Honestly I was confused during that scene because up to that point I’d just assumed that killing Shadow Kamoshida would have no effect on the real Kamoshida. Obviously it would, because they said it would, that’s just not the vibe I’d been getting.
The sparing-the-villain’s-life scene is a stock scene, but it doesn’t feel like it belongs in this game. Though that could be said of like half of P5.
Kamoshida really doesn’t deserve mercy, but if they wanted to go down the “spare him” route, they could have had someone say “hey let’s not cause mental shutdowns regardless of who the victim is. Our only frame of reference is a cat who also doesn’t know entirely how this works, we can’t say this is a perfect crime.” Granted they’re all teens and that might not be their first thought, but Joker’s heard a lot of NPCs mention mental shutdowns. He’s aware.
Yeah having it brought up that “hey the last person I heard go mental shut down crashed a train. He might start killing people if we break him”, that’s a thing!
: Welcome to the tail end of 4/20, where we’ll be using a bunch of days to get special stat boosts that we’d miss out on had we actually gone right from the dungeon on 4/20 to fighting Kamoshida on 04/22.
: John Persona spends the night of 04/20 studying. Studying has a special mechanic where if you do it on a rainy day, you get 5 points to Knowledge instead of 2.
: How about Bittorrent? Anyway, this is a pretty big hint as to why we’re actually bothering with the DVD player. In the original game, the DVD store charged you to rent a DVD and then you had to return it by a specific date or pay a late fee. It sucked.
: Keep in mind that Netflix was very much a thing in 2015 and 2016 and DVD rental stores were just as dead as they are today, because this game is written by boomers.
: The DVD store was completely changed in Royal to be a one-time fee that then lets you borrow as many DVDs as you’d like with no late fees.
: On the train platform, we have Ann pester us about sending the calling card. The game will do this no fewer than seven times before the end of this update.
: Nag number two.
: The after school block of 04/21 gets spent studying in the library. Early on, the library works kind of strangely: on any day where it’s not raining, John Persona will get too distracted by students talking about him and get 2 Guts and 2 Knowledge. On rainy days, we get 5 knowledge just like studying at Leblanc.
: Tonight, we’re going to get a new confidant. This happens to be the first night we could possibly unlock Sojiro as a confidant, so we’re doing that.
: “Good. There’re a lot of things I want to ask you. I’ll clean up, so just wait there.”
: “You’re not causing any trouble, are you?”
: Causing trouble? In the neighborhood? Of course not. No, I’m not linking the song because I’m saving that.
: “Good. I’ve gotta report to your probation officer twice a month. It’s already a pain in the ass as is, so don’t make me have to write even more crap.”
: I mean, apart from all the times the cops turned out to be demons. Like in Persona 1, or Devil Survivor if I remember right.
: “You can go and get yourself killed if you want, but don’t go dragging other people into your mess.”
: “The last thing we need is more idiots like you roaming around.”
: You might notice that Sojiro is an asshole. This will change very rapidly.
: “…I know. The usual, right? Okay. I’ll see you later.”
: “As you can see, I’m pretty damn busy both at work and in my private life. If you could lend a hand, it’d really be a great help…”
: Says the man who owns a cafe where we’ve only ever seen one customer in it at a time.
: “Now we’re talking. Either way, I won’t ask you to work for free. If you agree to help me, then… I’ll teach you how to make the perfect cup of coffee. Not a bad trade, eh?”
: “All right. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a deal.”
: What I’m saying is, someone had to have taught you how to make coffee! There’s no way you could rob a casino without knowing how to make coffee! I don’t even know how to make coffee! and then it cuts to Sae in her apartment opening a container of instant coffee and trying to eat it dry.
: Getting the Hierophant confidant doesn’t do anything directly apart from give extra EXP to Hiero Personas. What it eventually unlocks is the ability to make coffee (which takes time but gives you SP healing items) and curry (same but for HP) at night. This is why we needed Berith, by the way.
: “Gotta say, I’m glad you catch on quick with this stuff. Makes my life a lot easier. Just keep doing what you can. And don’t cause any trouble, alright?”
: “Glad to hear it. For today though, just make sure you lock the place up.”
: “And don’t go too crazy with the stuff in the shop. You’re staying here rent-free, so you should know not to go overboard. All right, see you tomorrow.”
: We have no reason to go there.
: Also, where the fuck are there arcades in 2016? Seriously tell me, I want to know. The last one in Connecticut closed down years ago and now it’s all shitty bars with a single Neo-Geo or a CPS2.
: “Why does it seem like products that come from overseas always work? Maybe it’s the unique taste? And there’s a delinquent, huh? Well, compared to Shadows, he shouldn’t be any trouble.”
: Now, you might think that the delinquent would be a confidant hint. It’s not. There IS a confidant that happens at an arcade… but it’s not that one.
: This is kind of unimportant. The school store does in fact sell a single Yakisoba Pan every Friday, and it’s basically Tae’s most basic healing item for like 1/5th of the price.
: As for what that is, I had to look it up because I honestly had no idea. It’s basically bread in the shape of a hot dog roll with noodles where the hot dog would go. There’s usually meat and some other stuff in there too.
: “Huh, I guess there’s a lot in this world you can only get for a limited time or during certain seasons…”
: “Right? Do you want to try and find some?”
: Nag count: 3.
: John Persona goes and gets his yakisoba pan. If you ask me, the only seasonal thing that belongs in a hot dog roll is one of the footlong hot dogs they sell at this small supermarket chain here in Connecticut. I really wish they sold those year-round.
: We can also run into Kamoshida in the hallways, who will come up and start complaining about how much he hates us. Not going to bother posting the entire 10-dialog-box thing unless people really want it for some reason, but just imagine him reciting the Navy Seal copypasta because that’s basically what he does.
: Our actual goal is to get John Persona a job. This is done using one of the two magazine racks in the subway station, because again, game written by boomers.
: There’s three jobs available. Triple Seven is a convenience store in Shibuya. Rafflesia is the flower shop where we bought the Bio Nutrients earlier. Ore no Beko is kind of special because we need to work it twice for a confidant later on.
: I’m only posting this because basically every job has the same intro phone call, so I can skip it later.
: First, I head to Untouchable to sell off the vendor trash we picked up, and bring our money total to over 130,000 yen.
: On the way out, the Velvet Room appears in Shibuya. This allows us to fuse Personas and buy them out of the compendium even when we’re not in a dungeon.
: Here we are, at what is absolutely not a Japanese 7/11. I had a friend who used to live near a 7/11 and it’s basically a vape shop now.
: Keep this in mind. On the 100% route, I think we work at Triple Seven something like three times, and the other two are both on days ending in 7 because it gets you a massive Charm boost.
: Nanami also gives us a quiz that I didn’t capture correctly where she asks you where the bar codes are on the milk. They’re by the company logo.
: This also gets us another 3,500 yen.
: “I see. You’re the only one here at night, so I’m not gonna bother setting a curfew or anything like that. So long as you’re taking school seriously, I don’t mind if you stroll the streets in the evenings.”
: “But only around these parts, got it? You go back on your word, I’ll kick you right out.”
: We now have the ability to go out at night… on some nights, but only within Yongen-Jaya. We will need this later in the week.
: “If you’re up for it, why don’t you learn how to work here…”
: This is the first time we’ll see this, so I want to point it out. The first thought bubble means that we have a matching arcana Persona (in this case Berith) and will be getting the extra confidant point. This bubble will only appear once you’ve gotten Rank 1. If you are going for 100% and you don’t see this bubble? That’s a permafuck. Note that you do not need Berith equipped, only in your roster.
: The second bubble tells us that this will be a guaranteed rank up event.
: “So you do get it. All right, put your stuff down and come back here. It’s about time one of the regulars arrives. She’s a talkative one…”
: “You know what I’m talking about, right?”
: “This store’s not the busiest around, but I’m real particular about how we do things here. And I’ll kick you out no questions asked if you serve a bad cup, you got that?”
: “What can I say, each of my regulars gets an experience personally tailored to them.”
: “Sorry, that’s a trade secret. You’re free to try and guess based on the taste, though.”
: “How about a nice dessert then? It’s only three hundred yen.”
: “That’s what being in food service is all about.”
: “Welco-”
: Newman!
: Shame if someone was to drink all the Snapple.
: “Your order?”
: “Your order, sir?”
: “Ugh… I don’t know where he caught wind of this place.”
: “Heh, I guess you have an eye for some things after all. Anyway, if you have time for questions, you have time to be learning about bean types.”
: “You’re not going to be any use to me if you can’t pick up on the ABCs sometime soon.”
: “Besides, ladies love a guy who knows his coffee. This isn’t such a bad deal for you.”
: Now, if this was Innocent Sin, this would be a choice point where you could make Joker gay or bisexual. Instead, we HAVE TO use the top answer for full points.
: “Heh, if only you were this obedient all the time. Either way, I’m gonna teach you right. That way, I’ll be able to sit back and relax while you work.”
: “Let’s start closing up. And no slacking off, you got it?”
: We also get some extra points in kindness for watching Sojiro tell some guy to fuck off. That’s customer service.
: “I forgot to ask for your cell number, so I had to dig it out of your papers. A real hassle, let me tell you.”
: “Anyway, you done closing up yet? I’m gonna have you handle that from now on, so you better learn now.”
: “Seems like you’re a quick study, so I hope you get the hang of it.”
: “…But man. Not sure how I feel about calling up a guy’s phone.”
