Persona: Our Journey Between Worlds
The definition of literary merit is hard to establish in today’s world. Now, more than ever, people of every social, political, and economic class have the opportunity to share their opinions of what defines merit and art. However, one of the most simple and digestible definitions of literary merit is the deceptively simple phrase “something that makes you feel.” By this definition, anything someone creates that is meant to and does elicit an emotional response constitutes art. Persona 5, a game by Japanese developer ATLUS, does just that through its riveting story, captivating characters, and engaging gameplay.
Persona 5 follows a Japanese teenager referred to as Joker, who was wrongfully convicted of assault and forced to spend a year on probation as a result. As part of his sentence, he is moved into the care of a voluntary but reluctant guardian, Sojiro Sakura, who allows Joker to sleep in the loft above his café. As the story progresses, Joker meets dozens of characters, many of whom he befriends and forms close bonds with. While developing these bonds, Joker, and his team, “The Phantom Thieves of Hearts,” infiltrate the minds of many dangerous and twisted people through an alternative world called the “Metaverse.” In the Metaverse, they secure the source of the target’s twisted perception of reality and steal it from their mind palace. This results in a “change of heart” in which the affected individual confesses to their crimes and shows great remorse for the pain they caused. The Phantom Thieves face several individuals who require a change of heart throughout the game, but all fall with time. However, their last battle comes in the form of the god that set these events in motion, Yaldabaoth.
Yaldabaoth gave the Phantom Thieves and their enemies access to their powers as a test of humanity’s spirit. If the world rallied behind the Phantom Thieves in their hour of need, it would be allowed to continue as before. If the world shunned them as criminals, then Yaldabaoth would wrestle control of the world and its people into his hands, essentially eliminating humanity’s free will. While initially the Phantom Thieves are shunned, those Joker befriended eventually rally the public to support them once more. Their chants of support empowered the Phantom Thieves to continue fighting and eventually defeat Yaldabaoth in an epic final battle. After this battle, things return to relative normalcy. The Phantom Thieves disband and are mostly forgotten, as all except a select few lost memory of the Yaldabaoth event. This does not particularly bother them, as the Thieves are satisfied in the knowledge that they secured the world’s safety, even if they will never see a thank you for it. A calm descends on the group as the next several months pass by in relative peace, until March.
When March arrives, the real emotional weight of ATLUS’s story comes to the forefront. The player is reminded of the length of the sentence that put them in Tokyo and that March is the month it ends. Joker must return home. The player has one single day to track down and say goodbye to all the characters they have spent their time with and revisit the many locations they have spent time in over that in-game year. Finally, Joker goes to bed in the loft for one final time, ready to board the train home in the morning.
It is at this point where the first emotional impact of the game’s ending truly comes into play. After the defeat of the final villain and becoming the savior of humanity, Joker, the Phantom Thieves, and the player all feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, especially considering the intense difficulty of the final ten hours of the game. This then slowly but surely shifts into a sense of sadness at the realization that it is all truly over. The saga that spanned over a hundred hours for the player, and a year for the characters is coming to an end. This feeling is best summarized by Andrew Webster, where the closing line of his article reads, “As for me, well, the story is over. And yet, after 100 hours, I just wish I had more time” (Webster). However, there is no more time, and Joker, as well as the player, have to move on from these events and this place. With this sense of sadness, the player feels what Joker must be feeling at the need to return home. The feeling lingers as Joker prepares to go home the next morning and walks to the train station.
As Joker walks down the streets of Shibuya, he is greeted by a shocking sight, his friends, all piled into a van, beckoning him over. They tell him they want to drive him back home, out of the city, and want to stop for a beach day before they take him back. Joker agrees, and they drive off towards the ocean. It is at this point where the second emotional impact of the game’s ending comes into effect. It gives Joker and the player one last moment of happiness and excitement with the group they have come to care for through their stories and the hardships they faced together. That single moment elevates the sense of sadness and loss into a bittersweet acceptance of the reality of the story’s end. It confirms that what happened and the emotions the player experienced mattered. Just because those events are over does not mean they are worthless. This feeling allows Joker and, by extension, the player, to move on, retaining that sense of accomplishment and emotional weight they attained during their journey and move on.
