Persona 4 – 05

This is what happens when you use a martial artist as a cheerleader

I’m on Fall Break now and have all kinds of time to do anime-related things! Like watch Persona! The only issue: our university considers two days to be a proper “reading week.” Much appreciated, elitist university that makes us suffer. Much appreciated.

Halloween wasn’t over for even five seconds before it started snowing here and now I can’t walk into any given store without hearing Christmas music. Thank god Persona is still in spring so it doesn’t feel completely like winter. Maybe watching a threeway bromance will improve my mood some.

I’ll give you five guesses as to where this episode starts off. If the Velvet Room wasn’t your first choice, than you obviously haven’t been paying attention to the previous episodes. Igor and Maragaret talk, blah, blah, Moon and Strength Arcana, inner strength, bonds, etc. The first thing after the credits is Yu wearing a basketball uniform and almost making out with some girl on the roof, which is worlds away from fighting shadows and adventuring inside technology. Skipping back a few days, Yukiko is ditching school because she’s tired and Chie asks if Yu was in a club since he has no soul amazing stamina. She asks him to help him with something.

Ahnnn~ Yu, stop undressing my body with your eyes~

Next, there’s a scene change to people playing basketball and a bored looking girl watching them. Chie brings Yu in as a new member and Kou and Daisuke introduce themselves. Kou is part of the basketball team and Daisuke is part o the soccer team but apparently he has nothing better to do than hang out with the basketball people. Kou is EXTREMELY happy to have Yu join in and introduces the people who actually bothered to join practice. Among them is Ebihara Ai, the team manager who doesn’t want to be there. She ditches practice before its over and so does everyone else.

That night, Dojima comes home and brings Adachi with him. During dinner, Adachi rambles on about how it’s great that Yukiko came back but they still suspect her, earning him a fist to the face from Dojima. Dojima says that he can get Golden Week (a Japanese holiday in May) off, so the three of them should go somewhere. Nanako gets excited and Yu ends up on bento packing duty.

Geez, no one can keep their hands off Yu this episode.

The next day, Yu runs into Ai in school and she convinces him to ditch school to help her with club stuff. Yet somehow they end up shopping instead. Somehow Yu’s obsessive crane making doesn’t scare Ai off and she expresses her interest in him.

SWAG LEVELS: MAXIMUM

The day after that, Yu is at basketball practice and the guys talk about how Ai probably has a sugar daddy because she’s ‘loose’. Kou stands up for her just as the rest of the club members notice that Ai has been standing there for most of the conversation. She walks off after giving them a death glare and Yu runs after her. After asking if she’s okay, Ai admits that she has a crush on Kou (…Ai, you’ve only known Yu for 3 days. Should you really be telling him this? …Not that there will ever be the risk of him telling anyone).

She asks Yu to help her, so he later asks Kou what his type is. …It turns out that Kou likes Chie. Kou then tells Yu that he has to help him out and Yu suddenly finds himself in an extremely complicated affair. Ai heard the whole thing. He then has to stop her from throwing herself off the roof while she cries about how there’s no point in being cute if Kou doesn’t like her. Apparently she used to get picked on for being chubby, but people still don’t like her now after an extreme makeover. Ai says she should have fallen in love with Yu and then asks to date or else she’ll kill herself.

For the next few days, Ai is all over Yu while Yu lives in fear (lol). Yosuke doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the two of them going out, but Chie thinks that Yu is acting unnatural. Yosuke just assumes that Chie likes Yu and is jealous. A few days later, Yosuke walks into practice with Chie and says that she wants to be the new manager. Chie is annoyed and doesn’t get it while Kou is all for it. Ai glares at Chie for this. Later, Kou strips while telling Yu that he’s probably going to quit basketball after this next game since his parents never approved. He’s known Yu for about a week after all, so he completely trusts him. He also tells Yu that he plans on confessing to Chie if he wins his last game.

More time skipping and suddenly it’s the game. Yosuke’s been roped into play and Ai and Chie have a catfight for no reason. The game starts and Ai tells Chie that she’s the cause of her suffering. Chie retorts that she doesn’t like the way Ai treats Yu and this leads to some bitchslapping. Scratch that, a lot of bitchslapping. Nobody seems to care, but Yu tells them to stop since this is Kou’s last game.

