Hello and greetings fellow Otaku,
So I promised you guys a little over two weeks ago that I was going to give you a first look at the new Persona 4 anime series. But due to a couple of unfortunate events in my life, I ended up getting a little bit sidetracked!!!! However, there is no need to worry because I am going to be covering the first two episodes for those of you who haven’t had a chance to see it yet or those of you who are still on the fence about watching this series. So without further a due, let get started.
Episode 1-Your Myself I’m Yourself
At the beginning of the episode, we are introduced to two characters named Igor and Margaret inside a limousine known as the Velvet Room. Igor tells us about the maim plot of the series in which people who enter the Velvet Room usually form a contract in which they enter a realm found between dream, reality, mind and matter in which we can be destined to face in the future. At the end of this particular scene, Margaret says farewell in which we will meet her again someday in the near future.
Next we meet the main protagonist of the series Yu Nakurumi. Yu is like any other normal teenager in Japan, however due to his parents receiving different job assignments all the time, he has a shallow outlook on life. We thus see Yu enter a small town known as Yasoinaba, a small town that is country like. Next we are introduced to Yu’s uncle, Ryotaro Dojima and his daughter Nanako. Ryotaro complements Yu on how much he has grown over the years. though Yu doesn’t remember him all that well. Ryotaro mentions that it is tough for Yu to move from place to place because of his parents, but he is excited as he gets to spend the year with him.
During a brief stop at the local gas station, the gas station attendant offers a job to Yu in which he happily declines. The attendant says that he will be bored to his mind if he doesn’t find a job or something else to occupy his time. Once Yu’s uncle comes back from the restroom, Yu get a weird feeling in which he holds his head. Nanko worried about his health asks Yu if he was carsick. However, he politely declines that he is sick.
Later, we see Yu getting situated in his new home in which he reflects back about how he got into this situation in the first place by seeing him in front of the his former classmates in which his former teacher states that he will be transferring to a new school. We then see Yu starting to drift off to sleep in which he states, “So I am stuck here for a whole year here?”. Later we see a mysterious figure talking to Yu in a dream in which he asks him “Do you want to know the truth?” Yu in a state of shock figures that the mysterious person was just a dream and try’s to figure out his identity.
The rest of this episode is split into days, just as in the game. The next day we see Yu starting his first day of school at “Yasogami High”. The teacher in his homeroom class, states that he was kicked out of his home to live in the boondocks. He then tells Yu to introduce himself to the class. He does, but the teacher notices that he was staring at a young girl at the front of the class in which he was branded as an infidel in which he gets placed on the teachers S*** list. However the young girl stands up in Yu’s defense by asking the teacher to sit in the seat next to her. Once Yu sits down, the young girl tells him that the students call their teacher “King Moron”!!!!! In which she considers him as awful. Towards the end of the first half of the episode, Yu notices that fog was coming from the out side. We then cut to a scene in which we see another young lady walking to school in which she sees a dead body hanging from an television antenna. The young lady screams in shock in which we return to the school seeing that classes have ended for the day.
Ok, I know that the first half of this review is a little long(Just wanted to cover all the bases), but the rest of it is going to be in a cliffs notes style to summarize the rest of the episodes (No spoilers included!!!!). So lets take a quick break for some eye candy shall we!!!!!
EYE CANDY BREAK!!!!!
Ok, break over!!!!! Back to the review.
Once the class has adjourned, some of Yu’s classmates started talking about a new thing that has been gong around know as “The Midnight Channel”. Next, a warning announcement comes over the PA system in which they state that their was an accident on campus and it is urged that students take caution when walking home from the school grounds. It is then we are introduced to two new characters, Chie Satonaka and Yukiko Amagi. Another character named Harumuki is also introduced in which we see him returning a DVD to Chie damaged. He tells Chie that he will buy a replacement copy when his next paycheck arrives.
Next we see Yu’s uncle over at the crime scene where the young girl found the dead body on the television antenna. We then see his partner Adachi, look at the victim and went to throw up. Thus he still calls him a rookie and asks if he wants to return to headquarters. The scene ends when we see Yu’s uncle look up at the antenna commenting what a horrific site it was.
Next we are introduce to another new character, Youske Hanamura, a young boy who has a red pair of head phones and who works at a local department store in which his father is a department manager. Yu and Youske hit it off in which they go out to a local food court to get beef steak in which Chie meets up with them. While they were eating, a picture of Myumi Yamano, a local television announcer who died the other day.
In other things, the group starts discussing about the midnight channel. Yu in surprise did not know what it was about. Youske states that the channel shows up at midnight on rainy nights. Later that evening, Yu closes his curtains and sees an image of a young girl on his television screen. Thus a mysterious voice speaks thru the television in which it states, “I arth thou, thou art me. Ye who shalt open the door…” we then see Yu’s arm getting sucked into the television. Luckily, he was able to pull it out though he did not realized what just happened.
Yu would experience this same feeling again when he talks to his classmates the very next day. Yu, Youske and Chie assumed that it was near impossible that a person can be sucked into a television, so they decided to stop by Junes Department Store to see if it was possible on a larger television. Once they arrived in the store, they noticed a familiar image that they have seen the night before. Then before long, Yu sticks his hand inside a big screen television in which his arm gets sucked in just like before. Chie and Youske were both shocked at what happened, however since Youske was scared and was about to pee himself, he knocked himself, Yu and Chie into the television transporting them into another dimension.
Thus this is where the story get’s interesting. So to prevent spoilers for the most last exciting eight minutes of the episode, I am going to stop the review right here. Overall, my first impressions of the series were very surprising. I have to say that it was everything that I have read about on news sites and fan boards with a little more mixed in-between.
So I hope you enjoyed the first half of my review of Persona 4 The Animation. Part two in which I will cover episode two since this post was so long will be posted tomorrow. So until then, remember that there is a ton of great anime and manga out there. All you have to do is find it. Ltrs.
Posted by Andrew B 
Anime Full Circle 