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 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, 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, 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, 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, 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!"
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.

- 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) 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, 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.