This week’s issue of Famitsu magazine issue #1448 featured details on the game’s online functionality, summed up in a previous post.

Additionally, the feature contained an interview with Toshiyuki Kono, the animation director and supervisor for Persona 5 from the anime studio Production I.G. He discusses the process behind the animation in the upcoming RPG and their contents, translated by @MysticDistance.

Process

Toshiyuki Kono was contacted three and a half years ago by the director of Persona 5, Katsura Hashino, to be involved in the project.

Kono felt a great amount of pressure for it. He attended the “Persona Music Fes 2013” in August 2013, and he was amazed at the amount of fans that were there and the enthusiasm they expressed.

At last year’s live event in February 2015 (Persona Super Live 2015), Kono was deeply moved by the reactions to the first animated sequence shown for Persona 5 (the anime scenes in trailer PV01).

Sayo Yamamoto, who was the director for Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, did storyboard production for Persona 5‘s opening.

Many people at Production I.G are fans of the Persona series.

Concepts & Content

Altogether, the animated scenes in Persona 5 make up approximately one hour of the game.

The most important part for Kono was ensuring that the characters’ expressions were well-represented in the animated cutscenes.

Because the main character barely speaks, the team had to work on how he should be perceived, especially when it came to his facial expressions. It was important to make sure he seemed polite.

Scenes

In the Shibuya scene, where it shows the protagonist from the front, Kono’s intention was to give the players a sense of unity with the main character.

The blue flames during the above scene at the Shibuya Crossing are not CG, but hand-drawn effects.

For the scene where the protagonist first summons his persona, Arsene, Atlus requested that it should be something “wild.” It was hard to get that specific expression down for the protagonist because of the fact that the main character is also meant to represent the other side of the player.

The opening of the game is about breaking away from what holds you, hence the figure skating as an expression of freedom.

Persona 5 is slated to be released for the PS3 and PS4 in Japan on September 15, 2016. It will release in North America and Europe on February 14, 2017, and in traditional Chinese in 2017.