Persona 4: The Animation - Greatness You Need to Watch

Let me begin by saying one of my favorite role-playing games is Persona 4.  This game is a complete package of story, music, developed characters, and overall fun factors.  When this anime was first announced I was so excited to watch it and see how well it stacks up to an amazing game.  I can only say that I was not prepared for how good this anime is.


While the anime is only on the first three episodes I believe this is going to end up being a fantastic series to watch.  To start, it seems that everyone involved in the game has made the transition to being involved in the anime.  I always wanted to see a full blown anime with this group of people since the story, characters, and animated sequences in the game were always top-notch.  The anime lives up to my hopes and dreams of wanting to see a show by this crew.

Yu Narukami and his Persona, Izanagi

In order not spoil anything I'll give you just a brief summery of what you are in store for in the small town of Inaba.  The main character, Yu Narukmai, is forced to move from Tokyo to the small town of Inaba due to his parents having to work abroad for the coming year.  While living in Inaba, Narukami befriends fellow students Yosuke Hanamure, Chie Satonaka, and Yukiko Amagi.  They find themselves interested in the urban legend, the Midnight Channel.  They say the person that appears on the Midnight Channel is the viewers soul-mate, however, the group quickly learns whoever shows up on the Midnight Channel is subsequently murdered on the next foggy day.  In order to solve these mysterious television murders the group must face their inner-darker selves and unlock the power of Persona.  While the characters meet new friends, create "social links" similar to the video game, and unlock the clues of what was once a quiet town, they battle their way through the mysterious world of the Midnight Channel with their help from Teddie (Kuma in the Japanese version) and solve the mystery of who is murdering people by throwing them into TVs.  Sounds somewhat silly, turns out to be nothing short of completely awesome.  Greatness found.


The animation is a different style than most animes you might watch.  This is a good thing if you ask me.  The style this show brings to the table is unmatched by other animes.  The clothing, the way the main personae are drawn, and even the worlds the cast has, or will eventually visit, are all pouring the style out to the viewer.  Something that I find to be awesome is the addition of screens from the game in the anime.  For example, during the game whenever you go from day to day, a screen with a calendar and weather report shows up and sets you up for the next day.  I was very excited to learn that something as simple as this was included in the anime and did not seem cheesey or unneccesary.  The mid-show commercial break was pulled straight from the main character status screen in the game.  It updates as the shows moves on to show stat increases as well.  Once again, in the game you spend a lot of time doing small tasks to raise your social stats.  This would be incredibly boring in the anime and yet they found a simple way to show it and not exclude character growth from the show.  Simply put, it is awesome.


The American version of the game did not include an option for Japanese voices so I was curious to hear what all the characters I've spent hours and hours with sound like in the native tounge.  No doubt, it was a welcome change.  You might recognize the voice actor for Narukami as Ulquiorra from Bleach.  I was glad to hear familiar and high-quality voice acting throughout the characters of P4A.  There's nothing worse than bad voice acting and Persona 4: The Animation does not fall short on any character. 


One of my favorite things about the Shin Megami Tensei series of video games, the series the Persona line of video games belongs to, is the music.  I always made a point to purchase the limited edition versions of these games to be sure to get the soundtrack that comes along with it.  In P4A they not only transfered all of the excellent music over from the video game but added some new tracks.  I was glad to see that one of the best video game composers, Shoji Meguro, continued to add new music to the anime.  Meguros style of jazzy Japanese pop is very interesting.  While some of the vocal tracks might not appeal to everyone due to some interesting lyrical choices, the music in general is a wide range of jazzy, drum and bass, and even some rock in there as well.  It provides an nice pace and never allows the listener to get bored of the soundtrack  They included the original opening music in the first episode of the anime which assists in letting the viewers know that they are in for a a full blown anime version of the video game.  Be sure to listen to the video for the original opening song to hear of taste of the music.

