Goro Akechi: An Analysis

There’s a hidden detail; on the final day you can go to the jazz club and the owner asks if you’ve seen him lately because he’s been missing. Joker instinctively grabs the glove in his pocket and swears he’s still gotta be out there. It’s a neat touch because you have zero motivation to go there as no one is there to give you a social link reward sans strength which can be gotten right after hanged man anyway.

I appreciate what Royal did with Akechi because he was a character that needed expanding. Also he is such a sassy bitch in the winter semester and I love him for it.

Akechi's conviction is something I really stuck with in P5R. It resonated a lot with me personally. I like the way you put it about "live with the knowledge you betrayed his trust", because despite the other whole host of issues with Maruki's world, that's one thing that is truly disturbing. Him trusting you, and you, in response, damning the world and clattering out his corpse to play out your little puppet fantasy. It's sick. I think it was genuinely brave of the creators of P5R to trust the players with such a despicable choice. People undercut the quality of persona's writing too often, then when it delivers something of nuance and substance, they miss the whole point. Good video! I've said it for months but you and Tony4you are basically the only voices on ATLUS stuff I 100% trust to do your homework and put out well measured quality work

[Now further translation notes in the replies!] ...I want to mention, Akechi does not make shadows wrathful in a sense, translation fault. In the game, his Call of Chaos is proposed as 'turning psychotic' - but in Japanese, his power is called 暴走のいざない which is 'Rampage's Invitation' and a completely different meaning, IMO. Instead of just... making shadows go crazy, it's instead him tempting the shadows to let loose and to not hold back, to have no inhibitions. This means that the shadows already had that wrath. Maybe like he unmasked them...? Symbolism. Also I rarely see this talked about but I first saw it from a meme and it shocked me -- Akechi is a mix of all the confidants: Wants to punish the man who ruined their life; wants a place to belong; is viewed as a nuisance; was blamed for mothers death; wants recognition for their skills pressured to be perfect; groomed by father to be a pawn for their plans, and unable to be seen for who they really are.

What I think makes akechi an even more tragic character is how he was doomed from the start. Since he was chosen as the one to represent the distortion of the world, he would either win, leading to the world's destruction or lose to the theives and die in the process. Being able to save the world in the 3rd semester despite knowing he will die shows that despite still not being a 'good' person yet, he is more willing to do something heroic for the sake of his justice by changing marukis heart instead of cutting down those around him

One of my favorite conversations that Akechi has that never gets talked about despite how much it really shows his character, has got to be his phone calls with Shido after the reveal. And I never got why people didn't talk more about them? Because the first one despite being the most interesting, doesn't seem like much on first viewing? However with hindsight it shows it a lot more into how these two are playing each other. The biggest outlier in the first conversation is how Shido practically worship the ground Goro is walking on praising him and being so thankful for "letting him get this far", this is a far contrast from his public and subconscious displays of egomania(he has the distortion of pride after all.) But later on makes sense when he's shadow discusses how easy it was to keep him in line with just empty complements and how desperate he seemed to be for his approval. Then on Goro's end, we see him downplaying the other phantom thieves capability telling him how they'll be no threat and he keeps trying to push back their execution by saying it'd be suspicious to kill them all at once, even outright lying by saying Morgana is just a normal cat. We see him try this again in later conversations with him arguing against Shido moving up his political rivals and liabilities murders too before his election, while he keeps trying to move them to be after his election. However once we hear both sides plan we see that Shido he's trying to get Akechi to clean up all the loose ends so quickly because he plans to kill him once he's elected. Meanwhile Goro he's trying to leave everything as is as he plans to expose and then murder Shido when he's finally elected. It's just a very interesting insight into both characters and I don't get why more people don't talk about it?

Akechi’s last moments in royal, before disappearing with Maruki’s reality, was being squashed in the Monacopter. What a send-off…

Pride comes before the fall, but what happens after the fall determines what defines a person. Akechi didn't wallow in despair, instead fighting for his truth.

Damn, Akechi’s line at the end feels like a jab a the player. “What’s a life worth, in a reality that was cooked up…just to satisfy someone else? I say none.” That’s to say, what’s it worth in Royal’s 3rd Semester that the player raised their confidants with Maruki, Sumire and him, to bring him back only on borrowed time? Akechi’s question is to the player of Royal, “why did you bring me back, only for a few more hours together? Just to appease yourself?” At least, that’s how I read it now

What I love most about Akechi, is that he doesn't want to be forgiven or redeemed. In a cut side quest he basically says as much. Explaining that just because he's a victim it doesn't excuse his crimes.

