#but p4 has kanji's whole arc

[kumakuma-circus]

you ever think about how if it was a straight relationship then yukichie would definitely be canon or at least heavily implied given shadow yukiko calling chie her prince cuz i realized that earlier-

[daily-hanamura]

I kind of wished that the persona 4 cast wasn’t stuck in a narrative where the main theme is ‘always accept the role thrust upon you and if you don’t like it, just force yourself to like it’. Yukiko actively wants to leave Inaba and create her own life, but is portrayed negatively when doing so, with her character arc involving her accepting the role thrust upon her. Don’t get me started on Naoto. I know you’re the Yosuke guy, and was wondering what are your thoughts on this when applied to Yosuke?

I want you to know that being called "the Yosuke guy" is now my greatest achievement you've made my day everyday for the last week

I do agree with you, and I think it was one of my initial issues with P4 where, for a game whose entire narrative is about being true to yourself, it sure falls back into that tired sense of social conformation a lot. It's grating, right, because it feels like what they really mean to say is "be yourself! but not too much and not in a way that makes other people unhappy and make sure you're still living up to other peoples expectations because that's the real reason why you're unhappy with yourself, you haven't accepted who we want you to be (which is the real you that we've decided) etcetc" and it just undercuts the emotional impact of their self-acceptance (see also kanji and rise). (dw I know P5 also kind of has the same problem, and I can go into a whole thing about the limits of transformative narratives written by capitalist corporations but i wont. today-)

I think with Yosuke though, it's really interesting because his character arc is more so tied to his relationship with Inaba as a place, rather than his fundamental self-perceptions. It's established early on that Yosuke hated the town for various reasons; he's a city boy who wants excitement and connection, but most of the town hates him so he's shit out of luck and it gives him little reason to like the town back. As the game progresses, he starts to like the town -- "it's not about where you are, but who you're with", so it's his friendships (and having people who accept him for who he is) that makes the place meaningful for him. And, at the end of the day, Yosuke did get what he wanted - excitement and connection.

But he's not tied to Inaba.

In P4AU, it's revealed that Yosuke's struggling to figure out what he wants to do in life, but by the end of it he tells Yu that he wants to leave the town and go to college with Yu in the city, and that he wants to see the world and experience more things for himself. It fascinates me because it very strongly implies that Yosuke's arc isn't complete as we're very expressly told that he's still developing. It stands in contrast to the other characters who have effectively been fixed into some role or position (Yukiko as an inn manager, Rise as an idol), and unlike them, Yosuke hasn't been permanently relegated to the things that he starts off hating. He hasn't been written to stay in Inaba or even to continue working at Junes after graduation, instead he gets the opportunity to try things. imo this makes his arc more situational (and therefore layered) - Yosuke's perspective on his circumstance matures, but who he is as a person doesn't have to change, and he's not forced to make a trade-off with the wishes he had at the start.

This might be because Yosuke is Atlus' favourite character of the contrast between Yosuke's city background and the rest of the Inaba folk. There's a guy in the school who talks about how most people who finish high school in Inaba just go on to get jobs, and very few actually leave for college and beyond. It's something deeply realistic and reflective of human geography IRL, because that's very common in small communities. A fear of the outside world because of how isolated they are (and Inaba kind of is - remember how Yosuke said they barely had cell connectivity up until recently) means they tend to look inwards instead of out, so there isn't as strong an awareness of what else there is out there and a belief that your options are basically just that (it also makes it all the more impressive that they have surprisingly well-traveled teachers). Yosuke, on the other hand, is very much connected to the internet and the outside world, and he also tends to think about the things that he's missing out on more tangibly.

It makes for a very interesting parallel with Yukiko, who had grown up in Inaba all her life and also expresses that same interest in wanting to go out and see the world. Yukiko's idea about the kind of options that she has is weirdly limited for someone who is supposed to be at the top of her class. When you meet her at the bookstore, she talks about getting a job license so she could leave town, and her first thought was interior decorator (do you even need a license for that? it's not a chartered profession unlike an architect or interior designer, but things might work differently in japan). And maybe she does have a genuine interest in it so I'm talking shit, but it also feels like it's a job that she's aware of only because of the ryokan. As far as I could tell, we don't actually see her express any interest in, say, furniture themes or colour swatches and fabric textures in the way Kanji very clearly does. Her world view, like everyone else, is bounded by the reach of her experience, but because Inaba is so small and cloistered it impedes her ability to imagine beyond that. Even when she's thinking of leaving, her options are still limited to her experiences at the inn. I'm still really salty about how she decided to stay at the ryokan in the end, because something much more satisfying in my opinion would have been for her to get the opportunity to try different things elsewhere in the world, and if she decided that the ryokan was the right thing for her, then, well, fine, I guess? Or some cliche like exploring other inns elsewhere so she could bring that knowledge home. Especially since she had the support of her family and the inn staff, it makes her narrative feel more like an acceptance of her lot in life, rather than a genuine realisation that yeah, this was what she wanted, which was what the game wanted us to think, except it's not convincing. Instead, it just feels like a weird stagnation because her initial wish of wanting to see the world beyond the ryokan was not satisfied.

But hey, guess who does!

Yosuke gets to learn how to make the best of a situation, but ultimately, he's not beholden to it. He - and his writers - understand that he's not done growing, so he doesn't fix himself to a role that he doesn't like. AND IT'S GOOD. I just wish everyone else got that opportunity.

[offbrandtoaster]

I think part of the reason Persona 3 is my favorite, despite the plotholes in the original, is that it doesn't constantly undermine it's whole theme and message.

Death is inevitable but life is beautiful.

Person a 4 and 5 on the other hand suffer constant tonal issues with their core messages.

4 really drives home the be true to yourself message, but it always pulls back before said true self is a problem to society. Doesn't help that Yosuke makes homophobic jokes in P4 media to this day. So like, be true to yourself but also don't be gay. A

nd before anyone says the cut gay Yosuke stuff, that genuinely is irrelevant considering it was removed and is non-canon, and because of how Social Links don't effect the main story at all, Yosuke would STILL be like "Kill yourself fag" even it WERE canon. Be true to yourself... just not too much you know?

Persona 5 isn't quuuuite as bad, but it has its issues. I think everyone besides like, Joker and Ryuji being some super star in some manner feels a little contradictory to the message, but whatever it's not a big deal.

But then you have how the game treats Ann. Literally the arc right her's has her needing to put herself in an uncomfortable situation regarding her bodily autonomy. And like... it leaves a SUPER sour taste in the mouth after Kamishido's Dungeon. There's also the fact Joker is also able to date adult women. And like I personally don't give a shit what a game does or does not allow you to do, but it directly undermines Kamishido's dungeon, and so the whole dungeon just feels insincere.

I don't know. I don't hate 4 or 5. I ADORED 4 as a teen, and Kanji being ambiguously bi back then was super important to me (newer fans may not know, but they intentionally used ambiguous language back then. The Golden made sure to No Homo the fuck out of Kanji though lol.) But they just undermine their main narrative so hard that it's frustrating when I replay them (again. Mostly 4, as I haven't played Royal.)

Making most of the main characters' character growth be in Social Links shot themselves in the foot. In 3 the characters grow in the main narrative, and so it just feels nicer despite the more glaring plotholes.

[arcplaysgames]

And the biggest problem I have with P4G...

The main character.

I think the main character of Persona 4 is actively bad. And I think the game paints itself into a corner by making him so fucking boring and non-emotive and non-reactive. He is the opposite of a catalyst in a game that needs forward momentum.

This becomes painfully obvious in the mid-to-late game, around when the entire Namatame thing happens, but it's present for the entire thing. All of the emotional pushes come from other characters. Chie and Yukiko worried about each other, Kanji worried about Naoto, Teddie and Rise driving their arc forward. Because the P4MC can't drive anything everywhere. They are purely reactive in a plot structure that doesn't deal well with reactive protagonists.

(For comparison, see how P3P is structured.)

Yosuke is the real protagonist of P4G. And yes, in universe, I love how this manifests, how you can feel Yosuke taking on more and more responsibility through the game. He takes in Teddie, he leads the team to Namatame, he works with Naoto to solve the case. His anger is one of the primary thrusts of the plot, and if you removed him, the ENTIRE story would fall apart because the MC has nothing.

I am an unabashed stan of FeMC in P3P. I thought she was the perfect balance of a proxy for the player while also having a lot of forward momentum. Also!!! As mentioned in the last post, having the people around her in SEES having their own shit going on frankly alleviates the need for her to carry the whole story!

I appreciate that P4G let me have fun as the MC and gave me some fun chaos options. But the dull void of the MC has bothered me for literally half the game.