Much of the emotional impact of Persona 5’s ending is enforced by the characters Joker has come to know throughout the game. From his first day in Tokyo, Joker begins to meet new and exciting individuals, from a shunned-but-talented doctor to a pair of powerful twin girls to a shogi prodigy to, of course, his team. Throughout the game, the player has the option to spend time with some or all of these characters, called Confidants, slowly building up their relationships. As these relationships progress, Joker and the player learn more about all of these characters, including their backstories, struggles, opinions, and personality quirks. After several encounters, Joker will often face what will become the primary story-arc of each character’s friendship route. These arcs often deal with dim topics that cover a vast array of issues many players could relate to. Despite the game’s tone and fantastical story, Persona 5 does not fail in its depiction of these issues. Webster comments that the game “deftly deals with a number of dark, challenging topics, particularly around abuse and exploitation” (Webster). This sentiment is echoed by IGN’s Andrew Goldfarb, who comments Persona 5 “shines light on abuse by teachers, drug sales, suicide, and a host of other issues that are handled well and are at times extraordinarily moving” (Goldfarb). This deft and skillful handling of issues makes the characters relatable without feeling pandering.
A great example of this emotional connection Joker and the player can form is with one of the first characters they meet, Ryuji. Ryuji is one of the three founding members of the Phantom Thieves and essentially becomes Joker’s best friend throughout the game. Many things are revealed about Ryuji, such as his dislike for teachers, his love of exercise, and his love for his mother. Despite these tropes, he is more complex than the “tough guy with a heart of gold” archetype. Ryuji was abused by his father as a child and has been affected by that pain. However, his abusive father is only mentioned a handful of times during his Confidant story-arc. Instead, Ryuji’s arc focuses more on anger issues and how they have affected others, especially his former track team. While his anger issues have clear ties to the abuse he suffered as a child, he is not treated as a victim and instead as a person. Ryuji learns that he must take responsibility for his actions, even if there is an explanation for them. Eventually, Ryuji learns sometimes it is best to use his head and not his heart to solve problems. While he is a victim of abuse, said abuse does not define him, and he exists as more than just a token representation of abuse’s effects.
Ryuji is portrayed as someone who struggles with the results of abuse but is not just a mouthpiece to voice its evils. Due to this, he becomes much more relatable and understandable to both those who have faced physical abuse as well as those who have struggled with anger issues like Ryuji’s. Ryuji’s character-arc is one of the more robust examples of characters being relatable in Persona 5, but he is far from the only one. Across the game, there are twenty Confidants, many of which have stories with just as much relatability and emotional impact as Ryuji’s. While every player will not connect to every character’s struggles, they will undoubtedly find several that they do. It is this relatability that instills a sense of care and connection between the characters and the player. This only compounds with the events of the story, where internal struggles begin to explain why certain characters behave certain ways during the events of the Phantom Thieves’ journey. The player begins to understand what they feel, and sympathize with them throughout their personal struggles, as well as the darker parts of Persona 5’s general storyline.
Despite the story revolving around the Phantom Thieves, the focus on connection and dark emotional turmoil can detract from the group’s cohesiveness at times. Goldfarb rightfully points out that the Phantom Thieves never reach “the heights of Persona 4’s Scooby Gang vibe” (Goldfarb). The Phantom Thieves often disagree and even come to stalemates in moving forward amid stressful situations. However, this disagreement and strife serve to further flesh out the characters, their motivations, and their personalities. The Phantom Thieves do not attain the fourth game’s level of team unity and its “Scooby Gang vibe” because each member has different ideals and motivations. Their story’s compelling nature is rooted in the fact they all have different views on how to cope and grow as people. This is a much more realistic and relatable depiction of group dynamics and personal beliefs than a “Scooby Gang.” Mixed with the compelling characters, the group dynamics fill out the Phantom Thieves and Joker’s many Confidants as characters, completing the sense of realism and connection the player can make to them.
