#disclaimer 2 my comments abt transfem Akechi aren’t to diss any interpretations of transmasc Akechi except that you’re wrong and I’m right

[cainshitincorporated]

☕️ akechi >:3c

Part of my love for this boy comes specifically from the fact that I’ve seen more incorrect interpretations of him than any other character in fiction. From “he did nothing wrong bc being a hit man was just his job” (???) to “I’m so glad he’s not in strikers and presumed dead in royal because he’s annoying and therefore deserving of death” to the completely baffling softboy uwu pancakes shit, to all of the extremely disturbing hypersexualized interpretations of him, and especially the way that intersects with shipping him with Ren.

To be clear I have no actual strong opposition to shipping him with Ren given the proper framework to their relationship. I don’t think it works as a healthy relationship in Deja Vu for example given the context we’ve given their relationship and dynamic, there’s too much there that wouldn’t be healthy (though it could be given time and effort), whereas I think given a different reading of the canon text of P5 they could have a relatively healthy relationship with some work based on the interpretation. Either way it’s just not something I personally care for, though I can recognize the reasons for the popularity and I think it’s probable the writers at least for the English translation knew what they were doing in certain instances. All that said and done it’s not my thing but I’d hardly call it a toxic ship. What bothers me the most about it, frankly, is how much conversation about that overrides any discussion of his actual arc, character and development which I consider far more interesting.

Canon P5 (the base game) does a massive disservice by introducing him as undoubtedly one of the most interesting and well-developed members of the cast, and then dropping him immediately with no resolution whatsoever. The fact that we get so many revelations about him in the engine room scene only for him to permanently vanish after that is wildly stupid, compounded by the little bits of filler lore we get only after he’s bit the bullet (the revelation that he was Yaldabaoth’s chosen warrior was like, simply thrown out there and glossed over during the scene where Fake Igor is revealed). The anime interpretation is both better and worse, making a lot of extremely confusing decisions to further develop him prior to the reveal of his true intentions and role, and then making the scenes after his reveal EVEN SHORTER. All of this is done in such a confusing way that I genuinely believe the anime writers didn’t like the reveal of his true personality and role and so they decided to devote more time to his fake presentation and cut down on the scenes that involved his more genuine personality.

Royal’s third semester is awful in more ways than I can count (something something Kasumi) but the star of the show is absolutely Akechi, who basically steals the entire third arc despite hardly appearing in it outside of the very beginning and end. Atlus correctly identified that people liked and wanted to see more of his genuine personality and delivered, at the bare minimum, a few extremely good scenes of him just kind of being a dick, on top of revealing that he’s still a relatively competent investigator and allowing us more time with his completely unhinged Black Mask personality. Unfortunately while we absolutely do get more development from him in the third semester (arguably more than any other character, though my bias against the direction they took with Kasumi may be speaking here), we don’t really get any closure on his relationship to the Thieves, especially Futaba and Haru, and the most we get is an implication that he’s maybe still out there. I’m also of the opinion that the added social link is a huge missed opportunity, and the baffling choice to keep ranks 9 and 10 as automatic rank-ups as they were in the base game rather than filling them in during the third semester was a completely confusing choice. Rank 8 is a masterpiece but aside from that, most of Akechi’s social link feels like filler. There are a few scenes that fill in details we already knew and some comic relief between him and Ren, but nothing to give us further insight about his past, mental state, feelings about things, etc.

Given his personality, story role and appearance it was perhaps inevitable that he’d be meme’d to hell and back, softened, despised and infantilized in the fandom. Fan content is a rough batch and I’m constantly frustrated that whatever kernels of decent interpretation may exist out there are buried under so many layers of hypersexualized Akeshu, pancake jokes and rants about the morality of liking a character who’s killed people. It’s a trash heap of terrible interpretations and maddeningly juvenile readings of the text. I’m as mad at the people giving a free pass to P5’s other villains even up to Shido for being comical and overall well-performed villains while writing manifestos about why the clearly mentally ill minor who was emotionally isolated and manipulated into doing acts of unspeakable violence is irredeemably evil and anyone who likes him should be put on a watch list as I am the countless people so desperate to declaw him that they ignore the vast amounts of text implying his negative qualities, hostility toward the Thieves and acts of cruelty so they can happily write smut where he dates another underage character in an utterly unproblematic way.

It is therefore up to me, the last remaining person on earth who has both a taste for cringe edgy boys and a sense of nuance, to carry the weight of properly interpreting this character in the only fanfic that matters (Deja Vu) by doing what I do best: projecting my personal trauma, anger issues, bad coping mechanisms and mental illness onto him, and making him nonbinary and transfem, to further piss off all the adult women who are weirdly invested in him being a gay boy who has a deeply sexual relationship with another underage gay boy.

The way I see it, jokes aside, the way Akechi works best as a character is when he’s allowed to be messy. When his actions are neither excused nor sanitized, with him written off nor condemned, given space for the one thing canon and fanon seem to be allergic to giving him: character development. What we know about him as a character all lends itself to the fact that he’s deeply, profoundly traumatized, mentally ill and desperately alone. Despite what fandom purity weirdos might tell you, children don’t normally just start killing people, that’s usually a symptom of a deeply fucked up upbringing. When the space is given to backfill Akechi’s past, his actual history and what made him the way he is, it allows the audience to sympathize with him and root for him to get better and to be accepted by his piers without having to apply the cognitive dissonance of simultaneously working alongside him as a trusted ally and knowing about his acts of malice. When we’re allowed to see him in real time actively growing and changing, recognizing his bad habits, vowing to work past them, falling back into them, struggling with his own mentality and lack of trust, then we can treat him as an actual fully-fledged three-dimensional character.

It feels practically impossible to have a real conversation about Akechi as a character given all the stigma around him in fanon. My solution to this is to say fuck fanon, fuck persona 5 fans and allow me to project unabashedly onto this fucked-up dude. This entire post has been a lie, the reality is Akechi works best as a character when he’s written to just literally be me one for one.