4593 réponses à ce sujet

[TheChris92]

So... is that Minato deep or David Cage deep?

David Cage sounds about right.

[AventuroLegendary]

 

David Cage sounds about right.

 

I read a few of Marie's poems and I already feel Emotions(TM).

[Mr.House]

I miss when each episode started with Margret talking about Yu's bound with person X in accordance to the arcana. Now we have crappy poems.

[Ellyria]

I swear to god if they put Marie in Adachi's social link somehow (which I heard they're supposed to get into soon? YAY!) I will hurt someone. I'll take the accomplice ending over the Marie-Sue ending. 

[Mr.House]

I swear to god if they put Marie in Adachi's social link somehow (which I heard they're supposed to get into soon? YAY!) I will hurt someone. I'll take the accomplice ending over the Marie-Sue ending. 

I like how Dojima is like, you and Yu are tight to Adachi, even though all we've seen is Marie-sue.

 

With the preview though, we are at last getting some Adachi. Show might have more going for it then it's art now.

[TheChris92]

Plot twist!

Spoiler

The Golden Animation ends with Yu betraying everyone to Adachi.

[AventuroLegendary]

*M. Night Shyamalan*

 

That's a gutsy move, anime. Unless, of course, Chris is just playing a trick again.

 

Fool me two times...

[Ozzy]

Nah, they're going to give Adachi a big redemption moment via the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP. 

 

More redemptiony than sending Yu a letter.

 

I dunno, he runs over the gas station attendant or something. 

[TheChris92]

Here's quote from a Neogaff user which I feel perfectly sums up everything that is wrong with The Golden Animation and Marie.

 

PersonaGAF, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was this video game called Final Fantasy V and it was pretty good. The gameplay was well-thought out, the plot was light-hearted, and the cast was full of humorous characters. As a follow up to the rather brooding Final Fantasy IV and predecessor to the equally serious Final Fantasy VI, FFV was a wonderful contrast and a great change of pace.

But then Krile was introduced. She was the sort of character one didn't really expect to just fall into a game. More like the type now famous for populating a thousand and one fan fictions on fanfic.net, really. Krile had no specific trait of her own. She just borrowed and amplified the traits of others. Bartz, the hero, was a talented warrior in his own right, trained by and capable of besting warriors of legend. Krile was a better fighter. Lenna was a kind-hearted princess willing to sacrifice herself for the dragons with whom she had a significant history. Krile was a better dragon rider. Faris had a deep emotional bond with monsters, but Krile could speak to them psychically! Ex-Death was a demon wizard whose power was shattering the elemental anchors of reality, but Krile could off him with a single magic spell. The more you got to know her, the more she usurped from you, right up until she managed to plant herself as the centerpoint of the entire ending for no apparent reason.

Now let's skip ahead a bit to a more recent era. Say, 2006-7. Square Enix, hot off the heels of FFXII, announced FFXIII with a brightly colored heroine doing all manner of nifty tricks of her own. Boy were we wrong about that, huh? Square went nuts and got all revisionist with Lightning, calling her "the first female protagonist in the series" in blatant disregard for the several who had preceded her. They thought to strike that ol' FF7 magic again, not realizing you can't make magic in a lab, and began forcing her down everybody's throats. And she wasn't just forced, she was everywhere. To the point of being the first Final Fantasy character to have a game named in their honor. Needless to say, it was painful to watch for everybody who wasn't all that stoked about her to begin with, or who had come to see her as the emblem of all that was wrong with the company in modern times.

So what happens when you combine these two? Apparently you get Marie in Persona 4: The Golden The Animation. In the interest of not making this simply a rant, let's consider what Marie was in Persona 4: The Golden, first. Disregard with me any complaints about her actual person or her poetry and consider just the minimum of her execution within the plot. Her Social Link was undeniably a poorly forced scenario in which players had to spend an abundance of time with her (including non-social link time!) in order to witness the full ending, during which Social Link Marie was attributed not one, but two classical faults of the genre: amnesia and an intimate connection with the game's true foe. While these things were passable in the bygone age of FF4, FF6 and FF7, they've been done to a wearying death by now. But that isn't really the point. The point is her Social Link felt forced and half-hearted, with the game at times wanting the player to view her as another member of the team (but her never being placed into the team) and yet her optional nature leaving weird gaps where her friendship and importance had to be questioned. After all, if Marie was so important to the gang, why doesn't she participate in numerous shared difficulties?

To that end, I had assumed that the point of Persona 4: The Golden The Animation was to address this sort of haphazard inclusion by making Marie a more intimate part of the story, to set her on par with the members of the IT. Oh, I told myself any number of lies about this show when it began. The haphazard story-telling being because it was meant to serve as a supplement to the other show, the lack of character to the entire cast for the same reason. The added weight to Marie simply because she was a part of The Golden and that was what was getting all the attention here.

