#featherman seeker

[uwukechi]

does anyone have a link to that post about the featherman game in royal that points towards the scientist in it being wakaba?

[echoblossom059]

[235uranium]

"loki is akechi's hate" "loki is destroying akechi's psyche" you're all cowards. loki is akechi's anger and outrage at being trapped and abused. and that is NOT a bad thing

[kroosluvr]

featherman seeker

as usual da cele notes under cut

had to get some food so thsi si late... i lterally gluedm yself to my chair to finish this LMAOAO

all of the not-dialogue is just straight up lines frm featherman seeker LMAOOO just rearranged

this takes place during 3rd semester (see: infiltration log on wall on 4th page, also their winter clothes strewn around akira's room) after drawing it i was rereading like oh u cld prob see this as like post-third semester but nah i intended it to be such BECAUSE

i rock w the canon that sumire has no clue abt akechi's past and black mask and the mental shutdowns and shido and the engine room she doesnt know hes supposed to be dead, that he sacrificed himself, etc. so ofc shes going thru the game like yayyy featherman yay and her sort of naivete Gets thru to goro. i imagine this is like idk a game he played in childhood bc he was a featherman fan but now revisiting it bc sumire wanted to try it, hes like. damn. this kinda. uh. well thats crazy how things line up. so i think it kinda grates at him but sumi's excitement and like. enjoyment! of it kinda helps him also enjoy it more

SO LIKE He knows he's going to die. He knows thats how grey pigeon's story ends. but he's happy here, and now, with the people he loves, so that makes it All right for now. it's a sad story but it's the good ending.

also i forgor how/where/when goro exactly Actualizes back into existence but can u imagine if he spawned right into the winter wonderland of shibuya square like (head in hands) smth so like. isolating abt it. in a crowd of ppl being excited over christmas and hes like what the hell im supposed to be Dead right now.

also "you are not alone" in the first panels very important..... right under hte panel w goro and sumi side by side :') yea

ryuji and ann holding akira back. YEA.

i really like the 3rd slide. the colors mmmm BUT YEAH so its goro/akira fighting/saving sumire, hanging out at jazz jin, last stand against adam kadmon, then goro holding sumi and akira's hands in the snow, then them smiling :') kinda like a procession of memories, or to-be memories or whatever

ANYWAY this is also like part of my whatever canon divergence where the royal trio section of 3rd sem is just longer for no reason . (aka: the thieves take longer to win over to their side, idk maruki gives u a longer time on the deal, etc etcetc.) just more royal trio time :3

sumibun akimeow and gorodog in 4th img... hidden.... also tennis rackets. ALSO THE LITTLE POLAROIDS Important. and all their clothes! i imagine they stay over at leblanc A Lot. akira prob convinces sojiro to Keep morgana at his house LOL and he handles the business and stuff just so they can have their safe haven while they struggle to try and win the thieves back and infiltrate the palace etc . (I kinda have a comic or something in the works for this)

more abt dialogue choices

"it's tough for a tutorial stage" - this means smth. i didnt think this thru 100% ASKJDHASDKJA but its to do w akechi's life and how everything was so fucking difficult for him as a kid when it shouldnt have been.

"is the second phase giving you trouble" - also smth to do w akechi. (As u can see these are all half baked metaphors) smth to do w his 'second life" aka: third semester being Difficult. because now he has sumire and akira and he doesn't want to leave them, so dying the 2nd time is gonna suck real bad.

i like shuakesumi btw

[p5x-theories]

@sir-adamus​ Exactly! At least from what we know so far, this team’s theming actually seems to fit with Akechi moreso than the rest of the Phantom Thieves we know, which has led some people- including me, haha- to wonder if Akechi is going to play some sort of role in this game. It’d be interesting if they’re somehow like, the Persona team he would’ve been part of, had the game not been rigged and he was a proper wildcard, or something!

Idk if there’s anything that supports or goes against this theory other than the trailer and stuff I’ve seen bc I don’t speak Japanese but. My guess from first seeing this game is that our good buddy Wonder and the gang are acting because they’re inspired by the PTs and this is like, a few years post-P5. The reason for the hero motif instead of the thief motif is because they see the PTs as heroes and are imitating them.

Honestly I think it would be so funny if that is what it is. Can you imagine? You see these Phantom Thieves of Hearts on the news, really changing things and taking down shitty people in power, and then after like a year and a half they go silent... and then suddenly now you have the power to do that?? How do you even react to that?

