Persona 5 is a pretty good game with a HUGE Ann Takamaki Problem

[Solid Snake]

SPOILER WARNING:

There are minor character-specific spoilers covering the first fifteen hours or so of Persona 5 in this thread, basically covering aspects of the story from the beginning of the game to approximately June 1st. None of these spoilers encompass the more major facets of the overarching plot, it's just about certain social links and how one character in particular is treated by her so-called 'friends'.
IF you decide to include spoilers in your arguments that goes beyond early June in Persona 5, please use spoiler tags because I'm not there yet. I will read your arguments eventually, once I get to the part of the game you're in, so long as you precede your Spoiler tag with the month of the game the events you reference take place in. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. Thanks!

I've envisioned posting a "NieR Automata is the Game of the Generation" thread here on NPF for weeks now, and hopefully I'll still get around to creating that thread some day, but right now I'm more in the mood to critique awful writing in videogames than to worship the sacred ground our blessed hero Yoko Taro stands upon.

...And, fortunately, released as if on cue to give me something new to complain about: Atlus' latest Persona title!

You all remember how atrocious the last entry in the series (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1204443&postcount=310) could be, right? Well, boy oh boy, Persona's esteemed writers of some of the most cringeworthy scenes I've ever witnessed in a game are back at it again, and this time they're ready to prove if anything they've somehow managed to regress over the past half-decade, like a lizard heading back to the sea and devolving into a fish.

This is unfortunate, because Persona 5 is nothing if not exceedingly well polished. Let me get some of this objective, unbiased commentary on the game's strengths and weaknesses out of the way first, so none of you claim I'm some deranged social justice advocate out for Atlus' blood. (Let me be abundantly clear, though; reasonably decent human beings should be infuriated with more than a few of Atlus' story decisions here.)

From a pure gameplay perspective, this is undeniably the best variation of the Persona formula yet, with subtle innovations that generously manage to lessen the tedium of grinding and that enable players to employ more even more strategic thinking to take down opponents that always feel 'just right' in terms of the challenge they present. They've introduced a funky new negotiating system where you can barter for new personas, and that's neat.

Even more impressively, from a pure aesthetics perspective the game is gorgeous. I've never found myself more transfixed by scene transitions and menu screens. Character designs are quite exquisite and they've added all kinds of intricate animations to the character models that bring story scenes to life in ways previous Persona titles could never pull off. The music is kind of hit-or-miss; the soundtrack hasn't hit me quite as hard with feels as Persona 4's did, but a few tracks in particular are worth listening to on repeat.

The voice acting is...weird. Whereas Personas 3 and 4 employed casts of VAs who felt a bit newer to the scene, Persona 5 reuses a lot of the same VAs from so many other significant roles in JRPGs I've played lately, even from earlier Persona titles. The aftereffect of this on me has been an inability to really bond as thoroughly with Persona 5's cast because...instead of viewing them as their own unique and independent characters I'm viewing these characters as their VAs' previous roles. Your uncle is played by the excellent VA who voiced Papa Nier in NieR (http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Jamieson-Price/), while Yukari (from P3) and Yukiko (from P4) both voice new love interests in Persona 5 with Yukari and Yukiko's voices, which is awkward. If you're like me and you've played the Trails of Cold Steel series of Persona-like JRPGs, be prepared to listen to Rean, Sara, Claire, and others play different roles this time around. And if you've played the infinitely superior NieR Automata lately, which I so very strongly recommend, A2's voice is Makoto's voice here and 6O's voice is Morgana's.

Anyway, that's enough of the pseudo-review. Let's talk about how Persona 5 infuriates me.

I have to shorten this to a specific subset of things that Persona 5 that irritate me or I'd rant and rave about it forever. So I've chosen to focus my critique on the single specific character of Ann Takamaki because I'm less than a third of the way into this atrocity of a storyline and the story's already gone out of its way to utterly ruin her with some of the most profoundly idiotic bullshit I've seen in a game like this. I feel so bad for her. I want you all to feel bad for her, too.

But before I talk about Ann, it's worth covering a few of the basics of What's Wrong with Persona 5:

- The main character can 'steal hearts', which apparently gives him the superpower to enter into relationships with up to nine women at once, including -- somehow -- adults such as a teacher, a doctor, and a journalist, all of whom are well beyond college-aged. The narrative makes it clear that this isn't some consensual polyamorous pseudo-orgy or a covenant among the ladies to share and split the Protagonist's time; the game just encourages you to make the Protag a conniving, cheating bastard with little in the way of consequences.

- Somehow that's all true but you still can't romance any of the guys, swap the Protagonist's gender or face any genuine, decently written repercussions for your actions in which the women express any independent agency or have any of their own say in your relationships. The women are treated like objects; once you reach Max Level with them as Confidants you can completely ignore them for months and there's no consequence beyond a few texts they'll send begging to see your face again. Realistic romance, everyone!!

- The main character himself is punished for the grave crime of...saving a woman from a man who was attacking her, and then being sued by the guy? I don't know, maybe this gets clarified a bit deeper into the game, but I'm fifteen hours in and even most the women in this game have ostracized the guy not for being a womanizing jackass (more on that later; he somehow comes across as worse than Yu Narukami in many of the 'comedic' scenes where misogyny runs rampant) but rather for that one time in his past where he actually did the right thing and protected a woman under circumstances that would be legally justifiable in America. Maybe Japan's just weird about this? But I'm uncomfortable with a game so overtly promoting the moral lesson of "Don't defend a woman who's being physically assaulted or else society will ostracize you and you'll have to move from your hometown and be treated like a criminal."

Having covered some of the basics that strike me as offensive so far, let's talk about Ann Takamaki (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Ann_Takamaki), the sole sane voice among some clinically insane fucking dipshits and Atlus' punching bag for Persona 5's first grueling fifteen hours of story shenanigans:

So, first and foremost, Atlus makes a crucial mistake here that subjects Ann Takamaki to so much more abuse than Yukari or Mitsuru in Persona 3's male protagonist route, or Chie or Yukiko in Persona 4's; for the first couple months of in-game time, she's the only woman on your team of combatants. This may seem like a subtle difference in the order of character introductions, but it has a profound impact on character interactions down the line.

In Persona 4, Chie and Yukiko were together, and they fought against misogynistic bullshit perpetrated against them together as a cohesive unit of human decency when Yosuke, Kanji, Teddie, and/or even Yu Narukami said or did stupid shitty things. Yosuke says something offensive and sexist when they're forced to wear swimsuits? The scene's still ugly and bad, but Chie and Yukiko can conspire together to mock Yosuke and get some revenge. Some random pervert creeps on Yukiko? Chie will threaten to pound the asshole to oblivion. Teddie makes an awful comment? Chie and Yukiko will gang together to make the boys feel bad or make some snarky comment about immaturity that will at least make you feel for a moment that maybe, just maybe, Atlus understands on some deeper level that Teddie is a fucking grotesque monster.

This keeps Persona 4 from falling too far into the abyss with misogyny. By contrast, Persona 5 tries a different approach: Ann is the sole girl surrounded by up to four guys before another girl joins the main cast of thieves, meaning there's no one else willing to stick up for Ann when the boys get raunchy.

Oh, and let's complicate matters with the following three tidbits of information:

- Ann's a beautiful model, and at least three of the boys introduced appear to have huge crushes on her. Ironically, the only guy who may not have feelings for Ann is the Protag, depending on how you roleplay as him, and he's the one and only guy who Ann may actually like. She clearly has no feelings for the other three and tries her damnedest to make that brazenly obvious from the get-go with all of them, with little to no success with deterring their batshit lunacy around her.

- The three guys who have crushes on her are:
1) The new Yosuke (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Ryuji_Sakamoto), the Nice Guy childhood friend who's been rejected by her in the past but who still clearly is a bit more attracted to her than he probably should be, given how frequently she attempts to remind him that they're nowhere near suitable for each other;
2) The new Teddie, (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Morgana) and boy was I disappointed to learn in spite of the name (and in spite of the excellent voice actress portraying him, (http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Cassandra-Lee-Morris/) it's 6O and Fie's VA) that he's a he and he's every bit the raunchy, perverted asshole that Teddie was, complete with the same excuse Teddie had of "I don't really understand how humans work, so it's totally okay for me to be extremely aggressive in pursuing ladies in really creepy ways!"
3) Worst of all three so far, there's the creepy painter. (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Yusuke_Kitagawa) I'll get into why Yusuke is the worst of the three momentarily, as he's really the one I want to highlight as the worst of the bunch, but for now just understand that he thinks Ann is hot and he acts like a monstrous barbarian around her to concoct a circumstance to paint her naked.

- Here's what happens to Ann in the first ten or so hours of Persona 5, and keep in mind this is just background that offers context to the particular scene later in the game that I find utterly offensive as fuck:

The first antagonist
(the initial boss with the first dungeon) (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Suguru_Kamoshida) in the game also has a huge crush on her, because everyone apparently does. Except he's a powerful and charismatic teacher who uses his privilege as a favored member of the faculty to attempt to forcibly coerce her into a sexual relationship. She initially refuses his advances, as any sane person would because Kamoshida's an awful, abusive jerk and she's an underage student.

To convince her to partake in relations Kamoshida targets her best friend, who plays for the volleyball team that he coaches. Kamoshida basically tells Ann "Sleep with me or I will ruin your best friend's life," and when Ann hesitates Kamoshida first beats up her best friend, then he sleeps with her best friend, and then her best friend attempts to commit suicide.

I do not know why Atlus felt the Persona series was an adequate forum to attempt to portray this kind of an antagonist with this kind of a sexual fixation on a student, but this is what we got.

...By the way like, none of the male characters have tragic backstories to work through with nearly as much bullshit. Ryuji's trauma which Atlus dares to compare to Ann's is that Kamoshida ruined his life by...kicking him off another sports team and ostracizing him from his former team members. Kind of tame compared to attempted sexual assault, actually sexually assaulting your friend because you refused to comply, and then your friend attempting suicide and ending up in a coma, don't you think?

Oh, and did I mention that at one point Ann is confronted with a fantasy version of herself -- concocted from Kamoshida's imagination -- who's dressed in a scantily clad bikini and who kisses and gropes Kamoshida right in front of her? Because I feel like that's an additional really disturbing thing to note that actually happens.

I don't know why Atlus seeks to burden Ann with all this awful atrocious baggage, but boy is she a trooper for putting up with it and actually still functioning as a full-fledged member of the band of merry thieves. To Atlus' meager credit, Ann does get some nice revenge against Kamoshida, and she does act with some appropriate agency in her final confrontation with him -- Atlus actually made the wise decision to ensure that the boys gave her the final say as to whether to spare or kill him, and throughout that sequence she's genuinely badass in bringing her attempted rapist to justice. She's a cool character! She's one of my favorite characters in teh cast so far.

But here's a tip for Atlus: If you're going to write a character as the very serious victim of attempted rape and assault, and subject her to guilt over her BEST FRIEND suffering the fate her abuser originally intended for her specifically because she refused to comply with his demands, AND you're going to burden her with some serious trauma over all that, MAYBE DON'T FUCKING WRITE A SUPPOSEDLY COMEDIC PLAYED-FOR-LAUGHS SCENE WHERE HER SO-CALLED 'FRIENDS' ON HER SO-CALLED 'TEAM' COERCE HER INTO AGREEING TO POSE NUDE FOR A PERVERT you fucking Neanderthals

Okay, so, finally, FINALLY, we get to the scene I want to talk about. Sorry! It was just really important to burden you with all that context so you'd understand why this scene UTTERLY ENRAGES ME WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING

Okay so, now the Phantom Thieves are gunning after a new baddie; he's an elderly artist who's secretly a lazy bum profiting off the work of his pupils by selling their work as his own. (He represents Sloth; Ann's wannabe rapist represented Lust. Apparently all the baddies are represented in the abstract as deadly sins? I dunno.) The current trainee under his mentorship that the new bad guy is exploiting is Yusuke, (http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Yusuke_Kitagawa) who's an orphan that the famous artist 'adopted' and a victim of that artist's plagiarism.

The thieves, including Ann, confront Yusuke and seek answers regarding his mentor's alleged crimes. Yusuke is loyal to his mentor, so he covers up for the bad guy. He refuses to interact with the thieves any longer...except for Ann, who he insists he wants to model for him for his next painting.

So far so okay, I guess. Ann actually works as a model in her spare time, and even though she's reluctant to model for Yusuke because she wisely senses something is 'off' about the whole situation, Yusuke hasn't yet demanded she model in the nude so nothing's too crazy about the situation.

