PERSONA5 the Animation

I absolutely love Persona 5. Though it might not be the largest numbers, I have put over 350 hours into the vanilla version and 130 hours and counting into Royal, and I enjoyed every minute of it. The everyday life simulator combined with the dungeon crawling and turn-based RPG, the overflowing and elegant visual style, the absolutely godlike soundtrack—it is hard to understate how much I adore this game. Then I was reminded a few months back that this game had an anime adaptation, and even though I knew that people said it was horrible, I, for some reason, went and watched it. I do not know why.

In general, I like the story of Persona 5. It’s certainly not perfect, with certain moments and arcs that feel weird and plot holes that aren’t filled, but it’s a story that is compelling, makes sense, and is ultimately satisfying and cathartic. Persona 5: The Animation retells the story of Persona 5, though it changes elements to fit the medium. Some of the confidant relationships were handled decently well in the anime, considering the confidants were a core gameplay element that would be difficult to adapt. The anime has golden moments that weren’t in the game—everyone’s favorite example is the scene at the school festival where Ren tries to unmask a ghost in his school’s haunted house out of habit from his Phantom Thieves shenanigans. Additionally, the anime also explores the relationship between Ren and Akechi much more in depth than vanilla Persona 5 did, which was interesting to see. But the elephant in the room regarding the anime’s story, as I think anyone who knows about it can tell you, is the god awful pacing. The vast majority of the time, the story is incredibly rushed. Events that take time to occur in the game are presented at breakneck speed, with whole arcs in the game being crammed into a fewer number of episodes than you can count on half a hand. Many scenes are painful to watch with how rushed they are, with characters following each other’s lines up with almost no time to breathe. Half of the entire game’s content, infiltrating and exploring palaces, is substituted for mere minutes of badly animated sequences showing the Phantom Thieves running around, with the occasional reference to unique portions of the palace—there was so much that could have been done with the Metaverse exploration that wasn't. I could go on, but the bottom line is that the storytelling in Persona 5: The Animation is pretty garbage, and it definitely doesn’t the do the game’s story justice. If this anime were given more episodes and more time, it certainly could have been a good retelling of Persona 5. Alas, it was not. 3/10.

The characters in this adaptation largely suffered as a direct result of the bad writing. Given the vast amount of characters, including the Phantom Thieves themselves and Ren’s confidants, and the limited timeframe the anime was pigeonholed into, it’s not surprising that the majority of the characters in the anime are sorely undeveloped, uninteresting, and, in the case of most of the confidants, don’t make much sense unless you already know who they are from the game. There’s honestly not much to say here. Some people argue that Ren Amamiya, the protagonist, actually has a personality in the anime as opposed to in the game—as should be the case, considering the game’s protagonist is meant to be an insert for the player. In my opinion, Ren’s personality isn’t even strong enough in the anime. Sure, he can still maintain the cool and quiet persona, but there’s no reason for him to be as silent and passive in the anime as he usually is in game. Line choices in the game for Ren are often witty and funny—some of this spirit was captured in the anime, but not nearly enough. But again, given the quality of writing, having strong characters is a bit of a tall order. 3/10.

And then there are the visuals. Persona 5 is a game renowned for its gorgeous visual style, yet the animation in the anime adaptation is nothing short of embarrassing. A simple comparison of the All-Out Attack animation in game and the meager effort to reproduce it in the anime is a pretty good summary of the disparity in quality between the two mediums. That also isn’t to mention the awful fight choreography in the anime, which might as well have not existed. The cutscenes from in-game look better than most of the content in the anime, with the occasional exception, usually in the form of character expressions. Put simply, the visuals suck—and that’s even speaking from an objective point of view without comparing it to the game. 3/10.

One of the “potentially” redeeming factors for the anime was its music, and it’s mostly just because it took much of the soundtrack directly from the game, whose music, as mentioned, is god-tier. Granted, there were some soundtracks that were exclusive to the anime that also were pretty great: one that comes to mind for me is the track that plays when Ren and Akechi play chess for the first time. The first opening, “Break In to Break Out,” was also a certified banger. That being said, “potentially” is in quotes because occasionally the timing and mood-setting of songs felt a little off, but this is a pretty minor problem compared to everything else. 7/10, because Persona 5 music absolutely kills it.

It’s honestly really unfortunate that Persona 5: The Animation was as much of a mess as it is. I genuinely believe that if this anime was given a few seasons of time to develop, it could have been an absolutely amazing adaptation—after all, the source material quality is there. And even aside from that, the anime itself had, as mentioned before, moments of brilliance that could have been even better had the rest of the adaptation held up. It seems blatantly obvious that this anime was rushed through production to capitalize on hype around Persona 5, which is almost made more apparent by the fact that the dub version was released on Blu-ray not too long ago from the time of writing for a whopping $300 (or for streaming on Funimation, to which the point still stands). The bottom line is: if you’re interested in Persona 5 at all, just go play the game. Please.