Persona 5: The Animation Episode 22: Is It Our Fault…?

Berry’s Impression

I’m not going to beat around the bush. I hated this episode. It was a terrible filler episode that tried squeezing in as many Confidants as it could, with only one or two being acceptable. I get that the group agreed to lay low and not bring attention to themselves, so that left the show to have some down time, but this isn’t the time for some down time. And this certainly doesn’t mean you can just shove “character development” for characters that have barely appeared in the show (or in one case, never). The timing for some of them was strange, some just did not work at all. I’m honestly so damn frustrated.

The episode continues on with the sudden death of Okumura. Poor Haru has to deal with police questioning as police search around her home for clues. She overhears Sae mention the principal from their school receiving a calling card and she confronts the others about it. Of course none of them sent it so it shocks them all. Futaba leaves to look into something and the group is left with a sick feeling of self doubt and fear. And stress, because of many reasons. Makoto tells the group that her sister is in charge of the case, so the Prosecutor Team is on the move. The police go to Shujin Academy to question all of the students. And to make things worse, the general public views the Phantom Thieves as murderers. Which is hilarious and just sad that not that long ago they were supporting them 100%, but all of a sudden they turn against them. Another stress on their shoulders is when Futaba finds out that the Medjed that called them out before was a fake in order to lure them out. It was to get them out in the public and make them fall into their hands in order to bring them down. Of course the guy in charge of Sae has to be behind all this because he’s been shady for episodes now. There’s so much against them, the Thieves are kind of in a corner, but because there’s so much investigation they have to lay low.

The rest of the episode deals with the Confidants and I can say that the only one that was acceptable to me was Haru. It makes total sense because Haru’s side stories in the game are directly involved with her father’s murder. She goes to Leblanc to speak with Ren and get some things off of her chest. With the death of her father, Haru is now in charge of the company. She’s a shareholder and now she has to work with the guys her father had worked with himself. But it’s extremely stressful as the people around her are fighting each other to work with her, all of them thinking of only one thing: profit. Instead of coming together to cooperate, they’re all fighting against each other. This is all a huge stressor for Haru considering she’s still getting over the death of her father, but now she has so much responsibility. It was also a nice touch to show Haru looking after her father through the ICU window, really showing how helpless and alone she feels.

After that, I didn’t care for the rest of the episode at all. Maybe I can kind of understand Ann and Shiho, it was nice seeing Shiho again after all the crap she went through. It doesn’t make her seem like a forgettable character that was there just because. Though the moment was a little random, I liked seeing her again and thought the moment on the roof was nice. But then! Shadow was sweet enough to show me a clip of this scene from the game, since I never finished Ann’s confidant, and all of the emotion and strength of Ann and Shiho’s friendship was completely cut. Wow. Goddamn. The kid at the arcade was random but the anime didn’t spend that much time on him, though his support of the Phantom Thieves wasn’t explained. There was Ren formally meeting Hifumi, which I suppose wasn’t too random because she’s appeared before, namely in the Hawaii episode. But even then, to suddenly get her drama just didn’t make sense at this point. She’s not an important character, and while I really do like her, I just didn’t care. But the worse offender here had to be Mishima’s side story being shoehorned in here. All of a sudden we see Mishima looking distraught and then he calls out Ren to tell him to go after some huge celebrity in order to fix their reputation. Then one night he posts a threatening message where he’ll purge anyone that harms the Thieves and they go to Mementos, Mishima’s shadow complains of wanting to be a hero and tired of being a zero. Doesn’t make sense? That’s okay because it really doesn’t make sense. Why should we care about Mishima when he’s hardly appeared in the anime? His lack of self confidence doesn’t make any sense since we’ve always seen him be so much chipper. It makes sense in the game because he gets bullied and made fun of in the game’s side stories, but here….just…why should I care about him?!

I don’t care. This episode was just bad. There was absolutely no need for there to be filler. We don’t need this filler, it’s completely unnecessary and I’m just really disappointed. My patience for this show is almost entirely depleted and my frustration only grows. This was probably the worst episode we’ve gotten, smushing in as many confidants as they could when there’s no time for filler at this point. It’s pointless. I don’t even know what to say anymore. Just…it wasn’t needed! But here it is, oh well.

Sae’s arc starts next week. Let’s go, then.