Later, Yusuke changes the terms of their deal: He now wants Ann to pose for him in the nude. He insists -- and I think it's important to note this because this actually makes this even worse in my mind given what happens later -- he insists to Ann that he's not interested in seeing her nude for any sexual reason. He's a serious painter, he alleges, he takes this kind of art seriously, it's just a job to him, and he just wants to translate her beauty to a canvas for purely artistic reasons. I mean, I know plenty of artists who draw nude portraits and it really is just about the art and not at all sexual to them and he's about Ann's age so maybe, just maybe, we can trust his word, right?

...Nope!

Fortunately, Ann's too smart to actually end up in a situation where she completely undresses in front of this pervert. But the entire scene is played for laughs, and she's less than a month out of a situation where she's recovering as a victim of sexual misconduct and attempted assault. She's healing after all the bullshit Kamoshida's put her and her best friend -- STILL in a coma -- though and now she gets to play the comic relief in a scene that frequently teases the (presumably male, presumably heterosexual) audience with the possibility of her gettin' nekkid.

So, first things first: Before she shows up to be Yusuke's model, you and Ryuji and Morgana have to fucking convince her against her wishes to do this. You see, there's no other option. (There are actually other options, the boys just suddenly have no imagination to conceive of any other possibility.) After Morgana drools over the thought of Ann stripping and after Ryuji barely contains his own jealousy over the whole situation you as the Protagonist have the option to text her a message that reads,
and I FUCKING QUOTE:"Strip for him, Ann."

(Unlike Yu Narukami at Inaba's disgusting pageant, it's worth noting you don't even have a Decent Human Being option to choose from as the Protagonist here. You can demand Ann strip for the perverted painter, you can merely remind her that she has to or your investigation hits a dead end, or you can wish her luck and remind her to 'Be Careful.' That's it.)

Now, Ann's a model, but she isn't anything like Rise Kujikawa was in Persona 4. Rise's characterization at least enabled her to just come across as extremely sex-positive and more than willing to indulge men's masturbatory fantasies because she didn't mind that kind of attention for...whatever reason Persona 4 concocted to justify her acting that way. Ann, by contrast, vehemently opposes the plan and shouts that it's inherently and fundamentally wrong to request this of her in a way that painfully reminded me of everything she just went through three goddamn weeks ago in the game. This is not something she wants to do. That should be enough on its own. Nope! She still ends up being convinced that this is a sacrifice she must make for the good of the team.

Okay, so: She shows up in Yusuke's room, alone, and the first comic joke that Atlus really wants you to laugh with them is...she decides to wear like, twenty layers of clothing so she'll delay the inevitable nudity by slowly removing each layer of fabric (while Morgana hopefully unlocks a door they need to unlock, that is the extent of their plan.) HAHAHAHA, you get it guys, Yusuke is naively dismayed and verbally moans and groans because he thinks Ann has 'gained weight' in the whopping twenty-four hours since they last saw each other. Ann appears to be fat, har dee fuckin' har, it's seventh grade humor all the fucking over again.

So the camera POV obscures Ann from the audience's view and focuses on a closeup of Yusuke and his artsy canvas as she begins to 'strip.' Pieces of Ann's clothing begin to appear on the screen as she tosses them his way as she's removing them. Ann instructs Yusuke to look away but as she begins to remove her clothes, Yusuke catches glimpses of her clothing near his feet and...he begins to stutter and slur his words and blush and act all predictably clumsy and betray the fact that he's actually a pervert who just wanted an excuse to see an attractive woman nekkid. As someone who desperately wanted to believe that Yusuke was telling Ann the truth when he insisted upon his honor that he only wanted to draw her for some abstract artistic motivation, and that he wasn't at all motivated by sexual desire, this revelation was...well, not surprising, still annoying as all hell.

Ann picks up on Yusuke's juvenile behavior and is perturbed enough to begin begging Morgana to finish unlocking the damned door so she can make an early getaway, dammit. Of course, the gag at this point is that Morgana runs into unexpected difficulties unlocking said door, requiring poor Ann to continue to find awkward excuses to buy time.

For the (heterosexual, male) audience's amusement, at this point Ann is revealed to have stripped down to just a tanktop and the shortest of imaginable short shorts. Morgana reveals Ann needs to continue 'acting' so...
...Ann decides she's going to have to seduce Yusuke, I guess? I think the joke on Atlus' mind is having Ann utilize vague language with Yusuke that could be interpreted both ways -- the classic "Let's go inside that room for more privacy, then we can do exactly what you want" kind of purring that just strikes me as icky to the extreme. Here's a problem, though: While Ann is 'acting' this way she is simultaneously whispering sincere despondent "PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE FINISHED!" messages to Morgana, and she comes across as very, very uncomfortable with the situation she must 'act.'

Yusuke is flustered and betrays any possibility that he really was just motivated by 'fine art' by seeming perfectly willing to engage in far dirtier escapades than just painting a nude portrait with Ann until his mentor, the elderly plagarizing baddie, shows up and shit hits the fan, I guess.

Now, here's an additional problem: Yusuke is NOT an antagonist. He is actually a supposed 'good guy' who ultimately joins the Phantom Thieves and becomes a full-fledged fighting member of your team who works alongside Ann.
And, here's yet another fucking problem: After all's said and done and Yusuke apologizes TO THE WHOLE TEAM for obstructing their investigation and he joins their team, Yusuke ***DOES NOT*** apologize to Ann for the whole nude drawing fiasco. In fact, Ann angrily confronts him as the group's chilling in the diner after all's said and done, and Yusuke's response is not so much "I'm sorry" as it is, essentially, "I'll drop the nude portrait thing FOR NOW but I really hope you do reconsider heh heh heh..."

...And the guys are all okay with this, of course. All grins and giggles from those lunatics.
This is where it'd be really nice if Persona 5 were more like Persona 4, and if poor Ann had another woman in the group to help defend her, or to keep the boys honest, or to just rip them to shreds. Chie wouldn't tolerate this shit if this happened to Yukiko, y'know? But Ann is all alone, surrounded by guys who spend those moments in the diner relating with Yusuke's desire, not Ann's entirely justifiable anger at Yusuke.

...And then, like a battered victim who's just sick and tired of putting up a fight, Ann just...sort of drops it. Yusuke's a full-fledged member of the team, it isn't brought up again, Ann no longer seems pissed about it, extremely selective memory seems to apply and she just moves on. And the two become good friends, I guess. Sure. That makes sense.

This infuriates me even more than the goddamn pageant, for some reason. Unlike the comparatively happy-go-lucky cast of Persona 4, Ann has undergone some serious trauma in a MUCH darker game with darker thematic elements and in prior conversations with the Protagonist and Ryuji she makes it damn clear to them that she's struggling with post-traumatic stress after her gym coach's attempted abuse of her and her best friend's attempted suicide and subsequent coma that she BLAMES HERSELF for because it wouldn't have happened if she accepted Kamoshida's primal lust.

...It's a fucking atrocity.
It's a fucking atrocity.
Persona 5 isn't an awful game, sure, maybe, but this is an awful moment and I feel terrible for having financially encouraged it with my money.
Don't let Atlus get away with it.

EDIT: An acquaintance who's also playing Persona 5 and who read this rant before I posted it here -- and who actually disagrees with me to some extent, heh -- pointed out that Ann's best friend was only in a coma for about a week after her attempted suicide and her friend wasn't still in a coma by the time the nude modeling scene unfolds. Ann's best friend had recovered from her coma, but decided she couldn't stay in Tokyo anymore so she's transferring schools. I don't really buy his other criticisms of my points, but I did get that wrong, so I'll correct myself accordingly.

[Marc v4.0]

Hoofah. That's a lot of gross bullshit for the sake of gross bullshit and nothing more.

[Solid Snake]

Minor Persona 5 Spoilers Incoming, through 7/5 In-Game

I'm a bit more than a month of in-game time further along into Persona 5's story and things really haven't improved for Ann. Another woman's joined the Phantom Thieves and she's been treated more respectfully and like an actual human being so far; by contrast, all the boys are still drooling over Ann and interspersing the serious plot developments with creepy comments that she's just shrugging off.

Yusuke still occasionally brings up his desire to paint Ann in the nude and has moved on with a new plan to try to move in with her to increase his chances of this happening (long story there), which she repeatedly rebuffs. At one point, Ann decides she's going to take a nap during a Phantom Thieves meeting on the Protag's couch (they're all in his bedroom), and Persona 5's animators took the time to animate specific character movements showing Ryuji and Morgana attempting to 'sneak a peek', followed by Ann adjusting her clothing and her positioning on the couch so she isn't as 'exposed.' Oh, and as if all her previously established admirers weren't enough, even the Protagonist's elderly uncle has a scene with Ann where he's charmed by her and flirts with her. Oy vey.

In perhaps the weirdest and most counter-intuitive of developments, if you get far enough along in Ann's social link you'll spark a scene where she seeks Ryuji's help to train her body and become stronger (Ryuji's the athlete of the group, so it makes sense she'd seek his guidance.) Here's the counter-intuitive part; Ryuji then accuses Ann of being obsessed with her appearance and being shallow and the type who likes to showcase herself and have a certain nefarious reputation. This strikes me as projection to the extreme; all the guys, including Ryuji, find her beautiful and have been over-sexualizing her. Unless you view Ann's part-time modeling gig as inherently sinful behavior (it's at least implied that Ryuji may believe this, because Ryuji's apparently a dunce), or unless you want to join Ryuji in judging Ann on the basis of the clothing she wears (ick), Ann has literally said and done nothing to merit this impression. So basically Persona 5 has a moment where a boy accuses a girl of a slutty reputation because he finds her attractive, har dee har.

This might well work as incisive social commentary over how fucked up some high school boys can be, except Atlus plays all this so painfully straight that you're left to assume their writers practically side with Ryuji in the above debate, and similarly are rooting for the boys to sneak peeks and finally convince her to strip off her clothes for Yusuke's pervy painting.

In general, Ann's story arc should feel truly liberating -- she does, after all, get sweet vengeance against the monster of a man who tormented her and her best friend. But it feels less like a genuine victory for her and more like she's traded a greater evil for lesser ones. Kamoshida was violent, brutish, grotesque -- worse than the boys in the Phantom Thieves, to be sure -- but guys like Ryuji and Yusuke and Morgana are the epitome of the 'Nice Guy' passive-aggressive phenomenon, hellbent on a less flashy and more subtle way of repeatedly objectifying and belittling her. It's sad that you actually witness Ann slowly lose her willpower to fight this...she starts off much angrier and more confrontational, then eventually seems to decide that the guys' 'good character' somehow counteracts bad behavior. Soon she's giggling along with the rest of them at all their comedic hijinks.

And given her fierce loyalty -- and romantic interest -- in the Protagonist (you can choose whether to reciprocate or not, but if you advance her social link it's clear she has feelings for him, as it is with nearly all the women in this game who are Confidants), it's easy to summarize Ann so far as someone who Atlus has written to essentially trade blind loyalty from one male authority figure (in Kamoshida, who she initially defended and protected for her friend's sake in spite of his monstrosity) to another (in the Protag, who she appears to like so much that she'll endure all kinds of slings and arrows from the others so long as he remains in her life and she remains a Phantom Thief.) That's not at all liberating; it's just sort of sad.

[Gregness]

So, not gonna be contributing terribly much to this thread in the immediate future, as I'm going to have to wait 'till I can buy myself a PS4 'cause I don't want to spoil myself, but I gotta say it's nice to see that Walls, Walls never change.

I'll just have to necromance the thread when I get around to playing P5 for myself in a couple months. ::V:

[Arcanum]

Just going to start my post off by saying I'm at the beginning of August in-game, so anyone who cares has an idea of where I'm at in the game (which I'm guessing is roughly halfway).

I have also never played any previous Persona games so any references to those will be met with a blank stare on my part because I know nothing about them.

- The main character can 'steal hearts', which apparently gives him the superpower to enter into relationships with up to nine women at once, including -- somehow -- adults such as a teacher, a doctor, and a journalist, all of whom are well beyond college-aged. The narrative makes it clear that this isn't some consensual polyamorous pseudo-orgy or a covenant among the ladies to share and split the Protagonist's time; the game just encourages you to make the Protag a conniving, cheating bastard with little in the way of consequences.

I haven't gotten far enough in the confidant ranks to actually date anyone (well there was a "date" with one character of appropriate age, but it wasn't an actual date), so I can't comment to much on this, but I have heard you can date multiple people at once. What i will say is that after getting multiple female characters up to ranks 5-7, the game has never once encouraged me to be a "conniving, cheating bastard."

Although I will say I've only ranked up one of the older women (and only to rank 5), as the other confidant bonuses didn't appeal to me so I've spent my time doing other things.

