A talkative pigeon

[lacnunga]

There are some characters where giving them therapy and cleaning them up is the fanfiction equivalent of buying antique furniture and painting it white

[carco5a]

personally i’m a fan of when a story is like. the love was there. unfortunately. this all could have actually gone a lot easier for everyone if the love hadn’t been there but here we are

[copperfurredfox]

you can love someone and still murder them in cold blood without remorse btw!!! the two are not mutually exclusive and to suggest otherwise is a very heteronormative point of view!!!!

[movingdeactivating8910]

hesitations & white lies

[heizzer]

a lovely afternoon ( ´ ▽ ` )

[megaderping]

Something a lot of people mistakenly believe is that Akechi enjoys the work he does for Shido and that he takes the orders to kill without any resentment or regret. These text messages shed some light on the way he thinks and show that this is not actually the case. Unfortunately, these texts are entirely missable if you finish the treasure route to Sae's Palace too early. As a result, this crucial characterization is often overlooked and people take what they know about characters like Persona 4's culprit and Persona 3's traitor and assume that Akechi is playing it straight.

But even without these obscure texts, it's not like the game is subtle about this. Akechi's lack of freedom and agency is a recurring aspect of his character that people will often cast aside because it's much easier to boil him down to "crazy serial killer" than actually look at the complexity of his situation and his own victimhood.

Throughout his Royal confidant, Akechi's perfectly crafted mask cracks several times. Moments like this show him offering an out, even if he's MUCH happier if you don't consider it.

He doesn't WANT Joker to change. As much as he claims to hate Joker, he admires his convictions. Wishes he had what Joker had. Wishes he could have been more like him. See: the Gun About rank up where he mentions how he used to want to be a hero of justice.

The creepy smiles and shit you see on 11/20 and in parts of the engine room are another mask Akechi wears. Akechi ALWAYS swaps out his masks to best serve his situation. Yet he still tells Shido not to kill the thieves, that Morgana is just a cat, and is perfectly content to leave them alone, and after his fight in the engine room, when the mask literally breaks...

We see his regrets on full display. He isn't proud. He's done making excuses. All those little times the mask broke in the Royal confidant were ways to set up this moment. He genuinely cares SO much about Joker, but that caring was dangerous to his objectives, so he HAD to hate him. He HAD to want to kill him to achieve his objective, and yet...

He still cares. He's putting out spikes in third sem, no doubt because he suspects his own fate should they destroy Maruki's world, but...

[vashtijoy]

Oh my god thank you for this. I get so mad when people insist you should do the Palaces right away that I want to spit.

Not just Sae's Palace, but all the Palaces have these additional "prompt chats" buried in the game flow. They only play if you have not completed the infiltration. And yeah, sometimes they're boring, just "wow, we really should do that Palace, huh?"

But sometimes they're not. And these four in Sae's Palace are so critical. For instance, did you know that Akechi is systematically murdering people on the PT ranking list during the Sae's Palace mission?

There are a ton of references to this in October, actually, but they suffer from "having a mental shutdown" being translated as "losing their mind" or similar—a common error. But this is what the hysterical references to the PTs being murderers are all about—it's not just Okumura, it's that Akechi has been sent to whip up the public again by killing people listed on the Phan-Site.

And that's made explicit in this 11/3 chat, where Ryuji and Akechi use 殺す korosu, "to kill"—these people are being murdered. And there are a lot of them.

gasps for air

At some point I want to go into this but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T DO THE INFILTRATIONS RIGHT AWAY. Save them for the first day your playable confidants refuse to hang out with you—that way you have plenty of time and you don't sacrifice slots that you could have used to level a playable confidant.

[movingdeactivating8910]

It's impossible not to know just how impressive it is that Akechi got to where he was. His revenge plan not being something to be congratulated but his ability to become the famous ace detective still being extraordinarily impressive are two truths that can coexist. For him as a minor and an orphan, ESPECIALLY in japan, with absolutely zero support system and basically no privilege as a ground to stand on working his way up and building those connections inside the system he hated so much, is jack shit insane.

