Persona 4 the Animation

Serial murders have recently plagued Inaba, with the police struggling to find any leads. Despite this, due to his parents going abroad for work, Yuu Narukami moves to the small town to live with his uncle for a year. He enrolls at Yasogami High School, where he meets and befriends Yousuke Hanamura, Chie Satonaka, and Yukiko Amagi.

While hanging out together after school, the group fills Yuu in on the urban legend known as the "Midnight Channel"—a mysterious TV channel that only appears at midnight on rainy days while the viewer is alone. Curious about the claim, Yuu decides to tune in that night, only to see the next victim of the serial murders appear on the screen instead. He also finds himself being drawn into the TV, which intrigues his newfound friends enough to want to investigate.

Yuu ends up falling into the world within the TV, which is blanketed by a thick fog and swarming with hostile creatures known as "Shadows." Realizing that this world is somehow connected to the murders, the Investigation Team forms with the goal of uncovering the mystery behind the incidents.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Narukami, Yuu Main

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Shirogane, Naoto Main

Park, Romi Japanese

Satonaka, Chie Main

Horie, Yui Japanese

Hanamura, Yousuke Main

Morikubo, Shoutarou Japanese

Kujikawa, Rise Main

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Tatsumi, Kanji Main

Seki, Tomokazu Japanese

Amagi, Yukiko Main

Koshimizu, Ami Japanese

Kuma Main

Yamaguchi, Kappei Japanese

Adachi, Tooru Supporting

Madono, Mitsuaki Japanese

Doujima, Nanako Supporting

Kanda, Akemi Japanese

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Maruyama, Hiroo Producer

Adachi, Kazuki Producer

Sakurai, Takashi Producer, Editing

Reviews

Dec 18, 2011

tazillo

Recommended

"Bonds of people is the true power"

Persona 4 is one of the best video games that I have had the chance to play. Despite being highly acclaimed by critics both in Japan and in the West, Persona 4 remains somewhat of a niche title and this more or less transfers to the anime adaptation too. As a result, those who have played the game are the ones best-placed to be able to fully appreciate the anime series, but new fans will also find a very good anime thanks to Aniplex doing a commendable job with the existing game material.

The opening episodes set the story up ... quite well with mysterious deaths, the TV world, shadows and personas. The main character, along with another high school student, get involved through various circumstances and then strive to solve the murder cases, meanwhile gaining new friends and abilities. However, it does take a while before huge plot developments start to occur, and these are spread out unevenly over the course of the series. As a result, the pacing is off throughout certain episodes and some important revelations are only lightly touched upon. Social links are a crucial feature in Persona 4; these are several side stories which detail the interactions and bonds that form between the main character and supporting characters. Certain social links are arguably more enjoyable to watch in the anime rather than play in the game, as there's original material which fleshes them out better. Others, however, feel rather rushed.

The game features several short anime-styled cut scenes, and the anime series is similar in terms of artwork and animation. Character designs, which have been copied from the game, are simple and sharp. This means it's decent, but compared to certain other anime it's probably not as visually striking. In some episodes the animation is quite inconsistent; for example, facial expressions are usually good but sometimes become lifeless. Nevertheless, the battle scenes featuring personas and shadows are mostly excellent and full of action, appropriate BGM and variation. It's also amusing that the anime retains the look and feel of a video game; the main character's stats appearing halfway through each episode, as well as the calendar being displayed when each day passes are just a couple of examples.

The sound, in my opinion, is the best aspect of this anime. Poor music alone can't make-or-break a series, but that is irrelevant anyway when it comes to Persona 4 The Animation. The background music is composed by Shoji Meguro, who also composed the music for the game, and it doesn't disappoint, especially during battle scenes. A lot of the music has been recycled from the game and rightly so; why change something that's already superb? The OP and ED themes are new, but they're done in the same style as the OP: sung in English but still sounding incredible. The Japanese VAs have done a good job (which is expected as they also voiced the characters in the game, and therefore have previous experience), and more often than not they suit the roles well.

