Persona 4: The Animation - Episode 3

After her appearance on Midnight Channel at the end of the last episode, concerns turn towards the well-being of Yukiko as we enter episode three of Persona 4: The Animation - concerns which most markedly affect her friend Chie Satonaka, as she finds herself unable to get hold of Yukiko.

Although this turns out to be nothing more than a false alarm as Yukiko was simply busy with work at her family's hotel, that night sees her turn up once more on Midnight Channel, and what's more she's acting decidedly out of character as she discusses hunting for guys and effectively building her own harem.

Lo and behold, after this appearance Yukiko has indeed gone missing just as a distraught Satonaka feared that she would, and after a few unexpected hold-ups it's time to visit the world within the Junes television set along with Hanamura and Narukami in the hunt for her friend.  Just as it seems that finding Yukiko might be in sight, Satonaka finds herself faced with a more pressing problem - herself... or more to the point, her dark inner emotions, which point towards Chie as feeling worthless and thus befriending Yukiko to make her feel better about herself.  As per last episode's focus on Hanamura, it's up to Satonaka to get a grip on her emotions and inner turmoil and, with the help of her friends, win her own Persona to help in the struggle ahead with Yukiko's whereabouts still unknown.

After last week's instalment, it pretty much went without saying that this would be a rinse and repeat affair to bring Satonaka into the Persona club, so I can't really complain about that too much - it's where the series goes from this point forwards that will be more interesting, with Yukiko still missing and clearly suffering from some turmoil of her own.  Although it perhaps tries too hard to squeeze frivolous moments from the original game into this episode it was still an entertaining instalment once you get past the truly horrible art style (which I think I'm liking less by the week rather than more), complete with a solid roster of characters - hell, even Narukami's boring personality is actually played for laughs this week, which was much needed to paper over that particular issue.  All in all then, it might not be my favourite show of the season, but Persona 4 continues to hold my attention.