Persona 3 The movie #1 Spring of Birth review

Hello everyone and welcome to the opening of the channel of Over The Top. Who's Over The Top? Of course, it is me. I'm an Italian nerd and I decided to make this channel in order to talk about, well, you guessed it, nerdy stuff. Just like this one over here, the first movie of Persona 3. Persona 3, the movie number one, spring of birth. I know it has been one month and a half since the subtitles for this video have been released, but unfortunately I had some problems while editing the video. First one was that I've never edited a video before. The second one was Dark Souls 2. Another thing that I want to point out is my name, Over The Top. It's not because I think that I'm some kind of a game master. No, that's not it at all. It's just because while I was playing Starcraft with a friend of mine, he said, you call yourself The Top? Yeah, what about it? And then he told me, you should call yourself Over The Top. So, I actually didn't know it. It sounded kind of cool and kind of stupid at the same time, so I decided to adapt that name. But let's stop talking right now and let's begin this movie. This movie review that I've been waiting for so much time. I'm gonna say right from the beginning that this movie kind of disappointed me, but don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean that you're gonna like it. What you're gonna find in the review is a brief analysis of the animation and the plot, because as you know this movie covers only two months of gameplay, and I focused mostly on the characters. First because, as we know, characters, according to me, are the most important thing of a Persona video game. It's the thing that I remember the most. Another thing that I would love to ask is not to be too rude with comments, because this is the first time I used a video editor and I still didn't know exactly how to make this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it and we'll see at the end of the review. Persona 3, the movie number one, A Spring of Birth, is the movie that I've been waiting for so much time. As soon as I heard it would have been a trilogy, I thought it was an excellent idea, since the story of Persona 3 is very long and would have been impossible to narrate it in just one movie. Unfortunately, even this strategy has weak points, since the movies last only around 90-95 minutes, which is not enough time. I gotta be honest that the main events are there, from Yuki's arrival at the door, bombing on his Persona awakening, which was freaking epic by the way, continuing with the monorail battle and concluding with Fuuka's rescue. Obviously, something had to be changed, like the fact that our main character, here called Makoto Yuki, encounters Fuuka two times even before the monorail operation, but those are the kind of changes that were necessary, since there was no other way to introduce Fuuka's character properly. So, even though some changes were fine, something got explained in a rushed way. Wanna guess what it was? That's right, the introduction of the Velvet Room. Yuki only wanders in this room two or three times, and in none of them we get to understand what's the purpose of that place or how Yuki's ability to change her Persona works. That was disappointing, since the Velvet Room is a very important thing of every Persona game. This wouldn't have happened if this movie lasted 10 minutes more, but let's keep going with the review, because even though some rushed things, this movie has still a lot to offer to us Persona fans. Moving on, we encounter a fundamental aspect of every anime movie, the quality of the animation. As far as we talk about the animation in this movie, there is only one thing we can say, OH MY GOD THAT WAS FREAKING AWESOME! I've never seen something animated better than this. Okay, maybe the animation of JoJo's Stardust Crusaders, but we'll talk about that sometime. Maybe. The animation and the drawings are superb, and as a result the characters are even more similar to the ones in the video game, and the action scenes were amazing. The moment when Thanos rises from the empty shell of Orpheus should be the new definition of epicness. Seriously, if you're looking for epicness in the dictionary, you should tell him, watch Thanos' awakening in the first Persona 3 movie, you dick! A proper animation helps to make action scenes even more important, especially the ones that are essential to the continuation of the plot. Besides Yuki's awakening, the monorail operation and the Emperor and Empress Full Moon battle acquire the exact same importance that they had in the video game, and then it also helps the viewers to amuse themselves with some great quality animation. In addition, as I was saying before, beautiful drawings help to represent the main characters. Let's be honest, if an intriguing and fascinating story is the most important thing about a Persona game, its characters are the second most important one. Characterization was done magnificently, as as soon as a specific character started to talk, I was able to say Yep, that's definitely him. The only one that caught me by surprise needing a more particular and in-depth description was Yuki, but only because in this movie they went with a kind of main character that I didn't really expect. But don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean that I didn't like him. When I say caught by surprise, I really mean it. Here, Makoto Yuki could be described as the personification of indifference itself. He never talks unless someone directly asks him something, in two situations clearly tells Junpei not to stay too close for him, or in other words to simply **** off, and also doesn't show any sign of interest even when a person like Akihiko or Yukari talks about their own motives for fighting. For example, when