: “Anyhow, we’ll get the routine ground into you. That way, I might be able to take it easy.”
: You just fucking said that not even minutes ago!
: “All right, don’t stay up too late.”
: Just like Persona 3 and Persona 4, there’s a home shopping show on Sundays. Everything they sell is incredibly overpriced. Also, who the fuck still watches those? Do those even exist anymore?
: Nag count: 4
: “You kids are lucky to receive direct instruction from a world-famous athlete like him.”
: “Sports have been regarded as sacred things that invigorate people since ancient times, so much that an emperor himself even participated once.”
: “Mishima-kun. Do you know the name of the Roman emperor who participated in the Olympics?”
: “That said, you don’t seem too into sports, Kurusu-kun.”
: So one thing I found out is that they actually changed all of the school questions from the base game to Royal. In the base game, the question was which sport Nero added to the Olympics (music and acting). Amusingly enough, most of the results I got when I looked this up were guides for the base game.
: This is true, but it doesn’t really give you the whole picture. Nero didn’t just win at those three events, he won every single gold medal even though he didn’t enter most of the competitions simply because he was the emperor. Amusingly, he did enter the chariot race and used a team of 10 horses (as opposed to 4) which caused him to crash almost immediately but still “won”.
: “Correct. Hm. It seems you’ve been studying after all. Nero won many awards in all kinds of competitions. All rigged in his favor, of course.”
: “Because of these selfish actions - not to mention a lecherous side - he became known as a despot.”
: “That said, recently people have begun reevaluating Nero’s reign. Regardless though, he was lacking in sportsmanship. He should have taken a page out of Kamoshida-kun’s book! Hahaha!”
: This is kind of fucked up when you realize that he probably knows about Kamoshida and won’t say anything.
: Nag counter: 5.
: We spend the after school hours studying for 2 points in guts and 2 points in knowledge.
: And at night, we use our new ability to brew coffee - it’s both a stat booster for charm and gets us a point towards Sojiro’s confidant. There’s actually unique dialog for these so I’ll let this play out.
: “You used Blue Mountain, huh?”
: Coffee snobs are the worst kind of people. They’re like audiophiles, only worse.
: I don’t even drink coffee and I know half of this is bullshit that someone at Atlus read in a snob magazine.
: “…the flavor profile is bland. You should practice more to bring out the roast’s full potential. Although, I see you’re preparing the cup the way I taught you. I’ll acknowledge your hard work.”
: “You look like a real barista standing at the counter like that. It seems like you’re following all the rules and instructions I gave you.”
: “I can’t believe this kid in front of me is a troublemaker with a criminal record… well, there’s no need to have a lengthy conversation about this. Just keep up with your training.”
: Welcome to 04/24, where I forgot to capture the calendar animation.
: I checked the shit on TV and it’s all overpriced. The “Share of Spring” set has some SP restoratives and a couple of crap healing items we don’t care about, the other is status recovery.
: Our first actual job today, as it will be every Sunday until our social stats are maxed out, is to go to the drink stand in the subway and buy aojiru. Aojiru is a stat boost that does not take time but is rather expensive at 5,000 yen per. The stat boost rotates each week.
: Aojiru is a drink with a name that literally means “green juice”. It’s made from kale and probably tastes like shit because kale tastes like gasoline.
: We grip and sip, and that’s how we get to rank 2 charm.
: It’s a good thing we did, too. We needed rank 2 charm in order to work at the plant store.
: Before we work there, I buy enough Bio Nutrients to last us until we unlock the ability to buy better ones.
: Unlike the convenience store, the dialog here is very short. Next time we work here, it’ll be a bit longer.
: We spend the evening doing another thing you can only do on Sundays.
: First, I buy some placenta water because that’s a perfectly normal thing to drink. All of the vending machine drinks are either 100 or 150 yen each and restore a tiny amount of SP.
: Just like the old guy says, every Sunday, the local bathhouse has a “medicinal bath” which raises social stats. I think the bathhouse raises charm every time, but I might be wrong and it might rotate like the aojiru does. It costs 500 yen, which is pretty reasonable.
: Honestly, after the whole “gamer girl bathwater” debacle, the image in my mind of a “medicinal bath” is a guy at a lever shouting “LOWER THE MEDICINAL GAMER GIRL!” and then a generic Twitch streamer gets lowered into the bath like a human tea bag.
: This gets us I believe 5 points in charm.
: On the 25th, we get a seat on the train, which allows us to read Pirate Legend.
: I don’t know if I’d call having your crew mutiny and then being executed by the English government an exciting adventure, but it does get us 5 points in Guts.
: The morning dialog is another “hey this thing exists” about the local movie theater. We will be going there, but not anytime soon.
: I should’ve said not telling because John Persona has never seen a movie before.
: “I get you! They’re just so cathartic to watch! When I turn back into a human, it might not be so bad to make our debut on the silver screen…”
: I mean, I could care less about how bad the writing and localization is in this game, but I won’t.
: "I’ve seen this a lot these days, where people are using a phrase differently from its real meaning. It reminds me of something I’ve been hearing politicians saying: ‘My country, right or wrong.’ "
: “They wouldn’t be saying it so stubbornly if they knew how it was originally used. All right, Takamaki-san. Can you tell me how its meaning has changed?”
: “Huh!? Oh, uh, yeah! I mean-”
: “Hey, Lady Ann is obviously panicking! Be a good guy and help her out!”
: “Crap - Hey, Akira, can you give me a hint here? What’s that phrase originally meant to convey? ‘My country, right or wrong’?”
: I mean, this one should be pretty obvious if you speak English. In fact, about the only way it makes sense for Ann not to know this is if she doesn’t speak English… but unlike Lisa Silverman, I’m pretty sure she actually does.
: “Oh, right! Like, it doesn’t matter what they do - you’ll always support it.”
: “But the original meaning is different? So I guess it’d be something like…”
: “That is correct. The phrase was originally meant to inspire you to take responsibility for keeping your country on the right path.”
: “The full quote is 'My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong to be set right.”
: This quote is attributed to Carl Schurz, a German expat who became a Senator from Missouri and later Interior Secretary under Rutherford Hayes.
: Schurz was a fucking asshole and a white supremacist who opposed things like the protection of civil rights for Black people and Ulysses S Grant’s use of the military to fight the KKK.
: “So you can see the original was more about taking responsibility for your country’s future. Unfortunately, these days it’s used more to justify blind support instead of actually fixing social issues.”
: The thing is, the kind of people using it that way are probably the kind of people Carl Schurz would approve of.
: We get two points towards Ann’s confidant - one from the question and one from having a matching Persona. We also get two points to Knowledge.
: In the afternoon, we make a trip to the library to return Pirate Legend and check out The Alluring Dancer.
: We also swing by the DVD store, which I mentioned earlier was changed to a one-time fee. I never mentioned the reason the late fees were bullshit, though: the reason is that there will be points where the game skips multiple days at a time - and if your rental was due during that period, you’d automatically be late.
: These seem incredibly outdated until you realize that both MacGuyver and The X-Files had reboots in 2016. Beverly Hills 90210 also got a reboot… in 2019… which died immediately after it started, airing six episodes before Fox took it off the air, so it’s just out of date because this was written by boomers.
: Ghost was a 1990 movie with Patrick Swayze on it that I saw part of at the gym once and wished I hadn’t, kind of like that time they aired Jaws 2 when I was on the treadmill.
: Oh christ no. Good thing today isn’t a Wednesday or a Saturday. My idea of flower arrangement is “just kinda jam everything into a vase until it doesn’t fit anymore”.
: Oh god dammit no.
: Uh… Fuck.
: Well, this is gonna be a permafuck. I didn’t save since right after the dungeon, and-
: We’ll start with the gerbera. Gerbera daisies represent happiness.
: The customer’s an older man, probably married. Get me a crysanthemum. White crysanthemums mean “truth”.
: And finally, a red rose. You don’t even need to guess to know that these mean “I love you”.
: She probably didn’t notice the “Jun Kashihara” byline on that book.
: That’s understandable, though. I tend to go by “Jun Suou” these days.
: Well, that was weird. Felt like Innocent Sin all over again for some reason.
: And now we’re at Kindness 2.
: The night of the 25th is spent with Sojiro. Again. We’re basically doing this because there’s better social stat gains during the day then there are at Leblanc, and we can do Sojiro’s confidant at night.
: “Hey, how’s it going? You getting any better at remembering how to handle different bean types? Now then… there are three factors that determine the flavor for a cup of coffee: grind, heat, and time.”
: There’s three, alright. First is “Did you burn the shit out of the beans?”, second is “Did you use a filter?” and the third is “How much did it cost?”
: It’s like those audiophiles who claim they can tell whether a CD was pressed in Germany or Japan by how “warm” the sound is, or the ones who claim they can tell the difference between a regular ~900kbps flac and one of the ~2500kbps ones where each track is like 200MB.
: “First up is the grind. For the siphons we have here, we’re aiming for medium-fine.”
: “…Are you listening to me? What grind are you supposed to use?”
: “Right. Keep up the good work. It doesn’t net much profit given the effort it takes, but hey, money is money.”
: “I’m not gonna forgive you if you serve our customers crap coffee though. Just remember that.”
: “Yes, hello?”
: “…How’d you get this number?”
: “Now? Where? …Fine.”
: “Sorry, something just came up. We can keep going with the lessons some other time.”
