#virtype

[royalbilliards]

[royalbilliards]

i would LOVE to hear your opinion on maruki's therapy bc i see a lot of ppl saying he sucked as a therapist and i've never seen one so i can't really say anything with certainty...... but idk, i want joker to have at least an okay therapist just because it's a nice touch. also i think it's more satisfying narratively when maruki is someone joker can lean on for support and get attached to, but then has to oppose because shitty actualization. idk. pathetic wet man makes me go brrrrrr

Welcome to the autism zone.

So a lot of my thoughts on maruki’s therapy comes from my own experiences with a therapist in the past (I’m trying to get a new one right now) but. A lot of what Maruki’s ‘confidant perks’ and what they’re called suggest he’s giving Joker treatment for anxiety and depression, which makes a lot of sense given the way he acts in public outside of the joker persona, and the situation he’s in at Shujin (being bullied, for lack of a better term because it’s 5 am and I just woke up, and ostracised due to Kamoshida spilling his criminal record).

Practices like mindfulness and wakefulness sound like bullshit when you first have to start them, mostly because of the names, but the practices themselves are grounding techniques, being able to be present in your body, aware of your surroundings, and not letting yourself spiral via panic or depression and stuff. Detox is a term for drug addiction and alcoholism rehab, they’re not exactly practices we know Joker needs help with, but they’re most likely preventative measures, so that he doesn’t go Down those paths BECAUSE of his situation, which honestly makes sense, depression, anxiety, bullying from peers and the rest of it, including his criminal record and the way Japan treats students with criminal records, it makes sense that Joker could have easily gone down those routes if he didn’t have his friends and the metaverse to blow off steam and have an outlet for his emotions that he isn’t allowed to have in his day to day life. Flow is also a form of therapy treatment for handling depression, and mostly focus’ on capturing moments of positive mental states and allowing yourself to be completely focused and involved in Enjoyable activities that make you happy.

Because all of these therapy treatments that we get named from his confidant perks are Real therapy treatments that both Work and are widely used to treat specific mental health problems (Depression, Anxiety and Self-worth) we get both an insight into how Joker is actually feeling about things outside of what he shows and how useful these techniques are in his actual day to day life, because he’s using them to handle stressful situations in the metaverse.

There’s also the fact that Before everything, and AFTER everything, Joker doesn’t seem to hold much animosity towards Maruki, yes Akechi does and he’s Totally allowed to hate him, but neither Yoshizawa or Joker do, when Yoshizawa is more than justified in being angry and frustrated with him. And it might just be due to the abysmal lack of characterisation Yoshizawa gets, but mostly she seems like she too, like Joker, WANTS to help him, because we know that Maruki himself struggles with Self-worth problems, delusions of grandeur, a messiah complex (in both definitions of the term) anxiety and depression (along with a few other spicier things I don’t feel like mentioning because I’d need to bring up the psa’s on how demonised disorders need to be treated with respect since no one can do that on the internet). But there doesn’t seem to Be animosity between the three of them. Mostly just worry about someone they both cared about, and trusted.

There’s also the fact that, Jokers interactions with Maruki do not End After you help him with his research, we’re just cut off from the interaction at that point, because Joker in canon is explaining to Sae other more important things, he probably doesn’t feel the need to tell her the confidential therapy treatment he’s receiving at school. Their interaction continues, we get a fade to black, so it’s obvious he is getting actual therapy treatment, but Maruki has probably picked up on Jokers earth shattering savior complex and is easing him into the idea of therapeutic treatment by having him assist in his research, so Joker is more inclined to accept the help, since it’s a Transaction to Joker. If Maruki had more time to be Jokers therapist, and I assume he would have at some point Offered to continue his work as Jokers therapist after his tenure at Shujin ending, he would have eventually been able to work on that with Joker, and weaned him off Needing to help people all the time, and viewing social interactions as a transactional thing.