Loki’s dazzle camouflage is perfect for akechi‘’s character and role in the story. The camouflage doesn’t obscure the existence of an object, just the intentions of it, and this mirrors the false persona that he embodies to further his goals.

This video is big catharsis, seeing as how I quickly fell in love with Akechi as a character even back in vanilla when he was at his worst, from a writing and execution perspective. He is easy to hate, hard to love, but overall just an interesting character all around. I love that his theming boils down to 'personal justice', rather than the creed of the Phantom Thieves' justice, who work for the betterment of society as a whole. He is the example of someone who wasn't as lucky as Joker, who suffered an injustice but was lucky to find support when he needed it. Akechi is a 'throwaway kid', an orphan ostracised by the system he was born into because of the sins of his parents. Once I looked into 'koseki' and the discrimination and prejudice that orphaned kids in Japan face, his reasons for doing what he did made a lot more sense. I want to speculate that Akechi isn't as popular in the West as he is in Japan is because of this blockade of not understanding the socioeconomic issues that plague people like him. Orphans in the West don't face as much scrutiny as their Japanese counterparts. Maybe it reflects poorly on me but I found him very relateable (aside from the murder, of course) in how he switches masks (ha) between a people pleaser version of himself and a version that unleashes the dark parts of himself, the anger and vitriol at the world. And, honestly, when I first played Royal and he said that he hated Joker, I didn't believe it for a second. He's putting up yet another front, only except this time he doesn't know it. Given what we know about his social life, it's very likely that Joker and (probably) Kasumi were the first real friends he's ever had. When you've gone that long in your life without having people really care about you or want to spend time with you, there's a lot of conflicting feelings boiling up. It could be that he's trying to fool himself so the pain of killing Joker later on after Sae's Palace doesn't hurt as much.

To give my thoughts I would say "Better to be Black than Flat". I think its better for Goro to live, not out of some sense of him being or turning "good" but because there is still growth to him as a person, similarly to Adachi. To me (imo) letting him stay dead or killing him like in the first P5 sends the wrong message, yes there are consequences to actions. But by saying one is better off dead than pathetic or disgraced, especially one who is as young but also as condemned and constricted by the wills of things larger than themselves as Akechi . It just doesn't sit right with me in a game that revolves around the potential of change and or evolution of one's own nature, and yea he might be dead in P5R as well but it presents the hope of a possibility and doesn't force one notion or the other onto the player.

Obviously the spin-offs aren't exactly peak writing, but I do like how Akechi is portrayed in Persona Q2, specifically in sidequests. He's paralleled quite well with Ken Amada, and koromaru even takes a liking to him for their similar inner conflicts. Its one of the best writing choices Q2 made, and its sidequests are routinely the best part of that game imo

One thing I noticed is that in battle Akechi says "My skills exceed yours" when he uses a skill. On repeat playthroughs you wonder: Is he talking to the enemy? Or you?

A small little thing I like is that the words for his “black knight” forms all out finisher change yet keeps the same theme White knight- my sole interest is uncovering the truth! Black knight- I WILL DECIDE THE TRUTH

Finally a video on the best boy dropped. Ngl i always felt like Akechi's character was missunderstood by many people in the original and Royal was the way of the writters to say "dumb fucks akechi's character is about this". Excellent video Snick as always

Not only a new SnicketySlice video, but it opens with "Goro Akechi is the the best character in Persona 5." This is why Snickety is in S tier.

I feel like Ren/Akira saw through Goro from the start, and wished to help him. But like Akechi says they’d met too late. Akechi had already been ruined by Shido’s evil. Also, I just can’t see him as the bad guy, because he isn’t. He’s a misguided child, who is also being influenced by yaldabaoth/shido. Truly he craves being cared for and friends. He could have been the next detective prince he is clever and smart enough, but he doesn’t think highly enough of himself and is turned astray by his plan to kill shido. It made me mad the thieves didn’t see what they could have become through him, and just viewed him one sidedly. They did when he sacrificed himself but not in the 3rd semester, which I’m hoping was just an oversight. [ These are my thoughts] Also he doesn’t die in the real world.

I swear to god Goro has BPD. It's actually tragic because his love/hate line of thinking is in line with a lot of borderlines, which causes a lot of questionable decisions and many regrets