Warning: This entry reveals The Killer's identity.
December 4
You wake up to the doorbell ringing, and find Yosuke at your door. He's realized that Teddie has gone missing, and is quite worried, but comes with you to Junes.
At Junes, Rise is unable to find Teddie, much to Yosuke's chagrin, as he'd repeatedly told Teddie he could stay. You then recall dreaming about Igor saying that "This may be a time for contemplation rather than action," and the most appropriate response is "Let's think about this."
Naoto decides to focus on the case, since they don't have long before Namatame is transferred. She recaps the case, and initially, nothing seems to put any doubt on the idea that Namatame's guilty or that "saving" means killing people until Yukiko points out that he'd recognized them all as the ones he "saved," and was determined to save Nanako as well. Naoto concurs, noting that "Shadow Namatame" said he failed to save Nanako. Chie takes it to its logical conclusion by saying that he believed that putting them into the TV was saving them, and is again surprised that anyone thinks that's a good point. She has a good point, although Yukiko deserves the credit for taking the discussion in this direction.
Yosuke, still not fully convinced, asks why he'd kill the first two victims. You then have to choose a piece of evidence that will reveal the existence of another culprit, and the right choice is the warning letter. Naturally, the wording is odd, as Namatame thought he was saving people, but the writer doesn't want anyone to be saved. After you conclude that Namatame didn't write the letter, Naoto's shocked to realize that she's been thinking about the case from the wrong perspective the entire time, by assuming there's only one culprit besides Mitsuo. She points out that Namatame would have given up after the second death, but his continuing to do so suggests that the writer of the warning letter was someone else. She then concludes that they must speak to Namatame himself, and get a second rank in the Judgment Arcana.
You set out to see Namatame. Naoto meets up with the police officer at the door to Namatame's room, who seems to be under the impression that she's still on the investigation, so he offers to give Naoto a few minutes with Namatame while recording it. Luckily, he's fooled long enough for Naoto to arrange something to call him away, enabling the rest of the Investigation Team to accompany Naoto.
You talk with Namatame, who barely seems to realize that you're here, but he gives some incredibly important information when he not only denies killing Mayumi or Saki (along with the idea that he thinks killing people is "saving" them), but after being asked who he put in first, points at Yukiko. Naoto concludes that Namatame must have assumed that an appearance on the Midnight Channel was a death sentence, and that by putting the people who appeared on it in the TV, he'd be placing them out of the killer's reach.
Further questioning reveals that Namatame had no idea that the TV world was dangerous, he doesn't know who killed the first two, and he's never even heard about the warning letters. The group starts to believe that he didn't actually do it, and asks him to tell them his story.
Namatame tells his story, starting with how he fell in love with Mayumi, because while he knew it was wrong, the two of them were truly in love. Of course, they were found out, resulting in both of them being disgraced. He started drinking, and tried in vain to contact Mayumi, but then realized she was on the Midnight Channel. The next day, he was hit with the double-whammy of being fired and hearing about Mayumi's death.
Namatame then took a job as a deliveryman for his father's company, and this leads up to him seeing Saki on the Midnight Channel. He tried to warn her, but she refused to listen, and ended up dead the next day. Seeing Yukiko on the TV was his impetus to act, and prevent her from suffering the other two women's fate by any means necessary. He believed that he, a person who possessed the power to go through the TV, was the only one who could protect her, and that it had become his mission.
Naoto, not mincing words but not entirely without sympathy, tells Namatame that he'd been doing the opposite of what he'd intended, and everyone he'd "saved" was in danger until her friends came to the rescue. Namatame confesses that he'd had doubts about the plan when he went in with Nanako, and during the concert at Junes, when he saw all the people he'd "saved" hanging out as friends (an interesting case of a "filler" event having more significance than is initially apparent). He realizes that he didn't even question whether what he was doing was right or wrong, and even if you're willing to put things behind him, he can't forgive himself. Naoto also apologizes, though, saying that the Investigation Team had been too hasty to label him the culprit, and even Yosuke understands where Namatame's coming from (possibly because the two of them are motivated by the death of a woman they loved).
The police arrive, and order you out of the room. Namatame asks you to find the killer, something the group wholeheartedly agrees to do. With that, you get another rank in the Judgment Social Link.
You then visit Nanako, who's still in bad condition. Chie notes that this is where you last saw Teddie, who was worried about her, and Naoto points out that since the police are confident Namatame did it, it's all up to the Investigation Team to find the killer. Chie isn't convinced that they'll find anything, but Yosuke believes there will be something they can find out.
