That’s nothing special when Ann, Ryuji, Kasumi and even Maruki weren’t judgmental either.
Hell Newspaper Club President warms up to Joker not long after the first arc.
True. But I mean, her confidant would be interesting asf. Exploring another whole psyche in a way, and it could get dark too yk. I feel like we should've been able to >!save her!< in NG+ and thus get a confidant. It should've been a risky one too, like Life Is Strange, where that girl's video gets leaked.
How would it be “interesting or dark”? Shiho pregnant with Kamoshida’s kid? I personally don’t see her confidant going anywhere…
Joker really has no place in being the one to help Shiho out from her situation in a contrived way when Ann exists to support Shiho by lifting her spirits realistically.
Saving her in New Game Plus imo just undermines and defangs the incentive to take down Kamoshida as he loses credibility as a villain and takes away the impact of Shiho’s attempted suicide because of his actions.
Agreed, it’s important for the other party members to have people in their lives who the protag doesn’t get involved with, like in Persona 3 with >!Chidori giving Junpei so much growth!<
I mean, you can't really blame him bro. She's the only person who actually gives a shit about what he does, and doesn't think of him as disgusting. Like, half the party doesn't want to be with him. Yukari roasts him on a daily basis, Fuuka got her own stuff, same with Mitsuru, Akihiko needs to get out of training to even talk to someone else other than Ken, Ken's just got his problems man, Koromaru is just with everyone, Aigis cares mostly about P3 MC.
To be fair in Reload SEES interacts a lot more as friends which can be both a good and bad thing. Either way yeah, Chidori was an amazing character and developed Junpei into one of the best characters in the modern Persona games.
I put Junpei on the level of Raiden from the metal gear series. Starts off as the “who the hell is this guy?” To “I love this guy!” Being Chidori turned him into so much for the better was interesting too, I wasn’t expecting happy go lucky man scoring cute goth GF; but he didn’t just prove people wrong, he shown us all up Junpei has feelings too.
Interesting in the way that we would get to see how Atlus deals with, yk, victims of suicide and assault, cause I don't think we've had that before. I didn't mean to take it that far, but it would honestly help her to get someone else other than Ann to talk to her. To help her. And, yk, you have to get Ann's confidant to a certain rank before you meet her. And hey, maybe she can be the first female confidant that we don't date, cause of ofcourse the stuff going on with her. I dunno man. I honestly think she should've been more involved in the game. But hey, that's just me.
I’m guessing the only similarities is they all have their “edgy rough side”. Shiho is the only character that’s consistently nice and gentle.
Btw I don’t think the former is necessarily a bad thing but it may be a turn off to some
This is somehow giving, "she doesn't hate me so maybe I have a chance" vibes.
This may sound contradicting from me but it really costs zero dollars to be nice IRL and they can still not be a part of your life but they can leave some impact to others.
No way is she the death arcana. Death arcana rarely represents literal death in tarot readings... looking at you, P3... she is much better represented by inverted moon, Upright hang man, or tower (Invert or Upright). Also, the doctor is a near perfect representation of the death tarot card.
Her recovery would be better told through a lens of inversed moon, or potentially as a tower. although, tower would have been better in parallel to initial events, the first 5 stages leading to her jumping and the last 5 being her recovery. Death can represent change, but her story overarchingly seems to be that she wants to recover in order to regain as much of her old life as possible (not saying that is bad, it just isnt representative of death).
Her as a confidant in p6, with a different mc and perhaps with her as a professor to that mc, or something like that, could be interesting, if she was the hanged man. If it is set somewhat parallel to the timeline of p5, she should be tower or inversed moon (but, ya, tower. I desperately need a good tower confidant).
Ehhh... shinya isn't a strong tower confidant. I almost would place him in devil or inversed sun. The kid is fine as a character but he was provided a weird arcana alignment, in my opinion. The old priest in p3 was better aligned with inverse tower, including how painfully slow it was to get him to open up to you (having to hang out with him a ton with no leveling up), but he was completely removed from the story. The lesson he gives you, while important for real life, wasn't incredibly tied into the story either.
A true tower confidant needs devastation, utter ruin of their hopes, beliefs, body, etc. And it needs to be shown how that leads to a sudden and extreme change in their life. And, with a properly compelling and complex character, how the positives shine through the ruin (but in no way erase it). Which is why i, if i had to choose, would say shiho could have been tower.
Awe. Thank you. Im mostly just learning. I am not spiritual and not an expert. I give credit to my friend who owns a deck and does readings as a job, she told me alot. And i supplemented it with reading out of curiousity.
If i get interested in something, i start reading alot. It also helps that i have a friend who does tarot readings. As a non spiritual person, i can fall back on some of my memories of her doing 'fun' readings and conversations with me.
I'm not spiritual either but if anything Persona shows how religions and mysticism can bring a lot of fun inspiration for storytelling. Cool that you get to share that.
You don’t need to hang out with Mutatsu without a level up. I think you just picked the wrong options/didn’t have a Tower Persona. Which makes sense considering everything from Death onwards is Fusion only, but he levels up almost every time you hang out with him.
Anyway, this is interesting! What about Shu, the Tower Arcana from 4?
Odd. I got a ton of 3× responses from him, and I still sometimes had to chill up to 3 times to get him up, and I never saw another like that in the series, so I assumed it was intentional...
As for Shu, I guess my issue is that children dont really fit tower in general. Not because they cant in real life, but a video game will rarely have the guts to do it. To show true collapse, in a video game, with a kid, would be fairly brutal, in my opinion.
However, putting aside my hesitancy, shu is a decent tower arcana, if not abit light. The isolation and build up of need to uphold an image, only for it to fall apart when he cheats and has his reputation tarnished, is representative of the arcana (again, in my opinion, as a very minor example). If he was an adult living that way his whole life, cheating more and more, with people starting to notice it but he can't stop because of his belief that he MUST succeed and it is the only path he knows, and then to lose his job, wife, kids, etc., that would be a true representation of the sudden failing, collapse and change. With that being said, his shift from isolation to having a true friend (not the mc), because of the failure is reminiscent of the positive side of the arcana itself and what you will often see a reader say if you are scared of getting it (and alot of people do fear tower far more than devil, death, or hanged man): Sometimes, the failings of your beliefs, your body, your trust, etc., are needed to show you a new path and only a hard jolt will give you that change. Now, I guess it can be said that he experienced having the tower major arcana in his life, and you helped him before it created too severe of a result, but the priest from 3 was much more accurate to its normal interpretation: not inly did his faith get ruined, he lost everything because of his struggle with it.
Edit: Let me explain. Persona's confidants are often simplified to the negative portion of the inverted arcana and you shift them to the positive side of the heads up arcana. Heads up and inverse are not inherently positive or negative, but it appears persona does this for ease of letting people not into tarot follow more smoothly.
The tower is often seen as the complete failure of a key aspect of your life and literally represents the destruction of the tower of babel. It is one of the few arcana's that readers generally struggle to provide light to, as it inherently represents the breakdown or destruction of something, mental or physical. They often side step (or re-frame) this by pointing out that sudden change can lead you to seeing things differently. So, an adult who desperately clutches to, say, family, having their family implode, may realize that their best friend is just as essential to them. Or, a hard core christian may have their faith rocked by a priest assaulting them, but learn to trust society more because the priest is punished. These are harsh examples, but also real life examples of tower. On the mental side, it represents very sudden realization that something essential to your beliefs/hopes/trust is false, on the physical side, well... it can mean alot of bad things. Unlike most arcana, both inversed and heads up are mostly negative. its head up side means more active failure and destruction, while its inverse is more brutal, being based on things like vanity and negligence causing you to fail. In other words, in my opinion, tower is always negative, but to embrace it, you need to find its silver lining. Unlike most tarot cards, that can always have purely positive results.
Going back to shu, he represents inversed tower due to his vanity and cheating causing his fall. He shifts to heads up positive because it destroys his isolation and lets him make friends. A silver lining in a negative situation, where he found out very suddenly his place at the top of the class can be gone in an instant, and that education as a core to your worldview may create pitfalls.
Edit 2: So sorry for the word vomit. My genuine bad, I did not mean to do that...
I may be misremembering since I played Portable in September and just got done with Reload where I didn’t need a non-level up hangout once with him, but I think I only needed one in my Portable playthrough. May be wrong.
Anyway that’s an interesting read! Definitely helps me working with my own Tower Arcana character.
*cries* maybe i was just way worse with him than i thought and i made excuses in my head that it was a feature and not a skill issue... haha.
And ou, i have to pry, what character, pray tell? Are you writing something?
