guys im sorry im descending into madness about goro akechi yet again. oughhgwhs.
My boy with a deep personal need to have agency in his life because of the fact that at the root the very circumstances of his birth is a complete lack of choice. Akechi, whose need for personal autonomy outweighs everything. Who would rather live and die in pain than in bleached ugly fake joy, because in a sense reality is its own form of autonomy. Realism, a coping mechanism of choice. He didn’t CHOOSE to come back, and it’s VIOLATING in a real cosmic horror kind of sense. Akechi made his decisions, and would rather die than get off scott free, because that was never the goal. He’s YOUNG. Goro, who never truly had anyone, and sees his very existence as poison. Everything he touches, every place he is made to inhabit, every single human connection he’s tried to make since birth, tainted by the fact that he himself comes from something so messed up. A child who, despite his real attempts at displaying a sense of inflated ego, truly believes that he is at fault for even having the misfortune of existing as he did. Akechi views himself as both a victim and a disease. He is a plague, he comes from one of the worst people ever, and he wants to prevent further spread. Ironically, that comes in the form of violence. It’s the very tendency that he hates, and he’s stuck. Violence is how he accesses connection, violence is what earns him praise, violence is what grants him Persona (which he gained at such a vulnerable era of his life, and did so COMPLETELY ALONE) through battle, and by the time that the thieves roll around he’s in too deep but violence is ultimately what leads him to his first AND ONLY REAL connection: Ren.
Ren, who has also experienced the act of being branded by a society as evil for just the fact that he lived his life, waltzes in and suddenly everything is going wrong. He’s ironically also here in Tokyo due to an act of violence by the very same man, Shido, and Ren manages to walk away with his morality and justice intact. In my opinion, Ren exemplifies everything that Goro (as a young child before he really understood the gravity of his existence) thought a hero should look like. He’s charismatic, his priority is the world at large, he’s POWERFUL. As someone who grew up in poverty, another instance of a complete lack of agency, Goro sees his own power as a thing that makes him worth keeping around. Persona is the first time he himself has status, and then he clings to it. He builds an entire face for the world, this identity that shows competence, and the theres Ren. Joker builds himself around Persona too. His coming to tokyo, the connections he forms through the bonds he makes, but persona is about truth, not facades.
I think THATS what makes the Maruki choice in Royal so INTERESTING. We spend this whole game thinking about truth, and identity, and circumstances, and AUTONOMY. Ren is not a perfect person. He has wants and desires, he has the ability to make cruel decisions. His own autonomy could easily bulldoze all of it, he’s powerful, he’s the leader. But that’s not true ending. What is true is what matters, the reality, the world, the GRIEF. Listen, Goro could never be happy in that fake reality, it’s not only outright stated but extremely obvious if you understand his arc at all, not to even mention that he would’ve been essentially lobotomized. But i really think that a lot of what gives him the strength to CHOOSE to push Ren to be real and just is that for once he finally knows he’s wanted. Ren would tear apart the earth for Akechi, subconsciously at least. The fact that it meant something, that there was a single person out there in the world who cared, and that Goro now knows what that feels like, i think that’s what makes it so much easier to force Ren’s hand on the situation. He’s felt it now. Having that means that the autonomy MATTERS more, he’s essentially holding Ren’s most poignant wish in the palm of his hand, it’s basically another bet. Ren COULD take the deal, but he doesn’t. He won’t. The basis of their relationship is built so much around what kinds of control they’re able to exert over each other, but the pretenses are gone even despite the continuing rivalry, and that means that what remains is trust. Holding each other accountable, with the amount of power they both have. A level playing field. A decision where his opinion holds weight, because Ren CARES. Akechi won’t ever admit that it’s true, but it is. Ha. There’s that truth again.
Goro’s final act is to be respected enough that he gets to let go. Ren loves Goro more than he regrets him, and that’s the first time in Akechi’s entire life that that has been true of anyone.
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