YMMV / Persona: The Sougawa Files

• Awesome Ego: Yuudai Honda, by far. Despite being a normal guy with no Persona powers, he has a healthy dose of self-confidence that lets him play the Freedom Fighters like a fiddle. This amps up even more when he absorbs the Mother Shadow, gaining unmatched combat finesse along with retaining his intelligence.
• Base-Breaking Character: Kazuki became this after his Social Link. He has a lot of fans who enjoy his creepy side and his Social Link, but a lot of people also dislike him for his ego and intruding on Rina/Wilma.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Quite a few people predicted that Nobuyuki would have a Persona based on the roles of other important human characters in the Persona series.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite being a party member who doesn't get as much focus compared to, say, Kazuki or Arata, Wilma is by far the most popular character due to her likeable personality, to the point where some prefer her and Rina over Rina and Kazuki. Even Arsene agrees, if Chapter 91 is anything to go by.
  • A close second is Tamiko, who arguably gets the least focus of any party member (the party even finds out she has Shadows offscreen, as opposed to the other Freedom Fighters that get concrete showings of the Shadow disease), and yet is just as popular as Rina, if not even more so. There's an obvious reason why, but people also love her for her touching relationships with various cast members, her surprisingly awesome moments despite being the navigator, and her surprisingly deep and heartfelt Social Link.
  • Grendel is well-liked for his ideological debate with Gilgamesh along with his more comedic moments, to the point where some people jokingly complained that he was absent from the final group hug in the story.
• Evil Is Cool: The true main villain behind everything, Yuudai Honda, is impressively stylish and awesome to watch in how he goes about things. He's devilishly smart, has an understandable motivation, and has, by far, the coolest powerset in the fanfiction after he absorbs the Mother Shadow.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "The Shadow Syndicate" for Nobuyuki's crime group. Even Arsene has used it herself, though it's never been used in story.
  • "Mystery Knight" for the armored figure that saves Rina's life. Still used even after their identity was revealed.
  • "Doctor You Die" for Yuudai, based on a joke in a tabletop Arsene used him in.
• Fridge Horror: After Chapter 102, there's one big question that's incredibly concerning: what happened to Arata and Satomi's mother? Whether Yuudai is their father or not, none of the answers are any good, especially since she's not even mentioned in his laboratory logs.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the April Fools chapter, Rina criticizes Arsene for making it blatantly clear she'll end up with Kazuki. She doesn't.
  • There's a lot relating to things that happen in the third semester of Persona 5 Royal that Arsene has even acknowledged.
    • A female character that becomes important shortly after the reveal of the final villain, is initially allied with them and starts off fighting normally, before their Persona goes berserk and engages in a much tougher second phase, complete with its own dialogue. Are we talking about Satomi Kobayashi or Kasumi/Sumire Yoshizawa?
    • Speaking of said final villain, they want to make everyone happy through changing their mentalities to the point where they're pretty much husks, are initially presented as somewhat bumbling figures that aren't too much of a threat, and gain an 11th-Hour Superpower from a higher deity that changes them into Final Boss material. Yep, Maruki and Yuudai sure have a lot of similarities.
• I Knew It!: A fair amount of the story's frequent readers correctly predicted Yuudai was the true villain of the story.
• Iron Woobie: Rina goes through a lot. At the start of the story she's grown to distrust most people due to constantly being preyed on for her wealth and status. Then she contracts Shadow disease in a rather painfully described process. Things start to look up for her from there, but things go downhill fast when Nobuyuki gets involved. Not only does the crime lord directly attack her apartment, but he beats her beloved sister to near-death. Not only that, but she accidentally kills Nobuyuki and nearly gets choked unconscious by the armored figure, her only lead on Shadows - then gets played like a fool by Yuudai several times, culminating in an absolutely brutal Curb-Stomp Battle. And despite all this? She always fights to get better for her team and refuses to back down.
• Love to Hate: Yuudai Honda may be evil, but his bumbling nature makes him a total riot. Not to mention, as the main villain, this only gets even better - he performs some truly heinous acts like everything he did to Satomi and his brutal Curb-Stomp Battle against Rina, but despite all this, fans of the fanfiction still believe he's a vastly superior villain to Nobuyuki and love his humorous moments and somewhat understandable motivations.
• Moe:
  • Wilma, big time. She's awkward, somewhat shy, and adorable.
