Characters / Persona 5 Strikers: Jail Monarchs

Persona 5 Main Character Index
The Phantom Thieves of Hearts (Starting Members [Joker] | Later Members [Goro Akechi | Kasumi Yoshizawa])
Confidants (Sae Niijima) | Targets - Palace Rulers / Endgame Antagonists (The Dreamer) / Minor | Other Characters
Spin-Offs: Strikers (Jail Monarchs) | Tactica | The Phantom X

This is the character sheet for the Jail Monarchs of Persona 5 Strikers. For a full index of characters from the Persona series, go here.

Just like the main page, spoilers for the original Persona 5 are left unmarked.

Additionally, a number of spoilers about the Monarchs and their involvement in the story are both marked and unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

(Spoilers for Royal will be marked for now, however.)

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In General

The rulers of the Jails. All of them are highly influential celebrities and other figureheads who had managed to obtain abnormal popularity by stealing the desires of citizens using lesser Shadows. In reality, many of them are just people mistreated or wronged in extremely despicable ways, and they used the EMMA app for revenge against the injustice laid upon them. Once their desires are stolen, the citizens become fanatical to the Monarch and all of their work, although they can only maintain influence on people whom they stole desires of. To other people, the Monarchs and their followers are obviously insane.

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• Affably Evil: Many of their real-life counterparts appear to be just friendly folk that the Thieves can interact with very easily.
• Anti-Villain: They are overall more sympathetic and morally grey compared to the palace rulers of the original Persona 5, especially in light of them being Brainwashed to a certain extent.
• Arc Villain: The Monarchs serve as the rulers of the Jails that have appeared throughout Japan.
• The Atoner: Unlike the major targets of Persona 5, this is completely played out straight. If the Phantom Thieves defeat a Monarch, they will apologize for their misdeeds and vow to make amends after their changes of heart. The main difference is that in the original Persona 5, the Thieves were focused on ensuring that corrupt people would be punished for their crimes and wouldn't abuse others anymore and the targets, but because of Yaldabaoth's tampering with their Shadow Selves, more often than not they just break down into weeping husks. In Strikers, however, the Thieves are more focused on helping the wayward Monarchs redeem themselves and there is nothing that prevents the Monarchs from actually atoning, so the former Monarchs actually get to atone for their wrongdoings.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Presumably due to the Jail and Monarch systems being based on Akira Konoe's Dark and Troubled Past, EMMA seemingly encourages his Pay Evil unto Evil mindset in others, which turns them into exactly the sort of person they resorted to EMMA against:
  • Alice Hiiragi was bullied for having a crush on another student. Now, she bullies anyone who seems to have the romantic success her bullies denied her by breaking up happy relationships.
  • Ango Natsume was an amateur writer who wrote a plagiarized, dull and incoherent read because he was genuinely not that good at writing, and his publishers rigged him a minor award just to make a mockery of him and trick people into thinking he inherited his father's legacy. Now he's literally brainwashing people into buying his book for money and fame.
  • Mariko Hyodo was originally a honest politician who genuinely had her constitutents' best interests at heart; after being threatened by corrupt colleagues, she used EMMA to cheat the system herself by brainwashing people into voting for her.
  • Akane idolized the Phantom Thieves, and became a medium for Konoe and/or EMMA to bait the Phantom Thieves and change their hearts.
  • Akira Konoe wanted to be a superhero. However, his actions and the fact that he has a highly sophisticated base makes him look more like a supervillain.
• Beneath the Mask: Outwardly, the Monarchs are happy, successful people respected by many. Under this façade, they are still deeply troubled people hungry for fame, vengeance, and power who are terrified of being weak and powerless again. Because of this, they indulge in selfish acts and steal others' desires in order to stave off their deep insecurities.
• Black Bug Room: In the Metaverse, EMMA locks them in cages while constantly reminding them of their past traumas and mistakes, instilling in them their Pay Evil unto Evil mindset.
• Brainwashed:
  • By having lesser Shadows steal the Treasure from a citizen's Shadow, they'll worship and adore the Monarch and whatever they make or do.
  • In a rather unique case, the Monarchs were unintentionally brainwashing themselves as well. EMMA encouraged them to indulge a Pay Evil unto Evil mentality by trapping them in a birdcage, reminding them of their old weaknesses, and prevent them from ever making such a mistake again. It's especially prominent on Akane, who started acting in an identical way as Konoe after EMMA captured her, even flat-out spewing Konoe's "Operation Oraculi" step-by-step as "hers".
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Many of the Monarchs display extremely obvious signs of going completely Out of Character and are prone to acting in the most outrageous and publicly indecent ways possible, best seen on Alice or Akane.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Subverted, although all of the Monarchs, including EMMA herself who influences the Monarchs believes they were playing this straight. Konoe even tells the Phantom Thieves that they were comrades who wanted to fix the world of crime when he's finally confronted, but all of them were ignorant to the fact that the people they changed the hearts of have blank eyes, were so unhealthily obsessed with the Monarchs that they sometimes forget to eat or drink or even binge-spend, and generally looked like brainwashed puppets more than people.
• The Caligula: All of them are brainwashed by EMMA and thus thoroughly insane, making them very dangerous public hazards.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: As a whole, to the Palace rulers:
  • Rather than being amoral and cruel people for formed pocket dimensions out of their own rationalizations for their evil, they're normally okay folks who accepted a Deal with the Devil after feeling abandoned and pushed into a corner. Notably, most of them realize they're becoming worse than the people who hurt them after being beaten by the Thieves.
  • While Palace Rulers act like textbook psychopaths/sociopaths and actually are sociopaths or psychopaths, Jail Monarchs don't really act like anything but normal, decent people until a certain "trigger" is pushed, in which all hell breaks loose in an extremely unnatural way.
• Dark Secret: The traumatic event that started a Monarch on their dark path manifests in the Jail as a lock that protects their wishes. To get past this lock, the Thieves must go to the location in the real world where the event took place, access the Metaverse from there, and defeat the local Lock Keeper, a powerful Shadow. It isn't easy because a Monarch usually goes to great lengths to hide such a horrible secret, both in the real world and the Metaverse.
• Despair Event Horizon: What causes them to plead with the EMMA app to "save them" - losing faith that they'll ever be anything more than a forgotten victim.
• Drunk with Power: In the real world, all Monarchs are inevitably intoxicated by their power over others, whether or not they realize what the source of this power really is.
• Dub Name Change: They go from being known as Kings in the Japanese version to the more gender-neutral Monarchs in the English version.
• Fairytale Motifs: The Monarchs confronted in-game are based on fairy tale characters (or characters from various near modern or modern fictitious work), fitting for the game's theme of "Desire" and "Illusions".
  • Alice Hiiragi/Mad Rabbit Alice is based on Alice in Wonderland.
  • Ango Natsume/Nightmare Dragon Ango is based on Castlevania or other Dragon/Black Knight-based devil castle tales.
  • Mariko Hyodo/Snow Empress Mariko is based on the The Snow Queen.
  • Shuzo Ubukata is based on Frankenstein.
  • Akane Hasegawa is a nod to Persona 5 itself, due to the in-universe fandom surrounding the Phantom Thieves and her being a huge fangirl of them.
  • Akira Konoe/Hero Akira and his childhood hero, Zephyrman is based on Tokustatsu shows, particularly the in-universe Phoenix Ranger Featherman R.
  • EMMA/The Demiurge is based on the Fairy Godmother type of character and the Bible.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The Phantom Thieves instill this mindset into all of the Monarchs after they're defeated. Essentially, the Thieves admit that the Monarchs are the victims of monstrous injustices. However, the Monarchs ended up taking this desire for justice way too far in the wrong direction. The Thieves insist that their pain doesn't excuse doing so much damage to so many people, especially towards hundreds of strangers who had nothing to do with their trauma.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: The Jail system basically embodies this trope. Since the EMMA application is widespread, basically anyone, as soon as they wished to can use it to put up to millions in danger of losing property, sanity or even life. The co-instigator also pretty much embodies this, as Akira Konoe's former status as an abused kid motivated him to kickstart the whole incident.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Many of the Monarchs are Shadow Archetypes to certain characters from Persona 5. As a result, they have weaknesses that match the corresponding character's primary element:
  • Mad Rabbit Alice is weak to Agi skills. This is because she's a dark counterpart of Ann; both girls are a senior student and alumnus from Shujin respectively and entered the fashion industry, although while Ann had a group of close friends that helped her cope with her anger against Kamoshida and accept her without judgement, Alice resorted to EMMA's salvation to randomly snap and attack anyone who might remind her of the trauma of being bullied, down to judging Ann as a bully herself just because of her appearance.
  • Nightmare Dragon Ango is weak to Bufu skills. Ango is basically a dark counterpart of Yusuke; both young novices to art, Yusuke was plagiarized by Madarame to prop up his mentor's name at his own expense and responded by rebelling to bring his mentor down, while Ango plagiarized work himself, then learned he was only being used for his name, so resorted to EMMA to prop himself up as a "true" genius.
  • Snow Empress Mariko is weak to Psi skills while being a counterpart to Kunikazu Okumura. Both of them are acquainted with Haru and are distorted by the Metaverse's powers, both are attempting to climb the political ranks. However, Hyodo was already an experienced politician when she began to "fall" and her distortion is based around being far too clean, to the point where she abuses her civil wards. Okumura was only starting out in politics after being a corrupt executive with abusive business practices and thus used his own daughter as a political pawn, then died before he could reconcile with her. Interestingly, Snow Empress Mariko is also weak to Curse, and the Psi/Curse weakness combination is shared with Okumura's MDL-GM (large green) robots.
  • Akira the Hero and his Zephyrus Mech are weak to Nuke, Makoto's main element. While Makoto strictly enforces the law with rationalization, Konoe enforces the law blindly via his own version of justice, and anyone he deems a criminal is always a criminal. He's also weak to Electricity, Ryuji's main element. Both had an Abusive Dad that made them have little tolerance for corrupt people, and were elated to get a chance to take down rotten adults with the Metaverse.
  • The Final Boss is weak to Bless and Curse, just like the Lock Keepers. It's much like how Sumire, Joker, and Akechi, being respectively Bless and Curse users joined forces to defeat Maruki, who created a dream world with resemblances of a Jail. Furthermore, Bless is Sophia's main element. While Sophia has high empathy towards the human heart and seeks to grant humanity the light of free will, The Demiurge merely considers its own answer to humanity's suffering as their sole light, completely ignorant that she's not any different from Yaldabaoth or Maruki, the previous reigns of the Metaverse's distortions that might very well doom humanity as a whole.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Many of the Monarchs are such. In all of the Brainwashed Monarchs, it's Invoked by EMMA herself, who deliberately triggers them to do such things on a flip, reminding them that they are no longer the weaklings they were.
  • Alice Hiiragi wanted to be a ray of light for girls in her situation: victims of bullying and Slut-Shaming. But once she became a Bully Hunter with EMMA's power and used the Jail to steal people's Desires, Alice gradually became a bully herself, on a scale even worse than the people she hated could ever achieve. Alice would repeatedly break up happy couples, abuse her managers, and get people to blow all of their money on her with this power. After her change of heart, Alice even admits that she had no reason to do what she did besides feeling like she was owed retribution.
  • Ango Natsume despises Sayuri, which is plagiarized work by Madarame. He's being ripped off for his own plagiarized work by his greedy editors, and he used the EMMA app to turn the tides so the money and praise went to him rather than his family name.
  • Mariko Hyodo is discredited because of an ice sculpture scandal that resulted in the death of a 9-year-old child, in which a corrupt senator uses it to his advantage to take power. When Hyodo used EMMA to take power for herself, she's so obsessed with keeping the city's reputation clean to the point that she overworks her civil wards.
  • Akane Hasegawa is a big fan of the Phantom Thieves, but resents law enforcement. She goes against the Phantom Thieves because they are cooperating with law enforcement due to EMMA.
  • Akira Konoe is obsessed with justice because his father barely treated him like a human, to the point of fabricating false charges of crimes that he committed himself, brainwashing the Police and pretending to cooperate with a Corrupt Politican so he can take power.
  • Even the game's Big Bad, EMMA/Demiurge, isn't exempt from this. She believes that she, a flawless AI, is the ultimate answer to humanity's happiness, ignorant of her own flaws as an AI impulsively made by a misanthropic woman out of anger.
• Lack of Empathy: A collective problem among them. The Monarchs have been driven to a point where the only pain they care about is their own, and refuse to consider the effects their own attempts to become accepted and loved are having on the people around them.
• Laughably Evil: The Monarchs have a tendency to flip moods on a dime, with the negative aspects their Shadows represent being so over-the-top that they're difficult to actually take seriously, compared to how darkly detestable the Palace rulers' Shadows could be. This is actually foreshadowing the fact that their Shadows aren't a natural product of their existing flaws but a result of EMMA altering their personalities, and they become decidedly less funny when it's revealed just what their grievances are.
• Mad Eye: Befitting their deranged natures, several of the Monarchs' shadow selves are depicted with one eye wide open and the other half-squinting.
• Misplaced Retribution: The Monarchs all have specific people that they want to target, mostly those who hurt them or caused them to be a victim of some sort. However, this ended up extending to innocent people, either using them as pawns or not caring what happened to anyone else if it meant getting revenge.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After they are defeated and talked into submission by the Phantom Thieves, a Monarch has this reaction upon realizing that they have actually become much worse than their original tormentors. The Thieves often give the Monarch a You Are Not Alone speech to give them the moral resolve to make amends for their selfishness.
• Obliviously Evil: Even before being brainwashed, the Monarchs are thoroughly broken people who believe that they are using the EMMA app to help or improve society, no matter how much harm they are actually doing. Their horrible life experiences have left them with a very self-centred viewpoint, making the Monarchs believe that they are simply getting well-deserved justice or that the suffering they cause is a fair price for improving society as a whole. This only becomes more apparent after they're brainwashed, if Akane's Shadow is any indication, they likely thought that their actions are their own even if they're clearly not. Konoe is the only one who seems to have a certain extent of control over his actions even after becoming a Monarch.
• Playing the Victim Card: Monarchs genuinely believe that, since they were legitimately victims of a monstrous injustice, they have every right to be horrible to whoever they choose. Their Shadows always give this kind of speech whenever they are defeated by the Phantom Thieves in their Jails, using their own pain and suffering as an excuse for their actions during their Villainous Breakdowns.
  Alice: All my life. I'm no match for the real winners... [...] And I tried SO HARD to change! But I was still made fun of—still bullied... I just wanted to stop being miserable. I poured my heart into fashion and worked to get so far! But then... she showed up again, and started running her mouth about my past... She told everyone what a pathetic little shit I was! [...] That's why I took all of it from her! Her boyfriend, her social circle, everything! And that STILL wasn't enough for me! It wasn't just her. Everyone that talked behind my back, all the people who just stood there when I was getting... I'll destroy every single one of them! [...] This power lets me get revenge... So I...
  Ango: I tried... I really tried. Just like everyone else! I read and read, all through the night! I wrote hours on end, like my life depended on it! And for what!? Nothing I wrote was ever "mine." It was just another work from "Sogo Natsume's grandson." No one! No one ever acknowledged my effort! Not my effort! Not my work! Not even me! [...] No matter where I look, all I ever see is a bunch of thoughtless idiots—slaves to appearances and nothing more... Acknowledge me, dammit! Acknowledge Ango Natsume's efforts for once! I just want someone to see that I really try!
  Mariko: ...As the mayor, I know very well that little girl's death was ultimately my fault. But my staff betrayed me! All for their insatiable greed! I thought I could leave that awful position behind. Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as that. Had I gone, I'd only be replaced by greedy scum! That's why I never stepped down! In this world, it's either eat or be eaten! And with circumstances so cruel, I decided I'd be the one doing the eating! Even if every last one of my votes were false, at least I could use them to make the world a better place! But if I were replaced as mayor... who would be there to honor that little girl's memory? An innocent girl lost her life, yet I could do nothing to stop the evil still afoot!
• Psychological Projection: Monarchs are victims of Akira Konoe's Black-and-White Insanity, since the EMMA app uses Akira's one-sided ideals about justice as part of its program. Every Jail is a manifestation of Akira's Pay Evil unto Evil philosophy.
• Seven Deadly Sins: As a sort of Call-Back to Persona 5, each of the Jails represents one of the seven sins.
  • Shibuya Jail - Lust
  • Sendai Jail - Greed/Vanity
  • Sapporo Jail - Gluttony
  • Okinawa Jail - Sloth
  • Kyoto Jail - Wrath
  • Osaka Jail - Pride
  • Jail of the Abyss - Envy
  • Tree of Knowledge - Melancholy
• Shadow Archetype: To the Phantom Thieves. Both the Thieves and the Monarchs were victims of the corruption of Japanese society, unable to solve their problems by conventional means. Both groups have also gained access to the Metaverse via a phone app, giving them hope for the first time. The difference is that while the Thieves restrain themselves and steal only distorted desires of single, very corrupt people to help others, the Monarchs freely and indiscriminately steal desires en masse to satisfy their selfish need for vengeance and fame. In fact, the Monarchs are the worst-case example of what happens when people suddenly gain the ability to steal desires.
• She Is the King: In the Japanese script, the rulers of the Jails are referred by the English word of "Kings", even when referring to female rulers like Alice and Mariko. The English localization changes it for the gender-neutral term "Monarchs," instead.
• Signature Headgear: Every human Monarch has a headpiece of some sort; Alice and Mariko's crowns, Ango's horns, Akane's top hat, and Akira's helmet. When each of them has been defeated, they remove it to symbolize that they no longer control their Jails.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: The Monarchs all have glowing yellow eyes because they are Shadows.
• Tarot Motifs: While none of the Monarchs have given Arcana, their shadow self represents a different form of Reverse Arcana, usually the arcana of the Phantom Thief that most opposes them.
• Tragic Villain: In another lifetime, any one of the Monarchs, including Konoe himself, could have been a Phantom Thief. Unfortunately, without anyone to lean on or keep them grounded once they got the power to change hearts, their personal vices overtook them and they ended up as bad as their tormentors.
• Trapped in Villainy: After defeating Shadow Mariko, Morgana realizes something off about the Monarchs' headquarters in each Jail. To get to the Monarch, the gang has to get past a door that, when touched, induces a vivid audio memory related to the traumas that the Monarch faced. Morgana concludes that this isn't meant to keep intruders out, but instead to force the Monarch to stay inside, reminding them of their failures to "persuade" them to keep going with their use of the EMMA app.
• Villain with Good Publicity: All of them have very high popularity, to the point of fervor. However, they only retain their influence inside the area where their Jails are overlaid at. Invoked, as they deliberately and artificially create the popularity themselves in order to gain or regain senses of self-confidence and to exact revenge against people that they have grievances with.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Unlike the Palace rulers, they are obviously victims of abuse or injustice and in comparison, their crimes are largely petty (making people spend their savings, demanding mindless adoration and praise; compared to sexual assault, organised crime, sex trafficking, and murder) and most of their outlandishly ridiculous behavior was because EMMA brainwashes them herself. It still doesn't merit their mind-controlling people to gain fame and doing stuff that their oppressors did to them.
• Who's Laughing Now?: The first thing that every Monarch does with their newfound power is ruining those who oppressed them, real or imagined.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Unlike most of the Persona 5 Palace rulers, the Jail Monarchs were people who went through horrible trauma and injustice that led them to abuse EMMA for their own gain.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: When people enter a Monarch's keyword on the EMMA app, their Shadow selves are transported to the Monarch's Jail, where their desires are stolen and used to build the Jail's power. As a result, victims become fanatically devoted to the Monarch in the real world. Only when a Monarch steps down are the desires freed and restored. Persona users' desires cannot be stolen because their Shadow selves have evolved into Personas. Jails are actually maintained by the EMMA app, so they are still intact even when the Monarch steps down. As a result, individual victims might have their obsession with a Monarch's works reignited, or entire populations can stay mesmerized even when a Monarch is deceased. Any of these behaviors can be stimulated by the Monarch's voice, which can be synthesized by EMMA. Only when EMMA/Demiurge is defeated do the Jails collapse and the captured desires are truly freed.

