Persona Trinity Soul

Persona -trinity soul- is an anime I started watching in January 2008. The fansub group dropped it after 6 episodes. As is my usual practice, I started over with another group in April 2008. This group disappeared after completing 16-17 episodes. That's too far along to start over again so I just left the series unfinished and went on to watch other shows. It was a good thing I waited, since only one group out of about 6-7 total, actually finished the series, which is an unusually low completion rate.

I obviously liked the anime which is why I've started watching it again. But, many who knew the game on which the anime was based, were very disappointed which probably explains the low completion rate. The story stands on its own merits as far as I'm concerned, so it was unfortunate that so many people couldn't separate the anime from the game. It must have been a great game!

The story is about certain people who have mental abilities which manifests as an entity that emerges from their body. The entities are just projections of the psionic powers, so when the entities fight, it is really a mental struggle that has been made visible. This is such a cool idea and is what hooked me on the series in the first place.

The power diminishes with age, but there is a drug which enables older people to continue using their power, but at a cost to their health. Of course, there are those who see the potential military applications for such a drug, and those who see it as being too dangerous and would like to destroy it. The conflict swirls around the characters in the early part of the story even though most of them are unaware of the drug, but eventually all of them are drawn into the center of the struggle.