Characters / Persona 5: Targets

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

The antagonists of Persona 5.

Be aware that there will be spoilers for the game, marked and unmarked.

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In general

• Alternate Identity Amnesia: A person's real-world self doesn't share memories with their Shadow, which is a good thing for the Thieves as it means nothing they do in the Metaverse risks exposing them. A Shadow is fully aware of their real-world self's memories.
• And That's Terrible: Whenever you catch a glimpse of a Target's depravity in full force, at least one of your party members will always comment on how horrible said target is and make it perfectly clear that their heart must be stolen, no matter what.
• Arc Villain:
  • Each of the Palace Rulers acts as the main threat for a portion of the game's story before vanishing altogether once the Thieves succeed in stealing their heart. The game even acknowledges their fleeting importance by referring to their respective storylines as the "[villain] arc". The sole exceptions are Futaba and Sae (who were never evil to begin with and have extra story relevance besides their palaces) and Shido (who acts as The Heavy throughout the game).
  • Certain Mementos targets act as the antagonists of specific Confidants and need to be defeated to complete them.
• The Atoner:
  • Played straight for minor targets. The more atrocious Mementos targets the Phantom Thieves change the hearts of do genuinely apologize and stop their misdeeds, and others turn from corrupt corporate executives into benevolent bosses or Abusive Parents into genuinely caring ones.
  • Subverted for most major targets, who were made into cowering empty shells of their former selves, devoid of any ambition and enjoying their captivity in Mementos' Depths.
• Barrier Maiden: For every Palace that the Phantom Thieves destroy, a door leading further into the Depths of Mementos opens up. Morgana theorizes that more of Mementos is explorable because it is the Palace of the general public, so their growing awareness of the Thieves grants them further access. Also in play for whichever Mementos Target blocks the way to the next Path.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: The Palaces exist inside the consciousness of distorted people. The Thieves are effectively going inside their brains to bring them down.
• Bring It: The Palace Rulers (with the exception of Shadow Futaba) react to their calling cards in this manner: the screen flickers, revealing the Target's true self, who taunts the Phantom Thieves to steal their treasure if they dare, before the Palace's security rating rockets up to 99% in the vanilla or 100% in Royal.
• Card-Carrying Villain: No matter how carefully the Targets hide their twisted nature in reality, their Shadows often present themselves as thoroughly unpleasant people with little shame or remorse for how they conduct themselves. Justified in that Shadows represent the impulses that everyone tries to hide.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: The Major Targets are a contrast to the Shadows in Persona 4. Rather than be the Shadows of the party members, they're instead the Shadows of those party members' major emotional roadblocks, with Kamoshida serving as one to both Ryuji and Ann. As such, the party members awaken their Persona and join the party before the bosses' defeat, not afterwards. It's worth noting that the exception to this just so happens to be the Navigator of the game, Futaba, much as the same way that Shadow Rise was the odd one out of the Party's Shadows.
• Deconstruction: Of the idea of Shadows in general. Shadows are physical manifestations of a person's repressed emotions and desires, with the protagonists of the games generally gaining their Personas by accepting theirs. But whereas the Shadows of the previous game were largely teenage desires and confusion, 5 displays that Shadows can also become the dark sides of some truly monstrous individuals.
• Defeat Means Playable: For a few Mementos Targets, defeating them bestows a key item that unlocks their corresponding Persona for fusion.
• Empty Shell: Morgana warns Ryuji and Joker that stealing desires equates to robbing people of the pillars that hold up their world. Without those desires, they could lose the will to live. This happens to all Palace Rulers the Phantom Thieves target, although rather than killing themselves, they are just reduced into weeping husks completely subservient to the masses. This is a part of Yaldabaoth's plan, seemingly as psychological warfare against the Phantom Thieves, as shown by how the people they target in Mementos actually become The Atoner instead.
• Evil Is Petty: All the Targets are unhealthily petty to absurd degrees, most of them doing a pretty bad job of hiding it in the real world. Think that Kamoshida's leaking of Joker's criminal record to all of Shujin was bad? He's not even the worst of the lot.
• Fate Worse than Death: Ann quotes this trope word-for-word when she explains why she didn't kill Kamoshida, and the same logic applies to all of the Targets. Killing them would be too easy because they wouldn't get the chance to repent for their crimes. The change of heart forces a Target to live the rest of their lives wallowing in guilt, knowing what horrible people they used to be.
