BungArip the Dreamer

Dear Anonymous,

Tales of the World: Reve Unitia - Zelos Favorability Conversation

Cast: Zelos Wilder (TOS) - Masaya Onosaka Jade Curtiss (TOA) - Takehito Koyasu

Translator: EirlysTylluan Subber/Timer: DimensionSlip

107 Jade Skit faces + MA Cut-in from Tactics Union

Thanks to a tweet by Japanese fan, I just realized this book also features a short story. And it’s very, very relevant to this blog.

The story was written by Fujiwara Kenichi, the author of 3 out of the 4 Persona 3 Light Novels. It’s called Memories of Him, stars Aigis and ― from what I can see ― takes place right after the events of The Answer. 

The final scene of the story is too precious for words, so I wanted to share it with everyone! 

Translation of the final scene below the cut!

Well, at face value this clearly means that Sho has Wild Card abilities now and has thus gained access to the Velvet Room. However, it is weird that they would include this detail in the game, given that it’s very unlikely that there’ll ever be a Persona Game where we’ll actually get to play as Sho, right?

…Well, funny story, some hackers have found that, for some reason, some of Sho’s character files are labeled as “P5 Hero” in the game data. If you check closely, Sho also has similar facial structures and a similar built to the P5 Protag. HOWEVER, at the same time, the P5 Protag also has a different voice actor and lacks Sho’s characteristic scar. 

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, but what happened in the ending of P4U2 seems to indicate that Sho has the Wild Card ability now, meaning that he shares that thread with the P5 Protag as well. That said, in trailers so far, the calendar in P5 showed no year, meaning that this might be the first mainline Persona Game since P2 that cannot be clearly placed on the P2EP timeline. For that reason, some people have theorized that P5 isn’t set in the P2EP Timeline (the one all Persona Games have been in since P2EP) at all, but rather is yet another alternate Universe, spawned possibly somewhere around the point of P3 (P3P’s FeMC route would be a good contender) or maybe even earlier. If so, that would make it possible that P5Protag is an Alternate Timeline Version of Sho, from a timeline where all games past at very least P3 never happened, which might explain *a lot*, but, oh well.

I mean, given that we literally killed the Collective Unconscious’ representation of the concept of time in Persona Q, I wouldn’t be surprised if the timeline was now screwed up beyond repair. 

Ok so as we all know every Persona game has an endgame boss. And then, there’s the END game boss. The True Shadow, the Mastermind, the Personification of one of human kinds most secret but deepest desires.  I don’t know what the first one was but the second one represented humanity’s desire to give up control, to not carry the weight of decision on their shoulders but rather hand it off to someone else. In the, it was the human desire for death and the peace that it brought. In four it was Ignorance, the desire to keep the truth hidden away or to remain blinded to a truth they did not wish to see. And all these Shadows still exist because the desire and want for these things still remain in the hearts of humans. So that brings to question; Who and what will our Major Shadow in this game represent? We know that the Persona franchise has always focused on one attribute per game and this one we already know; Red for Freedom. Freedom to be who you really are and not be judged for it, to live life without the shackles of peoples expectations. But what if it’s that very same mentality putting the world in danger? What if it’s that DESIRE to be free, to do whatever the hell they want because they’re entitled to it that’s putting the world at risk?  Yep. I’m saying that the Major Shadow in this game will represent humanities desire for Freedom to do what they want without consequence. Think about it for a second: each Shadow boss is based on one of the seven deadly sins. Lust wants Ann to himself, Greed wants all the money, Sloth wants to sit back and do nothing and rather let things run themselves. So what if everyone got what they wanted? The power to take it without consequence? There would be complete and utter destruction. They would become their Shadows and destroy everything on their path to claiming what they believe they desire, rather than what they need.

