#p-studio

Artist: Shoji Meguro

Vocals: Lyn Inaizumi

Lyrics: Benjamin Franklin

We're now live with another livestream of Persona 3 Reload for PS5 on YouTube! We've got a new party member and new outfits! Let's see how they do!

Persona 5: Beneath the Mask - Sapphire ft. The Consouls

[Beneath the Mask]

This is designed to be a “fun” episode because we haven’t had enough of them in this series apparently. They all go Yukiko Amagi’s inn to get some rest and rehabilitation. Now, I don’t know if I’m showing my whiteness here but I don’t see what’s so great and luxurious about the famous Amagi inn. The gang finally visit the inn for the first time and I feel underwhelmed by it with all this context that the story gives you about the place.

Margaret has a Margaret moment.

It initially starts as Yukiko wanting to treat Nanako with a trip to the inn because she’s parentally deprived but everyone invites themself to come along too because they’re all assholes. The investigation team get all happy and excited to stay in a hotel with a bar in it but primarily so they can have a bath together.

Yep.

They’re all worried about it being haunted but... it isn’t. I think this is just a way for them to remind you about Mayumi Yamano who was killed right at the very beginning at the inn. I don’t know what the deal is with this but I just didn’t care. The big subplot with this is that they are all looking forward to going in the hotsprings. Maybe I don’t know what I’m missing.

They all molest Naoto bear in the face of her obvious insecurities about her body because that’s what friends do. The guys show up because Yukiko got the scheduling wrong. I mean, what would she know? She’s only worked there her whole life. Then the girls proceed to batter the boys with wooden pitchers of water. Honestly, I’ve seen a lot of the scenes in this episode quite a few times so this probably comes off as less charitable than it perhaps might be if I wasn’t so cynical. Nanako applauds them for firing wooden buckets at her cousins face.

Kanji and Yosuke have a table tennis game then they go and try again but the girls had already left the hotsprings earlier and had came back for their proper times and apparently they can’t read because the signs clearly label the corresponding sex in Japanese, symbol and in English.

Part of the greater story of this episode is Yukiko having her moment of arriving at the end goal of her story they want to tell. Some TV executives arrive demanding that they film a reality show here based on Mayumi’s murder and she tells them off. Out of all of the little round-offs that they give for all the characters, this probably feels the most satisfactory of all the growths. Yukiko has problems standing up for herself and actually stood up for herself so that was cool. Not much was really said but it was a nice conclusions of sorts. That’s probably it for the redeeming features in this particular episode.

Because 3 high-school students and an aetherial entity are all equally scared of a ghost, they decide they can no longer sleep in their room because someone down the hall has a cough so they decide to invade the private spaces of four women they go to school with in the middle of the night.

Yep.

But it turns out the girls room they go to is where Ms. Kashiwagi and Hanako are and this scene features one of the most disturbing lines that I’ve ever heard in an animé. It's so awful in fact, that I don't think I can even mention it because it would violate Tumblr's Terms of Service

The episode ends meekly with them explaining the caged bird metaphor again from the 4th episode.

I just want to move on from this episode. In fact, there is BEARLY anything to say about it.

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