Anyways, yeah, I don’t think Maruki is a bad therapist outside of the horrors, I think people just don’t think about it because it isn’t spoon fed to them in a social link interaction, which is where the assumption that he’s Only using Joker as a sounding board comes from. But what would I know I just did media studies and have a special interest in analysing media, SHRUG

[royalbilliards]

Maruki would fall for the “candy apple but it’s actually an onion” trick.

yeah absolutely

proof of concept drawn via my finger on my work laptop

[royalbilliards]

Post canon Maruki would get a cat and would have a mental breakdown over wether or not he had forced the cat to love him through actualisation. These fears are swiftly forgotten when said cat knocks his favourite mug off a shelf I think

[royalbilliards]

Im curious what are the maruki misinterpretations that the fandom can have do you dislike the most? Your maruki takes and analysations are great i’d love to see more of your thoughts on him :D

Thank you!! I love the wet man councillor and I spend a lot of time thinking about him, it’s a problem

And hmm there’s a few, a lot of them is the idea he’s doing stuff maliciously, which he isn’t, and like it doesn’t take a genius to go “yeah he’s not evil” he’s just sad and hurt and kinda dumb about his own emotions and I think literally anyone given the chance to control reality would be unable to handle it and stop themselves from shaping the world as they personally see fit, humans are complicated and no one is free from their own biases and ideas about what a perfect world would look like.

I’ve already gone on my rant about the whole bad therapist/ joker acts as his therapist thing so we don’t need a repeat of that here.

People using his as an instigator in stuff because they Need a Bad Guy tm for their fic and because Maruki is the Palace Ruler Joker and Akechi go up against together they default to Him and they just severely fuck up his character or misunderstand how he acts, a lot of the time making him an active antagonist or someone who genuinely hates the PT for dismantling his false reality, when Maruki really isn’t like that at all, his themes are literally called Gentle Madman and Out of Kindness, like Fucking come on man.

Those are just a few but I know if I look in my discord dms with my friends I’ll find more, because I don’t think I ever shut up, a large portion is just Misunderstanding his character, purposefully misunderstanding his character, or people not doing a little research into things I guess. The grey morals are allowed for other characters in the series but not Maruki I guess

[royalbilliards]

Love your art and analysis!!

Thank you!!!! Please enjoy this 5 second Maruki I drew in math class a few weeks ago

[royalbilliards]

Now that you’re done, what are your thoughts on our fav failking Maruki?

So I’ve been sitting on this question a while. I didn’t know how to really express my opinions properly that weren’t in the usual comedic tone I pick up when I talk about the things I love, but I really wanted to answer this question wholeheartedly, so here we are!

Firstly, I need to get my actual thoughts about Persona 5 Royal out of the way, because I love this game. I truly and completely love this game, and it’s knocked BOTW out of the number one placement spot for my favourite game of all time. Everything from the characters, story, music, even the UI design have me absolutely floored, and I genuinely cannot think of a game I could say tops it for me. I listen to the soundtrack daily, and constantly think about the game when I can. I have so many complex thoughts about the game I could talk about here, but since this is just about my opinions on Maruki, I’ll keep those to myself.

Moving on, Maruki is, I feel, one of my favourite characters of all time. He’s so interesting and well-written, his motives make sense, and for the audience it’s sympathetic. We understand why he’s doing what he does, even if it’s wrong. He cares a lot about people, but he cares too much, and it’s his downfall. He wants to make everyone happy, and it’s just impossible. He can’t live knowing someone would be slightly upset. He worked for multiple years to create his perfect reality, presumably trying to figure out a way to help everyone he could, when the opportunity to help everyone landed right in his lap. This was the most important thing to him, and it’s admirable as it is stupid. The loss of that desire, the loss of that ability to help everyone he could, his failed reality and the fact that no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn’t succeed did a massive number on his mental state. Though, I feel as though he mostly survived on his need to help people rather than any positive mental state for a while. I mean, the second he loses that desire, loses years of work and watches as it crumbles and shatters around him, he fully gives up and tries to kill himself (something which Ren was in no way shape or form going to allow). His love for people is what drove him, and his love for people almost drove him to his death.

