Anime review: Persona 4: The Animation

Anime adaptations of video games and other licensed properties sometimes receive a bad reputation due to their nature of being produced solely to make a quick buck based on namesake. Persona 4: The Animation is a curious case of trimming a fifty-plus hour JRPG into a twenty-six episode series. There’s a lot to consider with such a bold undertaking – what gets left on the cutting room floor, how do the writers properly convey such a large and diverse main cast, and how could the variables unique to each individual player’s experiences factor in without alienating viewers? The result, while perhaps not perfect, is one of the more successful forays into adapting a video game to anime in recent years.

As with the video game, Persona 4: The Animation begins with Yu Narukami moving to the small town of Inaba to live with his Uncle Dojima, the local detective, and young cousin Nanako. Early on during his stay, Yu hears rumors of a television broadcast that airs rainy evenings as the clock strikes midnight, and begins to formulate with his friends and classmates as to whether this Midnight Channel might share any connection to a recent string of murders in the area. After a few brief ventures into the world behind the television screen, Yu and friends learn they must face their inner selves in order to call upon the Arcana powers of their own unique Personas and face off against the violent Shadows that inhabit the TV realm.

Yu is the lone exception to the rule of everyone hosting a singular Persona, as he can forge bonds with his friends and locals in order to expand his capabilities. While the actual process of his forging social links is largely glossed over in this anime version due these being left largely up to individual players’ discretion in the video game, a few episodes see Yu interacting with NPCs and taking time away from the murder case in order to help an old lady and tutor a child. The dungeons are typically completely explored within a single episode each, as the anime is less concerned with the process of fighting hordes of enemies and opening treasure chests, opting instead to place greater emphasis on the investigative team facing their shadow selves and subsequently revealing more about their personalities and character traits.

Key non-combat events from the game also receive ample attention, including the school camping trip and Miss Yasogami beauty pageant. It provides a fresh break from the otherwise intense atmosphere and darker color palettes within the TV world. The animation style itself is highly reminiscent of the few fully-animated cutscenes from the video game, though Persona 4: The Animation has a notably higher production quality than said sequences. A few new subplots, such as Nanako dressing up as a magical-girl-meets-Sherlock-Holmes anime protagonist and tailing Yu to find out what he has been up to all summer break, add a bit more lighthearted storytelling that is welcome in putting a slight spin on a story otherwise quite familiar to those who have already poured multiple days worth of time into the video game.

The majority of the cast from the video game’s localization return for the English dub of the anime, with only a couple change-ups – Chie’s being the most instantly noticeable, due to how heavily involved in the story she is from the outset. Johnny Yong Bosch’s voice work for Yu Narukami is a real treat – while he may not be highly talkative in order to preserve a sense of neutrality and focus the story more on Yosuke, Yukiko, Kanji, and so on, there are certain points in the anime where he will deliver lines of dialogue that would be considered the strange or obscure options in-game. This often creates evokes humorous responses from his companions. With many of the gaps bridged due to the anime not covering so much of the downtime between dungeons, Naoto’s inclusion in the story is more consistent, and Margaret prefaces nearly every episode, giving the Velvet Room a constant presence, though one that is left largely unexplained in this version of the story. Dojima is effectively reduced to a one-dimensional and often bitter individual, which makes his shift to becoming a more caring parent in the later episodes both sudden and clunky.

As is only to be expected, the endgame storylines see slower pacing in order to fully prepare viewers for the multi-layered revelations. They remain just as half-baked as in the video game version, however, and it is a shame that both interpretations of Persona 4 stumble over themselves so late in their runs. Aside from a couple of the events signifying a maxed out social link being shuffled around to places that proved more convenient in this version, Persona 4: The Animation remains largely unchanged from its video game counterpart, and given how story-heavy the game was to begin with, that’s probably just as well. There is little revolutionary about this adaptation, but at the same time, it does exactly what it sets out to do, offering ample time to highlight Naoto’s gender dysphoria, Rise’s stress from life in the spotlight, and Teddie’s existentialism.

My rating: 7 (out of 10)

Anime review: Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Rebellion

Fair warning: while this review will not reveal major spoilers about the film itself, it will contain spoilers regarding the Madoka anime series.