If I haven't sold you on the anime yet, then I apologize.  I can not stress enough that this is something you should be watching.  Anime fan or not, the story is intriguing, the characters are diverse and well developed as the show goes on and it bleeds style.  The cool factor this show has is nothing I have seen before in an anime.  So why aren't you watching this?  Oh, it's not out in America yet...  Actually it is!  You can watch subtitled episodes, for free, on Hulu!  I think this is so great that Hulu has subtitled anime and series that might not fall under the super-popular category.  Check out Persona 4 on Hulu right here.

Persona 4: The Animation is Greatness in a TV show.  I haven't been so excited for anime in a long time and I highly recommend that if you like anime, you need to be watching this, and if you don't care for it, maybe you should give this one a shot.

Movies That Involve Greatness

50/50

The half shaved/half long is always a good choice in hair.

Today I decided to head out to the movies and check out this new film, 50/50.  I was very interested in this as it involves some great actors and an interesting story.  If you're interested in seeing this movie do not worry, I will provide no spoilers in my review. Also you can hop to the bottom of the post and read the one sentence review if you're lazy...but I know you want to read the whole thing.

The film is the story of Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing the character Adam, who learns he has cancer and must go through chemotherapy to battle this beast.  Thankfully he has his friend Kyle, played by Seth Rogen, girlfriend Rachael, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, therapist Katherine, played by Anna Kendrick, and family to help him work through his life.  Through the amazing device known as the internet, Adam learns that his form of cancer has a 50% survival rate (Ooooh so that is why the movie is called 50/50 I get it now...)

Okay, enough of the story, I'm sure if you haven't been under a rock since the previews for this started airing on TV you know what the story is.  Lets get down to business.

I thought this was an excellent film.  The emotions through all of the characters felt very realistic.  It was nice to see how every character, not just Adam, dealt with the cancer discovery and how each person prevented themselves from going crazy knowing Adam had a 50/50 chance of survival.  Nothing ever felt cheesy or overly dramatic which is great for keeping the audience engaged and interested in the development of the characters and story.  I really liked that the movie draws a wide range of emotion throughout.  It wasn't just a comedy or a drama which prevented the movie from falling in the depressing movie category.  All the characters were given the opportunity for comic relief which was excellent.  I was worried about it being a sad movie with some Seth Rogen one-liners and a few smart remarks from Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Anna Kendrick and Anejelica Huston have some great lines throughout and are a welcomed surprise.  


I highly recommend this movie for any movie lover.  I know some people who expressed caution about Seth Rogen being in it due to personal tastes, but he never steals the show away from Gordon-Levitt.  There was just the right amount of Seth Rogen.  Don't wait for DVD on this one as it is a movie that definitely qualifies for greatness.


One Line Review of Greatness:  Unless you're a complete fool, you should see this before it is out of theaters.  

Music You Should Be Listening To - Black Materia

Music You Should Be Listening To

To start things off here I want to throw out a CD you should check out.

Even though I've never been a hardcore fan of the nerdcore genre of hip-hop, Random (Mega-Ran) does things right.  Mixing background music from classic video games with a smooth flow on top creates a fine quality of music.

Black Materia uses the music and follows the story of the classic, arguably the most popular of the series, Final Fantasy VII.  This landmark game provided lots of people with an incredible introduction to the RPG video game genre.  Even today in 2011 the game is still hanging out in lists of the best games ever made.

Among the things in this game that blew me away it would have to be the amazing score composed by Nobuo Uematsu.  Some of these pieces are still among my favorite pieces of video game music like Aerith's Theme, Cid's Theme, and One Winged Angel.  Thankfully Random gives us amazing lyrics on top of these tracks to help you remember why you loved these songs in the first place.  Random smoothly puts story elements of the game and song into his lyrics.  You can find these tracks below, at Random's Website, or even on Spotify.  If you REALLY like it you should purchase a download of it!  For $7.77, its a hard price to beat for such a good album.



This is the first of many posts to come on Pyramid of Greatness.  If you feel something could be done better please leave a comment below!