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My first Persona game was Persona 4 Golden, and it made such a great impression on me (check out my shrine to it above!) that I decided to go back and play its predecessor. Persona 3 plays…like a clunkier version of Persona 4 – which isn’t really a fair basis from which to appraise the game, as Persona 3 obviously came first and one would expect the developers to fix the flaws for the next installment.
With that said, Persona 3 marked a fateful turning point for the series. The first 2 Persona games were much more traditional RPGs spun off from the Shin Megami Tensei series. Persona 3 implemented features such as Social Links and the calendar system, giving the Persona series its own unique place. For this reason alone, I feel the game deserves a shrine.
Since I finished Persona 4 Golden first, I’m going to follow its format here – month-by-month, with spotlights on the characters. I’m also going to follow the same rules I did in Persona 4 Golden (nobody is allowed to get KO’d and the main character can field a maximum of 6 Personas).
Again, major spoilers run free from now on.
SEES dossier: Minato Arisato
My first Persona game was Persona 4 Golden, and it made such a great impression on me (check out my shrine to it above!) that I decided to go back and play its predecessor. Persona 3 plays…like a clunkier version of Persona 4 – which isn’t really a fair basis from which to appraise the game, as Persona 3 obviously came first and one would expect the developers to fix the flaws for the next installment.
With that said, Persona 3 marked a fateful turning point for the series. The first 2 Persona games were much more traditional RPGs spun off from the Shin Megami Tensei series. Persona 3 implemented features such as Social Links and the calendar system, giving the Persona series its own unique place. For this reason alone, I feel the game deserves a shrine.
Since I finished Persona 4 Golden first, I’m going to follow its format here – month-by-month, with spotlights on the characters. I’m also going to follow the same rules I did in Persona 4 Golden (nobody is allowed to get KO’d and the main character can field a maximum of 6 Personas).
Again, major spoilers run free from now on.
SEES dossier: Minato Arisato
The player character of this game is called Makoto Yuki in the anime and Minato Arisato in the manga. Since Persona 5 has a character named Makoto, I went with the latter to stave off any potential confusion in the future.
While we’re at it, the writers at Atlus need to branch out their naming. In stark contrast to Fire Emblem, a series with remarkably few repeat/similar names over almost 600 characters in 13 games, within the span of just 3 games the Persona series already has, beyond potentially 2 Makotos:
Come on, guys.
Since the character screen for some reason shows Minato’s social stats rather than his equipment: Minato has the best armor in the game, the Armor of Light. He wields Lucifer’s Blade, which you get from fusing Lucifer’s balls into a short sword, and he wears the Hallowed Boots. There’s a better pair of shoes that gives high evasion, but Minato also has the Divine Pillar, which prevents all dodging but halves all damage. I gave him that for a reason – we’ll get to that way later.
The Canon Persona
Minato’s ultimate Persona, pictured above, is Messiah, whom you get from fusing Orpheus (Minato’s first Persona) with Thanatos (the ultimate Death Persona). Since Orpheus is heavily associated with music, I devised a theme for this Persona: “a Symphony of the Night, featuring a Song of Ice and Fire.” To that end, he has darkness, ice, and fire skills. It’s not optimized, but since when the hell do I optimize in these games?
Lore corner: Messiah is the Christian savior, Jesus Christ. The son of God, he was persecuted by the Romans and crucified, but from his death, he offered humanity salvation from their sins. Persona 3…is not shy at all about its Christian imagery with Minato.
The Leader
While we’re at it, the writers at Atlus need to branch out their naming. In stark contrast to Fire Emblem, a series with remarkably few repeat/similar names over almost 600 characters in 13 games, within the span of just 3 games the Persona series already has, beyond potentially 2 Makotos:
- Yosuke from Persona 4, not to be confused with Yusuke from Persona 5
- Ryoji from this game, not to be confused with Ryuji from Persona 5
- Shuji from this game, not to be confused with Shinji, also from this game
- Shu from Persona 4, not to be confused with Sho from Arena Ultimax
- Kenji from this game, not to be confused with Kanji from Persona 4
Come on, guys.
Since the character screen for some reason shows Minato’s social stats rather than his equipment: Minato has the best armor in the game, the Armor of Light. He wields Lucifer’s Blade, which you get from fusing Lucifer’s balls into a short sword, and he wears the Hallowed Boots. There’s a better pair of shoes that gives high evasion, but Minato also has the Divine Pillar, which prevents all dodging but halves all damage. I gave him that for a reason – we’ll get to that way later.
The Canon Persona
Minato’s ultimate Persona, pictured above, is Messiah, whom you get from fusing Orpheus (Minato’s first Persona) with Thanatos (the ultimate Death Persona). Since Orpheus is heavily associated with music, I devised a theme for this Persona: “a Symphony of the Night, featuring a Song of Ice and Fire.” To that end, he has darkness, ice, and fire skills. It’s not optimized, but since when the hell do I optimize in these games?
Lore corner: Messiah is the Christian savior, Jesus Christ. The son of God, he was persecuted by the Romans and crucified, but from his death, he offered humanity salvation from their sins. Persona 3…is not shy at all about its Christian imagery with Minato.
The Leader
Chi You leads Minato’s Personas into battle with the 3 Auto skills. He also specializes in slashing attacks. There’s not a lot of thematic reason for fielding Chi You – I just felt like it.
Lore corner: There’s a mythical era of Chinese history, before the dynasties, in which Chi You fought against the Yellow Emperor and his allies. Chi You’s side lost because the Yellow Emperor’s troops had compasses. This allowed the Yellow Emperor to consolidate rule in China, eventually leading to the dynasties – the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty took his title from the Yellow Emperor. Despite this, the Chinese still revere Chi You as one of their god-ancestors. For instance, the founder of the Han Dynasty, arguably one of the most impactful dynasties, worshipped Chi You.
The Idol Goddess
Lore corner: There’s a mythical era of Chinese history, before the dynasties, in which Chi You fought against the Yellow Emperor and his allies. Chi You’s side lost because the Yellow Emperor’s troops had compasses. This allowed the Yellow Emperor to consolidate rule in China, eventually leading to the dynasties – the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty took his title from the Yellow Emperor. Despite this, the Chinese still revere Chi You as one of their god-ancestors. For instance, the founder of the Han Dynasty, arguably one of the most impactful dynasties, worshipped Chi You.
The Idol Goddess
Alilat represents Minato’s bond with his one true love, Mitsuru. Here’s a good time to explain something – in Persona 3, if you advance a romanceable Social Link enough, it becomes romantic. There’s no “close friend” option. So if you want to max all Social Links, you need to be a cheating man-whore. Needless to say, I didn’t do that, so the only romanceable Social Link I maxed was Mitsuru’s.
Alilat is Minato’s go-to generalist Persona. She can heal, she can counter physical attacks, she’s immune to most status ailments, and she can answer any resistance shenanigans the enemies try to pull by just nuking them with Megidolaon.
Lore corner: Alilat is a goddess worshipped through the Middle East prior to the rise of Islam. I’m not entirely sure what she’s the goddess of, though. I’ve seen her as a parallel to both Aphrodite (Greek goddess of love) or to Athena (Greek goddess of war and wisdom).
The Flying God
Alilat is Minato’s go-to generalist Persona. She can heal, she can counter physical attacks, she’s immune to most status ailments, and she can answer any resistance shenanigans the enemies try to pull by just nuking them with Megidolaon.
Lore corner: Alilat is a goddess worshipped through the Middle East prior to the rise of Islam. I’m not entirely sure what she’s the goddess of, though. I’ve seen her as a parallel to both Aphrodite (Greek goddess of love) or to Athena (Greek goddess of war and wisdom).
The Flying God
Kartikeya represents Minato’s bond with Elizabeth, who would resign from her post in the Velvet Room to undertake a quest to save him. There’s a spoiler warning above, right? Right.
Kartikeya specializes in wind and piercing attacks; in particular, he learned his father Shiva’s ultimate skill, Pralaya. He also shoots Holy Arrows to fit his theme, even though it’s a weak attack that I more-or-less never used.
Lore corner: In Hindu mythology, Kartikeya is one of Shiva’s and Parvati’s sons. He’s associated with war, philosophy, and virtue.
The Thunder God
Kartikeya specializes in wind and piercing attacks; in particular, he learned his father Shiva’s ultimate skill, Pralaya. He also shoots Holy Arrows to fit his theme, even though it’s a weak attack that I more-or-less never used.
Lore corner: In Hindu mythology, Kartikeya is one of Shiva’s and Parvati’s sons. He’s associated with war, philosophy, and virtue.
The Thunder God
The only other character I know named Minato is Naruto’s dad, who’s nicknamed the Flying Thunder God. That’s why Thor’s here. Thor sports Thunder Reign, the most powerful electric spell, which for some reason only Odin learns in this game (it’s inheritable, though, which is how Thor has it). He’s also adept at strike attacks.
Lore corner: Thor, son of Odin, is the Norse god of thunder, which is to say he’s the Norse god of lightning, since thunder is just a sound wave caused by lightning. There’s not some other Norse god of lightning that Thor just follows around, right? Right.
The Elder Monk
Lore corner: Thor, son of Odin, is the Norse god of thunder, which is to say he’s the Norse god of lightning, since thunder is just a sound wave caused by lightning. There’s not some other Norse god of lightning that Thor just follows around, right? Right.
The Elder Monk
Minato fielded Daisoujou as a parallel to me fielding Alice in Persona 4 Golden. While Alice has the most powerful dark spell, Daisoujou has the most powerful light spell (Samsara).
Lore corner: The daisoujou is a governmental title for the Buddhist monk who oversaw all the monasteries in imperial Japan. His appearance is based on an ancient practice of mummification where monks would stop eating and drinking but continue meditating, thereby dying of malnutrition while pursuing Enlightenment. It honestly confuses me, since the origin story of the Buddha specifically said that extreme asceticism is not the path to Enlightenment.
The “yes of course Ben would make this Persona” Persona
Lore corner: The daisoujou is a governmental title for the Buddhist monk who oversaw all the monasteries in imperial Japan. His appearance is based on an ancient practice of mummification where monks would stop eating and drinking but continue meditating, thereby dying of malnutrition while pursuing Enlightenment. It honestly confuses me, since the origin story of the Buddha specifically said that extreme asceticism is not the path to Enlightenment.
The “yes of course Ben would make this Persona” Persona
Okay, cum on, you totally saw this cumming. And just like in Persona 4 Golden, he doesn’t count against the 6-Persona limit because I never actually fielded him.
Lore corner: Mara is the demon king who tried to distract the Buddha the night before he attained enlightenment. And before you ask, no, nothing at all about the story has Mara being a giant penis on a chariot. He’s more-or-less just a humanoid demon.
April
We meet Minato Arisato on the last leg of his journey to the Iwatodai Dorm, where he’s moving because he’s transferring to Gekkoukan High School. His train arrives close to midnight, and as soon as midnight strikes, all the electronic equipment around him stops working. The sky turns green. Any water around, such as a puddle on the ground, turns to blood. Coffins appear and envelope all the people around him.
Upon arriving at the dorm proper, a boy with bright, piercing blue eyes and wearing a prison jumpsuit appears out of thin air. He offers Minato a contract that the game says contains one line: “I chooseth this fate of mine own free will.” Now…you can see the contract in the background of the screen where you enter your name:
Lore corner: Mara is the demon king who tried to distract the Buddha the night before he attained enlightenment. And before you ask, no, nothing at all about the story has Mara being a giant penis on a chariot. He’s more-or-less just a humanoid demon.
April
We meet Minato Arisato on the last leg of his journey to the Iwatodai Dorm, where he’s moving because he’s transferring to Gekkoukan High School. His train arrives close to midnight, and as soon as midnight strikes, all the electronic equipment around him stops working. The sky turns green. Any water around, such as a puddle on the ground, turns to blood. Coffins appear and envelope all the people around him.
Upon arriving at the dorm proper, a boy with bright, piercing blue eyes and wearing a prison jumpsuit appears out of thin air. He offers Minato a contract that the game says contains one line: “I chooseth this fate of mine own free will.” Now…you can see the contract in the background of the screen where you enter your name:
That sure looks like more text than “I chooseth this fate of mine own free will.” Either the contract just has that sentence repeated several times for some reason or the game’s not telling me something. VERY SUS, GAME. I’M ON TO YOU.
Minato signs it and the boy then disappears back into thin air. Minato continues on into the dorm lobby, where a girl comes down the stairs and starts to pull a gun on him. But then a different, red-haired girl appears and stops her, and at that moment, the lights come back on.
The girls introduce themselves as Yukari Takeba and Mitsuru Kirijo. The entire dorm has only 3 inhabitants, including these two, and Minato would become the fourth.
Minato…fourth…
Umm, where was I? Right. So Yukari shows Minato to his room and asks if anything strange happened on the way to the dorm. As you can see from my description thus far, his trip has been completely uneventful, so Minato answers no.
A few nights later, some giant monster attacks the dorm, severely injuring Akihiko Sanada, the remaining inhabitant I alluded to before. Mitsuru orders Yukari to get Minato and escape; they do so onto the dorm roof, but the enemy climbs onto the roof. Yukari explains the monster is called a Shadow, pulls out her gun, and points it at herself, but the Shadow knocks the gun out of her hands before she can pull the trigger. Minato does the only logical/sensible thing in that situation, which is to pick up Yukari’s gun and shoot himself in the head.
