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Persona Community Thread |OT8| Coming Winter 2014

They're unsatisfied because they're in high school...???? The main guy literally just got there and just got into high school. What is he going through that makes him think he's a slave to fate and to society? People who think they are slaves to fate and society usually are somewhat older and are wise in the head because of their experiences. Unless he has some huge emotional baggage from his past.... what is HE a slave to????

You don't have to be a certain age to feel a certain way. Telling someone that their problems are being overblown or that they're "full of shit" just because they're in high school is being pointlessly reductive.
 
You don't have to be a certain age to feel a certain way. Telling someone that their problems are being overblown or that they're "full of shit" just because they're in high school is being pointlessly reductive.

To clarify, I figured the character would be "full of shit" if he felt trapped by a world he had only just gotten into.
Though I guess not suffering parts of society that you dislike instantly could be taken as 'admirable'.
 

Mediking

Member
I've been in high school too... but being in high school and feeling like you're a slave to society just because you gotta get good grades and study... is... well.... Hating high school because it makes you feel obligated to do stuff is one thing but even that's kinda silly because high school is just 4 years. You'll really feel like a slave to society when you're older and juggling multiple responsibilities

I bet the high school in the game isn't even super strict on grades or anything.

I had friends in high school who felt education was flawed and all that stuff but you know what they did? They turned on some music and let it go. They did what they could to graduate and moved on. They didn't turn into thieves as a way to lash out.

HOWEVER! I do trust Atlus so I'm not really concerned.

I still kinda feel this whole slave to society thing is better for a somewhat older cast
 

PK Gaming

Member
The Japanese High School system definitely makes you feel like a slave to society. Uniforms are mandatory in every high school, and fairly strict (no personalizing your uniform). You need to study like crazy to get into a good high school and then study even more to get into a good university. Cram school is a thing. Club activities are generally mandatory, and it's not uncommon for kids to get home at like 8-9PM (sometimes even later) from school, which leaves like what, 1-2 hours to study, then go to bed and restart the entire process again 6 days a week? And to top it off, the pressure to perform well is massive. From what I've seen, Japanese High school is basically work, and people who don't succeed get left behind.

It's incredibly fucked up.
 

Mediking

Member
The Japanese High School system definitely makes you feel like a slave to society. Uniforms are mandatory in every high school, and fairly strict (no personalizing your uniform). You need to study like crazy to get into a good high school and then study even more to get into a good university. Cram school is a thing. Club activities are generally mandatory, and it's not uncommon for kids to get home at like 8-9PM (sometimes even later) from school, which leaves like what, 1-2 hours to study, then go to bed and restart the entire process again 6 days a week? And to top it off, the pressure to perform well is massive. From what I've seen, Japanese High school is basically work, and people who don't succeed get left behind.

It's incredibly fucked up.

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.... okay. I get it. That makes much more sense.
 

Sophia

Member
The Japanese High School system definitely makes you feel like a slave to society. Uniforms are mandatory in every high school, and fairly strict (no personalizing your uniform). You need to study like crazy to get into a good high school and then study even more to get into a good university. Cram school is a thing. Club activities are generally mandatory, and it's not uncommon for kids to get home at like 8-9PM (sometimes even later) from school, which leaves like what, 1-2 hours to study, then go to bed and restart the entire process again 6 days a week? And to top it off, the pressure to perform well is massive. From what I've seen, Japanese High school is basically work, and people who don't succeed get left behind.

It's incredibly fucked up.

Call it my upbringing, but I do like some (but not all) qualities of the Japanese school system. In anime/manga/video games you always do get a sense of unity, as well as a desire to succeed. You didn't see those things at my school growing up.

Maybe that's why Persona appeals in the west? It's like an idealized version of Japanese schools without any of the flaws. Very curious to see how Persona 5 tackles the negative aspects.
 

