Persona 5: The Animation Episode 24: A Challenge that Must be Won

Berry’s Impression

GIVE IN TO TEMPTATIOOOOOOON

Probably the only part of the episode I liked because Whims of Fate is such a sexy song and probably is the worst song to listen to in a casino because people probably would give in to temptation and lose all their money. Which probably would be good for business. Vegas, take notes.

And while we got to see Sae’s palace, it wasn’t as ritzy and shiny as it was in the game. It was cool because money was always falling from the ceiling and there were lots of lights. But really we hardly saw any of the palace because most of the episode was dedicated to Sojiro and Futaba. The group enter Sae’s palace and we get to see Akechi’s cool-looking outfit and persona, Robin Hood. Shadow Sae appears before them and tells them the treasure is on the highest floor and that she wants to face them fairly and she leaves. The group gets stuck because they can’t use the elevator without a member’s card, which they need to buy by winning chips in the casino. Which the anime doesn’t explain but you can figure it out. Unfortunately for them the system is against them and is cheating and they hoped Futaba could use Navi to help them find the pattern but she has trouble because of a certain scene they had shown before.

The whole thing with Sojiro and Futaba’s uncle, the calling card, and confronting Futaba about the calling card was handled very differently. The placement of this whole situation was weird because here I thought we would head straight on with Sae’s palace and I think it would have been interesting. But instead we got teased with Sae’s palace for a little bit and went in the Sojiro/Futaba dilemma.

Futaba had kept her calling card she received from the Thieves and Sojiro found it when he was cleaning her room. We see Ren and Akechi play chess in the cafe and Futaba suddenly running in and hiding behind Ren. Sojiro comes in and promises not to raise his voice again but Futaba just runs out and Sojiro drops the card. Ren picks it up and Sojiro takes it from him. Later on we meet with Futaba’s shitty uncle and demands child support money from Sojiro. Either that or take back custody of her, to which Sojiro of course doesn’t want. Sojiro explains to Ren later that Futaba moved from relative to relative and landed with her uncle last, you made her sleep on the floor and didn’t allow her to bathe. It just hurts me that Futaba went through so much. Ren doesn’t like what he’s hearing and asks Akechi to help change his heart, because the anime team seems to have a raging boner for Akechi because in the game it was Futaba that was involved in all this. Akechi finds nasty files on the guy and confronts him when he comes back to the cafe, pretends Ren pushed him to the floor, and called for social workers to investigate. The come over and they ask about the scene that happened, why Futaba doesn’t go to school, but Morgana gets Futaba to come over and she assures them that she loves living with Sojiro, who she called her dad. Which was cute. Ren also agrees that he’s never suffered while living with Sojiro and the workers are satisfied.

The way Sojiro reacted to finding out about Futaba’s change of heart and Ren being a Phantom Thief was totally different and they changed the scene in a way that they took out important plot details, and actually making Sojiro a relevant and important character when it came to the plot. It happened so fast and was so unsatisfying. In the game Sojiro was not easily acceptable of them being Phantom Thieves and there were lots of emotions and gripping pieces of dialogue that was not found here. Which is how I can summarize this entire adaption, really.

In the end things are better and Futaba is able to break the system and they win enough poker chips to buy a membership card to use the elevator and move on.

I wasn’t a fan of this episode and I’m not a fan of this adaptation but that’s nothing new. I’ve given up hope long ago. So we’re at 24 episodes, I wonder if the anime will go up to 26? Who knows, but the lack of a number of episodes makes me nervous.

Also, I’m sick of Akechi. Stop trying to include him in everything.