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EP. REVIEW: PERSONA 5 the Animation

And I am impressed at how hard the show commits to this as the finale, complete with final-episode credits over Akechi's menacing slow-walk. There's already been confirmation that the real ending of the story will get covered in a special at the end of this year, and those familiar with the game of course even know how Ren's untimely demise here will get circumvented for that. The problem is that even as an exceedingly clever way to abuse the limited episode count, the result means the story of this actual episode ends up feeling hollow and unsatisfying. None of the mysteries powering the world of Persona 5 are close to answered yet, and indeed more are raised at the end here. As much effort as the show expended on setting Akechi up, it can seem frustrating to the audience to turn everything they know about him on its head with no answers offered until later on. There was some strong, clever stuff in this episode, but it ultimately feels unfair to just drop this giant shock in the audience's lap, then tell them they'll get an explanation by waiting three months. (Or just going and playing the game instead.)

As mentioned, this is based on a ‘Bad Ending’ from the game [. . .] There's already been confirmation that the real ending of the story will get covered in a special at the end of this year,

This review makes me wonder if the reviewer has even played the game. This was not at all based on the "bad end". It is in fact based on the true end. Stop spreading false information and either play the game or back and play it again to remember how it goes.

Too much CSI kinda ruined this ending for me. Are people supposed to buy that the dude managed to kill a guard standing with his back to the door with a shot to the back, then proceeded to sit down and suicide by shooting his forehead with that angle? I understand Akechi's pulling strings here but come on.

I'm really disappointed that Japanese anime has started to get into political commentary for other nations.

I do think it's a bit hilarious that the reviewer says, "His talk of reestablishing the country, making it a powerful nation that others will bow to, definitely smacks of the right-wing nationalism that was accelerating worldwide..." and it's like Que? Bowing down to the dictates of the American Empire has been going on for a long long long long time, by both left and right feet marching to the same drum, and has never been anything exclusive to Trump. If anything, Trump ran on a platform of trying to dissipate tensions between superpowers, particularly the insane attacks and slanders by the American Deep State against Russia versus his known criminal opponent and her predecessor who wished only to accelerate tensions because they belonged to the "Indispensable Nation" and how dare anybody else challenge their standing in the world order!

If anything, Americans need to realize that the other half of the world doesn't see any difference between the red or blue parties. The outcomes are always the same - war, war, sanctions, economic and currency control and more war, and pushing and demands of progressive immoral sex and population control values. And they are not so critical of one Donald Trump as much as they are criticizing America as an Empire. And when relevant, they're obviously going to use the current figurehead as the stand-in prop.

The final fight against the revealed Yaldabaoth at least hits the mark as suitably epic. The design and direction makes great use of this boss' CGI model. It's got real impact and just looks cool as hell. I'm thankful that the final Persona battle of this show ended up being one of its few good efforts, impressively illustrating just how a fight against something of this massive scale would even look in real-time

The trickier issue with this plot point in-universe is how one of the first revelations of this episode lays the blame for these shortcomings not at existing societal structures, but rather at the hands of a tangible antagonistic force. So, the societal problems in the story that mirror our own are here caused by the presence of an actual supernatural villain.

That's a difficult conceptual pill to swallow, depending on how you approach Persona's particular brand of escapism. (...) The main problem is that Persona 5 doesn't offer any real-world analogue for overcoming the corrupt God of desires that's causing its world's issues, beyond basic platitudes about free-thinking individuality.

But then after that grand finale, we have to come to the epilogue of Persona 5, which has more of its own problems. The big issue is how things get resolved (...) The insidiousness of this development is how easy it is to shrug off, because it fits into our ideas of how society usually works, but the problem is that the message of this story was always that society shouldn't have to work like that (...) For all their trials and efforts, the Phantom Thieves don't get to be hailed as heroes, the system is trusted to bring down Shido instead.

Ren happily sacrifices his own freedom ‘If it'll help reform society’. (...) "Everything can work out just fine, so long as you work with the system and have connections in all the right places!" It flies in the face of the societal upheaval the Phantom Thieves were working toward all this time, as they pass the baton on to ‘responsible adults’, like their teenage rebellion was just a passing phase.

I should make clear that I still have a lot of fondness for the original Persona 5 game's story, but its ending has always been one of the least interesting things about it. (...) But the bigger issues with Persona 5's ending lie at the heart of its source material.

wow, way to make an ass out of yourself. this wasn't even an American thing, the rise of right wing nationalism that the reviewers is referring to is a real phenomenon that has been happening round the world for the last decade, Starting with Venezuela and Rusia then going from Italy to mexico, Brazil, Singapore, etc, it is notable how it has become frighteningly predominant for people to vote for populist strongmen that propose borderline fascist policies in their campaigns. If you want to be critical of the USA you are welcomed to, I am sure it isn't hard to find things their system do wrong, but at least bring in your bashing when it is relevant otherwise you look bad