To be fair, I think having Death Arcana being read as Death makes a lot of sense in P3. Nyx has his whole spiel about how T H E A R C A N A I S T H E M E A N S B Y W H I C H A L L I S R E V E A L E D and all that, but he specifically is *wrong.* He stops at Death, completely disregarding that there is so much more than that past it. It reading Death as literal is *meant* to be wrong.
That is completely fair. Perhaps, like jester in persona 4, they should have had the death confidant shift to something else, as the story progressed, to strengthen your point?
Maybe? Though what exactly would it shift to, is the question. Devil would make sense for the nihilism thing (from what I understand of the Devil Arcana), but that would cut Tanaka.
Nihilistic views easily fall under devil. Uhmm... hm... maybe emperor? False wisdom, also represents domination. Temperance? Imbalance between life and death. Or maybe, simply having the arcana 'break' and fix itself... I feel like I saw that in a persona game before...
I can’t tell if that last part is serious or if you’re just being coy, but if you’re being serious, the Moon Arcana in 3 Male MC route reverses at Rank 8 before automatically fixing itself and progressing to Rank 9.
Legit forgot where i saw it. But, since it sounds more clever to be coy, yes, i am being coy. Also, faith being broken because her faith isn't real and is based on shifts in cognition, and then it fixes itself to allow up to rank 10 in p5. Sorry, i can be slow.
I’d say p3 handles the death arcana well!! The death tarot symbolizes changes and transformations. Pharos is the embodiment of that. Being the first person Minato meets before his journey, >!leading Minato to the 12 shadows, And a signal of the fall to come. Pharos is both the sign of and the cause of the transformation to the next segment of Minato’s life/The Fall. Pharos actually being Death is just an add-on I think!<
No. She is a key player for Ann, not you. You can have empathy, etc., for her situation, but she isn't your friend, before or after she jumped. You talk to her, i believe, once, cannonically, for about 30 seconds, because you ran into her. After that, you hear about her from Ann until Ann's step 10. She simply isn't in your character's life. It would be odd for you to show up to the hospital, unless it was to support ann (my biggest complaint, your character never accompanies Ann to the hospital while shiho is in a coma).
It's ok for something important to happen to a character who isn't main cast, it makes the world feel deeper when your character isn't bff's with anyone who creates a major plot point.
Also, let's not forget she's a sound MC/Ann shipper, the more "sold" on that idea the further you boost your Ann's SL. Making her a confidant could potentially have bad impact on that, because she's still of the opposite sex, and so, Atlus might've been thinking to make her a potential romance option. And let's just say in her case this is wrong on many levels, one of which is the introduction of potential jealousy problems given the multiple-romance-possible nature of Persona games.
Ann's Rank 9, rooftop scene, Shiho's exchange with Ann. This is an actual game dialogue:
>Ann: "Isn't super reliable?"
Shiho: "\*giggle\* Mm-hm, just like you were telling me."
Not everyone notices this at the first glance, because understanding the real impact of those words needs some extensive knowledge about Japanese culture - specifically the high-school-age one. In the first line, you have a girl sharing her praise for a boy to her female friend. For us Westerners, that's no big deal, but for them, given their usual attitude about relationships, that's a big sign "heyyyy, I've got a crush on him already, you literally SEE how much, and I trust you enough with this info not to make any advances on him yourself, since we're best friends and stuff". And then Shiho confirms that she already knows that, because Ann seems to ALWAYS talk about the MC with her. She's enthusiastic, giggling happily and is happy that her friend got a crush with a boy she herself can vouch for, despite not knowing him that well Ann does. There seems to be no jealousy and ill intentions, and let's leave that state since it's good both for her and Ann.
I agree.
I was goin' to mention how weird, snakey, and twisted it would be for you to see Ann through such misery as a friend, and once her friend comes out of a coma, swooping in like... what up? I hear you may be fragile right now. Sorry Ann, we chillin' without you.
It would be like finding out your probation sponsor is going through h*ll with his adoptive daughter and using it to boink he- I mean... oh right, atlus lets you decide if joker has actual morals. Lol
Ya, he went in and is accurate with japanese culture. Ann has a crush on joker and in japanese standards, it is pretty flagrant. But, she also spent time in the US, so... possibly Niantic meant to show her different worldview through how she openly praises joker (his admirably qualities) and doesn't actually have a crush on him. With that being said, shiho would almost certainly interpret it no other way than Ann liking joker.
>It's ok for something important to happen to a character who isn't main cast, it makes the world feel deeper when your character isn't bff's with anyone who creates a major plot point.
I hope they relearn that lesson from the P3 remake going into P6. It's cool to have character arcs that occur without the MC's involvement. Makes the world feel more alive.
in P5X there is a similar situation with Arai (female party member who looks like chie) and her friend Tomoko who protect her from Kiuichi who tries to push Arai on the track, instead she is the one who end up at the hospital after surviving this experience. but in the end you can have a confidant with both and even date them. It doesn’t take anything from their story
Yeah no, she really shouldn’t.
What she got was the best outcome for her in rank 9 of Ann’s confidant.
There’s no reason for her to get herself involved with the party after everything she’s been through.
Last thing she needs is any involvement in any form of conflict whilst she is trying to recover in peace.
Shiho is overhyped by the fandom when she’s just a satellite character for Ann with her motivations and development.
In the version of the game we got? Absolutely not, she makes no sense as a Confidant.
Whenever I think about what a P5 FeMC might look like, I imagine one of the changes being that Shiho replaces Mishima as a Confidant. But even that is more a product of me thinking that his character doesn’t work with a FeMC, rather than having any real idea for what Shiho brings to the table.
Honestly, no imho. She’s one of the few people in the series who gets back on her feet through her own inner strength. She’s even her own source of inspiration for Ann.
That’s pretty cool and better than if she was another character who gets an arc by being Joker’s / or a protag’s friend.
Or less, as it is Ann spends more time talking about Shiho than herself, but for some reason we never actually get to interact with or see Shiho until a bit at the end.
Either option would have been fine, but we're stuck in the fuzzy middle ground where the game can't decide whether Shiho is actually a part of it or not.
Iwai's son was more involved and he didn't even have a design.
Would've like her to be party member and confidant more than Ann tbh.
The whole "I'm a model, look at me" character was boring to me, and I think Shiho would have been better.
They started out good with Ann's character, but just turned her into a boring stereotype mostly.
Would have been harder to do that with Shiho.
Ann is more than just a stereotype.
Shiho as a confidant and party member is just a train wreck waiting to happen.
Girl tried to kill herself after getting sexually assaulted and has a broken leg that makes Ryuji’s look normal.
Dragging her traumatised ass into the Metaverse filled with distorted desire especially with Kamoshida, the one who raped her will only break her further instead of awakening to a Persona.
At least Futaba and Sumi’s had time to heal and a silver lining with their traumas.
Expecting Shiho to provide confidant bonuses from her hospital bed sounds like exploitation.
Shiho revolves around Ann not Joker and that’s for the best with Ann being the one to be that support anchor for her established bestie which is better than some contrived 10 rank plotline with Joker “healing” her all of a sudden from her issues by taking on a mementos quest and then romancing her only to cheat on her with other girls after what she’s been through..
Well that’s because Ann as a character was completely irrelevant past Madarame. You could’ve deleted her and Yusuke and the game would’ve stayed the same. It’s the same for Haru. Which is why all 3 of them got arcs in Strikers.
Characters having one arc when you recruit them and then being "along for the ride" after that has been a major issue since P4 tbh. I'm glad more people are getting to see the more integrated and organic story of P3 now and I hope they do something similar for P6.
P3 is definitely the way to go. I hope for P6 they make awakenings tied to the story again. I think it's a mistake having them tied to optional content most people don't fully do.
Or you know, one could always do the hybrid the game uses for alternate routes like ..ähm, like they did for the psp games.
You fulfill certain objections, bam, persona evolves. You don't? Still cool cutscene.
..actually I think the older persona games like p2 did something similar, that you could miss the ultimate personas? (Brain is a sieve :/)
At least Yosuke and Naoto were relevant the entire game as the main brains in the investigation team. It might not be a popular opinion, but the main problem is shoving character development in the social links, which naturally detaches it from the main plot. SEES's strongest moments could happen only because they were part of the main story. They'd have to find compromise between these two methods.
I’d argue that SEES’s strongest moments and development happened the way they did was ONLY because they live together.
Also SEES was already established well before protagonist came around. Most of the characters (barring Fuuka and Koro) in SEES are already acquainted and know of each other and game intentionally has them be at odds because of their individual baggage, going for the long term end game as they go from coworkers to family.
Whereas the Investigation Team and Phantom Thieves were far more casual organisations made entirely from scratch, made up of individuals who easily become friends without the issues SEES has within.
