okay I gotta hear about your detective princes thoughts 👀
(quaking in my boots) wow The detective prince enthusiast wants my thoughts
okay so a lot of my thoughts on them did come from you / you share a lot of my other thoughts even if they didn't come from you But Also my detprinces stuff is quite self-indulgent (hehe)
so first of all, i think the most interesting part of the detective princes is the way they're extremely similar but also extremely different. like they both have themes surrounding childhood and what it means to become your idealised self (detective and hero for naoto and akechi respectively). they're both people in the limelight with a desire to be wanted and needed by those around them. but that's where most of the similarity ends
one of their biggest differences is their disparity in privilege. despite both of them being orphans, naoto was ultimately taken in by his grandfather (who appears to care about him a lot from his social link) and also ultimately originate from a more wealthy family. this meant his integration and helping of the police is both something he actively chose and had resources to do from a young age. akechi comparatively is from an imporvished family with a significantly more marginalised status. in a sense, akechi's "detective prince" title is more a bastardisation than anything else
elaborating on the point above, both of them are detective princes, real and true (naoto's persona and akechi's metaverse prince outfit). but in naoto's sense, the detective prince title is more molded to fit him than him being molded to fit the title. comparatively, akechi as the spokesperson? (not the word I'm looking for) for the shido conspiracy and more of an industry plant than anything lol (he Did get popular on his own merit but it's clear he was pushed into that position in the first place)
one of the way we can most clearly see this difference is in their most notable outfits that we first see when we're introduced to them as the detective princes of their respective game.
(writing shorter because tumblr deleted this part and I'm pissed about it) it's mentioned in the dungeon outfit dialogues that naoto's outfit is tailor-made because the other coats weren't in his size
comparatively, akechi's outfit is a uniform, which is an outfit intended to force conformity. this means you can see it as akechi being able to better fit the mold of detective prince in society's eyes but ultimately the title was molded around naoto. (if you want to super corn-plate, akechi's outfits in thirdsem has smaller shoulders, much to think about)
oh yeah adding onto this, we can presume akechi doesn't style his uniform much (because he's trying to do the good schoolboy image) and interestingly enough, naoto also doesn't. his biggest stylisation is his hat and his super tall shoes. this can be viewed as a means of conformity by the two of them, with naoto conforming less and akechi conforming more
the conclusions of their arcs are also drastically different because ultimately despite their similarities in desire, the thing that actually drives them forward is different. for naoto, it's a desire to prove himself and be taken seriously and to become his ideal detective. for akechi, it's revenge for his mother and for himself on a society that mistreated them since birth. the thing is that ultimately, they share quite some circumstances that led to their paths (the isolation, the childish hope, the desire to prove themselves) but naoto was able to walk down a different path because he had people who cared about him for all his life.
depending on which route you go for p4/g, both naoto and akechi can kill someone at 15 and i think that's very funny.
okay so on my detective princes game (you don't need to read this part):
it takes place after persona 5 royal canon
like immediately after
like the first day in the main detprinces game is february fourth
it's a murder mystery game, but the murder doesn't happen until half the game in and it's like. what if the murder mystery is connected to both the pasts of the detectives.
naoto is in tokyo to research something else, ends up getting wrapped up in figuring out the shido's conspiracy, and ends up working with akechi, who is perhaps not in the best mental state considering how it's immediately post-p5r-canon
akechi gets framed for murder. that's my favourite part. there's a part where the murderer gets framed for a murder they did not commit
honestly a problem with the detective princes game is that all the major characters in it have Extremely similar personalities and issues (just on a sliding scale of how much they've matured and overcame their issues)
WE'RE OFFICIALLY DONE WITH CHAPTER 2 OF THE DETECTIVE PRINCES GAME (kindof, there's still parts of chapter 1 I've yet to cover) AT 31.9K WORDS 💥💥💥 this means we're officially halfway through the gane yayyyy
