Great Games: Persona 4
SPOILER ALERT: Major plot details for Persona 4 follow.
Persona 4 is everything you never knew you wanted. A role playing game that combines the emotional maneuvering of a Japanese visual novel, with the dungeon crawling tactics of Final Fantasy. A complex combination that breathes new life into a genre that grows ever stale. While Persona 3 laid the groundwork for the new direction this series would take, Persona 4 ensured this franchise a rightful place into the annals of great gaming, and even greater storytelling.
There’s so much to be loved about this game, that’s hard to pinpoint exactly where to start. It should be noted that you don’t had to have played the previous Persona games in order to thoroughly enjoy this one. Indeed, for many gamers, this was their first Persona, and their gateway into a larger universe. While the mechanics of the game can be complex, they aren’t difficult or beyond understanding, especially if you’re familiar with JRPGs.
P4 is set in the sleepy rural town of Inaba, not far from Mt. Fuji. You are a transfer student from the city to Yasogami High School. You can name your protagonist whatever you want, though his default names elsewhere have been either Yu Narukami or Seta Souji. You stay with your uncle, a police detective named Ryotaro Dojima, and his daughter, Nanako. Dojima is often too busy to spend time around the house, so Nanako quickly takes a liking to you, even calling you, “big bro.” Not long after you arrive, you hear of a reporter, Mayumi Yamano, who was killed after being publicly exposed in an affair with Taro Namatame, once a secretary on the city council. The murders continue, often done in a similar fashion, with the victim appearing on the “Midnight Channel” before being strung up on a telephone pole. The murders are quite the buzz at school, with everyone in speculation. You and your new friends, Yosuke Hanamura, a perverted goofball who’s also transferred from the city, and Chie Satonaka, a meat-obsessed kung-fu fan, discover the ability to enter the TVs. It turns out that the victims who appear on the Midnight Channel are often thrown into the TV first, where monsters known as “Shadows” run wild. The only way to beat the Shadows and saved the kidnapped is to adopt the “Personas”, or inner manifestations of the deepest parts of your soul. Shadows also represent your “true self”, but in the worst possible light. These Personas are, of course, kick-ass fighters styled after the kami of the Shinto religion, each with their own unique sets of strengths and weaknesses. In your battle to find the murderer and save the kidnapped, you are joined by the reserved Yukiko Amagi, the brash Kanji Tatsumi, the pop star Rise Kujikawa, the clueless Teddie, and the intellect Naoto Shirogane.
The gameplay of P4 has dual sides. The first half is the dungeon crawling RPG that seasoned gamers will come to expect.The battle system is take-turn, with the highlight being the abilities you gain from the Personas. The protagonist alone can acquire new Personas and change his once per turn, which increases the number of stratagems a player can employ. I often had Parvati ready for healing, Unicorn in stock with Light attacks, and Ose prepared to deal physical damage. Further, Personas can be fused in the Velvet Room, where sits Igor, the connecting tissue between all of these games. The fusion of Personas often results in the combination of their best abilities, and fusing on certain days can result in new bonuses. Variety is important because the key to winning battles lies in determining the elemental weaknesses of certain enemies. Based on this, you may need to switch around certain party members. For instance, Yosuke is a wind attribute and weak to lightning, whereas Yukiko is a fire attribute and weak to ice. Hitting an enemy’s weak spot sends them “down” and grants you a successive turn. When all the enemies are “down”, all the characters can pile on enemies for severe damage. Sometimes, if the damage you deal is insufficient, one or two characters will perform a special attack to finish them off. Chie can perform a “Galactic Punt”, she and Yukiko can do “Twin Dragons”, Yosuke and Teddie can attack with “Junes Special”, and other characters can even drive in on their mopeds. All this adds a sense of high-octane, comic book action to the generic take-turn combat model. This experience is greatly helped along by the J-rock themes “Time To Make History”, “Reach Out To The Truth”, and “I’ll Face Myself,” which grant the player, early on, a constant uplift of badassery. In a word, you don’t feel the grind.