I feel like a lot of people misunderstand Maruki and what he was meant to represent, He's not one of those “rotten adults.'' He's a broken and hurt man who hadn’t been allowed to express his emotions, and suffered hit after hit (his studies being cut short, his lab being turned into a stadium, his fiancé having a mental breakdown and going catatonic) and tried to fight his emotions by helping other people instead of focusing oh himself. Hence him becoming a therapist and trying to help other people out with their problems as opposed to focusing on his own.

I’ve realised people tend to get angry at Maruki because he was a twist villain. They trusted him and he turned out to be the last boss of the game, and whilst this is understandable, it’s also fucking stupid to stay mad. Characters like this tend to get a lot of shit treatment and I’ve seen people complain multiple times about games having obvious villains, only to complain and get genuinely angry when a twist villain is revealed to be a character they got attached to or trusted. (An example of this is Volo from Legends: Arceus.) Maruki is very much one of these. People are allowed to feel how they want, however these communities of people are so loud, and it makes it hard to find accurate and earnest portrayals of the characters. Instead, what's more prevalent is an insane twisting of the truth people do to justify their anger, or portrayals present in order to have a “villain” for fan content. They do this without realising that the point is that anyone can mess up, and Maruki isn’t a villain for what he did.

To me, Maruki represents guilt and trying to catch an elusive “happy ending." The story of the game is riddled with tragedy and it mostly sticks to its guns about keeping these tragedies permanent. The characters wouldn’t be who they were without the sadness that’s befallen them. The reality Maruki tried to make (and what a lot of people who try to “fix” the canon of a story) made no sense for the characterisation of the characters or who they became as a person because the reasons were erased. There is no happy ending to Persona 5, there is no way to fix everything, and I feel a lot of people may have seen Maruki as an attack on this. It’s okay to feel sad about how something ended, but sometimes you just gotta accept it.

This has gotten pretty wordy, and it’s just a long winded way to say that my opinions on Maruki haven’t changed all that much, other than those 4 hours I spent on merciless trying to beat his fucking fight and getting more and more wound up each time I fucking failed. Anyways, the point is I love him, I love the game, and if anyone is meanies to him again I’ll fucking kill them all with my autism laser beams.

[royalbilliards]

hey– i just wanted to say i'm really sorry people are being rude about maruki on your own dang posts, that really sucks. so, instead, i want to bring some positivity!

i LOVE maruki. a lot! in the first half of the game, i honestly came to completely trust and admire him– his speech when he left shujin left me in tears because of how it resonated with me. i don't know about his japanese seiyuu, but billy kametz was an incredible voice actor and put everything he had into giving maruki an unforgettable performance.

also, all of his themes are some of the best in the game– out of kindness (and its variations), the ideal and the real, and throw away your mask are all incredible songs that i listen to.. a normal amount..

anyways! sorry for rambling for a second there but, i just wanted to show maruki some appreciation. i love your art, and especially your maruki art! keep going!! have a wonderful day!

^ image of me seeing this ask Thank you anon, im usually pretty chill if people dont like a character I dislike, but with Maruki there is an overwhelming amount of people that just do NOT understand him at all that it really grates on my nerves and seeing people actively be rude on posts i make about him just made it worse. I also ADORE maruki, hes one of the characters of all time to me, and his character themes and what hes meant to represent, and his musical themes are all wonderful, i havent heard his Japanese VA (i also played with the english VA's but thats because some of the CR cast did voices and i was like hehe my silly guys) but Billy put in an insane preformance for Maruki, and really helped sell Maruki's character as a whole (i also just have a deep love for voice actors though, so), Near the End of Royal after his first boss fight, the scream he lets out when talking to the PT during this voice line made me fucking INSANE.

And his preformance during the end of the game, where Maruki had Given up also drove me mental. im normal about him, prommy. His musical themes are some of my favourites, and i tend to have I believe and Ideal and the Real stuck in my head at all times because i listen to them so much, the rest of his themes also really help lend to his character and his motivations, and the way theyre composed helps this too. i just wish people took notice of them and their naming schemes importance into consideration when theyre being dumb about his character. I Do not mind your ramble, because i am ALSO rambling, I love hearing why people love Maruki and their thoughts on his character, and it means the world to me when i get asks like this telling me what people think, because it gives me a reason to talk about him too!! so thank you, and thank you for your kind words :3