Persona 4: The Animation – Episode 8

We’ve Lost Something Important Again

.Synopsis.

Ah, camping fun with the whole crew. Don’t let the urgent sounding title of this episode fool you- Nothing of great importance happens~ (Except character development, which is always fun right?)

The crew gets to go camping for a school field trip! Oh wait- they have to clean the environment and cook for themselves. Sounds like a pretty exciting camping trip.. er… Anyhow Yukiko and Chie fail rather hard at cooking, so the group hides out in the forrest in an attempt to get some real food ordered. Meanwhile Yousuke and Yu meet Konishi’s brother, who hates them. After a rather short talk, Yu manages to turn that around and become friends with the rather sad boy.

Later that day the group concludes that with Kanji being kidnapped, the person throwing people into the TV is not after just women. Though it does seem that if people appear on TV they will be kidnapped.

Some awkward scenes involving Kanji giving the boys the creeps and some more awkward scenes where Yousuke pervs on the girls yadda yadda yadda then the episode ends.

It’s a character development episode at it’s.. finest?

.Impressions.

Hot off the heals of the Kanji incident, this episode was supposed to serve as breath of fresh air or something. It wasn’t a bad episode, and I found myself laughing quite a bit at the ridiculousness of our heroes. With that said, due to the unessential amounts of goofiness over the course of the last two episodes, I felt Persona was trying to hard to be just a comedy, when really, the game was a good combination of humor, plot, and some decent character building. I mean, this episode would have been welcomed if the last episodes involving Kanji were emotionally taxing at all. But hey- Wasn’t it great how they made Kanji look foolish again? I wouldn’t be surpsied if anyone who has only watched the anime would hate him. Hell, I don’t like him in this adaptation much. It’s kinda sad to see one of my favorite characters go down the drain.

All in all- Good slice of life episode with a lot of awkward humor and some forced social link with Saki Konishi’s brother. Persona, please get good again…