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.
