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Thoughts on Persona 5 (Massive Spoilers)
I gradually played Persona 5 over the course of a month or two and finished it about a week ago. I liveblogged/ranted about it on Twitter as I went, but figured I'd collect my big picture thoughts in one place.
For a game about confronting societal lies, Persona 5 loves running away from the hard stuff. Your volleyball coach is raping girls? Steal his heart. A mafia boss is blackmailing students into lifelong debt? Steal his heart. McDonald's has evil employment practices? Steal the CEO's heart. Your childhood friend's parents are prostituting her for gambling money? Steal their hearts. gg ez.
What do we mean by stealing their hearts? Oh, well, you go into an alternate dimension that represents their mind, discover all their secrets, then beat up and rob their alter-ego. Then they'll suddenly rediscover their conscience and feel bad enough to stop and make a traditional Japanese public show of humility and repentance.
So basically: Idk. Magic.
In my view, supernatural elements in narratives about real problems are strongest when they align metaphorically with how things are in reality. Netflix's Jessica Jones does this marvelously, reimagining relationship abuse into a superhero terms where even the strongest woman (literally strong) can be brought to heel by a mind-controller whose powers were born from torturous pain and honed by the necessity of manipulating others to meet his basic needs.
If Persona 5's methods offer any guidance for how to engage with abuse of power in real life, I have no idea what it's trying to say. Break into their house and give them a lobotomy?
(IMO, even the social links are generally weaker in this game because they all follow the pattern of Akira magically saving people from their problems.)
The game seems to realize that it needs to ground its narrative with some way to engage with real problems in reality. At the very end, it does show the cast trying to take action to enact change without the assistance of the Metaverse--I'll give it credit for that. It should have been more than a tacked-on episode you passively watch in an already-crammed epilogue.
Given its weakness with resolving problems, one might hope that the game would at least depict the problem itself with gravity. And at times, it does. But it can't seem to be consistent.
From the start, you meet Mr. Kamoshida, star coach and master creep, and you learn all about how Hitting People Is Bad And Objectifying Women Is Bad And Things Aren't Always What They Seem.
Then you're supposed to laugh at people punching Ryuji. And you can oogle at Ann's Grade-A model boobs on multiple occasions. And Futaba's mom can't be the demon-sphinx she remembers because Sojiro described her as being caring and legit, so clearly Futaba's gotten it wrong somehow.
(Oh, and like, participate in this unsupervised backalley medical trial for this mysterious elixir that will knock you out, but it's totally for the greater good and you can definitely trust this doctor and in fact bond over this experience.)
It's like the hypocrisy of Persona 4 showing Ai's broken psyche from having bullied as a fat kid and following it up by laughing at fat ugly Hanako, except that was just one Moon arc.
In Persona 5, abuse and power are some of the central themes of the game. And it just isn't a very good narrative about that.
Disappointment weighs heavy on my mind because there are many passages where Persona 5 shows how damn good it can be. Nothing delighted and disappointed me as much as Futaba Sakura.
I adored the way they wrote her from the moment she sends you creepy text messages attempting to blackmail you into helping her. The lead-up to her dungeon was a masterful display of show-not-tell characterization. She threatens you into helping her because she has been exploited and shown the weakness of her position--and she'd had poor social skills to start with--and now it seems like the only safe way to receive aid is from a position of power, shielded by anonymity and made strong in this cyber-context with her hacking skills. So from the safe distance of electronic communication, she threatens you: Aren't you going to do it? Aren't you afraid at all of the consequences? I'll expose you. Then you come before her door, and in pain and terror her messages reduce to short, clipped utterances, all she can manage. It hurts. This is my tomb. I will die here.
I loved the start of Futaba's mission so much. Her Palace was symbolically perfect. I loved how she'd invite you in, then reactively chuck a giant boulder in your face because woah you got too close there you need to back off right now buddy. I loved sorting out the puzzles to unscramble her fragmented past. I loved the depth of the pain she carried from her mother's neglect and suicide.