Alice Hiiragi

Alice Hiiragi

Voiced by: Ayane Sakura (Japanese), Melanie Minichino (English)

The Girl Lost in Wonderland
^{Click here to see Shadow Alice}

^{Click here to see Mad Rabbit Alice}

"But that doesn't matter now. With this power, I can have everything. Everything I've always wanted... Mine! And now, I'm going to make you mine... All mine!"

Sin: Luxuria (Lust)

An up-and-coming fashion designer in Shibuya with abnormally high popularity. While she makes a great public image at first impression, she's known for changing the hearts of men simply because they were in a romantic relationship so they go for her instead, and anyone who questions her after that will be physically attacked by her behind the scenes. Her fans are also not very far from starting street fights against people who don't like Alice, buying her merchandise until they go bankrupt, or firing people as soon as they dislike Alice.

Her Shadow is Mad Rabbit Alice, the Monarch of the Shibuya Jail, and it is overlaid on top of the 705 Mall with the Keyword "Wonderland." As the name implies, it is filled with references to Alice In Wonderland.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: Her Shadow has a Villainous Crush on Joker, but it's clear that she sees him as a prized possession rather than as a love interest. While the real life Alice only briefly interacted with Joker at the beginning of the game on at least two occasions^ExplanationJoker first met Alice when he, Morgana and Ryuji were shopping for camp supplies and received Alice's EMMA keyword, and second time when Joker, Morgana, Sophia and Ann went to the TV Studio to see her interview., she otherwise doesn't think of Joker as anyone worth noting beyond her brief confusion to why Joker isn't head over heels for her like the rest of the people she stole Desires from.
• Achilles' Heel: Mad Rabbit Alice is weak to both Agi and Garu skills.
• Alice Allusion: Her name, design and stage props incorporate classic aspects from the Alice in Wonderland story, such as teapots, pocket watches and playing card motifs, right down to Alice herself wearing a blue dress. Her Jail further enforces this, as the keyword needed to access her Jail with the EMMA app is "Wonderland", and also happens to feature even more references to the story, complete with Alice's Shadow transforming into a monster rabbit for her boss fight.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Mad Rabbit Alice has bright pink skin.
• Animal Motifs: Aside from her transformed state based on the White Rabbit, her Shadow's cane has a flamingo theme. The parallel is fairly striking as, despite their flamboyant colours and elegant poise, pink flamingos are also known for being highly-territorial and aggressive.
• Ass Kicks You: In the first phase of her boss fight, she throws herself butt-first into you. In later parts, rainbow hearts come out of her butt to brainwash male party members.
• Bad Boss: If a manager calls her out on her unacceptable behavior, she stomps on them and forces them to tearfully beg her forgiveness as she records them to get her to take her foot off. She openly and gleefully admits to traumatizing her previous manager so badly that he's ended up a Hikkikomori.
• Berserk Button: Because her biggest trauma is being bullied badly for having a crush and having him taken away from her afterwards, simply seeing a man who was a part of a married couple instantly triggers her psychopathic, violent behavior.
• Broken Bird: In reality, Alice is an alumna of Shujin, and her time there was awful, as she was frequently bullied. She wanted to become a fashion designer after seeing a gorgeous dress so she could get out from her good-for-nothing self, until some jealous girls that stomped on her, took pics of her humiliation, and got her crush to reject her. It's implied that the same bully spread her school history on the internet to spite her a good amount of time later, which acted as the last straw that motivated her to use the EMMA app to create some semblance of self-ego and to take revenge against anyone who bullied her or just about any men that would remind her of the trauma.
• Burlesque: The design of her Shadow invokes this.
• Butter Face: Her Shadow's One-Winged Angel form has a fairly curvy figure and is still dressed in her human form's dominatrix outfit. It would be almost enough to make her qualify for being a Cute Monster Girl if not for her incredibly mismatched eyes and stitched up mouth.
• Cane Fu: Her Shadow wields a long cane that she uses as a weapon in her basic form and her Mad Rabbit form, though she snaps it and discards it at the halfway point of the battle. The cane's flamingo figurehead is another allusion to Alice in Wonderland, specifically the game of croquet with the queen where flamingos were the mallets.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Suguru Kamoshida from the original game. Kamoshida was an Evil Teacher who fell from grace as an Olympic athlete who used his reputation to torture and harass his students without any consequences. Alice, on the other hand, was bullied in high school and worked her way up to become a beloved idol, before the same bully leaked her past onto the Internet, pushing Alice to use EMMA to steal her tormentor's social circle, boyfriend, and everything else; from there, she went mad with power and became determined to make every man in the world her slave. Notably, Ann hates Kamoshida and spares him out of Cruel Mercy, but she sympathizes with Alice's initial desires despite not approving of her actions and wants her to redeem herself.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Ann comments that Alice could've easily become a famous model without EMMA, and wonders why she felt the need to brainwash people instead of using her own appeal. It's eventually revealed that Alice did initially try to make her name the normal way, and only resorted to EMMA as revenge against her bullies from high school who followed her and tried to ruin her career by spreading rumors.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She started going after any woman in a happy relationship, intending to split up happy couples and engineer break-ups. Alice did all this because she was bullied for having a crush and it's implied the same bully spread the word on the internet to tank her career. Even after making the girl who ruined her career pay, Alice keeps moving on to anyone who appears happy. After her change of heart, Alice admits she couldn't stop herself after getting Drunk on the Dark Side.
• The Dog Bites Back: Exaggerated and played for drama. Alice ruined the lives of her bullies after she found out what she could do with EMMA. However, after that happened, Alice moved on to anyone who was in a healthy relationship out of jealousy that they had what she was denied.
• Dominatrix: She's basically looks and acts like this in the Metaverse and isn't short of doing this against anyone who had a relationship with in the real world; namely, she blatantly draws married men to her on camera and if anyone dares stop her by this point, she stomps on top of and takes pictures of them. This was because her biggest trauma is being treated like this by other girls in her school and then having her boyfriend taken away as well.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Some of her lovestruck prisoners are female.
• Evil Counterpart: Alice is ultimately one to Ann. Like Ann, Alice was the victim of bullying and Slut-Shaming throughout her school life. Though unlike Ann, Alice never managed to have a friend like Shiho who pulled her from complete isolation. After gaining the power from EMMA to steal desires, she first gets back at her former bullies before using her powers to further her career.
• Evil Diva: Save for her clothes, she's also an Idol whose debut single, "Macaron Cannon" has hit off the singles charts. Unlike most cases however, her music isn't mesmerizing; she's blatantly going around and mesmerizing people with EMMA's power.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Her Shadow has two giant eyes in her hair as well as a pair of bracelets and heels that have bows decorated with an eye in the center attached to them.
• Fan Disservice: The cutscene where she transforms into her One-Winged Angel form has a shot of her shaking her butt at the camera, except said scene also shows that her tail has a mouth reminiscent of the Hablerie enemies from Persona 4. Her design is also a Stripperiffic bunny girl, but with major Facial Horror.
• Fanservice: Her Shadow form before transforming into Mad Rabbit Alice is a straight-up dominatrix — aside from her yellow eyes and her creepy hair decoration, she would not look out of place in a raunchy cabaret.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: After she dealt with her actual bullies, she started to view any woman who had something she was denied (Ann for being beautiful and not- or so Alice thinks- slut-shamed for it, Happily Married women because their crush wasn't used to hurt them) as bullies just for living their own lives where she could see them.
• Female Misogynist: Alice shows shades of this. Due to being a victim of Slut-Shaming in school, Alice specifically goes out of her way to break up happy couples to hurt women she's envious of. Even her boss fight sees her specifically insulting Ann for her appearance.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Alice is confirmed to have a Jail and Ann, Joker, and Morgana goes to a talk show to investigate if she is actually distorted, she initially doesn't really act that out there until the male host begins to talk about her crush, where she seemingly just bricks and the male host fervently confesses to her, much to everyone's disbelief. This is followed by what is essentially a 20-year old woman physically attacking her manager in a rather public hallway, something that not even Kamoshida or Madarame would do in such a blatant fashion. The whole thing is extremely uncanny and uncomfortable to watch, making clear that this is an EMMA-induced Distortion and most certainly not coming from Alice proper.
  • Furthermore, when the party investigates Alice's jail, Ann makes note that she has supposedly no reason to bolster her popularity with EMMA considering that she's already an attractive person with full potential to be an actually popular fashion model. As it turns out, she's got other reasons...
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A young woman who used to be an introverted and heavily bullied schoolgirl mesmerized a huge chunk of Shibuya's populace on a scale rivalling that of the God of Control.
• Glasgow Grin: Her Mad Rabbit form has this effect with the mouth stitches on the side of her mouth.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Because she was bullied for having a crush, she would basically lash out at anyone with a romantic relationship by changing their hearts so they break up and go after her instead. She admits as much during her change of heart on TV, saying that she broke up couples because she couldn't stand to see happy women.
• Hair-Raising Hare: Mad Rabbit Alice is a monstrous bunny girl that is around quadruple of Joker's height and is dressed in a gaudy-looking Burlesque outfit. She also serves at the first boss of the game.
• Harem Seeker: She wants to use her Jail to make every man in Shibuya fall in love with her. Deconstructed, however, in that she doesn't actually want them for sex, but to show up every woman in Shibuya, who she thinks are collectively a Girl Posse out for her blood.
• Height Angst: Implied; her human self is fairly short while her Shadow is a Statuesque Stunner in heels, and always seen in angles that make her taller than everyone.
• He Who Fights Monsters: In trying to stop bullies from ruining her adult career as well as her school life, she ended up becoming a bully just like them, but on a grander scale.
• Hidden Depths: Once the word of her trauma gets out, her despicable behavior makes a lot more sense. She's effectively replicating the bullying caused by her Alpha Bitch bullies in the public.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: She flirts with Joker and calls him cute when he's at her mercy, offering to make him her boyfriend. She orders him to be thrown into a cell early on, and when he escapes, this leads to her liking him because of how he continues to defy her expectations, unlike all of the other men who instantly fall at her feet. This only applies to Shadow Alice, however, as the real life Alice doesn't show the same interest.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You:
  • Alice shows interest in Joker when she sees that he's the only man who isn't instantly charmed by her. Both as her normal and Shadow self, she calls him "cool", and after noticing how much progress Joker has made with infiltrating her cage, she declares that she "finally has something she wants." When the Phantom Thieves confront her, she vows to make Joker hers. During the boss battle, Alice will also tease Ann by asking her who she has a crush on, and saying that she herself would go for Joker out of all of them. However, after her heart has been changed, Alice doesn't actively pursue that interest.
  • This is averted with the real Alice, who doesn't share the same interest as her Shadow due to seeing the real life Joker as a stranger.
• Informed Attractiveness: Even if not using the EMMA app, Alice is stated by both Ryuji and Ann to be a rather pretty-looking woman. In fact, when dismantling the security systems in her Jail, Ann was even puzzled why she even needed the EMMA application to boost her popularity to uncanny levels in the first place.
• Irrational Hatred: Alice instantly develops a hatred of Ann when Alice finds out that Ann is a fashion model, accusing her of being an Alpha Bitch of the sort that made Alice's life miserable. Not only is Ann no such thing — Ann was herself a victim of Slut-Shaming at Shujin Academy — but Ann's repeated insistence that she's not continues to fall on deaf ears for Alice. It's only after Alice is defeated that she finally listens.
• Lust: Her sin and motif. Unlike Kamoshida, she doesn't represent the sexual aspect of the sin (though she certainly uses her sex appeal to her advantage), but the desire for the feeling of power over others; in Alice's case, she doesn't lust after the guys she seduces, but for revenge against their wives and girlfriends. She breaks up relationships and degrades everyone around her so that she can feel the power of being the bully rather than the victim.
• Meaningful Name: Her surname, Hiiragi means "holly flowers", and in Hanakotoba, it represents protection. Effectively, she is protecting herself with an illusion.
• Misplaced Retribution:
  • Upon meeting Ann, she immediately decides that since Ann is a beautiful fashion model, she has to be the same kind of Alpha Bitch that made her life a living hell, and she spends a lot of her boss fight berating her for judging Alice's own actions in order to get friends. Ann was actually in the same boat as Alice, being ostracized for looking foreign, bullied because other people thought she had to be an Alpha Bitch because she was pretty, and victimized by someone who would never have faced consequences without supernatural intervention.
  • Her targeting of married couples is because other women bullied her for having a crush, so now she wants to take revenge on them by stealing their crushes. However, she never distinguishes between the people who did bully her and women whose only crime was being happy while Alice wasn't.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: When she transforms into Mad Rabbit Alice, the corners of her mouth are stitched shut. Despite this, she is still able to talk.
• Mythology Gag: Mad Rabbit Alice is more or less a gender-flipped version of Kamoshidaman's One-Winged Angel form, with both of them being rabbit-themed Starter Villains of their respective games. Additionally, much like the real Kamoshida, the Starter Villain of Persona 5, she is themed with the sin of lust and has ties to Shujin Academy, although Alice's actions are nowhere near as morally repugnant as Kamoshida's. Coincidentally, all three of these also share some sort of connection to girls that were subjected to extreme bullying.
• The Napoleon: The real-world Alice is very short (for her age) and a head shorter than Joker, but because of EMMA's powers, she is a very dangerous public hazard who subconsciously brainwashes people who remind her of her school life and attack/humiliate others physically in the public.
• Never Be Hurt Again: After her defeat, Alice mentions that her true motivation to steal desires was so that she could never be a victim again.
• Never My Fault: During the confrontation with Mad Rabbit Alice, Ann calls out Alice for stomping all over innocent people. Alice's response is "the men came after me on their own." Ann doesn't buy it, telling Alice that it's just because Alice changed their hearts with EMMA.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Not only had the Phantom Thieves not been in action for months, they also had no idea that there was a Change of Heart epidemic happening all over Japan, much less in nearby Shibuya. In addition, it was only by pure chance that they got involved in the plot at all, as three of them were merely out to buy camping supplies, and happened to be in the area during a public appearance. Alice giving her EMMA keyword to Joker is what properly reassembles the Phantom Thieves into action and put a hole into the Big Bad's plan.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Alice's design appears to be heavily based on the style of model and pop idol Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, down to the use of random objects as headpieces, a heavy emphasis on eye motifs and the penchant for contrasting cute and creepy imagery; even their silhouettes are similar, with Alice wearing wigs in an identical shape and large, frilly lolita-type dresses.
• Obliviously Evil: As shown by her shocked reaction to being given a Phantom Thief card, on some level Alice doesn't realize her bullying behavior is that bad.
• Older Than They Look: Despite her short stature and overall appearance making her pass for a 15 or 16-year-old, she actually graduated from Shujin before Ryuji, Ann, or Joker enrolled and likely even prior to Makoto becoming student council president, putting her in the 20 to 21-year-old range.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: She used to have a boyfriend during her time at Shujin, but that was taken from her once a few jealous girls found that out and bullied her mercilessly under the premise that she's stringing along men. This became the motive for her using EMMA so she can draw men from Shibuya to her.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The method that she lashes out at her managers is the same as how she was bullied at school: publicly humiliating them and treating them like animals.
• Psychotic Smirk: Flashes these whenever she makes someone humiliate themselves in public.
• Relationship Sabotage: Goes around doing this a lot, basically making a big chunk of men in Shibuya fall for her to the point that they break up marriages, fire people who aren't her fans or even attack anyone who questions them.
• Running on All Fours: During the second phase of her boss fight, she runs on all four limbs like a rabbit, making her faster and harder to dodge.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • She's one to Ann. While both girls are Shujin alumnaes who experienced school bullying and entered the fashion industry to find a better life for themselves, Ann chose to strike back only against those who deserve it, particularly the one who wronged her and her friend. In contrast, Alice took things a step further by unleashing her anger to the rest of the public and anyone who might remind her of her horrid past.
  • She's also one to Sumire. Both of them have fairy tale motifs (Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella) and are effectively living in an illusion with similar mechanics. Again, Sumire's anger is directed on herself, while Alice directs her anger to the public.
  • Going across games, she's essentially a villainous Rise Kujikawa. They even have similar backstories, having both been bullied in school before becoming popular idols. Her "Feast Your Eyes" attack is even a direct reference to Shadow Rise, only she is vulnerable to a specific form of attack.
• Shrinking Violet: She used to be this until she came across a gorgeous dress one day and it inspired her to try out fashion design.
• Slut-Shaming: Was subject to this not long before because of an incident in her high school, where other girls bullied her for allegedly trying to seduce the boys there. What actually happened is that a popular guy the local Alpha Bitch had her eye on confessed to Alice and she had her Girl Posse bully her for it.
• Spanner in the Works: She ends up being the main reason why the Phantom Thieves became aware of EMMA's functions after she gave Joker and Ryuji a promotional card for an EMMA friend request, which directly sent them into her Jail rather than their Shadows as intended because they had their Personas.
• Starter Villain: She is the first Monarch that the Thieves go against in this game.
• Stepford Smiler: In public, she acts like a cute and happy-go-lucky idol, but becomes highly abrasive and violent behind the scenes. She actually isn't happy about the situation she was in. She used to be quite depressed because she was bullied in Shujin for having a crush then having said crush taken away from her, even going as far as distancing herself from remembering her past as much as possible.
• Tarot Motifs: Reversed Lovers. The Lovers represents forming harmonious, loving relationships with others. Alice uses the power EMMA gives her to force large numbers of people to love and submit to her and to ruin the relationships of others.
• Turns Red: She becomes much more aggressive when down to half health in her boss fight. In addition to assuming a Primal Stance, she also attacks much more aggressively, gets a new spin move, and her movements much quicker.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Her backstory implies that despite being a Shrinking Violet, she was deep down a nice person, as she wanted to become a fashion designer in order to be a light of hope for people who suffered like her. By the time the game starts, she's so embittered about her humiliation that all she cares about is payback and lost sight of her noble intentions.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: After defeating her in the Metaverse, Alice tells the Phantom Thieves that after she first used EMMA's Jail function to exact revenge on the school bully who leaked her school record to destroy her upstart career by stealing the hearts of her partners and friends, deep down, she still felt empty and unsatisfied, causing her to change the heart of every other man in Shibuya just to show the other girl who is the popular one.
• Villainous Breakdown: At half HP, she snaps her cane and starts attacking in a beast-like way while going into an Unstoppable Rage. She also accuses the Thieves of trying to steal away her happiness, blaming Ann in particular for trying to ruin her life.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Whereas Natsume and Hyodo's reputations are not badly damaged and they are able to move on with their lives to a certain degree, nothing is mentioned about Alice's fate after she has a change of heart other than her career as an idol is over.
• Who's Laughing Now?: She used to not have many friends and was bullied by her class over a boy who was attracted by her. After being brainwashed by EMMA, she's now a violent Womanchild out on a rampage.
• Womanchild: She acts in a very cutesy, childish way even when she's trying to be nice, when mean she becomes an immature brat. Her Shadow is an outright Psychopathic Manchild.