• Females Are More Innocent: Zigzagged.
  • As noted on the main page, the two major female targets are nowhere near as twisted as the male targets:
    • Futaba in particular is a special case: you're stealing her heart not to reform her, but to prevent her from committing suicide.
    • Sae is notable for being the only Palace ruler who doesn't need her heart stolen to perform a Heel–Face Turn, instead pulling one of her own volition after undergoing some Character Development.
  • Downplayed for the women you target in Mementos. While there are truly wicked people among the women there, they are sharply outnumbered and are largely relegated to extortionists, Abusive Parents and overly obsessive Yanderes, as opposed to the men who can be serial killers, ex-mercenaries, manipulators of women or even at one case, an entertainment industry head who blatantly goes to bed with his idols like Kamoshida.
  • Inverted for the True Final Boss of Royal, Takuto Maruki, whose status as a target is merely a consequence of the main campaign, and whose actions and dialogue are anything but evil, just misguided.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief:
  • The first three Palace Rulers fit these archetypes in order, both their occupations and in gameplay.
    • Kamoshida is the Fighter, since he is an extremely tall athlete who intimidates and injures people in the real world. His Shadow uses mostly physical attacks or physical themed Almighty attacks.
    • Madarame is the Mage, as an elderly artist that is more intelligent and manipulative than Kamoshida and tries to take care of problems with legal threats and blacklisting. His Shadow fights mostly with elemental spells and a few debuffs also to target weaknesses.
    • Kaneshiro is the Thief, since he is a criminal extortionist that stays out of the public's sight, but robs anyone he gets any leverage over. His Shadow's fighting style in Royal (outside of piloting Piggytron) is to pay bodyguards to fight you while putting your party members to sleep and using gun attacks for technical damage.
  • The main human antagonists of Royal also fit the archetypes, both in the real world and how they are represented in the Metaverse.
    • Akechi is the Thief, being the primary hitman and spy for the Antisocial Force, who otherwise acts as a normal celebrity detective. Akechi operates from the shadows, his metaverse outfit wears a Black Mask not unlike a Phantom Thief and has Loki, the Norse trickster god himself as his Persona. His fighting style is aggressive, has a balance of magical and physical spells, and incorporates Kick Them While They Are Down mechanics if Loki gets upgraded to Hereward.
    • Shido is the Fighter, acting as a political strongman in the real world, and his first action in the story is attempting to overpower a woman for his sexual satisfaction. His Shadow takes the form of The Generalissimo that is also completely muscle-bound. His fighting style leans more towards physical attacks in his later phases, and even some of his magical abilities still involve him slamming his fist on the ground.
    • The final antagonist Maruki is the Mage, having a cerebral line of work as counselor and researcher. Maruki's appearance in battle is pretty close to a standard fantasy RPG representation of a Cleric, with a shawl and holy staff. His fighting style is built around a Power Nullifier, elemental spells, status effects, and even the physical spell looks magical. He also fights more exclusively with his Persona Azathoth that he effectively becomes a Support Party Member for it in gameplay, not being able to attack on his own if Azathoth is immobilized.
• Flat Character: Zig-Zagged. A lot of the Targets are so incredibly vile and needlessly cruel that there's an inherent Catharsis Factor to want them put down. However, several of the major Targets the Thieves gun for are varying degrees of Anti-Villain: namely Shadow Futaba, Okumura, Sae and Maruki. Royal introduces additional Mementos Targets that are more sympathetic than the norm, such as Ryoko Aino, a Crazy Cat Lady trying to save every cat she sees after she failed to protect her own.
• Foil: Almost all of them can be interpreted as representing the reversed form of the Arcana represented by the people they act as the Arc Villain to.
• Forced to Feel Empathy: By stealing the hearts of the targets, the Phantom Thieves makes them see all the harm they have caused. However, this ends up being the biggest detraction used against the thieves, as they get described as changing people against their will, even if the targets can be described as complete monsters.
• Freudian Excuse: Several of the Mementos Targets will reveal, after you defeat them, that they too were victimized by the system, and figured that if they couldn't beat the corrupt establishment, they might as well join it.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: While many of the targets have their personal tragedies, the Phantom Thieves point out that this doesn't justify what they put their victims through.
• A God Am I: Zigzagged depending on the target. While not all of them think this highly of themselves, some are convinced by the power and/or authority they have at their disposal that they can compare it to being godlike in some form or another.