The second half of P4’s gameplay adroitly captures the life of the average Japanese high school student, and having studied in Japan myself for four months, it all felt very familiar. For those who haven’t been to Japan, it provides them with a window into the daily routine of others in a foreign land. Every morning, you rise up for school, which takes up a good chunk of your day. Sometimes you’ll be asked questions about certain subjects. These are important to remember since they’ll be on the test. After school, you can spend the rest of your day hanging out with friends, practicing at school clubs, or going to the movies. At night, you can take up a part-time job, read books to gain new skills, or study to improve your knowledge. Not all of this is mere periphery, as your interactions with others forge Social Links, which improve the abilities of Personas in battle. While improving your skills can give you better options of choices to select throughout the game.
Indeed, what makes this side of the game so interesting is how much of the game is determined by your own choices. Much of this is also rather time sensitive, as you have until the fog appears before the kidnapped is slain. Fog often descends a few days after the rain, so its important to check the weather and plan how to spend your days. My method was to beat the dungeon first and then max out Social Links, only leveling up on rainy days when no one is around. How much you know about any of the major characters depends on how much time you spend with them on a day to day basis. Even the minor NPCs, like Kou of the basketball team, the distressed beauty queen Ai Ebihara, and the flirtatious nurse Naoko Uehara, are given a surprising amount of depth. Yet nowhere is personal choice most significant than in the selection of romance. You can take on an intimate relationship with any of the female leads you choose, but do more than one at the same time and the results on Valentine’s Day will leave you feeling horrible. The dating aspect, while minor, is an emotional highlight that’ll make even the coldest of hearts flutter. In lesser a game, all this would feel like busy work, but the characters in P4 are so damn interesting that I found myself looking forward more to building Social Links than to slaying Shadows. I could watch this cast for hours without a single Persona in sight. In fact, my favorite moments in the game were the slice of life stuff: the disastrous camping trip, the drunken King’s Game, and the cross-dressing of the school pageant. I’d pay top dollar to see a remake of the Odd Couple featuring the wacky antics of Teddie and Yosuke. That being said, if I had to offer a critique, it’d be that the fruit of romance is unavailable to female gamers interested in romancing a male. I say this because the romantic aspect was such an enriching part of my gaming experience, that I find it sad that there are others who’ll never feel the same.
The strongest feature of P4 is its characters. If you don’t like them, then you probably won’t like the rest of the game. They’ll make or break it for many. Yosuke provides much of the comic relief, always the first to express cynicism, and a clear everyman for the teenage male. Yosuke’s quirk is that he says perverted jokes, which is also his greatest flaw, as he can sometimes come off as an ass. What keeps him from being outright unlikable, at least for me, are his relatable failings. For his privileged position, he’s resented by many in the town, including his crush, Saki, whose family’s alcohol business has suffered due to his arrival. Like most teenage boys, Yosuke shares affection for girls who hardly feel the same for him. He can also be kind of a pushover around the spoiled girls who work with him at Junes. In the Shadow World, Yosuke has to confront the fact that he’s bored of living in the country, and that Saki hated him before her murder. What I liked about how this was handled is that there is no redemption or forgiveness from Saki beyond the grave. Yosuke has to accept unrequited love, but does so without any ill will towards her, even going so far as to defend her name when gossiped about. Yosuke also reveals a past jealousy towards the protagonist, being the star transfer student he wished he could be. Yet he overcomes his resentment, finding a deep love of all the friends he’s made in the boonies.
