Something I think goes underappreciated about Persona 4 is the way that it gives you all the tools you need to solve its greatest mysteries if you put the time in to explore. There are special NPC interactions throughout the year with plot relevant characters like the Moel Gas Station attendant, Mitsuo Kubo, and Namatame that give insights to their roles in the story.
Take the attendant, for example:
This character ONLY appears on rainy days. Persona 4 teaches you that rainy days are important. The Midnight Channel, your rescue deadlines, all of it links back to rain, so if you go to the gas station on those days, you get dialogue. This NPC is never available on any other day. So, if you catch onto this pattern, the gas station attendant becomes more significant than if you never explore the town on rainy days and just focus on your story objectives, Social Links, etc.
But it's not just the gas station attendant. This applies to other plot significant characters, too.
Taro Namatame is a special NPC who only appears around set dates in the game's calendar, but one who appears throughout the entire story. The game teaches you he's important by giving him a portrait. Portrait characters are always going to be more meaningful, which actually makes the gas station attendant a fascinating subversion by having a distinct design and even a voice actor in his introduction, but not a portrait until the game's final day.
But if you interact with Namatame, you will get insight to his feelings and get early evidence that he did not kill Saki or Mayumi Yamano. If you explore, if you investigate, you will have the tools you need months in advance to confront the game's red herrings and see through the fog.
But you have to put in the effort. You have to commit yourself to the investigation and leave no stone unturned. Persona 4 embraces the mystery genre even in its game design by encouraging exploration and interaction with Inaba itself.
Mitsuo is another example. He's introduced earlier with a portrait and appears on the overworld for a few months before he becomes plot relevant. During this time, you do get glimmers of... possible concern intermixed with his less pleasant personality.
But he genuinely is furious at the police for their inability to catch the killer. He may not be nice, he may look creepy, and he may be a copycat killer who wants the attention, but with his dungeon painting this action as a result of social ostracization, expulsion, and possibly even neglect, he becomes a much more layered, if ultimately still antagonistic character. For more on that, I recommend this tumblr post.
So, once again, you are given a hint that he's a red herring, if you pay attention, remember those interactions, and ruminate on them.
There are other really cool NPC interactions that update throughout the game, like the shopkeepers, but I bring these examples up specifically because they demonstrate how Persona 4's game design sets you up with all the tools you need to solve the case that I think go underdiscussed.
now that i'm not totally crashing out over persona 2 and can think rationally about it the one specific thing i can't get over is how tatsuya's story is so unbelievably tragic but there is still something really beautiful about it. beautiful in a sad way.
(full analysis below, beware spoilers for p2 innocent sin + eternal punishment)
to me, innocent sin was about growing up and eternal punishment was about being an adult. specifically, that being an adult means you have to take responsibility for your past choices/mistakes/regrets and make peace with them so that you can forge your own way forward.
it's inevitable that you will have to make sacrifices or give up on your dreams (like katsuya) or make terrible decisions that you regret (like baofu) or feel completely lost and unsatisfied with where you are in life (like ulala). but that is never the end, you can still take ownership of yourself and your own fate. you can defy a terrible fate, you can choose to make yourself into a better person, take the shattered pieces of your life and build something new.
at the end of innocent sin, they had to make a sacrifice: their friendship and memories of each other to save the entire world. but tatsuya rejecting this caused everything that happens in eternal punishment. and you can't really blame him... he went through so much only to have everything ripped away from him.
the poem they quote in innocent sin is le calmant by marie laurencin: "Worse than alone / Exiled. Worse than exiled / Dead. Worse than dead / Forgotten." is being forgotten truly the worst fate? maybe it is for tatsuya.
maya asks them to forget her, then philemon asks them to forget each other. if being forgotten is worse than death, how can tatsuya allow that fate for the people he cares about the most? and for himself? so he rejects that fate and has to suffer the consequences. and of course, he feels extreme guilt that so many people are endangered because of his 'innocent sin' and he takes responsibility for it by trying to stop nyarlathotep. he ends up losing the most important people to him forever at the cost of saving them in an alternate timeline.
but in the end... didn't he get what he wanted? he didn't forget anything, he carries the memory of his friends and by doing that they avoided the worst fate: being forgotten. even if 'this side' tatsuya doesn't remember them, he does and that has to count for something. bc as long as he remembers it, their friendship is kept alive in his memory and isn't completely erased from the world.
and because of tatsuya, maya also regains her memories meaning that the memory also remains alive with her too. through tatsuya and maya, the memory of everything they went through in innocent sin and their friendship remains alive in both timelines. as long as it isn't completely forgotten, it still exists in some ephemeral form. and although it wasn't his intention, 'other side' tatsuya also avoids the worst fate of being forgotten as so many people now carry the memory of him: maya, katsuya, ulala, baofu, shiori, nanjo, etc.
if one of the messages of p2EP is that being an adult means taking responsibility for your actions then tatsuya illustrates it beautifully. his actions at the end of innocent sin have far reaching consequences but he takes responsibility for saving the new timeline. he takes his own fate in his hands and he ends up following through with his desire to not forget or be forgotten. i feel like even though his fate is tragic he can at least take solace in the fact that he carries those memories and if this is the sacrfice he has to make to ensure that his friendships won't be completely erased from the world then maybe it was worth it, in a way. and there's something heart breakingly beautiful about that.
a very long about haru because i love her and im upset about how the game let her story get overshadowed at every turn
its nearly 3am rn but i'm thinking about how genuinely insane it is for persona 5 to introduce Haru as a character who is struggling to find any of her autonomy and treat her the way that they do. her father is marrying her off to a man who makes it explicitly clear he wants to use her for sex and even Okumura, in his palace, is shown to understand this.
[ID: three screenshots of Persona five royal. In the first, Haru in her Phantom Thief outfit says "Father! You want me to be that mans plaything to satisfy your own ambitions?" the second is of Shadow Okumura, looking angry, saying "This is the only value you've had from the very beginning. The third image is before the boss fight against the cognition of Haru's fiance. He is saying "let's have fun! I'll play with you until I get bored!"]
even outside of the palace, in their daily life he makes it extremely clear that he has no intent on trusting Haru with company business (likely because he expects the company to be handed off to her husband after he dies) and he doesn't acknowledge her feelings or anything she says to defend her own autonomy (i know this is me reciting everything in the game i do have a point)
[ID: three screenshots of Persona five royal. In the first, Haru is upset as she says "So I'm not even allowed to decide where I will live, am I?". In the second, Okumura is saying "not only do you come home late, you've even stayed out overnight without permission..." looking disapproving. In the third image, Okumura is saying "I have my hands full right now with the company. Don't cause any more trouble for me." He is holding his phone.]
even when she first joins your team, she tries to insist on being useful and fighting, considering this is her request and her fathers palace, and morgana tells her she cant. i know its 'for her own sake' that she cant fight, but considering that Morgana was there when she first awakened and planned on using her to get through a palace alone, its really frustrating to then see him say shes not strong enough to fight in a team.
