Hetare King

Early Persona 5 is pretty rich in set pieces as it slowly introduces its many systems, but it does open up quite a lot after a while. It’s a content-rich 100+ hour long game, it kind of has to. It still has a lot of cutscenes even after that, but they’re mostly of the gamey yapping portraits kind, with cinematic cutscenes and anime FMVs left for climactic moments.

Persona 3 and 4 are similar in style, though not quite as cinematic, and you get to the meat of the games faster.

Persona 1 and 2 are completely different beasts, and what you dislike about Persona 5 so far will have no bearing on whether you’ll like those. The most modern versions are on PSP, however.

As for other JRPGs on Switch, from the same developer there’s Shin Megami Tensei V and the remaster of III. Even though they’re also from Atlus, they very much go in the opposite direction of Persona and are very stoic games where it’s mostly just you, the environment and the systems, and cutscenes are far and between.

Someone else mentioned the Trails games and I’ll second that. Like the Persona, they’re very story-rich, but not as budget-rich as Persona 5, which puts constraints on how that story is told. Also, if you like action RPGs, from the same developer (Falcom) there’s the Ys games. Ys: The Oath in Felghana is pretty much the pinnacle of the genre and is pretty short, so it’s a good snack between bigger games.

For DVDs it wasn’t uncommon for the Japanese releases to have higher video quality because they typically had fewer episodes on one disc, but for BDs, if there is any difference at all, it’s probably not worth the additional cost.

That leaves bonus features and packaging. Often Japan-exclusive bonus features aren’t terribly interesting, just stuff like audio commentary by the voice actors (if you’re lucky, staff like the director might show up too), but occasionally you get things like the famously overpriced Nichijou BDs, which are more bonus feature than show. It’s also still the only way of getting the soundtrack of that show, I think. Some also come with feelies, like each Puniru BD box came with a quarter of a deck of cards, a post card and some booklets.

Packaging-wise, there’s generally just more of it and with made-for-purpose art. While the days of two episodes per disc are over, it’s also not like modern US or European releases where they squeeze as many discs in the space of a standard case as they can. Some releases have special packaging, like the gorgeous CITY BDs, which is also not very common anymore for anime over here. Occasionally the opposite does happen, though, like the YAT Anshin! Uchuu Ryokou BD box that looks like a cheap VHS case and uses a literal screencap from the show as cover art, but on the whole if you like having your favourite show have some actual presence on your shelf and maybe be in a nice box, the Japanese release is often your only option nowadays.

English subtitles on Japanese releases, while they do occasionally happen, aren’t very common. If I recall correctly, the Nanoha movies had English subtitles of mixed quality and the Heybot BD box had subtitles in several languages… for only the first episode.

I think synthetic fuels might be good for situations where there are no feasible alternatives for now, like airplanes. But while they may not increase the net amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, they would still produce pollution locally, so I don’t think they would be desirable for things like cars. Also, we need to reduce the number of cars irrespective of whether they’re electric or not (for many reasons, but in the context of climate change, because manufacturing a car also generates a lot of greenhouse gasses and is an inefficient use of resources), so I don’t think that trying to soothe people’s irrational fears* by having synthetic fuels as an in-between so that they can ultimately be convinced to go electric is the right approach. In a world where most cars are capital assets instead of many people’s sole lifeline out of suburban purgatory, it would be a lot easier to say “you’ll use an electric car from now on and you’ll LIKE it!”, so I think it would it would be more fruitful to try to get closer to that world.

But my impression of this research is that the goal of it is having something that can be installed in people’s homes. I doubt we’re ever going to be producing synthetic fuels in people’s homes at a large scale.

*EDIT: I think I came off as too dismissive here, so I’d like to rephrase this and expand upon it. For the vast majority of people, range anxiety is an unfounded fear. That doesn’t change that the fear is real, but it does mean that it can dispelled by having a sufficient number of people in their community show that it is unfounded. But having synthetic fuels as an off-ramp, even though it can at best be a temporary measure that still has many of the problems of fossil fuels, would significantly slow down this process. There are, of course, also rational reasons not to get an EV; not being able to afford one, living somewhere with a flaky electrical grid etc., but those are things that need to be solved regardless and the very institutions that are incentivising EV can do something about (of course, the best reason to not get an EV is to not need a car to begin with).

The kind of genetic engineering it would take for humans to be able to transform into other animals is very much in the realm of science-fiction, after all.