Well, that was a short game. I guess we’re done here?
…Okay, fine, the gun isn’t really a gun, but is instead something called an Evoker, which allows people to summon their Personas by shooting themselves in the head with it. Minato, of course, didn’t know that, but his Persona – Orpheus – does emerge. Before he can do anything, a different Persona – Thanatos – explodes out of Orpheus’s head and rips the enemy apart. Afterward, Minato falls asleep for ~1 week.
Around this time you’re probably wondering whether I’m just trolling the hell out of you, but no, this is true to the game’s introduction. And even though Minato doesn’t seem to want or need an explanation for just about everything I’ve written thus far, the player probably does, so here we go.
When Minato returns to the dorm, Mitsuru and someone calling himself Chairman Shuji Ikutsuki call a meeting. Since I can’t be bothered to remember or to look up how to spell that surname every time I have to write it, I’m just going to call this guy Chair Man. Chair Man begins by asking Minato whether he’d believe him if he said there are more than 24 hours in a day.
Me: Well, it depends on how you define a day. If you define a day as it is normally defined, 86,400 SI seconds, then a day is exactly 24 hours by definition. If you define a day as the time it takes for Earth to make one full rotation, a day will vary in length constantly – it’ll sometimes be less than 24 hours and sometimes more.
Unfortunately, that’s not one of the options – Minato’s options for answers are no and no.
Chair Man and Mitsuru explain that at midnight, the Dark Hour hits, making it the 25th hour of the day. I assume this occurs throughout the world, but it happens at midnight local time, 1:00 am the next time zone over, and so on. This is the no-electronics, green-sky, water-to-blood time we saw at the beginning. Most people become enveloped in coffins during the Dark Hour, and after it ends, they have no memory of it, so from a regular person’s perspective, the day only has 24 hours.
By the way, I’m not sure why Minato’s forced to answer no – he’s clearly experienced the Dark Hour, given how he was utterly unsurprised when it hit during his walk to the Iwatodai Dorm.
Chair Man further explains that most people do the coffin-amnesia thing, but a small number don’t. Shadows, which only appear during the Dark Hour, attack those people and…basically turn them into zombies – the game refers to these as “the Lost.” I guess the closest real-world analogy would be someone in a persistent vegetative state? Now a subset of the ones who remain active during the Dark Hour can summon Personas, giving them a way to fight back against the Shadows. All 3 original inhabitants of Iwatodai Dorm fall into this category and they call themselves the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES), one of the most badass names ever.
Chair Man and Mitsuru invite Minato into SEES and he accepts because why not. A few days later, one of Minato’s classmates (Junpei Iori) also joins SEES…kind of out of nowhere. At that time, Chair Man explains that during the Dark Hour, the school turns into a giant tower infested with Shadows – this is Tartarus, and since SEES just gained 2 members, he proposes SEES begin conducting raids into Tartarus.
And that’s the basic setup for the game. Sometimes a particularly powerful Shadow, such as the thing that attacked the dorm, will appear outside Tartarus and SEES will deploy to deal with it. Otherwise, SEES raids Tartarus to train and to figure out why it and the Dark Hour exist.
Well that was a giant lore dump. Let’s talk about characters.
SEES dossier: Yukari Takeba
Minato signs it and the boy then disappears back into thin air. Minato continues on into the dorm lobby, where a girl comes down the stairs and starts to pull a gun on him. But then a different, red-haired girl appears and stops her, and at that moment, the lights come back on.
The girls introduce themselves as Yukari Takeba and Mitsuru Kirijo. The entire dorm has only 3 inhabitants, including these two, and Minato would become the fourth.
Minato…fourth…
Umm, where was I? Right. So Yukari shows Minato to his room and asks if anything strange happened on the way to the dorm. As you can see from my description thus far, his trip has been completely uneventful, so Minato answers no.
A few nights later, some giant monster attacks the dorm, severely injuring Akihiko Sanada, the remaining inhabitant I alluded to before. Mitsuru orders Yukari to get Minato and escape; they do so onto the dorm roof, but the enemy climbs onto the roof. Yukari explains the monster is called a Shadow, pulls out her gun, and points it at herself, but the Shadow knocks the gun out of her hands before she can pull the trigger. Minato does the only logical/sensible thing in that situation, which is to pick up Yukari’s gun and shoot himself in the head.
Well, that was a short game. I guess we’re done here?
…Okay, fine, the gun isn’t really a gun, but is instead something called an Evoker, which allows people to summon their Personas by shooting themselves in the head with it. Minato, of course, didn’t know that, but his Persona – Orpheus – does emerge. Before he can do anything, a different Persona – Thanatos – explodes out of Orpheus’s head and rips the enemy apart. Afterward, Minato falls asleep for ~1 week.
Around this time you’re probably wondering whether I’m just trolling the hell out of you, but no, this is true to the game’s introduction. And even though Minato doesn’t seem to want or need an explanation for just about everything I’ve written thus far, the player probably does, so here we go.
When Minato returns to the dorm, Mitsuru and someone calling himself Chairman Shuji Ikutsuki call a meeting. Since I can’t be bothered to remember or to look up how to spell that surname every time I have to write it, I’m just going to call this guy Chair Man. Chair Man begins by asking Minato whether he’d believe him if he said there are more than 24 hours in a day.
Me: Well, it depends on how you define a day. If you define a day as it is normally defined, 86,400 SI seconds, then a day is exactly 24 hours by definition. If you define a day as the time it takes for Earth to make one full rotation, a day will vary in length constantly – it’ll sometimes be less than 24 hours and sometimes more.
Unfortunately, that’s not one of the options – Minato’s options for answers are no and no.
Chair Man and Mitsuru explain that at midnight, the Dark Hour hits, making it the 25th hour of the day. I assume this occurs throughout the world, but it happens at midnight local time, 1:00 am the next time zone over, and so on. This is the no-electronics, green-sky, water-to-blood time we saw at the beginning. Most people become enveloped in coffins during the Dark Hour, and after it ends, they have no memory of it, so from a regular person’s perspective, the day only has 24 hours.
By the way, I’m not sure why Minato’s forced to answer no – he’s clearly experienced the Dark Hour, given how he was utterly unsurprised when it hit during his walk to the Iwatodai Dorm.
Chair Man further explains that most people do the coffin-amnesia thing, but a small number don’t. Shadows, which only appear during the Dark Hour, attack those people and…basically turn them into zombies – the game refers to these as “the Lost.” I guess the closest real-world analogy would be someone in a persistent vegetative state? Now a subset of the ones who remain active during the Dark Hour can summon Personas, giving them a way to fight back against the Shadows. All 3 original inhabitants of Iwatodai Dorm fall into this category and they call themselves the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES), one of the most badass names ever.
Chair Man and Mitsuru invite Minato into SEES and he accepts because why not. A few days later, one of Minato’s classmates (Junpei Iori) also joins SEES…kind of out of nowhere. At that time, Chair Man explains that during the Dark Hour, the school turns into a giant tower infested with Shadows – this is Tartarus, and since SEES just gained 2 members, he proposes SEES begin conducting raids into Tartarus.
And that’s the basic setup for the game. Sometimes a particularly powerful Shadow, such as the thing that attacked the dorm, will appear outside Tartarus and SEES will deploy to deal with it. Otherwise, SEES raids Tartarus to train and to figure out why it and the Dark Hour exist.
Well that was a giant lore dump. Let’s talk about characters.
SEES dossier: Yukari Takeba
Yukari’s the girl who made the great first impression of “she almost pulled a gun-that-isn’t-actually-a-gun on Minato.” She’s popular at school and does archery, she’s quick to dispense sass (especially toward Junpei), and she has one special distinction that we’ll get to circa November.
At the beginning of the game, Yukari’s the newest member of SEES and we see her struggle to summon her Persona, as she’s uncomfortable with shooting herself in the head. While at first this seems understandable, I have to wonder: Mitsuru and Akihiko must’ve demonstrated to Yukari how Evokers work, meaning Yukari must’ve known they don’t actually shoot bullets into your head. It might be weird and uncomfortable at first, but clearly Mitsuru and Akihiko got used to it, so…why’s she so scared?
After Yukari gets over it (off-camera), she joins the front lines as the game’s first mage. Her wind skills hit hard and she’ll be the team’s main healer. Her bow does pierce damage, and while some people lament how bows have low accuracy in this game, I don’t agree. Most bows in Persona 3 have accuracy in the high 80s, and that’s way the hell better accuracy than I have with a bow in real life.
Lore corner: Unlike what those terrorists would imply, Isis is the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility.
SEES dossier: Junpei Iori
At the beginning of the game, Yukari’s the newest member of SEES and we see her struggle to summon her Persona, as she’s uncomfortable with shooting herself in the head. While at first this seems understandable, I have to wonder: Mitsuru and Akihiko must’ve demonstrated to Yukari how Evokers work, meaning Yukari must’ve known they don’t actually shoot bullets into your head. It might be weird and uncomfortable at first, but clearly Mitsuru and Akihiko got used to it, so…why’s she so scared?
After Yukari gets over it (off-camera), she joins the front lines as the game’s first mage. Her wind skills hit hard and she’ll be the team’s main healer. Her bow does pierce damage, and while some people lament how bows have low accuracy in this game, I don’t agree. Most bows in Persona 3 have accuracy in the high 80s, and that’s way the hell better accuracy than I have with a bow in real life.
Lore corner: Unlike what those terrorists would imply, Isis is the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility.
SEES dossier: Junpei Iori
Minato first meets Junpei at school, where Junpei walks up to him and introduces himself since Minato’s the new kid. Then apparently Akihiko finds Junpei freaking out somewhere during the Dark Hour, deduces he can summon a Persona, and invites him into SEES. Like I said, it kind of comes out of nowhere. Junpei fills the brash, overconfident teenager trope, but I really like Junpei’s character, as he has some excellent character development later on.
Lore corner: I really know very little about Trismegistus. I think he’s the patron god of alchemy, astrology, and magic, but he’s also seems to be an important figure in philosophy.
May
Remember the setup for this game? Outside of Tartarus, SEES will deploy to fight a unique Shadow from time to time. In May, that Shadow is the Arcana Priestess. It takes control of the monorail and sends it hurtling directly toward another train, so SEES ends up stopping it before a massive collision occurs.
Otherwise, not much happens in May besides Akihiko recovering from his injury. He eagerly joins the team on the front lines.
SEES dossier: Akihiko Sanada
Lore corner: I really know very little about Trismegistus. I think he’s the patron god of alchemy, astrology, and magic, but he’s also seems to be an important figure in philosophy.
May
Remember the setup for this game? Outside of Tartarus, SEES will deploy to fight a unique Shadow from time to time. In May, that Shadow is the Arcana Priestess. It takes control of the monorail and sends it hurtling directly toward another train, so SEES ends up stopping it before a massive collision occurs.
Otherwise, not much happens in May besides Akihiko recovering from his injury. He eagerly joins the team on the front lines.
SEES dossier: Akihiko Sanada
Fist Master Akihiko has the Evil Gloves, which you get from fusing Mara into a pair of gloves. Akihiko is a very shounen-protagonist-wants-to-get-stronger kind of character, but contrary to the trope, he has a cool head on his shoulders and a good amount of common sense. As you may have gathered, Akihiko leads the school’s boxing team. His Persona, contrary to what you might expect, isn’t physically oriented but instead specializes in electricity magic and debuffs. That said, his debuffs are very useful and make Akihiko a great choice for any team composition.
Lore corner: …You guys know who Julius Caesar was, right? Right.
June
June is a pretty story-heavy month and, under normal circumstances, is where the game first demonstrates Mitsuru being Mitsuru, so I’m going to do things differently and do her character first.
SEES dossier: Mitsuru Kirijo
Lore corner: …You guys know who Julius Caesar was, right? Right.
June
June is a pretty story-heavy month and, under normal circumstances, is where the game first demonstrates Mitsuru being Mitsuru, so I’m going to do things differently and do her character first.
SEES dossier: Mitsuru Kirijo
Mitsuru is the heir to the eponymous Kirijo Group, a giant international corporation that split off from the Nanjo Group, a different giant international corporation from earlier in the series. As a tangent: apparently all the rich and famous families in the series have -jo at the end of their surnames. Kou Ichijo’s family in Persona 4 is the third one.
Three characters carry Persona 3 and Mitsuru is one of them. She’s calm, confident, and commanding. While she appoints Minato field leader – he makes tactical decisions regarding combat and equipment – she is the actual leader of SEES, make no mistake. Recall how I said, “normal circumstances” before? Normal players will likely never see this scene, but if, for whatever reason, you neglect Tartarus for 10 days after the tutorial in April, Mitsuru will lay down the law upon you:
Three characters carry Persona 3 and Mitsuru is one of them. She’s calm, confident, and commanding. While she appoints Minato field leader – he makes tactical decisions regarding combat and equipment – she is the actual leader of SEES, make no mistake. Recall how I said, “normal circumstances” before? Normal players will likely never see this scene, but if, for whatever reason, you neglect Tartarus for 10 days after the tutorial in April, Mitsuru will lay down the law upon you:
Well, I’m level 99, and I’m on New Game Plus, so…I was going to wait until –
Yes ma’am.
