WEBVTT

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Hello there!

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Welcome to New Frame Plus,

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a series about video
game animation.

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Persona 5 is one of the most
eye-catching games of 2017 AND 2019.

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And the Persona team
keeps doing this

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on considerably smaller
budgets and team sizes

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than most of their competition
in the AAA RPG space,

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making up for any
shortcomings in fidelity with

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strong art direction
and overwhelming style.

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But how are they doing that?

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Animation is slow work,
which means it’s expensive,

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so how does this team manage such
an eye-popping anime aesthetic

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for 80+ hours straight without
spending Final Fantasy money?

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To find out,
let’s break down the animation

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of one of the most intensely
stylish sequences in the game,

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the All-Out Attack.

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All Out Attacks are basically
a high-damage dog-pile maneuver

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which requires some
strategizing to set up.

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When you hit enemies with
something that they are weak to,

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it will knock them down and leave
them vulnerable until their next turn.

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If you can manage to knock down every enemy
on the field, this will trigger a Hold Up,

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where your entire team moves in
on the vulnerable enemy line.

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From here,
you've got a lot of options:

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you can try to convince the enemy
to join you as a summon-able persona,

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you can extort them
for money or items,

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OR you can take advantage of your
position and perform an All Out Attack.

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If you choose that option,
this will initiate a short,

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flashy cut-scene in which your entire
team attacks the enemy at once in a

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glorious swarm.

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Now, in the event that your opponent
survives this, battle will simply resume.

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But in the much-more-likely event that
your enemies are completely wiped out,

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you are rewarded with a
special victory screen

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featuring the character
who initiated the attack.

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These are unique for every party
member, and they are all great.

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Now, there are a LOT of moving parts
in this All-Out Attack sequence,

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and they all come and go
in the blink of an eye so,

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let’s try to break
this down into chunks.

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From the Hold Up screen,
as soon as you select All-Out Attack,

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your entire party first
stows their firearms

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and switches back
to melee weapons.

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These are just the default
animations your characters do

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whenever you swap back to
melee weapons during battle.

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And the instant everybody returns to their
idle pose, they immediately leap backward.

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Your main character, Joker, has the
most eye-catching jump of the bunch,

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which is good,
because he’s always in your party

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and he’s always going to be
front and center on this screen.

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And then,
just as your characters land,

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the battlefield is obscured by
a big 2D animated dust cloud,

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which serves to hide
a scenery change.

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When the cloud clears,
your party is now clustered together

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and facing camera,
against a flat red background.

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The camera pulls back,
the background cracks

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and the lighting on your 3D characters
dims until they’re nothing but silhouettes,

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visually flattening
them into a 2D shape.

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And then everybody
springs into action.

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And I really like how they’re not
all jumping at the exact same time!

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There is a nice
staggered rhythm to this.

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Morgana even does a smaller hop
before leaping out of frame.

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And in real time, obviously,
this is all happening super fast.

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The time between the
2D dust cloud wipe

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and everybody leaving frame
is like 1 second, tops,

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but that variation in their exit
timing adds some really nice texture.

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It’s the little
touches like that,

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that make this whole sequence feel
so viscerally satisfying in motion.

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So once everybody is off screen,
there’s another screen shake,

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the fractured background
shatters and your party members’

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portraits appear in
the foreground shards.

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Then all the fragments fly past camera,
setting us up for another scene change.

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We pull back to see the darkened
silhouette of our opponent.

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And this is still a 3D model
that we're looking at, but again,

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because of the absence of lighting,
it appears like a flat 2D shape,

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which helps them to fit right in to
this barrage of 2D effects animation

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they are being pummeled with.

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The screen shakes.

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Darkened 2D blurs representing your
characters streak across the screen.

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The enemy plays their hit
react animation on loop.

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Onomatopoeic katakana and impact
flashes are everywhere… it’s awesome.

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And then one final bright
flash fills the screen,

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clearing the board and setting
up the final scene change.

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Whichever character
initiated the All-Out Attack

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drops down onto a flat
red and black field

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with the enemy silhouetted
behind, does a little flourish.

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And then, with a snappy zoom,
your 3D character is swapped

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for a gorgeous hand drawn rendition
and the background is filled

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with an animated splash screen

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as the enemy bursts in a
silhouetted blood spray effect.

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When you frame through this, you can
actually see the the one-frame cross-fade

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from the 3D model to
the pose-matched 2D art!

