YMMV / Persona 4: Arena

• Anti-Climax Boss: The final boss, whether it was of Arcade Mode ^note Shadow Labrys or Yu or Story mode ^note either an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight with a controlled Labrys or a Mirror Boss, isn't any more difficult than anyone else you've fought up to that point. The SNK Bosses are instead reserved for the infamous Score Attack mode.
• Awesome Music: "Princess Amagi" and "Mass Destruction" stand out in particular, as well as "Seeker of Truth".
  • The OP song "Best Friends". It shows how Yu and company do struggle with facing the Shadows while having each other's back.
• Catharsis Factor: For some, it was satisfying to get the chance to beat the tar out of Teddie for his perverted antics and puns, Yosuke for his obnoxious behavior, or all of the girls for the Amagi Inn Incident.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • A majority of your online matches will be Yu, Yosuke, Chie, Akihiko, and Mitsuru. To put that in perspective, that's almost half the cast.
  • The tournament scene sees a lot of Aigis, Kanji, Teddie, and Naoto show up more often too. But the others are rather rare.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Teddie's M. Bison inspired attire has in some circles earned him the nickname "T. Bearson." He's also occasionally called "Captain Teddie" and "General Teddie" by some fans.
    • There's also Teddie Crusher, adding to the M. Bison similarities as it looks exactly like the Psycho Crusher. Also, Psycho Kumasher.
    • Teddie's exploitable screw attack is getting called "Bearserker Bearage" on a few forums.
  • Due to the obvious similarities to Iron Man, Aigis' instant kill is often just called "Proton Cannon" or "Superior Tech."
  • Senbonzakura for Yukiko's Instant Kill. Kageyoshi addendum optional.
  • Labby for Labrys, courtesy of Teddie.
    • Shabrys for Shadow Labrys (specifically, the version who uses Asterius).
    • Slabrys for the Shadow version of regular Labrys (the one who uses Ariadne).
• High-Tier Scrappy: Mitsuru was considered one of the most broken characters in the original Persona 4 Arena thanks to her massive range, extremely useful Furious Action, and the fact that her autocombo does a surprisingly high amount of damage. This garnered her quite a reputation among the competitive community, to the point that one player once decided to participate in a tournament with a special arcade stick that has only two buttons — one for an autocombo and one for a Furious Action — using Mitsuru as a joke. He got into the top 8, only being held from first place because she couldn't burst.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This piece of fanart made before Persona 4 Arena. And when the game did release, we were actually treated to a scene where Chie and Akihiko actually fought over a beef bowl.
• Ho Yay:
  • Akihiko and Kanji's pre-fight exchange.
    Akihiko: "... Hey, take off your clothes."◊
  • Yu's justification for not wanting to get Yosuke a new "nurse magazine" after Yosuke's mom burned the old ones. Yu would feel bad if he was popping into Yosuke's head instead every time Yosuke "uses it."
  • Adachi has a lot of this with Yu in Ultimax's scenarios.
  • Female examples:
    • More than a fair amount between Yukari and Mitsuru. When Mitsuru is captured, although she's concerned with her comrades in general, she specifically mentions Yukari and gives special emphasis when wishing for her safety. In the P3 epilogue of Ultimax, the 2 of them go on a date of sorts. Mitsuru aggressively rebukes of the advances of 2 skeezy guys who try to flirt with Yukari, and it's revealed that Mitsuru watches Phoenix Ranger Featherman R, just because Yukari is the star. Ultimax in general focuses hugely on their close relationship.
    • Though it's merely implied, according to Mitsuru following her battle with Naoto in Naoto's Story Mode, her illusion self said "things" about her body. Naoto promptly blushes and wonders just what the hell her illusion self said.
    • Chie thinks that Labrys is really cute, strongly desires to become her friend and protect her, and is generally really emotional about her and cries when she leaves. Maybe Chie just likes robot girls? Or it could just be that she's The McCoy of the group.
    • In Aigis' story mode, General Teddie shows interest in Naoto's measurements. Put two and two together and either Shadow Labrys was just being in character, or Labrys is a Covert Pervert.
    • Speaking of Aigis, Elizabeth seems incredibly interested in her...
    • One of Shadow Labrys' win quotes is calling her opponent 'cute...and weak'. She can say this to female fighters.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Chie the Hedgehog because of her theme sounding extremely similar to something you can find in said character's games. People then started liking the phrase GOTTA STEAK FAST.
    • Which became Hilarious in Hindsight now that Sega own Atlus.
  • Mitsuru's coat became a target of jokes that it was made from Koromaru since the game takes place multiple years after Persona 3 and it's unknown how old Koromaru was/is and he was unaccounted for in the vanilla version of the game. He made a proper appearance in Ultimax though, putting the joke to bed.
  • WATCH YA FEET!
  • MY ARMOR!
  • LET'S GO TEDDIE!
• Mis-blamed: Zen United and PQube received a lot of flack over the severely delayed European release, with fans accusing them of using the region lock as an excuse to put as little effort into getting the game out as possible. However, it subsided after it was revealed that the hold-up stemmed from Atlus/Arc Systems not supplying the European build of the game.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: A common complain of Fuuka in Persona 3 is how grating her English voice can be, from her Dull Surprise and Captain Obvious comments to her saying the same thing over and over again. The change in voice actress to Wendee Lee has made Fuuka sound more fitting to her character in addition to being more adorable and remove some of her detractors.
• Scrappy Mechanic: To say that European gamers despised the fact that the first game is the only region-locked PS3 game (combined with the EXTREMELY delayed European release) is an understatement.
• Spiritual Licensee: The gameplay is one to both BlazBlue and the first Jojo's Bizarre Adventure fighting game. The latter especially since it's hard to obtain through legal means because it got Screwed by the Lawyers.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Naoto's theme, "Seeker Of Truth" has a very similar beginning to that of "Tame A Bad Boy", from The King of Fighters XIII.
• Tear Jerker: Labrys' backstory, bar none. Which also makes her The Woobie. Especially when she is forced to destroy Unit #024.
• Unexpected Character: Labrys, who makes her debut in this fighting game, when her only previous appearance was from the Drama CDs of Persona 3.

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