A twelve-episode series and two recap films later, the story of Puella Magi Madoka Magica tells its final chapter in a third film, titled Rebellion. After Madoka transcended to the level of a god and rewrote the laws of the universe, Homura was left in a new timeline where the curse of magical girls becoming witches did not apply. Instead, the energy of negative emotions and thoughts manifested in the form of beings known as wraiths, and hunting these became the new role of magical girls. While Madoka’s memory was wiped from existence, Homura still remembered her best friend and everything the two had sacrificed for each other’s sake. In the final moments of the anime, Homura displayed dark wings, implying her own powers had grown beyond what was typical of a magical girl.

It may come as something of a surprise, then, that Rebellion begins with all five of the magical girls from the series watching over the city and quelling nightmares before they grow out of control. There is a certain similarity between the presentation of these nightmares and the witches of the original anime, in that they are both presented in a very distinct style not exhibited by many other works in said medium. Backgrounds transition from a grayscale cityscape to colorful quilt-like patterns, while the physical forms of these nightmares are filmed as live-action 3D models than are layered into this 2D animated realm. While only a few instances of this are exhibited throughout the film, it works well as an evolution of the way the anime presented the witch’s labyrinths.

Within a half-hour of the film getting underway, both Homura and the audience are strikingly aware of the fact that something is off with the world as it being perceived. Some of the magical girls remember key events from the anime, others do not. The world appears more exaggerated and stylized, with gothic architecture and a greater contrast in colors prevalent as the world gradually shifts away from a familiar realm of modern technology witnessed throughout the majority of the series. Thus, Homura’s goal becomes that of uncovering the truth – why things appear out of order, what happened to the witches, and most importantly, what the full ramifications of Madoka’s ultimate sacrifice were.

One of Rebellion’s big selling points prior to its release was that it would introduce a new magical girl. However, the fact that she receives very little screen time and is allotted practically nothing in the way of time to develop into anything more than a mildly interesting plot device makes her inclusion more or less a joke. The animation and artistic style of the film, while still very good, do not display any significant increase in production value over the original series. The soundtrack is similarly a bit underwhelming – it certainly perpetuates an atmosphere similar to the series, but does not contain many complex or interesting tunes by comparison.

The brilliance of Puella Magi Madoka Magica was in its delivery and pacing – each of the twelve episodes layered the necessary information while similarly taking the time to focus on each character and weave a complex story, the full extent of which was not realized until the final few episodes. However, by the time Rebellion rolls around, viewers are intimately familiar with the personalities and behaviors of each magical girl, and while the first twenty minutes or so are a fun trip down memory lane, this portion of the film serves largely as a highlight reel for their individual powers and techniques. Once Homura picks up on the world being an imperfect vision of what she once knew, the story becomes incredibly predictable and reveals itself as unfortunately simplistic.

When Hideaki Anno set out to create End of Evangelion as a follow-up to the original Neon Genesis Evangelion, he did so with a few factors in mind – viewers being disappointed over the original series’ conclusion, the budget restraints the original series faced, the grander vision he had for the story, and the increase in popularity Evangelion saw a couple of years after its initial release. With Rebellion effectively taking on the same role of a follow-up film to an otherwise already-concluded series, it feels like a cheap cash-in for the sake of Madoka being so popular upon its initial release. The new endgame is a pointless retread of familiar territory, and attempts to explain itself as an end-all be-all solution for one final happy(-ish) ending, but there is little thought or care put into it. While the magical girls all display watered-down versions of their personalities from the series due to Rebellion’s less-than-two-hour runtime, Homura’s is the most insulting, as she is reduced to a selfish, almost sinister caricature of the complicated, hardened, and loving individual revealed by the conclusion of the original series.

My rating: 5 (out of 10)

Anime review: Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Prior to my viewing of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, I had heard it described as offering to the magical girl genre what Neon Genesis Evangelion offered to mecha anime. I went in almost completely blind, knowing only a few bits of what was to come along with the plot of the show. At twelve episodes, Madoka does surprisingly well with its pacing, and covers all the necessary information within its allotted runtime. It also maintains an air of intrigue about it by consistently layering the complexity of what it means to become a magical girl. In the end, this anime does remind me of Neon Genesis Evangelion to a degree – the two deal with notably different themes, but both tackle genres that viewers have become some familiar with, so comfortable with the classic character themes and plot points therein, and opts to turn all of that on its head.

