#im not a fan of the 'Haru hates akechi all the time' and think its complicated

[danidoesathing]

Persona 5 but the Cast can fuse together in the Metaverse as a blending of their subconscious desires and drives

Joker + Queen Codename Ace

Ryuji + Ann Codename: Tiger

Yusuke + Futaba Codename: Sibyl

Akechi + Haru Codename: Flamant ( French for Flamingo)

Sumire + Morgana Codename: Periwinkle

Interesting Idea. Would they like....Steven universe kinda fuse? Or just their personas? That could offer some interesting ideas and dynamics between the crew, plus some neat outfit changes. I, personally, would love to see catgirl and catboy phantom thieves because of Morgana fusion

May I offer:

Akira + Sumire: Lotus

Ann + Futaba: Witch

Haru + Makoto: Monarch or Monarque

Ann + Yusuke: Lynx

Akechi + Sumire: Swan

[chihirolovebot]

HI VENUS !! i havent forgotten that one time u told me youd been playing persona 5 . so i am respectfully asking for persona 5 and ryuji for the ask game ( holding my hands out like a poor victorian beggar boy on the dirty london streets ) idk how far in u are so its ok if u pass this up smile

HABIT HI!!!

i have been informed by my sister ( professional persona player) that we r about to enter the futaba arc . i hope that's helpful.

persona five:

favorite character: makoto she is everything 2 me.

least favorite character: hm. the only ones i dislike r the ones ur supposed to?? like kamoshida and the rest. madarame made me the most angry though so probably him. OH my god and literally every single teacher they all just slag u off a soon as u get to school like i beg u get a fucking hobby. i hate ur teacher , the one who also works at a maid cafe her voice goes THROUGH me i skip all her dialogue.

5 favorite ships (canon or non-canon): hmm hmmmmmm let me Think. okay. i like the main character with almost everyone. ryuji. makoto. yusuke. mishima. i also find ryuji and yusuke's dynamic very funny.

character i find most attractive: i would. i would let akechi hit me with a train. but then i would run him over in turn (he deserves it).

character i would marry: makoto god please. eats drywall. dont i deserve it.

character i would be best friends with: RYUJI!!!! my baby boy.

a random thought: ummmm. i appreciate the way this game handles objectification (sideeyes the anime).

an unpopular opinion: i am not involved enough in this fandom to know what is unpopular.

my canon otp: canon differs because u can pick who to date, right? so i guess the main character and makoto. but i havent done the futaba or haru arcs yet so that could change!!!

my non-canon otp: the main character and ANY of the boys. claws my eyes out. why cant i date mishima.

most badass character: as of right now. makoto. her fuckign. fuckin joan of arc suit....... but ive heard akechi is cool too later on.

most epic villain: theyre all bellends.

pairing i am not a fan of: main character x ann or ryuji x ann and idk why. i like ann fine i just dont see any chemistry with her. i like her with shiho i guess.

character i feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): oh!!! ann. because after her arc she is literally so useless and her attacks do fuck all.

favourite friendship: ryuji and ANYONE smart. him conversing w makoto or yusuke. i live for it.

character i most identify with: out of all of them. i think yoshizawa?? idk our personalities r similar. but i identify a lot w the way ryuji thinks. so im not sure.

character i wish i could be: makoto niijima.......

ryuji:

how i feel about this character: throws shit around my room like a madman. he is everything 2 me. my second favourite character after makoto.

any/all the people i ship romantically with this character: the main character and yusuke?? i guess?? but that is it.

my favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: ryuji ann best friends agenda.

my unpopular opinion about this character: idk what the popular opinions are!!! but if loving him is unpopular then that.

one thing i wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon: i want to DATE HIM!!!! chews my hands.

[kareofbears]

finished my task early and realized that as a byproduct of our capitalist society, im unfortunately happier when i do tasks. here are my rankings of persona 5 awakenings spanning from vanilla to strikers. and i watched all of them again just so i wasn’t biased. i will also be attaching the splash pages they have of the group during awakening scenes because theyre fucking awesome 

excluded: 

morgana - no awakening, very sad

akechi - just a reveal, but an awesome reveal 

10. okumura haru  

it feels like a lie to even say she got an awakening, because they didnt even let her rip off her mask. they gave her a half awakening like it was on clearance. sad stuff, couldve been amazing, instead felt underwhelming since there was no lethargic high point where you feel her anger. i liked the gun reveal though 

9. sakura futaba 

same deal as haru, no mask ripping part :( that part of awakenings are very important to me, since its like, the whole deal with awakening your persona. its supposed to hurt, cause it hurts to throw away your facade and be who you really are!! also it just felt long and drawn out, making the tension feel...untensed. pliable, if you will. ranks higher than haru cause it still made me cry--futaba truly has one of the toughest and heart-wrenching motivations to persona awakenings, truly. 

