#my ideal version of Tokyo could honestly stay pretty much the same as it is now

[grassbreads]

One thing has been haunting me for a while now as I read Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo for the first time—what has Tetsu been eating??

I'm all for Count D getting less murderous. It seems like his experiences with Leon and Chris have made him want to help out at least some humans and nudge them in a better direction, rather than setting people up for karmic animal deaths as a matter of course. He's helping a little, rather than judging and condemning and scaring quite so often. Or at least he's relatively neutral toward people while he tries to mess around and help out the local animals. He still ends up setting people up for self-defeat sometimes, but Tokyo has featured way fewer stories with that angle. And that's a nice character beat! I wish we'd spend a little more time on his introspection in-manga, but I can see what the creator is going for with this direction.

However, there's still a totetsu in the pet shop. There's at least one "pet" that eats humans as the center of his diet, and there's very likely more than just the one. D specifically got Tetsu to come stay at the pet shop by offering him food! Even if he's gotten less gung-ho about killing people, the fact that we've seen him/his pets cause the deaths of hardly anyone at all feels almost like a plot hole. Is there a list of missing persons in Kabukicho lining Tetsu's stomach, and we just don't know because Lau Wu Fei doesn't ever suspect or get involved with that side of D?

I'm all for character development, but in my heart D isn't D unless he's feeding the occasional creep and/or asshole to his menagerie.

[courtingstars]

Notes for The Vanishing Prince: Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight has been posted! I don’t have nearly as many notes this time. (Which is good, because it took me a lot less time to draft this post. XD;) Still, I did want to bring up a couple of things that I thought might be worth mentioning.

And as always, I updated the inspiration board for this fic over on Pinterest, so feel free to check out the new images if you feel like it/have access to Pinterest. (The most recently added images are at the top, so when you scroll down, you’re basically going backwards through the story.) And with that, onto the notes...

(Cut for the ramblings of a writer who overthinks everything, and also some very important notes about omurice, because I LOVED writing that part…)

Akashi and His Mom, Plus Heian Poetry

This is basically just a note to say that I really loved being able to write the scene with Akashi and his mom. <3 I think it’s the first scene of them together that I’ve posted online…? (Though I’ve written lots of scenes where Akashi talks about his mother, or has a very brief memory of her.) I wrote something short about them for Mother’s Day years ago, but I never finished it, sadly. So it felt nice to finally be able to include a glimpse of how I see their interactions.

Also, the part about Japanese poetry is indeed a thing! A lot of the Heian-era poetry in Japan revolves around themes of courtly love, and because of how courting worked in that time period, they often feature various forms of pining-for-your-lover-from-a-distance. So like Akashi says, there was a folk belief that if you were missing your lover enough, you would appear in each other’s dreams, so that you could at least be together in the dream world. Like this site about the poet Ono-no-Komachi explains, “the intensity of one's feelings for one's lover could induce him to appear in one's dream or could cause one to appear in his dreams.” I always thought that was a fascinating concept. (Also the idea that Akashi would be studying those poems at six years old is just really funny to me? But anyway. //laughs)

Akashi’s Issues, Poor Guy

I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but I thought it might be worth mentioning… One of the things I really wanted to explore in this fic (and the series as a whole) is the reality that working on mental health problems can be a very difficult and often nonlinear process. While it’s not the only plot line of the story—and I definitely don’t claim to have done a great job with it by any means, though I try my best!—I felt like it was important to take the time to show how a person’s struggles with mental illness don’t just get solved overnight. Akashi has been fighting a lot of the same problems throughout the series, because these kinds of emotional hang-ups and coping mechanisms aren’t easy to change.

To be honest, it felt somewhat counterintuitive to me as a writer, because back when I was trying to publish original stories, there was this idea that you weren’t supposed to write characters “brooding” for too long or repeat the same issues/mistakes over and over. Basically, the characters needed to show growth quickly, and passages that could be seen as repetitive should probably be cut, because they weren’t “progressing the story.” While I can understand that idea in a writing sense, I tend to feel like it’s not a very fair representation of what it’s like to struggle with mental health. (Which also applies to a lot of other kinds of personal issues/growth as well, honestly. Change is just hard in general.)

So I’m definitely trying to walk a balance between not writing the same scenes over and over, while also showing Akashi’s struggles as an ongoing journey for him. The latter was really important to me, both as a writer, and as someone who’s had cycles and setbacks with my own mental health stuff.

