Characters / Persona 5: Takuto Maruki

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

For the tropes related to before the reveal and his Social Link click here.

All spoilers are unmarked. Read at your own risk.

Takuto Maruki

"No matter what happens to me in the end, I will fix this torturous world! That... is my own rebellion."

^{His Battle Form}

The Sorrowful Dreamer

"Think about it: you both have dreams, no? I have the power to make them come true. My reality can become just the way you like."

Sin: Tristitia (Sorrow)
Arcana: 1. Le Consultant (Councillor)
Persona: Azathoth, Adam Kadmon
Weapons: Holy Staff
Voiced by: Satoshi Hino (JP), Billy Kametz (EN)

The creator of the "dream world" the Phantom Thieves suddenly find themselves in during winter term. After his girlfriend Rumi fell into catatonia following a break-in that resulted in the deaths of her parents, Maruki awakened to a Persona with the power to alter cognition, which he used to save Rumi by rewriting her memories. It worked, but at the cost of her forgetting their relationship. While devastated, this only emboldened Maruki's desire to better understand the cognitive world, and he later opened a clinic where he subconsciously used his powers to help alleviate Sumire Yoshizawa from her suffering, who he brainwashed into believing was her recently deceased sister Kasumi.

During the Day of Reckoning, Yaldabaoth's merging of Mementos with reality allows Maruki to fully awaken his Persona - as he had never received the MetaNav, he'd never entered the Metaverse and only partially awakened. Manifesting his Persona in full gives him the power to make his deluded belief, that he must "save" all of humanity from suffering of any kind, come to fruition. By distorting the cognition of the masses, Mementos itself, Maruki gains the ability to warp reality. Immediately, Maruki takes advantage of his new abilities and his knowledge of the Phantom Thieves' personal wishes (gained through their counselling sessions) to create a new, idealized reality in which all of their dreams can come true. However, Joker isn't taken in by this reality, allowing him to free the other Thieves from the mirage the following week; thus, the Phantom Thieves, joined by an inexplicably-still-alive Akechi and a now-herself Sumire, aim to stop him and dismantle the Lotus-Eater Machine he has turned the world into.

Part research facility and part cult complex, his Palace is a massive, towering laboratory made out of glass and gold, filled with cognitive patients in white who are slowly being brainwashed into believing they're experiencing true happiness, before experiencing true bliss in a model of the biblical Garden of Eden. It first appears on top of the Odaiba construction site at the start of October, and is based on the real laboratory Maruki had planned to open before his funds were embargoed and his research stolen by Shido. His treasure is a golden torch with chains on it, and its true form is the newsletter about the murder of Rumi's family.

