My Thoughts
I'll summarize the first four episodes in one review so that I can catch up with the airing. Well, Persona 4 is based off of a videogame I really love. I played that video game for 80 hours of my life. Anyway, the anime has nice animation, wonderful ost that is a direct import from the video game (save for the new OP and ED songs), and the stellar voice acting (but I find the english voice actors better).
As for the plot, it follows the source material very closely but speeding things up a bit since it has only 26 episodes to spare. People who played the video games and even the people who didn't play it can really notice as may be because they want to finish all the main characters introductions and backstories below the double digit episode mark. It's completely understandable as it took me 20+ hours to finally meet all the main characters within the video game. However, they could have improved the pacing a bit to make the new comers feel welcome to the series.
The transition from game to anime for those who didn't play it is actually seamless as from the opening introduction of episode 1 of the velvet room, to the date and weather transitions, and even the half break part where the stats of the main character is shown is also included which is quite a nice touch. The major change however would be the main character having his/her voice and personality. In game he was a silent protagonist with some conversational choices, yet in the anime he's near silent and some even call him as dull and uninteresting. Well, in the video game he is actually silent and its up to the player to bring his charms out so may be this didn't transition quite well for the uninitiated, but if you ever played the game you don't really find this as a negative.
Overall, the show is coming along nicely albeit rushed, and the first 4 episodes still focused on the character introductions. It's yet to get to the juicy part of the story. It is indeed necessary to speed things up since the show has only 26 episodes to provide for the plot, it may be a dissapointment to those who didn't play the game, but for me who finished it, I don't find it problematic as I have already invested in the characters early on. This anime is not catered to everybody, it is most probably a fan service for the gamers and may be a bit unwelcoming to the newcomers but check it out around halfway as the story would get better up until all the way to the end, I just hope the creators won't rush it as the mystery in this series is quite good, but because the cast is so large, it may be inevitable.
Mood while watching: Fanboy happy, all the vivid memories of those 80 hours of playing returning.
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