Persona 5: The Animation Episode 21 Recap/Review: 'You Can Call Me Noir'

Persona 5: The Animation continues on as The Phantom Thieves have to take down an evil CEO by the name of Kunikazu Okumura. They are not alone in their quest because they are joined by Kunikazu Okumura's own daughter named Haru.

At this start of this episode, Haru describes that her grandfather started the company years ago and he was a kind boss.

Even though he wasn't chasing profits, he made sure to keep prices low for customers and treated all of his employees well.

That said, being kind came at a price because Okumura Foods was starting to lose money and it was no longer able to run like this.

When Haru's grandfather retired, her father Kunikazu Okumura overtook the company and this is where things went downhill.

This episode has an anti-capitalist narrative because Kunikazu Okumura was chasing profits rather than treating his customers and own employees well.

Kunikazu Okumura did everything he could to make Okumura Foods earn as much money as possible. This includes paying employees a really low wage and requiring them to work long hours and treating them poorly.

Another thing he did was literally kill off his competitors so this is how Okumura Foods became one of the biggest food chains in all of Japan. The Phantom Thieves need to stop him to prevent more deaths from happening.

Much like the rest of the anime episodes, sadly the dungeon crawling in the cartoon is kept to a minimum.

The Phantom Thieves easily get to their goal in the cartoon and they did not have to travel the big labyrinth that was required if you played the actual video game.

Haru is becoming more powerful and is not afraid of facing against her own father. Kunikazu Okumura is wearing some type of Darth Vader inspired costume highlighting the fact that he's an evil powerful dictator.

Despite looking very tough, The Phantom Thieves are able to defeat Kunikazu Okumura's cognition and this means the real life character will have to confess his crimes.

The boss fights in the anime are very quick and aren't as long as they are in the actual video game. There's nothing wrong with the quick battles, but it just feels like the cartoon glosses over everything too quickly.

At the end of the episode though, Kunikazu Okumura holds a press conference where he's about to confess his crimes.

He apologizes for his crimes, but wants to reveal who is responsible for the mental shutdowns. Before we know who's behind everything, Kunikazu Okumura himself dies by his own mental shutdown in a very gruesome scene.

Kunikazu Okumura's death looks very bad because the people from Japan will think The Phantom Thieves are responsible.

More on this story will be shown next week so The Phantom Thieves may need to hide for a while to conceal their identities.

Anyway, Persona 5: The Animation is going at a very fast pace and it will be interesting to see if the cartoon is able to cover everything in the video game.

I'm hoping many of the major events aren't glossed over, but it looks like the show might have to cut a lot of content as there aren't many episodes left!

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 20 Recap/Review: 'My Name Is Beauty Thief' (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 19 Recap/Review: 'Aloha' (more).

A few more: Persona 5: The Animation Episode 18 Recap/Review: 'I'll Guide You To Victory' (more); Persona 5: The Animation Episode 17 Recap/Review: 'X Day' (more).