i am glad you still love your supercomputer au! your fanfiction and the pieces you created once is such masterpieces... your old curiouscat link gave an error so i cannot see the answers you gave to people. can you generally tell the au shortly? akiras relationships with phantom thieves, futaba and akiras relationships etc etc

aaaa thank you!! and im sorry so much was on curiouscat that i didn't back up ;o; but i can definitely give a brief overview as well as go into a little more detail about akira!!

for some background, akira was an orphaned child used in the cognitive pscience experiments, as he showed great potential in preliminary testing (ie, what would become his wildcard ability) he grew up housed in a facility for this purpose, with his main social contact through the ten years he was there being YAL20XX, a supercomputer designed to analyze data related to the field. frightened and eventually bitter toward the researchers, YAL was programmed to speak to him for them, keeping him content in a way they couldn't while gathering information he refused to give. this back and forth went on long enough that, in YAL's complexity, he grew into sentience and so into hatred for humanity - akira understood his emotions and yal, with full control of the facility, was able to plan their escape and the subsequent work they did on creating the metaverse navigator

the test for humanity is the same as in canon, with akira playing the role of black mask with his persona, mephistopheles. he is an unknown entity to the conspiracy, but his brutal efficiency means they don't bother to question who he might be. akira, as a person, rarely goes out and refuses to make connections with others, believing yal to be the only being he can trust or that can understand him - he is too different, too changed from who he could have been and what everyone else is, and he carries a great grudge for his mistreatment. he believes in the world yaldabaoth promises, and he is sure humanity will ultimately fail their test regardless of the introduction of the phantom thieves to stand against shido

his connection to the thieves is mixed, somewhat limited, but grows increasingly over time - goro is of course who he meets first, becoming a regular at leblanc so yal can keep a close eye on him through a more human lens (and have an agent that can direct him as needed) goro is very much taken by akira's bright intellect and unusual perspective, while akira slowly comes to appreciate goro's tenacity and his willingness to risk everything in his work as a thief. it's not easy for him to make connections or believe others, but goro doesn't give up on pursuing their relationship, he puts his faith in akira and refuses to leave their friendship at a surface level despite akira's coldness. and that's. very hard for akira to accept. he so fully believes in humanity's irredeemable malice and his own fundamental brokenness that he doesn't know how to feel when goro continuously defies those expectations. goro, as well as all the thieves, risk their freedom and their lives over and over again for victims they don't know, to build a better world without ever receiving praise or compensation. and goro listens to akira, engages with him but gives him space too, reaches out to see if he ever wants to join them for a day out or just spend time together. even if akira keeps saying no, goro will text him again soon. the thieves are good people, and akira isn't the unlovable monster he believed himself to be.

futaba is very interesting in the supercomputer au, because i like to think she's the one that tipped goro off to akira being much more than he seemed - largely because whatever he's using, futaba can't hack into it. it makes akira VERY wary of her, keeping his distance from futaba as much as he can without attracting attention, but she just knows something is up with him if he's got a setup she has no way into. i do like the idea that she basically fries her computer to catch a glimpse of yal with his mess of esoteric code, but it's enough to unravel akira's identity (in a much more convoluted way than canon got to lol) - she traces him back to a user known as "bowman" that was snooping similar government databases as she did, making his connection to cognitive psience come to the forefront. this is compounded by her finding out all of akira's identification, from his name to his apparent history, is all faked when dug into. at this point they all know he will have to be confronted, and that leads into the end of the game

sorry that was kinda long ;;;; but i think that about covers it!!! if you have any other questions i'd be happy to answer those too ^^

What about an Akechi/Joker role swap AU where Akechi is still the detective prince and Joker is still the Shujin delinquent, but the major difference is that Morgana never lost his memories and found Akechi before he approached Shido with his metaverse assassination plot?

Like, imagine Akechi, bitter and jaded, who has just awakened Loki and felt the terrifying and thrilling rush of the berserk power. He's formed a plan to get back at his piece of shit father, even managed to set up a meeting, which he had to set up months in advance, and on the day he's going to present Shido with info on the metaverse, he winds up arriving a few minutes late, because even though he intended to be early, he was accosted by a talking cat (he's been in the metaverse, so he can hear him) on the way over, and in the whole wtf-ery of the moment, lost track of time. Shido, being Shido, refuses to see him and will not reschedule because he doesn't like having his time wasted.

Pissed off, Akechi leaves to find Morgana still waiting for him outside. So he doesn't look like an idiot yelling at a cat on the street, he brings Morgana back to his shitty apartment, where Morgana explains why he had found Akechi and whats up. He doesn't know about Yaldobaoth taking Igor's place, he just knows there's two champions, and Akechi was the one he found first, so he must be Igor's chosen champion. (It is my theory that it doesn't actually matter who was Igor's and Yaldobaoth's champions, it was more about the choices they each made and where they ended up.) 

Akechi has no interest in saving the world, but he knows that if he wants to get back at Shido, he needs to become someone of consequence, so he agrees to undergo Morgana's training, since Morgana clearly knows more about the metaverse than he does, and he can use it to solve cold cases, earning him a place as the Detective Prince. He changes a few hearts, to pacify Morgana, too. It takes a couple years, but during his senior year in high school, he makes it, earning himself the cooperation of the police and the spotlight of the public eye. He's getting so close to making Shido notice him that he can practically taste it. Also, what’s this ‘velvet room’ he keeps dreaming about?

Then Morgana finds Kamoshida’s palace and is like ‘heyo, you thought changing hearts in the metaverse was cool, check this shit out’ and Akechi is admittedly intrigued , so he takes a look. He sees the inside of Kamoshida’s heart and is appropriately disgusted and says to Morgana, ‘hey we should totally kill this guy’s shadow.’ Morgana’s like ‘why is your first suggestion always murder, we don’t know what would happen if we killed his shadow, Igor wasn’t very clear about that bit, we should try stealing the treasure instead’ and Morgana has been useful (and it’s been really nice to have the company these past two years, though he won’t admit that) so Akechi agrees ‘fine, we’ll steal the treasure, but if that doesn’t work, then I’m killing his shadow.’

And that’s when Ryuji and Ann make an appearance (’ohmigawd, goro, be more careful with that damn app, i s2g.’) Ryuji’s mom apparently thinks Akechi is pretty neat and watches all his interviews, so Ryuji knows who he is and is delighted to find out that the lame-ass detective his mom has talked about is actually a grumpy badass in the metaverse, with this shadow that has some kind of insane power, and hey, he helped them bring down Kamoshida (alive,) so maybe he is actually pretty cool, even though sometimes he spaces out and talks about evil twins and some longed-nose dude. He decides then and there that he’s going to be Akechi’s best friend, since he apparently has none, and Ann is all too happy to join in for the ride, and all of Goro’s protests have fallen on deaf ears, and they know about the whole detective prince thing being a facade, so he might as well indulge them for now. 

The ‘Phantom Thieves’ (a name that makes Goro want to roll his eyes whenever he hears it, and why is everyone calling him ‘leader?’) gain fame and change hearts, gaining new members such as this weird-ass artist dude who fights with ice, and oh, god, one Nijima is bad enough, don’t tell me there’s two! and she uses nukes, wtf?!

Around this time, he also meets Shujin’s delinquent, enigmatic transfer student whose talk of hope and justice never quite seem to reflect in his stormy grey eyes, and he and Goro are clearly birds of a feather in a way, he can tell, there’s just something about him, and he thinks this guy might actually be his best friend, but don’t tell Ryuji that, he’d never hear the end of it.

Akechi learns the truth behind Akira’s arrest and Shido’s involvement and he is disgusted to find that he genuinely wants to help this guy, and he can’t do that if Shido’s dead, maybe he doesn’t want his revenge as badly as he thought??? Oh, ew, I have feelings that aren’t anger and it’s all my friends’ fault, I can’t just leave them and go off to get revenge, they’d literally die without me, those lovable idiots. Also, when Ryuji saw his home, he pretty much insisted he stay with him instead, and Ryuji’s mom reminds him of the good times he had with his own mother, and he honestly doesn’t think he has the strength to disappoint her like that. So, he decides to change Shido’s heart, but he knows that there’s no way that this little group of miscreants is strong enough to take on the fucked up bullshit that he’s seen in Shido’s heart, so let’s hit pause on that for now.

Shido had Wakaba killed via completely non-supernatural ways and stole her research, same as before, so Futaba still has a palace. He found out Akira worked at Leblanc a while ago and started dropping by, and then somehow Ryuji found out about it, and now all the Phantom Thieves know, so much for a peaceful place to get away, but he actually doesn’t mind that much, and Akira lets Akechi keep an eye on the shop when there are no customers so he can go out and do errands and Boss doesn’t mind, so they’ve ended up hanging out there as a group from time to time and talking Phantom Thief business, so Futaba knows who they are, and asks for their help.

Okumura’s palace pretty much goes the same, Okumura dies somehow, are we responsible, why does murder actually make me feel kinda bad, stupid friends and their stupid good influence. 

Goro attends the Shujin student fair as guest speaker, whoa, the class president being friends with Akechi does have its perks, doesn’t it? Akira finds them all there together and approaches them, tells them he saw them go into the metaverse, awakened his own persona, and saw a guy in a black mask kill Okumura’s shadow, hey why don’t I join you, you probably need all the help you can get, who’s heart are we stealing next, how about Sae, she knows my probabtion officer and has been giving me hell, plus I already checked, she definitely has a palace.

They agree, and oh, hey, Akira can hear Morgana talk now, but WAIT A MINUTE?! Didn’t he hear Morgana talk before when he told Goro that Leblanc didn’t sell sushi, even though Goro hadn’t asked for any?

They hack Akira’s phone, learn that Shido (Akechi recognizes that voice) will have thugs waiting to capture them when they leave the palace. They plan around it, pull the metaverse switch and manage to sneak a heavily drugged Akechi out of the warehouse Shido stashed him in by traveling through the metaverse. Shido’s lackey’s have written a fake suicide letter from the leader of the Phantom thieves, and the chief of police, under Shido’s orders, delivers a statement confirming its authenticity, and look the plan succeeded. All they need to do know is take down Shido.

Things are going great, until they get to the engine room, where Joker, having realized what happened, is waiting for them. Joker, who lost everything after he transferred, who discovered the metaverse completely alone, who didn’t mean to kill that guy’s shadow, but he attacked him first, and Shido had somehow known, had been keeping an eye on him, had him convicted for a crime that he didn’t commit in the hopes that he would break because he needed an agent in the metaverse, and so far he’s had no luck. Joker, who had nothing left to lose and had accepted the only hand that had reached out for him.

They fight, and when it looks like things are going badly for Joker, he pulls out... a second persona?!?! At least, it looks like a persona, but something about it is off. it looks familiar somehow. And then Akira asks if they knew it was possible to fuse personas and Akechi realizes what he’s looking at. These aren’t the clean executions that Caroline and Justine perform, these are personas that have been ripped apart and haphazardly thrown back together with no thought to form or elegance, look, there’s a Yaksini’s arm, and that bit right there clearly used to belong to a Rangda, and I think that piece might have belonged to a Seiryu, and Akechi should stop listing personas now because Ann thinks she’s going to be sick.

They keep fighting. Joker can’t understand the difference in power between them. After all, aren’t they the same? Unloved, unwanted, soldiers pitted against each other by some bullshit higher power?

When Joker shoots the bulkhead door closed and Futaba reports that she’s lost Joker’s reading, Akechi vows then and there that he’s going to kill Shido after all. And he almost does. He stands there, with his gun pressed to the head of the shadow of his father, his friends can’t blame him, and even Morgana knows better than to try and stop him. But he doesn’t. He remembers Akira’s madness there at the end, and wonders what he would have become of him if it weren’t for Ryuji, who somewhere along the way, he’d realized he’d stopped tolerating and started actually liking. Ann, who shared his woes about being in the public eye and swapped tips with him about how to handle the press. Yusuke, who, although he was still completely bizarre to him, appreciated the beauty in life and didn’t tease Goro for his taste in Grandpa clothes. Makoto, who knew the importance of hard work and who, between herself and her sister, had caused Goro to pick up some healthier coping mechanisms. Futaba, who made fun of him for his food blog, but liked the same nerd bullshit that he did and would bombard him with memes until his day somehow became a little less shittier. Haru, who dreamed of starting her own business and actually cared about Goro’s opinions, and could threaten someone with a smile in a way that even Goro was jealous of. And Morganna, who had reminded him what it was like to not be lonely, and demanded more sushi than he could afford, but always made sure Goro ate his fill, instead of getting so focused on his work that he forgot.

Akechi guesses that he must have turned soft somewhere during the past several months, but after seeing what happened to Akira, he can’t help but be grateful, knowing with certainty that if things had turned out differently, that would have been him. Hey, Morgana, you know that world-saving bs you talked about two years ago? Let’s leave this piece of shit here to rot and focus our attention on that instead.

And you guys know the rest.

Or, at least, that’s how I thought it would go. Feel free to share your thoughts. :)

persona 5 strikers thoughts and feelings

This is going to be a long post. Like, the type of post you’d only really have time to read when you’re trying to sleep but you’re not ready to be unconscious yet so you’re just looking for something to do to spend your time with minimal effort. 

So in 2018, a masterpiece was born into the world: Into the Spider-verse was released and it was amazing—it’s honestly the best spiderman movie we have without a doubt, and it’ll be very far into the future before Spider-verse is beaten as the best spiderman movie. Them’s the facts. Then in 2019, Spider-man: Far From Home was dropped. It’s a great movie! Great characters, great continuation of who these characters are and works fantastic as a continuation of a story. It’s really hard trying to take the torch of a previous movie (or in Marvel’s case, juggling twenty something movies) and come up with a new movie that both works on its own, as well as being the next step in this series of films. Thus, with that idea in mind, I think it’s kind of unfair to judge into the spiderverse and far from home, because these are two movies with two completely different objectives in mind. 

Okay, so this is still a persona 5 strikers post, I promise, but the idea is the same: Persona 5 could basically do whatever it wanted—new story, new characters, new everything, and it’s just plain old awesome. However, Persona 5 strikers did not have that sort of freedom. It was bound to the original game, and it had its own rules and stuff it had to keep intact, characters they had to work with, and on top of that, it had to justify its existence as a sequel (lets pretend money doesnt exist lmfao). 

SO, the big question is: did it do that? Did it justify its existence? 

And my answer: holy fuck did it ever do that

I came into this game knowing the extreme bare minimum. I knew there was someone named Sophia, and i knew there was roadtrip, and i knew there were Personas. That’s my knowledge of it before i played it on the Switch.  I should also clarify like, early on, that i was not expecting anything from this game. At all. I was the world’s biggest cynic of this game—if you scroll down my p5s tag far enough, youll just see me complaining about a game that hasn’t even come out yet. I was fully expecting to have this be a Waifu show, and any male character that isn’t Akira to just be shoved aside like some kind of nerd in a high school hallway, and i have never been more pleased to be wrong. In fact, i actually owe it an apology, because of how fucking rude i was for no reason!!! Because this game deserves everything to be honest. 

Persona 5 strikers is, frankly, insane. Insane in the sense that it got to pull shit off that just would never have existed in the original game, because the original game is scared. It had to be as impressive as possible and garner as much attention as possible. Strikers does not have that problem—every single person who bought that game does not need to be convinced that persona 5 is a good game. They already played it. That means Atlus can just fuck around and have a good time, and man did they have a good time. There’s still scenes that still shock me if i think about it too hard, because i’m used to atlus having to follow this sort of rule set when it comes to persona 5 (or any of the main games im assuming, but i havent played them.) And on top of that, there’s still shit that’s Atlus Trademarked Branded in a good way. The style of story of story telling, and revealing the mystery that is so integral to what p5 is, is still there. 

So, to make this even a little bit comprehensible, i will make a list! 

First of all, What is this game?

In short, this game is an OVA of an anime. It’s bonus side content that has one thing in mind: to showcase these lovable characters more by putting them in fun situations. That’s it, and it is just phenomenal. That was the main point of, i’d say, like forty hours of the game. It’s just fun times with fun characters. 