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Again, every member of the party has
a different version of this screen

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and they all look amazing.

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And even here there's a lot
of subtle animation happening.

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There’s that shake on
the 2D assets emphasizing

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the impact of the
zoom transition,

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and the slight drifting
rotation of the 2D layers?

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Mmm. It's very good.

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All of the action I just described
happens within the span of like 8 seconds,

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but that action is so well-composed that
it not only reads clearly throughout,

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but you don’t even get a chance to
notice when any individual element is

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maybe a little lackluster.

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Which is good, because that element
is usually the character animation.

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Like, if I really wanted to get in
there and nitpick things a bit,

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I can see plenty of places where the
animation on the 3D characters is a little

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rough around the edges.

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Like, here: Ryuji’s transition from Hold
Up stance to his weapon swapping animation

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results in this quick,
slide-y 180 degree turn,

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because the two animations don’t
start with the same foot forward.

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You usually don’t want that.

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And his little weapon
twirl right after -

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while a cool touch - isn’t animated in
a way that makes much physical sense.

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Or Joker’s back handspring
here: it looks pretty nice,

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but it could use a more
pronounced anticipating crouch

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to sell the physicality
of the jump better.

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It’s little polishy
stuff like that.

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And there’s a number of tiny imperfections
in the screen transitions too,

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like, how your party members
often pop into place a few frames

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after the dust cloud
already passed,

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and sometimes the characters
are even partially clipping

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through the red backdrop
for a couple of frames.

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But good luck spotting ANY of those rough
edges when you play this back at speed.

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All those tiny little flaws
just get completely lost

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in the larger whirling
tapestry of movement here.

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If anything, framing through this
and seeing those tiny little seams

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really only serves to highlight how
intricately-choreographed this whole sequence is.

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This right here is a microcosm

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of everything that makes the
animation in Persona work:

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in the places where the polish and
fidelity of the character animation

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kind of underwhelms,
a bombardment of gorgeous 2D art,

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and effects and UI animation
picks up the slack.

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Because,
to be a little blunt about it,

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there is not much
especially remarkable

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about the 3D character
animation in Persona games.

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And I’m not meaning
that as an insult!

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For a franchise that has historically
had to make modest budgets

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and small dev teams go
a very very long way,

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I think they’ve done
a fantastic job.

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But if you actually look at most of the
game’s 3D character animation in isolation,

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very little of it stands out.

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Like, if you’re just looking at the 3D
characters in these story scenes,

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just their gestures and
their physical acting,

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nothing about these performances
is all that striking or impressive.

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BUT, reinforce those animations with
some gorgeous character portraits

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so that every line of dialog has some
more nuanced expressiveness attached,

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and suddenly it pops!

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And layered on top of that, you’ve got a
dialog box wobbling with chaotic energy,

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plus some extreme close-up splashes
to punctuate spikes in emotion…

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put all of that together and now you’ve
got a yourself a pretty dynamic scene.

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It’s the same with the
battle interface too!

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A lot of these battle animations are
actually pretty darned solid to begin with,

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but even so, none of this would
be nearly so visually striking

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without all those
2D hit effects,

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and those really stylish
screen wipes between turns,

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and also that INCREDIBLE animated menu
interface layered behind your character.

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The 3D character animation in
Persona is like a foundation layer,

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with all of the 2D art that actually
makes things pop built on top of it.

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The streamlined efficiency
of this animation

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approach is what
makes it possible

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for the Persona team to produce an
absurd quantity of story scenes.

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And because this game’s art
direction is so incredibly cohesive,

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this 2D/3D hybrid anime-infused aesthetic
far exceeds the sum of its parts.

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The character
animation in Persona

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may not have nearly the animation
fidelity of a Final Fantasy,

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nor stay as true to the anime
aesthetic as a Guilty Gear.

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And yet, these games still transcend their
budget limitations with overwhelming style.

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And I think that is very cool.

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A special thanks to Hank Kleinberg
for suggesting this topic,

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and for giving me an excuse to
listen to a LOT of Persona music.

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If you enjoyed this
animation breakdown,

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then consider hitting
that Subscribe button,

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maybe even that little bell
thingy if you’re feeling feisty.

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Or hey, you could consider
supporting the show directly

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like all these good
delinquents over here.

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Thank you for watching,
and I’ll see you next time.

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[music]