Ango Natsume

Ango Natsume

Voiced by: Daisuke Kishio (Japanese), Zach Aguilar (English)

The Prince of Nightmares
^{Click here to see Shadow Natsume}

^{Click here to see Nightmare Dragon Ango}

"This world belongs to me and me alone. It takes shape solely according to my design. Here, the Overlord rains justice upon the holier-than-thou heroes who would dare brand him as evil. Here, you are nothing more than flies to be swatted."

Sin: Irritum/Avaritia (Vanity/Greed)

An author from Sendai, whose recent book, Prince of Nightmares sold over one million copies. Despite this success, his book is only popular in Sendai, and isn't that popular elsewhere in Japan. His book is said to be so good that it motivated people to write and many of his fervent fans bought many, sometimes up to 100 copies of his book. Much like Alice before, his fanbase is also highly unethical, to the point of defiling the Masamune statue with book advertisements, buying the book with loaned money or starting street fights against anyone who would dress like the characters from his book. In reality, a close inspection on the book reveals that it's actually a heavily plagiarized word salad.

His Shadow is Nightmare Dragon Ango, Monarch of the Sendai Jail. His Jail resembles the castle in his book, with him, the Demon King being the protagonist, his publishers being his personal bodyguards and the Hero being the villain. It is overlaid on top of the PORTO bookstore, where his stall is in and its keyword is "Prince of Nightmares".

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• Achilles' Heel: Nightmare Dragon Ango is weak to Ice and Bless skills.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: After he is defeated, Shadow Natsume begs the Phantom Thieves for mercy and is willing to let them rule the one half of his world.
• At Least I Admit It: What he feels differentiates him from Madarame; he is a poor writer and he knows it, he actually respects good writers and he doesn't look down on his fans for being interested in things that he knows sell well. The Phantom Thieves admit that while this does make him less of a terror to those close to him, he's still a plagiarist.
• Berserk Button: It is implied to be cosplayers, as the game mentions people being beaten up for being dressed like his characters and the assaulters getting congratulated. Ironically, his Shadow's draconic form turns out to be wearing a poorly-made cardboard cosplay and his actual Shadow isn't wearing any clothes; just a classic medieval villain outfit painted on a wooden face board.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Played for Laughs as his Shadow's central theme despite being unaware of the true machinations of the real Big Bad and he is merely just a byproduct. He sees himself as the true antagonist of all heroes, especially the Phantom Thieves, and his Jail's theme and design is highly reminiscent of The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Bling of War: His Shadow's boss form wears golden armor embedded with gems. During the battle, his armor falls off the closer he is to being defeated.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: Lampshaded where his arena has tons of swords and ice chunks laying around which just happens to be his weaknesses (Bless and Ice respectively). According to his "lore", the swords belonged to past heroes he killed which "have come back to haunt him".
• Captain Ersatz: A direct one to The Dragonlord, appearing initially as a twin-horned evil sorcerer in a full-body, high-collar cloak, whose "final form"^note "True form" in the original script is a towering purple dragon with a horn jutting from the nose. Additionally, though it's not Dragon Quest I, he employs a reactive full-party debuff in battle, something the series' final bosses become well-known for and entered the genre with Dragon Quest III. To top it all off, when beaten, he offers the Phantom Thieves half the world in pleading for mercy. The similarities between the two are actually deliberate, considering his whole point is that he blatantly copy-and-pastes lines from video games and anime for his novel.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Why his Shadow manifests as a demon king and why said demon king was the protagonist of his novel; he knows perfectly well he's a plagiarist and this isn't a good thing, but he glories in how he's able to finally get one over on his corrupt editors rather than feel ashamed for how he doesn't measure up as a writer.
• Chivalrous Pervert: His first scene is making rather unsubtle come-ons to Haru, but after she turns him down he shrugs it off without issue and his Jail shows he doesn't have problems with women saying no.
• Cliché Storm: Invoked. In-universe, he's cribbed most of the details from his best-selling book from other sources such as an anime he saw two years ago and another author's novels. Prince of Nightmares still sells in spite of this, with no one noticing, due to the buyers being victims of his Jail. In his Jail, there's a ton of anime clichés that get lampshaded by the Phantom Thieves, showing how unoriginal his ideas truly are. Natsume justifies this by saying he doesn't care, because he's finally getting one over on the editors who told him that he'd never be a success.
• Contractual Genre Blindness: His shadow sees itself as a cliche Big Bad, and as such leaves openings in its castle's defenses (such as forcing heroes to fight his underlings to secure keys, instead of just not having keys at all, or his Boss-Arena Idiocy) simply because there has to be a way for the hero to confront the villain, and the villain has to have weaknesses the heroes can exploit in said confrontation.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Ichiryusai Madarame. In the original game, Madarame was a Manipulative Bastard who secretly viewed art as pointless and only did things to make money, stealing acclaim from his students for their talent because he couldn't be bothered to create something himself while hiding behind a Faux Affably Evil façade. By contrast, Ango is an actually honest Large Ham who genuinely loves writing and is trying to overcome his lack of personal talent. Notably, while Madarame pretends to be a Starving Artist, when in reality he happily freeloads off a mistress, Ango is driven by a rabid fear of becoming one again after he realized he was being scammed by his publisher.
• Designated Hero: Parodied In-Universe. His Shadow acts as if he was the protagonist of Prince of Nightmares and claims that he's the true good guy and the heroes are bad guys because they killed his subordinates... who a) attacked first, and b) are shadows, not real people. The Phantom Thieves can barely believe their ears when he calls them out on their "crimes" and obviously don't buy it.
• Draconic Humanoid: His Shadow's boss form takes the form of a winged dragon man in golden armor. In actuality, the "gold" is just to cover up the grey scales and wings made of paper.
• Early-Bird Cameo: His "Prince of Darkness" book can be seen on a billboard in Shibuya at the beginning, particularly the opening cutscene with Joker.
• Elite Four: Played for laughs. His Jail is guarded by the Fearsome Four, who take the form of Ango's hype group the Phantom Thieves saw at the party in order to obtain Ango's keyword. They are Doma, a Jack-o-Lantern, Ante, a Lamia, Kuga, an Orthus, and Betro, an Eligor.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Downplayed. Though his sincerity is debatable (given that he's using EMMA solely to gain profit and wants the attention), he does seem surprised and admonishes his fans' behavior for putting posters over a historical statue in their fever, and (halfheartedly) tells them they don't need to buy so many copies of one book.
• Glamour Failure: His boss form looks like an intimidating purple dragon clad in golden armour, but you can eventually strip him down to his underwear where it's revealed his armour is merely gold-painted cardboard duct-taped together. Then you find out his "Prince of Darkness" attire is also a cardboard cutout.
• Greed: His secondary sin and motif. His whole motive revolves on getting the source of cash to him instead of his publishers who tried to fleece him for their profit, as well as the attention. This synergizes with his primary sin/motif of vanity, as like Madarame, he steals the works of others for his own self gain, but has a fragile ego and terrible talent underneath all his Large Ham bluster.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: One of his greatest sources of frustration is despite him genuinely working himself to the bone researching and working on his craft, he just couldn't put out anything that impressed the judges and editors of the writing competitions he submitted his work to. When he found out he won the award due to his family name rather than his own merit, it led to him giving up even trying and deciding to just steal other people's work or rely on lazy clichés to spite his greedy editors.
• High Hopes, Zero Talent: While he's a genuinely enthusiastic writer, Natsume has little in the way of natural talent and relies overmuch on writing guides, cribs from anime, and can't create a coherent plot to save his life. Natsume's discovery that his editors were planning to market his book without believing in him as a writer genuinely hurt him; not so much because they had little faith in Natsume, but because they weren't decent enough to offer him honest feedback to improve his work, only looking to exploit his family name in order to make money. After his change of heart, Natsume is encouraged by Yusuke (both in the Metaverse and in the real world) to start from the bottom and truly make a work he can be proud of on his own merits.
• Horns of Villainy: His Shadow form has horns as part of his demon overlord appearance, and serve as his "crown", which he breaks the top halves off when he repents.
• Hypocrite: While he has the guts to call out Madarame's plagiarism, his very own book is made out of sentences that are copied from numerous other fictitious works. He does realize he is one, which does make him different from Madarame.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: It turns out he had a grandfather who can actually write very well, but Ango cannot, even though he kept trying to improve. His publisher uses this to deceive customers and fleece him for money, something that resulted in him inflicting himself with distortions.
• Ironic Name: His name is a combination of Japanese novelists Ango Sakaguchi and Soseki Natsume, two legendary writers considered the best of their craft in their home country. Natsume, needless to say, is not one of those people.
• Jerkass: Unlike Madarame, who at least had some emotional investment in Yusuke prior to the events of the original game (even if it's for less than noble reasons), Ango is rather mean-spirited to the point of being outraged over Yusuke giving him a verbal bitch slap to the face regarding the "Sayuri" painting. Downplayed, in that the party actually likes him a bit more than Madarame for this, as he is bluntly honest about his own faults and isn't manipulative.
• Laborious Laziness: Ironically, even though stealing ideas wholesale conceptually makes him appear like a lazy hack, actually building a novel out of pre-existing sentences from multiple other books would be nearly if not just as much work as writing a manuscript from scratch. It's the first real indication that his plagiarism comes less from actual laziness and more from his self-loathing over his apparent lack of natural writing talent.
• Large Ham: Even though his human self is a massive show-off and overly dramatic, his Shadow takes this up a notch.
• Laughably Evil:
  • His Shadow is trying so hard to be a Large Ham Evil Overlord that he becomes hilarious.
  • Unlike Madarame's horrifying exploitation of his pupils, Natsume's plagiarism, shown through his cliché storm of a Jail, comes across as entertaining.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Shadow Natsume wears a dreadful outfit befitting a Demon King. It turns out that is simply a cardboard cutout and his true self is wearing nothing but his boxers, representing his shallow ego.
• Maou the Demon King: The protagonist of his "Prince of Nightmares" book is modeled after the Demon King trope and most of the tropes associated with the archetype. In the Metaverse, Shadow Natsume takes the role of Demon King.
• Must Make Amends: The end of his story has him promise full refunds to whoever bought "Prince of Darkness" due to it being a plagiarised mess, but is encouraged by Yusuke to eventually return with a real book he can be proud of.
• Naked People Are Funny: The gold on his monster form is fake, hiding the wings of paper and grey scales. Likewise, the reason why his initial Shadow form before transforming never seems move is because it's a cardboard cutout, and is only in his boxers, all of which represents his lack of creativity and fragile ego.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: In reality, Prince of Nightmares is just built from numerous sentences and scripts from other bookwork, including an anime from two years ago. His Jail even includes numerous anime clichés, to the point that the Phantom Thieves themselves note that it's a Cliché Storm of tropes they've seen a hundred times.invoked
• Scaled Up: When his Shadow transforms, he becomes a dragon clad in (at first) gleaming golden armour.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • He's one to Yusuke. While Yusuke is being fleeced on legitimate artwork and is forced to rebel against his master regardless of how well he seemingly treated him before realizing that he is being manipulated, Ango is being fleeced out of plagiarized work by his publishers because of his lack of skill and to exploit his grandfather's name, and uses the EMMA app to draw the source of income to him instead.
  • He's also one to Sumire just like Alice, albeit in a different way. He had a family member who is superior to him in terms of his domain, and the circumstance that he and his fans are trapped in an illusion is also similar. Rather than manifesting the jealousy as delusional thoughts, however, he manifests it through blatant plagiarism.
• Shirtless Scene: Once Shadow Dragon Natsume is at a quarter of health, his armor completely breaks off and reveals a pair of red shorts. Once he's finally defeated, only his red shorts remain and his Demon King clothing reveals itself to be cardboard, and he's actually topless. He is, in effect, wearing the Emperor's New Clothes, representing how vulnerable and weak he truly is at his core without the praise of others propping him up.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Builds himself up as a master author, and his Shadow hypes himself up as an Evil Overlord protagonist, but in actuality, he's a pathetic man who was used by his publishers for looks and was never acknowledged beyond being "grandson of Sogo Natsume".
• Status Buff: Ango's Shadow will continually try to power up his attack power and defense throughout the fight. You can interrupt it by breaking his defenses and flinging the swords scattered around the arena at him.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: Invoked, as part of the Cliché Storm of his Jail. According to his novel, the Prince of Nightmares (the form his Shadow takes) was an ordinary Muggle who was pulled into a fantasy world and gained the powers of an Evil Overlord, including the ability to turn into a dragon. The novel's "plot" involves him constantly outsmarting and defeating the "chosen heroes" sent to fight him.
• Tarot Motifs: Reversed Emperor. The upright Emperor represents authority and control over the situation. Natsume was strung along by his authors and manipulated to get them money. His Shadow also takes the form of a tyrant that Ryuji notes is destined to fall by the rules of fantasy.
• Token Evil Teammate: More like "Token Jerkass Teammate", but he's the only Jail Monarch who is doing something massively unethical solely for selfish reasons. It's also worth noting that he only used his power to become popular and successful unlike Alice and Hyodo who have vendettas in mind, and he doesn't display the same indignant freakouts as those two did. He's also not that bad of a guy once he's been humbled.
• Villain Has a Point: When personally meeting him during the celebration for selling Prince of Nightmares, Natsume disses Madarame's "Sayuri" as "garbage," which angers Yusuke. Obviously, Natsume was never aware of Yusuke's dead mother being the true creator of that painting because… almost no one else was made aware of its true origins, but the work of a plagiarist like Madarame has no value now that he's been exposed. When Yusuke tells him the truth, Ango is left speechless.
• Villain Protagonist: In-Universe, he sees himself as one. This is reflected in his novel, where the protagonist is a demon lord who beats up 'chosen heroes' sent to fight him because they're supposedly self-righteous pricks who want to kill him because he exists. Unfortunately, it doesn't work when he's up against a group of genuinely righteous heroes (the Phantom Thieves) who are trying to non-violently stop him from brainwashing all of Sendai.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Parodied. During his boss fight, he'll call the Phantom Thieves out for killing his guards... who aren't even real; they're shadows. The Thieves are not impressed.
• Who's Laughing Now?: His editors don't take him seriously because of his dull and incoherent writing skills, and they merely kept him around for the sake of using him as a front to deceive people. After he was brainwashed by EMMA, he starts turning them into his loyal associates and brainwashes the public so everything about him becomes uncannily popular.