In fact, Mitsuru presents a pretty good litmus test for a character’s intelligence level. If we take all the characters in the game and exclude (1) Mitsuru herself, (2) her father, and (3) characters who don’t interact with her, we can group the remainder into three categories:
In battle, Mitsuru mostly specializes in nuking the enemies with ice and nuking them hard. Auto-Mataru + (Ma)Rakunda + Mind Charge + Ice Amp/Boost + (Ma)Bufudyne is not a combination any enemy susceptible to ice ever wants to see.
Oh, and by the way, Mitsuru’s weapon is the Snow Queen Whip, which in this game is a thin rod classed as a rapier because that totally makes sense.
Lore corner: Artemisia, sometimes translated to Ultimecia, is a powerful sorceress from the future who wants to compress time.
…Okay, fine, Mitsuru’s Persona refers to one or both of 2 historical figures. Artemisia I ruled Caria, a region in modern-day southwestern Turkey, during the Persian Empire’s attempted conquest of the Greek nation-states. The Greeks goaded the Persians into a naval battle and when one of their ships began going after Artemisia’s, she took down her flag and attacked one of her allies’ ships. The Greeks figured her ship was on their side and backed off, allowing her to escape.
Artemisia II also ruled Caria much later on. She’s known for 2 things: (1) grieving hard over her brother’s/husband’s death, so hard that she mixed his ashes into her drinks and built one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in his memory; and (2) tricking an enemy force on two different occasions to abandon their positions, then surprise attacking them for a win.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the plot. A girl is found unconscious outside the school gates and a rumor begins that she was haunted by a ghost. Yukari investigates and discovers that this has happened to multiple girls and they were all part of some delinquent drug gang. She then ropes Junpei and Minato into going with her to their hideout to ask questions, because that seems like a totally smart thing to do.
…I was being sarcastic, because the gangsters at the hideout instantly become hostile until a guy steps in and scares them off. This guy is Shinjiro (Shinji) Aragaki, and we’ll see more of him later on. For now, he tells Yukari that the girls were all bullying one of their classmates, Fuuka Yamagishi, who recently went missing. That’s where the rumor came from – Fuuka died, became a ghost, and is now exacting revenge on the bullies.
Before we continue, I want to ask a question. What was Yukari’s plan? She walked into a gang’s meeting place, something even Junpei cautioned against, and…expected them to be cordial? Prior to the scene, I honestly thought she was planning to threaten them with her Persona or at least threaten them with her Evoker. It’s not actually a gun, but they don’t know that. And if push came to shove and the trio summoned their Personas on the gang members, what are the delinquents going to do? Is anyone going to believe a few teen drug-dealers if they say, “these three high school kids walked in, shot themselves in the head, and summoned some ancient Greek gods to kill us”?
Don’t tell me that they can only summon their Personas during the Dark Hour, either – that’s demonstrably false as the game implies on at least 3 separate occasions. Yukari in the opening cinematic is one of them, as it shows her struggling with her Evoker around sunset.
Anyway, the trio reports back to Mitsuru and Akihiko, who express disappointment that they pulled such an idiotic stunt. They do agree that they should look into Fuuka’s disappearance, so they go to her homeroom teacher’s office the next day to ask after her. They find him talking to Fuuka’s classmate, Natsuki Moriyama. Natsuki confesses that she and her friends were bullying Fuuka and, at one point, locked her inside the gym. When they went back the next day to let her out, they found the gym empty. They would go search for her at nighttime, but would hear voices and end up unconscious outside the school gates.
Here’s where Mitsuru decides to step in:
In fact, Mitsuru presents a pretty good litmus test for a character’s intelligence level. If we take all the characters in the game and exclude (1) Mitsuru herself, (2) her father, and (3) characters who don’t interact with her, we can group the remainder into three categories:
- People who fear Mitsuru
- People too stupid to fear Mitsuru
- A third category that we’ll get to circa November
In battle, Mitsuru mostly specializes in nuking the enemies with ice and nuking them hard. Auto-Mataru + (Ma)Rakunda + Mind Charge + Ice Amp/Boost + (Ma)Bufudyne is not a combination any enemy susceptible to ice ever wants to see.
Oh, and by the way, Mitsuru’s weapon is the Snow Queen Whip, which in this game is a thin rod classed as a rapier because that totally makes sense.
Lore corner: Artemisia, sometimes translated to Ultimecia, is a powerful sorceress from the future who wants to compress time.
…Okay, fine, Mitsuru’s Persona refers to one or both of 2 historical figures. Artemisia I ruled Caria, a region in modern-day southwestern Turkey, during the Persian Empire’s attempted conquest of the Greek nation-states. The Greeks goaded the Persians into a naval battle and when one of their ships began going after Artemisia’s, she took down her flag and attacked one of her allies’ ships. The Greeks figured her ship was on their side and backed off, allowing her to escape.
Artemisia II also ruled Caria much later on. She’s known for 2 things: (1) grieving hard over her brother’s/husband’s death, so hard that she mixed his ashes into her drinks and built one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in his memory; and (2) tricking an enemy force on two different occasions to abandon their positions, then surprise attacking them for a win.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the plot. A girl is found unconscious outside the school gates and a rumor begins that she was haunted by a ghost. Yukari investigates and discovers that this has happened to multiple girls and they were all part of some delinquent drug gang. She then ropes Junpei and Minato into going with her to their hideout to ask questions, because that seems like a totally smart thing to do.
…I was being sarcastic, because the gangsters at the hideout instantly become hostile until a guy steps in and scares them off. This guy is Shinjiro (Shinji) Aragaki, and we’ll see more of him later on. For now, he tells Yukari that the girls were all bullying one of their classmates, Fuuka Yamagishi, who recently went missing. That’s where the rumor came from – Fuuka died, became a ghost, and is now exacting revenge on the bullies.
Before we continue, I want to ask a question. What was Yukari’s plan? She walked into a gang’s meeting place, something even Junpei cautioned against, and…expected them to be cordial? Prior to the scene, I honestly thought she was planning to threaten them with her Persona or at least threaten them with her Evoker. It’s not actually a gun, but they don’t know that. And if push came to shove and the trio summoned their Personas on the gang members, what are the delinquents going to do? Is anyone going to believe a few teen drug-dealers if they say, “these three high school kids walked in, shot themselves in the head, and summoned some ancient Greek gods to kill us”?
Don’t tell me that they can only summon their Personas during the Dark Hour, either – that’s demonstrably false as the game implies on at least 3 separate occasions. Yukari in the opening cinematic is one of them, as it shows her struggling with her Evoker around sunset.
Anyway, the trio reports back to Mitsuru and Akihiko, who express disappointment that they pulled such an idiotic stunt. They do agree that they should look into Fuuka’s disappearance, so they go to her homeroom teacher’s office the next day to ask after her. They find him talking to Fuuka’s classmate, Natsuki Moriyama. Natsuki confesses that she and her friends were bullying Fuuka and, at one point, locked her inside the gym. When they went back the next day to let her out, they found the gym empty. They would go search for her at nighttime, but would hear voices and end up unconscious outside the school gates.
Here’s where Mitsuru decides to step in:
One might imagine Ekoda would get indignant and try to pull rank…but this is Mitsuru we’re talking about. Remember the three categories? Ekoda may be despicable, but he is, in fact, not stupid, and he immediately shuts up. You’ll hear later that he was punished somehow and, if you ask Mitsuru about it…
Back to the present: Mitsuru and Akihiko deduce that, since Gekkoukan High School turns into Tartarus at midnight, Fuuka must’ve become trapped in Tartarus the night after Natsuki’s group locked her in the gym. They then decide SEES will sneak into the school at night, go to the gym, wait for the Dark Hour, and find Fuuka.
The first part goes without a hitch thanks to Junpei. Mitsuru then deploys the group into two teams to find the key to the gym, with one team going to the faculty office and the other going to the janitor’s. Junpei and Akihiko seem on-board with going to the faculty office:
The first part goes without a hitch thanks to Junpei. Mitsuru then deploys the group into two teams to find the key to the gym, with one team going to the faculty office and the other going to the janitor’s. Junpei and Akihiko seem on-board with going to the faculty office:
Mitsuru then reminds them that she’s…well, Mitsuru:
…at which point Junpei and Akihiko demonstrate that they are firmly in the “not stupid” category.
The rest of the night makes very little sense. First of all, Mitsuru told Natsuki to stay at Iwatodai Dorm so she’d be safe from the “voices.” Apparently, Shadows can compel people during the Dark Hour, which overrides them getting coffin’d – this is why those girls fell unconscious outside the school gates. This plot point never came up prior to this month and will never come up again.
Mitsuru later admits that nowhere is safe from those voices, but she didn’t want Natsuki to panic, nor can she spare a SEES member to watch over Natsuki. She then tells Yukari to stay with her in the lobby of Tartarus while the rest of the team enters through the gym. So…you can’t spare a SEES member to stay at the dorm to watch Natsuki, but you can spare a SEES member to stay at the lobby of Tartarus to…do nothing?
Everyone except Mitsuru and Yukari groups within Tartarus and finds Fuuka, who’d managed to evade all the Shadows this entire time. Akihiko deduces she has Persona power – specifically, she can sense Shadows, and he immediately gives her an Evoker. He just says it’s not really a gun – he figures he’ll explain everything later once they got out of Tartarus. But then Fuuka senses two large Shadows attacking Mitsuru and Yukari, so they rush to the lobby. At that time, Natsuki wanders in, having heard the Shadow-voice, and the two large Shadows attack her. Fuuka draws the Evoker that Akihiko gave her and Akihiko reminds her that it’s not actually a gun.
Fuuka says, “I know” and shoots herself in the head, summoning her Persona to protect Natsuki. How the absolute hell did she know to do that? As unbelievable as Minato’s situation was when he first summoned Orpheus, he did see Yukari point the Evoker at her head. Here? This makes no sense.
…Anyway, Fuuka becomes the team’s mission control since she has sensor abilities. The team fights off the large Shadows, who turn out to be the Arcana Emperor and the Arcana Empress.
SEES dossier: Fuuka Yamagishi
Mitsuru later admits that nowhere is safe from those voices, but she didn’t want Natsuki to panic, nor can she spare a SEES member to watch over Natsuki. She then tells Yukari to stay with her in the lobby of Tartarus while the rest of the team enters through the gym. So…you can’t spare a SEES member to stay at the dorm to watch Natsuki, but you can spare a SEES member to stay at the lobby of Tartarus to…do nothing?
Everyone except Mitsuru and Yukari groups within Tartarus and finds Fuuka, who’d managed to evade all the Shadows this entire time. Akihiko deduces she has Persona power – specifically, she can sense Shadows, and he immediately gives her an Evoker. He just says it’s not really a gun – he figures he’ll explain everything later once they got out of Tartarus. But then Fuuka senses two large Shadows attacking Mitsuru and Yukari, so they rush to the lobby. At that time, Natsuki wanders in, having heard the Shadow-voice, and the two large Shadows attack her. Fuuka draws the Evoker that Akihiko gave her and Akihiko reminds her that it’s not actually a gun.
Fuuka says, “I know” and shoots herself in the head, summoning her Persona to protect Natsuki. How the absolute hell did she know to do that? As unbelievable as Minato’s situation was when he first summoned Orpheus, he did see Yukari point the Evoker at her head. Here? This makes no sense.
…Anyway, Fuuka becomes the team’s mission control since she has sensor abilities. The team fights off the large Shadows, who turn out to be the Arcana Emperor and the Arcana Empress.
SEES dossier: Fuuka Yamagishi
Just like Rise from Persona 4, she has stats for no reason. Persona 3 actually steps it up because she will also gain stats at level-up for no reason. Fuuka doesn’t ever learn battle-useful abilities, but her Escape Route is a free exit from anywhere in Tartarus, which is incredibly useful. Beyond that, Fuuka mostly just does the usual, “constantly remark on things the player can easily see already.”
Personality-wise, Fuuka is the nicest person ever. Remember Natsuki was bullying her? She didn’t hesitate to protect her and they later become best friends. That’s kind of heartwarming.
Oh, and by the way, I didn’t go into this during my Persona 4 Golden shrine, but during the ski trip, Yosuke tells a ghost story, which turns out to be what happened to Fuuka. One of the girls bullying Fuuka has a brother, who is friends with Yosuke and told him about it. I love bits of continuity like this.
Lore corner: Juno is the Roman name for Hera, queen of the gods.
July
You’ve probably noticed a pattern – the large Shadows have all represented one of the Major Arcana in tarot. In July, SEES deploys to a love hotel and encounters the Arcana Hierophant and Arcana Lovers. I think the love hotel is also the hotel the Persona 4 cast stays at during their school trip, which is cool and…honestly kind of drives home how unprofessional their teacher was. Yeesh.
July’s also where we start Yukari’s character arc. See, her dad died circa 10 years before the game started while working as a senior scientist in a Kirijo lab. That lab was on Tatsumi Port Island and he died when the lab exploded. He was actually blamed for the explosion, which resulted in Yukari and her mother becoming social pariahs.
Yukari never stopped believing in her father, though, so she decided to return to the island and attend Gekkoukan High School in the hopes of learning more about the incident. She quickly figures out Mitsuru is hiding something about the Dark Hour and that the lab explosion 10 years ago has something to do with it all. She secretly asks Fuuka to help her look into it and finds that after the explosion, many people were hospitalized, but not for injuries as one would expect; instead, they seemed to be…randomly unconscious, just like the girls who bullied Fuuka.
