Persona3 the Movie #4 Winter of Rebirth

Makoto and his friends have fought the beings called Shadows for a year; none of the large enemies that arrive at the end of each month is left. Then what they learn changes everything: the cause of the whole war is their own institution, and what will bring about the end of the world is exactly what they have been doing. The group faces a choice: to remember and fight until the last day, or to forget and live at peace. Tomohisa Taguchi directs. The source is the video game Persona 3, and this is the last of a four part adaptation. The idea of the series is the awareness of death. The whole structure of the game rests on a school calendar and every day works like a countdown; the characters' power comes directly from their relation to death. This part is the darkest and ends inevitably; the adaptation does not soften it. The animation is better than the earlier parts, particularly the final battle, which is at large scale. Its limit is fidelity to the source. The game runs over a hundred hours and four films cannot carry it; the development of the supporting characters is largely cut and the emotional weight works for those who played it. Who it is for: viewers who know the Persona series and like game adaptations in anime. Who it is not for: the characters and rules are unexplained for a newcomer, the narrative does not begin here, and the ending cannot be understood alone.