[ID: two screenshots of persona five royal. Both are taken in Okumura's palace. In the first, Haru is saying "I can fight too! Please, let me join you in battle!". In the second, Morgana is saying "Your persona is too weak to fight safely at the moment. Just leave that side of things to us for now."]
and this comes in AFTER morgana, while using her, gets her to insult his friends on his behalf because hes annoyed with them, even though she's visibly uncomfortable doing so, contradicts what morgana wants her to say, and is shown later to have no real malicious feelings for them - and all of the bitter feelings she DID have were because morgana told her that the PT's were mean and didn't treat him right or didn't need him, which wasn't true to begin with, and is why she has to ask him for direction on what to say,
[ID: Haru looks upset. She stands opposite the Phantom Thieves and looks at Morgana. She is asking him "What was it again?"]
and you bring all of this into a brilliant character of a girl who is so self-assured, so firm on what she wants and her own autonomy - i want to be a Phantom Thief, i want to be a hero, i want to have my autonomy but more importantly i want to earn it, i want to change my fathers heart myself so that he becomes a better person and a better business owner, i want to prove to him that i can be trusted with the company and that i have more worth than being married off - but never really gets to express that? Even when it comes to the fight with Okumura and her chance to have her moment - the moment where Yusuke tells Madarame he's a coward who lost sight of his passion, where Ann gets to tell Kamoshida that he's only alive because she wants him to live through all he's done (both in the palace and the real world), where Futaba gets to talk to her mom directly in a scene that always makes me tear up - Haru's moment to stand up to her father is overshadowed by her father speaking to Morgana instead!!!!!
i know that this could also be a huge meta moment - he sees his daughter standing up to him, defending herself, and dismisses her entirely to try and appeal to the next rational subject, a man, but . the man is a cat. it doesnt work as well if he turns to a cat to be like "well certainly you'll be more reasonable" and turns the focus to Morgana - who has already taken up a lot of time that Haru deserved to have recognised!!!!
i have issues with morgana, yes, and I believe a lot of that arc could have been really useful character building for him if it had been handled slightly better, given more weight and better pacing, but it really wouldn't have been such a big problem for me if it hadn't been pushed so heavily during Haru's character moments, because she is SUCH a good character!!!!
in her first appearance she makes for a really good subversion of what the PT's think that they are. her insistence on working for justice helps them work through their temporary doubt for what their purpose is and by having such a difficult situation happening in her life, she unites them all on something that they have to do. At least until they go to Okumura's palace for the first proper investigation, the intent to rescue Haru from her fiance is more important than the Phan-site and more important than any of Okumura's business practices.
she prioritises everyone elses happiness over her own to the point where she watches her father die on live television and tells the PT's to continue having fun at destinyland without her without considering that they'd want to be there for her. She has always suspected that people only wanted to be her friend for her money - and this seems to have affected her so much that despite being 'secretive about her history' at Shujin, she still doesn't mention at any point whether or not she has friends and is only seen speaking with teachers.
after her fathers death she has no real reason to trust any of the PT's - they were navigating with an unknown method, with no proof to show that what they were doing wouldn't cause a mental shutdown, they barely know each other, and yet she trusts them in spite of this and places her faith in the PT's regardless. even when faced with the person who DID kill her father, she understands that his death was a larger piece in a bigger plan and that it wasn't akechi's fault, it was the fault of Shido for ordering him dead, and in Shido's palace she's able to get the catharsis of killing the cognition of the person who aired her fathers death publicly on TV.
And what I think is a more frustrating part than any of that - where all of the Phantom Thieves, after their palace, get following story beats that increase their importance to make sure that you, as the player, can get attached to them, but the more PT's that join the team, the harder it is to juggle all of those characters and a lot of them have very vocal and prominent personalities that keep them involved. Yusuke's general quirks and behaviour keep him interesting, Makoto has an entire arc that's established ages before she's involved in Kaneshiro's palace, Futaba becoming navigator keeps her relevant, but where Haru's arc is taken over by Morgana in the palace where she's introduced, all subsequent story beats are entirely overtaken by Akechi.
Don't get me wrong, I love Akechi and he is in my brain 24/7, but it is extremely unfortunate that her fathers death immediately kickstarts the section of plot where the PT's realise that they're being tricked, meaning the plot suddenly ramps up, and during the school fair (something Haru is explicitly very excited about), Akechi's growing popularity and prominence in the story takes centre stage, especially as a day later he blackmails the PTs and joins their party.
Again, not complaining about Akechi, its just unfortunate that Haru's main story is clouded over by Morgana having a character arc and then the fan favourite comes in and immediately becomes the most prominent character for almost the entire rest of the game. It's sad because I love Haru but it wasn't until I romanced her that I realised how much I love her and how much there is too her - which ESPECIALLY sucks because it makes the section where you're reassuring her in the velvet room fall so flat compared to how you reassure everyone else.
ALL to say that i think it's wild to have a character whose entire arc routinely revolves around proving herself and reclaiming her autonomy from the men in her life, like her father and her fiance, and having her character arc so heavily influenced and even overshadowed by morgana, a male character. thank you guys for listening and if you disagree with me consider writing what your opinions are on your own post and not on mine :3
Anyway. huge rant post over. Haru is my wife and my girlfriend and my silly rabbit and i think she should be hyped up way more. ESPECIALLY for her showtime attack with makoto because that's fucking adorable. everyone must post one thousand haru okumura positivity posts right now
[ID: a gif of Haru Okumura, in her Phantom Thief outfit, holding her hat with one hand and pointing with the other. She says "I am no longer your subservient puppet!" while looking determined.]
Okay, so... between wanting to analyze this and Our Light, and the kpop posts that I'll be doing that overlap with this. This blog will turn into Persona Music Analysis hour. Long post. Heavy spoilers for P5R, Proof of Justice, and Mementos Mission. BEGIN!
Let's begin with some context for the song. I think this is crucial to understanding why it is associated with Akechi's character. If you're familiar with this, you can skip to the lyrical analysis! The best analogy is that Beneath the Mask is to Akira as NMWI is to Akechi, in my opinion. Proof of Justice was an OVA released with the P5 anime (in May 2019) a couple months before the release of Persona 5 Royal in Japan (October of the same year). This OVA is centered around the relationship between Akira and Akechi. Specifically, Akira's grieving process as he goes through the places where they used to meet to find clues about the phrase "Proof of Justice" which was written in the Leblanc crossword. The Jazz Jin, as noted by Muhen here, is a place where Akechi would typically go alone. He also notes in confidant rank 4 that it wasn't necessarily a place that he was keeping secret, but that he never brought people around there since it was his personal space to reflect. As we'll examine, the content of the lyrics is too specific to not be related to the story, and there aren't any other characters or themes I could think are as associated with the song as Goro Akechi. Just wanted to clear this up first, as for some it's not entirely clear why the song is specifically Akechi's (since it's not explicitly stated, and the lyrics are hard to catch while you're playing through normally).