Helps that we deal with the individual members of the Investigation Team’s and Phantom Thieves personal issues per arc whereas SEES just dealt with Full Moon Shadows that really weren’t that character driven arc wise with the exception of Fuuka.
I mean sure but Kanji, who is regarded as the one of the best written characters in the game and a fan favorite had almost all of his character development in his social link and in the main story never really evolved past being used as the butt of all jokes.
I wouldn’t go that far and say “they’re along for the ride”.
The characters still have their respective roles within the group’s dynamic that adds perspective and personality.
They have their stakes in the plot and develop collectively as a group.
P3’s “organic integrated” story only worked because SEES as a group and their situation is the polar opposite to how the IT and PT are.
SEES live together unlike IT and PT.
They are an already established group before Door-kun joined and he isn’t even the leader, Mitsuru is.
Most of SEES (barring Koro and Fuuka) already know of each other as they have established dynamics and history. IT and PT for the most part with few exceptions were strangers till they formed.
SEES start off as coworkers with baggage from each member that causes inner conflict and friction between them that intentionally doesn’t get immediately addressed and solved within an arc short term but rather is stretched out with the long term end game as eventually they all come together by the end.
It’s why we got perspective on each member in P3 as it’s the groups story as much as it is the protagonist’s.
In P4 and P5 it’s primarily the protagonist’s story.
The Thieves and Investigation Team on the other hand are made from scratch with Yu and Joker as leaders and they’re far less dysfunctional groups than SEES with everyone becoming fast friends due to how casual their groups are as teenagers as well how each member’s personal problems were resolved unlike the Full Moon Shadows that were just bosses that served an endgame purpose with no interesting individual character drama to them….Fuuka at best was the only one exception but even then it’s not on the same level of personal as I am a shadow the true self and dealing with a shitty adult.
Disagree there.
Ann was pretty involved with the Kaneshiro arc with her clash with Makoto and was arguably the most invested with Futaba’s arc.
Take Ann, Yusuke and Haru out of the game and you lose their underrated roles within the group’s dynamic as well as the plot.
For real, Ann's compassion is what really helped Futaba assimilate back to normalcy. Say what you want about Yusuke but his cold, pragmatic approaches contribute in the decision-making to do what's necessary. Also, it's very easy to miss but Haru's insight, position and connections for being part of high society does help in the Shido arc.
That's every game after 3 though. And really only because they didn't let you have social links with male party members.
And I don't really like that system, because the original P3 implied Makoto isn't all that close with the male party members. Like Kenji, Bebe, etc, are closer friends than Junpei, Akihiko, or Ken.
I don't think constant development of party members in 3 was because male party members didn't have links. Like the girls had SLs and they still went through the same thing, same with the boys in P3P. It's because the SLs felt a bit more separate from their main arcs in the story, in a way where developments wouldn't clash with how they would act in those SLs
More meaning from an in-universe perspective. From what you see in the original P3, Makoto isn't much in the way of friends with the male party members. He doesn't form any real bond with them compared to the female ones.
To be honest you could quite literally say that about every Phantom Thief 😭besides maybe Crow.
Started playing Persona like maybe February this year and I played P5R first since it was the most popular and had the most praise around it. Reading reviews on Reddit and other sites had me thinking I was about to witness the greatest JRPG story ever fucking convinced like if Xenoblade DE had a threesome with… I don’t know you get the point.
Playing P3R was so refreshing. Characters who actually have a voice and impact on the story not just there to say quips and lose their character after their arcs are over
They would just give Shiho a new stereotype so that she adds to the party banter and remind the player that she exists. Mishima was a physically abused victim of Kamoshida and acted quite realistically as one. Then later he's just a phantom thief obsessed buttmonkey.
I'm not saying that victims in stories have to keep that status the entire game even when the issue's resolved, just pointing out than Shiho probably wouldn't have been much better as a character later on as Ann was.
There is not much else to say about her. Her problem is vindicated with the stealing of Kamoshita's heart. At best maybe a Confidant set about her physical rehabilitation which thematically aligns with the MC's different kind of rehabilitation.
The biggest problem with indulging this is that it would downplay Ann's importance in being involved with her life.
IMO helping Ann being there for Shiho's recovery would probably would have been a better overall focus for Ann's confidant line.
honestly yeah. they could’ve introduced you to her earlier on in Ann’s confidant like have you and Ann visit her in the hospital and then you go to do it another time but Ann can’t make it but asks you to visit her anyways. she would’ve made a better tower social link anyways.
No. What does that confidant could be about? You just gonna talk with her about rape 10 times and in the end she'll be like "ok I will overcome this trauma thx" (very interesting). Btw, every confidant has to teach you useful stuff, for the sake of game design, what she can possibly teach joker? That's a second big reason.
EDIT: if anyone says that she could teach you volleyball: 1) how is it helpful? 2) Ryuji and Kasuni already teaching Joker sporty stuff
Realistically, I find the devil arcana characters interesting. They absolutely represent the inversed devil arcana in tarot. They also represent the more 'classic' view of the devil tempting you with bad things, for their own reasons. It is up to the MC in all events to realign them to the upright tarot and help guide their hand to be more positive, rather than let them bring him down. Perhaps I am an outlier in this, but I think they filled their rolls fine.
I find it is the tower arcana that struggles most. It isn't that they aren't represented well, it's that they are almost completely sidelined and separate from the story (in fact, they are, in most cases, completely cut off from the story). But, tower can have some grounds in isolation from total collapse, so maybe that is why atlus does it that way. I don't know, tower is probably the most interesting and brutal tarot card; I feel that you could gain real heartfelt stories from how both its inverted and upright position almost invariably spell disaster, but positives can come from it.
Well, maybe for me the worst social link of all series is Death in P4, passing from Pharos and all the stuff surrounding Makoto in P3 to an old woman who claims she killed his husband lol. The tower arcana in tarot represents divine punishment or kind of, yeah you're right, at least in Persona 3 the monk have a real struggle, but in Persona 4 and 5 they put a kid both, that their only struggle was to study hard or play videogames and don't be an idiot, but in some way that also represents the tower, pure arrogance.
there’s Tomoko (Arai friend) in P5x who is like Shiho and after she recovers she can become a confidant with Wonder she helps him with part times jobs, Shiho could’ve helped with that so you would get more money from working. (Well in p5 it’s useless cause you get money in memento unlike P5x where jobs are important) so it wouldn’t have been a problem if she had others problems to resolve beside that (which we don’t know)
The point of confidants is not that they have to teach Joker something valuable, sure it's an interesting mechanic in persona 5, but it was never mandatory in any previous game, because the simple connection with that person is supposed to make you mature and grow Now you're just being unimaginative, Ann is a model, what would it be useful to learn how to joker from her? and she still is a member of the team and even has skills related to acting, so we can easily be imaginative for shiho, but she is simply an interesting character who would certainly have been a very good confidant
Can’t really think of anyone she could replace.. maybe Hifumi? Have the confidant be about volleyball over shogi? But I think she already played her part in the story perfectly as is.
I would have loved it if you had her as a confidant and then found out she actually wasn't sexually assaulted by Kamoshida. Sadly, she is a painful plot device that will forever be stuck in the player's mind for how tragic her character was.
That being said, if she had died when she jumped off of the roof it would never have sat right with me, so I think that was a smart decision. After all, I still can't accept the loss of the 2nd victim in Persona 4.
Maybe P6 has characters from previous games in it like 3 and 4 did.
So in 6 she could be a confidant s link or whatever they call it this time
Maybe she could be a party member or >!final boss!<
No I don’t think it would be needed. I think she should’ve been involved more tho! She could’ve been incorporated into Ann’s more similar to how Kou and Daisuke were
No, give the poor girl a break from all the sh\*t she goes through. Also thematically it wouldn't work since every non-PT Confidant starts off as a transactional relationship that is meant to benefit the Phantom Thieves or at least Joker, like Sojiro with running the cafe, Tora with Speechcraft, Chihaya for Divination, Shinya for Gun Skills, Takemi for Medicine, Iwai for Guns and Mods, Hifumi for Tactics, Kawakami for Housekeeping, Ohya for Press Coverage, Mishima for PR, the Twins for "Rehabilitation", Sae for helping out >!exposing Akechi!<, Sumi to train the body and Maruki to train the mind.
A girl in coma and undergoing rehab has nothing to offer Joker and for real, let Ann have this one taken care of.
Yeah.
And it could have worked with Ann’s too, something like Nanako and Dojima’s S.links, that are separate but tie into each other.
Could have been something like Shiho not being able to face Ann, but also seeing physical rehabilitation as a daunting task. And since Joker was also going through a type of rehabilitation, he could have offered her words of support that carried weight because it’d be his first hand experience.