• Gotta Catch Them All: In Royal, there are special items hidden in all of the Palaces except for the Mementos Depths, called Will Seeds, skulls that are attached to roots and are hidden away, with the last one guarded by a powerful Shadow. Collecting all three causes them to fuse and become a Crystal, which while useful, can also be traded with José for a Ring, which has even better spacial abilities.
  • Ring of Lust: Champion's Cup; summons Kamoshida's Trophy to restore a medium amount of HP and increases Attack for one ally for 3 turns.
  • Ring of Vanity: Bleeding Dry Brush; an inverse of Madarame's Artist's Grace, seven brush strokes form a barrier that can absorb any one attack except Almighty.
  • Ring of Gluttony: Vault Guardian; summons golden vaults to increases Defense for all allies for 3 turns.
  • Ring of Wrath: Wings of Wisdom; summons the wings of The Sphinx to cure all non-special ailments for all allies.
  • Ring of Greed: President's Insight; summons the Corporobos to multiply one ally's next magical attack damage by 2.5.
  • Ring of Envy: Gambler's Foresight; increases Agility for all allies for 3 turns.
  • Ring of Pride: Tyrant's Will; summons Beast of Human Sacrifice's head to multiply one ally's next Physical or Gun attack damage by 2.5.
  • Ring of Sorrow: Guiding Tendril; summons Azathoth's tentacles to down all foes. Only usable during preemptive attack.
• Hate Sink: Justified in the case of the Shadows themselves—since Shadows are the darkest parts of humanity given life, it's expected that the Targets' Shadows would be unashamedly evil (or in the case of the Mementos Targets, generally unpleasant). However, the story goes out of its way to present a lot of the Targets in the real world (especially Shido) as thoroughly reprehensible people as well, allowing the player to feel less guilt when it comes to stealing their heart away.
• Heel–Face Brainwashing: Stealing their Treasures removes their distorted desires and gives them an intense desire to atone for their sins.
• Heel Realization: The response of most Targets to having their Treasure stolen is a sudden feeling of remorse and actively attempting to repent for their crimes. The only exception is Shido, who prefers to commit suicide rather than be changed... though even then, after failing, he too tries to repent for his actions.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Many of them justify their actions this way due to demanding expectations from society as well as their own insecurities.
• It's All About Me: Most of the Targets are generally selfish people who are willing to do anything to fulfill their own desires, from harming their own family members to committing murder.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Several of the major targets like Kamoshida, Madarame and Shido have been getting away with their crimes for years before the events of the game. Needless to say, the Thieves are all too happy to put an end to that and finally make them pay for all they've done.
• Kick the Dog: All of them have their moments of doing evil things for the sake of sadism.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Each of the main Targets gets a dose of it, most often during their boss fight:
  • Kamoshida used his past glories as an excuse to abuse the students under his care. He ends up stripped of the representations of these trophies over the course of his Shadow's boss fight, leaving him as the pathetic monster he is deep down. And after the boss fight, he's cornered on a balcony by a very pissed off Ann, who takes the chance to point out that what he's feeling is probably how Shiho felt when she jumped off the school's roof during her suicide attempt.
  • Madarame stole the artwork his students created to pass it off as his own. During the fight against his Shadow, it covers party members in ink in order to weaken them and make them vulnerable to his attacks. If the fight goes on long enough, you get the opportunity to steal his own trick and use it against him. In Royal, he summons Ersatz copies of himself to attack in numbers, only to have them removed quickly and the more Ersatz he summons, the weaker they become.
  • Kaneshiro lured in students with the promise of a "part-time job" in order to Blackmail them. He's lured in by the Thieves giving up a valuable item in order to distract him from the fight, letting the Thieves wail on him without worry. In Royal, he goes to the Piggytron first, then fights the party on foot summoning a pair of incredibly tough bodyguards that he hired with money and boasts on their impregnability, only to have a simple Dormina disable them and the party's attacks severing them. The guards are also literal money-grubbing flies that are only there for the money, so once he wastes all of his money as a last ditch attempt to severely damage the Thieves, he will have no money to hire the guards, so they flee and leave him vulnerable to anything that the Phantom Thieves might throw at him.
  • The Sphinx, the representation of Futaba's guilt over her mother's death, is brought down when Futaba decides to stop feeling guilty and realizes that her mother loved her, and the "rotten adults" who accused Futaba of her mother's murder are the ones to blame.
