Nerdbot Reviews: Manga “Persona 5” Vol. 3

With a beloved franchise such as the “Persona” series, it’s easy to get lost in the world of it. But that sometimes isn’t the case. As much as I wanted to get into this story, I kept finding it increasingly difficult. It did have some good things going for it but overall it feels like this a miss.

Vol. 3 follows Joker, Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana. It quickly jumps into them seeing if they should further look into Madarame and steal his treasure. But the writing on how they go was really lazy. And that seemed to fix the theme of a lot of the motivation throughout the entire story. As someone who respects the series it seemed like they could have done a better job at fleshing out some of the back stories.

The story more or less revolves around Yusuke and his origin story. It goes into detail of why he wanted to become an artist and study under Madarame. And although they try to leave it a mystery on how Madarame is such a talented artist it won’t long for anyone to really pick up on what’s really going on. Leaving the twist to less of a shock than what they had intended.

And although it is explained that Yusuke doesn’t have the greatest of social skills it doesn’t justify the lack of common sense they give the character. As a reader it left me feeling more mad than anything that such a poorly written person had such a pivotal role in this volume. 

To backtrack a little the motivation to look into Madarame by Joker and the others is not that well paced. Everything they do just seemed to fall into place for them and it involved little to no effort. Or when things looked dire for them they just so happened to run into a conventionally placed getaway to defuse the situation that often left a poor taste in my mouth. Because it happened a little more than I would like. 

But with all that being said it still did have some redeemable traits to it. Such as the art that was one thing that kept me reading from start to finish. It was all  the attention to detail they added, and every panel looked as pretty as the next one. As well as the humor in it, even though the writing may not of been the best, the jokes were probably one of the only well paced things in this volume. And it was more than often a refreshing change of pace.

And lastly the heist was great to read. Even though most of it wasn’t what I had expected the final heist at the end was something that brought it back for me. Every twist and turn they put in seemed to lure me in more and made me forget how much I didn’t enjoy it until now. And because of the ending it gave me hope that the next volume will better than this one. 

But with all that being said if you’re a fan of the series more than likely you’ll enjoy this without a doubt. Persona 5 Vol. 3 drops July 14th, and be sure to pick up a copy at Viz.com

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