As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Since this happened during the Niijima's Palace heist, the police should be finding the lost Phantom Thieves and Akechi since they had literally vanished, the Phantom Thieves are top criminals and Akechi is the key to finding them. This not only makes the Phantom Thieves more suspicious, Akechi himself will become suspicious too and in case if Sae asks Ren during the interrogation about their vanishing, how is he going to explain? He doesn't remember anything, and nobody does. The police probably can't ask Hikari either since they won't know her in the first place unless someone slips it out.
- None of the characters remember the events in this game, and they were transported back with no time lost.
- The Q games take place in realms outside linear time and space to allow for still-active versions of casts from different time periods to interact. They're basically fanservice, but have this and the mandatory memory wipes as a blanket explanation for how they can be technically canon without changing anything from plots of the characters' games of origin.
- When Hikari is being dragged into the Cinema, why doesn't her father call child protective services or something like that already? It isn't like that she was just sleeping, she has either vanished from the real world or was in a coma for eight straight months. This should be able to ring red alarms by itself; Yet he doesn't act like he knew anything at all?
- She did not "vanish." What the Cinemas are trapping are only people's will to live. There is still a Hikari in the real world, and she's moving and living, it's just her living force has been separated from her and as a result the real person is still depressed and withdrawn. It's obvious that her father is concerned about this, he just does not know why because her daughter has avoided all contact with him in fears of angering him.
- And related to the point above, how can Hikari survive being trapped in the Cinema for that amount of time? Remember she and the Phantom Thieves live in the same reality, and the thieves are probably all over the news during that heist. Since she doesn't even recognize them at all (Not even as a kid's prank!) and the Phantom Thieves weren't known until Kamoshida got his heart changed at May, she was likely trapped before that happened. It should be pretty obvious that her dangerously poor mental health and that the movies in Enlil's cinemas only exist to make it worse doesn't let her sustain such a torturous experience for this long.
- She's not actually living in there. The Hikari living in there is just her willpower, and the cinema is actually a mental place. The Hikari in the real world is still intact, she's just crippled by depression. Depressed people in real life can definitely stick around longer.
- If the P3 cast were transported from a Tartarus exploration run into the movie world, why is Fuuka alongside them? Shouldn't she be downstairs providing navigation to the party, and thus she won't be dragged into there since she's not in Tartarus at all? Or worse, Tartarus collapses and she gets crushed flat?
- When you look at the scene, Tartarus seems to be breaking down. All of SEES ran into the portal as it was their only chance at escape. Yes, it's a massive violation of common sense to run upstairs in a collapsing building, but it was just an excuse to have the P3 cast run in. It's more awkward than it was for the other two casts since they don't have a convenient mode of transportation to all ride on that could be suddenly redirected to get them all at once like the other two teams do.
- The A.I. Overlord in A.I.G.I.S takes the form of Ikutsuki, and the movie labyrinths are just as a result of Doe replacing the projectors in Hikari's Cinema with Hikari's memories, in which they attract the persona users that replace the cognitive actors with Persona characters. If this is true, does S.E.E.S subconsciously suspect or know that Ikutsuki is up to something even though it looks like that they don't know?
- The casting isn't necessarily that direct. The best explanation I can come up with is that it places characters in the roles that are somewhat fitting, even if the team related to them don't realize it.
- Isn't Ribbon actually a bit hypocritical and self-righteous? She's just Heel–Face Brainwashing the robots in the movie, but instead of brainwashing them to have no personality, she does the exact reverse. Wouldn't this make her not very different than the Mother Computer she is supposed to oppose and overthrow?
- The robots have no personality or will to speak of. You aren't offending their personal rights because there isn't a "person" in them until they are given personalities. Before that, they are hardly different than appliances.
- The robots also seem to naturally develop their own individuality like Ribbon did. When the Mother Computer was in charge, they would all be scrapped the moment they show any deviation from base programming. All Ribbon is doing is giving these robots like her the opportunity to live on as individuals and teach them what it means to be themselves so they aren't scared of these new feelings they're having.
- The F.O.Es of the first three labyrinth have some degree of relation to Hikari's cognition. The heroes in Kamoshidaman are based on the teacher heroes that she saw in a movie mixed with the other rabbit caretaker students, the carnivores in Junessic Land are based on the bullies in her secondary school, and the security robots in A.I.G.I.S are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. So, what does the bear, tin man and dwarf F.O.Es in the fourth labyrinth have anything to do with her past?
- I think it references all of the musicals (live-action or animated) that Hikari has ever watched.
- How can the Shadows or any other enemy in the game outright ignore Hikari especially during the fourth labyrinth? Especially when it comes to Doe, who literally screams out her name while attacking you.
- Shadows ignore normal people without Personas. Since Hikari did not have a Persona and her sole power comes from a Your Mind Makes It Real in addition to being a projection herself, she cannot be outright attacked. The shadows/enemies might had been realized this and simply ignored her.
