Scheduling note: Farla is busy with Pokemon reviewing month, so Persona 4 will have to go on hiatus for a little while after this.
Finally, it’s time for the summer festival.
The girls are late because they had to dress up in yukatas, including Nanako.
TEDDIE: Nana-chan, you look so cute! I’m head over heels for you!
I will murder you. Nanako just blushes and giggles because she’s too young to recognize red flags.
RISE: How do we look, Senpai? Does the sight make your heart skip a beat?
Yes, but not for the reasons you think, creep.
…And my dialogue options force me to play Eris and declare which one I think is prettiest. Sigh. I say Chie, since I know she feels insecure about her femininity so she’d probably appreciate the compliment the most. She does. Dojima arrives to rescue Nanako from this mess and we’re left to ourselves.
TEDDIE: A couple walking together at a festival… Unused to wearing it, the girl’s yukata comes loose… Summer has begun.
Yosuke, are you watching porn with Teddie at your house? He insists we all pair up into couples.
RISE: I’m with Teddie!
Surprised she didn’t pick me, but I am pleased with this. Go ahead, you deserve each other. Chie and Yukiko tell the rest of us to decide the pairings. Can I please pair them together?
Yosuke starts a man-huddle and immediately excludes Teddie. That’s especially dickish considering he’s your roommate, Yosuke. He then doubles it up with homophobia.
KANJI: Uhhhh… Should I really do this?
YOSUKE: Oh yeah… You can barely look at ’em…
KANJI: N-No way! I can look at ’em! It’ll be a cinch, just you watch!
YOSUKE: Nah… You should bail, Kanji. It’d be best for everyone that way.
This isn’t even forcing him into compulsory heterosexuality. This is “Go away and rot in a hole, freak,” just like how he’s behaved toward Kanji in every interaction. I can see the argument that, combined with the cut romance, this is internalized homophobia on Yosuke’s part, but regardless of the reason he is being so, so awful.
Teddie interrupts this to declare he wants a harem. Everyone gets pissed off, and Teddie abruptly pivots to convincing Kanji that if he’s really masculine he’ll sit this one out, and Kanji agrees. O…kay?
YOSUKE: Dude, come on! Don’t fall for that!
Make up your goddamn mind, Yosuke, do you want Kanji in on this or not? Farla says this makes sense if we just continue assuming the worst of Yosuke: He doesn’t want Kanji to be able to leave with his dignity intact, he wants to force him into submission. This, again, is consistent with his previous interactions with Kanji — he never wants to give Kanji an out, even when Kanji manages to find one on his own.
Then Teddie walks over and tells the girls he’s claiming all of them, because “there are too many guys, so someone would have been left out…” even though he successfully cut Kanji out of the running. So was he just screwing with Kanji for no reason? Rise is annoyed by this even though she said she wanted Teddie at the beginning. I can’t follow this at all. The girls go along with this for some reason, and… that’s it? The day just ends there?
The next day Rise asks me out on a date, “just the two of us this time!” NOPE. I go to the shrine on my own, and John decides to make a wish. It would be hilarious if the fox gave me my own wish to solve next time. I wish for money and immediately get $100, sweet!
On the 22nd I can hang out with Yosuke some more. The whiny girls show up to bother him again, because apparently he gave another worker time off but not them. This time, they also claim that he gave Saki special treatment.
GAUDY STUDENT: You told the other workers to take it easy on Saki too, didn’t you?
The specificity of this intrigues me. We saw no indication he gave Saki special treatment, but it’s entirely possible he did say this sometime before we arrived… however, given she asks, “Didn’t you?” it’s possible she just assumed he did. And indeed, she goes on to say he clearly has the hots for this other worker we’ve never heard of, so it seems likely she’s just making stuff up.
They start badmouthing Saki again, and this time I finally get the chance to interject and tell them to stop. This directs their ire to me, whereupon Yosuke immediately loses his temper and defends my honor. It is possible that he’s been simmering for a while and seeing them attack a second person pushed him over the edge, but it is nonetheless interesting that he’s consistently been so blase about them badmouthing Saki yet leaps to my defense.
He does, finally, defend Saki… by saying she was a good worker, unlike these truants.
YOSUKE: She looked lazy, but she worked hard! She talked bad, but she was good inside!
