Forum - View topicShelf Life - Persona 4: The Animation
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MiloTheFirst
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I tend to agree wit gaby in most of hers review, but I think it is unfair to rate the anime based on how good it is compared to the game, I mean, telling the reader her opinion that the game is a better pick is totally fine but the score itself should ignore this factor.
That being said, allow me to share my personal experience. Persona 4 the Animation was my first experience of the persona/SMT franchise, and at the time its main theme (bonds are what make life fulfilling) really resonated with me. I won't pretend the show is without its fault but there are some points reviewers often bring up which I would like to counter-argue "The gay panic reactions/jokes... actually hurts the story significantly" this is something I see often mentioned in several ANN reviews. And I have to disagree, firstly when the story was indeed moving and not indulging in comedy-relief they did take the topic very seriously as gaby said they did in the game. Secondly, what's so bad about gay panic jokes? a character's lack of maturity is not an statement of the show's narrative. if anything a bunch of mid 2000's highschooler being akward and politically uncorrect while meeting someone gay is actually very realistic. it isn't pro homophobe propaganda. While we are at it, fun fact, the character in question being gay is just something some of the fandom who missed the point of his character arc came up with. this is a confusion caused by the interpretation of what the tv world is supposed to be. spoiler[while the shadows say "I am a shadow of your true inner self", and Jung indeed describes shadows as a suppressed part of the self, the master mind explain in the final episodes (plot twist?) that the tv world is a representation of what the masses " want to see". in short "people only see what they want to see (what it is easier to understand) thus they fit people into stereotypes ignoring the depths of their character" thus why shadow kanji is an okama/dragqueen, for the general masses it is too much effort to understand that a man can like girly things without liking men (just as in real life some people fail to understand that a homosexual man can like men without identifying as female himself), which is the resolution kanji reaches before defeating his shadow. in the same fashion, while the other characters may have indeed felt some of the arguments their shadows mention, the characterization of the shadows is a reflection of the labels society would give to those characters. while yousuke indeed felt bored of the country life and wanted to be seen as a hero, it was the town resentment towards junes which made his shadow to be a self centered jerk. and so on and so on.] this is just a result of confusing the series theme of "finding your true self" with its other theme of "you don't have to be what society expects you to be". Some people (not gaby's case) bring up that "the show's (magical) setting is difficult to understand and that the show expects you to have played the game". this is mostly untrue, just a matter of context. I for instance had never even heard of the game before watching the anime, and yet I was one of the (seemingly) few western viewers that understood all the symbolism and lore behind the plot on my first watch, that is because I was familiar with what the show does indeed expect you to know before hand "The tale of izanami's descent into the underworld", "the symbolism of the fog in shinto mythology", and C. G. Jung's take on anthropology. while the later is indeed a fault of the anime (the game does explain it to you through conversations with npcs) , the former two are supposed to be common knowledge for the original japanese audience. "The animation is unremarkable". this was also my opinion for the broadcast version, but later I found the BD release fairly improved for that time's standards anyways. "The main character is a blank slate because this was adapted from an RPG/VN ... thankfully it was remedied in the second half". while I can see why some reviewers might be tempted to argue this (seeing how it really is the case in most adaptations), I believe that it is not the case in this particular series, the anime's story was built upon using that apparent weakness for its central theme "bonds make who you are", at the beginning of the anime Yu was not stoic because he is supposed to be self insert, but because his given (anime) back story of absent parental figures and constant school transfers caused him not to make any relevant acquaintance, therefore the lack of social experience prevented him from develop opinions of his own, his change in personality can be seen throughout the series. |
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