🌸🧸🌸

Twitter: @Milkshake6814 💜🖤🩶🤍

[p5x-theories]

Now I know the game is keeping it under tabs of the characters' Arcana, but in regards to the main cast, what one would say is Motoha is the closest to given she's like a mix of Ann & Ryuji?

Now in theory, I would assume since the main cast (Wonder, Ruferu, Motoha, Shun, Riko and possibly Aran & Ikenami) are weird equivalents to the P5 playable characters that would probably share their own Arcanas, just with Motoha it's a little hard for me to tell with her × ×

I'll be honest, I don't think the game's just keeping the Arcana under wraps, I've kind of lost all hope they'll even have Arcana, heh. But it is fun to speculate about what Arcana would fit the characters, anyway!

My personal feeling on the matter is that Motoha feels more like a Chariot to me than a Lovers, in terms of which Arcana would suit her. Since Tomoko is kind of an "extra" Confidant, being the Shiho equivalent when Shiho herself wasn't a Confidant, I tend to think of Motoha as the Chariot, and Tomoko as the Lovers. Though I'm admittedly not sure Lovers actually fits Tomoko quite as well as the more classic Lovers characters...? But that's just how my brain works, I guess, heh.

[p5x-theories]

@pantiesinabox And you didn't think to mention this until now?? Translating those files is like looking for a needle in a haystack, I haven't had the time to go through them one by one and look for anything interesting! (Not mad, genuinely shocked. I'd given up hope??)

Okay, okay, I looked through the files. Not everyone has an Arcana listed, but:

Motoha does appear to be Strength (力量)

Ruferu looks to be Hope (希望)

Yukimi looks to be Judgement (裁决)

Seiji is listed as "Freedom" (自由)

Kotone is listed as "Glory" (荣耀)

Interestingly, Joker seems to be listed as "Trickster" (诡骗师) instead of Fool

Joker's also apparently listed twice, but the second one uses the name 七濑基良, and a single line instead uses the codename TL_UI_Thief_doctor, so this may actually have been the beginnings of them implementing Doctor. If so, that's likely actually his name? I'm having trouble getting any information on the second character in the name, though, so I'm not sure how the name would be read

Note that this is from the data back in Version 1.3.1, so some characters weren't even listed (Phoebe, Vino, Chord). Riko, Shun, Reo, Kayo, Yaoling, Tomoko, YUI, Kiyoshi, Toshiya, Minami, Puppet, and Haruna were all listed, but their Arcana was left blank.

My suspicion with the unfamiliar ones ("Freedom" and "Glory") is that the devs were trying to avoid duplicate Arcana? Considering it was only the original three Phantom Idols and two early story teammates that had Arcana, it's very possible they started out by giving characters Arcana, then stopped assigning them once the game's plan pivoted to be a new story.

[milkshake-999]

Why are there 3 monitors behind the couch??

[milkshake-999]

Happy Father’s Day to all Dads except Ikutsuki!

[milkshake-999]

‼️ATTENTION P5X PLAYERS‼️

YOU CAN GET FREE 10 DAILY META JEWELS AT PAULOWNIA MALL

[p5x-theories]

Fleuret's redrawn portraits (these are from v3.0.1, but I'm not sure if they were redrawn sooner)! His new base uses the same expression pieces as his real-world portraits, and generally seems to match them a bit better. This does mean his portraits no longer have slit pupils, though :(

[milkshake-999]

Short-hair Seiji edit I made (left)

[milkshake-999]

They were going to use Sho Minazuki for human transplants…he was just a child🥺

[milkshake-999]

YOU WILL EAT ZE SHO PASTA

YOU WILL BE HAPPY

[milkshake-999]

RARE SHO MINAZUKI MERCH

[milkshake-999]

ZEN PFP YOU ARE AWESOME OMG

THANK YOUUU😊

[milkshake-999]

P5X tier list based on who ate pizza

[milkshake-999]

Part 3 of assigning Pokémon to the thieves! (Pt.2)

[the-weird-otaku]

hi!!’ I see that you like Sho minazuki!! If you like making headcanons, what are some of your favorite headcanons for him that youd be comfy sharing? Thanks! Great to see the Sho fandom is still alive :)

"Like" is an understatement lol

Sorry for taking so long, I wanted to gather as much as I could (I forget every single thought I've ever had when asked).