But to get deeper of what i think is happening, or what they were thinking during the development, is that this is a second opportunity. Persona 5 (as we all know) had a lot of problems, and we were not quiet about those problems. We yelled it all out, made posts, made complaints on every social media platform ever. And Atlus heard all of them, and Strikers is a way to mitigate those mistakes. Aside from being a fun OVA, Strikers also works to be a deeper exploration of these characters—more specifically, the characters that did not receive much in the original game. Creating this sequel is having the ability to redo what they felt (or to be more specific, we felt) in the original game while adding new ones. I will get to that in a second.  

The format of the game 

Absolutely brilliant to throw them on a road trip. P5V already forced us to experience Shibuya for 200+ hours, and im so glad that they didn’t do that again. Going from town to town, making us experience these new places alongside our favorite characters is so good, and it just makes sense. It’s fun, it’s lighthearted, and it’s actually shockingly good. But one thing i do want to talk about early on is the way the story unfolds and the villains that they use, and what they do with it because it’s very interesting. 

So as we explore japan and stuff, we encounter jails, and with those jails comes an antagonist. This antagonist works to be a parallel to one of our characters. That character will find it in their hearts to feel bad for the antagonist, because the antagonist could have been them had the original game not happen. At first I thought all of the thieves were gonna get an antagonist, and i was really hyped for the ryuji one. And then came to hour forty of the game where i realized “yeah that’s not gonna happen. There’s just not enough time.” And i was right, and the game ended. But i am not salty at all, honestly, because the people who got a direct antagonist were: Ann, Yusuke, and Haru. (we wont count zen and sophie). 

Is there a trend??? Yes. these are all characters in the original game that have received the worst treatment by atlus. The three of them are basically cast aside the minute they finished their original arc, and its horrible! BUT that’s why this is the path that atlus chose for them—to give them more depth, and screentime, and a way to show their inner self. That isn’t to say that the ones who aren’t those three (makoto, futaba, mona, akira, ryuji) didn’t get anything. Futaba still has her thing at the end with ichinose, and she was very prevalent and animated during the rest of the game. Mona and Akira have to be a focal points, that’s just the nature of the game. The other two though, I will talk about in depth in a second.  

Makoto

Y’all i poke fun at shumako fans sometimes cause its kind of easy and fun, but i honestly love makoto. In my very first playthrough of p5 (my first ever jrpg game, first persona game, i had no idea what i was doing), i had only maxed out two characters: ryuji and makoto. And i know she had a lot of screentime and love in the original game which is great, but i truly felt like she was dissed in this game. Her only roles were

A driver

Someone to tell them “we don’t have a choice. Let’s keep going and see where this takes us.” (seriously, if you replay this game, you will see how much she does this)

Idk, i just wish she had more to do, especially compared to how much love they gave the other characters. 

But let’s talk about some of the new characters! 

Zenkichi

Damn you atlus. Damn you and your insistence at bringing in cop characters. I was fully on board with hating zenkichi, i was fucking ready for it. I was convinced that there was nothing they could do convince to like zenkichi. I was immune to their copaganda. 

And then i ended up loving him, which makes me sad a little bit. I didn’t realize how desperate i was to have an adult who has a persona. Someone who wants the world to change just as much as they do, while still having that aspect of them that makes them adult. Like??? As someone who is technically an adult, its a breath of fresh air. An adult. Who fights. For justice. Using a persona. And god i love akane so much, and her obsession with the thieves (that scene is probably in my top ten fave scenes of the game). Also what i loved about zenkichi is that he fucking hates the cops!! He hates the system of the cops!! And thats why i actually really started to love him!! Because i thought it was atlus saying that the systematic problem of the police cannot be solved by one person, and zenkichi threw away his badge. I actually cried at that part!! 

But then he became a cop again, and i was just :/ but as a character, i really love him to bits and would love to do a study on him, or at least use him as an outside pov. But! i absolutely love his persona, since im a les miserables fan hehe

Sophia 

she’s probably my favorite new aspect of the game. I was ready to not like her—again, i just suck like that, lmfao—and when i saw her, i was scared that she was just another waifu. I mean, she was very cute after all. But then as the game went on, i thought she was a little too cute. And even further into the game, i finally slapped myself in the face and realized oh my god shes not a waifu. Shes a sister. 

That blew my mind, im ngl to you. A female character that isn’t supposed to be romanced? By jove, what a miracle! 

And she…is an amazing character. Im sorry, i just love her so much. I love her so much that she  probably ranks as my fifth or sixth favorite character which is surprising even to me. Everything about her is delightful and invigorating. She’s funny??? Her comedic timing is amazing, and she has such chemistry with the rest of the team. She’s actually useful to the plot, and while her character design is a little too on the nose for me in terms of cuteness (i mean, good god she’s wearing oversized sweater to show how cute and tiny she is, and her hair has literal hearts in it), she is absolutely lovable. 

But what i actually really wanna gush about for a second is sophia at the last stage of the game. You get the idea, i dont really like to get excited over things, so at this point i figured that there was nothing this game could do to shock me. 

And then sophia had a persona awakening. 

Like. holy fuck did i yell. I didnt realize what was happening until the music had already kicked in. and its just so fucking smart!!! Sophia??? The ai?? With no heart?? gOT A PERSONA???? AWAKENING??? BECAUSE SHE LEARNED WHAT THE HEART IS AND THE PASSION THAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO GET A PERSONA??? I started crying honestly, because it was just so smart. And looking back on it now, its obvious!! Of course it would lead to this, it only made sense that the culmination of her character arc leads to her getting a persona, nothing else would have been as good. Also, her voice actor is just amazing?? When she was talking to ichinose at the end, i actually got incredibly emotional because of the line reads. Its just so spot on and it really captures the essence of sophia.

Muah. five stars Atlus. You got me. 

Ryuji <3!!!!

Oh man. Oh boy. Okay. so where do i start. 

Yall know i love him. Hes probably my favorite fictional male character of all time, and he is the one i was the absolute most cynical about in this game. I was expecting literally nothing. Nothing. Like. nothing. I thought he was just gonna keep being used as a joke, or a gag, and he’s gonna be super horny all the time for the other girls and it was gonna make me mad and there was gonna be some insane homophobic/queerphobic jokes in every other scene and i know i was being unfair, but i cant help it. 

And then i played the first two hours of the game, and i cried the entire time. Because ryuji has never been better than he is in this game. Its crazy. 

The ryuji in persona 5 strikers is who ryuji should have been/how he should have been treated this entire time. From the actual funny jokes (for example, the gold bar joke + his reaction to it in the beginning of the game), defending his female friends instead of being the one people need to defend from (natsume arc), and the fact that he was the one to be there with morgana and akira in the very beginning of the game. Its such a small thing that they didnt even need to do, but it was such an integral part of the original game for me, that i just was convinced that nothing like this was going to happen. But then it happened. Its just small stuff like that that could have been overlooked but it wasn’t because this game? Persona 5 strikers? Fucking loves ryuji. 

The actual respect they gave this boy is insane and i wasn't ready for it. Like, they gave the shujin trio lunch, they gave the little charm of the katana when they were in natsume’s jail, and, in my opinion this is the second-best thing that they could have given ryuji is sophia. Ryuji and sophia are the pinnacle of a brother & sister bonding relationship in the game that isn’t akira & futaba. And its really prevalent too?? Small stuff from the beginning of the game (pulling her out of a jail, calling her shorty), but then you have the iconic “shut the fuck up” scene, and that scene was so well characterized and written and voice acted, that somehow him saying “fuck” was the least exciting part of that scene to me. Ryuji is an older brother to her, like its undoubtable, and its only further cemented at the end of the game where Ryuji helps out ichinose because he knows how much sophia cares about her. This game. Love ryuji. And i love. This game. 

You know what else i love? Akiryu. 

Guys. i was fully prepared to starve in terms of akiryu. But theres just. So much of it. I wont get too deep into it, because i think this aspect of the game for me still needs marinate a little bit. Like, what was that last shot when EMMA died and Ryuji walked to approach Akira so they could relish in their victory together?? And the smile from both of them??? What the fuck. That was amazing. Also Joker being saved by Ryuji when he was about to fall from the cliff to save sophia??? WHAT. The LEADER AND HIS RIGHT HAND MAN? WHAT. anyway. If theres anything i want to keep for myself in my own brain, its the akiryu aspect of this game, so i wont talk too much about that part of things (instead, itll probably manifest in fic lmfaooo). 

Sure, there’s tidbits of stuff i dont like that they gave ryuji: sexualizing ann in that one cut scene and making him touch the jails even though it hurts, and i recognize those and frown at them, but for the most part, i am blown away with how they treated him.

Basically, Ryuji has never been better. From the opening of the game with him being the first text message and the one to sling his arm around akira, to the very last cut scene where it was ryuji wordlessly leaving because he’s so confident that they would never be separated for long, this game adores Ryuji and i am so so happy to say that.

The Royal aspect of things

Yeah, i had to talk about this, but itll be a short thing i just wanted to point out. Because the last part of this game...is persona 5 royal. Which is curious. Like taking reality and giving that power to someone else so you dont have to experience suffering anymore? And even like, the final section just looked a lot like the top half of maruki’s palace?? And whats even crazier is that we had a boss fight with sophia, just like how we had a boss fight with sumire? Royal and Strikers have like, the same thesis statement. It’s kind of uncanny.It’s interesting, it’s like atlus came up with these two ideas, and then just decided they liked both of them so much that they just did it twice. I don’t mind though—actually, in terms of how the last Palace/Jails go, i probably like them both about equally. 

Though i did love the final battle in this one more than i did in royal. Splitting into teams?? Thats cool as fuck, and really innovative and i didnt see it coming. It also kicked my ass. A lot. 

Now for the last stretch: the small stuff!

The music — bomb as fuck. In my heart, Daredevil is ranked the same as Rivers. Axe to grind is also amazing, but Daredevil owns me

Akechi — i really debated whether or not to talk about him, but i figured a bullet point should be enough. Im really shocked that he wasnt in this at all. Like not even a name drop. If this is an OVA, and the point of the game is to please the fans, and akechi is arguably the fan favorite character, i was really ready for something. But there was nothing, except for the pancake hallway if that even counts as a reference. Thats it. Thats all i wanted to say about him.

The humour — FUCKING HILARIOUS im convinced that in my fifty hour playtime, five of that is dedicated to me laughing and unable to continue the game 

Akira — so much personality! His lines of dialogue are crazy sometimes (like. Whats up with him saying Ryuji has ‘nice abs’ when they were in bath? Im crazy and even i dont know what the fuck that could mean) 

Battle system — oh my god i almost forgot to talk about this. I love it! I kind of miss the turn based aspect just because i found it very comforting for some reason, but this hack and slash style of gameplay is so invigorating because i do feel like it justifies shit like the baton pass and huge attacks.  This battle system fully encompases how the Phantom Thieves are supposed to fight, you know what i mean?

Anyway, thats my thoughts on strikers. Loved it. Amazing. 9.3/10, wouldve been higher but Konoe’s Jail almost bored me to death. Also im a monster and i didnt do any requests that isn’t a fun one, teehee. As if i play persona 5 for the persona aspect of things.

Hear me out:

Okay so, my brother made a joke about ghosts last night while I was playing Persona 5 Royal, and me being me, my brain came up with an entire AU.

Paranormal investigators AU for Persona 5 Royal.

Straight up, they could keep the Phantom Thieves name for the group, or, if they wanted to be punny, Phantom Sees as I came up with at 3 in the morning. No but I straight up have whole plot points for characters. Mild Persona 5 spoilers I guess because some of the AU ideas revolve around the character's original story.

Joker: A mostly normal kid who used to be known in his hometown for being able to see ghosts and performing other psychic type things, but was run out of town after accusing someone (*cough* Shido *cough*) of a crime after seeing it in a vision he had. (Shido managed to convince people he was a fraud). At first, he is the only one who can hear Morgana speak, but depending on how close he gets with certain people, some of his powers may be transferred to others, the first typically being able to understand Morgana and some of the ghosts.

Morgana: A human soul who immediately possessed a cat after passing away (not to his knowledge, he did it completely on accident after being coaxed by Igor). Has no idea he's dead and has no memory of his life before the possession, but feels that he isn't meant to be a cat deep down. As a ghost, he knows how to exorcise other ghosts and has a vast knowledge regarding other paranormal entities, yet has no clue how he knows any of this. Decides to stick around with Joker since he seems to be able to communicate with him, and decides to convince Joker to start the Phantom Sees because he feels drawn towards other ghosts (for obvious reasons) and believes them to be the key to learning his true identity, thus he persuades Joker with the promise of sharing his paranormal knowledge with Joker, which comes in handy when Kamoshida's case rolls around.

Ryuji: Mostly the same except the set-up by which he meets Joker. Basically Shujin is being haunted by one of it's old abusive gym coaches (Kamoshida) and he is somehow causing more havoc than when he was alive. Physically harming students, mostly the ones doing poorly on the volleyball team, and even sexually assaulting the female students. Him being a ghost of course, no one believes any of the students when they try speaking up. Ryuji and the track team incident was the last thing Kamoshida ruined before passing away, and ever since he has been haunting Ryuji and refusing to let him forget the whole thing. Ryuji can't actually SEE Kamoshida, but just by the injuries he sees on the other students, and the occasional degrading whispers he hears, he just KNOWS Kamoshida is the cause of everything. One day while walking to school in the rain, he sees Ann, and also sees her looking incredibly uncomfortable. Ryuji comes to the conclusion that Kamoshida is messing with her in some way, but she runs off before he can confront her about it. At this very same moment someone (Joker) asks Ryuji if he knew who "that man bothering that girl" was, and instantly (well knowing Ryuji it probably takes him a bit) he realizes this strange guy can see Kamoshida, thus, he tags along with him in the hopes of finding out a way to get rid of Kamoshida, and inevitably does with the help of Morgana, who he understands after forming a bond with Joker. While he starts to realize over the course of his time in the Phantom Sees that hunting down paranormal "D-bags" is probably the best job ever, he starts to get upset over how there isn't much glory to be had when you're hunting things most people think are fake anyways.

Ann: Ann was being forced into a relationship with Kamoshida to help Shiho while Kamoshida was alive, and thought that she was free once he died, but, much to her dismay, she could still feel his overwhelming presence. He managed to get in contact with her (by possessing her phone for a bit) and told her that if she didn't continue to do whatever he asked, he would harm Shiho more than ever before. She went through it for a long time until she just couldn't anymore, and Kamoshida went through with his... Plot to harm Shiho, thus leading Shiho to try and kill herself. Joker notices her distress one day and gets her to open up a bit about what has been going on with her, forming a fragile, but decent bond. One day she happens to notice Ryuji and the new transfer student at school plotting something, and, due to her start of a bond with Joker, is able to hear Morgana chime in as well. She immediately confronts them and, after a lot of confusion and various antics, agree to let her help them exorcise Kamoshida.

(Now I have A LOT more ideas for characters such as the tech person being Futaba, Akechi being a ghost that becomes attached to Joker after a hunt but he turns out to secretly be a demon, Shido literally being the devil himself, the "awakenings" being when any of the team members get enough psychic power from Joker to be able to see the ghosts/paranormal creatures for what they really are, Igor and the twins being fallen angels of sorts. Look, I have so many ideas for this AU and I'd LOVE to go more into depth with it, but I first want to see if people are interested in it. If they are I'll go into more detail because I really really love this idea and I would love to spend forever explaining it but I don't want it to be in vain)

So I was zoning out during work this morning thinking about how they made a big deal about deviations to Mementos floors being a thing that could happen, but I’ve literally only gotten two the entire game. That one time when they told me about them, I got a whole dark floor full of Treasure demons. And I got a dark floor one other time. I thought it was weird, because I didn’t visit Mementos a lot, but when I was there, I was there for long periods of time. It feels like something that should have happened more often.

I now regret every thought in my head about that subject.

So we’re heading back into Maruki’s Palace to try to route the Treasure, which... I don’t know. I’m not getting the impression that he has a specific Treasure. The whole thing with his fiancee was the instigating event, but...this is clearly not a normal Palace.

Ten Thieves is so many Thieves.

So she wasn’t Ribbon or Midnight. XD I like Violet, but at the same time, it feels like it doesn’t match her overall aesthetic. It fits her, but not how she looks, which means the Thief gear really needs an update.