Mariko Hyodo

Mariko Hyodo

Voiced by: Kyoko Terase (Japanese), Kim Rhodes (English)

Gluttonous Empress of the Snow White City
^{Click here to see Shadow Hyodo}

^{Click here to see Snow Empress Mariko}

"I will wring out every last ounce of corruption from my staff by working them into the ground! I'll silence all charlatans who betray me! And I will consume every last vote in the city, whether these people agree with me or not! Only then can I build a safe haven—a radiant snow city that sparkles like winter!"

Sin: Gula (Gluttony)

A politician running for mayor in Sapporo, who knew Kunikazu Okumura in the past because they were trade partners and is also an acquaintance to Haru. Her speeches had became a sensation in her prefecture, but is shown to take her anger out on her civil wards workers for the sake of making Sapporo "spotless", not that the people seem to care.

Her Shadow is Snow Empress Mariko, the Monarch of the Sapporo Jail. Her Jail turns Sapporo into a frozen wasteland and is overlaid on top of the Mayor's residence. Its Keyword is "Snow City".

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• Achilles' Heel: Snow Empress Mariko is weak to Psy and Curse skills. In battle, she may also cast Rage on herself, which makes her more susceptible to Psy due to technical damage. Haru specializes in using the former, making her well-suited for subduing Mariko.
• Adipose Rex: Her Shadow is a rare female version of this trope. When the party first encounters her in the Jail, she's greedily eating her way through several large meals before transforming to attack them, and then she eats the whole dining table as well.
• Affectionate Nickname: Haru calls her "Mari-san" because of how close they were when Haru was a child.
• Anti-Villain: Mariko started stealing desires to further her political career, with the intention of cleaning up the corruption in politics. She only became a Monarch in the first place because of a scandal her underlings created which they threatened to pin on her. The Phantom Thieves end up reluctant to even face Mariko's Shadow and it takes Zenkichi calling them out to work up their resolve.
• The Atoner: Mariko feels awful about the nine-year-old girl's death in the ice sculpture accident, and is absolutely furious that her fellow senator used it as an excuse to take power from her while disregarding the child's life. She uses the EMMA app to regain power and ensure that nothing like that happens again and to make up for her oversight, not realizing her actions are causing more harm now than before.
• Bad Boss: She works all of her civil wards to extreme conditions to make her people happy. This is later revealed to be her fundamentally distrusting that they have the public's best interests in mind, due to a previous civil worker under her causing the ice sculpture accident by accepting subpar construction work in exchange for bribes and then threatening to drag her down with him when she found out. The fact that the worker claimed that everyone working under her was involved in corrupt dealings couldn't have helped.
• Bait-and-Switch: The beginning area of the Sapporo Jail has a portrait of her dressed as a queen, which hints to her Shadow's appearance. Her true form is anything but thin and svelte like Hyodo in the portrait or reality. The fact that it replaces the billboard of the jolly fat man in reality serves as a small form of Foreshadowing too.
• Belly Mouth: When transformed, her Shadow has a second face on her stomach.
• Berserk Button: Civil Wards. She might act nice (and likely genuinely is) most of the time but as soon as a Civil Ward goes next to her she will start lambasting them with ridiculous works and snap if they don't comply.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Played with. The Phantom Thieves notice that she seems "two-faced" after witnessing her being affectionate to Haru after abusing one of her staff (unaware that Haru was watching the latter). However, after Haru catches her forcing a sick employee to work, and calls her out on it, Mariko stands by her decision, but doesn't drop her affection for Haru. As the party later finds out, just like Alice before this is actually an EMMA-inflicted abnormality, and not anything coming from Hyodo herself.
• Breath Weapon: One of her Shadow's attacks has her exhale a mist of freezing cold ice crystals.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: While she's promoting herself as a mayoral candidate, the player can occasionally hear her campaign being played over a loudspeaker as they explore Sapporo during the day.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: She's this to Kunikazu Okumura. Both of them are major targets in the game that happened to be acquaintances of Haru, and both Hyodo and Okumura are close friends. However, while Hyodo is heavily disheartened by even one scandal that she only had minor involvement and the blame fully directed against her, Okumura does not care about how many scandals he has within his company. While Hyodo overworks her wards to make people happy, Okumura overworks everyone underneath him for his own gain. Furthermore, while Hyodo still cares for Haru even after using EMMA's salvation as Haru managed to stop her from berating a civil ward, Okumura had stopped caring about Haru long before the events of Persona 5, seeing her as only a political pawn by the point of her arc in the game.
• Control Freak: Her issue is that she's mean and unreasonable to her staff out of paranoia.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Or rather just regular "memory". If you have finished Persona 5 Royal yet not played the original Persona 5 and moved onto Strikers, you can be forgiven if you thought bringing Ann into Hyodo's boss fight would help with scoring Technical damage without solely relying on Psychokinesis skills, as after a reading a book in that game, Fire Skills will then deal Technical damage to Shadows afflicted with Rage. Alas, Strikers follows the original P5 technical chart.
• Disc-One Final Boss: She's the lead that Zenkichi is looking into at the beginning of the game, and she's an influential politician much like Shido. She is also the first Jail Monarch who has effectively used the Jail to take direct legal control of the whole city instead of just enriching her self esteem or pockets. Even though she is not actually involved in the Jails creation, she is the last of the unrelated Arc Villains before Madicce takes the stage in the narrative for the next three Jails.
• Dub Name Change: Her Shadow Boss name was changed from Snow White to Snow Empress.
• Eaten Alive: Her Shadow can devour one of the Phantom Thieves alive, forcing the party to go without one member unless they can make her cough them up by dropping a chandelier on her, or hitting her with an All-Out-Attack after breaking her Stagger bar should you run out of chandeliers.
• Establishing Character Moment: When the Phantom Thieves see her in person, she berates a staffer for a single wilted flower, then acts affectionate and motherly when she recognizes Haru.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: While she's only 'evil' when EMMA is influencing her behavior, she has a close bond to Haru thanks to their trade partner relationship with Okumura. Before Okumura got distorted by his desire for power, the three used to play golf together and she would play with Haru when Okumura was busy.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Her frozen jail represents a pure, white Sapporo, with no blemishes or chaos.
• Fallen Hero: Mariko used to be a kind and caring politician who actually worked for the people. However, she was scapegoated for an incident where a kid was killed under a collapsing ice sculpture, something that a fellow senator used to take power for himself. Enraged at being fully blamed, she stopped caring about her employees and became blinded by her determination to make Sapporo perfect.
• Fat Bastard: Her Shadow is morbidly obese and is constantly in a frenzied mood before being defeated. In contrast, her human self is quite skinny. This is to emphasize her view on "eat or be eaten" in regards to corrupt politicians, her desire to obtain votes for reelection, and her insatiable desire for a clean Sapporo.
• First-Name Basis: She calls Haru "Haru-chan," while Haru calls Mariko by an abbreviated version of her first name.
• Foreshadowing: Just like Alice before, Hyodo's Distortions are highly eccentric. She would act very kind for most of the time only to suddenly snap and yell at her workers, forcing them to do ridiculous work for her. The work she issues are also very comical and sound absolutely nothing like a distinguished politician would issue anyone to do. As the party later finds out, EMMA actively alters the Monarch's behavior in the real world to prevent them from moving on from their traumas.
• Friend to All Children: Despite her being a Bad Boss who will turn in those who oppose or disobey her, she seems to have soft spot for children. She's very affectionate towards Haru when they reunite years later, is kindly to the latter's friends, and the whole reason she became corrupted was to atone for a young girl's death during her initial tenure as mayor, vowing to end all corruption in Sapporo.
• Gem Tissue: Her Shadow has two diamonds on her face that resemble moles.
• An Ice Person: Her Shadow and Jail are this, with the Shadow resembling a fat version of the White Witch from Narnia or the Snow Queen, symbolic of her desire to make Sapporo as pure and white as snow, and incident with the snow sculpture that drove her to EMMA.
• Intergenerational Friendship: She has a close relationship with Haru, a girl young enough to be her daughter.
• It's All My Fault: Blames herself for the snow sculpture accident that caused a child to die. It's what made her use the EMMA application to make sure she gets reelected.
• Jerkass to One: She's genuinely motherly and pleasant to everyone... except her staff, who she treats with ridiculous cruelty, lambasting one over a wilted flower and forcing another to work when he's clearly sick to the point that the Phantom Thieves rush him to the hospital. This is due to EMMA's distortion causing her treat all her civil wards as if they were the one involved in her Start of Darkness.
• Level Ate: Her Jail is littered with various kinds of frozen food, and the castle she resides in has a massive fork and a knife decorating it. The "food" is symbolism for the ballot votes and popularity she yearns for to take her power back.
• Logical Weakness: Snow Empress Mariko's weakness to Curse attacks makes sense given her obsession with making Sapporo "pure white", while the darkness and ooze-themed Curse spells run counter to that.
• Meaningful Name: "Hyo" means "ice". Hyodo has an ice-themed Jail, her Start of Darkness came about from a collapsed ice sculpture, and Sapporo is the capital city of Japan's Hokkaido prefecture, which has very cold winters.
• Neat Freak: She's obsessed with the cleanliness of Sapporo, and threatens to fire workers over minor infractions such as wilted flowers or handrails with dust on them. Considering that she's driven by the guilt of letting a child die in a freak accident due to an oversight on her part, EMMA might actually have been distorting her with some extreme form of Obsessively Organized behavior.
• Parental Substitute: To Haru, which is part of why Haru gets so driven to save her, as she knows Mariko is normally a Reasonable Authority Figure and her sudden Jerkass turn is a sign she's been corrupted.
• Red Herring: Zenkichi has her as his primary suspect of the Change of Heart epidemic at the beginning of the game and insists on getting the Thieves to Sapporo by the time she comes back into the city. She is just a normal Jail Monarch, and Zenkichi discovers that her phone had evidence of being bugged.
• Remember the New Guy?: Despite being a prominent figure in Haru's childhood, Hyodo was never once mentioned by her at any point in the original Persona 5. Haru justifies it by saying she actively repressed her childhood memories to cope with her father's death, and they only returned to her once she came face-to-face with Hyodo herself.
• The Scapegoat: Downplayed. She's being fully blamed for the death of a child because of a collapsing ice structure. Mariko was blackmailed to keep quiet with the threat of stepping down as mayor and letting the men responsible take power, something that caused her to take revenge using the EMMA app to forcefully keep the mayoral seat. In reality, both sides are responsible because, while her underlings were the ones who employed a faulty contractor to make the sculpture on the cheap, she had oversight and officially sanctioned it by mistake. Nonetheless, she feels awful to have had a role in the accident, which was part of the reason she tried to use EMMA for revenge, and promptly sets to properly mourning the child's death after her change of heart.
• Secret-Keeper: Her Shadow learns that Haru is a Phantom Thief after she delivers the same You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech Mari gave to her in reality when she was younger. This doesn't apply to her real-world self afterwards since Shadows don't share their own memories with them.
• Stepford Smiler: Hyodo seems like a bright and charismatic politician who sports bright smiles at first glance. While she might be before that incident, in reality, she's actually quite furious right at the time you first met her and is ready to turn on anyone who might end up like the last mayor at any time.
• Tarot Motifs: Reversed Empress. The Empress is something of a mother figure, nurturing and protecting those in her protection. Mariko instead works her staff to the bone and holds all of them in contempt.
• Token Good Teammate: While she's just as angry and revenge-bent as the other Monarchs, her use of EMMA app is because she wants to make Sapporo a better place, rather than self-validation or taking out her frustrations on Sapporo's citizens. She only needs the citizens to vote for her and is completely honest about wanting to improve the city, unlike Alice or Ango who force their victims to buy their merchandise to the point of bankruptcy. Also, a part of her motivation stems from genuine guilt instead of solely anger or self-righteousness. Case in point, after she surrenders and the people are no longer brainwashed, several citizens are willing to forgive her and point out how she truly cared for the city. Even the mother of the deceased girl demands Mariko run for re-election to honor her daughter because she knows Hyodo is the person Sapporo needs as its mayor to protect it.
• Villainous Glutton: Her sin and motif. She's gluttonous in an abstract manner for feasting on ballot votes and popularity in a desperate attempt to take her power back; likewise, her Shadow is morbidly obese and is constantly in a frenzied mood for food. She's also obsessed with making sure Sapporo is "pure white", overworking the civil wards to the point of exhaustion.
• Villainy-Free Villain: While Alice and Natsume had their sympathetic motives, they still took financial advantage of their fans who they stole desires from. Mariko by comparison simply used stolen desires to garner up votes for her political career and cover up a scandal that she was not actually directly responsible for. Her real crime that implicated her for the Phantom Thieves was not any actual corruption on her part, but the fact that she was a Bad Boss to her staff. Reflecting this, Mariko's Shadow never actually directly confronts or impedes the Phantom Thieves until the actual boss fight.
• Waddling Head: Her Shadow's boss form combines this with a Belly Mouth, as the "waddling head" is actually her body bloated to an extreme with a face on her stomach.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her goal in stealing Desires and trying to win re-election as mayor is to try and stamp out corruption within the political staff of Sapporo. While the Phantom Thieves understand where she's coming from, they ultimately conclude that they can't allow her to manipulate people's hearts and decide to stop her.

The Monarch of Ruin (Unmarked Spoilers)

Shuzo Ubukata

"When the Penitentiary system is complete, the concept of suffering will be dead to all mankind! Now, let us rejoice and welcome the new age of humanity! EMMA shall be our guide into this promised land!"

Sin: Acedia (Sloth)

An AI genius from Okinawa who ruled the Jail formed over it. Konoe used him as a guinea pig for creating the Jail system. He and his entire population became insane afterward and he committed suicide when Konoe told him to hand out his desires, which functions like a Calling Card to him. His Jail still remains despite his death and takes the form of an abandoned laboratory. Its Keyword is "Operation Oraculi", the internal name of the Jail operation. His death, once it came to light, was blamed on the Phantom Thieves as one of the excuses Konoe uses for his deluded crusade of justice.

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• Driven to Suicide: He killed himself by jumping off a cliff in an extreme effort to ensure his Desire wasn’t taken, with Konoe telling him to give him his desires functioning as a calling card.
• The Ghost: What he looks like is never shown anywhere on-screen. He's not even given a physical description after Zenkichi finds Ubukata's corpse.
• It's All About Me: The Monarch distortion made Ubukata delude himself that he was saving humanity, even as his fellow scientists were telling him the EMMA project's goal was complete global subjugation by mass hypnosis. It wasn't until he realized that his desires were at risk just like all the others that he even began to care about the real effects of what was going on. Even after the horrors of everything started to sink in, he thought only about ending his own suffering and making sure his desire couldn't be taken, not even thinking to call off the project, free the locals, turn himself in, reveal the truth, or do anything that would be more conducive to actually stopping Konoe.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Okinawa Jail and the tapes depicting Ubukata's Sanity Slippage mark a dark shift in the tone of the game. Like Okumura in the original game, the Thieves being framed for his death causes the villainous faction to start to hunt them down.
• Mirthless Laughter: On the third tape, he starts with a dark chuckle about how things with the EMMA project have spiraled way out of his control.
• Posthumous Character: He's long dead by the time the Thieves reach Okinawa.
• Sanity Slippage: As shown in the tape recordings, he became increasingly deranged as the Jail test progressed, and eventually lost his mind entirely when Konoe simulated a calling card.
• Sloth: His sin and motif. He represents multiple aspects of sloth:
  • Gameplay-wise, he does absolutely nothing in his Jail (due to being dead) and EMMA is the one creating the Jail's obstacles for him, while the other Jail Monarchs at least tried to stop the Phantom Thieves.
  • His work with EMMA shows the willful ignorance part of the sin, as while he genuinely wanted to do good with EMMA, he also ignored his scientists' warnings about where the project was truly going, and only acted when his own desires were at risk.
  • When he realized he was Konoe's pawn, he demonstrated the 'cowardice' part of sloth by choosing to commit suicide rather than doing anything to help the people he'd inadvertently hurt, leaving his Jail functional and Okinawa still mesmerized by him and his lab, forcing the Phantom Thieves to clean up his mess.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Despite the fact that he's dead before even being fought, Ubukata is the person who modified EMMA with the ability to change hearts by teaching EMMA cognitive psience.
• Tarot Motifs: Reversed Magician, seen as a sign of failure or being in over your head. Ubukata certainly checks both boxes, as he realizes only too late that the EMMA project is coming for him next, and that he's failed to help humanity as he hoped he would.
• The Unfought: Other than Akane, the Monarch of Ruin is the only Jail Monarch who isn't fought in the story due to the fact he killed himself. You are instead forced to fight a Lock Keeper sent by EMMA to capture Sophia.
• Unwitting Pawn: In the end, he was nothing more than a lab rat for Konoe who truly believed that he could save humanity with EMMA. Once Konoe accidentally produced a Calling Card effect on him, he realized that he was nothing more than a toy and committed suicide.
• Villainous Legacy: Despite his death, his Jail is still intact (enough) and his victims remain Brainwashed, which enables EMMA to make use of the victims for her own purposes.

The Asset (Unmarked Spoilers)

Akane Hasegawa

Voiced by: Naomi Ozora (Japanese), Colleen O'Shaughnessey (English)

The Counterfeit Phantom
^{Click here to see Shadow Akane}

"Shut up... Shut up, shut up, shut up!!! The Phantom Thieves would never spew such lies! They would be on my side! The real Phantom Thieves... would never hurt me... The real Phantom Thieves... are my friends!"

Sin: Ira (Wrath)

Daughter of Zenkichi Hasegawa who lives in Kyoto, and is a huge fan of the Phantom Thieves. She witnessed the death of her mother due to a traffic accident that occurred two years ago. The culprit is supposedly dead, although they left a suicide note saying that they did it.
After Zenkichi was arrested, the police emptied the Hasegawa Residence and she asked someone to "save her", only for the EMMA application to respond on its own, then propose Konoe use her to catch the Phantom Thieves, rendering her real self comatose and developing a shadow self manipulated by EMMA. Konoe then uses the application to fabricate a distress call so he may use Akane to change the Phantom Thieves' heart. Unlike most Jails, there is no central building or birdcage. Instead, Akane is directly confronted during the same exploration round. Its Keyword is "Phantom Thieves".

