🌿Ray/Basil/Sun🌿

Akechi meets the requirements for diagnosis of BPD as I will now explain what those symptoms are and how he correlates to them with his behavior and actions.

[Markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self/Markedly impoverished, poorly developed, or unstable self-image, often associated with excessive self-criticism; chronic feelings of emptiness; dissociative states under stress.]

Initially, I was under the belief he didn't have this but an analysis of his character lead me to believe otherwise. I didn't initially believe it because I myself was fooled into believing that Akechi knew who he was because he thought he knew who he was. His personas being Robin Hood and Loki is a very literal display of black and white thinking: Robin Hood represents his desire for and idealization of justice and is predominately white, gold, blue, and red; colors that typically denote royalty or high social standing and wields a golden winged bow. His Metaverse outfit when using Robin Hood is white and red and represents that of a prince. Loki represents his bitter hatred at the cruelty and unfairness of society and his desire for vengeance towards that society and is a chaotic black and white striped being with no clearly defined pattern to the stripes coupled with flaming hooves, red braids, and horns coming out of its eye sockets like that of a snail parasite as well as a burning red sword so hot it can only even be wielded by Loki by holding it with pliers. His Metaverse outfit when using Loki is black and blue and resembles something of a combination of a harlequin, a knight, and perhaps a prisoner.

His Robin Hood outfit is easily understandable and appears pristine and practically too perfect while his Loki outfit isn't easy to comprehend what you're looking at and what it's supposed to be if anything and the cape, sleeves, and pant legs are torn and blackened at the ends, denoting the opposite of perfection. Black and blue is the opposite of white and red and vengeance and justice are separate via a razor thin line. Vengeance is justice for the sake of the self and justice can be considered vengeance for the sake of everyone. It is due to Akechi's inability to reconcile these aspects of himself into something unified that caused him to awaken to two personas to begin with. Even Akira who is a wildcard awoke to just Arséne and not several personas; he's able to acquire more but he didn't awaken to multiple.

With Akechi we have word of god that states that he awoke to both Robin Hood and Loki at the same time and since in P5, a person's shadow is their persona, the only feasible way he could have awoken to two personas when a person only has one shadow is because his shadow ripped in two. As is also stated in the linked analysis, (thank goodness I'm not the only one who realized this) Hereward is the persona he would have awakened to had he been able to reconcile both the aspects of himself that were torn apart to awaken Robin Hood and Loki from the beginning.

On a gameplay level, the fusion of Robin Hood and Loki mimics the third-tier persona animations the PT have where it's their original persona fusing with their current evolved persona to create the ultimate version of themselves, but Loki isn't a persona evolution of Robin Hood, it's a completely separate persona. The Hereward awakening animation is just presented as such since Robin Hood was the first persona that he uses, then in third semester he only uses Loki and no longer Robin Hood, mimicking that of a persona evolution even though it isn't.

For the PT and Sumire, their third-tier personas are the ultimate versions of themselves; of their original rebellion combined with the progression of that rebellion. Akechi awakening to Hereward is him finally reconciling the aspects of himself that initially refused to do so and thus created Robin Hood and Loki, finally reunifying his shadow back into one and thus giving him one persona. (But why didn't his outfit change from his black mask outfit to a unification of that and his crow outfit :0? Do you have any idea how bullshit that would be if he got a completely new outfit for the very last time you can ever use him in combat? Do you think Atlus would design, model, and program an entirely new outfit that would only ever be used legitimately in one battle and every proceeding time would just be in NG+? We already have that bullshit with Hereward AND HE DOESN'T EVEN TRANSFER OVER INTO NG+)

For self-criticism, it's exhibited in his perfectionism and being the best at what he does. We know this well what with him feeling 'threatened' with Akira catching up to him in skill in a very short amount of time with things that Akechi likely didn't learn as quickly as Akira. Akira excels him in every way and this frustrates him to no end because he wants to be the most special and to be the most skillful one and to have someone so similar to him not only catch up to his level of skill but surpass him in a fraction of the time is infuriating and instills a deep envy in him.

