While I was writing my most recent post in the first P5R thread, I went down a couple of tangents that I decided should probably be a separate thread, since they're not directly connected to the gameplay and such.

First: Thinking about how all three of the Persona games I've played and/or watched someone play have gone, I've figured out that they're set in a universe that obeys the same basic laws as the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Tartarus/the TV World/the Metaverse is the Warp. The bosses are Chaos gods. The fabric of reality is too malleable by the unconscious minds of sapient beings for the universe to ever be stable or safe. There will always be another Nyx, or Izanami-no-Okami, or Yaldabaoth, or whoever the actual final boss of P5R turns out to be, no matter how many times Igor (... who I guess is the God-Emperor of Man disguised as a well-dressed garden gnome? Weird flex but OK) sends some poor high school student to punch the latest one in the face.

The parallels are there, is all that I'm saying. In the grim darkness of parallel realities lying close alongside early-21st-century Japan, there is only war. (I hear the Megami Tensei games this series spun off from do much less bothering to disguise that they're cosmic horror.)

Second: Also, is it just me, or has anyone else who's played both games noticed now much more both overt and implied sexual misconduct there is in P5 than P4? There's Kamoshida, obviously, but there's also that flesh-crawling subplot about Haru's arranged marriage, the mafia guy trying to force Makoto and Ann into his already-extensive sex slave racket, that whole thing with Makoto's friend's skeevy boyfriend who was part of a different sex slave racket... some of the Mementos Request mini-missions are overtly about taking down various sorts of sexual predator (and of course the most egregious of them takes the form of that one Shadow that's unmistakably a giant green penis on a chariot, what the fuck, Atlus?)... there's just a heckuva lot of rapey shit going down in this game.

Meanwhile, in P4, there was... Adachi, except he fucked it up both times and ended up murdering his intended victims instead, because he's the most pathetic no-hoper in a game universe that's not exactly understaffed with pathetic no-hopers. They didn't even go there with the backstory of Rise's show-business career. Heck, if anything, her Shadow seemed to be kinda disappointed about that.

It's, uh, quite a tonal shift, anyhow. Not sure I like what it suggests about where the writers' heads were at...

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

For the latter, I think Persona development is often linked to/influenced by the general vibes around Japan when it’s being developed. Sexual assault is much more prominent in headlines these last however many years since 5 was in development. (As for Mara, I think that might be what it’s actually described as being in some religious text or other. They don’t go too off the rails with their designs for most of them, the Jacks and character personas aside.)

For the former, the Shin Megami Tensei games are often....cosmic horror by way of showing people what they really are.

Almost all of them revolve around the conflict between Law and Chaos. Complete obedience to a greater being with an ineffable Plan for you, and a space for you to slot in like the cog you are, or rule of might type anarchy. You, as the player character, are often the one left to decide, in some manner, what fate humanity has. (It’s no surprise that the best ending comes from saying ‘screw that’ to both and going for the ending where you kill God and whoever has decided they’re the strongest of all the chaotic beings and leaving humanity’s fate up to itself). ....it often involves killing one or more of your friends who has gone to one side or the other.

(Then there’s Digital Devil Saga, which is something else entirely, and I can’t even pretend to understand it.)

It’s pretty unlikely you’ll be able to find a way to play it unless you have older systems, but you might dig the Kuzunoha Raidou games, at least aesthetically.

Ah, I see you've met Mara, a staple of the franchise.

Yeah, we dunno either.

>Second: Also, is it just me, or has anyone else who's played both
>games noticed now much more both overt and implied sexual misconduct
>there is in P5 than P4? There's Kamoshida, obviously, but there's
>also that flesh-crawling subplot about Haru's arranged marriage, the
>mafia guy trying to force Makoto and Ann into his already-extensive
>sex slave racket, that whole thing with Makoto's friend's skeevy
>boyfriend who was part of a different sex slave racket... some
>of the Mementos Request mini-missions are overtly about taking down
>various sorts of sexual predator (and of course the most egregious of
>them takes the form of that one Shadow that's unmistakably a giant
>green penis on a chariot, what the fuck, Atlus?)... there's
>just a heckuva lot of rapey shit going down in this game.
>
>Meanwhile, in P4, there was... Adachi, except he fucked it up both
>times and ended up murdering his intended victims instead, because
>he's the most pathetic no-hoper in a game universe that's not exactly
>understaffed with pathetic no-hopers. They didn't even go there with
>the backstory of Rise's show-business career. Heck, if anything, her
>Shadow seemed to be kinda disappointed about that.