8. niijima Makoto 

no splash page for her which makes me sad. love how gritty her mask + scream were afterwards, you can really feel the impact of it. also, editing was great during this scene. ranks low (high?) on the list though because it was pretty unremarkable overall--thats because makoto’s awakening/arc is pretty detached from who she is. its not very personal, since the conflict isn’t specifically about her you know? 

7. Kitagawa Yusuke 

a fan favorite and im sorry i couldnt rank it in a better spot. loved the camera work, loved the dialogue and his speech afterwards. it really is poetry infused with pissed-off and ready for revenge. if only the mask removal scene was grittier!! i like seeing them in pain!! it shouldnt be easy to take off the mask!!

6. takamaki ann

beautiful spectacular awakening that always makes me cry, but docked many points off because of how sexual it is. why are they focusing on her torso when shes crying. enough with the jiggle physics. stop that!!

her rage and swearing is so on point, and i am in love with how she mows down her shadow self in one go. so cool. love ann.

5. Hasegawa Zenkichi 

another fan favorite and its also one of mine as well. yall im just so emotional that an adult actually got a persona awakening. like, an adult who wants change just as desperately as the young people do? that means so much to me. dialogue is great, shadows are great. his mask ripping scene was so fucking intense that he snapped his mask in half like thats so rad 

4. yoshizawa sumire 

yeah yeah whatever i love her awakening ok. its big cheating that she got two on camera awakenings, but the first one sucked so its fine. the second one is just so great and i love how quiet the music is . where some awakenings feel very disjointed and impersonal, hers was arguably the most personal out of all of them. like she saw her sister?? and that was what made her awaken for real this time?? fantastic. also her mask removal scene was so intense and i loved that nothing happened at first because it makes you think that something is still wrong. hated the first awakening though--why the magical girl sequence?? what the fuck 

3. Sophia 

hehe her awakening is so fucking good. from the line read to the dialogue. this was the only awakening (besides jokers but ill get to that) that truly caught me off guard. i didnt expect that, even though it was the only logical conclusion to her character arc. brillaint. and i cant stress this enough--the line reads. the line reads. are so good.  thank you VA from puyo puyo tetris lmfao 

2. Kurusu Akira 

no splash page for him either but i will forgive it since hes the first. this one fucked me over because one: the animation was amazing, two, he awakened for ryuji, and three, his mask removal scene is the best of them all. you can feel every centimeter of his mask forcibly peeling away from his skin and i love it. also, this one scared the fuck out of me because when i bought p5, i didnt know what a fucking persona was. i thought this was like, a high school adventure. so yeah, this had a big impact on me

1. sakamoto Ryuji 

look man. this boy is just so angry. so fucking angry, and so intense about his feelings, and so desperate to help, and all of that accumulates to being the best awakening. where akira has the best mask ripping scene, he has the best scream after he rips his mask--you could feel that shit in your throat, in your lungs, the vibrations in your head. not to mention, he was the only one who was allowed to look fucking insane--rolling on the carpet and shit, sweating his heart out. i love how gritty it is. 

Those are my opnions thanks for coming to my ted talk 

[kareofbears]

Ok. . . but can you give an in-depth explanation as to how you feel about akeshu?

yes. 

rest is under the cut since this is going to be a long answer 

im a big big big big big fan of enemies to lovers. love it. loved the initial hate, the heightening tension between two characters with conflicting situations or personality types. i love the anger, the arguments, the sighs from everyone around them because they’re tired of the repetitive beef. during quarantine, i even wrote out and gave a verbal presentation to my beta explaining how an enemies to lovers arc would work through writing and all the needed dynamics in order to justify a person falling in love with their enemy. 

and yeah, the process is the best part of it. i want to be able to see the transition between worst enemy to begrudged partner to lover. that’s the best part!!! the character development!!! the molding around each other and learning to accept their character flaws!! the willingness to defend that flaw in front of other people!! 

but here’s where the problem lies: akechi goro. 

oh akechi. oh akechi goro, the bane of my existence and the object of affection by everyone in this god forsaken fandom. look, i get it. it’s really really fucking hard to resist the charm of akechi goro, i admit it. he’s so interesting, he’s so in-depth, he’s so cool and rugged and he’s such a bastard that you end up kind of being obsessed with him, and that’s fine. I'm also kind of obsessed with him. 

but i don't like him. because he isn’t a likeable character. there’s a huge difference between thinking he’s a fantastic character and loving him. because i don't love him. i hate him. i despise him. he’s caused so, so, so much grievance, so much pain to so many characters in persona that it honestly impossible to give him a redemption arc. it’s not possible. even if you go down the Black Star route (amazing fanfic, brilliant work) it still doesn't redeem him. he killed futabas mom (which literally led her to her spiraling depression and self hatred and manifested intense mental illness that led to her isolating herself from the world and made her lose her mom that she loves so much) and killed haru’s dad (how on earth can you justify that one??? god, haru wanted nothing more than to just see her dad happy again) and killed so many other random people!! and don’t feed me that “oh he had a sad life” shut the fuck up literally everyone in p5 had a sob story and you don't see them killing people. he’s complex, not likeable. 

