Click Here for Update 94
: We still have a couple of days to go before we go into the dungeon, and a surprising amount of optional confidant events left.
: “That’s right. The turning point of any era is when a hero is born. They address everyone’s fears and worries and skillfully carry out a revolution. Representative Shido is like that, don’t you think?”
: Does he always gravitate toward the worst possible people?
: “A hero? Him…? Don’t make me laugh. This is getting really bad. We need to make everyone realize it.”
: Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be seeing a lot of optional confidant events that involve Joker picking a place to bring someone. I believe these can be done at any time once you’ve unlocked the relevant locations, provided you’re not going to rank up.
: “Sure thing. Where we goin’? I think I’d prolly pick somewhere with good food if it were up to me..”
: We’re going to take Ryuji to the ramen shop in Ogikubo first.
: “We’re gonna look like we’re just goin’ for the new fad, but my stomach’s already in ramen mode. C’mon, let’s get in line!”
: “Ain’t you totally fallin’ for this soy sauce flavor too!?”
: “Right!? Tokyo guys are all over this stuff! You’re one of us now. Anyways.. .thanks for askin’ me here today. I’m all cheered up now 'cause of you!”
: Joker’s like “I’m one of what? A dumbass who is so dense as to be unbelievable?”
: “Huh, looks like they’re givin’ out presents. Here, you can have mine.”
: “I’m not crazy enough about ramen to be showin’ that off in my room. All right, let’s run to the station and work that meal off!”
: Tonight’s more of the same, with an optional event with Chihaya at the Sky Tree.
: “If any place comes to mind, please let me know.”
: “The Skytree? Hmm… it sounds like a nice place. Let’s go!”
: “The skyscrapers are now under our feet… doesn’t that give you a sense of superiority?”
: “For some reason, when you say that, it makes you sound like a villain…when I’m at street level, all the tall buildings make me feel like Tokyo is a prison.”
: “But when I look down from here, it’s surprisingly huge. I forget how big it actually is.”
: “…All the members are still trapped in their tiny world. That’s why I need to help them realize that there are more important things than destiny. And since I realized that, I have to be the one to help them…!”
: This is another one of those events that I don’t think has a specific rank trigger. The only requirement to get it is that you’ve done the event at Jinbocho.
: “Okay.. I have to do something! But for now, I’m going to immerse myself in the feeling of being a ruler of this city… and I’ll do so by your side.”
: “I had a great time today. …This is to say thanks for always encouraging me. May the light guide you…!”
: Joker looks nervously at Beelzebub and Satan. “Uh, yeah.. the light.”
: There’s another Persona 4 reference on the TV today, so let’s go take a look.
: I’m of the opinion that Namatame should’ve fucking died. While you couldn’t make the comparison at the time, he feels a lot like Huey Emmerich in The Phantom Pain.
: “How was I supposed to know that throwing people into the TV kills them? You’re the one who belongs in that TV, Yu!”
: Killing him should’ve been the good ending. He’s either too much of a fucking idiot to live or was playing dumb to get out of being killed.
: “Isn’t he a bit old for a newcomer? Huh… that kind of makes me want to root for him.”
: “I love aquariums! I hope there’re penguins.. let’s go!”
: Hearing someone talk to a character played by Jun Fukuyama about penguins reminds me of Shirokuma Cafe.
: “Ahh… I could stare at this tank forever. Aren’t the movements of living creatures just fascinating?”
: “Right!? Their will to survive shines through in their every move. If only I could perform like this… oh, speaking of performances! I really want to see the dolphin show!”
: “I might get some inspiration from watching an elegant dolphin moving in perfect sync with its trainer. Oh, but there’s a sea lion show too… hmm…”
: “Kurusu-senpai, which would you rather see? The dolphin show or the sea lion show?”
: Kasumi really belongs in one of those Saturn/Dreamcast-era Sega games that had a strange fascination with sea life. This game would’ve been better on the Saturn because it would’ve forced them to cut a lot of the pointless dialog.
: “You’re a genius! Why limit ourselves to just one? All right, let’s check out the dolphins AND the sea lions! We still have some time before the show starts. Let’s look around at the exhibits a bit more.”
: “Oh, actually, before that.. I have a present for you, Kurusu-senpai. I saw this at the gift shop earlier, and it was so cute I couldn’t resist! Please, take it.”
: Speaking of games on other platforms, I played through Psychonauts 2 recently and I think it’s what they should’ve done with Strikers instead of making it a generic-ass action RPG.
