Persona 4 the Animation: Collection 1 Blu-ray Review
Mom always said standing too close to the television was dangerous.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 15, 2012
Do you have memories of books you read when you were a kid that no one else has seemingly ever heard of? I got a
lot of hand me down Scholastic titles from my elder sisters, and for some reason two volumes I read when I was quite
young have stuck with me for years. One is a book called
Dorp Dead which I only have the vaguest memory of
other than its intentionally misspelled title. The other one was a little mystery novel called
The Velvet Room
which was written by the euphoniously named Zilpha Keatley Snyder (could
you forget a name like that?) and
involved a young girl who discovered a secret room in her San Francisco home, a discovery which coincides with the
disastrous San Francisco earthquake that devastated the city in the early years of the 20th century. (I should add that
I am writing this entirely from memory, and you Zilpha Keatley Snyder fans—should you exist—may take issue with my
summation of the book.)
I couldn't help but think of
The Velvet Room when
Persona 4: The Animation started up, for
every episode begins with a bizarre little opening sequence featuring two odd characters addressing an unseen
individual who is evidently existing from the point of view of the camera, because these two strange people identify
their locale as—yep, you guessed it—the velvet room, even if it more aptly should be described as the back of a
luxurious limousine.
That little synchronicity was enough to initially hook me into
Persona 4, but once the first episode really got
underway, I confess I was wondering what exactly this show was going to be about. There was Yu, evidently the
central character of the piece, a young man who has perhaps been exiled to the country to live with his uncle, a police
detective named Ryotara Dojima, and Dojima's daughter Nanako. School starts up and Yu has a conflict with his
teacher. Was this going to be another interminable quasi-
shōnen outing with Yu interacting with a coterie of
high school outcasts?
And then something rather unexpected happened: about halfway through the first episode, Yu
turns on the television at midnight and discovers a bizarre show seemingly being broadcast and, strangest of all, he
discovers he can reach into the television. Not to put too fine a point on it, that obviously freaks the young guy out,
and he babbles incoherently about this phenomenon the next day to his new friends. They, of course, are not buying it,
at least that is until they make him go to the local home electronics superstar to prove it to them, at which point all
three of them fall into an alternate universe within the telly.
Those familiar with the
Persona 4 universe will no doubt already know the
Persona 4: The Animation
was
culled from a videogame
franchise which featured a first person role playing game, so its transference to a third person narrative might initially
seem to be ill advised. The first person aspect is obviously maintained through the introductory segments in The Velvet
Room, but perhaps surprisingly crafting Yu as a visible hero actually strengthens the enterprise and anchors both the
spooky elements as well as the comedy in something approaching reality. That said, Yu remains something of a cipher
throughout the series, perhaps a recognition that the viewer has to imprint something of his own personality on the
character much in the same way a gamer imparts something of his own when he plays a first person videogame.
Once Yu and his cohorts begin regularly visiting this alternate world reached via the portal of the television, strange
murders in the "real" world seem to be linked to goings-on in this weird, interior universe. The mystery actually takes
several episodes—perhaps
too many episodes—to evolve, but
Persona 4: The Animation manages to fill
the time with some wonderful character beats as well as some genial if sometimes patently goofy humor.
Persona 4: The Animation wants to trade some intentional obfuscation for actual well conceived mystery in at
least a couple of salient ways. The opening segments feature our two Velvet Room hosts, Igor (who resembles a cross
between Nosferatu and Gollum) and Margaret,
seemingly schooling their "guest" in various powers that are often linked to iconic Tarot cards like The Hermit or The
Magician. Occult symbols are profligate in these sequences, though their meaning is often not very well explicated. The
"persona" of the series' title refers to various powers that Yu is able to access in each episode, and while those
perhaps expectedly aide him in defeating whatever nemesis he may be up against, once again the actual
reason for the personas and how in fact they may relate to the opening sequences' cards is not ever very
clearly explained.
This first two disc volume of
Persona 4: The Animation gets the story a little less than halfway through the
series' 26 episode arc. The connections between the exterior world murders and the mysterious goings-on inside the
world accessed through the television have received a cursory explanation, but one has the feeling it may not be the
ultimate answer. In fact this set of episodes ends (perhaps wisely, from a marketing standpoint anyway) with several
questions about just what exactly it is Yu has been experiencing and why suddenly his Personas don't seem to be as
instantly available as they once were. As any good television cliffhanger does, it's an incipient invitation to "tune in
next week" (or next volume, as the case may be) to see how it all plays out.
Persona 4 the Animation: Collection 1 Blu-ray, Video Quality
Persona 4: The Animation is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p
transfer in 1.78:1. This is a very sharp and well detailed high definition presentation that also offers some intriguing design
elements along the way. Part of the mystery of the murders and the overall ambience of the interior world have to do with
a sickly yellow-green fog that overhangs everything, and that thin veil of "pea soup" casts a lot of the anime in a kind of
ghastly palette, but rarely if ever sacrifices detail as a result. Line detail in fact is extremely sharp throughout this anime,
and though colors are often intentionally subdued (some of the anime is almost in black and white at times), when colors
are present, they pop extremely well.
Persona 4: The Animation has the tendency to be kind of generic
looking in establishing shots and some midrange shots, when facial features go completely missing and backgrounds look a
bit slapdash, but overall this is an extremely appealing looking show that benefits from a superior high definition
presentation.
Persona 4 the Animation: Collection 1 Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
I have to admit I was kind of sighing impatiently through the first fifteen minutes or so of the premiere episode of
Persona 4: The Animation. Reviewing as much anime as I do, and having weathered a few too many high school-
centric anime that have little new to offer this subgenre, I was frankly trepidatious that I had wandered into yet another
show detailing the slow, steady accretion of bonds between disparate (and often pretty geeky) kids. Thankfully, that
complete misapprehension was changed dramatically once Yu started watching the so-called Midnight Channel and figured
out he could actually transport to an alternate world. I'm still not quite certain
Persona 4: The Animation is going to
be able to tie the two worlds together coherently, and though I
think I know what the preludes featuring Igor and
Margaret in The Velvet Room may be alluding to, I'm equally uncertain whether their connection to the main storyline is
ultimately going to pan out. But these are relatively minor qualms in what is otherwise a really interesting, well written and
extremely well designed anime. Though this Sentai Filmworks release is a bit light on the supplements, its video and audio
are excellent (though the exclusion of the original Japanese language track may well be a deal killer for rabid fans of the
franchise), and this release comes
Recommended.