Like, compare Yosuke and P4MC with Junpei and FeMC. It's stupid, but I felt real fucking camaraderie with Junpei! I cared about him and I felt like he was my fucking wingman in all things! Which let the game pull that masterful trick when Junpei gets his crisis of self-esteem and turned his back on me for several in-game weeks, I really felt that! But as much as I like Yosuke and P4MC, that exact same plot would not work with Yosuke because P4MC is just not enough of a character to pull it off.

Also, I will be a total asshole for a second. Why the fuck are you only allowed to be a boy in P4? It's actively asinine and if you are gonna make the MC such a blank slate, you can at least give me a blank slate with different fuckign pronouns. Nothing is gained from making P4MC a boy except to reaffirm the idea that Boys Are Default.

In a perfect world, Atlus would make the Persona 6 protagonist gender neutral. Just don't use gendered terms at all! Let the player decide who the fuck they are!

(MAN i am sad thinking about Junpei talking to FeMC like she's One of the Boys. I literally loved that shit so much.)

But yeah, I... did not like the P4MC and as a writer, I can feel the way the story struggles against the void of his existence and presence and how other characters have to compensate for those deficencies. Which becomes even more galling when the game tries to convince me what a cool and excellent guy he is.

SIGHS

Anyway. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed my time with P4G despite all my complaints. Persona 3 Portable Girl Route is just the better game.

[ragecndybars]

Top 5 Persona Users (you can include velvet attendants if you want)

ooh this is gonna be a hard one, but challenge accepted!!!

Only easy spot on this list. Aigis owns my whole heart. Her growing uncertainty towards her own burgeoning humanity is one of the best parts of one of my favorite games, and her intense resolve even in the face of emotional turmoil is... just... chef's kiss. Perfection. She's even bisexual. Icon. Also, her Persona evolving from Palladion, which was a wooden statue of Athena, into Athena... God. Just. Yeah.

The rest of this list will be tentatively ordered, but... Tatsuya Suou. Yeah. Just. God. Where do I even begin. He's the guy of all time. He has extremely traumatic childhood memories which he had to repress. Even though he was a kid, he awakened his Persona in an effort to protect his friends. If he gets with his BF in Eternal Punishment the world will end. (He was even bisexual. Icon.)

Akihiko Sanada. My blorbo, my wet cat, my little scrunkly, my baby boy, my mans, my beloved. He gets to follow Tatsuya because they both had sisters die in a fire while they were unable to save them as kids and it fucked them both up. I love how earnest he is. I love how overly serious he is, to the point where it can be off-putting. I just love this man. And his wails at Shinji's memorial may have been a meme at one point but they actually brought tears to my eyes, so.

Naoto Shirogane. Not as much to say here. Trams Gander.

Ulala Serizawa. Her arc is fucking superb. I cannot get over it. The reveal that she set the Jokers on Maya... her locking herself away trying to protect Maya from her when she knows she'll turn into one, and yet the fact that she keeps going after that, stays with Maya and the rest of the party despite the fact that they all saw her at her lowest... God. The cringefail woman of all time.

Honorable mentions: Yukino from P1, Katsuya and Maya from P2, Shinjiro, Minato, and Kotone from P3, Kanji from P4, Yusuke and Futaba from P5.

[timothylawrence]

OK P4 thoughts.... now that it's been like 18 hours...

overall... solid 8.5/10. i loveee murder mysteries

the dynamic between the characters carried the game more than anything

multiple moments where I laughed out loud so s/o to the writers

AND despite guessing the big twist from day one, I was pleasantly surprised by various other twists and turns in the story so yay :)

never before has a silent protagonist literally swayed my heart in such a way Yu Narukami you are my angelll

ok spoiler-y review below :)

okay. serious review time but keep in mind im fasting so like these are the rambles from that. i'll start with the positives :)

did not believe jordan when she said i would be adopting these children by the end yet here i am. every single character you met had such a sweet and profound relationship and dynamic with one another... it was so so sweet. truly the high point of the game is how the characters interact. Yukiko and Chie, Rise and Naoto, Rise and Yu, Teddie and Yosuke, Naoto and Kanji... even Yosuke and Yu..... like they were all so so so wonderfully crafted with one another... AND RISE WAS THE SHINING STARRRRR

Dojima and Nanako.... the way i thought they wouldn't have such a big role and then by the end i was crying . yeah. big bro . i love u .

I KNEW IT WAS ADACHI!!!! I LITERALLY CALLED IT FROM DAY ONE!!! DAY ONE!!!! I just couldnt stick why he was choosing the teenagers,.... hence why the twist with Namatane was so fucking good. S/O to Jordan and Fil who had to listen to me scream about how he was the killer without being able to shut me up.

Okay but in all seriousness Teddie becoming human was like the wildest part of the game like did no one else go ??

The soundtrack bangs. to be expected.

Yosuke's SL was my favorite... i dont know how teary eyed i got but whew. it was teary. the ending scene on the grass... yea... yea...

man. the icon. the star. Yu Narukami. I NEVER thought I would like the protagonist, at least not more than "he's cool", and yet by the end I was more sad than anything to say goodbye to him!!! i had so much joy playing as him, he was so funny, so loyal, his dialogue options we're just phenomenal. He felt like a real character in his own world despite never even talking. I think I'll miss him the most/

ok time for the bad stuff:

okay like atlus why do you do this thing where you create such a good amazing storyline about humanity and what makes you you only to drop the ball and opt to make things creepy or some form of phobic !!! like WHY!!!!!!!

Kanji's treatment was actually vileeeee . I hate how they chickened out in the last moment because instead of having a whole discussion abt homophobia internalized and otherwise you've just created a homophobic ass arc in the game that serves no purpose. like UGH. just go the full mile!!! go !!! let him understand there's nothing wrong wit him being gay!!! stop backing out!! You quite literally would've had a near perfect arc if you just went that extra mile and didn't make things weird !!!

also naoto........ don't even wanna trudge into the discourse here but he/him Naoto is where I stand idk. his story kinda felt really similar to my own when i was in my teens but... again...Atlus...

hey atlus can you make ONE game where there isn't 10 scenes of teenage boys being creeps or has some form of teenage fan service. please.

rlly sucks that i cant reccommend this game without caveats because atlus is.... ugh. but yes. i did enjoy it. it has some moments that are genuinely uncomfortable and made me go :///. but i can fix things as is my will as a writer etc etc.

yeah i think thats what i have for now. i loved playing this game but i think i'll love thinking abt it and plotting even more..... <33333

[fafnirsden]

THE p4 Twitter discourse is making the rounds again (you know the one) and one of the things that keep bothering me about how this is talked about is that there seems to be a disconnect between people taking the writer's intent at face value and people who disregard the intended arc entirely? This might sound odd but esp regarding Naoto gender discourse the fallback line seems to be that Naoto ultimately identifies as a girl and that's fine and good for real people but gives Naoto a degree of agency that she does not have because she's a fictional character. The thing that people are criticising is the writing decision real people made to conclude her arc that way, not Naoto's self identification - Naoto can't identify as anything, she has no thoughts outside of those given to her by the writers. And on the flipside, criticising Naoto's arc for the (likely unintended) transphobic implication lets it off the hook for also mishandling the workplace sexism angle they were actually going for (cont below cut)

If you take the game at its word for what each of the character arcs are supposed to be about, then the game has a whole character who is forced to take on a more masculine persona (pun not intended) to be taken seriously because of sexism but this is all in a game that continuously does sexist pervy comedy routines. Including to Naoto! If you're trying to make a point about how sexism is bad, maybe don't force the character in question into a swimsuit beauty pageant where she feels humiliated and uncomfortable as a joke?

Maybe Kanji isn't attracted to men and people shouldn't make assumptions about his sexuality because of his interests. Okay. Good point, you shouldn't do that. But what's the implication here when you look at moments like the camping trip tent scene where Yosuke treats him like a sexual predator for just being in the same tent (while Yosuke himself actually creeps on the girls during the same trip, which is just taken as funny despite being actual sexual harassment. Amazing stuff.)? There's multiple scenes like this, it happens during the pick up contest too where it's part of the comedy of uncomfortable situations that happen to Yosuke that Kanji starts blushing from being pressed up to him on the scooter. Like this is all still homophobic even if Kanji is straight and "hey don't assume people are gay based on stereotypes they might not be and then it would be bad if you put them in a box like that" is a good point in theory but not when you're also kinda implying that gay men are a danger to other men or that treating them as such is just an understandable funny reaction.

As much of a deal as people make about the cut Yosuke romance, him being closeted wouldn't fix how vile he is to his friends without consequences. It maybe explains it a little but that still means you're left with a game that constantly disregards sexual harassment as just a goofy thing your silly fun guy friends do.

