Review of Persona 3 the Movie: #1 Spring of Birth
“The first card, numbered 0, is The Fool. It represents the beginning and suggests infinite possibilities.” Adapting source material, especially from a game that can take literally a hundred or more hours to play, will always be an uphill battle. There is plenty of consideration of how much to leave in and how much to take. As I will discuss in my review of Spring of Birth, this can be a tough tightrope to walk, especially for millions of fans who eagerly anticipated it. Before I begin, I will state my bias first. I am a HUGE fan of this franchise and absolutely adore Persona 3.I have beaten the game in its entirety and hold it very close to my heart. However, this is an adaption of a game that has 15+ hours of cutscenes and story. This movie only covers the first couple months of the game and there are three other movies that likely cover the rest of the games content.
One of the major criticisms I have of this adaptation is the first scene or so. Now this seems like a very petty nitpick, but I felt the opening here was a bit wasteful in comparison to the source materials. I know that adaptations have to change some things, however a good chunk of the characters they showed in the opening do not appear anywhere in the movie. Sure, fans of the game will know who they are but newcomers don’t. Very briefly, the opening of the original game had Yukari in a state of high anxiety from attempting suicide, while outside the crowd loudly creates white noise to heighten the turbulence Yukari was seemingly facing to the apathy of the outside world. It instantly grips the viewer and makes her character more easily sympathetic.
As for the movie, it has a random teen we have never seen jump in front of a subway. Sure, it is also a bit creepy and shocking, but there is much less weight since the movie doesn’t really have that character in it anymore. Regarding Yukari's scene, it has that scene as well but only shows it for a few seconds or so, missing the evocative and creepy feeling of the original game, which would be added onto by the rest of the game's themes and symbolism.
The last narrative complaint I have is some of the pacing. Yes, the adaption couldn’t possibly contain all the initial social links (those being characters you can interact with in the game in a self-contained arc from the rest of the story) that were there in the game. However, it only gives brief implications that he visited them or a small tidbit of them interacting with students. The movie rushes by the months, giving you the main plot points the game did (for the most part). I think they could have included a couple of scenes from some of the Social Links (for those who played the game, the old couple would have been a good choice as parental figures) to help enrich the narrative and themes of Persona 3.
Speaking of, staying very faithful to the overall story, themes and narrative (most of the time) was a big positive. Thematically, both the game and movie borrow from Evangelion (there being several Shadow bosses as trials, lakes of blood and hits of mental instability from the characters, red sashes that resemble NERV’s colour scheme and font, replacing cross imagery with coffins, etc). It still kept the story fairly mysterious as well as what the incident that happens many years ago. They also didn’t wuss out on the heavy suicidal themes/imagery with the evokers, which is great to see. A lot of the same lines from the game made it into the movie, which was very nice to see.
Since this is just the first couple of months, there won’t be much possible to be done with character development, so I will refrain from critiquing it too harshly. The biggest positive on the character front is from Yuki. This is a change I think that improves on the original, since in game, he was a silent protagonist with a vague backstory. However, we see him grow from largely indifferent at the start to slowly but surely caring about his comrades. The side characters have all the key scenes that they did in the game; Yukari got fairly emotional (though not at the Main Character typically) and gave some insight to her own dead father, Junpei got jealous of Yuki because he is the protagonist, Shinjiro looked after our main characters from getting into serious trouble, etc.
What really stood out to me was Fuuka surprisingly enough. Sure, a good portion of her arc was in the first couple of months, but this is another aspect that I felt was improved from the game’s narrative. We get a bit more character from Fuuka whenever the protagonist continuously keeps helping her out after Natsuki’s gang bullies her. It manages to capture the heart and emotion that the source material had rather well and it builds to an amazing boss battle sequence at the end that furthers both the development of her character (while giving us a tear-jerking scene with Natsuki) along with Makoto, fighting for his own friends survival when he barely cared about his own at the start of the movie (though when the hell did he learn to ride a motorcycle?).
Lastly, I will discuss the best part of this whole movie: the animation and (mostly) sound. This movie looks AMAZING. The animation is fluid, crisp and the characters look great, even though I have preferences to Yukari’s older character design. The bright and murky greens, the overpowering yellow, the ethereal and lush pinks of the cherry blossoms in Gekkoukan High... It is amazing seeing these scenes (which had some animation in FES but was rather dated and low quality) come to life and done so faithfully. Much of the OST is reused tracks from the original game's soundtrack, but the new tracks are great additions, adding ample emotion and weight to the last quarter of the movie. The only disappointment here (and this is pretty nitpicky) is that I kinda wished the Evokers gun had a bit more oomph to it like the game had, where it sounded like a real gun had been fired. Minor point, yes, but it does add to that unsettling feeling of them actually attempting suicide everytime they use their Personas.
Summary: Persona 3 Spring of Birth is a rather well done adaptation of the first couple of months of the game. Some may find it cash-grabby to stretch this out into four movies, but I’m fine with it as Persona 3 was a huge game. It touched on a lot of the same themes, metaphors and symbolism of death that the source material had while giving a faithful recreation of the events that happened in the game. It made some improvements to the protagonist and some side characters, features some impressive animation with very good art direction, memorable songs from the game as well as some good new ones and managed to fit the first two months of the game into an hour and thirty minutes, despite some pacing issues. I would recommend this to fans of the games more than I would for newcomers. To those new to P3, I would start off with the game (Persona 3 FES) and then watch the movie(s).
(Side note: Happy 20th anniversary, Persona!)
"Time never waits. It delivers all equally to the same end. You, who wish to safeguard the future, however limited it may be... You will be given one year; go forth without falter, with your heart as your guide..."