#IM SORRY I LIKE AKECHI. literally only got Ryuji and Yusuke their reawakened personas. wHOOPS sorry. lol

[royalbilliards]

i honestly loved the option to have an in-game therapist because 1) he's a fun endearingly awkward little meow meow 2) joker genuinely seems like he.... needs someone like that since all other confidants basically use him as a person to vent to at some point in the social links. and like you say it's fine if you vent to a friend! sometimes you just need to bemoan to a person close to you. but when it's done constantly by either one person or several that's. a lot.

and tbh i never really got the fandom complaints that maruki used joker only as a sounding board for his thesis. having actual therapy session in-game might have been too much, and they wouldn't have given us much on maruki as a character i think? like his ideals passions desires idk. so ofc the social link scenes won't go into details. ive always felt that the actual therapy sesh occured after maruki talked about his thesis with joker to ease him into talking and break the ice. im a pretty anxious person so even if it's just a routine check with a gp im nervous. i imagine a therapy session is even worse skjdksk

No literally!! Maruki was a character they really needed in P5, a generally trustable adult social link that didn’t vent to Joker about his problems, a lot of the adult social links in P5 bothered me a lot because it felt like. A lot to dump on some kid who is already going through a shit time of it (new school, criminal record, literally being kicked out of home for a year to live in a capital city) so I never really did them aside from Sojiro. Maruki treat Joker as both an equal and someone who really did need his help, and the ice breaking of the thesis research is a good way to involve Maruki in the story, give foreshadowing of his palace and royal content, and have a fun guy that you can trust, and I’ll be honest,, Maruki never really asked Joker anything that he couldn’t answer, he simply asked him for his opinion on his thesis research or a thought experiment, and shared that he had similar experiences with Joker to help him feel more comfortable. It’s why the jokes about Joker being Maruki’s therapist always bothered me, Maruki has his problems obviously but he only ever brought them up as common ground between him and Joker, and never asked Joker for help or advice with them.

Therapy appointments are Scary, they’re even scarier as a teenager, as someone who got teenage therapy, I never knew what to say or how to get my point across to my therapist, and Maruki having that before session thought experiment and discussion is a really good way to get Joker more comfortable about his treatment, even if he’s choosing to go to the sessions.

Also I would have done that if I didn’t run around every day trying to guess when Akechi would be free to hang out, less that is said about my confidant ranks with the other PT the better//