You know what I've been thinking? I ve been thinking that Atlus shot itself in the foot by honoring p2 and making the explosion on the bridge caused by the death arcana to happen on the same year as p2 instead of a few years later.
Because imagine this.If it had happened a few years later we could have this narrative:
After the events of p2 EP Nanjo, not satisfied with the resolution reached, decides to take Kandoris research(that he had previously saved and kept under lock so it wouldnt fall on the wrong hands), create an investigation team and fund further research regarding Shadows and the collective unconscious/the des of souls in hopes to find a better solution to the fragile situation the splitting of realities caused.
Unbeknownst to him (as the P1 team had no idea about the true extent of Nyx power, only having fought a small scrap of it in the form of the Snow Queen Mask) Nyx starts to take control of the minds of the scientists working for him who start to commit unethical experimentation in the name of the research to fulfill Nyx objective.
Eventually Nanjo finds about the unethical experimentation, including a future project regarding experimentation on children, and immediatelly shuts down the research, angering the group of scientists and causing the fights that eventually lead to the separation of the group who will go on to become the Kirijo group under the leadership of Kouetsu Kirijo.
They of course take/steal the research with them.
As Nanjo couldn't draw the media attention and risk the knowledge that his company was involved with unethical experimentation to come out Nanjo couldn't stop them and he had to play the card about how the separation was a mutual accord caused by a difference of interests while trying to find a way to close in and stop the Kirijo group from the shadows without the research leaking out even more (here's where he hires Baofu and Ulala and starts working with them to find a way to subtly bring the Kirijo group down)
This all comes to an end when the Kirijo lab explodes and all the research is seemingly lost.
Nobody knows what happened and everybody involved died in the accident.
No matter how much they search they can't find anything.
Not even the son of Kouetsu, Takeharu Kouetsu, who now that his father is dead has inherited the company seems to know anything (in part because Kirijo is keeping everything under wraps, in part because even they actually don't know what really happened. The only one who knows it's Ikutsuki and he's manipulating everyone).
So believing everything was truly lost and there's nothing more to do, ridden with guilt born from everything bad that happened since he decided to revive Kandoris research (he should have know anything related to THAT would need up this way, he should have known it was a terrible desicion, why did he have to be so arrogant to want to take everything in his hands...) Nanjo ceases and decides to focus on his company and watching over his own team and the p2 cast (keeping watch on them and making sure they don't accidentally bring the end of the world by recovering their memories)
But there's always something inside of him telling him to keep an eye on the Kirijo group, to not ignore them and he kinda does by maintaining close business relationships.
But it isn't enought.
He's not as as meticulous as he was before, as he should have been.
Thisakes him completely unprepared when the Fall happens years later.
And again nobody knows what happened, worst of all, everybody seems to have actually completely forgotten anything even happened.
But he knows.
He knows whatever happened was Persona/Shadow related so he once again turns his full attention to the Kirijo Group but this time he keeps a careful eye on the young heiress, Mitsuru Kirijo, as it's clear to him she isn't all that it seems.
He keeps his distance, not interfering, but staying watchful. Hoping to learn anything about what truly happened before acting seeing as how badly trying to take everything in his hand went last time.
And that's how Nanjo eventually learns about the Shadows ops (but funnily enough still knows nothing about the Fall being this the most guarded secret the Shadow ops, NO, SEES has).
And this narrative would have been great.
It would have been good way to keep everything connected ... IF ONLY the kirijo lab had happened a few years later.
By making it happen a few months after p2 it gives a very tiny widow of time for the fallout between the Nanjo and Kirijo groups to occur.
In fact it gives too little time for everything to happen considering P1 takes place in 1996.
By 1999 only 3 years have happened since the P1 cast found out about personas, shadows and defeated Kandori.
Only 3 years for the Nanjo group to start its research, a fallout to occur which ends up creating the Kirijo group AND then the Kirijo group doing everything they did until the formation of the death arcana and it's battle with Aigis on the bridge...
All of that in the span of just 3 years with everything in P2 happening at the same time.
And I KNOW I could change it.
I could move the dates a little to make everything fit better without really changing anything...