: There is an entire stage where Razputin has a character explain Jungian psychology to him and then gets a powerup that gives him a Persona. That one stage fucking rules.
: We spend the night doing one last round of darts to get everyone to Rank 3 except Morgana. One thing I find out later is that baton pass kind of becomes a lot less useful in Shido’s palace.
: In fact, let me talk about that a little. Roughly half the enemies in Shido’s palace do not have a weakness, and in most cases it’s more efficient to just nuke them down rather than try to go for Technicals.
: What I’m saying is that Shido’s palace is poorly designed, a fact that will make itself obvious from about the first minute we actually set foot in it.
: “Charismatic, eh? I suppose that’s an accurate description, at least in terms of deceiving people. He only thinks of people as stepping stones for his own personal gain.”
: “…Father… Father, is this the type of person you fought to protect us from? I will fight against this injustice with my own power. I’ll be all right. I have Sis and the Phantom Thieves on my side. So.. watch over me, okay?”
: Okay, Makoto? Clearly you have no grasp of dumbass shonen battle anime. You say that when your partner has died and you’re ass-pulling a last minute ability because the writers wrote themselves into a corner.
: We’re going in tomorrow. Today, we have an optional event with Futaba in Asakusa.
: “Nope! Nope, nope, nope! I-I wanna go home and hide in my futon…”
: “A ninja!? Where!? WHERE!? I know… they have to be in hiding. I’ll find them! Now that I take a better look around.. aren’t there a lot of foreigners here? I guess this kind of place is unique to Japan, after all.”
: “Actually.. I’m a little excited too. Even though I hate crowds.. weird. Okeydokey, let’s go explorin’! Akira, you walk ahead and push through the crowd for me.”
: There’s a TV thing tonight, and one more tomorrow morning.
: We’re going into the palace today. Because it’s so long, and there’s not much to this update otherwise, I’ll do a little bit of it today just so you can get a taste for why I hate it.
: Wait.. did they just.. acknowledge that Persona 2 exists? The first detective is Katsuya Suou, who we’ll see if the Eternal Punishment PSP translation is ever finished. The second is Akihiko from Persona 3.
: And this is, of course, Chie from Persona 4. This is the second to last one of these - the last one is on 12/14.
: The theme for Shido’s palace is called Ark, and it’s a remix of the track that plays when you’re walking around during the VN portions of the game.
: “We know the identities of the five VIPs.”
: “A politician, a former noble, a TV station president, an IT company president, and that cleaner guy!”
: “Hm, according to the map, there should be a restaurant up ahead.”
: “That’s where the politician should be, yes? Let us go check it out.”
: “We might be able to gain intel from talking to them. Just don’t ask any suspicious questions, okay?”
: Now, I have a theory about Shido’s palace. My theory is that the level designers went “We’re going to make this big fuckoff cruise ship map” and then the budget alarm went off and they realized that was about as far as they were going to get.
: This first room off the main area is two floors and is completely empty apart from a bunch of shadows. It’s also confusing as shit, so let me cut through the bullshit and show you how dumb this is.
: We entered from the second floor, and in the bottom-right corner of the first floor is the restaurant. Now, let’s try opening that door.
: “A members-only restaurant… ‘Ristorante…Elite’?”
: Uh, Ann? The sign just says “The Ark of Elite Restaurant”.
: “You really can’t read that either? Aren’t you suppose’ta be Lil Miss English or something?”
: “Yeah, Ryuji? That’s not English, it’s Italian. So, anyway…”
: Now, you’re probably thinking something along the lines of “The game is telling me to go find a membership card before I go in, so clearly there must be one in this big empty room somewhere.”
: …Except you’re not whatever dipshit designed the event flags for this dungeon. No, we have to go into the restaurant so they can tell us that we don’t have a card and THEN we can go look for the card in the big empty room.
: “Oh yeah, we heard about that thing earlier… what a pain.”
: “This is bad… we should retreat. It seems we won’t be able to get inside peacefully until we can obtain this membership card…”
: Now that we’ve set this pointless event flag, we can go outside and find a new conversation that will lead us to the card. I reloaded and checked this exact spot, and it doesn’t show up until you’ve gone inside.
: The new conversation is on the second floor, roughly here.
: “Hey, isn’t this a good chance for us? He said he dropped his membership card.”
: “I am not keen on this, but we may be able to take it from him if we can find it first.”
: “Hell yeah! He dropped it, so we gotta swoop in n’ take it!”