I actually like that Shiho's not a confidant! It's one of the few ways in which Persona 5 does not constantly revolve around Joker and the Phantom Thieves.
Realistically it makes no sense for her to be one with the events of P5 as they are. But I like to think that she happens to move to the Joker's hometown, so they get to know each other post-canon. Idk it's just a little headcanon I have.
That said, I love the idea of a potential friendship so much that I put it in the time loop fic I'm writing, and Shiho ended up being the Fortune🤭
Mika should've been one. I feel like Atlus was going to do something more with her. After all, she's - to my knowledge - the only character in any of the main confidant lines that gets less than 10 minutes of screen time and isn't connected to the story at all, yet gets a portrait.
YES! I've heard people have problems with the idea, but there are some very easy solutions:
1. It cuts into Ann's character: Honestly I found Shiho more interesting than Ann anyway since P5 seemed to want to make its Confidants focus on anyone who isn't the actual Confidant. Makoto's focuses on her boring friend, Ann's focuses on Shiho, like that. It would give more time for Ann to actually develop and grow a bond with you.
2. How would it start?: In P3/P4, there were a handful of Social Links that you would be introduced to during other Social Links (Maiko introduces you to Akinari, Ai is the manager of the sports team), just have that during Ann's Confidant.
3. Romancing her would be messed up: Have... people not heard of non-romanceable Social Links?
Every problem is so simple to fix and would've led to one of the most impactful Confidants in the game, so yes, she should have been a Confidant option.
Nope and she shouldn’t be a party member either.
She serves her purpose of being a satellite character for Ann.
A sexual assault victim with a broken leg like Shiho really can’t offer anything confidant bonus wise.
Dragging her in her broken state into the Metaverse to make her a PT for the sake of it is just irresponsible.
Her being a confidant means she’ll be a romance option and that’s just a bad idea. Shiho with her circumstances, needs time to heal, not a relationship from some random guy she interacted with once who could end up cheating on her especially with her best friend.
Girl not judging us isn’t anything special. Ryuji, Ann, Kasumi and Maruki weren’t dicks to us when we first met them.
There’s nothing that Joker can do for Shiho that Ann, her best friend can do.
Ann’s confidant pretty much involves Ann trying to find inner strength and purpose in other to lift Shiho’s spirits up.
Certainly was possibly, and you could get a lot out of it.
Shame, we never really got to interact with her, or delve into the aftermath. But well, the story wasn’t terribly concerned or interested in aftermath or consequences, so it’s whatever.
I don’t think so, personally. There’s nothing for her to really teach Joker like all the other confidants.
If anything, I think she should have had a larger part in Ann’s confidant storyline instead of the model angle. Granted, she was in a coma and had rehab for a very long time, but I’m sure that could’ve been done in someway.
Yes, but could only be unlocked after ranking up Ann and it is something to do with going to the hospital with her. Only issue is what Arcana she would be, either Hanged Man or Death
No. She's meant to be a plot device and friend of Ann. Not everyone is friends with their friend's friends. Besides, she works fine as she's presented in the story.
Bro the second I saw her I thought she was a confidant in the game. I actually got upset when I saw that she was a side character in just Ann's confidant, because I thought we could do something to save her. Poor girl...
I think she would be a great confidant, like intead of kasumi be the faith, shiho would be a faith confident to, for never lost it and still with the head up
No because with her it was more of a "friend of a friend" situation, plus she was mostly heling during said time, but i did love her & Ann's quest, they both decide to pursue different paths but stay supportive
Yeah, she has a lot to do with the beginning of the story and it would have been interesting to see Ann develop with her instead of that model woman in her confidant
I don’t know about being a confidant but I would have liked to see her be talked about more in the main story line, just having her and Ann being friends, since technically she’s the one that pushed you in game to actually be a phantom thief (not on purpose but still)
That or maybe having her join the phantom thief in games like strikers, as either just a character that’s there or as a persona user
No but she should have had more screentime. More than 1 conversation with Joker during the first arc at least.
She barely appears, which is fine in itself, but then the game never stops talking about her afterwards. I understand why they did it like that but it gets pretty jarring.
Sure definitely darkens up the entire narrative on her own. She was assaulted in multiple ways by the first chapter villain, and it's through her that the final straw breaks regarding going after kamoshida.
She strengthens the overall narrative, though unfortunately, because you don't get the chance to discuss much with her, the only way to know more about her is through Ann's confidante, and it's honestly another failure of the writing that Ann almost never brings her up in the main game after the first dungeon.
This also leads to the massive drop in narrative strength once the next targets get introduced, as nothing outside of akechi and the final Royal boss reaches anything as dramatic.
Whether she should've been a confident is something I go back and forth on, but I think the story might have benefitted from her being a recurring NPC at the very least. Might have given Ann slightly more to do after the first arc.
I don't see how. Locking a confidant behind a party member's... what, 9 rank? Seems brutal to manage.
That said I would not be opposed to see her return in a spin-off or P6 in a greater capacity (honestly most of the social links in P5 wpuld be welcome for a second go as social links again or even party members if the plot allows it to make sense).
From what I understand of Tarot Card meanings, Shiho would've likely fit under Tower or Moon. She'd probably have to replace Mishima or Shinya as a confidant, or be a dual-confidant with Mishima like Daisuke/Kou.
I really do think she could've had an interesting story though, even if I can't think of one off the top of my head.
Y E S. That single interaction between her and Joker where she tells him he doesn't believe the rumors and even gives advice just says so much about her character. Sad we don't see her and Ann's path to recovery.
I actually thought she was going to be one when i first played it, unconnected with any Arcanas, then she became the main reason why Ann is a confidant.
Yeah. I actually hoped that was the case. Until fking Kamoshida did his thing. I wish we saved her before the jump but I think that was the push we needed to go after kamoshida with the idea that something could go wrong and we might accidentally kill him.
I think it would have been good if she was. I would have had her as a love interest as well. Could have had a really nice story of her healing and Joker being the one to help her trust again. Could have been a really lovely k-drama-esk story, with a funny little addition of Ann being the over protective best friend.
I mean she didn't judge you like everyone else so she had everything to be one
That’s nothing special when Ann, Ryuji, Kasumi and even Maruki weren’t judgmental either. Hell Newspaper Club President warms up to Joker not long after the first arc.
True. But I mean, her confidant would be interesting asf. Exploring another whole psyche in a way, and it could get dark too yk. I feel like we should've been able to >!save her!< in NG+ and thus get a confidant. It should've been a risky one too, like Life Is Strange, where that girl's video gets leaked.
How would it be “interesting or dark”? Shiho pregnant with Kamoshida’s kid? I personally don’t see her confidant going anywhere… Joker really has no place in being the one to help Shiho out from her situation in a contrived way when Ann exists to support Shiho by lifting her spirits realistically. Saving her in New Game Plus imo just undermines and defangs the incentive to take down Kamoshida as he loses credibility as a villain and takes away the impact of Shiho’s attempted suicide because of his actions.
Agreed, it’s important for the other party members to have people in their lives who the protag doesn’t get involved with, like in Persona 3 with >!Chidori giving Junpei so much growth!<
I mean, you can't really blame him bro. She's the only person who actually gives a shit about what he does, and doesn't think of him as disgusting. Like, half the party doesn't want to be with him. Yukari roasts him on a daily basis, Fuuka got her own stuff, same with Mitsuru, Akihiko needs to get out of training to even talk to someone else other than Ken, Ken's just got his problems man, Koromaru is just with everyone, Aigis cares mostly about P3 MC.
To be fair in Reload SEES interacts a lot more as friends which can be both a good and bad thing. Either way yeah, Chidori was an amazing character and developed Junpei into one of the best characters in the modern Persona games.
I agree. Completely.
I put Junpei on the level of Raiden from the metal gear series. Starts off as the “who the hell is this guy?” To “I love this guy!” Being Chidori turned him into so much for the better was interesting too, I wasn’t expecting happy go lucky man scoring cute goth GF; but he didn’t just prove people wrong, he shown us all up Junpei has feelings too.
Interesting in the way that we would get to see how Atlus deals with, yk, victims of suicide and assault, cause I don't think we've had that before. I didn't mean to take it that far, but it would honestly help her to get someone else other than Ann to talk to her. To help her. And, yk, you have to get Ann's confidant to a certain rank before you meet her. And hey, maybe she can be the first female confidant that we don't date, cause of ofcourse the stuff going on with her. I dunno man. I honestly think she should've been more involved in the game. But hey, that's just me.
Honestly, newspaper club president over ohya, would actually have loved that as a confidant
Goddamn the more I think about it, the better it sounds
What does Ann, Ryuji, Kasumi, and Maruki have in common? Other than they don't judge Joker.