I know this girl. I've been friends with this girl. I've been this girl. I've hated this girl. I've loved this girl.
And then. You find out that the thing with her mom was all made up. Ta-daa! Actually Wakaba was a great mom and it's all the fault of some men in black. Let's go beat them up after we put Futaba through one week of social boot camp ending in boobies on the beach.
Um. What?
I honestly don't know if I've ever been so profoundly disappointed by a story in a video game in my life. When I hit the "actually wakaba was a great mom" twist I had to put Persona 5 down for several days. I was too damn mad. (Am I biased in this matter? Yes. But come on, isn't it clear how Futaba's pain is completely trivialized by the end of her dungeon?)
The rest of Futaba's content feels similarly inconsistent. The Kana arc? Great stuff, exactly the tale of broken outsider friendship I expect for Futaba. The scene where Sojiro finds the calling card in Futaba's room? Beautifully written (albeit slightly messed up in translation), and beautifully acted in the Japanese too. Needing to be an incredibly kind flower child to condescend to take a hermit shopping? Wait, what are you saying? This isn't charity dude, I just wanna hang out with Futaba because I like her? Fuck you, game. And please leave the bikini out of it, too.
Harder to notice, perhaps, are the characters that don't stand out at all because their most resonant arcs themselves were botched. I feel like so much of Haru's potential was wasted that it's hard to even notice her potential at all. (Girl even got only a halfassed awakening scene!) She was railroaded so heavily into being on the Phantom Thieves' side that we never had a chance to see her experience the complexity of having just taken part in a dangerous supernatural mission that ended in the death of her father.
How does she know that we'd done it safely several times before? How does she know we weren't culpable somehow? How does she know there isn't blood on her hands? Why is she so sure of what we'd done?
Makoto was given much better treatment when it came to her sister. Haru got so, so little.
It's a sorry thing because the more I saw of Haru, the more I liked her. I felt like they did a good job with her personality. I liked the plucky silliness underneath her demure outer shell. She was subdued but vibrant, convincingly an heiress with a bishoujo heart. It's really too bad the game just didn't do much with her--other than give Morgana a temporary New Best Friend because Ryuji was inexplicably being a dick. (Ryuji, too, was shafted by plot railroading.)
I love Morgana, by the way, but I'm probably just biased toward cats.
Speaking of plot railroading, I feel like it works to Persona 5's detriment that it tries to follow conventions of the heist genre and that it feels the need to end with the traditional Persona apocalypse.
Many people, I'm sure, have expressed their dislike of the manner in which the "ta-daaa you're alive" twist was handled. I disliked it too. I see what they were trying to do with it. Persona 5 is a heist movie, not a detective novel: The point isn't that you're supposed to figure it out by using your brain, but that the noble thieves reveal how they pulled it off after the fact, revelling in their badassery. But I don't think Persona 5 did it well. A good heist narrative leaves you feeling wicked delight at the cleverness of the cast. Persona 5 mostly leaves you feeling annoyed at having been kept in the dark.
Similarly, I'm sure there's some way they could have worked in the surprise apocalypse organically, but as it is, it feels like a sudden divine diversion from what had been, until then, a very human problem. The only part of that twist that I felt was clever was Igor. (Well done.) Other than that, I would've rather played the #FreeAkira mission out as the capstone to the Persona 5 plot.
Now, Akechi. I'm obligated to talk about Akechi, right? Everyone talks about Akechi.
I respect the game's sympathy toward Akechi. I don't think the game itself makes a very good case for him--it mostly wants him to be a supervillain and a woobie at the same time--so hear me out.
Persona 5 wants to talk about the exploitation of children? All around the world, children are exploited to be groomed into killers. Not just child soldiers in Africa, or suicide bombers in ISIS. California actually had to pass a law saying that juveniles must be tried as adults when it comes to murder. You know why? Because gangs were making kids do the killing for them because a kid would just go to juvie for a handful of years and be out right after.