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A-D

• Absurdly Long Stairway: One precedes his boss room and encircles the Tree of Knowledge in Psientific Model Eden. That's also the Point of No Return where an invisible roadblock prevents you from going down and you have to wager his boss encounter.
• Affably Evil: He is by no means evil, but even as the Phantom Thieves oppose him he doesn’t hold anything against them and repeatedly tries to get them to accept his new reality. This does not mean he will give up on his plans until absolutely forced too and is ultimately willing (if reluctant) to kill the Phantom Thieves to stop them from stealing his treasure.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: As a part of his Reverse Councillor Tarot motif, he's shown to constantly try and "reach an understanding" and keeps asking you not to destroy his dream world for the sake of everyone's happiness, to the point he's begging during the first phase of his fight not to do it. He does it once more when Joker saves him from his suicide, begging him to let him go.
• Alas, Poor Villain: The Phantom Thieves bring Maruki's dream world crashing down despite his best efforts. Their victory is not celebrated in a satisfactory way unlike with almost every other target, and Maruki attempts suicide once he is purged of his regrets.
• The Aloner: Maruki intends to become this as part of his plan, and succeeds in the "Stay" Ending. When he puts everyone inside his Lotus-Eater Machine, he loses all direct bonds with everyone else and only has the company of his Persona and the Shadows of his Palace. He only makes small appearances in the world and almost all of the people who used to know him don't anymore.
• Ambition Is Evil: Whereas Yaldabaoth believed that free will is the source of all suffering, Maruki believes that all desire—ambitions, yearnings, wants, wishes—is the source of all suffering. To solve this, he creates a world where everyone's desires are achieved, no questions asked and no strings attached. Unfortunately, humanity has absolutely nothing to strive for in this kind of world, effectively bringing oblivious stagnation to everyone if Maruki consolidates himself as Yaldabaoth's successor as the God of Control.
• Anti-Villain: The biggest example in the franchise. Maruki is one of the only major antagonists in the series that can possibly be interpreted as a Hero Antagonist.
  • Maruki isn't a part of the Antisocial Force, someone with a grudge against the heroes, or even evil at all. His grand scheme is to ultimately save everyone by trapping them in the dream world for a sort of eternal peace. And while he resents the fact that the Phantom Thieves opt for the painful reality instead, he doesn't necessarily hate them for it.
  • He shows a great deal of concern with saving lives and making sure the Thieves are okay even as they rail against his illusion (despite hurting Sumire multiple times in his twisted efforts to help), and doesn't betray any kind of hypocrisy as his plan falls apart. In fact, most of his mannerisms in the third semester are fueled by losing his fiancée to his Persona and his research to Shido before.
  • He originally used his Persona for him to help people cope with extreme mental conditions. Even his grand scheme was initially nothing other than validating his own brand of cognitive psience so he can use it to save lives and cure mental illnesses, only becoming a Lotus-Eater Machine plot when his Persona manifested as a result of Yaldabaoth's merging of the Metaverse.
  • The lyrics of his Battle Theme Music were written with the intent of making players question if stopping him is the right thing to do, even if it's the conclusion the Phantom Thieves ultimately decide on.
• Arc Symbol: A bizarre sun shape is frequently seen throughout his Palace, from appearing on the lenses of the building's security cameras, inside the apples in the Garden of Eden, and even being incorporated into Adam Kadmon’s design.
• Arc Villain: Of the Third Semester arc. He's the one who trapped the Phantom Thieves in a world of their hearts' desires, and a major reason why Kasumi/Sumire is the way she is.
• Badass Boast: Lets out two just before the phases of his fight.
  Azathoth phase: I regret not pointing this out to you... You shouldn't mistake our powers as being equal.
  Adam Kadmon phase: If it is for everyone's happiness, I don't care what happens to me! Don't resist... Accept it. With my power- No... with mine and Adam Kadmon's together, our reality is nigh!
• The Bad Guy Wins: Much like Yaldabaoth, the player can side with him and get a new ending where Maruki's dream world continues unopposed and Maruki himself ascends and becomes a god. The biggest difference is the dream ending being portrayed positively with everyone happy, compared to the sinister fall of Joker and the Phantom Thieves into Yaldabaoth's allies. If you miss the deadline and don't even complete the Palace, Maruki still wins, but decides to make Joker sleep forever as to not worry about anything, concluding that the very act of making a decision was causing him too much suffering.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Much like the Phantom Thieves, he utilizes dubious methods to make the world a better place, except said power is inherent to him and it only gets elevated once he unknowingly takes the reins of Mementos. Even after his ascension to godlike status, he doesn't stop being a Nice Guy who's harmfully misguided at worst in his attempt to take away people's pain.
• Barrier Change Boss: In the second Azathoth phase, the tendrils will have their elemental affinities randomized each time Maruki regenerates them. Thankfully the Analysis screen and Shadow Calculus will show their current weaknesses.
• Beard of Evil: Inverted. As a normal person, Maruki has some light stubble on his chin. As the master of the final Palace, he is clean shaven. Of course, he isn't actually evil.
• Beneath Suspicion: Akechi mentions that he'd investigated the non-party Confidants before, including Maruki, but never suspected that he had such control over the Metaverse on a massive scale.
• Benevolent Genie: The manner in which Maruki grants the Thieves' wishes in the Third Semester is done in a way to make them the most happy, with no twisting of the words. However, with Sumire, he was more of a Literal Genie by making her into Kasumi (or rather what she thought Kasumi was like) instead of just taking Kasumi's positive traits.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Maruki is arguably the nicest adult apart from Sojiro, Yoshida, and a post-Heel–Face Turn Sae that the Phantom Thieves have met and truly does mean well despite his intentions. He's also bar none one of the strongest opponents that they've faced if his status as a Reality Warper and the True Final Boss is any indication.
• Big Bad: For the Third Semester Arc in Royal. Maruki is the creator of the idealized reality that the Thieves find themselves in. He becomes the new God of Control, taking the title from the previous Big Bad, Yaldabaoth.
• Big Bad Friend: Subverted. When he meets Joker, Sumire, and Akechi for the first time in his Palace he looks like he is going to reveal he was working against them the whole time when his Dark Secret about Sumire comes to light. While infiltrating his Palace, the Thieves find out it was actually Big Bad Slippage.
• Big Bad Slippage: Offscreen. While his Palace was in place since at least early October, he's not malevolent at all, being merely driven by his overzealous desire to save people from their pain no matter what it takes. However, his friendship with Joker gives him the tools he needs to create a Lotus-Eater Machine for everyone and the final battle with Yaldabaoth awakens his Persona, turning him into the True Final Boss of the game.
• Bizarrchitecture: His Palace notably appears more abstract than most, being a crystal globe that is much larger in the inside and surrounded by giant floating telescopes and glass staircases that defy physics, likely to match his Lovecraftian aesthetics.
• Bling of War: He's clad entirely in gold armor, along with a white cape that is kept in place with a golden medal that has the Metaverse app insignia on it when he faces the Thieves in the finale.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Thieves' are flabbergasted by the "correct" answers to the Palace's thought experiment questions. Maruki would generally advise someone to avoid risking getting hurt rather than follow their hearts.
  • In question 1, to save a friend that was being kidnapped, Maruki would get help first, rather than go after them by himself and risk becoming another victim. ^note This does not apply to him, since he's more than willing to save people close to him himself—best demonstrated with Rumi
  • In question 2, if one was failing to make their dream come true, Maruki would want them to give up on their current dream and find a new, easier ambition. The "wrong" choices are to stay determined no matter what, or to do something underhanded to succeed.^note Quite ironically and hypocritically however, Maruki himself will stay determined to actualizing the end of all suffering no matter what
  • Subverted in question 3, where given that someone had the power to steal hearts with no risk, the correct answer is to steal hearts to fix society, the same thing the Phantom Thieves would do. The wrong options are monetary gain, healing your own heart^note In the original Japanese context this means changing your own heart to correct your flaws, as opposed to changing the hearts of others, forcing someone to fall in love with you, or simply doing nothing because you're implicitly afraid of upsetting the status quo—Maruki would advise one to avoid risks, but if there are no risks, he would prefer changing things for the better.
• Breaking Old Trends: Maruki is the first Final Boss in the main Persona series that is a human with a Persona instead of a monstrous or god-like being. Persona-users are usually the Climax Boss in the games, but have never been the Final Boss outside of spinoffs ^note Sho Minazuki technically predates Maruki by being the Final Boss of the True Ending of Persona 4: Arena Ultimax.
• Call-Back: Some element's of Maruki and his arc harken back to older Persona games.
  • His plan is basically to do exactly what Philemon did to undo Nyarlathotep's victory in Persona 2: Innocent Sin by creating a new reality, only for his plan to similarly run into issues when Joker remembers the original world like Tatsuya did in Eternal Punishment. The main difference is that the new reality in Eternal Punishment was not an idealized Lotus-Eater Machine, but simply a world where Nyartlathotep didn't win. As a result, the main characters of Eternal Punishment fight to preserve their reality, rather than undo it.
  • The scene where Joker, Akechi, and Sumire find out Maruki is the ruler of the Palace is framed quite similarly to the scene in Persona 3 where Shuji Ikutsuki confronts SEES in front of Tartarus, revealing himself as the mastermind of the plot, and promising them something akin to salvation if they stick with him just a while longer. When they refuse, he sics Aigis on them. Maruki does something similar (though far more sane and reasonable) by promising the value of his dream world and his genuine intentions, though he does also sic his Hastur on Joker and Akechi to try to kick them out of his Palace for a week. In a separate event where Maruki is present, Sumire attacks Joker in a similar manner to Aigis attacking the rest of SEES, though unlike Aigis in 3, both the Hastur and Sumire in Royal are boss battles and not cutscene only.
• Call-Forward: The mechanics of his Palace, his Reality Warping powers to grant his clients happiness in illusionary overlays and his motive of granting humanity an eternal golden age are later largely replicated in Strikers by the EMMA application and the Jails it manifests. When the ascended form of EMMA begins to step into action on her own, her Jail also takes on similar Eden/Sephirot motifs.
• The Chosen One: In a horribly Deconstructed fashion. The awakening of his Persona on the Day of Reckoning gave him the awareness of what he believes must be done in order to realize his goals, and the Phantom Thieves' subconscious yearning for their old lives before facing their trauma led to them unwittingly passing on the reins of the Mementos to him, making him the successor to the God of Control. These amplified his powers along with his budding messiah complex.
  Maruki: I've been chosen by the world itself... Granting this wish is my responsibility!
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: For all his posturing about wanting to make everyone else happy through his Lotus-Eater Machine, it's pretty obvious that his own happiness is far beyond his reach. And despite encouraging others to confide in him if they ever needed help, he's continued to soldier on alone no matter what it took to accomplish his goals. In the ending where you accept his reality, no one even remembers him anymore. His only appearance has him rendered a seemingly nameless stranger who doesn't even get a character portrait.
• Combat Breakdown: Thanks to his Palace breaking down along with the entire Metaverse, neither him or Joker is capable of using their Personas, thus forcing Joker to engage Maruki in a fist fight that ends in Joker's victory.
• Combat Tentacles: His primary weapons are tentacles, as expected of his Lovecraftian Persona. He mainly uses them to defend himself, grab onto objects and cast his abilities, while only one of his skills uses them to attack.
• Conflict Killer: Stopping Maruki in the Third Semester is the top priority, which means Akechi is willing to formally declare a truce with the other Phantom Thieves, despite their past grievances. The team accept him back because they need all the help they can get.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • Unlike previous human antagonists, who are already conspiring against the heroes when you meet them and only care about benefiting themselves, Maruki undergoes offscreen Big Bad Slippage as the game progresses and seeks to create a utopia with his powers for everyone to enjoy.
  • Like Shido and Akechi before him, he's one to Tohru Adachi:
    • Adachi only pretends to be a Nice Guy before his true colors are revealed. Maruki is a genuine Nice Guy and remains one even after becoming an antagonist.
    • Adachi throws the girls he likes but can't have into the Midnight Channel to die. Maruki erased his girlfriend's memories of him to save her life, and accepts the fact that he can't be with her anymore.
    • Adachi traps random people in a dangerous other reality purely for his own amusement. Maruki traps the Phantom Thieves in a reality based on their heart's desire because he genuinely wants them to be happy.
    • Adachi is a Disc-One Final Boss. Maruki is the True Final Boss.
    • Adachi goes to jail after his defeat, while Maruki remains a free man after his defeat.
  • He's also one to Taro Namatame, also from Persona 4
    • Both have a Start of Darkness involving a tragedy with the woman they love.
    • Both develop supernatural powers as a result of this. However, while Namatame never developed a persona or any other abilities besides throwing people into the TV world, Maruki became one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) persona users ever seen in the series.
    • Both desire to "save" people by placing them into an alternate reality. However, while the world Namatame put people was not in fact safe for them, Maruki's was (physically at least).
    • Save for a few Early Bird Cameos that you probably won't notice on a first playthrough, Namatame isn't seen until late in the story. Maruki is present throughout the game as a confidant for the protagonists.
    • Both have a Mental World that takes the form of a Heavenly Paradise with garden motifs.
    • Namatame is the first in a series of Disc One Final Bosses that make up Persona 4's endgame, whereas Maruki is in fact the True Final Boss of Persona 5 Royal.
  • He's also one to Nyx Avatar/Ryoji from Persona 3:
    • Both of them are Anti-Villains who are not evil in any sort and are actually close friends to the protagonist before becoming antagonists later on. However, Ryoji is naturally a harbinger of death who doesn't even want to fulfil his role, and offers the protagonist the chance to live in blissful ignorance because he genuinely believes that preventing the Fall is impossible. Maruki, as an unintended consequence of Yaldabaoth's plan, starts creating his Lotus-Eater Machine after years of disillusionment that's been fueled by the trauma his girlfriend faced, and the bleak realization that people can't always overcome the injustice and adversities thrust upon them.
    • Both of them carry out their plans with a swift, end-it-all method that nobody can see coming when it comes. While Nyx Avatar kills everything without a trace of life, Maruki lets life remain without being harmed, but takes out all of their growth with incomplete perfection. If the protagonist accepts their "salvation", the ending is also a still frame picture of the cast enjoying life, before Nyx's aftermath is presented by fading into black while Maruki's is represented by the picture burning.
    • An Unwitting Instigator of Doom summons them into action. While Nyx is a Shadow or God accidentally brought to life by the hands of man before the events of the game, Maruki is a Persona user who was accidentally awakened through Yaldabaoth’s machination, a false god during the climax of the game.
  • He's also one to Takahisa Kandori from Persona. While both of them have aspirations of godhood for the world, Kandori's is openly malevolent, while Maruki's is well-intentioned.
    • Kandori eventually falls into despair at getting everything he wanted because there's no more challenge in the world with him standing at the top, while Maruki desires to eliminate all forms of challenge and hardship to get what he wants, satisfied with his actions.
    • Both of them end up fusing with their Persona during their climactic battles. However, Kandori was forced against his will to fuse with his Persona Nyarlathotep when it went wild, resulting in a parasitic combination that ultimately lead to his death. Maruki on the other hand willingly fuses with Adam Kadmon, in the form of a symbiotic relation, and he ends up surviving the battle. Furthermore, both of their Personas, Nyarlathotep and Azathoth, are of Lovecraftian lore.
  • And last but not least, he is one to Masayoshi Shido himself. With Royal being an Updated Re-release of the original game, there were several years of development between the two games and Maruki seems to be designed to contrast Shido.
    • In terms of their similarities, both are bespectacled Palace Rulers with knowledge of Cognitive Psience, awareness of the existence of their Palace, manipulated control over a party member (Akechi for Shido, Sumire for Maruki), and their Palaces are based on biblical locations (Noah’s Ark for Shido and the Garden of Eden for Maruki). In battle they do not undergo any One-Winged Angel transformations, are fought in five phases, have signature moves that have “Tyrant” in the name ^note Tyrant Stance and Tyrant Chaos for Maruki; Tyrant's Fist, Judgement, Glare, Purge, and Wave for Shido, and they have extreme Determinator tendencies to the point of being unwilling to give up until the very end. These are ultimately more superficial similarities and in key character traits, they cannot be more different.
    • Shido is a Hate Sink, completely devoid of any redeeming qualities, and defined entirely by his cruelty and selfishness; Maruki is an Anti-Villain who is defined by his kindness and selfless wish to put all of humanity into a Lotus-Eater Machine.
    • Shido does not know any of the Thieves even down to what they look like, while Maruki is their genuine friend, provides them counseling and knows about all of their thoughts and insecurities.
    • Shido is the head of The Conspiracy, a powerful politician who has control of many people directly or indirectly and has a dragon in Akechi; Maruki is one man of modest social background, being just a researcher and high school counselor, and acts without accomplices (unless you count the Thieves themselves), not that he would need any since he is effectively a god once he's an antagonist.
    • Shido was the Unwitting Pawn of a godlike being and fought entirely through his Shadow, while Maruki has a godlike being as his Persona, has full control of it, and is fought as a Persona-user (with a cut-in and everything).
    • While both have deep Determinator tendencies, for Shido (especially his Shadow), it is treated as Villainous Valour and is probably his most admirable trait, while for Maruki it is treated as his worst trait and Fatal Flaw.
    • Shido is remembered as a corrupt and murderous psychopath by the public and is prosecuted for his crimes, while Maruki’s entire stint as antagonist of the Third Semester is forgotten by the public following his defeat and he is Easily Forgiven by the Thieves after everything.
    • Shido and Maruki essentially have the opposite sins. Pride is an extreme form of self-love while Sorrow is an extreme form of self-hatred. Both of these sins also effectively cause them both to attempt suicide when their plans fail, for completely different reasons.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He presents himself to the world as a bumbling therapist, but he managed to form a Persona completely on his own outside the Metaverse, and he's apparently unique in that he was able to freely use said Persona outside the Metaverse as well, something that previously has only been seen through the use of Evokers in 3. He only gets more powerful after accidentally fusing with Mementos, easily becoming the single most powerful Persona user in the franchise. He even self-actualizes and evolves his Persona to a stronger form without any outside help, something nobody else has been capable of doing. It takes everything the Phantom Thieves have to defeat him.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Most of the shadows in his Palace look evil (like Macabre, Belial, and Loa) and are themed around darkness in contrast to the heavenly aesthetic. This is unlike Yaldabaoth, who is the opposite trope and has angelic themed shadows like Dominion and Throne in the hell-like Qliphoth World.
• Dark Messiah: Thanks to accidentally becoming the new master of Mementos, he becomes the successor to Yaldabaoth, and wishes to give everyone a Happily Ever After, even if it'll cause Modern Stasis. He even claims that he's been chosen by the world itself to grant that wish.
• Dark Reprise: His Leitmotif as a Confidant "Ideal and the Real" is absent on his return in the Third Semester since he is now an antagonist. If the player chooses the "Stay" ending where he grants everyone's wishes, a much grander and emotional version of it returns and plays during the credits. Very unusually for this trope, the ending version of "Ideal and the Real" can also be considered a Triumphant Reprise if the player does not consider Maruki to be a villain, since the song sounds ambiguous enough to be interpreted both ways.
• Death of Personality: Maruki has no qualms about rewriting minds if he believes someone would be happier that way. He essentially kills every Phantom Thief member sans Joker this way if Joker accepts his deal; the regulars lose their personalities and inner strengths entirely, Sumire permanently transforms into her sister Kasumi (in effect erasing Sumire from existence altogether) and Akechi (who never consented to Maruki's reality to begin with) is reduced to what amounts to an empty, friendly puppet with none of his original personality left. He unintentionally did this for the first time to his girlfriend Rumi, and was devastated upon learning that she no longer remembers him and their relationship, but made peace with it by justifying that she's happier that way and even put a distance between them as to not reawaken her trauma.
• Deity of Human Origin: He's essentially become the new God of Control, as his Palace and Persona took control of Mementos, effectively turning him into a Reality Warper within his Lotus-Eater Machine, able to warp the cognition of the masses and of reality itself. He's not a true god yet, but accepting his deal or missing the deadline allows him to truly ascend and ensnare humanity in his dream world permanently with the Metaverse and reality remerging and becoming one.
• Despair Event Horizon: Maruki's sin and motif is sorrow or despair (Tristitia), and is often connected to the sin of suicide. The loss of his girlfriend to catatonic depression under very unfortunate circumstances has resulted in him awakening to Adam Kadmon's powers, and Shido's sabotage of his research lab fundings only broke him further. As a result, he rewrites history so the Phantom Thieves' wishes came true and their cruel truths either never happened (as seen in Ryuji, Futaba and the like) or are replaced with the cognitive overlays they desire (as seen in Sumire or Morgana). In other words, Maruki has devolved into a compassionate nihilist of the most twisted form, and amounts to an inversion of the Nyx Avatar/Ryoji from Persona 3. His final defeat also shows signs of flat out Driven to Suicide as he begs Joker to let him fall to his death to end it all after losing to the Phantom Thieves.
• Determinator: One of the biggest in the entire franchise. He so adamantly believes in his cause and is so unwilling to accept a loss to the Phantom Thieves that he stops the collapse of his Palace twice on sheer willpower alone, prompting additional boss phases. He even steals back his own Treasure to restore his Persona to its true form.
• Detrimental Determination: Maruki's unwillingness to give up on his goal is shown to be the main reason for his antagonism:
  • His devotion to his dream of changing reality to make people happy became his reason for living, since he was content to die if it failed. Even if it succeeds, like in the Stay Ending, he would have subjected himself to an eternity of being alone and forgotten. He tells himself it's for Rumi, but all this determination does is inhibit his ability to move past her.
  • Throughout the arc, he constantly treats the Phantom Thieves as children that don't know any better, need more time to think about it, and will come to his way of thinking. Maruki has many opportunities to back down against the Phantom Thieves when they defeat him, but he keeps resisting. This determination culminates in him attempting to murder the very youths he was trying to save with his dream world. It's not until the entire reality is collapsing and Joker stops him from trying to kill himself that he finally backs down.
  • After he is defeated, he does let go of it and is shown living a more normal life as a taxi driver in the epilogue, though talking to Shibusawa will reveal he needed some time and self reflecting to get there.
• Deus ex Machina: Subverted, although he himself believes that he's playing this straight. Maruki seeks to erase the tragedies that negatively impacted people, effectively rewriting an entire person’s history. While reviving someone's most beloved acquaintances to their most pristine state or restoring lost fame or overwriting somebody with a cognitive overlay that they yearned for might seem noble, it also erases the lessons and growth a person gained from accepting the tragedies. This process can also damage the connections someone made with others while experiencing the tragedy, as nobody among the first seven Phantom Thieves can actually remember why they became intimate friends with Joker because their traumas led them to bond with him in the first place. What Maruki is doing is actually disrupting natural order and human progress, eventually resulting in total Modern Stasis with everyone in this world being metaphorically murdered.
• Dirty Coward: Not him, but he thinks you should take the easy way out of things. For example, if a friend were in trouble, he believes you should rather call for help rather than stepping in yourself for your own personal safety. Ironically, since his heart is so broken that he doesn't see any easier way for himself to go on, he will fight to the end for his ideal reality on his own no matter what.
• The Dog Bites Back: When he creates his perfect world, he specifically excludes Shido, after Shido cut his funding and stole his life's work, leaving him discredited and isolated.
• Dramatic Irony: Joker has the option to accept Maruki's deal on January 9th. This is after Joker was unable to get his friends to leave behind their idealized reality. Joker was unaware that his friends had met to reject the false reality that morning after he and Akechi had taken off for Maruki's Palace. The player is aware that they were on their way to him at that time. This adds a little extra sting if Joker chooses to accept the deal with the player knowing all his friends had already rejected it, but Joker hadn't yet.
• Driven to Suicide: After losing to Joker in a fist fight above his crumbling Palace, he lets himself fall to his death due to just being done with everything. He even begs Joker, who is trying to pull him back up, to let his hand go.
  Maruki: Come on... I said I'm done. Please... let go of my hand.
• Drowning My Sorrows: He's shown to be doing this in a flashback over his research being mysteriously halted. He already chugged down multiple bottles by the time his friend Shibusawa left the dining table. This moment is also when he visibly started developing fanatical ideas of saving all people from their pain.
• Dueling Messiahs: A fact he's actually afraid of, and why he spent so much time trying to get Joker to accept the dream world he created for everyone. He never wanted to fight the Thieves—they were among his first patients and the people he cares about so very much among those he was trying to save. This is especially the case with Joker. However, deep down he knew that he would be forced to face them to see whether Joker's "face the true world, fraught with pain and sorrow" compared to his "take solace in a perfect yet illusory world" would be the "true" reality.