Another thing I want to point out: WE’VE LIKELY ALREADY SEEN THE MAJOR SHADOWS HUMAN FORM! AND NOT JUST HIS BOOTS! Remember that scene with the eggman lookalike that’s just crossing the road on his merry way and only one other person passes him? A man in simple business attire. Or is he? Shortly after passing the man, Eggman grabs his chest, over his heart, and it looks like he’s having a heartattack. He’s not. The man that crossed his path is the human form of the major shadow, and a fact Izanami pointed out is what proves it. Anyone who comes into contact with a Major Shadow has some kind of ‘Awakening’. She gave Yu, Namatame, and Adachi the ability to Enter the other world and summon Persona’s without the need to face their Shadow in order to gauge the desire of humanity to see what they would do with the truth when it was given to them. Adachi saw it for what it was and used it to hurt people. Namatame saw it and twisted it into something that pleased his eye. And Yu saw the Truth.

Lastest Famitsu information stated that Phantom (P5 protagonist) gets arrested at the start of the game for beating the shit out of a women harasser.

So, let’s talk about PV#02 then, as now I realized it’s a key element in the puzzle.

On the PV#02 Yusuke’s painting was 

Are they on the road to glory or ruin?

and it clearly refers to the Phantom Thieves’ plot.

Arsene also says interesting things like:

What’s wrong? Are you gonna let this happen? What’s that a mistake? That’s right! You are me, and I am you, as it should be! For the sake of the justice you believe in, make those of blasphemy repent!

From these lines we can know that both are looking for the same kind of “vigilante justice”, and that probably Phantom accepts being possesed by Arsene so he can apply that kind of justice to criminals.

Once your destiny has been determined, we shall meet again

And then the trailer ends with Phantom in the Velvet Room and “Steal back your future”.

So my theory is that Phantom will have to decide through the game if he embraces Arsene and goes punishing criminals by his own twisted sense of justice (Ruin), or he will be rehabilitated - As Igor said - and will become part of society (Glory), which is a similar to Nyarly’s and Philemon’s bet on humanity on both Persona 1 and 2. This also applies to the other members of the gang, as they are in a similar position:

Ryuji is not taken seriously by adults. Anne is casted aside for being a gaijin. Yusuke was being used by his landlord. Makoto is a iron-moral student council president and probaly she is disliked by the other students due to this, and her sister/mother it’s a detective who it’s very strict with her on this aspect too. Haru is the future heirness of a weatlhy family and most likely she has been turned into some kind of mindless person whose only porpouse it’s to keep the company going. Futaba is probably targeted by someone very important due to her hacking some important information, and thus she’s scared of even go out of her own home.

This time Justice and Tower could be key Arcanas, like Death was in Persona 3, as they represent the two paths that Phantom can choose.

It’s also an important fact that both Ryuji and Makoto go full angry and get shadow eyes in the PVs, as well of Yusuke talking about releasing “your inner rage”. This could mean that now Personas are summoned by focusing on the things that “make you angry” and “your reasons to change the world”.

Finally, even if no one is a mole or an spy, it’s kind of obvious that the Phantom Thieves are going to have some important point in the game.where you have to choose if blindly follow your “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” justice and probably being executed or follow a proper moral mindset and have a bright future.

As an extra, I must say that the party’s Personas doesn’t have a bright future (Except ironically Arsene Lupin)

(prep for Persona 3 and 4 spoilers just in case)

Don’t worry about it.

As for differences between Shadow Labrys and the fake Labrys, well, I’m not sure if it was as apparent in the English version, but in the Japanese version the real Shadow Labrys distinctly lacks Labrys’ accent (possibly a symbol of “forsaking” the humanity she got from her mother), while the fake Labrys does have it. Sprite-wise, I also feel like Shadow Labrys’ eyes have a deeper shade of yellow than the eyes of the fake Labrys, but that might just be my imagination.