Like he said, he was extremely calculated about his life. I can't even imagine the scope of how much work and how hard he worked all. the. damn. time. empathizing yet again that someone coming from a background of nothing to getting to where he was is almost unheard of. No one but him knew Shido was his dad. Also it's easy to forget that while yes, the fabricated crimes he “solved” made him famous, that he couldn't have even gotten there in the first place without also doing actual detective work. He's done good work. The point of him is that he's exceptionally smart, but narrow-minded and dumb in a way that a child is. his revenge plan wouldn't have worked even without the slip of the "pancakes." Persona 5 puts a lot of emphasis on children, in fact it's the main root in the entire game, so it makes sense that the "villain's" fault is childish motivation.

And wrapping back around to “basically no privilege” instead of "none at all" is because he has 2 privileges: being a man and being attractive. He arguably wouldn't have gotten where he was if he was a girl, and while he could have gotten far if he was unattractive, his fame would be no where near the same. A lot of his fans were highschool girls who found him hot. I enjoy his character a lot in contrast to Sae, who is greatly affected by misogyny, a main factor in her being driven to the point of corruption herself. She is seeing Akechi, who is a lot younger, who came from nothing, getting more "progress" than she is. It’s very interesting.

ANYWAYS. refusing to recognize akechi as smart is very dumb when his smarts fighting with his childish side is very much his character. Dude his crash out in the engine room makes so much sense i would've crashed out even harder. For him to stand face to face with the guy who did everything faster than he did. who also came from injustice, yet had friends and a guide. for everything you've ever done in your life to not matter in that one, singular moment. for him to know that everything was useless, and deciding his death. "how? how does someone like you have things I don't?"

[sajou-rihito]

♧ authorized reprint for tumblr // artist:    メメ   /   p5 log

✿ please do not remove source link// edit  illustration // change caption // upload to other websites!

[shegs]

[meruz]

comic I made for SHOWTIME zine… I BELIEVE…all original orders have finally shipped!! yayy so I’m posting this before I forget. It’s a missing scene right before (Vauge P5R Spoilers) the infamous 2/2 conversation with Maruki.

[kohi-karasu]

interrogation room

[megaderping]

Something a lot of people mistakenly believe is that Akechi enjoys the work he does for Shido and that he takes the orders to kill without any resentment or regret. These text messages shed some light on the way he thinks and show that this is not actually the case. Unfortunately, these texts are entirely missable if you finish the treasure route to Sae's Palace too early. As a result, this crucial characterization is often overlooked and people take what they know about characters like Persona 4's culprit and Persona 3's traitor and assume that Akechi is playing it straight.

But even without these obscure texts, it's not like the game is subtle about this. Akechi's lack of freedom and agency is a recurring aspect of his character that people will often cast aside because it's much easier to boil him down to "crazy serial killer" than actually look at the complexity of his situation and his own victimhood.

Throughout his Royal confidant, Akechi's perfectly crafted mask cracks several times. Moments like this show him offering an out, even if he's MUCH happier if you don't consider it.

He doesn't WANT Joker to change. As much as he claims to hate Joker, he admires his convictions. Wishes he had what Joker had. Wishes he could have been more like him. See: the Gun About rank up where he mentions how he used to want to be a hero of justice.

The creepy smiles and shit you see on 11/20 and in parts of the engine room are another mask Akechi wears. Akechi ALWAYS swaps out his masks to best serve his situation. Yet he still tells Shido not to kill the thieves, that Morgana is just a cat, and is perfectly content to leave them alone, and after his fight in the engine room, when the mask literally breaks...

We see his regrets on full display. He isn't proud. He's done making excuses. All those little times the mask broke in the Royal confidant were ways to set up this moment. He genuinely cares SO much about Joker, but that caring was dangerous to his objectives, so he HAD to hate him. He HAD to want to kill him to achieve his objective, and yet...

He still cares. He's putting out spikes in third sem, no doubt because he suspects his own fate should they destroy Maruki's world, but...