  • Okumura espoused betrayal as necessary in order to get ahead in the world and relied on always having disposable workers. He eventually runs out of robots to throw at the Thieves during his boss fight and in Royal, throws his daughter as a suicide bomb against the Phantom Thieves for nothing, eventually bared on the battlefield and defeated in a single hit. He is ultimately betrayed not only by his own daughter, but by the very conspiracy he embraced for power, who set him up to die so that they can frame the Phantom Thieves. In Royal, he also fakes difficulty by retreating and redeploying his robots and using Rakukaja on his stronger ones to make sure he gets his way, only for a keen-eyed player to find out that the robots stopped resisting Gun and are all vulnerable to a variety of status conditions unlike in Vanilla and thus can be hit incredibly hard with Technical Gun attacks using this way just like Kaneshiro's hired bodyguards and the Rakukaja lifted by a simple Dekaja, allowing the party's offenses to actually go through.
  • Sae Niijima spends the entirety of her Palace claiming that she'd fight "fair and square", only to keep rigging games in her favor. She's forced into an actual fair fight after being exposed one too many times, and ultimately loses.
  • Black Mask AKA Goro Akechi, the personal assassin of the Big Bad and a traitor to basically everyone he knows, seemingly dies saving the Thieves when Shido's cognition of him turns on him for his failure and reveals that he was always meant to be disposed of in the end just like Goro did for everyone else who could potentially stand in Shido's way. Furthermore, having done everything he did in order to receive affirmation and praise, his ultimate deed of glory takes place where nobody could see it, under circumstances that mean nobody besides the other Thieves will ever know that in the end he was truly a hero.
  • Samael AKA Masayoshi Shido, a Corrupt Politician who crushed the lives of many innocents for reasons ranging from power to pettiness, is ultimately brought down by the Phantom Thieves, many of whom have lives that he tried to ruin. It was his attempts to ruin their lives that bought the Thieves' attention to The Conspiracy in the first place. Furthermore, in a display of Irony, despite how he goes out of the way to catch the Phantom Thieves, he never knew that they got his heart changed and they were formed by the very people he crushed, and he doesn't even know that the kid he put on probation and forgot in March was leading them. In Royal, he also attempts to challenge Joker one on one when his HP is low enough, although he loses Tyrant's Wave and physical attacks completely, and is thus outmatched by Joker's wild card. Furthermore, a resourceful player can force him to kill himself by spamming Magic Oinments on their Joker, since he no longer uses anything but Magic once he starts fighting Joker one-on-one.
  • The Holy Grail. A malevolent god who claimed to represent the voice of the masses, is defeated when the masses ultimately support the Phantom Thieves, allowing Joker to summon Satanael.
  • Takuto Maruki in Royal during the Third Term. A loyal confidant of the Phantom Thieves who fortifies their mentality, collapses to a series of career and love-based issues and is eventually corrupted by Yaldabaoth, going into a fit and attempting to jump off the debris of his Palace only to be saved by Joker and Morgana in his newfound helicopter form. One of the basis of his research, Sumire, also becomes one of the greatest counters against his Azathoth form, being immune to his nuke and bless attacks that he spams frequently, assuming that Cendrillon has transmogrified into Ella.
• Laughably Evil: A few of the early Palace rulers (namely Kaneshiro, though Madarame and Kamoshida have some small shades of this as well) are rather amusing at points; while they still serve as very real and dangerous threats to both society and the Phantom Thieves themselves, their Shadow Selves expose them as petty, over-the-top, pathetic losers who have unbelievably fragile egos and fall back on excuse after excuse as to why they're as evil as they are. Otherwise, most of the Palace rulers are portrayed very seriously, especially the ones encountered near the end of the game.
• Load-Bearing Boss: A Palace disappears once its Treasure is stolen, so after defeating a boss, the Thieves have to scramble for the exit.
• MacGuffin: Each Target has a Treasure that the Thieves need to steal in order to change their hearts.
• Metaphorically True: The Targets aren't exactly wrong in most of their statements.
  • Kamoshida was in fact, once a famous volleyball athlete, and he was truly in fear of losing his reputation. He just copes with it by committing atrocities around Shujin.
  • Madarame wasn't exactly a terrible artist and he was once truly famous for his work, he just went into a slump and tries to cope with it by scamming his pupils.