In the end, they go out to eat despite losing the game. There, Kou decides that he actually does like basketball so he’s not quitting. He whispers to Yu that he’ll hold off confessing until he actually wins a game. On the way back, Ai tells Yu that she’ll be okay on her own from now on. After the ending credits, Yukiko is back at school and the team decides that they should resume investigating since the police are incompetent.

Screencaps:

My one love….is balls…

No one wants to die cold and alone inside of gym equipment

>Kou approached you naked and told you about his desires >You started to feel closer to Kou >like, too close

Lights, camera, molestation!

 

End Thoughts:

Oh man, I really enjoyed that episode. A big part of playing Persona is forming social links on the days you don’t want to grind like a maniac in the TV world, and it’s an insanely addictive gameplay mechanic. The anime version of this was nice, although a bit more of a shallow version. Kou really does have a deep story involving an orphanage, a strict family and lots of bonding with Daisuke, but that was largely ignored. I’m a bit sad about this sloppy coverage since Kou is one of my favourite social link characters in the game, but I guess they want to cover all the social links quickly since this isn’t set to really be a highschool life anime. Still, NO EXCUSE FOR RUSHING! I won’t forgive you, even though you gave me shirtless Kou…

Ai was quite the contrary, and I greatly appreciated the anime’s goofy depiction of her. In the game she was REALLY DAMN CLOSE to seriously killing herself over Kou (at least, to me, someone who has had friends do this kind of thing before). And that was…dumb. I like Ai’s social link, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to have her go that far. I’m so glad the anime made her route so amusing, and I was especially grinning when poor Yu was sweating bullets every time she called him. The slap-fight was a nice touch too. Not sure why Chie didn’t resort to punching or kicking given her character, but it was still awesome to see a betch fight next to an awesome basketball match. On a side note, Yu should stop folding everything into cranes and start working out more. Dude sucks at basketball. =.=

I’m glad they’re including the social links and I hope this continues. The next episode seems to already be moving onwards though, so that’s a bit of a shame. There’s no need to cram 2 social links into one episode, I think it would be nice to just hunker down and go one at a time for a bit. The inclusion of all the extra content really makes it worth the while. I’m going to assume they’ll address all of the social links in the game, which sounds really exciting. Especially since when I played, I got a lot of character to social rank 9…and then never maxed them. =.= I wanna know what happens, damn it!

Fun bonus, I found out that much like Durarara!!, the locations are based off of real live places! Check it out.

 

Okay so no threeway bromance, but holy mother of fanservice! …So I assume that that’s the last that we’ll be focusing on Kou and Ai? That was actually pretty good pacing and despite it being unnecessarily complicated (and the lack of Persona), I wasn’t bored in the slightest. If they cover all of the minor characters like this, I think they can still manage to make it interesting. Though the one thing I found ridiculous was the fact that both Kou and Ai were ready to trust Yu with important secrets just after meeting him a couple days ago. That’s how it worked in game, but it just seems silly in real life. Of course, this isn’t real life, but still.

They also added in extra stuff! I couldn’t stand Ai in the game, but her character was hilarious here (yay Itou Kanae!). Yu actually reacted to things too. It was like he almost had a personality here. I like the fact that the writers have turned him into an obsessive crane folder. …Plus seeing him so fearful was entertaining to say the least. Ai definitely wore the pants in that relationship. I found the fight between Chie and Ai pretty funny as well. This whole episode was just one giant misunderstanding, though I’m glad that Ai worked out her problems on her own in the end. I hope they show more of Yu’s pimping skills as the other members of the team make their appearances.

THEY INCLUDED THE HAPPY FLOWERS! But has Kou always been so… forward? I swear that he was much more reserved in the game. Though his character here was more interesting. They cut out pretty much all of his back story and didn’t even bother with Daisuke’s problems, but I think it worked here. Not explaining every single thing about the side characters just gives people more of a reason to play the games. Once again, I’m amazed that I wasn’t bored in the slightest while watching this. The comic relief in this totally distracted me from realising that this was slice of life. I hope they continue to add in extra scenes instead of following the game script. It’s really working out really well so far.

Preview: Bromance! …Or is it?

Hey, we’re not…watching you be gay or anything…Haha…