I swear, if Akechi ends up being a gay option, I'm going to find that monkey's paw and set fire to it.
Bewitching EyesYeah Hashino appears to have a painfully limited view of the world but blaming him for everything is just the usual "he's the only name we know so let's all hate him." Kinda like how Nomura or Toriyama got shit for stuff that was clearly not their fault in various Square games.
Removing him is not the miracle cure to Persona's various bad opinions/extremely dated humor.
He may not have been the source of all of it, but a lot of the shit can be traced back in at least part to him, considering the things he's said on the record
Edited by asterism on Oct 12th 2019 at 3:42:35 PM
Bewitching EyesAnd his decisions have made bank globally. In the east and west Persona has only gotten more and more popular.
Japan is still largely uneasy about the subject to this day, so they have no incentive to suddenly become more open minded if the same old homophobia is neither significantly called out nor detrimental to sales nor series reputation in the east or west.
Edited by Hashil on Oct 12th 2019 at 9:48:41 AM
I mean....we did just get Fire Emblem, which has a slew of same-sex relationship options. Japan itself has become much more active in making such a thing legal as well.
Not saying it's going to have an affect on the series now, but the more these games actively shy away from LGBTQ topics, the more archaic they're going to look when other game companies are becoming more open to them.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.On another forum I frequent there are several posters who vehemently hate P4 and P5 for what they perceive as a pretense to social commentary. P3 was more abstract and philosophical so it gets less shit.
But the point is, Persona gets its intellectual cred entirely from the perception it tackles real issues in the real world. Some would say you can't talk of revolution and change while also being fairly conservative about, say, sexual orientation or identity.
Japan is like anywhere else. You have more liberally minded folks and more conservatively minded folks. Hashino appears to be fairly conservative compared to other Japanese devs.
I don't think Yoko Taro's Persona would have weird anti-gay jokes for example.
Edited by Nikkolas on Oct 12th 2019 at 9:46:10 AM
I played a visual novel recently which had a straight up transman whose gender identity was very respectfully treated. There's also Swery's The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories. While degrees of LGB Tphobia aren't uncommon in japanese games, it's not like every other japanese game takes it up to the level Atlus does.
Also seconding that this is almost certainly a systemic/company wide problem.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Oct 12th 2019 at 12:55:30 PM
On social issues that generally matter to us, Japan is about a decade behind.
Most of the social issues dealt in P4 and P5 are mostly very Japanese social issues with commentary with the occasional very Japanese result of.
Also I do wanna add that the games have very different writing teams that dont always match up completely with each other leading to a lot of mixed signals.
While Japan is still pretty conservative towards LGBT+, I feel they're more open towards trans people than LGB?
In Persona 5 we have those two gay guys, but we also have the pretty cool Lala, who despite being a gonk is never portrayed as anything but positive.
My Hero Academia doesn't have any homosexuals, but has two openly trans characters. Heck, a friend of one of them actually bothered to correct the pronoun when another character misgendered the trans character.
Those are the ones I've remembered at the top of my head. There might be more.
Okama Bar owners, referred to as Mama's, are very well respected by Patrons that go to them.
The Mama from the Yakuza series in particular is not only seen as respected by everyone, but shes more then willing to get her hands dirty in some sidequests.
Watch Symphogear![]()
Its different...
Crossdressing and other things like that have been in Japanese society for a very long time and even now doing things like that isnt not an element of your sexual identity or gender identity, for the genre see Otokonoko.
Speaking of Lala, here's me only just now noticing that Crossroads's sign has a snail on it
Bewitching Eyes

Wow. Those hacks stole the gay people lying in a field of flowers and surrounded by sparkles bit from Sailor Moon. And yes, top post was intentional.
The legend has returned.