: You know what would’ve been cool? If they’d made it so that Sojiro was actually the Devil Summoner protagonist and that asking “Is it trouble?” is the correct answer because if you answer the first one he gets suspicious that you know about him and Tamaki.
: “…It’s nothing you need to concern yourself over. Just do the dishes while I’m gone. Oh, and remember to shut off the gas before you close up shop.”
: “It’s nice having someone around to help at times like this. Turns out you’re actually a harder worker than I thought. Keep it up.”
: With this, we’re already at Rank 3.
: “Sorry about earlier. Had to take care of some business.”
: Yeah, you know, just a little casual devil busting.
: “But don’t worry, I’ll put you to work. We’ve got lots of time on our hands.”
: “Huh. You’re awfully obedient today. Well, as long as you help out and do your part, I’ll treat you fairly. Just make sure you turn off the stove before you head to bed.”
: Nag count: 6. There’s a 7th nag that happens tomorrow (which I may or may not have shown, I don’t remember) and that’s the last one before we do the boss.
: Afternoon is spent studying for 2 knowledge and 2 guts.
: This also levels up our guts.
: At night, we sit in Joker’s room and watch The X-Files, just like we did at the end of the last update. I forgot to capture it that time.
: Unlike books, which give you a single stat boost once you’re finished reading them, DVDs give you a stat boost each time you watch them - so we get a total of 6 guts (three tonight, three on 4/28) over two nights. This means that it’s only really worth it to read books on the train.
: And that brings us to up to where we sent the calling card in the last update. Next time, more stat raising and confidants until we find out what happened to Kamoshida.
Aah, the gaining and grinding of stats. An age old tradition of Persona 3 and onwards.
Le Pape! The Pope! In english, The Hierophant or High Priest, in contrast to the High Priestess. Hierophant is the bridge between the divine and the mortal, symbolizing a figure that has gone through the Tarot and will assist you in traversing it yourself. A big, powerful force in your life, that helps you become who you should.
Persona 5’s Le Pape is… pretty stark. The two pillars that stand behind Le Paper symbolize Law and Liberty, and they’re so tiny on this card! In additional, he is only pointing downward, taking on the modern parlance of “rejected”. He is smiling devilishly instead of looking upon you with grace. Quite a nasty lad! If he’s watching over us, it’s not likely to be very well.
Given Sojiro’s seeming lack of care to Joker, caring more about his customers, and generally being an asshole (though meaning well, if we’re being honest) I think he fits the corrupted Le Pape quite well.
Kindness to one’s own self is a form of kindness, absolutely.
I don’t know, call me a cynic but I have a feeling that this Nero guy isn’t a great emperor.
: It’s 4/29, and it’s the start of Golden Week. I wish I got a week off like, ever.
: Today, we first need to switch out our DVD. We trade The X-Files for a copy of “Wraith”, a reference to the 1990 movie “Ghost” with Patrick Swayze.
: While we have invitation from both Ryuji and Tae, we take Ryuji’s for now.
: “I was trainin’ for nationals back in the day… but now I totally suck balls.”
: If the yaoi doujin artists have anything to say about it, Ryuji’s been sucking balls for a lot longer than today, if you get my drift.
: This is a bit of weirdness in the writing. They were in the building… on a day when there’s no school? Ryuji even mentions in his IM that they had to use the back gate to get in.
: “Huh? H-Hell no…”
: “…”
: “That don’t got anything to do with this…”
: “… You’re right. Look, back then, I…”
: “I haven’t changed at all… but y’know, you actually helped me calm down a little.”
: “I’m glad you were here with me. Thanks, man!”
: Follow Up is a skill that every party member gets at Rank 3. It’s a relatively small chance (I can’t recall it happening too much in my base game run) but is a free knockdown if it goes off. The guides claim that the chance of this happening is higher on Safety and virtually nonexistent on Merciless.
: “Now they’re just arguin’ with each other… I should stay out of it.”
: On a side note, I started watching the LP of the Final Fantasy 7 remake and now I’m hoping the rumors about Atlus wanting to remake Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment never come true.
: “I wanted to thank you again for today. I really owe you one, man.”
: “I get pissed off so damn easily. I really gotta work on that.”
: “Nah, this one’s definitely my bad. Besides, I can’t cause a scene. Don’t wanna get you pulled into even more bad shit.”
: “Huh… I gotta wonder what they were arguin’ about.”
: Seriously though the thought of Innocent Sin getting a remake is just… no. You know they’d do what Square-Enix did and pad it out with random cutscenes of Kashihara teleporting around and taunting Tatsuya about how good it felt to plunge a spear into Maya.
: “…but hey, I’m an outsider. Nothin’ to do with me. Thanks again for today!”
: On the TV tonight is something special. Just like the older games, Persona 5 has hidden follow-ups for each of the Persona 4 characters on the TV on certain nights. This is actually about Goro Akechi, but…
: This is the only time Naoto is ever referenced - unlike most of the P4 cast, she doesn’t get a follow-up. Why, you ask?
: Because she got her own spinoff novel, that’s why. It’s never been translated, but the wiki claims it takes place three or so years after Persona 4 (in 2013) and that Naoto is in her final year of high school - it’s got issues with the overarching canon and probably is non-canon anyway.
: We spend the night studying at Leblanc. Because it’s not raining, we only get 3 knowledge points instead of 5.
: We start the morning by reading The Alluring Dancer on the train. This will get us 5 points in charm when we finish it.
: “…I wonder if Kamoshida really had a change of heart? What if we failed? That’s all I’ve been able to think about…”
: John Persona is still processing watching the entirety of The X-Files over two nights. The truth is out there.
: “We did do what we could. I guess all I can do now is believe…”
: “But how strange… I feel a bit better now. Maybe it’s because of your composure?”
: John Persona, not having listened at all, turns to Morgana and goes “I think she’s one of the aliens.”
: “What’s important is becoming someone else.”
: Okay, I can do that… oh god! What if I never really was American and I’m actually some random Japanese guy in a coma dreaming that he’s someone else?! What if this is one of those Your Name situations!? Fuck! Make it stop!
: “In this day and age, being able to swap your mask depending on the situation is a critical talent.”
: Anyway, Ms. Chouno is kind of a running joke because she’s over 30 and not married, but wants to be. The joke is that no one wants her.
: “How will you fare, Mr. Kurusu? Here’s a question. “Are you a wunderkind?” See if you can work out the answer based on what you know.”
: That… that isn’t even English! She’s supposed to be the English teacher! That’s a German loan word! I also feel like it’s kind of weird that they ask questions that a lot of English speakers would know but Japanese speakers wouldn’t when this game was intended to be released internationally from the get-go.
: “Are you a wunderkind? Well, seems to me like we need to work out what that is so we can answer properly.”
: “Well, seems to me like we need to work out what that is so we can answer properly. My German is a little rusty, but I’ll give you a hand if I can.”
: This seems insultingly easy, but I’m told that they did not change this for the English release: everything is exactly the same as the Japanese version minus a handful of very controversial lines we’ll see later on at some point. This is supposedly why there’s a lot of questions about very obscure topics few outside of Japan are likely to know.
: “Right, wonder! So something… wondrous, I guess, or impressive. Next, the ‘kind’ part. That’s probably…”
: “Hm… let’s think about this again. Oh, huh. If the “kind” in “kindergarten” refers to all the kids in it… yeah, that’s gotta be it. ‘Kind’ means a child… or at least a young guy, in your case.”
: I honestly want to know how the fuck they did this in Japanese. Japanese has a word for kindergarten, and not a loan word either: it’s 幼稚園 (ようちえん) which is pronounced “yo-chien” and sounds nothing like the German/English word.
: Honestly, it would’ve been cool if they’d done this with a Japanese word and tried to walk you through it like that for the English release. Would’ve felt less insulting, too. Sure, it wouldn’t have made as much sense from a story perspective, but I mean…
: “That’s right! I was asking if you were a wonder child - in other words, a youth of uncommon talent.”
: “But I suppose if you were able to think and adapt so quickly, that proves you certainly must be!”
: “Oh, the word ‘talent’ comes from the Greek ‘talanton’, a sum of money referenced in the Bible. The more skilled a servant was, the more coins they would receive from God - their talent led to wealth.”
: “The English word ‘talent’ didn’t originally have anything to do with our modern concept of celebrity. But the ability to change one’s mask depending on the situation is surely a talent given to one by God.”
: Somewhere, in a far-off space dildo, Philemon is holding up both middle fingers. A faint “FUCK YOU!!!” can be heard on the wind, followed by the sound of Tatsuya punching him.
: “You really think he changed?”
: “Well, yeah…”
: “Mr. Kamoshida has taken the day off.”
: “He ain’t here?”
: “Don’t tell anyone that you heard this from me… but we received word that Mr. Kamoshida is placing himself under suspension. It’s such an important time before the tournament too…”
: “Principal Kobayakawa went to talk to him about it, but he supposedly wasn’t making any sense.”
: “Wait, a suspension!?”
: “Not so loud!”
: “The talks about your expulsions may be put on hold too… I don’t know too much about it though…”
: “Anyway, I’ve relayed what’s going on to you.”
: “Looks like something happened… at least it sounds different from a mental shutdown. I guess all we can do is wait…”
: Just like he says, Ann’s confidant CANNOT be advanced for about another week. We also need a base of 2 kindness just to be able to start her confidant.
: In the base game, this sucked, and let me explain why: in the base game, Baton Pass was only unlocked at level 2 and was done on a per-party-member basis. This means that you didn’t have it for Kamoshida’s palace for anyone but Ryuji.