He also works several jobs that he disallows anything less than the best with: school where he has exceptional grades, Shido's hitman where he has to do his absolute best since he cannot risk losing Shido's "trust" in him if he wants to enact his plan without Shido suspecting anything, an ace detective where he practically has to do constant games of chess so as to not even hint at being the true culprit behind the shutdowns and rampages, and being a celebrity where he has to be the most presentable at any time he may be called to appear on TV and he must upkeep his best of appearances.

It's rather difficult to properly ascertain how much self-criticism he has that actually reflects an unstable sense of self since he, until the engine room, is masking very well. His utter refusal to use Robin Hood during third semester under the belief that Loki is his true self, could also reflect excessive self-criticism. Robin Hood is the representation of his more "virtuous" sense of justice and not the inky black hate of his desire for vengeance; for Akechi to completely shun Robin Hood during third semester, not even allowing the option of switching between his two personas, can also symbolize him shunning that aspect of himself and what Robin Hood represents. For him to refuse both usage and acknowledgement of what represents a more "lighter" and "virtuous" part of himself in favor of a part of him that causes him and others harm and is representative of something "darker" and chaotic can come across as harshly criticizing.

[Instability in goals, aspirations, values, or career plans.]

I am with the belief that he has instability in his values: he states in the engine room that his targets were pieces of shit people that deserved to be killed as it removed their evil influence—

Goro (JP): 別にいいだろ？どうせヤツら自身だって、薄汚い『食うか食われるか』をやってんだ。 ("It's fine, isn't it? After all, those guys acted on their own "eat or be eaten" filth too.")

Goro (JP): そんな害悪を処理してやったのさ。("So I dealt with that kind of evil influence.")

and that him doing to them what they do to others was just him giving them a taste of their own medicine.

❝He's not talking about the world having an "eat or be eaten" philosophy, but the people he targeted. The fact he derides that sort of view went missing in the localization too; instead, it sounds like HE views the world that way, rather than just him giving those people a taste of their own medicine.❞

But Akechi is still someone who believes in a more virtuous sense of justice as opposed to just a more 'personal' justice. In his conversations with Sae, he says that for the sake of his justice he won't forgive the person behind the rampages (and presumably, the person enacting them aka himself).

We are given multiple hints throughout the game that he detests what Shido is having him do and from that specific dialogue mentioned above, can't forgive himself nor Shido for it. Sure, Akechi himself effectively states that what he's doing is right since it's towards people that deserve it, but he yet still exhibits disgust and self-loathing for still doing it.

The best example of this is in Vanilla P5, which unfortunately doesn't exist in Royal as a result of Akechi's confidant being completely reworked, but during one of the few times Akechi could appear at Leblanc during the evening, after Okumura's death, he looks downcast. I have seen it speculated that his downtrodden state was due to somberness from the act of killing yet another person rather than from the murder of the person themself. Then there are his victims that actually didn't deserve mental shutdowns yet he carried them out anyway: Wakaba, who was one of, if not his first kill and Ohya's partner. Wakaba being one of his first kills lightens the brunt of how contradictory it is to his values (i.e his sense of justice) since he at that point in time wouldn't have had any clue that killing a person's shadow would possibly kill them in the real world. We also see him indirectly exhibit regret/guilt for killing Wakaba during his introduction to Futaba.

Ohya's partner, Kayo, on the other hand, doesn't get a softening of contradiction since by that point Akechi knows full well the extent of what his powers can do and what harm to a person's shadow can cause. Kayo was not someone who fit Akechi's ideology of people who deserve death for being utterly fucking terrible people and despite her not being someone Akechi was ordered to carry a hit out on and was collateral for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, he still inflicted a mental shutdown on her and left her to be hospitalized with doctors having no idea how to improve her condition. We obviously don't see Akechi express guilt for this for a potential reason being she was just some unfortunate rando who stuck her nose where it didn't belong, but also by that point his emotions would have numbed from the constant atrocities he was committing.

