天下制覇

I wish persona was a different word in French.

Apparently this was accidentally posted a day early on a French streaming site. And you know me. I’m not one to turn down a little je ne sais quoi. I’ve watched xxxHOLiC episodes with Chinese closed captions. Not subtitles. Closed captions. Hoo boy. Those were the days.

Impressions:

Well, I can’t say it’s really gotten any better or worse than the first episode. This churned right along to the end of the tutorial/introduction which hasn’t really gotten all that much more interesting than the last time. They deserve some credit from cutting the monstrous two plus hours of tedium in nearly half, but they just trimmed the fat without adding much of anything in its place. I personally think Konishi’s death would have had much more impact if it had come after Yosuke realized how she really felt about him and accepted it, then went happily on his way to go actually talk to her about it before finding out she was murdered via TV shenanigans, but robble robble, source.

Anyway, my ramblings aside, the action remained animated at least, but still not great. It just played background to Yosuke bawling his brain out. I did laugh at Yuu punching him though. Probably not the intended effect there, but hey, at least he actually sort of did something. I really hope that’s not how most of the persona things are going to go. I know the game did a terrible job of it, but you can actually build up to these ‘revelations’ and whatnot, AIC. Let’s try doing that. On the other hand, it would be quite amusing to see see Yuu or Yosuke punch the girls out of their own breakdowns. Less so once Chie’s there to slap people, although maybe Kanji deserves one. The world corrupting and breaking down because of him rejecting it was also a nice touch too. See? That’s how you add things to good effect. A pity they couldn’t do that to the rest.

Preview:

Into Yukiko’s dungeon.