E-M

• Easily Forgiven: Perhaps in due part to his Anti-Villain nature and not intending to actually endanger anyone, Maruki ultimately does not face any real repercussions for his actions in the True Ending besides changing his job from a school guidance councillor to a taxi driver, though it's debatable if any of his actions even really occurred at that point given the dream world's "reset" of most people's memories involved.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Like all Persona users, Maruki falls under this though he is perhaps a stronger example than anyone else. He already possessed a knowledge or at least desire in cognitive psience when he awoke to the power of his Persona. Given how Persona awakenings work, it's likely Azathoth/Adam Kadmon being so strong was in part due to Maruki being an adult who knows his strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, given how Personas in Persona 5 function in the cognitive world, it's likely his knowledge of cognitive psience was why his Persona could override cognition in how he wanted. Notably, he gains his Persona's powers by himself in the real world. However, given how he actually awoke his Persona and how it went awry, Power Born of Madness may apply here too.
• Everyone Has Standards: Originally he only ever used his powers subconsciously based on what appears to be trigger-based, such as someone losing their beloved relatives to a traumatic incident, leaving them with crippling depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Both Rumi and Sumire were such cases. Sumire even admits near the end of her Confidant she would have likely killed herself for wanting to turn into Kasumi due to her own breakdown, and what Maruki did for her allowed her to live long enough for the Phantom Thieves to help her the rest of the way. When he met the seven human Phantom Thieves, he sympathized with their plights but did not interfere with their cognitions because they are coping well enough with their troubles and he respected their decisions to move forward and grow beyond their pain. But when Yaldabaoth's master plan unintentionally causes Azathoth to awaken, Maruki's standards go out of the window and he dives into extremism as a result.
• Evil Costume Switch: After his Face–Heel Turn, he trades in his casual labcoat, trousers and flip-flops for a stern-looking white suit, slicks back his hair, and shaves. Though his actual battle outfit looks more heroic in comparison, appearing holier and priest-like.
• Evil Power Vacuum: After Yaldabaoth's defeat, he installs himself as the new ruler of Mementos in order to create his dream reality.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: For most of the game, his messy hair provided the similar sort of symbolism as Joker's, a reflection of Maruki's playfulness, healthy positivity and desire for good. Seeing him in the Metaverse of the third arc, it's slicked back to give him a professional and no-nonsense sort of appearance, and he has shaved his face. While part of it is based on his desire for what would've been his institution to help people, it also shows his seriousness and how he's in charge now, his goal being making every person alive happy, and he's not above coercion, manipulation, and sometimes blatant Mind Rape to force the issue.
• Face–Heel Turn: Maruki is unambiguously an ally to Joker and the Thieves during his time at Shujin, but undergoes Big Bad Slippage that is completed on the Day of Reckoning and becomes the Anti-Villain antagonist of the Third Semester. At the end of the arc, he does not stay a heel.
• Fair-Play Villain: Justified given his desire for creating a world of happiness and the Thieves were some of the first he counseled, so he cares about their well-being.
  • Lavenza notes that as a Reality Warper, he could easily erase the Thieves from existence like Yaldabaoth tried to do. Instead, he tries to talk the Thieves into accepting his way of thinking without fighting. He even allows them to use the Meta-Nav and their Personas, knowing they would likely try to infiltrate his Palace.
  • After defeating Cendrillon and the team being reassembled, Akechi tries to challenge Maruki to a final battle right then. Maruki says he would be willing, but would prefer not to do it when they are exhausted and while Sumire had collapsed. Akechi quickly backs off.
  • On the Day of Fates, Maruki makes no effort to put any surprise obstacles in Psientific Model Eden, and even summons a magical Absurdly Long Stairway to help the Thieves reach where he is.
• Fatal Flaw: Stubbornness. Maruki is completely set on his goal of forcing happiness on everyone. None of his attempts to negotiate with the Phantom Thieves have him proposing any less radical solutions or compromises. His idea of coming to an understanding is them accepting his world. After losing to the Thieves and being saved from suicide by Joker, he finally moves on in the Return Ending.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • He inflicts this upon Joker if he misses the Palace deadline, placing him in a cycle of eternal sleep and lethargy, reasoning that his indecisiveness is causing him too much suffering.
  • This is also what tragically befalls Maruki if his plans succeed. Not only does it not relieve him of his grief, but he has also essentially deprived himself of human connections and lost all his friends to become a nameless god overseeing the happiness of everyone but himself.
• Fighting Your Friend: Even after his Big Bad Slippage, he's still a very pleasant individual who Joker and co. (except Akechi) see as a friend, and all parties involved are reluctant to engage in a violent clash of ideals.
• Final-Exam Boss: His boss fight requires a full elemental distribution and effective use of Baton Pass to break through his defenses. If you don't have it, Azathoth will only take Scratch Damage and Maruki will revive the tendrils every turn. It also requires a lot of knowledge on the game's mechanics such as types of abilities, technical damage, and Status Effects.
• Fisticuffs Boss: The last conflict in Royal is an ordinary fist fight between Joker and Maruki.
• Five Stages of Grief: Fitting for the Palace Ruler of Sorrow, all of Maruki's actions before the game are born from his inability to process the tragedy that took Rumi away from him. His ambition and endless drive to complete his research stem from Denial. After finally finishing said research, he finds the Anger to confront his old Professor about how Shido torpedoed his research. The entire Third Semester, including the final battle, is him Bargaining with the Phantom Thieves and Joker especially to allow for a world where their pain, and his, are completely erased. When the battle finally reaches its terminus, his Depression causes him to attack the Phantom Thieves as they're escaping to force Joker to fight him so he can die without regrets. It's only at the end of the game, after he's had his change of heart that he finds Acceptance.
• For Happiness: The main reason he gives for just about everything he does. No matter how twisted his methods are, he firmly believes what he's doing is worth it if it makes people's lives even a little better.
• Foreshadowing: There are just about a few hints where he's about to become the Arc Villain of the third term. Be noted that most of these do not show until you reach the later stages of his confidant, since maxing his confidant is required to trigger it.
  • His Leitmotif is called "Ideal and the Real". This should be self explanatory that he's the instigator of the idealized dream world, though the player can only discover the song name in-game from the Thieves Den.
  • He always seems to be covering for Kasumi, as shown when he tries to not let her get her scholarship revoked due to the Vice Principal seeing Kasumi as not living up to her expectations as an honor student (since she is in fact Sumire seeing herself as Kasumi). It shows that he's trying to keep the spell he casts on Sumire intact as long as he can.
  • During his Rank 6 hangout in LeBlanc, he asks Joker a way to change the cognition of billions so they can all be freed from suffering. Joker hints about Mementos to him and he seems to be so happy that he exhausts himself rushing back to home.
  • In his Confidant his friend Shibusawa calls him "the most stubborn man in the world" for trying to finish his paper from college. As the Third Semester progresses, it becomes clear that it is his Fatal Flaw.
  • His Confidant is one of the few that doesn't require you to take out a Mementos target/personal villain. That's because Maruki himself becomes the target by the mid-winter term, and he's taken control of the entirety of Mementos.
  • During the speech that he does before he leaves Shujin, he tells his students to stay strong, don't obsess about any negativity and spend their days in happiness. In the Japanese version, he even uses a type of wording straight out from Enlil from Persona Q2.
  • During his Rank 10 Confidant hangout, which occurs on the same day where he holds the parting speech, his final dialogue asks if Joker is going to change his heart if he doesn't believe what he says, and he proceeds to say that he will make society a better place using methods different from the Phantom Thieves with his research. After the Confidant maxes out, he even says that this will not be the last time they meet, and he even knew that Joker might go for him for meddling his affairs. Though he hadn't quite settled on his Lotus-Eater Machine plot just yet, he had likely begun developing the fanatical extremism that would push him to pursue the plan when his Persona finally manifested.
  • Despite you maxing his Confidant, after you defeat Yaldabaoth manually, you won't see him cheering for you unlike other maxed Confidants. ^note Kasumi aside because her Confidant isn't truly maxed, and Akechi for obvious reasons He's likely beginning to assert himself over Mementos, or just about to, when the Phantom Thieves unknowingly give him domain over it.
  • In the Dream Sequence that happens over December 31st, Joker wakes up in the nurse's office, where Maruki used to counsel people, and then hears the voices of his friends from times they went to his counseling ^note Though what's spoken varies from what was actually said in these scenes in the game, since those scenes are not voiced and may have been rewritten after the lines were originally recorded.
  • On the second visit to the mysterious Odaiba Palace on January 2nd, Joker can examine the bulletin board and see that it is an award for a paper about Cognitive Psience. With this context, it is easy to eliminate all suspects and deduce the Palace Ruler is Maruki.
  • A case of Chekhov's Classroom on June 8th:
    Maruki: Totalitarianism is a governmental structure that unites its people under a single ideology and authoritarian control of the masses. In theory it brings the people together under one ideal. That definitely comes with logistical benefits... but it also means forcing ideals on people. Assimilating the unwilling. And that's how wars get started. Where does totalitarianism take things a step further than authoritarianism?
    Player: (selects "Controlling public thought")
    Maruki: A totalitarian government tries to control the culture, morals, and even thoughts of its people.
  • Before you first visit the Odaiba Palace in October, Kasumi mentions Maruki offhand over the phone, as well as naming her location and the form the palace takes. This of course triggers the Meta-Nav, and attentive players may realise that Maruki's was the only name she said before entering the Palace.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: A high-school counselor who ends up becoming a near god-like entity and arguably the most powerful Persona user in the franchise. As a reminder, he's presented as a tougher challenge for the Phantom Thieves than the abusive God-Emperor of the universe.
• Fusion Dance: A twofold example. His Persona Azathoth fuses with his treasure, turning it into Adam Kadmon. Maruki then proceeds to fuse with Adam Kadmon partway into the battle, causing Adam to literally turn red and start spamming "Full Force".
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • The security meter icon when the team is yet to discover Maruki is the ruler of the Odaiba Palace is one of the most threatening and evil-looking in the game. After Maruki is revealed as the ruler of the Palace, and proves not to be the same as the vile Palace Rulers that the Thieves had defeated before, the icon changes to one of the least threatening in the game, where his smile looks, at most, a little smug, in contrast to the rest of the targets who all favor a Slasher Smile if they smile at all.
  • His skills are the least effective against Sumire, whose Ultimate Persona Ella nullifies Bless and resists Nuclear, which are elements of two of his dangerous spells, Nuclear Crush in Phase 1 and Eternal Radiance in Phase 2. This shows Sumire steadily rejecting and outgrowing him, his treatment, and his philosophy.
  • Likewise, Maruki's skills are extremely powerful against Akechi, the party member that dislikes him and is philosophically opposed to him the most. Akechi is also the only party member he never offered any counseling to. Akechi's weakness to Bless makes him extremely liable to being knocked down or killed by Eternal Radiance and is perhaps the worst party member you can bring to the fight, at least in the second phase.
  • In the "Stay" ending, if the player accepts Maruki's reality, he appears at the end wearing a hat to take the team's photo. No one (except Joker) recognizes him. He loses his Character Portrait and becomes a Nominal Importance character, only called "Man Wearing Hat" in the game's UI. By selecting this ending, Maruki is no longer the type of NPC that gets a portrait, not a friend nor an enemy; he just becomes nobody. Notably, the same thing happened to Rumi in Maruki's flashback, where she also loses her Character Portrait once Maruki said his girlfriend passed away.
• Garden of Eden: The biblical one. At the end of his Palace, a massive model garden where his "patients" are in nothing but their underwear, forming circles around the trees and drinking from chalices while wearing wreaths that cover their faces, a symbolic representation of the end result of the "salvation" his dream world will bring. It even includes his version of the infamous Forbidden Fruit, where the biggest tree he resides in is filled with apples that have strange "bite marks" that look like eyes, twitching and blinking as well.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: His ultimate goal is to subject the world to this.
  • The trope is visually represented by most of the faceless NPCs in Tokyo having a deep red smile. These smiling faceless NPCs also appear in his Palace at various points, though those are likely cognitions instead of real people.
  • He does it to all the Phantom Thieves if Joker accepts Maruki's deal, especially on February 2nd after they had decided to fight the dream world. This is especially prevalent with Akechi who acts more friendly like his Detective Prince mask than his bitter true self in the Stay Ending.
• Glamour Failure: His distorted form of reality makes people happy but the inconsistencies are often noticeable even to normal people, let alone the main characters. Even the transition screen dialogue has people wondering why they have certain clothes or asking each other why they're working at a job they quit a year ago.
• A God Am I: It's very subtle, but during his encounter before the final fight, he states that he sees the events that led to his ascension as "wholly inevitable". To be perfectly fair, he has managed to surpass the actual Gnostic gaoler-god Yaldabaoth by this point, giving him a better excuse than most for waxing a little religious. As Akechi points out, the manner in which the Shadows refer to Maruki very much implies this mentality.
  Akechi: The language of a Shadow is a hint into its Ruler's ideology... This one sounds rather cultish for example.
• Gold and White Are Divine: His cognitive outfit fits with the divine imagery of his Palace's upper levels (modelled as the Garden of Eden). He contrasts the Phantom Thieves' assortment of black and dark-colored outfits, in a subversion of Good Wears White and Evil Wears Black.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: His cognitive outfit is gold. Additionally, both forms of his Persona are gold in color.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: In a twisted sense of "good", he doesn't understand why Joker would prefer the painful reality over the perfect dream world he created for him and his friends, even when the rest of Tokyo is happy themselves. Even after explaining that they want to live in a world with all of the pain that comes with it, Maruki can't agree with them.
  Maruki: Suffering and pain bring nothing to people except their ruin! Why would you force yourself into that? Just... let me save you all, just this once!
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: When he appears as the dream's mastermind, his hair is slicked back. Downplayed in that he's an Anti-Villain and not strictly "evil", just overzealous and misguided.
• Good Is Not Nice: He never fights by himself except during the day he has to, instead he relies on warning shots for defense. Those warning shots, however, are respectively exposing Kasumi as Sumire so she falls into despair, then using said despair to take Sumire hostage, followed by her Persona Cendrillon attacking you as he drives it berserk with his powers.
• Good-Times Montage: How the credits to the "Stay" ending play out, with the Dark Reprise of Maruki's theme (as a Confidant) playing through it.
• Graceful Loser: Zig-Zagged. Maruki's boss fight is the most complex and multi-staged, fitting him as both the True Final Boss and someone completely incapable or unwilling to concede his dream. After completely losing to Joker in a fistfight at the end of his battle, he calmly states that he's over his obsession with his desire to rewrite reality, and lets the floor under him crumble apart. Fortunately, Joker saves him at the last moment, and they return to reality.
• Heal Thyself: In his Azathoth form, he can infinitely heal himself to full health using one of Azathoth's tentacles. Additionally, when on foot, he can order Adam Kadmon to leech health from the Phantom Thieves to heal him fully when his HP gets low once.
• Heartbroken Badass: Though he does a good job at hiding it, Maruki is heartbroken over accidentally erasing his then-girlfriend Rumi's memories of him. Making sure no one suffers like she did is his main motivation throughout the third semester.
• Heel–Face Turn: After his defeat, Maruki reforms and is last seen as a taxi driver helping Joker evade the government agents in the ending. The two depart on good terms, despite everything that happened between them.
• Hero Antagonist: Maruki is arguably this if the player does not interpret him as a villain.
  • Maruki lacks malicious intent and there is no hint he faces any sort of corrupt temptation in the "Stay" Ending (which is not considered a bad ending by the creators in Persona 5 Official Complete Guide), if Joker is to accept his deal.
  • In huge contrast to how Joker undergoes a Face–Heel Turn if he accepts Yaldabaoth's deal, using the name of the Phantom Thieves to strike fear into anyone who would oppose him, Maruki is content being an anonymous god who does not need to be thanked or worshipped for his work. Even if the Shadows in his Palace do that, he never is hinted to want to impose that outside his Palace and in the "Stay" ending, he even erased himself from the memory of everyone except Joker.
  • Maruki shows a huge amount of restraint in trying to get Joker and the Thieves on his side and only slips into his more morally questionable tactics the more they rebel against him. Despite this, he continues to beg them to stop fighting until the moment he summons Adam Kadmon.
  • Unlike previous Persona villains, who all had villainous goals to become a god, condemn humanity to destroy itself, kill everyone, turn everyone into shadows or to enslave everyone, Maruki has a goal that can only be considered heroic. He wants to create a utopia where all people are happy and there is no crime or violence. He only believes that the ends justify the means when it comes to what he would have to do to make it happen.
  • Because of all these factors, he is Easily Forgiven after he is defeated unlike the much eviler targets like Shido and Kamoshida.
• Heroic Fatigue: He alludes to it during his talk with Joker. He notes that in an ideal world, people would grow stronger from enduring and overcoming their problems. He follows it up with the grim but accurate observations at how the troubles of reality will often overwhelm people and their limitations. His conversation during Sumire's recovery and freedom from his spell sums it up here:
  Maruki: ... You know, I'd love for that to be the truth. But, people can't maintain their strength forever, Joker-kun.
• Hidden Depths: As it turns out, his interest in the mind is on the same level as Wakaba Isshiki, as he's also interested in the cognitive world, though his interest mainly lies in understanding the desires of others. He's actually much better at understanding the cognitive world than Wakaba was, on account of his Persona and his own ability to manipulate cognition to the point where he can make someone believe they're someone else.