Akechi's actions are in direct contradiction of his values and he is fully aware of it and loathes himself for it. He both values virtuous justice while also 'contradictorily' believing it to be worthless and that kind of justice can't and won't have any effect in a society as broken as the one he lives in. That the only 'justice' that can have any impact is justice that is for the benefit of the self alone rather than for everyone since that seems to be the only kind that has any lasting effect. He judges the PT for taking the law into their own hands and ridding society of harmful people when he himself does the exact same in a way that— depending on one's views— may be more or less horrible.

The biggest difference being the PT attempt justice for the sake of others yet due to just how their society is built, isn't really doing anything since they aren't getting to the source of the disease and are only dealing with the symptoms. Akechi doesn't attempt justice for the sake of others because again, as much as he does harbor an idealization of virtuous justice, he also believes it to be worthless, and thus only enacts 'justice' on others in the manner of being judge, jury, and executioner.

He pretty much states that he's doing something good by removing such terrible people's evil influence and through implication that he is doing a justice that is ultimately for everyone, but it's really only self-serving since he's only complying with the orders to inflict shutdowns and rampages on these people in order to get revenge on Shido.

[Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (eg, intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days)]

Affective instability can also present as alexithymia, feelings of emptiness, and emotional dysregulation. Alexithymia is displayed in Akechi in the form of the first point. Alexithymia has several different ways it could present, three cognitive and two affective:

•Difficulties identifying feelings and emotions

•Problems distinguishing between emotions and bodily sensations that relate to those emotions

•Limited ability to communicate feelings to others

•Difficulties recognizing and responding to emotions in others, including tone of voice and facial expressions

•A lack of fantasies and imagination

•A logical and rigid thinking style that does not account for emotions

He does have difficulties in properly identifying his emotions in what is namely the most iconic scene in his confidant, that is him telling Akira he hates him. Because what he's fully feeling at that point is a boiling level of envy that could be laced with hatred or even be both hate and envy, but him mistaking what he's feeling towards Akira in that moment as solely hate is incorrect when any person from an outside perspective can see that that's not all it is.

What happened in the engine room would seemingly be the biggest example of emotional dysregulation for him as although Akechi was already in a state of tranquil fury at the beginning of the engine room scene, as said scene progressed his emotions completely explode disproportionately to the point of inflicting Call of Chaos on himself which only further exacerbates his rage.

He wasn't at 0 at the beginning but more like 50 at least. Notably, he did react very negatively to Morgana commenting that Akechi did come to care for Joker despite Akechi claiming to hate him since Morgana spoke a truth Akechi didn't want to acknowledge (because saying it makes it real). His anger was dysregulated during that scene as he had very high reactivity to anger as his ability to keep a lid on it was coming loose. It could particularly not come across as emotional dysregulation since Akechi is very good at masking and is able to stuff it down.

However, one of his Jazz Jin conversations prior to the end of Sae's palace has him say that he's told that he usually has a poker face on TV or is always smiling and his response to Akira about that is that he isn't a robot and he does get angry like any other human and that it may be good to unchain himself.

One could take that to mean he does allow himself to feel a lot of anger but not too much that he can't mask it, and that by unchaining himself he'd stop holding back the full extent of his anger once he stops caring about how others would react to such explosive emotions.

Additionally, his rage spiking towards Morgana saying that he came to like Joker despite him saying he hates him is not just a display of emotional dysregulation, but the very same alexithymia that I discussed above. Because again, he is mischaracterizing his emotions and saying what they aren't and when Morgana figured out what he said he felt wasn't what he actually felt and stated what he's really feeling, something had to have clicked in his mind and that sent him into a rage at the recognition that what he's feeling actually isn't hate but something of the opposite.

