Persona series

No, Adachi was always rather sketchy and written a lot better. Even he is more sympathetic than Akechi, Adachi fessed up to his crimes and is on Death Row because of it. His victims are going to get more closure than Akechi’s ever will.

Akechi breaks one of the laws of mysteries, the the killer can not be a member of the good guy / POV team. All in the name of attempting to make him more sympathetic...

I mean, he’s not a member of the team for all that long. And even then, that’s not a hard and fast rule - Agatha Christie broke it on a few occasions, one of which is quite widely acclaimed (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, btw). So I don’t think that’s a fault in itself.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on May 3rd 2021 at 12:05:09 PM

Honestly, I'm all for having him be a straight-up villain next time he shows up.

I find it odd that they never bring up the fact that Akechi killed futaba's mom... this gives me some idea as to how Akechi's story might have been changed during development

And they even remembered Akechi killed Haru's dad too.

Yeah, it kinda feels like you're reaching super hard here, memers - not only is that not the actual rule of a Fair-Play Whodunnit - it's that the criminal shouldn't be someone the reader has been privy to their thoughts, which was never the case with akechi- but that also comes from the assumption that the mystery about Akechi is what's important about him and not... y'know, his entire character ? this ain't p4, the mystery doesn't occupy the center stage of the plot here.

Also yeah, breaking the commandments of Knox is hardly as big a deal as you make it look like - outside of the fact some are straight up outdated, plenty of games who actually center around detective work have broken those rules to GREAT effect (disco elysium and DRV 3 to name two), so that sounds even more petty a complaint.

Also, that whole bit about the victims getting more closure seems to ignore everything about royale where he does actually goes to great pains to make sure he's held accountable for his crimes ? I know you're very insistent about this idea that the game had a different writers problem (which has never been backed by actual statements on the matter), but it's frankly hard to take seriously when you seem to straight-up disregard actual facts of the game.

I've seen people point out a neat detail that while post-twist akechi has some mementos convos with some, he has exaclty zero with futaba and haru. The writers do remember Akechi killed futaba's mom, they just didn't feel the need to bring it up over and over.

Edited by Yumil on May 3rd 2021 at 8:26:48 PM

I've never really understood how Adachi often seems to be perceived as being that much more sympathetic than Akechi. I guess there is the matter of scale when it comes to their crimes, but then again, Adachi did try to turn all of Inaba into Shadows. I'm not entirely sure what about Adachi screams tragic when his backstory is a bit thin when compared to Akechi whose backstory in the original was slightly vague, but it was still more tangible than what we got from Adachi.

Adachi being considered more deep than Akechi I can kinda see, to some extent, if you take Arena into account. arena ultimax goes a loooooooong way to show a lot of depth to adachi and make him a fairly complex character without ever excusing the shit he did - and exemplified in how the smallest measure of atonement adachi can earn is by literally stopping someone who's past him, down to the same stupid rants. That one rant where he tears Sho apart is going to stick with me for a long time.

If that's without Arena though I've got no idea, because Adachi as of golden ends up on literally a less developed note than Akechi does by the end of Royal.

Akechi gets some really cool development in royal but it hasn't settled in in the same way ultimax's development of adachi has for me, I'm not entirely sure why. maybe the fact his story in 4au made him the viewpoint cahracter just made the whole development more powerful than seen from the outside.

Edited by Yumil on May 3rd 2021 at 9:36:24 PM

Adachi was handled better in his original game as an antagonist, whereas almost no one thought Akechi was until Royal. This meant any additions to the former's character was a cherry on top, but the latter needed fixing. It has nothing to do with who was more sympathetic except to select people that shouldn't really matter in this conversation.

I mean, I don't really think Adachi worked all that well as an antagonist in the original either, not even that well as a flunky for the actual antagonists either.

That's fine for an individual viewpoint, but your own question concerned fan reaction, which is something those out of the mindset will always feel stumped on.

I'd like to point that while Knox's Decalogue is not a bad guideline (emphasis on guideline) for detective stories, the second rule is: "All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course."

...Kinda of a hard thing to adhere to in a Persona game.

Knox's Dialogue just doesn't work in mysteries set in a magical world. There you need 1) to lead by the principle of Magic A Is Magic A and 2) establish how Magic A works prior to it being the solution to the mystery.

As I said, it's a guideline, best taken at principle or in spirit then in strict adherence to every single rule when it comes to any particular story.

I never got the impression people necessarily thought Adachi was more sympathetic but rather that the game didn't necessarily try to get you to feel sorry for him and evoke pathos the same way it did with Akechi.

Since when was 5 a mystery story?

We were talking about 4 the whole time.

Akechi breaks one of the laws of mysteries, the the killer can not be a member of the good guy / POV team. All in the name of attempting to make him more sympathetic...

It should be noted that Adachi wasn't all that well received until later additions to his backstory came about. Before that, some felt the reveal about him was something of a Shocking Swerve and made little sense.

There was a four year gap between the original Persona 4 with Golden, The Anime, and Arena where Adachi really blew up in popularity.

That trope has also happened in Persona 3 too in a way.

Persona 4 is, at its core, a murder mystery, and it's perfectly possible to figure out Adachi's the killer if you're familiar with that genre

I was quoting something Memers posted earlier as a rebuttal to what Very Melon said. Neither 3 nor 5 are meant to be mystery stories, so I think the question of whether they fit the rules of a Fair Play Whudunnit or not is moot.

I do like that 4 was a mystery, as I feel that gave a good sense of structure to the plot, although there weren't any real clues until near the very end.

3 does, technically, have some foreshadowing for one of its major twists, namely that Ikutsuki is actually evil, but you can only see it during a piece of optional dialogue with Ikutsuki on one particular day.

Edited by MisterTambourineMan on May 4th 2021 at 2:59:40 AM

P5 is a mystery story, every step fills in a bit of info on the greater conspiracy in the exact same way P4 did for the killer. You just don’t have everyone saying ‘killer’ and ‘culprit’ every other line.

no it's not. By that token, every story with a conspiracy or a traitor is a mystery, so pokemon mystery dungeon is a mystery story. Same goes for metal gear solid.

Even if you were to make a case those stories are actually mystery stories too, and so is every spy movie, heist movie, etc, then you've just made the definition of "mystery story" way broader than the one the knox commandments is meant to apply to, which still renders your point moot.

Edited by Yumil on May 4th 2021 at 6:37:18 PM

Even if we want to classify P4 and P5 as mystery stories (which I don't exactly disagree with though P5 is a obviously a lot less of one), stories under a genre have never been exactly obligated to adhere to all or even most of the commonly held genre conventions. It is the observed similarities between stories that form our understanding of genres, not the other way around.

Knox's decalogue has been mentioned as being a guideline, and while I agree inasmuch as any writing "rule" is a guideline, I'm still slightly wary of people taking it to heart as that decalogue has always been indicative of a certain type of mystery story in a specific timeframe. And as mentioned before, it is kinda hard to adhere to certain rules in a fantastical setting. And to circle back to P4 & P5, the mystery of P4 in particular has always been in service of the theme of truth and the supposed mystery in P5 being more in service of showing the pervasion of societal corruption.