It's hard to suggest that a 17-year-old killer doesn't know what they're doing--they do--but teenagers are more vulnerable than they know, perhaps more vulnerable than the teenager-heavy society of fandom realizes. Akechi thinks he's so powerful and clever. He thinks he's in control. He doesn't realize how the pain of his life is written all over his face, and an experienced alpha douchebag with an extra 30 years of experience controlling people can play him like an instrument.
Akechi's death scene is not well written. He howls like a supervillain. Suddenly he goes down with the nobility of Robin Hood. For some reason, your teammates--who have no real reason to have a level perspective on Akechi's situation--all have bleeding hearts for him. But the intent of that scene--to show how he, too, has ultimately been exploited by the adults around him--is solid. I respect it.
It's a shame that his denouement boils down into supervillain rage, because up until the twist reveal, I thought they'd characterized him well. His polished cheery charismatic perfection carries an eerie vibe, tempered by the moments he allows himself to play the pathetic waif in the comfort of Leblanc. You can tell that he's smart, and he's good at what he does, but he is still a child, his heart far closer to his sleeve than Shido's practiced and utterly perfect political appearances.
To sum it up, I suppose I'd say that with Akechi, they got all the little things right and all the big things painted in the wrong tones.
Oh, how I wanted to love Persona 5. It's such a visually beautiful game. I imagine that video game aesthetic design classes all over the world will use its dynamic menus, readably aesthetic fonts, and smooth elegant jumping as textbook examples of how to bend the rules well. The umbrella and subway transitions are the best loading screens I have ever seen. The gameplay is (mostly) fun and I love Haru's skillset.
But it's so hard to love a game when the biggest elements of its main story fall flat.
Oh yeah and because you expect this kind of commentary from me, yeah, the localization for this game sucks ass. Thank god there's Japanese audio that I can listen to not only for the better acting and pronunciation, but also so that I can know what the heck the original lines were when what I'm reading makes no sense.
But I'm sure there's plenty of articles on that subject already, so I'll leave that dead horse alone.
PS: The 2D animated scenes added literally nothing. Just skip the obligatory animes and stage scenes with the sprites. The sprite-led cutscenes were consistently better.
For a game about confronting societal lies, Persona 5 loves running away from the hard stuff. Your volleyball coach is raping girls? Steal his heart. A mafia boss is blackmailing students into lifelong debt? Steal his heart. McDonald's has evil employment practices? Steal the CEO's heart. Your childhood friend's parents are prostituting her for gambling money? Steal their hearts. gg ez.
What do we mean by stealing their hearts? Oh, well, you go into an alternate dimension that represents their mind, discover all their secrets, then beat up and rob their alter-ego. Then they'll suddenly rediscover their conscience and feel bad enough to stop and make a traditional Japanese public show of humility and repentance.
So basically: Idk. Magic.
In my view, supernatural elements in narratives about real problems are strongest when they align metaphorically with how things are in reality. Netflix's Jessica Jones does this marvelously, reimagining relationship abuse into a superhero terms where even the strongest woman (literally strong) can be brought to heel by a mind-controller whose powers were born from torturous pain and honed by the necessity of manipulating others to meet his basic needs.
If Persona 5's methods offer any guidance for how to engage with abuse of power in real life, I have no idea what it's trying to say. Break into their house and give them a lobotomy?
(IMO, even the social links are generally weaker in this game because they all follow the pattern of Akira magically saving people from their problems.)
The game seems to realize that it needs to ground its narrative with some way to engage with real problems in reality. At the very end, it does show the cast trying to take action to enact change without the assistance of the Metaverse--I'll give it credit for that. It should have been more than a tacked-on episode you passively watch in an already-crammed epilogue.
Given its weakness with resolving problems, one might hope that the game would at least depict the problem itself with gravity. And at times, it does. But it can't seem to be consistent.
From the start, you meet Mr. Kamoshida, star coach and master creep, and you learn all about how Hitting People Is Bad And Objectifying Women Is Bad And Things Aren't Always What They Seem.