: This is obviously a parody of the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, which I had to look up a plot synopsis of because I’ve never seen it - it’s about a kid who gets accused of cheating on a quiz show.
: Watching the movie gets us 5 points to guts.
: So wait, what you’re saying is… we gotta do… what? Gotta believe? Shit, how did I not do that earlier?
: Let’s just check the TV to make sure there’s nothing about Yukiko on there.
: Sound familiar? If you didn’t read my Innocent Sin LP, this is more or less the plot of Innocent Sin - Jun becomes Joker and uses that to reunite Tatsuya, Lisa, Eikichi and Maya to remember that they all knew each other as kids when they played Featherman together.
: I’d like to think that somewhere, on a couch in an apartment in Sumaru City, Tatsuya just turns his head and looks at Jun with an expression like he knows Jun did this.
: We spend the night crafting lockpicks. Fortunately, I have a shit ton of materials so crafting 2 isn’t a big deal supply-wise.
: This gets our proficiency to 2.
: It’s Sunday, and I think you all know what that means.
: Time to grip and sip. This week’s aojiru gets us 2 points in proficiency.
: It’s also time for a visit to Dr. Femdom. Note that this is why we were kind of grinding guts as hard as possible - we need a minimum of 2 to advance the confidant any further.
: “I made various adjustments to the previous drug, based on your trial results. All right, drink it down in one gulp.”
: “…Ah, your reaction to it is absolutely perfect. You feel a bit dazed, hm? Yes, I mixed in some special… components.”
: “Okay, let’s take your temperature and blood pressure. I’m also going to draw some blood. I also want to perform a few motor skill tests, but those might be to much for you right now.”
: “Anyway, since we’re in the final stages, I should first stabilize the fundamental formula…”
: “…Must be under the orders of the Medical Chief of Staff.”
: “This kid here is my only patient today. If you’re asking for his medical expenses, I’m guessing I’m under suspicion of improper billing?”
: “But without a receipt, I’d say you’ve been sent on a wild goose chase.”
: “You’re being manipulated. That ‘report’ is fictitious. It’s nothing but an attempt to harass me.”
: We’ve actually been playing as Hisao from Katawa Shoujo this entire time.
: “He’s stressed about taking his entrance exams. I have some drugs that help with relaxation.”
: “So, is there anything else? As you can see, I’m pretty busy here.”
: “I think we’re going to get along just fine. It’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure it was my former superior who made that false report.”
: “You eavesdropped on our conversation the other day, remember?”
: If by ‘the other day’ you mean like two weeks ago.
: “He’s just trying to put pressure on me… by having the police investigate me and my practice. Anyway, I need to draw some blood. There’ll be some mild anemia, but only temporarily. You’ll be fine.”
: “It’s part of our “deal”, remember?”
: “I like kids who listen to their superiors. Enjoy your medicine.”
: And just like that, we’re femdommed into Rank 2.
: “…Only kidding. Okay, please lie down. You can go home once I’m done.”
: “You still seemed kind of dizzy when you left, so I figured I’d check in. You know how it is. Some patients get sick on their way back home.”
: “Yeah, you sound all right. Guess I’ve got nothing to worry about. I think you’ll be okay, but call me if you start feeling sick.”
: “Okay, I’m looking forward to our next clinical trial.”
: So I’m sure you’ve noticed something, and that’s that the phone calls are all kind of repetitive. I kind of wish that Atlus had just chosen to increase the number of points you get per correct twanswer rather than add these. They feel like they were written by an intern who suddenly had to come up with… just over 140 phone calls, if my math is right.
: “Let’s just believe in that while we wait for tomorrow.”
: We spend the first night of May buying more placenta water, and then going to the medicinal bath.
: I just realized that with his eyes closed, Kobayakawa has a face that is dangerously close to the Yaranaika face.
: “That is why I will confess everything to you all…”
: “…Huh?”
: “I have repeatedly done things that were… unbecoming of a teacher. Verbally abusing students… physically abusing my team, and… sexually harassing female students.”
: Note that he never confesses to raping Shiho. This is not one of those things where the writer never intended for him to have raped her and we all took it the wrong way - he definitely did, and it’ll be brought up again much later.
: “There were even students that I sentenced to expulsion, simply because I didn’t like them…”
: “I will, of course, rescind those…”
: The thing is, that’s not typically how expulsion works in the first place. It’s usually done by the local Board of Education, not even by the school’s administrators.
: “I am truly sorry for putting innocent youths through such horrible acts… I am an arrogant, shallow… and shameful person. No, I’m worse than that…”
: Way to kill the mood, Kamoshida.
: There’s something about the way the principal is looking at Kamoshida’s ass that makes me laugh at this.
: “Don’t run, you bastard! Shiho’s still alive even after all the things that made her want to die!”
: “You have no right to run from this!”
: “You’re right… you’re absolutely right… I should be punished under the law and atone for my crimes…”
: “I did horrible things to Takamaki-san as well. In return for giving Suzui-san a position on the team… I… I tried to force her into having relations.”
: Part of me thought that “Oh, maybe Kamoshida didn’t mention raping Shiho so that the students wouldn’t find out” but then he goes and announces he tried to do the same thing to Ann.
: “As of today, I will resign from my position as an instructor and turn myself in.”
: “Seems like it. But, was this really for the best?”
: “You mean the police stuff? Well, that’s true…”
: I mean, his entire confession was kinda weak. Probably would’ve been better to off him.
: “Huh…?”
: “We all knew… but pretended we didn’t.”
: Anyway, since I don’t have much else to talk about now that the Kamoshida arc is over, let me just talk a little bit about how I’ve seen people react to Kamoshida.
: People who have played this game are usually divided into two camps: those who think Kamoshida is the best written villain in the game and those who think he’s too over-the-top.
: A lot of people in the first camp point out that Kamoshida is suspected to be based on a real person who is also an Olympic gold medalist by the name of Masato Uchishiba. Uchishiba was arrested in 2011 on rape charges shortly after being released from the Kyuushu University of Nursing and Social Welfare (where he was a women’s judo coach) due to complaints of sexual harassment.
: The main difference is that Uchishiba was thrown out of the school pretty much the second they learned about it, and was arrested not long after that.
: The people in the second camp tend to point out that Kamoshida is a little too over the top and that he’s kind of a cartoon character. You can’t hear it, but in Japanese, Kamoshida’s voice is very high-pitched and he sounds kind of like Snidely Whiplash. You wouldn’t notice it in the dub because they got DC Douglas to do it.
: “No, it’s okay. The same goes for me too… besides, that’s all in the past now.”
: “I can’t apologize enough for what I did to you. …I swear I’ll make it up someday.”
: “Looks like Kamoshida ain’t the only one that had a change of heart.”
: My personal thought is that he’s just a poorly-written clone of Principal Hanya from the earlier Persona games. Hanya pretty much had the exact same motif that Kamoshida does - seeing the school as his castle - except he didn’t need to beat or rape anyone to make you want to kill him.
: “Man, I’m glad for you. Looks like those rumors are gonna go away.”
: “My thing doesn’t really matter. We made Kamoshida apologize about Shiho. That’s more than enough for me.”
: “You should hurry and tell her about it then.”
: “…Yeah.”
: I thought about it, and I think there were ways they definitely could’ve made Kamoshida work better without being a clone of Hanya.
: One example I thought of would be what if they had focused on the whole “disbanding the track team” thing. Have Kamoshida be a narcisstic type who thinks he’s really great for winning gold in volleyball when in reality no one outside of the school really gives a shit - and that pisses him off.
: What he really wants is to be an Olympic coach or something where he could build a legacy, but instead he’s at Shujin. At some point, he crosses a line where his job stops being about his students and starts being about him, and then he fabricates evidence to get the track coach fired because if the track coach made nationals at the same time he did he might not get as much attention.
: Have him be the kind of person who tries to destroy anything he sees as a threat to his goal, to the point where he starts gaslighting the best athletes on the other teams to get them to leave so they don’t distract from his volleyball team - and if they don’t, he makes their lives hell. He hates Joker for more or less the same reasons (student with a criminal record is a bigger story than he is) and hates Ann because she’s a model who gets regular media attention that he clearly deserves more.
: “I see… so we need to persuade the Shadow without killing it, and then send it back to its real self. Our targets won’t undergo a cognitive collapse if we do that.”
: “So, we can get 'em to confess with no bad stuff? Hey! That works for me!”
: “Do you have to be so loud?”
: “Don’t worry about it. So… how’d it go? With Shiho, I mean.”
: “She’s regained consciousness!”
: “For real!?”
: “It was only for a little bit, but I got to talk to her! I was able to tell her that Kamoshida admitted to what he did!”
: “Shiho, she… she told me she was sorry. Looks like she found out that I was flirting with Kamoshida for her sake… and here I was, wanting to apologize to her.”
: “Kamoshida’s at fault for all this.”
: “I know… Shiho’s mom is thinking of transferring her to another school after she recovers. The whole sexual harassment and attempted suicide… people will label her after that.”
: Oh right, so one thing my better-written Kamoshida doesn’t take into account is Shiho - and really, the answer is simple. Kamoshida tried to get rid of Ann by spreading rumors, and when that didn’t work started using Shiho as a wedge to force Ann out.
: “Sounded lke Shiho had the same idea too.”
: “It’s gonna get lonely…”
: “But I think it’s for the best… I’m sure it’ll be hard if she stays here.”