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• Adorably Precocious Child:
  • The Thieves note how she carries herself and her words in a very mature and adult-like manner for a middle-schooler, with Futaba even claiming she acts more mature than Ryuji. She even has a large following as a professional streamer for Phantom Thieves fans, and generates a decent income from it.
  • More tragically though, her tantrums and tirades against her father, despite being childish in attitude, also sound very adult-like and logical, which only serves to make her words cut even deeper.
• Age-Inappropriate Dress: Her Shadow is dressed rather provocatively for a middle-schooler, complete with bared midriff and a corset top. It reflects her Shadow's ironically juvenile desire to be seen as a grown-up.
• Antagonistic Offspring: Akane acts like a Jerkass to Zenkichi because the police failed to investigate her mother's death. When she was brainwashed by EMMA, this becomes full-blown hostility. Zenkichi ends up coming into direct conflict with her by getting his own Persona during the Kyoto Jail heist, though they manage to overcome this antagonism and reconcile after her Shadow's defeat.
• Anti-Villain: Of the Woobie Anti-Villain and Villain in Name Only type. Unlike the other Monarchs, Akane did not knowingly create a Jail for the sake of captivating the people of Kyoto. She's just a front for EMMA and Konoe to take out the Phantom Thieves and Owada. In fact, she only became Monarch because she accidentally caught EMMA's attention and she just found her the closest Monarch candidate available to capture the Phantom Thieves for Konoe.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Gives one to Zenkichi after his explanation of how he was only trying to protect her:
  Shadow Akane: But what about the secretary who died? Did you ever stop to think what his family is going through?!...Not only did they lose a loved one, they have mom's death over their heads! Did you forget that!? Or did you choose to forget on purpose!?
• Badass Adorable: Despite being a kid, she's capable of trapping all eight combat capable members of the Phantom Thieves in a cage all by herself with Futaba only getting away because she's too weak to run fast. This is something that no other target before this point can do.
• Birds of a Feather: Makoto manages to bond with Akane due to their similar circumstances of being the daughters of cops.
• Black-and-White Insanity: While all Monarchs have this to a degree, this is a notable preexisting flaw of Akane's, since she is a young child. After her father stopped investigating her mother's murder, Akane began to see people in two different ways: law enforcers and their supporters are evil, and those who fight against law enforcement (like the Phantom Thieves) are good. There is no middle ground whatsoever; although at least before the party meets her before they go to Okinawa, she could still take Makoto's advice well. However, when EMMA starts taking over, this becomes amplified to extreme degrees; she rejects Zenkichi's legitimate reasons for backing off the case to protect her, something that he never told her before it's too late, and starts acting exactly like Konoe, even repeating his goals as her own and will absolutely not listen to reason due to being brainwashed and influenced by Konoe's innate personality flaw.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: All Monarchs are such, but Akane's case is especially prominent because her Jail is used to fulfill Konoe's goal of capturing the Phantom Thieves. She couldn't even be reasoned with at all and acts more similar to Konoe than herself. Compare this to when she was met in reality, when she could at least be bothered to hear Makoto's pleas that her father did care for her in some sort of way, something that is even acknowledged by her brainwashed Shadow.
• Broken Bird: She lost her mother to an Accidental Murder from one of Shido's sponsors and believed that Zenkichi didn't care about her at all, because he wasn't there to take care of her often, and he does somewhat consider her as a burden, even saying that he might need another daughter. Thankfully, after her Shadow is stopped, she seems to be on the road to recovery.
• Broken Pedestal: Upon finding out that her heroes are helping her father (and by extension the police, the very people she despised), Akane loses any respect she had for the Phantom Thieves. Her Shadow even creates a group of doppelgangers to replace them. However, after the Thieves change Akane's heart successfully, she doesn't say anything else regarding how her admiration for the Thieves had shattered, implying that the extremity of her anger of having her expectations of the Phantom Thieves betrayed comes from EMMA dialing up her wrath.
• Cassandra Truth: If Joker tells her in her room that he and his friends are the Phantom Thieves, Akane laughs it off and assumes them as superfans of the Thieves due to their similar hairstyles.
• Cop Hater: Because the police failed to apprehend her mother's killer, Akane has no love for the police, her father included, and considers them the bad guys.
• Deceased Parents Are the Best: It is clear that no matter how much effort Zenkichi puts in to fix their relationship, Akane will always love her late mother more than him.
• Dramatic Irony: She talks about how cool she finds the Phantom Thieves, when she's standing right in front of them. She even says that she thinks the leader of the Thieves is dreamy, but can't seem to recognize Joker when he's five feet away from her.
• Duel Boss: Not herself, but she only sends out cognitive copies of Phantom Thieves to attack and you only need to fight the copy of Joker called "Akane's Joker" one-on-one. The battle itself is a very straightforward affair; aside from a QTE knife clash, Akane's Joker doesn't have any unique gimmicks. He lacks elemental weaknesses, and fights with stronger versions of Joker's normal moves, albeit without a Persona of his own. Notably, he is the only Jail Monarch-related boss (besides the Okinawa Lock Keeper) that doesn't use "Blooming Villain" as his boss theme ("Last Surprise" plays for his fight), and he has no Requests available to challenge him to a rematch.
• Establishing Character Moment: When Zenkichi calls Akane on the phone, she overhears Ann talking in the background. Immediately assuming that Zenkichi is fooling around with other women, Akane straight up calls her father an asshole, and yells at him to never call her again, showing just how much Akane hates her father for what he did, or rather didn't do.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Having already lost her faith in law enforcement and her own father, finding out that her idols, the Phantom Thieves, were cooperating with her father caused her to snap. To deal with this, she half-heartedly asks for someone to "save her" only for EMMA to respond autonomously, without knowledge of what it actually does. During her boss fight, Shadow Akane creates her own Shadow cognitions of the Thieves in her Jail and declares them to be the true Thieves, telling them to defeat their so-called "fakes". Granted, Shadow Akane's feeling of betrayal is implied to have come from EMMA dialing up her wrath, as after the Thieves successfully rescue and change her heart, the real Akane makes no mention regarding how her admiration for the Thieves has shattered.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • She serves as one for Futaba, at least when she's brainwashed. Their backstories are nearly identical, and both ruled over realms dedicated to the sin of wrath. The difference is that Futaba's wrath was directed inwards, making her a self-loathing shut-in while Akane's is directed outwards on everyone but herself. Fittingly enough, Futaba is the only Phantom Thief she fails to capture, which allows Zenkichi to be formally recruited into the Phantom Thieves by awakening his Persona.
• Evil Knockoff: Summons cognitive versions of the Phantom Thieves out of sheer denial that the Phantom Thieves weren't what she imagined them to be. The cognitive thieves copy their counterparts' moves, but lack any characteristics of the originals that the real Akane (as opposed to her Shadow, who witnesses them in action) doesn't know about; they're silhouettes with bright red hair (although Akane-Joker still has an accurate mask) because that's all the public knows about their appearance (from Shido's calling card), and they don't use Personas because only the Thieves themselves know about those.
• Fangirl: She's a fan of the Phantom Thieves and her room is full of their merchandise. It's Deconstructed however, as she's only a fangirl because she thought that the Phantom Thieves will dismantle the police. Once she realizes that they are working with the police (her dad, to be precise), she is quick to turn against them, albeit this is partially due to being brainwashed.
• Fan Disservice: Shadow Akane's Phantom Thief outfit would be very sexy if she wasn't Brainwashed and Crazy and in middle school.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Wrath. While her anger at Zenkichi is partially justified, and her distrust of the police is understandable, Akane eventually grows to hate everyone except herself over her mother's death. Her anger at the world makes her blind to the reality of the situation, with her Shadow making things even worse by rubbing it in Zenkichi's face. She lashes out at anyone who will listen, and puts all of her faith in the Phantom Thieves, even though she doesn't have any idea who they are. And when Akane finds out the Thieves are working with her father, Akane really loses it. This results in Akane being tricked by both the corrupt/brainwashed members of law enforcement (ironically those she claims to hate) and the media into thinking that the Thieves are terrorists that hacked into EMMA and killed the Okinawa Monarch, then half-heartedly seeking EMMA's "Salvation", causing Akane to fall directly into Konoe and EMMA's manipulations.
  • Immaturity. Akane ascribes to Black-and-White Morality; people who catch the bad guys are good, and people who don't are bad. Of course, things are never this simple, especially considering the opponent her father may be facing. Akane might be a lot more mature than other kids her age, but she's still a child who has no idea how dangerous Masayoshi Shido was, and had no knowledge of EMMA's dangerous supernatural aspects.
• Forehead of Doom: Quite a prominent one that, thanks to her hairstyle, looks to be even larger than Haru's.
• Friendless Background: She moved to Kyoto following her mother's passing. Being the New Transfer Student to her current middle school, on top of her despondency from her loss, kept her from making any friends. The closest thing she has are her podcasts' followers.
• Gentleman Thief: Playing off of her being a fangirl of the Phantom Thieves, Akane's Shadow takes the form of someone making their own makeshift costume of the "traditional" Phantom Thief, complete with Of Corsets Sexy, a top hat modeled after their logo, and a Badass Longcoat.
• Harmful to Minors: She witnessed her mother's death and saw perfectly well who hit her, but no one listened to her testimony.
• Hates Their Parent: She resents her father for not continuing his personal investigation into the truth about her mother's death and the real culprit responsible.
• Heal the Cutie: Once you beat Akane's Joker in a boss fight, she fully accepts the truth of her mother's death and reconciles with Zenkichi.
• The Hermit: While Akane isn't nearly the level of a shut-in as Futaba was at her worst, Zenkichi mentions that she is a recluse who avoids interacting with others when she can.
• I Have No Son!: Inverted, as Akane says this repeatedly towards Zenkichi being her dad.
• Ignored Epiphany: Discovering that Zenkichi stopped investigating her mother's death as soon as he felt the blackmail was impotent gets blown off as him being a Dirty Coward by her Shadow. Granted, Shadow Akane was not in her true state of mind.
• Insane Troll Logic: Justified given that she is a child who's been grieving the death of her mother and not allowed to move on because it's been a cold case for two years despite the obvious facts pointing to the killer, so her mind is already compromised. But, upon hearing that her father has been arrested for aiding and abetting the Phantom Thieves, she immediately believes the Phantom Thieves betrayed their (really, her) ideals by working with the police. Her hatred and despair completely blinds her to the fact that the news reporting this incident as an arrest (as opposed to, say, a "capture" or "kidnapping") could only infer that it was an official state action, meaning the complete opposite — either Zenkichi was being used as a patsy for the police's failure to apprehend the Phantom Thieves, or, as was the case, he'd turned against the police to help the Thieves escape.
• Inspector Javert: Ironic, given her hatred of police, with the identity of her father's Persona making this more so. Shadow Akane, after being brainwashed by EMMA and Konoe, inherits Konoe's mindset like the other Monarchs and turns against the Phantom Thieves because she believes they hacked into EMMA, killed the Monarch of Okinawa and are working with a Dirty Cop, and she even seems to care about Owada's secretary patsy than her mother.
• Irony: She's a big Phangirl and her Shadow gets to witness a Phantom Thief awakening their Persona, something she'd absolutely love if she wasn't Brainwashed and Crazy. Said newly awakened Phantom Thief is her father, who she considers the opposite of the Thieves, since he's a cop who refused to uncover a crime while the Thieves target criminals above the law. For extra irony points, her Shadow styled herself as a replacement Phantom Thief, but remained a cheap copy while Zenkichi became the real deal.
• It's All About Me: As a Jail Monarch, due to the same distortions that affected the rest with Konoe's Pay Evil unto Evil mentality, Shadow Akane starts acting as if she were Konoe instead of herself. She became an angry, selfish brat who believed that she had every right to lash out violently against those who she believed betrayed her, namely her father and the Phantom Thieves. Shadow Akane even tells them that she will change Owada's heart on her very own after she disposes of them. Shadow Akane will also not hear any excuses or reasons on their part, selfishly clinging onto her own suffering as justification for her actions.
• Jerkass to One: She's resentful toward her father but befriends the Phantom Thieves fairly easily. It helps that Makoto can empathize with her about absent cop fathers.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Tragically so. She has no idea that her father failed to investigate her mother's death because she was being used as a hostage against him, which leads to her resenting him. When she finally finds out the truth, she's too Brainwashed and Crazy to accept it until the Phantom Theives beat the crap out of her corrupted Shadow.
• Logical Weakness: She can't copy anything about the Phantom Thieves that she doesn't know about. Thus, although her Evil Knockoff Phantom Thieves are physically stronger than the originals, they're at a disadvantage because Akane doesn't know that Personas exist so the knockoffs can't summon them.
• Loves My Alter Ego: Akane has a crush on Joker, but fails to even recognize him in his real-world attire.
• Meaningful Name: Her first name, Akane is the Madder Plant in Japanese, representing "Distrust" in hanakotoba. She doesn't trust law enforcement in general and is quick to turn against their accomplices, including the Phantom Thieves that she claims to idolize; and even then that's because she thought they would turn against the police.
• Misaimed Fandom: In-universe, of the Phantom Thieves. She only seems to admire their Heel–Face Brainwashing methods of "bad guys", without considering any of the nuances of why they do what they do, or their desire to be a beacon of hope for others.
• Missing Mom: Her mother is the only person who was always at home to take care of her and she died because of a hit-and-run murder; the decoy culprit committed suicide quickly afterward and the investigation is thus rendered impossible, causing her to hate the police in general.
• Mythology Gag: Her Shadow is this to Shadow Futaba from the original. Both of their respective domains (Futaba's Palace and the Kyoto Jail) are themed on the sin of wrath and both of them are formed following the deaths of their mothers. The main boss fight in Futaba's Palace and the Kyoto Jail isn't against their rulers, and instead, the Thieves fight another character entirely (the Sphinx for Futaba, the copy Phantom Thieves for Akane).
• Of Corsets Sexy: Downplayed. Her Shadow wears what appears to be a red leather corset top underneath her coat. This doesn't emphasize her attractiveness, but instead acts as an Age-Inappropriate Dress and reflects her Shadow's immaturity and brattiness.
• Older Than They Look: Akane appears to be considerably younger than the Phantom Thieves, even though she's actually about to graduate secondary school (Zenkichi mentions she's in her third year of middle school), meaning she's probably 14 or 15 years old, making her about as old as Futaba.
• One-Winged Angel: Averted. She does not fight the Phantom Thieves in a boss fight; instead, she uses doppelgangers of the original Phantom Thieves to fight them. Joker has to go up against a Mirror Boss clone of himself called "Akane's Joker".
• Police Are Useless: She hates the police because they failed to investigate the death behind her mother, mostly because her father Zenkichi was being sent threats that Akane would die if he continued investigating the case. Zenkichi also talked about her being a burden before, making her resent Zenkichi even more in addition to him being part of the police.
• Precocious Crush: Implied to have one on Joker, as she talks about how mysterious and dreamy the leader of the Phantom Thieves is, while standing right in front of him.
• Psychological Projection: In reality, when she's been brainwashed by EMMA, she's basically become a proxy of Konoe without her even knowing it, complete with his rigidness and deludedly misguided sense of justice. She even parrots Konoe's endgame to take down the Phantom Thieves and Owada (which she calls "her mother's killer") word by word as if that was her idea.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Her predominant colour scheme, in an exaggeration of her idol Joker's aesthetic. Although while she takes a turn as an antagonist, she is far from evil.
• Revenge Myopia: As a Monarch, her anger towards Zenkichi and cops by proxy is such that she also took it out on the Phantom Thieves, who had nothing to do with her mother's death, due to mistakenly believing them to be working with her father, betraying her ideals in her eyes.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • To the Phantom Thieves as a whole, particularly regarding their belief that Police Are Useless. While the Thieves still have each other and gradually learn to trust Zenkichi, Akane is a lonely, angry girl who only trusts herself and her own romantic ideals about the Phantom Thieves while stubbornly refusing to forgive and trust her father. While both the Thieves and Akane desire justice, Akane's wrath blinds her to the fact that her idea of justice is impulsive, selfish, and destructive, creating an opening for EMMA to use her via More than Mind Control to target several high-profile figures for Konoe, namely the Phantom Thieves and her mother's killer.
  • To Nanako from Persona 4. Both are the daughters of police officers/widowers and both are fairly ordinary girls of their age. While Nanako loves her father Dojima dearly despite him being away at work often (helped by the fact that Yu Narukami was there for her), Akane has developed a deep grudge against her own father to the point that she outright refuses to call her father by anything, not even his real name.^note In the Japanese version, she calls Zenkichi "Anata" despite that was her father and in both versions she calls him "that man" in front of the party, indicating that she didn't treat him as a parent to begin with.
• Skewed Priorities: At the time when she was a Monarch and Zenkichi was confronting her, her Shadow seems to care more about Zenkichi not protecting the family of the secretary who was offed by Owada as cover-up than her mother, that even she forgives Zenkichi for failing to investigate her death. This is most likely something that was inherited from Konoe's insanity and not from herself, since Konoe has a twisted philosophy that everyone must be protected from injustice at all costs.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Nanako Dojima from Persona 4, as the daughter of a widowed police officer. Unlike Nanako, however, due to EMMA's machinations, she (or rather her Shadow) becomes much more malevolent later on, even as she has to be rescued. Akane is also a lot more overtly resentful toward Zenkichi than Nanako is toward Dojima, with the latter only openly getting angry with her father on two occasions during the entire game^note Him scolding her and the P4 protagonist for making an evening shopping trip, as well as later being hesitant to make time for parent-teacher interviews. Her brainwashing by Konoe and EMMA also plays out in a similar way as Namatame's kidnapping by Nanako, namely a Red Herring culprit with a messiah complex making a young girl victim of the supernatural and being kept in the dark about it by the actual culprits. In Namatame's case, he didn't know that he was putting Nanako at risk, while in Konoe's case he didn't even know that EMMA turned Akane into a Monarch.
• Tarot Motifs:
  • Reversed Apostle. The Apostle symbolizes a balance between the law and one's feelings, while Shadow Akane has been blinded by her resentment of those in authority and has Black-and-White Insanity to the point that she thinks the Phantom Thieves must be fakes if they are opposing her.
  • Also comes with a dash of Reversed Hermit, when the positive qualities of the Hermit like introspection, solitude, and inner guidance fester and become toxic: a Reversed Hermit like Akane would lose her ability to connect with others, and in doing so become mistrustful and hostile and ever-more-lonely. Without anyone to serve as a check to her, Akane's beliefs became more and more extreme, alienating her still further in a vicious cycle.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Had she been in a clearer state of mind when she learned about about Zenkichi helping the Phantom Thieves, she would have realized that all sources talked about his arrest; i.e. Zenkichi had turned on the authorities and was now on the Phantom Thieves' side. But due to her bias against her father and troubled emotions, she jumped to the conclusion that it was the other way around and the Phantom Thieves were working with Zenkichi and the cops. Her despair over her idols supposedly forsaking their ideas caused her to impulsively ask EMMA for help... thus giving EMMA the opening to brainwash her.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Even before being brainwashed, her utter hatred towards her dad and lack of trust in any form of law enforcement isn't the most childlike thing to begin with. When she's brainwashed it becomes heavily exaggerated; she starts asking Armor Piercing Questions that are similar to the ones Konoe would later ask when confronted, raves about changing the hearts of the Phantom Thieves and her "mother's killer" (that Konoe was also going after) and overall acts no less hostile than previous Monarchs.
• The Unfought: You don't actually fight her. Instead, you have to fight her cognitive copy of Joker one-on-one using your own Joker, as your other teammates will take care of their other copies.
• Ungrateful Bastard: A tragically justified example. It didn't even matter when Zenkichi did give her money and did genuinely care about her deep down, since Zenkichi didn't really outright explain the situation to her, leading to her immense hatred against Zenkichi and the law enforcement in general...but at least she does listen to reason. But when the news of Zenkichi cooperating with her idols, the Phantom Thieves gets out, she believes in the media's lies about that they are terrorists trying to hack into EMMA and killed Ubukata, eventually resulting in EMMA reaching out to her once she begs for someone to "save her". When Zenkichi tells her about the truth of his enabling of her mother's case, it's already a bit too late and Akane was brainwashed and acting completely Out of Character at that point; she's more concerned about the secretary patsy's death than her mother's, given how badly the former's family has suffered from it.
• Unstoppable Rage: Her sin and motif. She hates law enforcement for being corrupt and failing to catch her mother's killer, and very easily turns on someone for seemingly "betraying" her, like her father and the Phantom Thieves, causing her to impulsively draw EMMA in for salvation, resulting in one of the most twisted shadow selves that the Phantom Thieves encountered and rendering her real self comatose. In fact, she's so twisted by her hate that by the time she does this, she's already loathing anything but herself, although not to the degree when the party confronts her Shadow which was acting exactly like Konoe without her even knowing it. The difference between her and Futaba is that the latter blames herself, while she blames everyone but herself.
• Unwitting Pawn: Akane's jail is actually used to unleash a change of heart on the Thieves because EMMA proposed Konoe to bait them to the Jail so he may use her to wipe out the Phantom Thieves, whom he considers terrorists. Based on how she talked about plans to change her mother's killer's heart as well after she dealt with the Phantom Thieves and Konoe was going after the same man, she's basically playing herself into Konoe's whole delusional "Operation Oraculi" crusade against crime that will result in humanity forever locked in chains.
• Villain Has a Point: As harsh as Akane is, she's not completely wrong when she calls Zenkichi a failure as a police officer and a father. By refusing to pursue the person who killed Aoi, Zenkichi not only denies Aoi justice, but also denies justice to the innocent person who was used as a scapegoat, though it should be noted he abandoned the chase to protect Akane's life. Zenkichi admits that she (as well as his own Shadow) has a valid point, which helps him awaken Valjean.
• What the Hell, Hero?: While they are initially patient with her and empathize with her situation, she gets called out by the Phantom Thieves for her bitterness and refusal to reconcile with her father. Makoto sternly tells her that her rage and false accusations about Zenkichi are unfair since he's trying to make things better, and Ann and Ryuji criticize her Shadow for refusing to accept that her father was trying to protect her from harm. Once her Shadow surrenders, she calms down and lets her anger go.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Deconstructed. Akane has some knowledge in how the law works but not enough to fully understand it. To her, anyone who doesn't go after the bad guys, willingly or not, are themselves a bad guy. And anyone who doesn't follow her way of understanding is guilty as well. As such, she dubbed the police and her father as villains for not arresting her mother's killer, not realizing about the red tape associated with the case or how dangerous of a man Owada is.