Bokushi Is Still Kind of an Asshole, Lol

On kind of a similar note… I have no idea how Bokushi comes across as a character at this point in the story? //laughs But if anyone finds him to be kind of a jerk, I will say that’s an intentional choice, at least. Ideally, I wanted him to be likable but still flawed, and I do find him hilarious personally, but… Hopefully it’s obvious that I don’t think he’s a perfect person, by any means. XD;

I think I’ve said before that I really want to use this storyline as a chance to explore my view of his character—and the why/how of how his personality differs from Oreshi—in as much detail as possible. Hopefully it ends up coming across as nuanced in the long run… But if nothing else, I hope it’s at least fairly interesting to read! Because I do find him extremely interesting as a character.

Omurice!

So here’s my major cultural note for the chapter… I’m guessing a lot of people are already aware of the fact that Furihata’s favorite food in canon is omurice, since it tends to pop up in AkaFuri fics a lot. For anyone who’s not familiar with the dish, omurice (a borrowed compound word for “rice omelet”) is a Western-inspired Japanese dish that’s extremely popular as a comfort food. (This type of Western-inspired cuisine is generally called yoshoku. Which I think I also mentioned in Storming the Castle, but… it’s been awhile? //laughs)

So basically, omurice consists of pan-fried rice that’s usually seasoned with either ketchup (often considered the more homey/classic version) or demi-glace sauce (more often seen in restaurants). Like in a lot of fried rice recipes, vegetables and meat are added to the rice, and then the whole thing is served beneath a super-fluffy egg omelet. It typically looks like this, or this. I’ve made it before, and enjoyed it way more than I expected. So while I was writing this chapter, I couldn’t resist preparing one of my own (for research purposes of course, lol):

I’m not a good cook, to put it mildly, but I was proud that this one came out a little better than the last time I tried it. XD

To me, the coolest thing about watching someone prepare omurice is the part where they plate the omelet... This can be done a few different ways, and some take more skill than others. (I totally cheat, by making a single-layer omelet and just setting it on top of the rice as best I can. XD) The most difficult way (and the way Furihata does it in the fic!) is to layer the omelet on top of itself while you’re cooking it, so that it becomes a kind of pouch that you can slice open over the rice. There’s a great animation of this process over on my Pinterest board, and I also really recommend two videos on Youtube if you’d like to see more… This clip features an amazing chef from the most famous omurice restaurant in Kyoto, and this one is an iconic scene from Tampopo, a classic Japanese film. To learn more about the context of those clips, and about omurice in general, I also recommend this really fun article about it.

The thing I find the most interesting about omurice is that it’s such a popular comfort food, so it’s often associated with home and family life. That’s why in The Fast Train to Kyoto, I was inspired to have Furihata’s mom make him omurice when he’s having a bad day. At the same time, though, the dish can also have a bit of a “lovey dovey” connotation to it? Like how in this survey it was one of the top foods that Japanese guys said they would like their girlfriends to make for them. (Hence the trope of decorating the omelet with a ketchup heart, as Bokushi mentions, in his extremely Bokushi way. //laughs)

For all these reasons, I tend to think of omurice as the perfect favorite food for a character like Furihata. It definitely inspired how I write about him, especially when it comes to things like his family life as well as his romantic side. <3

So How About All Those Storming the Castle References Huh

This is just a quick note to say that if anyone happened to be confused by some of the references in this chapter, a lot of them were referring back to events from Part Two of Storming the Castle. (Like the first time Furihata saw Akashi’s dad, the huge portrait of Akashi and his parents in the ballroom, the butsudan altar, the secret passage with the stairs, the ghost, etc, etc… Also the character of Ginhara, since he’s the butler who runs the mansion in Tokyo.)

I tend to be pretty indecisive about exactly how much detail I should use to explain something that happened earlier in the series… Since I know some people might not have read the earlier fics, and at the same time, I don’t want to be too repetitive for those who have? In any case, if anything was confusing/unclear, it was probably a callback to that story. (Oh, and there was also a callback to The Fast Train to Kyoto, about when Akashi and Furihata talked about becoming friends!)

Well, that’s it from me this time around. Thank you so much for reading, as always. As I mentioned in more detail over on Ao3, I really hope everyone is staying safe where possible, and supporting each other in this difficult time. I will do my best to get the next chapter posted very soon. <3

[nightshadedawn]

Persona 6 Concept Part 6

{First} {Previous} {Next} {Last}

When does an idea stop being someone else’s, and start becoming your own? It’s a question I’ve been pondering since perhaps Part 2 or three.

