Reviews

Persona 3 the Movie 1: Spring of Rebirth follows the story of Makoto Yuuki, a boy who is able to witness strange events during the period known as the Dark Hour. During this time, there are some people who are aware of this are able to move while others cannot. The story follows a group of people who can move during this time as they try to discover what is the cause behind it. The only problem is that there are some odd cuts that kind of mess up the pacing and would have been better if it was just flat out introduced in the beginning instead of in the middle of a battle. The way they do it make it sometimes look like the main character not a new power out of nowhere. Characters take the time to compare their experiences as well instead of just writing off some battles as past experiences.

The quality of the art and animation is very high. The animation and character designs are great, with no signs of off model characters or silly looking animations that are sometimes present in TV shows. They definitely make great use of lightning and shadows. One of the things I like is how the Persona are clearly CGI while the characters are not as obvious. This gives them an "otherworldly" feel that makes it seem like they do not belong in the world.

A lot of the sound in the anime is directly taken from the Persona 3, but I feel that there is a noticeable improvement in the quality. The voice acting is also pretty good. They also make great use of timing and changing the music to reflect the sudden shifts in tone.

Overall, the movie is pretty good. It is a great adaptation of the early parts of the Persona 3 game though they do kind of start rushing things towards the end. The music is good and the characters do have some development to make them interesting. The only downside is that it starts to get rushed towards the end.