I mainly have stuff for post-Ultimax because if shitlus isn't gonna give him a future, I am. Leaving out all of my yume stuff because I doubt that’s what you’re here for.

Methinks he should have freckles, but they only show up after the events of Ultimax because he finally gets some sunlight

Travels around Japan for a couple of years

Eventually returns to the safehouse in Inaba, fixes it up, and becomes Daidara's apprentice (redhead + cross scar duo)

Blacksmith Sho is just a cute concept to me, he gets to interact with weapons in a healthier way alongside a trustworthy adult

Like he doesn't need to work due to the money left behind by Ikutsuki but it gives him a sense of purpose

One day Kanji and idk Naoto or something decides to pay Daidara a visit, while Naoto is looking at the wares she hears "woah Daidara, when'd you get younger?" from Kanji, she looks over and has the most awkward silence as she makes eye contact with Sho (it works because Kanji never actually meets Sho in the story while Naoto does) this is getting way too long ANYWAYS

Stupidly good at fighting games, is a menace throughout arcades in Japan

Autism (this is me projecting)

His birthdate's June 13th, 1991

Nailbiter

Eventually gets a motocycle license, it gives him a form of freedom (and also makes him look cool), a car is too much hassle

No sense of personal space

Picks up journaling and addresses all entries to Minazuki

His social media posts would have no personal information and all be pics of sites he visits during his travels with no caption interjected with the most insane rants possible, there is no inbetween, juxtaposition maximum

This guy was in tears laughing when he happened to see the entire Investigation Team in the Love Meets Bonds Festival ads

While he still isn’t too fond of the Shadow Ops, he does use them for shit like free therapy because since Mitsuru is trying to make amends (Labrys is the one who made him actually go)

Inherited all of Minazuki’s memories memories, skills etc.

Yeah I think that's what I got for now.

[milkshake-999]

Assigning Pokémon types to the thieves!

[milkshake-999]

Moshi Moshi!! ^_^

Who could he possibly be calling???

[systematicallycapricious]

In [Ch30 of the manga] (where Sho gains his face scar), as I've recently realized; Minazuki is showing Sho a lot of memories that Sho didn't have access to before that point. …Or, at least, it's a feasible way to interpret that scene, I think.

Despite the nightmare that Sho has in Ch1, going off of Sho's reaction to Minazuki sharing the memories of his Persona awakening, Sho might not have yet had access to those memories himself. (Reminder: timeline-wise, Ch30 takes place before Ch1.) Sho remembers the aftermath when Ikutsuki told him that 'he had been possessed by an evil spirit, and that he needed surgery to remove it', but the actual attack itself? That seems to surprise and distress him. Though, perhaps Sho just didn't know that it was Minazuki who did that, but had some semblance of memory access… I haven't quite parsed it out. (It would be interesting, though, if Sho only started having that nightmare after Minazuki shared the memories with him…)

Next up, the memory of being on the operating table. Minazuki was the one conscious for the surgery that intended to eradicate his personhood. Not Sho. …If one pairs this up with Sho's quote from the EpP3 of the game, “I took the medicine Ikutsuki gave me, went into a machine, and…”, it might imply that Ergo either somehow knocked-out Sho specifically, or Minazuki took front from Sho during the surgery prep in an attempt to try and fight back or protect Sho. Lamentably, there isn't enough information to go off of to draw any definitive conclusions on that front.

(…Though, again, you could also theoretically take Sho's reaction of abject terror to the memory of a scalpel coming at his face to be how he reacted at the time, and Minazuki speaking of it just happening to trigger the memory into Sho's conscious processing. It just seems awfully suspicious that the memories come up as Minazuki is trying to give Sho context that Sho was being oblivious to… Especially since that's a common occurrence for protective headmates!)

Ikutsuki's death report was most likely actively shown to Sho on the actual laptop (especially since we see it flung onto the floor when we resume viewing the outerworld), but given that Minazuki seems to be familiar with it, it could have also been pulled-up from recent memory as well.