Then you're supposed to laugh at people punching Ryuji. And you can oogle at Ann's Grade-A model boobs on multiple occasions. And Futaba's mom can't be the demon-sphinx she remembers because Sojiro described her as being caring and legit, so clearly Futaba's gotten it wrong somehow.
(Oh, and like, participate in this unsupervised backalley medical trial for this mysterious elixir that will knock you out, but it's totally for the greater good and you can definitely trust this doctor and in fact bond over this experience.)
It's like the hypocrisy of Persona 4 showing Ai's broken psyche from having bullied as a fat kid and following it up by laughing at fat ugly Hanako, except that was just one Moon arc.
In Persona 5, abuse and power are some of the central themes of the game. And it just isn't a very good narrative about that.
Disappointment weighs heavy on my mind because there are many passages where Persona 5 shows how damn good it can be. Nothing delighted and disappointed me as much as Futaba Sakura.
I adored the way they wrote her from the moment she sends you creepy text messages attempting to blackmail you into helping her. The lead-up to her dungeon was a masterful display of show-not-tell characterization. She threatens you into helping her because she has been exploited and shown the weakness of her position--and she'd had poor social skills to start with--and now it seems like the only safe way to receive aid is from a position of power, shielded by anonymity and made strong in this cyber-context with her hacking skills. So from the safe distance of electronic communication, she threatens you: Aren't you going to do it? Aren't you afraid at all of the consequences? I'll expose you. Then you come before her door, and in pain and terror her messages reduce to short, clipped utterances, all she can manage. It hurts. This is my tomb. I will die here.
I loved the start of Futaba's mission so much. Her Palace was symbolically perfect. I loved how she'd invite you in, then reactively chuck a giant boulder in your face because woah you got too close there you need to back off right now buddy. I loved sorting out the puzzles to unscramble her fragmented past. I loved the depth of the pain she carried from her mother's neglect and suicide.
I know this girl. I've been friends with this girl. I've been this girl. I've hated this girl. I've loved this girl.
And then. You find out that the thing with her mom was all made up. Ta-daa! Actually Wakaba was a great mom and it's all the fault of some men in black. Let's go beat them up after we put Futaba through one week of social boot camp ending in boobies on the beach.
Um. What?
I honestly don't know if I've ever been so profoundly disappointed by a story in a video game in my life. When I hit the "actually wakaba was a great mom" twist I had to put Persona 5 down for several days. I was too damn mad. (Am I biased in this matter? Yes. But come on, isn't it clear how Futaba's pain is completely trivialized by the end of her dungeon?)
The rest of Futaba's content feels similarly inconsistent. The Kana arc? Great stuff, exactly the tale of broken outsider friendship I expect for Futaba. The scene where Sojiro finds the calling card in Futaba's room? Beautifully written (albeit slightly messed up in translation), and beautifully acted in the Japanese too. Needing to be an incredibly kind flower child to condescend to take a hermit shopping? Wait, what are you saying? This isn't charity dude, I just wanna hang out with Futaba because I like her? Fuck you, game. And please leave the bikini out of it, too.
Harder to notice, perhaps, are the characters that don't stand out at all because their most resonant arcs themselves were botched. I feel like so much of Haru's potential was wasted that it's hard to even notice her potential at all. (Girl even got only a halfassed awakening scene!) She was railroaded so heavily into being on the Phantom Thieves' side that we never had a chance to see her experience the complexity of having just taken part in a dangerous supernatural mission that ended in the death of her father.
How does she know that we'd done it safely several times before? How does she know we weren't culpable somehow? How does she know there isn't blood on her hands? Why is she so sure of what we'd done?
Makoto was given much better treatment when it came to her sister. Haru got so, so little.
It's a sorry thing because the more I saw of Haru, the more I liked her. I felt like they did a good job with her personality. I liked the plucky silliness underneath her demure outer shell. She was subdued but vibrant, convincingly an heiress with a bishoujo heart. It's really too bad the game just didn't do much with her--other than give Morgana a temporary New Best Friend because Ryuji was inexplicably being a dick. (Ryuji, too, was shafted by plot railroading.)
