Forum - View topicREVIEW: PERSONA5 the Animation Blu-Ray
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Horsefellow
 Posts: 262 |
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Haru suffers from "last party member to join you after all the cool events happened" syndrome, so she doesn't get much focus or time to shine like the other cast members. Otherwise, I got no real complaint about the writing or cast. They're all pretty solid.
This is untrue. https://twitter.com/MysticDistance/status/943886752070230016 https://nenilein.tumblr.com/post/164488486112/apparently-a-hashinosoejima-interview-was I get some people don't like the fanservice or humor in the series, but there seems to be a lot of (completely bogus) personal attacks against Hashino going on here, like how a certain author of a certain light novel series getting called an incel or virgin for writing a book people don't like. And comments like these just erase all the work and efforts of the female staff that have worked on the series over the numerous installments. For all you know the aspects of the games you dislike were written by women, not men.
That was the entire point of Ann's story, to find confidence in herself and be like that totally-not-Fujiko heroine she admired growing up. |
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AmpersandsUnited
Posts: 633 |
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At least there's a sub track this time around unlike with Persona 4's American release. But any release that doesn't include all the content is pretty useless, and if this release is missing key specials/OVAs then it's an easy pass.
There's a difference between bad writing and writing having elements one dislikes. Politically incorrect jokes or fanservice aren't inherently bad, so I don't really see those as problems about the writing quality any more than a person not liking dogs and complaining there are dogs in an anime. It's a personal preference thing.
I felt 5's cast was more developed and interesting overall. And if we're talking special edition, Kasumi is far and away a much better and fleshed out character than Marie ever was. The only real complaint I had was there was a bit too much relying on text messages and group chats. I would have liked to see more of those scenes taking place in-person but I guess it's the nature of evolving technology, but it felt like a lazy shortcut that didn't require animating the characters talking, especially the really lengthy group convos later on. But overall I feel 5 is more structured and narrated better, especially in the dungeons which are actual set pieces rather than randomly generated rooms between cutscenes like in 3 and 4. |
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cookiemanstah
 Posts: 546 |
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i don't think P5R is a "special edition" as much as it is *the* game now. And that's another thing not addressed with this anime in this review or in the comments yet from what I've seen. This game wholly adapts from the vanilla P5. When Royal is out right now, it further raises the question of why you would even bother with this show considering it ineptly adapts a now-outdated version of the story. The certain other big character Royal introduced is one of the best antagonists ever written in video games and the best in a game where, even though it's intentional, all the major villains are one-dimensional psychopaths. His introduction also addresses the rather uninteresting "supernatural big bad" referenced in this review. |
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tintor2
 Posts: 1816 |
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My guess is that the studios are desperated to sell so they grabbed the latest game without asking about potential narrative. Persona 4 had a "vanilla anime" and then a Golden one focused solely on Marie with one episode focused on the culprit.Heard Royal was also delayed considering I remember seeing news about the new Thief forever to the point they made jokes with Aqua from Konosuba due to having the same voice |
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blahmoomoo
Posts: 459 |
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To be clear, this anime started airing in April 2018, while Royal came out on October 31, 2019 (vanilla was released in September 2016; both of these dates are the JP release). During 2018, the P3 and P5 rhythm games and PQ2 were released, so I guess it made some sense for the anime to be aired that year. It just took a while for Aniplex USA to dub it and release this blu-ray set on September 29, 2020. If a P5R anime is coming, it would currently be in pre-production, or maybe early production if they jumped on it before the official release. There's no way for P5R's content to be in a 2018 anime. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 11111 |
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I did not know about Azusa Kido. That's kind of neat.
I don't think the Golden anime sold that well, so that's probably why they seemingly haven't commissioned anything for Royal. Well, that and the reception to the anime adaption of the vanilla P5 probably didn't help. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5912 |
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Yeah Yosuke's banter with Ryuji & Teddy really shows how friends really are with one another 
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Fluwm
 Posts: 887 |
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P5A absolutely was not doomed from the start: like many terrible adaptations, it was doomed by being too beholden to the source material. Just look at the premise: small group of teens became super-powered thieves to strike back at society's scum. That can work well in literally any medium, from 80-hour video games to 4-panel comics.
