The Biggest Issue With Akechi For Me Is The Lack Of Acknowledgement Of The Scope Of The Things He Did.

The biggest issue with Akechi for me is the lack of acknowledgement of the scope of the things he did.

Like I said before, Akechi is proto Edelgard for me, and there are more than a few reasons as to why.

They actually have a lot in common, now that I think about it: Very early on, the games present us with events that Edelgard and Akechi are revealed to behind of: The bandit attack in the prologue, which turned out to be an assassination attempt on Dimitri and Claude by Edelgard. And a train accident that killed and injured people, which turned out to be the result of Akechi forcing a mental breakdown on the innocent driver. From then on, we have these terribles events that are happening both in the foreground and background while we're befriending this person that have some strong opinions of their own while still being at least amicable enough to you.

But their amicability was ultimately just a farce to get the drop on the player with a surprise twist. These friendly people turned out to be the villain all along, behind nigh all bad things that have happened through the year and working in tandem with the greater scope villains, enabling them in all their fuckery with the excuse that they will deal with the "actual" bad guys themselves, and now they're going to remorselessly kill you and your real friends for no other reason other than you "being on their way".

But the similarities don't end there, they also share the one trait that ultimately made me hate them as characters: Everyone else is feeling sorry for them instead rightfully telling them off.

The games are very heavy-handedly trying to get us to feel bad for these awful people because they had the saddest backstories the writers could've come up with, completely glossing over their evil deeds in order to do so. And the games very deliberately chose the people that should be the angriest at these villains, besides the plank of wood protagonists, as THE ONES WHO FEEL SORRY FOR THEM THE MOST: Futaba and Seteth respectively. It has to be deliberate, there is no way this is coincidental. Insulting doesn't begin to describe it.

And this is just in the base game for Akechi. Royal comes up and it makes everything worse: The game is forcing you to play alongside this person who doesn't even bother to hide his contempt for you and your real friends. In fact, he fully embraces his psychotic personality and hijacks the story from then on. He basically contributes nothing but manpower for the new dungeon, as all he does in the story is catching up to where you are in regards as to who the antagonist is, and then being very vehemently against everything the antagonist does in the most visceral way possible, even though I don't care what this unwanted bastard thinks (side note, you know how people go at great lengths to say that Edelgard is an antagonist and not a villain? This idea very much applies, like actually applies, to Royal's new palace ruler) We're actually forced to deploy him for a sizeable part of the dungeon, and we spend a considerable amount of time on his thoughts and feeling on the matter, at the cost of spending time with the thoughts and feelings on the people we actually care about, Akechi is basically everything people accuse Yoshizawa, the new girl, of doing, even though Yoshizawa herself could've used some more time both in Royal and in the base game. And to top it all off, Royal further buys into the idea that Akechi was a victim and everything he's done was really Shido's fault and you should really feel bad for him.

Marketability has to play a factor in all of this. Just like how they needed to pull their punches with Edelgard's villainy because she's the game's main waifu, Atlus needed to ramp up the sympathy point for Akechi because he's a pretty anime boy.

This is just like what I've been talking about with @randomnameless a few weeks ago. Sympathy for the villains is a zero-sum game in which the writers and the audience need to ignore the suffering of the villains' victims in order to sell the sympathy. It's easier to do when the victims are ultimately background characters, so the story doesn't need to dwell on their pain like it does with main characters like Akechi or Edelgard. Even though this is all bad on its own, it gets worse for these two fuckers because among their victims are main named characters. Akechi killed Futaba's mom some time ago, which is the reason Futaba got a palace in the first place, and Akechi also kills Haru's dad on screen. Even though Kunikazu was ultimately a terrible person, I'd argue he was the least messed up of all palace rulers bar Futaba (yes, that includes Sae (does being a bitch run in the Niijima family?)) he didn't deserve such a horrible fate (none of Akechi's victims did) and that still doesn't change the fact that this must have scarred Haru, who despite having a bad relationship with her father, must have looked forward to patching thing up. Akechi robbed her of that.

Speaking of Haru, just like how the game has Futaba of all fucking people to try to feel bad for Akechi, the game also has Haru of all fucking people stay completely quiet during Akechi's little sad backstory moment (it's like Seteth and Flayn in Marianne's paralogue)

Really Haru was probably the most screwed over by the game, thank God Strikers came along and gave Haru the spotlight she deserves, which single handedly made her my most favorite character of all of Persona 5!

It ALL comes down to the fact that the game is deciding my feelings for these characters for me. Akechi and Edelgard are not good people, but they still could be great characters, but the games don't commit to the fact that they're bad people, for one reason or another. Some explanation may be that Joker and Byleth don't hate them despite everything they've done because of their past relationships, even if said relationships were built on lies, but this explanation isn't very satisfying because it's a well-known fact that Joker and Byleth try to be both silent protagonist for the players to self-insert into as well as their own character, resulting in them failing at both.