December 5
You set out to ask about the murders. To sum it all up, everyone essentially concludes that they're old news, and hardly anyone has any information. One interesting bit, though, is that one girl actually disproves the rumors about Saki and Namatame, saying that Saki is a good person, just misunderstood. Meanwhile, your teammates, who are usually one step behind you (Yukiko finding out Mitsuo's part-time job) or have useful ideas about where to look (Chie telling you to pretend to be a friend of Naoto's), aren't having any more luck, a good indicator of how fruitless your search is.
Evening
You all reconvene in Aiya, and talk about how people have moved on, making it difficult to get anything useful out of them. It's clear that unlike the other investigations, no one has made much progress this time.
You, Naoto and Yosuke step outside. You have three chances to guess who the killer is, or else you will get the same bad ending that you would if you didn't kill Namatame. A lot of people try to hide the killer's identity with spoilers, but since this liveblog covers all spoilers as they come, I'll say it straight out.
The correct answer is Tohru Adachi.
To some, the answer is fairly obvious (Adachi's the only one who fits all the criteria, and his facade as a nice but incompetent police detective is clearly flimsy), and to others, it comes out of nowhere. TV Tropes tends to have fairly strict standards for twists, often labeling them as too obvious or too poorly built up, but this one nicely walks a fine middle ground, since it's one that you'll figure out if you put together the clues from throughout the game (including those that were only revealed recently, or are just that Genre Savvy.
If you've gotten up to Rank 8 in the Jester Social Link, you're then granted another choice, of whether or not to protect Adachi. Needless to say, the correct answer is to tell the truth. If you don't, you get to destroy the letter that incriminates Adachi, which leads him to blackmail you into doing his bidding whenever he feels like it, and your character to realize that he made the wrong decision, to put it mildly.
That said, Adachi being the culprit is only treated as a possibility for now, since it would explain who gave you the threatening letter, and how he could destroy incriminating evidence.
Yukiko's surprised to hear about Adachi, saying that he was at her inn when Mayumi was there (but unlike Namatame, he had no connection to her). Kanji also mentions that he called out to a girl in Kanji's class. Naoto places a call, and after hearing that Adachi's at the hospital, goes over to ask him some questions, resulting in another rank up for Judgment.
You then head to the hospital and find Adachi in a lobby, talking with an annoyed nurse about how Dojima left his room again. Dojima shows up and asks where Namatame is, and is upset to hear that Adachi transferred him out, since Dojima has more questions.
You then ask Adachi questions, starting with his interactions with Mayumi and Saki. He tells some bald-faced lies about how he never saw them, and this leads into the question about the warning letter. After pleading ignorance, he says he "forgot" to take it to the crime lab, and claims it was all a prank. Adachi soon gets agitated, telling Dojima to get back to his room and you to get home.
Naoto gets straight to the point, asking who Adachi thinks committed the first two murders, and Kanji even more bluntly says he thinks Adachi might be the one. Adachi snaps and suddenly says "We already know Namatame's the one who put 'em all in!" Dojima's confused as to how Adachi knows about the method of murder, and Naoto says that Adachi slipped up earlier by saying that the previous disappearances were related, even if she only realized now. Adachi panics and runs out, pursued by the party and Dojima, although Dojima collapses before he can get far.
Adachi makes it to Namatame's room, and escapes inside the TV, causing the party to realize that pursuing him that way is too risky. Dojima then comes in and gets a tongue-lashing from the nurse for pushing himself too far, and is warned that if he continues, there might be permanent damage. Dojima meekly apologizes and asks you to settle things with Adachi. You get another Judgment rank up in the process.
That night, you enter the Velvet Room in your dreams and find Teddie there. He reveals that he's a Shadow who deliberately forgot what he was, and that he blames himself for Nanako's death, not knowing that she's still alive. You comfort him by reassuring him that Nanako's still alive and offering to be there for him. He feels better, even if he doesn't know why he's in your dream world, so the Star Social Link ranks up to 10.
Teddie disappears and suggests that you summoned Teddie here, even though he, as a Shadow, supposedly doesn't belong in the Velvet Room (which indicates that Teddie, unlike the rest of his kind, has an ego). He then suggests that this is why the Velvet Room stopped, and now, the time has come for it to continue moving.
December 6
Rise searches for Adachi, and is able to sense him on the other side. Unfortunately, she doesn't make much progress without Teddie there, prompting the gang to note how much they miss having him around.
