It's Showtime, For Real!: Let's Play Persona 5 Royal

[Bea]

PART 1. INTRODUCTION

So, as anybody who read that monstrosity I posted in fiction discussion a bit back knows, I played P5 Royal. I actually played an unnecessary amount of P5 Royal for reasons I won't necessarily get into here, but I played it a lot, and know the game very well, and have a tendency, which I'm sure is frustrating to people subjected to it, to blab about it on Discord. And today a couple people said they'd actually be interested in a LP of the game when the topic came up, and I indicated I was sad that I hadn't actually done one.

And I will admit straight-up that this, like many good choices, is partially based on spite. As I've said elsewhere, I do think this is, to a degree, a kind of misunderstood game in some ways, sometimes due to the games' own problems. I'll get into that as we go along. But I also have tried a couple of the let's plays that are available that approach the game from a critical lens, and honestly found that they have a tendency toward CinemaSins-style cheap shots for the sake of humor and, honestly, not taking the game on its own terms, which I admit irritates me a bit. And I do feel like it's a game that could benefit from somebody giving it a shake that is critical but at least attempting to be fair (and full disclosure will be to a degree sympathetic). So here we are.

As you can guess, this'll be far from a typical Let's Play. Rather than recording somebody's experience fresh, I'll typically be more a kind of... guide through the game, I suppose, with me playing the game with screenshots and links to video when appropriate, and with at most very oblique spoilers, talking about the game from primarily a writing and character standpoint, though I will of course also be commenting on gameplay as we go. And at the end of the day it'll be maybe putting a bit of a cap on my experience with a game that, I will freely admit has flaws, but I quite like and do have an emotional attachment to, the reasons for which will hopefully maybe become clear as we go along.

Okay, but what is Persona 5 Royal?

Persona 5 Royal is a game produced by good ol' Atlus, and is essentially to the original Persona 5 what Golden was to Persona 4. The same plot, with some substantial Quality of Life improvements and additional content, including two new characters with social links and one additional arc at the end.

If you're still confused, Persona itself is a 5 part (or, as Atlus would prefer we think of it, 3 part) series of teenagers going to school, fighting evil that takes the form of both humans and creatures known as "Shadows", and making friendships and even finding love along the way to fight said mysterious evils. And they're long games. Very long. Fair warning.

I do want to begin with a point of order. This post is going to be a lot of summary, and then cut to my commentary. This is very much not the writing style this LP will typically have, it'll be very commentary driven, but so much of this is important establishing stuff and I honestly didn't see much of an opportunity to chime in before the end of the opening. I have one or two asides in here too, but I just want to make it clear that this is not remotely the typical writing style I want to have, so much as just something necessary given the nature of this introduction.

And though I don't think it'll impact anybody else too much, fair warning that I will be using English VAs. I honestly quite like the English dub, I think the VAs do a really good job, and it's just generally the language I prefer to play games with.

So, with all that out of the way, I suppose it is showtime. Let's go.


We then open to your typical disclaimer (story is a work of fiction, not based on real people, etc. etc. you've all heard it before), with a bit of a twist. See, you can select "no" here and get a cute little pseudo-ending where the game essentially goes "If you're dumb enough to think this game is non-fiction, guess you won't be playing it loser". It's not particularly important, but I thought it was a neat touch.

We will, of course, be agreeing to this games' very onerous terms.



I'd better be getting paid for this shit, ominous narrator.

So. If you, dear reader, have played Persona 3 or 4, you might remember how those games start. It's pretty gentle, I'd say? Just softly introducing the main character and showing them getting introduced to their new surroundings, quickly introducing a couple supporting cast members, and letting you know the lay of the land and what's going on.

So with that expectation we start out Persona 5 and...



BOOM CASINO TIME BABY.

Here's a video of the opening. It both might make the scene a bit easier to follow than just pure screencaps from my Switch, and also the music is an absolute banger.

Anyway, as people are gamblin' their lives away, we see a teenager in a mask very conspicuously swinging across the top of the room- this young man, of course, is Joker, our erstwhile protag.


A protag who appears to have pissed somebody off, given that he has security on his tail. He swings onto a large chandelier with a weird honeycomb design for some reason and we then get an interjection from some soon-to-be-friends.




So it turns out that Joker's attention-drawing shenanigans were entirely deliberate, in order to allow his collaborators to sneak off, grabbing a "briefcase" of mysterious contents. From the cards and voices it seems that Joker's group consists of 4 other guys, and 4 girls, one of whom apparently goes by "Skull", which we can assume like "Joker", is a codename of some sort.



We then get a bit of a short gameplay, pseudo-tutorial interlude, where we get to see some of the stuff the player will be able to do later on, as we navigate the casino. Some parkour-style jumping across gaps, some stealth action, some grappling hook swinging shenanigans, and of course, a short and immensely easy combat segment as guards turn into MYSTERIOUS MONSTERS.

Yeah, I'm not going to be that cute. They're Shadows. They turned into Shadows. How exactly apparently perfectly sentient human beings can turn into most certainly non-human monsters representing fears, desires, etc. will be explained much later.

After dispatching both that shadow and some comrades, Joker continues his escape through the interior of the casino, while receiving warning of a "weird reading" by one of our female associates, accompanied by some dialogue from the co-protagonists as they also make their escape.


Skull, my guy, I love you, but Joker barely ever talks. You know this.

However, after attempting to evade their pursuit for a bit, Joker finds himself surrounded by more Shadows than, evidently, he can handle. (Sounds like poor Persona management to me tbh.) However, this is when our "weird reading" makes their appearance.



Our female deus-ex-machina quickly dispatches of most of the shadows, and we get another quick combat segment where she and Joker team up to quickly obliterate the rest, showing off the team attack combat mechanic.



Not going to lie, I love the snazzy little cards after all-out attacks in this game. Very nice addition.

The scene does give us some clues about her- apparently she's younger than our protagonist (given the "senpai" honorific), has fought with Joker before and he has helped her out in the past, and she has made some sort of promise with him. She's also not part of the "Phantom Thieves" (presumably the name of our protagonists' little group), but seems like a benevolent outsider, if nothing else.

(If you're very confused, yes, everything surrounding her is new to Royal. Don't worry, her deal will become more and more clear... relatively soon.)

After the brief interlude, Joker returns to his escape. But just as he appears to have reached a way out (AND HAS A VOICED LINE)...

Yep, he walks right into an ambush. He quickly attempts to adapt before getting literally smacked back down to earth and cuffed, with one of the cops informing him that a "teammate" sold him out.

Intro done, we cut to what appears to be some kind of cell, where Joker is manhandled by cops, who inform him they gave him some kind of drug.



I must give this dialogue a Cop/10

After some classic Police Brutality, one of the cops backs off and lists Joker's supposed crimes, which are topped off with a manslaughter charge. The drugged Joker, meanwhile, tries to reassemble his memories back together, as we choose our difficulty and name our character, so that he can sign a forced confession (Classic JAPANESE cop moment.)

For the record I will be choosing "Hard", but it honestly doesn't really make that much of a difference, the game isn't particularly difficult regardless of difficulty setting if you have a good grasp of the mechanics. Heck, the hardest, Merciless, is outright easier at certain points due to the changes the difficulty setting makes.

As for the name, well, I think i will give the Joker the indisputable honor of being named after myself.


Perfection.

And now.... scene cut!
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Let me say, I absolutely love in medias res openings. They are literally my favorite thing in fiction- while wanting to set the stage is perfectly understandable, there is no better way to get me invested than to just thrust me into something happening and have me have to put some pieces together on my own. The sort of sense of disorientation this creates is something that I find uniquely captivating that you can't really get in almost any other story structure style, in my opinion.


Yep, that's me. I bet you're wondering how I ended up in this situation...

In many ways, I would argue this is the strongest opening when it comes to Personas 3-5 by far. You have a rough introduction to pretty much all the protags in an engaging way, with some personality and tidbits to get you interested in more, while also giving you a rough feel for the gameplay. The pacing is appropriately frenetic, swinging from development to development at an appropriately rapid pace, while giving the player a colossal amount to chew on. I can say I prefer it vastly to Persona 4's "two hours of introduction before basically anything happens" for sure.

That lack of context and sense of disorientation also allows the writers to pull a really cute slight of hand that is in my opinion incredibly well done, but we'll get into that much later.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Alright, opinions aside, let's wrap-up the set-up.

As the next scene begins we are introduced to the first character, aside from our friend Mr. Bean, to be given an actual name. Professional Cop with better PR Public Prosecutor Sae Niijima. Voiced by Yuko Kaida in the JP dub, and Elizabeth Maxwell, the rare RWBY voice actor to have an actual career, in English. We get a bit of establishing dialogue that she's apparently been taken off the case, but wants to talk to Clown all the same to confirm the details. Her boss, the director of the SIU, has a short conversation with her, essentially chastising her but giving her authorization to have a quick conversation with us.

A funny little detail is that the detective proceeds to justify Niijima's shortened time by saying that they don't even know if it's safe to speak with Joker, which certainly didn't seem to keep his buddies from hanging around, drugging him, and then beating him up for an entire scene. Pretty clear that this is just a formality everybody wants to get out of the way as quickly as possible. This conversation will then be how most of the several months the game takes place in prior to this point is communicated to us, but you know, wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

She then enters the cell, and says that she didn't "expect it" to be Clown, and that now we'd be answering her questions, indicating that Clown has a bit of history with her as well. She then expresses contempt at how her colleagues the cops abused Joker, and she freely admits that she has no power to keep the cops from continuing to Exercise Authority. We then get a bit of clunkily-translated dialogue that roughly translates to the fact that she always suspected something was going on, but she couldn't make a case because she couldn't figure out exactly how it was being done, and that she could hardly be suspected to believe what Clown is evidently claiming the method to be.



I'll freely admit that one of the joys of these interludes is being a contemptuous dick to Sae. It's always great fun.

As Sae asks Clown to explain the plot of Persona 5, we get the Good Ol' Persona Butterfly, and a mysterious female voice comments that our protagonist is the prisoner to a pre-determined fate, and that the game about to begin is entirely unfair, and that he has basically no chance to win. But if he builds bonds with his friends and holds onto "the truth they grasped", there's still a chance. Not unusual Persona fare.

And thus begins the framing device for most of the game, which is Clown essentially explaining everything that happened to Sae that got him to this point, beginning half a year prior.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
And we will start that in my next post. I think 2000 words is probably a decent starting point, and frankly i don't want my first post to be forever long. I will say that given that I am doing the more onerous job of screencapping the game on my switch and then going through a process of getting them onto the internet while also writing things up in addition to playing through the game (you do not want to know how many times I had to replay the intro to get all the screencaps I wanted), writing this stuff up and adding the screencaps will likely be a bit of work and as a result I don't want to make any strict guarantees regarding an update schedule, but this genuinely is a passion project for me so I'll be shooting for 1-2 updates a week. I'll probably slide into a comfortable groove as things go along, and maybe have a bit of a backlog for updates.

If you actually read this far, I genuinely am very grateful that you are thinking of giving this a chance, and I will try to make it worth your time. Be back soon with a far more commentary-heavy post on the beginning of Clown's little adventure.

 

[1337Procrast]

Hell yeah. Persona 5 time. Let's gooooo.

 

[WestOrEast]

So, as anybody who read that monstrosity I posted in fiction discussion a bit back knows, I played P5 Royal.

Click to shrink...

I didn't. Link, please?

And they're long games. Very long. Fair warning.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, my single runthrough the game, getting all the Steam badges, it lasted 125 hours.

Surprised you didn't mention the music, since there's so much of it and it's so good.

 

[Bea]

I didn't. Link, please?

Click to shrink...

Here you go. Another thing that made me want to do this LP was honestly inspired because I wanted to do an addendum that dug into Persona 5's relationship with Great Man Theory and how it contrasts with 3 and 4, and at some point I decided that if I had so much to say about the game I might as well just do a walk through of it, especially since in some ways I think it could make both that point and some of the points I make in the essay a bit clearer, since I can directly reference the game's text and I feel like some of the points can be communicated better when you look at the game in aggregate.

Yeah, my single runthrough the game, getting all the Steam badges, it lasted 125 hours.

Click to shrink...

My relationship with the game is kinda funny- i ended up playing it for roughly 145 hours prior to this playthrough, because I worried that I was out of time for the social links several times, not knowing how generous Royal really was when it came to 100%ing it. Which is part of why my essay references a lot of really minor stuff, I know this game far too well.

Surprised you didn't mention the music, since there's so much of it and it's so good.

Click to shrink...

I do touch on the music at the beginning, but admittedly I find it a little rough talking about it because it's something that it's harder to convey in text without adding a bunch of links. I may hit on it more later and provide some links but yeah, the music is full of absolute bangers. My main compliant on that front, frankly, is that Royal kind of sidelines Last Surprise, which aside from Running in the Deep is my favorite song in the OST.

For the record I do have a second post basically done that gets through most of the early exposition and transitions to the start of the game proper. It has some self-indulgent bits I think are fun and I think gives a better perspective on what the LP will look like, but I both have some technical aspects I still want to tweak on it and I think having a backlog is probably better than just bombarding the thread with long posts, especially given how thick with exposition and foreshadowing the beginning is. I'm bad at ETAs but I did have some fun with it I want to share so I do want to post it soon.

 

[Broken25]

Oh, this will be good.

 

[Bea]

Eh, I decided to post this update a little earlier than I thought because the brain spiders wouldn't let me go. They are holding me captive, please help. In this update we work our way through the rest of the setup, some foreshadowing, and I toss in a bit of blatant self-indulgence.

I would, for the record, like to give many thanks to @NemoMarx, who though she doesn't want to follow the LP since she hasn't played the game yet, was willing to look at it and give me a few tips regarding mild content edits and structuring suggestions, which also lead to me looking through the entry again and seeing a lot of ways to clean it up and make it look and flow better, so the fact that it's presentable at all is, at heart, thanks to her.

Also I am myself a clown and forgot to add a threadmark to the OP, so I fixed that. It's like an actual LP now!

April 9th

Our flashback begins with Bean waking up on the train as it approaches the last stop: Shibuya, a key setting in our story. We then get a short flashback to... some sort of past event. Exactly what is going on at the time is rather ambiguous: we get a shot of a woman being quite physically harassed by a bald guy as she cries out in distress. Clown, fists clenched, arrives on the scene and starts to intervene, the harasser rather clearly stumbles, then blames our protagonist for his njury, and we cut to him being carried away by police officers.

One thing I respect about Persona 5 is how much it communicates through very little- this flashback is 4 rapidly cut scenes but they actually tell you quite a bit: That whoever this guy is is probably bad news, that our protagonist has a solid sense of justice and has a firm desire to protect people in danger, and that the trouble with the law that is the inciting incident to our story was perhaps not necessarily The System Working as It Should.

We also get a bit of foreshadowing, as a couple girls gossip- one talks about a phenomenon where people essentially become zombies- have a mental shutdown, if you will- which the other girl dismisses as occult nonsense. Pay attention, this will be on the test.

It's interesting to contrast this opening with the Persona 4 opening, which has a lot of the same beats. It opens with Yu on a train, heading to the primary setting in our story, with a bit of foreshadowing about things that'll happen in the story, and a bit of backstory regarding Yu- that he has to move schools a lot. But in many ways the opening is rather rote and if you can get any characterization of Yu from this scene, you're better at reading characters than me. He's just kinda a Guy. Just a Dude.

