Lady here! Content on Persona/Atlus! Learn about JPN culture! Finding symbolism in everything and nothing~
My character analyses are always informed by research, my education (degrees in social work & international political science), and some prior experience in such fields. I am physically disabled and live with a chronic neurological illness called transverse myelitis.
*~Current video series that I'm working on include~* 1) PERSONA 3 RELOAD BABEEEE 2) P4/G character analyses in JP context
*~Upcoming projects in the coming months~* 1) Arcana analyses of P4 cast 2) Mythological & Historical figures impact on P4 and P5 character arcs
**I do my best to release a new video at least once a month! Usually these are BEHEMOTHS, so thank you for your patience**
I know I'm late on this one, but that story with your friends helping you during your struggle kinda hit home when you got to the part where you mentioned your group's Ann taking photos. Being autistic, I often had, and continue to have, trouble getting out and being part of my friend group beyond seeing each other at school or work, and as such, I have few memories of them beyond that. I also have always had an aversion to taking my picture taken (I've never been sure why. It just makes me feel awful to have someone aim a camera or phone at me and snap a picture). So the pictures I do appear in with friends and family are few and far between. Nowadays, I somewhat regret this; for a lot of my closest friends whom I fell out of contact with, I don't have anything to remember them by beyond my memories themselves, which have begun to fade. It makes me wish I had pushed myself when I felt uncomfortable doing these things so that I could have a few mementos (haha funny) to remember them by.
One of the reasons i dismissed Cold Steel until playing this year was i expected it to be very cringey, especially with the tachi wielding rean. was surprised early on with how much i liked rean and thoroughly enjoyed the CS arc, and am extremely hyped for Kai
Well, I'm from the west as well as my entire family and I was born and raised in a country where the culture doesn't exactly punish you for being loud and I still don't like Ryuji. Above all of his unlikable personality bits and actions, what I really can't stand about him is how badly he treats Morgana. Almost all of his grievances and insults to Morgana are completely gratuitous and unprovoked, he also calls Morgana useless when in reality throughout the entire game Morgana is a hell of a lot more useful than him both in and out of combat, in both story and gameplay, like they're not even remotely, not even minimally, not even a little bit close. There is no possible comparison, man. Know your place. He treats you (the protagonist) very well and from that alone you may think he's the perfect best friend ever, but when it comes to the entire team, the guy gets in the way many more times than he helps. And if you don't consider the usefulness of him and just take the social and best friend aspects, Junpei (FeMC route) and Brosuke are still better, at least for me. Not only does Brosuke carry out the investigation almost by himself for most of the game, but he is also a loyal and caring friend and he has a bare-knuckle duel with you at the end of his social link. True friendship. I also loved Kanji, Yusuke and in general all of the Persona boys except for Teddy and Ryuji xD I don't hate them tho, I just don't like them.
Late to the party but whatever Speaking about Battle Hymn of The Soul, at around 1:35 to 1:40 you can hear the old percussions, seemingly re-recorded Also, how funny it is hearing you mention Moonless Gown, it's not in Reload Also, I don't necessarily agree with all your opinions, mostly because a lot of them are just nitpicks (think Jin standing up after being defeated type of thing) that don't affect the experience much What I will say, most of the musical changes made to some arrangements absolutely do feel like they were made not to re-use FES tracks (like Aria of the soul, it's fine to have it be consistent throughout games imo)😊 Speaking of consistent, the logo of the game is consistently NOWHERE to be seen at all in the game, instead you get that (imo) basic and forgettable font everywhere, I wonder why
As someone with childhood trauma that led to years long gaps in my memory, and abandonment issues, Morgana actually was one of my favourite characters (after Sumire). Having someone that (to me) makes it feel like you are never alone and gets to experience the game with, since he also goes with you to different activities you can do on your own, makes the game more enjoyable to me. When morgana was gone I was very upset and when streaming the game to my friends i just kept saying "Give me my cat back! >:c" and made me actually kinda sad, scared of what if Morgana didn't come back? luckily he did haha. I love your video, I actually never thought about this whole thing before but you're so right about his self-image and the childlike behaviour. I relate a lot to Morgana and I'm glad for this video!
Of the male ones it would have to be Akihiko Sanada. I'm Scottish and, to be honest, that might have something to do with it, he isn't super far off what is considered the masculine ideal here. Sotic, honorable, fairly reserved but also good and punching shit.
God the comparative Persona Jojo analysis would be amazing, I know my brother would be so excited to join me in watching that. Woyld absolutely love to see it
There's so much about this I really enjoyed and felt I wanted to interact with it's hard to know where to begin. Quality stuff! As someone who only fully played through Reload, the "Living With Determination Dorm Arrange" motif going into the last stretch to the final fight really did hit me. Finding it was called "Living With Determination" actually elevated it, because that Dorm Arrangement only plays after you have made the decision to fight against all odds. "Determination" has a really sorrowful feel, and got used so much for character death that I associated it with tragedy and connected it with characters having moments where they could not find their way forward. So when the Dorm Arrange leads with those familiar chords and then suddenly kicks in the percussion that first time, I felt in the music it was expressing everyone's resolve not to let this be the end. I agree with so many of your points, particularly how Reload seems to emphasize accessibility and narrative clarity. I've only read and heard secondhand about FES's more hardcore aspects, and while I definitely see what they accomplish from the ludo-narrative and immersive perspective, I understand they may not seem fun for everyone, so I appreciate there being a version allowing more people to enjoy the story. I was really impressed how thorough you were when it came to the music. The original tracks definitely seem more "raw". I do wonder how much has to do with general modern audio production trends, since I feel I've heard complaints about excessive normalization and less dynamism a lot.
