Persona 3 The Movie: Chapter 1 Spring of Birth Review

Review by Spencer Pressly

Making a good movie these days is difficult, making a good animated movie is even more difficult, and trying to adapt an extremely popular video game series into a movie that doesn't suck is damn near impossible. That didn't stop Atlus from asking Aniplex to make Persona 3 into a movie after the success of the Persona 4 animated series in 2012. Since the story of Persona 3 is just as long as Persona 4, the story will be split up into multiple movies. Spoilers Ahead!

The story of Persona 3 is the same here in the movie as it is in the video game, the only one that will be very apparent to any long time Persona fan is the main character now has a new name. Originally refereed to as Arisato Minato before, the teenaged orphan who is this story's hero is now called Makoto Yuki. Makoto is the new kid in the Japanese city of Iwatodai. As soon as he arrives things are already strange with coffins littering the streets, but this doesn't seem to even phase him. This will continue to be a trend for almost the entirety of the first movie so prepare yourself for maximum aloofness.

As soon as Makoto is settled in at school and his new co-ed dorm things continue to get more mysterious. The movie does a great job at following the pacing of your first few weeks from obtaining your persona, joining SEES, and even rescuing Fuka. The most glaring problem in this movie sadly comes from the Makoto, the rest of his friends and teammates are just as memorable as they are in the game and really save this movie from the totally bland character Makoto is portrait as.

The story does it''s best to explain why Makoto is so uninterested in everything, by constantly showing us flashbacks of the accidents his parents died in. Instead of making us feel bad for him Makoto just comes off as a real jerk to everyone, even though he is going along with whatever anyone tells him. His characteristics are extremely contradiction in this way, but thankfully in the final act of this movie he finally seems to slowly start being an active participant.

As stated before the rest of Makoto's friends do a great job of reminding us why we still like them after all these years. The only real negative there is with the other cast of main characters is that besides Makoto, Junpei, and Yukari the rest of the cast never seems to get as much time on screen as they deserve which if not sorted out in the future movies will lead to people wondering why there are so many main characters yet so little for them to do. While streamlining the story of a 100+ hour RPG is difficult to condense to the bare essentials it is always key to leave enough moments in the story for you to build a relationship with all of your main characters.

One of the biggest positives this movie has going with it is without a doubt the action scenes. Much like the Persona 4 Anime, all of the fights are much more interactive with the persona's and their summoners. Also putting an evoke next to your head will never stop looking badass. For a 90 minute movie the amount of fight scenes is really surprising especially since this slice of story is one of the least action heavy parts in the overall story. Still some people might not like this very straight forward way of storytelling and miss the slower more human moments of Persona 3.

One last major issue is how the movie ends, now this isn't me taking issue with the last act. In fact the last act really saves the overall movie for me. My issue in the ending comes from it ending on a very forced note in my opinion. It felt like seeing either of the two Hobbit movies, because as soon as it was over I knew it was suppose to continue on and the movie never has a satisfying ending. This makes me almost wonder why they didn't just make a Persona 3 anime series as opposed to a movie, but all I can do now is just hope the next movies improves on this ones flaws.

While it may seem like I hated the first Persona 3 movie I still enjoyed many aspects of the movie that make it an easy recommendation to any fan of the series or anyone looking for a good starting point. The animation quality is top notch and the music is just as catchy as it was all those years ago. A positive that will hopefully come from this story being told as a movies instead of a anime series is that the team at Aniplex will be able to listen to feedback and improve the flaws of this movie for the sequels. Until then here is hoping that a English dub of this will release in the next six months to make the wait for the second movie not feel so long.

7/10
*This review was based off the subtitled version*