Lyrical Analysis
people come and they go
some people may stay with you though
I am all alone tonight and I kept on
asking myself questions
The very first line is one of the easiest to dissect. Goro, since the death of his mother, has had few stable figures in his life, whether it is his parents, family, or friends. This also extends to his line of work as a celebrity detective, as he is kept so busy that there are very few people he sees on a regular basis, at all. He notes in the second confidant rank (if you choose to ask if he has no friends) that he doesn't have people that he chooses to spend time with. [I chose this option on my last play through and remember it but I can't find the dialogue anywhere].
The doubt that grows in this verse comes from the second line. He is taken by surprise that there is someone he is giving thought to for more than a couple seconds at time. Someone he is... to some degree choosing to spend time with even though he is doing it for the mission. At first, to investigate the Phantom Thieves identity to prevent them from interfering in his revenge plot, and then to lure Akira into a death trap. Tying it back to the first line analysis with the third and fourth line, this dissonance has put the first example of his doubt in this song.
Conceited I was at time
I never really doubted myself
But tonight got me thinking about it all
if I am the fool or what not
There is a self-awareness that Goro always has about his personas (in the metaphorical sense). Goro kind of knows that he's arrogant and it was not ever something that bothered him. Even his character flaws will not get in the way of his plan, even if those flaws are just his humanity peeking through. There's a longing in Lyn's delivery of the last two lines here. He's stumped as to why he feels this way and the inner conflict makes him pause more than he is comfortable with.
"If I am the fool or what not." This line, is literally perfect, the double meaning is just ugh! We'll see this idea again near the end of the song, but I want to take an opportunity to talk about it now. For two years, Goro was the only Persona-user he knew, so he had no reason to believe anyone would ever stand a chance against him. Not only is he angered at himself for allowing Akira to get close to him and cause these doubts but he's also questioning what his role was.
I do not
regret with my choices I'm rather proud
ooh I know I won't change
anything
because I can only be me so
I had already written parts of this analysis like two months ago but I saw a post written by @vashtijoy here on how Mementos mission has a sneaky reference to this song. So check that out! It's something I never noticed.
Before Shido's palace, there's an acceptance of the circumstances in this line, that he has to do it regardless of what he may think because he has a goal. Throughout the third semester, we see an Akechi that is alive and tried to deal with the consequences of his actions before Maruki took that opportunity away from him. But he does not show remorse for what he did, that it was the only path he could have chosen with the information he knew.
How can I be so sure?
at a crossroads I'm afraid too
But I can't let fear get the best of me
Someone once said burn my dread babe
This verse... this verse makes me wanna cry. I cannot even lie to you. The direct statement that there is fear behind the fact that he doesn't want to kill Akira and the acknowledgement in the last two lines that one of them has to end up dead. That he is also acknowledging that Akira must also be fearful, by playing with fire through continuing to lead the Phantom Thieves. The doubt is consuming him in this verse. The crossroad offers two choices, one where he sacrifices himself for Akira and one where Akira no longer is with him. The reference to Persona 3 really carries the weight here with this theory. I would explain more but I only spoiler tagged for P5R so we move.
Who knows what tomorrow holds?
just wanna live my life the way I want
what fills up my soul is passionate
music that makes me want to sing
The first line, to me, reads that he's given up on allowing himself to think if there's another way to resolve his doubts. That there's another path where neither of them die and that it can't exist. He wants to live freely, which is what he thinks is assured once his revenge plan is complete. In another world, maybe it was one where both of them could be together without this chasing them. The last two lines I don't have a particular opinion about, but I think they add to the fact that Goro has given up entertaining other possibilities.
my story will be starring me just like yours ooh ooh
who knows when will it end
what matters most is how you bring joy to life so
I think about confidant rank 8. It feels written all over this line, and we come back to an idea that was present with "If I am the fool or what not." I think there's a bit of that 'hatred' that he talks about, that he's resentful that Akira story will end differently than his own. He's waiting for the day to come and resolves by centering himself, that once his goal is achieved, that he will achieve joy for the first time in his life. Refusing to acknowledge that Akira was showing him companionship that brought him happiness for one last time.
The Theme of Doubt
One of the things I have had trouble defining is what the doubt Goro is referring to is, or why the doubt is there. It's one of the things that is left in the air. Speculating here a little more than I usually will try to: the doubt stems from the fact that Goro is enjoying his time with the protagonist and is unsure what that means. In terms of what he is doubting, I'm not sure, I don't think he is referring to his plan, but rather the fact that Akira is caught up in it at all. His resolve to complete his plan never changes, but he wishes he could choose to leave him out of this. This tracks with a line stated by the SIU director which implies that some of the cruel actions carried out by the conspiracy/antisocial force by Akechi are not entirely his idea. He still carries them out without hesitation, but he never thinks of them himself. One of the reasons I wrote out this analysis was to see if there were any opinions on what this part of the song meant since I have trouble wrapping my head around it myself.
Goro, in base game and third semester, never shows any form of doubt or regret to the protagonist directly, only brief flickers and implications from dialogue. But this song is layered with it and bashes you in by telling you that it is what he is struggling with most when it comes to executing his plan. It's what nags at me even though I've tried to analyze this song a couple of times on my own.
IN CONCLUSION: I obviously hate goro akechi. (lying is fun)
There's something just so fascinating at how Persona 5 finds ways to explain the complex personality of the protagonist. Besides the typical cheeky answer options that we get when we're asked a question, the game is oozing with his personality in every turn.
We know from the cutscenes that he's a confident son of a bitch that doesn't give a rat's ass about how people see him. We also know from these cutscenes that he just can't help himself from getting nosy into people's business when he perceives an injustice even if it has nothing to do with him. Even with just the first few ones, we could see it. Just from the infamous "damn brat!" scene, to how he shows genuine anger when hearing his classmate talk about his new abusive teacher even before he becomes a phantom thief.
Despite his confident demeanor, the games songs meanwhile paint an entirely different picture of him. "Wake up, Get up, Get out There!" tells us that this confidence is new and that he himself has just found his edge. He came from a background of uncertainty and only now after recognizing how powerless he is that he could finally rebel.
Even with this rebellion, we know for a fact that he's still ever so lost as ever from "Beneath the Mask", being the calm song that plays on his downtimes that completely recontextualizes his actions. The song explains how our protagonist not only doesn't want to be perceived by people, but also how he doesn't even know who he is. He doesn't want people to "take off his mask" which is his "place to hide" and see that he's nothing but a "shapeshifter" who's so nothing of a person that anyone is "free to draw" him.
This then leads to some interesting take aways from his other actions like his relationships. None of his relationships are unconditional. All of them are transactional one way or another. Even with his teammates, there are stakes to improving them. Morgana starts their friendship by teaching him the ways of infiltration in exchange for helping Mona get his form back, Ryuji and him have shared stakes of being a phantom thief thus training together, Ann starts their main friendship by trying to get her persona stronger so she becomes a better fighter and phantom thief, etc. - all of them start with transactions. This is even more poignant with his non phantom thief relationships as all of them he wants something out of, and even most of them he doesn't initiate. Morgana does.