Yukari confronts Mitsuru about this and she turns out to be absolutely right. Mitsuru reveals that her grandfather, then head of the Kirijo Group, assembled a team of scientists and amassed a large number of Shadows to do experiments on. The experiment went awry 10 years ago and the lab exploded, which somehow created the Dark Hour/Tartarus.
…This makes no sense. The game explicitly says Shadows only appear during the Dark Hour. So how did the Kirijo Group amass any Shadows to begin with if their experiments on Shadows was what created the Dark Hour?
Anyway, at around this time you’re probably wondering: Yukari openly called Mitsuru out and, coupled with the “hey let’s saunter into a gang hideout” thing she pulled last month, she must be in the category of people too stupid to know she should fear Mitsuru.
She’s actually not. Remember, thus far she’s solved two mysteries – the events around Fuuka and the origin of the Dark Hour. She also knew better than to confront Mitsuru before she had enough evidence. But…she’s clearly not afraid of Mitsuru, right? We’ll come back to this.
July’s also the beach trip, where SEES goes to the Kirijo vacation home at Yakushima. Mitsuru didn’t invite the gang there to chill, though – she wanted to talk to her father, who openly tells the group what happened during the lab explosion 10 years ago. Yukari’s father realized the experiment was leading to something terrible, so he sabotaged it – resulting in the explosion, Tartarus, the Dark Hour, and 12 Arcana Shadows escaping. His final message to future generations was to find and destroy the 12 Arcana Shadows. According to Chair Man, destroying the 12 Arcana Shadows will end the Dark Hour.
…which is kind of a mixed bag for Yukari, since this means her father was responsible for the explosion, but her father had a good reason for it. And let’s be real – it doesn’t take a genius, nor do I need to go into spoilers, to deduce that amassing Shadows to do whatever-the-hell is a terrible, terrible idea. Spoilers: we later find that Mitsuru’s grandfather amassing Shadows to do whatever-the-hell was a terrible, terrible idea.
The next day, the girls ditch the guys to look around the forest when Chair Man calls Mitsuru to tell her that some anti-Shadow weapon activated itself and escaped the lab. Mitsuru and the girls prepare to return to the house for their equipment so Fuuka can scan for it. Note that this is early in the day, demonstrating once again that people can indeed summon their Personas outside the Dark Hour.
In the meantime, Junpei ropes Akihiko and Minato into roving around the beach hitting on any girl they see. You’ll recall there was a similar event in Persona 4, except Junpei’s plan here is way better than Yosuke’s “stand next to my scooter to boost my pheromones” plan. There’re also no unfortunate domestic abuse implications here, so I give this event a pass.
They fail miserably no less than 3 times before they see a girl staring out into the ocean. Junpei proposes that each guy go try to talk to her one-by-one, so he goes first.
Personality-wise, Fuuka is the nicest person ever. Remember Natsuki was bullying her? She didn’t hesitate to protect her and they later become best friends. That’s kind of heartwarming.
Oh, and by the way, I didn’t go into this during my Persona 4 Golden shrine, but during the ski trip, Yosuke tells a ghost story, which turns out to be what happened to Fuuka. One of the girls bullying Fuuka has a brother, who is friends with Yosuke and told him about it. I love bits of continuity like this.
Lore corner: Juno is the Roman name for Hera, queen of the gods.
July
You’ve probably noticed a pattern – the large Shadows have all represented one of the Major Arcana in tarot. In July, SEES deploys to a love hotel and encounters the Arcana Hierophant and Arcana Lovers. I think the love hotel is also the hotel the Persona 4 cast stays at during their school trip, which is cool and…honestly kind of drives home how unprofessional their teacher was. Yeesh.
July’s also where we start Yukari’s character arc. See, her dad died circa 10 years before the game started while working as a senior scientist in a Kirijo lab. That lab was on Tatsumi Port Island and he died when the lab exploded. He was actually blamed for the explosion, which resulted in Yukari and her mother becoming social pariahs.
Yukari never stopped believing in her father, though, so she decided to return to the island and attend Gekkoukan High School in the hopes of learning more about the incident. She quickly figures out Mitsuru is hiding something about the Dark Hour and that the lab explosion 10 years ago has something to do with it all. She secretly asks Fuuka to help her look into it and finds that after the explosion, many people were hospitalized, but not for injuries as one would expect; instead, they seemed to be…randomly unconscious, just like the girls who bullied Fuuka.
Yukari confronts Mitsuru about this and she turns out to be absolutely right. Mitsuru reveals that her grandfather, then head of the Kirijo Group, assembled a team of scientists and amassed a large number of Shadows to do experiments on. The experiment went awry 10 years ago and the lab exploded, which somehow created the Dark Hour/Tartarus.
…This makes no sense. The game explicitly says Shadows only appear during the Dark Hour. So how did the Kirijo Group amass any Shadows to begin with if their experiments on Shadows was what created the Dark Hour?
Anyway, at around this time you’re probably wondering: Yukari openly called Mitsuru out and, coupled with the “hey let’s saunter into a gang hideout” thing she pulled last month, she must be in the category of people too stupid to know she should fear Mitsuru.
She’s actually not. Remember, thus far she’s solved two mysteries – the events around Fuuka and the origin of the Dark Hour. She also knew better than to confront Mitsuru before she had enough evidence. But…she’s clearly not afraid of Mitsuru, right? We’ll come back to this.
July’s also the beach trip, where SEES goes to the Kirijo vacation home at Yakushima. Mitsuru didn’t invite the gang there to chill, though – she wanted to talk to her father, who openly tells the group what happened during the lab explosion 10 years ago. Yukari’s father realized the experiment was leading to something terrible, so he sabotaged it – resulting in the explosion, Tartarus, the Dark Hour, and 12 Arcana Shadows escaping. His final message to future generations was to find and destroy the 12 Arcana Shadows. According to Chair Man, destroying the 12 Arcana Shadows will end the Dark Hour.
…which is kind of a mixed bag for Yukari, since this means her father was responsible for the explosion, but her father had a good reason for it. And let’s be real – it doesn’t take a genius, nor do I need to go into spoilers, to deduce that amassing Shadows to do whatever-the-hell is a terrible, terrible idea. Spoilers: we later find that Mitsuru’s grandfather amassing Shadows to do whatever-the-hell was a terrible, terrible idea.
The next day, the girls ditch the guys to look around the forest when Chair Man calls Mitsuru to tell her that some anti-Shadow weapon activated itself and escaped the lab. Mitsuru and the girls prepare to return to the house for their equipment so Fuuka can scan for it. Note that this is early in the day, demonstrating once again that people can indeed summon their Personas outside the Dark Hour.
In the meantime, Junpei ropes Akihiko and Minato into roving around the beach hitting on any girl they see. You’ll recall there was a similar event in Persona 4, except Junpei’s plan here is way better than Yosuke’s “stand next to my scooter to boost my pheromones” plan. There’re also no unfortunate domestic abuse implications here, so I give this event a pass.
They fail miserably no less than 3 times before they see a girl staring out into the ocean. Junpei proposes that each guy go try to talk to her one-by-one, so he goes first.
I like her already. Akihiko chats her up about triathletes and she flatly tells him she doesn’t care. Minato approaches and she has a minor freakout before “initiating evasive maneuvers” and running into the forest. Upon Minato catching up to her, she declares she wants to be with Minato and hugs him. The girls then appear to tell the guys about finding that weapon…except Chair Man then appears to inform them that they’ve found it already – the girl is the weapon. Specifically, she’s a robot, built especially to fight Shadows. Her name is Aigis. We’ll get to why she wants to stay very close to Minato at all times – and I mean all times – later.
SEES dossier: Aigis
SEES dossier: Aigis
Oh, Aigis. I have nothing against Aigis (honestly, I find her hilarious), but I don’t think her character’s handled all that well.
As I mentioned, Aigis is a robot. You might think that, as an anti-Shadow weapon, she has built-in guns and missiles and whatnot. You’d be right, except she also fights with a Persona like everyone else does. How the hell does a robot have a Persona?
Personas are facets of a person’s inner self that the person uses to interface with the outside world. Being alive, with a consciousness, is part of the definition of a Persona-user. Aigis is a robot. She can’t possibly have that. Even if she had some super-advanced AI, she’s not a person with an inner personality. And I know there’s a pretty common “robot develops humanity” trope, but stories with that trope generally spend a lot of time and finesse constructing plots that illustrate what it means to find and develop humanity. Persona 3 does not do that. At all. She just…has character development like everyone else with no explanation as to how. The writers also really, really like Aigis, to the point she’s the main character in the expansion (I’m not covering the expansion – it’s not in Portable and it also sucks). The writer team really didn’t think Aigis through.
Aigis does have a unique feature in battle, which is her Orgasm Mode. Her inhibitions are disabled in Orgasm Mode, so she’s uncontrollable and her defenses go down, but her attack power increases. Orgasm Mode only lasts a short while, after which she needs time to recover from how hot she became over the course of Orgasm Mode. I…honestly never used it, but it’s unique to her, so that’s cool.
Lore corner: Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom (as well as a lot of other things, all stemming from wisdom, such as tactical thinking in war).
August
SEES goes into an old bunker to fight the Arcana Chariot and Arcana Justice. They also run into a rival group of Persona-users calling themselves Strega. We’re unfortunately going to have to talk about Strega periodically from here on out, because they’re recurring enemies. I say “unfortunately” because these guys are annoying as hell. They’re more-or-less irrelevant to the overall plot, but they recur, and each time they show up, their leader Takaya monologues – at length – in this super-smug tone. Takaya never. Shuts. The fuck. Up. Strega’s second-in-command, Jin, sounds like a petulant child despite ostensibly being the brains of the group. Their third member is Chidori, whom I’ll talk about more later.
The game shows these scenes of Strega standing around making smug monologues that don’t really mean anything except they’re aware of SEES’s activities. They’re also involved with this revenge website where people write names into the website and Strega goes and shoots them during the Dark Hour, a plot point that gets mentioned once or twice and then never comes up again.
For now, they’ve taken issue with SEES’s mission to end the Dark Hour, since they believe they won’t be able to use their Personas anymore if the Dark Hour ends. So their entire motivation so far is egomaniacal selfishness. They lock the door to the bunker from the outside, which amounts to nothing, since Mitsuru just calls Chair Man and he sends someone to get them out after SEES takes out the Arcana Shadows.
A few days later, Fuuka detects a Shadow and Akihiko goes to investigate. He finds that a dog had killed the Shadow already, by himself, and that dog joins SEES.
SEES dossier: Koromaru
As I mentioned, Aigis is a robot. You might think that, as an anti-Shadow weapon, she has built-in guns and missiles and whatnot. You’d be right, except she also fights with a Persona like everyone else does. How the hell does a robot have a Persona?
Personas are facets of a person’s inner self that the person uses to interface with the outside world. Being alive, with a consciousness, is part of the definition of a Persona-user. Aigis is a robot. She can’t possibly have that. Even if she had some super-advanced AI, she’s not a person with an inner personality. And I know there’s a pretty common “robot develops humanity” trope, but stories with that trope generally spend a lot of time and finesse constructing plots that illustrate what it means to find and develop humanity. Persona 3 does not do that. At all. She just…has character development like everyone else with no explanation as to how. The writers also really, really like Aigis, to the point she’s the main character in the expansion (I’m not covering the expansion – it’s not in Portable and it also sucks). The writer team really didn’t think Aigis through.
Aigis does have a unique feature in battle, which is her Orgasm Mode. Her inhibitions are disabled in Orgasm Mode, so she’s uncontrollable and her defenses go down, but her attack power increases. Orgasm Mode only lasts a short while, after which she needs time to recover from how hot she became over the course of Orgasm Mode. I…honestly never used it, but it’s unique to her, so that’s cool.
Lore corner: Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom (as well as a lot of other things, all stemming from wisdom, such as tactical thinking in war).
August
SEES goes into an old bunker to fight the Arcana Chariot and Arcana Justice. They also run into a rival group of Persona-users calling themselves Strega. We’re unfortunately going to have to talk about Strega periodically from here on out, because they’re recurring enemies. I say “unfortunately” because these guys are annoying as hell. They’re more-or-less irrelevant to the overall plot, but they recur, and each time they show up, their leader Takaya monologues – at length – in this super-smug tone. Takaya never. Shuts. The fuck. Up. Strega’s second-in-command, Jin, sounds like a petulant child despite ostensibly being the brains of the group. Their third member is Chidori, whom I’ll talk about more later.
The game shows these scenes of Strega standing around making smug monologues that don’t really mean anything except they’re aware of SEES’s activities. They’re also involved with this revenge website where people write names into the website and Strega goes and shoots them during the Dark Hour, a plot point that gets mentioned once or twice and then never comes up again.
For now, they’ve taken issue with SEES’s mission to end the Dark Hour, since they believe they won’t be able to use their Personas anymore if the Dark Hour ends. So their entire motivation so far is egomaniacal selfishness. They lock the door to the bunker from the outside, which amounts to nothing, since Mitsuru just calls Chair Man and he sends someone to get them out after SEES takes out the Arcana Shadows.
A few days later, Fuuka detects a Shadow and Akihiko goes to investigate. He finds that a dog had killed the Shadow already, by himself, and that dog joins SEES.
