Usually when I get a hold of a series like this I set it aside in my ‘will marathon at a later date’ pile, which has seen countless unfinished series like Kaze no Stigma, Dragonaut, Night Wizard, to name a few. However, with so few winter season anime actually interesting me, Persona seemed like utter brilliance in comparison. Admittedly it’s got a pretty generic shounen/supernatural plot going on so far, but it was good enough to hold my attention for the full duration, so I might watch this one ongoing. It’s definitely not my type of blogging material though.

The story revolves around a young boy named Kanzato Shin, he and his brother Jun have recently moved out of the care of their aunt to Ayanagi City to live with their older brother Ryo whom they have not met in over ten years. However, when they get there, he’s nowhere to be found, apparently too busy with his duties as police chief to bother to pick up his two little brothers. The city has seen a few odd cases lately, most notably, a case of serial murders where the victims literally have their bodies turned inside out, Ryo being the lead investigator on the case.

Shin and Jun eventually find their own way to their home but find the lock changed and password coded, with nothing else to do, the two brothers spend some time in the yard reminiscing about their childhood, Jun lamenting the lack of memories with Ryo.

Meanwhile, while working on the case, Ryo gets a call from a subordinate officer who lets out a shrill scream over the phone. When the police find him, he’s already dead, Ryo takes a look at the surroundings and failing to get in touch with certain members of his team, takes off. When he gets on scene he’s just in time to save a woman from having her persona, analogous to one’s soul, being ripped away from her. Using his own persona he fights off the man and saves the woman, taking her to a hospital afterwards.

Ryo gets home to see his two brothers sitting by the door in the cold, disappointed they couldn’t find the spare key he hid and decipher the password comprised of the first number of their birthdays. After getting settled in, Shin runs out for a while to track down a fortune teller he had a dream of earlier. Instead he finds the man who Ryo fought off earlier, the one tried to steal the woman’s persona. His persona attacks Shin, only to be effortlessly dispatched by Shin’s own persona, which manifests itself to protect its master.

First Impressions

Not bad, all things considered. Nothing spectacular, but it has the foundations of a solid, albeit slightly generic, plot. What will dictate my further interest in this series is how well the characters are developed. Shin seems to be your typical shounen lead, one who gets caught up in a situation beyond his comprehension only to stumble through and survive it. No doubt he will hax his way to being one of, if not the, strongest characters in the series. I actually like Ryo as well, I usually hate the arrogant bastard type characters, but Ryo has that air of superiority around them, scolding his brothers for not being able to solve a simple little puzzle to get into their own house. He seems level headed and intelligent and will probably have the task of holding Shin’s hand through the new abilities he’s discovered. Jun is seemingly useless, for now.

Technicalities were so-so, animation was pretty standard for this type of show, which means severe lack of fluidity and half-assed cg, but it didn’t really bug me that much. The persona fights were a bit of a pain to follow though, what with them being semi-transparent and all, it’s not that big of a deal when it’s one on one, but if there get to be more than that, things might get a little crowded and overlap. Some research into the games that Persona is based on leads me to believe that they’re being pretty faithful in terms of adaptation so far. Only that they got rid of things called evokers, special guns that the characters shoot themselves in the head with to bring out their persona, not that I can’t see why that would be a problem though, especially with the astronomical suicide rate in Japan.

Music was actually surprisingly good, I listened to the entire OP, quite catchy. The ED wasn’t nearly as good, but the weird artistic drawings of people with their heads replaced with various animals/plant life carried me through it. Background and ambient music was negligible for the most part, minus that weird upbeat hip hop insert song they threw into Ryo’s chase scene.

So in conclusion, watching? Probably. Blogging? Probably not. Though at least we finally have a winter season anime premiere that didn’t utterly fail, though my track record with these types of series is terrible, I’ll probably end up stalling halfway through. I’m still waiting on Minami-ke, ARIA and GsG subs so I can really experience the start of the winter season. Ayako? Crystal Nova? Anyone ;_;?

~ Shirukii ~