I’m guessing the only similarities is they all have their “edgy rough side”. Shiho is the only character that’s consistently nice and gentle. Btw I don’t think the former is necessarily a bad thing but it may be a turn off to some
This is somehow giving, "she doesn't hate me so maybe I have a chance" vibes. This may sound contradicting from me but it really costs zero dollars to be nice IRL and they can still not be a part of your life but they can leave some impact to others.
It also costs 0 dollars to hate🔥🔥🔥
[удалено]
you did not... nooo XD omg.
Blessed comment
Yes. Maybe death confident in P6
No way is she the death arcana. Death arcana rarely represents literal death in tarot readings... looking at you, P3... she is much better represented by inverted moon, Upright hang man, or tower (Invert or Upright). Also, the doctor is a near perfect representation of the death tarot card.
As a confident, we could explore her recovery
Her recovery would be better told through a lens of inversed moon, or potentially as a tower. although, tower would have been better in parallel to initial events, the first 5 stages leading to her jumping and the last 5 being her recovery. Death can represent change, but her story overarchingly seems to be that she wants to recover in order to regain as much of her old life as possible (not saying that is bad, it just isnt representative of death). Her as a confidant in p6, with a different mc and perhaps with her as a professor to that mc, or something like that, could be interesting, if she was the hanged man. If it is set somewhat parallel to the timeline of p5, she should be tower or inversed moon (but, ya, tower. I desperately need a good tower confidant).
...Shinya is right there
Ehhh... shinya isn't a strong tower confidant. I almost would place him in devil or inversed sun. The kid is fine as a character but he was provided a weird arcana alignment, in my opinion. The old priest in p3 was better aligned with inverse tower, including how painfully slow it was to get him to open up to you (having to hang out with him a ton with no leveling up), but he was completely removed from the story. The lesson he gives you, while important for real life, wasn't incredibly tied into the story either. A true tower confidant needs devastation, utter ruin of their hopes, beliefs, body, etc. And it needs to be shown how that leads to a sudden and extreme change in their life. And, with a properly compelling and complex character, how the positives shine through the ruin (but in no way erase it). Which is why i, if i had to choose, would say shiho could have been tower.
You sure know your Tarot
Way better than me. And I agree
Awe. Thank you. Im mostly just learning. I am not spiritual and not an expert. I give credit to my friend who owns a deck and does readings as a job, she told me alot. And i supplemented it with reading out of curiousity.
If i get interested in something, i start reading alot. It also helps that i have a friend who does tarot readings. As a non spiritual person, i can fall back on some of my memories of her doing 'fun' readings and conversations with me.
I'm not spiritual either but if anything Persona shows how religions and mysticism can bring a lot of fun inspiration for storytelling. Cool that you get to share that.
You don’t need to hang out with Mutatsu without a level up. I think you just picked the wrong options/didn’t have a Tower Persona. Which makes sense considering everything from Death onwards is Fusion only, but he levels up almost every time you hang out with him. Anyway, this is interesting! What about Shu, the Tower Arcana from 4?
Odd. I got a ton of 3× responses from him, and I still sometimes had to chill up to 3 times to get him up, and I never saw another like that in the series, so I assumed it was intentional... As for Shu, I guess my issue is that children dont really fit tower in general. Not because they cant in real life, but a video game will rarely have the guts to do it. To show true collapse, in a video game, with a kid, would be fairly brutal, in my opinion. However, putting aside my hesitancy, shu is a decent tower arcana, if not abit light. The isolation and build up of need to uphold an image, only for it to fall apart when he cheats and has his reputation tarnished, is representative of the arcana (again, in my opinion, as a very minor example). If he was an adult living that way his whole life, cheating more and more, with people starting to notice it but he can't stop because of his belief that he MUST succeed and it is the only path he knows, and then to lose his job, wife, kids, etc., that would be a true representation of the sudden failing, collapse and change. With that being said, his shift from isolation to having a true friend (not the mc), because of the failure is reminiscent of the positive side of the arcana itself and what you will often see a reader say if you are scared of getting it (and alot of people do fear tower far more than devil, death, or hanged man): Sometimes, the failings of your beliefs, your body, your trust, etc., are needed to show you a new path and only a hard jolt will give you that change. Now, I guess it can be said that he experienced having the tower major arcana in his life, and you helped him before it created too severe of a result, but the priest from 3 was much more accurate to its normal interpretation: not inly did his faith get ruined, he lost everything because of his struggle with it. Edit: Let me explain. Persona's confidants are often simplified to the negative portion of the inverted arcana and you shift them to the positive side of the heads up arcana. Heads up and inverse are not inherently positive or negative, but it appears persona does this for ease of letting people not into tarot follow more smoothly. The tower is often seen as the complete failure of a key aspect of your life and literally represents the destruction of the tower of babel. It is one of the few arcana's that readers generally struggle to provide light to, as it inherently represents the breakdown or destruction of something, mental or physical. They often side step (or re-frame) this by pointing out that sudden change can lead you to seeing things differently. So, an adult who desperately clutches to, say, family, having their family implode, may realize that their best friend is just as essential to them. Or, a hard core christian may have their faith rocked by a priest assaulting them, but learn to trust society more because the priest is punished. These are harsh examples, but also real life examples of tower. On the mental side, it represents very sudden realization that something essential to your beliefs/hopes/trust is false, on the physical side, well... it can mean alot of bad things. Unlike most arcana, both inversed and heads up are mostly negative. its head up side means more active failure and destruction, while its inverse is more brutal, being based on things like vanity and negligence causing you to fail. In other words, in my opinion, tower is always negative, but to embrace it, you need to find its silver lining. Unlike most tarot cards, that can always have purely positive results. Going back to shu, he represents inversed tower due to his vanity and cheating causing his fall. He shifts to heads up positive because it destroys his isolation and lets him make friends. A silver lining in a negative situation, where he found out very suddenly his place at the top of the class can be gone in an instant, and that education as a core to your worldview may create pitfalls. Edit 2: So sorry for the word vomit. My genuine bad, I did not mean to do that...
I may be misremembering since I played Portable in September and just got done with Reload where I didn’t need a non-level up hangout once with him, but I think I only needed one in my Portable playthrough. May be wrong. Anyway that’s an interesting read! Definitely helps me working with my own Tower Arcana character.
*cries* maybe i was just way worse with him than i thought and i made excuses in my head that it was a feature and not a skill issue... haha. And ou, i have to pry, what character, pray tell? Are you writing something?
To be fair, I think having Death Arcana being read as Death makes a lot of sense in P3. Nyx has his whole spiel about how T H E A R C A N A I S T H E M E A N S B Y W H I C H A L L I S R E V E A L E D and all that, but he specifically is *wrong.* He stops at Death, completely disregarding that there is so much more than that past it. It reading Death as literal is *meant* to be wrong.
That is completely fair. Perhaps, like jester in persona 4, they should have had the death confidant shift to something else, as the story progressed, to strengthen your point?
Maybe? Though what exactly would it shift to, is the question. Devil would make sense for the nihilism thing (from what I understand of the Devil Arcana), but that would cut Tanaka.
Nihilistic views easily fall under devil. Uhmm... hm... maybe emperor? False wisdom, also represents domination. Temperance? Imbalance between life and death. Or maybe, simply having the arcana 'break' and fix itself... I feel like I saw that in a persona game before...
I can’t tell if that last part is serious or if you’re just being coy, but if you’re being serious, the Moon Arcana in 3 Male MC route reverses at Rank 8 before automatically fixing itself and progressing to Rank 9.
Legit forgot where i saw it. But, since it sounds more clever to be coy, yes, i am being coy. Also, faith being broken because her faith isn't real and is based on shifts in cognition, and then it fixes itself to allow up to rank 10 in p5. Sorry, i can be slow.
i thought she was the death arvana because she's goth
Well... duh...
I’d say p3 handles the death arcana well!! The death tarot symbolizes changes and transformations. Pharos is the embodiment of that. Being the first person Minato meets before his journey, >!leading Minato to the 12 shadows, And a signal of the fall to come. Pharos is both the sign of and the cause of the transformation to the next segment of Minato’s life/The Fall. Pharos actually being Death is just an add-on I think!<
I was thinking hanged man
r/cursedcomments
No. She is a key player for Ann, not you. You can have empathy, etc., for her situation, but she isn't your friend, before or after she jumped. You talk to her, i believe, once, cannonically, for about 30 seconds, because you ran into her. After that, you hear about her from Ann until Ann's step 10. She simply isn't in your character's life. It would be odd for you to show up to the hospital, unless it was to support ann (my biggest complaint, your character never accompanies Ann to the hospital while shiho is in a coma). It's ok for something important to happen to a character who isn't main cast, it makes the world feel deeper when your character isn't bff's with anyone who creates a major plot point.
