What I'm Watching: Persona 4 The Animation
Oct. 7th, 2011 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joiedecombatLike so.
This will be an interesting experience, since while I've played Persona 3 and am familiar with the series through it (although I take it that the main themes are rather different, what with the copious suicide imagery of P3 being replaced in P4 by... glasses?) - and have been spoiled for a lot of the major points of the game - I have not actually played Persona 4 yet.
I gather from reactions elsewhere on the interwebs that the first episode trims down the game's prologue considerably, but it didn't read to me as particularly rushed, even though it did launch pretty promptly into crazy what with the dead body hanging from the TV antenna and people getting sucked into televisions. In any case, we have our basic premise - new transfer student! murders! strange happenings on midnight TV! - and I'm interested enough to keep watching.
I'm amused at how many artifacts of the game seem to have made it in, from the ingame calendar progression, Yu's stats being displayed in the eyecatch, alertness-blinks and sweatdrops and, apparently a good bit of the game's actual soundtrack. Yu has very little personality through most of the episode, but since his social stats are (the eyecatch helpfully informs us) all at 0, we can hope that the guiding hand of character development will help him become more of a presence in the plot once there's more to do than watch Chie harass Yousuke all the time. At the very least, he certainly takes a level in something in the last scene...
I don't think the episode really hit its stride until right at the end, but the last scene was definitely an attention-grabber. I'm willing to suppose that it's a Persona tradition for the protagonist to seem simultaneously badass and kind of creepy when they awaken to their Persona for the first time; if so, Yu is living up to his source material like a champ. I have nothing invested in the original game and I still got a thrill.
Dammit, why can't P3 get an anime like this, instead of Trinity Soul?
...oh, copious suicide imagery. Right.
This will be an interesting experience, since while I've played Persona 3 and am familiar with the series through it (although I take it that the main themes are rather different, what with the copious suicide imagery of P3 being replaced in P4 by... glasses?) - and have been spoiled for a lot of the major points of the game - I have not actually played Persona 4 yet.
I gather from reactions elsewhere on the interwebs that the first episode trims down the game's prologue considerably, but it didn't read to me as particularly rushed, even though it did launch pretty promptly into crazy what with the dead body hanging from the TV antenna and people getting sucked into televisions. In any case, we have our basic premise - new transfer student! murders! strange happenings on midnight TV! - and I'm interested enough to keep watching.
I'm amused at how many artifacts of the game seem to have made it in, from the ingame calendar progression, Yu's stats being displayed in the eyecatch, alertness-blinks and sweatdrops and, apparently a good bit of the game's actual soundtrack. Yu has very little personality through most of the episode, but since his social stats are (the eyecatch helpfully informs us) all at 0, we can hope that the guiding hand of character development will help him become more of a presence in the plot once there's more to do than watch Chie harass Yousuke all the time. At the very least, he certainly takes a level in something in the last scene...
I don't think the episode really hit its stride until right at the end, but the last scene was definitely an attention-grabber. I'm willing to suppose that it's a Persona tradition for the protagonist to seem simultaneously badass and kind of creepy when they awaken to their Persona for the first time; if so, Yu is living up to his source material like a champ. I have nothing invested in the original game and I still got a thrill.
Dammit, why can't P3 get an anime like this, instead of Trinity Soul?
...oh, copious suicide imagery. Right.