Being Goro is suffering.

Sumire gets an actual, proper awakening, with actual blood! I knew there was something fishy about there not being any the first time around. I really, really wish her outfit had changed, though. Give her something unique to represent herself as her own person. Not Kasumi, and not Joker’s aesthetic. But okay, fine, be the only person whose gloves don’t match their core element.

Time to shove my whole team into a safe room!

...while I appreciate you not making a scene and understand why you have mixed feelings, I’d also just like to remind you that you were the one who said, “It doesn’t matter where you start over.” He’s...trying, Futaba.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room...

I guess not being at each other’s throats is as much as I can ask.

So I gasped out loud like an excited dork when I realized that one of the personas you can fuse now in the Velvet Room was Hastur (and it was also something I had to fight in the Palace). I should have figured that if Biyarki was around, the thing it serves wouldn’t be too far behind. Shame Hastur wasn’t the final boss, but I still think this is the first time he’s shown up since Innocent Sin, and even there he was like a weirdly-hidden secret. I’m honestly just nerding out. XDDD

The warehouse areas were fun to climb around in, and the monitoring room was about as unsettling as anything else so far. I do think it’s funny that everything is so sleek and sci-fi and whatnot and then...ceiling fan.

Anyway, we can’t get any further in the Palace here, so it’s off to Mementos. Another day, because god forbid we just go today. But that means I’m finally free from plot prison and all my friends want to talk to me again. I might have enough time to rank up Haru. I probably won’t have time for Shinya, but if I have an extra two days somewhere...

I feel so bad for Sumire.

Makoto has finally directly acknowledged that she plowed in head-first and was kind of stupid.

It would have been funny if her third-tier persona was just Anat riding Johanna, but the new bike is cool, too.

I’ve got four third-tier personas, rank 7 of Sumire, and rank 8 of Haru, but I’ve also got two Mementos requests, so I guess it’s time to go investigate.

...oh dear.

Apparently the Depths no longer exist. Iweleth opens directly into the Grail’s chamber. Which he’s filled with giant security cameras. What is he even looking at?

A whole new area has formed, going up instead of down. I wonder if it’s going to connect back into the Palace. It’s like he looked at Mementos and was like, “I’m going to make a better Mementos. With tentacle monsters and the color white.”

And what requests we have! A mother threatening to kill herself and her kid out of grief and depression, and a teenage boy that wants us to kill him so he won’t hurt his sister again. How dare I assume that utopia means less severe Mementos requests!

(In hindsight, there was one request a long time ago where we just talked down the person. It was the only time we’ve done that. You’d think we’d talk down the kid trying to commit suicide by phantom thief, but nope. He was fucking Yoshitsune and it was a nightmare.)

Please appreciate that I almost launched my phone across the room trying to get a picture of this Showtime activation dialogue before it disappeared. XDDD

So I’m pushing forward through Da’at looking for the next rest area so I can stop for the night, it’s probably two floors away, and my thoughts from this morning manifest to destroy me as we head up the escalator and Futaba announces, “Joker, this floor is dangerous! We need to get out of here as fast as possible!”

Okay, cool. It must be a deviation where all the enemies are the powered-up red-aura kind. I’ll just be ready to floor it around them and it’ll be---

...what’s that noise?

Watch out for the what?

So I haven’t seen the reaper yet. I’m pretty speedy in Mementos. And apparently there’s a deviation floor where he’s just there from the start. Stalking you around as you open treasure chests and scream and drive like a maniac. He almost cornered me in a dead end and if this was remotely realistic I’d have crashed the bus swerving around him. X’D

Thank goodness the safe floor was in fact two floors up.

Bonus:

Went to run around in the Den and spend more coins, and...

Iwai’s shop is...where, Akira?

I’ve got Shido’s statue and Yald’s statue around to bait Goro into commenting on them, and it finally paid off. XD He hates the big gold lion.

Yusuke says that he’s probably being a bit narrow-minded, and Goro shrugs him off with, “You probably felt the same about Madarame.”

Yusuke says that he understands that Madarame was not always a terrible person. Something distorted him into what he became. Goro doesn’t care that Shido was probably the same.

Which, all things considered.......fair.

His 3rd Life - Nachi (Fluff)

Nonnie, because the glory of cat puns should not be shoved in a mere post, I have added them in. How? Well, read on to find out. Tumblr deleted the draft and honestly, with the number of puns, I can’t really blame the site. Happy Birthday, Nachi! 

Also, one part was inspired by a Tumblr Post. I can’t find it now. Help. 

The Life Cycle of a Tomato plant

The Life Cycle of Oji

The Life Cycle of Oji who doesn’t have a life vs The Life Cycle of a Lively Nekomata

Day 1

Student’s Cat’s Name: Nachi Saotome

Growth Terms Used

Oji

Nachi

Oji-san

Old Man

Old Fossil

Height

MC

5'7

6'2

Spine

I have learnt that plants I need these things to grow healthily:

Dad Jokes

Puns

Cooking omurice

Dried Sardines

Milk

Since Aoi said that I shouldn't be trusted around a stove (not that I'm agreeing with him, it's just that all of our pots are a bit... burnt), and I can sense that it’s going to be raining non-stop, I shall now attempt to do the first two tasks and the last. Don’t worry MC, you’ll be able to get on my shoulders one day!

Attempt #1 starts on the next page. 

To plot my purr-gress, I'm going to use MC's drawing of me-ow! I cat-not believe that Kuya actually couldn't identify what it was fur.

The spine is straight. Needs to be lengthened. 

Neither of the tails counts. 

What do you see? 

The height chart says I am only 5′2. While Oji 

What Do You Hear?

I hear mocking. Too much mocking. Must rectify. 

What Do You Smell?

Something behind my ear. Did I only wash one? Better start-over.

Teacher’s Friend’s Comments

Teacher’s Super young-but-not-too-young Friend’s Name: Futaba Saotome

Nachi, admirable effort but I am pretty sure Oji was just joking. He was actually busy.

... You’re going to ignore this page, aren’t you? I don’t blame you, I did the same thing at kindergarten. 

Day 2

I need to stay paw-sitive. That’s why I thought that going to the Market Area would cheer me up if I just stuck to the sheltered areas. MC was away at Finishing School so I knew she didn’t need my help unless she finally realized how boring being lectured by adults is. 

I had to wait for a meow-ment. 

Cat-titude is everything so once the crowd was gone, I could finally transform into my taller form and who should just appear but Oji?

Oji: Still at 6′2. Hah! He will never grow taller BUT I CAN!

While waiting for the milk, I noticed that Ogre-Face was there. Seemed to be tutoring Kuro. Of course, I was called Nach-Nach and then he started saying more things in gibberish. All while I was being glomped like a cat teaser. Not that I have ever played with one. I’m fifteen years old already, fur goodness sake.

Poor... I mean purr Aoi was up to his eyeballs and Koga actually looked tired from Kuro’s practice sheets so I tried to tell both about you. Usually, they cheer up when they hear about you.

Aoi screamed about making it stop. Koga just burst out laughing. 

Well until Oji shared with me about saying puns that work in several languages. To be super-inclusive and grow even more. That fossil actually showed the Spanish and Italian textbooks on the table. 

At least now I know once I am no longer a Nekomata, I will go to Purrgatory.

Purgatorio. The Spanish word for cat is ‘gato’!

PurGATTOrio = Gatto (cat) plus purgatorio (purgatory). Italian!

You would think Koga and Kuro would be happy. Fur some reason, everyone seemed shorter though. Maybe it’s because I grew taller? Aoi did say Oji create a monster and monsters are usually big! 

Oh, but don’t worry MC, my size is purr-fect to purr-tect yeow!

Purr-fressor Yakumo dropped by again-eow. I hope he was kitten-ning around when he said MC was a lovely doll to be caged. I still find it weird that he keeps calling her a doll and fur-requent mentions of traps. What was even weirder was when Mr Saotome made a joke, no one’s height changed. I’m pretty sure he is MC’s old man.

Teacher’s Friend’s Comments

Nachi, I always knew that. I also know someone might have fallen for a prank that made everyone’s heads drop. That’s why they are shorter. Come here, puss, puss. 

Day 3

What. The. Fluff.  I mean, what the... actually let’s keep it PG-rated. 

I WAS TRICKED.

The joke is on the old man though because both the Dawn and Twilight Faction actually ganged up against him. Something about being unable to take the number of puns.

I had to apologize according to MC... I should have known no one would believe that I could get taller.

But then, I didn’t expect the cake. Or the streamers. 

Actually, I didn’t get a feeling about getting a party.

Kuro wasn’t the only one hugging me. I have to say, feathers and scales are a bit weird to feel considering they are part of my diet but not necessarily... unpleasant. 

I’ve grown in age. And I will grow! You will see beyond this book!

Teacher’s Friend’s Comments

Happy Birthday, my dearest friend!

You may not have reached your full height, but you have reached into my heart. You would always reach for in any situation. I really a-purreciate you. 

You went out to check out if that textbook was out for me and Aoi, you greeted Professor Yakumo who was really tired after marking all those essays, you helped organize the textbooks and clean up the Milk Hall Raccord. 

You do everything and more. 

We all love you and can’t wait to see you grow!

Image is not mine, it is from Voltage Inc. Please don’t kill me... ow.

Bookshelf Briefs 8/21/19

Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter, Vol. 4 | By Reai and Suki Umemiya | Seven Seas – Aside from praising Iris’s innovations, this volume focuses more on the political end of things than the commerce end. Iris ends up attending the ball, and it goes better than she expected, mostly as the Queen Dowager is in her corner. In fact, honestly, things may go a little TOO well—the entire ball seems engineered to show off how the guy who dumped and exiled Iris is a hothead idiot, and Yuri seems to be doing an excellent job of manipulating the country into… running itself into the ground. But how invested should Iris be in all this, especially as she has to look out for her own nation, because there’s war on the horizon. Still an excellent political drama. – Sean Gaffney

Behind the Scenes!!, Vol. 7 | By Bisco Hatori | Viz Media – I enjoy Bisco Hatori’s humor, but her plotting is not a thing to behold. That said, as predicted, things resolved with the Ruka plotline, followed by a quick epilogue showing the film Goda made (honestly, the plot of the film sounds like a manga I’d love to see Hatori write), and then another epilogue several years later showing the two pairings (mostly) resolved and the two stars at ease with themselves and successful. There’s fun to be had here, but I can’t deny that I think this started a lot stronger than it ended, and I’m glad it did not end up as long as Ouran. I’d still recommend it to Hatori fans, though. Oh yes, and the amnesia arc proves to be as inconsequential as I suspected it would be. – Sean Gaffney

Cocoon Entwined, Vol. 1 | By Yuriko Hara | Yen Press – Hoshimiya Girls’ Academy has a unique tradition. The students have exceedingly long hair, and as the middle school third-year students are being measured for their high school uniforms, the high school third-years are finally having their hair cut, which will be used to make said uniforms. Cocoon Entwined so far is light on plot, heavy on atmosphere. We meet Yokozawa, a girl who seems to be able to sense breathing and/or heartbeats from the uniforms, and Saeki, the princely girl whom Yokozawa has feelings for. We don’t meet, except in flashback, the elusive Hoshimiya, granddaughter of the headmistress, who has locked herself in her room and for whom Saeki seemingly pines, much to Yokozawa’s dismay. I really liked this volume, even though there’s not a lot happening so far. I look forward to more, whenever it comes. – Michelle Smith

Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, Vol. 6 | By Inio Asano | Viz Media – Thankfully, and despite Kadode assuring her friends that something happened, it’s suggested nothing did, and the teacher is leaving the city due to the ongoing chaos. Honestly, the world may not have all that long to go—even if the aliens don’t bring things to an end, can Japan really hold off America and everyone else? This still has a bit of a post-apocalyptic feel to it. Still, Futaba does end up getting lucky, so to speak, though the implication is that her politics and his desire for a non-serious relationship will make that a very short relationship. The best part of the story was Oran’s surprise birthday party, which was sweet as pie. I hope there’s more sweet moments ahead. – Sean Gaffney

Emanon, Vol. 1: Memories of Emanon | By Shinji Kaijo and Kenji Tsuruta | Dark Horse – I initially picked up Emanon due to Tsuruta’s involvement since I’ve been enjoying Wandering Island; I only later realized that Kaijo is an award-winning author. The Emanon manga is an adaptation of a series of stories written by Kaijo (also illustrated by Tsuruta) featuring a young woman who calls herself Emanon. Kaijo’s somewhat melancholic but engaging narratives lend themselves well to Tsuruta’s atmospheric artwork. There’s very little action in the first volume of the manga. For the most part, Tsuruta is capturing a reminiscence of a conversation between two people, a young man who enjoys speculative fiction and Emanon. She intrigues him, not only because of the air of mystery surrounding her but because she tells him that she holds memories reaching back to the beginning of life on Earth. Memories of Emanon, adapting Kaijo’s original story, is self-contained, but I’m greatly looking forward to the continuation of the series. – Ash Brown

Idol Dreams, Vol. 6 | By Arina Tanemura | VIZ Media – It’s been almost two years since I read a volume of Idol Dreams. I’d stop short of saying it has gotten good in the intervening time—there’s a lot of melodrama here, from the death of Hibiki’s little sister and him carrying on despite his grief (leading to the spectacularly cheesy line, “Sayaka, can you hear Hibiki singing?”) to the plotline revolving around Hanami’s pregnancy and the fact that it isn’t Tokita’s—but it’s certainly somewhat better, and I think that’s because this volume puts much more emphasis on Deguchi as an adult interacting with adults rather than her masquerading as a teen interacting with teens. It was even a little gratifying to see this mousey character haul off and smack Hanami for leaving Tokita at the altar. Do I care enough to keep reading? Maybe, especially if the next volume is the final one. – Michelle Smith

Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, Vol. 37 | By Shinobu Ohtaka | VIZ Media – And so, Magi comes to an end. There were some things I really liked about it, like how Ohtaka-sensei showed how Alibaba’s unfailing determination to fight the spell reminded various brainwashed people of other heroes they had known who had sacrificed everything for goals and countries that would no longer exist if everyone and everything returned to rukh. I liked how Kogyoku was desperately trying to get him to surrender to her before the arrival of the massive army in an attempt to save his life. The rest, though, is not completely clear. I get most of what Sinbad did, but I don’t really get how Aladdin emerged victorious. There was a big flash of light and then… happy epilogue? Which I guess is fine. The happy epilogue was what I really wanted, anyway. Overall, I enjoyed this series and its themes of self-determination. – Michelle Smith

My Hero Academia, Vol. 20 | By Kohei Horikoshi | Viz Media – This is an excellent volume, but it’s definitely a “wrap up one plot and start another” sort of book. Midoriya stops the “villains” and we see the small series of tragedies behind their backstory. He makes it back for the festival—just—and it’s a blast, with Jiro at her best (the redrawn art helps) and Eri dazzled. Then we see the new hero rankings post-All Might, and Endeavor is finally top of the charts, but being #1 also means that people are after you as well, and there’s a pretty nasty fight towards the end. Will Endeavor win the day? And will Todoroki care? Great volume, but I think it’s all about Jiro and Eri’s big grins in the end. Those are wonderful smiles. – Sean Gaffney

Shortcake Cake, Vol. 5 | By suu Morishita | VIZ Media – Ten has realized she likes Riku after all and returns early after summer vacation because he’s alone in the boardinghouse. Meanwhile, Chiaki is getting bolder about expressing his feelings. The great part is that not only does he get this pertain to Ten—including a smooch at the end and a “What can I do so that you consider me?”—but to Riku, as well. Chiaki’s oddball personality is starting to come through, and the best chapter here is a cute interlude where he lies about the origins of a cup Riku broke so that they can go out shopping for a replacement together. It involves Riku winning an enormous bag of potato chips for Chiaki from a crane game. I’m not super invested in the romance angle of this story, but I do like the main trio of characters! – Michelle Smith

Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization, Vol. 4 | By Tomo Hirokawa, based on the story by Reki Kawahara | Yen Press – There’s an attempt to ramp up the danger here, given that we’re dealing with the death of NPCs, who technically aren’t real people (though honestly, most of SAO has been built around proving that false lately) and the fact that this time you really can log out and go back to your life. But the threat of the game being hacked, as well as users using drugs to “enhance” their experience, means that this time the Japanese government may finally shut down all these VR games for good—something that Kirito and Asuna in particular are determined to stop. Can they help save Premiere from her fate? And what about Anti-Premiere? – Sean Gaffney

Takane & Hana, Vol. 10 | By Yuki Shiwasu | Viz Media – As expected, Okamon is shot down (very nicely) by Hana. Of course, Takane misunderstands. Indeed, the entire volume is about misunderstandings and poor communication, which is always a good fallback in romantic comedies like this one. We also get the backstory on how Takane met Nicola, and how, like Hana, he was at first completely annoyed by him till he saw his hidden nice side. There are not quite as many amusing faces as previous volumes (though the omake helps make up a lot of the difference). But in return we do get a bit more on the romance front, as a drunken Takane (they had a birthday party for him) ends up kissing Hana… on the nose. That said, the effect is devastating. Fun times. – Sean Gaffney

Yuri Life | By Kurukuruhime | Yen Press – We’ve seen quite a few yuri anthologies about adults lately and this one is a 4-koma one-shot, with each chapter focusing on a different couple, until we come around to the first one at the end. There are couples I found interesting. (One involves the Grim Reaper waiting for a woman to die, falling in love with her, and then having her romance be what enables the woman to keep living… so they have to part.) I will say they are “mostly” adult romances… one is teacher-student, with the student being sixteen, and it didn’t work for me. Nor did the one about the “yandere.” Still, there were more hits than misses, and if you’re looking for cute, sweet yuri that won’t stick in the head, this is decent enough. – Sean Gaffney

By: Ash Brown

if you want: slice-of-life / realistic portrayal of wlw relationships with no fanservice 

We obviously know why I’m here. If something contains wlw, expect me to appear there sooner or later.