but here’s the good part: the game doesn't want you to like akechi. i mean it. they never said what he did was okay (never. they never said it was okay), they never said that you had to like him. all they said was that you had to work with him. even in the third semester, the one people are so insistent on calling a redemption arc, isn’t a fucking redemption arc. they just want you to see who akechi really is!! without the facade!!! all they want is for you to see how complex he is, see him spiral and angry and bitter and they want you to see him turn out the complete opposite of akira. 

and here’s where we actually start talking about akeshu

akechi and akira are two halves of the same coin. akira chose the side of justice (by ironically being a criminal) while akechi chose the side of vengeance (which is ironic, since he’s a detective.) see, even with that whole crime vs justice thing, they’re connected. the person who ruined their life is the same person (shido), they both have had hard lives. but they turned out as opposites, with akira having a much better life than akechi--which is why akechi is so obsessed with akira. what does akira have that he doesn't? why did he turn out happy when he’s still miserable? and that creates a tension (which we will talk about later)

akechi and akira are rivals. they are connected, they always will be. it’s a hero/villain narrative that we all love, it’s an interesting character dynamic. it’s fun to see them interact. 

but by god, it does not mean that akechi and akira are good for each other. i would go as far to say it would do akechi a huge disservice as a character if you made them end up together. 

remember how akechi is a complex character? if akechi ends up with akira, you would essentially be ripping out all of his complexity just to have both of them date. akechi doesn't want to be with akira, and if you honestly think akechi is in love with akira id be surprised because he’s not--he’s obsessed with akira, infatuated with him. what he’s feeling isn’t love, it’s the feeling of frustration. he doesn't care about akira, or anyone. he cares about himself, and that’s it. which is what makes him so interesting because this never changes throughout the entire game!!! that's so FUN!!!

and the game never wants you to forget that complexity!! because they never gave akechi a redemption arc!! they want you to remember him as someone who’s willing to die for himself. (and, in a way, that’s the extent of akechis mercy. because before shidos palace, he wasn't even willing to die for himself, you know what i mean? he was willing to die in shidos palace because that’s what he wanted, he wanted to defeat shidos cognition of himself, he wanted to save the thieves because they were the first to listen to him and understand him, but he didn't really do it out of empathy. he did it because he’d rather die than continue living shidos lie--funny because that how he ‘dies’ in the third semester. nice one atlus)

and i get it. the game gives them such an undeniable tension that its super easy to see it as love, but its not. it’s not love, guys. that tension isn’t love, because what it’s actually tragedy. it’s tragic that akechi can’t have happiness (in canon, at least.) it’s tragic that akira, the person who loves his friends more than anything, who would die saving someone he doesn't even know, it’s tragic that he can’t save someone who’s the most desperate to be saved. and that is why i love platonic/non-romantic akeshu, because i think that concept is way more interesting than them falling in love. it’s about akira’s obvious trauma that he couldn’t save everyone, it’s about akechi’s hard-headedness about not wanting to be saved because he’s been let down too many times for him to ever put trust into anyone again. 

it’s tragic. it’s meant to be tragic. persona 5 is a game about fighting for reality, and reality is fucking hard. so the fact that these two people have such a tragic ending despite what we, as an audience, are used to (happy endings), is part of the game. they’re not meant for each other. they won’t work, they don't work. that tension isn't made out of love or sexual tension--it’s stemmed from tragedy and hate and confusion and such a deep rooted sadness from inside of them. 

they both deserve better than each other. akira deserves to be with the friends he made in tokyo, and akechi deserves to be with someone (if he lives) who isn’t associated with the metaverse at all. he deserves a clean slate, he deserves a fresh start. he deserves a reset. 

and another reason is that akira loves his friends too much. he would do anything for them. it’s supposed to be funny--the wildcard, with no vulnerability, no weakness, has the most weakness out of all of them because he cares too deeply about his friends that if one single thing were to hurt them akira would fold like a deck of cards. you think akira would do that to haru? to futaba? yeah, right. he would never. akira can forgive but he would never forget. he’d never compromise. not for his friends.

so going back to the topic of enemies to lovers--akeshu is not enemies to lovers, because there are certain rules for enemies to lovers. enemies should be fun. it should be people on the opposite team with different perspectives. enemies should not be morally horrific. the ‘enemy’ should be forgivable. both characters should still come off likable. they should both be able to stand up on their own legs as characters even if you take away their love interest. for example, hermione/draco wouldn't work because draco calls Hermione a slur on many occasions. that is not forgivable. if draco instead, i don't know, cheats off her test or something and she gets mad and they have a back and forth thing, then sure, hermione/draco could work. 

a fantastic enemies to lovers would be snowbaz from carry on. uh, zootopia? thats a great one. natsume and mikan from gakuen alice is good too!! basically, there’s a lot of actual good enemies to lovers out there. enemies to lovers shouldn't be morally ambiguous. it should be fun. it should be the right kind of tension. the characters should be likable from both sides. and akeshu does not have that. 

tldr stan akiryu and akesumi instead