I would maybe use screencaps to illustrate the contrast, but I still have fatigue from the amount of times I had to restart the intro scene to get those screencaps. (For the record it was at least 15.) So I'll link the relevant scene in Persona 4, and you can compare with my description, and judge for yourself.

Bean proceeds to get off the train and enter the station. One feature that Persona 5 has is that when you're walking through an area, not really triggering anything, simply playing the game and walking by all these NPCs, you'll very often overhear conversations going on around you- this is never super important, but it often does a good job at providing a sense of the public's attitude toward what's going on in the story as well as feeding into the tone and at times thematics of the work as a whole. At the subway we hear some grumbling about the police's incompetence (a very common compliant the public has, as we'll see), and some comments on how nobody is taking responsibility for everything going wrong, so there is no point dwelling on it.



Bean then goes up the escalator. We get a quick scene of a ominous app popping up on his phone, and then a shot of him embracing his Persona. I'll freely admit that I'm honestly not sure what this was supposed to communicate, but the shot of Bean being the sole observant one as everybody else carries on in their day to day life is solidly striking, even if I'm uncertain the symbolism was entirely intentional.

We then transition to what appears to be some sort of small town, which we learn is where Sojiro Sakura, our new caregiver, lives. It's not strictly remarkable, consisting of a collection of shops, a clinic, and likely some housing- all connected through a series of small alleyways. As Joker enters the town, he walks aside a dark-haired woman in a labcoat, who then walks past Joker and turns into one of said alleyways. Nobody important, I'm sure.

The game then introduces talking to NPCs. I appreciate that Persona 5 actually really incentivizes you to fully explore the game; talking to incidental characters will often provide interesting tidbits; sometimes fun easter eggs, sometimes foreshadowing or scene-setting, sometimes emphasizing themes.

In this case, aside from the police officer and deliveryman that direct you to Sojiro's house- where you get no response- and then to his actual location, the cafe Leblanc, you can talk to a couple people- a mother and her child, and a sick dude by a small building that is apparently some sort of clinic.




Nothing huge here, but this does provide a bit of further establishment in the way of both plot and character- The mother notes that the policeman is here because of the accident that has occurred, and the sick man bitterly complains that the clinic is closed despite how early it is. So there is definitely something going down if the police are keeping watch, and it's pretty safe to assume that whoever works at this clinic probably doesn't actually care that much about treating patients, if they've already shut down in the middle of the day.



We also get another aside from The Crowd, as it I will likely call them, about how the monotonous drudgery of life, and how nothing feels like it'll ever get better. The game is already pretty clearly establishing the public temperature, as it were- things suck but nobody really feels like there's anything that can be done about it.

Bean then arrives at Leblanc, where we meet Sojiro Sakura, the Dojima of our little story. (Voiced by Jamieson Price in the EN dub. He was also the voice of Nemesis in Three Houses, but you might have also heard him as bit parts in... a lot of things, honestly. He's a pretty prominent character VA, though this is definitely one of his more prominent roles.)

Rather than being a fed, however, our game's father figure has a proper proliterarian job of being the proprietor of a small cafe. And also unlike Dojima, if in slight contrast to his expression, his rather distasteful feelings regarding our protagonist are made abundantly clear from the get-go.



We learn that he got custody due to a regular and Clown's parents having some sort of connection that really isn't super important, so we won't dwell on it.

The game also proceeds to give us more information- through the cafe's television we hear about a bizarre accident where a bus driver drives down the opposite lane while full of passengers, something a customer notes is similar to some other "rampage incidents" that had happened recently, but it's probably nothing to worry about. Shit happens.

Sojiro shows Joker to his room directly above the cafe, which is certainly... homely.



We then get another trip down Exposition Town as Sojiro gives a lowdown on the situation- he has a criminal record and is on probation due to being sued due to injuring someone while protecting a woman who was being harassed. (The previous cutscene already making it clear that perhaps this depiction isn't entirely accurate.) As a result, he's going to be on a bit of a tight leash.

I will say that in some ways I do wish the game had paced out the exposition rather than stuffing so much at the beginning. The pacing is still far better than P4 and around as good as P3 in my opinion, but it's also a good deal denser and really easy to get information overload. It's a bit more stark when I'm writing it all out admittedly, but you definitely feel it in game as well.

Sojiro then leaves and Clown proceeds to start straightening up his dump of a room, and goes to bed. He reflects on his situation, but emphasizes that he couldn't just let what was being done to the woman go. Before we cut to the next day we get a flashback further establishing our inciting incident; as he was heading home he heard cries of distress from a woman, and quickly follows them to where the woman is struggling against somebody trying to force her into his car, indicating that perhaps things were even worse than previously implicated.

The cutscene mostly just underlines what was already established- the dude is a pretty horrible scumbag that seems to have some influence over the police (with a blink-and-you-miss-it line of further foreshadowing tossed in), but there is something I want to note.


Like the only other 2 Persona games before it that exist, you get to make some dialogue choices. But unlike 4 especially, where Yu is essentially a blank slate for you to insert minor characterization details upon and the choices do not at all allow you to paint any sort of character, the choices you get in this game are carefully chosen, and if you pay attention have a very, very definite trend that actually help display some of the protagonist's key traits.

1. He has a firm sense of justice
2. He has a strong belief in both his friends and fighting for what's right
3. As we will see, he is snarky as hell.

Joker then drifts off to sleep, and he wakes up in the good ol' Velvet Room, with a bit of a... different aesthetic than last time.



Our friend Clown apparently gets no reprieve from his prisoner status no matter where he goes, evidently, to the point that it's a point established pretty firm in his psyche. When Persona 5 wants to make a point, it makes it hard.

He is... aggressively welcomed by being berated by two young girls who stand in front of his cell, who are later introduced as Caroline and Justine. Our good friend Igor, sitting at a nearby desk, then proceeds to introduce himself. He warns that ruin is coming, and that the protag needs to go through a process of "rehabilitation" in order to help fight back against this ruin.



See what I mean? Dude is a snarky dick. I love that for him.

(Time for more VA Trivia! Igor is voiced by a different voice actor than in both 3 and 4 in both the Japanese and English dubs, the role shifting from Dan Woren to Kirk Thornton in English. His original seiyuu passed away and looking at his credits Dan Woren appears to have been taking an extended break from doing acting work at the time, so it's probably not particularly notable.)

One thing I do think worth noting is that Igor's message is slightly different than in the prior games. While there his message is more one of liberation, here it is one of correction. Clown needs to be rehabilitated, his behavior needs to be corrected if he wishes to do his duty. The constant theme being driven into the characters is that the problem doesn't lie with the world around him, with its apathy to people in danger and the world around him, but with him. He's the outier, the prisoner, the one that needs to be fixed. It's an interesting contrast- despite Igor noting that society itself is trending toward ruin and that it needs to be fault, it's the hero's need to be corrected that he is emphasizing. Which of course, runs parallel to the belittlement he receives in the real world.

Bean then goes back to his snooze, and we cut to the next day.

April 10th

After Bean wakes up, Sojiro proceeds to take him to his new school, Shujin Academy; given the mess that train service is at the moment, he agrees to give him a ride in his car, despite his personal policy to never give a ride to someone of a male persuasion. We are then introduced to two more authority figures in the game- Principal Kobayakawa (voiced by the omnipresent Richard Epcar in English), and his homeroom teacher, Sadayo Kawakami. (Voiced by Michelle Ruff in English, whose prominent roles include Rukia and Hinata but you also probably know from pretty much everything. )

The thoroughline of contempt from authority continues at Shujin: Kobayakawa making it clear that there will be zero tolerance for any misbehavior, with Kawakami backing this up in the most dry, apathetic voice imaginable. She adds that if he does anything wrong, she'll essentially throw him under the bus without a second thought. She proceeds to lament the fact that she has to deal with a student with a criminal record. Right in front of him. The compassion is real.




Seriously, you get that he's right there, right?

As they head out of the school, Sojiro reiterates that the criminal record is why everybody is treating him like absolute shit, if in a way that almost sounds, dare I say it, sympathetic. While then immediately noting that if he causes any problems, his ass will be kicked to the curb. They then leave the school.

Next up is a chat between Kawakami and her colleague- resident Garbage Can Respected PE Teacher, Suguru Kamoshida.

They lament together that Clown was allowed into the school at all, Kawakami speculating that it's at the end of the day about improving the school's reputation, and therefore the principal's pocketbook. Kamoshida grumbles that surely his work with the volleyball team does enough on that front, helping to lift up the school despite the absolutely pathetic track team. So pretty clear the dude has a biiit of an ego. Surely it will be the worst of his sins. Surely.

Kawakami grumbles that she hopes he just dips entirely, while noting that perhaps that wasn't necessarily the most Supportive Teacherly thing to want. it's worth noting that there will be a lot of grumbling about teachers by the student body later on, and well, given a staff like this lead by a principal who seems most concerned about his pocketbook, who can blame them, really? Man, teachers sure do suck.

(Fun fact, Kamoshida is voiced by D.C. Douglas, probably best known for his work as Albert Wesker, and he has gone out of his way to talk about how much he absolutely hates Kamoshida. Just felt like noting that. The actor who voiced Wesker feels the need to note that he holds this character in particular contempt.)

We cut back to Bean and Sojiro heading home, and while Sojiro comments that obviously nobody will be sympathetic toward him given his criminal record, the delivery of the lines again actually do have a ring of empathy to them. At this point Clown asks a rather obvious question: given all the complaints Sojiro has about taking care of him, why did he in the first place? This proves to be something he's weirdly evasive about, beyond that he got paid for it. News on the radio makes Sojiro remember an accident that happened recently that killed a 15 year old girl. Which, fun fact, makes her a year younger than the protagonist. Not particularly important I'm sure, but you know, just a fun bit of trivia.

That evening there is an accident with a subway train colliding into the station. The engineer seems to be having a perfectly normal time.



Dude clearly needs some TLC. Maybe a cup of Folgers would help?

We then get a short cutscene taking place presumably the same day with Sae Niijima and her boss, the SIU head, where the news reports that apparently the engineer responsible wasn't injured. And ideally nobody else was either. He says that obviously fault for this lies at the feet of the Minister of Transportation, though Sae seems to think there might be a bit more to it. She then leaves and meets up with a boy who looks to be around Clown's age, whom apparently Sae wants to consult about something, though his asking if there's a "case", so we can deduce he's likely a private detective of some sort.



My good man, the Light Yagami lookalike convention is NEXT door.

Sojiro and Clown reach home, and Sojiro comments that the accident we saw was evidently quite "gruesome", with 80 people involved. Something that news anchor didn't think was important enough to mention, I suppose.

Sojiro then gives us the game's conceit for the save feature- a diary Clown uses to indicate to Sojiro what's going on in his life, so that he knows he's staying entirely in line. It's kind of cute that they bothered to fit it into the story in my opinion, and does provide a token explanation for how our protagonist remembers so much of the last few months in such depth.

Our surrogate father then receives a phone call with the person on the other end of the line he needs to go some place (given his earlier comments about women being in his front seat indicating he probably is something of a playboy it's probably a hot date) and heads off.

Backing away from the recap for a moment, I would also like to note another feature of the game's interface. There's a notice on the top right that essentially functions as a status update. While the game calls it a hint system, and it does often give you a friendly reminder of what your current objective is, it also provides insight as to the protagonist's current mindset.

• 

See the current one for instance. This is the protagonist's current goal- do as he's told, stay in line. Be a Good Citizen, because god knows he doesn't want to get thrown out onto the street.



As one can see above, this is echoed by the thoughts Bean has before he goes to sleep; he thinks about the accident, to reflect on how it'll impact the train's timetables. It's Bean ingratiating himself into the attitude of the average citizen- why care about the injured and dead? It's none of your business. just carry on with your life, citizen, nothing to see here. The contrast is jarring, but that is, I would argue, the point. Our friend Bean has been beaten down- he's seen what rebelling against society gets you- scorn, resentment, and punishment with no reward. Why bother? Just life your life, focus on what's important: yourself, your goals, your needs.

The app appears again, and Bean mindlessly deletes it and goes to sleep.

April 11th

Bean wakes up, and heads for school, after a delicious curry breakfast by Sojiro. He then quietly head to school, listening to the nihilistic grumblings of the people around him, talk about how things can't keep going in this direction that will lead to nothing.

Well, there's one person that seems to care. If you talk with everybody you see a woman with a camera, potentially a journalist, asking whether or not the accident might be a product of the oppressive Japanese work environment. But eh, it'll probably come to nothing. Not like anything has helped up to this point. None of our business, let's continue on.



It can be genuinely remarkable the amount of cameos that this game stuffs into a couple game days, I swear.

We then get a quick interlude back at Leblanc with a bit more foreshadowing, and then back to Clown's attempts to live an Honest Student Life.



DAD DOES CARE

Bean heads outside the station as he closes in on the school, and sees a platinum blonde-haired girl, clearly despirited about something. They stand there, not saying anything to each other. Two normal students, just passing by. Two parallel lines that will never intersect.



I know I'm breaking from the bit here, but Sad Ann kinda breaks my heart ngl

We then see Kamoshida come up in his car, and ask if the blonde girl wants a ride. She agrees and gets in. He asks if Bean wants one too, and he declines. Kamoshida then drives off. We also get this shot.



Wonder if something's wrong? Eh, none of our business.

Kinda weird, but eh. Was there anything really wrong with what he did? It might have seemed a little red-flaggy, but like... he asked Bean for a ride too, so it's not like it was just her. And it's out of our hands anyway, if she's uncomfortable, it's her business, not ours. Time to focus on what's important, getting to school.

Bean then bumps into a clearly angry boy, who grumbles about Kamoshida, calling him an arrogant asshole. The angry blonde boy and Bean have a bit of a conversation, and the former figures out that Bean is a new transfer student. For a moment, the two feel a little light-headed. Weird. Anyway, time to get to school.

The angry boy starts to take a shortcut, and Bean follows. Suddenly, as they walk through an alley, there are sudden mysterious ripples. Bean looks back, surprised (the first actual bit of emotion he's shown in the last few scenes.), but keeps walking until the two of them bump into something that is... well... clearly not Shujin Academy.



I don't think we're in Aoyama-Ichitome anymore.

And, okay, bit's over. Sorry if it was a little uncomfortable, but it wasn't purely an exercise in tedious pretension. I'm trying to make a point. There's an interrogation interlude near the end of that portion I skipped, where Sae asks if at this point Bean was still a "normal student". And I think the game was trying to say that, yes, he was. Or was trying to be. Because that's what being a normal Japanese citizen entails- keeping your head down, not making waves, not caring about the world in front of you. He was just being like all the people in the background throughout this portion of the story- noticing how things are clearly not right, but not doing anything about it. Just letting the world pass them by, not actually doing anything to make the world better.

I feel like there's a few signs the game is trying to depict that. I've tried to make a case that even at this point, the protagonist does have a decently clear personality that isn't cookie-cutter, but throughout this short segment of the game, there's none of that. He's just wandering through life, basically not really reacting to anything. The clear clash with what the character was like before, even within the early portion of the game itself, feels intentional to me. It creates a sharp contrast that's meant to be disconcerting.