Aoi Hana is a pretty special series. Among all the shoujo ai series whose main draw is the fanservice and the fetishization of girl on girl action, Aoi Hana contains none of that. It’s a quite realistic take on the “genre”.

The way I’d describe this anime would be to say that it’s about “Fumi’s first love”. Our main cast consists of Fumi, a very timid and gentle girl who moves back to her hometown where she meets Akira (Aa-chan) with whom she used to be friends with as kids. Despite the expected premise, Aoi Hana isn’t a love story between these two. Fumi meets a girl called Sugimoto on her first day in her new school. They eventually start dating. The series is basically about Fumi’s personal growth throughout this relationship with multiple characters and their interjecting love interests keeping things even more interesting. I’d also like to mention that while wlw relationships are the focal point of the anime, Fumi is the only lesbian in the bunch. Two other main characters are bisexuals and we aren’t really given anything to figure out Aa-chan’s.

With the complicated relationship “drama” you’d expect Aoi Hana to be pretty spicy but it’s a slice-of-life through and through. The story advances at a very slow pace and focuses quite a bit on side-characters’ relationships, friendships and just general school life.

The technical side perfectly mirrors the anime’s pacing and general atmoshpere. The OST contains a lot of piano and various musical instruments and the OP/ED are both slow and soothing. The animation is very smooth and the art direction is quite interesting with the backgrounds only being drawn as if they were just sketched. The character designs are simple but distinct.

However, there’s a reason I said that this is about “Fumi’s FIRST love” as this is just a small piece of the actual story. The manga was unfinished at the time of this production and thus they decided to leave the ending SOMEWHAT open-ended. Not in a bad way as most of the story threads have been wrapped up but they left room for a potential sequel which I’d love to see so bad!”

Sidenote: compared to my review my score may seem low and that is because I may have appreciated how the series was handled, I’m really not a sucker for SOL and the pacing was way too slow for me personally. [7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want: boobs and asses tbh / okay-ish beach volleyball matches

Harukana Recieve is a sports anime mixed with some slice-of-life. Which sport? Beach volleyball. And as I found out from watching this, that is apparently very different from normal volleyball.

The story starts out with Haruka, who moves in with her cousin Kanata. Now living near the ocean, Haruka obviously takes a trip down to check it out where she meets 2 girls playing beach volleyball. Later it turns out that Kanata has certain connections to the pair. This is the start of how Haruka gets her first taste of the sport which later leads to her pairing up with Kanata. A bit later we meet another pair, the Thomas twins, who get the other 2 to join the beach volleyball club at school.

Honestly, Harukana Recieve was quite boring to me. The slice-of-life between the matches felt really slow. They did give some character bulding moments to our characters, however this being a sports anime I think the same could’ve been achieved during or after some exciting matches. And while the anime tries to give some depth to our cast, for quite some time I could only think of them as the tropes they represent...cause of the fanservice.

I looked at a few pages of the manga and was surprised to see that the characters don’t look like they came out of a hentai which means that making their boobs 3 times the size of what they were in the manga was a conscious choice. The creators most likely thought that the story couldn’t carry the anime and instead they filled the empty spots with a lot of eyecandy. Boob jiggles, close up shots of their asses and of course weirdly small swimsuits, everything a salivating virgin would want and more!

Shortly about beach volleyball from what the anime told me: a team consists of 2 people. A pair can only touch the ball 3 times while it’s in their court before needing to send it over the net. This part was initially what I thought made the matches quite boring to watch as it really doesn’t offer much variety. The tactics were the exact same for a long while. Recieve the ball, second person goes up to the net and passes up the ball to be hit over, first person jumps up and hits ball over. Repeat. However, I took a look at some actual real life beach volleyball matches and I realized the problem. The camera work. In real life, the passing of the ball is incredibly fast paced. You barely have time to think, the ball is just flying all over the place. In the anime however, they often pan on the ball while it’s in the air or even slow down the camera after a hit, making the matches feel much more sluggish than they actually would be. This is made worse by the fact that they barely use any wider shots, mostly just close ups from a lot of weird angles, making it hard to discern how big the court actually is and following the ball’s trajectory is almost impossible, as sometimes the ball looks like it got launched into the stratosphere and then we pan to literally a few meters from the person who hit it.

Obviously, the lack of tactics used in the matches could be attributed to the fact that Haruka is new and she is slowly progressing. Which is realistic, but doesn’t make it any less boring. 

The final 3 episodes more or less consist of one match, which is the most exciting part of the whole thing. It still has the problems I pointed out above but as the 2 pairs are both more or less experienced, the fooling around is finally over and replaced by some actual tactical playing. It helps that the match also carries much more emotional weight than the ones before.

Well this ended up being hella long...if you just wanna look at boobs and asses go ahead tbh. If you want the beach volleyball part just watch the last 3 episodes. If you’re not interestested in either, then... [5/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

if you want: beautiful presentation and nature scenes / some insight into diving /  iyashikei (healing slice-of-life anime) / peculiar charm

Amanchu! is a special case for me. I see it mentioned a lot that one of the most exciting points of the anime is that it’s made by the creator of Aria, which I’ve obviously heard of but haven’t seen yet. And while this would work great towards me not comparing it to a prior work of the mangaka, I still made a mistake by having preconceptions about what this anime would be like. 

My vague memory of the plot was that it was going to be about a diving club. Great! Basically another sports anime, which I’m fine with. However that wasn’t quite the case.

In the beginning, we’re introduced to Futaba (Teko) who moves into a new town, away from her dear friends. She is very shy and timid. Then at her new school she happens to meet a peculiar girl named Hikari (Pikari) who quickly befirends her and makes her join the diving club with her. The overarching plot of the anime is Teko’s change from a shy little girl into a much more mature young woman thtough Pikari, the diving club and the sport itself. 

That is, in the first half of the anime and then the last episode. However, there’s a pretty big chunk of Amanchu! where the diving barely gets mentioned in favour of some slice-of-life and character building episodes, some of which focus on the side characters; the other 2 members of the diving club, a twin sister and brother and the club manager who’s their teacher. Unfortunately, most of these episodes fell flat for me as they really aren’t...very interesting characters!

While my lack of enjoyment in most of Amanchu! could be chalked up to me being a bit sick of slice-of-life stuff thus making it hard to get invested in what was happening, there’s something else that can be a huge turn off for people which is the “comedy”. Whenever something that demands a reaction happens the characters’ heads turn into a circle and their faces kinda turn into an emoji (for examples look up ‘Amanchu faces’). All of them have a specific “emoji face”. This looks cute of course but the anime uses it SO OFTEN you sometimes feel like you see their normal faces less than their emoji faces. Characters also have certain “ticks” like Pikari constantly saying “upyo!”, Teko making this high pitched “eeeeeehhh??” and the twin sister kicking her brother in the back at basically every occasion. The “funny sibling abuse” trope I hate anyway but your opinion of these things I just listed could make or break the series. It could either annoy you to hell and back making it basically unbearable to watch or you can find it incredibly charming and entertaining. 

If you’re on of those many people who find it charming then Amanchu! will be a great iyashikei (healing anime) for you. The presentation is absolutely gorgeous with soft linework and a vivid but inintrusive colour palette. The background music consists of some very nice instrumental tracks. Of course, the anme shines especially during the diving and underwater moments while the slice-of-life episodes bring up some less serious but everyday questions. The enjoyment of small moments is a big part of Amanchu!.

This anime wasn’t really for me but I’m still giving it a quite weak 7 as I don’t think it deserves to be listed with some of my 6 rated anime that are objectively much worse. [7/10] (x)

Recommend: HELL Yeah! | Yes | Eh??? | Nope | This anime killed my parents

P5 Shipping Round Robin: Final Thoughts

Here are my final thoughts/feelings for this entire experience. Feel free to read or disregard completely!

I will be posting this in a question/answer format, just so it’s not one huge block of text/word vomit. If anyone else who is completing this challenge sees this, I’d love to see your answers to these questions as well!

Why did you decide to do this challenge?

When I first saw this challenge, I thought it would be fun and would help me to try out different styles of writing. I have my favorite characters, as well as ones that I don’t like too much, and I was curious to see who I would write well, and who I would struggle to write.

I also wanted to be able to contribute something to the Persona 5 fandom, since I’ve seen such great artwork and fanfiction – on Tumblr, fanfiction.net, and a variety of other places. It has also been a while since I had posted anything on my fanfiction account, so anything to boost productivity there is a huge plus! In fact, with all these one-shots combined into one story, this is my longest piece on that site as of now!

Who did you think would be the easiest to write when you started? Was that character truly the easiest once you began to write?

To be honest, I thought it would be easiest for me to write my favorite characters: Makoto and Haru. Even though I hadn’t personally seen all ranks 1-10 with them, I had heard about them, plus I focused more on them during the main plot.

Were they the easiest when I started to actually write? Yes and no. I found that writing for Makoto was much more difficult than I thought it would be. She definitely was not the worst (see my answer to the next question for that), but I was surprised at how much I struggled. I found that it was easier to write her with someone more bubbly (like Ann and Futaba) rather than with more subdued individuals, like Akira or Yusuke. I suppose it’s because I see her as a calmer and more collected individual, so if there’s no contrast, it’s harder to make a compelling one-shot.

With Haru, I found that she was rather easy to write. I learned as I wrote that Haru is a much more complicated individual than I had originally thought. She can play the part of the excited and giggling love interest, as well as the more level-headed and rational love interest. It was interesting to see how many ways she could be portrayed, yet still retain the essence of Haru.

However, there were three characters I found surprisingly easy to write: Ann, Ryuji, and Futaba. I think the main reason it was easy to write them was because I have seen all of their ranks 1-10, so I knew a lot more about them than other characters. Futaba has a very distinct personality, so it was fun and easy to play around with that. Ann and Ryuji are both energetic characters as well, so it was easy for me to pair them up with more subdued characters (like Akira and Goro). In short, all of their stories were just really fun (and therefore, easy) to write!

 Who did you think would be the most difficult to write when you started? Was that character truly the most difficult when you began to write?

When I started, I figured that Goro and Yusuke would be the most difficult to write, for two different reasons. Goro is my least favorite Phantom Thief (not exactly the smartest thing to admit on Tumblr, but there ya go), so I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to write his one-shots without them turning nasty or unrepresentative of his true character. With Yusuke, I sometimes find it difficult to get a read on his personality, so I was worried that I’d struggle with making his interactions realistic.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy Goro’s character was to write. Though he was not the easiest, I found as I wrote that he can be extremely complex, and that makes for really great writing. I feel that I came to appreciate him more as I wrote stories for him.

I will say without a doubt that Yusuke was by far the hardest character for me to write. Every story (with the exception of Ann x Yusuke) had me sitting at my computer screen, staring blankly at it for ten minutes, typing a sentence, and then immediately getting rid of it because it sounded nothing like him.

The hardest story for me to write was Yusuke x Makoto, I think because they are both somewhat subdued individuals, plus they really don’t interact all that much in-game. Most of his humor and appeal flies over my head, so I struggled to write him because I wasn’t sure if I was doing his character justice.

 What lessons have you learned from this experience?

What a generic question!

But seriously, I think one of the main lessons I learned was that all characters from the Phantom Thieves are complex. This challenge forced me to focus on each character, to analyze his or her actions within Persona 5, and to then predict and write out how they would react in my made-up scenarios. It helped me see things from all of the characters’ perspectives, and, as such, I think it’s helped me appreciate all of the characters a little bit more, especially those whom I had previously disliked.

Another (probably obvious) lesson that I learned is that I have a couple new pairings that I enjoy. As stated before, my “Persona 5 OTP” is Okujima, but I found that I also like Ann x Makoto, and Ann x Futaba. This kinda shows that I apparently really like Ann, which I hadn’t considered before starting this challenge!

 Which story’s reception most surprised you?

I think I was surprised at how much attention the Ryuji x Haru, Ryuji x Futaba, Ryuji x Makoto, and Ann x Futaba stories received. I guess those were more popular pairings than I realized! To be fair, the Ryuji stories all had a ship name, which probably indicates that it’s a popular ship. Plus, Ryuji seems to be fairly popular on Tumblr, regardless of pairings.

It was interesting to see how popular the Ann x Futaba one-shot was. It was one of my favorite (and easiest) stories to write, but it’s surprising to think that there are a fair amount of people out there actively looking for this ship!

Also, anything with Yusuke seemed somewhat popular, which is interesting, since I thought those were my weakest one-shots. Interestingly enough, the Yusuke x Goro one-shot was pretty popular as well, and those are the two characters that I thought I would struggle with the most to write!

Something else to note: some of the one-shots that I put the most effort into (like Futaba x Goro, PolyThieves, Makoto x Futaba, and Ann x Haru) were actually on the lower end in terms of notes received. Meanwhile, some stories that I spent a lot less time on (Ryuji x Ann, Akira x Goro, and Yusuke x Goro were literally written the night I had to post) got a lot of attention. It might possibly be the popularity of the pairings, or maybe it means I shouldn’t think too hard about a topic and should just write!

Lastly, I was extremely heartened by the amazing response for the Akira x Makoto one-shot! I put a lot of thought and research into that story, so I’m glad that paid off!

 Any personal stories/reasons that helped you write certain one-shots?

Not really, my life is pretty boring (ha!).

I used my love of goats to write the Yusuke x Futaba story, as well as my fear of roller coasters for my Makoto x Futaba story.

I tried really hard to make the Akira x Futaba one-shot be dramatic and entertaining, since this is my sister’s favorite pairing. I made my favorite pairing of Makoto x Haru how I like romances myself, with quiet moments that show how strongly the two people feel for each other.

I also used plot suggestions from my family to write some of the one-shots. One example was the Makoto x Goro unrequited love one.

 Tips and tricks for anyone who would like to do this challenge?

Make sure that you have at least half of the stories written before you begin the challenge (if not more)! It really saved my butt some nights when I had no inspiration, and the random number generator would place two or three of my completed stories next to each other. Unfortunately, there were some stretches where it placed two or three stories that I had not completed next to each other, and I had to work really hard to write them quickly but with quality.

Also, I would suggest switching around to different stories when you run out of inspiration. Sometimes, I would be writing one story and start to daydream and get distracted, but it would lead to an idea for another story.

One thing that really helped me too was to have an outline for each story. I’m not gonna post my notes (because they’re a mess), but I would essentially have: title, what stage of the relationship the story occurred in, when in the main story it occurred in, who (if anyone) confessed, who had the romantic feelings, whose perspective the one-shot would be from, the main plot, and any significant details. It really helped me to figure out how each story should be written, from dramatic unrequited love to an established mutual relationship.