And then the hero vibe, too! You make a great point that if they do know of the Phantom Thieves, and see them as heroes, that'd for sure explain why the new cast's outfits seem a little more hero-y rather than thief-y. It'd certainly be interesting if the new cast went in already having an idea of what they can do with this weird world and their new power of Persona, even if they don't know how to do it yet! Would mix things up a bit from previous Persona games too, and give a reason for why they made this P5 X instead of just like, Persona 6.

[triphantoms]

Akechi, favourite featherman character and why?

Have you got into debates with Futaba about the show?

Why would I like such a childish thing? I'm not going to tell you.

- Akechi 🐦‍⬛

He's played Featherman Seeker so many times in my room... He likes Gray Pigeon. He only talks about it with me, but calls it childish to Futaba... So they get into fights about that.

- Joker 🃏

[yoshizawaviolet]

sumire do you have opinions on featherman? if you do, you should talk to akechi about them :)

"Featherman ..." Sumire muses. "I'm sort of a casual fan! I watch some episodes here and there when I have the time. But I played Featherman Seeker with Goro-senpai recently — and Akira-senpai a bit — and that was really fun. The story was really sad ... but, I guess it was a good ending."

[webbedphantom]

"Yeah, though it didn't sell very well since... it was a Japanese exclusive on the Master System-"

"But it is a thing. I actually found a copy in Akihabara last year. The guy who sold it to me even gave a promotional badge for beating it. It's on my desk upstairs."

@webbedphantom replied to your post “"I want to see a featherman beat em up so badly...”:

"I mean, there was a beat 'em released for Master System back in the early 90s. Think it was called Featherman... Seeker? No idea what series it's based on though-"

"Was there?! I don't think I've ever heard of that before, and I'm the biggest fan of the franchise! I think I have to turn in my featherman fan card..."

[denizenhardwick]

Reading Comprehension Questions:

Why did the creators make Akechi 18 years old, legally a minor in Japan at the time and the same age as several members of the Phantom Thieves? What does P5 have to say about children in Japanese society in general?

What is his relationship with Joker? Do they really hate each other? Use evidence and quotes from the text to support your answer.

Why did Akechi kill people? Was it because he wanted to, or were there other reasons at play? What social dynamics are at play between him and Shido?

What similarities and differences does Akechi's backstory have with those of the other Phantom Thieves? What do these comparisons have to say?

How do the other characters view Akechi after the scene in the engine room? What do they say about him and why?

BONUS: Play the in-game video game "Featherman Seekers." In what ways does the story of Grey Pigeon mirror Akechi? How is Grey Pigeon discussed? What does the inclusion of this minigame imply about how Akechi is meant to be perceived by the audience?

[vashtijoy]

I am so sorry if I missed it somewhere but is it confirmed that Akechi killed Wakaba? It is heavily implied but I am curious if you translated the moment when Akechi and Shido mention Wakaba?

And the second question: Is there something interesting in Feather Seeker?

Thank you in advance!!

Hi, anon, I'm so glad you asked as this one has been on my mind a lot lately. I think this is long enough without me getting into Featherman Seeker, lmao, but if you want to drop me another ask about it, I'll hopefully get to it soon.

To answer your question up front: yes, it is pretty much confirmed that Akechi kills Wakaba. Here's Sae, interrogating Joker about Kaneshiro:

Sae 若葉の死は2年前⋯『あれ』が起き始めた時期とも一致する⋯ wakaba no shi wa ninenmae... "are" ga okihajimeta jiki to mo icchi suru... Wakaba's death was two years ago... That also coincides with when the incidents started occurring...

IIRC this is the line that the idea that Wakaba was the first person Akechi murdered comes from. It's not explicit that she was the first victim—in this line, Sae has only just realised Wakaba didn't kill herself—but if she wasn't, she may very well have been the first to immediately die.

What gives far more credit to the idea that a. Wakaba was the first person Akechi killed, and b. that he feels bad about it to this day, are the various mentions of her that he sprinkles through his dialogue. And that's what the rest of this post will largely be about—though page down to see more about the Shido scene you asked about.

akechi and wakaba

Akechi mentions Wakaba by name several times. I talked recently about how Akechi's use of ellipsis can be important, how it sometimes indicates something deeper going on—surprise, or shock, or a hidden emotion. Or that he's just taking his time—sometimes an ellipsis is just a pause for effect, and Akechi does use them a lot.

But ALL FIVE of Akechi's mentions of Wakaba by name—two in the first year, and three in the third semester—have an ellipsis. They have that pause that indicates he's for some reason thinking more about what he's saying.

Let's take them one by one.

