#persona liveblog

[arcplaysgames]

I forgot as soon as you meet Aegis, she hugs you and refuses to let go.

Akihiko is just like "oh, homosexuality, that makes sense, right"

[callmearcturus]

okay so WAAAAAAY back at the beginning of my liveblog i gave P3P shit for how Yukari was the Lovers Arcana and how it made no sense with her and some people remarked that the Lovers tends to just be the canon love interest girl for the game and i was disappointed but whatever its fine

I TAKE ALL OF IT BACK. PERSONA 3 KNOWS WHAT THE LOVERS IS. I just made the mistake of thinking the 'lovers' was supposed to be Yukari and the main character.

WRONG. It's Mitsuru.

The Lovers is all about coming together with someone to make a hard decision and together walk a difficult path, buoyed in the understanding that you made that choice together and will see it through with each other's support.

FUCKING. YUKARI AND MITSURU! STRUGGLING TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE FIGHTING FOR, ONLY TO COME TOGETHER AND UNITE OVER AN IDEAL THAT HONORS THE PEOPLE THEY'VE LOST.

also

I love this game I love this game I love this game. I apologize for being cold on Yukari in the first half of the game, she's great.

ALSO THE WAY HER PERSONA CHANGES LITERALLY IS AN INVERSION OF THE LOVERS CARD

Her starting Persona, Io, is bound and chained, unable to reach out and touch anyone, cut off from connections. Even the fact that she's seated, in stasis, unable to take the crucial steps, is a perfect flip of the Lovers card.

Then it becomes Isis, the bound hands and legs become wings. It literally invokes the spread wings of the angel/bird that usually sits atop the card to signal the freedom to begin the journey.

I FORMALLY APOLOGIZE TO PERSONA 3. This game is amazing.

[wugblogs]

most unrealistic part of persona 5: a weird app keeps showing up on this teenager's phone and he doesn't go "aw fuck i have a virus, shit, how do i get rid of this, has my identity been stolen, aaah"

[spacetrashpile]

futaba time every one get excited or ill blow this whole place up

[ekourege]

minato is so funny he was just like "there's been a disturbance in the force, I can feel it...." and everyone else in SEES followed his ass directly into tartarus for no reason huh. they all just trust that if he thinks something funky is happening he's probably right. despite the fact he's had a high fever for multiple days and there's the possibility he could actually just be sick. hilarious. what is wrong with all of you

[burnt-toast-life]

Ok but I hate the. The guy. I refuse to remember his name I just have a deep hatred and am very uncomfortable anytime he shows up actually. Which is impressive because I never have that reaction towards any character.

[stealyourhearts]

my pain has been reloaded

[m0e-ru]

did everybody remember when atlus finally restored the attendant social link in the steam port and how stupid it actually was

[alittletreecko]

I forgot that Futaba goes into a month long coma, wakes up, makes Sojiro cry, defeats Medjed, and then immediately falls asleep again. an icon.

[kadextra]

Oh my god. omg q!LANDDUO. YOUUUUUU. q!bad recognized how foolish was hurting because of leo and offered his comfort…… :( that kinda hits after yesterday

[rindomness]

honestly i think this sums him up perfectly actually. this is all you need to know to understand why he's like that

[arcplaysgames]

The Persona 5 Post-Mortem, Part Three: The Royal

The Third Semester of P5R is so good it feels like it was dropped in from another game and I'm still reeling from it.

This post is going to be a mix of positive and negative, but to be clear: The Royal content saves Persona 5 from being a bad game. It's a masterful trick.

I have been thinking about the Maruki Arc since I finished it, haunted by it really, and what I'm settling on is that it's basically a refutation of the entire game up to that point, and in doing so, in being that, it manages to actually say something and give me hope.

It's like watching sleight of hand. Because I know there are probably people who played this game who weren't doing a liveblog analysis who just kind of rolled with the presented truths of P5 and enjoyed the rollercoast of a plot. The Thieves are good. The bad people deserve what happens to them. Society has failed, therefore rewriting people's brains is our last resort and is justified.

And then Maruki comes in and uses all his softboy wiles to interrogate all of those assumed truths. A person who recognizes the societal injustice of the world. Who wants to protect people from being hurt. Who rewrote bad people to be better people.

The final Mission of Persona 5 is to change the heart of the entire world, and Joker is empowered to do so in a big flashy triumphant sequence that drips coolness from its pores. That shit with Gnostic Lucifer and the big fuck off gun? Awesome.

So it's hilarious to me that Maruki getting the exact same opportunity, getting the power to change the heart of the entire world is treated like a full-blown psychological horror.

Maruki and the Thieves are the same fucking thing! It's genius! It's amazing! Finally, 80 hours into this video game, it turns the tables and aims that power right back at the player and the characters they've come to care for, and it shines a light that recontextualizes the whole story.

I'm a rehabilitationist. From the start, I was uncomfortable with the entire conceit of Persona 5. So reaching Maruki's Arc had me joyously enthralled.

But it's not just a horror show. It's not just the game going "Ha ha NOW you see the truth, YOU were the bad guy all along," and wallowing in it. No, finally Persona 5 Royal figures out something to fucking say with its world and half-formed ideas and its middling themes.

It's fun and easy to joke about how Maruki went evil. I'm sure I did it myself, but the truth is a lot more complicated. He's a well-intentioned man who sees the need for societal reform and tries to implement it... and becomes a practical lesson in why you can't flip a switch and reform society.