SEES dossier: Koromaru
Koromaru’s entry is random even compared to Junpei’s debut. One can also ask how a dog has a Persona – it makes more sense than does Aigis having one, but it’s a valid question.
The previous paragraph is also irrelevant, because Koromaru is a good boy. Look at him. I’m more of a cat person and I say he’s a good boy. Three characters carry this game and Koromaru is the second by virtue of being Koromaru.
Lore corner: Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades.
A few days after that, Ken Amada joins SEES.
SEES dossier: Ken Amada
The previous paragraph is also irrelevant, because Koromaru is a good boy. Look at him. I’m more of a cat person and I say he’s a good boy. Three characters carry this game and Koromaru is the second by virtue of being Koromaru.
Lore corner: Cerberus is the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades.
A few days after that, Ken Amada joins SEES.
SEES dossier: Ken Amada
Unlike the other human members of SEES, Ken’s in elementary school. I might ask whether it’s right to send an elementary school kid into battle against dangerous Shadows, but then again, my favorite series features 11-year-old protagonists, so I’ll shut up on that topic.
Under normal circumstances, we first meet Ken because he’s an orphan and Chair Man invites him to live in Iwatodai Dorm over break, since elementary schools don’t have dorms. He also off-handedly mentions Ken can summon a Persona, but Ken doesn’t officially join SEES until a few weeks after he moves in. Why does he join SEES? He volunteered…for reasons we’ll get to later.
Lore corner: I’ve read that Kala-Nemi is a personification of the Zodiac or he’s a few separate figures from Hindu myth. At least one of those figures is a sorcerer, so maybe he’s all of the above?
The other noteworthy event in August is Junpei meeting Chidori. Junpei doesn’t know Chidori is a member of Strega; he just notices this weird red-haired girl drawing in a notebook and falls instantly in love. He chats her up and, despite being initially annoyed, Chidori eventually starts to talk to him.
September
Akihiko tries to get Shinji – remember, the guy who stepped in during the gang confrontation when Yukari was investigating Fuuka’s disappearance – to rejoin SEES. Yes, I said “rejoin,” since Shinji was once in SEES, alongside Akihiko and Mitsuru, but he quit. Shinji mostly reacts with annoyance and refusal, but then Akihiko informs Shinji that Ken joined and Shinji suddenly agrees to rejoin SEES. So there’s something going on between Akihiko, Ken, and Shinji. We’ll…get to this later. I know I keep saying that, but that’s how the story’s paced in this game. It’s not ideal.
SEES dossier: Shinjiro Aragaki
Under normal circumstances, we first meet Ken because he’s an orphan and Chair Man invites him to live in Iwatodai Dorm over break, since elementary schools don’t have dorms. He also off-handedly mentions Ken can summon a Persona, but Ken doesn’t officially join SEES until a few weeks after he moves in. Why does he join SEES? He volunteered…for reasons we’ll get to later.
Lore corner: I’ve read that Kala-Nemi is a personification of the Zodiac or he’s a few separate figures from Hindu myth. At least one of those figures is a sorcerer, so maybe he’s all of the above?
The other noteworthy event in August is Junpei meeting Chidori. Junpei doesn’t know Chidori is a member of Strega; he just notices this weird red-haired girl drawing in a notebook and falls instantly in love. He chats her up and, despite being initially annoyed, Chidori eventually starts to talk to him.
September
Akihiko tries to get Shinji – remember, the guy who stepped in during the gang confrontation when Yukari was investigating Fuuka’s disappearance – to rejoin SEES. Yes, I said “rejoin,” since Shinji was once in SEES, alongside Akihiko and Mitsuru, but he quit. Shinji mostly reacts with annoyance and refusal, but then Akihiko informs Shinji that Ken joined and Shinji suddenly agrees to rejoin SEES. So there’s something going on between Akihiko, Ken, and Shinji. We’ll…get to this later. I know I keep saying that, but that’s how the story’s paced in this game. It’s not ideal.
SEES dossier: Shinjiro Aragaki
Shinji’s pretty straightforward as a character. He beats enemies up with physical attacks. That’s about it. It fits his personality, which is a kind-of standoffish, physically intimidating guy. Shinji’s a good guy, though, despite his appearance and demeanor.
Lore corner: Castor is the twin brother of Polydeuces. Their mother was Leda, but they had different fathers. Castor’s father was Tyndareus, the king of Sparta. Polydeuces’s father was Zeus, who transformed into a swan and impregnated Leda (???). Castor was thus mortal whereas his twin brother wasn’t, and when Castor was about to die, Polydeuces shared his immortality with him, and they became known as Gemini, the Twins. Polydeuces, by the way, is Akihiko’s first Persona, reflecting his close friendship with Shinji.
Very soon after Shinji joins the group, SEES deploys to fight the Arcana Hermit. Fuuka detects it in the mall, which recently experienced a power outage…
Lore corner: Castor is the twin brother of Polydeuces. Their mother was Leda, but they had different fathers. Castor’s father was Tyndareus, the king of Sparta. Polydeuces’s father was Zeus, who transformed into a swan and impregnated Leda (???). Castor was thus mortal whereas his twin brother wasn’t, and when Castor was about to die, Polydeuces shared his immortality with him, and they became known as Gemini, the Twins. Polydeuces, by the way, is Akihiko’s first Persona, reflecting his close friendship with Shinji.
Very soon after Shinji joins the group, SEES deploys to fight the Arcana Hermit. Fuuka detects it in the mall, which recently experienced a power outage…
Yes, this event is the one Rise mentions in Persona 4. Real nice.
Anyway, as SEES is getting ready to deploy, nobody can find Junpei anywhere. That’s because Junpei, in an effort to impress Chidori, revealed to her who he is (in SEES) and she kidnapped him. She tries to force him to call off SEES’s missions, except Junpei isn’t in any position to do so, and the mission goes without incident. Fuuka then…somehow locates Junpei, even though she couldn’t find him before, and SEES swoops in to rescue him and apprehend Chidori.
They send Chidori to the hospital, since she’s injured. Mitsuru and Akihiko attempt to interrogate her to no avail, since Chidori doesn’t really talk. Junpei busts into the room, still in love with Chidori, and though Chidori remains confused as to why Junpei likes her, she gradually opens up to him and the two essentially begin their romantic relationship here. She never tells him anything useful about Strega, though I have to wonder whether there’s anything for her to tell – SEES already knows Strega’s agenda courtesy of Takaya and his annoying monologue in August and there’s really nothing else to Strega. Remember how I said these guys’ relevance to the plot is at a minimum? I meant it. Chidori’s very important to Junpei on account of being herself, but as far as Strega’s concerned? They’re irrelevant.
Notably, at one point, the flowers in Chidori’s hospital room die. Junpei offers to buy her some new ones, but Chidori uses her Persona power to infuse them with new life. This is in the middle of the day, proving once again that people can use their Personas outside the Dark Hour.
October
So in Persona 4, the game gets heavy in November, but assuming you do the right things in early December, the game goes back up to a happy ending. Persona 3 doesn’t play that way. It gets heavy in October and things get worse until the game ends. Just…keep that in mind.
Early in October, SEES goes to fight the Arcana Fortune and the Arcana Strength. They can’t locate Shinji and Ken anywhere, so they complete the mission without them. Only afterwards does Mitsuru realize that the day is the 2-year anniversary of Ken’s mother’s death and she reveals that 2 years ago, SEES (composed of herself, Akihiko, and Shinji) were fighting a Shadow when Shinji lost control of his Persona and inadvertently killed Ken’s mother.
Meanwhile, Ken is elsewhere holding Shinji at spearpoint, since Ken wants to kill him as revenge. This is why Ken volunteered to join SEES. This is why Shinji suddenly agreed to return to SEES upon learning Ken had joined. Shinji’s still wracked with guilt over the accident, so he’s fully intending to let Ken kill him. To make things worse, Takaya shows up and attempts to kill them both. Shinji takes two bullets for Ken and dies just as Akihiko and the rest of SEES arrives. Yes. He dies.
…Wait, you say. Ben, you showed a screenshot of Shinji at level 99. Yeah, that’s because I spent a few hours taking him to max level just so he’d be at max level before he died. I’m weird; get over it.
Takaya slithers off, leaving SEES to mourn their first casualty. Akihiko grieves for about a day, then resolves to fight harder for his sake, awakening his Persona’s second form and completing his character arc. He finds Ken, who feels empty since he kind-of got his revenge, kind-of not, and now has nothing except suicidal ideation. Akihiko tells him to make a choice between death and fighting on. Ken chooses the latter, rejoining SEES, evolving his Persona, and completing his character arc. So to recap:
Pacing!
November
If you thought last month was bad, it gets worse. November begins with SEES deploying to fight the last Arcana Shadow. Takaya and Jin show up to try to prevent SEES from killing the last Shadow and Takaya monologues annoyingly for awhile, trying to convince SEES that they don’t actually want to end the Dark Hour despite the fact that SEES has spent literally the entire game up to now trying to end the Dark Hour. Takaya and Jin fight the party after his completely unfounded argument shockingly fails.
Takaya and Jin are a joke of a boss fight – which I actually appreciate. SEES is better equipped, knows more about Personas, and has way more battle experience. It makes all the sense in the world that Strega wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s kind of like Adachi from Persona 4 – his boss fight is pretty easy (Ameno-Sagiri afterwards is the actual boss fight) and it makes sense that it would be, since the Investigation Team has a few months of battle experience he doesn’t have (not to mention, as I pointed out, Izanami rigged a lot of things in Adachi’s favor, so he didn’t need to struggle and get stronger to get where he was). I really like it when gameplay and story reinforce each other like this.
So after getting their asses handed to them, they jump off a bridge. Yeah, that was time well spent.
SEES then kills the Arcana Hanged Man. Mitsuru’s father joins them the following day for a celebration and to congratulate them. The Dark Hour is over…or so they think, until the Dark Hour hits at midnight as it always had. They hear bells coming from Tartarus for some reason, so they investigate, only to find Chair Man standing at the gate with a reprogrammed Aigis. Chair Man reveals that killing the 12 Arcana Shadows doesn’t end the Dark Hour; instead, it brings about the end of the world. This is called “the Fall” and he wants to bring it about so he’ll rule the world.
If that didn’t make sense to you, congratulations. Chair Man is our first example of the category of people too cosmically stupid to fear Mitsuru. Chair Man is stupid enough to think that he’ll (1) survive the end of the world for some reason and (2) rule over the world…after everything’s dead? With this kind of intelligence level, of course he wouldn’t be smart enough to fear Mitsuru.
Chair Man then says he wants to murder-sacrifice the members of SEES to bring about the Fall. Now I’ll explain the Fall later on, but for now, just know that after a certain point, it becomes inevitable. We’ve passed that point by now, courtesy of killing the 12 Arcana Shadows. So literally nothing anyone does or doesn’t do will change the Fall – it will happen, period. If Chair Man had just…sat…on this information…
( . _ .)
( . _ .)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!
…and just pretended to be confused as to why the Dark Hour is still there, SEES would be completely clueless. But instead, he has this big reveal and attempts to perform this sacrifice that would’ve been completely irrelevant to the Fall even if it succeeded.
We also must remember that Chair Man is facing the entirety of SEES minus Aigis, whom he reprogrammed. Chair Man himself can’t summon a Persona, so outside of plot holes of the cutscene power variety, he stands exactly no chance of getting out of this encounter on top. Unfortunately, cutscene power does take hold and Aigis manages to knock out all of SEES and to bind them to crosses (I guess that’s part of the ritual?).
SEES wakes up to see Mitsuru’s father has arrived on the scene and is confronting Chair Man. Chair Man commands Aigis to kill Mitsuru’s father, but she hesitates when Mitsuru tells her to stop. Yes, even reprogrammed, Aigis fears Mitsuru enough to stay her hand. Chair Man decides to do things himself and pulls out a gun. Mitsuru’s father does the same and they shoot each other. Chair Man gets fatally wounded and jumps off Tartarus to his death, whereas Mitsuru’s father dies immediately.
Aigis frees SEES from the crosses and they return home with Mitsuru in shock. This sequence annoys me because without the gaping plot hole that is “Aigis can single-handedly defeat all of SEES,” Mitsuru’s father would not have died. This is not the last time the writers will pull this BS for cheap drama.
Later on, SEES clears out Chair Man’s room and Fuuka finds a video on his computer. It turns out that the recording of Yukari’s father – the one the team saw on Yakushima – was doctored, and the one Fuuka finds is the real version. In the real version, Yukari’s father instead says the 12 Arcana Shadows must be left alone, not destroyed. Now since we’ve established that killing the 12 Arcana Shadows has locked in the end of the world, these reveals might seem like SEES really screwed up by listening to Chair Man, but let’s remember that many of the Arcana Shadows posed real threats all by themselves. The Arcana Magician literally rampaged through the city and attacked the dorm, the Arcana Priestess took control of a train and sent it on a collision course, the Arcana Hermit shut off the city’s electricity grid, etc. The Shadows also turn people into zombies (remember that?), so leaving them alone is really not a viable or tenable solution.
At any rate, this vindicates Yukari’s belief in her father, and she evolves her Persona to its second form. I don’t know how this video is any different from the doctored one in the sense that Yukari learns from both that her father did indeed cause the lab explosion, but did it for the right reasons, so why she reacted differently to this one, I don’t know.