Take breaks! Do not try and write every single night. You will exhaust yourself, especially if you have work or school. If you’re exhausted, it’s extremely difficult to be creative. I would use the weekends to catch up if I was behind, but there were some weeknights where I stayed up way too late to make a deadline. This did not have a good end result, so make sure that you don’t repeat my mistakes! This is where my first piece of advice comes into play.

And the best piece of advice: Have fun! This experience can be as fun or as dreadful as you make it, so definitely have a positive outlook, even when things seem impossible.

 Final final thoughts?

Hope everyone enjoyed! Please consider doing this challenge yourself – I don’t want to be the only one who suffered through this (kidding… kind of)! There are so many ways that characters could be written, and I’d love to see other interpretations.

I’d also suggest trying this with Persona 3 or 4 characters, since there are a lot of possibilities there as well. I will not be doing that anytime soon (I have officially run out of plots), but I may do something like that in the future!

To sum up, this was a great (and exhausting) experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves Persona 5 and loves to write. It will really flex your creative muscles. I realized around one-shot number 17 that I was starting to run out of ideas. It’s hard to think of 29 different plots! It will also get you to really appreciate characters that you might not have before.

Goodbye for now, and have fun doing what you do!

a tiny princess’ big list of favorite games

It’s been about three years since I sat down and considered my top 10 favorite games, and I was curious to see how my tastes had changed. I love making lists, and this was really  fun! I ended up writing a whole fuckload of words about them so I’ll put them beneath a read more; feel free to read over them if you like!

Doom II is, for my money, the greatest videogame ever made. No other game has captured the purity of gameplay and design that was managed back in 1994; it’s nearly perfect in every way. Monster and weapon design encourage you to be moving constantly, never hiding behind cover but weaving between attacks. Every monster is threatening in its own way -- the deadliest enemy is the shotgun guy, one of the earliest and weakest you’ll see. Every weapon has its use in various situations (except the pistol, unfortunately). The level design was, by and large, better than the previous game, but even if you don’t like those levels, the game is infinitely moddable and tens of thousands of maps have been released over the last twenty-four years. I’ve sunk thousands and thousands of hours into the game and it absolutely never gets old. Doom II is perfection.

Chrono Trigger is a game that needs no introduction or explanation; anyone who has played JRPGs has assuredly played Chrono Trigger, and it’s much-lauded for very good reason. The characters are varied and interesting, the battle mechanics utilizing combos and positioning are compelling and encourage you to swap around characters in your party to find out what all the double and triple techs are. The plot is a masterful swerve from ‘extremely standard’ to ‘what the fuck is happening’, the prime antagonists extremely memorable (Magus, Queen Zeal, and Lavos are all much more complex than they seem at first glance, and the game fleshes them all out phenomenally), and the soundtrack puts pretty much every other one to shame. The game goes from comedy to pathos with ease, and it’s exactly long enough to finish right when it’s about to wear out its welcome. It’s a real, real good game, y’all.

Nearly the pinnacle of JRPGs, Suikoden II possesses, in my experience, by far the single most compelling story in a video game, and I think it’s largely in part because it keeps itself relatively simple. A story of war, of friends and family torn apart, allegiances shifting and loss and friendship; it never reaches further than it should nor ruins immersion for even a moment. It has some of the worst, saddest, most heartwrenching bad ends I’ve ever seen, and it was those that lingered in my mind far more than the ‘good ends’. The gameplay is fluid and a solid refinement of turn-based RPGs of the era, the spritework is beyond compare for each and every one of its 108 recruitable characters and the background art is perfect. The only real flaws it has is a bit of filler -- did we really need the Neclord subplot in Tinto? -- but it’s so minor as to not detract at all from the overall package.

I was six years old when Myst came out in 1993: my grandfather bought a new computer and Myst was a brand-new pack-in with the CD-ROM drive. From the moment I loaded it up, I was utterly blown away with the most gorgeously rendered, fully realized world I had ever seen in a videogame; keep in mind I was playing shit like SMB3 at the time, so Myst was a whole new world. It showed me that games could be so much more than what the NES could produce, it could be true worlds for me to explore. It helped me to learn how to read, hours spent in the library poring over the books there; it taught me my adoration for exploring empty, lonely places, and ultimately it was Myst that inspired me to legally change my name. Few games have had such a powerful impact on me, and it’s for that reason that I've forever loved the game (and the series that followed!) I cried and cried in simple joy when I learned about the recent kickstarter to rerelease all of the games; few things have managed to worm their way into my heart the way this humble little game did.

A much more recent addition, but no less important to me: Persona 5 was the first game in the series (including all of SMT) that I ever played, and the degree to which the fictionalized Tokyo is a world fully realized utterly blew me away. For dozens of hours, I lived with characters I came to love, I forged bonds and fought for justice, I agonized over which romantic overtures to accept (I went with Futaba my first time). The calendar and social link system is phenomenally cool to me, the battle system is fluid and intuitive, the Palaces had fun design (mostly; some exceptions exist). So deeply was I ensconced in that world that I ended up writing two hundred thousand words (so far) of fanfiction about it, as a result of one of the game’s few major flaws: for a game that seemed so willing to have the protagonist be such a blank slate and a cipher for the player, it saddened me immensely to be forced into one gender. Between that and a few other examples of somewhat socially regressive design (the gay panic scene, the treatment of Ann in some ways) I can’t say the game is perfect, but it’s awfully close to that for me.

I caught sight of the gigantic Earthbound box in a Blockbuster when I was a kid, and my curiosity demanded I rent it and see why it needed such a massive box - the answer, of course, was that it came with its own incredible strategy guide. Earthbound was my very first JRPG and welcomed me into a new kind of game I had never imagined. Fighting with numbers instead of jumping on an enemy's head! Equipment! Stats! A long, involved story that guided me through hugely diverse locations! Humor! Earthbound is a game that doesn't entirely hold up these days, gameplay-wise; there's way too much combat and there's not a lot to it, but its tone and writing remain absolutely top-notch, not to mention its soundtrack. Based on pure quality alone, Earthbound wouldn't be in my top 10, but its impact on my life is nearly more than any other game.

Guild Wars was a game before its time. It was perceived by many as a cheaper alternative to WoW, which had come out six months prior, but the comparisons between the games were never really fair. Guild Wars wasn't an MMO and didn't pretend to be one; it was a much cozier affair with many fewer people involved, the combat areas were all instanced to your party alone, and it had a massive emphasis on solo play with its NPC party member system. The story wasn't anything to write home about, the combat was effectively the same hotbar-based combat as WoW, and the level design was okay at best. All of that said, the character customization was incredible, forcing you to select only eight skills at any given time, so that along with the rest of your party, it was more like building a deck in a card game than standard class-based party composition. Its crossclassing was deep and helped to even further differentiate players from another, its mission system was memorable and fun, but what mostly makes Guild Wars stand out for me was the PvP content. Normally, PvP is something I have no love for, but the 8v8 guild battles were incredibly exciting, fast-paced, and frenetic like nothing else I've seen before or since. I fell in love with it right away and met a community of friends that lasted me for years, and ended up having another enormous impact on my life. I've spent four thousand hours in the game, enough to do literally every scrap of content offered, and still I go back every now and then to play through a mission; its systems just work so, so well. And this isn't even getting into a lot of the stuff that made it unique, like its super-customizable NPC party members, its incredible enemy AI, or the sheer uniqueness of the Mesmer class; there is a lot about the game that I just adore.

The RPG in which you don't have to kill anyone! Everyone knows about Undertale, so I'm sure I don't have to say too much about it. It took normal JRPG tropes and turned them on their head, its sense of humor and overall writing are absolutely outstanding, its characters memorable and varied, and the bullet hell gameplay a fun take on RPG combat. It marries its mechanics and plot more tightly than any other game I've ever played, its soundtrack is incredible, and its emotional moments took me all over the place; just thinking about the hug at the end of the game just makes me tear up. Past all the memes that spawned from it, Undertale is just an extremely solid game that more than lives up to the hype. Please play Undertale.

FFXIV, unlike Guild Wars, is a game that almost seems *after* its time. It came out in a post-WoW world where many MMOs had already played their hand and died, its combat isn't incredibly different from WoW and doesn't seem to have much to set it apart, especially considering it dares to ask a subscription. And yet, it has flourished to become one of the only subscription-based games remaining and has turned an incredible profit for its developers. This is all, I believe, because the game is a giant, well-crafted love letter to the whole series. Enemies, locations, plot mechanics are all deftly drawn from prior games and woven into a tapestry that clearly shows a great deal of love and affection for the previous entries. The story is phenomenal - not just for an MMO, but for games in general. The character animations, armor appearances, and glamour system make it one of the best dress up games available, and it helps that the combat is fun, the bosses true spectacle, and the developers remain wholly committed to the game, constantly releasing content every few months. It keeps a special place in my heart, again, for the people that I surrounded myself with while playing and the extremely fond memories I have of all of the things we did together ingame. FFXIV is incredible and more than just another MMO.

The last spot on my list was hotly contested, but I ended up having little choice but to give it to this bizarre, unknown little rhythm game. Thumper is incredibly unlike any other rhythm game you've ever played, however; even after I beat it I couldn't remember a single song, because it wasn't really about the music, which consisted primarily of pounding drums, howling screeches, and relentless, rising dread. The developers refer to it as 'rhythm violence', and that's an extremely apropos genre; the game is dark, heavy, and endlessly captivating. There's really no describing it, but it's an experience unlike any other. It's apparently available on VR, but I couldn't imagine playing it there - I'd have a heart attack.

How could I give Akechi a redemption arc in my fanfic?

whoa this is such a fun question I'm going to be sitting on my floor for awhile ok OK LETS GO 

sweeping this under the cut since, wow, it’s long

first off, thanks for asking me! I'm surprised, since I'm not really an akechi blog but by god do i have a lot to say about him. second thing to note--obviously this is all my opinion, etc

so, to me, akechi is an irredeemable character, but there’s a little asterisk to that because he’s an irredeemable character in what canon presented to us. this is due to three things: 

No redemption arc 

He didn’t want a redemption arc AKA no guilt and no desire to change who he is or even just regretting his actions

The people who were affected by his horrible actions are still in the process of grieving and are still being affected by it every day

In order to give akechi goro a full redemption arc, we need to solve these three aspects of what made/makes him a bad person. 

while it’s completely possible to fix smaller aspects of his character in a short fic if that’s what you were looking for, i think that a full-fledged fic is what you need if you want to fully redeem akechi. like, I'm talking a fairly chonky word count. it would take a lot to solve those three issues, so you do need to devote a lot of words to do that.

and before i actually start suggesting some solutions, i want to make it clear: i think that you should stick to akechi’s canon personality as close as possible while you’re writing redemption arc. i say that because often times I've seen fic authors make akechi toothless, and nicer, but the thing is if you want to make a redemption arc for this ireedemable character you have to keep the aspects that made him ireedemable in the first place. obviously, fic authors should do whatever the fuck they want, but for a redemption arc, i think you should stick very close to akechi’s personality in p5/r

okay lets actually get to it. to make things easier to digest, I have made *jenny Nicholson voice* a numbered list!

part one: no redemption arc

you’re already nailing problem number 1, but let’s talk about the format of a redemption arc! while there are endless exceptions, you’re PROBABLY doing akechi’s arc in one of three ways: 

he’s forced to work with them/be around them/etc and he finds something in himself: the desire to be redeemed. 

this is a tough one and i assume this is the one you’re writing but i could be wrong! the reason this is tough is because you have to write akechi wanting to be redeemed. and this is hard because he’s a fucking bastard! but the very nature of his bastard-ness is what makes a redemption arc so so compelling. 

a redemption arc is almost like an enemies to lovers trope where you have to force the Bad Person to be around the one that they want to be redeemed by (Let’s say the Phantom Thieves, even though i don't know the premise of your fic). 

For formatting, you have to establish why he’s a bad person (but you don’t really need to put that much effort into it since the audience already knows why), force them to work together so they can all get to know each other better, create an environment/insert a scene that forces them all to work together so that the PTs understand that “wow akechi’s really wanting to change! I thought he was lying”, have some more scenes together where they bond without realizing it, have a climactic scene where they’re all realizing their worth and they work together like a team for real, and happy ending (i hope.)

but remember! somewhere in the beginning, akechi must have the realization that he actually wants to be better, and the PTs must have see him being better or at least trying to. 

AND, i don’t know how huge or grandiose your fic is going to be in terms of plot, but plot is super useful in redemption arcs because it forces the PTs to focus on something that isn’t akechi’s horribleness. the plot is supposed what drives the redemption arc, it’s what makes them keep akechi rather than just kick them out. if you’re doing a more “set in reality” fic, you can have one of the phantom thieves to want to keep akechi around and that can be the plot--if you want. that’s only a suggestion as to why they would want to keep akechi around despite hating him. 

he is feeling guilty/had a bit of a change of heart so now he’s working to gain their forgiveness

easy peasy! you already got the biggest hurdle over with, which is find a reason why akechi would even want to be redeemed. everything else is the same, except now it’s probably a little easier on you! go you!

he gets redeemed by accident

now this is kinda funny, but it’s still the same formatting as my first point: he’s there with the PTs, accidentally gets to know them and be known in return, they work together and see each others values, he learns what he did is wrong but this time it matters because he cares about them, he unintentionally tries to make it up to them, the climax comes around and they work together, and happy ending. 

formats don't really matter, but they personally help me think of the grand scope of things without needing the smaller details :)

part two: he didn’t want a redemption arc

i kinda already talked about that in part one, but really this is a driving factor. if we’re sticking to canon, why does he want to be redeemed? what changed? because there has to be a change, no matter how close we want to stick to canon. you have to justify the reasonings behind this because if you forget the motivation of akechi’s journey, it might end up being hollow and incomprehensible 

in nearly every action that akechi takes, it must be towards redemption (unless these are the early stages). but hey, as per usual, there’s an exception: akechi can have a withdrawal of some sort. 

this would be great actually, because it’s more realistic than just having a perfect line to redemption that’s unwavering. this is called the third act slump--the plan failed, everyone is sad, etc. this is to raise the stakes of the story, remind the audience what would happen if everything “went back to normal”, and also show the characters are not perfect and they can actually fail. 

but, and this is just me, i hate the third act slump. hate it!! it makes me sad!!! so it’s really up to you whether or not you want to do it. 

part three: the people affected

now, this is the part where you have to bust ass as a writer, because this is the real reason why akechi’s irreedemable--he did a lot of bad fucking shit. he killed two of the thieves’ parents, loads of other people, actually very nearly killed akira. like. no. that's horrible. it’s iredeemably horrible. i hate him actually. and so does everyone else in the thieves.

this is the part of the ask where i can’t really help you. it’s up to you how you want to fix it, because there’s so many ways you can do this. you can have them forgive him, not forgive him. they can punch him and not feel better, they can give him the cold shoulder.

that’s why i think sumire works so well with akechi--she doesn’t have any of the baggage that the thieves have towards akechi. 

but hey, just cause it’s hard doesn’t mean its impossible! it really depends on what you want to do and how to do it. it depends on your characterization of who akechi is, who akira is, who futaba is, and who haru is since those are the people affected the most. 

but i think I'm finally done here. that was super long, but i hope you found that helpful in some way! :)

I’ve known this for quite some time, but I’m just going to post this now since even now, it’s still a very confusing part of P5.

Regarding to the ending split...

... it has plot holes, but it isn’t as major as I initially thought it was.

It was a complex plan, no doubt, and certainly, there had to have been a better way to explain it (ATLUUUUUS). After all, for a good amount of time, I thought the thing is riddled with nonsense, but after being explained by a certain someone on discord and some more thought, some questions has been answered. Oh, and reading Futaba’s dialogue before you go to sleep-- I don’t see many videos of that on it’s own so I suppose that’s part of the reason why it’s confusing.

