Professional™ Persona Weeb At Your Service

It’s a pet theory of mine that Jose was originally meant to be a Velvet Room attendant, specifically Goro Akechi’s attendant, and I can explain, including why no one in the Velvet Room has mentioned Jose before as well as Jose’s general design.

Point 1: Every Wild Card excluding Aigis and Goro has a unique attendant (and since Aigis inherits the Wild Card from Minato, we can probably assume she inherited his attendant as well). The only ‘extra’ attendant is Theodore who appears in mainline games without fem!MC, except! The Velvet Room seems to exist across multiple timelines as demonstrated in PQ2 where we don’t end up with alt!timeline Theo for fem!MC, just normal Theo who was familiar with main!timeline Margaret and Elizebeth. Which both implies the Velvet Room and the attendants are the same across timelines, and that Theo is fem!MC’s attendant. So no extra attendants!

The only Wild Card without an attendant is Goro, and following the logic that Goro was cut off from the Velvet Room once Yaldy took over, that makes sense. But Goro still should have been a guest so… what happened to his potential attendant?

Point 2: Each Velvet Room attendant seems almost created specifically for each Wild Card by Igor. They don’t talk about their siblings until after that sibling has interacted with their respective Wild Card (like prior to P5, Lavenza did not seem to exist) but afterwards they interact as if they’ve known each other for far longer than the game timelines would suggest, which implies some weird time stuff. So the fact no one mentions Goro’s attendant (like a lost sibling or something) doesn’t mean they didn’t exist in some capacity, it’s just more of a schrodingers box scenario where an attendant’s existence only seems to solidify their presence in the timeline once the box is open (as in, their respective Wild Card shows up or Igor completes their creation, either or). Only because of Yaldy, the box is a trick box with a false bottom. I would propose that when Yaldy showed up and locked Goro out of the Velvet Room, he disposed of his potential attendant since unlike Lavenza he did not need the attendant to perform fusions for Goro. Removing the theoretical cat from the box before someone could open it. This explains why no one in the Velvet Room (except potentially Igor, but that man isn’t talking) says anything about Jose despite his obvious connection to the Velvet Room.

Point 3: Well, Jose certainly would match what Goro’s theoretical attendant could be. Let’s get into some jungian psychology. The attendants of the Velvet Room seem to be inspired by (according to the Persona wiki and my own understanding) the anima and animus. In jungian theory the anima is the unconscious feminine side of the man, and the animus is the unconscious masculine aspect of the women. This is why every attendant is opposite gender to the protagonist, excluding potentially in P3 (though since MC and fem!MC are technically the same person separated by a timeline, they might be able to switch attendants without any trouble). I’m not going to get into it in anymore depth, but I’d recommend checking it out because it’s fascinating in the context of the Persona series (in real life though, probably BS lmao). More importantly though, Velvet attendants also seem to be opposite yet complimentary in personality and designs to their respective Wild Cards, for both good or ill. I’m not going to do anything too in-depth, but Goro and Jose (in my opinion) have a similar dynamic at least in terms of personality and design (with Jose being a young, happy kid while Goro is… that). They don’t interact much during P5R, but the general vibe (for lack of a better word) is that they would probably make a good pair similar to other Wild Cards and their attendants.

But wait! I hear you say. Jose is a boy! Wouldn’t Jose be a girl if he represented Goro’s anima?

Well, yes. If his creation wasn’t interrupted.

Point 4: Let’s look at Jose’s design. Doesn’t he look like a doll?

(Compare how well his design compliments Goro’s similar to how Lavenza’s compliments Joker’s)

The Velvet Room attendants have been frequently described as not human. They are very human-like in their behaviour (though they and Jose display similar ignorance to common human things, as well a certain alien-ish way of thinking and distinct lack of human biological limits). Igor is also explicitly a doll brought to life by a magic ritual and he created the Velvet Room attendants, so it’s likely they are similar creations to Igor, basically dolls given life. So based on this, I think it’s not much of a leap to think Jose was still in the process of being created when Yaldy showed up, which is why he seems almost half-way between doll and whatever the Velvet Room attendants are. Which would also explain why he’s male. Humans in the womb are default female, so maybe Velvet Room attendants are default male (or maybe Jose is enby or gender doesn’t matter to him, idk, he’s a feral child living in the subway).

i also drew a lot of persona 5 stuff recently!! finally got the chance to binge watch a whole bunch of joseph anderson streams after coming to terms that i’ll never play be able to play it on my own lmao (can’t believe he finally did p4 too gosh)

Min-nya-to, Nya-muko, Nya-rukami and Nyakira