[vashtijoy]

Oh my god thank you for this. I get so mad when people insist you should do the Palaces right away that I want to spit.

Not just Sae's Palace, but all the Palaces have these additional "prompt chats" buried in the game flow. They only play if you have not completed the infiltration. And yeah, sometimes they're boring, just "wow, we really should do that Palace, huh?"

But sometimes they're not. And these four in Sae's Palace are so critical. For instance, did you know that Akechi is systematically murdering people on the PT ranking list during the Sae's Palace mission?

There are a ton of references to this in October, actually, but they suffer from "having a mental shutdown" being translated as "losing their mind" or similar—a common error. But this is what the hysterical references to the PTs being murderers are all about—it's not just Okumura, it's that Akechi has been sent to whip up the public again by killing people listed on the Phan-Site.

And that's made explicit in this 11/3 chat, where Ryuji and Akechi use 殺す korosu, "to kill"—these people are being murdered. And there are a lot of them.

gasps for air

At some point I want to go into this but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T DO THE INFILTRATIONS RIGHT AWAY. Save them for the first day your playable confidants refuse to hang out with you—that way you have plenty of time and you don't sacrifice slots that you could have used to level a playable confidant.

[infiniwings]

xd

[infiniwings]

a slightly clearer image of medea i think？

and a ren（medea ver.）in akechi‘s dream which showed up after ren’s death in ep（in my imagination of course i‘ve been trying to write the scene i have in mind but wasn't good at actually writing things，and wasn't sure if it was okay to write a fanfic of a fanfic too（）

[infiniwings]

some crude drawings inspired by ch.5 in atott

[infiniwings]

some drawings of my thoughts on Medea wwww

really liked this persona akechi gets in EP，so i tried to design it‘s image for a bit。p1 kinda says how i got the idea and p2 is sort of a three-veiw drawing about Medea

（and Jormungand on the left corner but im sure i didn‘t get it right on this one nevermind）

hope it would not be too inappropriate？

ps. was imagining a vison of medea showing up behind akechi and gestures a hug，using her arms to surround him in some way during his boss fight when i drew this.

p.ps.the two look—like—wings something floating beside medea on p2 is referenced to the dragons dragging her chariot when she left jason

p.p.ps. sort of imagined medea‘s voice as a mixture of akc’s mom，isssiki，and ren（just being cruel sorry akechi i promise you are my favorite boy in p5）

[infiniwings]

some drawings of my thoughts on Medea wwww

really liked this persona akechi gets in EP，so i tried to design it‘s image for a bit。p1 kinda says how i got the idea and p2 is sort of a three-veiw drawing about Medea

（and Jormungand on the left corner but im sure i didn‘t get it right on this one nevermind）

hope it would not be too inappropriate？

and ouch i didn‘t find out that the words were blurry！

well here‘s the main idea：

1.as hereward‘s shape mostly was designed in a very robinhood like way，medea，being an alternative choice of akechi’s persona，might be very loki like.

2.so i checked out some of loki‘s memorable parts as for：a.the horns（which turned to goat horns on medea）b.the braids（turned to black veils on medea because i wanted to add mourning vibes）andc.no eyes，so medea’s actuall face is also covered with black veils too.

3.the color part！

i‘m not that sure about this but i do have thoughts.

the red on medea‘s hands and legs are meant to mimic blood stains，fire，and the design of arsene at the same time.

while the golden part wasmeant to resemble the golden fleece.

i suspected the other parts should be black and bonewhite but didn‘t got it that right.

ps. was imagining a vison of medea showing up behind akechi and gestures a hug，using her arms to surround him in some way during his boss fight when i drew this.

p.ps.the two look—like—wings something floating beside medea on p2 is referenced to the dragons dragging her chariot when she left jason

p.p.ps. sort of imagined medea‘s voice as a mixture of akc’s mom，isssiki，and ren（just being cruel sorry akechi i promise you are my favorite boy in p5）

i couldn‘t see this under the tags but i wanted you to see this so badly sorrryyyy if this disturbed you but @cookiecomics！ waving franticaly