But I think it's time we were all honest with ourselves about what, exactly, we have here: A poorly animated, woefully disjointed, abhorrently written piece of dreck attributed to a single character at the expense of literally every single other thing. Like a black hole swallowing light, Marie drains all quality from the rest of the production into herself, where it cannot truly be said to continue to exist. When was the last time in this you saw Yu interact with any of the other girls on the Investigation Team? ****, his only non-Marie interactions are with Yosuke and Teddie, and both of those are terrifyingly limited. I went on at length about how bad cast interactions were last week, but I feel the need to punctuate this by stating that, for however off Yu Narukami's portrayal might be in Arena, at least he has a portrayal in that. The main character here is less an amalgamation of the quirks the player might ascribe to him and more a sock puppet on one of the myriad tentacles Marie is playing with in the fever-dream that is this production.

And as if Marie's bloated importance at the cost of every other cast member was not crime enough, they've now decided to lay bare all that which may have concealed her true nature and just flat out start giving her brazenly absurd powers. Marie can now play guitar. Now, I'm not going to defend the band scene like it's some paragon of writing or like it was even one of the truly amazing sequences of Persona 4. The writers seemed fully aware that it was a stupid idea and ran with it, but I'm not going to let that stand as an excuse for it anyway, but then, if that scene was already stupid, consider how much worse this is now: Marie doesn't even know what a ****** school is but somehow she knows how to play the guitar. And mind you, there's no arguing that that has anything to do with who she really is. If anything, it stands rather at odds with it. But to top it off, Marie hears Rise singing one time on a river bank and is suddenly quite capable of singing every bit as well and appeasing a crowd of angry hicks. That'd be bad enough on its own, but she's essentially overthrown Rise's entire role in this little scenario, and honestly she's kind of driven Rise out of her position in the group dynamic by becoming the new girl who shamelessly hangs all over Yu. And oh yeah, MARIE HAS THE MYSTIC POWER TO KNOW WHO DUNNIT MONTHS IN ADVANCE.

What I'm driving at here is that Marie was only ever a tolerable character executed poorly to begin with, and that this has taken things entirely too far. There's no point to any members of the Investigation Team being in any of these scenes because the nature of every single scene in the entire show is almost exactly the same: Narukami gonna **** this girl and everybody is gonna be so happy for her when he does. In a way, it resembles less the antics of a group of sappy high-schoolers and more a free-love cult wherein the leader is grooming the newcomer to be his fifth bride. Except, in spite of that, Marie is clearly the one in charge.

Persona 4 is a game about how your bonds with the people around you help you to grow as a person and make you strong. Persona 4 The Golden The Animation eschews this idea entirely by making it clear that the only bond that matters is ATLUS' special baby Marie.

Before all this went down, I'd wondered if Margaret wasn't going to take the role of Igor in light of Igor's sort of being phased out, but now it's obvious who the only important person in the Velvet Room is ever going to be, and it's the girl in the dumb ****** hat.

Marie stands in such amazing contrast with Labrys that it's hard for me to really fault Labrys for being yet another robot girl with yet another tragic backstoryhaving yet another mental breakdown and somehow being included despite only possibly being able to forge bonds with one or two members of the cast because of Arena's horrible story-telling. It's ironic, too, that Labrys can magically steal the appearance and powers of others and yet Marie is the one whose theft of traits of others is the true offense. I suppose, really, it all comes down to execution, but that only highlights it all the more. It's insane that a game with a plot as terribly disjointed as Arena's can somehow manage to better sell it's 11th hour girl than Marie, who has the advantage of both The Golden and The Golden Animation, but there you have it.

If even the slightest bit of effort had ever been invested in making Marie gel with the series, maybe I wouldn't be sitting here, ranting like I am, but as it stands, I'm just left scratching my head how the girl who looks like a made up anime fanpage mascot has somehow taken so virile and cancerous a hold over everything.

[Liamv2]

I agree except for the poorly animated part they are incredibly good disregarding the problem that lot's of new anime seems to have lately.

[TheChris92]

Come to think of it -- This whole charade with Marie's rather awful implementation made me think of The Simpsons -- At one point they did an episode that functioned at best like a self-deprecating satire on the show itself, and the usual issues that arises when dealing with longevity. In television, the term is called "jumping the shark" which refers to a situation that occurs when producers, or designers (from a gaming perspective, decides to forcefully add and introduce a new character solely for trying to sloppily cover up the aging and decline in quality -- to put it in simpler term: Add freshness to an otherwise failing product.  Not that I thought Persona 4 was a failing product, but in the case of Persona it was obviously a decision made to make the game seem all the more new and shiny, to justify a sale on the Vita, evidently. The game is absolutely worth the money I spent. It ended being on my Super-Star-Tag-Team list but of course I have issues with it, and Marie is certainly amongst them.

