After watching the first episode and reading some comments I realized it's kind of a sequel to Persona 3, but kind of not. I imagine that if you have played or watched Persona 3 there is some fan service(?). I decided to watch it because of the upcoming Persona 3 Portable - switch release, but I didn't want to spoil the plot much by watching the actual anime for P3.

I like that the MC isn't a "wild card". But he and the other characters feel lifeless, they lack the charisma of characters that I would find in-game. Characters act very abnormally. You could say "Well, there is a lot more time and opportunity to deepen a bond in-game", but this show has 26 episodes, this should be enough time to make me like someone no? Some characters straight up disappear and I don't feel a change at all.

The only thing I like about the series is the idea of the villains consuming another person's persona, forcing their members to become "wild cards" and some other stuff I won't go into. But even that feels weak when you realize they haven't done anything to develop this in 10 years since the "incident" it seems. The basic premise of science is bad.

I can't really say anything about the audio, the OP's and ED's were good, but everything else was background noise. Maybe if I had played Persona 3 it would be nostalgic, but I doubt that even that would save this.

It's hard to pinpoint but the series is lacking... something. I can only see people who are fans of the other series enjoying this anime. Others who just jump into this one will find it - average or boring to the point of dropping. I only continued out of hope. The plot is hard to follow because of how vague and slow everything is. It's very forgettable and it doesn't help when each episode kind of starts randomly. And then in the later half, they introduce things that exist only for one episode, very odd.

Persona fights are a mess, nothing interesting. Why is this considered an action anime? You can't even see their designs (which is arguably part of the charm), and when you do, they all look the same mecha-styled, no series favorite personas that we are used to encountering.

It's very character-focused yet it doesn't flesh them out, the show would be more interesting if it had no connection to the Persona franchise. Replace shadow extraction with some new drug that makes you aggressive and some weird experimentation on humans and it's done. There is very little of Persona to begin with: a bit of Igor, a bit of Personas, the art. No real "awakening" or contract, it misses that inner turmoil that awakenings have. Felt very forced, especially the character added from Persona 3. He was also the only character that properly introduced what was going on, even if it was just a dialog dump.

The anime didn't make me angry just indifferent. I hope that this isn't someone's first experience with the franchise, that be very sad. Overall I don't recommend this to anyone, learn from my mistakes and don't watch.