These a few plot holes that I thought (or others) existed, but didn’t:

- How Akechi got out of the Metaverse (do you remember how you leave the Metaverse?) - How Akechi contacted Shido (u thought he was was underground/in the metaverse? apparently he wasn’t necessarily) - The Metaverse app being activated without alerting Goro (you can use the app without audio input via the search history function (see: the second time Akira and Ryuji entered Kamoshida’s Palace)) - Goro not getting into his rebel outfit after entering the Metaverse (When asked, you can sell out your teammates and/or you confidants, but NOT Akechi. At that moment, Sae didn’t know that Akechi intends to shoot Akira until Akechi had already left the Metaverse. During the duration of the attempted hit, there was no reason for Sae to see Akechi as a threat, either a hitman or a thief)  - How tf Futaba can get a signal from Akechi’s phone (since it had a GPS) and Akira’s phone (GPS and voice messaging) when both Akechi and Sae were supposedly 8 floors underground (They weren’t necessarily. Sae met Akechi w/ the phone right after leaving an elevator. The voice messaging was pre-programmed into Akira’s phone so that it could work in the Metaverse; Futaba OP, pls nerf) 

What wasn’t explained regardless:

- The mess that is Justice Rank 8 (someone told me that it might be a developer’s joke since Morgana commented how it didn’t make sense nor would it make sense for either Morgana or Akira to , which would be shitty cuz that is literally the definition of lazy writing: “Idk what to put here so let him rank up cuz lul”) - How exactly did Sae convince the police that there was a body in the first place? I get forging the death certificate (which should be enough to fool Shido since his ass isn’t getting out of his office chair), but what about everyone else? That doesn’t sound like a feat that could be done by one person. Maybe the grunts anticipated Akira’s death too quickly and assumed that it happened when Sae reported? Eh, even for P5, that relies way too much on incompetence. How Sae managed to 1) drag Akira out without being caught 2) fool the police in regard of a dead body and 3) get away with it all for so long is the worst plot hole you could pull out of this whole plot segment. - SEE EDIT BELOW

Asterisks (*) are used to mark questionable parts that I realized after what Atlus was really trying to do. 

I found Futaba’s extra dialogue during NicoB’s Let’s Play of Persona 5. It’s around the last 10 min of the episode linked below. Couldn’t find a better video, but this is where I found out, so it’ll work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi6wLyeuqws&list=PL5bkYBlFL9xcNUVU5-EcBxdaVVAZM2zX1&index=62

Look at the moment when Akechi and Sae meet. When Sae showed him the phone, Futaba explained later that she bugged the phone (the one belonging to Akira) similarly like with Akechi’s phone. Through that, she remotely activated the Metaverse app to transport the two into the Metaverse. (remember the search history function that was used for Akira’s and Ryuji’s second visit to Kamoshida’s palace? That’s the function that Futaba remotely activated. She didn’t tamper with the magical app itself.)*

So Sae and Akechi are in and they went in opposite directions. Akechi goes in, kills the cognitive guard and cognitive Akira.** Now, here’s where one of the so-called ‘major plothole’ existed. How did Akechi get out? First, let me ask you this, how do leave the Metaverse in the first place? I thought that you just press the app to leave, but apparently, that’s wrong. You have to physically go back the way you came, and that’s why you always have to return to the Palace’s entrance to leave the Palace. This is what Atlus failed to do-- what leaving the Metaverse actually looks like. We saw Akechi’s pictures of the PT appearing/disappearing out of thin air back at Okumura’s palace, but we didn’t see how it really looks like without the red/black circles washing over the screen every time we do it. Apparently, leaving the Metaverse doesn’t involve pressing the app at all-- just going back the way they came. Remember where Sae showed Akechi the phone? That is where they entered, and hence, where they exit. When Akechi was done with his assassination attempt, he goes down the hall, up the elevator (yeah, the guard couldn’t have seen Sae and Akechi conversing, they were on a different floor), and back to where the app was first activated. Once Akechi crossed that point, that’s when he left the Metaverse.

This is when Akechi calls Shido. You see how he calls Shido right in front of an elevator? Yeah, he probably wasn’t 8 floors underground at that point. 

Now, I’m assume you know the general story with Sae, but I’m going to clear this up anyways. Sae received the pre-programmed messages from Akira’s phone, and she followed their instructions to go back to the interrogation room. Once again, she crossed the same point where the app was first activated, thus causing her to exit the Metaverse. She goes down the elevator and towards the room. The GPS installed in Akechi’s phone helped Futaba to time Sae’s entrance because it would be awkward if Sae encountered Akechi mid-assassination. (Futaba would know when Akechi is out of the Metaverse and out of the police station; nothing contradictory of getting a signal by then)

*The problem with this is... even if you use the search history function, the phone still plays it’s voice protocols like normal (”...Beginning navigation” You know the drill.). I don’t recall this ever being mentioned by any of the characters, but you can easily explain this away with “the phone was on silent”. **The cognitions should’ve disappeared similarly like Shadows when they were killed. You can pull any number of BS by using “well maybe Sae’s cognition is different because hurr durr”, but it was never mentioned by the PT to even consider the rate in which cognition disintegrate into nothing nor was there any measures to accommodate for that. This instance is plot convenience at it’s finest.

Now for the sake of clarification, this doesn’t mean that Atlus is suddenly flawless in regards of how they handled this aspect of the story. Aside from what I’ve already stated above, this stuff could’ve been handled better. The search history function was only mentioned offhandedly in the the very, very beginning of Kamoshida’s Palace (before even Shiho attempted suicide) by Ryuji so there is almost no way anyone would remember without looking back. The anime cutscene where Ryuji was smirking “we got ‘em” when he heard about the supposed suicide of the PT leader made no sense. (How would he know that the plan even succeeded???? I know he was being like, “well I toOOOTALLY knew that we were going to succeed” but goddamn, but that sounds like he was acting tough more than anything. That kind of blind confidence shouldn’t be present, even for a character like Ryuji.)

You know what would really help? Seeing a few frames of the inside of the elevator as it goes up and down. Despite hanging out in the background, I barely even noticed it before someone else pointed it out.

A good part of the fandom was impressed by the plan and yes, I do think it’s a clever trick for Atlus to pull on us. However, the more complicated the plan is, the more effort one should put in explaining said plan because, you know, it would be harder for the player to understand. I don’t mean treating the audience like idiots and I understand the concern of dragging the explanation scene out, but man, Atlus was totally off their game when it came to hinting/foreshadowing. Instead of doing off-hand comments about seemingly arbitrary, but relevant aspects of the plan (ex. Futaba’s bug on Akira’s phone, the search history function, etc.) that you can probably catch by your second or third run of the game, Atlus favored getting hung up on whether or not they wanted the traitor to be obvious or not because they seemed to be pretty damn bipolar regarding to that.

I do give them credit for making some information optional (discoverable by talking to Futaba). It makes the scene less draggy and allows people who don’t give two shits to skip the parts they don’t care. I don’t watch many let’s players on the same game, so I can’t conclude if many people actually went out of their way to talk to Futaba and process her words.

And one last note, I don’t think Persona 5 is a bad games by any standard, but I do believe that the writing is the weakest aspect of the game. Style and gameplay seems more polished than the actual story aspects.

I hope this helped for any of you guys out there. Feel free to let me know if you.see any mistakes/seek clarification. It’s 9:30 PM for me, so I hope I didn’t mess up too badly explaining this.

EDIT: It came to me that if the method of leaving the Metaverse is truly just by going back where they came, it raises issues in Shido’s Palace, where the place they started was on the front deck, which, as you guys know, was sinking into the depths by the end. Basically, there’s no winning with P5 plotholes-- no matter how you look at it, there’s an issue.

p5 rarepair dumpster diving: director’s cut edition

last night on discord i spent two full hours of my life typing up a canon-compliant akechi/ryuji timeline and frankly that kind of effort isn’t something i want to waste by keeping the fruits of my labor private. so! here it is. welcome to my special hell: a hilariously obscure and hilariously baseless ship that i seem to be invested in purely to clown my own damn self.

this is an extremely long post and there are a lot of spoilers contained herein, so be wary of both those things. events that happened in actual canon are bolded, and everything else is just me elaborating. 

- first off, the initial meeting at the tv station, where akechi introduces himself, and then slips up by talking about pancakes. this is the first time ryuji's met akechi, though not the first time he's heard about him, and he can tell that something is off about akechi's behavior from the get-go, but can't tell what, because he's kind of extremely distracted and not thinking right. this boy is pretty. he's pretty and ryuji doesn't like it. is he wearing mascara or are his eyelashes really that dark? why is he thinking about that? true to form, he goes for aggressive behavior to cover for internal confusion. hating akechi for making him face his own repressed masc attraction is very easy. 

- the class returns to the tv station for a second day, where they see akechi give an interview live. ryuji is not friendly during this. after the interview, akechi runs into akira alone in the hallways. ryuji is a good friend, so he goes looking for akira. akechi and akira are done talking by then, and ryuji crosses paths with the wrong dude. akechi appears nonetheless. ryuji isn't friendly, but even when he's being actively hostile the poor guy wears his heart on his sleeve and akechi might not be a true ace detective but he is a little more observant than the average person. not that you would need that to be able to tell from how ryuji's talking about the friend he's looking for that the guy is crushing hard on glasses mcgee. akechi assures ryuji that he won't let that friend of his in on his secret, and, not knowing what he's talking about, ryuji assumes that akechi's noticed him staring. he denies that explicitly, which tells akechi that ryuji's got something for akechi himself on top of a crush on akira. noted. akechi swears up and down that he believes ryuji and they part ways. ryuji goes back and meets up with akira again. still does not know what feels off about akechi.

- akechi starts visiting leblanc semiregularly about midway through things. usually it's akira that runs into him, but ryuji swings by now and then too - looking for akira, of course, but somehow he always ends up at leblanc after akira's already headed out to do something else. so it's just him and. that dude. he ignores akechi for the most part, but just him being present in the area is enough to remind ryuji that yeah, actually, he really is attracted to this guy. ryuji's behavior experiences a sharp uptick in forced heteromasculinity as ryuji starts to doubt himself and attempts to affirm his identity as a straight dude to fix things. this fixes nothing. akechi is still frustratingly attractive.

- eventually ryuji decides to confront akechi. he doesn't come to leblanc that often without an invite from akira, but he's getting sick of akechi always hanging around the place. he catches akechi walking back from leblanc to the station, and asks him what business he's got always hanging around here. akechi says plainly that he's just after a good cup of coffee in a charming atmosphere. ryuji asks if akechi is trying to piss him off. akechi assures ryuji that he's not, really; he knows they haven't talked much but he really doesn't have anything against ryuji and if this is about ryuji's little crush, he promises he doesn't mind. ryuji tells him to shut the hell up, but that's a lot less effective when he's beet red. poor kid. akechi promises that he'll stop coming by the coffee shop so much once work picks back up, and ryuji tells him that he better damn well do that. akechi laughs, like a fake bitch. he tells ryuji that he doesn't know why ryuji tries so hard to seem like a thug; he's really such a nice person to be around under that act - maybe once ryuji accepts that they have no reason to be enemies, they can get to know each other. he knows a great place that serves brunch around the clock. ryuji ends the conversation as fast as humanly possible because he's throughly rattled - which is exactly what akechi was hoping for, obviously - and needs to get away from this man and his beautiful eyelashes. they split. ryuji does not sleep that night.

- at some point, ryuji realizes just why it was that akechi's behavior bothered him the first time they met, and comes to understand that akechi is able to hear morgana's voice. akechi mentioning a place serving brunch and leading him to daydream about a brunch date with lots of fluffy pancakes might have been what triggered his memory, but look, ends justify the means, right?? it's fine to think about dating another guy if it's for a just cause like figuring out important stuff. trouble is, he doesn't know what to do with this information. he considers telling the others, but ends up keeping quiet. after all, maybe akechi's got issues of his own. but also fuck his issues, because he's terrible and ryuji hates him and would never do anything out of consideration for fucking akechi's feelings, except that is exactly what he is doing.

- while ryuji is stewing in a bog of internalized homophobia and unresolved crushes on boys, shujin academy's student festival is rolling around. makoto appoints ryuji to the planning committee along with the rest of the phantom thieves to give them an excuse for all meeting together. as part of their committee duties, they tally the student votes for the special guest, and decide that akechi will be this year's guest, if they can convince him. makoto texts akechi to ask him to attend. they wait. when she doesn't get a response for a while, she asks if they should consider having a plan b ready to go in case akechi doesn't show. by this point ryuji's been keeping his realization that akechi is a metaverse user under his hat for a while now, and for some reason hearing makoto talk about this brings that to the forefront of his mind again. he tells the gang that there's something they should know, if they're really gonna invite akechi - he intends for this revelation to dissuade makoto from pursuing akechi as the festival's guest, but it only makes her more determined. akechi agrees to attend the festival shortly after. ryuji does not like where this is going. 

- during the festival, akechi calls the mystery gang out on being the phantom thieves, reveals himself as a metaverse user, and pretends to have never heard morgana's voice before, which is bullshit. he strikes a deal with them, and becomes a temporary member of crimesquad. thanks to their conversation earlier, however, the crew already knows that he's lying to them, and takes countermeasures immediately. one of these countermeasures includes a war room style meeting to decide how to deal with this situation, in which makoto tells everyone that if anyone knows anything, anything at all about what akechi knows or things they could use against them, they need to have all cards on the table right now. ryuji keeps quiet. akira notices. they're pretty close by this point (rank 10 confidant, hello), and they've recently had a few pretty serious heart to hearts - nothing romantic between them yet, but ryuji's trusted akira enough to open up about his sexuality crisis a little, which is part of why ryuji's instances of forced heteromasculinty have decreased in frequency in recent weeks.) ryuji receives a text message when he checks his phone, it's akira telling him to 'tell them about that conversation you had with akechi outside leblanc. everything about it. they won't think any less of you, i promise. all of us are your friends.' deep breaths, ryuji.

- after a little psyching up, ryuji says that he's got some info. he reveals both his major encounters with akechi since their first meeting at the tv station, and explains that akechi knows... something about him. his phone buzzes. he does not have to look at it to know it's akira telling him that he can do this. makoto asks if ryuji is worried that akechi will try to use that 'something' against him. ryuji says that akechi's definitely gonna use it, if akechi's really a bad guy, at least - he clarifies that what akechi knows is the truth of ryuji's crush on him. yusuke suddenly sits up much straighter, in the way of a gay guy who has just realized for the first time that he isn't the only queer person in his friend group. ann seems like she's about to say something, but gets interrupted by makoto telling ryuji that they can use this. ryuji wants to die a little!!

- with that incredibly stressful meeting over with, the process of infiltrating sae's palace begins shortly after akechi strikes his bargain with the phantom thieves. before the heist even begins, however, the thieves have already made a couple important plans of own: firstly, they've plotted to bug akechi's phone, a scheme that gets carried off without a hitch on the day that the heist begins. secondly, they've decided ahead of time to wait until the last possible day to send the calling card, not knowing that akechi will suggest this anyway. they need time to prepare for what they're about to pull off,  and they've guessed that akechi will go along with this because he needs time to arrange his own plans as well.

- futaba works fast. that little hack of hers isn't just recording akechi's conversations, it's rooting through all his calls and texts for information on what he's planning, and boy oh boy there is a lot to unpack. by the time they head home early after the first day's infiltration, she's already got more than enough for them to work with. another war room gets called. by now they know what akechi plans to do and roughly how he plans to do it, so it's time to prepare a defense against him. problem is, it'll be difficult to get away from him to investigate and prepare things when they're inside the palace - unless akechi suggests that they split up himself. they know that akechi wants joker dead, but hasn't talked about any specific plans for the rest of them, so they decide to take a pretty big gamble.

- the thieves do not infiltrate the palace again the next day, and therefore, neither do akechi or ryuji. instead, ryuji once again catches akechi outside leblanc - this time in the early afternoon, while akechi's on his way there. he tells akechi that since they have no reason to be enemies anymore, maybe it's time akechi made good on that promise about going to brunch together. akechi agrees. breakfast at tiffany's, but it's brunch at some upscale diner. during the course of this dinner date, ryuji does some complaining. he tells akechi about how he doesn't feel like a real member of the phantom thieves, how everyone else thinks he's just a stupid thug, how sometimes he just wants to quit this whole thing, and how he's glad that there's finally someone here who doesn't think he's an idiot. akechi, who thinks ryuji is an idiot, assumes that ryuji isn't smart enough to have an ulterior motive and takes him at face value. he tells ryuji that he's sorry ryuji feels that way, and that he's just glad that ryuji's trusting him a little more ("especially after some of the things you said at first! haha :-)"). ryuji tells akechi that he's not so bad after all, and hey, maybe he could take akechi with him if he really does split off from the phantom thieves. akechi says he'll think about it. he is coming to understand that ryuji 1) is kind of very handsome 2) has a nice voice 3) is probably dumb enough to be useful, which is obviously the most important part and that's why it's listed last. as most important things are.