As for Apathy Syndrome in P4D, that’s not a retcon, it’s a clarification! It was explained in the P3ClubBook, which was released half a year after the original P3 and contained a Q&A with canon information straight from the staff; 

Basically, Mitsuru didn’t figure it out until after the events of The Answer, because Ikutsuki was withholding information from her that couldn’t be uncovered until later, but Apathy Syndrome was never caused by Shadows “eating Psyches”. The truth was that during the Dark Hour, very weak-minded people (Like Natsuki Moriyama) would have their Shadows escape from their minds, much like they would in the TV World, except due to the presence of Tartarus (which Shadows are naturally drawn to), these Shadows wouldn’t even bother taking the forms of their hosts, but just ignore them and move straight to Tartarus. That’s why, after the defeating a Fullmoon Shadow many Apathy Syndrome Victims would be cured; Shadows are naturally drawn to larger Shadows and merge with them, so the Fullmoon Shadows did not only have parts of Ryoji/Pharos in them, but also had a ton of random people’s Shadow Selves mixed in. By killing them, these Shadows were dispersed and weakened so much that they had no choice but return to their hosts. It’s also explained that the voices Natsuki and her friends heard weren’t random Shadows trying to lure them into the Dark Hour; those were their own Shadow Selves, using the Dark Hour as a means of torturing them with their own unconscious guilt. I mean, think about it, if the Shadows’ goal had really been to “eat Natsuki’s mind”, why would they have made her feel guilty about bullying Fuuka? In reality, those voices did the same thing to them that the Shadow Selves did to the IT in P4: Torture them with their own unconscious thoughts. 

Remember that one animated scene in P3, when Shadow Goo exploded out of that one guy’s face before he got Apathy Syndrome? That scene was supposed to clue players in to the fact that Shadows came from inside people, but it ended up confusing players more than actually helping them understand, hence why Metis had to clarify it in the Answer. (It’s not actually explained why Shadows manifesting from a person is so brutal and painful in the Dark Hour, as compared to the TV World, but my theory is that that’s because the Dark Hour still intermingles with the physical world a lot more than the TV World does, meaning that everything in it has to at least have *some* sort of physical property- For Shadows coming out of their hosts, that’s manifesting as their goo-form right away, rather than as just energy at first.) Anyway, almost everything Ikutsuki told SEES about Shadows and the Dark Hour was a lie; the stuff Mitsuru learned later (and passed on to Naoto) is far more reliable. 

Don’t apologize, I love answering you guys questions! Makes me feel useful, heh heh~!

(I’m including Maki Sonomura in this, because I think it’s important to take P1 and P2 into account with analyses like this. :-) )

Anyway, if you want a difference between them, I think you have to keep in mind that the Abyss of Time wasn’t a physical realm either, so since Metis only showed up in the dorm after it had already been cut off from the real world, she never manifested in the real, physical world, unlike Teddie. In that way, I’d say Metis is a lot more like the Ideal Maki from Persona 1 than she is like Teddie; Metis and Maki still perceived themselves as aspects of their hosts’ personalities by the end and were re-merged into them, while Teddie created a completely independent and faceted identity and personality for himself all on his own and never relegates himself to just being a fragment of someone else’s psyche. I also think that it’s likely that Metis’ “Psyche”-Persona is actually just a potential Persona of Aigis, used as a de-facto “Reverse Persona” by Metis, while Teddie’s Persona was definitely his own. (Likewise, the Ideal Maki’s Personas are probably the Personas of the real Maki Sonomura, used by the ideal Maki as, again, de-facto “Reverse Personas”. Note how the Ideal Maki just suddenly “had” the Persona Powers, despite the real Maki never contracting with Philemon through the Persona-game.)

In fact, Teddie might not even technically have “a host”; Given that he was in the TV world, it’s totally possible that he’s actually an amalgamation of a ton of tiny Shadow-fragments that had gathered there, much like the other mook Shadows in the TV world seem to be. Since, according to some lines of dialogue in P3 and P4, as well as the Persona 3 Club Book, weak Shadows are attracted by stronger Shadows and merge with them, and strong Shadows can split into weaker Shadows when dealt a powerful shock, it’s likely that Teddie was just the result of a lot of Shadows that happened to carry a powerful need for affection merging together by chance, thus creating a strong Shadow with such a strong need to connect to humans that it overpowered the Shadow’s natural malevolence and, well… Teddie happened. Well, at least that’s my current theory about Teddie, I’ve had, like, 3 others before that already, but this is the one I currently think is the most likely.

