Mark Danced Crazy - Let's Play Shin Megami Tensei: Persona

[Timrod]

: After spending several hours grinding levels, it’s time to get some casino coins. If you’re doing Snow Queen the way we’re going to be doing Snow Queen, you want everyone at Persona Level 21 before going into the school again. This is absolutely key, because once we go into the school, we lose our ability to grind.

: I loaded the save into an emulator, and used that to bypass the casino grind. The easiest and fastest way to do this is to start a game of Code Breaker, and immediately make a save state.

: You then play through Code Breaker using the solver program (or just failing until it shows you what the correct code is) and then reload your state and put the correct answer in. This will win you a gem set plus a MILLION casino coins. Fuck casino grinding.

: We then go back to the point at which the two routes break. I was incorrect on something I said in the SEBEC route - picking the second option does not automatically put you on the Snow Queen route. No, the Snow Queen route is much more complicated.

: First, we need to go to Classroom 2-4. If I remember right, this is one of the classrooms we had to visit to get information on Reiji when we started the SEBEC route.

: If you’ll remember, Devil Boy is Tsutomu, who we met in Maki’s dream world before we fought Tesso. One piece of trivia I think I forgot to mention in the SEBEC route - Tsutomu is actually the nephew of a character called “T-Shirt” Isono from Devil Summoner, which means that technically Devil Summoner (and thus Soul Hackers and the Raidou games) are canon to the Persona universe.

: Next, we need to see Tsutomu himself. If you’ll recall, we met him in the library in the SEBEC route, and that’s exactly where he is in the real world.

: If you’ll recall, Tsutomu in Maki’s dream world was the exact opposite.

: “You know of ‘The Snow Queen’, right? Yes.. the fairy tale.”

: I’d like to pause here for just a second. This game came out several years before Frozen did, and The Snow Queen is not particularly popular in the United States (I’d never heard of it when I first played the game). I tried to do a reading of it, but it’s like 19 pages long and my voice started giving out six pages in.

: “It’s the traditional play performed by St. Hermelin’s drama club.”

: The game will eventually give us a plot synopsis, but I’m definitely going to expand on that because the original Hans Christian Anderson story is.. something else.

: “Heeheehee.. don’t be so hasty. Listen to this… for some reason, The Snow Queen is usually performed while wearing a mask.”

: “Which brings me to my point. In truth, the mask is cursed. The students who wore it while playing the role all died unnatural deaths. Isn’t that interesting?”

: This part is something I’d also like to take just a second to address. The Snow Queen quest implies that Mikage-cho had some weird shit going on even before Kandori built the Deva System. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be because it takes place in the same world as Devil Summoner (which means that SMT-style demons are around) or if it’s supposed to be sort of an early version of the rumor system we’ll see in Innocent Sin.

: Our next stop is the drama club, which is located behind the gym. As it turns out, one of these club members will give you a Rapier for Jihei if you talk to them before starting this whole quest chain. It won’t matter on this route because of how we’re going to be handling it.

: This is a dead end. Next, we need to go to the Student Council room, which is on the second floor near the library.

: What’s funny is that the student council president actually gets an intro box despite not even having a portrait.

: Next stop is the principal’s office. We met Principal Ooishi’s dream world clone in the SEBEC route, but never got to meet the real one.

: Ms. Saeko is the homeroom teacher for all of the main cast, if you’ll recall from the SEBEC route. The principal has an intro box, but it’s the same as it was in SEBEC.

: You can probably tell what we’re going to do next.

: I’m pretty sure that Vice Principal Hanya’s name is supposed to be a play on “Hannya”, a demon/ogress of Japanese legend. Goro Majima has one on his back in the Yakuza games.

: Our final stop before being sent on the Snow Queen route is to the gym. You’ll recall that we saw the old gym in the SEBEC route, but never saw the new one. That door back there is where we’re going.

: That just seems like a really weird place to put a cursed mask. Why they didn’t just burn it or something, I don’t know. Clearly the staff at St. Hermelin are Umbrella Corporation levels of stupid.

