#//And Shido saw that and essentially proves that people will only use it for their own desires.

[kingspuppet]

I will forever think about how Goro is mature mentally and physically but definitely not emotionally. That emotions are always something super foreign to him because no one has ever really taught him how to nurture that side of him. And overall it's just easier to be angry, especially when dealing with complex feelings that he doesn't understand. Because anger is familiar and protects him. It puts up this wall and pushes people away before they can hurt him. It's kept him going for so long that anything else is terrifying. Without his anger who is he? Strip all that down and what's left underneath? Emotionally, it's a kid. A kid that never got to grow up slowly, who was forced to be an adult and independent at a young age because no one else was there to help. The anger protects that kid beneath all the walls, but it also buries them beneath his trauma because being angry is easier than dealing with the hurt kid who was orphaned and unwanted.

[radiantresplendence]

Doctor Takuto Maruki Was Right

Maruki is the Councillor Arcana in Persona 5 Royal and is a fantastic character that the original game was sorely lacking. I’ll be talking some spoilers here. Be warned. 

We can talk about how Demiurge/Yaldabaoth/Yagor/Jägermeister (or whatever you want to call him) is straight trash and shouldn’t be the overarching antagonist of Persona 5 another time, but that’s not what’s important here. 

What’s important here is that Maruki wasn’t in the original game and that does a disservice to everyone who played it. 

For the vast majority of P5R, Maruki is just the high school counselor who was brought in to the school in the aftermath of the Kamoshida incident as a means of damage control. He’s kind, emphatic and insightful and genuinely wants to help anyone seeking his services. 

The Phantom Thieves, due to their involvement in the Kamoshida incident are mandated by the school to talk to him; as the game progresses, most of the team members form some sort of connection to him, save for Akechi and Futaba (I believe) as Akechi is only a Phantom Thief when his goals align with the team and Futaba isn’t a student. 

Even Yoshizawa and Yusuke interact with Maruki, as Yusuke goes out of his way to do so after hearing about him from the other thieves and he was Yoshizawa’s counselor after the death of her sister. 

Over the course of his confidant, Joker gives Maruki his perspective on some of Maruki’s research, which is later revealed to be Cognitive Psience. At the end of his confidant arc, Maruki reveals that he’s known that Joker’s group were the Phantom Thieves since he saw them exit the Cognitive world during the first heist. He says he supports the thieves and their justice but he has to go a separate way. He then exits the story until after the defeat of the God of Control.

If you finish Maruki’s Confidant Arc by the time that he leaves the school, Maruki completes a belated Cognitive Psience paper that he was working on with funding from a college in Toyko and winds up applying his theory when Mementos merges with the real world. 

In short, Maruki fully awakens to his persona with the special ability to rewrite cognition. When the cognitive world and the real world are merged, however this power becomes absurdly potent, and Maruki begins to warp reality in order to make a world where no one suffers. 

Maruki’s machinations affect all of the Phantom Thieves positively: Joker doesn’t go to prison because... Akechi is alive and confesses to his crimes in Joker’s stead. Akechi is let off the hook for his crimes. Morgana is a human. Ryuji was never injured and is still the star of the track team. Ann’s friend Shiho never attempted suicide. Yusuke was never exploited by Madarame, who instead acts as a passable father figure to him. Makoto and Sae’s dad was never assassinated. Futaba’s mother is alive and is presumably in some sort of relationship with Sojiro. Finally, Haru’s father wasn’t executed after his bossfight and he was never an exploitative egoist. 

There’s a lone exception to this: the girl who the game refused to let join the Phantom Thieves; a girl who had been receiving therapy from Dr. Maruki since before the start of the game due to her trauma from the death of her sister, Sumire Yoshizawa.

In a way, “Kasumi” was Maruki’s prototype for the world he wanted to create. She couldn’t process the guilt she felt for surviving the crash that killed her allegedly more talented sister and consequently wished that she was her late sibling. 

Now the world that Maruki creates is essentially a utopia, where no one suffers and crippling psychological harm is unable to befall anyone. Now we can consider the value of free will that Maruki is removing by becoming a new “God of Control”, but as a card carrying deterministic nihilist, I see it as more or less as trading the whims of an uncaring chaotic universe for those of a benevolent eccentric. The game frames this as a stagnation of humanity, something I don’t entirely agree with. Maruki understands that physical wounds (aka hardship) are inescapable (and can provide adversity to fuel growth) and his big theory revolves around altering cognition to inoculate against mental illness. Any issue with Maruki’s world revolves more around his personal flaws and lack of moderation than it does with his theoretical framework. Regardless, Maruki’s world is more ethical than what it replaces. 

In the third semester, if we ignore some of the alterations like reviving the dead as they’re more of a condition of the world than an effect of it, many people who would otherwise be sick or destitute are not, and the natural conclusion of Maruki gaining full control (as evidenced in the bad ending where you side with the doctor) is a world where no one is. Essentially, the Phantom Thieves in the third semester who fight against Maruki are condemning these people to poverty, despair and a miserable death. Ethically, for the sake of their own morality, the Phantom Thieves are the bad guys. 