Similar to how Persona 5’s characters complete their emotional impact through characterization and group dynamics, the JRPG’s gameplay also elicits emotion through two different elements. Persona 5 is split into two distinct gameplay experiences, which the player switches between with relative regularity. The first form of gameplay introduced is that of the real world, where Joker is allowed to explore Tokyo, complete tasks for money and stat boosts, and build relationships with Confidants. The second style comes into play when the player enters the Metaverse, wherein the world warps and the Phantom Thieves change to reflect their occupation as thieves. The Metaverse is where gameplay becomes the intense and enthralling dungeon-crawling JRPG Persona 5 is known to be. The Phantom Thieves travel through the world of cognition, battling monsters and infiltrating the dungeons, called “Palaces,” formed by the twisted thoughts of a target. These gameplay styles work to create their own sense of atmosphere and mood, but it is in their contrast where the emotional impact of the gameplay truly shines through.
The real world creates a sense of plodding calm and relaxation, as the music and actions available rarely require intense attention or reaction times from the player. The game’s multitude of options often allow the player not to feel too pressured to do something they do not want to and encourages them to explore. Exploration often even becomes an activity in itself, as discussed by Goldfarb when he comments “the very act of exploring Persona 5’s Tokyo is a delight. From city lights at night to crowded subways during your school commute, every part of this world is bursting with vibrant color…” (Goldfarb). His statement nicely encapsulates the light tone and exciting discovery that is exploring the real world. Almost every element of the world seems crafted to create the sense of quiet contentment and excitement that comes with exploring a new city or settling into a comfortable routine. This feeling further develops on rainy days. The soft sound of rain mixes with the calm music in the background, and fewer NPCs are about, further enforcing a sense of calm and comfort.
This comfort is then immediately replaced the moment Joker and the Phantom Thieves enter the Metaverse. Along with the warping of the world and the changing of appearance, the music and ambiance immediately rise in tension and intensity. The mood of Persona 5’s Metaverse is similar to that of an intense football match or a particularly challenging test. The tension continues as the Phantom Thieves battle through dozens of enemies on their way to their goal. Battle music takes over during encounters, further emphasizing the importance of actions and the threats the player faces. In addition to the music, the menus the player interacts with during battle take on a much more jagged and explosive appearance, flowing into the visually impressive attacks and actions the Phantom Thieves can make against their enemies. Finally, where the real world often has soft colors, the Metaverse is often drenched in deep reds and blacks, intensifying the visuals and solidifying a sharp break between it and the real world.
Both of these worlds create two distinctive moods. One creates a sense of calm, while the other is intense and exciting. It is through this contrast that their true emotional impact can be gleaned. As the game progresses, the player will switch between these worlds often, each time emphasizing their stark differences in tone and design. The feelings of focus and adrenaline change to Joker’s café home and cat companion’s calming atmosphere, which themselves are replaced by more intense action. This dichotomy continues for almost the entire game, giving the player opportunity to rest and breathe before throwing them into the fray once more. This cycle’s highs and lows leave the player with memories of a varied experience that offered many different opportunities and activities, much like real life.
Persona 5 is a game that uses its story, characters, and gameplay to elicit a range of emotions in the player throughout the experience. A captivating story wraps itself up with a bittersweet but necessary goodbye to both the protagonist and player as the game draws to a close. Engaging and relatable characters make the player feel just as attached to them as the protagonist does. Finally, a mix of calm and exciting gameplay creates a rollercoaster ride of emotion and adrenaline throughout the experience of Persona 5. Separately, each of these elements does a perfectly adequate job of creating an atmosphere and emotionally impacting the player. However, when they are all taken together, Persona 5’s story, characters, and gameplay all weave together to form a complex and emotional narrative about love, pain, and struggle. By the end of the experience, these three elements have broken down part of the barrier between player and protagonist, allowing them to truly feel attached to the world they just explored and the characters they just met. Now, regarding the definition of literary merit and art used in the introduction. Art is something that makes you feel, and anything that is art has merit. Persona 5 does this.
Persona 5 makes you feel.
Works Cited
ATLUS. (2017). Persona 5. (PS4 Version) [Video Game]. Minato City, Tokyo, Japan: ATLUS
Goldfarb, Andrew. “Persona 5 Review.” IGN, 2 May 2017,
www.ign.com/articles/2017/03/29/persona-5-review.
Webster, Andrew. Persona 5 Review: a Cult Classic Shined to Perfection. 29 Mar. 2017,
www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15098458/persona-5-review-ps4-ps3.