His actions in the Metaverse when combating shadows had me skeptical for a moment as a result of overthinking since on one hand, his actions in the Metaverse at that point are a part of his Black Mask persona in contrast to his Detective Prince persona during Sae's palace arc and I was contemplating that it may not be genuinely indicative of his actual emotions, just exaggerations or what he believes he really is but actually isn't. That he believes himself to be "ruthless" because it's who he "really is" but it actually isn't but he doesn't realize. A case of not being able to distinguish one's self from their mask. One the other hand it also could be genuine in how his emotions are relatively chill then immediately go to 100 whence battle with shadows is initiated. My misconstruing of his behavior in combat was again, a result of overthinking as I wanted to think of every possible interpretation of his behavior and didn't want to pin it as an affirmative to this symptom of BPD (i.e confirmation bias), but ruthless is just how Sumire described him, it's not like it's a fabrication of himself.

Since Akechi is acting under the belief that his Black Mask persona is "who he really is" there is a bit more truth to his actions than that of the Detective Prince; Black Mask displays himself loud and clear with no mistaking of his intentions while the Detective Prince has so many layers to sift through to maybe ascertain what his true intentions are that one is left analyzing his every word out of belief he almost never clearly says his true intentions. The Detective Prince isn't pure fabrication; there is more truth than one would initially assume and from the words of a youtube comment I really liked, the Detective Prince is Akechi but more filtered. And since the Black Mask is the opposite of the inconspicuous 'read-between-the-lines' Detective Prince, Black Mask is not filtered and thus his emotions presented when wearing that mask; that persona; are more genuine than when they were filtered.

So I am led to believe his intense display of emotion during combat in third semester is genuine especially since Joker himself seems to think so (just everyday Akechi...) And since Akechi acts the way he does around the PT when using Loki during third semester, one could presume he also acted like that when he soloed palaces and thus application of emotional dysregulation would definitely be viable in the face of his emotions reacting like that when merely fighting shadows in comparison to how the PT fight shadows. (Also in one of his third semester Jazz Jin dialogues, he mentions enjoying being able to act freely as opposed to acting while wearing a mask. He doesn't mind it, but nothing beats being able to be himself)

His emotions, namely his anger, flaring like that when fighting shadows isn't healthy (the fact that he's swearing up a storm in his general nav dialogue, his dialogue when inflicted with rage being scarcely any different from how he normally acts, his agitation towards shadows when they just won't die or when in a hold up, his quip of "YOU LITTLE SHIT" whenever a shadow dodges his melee attack, etc) and if it's been going on since before third semester, when he was completely alone and that he was able to stuff it down perfectly in public, it becomes less of a surprise with his anger finally boiling over come Shido's palace.

Feelings of emptiness immediately brings to mind the Thieves Den conversation where the Cognitive Akechi says, to paraphrase, that after upkeeping a face of deception for so long you stop feeling things once you get used to it. Since we don't know exactly how long he's been wearing a mask of deception and when he even started (was it before meeting Shido? Upon meeting Shido but before becoming the Detective Prince? Was it Shido to the extent of appearing like a heartless sadist in his eyes but then eventually crafted a mask of deception for the public as the Absolutely Perfect and Dreamy Detective Prince™? When did he become the Detective Prince? Many unknown variables) we don't have proper knowledge of how long and when he stopped feeling things. But given his expression when he says this, one could infer it to mean that he's stopped feeling things regarding exhaustion from constant deception a long time ago.

(Yes I am using the Cognitive Akechi in the Thieves Den as substantial enough evidence to the real Akechi feeling this way since Akira's understanding of not just Akechi but all the people who have cognitions in the Thieves Den is so thorough and undistorted that it's practically 1:1 with their real selves. This goes doubly so since I've actually seen a lot of people who can't quite tell whether the PT + Akechi and Sumire in the Thieves Den are cognitions or the real thing since they're so accurate.)