Eylos

Banned
i see how they can pull it, japanese society is very harsh, to much pressure and everything, that is why its know as the suicide country (leading cause of death among men age 20–44 in japan), this pressure is like a prison, you have to be the best, you have to get money,and for teenager you have to decide what you will be for the rest of your life

but i could be wrong
 

FluxWaveZ

Member
It's not like the sense of desolation and hopelessness for high school students is exclusively a Japanese phenomenon. It might be impossible for most to relate to that, but it's definitely a reality that resonates with me a great deal.
 
*snip*

It's incredibly fucked up.

I remember playing P4 for the first time and wondering what the fuck was going on when my character was going to school on a saturday!

Also, I can see high school characters being wise enough to how society works to feel trapped in their ways. Hell, I wish Id have realised it myself sooner than I did. I went to college and university simply because it was what was expected of me by society. It was only after job searching for a year afterwards (and playing P4 coincidentally, really resonated with Yukiko at the time), that I went "Maybe I dont have to follow this path that Ive been told to walk down".

Like I said, I wish I'd have figured that out sooner, would have saved myself 6 years and a lot of money! Now I have an awesome job and over the past couple years Ive gotten better and better in all aspects of my life. I genuinely feel like Ive freed myself from what I once was and what I was going to be. So yeah, I can see high schoolers having similar revelaitons. The high schoolers in P4 were having similar situations to my adult life, so why cant the high schoolers in P5?

I rambled on way too long there
 

Lunar15

Member
The protagonist is definitely "chained" to his fate as a thief early on. From the footage, there's definitely something he does or that happens to him that puts him in a bad situation that he must actively work against from the start. Even his Velvet Room is a prison cell.

For him, it's probably not the "psychological slavery" the other characters will have to overcome, but there is some kind of force that puts him in that position. Thinking about it, P4 MC really came out the best of this. P3 MC technically had to undergo the same conditions his teammates went through to get a Persona, but P4 MC never had to face his true self.
 
In addition to what others have said about the nature of high school, I think it's important to remember that high school students don't just have "high school problems." They aren't limited to interacting with society through school, they can also feel challenged or constrained from their personal lives. I mean, high school is a time when a lot of people become more aware of their sexuality, and that can very easily make them feel constrained if they don't fit into the box society drew for them.

Obviously, adults can feel incredibly constrained by society too. I'm just saying that they're not the only ones.

To clarify, I figured the character would be "full of shit" if he felt trapped by a world he had only just gotten into.
Though I guess not suffering parts of society that you dislike instantly could be taken as 'admirable'.

I see what you mean now, so sorry if I came across as rude, but I still disagree. It might not be the new school he takes issue with, for example. To borrow an anime trope, maybe his parents move around constantly and he's forced to follow them and leave all of his friends behind. If that were the case, then I can easily see him feeling trapped by society, namely the demands of his parents.
 
I see what you mean now, so sorry if I came across as rude, but I still disagree. It might not be the new school he takes issue with, for example. To borrow an anime trope, maybe his parents move around constantly and he's forced to follow them and leave all of his friends behind. If that were the case, then I can easily see him feeling trapped by society, namely the demands of his parents.

Now that, I can totally see. In fact, it seems to be a popular perception of Yu's backstory (which I agree with), but Atlus probably won't touch that with a ten-foot pole.

So someone sell me on the Persona franchise. I'm itching for a JRPG and have never played one. Thinking of picking up 4 on PS2 and playing it on an emulator.
You go through an entire school year trying to solve a murder mystery in a Japanese small town. The setting is pretty grounded in reality, but mysticism and mythology are shown to be huge components really soon.

The turn-based dungeon crawling is only half of the game, the rest is building relationships with other characters through Social Links in order to give yourself some extra power (or be a human with a soul and just do it cause you like the characters).
 

ACE 1991

Member
So someone sell me on the Persona franchise. I'm itching for a JRPG and have never played one. Thinking of picking up 4 on PS2 and playing it on an emulator.
 
So someone sell me on the Persona franchise. I'm itching for a JRPG and have never played one. Thinking of picking up 4 on PS2 and playing it on an emulator.

