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A piece I drew for Feb 2nd last year, I post it here now. Happy 2/2.
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Something a lot of people mistakenly believe is that Akechi enjoys the work he does for Shido and that he takes the orders to kill without any resentment or regret. These text messages shed some light on the way he thinks and show that this is not actually the case.
Unfortunately, these texts are entirely missable if you finish the treasure route to Sae's Palace too early. As a result, this crucial characterization is often overlooked and people take what they know about characters like Persona 4's culprit and Persona 3's traitor and assume that Akechi is playing it straight.
But even without these obscure texts, it's not like the game is subtle about this. Akechi's lack of freedom and agency is a recurring aspect of his character that people will often cast aside because it's much easier to boil him down to "crazy serial killer" than actually look at the complexity of his situation and his own victimhood.
Throughout his Royal confidant, Akechi's perfectly crafted mask cracks several times. Moments like this show him offering an out, even if he's MUCH happier if you don't consider it.
He doesn't WANT Joker to change. As much as he claims to hate Joker, he admires his convictions. Wishes he had what Joker had. Wishes he could have been more like him. See: the Gun About rank up where he mentions how he used to want to be a hero of justice.
The creepy smiles and shit you see on 11/20 and in parts of the engine room are another mask Akechi wears. Akechi ALWAYS swaps out his masks to best serve his situation. Yet he still tells Shido not to kill the thieves, that Morgana is just a cat, and is perfectly content to leave them alone, and after his fight in the engine room, when the mask literally breaks...
We see his regrets on full display. He isn't proud. He's done making excuses. All those little times the mask broke in the Royal confidant were ways to set up this moment. He genuinely cares SO much about Joker, but that caring was dangerous to his objectives, so he HAD to hate him. He HAD to want to kill him to achieve his objective, and yet...
He still cares. He's putting out spikes in third sem, no doubt because he suspects his own fate should they destroy Maruki's world, but...
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the third semester of p5r is wild if you think about it from sumire's perspective, and that's without even getting into the whole sumire/kasumi thing.
imagine you wake up one day and the entire world's a little bit fucked up for some reason. you see a building flickering in and out of existence (the same one where you awoke to some crazy JJBA stand powers, except last time it wasn't visable from the outside). so you call your friend/crush (??) because he knows more about this shit than you do, and he shows up with the idol and ace detective, trademarked 'pleasant-boy' goro akechi?? for some reason??? but hey, if he knows about the metaverse then that's good enough for you. he's a nice enough guy anyway but then you get INTO the metaverse, and his outfit is the edgiest thing you've ever seen, and the moment you get into a fight he's releasing what looks like years of pent up rage by screaming and laughing maniacally while absolutely tearing through shadows. and hes flirting (?) with your friend/crush (??) the whole time
but while he's literally calling your friend/crush (?) a loser and an idiot straight to his face, the meanest thing he calls you is a scardy-cat. he never refers to you by your first name and always uses the honorific '-san,' even while he's yelling. he commentates on every one of your kills like a deranged and zealous sports commentator. you think he respects you (???) youre not sure
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we might be battling against the end of the world as we know it but we can at least be respectful of peoples preferences
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