: “She’s alive. You can see her anytime.”
: “…I need to change too.”
: “That aside, I was surprised you could hold yourself back against Kamoshida’s Shadow.”
: “It wasn’t like that… I just wanted Kamoshida to apologize himself.”
: “You’re so kind, Lady Ann.”
: “No matter how much of a shitbag he was, finishing him off woulda left a bad aftertaste, huh?”
: "Huh? That’s not it. I think revenge is better served if I make him repent. Realizing what he’s done, he’ll grovel for forgiveness for the rest of his life, you know?
: “A-Anyways, that’s all settled… but you know, there was one more thing I was wonderin’ about that castle.”
: “Why was Kamoshida the only one who had that Metaverse thing?”
: “It isn’t necessarily limited to him. It’s something anyone could have if their heart became warped from their desires.”
: “Anyone…”
: “Wanna check it out?”
: “N-Not right now. We better lay low for a while. People are still gonna be talkin’ about Kamoshida. Then again, it’s totally impossible for someone to find out what we did at his Palace.”
: “Yeah, about that… weird rumors about you guys are already going around. Stuff like, you got together and threatened Kamoshida with something close to physical violence…”
: “The hell!?”
: “People aren’t going to easily believe that phantom thieves really exist. The calling card’s being treated like it was a prank by someone who knew what Kamoshida was doing.”
: “Makes sense… we’re the ones who did it, and I still don’t completely believe it myself.”
: “Let’s wait for things to settle down for the time being.”
: Okay so here’s my question. Could you abuse the shit out of this if this was a real thing by just going full on Snidely Whiplash for the sole purpose of generating a palace so people could “steal” your treasure and just repeat until you’re rich? I’m just imagining Joker pushing around a wheelbarrow full of cash and Igor pointing and yelling “That’s not how it works, asshole!”
: Anyway, this part about an Olympic gold medal only being worth around $300 is accurate. I looked it up, and as it turns out the medals aren’t made of gold - they’re mostly silver with a bit of gold mixed in. This is presumably because they don’t want the athletes to cash the medals in for money.
: Silver has a spot price of around $27 right now, and that’s on the high end. The highest I’ve seen it go recently is around $30 an ounce. Silver is stupid cheap compared to gold…
: As you can tell, today is not a good day for precious metals. Today is not a good day for anything. Still, that medal would probably be worth a bit more today than it was in 2016.
: Someday, I’m going to do a Let’s Play of the stock market. Just as soon as I find a good paper trade thing that lets you do it without paying and without having an actual brokerage account.
: “There’s no way I borrowed thirty thousand yen from you!”
: “Wouldn’t it be around that much with compounded interest?”
: “Interest my ass!”
: Fun fact, because Japan’s interest rates had basically been zero since the 1990s, assuming Ann was charging prevailing rates she’d basically get nothing.
: “I’m not saying that I’m taking all of it. I mean, it’s your fault for not paying me back all these years! It’s just common sense!”
: “Dammit…”
: “I agree on laying low and keeping an eye on the situation. However, you dragged me into this. It would be nonsense not to celebrate a successful mission.”
: “I guess we could blow this dirty money on something fun.”
: “Discussions among phantom theives are to take place over luxurious food. How about it?”
: “Hey, wait- …nah, I guess it’s fine. There’s somewhere I want to go then.”
: “Where’s that?”
: “It’s a place Shiho and I have been wanting to go for a while.”
: “I owe money, so I can’t complain… you good with that?”
: Joker’s thoughts immediately drift to how he could buy a new anime gun with that kind of money. Maybe even two. Get Ann an MP5 with Hatsune Miku all over it and he can get a gold-plated Desert Eagle with Rin Kagamine carved onto the barrel.
: “I’ll leave it to your discretion as well, Lady Ann.”
: “I’ll call and check the prices later then.”
: “When should we go? Wanna do it soon, like tomorrow?”
: “Why don’t we go on the last day of the holidays? It’ll help energize us when school life starts up again the day after.”
: “Then… the 5th, on Children’s Day.”
: Oh god, that last line. That gives me horrible flashbacks to Tales of Zestiria.
: If you haven’t played that, ToZ was both total shit and also very controversial among Japanese players. Why, you ask? One of the female characters who was originally intended to be playable got sidelined. She was a fan favorite among Japanese players.
: From what I heard, it was because the guy directing it was dating someone new and wanted them in on the project, so he got rid of the character and replaced her with one his girlfriend could voiceact.
: The new character was probably the worst-written anything ever - she’s a merchant who is actually the leader of the assassin’s guild, but don’t worry she’s totally a good guy because, in her own words “I only kill bad people.”
: There’s nothing interesting on TV and we can’t do Sojiro’s confidant tonight.
: What we do have is a new crossword!
: Clearly, Golden Time is the “just after midnight” time slot when Game Center CX airs on Fuji TV.
: Finally, we end the night (and the last day of the Kamoshida arc) by studying.
: This gets us the much-coveted second rank in knowledge.
: Next time, we’ll do more stat-raising and confidants until the next plot arc rolls around and I have to grind a metric shitload of money so we can see some of the new features in Royal.
It’s a… bit more complicated than that. Also just a pretty good film honestly?
I’m thinking no. Your desires have to be genuine, I feel, to be twisted up into a Palace… and treasure doesn’t necessarily mean “valuable”, as the 300 dollar medal shows.
The only reason the game can come up with for not murdering people is that when you think about it Not Murder is actually meaner than Murder which is…cute? In a way?
I’m glad that we got pulled into the mind prison of exactly Kamoshida and not the freshman thats beating himself up internally because he stole a video game.
With the Feathermen thing I’m going to choose to imagine Tatsuya and Jun just watching in silent shock going, “Thats not what happened. Thats not what happened at all.” Bet you its a gritty reboot and in the show they have Featherman Red and Feartherman Pink hook up instead.
Yeah I know but I just like the idea of like “Shit, I need cash quick, I could go to an ATM… or I could invade someone’s brain for cash”.
I mean, I guess. I think it’s just that I want to see a Persona game starring a character like the Devil Summoner protagonist who would just cut Kamoshida off during his speech and shoot him.
Jun sitting on the couch just waiting for the scene he wrote in where Black and Red kiss so he can do it to Tatsuya while it’s happening on screen, only instead it’s Red and Pink and the end credits have Lisa as executive producer.
Hi! I uh… started recording for the next update and got most of the way through a big cutscene before I remembered something. Remember how I said earlier that I had already named the main character Akira Kurusu (but he will always be John Persona in our hearts)? Well, there’s something else I need a name for:
It’s 12 characters, and I don’t think you see it anywhere except the online mode and the status screen.
John Persona fits with spaces.
I’ll mention in this the update, but the default name is “The Phantoms” and is kind of a reference to Soul Hackers, which featured a hacker group by the name of “The Spookies” who had a ghost as an emblem.
I’ll need a few days to work on the update up to the naming point since it’s one gigantic cutscene, so you’ll have until… let’s say Sunday to come up with one.
On that note, the first P5D stream will be next Saturday, 09/25. I will be accepting co-commentators.
I think John Persona should be it. We may be called Akira Kurusu, but in our heart and soul we are all John Persona.
My mask is John Persona. Jung would probably have a field day but thanks to my mask I can barely spell Jung let alone know what any of this is about.
: It’s 05/03, and unfortunately the rest of Joker’s school vacation is on autopilot. We can’t do anything during the day.
: “Hey, you can hear me, right? You don’t have plans, do you? Come help me out, instead of sleeping your life away.”
: “We do owe it to him… we’ll just have to wait. Hurry down and help him out.”
: “Hm? Isn’t this…?”
: “I knew it. This is your school, isn’t it?”
: “sigh Things might be getting turbulent at school, but you need to just keep your head down, all right?”
: I feel like for the first half of the game, there just needs to be a button where any time Sojiro comes on screen you can press it and it’ll just flash “OK BOOMER” and skip it.
: We spend the evening watching the first half of Wraith, which gets us 3 points to kindness.
: “Just do it. Don’t get cocky with me.”
: Oh look, Sae’s here, no doubt about some irrelevant bullshit. She’s going to order curry and then ask Sojiro how he learned to make it because no one could possibly make curry by themselves.
: “Not at all.”
: “Oh, is that the thing everyone’s been talking about?”
: “Doesn’t it make you curious? People who were living normal lives suddenly went mad or deranged out of the blue…”
: “Not to mention it’s happening one after another… could they really be coincidental?”
: “Hmm… leaving that aside, what’ll you have?”
: “…I’ll have the house blend please.”
: “Uhh, no, not exactly.”
: Ahh, nope. It’s just me, Gabe Newell. And then Sae interrogates him because there has to be a conspiracy about why Episode 3 never came out - it couldn’t just be because Valve has become a progressively shittier company since the early 2000s.
: “Are you a high school student? Where do you attend?”
: “Oh? Someone I know goes there as well. I’ve heard that things are rough right now.”
: “A teacher named Kamoshida confessed his crimes like he was a completely different person, supposedly.”
: Her next line should be “It’s like we’re in a poorly-written videogame.”
: “And it happened all of a sudden one day… can a person’s mental state change so easily?”
: “…Huh.”
: “Is my drink ready yet?”
: “Coming right up.”
: Naturally, we go to Untouchable to sell the medal.
: “Huh? A gold medal? Why do you have this? We don’t buy any fake or stolen goods here, kid.”
: “…Hold on a sec. Lemme see it.”
