A new feature on Poisoned Rationality, "What I'm Watching" will cover the anime, tv shows and DVDs I'm watching each week.


Persona 4: the animation
Some of you on twitter may remember my utter obsession with the Persona series.  I played all 3 versions of Persona 3 (Persona 3, Persona 3 FES and Persona 3 Portable) and trounced Persona 4 in about a week in my feverish need to play it.  Admittedly many of my favorite characters are from Persona 3 (Akihiko-senpai!), but Persona 4 deserves some love!

This isn't an exact replication of the game.  Since in the game you are the main character (Yu Narukami), and dictate his actions/friendships the show takes that control away and instead has a more general idea of what happens.  The Arcana for instance seems to mean a lot less than in the show--where you can't level up or increase your friendship level with people for better Personas.

Currently there's 13 episodes available through the Anime Network (which is subbing the episodes in a simulcast on Thursdays) where you can watch the episodes online.  That's roughly half of the series and it seems as if the show will cover the entire game (Narukami has just one more person to add to his coterie of friends, Naoto the detective 'boy') and we're already at August (the game is playable between April 2011 and December 2011, with the ending 'epilogue' in March 2012).

While the big details don't seem to have been changed, some of the character relationships and events have changed to compensate for the fact the viewer can't say to Narukami 'Maybe you should hang out with that person on this day!'.  Having played the game I know who the bad guy is in that, so I'm waiting to see how that unfolds.