Hello! You don't know me, but I found you when researching P5. I loved P3 and P4 when I first played them, but replaying them + PQ really soured me on them. The sexism, homophobia and transphobia in them really made me resent the games. I wish asks weren't so limited so I could tell you what specifically bothered me. Would you mind talking about these issues in P5? How often it comes up, the severity of it, and such? It would mean a lot to me. Sorry and thank you. 👋🏻
Aaah… the sexist and homophobic jokes, yes… to be honest this is one of the most toxic things and for me is the worst flaw in the series (and I talk a lot about this with my mutuals, like seriously what happened with Atlus).
First of all, I love those games with all my heart, but I’m not blind of it’s flaws.
The games are awesome, the social links are funny and enjoyable, the battle system is incredible, the protagonist interaction makes you want to play more and more and the story is beautiful and is really worth playing, BUT the amount of rude jokes that there is in them are awful and uncomfortable to the point it’s stops being simply a joke, they aren’t funny and respectful at all.
I do believe the main reason of those jokes were created as comic relief (“no homo” jokes everywhere) and bait (BL merchandise is a big thing in Japan) since the team was reformed from Persona 2 to Persona 3 and the writer’s and the main director of the team were completely scrapped and changed.
If you want to play a game in the series in which they are very open about it I really recommend playing Persona 2, where you can choose to romance a male character without any homophobic jokes present and it’s very natural to the plot (there’s also a remake for PSP if you don’t like much of the old visuals, it’s ok).
Like seriously, the protagonist of Persona 2 even has an option in a demon negotiation to say “sexual discrimination should be banned!”, it was a pretty savage game for representation at a time like the 90′s in Japan.
Persona 5 however… It is bad:
The way they show how the only gay people in there are practically stereotypes (being forceful and flirty) and okamas (basically japanes transvestites, but not very developed in the game, even if Lala-chan is a character with a very bright and a nice representation).
And with the above fact it’s very uncomfortable how the game shows that “two older men flirting with two young boys is so creepy” (in two scenes with the presence of the “stereotypes”) when the game itself lets you date older women (I know they were creepy and it’s wrong, but if it was a woman would it be alright!? Is this what the game wants to portray? It’s ridiculous that they made it look so bad when there are random flirty older women in other scenes and nobody even cares).
There are options to say “you like this male character” or “you like men” and even flirt with some of your male companions but the game itself don’t let you romance the boys (yes, it’s worse than the fact that they scrapped the options to romance Yosuke in Persona 4, they let you flirt them, hang out with them like the girls, but that’s it).
And the worst of all, but not forgotten:
You can literally work in a gay bar/okama bar (even the freaking OST of the place is called it), but with the exception of your boss (that is a okama by the way) you don’t see anyone gay in there and you can only romance a reporter in there (that is older than you).
BUT to be quite honest the game at least don’t make heavy homophobic jokes like we had in Persona 4 and Persona 3:
Yes there are two scenes with stereotypes of gay men, but at least they try to focus more on the fact that they are being creepy older men and they don’t even adress them as gay (even if it is clearly and heavily implied they don’t go around saying “gay” as we had in Persona 4).
If you confess you like men or that you like a male character people don’t go around shaming you for it, even if they do try to shake it off as a joke in some scenes or act very surprised.
So basically, for me, Persona 5 is homophobic/sexist/transphobic, it’s like the team looked at every fan asking for when the protagonist would have the option to date boys again and said “You guys want representation? There, have this. Oh? What is it? This is not accurate representation? Whatever!”, but at least it wasn’t as bad as it could be, if you know what I’m saying (like putting a new Yosuke/Junpei)
I have a small bit of hope that in a future game they fix those issues and stop being completely blind of what the fans really want as representation, maybe even scrapping the team of writer’s again or bringing back the old direction would make some justice, but that’s it.
I really hope I could try to adress those issues with all the respect and help you know the severity of it. I don’t think it’s something very major like in Persona 4/Persona 3, the scenes are very very rare and it doesn’t affect the plot at all (at least we don’t have a whole dungeon just for it like in Persona 4), so you can still enjoy the game if you want.