: “I’m just… not gonna ask where you got this. How’s 30,000 yen sound for it though?”
: Iwai reminds me a lot of The Dark Id.
: “Hmph. The both of us know you ain’t findin’ another buyer for that thing. Just take the 30k.”
: By the way, selling precious metals very rarely works this way in real life. Most places will not give you spot price for metals - they’ll only buy slightly below that so they always make a profit. It’s one of the reasons investing in physical metals is a bad idea.
: “It’s almost time…”
: Oh, this bag. This fucking bag. As you’ve probably guessed by the pattern of “all characters with portraits are confidants or major bosses”, Iwai here is a confidant.
: In the base game, you had to open the bag to start Iwai’s confidant. Doing so required a minimum of 4 guts. In the 100% guide I used for the base game, the earliest you could do this was near the end of August, and you wound up finishing it with less than a month to go before the last day because that’s how unimportant he was.
: A lot of people never even made it that far - one of the top questions on Gamefaqs is “How do I open the bag?”. The reason they give it to you this early was originally for people playing New Game + who had maxed social stats.
: Make no mistake though, we still need 4 guts to start his confidant. The good news is, we’ll be doing this significantly earlier - we’ll have that by the end of July.
: “Glad you’re so quick to understand.”
: “…They’re here.”
: “I dunno, lookin’ for evidence? You tell me, Mr. Detective.”
: “Well, you guys gonna search me? Go on, do what you gotta do.”
: “An upstandin’ citizen’s supposed to cooperate with the cops, right?”
: “Can you two hurry it up? I got a business to run here.”
: I know what’s in the bag, but I imagine the cops opening it and inside are two Desert Eagles. The first one is named Nagisa, the second one Honoka, and they’re pink, white, covered in Pretty Cure and have little rings on the underside of the grip to hang charms on. The iron sights have been replaced with tiny anime figures. The cops open the bag and it causes the Third Impact.
: “…The kid’s just a regular ol’ customer. You can check the tapes if that’ll convince you. They’ll show you everything that’s gone down here today.”
: “That’s right, Mr. Detective. Maybe next time try not harassin’ my customers, see how that goes.”
: “More importantly… aren’t you curious about what’s in the bag?”
: “Well? Come on, let’s open it up.”
: “It’s incredible though! Miles ahead of the one Ryuji had. There’s something weird about that place…”
: “Hey Akira, I just had a great idea… we should totally buy this gun from him later!”
: “I mean, it’s perfect. Something this real-looking would work wonders in the Metaverse…”
: “Anyway, he told you to bring it back the next time you came, right? You should try striking a deal with him when we go to return it!”
: “I saw the news coverage. You know, about Kamoshida. It’s getting a lot of coverage…”
: “I don’t know… the reaction’s been bigger than what I was expecting… I guess I’m just… surprised.”
: “I don’t think we did anything wrong though. I wonder if we helped those people speak up about it…”
: “That’s pretty amazing, huh? I didn’t think we’d actually be able to do it! And yet look at us now! This calls for a celebration.”
: “Let’s meet in front of Shibuya Station at noon tomorrow. Don’t be late! Oh, and did you pawn off that medal? You didn’t forget, right?”
: “Good to hear! I already made reservations! You should be really excited about the place I chose, by the way. I’m sure everyone’s gonna love it!”
: “Ah, a restaurant of Lady Ann’s choosing. Finally, a decent meal! Hey, what do you think we’re gonna be eating?”
: I’ve made my position on sushi clear in the Innocent Sin LP (it sucks).
: We spend the night crafting. I only make one lockpick because there will be at least two more crafting sessions before the next dungeon. Because we have proficiency at 2, we can now make 3 items per session.
: “Oh yeah, I heard that the police are coming to interview some people at school.”
: “That’s troublesome.”
: "Our names are gonna come up for sure. People’re spreadin’ all sorts of rumors about us and Kamoshida… but we got ‘em pumped up! I keep hearin’ stuff like ‘The Phantom Thieves really stole his heart!’ "
: “I think most people don’t believe it, but some of 'em actually seem grateful. Look at this.”
: “Pretty cool, huh?”
: “I was just desperate to deal with my own problems, but seeing people saying all this feels… strange.”
: “Yeah… hey, what do we do now?”
: “Well of course I’m gonna eat, but…”
: gasp “This place has a time limit!”
: “Oh crap, we only got an hour to eat!”
: “Just fifty minutes left!”
: “I’m not gonna finish all the beef dishes at this pace!”
: What are you, Chie?
: “I need to eat my way through the entire desserts menu!”
: What are you, Stocking?
: “Look after our stuff! We’ll snag somethin’ for you guys too, don’t worry!”
: “Seriously? Only meat?”
: “Now, where should I start?”
: “Hey. Calories.”
: “Shuddup! How much do you think oneo f these costs!? I’ll never get the chance to do this again! Mmm, the Wilton Hotel cake buffet… I’d heard rumors, but I never thought it’d be so amazing!”
: “And… where’s our share?”
: “I didn’t really know what you’d want… so I just grabbed you some beans.”
: “B-Beans!?”
: “There were some pretty bizarre things there too, so we got you a variety of those. Fried bananas, preserved eggs, and… some kind of beans.”
: “M-More beans?”
: “We put so much on the plate that it got all mixed up, but it should probably still taste good.”
: “This is just plain grotesque. Let’s go, Akira. These two just don’t know what fine dining means! We’ll show them!”
: “You guys watch our things while we’re gone! Wait patiently for our return!”
: Bet the yaoi artists loved that one.
: “Ooh, this part’s cream cheese!”
: “They’re not even listening.”
: This is how you’re supposed to know that the cast are teenagers because only teenagers would pay $80 for a hotel buffet. I don’t know if things are different in Japan, but they act like this is some super upscale dining experience when in America (and as far as I know, everywhere else in the world) buffets are the lowest form of food.
: “They have a lot here… but fish should come first! Let’s fill our plate with all sorts of fish. Which table do you think they’re at?”
: “I’d prefer it raw, but grilled is great too!”
: So, what I’d like you to do is pay attention to what the “shitty adults” are saying, because Morgana is going to give us a summary that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense at the end of this.
: “Hold on a sec…”
: “Huh. It sounds like the Kamoshida incident is the talk of the town.”
: It strikes me as really weird that people here are talking about Kamoshida by name. Kamoshida was basically a local scandal in Aoyama, and we’re in Shibuya right now. I’m not surprised they know about him, but it seems weird they’d have remembered his name.
: “Shoot! They noticed you! Just grab some food and act natural! On the plus side, we’ll get to eat the food later.”
: Let me ask you something. When was the last time you saw a rich person eat at a buffet?
: “What’s so bad about kids coming to enjoy a buffet? Hm, I wonder how the other people here are reacting to the news. Let’s get some more food and listen in.”
: We then go through several eavesdropping cutscenes like it’s Dagger of Amon Ra.
: “Look into? I guess they’re investigating Kamoshida? They don’t sound very enthusiastic about it though.”
: "Gah! Grab some food! Ah, get the part that’s not too fatty!’
: Eggplant parm. Chicken parm. The legendary Pizza Burger. What I’m saying is that Morgana is wrong.
: “…Sorry, I got a bit carried away there.”
: “How can he be so insensitive? A student almost killed herself because of that Kamoshida…”
: “Quick! Grab some food! And don’t forget the crispy bits!”
: So now we’ve been through three different conversations where the adults have done nothing but talk about Kamoshida.
: “A sudden change of heart, huh? I suppose I can’t blame him for seeing it that way.”
: This is the last one of these we have to do. It’s as boring and repetitive here as it is in game.
: “Ah. I got distracted.”
: “So they don’t believe themselves, but they’re making up stories to make the Phantom Thieves seem real… and they’re doing this in front of the actual Phantom Thieves.”
: “Whoa! Act fast, and get some food! And make sure it’s got a lot of whipped cream!”
: “Well, that was rude. Did you hear him? He said you were weird.”
: “But it’s shocking. So many of the adults here don’t seem like nice people. Now, according to what we heard…”
: “It seems most adults aren’t very interested in the news about Kamoshida.”
: I’d like to point out that out of the last 12 adults we’ve seen (roughly 10 here, plus Sae and Sojiro) 12 have talked about nothing but Kamoshida.
: “Well, now that we’ve got a nice variety of food on our plates, let’s head back to the others.”
: “Whaddya think about comin’ up against such ritzy food?”
: “I was thinkin’ that too, but take a bite. Usin’ better ingredients makes stuff taste way different!”
: Wait, what? How does that last line track with what I just answered?
: “Look at you, acting like you have a refined palate all of a sudden.”
: “Don’t you think you’re eatin’ too much, Mona?”
: “There’s no… knowing when we’ll get to come back here again.”
: “Sure, but you guys brought back loads of food. It’d be a shame to let it all go to waste. Why don’t you help them out, Ryuji?”
: “We should both help.”
: "Oh, me? I’m waaay too stuffed! I couldn’t possibly help!’
: “Yeah, stuffin’ your face with cake. Whatever. Let’s deal with this ourselves!”
: “W-We did it…”
: “Ye-Oh yeah… this is a victory… for all of us…”
: John Persona looks Ryuji straight in the eyes and goes “It looks like food to you?”
: “Not exactly…”
: “Good job, you guys. How about one last dish to cleanse your palates? I recommend the seasonal tart! The grapefruit has both alluring sweetness and a tangy sourness!”
: “Stop… I don’t wanna hear about sour stuff.”