Next, you may remember that boy who appeared to give Minato the contract when he first arrived at Iwatodai Dorm. He appears again to say good-bye to Minato now that he has his memories back. He doesn’t explain what those memories are, but they have to do with killing the 12 Arcana Shadows. Also at the same time, a high school kid who looks like an older version of that boy transfers to Gekkoukan High School. He introduces himself as Ryoji and promptly begins hitting on every girl he sees. Aigis, for one, immediately hates him, though she doesn’t quite know why.
A few days after this, the class trip to Kyoto takes place. Mitsuru is still in shock and depressed over her father’s death, and at one point Yukari goes to talk to her.
…actually, wait. Did I say “talk”? I meant Yukari bitch-slaps Mitsuru across the face in an effort to get her to snap out of it. Yukari lost her father as well, after all, but she found the resolve to push on and finish what her father started. This does, in fact, get through to Mitsuru, and she evolves her Persona resolving that, alongside her friends, she will avenge her father and find a way to end the Dark Hour for real.
And this brings me to Yukari’s distinguishing feature in that of the three categories regarding fear of Mitsuru, Yukari is in her own category. Yukari’s not stupid – compare her track record to Chair Man’s “plan,” to give an example. Yukari, you see, just has the biggest pair of balls in the entire game. You know how Minato’s maximum Courage is level 6? There’s a level 7, and Minato can’t achieve level 7, because level 7 is Yukari Takeba.
Anyway, the next day sees the hot springs scene. Junpei and Ryoji invite Minato and Akihiko into the hot springs, and soon after, the SEES girls enter. Now it’s implied that Junpei and Ryoji planned this: enter the hot springs toward the end of the guys’ time so that they’ll still be in there when the girls’ time begins, but I really have to wonder whether this plan would even work. Hot springs like this must have some sort of attendant or alarm or something to inform anyone in the hot springs that they need to clear out when time’s up. It’s not like people bring watches/phones/clocks into the bath with them. Since no one alerted the guys, I must assume the time is still the guys’ time and not the girls’ time.
Also, despite this ostensibly being Junpei’s and Ryoji’s plan, upon hearing the girls enter, Junpei becomes terrified. I guess he was hoping some girls he didn’t know would walk in? The game then goes into a sequence where the player must evade the girls and escape. Escaping isn’t hard, especially in Portable where you just pick the correct menu choices, but…
At one point, Junpei’s towel is about to fall off, and the game gives you these choices:
Anyway, as SEES is getting ready to deploy, nobody can find Junpei anywhere. That’s because Junpei, in an effort to impress Chidori, revealed to her who he is (in SEES) and she kidnapped him. She tries to force him to call off SEES’s missions, except Junpei isn’t in any position to do so, and the mission goes without incident. Fuuka then…somehow locates Junpei, even though she couldn’t find him before, and SEES swoops in to rescue him and apprehend Chidori.
They send Chidori to the hospital, since she’s injured. Mitsuru and Akihiko attempt to interrogate her to no avail, since Chidori doesn’t really talk. Junpei busts into the room, still in love with Chidori, and though Chidori remains confused as to why Junpei likes her, she gradually opens up to him and the two essentially begin their romantic relationship here. She never tells him anything useful about Strega, though I have to wonder whether there’s anything for her to tell – SEES already knows Strega’s agenda courtesy of Takaya and his annoying monologue in August and there’s really nothing else to Strega. Remember how I said these guys’ relevance to the plot is at a minimum? I meant it. Chidori’s very important to Junpei on account of being herself, but as far as Strega’s concerned? They’re irrelevant.
Notably, at one point, the flowers in Chidori’s hospital room die. Junpei offers to buy her some new ones, but Chidori uses her Persona power to infuse them with new life. This is in the middle of the day, proving once again that people can use their Personas outside the Dark Hour.
October
So in Persona 4, the game gets heavy in November, but assuming you do the right things in early December, the game goes back up to a happy ending. Persona 3 doesn’t play that way. It gets heavy in October and things get worse until the game ends. Just…keep that in mind.
Early in October, SEES goes to fight the Arcana Fortune and the Arcana Strength. They can’t locate Shinji and Ken anywhere, so they complete the mission without them. Only afterwards does Mitsuru realize that the day is the 2-year anniversary of Ken’s mother’s death and she reveals that 2 years ago, SEES (composed of herself, Akihiko, and Shinji) were fighting a Shadow when Shinji lost control of his Persona and inadvertently killed Ken’s mother.
Meanwhile, Ken is elsewhere holding Shinji at spearpoint, since Ken wants to kill him as revenge. This is why Ken volunteered to join SEES. This is why Shinji suddenly agreed to return to SEES upon learning Ken had joined. Shinji’s still wracked with guilt over the accident, so he’s fully intending to let Ken kill him. To make things worse, Takaya shows up and attempts to kill them both. Shinji takes two bullets for Ken and dies just as Akihiko and the rest of SEES arrives. Yes. He dies.
…Wait, you say. Ben, you showed a screenshot of Shinji at level 99. Yeah, that’s because I spent a few hours taking him to max level just so he’d be at max level before he died. I’m weird; get over it.
Takaya slithers off, leaving SEES to mourn their first casualty. Akihiko grieves for about a day, then resolves to fight harder for his sake, awakening his Persona’s second form and completing his character arc. He finds Ken, who feels empty since he kind-of got his revenge, kind-of not, and now has nothing except suicidal ideation. Akihiko tells him to make a choice between death and fighting on. Ken chooses the latter, rejoining SEES, evolving his Persona, and completing his character arc. So to recap:
- Late August: the game hints that there’s some backstory between Ken, Akihiko, and Shinji.
- Early October: we learn the entire backstory via exposition dump from Mitsuru, Ken goes to kill Shinji, Takaya kills Shinji, Akihiko mourns Shinji for about a day, Ken come to terms with his past and forgives Shinji, and they both awaken their Personas’ second forms to complete their character arcs.
Pacing!
November
If you thought last month was bad, it gets worse. November begins with SEES deploying to fight the last Arcana Shadow. Takaya and Jin show up to try to prevent SEES from killing the last Shadow and Takaya monologues annoyingly for awhile, trying to convince SEES that they don’t actually want to end the Dark Hour despite the fact that SEES has spent literally the entire game up to now trying to end the Dark Hour. Takaya and Jin fight the party after his completely unfounded argument shockingly fails.
Takaya and Jin are a joke of a boss fight – which I actually appreciate. SEES is better equipped, knows more about Personas, and has way more battle experience. It makes all the sense in the world that Strega wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s kind of like Adachi from Persona 4 – his boss fight is pretty easy (Ameno-Sagiri afterwards is the actual boss fight) and it makes sense that it would be, since the Investigation Team has a few months of battle experience he doesn’t have (not to mention, as I pointed out, Izanami rigged a lot of things in Adachi’s favor, so he didn’t need to struggle and get stronger to get where he was). I really like it when gameplay and story reinforce each other like this.
So after getting their asses handed to them, they jump off a bridge. Yeah, that was time well spent.
SEES then kills the Arcana Hanged Man. Mitsuru’s father joins them the following day for a celebration and to congratulate them. The Dark Hour is over…or so they think, until the Dark Hour hits at midnight as it always had. They hear bells coming from Tartarus for some reason, so they investigate, only to find Chair Man standing at the gate with a reprogrammed Aigis. Chair Man reveals that killing the 12 Arcana Shadows doesn’t end the Dark Hour; instead, it brings about the end of the world. This is called “the Fall” and he wants to bring it about so he’ll rule the world.
If that didn’t make sense to you, congratulations. Chair Man is our first example of the category of people too cosmically stupid to fear Mitsuru. Chair Man is stupid enough to think that he’ll (1) survive the end of the world for some reason and (2) rule over the world…after everything’s dead? With this kind of intelligence level, of course he wouldn’t be smart enough to fear Mitsuru.
Chair Man then says he wants to murder-sacrifice the members of SEES to bring about the Fall. Now I’ll explain the Fall later on, but for now, just know that after a certain point, it becomes inevitable. We’ve passed that point by now, courtesy of killing the 12 Arcana Shadows. So literally nothing anyone does or doesn’t do will change the Fall – it will happen, period. If Chair Man had just…sat…on this information…
( . _ .)
( . _ .)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_■)
YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!
…and just pretended to be confused as to why the Dark Hour is still there, SEES would be completely clueless. But instead, he has this big reveal and attempts to perform this sacrifice that would’ve been completely irrelevant to the Fall even if it succeeded.
We also must remember that Chair Man is facing the entirety of SEES minus Aigis, whom he reprogrammed. Chair Man himself can’t summon a Persona, so outside of plot holes of the cutscene power variety, he stands exactly no chance of getting out of this encounter on top. Unfortunately, cutscene power does take hold and Aigis manages to knock out all of SEES and to bind them to crosses (I guess that’s part of the ritual?).
SEES wakes up to see Mitsuru’s father has arrived on the scene and is confronting Chair Man. Chair Man commands Aigis to kill Mitsuru’s father, but she hesitates when Mitsuru tells her to stop. Yes, even reprogrammed, Aigis fears Mitsuru enough to stay her hand. Chair Man decides to do things himself and pulls out a gun. Mitsuru’s father does the same and they shoot each other. Chair Man gets fatally wounded and jumps off Tartarus to his death, whereas Mitsuru’s father dies immediately.
Aigis frees SEES from the crosses and they return home with Mitsuru in shock. This sequence annoys me because without the gaping plot hole that is “Aigis can single-handedly defeat all of SEES,” Mitsuru’s father would not have died. This is not the last time the writers will pull this BS for cheap drama.
Later on, SEES clears out Chair Man’s room and Fuuka finds a video on his computer. It turns out that the recording of Yukari’s father – the one the team saw on Yakushima – was doctored, and the one Fuuka finds is the real version. In the real version, Yukari’s father instead says the 12 Arcana Shadows must be left alone, not destroyed. Now since we’ve established that killing the 12 Arcana Shadows has locked in the end of the world, these reveals might seem like SEES really screwed up by listening to Chair Man, but let’s remember that many of the Arcana Shadows posed real threats all by themselves. The Arcana Magician literally rampaged through the city and attacked the dorm, the Arcana Priestess took control of a train and sent it on a collision course, the Arcana Hermit shut off the city’s electricity grid, etc. The Shadows also turn people into zombies (remember that?), so leaving them alone is really not a viable or tenable solution.
At any rate, this vindicates Yukari’s belief in her father, and she evolves her Persona to its second form. I don’t know how this video is any different from the doctored one in the sense that Yukari learns from both that her father did indeed cause the lab explosion, but did it for the right reasons, so why she reacted differently to this one, I don’t know.
Next, you may remember that boy who appeared to give Minato the contract when he first arrived at Iwatodai Dorm. He appears again to say good-bye to Minato now that he has his memories back. He doesn’t explain what those memories are, but they have to do with killing the 12 Arcana Shadows. Also at the same time, a high school kid who looks like an older version of that boy transfers to Gekkoukan High School. He introduces himself as Ryoji and promptly begins hitting on every girl he sees. Aigis, for one, immediately hates him, though she doesn’t quite know why.
A few days after this, the class trip to Kyoto takes place. Mitsuru is still in shock and depressed over her father’s death, and at one point Yukari goes to talk to her.
…actually, wait. Did I say “talk”? I meant Yukari bitch-slaps Mitsuru across the face in an effort to get her to snap out of it. Yukari lost her father as well, after all, but she found the resolve to push on and finish what her father started. This does, in fact, get through to Mitsuru, and she evolves her Persona resolving that, alongside her friends, she will avenge her father and find a way to end the Dark Hour for real.
And this brings me to Yukari’s distinguishing feature in that of the three categories regarding fear of Mitsuru, Yukari is in her own category. Yukari’s not stupid – compare her track record to Chair Man’s “plan,” to give an example. Yukari, you see, just has the biggest pair of balls in the entire game. You know how Minato’s maximum Courage is level 6? There’s a level 7, and Minato can’t achieve level 7, because level 7 is Yukari Takeba.
Anyway, the next day sees the hot springs scene. Junpei and Ryoji invite Minato and Akihiko into the hot springs, and soon after, the SEES girls enter. Now it’s implied that Junpei and Ryoji planned this: enter the hot springs toward the end of the guys’ time so that they’ll still be in there when the girls’ time begins, but I really have to wonder whether this plan would even work. Hot springs like this must have some sort of attendant or alarm or something to inform anyone in the hot springs that they need to clear out when time’s up. It’s not like people bring watches/phones/clocks into the bath with them. Since no one alerted the guys, I must assume the time is still the guys’ time and not the girls’ time.
Also, despite this ostensibly being Junpei’s and Ryoji’s plan, upon hearing the girls enter, Junpei becomes terrified. I guess he was hoping some girls he didn’t know would walk in? The game then goes into a sequence where the player must evade the girls and escape. Escaping isn’t hard, especially in Portable where you just pick the correct menu choices, but…
At one point, Junpei’s towel is about to fall off, and the game gives you these choices:
The first choice distracts Yukari whereas the second choice causes enough of a commotion where the guys get caught. Yukari’s response is…
…whereupon the game gives you these choices:
Yeah, this is hilarious enough that I decided to fail on purpose. Mitsuru is…displeased.
Note that this scene is the most fear Akihiko will show for the entire game, including when he’s faced with the end of the world. Also remember how Aigis wants to be at Minato’s side always? Even thus, she doesn’t dare oppose Mitsuru in this scene, showing that even a robot is smart enough to fear Mitsuru.
