Oh hey, more students with Protagonist Hair.

Looks like this is our Catwoman from the prologue. She gives up her seat for an old lady, but a man snipes it instead. She tries to tell him off, establishing she is the one character so far who has a spine, but the dick immediately falls asleep. Damien offers to intervene, but Catwoman says, “It’s all right. I understand his position as well,” so I take that back about her having a spine. Afterwards, she profusely thanks us for… offering to help but not doing anything.

Girl: Thanking you totally slipped my mind on the train, and I didn’t want to be rude to my senpai.

I have to admit, it is weird hearing English voice actors use Japanese terms like this. I think you could make a case for honorifics being untranslatable, but… we have a word for “upperclassman”.

On the way to school I overhear students gossiping about Dead-Eyed Blonde Girl, who they name as Takamaki. She’s apparently a supermodel. What happens if I try to skip school again?

Damien: I better hurry up and go to school…

Of course.

It occurs to me that the railroading could work as thematic resonance — making the player feel confined just like the protagonist feels confined. Unfortunately, if that is the intent it doesn’t come across. Damien never expresses any desire to break the rules or that he’s refusing due to external threats, he’s just a bland goody two-shoes. Like many other things, this would probably work better if he was engaging in delinquent behavior before his arrest, establishing that this is a change in his behavior, but we don’t get any sense of that.

We make it to class on time, allowing us to be introduced to a new teacher:

He looks pleasingly normal. Please don’t be a weirdo. His gimmick appears to be that he’s a grump who hates everyone, which, fair.

Ushimaru: A certain dictionary defines a year as “a period of 365 disappointments.” The book’s title is about as cynically satirical as the rest of it. It’s “The Devil’s Dictionary,” by Ambrose Bierce.

Why are we studying a European text in a Japanese school? He asks me what the Devil’s Dictionary defines as the chief factor in the progress of the human race. I have no idea, but given its edginess, I guess “Villains”. And I’m correct!

Ushimaru: Here in the real world, villains don’t push humanity forward. All they do is spread chaos and strife.

Why are you making us learn about this then?

After school, we overhear Kamoshida creeping on Takamaki, who awkwardly makes excuses to get away. Why did he invite Damien into the car too, then? Did he realize that looked sketchy in front of a witness and was trying to save face? Ryuji ambushes us when we leave school and says he wants to return to the castle. Glutton for punishment, I see.

Ryuji: It’s all connected to that bastard Kamoshida, after all.

Maybe you could tell me why he’s such a bastard? …No, he just talks about the castle more.

Damien: Ryuji doesn’t seem like a bad guy. I should probably just go along with this…

Why are you such a doormat. This is especially weird because we actually have good reason not to go along with this — we’ve been warned not to make trouble and that Ryuji is trouble. Are we trying to be a goody two-shoes, or not? Ryuji loudly wonders how to find the castle again, and for some reason Damien doesn’t bring up the app he was explicitly told has this ability. After more unsuccessful wandering, Ryuji is the one who figures out the app might be important.

> Navigation app?
> I dunno.

Why are you so stupid, Damien? Were the Velvet Room scenes added later in the script? Ryuji gets sick of our gormlessness and swipes our phone, where he singlehandedly figures out how to use the app to take us to the castle again.

Ryuji: Oh man, I’m such a genius!

I will admit, you really are.

Morgana shows up to give us some exposition.

Morgana: The castle IS the school. …But only to this castle’s ruler. […] It’s how his distorted heart views the school.

[…]

Ryuji: This is Kamoshida’s reality? Shit makes no sense at all!

It really doesn’t. Why would he view himself as a weird pervert prancing around in a bathrobe? Why would he accuse the loner of being unable to do anything without his friends? Why does he want to execute Ryuji in the Palace but in the real world he’s stopping him from getting expelled? Given the whole prison aspect, it would make far more sense for him to want the students to remain locked up under his power — why not have that be the threat?

During the conversation, Morgana calls Ryuji by his name. How does he know that? He also calls the prisoners “slaves” and says they’re being tortured on Kamoshida’s orders. He agrees to let Ryuji in only if Damien comes with.

Morgana: I just want to get a better look at your powers. Even if you don’t agree, I bet this guy’ll go on even if he has to do it alone. Are you gonna leave him?

Wow, jumping straight to manipulation. This is a sketchy kitty.

Nice try, Damien, but can’t you see that wall is full of holes? Your wall cling does nothing.

Morgana: You’ll need to rip their masks off to momentarily break the control that the Palace ruler has over them.

So these are demons the Palace rulers are controlling? And hold on, the ones we fought last time transformed spontaneously.