- The main character himself is punished for the grave crime of...saving a woman from a man who was attacking her, and then being sued by the guy? I don't know, maybe this gets clarified a bit deeper into the game, but I'm fifteen hours in and even most the women in this game have ostracized the guy not for being a womanizing jackass (more on that later; he somehow comes across as worse than Yu Narukami in many of the 'comedic' scenes where misogyny runs rampant) but rather for that one time in his past where he actually did the right thing and protected a woman under circumstances that would be legally justifiable in America. Maybe Japan's just weird about this? But I'm uncomfortable with a game so overtly promoting the moral lesson of "Don't defend a woman who's being physically assaulted or else society will ostracize you and you'll have to move from your hometown and be treated like a criminal."

You're missing the point here. It was clearly implied the guy was a high level government official abusing his power. There's also some other implications that you should be getting to soon.

There's also the fact that all anyone knows is that you were arrested for assault (because said official tampered with shit). Nobody except the protagonist, the official, and the woman knows what really happened that night, and in this case nobody is believing the protagonist's version of the story.

- Ann's a beautiful model, and at least three of the boys introduced appear to have huge crushes on her. Ironically, the only guy who may not have feelings for Ann is the Protag, depending on how you roleplay as him, and he's the one and only guy who Ann may actually like. She clearly has no feelings for the other three and tries her damnedest to make that brazenly obvious from the get-go with all of them, with little to no success with deterring their batshit lunacy around her.

- The three guys who have crushes on her are:
1) The new Yosuke, the Nice Guy childhood friend who's been rejected by her in the past but who still clearly is a bit more attracted to her than he probably should be, given how frequently she attempts to remind him that they're nowhere near suitable for each other;

Except it was never mentioned that Ruji made advances on Ann in middle school, so he was never rejected by her in the past (at least not in main story or in any of the confidant scenes I've seen, if I'm wrong please let me know). And they were never really childhood friends, they just went to the same middle school. As for Ryuji's persistence, it actually reminded me of someone I knew in high school who would make similar brazen jokey comments, just hoping that his persistence would pay off. Is that model behavior? No of course not, but Ryuji isn't a model character. He's brash, and a bit of a delinquent, but still a good guy when it matters. I find him to be a realistic high schooler, and I fail to see how that's something to criticize in a game about high school kids.

2) The new Teddie, and boy was I disappointed to learn in spite of the name (and in spite of the excellent voice actress portraying him, it's 6O and Fie's VA) that he's a he and he's every bit the raunchy, perverted asshole that Teddie was, complete with the same excuse Teddie had of "I don't really understand how humans work, so it's totally okay for me to be extremely aggressive in pursuing ladies in really creepy ways!"

Yeah I was also a bit thrown off when I found out Morgana was a boy. But still, "raunchy" and "perverted asshole" are not words I would use to describe Morgana. The way he acts is definitely cringe-worthy in regards to Ann, but it made me think of a younger kid trying desperately to show he is mature enough for the older woman he instantly developed a crush on. So while I'm not a huge fan of the personality, I can understand it, and I feel like you're taking it to the extreme. And honestly Morgana has grown on me quite a bit since the start of the game.

3) Worst of all three so far, there's the creepy painter. I'll get into why Yusuke is the worst of the three momentarily, as he's really the one I want to highlight as the worst of the bunch, but for now just understand that he thinks Ann is hot and he acts like a monstrous barbarian around her to concoct a circumstance to paint her naked.


Okay you could not be more wrong here. Specifically this:

concoct a circumstance to paint her naked.

Yusuke has no ulterior motives, he's not some big creepazoid that you seem to think he is. He is obsessed with painting, not Ann. He doesn't want to see her nude, he wants to paint her. Well okay, he also wants to see her nude because he's a high school kid and who wouldn't say no to seeing a naked woman in front of you at that age, but ultimately he wants to paint (but more on that later).

To convince her to partake in relations Kamoshida targets her best friend, who plays for the volleyball team that he coaches. Kamoshida basically tells Ann "Sleep with me or I will ruin your best friend's life," and when Ann hesitates Kamoshida first beats up her best friend, then he sleeps with her best friend, and then her best friend attempts to commit suicide.

Yeah that part I bolded was never implied. At least I never got that implication from any of the dialogue. Like at best he was going to try to force herself on her, but she attempted suicide before that happened.

...By the way like, none of the male characters have tragic backstories to work through with nearly as much bullshit. Ryuji's trauma which Atlus dares to compare to Ann's is that Kamoshida ruined his life by...kicking him off another sports team and ostracizing him from his former team members. Kind of tame compared to attempted sexual assault, actually sexually assaulting your friend because you refused to comply, and then your friend attempting suicide and ending up in a coma, don't you think?

Uhhh the game never implies they have the same severity. It tells you they are both bad things, and to each individual they are really bad things, but it never really compares them directly.

Oh, and did I mention that at one point Ann is confronted with a fantasy version of herself -- concocted from Kamoshida's imagination -- who's dressed in a scantily clad bikini and who kisses and gropes Kamoshida right in front of her? Because I feel like that's an additional really disturbing thing to note that actually happens.

Is this really a criticism? Like it's supposed to be disturbing. You're supposed to feel gross seeing that. That's the point. I think they did a good job of portraying how much of a scum bag Kamoshida is.

big ol' wall of text about Yusuke

Okay before I pick apart specific parts of what you wrote that I disagree with, I just want to say that this is a story about high school kids. Because I feel like that is an important part of the story and ultimately a lot of the actions in the story are pretty damn accurate for people of that age (at least in my personal experience from when I was that age). And it seems like you're getting hung up on Atlas sending perfect moral messages at all times instead of acknowledging their accurate portrayal of high school kids. So with that said, let's get into it.

stuff about pressuring Ann to strip

Personally, I interpreted the plan as Ann (and the guys) never intending Ann to actually strip. Ryuji's persistence, and even the option give to the you to say "strip for him Ann" are them being high school kids and teasing their friend. Is it in poor taste given what happened so recently? Yes, and I wish Atlas had addressed that. But ultimately these aren't the actions of lecherous perverts, these are the actions of high school kids who have been through a lot of shit and are blowing off steam.

the stuff that happens in Yusuke's room

I'm sticking with what I said earlier that Yusuke's sole motivation is to paint. He goes on at length about how the Sayuri painting inspired him, and how he wants to create something just as inspiring. That is his goal in asking Ann to model for him. His flustered reactions to Ann's clothing aren't revealing that he has perverted ulterior motives, it's revealing that despite his haughty art-focused attitude he's still a high school kid, and that he wasn't prepared for what he was getting himself into.

Yeah the lame humor overstays its welcome in this scene (and in the hallway with Morgana), so that's a fair criticism, but the awkward urgency in the scene isn't so Ann can escape, it's so Madarame can see the door unlocked and that people are inside it. Without doing so, his cognition won't change, and they can't make progress in his palace.

Also Ann's "revealing" outfit in this scene is actually her casual summer clothes, so take that how you will.

Yusuke is flustered and betrays any possibility that he really was just motivated by 'fine art' by seeming perfectly willing to engage in far dirtier escapades than just painting a nude portrait with Ann until his mentor, the elderly plagarizing baddie, shows up and shit hits the fan, I guess.

Again you're missing the point. Yusuke is flustered because 1) he's a high school kid with no experience with women, 2) Ann keeps pressuring him to essentially betray his mentor and guardian and father figure, the man who looked after him and cared for him since he was 3 years old. Like honestly, put yourself in Yusuke's shoes. You invite a beautiful woman over to model for you, then the realization hits that oh shit you actually are going to see her in the nude, the only nudity you've seen before was art. And then on top of that she runs off in the direction of a forbidden room you never went into in 15 years, and starts making vague suggestions. Are you telling me you wouldn't be flustered in that situation?

And, here's yet another fucking problem: After all's said and done and Yusuke apologizes TO THE WHOLE TEAM for obstructing their investigation and he joins their team, Yusuke ***DOES NOT*** apologize to Ann for the whole nude drawing fiasco. In fact, Ann angrily confronts him as the group's chilling in the diner after all's said and done, and Yusuke's response is not so much "I'm sorry" as it is, essentially, "I'll drop the nude portrait thing FOR NOW but I really hope you do reconsider heh heh heh..."

Because in Yusuke's mind it wasn't a big fiasco. He still wants to create his perfect piece of art. But I'm just parroting myself at this point so I'll leave it at that.

And now onto your follow up post you had spoiler tags on, so EVEN MORE SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE READING THIS FAR BUT REALLY WE'VE BEEN SPOILING STUFF SO FAR SO NO EXCUSES.

Yusuke still occasionally brings up his desire to paint Ann in the nude and has moved on with a new plan to try to move in with her to increase his chances of this happening (long story there), which she repeatedly rebuffs. At one point, Ann decides she's going to take a nap during a Phantom Thieves meeting on the Protag's couch (they're all in his bedroom), and Persona 5's animators took the time to animate specific character movements showing Ryuji and Morgana attempting to 'sneak a peek', followed by Ann adjusting her clothing and her positioning on the couch so she isn't as 'exposed.'

Just voicing my agreement that I'm not a fan of that couch scene. It was definitely done for laughs and didn't add much, and while yeah it might be an accurate representation of high schoolers I feel like that one crossed the line since it served no real purpose.

Oh, and as if all her previously established admirers weren't enough, even the Protagonist's elderly uncle has a scene with Ann where he's charmed by her and flirts with her. Oy vey.

What? WHAT? Are we playing the same game here? Because Papa Nier Sojiro did not flirt with Ann. He remarks on her being a charming young girl because he thinks you're dating her (or will be soon) since she's the first girl you brought home. Alternatively, he's happy that this nice girl is in your life because she seems like a good influence on you (because Sojiro still thinks you're a criminal who committed assault)

And given her fierce loyalty -- and romantic interest -- in the Protagonist (you can choose whether to reciprocate or not, but if you advance her social link it's clear she has feelings for him, as it is with nearly all the women in this game who are Confidants), it's easy to summarize Ann so far as someone who Atlus has written to essentially trade blind loyalty from one male authority figure (in Kamoshida, who she initially defended and protected for her friend's sake in spite of his monstrosity) to another (in the Protag, who she appears to like so much that she'll endure all kinds of slings and arrows from the others so long as he remains in her life and she remains a Phantom Thief.) That's not at all liberating; it's just sort of sad.

And yeah just reiterating that I can't really comment on this as I've only gotten Ann's confidant up to rank 6 I think.

[Marc v4.0]

That's a lot of tapdancing and twirling to dodge around gross shit actually being really, completely gross.

[Arcanum]

That's a lot of tapdancing and twirling to dodge around gross shit actually being really, completely gross.

What am I tapdancing around? I'm stating the character's motivations as I've perceived them, and pointing out where I feel Snake misinterpreted the game.

Like at least put a bit more effort into a response other than "I think Snake's post is better so your post has no validity" especially since it seems you haven't actually played the game.

[Solid Snake]

Just going to start my post off by saying I'm at the beginning of August in-game, so anyone who cares has an idea of where I'm at in the game (which I'm guessing is roughly halfway).

I'm still in mid-July, though it's clear there's some divergence in our experiences so far because of social links we've prioritized and whatnot: In the early game when Ann, Ryuji and Yusuke are your only party Confidant choices I basically chose to exclusively hang out with just Ann because the guys were comparatively boring and/or infuriating. So I'm further than you are with Ann's scenes (though based on what you've typed about her I'd suspect you and I will disagree on interpretations of a couple scenes you haven't seen yet.) At any rate, I will avoid unnecessary commentary here on scenes you haven't seen and limit main plot discussion to stuff you and I have both already seen.

I haven't gotten far enough in the confidant ranks to actually date anyone (well there was a "date" with one character of appropriate age, but it wasn't an actual date), so I can't comment to much on this, but I have heard you can date multiple people at once. What i will say is that after getting multiple female characters up to ranks 5-7, the game has never once encouraged me to be a "conniving, cheating bastard."

This is something that I actually honestly haven't experienced either -- I think I just now entered into a relationship with Ann and only because I'm going to treat this as my "Let's just see all the romantic content for everyone so I can critique it" playthrough. It's actually something that I consider 'not a spoiler' because of experience with past Persona titles, so I'll spoiler-text this from here as you're unfamiliar with past titles in the series.

Like Persona 3 and Persona 4, at a certain point in Persona 5 you're given the option to pursue a relationship -- not just go out on dates but explicitly make a commitment -- with multiple women with no in-game repercussions (aside from a Valentine's Day scene at the end of the game like Persona 4 Golden's that designed to make you feel bad.) I haven't gotten far enough to know this myself but I inquired about it because I was willing to spoil my own experience and I wanted to know whether Atlus changed things up with actual consequences for cheating this time around. According to people who are much further than me due to playing the Japanese version of Persona 5 after its release, Persona 5 suffers from the same baggage here that Persona 4 did.