• Hidden Villain: The first time you visit his Palace in early October, he and his distortion go unidentified by Joker, Morgana, and Kasumi, and he quickly fizzles off their radar in the face of the upcoming Wham Episode. It's only in the third semester where he becomes a significant threat and the Palace in Odaiba becomes visible in the real world. Your first order of business is finding out who he is and what he wants.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In a minor sense. In his second phase, Maruki frequently uses Evil Smile to inflict Fear and Eternal Radiance to inflict Dizzy on you and your allies. Detox, which is unlocked early into Maruki's own confidant, can cleanse Joker of status conditions as soon as they're applied.
• Hypocrite:
  • Despite claiming that he's making a reality where everyone can be happy, according to Akechi, only Shido is in jail for the psychotic breakdown cases, going against what he said. Justified, since it's Joker's desire to see Shido imprisoned and spend time together with his friends from Tokyo. Moreover, Shido's own desires would end up hurting people in the long run and Shido also nearly ruined Maruki's career, so it makes sense why Maruki wouldn't see Shido as fit to partake in his utopia. Alternately, Shido has been reformed to where he believes he deserves to be in prison and Maruki left him there.
    • Furthermore, his own situation with Rumi illustrates this point. Even after gaining Reality Warper powers, Maruki refuses to rectify both the death of Rumi's parents, and his subsequent alteration of her memories. This is because he couldn't be with Rumi without preserving her painful memories of her parents' murder, and because he's so Married to the Job of eliminating people's suffering and doesn't want his relationship with her to be compromised by that work. In other words, he's experienced first-hand how a "perfect world" cannot exist, since sometimes making the world ideal for one person can make it less so for others. Furthermore, he considers his inability to be with Rumi as a necessary and justified sacrifice for creating his perfect reality, in spite of criticizing the Phantom Thieves' for taking a similar attitude towards their own hardships and suffering.
    • This also leads to a bigger problem that Akechi lampshades: A world where everyone is happy is physically impossible because peoples' desires will conflict with each other and at worst cause each other harm. The fact that Joker and the Phantom Thieves are rebelling with Maruki's desire only confirms this. Akechi calls Maruki out on this and notably Maruki has no real response.
  • While the mental health exams in his Palace suggest that he believes that if you find a roadblock in your dreams you should give up on it and find something easier to do, he's been nothing short of determined to actualize the world away from suffering and won't stop on it even with how severe the setbacks placed to him are.
  • Despite his claims about not wanting to fight the Thieves, one of the bad endings has him put Joker permanently to sleep—in effect a slow death rather than a quick one. In the battle proper, despite claiming otherwise Maruki is perfectly willing to kill the Thieves if it means his world will become permanent.
  • He believes that desires and ambitions along with people’s attempts to fulfil said desires and ambitions are the root of all suffering in the world. He is also a Determinator willing to go to extreme lengths to fulfil his desires and ambitions and refuses to acknowledge the consequences of his actions no matter how much the Phantom Thieves plead to him.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Despite his defeat with his Treasure being taken away from him the second time, and being explained to that his wish to rewrite reality just won't work, Maruki still holds onto his crumbling Palace, going so far as to attack the Thieves in their escape. However, he only does so so that Joker can kill his regrets through a fist fight, and finally gives up after losing said fight, letting himself fall to the ground hundreds of feet into the air, only to be saved by Joker.
• Inconsistent Coloring: Maruki's hair color is light brown on his in-game model when his hair is down, a darker brown on the model when it's slicked back, an even darker brown on his portrait sprites, and black in anime cutscenes.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Averted in regards to the unique Shadows in his Palace. The Shadows that are unique to the laboratory (and not returning from the original P5) cannot be fused and do not show up as part of the compendium until January 12th, whereas all enemy Shadows until Mementos Depths are a silhouette under question marks.
  • Played straighter with his security level icon, which despite hiding his identity well, still appears masculine. This eliminates the real Kasumi Yoshizawa, who was the Red Herring that was being set up.
• Interim Villain: Maruki is the antagonist of the Third Semester taking place between the original endgame of Persona 5 and Strikers. While both games have the Antisocial Force or their associates as the driving antagonistic faction and a non-human Big Bad based on the Demiurge, Maruki doesn't have anything to do with either of them apart from being another victim of Shido.
• Ironic Fear: While Joker tries to save him, Maruki tearfully admits that he was always secretly afraid they wouldn't wish for the same world.
• Irony: Despite telling people not to fear anything and live on with a strong heart, his most dangerous tactic is to spam dizzy and fear. And he does this a lot in Azathoth's second phase.
• It's All About Me: Downplayed. While he obviously doesn't have a Lack of Empathy, Maruki ultimately gives people what he thinks is best, and he is very unwilling to question himself or go back on his past decisions. This is evidenced by his treatment of Akechi and Sumire in the third semester, especially the latter, even after Sumire explicitly says she wants to start living as herself again instead of regaining her "Kasumi" filter. Justified in that by the time the heroes face him, he has become The Unfettered and is too deep into it to second guess himself.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In a conversation with Joker on February 2nd, Maruki says he doesn't mind that his powers caused Rumi to forget all about him, because she's happy without him and he doesn't wish to reawaken her trauma with his presence in her life. Though it's clear from the statues of her in his Palace and during his Villainous Breakdown that he still misses her deeply and a massive crux of his plan was all for her. His Treasure's true form is the newsletter about the murder of Rumi's family, which is what kickstarted the poor man's problems.
• Jumped at the Call: He went to Shujin to offer his services as a counselor on the very same day that Shiho attempted suicide.
• Kick the Dog: Maruki will do this to Joker if he misses the deadline to the Palace. Maruki puts Joker to sleep for the rest of his life, forgotten by his friends and unable to be reached by the Velvet Room. He rationalizes it by saying that the decision-making process is too painful for Joker, who's unable to decide which reality he wants to live in, so he takes away Joker's obligation to choose.
• Kick the Morality Pet: The game shows us how far Maruki has fallen in his final talk with Joker before fighting. At the start of that particular conversation, Maruki ignorantly dismisses Sumire's growth by saying that she will eventually fall back unto her old habits of wanting to be Kasumi (which he helped to encourage to begin with). When Joker brings up the fact that everyone is moving on but him (regarding his loss of Rumi) after this, he brings up the fact that Akechi was actualized as a last ditch attempt to persuade Joker to leave him alone.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: In the exam room of his Palace, one of the correct answers is to give up on your dreams if these dreams are causing you pain. Ironically, Maruki himself goes through many defeats in a row and refuses to give up or allow his Palace to collapse as a Determinator. He only accepts that he can't beat the Thieves after Adam Kadmon is defeated, knowing he would lose if he tried to fight them again.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Guided by Maruki himself. He specifically excludes Shido from his dream as he is announced to be incarcerated for political treason early into the third semester. Although it does make Maruki slightly come off as a Hypocrite considering his constant preaching of a reality where everyone lives in harmony.
• Last-Name Basis: The Phantom Thieves and even his old friend Shibusawa exclusively refer to him by his last name, with the former mostly calling him Dr. Maruki. Akechi chooses not to use his title most of the time, likely due to Akechi's obvious disdain for him. The only character that calls him by his first name on-screen is Rumi.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A subtle example. Maruki's dream world possesses an extensively happy ending for the protagonists involved, including outright defying death itself and the negative circumstances without much explanation and all done by an outsider and all-powerful force. It could be interpreted as how certain fans write fanfictions that have similar scenarios, endings or approaches. He even says that he was disheartened when he saw how Joker and Akechi's relationship ended. Naturally, Akechi is disgusted by this fact as he believes himself Beyond Redemption and ultimately chooses to team up with Joker, who also feels that the dream world isn't right, to rebel and destroy it, even if it means going back to his uncertain fate, as he is sick of being controlled by others and will live his life his way.
• "Leave Your Quest" Test: Presents offers to accept his ideal reality to Joker twice, once on the 9th of January checkpoint and during the 2nd of February, prior to the climax of his arc. If Joker accepts any of his deals the world will enter Modern Stasis, everyone but Joker living happily with all of their desires actualized, and Maruki will become something close to a nameless god. Rejecting these offers is required to get the true, non-alternate ending.
• Light Is Not Good: In spite of his Persona, Maruki mostly wears white and later his true Persona is the light-based Adam Kadmon. He later wears a white lab suit while maintaining his Palace, similar to the one he used to wear as a school counselor. In battle, he wears a long white shawl over his armor.
• Logical Weakness: Maruki's wish-granting and reality warping powers seem to be unable to fill gaps in memory or logic. Maruki's power until he performs a full Death of Personality on people can end up as relatively easy to see through and is reliant on the happiness it gives to stop any resistance. This fits because he is a counselor and is only out to treat emotional pain, not to make sense of everything.
  • Akechi is unable to remember in between his likely death at Shido's Palace and Yaldabaoth's defeat. Maruki's wish-granting being dependent on just happiness to keep someone in is also why Akechi is able to break free so easily, since his whole life has been defined by misfortune. He is unable to accept that such good things could happen to him out of the blue.
  • Sumire's entire stint as Kasumi slips up because of this weakness too. Despite altering her cognition to hear "Sumire" and "Kasumi" swapped, Sumire still suffered physical shortcomings, her family and loved ones basically treated her as if she went insane and to Sumire (as Kasumi), it made no sense how much big the slump was. Maruki himself has to step in multiple times to prevent the illusion from being broken earlier.
  • Ryuji is only hazily able to remember why he's friends with Joker to begin with, since they became friends due to something traumatic happening to both of them (which Maruki undid, leaving an in-universe Plot Hole).
  • Morgana is convinced he’s always been human which runs up against his own memories of how he met Joker and sleeping on top of him.
  • Futaba admits that she knew for sure the reality was fake when she saw her Mom again, but like everyone else was too happy to fight it.
• The Lost Lenore: Rumi went catatonic at seeing the death of her parents, and when Maruki attempted to seal away her memories of their death, she suffered a Death of Personality. This is the source of Maruki's Despair Event Horizon and Sanity Slippage, which has him turning to his research to cope.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: He intends to trap all of humanity in an idealized world by merging reality with Mementos (the latter of which he is cementing total control over). Notably, for a Non-Standard Game Over bad ending if you choose to align with his decision, it doesn't seem to have a cynical edge to it at first, until you realize what it means for people like Sumire and Akechi and how it invalidates the growth the Phantom Thieves underwent throughout the story.
• Mad Scientist: Was actually better than Wakaba at cognitive psience, and has learned how to use it to become a Reality Warper. Downplayed, as his original intent wasn't making the Lotus-Eater Machine to begin with. However, by the time he manages to warp reality in the third semester, much of the mindset implied by his Palace's treatment of cognitive patients plays this straight.
• Martial Pacifist: Played With. This is a very rare antagonistic version of this trope. More than every other Palace Ruler he is adverse to violence and constantly delays the battle he will be forced to have with the Phantom Thieves. He also adheres to a Thou Shalt Not Kill doctrine for the most part, not even killing Shido when he easily could. Maruki is only willing to break it on the Day of Fates to fight for his reality. However, he favors Death of Personality instead of murder and sees it as a good thing, which could be seen as Loophole Abuse of his pacifist tendencies. He is also more than willing to send his minions with lethal intent to protect his Treasure and Palace.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • Knowingly rewrote Sumire's cognition to make her believe she was her deceased sister, Kasumi, not for her sake, but to further his thesis - a journal entry in the Laboratory of Sorrow outright has Maruki admit one of the biggest hurdles of his research is a lack of test subjects, and the very next entry is his meeting with Sumire. From that point on, he spends a significant amount of time and effort in "Kasumi's" corner in order to make sure the illusion is maintained, as the primary example in his mind of a person who would be most helped by his cognitive alterations.
  • Lavenza and Akechi suspect that he took advantage of the counseling sessions to learn of the Phantom Thieves' wishes. Then, when they defeat Yaldabaoth and unintentionally become the new masters of Mementos, he takes control because Joker told him how to manipulate cognition and their wishes allowed him to do just that. Granted, this is not mulled much, given how he only got confirmation they were the Thieves near the end and how for the theory to make perfect sense, he would need to be aware of every member of the Phantom Thieves past Ryuji and Ann, along with Yaldabaoth's existence in the first place (he was not even much aware of how the Metaverse works, at least to the level of the Thieves). However, everything he's doing is still in line with his aspiration to use cognitive psience as a means to heal emotional trauma, thus giving him enough reason to try to pry into the Phantom Thieves regardless (this is especially obvious in Ryuji's session).
  • This trait gets highlighted once he returns as the Big Bad of the third semester to drive his Sanity Slippage home. As he tries his hardest to convince Joker and Akechi to accept his new reality, he gets Sumire to relive her traumatic past to guilt-trip the duo for rejecting the reality she wishes to live in, and he emotionally appeals to Joker about Akechi's Uncertain Doom the day before his Palace's deadline, causing Joker's resolve to potentially falter at the last moment. Akechi anticipated this upon reaching the location of Maruki's treasure and later calls him out on it in his face.
    Akechi: Don't tell me you think dangling my life before us is going to have any impact on our decision.
• Meaningful Background Event: While most will take his transition from Psychiatrist to Cab Driver in the True Ending as a minor detail, it actually shows that he's given up on taking people where he thinks they should go and resolved to simply take them where they want to go.
• Meaningful Name: The "ki" in "Maruki" means "happiness", which is what he's trying to achieve on a global level. The "Maru" in his name can actually mean "0", or "Zero". His given name, Takuto, means "helping people grow". This ties to no matter how hard he tries and helps others, he himself is filled with sadness, to the point that in the new bad ending, he becomes a nameless god that no one knows so that everyone but him can be happy.
• Meet the New Boss: Immediately after Yaldabaoth is defeated, Maruki becomes the new master of Mementos and uses the Reality Bleed of Mementos and the real world to impose his will and hypnotize everyone in Tokyo (and eventually the rest of human civilization) into what he thinks is happiness by taking their free will away, just like Yaldabaoth. Before they are revealed as the antagonists of their respective arcs, they had previously been a helpful authority figure to Joker and they make peace offerings out of respect for him that need to be rejected before Joker can take them down. There are a lot of differences between Maruki and Yaldabaoth, but they share the same method of enacting their plan, which is brainwashing everyone using Mementos.
• Mind Control: His powers essentially work like this. As he manipulates cognition, he alters how his targets perceive themselves and the world around them. In the third semester, he can apply this power to anyone under the influence of his cognitive overlay.
• Mind Rape: That's how he manages to get Sumire to attack Joker for rejecting his deal, via making her Persona go berserk. His Palace also does this to a bunch of his cognitive patients so they can become happy.
• Missed Him by That Much: The existence of Maruki as the keeper of the Palace would have been outed much earlier had Kasumi's phone not died just as she, Joker, and Morgana were about to learn the identity of the Palace Ruler. They ultimately write him off, as they weren't after him at the time, and the following Wham Episode leads them to completely forget about him until the Third Semester Arc, where his plans begin to come to fruition.
• More than Mind Control: Maruki's actualization is a variant of this. Since the Thieves were resolving to move past their pain and Maruki still had his personal ethics, he respected their choices and did not change their hearts. However, most of the Phantom Thieves subconsciously still wished for their lives to go back to the way they were before they faced their traumas, and accidentally transferred control of the cognitive world to Maruki once they defeated Yaldaboath. With Maruki becoming The Unfettered via awakening Azathoth and his Palace now merged with Mementos, he changed the world to match their desires and suppressed their drives to rebel since those traumas were linked to their rebellious spirits. It makes it harder for Joker, who wasn't completely affected due to his desires having nothing to do with his rebellious spirit, to snap them out of it since they have everything they want. It takes a substantial amount of doubt and unease for the Thieves to break the brainwashing and fight back against the new reality.
• Mundane Made Awesome: His receiving of the Phantom Thieves' calling card. Unlike every other major target except for Futaba, Maruki receives his directly face-to-face while visiting LeBlanc, after a discussion with Joker, Akechi, and Morgana. It's to the point that it appears he was fully expecting it and the calling card doesn't actually matter to him.
  Maruki: Ah, that's right. I've heard your calling.
• Mundane Utility: He uses his Reality Warper powers in mundane ways several times.
  • It's heavily implied that the only reason why Joker and his chosen date were able to find a cake at the last hour on Christmas Eve was because of Maruki's intervention.
  • When Joker meets Mr. Yoshizawa on New Year's Day, he tries to call Sumire by her actual name while she (and Joker) still thought she was Kasumi, which leads to a bizarre moment where he is censored in real time. Only a little bit of Sumire's name is audible, but otherwise extremely muffled. Joker and Sumire both notice and are freaked out.
  • Maruki censors his name on the Metaverse Navigator app when Joker, Akechi, and Sumire are trying to see who the Ruler of the mysterious Odaiba Palace is.
  • When Maruki takes Sumire to keep her in his Palace, he alters the cognition of the Yoshizawa family so they think she went to a training camp, instead of allowing them to believe that she went missing.