From what we know of his history and how he doesn't even know who he is, it could be assumed that he doesn't trust people easily and relationships must always have a catch to them. Coming from a background where he has been beaten, ostracized, and neglected, it's really not surprising that he acts this way either. Even the least of those events happening to anyone could make them distrust others to make them view the world that way.
This is why it's so fitting that Joker is often compared to a cat - a mischievous creature that often causes problems, seemingly so full of itself, but so prone to being abused and distrusting others. He's a stray cat that came from a lot of abuse and isn't willing to let anyone in for fear of its safety. That's why the small little character details and even major aspects of the game really paint an interesting picture of the protagonist that just fascinates the heck out of me
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:
Ok, so this is something that’s been bothering me for a VERY long time, it was something that caught my attention back when they were just advertising the game (if anyone is wondering, it was how the cognition worked in this game…and that questioned snowballed to say the least into what this was), but I wanted to wait till the game came out to talk about it (took really long cause I wasn’t sure how to approach it, I mean this thing came up as about 7ish pages in GoogleDocs so like....yeah 8U lotta writing).
Before I begin, yes I know there are different ways to summon persona. Yes they can coexist in the same series, that isn’t the issue. The issue is how P5 and onward’s lore has been handled. I also wanted to do a complete replay of Arena, Ultimax (esp this one cause it’s a bit funky with the DH and red fog), and PQ1 buuuuuuuuuuuuuut due to events (aka me working despite Corona happening), I didn’t get around to it yet. So consider this a “version 1″ post, with the possibility of there being a “revised version” later. I also won’t really touch on P1/2 much (I’ll bring them up a few times), not because they aren’t important, but because this mostly pertains to PQ2 and the games associated with it.... as well as my sparse knowledge on P1/2 (so I’m sorry in advance if I mess something up while talking about those two games ;w;). We also aren’t talking about P3D, P5D, Royal or Scramble (maybe I’ll include Royal/Scramble in the possible revised/add on/sequel post to this but not now….cause spoilers….and PQ2 came before those so I’d rather focus on what built up to it rather than what comes after).
Also yeah some of this will contain a theory (the theory parts is me trying to reconcile canon and it’s at the end of the post, the rest is me pointing at a hole in the canon/lore tho.... so no this isn’t a glorified theory post, I’ll point out when I’mma enter my minor theory). Anyway, under the cut cause length! 8U:
So first we’re gonna start off with a question. At one point my bf asked me “What dictates why the characters summon the way they do in their games?” To which I replied, after thinking about it for a decent minute, “Setting......maybe with some god interference but it’s usually cause they created that setting, so really it’s just the setting.” If we look at all the games, they all summon things a bit differently (P1/2 being the closest in similarity, with P4 being the closest to them among the newer titles), but what also is different in each game is the setting.
P1 does a Jojo summon cause of a Parallel world, P2 does Jojo poses thanks to the rumors, P3 uses evokers (but otherwise they can just make it appear if they concentrate hard enough, or if you are a VR attendant then you use cards) thanks to the Dark Hour (DH), P4 uses cards (but like P3, can sometimes just summon without manifesting a card similar to P3’s evoker-less summons and P1/2 summons) thanks to the TV World (TVW), and P5 uses their masks thanks to the Metaverse.
So next (2) question(s).....What would happen if you take one team and put them in another teams’ world? How would they summon their persona’s then? Well.....it depends on the setting, but spoiler for the rest of the post....they would either use cards/no cards (ala P4 style, from here on I’mma just say “card style” but keep in mind cards may or may not be utilized), or have a PT outfit/mask summon (aka P5 style). OR, if they are struggling and have an evoker on hand, then they’d use an evoker (but not if it’s in the Metaverse). So to use an evoker, they’d have to struggle with summoning in a P3ish type area (which keep in mind is similar to a P4 type area), and if they aren’t struggling then the default would be P4 type summoning (I mean they could still use the evoker if you want, but the card style is the default tbh). Oh yeah there’s a lot to unpack there. You see, P3/4 can exist together without issues, P5.....can’t.....with either of them…..At least not without certain rules being established in a setting, and then ALL THREE having to follow those rules. (Tbh it feels like the P5 era/PQ2 specifically, they seem to prioritize iconography over logic. Aka “Well P3 used evokers because they are P3!” rather than looking at the implications of the world they are utilizing and instead prioritizing something the audience will recognize rather than following the rules they have built.)
Ok so I know I just threw a ton of facts at you, so let’s backtrack and explain how I know these are facts by going through the games (cause I know you can’t just take my word for it)!
Now, how do P3/4 work well together? It’s simple.....the DH and TVW are similar (TVW is a more...”potent” DH and makes it easier to summon things), well similar in feel as Arena states:
Ok so they are similar in feel, and tbh the means of being able to summon a Persona is similar too! P3 kids don’t NEED evokers, it’s proven that characters can summon a Persona without a need of an evoker in both the DH and Real World (ex: Labby in Arena when escaping the lab, Mitsuru in The Answer flashback, Fuuka in Arena iirc, Takaya all the time in P3, Chidori when her Persona tried to kill her, and possibly Tatsuya/other P2 characters prior to the rumors going rampant during the P2 game), HOWEVER it’s very hard to do so. It usually requires intense concentration, or a rush of emotion or a life/death situation (which all examples fall under one or both). The evoker is designed to help facilitate this life/death feeling (*cough* tho it takes the shape of a gun cause Mitsuru thought it’d catch Akihiko’s attention*cough* I mean Koro doesn’t need it being a gun so the shape could be whatever they just chose a gun so they could seduce Akihiko 8U). But regardless, the evoker is a man made tool that helps one summon a Persona (aka creates an artificial focal point), but it’s not a natural focal point made by the user (ie, card, clutching your head/no card/possibly P1&P2 style, or P5′s mask), so really anyone can use an evoker. (one more side tangent since we’re on focal points, as for how P4 can have two different ways of summoning, ie card/no card, it could just be that the TVW allows different forms of a natural focal point to form, either via thinking of summoning the Persona, or having your mind form a physical card in front of you, so the setting of the TVW gives a choice to the user)
Now remember when I said that the TVW is a DH that’s easier to summon Personas? Or that if a user isn’t struggling then the default is the card/P4 style summoning and not the evoker? Well Arena showcases how easy it is to summon in the TVW:
So there we go, it’s easier to summon in the TVW than the DH. Can’t argue with that! The reason is probably because DH is a layer on top of the Real World, so it’s closer to reality, while the TVW is closer to the Collective Unconscious/aka CU (aka the TVW is an alternate world, rather than a camera filter like the DH is), so that could explain why it’s easier.
So what have we established so far?:
DH and TVW are very similar, but TVW is probably more is closer to the CU than the DH (while the DH is closer to reality), which makes it easier to summon in the TVW.
Evokers can be used by anyone because they are a man-made tool, but they aren’t natural ways of summoning like show cased in P1/2/4/5.
P3 cast can summon Personas like P4 cast, and theoretically vice versa is probably possible if they ever gave the P4 cast evokers.