: There’s a weird item jingle that plays here that doesn’t play anywhere else in the game. I should mention that the Snow Queen quest was dummied out of Revelations: Persona, but you can still get the mask here via a Gameshark. We’ll talk a little bit about why that is later.

: I actually really like the Snow Queen route because it feels like a late-80s/early-90s horror film.

: “You don’t even know if that really is Maki!”

: An explanation. The police station segment from the SEBEC route is not canon. Also, I’m going to continue calling the protagonist Jihei even though I used the Naoya Toudou name for the Snow Queen file.

: “Omigod, Jihei! Masao’s in big trouble!”

: “Kei was hurt, so Masao, Hidehiko, and Eriko brought him back here.”

: This is the canon version of what happens at the police station. Presumably, Nanjo went by himself to save Mark and got hurt in the process.

: “But then…”

: “Y-Yeah, but…”

: “So he and Maki went outside together? Oh, I have to bring them back!”

: “Wait, Ms. Saeko! If something happens to you, what’ll the gang here do? Let us go instead!”

: You know, I wouldn’t mind doing a sort of B-Game of the SEBEC route with Yukino, Elly, and Brown. I hope someday that if Atlus remakes Persona 1, they add that in.

: “Oh, good point, Yukino! Thanks…”

: “That.. that mask! Goodness.. I didn’t think it was still lying around here…”

: “It reminds me of my high school days… I wore this mask when I was in a play called ‘The Snow Queen’.”

: Plot synopsis time! I’ll add some stuff as we go along. The demon is described as a hobgoblin in the original story, and he also runs a school of demons.

: The story goes into more detail about why the hobgoblin does it, but the key reason is that he believes that it shows how humanity really looks.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

All who went to the demon’s school- for he kept a school- talked everywhere of the wonders they had seen, and declared that people could now, for the first time, see what the world and mankind were really like.

: The demon was clearly a Chaos player, and made the mirror to show anyone who picks the Law route how dumb they look.

: The story goes into a little more depth, describing how the mirror shattered into bits small enough to get caught in people’s eyes and also their hearts somehow, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure if you breathed in a sand-sized piece of glass you’d cough it out almost immediately. The story also describes some of the glass as being used to make windowpanes and eyeglasses.

: This part is actually accurate to the original story, the kids are in fact named Kay and Gerda. The story goes way more in depth on this: they’re both poor and live in houses so close to each other that they can step out of a window and into the house across the street. A key point is that they keep roses, even though they’re in a densely-packed town with no room for a garden.

: The way this happens in the story is kind of unintentionally hilarious. To get how I pictured it in my head, imagine Danny Devito as Frank Reynolds saying this.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

One day Kay and Gerda sat looking at a book full of pictures of animals and birds, and then just as the clock in the church tower struck twelve, Kay said, “Oh, something has struck my heart!” and soon after, “There is something in my eye.”

: The way Hans Andersen depicts Kay’s heart “becoming a lump of ice” is that he starts being snarky. No, seriously.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“Why do you cry?” said he at last; “it makes you look ugly.
There is nothing the matter with me now. Oh, see!” he cried
suddenly, “that rose is worm-eaten, and this one is quite crooked.
After all they are ugly roses, just like the box in which they stand,”
and then he kicked the boxes with his foot, and pulled off the two
roses.

“Kay, what are you doing?” cried the little girl; and then, when
he saw how frightened she was, he tore off another rose, and jumped
through his own window away from little Gerda.

When she afterwards brought out the picture book, he said, “It was
only fit for babies in long clothes,” and when grandmother told any
stories, he would interrupt her with “but;” or, when he could manage
it, he would get behind her chair, put on a pair of spectacles, and
imitate her very cleverly, to make people laugh. By-and-by he began to
mimic the speech and gait of persons in the street. All that was
peculiar or disagreeable in a person he would imitate directly, and
people said, “That boy will be very clever; he has a remarkable
genius.”

: This isn’t exactly how the story goes. What happens is that Kay joins a bunch of older boys who take their “sledges” (which made me stop for a second the first time I tried doing a reading because I thought they were talking about sledgehammers) and tie them to passing horse-drawn carts to ride behind them, almost like a primitive form of wakeboarding.