Right now, our protagonist is just a normal person, trying to live what he sees as a normal life. Because he tried to be different, he tried to do something to help. And what did it get him? Nothing but shit.

I wanted to try and use that presentation style because there's not much in the story that happens I can really point to to make my case, but what doesn't happen, what Clown doesn't do, how he doesn't react. So I thought trying to convey that sort of apathetic nothingness via narration would probably work best.

It's in some ways a very nihilistic portion of the game, but I feel like it was meant to be.

Relatedly, after they enter Kamoshida's palace and encounter the armored guards, there's a couple bits that make both our characters look... kinda dumb.




But what I can say I take from that is that it's two people basically in denial, clinging to a normalcy that is rapidly slipping away.

Can I say this was all intentional, some brilliant masterstroke? Of course not. But art is what you make of it, in my opinion, and this isn't some formal review, but what I take from this game, and this is what I take from it. How seriously you view my take is up to you.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We're reaching a bit of a turning point now, so I think a paragraph break is appropriate here.

As I alluded to, Clown and Ryuji enter the castle, or Kamoshida's Palace, and get confronted by a couple guards. They try to escape, but are thrown in the dungeon. Clown falls unconscious, and Ryuji wakes him up. This is where you get the first option you get to have our MC show actual compassion in several scenes, by the way.

There's a short segment where they try to find a way to escape, though nothing comes of it. Then after hearing desperate cries of pain, some guards emerge and informatively let them know that they have been found guilty of trespassing, and that the sentence is death. As Ryuji expresses disbelief, Kamoshida's Shadow makes his appearance, declaring that people can't do as they please in his castle. Ryuji snaps at Kamoshida, only to learn that the punishment for speaking back is, conveniently enough I suppose, also death.

So, let's back up for a second, because there's some stuff to unpack here. Kamoshida's Shadow actually, in my opinion, reveals quite a bit. There's the on-the-nose castle stuff with his aesthetic as a king, but there's a bit more to look at, I think. The first is that Kamoshida is, rather clearly, a massive control freak- everything must go his way, everything must be how he wants it, and if you disobey him, you will be broken. He has the power, and he loves having that power. Over everything and everyone, and you'd better fall in line.

There's one other interesting tidbit in my opinion- Kamoshida's Shadow has a weirdly sexual component, where he's basically wearing nothing but his kingly attire. (There isn't a very clear screencap of it, which honestly I'm grateful for.) It's got a sexual undertone but, at least in my opinion, a really uncomfortable sort of sexuality. Kamoshida is a sexual being, he's proud of being a sexual being, but the way he expresses that sexuality is creepy, it's wrong.

Ryuji tries to break through the guards, and allow Clown to escape, but fails. Kamoshida mocks him for not running away, it's what he would do after all, but he stands firm. Kamoshida then starts to beat Ryuji, because that's the kind of person he is. He doesn't want to just kill Ryuji for getting in his way, he wants to make him suffer. He spits on Ryuji before saying that he isn't even worth beating, no longer worth continuing to crush beneath his heel, and wants to get to the murder part.

But. Then we get a dialogue option.



Joker's had enough. He's tired of this shit. He isn't going to just let somebody die for his sake, he isn't going to quietly stand by. He tried that, and look where it got him.

And then. He hears a voice.



A voice that asks if he wants to be a bystander, if he wants to just let the world be as it is.



And then asks a question that, well, i think the answer the game wants us to give is pretty obvious.



Kamoshida orders Joker's death, but he isn't just fighting for his own life now, but Ryuji's life too. This is bullshit he won't stand for. He WILL stop this.




He rips off the mask that he'd been forced to don. It's painful, agonizing even, but at the same time delightfully liberating.



And then. the wind blows. And in classic Persona 5 on-the-nose visual symbology, before he fights, he blows away the chains that have bound him.


And so begins Act 1 of the story of Joker, the Trickster. Somebody that is willing to fight for what's right, fight for the world. Maybe he can't be a Great Man that fixes everything, maybe at the end of the day some things are too big to fix alone. But maybe he can do something to make people's lives better, stand true to what he believes in, and maybe that's enough.

Now it's really showtime. Let's play Persona 5.

-----------------------------------------------------
My brain (ok, my anxiety) wouldn't settle down until I posted this, tbh, so here it is a bit early. Hope it was enjoyable. I had fun writing it.

For a bit of a necessary look behind the curtain, as it were, I was previously directly uploading these images to SV, because with the tedious way I have to transition them from the Switch onto the SV post it was most convenient. However this time I ran into the brick wall of the image upload limit, and therefore switched to putting the rest on a hosting site, which I'll be transitioning to. Quality seems consistent and in general everything seems to be fine when I look at it, but I've had issues with this in the past with a different site, so if the images don't show up for anyone else or there's some other problem I'll have to take drastic measures (AKA: Bug Omicron for where he saves the images for his final fantasy let's play). Just let me know. ^^

 

[1337Procrast]

Let's fucking goooooooo!

I love the Arsene dialogue a lot, and the interpretation of the protagonist being beaten down into normality and attempting to keep his head down after what he got last time is an idea I've played with too. The way you show it makes a lot of the symbolism way more clear though. Literally tearing off society's mask.
This game has such a strong aesthetic it's unreal.

 

[WestOrEast]

The engineer seems to be having a perfectly normal time.

Click to shrink...

I don't see the problem, I look like that every time I get on public transportation.

 

[Sumanai]

She then enters the cell, and says that she didn't "expect it" to be Clown

Click to shrink...

The only reason not to suspect the Clown is the Joker is because its too obvious.

Annnnywhoo~ I've never played a Persona game, so by that metrix:

My brain (ok, my anxiety) wouldn't settle down until I posted this, tbh, so here it is a bit early. Hope it was enjoyable. I had fun writing it.

Click to shrink...

This was fun, and I enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to finally experiencing Persona 5 for the first time (secondhand).

 

[Bea]

Welcome back, dear reader. Last time our protagonist got trapped in his first Palace and awakened to his Persona, something I was immensely normal about. Let's keep going.

April 11th (Part 2)
After Joker quickly dispatches of Kamoshida's goons, the rather snazzy attire he was wearing during the fight disappears. Ryuji gives the Shadow a suckerpunch and they lock him in one of his own cells. Which given his couterie of minions probably won't help too much, but will buy them a bit of time. As Shadow Kamoshida ineffectively rages, telling some off-screen men to chase after the pair.

I'll probably dig into this more when we get to an actual Palace segment, but given that this is our introduction to the palace's aesthetics, there are a couple things I want to touch on here. It has, I would argue, a very grim, unwelcoming vibe. Very sharp colors, a lot of usage of red, and the use of cell aesthetics are incredibly common. Not only are there the cells themselves, the entrances and exits from portion to portion of the palace in the area these two are in also take the appearance of cell doors, and there are of course the elevated cages themselves. Chains are also a pretty common aesthetic here.

\
Not only does Kamoshida clearly view the school as his castle, but the students themselves as his prisoners. They're captives to his ego, not actual beings with agency, but less-than-humans to which he can do whatever he sees fit. They aren't people under his tutelage, but, essentially, captives to which he is entitled to act his will upon. And as the king, and in a sense the warden of this glorified prison, the chained prisoners must obey every whim he may have. This'll be made even starker in a bit, but it's worth noting that even now the visuals of the palace itself pretty clearly sets that tone.

We get a quick reintroduction to the game's parkour element here, as we press the A button to jump across some gratings to get to the other side of the river, as well as the ability to crawl through gaps, as the pair crawl through an opening in the wall of one of the cells.

There's also, as Ryuji remarks, an old school drawbridge that allows them to get across the river again. The utilization of an older, classical aesthetic- the drawbridge, the cracked wall with clear wear and tear, also call upon somebody who wishes for an older time, somebody who clings to the past and refuses to let it go, and allows that to maintain a hold upon their psyche.




Ryuji and Joker hide from some guards and then go up a spiral staircase to where they hope is the exit. Sadly, it just leads to another area of the Palace. They walk past a few more cells, before encountering another drawbridge, this one raised and uncrossable, with a miniature statue of Kamoshida to its right, because I mean, of course he'd have those.



They pass a couple more cells, before meeting our third protagonist, being held prisoner.


This very cute Totally Not A Cat is Morgana (voiced by Cassandra Morris, best known as Kyubey and Taiga from Toradora. Funnily, she was also the original character Aika in the Persona 4 anime.) They plead for the pair to let the furball out, noting that the key is right there. Kind of slack security in my opinion, but I suppose Kamoshida didn't really plan for intruders with actual freedom to explore the place, so it is what it is.

Ryuji voices skepticism that Morgana has their best interests at heart, noting that they look a bit like an enemy themselves, though Morgana raises the pretty salient counterpoint that they're, you know, a prisoner. Joker admittedly also doesn't have the greatest first impression of our new supposed ally.

I've commented on the choices giving our protagonist personality before, but another thing I like about them is that in many cases they can make it pretty clear how Joker feels about the people around him. This'll be especially stark with a couple other characters, but we'll get there.

Morgana promises to lead them to the exit if they free him, and despite Joker and Ryuji's skepticism, well, it's not like they're getting anywhere on their own.

Meanwhile, back at The Ranch Shujin Academy, Kawakami notes that Bean isn't at school yet, and ponders if she should call the police. She adds in a bit more grumbling and self-pity, but at least she kind of cares, I suppose.

At the palace, Morgana leads them back to the raised drawbridge and statue, and guides them through the One Neat Trick to lower it: interacting with the statue and lowering its mouth causing the drawbridge to lower. They then run into a couple more guards, and Morgana reveals that he too has a Persona, and the fight begins in earnest.

It's another pretty easy tutorial fight against two Shadows, with Morgana teaching the concept that some shadows have weaknesses to certain attacks that you can exploit with the proper actions- typically different kinds of spells, though there are a couple weak to physical attacks we'll see much later. And if you exploit a weakness against a Shadow, you get an additional turn to do stuff. Pretty typical Persona gameplay fare.

And since there's a bt of a lull in the necessary recapping, I suppose now is a good time to point out that our protagonists' personas have names and identities, which thus far are tied to famous fictional thieves. Joker's is named Arsene, a reference, of course, to Arsene Lupin, one of the most famous gentleman thieves in fiction dedicated to doing good, even if his methods are often... legally dubious, and whose adventures on occasion had elements of, let's say, the fantastic. Morgana's is Zorro, another classic do-gooder who often finds himself on the wrong side of the law.



Persona 5 fluctuates from a degree of subtlety to just smashing a brick called "The Point" in your face.

Joker regained his snazzy black thief aesthetic during the Shadow fight, but dissipated shortly thereafter. Morgana concludes that this is because Joker doesn't have full control over his powers yet. Which in this case is probably true to a degree, but it might be worth noting that the appearance and disappearance of the thief garb once one gains a Persona is, we will see, also tied to one's will of rebellion and desire to fight against the injustice around them.

If I were the analytical sort, I could argue that another reasonable read of Joker's magical appearing and disappearing attire has to do with his current mindset. Right now he doesn't want to fight against the injustice around him, he just wants to get himself and Ryuji the fuck out of here. Which like, mood to be honest. He's very self-driven, not goal oriented, or driven by any kind of spirit of fighting back against the obvious evil around him. And if you think I'm reading too much into it, though God knows I would never do such a thing, don't worry, we'll get some more blatant examples later.

Morgana then remembers that, hey, these two want to escape, and after handing them some recovery items, they press onward. As they traverse onward, Ryuji notices a boy trapped in one of the cells, and thinks his garb looks oddly familiar.

Ryuji wants to rescue him, but Morgana points out that maybe escaping the Palace where the king wants them dead is more important at the moment, and seems to want to dump some more exposition about our new friend, but gets interrupted by another fight sequence. I win in a couple seconds, because I'm a master at this game. It's not because it's an incredibly easy fight because the two Shadows are softies and are weak to Curse magic, which Arsene has. Nope, it's not that at all.

The trio then arrive at the entrance hall, and Morgana brings them to an exit- but not before quizzing Joker on how they should escape, which is, of course, the very conspicuous ventilation shaft.

While Ryuji celebrates his soon to be freedom, but Morgana says that he still has something to do here and they'll have to go their separate ways, clearly to never see these two again. As they leave, he comments that they could prove useful to his mysterious machinations, Joker in particular.

Kinda snarky, yes, but good advice, to be fair. I'm sure Morgana appreciated the tip.

They then arrive on a street and a Navigation App, probably associated with Eyeball App, helpfully informs them they're back in the real world. I'm sure they appreciate the heads up.

As Ryuji voices his rather understandable confusion, they meet up with the Fuzz, who want to know what's going on. And Ryuji's input that there were trapped in a mysterious castle is, admittedly, probably less than helpful at convincing the cops that these two are on the up and up.

The fuzz then suggest they head to school, noting they certainly didn't see some ominous castle when they passed by the school earlier, and Ryuji and Bean shortly thereafter Follow Instructions.

Think it's a bit late for that, my friend.

We then get a quick scene where we cut to the head of the SIU (Our good friend Sae's boss), who gleefully indicates that the Minister of Transportion is a scapegoat for whatever is going on, and that perhaps he's not necessarily the most trustworthy guy around. He grumbles that Sae seems to know things might be Deeper than They Seem, but seems to want to let her be for now. (I can only link music so insert your own ominous musical sting here.)

Meanwhile, Bean and Ryuji arrive at the school, which has done a bit of transfiguration back to, well, a school. There's a teacher waiting for them, informing them that the cop proceeded to call the school to report their little act of pseudo-hookey, while proceeding to let us know that Ryuji is a bit of a loner.
Better be careful Fed, as they say, snitches get stitches.

The teacher reasonably asks them where they were, and while Ryuji is understandably really confused at this point, I won't pretend his answer of insisting that they were in a magically disappearing giant castle would be particularly convincing.

Overhearing them, the PE Teacher of the Year makes his appearance, though he seems to have no memory of bumping into them at the castle. He proceeds to take another shot at that terrible, awful, no good track team Ryuji was evidently part of. This understandably doesn't sit well with our new... friend? Acquaintance? And there's a bit of tension before the fight is broken up, though Ryuji indicates that whatever happened with the team, it's our Very Trustworthy Teacher's fault.

The other teacher on the scene tut-tuts Ryuji for daring to speak out, but Kamoshida says that it was his fault too for his snark, so they can call it even. The Person of the Year award is in the mail, I'm certain. Bean and Kamoshida then have a short conversation, with Kamoshida confirming that he has no time for giving tolerance to someone with a criminal record and questions if they'd seen each other before.

We get confirmation that Kamoshida remembers that Bean was there when he Not At All Creepily invited the female student into his car, but seems to have no memory of, you know, wanting Bean dead. Being a standup guy, he agrees to let Bean being late go, it is his first day and all and this is obviously not at all related to Bean maybe mentioning to people that really creepy thing he did.

We then get a cut back to the interrogation room. Sae is, for some bizarre reason, a bit skeptical of this whole story. She proceeds to be possessed by the Exposition Fairy and lets us know Kamoshida has, shocker, Done Some Shit, including abusing students and stuff bad enough she dances around naming it, but wants an explanation of how exactly he became involved in the game's plot. So back to the flashback we go.

Before meeting up with our Friendly Homeroom Teacher, we can check in with some more NPCs. A lot of of it reiterates how awful Bean, who none of them have met, clearly is, but we also get some more friendly information about how awesome Kamoshida is.