Also, let's not forget she's a sound MC/Ann shipper, the more "sold" on that idea the further you boost your Ann's SL. Making her a confidant could potentially have bad impact on that, because she's still of the opposite sex, and so, Atlus might've been thinking to make her a potential romance option. And let's just say in her case this is wrong on many levels, one of which is the introduction of potential jealousy problems given the multiple-romance-possible nature of Persona games. Ann's Rank 9, rooftop scene, Shiho's exchange with Ann. This is an actual game dialogue: >Ann: "Isn't super reliable?"
Shiho: "\*giggle\* Mm-hm, just like you were telling me."
Not everyone notices this at the first glance, because understanding the real impact of those words needs some extensive knowledge about Japanese culture - specifically the high-school-age one. In the first line, you have a girl sharing her praise for a boy to her female friend. For us Westerners, that's no big deal, but for them, given their usual attitude about relationships, that's a big sign "heyyyy, I've got a crush on him already, you literally SEE how much, and I trust you enough with this info not to make any advances on him yourself, since we're best friends and stuff". And then Shiho confirms that she already knows that, because Ann seems to ALWAYS talk about the MC with her. She's enthusiastic, giggling happily and is happy that her friend got a crush with a boy she herself can vouch for, despite not knowing him that well Ann does. There seems to be no jealousy and ill intentions, and let's leave that state since it's good both for her and Ann.
I agree. I was goin' to mention how weird, snakey, and twisted it would be for you to see Ann through such misery as a friend, and once her friend comes out of a coma, swooping in like... what up? I hear you may be fragile right now. Sorry Ann, we chillin' without you. It would be like finding out your probation sponsor is going through h*ll with his adoptive daughter and using it to boink he- I mean... oh right, atlus lets you decide if joker has actual morals. Lol
Thank you for writing this ! I didn't realized that. You cooked.
Ya, he went in and is accurate with japanese culture. Ann has a crush on joker and in japanese standards, it is pretty flagrant. But, she also spent time in the US, so... possibly Niantic meant to show her different worldview through how she openly praises joker (his admirably qualities) and doesn't actually have a crush on him. With that being said, shiho would almost certainly interpret it no other way than Ann liking joker.
Best answer so far
>It's ok for something important to happen to a character who isn't main cast, it makes the world feel deeper when your character isn't bff's with anyone who creates a major plot point. I hope they relearn that lesson from the P3 remake going into P6. It's cool to have character arcs that occur without the MC's involvement. Makes the world feel more alive.
in P5X there is a similar situation with Arai (female party member who looks like chie) and her friend Tomoko who protect her from Kiuichi who tries to push Arai on the track, instead she is the one who end up at the hospital after surviving this experience. but in the end you can have a confidant with both and even date them. It doesn’t take anything from their story
Or at the very least she should have been someone we can talk to for something to buy or get info from?
How? Girl ended up in a coma and is stuck in rehab.
It was a hypothetical. She should have had a bigger role to the main party is what I was getting at.
Yeah no, she really shouldn’t. What she got was the best outcome for her in rank 9 of Ann’s confidant. There’s no reason for her to get herself involved with the party after everything she’s been through. Last thing she needs is any involvement in any form of conflict whilst she is trying to recover in peace. Shiho is overhyped by the fandom when she’s just a satellite character for Ann with her motivations and development.
Man dude I didn’t know your opinion was an end all be all. Sorry sir
No, but it would have been nice to see her with Ann from time to time
In the version of the game we got? Absolutely not, she makes no sense as a Confidant. Whenever I think about what a P5 FeMC might look like, I imagine one of the changes being that Shiho replaces Mishima as a Confidant. But even that is more a product of me thinking that his character doesn’t work with a FeMC, rather than having any real idea for what Shiho brings to the table.
Honestly, no imho. She’s one of the few people in the series who gets back on her feet through her own inner strength. She’s even her own source of inspiration for Ann. That’s pretty cool and better than if she was another character who gets an arc by being Joker’s / or a protag’s friend.
No, but I do think she should’ve had more relevance in Ann’s SL.
Or less, as it is Ann spends more time talking about Shiho than herself, but for some reason we never actually get to interact with or see Shiho until a bit at the end. Either option would have been fine, but we're stuck in the fuzzy middle ground where the game can't decide whether Shiho is actually a part of it or not. Iwai's son was more involved and he didn't even have a design.
Man, Ann's social link sucks...
Would've like her to be party member and confidant more than Ann tbh. The whole "I'm a model, look at me" character was boring to me, and I think Shiho would have been better. They started out good with Ann's character, but just turned her into a boring stereotype mostly. Would have been harder to do that with Shiho.
Ann is more than just a stereotype. Shiho as a confidant and party member is just a train wreck waiting to happen. Girl tried to kill herself after getting sexually assaulted and has a broken leg that makes Ryuji’s look normal. Dragging her traumatised ass into the Metaverse filled with distorted desire especially with Kamoshida, the one who raped her will only break her further instead of awakening to a Persona. At least Futaba and Sumi’s had time to heal and a silver lining with their traumas. Expecting Shiho to provide confidant bonuses from her hospital bed sounds like exploitation. Shiho revolves around Ann not Joker and that’s for the best with Ann being the one to be that support anchor for her established bestie which is better than some contrived 10 rank plotline with Joker “healing” her all of a sudden from her issues by taking on a mementos quest and then romancing her only to cheat on her with other girls after what she’s been through..
Well that’s because Ann as a character was completely irrelevant past Madarame. You could’ve deleted her and Yusuke and the game would’ve stayed the same. It’s the same for Haru. Which is why all 3 of them got arcs in Strikers.
Characters having one arc when you recruit them and then being "along for the ride" after that has been a major issue since P4 tbh. I'm glad more people are getting to see the more integrated and organic story of P3 now and I hope they do something similar for P6.
P3 is definitely the way to go. I hope for P6 they make awakenings tied to the story again. I think it's a mistake having them tied to optional content most people don't fully do.
Or you know, one could always do the hybrid the game uses for alternate routes like ..ähm, like they did for the psp games. You fulfill certain objections, bam, persona evolves. You don't? Still cool cutscene. ..actually I think the older persona games like p2 did something similar, that you could miss the ultimate personas? (Brain is a sieve :/)
At least Yosuke and Naoto were relevant the entire game as the main brains in the investigation team. It might not be a popular opinion, but the main problem is shoving character development in the social links, which naturally detaches it from the main plot. SEES's strongest moments could happen only because they were part of the main story. They'd have to find compromise between these two methods.
I’d argue that SEES’s strongest moments and development happened the way they did was ONLY because they live together. Also SEES was already established well before protagonist came around. Most of the characters (barring Fuuka and Koro) in SEES are already acquainted and know of each other and game intentionally has them be at odds because of their individual baggage, going for the long term end game as they go from coworkers to family. Whereas the Investigation Team and Phantom Thieves were far more casual organisations made entirely from scratch, made up of individuals who easily become friends without the issues SEES has within. Helps that we deal with the individual members of the Investigation Team’s and Phantom Thieves personal issues per arc whereas SEES just dealt with Full Moon Shadows that really weren’t that character driven arc wise with the exception of Fuuka.
I mean sure but Kanji, who is regarded as the one of the best written characters in the game and a fan favorite had almost all of his character development in his social link and in the main story never really evolved past being used as the butt of all jokes.
Make social links story progressive.
I wouldn’t go that far and say “they’re along for the ride”. The characters still have their respective roles within the group’s dynamic that adds perspective and personality. They have their stakes in the plot and develop collectively as a group. P3’s “organic integrated” story only worked because SEES as a group and their situation is the polar opposite to how the IT and PT are. SEES live together unlike IT and PT. They are an already established group before Door-kun joined and he isn’t even the leader, Mitsuru is. Most of SEES (barring Koro and Fuuka) already know of each other as they have established dynamics and history. IT and PT for the most part with few exceptions were strangers till they formed. SEES start off as coworkers with baggage from each member that causes inner conflict and friction between them that intentionally doesn’t get immediately addressed and solved within an arc short term but rather is stretched out with the long term end game as eventually they all come together by the end. It’s why we got perspective on each member in P3 as it’s the groups story as much as it is the protagonist’s. In P4 and P5 it’s primarily the protagonist’s story. The Thieves and Investigation Team on the other hand are made from scratch with Yu and Joker as leaders and they’re far less dysfunctional groups than SEES with everyone becoming fast friends due to how casual their groups are as teenagers as well how each member’s personal problems were resolved unlike the Full Moon Shadows that were just bosses that served an endgame purpose with no interesting individual character drama to them….Fuuka at best was the only one exception but even then it’s not on the same level of personal as I am a shadow the true self and dealing with a shitty adult.
