Persona 4 the Animation

This review encompasses both Persona 4 The Animation and Persona 4 The Golden Animation

P4A and P4GA were more or less a pretty straightforward adaptation of the Persona 4 game, with the Golden Animation acting like an “anime expansion pack” representing the Golden content from the game. While the exact events diverged pretty heavily at a couple of points, it was pretty much just the game in anime form. As the game itself is basically a playable anime, this was about as much as I could’ve hoped for. The animes also contained many visual setpieces that were a lot more unique and less repetitive than the game was able to achieve with its JRPG dungeons and combat, which made it a lot more digestible story-wise than the game.

I can’t decide which series I prefer visually. While the art of The Golden is much cleaner and more colorful, I felt the characters in the first series looked more accurate to their in-game counterparts, and the animation itself was smoother and more lively, where The Golden felt more choppy to me. Though one weird aspect of the original series is how the characters’ faces are all drawn with this vertical gradient that kind of makes them all look like they have five o’clock shadows. While I’m complaining, I would also just like to say that Nanako’s depiction in the anime leaned far more into loli territory, which I find disgusting and upsetting, doubly so because her character is portrayed as a little sister figure to the protagonist Yu Narukami.

Onto aspects I enjoy, I liked how much more fleshed out some of the characters were than in the game. Yukiko Amagi was one character that I actually quite disliked in the game, and while she still has some annoying traits here in these shows, I loved how much more they delved into her backstory and character motivations, which we see very little of in the game. The episodes where we see the goings-on at the Amagi Inn made me feel so much more empathetic for her as a character. I also thought that, despite still being pretty shallow and lacking in some areas, Ai Ebihara and Adachi were handled somewhat better in the show, which was nice to see. The character of Aika Nakamura was a completely original addition to the anime who I loved. She comes off as confident and knowledgeable but bored, and I thought she was such a great comedic addition whenever she appeared working at her various jobs. It was a fun addition, and I’m still kind of surprised they managed to cram in another character despite there being so many to work with already. Also, the English voice actress for Naoto felt much more androgynous & masculine than the English voice actress that appears in the game, which made her character immediately so much more believable to me.

These animes were also even funnier than the Persona 4 game, which I previously thought was a funnier game than Persona 5. I guess it’s a lot easier to convey comedy in an animated format compared to interactive visual novel style dialogue scenes, but there were genuinely so many laugh-out-loud moments.

Overall, like the game, Persona 4 The Animation and Persona 4 The Golden Animation comprise a nice, fun, and humorous anime adventure story that’s full of heart and optimism.