: Kay winds up tying his sled to the Snow Queen’s, and gets taken away pretty much by accident. The HCA story has a lot of kids being taken by people not for money or anything, but just because they want a kid, because child kidnapping is just fine in HCA’s fantasy worlds. Also, the Snow Queen has a sled pulled by chickens that are made of snow.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

The snow-flakes became larger and larger, till they appeared
like great white chickens. All at once they sprang on one side, the
great sledge stopped, and the person who had driven it rose up. The
fur and the cap, which were made entirely of snow, fell off, and he
saw a lady, tall and white, it was the Snow Queen.

“We have driven well,” said she, “but why do you tremble? here,
creep into my warm fur.” Then she seated him beside her in the sledge,
and as she wrapped the fur round him he felt as if he were sinking
into a snow drift.

: I only added this part because “here, creep into my warm fur” sounds like the start of someone’s tale about getting laid at a furry con.

“Are you still cold,” she asked, as she kissed him on the
forehead. The kiss was colder than ice; it went quite through to his
heart, which was already almost a lump of ice; he felt as if he were
going to die, but only for a moment; he soon seemed quite well
again, and did not notice the cold around him.

: I should mention that if any of this sounds familiar, you might’ve read the Narnia books as a kid. The White Witch in that was based almost directly on the Snow Queen.

: Oh right. The entire reason Kay wants to stay with her is because snowflakes are one of the only things the mirror doesn’t effect, and that property also carries over to the Snow Queen herself (who may or may not be made of snow).

: The synopsis here skips a LOT of shit. Hans Andersen goes off on a lot of side bits. Gerda first assumes that Kay is dead, and tries talking to the sun to confirm it. I’m not even kidding.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

Oh, indeed those long winter days were very dreary. But at
last spring came, with warm sunshine. “Kay is dead and gone,” said
little Gerda.

“I don’t believe it,” said the sunshine.
“He is dead and gone,” she said to the sparrows.
“We don’t believe it,” they replied; and at last little Gerda
began to doubt it herself.

: Gerda then puts on her new red shoes, which she attempts to throw into the river as an offering to get the river to give her Kay back.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“Is it true that you have taken my little playmate away from me?” said she to the river. “I will give you my red shoes if you will give him back to me.” And it seemed as if the waves nodded to her in a strange manner. Then she took off her red shoes, which she liked better than anything else, and threw them both into the river, but they fell near the bank, and the little waves carried them back to the land, just as if the river would not take from her what she loved best, because they could not give her back little Kay.

: Given that this is a magical fantasy world where people can talk to the fucking sun, I have no doubt that it is somehow possible for a river to wear shoes. Anyway, Gerda throws her shoes again, but this time from a boat. The boat starts moving, and carries her to the house of a witch who tries to keep her forever and buries her rosebushes underground because they’d remind Gerda of Kay.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“Oh, how I have been detained!” said the little maiden, “I wanted to seek for little Kay. Do you know where he is?” she asked the roses; “do you think he is dead?”

And the roses answered, “No, he is not dead. We have been in the
ground where all the dead lie; but Kay is not there.”

“Thank you,” said little Gerda, and then she went to the other flowers, and looked into their little cups, and asked, “Do you know where little Kay is?” But each flower, as it stood in the sunshine, dreamed only of its own little fairy tale of history. Not one knew anything of Kay."

: Gerda talking to the flowers is four pages out of the story’s total run time of 19 pages. The flowers are kind of racist in that they describe a “Hindoo woman” throwing herself into a funeral pyre and then go on a bunch of unrelated, YIIK-like bullshit. There is one paragraph here that the writers found very important.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

What do the hyacinths say? "There were three beautiful sisters, fair and delicate. The dress of one was red, of the second blue, and of the third pure white. Hand in hand they danced in the bright moonlight, by the calm lake; but they were human beings, not fairy elves.

The sweet fragrance attracted them, and they disappeared in the wood; here the fragrance became stronger. Three coffins, in which lay the three beautiful maidens, glided from the thickest part of the forest across the lake.