N-Y

• Nice Guy: Even after ascending to godhood, Maruki's personality isn't an act; he genuinely is a kind, reasonable, and well-intentioned person. His core motive is to create a world where everyone can be happy, and his less than benign actions along the way are only to reach that dream.
• Nightmare Face: Averted. Unlike the other targets, Maruki was consciously designed to not make any mocking or unhinged expressions in his sprites so he could be sympathetic to the player, according to an interview in the Persona 5 Royal Official Complete Guide. Though there is a moment when he gives a Psychotic Smirk in an animated cutscene.
• Necromancer: When he revives Wakaba, Okumura and Makoto's father, he doesn't actually create illusions of them. Instead, he outright overwrites reality so they never even died in the first place and they appear as their past selves that their children once knew and loved before they died or became corrupt.
• No Ontological Inertia: Taking Maruki's treasure causes his version of reality to have never happened, except in the memory of the Thieves and himself. This causes reality to return to what happened at the original endgame of Persona 5, where Joker had turned himself in after defeating Yaldabaoth so he can testify against Shido, since in Maruki's world, a revived Akechi went in Joker's place. It also (possibly) undoes Akechi's revival. However it does not undo Confidant levels that Joker may have done with non-party members (who do not have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory) during the Third Semester, including changing Mementos targets' hearts and entering a new relationship with one or more of them.
• Not So Above It All: While he's a genuinely all-around Nice Guy, Maruki decided to showcase the breakthroughs that he made on his research on cognitive psience to the professor who had rejected him years ago. Not because he hoped that the professor would support him, but by his own admission it was simply out of spite. Similarly, he gives nearly everyone a slice of happiness in his world - all except Shido, solely because he was the one who ultimately screwed over his research. To Maruki's credit though, it was Shido.
• Obliviously Evil: Maruki isn’t evil and genuinely thinks that what he is doing will make everyone happy. However he does not seem to realize that his actions, in the long term, would result in killing any reason for people to live or grow as people. His actions would be functionally indistinguishable from just killing everyone and he doesn’t realize it.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Happens briefly at certain moments.
  • For some reason, Maruki chuckles every time he regenerates Azathoth's tentacles. This happens in between him begging the Thieves to stop fighting him.
  • When Adam Kadmon is defeated and Maruki's Palace starts to collapse again, an animated cutscene has the Phantom Thieves escape through the Monacopter while Maruki seems so grief-stricken he can't even move. At the end of the cutscene, he summons a tentacle to grab the Monacopter while the Thieves are escaping. He then looks up at the Thieves with a Psychotic Smirk and gives a brief evil chuckle. Right after the cutscene ends, he switches back to a somber tone and apologizes for stopping their flight, because he wants to ask Joker to help him kill his regrets with a fist fight. Whether it was because he was intended to have a less sympathetic Villainous Breakdown that was later changed and the evil smirk and chuckle are The Artifact from the cutscene that was already made, or a weird side effect from taking the place of his own Shadow as a Palace Ruler, is unclear.
• Pet the Dog:
  • It's implied that he used his phenomenal cosmic powers to get Joker a cake on Christmas.
  • When he takes Sumire into his Palace, he makes sure that her parents think she's going to a training camp so they don't have to worry about her.
• Post-Final Boss: All phases after Azathoth count:
  • Adam Kadmon and Maruki is straightforward, where Adam Kadmon will only use almighty attacks (telegraphed and otherwise) and no other tricks or strategies. The party only needs to deal about 3,000 damage to Maruki to advance to the next phase.
  • Adam Kadmon fused with Maruki is essentially a Cutscene Boss and Controllable Helplessness.
  • After defeating Adam Kadmon, there's a one-on-one fist fight between him and Joker, without their Personas. All Joker can do here is attack, and after punching Maruki three times, the battle automatically ends.
• Power Nullifier: This appears to be a form of his actualization.
  • In the second phase of his Azathoth boss fight, he can disable certain ability types every few turns.
  • Those who accept his actualization lose their rebellious spirit, which in Persona 5 is the power source of a Persona.
• Prefers the Illusion: A bit of a variant, but he has great difficulty understanding why the Thieves chose the painful reality over the utopia of his dream world. After his defeat, he admits to this as part of his Villainous Breakdown.
  Maruki: I'm... running from... ... Heheh. You nailed it. It's true that I turned my back on the original reality... But where's the harm in that!? When it grows to be too much, too painful... Every person deserves to escape that! In all honesty, it's best for a person's growth when they tackle their own hardships... But reality doesn't always make that so feasible! No matter how much you try, or work for so long, the smallest injustice can wipe it all out, leave you with nothing... Don't you, of all people, understand that!?
• Psychological Projection: When you deliver his calling card, he asks how Sumire is coping with reality; you say she's tough and doing fine, but he insists that's not true. His response to losing Rumi was avoidance (pretending they're strangers), denial (insisting he's not unhappy without her), and throwing himself into his research; he therefore assumes everyone follows his own grieving behavior. You even call him out on this:
  Maruki: If you just stay, you'll never have to suffer the pain of loss, or the pain of having people and things stolen away from you!
  Player: (option A) Like you have? (option B) What was stolen from you?
• Psycho Psychologist: Downplayed, in that he doesn't use his psychiatry as a tool of harm. In fact, he's actually trying to create a world where nobody feels grief or sorrow, with only his extreme methods making him a villain.
• The Psycho Rangers: His battle form is essentially a Foil to the Phantom Thieves' outfits. Both of their outfits represent their desire to rebel against society and stealing distorted hearts, but while the Phantom Thieves outfits represent rebels to counter the corruption of the world, his is neutral and represents his despair-driven messiah complex to grant the wishes of the people and the world itself.
• Puzzle Boss: Much more so than Shido and Yaldabaoth, which are more duels of brute force with few gimmicks, Maruki's Azathoth phases are more like Okumura's battle in Royal. It requires Personas or a team composition with enough elemental variety to use Baton Pass properly to break through his tendril defenses and actually hurt Azathoth, otherwise he will run out the clock and kill the team. You also need to be able to deal with his incoming status effects and the technical damage combos he will try to do with them. Though his fight, his Actualization will disable key abilities or combat mechanics that will require you to adapt. His tendrils also get their affinities randomized each time they revive in the second Azathoth phase. Once you know the details of his skillset he is not that tough of a fight.
• Reality Warper: His Persona has some signs of this, as he's able to influence and override how someone views reality. This is exactly how he has overwritten Sumire Yoshizawa with her dead sister Kasumi Yoshizawa, as requested by Sumire, when she was becoming increasingly suicidal in her delusional belief where she literally wanted to become Kasumi. However, this gets Exaggerated when he becomes The Unfettered. When the Thieves accidentally give him the reins to the Metaverse when it's briefly merged with reality, he's able to exploit it and thus, take Azathoth's powers to untold heights. Because the Metaverse and reality are one, he's able to warp reality, such as raising the dead or other "miracles." In fact, the race against time is to stop Maruki from cementing complete control as his Palace would connect with the minds of the entire human race and thus, influence everyone to live in his version of reality.
• Red Herring: It's first assumed that his Palace is actually Kasumi's, as noted by Akechi, due to the strangeness of her (false) awakening and the nature of said Palace showing various memories of Kasumi and Sumire.
• Reluctant Warrior: As a medical professional, he has no interest in harming the Phantom Thieves, and offers them multiple outs in their conflict with him. He only does battle with the Thieves to defend his dream world to the end.
• Revealing Continuity Lapse: Your first indicators that things are not over yet after defeating Yaldabaoth and escaping the nightmare on New Year's Eve is Futaba mentioning her mother being alive and picking her Kimono and the "Sayuri" painting on LeBlanc being mysteriously missing. It gets more and more jarring from that point on.
• Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: Waste more than fourty turns on his second phase, and he will save you from the suffering of being stuck on him by wiping out your entire party with a Megidolaon that does five-digits worth of damage. Unlike with Madarame or Wakaba however, you can trigger this easily if you're unprepared.
• Sad Battle Music: "Keep Your Faith" and its vocal version, "Throw Away Your Mask", with the latter's lyrics explaining the pain he's suffering.
• Scary Shiny Glasses: He sports these in his flashbacks right before he's about to awaken his Persona and in his Palace’s alert icon.
• Scenery Dissonance: His Palace is the most athestically pleasant of all Palaces, taking the form of a cognitive research lab mixed with a mental health clinic and a lush greenhouse structure resembling the Garden of Eden. However, the Shadows inside take the form of sinister blob monsters that explode into mythical figures of death, heresy and fairytales, the cognitive patients in the Palace slowly become empty shells as they ascend, and the (disturbingly) beautiful scenery on the top floor will be accompanied by the climatic pre-battle BGM "I Believe" right before you enter his boss room.
• Shadow Archetype: He's a pretty deep one to Joker. Both of them are frizzy-haired and bespectacled good-looking males who are also pretty adorkable in their mannerisms at times. Both of them are defined by wanting to do the right thing and helping people, being there to listen to their problems. At the same time, they become stronger and reach their goals through the power of those relationships (the Confidants for Joker and Maruki with his clients). Both of them experienced a tragedy that wrecked their lives and have been personally hurt by Shido (Joker's record being ruined and Maruki's research stolen and suppressed) as well as being driven to act upon a tragedy befalling a woman they care about (Rumi for Maruki and although not as close, Shiho for Joker). Upon their encounter with the cognitive world, they use its capabilities to help people in need. In certain bad endings, both them and their benefactor (if Joker sides with Yaldabaoth along with Maruki with Azathoth/Adam Kadmon) end up controlling the world in their image. Their ultimate goal is to defeat societal corruption and make the world a better place. However, their approaches are different, with Joker leading the Phantom Thieves to forcefully reform crooked adults and inspire society and people to better themselves and improve society to make sure these problems occur less frequently. While Joker's approach could be considered "bottom-up", Maruki's approach would be "top-down." Maruki sees the arbitrary cruelty of reality as the main problem since it is this that usually drives people to do terrible things in response. This ultimately drives him to ascend into his messiah complex when his Persona awakening seems to have Gone Horribly Right. This may explain why they're drawn to each other and why Maruki feared their eventual conflict along with why Joker fully understands why he does what he does:
  Maruki: No matter what happens to me in the end, I will fix this torturous world! That... is my own rebellion!
  • In another sense, he's one to the entire Phantom Thief group. His plan for the world is essentially what the Thieves have been doing to their major targets but on a much larger scale regardless of reason or morals of his victims.
    • He specifically has some interesting parallels to Futaba. Both of them are lovable nerds who have more knowledge of cognitive psience than their peers, their initial Personas are tentacled creatures that originate from the works of H. P. Lovecraft, and they've both grappled with suicidal despair. Futaba eventually moved past her guilt herself by digging down deep to find the truth of her mother's love for her, but Maruki coped with his own loss by getting others to run away from what really happened and eventually using his powers to deny the old and harsh reality for a idyllic dreamworld.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Towards Rumi. He never shows any attraction towards any other person and appears to have given up on ever finding a new partner, even after he is defeated.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He's not a real Sadist, but in befitting of his Affably Evil personality, he maintains the same gentle, friendly tone he had before creating the dream reality. Even when he's using his actualization to make Cendrillon go berserk and attack Joker and Akechi.
• Start of Darkness: His obsession with trying to end suffering began when his girlfriend Rumi, who was left in a broken mental state after surviving an accident that killed her mother and father, suffered a worse breakdown in a hospital. His Persona began to act, granting his wish of ending her pain, by erasing her memories of the tragedy, but also the rest of her life including the memories of him. This convinced him to make a better world where those in pain don't have to suffer the way Rumi did. At first, it wasn't anything other than using his abilities on catatonic or suicidal patients so he could prove to his professor that his essay was true. Only by Yaldabaoth's unintentional meddling does it get twisted into a grand Lotus-Eater Machine scheme.
• Stone Wall: Maruki himself is this in the boss fight with Azathoth. There are two ways to win the boss fight, which is to deplete Maruki's health or Azathoth's. Maruki himself does not do any attacking. He has a higher defense stat than Azathoth and is supported by the Tentacle of Protection, which will block attacks at him, and buff Maruki's defense. Tentacle of Healing exclusively spams Energy Stream on Maruki, healing for around 800-900 each turn. As such it is usually easier to go for Azathoth.
• Straw Nihilist: A variant of. Instead of being blatantly nihilistic, he's compassionate in a ridiculously warped way, to the point that the only solution he accepts is granting everyone whatever they want but cannot achieve via any normal means. In other words, he is neutral to a very extremist degree, unlike Akechi which is radically Chaotic and Yaldabaoth who is radically Lawful. In terms of Shin Megami Tensei however, his world where everybody gets what they want is pretty akin to the Lawful path of eternal peace and prosperity, but unlike a standard Law ending where one order rules over them by force, it was actually more akin to the White Ending from Shin Megami Tensei IV, that he offers the easy way out to all suffering by metaphorically wiping out humanity, or more accurately, the qualities that define its existence by wiping out all of their seeds of grief.
• Superior Successor: To Yaldabaoth as the God of Control and Master of Mementos. He (with Azathoth/Adam Kadmon) is more powerful than Yaldabaoth ever was and demonstrates stronger Reality Warper abilities, which include reviving the dead, and can even weaken the Velvet Room's influence to the point of making it unable to reach Joker if you miss the deadline to his Palace.
• Super-Empowering: Despite his reality shaping powers, Maruki could only affect people on a small scale at first. All the increased power of his abilities as an antagonist are directly the product of the Phantom Thieves subconsciously wanting him to grant their wishes as well as Yaldabaoth's mistake in the Day of Reckoning, making him the new master of Mementos and taking his power to untold heights.
• Superpower Lottery: Wins this big thanks to Adam Kadmon. His powers give him the ability to rewrite a person's cognition to give them exactly what they want. When becoming the new God of Control, he gets even more powerful.
• Support Party Member: In the two boss fights where he is involved he is this.
  • In the fight against Cendrillon, he is untargetable, and summons Byakhees each turn for Cendrillon to absorb.
  • In the actual final battle, he is this to Azathoth. Azathoth does all the fighting, while Maruki and the tendrils just support him. Unlike the Thieves, Maruki does not even have a normal melee or ranged attack if he's not using his Persona, and will stop fighting if Azathoth is immobilized.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: He's one to Namatame from Persona 4. Both of them managed to obtain powers from the supernatural out of grief from losing their lovers, trap people in unsafe situations because they believe that they are helping them and making them happy, mingle along well with the public, become a free man and redeem themselves upon defeat, and their dungeons are based on the Garden of Eden. The only (rather significant) differences between the two are Namatame never put his powers to full use, while Maruki was able to use the powers bestowed to him to its fullest extent, and Namatame wallowed in his despair since his Trauma Conga Line but Maruki keeps up a calm facade after losing Rumi and has somewhat accepted all along that he can never live with her anymore.
• Tarot Motifs:
  • As fitting his Affably Evil Anti-Villain personality, he's actually the upright Consultant; diplomatic skill, persuasiveness, and the ability to treat mental illness. Awakening Azathoth pushes him into the reverse of indecision, lack of original thought, and delusion, but even in the ending where he wins he creates a utopia. The Consultant is also a variant on the Magician Arcana. Beyond being a literal magician when you fight him, Maruki follows certain traits with Magician Arcanas established in the series, such as a close bond with the protagonist and a painful love life (in his case, his girlfriend being rendered emotionally comatose by the loss of her parents and in trying to save her, he succeeds... with the side effect of undoing their relationship).
  • His dream world fills in traits with the Reversed Death Arcana, which represents complete stagnation, nihilism and an end to everything.
• Tempting Apple: The Psientfic Model Eden of his Palace has a gigantic tree at the center, bearing apples with bite marks that have the Arc Symbol inside as eyes that twitch and blink. This symbolism is also alluded to in the very beginning, with Maruki having apple juice as his Trademark Favorite Food, and always keeping a box of it in his office.
• Time-Limit Boss: Similar to Okumura, Maruki's boss fight has a time limit of 40 rounds ^note Though Okumura's time limit is an actual timer, and he has a 2 round limit for each robot wave. After that, Azathoth starts to cast extremely buffed Megidolaons on his turns, which will easily hit for 4 digit damage (when your max possible HP is 999).
• Took a Level in Badass: To an absurd extent. Maruki went from a dorky school counselor that no one could possibly be threatened by to a Deity of Human Origin and master of one of the most powerful Personas ever awakened. He even goes through a Significant Wardrobe Shift to match his new badass self.
• Totalitarian Utilitarian: Of the Ethical Hedonism variety. He is driven to fulfill everyone's desires For Happiness, but resorts to drastic measures and is willing to stand against the Phantom Thieves even after they explicitly reject the wishes he granted for them.
• Tragic Villain: Ultimately, Maruki is not an inherently bad person and genuinely means well in creating a utopia where nobody can get hurt again. It's just that his methods are flawed at best, and he has no qualms about essentially brainwashing the entire population (inflicting mass identity death in the process) or resorting to other unscrupulous means (such as using Sumire as a meatshield or Akechi as a bargaining chip) to make his utopia happen. Deep down, he's a broken man who never truly learned to deal with the loss of Rumi and got handed what was possibly the worst coping mechanism ever, to the point where he's genuinely unable to parse the idea of anyone truly moving on from their own losses.
• Tranquil Fury: While he isn't at all mad at the Phantom Thieves for getting in his way, his cut-in reeks of this, displaying his serious resolve.
• Trauma Button: Before his actual awakening, it's implied to be a person who lost their beloved relatives over an unfortunate accident and was mentally crippled by their deaths, since his actualization power was only capable of activating subconsciously. He notes that Sumire was the first person whose cognition he managed to change so greatly since Rumi and she also suffered from a similar trauma as his ex-fiancée, suggesting that it doesn't activate unless something reminds him of his trauma.
• Trauma Conga Line: A large part of creating his dream world is motivated by a terrible string of personal tragedies: his girlfriend fell into catatonic depression after her parents were murdered, where he partially awoke to his Persona and his subsequent powers of affecting cognition. In trying to cure her of her depression, he did so by erasing her memories of the tragedy... along with many others, such as their relationship. Then his research was stamped out by Shido and the Antisocial Force, thus seemingly ruining his life's work. Later he's sent off the deep end when Yaldabaoth fully awakens Azathoth and as such, Maruki is now taking his intense desire to help people to its logical extreme, enabled by Azathoth. Being aware of the basics of the Metaverse thanks to his relationship with Joker and now armed with an abundance of power thanks to the fall of the God of Control and the Thieves' subconscious desire to have their wishes fulfilled, he proceeds to start forcibly reshaping reality to his will.
• True Final Boss: Of Royal, if the condition for the third semester event is met.
• Unexpected Successor: Yaldabaoth was likely not expecting to be succeeded at all in his role as the God of Control, but Maruki still manages to become one, thanks to the Phantom Thieves.
• The Unfettered: When Yaldabaoth's merge of the real world with Mementos happens, this causes Maruki to awaken Azathoth (with the implication that something may have Gone Horribly Wrong with the awakening). His goal in helping people cope with their pain and overall goal to create a form of preventive therapy with his Persona and knowledge of cognitive psience is instead taken to its logical extreme: prevent people from ever being hurt by enforcing a utopia based on people’s happiness. Furthermore, it explains his willingness to do some surprisingly underhanded tactics one would not expect a good man like him to do.
• Unluckily Lucky:
  • His backstory reveals that his research was stolen by Masayoshi Shido. Given how Shido usually deals with people who inconvenience him or could potentially threaten him, the fact that he never suffered a mental shutdown or an unfortunate "accident" at any point is utterly astounding - but, well, he did still lose his life's work.
  • Then there's the fact that thanks to both the Thieves and Yaldabaoth, he becomes the next God of Control, enabling him to enact his Lotus-Eater Machine in order to save humanity (as he sees it). In the Thieves' Den, Lavenza even states the irony of his predicament, as despite having a major Trauma Conga Line, it's also what gave him the powers of God to save the world.
  • As a slightly lesser example, it's implied that he has in fact started developing his Persona before Rumi's tragedy even struck while writing his thesis, as indicated by his frequent headaches.
  • Also, in the end of the normal ending of Royal, where the Thieves defeat him, Maruki seems to have lost his powers, as far as we know - but his mental health seems to be improving, he's still on speaking terms with the Thieves, and he's gotten a new job as a taxi driver and seems to be taking things well.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: A far more sympathetic example than Yaldabaoth, since instead of forcing everyone to knuckle down under an oppressive system for order's sake, Maruki wants to use Mementos to turn dreams into reality so people can be happy and be free of suffering.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: It is implied Maruki began a dangerously obsessive pursuit of Rumi's parents' murderer after he got away. When he brings up that he has finally been caught in front of a catatonically depressed Rumi, it didn't really change anything, nor was he even capable of moving away from his trauma long after awakening his Persona, and it only got worse when Rumi's memories got scrambled into an unrecognizable form because of it.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • When he gives his speech to the student body on it being okay to want to escape, it's actually quite applicable in real life. Bad situations such as abusive relationships, unfulfilling jobs or other unhealthy problems (such as an addiction) are all very much the same sort of situations where Maruki's advice of escape makes sense, even if complicated by how feasible it may be. In fact, given Japan's massive sense of commitment and duty to the whole, whether to your job or relationship, it's actually a subtle but strong statement.
  • His general methodology has a painful amount of truth to it. Just before the calling card, he notes on how ideally, people would grow stronger from their hardship before noting how that's not how reality always works. The truth is that often reality will overwhelm people and wear them down to nothing. That all of your attempts to rebuild and grow can easily be made All for Nothing by further misfortune or calamity. After all, he's seen it firsthand with Rumi and it was barely averted with folks like Futaba or Sumire or even Shiho. However, what makes this even more poignant is how this point not only relates to the game itself, but also the entire Persona franchise (or at the very least, starting from Persona 3). After all, beyond the Phantom Thieves themselves, the members and friends of SEES and the Investigation Team were only able to grow and overcome their hardships thanks to the bond made with your player character, the one blessed with the Wild Card and through that, help them grow into better people while allowing them to confront supernatural conflicts by utilizing their Personas. From facing your Shadow in Persona 4 being the most direct example to other indirect examples such as Persona evolution through bonds with the protagonists symbolizing their growth, growth they only had the opportunity to undergo because of the supernatural events going on and ties to a certain special individual. In fact, Sumire is the most prominent example; her recovery was only possible because Maruki's radical treatment ensured she wouldn't commit suicide... long enough for her to meet Joker. An extraordinary individual with the power of the Wild Card, allowing him to better understand and help people and thus help her when Maruki could not. In the same way the protagonists helped out the people they met. After all, how many of them avoided tragic or painful lives because of the involvement of the protagonist and by proxy, you as the player? An outsider force beyond humanity helping people out? It's very similar to what Maruki wants to do. In fact, the only difference is that you're not motivated by grief-driven messianic delusions.
  • While the Thieves don't really agree with how he went about it, they acknowledge that Maruki's reality gave them exactly what they desired, even if they themselves didn't realize that they wanted it. This ends up motivating them to make some life-changing decisions after they beat him so that they can fulfill said desires, such as Ryuji moving closer to a physical rehabilitation center so he can fix up his leg and rejoin Shujin's Track Team. And even if some of the changes Maruki made to reality aren't possible without his powers, such as the revival of Makoto, Futaba and Haru's parents, it gives those three an extra push in making steps to achieve their own goals, such as Makoto moving out of her sister's apartment to be more independent, Futaba finally deciding to go back to school and Haru going to college overseas so she can learn better ways to run Okumura Foods when she finally takes over.
• Villain in a White Suit: A variation where the draft design of his suit is distinctly a wedding attire, indicating his unresolved grief for his ex-fiancée Rumi. Underneath the jacket, his high circular shirt collar and the buttons are also reminiscent of a Mad Scientist labcoat.
• Villain of Another Story: All of his actions have nothing to do with the main story (Yaldabaoth still kickstarted the whole event, although unintentionally) and his arc is basically a separate story from the main campaign.
• Villainous Widow's Peak: It's never visible as a Confidant due to his hairstyle, but Maruki has a widow's peak. Fittingly, it is visible when he takes an antagonistic role.
• Villainous Breakdown: As his Palace begins to collapse on Joker's final victory over him, he begins undergoing this as everything he set in stone to try and help people is seemingly All for Nothing. He finally begins venting out the sadness that's been motivating him during the Post-Final Boss fight:
  Maruki: I gave up everything! Everything!!! So, why!? Why... Why Rumi!? A reality where... no one suffers...
• Villainous BSoD: After the aforementioned Villainous Breakdown, he despondently says that he's done, not even caring when he starts falling to his death. When Joker halts his fall, Maruki reiterates that he's done, and begs him to let him go.
• Villain Song: "Throw Away Your Mask" is sung from his perspective as he tries for the final time to get the Phantom Thieves to accept his perfect reality.
• Violence is the Only Option:
  • An interesting aversion with the "Stay" Ending. The creators of Royal do not consider accepting Maruki's reality as a bad ending, but as just an alternative ending. Both times that the player has the option to accept it, it would avert violence by avoiding a major boss fight (with Sumire and Cendrillon on 1/9 and with Maruki himself on 2/2). This makes the "Stay" Ending the only one to not have a Final Boss in any form ^note The Bad Ending with Akechi has a final battle against Shadow Sae, the Face–Heel Turn ending has a Hopeless Boss Fight against the Holy Grail and a Cutscene Boss in the form of the Twins, the vanilla P5 Good Ending has Yaldabaoth. In a meta sense, one reason the "Stay" Ending can feel empty is because it deprives the player of any sort of final battle that they come to expect from an epic-length RPG.
  • Played straight at first in the canon "Return" Ending. Despite all his attempts at negotiations, Maruki and the Thieves are forced into a final battle for reality. As the case with this trope, it is much more dramatic and climactic than the non-violent choice, though it ends up Deconstructed since choosing violence pushes Maruki into a Despair Event Horizon and has him attempt suicide when his plans fail.
• Walking the Earth: Downplayed; while he doesn't leave the city and does have a new job as a taxi driver, his send-off gives the impression of this trope.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Maruki is the one responsible for the Lotus-Eater Machine that entrances the Phantom Thieves (sans Joker, Akechi and Kasumi), and starts to create a new Mementos based on peoples' desires. He had seen so many people in pain that he wanted to merge reality with the cognitive world to help end others' suffering, but will oppose anyone who gets in his way if they can't see eye to eye with him. The Phantom Thieves even admit after defeating Maruki that there would undoubtedly be people who would be better off in his dream world, but being entirely beholden to Maruki's own version of morality, and in turn being forced to run from their problems rather than be able to grow and change from them, is unacceptable to them.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Maruki's research was covertly stolen by Shido and he was defunded and dismissed as a baseless quack. Years later when he confronts a Shido crony about this not long after his boss is defeated, Yaldabaoth's actions resulted in Maruki awakening his Persona shortly after he's dismissed again. He can only laugh to himself about the tides turning and, sure enough, Shido is the only known person in Maruki's world to be exempt from happiness.
• World-Healing Wave: Deconstructed, as Maruki's methods undo not only a person's negative experiences, but also any personal growth they might have experienced or will experience later as a byproduct.
• World's Strongest Man: He has a legitimate claim to being the most powerful Persona user in the whole franchise, period. While he doesn't possess the power of the Wild Card, the sheer Reality Warper abilities Azathoth gives him are mind-boggling. And he's no slouch in combat either, pushing the Phantom Thieves to their limits with just Azathoth. Once it evolves into Adam Kadmon, it becomes the size of a skyscraper. Joker only wins from the combined efforts of the Thieves, and a well-timed bullet.
• Wrong Context Magic:
  • It's established during the Madarame Arc by Morgana that Persona-users cannot manifest a Palace, as Palaces are created when a person's heart becomes distorted. This can in fact be observed in real-time during the Medjed Arc. After Futaba enters her own Palace, and not long after acquires her Persona, the pyramid almost instantly begins to crumble, with the Thieves very barely managing to get out. In spite of this fact, Maruki not only has a Persona of his own, but he also has a Palace. However, it quickly becomes noticeable that while functionally similar to other Palaces, Maruki's Palace isn't quite like the others. Upon closer inspection, it is attached to Mementos rather than actually being cut-off from its own separate area. Furthermore, despite Maruki not harboring any hostilities on October 3rd like Futaba or Sae, Joker is in his Phantom Thief clothing instantly once he enters the Palace's vicinity with Morgana and Yoshizawa during that date, much like how they would be in Mementos.
  • When the Path of Da'at opens, from Mementos Depths, an opening appears and the path literally comes out of it, before wiring resembling the tentacles of Azathoth covers all of Mementos from his Palace, as shown here◊. Said path is also completely different from everything else as well, being silver and lifeless compared to the rest of it, organic and dark. This silver and mechanical coloring references Maruki's growing influence as it matches his Palace's own appearance.
  • In fact, when Maruki's Persona was awakened while "ascending", it's likely Azathoth began operating independently of Maruki, if with the same desires. It manifesting in the real world is a sign of how the Metaverse is fusing with reality, as Azathoth explained to Maruki.
  • Morgana stated as early as Kamoshida's Palace that Persona users are immune to a Palace's distortions. But Maruki is able to affect your entire party, plus Yoshizawa, outright making Morgana a human on top.
  • Lastly, given how a Palace is ruled by the Shadow Self it stems from and hence why Persona users don't have it since they don't have a Shadow to form a Palace, this implies that Maruki's Palace has formed before his Persona does, since he only properly awakens to his on December, while his Palace has been in place since as early as October and likely far before then. As a result, he has effectively become the ruler of his Palace, since his Shadow has become his Persona, with Maruki now taking the place of his own Shadow. Futaba was the only other Persona user who could manipulate her own Palace for a short time before inadvertently taking away its Treasure.
• Your Heart's Desire: A rare, genuinely altruistic example without any strings attached. This is what Maruki offers to the world and it's also a case of Be Careful What You Wish For because accepting this would doom the world to eternal stagnation since there would be nothing to strive for.

