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Mienai wrote to inform me that his translation group, Gekkoukan High Scans, has two new releases today: Piece 02 and Volume 01 Complete (”Chapitre Un”).

You might remember a few days ago we wrote about GHS’s release of a translation of Sogabe Shuuji’s Persona 3 manga. Piece 00 (Prologue) and Piece 03 of the series were also discussed at that point, both of which were a joint release with Starry Heaven (headed by Cheebs). The groups have since split off, each handling the remaining chapters (and revisions of previous releases) on their own.

You can download each set of releases from Starry Heaven or GHS respectively. We will continue to post about any new developments from either team and wish them both the best. This site will be providing direct download mirrors for both releases, but (at this point in time, at least) the links will be listed solely on their web sites because they truly deserve the attention for every thing they’ve accomplished here thus far.

Thanks to both Mienai and Cheebs for their cooperation and work!

The Persona -trinity soul- web site continues to receive a slew of updates. New sections have been added, featuring character art and further details. The most significant addition is arguably the first trailer for the series. It is available under the “Special” section of the site, but it seems quite a few people are having issues streaming it properly (plus the page itself uses an ActiveX control that seems to put some browsers into an infinite loading loop).

As such, we’re providing the video for download, as either a .WMV or within a .ZIP file. Both contain the same video, which is a direct rip of the video available on the site currently.

Thanks a lot to QBasic for pointing out the trailer to us. Looks pretty promising, although many seem to be bummed out by the apparent lack of the evoker so prominently utilized in Persona 3.

Mienai also informed me that sakuraxsyaoran, a member of his Persona 3 LiveJournal community found some new information the theme song that will be used for the series. The song is entitled “Breakin’ Through” and is written by Yoshiharu Shiina (a member of surface) and composed/produced by Takuya Asanuma (former member of JUDY & MARY). The song will be sung by a contest winner named Siyuuhei Kita. You can read more about this on surface’s web site under news, assuming you know Japanese.

Big thanks to both of them for this information.

Edit: It came to my attention that the videos were not working. They should be fixed now, so please retry. Thanks!

yksehtniycul was nice enough to make a Digital Devil Database based klan in Shin Megami Tensei Online: IMAGINE. The name of the klan is DDDBジャンプ— and it can be searched for from the terminal in the city you start out in. While it only currently contains a handful of members, we obviously hope it will increase in size as time goes on. As is pointed out in the thread, the klan is largely to help people get started in the game.

If you would like to get more information or join up, please visit the thread on the subject. Any other questions can be posted in the new section for the game on our forums. The game is free to play, although you must be able to read Japanese (or at least able to memorize what button does what, like I do).

Big thanks again to yksehtniycul for all of this.

A few days ago we featured some basic news on Persona -trinity soul-, clumsily translated from the official site. We detailed some basic information on the Kanzato (also apparently translated as Shingou) brothers that star in the series, but thanks to some wonderful help from Cheebs, we also have a better translation of the remaining plot information.

It apparently opens up with a bizarre scandal that strikes Ayanagi City. The crew of a submarine suddenly disappears and for the first time in 10 years people found themselves again concerned over the Apathy Syndrome. Around this same time, dead students with their corpses cruelly turned inside-out began to appear. Ryou’s police force is secretly following these events. His two younger brothers also get involved, resulting in Shin’s summoning of a Persona. The description ends with the ever-mysterious “The gears controlling the fate of these brothers have now begun to turn…”.

Since then even more information has been added, including a listing of the voice actors for the main characters:

• Shin Kanzato (the middle brother and Persona user) will be voiced by Nobuhiko Okamoto. He has previously been cast in anime such as Sola and Ghost Hunt.
  

• Jun Kanzato (the youngest brother) will be voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro. She has done voice over work for both anime and games, including the roles of Elizabeth and Chidori in the Japanese version of Persona 3. Interestingly, she has also done English voice over work for anime released in the West, such as Di Gi Charat: The Movie.

• Ryou Kanzato (the eldest brother and police officer) will be voiced by Takehito Koyasu. An extremely prolific Japanese seiyū (voice actor), Koyasu has lent his voice to anime including One Piece, Neon Genesis Evangelion and others far too numerous to list. Of particular interest to Megaten fans is the fact that he voiced Tatsuya in the Japanese Persona 2 titles.

