PERSONA5 the Animation

I figured I would go ahead and help to pad out the reviews for the P5 animation. Given the popularity of the game, I'm surprised it does not have more reviews/ratings as is.

For anyone who is not familiar with Persona 5, or the Persona series as a whole, It would take an entire essay to bring you completely up to speed. Just to cover the basics, Persona is a game series that mixes action JRPG elements with Life and Dating sim social systems. You often role play as a high school student, who is blessed with the ability "Wild Card", which allows him to wield multiple Personas in battle. Personas are essentially pokemon, though they operate on a much more complex elemental system. When you aren't battling the bad guys, called "Shadows", you are tasked with leading the life of an average student. You take tests, gets part time jobs for more income, and develop your relationships with your teammates and other supporting characters. The more you develop these bonds, the stronger you become in battle.

Persona 5, the latest entry in the series, was released for western audiences in the spring of last year by, and has quickly risen to the top of many fan's rankings for best Persona game yet due to its deep plot and engaging characters. Now, just about a year later, the anime adaptation has been released by company Aniplex, and is putting out episodes on a weekly basis, presumably until the entire main plot has concluded.

The reception to this project has been mixed, as opposed to the near universal praise that Persona 4's animation received. The reason why is immediately apparent after you watch the first episode. The pacing is.. not great. In fact, I could easily imagine someone who has not already played the game and knows the story getting entirely lost as to what is going on. With a property like this, that prides itself on giving sufficient context on the plot over multiple hours of gameplay and worldbuilding, it seems that a bit of that care was lost when they attempted to cram roughly the first two hours of the game into a 24 minute block.

At the same time, you can understand the approach from an objective perspective. If Aniplex were only able to cover an hour of in-game content per episode, they would be well over 150 episodes before they were done, and I simply don't believe they are able to invest the time to go into the triple digits.

From the second episode onward, the pace was fixed in a few places and we start to get invested in the characters. This is achieved well enough for how much screen time each one is given, but there's something.... missing. Some element of the social interactions that gets lost when you aren't driving the dialogue as you do in the game. This I fear will end up being the main issue with the series as a whole; the plot and its emotional impact will suffer for those who have only watched the adaptation, due to the fact they have not been given enough time with each character to fully appreciate their backstories and their bond with the main character.

As of the time of this review, there are 7 episodes released, covering roughly the first 30 or so hours of the game. So far, I can say that it is worth your time whether or not you have played the source materiel, but only time will tell if the entire package will come together as the story progresses, or whether things start to fall apart as more characters and plot elements are introduced.

The soundtrack is good as it matches the tone of each scene. However the animation in this is awful in comparison to the game. Just look at the intro & you'll see what I mean. It's passable maybe to some but for me, it's a failed attempt for entertainment. It has its moments but they are shortlived due to the horrible animation. And the battle scenes are the worst! It's not fun to watch & makes you wanna fast forward them! They were done so much better in the game!

This is a solid series despite setting itself up to fail in a couple of ways.

The first is the flash-back intro. It begins with a character who, without context, appears as a cocky punk you couldn't care less about who gets caught doing crimes. Then, as he is questioned, you get obnoxiously vague exposition that finally leads to the flashback where the actual story is.

I personally benched the show for months because of this intro. I only finally finished the first episode because it is my personal rule to give any show one full episode to prove itself. This being my introduction to the game, which I later played, it also made for a very slow, weak un-engaging start to the game. Clearly, the developers were banking on the built up good will from previous iterations.

Flashbacks/forwards are only ever a cheap, detrimental story device or essential enhancing element with no middle ground. It's obvious which category this falls into and very unfortunate that it continues to punctuate the series.

The second way the anime shoots itself in the foot is content packaging/episode release. The packaged 26 episode anime doesn't actually finish the story. Without the final episodes, which you must know about and then hunt down separately, the putative ending from the first 26 is just a pointless slap in the face.

I never quite know who anime adaptations of games are for.

For those who played the game they are usually judged against game negatively as an update of the olde timey complaint wherein the book was better than the movie instead of judging each according to the genre of which it is actually a part.

If one is taking this apples/oranges approach wouldn't the anime, unsurprisingly and necessarily, be lesser since you are passively watching a truncated version of the game with no new story elements?

Yet, conversely, for anyone who hasn't played the game such adaptations are usually unwatchable exactly because they 1. Are set up such that they depend on you already being familiar with the game and 2. Are too much like a game, making for awkward and clumsy anime.

This adaptation also occasionally trips up from being too much like a game, e.g. Distracting bits of dead-end plot that only exist because they are translations of game elements, the main protagonist being unnaturally mute and un-reactive because that is the de facto for first-person RPGs, etc. But these are comparatively minor and might go unnoticed by many viewers.

So I am marking this pretty high because it actually stands up pretty well on its own with serious and relevant plot elements, flushed out characters, good world building and intriguing neo-noir type mystery.

This series is made exclusively for fans of the game. The pacing is inconsistent and jumpy, and the core ideas were spread out in a messy way. For someone who hasn't played Persona 5, I can't recommend the anime at all.

Characters aren't given enough time do develop the emotional connection you would have in the game - and perhaps it's hard, given in the game, you'd be spending a few dozen battles with these friends, and getting to hear about the banters and fun they have with each other. As a result, there are some situations that were significant in the game to the development and motivations for the characters simply don't land in the show - in fact, it seems ridiculous and over-exaggerated. The time to explore your friends and pals really help develop them and understand why these are such important moments to them.

In order to keep this in 25 (26?) episodes, they had to really cut some stuff, and unfortunately, that means a lot of the explanation as well. Having played the games multiple times myself, I already knew and understood all the concepts, but I can imagine a lot of new comers would be confused. These skips also reduces the significance of palace crawling - in the game, these are gruelling, difficult tasks. While it isn't uncommon to finish the first part of the palace in a single run, it's very obviously taxing on the characters, and this isn't something that is conveyed well in the show. The first part is often skipped with just a few scenes.

The little Easter eggs in terms of animation seems really out of place without the context of the game. All out attacks, travel menus, etc don't really match the style of the rest of the animation. Without that context, it can seem like the animators were lazy, but it's actually just the animators paying homage to the show.

On the other hand, for those who played and love Persona 5, this was the perfect tribute. We already know and love all of these characters, and seeing the story come through again was a treat. The music from the game(s) plays at the time you would expect it to, they even added in the transit screen, all out attack, and executions. The humour of the banters are kept great, and there's a little bit of each character in the show.

The story isn't altered much, other than parts that need to speed up the story to help it get through it in a much shorter package. There's a few extra scenes here and there that are just great to see, and Joker has a LOT of voice lines.

If you loved the games, this is the perfect tribute to top it off, but don't expect anything out of the ordinary. If you haven't played Persona 5, I don't recommend you watch this show at all.

I'm one of the people who actually had fun with the anime, but even I can recognize it has some flaws. For one, it's length. They are trying to squeeze over 100 hours of story intensive gameplay into a show a tenth of the size, however, they try to remain faithful to the story, which means leaving most everything in. This leads to some episodes, like the first, feeling kind of like a rushed mess. Something I know other people may complain about, and I admit to feeling some frustration with myself, is the fight scenes in the anime: unlike the intensive boss fights characteristic of the game, everything had to be over and done with in 15 minutes or less. And the regular encounters are even worse, ending in two minutes. Again, sometimes thus makes things seem kinda rushed. Overall, it was a good watch, but I would recommend playing the game over this.