If it wasn't clear I'm ultimately more sympathetic to people critical of p4's writing about gender and sexuality (and I didn't even talk about the fat girl. christ.) but I also don't think it's helpful to superimpose a more progressive version of the game where every character is actually queer and then critique the game for not delivering on that version. You can headcanon whatever you want ofc (Naoto's canon gender is such a mess you could tell me anything about what you think their gender is and I'd probably nod along) but I think it muddies the water on discussing the actual text when you loose track of the distinction here. And like. I get it p4 has a lot of stuff to like. I'm still fond of p4 in spite of all of this. But how depressing for actual queer media to see how much time people spend on inventing a gayer version of p4.

Especially when the actual solution is obviously to shoot Yosuke into the sun /j

[caughtthedarkness93]

Considering a Persona 4 remake is likely inevitable given 3load's success, I wonder if it would address these issues as well as some other aspects of 4 that have aged less gracefully. Especially considering there was apparently a cut Yosuke romance - or at least something that suggests that there was.

And honestly? It'd fit thematically well with the game. Yosuke's often flagrantly homophobic and very eager to hit on girls, and in a game that's so much about confronting the aspects of ourselves we're afraid of, writing Yosuke as if he's bi would do so much for his character without having to change the less savory aspects of him.

Think about it - Persona games (and even Metaphor) often give you a sort of best bro character early on. In 3, it's Junpei. In 5, it's Ryuji. And in 4, it's Yosuke. Out of that whole sort of archetype, Yosuke is outright the nicest. His biggest flaws, at least to me as a player, are that he very much cannot be normal around women and has very homophobic tendencies.

And yeah, I think the writing team for a hypothetical P4 remake could very much be justified in altering that, I think it actually strengthens Yosuke's character if his character is portrayed as bi because that behavior then becomes projection. Imagine what that one alteration does - imagine a Yosuke who struggles to face his truths, and so feels the need to attack others who reflect the aspects of himself that he's not willing to face or admit to. So he constantly attacks Kanji, who definitely feels insecure about his own gender and sexuality and had those insecurities put on blast in front of all the Inaba Scoobies, to assert his own straightness and masculinity. He flirts with girls to a degree where it makes them uncomfortable because it reinforces his sexuality to others and allows him to reassure himself.

It's brilliant because it turns aspects of his character that are frustrating and annoying into something genuinely interesting.

Even more so because, unexpectedly, Persona 4 has a lot to say about gender. Almost every party member has at least some subtext about struggling with what society expects of them based on their gender, and for Yukiko, Chie, and especially Kanji and Naoto, that's just...text. Seriously, I and so many other men I've talked to see so much of themselves in Kanji. Like it's wild how much this game has gender on its mind, right? It feels like it's not something that the game's main story is paying much attention to. The murder mystery plotline isn't about gender in the same way a lot of these character storylines are. It has gender as an aspect of it for sure, but you have to, like, bring feminist theory into it to really dig into that. But when you get to some of the individual character arcs, it becomes a huge presence. Like it's such a consistent thing across the game, and I'm so curious as to why that is.

And bi Yosuke performing masculinity as hard as he can to stop people (and himself) from questioning him is in line with that too! Like that character choice would fit the game so damn well!

Anyway, I don't know if a Persona 4 remake would make Yosuke romanceable (although it definitely should), but even if they do, I expect with the way 3load is. They softened 3 in a lot of ways - not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing and it's still quite eerie and in line with the themes of the story, but in general, 3load is a game that's much less alienating and discomforting than FES or Portable are - especially when it comes to The Answer. I expect they'd sand off the harsher edges of 4 the same way. I think it'd be more interesting if they left those apsects of the character in and restored the Yosuke romance to take advantage of those themes, but like I said, I don't think they will. But I guess we'll see.

I think I want the 4 remake even more now, knowing that Teddie was such a radically different - and far better-written - character in the original text. Fix the botch job localization and give us the Yosuke romance that the game needs.

Favorite Sega Character: Losers Bracket Round 4

[danggerine]

i made the mistake of reading the notes on a lot of trans naoto posts so now y’all get responses to some of the bad takes i keep seeing. buckle the fuck up

• “naoto’s arc is about sexism specific to the japanese workplace and calling her trans erases that to fit it into a western lens!!!”

you guys do know that there are japanese trans people right. like i agree that there are lots of issues with workplace sexism and gender roles in japan, but there’s also lots of issues with transphobia. y’all do know that you do not have to be white and/or live in a western country to be trans, and that queer stories and issues are GLOBAL stories and issues right.

• “naoto isn’t a man, she just pretended to be one to get respect in a male-dominated field, if you say she’s a trans man you’re ruining that whole character arc about accepting your true self!”

here’s the thing! the way that character arc was done was fucking transphobic! the trope of a woman going into disguise as a man for safety/respect/etc is tried and tested, it shows up literally everywhere, and the trope itself is not inherently transphobic. HOWEVER, when persona 4 incorporates Really Obviously Trans elements into that trope, like chest binding and literal gender reassignment surgery, then we have a problem, because now you have a cis character going through a trans narrative in the name of insecurity.

p4 does everything it can to embody the typical narrative of a young transitioning trans guy: binding, changing your name, revising official documents to be known as a man in work and school records, dressing masculine, and forming a shadow literally based on transitional surgery. plus the stuff naoto’s shadow says isn’t about being “a weak little girl” or “no one will ever take you seriously when you’re just a little girl” like you would expect it to be for someone who’s arc is supposed to be about dealing with misogyny, it’s all “you’ll never be a real man,” “you can’t cross the boundary between the sexes,” “no one will ever see you as you are” comments. you know, textbook trans guy insecurity. but the game backtracks on that and says naoto was just insecure about being a female detective and wanted people to take them seriously, and that they should get rid of these feelings and accept their true, female self.

and this is where the problem lies. when you write an obviously trans-coded narrative, but make the character experiencing it an insecure cis person or someone trying to avoid discrimination, you say either 1. trans people are really their assigned gender and are just insecure, but accepting the gender they were given at birth will make them happier and more confident or 2. being a trans man is a way for cis women to escape misogyny. 1 is obviously stupid and has been talked about by plenty of people, but 2 is a BIG problem and a wild assumption to me. being a trans man is seen as an “out” for naoto, or a solution to a problem, as if once they’re a man they’ll face no discrimination whatsoever, when in reality things like getting their gender marker changed in official documents that would allow them to go by “he” and wear the boy’s uniform at school and passing well enough to be seen as a boy in public would be a HUGE ordeal that includes a lot of stress and rejection and danger. realistically, naoto is putting themself in a really precarious position, because if they are exposed as actually afab to the media, to the detective agency, or to the school, they are set for a hell of a lot of ridicule, discrimination, and potential physical danger. but persona 4 doesn’t reflect this at all, because it’s transphobic and thinks that being trans is the easy way out for cis women experiencing misogyny!

• really any argument that boils down to “naoto is a cis woman in canon whose struggle is about sexism, not being trans”

like i already addressed enough of this, i think, but what really gets me is that kanji’s arc is fucked up in a lot of the same ways naoto is and no one is clowning on posts about kanji being gay? his shadow is a very clear (and offensive) gay caricature, and his narrative is very much one about a mlm guy experiencing homophobia from his peers and acting out because of that. and yet the game backtracks to saying “oh no it’s not about liking men, kanji is insecure about his femininity and softer hobbies because of toxic masculinity” and then literally uses naoto to refute his queerness because “look the only guy kanji was ever shown as attracted to was ACTUALLY a woman all along and now that kanji knows she’s a girl he can be openly attracted to her!” in canon, naoto is about as cis as kanji is straight, and yet EVERYONE is on board for portraying kanji as gay in fan works like it’s not even a question, but there has to be a huge debate anytime anyone wants to call naoto trans. legitimately, i think i’ve seen someone argue about kanji being mlm on a post...once? ever? meanwhile every post about naoto being trans has to have a horde of discourse, i’m literally already prepping for the bad notes this post will get because y’all cannot leave this ALONE

in conclusion, i am not saying that everyone has to think naoto is a trans man or forcing anyone to stop liking a character in the way they want or anything like that. i am saying that the naoto’s canon character arc is transphobic and if you’re trying to fight with trans people about how they want to reclaim something that uses a lot of their experiences, don’t.

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

your posts slash rants regarding p3 at yukari and jupei being terrible friends to everyone and protag has me thinking about everything in modern new persona you're supposed to feel the teams are friends, but p4 investigation team is the only group i feel that are friends. sees was more like coworkers who do slowly become friends, granted terrible friends. and the pt were supposed to be friends but are actually coworkers and no one acknowledge it properly, in or out of universe. this make sense?

Yup you got it right on the money anon. Makes total sense. (more under cut it got long ;w;) (btw I’m mostly talking about vanilla vers cause that’s the foundation). 

P3 is supposedly coworkers to friends (I would extend that it's more there are more mini friend groups in there....and even then that's a STRETCH)

P4 is strangers/acquaintances to true friends (obvie you don’t know them the second they are introduced, and there can be a bit of a rough patch as everyone is sussing out how to interact, mostly early P4 pre-Rise, but they do develop into having a great bond).

