Anime Reviews: Persona 4 The Animation Episode 10 - Real Me Doesn't Exist

Watch the Show Here!

Plot Summary
The episode pics up immediately after the last one ended, with Yu seeing Rise on the midnight channel. She starts a sexy striptease, which Yu responds to by frantically pressing the record button. After the show ends, Yu checks it to find that the recording didn't work.

The group makes their way into the tv world, and into the seedy looking strip joint that Rise is inside. They discover not only one shadow Rise, but several shadow Rises. With the real Rise there as a special guest.

The group fights several gangster shadows, and after Kanji gets a proper pair of glasses, he uses his persona to beat up the shadows.

Shadow Rise in the meanwhile continues to taunt Rise, asking her who the real her is. She starts to take her top off, prompting Rise to reject her. She transforms into her shadow form, as a strange kind of poledancer.

They try to fight her, but she has the ability to analyze their Persona and counter their tactics. Beary wants to help, but Yu has him take Rise and run while they deal with shadow Rise. Shadow Rise powers up an attack, and aims it at Beary and Rise, but Beary powers up and takes down shadow Rise.

In the aftermath of the explosion, Beary is left flattened. Rise reconciles with her shadow self, unlocking her Persona. She says that there is no real me to be found, which throws Beary into an existential crisis, summoning his own shadow, a freaky giant version of himself.

Beary confronts his shadows self, and the two trade existential litany while the giant shadow attacks Yu and the others. Rise uses her Persona to analyze shadow Beary, and detects another presence inside of it. She directs Yu where to attack, and they are able to take down shadow Beary.

Beary confronts the fact that maybe there are no answers, but he won't stop trying to find out who he is. Facing himself in this way he unlocks his own Persona. The group go back home, leaving Beary in the TV world, where he trains to regain his three dimensional shape. Skip forward several days, and another dead body is found.

The Review
Yu is an interesting character. I've mentioned that the anime has been having a lot of fun emphasizing his bland video game persona, while at the same time building a quirky, interesting personality that strains against, but doesn't break, the limitations placed on him.

His reaction to Rise appearing on the midnight channel is crass, callous, and absolutely hillarious. Yes, it counts against him that he thought with his libido first, and worried about the implications of Rise being on the midnight channel later. But I can't help but be amused at the reaction. He did the first thing that any teenage boy would do. It's really hard to be a hero while dealing with hormones, so at least the show adresses that.

Perhaps it's just me, or maybe it's Hulu, but I have a hard time following the action scenes. They are kind of blurry, generally in low light conditions, with shiny attacks, that make it confusing to follow. But I figure they adapted the fighting as well as they could. It's the one area that I won't complain about them not being faithful to the original. If they did the show would never end.

Pictured: I can't f***ing tell!

I feel that I need to say something about Rise. While I haven't played the game, and therefore not developed any preexisting opinion on her, I have to say that I'm not entirely impressed with her. She seems unsure of what she wants, which is the point of her character, but seeing her decide to stop being in show business, and then get upset when her manager moves on with his carreer did not make her the most sympathetic character in my opinion.

Though chances are that my opinion of her has been colored by a certain friend of mine's own opinion. Not like it makes a difference, Chie is still the best girl in the game/show.

If you liked my review, Watch the Episode Here!