Persona 4 – 13

Ah, yes. Another great episode of Milky Holmes.

I…kind of forgot this show existed. To be perfectly honest, I forgot that real life existed and locked myself in my room for a week and just played Rusty Hearts with my friends. But hey! I’m back! I have no choice since school starts tomorrow, so I need to start getting my brain working again.

Oh Persona, it’s been way too long. Well, it’s only been a week, but it feels so much longer. I could throw in one of those lame “I haven’t blogged since 2011! AHAHAHA!” jokes in here, but honestly that would take too much effort. I’m tired. But what else is new? Let’s just move on to Persona.

Velvet room. It’s nice to know that they start things so predictably even after a break. Other then that, HELL YES new OP. Now with 30% more technicolor and megane.  After that, it’s raining in Inaba and Nanako runs into a fox. Normally interacting with wild animals is a bad idea, but Nanako is an anime character a sweet girl and gives the fox her umbrella. The next few days, Yu comes home late and is too busy for Nanako. Dojima thinks that Yu has a girlfriend, but his heart belongs to Yosuke apparently that’s not the case. Nanako decides that the only way to get back her onii-chan’s attention is to cosplay (some weird cross between Milky Holmes and Precure) and so she dresses up and plans to stalk him for a day. She runs into Kuma though and he distracts her, so she loses Yu.

The next day is cosplay stalking round two. However, Nanako loses Yu and then runs into his group of friends instead. Apparently he isn’t hanging out with them either. So the group spends the day looking for him to a musical interlude with no luck. At the end of the day, they run into a very suspicious Kuma in his bear suit, but he runs away before the team figures out wtf is going on.

Nanako is still worried about Yu and decides to go for round 3 of cosplay stalking. However, right away, she sees him with some woman (people who have played the game might recognise her as the slutty nurse). She runs into Yosuke and Kuma after that, so the guys take a look to see if this is true… and they see Yu with a different woman who has a kid. So the girls Rise gets concerned and so the rest of the team goes to see what Yu is doing… only to find him chatting it up with an old woman. On the way home, Nanako sees a kid with a bowl cut and glasses who looks lonely. Yu comes home with extreme fishing gear on, but Nanako is too depressed about Yu’s pimping to ask him about anything.

MILFs and a…GILF?

Later, there’s a festival going on, but Adachi was too busy stroking a cabbage or something to do his work properly, so Dojima has to stay in late. Nanako cosplays, but there’s no stalking. She’s depressed, but then Naoto shows up and tells her that the case can’t be solved if the detective gives up. This cheers up Nanako and she runs off and helps a bunch of characters from Yu’s previous Social Links while looking for Yu. She runs into the guy who sells weapons in the game, but apparently he only does fireworks in the anime. After Nanako saves him from choking, he tells her his life story that he likes doing fireworks because they’re amazing/make everyone’s smile.

Is it bad that I want that magnifying glass now?

Suddenly, fireworks. Also, Nanako finds Yu and they watch the fireworks together. While this goes on, Nanako meets all of the people she saw Yu with and notices that they’re all smiling. She tells Yu that he’s amazing because he makes others smile. Suddenly, Nanako is in a yukata and Dojima is there. He tells he that he has a surprise for her in 2 days. Days later, everyone is over at Yu’s place to eat watermelon. After a Nanako themed ED complete with bishoujo-eyed Yu, Nanako asks what Yu did all summer. TO BE CONTINUED.

Bonus Detective Story:

HNGGGHHH WHAT IS THIS FEELING?! IS THIS…IS THIS MOE?!

The great sea of chicken nuggets beckons me!

Kuma has no idea what’s happening, he just wants to join in

Magical Detective Loveline is secretly plotting your death 😀

End Thoughts:

Nanako’s not my favourite character in the show, but I have to admit she was pretty damn adorable here. I liked how she ran about in her Loveline costume and no one made her change into normal clothes to attract less attention. Everyone just went with it. I like how Yu’s friends were super nice, meanwhile Yu just ignored her for an entire summer. You’d think someone with their understanding at “motherly” would clue in that she’s worried about him. Kids have very obvious emotions at that age, you can tell when they’re sulking immediately. I’m surprised he didn’t at least try to cheer her up by flinging a rubber band or something like last time. Nanako got so worried about him! Bad big brother! Bad!