The Creator of Wisdom

Azathoth / Adam Kadmon

The Blind God of Dreams

^{Azathoth's Second Phase}

^{Adam Kadmon}

Ain Soph Ohr

"This power is the source... and the destination. I will be the light that guides mankind."

The creator of wisdom who acts as Maruki's Persona. Its initial form is Azathoth, the mindless, formless, blind idiot god of ultimate chaos who rules over the dreamlands in the Cthulhu Mythos. It is later evolved into its true form, Adam Kadmon, the Kabbalahistic concept of the pure, unbound potential of the human soul, often associated with the crown of the Sephirot.

It is also possible that Azathoth might be a corruption of the "Azoth," the ultimate universal life force and the cure to all in Alchemy, which Azathoth envisions itself as, and in some sense of word, it is truly a "cure for all suffering." Azoth also motivates people towards physical and spiritual perfection, which Azathoth violates by giving them perfection and causing them to ironically become imperfect.

Another interesting point is that Azathoth and Adam Kadmon can be considered Lovecraftian and Kabbalistic versions of the Demiurge. Further, Azathoth and Maruki's plans mirror the initial conception of the Gnostic Demiurge, who imprisoned Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden so they could be happy, but in the process left them equally deluded and ignorant to the fact he is not the one true god. This is in opposition to the previous Big Bad, Yaldabaoth, who mirrors the modern Gnostic interpretation of the Demiurge, where he simply wished to oppress humanity.