Ryuji runs off on his own like an idiot and Morgana shows us to a safe room where “There’s a lack of distortion here, meaning the ruler’s control over this area is weak.” He gives us more exposition:

Morgana: This is happening because [Kamoshida] thinks the school is his own castle.

This is, again, weird when Ryuji is the one who drew that comparison, not Kamoshida himself.

Morgana: You’re curious about your outfit, aren’t you? […] Anything distorts according to how a ruler pleases within his Palace. […] In order to prevent such distortions, one must hold a powerful will of rebellion. Your appearance is a manifestation of that. It’s the image of rebellion that you hold within.

We should be totally powerless, then. We are a complete square. Ryuji should be the one with all the power, yet he hasn’t even awakened his persona yet.

Morgana also explains why he looks like a cat: He used to be human, but “I lost my true form. …I think.” He does not elaborate. Ryuji, demonstrating once again that he’s the brains of the team, reveals he brought in a model gun, with the idea that it can intimidate enemies. (For my US readers, getting a real gun in Japan is extremely hard, so this is believably the best he could do.) He also brought some medicine. For some reason Morgana is a dick about him preparing in advance.

We apparently have actual stealth mechanics now! If we get noticed by enemies, the security level will rise and the Palace will become “more dangerous”. We can reduce it by killing enemies without getting noticed, because that’s definitely how security levels work.

…We punch an underling of the PE teacher and pansies come out. Should I be reading into this? Probably not, but if the story is going to make a point about these being “true forms”, this really ought to mean something.

Then we get the gun tutorial, and there’s actually an in-universe explanation for it!

Morgana: This is a cognitive world. As long as our opponent sees it as real, it becomes such. It’s a good thing it’s realistic-looking. […] Because they recognize it as a gun, your ammo capacity is limited in battle. But your enemies are expecting you to come at them with guns loaded, so your ammo’s replenished in every new fight.

I actually find this really clever, and it’s exactly what I suggested should be the case in the previous games. However, this does necessarily mean our enemies have to be sapient, so we’re also mass murderers.

Morgana also has a gun he neglected to mention up till now, and it’s… a slingshot. Somehow this is exactly as powerful as my handgun.

That sure is a lot of Japanese I can’t read. What were you doing, localizers? I guess they figured it wasn’t necessary, because Ryuji immediately tells us it says “Kamoshida’s Training Hall of Love”.

Inside, we see demons brutalizing sports students. Morgana explains this is cool because they’re only imaginary humans dreamt up by Kamoshida, not real humans who wandered in like us. Uh, how are you so certain of that? However, this does imply he’s abusing them in real life. For some reason Ryuji is shocked by this despite constantly telling us he’s the scum of the earth. Ryuji tries to take a picture to use as evidence against Kamoshida (I’m… not entirely sure how you’d explain the weirdos in armor) but discovers cameras don’t work here. He resolves to go to the cells and memorize everyone’s faces so he can find them in the real world. Why can’t you just assume it’s all the volleyball players?

Ryuji: The hell…? This ain’t trainin’ at all… It’s just violence!

Yeah, this is pretty over-the-top. This looks more like Kamoshida is just a sadist who wants to hurt kids for no reason, but from what we see in the real world he seems very concerned about producing results. Your athletes aren’t going to be winning matches if you just beat them all day. Also, the volleyball players at the school were bragging about how Kamoshida would protect them from the evil transfer student, so… why would they be so reverent if he was actually abusing them?

Beaten Volleyball Player: I don’t know why you guys are here… but just leave us alone…
Ryuji: What’re you talkin’ about!? You’re seriously okay with this!? Tch… I guess there’s no point tryin’ to talk to ’em…

It is really weird that we’re told we should care about this, but also we shouldn’t care about the individual people because they’re not real.

We try to leave, but Kamoshida intercepts us. He reveals that Ryuji betrayed the track team through an act of violence, but gives no details. He throws some bicorns at me, but they’re cheaters who don’t die when their HP reaches 0 and KO everyone in a scripted sequence.

Shadow Kamoshida: Have you forgotten my kindness in supervising track practice?
Ryuji: Wasn’t no practice — it was physical abuse! You just didn’t like our team!

So Ryuji was abused by this guy, but he’s surprised he’s abusing other kids? What?

Naturally, this drives Ryuji to apotheosize and summon his persona, Captain Kidd. (Interesting that he’s a privateer, not a pirate. Does Ryuji secretly want to be a bootlicker?) Why this didn’t happen earlier when he’s been brash and aggressive this whole time, I don’t know. Despite the enemy seeing me use all my bullets in the first fight, I get them back in the second. Ryuji also suddenly has a giant shotgun out of nowhere. If personas can generate guns too, why did we have to bring in a real object?

But then Kamoshida summons Sexy Girl!

