Two avid fans of Persona 4 have been working on a "non-parody, musical version" of the game for the past three years, and they've begun to release a few recordings of their work on the web.
The sibling duo of Jake and Gina Smith, who refer to themselves as "a young song writer and an amateur lyricist," respectively, call their production the Persona 4 Musical Project. As of mid-November, they had most of the songs "plotted, planned and almost-polished," according to Gina Smith. Rough cuts of some of the songs, with Jake Smith performing all the parts, are available on their Tumblr page.
According to an update posted on Dec. 18, the team has "tracked down a number of rather remarkable vocalists to cover all of the show's parts." At this point, they're still hoping to make an actual theater production out of it. "The original plan was to gather some local performers and put on a concert version of the show," said Gina Smith today on the project's forums, "to finalize the staging and to make video recordings so that people could see what we were working on.
"Past that...well, we really had not planned that far," she said, adding that she and her brother were surprised by the positive reception they received from other Persona 4 lovers.
But without a real budget, she acknowledged that "an online release would be both easier and more feasible monetarily," especially since it would be difficult to find actors who both resemble the game's characters and could sing the songs in a stage production.
"The truth is that some form of audio production will probably, ultimately, be the form that the show takes."