[Chronic feelings of emptiness]

Chronic feelings of emptiness can also manifest as numbness or dulled emotions. Discussed in the point directly above. Yes it's possible to both have emotions so intense they control you rather than you them and also have chronic feelings of emptiness, given his dialogue in Thieves Den + his behavior in Maruki's palace, he is evidence to that. (And I myself am testament to it as well)

❝Feeling empty amounts to a mismatch between how one experiences oneself and the identities and roles that seem to have accrued to oneself. Not only is such a mismatch painful and tiring, it also exacerbates the experience of isolation. For it is not just that interaffective exchange with others is hindered by one’s lack of affective understanding and regulative capacities; additionally, if one does not feel oneself to be this or that person with these individual character traits, then it is also very difficult to have an experience of a real encounter with others. If one feels that one is always wearing a mask that conceals one’s own being, no real contact with another person is possible❞

[Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger (eg, frequent displays of temper, constant anger, or recurrent physical fights)]

Talked about in the emotional dysregulation point; his anger being very intense in not only combat but to people he views as despicable trash that deserves to die/manipulative pieces of shit like Shido and Maruki is highly prevalent. Shido is already known and his anger towards him can be considered perfectly proportionate to just how horrible he is, but Maruki is something completely different. Maruki is someone who genuinely has good intentions and wanted to do what he believed the best for everyone, but Akechi utterly despises him and can't fathom someone having the power of a god and not use those powers for completely self serving purposes.

Akechi at multiple points in third semester displays disgust and vitriol towards Maruki for practically all of his actions, ranging from those that are perfectly deserving of such disgust like what Maruki was doing and had done to Sumire; his Actualization cognitive overlay on her, him forcing the decision of her to wanting to stay in his idealized reality, him driving her persona berserk— to Maruki pleading to Akechi that in his reality he can freely give him a new start with Akira without any of the consequences that came from his actions hindering him to which Akechi furiously yells that Maruki's high-and-mighty bullshit is pissing him off.

To top if off, in Akechi's unused third tier awakening scene, he outright states that Maruki is no different from Shido, so his vitriol and hair trigger temper towards him is understandable in the regard if he considers that to be so (and he's more right than you'd first think).

[Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms]

Dissociation can manifest in multiple forms: derealization, depersonalization, amnesia, identity confusion, and identity alteration. Putting that aside for a moment, we can see Akechi display what greatly appears to be dissociation in his phone call to Shido after having assassinated Akira. The look on his face during that segment can be perceived as such, but I namely want to point out his behavior as the more evident grounds.

Consider this: Akechi as a person is someone who we and Akira already know is not the most mentally healthy individual or as stable as he makes himself appear to be to the public, he hasn't had any friends until meeting Akira who's company he enjoys so greatly and feels so much trust towards, he told him about his past about being a bastard child to a single mother— where in Japan can completely destroy his life and everything he worked for, and he trusted Akira enough to just hand him that information without expecting anything of equal value— and then he starts distancing himself from Akira in the parts of his confidant that align with when they're typically expected to be done in the story. (i.e the gap of his confidant that happens during Summer that leads to it not being able to be progressed falls in line with when he would be informed by Shido about the plan to pin the mental shutdowns on the PT and the assassination of their leader)

He then subtly warns Akira that if he continues down the path he's going he may end up being one of the billiard balls hit for being in the trajectory he was struck from and whether Akira wishes to back out now and forfeit than risk whatever happens next. That he humored the thought of asking Akira if he'd like to join him as a detective when regardless of if Akira seriously considers the offer or not, he tells Akira he refuses to allow him to change in any way and that includes his position in their rivalry. Then Akira catches up to him in skill level and to vent out his frustration to him at that— to excelling himself in such a short amount of time that based on why he's so angry and how he phrases his words, took him a long time to get to where he is now and Akira caught up to and surpassed him in the blink of an eye.

Akechi claims to hate Akira and that much may or may not be true in the moment, but what he feels most of all is all encompassing envy. Akechi mischaracterizes his emotions (such as his envy for hate) as a result of the trauma he's experienced throughout his life and can't properly define what exactly he's feeling when emotions more complex than, for example: anger, regret, or hate, explode and completely consume him. To him, this overwhelming feeling of envy may as well be hate; it's a similar powerful surge in negative emotions towards another, and him conflating the two in that moment where in his rank 4 confidant he explicitly displays the ability to label his envy and doesn't misconstrue it as hate may be because it wasn't the overwhelming boiling cacophony of emotion that he felt in his rank 8.

