Persona 3 the Movie 1: Spring of Birth

At the stroke of midnight, the Dark Hour appears—a secret hour which most are unaware of. Those not trapped in coffins during this time, unfortunate enough to find themselves conscious, are met by dangerous creatures known as Shadows. A select few, however, possess the potential to wield Persona: a special power used to defeat these beings. This secret group is called SEES (Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad), and their mission is to uncover the reason behind the Dark Hour's appearance.

Only a short while after transfer student Makoto Yuuki begins his residency at Iwatodai Dorm, his Persona awakens after an attack by a strong Shadow. Now recruited into the ranks of SEES, he begins fighting alongside his comrades, as only they can protect humanity from Shadows and prevent the anomaly that is the Dark Hour.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Yuuki, Makoto Main

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Kirijou, Mitsuru Main

Tanaka, Rie Japanese

Sanada, Akihiko Main

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Takeba, Yukari Main

Toyoguchi, Megumi Japanese

Iori, Junpei Main

Toriumi, Kousuke Japanese

Aegis Supporting

Aragaki, Shinjirou Supporting

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Yamagishi, Fuuka Supporting

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Elizabeth Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Koromaru Supporting

Takahashi, Shinya Japanese

Kananiwa, Kozue Producer

Adachi, Kazuki Producer

Sakurai, Takashi Producer, Editing

Hosokawa, Osamu Producer

Reviews

Nov 24, 2013

Enter_the_Fray

Recommended

Persona 3 The Movie: Spring of Birth is directed by Noriaki Akitaya, director of the Bakuman series. He’s also been an episode director for series such as Code Geass, Honey and Clover II and Nodame Cantabile.

The first big-screen outing of Persona 3 is roughly 90 minutes long and it covers April to June. They have cut out much of the school life aspect, and there is no mention of the characters joining clubs or taking exams. Instead, it focuses on the members of SEES and how their bond grows stronger. Makoto Yuki was a blank canvas in the game and at the beginning of the ... film he still feels like one; he is quiet, doesn’t say much and doesn’t really care about his own life or have much of an interest in those around him. Seeing Yuki piece together his emotions and learn what it means to have friends and comrades is a nice touch to the movie.

If you’ve never played the game but have seen or played Persona 4, the first Persona 3 movie is darker and doesn’t have as much comedy. It focuses more on jealousy, bullying and friendship. It jumps from one Full Moon battle to the next, with moments in-between where the group gets to know each other better. Yuki, Yukari and Junpei’s first battle within the Shadow-infested tower, Tartarus, is very fun and beautifully animated. Junpei ends his battle with his famous line about levelling up, before becoming jealous of Yuki’s abilities. Akihiko and Mitsuru haven’t had their time to shine yet, but there is plenty of time for that in the next movie.

After the credits we see a certain character opening their eyes and are told that the second movie is coming Summer 2014.

I couldn’t help but smile when the opening credits started accompanied by Burn My Dread: Spring of Birth Version and that smile stayed on my face for almost the entirety of the film. Shouji Meguro’s music is always fantastic and this film’s soundtrack is no exception, the memorable themes of Tartarus, The Velvet Room and Gekkoukan High School all return. These familiar pieces alongside the impressive animation makes the film that much stronger.

As a fan of the game, I found Spring of Birth very enjoyable, Makoto Yuki’s character development, the battles and the fantastic animation made it well worth the wait. I would’ve liked to have seen more of the side characters and school life, but overall it did a really good job of bringing the characters to the big screen.

I originally wrote this review for my own website, but several users have messaged me asking me to review it on here as well.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jun 22, 2014

varmala

Mixed Feelings

Persona Spring of Birth is a film adaptation of the 2008 game Persona 3. At this point, it’s common knowledge that video games don’t typically make for good television shows and almost never make good movies, animated or live action. Much of the problem comes from both trying to fulfill obligations to fans of the source material as well as making an adaption that can stand alone as a good film, tv show, play etc. The end result is usually something so far off base that it doesn’t even slightly resemble the original story line or, something so copy-pasted to the point that it ... doesn’t look as if any effort was put forth into editing the material into a watchable format. In the case of P3M, it falls uncomfortably between both descriptions.

The story is centered around S.E.E.S., a group of persona users posing as a school club, whose mission is defending the public against monsters called ‘shadows’. New to the group is an orphan transfer student named Yuuki Makoto and resting on his shoulders are many of the problems within Persona Spring of Birth. His characterization is laughable. Regardless of individual experience with the protagonist (if you played the game), you were still left with a sense that he was a charming, fairly optimistic and caring person with a healthy sense of humor. But in the film, all that is stripped of him for no reason other than to make him a 2 cool 4 skool, badass who doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything and yet he always saves the day. Most of Makoto’s script is either silence or sarcasm which gets really annoying really fast. It’s hard to root for this guy seeing as he has no purpose for what he’s doing besides being asked to do it (I thought Aegis was the robot?). In the game, it was easy to get to know and empathize for him as the story progressed and the fact that they couldn’t translate not one drop of this into the film really irritates me - he simply lacks the curiosity and initiative to be human.