The fire-flies flew lightly over them, like little floating torches. Do the dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead? The scent of the flower says that they are corpses. The evening bell tolls their knell."

: This is important. Remember this, especially the idea of there being three dead girls. Anyway, Gerda then meets a talking crow who takes her to a princess who gives her a new outfit and a carriage and horses and an entire crew of footmen, who are then brutally slaughtered by a group of bandits. Have I mentioned The Snow Queen probably takes place in Norway?

: The bandits are run by an old woman with a beard, and her daughter takes a fancy to Gerda and demands that Gerda give her all of her clothes on pain of being gutted with a knife. The bandit daughter has an entire flock of pigeons and also a captive reindeer she likes to threaten to murder. Gerda finds out from the reindeer where the Snow Queen went.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

“What are you saying up there?” cried Gerda. “Where was the Snow Queen going? Do you know anything about it?”

“She was most likely travelling to Lapland, where there is always snow and ice. Ask the reindeer that is fastened up there with a rope.”

“Yes, there is always snow and ice,” said the reindeer; “and it is a glorious place; you can leap and run about freely on the sparkling ice plains. The Snow Queen has her summer tent there, but her strong
castle is at the North Pole, on an island called Spitzbergen.”

: If you’ve ever played Crusader Kings 2, particularly as the Vikings, you’ll know what Lapland is.

: Lapland is a region inhabited by a group of people known as the Sami, which consists of parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Lapland was the English term for it - today it’s called Sapmi.

: Spitsbergen is the largest island in Svalbard, which is an island chain that is considered part of Norway. Svalbard is probably most famous today for being the home of the Svalbard seed vault.

: Anyway, Gerda keeps going and winds up in Lapland, where she meets an old woman who tells her that the Snow Queen is actually in Finland. Gerda then goes to Finland and meets another old woman, who tells her where the Snow Queen’s castle is. Gerda accidentally leaves her boots and gloves behind, and prays so hard that God himself sends angels to massage her feet.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

The snow-flakes ran along the ground, and the nearer they came to her, the larger they appeared. Gerda remembered how large and beautiful they looked through the burning-glass. But these were really larger, and much more terrible, for they were alive, and were the guards of the Snow Queen, and had the strangest shapes. Some were like great porcupines, others like twisted serpents with their heads stretching out, and some few were like little fat bears with their hair bristled; but all were dazzlingly white, and all were living snow-flakes.

Then little Gerda repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and the cold was so great that she could see her own breath come out of her mouth like steam as she uttered the words. The steam appeared to increase, as she continued her prayer, till it took the shape of little angels who grew larger the moment they touched the earth. They all wore helmets on their heads, and carried spears and shields.

Their number continued to increase more and more; and by the time Gerda had finished her prayers, a whole legion stood round her. They thrust their spears into the terrible snow-flakes, so that they shivered into a hundred pieces, and little Gerda could go forward with courage and safety. The angels stroked her hands and feet, so that she felt the cold less, and she hastened on to the Snow Queen’s castle.

: This isn’t what happens in the story - not quite. She does cry on him and melt his heart, but then invokes the power of Christ to make him cry.

: The story goes further, because Hans Andersen was a fucking weirdo. First, Gerda runs into the reindeer who carried her to the castle, who invites them to drink milk from his pregnant wife.

From The Snow Queen, believed to be public domain.

When they arrived at the bush with red berries, there stood the reindeer waiting for them, and he had brought another young reindeer with him, whose udders were full, and the children drank her warm milk and kissed her on the mouth.

: Then they go back to the Finnish woman, who somehow knows how to get them back home. They meet the robber’s daughter, who tells them the crow that got Gerda in to see the princess is dead and his wife is in a terrible depression. Then they go back to grandma, who recites the Bible at them. THEN they live happily ever after.

: Well, that was a fucked-up story. I see why they never talk about it, and now I’ll probably never be able to watch Frozen (not that I ever have) without imagining a dipshit reindeer going “Hey kids, wanna nurse from my pregnant mate?”