P5 is suppose to be.....like P4, but instead they all sound like coworkers (all they talk about is work).

I mean it plays into it strengths. P3 chars are more independent, with independent arcs.....but it has a hard time coming together (I think it's possible but it needs tweaks). And, imo P3 is more plot driven, so the disconnect with the chars works with it to make the plot work (but to me, a lot of the chars just feel in service to the plot, they are still consistent but.....everything about them relates back to the plot, so they feel a bit flat).

P4 has short individual arcs that leads into a group dynamic. It sacrifices later independent growth to SLs, BUT it keeps the group in tact. This might be because P4 is more character driven imo, so it being focused on the chars the most works for it. (because of the focus on the chars, unlike P3, they feel more fleshed out, I know a lot more about them IN SPITE OF the plot).

P5......................................................it's wishy washy and tries (and fails) at emulating P3/4′s good parts (while only emulating it’s bad parts), and that's what P5 does best. At least you have one consistent trait ol' nemesis! :D I feel like it’s fighting to be both a character driven and plot driven story, but it’s always at odd with each other. I think on paper, PT is suppose to be closer than SEES, but the execution is....yeah off. It’s just......so bizarre. DX 

Like P5, it def tries to focus on the chars....but then instead of learning about them in depth like with P4, we instead only hear them talk about work (and unlike P3, there’s.....not a whole lot to be talked about). But then we need a plot point to happen, and all be damned if characterization stays consistent! 

Oh god...... I think I figured it out (sorry slightly off tangent but it does relate to why P4 works). P5 is what would happen if we only focused on the murder mystery in P4. Like, for the most part, P5 is mostly a group endeavor (Mako/Futaba both chokehold the game and have the most investment to the main plot, but there’s no vast amounts of individual char arcs happening outside of the group unlike P3), and that’s just like P4! But we don’t get the same character growth/interactions we do in P4. And it’s because they cut out all the “fluff/filler.” But....here’s the thing....that’s not really fluff/filler, that’s integral to the character driven nature of P4. It’s about exploring the dynamic of the characters, watching them grow and become closer. There’s usually some purpose to it!

Camp scene? It’s to get everyone to bond with Kanji. I know everyone focuses on the bad stuff, but let’s look at the purpose of it. At the start everyone is awkward around the big guy, but that wall really starts to break down fast after that scene (to the point Yosuke acts a bit like a big bro to Teddie/Kanji by the time Rise joins!). 

Omelette scene with Nanako? The game is trying to really get you attached because of what’s to come (and we can see how much Chie/Yuki have...not....grown with their cooking). Port Island? While also doubling as fanservice, but it gets us interacting more with Naoto, and it does start to push her character into the next plot point. 

Those scenes may not push the mystery along *all the time* (sometimes they do get the plot pushed forward, like Naoto related ones, we are pushing that char to thinking/changing their perspective until they join our team, their perspective being about us and the case), but that’s ok because the mystery is something that will take time. If anything, us getting close to the cast is supposed to help blind us to the big crescendo of the game. Throwing Namatame into the TV.

P4 wants us to be attached to the characters, to be invested in them and their relationship with one another. To be attached to their pain. To be blinded by their pain.....so that we have a hard time seeing the truth. 

It’s all only possible if we had spent time with all those characters. 

So anyway....The filler/fluff? P4 ironically “takes its time” (ironic considering P5-oh you get it XP), so it can build all of that. 

Now what if we removed all those fun scenes in P4? What if we just replaced all the silly dialogue with “let’s talk about the case” (even if, spoiler, we’ve already exhausted all we know for the 100th time)? Oh I’m sure everyone will like most of the jokes that have aged poorly to be cut out. But now what do we have? 

Scene 1: Ok let’s talk about all we know. Ok done? Alright scene over. Filler replaced 1: Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 1* Ok done? Alright scene over. Filler replaced 2:  Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 1* Ok done? Alright scene over. Filler replaced 3:  Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 1* Ok done? Alright scene over. Scene 2: Ok we got some new info, let’s compare it to old info. Ok done? Alright scene over.  Text convo 87: Let’s reiterate the exact same thing we’ve been saying in the past 86 messages. Filler replaced 4: Ok let’s talk about all we know. *says the exact same as scene 2* Ok done? Alright scene over. And so on. and on and on......

Sound familiar? Yeah that’s P5. Replace clues and/or “We need to figure out who the next target is” with “we need to find a new target to steal the heart of!” (god they really are so similar). 

You know what true filler is? Just absolutely nothing of substance? The Hawaii trip. Nothing really happens, and they just talk about work all the gd time. The beach thing is also pretty nothing, except maaaaaybe the end with the sunset. Everything else? Nope, hell they even speed run a babe hunt event. XP 

P5 has the true filler, because we learn nothing. “Oh they’re talking about PT stuff!” They’ve BEEN talking about PT stuff, nothing changed between this convo and last convo. Or at least, nothing of actual value (I hate the texts so gd much, they just keep reiterating stuff we JUST talked about too! DX *sobs*)

[mystech-master]

One big complaint about the Persona series, specifically 4 and 5, is how a good chunk of the party members really have nothing to do story wise after their dungeons. But, in Persona 3 all the party members had relevant arcs all the way through. To me, there are about 2-3 factors for this I think.

1. More characters introduced early.

By the time you start the dungeon crawling aspect of the game, you’ve already met 4 of your teammates, with Mitsuru working as navigator and Akihiko being injured by the Arcana Magician so he can’t join the party immediately. Then soon we see the scenes with Akihiko and Shinji, Ken can be found at the shrine WAY before he joins (but I think that was on Sundays when you’d more likely be doing the Hermit SL). Meanwhile, in P4 you have the first 3 party members with Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko, then once you start investigating Kanji that is when Naoto comes into the story, not as a teammate but still as a pretty consistent character. But then in P5, you’re back to one at a time.

2. Characters are (for the most part) paired up in their stories.

Outside of Junpei (who has his whole plot with Chidori), and Fuuka (who’s plot isn’t very Persona/Shadow related so I kind of blank on her), almost every party member was kind of paired with another in their story. Yukari and Mitsuru both have their dads and connection to the creation of the dark hour on top of Yukari not being very trusting of Mitsuru. Ken and Akihiko both have the middle ground with Shinji, the accidental-murderer of the former’s mother and the later’s best friend. Even the MC has a sort of connection with Aigis, due to her placing Death in them 10 years prior. This gives them at least SOMEONE to bounce off of in their plots.

At least for the pairing of characters for P4 you could say they are paired like their Fusion Moves in P4G, Yosuke and Teddie, Chie and Yukiko, Kanji and Naoto. Not too sure on P5 though.

3. The characters have deeper connections to the Persona side of things

P3 has the advantage over P4 and 5 of being more balls deep in the Persona stuff, with the Kirijo group doing research on them, developing the ASSW, S.E.E.S. existing LONG before the protag came along, and having a sort of rogues gallery with Strega instead of just “big shadows” (I know P5 had actual human villains but while they were all connected by Shido’s schemes they weren’t all aware of the cognitive world). All the plots I just listed, while they do have their personal side to things, like Akihiko wanting to be strong enough to protect people and Ken’s vengeance, they wouldn’t be there without them being more aware of the Persona stuff. But with 4 and 5 just having your team being a bunch of HS kids winging it the Persona side of stuff barely matters. Hell, sometimes I feel like b/c they never talk about the very specific parts of having a Persona you could switch out the powers with something else and not much would change. The one downside to having characters be more relevant is that we may not get their specific dungeons/arcs, like Yukiko’s castle, Kanji’s bathhouse, Kamoshida’s Palace, and Madarame’s Museum, they all exist because we have the CHie/Yukiko, Kanji, Ryuji/Ann, and Yusuke arcs. If they are more spread out in their arcs IDK how it’d e implemented. Not not ALL the characters are like this. Makoto is relevant all throughout b/c of her sister being one of the “antagonists” at first, and Futaba to a lesser extent due to her mother being connected to everything, being the tram techie, and her know how of cognitive psience.

So basically, introduce more characters early, pair them up in their individual arcs, and have them be more connected to the Persona side of things to actually create a conflict for this.