---

• Achilles' Heel: In both gameplay and story.
  • In gameplay, Azathoth takes Scratch Damage if all tendrils are alive, and reduced damage if at least one is alive. However, reflected spells are not reduced, no matter how many of the tendrils are alive. Players can do quite a bit of damage to Azathoth just from reflecting his spells, even if they did not kill all the tendrils that round.
  • In story, despite being effectively invincible in direct combat, Adam Kadmon is still a Persona, which means targeting his master, particularly in the mask, can undo his summoning.
• Adaptational Heroism: At the very least, the Azathoth of Persona 5 Royal is willing to fulfill the dreams of every human being in existence because that seemed like the best way to accomplish his master's goal. The Azathoth of the Cthulhu Mythos does not care for much of anything except the music being played by his servants.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Azathoth having any sort of goal at all puts him miles ahead of the original, who quite literally lost his mind.
• Adaptational Wimp: Despite being one of the most powerful characters in the setting, Azathoth in Persona is still nothing compared to the original in the Cthulhu Mythos, who is completely omnipotent and one of the most powerful characters in fiction.
• Ambiguous Situation: There is some speculation that Adam Kadmon might be a separate entity similar to other gods born from the Collective Unconscious, given how it sometimes acts as if it were a separate entity from Maruki. In addition, every other character's masks are the form their Persona takes while not in use, and disappear when their Persona is summoned. Maruki's mask remains on his face even after Azathoth/Adam Kadmon has manifested. Not only that, but it's also unclear if Adam Kadmon is sentient and was directly addressing the Thieves for the second phase of their fight or if Maruki was merely talking through Adam Kadmon like some sort of puppet, given that before the Persona's awakening, it was Adam Kadmon's voice that spoke to Maruki, not Azathoth, as they have noticeably different voice distortions.
• Anti-Villain: Just like Maruki himself, all of its actions in the Third Semester are actually an unintended aftermath of Yaldabaoth's plan. It's unclear if it's even sentient at all.
• Armored But Frail: Downplayed, since Azathoth actually has a fair amount of health, but his phase 1 and 2 individually have less health than The Holy Grail and Yaldabaoth phases of the Final Boss respectively. Yaldabaoth is also fought about 10-20 levels earlier^note For perspective, The Holy Grail has 10,000 HP, Yaldabaoth has 15,000 HP, while Azathoth phase 1 has about 6,000 HP and Azathoth phase 2 has about 12,000 HP. Azathoth is instead dependent on the tendrils shielding ability to protect him from damage. When the tendrils are knocked out and the party has done multiple baton passes, Azathoth (or Maruki) will take a massive amount of damage from the built up power. Unlike Maruki, Azathoth never gets any defense buffs or healing from the tentacles either.
• Artistic License – Religion: Azathoth has nothing to do with the Garden of Eden or even the infinite wisdom of man known as Adam Kadmon to begin with, and he's actually the reverse of wisdom. In-Universe, he even seemingly has literally nothing to do with Nyarlathotep unlike the Lovecraftian Gods from Persona 2, who are said to be connected with each other.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The Phantom Thieves beat Adam Kadmon by attacking his head. Joker firing his gun through Adam Kadmon's head to hit Maruki's mask destroys Adam Kadmon.
• Beware the Superman: Adam Kadmon's overall design follows the convention started by the Phantom Thieves. Just like Makoto is an homage to Kamen Rider and two of Akechi's Personas are based on Superman and Batman, Adam Kadmon is based on Ultra Series heroes such as Ultraman and Ultraseven.
• Bishōnen Line: Adam Kadmon is much more humanoid than Azathoth, who looks more like an Eldritch Abomination, though Azathoth does first become more horrific in its second phase by summoning a massive amount of tentacles before becoming more humanoid.
• Body Horror: Azathoth's tentacles are actually Adam Kadmon's entrails or veins spilled all over the floor as Azathoth.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: The Adam Kadmon phase is significantly easier than the Azathoth phase, as during the Adam Kadmon phase, he only has a single-target Almighty attack, a weaker group-targeting Almighty attack, and an attack that drains around 300 health from each party member. In this phase only Maruki is targetable, and has only around 3000 HP. However, invoked Fridge Brilliance may explain this once you consider Azathoth was The Unfettered in comparison.
• Chaos Is Evil: Azathoth's ultimate attack is called "Tyrant Chaos", which fires a purple beam of energy at the team. It is worth noting one of Azathoth's names in the Cthulhu Mythos is "Nuclear Chaos".
• The Corrupter: Downplayed. He's responsible for Maruki's cognition-warping abilities, and convinced Maruki, in his desperation, to allow him to heal Rumi of her trauma (but unwittingly erasing her memories as a result). While their initial relationship is relatively benign, with Maruki using his newfound powers judiciously, Azathoth eventually tempts Maruki into creating a Lotus-Eater Machine when he fully manifests into reality due to Yaldabaoth's merging of Mementos. None of this is done with any malicious intent however, and Maruki himself has (subconsciously) manifested these same thoughts long before Azathoth, his supposed other self, voices them out.
• Cognizant Limbs: Azathoth is consisted of Azathoth itself, Maruki and three tentacles. One of the tentacles protect Azathoth from taking anything but 1 or 2 damage, other constantly heals Maruki for ridiculous amounts, while the last one casts buffs on him. The game does not give any tips on how to deal with it, but the protective effects weaken after each destroyed tentacle, with the final goal being defeating either one of them. To make things worse, these tentacles shuffle weaknesses after it enters phase 2, indicating they have to be taken down one at a time; using crowd control may trigger repel which can kill anyone mistakenly hitting the wrong tentacles.
• Combat Tentacles: Double Subverted. Because Maruki was using the Palace's tentacles to protect himself and restrain people, in combat Azathoth's tentacles seem like they will be used for offensive purposes, but instead they are all just there to support Azathoth's main body. Azathoth's Piercing Strike attack has it use the tentacles to attack if it must, though.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist:
  • Like Yaldabaoth, Azathoth and Adam Kadmon are this to Izanami, the Non-Human Greater-Scope Villain of Persona 4.
    • Both have the goal of granting humanity’s wishes in hopes of making them happier, either through turning them into shadows or by achieving all their goals, though Izanami did it because Adachi's actions convinced her that is what humanity wanted since they paid the most attention to his murders, and Azathoth did it because it's what his master Maruki wanted, though Maruki came to that conclusion also due to the actions of a murderer. Izanami in Persona 4: The Animation even flat out puts Yu Narukami in a Lotus-Eater Machine, while Azathoth's Lotus-Eater Machine affects everyone except Joker.
    • Izanami is the overall mastermind of the plot from the beginning and empowered all the human antagonists to do as they want and she would plan based on what they did, while Azathoth and Adam Kadmon only truly awaken in the endgame of Royal and serve as Maruki's top muscle, putting the human in charge of the God-like non-human being.
    • Izanami transforming into Izanami-no-Okami turns her from a humanoid goddess into an Eldritch Abomination, while Azathoth transforming into Adam Kadmon turns him from an Eldritch Abomination into a humanoid robotic god.
  • He is also one to Yaldabaoth himself, since Royal is an Updated Re-release of the original Persona 5 and had several years of development after its original release. While Maruki was designed to contrast Shido, Azathoth and Adam Kadmon end up contrasting Yaldabaoth.
    • Both are in control of Mementos and it is shown by running long tubes through it. Red for Yaldabaoth and Blue for Azathoth. They also fight with Cognizant Limbs in their boss fights.
    • Yaldabaoth is highly involved in the story and manipulates everything from behind the scenes. He attempts to take control of the world at the end once the pieces are set up as he likes. Azathoth does not awaken until near the end of the game but when awoken he immediately puts the Lotus-Eater Machine into place at Maruki's direction with no plotting whatsoever.
    • Yaldabaoth is The Man Behind the Man to Shido and Akechi, manipulating the public to help the former and awakening the Personas of the latter, while Azathoth and Adam Kadmon are a loyal Dragon-in-Chief to Maruki. This is essentially an inversion of the standard relationship between a Non-Human and Human antagonist in the game (and most of the series).
    • Yaldabaoth is a Treasure that represents the will of most of humanity, while Azathoth and Adam Kadmon are Personas (though Adam Kadmon is fused with and empowered by a Treasure) that represent the unbreakable will of one man.
    • Both are ultimately defeated by Joker shooting them in the face, but it plays out very differently. Yaldabaoth is defeated by Satanael, who was summoned by people believing in the Phantom Thieves over Yaldabaoth, while Adam Kadmon is defeated by the Phantom Thieves working together and exploiting the weakness of his Full Force attack without the help of the people and Joker shooting Maruki's mask through Adam Kadmon to unsummon him.
• Controllable Helplessness: Adam Kadmon's final phase is not beatable by fighting, but is still presented as a proper boss fight, having multiple targets and even taking more than Scratch Damage while it's winding up for an attack (though eagle-eyed players will notice that its health bar doesn't go down).^HoweverTaking a close look at the game files reveals that Adam Kadmon's three nodes each have 65,535 HP, which the player simply cannot deplete within three turns without cheating.
• Deal with the Devil: The nature of Azathoth and Maruki's relationship is akin to this trope, in contrast to the other Persona users in this game, where the Persona is mostly treated as a tool and a means for teenagers to gain cool powers.
  • With Rumi as an Empty Shell after the murder of her parents, and news of the murderer's capture failing to soothe her at all, she begs just to forget about the incident. Maruki ponders it's possible while Azathoth tries to reach out to him. Azathoth promises he can do it and Maruki accepts, which causes Rumi to forget her parents but also her relationship with him. For Maruki, by accepting Azathoth's great power, Maruki gained the ability to reach for his life goal of bringing happiness to everyone, but at great personal cost to his own joy.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: In his second phase, Azathoth has a telegraphed single-target attack called "Piercing Strike" that does this by dealing many instances of Almighty damage, which is almost guaranteed to deal lethal damage on weaker party members. To stop the skill from being too unfair, it cannot target Joker.
• Dig Attack: How Piercing Strike works. All of Azathoth's extra tentacles behind him retract, Futaba senses who is being targeted, then next turn, they erupt from the ground and each strikes at the target from below.
• Dragon-in-Chief: As with any Persona, he is the real threat in combat and not his master. Maruki's vast new powers from Mementos are channeled through his Persona, which though an extension of himself, is also it's own being.
  • Unlike most Personas, Azathoth and Adam Kadmon demonstrate some basic forms of independence. They sometimes make decisions without Maruki giving the specific order, but they always do something he subconsciously wanted. An example would be Azathoth actualizing Sumire to think she is Kasumi because Maruki wanted to grant that wish somehow. Another example is when Adam Kadmon reached out to Maruki to carry him (to be held safely inside Adam Kadmon) without Maruki ever directing Adam Kadmon to do so.
  • In gameplay, Azathoth does all of the attacking in the True Final Boss fight and Maruki only regenerates the tentacles. If Azathoth is knocked out of the fight, Maruki stops fighting back.
  • In the Post-Final Boss Adam Kadmon phase, when he first appears, he is loyal and subservient to Maruki's direction, but takes the lead in combat when Maruki struggles against the Phantom Thieves still, with Maruki even surrendering direct control of his body to Adam Kadmon.
• Dumb Muscle: Adam Kadmon is this compared to Azathoth in terms of battle tactics. Though far stronger, he lacks Azathoth's strategic setup, where the tentacles protect Maruki (his weak spot) and keeps him healed. Instead Adam Kadmon makes no effort to protect Maruki in the first phase, and constantly uses an attack that leaves himself and Maruki vulnerable in the second phase. This is ironic, given the intelligence levels of their mythological original selves.
• Eldritch Abomination: Evoked with Azathoth, who can summon legions of undulating tentacles, take control of other Persona users, rewrite people's minds, and even warp reality itself. Subverted with Adam Kadmon, however, who takes on the form of a giant human and uses much more conventional attacks.
• Evil Counterpart: Though "evil" is a strong word, the trope still applies towards Arsène. Arsène represents Joker's rebellion against societal injustice while Azathoth and Adam Kadmon represent Maruki's rebellion against the cruel nature of reality in general. Arsène also has a healthy relationship with Joker, reminding him of The Power of Friendship and the bonds he forged to save him from Shido and Akechi. Azathoth deprives Maruki of joy and his closest bonds while contributing significantly to his Big Bad Slippage by pushing him harder towards his ideals.
• Evil Is Visceral: Azathoth's Body Horror gives this impression, even if he's not truly evil.
• Finish Him!: At the end of the boss fight, Joker's teammates distract him by blocking his fist and Joker uses this chance to fling himself right on top of his head with his grappling hook, before shouting "Checkmate!" and shooting it in the head, knocking off Maruki's mask and killing it immediately.
• HP to One: Adam Kadmon's "Full Force", which he spends a turn charging, where it also leaves him vulnerable. Futaba's scans reveals that it's only when it charges that attack that its weak point, its head, can be hit.
• Humongous Mecha: Adam Kadmon is a gigantic, near-invincible robot. According to Morgana in the Thieves Den, it shouldn't actually be as big as it was in reality, and only because of the dream world did Maruki's Persona become as big as it did, similar to Satanael's appearance during the final battle against Yaldabaoth.
• Irony: Despite the mighty appearance of Adam Kadmon after beating Azathoth, he's a Zero-Effort Boss and can be spammed with little effort, even with the Almighty attacks it throws. Then as Berserk Adam Kadmon, it's a straight up Cutscene Boss, with absolutely zero effort required.
• Kaiju: Adam Kadmon is a hundred-meter-tall golden robot Persona, and his true awakening cutscene shows him rising amidst buildings and construction cranes, accompanied by a distorted electronic noise that sounds like a roar.
• Light Is Not Good: Adam Kadmon is the ultimate representation of humanity's light and wisdom, and seeks to trap all of humanity in a dream world, which will cause Modern Stasis.
• Meta Twist: Maruki's Persona is subject to a few of these.
  • Maruki starts out as a Call-Back to the Big Bad of Persona, Takahisa Kandori, a human science researcher with a Lovecraftian Persona that ascends to godhood. Kandori's Persona, Nyarlathotep, eventually took control of him as his power kept growing, transforming him into an inhuman abomination against his will. This leads the player to think something similar will happen to Maruki. Instead, both Azathoth and Adam Kadmon remain completely loyal to Maruki. Maruki willingly fuses with Adam Kadmon instead of forcibly like Kandori and instead of losing control he willingly gives it up to Adam Kadmon, which emphasizes that there is no betrayal whatsoever.
  • Unlike most previous Eldritch Abomination villains in the series, neither Azathoth nor Adam Kadmon have a I Am Not Left-Handed moment. Both were fighting at their full power and were defeated either directly with Azathoth or by exploiting their weakness with Adam Kadmon. This is unlike Yaldabaoth, Izanami, or Nyx, who all could have easily beaten the party whenever they wanted and the Boss Battle was more for their amusement. The heroes in those previous cases had to awaken a hidden power or Persona in order to defeat them. In the case of Maruki, he is the one that awakens the hidden power to attempt to defeat you.
• No-Sell: Sort of. During his Azathoth form, if you do not destroy at least 1 tentacle, because of his persona trait it will take only Scratch Damage from anything... including Almighty Attacks. When it is Adam Kadmon fused with Maruki, it naturally does this. (Adam Kadmon will still allow the party to dish out decent damage on it every turn after it uses Attack Stance, although its HP bar is still un-depleteable.)
• One-Winged Angel: Unlike most versions of this trope in the series, Azathoth did not have the ability to transform before the fight started. Maruki had to strengthen his resolve to evolve Azathoth into Adam Kadmon after losing the first round to the Phantom Thieves.
• Post-Final Boss: While Azathoth is a proper boss that can knock you on your ass if you aren't careful, the two phases against Adam Kadmon are much more simple. In the phase where they fight separately, Adam Kadmon only has 3 almighty attacks, no real gimmicks, and only has about 3000 (of Maruki's) health to deplete. The final phase against Adam Kadmon can't actually be lost.
• Power Palms: Adam Kadmon's strongest attack in his first phase is called "Grand Palm", where he closes his palm at one of the party members and powerful energy smites them from above.
• Reality Warper: It has the ability to alter the very fabric of cognition itself and can do nearly anything when combined with Mementos. If it's destroyed, everything goes back to normal, however.
• Red Herring: The appearance of Byakhee and Hastur in Maruki's Palace should ring any red alarms that Nyarlathotep or his associates would be behind it. It becomes even more suspicious when Azathoth is revealed as Maruki's initial Persona, but it turns out the plot of the Third Semester has nothing to do with Nyarlathotep.
• Rule of Symbolism: Azathoth's first form looks like the Staff of Hermes, a symbol often confused with the Rod of Asclepius as the symbol of medicine. Fitting for a doctor who has taken the old doctor oath "First, do no harm" too damn far to use the incorrect symbol.
• Signature Move: He has several unique moves but some that stand out are Tyrant Chaos as Azathoth and Full Force as Adam Kadmon, which are both telegraphed party-hitting almighty attacks.
  • In a practical battle sense, Azathoth also has Eternal Radiance, a bless spell with a high chance to dizzy all enemies, which Azathoth loves to spam for technical damage. Facing this skill unprepared can be devastating.
• Sizeshifter: In the flashback on the Day of Reckoning, Azathoth is the size of a normal Persona, only slightly larger than an average human and able to fit in the room where Maruki was meeting his former professor. On the Day of Fates, Azathoth is several times larger than before. Adam Kadmon is the size of a skyscraper. The Thieves Den has Morgana explain that being in Maruki's dream world is the reason for the massive size, much like Satanael on the Day of Reckoning coming from the people believing in the Phantom Thieves.
• Superpower Lottery: He is arguably the most powerful Persona that anyone has awakened. A combination of Maruki's own good heart, his understanding of cognition and his desire to rebel against the cruelty of reality led to getting Maruki awakening the Persona's unique capability of "Actualization" and manipulate cognition. Yaldabaoth's endgame plan to fuse Mementos with reality just causes Maruki to awaken his Persona albeit in an unnatural way. When the Thieves unintendedly make Maruki in charge of Mementos, he and Azathoth manifest the Palace in the real world and his power grows drastically.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Adam Kadmon bears more than a passing resemblance to (ironically enough) Yaldabaoth from Shin Megami Tensei NINE. Interestingly, Adam Kadmon himself DOES appear in NINE in its first (and till Persona 5 Royal, only) appearance in the franchise, but he's a random encounter in the final dungeon rather than a boss fight.
• Total Party Kill: Azathoth will begin to throw out extremely strong Megidolaons if he cannot be defeated in 40 turns. These Megidolaons do massive damage and will one-shot the party.
• This Cannot Be!: Adam Kadmon's reaction to the Phantom Thieves blocking his Full Force attack.
  Adam Kadmon: What?! Impossible!
• Trick Boss: Adam Kadmon cannot be defeated as nothing even scratches it. The party must stall him until Futaba discovers its weakness.
• True Final Boss: Azathoth is the last significant boss fight of the Royal exclusive Third Semester arc, not counting Adam Kadmon. This is a role that he shares with Maruki. He is the real threat in the battle and the fight from a gameplay perspective is more with him than with Maruki.
• Undying Loyalty: Azathoth is unyieldingly loyal to Maruki and wishes to grant his other self's wish, from the moment he purged Rumi of her trauma, up until his full manifestation when Yaldabaoth begins distorting reality, though unsurprisingly, given it's Maruki's Persona after all. It dabbles into a toxic relationship as Azathoth urges him to push forward with his ideals no matter what, but it remains loyal to him as everything falls apart and his plans end. Maruki shares the same sentiment as he gives all of himself to his Persona, making Adam Kadmon the dominant force.
  Adam Kadmon: I can't lose! I'm fighting for your sakes as well!
• Victimized Bystander: Azathoth's awakening and the Third Semester events are merely unintended consequences for Yaldabaoth's domination plan, where the fusion of the real world with the Metaverse allowed Azathoth to make direct contact with Maruki.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Just like Maruki, it also seeks to trap humanity in a dream world to bring happiness to all, seeking to defy the cruel reality that lead into his being.
• The Worm That Walks: Both forms of this Persona are just tentacles controlling different avatars. Azathoth is just the tentacles propping up a metal cross, while Adam Kadmon is a humanoid shell filled with nothing but tentacles.
• Zero-Effort Boss: While Azathoth is definitely not of this trope, Adam Kadmon's second phase will make sure that no side can actually kill one or the other; even if he unleashes a would-be lethal attack, your party members will always endure it at 1 HP (or more, if they have guarded themselves).

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"If you find yourself struggling in life, you can start over, like me. Remember that."

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