When I was young, like 16 or 17, I had this elaborate fantasy story I told myself. I grew up in the Bush years as a low class queer heathen, the era of Prop 8 and DADT, and to make myself feel better I would dream up these stories about how if I could just (to be blunt) assassinate a few specific people, I could fix it all. I had a mental list. It felt like it was that fucking easy.

Just like the Thieves talk about reforming society.... by targeting specific Bad People and causing what I would argue (and I think the game confirms tacitly) is a form of ego death. With the exception of Futaba, who was an outlier anyway, everyone who the Thieves steal from essentially becomes a different person. What is that but not death?

Maruki is a mirror held up to the Thieves, and they all flinch at it. The entire arc is agony as they are all forced to contend with their own sense of ethics and morality.

But to me, the best part, the cherry on top, the part that doesn't just make Royal a well-written deconstruction of itself, is that final confrontation with Maruki and Joker.

Joker and Maruki are foils of each other. I mean... c'mon. It's not a coincidence that Maruki looks like middle-aged Joker, the hippie to Joker's soft punk.

In the end, when Maruki understands the gravity of his failure and why he lost, he gives up and tries to die.

And Joker does not let him. He grabs ahold of Maruki and holds on with all his might and he gets Maruki out of there. All so Maruki can start again and become a taxi driver. No one tells him to go flagellate himself until he's atoned for his sins. No, he lives so he can continue and try to put some good back into the world.

Either intentionally or by accident (I do not know), the Royal content is a rehabilitationist narrative.

You can't steal the heart of every bad person. You can't kill every bad person. You have to believe that people can become better, can move on from the things they have done, or else society really is doomed.

Maruki doesn't go to prison for 500 years or get locked away in the sacred realm for eternity, he doesn't die, he isn't maimed. He survives, and all he can do from there is keep living and try to become a better person.

To slightly pivot, it's not an accident that this entire arc is anchored by the relationship between Akechi and Joker.

Talk about your masterful sleights of hand. Fucking Goro Akechi. Akechi without his facades and masks is a mean bitch, is dependable, is dedicated to his work, is grim as a fucking gallows, and is willing to die to save the world from suede-gloved tyranny.

Maruki's final real play of the game is pointing a gun at Akechi's head and smiling.

And yanno, maybe that moment didn't work for everyone. I assume that Akechi is so abrasive he has his share of haters, just like my beloved favorite Morgana. So maybe the twist doesn't work for every player.

But regardless of the player, it works for Joker. It's a threat to Joker, Maruki's reflection. Akechi is a curt assholish murderer who is directly responsible for the deaths of at least two people Joker knows by proxy (and a lot more if you get into it).

And the one desire Maruki fulfilled for Joker was giving Akechi another chance, bringing him back to life. Even if you the player didn't believe in Akechi, Joker did. It was his deepest desire to see him again.

Because you have to believe! If you are going to change society, you can't just say people are lost causes, that they need to die for the new world order! You have to fucking believe they can change!

Joker is guided by the player, but he is more authored than the previous two Persona MCs. He has his own morals and personality, and the game does not ask you the player if Akechi should live, if Maruki should live. Joker just says yes, they should.

The final stinger after the credits, the moment when Joker sees just a glimpse of Akechi from the train is more than a fun little tease. It's doubling down. Akechi was a murderer who shot Joker in the face intending to kill him. Akechi was also a teenager who took a metaphysical bullet to save reality itself, to preserve the basic agency of every living person.

You have to believe people can change, that they are more than the worst thing they've done.

/BREATHES OUT. I was going to go into the ways Royal fails, but I don't think I need to. Here's a fast, VERY short list.

Sumire is a dropped ball of a character that the game keeps picking back up and dropping again.

The gating around even unlocking the Royal content is way too fucking stringent for how vital it is to the story.

Asking a player to get through 80 hours of mediocre game to reach the Good Part is an outrageous demand.

To drive the message home, they should have reduced the flags around unlocking Akechi's true ending, I don't think Royal is as effective if you don't unlock the true 2/2.

That light bridge color puzzle in Maruki's Palace literally is incomprehensible, what the fuck happened there.

Human Morgana was mid at best, he deserved to be a hotass human.

But whatever. Royal is a fucking miracle, and it singlehandedly made Persona 5 a good game. It is the necessary final act turn that redeems a thoroughly mediocre story. The writing is tremendous, the voice acting is off the fucking chain, the cinematography and visual design is stunning, and BOY it fucking HATES cults! It's just fucking good.

Except for the bad bits, but again: whatever.

[callmearcturus]

don't fucking talk to me, i care about this dumb fucking boy so much, he's my friend, he will be the maid of honor at my wedding.

also god what a mature thought. "I want to be reliable because for so long everyone has seen me as the joker and goof-off of the party, and I wanted to help you, but trying to do it alone wasn't respectful to you, and you're important to me." like what the fcuck. i love Junpei.

[wugblogs]

i sort of feel sorry for caroline and justine for no longer existing once you fuse lavenza even though they're actually a part of her

[spacetrashpile]

the va director could not get any of these people to pronounce "medjed" the same huh

[theminecraftbee]

god bdubs talking about this stuff is making me deeply embarrassed but not in a distressed way like i’m not being made fun of here or anything, in a “oh god my dad is trying to be supportive he’s trying to explain all of my interests to his friends way too enthusiastically why is he doing this to us” way