I actually liked Akechi. I liked his design and voice and role in the story. Nothing but positive things to say about him.
Which is a fairly normal position as far as I know. He's just sorta like Yosuke in that you love him or hate him, I guess. Characters that the narrative really, blatantly pushes on you usually seem to have this result. It's kind of a miracle Nanako is as beloved as she is. Or a testament to great writing, whichever.
I don't think P3 had any divisive characters like P4 and 5. Apparently Yukari is divisive but I've literally never met any real big fans or big haters so I don't think it's even close to as intense as with Yosuke and Goro.
Edited by Nikkolas on Jul 19th 2020 at 5:58:58 AM
As much as people hate Yosuke, he's not a damned murderer like Akechi is.
The thieves are still far too lenient towards him from what I can tell (he killed Haru Dad and Futaba's mom), though they seem well aware he's not a good dude. Haru does state on multiple occasions that she has no intentions of forgiving him, and their decisions to keep working with him are more out of pragmatism than anything else (they don't want to kill him, and they can't change his heart since he has a persona).
But still, he's a murder, Yosuke isn't (barring what you can do with Namatame, and Kanji and Naoto were in on that as well).
One Strip! One Strip!My feelings on Akechi were that he's pathetic and sad then a rival figure. The game succeeded at making me feel bad for him in being a messed up kid who stumbled into a bad situation without realizing there was a better way until it was too late, but there is a lot of assumed empathy going on for him.
The game both assumes Akechi is more sympathetic than he is and straight up ignores many of his crimes. They think he's Zuko when he's closer to Snape.
A character like that will always be divisive even when they are written better than base game Akechi is. I haven't gotten to the point of the Royal additions for him yet. If Royal actually acknowledges he's a multiple times murderer that needs to answer for that, they've pretty much solved the biggest issue with him.
Edited by deludedmusings on Jul 20th 2020 at 12:11:10 AM
![]()
![]()
Royale reworked his confident and made it an optionnal one so he gets a lot more of actual development and quality time with joker instead of ranking up in throwaway plot scenes, with a culmination where he admits he hate joker for being so much better than him and wanting to surpass him. It pushes the rival dynamic a lot.
It's hard to convey without a lot of context, but the game manages to make the phrase "I'm gonna be entirely honest : I hate you" almost heartwarming.
The third semester also adds a lot of stuff for him. He basically gets to survive his initial death because the bad guy of the third semester pulled some strings, and Akechi teams up with Joker to take him down. He shifts to using his black mask outfit and drops the pretentious, prim and proper detective facade, so he's a lot more bloodthirsty but you can also see a geniune side of him that's still thoughtful, honest with himself and owns up to his actions, and both him, the group and the game agrees it's strictly an Enemy Mine situation rather than forgiving him.
In several regards, it parralels the development Adachi got over time with Golden, the golden anime, P4 Arena. He's never treated as "redeemed" by the cast or the game, nor does he become a straight good guy, but he showcases some moral complexity and some redeeming traits he didn't originally had in vanilla 4/5.
Edited by Yumil on Jul 19th 2020 at 4:27:18 PM
"when you stare too long into the abyss, Xehanort takes advantage of the distraction to break into your house and steal all your shit."He's more of a Token Evil Teammate and The Friend Nobody Likes in Royal's third semester, and the group are rather clear that yea, their truce is merely for convenience and the same goes for Akechi.
That said they are still saddened when his death is seemingly "corrected" after the final boss, because even if they didn't necessarily like him, he was still considered part of the group.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jul 19th 2020 at 10:37:45 AM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
Pretty much. That and the fact that he was literally fighting to bring about his own death, something Ryuji lampshades. I still stand by my belief that if Akechi had lived for real, he'd have truly taken allowed himself to be jailed, just like in the fake world. It's pretty clear he had no real plan for what he'd do after he got his revenge, and considering that plan ended with expose myself as a murder and bastard child, I'm sure he didn't really care what his own fate was afterwards.
One Strip! One Strip!I get the feeling the questionable nature of his plan was him being a bit of a misanthrope who didn't care who hurt, combined with Sunk Cost Fallacy. He'd gone in too deep to pull out.
I wonder if anyone's written a fic about what Akechi would have done if he'd known about changing hearts ahead of time? It's clear that he's at least a little bothered by it during his last fight with the group.
One Strip! One Strip!Is he so edgy that he ends up stabbing himself sometimes?
Cause, before the problem was that he shot himself....
<Ducks a brick>
One Strip! One Strip!So, if we want to get rid of all the fangirls, we need to bait them in with an edgy boi, and then nuke that one spot?
Gotcha.
This plan would be effective against Fanboys too. That's useful.
One Strip! One Strip!

Too bad, Joker considers him his rival. Hold that.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.