: Now that we’ve hit all these stupid plot flags, we can follow the footsteps to the bar on the other side of the room.
: If you’re wondering - yes, this is exactly what the rest of this dungeon is going to be. It’s less a dungeon and more a boring, repetitive cutscene disguised as one.
: “That was actually pretty easy. Should it have been that simple?”
: “Who cares? It’s all thanks to that dick Shido thinkin’ everyone around him is incompetent.”
: Whoa there, Ryuji. Those are some awful big words for you to be throwing around.
: “So he doesn’t believe in anyone… that must be why there are so many membership cards around.”
: “Well, it’s not bad that it went by quick. Let’s head to the restaurant and grab a letter of introduction.”
: So wait, if he thinks everyone else is incompetent and useless, why are they even on his ship? You’re not really supporting the narrative of this being a magic ark to save a hand-picked group of elites.
: “Special guests…? Eh, who cares.”
: “A reserved seat is special information. That may lead us to the politician we’re looking for.”
: “For real!?”
: “That possibility didn’t even cross your mind!? Ugh. Anyway, let’s head in and find a seat.”
: “Try not to get too excited, okay? You’re embarrassing us…”
: “That must be the table.”
: “Right. That influential politician comes here.”
: “…Why don’t we have a seat at the table next to it and wait for him? I’ll go. He may become guarded if we go in a big group.”
: “Does someone want to come with me?”
: Joker volunteers to go knowing Makoto’s track record of being THE SMART GIRL.
: “Hold up, Joker! Lemme go with her! I mean, dude! It’s a restaurant!”
: “What are you, a preschooler!?”
: “I was wondering why you were so excited about this… sigh”
: “Why isn’t anyone asking me to do this?”
: “All right, we’re going in. Everyone else stay nearby. I’ll give the signal when the time is right.”
: “Man, what should I eat?”
: “You can’t get full off of food in a Palace.”
: “He’s as dumb as ever…”
: “A salad garnished with truffles.. and roasted lamb, please.”
: This sounds like something she read in a book, which I guess kind of makes sense given she’s a dipshit teen.
: “I can’t believe you can order so easily like that.. say, ain’t we kinda young compared to the others here? They’re all involved with Shido, yeah?”
: “They seem to be major figures in the political and financial worlds.”
: “Whose? Uhh… I don’t see any reserved signs or nothing here.”
: “What was that?”
: “Skull! Be quiet!”
: “S-Sorry…”
: “I apologize for our discourtesy.”
: “Excuse me, might you be Mr. Ooe?”
: “This will be an impudent request, but would you provide us a letter of introduction to.. Mr. Shido?”
: “We wish to be granted an audience with him.. his political ideology resonates so much with us… of course, the same can be said about you, Mr. Ooe.”
: “Yes, sir.”
: Basically, this entire dungeon is Hashino realizing that he wrote this entire plot centered around a shadowy cabal trying to take over Japan but forgot to write a narrative that supports it.
: Out of all the people the Phantom Thieves went up against, only one - Okumura - was a member of the cabal. In fact, they never even really try to tie in any of the other palace bosses.
: I think there’s some optional dialogue somewhere where they tell you that Madarame and Kaneshiro were giving money to Shido, but if you need to put that in optional dialogue it barely counts.
: “Considering your caliber, I would assume that the target must have been someone quite important.”
: “Oh, you must be being modest…”
: Shit localization, D-. See me after class. “Oh, you’re just being modest..”
: “That was you!?”
: Okay so wait. Why would you even.. why would you do that and not just kill the two people individually, especially when your entire goal is for the murders to look like accidents and go unnoticed?
: As we’ll find out later, Shido has a fucking yakuza hit squad that works for him - even if they didn’t have palaces/weren’t in Mementos, wouldn’t it have been easier to just order a regular hit?
: “I see.. that was very useful, Mr. Ooe. Actually, my sister is a prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor’s Office. I could pass on what you just said to her.. how about it? Won’t you give us a letter of introduction?”
: “The letter of introduction, please.”
: “Looks like you have one though! Welp, guess it’s time to use brute force!”
: “Guys!”
: This is going to be the formula for the rest of this dungeon: long cutscenes followed by minibosses.
: Ooe turns into Yamata no Orochi. We can destroy him with zero effort, but let me show you what our new boss fight strategy looks like.
: Yusuke uses Charge. Everyone else uses Concentrate except Haru, who doesn’t have it. Technically I should’ve subbed her out for Makoto but whatever.
