Summer means beach and festival fun but means more Shadows lurks. New characters, more character development and world building, this is Persona 3 the Movie 2: Midsummer Knight's Dream. So Persona 3 the Movie 2: Midsummer Knight's Dream starts off with SEES in a beach vacation where they encounter Aegis voiced by Maaya Sakamoto, an android weapon meant to kill Shadows but also Shinji, Akihiko's older brother encounters another Persona user, Ken Amada voiced by Megumi Ogata and a dog that can move in the Dark Hour named Koromaru. With these revelations, also comes in Strega, a sorta polar opposite to SEES, where they are tryingto PROTECT the Shadows and keep the Dark Hour going and this indirectly gets at Makoto, as he somewhat sympathizes with Strega's motives yet it conflicts with his desires of protecting his friends but at the expense of giving Makoto a fulfilling life in the Dark Hour, well to be honest this character development of Makoto was something LA was wanting from the first movie and is a moral dilemma for Makoto that affects not only his character but the plot too as what happens once all 12 of the Greater Shadows and the Dark Hour disappears?, will he be a nobody and be an ordinary student again or maybe because if the Dark hour disappears, he'll lose his friends he's met up til now.

Though Makoto's dilemma is somewhat plot crucial in this movie, Midsummer Knight's Dream focuses more on Shinji and Amada and how they are linked in a ways, in similar respects to fleshing out Fuuka but with Shinji and Amada's case much more detailed and with much worse consequences. From the first movie we got glimpses to Shinji as a character, just that he's a loner and is the older brother to Akihiko but in Midsummer Knight's Dream, we get more in depth with him and how his sins and dilemna's is linked to Amada in a ways and LA won't spoil but let's just say it reminds LA HEAVILY of Snow and Hope's relationship from Final Fantasy XIII, heck it's almost beat for beat...almost.

Though Amada and Shinji's development takes centre stage, we do get more world building and where Yukari comes in with why she's in SEES in the first place and for being LA's favorite character this was welcomed to say the least and LA only grew to like Yukari even more giving her at least some limelight. (Now that LA thinks about it, LA likes Persona's tomboyish characters, Yukari, Chie from P4 and Makoto from P5) Anyways her backstory more or less brings in the world building of how Tartarus, the Dark Hour was formed and how to get rid of it.

To say that Midsummer Knight's Dream is much more character-focused in an understatement and it's only helped with it's world building giving urgency and tying things together to the entire ordeal of Strega, the Dark Hour, Shinji, Amada and Makoto as it's core elements that was nicely no very well executed.

If there were any flaws, LA wouldn't exactly call them flaws, more nitpicks but even then LA will defend those, now Persona 3 the Movie 2: Midsummer Knight's Dream does seem to rush to the major events but LA will defend this by saying that at least they brought in some cameo social links during the off peak moments of the game and really again LA made this argument many times but trying to cram in a 200 hours game content to the second part of a series of movies each with 100 minutes of screentime is highly doubtful, but the second movie at least tried to put some mention of it in. Lastly would be that some character development was halted to make way for the new characters and their development, the major victims being Yukari and Aegis who was only introduced in this movie and nothing much else but much like Fuuka taking the focus during the first movie, LA can give this flaw some grace as LA will guess the next movie will flesh it out and heck Mitsuru had probably the smallest screentime of the movie and we just know about her father and that her father's company helps the SEES.

The production is the the same as the first movie however to be fair, the animation now done by A1-Pictures was as still consistent from the first movie with even better fights, background work, silkier character designs but most definitely from the atmospheric animation work was amazingly done. In the voice acting department, LA will give Akira Ishida as Makoto and Megumi Ogata as Amada and Kazuya Nakai as Shinji some props in their voice acting.

Persona 3 the Movie 2: Midsummer Knight's Dream shows that it isn't playing around and this isn't a game (well it is, LA is saying in-universe) of playing hero and nothing echoes it than the finale of this movie and it's incredibly heartbreaking to say the least what happens and the moral dilemma it's going to cause to Makoto of either wanting to get rid of the Dark Hour to protect his friends but his want to be something with the Dark Hour present. Midsummer Knight's Dream is an obvious step up to the first movie but LA won't give the first movie any slack and it was build up to this revelation. Well executed character development from both new and old characters, moral quandaries questioned, world building fleshing out the supernatural and villains and a bitter yet well deserved ending.

Summer slowly but surely moves to Falling Down...