Morgana: What a meow-velous and beautiful girl…

You’re offended to be called a cat, but also you use cat puns? Methinks the furry doth protest too much. And ugh, you better not be this game’s horndog. The obviously fake Takamaki starts fondling Kamoshida and for some reason everyone is confused by this. In response, you can say, “I’m jealous…” because once again the writers are getting off to underage sexual exploitation while pretending to criticize it. Ryuji yells a bunch before Morgana explains that she’s obviously a fake.

We escape to fight another day, and Ryuji is once again confused by his magical girl transformation despite Morgana already explaining this. How are you so smart and so dumb at the same time, Ryuji?

Morgana: Stop asking questions and accept what you see for what it is.

Except you just explained that can backfire if we believe things are worse than they are. Morgana also explains that the real Kamoshida doesn’t know anything that happens here because “A Shadow is the true self that is suppressed — a side of one’s personality they don’t want to see.” So wait, shouldn’t that mean he’s not doing any of this in reality, because this shows he feels ashamed by these urges?

Morgana demands we help him restore his real body in exchange for his help so far, but Ryuji suddenly decides to be a dick.

Ryuji: Thanks for everything, cat. You’ve got guts, bein’ a cat and all! See you around!

He’s presumably just saying this because he knows it pisses Morgana off, but this is still really cruel. Morgana’s been a dick, yes, but he did hold up his end of the bargain. Why are we suddenly betraying him?

Back in the real world, Ryuji dramatically reveals that Kamoshida is the one who told the school we’re a criminal! Okay? The mystery culprit is a guy we already hate? That doesn’t mean much.

We suddenly flash forward again.

Niijima: Acting as a phantom thief would’ve been more efficient alone. You could’ve gone about it that way…

That’s what you took away from this? What??? We just explained how having an ally saved our life! Also, why is she heaping so much responsibility on us? Ryuji was the one who wanted to do it, we just got dragged along!

Niijima: However, you did not. There are merits to having associates… That’s what you decided.

This turns out to be a weirdly over-elaborate lead-in to social links, since we now get Ryuji’s (The Chariot). Again, this is not a decision Damien made, it just happened.

Different spiel this time, and it’s now fully voiced. I take this to mean the central theme is going to be freedom and rebellion, at least ostensibly. Certainly hasn’t done a good job of demonstrating it with all the railroading.

Ryuji takes us on a date and we tell him our backstory. Ryuji proves Sojiro wrong by taking our side. He then says we’re totally alike because he’s an outcast too! He says “I did something stupid at school before, too,” and then drops the subject because we have to save something for the social link I guess. He really should have every reason to tell us now, especially since Shadow Kamoshida just implied it’s extremely relevant to the current situation.

“Let’s discuss our plans in the middle of a crowded restaurant!” Also, not sure why he thinks exposing the school to a huge scandal will end well for us. This kind of thing happens all the time in real life, not because no one knows, but because the school authorities protect their prize-winning sports coach. Even for a teenager, this seems very naive. In the next scene we can finally tell Ryuji to stop loudly broadcasting our plans in public, but honestly this is the one time it might actually make more sense to let people know? Start loudly chatting about how Kamoshida abuses his students and let the rumor mill do its thing.

We cut to Takamaki talking to her friend on the volleyball team, but it doesn’t tell us much other than that the abuse is really obvious.

Welp, we’ve now given the police written evidence of our crimes. Seriously, how is Niijima struggling to put together a case?

It’s sexually-transmitted malware, apparently. We still cannot tell him what it actually is, nor does he ask where we got it.

Damien continues to be a square and refuses to even go downstairs before going to bed.

Damien: I feel exhausted. Maybe it’s because of the Metaverse…

Wikipedia tells me Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021, so the writers did not know how well this would age.

We get another Velvet Room dream because Igor wants to chat some more. Once again, I can’t tell him off until New Game+.

Igor: It seems you have nerves of steel.

Game, you literally just told me I’m too cowardly for the other dialogue option. Are you trolling me? Igor exposits more about how social links are super duper important. This is starting to reach Pokemon levels of condescension. Game, if you’re going to give me constant dialogue options, can I at least say “I have played Persona games before, I understand this already,” instead of them all being meaningless?

Igor: That said, I am not advising the formation of superficial relationships. It must not be of frivolity, but a ring of those who would, by morals or faith, lend you their strength.

Okay…? This is really weird with non-playable social links, especially since many of them are pretty frivolous. It’s not like I even have any choice in the matter, social links just happen.

Igor: In other words, they are bonds with those who have been robbed of their place to belong.

Okay…? We then get a social link with him (The Fool). This gives me the “Wild Talk” ability, which allows me to negotiate with Shadows. It also provides the social link EXP bonus, instead of that just being intrinsic to fusion.