Truly Kamoshida and Ryuji clearly have a very healthy relationship.

And there's this little aside.

An entirely unbiased decision with no self-interest involved, I'm sure, not at all based upon the massively outsized influence athletics has in modern academic culture due to the dominance of the profit motive preventing just outcomes.
Getting back to the things we're supposed to be doing, we meet up with Kawakami. Main thing we learn is that Ryuji has been declared a Bad Egg, something he wasn't back when he was on the track team. I wonder who could be associated with this sudden change in behavior.

As we near the end of the school day Bean introduces himself to his class, though in a surprising twist Kawakami actually covers for his lateness. He is then assigned the Protagonist Seat, and bumps into Blonde Haired girl from that morning again, sitting in the seat above him, who has apparently decided that silence is golden, carefully avoiding saying anything to our protagonist.
We then overhear some students then comment that Blonde Hair is clearly two-timing Kamoshida, and chat about how awful these two people none of them seem to have talked to clearly are.

School ends, and Kawakami comments on the shitty treatment Bean is getting being inevitable, clarifying that she isn't the one that spread around the information about Bean's nefarious sins to the student body. Odd, because presumably the people that would know would be the teachers. Who else would do such a thing?

We then get free attendance to another pity party, before repeating that he shouldn't get involved with Bad Egg Ryuji. She complains that Ryuji hasn't redyed his hair black again, only getting snark in response. Pretty understandable- if the entire school is going to do nothing but shower you in contempt, why bother abiding by arbitrary conformity regulations?

Certified Japanese schooling moment.
There's then a short aside with Professional Scumbag Kawashima and Professional Principal Kabayakawa, where Kamoshida laments that a student with a criminal record will make his Grand Accomplishments with the volleyball team mean nothing. Kobayakawa proceeding to do some classic ego-puffing, while confirming that Bean being enrolled is all about the money, baby. You might be starting to note a theme with our dear authority figure.

The pair then meet up on the school's rooftop to discuss their situation. He notes that the two are kinda in the same social position at this point and thanks Clown for saving his life and all that. He then comments that nobody wants to say shit about Kamoshida because he is a gold medalist in volleyball that took his team to Nationals, something Sae touched on earlier, which pehaps does help explain that kinda massive ego he has.

Sadly, it turns out our new bestie seems to have injected far too much copium.

Ah, yes, one of those dreams that two different people remember when neither was asleep. Happens all the time, I hear.
When he gets home, Dad calls him out for being late, but mostly just leaves it at a "don't do it again". He gets then gets a call from someone who seems to be checking in on him and agrees to head out shortly for his totally a date. Bean then heads back to the Claustrophobia Center he calls a room, and heads off to sleep.
Night of April 11th
And we return to the good ol' magical Velvet Room. Justine and Caroline give around as warm a greeting as last time. Igor comments that it's celebratory that Joker has awakened to his powers, but there are sadly no balloons or streamers in sight,

Igor, I hate to break it to you, but Morgana basically already explained this. You're dropping the ball when it comes to being the mysterious mentor figure at the moment.
Bean asks the pretty reasonable questions of what on Earth "rehabilitation" means if he's meant to save the world given the implied implications that it would bring him in line with it, and what exactly is going on with... pretty much any of this nonsense he's been thrown into the middle of, and Igor helpfully tells him nothing, in his usual cagey style.

It's not all a waste though, he does explain that he gave Bean the Creepy Eye App that seems to let them access palaces, noting that others will likely receive it as well if he deems it appropriate. So we can assume that whatever this "rehabilitation" is, it's related to the Palaces.


If we go by Igor's track record, the logical conclusion is that vanquishing these palaces will likely result in thwarting this mysterious ruin. Though that begs the question of how exactly that "rehabilitates" our protagonist here, since one would think that shattering the desires of people like Kamoshida, those with a position of power in society, would position them as exactly the sort of justice-fighting rebel Bean was to begin with.

With that exposition done, Igor and his colleagues send Bean back to dreamland, bringing an end to the day.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you read this far, thank you so much for your time. I did actually also have most of the 12th in this post as well, but given that it proved to double this post's length and I wasn't even done with the day, I thought splitting the post in two would probably be for the best. But given that, as that kind of implies, the 12th is basically written up, more to come shortly.

 

[1337Procrast]

Tbh it seems like half the reason the dungeons are called Palaces is Kamoshida's actual fucking palace.

Also gotta stan our boy Ryuji.

 

[Bea]

"Very shortly", I think I said, hahaha....

There's a few reasons it took this long despite working on it semi-continuously, but tonight I just had to go: Okay I've been plugging away at this for multiple days and at some point, it's like, just post it dudette. You are at the intro of the game, it's ok.

Anyway, more exposition and scene-setting, more cameos, another persona awakening, good stuff.

Also I would like to thank @Omicron for a lifehack on how to post this with images that didn't involve me having to fiddle with an image hosting site for 2 hours with a migraine. This method also finally got me to start writing these on Google Docs rather than via the SV textbox like a psychopath, and trust me, that is way smoother.

That said, I still run into the image limit, so I ended up just splitting this post into two parts. It's something I'm not super happy with, most importantly because it will likely hurt my precious Post-To-Like-Ratio, but it might also make it easier to read, frankly, as well as fix the amount of images problem. The threadmarks will also be a little less clean, but it's really not a huge deal, I'll just add subcategories for them.

April 12th

Bean wakes up, basically goes "ok what the fuck was that", but then goes back to focusing on living a Normal Student Life (TM).

Bean takes the train, while they comment on the conductor's little 80 Casualty oopsie we get confirmation that going into a homicidal vogue state is something that has been happening quite a bit lately. Fortunately, some people discussing the problem provide a reasonable answer to this conundrum.



I mean, what could explain a bunch of people randomly becoming homicidal and killing dozens of people OTHER THAN the bad economy, when you think about it.

After Bean transfers trains, he bumps into a new student- a thin girl with a red ribbon some students were talking about a few seconds ago. She offers her seat to an old lady, but some douche takes the seat and pretends to fall asleep. Bean is like "hey yo this is kinda bullshit", but she takes it in stride (and to be fair there's little that can actually be done about it), while feeling bad that she couldn't help the old lady, and apologizes. The old lady dismisses the apology, probably happy that somebody actually cares given that almost nobody else in the game gives a shit about anyone. Our mystery girl offers to at least carry her luggage.




Would this solve anything? No. Given our protagonist's circumstances would it likely send him straight back to jail? Yes. Do I blame the MC wanting to do this to This Kind of Asshole? Not in the slightest.

Afterwards she has a short chat with Bean, clearly happy that he actually cared enough to try and help, and says that she partially went out of her want to thank him because she didn't want to be rude to her "senpai", which given that Bean is a second year, I can deduce with my Ace Detective skills makes her a first year.

Wish the game didn't feel the need to waste our time with this pointless cameo, but it is what it is.

(Yes, my snark will continue to have the subtlety of Persona 5's symbolism. I refuse to apologize for this.)



I'm partially posting this to give a clearer shot of what she looks like, but also because god is that an unwieldy moniker.

Bean then reaches school without having to worry about the threat of death this time. We get a quick class interlude that I should probably elaborate on for a couple reasons.



It really is fascinating that the jaded burnout that hates us seems to be the most sympathetic teacher at this school.

The first is a gameplay thing. The game has a few social stats you can build up that serve a few purposes- for instance the ability to interact with characters at certain points can be blocked and essentially function as a timelock for first time players- and properly answering teacher's trivia questions during class is one way to improve one of those stats. Stat accumulation being one of the three main reasons Persona guides can be such tedious min-maxxy disasters.

There are five stats, I'll talk about at least a couple of the others as we go along, but answering school questions correctly gives you a point in the one called "Knowledge". I'm admittedly not sure why providing an answer you already know makes you smarter, but hey, I won't say "no' to a free stat point.

The second is a bit more relevant, because the questions posed in class, in classic Meaningful Fiction fashion, do often have a very common tendency to touch on, or outright underline, the story and thematics.

In this case, the question is about a deeply cynical work that talks about how the framework of society is build and driven by villains, though the teacher (a deeply bitter and antagonistic man, so clearly an author avatar) quickly assures us that villains actually can find no place in the world, simply adding chaos and strife. Which is a pretty pat narrative, when you think about it.

We cut to a loading screen that lets us peek in on a bit of the student's gossip. Not too much here, but there is some chatter about how some honor student, the concept of foreshadowing filling us in that it was probably the girl with the ribbon we met earlier, and THE DELINQUENT are starting school at the same time, demonstrating that fate truly enjoys dualities. Which also helpfully makes it clear that she's probably a transfer student herself.

Speaking of non-main characters, Bean is nowhere to be found in the next scene. Instead our PE Hero is talking to Blonde Girl, who we learn is named Takamaki. He continues to be red flags shaped like a character, but Takamaki shuts him down, saying that she has a photoshoot today, indicating she's probably a model of some sort or something. She also adds that she's Really Sick with Real Appendicitis and is not at all trying to avoid the deeply creepy much older man, she swears.



This man is literally a walking billboard for Stranger Danger. For real, as the game would say.

(Takamaki is voiced by Nana Mizuki in Japanese and Erika Harlacher in EN, some prominent roles of Erika's being Aiba from the Somnium Files games, Kaede Akamatsu in Dangit Ron Paul 3, and Violet Evergarden from... Violet Evergarden. I'll be upfront here because, like, we all know she's going to be a main character, I'm not even going to keep pretending at this point.)

We now go back to our protag. Bean is walking out of school, where he proceeds to bump into Ryuji. Sadly, Ryuji's copium supply seems to have run out, and he wants to investigate what in the name of justice is going on here.




OH NO THAT'S BECAUSE BEAN STOLE RYUJI'S COPIUM BEAN NO

So, if you're a sensible person, you pick the choice to agree, much to Ryuji's relief. Which makes sense, given that I'm not sure how he planned to do anything if Bean said no without any way to fight the monsters swarming that place.

Bean in a moment where he actually has thoughts of his own, notes that Ryuji seems chill so he decides to go along with him. They then retrace their steps from yesterday, and get nowhere. They then do it again, and... get nowhere. Bean desperately wishes that he could go home which, I mean, given that they've been walking in circles for probably around an hour, pretty understandable.

After a bit more bumbling, Ryuji's neurons fire a bit, and he remembers how this seems tied to the Ominous App. They then use it, seem to teleport, and we're back at the castle.



I mean, I wouldn't blame Ryuji. Joker's subconscious has some style, I can't deny that.

Morgana then arrives on the scene, and reasonably is kinda confused as to why they came back to that place where the person in charge wants them dead. Ryuji then hears a scream, and Morgana notes that it's probably a prisoner, and that this is pretty typical. Just Another Day in Hell, I suppose. Ryuji is, quite understandably, a little pissed off at Not-Kamoshida torturing people, and wants to get more info on what's going on. Morgana agrees as long as Joker tags along, and he assents, to Ryuji's gratitude.

Morgana then points out that just charging in through the front door is what people might call a "Bad Idea", and they enter via the ventilation grate they broke last time. Morgana takes charge, and they head through the palace. I don't have much to say here on the aesthetic front, there isn't much we hadn't seen already at this point, and some of it I might draw on later anyway. Just give me a sec.

And then, after a bit more Persona-On-Shadow Violence and a quick tutorial about how you can use a model gun to kill shadows more easily (it makes sense in context, we'll put a pin in it), there's a dialogue exchange where Morgana explains a few game mechanics and then swears that he's a human. Which, like, Doubt.png.


We do learn why he's here though- according to him he wasn't always a Not Cat, and he thinks exploring this place will let him get his actual form back. So he made his Dynamic Entrance onto the scene and Kamoshida tortured him for his troubles. (At this point, pretty on brand, gotta say.)

They then enter one of the Palace's Safe Rooms, which is basically a glorified save point. There's also the ability to head back to the entrance or earlier areas of the Palace while you're in here, and have some optional dialogue with the other protagonists. It's very subtly suggested you ask the soldiers where the prisoners went, and the very chatty Shadows nearby let us know they've gone to some kind of training hall.

We'll find that Shadows love to detail exactly what the protagonists need to know at any given time when they're stuck, which in fairness is really neighborly of them.

After beating down two more guards and a couple explanations regarding gameplay mechanics, including re-introducing the group combo with the pretty little image at the end we saw in the opening, we get to the training hall and it's sure... a thing.



A lot going on here. Compared to a lot of the Palace we've seen up to this point, it's more fancy, stylish, and just looks better kept together. Probably in part because this is more recent for him compared to his halcyon days, but Kamoshida clearly thinks this area is important. Which makes sense, given that it's the home of his abuse. There's the celebratory nature of the title, as well as the framing of it being "Of Love". This in part is of course Kamoshida's joy in torturing the people under his thumb, but also is a pretty classic abusive tactic. He's doing this because he cares. He is doing this to help you. If you think it's weird, aren't you the problem, when you think about it?

We then get to see a couple volleyball members mindlessly echoing this sentiment with a good dose of learned helplessness. When Ryuji tries to talk sense into them, Morgana explains they aren't actually real people, but basically a mental construct of how Kamoshida sees them in an idealized form, is the gist. Though Morgana immediately adds that it's still reflective of reality generally speaking: if he's abusive in here, he almost certainly is abusive in the real world too. His perception of them is still as slaves he can do whatever he wants to until they mindlessly go along with it, after all.

RYUJI DON'T POINT OUT THE HAMFISTED SYMBOLISM THAT'S THE WRITERS JOB YOU'LL GET THEM UPSET DON'T DO IT

Ryuji then catches up with, honestly, the audience, and realizes that the people being abused are members of the volleyball team. Ryuji decides that the gameplan is to try and get evidence and report this behavior to the police, which in fairness is as good an idea as any at this point. Their cameras won't work, so Ryuji uses his newfound Photographic Memory, to memorize what they look like so he can talk to them in the real world.

We then get a good look at what exactly our good ol' boy that carries the volleyball team on his back is up to.

Depriving his athletes of water while engaging in strenuous workouts.



Not very fun fact: this is talking about something that is genuinely true. While I can't speak for the situation in Japan, It was a massive problem in the past in the US in sports like school football and while the situation has improved, it still isn't illegal for coaches to do so and despite it, to be clear, being deeply frowned upon and generally shamed even in the profession at this point, there are still cases where it absolutely happens. Who says video games can't be educational?

And actively abusing them because... he wants to, I guess
.

Ryuji and Joker then try to flee the palace again, before getting intercepted by... guess who. At some point you wonder if they were secretly fitted with GPS trackers.

We then get the dark truth about Ryuji- that he acted selfishly in a way that ruined the dreams of the other members, cruelly ending their ability to perform the sport they love.






It may shock you to learn that this narrative is a bit... one-sided. By which I mean it isn't true at all.









Meanwhile (Ok this happened a scene ago but give me a bit of structural liberty for the sake of pacing), Joker and Morgana were overwhelmed by Kamoshida's henchmen and are quickly captured.

(Some nice mood music)

Ryuji finds himself helpless, lamenting his fate. He can't escape Kamoshida, who took everything from him. He took his reputation, he took the track team, and now he would not only take his life, but the life of Joker, who did nothing wrong. Kamoshida is the one with power, he is the PE coach that everybody stands up for, that nobody can see is an absolute piece of shit. Another person that can just be ruined and tossed aside by people bigger than him, stronger than him, and there's nothing that he can do about it.