TVTropes has pages on the subject "Values Dissonance" for those tropes that used to be cool in the past/different cultures but to modern Western viewers are seen as either outrageous or difficult to understand. And while Persona games in general deal with this due to being set in the modern Japan of the year they were published, Persona 5 has a page all of its own.

Some of the highlights from this thread and the previous threads:

- Akechi is actually supposed to be a sympathetic character because of rigid Japanese views on paternal heritage and social status, i.e. his being the son of a sex worker whose father refuses to acknowledge him is actually supposed to be his shame to bear. In the West we try to hold a child blameless for the circumstances of their birth (emphasis on "try"), but in Japan the reality of Akechi's paternity getting out would destroy everybody involved. Combine that with the Japanese expectations that social inferiors will follow and abide by the will of those superior to them and you get a situation where he's actually supposed to be viewed as a tragic hero for being a willing puppet of his father.

- The whole business with Ryuji getting shit for speaking up is because of that emphasis on deferring to authority, that he was the only one who spoke up about Kamoshida and thus gets blamed for the team being broken up whereas in the West he'd be sympathetic and even heroic for calling attention to a sexual predator.

- And the business with Haru is due to an old tradition called "mukoyoshi," which is the idea of keeping a business "in the family" by having a man marry the eldest daughter and then being adopted into the family. And our little cinnamon roll is going along with it not only because of loyalty she feels to her father, but because Japanese culture insists she put the needs of her father's company over her own.

- Really, the overall theme of rebellion and bringing down those of higher social status is way more relevant in Japan than in the West, where such rebellion is not only seen as normal but (depending on the circumstances) encouraged. In the West it's considered normal for teens to be rebellious little shits, whereas in Japan by the time you're in high school you're expected to have put all that behind you and started working towards taking your adult place in society.

>> and started working towards taking your adult place in society

You mean 'as a soulless cog in the paternity/boomer/old men ruled machine of society', right?

>- Akechi is actually supposed to be a sympathetic character

I mean... I'm not disagreeing with your thesis there, it makes sense, but the sentence above still makes me chuckle darkly, because the boy is an insufferable trash fire regardless. He's that guy in every Pokémon game who keeps popping up insisting that he's the PC's rival when he's not even on the radar, on top of being a homicidal maniac. He's actually a little easier to take when he starts leaning into the Hannibal Lecter thing, just because it gives him a bit of flair.

[ That said, I laughed so hard I had to sleep-mode my Switch when Maruki tried to use his fate as emotional blackmail material. Do you honestly think I give, not a shit, but a single shittium atom what happens to this guy, Doc? Because I assure you I do not. In fact, my first impulse when you said "if you stop me, Akechi-kun will go back to being dead" was to ask, "You promise?" ]

>- The whole business with Ryuji getting shit for speaking up is
>because of that emphasis on deferring to authority, that he was the
>only one who spoke up about Kamoshida and thus gets blamed for the
>team being broken up whereas in the West he'd be sympathetic and even
>heroic for calling attention to a sexual predator.

Kind of? In Ryuji's confidant path, it says the administration's excuse to disband the track team was that Ryuji punched Kamoshida, not that he spoke up about his behavior. To be fair, that would also be viewed as criminal behavior in the United States, on account of it is criminal behavior.

>- And the business with Haru is due to an old tradition called
>"mukoyoshi," which is the idea of keeping a business "in the family"
>by having a man marry the eldest daughter and then being adopted into
>the family.

