#katnalysis

[chuchusama]

maruki, yaldabaoth, and adam kadmon

hello hello, my 5 adoring fans. kat is back again baby. today, i would like to take a look at the consequences in persona 5 due to events of personas 1-4, and, more importantly, adam kadmon and yaldabaoth’s buildup and significance.

so as we all know, persona 3, 4, and 5 all take place in the same universe, as implied by in game events, (i.e. the risette poster in shibuya station in 4, and the fact that mr edogawa is canon in 4) and actual games (persona 4 arena / ultimax). however, if i told you that the events in persona 1-4 directly influenced the outcome and story in 5, i wouldn’t be lying.

you might be wondering what the fuck this is, but if you’re smart, you’ll have realized what i’m getting at here.

in persona 3, the nyx avatar carries a sword and utilizes all elemental attacks, specifically wind. the nyx avatar is said to be the harbinger of the fall, which is obviously tied to wind itself. back to the swords, it would seem as if the nyx avatar is made out of them, as seen below.

for persona 4, this one... is a bit more difficult. from the graph, we can see that the fourth world is supposed to represent earth pentacles. pentacles are magical objects (usually circular) that represent the earth. they are circular or round, and inscribed with a pentagram or other symbol. but why would this make persona 4 difficult to figure out? in 4, there are 2 main options i’m considering to represent a pentacle. the first is the Orb of Sight, given to the protagonist by igor. the second is the attack ‘myriad truths’ which forms in a circular motion and represents the truth of the world. i feel like you can pick which one you think is the pentacle, but i am favoring the Orb of Sight, because of its circular shape and importance in the story.

now, let me come upfront and say one thing. i know next to nothing about persona 1&2. except for most of the cast in 2. however, i just wanted to put that out there because i scoured all the wikis i could and tried to make this as credible as possible. so, here i go. in persona 2, nyarlathotep’s ultimate goal is to drain the human race of all their ideal energy and kegare. the kegare is then drained into crystal skulls, which represent cups, and kegare (along with ideal energy) represents water. it would then be injected into the earth’s fissures, to anger the dragons in the earth’s core. this sounds like pumping water into the core, if you ask me. additionally, this energy is stored in tanks, which very loosely could be seen as water coolers. it sounds silly but this is a rather plausible assumption.

luckily, mgi (megami ibunroku) persona isn’t as difficult to place with a fire wand. the game has two routes, one where you go against the group SEBEC, and another where you go against the snow queen. the snow queen is actually night queen asura, and you defeat her using the demon mirror, which is very obviously a play on a fire wand, seeing as the opposite to snow is fire, and a wand taking form of a mirror isn’t too far fetched.

now that i’ve explained all of these stories and their significance to the four worlds, where does 5 fit in? well, for an answer, i present you this. adam kadmon is often excluded from the 4 worlds because of its transcendence. adam kadmon is a being and a world, in one. this plays in nicely to how maruki wished to create a new world. in descending order, the worlds go: adam kadmon, atziluth, beri’ah, yetzirah, and asiyah. (persona 5, 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively) an important thing to note is, as said by valentinus, ‘adam was created in the name of Anthrôpos and overawes the demons by the fear of the pre-existent man.’. this explains how maruki was able to take control of shadows so easily.

now that we’ve talked about and further discussed the significance of the 4 worlds, and adam kadmon, we need to dig a little further to find their significance to yaldabaoth. doing so requires nothing more than a quick look back at the four worlds chart. (the four letters all make the name of the biblical god of israel. yhvh is an smt god, as i’ve heard, and yahweh can be compared to yaldabaoth.) as we all know, yaldabaoth’s god. quite literally. and adam kadmon is the first man, the one who opens the gateway to god. however, let’s look at yaldabaoth’s boss fight, and see what can be drawn from there. yaldabaoth uses a sword, which can deal wind damage. this is obviously in reference to the air swords. now, for earth pentacles, i would think it’s a reasonable guess that the book of commandments could be those, as one of the attacks is envy. ‘but kat!! what about the water cups and fire wands?!’ you may ask. well, oh boy oh boy do i have a hell of an answer for you. it is revealed in p5r that yaldabaoth’s antics resulted in the torch being separated from adam kadmon, causing him to revert back to azathoth and draining him of all his powers. maruki’s treasure is a torch. when it is reconnected with azathoth, it becomes the primordial man, adam kadmon. a torch could be considered a wand, making this our contender for the fire wand. and if you couldn’t tell, the holy grail is the water cup. it’s the first form of yaldabaoth and is literally a cup. how much more obvious can it be?

