Persona 5 The Animation: A First Reaction – Glass Reflection

Persona 5 is a complex game about the shackles of society, the drudge of daily life, and the inescapable fact that all adults are assholes. Also waifus. So many goddamn waifus.

But this is not a video about the game. I am not a game reviewer, and as much as I’d love to do a video on Persona 5 proper, I am just an anime guy. I love anime, it is my passion. So when we got the inevitable announcement that Persona 5 was going to be getting an anime adaptation – and not just a one-off OVA that was more like an extended trailer of what a P5 anime would be like if it wasn’t tied down by the expectation of being a 1:1 adaptation – I was elated.

Because Persona 5 is a great game. It has a great story, great characters, and an aesthetic that I’ve been longing for. It’s perfect with no fl… Wait, the protagonist’s name is Ren? The manga called him Akira Kurusu! I went through the entire game with that as my name because I like to keep things like that canon and now you changed it? What is this bull—?

Persona 5: The Animation is an anime for the Spring 2018 season by A-1 Pictures. It is directed by Masashi Ishihama and is based off of the Playstation title of the same name.

It stars a young Japanese kid who finds himself branded a criminal and sent to Tokyo on probation. There he meets up with a variety of other misfits and will eventually band with them to form the infamous group known as the Phantom Thieves, who use a mysterious smartphone app to enter the hearts of various victims and try to steal their heart to make them change their horrible ways in order to better society and the world around them in general.

Despite the numerical portion of its title, you do not need to have watched any Persona anime or played any Persona game prior to this to get some enjoyment out of this series. Persona is a franchise that is built off of one-shot experiences, loosely connected in the same universe and containing similar themes, but largely they are all stand-alone. Hell, Persona itself is just a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei and you really don’t need to play that in order to enjoy this.

As far as adaptations go, this is not the first time that a Persona game has received an adaptation. Persona 3 has a series of films that cuts out the monotonous tedium of a procedurally generated tower of corpses. “My God, why does everything look the same?! I go up some stairs, and oh look, more corridors. What’s left? More corridors.” Persona 4 is the juggernaut of the franchise, so much so that it got two adaptations, the second of which pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable in a game-to-anime adaptation as far as mechanics. Basically it was just a “New Game Plus” of an adaptation that…well, fell flat. What’s that you say? Trinity Soul? Never heard of it, that can’t be a real series. Let’s push that over there, we don’t talk about that.

But Persona 5’s animated version has one major leg up, in my mind, next to its predecessors. And this might start a flame war, but I am prepared. Persona 5 has a better story to work with.

Now to clarify, I am talking about the game’s overarching story. Persona 4’s selling point was its characters. I love the cast of P4 to pieces, but the main story (the murder mystery of Iniba) was really just a loosely created bridge that linked the amazing individual stories of the cast. Well, that and all the social links, which P4 did much better…don’t @ me.

Persona 5 though – and now, by extension, Persona 5: The Animation – benefits greatly from having a main story that is fully engaging on its own merits. I will be far more invested in the story of the Phantom Thieves as a whole than I will be with Ann and how she’s struggling as a model, or Ryuji’s lack of a track and field carrier, or whatever it is Iori does while standing out in traffic.

Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t any individual standout stories from the game that might get glossed over in this adaptation. Kawakami had that blink-and-you-miss-it reference to her side-job as a maid, and Takami’s brief walk by for a few scant frames might be all we get. But that might just come down to a balance thing. Maybe because some confidants don’t have as interesting stories, the anime may decide to not include any of them. But I hope that the screenwriters took note of the popular confidants from the game and are keeping those in mind for this adaptation. I want more maid teacher, less shogi player. More crazy doctor, less gun salesman. Hell, the data from the Thieves Guild should tell them all they need to know about player habits and which confidants were seen by more people. So let’s hope they use it.

I’m also looking forward to seeing if they decide to do something unique with the group’s name. In the game, you could name your group of phantom thieves for some additional flair, even if all the voice over still referred to them as the Phantom Thieves. Sure, it’ll be a lot easier to just not do that and leave it as “The Phantom Thieves”, but sometimes it’s the little details that make the story shine.

In the intro casino escape scene, for example, there’s a whole other quick bit from the game where the protagonist is running from the mob of cops outside, which gives us this quick visual reference to Lupin the III that is unfortunately cut in the anime version. Now, the adaptation will probably give us far more references to the persona of Arsène himself, unlike in the game where you guillotine personas every chance you get for the newer, shiner models. Unless you do an Arsène-only play-through like a crazy person…not that I’m speaking from experience or anything. But the point that I’m meandering towards is that references like those to Arsène Lupin helped to show off where the influences for both the main story and the aesthetics came from.

I suppose the biggest problem I have with the show’s aesthetics as a whole is just the constant feeling of “Close, but no cigar”. There was one moment in episode one where I thought they nailed it, incorporating the location select screen from the game as a scene transition…ah, beautiful. But the rest would have been better if they didn’t try to loosely copy what the game did. The All Out attack from episode 2 was a good example of this. When they try to draw the comparison with the game for nostalgia purposes, but they don’t do it as well – or in some cases do it even worse – really all they are doing is answering the question of which would win in a direct fight: the game or the anime? This is not a fight they should have called attention to. However, there are many other moments where the animation clearly shows off its budget. While I mentioned the initial casino scene was cut short, I would argue that the parts we did get look better than their in-game counterparts.

The exception to this is the OP though. The game graced us with the expertise of Sayo Yamamoto’s greatness and the anime gives us a clip-show from the episodes we are already watching? Yeah, no, what is this bull—?

Ultimately, the question is whether or not should you watch this series…well, that plus the additional question of if you should watch this instead of playing the game. Now personally, I am of the mind that more great content is always a good thing. As such, I would wholeheartedly tell you to watch the series. It will not be a perfect adaptation, but that’s to be expected. You can’t cut a game with over 100+ hours of gameplay into a mere 24 episode series. There’s a lot that won’t get covered. The anime will not be able to recreate that feeling you get when you just laze around for a whole week of in-game time and do nothing meaningful because, gosh darn it, it’s MY free time and if I want to go to the bathhouse every day, then I’m going to freaking do it! But sometimes you just want to re-experience the story without the gameplay tedium, and that’s exactly what this new series will be good for. This will not and should not replace the game. If you have the ability to play Persona 5, my god, go and do that thing. But when you are done, the anime will be here to keep you company, to make you smile, and to remind you to go to bed.

If you want to check out P5: The Animation, you can go watch it over on Crunchyroll. That’s it from me for today. Thank you for reading. Until next time, stay frosty.

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