Persona series

Probably not for a very very very very long time. I'm gonna guess they're going wait until after Shin Megami Tensei V, and that doesn't even have a release yet.

Persona is also about problems in modern Japan, P5 especially. And that kind of thing is a real problem in Japan.

I mean, it's a problem everywhere. #metoo and all that, after all.

But as a writing thing it feels odd to default to it as the only way they know how to up the stakes when a female character is involved. It's the result of nearly half the dungeon deadlines, and even things like Futaba's social link revolves around her old friend being molested.

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 21st 2019 at 6:51:41 AM

Removed because responding to nonexistent post.

Edited by Clarste on Feb 21st 2019 at 6:57:32 AM

Yeah you answered my post just as I was posting. lol

So uh...Persona is good. my hot take.

P5 definitely defaulted to the darker side of things as much as it could and could have gone far deeper than they did. Japan has issues of middle school prostitution, assaulted on trains and far more.

And speaking up like the metoo movement is nothing compared trying it in Japan and there speaking up carries penalties. Something which P5 tries to deal with with the MC, the reporter, Futaba, Ryuji, but it tends to massively miss the mark in the social issues department outside of maybe the MC.

Edited by Memers on Feb 21st 2019 at 7:13:07 AM

I'm not sure what you think #metoo is if you think it's about how easy it is to speak up about sexual assault in countries that aren't Japan.

This. Weinstein got away with his crimes for decades because his victims knew that if they spoke up, he was powerful enough to destroy their careers and livelihoods with a few phone calls.

We still have a bazillion P5 spinoffs to go through. I think it's better to see how they write the P5 Updated Re-release.

In Japan it doesn’t matter much on power or anything like that, no one wants to associate with you as you are labeled as trouble. It can be pretty much anything too, it goes public you are screwed outside of up and moving away. It took a very long time to change that kind of culture on only train assaults, even that took decades.

On the other side of the fence no one is going to ask if you need help as well as that would be butting in. The culture is so prevalent that people have died in houses and not discovered for months cause no one will bother to check on a neighbor even after things start to stink.

Japan is like 40 years behind in this kind of department. It’s also 1/3rd the reason why the crime rate is so low, a lot goes unreported.

Edited by Memers on Feb 21st 2019 at 8:04:15 AM

And its caused a good deal of apathy where younger generation dont vote I recall.

There's still persona 5 R. Whatever that's supposed to be.

Edited by captainpat on Feb 21st 2019 at 8:38:17 AM

Hmm...is Hashino involved at all in R?

Persona 5 R doesn't have a Studio Zero trademark, which is where Hashino works now within Atlus, so its highly unlikely.

That's hardly exclusive to Japan. I've seen interviews with American women claiming the same problem, such as a woman in the park service who went out of her way to say she wasn't one of 'those girls' so she wouldn't be harassed/isolated at work.

Literally yesterday I was reading article about doctors complaining about being felt up by their patients

ED: here it is

Edited by asterism on Feb 21st 2019 at 6:04:12 PM

so given all the recent blame that has emerged for Hashino as "the reason Persona is Bad", I am curious on one aspect:

Why did the Yosuke Romance get cut?

It was clearly pretty far in development, given all the thumb prints left around signifying it was there. someone had to put the kibosh on it. could it have been hashino or someone else?

while Hashino would make sense if we're just blaming him for every mishandled lgbt thing in persona, they never bothered to re-add it for Persona 4 Golden, which i am to take Hashino didn't work on that one.

I have my priorities in order, what are you talking about?

It's not realistic to blame Hashino for everything because he doesn't write all the content by himself. I think it's more of a general problem with Atlus.

But Hashino himself had final say and if he really cared, he could have veto'd those scenes, and he didn't.

I think the idea is that he had the final say that it wasn't going to be in the game.

And I'm not sure how much of it is an issue with ATLUS as a whole given how Etrian Odyssey V had a questline on you helping a gay couple get married. A male gay couple too! So it isn't even like it's the safe lesbians deal.

Edit: My bad, it was Etrian Odyssey IV, and it's just one quest.

Edited by EpicBleye on Feb 21st 2019 at 1:52:49 PM

Hashino is being singled out because this is an issue in basically every game he directs to some extent, and the new information is making his past LGBT fumbles seem a lot more disturbing in hindsight.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Feb 21st 2019 at 12:23:00 PM

There is definitely a pattern with Hashino-directed games but the fact that the rest of Atlus hasn't exactly made an effort to improve on his mistakes doesn't give me confidence in how they would handle it either.

Except for Etrian Odyssey maybe? I've never actually played it but I'll have to look into that.

New Atlus Player Survey asking consumers and players about their products, including "Persona".

Etrian Odyssey is clearly a smaller name than most of their other series, so I wouldn't be surprised if the only reason that questline exists is due to ATLUS not caring as much.

Then again, they did two crossovers between Persona and Etrian Odyssey so maybe not.

In any case Etrian Odyssey isn't exactly a narrative driven game (quite the opposite, really) so don't expect too much.

Etrian Odyssey is pretty "minimalist" in characters, but I'd say the biggest thing LGBTQ thing they've done is stop labeling their class portraits as either male or female, and let the player decide how they identify. Pokemon did something similar iirc.

EOV also has important NP Cs who are an implied lesbian couple (although not explicit so that only goes so far), and in terms of general "wokeness" also has a sidequest where you help a tall, fat girl overcome her body image issues and get married to a scrawny guy with his own body image issues. Contrast the fat girl in P4 who is the butt of a running gag about how she doesn't realize how unappealing she is.

Edited by Clarste on Feb 21st 2019 at 6:23:28 AM