Persona 4 the Golden Animation is in the simplest ways, a retelling of the original Persona 4: The Animation but with a new character and Yu essentially being in New Game+ mode, add in one new Social Link and slice of life events not told in the original and we have Golden.
Now the slice of life events takes roughly the first half of the anime as we get integrated with our newest character in the anime, Marie voiced by Kana Hanazawa in her tsundere vocals and who she really is, as you guessed it, we have an amnesiac plot interlaced in all this.
The slice of life events is mostly fillery but also trying to get to know more of Marie throughout the anime, it works but Marie's brash tsundere personality doesn't help in some cases (mostly when got serious for LA). The slice of life events mostly compromises of beach to hot springs to the more zany "Yu's cramped schedule day with EVERYONE" event, it for all accounts counterbalances the more serious events the original had with it's serial murders and Persona's business.
Now Marie as a character for LA was a bit hard for LA to like with her tsundere personality and LA LOVES tsundere's but she kinda was borderline unlikable at times. LA knows her entire deal is of a person who has no idea who she is and also when she finds out who she is she doesn't want to know, Kana Hanazawa helps...a bit but when it starts focusing on her "arc" her motivation for what she did was for the Investigation Team but LA was still torn by those revelations and what she did to make it rather tedious to "get her back".
On speaking of "get her back", because Persona 4 Golden essentially being a retelling of the original game that means the "original series villain" of the series who LA won't name even in this review is back and mood-whiplashes you from the slice of life moments to the outrageously serious in taking down the villain in question and guess what Marie is nowhere to be seen (LA knows her disappearance has relevance but still coupled with the moodwhiplash doesn't help it as the major villain hijacks the plot for his development before jankily turning back to Marie).
The animation done this time by A1-Pictures, keeps the favour and art style of AIC A.S.T.A's animation pretty well form character designs the original had, LA really don't have that much to say about A1-Pictures animation besides that it has a few derpy facial animation at times but other than that, A1-Pictures' animation is decent enough.
The voice cast is back just adding the aforementioned Kana Hanazawa and a portion of the anime is dedicated to Marie so Kana Hanazawa has ALOT of screentime compared to the rest of the cast, LA will give Kana Hanazawa MVP by default but LA will put Yui Horie who voiced Chie as second merely because Chie gets screentime in the slice of life events and was LA's favourite character.
Persona 4 Golden: The Animation though does have elements of the anime missing from the original to pretty much abridging the original series to fit it's narrative but Golden still has it's upsides to all this, from new and old storylines from both Golden and the original series being finished along with trying to give character development to the newest character is a difficult feat Golden had done...just with some loose execution in it's part.
Some of the new and old storylines Golden did answer at the very least is who Marie really is in detail, how Yu got his Persona powers in the first place (and these two plot points are linked) as well as giving a proper epilogue of all the characters so that Persona 4 finishes completely with no loose ends.
If anything, Golden is an companion piece to the original anime series and sure LA will say both animes can compress a 200 hour or so game into 36 episodes and expect it to fill in ALL the details like what anime to game adaptation CAN do something like that?, but for what Golden did in 12 episodes from introducing, developing Marie and her presences in the plot, explaining everything it could AND bringing in Persona 4's more mundane slice of life events into focus all into one, LA will commend Persona 4 Golden: The Animation for that.
Persona 4 Golden: The Animation should at least be watched for diehard Persona fans or people who watched the original series and just want more of Persona 4, be it serious or not this time with all the loose ends tied. LA liked Golden but just not as much the original series, but as LA said Golden is more of a companion piece to the original anime series than a stand alone anime in it's right by the end of it.
Golden ain't terrible or anything but it needed some polish was all...
