Persona 4 Revival is coming out in February, and Atlus is pulling out all the stops to promote the remake. That includes making one of the best ways to experience Persona 4 (other than playing it, obviously) free for a limited, undisclosed time: both the Persona 4 anime adaptations are streaming in their entirety on Aniplex’s YouTube.
The 26-episode series, which originally aired from 2011 to 2012, has been compiled into a playlist on the company’s channel. The original show recounts most of the story of the original Persona 4, but it’s naturally missing characters like Marie from the Golden storyline. Even so, it’s actually a really solid version of the story that I rewatched several times during the height of my Persona 4 obsession rather than replaying the game multiple times. The one unfortunate wrinkle in this is that the version currently on YouTube doesn’t include the excellent English dub.
Aniplex has also uploaded the Golden series, which is about half as long and thus has some much more noticeable pacing issues, but it does include Marie’s storyline which debuted in the enhanced remaster when it launched on Vita in 2012. This series never got an English dub, so the Japanese version with subtitles is streaming on the channel.
Though it doesn’t match playing the game entirely, I introduced a handful of friends to Persona 4 through the animation back in the day because the barrier to entry is much lower. I also tried to emulate the game’s original murder mystery by pausing the show just before it revealed the culprit to ask those I’d forced to watch who they thought it was and would only unpause it when they got the right answer. God, I was an annoying college kid.