Anyway, the plan of assassinating Akira plays out and there he is pointing a gun to the head of the first person he fully confided in and felt he could tell anything to; the first person who he felt companionship towards and enough trust and comfort so as to just tell him secrets that absolutely no one else knows except for the very people involved in those secrets, and he pulls the trigger with a smirk on his face. His demeanor when talking to Shido afterwards feels like still air; hushed and like that of holding ones breath (this is how it feels to me personally btw since I rely entirely on emotional feeling and abstraction to understand Akechi) and he acts oddly tranquil in contrast to how he was just moments ago.

❝In severe forms of dissociation, disconnection occurs in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception. For example, someone may think about an event that was tremendously upsetting yet have no feelings about it. Clinically, this is termed emotional numbing, one of the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder.❞

If you think that Akechi could unhesitatingly kill someone who is that important to him without it being traumatizing and causing him to dissociate to cope with him being the reason why his friend is dead, I don't know what to tell you. Shido may have been the one to give the order, but Akechi is still the one who pulled the trigger.

[Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior]

I am uncertain on whether he displays suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, but I do know he does display self-mutilating behavior primarily in the form of his use of Call of Chaos. I initially disregarded his use of it beyond the first time he uses it on himself in the engine room and the time in Maruki's palace for his first showtime as just a gameplay mechanic, but considering how many "gameplay mechanics" are actually indicative of characteristics and facets of a character's personality in this game (coughcough Akira), it's stupid to cherry pick this particular mechanic as seen from strictly a doylist perspective as opposed to watsonian.

I.E, Akechi is using Call of Chaos on himself each and every time his showtime attack is initiated (especially given him having different sets of dialogue for using it) and considering how he screams when doing so combined with the very nature of what Call of Chaos does… (It's a kind of power that breaks the bonds on a person's heart. Bonds being both figurative and literal; bonds of one's relationships with others and acting with complete disregard to those relationships like they no longer matter and the expectations that come with those relationships being dropped like a weight, and bonds in terms of chains barring the full extent of a person's emotions. To completely numb the super ego into nothing and fully empowering the id to run wild)

I'd imagine it's very painful what with his emotions completely overtaking him and being his primary driving force at that point. Him slashing with wild abandon in a fit of raw strength and fury and screaming some variant of "I HATE WEAKLINGS LIKE YOU!" "STAY STILL YOU LITTLE SHIT!" and "YOU DON'T CONTROL ME!" shows a complete lack of inhibition and with Call of Chaos exacerbating his anger, one can only imagine how much it hurts since anger does inherently hurt. That combined with him clutching his head at the end of his showtime attack shows that using Call of Chaos does cause him head pain (whether or not it's that of a migraine I don't know)

That's not all, his persistent use of Call of Chaos on himself is just one facet of recurrent self-mutilating behavior; his victory animation (not to be confused with his All Out Attack portrait) in third semester is different from his victory animation during Sae's palace arc. In third semester he's clutching his head for a moment with his left hand upon kneeling before getting up whereas during Sae's palace arc his left arm is resting on his knee upon him kneeling.

Since during Sae's palace arc he's using Robin Hood, and during third semester he's using Loki, him clutching his head upon him solely using Loki much like in his showtime attack indicates that just using Loki causes him pain that doesn't occur when using Robin Hood.

The fact that he seemingly favors Loki more than Robin Hood; that he perceives his Black Mask persona to be his true self coupled with him using Loki A LOT due to his job as Shido's hitman and to inflict mental rampages on others, and the seeming likelihood that just using Loki causes him pain, he is persistently and consciously causing harm to himself. And since he sees the Loki aspect of himself as his "true" self, he therefore favors a part of himself that ultimately causes him pain whether or not it's just an unintended side effect of his shadow being torn in two upon awakening. Furthermore, him being more than okay with using Call of Chaos on himself no matter how many times it takes until the true reality is restored when both us and he knows how harmful it is shows how little he values his health beyond what's needed to be functioning enough to destroy his enemies, likely since it both functions as a way of pushing the PT and Akira away, and because he believes he's actually dead and was just revived in Maruki's reality so it doesn't really matter what happens to him anyway.