- Why doesn't Hikari's Father know about how horrible her relatives at all, and why he doesn't try to help her daughter in the first if they were this horrible?
- Unlike the Overseer and Mother Computer, they might not be inherently horrible people at all. They might be telling her to reconsider since movie director is a risky occupation, but they just outright told her to give up. Alas, Hikari had told the party that she had hid everything onto herself and enabled herself to break from repeated emotional abuse by not being open to her father at all in fears of making him hate her for being a disappointment.
- In both the fourth labyrinth and Epilogue, Hikari is revealed to have lots of books in her room. Does this state that Hikari is a bookworm, does Tsundoku (which is to collecting reading materials, but letting them pile up without reading them), or are all of them just about movies?
- She knows a lot of film theory and narrative, so it's possible she studies the whole movie process academically. That or she just has books as education or entertainment without having to be completely defined by them.
- Did Hikari ever regain her childhood love of superheroes? Or is it still just gone?
- If the Persona users are superheroes, then you can said it's regained.
- At all cases, why is Enlil being targeted? She wasn't the one responsible for trapping people or putting the locks in the Cinema, she just enables people to rot in the Cinemas to death. The people rot themselves in the Cinemas, and Enlil in fact just lets them leave whatever they want. There is absolutely no merits or benefits trying to beat her and the party's actions might not guarantee if other people won't get depressed again or will Enlil remain dormant, since she already states that as long as people wish for her to return, she will.
- Because she's a toxic influence who makes their depression worse and wouldn't accept criticism. Whatever her intentions were, her actions are causing undeniable harm to a unknowably large number of people. That and she intends to expand on her theaters, which will only add more victims. Getting rid of her for even a month is probably a breakthrough moment for thousands of people in catatonic depression.
- In the Epilogue, everybody sees a movie that corresponds with their adventures,(ie SEES watching what is implied to be A.I.G.I.S. and the Investigation Team sees Junessic Land) but where is the superhero movie?
- Because the origin is in the P5 world, so the P5 cast gets to see Hikari's entire biopic instead of a part of it.
- It might also because that the Phantom Thieves would not have responded well to Kamoshidaman's appearance, having forgotten the events of the game. Thus, perhaps Kamoshidaman, or even just the idea of a superhero movie, exists in Hikari's notebook, with Hikari no longer thinking negatively about movie superheroes.
- Additionally, Hikari is showing the Phantom Thieves the biopic that she was producing before she fell into depression instead of the superhero movie, and the Thieves simply gave her the ideas and motivation to set it back going.
- Minor Nitpick: Why is Hikari's blood type is not revealed? Rei from the first Persona Q had her blood type revealed as "A" blood type. Which makes it a little odd Hikari's wasn't shown.
- Firstly, they might not had been thought much when detailing in characters considering this is the last game from the 3DS, and secondly, unlike Rei she isn't playable at all; She is basically the equivalent of a sub-persona or Confidant, or even a heist target. Confidants and heist targets do not have their age or blood type revealed officially.
- Where is Hikari's Shadow? At least Rei's Shadow explicitly appears in Q1, the Phantom Thieves' Shadows had transformed into their metaverse outfit and every other major character in Persona is confirmed to have a Shadow counterpart via some means. So why don't we see her Shadow anywhere in the game? note
- Probably she's so distorted that she is her Shadow?
- Also, remember that the movies are all just embodiments of Hikari's unconscious, so ultimately you are fighting against her by going inside her unconscious for most of the game. It's also possible that the movies themselves are her Shadow.
- Which Major Arcana would fit Hikari the best?
- I suppose Justice Arcana, since she actually has a good grasp on what is good for herself and other people and what is not, as well as being concerned by the concept of fairness, all of them which define the trait of Justice Arcana characters. She even fits into the reversed Arcana, as part of the reason why she ended up in the theater is the lack of rationality and integrity when her father placed concern on her welfare using the exact phrasing as her Trauma Button.
- One theory I heard from filmqdirector
from Tumblr states of Hikari being of the Death arcana. This is based on how Hikari has gone through cycles of change in her life, as well as the reverse side where she tries to destroy what makes her unique by withdrawing herself from the outside world.
- Where would Hikari fall under Shin Megami Tensei's Aligment-Tendency chart?
- All Persona characters should be Neutral.
- That's true. But would Hikari then fall as Neutral-Light, Neutral-Dark, or Neutral-Neutarl?
- All Persona characters should be Neutral.
- Given that the Persona Q series is essentially Persona meets Etrian Odyssey, which Etrian Odyssey classes would match each character? Or at the very least for Hikari, Doe, and Nagi?
- Hikari is the Medium and Nagi is the Heavenbringer, at the least.
- What does Persona Q2 key colors, primarily orange and blue, mean in regards to its aesthetics and themes of the game?