Cool story with lots of twists, fun characters with really fleshed out personalities, gameplay is... kinda decent depending on the game. The PS2 titles have a time management system where you balance high school studies, hanging out with friends, and leveling up in dungeons with the deadline of the next Important Plot Event always looming over your shoulder. 3 and 4 are basically life sims meet JRPGs, while 1 and 2 are more traditional JRPGs. 4 is a good place to start, since none of the main games are connected in any important way, and I recommend going in as blind as possible. That first playthrough is always super magical.
 

84X

Banned
Personally I don't feel high school is a particularly shackling part of life but the feeling of being constrained by society is so universal and resonating that it doesn't matter that the characters are high-schoolers. Regardless, due to how abstract a thesis it is in general, P5's success in conveying it's themes will lie in how well each character's individual struggles are able to resonate with the player. This is no different than the previous games though so I'm not too sure what the concern is about.

--

Anyways, the first volume of the P4 side of the PQ manga came out recently. I picked it up because the art is rather enjoyable (in-line with the game) and for the sake of collection. Won't be getting the P3 side because... well it's just super ugly sadly. Like completely atrocious for official media. It's a shame since apparently people thought it was more interesting story wise but maybe that's just P3 fans being P3 fans since both sides are adapting roughly the exact same game. Anyways, I'm not going to go into a big spiel like I did for the P4 manga because a lot of people have already read some of the manga on Crunchyroll (and other less legal sites...) but I want to take the time to give kudos to the translators. In general, the PQ manga sticks much closer to the game's localization than the P4 manga and as a result it's simply much more enjoyable when you've been accustomed to the games for a long while. So yeah... won't say much more on that unless people particularly want me to. Oh wait before I forget:

These guys really need to pay more attention to editing.
CfoY8w2WsAYmWlL.jpg

--

Lastly, I have a few new sketches of varying quality up if anyone's interested.
Mitsuru: https://twitter.com/EightyFourX/status/718989733368578048
Rise: https://twitter.com/EightyFourX/status/720390979732185088
 

Jintor

Member
i just want ya'll to know there's nothing wrong with mandatory uniforms. aussie schools have uniforms all the way from primary to end of high school and ain't nothing wrong with aussie individuality

the rest of it, though... all accurate. The entrance exam grind is REAL
 

FluxWaveZ

Member
I went to a high school with mandatory uniforms. Didn't really care; if anything, it probably made it easier to decide what to wear every day.
 

Sophia

Member
The school I went to didn't have uniforms, but all the private/charter schools did. They ranged from the local academy having very professional uniforms that looked nice to the other schools having cheap polo shirts.
 

PK Gaming

Member
Oh, I wasn't implying mandatory uniforms were bad, but rather that Japanese high schools were stricter about how you could wear them (no wearing your uniform in a different style, no wearing hair clips, earrings, etc). I went to a uniformed school too, and the rules were pretty relaxed.

(I spent a good 80% of it wearing non-uniform pants, lol)
 

FluxWaveZ

Member
Oh, I wasn't implying mandatory uniforms were bad, but rather that Japanese high schools were stricter about how you could wear them (no wearing your uniform in a different style, no wearing hair clips, earrings, etc). I went to a uniformed school too, and the rules were pretty relaxed.

(I spent a good 80% of it wearing non-uniform pants, lol)

Weird, at the school I went to, the authority would wreck you if you altered your uniform in any way. They were really strict about that stuff.
 

Sophia

Member
Weird, at the school I went to, the authority would wreck you if you altered your uniform in any way. They were really strict about that stuff.

Our public schools had a dress code, and it really depended on when you went and who was in charge. When I was there, the vice principal was a real stickler for it. No offensive logos, no gang related stuff, no short shorts/skirts, no sleeveless shirts, etc. She sent kids home for even minor infactions of it.

By the time my sister got there, it was different, and the dress code was almost unenforced. :\
 

Jintor

Member
Oh, I wasn't implying mandatory uniforms were bad, but rather that Japanese high schools were stricter about how you could wear them (no wearing your uniform in a different style, no wearing hair clips, earrings, etc). I went to a uniformed school too, and the rules were pretty relaxed.