Few characters in P4 are as popular as Chie Satonaka, and its easy to see why. Chie reminds me a great deal of Midori from Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, an ineffable burst of quirky euphoria. Chie is always sure to tell you exactly what’s on her mind, eats more meat in a day than a T-Rex in a year, and is a fanatic for kung-fu movies. Her Persona even wears a yellow jumpsuit akin to Bruce Lee’s in The Game Of Death. It’d be wrong to dismiss Chie as a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” solely on the basis of her positivity. As if you date Chie on Valentine’s Day, she’ll wonder aloud why you picked someone as ordinary as her, but that’s just what gamers like about her. She’s a lot like meeting a real girl, someone you would call a best friend, someone who doesn’t feel out of reach. She isn’t a goddess on a pedestal, but imperfect, like the rest of us. What Chie has a gained from her kung-fu films a strong desire to protect those she cares about, particularly her best friend, Yukiko. She bears some jealousy towards Yukiko for her romantic popularity among the boys, but she knows that her friend is too timid and reserved to speak up for herself. So it gives Chie some pleasure to know that Yukiko’s dependent on her for security, and that this gives her an advantage. She has to confront the fact that her altruism wasn’t completely altruistic in roots. Chie’s growth comes from recognizing her failings, particularly in academics, but not letting that stop her in trying to learn from it regardless. As one who struggles in understanding from math, science, and history, I could relate to Chie’s message: even if you don’t know everything that goes on, these things aren’t to be ignored, and are an important part of bringing you here today. Another significant part of her maturity was in letting Yukiko save herself.
Yukiko Amagi is of particular interest to foreigners, because she represents an issue more central to Japan than to the United States. That’s the inheritance of the family business. Yukiko’s family runs the local inn, but she has mixed feelings about leading it in the future. She feels trapped and privately dreams of a “prince” who will save her. In the Shadow World, Yukiko had to confront these reservations, and accept that she needs to be her own prince. While quiet, Yukiko is hardly made of cardboard, never beyond making blunt remarks to Yosuke, or laughing uncontrollably at things that are hardly funny. Due to the media scrutiny her inn constantly receives, she feels the need to defend the honor of the good people who work there. Through her defenses, she decides to inherit the inn, not out of blind familial obligation, out of genuine love for those there and what they do. By having her do this, the game isn’t saying that filial piety is always best, but that whatever you do, be sure that your heart is in it.
While Chie has developed the most devoted following, it’s Kanji Tatsumi that’s sparked the most debate. The amount of ink that’s been spilled on this character probably accounts for more text than that in the game itself. This is due to the exploration of Kanji’s ambiguous sexuality, and that such a sensitive issue was dealt with in a mainstream video game. The LGBT haven’t always received the best of treatment in video games. Even the great Final Fantasy VII makes a gag out of Cloud being molested in a hot tub of muscle-bound men. While having a game character explore their sexuality may not seem so shocking today, its worth recalling the context under which this was done, a time when even Barack Obama was hesitant to voice his support for gay marriage. As Samantha Xu wrote in Gamasutra, “His struggles and their outcome may not be politically progressive enough to dub him the Harvey Milk of gaming, but his unique existence in Persona 4 is a small and positive move forward toward a more socially diversified gaming universe.”
Kanji starts off as the stereotypical macho man, he looks like a bosozoku (biker gang) member, routinely skips school, and is vicious to many who question him. We later learn that he has a sensitive side that enjoys feminine things like knitting, stuffed animals, and isn’t very resistant to cross-dressing. Much of the game features him dealing with what it means to be a “man.” His Shadow is a prissy gay stereotype, an extreme version of his true self, and fits in with the Shadows we’ve seen previously, Chie’s was a dominatrix who sat over a pile of students, and Yukiko’s was literally a bird in a cage. Kanji eventually accepts that the Shadow is a part of him, especially in terms of his more feminine qualities and phobia of women, but stays mum of whether or not he’s attracted to men. This is left to the gamer’s interpretation, with clues being thrown either way, and boy, have the interpretations been divisive.