: “Yes, but some say it’s cursed. I guess I can see why. It’s because of this that my friend was…”

: “C-C’mon, Ms. Saeko! Cut it out! We’ve got enough to be scared of… that mask gives me the creeps! Why don’t you just throw it away?”

: “Oh, sorry about that! It’s just a silly school legend. ‘Whoever wears it, dies’? Ha!”

: “I wore it, and I’m okay, aren’t I?”

: “See? So it’s better if I went looking for those two!”

: Why would you do that!?

: “Ms. Saeko!? What’s wrong!?”

: “Wh-What’s going on!?”

: I got this on stream, but there’s a sort of very quick before-and-after effect. Think that one scene at the end of The Day After Tomorrow, then don’t because that movie was trash.

: “Huh? Uh… where am I?”

: Oh shit, we’re in Finland! Nobody talk to the fucking reindeer!

: Or it’s the school courtyard.

: “Whoa! Look!”

: “Ms. Saeko!”

: Ms. Saeko starts putting up giant ice spears, which are actually a clever bit of asset re-use. These ice spears are recycled from the animation for Bufula, the second-tier single target ice spell.

: “Ms. Saeko…?”

: “Saeko? Oh… I see what’s happening.”

: “Poor Saeko… hahahah.”

: “Huh? But you are Saeko! Are you okay!? Did you trip and hit your head or something?”

: “Hahaha… “I wore it, and I’m okay”, eh? Teeheehee… Ahahaha! That’s the Saeko I remember so well.”

: “What’s wrong with you!? Stop with the jokes, 'cause they aren’t funny!”

: “Jokes? Look around you. Hahaha.. you think this is a joke? Beautiful, isn’t it? A peaceful, perfectly still landscape.”

: She’ll give you some turkish delight if you jump in her sleigh! I’ve actually had turkish delight, got it from a bodega near where I work. It’s like grandma candy covered in powdered sugar. You pretty much can’t eat it without looking like you just dove nose-first into a mountain of coke. It’s.. okay I guess. Not my favorite.

: “What are you saying!? You’re our teacher! This is just…”

: “Oh, what a lovely girl. Hahaha.. come closer, girl, and I’ll give you ageless beauty.”

: “Don’t do it, Yuka! It’s the mask.. it must have taken her over!”

: This? This is why Yukino is the best character in this game, tied with Elly. I personally think that as stupid as the premise for this part of the game is, it’s AMAZINGLY written. There’s a very good reason that Atlus re-used a lot of the concepts from here for Persona 3. Also, fuck the manga for not showing this part.

: The manga glosses over Snow Queen in all of like three pages, and changes it so that the Snow Queen is a sixth (or is that seventh?) Maki that wears the same mask we saw her wear in the Inner Lost Forest in the SEBEC route. Snow Queen would’ve made a more interesting fucking manga on its own than the dumb bullshit they came up with for the SEBEC route, and this is why I hate it when people say that Persona 1 isn’t worth playing and you should just read the manga.

: “Who put it on without thinking twice? Not to mention… isn’t it rude to go around calling people monsters?”

: I think my favorite thing about this is how the Snow Queen is an actual villain who feels like she wouldn’t be out of place in Persona 4.

: “Hahahaha!”

: By the way, you’ll notice that the Snow Queen doesn’t call herself that until now.

: Yukino is having exactly none of her bullshit and I love it.

: “What a reckless young lady. Your teacher is going to be… a sacrifice.”

: “A..a sacrifice?”

: “Yes, that’s right. Saeko is so full of hope. If I offer her as a sacrifice..”

: “Huh…? Does that mean everyone’s gonna get frozen? I hate being cold!”

: “That’s not gonna happen! I’m taking back Ms. Saeko, right now!”

: “Well, aren’t you brave? Fine.. you can have her. But Saeko will stay frozen as long as she has this mask on. So will the school.”

: Naturally, the Snow Queen pulls an Aki on us and stops us from leaving the school. This is why we couldn’t enter the school once we got back from the police station in the SEBEC route.

: “There’s no escape. You only have two choices…”

: “Welcome the Eternal Night, or take the mask off Saeko.”