Now from Arena, we will go to PQ1, then Ultimax, then briefly on P4D before we get to P5. (I’m doing PQ1 before Ultimax because I’m doing the it in the order of the JPN release not the US release, and no I’m not counting the arcade Ultimax release 8U)
So let’s look at PQ1. Now from my memory....I don’t recall them really talking about the P3 cast specifically not being able to summon their personas without their evoker in the PQ1 world. Like they talk about their differences in summoning, but I don’t think the P3 kids tried to summon without their evokers. And the reason I bring this up, because we could probably say this is a discrepancy too, is because the P4 kids still use their card style, which means the PQ1 world is similar to the TV world, where it’s easier to summon via using the cards. And since the P3 kids can use the card style, in a setting that allows card styles…..that means they could summon the same way the P4 kids can in PQ1! But the P3 kids don’t have the same thought process as they did in Arena, where “oh we summoned our personas without our evokers! Only just thinking about it!” And like....that’s a red flag....BUT, as I said before, evokers and cards can exist at the same time. In Arena/ Ultimax the human P3 users (minus maaaybe Junpei) use their evokers when doing a finisher. So we could just chalk it up to them being used to it out of habit. It also helps that Arena was released not long before PQ1, so we know they can both exist at the same time thanks to prior knowledge. So like yeah there’s a tiny issue here, but nothing glaring or a very big deal, it’s just them avoiding addressing something rather than creating a contradiction. Maybe in a remake they’ll add a line saying “huh that’s weird, still gonna use my evoker cause we’re used to it.” XU And it’d be all good.
Now Ultimax is a little.....more concerning. Technically there’s a dark hour....but you can summon without your evoker (and also they call the Fake!Dark Hour F!DH taking place in the “real world”):
Now I can’t remember the rest of Ultimax to that specific of a detail, so I dunno if they 100% explain why/how the F!DH it’s easier to summon than the DH, but they really seemed to hint at the red fog in these early scenes (where I rewatched to get the screen grabs), with it having some influence and possibly being the culprit behind the anomaly (I’d say the same thing for the TVW, but Teddie says Shadows have been there since forever, and Izanami only found the TVW not created it, she did bring the fog, so it’s possible the fog isn’t what dictates summoning in the TVW just TVW as a place, but in Ultimax the combination of the red fog and the F!DH makes the setting more palpable like the TVW rather than the original DH. So yeah F!DH needs special fog to work, but TVW doesn’t really need for summoning to exist it seems). There’s also the fact...Kagutsuchi is also there and his power might also have something to do with this cause, remember at the beginning I said sometimes there’s a god messing with the place to make that setting viable for summoning Personas? Yeah that’s probably what’s going on. Red Fog+Special DH+Kagu’s influence=TVW levels of card/natural summoning. Not the cleanest, but hey they at least tried giving us a reason! I’m at least happy for that! ;w;
So after briefing on the small issues (or just plot questions with PQ1/Ultimax), now for P4D. P4D it’s possible to summon your persona like in the TVW, but you can’t fight. So you instead dance to defeat your enemies.... So the area is similar to the TVW, BUT it has special rules (implemented by the god, so yeah a little god influence on the setting, but still the setting nonetheless is what dictates the summoning). Yeah that’s it, but it just strengthens the setting dictates stuff.
So again, to reiterate what we know:
If a place is like the TVW, then card summoning is the default.
DH and TVW are similar, but DH is a….”less palpable” TVW (probably cause it’s farther from the CU), so while card summoning is possible, it’s better to use the tool/evoker to help you.
The F!DH, PQ1 world, and Midnight Stage are all similar to the TVW so card summon is the default.
Evokers can be used in card summon settings, but they aren’t needed.
Anyone can use an evoker
So....let’s get to P5. P5 has the Metaverse, which has A LOT of distortion and cognition. I mean it’s possible that P1-4 have some cognition, but the Metavers is just…..there’s an abundance! Anyway, we know that P5 has outfits because it protects the user against the world (kinda like the TVW glasses, but unlike those, they aren’t a tool anyone can just.....use. Teddie makes the TVW glasses, PT outfits come with the summons). But they only get their cool outfit once they obtain their personas (either via fully or partially awakening their Persona, the persona has to at least be awakened). Thus the Persona is connected to the outfit, and the outfit is connected to the environment/setting. I should note that unlike the above screenshots, which are explicitly stated in the lore, this is implicitly stated instead. Something that isn’t outright said, but it’s backed up via consistency and repeating it (also this is the first consistent thing I found in P5! Yay! ;w;)
Anyway, it makes sense right? And without the need for an evoker (which...causes issues thanks to that world’s rules on guns), it seems that the natural way for summoning in a Metaverse-like setting, is a mask summon.
Ok. Now what’s the issue with PQ2?! 4-5ish pages in and still no answer I know. Well the answer is all three can’t exist at the same time. P5 can’t compliment either P3/4. Either P5/4 has to adapt to P3’s way of summoning, P5/3 have to adapt to P4′s way of summoning (aka everyone needs an evoker or everyone card summons), or P3/4 have to adapt to P5 (aka everyone gets an outfit and mask summons). And here’s why:
We know P3/4 characters in a TVW like place can summon their personas like P4 kids. So it doesn’t matter what game you are from, if you are in the TVW you summon like the P4 kids. P5, if one has a persona in a Metaverse they should have an outfit, because P5 vanilla establishes that (again it’s implicit but nonetheless it’s established). So P3/4 kids should get an outfit if they were in the Metaverse because it’s the only logical thing that makes sense (aka this isn’t confirmed by Atlus, but by following the logic of their lore, the explicit content, and the implicit content, it leads to this conclusion).
The issue is…. PQ2 tries to apply DH’s, TVW’s, and the Metaverse’ rules all at the same time.....that doesn’t work. While DH and TVW complement each other, TVW becomes the default if the two are combined. “But Silly you said that P3 cast can use Evokers in the TVW” Yes! But you see PQ2 doesn’t understand that....Because..... Minato couldn’t summon his Persona when he lost his evoker and had to rely on Aigis the entire time:
From what I can find, he’s never shown summoning his persona (even in a life/death situation, which is also odd in and of itself and a whole other issue) during this time. I don’t think it’s ever mentioned it’s because he’s tired, just because he lost his evoker. Except this shouldn’t be the case, because P4/5 can summon just fine WITHOUT an evoker, so an evokerless summon should be possible. And that’s the issue with PQ2 that PQ1 avoided, PQ1 didn’t call attention to this, while PQ2 made this a plot point and...well...made a really big plot hole (and a side plot hole with the whole life/death thing).
