listen the only thing I want from a persona 4 remake is detective nanako ( like in the anime)

personality traits / quirks

i’ve been thinking of this a lot bc unlike some of the other IT members, yu doesn’t really have nervous tells. which i guess makes sense when you’re a silent protag in a jrpg, but everyone should naturally have one or two. so i think when yu gets anxious & worked up, he clenches his fists. he will clench his teeth. grip at his clothes or his arms to steady himself & ground himself with reality. pain is a good way to offer focus or to feel the weight of something around you, like you’re clinging to a lifeline before tipping over the edge. they’re silent acts & not things that draw much focus or attention like scratching the back of your neck, looking away when flustered. when yu gets flustered, he’ll shake his head or even smile a little - depending on the type of attitude presented toward him. when he’s worked up, he can still keep his face mostly neutral & impassive, basically giving the impression that he’s fine & his words can remain steady. his eyes are often very clear or glazed when masking. sometimes he has slips, but prompted he’ll change the meaning of what he was implying & make you think, yeah you just misunderstood.

it is so hard to see through this guy. even when nanako was confirmed dead in the hospital, the only time he allowed himself to break & show how utterly upset he was about everything was when yosuke came back after the others walked away. he totally must have cried in nanako’s room with dojima, but when he exits out into the hallway it’s only the IT group that has tears in their eyes or running down their cheeks. narukami breaks down & cries on yosuke. asking him ‘did i make the right choice...letting namatame go like that?’ he’s a silent crier, clearly still trying to hold everything together when everything inside of him is beyond broken. the fact he only trusts yosuke to see him this way, clings onto him, really speaks volumes & parallels back to when yosuke cries on him in their confidant. & in good consciousness, i can’t see yosuke leaving narukami alone at the hospital while dojima was probably heavily sedated after trying to attempt murder on namatame also. narukami is not fine. dojima is not fine. the group comes back the next morning to check on him & go over the case again, they’ve all had a change of clothes except for narukami, which implies he didn’t go home or change.

he feels beyond empty inside. like all the light has been removed from his world, but then his light shows up again & assures him that it’s not over yet. yosuke is always shown to pull narukami out of the darkness, even when he’s dropping & falling in on himself after nanako’s death.

i still think he goes through spades where he can’t sleep well at night. he has to start stealing dojima’s booze just to sleep & still wakes up sweating from nightmares of adachi, namatame, or ame-no-sagiri. i don’t think narukami likes drinking & i really don’t think he acts like how he did in the animation where he takes on being an intense player sort of dude. but the fall out is bad for him. i think he has times where he doesn’t have an appetite & has to be encouraged to eat during this time too.

on another note with personality traits:

i think a lot of the beauty is destiny ending credits too. how oddly feminine narukami’s pose is during them? i’ve only really seen female characters / women taking this pose with their arms folded over their chests. men rarely ever are shown taking this pose.

& when the arcana shatters, the pose is still feminine & vulnerable in ways that you don’t see his character often being.

idk this is just a mental point i think about whenever i see the credits or listen to the song. his character is portrayed differently than many main protags in other animes, esp for the time-frame when the p4 series came out. i love this little touch because i think it shows how he’s someone who doesn’t have toxic masculinity in his nature. he’s rose above traditional norms set for japanese men & japan in general is very traditional culturally. you can see how naoto struggles to be accepted in a male driven society, & this is played again in p5 with sae telling makoto how challenging her job is due to the fact she’s a woman. kanji struggles to acknowledge his feminine side because people frown on how “girly” he acts. he’s not accepted by men or women & he feels there’s something wrong with him. narukami never felt there was something wrong with his friends. kanji’s knitting is cute! he should be proud to be so talented.

i can honestly say, narukami would make an ideal traditional housewife but he would be really bored with it too lol. but he is so comfortable with his manhood & sexuality unlike the characters who struggle to accept it. chie wishes she was as feminine as yukiko & gets embarrassed about her tomboy nature. kanji makes peace with his feminine side & realizes how wrong he was about what his dad meant. naoto is a harder one to place, because i think she still has struggles with defining which gender she identifies as & is more or less gender fluid / nonbinary - at least that’s how i see her, agree to disagree. & yosuke is shown to have a lot of toxic masculinity & struggles with accepting his sexuality to where he comes off as aggressively heterosexual to make up for the fact he’s interested in men.

narukami is so interesting because he’s always liked himself. he’s a person who genuinely likes himself for who he is & that is so refreshing to find. he has his flaws, but he accepts them & grows from them.