Persona 4 #05 — Social Link Leveling

November 3rd, 2011

 

Is it time to romance the fox yet?

Side note: This was far more adorable than it had any right to be.

Impressions:

Well, that answers the questions about how they’re going to handle the game’s social links as well as the space between kidnappings, although I do find it a little hard to believe that 10+ teenage boys plus a ref would be so intent on basketball that they’d completely ignore a screaming and slapping fight on the sidelines between two supposedly hot girls in an otherwise completely empty gym. Seriously. The only sounds there were someone dribbling, girls screaming at each other, and the background music. Maybe the BGM was being piped through the speakers and drowned it all out. Ai was one of the social links I liked the most in P4, but I also suspect that may be because her general character type is so rare in Japanese media and even when they are present, are usually relegated to the sidekick role or paired up against a character too wishy-washy to be able to decide between a sandwich and a mouthful of glass for lunch. Yuu does veer more towards the latter category, so a lot of it does remain Ai just narrating her life to a brick wall and it still doesn’t work so well when the character’s not a player avatar.

It still wasn’t that particularly interesting of an episode overall and they didn’t really try to tie it into events that transpired or the like, so it feels like they’re just going through the motions. Like Horizon, the narrative really should stay a little more tightly focused, even if here it means making up some new stuff to tie the side events into the main plot. Say Ai or Ball-boy had some connection to… I don’t know… anything. It shouldn’t just randomly spurt off like this if the story is going to remain cohesive. This isn’t the game anymore, although I think Yuu getting an announcement about his social link leveling up at random points would have been hilarious. Might as well maximize the silliness if you’re just going to keep the skin-deep events without any changes at all. No, the brief manservice doesn’t count either.

Preview:

If you’re reading this, it means that I forgot to change the template.

Posted in Persona | 11 Comments »

11 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • backspace says:
    November 3, 2011 at 1:42 pm

    Wait, was Ebihara’s S.Link even available that early on in the game?

  • AfroSquirrel says:
    November 3, 2011 at 2:27 pm

    http://tenka.seiha.org/images2/p45/p45_70.jpg

    Chie, that is not how you Galactic Punt.

  • sage says:
    November 3, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    あっかねえぇぇぇ！

  • AGear2Ax says:
    November 3, 2011 at 4:22 pm

    Hey Aroduc, didn’t you like this type of main character? He’s silent and useful, instead of others full of angst that doesn’t stop of telling us how they want to do something or for thing to be diferent… say for example, the one for Guilty Crown?

    • Aroduc says:
      November 3, 2011 at 5:10 pm

      Can’t we just leave it at “they’re both terrible?” I guess Yuu’s slightly better because at least he’s not going to actively annoy me, just passively be a piece of toast in the foreground, but Shuu could really ramp up the terribleness and come out on the other side of amusing by being trainwreck-level bad.

  • Andhros says:
    November 3, 2011 at 6:21 pm

    Wonder if that is the end for strength and moon. I figured that they would have gone for the fan-service route and had Ai give him the compact from the game.

    So far it seems that the full harem route is closed. Wonder if he is gonna get friend-zoned by everyone, they could follow the drama disks and have the party secretly in love with him, I guess.

  • Travis says:
    November 3, 2011 at 10:07 pm

    Seconding Ai as being an interesting – and very rare – sort of character in Japanese media; actually, characters like her aren’t treated too well on either side of the sea. My surprise as her social link unfolded was pleasantly unexpected. I actually haven’t caught up to this episode, but it still looks watchable – just not particularly good.

    The comment about the bgm being piped through does make me wonder, though… One of the schools I went to did something like that specifically to avoid student socializing.

  • Kaisos says:
    November 4, 2011 at 2:45 am

    Eh? I thought Ai’s character type was ‘rich whore’… that’s quite common in anime.

    • Travis says:
      November 4, 2011 at 2:03 pm

      It’s worth replaying her path just for a few of the surprises later on – that’s a face judgment, and the game does a nice job of subverting your expectations later on.

      • Kaisos says:
        November 4, 2011 at 6:10 pm

        I know she’s a lot more than she appears, but her archetype is still ‘slutty rich girl’. I don’t get what you guys are talking about when you talk about her “general character type [being] so rare in Japanese media”.

  • Tokwa says:
    November 4, 2011 at 8:30 pm

    Isn’t he supposed to be like this? Well, in the game he’s not talking nor we can’t see his emotions. I guess the director just did what he can to portray the protag as what he was like in the game…

    and it didn’t work out so well…