Out of Season Anime Review : Persona 3 Movie Series

Adapting a video game story to another material proofed to be very, very hard. And it would be much harder if the source material itself has so many components that only could be captured by playing it. One example is a silent and self-named protagonist as the main character. Silent and self-named protagonist is used in a game so the player could relate to the protagonist more as the silence makes them a blank slate ready to be scribbled by the player just like the player wanted. Persona 3 Movie is one of the examples of how to extract the real character inside a silent protagonist.

To project the protagonist. For me, that's the most important thing of adapting a video game into another media and Persona 3 Movie did their job perfectly. One of how they extract the real character is by playing with one of the game mechanism that is very important to the game itself and that is player stats or attributes. The stats in Persona 3 game is consisted of Courage, Charm, and Academics. As I know that the crew of this anime has previously worked on Persona 4 The Animation, I like to assume they using the attributes based on the game Persona 4 that is Courage, Diligence, Understanding, Expression, and Knowledge as their base to make the protagonist of Persona 3 Movie. The lack of Understanding and Expression in the Persona 3 attributes made the Persona 3 Movie Protagonist, Yuki Makoto, cold and expressionless with smiling for only few occasions. The lack of Diligence made Yuki, lazier than Persona 4 The Animation protagonist, Yu Narukami. In this movie series, Yuki Makoto depicted as a fearless cool boy but lazy and cold to other people just like many people depict the protagonist and only with that, this anime managed to capture and steal my heart.

Sadly there is a major let down from the character development that is they did not dive down into the social links but they repaid it with in depth relationship with the SEES member that seemed absent from the game yet for me is the most important aspect that must be brought out. Sacrificing the social links (with just cameos of the characters involved in social links), they really poured their heart into dedicating Yuki to the relationship between him and SEES members which for me, that's how should it be in the game. So, they managed to sacrifice something for bigger thing.

Of course, in the sake of making the game fit for a movie, there should be a major change from the story in the game and the story in the movie. And for me, the major changes in this movie series hit the spot that the game could not reach.

[SPOILER ALERT]

The major change that really made me fell in love with this series is of course how they altered Ken's relationship with Shinjiro. In the game, Ken's cry towards Shinjiro's death felt a bit empty since Ken did not have a very solid reason to cry over him aside from Shinjiro did protect him in the last second of his life. Well, Persona 3 Portable did repair this by having a social link option for Shinjiro if you are playing as the female protagonist so Shinjiro's farewell hit us more but because this movie adapted the most original source material that is the Persona 3 original game, I will scratch that entirely. In the movie, Ken were oblivious at first about Shinjiro's wrongdoing and adored him very much because Shinjiro saved the whole team in a pinch. This resulted in a huge impact on how Ken felt betrayed and how Ken felt guilty over Shinjiro's death. This impact made Ken's cry feel deeper and far more hurt that its game counterpart and of course, made me cry too.

Second major change that is very remarkable is how they added more interactions between Yuki and Ryoji. This added interactions made the decision to kill Ryoji in the fourth movie very much harder for Yuki to choose and for SEES to process. This is a major new thing that I love since I could not feel the urgency to kill Ryoji in the game.

[END OF SPOILER]

Lastly, the soundtrack of this movie series is so much good. While still having the tracks from the game those are already excellent, the added tracks are still achieving the quality of its predecessor. Scored by the same person who scored the game, Shoji Meguro, the tracks are very much worth listening just like the game counterpart of this movie series.

In the end, Persona 3 Movie Series is one example of how a game being adapted to another media. And not just media like anime, it applies to the media like live action movies or even stage plays. What we need from an adaptation is a great writer to write back the story and make the story more interesting than the original.

Final verdict :
#1 Spring of Birth : 9/10
#2 Midsummer Knight's Dream : 9/10
#3 Falling Down : 8/10
#4 Winter of Rebirth : 10/10
Overall : 9/10