on forgiveness: best girl haru okumura
OKAY LET’S TALK ABOUT how most people’s idea of Haru (besides her being axe crazy or some shit) begins and ends with the first half of this line to Akechi. And also babble about how everyone reacts in the engine room for a bit:
Just to be clear here: Akechi murders Haru’s father. Not only that, he murders him after his change of heart, at the point he has a chance to turn around and do better and stop being, y’know, kind of a tremendous asshole. Would it have worked? Haru will never know. Akechi stole that from her.
However. Haru is also not a tremendous asshole. I know, I know, y’all want her to go crazy ape batshit with vengeance and her axe. However, Haru doesn’t believe in vengeance (that’s Akechi’s gig, and maybe Ann’s). She does believe in redemption and giving people chances, and she (besides Joker, who like, doesn’t have lines) is the Phantom Thief who embodies this most in regard to Akechi.
Let’s start with the second half of that line. “I sympathize with you”. And let’s put it together with the next line:
Haru understands why Akechi might have acted as he did. And when Cognitive Akechi arrives, she’s the one who tells Akechi it isn’t too late:
Because, make no mistake, Haru is also a child of a terrible father. A father who used her to advance himself. Haru relates to Akechi. She sees what she could have become in him—someone just like her father.
This becomes clearer later on in the scene, when the bulkhead door comes up—and let’s just take a moment here to see what “unforgivable” looks like.
Here’s Ryuji banging on the door as it comes up:
Now note that Haru and Futaba (and Morgana and Ann) have not come forward at this point. But what’s Akechi’s response, by the way, when you tell him you’ll hang on to the glove and keep your promise?
He fucking smiles. Tiny little smile. Sad, barely there, but a real smile, behind the bulkhead where nobody can see it. I swear, people are like “oh, he only dies to save you because it’s the only way left he can get revenge, it’s all part of the manipulation” no, get out of my hair with that shit, I will literally eat you all. He passes up his revenge. He starts his arc as someone who has nothing but revenge to live for, and he ends it (for now) passing up that revenge for someone who matters to him. That’s important.
And that’s level 10: incidentally this is when he gets Endure, “survive an otherwise fatal attack with 1hp remaining”
After this Cogkechi and Akechi face off, and that is when Haru comes forward:
… and then the gunshots, not quite in unison. Bye, kids, we’ll miss you. But note that it is Futaba who only speaks up now—to do her job, not to express any concern for Akechi. It’s Futaba who gives him a far harder ride in Mementos later in the third semester than Haru does. And yet I feel like I see Futaba easily forgiving Akechi all the time and Haru almost not at all?? idk.
Well, here’s Haru when they resolve to leave:
She’s sad they couldn’t save him. Like her father, Akechi will never have a chance to do better.
what about the third semester?
So in the third semester Akechi comes out as an axe crazy killer and also kind of an interpersonal asshole, but he does seem to have laid off the hired killings, so that’s, uh, good?
This understandably impacts the way the engine room fell out: nobody wants to admit what went on there. Akechi doesn’t; Akechi wants to keep all of them at an emotional radius of ten thousand kilometres, for reasons of his own. The PTs certainly don’t, because third semester Akechi is an immense pain in the ass. and about as friendly as a porcupine on PCP.
Still, he comes back on the team for reasons, and Haru and Futaba understandably have feelings about this. Here are Haru’s:
But this isn’t all that goes on. What about all those Mementos chats?
Akechi doesn’t talk to the other Phantom Thieves—if they say anything, he doesn’t respond. (Sumire also doesn’t, which gives me an image of her, Akechi and Joker stuck next to each other speaking only in Royal Trio in-jokes.) But he’s not saying anything unless he chooses to say something—when the others respond.
And who responds how? Well, there are moments of connection—more than a few. But responses to Akechi often range from passive-aggressive through mocking to outright aggressive. And this is perfectly fair: make no mistake, these guys are not friends.
How does the count stack up?
Yusuke has the lowest number of responses to Akechi—he has five. Ann and Makoto each have seven. Futaba, Morgana and Ryuji each have eight. And Haru?
Haru has nine chats in response to Akechi. She has more than anyone else. And the reason she has more chats than anyone else is that there is one chat that only she responds to:
Yeah. Akechi is not someone who enjoys being cooped up in the back of a catbus. And when he complains about it, it’s Haru who’s the only one to reply. The Japanese is not that patronising, by the way
Haru is trying. She doesn’t want to sit down and hang out with him—she won’t join him in the Thieves’ Den, for instance. But her responses to him range from passive-aggressive through conversational. They are hard to interpret—she’s not comfortable with him; she’s keeping up her mask. She’s not necessarily concerned for him or welcoming—she’s saying the “right things”, making conversation; she joins in when they all laugh at him for bouldering. Haru’s mask has a lot in common with Akechi’s many masks. But she also has that one chat that only she replies to.
Here are her nine responses to various things Akechi says:
Haru: I think this [outfit] fits you better, after seeing how you fight.
Haru: I’ve heard you don’t actually need to be that strong to boulder. Maybe I should give it a shot.
Haru: It’s pretty hard to imagine a group of phantom thieves successfully getting around on bicycles.
Haru: Well, the car does have ears and a tail, so I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to tell…
Haru: Well, no one gives them orders, so it appears they just wander around.
Haru: As long as you’re fighting alongside us, we’re happy to have you.
Haru: Thanks for the concern. You should stay mindful of your health, too.
Haru: I wonder… You can’t underestimate the Tokyo subway system, though. It’s pretty long.
Haru: Then what say we take a little break when we reach the next rest area?
and what’s the takeaway here?
Pretty much this: forgiveness in P5 is complicated. The story is all about responsibility and redemption and the harm you do others. Even if you can’t forgive someone, that doesn’t mean you can’t work with them. It doesn’t make them not part of your group. It doesn’t mean you can’t take an interest in them. The Phantom Thieves have a bond with Akechi regardless of what he’s done. Regardless of whether they’re “friends” or “forgiven” or whether they will ever be close. That bond doesn’t have to be pretty, or fun, or even something most of them want too much to do with, but it is there. He is, in the end, as close to being one of them as you get.
And Haru does take an interest in Akechi: more than any of the others bar Joker, Haru is the one who seems to relate to him. Haru doesn’t model judgement (that’s Futaba)—Haru is modelling understanding, and reparative justice. She doesn’t want to be Akechi’s friend; they’re hugely unlikely to ever be friends. Any relationship they have is likely to be distant, based primarily on mutual obligation. But she understands him, to a degree.
Let Haru be the wonderful human being she is. #theend
