Reviews

Mar 2, 2015
Mixed Feelings
Adapting a video game story into any sort of media outlet is much, much harder than adapting, lets say, a manga into an anime. Video games are the most immersive medium of entertainment I feel, because for all intents and purposes, you ARE the main protagonist, and you are living out the story and setting the creators have given you. That being said, the tools used to create these immersive settings for the player, the game mechanics especially, are extremely hard to translate into any other medium, since you are not interacting with the world, just observing.

Quick disclaimer. I have played the game through once, and went straight into the anime after finishing it, so I apologize if it influences my review of the anime. I am under the belief that an adaptation doesn't have to be faithful to the source material in order for it to be good, so I will try to view it as it's own seperate entity.

The first thing I would like to talk about is the overall flow and pacing of the show. Translating 80+ hours of gameplay into 13 or so hours of anime means things are going to be tweaked around a bunch. That being said, the anime does a very good job of keeping the story in characters intact with such a limited timespace. However, the whole show feels very disjointed as a result. After revealing a certain plot point that is relevant to the story, the anime loves to timeskip to other days that are also important to the plot, creating this awkward pacing that sometimes skips through multiple days making it too fast, and sometimes having one episode be focused entirely within the timespan of a couple days, making it too slow.

However, there are some moments that I believe actually surpass the original source material. The biggest factor in this would certainly be the comedy. You'd think that the episodes focusing on comic relief would be kind of bad, but I enjoyed these more than the actual mystery parts of the show.
The actual mystery of the show is fairly weak, so that's probably the reason why.

A big part of this show is the main characters of the show getting kidnapped and thrown into this "TV World" where they meet their shadows. These shadows are pretty much the repressed feelings of that characters inner self; something inside of them that they want to forget about. Each main "party member" (except for the MC) gets these shadows, and they have to accept them, and when they do, they become personas. It's a pretty half baked explanation I know.

This setup creates some of the easiest character development possible. There wasn't as much as a focus on this as in the game, because of time restraints, but there was enough to create characters that are fairly layered. Other than that, the main bunch are extremely likeable, and add a lot to the enjoyment of the show, my personal favourite being Chie Satonaka. The side characters are less than spectacular for sure, since they are sidelined for the mystery, the main characters, among other things. Like, there is an episode where they try to develop 6 characters at once, that doesn't really work out at all.

The main protagonist, Yu Narukami, is pretty much a blank slate. This is one of those things that works much better in a game since you basically build his personality to your liking, but in anime, he is only seen as boring, and at times, without a personality. Granted, there are times where does genuinely have some great moments, particularly at the end of the show. That, and he is a surprising factor to the comedic aspects of the show (mainly because of the dub, but we will get to that later).

I won't spoil the main villain for you, but let's just say you probably won't expect it. The way they hide who the villain really is is one of the better aspects of the mystery. As for the villain itself, you might find him a bit of a turn off since his main motivation is "because I'm bored", but he is still an okay villain by the end of it.

The art stays pretty faithful to the game, which is nice. Everything looks very detailed, and the character designs are well done. The music is mainly just copy and pasted stuff from the game, which is fine since I like the music from the game. The standouts for OP's and ED's for me would have to be the second OP and ED (which aren't copy pasted).

The animation is a weird thing to talk about. I'm not an expert on this, so I apologize if I am wrong, but it feels a lot like how a poorly shot western action movie is filmed. With those movies, the action is filmed with quite a bit of shaky cam and lots of edited shots that last only a couple seconds to indicate that stuff is actually happening. This is used mainly to mask bad directing. This is kind of how the fight sequences in Persona 4: The Animation look. Multiple quick camera shots are used with a very heavy motion blur to make it seem like the animation is high quality, but in reality, it isn't. Granted, there aren't many fight scenes to begin with, but that is just something I felt needed to be adressed. Other than that, the animation is standard fare.

Finally, I'll talk about the dub. Since I played the game in English, it only made sense to watch the dub, since most of the people were voice actors for the game reprised their roles in this anime (except for Chie's VA, which made me very sad for a while). I feel they did a fantastic job, moreso than their performances in the game, but I have to mention two performances.

The first being Johnny Yong Bosch. In the game, he is the VA for the main character and Adachi, a rookie police detective. Since the MC barely talked at all, he only had to do various grunts and stuff mainly, and only had to do the VA for Adachi. However, in the anime, he still plays both roles, but Yu Narukami (the MC) gets much more talking roles, which meant he had to try and make two people with decent amounts of dialogue sound different from each other, and for the most part, he pulls it off, which I applaud him for. Not only that, but he is a big part in Yu actually having some emotions, along with his delivery of some of the comedic lines he says.

Secondly, we have Mary Elizabeth McGlynn for her performance of Naoto Shirogane. She plays the part of a male detective character very well to the point where she actually does sound like a guy, which is an impressive feat.


I want to say that the biggest problem with P4: The Animation is that it is too short, but that isn't really it's problem. With more episodes, even if things would be fleshed out more, it would be very hard to keep the viewers interest. This is exactly why game adaptations are very hard to make. That being said, it is probably one of, if not the greatest game adaptations for anime. It's shoddy pacing, lackluster side characters(except for a couple) and Yu Narukami, and average mystery/plot didn't really kill the enjoyment for me, as I still enjoyed the series wholeheartedly. Whilst not at the level of the game, I was invested into the characters, and the dub and comedy was a large selling point for me as well. If you don't want to spend 80+ hours on the game (which I would recommend as the game is quite fantastic), Persona 4: the Animation is actually a decent alternative.

This story is heavily laced in spoilers, so if you want to discuss it with me further, give me a shout on my profile. You can do the same if you want to discuss the game this anime was adapted from.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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