I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on Yu. He was ignoring her to help people with their problems and work at a part time job, after all. It’s funny how everyone just opens up to him right away. As long as someone is willing to listen, it’s amazing the types of personal information people divulge. Yu is not only a master pimp, winning over the hearts of all the ladies, but he wins over their trust. I’m still not quite sure what makes people so comfortable around him when he’s so stiff, but it’s kind of amazing to watch o_o I guess when you’re that nice, you deserve as many women as you can carry and more. While playing the game, I didn’t think much about everyone unloading their baggage onto me and JUST ME, but in the anime it really shows that Yu is practically a magnet for this kind of thing. People trust him so much, his life has turned hectic XD

Overall, this episode was cute and sweet, but nothing amazing. It was also a sorry reminder that all of the budget goes into making the OP and ED song. SO MANY STILL SHOTS, MY GOD. I like it when my characters move, thanks. It’s so weird to see such a stunning OP and then go into such inconsistent animation. The contrast is baffling. Back to how I felt about this episode, it didn’t stand out to me very much. I don’t even know what to think about the next episode, which is a dumping ground for all the social links they don’t want to cover in depth. I feel like all my opinions are on the cynical side recently, especially with all the new shows. *sighs* I guess it’s because I just watched Kuchuu Buranko, and it blew me away. Everything else just pales in comparison. D:

!!!!!!!! Finally, a Nanako themed episode! And oh my god was this ever cute. How could Yu ever ignore her?! *cough* Favoritism aside, yeah this was adorable. Even more so for me since my dream job as a child was to be a detective (…which I immediately dropped after finding out that real ones don’t actually go around smoking pipes and looking through a magnifying glass). I love how all of Yu’s friends are so nice to Nanako as well since I seriously doubt anyone I knew in high school would have spent the whole day with her like that. Plus Naoto was amazing this episode and we haven’t even gotten to his character yet. I’m now majorly excited for that. Nanako just seems to bring out the best in all of the characters~. …Have expressed my love for her character sufficiently yet? In any case I’ll stop here since I plan on ranting about her again in later episodes.

Dear lord Yu was busy over the summer. What was that, 4 Social Links he was working on? 5 If Nanako is included in there (but I don’t think she is since her and Dojima’s story will probably be done together). I also loved how they included Yu’s ability to fish in here. You see, in the game, they have the totally useless option to fish in there. I think you can sell the fish or trade them in for items, but really, you’re usually too busy with social links to bother with this unless it’s raining out. Not only were they paying attention to the game mechanics again, but they also decided to appeal to the fandom by throwing in Adachi and his cabbage. I think it started as some sort of meme over the internet because Adachi said that he liked cabbage a couple times randomly, but yeah. The staff must have thought it funny/random enough to throw in.

Back to the Social Links, I’ll probably rant about this more next episode, but 4 in one episode seems like overkill. Even 2 in one episode near the beginning felt a bit rushed, but 4? I can’t imagine how rushed next episode is going to feel. I know that Yu has to do something to fill his time since the team isn’t going into TV land anymore, but I’d rather the anime take it slow and focus on the side characters a bit more. …Maybe this means that they’ll focus more on the action more in the events to come? God it’s hard trying to be vague and avoiding spoilers. (Plus ugh, I’m too tired to form comprehensible thoughts.) Anyways, it was a cute, funny, non-game script following episode. Also, I love the new OP. Possibly better than the old one.

Preview: It looks like Yu’s side of the story. I’d like to say that there will be less cosplaying, but I bet you anything that it was Yu inside the Kuma suit that one time.

Whatcha gonna do…with all that swagger?