…No? Given what we heard from her in the TV world, the latter statement is the exact opposite of the truth. She pretended to be nice to Yosuke while secretly hating him.
YOSUKE: So she hated me? I knew that!
He definitely did not know that while she was alive, but I’ll be generous and assume he means “I’ve known that for a while”, given it’s been months. Though I feel he should have said “know” rather than “knew” in that case.
Yosuke yells them off, and I can say, “I know how it is.” However, this makes Yosuke annoyed:
YOSUKE: How can you understand, when I don’t…?
I feel that’s another point for sociopath. I think most people would understand why they’re upset in this situation, because, well, it’s completely understandable to be upset in this situation. But if strong emotions are very rare for him, this statement makes a lot more sense.
In the evening, Dojima is available. He confirms that the newspaper article he was looking for was about his wife. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it any more in the house (subtext: around Nanako). I find that completely reasonable, so I say we should take it outside. He agrees, and then… just keeps talking anyway???
DOJIMA: Nanako’s mother was run over on her way to pick up Nanako from nursery school.
Yep, this is absolutely something Nanako should not be overhearing, why are we talking about it here? He goes on to confirm that he is obsessed about this case, because he’s never found a suspect.
DOJIMA: I couldn’t tell Nanako that her mother was killed. That her father, whose job is to catch criminals… couldn’t find a single lead… …… But I haven’t given up. I’ll catch the guy. I don’t need a private life to catch the guy. …Nanako will understand.
I feel this does, finally, provide a good explanation for his behavior. This explains why he’s never around even when there aren’t any cases and why he’s constantly complaining about having to do his job. I can, finally, hit him where it hurts: “Is this what she wants?” He brushes me off with, “Even if it’s not what she wants now, she’ll understand someday…” Oh God damn it, Dojima. I reload and hit him with the even harder, “That’s just an excuse.” This time I get a ! from Dojima, but he just ends the conversation and tells me to leave him alone, hopefully to have a good long think about what a terrible, terrible dad he is.
On the 23rd the Beach Episode begins.
YOSUKE: I’m sure suntanned skin and a little accidental hand-slipping is in our future!
I am regretting this already. And the voice actor is way too good at making this sound as skeevy as possible. I do not call the girls to warn them about the incoming sexual harassment and/or make plans on how to make Yosuke’s death look like an accident.
We get to see Teddie in a swimsuit, and I swear I can see his ribs. What are you feeding him, Yosuke?
YOSUKE: We’re at the ocean. Which means swimsuits. Which means, Risette live and in person! What are the ramifications here…? Am I using up my lifetime supply of luck with this?
If only.
…I am pretty certain that’s the exact same model her Shadow was using, just with a different texture. Am I the only one who remembered she had a breakdown over the idea of flashing her underwear at the world? Also, why are the other girls wearing the same skimpy swimsuits Yosuke bought them?
Oh hey, we do get to see Kanji in a swimsuit! He looks so much healthier than the rest of these skeletons. Yosuke immediately has a nohomo freakout, and Kanji seems genuinely oblivious.
YOSUKE: I’m seeing things I never needed to see!
Dude, you already saw his Shadow running around in his underwear. Also, you could just stop staring at his dick.
KANJI: You’re the only one sayin’ stuff like that!
Kanji remains the only sane person in this mess.
YOSUKE: Don’t act like you’re not egging me on!
Okay wow that escalated quickly. Rise mercifully interrupts the hate crime in progress to whine that Kanji isn’t slobbering over her. Did no one tell her?
KANJI: Huh? Why would that happen?
Ha ha, the only reason a teenage boy wouldn’t commit sexual assault is if he’s gay!
They go swimming and we have some (mercifully offscreen) hilarious sexual assault from Teddie. Why can we not drown him.
TEDDIE: Aww, don’t be so stingy! I think we’re due for a “wardrobe malfunction”…
So Teddie has absolutely been watching porn. What have you been showing him, Yosuke? Or, given he was a creep even before that, what programs was he getting in TV world?
He actually ends up disrobing Kanji by mistake. This is an emergency…! insists the narration. Isn’t bathing naked normal in Japan? Is this really a huge deal? Yosuke’s solution:
The girls are confused by this and run off. We cut to later in the day, and Yosuke manages to have a conversation with Kanji without being completely terrible.