Oh and, massive spoilers because I spoiled myself on this one:
This time around in Persona 5, at least three of your romance options are with older women who are at least in their twenties. There's excuses to rationalize or justify this -- your teacher / maid, for example, in her final scene if you pursue the romance route with her is like "We have to wait to make things official until after you're done with school ", but it still strikes me as the epitome of inappropriate wish fulfillment fantasy for heterosexual males who dreamed of such relationships in high school.

You're missing the point here. It was clearly implied the guy was a high level government official abusing his power.

Yeah, I didn't see the additional contextual scene that reframed this narrative until after my first post. I [B]still think it's bizarre that the Protagonist doesn't bother sharing the truth with someone like Sojiro, and the other Phantom Thieves are the only one he confesses the truth to, and he's just sort of comfortable being ostracized by everyone else for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, the high-ranking government official getting away with things legally makes sense, but the notion that said officials are corrupt and can use their wealth and power to screw over folks isn't exactly mind-boggling for most regular ordinary folks in the US and Japan.

I dunno, I guess "nobody believing the protagonist's version of the story" strikes me as a bit far-fetched and implemented in this case just to ramp up some dramatic tension, even the most charismatic and likable politician or celebrity in the US wouldn't have that kind of that power to smear you irredeemably in the realm of popular opinion. And physical assault of another older man isn't exactly the kind of crime that leads to that degree of ostracizing among youths in America. The way the other kids at school react to the rumors about you -- some seem to be in abject terror with your presence -- you'd assume you were accused of killing folks.

Except it was never mentioned that Ruji made advances on Ann in middle school, so he was never rejected by her in the past (at least not in main story or in any of the confidant scenes I've seen, if I'm wrong please let me know).

If I stated or implied that Ryuji made advances on Ann in middle school, I misspoke. I intended to state that Ryuji liked Ann in middle school, though I do think there's a clear dynamic between the two (based on Ann constantly reiterating reasons to Ryuji why she finds them incompatible, and based on Ryuji 'joking' as you describe it and acting skeevy and pervy in moments around her) where Ryuji's clearly liked Ann since they met and Ann's clearly tried to dissuade him from pursuing her.

It's kind of vague as to how well the two knew each other back then, but Ryuji and Ann certainly weren't strangers and had spoken to each other and related on some level as acquaintances.

As for Ryuji's persistence, it actually reminded me of someone I knew in high school who would make similar brazen jokey comments, just hoping that his persistence would pay off. Is that model behavior? No of course not, but Ryuji isn't a model character. He's brash, and a bit of a delinquent, but still a good guy when it matters. I find him to be a realistic high schooler, and I fail to see how that's something to criticize in a game about high school kids.

"He's [X trait, Y quality], and a bit of a pervert, but he's a good person at heart" is basically how Atlus writes all its boy characters in every Persona game, and that's a huge source of criticism from me because it's tiring to see Atlus attempt to excuse all kinds of inexcusable behavior from boys as just 'high school boys being high school boys.'

I also don't think most high school boys actually act this way, because most of them have a basic degree of tact and etiquette to function decently in society. You can argue that Atlus plays up and melodramatizes a lot of this for the sake of 'grins and giggles' among its heterosexual male devotees, but I'd retort that's part of the problem, that Atlus is treating objectifying women in extravagant ways as a joke for its target audience because it's supposedly funny to watch guys openly treat women like sexual objects.

Yeah I was also a bit thrown off when I found out Morgana was a boy. But still, "raunchy" and "perverted asshole" are not words I would use to describe Morgana. The way he acts is definitely cringe-worthy in regards to Ann, but it made me think of a younger kid trying desperately to show he is mature enough for the older woman he instantly developed a crush on. So while I'm not a huge fan of the personality, I can understand it, and I feel like you're taking it to the extreme. And honestly Morgana has grown on me quite a bit since the start of the game.

I actually partially agree with you here, insofar as I do like Morgana a bit more than Teddie. If you ever play Persona 4, prepare yourself; Teddie is an infinitely worse version of Morgana with the same childlike boyish desire for women taken to an even greater extreme. I do think that's hardened my impression of Morgana off the bat, because I honestly assumed he was a girl (because of the voice actor and the name, Atlus seems to be intentionally deceiving us here) and was disappointed to learn he was actually Teddie 2.0, complete with Teddie's cringeworthy debacles dealing with raw, primal lust for every girl he interacts here.

Yusuke has no ulterior motives, he's not some big creepazoid that you seem to think he is.

...Ah. Here's where we're really going to disagree.
We did watch the same awful and odious attempt of a 'comedic' scene at Madarame's place, right? It feels like you're about to describe a very different scene than the one I experienced.

He is obsessed with painting, not Ann. He doesn't want to see her nude, he wants to paint her. Well okay, he also wants to see her nude because he's a high school kid and who wouldn't say no to seeing a naked woman in front of you at that age, but ultimately he wants to paint (but more on that later)

No, no, no. I disagree.
If Yusuke were just motivated and passionate about painting he'd be just as interested in drawing Ann clothed, or any other character, with any other expression, or he'd talk about other possibilities of things to draw even if nude painting fascinated him.

Instead he zeroes in with otherworldly focus on the possibility of drawing Ann and obsesses over drawing her -- specifically her -- nude for months, to the point where he's interjecting it in conversations that have nothing to do with Ann or painting and he's actually trying to plot his way into living in her home as that would presumably facilitate this painting.

If Yusuke were just interested in painting -- even just interested in painting Ann because of some quality she evoked that he wanted to capture in his art -- when Ann angrily and vehemently effectively kept saying "Fuck off Yusuke, you're not drawing me nude that makes me fucking uncomfortable" (I know she doesn't actually curse, but the cursing is essentially implied) Yusuke would back down.

He doesn't back down, because to Atlus the joke is that Yusuke is a horny boy who's looking for an excuse to see a beautiful woman nude. This joke is reinforced by Yusuke's reaction once Ann removes layers of clothing -- if he really had no sexual interest in her (as he asserted in his attempt to convince her to play along with this!) he wouldn't react by blushing and stammering and acting like a horny boy as her clothes hit the floor. More importantly, if Yusuke really just wanted to draw her for the dispassionate sake of quality art he'd act like an ACTUAL ARTIST acts when painting nude models -- professionally, treating it as a job and not a chance to gawk.

Instead, Yusuke is so infatuated with Ann that when she -- for the sake of unlocking a door -- starts flirting with him he ditches the professional artist act entirely and just becomes the teenage boy who really wants to get frisky with her but would prefer not to do so in Madarame's secret private room that he's been told by his mentor is off-limits. That's the nature of Yusuke's dilemma and it's why he doesn't just immediately tell Ann off when she recommends he break into Madarame's room and disrespect his beloved mentor's privacy -- he's compelled to say No for ethical reasons related to Madarame's trust in him, but he doesn't outright say no because he's attracted to Ann and wants to see where her flirtation is going. Which betrays the true motivations that's guided this entire creepy scene all along.

Yeah that part I bolded was never implied. At least I never got that implication from any of the dialogue.

Watch the scenes again; Ann tells us point blank that real-life Kamoshida sexually abused Ann's best friend (Shiho) after Ann rejected Kamoshida's advances as a way to get back at Ann for rejecting him, and that's one of the reasons Shiho attempts to commit suicide. He physically abused her at first as he physically abused the other volleyball players in general, but he's also sexually abused many female students at the school. Shiho was not the first, but Kamoshida sexually assaulted her shortly before her suicide attempt.

I'm willing to concede a lot of my arguments here are based on interpretations, but there's no room for interpretation here on that one. It's outright stated. Kamoshida's raped girls (via statutory laws even if they consented under pressure) at the school before and, while we don't know exactly what he did with Shiho but it was sexual abuse that drove her over the edge.

Personally, I interpreted the plan as Ann (and the guys) never intending Ann to actually strip. Ryuji's persistence, and even the option give to the you to say "strip for him Ann" are them being high school kids and teasing their friend. Is it in poor taste given what happened so recently? Yes, and I wish Atlas had addressed that.

Weird that on the one hand you chastise me at times for making assumptions based on things I imply based on my perceptions of certain characters, but here you're doing the same: You're just using your assumptions to give Ryuji and the Protagonist the benefit of any doubt.

Do I really think Atlus intends Ryuji and the Protagonist to come across as immoral sleazeballs? No, and that's part of my problem with Atlus. They're treating the objectification and sexualization of high school girls as some sort of byproduct of normal high school behavior. This is how misogyny is normalized. And no, it shouldn't be normal for two guy friends to joke with each other about coercing their female friend to strip nude against her will for a creepy boy they barely know.

...Jesus Christ, it's sad I had to type that.

I'm sticking with what I said earlier that Yusuke's sole motivation is to paint. He goes on at length about how the Sayuri painting inspired him, and how he wants to create something just as inspiring.

This justification would work much better if Sayuri was nude in that painting, but she isn't nude, so why would the Sayuri painting inspire Yusuke to draw Ann nude?!?!


Also Ann's "revealing" outfit in this scene is actually her casual summer clothes, so take that how you will.

Yeah, I've learned that since, though at the time her 'revealing' outfit looks unique to the player (who's never seen it before) and it certainly leaves little to the imagination.

Ann can and should feel comfortable wearing whatever the heck she wants, and in the context of the summer scenes she's clearly comfortable wearing that outfit and that's great. But the crucial point here is in the context of that scene in the presence of that particular person (Yusuke) who she barely knows in that particular moment in time, she doesn't want to be wearing what she's wearing. Her discomfort in that moment is what concerns me, not how much clothes she is or is not wearing.

Are you telling me you wouldn't be flustered in that situation?

I'd definitely be flustered in that situation.
I'd also never ask a woman to pose nude for the sake of my 'art' as a teenage heterosexual boy who'd clearly have ulterior motives.

Keep in mind that Ann actually sees through Yusuke's ulterior motives, and has a hunch at just how flustered Yusuke will be to see her naked, and that's the entire reason she so angrily and vehemently tries to strike this idea down. At one point she basically begs Ryuji and the Protagonist to think of any other feasible alternative that would give them access to Madarame's door without any possibility of her agreeing to pose nude. That's kind of important!

Because in Yusuke's mind it wasn't a big fiasco.

I'm more concerned with how Ann feels about it than how Yusuke feels. Yusuke was never at risk of being a victim.

Just voicing my agreement that I'm not a fan of that couch scene. It was definitely done for laughs and didn't add much, and while yeah it might be an accurate representation of high schoolers I feel like that one crossed the line since it served no real purpose.

Glad we agree on one scene, at least.

What? WHAT? Are we playing the same game here? Because Papa Nier Sojiro did not flirt with Ann.

'Flirt' may be a strong word as I don't think Sojiro has any actual desire to pursue any sort of relationship with Ann, but prior events in the story clearly establish that Sojiro has a bit of a reputation with women (hell, he refuses to save the Protagonist's phone number to his cell phone because the Protagonist is not a girl) and given how nearly every other male character treats Ann in the game, it just feels like yet another moment where another guy is inappropriately ensnared by her 'charms.'

Again, this doesn't automatically make Sojiro a pervert as a character, but I think it's important to look at this from the broader perspective of: What kinds of messages are Atlus' writers intending to send with Ann's character and how literally apparently all the men in her life treat her? Even Sojiro objectifies and reduces Ann a bit here -- instead of viewing her as her own person, she's primarily viewed as someone who's mere existence (because of her beauty and Sojiro's own desires for attractive women in his life, even in a nonsexual capacity he clearly values and admires them as one might admire gold or other desired material possessions) validates the Protagonist's decisions and life choices. In other words, to Sojiro Ann isn't her own person, she's an attractive thing who by virtue of the Protagonist 'possessing' her in his life must mean the Protagonist is doing something right.

And that's how nearly everyone seems to treat Ann, aside from maybe the Protagonist in Ann's Confidant link scenes. Her physical beauty seems to dwarf any independent consideration of who she is and what she wants for herself in her life.

EDIT: Given you're further than I am, Arcanum, I'm sure you have thoughts about the scene I just saw in the Catmobile driving through the desert?

[Arcanum]

This is something that I actually honestly haven't experienced either -- I think I just now entered into a relationship with Ann and only because I'm going to treat this as my "Let's just see all the romantic content for everyone so I can critique it" playthrough. It's actually something that I consider 'not a spoiler' because of experience with past Persona titles, so I'll spoiler-text this from here as you're unfamiliar with past titles in the series.

Like Persona 3 and Persona 4, at a certain point in Persona 5 you're given the option to pursue a relationship -- not just go out on dates but explicitly make a commitment -- with multiple women with no in-game repercussions (aside from a Valentine's Day scene at the end of the game like Persona 4 Golden's that designed to make you feel bad.) I haven't gotten far enough to know this myself but I inquired about it because I was willing to spoil my own experience and I wanted to know whether Atlus changed things up with actual consequences for cheating this time around. According to people who are much further than me due to playing the Japanese version of Persona 5 after its release, Persona 5 suffers from the same baggage here that Persona 4 did.