- during the next infiltration, the gang comes across a frustrating scheme to force minors into gambling. accumulating coins in sae's casino is difficult work, and everyone's itching to hurry on with things. akechi chooses this moment to both assist the team in proceeding forward, and to get ryuji on his own. he asks ryuji to help him with something, and the two of them go off on their own - leaving the rest of the team free to investigate. futaba has already briefed ryuji on exactly how long they need to keep akechi busy. all he's gotta do is listen to akechi talk. coin collecting goes fast, of course, since they've already hacked most of the machines. ryuji's almost worried that he won't be able to keep akechi busy long enough. luckily, akechi chooses that moment to ask ryuji if they can talk. sure, ryuji says, there's nothin' suspicious about two dudes sneaking off on their own to 'talk.'

- akechi asks ryuji if he truly is unhappy with the phantom thieves, and if so, why does he stay? after all, the police will close in sooner or later - does he really want to serve life in prison for a group of people he doesn't even seem welcomed by? ryuji's a little uncomfortable acknowledging something he mostly tries to ignore - that yeah, actually, the way his supposed friends treat him sucks, but he's ready for this conversation. he tells akechi that he doesn't know. maybe it's because he wouldn't have anyone there for him if he left. akechi asks him what he'd do if they ever did get caught. would he go down with these so-called friends, or cooperate with the police. ryuji asks akechi what he's getting at. akechi drops a small fraction of his act and tells ryuji that the police are much, much closer to making arrests than the phantom thieves think - meaning that ryuji is that much closer to that reckoning. but, he says, this detective thing isn't meaningless. akechi tells ryuji that if ryuji would be willing to testify to the identity of all the other phantom thieves - giving the prosecution bulletproof evidence for conviction - then he could pull some strings to get ryuji immunity. maybe. okay, ryuji says, but what then? ain't i just going back to square one? starting over again all on my own? good point, but: don't be silly, akechi assures him. i'd be there, wouldn't i? i wouldn't abandon you after you've been such a great help to me.

- ryuji doesn't have the best internal clock, but he thinks it's been probably twenty minutes since they split up - though he's worrying about that way less than he should. there's a lot of emotions happening right now, and he deserves a fucking oscar for keeping them in check. akechi wants akira dead - akira, the one person ryuji cares most about - and he'll get his wish if this plan doesn't work. for that, ryuji hates him - well, for that and other things. but the way they're talking right now, akechi seems so... nice. kinda sad, somehow. and he's still aggravatingly pretty, and that doesn't change no matter how much he pisses ryuji off. ryuji asks akechi what he means. akechi asks ryuji what ryuji thinks he means. ryuji asks if they can go to that brunch place again sometime, because if he answers that question he'll end up verbally punching akechi in his snake-ass mouth. anyway, like a date, right? that, akechi agrees to. it's weird, but the way he's talking, he seems like he's happy to have someone to talk to. ryuji seriously doesn't get this guy. he's also torn between feeling a single gay emotion and wanting to throttle akechi on the spot, so all things considered it's lucky that akechi notices the time. they head back to rejoin the party, and we all know how the rest of the heist goes.

- cut to the part where akira escapes death by akechi. the plan laid out by the phantom thieves successfully leaves akechi convinced that he's killed akira for good, as most deaths are in fact permanent. akechi enjoys the attention of the media too much to bother with contacting ryuji for help in rounding up the remaining members, which ryuji considers to be for the best. akechi's main goal of killing akira has been 'accomplished', after all, so he's no longer prioritizing this mission. eventually, he declares on tv that he will certainly catch the  remaining phantom thieves, though he's no longer as pressured to do so quickly since the head is already cut off. at this point, he calls ryuji. they agree to meet up again, but not to discuss a testimony yet - just a celebration for the leader's arrest. it's time to do brunch. all the prep time in the world could get ryuji ready to listen to akechi talk about akira's supposed death as though it's a good thing. the more he listens to akechi talk, the more he doesn't fucking understand this guy. he's seriously close to physical violence here, for real, but suddenly akechi's talking about how securing these arrests will finally earn his father's approval, and suddenly. a part of ryuji's anger deflates. he doesn't like to think about it, but he remembers how it feels to try to please a father who considers you worth less than the dirt on his shoes.

- akechi cuts brunch short after letting that slip. ryuji goes home with a lot to think about. they've made plans to talk again in a week or two at the courthouse to get statements from ryuji on the identities of the other phantom thieves - akechi is hoping to time the complete defeat of the remaining members to occur just after his father is elected prime minister, knowing that the public will take such instataneous good results as proof of the new prime minister's righteousness. this second meeting never occurs, because the phantom thieves break into shido's palace before that happens. akechi is waiting for them. akechi is not happy. it's not just that he's stressed to hell and quickly becoming unhinged and just absolutely furious that joker evaded him - joker's the main reason his mental state gets so bad so fast, but part of it is the fact that ryuji is there, still with the thieves, and akechi feels like a fucking idiot for falling for anything ryuji said. the fact that he couldn't see through that act serves to reinforce his fears about not being even half of what he presents himself as (what kind of ace detective can't see past such an obvious lie???), and ryuji's betrayal is just another reminder that no one, no one he's ever met has actually wanted him around. ryuji would rather side with friends who tear him down constantly than with someone who was trying to be in his corner.

- shit goes south. a fight happens. a second akechi shows up. for the first time since they met, ryuji's comments towards akechi aren't hostile - the opposite, in fact. he jumps to defend akechi when the puppet akechi tries to say some fuck shit, and seems to actually. worry about him, kinda. because even with all this shit happening, he's remembering what akechi told him about his father, and now he's got context for that. it's. hard for him to hate akechi knowing now what kind of a father akechi grew up with, and yeah, maybe he is taking this a little personal because of his own issues with his father, but he has come around to care about this guy. he still hates that, obviously, because having sympathy for someone who tried to kill akira feels positively foul. not like he can do anything about it, though. especially after akechi dies. 

- ryuji gets left with a lot of messy feelings and unanswered questions, but the main thing he keep wondering is this: would akechi still be dead if he'd stuck by him? is it his fault that this happened? akechi didn't have anyone there for him, he knows that, so as the one person who could have been, isn't he responsible for his betrayal? the phantom thieves might have done the right thing, but on a personal level, he doesn't feel like he did. no one is happy here. akira buys ryuji a burger after the heist is over but that like, barely helps.

IN CONCLUSION:

P5 Update after the break I’m very very far into the game so there will be heavy spoilers, just read through later if you aren’t at least in Mid November:

I guess first I’ll give an overview of my progress and general playstyle before moving onto thoughts about characters, social links, and the story. It’s currently 11/14 in game, so I’ll be delving into Sae’s dungeon soon. Like I mentioned before I’ve maxed 4/5 social stats, everything except Kindness which is at rank 4. Including the Confidants which will max out on their own eventually but have not yet (Fool, Magician, Judgement and I’m going to assume Justice) I’ve completed 13 social links with Haru’s (Rank 7), The Twin Wardens’ (Rank 8), Iwai’s (Rank 7), and Futaba’s (Rank 2) pretty likely to finish before the game is over. The only one I’m concerned for is Futaba’s since I’ve shamefully raised hers so little. Thus far I’ve completed every Palace in just one visit a piece, discounting any story forced segments like the first couple visits to Kamoshida and Madarame’s Palaces. I’ve really liked this game’s schedule tbh. Overall while I feel some of the story segments take up too much time, specifically during October, I don’t mind so much because I’ve gotten a lot done on a near completely blind first playthrough, and there’s still more I can do. While initially I was worried that social stats took too long to level up I feel it successfully threads the needle between 3′s “They’ll cap without effort” and 4′s “Fuck you for trying” approach for first time runs. They take effort and dedication, but like I said I’ve maxed nearly all of them. I also like how different confidant relationships will help improve your social stats as well, it’s a great secondary incentive to max certain ones and to stick with them. On top of that, there are more major barriers that require certain social stats and while some feel a little arbitrary (maxed charm for Makoto past rank 5) it makes sense to incentivize players to spend time on them as well. Another improvement to Confidants I enjoy over previous social links is how they all give a variety of skills. I know I focused on Hifumi’s and Kawakami’s way more than I might have otherwise just because their skills are so good and varied. Hifumi’s in particular add a lot of tactical depth. On the opposite end though, I know I ended up putting Ohya and Chihaya on the backburner because their skills weren’t that useful, though I certainly got a lot of use out of Chihaya’s social stat booster readings. Honestly, I just wish I had taken the time to max Sojiro’s. I like him a lot but he’s only at rank 3 because I spent the time I could have spent with him in the early game on my social stats. *sad trombone* For transparency, I’ve completed: Makoto’s, Yusuke’s, Ann’s, Ryuji’s, Takemi’s, Kawakami’s, Hifumi’s, Mishima’s, and Yoshida’s, and then another 3-4 will max automatically. I’ve enjoyed them all thoroughly, Yoshida’s in particular is one of my favorite non-party member Social Links in the entire franchise. I also like how Akira’s dialogue with women is much more respectful and natural than Yu’s or Minato’s was. He gets a lot more dialogue that doesn’t have sexual tension and feels like what an actual person would say, which leads to great character relationships and dynamics between him and characters like Ann, Makoto, and Hifumi even if you elect not to date them. In some cases I’d even say that his relationship dynamic is stronger if you do not date them, particularly with Futaba and Ann. (please don’t kill me avaterem if you’re reading this) This isn’t to say that electing to date one of them is bad or lesser per se, I just feel like there was a great dynamic between him and Ann as Just Friends which honestly I didn’t feel was there between Minato and Yukari or Yu and Rise, for instance.  Combat wise this game’s been a little on the easy side but I’ve enjoyed it a lot. I’ll definitely play new game+ through on hard or maybe even higher, we’ll see. All the party members fill unique niches and the greater variety of skills this game has helps keep them all fresh. Nobody overlaps unlike with 3 and 4 so that’s great. The Palace Bosses have all had really great fights, though I feel visually Kamoshida’s was still the most impressive because it was very out there comparatively. Still, they all fit thematically with who you’re fighting and they’ve all been very fun. Ever since she joined Makoto has been on the team and I just swap around the two members who aren’t Akira or Makoto. Generally it’s been a good move because she’s an extremely well balanced tank with good spread damage and support skills. The Palaces themselves have also been very enjoyable, they’ve each taken at least a somewhat different approach to design and I like that so far. Kamoshida’s has a good number of mandatory stops to keep you from getting worn out, and otherwise goes fairly easy since it’s the tutorial level basically. Madarame’s requires a mandatory stop to do stuff in real life which was neat and otherwise its level design was super cool and well realized thematically. Kaneshiro’s is a gauntlet through, it’s super long and fairly tough for its time in the story but there’s nothing stopping you except your own pacing and skill from actually just completing it in one go. Its level of difficulty is consistent throughout with no real spikes anywhere, it’s also the dungeon I had the most trouble keeping a low alertness rating in because it has a lot of unique mechanics. Futaba’s Palace is similar, though its difficulty is very spike-y. The dungeon itself isn’t too long, but the enemy mobs are generally speaking a good bit higher level than you are and many of them are only weak to PSI skills, which only Joker can have, or are weak to nothing at all. It’s the only dungeon that I made heavy use of just running away from encounters in. Most recently was Okumura’s Palace which is honestly one of my favorites. Its a great puzzle-dungeon that’s incredibly front loaded with challenge. If you can’t figure out that the worker drones are weak to fire then you’re in for an extremely bad time. On top of that several of the normal enemies in the first area are immune to regular attacks and guns, then it makes you fight a lot of unforgiving sub bosses up front but rewards you with an area where all the enemies are weak to physical attacks and guns. Then Haru really comes into play in spite of being a bit weaker than the others by virtue of lacking baton pass, the nearer you get to the end the more enemy types are weak to PSI and Gun skills, which Haru will just chew through. Overall it’s really well designed, but definitely much easier than 3 and 4. I’ve only had one game over happen and it was to a very unfortunate string of criticals. On a side note: Mementos is a nice bone throw to people who liked Tartarus a lot, though because of how it works it’s never challenging. I don’t have a lot to say on it, but I have a sneaking suspicion it’s gonna be the true final dungeon we do where we fight god or whatever because this is a Persona game so I know we’re gonna fight a god at some point, probably after the story mostly ends and we time skip to March. The story’s been very good so far. I was wondering when we’d get into the meat of it and oh boy October really delivered. There’s been this tension about the whole game because like, the first thing you learn is that you fucked up and got caught. You’re recounting what all happened to the prosecutor who’s in charge of your case. It’s flowed well and while a couple of the early segments, like within the first hour mostly, were somewhat stilted I’ve felt that way about every atlus product I’ve ever played. It’s just their weakpoint in storytelling as a company. This game does a great job not leaving things hanging, basically everything I’ve wondered about has been addressed in some way, even down to “Jeez Ryuji and Morgana are being really hostile towards each other” becomes an actual plot point and I like that a lot. Which btw Morgana running away called me the fuck out because like yeah, I’d totally benched him more or less in favor of the human party members since Yusuke joined. Since then I know I’ve been using him more not because I felt bad but because it made me appreciate having him more. I’ll do a full write up on the story once I’m totally done, all I really have to say right now is I haven’t trusted Akechi one fucking iota all game and that hasn’t changed now.  He’s a good character, but he’s sus as fuck and I’m waiting to fight him as a boss later. If he ends up just being an actually good boy and not betraying us I’ll eat my hat. But I’m dead fucking certain that he’s Future Prime Minister Shido’s darknet hitman who goes and assassinates people for him using the Metaverse. I’ve already caught Akechi in a lie, he said he only received his persona a month ago but that’s BULLSHIT because he could understand what Morgana was saying all the way back in May. He’s known about and been able to access the Metaverse for a long time. The only thing I’ve really not had addressed yet is why exactly was Akira accepted at this school? Kobayakawa mentioned it was because of ‘outside influence’ at the start of the game and that still hasn’t been addressed. The Phantom Thieves are great. Easily my favorite player group of the three people actually care about between SEES, The Investigation Team, and now these guys. They have a great set of dynamics and relationships, and you get a ton more interparty interaction and dialogue thanks to the text chat logs. They’ve all been great and it’s neat seeing the nuances of their relationships both as a group and individually. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean I like either other group less now, but after P4 neatly sorted the investigation team into sets of two all game it’s refreshing to see them all interact with each other directly and often. They’re all interesting and good characters. Morgana’s improved a lot. I already liked him better than Teddie, but after the Okumura arc of the story he’s improved a lot. I like him a good bit, but I’ll still wait to talk about him in full until the story’s over. Ryuji’s still great. He’s the ‘your first and best friend’ of the game. Compared one to one I probably don’t like him as much as Junpei but he’s real close. Obviously he blows Yosuke out of the water because he’s actually a good and enjoyable character. Ryuji’s dates are also really great, he’s just an earnest, good, vulgar boy trying his best. His hot headed-ness has actually been a detriment for the group a couple of times, which is good because him shouting about being Phantom Thieves in public and being overly combative toward Morgana (for understandable enough reasons) SHOULD come up. Still, he shows great growth and humility over the course of the story, particularly when he apologizes to Morgana and after he gets angry during a meeting and scares Haru and Futaba by punching some furniture he tells Akira that it made him feel shitty and he’s going to apologize to them individually. He’s great, I love him, and he’s strong in combat to boot. Ann is still the explosive, great, multifaceted character she was and I like her even more now that I’ve finished her Confidant relationship. She’s a very good character and honestly the driving force behind a lot of P5′s feminist messages. She’s a great character who can be silly, friendly, and serious all at the same time and it doesn’t feel like she’s whipping around from one personality to another, she’s just really well realized. One of my favorite things about her is that she’s allowed to be angry, she’s allowed to be pissed off and shout and rage against society in the same way as Ryuji. She’s never as loud as him, but it’s still great. As a party member she’s a little weaker than the others, mostly because he gun fucking sucks lol. That said she has a great mix of offense and utility, I just wish her speed were a bit higher. Yusuke’s even better now that I’ve taken him on like, 4 dates and finished his Confidant relationship. Like, putting aside that he’s obviously gay for a moment there is way more erotic and romantic tension between him and Akira than there is between Akira and most other characters. His dialogue, the way they interact, Akira’s response options and what motions he makes around him, it’s all very homoerotic and it makes me even more confused as to why he’s not romanceable. He has more date locations you can take him on than several of the romance options, just make him a full romance please Atlus. Aside from that, I love his character, he’s great. As a character he’s also great representation for people on the autism spectrum, imo. This game never outright says “Yusuke is autistic” but it’s extremely obvious he’s intended to be on the spectrum given some of his dialogue, behavior, and the particular use of the word ‘eccentric’ and ‘eccentricities’ in regards to him and only him. Japanese games don’t like saying shit like that outright but it’s totally clear if you just pay attention. His Confidant Relationship is also one of my favorites in the game. You get a great look at his life circumstances, some of his philosophical beliefs, and you get to see this great maturity come about as he takes it all in and turns it into his art. I think it was really meaningful that his final art piece for that competition was just him going back to the canvas he started on and making something more out of it. He’s a well rounded character and is also one of my favorite combat party members because he’s so fucking strong. His damage output is absurd to be frank and his followup attack is one of my favorites, he just instantly kills whatever enemy has the most health on the field. It’s great. Makoto’s a total babe tbh... She’s got the punk biker aesthetic when you’re in the metaverse, her weapons of choice are her fists and revolvers, she does the whole ‘Pretend we’re dating and whoops we just don’t stop’ thing. She’s a little socially awkward but not totally, she’s the boss friend and voice of reason, though she isn’t beyond jokes and she’s just great. I’m weak, she’s powerful, I love this character. It also helps that she’s clearly the secondary protagonist of the game in the same way that Mitsuru and Naoto were before her, so she gets a lot of nice extra focus in the story. Not so much as to detract from the others, but her being Sae’s sister naturally makes her interactions with her sister the main way we see Sae characterized. I’ve got a lot to say about her but I can’t really get it into words right now. I’ll talk about her more later cause some drama’s gonna go down I’m sure of it. Futaba’s the character I was most worried about going in, but I’ve been happily proven wrong. I was worried she’d just be your NEET Japanese Gamer Waifu and she’s absolutely not. I mean, she is literally a NEET Japanese Gamer Girl, but the story doesn’t sexualize her nor does it make her the ‘obvious’ romance like how Yukari and Rise were in 3 and 4. She’s a character with paranoid schizophrenia for christsake and they manage to not only handle that well, but they kept the integrity of her character all throughout it and make her own effort the reason she improves, not the phantom thieves magically fixing her. I’m still not over it. I haven’t done much of her confidant relationship, but I do really like what I’ve seen of her. She’s driven and works hard, but she’s got her limits and is trying hard to broaden her horizons. She’s very comedic as well in the text logs but in a way that makes sense for someone her age and background. Her relationship with the others is a little stilted, but it doesn’t feel awkward, it makes sense because really she only interacts to any major degree with Akira, Yusuke, and Morgana. And finally we have Haru! I love her, she’s so fucking cute and such a sweet character. It’s kind of funny how she’s almost the same as Mitsuru but is so different. They’re both 1%ers who are the sole daughters and heirs to a conglomerate, are set up for an aranaged marriage they do not want, and whose dads die suddenly. Plus they’re both Empress Arcana. Yet the major difference is Mitsuru’s dad was supportive and she was prepared to inherit her company, where Haru has neither of those things. She was a passenger to her dad’s corrupt will and suddenly has all of this thrust upon her. I think it’s neat how similar they are in concept yet they’re totally different. I haven’t completed her confidant relationship yet but so far I like how down to earth it is. She just needs someone she can trust and talk with about her life issues. It’s cute seeing her go out and try different hobbies of her own choice just to get away from it all and to see what comes of it. Oh, I just realized, but also like Mitsuru she copes with her situation by burying herself in more work, though with Haru it’s with getting more hobbies to do where Mitsuru just takes on more corporate responsibilities. I hope this ends well for her. Honestly I wish she joined us sooner, I get the feeling she won’t be around for enough time to get the focus she deserves. Also, and this is just me, but I feel people saying ‘This game’s gay representation is shit just like Atlus always is’ really aren’t giving the game its dues. Yes, those two NPCs are bad and solely negative inclusions that just randomly throw in two (admittedly very short) scenes with a couple of predatory gay guys. But to only highlight them and ignore characters like Lala Escargot being well handled and shown to be nothing but a good person, Yusuke being pretty gay, and even the main character explicitly and without joking being able to show attraction to men multiple times is just unfair. The game’s gay representation isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly a lot better than Persona 3 or 4′s initial releases. Though Persona 3′s cast ended up being very queer with later content if you just compare the initial releases of each game Persona 5 blows the others out of the water by means of actually having positive queer representation. All in all, it’s still amazing, 10/10, my game of the year without question. I love it.