Well, that was… odd, but could have been worse. When I get back, Nanako asks me to help her with her homework for the next few evenings. The next day, John remembers he also has summer homework he needs to do, so that’ll be taking up my days.
Chie asks to hang out, so I blow off my homework to do so. Our date is interrupted by the punks mugging another kid. They reveal that Takeshi repaid our help by selling all our secrets to them. They threaten to hurt Yukiko if Chie attacks them again, and… wow, the Persona mechanics make this so weird. Yukiko can light stuff on fire with her mind, why do we think these people are remotely a threat to her, or any of us for that matter? Heck, we could just throw them into the TV like the culprit is doing, the police have established they can’t trace that. This time, I finally get the option to “Let Chie do her thing”, so I take that. Chie decides the best option is to… let the punks beat her up. Somehow this weirds the punks out enough that they just walk off, because these are the laziest punks ever. Afterwards, Chie will say that was a stupid decision even if I tell her it wasn’t. Sigh. Then she proposes to me, but since this isn’t Persona 3 I can turn her down and she takes it well. Her rank up bonus this time is that she can guard me from a mortal blow, which is actually very fitting with this scene! I wonder if it’ll match up this well for the others.
On the 30th, there’s a fireworks festival. Rise asks me out on a date, and mercifully this time I can ask to bring everyone. Nanako also wants to go. Dojima doesn’t even promise to take her, he just says he’ll “try” to be home in time. We skip straight to evening with the gang sans Teddie. Apparently, he got dragged off by Hanako while flirting with girls, but he deserves it because he also showed off Yosuke’s porn stash to his parents. Conveniently, Teddie manages to show up anyway in his bear suit.
YOSUKE: People are going to stare at you like that. Hurry and take it off.
TEDDIE: But I’m like a newborn child inside…! Just like your magazine from this morning, Yosuke!
Teddie has been quoting porn tropes nonstop. There is no way he did not understand what that magazine was. Nanko then shows up and Teddie rushes off. He was either lying about being naked or he had a fresh suit stashed in the bushes, because…
Well, someone’s getting disappeared tonight. Chie interrupts to warn him of this. Dojima, because he is terrible, does not react.
You enjoyed the fireworks festival!
Speak for yourself, narrator.
Everyone reflects on the summer coming to an end. Yosuke whines that he didn’t get to go out with any girls. My choices:
> “I wanted to go with a girl.”
> “It’s easier with guys.”
Sigh. Why isn’t there a “You’re all my friends” option? Why do we have to pick favorites? After some consideration, I pick the latter — while Teddie and Yosuke are awful, I just know that if I say the former everyone (especially Rise) is going to get weird about it, and at least “guys” includes Kanji as a mitigating factor.
YOSUKE: You take the long view too much when it comes to this stuff… Are you going to throw away the only summer you’ll ever get as a second-year, just because it’s a little less annoying?
That’s a very weird thing to say. Surely trying to start a romance (and, ultimately, a family) is “taking the long view” over just hanging out with your bros because it’s easier? This sort of implies Yosuke doesn’t actually like girls very much, he’s just chasing them because he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to do.
RISE: Hey, that’s mean. You make it sound like we’re annoying!
Haha, yes, bite each others’ dicks off. Unfortunately, the girls I don’t hate are also hurt by this.
CHIE: It’s your fault for being so insensitive, Yosuke!
YOSUKE: Hmm, yeah. This kind of thing doesn’t really come up with guys…
Oh come on, you are a nonstop drama llama whenever Kanji’s around. I suppose the difference is that the girls are able to vocalize their feelings when he hurts them, while Kanji just takes it like a doormat. (Also, really telling that his immediate reaction isn’t to apologize, but to double down that yeah, he does find you annoying!)
Kanji wonders if they should have brought Naoto, and the others agree. They decide he would probably have been too standoffish to accept, and anyway he’s probably left town now that the case is closed.
YOSUKE: He was a pretty good-looking guy, too. He might have been a roadblock in, erm, other ways.
A very heterosexual statement, Yosuke. It really is cowardly they cut his romance, they set up his bisexuality so well.
A bit of an unremarkable note to end on, but a new plot thread starts in September so I think it makes most sense to cut it here.