Oh and, massive spoilers because I spoiled myself on this one:
This time around in Persona 5, at least three of your romance options are with older women who are at least in their twenties. There's excuses to rationalize or justify this -- your teacher / maid, for example, in her final scene if you pursue the romance route with her is like "We have to wait to make things official until after you're done with school [but she's totally going to wait for you]", but it still strikes me as the epitome of inappropriate wish fulfillment fantasy for heterosexual males who dreamed of such relationships in high school.

Yeah having never played previous Persona games I'm definitely seeing this stuff with a significantly different mindset from you as I'm still navigating all the social stuff with a sense of wonder and confusion.

I also knew about dating the older women, and it's a thing that bothers me too. I have no intention of pursuing those relationships for pretty much the reasons you wrote above. They just seemed so weird and out of place.

Yeah, I didn't see the additional contextual scene that reframed this narrative until after my first post. I still think it's bizarre that the Protagonist doesn't bother sharing the truth with someone like Sojiro, and the other Phantom Thieves are the only one he confesses the truth to, and he's just sort of comfortable being ostracized by everyone else for a crime he didn't commit. Sure, the high-ranking government official getting away with things legally makes sense, but the notion that said officials are corrupt and can use their wealth and power to screw over folks isn't exactly mind-boggling for most regular ordinary folks in the US and Japan.

I dunno, I guess "nobody believing the protagonist's version of the story" strikes me as a bit far-fetched and implemented in this case just to ramp up some dramatic tension, even the most charismatic and likable politician or celebrity in the US wouldn't have that kind of that power to smear you irredeemably in the realm of popular opinion. And physical assault of another older man isn't exactly the kind of crime that leads to that degree of ostracizing among youths in America. The way the other kids at school react to the rumors about you -- some seem to be in abject terror with your presence -- you'd assume you were accused of killing folks.

They're definitely exaggerating these aspects for the sake of the story, and I agree it's one of the weaker points of the game's introduction. There are some things that I wish they explained or implied sooner that makes the whole situation slightly more believable. I won't elaborate more than that for fear of spoilers but I think overall we're mostly on the same page here.

If I stated or implied that Ryuji made advances on Ann in middle school, I misspoke. I intended to state that Ryuji liked Ann in middle school, though I do think there's a clear dynamic between the two (based on Ann constantly reiterating reasons to Ryuji why she finds them incompatible, and based on Ryuji 'joking' as you describe it and acting skeevy and pervy in moments around her) where Ryuji's clearly liked Ann since they met and Ann's clearly tried to dissuade him from pursuing her.

Having played more of the game there's some... inconsistencies (I guess? trying to think of the right way to phrase this) in their interactions/relationship. I dunno, it's not every scene, but some of them just feel off in some way. I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what it is, so I know this isn't adding much to the discussion, I just didn't want to ignore this point as I mulled stuff over in my head. Hopefully later on I can make another post once I have my thoughts straightened out.

"He's [X trait, Y quality], and a bit of a pervert, but he's a good person at heart" is basically how Atlus writes all its boy characters in every Persona game, and that's a huge source of criticism from me because it's tiring to see Atlus attempt to excuse all kinds of inexcusable behavior from boys as just 'high school boys being high school boys.'

Okay yeah if it's a Persona staple then I can understand your dislike for it. Being new to Persona (and being someone who usually doesn't look too deep into writing in games, some times to my own detriment) Ryuji is still a solid bro character in my eyes. And actually he's the first confidant I maxed out (which happened shortly before me writing this post).

I also don't think most high school boys actually act this way, because most of them have a basic degree of tact and etiquette to function decently in society. You can argue that Atlus plays up and melodramatizes a lot of this for the sake of 'grins and giggles' among its heterosexual male devotees, but I'd retort that's part of the problem, that Atlus is treating objectifying women in extravagant ways as a joke for its target audience because it's supposedly funny to watch guys openly treat women like sexual objects.

I didn't mean to imply that all high schoolers act that way, just that some do and in my own experience Ryuji reminded me of one person I used to know. But again this seems like a clash between you seeing this song and dance multiple times before, and me getting this nostalgic blast on my first trip through that's helping me overlook many of the flaws.

stuff about Yusuke

So I forgot to mention in my previous post that after Yusuke joined the team I never ranked up his confidant for a significant amount of time (I actually only recently ranked him up once after clearing the fourth palace just so he could have Baton Pass in case I needed to swap him in).

Like ignoring the argument of him being a creep or not, I wasn't a fan of his personality or his moves (I already had some ice casting Personas, and Ryuji's got me covered for physical damage).

I say this to point out that I had mostly been avoiding him and brushing him off (haha painting pun oh god sorry it wasn't intended) as just a weirdo.

Well, he's definitely a weirdo, but having played more he's probably more perverted than I initially gave him credit for.

I think I just wanted to believe that he wasn't a pervy creep during the whole studio scene and chose to perceive that scene in a more favorable light than it deserves.

But since then he has made some more comments that made me stop and think "ok this is looking more and more like Snake is right."

There's actually a dialogue option at one point after the fourth palace to tell him to stop being a pervert.

So yeah, I'd like to rewrite what I wrote in regards to the studio scene but I feel I wouldn't make a decent argument without re-watching the whole thing again and ehhh that's too much work when I could just play more Persona, so I'll just say your points in this regard are more valid than mine.

Watch the scenes again; Ann tells us point blank that real-life Kamoshida sexually abused Ann's best friend (Shiho) after Ann rejected Kamoshida's advances as a way to get back at Ann for rejecting him, and that's one of the reasons Shiho attempts to commit suicide. He physically abused her at first as he physically abused the other volleyball players in general, but he's also sexually abused many female students at the school. Shiho was not the first, but Kamoshida sexually assaulted her shortly before her suicide attempt.

I'm willing to concede a lot of my arguments here are based on interpretations, but there's no room for interpretation here on that one. It's outright stated. Kamoshida's raped girls (via statutory laws even if they consented under pressure) at the school before and, while we don't know exactly what he did with Shiho but it was sexual abuse that drove her over the edge.


So you doubling down on this has cast doubts in my mind on how I'm remembering the scene, and I will definitely have to rewatch it at some point.

Again, this doesn't automatically make Sojiro a pervert as a character, but I think it's important to look at this from the broader perspective of: What kinds of messages are Atlus' writers intending to send with Ann's character and how literally apparently all the men in her life treat her? Even Sojiro objectifies and reduces Ann a bit here -- instead of viewing her as her own person, she's primarily viewed as someone who's mere existence (because of her beauty and Sojiro's own desires for attractive women in his life, even in a nonsexual capacity he clearly values and admires them as one might admire gold or other desired material possessions) validates the Protagonist's decisions and life choices. In other words, to Sojiro Ann isn't her own person, she's an attractive thing who by virtue of the Protagonist 'possessing' her in his life must mean the Protagonist is doing something right.

Sojiro is definitely an odd subject, and I feel he just suffers from poorly paced / inconsistent character development. Like yeah they set him up to be this womanizer I guess to mess with your expectations when they reveal more about his character later on? But it's just like... why? Knowing what I know now where I'm at in the game (which is months after the scene with Ann), that scene has a completely different meaning. Which is kind of neat, but I feel it would've been better if the scene was better on its own merits and not solely in hindsight. I dunno, I'm having trouble articulating my thoughts again so I hope you can understand what I mean with my ramblings.

EDIT: Given you're further than I am, Arcanum, I'm sure you have thoughts about the scene I just saw in the Catmobile driving through the desert?

Oh boy. Before I started writing my first post I had meant to mention later fan service scenes but forgot to do so. Yeah I was not a fan of that clip. Like I'm no stranger to fan service, and I'm not inherently against fan service, but man that was some bad fan service. All that scene did was be creepy and act as a detriment to everyone's characters.

Unfortunately there are some more questionable scenes like that coming up, although in my opinion none of them have been as bad as that bus ride.

[Solid Snake]

I also knew about dating the older women, and it's a thing that bothers me too. I have no intention of pursuing those relationships for pretty much the reasons you wrote above. They just seemed so weird and out of place.

Yeah, I'll just add that it's even more bizarre as someone who's played Personas 3 and 4 that Persona 5 seems to take further steps backward in terms of catering to weird wish-fulfillment fantasies with some very irregular, taboo relationships that are presented just seriously enough that it all crosses into an uncanny valley of yuck.

In the case of the Protagonist's homeroom teacher in particular -- I will spoiler-text this as I'll be discussing scenes I've witnessed that are optional and that you may or may not have seen already depending on whether your prioritize her Confidant link -- it's so strange that there are scenes that establish she's struggled in the past with inappropriate relationships with students and being too flirty with students, and she's paid an enormous price for doing so, and there are aspects of her narrative that are played very straightforwardly as a tragedy where she's in desperate need of redemption...and apparently her redemption is found in falling in love with another student. And in that case in particular it's like, okay, the entire narrative for the character is completely subverted by Atlus' desperate need to ensure every woman can be romanced by the protagonist.

Having played more of the game there's some... inconsistencies (I guess? trying to think of the right way to phrase this) in their interactions/relationship. I dunno, it's not every scene, but some of them just feel off in some way. I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what it is, so I know this isn't adding much to the discussion, I just didn't want to ignore this point as I mulled stuff over in my head. Hopefully later on I can make another post once I have my thoughts straightened out.

I think it's pretty clear -- you've seen the same scenes I have that I'd submit as evidence -- that Ryuji is very attracted to Ann. Granted, every guy in Tokyo seems to fit that descriptor at this juncture, and Ryuji isn't quite as bad as someone like Yusuke or Morgana is in handling rejection from her, but there's definitely some feelings there.

Beyond that, I think that the Persona series' approach of leaving every supporting male NPC in the dust so that every woman is equally viable as a romance candidate for the Protagonist and the Protagonist alone is in play here. Not that Ryuji deserves any better fate, but it often feels like some of these guys (Yosuke was a similar example in a previous Persona title) are written as offensive dunces around women in part to justify the Protagonist's charm and popularity. Surround the Protagonist with a few really offensive jerks and of course the Protagonist is going to have tons of dating options, at least that seems to be Atlus' theory on the subject. Unfortunately, it often feels like this results in the Protagonists of each Persona game benefiting tremendously by simply being portrayed the least overtly misogynistic douchebag in a given town.

Okay yeah if it's a Persona staple then I can understand your dislike for it.

Not only is it a Persona staple by this juncture, it also feels like it's an aspect of storytelling where Atlus is regressing and getting worse and worse with each iteration. Persona 4 was slightly worse in the aggregate than Persona 3, Persona 4 Golden tossed lots of disproportionately objectionable content into Persona 4, and now Persona 5 is eager to be the worst of the bunch.

Ryuji is still a solid bro character in my eyes. And actually he's the first confidant I maxed out (which happened shortly before me writing this post).

I would've been more sympathetic to this viewpoint on Ryuji had I not just recently seen that Catmobile cutscene I referenced earlier. Up until that moment, I was at least of the opinion that, as bad as Ryuji was, he wasn't nearly as awful as Yusuke or Morgana. He may well still be the best male supporting character in the Phantom Thieves, but that's only because his competition has set the bar so low.

There's definitely at least some tangential evidence of the possibility that Ryuji is just way too much a stereotypical 'Nice Guy' With Ulterior Motives around Ann -- that's just a vibe I feel frequently with him, and scenes where he indulges his baser instincts and just becomes so pervy around her certainly don't help his portrayal.

I'd still take Ryuji any day over the week over Yusuke, as Yusuke's easily my least favorite member in the Thieves by a country mile (for reasons you're about to cover in your own dissection of his creepiness.) Still, in general, I'd say the women in the Phantoms are much better written than the men. Independently of all the shit the writers have happen to Ann her characterization is quite exceptional, and I increasingly feel like the writers did a near-perfect job with Makoto (who somehow escapes most of the sexist bullcrap that's thrown at poor Ann's feet.)

I find I'm excited to spend time getting to know the women on the team, though I do feel guilty about seeking romances with all of them. I'm gritting my teeth through most the scenes with the guys.

So I forgot to mention in my previous post that after Yusuke joined the team I never ranked up his confidant for a significant amount of time (I actually only recently ranked him up once after clearing the fourth palace just so he could have Baton Pass in case I needed to swap him in).

This is the right approach to Yusuke. I'm likely a little further into his Confidant link than you are (if only because my attempts to criticize how awful he is require me to indulge his eccentricities and seek out whatever the hell Atlus intended with him) and it's just so fucking painful. I have no idea what the writers were thinking with Yusuke, but even independently of everything I already articulated that disgusts me about his interactions with Ann, he just comes across as a very disjointed combination of holier-than-thou elitist prodigy and brazenly misogynistic immaturity.