There are several characters in P4, and most seem to have made the transition from game to anime. The main character, Yu Narukami, was previously a silent protagonist but now has a voice and his own personality. The latter is initially quite bland but develops as his stats and social links develop; after a few episodes he becomes central to a fair few hilarious quips and situations. The rest of the main cast are a varied but likeable bunch, and each viewer will probably have their own favourites. This anime series has an interesting method of introducing the main characters and molding their personalities, by which I mean that it's incorporated into the Midnight Channel, one of the major plot points. Aside from Yu Narukami, some members of the main cast start out as plain high school students, but their backgrounds and insecurities are revealed as the anime progresses. As mentioned, the battles are entertaining but rather than just having persona-users as mere spectators, they feel pain when their personas are attacked, which raises the stakes and makes them more involved. Finally, the appearance of two mysterious characters (Igor and Margaret) at the beginning of each episode help to summarize which social links or bonds of friendship were developed by Yu in the previous episode.

Now, I'll assume that the majority of Persona 4 veterans will agree that it was a brilliant, or at the very least good, game for the Playstation 2. Therefore, it has two important challenges: to satisfy those who've played the game, and to appeal to those who haven't but are looking to watch a good anime series. The anime is a faithful adaptation, so anyone who liked the game can now enjoy watching it as a TV series. It's vastly entertaining and contains mystery, action and adventure in a high school/small town setting. Admittedly, the story does take a while to get going for those unfamiliar to P4, due to questionable pacing and an initial monster-of-the-week feeling to episodes. However, get past this and you'll find a decent series that's slightly different to others in its genre.

If the quality found in P4 The Animation becomes the usual standard for anime adapted from games, I'd definitely watch more of them. It complements the game adequately and while it remains quite faithful the anime also includes a lot of new stuff, as well as a heavier use of comedy. These changes allow Persona 4 The Animation to be watched as a standalone series, but at the end of the day existing P4 fans should enjoy the anime more because seeing how it handles the familiar characters and story from the game is great fun; newcomers will probably score the series a bit lower. Video gamers can look forward to more of Persona 4 in future: an updated port of the original game on Playstation Vita, and a spin-off fighting game on PS3/Xbox360.

Note: An unaired episode that adapts the video game's True Ending is scheduled to be released in August 2012.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Feb 21, 2012

Veronin

Mixed Feelings

As a fan of the games, the Persona 4 adaptation is a real shame. It exemplifies everything that can go wrong with video game adaptations. Not only is it poorly done in respect to anime as a whole, but it is poorly done even compared to some other video game adaptations. I fully expect I'll get a lot of hate for this, so please let me explain first.

The story is pretty typical for what you would find in most JRPGs these days, but one of the unique things about the Persona franchise has been the blend between the dating-sim styled day-to-day activities and the ... RPG combat. Most of the action takes place in a world hidden by all but a few lucky people granted the power of a Persona, the manifestation of the person's psyche which is used to fight shadows inside of the TV world. While it's fairly generic and comes with its fair share of clichés, it works well because the story is self-aware and does not try to take itself too seriously. It's a fairly light-hearted story even in the midst of all the murders, kidnappings, and crazy things going on.

There isn't any inherent problem with the story here because it's simply being taken from an already well-written series. The story was fine in the game, and for the most part it's fine here too. What there IS a problem with, however, is the pacing.

The pacing can be likened to teleportation. It's a disorganized mess of scenes abruptly changing from one to another with a calendar flashing for a few moments. No, the people behind the adaptation don't care about pacing-- instead they use the calendar as a lazy excuse to not deal with coherent pacing. You might have the main character sitting at a table talking with the group for all of around 30 seconds and then the calendar will simply flash on screen, skipping past several days and taking you into a completely different scene with almost no link or correlation with what just happened. Sometimes the days flash by so fast that you don't even know what the hell is happening any more. Sometimes you will have a dungeon given three entire episodes dedicated to it, and another dungeon will have less than half an episode. It makes no sense.

The calendar system and the day-to-day activities worked fine in the game, but this is not the game. It does not work here and it does not fit. This is an anime, not a video game, and the people behind the anime should at least try and make sure it translates properly into a condensed, strictly visual form. You can't simply take the game and then slap it into an anime. You need to make adjustments, you need to make changes, and you need to make sure it fits the medium that you are adapting it to. The staff behind the Persona 4 adaptation don't understand this important philosophy. It instead feels like they're awkwardly trying to recreate the feel of the game, but failing pretty miserably at it. I felt like I was getting a headache at times trying to follow the constant warping of the characters.

So, if you haven't played the games, don't expect to understand much of what is going on. You will probably be lost and confused amidst the pacing, especially when important plot points and characterization is skipped upon and barely explained. There really needed to be two seasons of anime here because it's clear as day how rushed it is.