In terms of the NPC Confidants, Takemi's is by far my favourite, and i think she was the first confidant i did way back in vanilla p5 when i was 11-12 (Ik i'm making alot of people feel old rn lmao). This mainly stems from a core memory of mine of being in the hospital on my birthday as a child. I guess 12 year old me just associated her with an, at the time, scary week of my life as a kid. I'll be honest, i don't recall much of her confidant back then other than always going to her for meds and being annoyed when people in game would talk bad about her.
I’m not going to lie - not what this video is addressing at all really… but I honestly did not feel like P5 needed Royale. I roll my eyes every time I see a new spinoff that ends up being a single player experience when the entire spinoff itself is built on the power of bonds with others. Why the hell wasn’t Strikers multiplayer? The most fun I’ve had in a DW game was in DW Gundam where it had co-op and you weren’t always fighting in the same spot because of he game that screams “MULTIPLAYER SPINOFF” assumes you don’t have friend or just wanted to go the same route as soon as P4 took in the west and whore out the same cast that just came out for a few years before we make you pay extra to bring in other ones for the special edition release of the spinoff? Considering the switch is Nintendo’s gambit going forward since we’ll see Switch 2 soon most likely, at least let the spin off games be something I can do with friends and maybe get them interested in the main games… which Persona is founded on since it’s one of many spinoff games from base SMT. Also, Digital Devil Saga remakes please, it’s one of the few spinoff that maintain the grit of SMT that wasn’t an $80+ purchase at a local GameStop like Devil Summoner. Hell, remake Nocturne and I’ll eat that up before Strikers.
I think that Ann is actually one of the most well-written Persona characters in general. In my opinion, she is one of the only Phantom Thieves with extremely well fleshed out dynamics with the other members. For example, Morgana has a crush on her and tries to be a white knight. Ryuji is her childhood friend who helps her grow as a person at the gym, and they have an almost sibling-like playfulness to their bickering. She is mature enough to make up with Makoto who originally said she didn’t try hard enough to protect Shiho (which almost anybody else would have probably held a grudge over). She is one of the only characters to try and relate to Futaba and the situation with her mom because she can partially relate due to Shiho’s situation (both because of the nature of their situations involving loved ones and blaming themself for something they weren’t responsible for). Sorry that I don’t mention Haru but i haven’t played the game in a while and i wanna do this off the top of my head instead of playing it all over again to see scenes with them together 😅 But my point still stands that she works wonderfully with most/all her friends! Additionally, although you might see the bad side of her abilities (especially in regard to how being a “femme fatal” is treated), the thing is that an important step for Ann is retaking her sexuality and confidence in herself after Kamoshida’s involvement in her life. Instead of feeling ashamed of a core part of herself, she instead learns to take that part of herself and own it to feel empowered. She recovers from a traumatic experience by making her flirtatiousness and appeal her choice rather than somebody else’s. While yes the scenes with Yusuke aren’t the best, it also just comes from his obliviousness and air-headed nature when dealing with other people’s sensibilities. However, I think it comes across okay because the moral of what happened is she didn’t have to do anything for him in the end. Despite Yusuke’s requests, she still found a way to get out of the situation and ultimately say “no”, which is probably a huge relief to her that she still has autonomy over her body. Idk, this may be a spiel on a video that is a few years old, but I really appreciate her character from beginning to end and can enjoy a positive takeaway from her development.
Oh man I remember how I would have entire classes prepping kids for upcoming tests!! (I used to teach English in Japan, and we legit had entire classes dedicated to the nation-wide English tests they have to take in Japan) My school was super dedicated but not pushy, which was nice to give the students extra practice time, but I always did feel a little bad at just how long their school days are... I used to always encourage them to spend even a little time doing something relaxing like listening to music or watching anime. Maybe that was just me being the rebellious foreign teacher tho lol but u gotta rest sometime!! Makoto definitely hit me pretty hard playing p5 because she rly did remind me of some of my students (actually playing the game set mostly in a japanese high school when you have taught in a japanese high school makes it a VERY different experience to most regular players I think, but also nostalgic in a weird way?? Wonder what it would be like playing it while working in a japanese high school...). Thanks for making a series of vids on these topics!! Im happy to see the incredibly japanese context of p5 hit the intl audience, for those who might not be as knowledgeable about it but wanna learn, this is a great way to do it!! As an (ex)teacher, love seeing ppl getting educated in fun ways ^w^
