Persona Super Live 2022!

Hello dear readers and welcome to Shoot the Rookie! This week I’m doing something a bit different. Instead of focussing on a video game or anime, I’m going to be talking about the live concert event – Persona Super Live 2022 – which took place in the Makuhari Messe event hall in Chiba over the 8th and 9th of October, and streamed online internationally. Come join me to find out what I made of the event!

Announced as part of the Persona 25th anniversary celebrations, this concert was the latest in a number of concerts that have taken place dedicated to the music from the series. Predominantly featuring music from Persona 3, 4 and 5, this time it took place over two days and featured a number of notable musicians and guests.

It was announced a short time after the event that it will be released as a blu-ray in spring 2023, so to help you decide if you wanna buy it, here are my impressions of the shows!

Day 1 (October 8th 2022)

Day 1 was all about Persona 3 and Persona 5 Royal, with Yumi Kawamura, Lotus Juice and Lyn Inaizumi starring on vocals alongside the Persona band, who are a group of incredible musicians. Shoji Meguro, the composer of this awesome collection of music was there playing guitar too! Having not played P5R, many of the songs from that were new to me and didn’t really stand out that much, but there were also versions of a few songs from the base game such as Rivers in the Desert and Last Surprise, and it finished on a real high with a celebratory, bombastic performance of Life Will Change.

Lyn is an absolutely incredible performer, with a voice and style matched by few, but day 1 perhaps belonged to the singers of the Persona 3 music, with its darker feel and rap vibe. I was blown away by Yumi Kawamura’s breathless performance of Memories of You, but my absolute standout song the incredibly fun and ridiculous Our Moment, which comes from Persona 3 Dancing and features Lotus Juice at his best.

The show also had a cool DJ set featuring (I think) music from the older games, and various very silly things like cosplay dancer versions of many of the main characters from 3 and 5. Although the cosplay thing is largely quite funny, there was also an extremely impressive interpretative dance sequence focusing on the plight of P3’s Shinji. If you are familiar with the game you can probably imagine that it was quite an intense watch!

Day 2 (October 9th 2022)

After the jubilant end to day 1, the second day sent me on another emotional rollercoaster with songs from Persona 4 and various incarnations of Persona 5. Although I enjoyed the Persona 4 stuff a lot, and the singer Shihoko Hirata performed wonderfully, particularly on the songs that were closer to a rap style, day 2 was Lyn’s day.

I knew pretty much every song she sang on day 2, and even though she sang it on day 1, Rivers in the Desert was a big highlight the second time. That said, there were A LOT of highlights. It was fantastic, and a little surprising to me, to see songs from Strikers, Persona 5 Dancing and the theme from the anime played. It was largely those songs which really blew me away on day 2, with Break in to Break Out and Daredevil my absolute favourites.

Again there were dancing sequences, this time featuring a super impressive fight between P4’s Adachi and Yu, and the instrumental performances by the band were truly awesome.

Final Thoughts

If the ending to day 1 was an expression of excitement, the ending of day 2, an emotional performance of P5’s closing theme Hoshi To Bokura To had the same devastating sense of loss and finality as when it plays in the game. Whilst you never really want to hear it because it means its all over, it was simply the perfect end to an incredible event which left me devastated and overjoyed at the sheer power the music from these games holds over me, and so grateful for all of the amazing performances that made it happen. It is unlikely I’ll ever get the opportunity to attend an event like this, but if I could I would without question!

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So there we have it! My review of the Persona Super Live 2022 concerts is complete. But what did you think? Did you tune into the event? Maybe you’ve watched one of the previous iterations? Let me know below in comments and don’t forget to join me next time for more anime and video game chat!

Thanks for reading,

Pix ‘Party Over Here’ 1001