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*Explosion*
PERSONA-MAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Persona, Persona, Persona~! Hey! Did you know I love Persona? I do! I love Persona. After the global success of Persona 5, the series sort of went under the radar only to reappear near the end of 2018 with a dancing game. However, 2019 is where the series would really turn heads. It was announced that Joker would be the first DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate which shocked everyone (we never saw it coming) and it was later announced that a Persona 5 Dynasty Warrior-like game called Scramble would be coming to the Switch and PS4 in the forseeable future. With these announcements, Switch fans were waiting in anticipating for Atlus to announce a Persona 5 port for the Switch. Unfortunately, they would have to settle for Scramble and Smash as their sources to Persona 5. As for PS4 fans, they would be getting a more enhanced version of Persona 5 called Persona 5 Royal which would feature a different story with new characters, personas, skills, music, and of course a winter portion of the game to enhance an already great game. With Persona 5 Royal already released in Japan this past October and the global release set sometime in March of 2020 along with Scramble, I felt it was time to bring back Persona-mas and take a look at the animated works of Persona starting with Persona 3 the Movie: Falling Down. The third movie in the Persona 3 movie series and was originally supposed to be the last movie in the series. Luckily, the writers and directors of this series realized there was so much they had to explore that a fourth movie was needed and thus the third movie would be used to set the stage for the finale. The third movie titled Falling Down was released in 2015 and is often considered to be the weakest of the bunch as this movie pretty much covers the slower sections of the game and is just used to build up the final part of the game. Does that make this the rotten apple of the bunch? Well grab your evokers and let’s find out. This is Persona 3 the Movie: Falling Down.
The movie opens up with the group fighting against the final boss shadow however Strega is there and have somehow taken Junpei hostage (there are so many questions running in my head right now. One, what happened after Shinjiro’s funeral? Two, how did Junpei get captured. Three- *2 hours of questions and complaining later* and finally one hundred and eighty-seven, what the hell is going on here? Look, I’ve played the game dozens of time so I know what happened and how we got here but what about the people who haven’t played the game yet? You can’t start a movie with this many questions for the viewer, that’s not how a movie works. If you do this you alienate newcomers and scare them away. That’s just bad directing right there). Minato gets knocked out and we get t fights. Akihiko and Ken are fighting Takaya and Jin, the girls are fighting the boss shadow, and Koromaru is tending to Minato (oh yeah, let the attack dog tend to the injured comrade. It’s not like we got 2 healers right beside him who could easily help him out). Minato drifts into his subconscious where he meets Pharos who tells us that Minato actually blames himself for Shinjiro’s death (no, blame the writers for screwing us over like that). Pharos just tells him it’s better not to get attached to anyone and just stay alone in the world because in the end once they leave the only thing waiting for you is pain and nothing else. But Pharos knows Minato won’t do that because he cares for his friends and returns him back to the living world where Minato gets back up and fights. With their leader back up everyone turns it up a notch. Akihiko and Ken beat Strega, Junpei takes down Chidori, and they kill the boss shadow (an end to a fight that left us with so many questions and no answers). With this the group has defeated all the boss shadows and now believe the Dark Hour will disappear. After the battle, Pharos tells Minato that he has to go saying all of his memories have returned however he thanks Minato for his friendship saying it was nothing short of a miracle that they became friends (no my friend. . .it was destiny that bought you two together). The next day the group detain Chidori in the hospital in the hopes that she’ll tell them where Takaya and Jin are (probably in that ocean of blood underneath the bridge) and they hand in their evokers where Takeru tells them that at midnight they’ll be relieved of duty (good. Now about the pay). That night, they have a celebration where Minato decides to turn in early and once the clock strikes midnight the Dark Hour returns (and the nightmare continues). Filled with questions they hear a bell ringing at Tartarus and go to investigate where Shuji is there waiting for them (and he’s gone crazy on them. Not the good crazy but more of an end the world crazy). He tells them he basically tricked them and that their actions have bought about the beginning of The Fall and they are to be sacrifices for it. Aigis comes in under the control of Shuji and with Takeru holding him at gunpoint (just like the divorce). The group gets placed on crosses (https://youtu.be/nbsWQqnWS_s) and Aigis is told to kill her friends but their voices manage to reach her and she fights back freeing them. Takeru and Shuji take out guns and fatally wound each other. Shuji plummets to his death by falling off the tower (how’d they get up there anyway without their evokers?) and Takeru dies from the gun wound.
After this event, Minato closes himself off from the world. He doesn’t talk to anyone or associate with anything as he’s come to see that Pharos was right, opening his heart to others only let’s in pain so it’s better to just be alone. After a few days a new student transfers into Minato’s class named Ryoji. He quickly starts to make friends with everyone in the school (and by that I mean hit on every girl that passes by) except for Aigis who says he is dangerous (to the world or to the harem?) and Minato. But Ryoji continues to pursue Minato (Isis: I ship it. (Nitsuj): Of course you would you BL freak. *Isis shoots Nitsuj in the leg* Ohhhh~) and finally catches his break when Minato has to work part-time at a coffee shop after ruining Takanaka’s suit and Ryoji decides to help him. Later that night, Mitsuru returns to the dorm after handling all of the family issues and even thinks about skipping out on the school trip which Yukari of all people protests this directly to her face. The next day, Ryoji and Minato start a helpers club to earn more money (just be whores and earn money that way. You got the looks why not make money off of it). While that’s going on, Junpei continues to go and visit Chidori in the hospital (I guess being bound by girls turns him on) and protecting her from Mitsuru and Akihiko’s questions. On one of their visits her persona actually tries to kill her showing that her as well as the other members of Strega have no control over their personas just like Shinjiro. After avoiding this near-death event Chidori says she’s not afraid of death (https://youtu.be/NPOb3DlB7WA) which upsets Junpei who says he doesn’t want her to die which causes her to laugh at how weird his statement is. Later on, we find out she has the power to heal things and even shows signs of falling for Junpei. Back with Minato and Ryoji, they help patch things up between Fuuka and Natsuki who is transferring to another school and decided to distance herself from Fuuka in the hopes of making her departure less hard and painful (it doesn’t work. It does not work). Seeing them patch things up actually brings a smile to Minato’s face and Ryoji finally has Minato all figured out (really? Because I had him all figured out a long time ago. Minato keeps himself at a distance from everyone because he’s afraid that if he gets close to people he’ll only wind up hurting himself. They’ve pretty much been hammering that in all movie).
