ANIME MONDAY: Persona 4 The Animation – “A Stormy Summer Vacation 1/2” Review


Previously on Persona 4:

The Investigation Team defeats Mitsuo’s shadow and solves the murder case. With nothing to do, their summer vacation begins. Spoilers Ahead.

After defeating Mitsuo’s shadow and solving the murder case, Yu (Johnny Yong Bosch) and his friends finally get their summer vacation underway. As the days pass by however, Nanako (Karen Strassman) begins to notice something wrong with her “big bro” as he leaves during the day and comes home late at night and becomes the “Magical Detective Loveline” to investigate his strange behavior.

Even though this is another episode that explores other “Social links” that were in the game, what I like about this episode is that it shifts the focus away from Yu and spotlights the supporting cast, most prominently Nanako. We get a look into how Nanako sees Yu, as well as how she interacts with the rest of his friends. Due to their ignorance of the world (though for completely different reasons) Nanako gets along with Teddie (Sam Riegel) the most and the two have a couple scenes together when she firsts starts to follow Yu around. As for Yu we see very little of him in which I usually think is a good thing for show to shift from the protagonist every once in a while.

We also get some more development on Yu’s friends as they too want to know why he has been avoiding them along with Nanako. This does lead to a few humorous scenes in the episode when Nanako sees Yu with a black haired woman who she assumes is his girlfriend, she tells the guys and follows him to a park along with Teddie, Kanji (now played by Matthew Mercer), & Yosuke (Yuri Lowenthal); where they find him with a different woman with a son who saw Nanako earlier in the episode. They then return to the girls and tell them what they saw and they then follow Yu to the riverbank (Rise being the most adamant to go) where they see him with an older woman in funeral garb, later Nanako sees a young boy looking sullenly at a group of kids playing in the park. This adds to the comedy as well as the mystery as to what Yu was doing. All the plot points sort of come together at the festival in town where Nanako encounters Naoto (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn), Ai Ebihara (Julie Ann Taylor) and all the people she had seen Yu with over the past couple of weeks.

“A Stormy Summer Vacation 1/2” is a decent little break from all of the mystery by being enjoyable and humorous. The focus on Nanako and the others was nice and it was good to see Yu be in the episode without being the main focus. The Investigation continues next week as we see summer vacation from Yu Narukami’s point of view.

3/5