>Manipulative Behavior as an Expression of Inhibited Interaffectivity<

So as to not just copy paste a gigantic text wall, I will sparingly copy enough to provide enough context to what I find relative to Akechi.

❝A lack of empathic ability can also lead to the emergence of maladaptive strategies for better grasping what others are feeling and thinking. […] For interpersonal fusion often seems to function as a general prototype for borderline relationships, motivating an increased need for individuals to know how others feel and why exactly. However, since the process of interaffective exchange is disturbed, persons with borderline are typically seen as developing alternative strategies for emotional transactions and synchronization that are often labeled manipulation.

Without entering into the important and controversial debate whether such a label is adequate and taking “manipulation” here only as a placeholder in the absence of a better term for the borderline strategies in question, I want to suggest that these behaviors can be regarded as maladaptive and compensatory attempts to overcome what are perceived deficits in interaffectivity and lack of successful exchange with others. […]

For instance, manipulation can serve an epistemological purpose. Eliciting strong emotions and clearer behaviors in others through provocation can make it easier for the person with borderline to understand how others are feeling and so reduce the insecurities that stem from ambivalence. In this sense, manipulation seems also to be used as a tool to test the quality of a relationship[.]❞

I feel that this aspect of BPD is fitting but I feel skepticism regarding one point due to possibly not understanding it properly in the context of Akechi. While I do feel that this does apply to Akechi, notably referring to how he interacts with Akira and his usage of philosophy and ethics in relation to Akira's support of the PT and Akira being his antithesis, I feel pensive as to whether the fusion aspect of BPD is fitting. Fusion in BPD is stated to be as such:

❝Lacking positive experiences of and capabilities for successful interaffective encounters in which two individuals can experience harmony as a process of alternating phases of synchronization and desynchronization, persons with borderline seem to seek a perfect harmony as a state that is never at risk. The ideal of a partner in relationships then is not one with whom a continuous process of interaffective synchronization is possible but one with whom a state of fusion can be attained. The ideal of fusion can be manifest in the borderline-typical ambivalence, intolerance, or hypersensitivity to cues that may indicate changes in relationships and hyperreactivity to anything short of fusion.❞

Akechi presents his opinion of the PT's actions as a disagreement to them repeatedly throughout the game and not once budges on that stance. He brings it up during his outing with Akira and Sumire partly as a way of hearing her opinion and seeing where she stands in whether she's for or against the PT. He even explains his disdain for the PT's methods and why to the very PT themselves as if expecting them to see their actions from his point of view. From him sparking an 'argument' in his outing with Akira and Sumire to his publicly vocal disagreement with the PT's actions at a point in time where he knows that Akira is not just a member of the PT, but their leader, can be seen as him trying to get Akira to consider his view on the matter.

This may seem contradictory to him not wanting Akira to change no matter what, but it's really not when that perfect harmony is of their differing of opinions. Their differing of opinions; their opposing places on the board; their rivalry, is that ideal fused state that Akechi doesn't want changed and Akira considering either joining him or seeing him as just a friend and not a rival threatens that fusion. Akira abandoning his ideals in favor of Akechi's wouldn't please him whatsoever, it'd only cause deep disappointment and irritation for Akira to so readily abandon his beliefs when Akechi doesn't abandon his. They are supposed to be equals and Akechi does not take lightly to that equality being disturbed.

An epistemological reason for his 'manipulation' brings to mind his first interaction with Akira at the TV studio about the PT as well as his outing with Akira and Sumire plus ranks 5 and 7 of his confidant. And for eliciting strong emotions and clearer behaviors in others through provocation, I already mentioned above at his outing with Akira and Sumire where he was rather cheeky in "starting an argument" concerning her take on the PT as well as his interactions with the PT on multiple occasions.

Medical Sources: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

The pastebin translation of the Vanilla P5 engine room scene: [×]

Why I refer to "psychotic breakdowns" as mental rampages: [×]

(The pastebin is actually why as I knew about it long prior to reading the linked post directly above, but said post functions more as a tl;dr since the pastebin is long)