#i've been holding onto this for awhile alfkejsdjfsa

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Persona 5 Problems: Makoto/Sae’s father

Everyday I’m more pissed that their father wasn’t some two faced cop who worked with the Mafia (yeah I know we already have two not so good father figures but EFF THAT developing an existing character is more important)......Because it would’ve been SOOOOOOO beneficial to their development. 

No you don’t understand a lot of things would make SO much sense! Sae’s attitude towards her father in this case especially. This time it’s not just “oh he off and died on us” (I mean he died from a mafia hit??? in the game it sounds like he was just walking around minding his own business when the hit happened, it wasn’t even in like a mafia shoot out where he tried to be a hero), instead it’s “This person who I looked up to, who I held as a moral beacon, turned out to not be who I thought he was. Everything about him is now tainted, even the profession I chose because I wanted to be like him and catch criminals, it’s now tainted. I hate him, but I still love him. I can’t let Makoto know who he really was, I won’t let her view be tainted either.” It makes more sense why she gets prickly about her father when brought up, it makes sense why she can’t/won’t talk about him in Makoto’s presence. Why Makoto thinks so highly of her father, but Sae does not. Instead “he just left us” becomes a cover up for how she truly feels.

Sae finds out via the higher ups at the police force (either they brought her in or she accidentally overheard and then confronted the people talking), apparently a few other officers were the same, it was the police’s way to make sure order was maintained between them and the mafia. But to the public, they covered that up with a lie, saying how upstanding he was. It saves the force’s face this way, and they talk Sae into the same thing. “It’d do horrible things to your reputation, it’d hurt Makoto, and so on and so on.” That’s why Sae keeps quiet, but it’s eating her up inside.

Makoto, she doesn’t know. Now it can go a few different ways (depending on the rewrite, but in this case let’s pretend it’s as close to the main game as possible). Her arc is more super focused on questioning authority rather than not following orders (I know it kinda has both, but in the game it’s more the latter or it’s framed as more the latter and it doesn’t really work since she still does follow orders, so we’re just gonna triple down on just questioning authority). And it’ll be more fleshed on on the why (which is not what the game did, which is key imo to fleshing out her character), and let’s change the whole “useless thing” to “you’re just a child who doesn’t know anything” and “can’t you just do as you are told?” (more broader and targeted towards her issues atm). Until the Kane arc she’s never needed to question authority, her father instilled that people in higher power usually know what’s best for society (yeah I know kinda insidious). 

Now let’s just hop and a skip to when she meets Kane, in this case after finding out his name she’s instead kidnapped instead of her running in like a moron. Because Kane heard her last name was “Niijima,” a familiar name in the underground. Both from her famous sister and infamous father. This is where she finds out about her father’s history, here world is flipped upside down. Instead of a pointless stress out that she caused to Kane, he instead proactively chooses this as a means to make money. Mako’s sister has been throwing her guys in jail left and right, which means less guys to collect money, which means less money for him. He doesn’t like that, and he has blackmail. Before no one in the underground opening revealed the Hero Cop Niijima was actually dirty, the reasoning could be because there was no real need plus info is profitable in it’s own right so don’t just give it out willy nilly. In this case, holding out proved that Kane can turn it liquid and get money outta it. He blackmails Makoto, saying he’ll go public with this info, with undeniable proof (maybe he had it on his phone to begin with), and ruin their lives. Sae would be disgraced, Makoto might even been looked over from getting into a good college or getting a good job. 

Now that her world has been rocked, this is probably when Makoto really starts questioning authority. The school staff, Sae, the police, everyone, all her doubts over the course of the arc start to come to a boil. She thinks about the PT. And here might be where I’d tweak how they are involved. See, Makoto got dirt on them, she was going to go to the principal, but the PT stop her. Instead THEY tell her “We’ll prove we’re just, please just wait.” She wonders how, and that’s when the MC reveals that they’ve heard rumors of a mafia boss hurting students in the area on the subway (which is true, in-game you hear this before Makoto mentions anything), you tell her mafia bosses are bad and that if they stop him that’d mean they were good right? Makoto isn’t.....completely convinced, but it won’t hurt her to hold out for a bit, not like she has anything to lose. This takes away the BS blackmail thing, and makes the PT more proactive. Flashforward to after meeting Kane. Makoto walks out of the building, the PT had just caught up to her, Makoto is fine but shaken up. She falls to the ground crying, saying how everything she knew was a lie, saying she can’t trust the adults. She says she doesn’t know if the PT are just or not, but she knows they take down those abusing their authority from how their past targets have been described. The PT tell her yes, she explains the situation. This leads to them realizing that Makoto is a “customer” of Kane and she can let them in (by the PT not being their like in the main game, we can’t say that they are also customers and thus don’t need Makoto btw). 

Everything else plays about roughly the same. Makoto awakens more to the fact of her rage at authority figures abusing their power. She doesn’t tell her sister of the knew knowledge she obtained, but she does see her sister in a different light (one that’s capable of lying, but also someone who was trying her best to protect her, is a mixed feeling). She feels more closer to Futaba too, knowing what it’s like to be lied to in a sense. Her CoOp also focuses more on her dream to become a Police commissioner, something she never forgot about and was actively striving towards, but now is questioning and seeing how she could handle it in a new light. 

Back to Sae, her sister’s dungeon has an additional somber taste to it. We see a woman who fought so hard to not be corrupt like her father, that she ended up going down a similar corrupt route. Her pure goal to not be like her father, almost turned her into him in a sense. Makoto is also fearful of this (possibly stemming from/explored in the CoOp).

Lastly, the dream world would make a lot more sense. Not only that he’s alive, but achieving such a high status/reward (I forget which). He’s not corrupt like he actually is! See he’s good? Everything is ideal! If we do have to wake our teammates up in P5R, it’s a lot more meaningful/understandable to have her go through the realization of what her father actually is, rather than just be like “yo he ded.” 

Last thing, I like this idea not cause it ties her into Kane being like “oh I killed your father” no in this case, Sae already prosecuted the guy who killed their father. There’s no revenge to be had here. Her father was just well known by the underground, possibly never even met Kane. But it does provide a way to connect her to Kane, using her as a pawn more naturally too. 

I dunno, I just feel like it makes more sense and it cleans up the story?????