Persona 4 #07 — “Tow Days Ago”

November 17th, 2011

 

That one slipped past the Engrish department.

Impressions:

The first third is exactly the kind of thing I dreaded from this show; a nearly one to one translation from game to show of the characters walking up to NPCs and having exposition spewed out. ADAPT, damn it. Thankfully (?), they got to the Bathhouse of Overcompensation after only about 8 minutes of listening to exposition. The episode was quite underanimated compared to many previous ones too. I’m not even sure why. The ‘fight’ this week certainly didn’t get the budget, although that’s only the slightest problem with it.

I also can’t say that I’m a huge fan of how much of this episode was comic relief either. Kanji’s whole setup was bizarre yes, but I can’t help but feel like AIC completely missed the point of… well… everything here and just decided to go the low road with a whole lot of low-hanging gay jokes. It’s impossible to take his shadow or his ‘development’ with confronting it seriously when most of its attacks are harmlessly sexually harassing the party and having them comically collapse from having their butts pinched. Yamata no Orochi also seems a little overpowered for the bathhouse. I guess they felt like they had to make use of that Moon link although personally, I think Yuu’s cheating.

Preview:

Camping trip.

Posted in Persona | 11 Comments »

11 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Ryugan says:
    November 17, 2011 at 1:47 pm

    its official now yuu is a game+ protagonist

  • kou says:
    November 17, 2011 at 3:40 pm

    “Tow days ago” lol. I always loved Yuu’s dead pan delivery of those one liners and this episode definitely had its share of them.

    • kou says:
      November 17, 2011 at 3:44 pm

      Oh, I forgot to add that I’m kinda disappointed that “Tow days ago” slipped though QA. I’m sure that would be something noticeable even to a non native English speaker.

  • Travis says:
    November 17, 2011 at 8:44 pm

    This episode cut it for me – it’s not that P4 is particularly bad, it just has the opportunity to be *good* and keeps screwing it up. Part of it might just be how I’m more of an P2 fan, but P4 was still the first game I’ve liked in some time, so… Bleh. It’s just kind of annoying having lack-of-expectations fulfilled.

    I mean, how hard would it have been to have this been something he wrestled with instead of Rose-of-Versailles gay jokes everywhere? Even the game made it clear there was humiliation and introspection going on in Kanji’s mind.

  • Anacone says:
    November 18, 2011 at 1:30 am

    *Sigh* They didn’t know how to make this Boss fight interesting so they added stupid gay jokes :( And fusion without showing what he actually did use.

  • tachi says:
    November 18, 2011 at 1:49 am

    Don’t think the japanese are capable of writing a gay character that contributes anything more than cheap laughs.

    • Travis says:
      November 18, 2011 at 4:34 am

      Ah, yes. I’m sure we can tell what the Japanese are capable of writing based on anime alone (Haruki Murakami might disagree with you, though; and I’m fairly sure there are plenty of examples in media modern and from times before).

      The thing is not that anyone is incapable of writing such a character – it’s that they won’t. My two cents, I’m probably wrong… But I’d bet money on it.

  • jingoi says:
    November 18, 2011 at 10:52 am

    If they had 39+ episodes instead maybe it would have more content from the game.

  • ark noir says:
    November 19, 2011 at 5:49 am

    best flashback award of 2011 goes to Persona 4 and the ‘two days ago’ flashback. It was filled full of content. All 5 seconds of it.

  • q4985urughnlst8yls86p30a58yhp says:
    November 20, 2011 at 1:54 pm

    I am a bit sad that many people are saying that this episode was funny. Most people seem to be ignoring the fact the this episode could be very offensive to gay people, and the boys’ behavior is frequently excused as “normal teenage” behavior when they were really overreacting. The manga version did not have them whine about going home, the manga version captured the original game’s seriousness by showing a young Kanji being bullied for sewing. The shadow in the manga was also very angry and serious at the end, while the anime one is stupidly happy the entire time.

  • q4985urughnlst8yls86p30a58yhp says:
    November 23, 2011 at 2:02 pm

    The next episode will be even more unfortunate, as in the preview: the main character is acting as homophobic as Yosuke towards Kanji (I thought you accepted me/Not at night). This situation will be played for laughs, and I fear that Kanji will be a chew toy. That is to say, he’ll be kicked out of his tent, kicked in the groin by Chie, and then he’ll be pushed into the river for nosebleeding at the girls. He will be abused! If the creators thought viewers are supposed to relate to a homophobe, then that will be pretty sad.