first off, wands, coins, cups, and swords are all main cards in the shuffle time for both persona 3 and 4. these also appear, albeit very subtly, in 5. arsene is a french character, and the suits for these are clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades. suits of a card deck. sae’s palace in 5/R is a casino which makes use of these. the game is also heavily based around gambling. a little off topic, but i believe each of the faculties mentioned corresponds to a different palace ruler in the game (excluding maruki’s and the holy grail). kamoshida is love, madarame is creativity, kaneshiro is possessions, futaba is emotions, okumura is will, and shido is reason. now... that would leave sae to be material body? doesn’t make sense on a first glance, but if you think about it a little, sae’s shadow is the only one that barely resembles her body. so it would make sense that her class would be merchant. this also very much supports the idea that her treasure is actually herself, as that would be her material body.

thank you guys a lot for reading. making analysis makes me really happy and it makes me happy to see people enjoying it. i leave you with this from persona 2:

[chuchusama]

maruki and adachi are.... more alike than you might think.

a weird way to start off an analysis, but hey. we can deal. akechi was atlus’s failed attempt to make a villain like adachi. (side note: it’s only similar in the role of the story, in the same vein as how yosuke and ryuji are the token friend characters. in the base game, akechi was supposed to play the most similar role to adachi) however, akechi became his own, unique character. he is the friendly seeming detective, betrays you, and then you are supposed to genuinely feel anguish when he dies, and relief when he is brought back by maruki. with adachi, you don’t have that. he has the same characteristics and role, but he is unforgiving in his actions, and doesn’t show remorce like akechi does.

but back to maruki and adachi. they’re different but yet somehow extremely similar, in both a story context, and character wise. adachi is the batshit insane incel who wants everyone to die and wants life to be easy by everyone giving up their free will and becoming shadows. maruki wants everyone to be free of pain and hurt by solving all their problems for them. the story wants you to hate adachi in 4, and feel bad for maruki in royal. at the end, adachi is revealed to be the culprit of all of the murders, and you are supposed to feel angry, and want to fight him. in the end of royal, you see that maruki is behind the fake reality, and his motives are revealed to you. you start to become less resentful of him, and you feel the hurt in his voice when you are going against him. (side note, ameno-sagiri originated from a being known as izanami-no-mikoto, created by the unconscious wish of people's minds to fulfill the "wish of the world" which is similar to adam kadmon. adam kadmon lacks eyes, which ameno-sagiri has, and adam kadmon has a humanoid form, which ameno-sagiri lacks.) adachi represents narcissism, a failed system and shattered dreams, meanwhile maruki is kindness, selflessness, misguidance, and a shattered dream. both characters are being controlled by gods, and have their actions succeed at the cost of their free will. adachi has izanami, and maruki has yaldabaoth. adachi does not think he is a god. he thinks he is some ordinary cop with a gun, and that’s what makes him so great. during maruki’s boss fight, we can see that he thinks he is a god, and you see how his ideals have shrouded him in a cloak of virtual yes men. the post final boss fight with maruki. it’s not some big budget cinematic battle. it’s not a battle with the blind (haha irony considering ameno-sagiri) idiot god, or the first man, it’s maruki and joker fighting like primitive children, all while maruki is screaming out his last remaining ideals. it’s a broken man lashing out at the one person who wiped his eyes clean of the god-given blindfold. this contrasts to izanami well, in the fact that it is narukami and the team fighting her, and not narukami facing her alone. izanami is a *god* lashing out at the person who dared get rid of the truth she upheld, getting rid of her own blindfold.

now, something else i’d like to note is that maruki and adachi both give off a sort of trustworthy, friendly vibe. and what’s important is what they do with them. maruki uses this to comfort students and help with their issues, whereas adachi uses this to kill and harm innocent people. the two also share fairly comforting voices, which, whether it is a coincidence or not, is still important to note. maruki and adachi both have been wronged by the academies that they once attended as well. maruki was wronged by his college when they rejected his thesis on cognitive psience. adachi was sent out to, as he calls it ‘the boonies’ because of his lack of work ethic and apathy. another interesting comparison is that obviously, magatsu-izanagi and izanagi proper are parallels, being the opposite form of one another. however, arsene and azathoth also share this parallel (albeit very loosely.). arsene is the trickster phantom thief. azathoth is nuclear chaos.

anyways, linked are the comparisons between maruki and adachi. and their respective gods. the next post will be an analysis of adam kadmon and his buildup, significance, and overall his relation to maruki.