Maruki’s motivations need to be examined closer. He is someone who has been largely unable to move past his own trauma (as evidenced by the entire third semester and foreshadowed in the scene where he runs into a college friend) so he has come to the conclusion that he should dedicate himself to moving others past theirs. I mean, mind-wiping your fiance of most of her life with you to cure her of her PTSD and having your life’s work stolen by Shido as you try to pick up the pieces would probably leave a guy feeling pretty empty. Essentially Maruki has resigned himself to his own sorrow after repeatedly being dealt a bad hand, so to speak. 

I think we can safely say that at the very least, Maruki has been emotionally displaced (if not worse) since the incident with Rumi and having his life's work defunded has led him to a place where his only real desire is the pursuit of a singular goal: obliterating sadness. Not his mind you, but everyone else's. 

Basically, Maruki is not well, emotionally or mentally, despite him being able to function as a productive member of society. Completing his contract with a cosmic entity and taking the throne of the god of control, enables him to pursue his goal far beyond what he was capable as a mere doctor with a special power. He infests the human subconscious to further his goal and relentlessly tightens his grip on the world. Despite having augmented physiology in the fused metaverse as a persona user, I feel that he's a mentally ill man who's burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. I think, if anything, fully awakening to Azathoth’s power exacerbated his preexisting mental state. 

To evidence my claim of Maruki’s declining illness, allow me to cite: putting a friend and confidant into a vegetative state because he couldn’t solve a moral dilemma in a month’s time, tentacling a teenage girl and brainwashing her because her dissent is a rejection of your life’s work, picking a fistfight with a high schooler while screaming about stuff unrelated to him, choosing to martyr yourself in resignation to your own suffering when you have the power to avert it. 

Imagine a world where Maruki became the new ruler of the Cognitive World, but acted in a more limited capacity that is more in line with his original research, than the extreme conclusion of it. Consider him acting more like the collective subconscious's guardian angel than the god of control, possibly with the blessing of the Phantom Thieves. I think that’s more what a sane Maruki would settle on, feeling responsible to use the powers he was granted by his contract with an outer god. 

With that out of the way, let’s discuss the way that Maruki implements his agenda.

While working at Shujin, Maruki isn't anything particularly special as a counselor, as it's neither something that he's particularly skilled at, nor is it something that he's passionate for. It's more or less a case of his job being something that he is qualified to do. 

We know that his real passion was cognitive psience research. In essence, he's a scientist over a health professional, even though the funding for his area of expertise was slashed to bits forcing him to take an alternate career path. Especially early on, the way he’d approach his job would certainly be influenced by his passion. To that end, I think you need to analyze his session with Yoshizawa from a research perspective. He rewrote her cognition to be that of her sister’s because he thought it would help her move on. His actions here were absolutely unethical, as he was experimenting on a minor without guardian consent or full disclosure of information, but initial results of his cognition rewrite were positive (especially in the short-term, despite Yoshizawa struggling more in the long term than she otherwise may have). 

"Kasumi" in a lot of ways is a proof of concept for the world he creates in the third semester, even if she isn't necessarily an optimally-functioning prototype. Now, I think Maruki was definitely acting as a bad counselor, and a "mad psientist", if you'll allow my pun, in the flashback. In the third semester however, there's no validity in examining him as a counselor, as he's not actively doing counseling. You can't even really examine him under the lens of ethical science, as he's essentially beyond morality. The man has the power to massively warp reality, raise the dead and alter memories. Essentially, his powers are such that only the end result of any action he takes really matters. If Maruki were to harm or kill someone, regardless of intent, he could make it never happen. So, only the ends of his actions can really be taken into account. 

The ends of his actions are, of course, to obliterate human misery, and he proved effective at this. The exceptions being Sumire Yoshizawa (albeit before the full implementation of his agenda) and himself (his palace is the Laboratory of Sorrow after all.) I guess what I'm getting at here is that, Maruki has to be judged as a god for all of his actions in the third semester, as that’s really the only lens applicable to his role there. 

With that in mind, the questionable actions that he takes in the third semester are basically just holding Akechi’s life hostage and forcing Yoshizawa to be Kasumi. He avoids physical altercation with the Phantom Thieves until they literally approach him with a mutual agreement of force. The Akechi situation is one that Maruki claims to be unintentional, and I do believe him. I think the awkwardness of that reveal is more due to Maruki’s social ineptitude and difficulty revealing that sensitive piece of information than it is anything nefarious. As for the Kasumi situation, Maruki has every ability to revive the real Kasumi and adjust Sumire’s life to become one more satisfying to her. In the end I think that that unfortunate situation has more to do with an ill man with unlimited power unable to distance Yoshizawa’s rejection of his initial gift as a personal sleight to everything he’s spent his life working towards. With his work being pretty much the only thing he’s currently attributed meaning to in his life his swift rejection of dissent makes a little more sense. 

This leads to something I consider mandatory, Yoshizawa needs to rebel against the fate Maruki assigned to her, or every member of the Phantom Thieves would be working against their and all of humanity’s best interests. 

