adachi's """confession""" scene on dec 7
lets drill down into adachi's "confession"
to begin with, adachi is standing inside the remnant of mayumi yamano's dungeon and complaining about her uh basically not being single. it seems he was unaware the investigation team were there, so he said this without knowing they were listening to him:
yosuke goes right into the interrogation part and asks adachi about mayumi. adachi replies, claiming that:
despite adachi's claims, he is portrayed as advancing on her and threatening her in the flashback. basically, he isn't exactly being truthful here about himself.
it seems that he verbally threatened her; no wodner she went hysterical man.
in the present adachi then explains that he heard about the midnight channel from the police (we know this is true bc he later sends the letter saying he actually heard about it twice - once when he came to inaba [from izanami] and again from the police) and how, at some point before seeing mayumi, he found out he had powers:
what he says here must have some level of truth to it because he *did* seem to be backing mayumi up against the tv, and in the flashback, he expresses shock at her whole body going in, rather than shock at him being able to touch the tv:
after the flashback, adachi says he was trying to punish mayumi:
given how they found him in mayumi's dungeon, ranting about her not being single, and he seemed to have this fixation on her, i would wager there is truth to this.
he pretends not to remember saki's name and he claims to have called her in to talk about the case:
but when you watch the flashback where he actually talks to her, and it's clear he had another motive that he doesn't seem to say in the present to the group...
to the team in the present, it must seem as though he claimed to call her in for questioning just to kill her. (honestly he doesnt seem like the kind of guy who would want to admit to them that a girl slapped him.)
he also tells a pretty blatant lie here. like oh my god adachi you killed mayumi this way what the fuck do you mean "uhm i didn't know it was dangerous tee hee" lmao?
he also claims they were gold diggers, yet, somehow...! none of this came up in the actual flashbacks where he attacked either of them:
adachi is clearly misogynistic and has issues with women, but this "i killed them bc they were gold diggin' poor namatame" sounds like made up bullshit, especially when you have his own flashbacks to compare it to
the topic then changes to namatame, and we see another flashback, but this is in media res, and we have no idea what namatame (or adachi) actually said up to this point:
and that seems to follow how the plot went, with namatame trying to save people starting with yukiko.
after, adachi outlines some sort of "master plan" of cat and mouse. he then goes on to say that he threw mitsuo in for that reason, and this is gonna be the longest chunk here because i think it's the most objection-worthy thing he says but probably also requires the longest explanation as to why it is objection-able:
adachi knew about the midnight channel even if he didnt know how it worked. he knew namatame saw things on the midnight channel. he also knew that people inside of the tv would be spit out dead on fog nights. he told namatame to "protect" people, expecting namatame to kill someone. we can say all of this with some level of certainty.
everything beyond that, welp...
if we take what adachi says in the scene itself at face value -- about him observing this "game" and seemingly knowing what the investigation team and namatame have been up to this whole time -- why would namatame stop because kubo was arrested? keep in mind that adachi knows about the midnight channel and knows that namatame was trying to "save the person who appears on tv". so even if kubo was arrested, wouldn't namatame would still be trying to "protect" the person who appears on the tv?
frankly, i think adachi is lying here, and the game has purposely not shown you a flashback of him throwing mitsuo into the tv because the flashback might reveal he is lying.
even if you accept the above, then the question remains why did adachi put kubo in? certainly im sure anyone could come up with a few possible reasons. for example: if we assume adachi is trying to get namatame arrested and to take the fall for his own murders, then putting kubo into the tv could be like "getting rid of him because the police have the wrong guy (he wants them to get namatame)" or "a 3rd murder to pin on namatame sometime down the road".
of course, from my pov, adachi is the person who is showing up in the shopping street on dungeon deadline dates, and he does not know who namatame is targeting, nor does he know they are rescued. so for yukiko and kanji, adachi's PoV is that "namatame hasn't put anyone into the TV or someone would have died by now". so, putting kubo inside could be him trying to kill kubo to show namatame the murderer is still out there, thus encouraging namatame to try and "save" someone himself leading to their death, thanks to his imaginary dickwaving contest w/the other man.
(also i think the game feels like it is being intentionally manipulative here. we're shown 3 flashbacks, mayumi saki and namatame. in the case of namatame, we know we aren't given all the information because the convo starts midway. we can tell with how adachi plays up his misogyny about mayumi and saki that what he tells the group in the present isn't quite 1:1 with what he did in the flashbacks. and for kubo, why, there isn't even a flashback to compare present adachi vs past adachi with.)
finally, adachi tells us that the world is fucked:
and this is something we can infer is true based on the bad ending for his dungeon where naoto is killed by a shadow.
rise then notices that the adachi they're talking to isn't the real adachi:
in some ways, or rather in the same way in which im sitting here typing this trying to discern adachi's truths from lies in this scene...!, it feels like he is inviting the team to come see the "real" him. he is openly communicating that this one who has been talking to them and saying all of these things is not actually him, it's a fake.
in a way, it goes back to hashino's interpretation of the izanagi myth:
this can not only be applied to adachi, but with every dungeon in the game, really, and even adachi going to the ryokan to meet mayumi: the team hears things about someone, then they must venture into the TV and see if it's true.
here, the investigation team (izanagi) have heard adachi's projection say a bunch of shit (izanami's death), but now he is telling them to come locate his real self in his dungeon (yomi) and verify it for themselves (is izanami really dead?)
but why would this fake adachi projection be lying anyway? a couple days ago, i posted about the investigation team's shadows and how not everything they say is true. and the way i see it, this is very very relevant to this mystery projection adachi thats like the door greeter.
while adachi is never shown as having a shadow, we know that once the real adachi is confronted, he gets yellow eyes and a purple aura similar to a shadow and becomes "other adachi" (on his nameplate and only in japanese for some reason lol). and in this scene itself, teddie compares the fake adachi they come across to a shadow...