Guess what I did? That’s right, I got more pictures for ya! And it’s, like, a lot. I have some ideas for the outfits for the character, but I’m seriously no stylist, so they all look kind lame. I’d love some input on how you thought they turned out! Now, let’s get into it!

MC Personalities

Before we get started, there’s something I have to explain to you.

The idea with any Persona MC is that the player creates their personality, so you don’t want too much of a personality to show through their outfits (hence why they wear the standard uniform while most of the other have differences to them). But the thing is, each MC already has a little bit of a personality by what kind of answers you can give. Joker is shown to be confident and cocky more often than not, P3’s male protag was solemn and closed off, and I hear the female MC was rather bubbly. Sadly, I was too young to play those kinds of game back when I would have actually owned a system to play any version of P3 on, so I only know the game of P5, the anime of P4, and the manga of P3, so I can’t say for certain if this is accurate.

However! I’ve had this thought in mind of having the MCs have the barebones of personalities. Obviously having them have the same personality is just rehashing the same character with a different model, so that idea went right out the window. But in light of the bad reception I’ve heard for the female MC of P3, I didn’t want to give you a pushover female MC. Not to say the male MC is a pushover, but, well…

Let’s start with the Female MC. She’s pretty, a senior, and in the provided picture from the original video, she wears those bright red, eye catching shoes. Just from this short description, I could say her personality shows up as being confident as the center of attention, even seeking it. She’s pretty and she knows it, might even flaunt it. Words I would use to describe her; confident, strong willed, hot-headed, intimidating, solid, dominant, reluctantly cares, bitter and jaded (her reaction towards the world after her mother’s death). Her dialogue options will likely be bitter, bored, sarcastic, or downright mean (up until further into the story as she starts getting closer to her teammates, you know, natural character growth).

Then there’s the Male MC. Belatedly, I realized that the picture I found was Italy from Hetalia and the cats are the Cat Countries, but the image really goes for what I’m looking for with him. Keeping Italy out of the picture (well, his direct personality, at least), we can still get a semblance of an idea about Male MC’s character. Shy, closed off, doesn’t interact well with humans. He’s anything but an open book, and I imagine that he’d used teasing/humourous dialogue, as if he was trying to play off that he’s fine. Words I would use to describe him: timid, teasing, awkward, thoughtful, calm, level-headed, submissive, delicate, quiet and sad (his reaction to his mother’s death). His dialogue options will likely consist of playful teasing, awkwardness, dodgy answers, and left field responses.

They’re not exact opposite, both are pretty closed off, but for different reasons. When you have a female main character in animes in comparison to male main characters, the girl is usually someone weak, timid, a pushover. Their ‘strength’ is their ability to get other to open up. She’s an open book, and even if she doesn’t always start off that way, she ends up a big softie. I wanted something different for this MC. She’s pained over her mother’s death, but she doesn’t outwardly cry like other female anime characters would. She holds it in, until it festers and grows and stops making her sad, but instead makes her angry.

…A very male anime character thing to do, no?

And that was my intent.

The Male MC also shows some traits that normally would show up in female anime character, notably his way of keeping things to himself to not worry his friends. I’m aware that male anime characters do the same, but they have different ways of doing it. Though impossible/implausible it may seem, I would like to break barriers with the personalities these characters have. 

Keep in mind, I’m going off the beginning of the plot, when they first come to the small town it takes place in. As the story goes on, they’ll grow as people and characters and grow beyond their bitterness, beyond their lack of confidence. She will not become timid, but become stronger. He will not stop being timid and awkward, but be able to go on despite it. That’s my vision for their characters. 

Well, that kinda went longer than I meant it to, and I hope it wasn’t too confusing. The entire idea of these characters was “What are some male/female anime traits that I can use and make them still appear femmenine/masculine?” Anyway, I just wanted you to have this in mind when we get to the pictures, because they’re the personalities I had in mind when creating their outfits.

Outfits

Female MC

I wanted to give her a classy, city girl look, as she’s new from the city and grew up there. She’s not into this backwater stuff yet. Black and white is a big theme for both MCs, hence why their outfits will be mostly black and white. But green should be incorporated, so I added the green button up. Either shirt could be used individually, but my plan had been to have the green shirt, open, over white. The snake twisting around the staff is a classic Greek symbol of healing, as is the theme of this game, and is worn as a necklace by the female MC.

Though those loafers most anime protagonists seem to wear would be more probable for this character, I went with boots as loafers are not ideal for going around forests or jungles in. 