: Joker uses Thermopylae for a full-party attack buff. This has a side effect of making enemies miss a lot. And now, let’s win this fight in exactly three attacks.
: Orochi is weak to psychic, which we can then pivot into an All-Out.
: Joker doesn’t even get his concentrated attack in.
: “Fine…”
: “In any case… it turns out Principal Kobayakawa was connected to Shido after all… no wonder he was so adamant about me digging up information on the Phantom Thieves.”
: That still doesn’t explain why some random high school principal was allowed into this big shadowy conspiracy. Did he order killings too?
: “Still, I can’t believe Shido just killed him so nonchalantly…”
: “The entire nation is underwater in his Palace. He must feel nothing toward one measly educator.”
: “In any case, even though that politician was cognitive, he turned into a monster. Up until Kaneshiro’s Palace, cognitive beings were nothing more than weak presences…”
: I mean, you know, apart from Sugimura in Okumura’s palace. Or the Haru-bot, but that wasn’t in the base game.
: “Hm? But he had the memories and appearance of an actual person…”
: “He was probably a Shadow fused with a cognition… it’s like making the Shadow wear human skin.”
: Of all the dumb bullshit in this palace, THIS is what you choose to explain away!?
: “I’ve never seen anything like that before… such power is normally impossible.”
: “Wasn’t Shido the one who destroyed the research done by Navi’s mother on cognition?”
: We already know he did!
: “Oh! Do you think that when he did, he took the results for his own purposes?”
: “Shido…”
: “For all we know, Shido could have some hidden trick that allows him to tamper with his own Palace. We need to be especially careful from here on out!”
: You know, it’d be cool if they actually did something with that. They won’t.
: “And in return, I only ask for your continued support… standing up to the world does require money.”
: “If the study of cognitive psience progresses, I believe it’s possible to increase the target range.”
: What’s the point of all that? Seriously, what was the point? They could have cut two thirds of that out - have the boss fight happen and then have the shadow explain the whole “I ordered the hit on the subway driver” thing.
: Can you believe we still have five of these to go? Yes, five. Not four.
: “According to the map, the elevator ahead will take us to the pool deck.”
: “Hm… if our intel is correct, there should be a womanizing ‘former noble’ there.”
: “Womanizing, huh..? I am so not up for this…”
: If you’re wondering “Is there going to be another segment in which Ann gets sexually harassed and/or assaulted?”, the answer is that this is a Hashino game. Of COURSE she will!
: The piano here plays a theme that is a remix of Ark, but sounds a lot like the opening theme to Persona 4. It has a name - the name is “Improvised Song Dedicated to the Next Prime Minister’s Ship”.
: This is honestly one of the only cool things they do with music in this game - the piano theme syncs to Ark, so when you leave the room it’ll go right into it, and it gets louder or fades based on your distance from the stage.
: And now it’s time for us to be introduced to this dungeon’s annoying and tedious gimmick.
: “This is prepawsterous! …Or something like that.”
: “Ugh, go to hell, Inari. Can you just come back here?”
: “Looks like we turn back when we leave the affected range. It’s not really a big deal.”
: “It most certainly is a big deal! Explain what just happened to us!”
: Okay so it’s called Furaffinity and..
: “So we’re nothing but rodents to him, huh? That’s irritating.”
: “I agree, but we need to be extra careful when we’re in mouse form. We won’t be able to open doors, and any enemy we try to fight in that state’ll beat us to a pulp.”
: They nerf the sight lines on the enemies so hard that I think I only had one notice me once the entire time I did this recording run - and it doesn’t matter because triggering a cutscene (such as examining the Shido statue) makes the shadow disappear.
: “So all we can do is hide? I guess we’ll have to change to a completely defensive strategy… I hope we can find a secret passage to get through there…”
: Here’s what the rest of the party looks like as mice.
: As a mouse, you can enter these small ducts that allow you to move between areas without opening doors.
: Now, there’s a bit of an exploit to these areas - the party will turn back when in hallways, so if you attract an enemy’s attention as a mouse you can run into the hallway and fight. You can also ambush enemies who are in mouse rooms from outside.
: At this point, the enemies kind of waver in and out of Insta-Kill range. Titania is an okay Nuke Persona in that she has Freidyne, Nuke Amp and Concentrate.. but we’ve got Michael for that.
: Most of the rest of this dungeon is going to be “Enter mouse room, hold down the Batman Vision button until you find a vent, enter the vent, repeat.”
: “Hm, something moved.. what was that button for?”