  • Samael says that they're not any different from the Phantom Thieves, rebelling against the current and corrupt Japanese government in hopes of turning it into a better place. It's just his definition for it is a fascist dictatorship where he and a select few bootlickers are at the top, and he ruined numerous lives to achieve it.
• Motive Rant: Since the Shadows are born from the Targets' repressed issues, they'll often go on about what led their hosts to become this way.
• My God, What Have I Done?: When the Target's Treasure is stolen and their Shadow beaten, the Target's heart will be unable to handle the guilt and they will immediately confess and beg to be punished.
• Never My Fault: Part of their MO when confronted is to blame their victims or the society that lets them get away with it. The Palace targets especially never blame themselves for any tragedies they might have caused, believing themselves to either be in the right to do it, or completely unrepentant about what they want.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Targets' tendencies to be so remorselessly cruel to unnecessary lengths only bolster the Phantom Thieves' resolve to steal their hearts.
• Obviously Evil: Their mere appearance already shows that these people are assholes who will trample on anyone for their own benefits. In fact, some of them do not bother hiding their true nature to others.
• One-Steve Limit: Beelzebub, Satan, and Lucifer are recurring characters in Shin Megami Tensei and also show up as individual Personas here, so the Shadows that represent Gluttony, Wrath, and Pride use alternative demon names instead.
• One-Winged Angel: When confronted, the Shadow Selves of each Target tend to transform to combat the Thieves:
  • The Palace Rulers usually have unique forms based on the Seven Deadly Sins, while the Mementos Targets often transform into a Shadow which Joker can use, or as a Mook in most cases.
  • With the Palace Ruler's Shadow Selves, the trope is only played straight twice, with only Kamoshida and Shadow Sae gaining a powerful new transformation from their normal forms. It is Subverted with Madarame, since his painting form is more akin to a powerful suit of armor and his true form that needs to be defeated is still his normal Shadow form. It is Downplayed towards a Clipped-Wing Angel for Kaneshiro, since he is not a threat in that form but is a threat when piloting Piggytron or when he summons his guards in Royal. It is Averted completely with Okumura, who summons robots instead and does not fight directly at all and with Shido, who fights in his normal Shadow form. He first fights on top of his Chariot of Human Sacrifice Lion, then he performs a Battle Strip revealing that his Shadow form is extremely muscular, and then he powers up and Turns Red instead of transforming.
  • It is played straight with the Final Boss who has a larger and more powerful second form but is Averted with the True Final Boss in Royal who uses a Persona and remains in control of it.
• Playing the Victim Card: When confronted, the Targets attempt to justify their actions by claiming that they are no different than their own victims and Society Is to Blame for turning them into monsters. The Phantom Thieves don't buy this line of thinking for one second, saying that a Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse and/or that they always had a choice, but simply took the easy way out.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The main motif of all of the major Palaces and their Shadows. Six of the regular seven are embodied by the owners of each Palace, along with two non-traditional ones (Emptiness and Vanity, alternatives / counterparts for Sloth and Pride). Sloth is a special case: the Mementos dungeon is its representative "Palace", and the people of Tokyo as a whole embody the sin, which is shown during the endgame when the Holy Grail begins to enact his plan. Royal adds Sorrow to the mix, an alternative for Sloth and sometimes considered the eighth sin by Orthodox Christianity.
• Single-Issue Psychology: A Treasure is a distilled manifestation of what triggered the Targets' internal distortion. The majority of the Targets' distortions can be traced back to a single reaction they'd gained from a simple object that is either completely worthless to anyone else or an actually valuable object that can be sold for a huge sum of money.
• Slasher Smile: Most of the Palace Rulers have this expression or a Psychotic Smirk; it usually comes out when they're doing something evil. Shadow Kamoshida is particularly prone to making twisted expressions. This is Averted with Shadow Futaba, who never emotes, the Sphinx who is in a constant state of rage (and thus does not smile), and Maruki, who according to the Persona 5 Royal Official Complete Guide was consciously designed to not make mocking or unhinged expressions so the player would feel sympathetic to him.