The rest of the cast, if only by contrast, is better but none of them are great with Yukari being the only one who comes off even the slightest bit believable. Pretty fucking ironic seeing as Yukari was largely disliked by much of the fanbase, including myself. She was the only character to have gradual development instead of flip-of-the-switch progression as with the rest of them. Development just feels rushed. I understand that it’s a lot of work condensing some 80+ hours of gameplay into a 4 part film series, but most of the problems with the characters boil down to poor and inconsistent handling which ripples throughout other aspects of the film.

Most games listed under the Shin Megami Tensei family (or rather just Shoji Meguro) are widely known for the high quality and extremely fitting soundtracks in each of them. Of course I was hoping to hear maybe one or two tracks but boy was I surprised to hear EVERY SINGLE SONG used in film. I quite enjoyed the title sequence and I thought the decision to use Persona 3 Portable’s “Burn my Dread” opening was well thought out and visually appropriate. But was it not just a tad bit overkill to incorporate so many songs in such a short amount of time? It’s not like the tracks used were utilized in such a way that was fitting with the situation at hand, they just felt slapped into the background – like the choice in music was an afterthought as opposed to a conscious decision made during production.

Lastly, the animation and design choices of P3M weren’t so hot either. Persona 3 incorporates this lunar calendar type sequence as a visual for the progression of time. It’s pretty fucking stylish for the game but choppy and stupid looking in the movie, even more so because the story is set in 2009. I’m left with the impression that the story of P3 is actually within alignment of Persona 4, so while I understand the decision to keep the setting within the original timeline, it doesn’t excuse the weird way of showing it. I mean, a lot of the game does happen at school where people undoubtedly write the date of assignments and whatnot somewhere in their work, so why not just include a few scenes with people asking or writing down what day it is? Or even better, why couldn’t there have just been a cleverly placed calendar somewhere that resembled the in game progression sequence? Little things like this actually have a bigger and better impact on fans than frivolous use of in game visuals (which there is a lot of).

I was really hoping that Persona 3 would’ve been given a movie as stirring and visually appealing as the game was. And in case you haven’t played it then please don’t let this mediocrity of an adaption deter you from playing the game as so much of what was important to the story was either only just mentioned or completely left out of the film. The characters felt too distant, the relationships were obligatory and transitions between events were lazy and unedited. You can’t leave it up to a game to the job of a full length film and Persona 3: Spring of Birth is yet another disappointing example of this.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jul 4, 2015

gariton

Not Recommended

This is my first time writing a review so I do apologise if I get some things wrong or forget some things.

Now for the actual review. I'll just write this at the start. Unless you've played the game, this movie is not worth it. My reasons are below.

To be honest, I'm probably a big persona fan. Persona 3 was the first game i played in the series and i liked it so much i played it and then directly after that I played it again just because I liked it so much. You can thus imagine my excitement and glee when i found out that ... Persona 3 had a movie as well. I decided to watch this movie with a friend in hopes of getting him to play the game as well. Boy was I wrong. I'll go through the good bits first.

Art (8). The animation and character design was very well done. The fight scenes were fluid and the characters movement didn't jar with the background at all or feel unnatural. The backgrounds were just as good as it helped create the ambiance that the world wanted to created very well. Apart from that, there's not much else to be said apart from that everything looks very pretty.

Music (8). I've always been a fan of pop and the way Persona 3 mixed jazz and pop was interesting and it's one of the things i find most unique about Persona. The music gave a very cool and chilled feeling that I've come to know and love while the battle music was very upbeat and suave. I'm sure my decision on this was clouded by the fact that I enjoyed the game music as well and given that the music used in the game and the movie was about the same, I would naturally not have a problem with the music here.

Characters (5). Right off the bat, the main character (MC) was very emotionless. I know that it's never easy when there's a transition between a playable game character and any animation they're in but Persona 4 the Animation did a much better job at this by making the MC then much more relate-able from his sense of humour to his weaknesses. It wouldn't be an exaggeration here to say that the MC in the movie feels like a dead fish or more like a puppet with a very bad puppeteer.He barely says anything giving him a very blank persona (pun intended) and even the decisions he makes remind me more of what a machine would say than an actual person.

Enjoyment (3). If I had watched this alone going into the movie as a persona fan, I would have enjoyed it much more. However I went into this movie with a clean slate and my friend and i sat there for what felt like a 3 hour movie when it was only an hour forty. My friend kept yawning and I struggled to keep my eyes open. At the end of it, both my friend and I felt a sense of relief when the credits started rolling.

Overall (4). I'm normally a person that would be more unwilling to give a high score but would think twice before rating an anime below (5). This movie is no way to get introduced into the world of Persona 3. The most you'll get out of it is that this game is boring and the guys that like are just avid fan-boys of the franchise. If you do want to watch the movie, I cannot recommend enough that you play the game on psp (it has an english release) before you watch the movie.

If I were to rate this from a person that has played the game though, I'd probably give it a solid 8 but from a new persons point of view, it would have to be 4. There were many other ways that this movie could have been improved giving the MC more personality to maybe focusing a bit more on the social links and how they actually come into play. Overall, not a good way to enter the Persona 3 universe and since i can't add it in anywhere (MITSURU-SENPAI FTW!!!)

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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