Maruki's Reality: the Misogyny Within It
I've come to a realization through my replaying of third semester, and that is that Maruki's reality will inevitably, cater towards the men.
How so? Maruki in the third semster is slowly once again letting Mementos fuse with reality, and it will fully fuse on the day of Febuary 3rd. In Lavenza's words, "he still continues to actualize the world of the masses as a whole." In the meantime, before the full fusion of the worlds, he is catering to individuals desires, which creates contradictions. That is his main flaw in his work, the fact that his reality will contradict itself on itself over and over until it falls.
Mementos is a place where the desire and cognition of the general public takes form, as we know. It is built off the reality that we see as our true reality. The facts we hold as true, or a popular thought society shares, are true in Mementos.
Where am I going with this? Well, misogyny is inside every crevice of our society. It bleeds through every social construct. If misogyny is something so grand in our world, something we are aware is true, then Mementos contains that misogyny, holding the "Man above anyone else," as fact. Men's voices are the loudest in society, so they are the loudest in Mementos. Not to mention, the view of women that the general population of men has, from the worst man to the kindest man, will still outweigh women's voices. The kindest man is not exempt from misogyny.
So Maruki's reality once fused with Mementos, will still have misogyny, because it's catering to the desire of men. Maruki fulfills desire. Whether that desire is morally good or bad, it doesn't matter, as long as everyone is happy. And the concept of man, desires to be above women.
We see several instances of this in the game. And I want to preface first, that I am not saying men aren't also changed in this reality to appease someone else. The women's desires are also fulfilled. This is just a showing of the fact that the desire of men is more prevalent.
One of the most disturbing ones being in NPC dialogue between two "pick up artists," who suddenly are able to obtain women.
To clear some things up first:
The women they are speaking of cannot be fake people. Maruki has never placed any shadows or cognitions inside his reality. The only people he has added to the world are the deceased, who are accounted as fully alive.
It could be argued they were planted with fake memories of getting girls, however, we more so see the removal of memories instead of fake ones in people. Maruki changes cognition, but that cognition in turn changes reality. We are constantly hearing NPC's changing jobs, moving houses, abrupt career and hobby changes, abusive families becoming nice, friends and family getting back together, etc. People are constantly being ripped from the path they planned on, and being put onto another one. It is not far out there at all to say that it's extremely more likely the cognition of the women were changed to like the two men's romantic interest.
No, the women originally would not have wanted this. It is true Maruki's reality is everyone's supposed ideal reality, however, people are constantly being warped and changed to fix the contradictions of individual desire. The reality is actively changing the wants of people. If the women's cognitions weren't changed to like it, the men would've been more successful on their advances before.
This singular interaction reveals a lot to us. That people's wants can be changed. That shitty desires are still granted. Getting women to appease them makes them happy, so they are granted that.
It also implies a much darker, possible thing that very much wouldn't be a reach in this reality. If women's cognitions can easily be changed to want men's advances, then that means sex, too. Women's consent towards romance and sex is non-existent.
The little speech bubbles of the NPCs that pop up on screen use she/her way, way more than they use he/him. A lot of the time, the gender is not revealed through speech bubbles when they are talking about a person or themselves, but when it is, the ratio of women is far more than men.
Is this intentional? I couldn't say, but regardless of intention, it's there, canon within the story, so intention doesn't mean much.
This information weirdly has a common theme: of women suddenly getting closer to people they weren't before, or becoming 'nicer' to people they weren't before.
And the maid cafe exchange is interesting, because its implied the girl suddenly started working there when she did not originally, nor does it seem that she would have wanted to work there originally. Yet, she describes it as the best job she's ever had. Please correct me if I am wrong, since I am not completely well-versed on the Japanese culture of maid cafe's, however reading up on it, it's a business that is easily exploitative. They are often managed by men, and they often run with the underlying misogyny of women being submissive and "serving."
Point is- these all share the same moral of these girls becoming "submissive" to whoever is speaking's desire. The general desire that men want women easy, and nice. It's disturbing.
Here's another interesting NPC interaction:
Now, this one's a little different, because it's obvious the man's cognition has been changed, and the woman is confused by it. We also cannot really tell if his cognition has been changed to appease her want of going to Tokyo. But if you want my interpretation, I don't think that is the case. If her desire was being fulfilled to make her truly happy, it would be strange for her to act weirded out and confused. When people's wants are fulfilled by the reality, they often don't question it, because why would they? They are in bliss. When we see NPCs question the world, it is often the person witnessing the person who has had their desire fulfilled who is questioning what the hell is happening. And the statement of "You like it over there," instead of "You like it over there, don't you?" makes me think this is the man's desire that he is deciding she wants too.
Another showing of women's consent being nonexistent, and their desires being favored towards the men, is the unused harem Valentine's day in Maruki's reality. You can watch it: here.
It is very unsettling and weird. No one acts like themselves. Every single one of them has had their cognitions changed to be okay with Joker cheating on them, instead of getting angry like they originally would. They aren't bothered by it at all, they don't even bat an eye towards it. The cognitions of what, ten women, changed to appease the singular man? Willingly letting themselves get disrespected? The fact that they are pushing to give joker more chocolate after he already said he was full is unnerving. The desperation to make him happy, to appease what he wants, constantly being like "Is that good? Is that enough? Do you want more? I can give you more."
I've been told that P4's harem ending "punishes" the player for it, so I really have no doubt this was supposed to be in the same realm. The purposeful unease that all the girls have zero voice at all.
I also want to bring up Maruki and Rumi.
I'm putting a disclaimer on this that Maruki truly, genuinely loved Rumi. He is also not directly appeasing men's desires over women's.
But something I find worth of value here, is pointing out that he decides right in this very moment, that what he thinks is in her best interest. Rumi loved Maruki, and he is ripping away that happiness from her "for her own good." This follows the theme of people not having a choice, not having consent about what they want. Him deciding to stray away from her life was both selfless and selfish.
He holds Rumi to this ideal. After all, she was the person that made him want to do all this, that he wanted to do all of this for her. But at the same time, he never truly told her what he was doing. Just that he's going "to make her happy, going to make it better." I think that if Rumi knew what Maruki wanted to do, she'd slap him to hell and back. Say to him that she can get through the hardship of the past, that she wants to get through it and love him. Maruki literally changed her as a person fundamentally, with her not having the memories that make her, her. He also sees her as his "Eve" if the statue of Rumi holding an apple in his "garden of eden" in his palace is anything to go by. An ideal of grand love, and grand selfishness to do what he wants.
There's also something to say about how maruki's first test of his actualization was a vulnerable teenage girl who just went through something traumatic. I mean, he outright says that she's not strong mentally.
Sumire never outright said "I want to be Kasumi" until Maruki pushed her in that direction with his questions. She said "I think things would've been better if I was Kasumi." That is when he started pushing the agenda that it's okay to want to be another person, and manipulating her.
If his client was a teenage boy, would he have done the same thing? Yes. So again, it is not direct misogyny from him, but a cycle that happens over and over again, nevertheless.
After all, he manipulated Ren so bad that Ren didn't even suspect that Akechi could've been a desire of his, despite the absurd situation, until he was told. His heart was weak, and he was just happy Akechi was there. I am bringing them up just to solidify that Maruki's fault is not directly favoring someone over the other, but that he didn't think like, literally anything through, leading to his reality unintentionally favoring people over the other and granting unmoral desire.
TLDR if Mementos holds misogyny as a truth and wishes are granted off of the desires in cognition than if a man and a woman's wishes contradict each other then it is likely that the man's desire will win out. And we have proof of this already happening in third sem, before the full fusion.
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