• Society Is to Blame: Many of the Targets in Mementos and all of the Palaces' rulers will at one point or another will blame society for the way they turned out, whether it's the public's mistreatment toward the poor (Ichiryuusai Madarame, Junya Kaneshiro, and Kunikazu Okumura), stress due to people's increasing expectations of them (Suguru Kamoshida and Goro Akechi), undeserving blame for those looking for a scapegoat to misfortune (Futaba Sakura), sexist discrimination in a male-dominated environment (Sae Niijima), believing that they need to preserve themselves and a chosen few in a continuously declining society (Masayoshi Shido) or simply claiming that they are fulfilling society's wishes (Yaldabaoth and Maruki). The Phantom Thieves will usually retort by pointing out that they are still fully responsible for their own actions. Granted, all of them do have a point to varying degrees, which actually becomes a plot point as the story progresses, as the Thieves wonder if what they're doing is the right thing.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil:
  • Zigzagged. It's mostly played straight with the Palace Rulers but subverted a few times with the female Palace Rulers and the True Final Boss. The Palace Rulers gradually become of higher social standing and influence as the Thieves progress through them with a few exceptions. The order of their jobs are: A gym teacher who used to be a famous athlete, a famous and influential artist, a hangure boss that extorts all of Shibuya, a depressed teenage hacker, the CEO of a food company that has locations all the way in Hawaii, the prosecutor looking into the Phantom Thieves, a Corrupt Politician on his way to become the Prime Minister of Japan, the robotic God of Control born from humanity's collective unconscious, and his even stronger replacement who used to be the Shujin student counselor and a cognitive psience researcher. For the exceptions, Futaba requested a Change of Heart to regain the will to live, and Sae was targeted because Akechi blackmailed the Phantom Thieves into doing it, both to make them look villainous and to trap them, and the final target Maruki is not truly evil, and comes from the same social background level as Kamoshida, but it is no longer relevant by the time he becomes an antagonist since he is a Reality Warper by then.
  • Averted with the Mementos Targets, where the severity of the crimes they commit or power they have in real life have little effect on how powerful they are in the Metaverse. There are gambling addicts and serial cheaters who are stronger than serial killers and men who assault random people.
• Space Whale Aesop:
  • Don't abuse your position of power, or be needlessly malicious to those under your station, or else teenagers with supernatural powers will perform Heel–Face Brainwashing upon you that may result in brain-death if they're not careful.
  • Also, keeping your head down out of fear of breaking the status quo may end up creating a monstrous Deity of Human Origin born out of your desire to be free from the responsibility of your actions.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Like in Persona 4, the Shadows have gold eyes that make them separate from their real world counterparts.
• Tarot Motifs: While none of the major targets have given arcanas, and minor targets share theirs with the Shadow they take the form of, inferring which Reverse Arcana they represent is a matter of whose Arc Villain they are.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: A few of the lesser targets in Mementos take this mindset. Basically, they think that if they can't fix the system, they might as well indulge in it and be just as bad as the people they hate.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In the depths of Mementos, the former Rulers are imprisoned by the last boss like almost everyone else in Tokyo or possibly Japan itself. Before this, they had managed to stay outside because their distorted desires actually gave them a stronger will than normal and one that left them too tough to be meddled with. Stealing their treasures turns them into normal people, so they lose this resistance.
• Unnamed Parent: Averted. Despite the fact that most Shadows are referred to by their last names, including those who are parents of other characters (for example, Mitsuyo Togo is called "Hifumi's mother" in her dialogue boxes), their first names are briefly mentioned, and are necessary knowledge to take on their Shadows.
• Villain Ball: The Targets tend to hide their darker sides well enough from the rest of society, but when they lash out, they all prove themselves to be so unrepentant and malicious that it simply gives the Thieves more of a motivation to steal their hearts away. A particularly egregious moment comes along when Madarame's Shadow manages to fool the Thieves into stealing a fake Treasure... only to confront them a few moments later with the real Treasure just to flaunt it in their faces—and the ensuing exchange between him and Yusuke only bolsters Yusuke's resolve, culminating in the destruction of Madarame's Palace. This is actually justified in the setting as a whole: The Shadow is not the complete person but rather a fragment that moves much more on instinct than the actual person would, so they tend to be much more reckless and bad at keeping secrets. Keeping secrets is basically the opposite of what they are, after all.
• Villain Has a Point: While the Targets are ultimately responsible for their own selfish choices, it is true that society's flaws are partly responsible for influencing those choices to various degrees given how rigid Japanese society is. In fact, it becomes a major plot point to where it is tied to the final boss and embodies the Sloth of the people of Japan.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Most of the better-known Targets are able to get away with what they do because of their reputations or the results they bring.

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