A week passes and it’s time for the school field trip to Kyoto where we see Mitsuru has decided to go after all. This whole trip is one big feels trip. We first start with Yukari and Mitsuru where Yukari actually comforts Mitsuru who’s having a hard time dealing with the death of her father which is something Yukari has faced before. Mitsuru admits that she did all of this to save her dad and no else (daddy’s girl) and now that everything they were told to do was a lie what’s the point of anything now. Yukari’s answer is to keep on fighting saying that there’s stuff to be done and that this disaster that both of their father’s fought so hard to prevent is still coming and now it falls on them to see this whole thing through and make their wishes come true. Later on, Akihiko plays his role as senpai and talks to Minato about how he too blamed himself for Shinjiro’s death because he was so focused on fighting that he failed to notice the feelings and thoughts of everyone around him. Shinjiro’s death really was painful for Akihiko but at the same time he doesn’t regret the bond he made with him because Shinjiro gave him something precious to protect and that’s a million times better than having nothing to protect according to Akihiko. After their talk Minato goes back to his room where Aigis is right outside the window (ahh~, crazy stalker robot). She wants to sleep in the same room as Minato and is prepared to switch places with Junpei and Ryoji (can I go too?). She tries to get them to leave out the window but they all fall in the garden pond (scene here: https://youtu.be/84n-LgTO0GE) where instead of getting mad Minato just laughs (well that’s kind of cute). After this, Minato actually starts to smile more and enjoy himself with Ryoji and everyone else. This leads to the funniest scene in the movie the hotsprings scene where the boys have to escape or execution at the hands of Mitsuru. They manage to make their way to the backdoor but Junpei can’t get out because he lost his towel (leave him). The guys refuse to leave him (you fools) so they all wind up getting captured and executed by the girls (scene here: https://youtu.be/dpToYN1FpeI). Back with Chidori, Takaya and Jin have come to pick her up and she willingly goes with them (old habits die hard). Once every one hears about this they set out to find her and when they do she tries to kill them (yandere much? Actually, she’s just yan at this point). In an effort to bring Chidori back to their side Junpei faces her himself and succeeds but then gets shot and killed by Takaya (what is with all the killing in this movie?). In order to save Junpei’s life (no, we don’t need him, you can join our group instead) Chidori gives her life in exchange for his (and unfortunately the laws of equivalent exchange don’t apply here). It works and Junpei is bought back to life however Chidori dies. But in her death, something good does come out of it, Junpei’s persona has evolved and Minato has finally realized the importance of bonds and having friends (I will consider this a win). Strega escapes again and Junpei receives Chidori’s sketchbook where we see she drew a sketch of Junpei showing us that she really loved him (well that’s because he’s the only guy you’ve really gotten to know). On the night of the full moon Aigis’s memories from the past finally return and she goes to confront Ryoji on the bridge by herself. She finally remembers who Ryoji really is, Death, the 13th shadow whose sole purpose is to destroy the world and everyone in it. 10 years ago, Aigis fought and sealed Death away but now it has returned, and she plans to finish the fight one way or another. The movie ends with everyone figuring out what Death is (shouldn’t be that hard) and Minato going to the bridge to see that Aigis has lost to Ryoji and him shocked at what has happened.
Final Thoughts
So that was Falling Down and surprisingly, I enjoyed this way more than the first two movies. While granted the opening and movie skip over quite a bit which at this point I’m used to it by now, they really do make up for it by focusing more on the characters. The relationship between Minato and Ryoji is excellent here. The game surprisingly didn’t focus too much on Ryoji and Minato’s relationship but here, we see how they really become the best of friends. The handling of Minato’s character was also done great here as we see his growth of someone trying to close himself off from the world only to be shown and reminded how important the bonds between other people are. The relationship between Junpei and Chidori was improved upon here. I liked how their interactions took place in the hospital instead of Junpei just running into her by chance on the street. It shows how much Junpei really did care about her and would take time out of his day to go and visit her. Yukari reaching out to Mitsuru and helping her return to the fight was good as well. Seeing Yukari put aside her grudge against Mitsuru and her family and comforting her is heartwarming and shows how she’s grown in her own little way. The only characters they seem to skip over and forget for that matter is Ken and Koromaru. While granted they weren’t focus on that much in the game either I was kind of hoping they would explore these two particularly Ken as they left a big chunk of his story out of the movie.
The animation is still good here and while they’re isn’t that much action as in the previous movies, they manage to make the action in this movie good and make it count. The soundtrack uses new music and music from the games which is always great and they still managed to get in a few laughs as well with the class trip while also not forgetting how serious the situation is.
Final Score
Falling Down earns an 8/10. A very good movie that takes it’s time to set up the final movie while exploring a majority of the characters and setting up their stories for the finale. So far this has been my favorite movie of the bunch. Here’s hoping the final one can deliver. Looking forward to the final one coming out this Friday. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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