8/28 in leblanc

NB (2023/05/21): putting a quick note here to say that I'm pretty sure now that the mention of Wakaba on 8/28 is not out of surprise, he's prepared for it and intending to mention her all along. So he doesn't open up until Joker and Futaba ask him (without words) what's wrong. At some point I'll rewrite this whole section (hopefully), but for now see below! for the continued WAKABA ANGST.

This one is pretty easy to cover: Sojiro cuts him off as soon as he mentions Wakaba. I don't know about this scene. I never know how much he's genuinely surprised, how much he doesn't expect to see Futaba out of the house, how much he's just being a bitch, prodding and poking because he can, to get a response, like he does.

The interesting thing is that, of course, seeing Futaba segues into his notorious "trauma dump"—he ends up telling Joker and Futaba about his childhood, about how he was an orphan passed from place to place. Did he walk in intending to do that? I very much doubt it. And one more thing before we move on:

... they ask him what's bothering him. They look at him like "? dude sup". The trauma dump is not as unprovoked as it seems.

And there's no sign that he connects with Joker over it—of course—but you know who he does connect with?

Yep. Futaba sees the similarity between his story and her own. And it looks like Akechi sees the similarities too. That suggests IMO that his background is not dissimilar to hers—that, as the anime suggests, he was fostered by a succession of family members who neglected and probably abused him, as Futaba's story describes.

... and we get another ellipsis. Just a pause as he reaches for her name, perfectly innocuous. Except he knows her name; he's been talking to Sae about her.

I don't know. This is an incredibly hard scene to read. He has that performatively-sad cut-in that I don't trust at all, for a start; he could be being purely malicious, or sharing more than he intends; he could be genuinely shocked to see Futaba, or fascinated to see one of his living victims face-to-face. Or the whole thing could be a performance for Joker's benefit. It's an interesting scene, that's for sure.

shido and akechi

This is the scene you asked about, of course. Strap in. Shido talks about pulling the plug on cognitive psience, Akechi touches his chin and leans back, and he says this:

Akechi 一色若葉⋯でしたっけ? あの研究者。素直に従えば、死ぬことはなかったのに。 isshiki wakaba... deshita kke? ano kenkyuusha. sunao ni shitagaeba, shinu koto wa nakatta no ni.  ...Wakaba Isshiki, was it? That researcher. She wouldn't have had to die if she just complied. It was ... Wakaba Isshiki, yes? That researcher? If only she'd been more amenable, she might have lived.

This is pretty well translated in the localisation. Some notes:

We have that kke—Akechi is not saying "do you mean Wakaba Isshiki, Shido-san", in case you were wondering, he's saying "am I remembering right that her name was Wakaba Isshiki".

sunao ni shitagaeba—literally, "if she could have meekly obeyed", but in English, unless we want to sound like murderous psychopaths (cough), we say "if she could have complied; if she could have been amenable".

Lastly, we have that no ni, at the end, which gives the statement a sense of regret, which turns that "if she could have complied" into "if only she could have complied". "She might not have died; what a shame". In the Japanese audio (and for all I know btw, this happens in the English audio too), Akechi's tone and manner change on this line, from sinister and self-satisfied to something slower and more preoccupied. On his next couple of lines, his speed and smuggery progressively pick back up.

Here's the scene—it's fascinating to listen to his voice shift, especially to how dark it gets when he tells Shido how he agrees with his ideology and supports him politically. (lol) Plus, watch out for the evil wink, as he mocks his public image.

This should be "celebrity ace detective", by the way—while karisuma does mean "charisma", a karisuma is a person, a celebrity. It's often translated correctly in P5, just not here.

ok but back to wakaba

So what's going on here as regards Wakaba? First of all, Akechi does remember her—he's been talking about her with Sae since at least July. Shido knows Akechi murdered Wakaba—that's not the point. Shido knows Akechi is pretending to investigate the shutdowns and breakdowns—so the mere fact that Akechi knows her name is not the point either.

No, what's going on here is that Akechi doesn't want Shido to know he thinks about Wakaba. That, after two years, he still has her name at his fingertips. And so we get exactly the same style of pause as in the Leblanc scene with Futaba, when he pauses for just a moment to act like he doesn't properly know her name. We get that moment when his voice shows that he's feeling something and concealing it beneath his mask.

That's a pause that implies remorse or guilt, IMO. The mask he shows Shido is essentially Cognitive Akechi—gleeful, remorseless, sadistic, relentless. Make no mistake, there's a lot of Akechi in it, like there's a lot of him, despite what he'd like to think, in the detective prince. There's a lot of how Akechi aspires to be in his mask for Shido, and a lot of what he truly values about himself. But it is still a mask. And one of the things it's hiding is that Akechi still thinks more about Wakaba than he wants Shido to know.

