Persona Trinity Soul - End

The anime series Persona -trinity soul- is a deep, dark, intense, psychological drama. It's a good series but its weakness is that the early part of the series drags on bit. However, it is worthwhile hanging in there until the end. As I mentioned in a previous post, It's easy to see why so many fansub groups abandoned the series as the payoff is not obvious from the early episodes.

The story's premise is that everyone has a Persona, a natural part of their psychological makeup. A few young people have the ability to draw out their Persona and use it as a physical force, somewhat like a psionic power but with an actual shape, which typically resembles a fighting mecha. The power of the Persona is quite destructive, which naturally leads a few people to consider using the Persona as a weapon of war.

The story begins with Kanzato Shin and Jun returning to live with their brother Ryou in Ayanagi City. Ryou is very cold and distant towards his brothers. The reasons for this become clear later. The first episode reveals that both Ryou and Shin have Personas although this is obviously the first time Shin draws out his Persona. Later this turns out to be a false.

Ten years ago, Ayanagi City suffered an event known as Apathy Syndrome, which continues to cause many strange problems in the city. Ryou seems to know exactly what is happening but he appears to be operating outside his role has Police Chief. Again, exactly what he is doing, is revealed later in the series.

In fact we later learn that the entire Kanzato family has been involved with Personas for over ten years and that Shin was at least partly responsible for causing Apathy Syndrome. The reason I like this series is that everything is explained eventually, but you need to be patient as story takes its time about it.

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.