The Realities of Japan "Beneath The Mask" of Persona 5

Content originally posted to Instagram on April 23, 2021.

The socio-political nature of Persona 5 — I’ve wanted to talk about this for a long time!! It’s not a popular topic, but having played through the original Persona 5, it’s a topic that fascinates me and I’d love to see it explored further. Like, if someone wrote an entire book about it, count on me to buy a copy!

That’s why, even though it’s taking me a loooong time to play through Persona 5 Royal, I’m ok with taking my time w/it. I want to see how the game builds upon the themes of the original (or doesn’t). So I’m doing my best to avoid the spoilers I haven’t seen yet…with that said, I tried to make sure there are no spoilers in this post so anyone can read it. If anyone leaves a comment below, please try not to spoil anything for others either 🙏🏼

For anyone interested in this topic, I’ll provide a few links at the bottom for some of the articles/videos that are featured in my post. There’s a bit more out there, but these are good places to start which break things down very well.

 

Suggestions (be careful about spoilers for Persona 5 [Royal])
:

∙ USgamer - “The Real-World Problems Behind Persona 5”

∙ Anime News Network - “The Real Japan Behind Persona 5”

∙ LadyVirgilia on YouTube - she has multiple videos discussing the sociocultural issues present throughout the game.
∙ Persona Central - visit their site to see their translation of a past 4Gamer interview about the original Persona 5's development (plus any current Persona/Atlus-related news!)

(Also, considering the time when Persona 5 was developed, the first picture probably should’ve used a picture of the previous JP PM Abe…but it’s 2021 now, so I thought I’d use a picture of PM Suga instead? Sorry if it’s not appropriate)