This, IMO, is what implies that Wakaba was his first murder—this odd little moment where he has to pretend he doesn't properly remember her.

the third semester

The third semester is where it all gets a little more complicated. Akechi mentions Wakaba three times here; the most emotion he shows is when he first sees her. And the likelihood is strong that anything he feels about her is overshadowed by his own predicament—namely, being dead.

First of all, here's that moment when he first sees her. And you can see him understand: he looks at her for a long moment, then he touches his chin and has one of his "...... putting-it-all-together" thinky moments:

... and then he puts on his bright smile and the detective prince voice to get Joker outside. That's to say: he comes in without his customary pleasant-boy mask, sees Wakaba, and then drops straight back behind it—when he must have known there were others present on the way in. Like he needs a heavier mask to make sure he doesn't fuck up. Or to hide something.

Let's look at those three times Akechi mentions Wakaba, one by one:

1/2 in the launderette

The only thing I'd pick at in the localisation of this little exchange is the missing ellipsis on the last line, so let's take the rest of it straight:

Akechi: But, what's even more unbelievable to me is... Joker: Wakaba. Akechi: That's right.

Akechi ⋯一色若葉。 ... isshiki wakaba Wakaba Isshiki. ... Wakaba Isshiki.

Here's the scene. All we really have for his Wakaba textbox is the ellipsis, but listen to the first one—"what's even more unbelievable to me is...", and compare his tone to the preceding lines where he's been all business and matter-of-fact. Do you hear his voice thinning? It's by far the most unsettled he sounds all scene; Wakaba's presence is difficult for him.

And it's not his own death that's in question. If you ask him "how are you alive", he'll deal with it then—he looks away with the sad sprite, but then picks himself up fast. Even his model looks away, which is a bit of a tell—but as for traces in his voice of what's really happening, no, there are none.

1/8 at leblanc

There are no interesting vocal tricks here—a week later, Akechi is well on top of the reality around him and his own situation. And he doesn't like it—this is the "it makes me want to puke / I'll be the one to choose my path" phone call. It's only at the end of the call that some emotion creeps in, as he asks what's happening with the other Phantom Thieves, and if Joker is still on course.

Let's take a look at the original first line:

Akechi 死んだはずの若葉や奥村⋯彼女らは本当に『生きている』ことになってる。 shinda hazu no wakaba ya okumura... kanojora wa hontou ni "ikiteiru" koto ni natteru It seems that Okumura and Wakaba are both considered alive by all accounts.

I'm not sure what's going on with the noun order here, on wakaba ya okumura—it's been rendered "Okumura and Wakaba". I can't track down a reason this would be grammatically necessary (anyone know?); more than that, Akechi clearly considers Wakaba the more important of the two—he goes on to group them with kanojora, "her and her group".

There's possibly a bit of foreshadowing here, too—lists with ya tend to be incomplete lists; they have a sense of "et cetera". So wakaba ya okumura is "Wakaba, Okumura and so on". Who's Akechi's unnamed "and so on"? Yeah. But see below on 2/2—he may well just mean "no doubt there are lots of other cases like this".

So that's probably the real reason he trails off here—it's not about Wakaba, it's about him. Likewise, when that bit of feeling creeps into his voice at the end of the call, that's still about him, and whether Joker is going to follow through. But Akechi is still thinking primarily about Wakaba, rather than Okumura, who was, by all accounts, an asshole almost as bad as Shido.

2/2 at leblanc

Akechi 一色若葉や奥村のこともある⋯そこに違和感を覚えないほど、僕は馬鹿じゃないさ。 isshiki wakaba ya okumura no koto mo aru... soko ni iwakan o mienai hodo, boku wa baka ja nai sa There were also the cases of Wakaba Isshiki and President Okumura... Of course I'd find all of that suspicious. And then there was Wakaba Isshiki, and Okumura... I'm not so stupid as to not find their presence unsettling.

Man, once again Okumura has been promoted by the localisation. Someone really likes this guy. Akechi says isshiki wakaba ya okumura—the same usage as before, despite that he's been outed as dead—"Wakaba Isshiki and Okumura". But in English, Okumura is suddenly President Okumura, presumably so we don't mix him up with Haru. Make no mistake, though, Akechi is not giving Okumura the benefit of his title.

