Persona series

This is a very minor thing but I saw that Tatsuya got on an old Persona popularity poll (well below P3 and 4 cast, naturally) and it was specifically noted to be him in Innocent Sin.

I started thinking about his character in the game and how some of it is determined by us the players. Naturally this meant considering the choices you can make in the game, including the choices that aren't really about you. The one that immediately came to mind was Yukino. I still defend my choice to let her mourn but the point is, it's your choice. Tatsuya decides if Yukino comes or stays.

Yet, unlike the P3, 4 or 5 MC's, no one ever really elected Tatsuya Leader. He was often the leader in the Masquerade flashbacks but he's calling the shots in the game long before anyone really remembers that. Plus even though he's always the leader in the flashbacks we see, we are at least told that they constantly switched who was in charge.

But yeah, I was just musing on how Tatsuya isn't really in charge like Minato, Yu or Joker were. The P1 MC, at least from Ellen's dialogue about him, seemed like he was also the official leader or center of the group.

edited 21st Oct '17 7:13:07 PM by Nikkolas

The parties in the earlier games felt more equal, at least to me. Everyone has the Wild Card more or less, everyone can enter the Velvet Room, and no one feels especially more important than anyone else unlike in 3 - 5. Maki in the 1st one is more integral to the plot than Earring Boy the MC is, for example.

Maybe that's another part of why the newer ones are more popular.

Because it's... not true? Of the entire P3 party, I'm not sure there's a single member who wouldn't be around if not for the main character. Maybe Aigis? The sempai trio and Yukari are already involved when the game starts. Junpei joins because Akihiko finds and recruits him. Ken joins because of his history with Shinji. Fuuka and Koromaru join because they get involved with the Tartarus stuff by happenstance. Aigis' main emotional connection is with the MC, but she is a Kirijo group creation, so it's possible she may have gotten involved with things even without that.

Compare P4 and P5, where the party only exists because the protagonist is a Magnetic Hero who gets singled out by the Powers That Be and given special abilities.

Sure, but that's literally one exception to the general rule. Chie and Yukiko are close childhood friends, true. Chie and Yosuke were classmates, but Yosuke only moved into town the year before, so it's not like they've been best friends for ages. Yukiko's family did business with Kanji's family, so she knows of him, but not much beyond that. Teddie, Rise, and Naoto all have no connection to anyone else prior to the events of the game.

P5 is even worse about it. Two of the characters knew each other in middle school but weren't particular friends even then and have since fallen out of touch anyway. Literally no one else has any prior connection.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Really the P3 MC was just there, silent off to the side not saying a word. He wasn’t holding anything together at all, the goal is the only reason everyone except P 3 P Junpei was there at all. The goal was completed, everyone finished their year and bam everyone moved out even those who hadn’t graduated.

Aigis was the only one who really got super attached to the MC and was going to just shut herself down before The Answer happened.

edited 21st Oct '17 10:53:53 PM by Memers

I wouldn't go that far, either. The MC was hugely important to the party, as evidenced by The Answer. He's just not the sole reason the group exists, like P4 and P5.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

And I wasn't saying he was the source of everything, just that he was what connected these disparate people. As in, he's the friend of every one of them more than they are friends with each other.

You got Mitsuru and Akhiko here.

And Yukari and Junpei here.

And Ken and Koro-chan here.

And Aigis here.

The only link between them all is the MC. Every last one of them loves you, as evidenced by their love literally letting you beat Death or something and how super excited they all are when they remember you at the end.

Then they find your corpse and presumably the mood changes considerably from how happy everything was when the game ended.

I wouldn’t say P4 or P5’s groups exist just for the MC either. They may have met cause of a handshake and an app true but the first and second years formed a group without the MC in P4 for example. Yosuke and Chie were already friends and Chie and Yukiko were BF Fs and on the first year side Rise, Kanji and Naoto also are in the same class and according to some of Rise’s lines really becoming friends with some really weird class antics.