I just went on about how loafers aren’t ideal for walking around in forests, but then I give her heels. But do you see that picture? She’s got heels. I wanted to honor that a little bit, hence, heels. I couldn’t decide if I wanted the red heels, to honor her original image, or if I liked the green to stay in theme with the rest of the game. The key chain is there to give the connection to P5 and the hint at maybe she was in Tokyo when the Phantom Thieves were at large, and probably supported them. (If we go canonically by year released, she would have been in middle school at that time, I think?) I liked the shirt that’s paired with the shorts, but the coloring of the other one was better. And after some thought, I liked the idea of a baggy shirt on the MC, even if it wouldn’t be very good for her in-game. Too much fabric moving around while she’s fighting would just get tangled up around her.

As before with the boots, I wanted it to be practical. As for the shirts, I couldn’t decide on one, though I lean more towards the light colored one. This was the most difficult outfit to design by far, at least for this character.

Male MC

Because of The cats in the picture, I couldn’t resist giving him some clothing with cats on them. Hence the shirt saying ‘Real men love cats’ and the cat on the back of the jean jacket. He’s also supposed to sport a classy city look, though more toned down than his counterpart’s, much like his personality is. I couldn’t decide between the trench coat and jean jacket, because I think both would serve their purpose. The snake bracelet is supposed to be reminiscent of the one on Hermes’ staff, another symbol of healing. 

This guy gets to deal with looking plain and wearing loafers. I couldn’t find any boots I really liked for him, and he doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of guy who’d wear boots to begin with. Too airheaded to think about practicality and going into the forest. The vest might be gotten rid of on the male uniforms in favor of one that buttons, giving the boys more diversity to their outfits. 

Here we see more green incorporated, and red converse to mirror the Female MC’s red heels if those are the ones chosen. (If I’m being perfectly honest, I hate the pairing of red and green for anything other than Christmas, but this does not bother me) As you can see, this MC also supported the Phantom Thieves by having their logo on his shoes. The choker’s there because… I honestly just liked the idea of guys wearing chokers? Kind of in tune and contradictory to his personality at the same time. (Fuck you to all those who say only girls wear necklaces)

I’ma be perfectly honest right now, I’m not sure about keeping the tie on the guys at all, let alone the summer uniform. And I have problems designing outfits for men in general. So, it might be tossed. The pants, for both summer and winter uniforms, will be the pattern of that little box right by them. I just couldn’t find a pair in that pattern, so woops.

Sayaka Ito

Sayaka also comes from the big city. However, the ‘classy city girl’ look isn’t really something she’s embrace. ‘Essentic city girl’ is more her speed. The swirly black symbol is another symbol of healing, and will either go on her guitar or hat. In the other world, the guitar will be replaced by whatever axe she has equipped. This is the only outfit in which she wears the hoodie properly.

Though the hoodie remains, she wears it tied around her waist in this outfit. And even if she doesn’t have the guitar with her uniform, the axe is still present in the other world. Rolls her sleeves to her elbows. Actually, I’m pretty sure she’d ditch the sweater too.

On top of being a little eccentric, Sayaka can be impractical, hence the sandals and skirts. Neither are good for battle, though both are cute. The black skirt shoes both the front and back of it. The hoodie gets tied around her waist. The first shirt is a crop top, while the other is full length.

As all the others aside from the winter weekend, Sayaka wears the hoodie tied around her waist in this outfit. She would wear the top button undone with the light colored shirt, and possibly have it untucked. 

Yudai Shinoda

I haven’t really a lot to say about this. The symbol (you guessed it; another symbol of healing) would either be on his bracelet or on the shirt. I think on the shirt to give it a bit of umph. The yellow laces would be on the boots, obviously. Who doesn’t like yellow laces?

I really picture this guy trying to keep up the image of a model student and wearing the uniform properly. Possibly has the sleeves rolled up to his elbows? 

I couldn’t quite decide which shirt I liked, because they all kinda fit my image of him. He’s really the kind of chill person that would wear graphic/band t-shirts. 

Nothing really interesting here.

Miyako Fujimori

I don’t know why, but I decided that Miyako likes octopi, hence the necklace. The onyx on the necklace is a symbol of healing, so it works with that theme too. As you can see, I couldn’t decide on a skirt or sweater. The turtle neck shirt is always worn, but I couldn’t decide on which sweater.

The one who wears the uniform most properly aside from the female MC. I haven’t much to say on the matter.

The only short sleeves she’ll wear! Whichever skirt wasn’t chosen for her winter will be worn here. 