: “This isn’t good… I gotta go to the bathroom…”
: “M-me too… please… carry me gently…”
: “What was that? …Urp! We don’t got time for that. C’mon, let’s go…”
: This is me every year at the family Christmas party.
: “I totally panicked when I saw the ‘Closed for Cleaning’ sign at the bathrooms…”
: “You were talking big about eating until you puked, but you really did puke… are you some kind of moron?”
: “Hey, same goes for you! What floor was that restaurant on?”
: “We came up to get here, so it has to be on a lower floor, right?”
: Oh look, it’s the guy from Joker’s flashback who kinda looks like Hideki Kamiya. He just shoves Ryuji out of the way and takes the elevator for himself.
: Nah, there’s no update to Wonderful 101 PC edition that makes it not control like crap.
: Now, you might think this is foreshadowing to the next dungeon. It’s not.
: “Hey, you’re cuttin’ in line!”
: “Oh, I’m sorry. So you can butt in front of other people if you’re in a hurry?”
: “What?”
: So yeah, the game just kind of expects you’ve totally forgotten that this guy exists. Now, you might think “Clearly, the rest of the game must be a revenge plot on this guy”… except it isn’t at all.
: “Shouldn’t we head back down?”
: “Yeah, but… that dick really pissed me off. He wasn’t even hidin’ the fact that he looks down on everyone!”
: “Don’t lose your temper over this.”
: “I just can’t forgive shitty adults like that!”
: “…What’s wrong?”
: “You sure? You’re not lookin’ so hot.”
: “It’s probably because he never eats well. I’m always stuck with canned cat food too.”
: “Ugh, that “sir” bullshit makes me sick! …Dammit!”
: “Why’re you all pissy?”
: “Sorry… I had a run-in with some woman a second ago. She bumped into me, but then said it was my fault when she dropped her plate.”
: “Sounds like a real bitch.”
: One thing this game does that I kind of can’t stand is that it abuses the hell out of ellipses. The start of the game didn’t do this. It’s something that’s coming up now, and it makes no sense. Persona 1 and Innocent Sin did this a lot when a character’s dialog was being split up into multiple text boxes, but both Ann and Ryuji do it in those last two lines (I removed it in the transcription) even though they’re not being split between boxes.
: “Yeah, thanks though. But… the restaurant workers all looked at me with this disapproving expression. I wonder if we’re out of place here…”
: I mean, it’s a buffet. A very overpriced buffet, but still a buffet.
: “…Hey, Morgana.”
: “What is it?”
: “Anyone could have a Palace, yeah?”
: “Anyone with a strong, distorted desire.”
: “Same for them havin’ a change of heart if their Treasure gets stolen?”
: “That would be the case.”
: “Why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?”
: “We had trouble earlier too. These selfish shitheads who just looked down on everyone else… I was just wonderin’ if we’d be able to change those kindsa people too.”
: In case you can’t tell, this game takes pretty heavy inspiration from Death Note.
: “You mean… you wanna continue as the Phantom Thieves?”
: “I’ve been thinkin’. We put a lot of work into changin’ Kamoshida’s heart, but nobody believes in the Phantom Thieves.”
: “Plus… those guys who had no other choice but to deal with it are thankin’ us. Us, of all people.”
: “Well… that’s true. You’re under my tutelage. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish as phantom thieves!”
: “Shouldn’t we be able to help 'em out?”
: Here’s the thing about this scene, and why I don’t like it. What Atlus is trying to do here (and also what they were trying to do in the cutscenes when the party was arguing about whether they should steal Kamoshida’s heart) is evoke the 2012 film Chronicle, which was a pretty big hit when it came out. The thing is, both this scene and that one are more or less carbon copies of a single scene in that movie.
: “But… that means we’ll have to fight Shadows again, doesn’t it?”
: “Indeed. That can’t be avoided.”
: If you haven’t seen it, Chronicle is a film about a group of three high school kids (all boys) who get superpowers after touching an alien techno-sphere thing. They immediately make a pact that none of them will use their powers for evil and then one of them inevitably goes to the dark side and kills his abusive stepdad.
: That movie’s biggest impact was bringing the term “apex predator” into vogue. That’s how the dark side kid justifies killing his stepdad: he’s an apex predator now despite the fact that he has no real protection against being shot.
: “Eh, I’m sure we’ll manage. Hehehe… right?”
: Here’s my problem with this scene, though. Chronicle was heavily inspired by things like Watchmen and Spider-Man, about what happens when suddenly you’ve got powers that make it so that the ordinary rules of society no longer apply to you and how you’re supposed to handle that while still trying to maintain your humanity. Persona 5 thinks about this for all of about ten seconds before tossing it out a window.
: My other problem with this is that there’s no real stakes behind it. The earlier games all worked because you were ultimately fighting something that was either going to destroy reality (Maki), was an existential threat to humanity (Nyx, Nyarlathotep) or had the immediate potential to become an existential threat (Izanami).
: Oh, right. I also wanted to mention that yes, I recognize that Inception was also probably an inspiration for this game. This is just kind of Atlus doing what they’d done for the past twenty-five years or so. The original Megami Tensei games were direct ripoffs of a book called Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, and SMT If was heavily inspired by a British film that was simply called “If” to the point where they copied the font for the cover art straight off the movie posters.
: “We’re gonna catch all these shitty adults by surprise, and make ourselves known to the world!”
: The other thing I think doesn’t work about this is that like, there’s no point in this game where any of our party members will even do anything vaguely questionable. I’m not saying I want like, WoW-grade corruption porn (because that’s exactly what Warcraft has always been) but have a point where the party maybe goes a little too far. It kind of sets that up here… but never really follows through.
: “…Are you okay being our leader?”
: “No objections here! I can’t handle all that responsibility stuff.”
: “Where’s my say in this? But Lady Ann made the recommendation, so I’ll allow it.”
: “Ooh, I’ve got it! I want it to be something both cute and luxurious sounding… let me see… how about “The Diamonds”?”
: This is Lupin III poking through. In the show, Lupin has this unhealthy attraction to a woman called Fujiko Mine. Fujiko loves diamonds, particularly in Red Jacket. She’s also more or less asexual (for the most part).
: “…I’m gettin’ a real little league baseball feel from it.”
: “Well then, here’s my suggestion. How about ‘Tilefish Poele’?”
: “Tile… uh, what?”
: “That’s what I ate earlier. It’s commemorative, no?”
: I looked it up, and as far as I can tell, tilefish poele is not an actual thing. The only results I got were a handful of recipes for tilefish and a lot of people doing runs of the base game where they named their group that.
: Tilefish is a firm, white, flaky fish that many places don’t use anymore because it typically contains large amounts of mercury. A lot of recipes that call for it can take other types of fish with lower mercury content just fine. Poele is a cooking method involving a covered pot that is used in French cuisine, but it’s typically used with chicken or other meat that has skin on.
: “Hell no, you idiot! Ugh… you decide for me.”
: By default, the group’s name is The Phantoms. This is kind of a reference to The Spookies from Soul Hackers, who have a logo that looks kind of like the one Ryuji put on the calling card for Kamoshida.
: The thread voted overwhelmingly to name Joker “John Persona” but I kind of screwed that up by recording too early. With another overwhelming vote, we’re naming the group John Persona instead, because we’re all John Persona inside. This name only really shows up online (if you use the thieves guild, which we don’t) but really, we’re all just John Persona inside.
: I can just imagine Sae asking “Who the fuck is John Persona? Where is he? Answer me, dammit!” and Joker just looking at her and laughing. “We’re all John Persona. I’m John Persona. He’s John Persona.”
: I like to think that canonically, while Joker gave us his real name, the one he gave to Sae was actually Juan Persoña.
: “John Persona. We goin’ with that?”
: “Well now that the name’s set, who’s our next target?”
: “There are tons of rotten adults and all. Why not just stick to targeting big names?”
: If this was Persona 1 or 2, this would actually be a route choice. It’s not.
: “Yeah, something along those lines. If we go after some bigwig, it’s gotta get on the news, right?”
: “Don’t you think more people would believe in us if we did that?”
: This sounds almost exactly like 4chan’s mentality around the time that /b/ was starting to degenerate into shit. At the time (this is like, probably 14 or 15 years ago now, which is just kind of mind-boggling to me) the goal was to get on the news for something incredibly stupid.
: The whole Phantom Thieves idea, apart from being inspired by Chronicle, was also probably inspired by Anonymous (as in the activist group), which kind of didn’t age well. I actually had an account on one of the separate message boards that early Anonymous (back when it was Project Chanology) used and I can tell you the mentality was almost exactly the same. There were even people going “Now that we’re attacking Scientology, what’s next?” like Ryuji does.
: Have I mentioned that there’s a character in this game who is basically Anonymous incarnate? There is. We won’t meet them for a while.
: “That’s not a bad idea… for you, Ryuji.”
: “True. If we become better known… we might be able to give courage to a lot more people.”
: “I don’t really like the idea of just picking someone out of the blue though.”
: “Let’s narrow it down to someone we can all agree on then.”
: “Hm, so we need a bigwig we can decide on unanimously.”
: “I like that unanimous decision part! It’s like we’re making some kind of pact!”
: “Now then, this is the official formation of the Phantom Thieves organization!”