Then there’s the DH and the Metaverse. Now Atlus was trying to fix the gun and evoker issue that well…..was created because of….(what is what got this post rolling) “Cognition.” Cause the Metaverse is like “If the gun looks real then it’s perceived as real! Even if it’s a fake gun.” And well….evokers are real guns who have been hollowed out (in english releases they changed it to fakes tho, but they are actually real guns). And well evokers and the Metaverse don’t mix well, and we’d have a lot of headless SEES. So Atlus tried to be like “Oh it just doesn’t work here!” But…….that reasoning doesn’t work, because the PT still have their outfits, and Mona is still in mascot form, which exists because of….you guessed it…”cognition”. And because of all that it leads to these questions:
Does this mean there’s a specific quantity of Cognition that needs to be met for there to be outfits but for fake guns not to work?
So how can there be enough cognition to dictate that they can have outfits but NOT guns?
How can Mona still be in his cognitive cat form at the lobby, but the rest of the team reverts back to their normal clothes despite both being connected to? He’s only ever in that form when the other teams are in their PT form (only time he isn’t is in PQ2’s lobby, and the early PVs of P5 which never appeared in the game)
Why doesn’t the P3/4 cast have PT outfits, despite the fact having a persona in a cognitive world indicates a PT outfit (at least implicitly via P5 vanilla)?
Basically how is it that the P5 Kids are the only ones that seem to be affected by the Cinema’s World Cognition but no other groups are? Answer, there is no answer, it just doesn’t make any sense! And that’s just P3 and P5!
Now we have Metaverse vs the TV World. While they are both natural means of summoning, they can’t coexist at the same time. They are like night and day, they can’t exist at the same time in the same place. If there is that much cognition in the Cinema world, then everyone should get an outfit! Otherwise they’d just use cards! You have to choose one!
“But Silly! What if it’s how they obtained their personas? Like maybe the way P5 got theirs is why they are special?” And…...that’s the thing dear reader….that’s not the case. Because let me introduce my Smoking Futaba Cannon! You know what Futaba has in common with the P4 group? THE SAME KIND OF AWAKENING! Her awakening is different from EVERY OTHER P5 CHARACTER! Her awakening is the same as the P4 kids! She accepts her shadow, and gets her persona! But do you know two things are different between Futaba and the P4 kids? 1) The setting, and 2) She gets an outfit! :0 Oh dear, she gets an outfit….and…..the only thing different from the P4 kids is the setting? Wow it’s almost as if….the setting dictates how you summon a persona! :D So because Futaba, who’s awakening is a P4 awakening, gets an outfit. Then ALL P4 kids, who have a P4 awakening, now get an outfit when they are in the Metaverse! But wait! Remember how P3 was able to easily change to the P4 style of summoning? Well since P3 is similar to P4 in this sense, and P4 is similar to Futaba, who has a PT outfit…..then P3 would get an outfit as well! You get an outfit! You get an outfit! EVERY PERSONA USER GETS AN OUTFIT! 8D
So what do we know now?
DH and TVW are similar, but if combined then the TVW rules overrule the DH rules
The DH seems to be closer to reality, while TVW and Metaverse seem to be closer to the UC which is why it’s easier to summon in the latter two.
The F!DH, PQ1 world, and Midnight Stage are all similar to the TVW so card summon is the default.
TVW and Metaverse can’t coexist at the same time (one has to overrule the other)
Evokers most likely can’t work in the Metaverse the same way they can in DH or TVW.
Evokers can be used in card summon settings (aka TVW) tho, but they aren’t needed.
Anyone can use an evoker (or have Teddie glasses 8U)
Only Persona users (either fully awakened or partially) can obtain a Metaverse/PT outfit.
Awakening doesn’t define how you summon Persona, the setting does (see Futaba vs P5 and compared to P4).
Because of Futaba, P4 kids should get outfits in the Metaverse.
And because of Arena and how the P3 kids have the same summoning in the P4 setting, it goes to say they’d also get outfits in the Metaverse too.
If reverse engineer this, then that’d mean P5 kids would get cards in a TVW-type setting (or would have to use evokers in a DH type setting).
I spent way too much time on this
It all comes together! Nice and neat! Arena establishes that you get a card summon when you are in a setting like the TVW, and P5 establishes that Persona users get PT outfits in the Metaverse (with Futaba showcasing it doesn’t matter how the awakening goes down you still get an outfit, which applies to P3/4). So, if the setting is like the Metaverse, they get outfits. If the setting ISN’T like the Metaverse, BUT INSTEAD, like the TV world, they do card summons. There the lore is nice and neat and clear cut!
…..EXCEPT! PQ2 …...just….makes no sense. ;w; It messes with all that is good and neat. ;w; And why? I don’t know! I can only think that, again, they chose the iconic looks of each game over the lore’s logic. Even if they were to say Enil made it so that the three types of settings could exist at the same time, it’s just…..too messy and wishy washy, and still doesn’t logically make sense (because of everything explained above). You can’t just mix water and oil! It’s just easier to choose a Metaverse or TVW type setting.
Now how do we fix PQ2? This is something Atlus can fix in a re-release on like the Switch, and it shouldn’t be too bad depending on how they approach it. But before I get to that I’m going to explain a theory, this theory makes it easier to break down the different settings, and thus gives Atlus a nice binary choice.
My theory is that there’s a cognition spectrum in these settings. Real life has the lowest to non existing cognition, the P1/2/3/4/4U1/4U2/4D/Q1 are all on the “low cognition” side (there’s some but there’s not a lot) while the Metaverse is “high cognition” (aka there’s a lot). Like here’s a rough (aka not 100% accurate, it’s just a general idea) depiction of what I mean:
Again it’s just a general idea on where they fall in terms of high and low cognition. P5 is obvie a new entry with us now exploring high cognition, which can lead to maybe a couple cool things. Maybe different places on the high cognition spectrum give us different ways of summoning too (give me a sec for a side tangent to explore that concept). Here’s an example, we have one high cognition plane called the “Metaverse” and another one called “Uverworld.” In the Metaverse you get a PT outfit, and summon with a mask. In the Uverworld, instead you take on your Persona’s appearance, either Digimon Frontier style or Digital Devil Saga style. We could say the Uverworld has even more cognition/distortion than the Metaverse and that’s why it’s different. And if any persona user from P1-5 were to summon their persona in the Uverworld, they’d summon it the same way as the Uverworld Persona users. And the Uverworld Persona users would summon the same way as say P4/5 depending on if they were in the TV World or Metaverse. This is how we can keep the lore consistent.
Now how does this high and low cognition apply to PQ2, and how could it have fixed it (and still could if Atlus makes these changes in a remake/re-release)? Well basically….they’d have to choose between a TV World type setting or the Metaverse, and have all three teams adjust accordingly! And they can either do what I call low asset route or a high asset route (which coordinate with low and high cognition respectively).
A low asset route, would’ve worked better for the original release on the 3DS (but I don’t recommend this for Switch re-release tho). It’d be that the PQ2 world operates like the TV World, everyone uses cards. That’d mean no one would get PT outfits (so less assets to make for the devs, and yes this includes P5 kids). Morgana, however, would have to remain in cat form (which shouldn’t be a problem, if we can give a dog a knife we can give a cat a knife 8U you can even have his character stats reflect something similar to Koromaru for the meta too!). P3 could still use their evokers if they want too! P5 the kids would probably crush the cards doing a similar pose they’d make if they had a mask, but tbh PQ doesn’t really show the characters in battle so we wouldn’t really need to worry that much.