: These pillars control all of the Shido statues in the area. Turning them off turns off all the mouse rooms.
: We can then go back through that last big empty room to where we exited that first vent, and then open a door that goes to the next elevator… but first…
: There’s a door in the big central room we couldn’t open before because we were mice.
: Is it just me, or does that landing on the map leading to this room look like a dick?
: And now we’ve got a crystal skull to collect all of Haru’s hopes and dreams in.
: There’s also a room up in the corner that has a red shadow in it. We don’t need these, because we already fused the Persona from them.
: Kali is annoying to fight due to having a large HP pool, no weaknesses, and nulling fire. You’re going to want to bring Makoto in for this one.
: Or, you know, don’t. We don’t really need to. Alternatively, you can nuke her down to near-zero HP and use a Down Shot to get a negotiation.
: Welcome to the pool area. This is the last one we’ll be doing for this update - the rest of the dungeon will be in the next one.
: “Our target’s here, right? Some sort of former noble guy?”
: “Yeah. Let’s find him and get a hold of his letter of introduction!”
: I’d have done some in-between shots of Joker running to this guy, but the pool area is a big empty rectangle. There’s a total of like, two or three shadows walking around… and that’s it.
: “Uhhh.. nice day today, huh? …Actually, m-maybe not. I-I wanna go swimming in the pool! Yeah! …It’s your turn, Panther.”
: If they wanted to go for the whole “Oh, these are SPECIAL SHADOWS” bit, they should’ve done something to make the level design reflect that. Make the palace non-linear, and give each target their own mini-dungeon.
: “What!? U-Um… h-hello there. We really would like to speak with you…”
: “We won’t take much of your time. Will you listen?”
: “Please, sir.”
: “Hey, you little…!”
: “No, we apologize for our lack of manners. Come on, Skull. We should leave.”
: “To be fair, you walked up to him and said ‘Hey dude’. You need to approach him with more tact. Starting the conversation with a quarrel won’t get us anywhere.”
: Let me ask you this. Why. We already know this is going to lead to a fight, and the developers had to know that this entire area was devoid of content. Why would they not just skip right to the inevitable fight when they know there’s fucking nothing in this room!?
: “Our approach doesn’t matter if he won’t listen to us. What are we supposed to do?”
: “Let’s speak to the people around here. Perhaps we’ll learn more about that man’s temperament.”
: “At the very least we might get some kind of hint.”
: “I guess that’d be better than nothin’! Welp, askin’ for info it is!”
: There’s one NPC we need to talk to, and it’s in the back by where you can barely see that shadow in the background.
: “Heh heh heh… I’ve got the perfect plan!”
: “That laugh was scary…”
: “Forget about that! Onward to the bar, you guys!”
: Now, it’s obvious what his plan is, but just imagine if they’d done something more with it. Have this area be a thing where only women can enter, and the female party members are poofed into their swimsuits when they come in.
: There’s a lot of ways you could go from there - you could play through it as just the female party members and fight the miniboss without Joker or have them find a way for Joker to get in.
: Or shit, maybe even make the whole “We can make clones of people” thing feel like less of an ass-pull and make a clone to distract him while you forge a letter using his stationery or some shit.
: The stupid part is, they actually simplified this area in Royal. It’s kind of hard to show without a shot from the base game.
: Okay, so you see those pink doors at the back there? They’re right next to the “N” in “Flu Season”. Those are the doors to the dressing room, and they’re locked.
: Now, if you’ll look over to the right a bit, you’ll notice a vent in the wall. In the base game, the vent was hidden under the stairs and was obscured by the stair supports.
: It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that they didn’t fix this dungeon for Royal when it was really the one most in need of a rework.
: “Hey, you guys rent out swimsuits, yeah? Give us some, ASAP!”
: “You moron…! Come on, Skull, let’s get out of here! You too, Joker!”
: “Naw, that was part of my plan! Over there’s the fittin’ room… I’m just gonna need your help findin’ a way in, Joker!”
: “You’re seriously going for the fitting room? Come on, this feels like a criminal offense…”
: “But we’re the Phantom Thieves! Just go with it.. I got a plan! Hey, Joker, you wanna bust in here?”
: I don’t know why it bothers asking us. There’s no fights in the dressing room.
: “And more importantly, isn’t this a fitting room?”
: “Just trust me! Wait here and I’ll be right back!”
: I captured this shot too early to get the text to show up, but really, the empty text box works just as well.
: “What’s he up to? I have a really bad feeling about this…”
: “It’s perfect… hehehe! This’ll totally work!”