Yuki wakes up in the hospital, Yukari apologizes for not being able to protect him. In the video game, both the choices we make have the purpose to make Yukari feel better. But in the movie, Yuki coldly says Don't worry, I wasn't counting on you. Damn dude, you're some kind of a dick. Even when he's asked to join C's, it is clear that he doesn't seem to have a will of his own. Whatever someone tells him, he takes it for granted. Take the monorail operation for example. As soon as Junpei runs off by himself, which is something that you mustn't do in such an operation, Yuki stands there watching. Even when Yukari tells him to go after Junpei, Yuki coldly answers, but he said not to. Dude, seriously? Only when Yukari angrily tells He's our teammate, Yuki seems to understand that maybe he should care about people around him some more. Just like Yukari will later affirm, he only fights because he was asked to. It is no surprise that right before the beginning of any operation, his answer is Understood. And that, I can tell you, seriously gets on Yukari's nerves. If something is not happening right in front of him, he wouldn't give a jack ----. It is clear when he encounters Fuuka for the first time. Fuuka's friends are bullying her and Doppler belongs to the ground. Yuki happens to be passing there, so he decides to help her out. After he's done, Fuuka apologizes for causing him trouble and thanks him. Obviously, Yuki suddenly walks away like K, whatever. Obviously, this state of his is caused by a traumatizing event, the death of his parents, which occurred 10 years before the events of the movie. This essential information about Yuki has now been ignored, of course, and the directors decided to make an excellent use of this event. In fact, the only thing that seems to shake off Yuki from his distant and cold behavior is seeing someone around him facing death. The first occasion is the battle on the rooftop of the dorm, where Yukari is getting killed by the big shadow. Seeing her unconscious triggers in Yuki the memory of his parents' death and, in addition of Ferro's excitation, he grabs the evoker and solves the situation. After that, Yuki encounters Fuuka for the second time, and this is when Fuuka calmly tells him that you should always care about people around you, especially if they are friends of yours. The second case of seeing someone dying in front of his face occurs during the monorail operation, when a desperate Junpei is running towards certain death. Here Yuki is reminded of his parents once more, so stops Junpei and decides to cooperate with him in order to save everyone, just like a real leader would. Yuki's birth, and this is also what, according to me, the title of the movie refers to, is not complete yet. Since his indifferent behavior finally managed to piss Yukari off, Yuki is left behind at the dorm during Fuuka's rescue operation. This is the second change in the movie, since in the video game Yuki takes the lead of the operation once more. The purpose of this change was to both make Yuki arrive at Tartarus in a very badass way to save everyone and, way more important, to let us witness the turning point in Yuki's behavior. While he's alone in his room, Yuki receives a visit from Feros, who asks him, shouldn't you go? For the first time Yuki answers, I don't know, even though he was ordered not to go, proving that something is really changing in him. Feros then continues by affirming that if Yuki doesn't run to Tartarus, the other C's members will die for sure. This time, the only sound of the word die triggers Yuki's memory once more to his parents, and it is now that he decides to run to Tartarus to save the others. He wants to fight alongside his teammates now, and not even the order of running away coming from an injured Mitsuru seems to change his mind. As I said before, this Yuki caught me by surprise. I would have never imagined that he could be so cold at first, but one thing that I can tell you for sure is that I really enjoyed this character. Ok, maybe the kind of character that's indifferent at first and that cares about other people is not that original, but I still think it was a smart choice. The only thing that I could have asked more was Yuki admitting to Yukari and Juppe what was causing his indifferent behavior. Instead, we get Yuki smiling for the first time at the sound of the word friend. I'm not saying that him smiling wasn't great, freaking finally, because it is still the evidence of him changing, but I guess directors could have made him say a word or two. As for the other characters, there's not that much to tell in addition to what we know of them from the video game, and that's exactly what I liked the most. Yukari in particular was represented in a perfect way. Every important trait that distinguished her in the video game is back in this movie adaptation, like her need to tell Yuki how similar they are, her difficulties to stick around Mitsuru-senpai, and her initial fear of pointing the evoker to her head. In the movie, we also see that she can't stand listening to ghost stories. Not an important aspect, but still a little detail appreciated from who has played the video game. In addition, directors managed to adapt their behavior towards the unusual interpretation of Yuki, revealing that she got mad at him not only because he didn't seem to care about people around him, but mainly because without a reason for fighting, Yuki didn't care about his own safety at all. That's something that only the Yukari we all know and love could do. I'm quite sure that Yukari was the best represented character in the whole movie. Moving on, we meet Junpei. Junpei is, well, our Junpei. The way too self-confident guy that takes almost nothing seriously so he can end up in trouble and gets rescued by his teammates. It is brilliant how