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.