YMMV / Steal the Truth, Reach Out For Your Heart

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Both in-universe and out: why does Nanako dislike Makoto so intensely? Does she resent Miss Prez for interfering in Phantom Thief business and strong-arming herself onto the team? Is she envious of Makoto's tactical prowess and afraid it'll make Nanako's own skills redundant? Is she afraid Makoto is a rival for Ren's affections? Even Nanako herself can't tell. Nanako's conversation with Ryuji suggests the antipathy might stem from a deeper source. As Ryuji points out, Nanako and Makoto have a lot in common: both the daughters of police officers, both lost their mothers at an early age, both have a strong sense of justice and a tendency to act rashly, and both are currently being cared for by a silver-haired older sibling. But that's where the similarities end. While Nanako has been surrounded by love and affection since she was seven years old, Makoto has no-one except Sae, who (as in canon) openly resents having to be her guardian. It forces Nanako to confront something she's never thought about: that her boundless empathy is not an innate superpower, but a result of her support system. If she didn't have a dad, a stepmom, and eight badass siblings willing to drop everything for her, she might well have turned out just as anxious, abrasive, and closed-off as Makoto. That's hard for anyone to square up to while they're still maturing.
  • Who was really responsible for Yu and Naoto's broken engagement? They both describe it as a perfectly mutual thing and still care for each other, but there's also a lot of awkwardness remaining. Were they really incompatible, as Yu claims, or were they just still too immature to get it right?
  • How does Ren really feel about Nanako? There's no way he could miss the obvious hints she's putting out, and as of chapter 364 they've gotten a Relationship Upgrade, but he still seems nervous about being with her for some reason he hasn't disclosed yet. Compounding the ambiguity, we've hardly gotten any scenes from his perspective. And there are still four ranks left in his social link...
• Arc Fatigue: With the fic's chapter count and how short those chapters can be, it can take well over a hundred chapters for the fic to cover each Palace. This can make it difficult for new readers to catch up.
• Archive Panic: Downplayed. While it has many chapters, they're short enough that it's not too daunting of a task.
• Broken Base: There's some disagreement among readers as to whether Nanako's actions to end the Kaneshiro arc were justified. On the one hand, her plan to break Kaneshiro's spirit by reminding him of the love he sacrificed to reach his position works perfectly, and her being Easily Forgiven by Ann directly leads to victory in the final battle. On the other, unlike Makoto's plan to bomb Compyshiro's mainframe, there was no need to hide this one from the team, and concealing it nearly derailed everything. On the one hand, Nanako gambled with Chie and Akihiko's careers on a hunch, but on the other, Makoto was the only reason their jobs were on the line in the first place. The author has promised that the full consequences of this decision have yet to be felt.
• Fridge Horror: Nanako's plan in Chapter 360 involves sending a yakuza boss to a day-care to face his ex-girlfriend and her daughter with the intent of emotionally destabilizing him. It's noted that he came to the meeting packing an automatic pistol, and if he hadn't reacted in the way she wanted him to it could easily have been a recipe for horrific disaster.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The story concept of Nanako being in the same age as the Phantom Thieves becomes this in light of the release of the 2015 Beta build of Persona 5, where it's revealed that there was a model of a grown up Nanako in the earlier concepts for Persona 5 among some of other unused ideas in regards to the original plans for Persona 5. Grown up Nanako came close to being real and would have interacted with the Phantom Thieves.
• Jerkass Woobie: Kaneshiro. He's as much of a money-grubbing asshole as ever, but it's hard not to weep for him as he stands in the road thinking that Hanabi's child should have his nose.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Nanako, of course, following time-honored Wild Card tradition.
  • Unbelievably, Yosuke. Nanako and Ann are determined to find him a girlfriend, and have set him up with Mika and Takemi so far; most readers seem to ship him with Kawakami, but there are of course all the lingering arguments for Yu and Chie, despite both having designated love interests already in this fic.
  • In-Universe, Yu frequently gets shipped with the idols he writes articles about. He plays this up to get better reception.
• Unexpected Character: The story launched as a crossover fic between Persona 4 and Persona 5, so it was a shock when Akihiko Sanada showed up as a cop in Tokyo. More characters from 3 have been brought in since then.