The company behind P4 has taken a neutral stance on Kanji’s sexuality, with Yu Namba of Atlus USA, saying, “We would like everyone to play through the game and come up with their own answers to that question; there is no official answer.” However, some who have worked with the game have acknowledged Kanji’s internal struggles as helpful to gamers. In the opinion of Kanji’s original voice actor, Troy Baker, his character was implied to be gay, and referred to testimonies where gamers have said, “it gave me the courage to come out because I realized it was okay.” In an interview with Famitsu, Masaru Namba of Atlus in Japan, has similarly remarked,
“Tatsumi’s dilemma is to embody his Shadow, even with its contemptible appearance and behavior. This theme itself is very heavy, but I think, very realistic. Yourself, as you are, is not accepted by those around you… An American gamer sympathized with Kanji on this point, and told us that this story’s stance rescued them, that, “It was okay.” Ah, you know, this dilemma is easy to make light of, but in the public today, where statements and works like these are overflowing, Persona 4 was able to change a single persons’ life. I think that’s really wonderful.”
Others have been more critical, game reviewer Carolyn Petit wrote an analysis of queer themes in P4, in which she sees only disappointment and lost opportunity. She interpreted Kanji’s internal struggles as stemming more from fear of what women will think of his manhood, than that of him dealing with an attraction to men. She wrote, “By clearly raising the idea in the player’s mind that Kanji is gay and then rejecting that idea, Persona 4 sends the message that homosexuality is shameful and not to be accepted.” It’s worth noting that the reason for Kanji’s sexuality being so frustratingly ambiguous is due to the fact that the game is from Japan. Dr. Antonia Levi, a professor of Japanese history, has stated, “The Japanese see homosexuality as a lifestyle choice, very different from the actual homosexual activity.” She contrasted this to Americans who, “see things in very black and white — you’re either gay, or you’re not. The Japanese are more comfortable with the concept of being gay and not being gay at the same time. In this case, it makes sense that, in the end, the game is not telling you what to think about Kanji, or even if he is gay. Dr Mark McClelland, a scholar of Japan, has said, “the notion of ‘coming out’ is seen as undesirable by many Japanese gay men and lesbians as it necessarily involves adopting a confrontational stance against mainstream lifestyles and values, which many still wish to endorse.” I find myself much in agreement with Gamasutra’s Xu, who has reflected, “In Kanji’s case, remaining ambiguous and undeclared about his sexuality is not necessarily a rejection of its existence, or the developer’s displaying homophobia, but rather as a comment on homosexuality in a greater Japanese social context.”
I, for my part, had always interpreted Kanji as bisexual, or at the very least, bi-curious. I look, mainly, to his attraction to Naoto as evidence of this, as seemed he pretty swooned with her before he knew she was a girl, and after her true gender was revealed, this attraction did not leave. In any case, Kanji, like all the other characters in this story, is a teenager. They are still working to discover their identities, so at this point of their lives, things are still in flux, with nothing set in stone. So whatever he prefers, he’ll do so without fear of rejection, or a discrediting of his manhood.
In the hands of lesser writers, Rise Kujikawa could’ve been a cheap throwaway character. The ditzy, cheerful sidekick, is a staple of Final Fantasy, with characters like Selphie or Rikku. Not so here. Rise’s conflict is that of her pop star image as “Risette” and how much it defines her. Rise’s struggles with her identity as a famous pop idol reminds me much of Mima’s dual personalities in Perfect Blue. The difference is that Mima’s conflict was resolved by means of a cheap “Friday The 13th ending”, whereas Rise actually undergoes a personal reflection. Her Shadow is a hypersexual stripper, the way that she fears others see her, as a sex symbol with little else to offer. Rise inevitably realizes that she has no “true self” and can define herself however she wishes. Rise’s charm is that she’s a flirt, so it would’ve been all too easy to make Rise’s attacks relate to love or sex, but instead they made her an intellect, the foremost analyzer of enemies and their dungeons. Eventually, she does embrace the pop star side of herself, mostly due to the good it brought to one little girl. Like Yukiko, the point here isn’t that Rise inevitably chose her previous role, but that now the role is truly hers.