Not much to say on the matter of this outfit. She does wear the long sleeved shirt in the summer for personal reasons that go alone with her depression. Considering she almost commits suicide on screen, I don’t know if I’d say she self-harmed and has scars from it, but I know, as someone who has depression, some days I just wear long sleeves because it makes me feel like it’s easier to hide.

Masahiko Oshiro

I think his symbol of healing will likely either be a pattern on his tie or a tie clip. The colored lines at the bottom are supposed to be the hair clips you see in animes, like those criss-cross designs in hair. He’s an asshole, but I wanted him to appear as a cute asshole. The pink jacket can go with any of the shirts (white, purple, or pink), but the white will either go with the purple or pink. The purple is mostly there because royalty and regalness.

Masahiko finds himself too dignified for such an unsightly sweater vest, so he refuses to wear it. Everyone thinks he’s attractive, so it’s not like they mind at all. I debated giving him an actual tie instead of the bowstring, but you see how that went.

Masahiko is, beyond a doubt, supposed to be a pretty city boy. I guess the theme I was going with there was ‘almost model material but never touched a runway.’ But guys are hard to make outfits for.

This time he did leave the ribbon behind, and I think he feels better for it.

Hoshiko Akiyama

I’ve decided that Hoshiko is an aspiring designer, but her looks are quirky and eccentric because she cares more about dressing up others rather than making herself look good. (She’s self conscious about her red hair, and seems to have deemed herself unable to model any of her good designs). Anyway, I wanted her to look cute but also a little bit odd.

As per my idea for her to be a designer, it seems in character that she’d do some work on her sweater vest. However, it’s still green. I just replaced the other one with this black one because of the design.

Both dresses are knee length, and all of the bracelets are purposefully mismatched. 

As the one from the winter, her top is replaced with one she embroidered herself. 

Jun Sanada

He seemed like the kind of character that would wear graphic tee. But the other shirt makes it look closer to the original picture. His symbol is uses as an earring.

I can’t decide if the shoddy job I did on cutting the shirt out from its background, making it look ratty and tattered, should stick or not.

Simple guy, people think he’s kinda princely until he opens his mouth and his temper explodes.

Again, not much to say on the matter.

Shinju Kawaguchi

The overall dress could be either blue or the pink that it is. I haven’t quite decided if the pretty cloak stays or not, but it is adorable, no? I think, instead of the bow being on the side of her head, it would be tied in the back.

The symbol she has is worn as a ring, and not much else to say.

My editing job is not great, but the blue dress has two straps. The others are both knee length as well.

Not much to say about this one.

Plot/Playthrough

July 10: Masahiko returns to school You’re unable to talk to him.

July 11: You get to talk to Masahiko. He and Miyako argue a bit, but make up afterwards.

July 12 - 14: Exam prep.

July 15 - 17: Exams days.

July 18: Last day of exams. Hoshiko enters the scene and confesses her love to MC. 

July 19: Summer vacation starts. You go celebrate Masahiko’s release from the hospital with the rest of the team. 

July 20 - 21: Some event things that have to be done before we move on in plot and don’t allow you to really do anything.

July 22: Avis will convince you to sneak away from your duties and into the Endless Forest, as there has been a rise in infected victims and corrupted cores that you need to take care of NOW. You meet The Plague, and find out Hoshiko has followed you.

July 23 - 25: You and your friends try to talk to Hoshiko, but she’s in too much of a stupor for it. 

July 26: It becomes apparent that Hoshiko’s core is corrupted and that she has a palace. You enter the palace, Hoshiko following once again, and she awakens her Persona.

July 27 - August 12: Your available days to complete Hoshiko’s palace before it kills her. 

August 13: Hoshiko is released from the hospital. 

August 14: School starts up again. Hoshiko joins the others at school. You meet Jun and stop him from hitting Hoshiko after she rejects him. 

August 15 - 17: No free time. You and your friends escort Hoshiko everywhere when it becomes apparent Jun is still trying to push the issue. He challenges you to a fight, which you can either just brush off or deny. Either way, you won’t fight him.

August 18: You expect it to be like before, but Jun keeps his distance and resumes his princely persona.

August 19: It’s finally time for Hoshiko’s release party. The party is interrupted by Jun fighting outside, beating another guy to a pulp.

We start the story again on August 19. Hoshiko tells you about how she was leaving, she heard about a young man who’d been brought into the hospital just as she was leaving it and died only a couple hours later from the virus. He’d showed no signs of symptoms before being brought in.