  • Tamiko, too; her Chuunibyou shtick only makes her all the more endearing.
• Moral Event Horizon: Nobuyuki crosses it when he destroys Rina's apartment and beats her sister to near-death, then leaves her a very threatening letter declaring that he'll kill all of her loved ones and then her if she continues on her course of action.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Nobuyuki's single German grunt, Eduard Dominic Laurin von Junkermann, The Third, has gotten attention for his amusing out of place-nature and authentic German speech despite literally only having one line.
  • Humbaba only appears in one chapter, yet is fondly remembered for being one of the few Personas that speaks more than just a few lines and also for its Knight Templar personality.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The Shadow disease in general. Imagine feeling steadily sick, only for your Shadow to drive you to an abandoned place - and then you come back as a mindless husk.
  • Everything about Nobuyuki falls under this, considering his Sinister Surveillance over the Freedom Fighters and the fact that he's more than willing to kill anyone he sees as a threat.
  • The Reveal of The Man Behind the Man can fall under this if you think about it from the perspective of not the Freedom Fighters, but the common people they're working to save. Yuudai is an extremely popular businessman for his charisma and his genuine love of Sougawa. Imagine suddenly finding out that businessman is not only batshit crazy, but has absorbed the power of an eldritch horror to spread the Shadow disease across the entire city.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: "Rizuki" and "Wilrina" for Rina/Kazuki and Wilma/Rina. This is even acknowledged on the Discord server, where there are user roles named after both ships.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Downplayed. Kazuki was one of the more disliked members of the fanfiction due to stealing spotlight away from Wilma and Rina in a rather forced manner and his personality being too similar to Rina's. However, his creepy moments and his relatable Social Link boosted his popularity considerably, to the point where he won second place in the favorite character poll (the first being, of course, Wilma). At the same time, however, he got a fair amount of people for least favorite, moving him into Base-Breaking Character territory.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Fans of the fic debate if Rina's best ship is with Kazuki or with Wilma. Both have valid points; fans of the former cite the two having more buildup and amusing moments while fans of the latter cite the two having more contrast and chemistry as well as feeling less forced. Amusingly, while Arsene originally had Rina/Kazuki as the ship of choice, she changed it to Rina/Wilma later.
• Signature Scene: The fight against Nobuyuki (particularly Gilgamesh's march through Humbaba's Holy Flames) and Yuudai's Curb-Stomp Battle against Rina are cited as some of the most memorable scenes in the fanfiction.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Storming Nobuyuki's hideout has a ton of them:
  • When Rina is about to die, an armored figure saves her out of nowhere, helps combat the Shadow, and leaves before they can question her.
  • The reveal that Nobuyuki has a Persona of his own. And it's strong enough that it nearly wipes out the entire team.
  • Tamiko utterly losing it against Nobuyuki and attacking him with countless beams of energy from Odysseus. She probably put the largest dent in Humbaba by far!
  • By far, the finishing blow against Nobuyuki. Rina's tired, beaten down, and about to be blasted with Humbaba's strongest attack. She sends Gilgamesh into the beam, and musters up enough willpower to not only get Gilgamesh to walk straight through the beam, but stab into a weak spot Arata opened earlier and cut Humbaba in half.
  • Chapters 98 and 99 are where the plot starts to come together, and some serious stuff happens. The armored figure shows up and is revealed to be a villain, and nearly chokes Rina out - only for Clerval to step in and save her life. Then, the next chapter has Rina deduce the mastermind behind everything: Yuudai Honda, the bumbling lackey who seemed like little more than a one-off joke.
• The Woobie: Just about every Freedom Fighter has moments of this. Thankfully, they tend to get better through their Social Link, but it's still painful to watch. However, the two crowning examples are the ones who are implied to be outright suicidal at certain points:
  • Hikaru is implied to be suffering from some form of depression and uses his "hero" shtick as a coping mechanism for being unable to save his old girlfriend coupled with his abusive parents. Not only that, but he has to watch his girlfriend get defeated effortlessly by a stronger Shadow twice, and even gets on the receiving end of a Breaking Lecture from one of those Shadows.
  • Tamiko acts like the cheerful resident Chuunibyou, but is actually also implied to be depressed and thinks no one actually cares about who she is and just thinks of her as a joke. Not to mention her Shadow is by far the darkest one of the bunch, spawning because she doesn't see a point in living because nobody shares her worldview.

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