own.

At first, the story is slow and confusing, but the explanations and speed picks up partway through the series. For people hoping to see a lot of Persona versus Persona fighting, sorry. The focus is more on story here.

Overall, though, it was a very great anime, with sometimes surprising plot twists and touching flashback scenes (which I usually hate). The music is always fitting with the scene that is occuring. Character design and art is great, and the studio did a great job of perfecting the same dark atmosphere that the Persona series is known for. read more

The Good:
- Persona 3 fanservice (it features one of the characters from the video game midway through the series)
- Great soundtrack
- Beautiful art style

The Bad:
- Convoluted plot
- Seriously...what's up with the whale feathers?
- Can be too emo at times
- Episodes never start exactly where the last episode left off. Annoying.

Conclusion:
Persona tries to draw you into their world, and into the dark histories of its characters, but only partially succeeds. Fans of the video game will surely find reason to like this anime. Those who have never played the game, however, will probably find it average at the least.

People who played the games and expected to see many cameos or lots of intense persona battles will find this anime to be disappointing, because the anime took a different direction. It is more like one of those "slice of life" anime series rather than the expected action-packed persona battles. Most of the episodes can be considered as drama rather than action genre action, because there is little to no battle scenes in it at all. On top of that, there were quite a number of twists and irony throughout the anime, as well as confusing points that people who don't pay attention would not have any idea what's going on.

If people watch this anime as an anime and not as a Persona-related anime would find this to be a masterpiece in terms of story elements, character developments, great animation and also an awesome soundtrack along with many vocal tracks by Lotus Juice and Kawamura Yumi, both of which did the Persona 3 FES OST. read more

Un animé travaillé, tant sur le fond que sur la forme :
1. D'abord parce que l'intrigue est excellemment bien gérée et répond au fur et à mesure à toutes nos questions.... même celles auxquelles on ne pensait plus^^. Mise en valeur par un rythme adéquat, elle est relativement facile à suivre, pour peu qu'on s'accroche un minimum (parce que bon, on parle de scénaristes japonais quand même xD)
2. Ensuite parce que les caractères respectifs des personnage sont bien exploités, le format en 26 épisodes permettant d'explorer les antécédents de chacun. Ils enrichissent ainsi l'histoire.
3. Enfin, parce que l'esthétique vous prend aux tripes, tant par le graphisme que par la musique. L'animation est de qualité constante et la BO accompagne superbement l'histoire. read more