[lispettoregadget]

You know what still thinking about this fuck this game 😭 read more cause I'm gonna be really annoying about this sorry

1. I have to say this first because it's been bothering me so bad since I first saw them the timeskip designs are all some weird degree of unpleasant to look at (except for Teddie who is the exact same as before) because who the fuck are half the people in this image

2. Ok actual thoughts on the ending/whole game. Golden end TO ME is wayy too happy of a way to end a game like this it feels almost unnatural. I feel crazy too since it seems like the general consensus for p4 is that it's the 'happiest' game in the series but honestly I don't agree but also like. Aesthetically speaking I guess I get why it's seen like that... The intro is colorful and cheery (*golden's not vanilla. I love the golden intro but I kinda prefer vanilla's) lots of the music is upbeat etc but I never really felt like the atmosphere in game was very happy, even with all the silly funny and actual happy moments it didn't give me the impression that P4 is a 'happy' game and with the whole plot being centered around murders and kidnappings it definitely doesn't help lighten my perception of it LOL

The Izanami stuff was insane I really didn't think about the handshake at the beginning of the game at all so looking back and knowing that the gas station attendant dude who appeared a total of one single time throughout the whole game up until now is a god who was orchestrating literally everything this whole time is hilarious and the fight with her and finally awakening izanagi-no-okami and myriad truths was really something else even though the genesis isn't nearly as good as the almighty was but whatever. I also didn't mind Marie's addition at all either because apparently people don't like her? But I do and I thought her social link was pretty nice + one random positive thing because I do still love P4 while at the same time hating it Inaba reminds me of the place I grew up even though it wasn't really rural there was just nothing at all to do there besides going to chain stores (like Junes) and I love it it feels really familiar and it's the perfect setting. I <3 small shitty dull town

Back to being a hater apart from golden end blowing another thing that's gnawing at me is that this game handles its own themes so poorly it's kind of insane. Besides the murder plot pushing everything along, the whole premise is facing/finding yourself and having the strength to accept your shadow which is like a manifestation of those repressed negative and highly emotional and bad parts we all have as another facet that make you yourself (the whole "I am you and you are me" thing everyone has to do) which sounds like a cool concept and I love it honestly except for some fucking reason pretty much the whole IT have bizarre reverse character development ESPECIALLY IN GOLDEN END where they neatly sort themselves right back into the status quo that they started out not fitting into and just drop the aspects that made them actual interesting characters to me. I could really go on and on about the IT social links, mostly Yosuke Yukiko Naoto and Kanji (unsure of Rise I never actually finished hers SORRY), and I probably will but for now I'll say that most importantly the shit they did to Naoto was genuinely evil if you have a functioning brain and can think about the implications of what happened in his dungeon for more than 5 seconds unlike a grand majority of persona fans

All this on top the fucking unreal amounts of bigoted and perverted shit the devs included, like the creepy "fan service" of teenage girls and the fatphobia/everything that just makes fun of hanako and the transmisogynist "joke" segment and the transphobic nightmare surrounding naoto's whole character arc and the homophobia and though not actually an-in game thing people are NOT fucking normal about adachi like I do find him interesting as a character and for most of the game I liked him (BEFORE finding out about all the crazy shit) and I don't find it wrong to like make fun of him or draw him or whatever but he is a seriously fucked up person who abuses his power as a police detective and does horrible things purely for his own amusement including attempting to sexually assault both the women he killed, one of them being a high school girl, but he's like...baby girlified online a lot and it really weirds me out

Honestly there's probably more stuff I could complain about but that's just off the top of my head. I don't care that this game is from 2008 this shit is gross and I barely ever see anyone acknowledge half of this honestly also tumblr crashed while I was typing this shit so I need pack it up 😭

TLDR I hate persona do not play persona

P4 golden ending genuinely kinda sucks which makes sense since just like with everything else about this game it is completely and totally dedicated to ending on the most lame note possible

[1eos]

on that one post u were like "i have to rewrite narratives to make them better" and im the same way, so i wanted to ask since youre playing p5 rn, what would you change about p5 to make it better? i love all the characters sm... but some of them r just handled so poorly cough cough ann... so im interested in hearing ur thoughts!!

oh im so glad u asked. after 300 hrs in persona 5 i have THOUGHTS. so i think p much every character in p5 has a p good introduction nd base but the nuance of their motivations nd growth go out of the window ESPECIALLY for ann nd ryuji. under the cut ofc bc im a long winded bitch 😔

i would rewrite everything abt ann post kamoshida tbh bc the whole thing abt the first arc was abt women nd kids being treated like objects just to treat her like an object the whole time? hell no. for one her pt outfit would NOT be that. i love a catsuit but the boob window was evil. nd ALSO i would have the male character NOT remark on her body as they get closer actually i would rewrite ryuji to not be flirty towards ann at all bc there's a moment where u find out they went to the same junior high nd knew each other nd i would rather have a kinda reunited sibling vibe bc ann’s whole thing is abt not feeling safe so for her friends to look down her shirt as a joke is.............no.

also her confidant would have to be kinda rewritten. again i think its weird for ann to lament abt her looks making her a target then her goal is to be a model....? nd she has no real drive for it? atlus basically just like to make lovers arcana girls famous PERSONALLY i would make ann’s route abt finding out what she actually wants to do bc she has no passion the way shiho had for volleyball nd finding out who she is beyond her looks nd beyond being shiho’s friend. like ann has no hobbies mentioned in game other than eating sweets nd not doing her homework but it always circle back to her weight 😐

nd bc of the above i would tweak yusukes introduction to be him either wanting to draw the protag bc atlus was so close to like........a good narrative on how artists should love the human body regardless of gender nd spare ann being treated as a walking pair of tits or just him wanting to draw her with her clothes ON nd it being a moment abt capturing inner nd outer beauty rather than tits

who else.........oh ryuji. im tired of atlus turning characters w unexplored trauma into comic relief. they do it to kanji too to the point where its homophobia nd its like.........why? nd there are so many moments where ryuji lashes out then APOLOGIZES bc he recognizes the behavior is bad nd its prime time to explore his relationship w his father. or even explore the relationship w the staff? like every teacher believed lies abt him AND the protag so eye think it wouldve been beneficial to get moments where the public opinion of both u nd ryuji changes for the better once kamoshida is exposed. 

nd honestly that dumbass part of the game where morgana leaves the party couldve been ryuji. i think it wouldve been justified to have him blowing up after the nth time he was treated as a joke or throwaway despite having as much emotional baggage as the rest of them. like ryuji is the first one to stand up to men who bother the girls nd they rag on him for nooooooo reason i think calling everyone out on being so callous nd treating him like comic relief wouldve been better nd it still couldve segued into getting haru bc after he stormed out he couldve seen haru w her shit stain of a fiance nd then jumped in to save her from him..........like i see the vision

akechi............................................................my biggest gripe w the game. akechi is such a weak villain until the very end nd ik atlus wanted to recreate the iconic narrative foil between the p4 protag nd adachi but it doesnt work 😭😭😭 for one akechi is bland nd has no real personality besides being sneaky but WE AS THE AUDIENCE DON’T EVEN GET THAT. actually no first of all making akechi a detective was so fucking stupid like again....they just wanted to recreate naoto from persona 4 but worse. 

i would double down on making akechi joker’s other half. have him be another normal student that stumbled upon powers nd double down on him being fake!!!!!! have him help the party one minute just to actively put them in harms way there was no real rivalry btwn u nd akechi which is why facing him in the end fell flat other than the great voice acting nd twist of him having multiple personas but like......we need more hints! imagine akechi hinting that he sees the velvet room? 

also his route being automatic 🤮 ik p5 was bogged down w links but in my p5 akechi is a night slink thats kinda offputting? like u don’t get closer to him per se but u do see more sides of him nd he can even give u a fake request nd when u go into the metaverse he’s there nd its even weirder. wasted potential with that one

that’s p much all of my big changes other than no kawakami or ohya romance fakfajfkafjakkjf thank u for reading all of this im sorry i talk so much

[akechicrimes]

when i was reading "emma" by jane austen in undergrad, one of my professors pointed out it's one of the best examples of a very common plotline: a willful child sets out as some sort of aberration from the status quo, and by the time they grow up at the end of the book, they've wound up reincorporated into the status quo.

in the case of emma, she believes that she knows romance better than society around her. she plays matchmaker according to what she believes is right. we are, at best, supposed to find her humorously wrong; at worst, she's a petulant child. her attempts at matchmaking go terribly, while she utterly and totally forgets to notice a man courting her throughout most of the plot. by the end of the book she's wound up marrying a good man of equivalent social standing, who courted her in socially acceptable ways, and is presumably going to settle down and become the good wife and mother that she was always meant to be.

persona 3 wasn't quite so interested in people who didn't fit in with the status quo, but persona 4 and 5 seemed to think they were hot shit for tackling the subject, while everyone and their grandmother pointed out that persona 4 and 5 started off with storylines that called society out on its bullshit, and then mysteriously rolled back its arguments in the later parts of the game. and i'm not trying to say that P4 and P5 didn't have doylist explanations for why they've got weird shit happening in the character arcs, but the more i think about it, the more it just sounds like emma woodhouse.

akira kurusu is wronged by the justice system, and comes to the conclusion that he must rebel against society. by the end of the game, it turns out that the justice system can be fair if you just work really really really really hard, so maybe we should all just work harder, and really you just need a good lawyer. akira is absolved of his charges through conventional status quo means.