Narratives are written by the powerful, after all- not the weak. Who cares about his story? Who cares that he was a victim brutalized out of convenience and what amounts to mild distaste. Nobody will speak up for him, nobody will believe him. If he sits here and dies now, is that truly that much worse than the slow agonizing death he'd face in the real world, with his name mud and his dreams crushed?



And Joker asks if he's going to just take this. The belittling, the abuse, everything. Just, essentially, be a grumbling doormat for Kamoshida to run over and beat down as he pleased. If the story Kamoshida wanted to write was him as a worthless punk, why abide by that narrative? Why not fight as best he can, and at least try to create his own?

And Ryuji most certainly agrees.





And so the inevitable happens.

And, well, I tried several different times to get good screencaps of the Persona awakening scene. I like them a lot and do want to kind of do them justice, but that is exactly why there won't be caps here- I have tried several times, using the cut-scene in game, using theater mode, adjusting the size of the image, no matter what I do I just hate the quality of image I get, it's a blurry mess, something I don't have a problem with the other ones. I don't know if it's some artifact of the coloration or an effect being used, or due to more of an emphasis on rapid movement, or my fault somehow, but I just can't get it to work. If you want to see the awakening, here's a good video of the scene.

Now that you expectations for this post are appropriately lowered, I can hopefully raise them again a bit because I do have some thoughts here

One thing that is a bit different in Persona 5 is the sheer level of agony in the transformations. The series is not a stranger to the implication that bodily harm or sacrifice must be achieved to obtain power- this is the series where people shoot themselves in the head to gain superpowers after all. However in Persona 4 much of that violent imagery is absent, since awakening has far more emphasis on self-actualization, and even Persona 3, though it does use a sort of pseudo-suicide as a metaphor for awakening to a new life, even it did not have anything resembling this level of emphasis on the sheer pain being experienced by those awakening their personas in particular. There's the viciousness of Joker's scene, and if you watch the video above, an equal amount of blood and bits of Ryuji lying on the ground, writhing in pain as the Persona awakens.

I think that one could argue that part of that has to do with what awakening consists of in each of these works. In Persona 3, it's the abandonment of a past self in order to embrace a new mission and meaning forward in life, in Persona 4 it's an embracing the darker side of oneself in order to reach full self-actualization and be able to fully move forward past those flaws in your life. Whereas with Persona 5, awakening to your Persona is becoming aware of the injustices in the world, and dedicating yourself to fight past them, embrace your own sense of what is right, and allow for that to reflect in your life. Something that requires a great deal of interpersonal struggle in some cases. In other cases perhaps less so, and there is an interesting contrast in the amount of brutality in the awakening scenes- the next one both isn't far off and I think shows this well, so we'll put a pin in it, but only for a couple posts. Won't be too long.

As with Joker, Ryuji releases a blast of energy upon his Persona awakening, knocking the minions back and freeing the others. The head of the guard, not impressed, decides that he'll take matters on himself, and we get our first real fight of the game, in my opinion.

-----

Miniboss Fight #1



Here you're fighting a Guard Captain (or Eligor), who immediately summons two Bicorns to fight alongside him.

It's to a degree a spike up in difficulty- mostly because the Guard Captain can hit pretty hard and the Bicorns can do decent physical damage if you let them live; he's the first real opponent where being knocked out is, in my opinion, an actually possible outcome.

That doesn't make it a hard fight, though.

The trick is to use Ryuji's lightning magic to quickly knock down the Bicorns and then finish them off that turn, and turn the fight into a 3-on-1. Yeah, Eligor can resist Arsene's magic, but at this point he should know a physical skill, and you can quickly chip away at his health using it and Ryuji and Morgana's offensive spells. If Eligor hits somebody hard with his physical attacks it can be annoying, but you can use Morgana to heal while you finish Eligor off. Nothing too cumbersome- I've lost Ryuji a couple times during this fight, but it was more me being a bit careless or Eligor getting a really unlucky crit than anything.

-----

Kamoshida frankly seems to care very little about his henchmen being murdered (and to be fair caring very little about anyone around him is massively on-brand, as the kids say), and proceeds to show off his cognitive perception of Takamaki. The fact that he would turn a teenager with a career that clearly has no time for him into hyper-sexualized arm candy is, perhaps, honestly the least surprising thing about this Palace thus far. (I will not be showing screenshots of this, naturally. What you're imagining is probably on-point.)

A confused Ryuji tries to get Takamaki to say something, before Morgana (after not at ALL being a gentleman upon her appearance) reminds him that this is closer to, essentially, a glorified sex doll than an actual person.

Kamoshida then underlines the point in a firm black marker- this Palace is his world, where everybody loves him, everybody respects him, and there is nobody that would dare talk back or question him. Which in a way, shows that at heart, Kamoshida has a deeply fragile ego. That part of the reason he lashes out at people that dare question him is because he himself can't stand to be questioned; his ego is so inflated by everybody around him but underneath that lies a sort of deep insecurity that he needs to guard himself from the world with cheap bravado. If, as it will turn out, he wasn't The Worst Person, it would kind of be pitiable.

Kamoshida then calls in some reinforcements, and the trio are forced to retreat for the time being. Morgana tries to then rope the two into his own plan to investigate how to get their original body back, with Ryuji and Joker interjecting that they didn't agree to join them in their little escapade.



Some Fs in chat seem appropriate here to be honest.

Morgana declares that this is Totally Not A Cat discrimination, while Ryuji just says they have bigger fish to fry, before the pair head back to the real world.

I suppose this isn't a bad point to touch on Ryuji's Persona. Who, for the record, is Captain Kidd, a reference to, of course, famous privateer Captain William Kidd. The story as told by the Persona 5 wiki is that he was falsely accused of piracy because a crew plundered a ship without his knowledge. As nice a parallel as that would be, the Wikipedia article argues that he lead the plundering, and just relied on the fact that the English government gave a lot of leniency to privateers engaging in forms of piracy at the time (and is the one with actual sources), with both sources agreeing England tried and executed him, largely for political reasons, soon after. To be fair, both sources then agree that stories about his piracy then became more and more expanded and exaggerated over time.

In fairness it's still not a terrible parallel- in both cases he became a victim of authority, and had his life destroyed out of convenience, and in both cases their stories were twisted and exaggerated over time, turning him into a greater and more notorious villain than, perhaps, you could argue is appropriate. But it's definitely quite not as on-the-nose or straightforward as P5 wants it to be, so they fudge things a bit.

Speaking of Ryuji, he then thanks Bean for the hand, and asks if he's in on the plan to get the volleyball team members to rat Kamoshida out on his abuse. Bean agrees readily. Ryuji reiterates that now that Bean's criminal record is out they're pretty much in the same boat anyway, and speculates that the whole thing was Kamoshida's fault. Which at this point is hardly a particularly unreasonable guess, to be honest.

The two agree to join forces, and we get our first social link!



I really like the look of the Confidant images btw. With the chains and everything it looks really snazzy.

For those unaware, a social link (ok they're called confidants in this game but I will probably forget) is basically a gamified way of showing people's bonds with the MC. You get (typically) 10 scenes of the other character being broadly introduced and then going through some kind of miniplot, character arc, conflict, or so on, and the main character helping them through it. They'll give you various bonuses, abilities, and so on. Trying to balance social links are the second thing that makes guides of Persona games min-maxxy as hell.

Ryuji, Confidant Scene 1/10

In the scene, Ryuji takes Bean to a nearby ramen place- we'll learn that ramen is a big thing with him- with Bean explaining the whole "framed for assault" thing that caused him to be transferred here. Ryuij commiserates, and says that Bean is the first guy he's felt a real bond with since the Track Incident. He assures Bean he has his back, Bean scores Ryuji's digits and chat info so that they can keep in contact.

The game has made sure to note Ryuji and Bean's similar status several times, but one thing that I'm surprised they haven't discussed yet is how their circumstances are also identical. Both of them were framed by someone with power and influence for something they didn't do, something that was passively abided by by a system that cow-towed to the powerful men making the demand. In fact, both are even essentially framed for the same offense of assault.

This is something the game doesn't really discuss at all in the social link, which is weird and a totally fumbled opportunity, because it's such an easy way to emphasize their duality and really highlight their bond in my opinion.

As they're heading to the station, Ryuji notes that conveniently there's a Kamoshida ego-stroking session volleyball rally tomorrow, which'll give them a good opportunity to talk to the volleyball team members without Kamoshida looking over their shoulder. And with that, the pair depart as they prepare to talk to the volleyball team and expose Kamoshida's abuse, a plan which will surely go well.

END CONFIDANT

I like Ryuji's social link a lot, but I would argue this is one of the weakest openings to a social link, confidant, whatever you wanan call them, in the game. Now, in the game's defense, this is also the introduction to them, and they have to try and balance the social link, plot stuff, and Ryuji learning about Bean's situation but it just... is mostly a repetition of stuff the game has already talked about? Even most social links with other team members try to start out approaching the story from a slightly different angle or provide a new aspect to have the characters, or something. It's just mostly nothing. In fairness it's pretty fast to get through in-game, but still.

There are, however, other characters in this story, so let's see what they are up to.

 

[Bea]

April 12th (2)

These other characters include two girls talking on a bench at Shujin Academy before volleyball practice: Takamaki, whose namecard helpfully finally informs us goes by Ann, and her bestie Shiho Suzui (voiced by Christine Cabanos, the new English voice of Sailor Saturn as well as Hapi from Three Houses.) Shiho is clearly feeling rather down and Ann tries to cheer her up, noting how great it is that her volleyball skills are finally being recognized.



Okay, I'm not a psychiatrist but I think that maybe that wasn't the best tack here.

Ann voices concern about some pretty bad injuries Shiho had last time they talked, Shiho assuring her that those were Totally Normal, especially given the volleyball meet coming up. Certainly nothing for her to be concerned about. Ann clearly has her doubts, but says nothing.

A fellow going by the moniker Well Behaved Student then enters the scene, letting Shiho know that Kamoshida wants to see her, for reasons apparently too important to disclose.



The cameos start coming and they don't stop coming…

Shiho is on the verge of saying something to Ann, but Ann interrupts her and waves her friend off, assuring her it will surely be a Totally Normal conversation about the starting lineup. Shiho agrees in one of the least convinced tones of voice ever, and heads off, Ann quietly sending well-wishes as she departs.

To summarize, we have somebody pretty clearly suffering from pretty awful depression and self-esteem issues who is being actively abused by her coach, and a best friend who clearly gets something is wrong, but has so much of her own shit to deal with that she feels like the best she can do is provide assurances and silently support from the sidelines. I'm not enough of a dick to be snarky about the fact that this is a powder keg that is clearly about to explode.

In less ominous news, Bean gets back to his cafe cum home. Sojiro checks in and is satisfied that Bean, you know, actually attended school this time. Ryuji messages him to remind him of The Plan, and Sojiro's irony senses are clearly tingling, as he chooses this moment to remind Bean to stay away from Bad Influences(TM).

Bean then heads up to his room to turn in for the night. But far more important than letting the poor boy sleep, now that the game has essentially outright started, checking Bean's belongings gives the player a lot of goodies.

Royal was nice enough to come packed with all the original DLC for the original Persona 5, which includes a bunch of outfits if you want to play dressup and add in gratuitous fanservice because Atlus, various useful items, as well as massively overpowered gift personas you can summon for free at first that just straight-up break the game that I refuse to use on principle.

Oh, and also you get 100,000 yen. Because why not.





To be clear, this skips roughly 21 pages of costumes, items, and accessories, and that doesn't include the roughly 15-20 personas which aren't noted here because that part of the Velvet Room isn't unlocked yet.

OP personas aside, probably the most useful item is the Camera Strap accessory, which continually refills your mana and health as you go through a Palace, meaning you don't have to micromanage your characters' resources, thereby making beating Palaces quickly infinitely easier. Indescribably valuable, especially in the early game.

After we've stocked up but before Bean can finally get some rest, Ryuji checks in again, letting him know that he too now has the Ominous App, which he can't get rid of. Ryuji notes that using it is probably an option worth keeping in mind, but first comes talking to the volleyball team and exposing Kamoshida's abuse, a plan that can only go well. Bean then heads off to sleep.



Too many people have made the obvious joke, damnit! I refuse!

We wrap up this post with a visit to the Velvet Room. Igor promises to actually explain what he means by "rehabilitation". He then does this by not doing so, and instead talking about how making close friends and building meaningful relationships is poggers, ya'll. So Bean should do that. Caroline and Justine then echo this sentiment, as does a friendly little text box.

Bean recognizes that Igor has very high expectations of him. We of course still have no idea what these expectations entail beyond defeating some kind of ruin he refuses to elaborate on, but that isn't particularly important because SOCIAL LINK GET!



If you haven't played the game, I know,, I know, that ability is utter gibberish. I'll explain it next Palace visit.

Igor says that Bean'll understand the things he makes effort to refuse to explain in due time, and that Bean should make sure to devote himself to his rehabilitation, while continuing to refuse to explain what that means, or how "rehabilitating" himself will actually do anything to fight against this ruin that is coming.

But our good friend Caroline tells us it's time to go to sleep instead of learning the context to anything, so sleep we shall.



One thing I respect about the Velvet Room is its customer service, to be honest.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As usual, thanks for reading this far. Next time we hit the 13th, where we see how badly Ryuji's plan goes, and our rollercoaster that is this arc finishes reaching the top of its ramp, and is about to plummet downhill at terminal velocity.

I really wanted to kinda underline how much Kamoshida's arc revolves around the concept that the powerful are the ones that get to define narratives, that the story is not just written by the victors but the victors with influence, popularity, and authority and echoed by people that don't know any better until it essentially becomes the truth, but the "fun" fact is I don't need to yet, given that in a couple game days the writers' approach will be less comparable to a knife in the gut, as it is so far, and more like an AK fired straight into your face.

 

[1337Procrast]

The delivery on Ryuji's line just before the awakening cutscene was really fucking good, iirc.

I continue to enjoy the blithe comedy of the commentary too.

 

[Bea]

This is, for the record, not the next update. However, this is something that I want to deal with, because it involves material I don't want to have to engage with later on in the story and can refer back to here.

This is also, for the record, not a buildup to an announcement that there will be no more updates, as I would think the above would imply. I actually have the next one started in a Google doc, and hope to finish it and probably post it tomorrow, and I doubt the tone of it will even be impacted basically at all by what I'm about to talk about. Fundamentally, I still really love this game. I love the characters, I think the story is incredibly well-written in a good deal of places and is pretty clever at times, and I connect with it quite a bit in a lot of ways, and do think it has many very progressive elements that in some ways are undersold or overlooked. In many ways, the attachment I have for it and starting this LP helped me out of the anxiety spiral I've been in for two years, and I'm not going to pretend I don't hold even more attachment to the game as a result of that. I'm also not going to pretend that I don't hope that people are still willing to follow along despite what I'm about to say, partially because I like that people care about my takes, and in part because I think the game still has a lot of value. But this is supposed to be an honest interlude.

But this is meant to be an honest analysis of the game, not just a gush fest, and deciding to look into the matter regarding the "gay" stereotypes (More on that in a second) that appear in the Shinjuku and beach cutscene has made me feel the need to address the point so that I don't have to later.