At that point, Teddie somehow appears in Nanako's room, and she wakes up long enough to see him there and say she heard his voice. The doctor comes and explains the phenomena to Teddie in medical terms (the only thing I can say with absolute certainty is that they don't apply here), and asks Teddie to call him if anything else comes up. Teddie, however, realizes he has something he must do, and decides to seek you out. The other shoe drops, and Teddie's Persona evolves to Kamui.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but Teddie is a bit of an odd one out for Personas. Apart from Rise's support-type Persona and Naoto's persona with its variety of skills, all Personas have weaknesses of the opposite element to theirs- Yosuke's wind-type one is weak against electricity and Kanji's electricity-type is weak against wind, while Chie's ice-type is weak against fire and Yukiko's fire-type is weak against ice- except Teddie, who has an ice-type that's weak against electricity. It's a bit like Persona 3, where Junpei's fire-type was weak against wind, Yukari's wind-type was weak against lightning, Akihiko's lightning-type was weak against ice, and Mitsuru's ice-type was weak against fire, creating a cycle without elemental opposites.
Meanwhile, after some fruitless searching, the group gives up, knowing that even if Rise succeeds, she'll be too tired to be of much use against Adachi. The group goes outside to Junes, and finds Teddie in his mascot form doing a poor job of hiding himself. Yosuke demands to know where he was.
Teddie recaps what he told you in the Velvet Room- that he's a Shadow- and that while unlike the rest of his kind, he doesn't attack people, he's not different from any of the others. He blames himself for not stopping the fog from entering the human world, which he believes he could have stopped if he were "special," like he assumed he was. The Investigation Team notes that in hindsight, they're not surprised, as Yosuke suspected that all along, and Naoto concludes that Teddie, as someone with an ego, a Shadow, and a Persona, is no different from the others in the party. With his confidence restored, Teddie vows to do what he can to help, resulting in another rank up for Judgment before you call it a day.
December 7
Teddie starts searching, and with dumb luck, finds Adachi in the room where he found Yosuke and Yu the first time (which presumably is the room created for Mayumi, Adachi's first victim). Chie wonders if the "smell" is from Yosuke's Potty Emergency, grossing out Rise and Yukiko. Teddie makes a pun, this time one that Yukiko laughs at, prompting Chie to have mixed feelings- she's happy that her friend seems in higher spirits, but still finds her sense of "humor" annoying. You then get your seventh rank in Judgment.
The group then heads into the room and finds Adachi ranting about Mayumi. He then turns to you and reveals a new portrait suiting his role as the villain- a smug grin. He plays dumb at first, but when Yosuke demands a confession from him, he claims it was an accident that happened after she got "hysterical" while meeting with him until a flashback reveals the truth.
In the flashback, Mayumi's confused as to what Adachi wants, and doesn't even seem to know who he is. When he questions her about the affair, she's understandably defensive, and becomes alarmed when he dismisses her as a "worthless bitch," suddenly becomes threatening, offering to show her what it's like to be afraid for her life (a threat that some seem to interpret as Adachi saying he's planning on raping her, even though nothing is outright said). Adachi backs her up against the TV, like he did in the opening cinematic, and pushes her in. When she falls in, he's shocked for a moment, then excited at the newfound possibility, like a kid with a new toy.
Of course, with that in mind, there's the issue of his vomiting when he found her body. It's possible that he's faking it, but it's also possible that he did so out of the horror that there was a body, and thus the murder could be traced back to him,or out of a genuine, if short-lived, bout of remorse (if only because he's actually seeing the consequences of his actions).
After Adachi notes that there were no witnesses, Yukiko's horrified that a murder happened in her inn, and Adachi goes on to explain that while he'd heard about the Midnight Channel before, he'd only found out about his ability to enter the TV or push people in by experimentation. He denies experimenting on Mayumi, and claims that her falling in was an accident, something that also goes for Saki, even if he claims he has trouble remembering her name. He returns to his story that he called her in for questioning about finding Mayumi's body, leading to another flashback.
In the flashback, Saki's just as confused as Mayumi is, since Adachi isn't asking her any questions, and starts off by asking her about Namatame, implying that they're romantically involved. Saki, realizing that this is getting ugly, slaps Adachi, but he overpowers her and shoves her inside the TV. He complains about how high school students are so undisciplined compared to him, who studied for years only to get assigned to a town like Inaba, with only a "sweet power" with which to enjoy himself. He then demands that Saki get on her knees and beg if she wants him to even consider letting her out, and while it's unclear whether she can even hear him if he's only partway inside the TV (remember that there's nothing behind the screen if you go partway in), he smugly notes that it was a false promise, and he'd never endanger himself like that.
After Adachi smugly notes that Saki went in more easily due to being smaller and lighter than Mayumi, a grown woman, Yosuke calls Adachi a "son of a bitch", prompting Adachi to claim that he wasn't trying to kill those two, and accusing them of being trying to take advantage of Namatame's rising career (forgetting that his career was dead after word got out about his affair). Yosuke, enraged, says that he knew people die in there, but Adachi tries to say this makes no difference.