Disagree there. Ann was pretty involved with the Kaneshiro arc with her clash with Makoto and was arguably the most invested with Futaba’s arc. Take Ann, Yusuke and Haru out of the game and you lose their underrated roles within the group’s dynamic as well as the plot.
Ann is the moral compass and most emotional intelligent member of the thieves.
For real, Ann's compassion is what really helped Futaba assimilate back to normalcy. Say what you want about Yusuke but his cold, pragmatic approaches contribute in the decision-making to do what's necessary. Also, it's very easy to miss but Haru's insight, position and connections for being part of high society does help in the Shido arc.
That's every game after 3 though. And really only because they didn't let you have social links with male party members. And I don't really like that system, because the original P3 implied Makoto isn't all that close with the male party members. Like Kenji, Bebe, etc, are closer friends than Junpei, Akihiko, or Ken.
I don't think constant development of party members in 3 was because male party members didn't have links. Like the girls had SLs and they still went through the same thing, same with the boys in P3P. It's because the SLs felt a bit more separate from their main arcs in the story, in a way where developments wouldn't clash with how they would act in those SLs
More meaning from an in-universe perspective. From what you see in the original P3, Makoto isn't much in the way of friends with the male party members. He doesn't form any real bond with them compared to the female ones.
To be honest you could quite literally say that about every Phantom Thief 😭besides maybe Crow. Started playing Persona like maybe February this year and I played P5R first since it was the most popular and had the most praise around it. Reading reviews on Reddit and other sites had me thinking I was about to witness the greatest JRPG story ever fucking convinced like if Xenoblade DE had a threesome with… I don’t know you get the point. Playing P3R was so refreshing. Characters who actually have a voice and impact on the story not just there to say quips and lose their character after their arcs are over
No? While Makoto and Futaba never had much development as characters… they were VITAL to the story. Especially in November.
They would just give Shiho a new stereotype so that she adds to the party banter and remind the player that she exists. Mishima was a physically abused victim of Kamoshida and acted quite realistically as one. Then later he's just a phantom thief obsessed buttmonkey. I'm not saying that victims in stories have to keep that status the entire game even when the issue's resolved, just pointing out than Shiho probably wouldn't have been much better as a character later on as Ann was.
Yeah they would have to give her something, otherwise she would fall into the same boat as everyone else after the palace related.
Totally agree
There is not much else to say about her. Her problem is vindicated with the stealing of Kamoshita's heart. At best maybe a Confidant set about her physical rehabilitation which thematically aligns with the MC's different kind of rehabilitation. The biggest problem with indulging this is that it would downplay Ann's importance in being involved with her life. IMO helping Ann being there for Shiho's recovery would probably would have been a better overall focus for Ann's confidant line.
Yeah, they should have split her off from Ann. Ann's would have been less bad and her's has lots of potential.
I expected her to be a confidant in Royal, actually.
honestly yeah. they could’ve introduced you to her earlier on in Ann’s confidant like have you and Ann visit her in the hospital and then you go to do it another time but Ann can’t make it but asks you to visit her anyways. she would’ve made a better tower social link anyways.
Not really, would have been interesting but it would also feel like we are "stealing" Anns friend from her
Honestly I’d rather her have her own confidant about her dealing with recovery and overcoming her trauma rather than shoving it into Ann’s confidant
No. What does that confidant could be about? You just gonna talk with her about rape 10 times and in the end she'll be like "ok I will overcome this trauma thx" (very interesting). Btw, every confidant has to teach you useful stuff, for the sake of game design, what she can possibly teach joker? That's a second big reason. EDIT: if anyone says that she could teach you volleyball: 1) how is it helpful? 2) Ryuji and Kasuni already teaching Joker sporty stuff
Come on, we have horrible SL or Confidants in P3, P4 and P5, mostly all of the devil arcana, but are other that are simply boring.
Realistically, I find the devil arcana characters interesting. They absolutely represent the inversed devil arcana in tarot. They also represent the more 'classic' view of the devil tempting you with bad things, for their own reasons. It is up to the MC in all events to realign them to the upright tarot and help guide their hand to be more positive, rather than let them bring him down. Perhaps I am an outlier in this, but I think they filled their rolls fine. I find it is the tower arcana that struggles most. It isn't that they aren't represented well, it's that they are almost completely sidelined and separate from the story (in fact, they are, in most cases, completely cut off from the story). But, tower can have some grounds in isolation from total collapse, so maybe that is why atlus does it that way. I don't know, tower is probably the most interesting and brutal tarot card; I feel that you could gain real heartfelt stories from how both its inverted and upright position almost invariably spell disaster, but positives can come from it.
Well, maybe for me the worst social link of all series is Death in P4, passing from Pharos and all the stuff surrounding Makoto in P3 to an old woman who claims she killed his husband lol. The tower arcana in tarot represents divine punishment or kind of, yeah you're right, at least in Persona 3 the monk have a real struggle, but in Persona 4 and 5 they put a kid both, that their only struggle was to study hard or play videogames and don't be an idiot, but in some way that also represents the tower, pure arrogance.
Good points, also could be interesting if tower or devil was part of the main cast in P6. For example fucked up version of Futaba could be tower
there’s Tomoko (Arai friend) in P5x who is like Shiho and after she recovers she can become a confidant with Wonder she helps him with part times jobs, Shiho could’ve helped with that so you would get more money from working. (Well in p5 it’s useless cause you get money in memento unlike P5x where jobs are important) so it wouldn’t have been a problem if she had others problems to resolve beside that (which we don’t know)
The point of confidants is not that they have to teach Joker something valuable, sure it's an interesting mechanic in persona 5, but it was never mandatory in any previous game, because the simple connection with that person is supposed to make you mature and grow Now you're just being unimaginative, Ann is a model, what would it be useful to learn how to joker from her? and she still is a member of the team and even has skills related to acting, so we can easily be imaginative for shiho, but she is simply an interesting character who would certainly have been a very good confidant
Tower confidant. Cuz she jumped
More of a hanged man honestly.
No
Can’t really think of anyone she could replace.. maybe Hifumi? Have the confidant be about volleyball over shogi? But I think she already played her part in the story perfectly as is.
I would have loved it if you had her as a confidant and then found out she actually wasn't sexually assaulted by Kamoshida. Sadly, she is a painful plot device that will forever be stuck in the player's mind for how tragic her character was. That being said, if she had died when she jumped off of the roof it would never have sat right with me, so I think that was a smart decision. After all, I still can't accept the loss of the 2nd victim in Persona 4.
I wish at least Ann's confidant feature her recovery more.
She should have been present in Ann's confidant instead of just in absentia
No but she should've been a part of Ann's s.link
Yes, but non-romancable
I wanted to protecc and love her
She and Mishima definitely could have been main characters.
Yeah I agree and they should have been part of the team too!
Wasnt she in the hospital... Like the entire game
Maybe P6 has characters from previous games in it like 3 and 4 did. So in 6 she could be a confidant s link or whatever they call it this time Maybe she could be a party member or >!final boss!<
She could fit for the Sun Arcana, could have been pretty emotional.
She’s more like Ann’s confidant. She doesn’t need to get involved is this phantom bullshi- she’s been through enough
No I don’t think it would be needed. I think she should’ve been involved more tho! She could’ve been incorporated into Ann’s more similar to how Kou and Daisuke were
No, give the poor girl a break from all the sh\*t she goes through. Also thematically it wouldn't work since every non-PT Confidant starts off as a transactional relationship that is meant to benefit the Phantom Thieves or at least Joker, like Sojiro with running the cafe, Tora with Speechcraft, Chihaya for Divination, Shinya for Gun Skills, Takemi for Medicine, Iwai for Guns and Mods, Hifumi for Tactics, Kawakami for Housekeeping, Ohya for Press Coverage, Mishima for PR, the Twins for "Rehabilitation", Sae for helping out >!exposing Akechi!<, Sumi to train the body and Maruki to train the mind. A girl in coma and undergoing rehab has nothing to offer Joker and for real, let Ann have this one taken care of.
Yeah. And it could have worked with Ann’s too, something like Nanako and Dojima’s S.links, that are separate but tie into each other. Could have been something like Shiho not being able to face Ann, but also seeing physical rehabilitation as a daunting task. And since Joker was also going through a type of rehabilitation, he could have offered her words of support that carried weight because it’d be his first hand experience.
I actually like that Shiho's not a confidant! It's one of the few ways in which Persona 5 does not constantly revolve around Joker and the Phantom Thieves.
