Persona 4 Golden Episode 10
I was complaining in the first five seconds of this episode, it should take longer than that for me to start complaining. Why the need to take this part in the game, which was kind of silly and make it so super serious? When you enter the TV to save Marie in the game, Elizabeth grabs Chies hand and drags all of you in at once, it’s a mixture of scary and yet hilarious. In the episode they go for a very straight laced thing of Yu walking into the TV, leaving everyone behind.
Elizabeth WANTED all his friends to be with him in the game, they just sort of follow him in this episode. What if they hadn’t? That would make the hollow forest massively hard. What’s worse is they all come in and are separated around the area.
There is no reason for this, absolutely no reason. They rushed this episode so much, there was no sense of danger to the hollow forest. This is perhaps one of the creepiest and most intimidating dungeons in all of Persona 4 Golden because of the way it screws with you. First off, it’s a larger maze then any dungeon before it. Also, it messes with your levels and your items making it hard to battle.
This isn’t conveyed in the slightest. The team gets their ass kicked but it doesn’t seem as urgent. Maybe that’s just me. Another thing that really bothered the hell out of me this episode was just how downplayed everything seemed. I never got the fear instilled in me that Marie was going to die here, I mean I know the episode said it but it never really was shown as something urgent. She’s trying to commit suicide guys, make everyone seem like they have more to invest into this. When Yu shows up they literally have a fight that consists of…
“You’re stupid!”
“No you’re stupid!”
It doesn’t feel like she’s trying to kill herself, it feels like she ran away from home or something and it deserves a small slap on the wrist and a “you’re stupid.” I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH MORE I CAN STRESS SHE’S TRYING TO DIE HERE, MAKE IT FEEL URGENT! OH MY GOD!
Anyway, the one thing I did find was handled pretty well was Marie’s true identity as one of the Sagiri’s who covered the world in fog. In our words she would be a spy, her job was to show the other Sagiri’s what humans wanted. Everyone’s reactions to this were played out well and I actually felt the shock coming off the characters for this bit of the episode.
The battle fighting Marie at the end was done decently as well I suppose but I’m not sure about this whole absorbing your Persona thing. I was about to get to this Dungeon in the game when I got distracted by Dangan Ronpa so I haven’t done this battle in a while but I do not remember any attack of this sort.
The ending cuts to an empty velvet room with the velvet room music playing in the background as the credits roll. It’s very reminiscent of what happens when you get a ‘Game Over.’
I don’t know, I feel like this conflict could have been done in one episode if they weren’t so desperately trying to drag it out for the sake of filling their episode quota.
Overall I give this episode a giant “Meh.” Like it wasn’t the worst one in the series and it did focus heavily on Marie’s plot but carried none of the urgency that it should of. If I hadn’t played the game I couldn’t think of a single reason to care about Marie’s suicide when even the characters of the show don’t seem to care that much.
~Midnight