![]() Truly gender-nonconforming heroines are far, far rarer. Fiction, after all, is rife with tough girls who, after a time, decide that maybe they want to give makeup and dresses a try. While Chie’s awkward forays into femininity may have connected with me at the time, it’s hardly a feminist message. However, the game stumbles in its female characters’ arcs, and in its handling of queer themes. Even the game’s villain is a literal would-be rapist who’s angry that women don’t pay sufficient attention to him. Persona 4 shines most when examining how gender roles can be harmful to men: Yosuke learns not to feel entitled to “specialness,” and Kanji no longer performs toxic masculinity. Because of this, many fans look back on the game and its clumsy treatment of its central themes with bitterness instead of affection. It’s a message the resonates with misfits searching for a found family. The support and acceptance of their friends is instrumental to each character learning to accept themselves. If not, Naoto is just going to keep hurting… We’ll just do our job and kick the Shadow’s ass.” But Kanji just says, “It’s okay… Let the kid spill the whole thing. When Naoto, the final party member to join, tells their shadow, “You’re not me!” the others try to stop them. None of them can face their Shadows alone they can only successfully convert their Shadows into Personae with the help of their friends. Yosuke Hanamura is bitter about moving from Tokyo to a small town Yukiko Amagi resents being trapped in Inaba as the successor to a historic inn Kanji Tatsumi’s struggle to reconcile his love of textiles and his image of masculinity causes him to question his sexuality popular idol singer Rise Kujikawa feels exposed and sexualized and detective Naoto Shirogane feels like being AFAB (assigned female at birth) is a professional liability.ĭefeated Shadows turn into Personae for the characters to wield in battle. One by one, the player-characters face down their Shadows, each one designed to reflect their internal battle to reconcile their own desires with their assigned roles. ![]() But where Persona 3 builds a melancholy narrative around a savior figure and Persona 5 advocates for rebelling against broken systems, Persona 4 focuses on finding peace through self-acceptance and understanding friends. It comes together with Persona 3 and 5 to form something of a trilogy-loosely connected games offering a different perspective on the troubled world we’ve inherited. There’s an interiority to Persona 4, an introspectiveness that remains unmatched by any other game I’ve played. And of course, I turned to my partner and teased him about his fondness for temperamental women. Like me, she positioned herself as a protector of her much quieter longtime best friend, Yukiko. Like me, she tended to be silly and speak without thinking. ![]() Like me, she had a hot temper and was prone to violence. ![]() From Chie Satonaka’s very first moment on-screen, I related to everything. “Like” turned out to be an understatement. ![]() I’d never even heard of the Persona series until my then-boyfriend (now fiance) suggested I play Persona 4 on his Playstation 2 shortly after I had moved to Seattle. I love story-driven games, but my reflexes and response times are crap, I don’t have the patience to keep redoing boss fights, and my parents wouldn’t allow anything other than Gameboys in the house when I was growing up. To be fair, I don’t play a lot of video games. No video game has ever hit me quite as hard as Persona 4 did. Editor’s Note: Due to the contradictory messaging of Naoto’s arc, the author has chosen to use they/them pronouns throughout.ĬONTENT WARNING for discussions of queerphobia and sexual assault. ![]()
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