You can ask Adachi whether he killed anyone else or if he tricked Namatame, leading to the same point- he answered the phone for Namatame on the night of April 15. Naoto accuses Adachi of dismissing Namatame so that he would take matters into his own hands, but Adachi claims that he was the only one who would have believed him.
Naturally, for the third time, the game cuts to a flashback. Adachi hears Namatame's story, and dismissively calls it a fantasy, but suggests that he save Yukiko himself by putting her somewhere no one can find her (It's never known whether Adachi was aware of Namatame's power, or whether anyone else could do what he did until Yu and the others started saving people).
Adachi laughs about his good fortune (you might notice a pattern that he mainly gets lucky) to be the only one to take Namatame's call, and that Namatame would keep on kidnapping people as long as the Investigation Team saved them, leading to a vicious cycle (albeit one that leads to a team of Persona users ready to take Adachi down). Adachi essentially admits that he did all this For the Evulz, and denies any direct responsibility for what happened.
Adachi admits that he enjoys surprises, and admits that he threw Mitsuo into the TV, with Naoto realizing that it's the only explanation for Mitsuo appearing inside. Upon being pressed, Adachi says he did it to prevent Mitsuo, who'd turned himself in, from taking the blame for the crimes, thereby causing Namatame to believe that the real killer had been caught and stop kidnapping people, and Mitsuo didn't realize Adachi had done it to him because the lights were off and he was startled (not to mention that Mitsuo's uncooperative by nature). Of course, the Investigation Team saving Mitsuo was not part of Adachi's plan, since once they did it, he once again was made the scapegoat. Perhaps Adachi would have gotten away from it if Naoto hadn't let herself be kidnapped, convincing the party and Namatame that the killer was still out there, but Adachi saw that as a good thing, laughing about Namatame's gullibility all the while.
Yosuke doesn't care about any of that, declaring that murdering people for a "stupid reason" is something he can never forgive him for, but Adachi smugly says he doesn't care, as the world is doomed with the fog leaking out, resulting in the real and TV worlds merging. Rise then realizes that the Adachi they're talking with is a fake. Adachi, smug as always, says that he's just here to "thank" them for wasting their time with an illusion, while the real him waits in the depths of the TV world, safe from the Shadows (whom he calls "monsters," which might imply that he doesn't know what they are).
Adachi says that Inaba will be consumed by the fog by the end of the year (although in the bad endings, it seems to still be in existence, albeit covered in fog, by March 20), and challenges you to come after him. Kanji declares that he wants to end it now, and takes a swing at Adachi. The illusion fades, and Adachi's voice echoes in the distance, mocking Kanji for thinking he was real (although taking a swing at the image of a villain who won't fight back is a great stress reliever), and again taunts the Investigation Team to put an end to things.
Chie is furious and demands that Adachi face them, but Yosuke's more concerned about the impending The End of the World as We Know It. Naoto believes that Adachi isn't lying, while Rise and Teddie note that Adachi has gained power since entering the TV World. Teddie notes that the people are acting like they were when their Shadows went berserk, and that it's possible that if things go on as they are, everyone will turn into shadows. Yosuke's determined to finish things with the villain who manipulated them. A door opens to the apparent final dungeon, and Kanji's eager to go in, but Naoto advises caution and preparation, so that Adachi can't get the jump on them. Chie's worried about the time limit, but resolves to defeat Adachi. You then get an eighth rank in Judgment.
Jester to Hunger Event
After the scene ends, if you've seen all the other Jester scenes so far, Naoto will ask that you not do anything reckless, even if you had a connection to Adachi. Rise then mentions that Adachi was seemingly calling to you, but asks you to forget she said anything.
You have the option of confronting Adachi alone. You then make your way to Junes at closing time and enter the TV, making your way to the eerie bedroom. The way into the dungeon closes, and Adachi points a pistol at you, complaining about how you didn't bring anyone else, not even the "wannabe detective" Adachi, and mockingly complains about how you should all be together to preach your virtues and beat "the bad guy." He mockingly and dismissively talks about your friendship with him, and says it's your fault for believing in him. You can then ask if he'll say the same thing to Dojima, or condemn him as a "sad human being," neither of which impresses him. He threatens to shoot you, giving you the chance to say whether you think he'd do such a thing. He then fires a warning shot to prove his point, and demands that you bring your friends.
In a rare event, the Jester Social Link transforms and becomes Hunger. There's no effect on any of the fusions, except for the different name, but this allows you to complete the link.
After leaving, you find Yosuke, who agrees to keep things secret, but is a bit sad that you didn't trust him more.
You might want to confront Adachi now, but that's the last thing you want to do. When you complete Magatsu Inaba, the game fast-forwards to Christmas Eve, if you're not there already, costing you valuable time to advance your social links. As such, it's generally best to procrastinate even when doing so might endanger all of humanity.