The initial premise of the first episode is quite consistent with most magical girl anime. The opening is impactful and provides a small taste of what is to come, but the routine of Madoka and her good friend Sayaka going to school, talking to their friends, and predicting when their teacher’s latest romantic breakup will be is exceptionally normal. It is the point when Madoka and Sayaka meet the new transfer student, Homura, that the story is truly set in motion. Madoka is warned in private by Homura that she should not abandon her friends, her family, the comfortable mundane life she currently has. While Homura does not come right out and say it during their first encounter, it soon becomes apparent that she wants to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl at any cost, despite the attempts of a cat-like creature named Kyubey to sway Madoka and Sayaka to making a contract with him. While Homura’s story is the last of the main characters to be fully realized, it is abundantly clear early on in the series that she is privy to information the rest of the characters are not.

There are five major magical girls who, alongside Kyubey, make up the main cast. Madoka is the central figure, and it is through her eyes that we, the viewers, are seeing the events that unfold. She believes herself very normal, very unexciting, and this sense of being exceptionally unexceptional is what leads her to question her own motives and character traits multiple times over the course of the series. Sayaka is more of a go-getter, and as Madoka’s close friend, she constant tries to perform helpful deeds to friends and loved ones. She is possibly more innocent than Madoka even, and her good nature goes at odds with Kyoko, an aggressive and somewhat selfish magical girl who is introduced around the halfway point of the series. Mami sees the least development of the lot, but is the means through which Madoka and Sayaka are directly exposed to the realm of magical girls and accompanies them on their first few witch hunts. Homura, being an enigma until late in the story, is largely an accessory to the other magical girls, intervening in their work and offering key information when necessary.

The animation throughout is incredible, and the show appears to have a higher production quality than most anime in this day and age. One of the real standout elements of this series comes in the form of the witch labyrinths the girls must traverse. These twisted fairy-tale-esque areas appear out of ripples in perceived reality, and each is represented as a collage of magazine photos pasted together. The jerky motions of the witches’ minions and the obscure yet highly creative designs of the witches themselves creates a series of unsettling environments that I simply couldn’t help but look forward to the next iteration of, due to the unique overarching motif each labyrinth exhibits. The soundtrack is decidedly melancholy on the whole, opting for a number of softer string instruments and piano parts, while the tense mood of battle themes do well to complement the dangerous and crazy environments where the witches are encountered, many of which appear as something of a classical European culture fever dream.

In truth, Madoka reminds me a lot of the Watchmen graphic novel, in the sense that it provides a more brutally honest and in-depth look at what ramifications taking up the mantle of being a magical would have on an individual – not only the tradeoffs and sacrifices they must make to gain such immense mystical powers, but also the psychological and emotional trauma they will experience as a result of becoming gradually more detached from friends, family, and society as a whole. For some magical girls, these personal challenges will weigh more heavily than others. When a candidate makes a contract with Kyubey, they are granted one wish. Some magical girls use this single wish on themselves, others grant a miracle to someone they know, but rarely do the girls understand the full gravity of what their new role in the world means. There are also certain side-effects to their powers based on what they used their wish on. Sayaka, for example, has the ability to heal faster than usual because her wish was used on healing someone else’s wounds.

While the other four see processes of character progression that prove consistently interesting and feel intelligently scripted from start to finish, Madoka’s suffers from a lack of believability at a few points. Some of her reactions to the hardships she and her friends must face fail to come across as genuine, though her development and role in the grand scheme of this story is handled far better in the late episodes. There is also a lack of cohesion between the magic themes, which are present from the first episode to the last, and the science fiction elements, which, while present from an early point, do not take on as large a role until after the halfway point. There are a few bits of information that are revealed that are intended to be hugely important to the overall plot, but come across as clunky and half-baked. There are a few ways that they could have incorporated these points into the magic routine and they would have worked just fine, but for some odd reason the show tries to push these late in the game, and with everything else that is going on in building toward the endgame, it doesn’t play out in as smooth a manner as I think the writers had hoped.

Madoka does not opt for the Neon Genesis Evangelion route of starting the show off as deceptively normal in tone, then eventually heading down a dark, dismal path. The serious, sometimes sinister nature of fighting witches is made quite clear from the outset, though it isn’t until the third episode concludes that the real danger these magical girls place themselves in on a regular basis is made strikingly apparent. There are some very heavy themes at play here, including suicide and the loss of one’s own identity or reason to be. While it may not display gore or utilize any real vulgar language, the story of Madoka Magica is not for the faint of heart, and I pity anyone who may have gone into viewing this series thinking that the happy-go-lucky intro sequence was an accurate depiction of what the series was all about.

My rating: 8.75 (out of 10)