Persona 4 The Animation: Collection 2 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

Persona 4 The Animation: Collection 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Dream a little dream of Yu.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 15, 2013

Have you ever had a dream which upon reflection from a waking state really makes absolutely no sense but which when you were actually experiencing it asleep seemed to be the height of rationality? Dreams are a such a patently bizarre experience to begin with, but if you’re lucky enough to vividly remember any given dream, they can be a sometimes disturbing window into how amorphous ideas and even physical constructs are within the seemingly infinite expanses of the human mind. Locations can magically transform without the dreamer questioning why, people can become someone else entirely mid-sentence, and all sorts of inexplicable phenomena can dance before the dreamer’s eyes without any easily identifiable reason. (For instance, last night I dreamt about someone named Arthur Ashe, who in my dream had something to do with a mystery I was investigating. Now Arthur Ashe was a well known tennis player back in the day, but why would my mind supply a character with that name? I have hardly ever played tennis, I don’t follow the sport as a fan, and aside from kind of knowing who Arthur Ashe is or was, I have no other connection to the man, aside from some dim recollection that my sister once rode a gondola with him at a ski resort decades ago.) That weird, almost hallucinogenic quality permeates a lot of Persona 4 the Animation, and while there is a relatively rational story being told (you can get up to speed by reading my Persona 4 the Animation: Collection 1 Blu-ray review), there’s also a bizarrely surreal, hard to define quality about a lot of what goes on in the series. Some of this might be attributed to fact that the anime was culled from both a videogame as well as a light novel, and certain conceits the anime exploits aren’t immediately understandable (I confess I’m still struggling with the connection between the “velvet room” bookends and the main storyline). But even within the main story arc, all sorts of unusual happenings dot the landscape in the continuing adventures of Yu, both "topside" as well as "down the rabbit hole" in the virtual (or alternate) world he has discovered within his television set.

A good example of this dreamlike quality occurs fairly early on in this second set of episodes. Nanako, the young girl who is a cousin of Yu’s, is walking out in the rain when she spots an inquisitive looking fox. Nanako doesn’t fear the animal and in fact approaches it, commiserating with it that it must be difficult for the poor animal to be out in the rain. She then gives her brand new (and evidently costly) umbrella to the fox. The fox pops in and out of subsequent episodes, a weird almost quasi-totemic character. The series also uses a floating calendar of sorts to indicate the passage of time, but again much as in dreams, time is a decidedly changeable entity, and the viewer is often given only little snippets of this or that day and kind of forced to string together these anecdotes into a meaningful narrative. This is especially true in the opening episodes of this second volume, where Nanako is on a mission of sorts to discover why Yu is continually arriving home late.

The kind of ironic thing about this dreamlike quality is that this second half of Persona 4: The Animation tends to dabble less in the patently world of both the serial killer (a mystery which is ostensibly solved) as well as the weird alternate reality that Yu has discovered than the first half of the series did. What’s so odd about this is that the first half of the series tended to deal with these outlandish events as if they were perfectly rational—itself kind of a dreamlike stance, though the series was much more grounded in its approach than that. Here in the second half, where we deal much more with the more relatively mundane, almost shōnen-esque travails of Yu’s everyday existence, things seem much more dreamlike and detached from reality. Whether or not this was an intentional decision on the part of the anime’s creative staff is debatable, but it’s one of the more intriguing elements of Persona 4: The Animation.

That very “mundane” reality actually turns out to be one of Persona 4: The Animation’s most startling little conceits, though it may take a couple of viewings of this second half to piece together the rather arcane combination of the occult and almost nihilistic philosophy that informs part of the series’ denouement. Suffice it to say that Yu’s enigmatic Midnight Channel does keep broadcasting, and Yu and his friends do in fact continue to traipse in and out of the “vast wasteland” of their own private broadcast reality, but the reasons for this ability and in fact for the Midnight Channel itself turn out to have some surprising causes as well as ramifications. One of these ramifications turns out to play something like an anime version of Groundhog Day, but to say more would potentially spoil part of what the anime holds in store.

While the series continues to be almost intentionally difficult to understand at times, there’s yet another irony at work as the “lessons” Yu has learned, which have granted him various powers along the way, turn out to boil down to something almost intuitively obvious to virtually everyone, namely that home can be anywhere where you’re surrounded by friends and family. It may seem, well, mundane, perhaps too mundane for a series that has attempted to blend so many disparate ideas in such a whirling stew of hallucinogenic splendor, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a lesson well worth taking to heart.

Persona 4 The Animation: Collection 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Persona 4: The Animation Collection 2 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. The second half of the series continues in the admirable footsteps of Persona 4 the Animation: Collection 1, with a beautifully sharp and precise presentation that features excellently crisp line detail, bold and well saturated colors and a really exciting design aesthetic. This half of the series doesn't tend to exploit the static prone world of the Midnight Channel quite as much as the first half, and so we get less of that sickly yellow ambience (combined with "ghosting" and white noise). Instead, quite a bit of this arc plays out in the ostensible "real world", albeit in drab, gray rainy conditions. It's a more or less equal trade off in terms of monochromaticism and a kind of intentionally fuzzy looking image. Aside from those elements, however, the presentation remains incredibly sharp and focused, with appealing character designs and a crisp and clear image offering lots to enjoy.

Persona 4 The Animation: Collection 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with the first volume of Persona 4: The Animation, Collection 2 offers only an English dub presented via a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. As was discussed in my Persona 4 the Animation: Collection 1 Blu-ray review, some fans have been upset by this decision, since the original Japanese language version of the anime included voicework by some of the same actors who played these roles in the videogame. That issue aside, this English dub is really rather good, with excellent voicework by all of the leads. The track, while narrow, boasts excellent fidelity and some appealing dynamic range. This is yet another anime series that probably could have been significantly improved and opened up with a decent surround track, but what's here really is fine on its own merits and shouldn't be cause for too much complaining, at least for those who aren't quite so tuned in to the Japanese voice cast.

Persona 4 The Animation: Collection 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animation (1080p; 1:32)

Persona 4 The Animation: Collection 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I'm typically not a huge fan of anime based on videogames, especially when I have no real experience playing the games. But Persona 4: The Animation is that rare exception. The series is not without flaws, and it seems to go out of its way at times to make things difficult to wade through, but taken as a whole, the series is almost always really intriguing, with a wealth of smart writing and some really nicely done animation. I frankly still have some questions about what I've seen, but that only means that I'll be revisiting Persona 4: The Animation again soon. This second volume has slightly fewer supplements to recommend it, but it continues the first volume's excellent video and audio quality. Recommended.