30 day persona challenge ;
day 2: least favorite character
bEFORE EVERYONE JUMPS DOWN MY THROAT ( i’m aware he’s a popular character ), lemme explain my criteria for judging how i dislike a character. first off, this isn’t ‘dislike’ in the sense of hating a character. i’m only allowed to choose from main cast + social links, and to be honest, i don’t outright dislike any of those characters from the games. if i was allowed to pick outside that limitation you can bet i would’ve slammed mitsuo kubo into this answer so fast
so, that being said, here’s what i was weighing to determine ‘dislike’:
character role within narrative / quality of character development -- contained within this aspect is consideration of how compelling the character is as well as the depth of their personal arc. this is the most objective criteria.
whether the character is interesting -- similar to the first criteria, but different. more subjective. it is possible for a character to have a good arc, but i may still find them ultimately un-engaging for me personally ( see: kawakami, ebihara, makoto, yukari, soooooo many others ).
my opinion on the character’s personality. this is the most subjective. p much just whether or not i would like them irl.
another important note: i actually ranked less favorably those characters who scored lower on point 1 than those who scored low on point 2. as in, if i do not like a character’s arc or aspects of how they’re written, i dislike that character more than if they’re just uninteresting to me. otherwise, the answer to this prompt would probably be... idk, politician uncle or death doctor from p5. no offense, but there were a lot of hella boring confidants in p5.
with all that said, here are my reasons for disliking how yosuke is done ( which is different from just hating a character subjectively. i hate mitsuo’s guts. i do not hate yosuke’s guts. )
for being one of the game’s maIN MAIN characters, he is remarkably devoid of meaningful character development. he’s the magician, for crying out loud. arguably second most important arcana after the protag. junpei got incredible character development. even ryuji ( i know he’s chariot but he’s the same niche as junpei and yosuke ), who wasn’t as good as junpei, got some solid development over the narrative. yooosssuukke...? stayed the same. same kid at the end of the game as he was at the beginning. one can argue that his social link showed some personal growth, but i felt like most of it just went over the same stuff each scene ( his struggle with being a bored city boy in inaba, trying to figure out the whole saki thing ) but nothing came of it. he says at the end that he’s reached some kind of inner peace or something, but nothing changes, he doesn’t act any different; it doesn’t seem to mean anything. it felt like a fake resolution, a resolution that was forced into the writing because all rank 10 social link scenes have to resolve something, not because it progressed organically to anything meaningful. these are all issues he struggled with from the start of the game, and which -- i feel like -- never see any real development, rising action, or resolution. give the boy some dang character development.
as a result of the above, he just wasn’t super engaging for me as a character. i couldn’t find any reason to be invested in him. as i’ll go more into below, the Dumbass With a Heart of Gold trope isn’t really my thing, and i felt like that was all he had going for him: being a lovable dork. in addition, i found some of his writing unrealistic, particularly surrounding saki. he’s remarkably okay?? with finding out that this person he super looked up to and thought cared about him and was his good friend actually thought he was really annoying and was just being nice to him because she felt sorry for him?? he only ever mentions this fact as a caveat in his scenes: “i know she felt x” or “even though she felt x”; he doesn’t seem bothered by it?? i have a hard time finding that believable. i have a hard time believing that he just looks right past that massively damaging realization and is all “yeah our entire relationship was a lie lol but she’s still so inspiring to me and gives me strength!” maybe i just don’t understand how that works, but it felt very unreal and immersion breaking.
finally -- and actually least important to my dislike, but since we’re here i might as well -- i just don’t really like him that much, personally. he was kind of endearing in the beginning where he was clearly just some poor bloke who needed to check himself before he wrecked himself, but then he kept really compounding on some of his negative qualities that rubbed me the wrong way. i felt like he was actually pretty thoughtless about other people; there were a few times where one of the characters -- usually chie or yukiko -- protested something or was clearly uncomfortable, and he kept pressuring them. his Trash Boy kind of went too far sometimes in my opinion, and he was.... honestly a jerk at times, like when he signed the girls up for the pageant. he got mad when people would do things in revenge for something he’d done that was actually pretty asshole-y or Not Okay. he’s the first character ( who’s a protagonist ) in the persona games where i frequently was genuinely annoyed, even mad, at his words and actions. and not even in the ‘this is Bad and you shouldn’t be doing this but it’s important to the narrative and your character development’, but just like “what the fuck, man?? why do you have to be such a jackass??” basically, he took the eyeroll-worthy tactlessness and crudeness of his character niche ( junpei, ryuji, etc. ) and took it to a point where he was just an asshole sometimes. believable teenage boy behavior? probably. but definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
okay. now people can throw tomatoes at me if they want to.