Persona 3 gets an anime!

[Lego]

Via ANN:

Aniplex's A-1 Pictures is adapting the Persona 3 PlayStation 2 role-playing game as a television anime series under the name Persona -trinity soul- for a January 2008 premiere. The anime is set a decade after the game, and will center around three brothers in a future city where the dead have risen with their skins turned inside out. The Persona games themselves are spinoffs from the long-running Shin Megami Tensei series.

Jun Matsumoto, an episode director on Blood+ and an animator on Digimon, is set to direct. Shigenori Soejima, the Persona games' character designer for the game developer Atlus, is creating the original character designs for Yuriko Ishii (Ouran High School Host Club, The Prince of Tennis key animator) to adapt for anime. Yasuyuki Muto (Le Chevalier D'Eon) is leading a team of writers including Shinsuke Onishi (Darker than BLACK, The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye) and Shogo Yasukawa. Nobuhiko Genma (Trouble Chocolate's contributing designer) is designing the Persona, the franchise's signature supernatural entities within humans. Taku Iwasaki (Lunar Silver Star Story Lunatic Festa Vol. 3 game, Read or Die anime) is composing the music.

Nice staff and the Persona 3 visuals were slick. Heres a shot from Moon Phase (http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/7003/20071107aup9.jpg) .

[Westlo]

Guess I should play the game before it airs, been meaning to anyway.

Edit - Taku Iwasaki ftw

[untoldsorrow]

Awesome. Love Persona 3 to death! It also comes out in Jan, pretty soon too.

[Lovely]

YES

Today.... today is a good day....

*ahem*

Well, I too love Persona3 to death, so this news is simply great! I loved the style used in the game, especially in the anime scenes, so it was always on my mind that an anime set in the same world would be fun.

Woo! Looking forward to this :D !

[HitokiriShadow]

I guess I should get around to playing the game before I watch this. Well, assuming I have time to even bother, that makes my decision of what to play easier.

[Ty]

Man, a lot of next season's shows are falling into the "will either be amazing or crap" category.

[Jumbo]

Via ANN:

Aniplex's A-1 Pictures is adapting the Persona 3 PlayStation 2 role-playing game as a television anime series under the name Persona -trinity soul- for a January 2008 premiere. The anime is set a decade after the game, and will center around three brothers in a future city where the dead have risen with their skins turned inside out. The Persona games themselves are spinoffs from the long-running Shin Megami Tensei series.

This really does sound like spin off more than an actual adaptation of anything... Unless they plan on bringing back grown up versions of the former cast...

This has two things going for it IMO. Shigenori Soejima's character designs and Taku Iwasaki's soundtrack.

The rest, regardless of their pedigrees leave me thinking that the "style" everyone raved about in the P3/P3FES anime PV's/cut scenes isn't going to make the transition here. Heck, I have doubts the character designs for the anime will even look as good as the game anime designs. That and I can't say I've got confidence with A-1 Pictures short animation track record.

Gonna miss Soejima's Persona designs but I'm down with getting to see the original art he works up for the series.

Will have to get around to finishing FES.

[pathos]

This has the potential to be completely awesome, or incredibly stupid. Of course, hoping for the former, but the pessimist in me is expecting the latter.

If they keep the dark, more mature feel of most of the Shin Megumi games, including Persona 3 (which had more light hearted moments than the other 2 I've played, but still a fairly dark game), then its got a lot of potential.

For some reason, I almost see them going the Pokemon route. "Thanatos, I choose you!"

:sigh:

[Lego]

They could go the Hime route with all the summoning and etc. I really liked the game and its atmosphere(as well as characters) so I was kind of hoping they'd have cameos or at least be side characters in the anime. After sitting through the stylish anime scenes in the game I'll check this out even though I've learned not to set my hopes up :P