Anyway, that’d definitely make Teddie different from Metis (and Maki), since those two were decidedly just aspects of one single other person.

Now, as for Sho…

Sho Minazuki had a crystal called a “Plume of Dusk” implanted in his brain’s frontal lobe. In Persona 3, Plumes of Dusk are an extremely rare item that gives you a chance to continue the game even when you get a game over by reviving and fully healing your entire party. The game itself doesn’t explain this, but in the Persona 3 Club Book, it’s explained that “Plumes of Dusk” are actually a special kind of moonstone, the material that Nyx’ body encased in the moon is made of. Since Nyx is a being that consists mostly of a gigantic mass of energy and information, the material her body is made of itself constantly produces an amount of mental energy and can actually “store” Shadows or even whole Psyches inside itself. Plumes of Dusk can connect to the Collective Unconscious like a human brain can because of that, and they produce energy even in spaces where electronic devices don’t work, so they’re used to power the Evokers, the Anti Shadow Suppression Weapons, the Kirijo Group’s Equipment and Mitsuru’s bike. It’s what makes them work even during the Dark Hour. 

Plumes of Dusk were used by the Kirijo Group as the basis for the Personality Modules of the Anti Shadow Suppression Weapons; they save the A.I. and some base-data that they get from sick children on the Plume of Dusk and then stimulate it, hoping that an actual psyche is going to develop inside the Plume. That’s how Aigis’ and Labrys’ souls were “made”. 

Ikutsuki implanted a Plume in Sho’s brain hoping that it was going to forcibly evoke a Persona from him (no idea how he thought THAT was going to work), but instead the Plume did what it naturally does, absorbed the information and emotions from Sho’s brain and birthed a new soul out of that, creating a second personality inside him. Technically, this would also make Minazuki a “Shadow born from Sho”, but since he was “stored” on the Plume, he didn’t actually manifest as a Shadow, but just as a secondary personality. This also explains why Minazuki disappeared after Sho was made aware of his emotions; since he became “aware” of that aspect of himself, Minazuki’s personality merged into Sho’s consciousness (notice how Sho acts a lot calmer in the true ending, more like Minazuki would), and Sho also became also to use the Persona which Minazuki previously used, since he had now “conquered” that part of himself. (By the way, Minazuki technically being a Shadow also explains why Kagutsuchi could use him as a “backup-vessel”, when he realized that Teddie’s will was too strong.)

Honestly, I think it’s all because of the Velvet Room.

If you pay attention, you’ll realize that in P3 and P4, the protags can gain Personas even without the Velvet Room and only need to go there to manage or fuse them. The characters in P1 and P2, however, can only get Persona from the Velvet Room, by trading certain items in there. 

Since every human soul technically has the potential for a ton of Personas, I think what makes Wild Cards differently is the ability to swap between these Personas with ease, while other people need a contract with the Velvet Room (and by extension, Philemon) for that. 

Which begs the question why the Velvet Room stopped accepting guests without the Wild Card Ability… In P3, Igor even does comment on how they have not had any guests for “years” making the P2EP cast probably the last people that used it.

My personal theory is that, without Philemon around, the Velvet Room has lost a lot of its power and can’t afford providing any but the most important services any longer, which would explain why they no longer make contracts with Persona Users who aren’t Wild Cards. The Wild Cards are easier to provide for, since changing Personas comes naturally to them; managing other Persona Users would probably take resources that they don’t currently have. (The only reason they could in Persona Q was because the protagonists’ souls had allocated some of their combined power to their friends.)