Well, yes (and indeed there's mention of that same custom in P4, if you get with Yukiko--she muses at one point late in the arc that the protag will have to take her name if they get married, because of the inn). They didn't need to make the dude so dang loathsome to make the point, though. She could've just not been into him, but nooo, they had to make him J. Handsy McGroperson, Esquire. 'Cause, you know, the game didn't have enough of those already.

I dunno, I'm probably overreacting, it's just that there are an awful lot of those guys cropping up over the course of the game. Maybe that's on purpose, maybe they were just trying to test Joker's resolve by having him constantly stumble into reruns of the situation that got him arrested in the first place (Makoto and the mobsters, Makoto again with Eiko's shitheel boyfriend, Haru and J. Handsy, Yoshizawa and that guy who all but tried to kidnap her before the park cleanup, Ann any number of times) to see if he dares keep trying to help. And he does, of course, but eventually it must start to dawn on him that the gods do not like his face.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>I mean... I'm not disagreeing with your thesis there, it makes
>sense, but the sentence above still makes me chuckle darkly, because
>the boy is an insufferable trash fire regardless. He's that guy in
>every Pokémon game who keeps popping up insisting that he's the
>PC's rival when he's not even on the radar, on top of being a
>homicidal maniac. He's actually a little easier to take when
>he starts leaning into the Hannibal Lecter thing, just because it
>gives him a bit of flair.
>
>[ That said, I laughed so hard I had to
>sleep-mode my Switch when Maruki tried to use his fate as emotional
>blackmail material. Do you honestly think I give, not a shit, but a
>single shittium atom what happens to this guy, Doc? Because I
>assure you I do not. In fact, my first impulse when you said
>"if you stop me, Akechi-kun will go back to being dead" was to ask,
>"You promise?" ]

Yeah, I know, I guess he's supposed to be the "sympathetic antihero" of the cast but just comes off as an insufferable douche to me as well. But apparently that's what they were going for and I guess I can see it...I don't like it, but then again I've never liked that character archetype anyway.

>Kind of? In Ryuji's confidant path, it says the administration's
>excuse to disband the track team was that Ryuji punched
>Kamoshida, not that he spoke up about his behavior. To be fair, that
>would also be viewed as criminal behavior in the United States, on
>account of it is criminal behavior.

Right, it's supposed to be an explanation for why the others on the team who knew what was going on still treat him like garbage because his calling attention to it (granted, in a rather public fashion) still led to what they view as a collective punishment.

>Well, yes (and indeed there's mention of that same custom in P4, if
>you get with Yukiko--she muses at one point late in the arc that the
>protag will have to take her name if they get married, because of the
>inn). They didn't need to make the dude so dang loathsome to make the
>point, though. She could've just not been into him, but nooo, they
>had to make him J. Handsy McGroperson, Esquire. 'Cause, you know, the
>game didn't have enough of those already.

Yeah, it seems part of the overall effort to make her father look like an evil bastard, even though he gets some measure of redemption towards the end. It certainly does go a long way to explain why our sweet little cinnamon bun* makes some rather...troubling statements about the killing of shadows and the sounds they make.

>I dunno, I'm probably overreacting, it's just that there are an awful
>lot of those guys cropping up over the course of the game. Maybe
>that's on purpose, maybe they were just trying to test Joker's resolve
>by having him constantly stumble into reruns of the situation that got
>him arrested in the first place (Makoto and the mobsters, Makoto again
>with Eiko's shitheel boyfriend, Haru and J. Handsy, Yoshizawa and that
>guy who all but tried to kidnap her before the park cleanup, Ann any
>number of times) to see if he dares keep trying to help. And he does,
>of course, but eventually it must start to dawn on him that the gods
>do not like his face.

It really does feel like the writers decided "Well, we've created a protagonist who is supposed to be a pile of living garbage in the eyes of society, so we have to massively overcompensate with the villains in order to make him seem likable by comparison."

*I do absolutely love her line if she finds out you've been cheating on her come Valentine's Day: "Please take my chocolate...before I crush it."