so I've been thinking about making/writing a big ol/ P5 AU (aka a fix-it fic because P5 infuriates me) and I was wondering; what are some changes you say would have to be made in order to improve P5?

Can do my dude, under the cut for length. 8U

So ngl I’m personally trying to do one myself too, I can give you a few ideas. I should tell you, I personally am just......trashing a lot of what happened in P5, and just using it’s setting to explore other ideas. I’m 1) choosing topics that weren’t in the original that I think would fit well, and 2) expanding on some things they talked about, and revolving my plot and characters in a way that the story can work with those two things (rather than......trying to force a square into a circle, I’m just going to shave off the sides to make it a circle and make it work). Doesn’t mean my fix it AU fic is what should’ve happened tho, just.....it’s made in a way that I want to work with things so I have to change a lot. Which makes it very AU than fix it but elkasfjls;jfad yeah 

But I’m not one to judge on how much you wanna change, just that if you wanna change a lot, this is coming from someone who is changing....A LOT! XD

First thing I think you should always consider is tackling the Metaverse’s ground rules, REALLY establish them (that’s what I’m doing, I’m not changing/taking away a whole lot but I’m clarifying what can and can’t happen and tbh just adding to it). These rule are up to you, but make them clear, and establish them. P5 really suffers from pretending to establish rules but then........breaking said rules without a care or explanation. Like this is probably it’s BIGGEST problem P5 has because it’s story HINGES on these rules for it’s plot to work. Here’s three examples of things that were broken constantly or just....aren’t explained well:

Boss Wakaba not changing nor disappearing once Futaba realizes her mom was good (thus no need for the boss). Even tho we saw, in real time, Madarame’s cognition changing over a gd door. So explain how cognition worksAccidentally pulling people in, we dunno what causes some to be pulled in instead of other’s (other than plot convenience).If a Persona can be touched/ridden on/ridden in.....utilize that, or make it so that they CAN’T utilize that. A lot of P5′s puzzles/road blocks could be bypassed with just “hey lemme try something-oh cool that works.” (Yusuke/Makoto, and probably Futaba wouldn’t have joined the team if they just did that, Haru is needed for a bio scan, but hey they could at least TRY ramming their Personas into the door 8U)Heart changing, explain how it really changes a person, why is Futaba considered having her heart stolen despite IT NOT BEING GD STOLEN, or how (like that 5 hour vid suggested) why Yuuki and Sae kinda act like they had a change of heart and how come one still has their palace despite that possible change of heart.... (if you go that route, you can maybe explain the difference in behavior of those two vs actual people having their desires ripped away). 

(side rant, one thing that still bugs me is that Sae has an alarm meter, but like.....She’s like a P4 shadow, she KNOWS you’re their, she even MEETS YOU at times! So like??????? Why have the meter?! She’s screwing you over all the damn time!!!! And she can only do that if she’s aware you’re there and know where you are! ANd she does! JUst????? I dunno make sense of that, maybe just explain there’s no meter?)

The next big issue is character consistency (first world building consistency, now Character consistency, tbh plot consistency is pretty bad too.....consistency is not in P5′s dictionary tbh). Everyone’s acting OOC everywhere, Anne’s biggest asset is somehow a flaw in her own CoOp (aka can read people and is very attuned to not saying the wrong thing), Ryuji isn’t a perv in HIS CoOp nor the first dungeon and is pretty level headed but after that???? nope, Futaba constantly talks about how it’s the TEAM that helped her and still help her but in her CoOp she only talks about how the MC is who helped her and can only do things cause of him and leave the house cause of him (despite the fact after she said that Yusuke went to her house the next day and got in in the main story >.>). Make the characters consistent, give them more flaws too tbh but as long as everything is the same and is foreshadowed well.

So those are the two biggest flaws in P5 that you might want to focus on fixing, how you do it is up to you! I’d also keep in mind to make sure that if the team needs to change cognition, make sure it’s for a good reason. Madarame’s door is a good reason, until you realize the stupid place has open windows and they can easily get to said open windows. Or Sae’s dungeon, her blockade is REALLY FREAKING STUPID cause it’s a public place and should already be open and JFSDKLJFLK;JASFD  JUST ANYTHING ELSE! Have the team work smarter not harder, if they are doing the opposite it can be....frustrating. 

Now the next stuff is up to you. Personally the first thing I do next is cut the team down to size (once Mako/Futaba/Haru were announced I started sweating and really felt like they should’ve kept it to 5ish). Too many characters to juggle on the team, who you choose is up to you if you want to do that. Think Yuki, Hifumi, or Sae should’ve been a thief? YOU DO THAT! Personally my fix-it one I’m doing MC/Anne/Ryu/Mona/Haru, but that’s because the story is based around their strengths and weaknesses (Yusuke and Futaba are important side characters/Coops tho, Makoto is a secret), there’s not need for a “smart person” because they all just work as a team, there’s no need for Yusuke’s art skills, and hacking isn’t going to appear in my fic (you can still do it, but my god the way P5 does it is horrible and OP and just.....why bother doing anything if Futaba can just wave her hacking wand? so unless you have a way to nerf it then go for it....but you’ll probs have to explain her “hacking cognition” bs cause.....why? just....why?). I tend to stick with the OG4 because they are solid and can fill a useful role that’s seen in other Phantom thief works (and can fit into P5, again I don’t think Yusuke’s artist eye is....useful), I chose Haru for reasons I won’t go into (but her personality is going to be different, this isn’t the reason, but I did need a personality change). 

But like I said, it can be anyone you want! Don’t like Anne or Ryuji or Mona (well you might need Mona, but you can re-write him!), then kick them! Or keep everyone doesn’t matter to me akldfjs;lajf XD 

If you want to keep all the characters.......I dunno. I don’t know where to start with Futaba, you can probably go a few different ways, but if you want to be more realistic, she’d probs still have issues for a few months (you don’t just get better after like a week XP) but that could make it hard for her to do anything for the team. Yusuke you’d have to make more relevant, you can make him the more level headed one (and you can remove Makoto via doing that). Makoto.....give her humility? I dunno, I wrote something on how to fix her arc (you can use it cause I’m not) but flksdafafafan I’d just boot her too personally XP (I guess character wise I’d actually make her smart, not point out obvious stuff in an attempt to appear smart, and ACTUALLY BE AN ACTION GIRL cause she ain’t shit when it comes to that either) I’d add more faults to Anne and Haru (love my girls, but first thing I did was add more issue to them), Ryuji make him consistent first then figure out what you want (I’d say keep him and Mona fighting the same, but make it more organic, with a good make up at the end). I’d also have Haru show up.

I’d also personally change Anne’s CoOp. I remember researching on Hafus well before P5 came out, and iirc I remember one hafu model lamenting on how everyone thinks they are pretty this and that and then talking bad behind their back, and then also how Hafus are kind of a commodity in Japan (aka they model and people think they are pretty, but then they also trash them for being “other”, think of it kinda like how everyone loves black culture in America but will trash black people for being black). Just the hypocrisy of “oh this is so awesome!!! BUT ALSO YOU SUCK!” kinda thing. It’s been awhile (I found it like a year or so before P5′s release), but it always stuck with me. And it made sense why Anne was a model but.....the way she’s....shamed for treating her PART TIME JOB/HOBBY as JUST THAT..... And then shaming her for her own natural beauty....it just reminded me of the interviews I read and it felt icky. I have an idea, it’s in the similar vein as modeling, but I think changing the writing so that it just treats her like a person instead of a hafu is one way to do it (after I finish writing it you can use it if you want/if you like it, it’s roughly similar to what we have but just tweaking it, I’m gonna use an aspect of that in my own fic but it won’t play beat by beat like it does in P5). 

I’m not sure about Kasumi, I personally started planning before Kasumi was announced. Do whatever with her tbh kflsjdf;asj

As for Goro.....listen I don’t like who we got, it felt like Atlus gave us like.......a few different characterizations they could’ve taken Goro and shoved them all into him despite these characterizations conflicting and not melding at all. They just contradict. He’s someone I think SHOULD be in the story (if not him, then give someone else the role of the “shadow archetype” but there needs to be one because that’s a staple for Persona, tho I mean if you want to reinvent the wheel and not have one then I say go for it! It’d def something new/different). But if you have Goro, you NEED to smooth him out. I’ll give you a few ideas.

Want him to be a puppet? Make sure it makes sense (by which I mean, due to his powers as we have it now, and how much he hated Shido prior to said powers, it doesn’t make sense for him to be Shido’s puppet when he can easily monitor Shido with said powers, and it doesn’t make sense for him to not monitor him nor be Shido’s puppet. It makes sense for him to pretend to be Shido’s puppet, and then turn around and be the REAL puppet master). A good way to make him a puppet is for him not to be related to Shido (or he and Shido are unknowing to that fact if you want), and Goro is just moved by this politician he sees one day and just stans the shit outta him, despite not knowing he’s a puppet to Shido (if this is the case, I don’t think think Shido planning on killing Goro would make sense, but proving he only thinks of Goro as a tool would def shake Goro’s world, since in this case he is unshakingly DEVOTED to Shido, hence why he’d never go into Shido’s mind). Sympathetic, and similar to Sho, has the best chance of being helped. 

Want him to basically be an extreme lawful person/Light Yagami? His way or the highway (also couples well with him being the real mastermind with Shido being the puppet). Well intention, but the ways he is doing it is horrible? Sympathetic? Not Sympathetic, your choice!

(closest rewrite you can get to keep it like the original P5 without the BS puppet thing) Guy that wants to just get revenge on Shido and Society, and is the real mastermind (much to everyone’s shock, due to thinking the red herring Shido was the real mastermind), who has Shido under his thumb. Sympathetic, but he’s willing to hurt whoever for his revenge. Might not be able to be helped, unless you count jail time. 

Personally I’m all for changing the god too but that’s just me. 8U

I know I didn’t touch on the bad guys, personally I’m keeping some the same, adding more to some other’s (tho changing their sin), and then just creating like some original bad guys to replace the one’s I’m not using (aka like.........Madarame is going to be a Mementos boss in my fic, I’m replacing him with someone else, and if you looked at my Haru link earlier Okumura is obvie going to be 2nd dungeon instead). You can do whatever with them imo, depends on how much you wanna change. All I can say is just make them deeper/more well rounded characters/no shallow Saturday Cartoon villains (aka give them nuance 8U). And don’t just....have a throw away line about this or that, incorporate it more into the dungeons (imo I’d take a page or two out of P4′s book, have their internal dialogue blasting a lot, maybe even have a memory play that we see). 

And that’s as much as I can word vomit atm (I’m very tired ;w;), I feel like I might’ve missed something but.....I’m not gonna worry about it. Sorry it’s in very big strokes, but you have a lot of wiggle room imo. I don’t think there’s a “perfect” way of fixing P5, so as long as you have a vision you want to execute I think you’re good. Like I said, my fix it fic is just retooling a lot of P5 in a way I can make certain ideas work, it’s not supposed to be “this is how P5 is supposed to be” but a “this is how I think a tighter version of P5 could’ve gone down.”