So, the first point I want to touch on is the original scene in the original Persona 5, because it is fundamentally unchanged in the Japanese release of Royal. While I could make justifications for this, the fact is that at the end of the day, the creators did not feel the need to originally alter the material, which does to a degree put the need to provide an alternate translation to the English, perhaps not outright bad faith, but not necessarily a full commitment that the material in the original text was wholly wrong. I can't say that for certain- there could be other reasons for the discrepancy I'm not aware of, and if anyone in my handful of readers knows more about this, I would like to know it myself.

So I found a far more sympathetic analysis that looked at the original scene than the usual take, but I didn't want to take that analysts word for it, so I asked if anybody who could read Japanese could provide their analysis, and a friend kindly offered. Their conclusion is that while the analysis was correct on a couple points, in many ways it's fundamentally wrong.

I feel like it's worth touching on what they felt the piece got right first. The Atlus EN translation, from my perspective likely deliberately though they were a bit more circumspect, did engage in a degree of trans erasure. The "gay" characters openly refer to themselves as women in the second scene, and use language in the first that is definitely language that is used in trans culture, rather than gay culture. Given the content I can't say why they did this, exactly, since them being trans doesn't really make the work that much more LGBT-friendly.

In the original, the trans people still do come across as, to a degree, predatory in both scenes, aggressively pursuing Ryuji despite his active distaste and even worse behavior in the second scene. While it is absolutely entirely arguable, I would even say is decently a reasonable read, that these characters had no idea that they were underage, and that some of the more extreme interpretations of the second scene are a bit off the mark, at its core they still come across as predatory, perverted, and not particularly sympathetic- if anything seen as something of a threat. I won't break the scene down further because it isn't worth heavily belaboring the point. The original piece's argument that this is an attempt to mock Ryuji, while artificially makes sense given some of the other content in the game, really doesn't hold up given some of the context of the second scene.

So, let's talk about the English edit. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't make the scene relatively better- instead of sexually predatory they are merely more incredibly pushy and aggressive; but that pushiness and aggressiveness is still decently problematic, especially given the lack of consent of Ryuji in the first scene, and the dismissive response by Joker is still incredibly awkward and goes against his character. The beach scene also makes them still come across as a degree predatory, though admittedly significantly less so than the original, and their overall language, appearance, and behavior is still to a degree stereotypical, as are, certainly, their designs.

the game actively engages in deeply problematic trans stereotypes to flesh out its characters, and while the closest thing to another trans character is treated more sympathetically, and there are small elements in the game that seem to treat crossing the gender binary as not inherently repulsive, it doesn't erase the to a degree hurtful nature of these scenes.

I love Persona 5, I still in many ways feel included in its message of rebelling against an unjust system, and believe that in terms of many social topics, including sexism, the police, and even gay people, it is still a significant step up from Persona 4, in my opinion. I think it has good messages about society, a lot of compassion, and overall is a game I still love quite a bit, and have a lot of emotional gratitude for. That said, I do wish I could feel fully included, and I can not. There is a frustrating caveat, one of the few in the game, and it does end up making me sad, because I wish the game could be better about this.

I don't think the situation is hopeless- the fact is that the edits are an improvement, I can't say for certain why the original in the Japanese was unchanged, and the scenes could, frankly, still be much worse than they are. I don't think this makes the creators iredeemable even on this issue, and even that aside, plenty of people have blind spots while still having a good deal of compassion toward the downtrodden and interesting things to say.

This will be continued, ideally very soon, and in many ways the positivity I have toward a lot of the work will not change. I've said it a few times, but I still love this game, have fun writing this let's play, and I hope that people are willing to stick around and find out why. But I felt like if I didn't let this out and vent a bit now, it would color my motivation to do the rest of the work, which would be a shame. I have to be intellectually honest and fair, and this is a flaw the game has. But as I said in my original post on P5, just because a game has flaws doesn't mean you can't get worthwhile things from it, that you can't connect with it, or that it isn't worth experiencing, and I stand by that wholeheartedly. I hope you can too, but if not, I also can understand that, even if it is a shame.

I will link to this post when we get to these parts in the beach scene and Shinjuku, because I will freely admit I don't want to go through those scenes against without the skip feature.

If you read all of this, thank you for your time, to be a broken record I hope you'll continue following this thread, and a much more positive post toward the game will be coming soon.

 

[WestOrEast]

I got the impression that those pair were gay crossdressers when I played Royal, which only minutely changes the flavor of 'yikes'. Kind of glad that they only had one unskippable scene and before and after you can just walk right on by them.

 

[Bea]

Alright, back to our regular programming. Also it probably isn't hugely going to matter but because the subforum doesn't have the prefix I added a "mature content" tag. There's some heavy stuff in the next couple posts and while in some ways it's the nadir, there's plenty of stuff later too, so I think it was probably overdue. I will also be providing a quick pre-update note if I think the content is worse than what we've seen so far to the point it deserves some kind of warning for if people don't want to deal with it. I can't recall too many times it'll be strictly necessary, but I don't think it'll hurt.

(Yes, to be clear, none of this is stuff the game is endorsing and quite obviously so, but in terms of some of this stuff, I can be a little sensitive to it myself at times, so better safe than sorry feels appropriate)

In that spirit, Mild content warning for some sexist stuff said by the teenagers, nothing too serious but out of thoroughness.

April 13th

We open with some students walking to school, talking about the Kamoshida Power Hour volleyball meet. There isn't much here worth commenting on, but I bring it up for two things



First of all, "bandwagoning first year" is the most on-the-nose moniker imaginable, I love it. You can also see Ann and Shiho walking together and chatting(?) in the background there which I thought was kinda a cute easter egg.

We then get to the EgoStroking Session totally fair volleyball rally where the two teams are the volleyball team against the teachers, one of whom, I will remind you, is a gold medalist. Glad they're striving for the team composition to have the fairness and balance exemplified by Fox News.


I love the shoujo sparkles here, to be honest, very nice touch.

When Kamoshida totally accidentally spikes one of the volleyball players in the face and they fall to the ground, he quickly goes to help them, thereby showing that he truly cares about his team members.


An example of behavior straight out of Faces of Compassion, to be honest. (God that's a deep cut)

We then get a couple shots of Sad Ann, one from the perspective of her and the volleyball team, and then a different one from the perspective of her and Ryuji, who implies that he knew her in the past, with Joker then looking at her for a second thoughtfully. Not at all symbolic of how Ann is now completely isolated from both any connections she could have in the present or any connections she had in the past outside Shiho, something that fills her with loneliness and pain, no sir.


So, the game now introduces the fast-travel function, which allows you to basically move from place to place with a click of a button. It's very useful but as I do want to show off a lot of the optional convos, it'll be used slightly more sparingly than in a typical playthrough.

Speaking of, we're going to completely ignore it right now, essentially flip the bird at Ryuji's request that we get down to business and interview the student in our class that Ryuji recognized at the Palace, and do some good ol' eavesdropping.




The main thing that I think worth noting here is the fundamental carrot and stick approach that helps ensure compliance from both the volleyball team members and (as will be indicated later) likely their parents. Yeah, getting abused sucks, but if you endure it for three years and do well, you get a fast-track scholarship, which will allow you to get into a good college and pursue a career in the future that will get you more money.

The issue here, I should note, is a bit different from in America. While not free, Japanese colleges are generally actually decently affordable overall compared to plenty of countries. The issue is that a great deal of emphasis is put on getting into as prestigious a school as possible, so scholarships are essential, because they can get you to the best college possible which can put you on a track to a good, well-paying job.

I don't want to dwell too hard on the rather obvious corruptive power of money and economic success in this relationship, I've touched on it already and it'll come up less subtly later, so let's put a pin in it.

This one isn't important but I do want to introduce one of my favorite NPCs, Newspaper Club Member. She's scared of us right now because the teachers have their eyes on us but once we're less notorious for our criminal record you can chat with her and get both context on the current situation and follow-up on what else is going on. It can be pretty useful. And I just really like her, she's a sweetheart and tries her best. She does tell us that Kamoshida's influence is blocking people from investigating what's going on regarding his abuse, which is somewhat new but not shocking.

Okay, we can go back to playing the game for a second. We go interview Mr. Scared Volleyball Player and Bean approaches the matter in the most diplomatic way he knows how.


Bean, I would say you'd make a bad detective, but honestly if you just make your questions a little more leading and reliant on tripping the other person up, you'll do fine.

Ryuji attempts to be something closer to Good Cop, saying that he promises they'll protect him as best they can, they just need someone willing to come forward about what Kamoshida is doing. Mr. Player is reticent, and well…


Bean I think you need a Snickers.

He then shuts Ryuji down by asking if he has actual proof, and the conversation quickly peters out. Ryuji and Bean then decide to split up and try to find somebody else that might be more willing to talk. Tyuji is going to go check the practice building for people, while we talk with a student whose homeroom is 3-C, which is slightly confusingly on the first floor. While we're doing that, though, let's check in on what else the student body is talking about.





Nice to see some of Shiho's classmates actually caring about her.


Yep, the compassion sure is real.

For a dose of actual empathy, you can find Ann and Shiho chatting by the school entrance.









I do wonder exactly why Ann was bullied? Sure she looks a bit different but surely there must be more to it. What could all the students have against her to such an extent that they would-






Oh. I see.

So like, something they don't make explicitly clear about Ann until her social link and character profile is that Ann is actually not "pure Japanese", though the platinum blonde hair and her name might have been a bit of a clue. She is 1/4th American and also moved to Japan from Finland when she was young. So, you know, there's that. The explanation kind of writes itself after that honestly.

Anyway, we meet up with the third year, he spouts a bunch of abuse apologia and then gets scared of us and stops talking. Ryuji then hits us up via text and says that he got another possible hot source- a first year. First years, confusingly, having classes on the third floor.

We also don't get too much from the first year, beyond that Kamoshida gives "Mishima" "special coaching" (honestly that sounds deeply ominous even if we weren't talking about this guy), which hey, is at least some kind of lead.

I will always pick the savage options for Bean. Personal policy.

Now that the volleyball meet is over, the two decide to meet up at the courtyard and figure out a new plan. However, Ann arrives first. She tries to get more info about what Bean's deal is, but Ryuji quickly arrives afterwards, and the two have a short clash, with the conversation ending by Ann saying that they shouldn't expect anyone to actually help them. Ryuji drops some info that she knew Ann in middle school, and then Bean drops his info that Mishima is their next lead

Bean and Ryuji corner Mishima near the entrance, and oh hey, it's Well Behaved Student! Nice to see you again, Cameo Man with Ryuji pressuring Mishima to come clean. After Mishima tosses out a couple of the usual excuses, Ryuji outright asks if Kamoshida is the one trying to keep them quiet, and, well, speak of the devil and he appears.


What a good, supportive coach. You can really tell that he cares about his players.

Kamoshida pressures Mishima to go to practice, and he eventually relents. Kamoshida basically tells Ryuji and Bean to get off his case, and before he leaves, Mishima drops a bit of a bombshell- that the parents and principal all know about the abuse, but that everybody keeps quiet about it. He then points out that Ryuji, Mr. Broken Leg himself, should know how useless it is to try and speak out against Kamoshida, which clearly hits a sore spot for the boy for rather obvious reasons, and then runs off to practice.

The fact is that with scandals like this, what Mishima says is very often true. The parents are often not necessarily in on it, but the staff especially frequently know about this sort of abuse, and turn a blind-eye because it's sportsball and that's how educational institutions make money and the coach allegedly can do a good job. I'm reminded of what Candice Fabry wrote in The Guardian on the topic:

"Administrators and leadership in positions of influence survive because of silence. It's a circle of silence, in which a survivor feels defeat, shame and guilt when the institution's inaction and silence breaks a survivor's will to keep fighting."

Kamoshida survives because nobody will admit it, and the people who might investigate it are continually blocked from learning more. The principal and people in charge will know about it, but it's something that is often difficult to impossible to prove, and with them quietly blocking people from actually being able to prove the allegations, essentially all the victims retreat into a sort of learned helplessness where they refuse to support revealing his behavior, not wanting to be the next one knocked down. And so the cycle continues.


Okay that is honestly a perfectly fine and entirely correct statement, but it being put that way still cracks me up.

While this is true, a more direct answer would basically be "because money". Kamoshida makes the volleyball team more prolific- they apparently do pretty well, and that is likely because the team became one of the Places To Go for Volleyball due to Kamoshida rather than his "coaching methods". This gets the school more funding and allows the people in charge to get more money, so they quietly force the students to endure. The students and parents, meanwhile, in this scenario know what's going on, but are both threatened into compliance and incentivized because it's the best way to get a scholarship, which will allow them to get good jobs and get money in the future. This entire scheme is essentially driven by capitalism's incredibly fucked up relationship with education, and education becoming something far more driven by profit than taking care of students.

Ryuji continues to rant about the shitty conditions all the students have to endure, before adding that "that follower" doesn't give a shit about them, who he confirms to be Ann, presumably because her statement that nobody will help them certainly gives the implication that she knows what is going on, but isn't actually telling anyone. Why Ryuji singles out her when the parentsand administration are more culpable is a little strange, but maybe it's because he actually knows her and therefore has a sense of disappointment.

Tired from the various adventures he had that day, Bean then proceeds to go to sleep.

April 14th

Time for another wholesome educational experience, I'm sure.

So not much happens during the school period, so let's cut to after school this time. Ann and Shiho are back at the bench and chatting. Ann again pressures Shiho to talk, but gets shut down and doesn't overly pursue the matter. She talks about Shiho's recent injuries, and Shiho basically brushes her off.



Ann, not sure what else to say or do, ends up wishing Shiho luck, and the two depart.

After school Ryuji and Bean are hanging around the courtyard figuring out what to do- they run through the possibilities: going to the police is a no-go since they have no real evidence outside things the police won't believe, and directly going to Kamoshida won't actually accomplish anything. Bean has a Big Brain Blast and suggests they attack King Kamoshida at his Palace. Ryuji is interested but not sure exactly what that could accomplish… and to answer that question, a cat wanders up and starts talking! Yep, as you might have guessed, it's Morgana.


DEFINITELY not a cat btw

After realizing that the school fuzz is looking for a cat on the property, they quickly hide Morgana in Bean's bag and go up to the rooftop for Exposition Time! Morgana basically explains the entire premise of the plot- that if you get rid of a palace, you cause the owner to have a "change of heart" that results in them no longer being corrupted by their twisted desires, and as a result of no longer being corrupted by those desires, they'll feel guilt for their crimes and confess them. The palace will also go away after it is destroyed, leaving no evidence behind that they did anything. You do this by stealing some sort of "Treasure", but he refuses to explain more before they agree to do it.

However, after the two slightly reluctantly agree, Morgana then notes something relatively important: getting rid of somebody's desires doesn't just mean bad things, but basically the desire to do anything at all, so if this is done improperly, the person could die. Ryuji balks at this, because well, potentially becoming a murderer was not on his to-do list for the day. He asks what Bean's opinion is and well…


Listen, I know what is going to happen. Dude kinda has it coming.

Morgana, upon hearing Ryuji's doubts, shares some great Totally Human sense of empathy.


Seems like he has a cat's morality too

Ryuji is still skeptical, feeling that if they just force their own will on people, they aren't any better than Kamoshida is. Morgana notes that they don't seem to really have any other options, and heads off, saying that they'd better have made up their minds when he comes back.