After the trip, we see that, unfortunately, Takaya and Jin are alive, and they bust Chidori out of the hospital. Chidori sends a message to SEES telling them to meet her outside Tartarus, where she promptly attacks Junpei. She says that she fears attachment and losing people she cares about; therefore, she’s pissed at Junpei because she fell in love with him and now must experience the fear and anxiety that she’ll lose him. She can’t quite bring herself to deny her feelings, though…so Takaya shows up and shoots her. Or, rather, he shoots Junpei and mortally wounds him when he shields Chidori. Chidori responds by sacrificing her life to heal Junpei (remember how she revived those flowers in the hospital?). She also merges her Persona with Junpei’s, allowing it to evolve to its final form. Chidori dies happy, knowing she’ll now be with Junpei forever.
Takaya makes some smug monologue and Junpei…well, he loses it. He attacks Takaya and Jin in a bloodthirsty rage, blasting them both with a torrent of fire. Note that Jin’s Persona repels fire, but he still got knocked back from Junpei’s attack. Junpei is just that pissed. This guy, in this scene, is out for blood. It’s honestly as unsettling as it is awesome given how chill Junpei’s been this entire game. Takaya decides he’s going to try to fight anyway and Jin has to pull him back, thereby solidifying Takaya’s position in the stupid people category. Besides being faced with a guy who absolutely and unequivocally wants him dead, Takaya has the entirety of SEES arrayed against him and he knows, first-hand, how easily these guys could kick his ass from a fight that took place less than a month ago. SEES also has 2 people besides Junpei who have personal beef with him. And Takaya thinks he can stay there and fight.
I also want to comment that during Takaya’s boss fights, he uses his gun as a weapon and it does some middling damage, but in this cutscene, it was powerful enough to kill Junpei in one shot. This is the second time the writers employed artificial BS for cheap drama and will not be the last time they do so.
That’s about it for this month. Yes, a fuckton of events happen in November in stark contrast to some other months, when very little happened at all. Pacing!
December
Aigis reveals she figured out why she hates Ryoji. 10 years ago, when that lab explosion first happened, the 12 Arcana Shadows split and the 13th Shadow, the Arcana Death (this is, in fact, the ultimate Death Persona, Thanatos), wandered onto the Moonlight Bridge. Aigis pursued it and fought it, but she couldn’t defeat it, so she somehow sealed it within a nearby boy. That boy was Minato, and the jumpsuit-boy who offered Minato the contract upon him first arriving at Iwatodai Dorm was the sealed Arcana Death. This is, incidentally, why Thanatos burst out of Orpheus when Minato first summoned his Persona. This is also why Aigis wants to be at Minato’s side all the time – she wants to protect him given what she did to him.
When SEES killed the 12 Arcana Shadows, this somehow caused them to re-merge with the Arcana Death, allowing him to achieve his complete form – this is Ryoji:
After the trip, we see that, unfortunately, Takaya and Jin are alive, and they bust Chidori out of the hospital. Chidori sends a message to SEES telling them to meet her outside Tartarus, where she promptly attacks Junpei. She says that she fears attachment and losing people she cares about; therefore, she’s pissed at Junpei because she fell in love with him and now must experience the fear and anxiety that she’ll lose him. She can’t quite bring herself to deny her feelings, though…so Takaya shows up and shoots her. Or, rather, he shoots Junpei and mortally wounds him when he shields Chidori. Chidori responds by sacrificing her life to heal Junpei (remember how she revived those flowers in the hospital?). She also merges her Persona with Junpei’s, allowing it to evolve to its final form. Chidori dies happy, knowing she’ll now be with Junpei forever.
Takaya makes some smug monologue and Junpei…well, he loses it. He attacks Takaya and Jin in a bloodthirsty rage, blasting them both with a torrent of fire. Note that Jin’s Persona repels fire, but he still got knocked back from Junpei’s attack. Junpei is just that pissed. This guy, in this scene, is out for blood. It’s honestly as unsettling as it is awesome given how chill Junpei’s been this entire game. Takaya decides he’s going to try to fight anyway and Jin has to pull him back, thereby solidifying Takaya’s position in the stupid people category. Besides being faced with a guy who absolutely and unequivocally wants him dead, Takaya has the entirety of SEES arrayed against him and he knows, first-hand, how easily these guys could kick his ass from a fight that took place less than a month ago. SEES also has 2 people besides Junpei who have personal beef with him. And Takaya thinks he can stay there and fight.
I also want to comment that during Takaya’s boss fights, he uses his gun as a weapon and it does some middling damage, but in this cutscene, it was powerful enough to kill Junpei in one shot. This is the second time the writers employed artificial BS for cheap drama and will not be the last time they do so.
That’s about it for this month. Yes, a fuckton of events happen in November in stark contrast to some other months, when very little happened at all. Pacing!
December
Aigis reveals she figured out why she hates Ryoji. 10 years ago, when that lab explosion first happened, the 12 Arcana Shadows split and the 13th Shadow, the Arcana Death (this is, in fact, the ultimate Death Persona, Thanatos), wandered onto the Moonlight Bridge. Aigis pursued it and fought it, but she couldn’t defeat it, so she somehow sealed it within a nearby boy. That boy was Minato, and the jumpsuit-boy who offered Minato the contract upon him first arriving at Iwatodai Dorm was the sealed Arcana Death. This is, incidentally, why Thanatos burst out of Orpheus when Minato first summoned his Persona. This is also why Aigis wants to be at Minato’s side all the time – she wants to protect him given what she did to him.
When SEES killed the 12 Arcana Shadows, this somehow caused them to re-merge with the Arcana Death, allowing him to achieve his complete form – this is Ryoji:
Uhh, no, Ryoji, Death is one of the Major Arcana, no different from any other Arcana. It’s supposed to be there. Do you not know your own Arcana?
Aigis attempts to fight Ryoji, but complete-form Ryoji is way too strong – she couldn’t beat him when he was incomplete 10 years ago, after all, so Ryoji wins easily. SEES arrives on the scene to see Aigis in pieces and Ryoji standing there looking remorseful. Ryoji begins to explain everything.
This is how the Fall works: the Appriser appears, which locks in the end of the world. As soon as the Appriser exists, he will pull an entity known as Nyx to Earth. Once Nyx reaches Earth, the world will end. This chain of events is inevitable as soon as the Appriser comes into being. Ryoji is the Appriser. Mitsuru’s grandfather was trying to assemble the Appriser 10 years ago and he almost succeeded, but then Yukari’s father blew up the lab, splitting the Appriser into 13 parts and preventing his birth. But when SEES killed the 12 Arcana Shadows, that somehow re-merged them into the Arcana Death inside Minato, creating Ryoji. Since the Appriser now exists, Nyx’s coming is inevitable.
Okay, so who’s Nyx? Ryoji explains that Nyx is the personification of death, which incidentally means she cannot be defeated as death is inevitable:
Aigis attempts to fight Ryoji, but complete-form Ryoji is way too strong – she couldn’t beat him when he was incomplete 10 years ago, after all, so Ryoji wins easily. SEES arrives on the scene to see Aigis in pieces and Ryoji standing there looking remorseful. Ryoji begins to explain everything.
This is how the Fall works: the Appriser appears, which locks in the end of the world. As soon as the Appriser exists, he will pull an entity known as Nyx to Earth. Once Nyx reaches Earth, the world will end. This chain of events is inevitable as soon as the Appriser comes into being. Ryoji is the Appriser. Mitsuru’s grandfather was trying to assemble the Appriser 10 years ago and he almost succeeded, but then Yukari’s father blew up the lab, splitting the Appriser into 13 parts and preventing his birth. But when SEES killed the 12 Arcana Shadows, that somehow re-merged them into the Arcana Death inside Minato, creating Ryoji. Since the Appriser now exists, Nyx’s coming is inevitable.
Okay, so who’s Nyx? Ryoji explains that Nyx is the personification of death, which incidentally means she cannot be defeated as death is inevitable:
As for what Nyx will do once she arrives…
So Nyx isn’t the personification of death so much as she’s the personification of a persistent vegetative state. Good to know. Ryoji, for his part, doesn’t want this to happen – he’s the Appriser, but he’s not evil or malevolent, and he laments how the Fall is inevitable now that he’s alive. He offers SEES a choice: they can kill him, which will temporarily eliminate the Dark Hour and Tartarus. This will also remove the team’s memories of these things (basically, memories of the entire game). But the Fall is inevitable, meaning Ryoji will just re-form, and once he re-forms, Nyx will descend and the Fall will occur. Ryoji’s thinking is that by doing this, the members of SEES can live a blissfully ignorant life until the Fall suddenly ends the world. Otherwise, Ryoji says:
Ryoji, what you’re describing is what literally every human ever experiences every single day. Death is inevitable and everyone knows this, so everyone lives daily with impending death. This isn’t unimaginable suffering – this is normalcy.
Right before New Year’s Eve, Aigis gets repaired, questions her purpose, gets inspired by SEES’s resolve, determines her new purpose, gains humanity, and evolves her Persona within the span of about 5 minutes. On New Year’s Eve itself, Ryoji returns to the dorm and asks Minato for his decision: kill him and get the bad ending, or refuse and go to January. Choose the latter and Ryoji tells the team that Nyx will descend upon Tartarus on the 31st of January, so that’s when and where the final battle will occur should SEES want to try to fight Nyx anyway.
January
SEES climbs the last few floors of Tartarus and runs into Jin, who says that Takaya is up ahead doing…something, and he’s there to block SEES from interfering with Takaya. He smugly says he can tell what their weaknesses are (something only Chidori should be able to do, by the way), but my party has no weaknesses courtesy of the Armors of Light, and I proceed to destroy him.
Jin then reveals Strega’s backstory – back in the day, the Kirijo Group rounded up street orphans and experimented on them to implant them artificially with Personas. Takaya found Jin and Chidori and they teamed up after the Kirijo Group abandoned them.
So here’s the thing. This backstory is actually interesting in that it opens up a lot of narrative possibilities. Mitsuru underwent experimentation as a child as well, but she awakened her Persona naturally because she wanted to protect her father. As she grew up, she had support from her parents as well as the considerable knowledge and resources of the Kirijo Group. Over the course of the game, she gained new friends (and, in my game, a boyfriend). The members of Strega had the same experimentation but none of the support. So, it’d be a great juxtaposition to show how Strega turned out versus how Mitsuru did. It then could feed into Mitsuru’s character arc – she feels guilt for what her grandfather did, even though she had nothing to do with it, a theme that would carry over to her story in Persona 4 Arena and Ultimax. Let’s say the game made Takaya less annoying and more sympathetic, and then he explodes or something, and Mitsuru gains new resolve to lead the Kirijo Group to atone for what her grandfather did given that she saw a horrific example first-hand. This could then be what evolves her Persona, which would be a much better and more natural event than some cutscene BS where Aigis incapacitates all of SEES and allows Chair Man to kill Mitsuru’s father.
The game, of course, does none of this, instead opting to have Strega show up annoyingly and pointlessly throughout the game and then exposition dump minutes before the game ends. After the exposition dump, Shadows show up and attack the wounded Jin, and Jin detonates a grenade to kill them all and himself. Yeah, that was time well spent.
SEES continues on and finds Takaya, who I guess was jacking off to Nyx or something. SEES unceremoniously hands him his ass again and moves on to meet Nyx at the top of the tower. Nyx is…an annoying boss – she has 13 initial health bars (one for each Major Arcana from Fool 0 to Hanged Man XII), but damage doesn’t carry over between health bars, so if you do more than 1,500 damage to any given health bar (a rather easy thing to do), the excess damage is ignored and Nyx just transitions to a new full bar. After you deplete her initial 13 health bars, Nyx switches Arcana again to her true Arcana, Death XIII, and comments…
Right before New Year’s Eve, Aigis gets repaired, questions her purpose, gets inspired by SEES’s resolve, determines her new purpose, gains humanity, and evolves her Persona within the span of about 5 minutes. On New Year’s Eve itself, Ryoji returns to the dorm and asks Minato for his decision: kill him and get the bad ending, or refuse and go to January. Choose the latter and Ryoji tells the team that Nyx will descend upon Tartarus on the 31st of January, so that’s when and where the final battle will occur should SEES want to try to fight Nyx anyway.
January
SEES climbs the last few floors of Tartarus and runs into Jin, who says that Takaya is up ahead doing…something, and he’s there to block SEES from interfering with Takaya. He smugly says he can tell what their weaknesses are (something only Chidori should be able to do, by the way), but my party has no weaknesses courtesy of the Armors of Light, and I proceed to destroy him.
Jin then reveals Strega’s backstory – back in the day, the Kirijo Group rounded up street orphans and experimented on them to implant them artificially with Personas. Takaya found Jin and Chidori and they teamed up after the Kirijo Group abandoned them.
