In previous Persona 4 Adachi posts you noted that he was of a specific generation (you had a special name for it but I can't remember it now) and that this contributed to his entitlement issues regarding his victims. Can you expand on this and what it means for him? From what I gather he was in the generation that was about to enter the work force when the 90s economy crashed but I'm not 100% sure?
Exactly! What I am talking about, is the effects of the Japanese Asset Price Bubble and the so-called “Lost Decade” that resulted of it.
The details are very complex, so I can’t go in very deeply right now, but basically, during the 80s, thanks to some fortunate alignments in international currency trends, Japan’s economy was booming and asset speculation became extremely popular with the country’s population as a ways of accumulating a lot of money very quickly. People would buy assets as their life ensurance, companies would base their finances entirely on them, etc.
This gave rise to/stabilized a culture, where “lifetime employment” was seen as the norm, unemployment was very low and it was believed that as long as you just graduate a good college you’re *determined* to have a comfortable living for the rest of your life. This mindset, again, gave rise to a nation of soccer moms (and dads) who conditioned their kids to do nothing but focus on studying, studying, studying all day, because, hey, once you got a job, you never have to worry about anything in your life and can chill anyway, kid!
Of course, as things tend to do, this eventually escalated past the point of no return. The bubble popped, and Japan’s economy dipped tremendously.
As a result of that, all these kids who’d been hounded about with the promise of eternal job security were now left standing on the shambles of a world view built on broken promises. Not only did many adults who had invested their entire fortunes in assets commit suicide, young high school and college graduates were barely off any better. These kids had to spend the 90s slowly but surely realizing their were raised to live a pipe dream and, well, yeah. It mentally destroyed many of them.
Adachi is one of these kids. As his social link makes clear, his mother’s upbringing of him not only lead into him having an existential crisis after losing his position at the metropolitan police force and being demoted, it also left his emotional growth severely stunted and had him fail to develop any social skills whatsoever, in a world that now required such skills more than ever.
This is why especially in Japan, so many players who were “90s kids” find him so relatable. Because many have been have been through this sort of premature midlife crisis and can imagine how they might have ended up just as insane as him if they hadn’t learned how to deal with the stress from it their own way (if they *did* learn to do that.)
areudirty
gummygunk
germansingergirl
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
ellievsbear
amandla
theartofmadeline
gamechangershow
