I just got the Blu-ray of Persona 4: The Animation today which is a few weeks before it's supposed to be released, but I pre-ordered it back in July from Rightstuf who for some reason decided to ship it to me early before the release date. As you can imagine I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email telling me that it had already shipped!But enough about how I got it, lets get on with the review! This release only contains the English audio and not any of the Japanese track, but that's a problem with the Japanese licensers not Sentai Filmworks. If Sentai was allowed, they would have kept the Japanese track in. As far as the English voice cast goes, just like the video game, it is amazingly good and most of the voice actors, even the side characters, reprised their roles. The only differences are the voices of Chie Satonaka, who is now played by Erin Fitzgerald instead of Tracey Rooney, and Teddie, who is now played by Sam Riegel instead of Dave Wittenberg.
However, Teddie fans will not be disappointed because Sam Riegel does an amazing Teddie in the same style as Dave Wittenberg, at times I even forgot that Teddie was even recast because it was so similar to the Dave Wittenberg performance. And yes, the un-bearable puns are still there.
Chie(Fitzgerald) sounds quite different from Chie(Rooney), but the voice still sounds right for the character and Chie is still Chie. The folks that complained that Chie sounded too old in the game will be glad that Chie sounds more like a high school girl.
The story is great, the cast is great, and even people who didn't play the game can get into it. A must-have for anime and Persona fans.
The subtitles are very well translated, and true to the Japanese dialogue, which shocked the hell out of me. Most anime such as this usually stick to the English naming conventions in the dub. I was surprised to see Teddie come up by his Japanese "Kuma" come up, among other instances of dialogue where it would be different in English. The only exception of this was Pyro Jack/Jacklantern, though I suspect this was due to copyright issues over multiple series, and doesn't come up often enough to be a noticeable glare on the translation. So, bravo to the translators for doing something I haven't seen done for a good ten years or so.
The menus are very nice, with full audio and some nice eye candy for the backgrounds. I haven't had the pleasure of checking out the special features yet, but I'm sure they won't disappoint. If I had to complain about ANYTHING, it would be that the Japanese audio track just does not seem to play that loud when compared to the English audio track.
Oh yes, and what I said about rarely watching stuff dubbed? Yeah; I actually LIKE the anime dub. I really enjoy the new voice actors they got for Chie and Teddie; I feel they are truer in pitch to the original Japanese than the voice actors they used in the game. JYB also did surprisingly well on double duty as Yu and Adachi, though I must admit that it took me two times watching it to notice the difference in their voices.
All in all, this is great. If you like the Persona series, you should already have this, but if you haven't seen it before, pick it up. Well worth adding to any anime collection.
Buy Persona 4: Collection 1 (2012) Now
While I never had a chance to play any of the Persona games, I have played a few others from the creator of them (Digital Devil, and Devil Survior)so I will say I liked how the stories made the characters more believeable in a situation that would make many people scratch their heads in confusion. The anime adaptation does the same, a group of teenagers who come across a dark mystery in their sleepy town decide to find out the mystery of the Midnight channel and why people are dying around town. Your typical character types are there, the strong willed leader, the jokester (and there are two in this series), the bossy girl, the elegant lady, and the tough (yet soft-hearted) butt kicker. As their bonds grow stronger, so do their powers, but can they find out who is behind the killings?the story was well paced and for people like me who have not played the game is a good way to introduce the characters and develop them so when the main events finally begin people are not wondering how did this happen, or when did they get so powerful. A good collection and I already pre-ordered collection 2 so when January arrives I will be happy to see what happens next while I wait for a few other series to announce their 3rd season releases.
Until we next meet in the Velvet Room, do take care..............
Read Best Reviews of Persona 4: Collection 1 (2012) Here
This is a testament to how animation should be localized. The voice actors do an absolutely fantastic job, and are largely the same voice actors you know and love from the game. Only Chie and Teddie are new, and the Teddie actor does a fantastic job. Even Chie, although being a very obviously different voice, manages to nail her enthusiasm and spunk.The animation is crisp and the dubbing is excellent, it requires a great deal of attention to notice that the lips don't perfectly match the words, which is truly amazing since the lips are speaking an entirely seperate language!
A minor setback is the lack of Japanese audio... but as I am not Japanese (and since this is the American Amazon site, I presume you aren't either!) then that is such a minor triviality that you'd have to be insane to downrate the product for not supporting it!
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if you like bleach action and anime this is one for you, based on a video game (similar to the dot hack series) it is well developed with unique set of characters.the HD is great and flawless as expected of sentie film works,ive come to enjoy their release more than funimation oddly. but im an otaku and getting off track.
the show will make you get sucked in (hopefully not into the tv)
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