Naoto Shirogane enters rather late in game, but manages to leave quite an impression. P4 drew much of its plot from the mystery stories of Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle. As such, Naoto is a spiritual successor to Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, detailing educated analysis with all the coolness of a scientist. Naoto is initially believed to be a boy, but we later learn that she’s a girl who just dresses as one. Much like Kanji, her personal inclinations don’t fit with the expectations of her gender. Naoto was inspired to be a detective by the stories she read, in which all the leading figures were men. While her intelligence allows to her to work with the police force, she isn’t taken seriously due to her youth, and knows that as girl, she’d be further belittled in such an overly male environment. Some have identified Naoto as transgender, albeit, one poorly handled, though I can’t quite agree with this. If we take Naoto to be trans, then the implications of such are harrowing, with the game essentially stating that it’s better to stick with the gender you’re born in than to change it. This being said, I’ve never interpreted Naoto’s arc as exploring transgender identities, but as a statement against stale gender roles in patriarchal spaces. I think her character greatly parallels Clarice Darling from Silence of the Lambs, a brilliant FBI agent whose credibility is constantly undermined by the casual sexism of her peers. Manhood, in that space, also implies maturity, which many in the police don’t often see from children. The point in Naoto embracing herself as a woman was to say that you don’t need to be a man to be a great detective. On a final note, you’ve also got to respect a RPG character who has the common sense to use a gun while others play with swords.
Teddie turned out to be the most surprising character out of the cast, and in a good way. He starts off as the cute mascot who spouts exposition while making bad bear puns. None of this made him unlikable, but predictable. When he gains his heartthrob human form, however, he quickly rises to be one of the funniest characters in the game. While Kanji can be clueless, Teddie is outright oblivious, doing things that range from the absurd to the perverse. Yet it’s all done with such an innocent charm that you can’t help but be disarmed. We soon learn that even Teddie has a Shadow, who taunts him over the possibility that he doesn’t have a real self. Teddie gains his Persona by resolving to discover who he really is, it’s even briefly flouted that he may be a king. The twist is that he has no real identity, and is little more than a tamed Shadow with a blank slate. This turns Teddie into the ultimate epitome of what P4 is all about, you are what you make of yourself.
What is “the truth?” There are many. At first, you think the “truth” is, “who is behind all of these murders?” Yet the shocking reveal of the killer as Adachi, isn’t as interesting as why he’s so sour. Adachi is your antithesis. While you spent the whole game building relationships, he spent all his time destroying them. Adachi’s cynicism about life comes from his observance of the society’s hypocrisy. People claim to seek the truth, but they end up believing what they want to believe. Throughout the game, rumors are spread and hardly questioned. The news media clearly enjoys hyping and shaping narratives. All the terrors in the Shadow World are made from the terrors of people outside it. While the Shadows of the characters represent their inner conflicts, they also present the images that the world wants to see, be it a young pop idol stripping bare, or seeing a person you want to kill boasting of murder. Mitsuo is also a dark mirror, not just for your character, but for you, the player. He enjoys RPGs and lusts after girls like Yukiko, much like many who play this game. In RPGs, whatever you do is right, even though that mostly consists of whacking people you don’t like with a sword. So to Mitsuo, King Moron was just another low-level boss. When you fight his Shadow, he hides behind the veneer of a “hero”, but when the blocks are removed, we see little more than a crying babe. Adachi, the “adult”, is little different, though when he tries to hide behind the pseudo-philosophical reasoning of many a Final Fantasy villain, Naoto properly brings him down to size: “Your twisted logic is like that of an immature, egotistic brat!”
P4 has so much content that its unlikely you’ll get through everything in your first playthrough. At least, I didn’t. So it’s one of those rare RPGs with a high replay value. Even so, P4 became the Final Fantasy VII of the series, spawning a whole franchise. The game was remade for the Playstation Vita, as Persona 4: Golden, which many consider a superior experience to the original game. In addition to enhanced graphics, the game includes new cutscenes, an epilogue, and the character Marie. Marie is an amnesiac who appears a new assistant in the Velvet Room who writes tacky poetry. Your Social Link consists of teaching her about the world, and her observations are always interesting to watch. Other spin-offs including a dancing game, two fighting games, a crossover with P3, and a promotional flash game were you can peek at Chie in the hot springs. The first fighting game, Persona 4: Arena is a canonical sequel set during Golden Week, with Yu returning to meet his friends, but of course, shenanigans occur, and the members of the Investigation Team are made to fight one another in a tournament. They are joined by three members of SEES from Persona 3: Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Aigis. These three are on the search for the supposed “mastermind” of the tournament, the Shadow of “Labrys”, Aigis’s “older sister.” For a fighting game, the plot is surprisingly well-strung, despite some repetition and walls of text. The story was at its most interesting when the characters of P4 and P3 interacted, or when we saw the harrowing backstory of Labrys unfold. The fast gameplay is also well-executed, with a variety of physical or Persona attacks to be utilized, and each character having different combos or advantages.