: Okay, so what you’re saying is that we need to take the mask off and be free? Find ourselves in the debris? Feed our anger like fire?

: “Okay, but like, how do we do that?”

: “Hahaha, keep fighting it. Nothing’s more beautiful than despair after a struggle.”

: This is the part where we find out that Ms. Saeko’s surname is Enoshima and she’s being taken over by Junko. Weirdly enough, Ms. Saeko does have a canon surname: it’s Takami.

: “Hey! I asked you a question!”

: I could absolutely see this being remade to actually take place in 2009 and Yukino going “Seriously what the shit is your deal? First you’re Junko Enoshima, now you’re some kind of wannabe Jigsaw! Get your fucking shit straight!”

: “A game!?”

: Those towers are Hypnos, Nemesis, and Thanatos, and they form the three major dungeons for the Snow Queen quest. Remember that part from the story where it talked about the three dead maidens? I wonder if that’s got something to do with it…

: And now we start getting into the meat of why Snow Queen is so fucking hard. Two words: time limits.

: “I’ll turn Saeko and the school back to normal. I must leave this mask now and prepare to call down the Eternal Night.”

: However, there’s a second twist to Snow Queen which is going to make things even harder.

: “I hope you enjoy yourselves while I’m gone. Hahaha… I’ll see you later.”

: “This is all your fault, Jihei! If you never found that stupid mask, this wouldn’t have happened!”

: “You better own up! Are you a man or not!? Say something!”

: “Stop it, Yuka! Pointing fingers won’t help the situation any.”

: “It’s not like Jihei knew what was gonna happen.”

: The screen flashes a few times here.

: Oh look, it’s our old buddy, Jangly Keys Man, he of the white subtitles.

: “That thing again..”

: “Huh…? “Again”?”

: Ayase hasn’t actually met Philemon yet. In fact, we’ve never seen her Persona. I should mention that this cutscene was the one they dubbed for Revelations: Persona before scrapping Snow Queen to meet the holiday deadline. You can watch that here.

: “A moment, please.”

: “You are angry and frustrated.”

: “But that will not rescue your teacher.”

: “There is only one way to do that…”

: “The Demon Mirror.”

: “It can remove the source of the mask’s curse.”

: “However, the Snow Queen has shattered it.”

: “The twelve shards are scattered amongst three towers.”

: “Take this mirror frame with you.”

: “Fit the mirror shards you find into it.”

: “If you gather enough shards to reflect your teacher…”

: “She can be saved. There isn’t much time left. I pray for your success.”

: “Umm, Yukino? You know the towers are guarded by demons, right? Aren’t we a little, y’know, shorthanded?”

: “You can stay here if you want. We won’t force you to come, not when we don’t know what we’re up against.”

: “Uh, no, I meant, it’s just…”

: “I’ll do whatever it takes to save Ms. Saeko. I used to be a lousy delinquent. Even my parents gave up on me.. but not her. She never gave up on me. Ever.”

: “Now it’s my turn to help her, and my.. expertise can be put to a good cause.”

: “Hey, Yukino.. you’re not planning on leaving me here all alone, are you? 'Cause I’m going with you! I feel much safer around you and Jihei.”

: “Haha, sure… whatever floats your boat. If we get stuck in a bad situation, I’m sure you’ll help lighten the mood.”

: “Kei gave it to me. Him and Masao went to the police station for some weapons. But Kei got hurt, so they came back to school.”

: “He handed me some guns and said to hold on to them while he went to the nurse… so I kept one for myself!”

: “Hehehe… I always wanted to try shooting one of these things!”

: “…”

: “Gah! The wind’s picking up! Brrr, it’s cooooold… my ears hurt! C’mon, let’s go inside, quick!”

: “Yeah, standing here won’t do anyone any good.”

: “I dunno, maybe we should grab a couple more people, like Yuka said.”

: “Sure, sure, but let’s get inside! I’m freezing to death here!”

: Next time, we’ll find Elly and Brown, fight a giant penis, do a bunch of fusions, and then.. well, you’ll see.