I always see a lot of discourse surrounding Goro Akechi, and that’s mostly fine because he is a very morally gray character, but it surprises me how so many takes contradict or even ignore direct quotes from the game. (A popular example that I see is people claiming that Goro wants to kill Shido, when he never outright says so)
I think these misunderstandings happen because Akechi’s plot is scattered around the game and only mentioned superficially, and this is why I am making a thread showing all the important plot points surrounding Akechi’s motives in linear order along with screenshots.
This way, if you ever want to discuss Akechi, at least you can have your facts right:
First, Akechi got his powers from Yaldabaoth two and a half years ago, when he was 15. He was an orphan who had wanted to get revenge on his father all his life, so he thought that those powers were a sign. And so, to prove himself to Shido, he made two of his political opponents psychotic. He didn’t kill them, and he still hadn’t killed anyone before that as well.
At this point it’s a mystery whether Goro knew if he could kill in the metaverse or not, but from the start we can see how he only offered his psychotic powers. Shido, who knew about the cognitive research, then instructed him to kill Wakaba, and Goro did just that.
In game, Shido says that he was the one who taught Akechi how to properly use his powers, so it’s likely that he was the one to instruct Akechi on how to actually murder in the metaverse.
(By that time, Akechi didn’t know about the changing of hearts, so a reason as of why he never contemplated on changing Shido’s heart could have been because he didn’t know it was even possible. He thought that those mystic powers could only be used for evil.)
Now, a big part of the discourse surrounding Akechi is whether he was controlled or not when he decided to follow orders and kill all those people.
In game, Shadow Shido states that he controlled him by offering praise. Shido knew about Goro’s plan: he knew that he was his son, that he wanted to be acknowledged, and that he wanted to trap him. He literally knew everything and used praise to his benefit.
Akechi never suspected a single thing about that.
He thought that he was outsmarting everyone when, in reality, he did just as Shido wanted. That doesn’t make him any less guilty, but the game wants you to know and puts clear emphasis that Akechi was emotionally manipulated.
and he could, and should have said no, yeah, but due to his story of being abandoned and unloved, words of praise coming from his father were something that Akechi was weak against, specially since his plan was also about getting that acknowledgment, which brings us to…
Akechi’s revenge plan, which is a bit of a mess since people seem to think that he wants to murder Shido:
He doesn’t. He wanted to become so indispensable to him that when Shido became first minister, Goro could say “Well, you got here thanks to me, the son you abandoned, don’t you regret leaving me? You are nothing without me.”
After that, he also says that he will make Shido’s life a living hell. The meaning of this is never explained, but LIVING hell pretty much means that Akechi didn’t plan on killing him.
The thing is, the concept of Goro’s plan is incredibly childish and it doesn’t work, but despite that, it still makes sense from his point of view because it was initially created by a lonely, deeply insecure and revengeful 15 year old orphan who wanted to prove that his existence wasn’t a mistake.
Akechi’s plan would have never worked because Shido never cared about him, quite the contrary, so it was doomed to fail from the start.
Akechi is very smart, and he should have seen how wrong everything was, but he was so completely blinded by praise and by the need of feeling useful to the point that he even agreed to become his dad’s hitman.
For a normal character, this would be unthinkable, but Akechi’s background makes him the perfect target to fall into that kind of pit. He can be as smart as he wants, but emotionally he is very weak and easily manipulable. (Again, I’m not excusing his actions, but I believe that the game made a good job in giving Goro a background that could explain why he did something so terrible that no one else would be capable of)
And so, Akechi blindly and stubbornly believes in his plan until Cognitive Akechi tells him that Shido planned to kill him from the start. That’s when Akechi’s whole world falls apart and when he finally realizes that he had been a puppet from the very beginning.
He was so desperate that he couldn’t conceive the possibility of Shido betraying him. Shido’s own cognition had to spell it out to him for Akechi to finally open his eyes. That’s when he sees the whole picture and decides to sacrifice himself and ask the thieves to change Shido’s heart.
This is what he should have done from the start, but he was too blinded to see it because he was alone and had no support, and Shido acted like he cared.
Also, If Akechi had only cared about revenge, he could have taken Shido down a long time ago, he is not stupid, his problem came when he decided that he also wanted to be acknowledged, because that’s when he had to start doing what Shido wanted (aka killing people) to get on his good side.
Revenge and acknowledgment are closely tied to Akechi’s character and both make him what he is and what he has done.
After this, you can still have a good or bad opinion on Akechi as a character, but I hope that these screenshots shed some light on Goro’s most common misconceptions.
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