Wakaba is up front again, of course, coming to Akechi's mind first. Maybe because if he just said "Isshiki and Okumura", we wouldn't know who he was talking about?—even in Japanese, Wakaba always gets her full or given name. Maybe so. Or maybe not.

Also note the very Akechi usage boku wa baka ja nai sa—"I'm not that much of an idiot, you know." This is rolled into the rather more bland "Of course I'd find that suspicious", probably to fit it into the textbox.

And yeah, the ellipsis. That pause, and the word Akechi uses that's rendered as "suspicious"—iwakan. Not a detective's suspicion, but unease; a sense of incongruity, of wrongness, almost uncanny valley. It's the unsettling feeling that something is out-of-place. The sentiment "I killed them, and yet there they are, walking about" is very iwakan.

conclusions??

yes, Akechi certainly kills Wakaba.

yes, the exposition sequence with Akechi and Shido supports this.

... yeah, it really seems like he feels bad about it. Not bad enough to overshadow his concern for himself, perhaps, and never badly enough to get in the way of his current obsession, of course. But he's not wholly without conscience. He still thinks about her, and there are slight suggestions he might even think about what he does to Futaba—like when he sees her, and thinks of Wakaba, and promptly trauma dumps all over the Leblanc counter. Like when his voice gets a bit softer when she comes up.

also the localisation loves Okumura way too much

[seitosokusha]

✨🎶💖 For the emoji fanfic asks

!!! thank you thank you! <3

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

WAIT A MINUTE! THIS IS A TRICK!

lksdfjskldjf

okay, okay. -turns a mirror- okay, sei, you're doing great. Look at you go, you just finished your remix fic at 8.2k which means you wrote 3k+ yesterday/this morning. You also are currently rubber ducking your way out of your plot hole for wwbtf so here go finish that!

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

Yes! Music carries me a lot. The latest songs on repeat are

hated by life itself (eng version) Dino Soul Featherman Seeker soul of steam (this is such an orv song)

💖 What made you start writing?

I-I have no idea? If I had to guess I had just discovered fanfiction.net and decided I wanted to write. Back then, that was the age where authors had "yami" and being secret 9th digidestined was a thing. I had daydreams in my head and wanted to write. It's been a long time since then haha.

ask game

[bobzora]

i think one of the funniest very small things in persona 5 is the akechi featherman stuff. like i'm 90% sure him being a featherman fan specifically is just popular fancanon instead of anything concrete AS FAR AS I KNOW as far as i know. (if anyone knows where the fanbase got that let me know lol.) but what we do get is a hilarious amount of like. parallels.

every once in a while when featherman comes on on the tv in leblanc it'll hit you with something like "Red Eagle is crushed after Black Falcon's shocking betrayal" (10/29 in game. aka the day sae's palace becomes available)......... there's also "I want a love so strong it'll bring me back from the dead!" (or something similar i lost my screenshot rip) which is extremely probably not on purpose (because/and probably not added in royal) but did make me yell. because guess who very literally did that. like. textually did that. LOL. god i wish someone wrote down all the tv dialogue somewhere

and then there's the most obvious most ridiculous most insane thing that atlus added in royal for Some Reason in the form of featherman seekers which ok if you haven't played it just look on the wiki. because again. yeah. why did they add it though. this has been bugging me for so long why did they make the deliberate choice to add it in royal. like i love it it rules it makes me feel emotions. including confusion. but yeah.um. that's akechi alright. bonus points for his dlc outfit to also be gray pigeon like it's not meant to be subtle (also: rude of him to be both gray AND black. so greedy)

and well, it makes sense with all the stuff with robin and proof of justice and the arcade in royal where he wanted to be a hero as a kid and Hold on a second. you know who else did the red/black featherman thing. that's right. the legendary canon gay tatsu/jun from persona 2. IN CONCLUSION featherman is lgbt culture. or something. uh. good night.

[235uranium]

I go back and forth on how based in canon/how likely the "akechi was involved with wakaba's research" theory is but. man her notes really do make it seem like she'd gotten information from someone

[hanaaria]

i love that despite having a maxed out knowledge stat i felt like i had to buy featherman seeker (a game that raises your knowledge). just bc of goro

[silver-strings-of-fate]

"Trying to find Gray Pigeon merch is impossible. Like, I know Featherman Seeker didn't sell well, but it still has a good cult following now-a days. You'd think I'd be able to find at least a keychain or something..."

[crabbunch]

big fan of the featherman seeker theory not because i care about akechi's backstory but because i love it when dead moms aren't perfect. like hear me out but what if wakaba wasnt a saint and also she did terrible terrible things and she loved her daughter so so much. lol.