Maybe the games didn't want to promote hatred for these characters because of the themes and whatnot, but that doesn't mean going so far to the other direction. I understand the protagonists not letting themselves be consume by hatred, the problem is one of framing. Far too much focus goes into feeling uwu sad for Akechi and Edelgard and not enough (or any at all) goes into how Joker and Byleth need to not let themselves be too consumed by their hatred of this people who had hurt them so deeply, even as they try to stop them. I guess I should be fair to Three Houses and acknowledge they did do this with Dimitri in Azure Moon, but Persona 5 has no such thing for Futaba, and especially not Haru.

Trying to get me to feel bad for a character has consistently achieved the opposite.

I feel like Akechi is a poor-man's Adachi.

Like, the twist with Adachi was really well-handled. He was a character you always say, were on friendly terms with, but him not having a social link in the original game served to highlight that something was off about him. Him being revealed to be the killer, as well as his true emotions, came as a shock as well as highlighted P4's themes of how often we only see people on a surface level. I haven't played Golden but I know about giving Adachi a social link and an ending where the protag instead allows Adachi to go.

Akechi feels like they wanted to pull off the same twist, but tries to imporve upon it. They gave him a social link that automatically progresses as the story does, but unlike Teddy he doesn't become playable until very late in the game. So that should tip some people off. Likewise, he's the only theif who is not in the original opening, making his inclusions stand out more. And whereas Adachi served to highlight the themes, Akechi instead serves to highlight what the Phantom Thieves could become in the bad ending. He betrays, we find out the truth, kick his ass, and then attempts to redeem himself though self-sacrifice. I honestly don't like how wishy-washy the series is with his survival unlike P3's protagonist.

Haven't played Royal yet though, but I'm going to now considering I realized the hadou thing. Really, I feel like P5 didn't click with me partially because of the hadou element even if I didn't recognize it.

You have no idea how happy it makes me to still see Lindsay fan art.

Thank you for this!

Admiral Lindsay Her Hotness 🫡⚓️

not a fan of how EVERYONE acts like this exchange didn't exist

"Claude was right about Rhea and the church promoting isolationism"

okay, Frieza.

That's just the thing with Rhea in these godforsaken games.

They could've just added extra dialogue of Rhea giving her blessings just this one to use the hero's relic. To showcase that her feelings matter for once, especially when it comes to things that relate directly to her family.

But Rhea is just being denied by the game of this. She's just denied of everything by everyone.

Just look at how edelstands denied her of her anger, trying to say that she overreacted in the Holy Tomb, shitting on her for it and using that moment as proof that she shouldn't rule over Fodlan (even though she doesn't rule over Fodlan) and they minimize all the shit Edelgard has done up until that point to further sell the point that Rhea overreacted, doubling as a poor defense against Edelgard critiques to boot.

@zeroabyss replied to your post “Just thinking about it but - UO : MC learns the...”:

Using the relics is a Necessary Evil. Rhea herself isn’t complaining about doing so either. If it saves the day and they can help destroy Nemesis instead of helping his reign, that’d even be some positive to her to come out of the atrocity that created them. Just wanted to give my two cents on only that. The rest is valid.

​TBF that's what I was sort of ranting against, Rhea isn't complaining and we infer that she allows the Relic's use in this situation because it's Nemesis they're dealing with, and they need their power.

But it's not tackled in the game, we don't have Claude, in the light of this reveal, tell her that maybe he should let that Nabatean alone and doesn't want to use this bow anymore, where Rhea would tell him it's okay just for this once, because bro/sis who became Failnaught would surely have wanted to lend their power to defeat Nemesis and his Elites.

It's just, nowhere so while we can suppose a lot of things happen "off-screen", objective fact is, in the game without any indication like a NPC telling us they talked about it or something, the reveal about the Nabateans and the Relics amounts to nothing for the characters.

Like, with or without Rhea's infodump about the Relics, nothing about the upcoming fight would have changed, Nemesis is storming against the Monastery to do Nemesis things so Claude'n'pals have to kill him "again".

What was the point of that infodump? What kind of consequences does it have? Is it even closing a character arc?

:/

Only related to a post I saw but it IS wild that

Things that Dimitri Fire Emblem can rightfully be criticized for:

Using excessive violence against his enemies

Dedicating a massive amount of his life to revenge

Actively seeking death when he’s made promises he needs to be alive to keep

Leading people who loved and were loyal to him on what is essentially a suicide mission

Being a dick to people trying to help him

(All of which are acknowledged by the story and he changes)

Things Dimitri gets criticized for:

Defending his home country against imperialism

Some bullshit “status quo” argument

Being mentally ill

my main ocs