Like Makoto, Sadayo is so close to being the best girl. What a shame. 

— C’mon, Ren… a Slime? You recruited a Slime? You know it has two elemental weaknesses right? While we’re on the topic, there are some pretty badass low level Personas like Neko Shogun that I hope we’ll eventually get to see. Black Frost is also pretty overpowered in every SMT game. I just got done playing Strange Journey Redux, and I think I used Black Frost for about 20 levels.

— At least the adaptation captures Yusuke’s eccentricity.

— The dirty equipment is a nice addition, too. But honestly, I rarely bothered with them in the actual game. I wasn’t going to waste my time doing the laundry, and by the time a certain someone could do it for me, I had stopped really worrying about equipment.

— Oh my…

— Leave it to the adaptation to outshine the game in only one area: fanservice. In the game, she definitely declined the invitation. I guess the anime simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

— Looking over some of these LPs, we’re still missing the trip to the TV station as well as a handful of scenes with Makoto. I imagine we’ll get the latter soon enough, but I’m wondering about the former…

— So this is how Ryuji caught wind of the maid service…

— Look at these minor characters that we’ll probably never see again. As I was going through the game, I thought the aspiring reporter would have a larger role. Unfortunately, she didn’t.

— This girl is kinda fun. There’s a similar thing in Persona 3 where a girl likes a guy all year long, but when he finally takes an interest in her, she stops caring.

— Oh hey, a Haru sighting. If the adaptation wants to get a leg up on the game, it should try and introduce her a little earlier. Haru’s biggest problem in the game was that she joined the team so late, and as a result, all of her character development occurs within her social link. She never felt like she became a proper member of the team. You only ever really get to know if you bothered to garden.

— That’s another thing that bugged me: gardening would’ve been so useful at the start of the game. By the time it was available to me, however, I already had plenty of ways to recover SP. A few of Persona 5’s mechanics are poorly implemented, which is surprising considering the game’s overall polish.

— See, the maid service makes me think of escorts, and y’know, escorts imply sex… but I’m not entirely clear whether or not sex is involved here. Are these prostitutes or not? I really wish games like Persona would stop beating around the bush.

— Mishima looks really scrawny here. Kid needs to eat some protein.

— At least Ren is showing a bit of personality. He’s still way too soft-spoken. If you think about it, Tae is the only person he’s been talking to aside from his teammates. This guy isn’t bothering to level up his social links at all.

— Operation Maidwatch is finally underway.

— Awesome, I picked the same dialogue option too.

— Sure sounds like she’s offering sex…

— I also picked this line as well.

— So as much as I would like to woo a hot teacher, being able to date Sadayo is so inappropriate especially considering we just dealt with Kamoshida. Sure, sure, Kamoshida was a creep who threw unwanted advances on his female students. On the other hand, there’s nothing but consent between Ren and Sadayo. In fact, he’s the aggressor if you play out the social link. He has to convince her to be with him. But again, considering how a teacher just got busted for sex-related stuff, Sadayo is a special kind of stupid for getting involved with one of her students. If Ren was a college student, I’d be all for this relationship. I even like Sadayo’s character design. Her regular hair is far superior to Becky’s. I guess I kinda like the semi-messy look. Nevertheless, the fact that he’s only a high school student, though… yeesh. He’s not even a senior who’s going to graduate! Like most anime protagonists, he’s a second year, so she has to wait even longer to be with him… not that she waited at all if you went after her.

— Plus, this is a huge departure from the previous games. I couldn’t really date Ms. Toriumi in Persona 3 even though I guess Makoto kinda had a relationship with Maya in that online game. And as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t date the hot nurse in Persona 4 either. As a result, I was really surprised to learn that Sadayo was actually an option. In fact, all of the adult characters are. Neither Makoto nor Yu could even get anywhere close to the adult women in their games.

— After he helped Sadayo with Ms. Chouno, she was supposed to give him the okay to start requesting her personally from the maid service, but I guess that can wait.

— I guess we’re finally leveling up a social link with our party members, and Ryuji gets to go first. I don’t remember Ryuji’s side story being very interesting, though. Just more drama with the track team. I remember not finishing it on my first playthrough, because you needed to wait for Ryuji’s invitation to scope out a restaurant. By the time I got the invitation, I was already in December. Whoops.

— Wuuuuut? Ren’s going to call Sadayo anyways? Despite everything I said above, however, leveling Sadayo’s social link is well worth it. The benefit you get when you max her out is probably the best one in the game. Basically, doing Mementos or a Palace leaves you too tired to do anything at night. Sadayo lets the player have their nights back. That’s a huge boon in a game where you have a limited amount of time to get stuff done.

— But interestingly enough, the adaptation uses this opportunity to merge a bit of Sadayo and Ryuji’s story. Ren calls her up because he wants to learn more about the disbanded track team. That’s taking liberties with the story that I don’t mind so much. Better than him calling his teacher just to have her clean his room and subtly flirt with him for money.

— Oh man, speaking of the restaurant that I had to scope out… Like I said earlier, you had to wait on Ryuji in the game. In the adaptation, however, Ren takes the initiative even if he wants to act all cool about it. Eh, I like the change. He’s being more proactive about helping his friends. One of the biggest complaints people had about Persona 5 was that the group never felt as close to each other as Persona 4’s group. Then again, I’d argue that Persona 4 had too much fluff. I don’t want any hypothetical Persona 5 Special Edition to come with another painful idol concert.

— Damn that former coack.

— At this rate, however, it looks like we’re going to max out Ryuji’s social link in a single episode.

— I dunno, though… wouldn’t Ryuji’s breakthrough make more sense at the end?

— Sadayo’s far off to the side, but nevertheless, the adaptation includes Sadayo in this scene. I think this makes sense. In the game, she starts trusting Ren too easily. Seeing the kid go to such lengths to help Ryuji out, however, is a strong argument in his favor. She can’t ignore that. This should also move Sadayo to be a better teacher, because up until this point, she’s been writing both Ren and Ryuji off as troublemakers. Obviously, you can’t judge a book by its cover (even though that’s what covers are for…).

— Then again, she’s smiling as she listens to Ryuji’s former teammates beat on him. Japanese teachers are weird, man.

— RYUJI WILL NOW TAKE A MORTAL BLOW FOR YOU BUT JUST ONCE SO DON’T GET CARRIED AWAY

— Ren finally has a crappy novelty item to decorate his room with. I can’t wait until he puts up the chocolate fountain that runs all day and all night.

— Why are you guys talking like that at school?

— Well, she said she’d do his laundry.

— Okay, okay, next week’s episode is gonna be all about Makoto.

— And we’re probably headed for the TV station while we’re at it. The writers must be antsy since Akechi hasn’t gotten any screentime lately.

— Oh hey, Ren is at least level 20 now.

— I don’t remember this.

— Personally, I think they made Kaneshiro look too chubby to be intimidating.