The fight breaks out outside the restaurant and once again, you go and stop it. Reactions will differ depending on gender; “She’s a girl!”, “You can’t hit girls!”, “That was highly improper!” verses “He was just trying to help!”, “Don’t be a dick!”, “Why would you do that!?”

You get the guy who Jun was beating up away, but now he’s PISSED and starts breaking shit. Sayaka tries to talk to him, but that kinda blows up in her face. Rather literally. He goes to lash out at her, a flash of guilt crossing his face, the moment right before you slug him. Whatever you tell him, he’ll immediately leave.

You won’t see Jun again until August 17, the next Monday. He’ll be back to his normal princely self as he’s followed around school by a gaggle of girls who fawn over and worry about him, though shows the most subtle of problematic behavior. (Namely bossing people around and getting absolutely furious if the task he gave them is not done at all, not done quick enough, or not done to his liking) The littlest things can set him off.

You’ll have four days of being free to do as you like, but then Masahiko and Miyako will bring it to your attention on August 22 that their classmate’s core is turning black. Sayaka will offhandedly comment that a bastard like him deserves it. You can agree or disagree with her, but no matter what you choose, an argument will be unavoidable. The morality of knowing you can do something to save someone’s life and willingly not do it because you don’t like them- essentially, MURDER- or saving someone who makes the lives of others miserable.

Regardless of what side you took originally, the argument will be made “We do not have the right to decide who lives or who dies; we were given the power to save, and that’s what we have to do.”

Thus, you and your team will go under the waterfall to locate his Palace and all that fun stuff. 

But, you know. Obviously Jun has been ‘stalking’ you for the last several days because he’s wanted to know what Hoshiko sees in you. And though confused about what you were talking about, he recognized himself as the topic of discussion, and the wary glances of Miyako and Masahiko, and follows you into the waterfall.

Which is honestly a terrible idea. You get through it a little before Jun shows up and… basically royally screws up everything by confronting the fucking Corruption. And then awakens his Persona, because he’s just that much of a dick.

But, you know what, fine. It’s fine. Seriously fine. It’s just that you barely manage to fight your way free, but it’s fine. Really fine. But whatevs’, right? 

No, not really. Jun, being the huge dickhead he is right now, basically forces himself onto the team despite what the others want and how skittish Hoshiko is of him. He also kinda refuses to really let anyone explain anything. (His full explanation will have to wait until after he gets out of the hospital)

The next day begins your dungeon crawl. August 23 - September 13 will be your dungeon crawl days. The longer you take to complete the Palace, the more you’ll be able to see the signs that Jun is unraveling and falling apart. There will be a time in the middle of the crawl that you’ll have to leave the Palace because Jun collapses from the exhaustion of pushing himself past his limits. When you complete the Palace, he will collapse again and will remain in a sleep that’s not quite a coma until September 13. 

Jun’s dungeon is a swamp, mirroring his rather nasty personality that drives people away once they get too close. The middle, where you need to go, is basically Jun’s shadow trapped in a cage. As all the others, he’s slumped over and already looks dead. The further you go, the more Jun realizes just how shitty his personality is and how much he wants it gone. The reason he collapses is because he pushes himself towards the goal with the idea that, if the Corruption goes and takes the virus away, then the Shadow leaving will take his misplaced anger issues away. (This misplaced idea comes from the fact he didn’t listen, at all, to what they were trying to explain). This Palace will be really battle heavy, so be prepared for that. 

The final battle against Jun’s Corrupted Anger will be your hardest yet, but you will make it through, as is the nature of this game. It’ll be a bit of a struggle trying to open the cage, but you’ll manage to free Jun’s Shadow so the MC can get to healing him. Jun will attack his Shadow before you can get there, though. Weak and helpless as the Shadow is, it won’t fight back, and Jun will almost manage to inadvertently kill himself before he’s pulled back by Yudai and someone else. The MC removes the corruption from Jun’s core and saves him. They return to the real world and Jun collapses from what he did to his Shadow.

September 14, Jun will return to school. He will apologize for his behavior directly to the MC, still not exactly a good person and still kind of a dick as he really only apologizes to the MC. He asks to formally be accepted into the group if you’ll have him, and for everything to be explained to him, properly this time. He promises he’ll listen. (Some time during this encounter, Miyako and Masahiko will drag Jun behind a door and do… something to him. You don’t see anything, just hear the sounds, and it’s implied that they smack him around a good couple of times, but they all come out looking mostly unharmed)

You won’t have a lot of time to worry about anything regarding the other world or Endless Forest, as on the 15 will be Jun’s release party and on the 16, you all head to Tokyo. Four days of exploring and scripted events, and on September 20, you’ll chill with your significant other of choice on the beach, or Shinju and Yuuki. During your trip, you’ll be able to notice how Shinju keeps looking sicker and sicker. She’s putting on a brave front and forces herself to look happy and okay, but she’s quite obviously not. Her core begins to turn black. Unfortunately, due to timing, you won’t be able to hang out with Jun at this time. But on September 21, his social link become available! So there’s always that.