He's like a Red Pill Redditor who is desperately eager to prove just how intelligent and unique he is with some fancy vocabulary and a desperate need to reframe every conversation into some pseudo-philosophical gobleygook, only every conversation eventually ends with some variation of Yusuke musing on just how unfair it is that the cute girls he likes won't strip naked for the sake of fine art.

At least Ryuji and Morgana aren't nearly as pretentious and enraptured with the sound of their own voices when they behave like sexist cavemen.

I think I just wanted to believe that he wasn't a pervy creep during the whole studio scene and chose to perceive that scene in a more favorable light than it deserves.

Honestly, having gotten into the beginning of August in my Persona 5 playthrough, I'd just be thrilled if the writers let us move on from the really shitty studio scene and stop rehashing it for the trillionth time in a desperate attempt for cheap laughs at Ann's expense.

At this juncture I'm far past a point where I give a damn about Yusuke, he's pretty much irredeemable in my book. I just want Ann to feel safe and secure and comfortable as a member of this group and instead it feels like every time the conversation shifts to her I have to brace myself for some unnecessarily offensive commentary from the frat bros. The boys' behavior would be unjustifiable around any woman, let me make that clear, but when you toss in the severe post-traumatic stress Ann repeatedly verbalizes she's suffering from in the aftermath of being abused by Kamoshida it just feels so utterly despicable.

So you doubling down on this has cast doubts in my mind on how I'm remembering the scene, and I will definitely have to rewatch it at some point.

Admittingly, what happens is more along the lines of Shadow Kamoshida first 'confessing' during one of his lunatic rants that he turned his attention from Ann to Shiho out of a desire to hurt Ann after Ann refused to indulge his advances. Shadow Kamoshida explicitly describes acting on a plan to have Shiho become what he originally hoped Ann would be (coerced into sexual acts) and Shadow Kamoshida also differentiates an initial period where he just physically abused Shiho to a later period (shortly before Shiho's suicide attempt) where he began interjecting sexual activities into his demands of her.

And while the Shadow versions of characters do have a propensity to exaggerate certain aspects of their real selves' personalities and actions, Ann later confirms that Shiho suffered from sexual abuse before her suicide attempt and promptly has several scenes with the group after Kamoshida's been defeated where she metaphorically beats the crap out of herself and holds herself in some way accountable for Shiho's suicide attempt because it wouldn't have happened if Ann just accepted Kamoshida's advances.

The whole situation with Shiho, Kamoshida, and Ann (and a number of other women on the volleyball team; Shiho and Ann were not Kamoshida's only victims) is utterly tragic and -- even in the context of a presumably 'darker' Persona title -- it just does not at all jive and fit in well with the more slapstick Adam Sandler-style 'comedic' (if you'd generously call that kind of juvenile humor 'comedy') tone of so many other scenes with the Phantom Thieves.

Sojiro is definitely an odd subject, and I feel he just suffers from poorly paced / inconsistent character development. Like yeah they set him up to be this womanizer I guess to mess with your expectations when they reveal more about his character later on? But it's just like... why?

I mean, I do appreciate the nice twist you and I have both reached with him and his 'adopted daughter.'
Still...I'm skeptical on Sojiro. We'll have to circle back on him after we've finished the game.

[Marc v4.0]

I mean, yeah, I've never touched a Persona game for lots of very good reasons. My choice appears to have been rightfully justified given everything I've seen and heard so far.

[Ryong]

"He's [X trait, Y quality], and a bit of a pervert, but he's a good person at heart" is basically how Atlus writes all its boy characters in every Persona game, and that's a huge source of criticism from me because it's tiring to see Atlus attempt to excuse all kinds of inexcusable behavior from boys as just 'high school boys being high school boys.'

I just popped in here trying to read the least amount of spoilers and saw this and I feel like pointing out that, out of the actual males in P3 and P4 that are perverts we have:

P3:

Junpei - jokes with the girls constantly, is constantly chewed out by Yukari and sometimes Mitsuru; there are times when the player is offered the option to chew him out or not. Ultimately shows that he has his heart in the right place, but is dumb and/or tactless for a long time.

Ryoji - Gigantic pervert, makes everyone uncomfortable and yet somehow no one actually chews him out too hard. Maybe it's a shadow thing.

Your Magician Arcana buddy whose name I forgot - Talks about nothing other than getting it on with an older woman. He's written as a character you hang out with for some unspecified reason.

P4:

Yosuke - Perverted, annoying and homophobic, supposedly huge bro. Fuck him.

Teddie - Gigantic pervert, constantly makes passes at girls, is also comic relief. Is constantly chewed out, but ultimately considered harmless by everyone.

I'm pretty sure that's the extent of perverted male characters in P3 and P4; technically you could include the player character itself since you can date multiple girls and given chances to make passes and/or be a pervert, so take that as you will.

[Arcanum]

Just taking a brief moment to say ignoring all the effects on gameplay it would have I would commit a felony for there to be a female option for the P5 protagonist just based off the following fan arts:

http://i.imgur.com/Q7vZPQZ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CpnQ7Al.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/t7Zyy3G.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/LngIQis.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/9X4QwmI.jpg

---------- Post added at 08:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:55 PM ----------

Also I've been trying really hard to keep Arsene leveled up because I love his design but boy it feels like the game really doesn't want you to keep using him. I lucked out and managed to make a Growth 3 skill card (how I got one: turns out Izanagi Picaro can be transformed into it with the electric chair) which gives him 100% exp even if he doesn't fight, so it's gotten easier to level him up and keep him relevant. But still, he hasn't gotten any new skills in like 15 levels, and I'm not a fan of his stat distribution.

Is it common in Persona games for your starter Persona to be rather trash and ultimately discarded?

[Solid Snake]

Is it common in Persona games for your starter Persona to be rather trash and ultimately discarded?

Yes. You're not supposed to keep your main character's starter Persona for long beyond the first or second dungeon.
You eventually unlock a new and improved iteration of said Persona near the end of the game, and that's the one you can basically use for the final dungeon and any NG+ playthrough.

EDIT: In mid-September now, and hahaha, the teacher-student relationship is so much more raunchy and inappropriate than I was told it would be. That Level 10 link scene was so bad I found myself physically cringing as I watched it play out.
This game is so ridiculous.

[Arcanum]

EDIT: In mid-September now, and hahaha, the teacher-student relationship is so much more raunchy and inappropriate than I was told it would be. That Level 10 link scene was so bad I found myself physically cringing as I watched it play out.
This game is so ridiculous.

I didn't trigger the romance with her and her level 10 scene was actually not that bad for me.
She talked about how great things are going with all the other students she has time to help now, and then started scolding me for not eating properly or tidying my room. So then she offers to help out if I ever need it, which yeah is a bit weird for a teacher to be doing so even if you did get to know each other really well over the past couple months.

So that scene itself wasn't too bad BUT THEN BOY DOES IT GET WORSE.

So of course she can't be seen giving such favorable treatment to one of her students, so she has to keep wearing the maid costume when she stops by. Uhh.. okay, sure. But hey, if you're ever super tired at night just call her up and she'll give you a special massage whenever you want. In her maid costume.

I appreciate the gameplay mechanic here Atlus, but couldn't you have implemented it in a less creepy/awkward way?

[Solid Snake]

So that scene itself wasn't too bad BUT THEN BOY DOES IT GET WORSE.


If you think that's bad, go on Youtube and watch a video of how things play out if the romance is pursued.
Atlus is in desperate need of a few new writers to join their staff.

Today in Persona 5 Transphobia: So there's a character named Lala Escargot who's transgendered (she identifies with feminine pronouns and the game isn't exactly discreet in portraying her as trans), and she's actually fairly well written! She's certainly better written than, say, the queer adult men predators who pursue inappropriate relations with Ryuji at the beach (that's written as a gag and it's homophobic and terrible.) Unlike Ohya, the alcoholic reporter who hangs out at the bar who you can establish a Confidant link with (and ultimately romance, because you can seduce nearly every woman in this wacky game), Lala is much more realistically overprotective of you since you're a minor; she establishes genuine and well-written concern over you hanging out in Tokyo's red light district at night, encourages you to head home at a reasonable hour, and chastises Ohya for drinking too much when she gets drunk. That's cool! For a split second you think "Huzzah, Persona is learning!"

...Nope! Eventually you can get a job at this bar and the first thing you can choose to have the Protag ask Lala once you get the job cleaning dishes is "Do I have to crossdress too?"
Lala's a champ and she laughs it off as a dumb kid just innocuously asking an inappropriate question, and I suppose you technically do not have to ask this question as it's an 'optional' selection, but its mere inclusion in the game is stupid and Atlus should feel bad.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Hmm seems Atlus still has issues with being too edgy or offensive with their dialog. Or Atlus America is miss interpreting the heck out of the game's original lines during translation. Either way it seems I may be better off just enjoying the sound tracks to these games rather then playing them. At least the UI is pretty impressive.

[Arcanum]

Hmm seems Atlus still has issues with being too edgy or offensive with their dialog. Or Atlus America is miss interpreting the heck out of the game's original lines during translation. Either way it seems I may be better off just enjoying the sound tracks to these games rather then playing them. At least the UI is pretty impressive.

Just to be clear, these bad moments are very brief experiences over the course of a gigantic amazing experience. I have 80 hours into the game and am only now nearing the end of the story and all of these bad moments combined take up like an hour combined at most (with the stuff involving Yusuke being the most prolonged, everything else are their own brief scenes).

This game is absolutely fantastic, it's just that we've only really been talking about the bad bits in this thread. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a passing interest in RPGs. I'm not a big JRPG person, and Persona 5 has sunk its teeth into me as much as Zelda Breath of the Wild or Nier Automata.

[Solid Snake]

Hmm seems Atlus still has issues with being too edgy or offensive with their dialog.

Just to be clear, these bad moments are very brief experiences over the course of a gigantic amazing experience.

Nah, I think Kyanbu's statement is a misinterpretation of what Atlus has done wrong.
The problem isn't that Atlus is attempting to be edgy or offensive with their rampant indulges with scenes showcasing transphobia, homophobia and sexism.
The problem is that Atlus' writers believe that what they've written is safe and normal.

Hell, I bet you if anything the one criticism Atlus' writers might make of their own content is that it's bland and unremarkable -- it's pretty much all the content that's been focus-tested for decades now and determined to be what the 'audience' wants -- though in reality it's just what a narrow subset of people who Atlus christens its audience might supposedly 'want.'

Like, they're practically following a mundane formula at this point. If you played any iteration of Personas 3 or 4, you know exactly what you're going to get. There needs to be X number of scenes where the attractive women in the game are coerced into objectifying themselves; there needs to be Y number of scenes where the men are predatory and their behavior is treated as humorous and comical. The Protagonist is perfect and universally beloved simply because he is who he is; his greatness is simply constantly told until it's practically a mantra. Because the Protagonist is amazing and incredible by sheer virtue of existing, every eligible bachelorette in town will bend over backwards and erode their own agency and independence for the mere chance to slobber over him. If the Protagonist is Casanova, all the other men in every Persona's cast is playing a variation of an Adam Sandler character, essentially incapable of making a solitary decision in life that isn't hijacked by a raging libido that leads them to hunt after every girl they know like they're Elmer Fudd in a Looney Tunes cartoon. And I've only just summarized the good guys; antagonists like Kamoshida just amp up the creep factor to pathologically criminal levels.

Furthermore, the very mechanics of the game that you laud are utilized to reinforce all these really nasty story themes. They're not minor blips, as Arcanum alleges -- they're ingrained into the fabric of the game itself. Take for example your Social Stats -- Knowledge, Charm, Proficiency, Guts and Kindness. The game encourages you to invest time into activities that presumably raise these stats, and raising the stats on their own unlocks additional relational content with the ladies. Hell, even Bioware for all its faults attempts to write their supporting cast in such a way that they're not merely gatekeepers demanding you gain X points in Y attributes -- and then immediately falling head over heels for you once you've pasted the litmus test. The game's mechanics support and attempt to rationalize the idiotic Nice Guy fallacy that women are objects whose affections can be 'earned' through correct behaviors or responses.

Real relationships are about chemistry and attraction and they're complex and truly character-driven; driven by our faults, our flaws, our needs and wants, our hopes and dreams. We converse to know each other better, not just to soothingly whisper empty platitudes at each other. Go back and watch any of the Social Link scenes with the Protagonist and notice what the 'correct' answers sound like. Every romantic scene with a love interest boils down to women attempting a real conversation with the Protagonist and the 'correct response' boiling down to the Protagonist simply saying some iteration of "Believe in Yourself" and that, combined with his Stats, apparently justifies a degree of affection that's downright irrational and harmful to the women the Protagonist is presumably helping.