I think no one would disagree with me when I say that his role in the third semester is that of a god antithetical to the themes of Persona 5, and thus narratively has to be deposed for a satisfying conclusion. Looking objectively at his grand plan however, even with his hiccups, I can’t really say he’s wrong, even if his implementation isn’t as clean as I (or even himself in a better frame of mind) would like.

[chainsawbettyloo]

Opinion on Goro?

oh gosh, I have so many 

Firstly, first and foremost, I love Akechi. He’s my favorite character from Persona 5 and I think he’s utterly fascinating 

Secondly, I think the game developers did an absolute shit job of handling his character. They had an absolutely fascinating character on their hands - someone who could have easily been an intriguing villain or dynamic shaky ally but wound up being neither of those things and instead ended up being used as fuel for a predictable, saw it coming from a million miles away twist 

Seriously, Akechi’s role in the game is so goddamn predictable that it’s nearly insulting. They literally did nothing to try to dissuade players from thinking Akechi was going to turn on them. I don’t know if that was intentional on their part or not but if it was, then that makes things even fucking worse because that gives no depth, no oomph to his story / character. If it wasn’t intentional then it just proves my point that the writers of Persona 5 were like sober for three days of the writing process, got some really good ideas and concepts out during those three days then got absolutely shitfaced and proceeded to fuck everything up 

Thirdly, Akechi would have been a more interesting main villain than Shido. I mean, a wet napkin would have been a more interesting villain than Shido but Akechi would have been vastly better than the stale piece of bread that is Shido. Come on, a villain with the motivation that he thinks he knows what’s best for the world and is going to create a perfect world where only those he deems necessary can live in it and he’s going to be the glorious ruler of that world? Yes, like that hasn’t been done fifty million times before. Meanwhile, Akechi, while his motivation isn’t entirely unique, still has a more creative motive for doing what he’s doing. Not to mention, he’s just, overall, a more interesting, engaging character than Shido. Shido is boring. Shido is about as interesting as watching paint dry. Akechi is flawed, multi-dimensional, capable of easily making himself appear harmless and friendly while hiding a goddamn hellfire of rage. Akechi is a teenager who is so goddamn sick of adults and yet, wants attentions, wants to be loved, wants to have a goddamn place in society. Akechi is someone obsessed with revenge, with his own rage, his own injustices 

Akechi has the same power as the wild card, Akechi is the only person who stands as pretty much even with Akira, Akechi is someone who Yabgkjshjfh handpicked out of everyone else in the whole goddamn world, Akechi is, essentially, at the starting point of becoming a corrupted adult so wouldn’t that dynamic have had been interesting, Akechi has a personal connection to the Phantom Thieves, Akechi has got the sympathetic factor going on, Akechi has so much more going for him than Shido does so it makes absolutely no goddamn sense that he was tossed aside in favor of Glasses McGee 

Fourth..ly, Akechi fucking deserved redemption. The entire game, the entire premise of Persona 5, is stealing people’s hearts to make them into better people. The entire message is that anyone, even the most despicable human being, can be changed so why. the. fuck. wasn’t. Akechi. afforded. the. same. chance? Why was a child, a fucking child, who had been mentally abused, neglected and turned into a killer by his own father not allowed the same chance for redemption? See, this is where the whole shortchanged comes into play because I don’t know what went wrong here, why the game developers suddenly decided that Akechi, for whatever reason, was going to be thrown away like yesterday’s leftovers because there was so much goddamn potential. He could have had redemption, he could have had this big scene where the theme of the entire goddamn game was solidified in Akechi, by having Akechi admit his crimes, work to take down his Father, to take down Yagjghjgf and then take responsibility for his actions, thus cementing the goddamn theme of redemption 

But no, we get a half ass “death” scene where we don’t even see what happens to Akechi. He’s not mentioned hardly at all (or not at all, I can’t remember) in the rest of the game. Basically, his character, which had so much going for it, was left behind, ignored, cast aside and it so pisses me off because he could have been so much more! There was so much they could have done with him! So many aspects, ideas of redemption, corruption, raising above your past or giving into it that they could have explored! But no, no, we get a stupid twist that isn’t even that good and is so goddamn predictable, a boss fight that crams pretty much all of Akechi’s motivations into a span of just a few minutes then a anti-climatic “death” scene. And for what? To prove the point that not everyone can be saved? That’s goddamn fucking bullshit. Don’t pull that kind of shit when it comes to kids, especially not abused kids. Pull that shit with shitty adults but not children. What kind of message is that sending? Definitely not one that’s congruent with the rest of the game so why the fuck even include it? Because you have this character on your hands that you don’t know what to do with so you decide to get rid of him in the least coherent way possible? 

Overall, my opinion of Akechi is that he suffers from what a lot of what Persona 5 itself suffers from: inconsistent, shitty writing. I don’t know what happened but there are some parts of Persona 5 that are just fucking spot on then the rest is just be an absolute dumpster fire. Akechi, unfortunately, gets stuck with the most of the terrible writing, which really fucking sucks because he could have, easily, been either one of the most interesting villains or anti-heroes of the entire Persona franchise if he had had a more competent writer at the helm but alas, what we have is just a mountain of wasted potential