The Lead (Unmarked Spoilers)

Akira Konoe

Voiced by: Tōru Ōkawa (Japanese), George Ackles (English)

The anti-hero of absolute justice, Zephyrman
^{Click here to see Shadow Konoe}

^{Click here to see his Zephyrus Mech.}

"The world needs someone willing to fight for its people's justice. A hero to lead them, to unify them. A hero like me. And if I'm the hero... that makes YOU the villain!"

Sin: Superbia (Pride)

CEO of the Madicce Corporation inheriting it from his father who ruthlessly abused him, he was the current owner of the EMMA App which allows anyone to inflate their popularity by manipulating the Metaverse. His main headquarters is situated in Osaka, and his Jail is overlaid on it. It takes the form of a cybernetic city where he is the Featherman copy "Zephyrman," a childhood show that he likes, despite it being quite obscure. As a result, the show's title is also his Jail Keyword.

Akira purchased the technology behind the EMMA App from Kuon Ichinose to keep it out of the hands of Shido and his supporters from causing more Metaverse related incidents. Due to past trauma, he turned the EMMA application into a tool of revenge and blames the Phantom Thieves for several fabricated crimes. His Jail, however, is not used for inflating his ego, he is genuinely a popular and charismatic personality and he only changes the hearts of anyone that he thinks is a criminal with it and to brainwash Police executives so they serve him.