Hell, I'd argue that the whole premise all this guff is born from works much better in an anime series format compared to games or movies due to the series' short, episodic nature--remember, LeBlanc's original anticapitalist superhero first, best home was within relatively brief, (mostly) self-contained short stories. And even if you want to ignore the century plus of historical precedent, it's not like we don't also have Lupin the 3rd alive and kicking in Japan as this hugely successful, internationally-beloved franchise or anything, demonstrating the innate and widespread appeal of the premise. So, nah. The only thing that doomed P5A was its producers' collective lack of imagination. |
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gsilver
Posts: 614 |
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I don't play those, either, but at least the stories are simple enough that I don't feel like I'm missing anything by not having a good condensed anime version. |
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RevyHenriettaRider
 Posts: 88 |
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Hello!
I am not a gamer. I have not played Persona 5 or Persona 4. I have watched both as an anime. I really liked both of them. I have rewatched Persona 4 a number of times. I came to really liked all of the characters. I watched Persona 5 just recently and thought it was great. I really liked the idea that the Phantom Thieves went and changed the hearts of those who had distorted desires. I liked all of their Personas and the way they looked. I felt for each member of the Phantom Thieves because they all had something bad that had happened to them in some fashion. I was really surprised by a rather jarring twist that happened near the end of the anime. I am sure that there was a good amount of fight scenes and side elements that were not in the anime but the structure of the anime was sound and could be followed by a non game player like myself. I decided that I wanted to watch it again just to catch little things along the way that lead to some important points. I have Persona 4 on DVD and would have Persona 5 on Blu Ray if the price was not so horribly expensive which is because of Aniplex has all their releases at a over the top price point. I have other anime that that with the same kind of release that was economical and fairly priced for the US market. I am glad that Funimation has Persona 5 to watch on their streaming platform. I have a relative that has played both Persona 4 and Persona 5 and thanks to the anime version of both I can talk to my relative about these interesting games. |
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 605 |
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Azusa Kido did great work in Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4. Those are the two games that I thought had the strongest character writing of the series thus far, even though P3P has problems it inherited from the first version (I really disliked the romance between Junpei and Chidori) and Persona 4 had its own blind spots in the homophobic humor around Kanji and Naoto's whole deal. I think a lot about how she had Soejima redesign the P3P protagonist because he first conceived her as a male fantasy, not a heroine in her own right When I point out that Hashino had no female friends in high school, I'm not saying he's sexist or an incel because of it. I'm saying that he lacks perspective on certain issues, regardless of whether it was caused by his own personal issues or because of how he was socialized. As for Ann, I can see two readings, neither of which are satisfying to me. A) Ann's initial arc isn't just about how Kamoshida blackmailed her, but how she was sexualized against her will because of her looks and her foreignness. The other students gossiped about her and assumed that she must be a slut, and Kamoshida perceived her as a purring sex kitten, rather than her actual self. It's not a problem of individual bad actors, but how culture as a whole makes assumptions about her. Therein lies the problem with fan service. The problem isn't necessarily her being dressed in a skimpy pleather outfit, but how the camera focuses on her breasts and her butt, sexualizing her the same way that led her to be victimized and that she's fighting against. It's how the boys on the team participate in the exact same behavior by staring down her shirt, or making her strip for Yusuke when she's uncomfortable with it. If she were written like an actual human being, this kind of behavior could retraumatize her. Furthermore, if her problems stem from her being treated in a certain way because of her appearance, it doesn't sit right with me for her to decide to suddenly become passionate about a job where she must work to maintain that appearance above all else; in fact, in the game she says it was how Kamoshida picked her out and thus she wouldn't want to make it her career. I'm fine with the idea of her having the kind of complex, multifaceted relationship with her sexuality and her appearance where she would still want to become serious about modeling, but the narrative doesn't do the work. She changes her mind because... another model was resentful of how easy she had it? It just doesn't make sense. I'd be all for her confidant relationship touching on her taking ownership of her sexuality as long as it were sensitively written by someone who understands teenage girls. But, by all appearances, it wasn't. Explanation B) There is no systematic problem with how young women are sexualized and Ann's issues stemmed solely from Kamoshida as an individual bad actor and she has no resulting trauma. Do I really need to go into why this sucks? That's just not how it works, not how societal problems work, not how trauma works. This is, unfortunately, consistent with the problems I have with Persona 5's writing as a whole, and a lot of so-called "revolutionary" fiction, where they really just need to take down the one bad person or the evil supernatural element making people act badly, and then everything will be peachy-keen. It's short-sighted and poorly thought-out, without an understanding of the mechanisms that cause these issues to keep happening. |
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