Oh– and lest I forget the hospital escape itself. Sho's clearly out of the loop for that, but that isn't something that Minazuki shares with Sho, instead keeping it to himself and being cagey about Ikutsuki's whereabouts. That (and the laptop) aren't pertinent to childhood-Minazuki, but nonetheless interesting supportive context for Minazuki's ability to bar and impart memories from/unto Sho.

(Of course, the game also gives us some tidbits here and there as for Sho lacking memories of Minazuki's fronting stints – Minazuki depleting his energy to protect Sho towards the end of EpP3 and Minazuki's vetting of Adachi in EpA come to mind as examples, not to mention a lot of information of their past with Ergo that Minazuki knows but Sho lacks some details of. So it seems perfectly feasible that Minazuki, in the above instances in Ch30, could have harbored memories that Sho wasn't privy to up until that point.)

All that is to say; Minazuki has braved a lot of stuff for Sho, and I just think that it's interesting to mull over.

[systematicallycapricious]

Secret third option to the question of "is Minazuki Sho's Shadow or his own being?":

Minazuki is his own being, but his subconscious mind first formed around Sho's feelings and instincts.

Minazuki likes to say that 'he awoke within Sho for the purpose of granting his desires', and that's true. If you look at the lore P5 gives us, "Desires" are a part of people's Shadows. (And people's Shadows are their subconscious minds, which entails stuff like feelings, instincts, etc.) And as a Plume of Dusk, what was about to become Minazuki likely would have been able to sense the contents of Sho's Shadow.

So when Sho had the strong desire of "I want someone to protect me" in a life-or-death situation, similar to how a person might awaken to a Persona ability, Minazuki awoke to sentient existence. His very first experience in 'living' was being someone who protected Sho because it was what Sho desired.

After that, he seems to have branched out as he became more sapient in his existence (existing as more than just mindless feelings and instincts for action), which is why he acts and thinks so differently from Sho, and why he has a Persona but Sho doesn't. But foundationally, his existence formed around Sho's.

You can also look to Sho's narrative parallel, Labrys, for further confirmation of this theory. Even though Episode P3 seems to be the less canon route, Shadow Labrys is still functionally the 'Minazuki' to Labrys. Shabrys originally existed as Labrys's own Shadow, then had a copy of her personality saved onto Labrys's second storage disk -- effectively, creating a copy of Labrys's Desires. This copy was then able to develop a conscious sense of self independent from Labrys's; and despite starting off with the same material, Shabrys's sense of self developed so differently that she ended up with a different Persona than Labrys.

(Contrast this to Minazuki, who somewhat did the inverse: he started off as his own separate entity, then internalized Sho's Desires into himself and used that as the basis for forming his own sense of self, albeit one that's 'an entity separate from Sho' rather than 'embracing an identity as Sho's Shadow'. A lot of the parallels between Sho/Minazuki and Labrys/Shabrys are sort of 'opposites', for a lack of me knowing how to better describe it. So, following that pattern, Shabrys being the way she is also helps support the idea that Minazuki would have formed the way that he did.)

(Also, I keep toying with the idea that Minazuki may have inadvertently incorporated some traits of Ikutsuki's, or the general Ergo scientists, when he formed. Sho seemed to desire for Ikutsuki specifically to reciprocate his care and protect him, so if Sho's perceptions of Ikutsuki somehow ended up in his desire for "wanting someone to protect him"... It might explain some of Minazuki's mannerisms and lexicon, and why they're so different than Sho's. Minazuki does seem to have a rather logical and evaluative mindset when it comes to new information he comes across, kind of like a scientist. He also uses more formal and polite speech than Sho; and Ikutsuki is shown to do such a thing himself, from what I recall. Though, he lacks Ikutsuki's more manic behaviors, and doesn't share Sho's punny sense of humor, so it may be less "Sho's perceptions of Ikutsuki" and more "people he was exposed to when forming his sense of self".)

(...As for the events of the 'true ending', I don't really need to cover that here, as doing so would only be for the sake of explaining "why Minazuki isn't just Sho's estranged Shadow, and why Sho inheriting Tsukiyomi isn't an axiom of Minazuki being Sho's Shadow" rather than positing how he's specifically "his own being that just imprinted on Sho's Shadow".)