Okay, slight aside, and I don't want to get all CinemaSins-y here, but the main characters discuss exactly what one can do to cause the person to die later on, and act like it's something they all know that Morgana told them. But Morgana never finishes his thought here, and it doesn't come up again. I don't know if this is a slight translation quirk, or if just the assumption is that it was talked about off-screen because the writers didn't want to ruin the surprise, but it just comes off as weird when we're being told the story from Bean's perspective that he and everybody else just casually knows this information that was kept from the rest of us. This isn't the only time that happens in the story, but usually there's some kind of context for it.

Anyway, back to the game. As Bean gets ready to head back to Leblanc, Ryuji texts him, noting that now rumors are also going around about Suzui and Kamoshida, which Ryuji finds odd, because he can't imagine Ann or Suzui being into him, and wonders where exactly these rumors are coming from.


Makes ya think.

There's a pretty obvious answer, but I'll get to it in a second. First of all, the game encourages us to listen to kids as we head home, and talking to NPCs is something I like to do anyway, so let's see what there is to offer.






Truly, it's not like there's anybody else potentially in this very conversation that could raise concern and awareness to the problem…


Why are teenage boys like this

So, that was all very pleasant. Thanks for the advice game.

Anyway, it's Kamoshida. Kamoshida is the one spreading these rumors. It gets established very shortly that he's the one that leaked the information about Bean, and he's the main one that actually has something to gain by spreading false rumors about Ann and Suzui; by spreading rumors about Ann he further isolates her from everybody and continually puts pressure on her to actually commit to his advances, while positioning himself as the only one that is actually on her side. The rumor about Suzui may seem a little weirder but… what's going on there will be made abundantly clear when we get to a certain part of Kamoshida's Palace.

Anyway, one thing that is interesting here is the emphasis on hierarchy in terms of control of the narrative. Kamoshida is above the hierarchy of Ryuji and Ann, so he gets to control what is believed about them, and they can't say anything about it because they are lower on the totem pole and do not have the status cachet to say anything about it- Ann in particular already being a social pariah due to her "non-native" status. Socially, Kamoshida is at the top- he's a Japanese dude who won a gold medal, is conventionally attractive (you do not know how many girls in the school are down atrocious for this guy), and has a position of power and prestige at the school, as well as helping the school obtain a lot of money, which puts those even above him in the hierarchy in his pocket, because money in itself can increase you position and influence iin the hierarchy.


SHOUJO SPARKLES AND EVERYTHING

And with this hierarchical power he controls what people believe, what people are told, and how people perceive the people and world around them through spreading false information. This'll come up a lot in the main plot itself, but it is the first example we see of how power can not only dictate terms, but also, in a sense, the truth, to the public.

Like, in terms of soul Kamoshida is, at this point, rather obviously hideous, but I think it worth noting that on some level he is pretty conventionally attractive? The huge chin is kinda a turn-off but he definitely has that sort of shoujo Hot Teacher look in my opinion. Which is, rather clearly, intentional. The contrast between outward beauty and inward ugliness is one rather obvious point that is being made, but given the direction the next couple days are going to go, there's a bit more worth digging into, I think.

One really common trait in both Japanese and American media is how teacher-student relationships are treated. The Japanese relationship is, of course, rather obvious- just turn on pretty much any otome game and you're likely to have the option to hook up with a teacher. But it's not uncommon in American media too; one of the most stark examples is the show Pretty Little Liars, which has, as I recall, three examples of the female teenage protagonists hooking up with men at least in their 20s, one of whom is the character's English teacher. To merely underline this point, hilariously the books the series is based on actually has said teacher be sent to jail pretty early on in the series, but the creator and main writer of the TV series decided, in her infinite wisdom, to not only keep him in the show, but keep that love interest plotline throughout.

And while I think it would be fair to argue that this is something actively encouraged by the fiction young girls consume and you can't pretend that this behavior occurs in a vacuum, it's also just something that seems to be, to a degree, kind of natural. The fact is that girls very often mature far more quickly than their male counterparts, and teenage boys are seen as immature, crude, and complete messes, while adults are seen as mature, wise, and people who have their lives together. (We pretty much never do, but that's neither here nor there.) So of course teenage girls will have their fantasies about being able to hook up with older men, and teachers are an obvious choice- they're people that have a sort of authority, that tend to look like they're in control, and so on.

This isn't me just purely rambling, the game is perfectly aware of this here and plays into it. Again and again, the female students talk about how attractive and cool Kamoshida is, and this is something that in some ways is clearly being weaponized by him, it makes it both easier for people to believe that Ann would want a relationship with him, and as a result easier to turn them against her, a feat that was likely already pretty easy anyway.

One final point, then I swear we'll get back to the game. I think that this arc does a good job at really summarizing the way that in this context, boys and girls have different jobs in supporting gendered hierarchical discrimination like we're seeing here.

With the boys you see sexist and objectifying judgments, essentially treating Ann like a piece of meat that they can pursue with no will of her own. They put all the will in the relationship on the man, Kamoshida, and essentially give him full control and power, that thing that he wants as well. In a way, it's an analysis of how patriarchy gives men the concept that women are, essentially, their property. With Kamoshida particularly this will definitely be seen again, and it'll come up elsewhere too. And sexism is a very common thoroughline in the work, and how women respond to it will be very interesting to talk about.



Girls, meanwhile, respond by essentially turning on each other, taking each other apart, and bitterly belittling and gossiping about the victim in question. Rather than straight out objectifying them, they turn them into the enemy, into a rival, into somebody that may have agency, but no positive agency. Something that they can just say as many horrible things about as possible with no real consequence, because they're getting in the way of what they want. While girls absolutely can directly bully, they often take a more indirect approach that merely contributes to the public shaming around people like Ryuji and Ann, solidifying Kamoshida's position.



In general, kids are cruel, but in this case I would argue that they are in particular cruel in a way that is actively defending the maintenance, certainly the influence, of a hierarchy with a tinge of patriarchy due to the words of those in power.

Okay, back to the game. When you reach the station, you can see Ann bickering on the phone with somebody- who in context is clearly Kamoshida. She clearly is trying to get him to back off something, but she starts to break down when he uses Shiho's position on the team as a bargaining chip.

Bean decides to intervene, given how clearly distraught she is, and desperate to avoid talking to somebody, she runs away. Bean decides to give chase, really wanting to have an actual word with her, and catches her in the subway terminal, and asks her to at least talk with him. Ann gives in, and the two go to what looks like the local burger place.

I will say that I think this is a pretty strong cutscene, and that the visuals and voice acting (both Harlacher and Mizuki sell the scene really well imo) do a better job than I can with screencaps and commentary, so I do recommend kinda following along by listening to the cutscene, or watching it first, especially if you haven't played the game. Here it is in English, and here it is in Japanese.

Ann is first reluctant to talk to Bean, but after Bean pokes her a bit about how he knows she was talking with Kamoshida, she opens up.


Man, if you think this is the most disgusting Kamoshida is going to get… yeah… put a pin in that.



Though we learn a decent amount about her in Ann's social link and a scene in the bonus content, I do wish we got to see Shiho a bit more. Her relationship with Ann is really cute in my opinion, and a compassionate NPC in the game is always refreshing.

After Ann recovers, they continue the conversation, Ann having a good deal of compassion to Bean for trying to help and saying she always suspected the rumors due to his CRIMINAL RECORD weren't legit. She then talks about how she feels a connection to him, since to her it feels like they're in the same position.





I feel like the fact that she is actively discriminated against honestly adds an additional layer of meaning to this bit.

Ann talks about how she wishes that Kamoshida could just move on and not harass her and Shiho anymore. You try to comfort her, but she basically dismisses whichever response you give. She says she'll figure out something to do with Kamoshida, and then leaves the burger joint, and you shortly follow thereafter.

We cut to Mishima talking to Suzui, who… umm… I'll let you see for yourself.



Anyway, Kamoshida wants to "meet" with Suzui in the PE Faculty office. Why exactly, he refused to tell him, or so he claims. Shiho just stands there for a second, and you can basically almost see her heart shatter into a million pieces.

Ann calls, but she doesn't answer the phone, even as she softly mutters her name. She then heads to where Kamoshida is waiting for her.


One thing I think is kinda underrated is that P5 sprites can genuinely have really strong emotive expressions.

It's evening now, and Bean arrives back at Leblanc, the meeting with Ann evidently meaning that he gets home too late for Sojiro's liking.



Bean should become a vtuber to be honest

Sojiro asks if Bean has been hanging around Bad Influences, and gives him a short bit about how he needs to be careful who his friends are, lest he get into Deep Trouble. I mean, a good point I suppose, I'm not sure there's bigger trouble than getting beaten up and injected with a drug by cops, but who can say if he's right or wrong really. Before Bean goes to bed, Ryuji goes to bed, he checks in with Bean and wants his take on Morgana's offer, hesitant if he wants to go so far as potentially murder him.


Objectively correct take.

Ryuji says he gets where Bean is coming from but is still uncomfortable with the "possibly kill a guy" part. He says he'll try and think of something else they can do tonight (spoilers he will not be able to do so), and Bean goes to sleep.

—-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's it for this update. Thank you so much for your time. The next update will be short. There will also be no jokes. We have now reached freefall.

 

[1337Procrast]

I'm glad we finally get to see the phone chat message interface. It's not of my favourite things of the game's whole aesthetic tbh. Really cool looking and solid for how it keeps the communication flowing between the main characters.

 

[eagle II]

This has been a great read so far - I've always been a mechanics-first player for many games, so it's nice to see a critical examination of the game's ideas. Looking forwards to more!

 

[Bea]

This one will be short. It also will have no jokes.

I would like to emphasize in case you haven't played the game that every prominent character involved in this scene shows up again later, and any indication that they will not is either a lie or simply early and incorrect information.

CN: Suicide attempt

April 15th

The day begins with a short aside from a couple students that Suzui didn't come to a volleyball team meeting either later yesterday or this morning, it's a bit difficult to tell from the line. We then cut to class, where the teacher who openly hates all his students is giving a lecture regarding the checks and balances of the Japanese government.

It's probably more there to indicate the importance that government will have in the narrative coming up, but I can't help but think about the fact that what fits in this game point-wise is that most systems are like government, and function on checks and balances and a level of fairness and equity on all sides. If all sides are corrupt, the checks and balances in place collapse, which can definitely become close to a failure state for that system, and if it occurs enough, society at large.

Ryuji then gives you a beep, saying that he can't think of anything that they can do beyond the plan possibly involving murder, shortly thereafter Morgana popping out of Bean's bag, saying that really they should hurry up and agree already seeing as they have little choice, much to Bean's frustration (and confusion as to how he got in there).

Class is then interrupted by a student running in and informing the class that someone is about to jump. Ann, seeming to suspect who it is, quickly runs out of the room. And a look on the roof shows it is Shiho. She stands on the ledge for a second. Then she falls.

We now have to head to a door in the practice building so that we can get better access to the scene in the courtyard. I won't belay the point for long, but two quick things.


Holy shit game, that is fucking savage


And at least somebody here seems to have their priorities straight.

Though they lack any sort of spine, evidently.

There's another convo I do want to highlight and some stuff to dig into here, but honestly I kinda just want to move past this scene. This'll absolutely come up again later, we can circle back.

Ryuji and Bean head to the scene, with Ann already there. When nobody else is willing to take charge, Ann says that she'll go with Shiho to the hospital. As Ann cries by Shiho's side and tries to comfort her in any way she can, after Shiho says she simply couldn't take it anymore, she whispers Kamoshida's name into Ann's ear.

Ryuji and Bean are obviously not in earshot of this, but they see Mishima rapidly fleeing the crowd and heading back to school, and conclude that obviously he knows something. So they chase after him back into the school building and corner him. After a bit of aggression, Ryuji has more patience than I would have in that situation, honestly, and ereassures him they don't want to get him in trouble, they just want to know what the fuck happened.

Mishima explains what we saw the previous game day, that Suzui was called to Kamoshida's office. He explains that when he was in a bad mood about somebody's performance, he'd call a student to the office and physically abuse them. However, nobody happened that day, so Mishima isn't sure what prompted this.

Of course, given that the order of scenes would place this after Ann rejected Kamoshida's missive, we can probably guess.

Ryuji, absolutely livid, runs to Kamoshida's office. Given that we don't even have any potential conversations to eavesdrop on, nothing to do but follow him to the PE Faculty Office.

Ryuji, angrily, and Mishima, more guiltily, call out Kamoshida's role in what Suzui did. Kamoshida coldly notes that they have no proof, while also declaring that Mishima is merely making the accusation out of spite.






It's actually amazing how every time you think this character can't get worse, they find a way to make him even less human.

Ryuji is about to hit him, but Bean stops him, noting that it won't actually do any good to just let Kamoshida goad him- if anything it'll get him in more trouble. Speaking of trouble, he declares that he will get all three of them expelled at the next board meeting. He implies that he will claim that he threatened them somehow, but it mostly just comes down to… because he can.

Deciding to rub further salt in the wound, he reveals that Mishima was the one who leaked Bean's criminal record in the first place, and it was to keep him quiet about Kamoshida forcing him to do that he kept him on the team, as a sort of bribe. Kamoshida then lets out an immensely creepy manic bit of laughter.

Ryuji vents that there seems to be nothing they can do, but Bean notes that they still have Morgana's option to get vengeance. Ryuji comes to the same conclusion, and the scene ends.

That's that. Part of the reason this took a bit is that I really didn't want to end it on this for a couple days, so I'll be adding the next part basically immediately after I add the screencaps. But I think a break here is good because the tone now shifts significantly. What happened remains very important, but on some level the game couldn't keep the utterly bleak tone that the previous scene had, and at least now the protagonists realize there's some hope, so there is a justification for things to stabilize a bit at least.

Catch you in a second.

 

[Bea]

Okay, let's swing back to a bit of a calmer Persona 5. Our last Persona for the first arc gets awakened let's go.

For the record, if the Vibes of my writing feel a little different, been going through some stuff (good stuff) that has tweaked my writing style a bit. Hopefully it'll be fine.

CW: Mention of sexual assault

(I swear it's mostly chiller, Kamoshida just somehow gets worse)

After they leave Kamoshida's office, they meet up in the Courtyard, and Morgana confirms that they want to go through with this. Ryuji is like, well fuck yes, someone almost died because he's such a creep, and Bean also confirms. Ryuji then asks the rather straightforward question of, you know, how does all this work. Morgana quickly notes that he's never actually done it before, much to Ryuji's shock. Which like, fair.

However, Ann then interrupts their conversation saying that everybody is talking about how the two (well three) of them are about to be expelled, and says that she wants in on whatever they're going to do to deal with Kamoshida.



Oh that Kamoshida and his wacky antics.

Ryuji, bewilderingly, says this has nothing to do with her, to which Ann points out that her best friend is kinda in a coma now because of him, but Ryuji still ends up forcing her to leave. Afterwards, however, he indicates that it was more out of a desire to protect her, which I mean… it's not like she can do anything against the Shadows so fair enough I suppose.



Morgana what does this even mean

One thing that is interesting about Morgana is that while he definitely is well-meaning and isn't bigoted, he can have kind of… dated perceptions regarding social issues, most commonly gender, that typically feel like they're being played for irony or laughs more than anything else. We'll see some examples as we go along.

