I have to say in terms of audio this episode was perfect. I mean you have the intro music for the game played early on and clearly could hear familiar tunes while watching the episode. Really added a nice nostalgic feel to the whole episode. Overall it just had some nice touches that really should appeal to fans of the game. The calendar scene to show the passage of days, how the mid point of the episode shows the lead’s current stats, etc. Not sure how the people who haven’t played the game will view things, but I like the little touches they’ve added here. Some things are actually pretty important so glad they kept them in.

A main worry I had coming into this was getting used to the different voices. Surprisingly I got into it pretty easily. The lead never had a voice anyways so that was easy enough to deal with. The other characters were pretty solid as well. Think Chie is a slight improvement and maybe Kuma is slightly worse. Voices are often a personal thing and so people have to judge for themselves. Overall I think the voices are pretty good quality for this anime so I won’t have to worry about going crazy listening XD.

One negative for the episode was speed. The episode was really moving at high speeds to get to that fight at the end of the episode. I’m not sure how many hours they compressed into twenty minutes, but there was compression. There wasn’t that much of importance cut out so I’m not really upset about that. The downside though is that the speed might put some people off and not get a good chance to appreciate the series. If it calms down from this point on it should be good though.

I thought the comedy was pretty nice even though it was hurried. Yosuke biking into a garbage can, the group getting sucked into a tv, and the lead just walking past Yosuke after Chie knocked him down. Just some good laughs if you take time to enjoy them. While we saw some death early with that murder this is going to be a series with some comical moments too.

Will say this is a rough way to come to a new school. Get a teacher who gets on your case early, a murder takes place, and you get sucked into a TV. Of course gaining a great power to fight is pretty handy and so is gaining some solid friends early. Narukami is a pretty solid lead so far. He might be a bit quiet to start off, but he’s a guy transferring out into the country and trying not to leave a bad impression. Besides as we saw from his stats shown off at that cut-away moment he doesn’t have much going for him right now. He’s got to build up things like courage before he stands out XD.

It’s hard to say much about the cast after just one episode. Chie is a pretty active person, but who she is at her core is still not so obvious. Yosuke is a transfer student himself though having six months on Narukami. Have to think there is some pressure on him though since his father manages a store that has hurt the smaller local stores. An interesting thing with him apparently being interested in that girl who found the the murder victim.

There are also just a lot of questions to be asked early. What was with Igor and the Velvet Room? How does Yosuke end up biking into a garbage can? Why can the main character enter TVs and summon a Persona? Why were they attacked inside the TV? Not much that can be easily answered in the first episode, but good questions to have in mind.

In the end I think this was a solid start to the series. Maybe a bit fast, but still pretty good. If the action can stay up with the first fight we saw then that aspect should be good. Now to see how the rest of the series turns out. Also while I loved the game I don’t intend to spoil a single thing about what is going to happen.
Score: A-