Unfortunately, that's not the only problem here. Both the animation and the art style are also poorly done. There is a strange lack of color throughout the entire show, which is odd given how colorful and vibrant the game was. Each character is drawn poorly and colored in with ugly looking gradients, something that you would expect from a high school computer animation class, not a commercial product created for thousands of people. It's all very bland and amateurish. There's also a startling lack of animation here. One character will have their mouth flap while everybody else in the background is static and motionless, often complete with disproportional faces and odd expressions, looking stupefied. For a lack of a better term, it's very 'derp'. Even when there is a decent amount of animation happening on screen it's usually done poorly with glaring mistakes in between movements, usually body parts morphing into strange shapes. Either they were lacking budget or something went horribly wrong in the production of the anime... either way, it has some of the worst art and animation I've seen in a mainstream anime. For all the years it took for the series to get a 'proper' anime adaptation, when it looks as poorly as this, well... was it really worth it?

On the plus side, the music is very nice and the remixed and new tracks are greatly appreciated. It helps to spice things up a little bit from the game, though there are problems even here since the background songs will abruptly switch from one to another with complete dissonance and shifts in tone. The music itself is good, but the application of the music is not. Instead of awkwardly switching between music all the time, the staff could have opted to just use silence or ambient noise from time to time instead, and save the music only for the scenes where it truly fits in. It should feel natural, and here it just stands out in a really unpleasant way.

Sadly, there just isn't much good I can say for the anime. There's a few brief moments of hilarity scattered here and there, and while it's nice to see all the characters fully animated, the entire time I was watching it just made me want to go replay the game instead. A good adaptation wouldn't make you want to do that. The anime is nothing more than fanservice for people who have played and enjoyed the games, and even as fanservice it fails in some pretty major areas.

Maybe other people will enjoy it more than me, but Persona 4 deserved so much more than this.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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May 27, 2018

Kuta1

Not Recommended

Funny

(Spoilers incoming) This review is coming from someone who's played the game multiple times. I think it's an understatement when I say the show is a very big disappointment.

Story: 7/10. The story is really nothing special: there's a series of murders going on, and our protagonist and his friends investigate a parallel world using their Personas in the attempt to save victims and find a lead on the murderer. The setup for the story is alright, and the biggest appeal is the mystery of who the murderer might be. Other than that, the execution of the story is pretty formulaic and uninspired. It essentially follows ... the pattern of:

1) Person gets captured
2) Hero + friends find a lead and jump into the TV world
3) Big persona battle happens, person is rescued
4) Person joins the team
5) Bunch of filler social life until next kidnapping occurs

After a while, the story gets stale until we actually reach the climax of the show.


Art: 6/10. The art isn't anything special, in fact there were times where the characters just looked awkward and stiff.


Sound: 8/10. Persona is known for its fantastic music, although I'd say even in the games Persona 4 is known for having the 'worst' OST. I say 'worst' in relative terms because it's still a fantastic OST. I think better choices of music could've been used for certain scenes though.


Character: 4/10. The characters suffer from a lack of depth and are essentially caricatures of what they are in the game, although that's to be expected when you only have 20 or so episodes to flesh out a team of several people. If you played the game and come into this, you'll probably be surprised at how shallow the characters are compared to their game counterparts. If you're coming into this show without playing the game, you'll might still think the characters fall flat.


Enjoyment: 2/10. Instead of watching the anime, I should've just replayed the game. The anime does little to convey the true appeal of Persona, which is to engage the player into the world and characters as an active component in the narrative. With a game, you're part of the story: a driving force that can do whatever you want, building the relationships you want and forging the story you want to follow while enjoying a well-made RPG. The show in comparison is just a slideshow of Persona 4's main situations and social highlights. Personally, I found the show something unnecessary, as it just showcases parts of the game and adds nothing new to the series itself.


Overall: 4/10. Despite my abysmal enjoyment, I think someone who hasn't played the games might be able to find (marginally) more interest in the show and be able to look over some of its flaws. However, I still think these flaws bring the show down quite a bit, and whether you've played the game or not I think the flaws of the show far outweigh the positives. I highly recommend picking up the game and playing through it yourself, because Persona shines as a phenomenal series when you experience it through the video-game medium. As an anime, it's nothing more than a sub-par detective story with mediocre characters and awkwardly fitted social events made in an attempt to cram 80 or so hours of content into a 20+ episode series.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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