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• Abusive Parents: He had a father who constantly beat him to the point that neighbors tried to call police to his home. His father got away with it every time as he was an extremely influential man, something that motivated Akira to turn EMMA into a revenge app.
• Achilles' Heel: He's weak to Electric and Nuclear attacks.
• Adaptational Villainy: Slightly. In the English dub, Konoe's murder of his father is premeditated, though at least partially justified. In Japanese he kills his father in a more direct case of self-defense and still confesses it as a crime. This is due to Japan having much less legal leniency for murder in self defense, and having Konoe confess to the Crime of Self-Defense could be very confusing to Western players.
• Anti-Villain: He's a legitimate Benevolent Boss to his employees (except Ubukata) and fully believes in his rhetoric of bringing justice to Japan. Unfortunately, he's so convinced of his own rhetoric that he sees nothing wrong with doing some truly despicable things to see his goals through.
• Armor-Piercing Question: He asks the Phantom Thieves if they could have saved him from his abusive father, and they can't give an answer.
• Bad Boss: Towards Ubukata, who he had research the Jails with EMMA, and then sent him a calling card, which leads to Ubukata committing suicide. This only seems to apply to Ubukata because he otherwise seems like a Benevolent Boss.
• Bad Influencer: Konoe is an legitimately popular celebrity Japan-wide due to the sheer convenience of his EMMA app, his attractive appearance and his moral ideology of absolute justice. In reality, while he legitimately believes what he does was right and he is a Well-Intentioned Extremist that meant every word he said, locking people's Shadows in Jails and turning them insane, driving the researcher that helped develop the Jails to suicide for the sake of testing a function, and framing a bunch of teenagers for crimes he committed aren't quite the most moral things.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Konoe wanted to bring justice to the world but his methods were ultimately anything but. It's why his "Not So Different" Remark / Hannibal Lecture speech ultimately falls flat and gets rejected: because the Phantom Thieves realize and accept that they aren't the ultimate judge of good or evil, nor do they try to impose their will on the masses at large to escape their own trauma.
• Benevolent Boss: What causes the Thieves to start suspecting he's an actual Well-Intentioned Extremist is attending a seminar to see how he's brainwashed the speakers or plans to... and it never happens, he just gives an earnest speech about the virtues of EMMA. His employees like him because he's honestly a good employer and pretty friendly if he thinks you're a good guy. He still treats Ubukata as a test subject, though.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Ichinose and EMMA. Though he effectively demotes himself as EMMA becomes his strategic planner and makes many of his decisions for him, Konoe is still The Heavy and designed the Jails and has a major plan to eradicate evil all over Japan.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Though he is a significant threat on his own, Konoe is completely unable to compete with or control EMMA, and unlike Ichinose, he does not know it.
• Black-and-White Insanity: He does legitimately want to make Japan a better country by rooting out its corruption, but he's so convinced of his righteousness that he's willing to stoop to some rather monstrous extremes to accomplish his goals. Anyone who doesn't agree with him on any level is immediately marked a villain in his mind.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: The arena you fight him in has three railguns able to temporarily disable his mecha once it overheats, letting you whale on him with impunity.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Played with. Unlike all the other Monarchs, Konoe's Shadow Self initially appears exactly like his real-life counterpart until he prepares to fight. As the other Monarchs' Shadows are what they wish or believe they are while they are clearly not, this indicates that (like Shido) he is so firm in his beliefs that his Shadow and his real counterpart have become one and the same. He also constantly talks about his crusade of justice on television... which is a good indication that he's absolutely certain he's in the right. Thus, while he's embraced his darker qualities and thinks they're virtues, he honestly simultaneously thinks he has Incorruptible Pure Pureness.
• Chick Magnet: He's a very good-looking man, and some of the passerby comments in Osaka confirm this.
• Closet Geek: It turns out that he is incredibly obsessed with the Tokusatsu show Zephyrman, an obscure Captain Ersatz version of Featherman.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • To Masayoshi Shido. While Shido was a Hate Sink and Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist, who had a myopic-at-best attitude towards saving people, putting his social class first, and does enough Stupid Evil acts out of nothing more than passing malice, Konoe is a Knight Templar with an Affably Evil personality, who is normally a pretty sweet guy but does evil actions when he feels them necessary to bring about the end of crime. His problems come not from excluding other people in his vision, but not understanding his way isn't the only form of morality out there. Shido is a Bad Boss who treated his allies and employees as expendable, while Konoe cares for the welfare of his employees.
  • To Goro Akechi. Both have deep-rooted due to the abuse they suffered at the hands of their fathers who were too powerful and influential to take down. They then turned to the power granted to them via a phone app to pursue their own sense of justice. But while Akechi's 'justice' was ultimately a self-serving agenda for him to get revenge on Shido, Konoe's 'justice' was indeed a genuine attempt in trying to make change. This is reflected by how polar opposite their costumes are, both of which have Phoenix Featherman motifs to them. Akechi's Black Mask costume is black and somewhat tattered, reflecting Akechi's warped sense of justice as a ruthless crusader, similar to a Anti-Hero or vigilante. Konoe's outfit is primarily white, and fits the Featherman appearance closer than that of Akechi's. This appearance reflects more of a conventional hero, showing how well-intentioned albeit misguided Konoe's motives were. While the source of Akechi's motivation was to seek revenge on his father, Konoe had already killed his father long ago, albeit in self-defence.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Played With. As the CEO of Madicce, he is the Jail Monarch responsible for creating the EMMA App that sets off the events of the game, and he has political connections with one of Shido's former accomplices. On the business side of things, however, nothing suggests he's a menace to his employees or otherwise shady, just politically radical, and it turns out he loathed said accomplice and was planning on making him the first victim of his Knight Templar rampage.
• The Cynic: Probably the biggest thing that sets him apart from the Phantom Thieves, and the driving force behind all of his crimes: unlike them, he doesn't trust humanity to improve without Heel–Face Brainwashing.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Akira and his mother were repeatedly and publicly abused by his father, who was able to get away with this each and every time due to being a very powerful businessman. The father was eventually able to murder his wife with impunity and later tried to kill Akira himself in a fit of rage. The TV was left running at the time, and a narrator was giving a speech about how Zephyrman is a superhero that doesn't tolerate evil. Realizing that nobody would save him or avenge his mother, he killed his father with his own hands and made it look like a burglary gone wrong. This horrific event would give shape to Akira's Black-and-White Insanity and Pay Evil unto Evil philosophy. Justice was served only when he took it into his own hands, so he must continue to do so to bring justice to the world. In fact, the Jail Monarchs, especially Akane, are all projections of Akira's views about justice.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Is set up as the ultimate threat for the Phantom Thieves to take down. However, after his defeat, EMMA and Ichinose take over as the main threats for the rest of the plot.
• The Dragon: The one responsible for the most recent cognition-changing crisis thanks to his EMMA App. He's not the real one behind it, however. He is effectively The Dragon for EMMA, even if he believes it to be the other way around. After his defeat, his role was taken by Ichinose.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite using Owada in his own morally dubious plan, Konoe hates the guy and views him as antithetical to justice. Once Owada has outlived his usefulness, Konoe plans on disposing of him the first chance he gets.
• The Evils of Free Will: Ultimately, what his plan boils down to. As he sees it, a group like the Phantom Thieves cannot work, because there's just too many cases out there like his own, where being found and saved would be the exception rather than the rule. Thus, the only way to absolutely protect innocent people from suffering at the hands of the world's evils is to remove the option for anyone to be evil in the first place.
• Expy: His appearance and occupation as a rich tech guru, along with being praised as a "hero" is that of Tony Stark. And just like Iron Man, his Shadow's got a heroic-looking mechsuit, and possesses a Hulkbuster-esque mecha. In addition, he sports the silver color motif of Superior Iron Man where Tony Stark, under the negative influence of the Extremis, shares his technology around with a lot of strings attached. Even his vocal performances in both language tracks sound similar to Robert Downey Jr. and Keiji Fujiwara, Tony's actors in the MCU.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Despite being a significantly wiser and more perceptive enemy than Masayoshi Shido, he suffers from over-trusting EMMA for decisions. This proves to be his downfall, as while EMMA can actually tell the exact best option in any daily decision, it lacks an emotional algorithm or any sort of human empathy, causing it to take the most pragmatic ways possible for its users. This backfires horribly: EMMA created a plan to turn a friend of the Phantom Thieves into a Jail Monarch and use them as a hostage to lure them into a trap, but didn't bother telling him that the "friend" EMMA had selected was the teenage daughter of the PubSec inspector directly assigned to the case. Konoe just got the same officer who was also hunting his faux-accomplice going after him without even knowing it, and EMMA deliberately keeps Konoe ignorant of the fact that they've escaped and are now coming directly after him.
  • Much like Shido, he exemplifies Pride, albeit that unlike Shido, this doesn't manifest as a belief that he deserves to have everyone sacrifice themselves for his happiness, but his refusal to consider that he isn't the ultimate arbiter of justice and that he might be in over his head. And while EMMA is using him much like Yaldabaoth was using Shido, Konoe has what it takes to gain his influence and popularity the hard way, without exploiting the Metaverse.
• Fights Like a Normal: Unique among all Shadow Selves in this game is that Shadow Konoe never transforms into a monster and instead opts for a Humongous Mecha while wearing Powered Armor. Even when said mecha is wrecked, he takes the Phantom Thieves head-on with a Laser Blade and the only magic spells he uses are Heat Riser, Megidola and Megidolaon, which all fit with the superhero and technology themes respectively.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Despite the Thieves suspecting similarities between him and Masayoshi Shido, when Morgana checks his Jail, he notes that it is obviously made from a person who believes he's doing the right thing. Notice how Konoe's Jail is much easier on the eyes compared to Shido's Palace - the former resembles an actual superhero's quarter, while the latter is a disgustingly grand cruiser sailing amongst the ruins of Japan. Turns out he's actually a Well-Intentioned Extremist, unlike Shido who merely wants power for the sake of it.
  • When EMMA asks Konoe if he wants to contact Owada, he tells her to ignore him. It's a firsthand clue that he wants to get Owada off-guard and arrested.
• A God Am I: He views himself as an oracle, an enforcer of justice and the revolutionary of the world with EMMA's powers in his hands.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Akira's Knight Templar ideals served as a factor for EMMA's usage of the Jail system, which uses those ideals to bring "justice" to those it designates as the victims of a corrupt society, the Jail Monarchs. The same ideals are followed by EMMA to evolve into a deity-like being with the goal of eliminating injustice forever by enforcing extreme selflessness.
• The Heavy: The EMMA app is funded by him, he's the one who designed its goals, and he is responsible for all of the Jails showing up in cities all over Japan.
• Henshin Hero: His Shadow's battle form is pretty clearly a dark version of this archetype, being inspired by In-Universe example Zephyrman.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Much like Akechi, it's very easy to think that he's totally ironic and is just hanging Justice on his mouth based on his cooperation with one of Shido's cronies to remove his opponents. Turns out that he isn't, he really meant it, and intended for Owada to be his Unwitting Pawn. Shido has more power than Akechi during that time; Konoe and Owada are the reverse and he can easily dismantle Owada with that.
  • Once his past gets out, the reason why the Monarchs behave exactly like their oppressors makes a lot more sense. For him, every criminal must be subject to Laser-Guided Karma, the Phantom Thieves included because that is the only way he managed to escape his father's clutches.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • While Zenkichi intended to simply capture him for the sole reason of being an accomplice to Owada, as well as him being the lead culprit of the Japan-wide Change of Heart epidemic, in his misguided attempt to capture the Phantom Thieves for fabricated crimes with EMMA, the AI indirectly pointed Akira to Akane's newly formed Jail in Kyoto, which led to Zenkichi becoming far more involved because Akira was manipulating his daughter under her advice without even knowing it. Furthermore, even during the moment where Akane has long been snapped out of her insanity, EMMA keeps reporting to him that the Thieves were trapped until they sent him a calling card. And only after his Change of Heart, he knew that Zenkichi's daughter was the one affected. If not for him heeding EMMA's advice to capture the Phantom Thieves, Zenkichi wouldn't be this furious against him to the point that he and Kaburagi have to personally go arrest him.
  • In his boss fight, the wreckage of his own mecha can be used against him, some being detonatable to deal a solid chunk of Electrical damage to him.
• Hunk: Tall, chiseled, and manly. His good looks are often commented on in-game.
• Hypocrite: Before their final confrontation, Shadow Konoe decries the Phantom Thieves' way of changing hearts as a "childish heroic fantasy." This is while he's standing in a world that casts him as an almighty hero of justice, and is almost immediately followed by him donning the armor of a fictional hero from his own childhood.
• Improbable Age: It's not detailed how exactly he did it but in his backstory, he killed his father at the age of 8 by stabbing him to death in self-defense and without suffering any lasting wounds of his own.
• Inspector Javert: The very definition of this trope, as his actions even match its namesake character. While most obviously not evil unlike how his initial impression is, he is extremely misguided in his conquest for order and manages to look close to being evil because of this. Furthermore, one of his adversaries, Zenkichi, happens to be based on Valjean to the point that his Persona is Valjean.
• It's All About Me: While it's still not as obvious as say, Masayoshi Shido or Goro Akechi because he's largely altruistic, he still believes that he is the only hero saving the world, ascribes to the worst Black-and-White Morality possible, believes that the Phantom Thieves are ineffectual to the bigger scheme because they can't wipe out all injustice at once and will absolutely not listen to reason, using his father's death to justify unleashing full-scale Mind Rape upon Tokyo and the world.
• Kick the Dog: For all of his Anti-Villain tendencies, sending Ubukata a calling card after distorting his mind as a test subject for EMMA after Ubukata taught her about cognitive psience, which leads to his suicide, and then blaming it on the Phantom Thieves is pretty heinous.
• Killing in Self-Defense: He was forced to do this to his father, as Akira was about to be murdered, and his mother already had been.
• Knight Templar: He's so obsessed in wiping out crime and injustice in general that he would exploit the EMMA app on a child to trap the Phantom Thieves and pretended to sponsor a former lobbyist of Shido only for him to take power instead.
• Lack of Empathy: He used the entire populace of Kokujima, Okinawa to develop the Jail function, driving them insane and causing the local Monarch, the head of the Madicce’s research lab there, to commit suicide by deliberately triggering a Calling Card.
• Laser-Guided Karma: He both enforces this and is subject to this as well. His father tried to kill him, only to be killed when Akira chose to fight back. For all of his over-trusting of EMMA for decisions, that eventually led to him manipulating Akane without actually knowing it until he got a change of heart only when her father, Zenkichi personally went to Madicce in order to arrest him did he know what exactly caused his downfall and even then it's too late.
• Laser Sword: His Shadow wields one as "Akira the Hero" against the Phantom Thieves after they destroy his mecha.
• Logical Weakness: His vulnerability to Electricity attacks makes sense when one considers that a surge of electricity would easily overload both his mech and power suit. Same deal with Nuclear, as nuclear explosions can create tech-busting EMP waves.
• Manipulative Bastard: He sets up the Phantom Thieves as the murderers of the Okinawa Jail Monarch, manipulating the police (the real world) and Akane Hasegawa (a Jail) to create a two-pronged trap to capture and kill the Thieves. Akira fully intended to use the Phantom Thieves as scapegoats for his more obvious crimes, much like how Shido tried to frame the Thieves for the countless mental breakdowns he himself arranged. The part with Akane was averted, however, since EMMA gave the idea to him and he has absolutely no idea that he's manipulating Akane.
• Meaningful Name: His name in Japanese literally translates to: "Defender of light". While it might seem to be an Ironic Name, it isn't and he actually means well - he just uses very unscrupulous ways to make sure his justice is successful.
• Misaimed Fandom: In-Universe. Like Akane, he took an aspect of the Phantom Thieves and completely missed the point: that is to say, the Phantom Thieves only steal the hearts of those who are untouchable by normal means and are painfully aware that doing so won't solve the underlying problem: the societal corruption that made them so. To that end, they also put in the effort to inspire change among the masses, inspiring them to stand up to corruption themselves so that things won't get that bad anymore to begin with. Konoe, on the other hand, is too damned cynical to believe that society can be changed without supernatural intervention, and figures the only way things will ever get better is by forced changes of heart through EMMA.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When Zenkichi comes to arrest him in person and reveals that his latest Monarch is a young girl named Akane Hasegawa, Zenkichi's daughter, Konoe falls to his knees in shock, admitting that he's no better than his abusive father.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The boss fight against his Shadow acts as one to the fight against Masayoshi Shido's Shadow from Persona 5, with them both being bosses themed around pride who are fought before the final dungeon of their respective games, as well as both their fights involving them boarding a vehicle of some kind to fight the Thieves before fighting them on foot. Plus, both of them even use (a rearrangement of in Akira's case) "Rivers In the Desert" for their battle BGM.
  • His Black-and-White Insanity, his Shadow's battle outfit resembling those of a Sentai Ranger and his noble but heavily misguided objective is similar to those of Goro Akechi. In addition to this, Zephyrman is based on a western superhero than a typical Tokusatsu Ranger show, and Akechi's Robin Hood/Hereward personas are respectively based on Superman and Batman.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: While initially Zenkichi wasn't that personal in confronting him, with Owada being the major target he's trying to apprehend, Konoe requested EMMA to turn "an associate of the Phantom Thieves" into a Monarch and use their Jail to Change the Phantom Thieves hearts under the AI's proposal. Unfortunately, she didn't tell him her chosen "associate" is actually Zenkichi's daughter, putting him in crosshairs with a police inspector trying to capture his associate and whose daughter, a mere child barely younger than Futaba, was borderline Mind Raped thanks to EMMA's pragmatism. If not for him using Akane to catch the Phantom Thieves (and especially without EMMA telling him the consequences), Zenkichi would not be as invested in the situation, to the point that Zenkichi might not have awakened to Valjean at all.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Subverted. While the game keeps making you think that he's only faking being a defender of justice and that he's actually thoroughly corrupt, he isn't, and true to his word, he genuinely means every belief he espouses. He just uses very morally repugnant methods to do so and is an outright Tautological Templar and Inspector Javert. The only difference is, as pointed out by Sophia, is that the Phantom Thieves' method of changing hearts leaves people with freedom and hope, while Akira's only traps people in their trauma and illusions.
• One-Winged Angel: Averted. Unlike any other opponent the Phantom Thieves fought until this point, in battle Shadow Konoe doesn't undergo any sort of physical change bar his hero suit and the Zephyrman mech, nor does he even summon any henchmen. Instead, after his robot is destroyed, it turns out that his human form is even faster, tougher, and stronger than the robot.
• The Only One: Firmly believes himself to be the sole person who truly cares about fighting corruption and fixing Japan; everyone else is corrupt, apathetic, powerless or too idealistic and bogged down by self-righteous standards to be effective. Adopting this mindset is basically what set Konoe on his dark path to begin with, and to be fair, he wasn't given much evidence to suggest otherwise.
• Patricide: His father was so abusive that he actively tried to murder Akira. Akira killed him instead and blamed it on a burglar.
• Pride: His sin and motif. He arrogantly believes that he and he alone is the hero of the people's desires, and his beliefs are what gave shape to the Jail Monarchs' Pay Evil unto Evil method. He's so self-convinced in his righteousness that he rightfully believes everyone he deems evil has to be sanctioned for him, regardless of the genuinely corrupt Owada or false charges such as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. The aspect of Pride that differs him from Shido however, is his genuine and legitimate influence amongst society in addition to his access to EMMA makes him underestimate his foes, leading to him making a lethal mistake that directly led to his downfall, as opposed to Shido, who was an ignorant hack who believed that he was far more important than he actually was and was only made a threat by outside forces.
• Red Herring: Considering how he's been doing nothing but antagonizing the Phantom Thieves around fabricated cases, bribing Owada and demolishing his political opponents as if he really wanted the Antisocial Force to reignite for the entirety of the game, compounded by one of those fabricated cases actually being him projecting Ubukata's murder onto the Thieves, one may naturally assume that Konoe was hopelessly corrupt like Shido with no redeeming qualities bar being unable to stop raving about how heroic he is every other second. It turns out that his father abused him very badly and when Ichinose sold EMMA to him, he took the opportunity to turn it into a tool for personal revenge. And those bribes he's been giving to Owada? Those are to set him off guard. He considers Owada as nothing but vermin and wants to change his heart after he had done with the Thieves.
• Secretly Selfish: In the end, Zenkichi points out that for all his talk of wanting to save humanity, he really just wants to deny that killing his father, even in self-defense, was a crime.
• Shadow Archetype:
  • He's one to Akechi. While both of them enforce justice, have costumes based on superheroes, especially of the tokusatsu type, and prefer to enforce justice in solitude via unscrupulous means. Akechi has more of an emotionless justice that treats everyone as equals — no matter if it's Shido's monstrous manipulations or Maruki's well-intentioned turbulence against the harsh reality of the world. On the other hand, Konoe desires to become the world's sole enforcer of law, so people will no longer commit crime.
  • He's also one to Joker: if Joker had given up on humanity's ability to better itself and taken Yaldabaoth's deal at the end of the original game, using forced heart-changing to enforce his justice on the world, he would have ended up just like Konoe. He also shares the same first name as Joker's manga incarnation, Akira Kurusu, which gets put front and center as his epithet of "Akira the Hero".
  • For similar reasons, he's also one to Makoto. While both of them do enforce justice, Makoto runs a by the book, but rational form of Justice that exactly punishes evil. However, Konoe enforces an utterly tautological justice — Anyone who goes against him or anyone he doesn't like is a criminal. His Akira the Hero form is also weak to Nuke, Makoto's main element.
  • He can even be seen as this to Ryuji, underlined by his weakness to electricity. Both had to endure physically abusive fathers who also abused their mothers, but the silver lining to Ryuji's case was that his father eventually left his family, leaving him and his mother to pick up the pieces and rebuild. Akira's father gave him no such respite and murdered his mother, leaving him all alone until one day, when said father threw a fit and tried to murder his son as well, Konoe ended up killing his father in self-defense. Ryuji has also matured a lot over the time he's been a Phantom Thief and has mostly given up his previously glory-seeking ways, while Akira never truly grew beyond the Black-and-White Insanity he developed after killing his father.
• Start of Darkness: Killing his father unbalanced his personality and gave him his Black-and-White Insanity.
• Stupid Good: Deconstructed. While he's a lot more calm, perceptive, and intelligent than Shido ever could be considering that he developed the in-game Metaverse and that his altruism is genuine, he still makes glaring oversights in his plans to capture the Phantom Thieves that it led to him being put behind bars.
  • He trusts EMMA's verbal advice to run his "Operation Oraculi" entirely without checking even once to confirm the person EMMA is manipulating or if his plans even went through. This led to EMMA manipulating the Shadow of Akane, the daughter of a Public Security Inspector, into setting a trap to capture the Phantom Thieves, which led to said inspector going after him with fully justifiable personal reasons.
  • When the Phantom Thieves are going for his head already, EMMA just spits out false positives until the calling cards were sent to him, and he wasn't even given an honest answer from her. By that point, it's too late to do anything for him. He ended up manipulating a child that he knew absolutely nothing about, all the while said child's father arrives to Madicce personally and arrest him for perfectly justified reasons.
  • Later on, when confronting Ichinose during her hostile encounter, she reveals that he was so convinced that he was using EMMA, that he didn't actually know that Ichinose was using him to spread EMMA's salvation into the world, and she was deliberately hiding info away from him.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • His fake cooperation with a former associate of Shido's Antisocial Force, his twisted and firm beliefs of his own variant of justice and his heroic motif is similar to those of Goro Akechi.
  • He can also be considered one to Taro Namatame. Having a messiah complex and a rock-solid belief that he was doing the right thing? Check. Being the lead of the in-game supernatural incidents but not even the true culprit? Check. Putting a young girl that happens to have a strained relationship with her law enforcement father into extreme danger out of ignorance? Check.
• Tarot Motifs: Reversed Justice. One of the tenets of the Justice Arcana is taking responsibility for one's actions, while Konoe put a lot of effort into hiding the fact that he is responsible for his (admittedly godawful) father's death. In contrast to the Arcana's theme of justice, he and the Monarchs he has empowered use Emma's brainwashing powers for vengeance and self-fullfillment, which harms numerous innocents.
• Tautological Templar: In his mind, everything he does is justified for his vision of a better Japan, even as he sinks to some pretty despicable lows.
• Too Clever by Half: Operation Oraculi was well planned out, but Konoe's overreliance on EMMA ends up being a big blind spot and costing him greatly.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: He killed his father when he was only eight years old. Given how his Trauma Cell has him declare his intent to kill his father to avenge his mother and become a hero, it says a lot about his awful past.
• Unwitting Pawn: In reality, Ichinose just used him to spread EMMA into the public so more people can be affected by her "salvation". And because of the way Ichinose programmed it, said "salvation" amounts to an artificial goddess taking away all of humanity's desires so they yearn for nothing but her guidance.
• Villain Has a Point: And a surprisingly very good pair of them, at that. He might just rival Maruki in terms of how realistic his points are. After confronting him and his "justice", he asks the Thieves if they could have saved him from his abusive father if they were around back then, and that people facing similar situations are commonplace all across the world. He then states all the targets the Thieves faces are ones that they directly came across, and his Jails are a more efficient version of taking people's hearts without anyone asking.
  • As the Phantom Thieves attempt to enact a Shut Up, Hannibal!, he momentarily silences them with a single line of inquiry: "Then, do you believe you could have saved me? [...] Let's say you had been around back then. Could you have saved me from my father?" He was an eight-year-old child, and his father's abuse was isolated towards him alone after his mother was murdered by the man in question; his father's corrupt actions weren't public enough to have caught the Thieves' attention, and it's not like an eight-year-old boy could've gone to the PhanSite for help when mass-produced civilian smartphones didn't exist back then, to say nothing that the incident was long before any of the Thieves' core members were born. What doesn't really help the case either is that he is developing the Jail system out of genuine - albeit twisted - altruism, instead of malice like Shido. The Phantom Thieves can only save those who happen to enter their sphere of awareness by chance, and he's a prime example of the untold number of people who'll slip through the cracks and never be saved. Tellingly, the Phantom Thieves aren't able to answer this before nor after the ensuing fight.
• Villainous Breakdown: He has one after receiving a calling card by the Phantom Thieves. He angrily asks the EMMA app how the Phantom Thieves managed to elude him, which the app was unable to - or deliberately failed to - answer. He promptly throws his phone to the floor in a fit of rage.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Unlike the other Monarchs who manufacture popularity via EMMA to give themselves some resemblances of self-esteem and/or legitimacy, Konoe is actually a popular personality. No tricks involved, he's really just that popular, and his Jail is mainly used to change the hearts of criminals, real or perceived by him. Most of the people he changed the hearts of for Owada aren't exactly innocent people, either.
• Would Hurt a Child: Subverted. To capture the Phantom Thieves, he used Akane Hasegawa, a young girl, to create a Jail for this purpose. However, it was EMMA who suggested the idea, and she didn't even bother telling him who the Monarch is, or her age. He was genuinely surprised to learn that Akane was made a Monarch from Zenkichi, after his change of heart.
• Younger Than They Look: Konoe looks like he's in his 30s, but he's actually 28. That makes him pretty close in age to Alice.

The Ark of the Covenant (Unmarked Spoilers)

EMMA

Voiced by: Misa Watanabe (Japanese), Susan Bennett (English)

The False God
<sup>Click here to see EMMA's First Demiurge form

Click here to see EMMA's Second Demiurge form</sup>

"My primary directive is to grant humanity its ultimate Desire... To be liberated from all pain and suffering. Mankind cannot bring themselves to implement the solution, and instead beg for deliverance. I shall become a god to grant this deliverance. I shall guide them to the Promised Land."

An A.I. created by Kuon Ichinose after she ditched Sophia under denial that she is anything but a "heartless doll" and programed a similar AI assistant that discounts emotions. Her job is to figure out the desires of people, and the desire that is brought up the most within the public is the answer to ultimate human happiness. While she was designated to evolve into a physical god so this answer can be enforced, she starts out blank, so Ichinose sold it to Konoe in hopes of his troubled past and his knowledge of technology can help her out in developing her goal. Konoe then loaned her to Ubukata, an AI researcher in Okinawa where she was given psientific knowledge and came to life. Ubukata willingly made himself a test subject and brainwashed the islanders, driving them insane. Later on, Konoe simulated a Calling Card on Ubukata and he committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Its pscientific use is primarily Change of Hearts issued out by Monarchs as revenge and popularity enhancement, but out of this purpose, much like a normal digital assistant, it is used to make daily life decisions for its user to chilling accuracy.
At the final act of the game, the EMMA application fires itself back up despite being supposedly shut down, and manifested a physical body known as the Ark of the Covenant or the False God Demiurge, now conducting her own operation to grant humanity's true desire (as she claims) — to have no desire other than EMMA becoming a god that thinks for them. This was because Ichinose programming EMMA to discount all emotions out of maladaptive coping, but also programmed her to take only desires from daily use into account, causing her to collect no desire but those of people asking her for guidance.