P4 also earned itself two anime series, Persona 4: The Animation and Persona 4: The Golden Animation. P4:TA is a near flawless adaptation of the source material, indeed, it’s probably the best adaptation of a video game that I’ve ever seen. While following the game’s plot straight to the letter, the changes made for the anime are mostly welcome, such as mixing certain Social Links and the addition of Aika, who always delivers food no matter the location. The skin tones can be a little too tan, the movements can sometimes be stilted, and if you had a favorite romance in game, then you may be disappointed by the anime’s strictly non-partisan approach, but overall, P4:TA was an exceptional effort, and well worth the time. P4:TGA, on the other hand,was a squandered opportunity. While Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood rushed through certain moments, it still made sure to establish the setting, introduce the characters, and develop them in a new, but interesting manner. It didn’t rely solely on the audience’s familiarity with with the previous anime. It did this so well, in fact, that many consider Brotherhood to be an improvement over the original. P4:TGA is just the opposite, randomly stripping the new scenes from Golden without any context or explanation. The result is what amounts to poorly delivered fanservice with little emotional investment. Marie deserved far better.
With a lot the buzz these days being about graphics, hardware, and downloadable content, it can be all too easy to forget that video games are all about having fun. Some series, such as Final Fantasy, have been lacking in this quality, being more about decorum than density. As great as the P4 anime was, it didn’t quite have that same immersive quality as the game. The fact that P4 is a game serves much to its advantage. As with your friends you spend hours, time which doesn’t quite translate to a show, even a twenty-five episode one. There’s a point where they start to feel real, or people you wished were real. You wished to have had personalities like Kanji or Teddie as friends, to have had girlfriends like Rise or Yukiko, relatives like Dojima or Nanako. In this respect, P4 is pure fantasy, and the hardest part is leaving. At the train station, you realize that when you depart from Inaba, the game will end, and you’ll never be able to return. When the characters chase your train and wave good-bye, they’re waving good-bye to you, the player, and what you did for them. The miracle of Persona 4 is that it gave you a emotional connection with pixels inside of a screen, connections that it asks you to make with those in your own life. It was the most arresting emotional reaction I ever had to a video game, and it proved to me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the awesome artistic power of this medium.
And one more thing…
Chie will always be best girl.
Translation Note:
For the interview with Masaru Namba in Famitsu, I translated part of a response he gave from the original Japanese. I doubt this translation was without flaw, as my Japanese is far from perfect, so I have included the original selection here for anyone to read or translate for themselves:
“完二のジレンマの具現化であるシャドウは、見た目や言動はヤバめですが（笑）、テーマ自体は非常に重く、そして現実的であると思います。自分のありのままを、周りが受け入れてくれない …… 。あるアメリカ人のユーザーは、そんな完二に共感し、そして「それでもいいんだ」という本作のスタンスに救われた、と言ってくれました。ああいったジレンマを笑いのネタにするのは簡単ですが、そのような発言や作品が氾濫しているいまの社会で、『 』はひとりの人生を変えることができたんです。本当にすばらしいことだと思います。これもひとえに、開発チームの熱意と、完二役の声優さんによる熱演のおかげですね。 …… あれ、ちょっと完二シャドウの熱にあてられたかな？（笑)”
Originally published at http://sansuthecat.blogspot.com on July 18, 2017.
