The Persona 4 anime’s greatest achievement is how it manages to be the same as the game while still bringing something new to the table.

I know, I’m a little bit behind the times right now. Some folks watched this series last fall when it came out in Japan. But once I heard that there was going to be a dub — featuring almost all of the original voices from the game — I decided I’d wait until P4TA had its release in the States.

(NOTE: We could go into an entire debate about the dub/sub divide or how Japanese voice acting is supposedly sooooooo much better its English counterpart, but that would turn into its own article. Instead, let’s just leave it at this: I prefer dubbed because I’d like to watch the animation and not read subtitles the entire time. Also, I think the English cast for the game was very good. Your mileage may vary.)

P4TA starts off by throwing a ton of backstory at the viewer in episode 1. For the uninitiated (aka, those who didn’t play P4), it’s probably a lot to take in. Shadows, arcana, social links, mascot characters…I wouldn’t blame some folks for going cross-eyed. But I think the choice to speed up the background and get to the meat of the story was a good one. It’s just enough information to get people up to speed.

From there, the series quickly devotes an episode to each member of the Investigation Team awakening to their Persona. Yu gets the call in the first episode, followed by Yosuke, Chie and Yukiko. By episode 5, we finally have a chance to step back and see a couple of the protagonist’s relationships with some of the minor characters. Then it’s off to save Kanji and Rise and ultimately end up in an encounter with the alleged murderer in the final episode of the arc. I’ll leave the plot at that for those who haven’t had a chance to watch yet.

Instead, let’s talk about the areas where the anime adaptation succeeds and fails.

THE GOOD

The main character, humorously named Yu in the canon, is the star of the show. While that sounds like a given, keep in mind that the protagonist is essentially silent in the game, only offering up choice responses from time to time and never speaking except in battle. Here, he’s fully fleshed out and the main source of laughs on the show. Somehow he manages to convey the perfect response to every situation even though his expression rarely changes. Nothing phases Yu Narukami. I was concerned going in how they would handle the transition, but it’s even better than I could have expected.

The animation adds some flavor to some stale scenes from the game. A lot of the social link interactions dragged on, with nothing but a room and a portrait of a character to set the scene. Here, Yu helps Ichijo in a basketball game and has to drag Ebihara off of a fence when she tries to kill herself. Plus, the battles have extra flair to them — in place of the game’s turn-based system, the show basically offers its own take on random encounters and allows the Personas to shine with plenty of action. The Investigation Team doesn’t even carry weapons like they do in the game, but it really doesn’t hurt anything.

The pacing is occasionally too quick, but overall it’s very good. I’m not sure that AIC A.S.T.A. had much choice in the matter once development started. There’s anywhere between 60 and 100 hours of original gameplay stuff to try to stuff into 26 episodes, so it’s not like the show can spend a ton of time on every social link. Instead, the main story points get their time in the limelight, with clever nods to the side stuff tossed in just enough that fans of those characters will still be satisfied to see them in their HD glory.

THE BAD

The Blu-ray collection has virtually nothing in the way of bonus features. There’s a clean version of the open and close and a TV edit of episode one. That’s it. Apparently Japan was worried about people importing the set from here, so they stripped the BR of features that the DVD in the U.S. still has. I’m not a huge fan of special features, but it’s certainly jarring when there’s nothing to choose from.

When’s part two coming out? Right now, there’s no word whatsoever. My guess would be sometime in Q1 of 2013, but it’s hard to say. Considering that the voice cast did all their work at one time, it’s confusing to not even have a release date set for the second half of the show. I’d be more willing to deal with the standard six-month wait for something to make it over here than not know what the hell’s happening.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The lack of extras on the discs — or details on when we get the rest of the series — is certainly a downer, but it doesn’t detract from the show itself. Once you boot up the show, it’s very solid from start to finish. It manages to be faithful to the source material while also juggling new additions and background info for folks who are unfamiliar with the universe. I’d give it a perfect score, but the problems listed above combined with a few quirky animation drops tie my hands. It’s still worth checking out whether you’re a fan of the show or not, and like the original game, the English dub is very good.

I’ll be reviewing individual episodes later on. Those will have spoilers, a natural trade-off for going more in-depth, but it’ll also be a more in-depth breakdown of why the show works.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars