Persona 5 - Introducing The Class President
This is a hard game to put down. Even though this is my second back-to-back run, I still can not stop playing it. So in an effort to not have all my time consumed by Persona 5, I have decided to only play it during the weekdays, and dabble into other things on the weekends.
For a modern JRPG, it is quite striking how on rails this game is. Some of it is to be expected from a game that imposes strict timeline limitations on the players. There is a finite amount of time that can be spent in the game. Each time an activity is undertaken, the game clock moves forward. This means each activity comes at the expense of everything else that was available to do at that given time. Considering not all activities are available at all times, there is a serious FOMO associated with each decision. This causes some annoyance when the player is railroaded in to conversations that end with only option being going to sleep. Then the player wakes up to be stuck into a similar situation and suddenly a few days have passed without me doing whatever it was I wanted to do. When Joker does get a say, both the choices are just different phrasing of same thought. First I though it mattered what tone I use, but I don’t think it makes any difference. This is just a modern version of “But you must!” trope of the JRPGS
There are a few days before we will know if Madarame has had a change of heart. He will not press charges against the team until his exhibition wraps up so that he can avoid any negative publicity. He has sequestered himself in his house. This deadline is still a few days away. In the mean time there are quite a few things we can do.
The next palace is being set up in this interval. There is a Yakuza boss who has been blackmailing school children in to selling drugs. Makoro Nijima will be the student of focus for this palace. She is Shujin student council president. More interestingly she is the younger sister of the prosecutor who is interrogating Joker in the present timeline. Makoro is being pushed by the inept principal to investigate the Phantom Thieves. I think this is the where the plan to frame them for all the Metaverse crimes starts formulating.
During her investigation, Makoro gets in to it with Ann. Ann accuses her (somewhat unfairly) of turning a blind eye towards the transgressions of Kamoshida, which culminated into him raping Shiho and her subsequent suicide attempt. This hits Makoro hard and drives her even more towards solving the mystery of the identity of the Phantom Thieves.
I find the expectations everyone seems to have for the student council president to be hilarious. When I was in high school, the only things student council had to worry about was setting up homecoming and prom and maybe come up with the design of the class shirt. In this school the president wants her to solve a crime, the police has not been able to solve. The students want her held accountable for the crimes of the teachers. While walking to the school one morning, Joker eavesdrops two students stating they have lost confidence in her ability to govern because of all the recent news about the coach physically abusing the students. She is not governing shit. The only thing she realistically has any control over may be what time the pep rally starts.
Mokoro teams up with the gang to find the drug runners so they can figure out who is blackmailing all the students. While investigating around Shibuya I ran into a pretty sleazy guy. He was trying to convince a school girl to shoot porn. He did not come right out and say it but the context was pretty clear. Persona 5 really does not shy away from the social problems relevant to the younger people of today. After running into few dead ends (figuratively and literally), I was able to find the rat faced Yakuza boss who was responsible for using the students to traffic drugs. Mokoro, in her bout hot headedness, runs straight in and gets caught. The others don’t have any choice but to go in after her. Here they have pictures taken which makes it look like they are hanging out with Yakuza. This puts the whole team in a compromising position. This guy is a low level Yakuza with dreams of rising through the ranks. His name is Kaneshiro. And to make his dreams a reality, he isn’t using Square Space like normal people. Instead he has been extorting students. So he asks the team an exorbitant sum of money or else he will release the pictures on the internet. This will get them expelled from school. And we all know that will go on the permanent record which will follow them all their life. Kaneshiro gives them a few days to come up with the money, thus establishing the timeline for palace completion.
Next time tune in to see the Phantom Thieves as they attempt a bank heist.
05-04-2020