Actual plot wise, on September 21 and 22, you’ll have a nightmare about the Other World. It’ll be incredibly shitty, and leave yout out of sorts and unable to do any activities those days. On September 23, you’ll get a dream from Igor, who is cryptic in his warnings, but tells you that you need to be careful, as things are very quickly going to change. Gilbert/Lucius tells you to remember to keep your bonds close, and look for new ones where you can.

One September 24 after you wake up, there will be a surprise assembly. Dr. Ueda will come to the front of the gym and stand with the teachers as he explains that the virus has become too deadly in recent months, and has been classified as an epidemic. The town has been quarantined off; no one gets in or out any time soon.

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Persona 5 Royal review – both better and worse than the original • Eurogamer.net

It’s a great intro: protagonist Joker darting along the casino roof, quick like a shadow. Making fast work of a handful of enemies while leaving others in the dust, his black coat swishing behind him. The excited voices of his team mates over the intercom as he’s almost reached his goal, but then! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal! He’s surrounded!

Persona 5 Royal review

Developer: Atlus/P Studio

Publisher: Atlus/Sega

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out now on PS4

The first sequence of Persona 5 Royal acts as foreshadowing and tutorial all wrapped up in one, showing you everything you will regularly be doing in each dungeon you crawl through – jumping between platforms and squeezing through ducts to find a way forward, hiding away from enemies or ambushing them when they’re not looking. Most importantly, in round-based combat you unleash Persona, manifestations of parts of Joker’s psyche who can use different elemental attacks, healing spells and stat buffs. Persona 5 Royal also adds a grappling hook to your arsenal, which you’ll mostly use to find shortcuts and additional treasure.

Joker and his friends, regular students at Shujin Academy in Tokyo, one day stumble into the Metaverse, a parallel reality that manifests Palaces where people live out their worst desires. There’s also Mementos, a sprawling maze of randomly generated dungeons. The group of high schoolers enter these palaces to steal people’s treasures, causing them to let go of harmful desires and confess their crimes.

Persona 5 Royal brands itself as the definitive version of the game, and introduces an extensive list of improvements – if you’ve played Persona 5 before, you’ll definitely notice how P-Studio worked to fix a few common gripes. New items help in combat, such as talismans that buff several stats at once, more food and drink that replenishes SP and many new accessories, among them rings you can put on your team members so they can use spells they normally don’t have access to.

You can form bonds with two new characters, first-year gymnast Kasumi Yoshizawa and school counsellor Takuto Maruki. Scenes with both are sprinkled in throughout the main story, while an all-new storyline after the main game focuses completely on them. New bonds mean there’s new Persona to catch and new abilities to gain from becoming friends, too.

Speaking of abilities – Persona 5 Royal introduces a really cool new special attack that unlocks as the story progresses. Called Showtime, it’s a powerful attack that unlocks when an enemy is almost finished or you’re really struggling. Two friends in your group will pair off and start a short, eye-popping sequence that briefly takes you elsewhere. They’re really difficult to describe if you haven’t seen them – Haru and Makoto for example start a WWE Smackdown double attack, and Ryuji and Yusuke start a saloon shootout when the enemy rudely interrupts Yusuke feeding Ryuji some ginger-laden donburi. It’ll all make some kind of distant sense when you see it, I promise.

The improvements aren’t all combat-focused, either. Thanks to a wealth of additional options, you’ll find it easier to raise your social stats, and if you time things right it will now only take you a single playthrough to max out every confidant. To justify adding even more content to an already meaty game, the palaces are now shorter, mostly because the layout of each has been streamlined to include fewer rooms, and some puzzles have also been shortened. Notably, you can now collect Will Seeds in each dungeon, manifestations of a palace ruler’s driving feeling. If you collect three seeds and take them to Jose, a small boy who hangs out in Mementos, you gain a powerful, otherwise inaccessible ability.

Gymnast Kasumi appears sporadically throughout the main game, to experience her full story you have to finish that first.

