#and i can't help but think of the parallels between the two akechis and nobunaga/shido

[singharit]

ur tags on the akechi / yusuke comparison gifset are my entire mood and some excellent analysis I'm weak for tbh

oh thank you so much!! 

imo, so much of akechi’s character is so incredibly nuanced that sometimes it’s easy for people to either miss out on those nuances, or just ignore them, and i think a lot of that is due to the cultural differences between the writers and western audiences.

similar to akechi, i remember reading at one point about japanese players’ reactions to adachi in persona 4 and how they were much more sympathetic than western players. a lot of them could relate to him and understand his motivations. it was primarily due to the nihilism and general misanthropy that pervaded japan’s youth after the bubble economy crashed in ‘92, where many kids growing up during what’s now called “the lost decade” resented the adults of the country for what they saw as creating the financial crisis, prolonging it, and leaving the youth of the country with nothing but hardship after they’d had their own fun. western players, who didn’t have the same kind of cultural context, just saw him as being a self-important and spoilt piece of shit.

while it’s hard to argue that adachi is a victim in the same way that akechi is, i find them to be very similar at their core, with the main difference between them being the power they hold. adachi, even with his front of being useless, was still a member of the police force, he was an adult, he had power and respect in one way or another just from his age and position. akechi was seventeen years old, which i think is something some people forget. he was still a minor, and beholden to the whims of adults as much as the rest of the thieves. if shido had wanted to, he could’ve withheld akechi’s education, he could’ve gotten akechi evicted from his apartment, he could’ve done a myriad of things to enforce his position of power. akechi is plainly aware of this since his shadow self says that shido is planning to have him killed after everything. that sort of abuse obviously takes its toll and may well be what shaped akechi into being a well-intentioned extremist with such a stark view of the world.

i think a lot about what kind of man akechi could’ve become if he’d been handed a better lot in life. he’s obviously cunning and incredibly intelligent even outside the whole detective prince image he’s cultivated, and knows how people think, what makes them tick. those skills seem to be innate in him as a person and if he’d had a better support network, with all the parallels between him and yusuke coming to mind again, i don’t think he’d have ended up even half as bad and desperate for vengeance as he did. 

my favourite headcanon: an older akechi, self-sufficient and slowly healing, practising law. he’s not like sae who faces down murderers and arsonists, he specialises in family law, typically mediating divorce proceedings and custody arrangments. it’s not a glamorous life, a far cry from his detective prince image as a teen, but he gets to make sure that the children he helps don’t suffer like he did.