(I spent a good 80% of it wearing non-uniform pants, lol)

when i first started working here there were two second years that had their hair dyed, so the disciplinarian like basically got them in the staffroom and redyed their hair black

this year there's a second year running around with a nose piercing and earrings and nobody's batting an eye

i dunno, man, japan's weird
 

PK Gaming

Member
when i first started working here there were two second years that had their hair dyed, so the disciplinarian like basically got them in the staffroom and redyed their hair black

this year there's a second year running around with a nose piercing and earrings and nobody's batting an eye

i dunno, man, japan's weird

Oh wow.

Times have changed, huh?
 

Jintor

Member
dunno, could be a thing beyond my understand like obviously you can't remove a piercing in-school and maybe the parents are unwilling or something. probably just an edge case
 

Zolo

Member
We had a dress code back when I went to school, and I always disliked how stickler janitors and teachers were about it. The funny thing is I'm pretty sure it was voted in because people were worried about gang problems, but I grew up in a country town similar to Inaba, so there's never been gang problems in the area.
 
The 30th will be interesting if nothing else.

It is worth mentioning that it's not like they've been completely radio silent though, we've still been getting the vo messages in Stalker Club at the very least. Although they don't seem to be including the Summer release window in those segments...
 

Lunar15

Member
5 months to end of summer and no news, i'm worried

I wouldn't take this as an indication of project health either way. I really do think their strategy is to be pretty quiet. I know last time I said that it got delayed and I had to wear a dumb avatar for it, but I still think that's their overall MO here.

My overall prediction still remains: Game is early September and Atlus usually has 3 month PR cycles, so we wouldn't start learning about anything new until June. Some say August, and if that's the case, then we wouldn't hear anything till May.

I'm not in panic mode yet, but I've been wrong a lot, so what do I know.
 

QuadOpto

Member
Woo! New mini-bet; what will come out first: SMTIV: A in North America or Persona 5 anywhere?

I also think this makes it prrrretty certain that Persona 5 isn't going to have a Summer 2016 NA release....It'd be sort of messy to release two prime ATLUS RPGs within or a month or so of each other.

...Course, this makes the next likely season Fall, which'll also wedge it in with FFXV.

...Not the best environment for a localized release...
 
Woo! New mini-bet; what will come out first: SMTIV: A in North America or Persona 5 anywhere?

I also think this makes it prrrretty certain that Persona 5 isn't going to have a Summer 2016 NA release....It'd be sort of messy to release two prime ATLUS RPGs within or a month or so of each other.

...Course, this makes the next likely season Fall, which'll also wedge it in with FFXV.

...Not the best environment for a localized release...

IMHO P5's in closer competition with SMT4A in EU lol
 

Setsu00

Member
I could care less for SMT IV or Final / Apocalypse.... but happy for the people was "bullying" Atlus FB and Youtube pages even call naming Atlus USA for not giving the game ...

Finally they can rest

And now they're annoyed about the name change, apparently. You can't please everyone.
 
Aaaaaaaaaand got spoiled on SMT4A(lready)

Jeez. That was fast.
Still interested?

Maybe Valerie Arem tease tweet was for SMT Apocalypse.

Gonna be interesting to see who they cast for the dub , since those actors not gonna be used for Persona 5.

(I dont see them recasting the same VA for two most recents games)

I see they announce the game release in June (E3) ... as one of the surprises Atlus already tease.

I'm just hoping Laura Bailey's back as Nozomi, though I wonder who they've got for the new characters. Anyone got any guesses?
 

Makio

Member
Maybe Valerie Arem tease tweet was for SMT Apocalypse.

Gonna be interesting to see who they cast for the dub , since those actors not gonna be used for Persona 5.

(I dont see them recasting the same VA for two most recents games)

I see they announce the game release in June (E3) ... as one of the surprises Atlus already tease.
 
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