 

Going back, briefly, to the Simpsons example. We know it's a commentary when it's the Simpsons, and we know it's meant to poke fun at the subject matter with obvious hints of satire. To summarize -- The episode is about the decline of Itchy & Scratchy (in the Simpsons universe) and thus producers feel the need to add a new character to spiff up the ratings. At the same time we find ourselves perhaps a bit perplexed by the sudden appearance of a new character in the Simpsons family, commonly named Roy, and his implementation and interaction is completely non-chalantly. He just sort of shows up and the characters are "a-okay" with that and yet they talk with him almost as if he's always been there. We, as the audience, know he hasn't. I loved that about the old Simpsons, about the neat ability to portray common issues with writing in modern television, or games, or books or what have you. It's also interesting to note the reflected parrallels that comes up every now and then during the episode. You've got the general conceptual differences between the actual writers, and network producers, discussing which ideas warrants the "go-ahead" to boost the quality of the subject matter. The writers understand the show's inner workings, but the network executives approach improvements to the show from a business point of view. They try to incorporate what they see as a rebellious character with the comment "This is popular with the kids", but the viewers later reject the character.

 

This is generally what it feels like with Marie -- Nevermind the fact that the actual Persona-studio was too busy working on Persona 5 and the other titles at the time Golden was released. I think it's an interesting comparison.

One of the quotes from that same episode essentially went like this -- I chose to replace a few words with something related to Persona, to draw the point home.

 

"One, Poochie Marie needs to be louder prettier, angrier more tsundere, and have access to a time machine Persona. Two, whenever Poochie Marie's not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Poochie Marie"?"

[TheChris92]

I agree except for the poorly animated part they are incredibly good disregarding the problem that lot's of new anime seems to have lately.

Actually, the anime is suffering from the same poorly done animation issues the first one did. Here's a few examples. The one above is actually one of them I'd say.

 

 

[Liamv2]

Ew I didn't notice some of them the first time.

[Ellyria]

Nah, they're going to give Adachi a big redemption moment via the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP. 

 

More redemptiony than sending Yu a letter.

 

I dunno, he runs over the gas station attendant or something. 

 

Nothing balances out murder than more murder! 

 

Can't wait for Arena Ultimax. I'm going to enjoy slapping people around with my favorite detective.

[Ozzy]

I bet Chris actually really loves Marie and this is all a front.

 

Isn't that right, Chris?

 

Come on, be honest.

 

[TheChris92]

Contrary to popular belief - I don't usually bother talking too much about things that annoy me, unless they are flung in my face like a pitching machine firing cat feces.

[GreyLycanTrope]

I'm actually starting to enjoy the Golden Anime a bit more now that we're a few episodes in. The pace is still a bit slow but Marie never annoyed me so I'm willing to give it a shot.

Admittedly it doesn't have as much pull as the original animation. I get why the focus on Marie is there but I'm hoping they start giving the other characters a bit more to do than worrying about Marie, I do hope they've been pushing it forward to get that out of the way as soon as possible before it starts getting mixed in with the main plot, especially now that we have the full cast. (There's even a hint about the Jester Social link getting some attention soon.)

On the plus side even if the show doesn't pick up in quality we still get more Naoto gifs. Glad to see you're not wasting time in that department Chris.

[Ellyria]

Marie never annoyed me in Golden, she was just there and meh. With the anime it seems like she's being shoved into a lot of the Golden exclusives even when she wasn't there in the game. (Like the beach scene and the concert.) Not to mention everyone is always like "Where's Marie? Is Marie okay?" etc etc. That's making me start to dislike her a bit. Same thing happened for me with Liara in Mass Effect.

[GreyLycanTrope]

Marie never annoyed me in Golden, she was just there and meh. With the anime it seems like she's being shoved into a lot of the Golden exclusives even when she wasn't there in the game. (Like the beach scene and the concert.) Not to mention everyone is always like "Where's Marie? Is Marie okay?" etc etc. That's making me start to dislike her a bit. Same thing happened for me with Liara in Mass Effect.

Well they have to make the friendship seem genuine, so they will be smacking you over the head with it initially to get the point across. We are jumping ahead pretty fast time wise so there isn't really a chance to have it built up more naturally like we saw with the rest of the group, which is partly to the detriment of the character(the other fault is her amnesia just not being that interesting outside of her character trying to grow despite it) So I can certainly see why if you don't particularly like the character the shows not really doing much for you at the moment. Thankfully their starting to focus away from her now, Rise and Yosuke were more the focus in the last episode and Marie seems to have found a relatively comfortable place within the group so I really do hope they'll be expanding the show past her now. She will probably remain a focus to a certain extant though, her poems at the start of the episode tell you a much.

[Liamv2]

The poems are worth it for the velvet room music box.

[Mr.House]

Um Chris, all anime has parts like that, so ya saying it's badly done because of that is crap. You're pretty much saying all anime is badly done.

[AventuroLegendary]

The original animation will always hold a special place in my but I'm not sure if Golden is dragged down that much by focusing on the Golden events. 

 

I could treat them like OVAs or independent episodes.

[Mr.House]

I'm only watching it because I have nothing to do after Zankyou, plus the animation and art s nice. Plus hearing Kana is nice even if the dialog she has to spew is crap. Least next episode is Adachi.

[Ozzy]

I just basically devoured AoT in like a couple of days. So good. I have no interest whatsoever in the Golden animation though and to be quite honest, my interest in P4U isn't that high either.

 

I feel like I'm 'done' with P4. I played the original on PS2, I watched the anime and I essentially bought a Vita for Golden. I've put many hours into it and I've enjoyed them all, don't get me wrong, but bring on P5.