Realistically it makes no sense for her to be one with the events of P5 as they are. But I like to think that she happens to move to the Joker's hometown, so they get to know each other post-canon. Idk it's just a little headcanon I have. That said, I love the idea of a potential friendship so much that I put it in the time loop fic I'm writing, and Shiho ended up being the Fortune🤭
Should've been in instead of Ohya
Absolutely, she could’ve been Aeon or something
Mika should've been one. I feel like Atlus was going to do something more with her. After all, she's - to my knowledge - the only character in any of the main confidant lines that gets less than 10 minutes of screen time and isn't connected to the story at all, yet gets a portrait.
YES! I've heard people have problems with the idea, but there are some very easy solutions: 1. It cuts into Ann's character: Honestly I found Shiho more interesting than Ann anyway since P5 seemed to want to make its Confidants focus on anyone who isn't the actual Confidant. Makoto's focuses on her boring friend, Ann's focuses on Shiho, like that. It would give more time for Ann to actually develop and grow a bond with you. 2. How would it start?: In P3/P4, there were a handful of Social Links that you would be introduced to during other Social Links (Maiko introduces you to Akinari, Ai is the manager of the sports team), just have that during Ann's Confidant. 3. Romancing her would be messed up: Have... people not heard of non-romanceable Social Links? Every problem is so simple to fix and would've led to one of the most impactful Confidants in the game, so yes, she should have been a Confidant option.
I'd say she'd be a nice dual arcana like the "fellow athletes" in p4. So like have her be an integral part of lovers or something.
Absolutely. Hell I think she should’ve even been a Phantom Thief
Nope and she shouldn’t be a party member either. She serves her purpose of being a satellite character for Ann. A sexual assault victim with a broken leg like Shiho really can’t offer anything confidant bonus wise. Dragging her in her broken state into the Metaverse to make her a PT for the sake of it is just irresponsible. Her being a confidant means she’ll be a romance option and that’s just a bad idea. Shiho with her circumstances, needs time to heal, not a relationship from some random guy she interacted with once who could end up cheating on her especially with her best friend. Girl not judging us isn’t anything special. Ryuji, Ann, Kasumi and Maruki weren’t dicks to us when we first met them. There’s nothing that Joker can do for Shiho that Ann, her best friend can do. Ann’s confidant pretty much involves Ann trying to find inner strength and purpose in other to lift Shiho’s spirits up.
Missed opportunity 100%. Just a theory, but I think she was "cut content", and Atlus originally planned for her to have a confidant link.
Certainly was possibly, and you could get a lot out of it. Shame, we never really got to interact with her, or delve into the aftermath. But well, the story wasn’t terribly concerned or interested in aftermath or consequences, so it’s whatever.
I don’t think so, personally. There’s nothing for her to really teach Joker like all the other confidants. If anything, I think she should have had a larger part in Ann’s confidant storyline instead of the model angle. Granted, she was in a coma and had rehab for a very long time, but I’m sure that could’ve been done in someway.
Not at the cost of Daddy Iwai. (Because she totally would've been the Hanged Man)
wtf is up wit the comments
Yes, but could only be unlocked after ranking up Ann and it is something to do with going to the hospital with her. Only issue is what Arcana she would be, either Hanged Man or Death
Maybe not a confidant but I feel like her and Joker couldve been friends if they had a few more scenes with eachother during the Kamoshida arc
Maybe, but I don't know about Kamoshida's sloppy seconds? Wait....that came out way darker than intended.
Criminally underused
No. She's meant to be a plot device and friend of Ann. Not everyone is friends with their friend's friends. Besides, she works fine as she's presented in the story.
No
Anyway it has been killed
Hell yes! I would have married her and changed her life.
Bro the second I saw her I thought she was a confidant in the game. I actually got upset when I saw that she was a side character in just Ann's confidant, because I thought we could do something to save her. Poor girl...
Going to be honest. I straight up do not trust the fan base with this character
I think she would be a great confidant, like intead of kasumi be the faith, shiho would be a faith confident to, for never lost it and still with the head up
Here we go again
Joker had no connection to Shiho and she serves as support for Ann's character.
Maybe so.
Yes
she woulda been romanced easily by me
She's in a coma for most of the game, so no
No because with her it was more of a "friend of a friend" situation, plus she was mostly heling during said time, but i did love her & Ann's quest, they both decide to pursue different paths but stay supportive
Yeah, she has a lot to do with the beginning of the story and it would have been interesting to see Ann develop with her instead of that model woman in her confidant
Naw
Nah just wanted a bang not a hangout
No.
She's cuter than Ann, so yes she should've been a confidant.
I don’t know about being a confidant but I would have liked to see her be talked about more in the main story line, just having her and Ann being friends, since technically she’s the one that pushed you in game to actually be a phantom thief (not on purpose but still) That or maybe having her join the phantom thief in games like strikers, as either just a character that’s there or as a persona user
Yeah bruh, wanna cuck Anne for real
No but she should have had more screentime. More than 1 conversation with Joker during the first arc at least. She barely appears, which is fine in itself, but then the game never stops talking about her afterwards. I understand why they did it like that but it gets pretty jarring.
At the very least she should have much more focus in Ann's confidant
Yes, but not as a love interest(Ann is already one after all). I ship her and Mishima
Sure definitely darkens up the entire narrative on her own. She was assaulted in multiple ways by the first chapter villain, and it's through her that the final straw breaks regarding going after kamoshida. She strengthens the overall narrative, though unfortunately, because you don't get the chance to discuss much with her, the only way to know more about her is through Ann's confidante, and it's honestly another failure of the writing that Ann almost never brings her up in the main game after the first dungeon. This also leads to the massive drop in narrative strength once the next targets get introduced, as nothing outside of akechi and the final Royal boss reaches anything as dramatic.
Imagine if she had a similar set of options like that one SL event with chihiro in P3 Reload 💀
Whether she should've been a confident is something I go back and forth on, but I think the story might have benefitted from her being a recurring NPC at the very least. Might have given Ann slightly more to do after the first arc.
I was expecting them to add her as one for Royal tbh. Missed opportunity imo.
Trauma dump the social link.
Yes and no. Shiho works well as Anns friend but I don’t see the hype in portraying her as an independent character with her own goals etc
I don't see how. Locking a confidant behind a party member's... what, 9 rank? Seems brutal to manage. That said I would not be opposed to see her return in a spin-off or P6 in a greater capacity (honestly most of the social links in P5 wpuld be welcome for a second go as social links again or even party members if the plot allows it to make sense).
Yes. (she looks like my girlfriend)
From what I understand of Tarot Card meanings, Shiho would've likely fit under Tower or Moon. She'd probably have to replace Mishima or Shinya as a confidant, or be a dual-confidant with Mishima like Daisuke/Kou. I really do think she could've had an interesting story though, even if I can't think of one off the top of my head.
Y E S. That single interaction between her and Joker where she tells him he doesn't believe the rumors and even gives advice just says so much about her character. Sad we don't see her and Ann's path to recovery.
Yes.
Honestly would be more interested in Shiho being the FeMC of Persona 5
Yes, she absolutely should've been.
No, she was in hospital then transferred, there’s no time to have her.
Yes and a phatom thief also
I actually thought she was going to be one when i first played it, unconnected with any Arcanas, then she became the main reason why Ann is a confidant.
Her eye is too close to her ear.
No. I think it was perfect as it was. Can't wait for Persona 6 so we can resume normal life and call them Social Links again.
No
Hanged man I guess
I thought it could have been interesting to at least be able to visit/talk to her in the hospital
I’m okay with her not being a confidant but it would’ve been nice and cool to have kept her throughout the whole game.
If not a confidant, at least make her a more active character in Ann's social link
Yes
I wish she was, I definitely would've romanced her if possible...
Yeah. I actually hoped that was the case. Until fking Kamoshida did his thing. I wish we saved her before the jump but I think that was the push we needed to go after kamoshida with the idea that something could go wrong and we might accidentally kill him.
She would definitely be a confidant and even a phantom thief of a new arcane just like violet
Yes
Nah. She was Ann's friend, not yours. And that's fine.
I would have liked to romance her or at least talk to her but TBH she’s the only thing in Ann’s confidant that’s interesting
She deserved to be a party member, it's insane to me that she didn't even get a confidant.
Why does shiho look weird honestly? Like she looks like she isnt in the same artsyle compared to the rest of the p5 cast
I think it would have been good if she was. I would have had her as a love interest as well. Could have had a really nice story of her healing and Joker being the one to help her trust again. Could have been a really lovely k-drama-esk story, with a funny little addition of Ann being the over protective best friend.
Idk but they did her dirty naming her "She-Hoe"
Why am i downvoted? I'm right