yukiko amagi struggles with having her whole life decided for her. while she wonders whether or not she wants to stay in inaba, she ultimately comes to the conclusion that she will stay and run the inn, mysteriously and coincidentally choosing the societally-acceptable answer after all.

ann takamaki struggles with a society that simultaneously sexualizes her and shames her for exercising any sexuality. after ending kamoshida's whole career and making a resolve to embrace her own sexuality as an empowerment thing, she then decides to go into... modeling, in which she sells images of her body to be sexualized by an entire industry set up around sexualizing teenage girls. by surprising coincidence, it seems that she has decided to express her new openness to her own sexuality in a way that makes her extremely palatable to men like kamoshida.

kanji tatsumi winds up with a crush on a guy and struggles with being rejected for his sexuality. but then we are led to believe that really he just struggles with being rejected in general. and maybe he just doesn't like girls because they bully him. and maybe it's not really about him being gay, maybe it's about him being confused. also coincidentally, naoto is revealed to be a "girl," and kanji theoretically has had a crush on a "girl" all along, rendering the entire thing just a series of silly mistakes and coincidentally bringing kanji back into a semblance of heterosexuality.

goro akechi points out the innate corruption of the government, justice system, and extreme prejudice in japanese society that drives someone like him to the point of where he was, but his heel-face turn involves him deciding to submit himself to the very corrupt justice system that he disagreed with in the first place, pitching his cooperation with the status quo as a positive change.

naoto shirogane presents as a boy and goes out of his way to have others refer to him as a boy, but also by pure coincidence, we are led to believe that naoto was just going through some shit and was using gender identity/presentation as a weird coping mechanism, and "actually naoto was cis all along."

and these are all narratives that occur in conjunction with, like jane austen's emma, the typical coming-of-age story. an aberrant child doesn't fit in. an aberrant child grows up. an aberrant child winds up being reincorporated into the existing status quo after all, as they demonstrate to the reader hey, perhaps the status quo was right all alone, and i was the one who should have been fitting in.

the narrative of a "coming of age" story pitches adults as people who've adjusted to society and have been changed by society, rather than agents who change society around them; a "coming of age" story relies on a general consensus that children, teenagers, and minors in general have opinions and thoughts that are amusingly incorrect at best and completely invalid at worst, and it is the job of adults to tell children how to "be correct."

that works for some cases like, say, shinya from persona 5, who's a literal bully playing violent video games because his mom doesn't pay enough attention to him and picks on other children and steals their lunch money like shinya's personal day job is to be a tiny powerhouse of cliches. shinya could stand to learn that yes, he's fucking wrong, and no, you can't beat up other kids.

but the same logic—that kids are misguided and need to be corrected (or "rehabilitated," to use P5's words)—that same logic is what implies to us that akira's phantom thief rebellion is ultimately a phase that he'll grow out of as he reincorporates himself back into society, because it was "morally skeevy" (read: defined as morally skeevy by the law, which has no interest in anything but itself and its own power). the same logic of "kids are misguided and need to be rehabilitated" is what tries to tell us that kanji was just confused about himself and naoto's gender presentation, and that naoto was just going through a phase that “she'll” grow out of. "kids are misguided and need to be rehabilitated" is what allows yukiko the room to doubt whether or not she wants to take over the inn, but ultimately pressures her to accept the socially-acceptable option she was always meant to.

there's a lot of other characters that i could point to as examples of the "emma" trend. by the same virtue, there's a lot of character arcs that don't always quite fit the trend perfectly. but in general, the trend happens with alarming consistency in P4 and P5, as if the storylines are trying convince us that people and behaviors that do not fit with the assigned social script will ultimately "see the light" and realize that they should fit in with society after all. and if you see yourself in these characters, perhaps you too should think along the lines of these characters as they "grow up" into "good adults."

by allowing people to voice their discontents with the status quo, and then ultimately come around to embrace the status quo in the end, the characters are essentially used as strawmen to be conquered and brought back into the normative fold. and in theory, these strawmen will bring with them anyone who found themselves agreeing with yukiko's discontents, or kanji's queerness, or akira's anger at society. you had your teenage rebellion, the games seem to say. but now it's time to give it up, give in, and grow up.

[kokoinupi]

ok so forgive me for my stupidity but I've been slowly getting into persona and I know nothing about 4 so uh. this is literally the first I'm hearing about naoto being a girl at all. Am I really gonna have to suffer through him getting misgendered the whole time if I watch the anime? (Can't play the games)

first of all youre very valid and theres no need to apologize! second of all... unfortunately yes. i haven’t watched the anime actually, but i know it won’t be any different than the games in that aspect. the beginning of his character arc is properly gendered and that’s really... deceptively nice. but the rest of the time, yeah, he just gets misgendered and theres some gross forced feminization, which would be uncomfy even if he was just a gnc cis girl. they do this backpedaling to poor kanji, a gay character, too, so there’s also that. atlus has Not been known for good queer n trans rep (except persona 2!! we love you persona 2!!!) but its especially bad in p4 cause they try and then immediately revoke their trying. twice. so they even center their terrible attempt. but!! despite that nastiness i still love the plot and characters of persona 4, and if its something you think you can ignore, i still suggest giving it a try! and if you are able to play the games, someone did make a trans naoto mod that changes his pronouns, as well as adds a cute trans stripe to his hat. so thats nice!

[cawfulopinions]

Persona 4 Golden and the Problem of Appealing to a Wider Audience

I’ve been questioning how to go about writing this essay ever since I first finished Persona 4 Golden back in 2013. When I first finished the game, I came out of it not liking it very much – mechanically, it felt unbalanced; and writing-wise, I found it poorer than its original. My opinions on the game have shifted somewhat since then, helped along by the release of Persona 5 and the realization that many of the game’s mechanics were testbeds for that game. However, with time, I’ve found that I can articulate a lot of the problems Golden has with its writing a lot better. What I’ve ultimately settled on is looking at the Persona 4 we were originally given, then looking at its rerelease, and seeing what changed there and why I didn’t like it. Let’s jump in, shall we?

(Note: There will be complaining about Marie. My opinions on that subject sure as hell haven’t changed in the past seven years. Also, there will obviously be spoilers.)

I. A Brief History of Persona 4 as a Franchise

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (later spinoffs would drop the subtitle) released in the west in 2008 as a follow-up to the very strange (at the time) and very niche Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. Persona 3 was notable for deciding to go for an urban setting, an avant-garde aesthetic, and heavy philosophical themes, something that was rare for RPGs before 2010 (though not for its own franchise). While Persona 4 kept the philosophical focus of Persona 3, it decided to dial back some of the artsier aspects in favor of a more down-to-earth, focused story. Where P3 told a story about the inevitability of death and took place in a very modern Japanese setting, P4 decides to tell a story about the lies we tell ourselves and takes place in a rustic, rural setting.

Some of the first things that Persona 4 tells you after getting to its setting, Inaba, are that the town really only has one tourist attraction, it’s far from anywhere of real note, and its local businesses are all being driven out of business by the construction of a corporate superstore. It’s relatable, particularly to anyone who’s watched their local mom-and-pops go out of business after a Wal-Mart decided to move in.

The tone of this setting permeates through Persona 4 – all of its characters are pretty down-to-earth, and though there’s some cartoonish exaggeration in their writing, they feel more like real people than your average RPG character. Yosuke is the new kid in town who struggles with feelings of inferiority, something that’s not helped by his dad running the superstore that’s driving everyone out of business. Naoto is a girl with aspirations of becoming a detective, but hides her gender out of a belief that if she does so, she’ll be taken more seriously by the male-dominated police force. Even the game’s idol character, Rise, is someone who quit the business because the pressures of the idol industry became too much for her. Most games would take the opportunity to have an idol character written into the cast as an excuse for a pandering song and dance sequence and to play up her “waifu” aspects. Persona 4 spends the first hour after Rise’s introduced having her in and apron and slacks, serving tofu, and dodging paparazzi.

Persona 4 is not perfect in how it approaches its characters – in particular, Kanji and Naoto’s storylines have gotten a deserved level of flack for having essentially written coming-out stories for a gay man and a transman, and then immediately backing off and “no homo”-ing them. There’s a number of Social Links that end with the character deciding to go do the socially acceptable thing for them to do instead of following their own hearts, too – Yukiko’s comes to mind. But the character conflicts and stories told in the game’s Social Links are grounded and relatable.

The grounded-ness of Persona 4 was what really made it stand out in 2009, a time where RPGs and games as a whole were mostly concerned with showing off the cool things they could do with their engines (keep in mind, this was the early era of the PS3, and Persona 4 was a PS2 game). Looking back, it’s easy to realize that Persona 4 was made as grounded and rustic as it was because of budgetary concerns, but what was done with its limited budget was incredible. It looked at its setting and tone and embraced them, and that helped to make the game stronger.