There’s more stuff, but the important question is, does it make Persona 5, an already universally lauded game, any better? Honestly, and I’m making my best Robert DeNiro face while I say this: meh.

When I played the original Persona 5, a handful of things detracted from my overall immense enjoyment – the treatment of some of its characters, the difficulty, which to me felt pretty easy, and the length of the game. It wasn’t just the number of hours, which was colossal, but how long they could feel.

If you’re plugged into the discussion that surrounded Persona 5, you know that certain parts of its plot didn’t land that well: a storyline in which your friend Ann is supposed to pose as a nude model, and a bit where your characters meet a couple of gay men. Atlus West requested the latter be changed, but to me it’s an absolute non-change that while no longer suggesting the abduction of minors, still finds ample opportunity to stereotype gay men. Small mercies, I suppose.

The way Ann is treated is equally off-putting to me, but it’s just part of your standard grab bag of misogyny in Japanese games, so of course that would remain unchanged. Don’t get me wrong, I love Persona 5 a lot, and I recognise that the opportunity for change is limited if you don’t want to downright cut content, but Royal does nothing to fix its larger problem: you get to meet a group of characters that’s perfectly adorable in their own right, but it’s constantly suggested they would be nothing without you.

The Velvet Room now offers battles where you earn battles for particular efficiency.

Persona 5 Royal puts its own characters down – it’s frequently suggested that Ann is a bit of dumb blonde, Yusuke is just weird, Makoto is too uptight, but you’re here to change their lives. P5R adds instances of queer-baiting to the mix, not letting you date your male team members, but putting you in intimate situations with them all the same. Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal take the power fantasy to whole new levels, making sure to call the protagonist, and by extension the player, awe-inspiring, a hero, a leader, whenever the opportunity presents itself. I find the idea of being near-infallible pretty tiring.

This leads me to the combat. I’m confident in telling you to start Royal on Hard if you’ve played Persona 5 before. Royal also comes with two modes that lock you into your chosen difficulty, Safe and Merciless. You now have so many additional abilities and items that I think the standard game is way too easy, and can feel like going through the motions. Boss fights have been retooled with new segments to fit the narrative better, but the balance feels off – overall I enjoyed the fights, but I had trouble with some that had never bothered me before, while others seemed too easy given how far into the game I was.

The last point on my list however, is perhaps one of the most common complaints about Persona 5. I’m pretty happy how on normal difficulty there’s never been a reason to mindlessly grind, even though in essence that’s what Mementos is for. Grinding isn’t what turns Persona 5 Royal into a game of over 100 hours – it’s how characters review and re-review even the most basic information ad nauseum. It’s how you might not want to spend the next four hours driving around in Mementos, but you have to, since it’s a plot requirement. It’s how the game heavily cheats you by suggesting not once, not twice but three times that this is definitely the last battle and the world will be saved any minute now.

The additions here make all of that worse. Absolutely no one I’ve ever talked to said “you know what Persona 5 needs? Another palace. And I also really want to spend more time in Mementos”, yet that’s exactly what you get. To make the plot additions work at all, it needs a massive leap of faith that undermines pretty much everything you’ve done until this point, and it’s so frustrating. After a truly epic finale, another villain simply takes the place of the last. It’s the same principle that often makes movie sequels so grating – the victory you’ve just had was for nothing. For a game that frequently tells you the exact opposite, to stay true to your ideals and keep fighting even when others think it’s pointless, this is especially disheartening.

You use the grappling hook seldomly but to great effect. Wheee!

Without wanting to spoil anything, the new villain does have interesting motives, but they’re the sole upside of a storyline that asks you twice to have the same conversation six times in a row, and that gives you a palace where you fight three new enemies over and over, one of them several consecutive times. The way it is, the new story content feels a bit tacked on, despite giving you the option to keep working on your Social Stats and links – it feels like a DLC. This is an additional month of in-game time, relating to something that’s only alluded to in bits and pieces throughout the main game. It might be fun if you come back to Persona 5 after several months, but put at the end of the main storyline like that, it just makes you wait for it to be over.

If you’ve never played Persona 5, thanks to much of the optimisation this is certainly a safe bet. But Persona 5 Royal doesn’t so much feel like a definitive edition and rather a game made for fans who get excited about collectibles like the Will Seeds or additional Persona, or who are thirsting for new interactions with characters like the twins, who were previously largely neglected. Sadly it doesn’t add enough to justify another playthrough.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/persona-5-royal-review-both-better-and-worse-than-the-original-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=persona-5-royal-review-both-better-and-worse-than-the-original-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net