So here’s the thing. This backstory is actually interesting in that it opens up a lot of narrative possibilities. Mitsuru underwent experimentation as a child as well, but she awakened her Persona naturally because she wanted to protect her father. As she grew up, she had support from her parents as well as the considerable knowledge and resources of the Kirijo Group. Over the course of the game, she gained new friends (and, in my game, a boyfriend). The members of Strega had the same experimentation but none of the support. So, it’d be a great juxtaposition to show how Strega turned out versus how Mitsuru did. It then could feed into Mitsuru’s character arc – she feels guilt for what her grandfather did, even though she had nothing to do with it, a theme that would carry over to her story in Persona 4 Arena and Ultimax. Let’s say the game made Takaya less annoying and more sympathetic, and then he explodes or something, and Mitsuru gains new resolve to lead the Kirijo Group to atone for what her grandfather did given that she saw a horrific example first-hand. This could then be what evolves her Persona, which would be a much better and more natural event than some cutscene BS where Aigis incapacitates all of SEES and allows Chair Man to kill Mitsuru’s father.
The game, of course, does none of this, instead opting to have Strega show up annoyingly and pointlessly throughout the game and then exposition dump minutes before the game ends. After the exposition dump, Shadows show up and attack the wounded Jin, and Jin detonates a grenade to kill them all and himself. Yeah, that was time well spent.
SEES continues on and finds Takaya, who I guess was jacking off to Nyx or something. SEES unceremoniously hands him his ass again and moves on to meet Nyx at the top of the tower. Nyx is…an annoying boss – she has 13 initial health bars (one for each Major Arcana from Fool 0 to Hanged Man XII), but damage doesn’t carry over between health bars, so if you do more than 1,500 damage to any given health bar (a rather easy thing to do), the excess damage is ignored and Nyx just transitions to a new full bar. After you deplete her initial 13 health bars, Nyx switches Arcana again to her true Arcana, Death XIII, and comments…
Sigh. Okay, so…the Death Arcana isn’t “death.” The Death Arcana means transformation – the end of the old and the beginning of the new. A good example is Ken awakening his second Persona – he has come to terms with his grief, forgiven Shinji, and resolved to fight for a better future rather than stay shackled by the past. That’s the Death Arcana, not biological death. Do you not know your own Arcana?!
Anyway, her 14th health bar has 6,000 HP and is the final stage of her fight. Make sure you don’t let her Charm you via Night Queen and make you heal her – or let her do that just to show you can kill her multiple times. Either works.
After SEES kicks her ass, Nyx shows that, unfortunately, Ryoji wasn’t bluffing, and she really cannot be killed. She levitates up into the moon, except it’s no moon; it’s the Death Star, or something, and it begins radiating energy waves that knock down the members of SEES. But then Minato, empowered by the bonds of friendship he’s forged through the game, resists Nyx’s attacks and casts the Great Seal, which blocks Nyx from descending to Earth (specifically, it blocks something called Erebus from pulling Nyx to Earth – but that’s detailed in the expansion that I’m not covering). There’s just one problem – casting the Great Seal means his soul is trapped empowering it, so he dies. That’s right, the main character of the game dies.
This is, of course, the final edgy death the writers put in, and it hinges on the fact that Nyx cannot be killed (otherwise, Minato wouldn’t need to cast a seal on her). So why is that? The game says it’s because Nyx is death personified. But…well, she’s not. Like Ryoji and I point out, Nyx kills exactly nobody – all she does is turn people into zombies. Sure, they’ll die afterward from dehydration or hunger or because their cars crashed, but Nyx itself doesn’t bring about any deaths directly. The “personification of a persistent vegetative state” kind of doesn’t have the same “inevitability” ring to it.
Continuing, the Reaper is actually a much more fitting personification of death. The characters in-game call him Death. The Reaper also straight-up cannot be killed, because if you beat him, go to the next floor of Tartarus, and sit around, he just comes right back. He does the same thing in Persona 4 – you can beat him, then open some chests, and he’ll show up again.
So I ask: who/what is Nyx, and why can she not be killed? And here’s the thing: the game never tells you besides Ryoji’s explanation that demonstrates Nyx isn’t the personification of death. We can go to two places to find the answer, neither of which are in the game. One is this book that says Nyx is an alien that devours planets and she just happened to land on Earth long ago. So…she’s Galactus from Marvel. That has literally nothing to do with personifying anything, which begs the question of why she can’t be killed, which in turns leads to the question of why Minato has to die. Remember, the answer isn’t that this alien is just too strong, since Ryoji specifically says Nyx’s invincibility has “nothing to do with strength, ability, or power.”
The other place we can try to turn to is Greek mythology, similar to how we go to Japanese mythology to find out who Izanami is. The problem here is that Nyx in Greek mythology is the personification of nighttime, not death.
There is. No. Explanation. As to why Nyx cannot be killed, meaning there is no justifiable reason for the main character to die. Just as the writers shoehorned in Mitsuru’s father getting shot and killed for cheap drama, the writers shoehorned in Minato’s death to be as edgy as possible “zomg look at how dark our game is the main character dies zomg.”
So with that rant over, let’s talk about one last character…
Character spotlight: Elizabeth
Anyway, her 14th health bar has 6,000 HP and is the final stage of her fight. Make sure you don’t let her Charm you via Night Queen and make you heal her – or let her do that just to show you can kill her multiple times. Either works.
After SEES kicks her ass, Nyx shows that, unfortunately, Ryoji wasn’t bluffing, and she really cannot be killed. She levitates up into the moon, except it’s no moon; it’s the Death Star, or something, and it begins radiating energy waves that knock down the members of SEES. But then Minato, empowered by the bonds of friendship he’s forged through the game, resists Nyx’s attacks and casts the Great Seal, which blocks Nyx from descending to Earth (specifically, it blocks something called Erebus from pulling Nyx to Earth – but that’s detailed in the expansion that I’m not covering). There’s just one problem – casting the Great Seal means his soul is trapped empowering it, so he dies. That’s right, the main character of the game dies.
This is, of course, the final edgy death the writers put in, and it hinges on the fact that Nyx cannot be killed (otherwise, Minato wouldn’t need to cast a seal on her). So why is that? The game says it’s because Nyx is death personified. But…well, she’s not. Like Ryoji and I point out, Nyx kills exactly nobody – all she does is turn people into zombies. Sure, they’ll die afterward from dehydration or hunger or because their cars crashed, but Nyx itself doesn’t bring about any deaths directly. The “personification of a persistent vegetative state” kind of doesn’t have the same “inevitability” ring to it.
Continuing, the Reaper is actually a much more fitting personification of death. The characters in-game call him Death. The Reaper also straight-up cannot be killed, because if you beat him, go to the next floor of Tartarus, and sit around, he just comes right back. He does the same thing in Persona 4 – you can beat him, then open some chests, and he’ll show up again.
So I ask: who/what is Nyx, and why can she not be killed? And here’s the thing: the game never tells you besides Ryoji’s explanation that demonstrates Nyx isn’t the personification of death. We can go to two places to find the answer, neither of which are in the game. One is this book that says Nyx is an alien that devours planets and she just happened to land on Earth long ago. So…she’s Galactus from Marvel. That has literally nothing to do with personifying anything, which begs the question of why she can’t be killed, which in turns leads to the question of why Minato has to die. Remember, the answer isn’t that this alien is just too strong, since Ryoji specifically says Nyx’s invincibility has “nothing to do with strength, ability, or power.”
The other place we can try to turn to is Greek mythology, similar to how we go to Japanese mythology to find out who Izanami is. The problem here is that Nyx in Greek mythology is the personification of nighttime, not death.
There is. No. Explanation. As to why Nyx cannot be killed, meaning there is no justifiable reason for the main character to die. Just as the writers shoehorned in Mitsuru’s father getting shot and killed for cheap drama, the writers shoehorned in Minato’s death to be as edgy as possible “zomg look at how dark our game is the main character dies zomg.”
So with that rant over, let’s talk about one last character…
Character spotlight: Elizabeth
Elizabeth fulfills much the same role her older sister Margaret does in Persona 4 – she’s Igor’s assistant in the Velvet Room. She also gives Minato sidequests. These come in many different flavors, including bringing her a specific item, fusing a specific Persona, or showing her around town. Most of that latter category leads to some hilarity. For example, she knows people throw coins into fountains and make wishes, so she concludes that fountains must be home to wish-granting spirits and they demand payment for fulfilling wishes. As such, she pours ¥1 million (using the average exchange rate of 118 yen per dollar in 2009, this comes out to almost $8,500) into a fountain to ensure she’s paying the fountain spirit enough. Then she realizes she hadn’t thought of what to wish for.
Other times, Elizabeth is just plain random, such as when you bring her some pine resin. She compares it to soybean powder, which she declares herself an expert in, and informs you that she will reward you with soybean powder. She then gives you a bow for Yukari. Uhh…okay…?
Another time, she gets up on the podium in school (where nobody knows who she is, by the way) and asks the class which is better between Diet Food and Super Diet Food. If you answer the former, Elizabeth says you are wrong and punishes you by giving you Diet Food. If you answer the latter, Elizabeth says you are correct and rewards you by giving you Super Diet Food. Okay, this woman is amazing. She is, of course, the third character who carries Persona 3.
She is also Persona 3’s secret superboss.
Other times, Elizabeth is just plain random, such as when you bring her some pine resin. She compares it to soybean powder, which she declares herself an expert in, and informs you that she will reward you with soybean powder. She then gives you a bow for Yukari. Uhh…okay…?
Another time, she gets up on the podium in school (where nobody knows who she is, by the way) and asks the class which is better between Diet Food and Super Diet Food. If you answer the former, Elizabeth says you are wrong and punishes you by giving you Diet Food. If you answer the latter, Elizabeth says you are correct and rewards you by giving you Super Diet Food. Okay, this woman is amazing. She is, of course, the third character who carries Persona 3.
She is also Persona 3’s secret superboss.
Oh, she is not kidding. She moves twice per round, cycles through the elements, and sometimes uses physical attacks – and she hits like a freight train. With neutral affinity for an element and no defense buffs, I’m taking ~250 damage per attack, and keep in mind my Personas all have 99 Endurance, I have the best armor in the game, and I have the Divine Pillar equipped. Without the Divine Pillar, I’d be taking twice the damage and I’d spend the whole time healing and/or buffing, which obviously isn’t going to win me the fight.
Canonically, her sister is stronger, but Elizabeth’s boss fight gave me a lot more trouble for two reasons. First, Margaret had basically one rule – nobody can have any items equipped that null/absorb/repel attacks (such as the Omnipotent Orb). Elizabeth has many more rules. Doing any of the following will result in her spamming her 9999-damage Megidolaon until you die:
Second, Elizabeth has 20,000 HP and will heal herself to full once she hits half HP, similar to Margaret; however, Margaret does this once in her fight, whereas Elizabeth will do this every time she hits 10,000 HP. Since it’s impossible to do more than 9999 damage (with Armageddon) in a single turn, the following sequence of events must happen to win the fight:
Step 2 is pure luck. If Elizabeth continually uses magic attacks? You can’t reflect those, so keep waiting and hope you don’t die. If High Counter refuses to proc? Same thing. In my playthrough, I counted, and High Counter activated 6 out of 34 times, which is not a high chance. If Elizabeth does a physical attack and High Counter procs but it was her first action? Her second action is a heal to full because she hit the 10,000 HP threshold.
By the way, there is one additional thing the player can do to make the fight significantly easier: field a Persona called Orpheus Telos, which resists everything. I didn’t, because I don’t have him, because to fuse him, you must max all Social Links in one playthrough, and I’d rather make the superboss harder than cheat in a romantic relationship in a video game. I’m weird; get over it.
Manage to win the fight and Elizabeth gives you her bookmark. It does nothing.
Canonically, her sister is stronger, but Elizabeth’s boss fight gave me a lot more trouble for two reasons. First, Margaret had basically one rule – nobody can have any items equipped that null/absorb/repel attacks (such as the Omnipotent Orb). Elizabeth has many more rules. Doing any of the following will result in her spamming her 9999-damage Megidolaon until you die:
- Entering battle with anyone other than Minato in the party.
- Having multiple nulls/absorbs/repels from any source.
- Fielding a Persona that nulls/absorbs/repels an attack she’s about to use.
- Casting Armageddon before she has 9,999 HP or below (Armageddon, if you’re unfamiliar, is an item that does 9999 damage to all enemies, no questions asked).
Second, Elizabeth has 20,000 HP and will heal herself to full once she hits half HP, similar to Margaret; however, Margaret does this once in her fight, whereas Elizabeth will do this every time she hits 10,000 HP. Since it’s impossible to do more than 9999 damage (with Armageddon) in a single turn, the following sequence of events must happen to win the fight:
- Minato does less than, but close to, 10,000 damage, so Elizabeth has slightly over 10,000 HP.
- Elizabeth’s second action in a given round is a physical attack and High Counter activates to reflect the damage, bringing her HP below 10,000.
- Minato casts Armageddon.
Step 2 is pure luck. If Elizabeth continually uses magic attacks? You can’t reflect those, so keep waiting and hope you don’t die. If High Counter refuses to proc? Same thing. In my playthrough, I counted, and High Counter activated 6 out of 34 times, which is not a high chance. If Elizabeth does a physical attack and High Counter procs but it was her first action? Her second action is a heal to full because she hit the 10,000 HP threshold.
By the way, there is one additional thing the player can do to make the fight significantly easier: field a Persona called Orpheus Telos, which resists everything. I didn’t, because I don’t have him, because to fuse him, you must max all Social Links in one playthrough, and I’d rather make the superboss harder than cheat in a romantic relationship in a video game. I’m weird; get over it.
Manage to win the fight and Elizabeth gives you her bookmark. It does nothing.