And it worked! Persona 4 was easily Atlus’s biggest success in the PS2 era. Though the game was hard to find in the United States due to its short print run, it was inescapable online, and the early Let’s Play era helped keep it in the public eye. There’s a large number of people in the English fandom who only knew Persona 4 existed back in the day because of the hiimdaisy comic and the Giant Bomb Endurance Run. Meanwhile, the game was huge in Japan and topped sales charts for weeks.

Source: Gamasutra

And then Atlus almost went out of business! Oops!

Here’s what we know about Atlus at the time that Persona 4 came out: it wasn’t doing good. The PS2 Shin Megami Tensei games were all desperate attempts to try and find success, something that Persona director Katsura Hashino has been fairly public about in interviews. Dataminers examining the PS2 SMT games have found evidence that suggests every game was built on top of the previous, with every game using SMT: Nocturne’s models and basic gameplay system until after Persona 4’s release. Persona 3 and Persona 4 are so similar under the hood that model swap mods are everywhere for the two, with literally the only adjustments necessary being a reordering of animations to account for Persona 4 having a guard animation and Persona 3 not.

Persona 4 was a huge hit, but it wasn’t enough to save Atlus. The last games released under an independent Atlus were Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (one of my personal favorites) and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (a massive failure for the company). Following Strange Journey’s release, long-time franchise artist (and, more importantly, producer and creative designer for Strange Journey) Kazuma Kaneko near entirely disappeared from future SMT titles, only credited for writing the scenario concept for SMTIV and as a demon design supervisor for later SMT titles.

Soon after Strange Journey’s failure, Atlus was snatched up by Index Corporation. Very little is known about the internal culture during the Index era, but evidence suggests that it wasn’t great. The first few games Atlus produced after this point were all remakes, save for the strange, marriage-drama focused Catherine, a game that was assuredly in development before Atlus was bought out.

It was the original games and spinoffs that Atlus produced after they were bought by Index that started to show a shift in tone. Devil Survivor 2 is a notably different game than its predecessor (which was made while Atlus was independent). While I won’t get into that too much here (that game’s worth an essay on its own), it decided to trade it’s classical SMT-style aesthetic for something more bombastic and widely-appealing. Many of the characters in that game are better summed up by what anime tropes they appeal to than by their own character arcs, and the game’s plot is an unsubtle ripoff of Neon Genesis Evangelion. And it worked. Devil Survivor 2 very notably sold better than its predecessor despite being a DS game in the 3DS era.

At around the same time as Devil Survivor 2 was released, Atlus was preparing to release the first anime adaptation of Persona 4. Persona 4: The Animation was released in October of 2011, directed by Seiji Kishi (of Angel Beats! fame) and animated by AIC. I’ll leave my thoughts on Seiji Kishi as a director out of this and focus on the content of Persona 4: The Animation instead.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Persona 4: The Animation is a comedy anime.

The anime is a fairly faithful adaptation of the game in terms of plotline. It follows the game’s story to the letter, hitting every plot beat. When it needs to get serious, it gets serious, and when it nails its emotional beats, it nails them well. While I’ll go on record in saying that I flat out dislike the anime, I won’t deny that certain episodes, like the Nanako arc, are done very well. However, when it doesn’t need to be serious, the anime decides to look at Persona 4’s subtlety in its character arcs, and says, “Subtlety is for cowards.”

There’s an argument to be made that there isn’t time for subtlety in a 24-episode anime, which is why everyone’s character arcs needed to be compressed and character traits shaved down to only the most exaggerated bits. I disagree. You can easily show character without exaggeration in short-form media – the entire short story genre is built off of that exact concept. The decision to shave everyone down to their most basic traits was a decision made to make Persona 4 more accessible to a general anime-watching audience, who likely came in expecting a more action-packed, high energy deal.

And it worked.

For many people, Persona 4: The Animation was their first experience with Persona, period.  The anime was incredibly popular, and it’s clear that at this point, Atlus (or, more likely, Index) realized they’d struck gold. Persona 4: The Animation was the start of a large spate of Persona 4 spinoffs, all of which adopting the character exaggerations of the anime in some form or fashion. Any time you see a scene in a P4 spinoff where Chie’s reduced to her love of meat and kung-fu? Blame the anime. Further original games after this point seemed to take a more mainstream shift as well – Shin Megami Tensei IV and its sequel, Apocalypse, are both very different games than their predecessors, with characters and plotlines seemingly written to appeal to Persona 4’s audience.

Atlus eventually managed to claw their way out from under the hand of Index, mostly because Index got caught up in a huge fraud investigation! Oops! Sega bought a whole bunch of Index at this point, and Atlus has more or less kept on trucking under Sega since. However, the shift in internal priorities hasn’t changed much – Persona 5, while still a good game, is much closer tonally to the games that came out under Index, Shin Megami Tensei V has been AWOL ever since its first preview, and the less said about Catherine Redux, the better.

II. Less is More, and Maybe Inaba Doesn’t Need A Nightclub

Which, after a long detour, brings us back to Persona 4 Golden.

Golden is a remake of Persona 4 with additional content, released for the Playstation Vita (RIP) during the height of its popularity in Japan. Like Persona 3 FES, a previous patch/remake for Persona 3, Golden primarily exists as a gameplay patch to Persona 4 with additional story content in places throughout the game. While most of FES’s additional story was segmented off into the controversial “The Answer” section, Golden’s additional content is peppered haphazardly throughout the game. Because of this integration into the main story, Golden’s issues are more pronounced than FES’s were – in FES, you could just not play “The Answer”. Golden isn’t letting you go home without at least pushing you toward Marie’s dungeon.

Golden feels like it was developed with an understanding that anyone who’s playing it has watched the anime, and decides to lean into chasing that mainstream appeal while also throwing out the intrigue of its plot and setting. This is first evidenced when you boot up the game and watch the opening. While it hits all of the same beats as Persona 4’s opening, Golden’s opening has a much cheerier tune to it, focusing on a dance sequence and colorful visuals instead of the larger tone of the game. It’s not like the Persona 4 opening is completely absent from the game, but you have to go out of your way to watch it, and first impressions are very important.

This change in opening tone is only one example of the general tone of the changes that Golden takes. While there are big issues with the game’s writing (specifically one big one, which, whooo boy, we’ll get to her), most of the issues are in the little things – the new gameplay elements, the new areas you can visit, and the new scenes that were added to the game.

I talked a lot about how important P4’s setting is to its game for a reason: most of Golden’s changes are ones that disrupt the carefully crafted tone and setting of the original game. From things like slice of life scenes about the party buying scooters for themselves, to a winter trip to a ski resort, to a goddamn idol concert on the roof of the supercenter driving everyone out of business, it feels like the game is trying to pull away from its rural setting and down-to-earth tone to appeal to the lowest common denominator: teenage boys who live in Japanese cities.

A big sticking point for me personally has always been that you can visit Okina City in Golden. In Persona 4, you visited the nearby city occasionally in social link events, but never explored it on the whole. It gave a sense that Okina City was somewhere inconvenient to go to – someplace worth going to for a day trip with your friends, but too out of the way to visit on the regular. In Golden, the city and all of its trappings are just a loading screen away. Having a larger setting change like this so easily accessible detracts from Inaba’s setting – it makes the anxieties that several characters have about being trapped by the town feel fake. It detracts from a feeling that’s so integral to the game’s tone.

Also, the first time you go there outside of a Social Link is because Yosuke wants to pick up chicks with his cool new motorcycle.

The first trip to Okina City is ultimately indicative of a larger problem with most of the added scenes in P4G have: because they were written after the anime, they’re written to appeal to anime watchers. You can immediately tell when you’ve entered a scene that is original to P4G because the writing almost immediately drops in quality – characters become less complex, scenes have nothing to do with the plot or character development, and, to be quite honest, the jokes get worse. The Okina City sequence ultimately just ends with a fat joke and another “no homo” moment with Kanji. It’s… really bad.

There’s four more of these additional sequences throughout the game, and they’re all similar slice of life sequences that rely on anime tropes to propel them. The next after this is a beach episode with the rest of your party. After that is the idol concert on the Junes roof, which gets a hastily written tie-in to the plot when an antagonist says that the concert was how he found the party. After that is the entire winter sequence of the game, which caps off with a ski resort trip that leads into the game’s extra dungeon (which we’ll get to), which THEN leads into the game’s second hot springs cutscene, which has even less purpose than the first one.

None of these scenes have any real substance – it feels like they were just included because they actually had the budget to include them this time around. It’s possible that Okina City and the nighttime areas in Inaba were originally intended for the original version of P4, and I’d believe it – the way nighttime jobs are implemented in the original version of the game is particularly awkward, and you visit Okina City enough times in Social Links that I fully believe it was intended for the full game. As for the idol concert sequence, it 100% only exists because they got Rie Kugimiya as Rise’s VA, but couldn’t fit a sequence where she sang into the original version of the game.