P5 it’s only the extremely out of place Yusuke that’s the real problem, even the late comer Haru was brought in by Morgana.

edited 21st Oct '17 11:11:35 PM by Memers

And I'm saying that this is untrue. As I pointed out above, no one (except arguably Aigis) is there because of a connection with the MC. They all have their own circumstances that led to them getting involved and their own reason for joining SEES. If the MC didn't exist, then all of them (again, with the possible exception of Aigis) would most likely have joined the group anyway.

I don't agree with that, either. The sempai trio's relationship with each other (and in Mitsuru's case, also Yukari) is closer than their relationship with the MC. Ken's closest connection is with Shinji. Fuuka and Koromaru are connected more to the group collectively than any one member individually. Junpei and Yukari are both arguable (they may be closest to the MC, or Junpei's closest connection may be Yukari and Yukari's may be Mitsuru). The only one who's closest connection is unambiguously the MC is Aigis.

Mitsuru is connected to Yukari because the latter blames the former('s grandfather) for the death of her own father. Akihiko is a Big Brother Mentor to Junpei (he's the one who recruits Junpei in the first place, he's the one who worries about Junpei's grades, etc). Ken's big connection is to Shinji (who is also connected to Mitsuru and especially Akihiko). Koromaru and Fuuka are both fairly independent, but they're friends with everyone more or less equally, not solely to the MC above and before everyone else. Aigis's main connection is the MC, but she's also connected to Mitsuru via the Kirijo Group.

I would. In both games, the MC has one friend that they make early on (Yosuke/Ryuji), who then ends up using the TV/app to travel to the other side with them, where they meet someone (Teddie/Morgana) who knows something but not everything about that world, and from then on every other character that joins does so due to a dungeon that revolves around them specifically.

In other words, in both P4 and P5, every single party member joins because the MC personally recruits them. (Minor exceptions in P5: Haru is recruited by Morgana first, but only properly joins the party once Joker and the rest of the party get involved in her father's Palace; Akechi isn't recruited, but rather blackmails his way into joining, but still does so primarily because of Joker.) In P3, the MC is only responsible for one character (Aigis) joining, and she may have been recruited by Mitsuru if she hadn't been by the MC.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

To further the discussion, Yu and Joker are both the leaders of their respective team but S.E.E.S doesn't have a real leader to it. The MC gets in charge of the field team because they didn't have any other choices at the time and sticks with it due to his skill at it, but he still has to get Ahikiko or Mitsuri's permission to go to Tartarus, and all the big decisions are handled by the chairman in the first half of the game and by the entire group for the second half. I feel that helps the feeling that the MC isn't the only one everybody is connected to.

So here's something I don't think I talked about with anyone here but i wrote about on Reddit.

"So I just finished P5 and I've been engaged in a lot of arguments about it. On another site we had a little breakdown of which Persona game did best in what area. YMMV and all that but there is one area where I don't think P 4 G had ANY competition.

That's home. You know, that place you live. It's kind of important. I remember being constantly frustrated at the total nothing that goes in in the P3 Dorm. Even when characters are in their room you can't have a special scene with them. Most of their dialogue when you find them in the lounge is unchanging, uninteresting and Mitsuru, my favorite, wasted a ton of time giving me basic tutorial advice. Also the dorm theme song is horrifically bad. (until the last month when it becomes the best)

In P5, you literally live in an attic. Not even a house attic, the attic of a store. Even when Sojiro warms up to you he still leaves you at night.

P4 meanwhile has "Signs of Love." That should win it all on its own but then of course there's also Nanako and Dojima. Their relationship is a key part of the game from start to finish with you looking out for the lonely Nanako and helping out the stressed Dojima. P4 gets complaints about "everything being in Social Links" but the whole relationship between Dojima, Nanako and you is very prominent in the main plot. When you add on the S Links, it just becomes even more perfect.

P4 actually feels like a home with a family. A hard-working father who needs help opening up and a sweet as sugar little sister who just needs someone to be there for her.

This is just one area P4 reigns supreme in my view."

What do you guys think? What's your favorite home between the Iwatodai Dorm, Dojima Residence and Cafe Leblanc?

I can't rate one homebase over the other. Each residency serves a different tonal and narrative purpose relative to each game's themes.

