Ren and the Phantom Thieves steal from the corrupt without apology, and the anime commits to that same audacity, plot, voice acting, Meguro's soundtrack all intact from the game, no compromise. The pacing cracks under the weight of 100 hours compressed to 26 episodes, but what survives is the core: a group of misfits who decided their city's rot was their problem to fix. Watch this if you need the story without the 80-hour time sink, or if you want to see these characters move and speak the way Atlus always imagined them.

Ren Amamiya transfers to Shujin Academy in Tokyo after he is wrongly given probation for stepping in to protect a woman from assault, and he moves in with family friend Sojiro Sakura. A strange app on his phone pulls him into the Metaverse, a realm of shadows that are twisted versions of people's true selves. There he awakens his Persona, an inner power that lets him fight them. Joined by other troubled students, he forms the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. The group targets corrupt adults, stealing the root of their warped desires so the wrongdoers repent and change. By day they live as ordinary high schoolers, and after hours they work as thieves across the city, while strange, unexplained crimes keep surfacing. As their fame grows, both praise and criticism follow, and Ren eventually ends up in custody, questioned by prosecutor Sae Niijima.