Persona 3 is focused on death, and it’s completely life affirming
Persona 3 is fixated on death, mortality, and finding ways to fill the empty spaces created by loss. That said, it’s a brilliant and life-affirming game that everyone should try.
This seemingly counter-intuitive dynamic is nothing new. The ancient Greeks, who were masters of drama and tragedy, discovered that a good story could lift the audience’s spirits by invoking a negative emotion and then dispelling it. They even created a cool word for it: catharsis.
Persona 3 is a great story, which achieves catharsis by tying together powerful threads of character development, music, and writing. It recognizes that mortality gives life meaning, and finds hope in friendship, humor, and purpose.
For those who don’t know, Persona is a classic RPG series. Each game is different, but there are common threads. Usually you are a teen in Japan who just transferred to a new high school. You’re on a calendar and have one year to get good grades, make friends, and solve a groovy mystery. It being an RPG, there’s a pretty good chance you’re also going to save the world.
Persona 3 wastes no time establishing its focus on mortality. Walking home your first night in the city, you witness a disquieting transformation. The moon is huge, the lighting is strange, and people on the streets are replaced with eerie coffin-shaped objects. Something is clearly wrong around here when the clock strikes midnight.
Much of the game takes place at the intersection of everyday life and fantastical nightmares. By day your school, Gekkoukan High, is a pretty cool place. By night it’s the epicenter of a creeping zombie apocalypse known as Apathy Syndrome, which causes locals to increasingly take on characteristics of the walking dead. Getting to the bottom of that mystery drives much of the story.
A cool thing about the Persona series is how everything seems to resonate within the overarching theme of each game. Persona 3 is first in the series where the player’s days are limited, and that directly reflects its commentary on the human condition.
The main character in Persona 3 lost their parents 10 years ago. Perhaps coincidentally, the first student you meet, Yukari Takeba, lost her dad around that same time. She awkwardly brings up that you have that in common, before realizing it’s an odd icebreaker. It’s a topic you will revisit as you get to know each other.
Nurturing relationships is key in Persona 3. It’s the best way to power up your character, but more importantly it draws out much of the heart, warmth, and humor in the game. You will frequently have options in conversation, and the right answers can save you precious time by building your relationships faster. Many of the characters aren’t who they seem, and all have more depth than they initially let on.
Legacy — what we leave behind when we are gone — also weighs heavy on the mind of several friends you make. You soon learn Takeba’s father died under shady circumstances involving a secret lab that once stood at the site of your new school. More than one legacy is tied to that dark secret, and a desire to reverse an ancestor’s mistakes motivates more than one of your friends.
You will soon notice many of the core people in your Persona life are recovering from loss. The others soon will be. The main character in Persona 3 is largely a silent protagonist, who helps by listening to others. There’s a certain wisdom in this.
There’s an old joke about RPGs, which points out that your first mission will likely be something like finding a lost cat and your final mission will be defeating god. The Persona series embraces many of these tropes, but injects heart and insight to create something special.
A good example: at some point you’ll likely hang out with your classmate Aigis while she searches the neighborhood for…a lost cat. She’s trying to help an old woman at the strip mall, who misses her pet. Eventually, you find the cat and return it. Time passes. When you and Aigis return to the mall, the cat is missing again.
Aigis offers to help again, but the old woman says there’s no need. She knows the cat has gone off to die alone, the way cats do. This is a bit of a curveball for Aigis, who looks like a young woman but is really a robot created to destroy monsters. Originally cold and robotic, a near death experience sets Aigis on the path to becoming truly alive. She’s an innocent eye, figuring out what gives life meaning in real time.
Afterward, Aigis says she thinks the old woman wanted to be there for her cat at the end, but could not. Aigis resolves that it will different for her with the ones she loves. It’s a promise she will keep.
Persona 3 poses some big questions, ones that don’t have easy answers. One clear theme is that the best way to recover from loss is finding something new. Humans are social: we need each other. The gameplay and story of Persona 3 reflect this basic fact. Being part of a close-knit group that finds each other to accomplish something worthwhile is a big part of why this series resonates so deeply. It’s like a dream you wish could last forever, but the calendar says otherwise.
No discussion of Persona would be complete without touching on the music, which is both excellent and reflects the themes of game. The original lyrics are Japanese, and perhaps a bit gets lost in translation, but read it like poetry and the themes shine right through. The gorgeous Time, which plays during your school days, tells us:
Time
Old dry winds go by
Uncertain space you need to fill in
Every time goodbye to yesterday
Greeted by today
Smiling at tomorrow
No one really belongs
Each time we hope to stay around
I know how you feel
Beyond your words
The inevitability of time, our choice of how to spend it, and the difficulty of establishing meaningful connections are all captured in this wistful and deceptively simple song.
The song Soul Phase, which plays at the beginning of the game and provides themes for much of its music, is more of a hard rocker. If Time is languidly accepting the inevitable, Soul Phrase is your hero raging against the dying of the light:
I believe so strongly
that tomorrow never falls away…
It still awaits
It still carries on through its old ways
till this moment of time…
Write me an endless song (When you let go)
As I’ll feel so alive (I’m walking on my way)
The Persona 3 soundtrack closes on a high note that sums it all up, with the beautiful Brand New Days :
There are days when I was tired to call “the meaning of living”, and then I was cowering
Even so, it’s still in my heart (so look up to you) — your smile…
Stay high, if you notice it
Hey, there’s a dazzling blue sky on the window
Surely, tomorrow’s door
Still green, will open
The message is clear: bad things happen in life. But together we can get through it and maybe even make the world a better place. Death is inevitable, but life is not; it is on us to make it happen with the time we have.
Voltaire — possibly one of the smartest writers in history — suggested that the best life starts with tending our own garden. Persona 3 is like that. You have a year and the time is yours to spend. You can do nothing but work, study, and play video games if you like. But by doing that, you’d miss the rich and compelling stories that are all around you.
Time is limited. Life goes on with or without you. Tend that garden while you may. These are the lessons of Persona 3, a game that’s fixated on death but makes you feel completely alive.
Nathan Lamb is a former reporter and news editor, who occasionally writes about video games for fun. His passions include the Persona series, history, and niche games likes Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