: The thing is, just like putting Steven Segal in Innocent Sin, having direct references to Anonymous was kind of a bad idea. Not even a year after the base game’s western release, the whole QAnon thing popped up and 4chan’s reputation took an even greater turn from merely being a self-described “ocean of piss” to being a hangout for white supremacy and the alt-right. The thing is, the signs were definitely there in 2014 and 2015. Atlus should’ve fucking known better.
: “Oh no! Our time for the buffet ran out…”
: “I guess we’ll just have to talk more tomorrow…”
: Let me tell you the other reason I don’t like that they glorified Anonymous. I used to play TF2 with a bunch of 4chan people going back to 2007. Half of them grew out of that and are now relatively well-adjusted adults. The other half… not so much. I’ve lost a lot of friends to that mentality, and it is fucking heartbreaking when a person you’ve known since 2007, where you know their actual name, comes to you and starts preaching QAnon.
: “Honestly speaking, that all sounds absurd. It’s hard to believe that this is even worth listening to.”
: “Still, it can’t be considered nonsense when parts of it align with Kamoshida’s confession.”
: “The same goes for the testimones of the officers who arrested you… but so be it. At any rate, you mentioned something more important.”
: “These two other accomplices, besides this talking cat thing that appeared in your story… from what you’ve been telling me, they’re students at the same school, aren’t they?”
: “Very well. I’ll leave it at that. Let’s continue on. The questioning’s not over, anyway. If you are making this up, the cracks in your story will prove it.”
: I hate that the game doesn’t just let us discover the next boss ourselves. Anyway, meet the target of the next arc: Ichiryusai Madarame. Hilariously, this line is wildly inaccurate: Madarame does not specialize in something like ukiyo-e or traditional Japanese sculpture or pottery. He’s a painter, and a western-style one at that.
: “It’s even more incomprehensible than Kamoshida as to why this man was targeted. Where did you come to know him? And how did you learn of his crimes when you weren’t a victim of them? Start by telling me all that you schemed…”
: We lose most of that 30,000 yen, but get to keep 8,000. We’re going to need that to get everyone locked and loaded before the next dungeon.
: We then get a notice about another new feature to Royal: the Thieves Den. We’ll see what that is in a side update immediately following this one.
: Before that though, we have another IM we can look at.
: I sure hope Akira deleted that from his phone before Sae got a hold of it, and that Sae didn’t think to just subpoena his cell carrier.
: We spend the night doing two important things. First up, it’s been exactly 16 days since we last fed the plant. Second, we finish watching Wraith for another 3 kindness.
: In bed, we get another cutscene with Igor. I am going to skip it because it’s basically a “Hey, you’re doing confidants, right?” reminder.
: We also get two extra slots in our Persona stock. This will be VERY important in the next dungeon, because we need not one, not two, but THREE new Persona arcana on top of the three we already need for confidants. In fact, we’ll be fusing one of those three before we even go into the next dungeon, thanks to all the grinding I did. This will put us ahead on a confidant by one point.
: By the way, I’m not kidding when I say it’s a tutorial. In the next side update, we’ll play a godawful card game.
: It’s time to go to the Thieves Den for the first time. You might notice that the menu tells us we’re John Persona now. This is part of the reason I’m glad I didn’t name the character John Persona.
: The Thieves Den is basically the Safe House from Payday 2, or the Memorial Hall from Deep Rock Galactic.
: It has a cutscene viewer, which… why.
: Concept art gallery. I’ll probably do a single update on this at the end, since more gets added to it as we go.
: This is where the godawful card game is.
: Meet Jose. We don’t know his name yet, but we will soon enough. Jose is new to Royal, and adds a whole bunch of features to this game’s equivalent of the Abandoned Factory or Mikage Ruins/Devil’s Peak.
: My first guess on seeing him was that he’s a piece of Philemon the way Marie was a piece of Izanami in P4 Golden, if not Philemon himself (even though we know that Philemon likes to pull the “I’m you in a mask” thing).
: So yeah, this is basically Joker’s Palace. Because apparently everyone can have one of those now.
: P Medals are currency you can use to buy stuff to decorate with. You get them for doing certain achievements, and getting all the achievements gives you a thing that makes it so security level never goes up and allows you to summon any Persona for free from the compendium. This requires a minimum of two complete playthroughs and requires killing four optional super-bosses which I am not going to do. Maybe if it had allowed me to import my save data from the base game.
: You can spend the medals at the Palace Maker machine, which pretty much directly confirms that this is Joker’s Palace. The stuff in “Confidants” only unlocks when you max a confidant, and the stuff in Daily Life requires doing a whole bunch of stuff we have no reason to do.
: As an example, we can buy a statue of Kamoshida’s demon form. I don’t know why we’d want that. The “enemy” category is pretty much entirely statues of the major bosses, including a few you can only actually see on New Game + because they’re of the final bosses.
: The “Metaverse” category has items from the various dungeons. We could buy the big statue of Kamoshida from the church if we wanted. I don’t know why we’d want to do that either.
: We can also buy statues of all of the starter Personas for each character. Unfortunately, there’s no statues of the upgraded Personas or the new Ultimate Personas as far as I know.
: There’s also the option to change the decor. There’s one for each Palace, plus the Velvet Room and the standard set. I picked the Velvet Room.
: This wall will fill in with pictures as we accomplish stuff. Many of these we won’t even be touching - there’s one for using the laundromat ten times and fuck that.
: This one, however, we will DEFINITELY be doing. When I said we’d be doing 100% confidants, I meant it.
: There’s also one for seeing both the Rank 10 cutscenes on the Romance route for all 10 female confidants. This means that yes, we can date Doctor Femdom if we want. She’s a very popular choice, but she’s not the best girl. We can do this without permafucking because the game saves system data every time you save, and the achievements are based off your system data. At some point, probably once we reach June or July, I’ll put up a poll for who we want to go for, if anyone.
: There’s also one for seeing the Rank 10 cutscene on the Friendship route with all of the female confidants. We’ll be getting that one as well.
: Tycoon is another way to get P Medals. I’ve heard it’s bullshit hard, but I only actually played on the easiest difficulty because I had no idea how it works. Playing cards in your brain with clones of your friends is a perfectly normal activity.
: The idea is that one player each round is the dealer, and they put down a card. It then cycles… I think left to right… and each player has the opportunity to play a card, so long as the value of the card is higher than the last one put down. Jokers can, of course, be any card you want.
: I started off with a real dumb move. Playing four of a kind gets you a “Revolution”, which reverses card values (so now a 2 is the highest card and an ace the lowest).
: I came in second the first two rounds. The highest-ranking player is the Tycoon, and the lowest is the Beggar. Second place is Rich, third place is Poor. At the end of the round, the Tycoon has to give a card to the Beggar and the Rich has to give a card to the Poor.
: In the last round, I figure out how the fuck the game works and come off with a win. Basically, you want to play your lowest-value cards first and then your highest-value ones. From what I’ve heard, on harder difficulties the AI basically plays like it knows which cards you have. Naturally, there are achievements for winning on the hardest difficulty.
: I also win the game because if you’re the Tycoon and lose, you automatically come in dead last and get no points. If people really want to see how this works, I can stream it a little when I do the P5D stream.
: Finally, there’s a thing on the second floor where you can switch to any party member you’ve recruited.
: The exit hall also has a bunch of the promo art for both the base game and Royal on the walls.
: One of these characters will be joining us in the next dungeon. The character on the far left (underneath the shot of Ryuji and Morgana) is the Anonymous character I mentioned in the last update.
: Anyway, that’s it for the Thieves Den for now. If you want to change it, let me know and I’ll put stuff down.
Can’t speak for Japan of course, but up here in Canada, at least my part of it, the hotel buffet is a professional high class dining buffet, not the “low form” of food.
It’s part of the tourism experience; you go to a fancy hotel, you go downstairs and get whatever you desire from an assortment of professionally cooked foods, and then gorge yourself on it. And because of where I live, that means roast caribou and cheesecake, among other things.
My Mom did catering so you’d be surprised how many rich people would get fancy buffet for like, their wedding. Again, probably coloured by my living in the middle of fucking nowhere tourism town.
Yeah, that’s probably very different from how it is in the US. In the US, buffets kind of had a bad reputation for a long time and still kinda do today. I think it’s because it was kind of a meme (how much of it was reality, I don’t know) in the 80s to make fun of the buffets at the casinos in Vegas. There’s also a lot of low-quality chain places (Golden Corral is one) that didn’t really help much with the reputation issue.
I’m sure there probably are nice ones somewhere, but the idea of going to a hotel and doing a buffet there is just not something I’ve ever done. Probably because I usually stay in crap hotels.
So, showing who the next villain is can work depending on how it’s done. It makes sense for, say, Ace Attorney, where they sometimes show the villain at the start so the player knows who did the murder and can focus on how the murder happened, (AA1 also plays around with the concept rather than always telling you exactly who the villain is, but that’s a separate tangent.) I can’t say I remember Persona 5 doing anything interesting with it, though. It’s really just a clunky way to say, “hey here’s the next arc.” (And I’m gonna be honest, if they didn’t want to go down the subtle route with introducing arcs they should have given each one a flashy title card. I’d be into that.)
Adding more fuel onto the “I’d like Morgana more if they were just a cat and not a mascot half the time” fire is that for some reason I love the idea of John Persona and his cat renting DVDs to watch. Like Danny trying to get Nick to watch Point Break from Hot Fuzz.
Also I get the feeling they won’t but between the needles that were visible in the interrogation room in the first update and Sae’s incredibly leading questions I feel a little doubt that any of this happened. Like the problems with hypnotic memory recall.