I love Morgana, by the way, but I'm probably just biased toward cats.
Speaking of plot railroading, I feel like it works to Persona 5's detriment that it tries to follow conventions of the heist genre and that it feels the need to end with the traditional Persona apocalypse.
Many people, I'm sure, have expressed their dislike of the manner in which the "ta-daaa you're alive" twist was handled. I disliked it too. I see what they were trying to do with it. Persona 5 is a heist movie, not a detective novel: The point isn't that you're supposed to figure it out by using your brain, but that the noble thieves reveal how they pulled it off after the fact, revelling in their badassery. But I don't think Persona 5 did it well. A good heist narrative leaves you feeling wicked delight at the cleverness of the cast. Persona 5 mostly leaves you feeling annoyed at having been kept in the dark.
Similarly, I'm sure there's some way they could have worked in the surprise apocalypse organically, but as it is, it feels like a sudden divine diversion from what had been, until then, a very human problem. The only part of that twist that I felt was clever was Igor. (Well done.) Other than that, I would've rather played the #FreeAkira mission out as the capstone to the Persona 5 plot.
Now, Akechi. I'm obligated to talk about Akechi, right? Everyone talks about Akechi.
I respect the game's sympathy toward Akechi. I don't think the game itself makes a very good case for him--it mostly wants him to be a supervillain and a woobie at the same time--so hear me out.
Persona 5 wants to talk about the exploitation of children? All around the world, children are exploited to be groomed into killers. Not just child soldiers in Africa, or suicide bombers in ISIS. California actually had to pass a law saying that juveniles must be tried as adults when it comes to murder. You know why? Because gangs were making kids do the killing for them because a kid would just go to juvie for a handful of years and be out right after.
It's hard to suggest that a 17-year-old killer doesn't know what they're doing--they do--but teenagers are more vulnerable than they know, perhaps more vulnerable than the teenager-heavy society of fandom realizes. Akechi thinks he's so powerful and clever. He thinks he's in control. He doesn't realize how the pain of his life is written all over his face, and an experienced alpha douchebag with an extra 30 years of experience controlling people can play him like an instrument.
Akechi's death scene is not well written. He howls like a supervillain. Suddenly he goes down with the nobility of Robin Hood. For some reason, your teammates--who have no real reason to have a level perspective on Akechi's situation--all have bleeding hearts for him. But the intent of that scene--to show how he, too, has ultimately been exploited by the adults around him--is solid. I respect it.
It's a shame that his denouement boils down into supervillain rage, because up until the twist reveal, I thought they'd characterized him well. His polished cheery charismatic perfection carries an eerie vibe, tempered by the moments he allows himself to play the pathetic waif in the comfort of Leblanc. You can tell that he's smart, and he's good at what he does, but he is still a child, his heart far closer to his sleeve than Shido's practiced and utterly perfect political appearances.
To sum it up, I suppose I'd say that with Akechi, they got all the little things right and all the big things painted in the wrong tones.
Oh, how I wanted to love Persona 5. It's such a visually beautiful game. I imagine that video game aesthetic design classes all over the world will use its dynamic menus, readably aesthetic fonts, and smooth elegant jumping as textbook examples of how to bend the rules well. The umbrella and subway transitions are the best loading screens I have ever seen. The gameplay is (mostly) fun and I love Haru's skillset.
But it's so hard to love a game when the biggest elements of its main story fall flat.
Oh yeah and because you expect this kind of commentary from me, yeah, the localization for this game sucks ass. Thank god there's Japanese audio that I can listen to not only for the better acting and pronunciation, but also so that I can know what the heck the original lines were when what I'm reading makes no sense.
But I'm sure there's plenty of articles on that subject already, so I'll leave that dead horse alone.
PS: The 2D animated scenes added literally nothing. Just skip the obligatory animes and stage scenes with the sprites. The sprite-led cutscenes were consistently better.