Persona 5: The Animation Episode 16 Recap/Review: 'This place is my grave'

The Phantom Thieves finally meet Futaba in this week's episode, although she does not live a normal life like other teenagers.

She has huge social anxiety so she stays inside of her bedroom all day and all night long.

The Phantom Thieves have to change her heart so that she has the courage to go outside and lead a normal life like everyone else.

Futaba wasn't always a "shut-in" because she was a normal kid when her mother was still alive.

It was not until her mother's apparent suicide that made her go into deep depression. Not to mention the people around her at the time blamed her for the death of her own mother.

Without her Mom, Sojiro had to adopt her although she never goes outside or goes to school like everyone else. Instead, she spends her entire life just sitting behind a computer in her bedroom and is doing nothing much.

Futaba views her own bedroom like a tomb because she fears this is the only place she can be and it will be her final resting place.

The Phantom Thieves find her "palace" and it's in the middle of the desert inside of a huge Pyramid.

The end goal for the team is to release Futaba from her tomb so that she has the courage to help them fight off the Medjed hacker group.

While in the video game players had to solve a lot of puzzles and fight lots of enemies, here in the anime all of that is kind of glossed over.

I would have liked to have seen more scenes inside the actual palace, but instead the TV show doesn't show that much and concentrates more on character development.

It's just a minor gripe I have about this week's episode because Futaba's palace was one of the best ones to explore in the video game version of Persona 5.

It is a bit disappointing all of the puzzle solving isn't featured much on the TV show.

That said, in this episode we do get an idea of the past issues that Futaba had to experience after the death of her mother.

She has severe depression and this episode hits close to home mainly because I'm also going through my own mental health problems at the moment.

It's great to see Futaba is actually seeking more help in order to get better as a healthy support group is one of the best ways to overcome depression.

At the end of the episode, Futaba actually let's the Phantom Thieves inside her bedroom for the very first time. Now the team has to change her heart so that she no longer blames herself for her mother's death.

It looks like Futaba's story arc will not conclude until next week so we will have to wait and see what happens.

Although people that have played the game will know that there's more to the mother's death than meets the eye. There may be a hint that her Mom didn't commit suicide on purpose...

Anyway, viewers of the anime will find about this more in next week's episode.

The anime did not change many things from the video game so it's still following the same plot points. It's still cool to watch the anime though as it's less time consuming than playing the 90 hour long video game!

Wanna read more on this? Check these out: Persona 5: The Animation Episode 26 Recap/Review: 'I Won't Let It End Here' (Spoilers) (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 25 Recap/Review: 'Jealous Sinner' (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 24 Recap/Review: 'A Challenge That Must Be Won' (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 23 Recap/Review: 'How About A Deal With Me?' (more).

And here are some more related articles: Persona 5: The Animation Episode 22 Recap/Review: 'Is This Our Fault'? (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 21 Recap/Review: 'You Can Call Me Noir' (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 20 Recap/Review: 'My Name Is Beauty Thief' (more).

A few more: Persona 5: The Animation Episode 19 Recap/Review: 'Aloha' (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 18 Recap/Review: 'I'll Guide You To Victory' (more).