[chuchusama]

The Importance Of Persona 4’s Music

hello everyone!! it is kat here!! of course i am talking persona 4 again, as usual. did you know it’s been my hyperfixation for almost a year at this point? it really doesn’t even feel like long. anyways, persona 4 music time let’s do it!! in this analysis, i won’t be talking about persona 4’s entire soundtrack one by one, (yet) but rather the entire thing, and some specific songs that i feel are particularly fitting. persona 4’s music is really something that i’ve been wanting to talk about from the beginning. persona 4’s music as a whole reflects the tone of the game impeccably. the soundtrack can be very in your face, upbeat, scary, dreadful, or dull, depending on the tone needed. often times, songs have only 2 or 3 unique verses sandwiched in between the chorus before the song repeats. for example, let’s use ‘Your Affection’. the song only has 2 verses that play before the chorus begins. this seems to convey a repetitive tone, and sounds similar to what would play in a grocery store. as we know, inaba is a very boring town, and as such, days pass by with little thought. this is what i will refer to as a ‘chorus verse chorus verse’ or ‘cvcv’ melody. on the flip side, the openings to p4 and p4g both have no repetition and change consistently throughout the duration. this is to make sure they grab the player’s attention, obviously. many songs in soundtrack are like this, if not all of them.

SMILE

this song is quite something to behold. the song is used in momentous occasions and conveys a sort of bittersweet tone. it pushes forth the emotions of happiness with a beat. it then retracts this for a bittersweet tone by using a more simple melody with less background music. this is to convey to the player that it is an important moment, and to take things seriously. this is very fitting for persona 4’s soundtrack because it has a two faces, much like some characters in the game.

Signs Of Love

Signs of Love

"Signs of Love" is a song from the Persona 4 Original Soundtrack. The original and reincarnation versions were both composed by Shoji Meguro

this song is one of my personal favorites in the persona 4 soundtrack, and it holds a special meaning. at first glance, it’s an upbeat jazz song with a cozy feel. however, as you look into the lyrics and progress through the game, you realize just what this song is about. it’s about nanako and dojima’s broken relationship. as we know, nanako’s mother died in a car accident when nanako was a child, and all that she has to remember her by are a few pictures and stories told to her by her dad. seeing as this song follows the [cvcv] format, let’s break it down and see what there is to take from it. in the first line, we can see the song telling us that the signs of love from dojima are overshadowed by the dreams of his wife, nanako’s mother. this is only to be quickly refuted when we hear the second line. this could either be from nanako’s mother to dojima, or from nanako’s mother to her daughter. on top of that, the verse says “you ain’t alone”. this gets infinitely more sad when we see that after november 6th, instead of signs of love, a track titled ‘Alone’ plays. in the third line of the song, we are seeing inaba described as it is, boring and monotonous. this is further shown in the last line, where tears and emotions are just swept away like nothing happened. this entire verse is deeply saddening if we read into it deeper. this entire song is nanako’s mother describing to her that they are possibly getting a divorce. however, this might be completely wrong. i could see it also being taken as what nanako internally feels towards dojima. either way you take it, the verse holds so much meaning and emotion that simply cannot go ignored. although one of the shortest, this verse accurately describes what nanako feels when she is alone at home. she often times gazes at the picture of her family and wonders if that was all love. and when is nanako most left alone? when it’s raining.

Who’s There?

this song is easily one of the best for setting a tone of importance and horror in persona 4. as we know, it plays when shadow events happen, or when there is a big piece of the mystery being revealed to the player. starting off, the song begins with an almost broken piano melody that has emphasis on the third note. this is to really drive it home that this scene is important, and not something to mess around with. it then repeats 16 times until we get a sort of clockwork melody. it creeps up in the song in the background and then abruptly begins. the first few notes sound strikingly similar to ‘A Corner Of Memories’, and i think this is sort of done intentionally. this song is associated with tohru adachi, and ‘A Corner Of Memories’ is associated with the entirety of the investigation team. this may be to draw the similarities between the protagonist and the villain. overall, this song accurately conveys the feeling of anxiety it is supposed to give off when it plays.

Backside Of The TV

Backside of the TV

Backside of the TV is a background song in Persona 4. It is sung by Shihoko Hirata, and as it's name implies, it is played during the Protag

can i just start off this section by saying that this song is absolutely amazing? i think it deserves to be heard by everyone due to its simplicity and catchiness. this song also follows the same [cvcv] format that most other songs in the soundtrack do. in the song, two voices exchange lyrics. and in my opinion, this part of the song is about one of two things. either it’s describing what one feels like when they are thrown into the tv world, or what the shadows are feeling. these are both heavily supported by the lyrics and the place this song plays in, of course.