You can tell yourself that the solution to bypass all this objectionable content is to simply enter into platonic friendships with everyone, or only indulge one monogamous romance so the Protagonist doesn't come across as a lying, cheating scoundrel with the universe's most bizarre luck erasing any consequences for his bad behavior. But then you're confronted with the fact that Atlus wrote supporting characters like Ryuji, and Morgana, and Yusuke, and they're all even worse. It isn't just one scene or one solitary moment. Yusuke openly and unapologetically obsesses over the possibility of drawing a high school aged girl in a nude painting for months on end and the game won't let you dare to forget it.

Hell, as late as December -- the last month of the damned game, when everyone's supposedly best of friends and the team's been together for months -- Ryuji coerces -- I mean, aggressively convinces -- all the female Phantom Thieves to wear bathing suits in a dungeon filled with enemy shadows because the particular opponent they're trying to cajole to write a document happens to be a huge pervert who can be seduced by high school girls wearing next to nothing.

I wanna be clear on one thing, I'm not necessarily even against the notion that some narratives demand the inclusion of an immoral perverted douchebag or two -- in the right doses a sexist asshole as an antagonist can promote healthy dialogue or a positive social message. Some of my favorite characters -- good or evil -- in fiction have quirks or flaws that I find questionable or problematic; that's what makes people human. But here's a huge problem I have with the Persona series, one of many: Every man in the Persona universe, good or evil, introverted or extroverted, quiet or loud, as teenagers or as adults, is written as a huge unrepentant pervert who begs for an opportunity to treat the women in their lives like shit. You can't argue that an awful character like Kamoshida even serves to make some sort of an incisive social commentary when the rest of the game openly refutes the premise that Kamoshida is in any way special or uniquely egregious because even the so-called 'heroes' view girls like Ann as exploitable objects.

And here's the kicker for me personally: This should really offend folks like me, the heterosexual men of the world, just as much as it offends women or members of the LGBT community who are the butt of all the Persona series' shitty attempts at comedy. Not just for the selfless reason that we should all be capable of feeling offended on a vicarious level for others, though that's certainly true too; but for the incredibly selfish reason that Atlus writing men this way should be conceived, on its face, as an insult to men everywhere.

In Atlus' eyes it is not at all edgy or unique or abnormal for men to behave like monsters. It's what they expect of us, and it's no coincidence that the men in the Persona series are much worse characters than the women because of it; every damn guy in the series seems to be tainted by their asinine interpretations of how boys are expected to deal with sexual desire.

In the end, and perhaps to my great shame, I still enjoy the Persona series despite all this because I'm the kind of fucked up person who will indulge in all kinds of cognitive dissonance in order to enjoy emotionally satisfying narratives in fiction. So basically, I try to concoct a fictional version of a fictitious story -- a headcanon similar to yet also fundamentally distinct from what Atlus displays on the screen -- so that I can thoroughly enjoy the content in Persona that I love and view that content as somehow different than all the objectionable content in the same exact product that I hate.

And, sure; there are good moments in Persona. The gameplay is as addictive as ever. While the women may have their personalities forcibly removed from themselves to become soulless automatons in their generic love scenes with the Protagonist, and while they constantly have to swat down Ryuji and Yusuke like flies, there's more than enough great scenes in the overarching plot with Ann and Makoto to put them on a short list of my favorite JRPG characters. The voice acting is generally pretty great. Your guardian has Papa Nier's voice, it doesn't get any better than that. And everything's so aesthetically pleasing, from the character designs to the menu screens to all the little meticulously rendered nooks and crannies of the alleyways and subway stations you could ever want to explore in Tokyo.

But to argue that those good moments somehow drastically outweigh the bad is, I think, to misconstrue what Persona is at this point, because I think a greater and greater percentage of Persona's identity as a series is in all the bad stuff I've written about. It's the reason why each iteration in the series has gradually gotten slightly worse, as opposed to better, when it comes to its characters. By the admission of the writers of the series, at its core, Persona is about friendships between characters; that's the whole theme of each game in the series, that's why there's so many speeches delivered on teamwork, that's why the foundation of each story is built on Social Links and Confidants. You can't have stories with that premise horrifically botch the portrayals of slightly more than half its characters by arbitrarily stripping them of free will for the sake of 'comedy' or 'romance' targeted at Neanderthals and have the narrative survive such an impact. You can't be so dismissive of supposedly 'brief interludes' of content that carry messages to its target audience that fundamentally dehumanize entire groups of people.

This isn't Atlus being edgy. Atlus being edgy would be a Persona title with a gay or transgendered main character, or with an attractive woman as a supporting character and a Confidant link who refused the Protagonist's interest, or a new Persona title with a diverse cast of characters who treated each other ethically and with comedy scenes that were actually funny instead of pandering to the hyperactive imaginations of immature heterosexual boys. (That's the kind of content that would actually offend certain idiots who've gleefully devoured all of Persona's past homophobia and misogyny.)

No: This is Atlus playing it quite safe. And the tragedy here isn't that Atlus created something incredibly offensive that was promptly and accurately derided for being edgy and offensive. The tragedy here is that, to a vast majority of its audience (even perhaps to a majority of women and members of the LGBT community in said audience who have lowered their own expectations to accommodate objectively offensive content because they're stuck in the world we all live in) this is normal and to be expected. The average critic and the average gamer doesn't take a few moments to reflect on what a character like Yusuke (or Ryuji, or Morgana, or...) is doing to Ann in an awful scene between them because this is par for the course in Triple A videogame storylines.

[Ryong]

Every man in the Persona universe, good or evil, introverted or extroverted, quiet or loud, as teenagers or as adults, is written as a huge unrepentant pervert who begs for an opportunity to treat the women in their lives like shit.

Bit of an overstatement, innit?

I played P3 and P4 and I can't name more than 5 - 7, if you want to count the protagonists too - perverted men. One of them, Junpei, stops being a pervert halfway through the game.

P3's Ryoji and P4's Teddie could maybe be excused because they're shadows and both only know how to be perverts and jokers who may or may not do it to hide their true nature but, on the other hand, why the heck is that the default state for a shadow to be? Perversion and humor really don't strike me as some sort of primordial facets of sapience.

[Solid Snake]

Bit of an overstatement, innit?

I played P3 and P4 and I can't name more than 5 - 7, if you want to count the protagonists too - perverted men. One of them, Junpei, stops being a pervert halfway through the game.

Maybe some of the minor supporting NPCs with Social Links in Persona 3 get a pass (if only by the virtue that we never see several of them interacting with women), but when it comes to the major guy characters the only one from P3, P4 or P5 who really escapes unscathed is Shinjiro (though I haven't romanced him as FemMC in P3 Portable, so there's content with him I haven't seen yet.)

And in Persona 4, it isn't just Teddie and Yosuke; Kanji has some truly questionable (not to mention potentially transphobic) moments with his crush Naoto and several scenes in Arena and Arena Ultimax are dedicated to showing he's just as terrible in his own unique way as the other guys are.

In Persona 5, there's Ryuji, Yusuke and Morgana and they're somehow the most offensive trio yet, and P5 does a much better job than the previous titles at ensuring that even the NPCs (ranging from Kamoshida to Mishima to other random adults who appear in numerous scenes) get to indulge in the rampant buffet of misogyny. Seriously, there isn't a high school aged guy character you interact with in the entirety of Persona 5 who isn't in some way defined as a person as harboring an unhealthy perspective on women (and poor Ann always deals with the brunt of their bad behavior.)

Like, really: Is "Only the vast majority of men are irredeemably scummy perverts and not literally every guy in the game" really the hill you want to make a stand on? Is that really a defense? And if my statement is accurate when it comes to all the important characters who are actually memorable from past games (seriously, does anyone remember someone like P3's Hidetoshi Odagiri?), was I really being all that hyperbolic?

[Ryong]

How is Ken a pervert?
How is Akihiko a pervert? ( or does getting goaded into attempting to flirt make you a pervert? )
How is Dojima a pervert?

Kanji is confused as fuck throughout most of Persona 4 with regards to what he even likes and has, at best, a crush on Naoto which he isn't quite sure why because there's the gender confusion thing going on.

You're also ignoring all the character growth Junpei goes through simply because he begins the game as a pervert.

[Arcanum]

Furthermore, the very mechanics of the game that you laud are utilized to reinforce all these really nasty story themes. They're not minor blips, as Arcanum alleges -- they're ingrained into the fabric of the game itself. Take for example your Social Stats -- Knowledge, Charm, Proficiency, Guts and Kindness. The game encourages you to invest time into activities that presumably raise these stats, and raising the stats on their own unlocks additional relational content with the ladies. Hell, even Bioware for all its faults attempts to write their supporting cast in such a way that they're not merely gatekeepers demanding you gain X points in Y attributes -- and then immediately falling head over heels for you once you've pasted the litmus test. The game's mechanics support and attempt to rationalize the idiotic Nice Guy fallacy that women are objects whose affections can be 'earned' through correct behaviors or responses.

Females that need a specific stat rank to continue their confidant: Futaba, Makoto (although she doesn't give a damn, it's for her friend that you need to be charming), Ann, Takemi, Hifumi. So 5 out of 9 total female confidants, or 55%.

Males that need a specific stat rank to continue their confidant: Yusuke, Sojiro, Iwai. So 3 out of 6 total male confidants, or 50% (although Mishima requires you to do requests, and Yoshida requires you to work at a ramen shop twice)

Those numbers are, of course, excluding confidants that progress automatically. Just because the game has more female confidants doesn't mean they are getting preferential "gateway" treatment.

Not to mention the stats needed make perfect sense. You need guts so you can physically handle Takemi's medicine, you need knowledge so you can keep up with Hifumi's shogi. It's not the most elegant solution, but from what I understand this is one of the core aspects of the Persona games. The mechanics aren't supporting or rationalizing anything, they are distilling complex social interactions into statistics and trivia.

I can understand you wanting a more involved system, and criticizing the game for that, but going on to insinuate that the game is pushing some kind of agenda because of that (whether the game is doing so intentionally or not is irrelevant) is asinine.

And here's the kicker for me personally: This should really offend folks like me, the heterosexual men of the world, just as much as it offends women or members of the LGBT community who are the butt of all the Persona series' shitty attempts at comedy. Not just for the selfless reason that we should all be capable of feeling offended on a vicarious level for others, though that's certainly true too; but for the incredibly selfish reason that Atlus writing men this way should be conceived, on its face, as an insult to men everywhere.

Or I can acknowledge the flaws, weigh them against the mountain of good things, and have fun playing the game instead of getting offended.

But to argue that those good moments somehow drastically outweigh the bad is, I think, to misconstrue what Persona is at this point, because I think a greater and greater percentage of Persona's identity as a series is in all the bad stuff I've written about.

Yeah gonna completely disagree with you here. Persona's identity (from what I've experienced of it) is a solid JRPG with great mechanics that distill the complexities of teenage life into enjoyable pieces, with a good overarching story, with some of the writing relying a bit too much on common Japanese tropes. While the writing and story and character interactions are a prominent part of the game, it is definitely a "gameplay first" kind of game. Pretty much all aspects of the story and character development tie into gameplay mechanics. Occasionally the story suffers a bit from that, occasionally it excels because of it. But at the end of the day the parts that are amazing far outweigh the parts that are bad because the story is just a vehicle for the gameplay. It's a damn good vehicle, but the package it delivers is even better.

[Solid Snake]

Females that need a specific stat rank to continue their confidant: Futaba, Makoto (although she doesn't give a damn, it's for her friend that you need to be charming), Ann, Takemi, Hifumi. So 5 out of 9 total female confidants, or 55%.

Technicality: You need either Rank 2 or 3 Knowledge (I forget which) very early on with Makoto's link. I forget which one, but it's a threshold before the Charm one that applies because she's smart and likes smart people, I guess.

I don't have a problem with the game tying stat progression to actions, I have a problem with the game tying stat progression with an assumption of deepening intimacy with people. It's a problem with guys too, insofar as it's just as clunky and nonsensical when applied to the boys, but because there's no SJ issues there insofar as I'm unconcerned with how Atlus chooses to portray platonic relationships among men. The issues I have with Atlus and sexism is how the Persona series portray romantic relationships, so it's patently obvious that I'm criticizing the system from that comparatively narrow perspective.

I can understand you wanting a more involved system, and criticizing the game for that, but going on to insinuate that the game is pushing some kind of agenda because of that (whether the game is doing so intentionally or not is irrelevant) is asinine.