• Megumi Tino will be voiced by Kana Asumi, a female singer and seiyū who has appeared in anime such as Bokurano.

• Kanou Marimoto will be voiced by Mai Nakahara, a female seiyū who has done work for both anime and games including .hack//Legend of the Twilight Bracelet.

At this point it is still unclear who the final two characters are in terms of the story. It’s likely the site will be updated with this information before the premiere of the series, however.

Again, big thanks to Cheebs for help translating a good deal of this properly.

A group by the name of Gekkoukan High Scans has taken on scanning and translating Shuji Sogabe’s Persona 3 manga series. It closely follows the events of the game, although it seems certain liberties are taken (earlier appearances of Aigis, for example) to help enhance the storytelling. Currently three pieces are available, all of which are up for download through their site. They’ve done a really nice job with them.

GHS has a surprisingly large staff; we wish them all luck with this project and any others they might take on. Thanks a lot to the founder of the project, Mienai Kitsune, for pointing out their work so far. Be sure to check it out.

We first reported on the new Persona anime, -trinity soul- a few days back. Emilo points out that it now has its own dedicated website.

The site features a brief description of the show. As mentioned before, the series takes place ten years after what happens in Persona 3 on the PS2. The anime appears to focus on a new set of characters: Shin Kanzato (a 17 year old student), his younger brother Jun (a 14 year old student) and their eldest brother Police Chief Ryou (28 years old).

The site also reveals some more of the staff involved. Makoto Matsumoto is directing the series, Taku Iwasaki is responsible for the music, Yuriko Ishii is working on character designs based on Shigenori Soejima’s original designs and the animation itself is being handled by A-1 Productions.

We’ll be sure to let you know if there are any new developments.

A couple of weeks back, Famitsu unveiled the first information on a Persona 3 prequel for mobile phones. Entitled Aigis: The First Mission, the game stars Aigis and appears to deal with the specific events that led to the Shadow’s domination of the area years prior. The game is an action RPG; screen shot captions state that the game still utilizes SP and Personae summoning for attacks. It features characters both new and familiar to those who have played through both Persona 3 releases. The title was released for download on November 14th, 2007.

While it appears the game is available for all mobile phones (including Softbank 3G terminals), the title seems to be focused on Yahoo!’s mobile network. For those interested (and obviously living in Japan), Famitsu gives the following directions: enter the phone menu, pick RPG, then Megami Tensei and then “Aigis THE FIRST MISSION”. The game costs 525 yen (about $4.75 USD) , plus tax.

The following screens are from the Famitsu entry:

Thanks to QBasic for pointing out the original Siliconera entry about the game. You can view his original thread on the subject here, which includes some additional images thanks to Emilio.

There’s some exciting things afoot for this website. With the addition of new staff (and all of those who offered to help, thank you! I’ll be in touch soon) I’ve found a lot more motivation. It’s amazing what a little help can do.

One of the things this is leading to is a complete overhaul of the backend of the website. The benefit for every one is that it will be completely and totally controlled from a control panel, which is not 100% true of the site currently (aside from news posts and some custom work done by Alan). The hope for this is that, essentially, anyone can be taught to update every function of this site with extremely minimal, basic HTML knowledge (and even most of that can be copied and pasted from example elsewhere on the site).

This should lead to far quicker updates (particularly in terms of the game pages as they’ll be the most affected by this), amongst other perks. The benefit for users beyond this is a lot of neat little options that normally haven’t worked like I would have liked. This includes a full site search, RSS feeds for any search you like (so, let’s say you really care about Yukari, search her out and subscribe to the resulting feed and you’ll be told every time something about her pops up anywhere on the site), larger thumbnail images all across the site, video adjustments (embedded and downloadable) and so forth.

I know we’re coming off a pretty recent redesign (although it will likely follow this current art style very closely), which makes this somewhat of a surprise (and perhaps even an annoyance to some). However, I bring this up largely because 1.) I want to reiterate this site isn’t dead (I’ve even been offered help by a few people on the Demonary… yes it is real, Alan finished the coding on it several months ago) and 2.) there will probably continue to be few news updates until that time comes.

Thanks a lot for your patience and understanding during this, but it will definitely be worth the time (I’m aiming for December at this point). I’ve worked very hard on this site over the years, I’m proud of that work and I hope to improve upon it significantly in the months to come.