directors decided to make him say Another funny thing was seeing his reaction when he hears Mitsuru speaking in another language during Fuuka's rescue, still from the video game. A smart move about Junpei was by pointing out from the very beginning that he's jealous of Yuki's fighting skills by muttering to himself I could have done that too and being jealous of him being the leader of every operation. It's basically the same Junpei that I didn't like that much at the beginning of the video game, but then I sympathized for him as the plot kept going. Next on our list is the manifestation of badassitude itself in human form, Mitsuru Kirijo. Everyone says that Akihiko is the badass of the group, but you're wrong. Akihiko is tough and reliable. Mitsuru is a total badass. First of all, she's the one who continually scolds Akihiko for being careless and getting hurt. Second, I mean, just look at how she stares at everybody in the whole movie. Her look seems to say You talking to me, man? Huh? You talking to me? Unfortunately, in this movie she doesn't do that much, but the infos that the movie gives us are right. She's a badass who badassly gets elected student council president while being badassly rich along with assigning roles before every C's operation in a very badass way. And on top of that, she arrives on her badass motorcycle and stares at the others as saying right in your face, pussies. The only other particular that stands out about her is that she refers to her teammates by their last name, exception made for Akihiko, of course. Sign that she doesn't want to open up to other C's members yet. One thing that I can tell for sure is that I'm really looking forward for the upcoming growth of her character in the second movie. Moving towards the end of the video, we meet our second last character, Akihiko Sanada, who could be described with just one word, RESOLUTE. His resolve and sense of justice are enthralling. Every time Akihiko was on screen, I felt motivated. His resolve and strength managed to give away a perfect adaptation of him. In the moment when the team is on scene and out to rescue Fuuka, Akihiko angrily slams his fists and firmly affirms I don't want to regret not trying. This is an amazing example of easy resolve, aroused by past mistakes due to his inadequacy and weakness, as explained in the hospital. Thanks to these mistakes, Akihiko finds the will to move on and get stronger, and he does that by doing the one thing that excels at, training. He even makes Junpei deliver him some heavy grips in the hospital in order not to slack off. That's our Akihiko, diligent and always at work. Last but not least, we have Ghost Girl, aka our dear Fuuka Yamagishi. Fuuka's screen time is not that much, but we still get to know her pretty well. She's the kind of person that tries not to hurt anybody, the one who actually cares of other people's feelings before thinking for their own ones. She's always thankful towards Yuki for helping her, and also apologizes every time she thinks to cause trouble to someone else. Her first priority is not to hurt anyone's feelings, and when it accidentally happens, she unwillingly tolerates being bullied by the same people she hurt. In this case, her friend, Mrs. Moriyama. When Yuki asks her why should you care, Fuuka passionately answers that it's her own fault if Moriyama is angry at her, and since the fear of losing her friend prevents Fuuka from apologizing, she prefers to keep tolerating other people messing around with her, even that costs her having her belongings tossed all around the place twice, skipping lunch break and getting locked in the school gym. Even though she manages to stand all that and keep factoring Fuuka's growth, stands up and fights as soon as her friend is in danger. She bravely points the evoker at her head and awakens her persona power. By the way, am I the only one who thinks that the hero Fuuka's power is OP? Think about it. In the video game, it's fundamental because battles have turns, enemies have different levels, so you have to spend the first turn of each battle analyzing enemies' weaknesses, and you should still be careful of shadows with a higher level. In the movie here, there are no such things, so Fuuka's power is more useful than unstoppable. That being said, I really liked the adaptation of Fuuka. Looking forward to see her in action in the second movie. In conclusion, I have to say this movie was very good. Very good, yes. I'm honest, I really liked it. It wasn't exactly like I expected it to be. I still have to give it some credit because the animations as I said before are awesome and characterization was done in a very magnificent way. The only problem is the runtime. I still wonder why the never-meet animation movies last more than one hour and a half. Would have been a problem making it last 10 minutes more? It should have 10 minutes in order to explain better what the battle room was. If I can be totally honest with you, I'm kind of worried for the second movie. This movie covered only two months of gameplay, and in an hour and a half, they didn't manage to cover everything perfectly. So what will happen in Midsummer Night's Dreamworld if it's gonna cover three months and a half of gameplay in just an hour and a half? I don't know, I guess I will have to have faith and see, but I can tell you I really really enjoyed it just because Aigis is in there. And unfortunately, also Kanamara is. Fuck, I hate that kid. So, I hope you enjoyed the video. Non-Persona fans, don't worry, I'm gonna try to put other stuff, other than Persona videos in this channel. Persona fans, if you really liked this video, I would love if you came back to see other videos because I can tell you, there's gonna be plenty of Persona in this YouTube channel. I hope you enjoyed my review. See you next time. Bye!