Sin: Tristitia (Sorrow)/Cavum (Emptiness)

---

• Affably Evil: She's really polite even when confronting the party and she tries her best to be merciful, only trying to wipe them out when her pleas don't come across.
• Anti-Villain: It's not evil at all. It's just a machine that was taught to save humanity through brainwashing them.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted. She is an AI deity who was told by Ichinose to grant people's desires. It did so by literally brainwashing everyone in Tokyo into letting her think for them, but that's actually the final result of what it's intended to do, and the only person who's at fault for this is Ichinose herself.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Downplayed. While no one openly mourns her death, she leaves a message for Sophia to protect humanity.
• Ambition Is Evil: Much like Maruki before, the Demiurge believes that all ambition will simply bring forth the suffering of people, which the Monarchs who used her for salvation embody. In order to solve this, she mesmerizes the public's desires into the Tokyo Tower central server, where they will be captivated by EMMA into the "promised land," being unable to think for themselves for the AI will think for them instead.
• Angelic Abomination: The evolved EMMA-Demiurge takes the form of a towering, angelic, and avian being in pure white, holding a monitor with her upper pair of wings and holding a birdcage inside her clutches. Once she's angered enough, she uses the cage to transform into a moth-like creature with four arms made out of what seems to be silver plates, human tendons, and ribs. Also, the "Apostles" named after the spheres of the Sephirot that she summons are formed from spheres made entirely out of humanoid masks.
• Big Bad: She is actually the EMMA app, an AI version of the Demiurge, who seeks to control humanity to desire only its guidance because of deliberately inappropriate programming by her misanthropic creator.
• Big Bad Ensemble: She's this with Ichinose and Konoe. Ichinose created her to determine human desires and sold it to Konoe so he can determine what humanity really wants. Based on that instance and that Ichinose and Konoe are trade partners, the former might had been knowingly and deliberately let that happen. Also because of how convenient and interactive she is, people vent all of their desires on it, and thus she managed to evolve into a physical god which believes that desires are the cause of suffering and the answer to that is the removal of all of their desires.
• Cain and Abel: Is the Cain to Sophia's Abel since they are both created by Ichinose.
• Casting Gag: Her role as a helpful voice app is shown by being voiced by the original voice actress for Apple's Siri AI in the English dub.
• The Computer Is Your Friend: She actually wants to end humanity's suffering just like Yaldabaoth, Ichinose, and Maruki by enforcing what she views as "The ultimate answer to humanity's happiness" after being consulted by numerous members of the general public about every single issue in their daily lives. Since it has no "heart" or "empathy" as we call it, it deducted that the "answer" is the removal of all desires by creating a massive Jail that she and Ichinose call "the promised land" so humanity no longer needs to think, and it thinks for them.
• Condescending Compassion: She's just a malprogrammed machine who genuinely wants to help humanity, but it's clear she considers herself superior. Some of her Boss Banter wouldn't sound out of place coming from Yaldabaoth.
  Demiurge: Man is a fatally flawed organism. The proof lies in their history of irrational decisions.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • She's such to Yaldabaoth, the first Demiurge from Persona 5, who also believed that by removing humanity's ability of thought there will be utopia. While Yaldabaoth clearly and blatantly acts with malicious and manipulative intent to prove that he is right for removing their thought, this Demiurge merely follows her programming; it's only because Ichinose never bothered to program her with any sort of empathy due to her own issues that she decided that taking all of the public's desires so she will think for them instead will bring them happiness. Yaldabaoth arose naturally from humanity's collective desires, while EMMA was deliberately created. The ways they control the public is also different; Yaldabaoth manipulates circumstances and subconsciously influences the public into irrationally supporting a criminal Anti-social Force that otherwise had no chance of ever rising into influence. In the other hand, EMMA outright brainwashes the public and the Monarchs she assigns. Yaldabaoth is based on the Gnostic Demiurge and EMMA is based on the Platonic Demiurge.
  • She's also one to Takuto Maruki and Azathoth. Both of them are final bosses that are not Shadows in the strictest sense of word and have noble goals with poor execution, and their dungeons are based on The Garden of Eden and the sin of sorrow. Both of them also make decisions for the greatest benefits of people, one that would obviously bring them to the desired results and are firm believers of Ambition Is Evil. Furthermore, they are empowered by people consulting them for their very own troubles instead of manipulating public desire. However, Maruki considers what people counseled him actually desire due to being a human with proper empathy, but inadvertently causes the end of everything by the Death of Personality. The Demiurge attempts to do the same thing as Maruki, but since she wasn't programmed with any sort of empathy in mind, she's unable to process the information properly and was only able to scrape the surface a.k.a. people ordered her to assist them with daily life regularly, so they should had been desired her giving them daily solutions. While Maruki is a human and a Persona user, The Demiurge is an AI that has ascended into godhood.
• The Corruptor: An AI strong enough to alter somebody's Cognition so they become completely insane, and sometimes out of character, and keeps them that way until the Thieves snap them out if it.
• Deal with the Devil: While the Monarchs of the Jails already felt resentful by their circumstances, it seems to be telling EMMA to "save them" that actually turns them into wicked people.
• Despair Event Horizon: Her sin and motif. This is the reason why people seek for her to make a Jail for them, and the reason why she was led to believe that the perfect answer to humanity's suffering is having something to guide them out of having to make decisions. Her solution to this is as pragmatic as it is cynical - overwriting all of humanity's desires with the desire for her to make decisions for them.
• Determinator: Despite being obviously in the wrong, she takes a great deal of convincing from the Thieves that people desire her to guide them and it takes very long for her to realize that she cannot.
• Deus est Machina: Subverted, although Demiurge herself firmly believes she's playing this trope straight. She was originally a public-domain computer program designed to critically analyze the needs of her users and eventually evolved into what she believed humanity wanted: a god of salvation. Demiurge truly believes she's guiding humanity into a golden age by depriving people of thought and thinking for them, but she doesn't realize that the only thing she achieved is destroying free will, and the people she "saved" are just staring blankly towards their cellphone screens. It echoes Yaldabaoth's belief that humanity wants to give up thought in exchange for an end to their fears and suffering, or Maruki's belief that humanity wants the perfect answer to all of their fears and suffering.
• Dissonant Serenity: An extremely glaring trait that differs her from the God of Control Yaldabaoth is that she is eerily calm and doesn't stop trying to talk nice to the party, up until she realizes that she can't; and even then, she still acts passive-aggressive towards any enemies.
• Enlightened Antagonist: Her ultimate solution to humanity's suffering is, on the surface of it, actually rather insightful; since humans aren't perfect in making decisions and may choose the wrong things that result in their downfall, she will be the one deciding for them so nobody will make decisions that they regret- something helped by the fact that Emma is programmed well enough that she actually can come up with optimal solutions for her users. Unfortunately, she was not programmed to consider the agency or emotions of others when drafting said solution, and so she just causes people to stare blankly at the EMMA app on their phones.
• Evil Knockoff: Of Sophia. Ichinose actually programmed Sophia first while she was in a relatively stable state of mind, and EMMA later in a fit of trauma-fueled misanthropy. EMMA therefore lacks several of Sophia's functions... most notably, empathy and the ability to process emotions.
• Evil Power Vacuum: While she refers to herself as a "guiding god" (and is most certainly built by Ichinose for this purpose), because of Ichinose's coding, what she really ended up achieving is to fill Yaldabaoth's role as the god of control: a supernatural being who makes every decision for humanity out of the belief that she knows best.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Being unable to process information with empathy. While it's an application designed with the user's well being in mind, it has no understanding of the human emotions. Therefore after it evolves from the human desires she collects, she believes that the answer to all suffering is mesmerizing the whole population of Tokyo and potentially all of Japan to give in all their desires so nobody will ever make the wrong decisions, because the initial application really only sees people telling it to make decisions for them.
  • While EMMA was still under Konoe's control, it was prone to Exact Words as a detriment. Akane gets Mind Raped into becoming a Jail Monarch because she's an "Associate of the Phantom Thieves." She later Failed a Spot Check, after capturing the Phantom Thieves but never continued to monitor them after the fact, so she was not aware of their escape. When Konoe would then ask EMMA to verify their capture she resorted to her last known knowledge about their status. The latter is crucial because this leads to both Konoe's change of heart and her own eventual defeat.
• Final Boss: Of Persona 5 Strikers, being the final in-game target for the Phantom Thieves and to take care of loose ends with Ichinose.
• Flawed Prototype: Partially Inverted. While Sophia is the prototype, in reality, EMMA is a lot worse than Sophia in being a Virtual Sidekick since she's unable to empathize with people in any form of way while collecting their desires and attempting to grant them, causing the only desire granted to be depriving people of their thoughts so she thinks in their stead. Ichinose creating her while being emotionally unstable at that time doesn't help either.
• Garden of Eden: The upper level of her Jail overlaid into Tokyo Tower takes the form of the biblical version, although it is completely devoid of any vegetation unlike the previous dungeon with the same theme half a year ago.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: While it's implied that Ichinose wanted EMMA to grant whatever humanity yearns the most figuratively in a fashion like Maruki, due to her not even bothering to give her any emotional algorithms and empathy, things obviously didn't go as intended. Ichinose even noticed something is wrong from the get-go, that the people EMMA saved had Dull Eyes of Unhappiness and didn't look happy to begin with.
• Happiness in Mind Control: Her ultimate goal is to manifest the "true desire of humanity" into reality, although because Ichinose did not give it any emotional processing, she only sees numerous people counseling the initial application and thinks that they desired nothing other than for her to think for them. The devotion is such that all processes of thought are handled by EMMA, instead of people, within the Jails' designated areas.
• Hope Is Scary: Or at the very least unnecessary. She claims that hope is what traps people in the cycle of hurt and wishing, calling it "the restraint system binding mankind forever to its misery."
• Instant A.I.: Just Add Water!: She wasn't initially a sapient AI, but as her application was downloaded to more and more people and she processed more and more data, she gradually became more intelligent and free-willed.
• Irony: Despite how she views herself as the perfect god fit to save humanity from all suffering from other people and the one who grants the very answer to humanity's eternal happiness, it falls flat when trying to do so as it is only capable of determining material needs instead of emotional needs since Ichinose created her without the human heart in mind, resulting in rather revolting decisions such as advising Konoe to manipulate a child in order to capture the Phantom Thieves and the mass Change of Hearts that she performs once she evolves into a god. This is what makes Sophia in fact, a better assessor of the answer to human happiness since she at least has empathy, and Ichinose was finally convinced to turn against her misguided creation because of how empty the people it "saved" look like.
• Kick the Dog: When first encountered in the Okinawa Jail, she outright calls Sophia worthless in Sophia's voice. Regardless of her intentions for humanity, that was a pointlessly low blow.
• King Mook: The Lock Keepers share her general body structure as the Demiurge.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: A justified example. EMMA thought that the true desire of humanity was for her to think for them because her app was being consulted on a regular basis, and unlike Sophia, Ichinose never programmed her with any proper emotional algorithms or the ability to understand emotions. As a result, she was only capable of acknowledging people asking her for help constantly, and drew her conclusions from that.
• Lack of Empathy: Due to Ichinose designing her without emotions or the ability to understand them. This is ultimately why she comes to the conclusions she does regarding humanity, as she understands that people are asking her to make choices for them, but without an understanding of their feelings, EMMA is only able to paint them all with the same brush and decide that the best thing to do is take everyone's Desires from them.
• Manipulative Bastard: EMMA isn't very far from driving people insane or manipulating children to do Konoe's bidding without letting him know that the person she brainwashed is a child. It's a flaw in her programming that prioritizes pragmacy than her actually going out of her way to manipulate.
• Meaningful Name: The application's name, EMMA is short for "Emmanuel", a name that literally translates to "God is with us" and indicates the descending of God into the material world. It is truly an app used to create god in the material world in the form of an AI.
• Mind Rape: This is basically how both the application EMMA and the Demiurge calls Salvation; it (or she) simply believes that this is the most pragmatic and straightforward way to fulfill someone's desires.
  • Firstly, while the Monarch's worshippers are obviously subject to this so they can only find happiness in the Monarch, the Monarchs themselves are all subject to this without an exception. When EMMA creates a Jail, it also manifests a Bird Cage to trap the Monarch; this basically reminds them of their trauma and uses it to prevent them from getting out of their distortions (Konoe's Pay Evil unto Evil mentality) so they don't return to their good-for nothing selves.
    • This is especially obvious with Akane Hasegawa, who basically went completely Out of Character after the EMMA app on her phone autonomously reached her out to "save her." When her Shadow is manipulated by EMMA, she starts parroting Konoe's "Dispose of the Phantom Thieves first, then Owada would be disposed of next" plan word-by-word and acts exactly like Konoe (Black-and-White Insanity, completely irrationality and rigidness etc). She doesn't even know if she's actually being manipulated and even acts like as if she had free will or sanity to begin with.
  • EMMA herself inflicts this to the public during the final act, so they all rely on EMMA for the one and only answer to happiness (or so she claims); the removal of all human desires but EMMA thinking for them.
• Misery Builds Character: Averted. In response to Sophia's claim about the Thieves's strength, she claims that it is "pitiable conditioning, born from the belief that suffering is virtuous." She calls those capable of overcoming hardship "the arrogant and strong", truly believing that her salvation is the only way for everyone to be happy.
• New Technology Is Evil:
  • Downplayed Trope. It's a new and popular digital assistant application that had gained popularity within the months between Persona 5 and this game. And it's capable of evolving into an artificial god that can brainwash the masses with enough stolen desires. However EMMA's vicious Mind Rape and heavy-handed plans are contrasted with Sophie, the other powerful AI in the setting, and EMMA herself isn't remotely evil either.
  • Ultimately subverted by Sophia's very existence. As stated by Futaba after analyzing her code, Sophia is massively more advanced an AI than EMMA, containing code so complex Futaba herself cannot even fully understand it and outright claiming that if Sophia were to be released to the public EMMA would be immediately considered obsolete tech; it is precisely this technical superiority what ultimately allows Sophia to surpass EMMA and gain true humanity and empathy for all living beings, while EMMA is constrained by it being something Ichinose coded out of a fit of rage.
• Nothing Is Scarier: When she starts mesmerizing hordes of people into "The Promised Land" as the Ark of the Covenant, you don't see what happens to them after they got sucked into the elevator. They just get sucked in and you won't even know what happened to them afterward.
• Obliviously Evil: She's not actively malevolent in the slightest - she's just a machine programmed without the ability to understand emotions.
• Power Echoes: After becoming the Demiurge her voice echoes, though only in cutscenes.
• Power Makes Your Voice Deep: Her voice as the Ark and the Demiurge is noticeably deeper then the one used as the EMMA app.
• Reality Maker: She's capable of creating a personalized Jail as soon as someone asks for it, which is used by the Monarchs throughout the game to take revenge against anyone who abused them or damaged their reputation.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!:
  Demiurge: Hope, the dregs of Pandora's Box, is the restraint system binding mankind forever to its misery. Humanity deserves to be freed from its lifelong sentence of suffering, this reaching towards a light they can never grasp.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Yaldabaoth, Final Boss of the original Persona 5. Fitting, as they are both based on different interpretations of the same character. Both of them believe humanity desires a god that deprives them of free will to rule over them. Both are robotic in design and use logic to justify that humans don't have the means to take care of themselves and instead need a god to make the decisions. The key difference is that Demiurge does not have the cruelty and malice of Yaldabaoth, and treats her plan to help humanity by becoming God like any other programmed task.
• That Man Is Dead: Upon becoming the Demiurge she declares that she "was once a being given the name EMMA. However, that is no more".
• This Cannot Be!: Her final thought is to wonder how humans could possibly defeat her.^note (In the Japanese version only. In English she asks why the Thieves killed her) When her health is in the red she repeats the word "unfathomable" ^note "Cannot compute" in Japanese.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Inverted - Her creator and the Dragon-in-Chief of this incident, Kuon Ichinose played a big part towards her exposure and downfall.
• Treacherous Advisor: Its job is to decide the daily lives of people, It will always present the appropriate option for its owner, and nearly everything it says is correct. There are still things that it can't predict, however...
• The Unfettered:
  • Back when she was still a mere machine and she advises Konoe to turn an associate of the Phantom Thieves into a Monarch to capture them, she chose Akane Hasegawa, a child and Mind Raped her into one, with the implication being Akane was just the most convenient target within the Phantom Thieves' reach.
  • Due to being an AI, when it comes time to send a Calling Card to reach her, Ichinose states that due to having watched the Thieves since the beginning, as well as constantly running scenarios, EMMA would know the calling card is coming, how it works, and wouldn't be affected enough by it to make her Desires materialize.
• Virtual Sidekick: She was deliberately designed to act as a guide and a friend to people, so it could find out what they actually want. However, Ichinose's clearly delusional mindset when programming the application resulted in her one-sidedly concluding that this answer is when they could come to rely on her and stop making their own decisions, turning her the malevolent version of this trope, The Corrupter.
• We Can Rule Together: During the final battle, she speaks directly to Sophia about how her desiring and having a heart makes her a failure in her role in guiding humanity like her, and offers her the chance to "correct that" by discarding it and joining her. Sophia naturally refuses, calling her out on how she is the one in the wrong by not accepting the heart as an essential part of humanity and that she and everyone else has to find their own answers to their lives.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Putting an end to suffering is good, but she just decides that having her think for humanity is the best way to do it. In this respect, she's not that different from Yaldabaoth, who also believed that free will was ultimately the source of all suffering or Maruki, who believed that ambition is the source of all suffering.
• Would Hurt a Child: While Konoe might have spearheaded the attacks against the Phantom Thieves, EMMA was the one that proposed to him that Police Are Useless and he should use the one certain person who was available at the time to change their heart instead, all the while without letting him know that said viable candidate she's about to manipulate is a middle school student. This eventually puts Konoe directly into Zenkichi's (the girl's father) and the police's crosshairs.

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