(Makoto losing his parents at the age of 8 instead of 4 for example doesn't really change anything. He would repress equally the same)
BUT changing the 10 years that Minato stored death inside of him feels SO WRONG.
It feels likes it's something quintessential to the narrative...AND I DONT KNOW WHY.
*coughcoughmaybeit'sjustmyfixationwithmultiplesof10coughcough*
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「 h.c. 」 ー the one about rosinante
hot take(?): doflamingo loved rosinante a lot.
one of the few people he would have the emotional capacity to and his worldview would allow him to love, actually.
('but he was planning to sacrifice himー' we will get to that. look, it's complicated.)
to explain what i mean (& prevent from being too long) i want to invite anybody who hasn't seen this to give it a look. here, i talk in more detail about what i mean when i say doflamingo 'loves' somebody & what his limitations are as a neurodivergent person with low empathy.
maybe i'll write a separate post about his cognitive empathy (using logic to determine how someone feels) vs. his emotional empathy (the ability to resonate with someone's emotions and feel what they feel) because it's complicated, and nuanced, and all that junkーbut that's a deep dive for another day. right now let's just talk his emotional empathy.
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basically, his love functions differently because his empathy (a pretty key component in loving somebody) functions differently. for most people, he 'loves' in the sense he attaches himself to you because you make him feel good & feed his ego, and he wants to keep you around as a result. he recognizes that, in order to do this, he needs to provide you with things in exchange: protection, money, opportunities, etc. but he cannot connect with you on an emotional level, or at least not where it matters: empathizing with you.
that's for most people, though; there are some rare exceptions, and even then it's still a bit... off.
he 'empathizes' best with not just people who have experienced the same things as him, but who experienced the same thing with him. ('empathizes' in quotes because, even then, it's more him projecting how the event made him feel onto a person rather than actually knowing how they feel and it just so happens that sometimes those feelings can overlap sometimes but, eh, he's trying his best...).
he lived in garbage dumps with his four executives, he built his pirate crew up from scratch over 25-30 years, and, uh... y'knowーspent two years suffering poverty & unimaginable abuse side-by-side with his little brother. it's a circumstance that allows him to speak in detail, and commiserate, and genuinely come the closet to caring about someone's feelings that his extremely finicky brain will allow.
but with rosinante specifically, doflamingo's capacity goes even deeper. because he, most likely, was not only the first person he developed a bond with as his brother, but he inherently places a higher social value on him because he's a celestial dragon. so, in a world of humans (people he declares himself as being socially, morally & maybe even genetically superior to) rosinante is the closest person he has to an equal, and that counts for something.
it counts for a lot, actually. it allowed rosinante to get away with a lot:
leaving for 14 years
coming back inexplicably
the frequent accidents
letting him just leave again for another 6 months & also take law
being seen as generally incompetent when doflamingo values people so long as they're useful
we also don't know the extent of how much rosinante masked his caring & compassionate side during his undercover mission before breaking away with law, but i have to assume doflamingo at the very least knew and, despite hating that side of him, overlooked it and allowed him to stay close.
i also genuinely believe vergo when he says doflamingo didn't suspect him and he accepted rosinante back with completely open arms & no strings attached. for my own portrayal of doffy, i've toyed with the idea of him being secretly a little bitter about being 'abandoned' because he's got some issues with that which may or may not have made the decision to sacrifice his brother easierーbut canonically it's probably a bit more cut & dry.
sacrificing him with the op op fruit was never the original plan. he didn't give rosinante the directive to eat it because he wanted to get rid of him for the last 4 yearsーhe wanted to sacrifice him because he was disobedient.
more than that, he wanted to sacrifice him in this specific way because it was a test to reconfirm his loyalty one last time. at the cost of his life, yes (though, all of his 'family' members are held to the same standard) but he gave rosinante something he didn't give his father or anybody else that betrayed him: an option of how he'd like to die.
'you can keep running if you want, prove to me right now you're a traitor, and i'll come & kill you myself. or you can come home & show me you're still my loyal little brother by giving your life to me. i'm giving you a choice.'
rosinante decided to run, and i have to imagine that broke doflamingo's heart a little. or, whatever what was left of it
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