The problem is that these inclusions ultimately detract from the original story. They take a game with a pretty firm idea of what kind of tone it wanted to have and muddle it because, fuck that, we have a budget this time and we need more anime tropes, idols, and tsunderes for those kids who came in after watching the anime.

Which brings us to Persona 4 Golden’s biggest issues: its additional Social Links, the winter semester, and its new ending sequence.

III. We have to talk about Marie.

Like Persona 3 FES before it, Persona 4 Golden adds new Social Links to the game. The first of which is the Jester Social Link, which deals with Tohru Adachi, a local police officer and a major character. While I’ve never been a huge fan of this Social Link (I’ve always felt like it made the identity of the culprit too obvious), it’s fairly well received by the fanbase and I can see the argument for its inclusion, so I’m not going to spend time discussing it here.

The other is Golden’s new Aeon Social Link, who manages to encompass most of Golden’s issues in a single character.

Marie is a completely original character to Golden, the first of a long chain of Atlus “remake waifus” – characters who are added to a remake of a game that are intended to appeal to the otaku crowd, rarely fit in with the rest of the game, and introduce large changes to the game’s plot. These characters rarely work because the narrative wasn’t built around them, and the retcons these characters introduce are often detrimental to their games’ original plots or themes.

Marie has all of these problems. She feels like she was written by committee – designed to appeal to an otaku crowd with a fancy design and tsundere personality. On top of that, she’s voiced by a big name seiyuu (Kana Hanazawa), and her plotline is used to fill in gaps with the game’s ending sequence, since the original game struggled with setting it up and the anime barely even bothered to touch it (Persona 4’s True Ending was shuffled off into an OVA in the anime adaptation).

From the moment you first see Marie, it’s obvious that she doesn’t belong. It’s not that her character design is bad, but it doesn’t match with the rest of the game’s tone. This is something of a pattern for her. The first time you meet Marie, it’s in the middle of a scene that was originally dedicated to the protagonist meeting his new family in Inaba. It’s jarring, disrupts a scene that was about setting up the protagonist’s larger family dynamic, and interrupts the flow of the game’s opening sequence.

Personality-wise, Marie is probably the most tropey of Golden’s characters – she’s a tsundere with amnesia, has a mysterious past, writes bad poetry as a hobby, and has a very obvious crush on the protagonist. Romancing her is almost mandated – you’re required to complete her Social Link to access the winter semester of the game, and during the game’s new ending, she calls out the protagonist on television to talk about how much she loves him. You can choose not to romance her if you want, but the game does its best to push you into wanting to do so.

Marie ultimately becomes one of the Velvet Room’s new attendants, though a lot of the evidence suggests that she was intended to become one of your party members originally. This is partially because she has a unique Persona related to her, and partially because the game takes every effort to emphasize how much of a buddy she is to the party. Marie’s Social Link ranks are time gated, usually becoming available after a new party member joins your team. All of these early scenes are dedicated to the protagonist going on dates with Marie, and then a random party member will show up and immediately become friends with her. Probably the most egregious case is during any mid-game hangouts where you don’t rank up, because the entirety of your party will just show up at Junes at the same time as you and Marie. It’s so obviously artificially constructed and honestly feels insulting to the player.

This artificiality feels like it was a writer’s saving throw to justify why the team would go into Marie’s dungeon to save her. The problem is that it’s also an unnecessary move to take. The majority of Persona 4’s plot is about the party entering dungeons to save people that they don’t really know from a serial killer; it stands to reason that the party would decide to help Marie without that extra motivation. But no, it was important to the writers that Marie is also big friends with the party, so we got what we got instead.

Marie’s dungeon comes after the skiing trip that caps off the winter semester, a portion of the game that is only available if you’ve finished her Social Link. The skiing trip is mostly more slice of life/comedy scenes, right up until you get thrust into the TV World to help Marie. The dungeon itself is… notoriously bad. You’re stripped of your equipment and items, and can only use items found within the dungeon to fight back. On top of that, the dungeon constantly drains your HP and MP, and the boss of it can only be damaged by using items that give her elemental weaknesses, because she starts off immune to everything. Here’s hoping you didn’t bring Chie for that fight like I did!

As you go through the dungeon, it’s revealed that Marie was secretly Kusumi-no-Okami, a minor Shinto god in service to Ameno-Sagiri (the game’s first final boss). Kusumi-no-Okami’s purpose is that she’s supposed to observe humanity and suck up all of Ameno-Sagiri’s fog after the conclusion of the game’s plot, which will inevitably kill her. The dungeon ends with the party trying to appeal to Marie to convince her that she doesn’t need to die, and then beating her up to save her. It’s… not particularly well written, but if that was all to Marie’s character after that, it would be fine. Unfortunately, it’s not.

The game proceeds as normal after that point as you approach the actual final boss, Izanami-no-Okami. During the fight with her, there is a sequence where the protagonist is encouraged to keep going by all of his social links. In the original version of the game (assuming that you’ve done their Social Links), this sequence ends with Dojima and Nanako, the family he’s been staying with the whole game, encouraging him to keep going. In Golden, Nanako’s line is immediately followed by Marie showing up, once again taking a sequence about familial love to make it about Marie. It’s… kind of gross!

Then you beat Izanami, and in the scene immediately afterwards, it’s revealed that, just kidding, Marie wasn’t Kusumi-no-Okami after all! She was actually Izanami-no-Mikoto, the good part of Izanami that was shaved off so that she could do her whole evil plot. Once you beat Izanami-no-Okami, she absorbs that evil part back into her and everything is all hunky dory! Conflict resolved completely, no need to worry about it anymore!

The “Marie was actually Izanami all along” reveal undercuts the finale of the game significantly. It comes immediately after what was the final scene before the ending scene, where Izanami pledged to leave humanity’s direction to humans in recognition of your feats. It’s an unnecessary doubling down on a finale that was already pretty definitive, if somewhat bittersweet, by making it unambiguously happy. This remains a theme for Golden’s ending sequence.

Persona 4 ends with the protagonist leaving his friends behind at the end of the year. Though the killer is in jail and the mastermind defeated, Inaba is still in the same melancholy state as it was when the protagonist came to it, and ultimately, he has to leave his friends behind. There’s a bittersweet-ness to its happy ending – no matter what, you have to move on and trust that things will be okay without you. Obviously, the protagonist comes back – there wouldn’t be so many spinoffs if he couldn’t – but it’s important that Persona 4 ends the way it does at that point. It puts a definitive close on the game.

Golden, however, adds an extended epilogue sequence where the protagonist comes back a year later. In this sequence, you find out that Inaba’s businesses are recovering, Namatame (the false antagonist) is running for office with a lot of support from the town, Adachi (the actual antagonist) has been on good behavior in jail, and your party members are all making tracks toward happiness for themselves.

A theme of esoteric happiness runs through this entire sequence – it feels like it entirely exists just to tell the player not to worry, everything is fine now, don’t worry about any other points of conflict. If it was just one of these things, it would have been fine, but the gatling gun of happy endings makes every one of those little victories feel lesser for it. Marie, of course, is inserted into the ending sequence of the epilogue to cap off her involvement. The esoteric happiness started with Marie, and it ends with Marie.

Golden’s epilogue ties every conflict in the game up into a neat little bow, in a way that’s almost entirely at odds with Persona 4’s down-to-home nature. It’s a fantasy that doesn’t acknowledge the uglier parts of life that Persona 4 was all about confronting. It’s the same kind of lie that Izanami accused humanity of wanting to nestle itself into. Marie’s involvement in Golden sums up a lot of that game’s problems, but the epilogue brings them into sharp relief.

IV. So now what?

I wouldn’t call Golden a bad game – I’ve heard a lot of people call it the superior version gameplay-wise, and while I disagree with that (it’s got some balance issues thanks to its new mechanics), it’s definitely the most accessible version. But when it comes to how it relates to its original, Golden throws a lot of what makes it good out the window in favor of appealing to a more general audience with slice of life sequences, more familiar tropes, and a character who mostly exists to sell merchandise and tie up Persona 4’s ending in an unambiguously happy manner.

I realize I’m in the minority here when I talk about what I dislike about Golden – you’ll find a lot of people who dislike Marie, but not a lot who dislike the rest of the package. And if you have a Vita and haven’t played Persona 4 already, then you might as well use it as your entry point into the franchise. However, I can’t help but feel like Golden is the exact point where Persona as a franchise shifted from trying to tell philosophical stories with more grounded characters to chasing mainstream appeal. Even Persona 5, a game that tries to tell a story about very real societal problems, has a lot of the same problems as Golden does, and from what I understand, these problems only got worse with Persona 5 Royal.

At the end of the day, Persona is going nowhere anytime soon – Persona 5 is the best-selling game in the franchise period, and the influence Persona has had on JRPGs in general cannot be understated. But I wouldn’t mind if some of the things I disliked about Persona 4 Golden didn’t come back.