Oh, the game is absolutely pushing an 'agenda' and that agenda is wish fulfillment fantasy for its presumed audience with a side helping of completely eroding the agency and independence of NPCs to ensure the wish fulfillment fantasy 'succeeds.' My objection is twofold: Atlus ignores the wishes of everyone outside the confines of its presumed target audience, and even then, Atlus misconstrues what its target audience actually wants. Either that or it's pandering to a subset of immature boys it really shouldn't bother pandering to; take your pick on the latter.

Now, you can argue that Atlus' agenda here is harmless (I'd disagree), but it's certainly the clear intent of three Persona titles and counting now to put the gamer in the shoes of a protagonist who, through some kind of combination of sheer willpower, the mechanics of the game world and the exigencies of the heroic narrative, lives some hyper-idealized life where all his desires (perfect grades, perfect relationships, perfect friends, even the existence of antagonists is necessary to provide heroic purpose) are within reach and require minimal effort or investment to achieve.


Or I can acknowledge the flaws, weigh them against the mountain of good things, and have fun playing the game instead of getting offended.

You seem to be implying it's an either/or scenario where I see it more as within the realms of possibility to simultaneously both enjoy the game AND be offended.
I mean, I certainly wouldn't be nearing the end of Persona 5 now if I hated every second of it. I just think whatever it does well (and I've talked substantially on aspects of the game I really like) doesn't somehow immunize the game or myself from being appropriately horrified with everything it does poorly.


While the writing and story and character interactions are a prominent part of the game, it is definitely a "gameplay first" kind of game.

Your description of the series isn't entirely inaccurate, but boy do I disagree with this.
I know 'gameplay first' gamers who wouldn't touch the Persona series with a ten-foot pole precisely because it's Story first with a capital 'S.' That much is readily evident when you consider the length of playthroughs and the sheer amount of time Persona invests in telling its longwinded narrative. Hell, Persona 4 famously has like eight hours of pure exposition before you even enter a 'real' battle. Persona 5 follows that lead. And before Persona 5, gameplay was so secondary that dungeons themselves were completely generic and randomized.

Now, the Persona series executes its gameplay quite well, I'd agree with that. But, if anything, the mechanics of gameplay during the segments of the game where you grind your stats and your social links furthers the story and requires you to be invested in the characters and the town you live in.

But at the end of the day the parts that are amazing far outweigh the parts that are bad because the story is just a vehicle for the gameplay.

I take issue with any sentiment where either of us feel qualified to uniquely judge whether the good outweighs the bad because it's going to be deeply personal to each person.

Like, if you were a woman, or a member of the LGBT community, and the Persona series seems to take a deranged pride in seeking ways to mercilessly offend you, I'm guessing you'd have a very different perception of whether the 'good' outweighed the 'bad' content.

And part of being a functional human being is being capable of feeling empathy for others and relating to other perspectives than your own. Ironically, even the Persona series is well aware of that much, as often the platitudes to select that give you the most boosts in social link scenes involve you putting yourself in others' shoes and trying to relate to issues from their perspective as opposed to just judging situations selfishly or dispassionately.
(It might be sloppily executed and oversimplified in practice, but at least the Aesop's fable thesis driving this aspect of the series' interactions is well-intended.)

[Arcanum]

I don't have a problem with the game tying stat progression to actions, I have a problem with the game tying stat progression with an assumption of deepening intimacy with people. It's a problem with guys too, insofar as it's just as clunky and nonsensical when applied to the boys, but because there's no SJ issues there insofar as I'm unconcerned with how Atlus chooses to portray platonic relationships among men. The issues I have with Atlus and sexism is how the Persona series portray romantic relationships, so it's patently obvious that I'm criticizing the system from that comparatively narrow perspective.

But it's portraying those romantic relationships in the same way it portrays all other social interactions in the game, which is as a mechanics-focused aspect. You just want more out of the game's mechanics and dislike that the game is sticking to its guns when it comes to an aspect that you feel more personally invested in. And because those limited mechanics don't do justice to these complex social interactions you somehow think that it is Atlus intentionally sabotaging characters.

Oh, the game is absolutely pushing an 'agenda' and that agenda is wish fulfillment fantasy for its presumed audience with a side helping of completely eroding the agency and independence of NPCs to ensure the wish fulfillment fantasy 'succeeds.' My objection is twofold: Atlus ignores the wishes of everyone outside the confines of its presumed target audience, and even then, Atlus misconstrues what its target audience actually wants. Either that or it's pandering to a subset of immature boys it really shouldn't bother pandering to; take your pick on the latter.

Now, you can argue that Atlus' agenda here is harmless (I'd disagree), but it's certainly the clear intent of three Persona titles and counting now to put the gamer in the shoes of a protagonist who, through some kind of combination of sheer willpower, the mechanics of the game world and the exigencies of the heroic narrative, lives some hyper-idealized life where all his desires (perfect grades, perfect relationships, perfect friends, even the existence of antagonists is necessary to provide heroic purpose) are within reach and require minimal effort or investment to achieve.


It's fine if you want Persona to be something that it's not, and it's fine to criticize Atlus for focusing too much on their target demographic (and as an aside, considering how well the game sells I don't think Atlus is misconstruing what its target audience wants at all and in fact it seems you've misconstrued who the target audience is), but you're saying a video game about a successful fantasy life is pushing an agenda that is harmful to society. That is just silly.

It's not Persona or Atlus's fault if someone plays the game and gets the impression that's how life is.

You might as well be decrying violent games for making people more violent.

You seem to be implying it's an either/or scenario where I see it more as within the realms of possibility to simultaneously both enjoy the game AND be offended.
I mean, I certainly wouldn't be nearing the end of Persona 5 now if I hated every second of it. I just think whatever it does well (and I've talked substantially on aspects of the game I really like) doesn't somehow immunize the game or myself from being appropriately horrified with everything it does poorly.

I just don't see the point in getting offended at everything, especially since doing so would diminish my enjoyment of the game. I'd rather just shake my head at the scene in question and move on, but hey that's just me.

I take issue with any sentiment where either of us feel qualified to uniquely judge whether the good outweighs the bad because it's going to be deeply personal to each person.

Like, if you were a woman, or a member of the LGBT community, and the Persona series seems to take a deranged pride in seeking ways to mercilessly offend you, I'm guessing you'd have a very different perception of whether the 'good' outweighed the 'bad' content.

I'd rather live my life by taking in the good and the bad and acknowledge the bad but not dwell on it and instead focus on the good. I don't think that would change depending on my gender or orientation.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

It usually has to be pretty extreme and/or abundant to bother me. The lighter offenses I'll criticize but it's not going to exactly ruin my day or the game if it's gameplay isn't already at "meh" and below.

It also depends on the narrative as well. sometimes a character(s) is intended to be a dick. Or discussing an issue that setting is facing (Japan's dealing with these kinds of issues with their youth among other things).

[Solid Snake]

It also depends on the narrative as well. sometimes a character(s) is intended to be a dick. Or discussing an issue that setting is facing (Japan's dealing with these kinds of issues with their youth among other things).

I promised myself I wasn't going to continue the conversation with Arcanum and Ryong on social justice issues because I think we've circled the wagons enough on that and there's really nothing more we can say to each other to change our perspectives.

However, I will take issue with one aspect of this comment: Having recently finished the game, it strikes me that Persona 5 is thematically much more a criticism and repudiation of western Old Testament style Judeo-Christian morality than dealing with innately Japanese history or mythology like Persona 4 did. Hell, the final boss is basically a renamed stand-in for Yahweh. Strikingly, it deals a lot more with conceptualizations of sin and guilt that are more 'western' in origin than 'Japanese' (though there's obviously more than a bit of traditional Japanese customs and traditions mixed in as well, given the setting.) The palaces of repugnant assholes like Kamoshida and Madarame drive the populace into the embrace of the Judeo-Christian guilt-based apathy of Mementos, wherein humanity deserves to be 'punished' for its 'sins', and the Phantom Thieves fight against both those extremes.

Honestly, had Persona 5 stuck to its guns on the repudiation of Old Testament style Judeo-Christian morality but simply given its supporting characters agency I probably would've loved it even as it explored and dissected all kinds of social taboos. Like, certain aspects of Persona 5 that seem weird at first glance like the adult / high schooler relationships actually start to make a twisted sort of sense when you reach a point where you understand what the game's thesis is and what it's trying to say about breaking free from repressive social norms. It's just that the message only really remains coherent so long as all the characters breaking away from the norms are still written believably as self-interested and three-dimensional human beings. Kawakami and the Protag can totally have a weird thing goin' on so long as Kawakami feels like a fully realized person (who'd presumably then be attracted to the Protagonist for legitimate reasons) and not just a collection of sexist wish-fulfillment tropes.

...Dammit, I told myself I wasn't going to get into social justice stuff in explaining Persona 5's theme and I went there anyway because it's hard to describe my perspective without its inclusion.

[Arcanum]

I promised myself I wasn't going to continue the conversation with Arcanum and Ryong on social justice issues because I think we've circled the wagons enough on that and there's really nothing more we can say to each other to change our perspectives.

Just popping in to say I will be helping you keep your promise to yourself by not continuing the conversation.

Also I beat the game. It is a good game.

[Solid Snake]

Also I beat the game. It is a good game.

It might surprise you to hear me say this, but in the aggregate, I agree; it's a damn good game.
I do wish they did more with the ending, though. Persona 4's ending felt really emotionally resonant and impactful, even before all the added content padded it in Golden. When I first beat that game its ending devastated me for several days. Persona 5 just sort of ended after the final fight and the epilogue didn't hit me nearly as hard.

There's definitely a lot of room for a theoretical 'Persona 5 Platinum' or whatever they might call it to add some more content. I'll probably play it, and I'll probably still complain about it, but I'll only be complaining because I like lots of it and want reasons to like it even more.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

How long was your total run time for the main game?

[Arcanum]

How long was your total run time for the main game?

About 110 hours. There were some times where I left the game on for a while without doing anything (if I had to guess I would say a total of maybe 5 hours of "empty" time), but also at other times I was skipping through dialogue after reading it and not waiting to hear the voice lines (this was mostly closer to the end of the game when I was starting to feel burned out because I don't normally play games that take over 100 hours to finish a single playthrough).

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I see, P5 has a very nice long length to it.

---------- Post added at 02:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 02:39 AM ----------

I promised myself I wasn't going to continue the conversation with Arcanum and Ryong on social justice issues because I think we've circled the wagons enough on that and there's really nothing more we can say to each other to change our perspectives.

However, I will take issue with one aspect of this comment: Having recently finished the game, it strikes me that Persona 5 is thematically much more a criticism and repudiation of western Old Testament style Judeo-Christian morality than dealing with innately Japanese history or mythology like Persona 4 did. Hell, the final boss is basically a renamed stand-in for Yahweh. Strikingly, it deals a lot more with conceptualizations of sin and guilt that are more 'western' in origin than 'Japanese' (though there's obviously more than a bit of traditional Japanese customs and traditions mixed in as well, given the setting.) The palaces of repugnant assholes like Kamoshida and Madarame drive the populace into the embrace of the Judeo-Christian guilt-based apathy of Mementos, wherein humanity deserves to be 'punished' for its 'sins', and the Phantom Thieves fight against both those extremes.

Honestly, had Persona 5 stuck to its guns on the repudiation of Old Testament style Judeo-Christian morality but simply given its supporting characters agency I probably would've loved it even as it explored and dissected all kinds of social taboos. Like, certain aspects of Persona 5 that seem weird at first glance like the adult / high schooler relationships actually start to make a twisted sort of sense when you reach a point where you understand what the game's thesis is and what it's trying to say about breaking free from repressive social norms. It's just that the message only really remains coherent so long as all the characters breaking away from the norms are still written believably as self-interested and three-dimensional human beings. Kawakami and the Protag can totally have a weird thing goin' on so long as Kawakami feels like a fully realized person (who'd presumably then be attracted to the Protagonist for legitimate reasons) and not just a collection of sexist wish-fulfillment tropes.

...Dammit, I told myself I wasn't going to get into social justice stuff in explaining Persona 5's theme and I went there anyway because it's hard to describe my perspective without its inclusion.

I see, that clears up a few question I had regarding the game.

[Solid Snake]

No matter what your opinions are of Persona 5, I think we can all agree that this desperately needs to be included in future versions of the game.

Xl552rK8Sjo

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Agreed, even if it's an end credits bit that needs to happen.

[Gregness]

No matter what your opinions are of Persona 5, I think we can all agree that this desperately needs to be included in future versions of the game.

Xl552rK8Sjo

I feel like there's some context I'm desperately missing in order to appreciate this.

[Solid Snake]

This reviewer articulates a lot of my thoughts on Persona 5 better than I can, and it's worth reading even though many of you will disagree with its conclusions. (http://www.zam.com/article/1412/persona-5-review)

As for the video, Gregness, it's just the vicarious thrill of seeing several characters you grow to love gettin' their grooves on