Or we could go with a high asset route (which I recommend for a re-release), in which there’s high cognition, aka the Cinema world is more like the Metaverse. Everyone would get an outfit, and cause it’s the metaverse you can introduce a gun mechanic into PQ2! It’d require more assets, making outfits for all the characters (tho keep in mind Mona should transform back into a cat and out of his outfit in the lobby like everyone else!) Which we’d probably really only see in cutscenes rather than battle. While this could complicate some scenes (such as Hamuko dressing up as a police officer-wait that scene already doesn’t make sense considering P5’s lore-no no stay on topic DX), the rewrites wouldn’t be as as if you took the low asset route (which would work if thought of from the beginning but….yeah). It’d just be a few convo lines, and like a scene or two. One big thing they could add is adding the gun mechanic (they can even add a fun convo with the P3 kids saying it’s hard getting used to the new summoning method). Fans would love to see outfits for P3/4 kids, lore would make sense, you could have funny conversations, new combat system. Def a thing people would love to see added into a re-release! Plus it gives it more of a P5 flair, and considering this has P5 as the main focal point it fits! You can even say that the 3DS ver is still canon, but it was an incorrect recollection of a character’s dream, which could explain the inconsistencies I have mentioned before.
Oh and Minato/SEES can still carry their evokers in both scenarios, but Minato just gets tired from all the fighting and can’t summon his Persona anymore cause he ran out of mana. There that fixes that scene.
So there you go, PQ2 fixed (well summoning lore wise), Persona lore intact, and even a little guideline thrown in to help keep the lore intact! I know I didn’t go into how to rewrite every scene to adjust these changes….I could but not today.
Anyway I dunno how else to end it but…...I hope PQ1/2 can be ported to the Switch (or another console as well?) soon! I just really want a dub of PQ2 ;w; orz
The Persona Series and the Generational Experience
Besides thinking about the ages of the protagonists recently, I had been greatly intrigued in the way that each persona game reflects the generation that would have come to the age that the main characters would have been as well as the social climate and environment that would have been present at the time.
The characters of the game would have grown up in a completely different age and environment from the previous generation, being Gen X in a world dominated by the post-war Baby Boomers, which causes them to struggle with what is expected of them and what they want to be. If not this, the characters are already labeled as outcasts due to their own individuality or personal histories they can't change. Yukino as a former delinquent and sapphic woman comes to mind and Reiji being a bastard and a delinquent himself too.
NOTE FROM OP AS OF 04/08/2024:
I feel like this wasn't the best worded post and I would rather rewrite a lot of this. I wrote this when I was fresh off of a serious personal event that led me to think a lot about Persona 1 considering I related heavily with Maki's experiences during the game. It sounds unrelated but uh, let's just say that's also the reason why the wording and research here is rather flimsy since I wasn't really in the most lucid or stable condition at the time. I don't think this post is that bad but I think some points aren't the best either and would rather not this post circulate but I don't really want to private it or to turn off reblogs so I'm just putting this note at the beginning. I'm going to try to read up more stuff and then I'll make a post about each game some other time. Sorry for the random note here but yeah. Feel free to read and still reblog the post though even if I don't really think it's my best worded one as of now.
Original Post:
Persona 1 (1996), besides being a game about how society leaves behind the disabled (Maki hating the world due to her inability to participate as a regular person in society due to her poor health), is primarily a story about the dangers of corporatization which was extremely relevant in Japan during the 90s especially coming from the economic boom of the 80s. The culture of this extreme progress also calls into question the traditional ideas of collectivism and how it could negatively affect the individual which is the core of the entirety of the Persona franchise.
This is more apparent in Persona 2 (IS: 1999; EP: 2000) which deals with a lot of discourse about rumors and propaganda and the early effects of the early internet on the community. There's also a sense of dread for the coming new age as such a possible reflection of the fears of things such as Y2K. An interesting thing to note about Persona 2 are the villains, mainly a serial killer and a terrorist bomber, which shows the communal fear of these events on a society-wide level as this calls back to how Japan just dealt with their own serial killer in the form of the infamous Otaku Killer in 1989 and the fresh from memory terrorist bombing of doomsday cult Aum Shrinrikyo in 1995.
The Persona 2 characters would have grown up in a similar environment as the Persona 1 characters as they are both within Generation X. Knowing my parents who had come from this generation as well, they had told me that there was a constant fear of the apocalypse. It was the height of the cold war when they were growing up and although we weren't directly affected by it, the sheer proximity of our country to large powers like China and our allegiance to their enemy America has created a constant panic. Japan falls in a similar position as a US Ally and a Chinese and Russian enemy that's extremely closely situated to them, so I could imagine that this sort of fear influenced the writing of the games as the writers most certainly had experienced this as well.
It's no wonder then that despite the characters coming from a post-cold war Japan, that these fears may continue in for them and everyone around them so rumors as ridiculous as Hitler literally coming back to attack Japan spread regardless of how realistic it could be.
Skip forward several years, and Atlus decides to brush off the dust of their shelved spin-off series and come back with Persona 3 (2006). The characters are now literally a completely new generation, a generation left behind by their elders and exposed to the harsh reality of the world at such an intensely young age - the millennials.
I know that a lot of people may see this as a stupid point to bring up, but I assure to you that as a non-American, that the war on terror still gripped and sensationalized my own country to such a degree that it did cause a level of apathy among the populace. I'm not sure if this is true of Japan as well, but I feel like tragic world events and the increased visibility of these stories due to the rise of the 24-hour news cycle certainly is a universal experience. It is not surprising that the members of S.E.E.S. needs to fight back against this desolation and desperation on a day-to-day basis when everyone is literally affected by this universal apathy.
An interesting thing to note about Persona 3 is how almost all the characters are either orphans, become orphans during the narrative, or have a complicated relationship with estranged family. I feel like this reflects the way that millennials may feel that they had been abandoned by their elders and now they're forced to navigate the world with little to no guidance or even possibly corrupted guidance from adults like Ikutski.
Technology is also an increased concern in this game, following the trends of the previous two. The progress of technology could lead to incredible and even helpful things such as the creation of Aigis as a fully-realized individual from an AI program or the creation of the evoker as a means to harness the ability of the persona which, in the lore of the franchise, needs to come more naturally but could now be summoned on command regardless of it all. No longer would the person with potential need to wait as long for their abilities to show, all they need is this macabre device in order to access it.
That's the thing though isn't it? This technology comes with a price and comes with disturbing progress as well. Aigis was created to kill shadows and the AI was just created to make her more effective. She was forced to destroy what were essentially her sisters in order to make her the perfect killing machine without any consideration about the possibility of her own humanity despite the fact that they programmed her to be as human as possible.
The evoker came about from years of research from the joint efforts of the Nanjo Conglomerate and the Kirijo group. The research involved in which abused children and destroyed the lives of those who opposed the research just to get where they want to go. There was no care for ethics nor humane treatment which resulted in these children to turn to crime in order to live as a consequence of the unethical research that harmed them.