Morgana then explains that they are Phantom Thieves now, because he… wants them to be I guess. I mean, it's as valid an aesthetic as any, and Bean and Ryuji are in favor, so you do you guys. Ryuji then realizes he knows literally nothing about this app, and asks the obvious question on if somebody made it, then decides he doesn't actually care, which given the situation is honestly a pretty reasonable response, worry about that stuff later.



You know, this is why you maybe should check around you before activating your magical device that essentially transports people to a different dimension. Don't worry, they'll never figure out that they should do this.

Anyway, they're preparing to do their castle exploration when Ann walks up wondering what the fuck is going on, and sees Ryuji and Bean in their stylish duds, sees Morgana talk, sees the giant castle, she sees a bunch of stuff really.

So Ryuji's response is just… to throw her out. Like yeah, I get it, Morgana says that the Shadows could attack which puts them on a clock (something that never happens in-game, but gameplay-story segregation I guess), you can't really explain this stuff quickly, she can't do anything in a Palace, and he at least promises to explain after they Handle Things, but like… it still feels a bit like a dick move. Could be my own Ann bias getting in the way though.


As I said, remember this for later.

Morgana and Ryuji bicker (something that will become a frustrating trend in some ways), and then Morgana gets more information about Ann and…

It begins….

Like, I don't hate Morgana as much as some people I know, but he can be a deeply frustrating character. Exactly what he is is kind of interesting and in specific places he does provide some interesting aspects for commentary but he can be… so annoying.

I do respect that I'm pretty sure how he treats Ann is more supposed to be more of his weirdness, like his obsession with gold, rather than something relatable, and it tends to be treated with a degree of ironic or comedic effect. Which makes it feel a bit better than a certain Persona 4 character, I'll give the game that.

In a way, you could see Morgana as a sort of, outside perception of humanity at its extremes. He has an extreme sense of greed, to the point that money actively distracts him from what he was previously doing, and an extreme sense of lust, to the point that he'll actively obsess over Ann (if in a less creepy and more annoying sort of way) in a way most people would probably consider massively unhealthy. I suppose you could argue that in a way he holds up a mirror to the extremes of human nature, and how we obviously find those distasteful.

Anyway, they then confirm their codenames, Ryuji is Skull, Bean is Joker, Morgana is Mona. I've already done this with Joker, but from this point on I'll probably use their codenames when they're doing Phantom Thief stuff, and their actual names when doing non-phantom thief stuff, because it feels like it's worth differentiating. If I forget, hit me with a rake politely inform me in the comment section.



I love how much of the game's aesthetic is decided basically by Morgana thinking it's cool. Genuinely really funny to me.

Our erstwhile group then proceed to enter the Palace, and see the shadows engaging in their own pep rally of sorts, with Kamoshida standing above them, saying that if our protagonists are seen again, to instantly kill them. I guess that he was just emphasizing their MO, since that seemed to be the plan anyway.

But I do find it interesting how in Kamoshida's head his goons are basically the same as his volleyball team, to the point that he has little pep rallies where they all do chants and praise him. It's not a novel point, but it just reinforces that he sees the volleyball team as essentially disposal slaves that exist primarily to prop him up.

Skull mostly just wants to go in and knock some heads, but Mona is like "bro, look at the guards", and says they need to focus on stealing the treasure. He isn't sure where it is, of course, except in some sense deeper within the castle.

They then open a door and encounter a shadow staring at… nothing, not sure what its deal is. Ultimate "Head empty, no thoughts" moment in my opinion. Wish I capped it.

But regardless they attack it, and introduce the mechanic that allows you to get more personas in this game- essentially negotiating with Shadows. After you have knocked the shadows in the battle down by exploiting a weakness (or getting a critical hit on them), you can ask them to join you, and if you pick the right dialogue options they will. I do not recall the Devil Survivor games that well, but I believe it's a vaguely similar system.



I do not know what is funnier about this scene, one of the worst persona in the game dunking on you for being cringe, or bonding with you because you're cringe.

You then get a chance to use Pixie to knock down and potentially recruit another shadow- I recommend doing that, since it'll give you wind magic after leveling it up. Shadows and fusing persona are the third and final reason Persona guides are so min-maxy.

I'll probably touch on it from time to time, and note when it's good to have a persona that does specific things against bosses, but this isn't a gameplay guide so it's not something I care about too much.

Listen I'm a Zillenial in 2023, this is not a good question to ask me.


Also just want to note that even when doing negotiations, Joker can be a total dick it's great.

I find the evolution of the perception of shadows kind of interesting- in Persona 4, outside a select couple, they don't really have that much autonomy as far as I can recall, they were essentially mooks that you took down mindlessly. They took different forms but those forms didn't really mean that much of anything?

Whereas shadows in this game have personalities that actually influence how they react to you and how you negotiate with them, they have different questions depending on what kind of shadow they are, and if you actually personafied them and ask them for an item instead, they will actually beg you to recruit them again. (I will often do this even unnecessarily because I am Parasocial and I feel bad). And while there's always some deviations, Shadows often feel like they have a sort of theme or contrast that fits with whose palace it is. It feels like a way Persona 5 kind of shows its compassion toward beings in general, even the Shadows are kind of people too, in a sense.


I guess, Mona, that you would say… you never saw it coming?

The gang then continues to explore the castle, finding another area of shadows to recruit.
Fun fact! Unlike in most areas of the game, the shadows always respawn here no matter how many times you go back and reset the area, so you can grind and grab any personas you want. Which I did. And ended up dying, forcing me to go through the entire palace stuff again. Which isn't that much of the game, but is kinda annoying.

So you know, it is a decent place to grind! Just don't be, well, a clown and get too greedy..

And uh-oh, somehow Ann got back into the Palace Realm! This is really bad she has no way to-



Oh, she's a main character. Okay she'll be fine.

The gang enters a safe room and discusses strategy- Mona explains that they'll need to, well, find a way to the treasure before they can get the treasure. This concept confuses Skull because he is a sweetheart but also has Jock Brain. He then shifts gears and makes the more reasonable point that it sure is convenient that Mona has amnesia but remembers everything that they need to know to progress through the game. Mona protests his innocence while not coming up with any actual explanation, and they start to fight, but then the guards walk by talking about a "Princess", catching the group's attention.



Laying it on thick, huh game?

Apparently the Shadows confused Ann for Conceptual Ann which seems a little weird, since they look and act nothing alike. Maybe Shadows operate more on Vibes than actually seeing things, and it has the same Ann Sense? I suppose that makes a degree of sense, since they're conceptual beings rather than real organisms, so identifying things by concept basically works.

Mona pops back in and says that they're holding the Real Ann captive, and they need to rescue her. So, you know, let's do that. She's in the central throne room area of the Palace, so we head there. We also hear Ann screaming protests all the while, she is clearly confused and Skull grumbles that she doesn't know what is going on, but you know, that kinda happens when you don't tell her literally anything.



Ann, trust me, the cops do even less in this game than in real life. It won't help.

Kamoshida then arrives, alongside Sex Doll Ann, and understandably the Real Ann is now even more confused. She asks the questions anybody would ask, and in response Kamoshida just does his creepy laugh and taunts her a bit. Ann decides she has had enough of Kamoshida's bullshit and snaps back at him, and after some "input" from Conceptual Ann, he decides that she should die. Which, I mean, c'mon my guy, you were going to do that anyway.

Oh and as Joker and Skull come to the rescue, we learn the female volleyball team members in general are basically depicted as his personal harem in a bit I really doubt I can put on SV. So, you know, is that a surprise? Not really. Is it disgusting? Absolutely.

(God I just realized I can screencap basically none of this scene huh)

So anyway, Joker and Skull arrive, and Kamoshida, having no human empathy whatsoever, says that it's her fault Shiho jumped, because after Ann refused his advances he…yeah. You can guess what he did. The game really wants you to want to murder this dude. Like genuinely a good villain to start the game with, because it becomes clearer and clearer that this is not remotely a moral dilemma because like, you can't let this guy keep doing this. He is starting to commit actual felonies at this point.

Ann and Skull are understandably kind of really pissed, but Kamoshida says that if Skull or Joker take another step, he'll kill her immediately. He then gets ready to kill Ann a bit more slowly, while continuing to be a horrible creep. Can't say he doesn't have a brand, I suppose.

Ann sits there, seemingly ready to die, wondering if this is her punishment for not saving Shiho. Whether she's internalizing Kamoshida's garbage or her own thoughts isn't really clear, but it is kind of aside from the point.

In many ways, Ann's behavior is kind of explained by something that isn't given that much focus on- that she was bullied for being a "foreigner" and Shiho had to essentially save her, and it's pretty clear people holding her in contempt never really stopped. Constant bullying typically results in one of two things- you find some way to resolve it, or your brain rewires itself into a state of learned helplessness where you decide that nothing can ever change and that there's nothing you can do.

So in many ways, Shiho essentially functioned as her anchor, if she couldn't change her own position, she could at least better Shiho's, make her successful in a way that could potentially give her confidence and make her stronger, only that massively backfires too, and she doesn't feel like she can do anything about either Shiho's situation or her own, and it very rapidly spirals out of control. And now she's lost her anchor, and is essentially moorless, feeling completely powerless. So who does she have to blame but herself? What can she do but wait for her own death, powerless to blame anybody but herself?

(Actually good mood music) or (The music I must admit I actually listened to while writing this)

Joker asks her if she's simply going to quietly take the mental and physical shame being heaped on her, if she is willing to suck this all up and let herself quietly die to the absolute monster that hurt and broke the only person in the school she cared about.

And she decides… no. That she's had enough of just sitting by and letting things happen around her, she's going to take her life into her own hands and do what is right, for both Shiho and herself.




Oh thank god some things I can actually screencap.

And then, well… here. We. Go.






I'd love to post the video of Ann's persona awakening because it involves her both killing some guards and slicing the cognitive version of herself in half which is kinda meaningless but both symbolic and pretty kino, but sadly Cognitive Ann just had to be too awful. Pain.

Also, one thing worth noting, I'll probably get some caps from the cutscene when I come back to this point later, is that though the Persona awakening scene is definitely painful for Ann, it is noticeably less vicious than for Ryuji and Bean, especially in the amount of blood. Just put a pin in that.

Anyway, a shadow awakens, and we get our next mini-boss fight.
______________________________________________________________________________
Mini-Boss



So we're facing a Belphegor, a Persona that is both incredibly gross and sexist (because I mean, it's this dude's Palace), and also looks pretty tough. I mean, he resists everything that Ryuji and Morgana can do, can heal himself, has the first AOE attack of an enemy that hits Ryuji's weakness. Going to be hard right?

Well… you might have noticed I left something out there. I lied. I actually left out two things. See, this Belphie honestly doesn't have that much health, and he's kinda weak to fire, the element Ann uses.

Do you want to know how badly Ann clowns on this shadow? This is the second hardest difficulty. I had Ann use her fire moves and do all-out attacks, and had everybody else use physical attacks which Belphegor resists, I would argue the worst thing they could do. The only real action any of the other characters took is that I had Mona heal Joker once just to make sure he didn't die.

I won in 3 turns, despite him healing, with no casualties. Ann just utterly destroys this boss. You can chip in- there is a persona you can get with fire skills to provide additional firepower, and there are items that do fire damage if you have the bonus content. But this way is much funnier.

I mean in this case it was basically all you, Ann, but I'm sure they appreciate the ego boost.
______________________________________________________________________________

Ann kinda snaps out of Persona mode and is back to "what the fuck is going on" mode. Mona at least actually shows a degree of compassion, even if it's just because he's down atrocious and it has heavy chivalrous connotations. Anyway, he then tells Ann to "calm down' which understandably just kinda annoys her. And so it's our turn to try to and help, and well…



GAME WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT SOPHIE'S CHOICE IS THIS

Mona notes that backup will likely be on the way, so there is no real time to give all the exposition now, and they exit the Castle and go through the Magic Phone App Portal.



It's wild how in these last couple scenes Ryuji so rapidly fluctuates between compassionate and concerned and being annoyed by Ann for literally no reason.

The two relocate to… somewhere, I'm legitimately unsure where this place is. By the subway station maybe? Anyway, they've given Ann at least a synopsized version on the way there, fortunately, so she at least gets that they plan to make Kamoshida confess his crimes. Ann says that she wants to join in too, not just to get vengeance for Shiho, but for everyone he's hurt. Ryuji seems to be against this, and I'm… not quite sure why. I guess he doesn't want to risk anybody else getting hurt? Is he still a bit bitter about Ann? This is never exactly made clear, but regardless, we obviously let her join the party



Morgana were you in a fugue state during that fight or something?

Now that Ann is officially part of the team, everybody exchanges digits, and then Ann heads off. Before the other three part ways, though, it's pointed out that they'll need a place to meet up, and they decide that the school rooftop will work. So that's where we have to do when we want to do main quests or sidequests, at least for the moment.

AND SOCIAL LINK LET'S GOOOO



We then head back to Leblanc, and Sojiro actually has a customer- the woman who works at the clinic we saw at the beginning, kinda rocking the punk aesthetic. Sojio gives us the scoop on her- that she's the head doctor of the clinic nearby, and people generally think she kinda sucks at her job and gives out shady homemade medicine. He kinda wishes people would just chill out, which is probably fair, though if her medicine doesn't work… that might be a genuine issue people should look into.

Setting that public health concern aside for the moment, we head up to our bedroom, and Sojiro learns that we have a cat, and after giving a couple Totally Legitimate reasons it should stay despite it being a cafe, he says Morgana can stay as long as he doesn't get into any trouble and Clown takes full responsibility for him.




Aww Dad is a cat person

Morgana explains that he seems to have lost (most) of his memory due to the Metaverse being screwed up in some way, but has a plan to get it back, with the gang's help. He says that this won't be him mooching off them, since he can make some tools to help them in the palace.

And SOCIAL LINK GET! TWO Social links today! Sadly I clicked a bit too fast and didn't get a cap for this one. Sorry Morgana.

After Morgana acts as a hype man a bit, Ann drops Clown a discord message saying she felt that she had to thank him for what he did today. After Morgana gripes about Bean's room, which in fairness is a bigger trainwreck than mine, which is a high bar, he heads off to sleep.




Bean stop being a dork.

And that's the end of the day, and thus the end of this update. We'll be able to more or less breeze through the next few days, and then Palace time!

 

[1337Procrast]

ANN LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

 

[eagle II]

The two relocate to… somewhere, I'm legitimately unsure where this place is. By the subway station maybe?

Click to shrink...

I know this one, actually! This is the subway platform by the school that the game basically always skips over - I remember it because I had to search for Makoto in the post-game wrap up and could not find her for the life of me… she's here.

 

[WestOrEast]

Missed Unnamed and Unimportant Diligent-Looking Student when I played though it makes sense that she'd have something to say.

I love how much of the game's aesthetic is decided basically by Morgana thinking it's cool. Genuinely really funny to me.

Click to shrink...

Honestly, with how he acts and how he sounds (in English, at least) it's surprising that his Royal look is so old.

 

[Bea]

Missed Unnamed and Unimportant Diligent-Looking Student when I played though it makes sense that she'd have something to say.

Click to shrink...

I missed her the first couple times too, since I kinda just sped through the scene. It's fun to see all the cameos, though.