Yeah, they feel different because they are different. The Dojima residence is an actual family home — maybe not a perfect fairy tale one, but it's still more than just a place to sleep at night. Persona 3's is a dorm — functional, but impersonal. There's not a whole lot of soul to it because it's not really yours, it's just temporary (though as I've said before, I do appreciate it as someplace where you can see the rest of the party on a daily basis in a way that actually makes them seem like they're living independent lives, rather than just waiting around for you to interact with them). The P5 attic isn't even a bedroom, it's a storage space — you have to put some hard work into even making it livable in the first place, much less comfortable. It's very much a place where you get stuck because no one really cares about you — it's up to you to make the best of it, which is why it's neat that you can slowly improve it over the course of the game (adding a TV and a retro game console, an old laptop that you repaired yourself, mementos from hanging out with your friends, etc).

I think that narratively speaking, your P5 room has the most personality. It does the best job of reflecting the story and your character growth throughout the game. That said, I still really like P3's dorms for the "SEES HQ" feel it has. I'd be neat if they could have both in the next game — a bedroom that you can customize and slowly make your own, but a dedicated "home base" where you can see the party interacting as a group, not just in combat or during meetings, but on a day-to-day basis. Maybe you take over a club room at school, or something like that. The trick would be making it something you see every day by default, like how you had to go home to the dorm at the end of every day in P3. Traditionally Persona games let you start your daily free time in your classroom, but maybe you could start in the party base instead? Though that'd be a little weird if you "started" somewhere else and then had to go back to school if you wanted to do anything on campus that day.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I was about to say that. P3 has you in a dorm and P4 has you as a guest in a home. P5 gives you your space that you personally upgrade and improve.

I think all the customization that the P4 room got was models and Jack Frost Dolls.

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Has anyone who translated Persona ever spoken about the decision to keep the honorifics in P3 and up? I'm not saying they're wrong or questioning their judgment, I's just very curious to me. I'm playing another game set in Japan and it has Japanese voices but it's translated for me to read in English. I can hear them using the honorifics but the written translation doesn't include them. The game I'm playing is Hakuoki, a VN set in Edo Japan so, if anything, I almost feel like honorifics would fit in pretty well. But of all the Japanese media I consume, only Persona elects to keep them and I am jus twondering if anyone knows why?

Also I never had a clue what Junpei's "Yuka-tan" meant, I don't even think that is an honorific maybe?

Yes, -tan is a kind of honorific, sort of an even cutesier version of -chan.

It’s something only in the English version, in the Japanese version it’s ‘Yukaricchi’. It implies the same thing as tan though and sounds better in English.

And any game ’’set’’ in Japan should use em, Japanese social dynamics require them and not putting them just loses the entire thing.

edited 26th Oct '17 5:06:47 AM by Memers

At least in 3, I remember them mainly using -san, even though there are definitely cases where another honorific is used in original. Feels like they tried but kinda halfassed it. There is also adressing everyone by first name, but I can understand this one.

Also, Risette is Risechi and Chidorita is Chidorin in Japanese.

I thought Risette was Rise's actual name and that Rise was her nickname though.

No, Rise is a real Japanese name. Risette is not, it's just a cute stage name.

imo Japanese honorifics in a work translated to English is dumb. There is extremely little that can't be recreated using English equivalents to convey similar meaning. It just makes the translators look like they're trying too hard to appeal to weeaboos.

Keep the Japanese names, cultures, conventions, and everything else, but "master" works just as well as "sama", "Mr." as well as "san", and so on. You could say nuance is lost by dropping them but nuance is inherently lost by virtue of the work being translated at all.

I haven’t really been bothered by the honorifics in 3 and 4, if anything it feels like it fits the setting than if they were missing.

I don't mind the presence of honorifics in 3, 4, or even 5.

I will confess that I've used honorifics in a fanfic (Danganronpa V3, not Persona) if only because that's what everyone else was using in their fics (the English dub doesn't, though, but then again, most of the fics for the game were written before it came out in the West).

As for using them in official localizations...well, I could go either way.

Oh God! Natural light!

I found that the English cast made it sound natural enough.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

I'm currently doing Mitsuo's dungeon in Persona 4. I decided to go home when I got to the 4th floor. I'm planning on going to the rest of the floors later. Is the boss in this dungeon particularly hard?