Persona: Trinity Soul
After finally watching the 'P3' anime:
Yes, ATLUS. Un-canon this. Un-canon this so hard.
Well, one exception to this: it works as a bad alternate timeline. The kind that ends with Nyarlathotep winning an absolute victory. It could be salvaged if we later find out that P4Arena is the 'Okay, humanity, try not to fail so hard as to get nearly exterminated this time' reboot?
But, WTF? Someone saying 'children are innocent' (apparently this is why they, and not adults, get Personas, which contradicts not just P1 and P2, in which tons of adults have personae, but P4's Nanako not having one) in something based on an ATLUS game? And I mean, a protagonist saying this, and someone who should know better given her own life history, instead of an idiot bad guy on the level of the Madame of the Karma Society, the kind of baddie who isn't even going to get a boss battle because they are so damn stupid they're going to get eaten alive by something worse long before the party gets around to them?
Children are not innocent. They are born not innocent, born with at least some degree of caring for others hardwired into them, and this is a good thing. Children who are born innocent, aka sociopaths, and children who aren't taught about managing pain and responsibility fast are either going to end up complete monsters or experience a hell of a lot more pain in their lives than they would if they weren't kept ignorant.
What you don't know will absolutely hurt you, and you can't defend yourself if you don't know what the threats are. In an anime that spent most of the first half going into detail on why sheltering other people who don't want to be sheltered and need to know certain things is such a damn stupid idea that gets people killed, why is there sudden and absolute Aesop Amnesia?
So much WTF. So much.
And Igor/the Velvet Room getting appearances/foreshadowing that they're still important in this verse at the beginning, and then... No follow up.
Well, them disappearing/getting destroyed fits with the storyline saying that the human collective unconsciousness is currently borked, but normally in SMT, if things are that borked, things go to their logical conclusion and the world ends. This anime fails to address both why something as relatively minor as complex personae would make it this borked (marebito have nothing on Jokers of both varieties) and why what happened at the end would fix anything. Also, Akihiko really should have delivered some epic Shut Up Hannibals at certain points, preferably wtih fists, and that's just based on what he saw in P3, even without knowing the fundamental nature of personae/having experienced the Velvet Room. Why were certain people not told/shown they were absolute idiots, as normal in SMT? Because they were plot mouthpieces, and apparently the director and such took this nonsense seriously.
And the thing is that with the traditional law/chaos/head-in-the-sand neutral/omnicidal neutral etc. alignment options, SMT actually has a great track record of people with all kinds of viewpoints not being idiots and being treated like the have a point to some degree, enough that all their endings are valid routes. Even Yamato Hotsuin, who really is a posterboy for 'childhood innocence needs fixing STAT, and before they get any real power,' is sympathetic and you can see how he wound up thinking this was a good idea. And the thing is, you still get the chance to beat up the ones you disagree with (again, unless they're this level of stupid and get eaten by something smarter before you get around to them), so I'm just... Was there any point at all to the protagonist even being there? Looking back on the series, it becomes clear that the MC accomplished exactly jack. Even Tatsuya managed to do a lot, trouble was that he had even more to make up for and then he refused to pay the price and trust in his friends this time.
Good bits:
A certain person whose persona is Cain saying "This time I'll fix/end it," and getting this bit of description about them: "A tragic determination: that is his persona." A tragic determination to protect little brothers, specifically.
The persona Seth having the ability to detect and fix messed-up personas, especially since personas are so closely connected to the ego in this, when they're supposed to be masks worn by the ego, only 'the true self' in the way all beings are one through the collective unconsciousness.
And... Yeah, this anime is really only worth watching for things with fluffy implications for Devil Survivor. It doesn't really add anything to the Persona series.
If all of this ended in the logical, apocalyptic result, now...
Yes, ATLUS. Un-canon this. Un-canon this so hard.
Well, one exception to this: it works as a bad alternate timeline. The kind that ends with Nyarlathotep winning an absolute victory. It could be salvaged if we later find out that P4Arena is the 'Okay, humanity, try not to fail so hard as to get nearly exterminated this time' reboot?
But, WTF? Someone saying 'children are innocent' (apparently this is why they, and not adults, get Personas, which contradicts not just P1 and P2, in which tons of adults have personae, but P4's Nanako not having one) in something based on an ATLUS game? And I mean, a protagonist saying this, and someone who should know better given her own life history, instead of an idiot bad guy on the level of the Madame of the Karma Society, the kind of baddie who isn't even going to get a boss battle because they are so damn stupid they're going to get eaten alive by something worse long before the party gets around to them?
Children are not innocent. They are born not innocent, born with at least some degree of caring for others hardwired into them, and this is a good thing. Children who are born innocent, aka sociopaths, and children who aren't taught about managing pain and responsibility fast are either going to end up complete monsters or experience a hell of a lot more pain in their lives than they would if they weren't kept ignorant.
What you don't know will absolutely hurt you, and you can't defend yourself if you don't know what the threats are. In an anime that spent most of the first half going into detail on why sheltering other people who don't want to be sheltered and need to know certain things is such a damn stupid idea that gets people killed, why is there sudden and absolute Aesop Amnesia?
So much WTF. So much.
And Igor/the Velvet Room getting appearances/foreshadowing that they're still important in this verse at the beginning, and then... No follow up.
Well, them disappearing/getting destroyed fits with the storyline saying that the human collective unconsciousness is currently borked, but normally in SMT, if things are that borked, things go to their logical conclusion and the world ends. This anime fails to address both why something as relatively minor as complex personae would make it this borked (marebito have nothing on Jokers of both varieties) and why what happened at the end would fix anything. Also, Akihiko really should have delivered some epic Shut Up Hannibals at certain points, preferably wtih fists, and that's just based on what he saw in P3, even without knowing the fundamental nature of personae/having experienced the Velvet Room. Why were certain people not told/shown they were absolute idiots, as normal in SMT? Because they were plot mouthpieces, and apparently the director and such took this nonsense seriously.
And the thing is that with the traditional law/chaos/head-in-the-sand neutral/omnicidal neutral etc. alignment options, SMT actually has a great track record of people with all kinds of viewpoints not being idiots and being treated like the have a point to some degree, enough that all their endings are valid routes. Even Yamato Hotsuin, who really is a posterboy for 'childhood innocence needs fixing STAT, and before they get any real power,' is sympathetic and you can see how he wound up thinking this was a good idea. And the thing is, you still get the chance to beat up the ones you disagree with (again, unless they're this level of stupid and get eaten by something smarter before you get around to them), so I'm just... Was there any point at all to the protagonist even being there? Looking back on the series, it becomes clear that the MC accomplished exactly jack. Even Tatsuya managed to do a lot, trouble was that he had even more to make up for and then he refused to pay the price and trust in his friends this time.
Good bits:
A certain person whose persona is Cain saying "This time I'll fix/end it," and getting this bit of description about them: "A tragic determination: that is his persona." A tragic determination to protect little brothers, specifically.
The persona Seth having the ability to detect and fix messed-up personas, especially since personas are so closely connected to the ego in this, when they're supposed to be masks worn by the ego, only 'the true self' in the way all beings are one through the collective unconsciousness.
And... Yeah, this anime is really only worth watching for things with fluffy implications for Devil Survivor. It doesn't really add anything to the Persona series.
If all of this ended in the logical, apocalyptic result, now...