: “Skull.. you have quite a scary look on your face.”
: “Actually, it’s creepy.”
: “Don’t worry 'bout that. C’mon, let’s head back to where that former.. noble dude is!”
: “Well, there’s no way guys lounging by the pool would not check out girls in swimsuits.”
: “I wanna go home…”
: “Are we really going to do this?”
: “Um… no, but…”
: “If you guys don’t hurry, he’s gonna go off somewhere!”
: “Um, would you grant us a letter of introduction to Mr. Shido?”
: You know what would have been good writing? If they subverted expectations by having the noble go “What the hell is this shit, do you really think I’m going to give you a letter of introduction just because you’re in bikinis.. and whatever that thing Haru has on is that can’t decide if it wants to be a one piece or a two piece?” and then you fight him.
: “A nobody?”
: “Yes, that may be true, but… well…”
: “We’re…”
: This entire thing is voiced, and Ann’s Japanese VA speaks this out in heavily-accented English. The subtitles match what she’s saying - they didn’t change this part in the English dub.
: “Ann Windsor!?”
: Or even better, have Makoto SMART GIRL it up and that’s why he fights you.
: “My father is the descendant of British royalty.”
: So uh, which one? You’re too old to be Prince William or Prince Harry’s daughter, and way too young to be anyone else’s.
: “Seriously!?”
: “These girls are the daughters of my retainers.”
: “Oh, yes. Lady Ann treats us quite well.”
: “I am.”
: Ahh yes, the well-known half-Japanese side of the British royal family.
: “…People tend to have such misconceptions, but that isn’t true. My hobbies include tea ceremonies. Then again, my father forced me to learn that art.”
: “Servants?”
: “You’re absolutely correct. I do feel a little sorry for these girls.”
: “For real!?”
: It also would’ve been good writing if at the end of all this, the noble gives her the letter and goes “By the way, Princess Ann, what happened to speaking English?” and just kinda laughs her away, since she stops even trying to speak English after saying her name.
: “By the by, about the letter of introduction… if you’d be so generous to grant me one, I’ll consider introducing you to my father.”
: “Thank you kindly.”
: “Oh no…”
: “Hey, um…”
: “Excuse me?”
: “Would you kindly stop this?”
: An Ann chooses, a slave obeys.
: “Now that I’m done using you - get away, you creep! This guy’s a molester!”
: Okay, so now I have questions. Clearly, they had to take their thief outfits off to put on the swimsuits.. so why did they turn back into their thief suits? Did their original clothes warp to them magical girl style, or did they get duplicated? Is half the party going to be in swimsuits when they leave?
: “Uh, it’s your fault for falling for such bad acting…”
: “Oh shuddup! We’re doing this!”
: Oh look, it’s Forneus.
: Forneus retains his lightning weakness from Nocturne, though this fight gets a little interesting in the middle.
: He manages to brainwash Haru, who then casts a reflect on him. While I could easily just have taken the hit (since I think all of Joker’s Personas null or repel their primary element) I just said fuck it and went guns.
: “Only three more left! Were you asking Shido for mental shutdowns too?”
: We went through all of that bullshit, and he doesn’t even have anything to do with the plot! He had some people killed off-screen.. or maybe he didn’t. We don’t even know if Shido granted his request.
: “I see.. so this system of introductions is taking place in reality as well.”
: “So he’s screening potential associates to find wealthy people who won’t betray him…”
: “And that’s why the passengers are wearing masks. He isn’t deceived by people’s outward appearances.”
: Fuck you, Hashino! Stop explaining the goddamn visual design choices that I can already see! I have fucking eyes! Fuck!
: “In any case, Ann.. your acting skills have developed quite strongly since our nude incident.”
: “Stop bringing that up!”
: “I hope you remember the conditions for our arrangement. Support me as best you can, understood?”
: “I’ll have you step down if I catch wind of any slack on your end. Are we clear?”
: “…Good.”
: Why is this here? Seriously, why is this here? We already know Shido uses people and only really gives a shit about them as long as they’re useful to him. We also already know he’s willing to kill them when he’s done with them. There’s no new information here.
: “Let’s see… one of them is apparently at the slots, and the other doesn’t leave his room? Well, the map says there’s an entertainment hall up ahead. Maybe the slots are there?”
: “Seeing for ourselves will likely be the quickest way to find out. Let us proceed onward.”
: Next time, we’ll do the rest of Shido’s palace. We’ll also fuse Lucifer.