The concerns of technology and the ethics of playing god were already prevalent before but the turn of the new century put it as a discussion front and center. Stories of cloned sheep or strange chimeras from experimentation had increased discourse of whether or not science had gone too far during this time. Vividly, I remember being s teenager in the 2010s reading these old articles and old Wikipedia entries about these oddities.
As Persona 3 discussed the increased societal apathy for the world, the struggles of the millennial generation navigating it by themselves, and the dangers of research that forego ethics, Persona 4 (2008) focuses on the world's obsession of media, the struggles of a small town in the center of fame, and how collectivism forces the individual to hide themselves to be accepted even moreso than the other three entries of the franchise.
Persona 3 focuses on the early to mid millennial experience in a pre-recession society, Persona 4 focused on the late millennial experience in a media-hungry, recession-era society. These characters would have grown up around the late 90s to the mid 2000s where things such as gossip and paparazzi culture was all the rage. People started to care more about their media presence and how they present themselves not only to the local community but the world.
Gone were the days where rumors only reached a handful of the informed gossipers and internet forum users, and here comes the rise of television! Found in every well-to-do middle-class home! The world is judgmental, unfeeling, and only cares about the hottest new headline and our Investigation Team needs to learn how to be true to who they are in a society that doesn't want them to be.
The setting of the story in a rural town in the brink of urbanization is such a relatable one as I also come from a similar background. The fears of the loss of the cultural and individual identity of the small town is a real one that I had the displeasure of experiencing recently. Progress is good, but it's destroying local businesses. Progress is good, but it's making everyone less personal. Progress is good, but it's making people lose who they are.
It's also not at all just a Japanese pandering situation for the themes of the game be centered on traditional Japanese culture such as the characters' personas being Japanese figures from history, literature, and religion, the main villain and basis of the grander narrative themes also coming from old Shinto mythologies, and the emphasis of tradition with the story even starting out in an old traditional Japanese inn.
Mass media is destroying culture and it's up to the younger generation to navigate these two worlds of preserving who you are and accepting the progress. As a child, I found some level of annoyance that the previous generation before me who acted as my teachers and seniors, both at school, at home, and on the internet, was too forceful on things such as local tradition to the point that some of them even shame people who aren't on the same page as them. In a way, this is them trying to deal with the grander pressures of what society is demanding of them and it's something that I myself grew to understand as I got older.
When I got older, I realized how these complicated systems had genuinely ruined too many lives and destroyed individuality and culture which I know for a fact is a definite almost universal experience for the next generation, Generation Z (colloquially now known as the Zoomers). A common experience for this generation is the shattering of wonderland and the intense exposure to horrible reality at such a young age which leads to such a desensitization that it's worrying.
Most often than not, this generation is told that they are responsible for the horrible state world around them, that they should be the ones to fix the problems of society, that they should do this themselves lest they want to die. This leads to a lot of youth activism and protests with people as young as 11 or 12 being so active in politics that it continues to permeate to this day. Think of those 16-year-olds in this website back at like 2015-2016 that rallied behind the discourse. This is that generation, and it's a universal experience among the group, not just in America, but globally.
I'm gonna be a bit salty and a bit cringy here and maybe a bit biased, but fuck it this is my generation after all.
Persona 5 (2016) is the persona game for the disgruntled Gen Z. As the previous persona games were criticisms of society that could be dismissed off as individual-motivational fluff by those that love ignoring the grander themes of the series, Persona 5 is a figurative punch in the face that's hard to ignore.
No longer are we in made up cities and towns, no longer are we just focused on finding our place in the world, we're in Tokyo, Japan, baby! And we're here to tell everyone in the world that the society that you pride yourselves in is a farce that actively oppresses the weirdos, the outcasts, and the miscreants! They've done fucked up and we're not sitting idly by no more! We're not just gonna defy you by being who we are, we're going to actively stop your shit before you continue hurting others!
As pompous and self-important and even stupid as that sounds, those words reflected the battle cry of the generation. Online slacktivism, exposés, cancellations, and borderline illegal activities that basically amount to doxxing and wiretapping are part of the gen z cultural identity whether we like it or not. The generation selects the shitty adult target and doesn't let off until they're gone and had paid for their crimes.
As how shitty these witch hunts could get, there is no denying that deplatforming dangerous individuals had garnered good results on the cases where it doesn't become a shit storm. In a way, the Phantom Thieves are the success stories that the copycats that we know about in-game try to emulate but just end up hurting innocent people.
As it stands, in the retrospect that we have more than half a decade later after the game's initial launch, Persona 5 interestingly also stands as not only a criticism of larger societal issues, but also to those who try to respond to it by force and how they don't help long-term and are simply contributing to society's oppressive systems. It's interesting to note here how the choice of taking Yaldabaoth's offer of keeping the Phantom Thieves a part of the grander influencers of Japanese society is considered a bad ending.
As much as you want to change society, you best be careful to not fall in the same trappings that would make you the villain that you so desperately fought against. Despite your good judgment before, you should not be the arbiter of right and wrong. You should be there to liberate people, not control them.
The games development in itself is interesting in that not only did it take a long time, but it's based on a lot of real-life events that led to the writing team to develop the game in this direction.
The original plan for the game was supposed to be a road trip with the characters possibly even going international. I speculate that it may be a story that would have supposedly tackled globalization and its effects on the individual which is also an equally poignant thing that Gen Z has experienced. This all changed, however, when Japan was rocked by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011 which launched the country into a national crisis. The team became more aware about their country's situation and the people within Japan that it made them change the focus back into Japanese-society.
This refocus seemed to have spurred the writing into a more rebellious direction than the previous concepts possibly owed to the rise of social awareness within the country. News stories had never been more front and center than they have with not only the rise of the internet but it's domination in daily life. In fact, Japanese players had pointed out that the first arc of the game, the lustful PE teacher Suguru Kamoshida, may be based on a real life case of Masato Uchishiba, an Olympic medalist judoka that was accused of sexual harassment and rape by the women's team that he coached which broke out into the news the same year this sudden shift of direction happened.
With news after news of this caliber, it's not surprising that the game had such a frustration with how society works and the failings of authority to protect and to serve the people.
With all of these in mind, as much as the series in itself is flawed, it's such a fascinating reflection of the times. Each of these games are, to a degree, timeless in the fact that they tackle constant pervasive issues that affects not only Japanese society but the grander global culture. Though besides this, the context of the time period and the setting gives such a raw view of what the issues most prevalent were at the time and the struggles of the generation that these games were released for.
I know that there is absolutely no indication that Atlus would be releasing Persona 6 in the near future, but I am assured of one thing. Persona 6 is going to be a reflection of the generation that will grow up with the main characters. It would be a criticism and an earnest look at society's ills that are important to the next generation. The series will continue to build up on previous themes and discussions of the previous games as each generation continues to build up on the discourse of the last. This is the intriguing relationship of the Persona series and the generational experience.
