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Let’s talk Persona. We haven’t in a while, have we? I’ve been playing through Persona 5 Strikers for the first time, finally, on my Twitch channel, and I’ve been restarting a gameplay through Persona 3 FES which I honestly still have yet to finish, but it’s been so long, and I decided to restart the game, I guess it’s a little harder since I’ve seen the movies that didn’t hype me much up on the game itself and that I’m trying to take each of these games slow and simultaneously trying to get through them, so I can get to Shin Megami Tensei V. But, I’ve heard a lot of voices over the years that wanted to see more Persona content – and you guys are finally getting that, it’s not that I didn’t want to make any, it’s more so I was more concerned with consuming Persona content, so I could understand what I’d be doing. So this idea came to mind, the idea of the silent protagonist the series has done from its inception.
From Naoya Todo, the boy with an earring to Ren Amamiya, the leader of the Phantom Thieves of Heart the series has done its fair share of differences with the silent protagonist in it’s 25 year lifespan, some choices made the characters better, some didn’t – but they’re still the guys, and sometimes the girls, that we love. Games tend to have silent protagonists, so we, the players, can project ourselves onto them, and sometimes in Persona’s case – the illusion of choice or sometimes lack of choice, we’re given at certain crossroads of the story, may not align with our ethos. But, I feel there are certain games in the series that do this better than others – so let’s take a quick look at each protagonist and see which game did it best.
Persona 1
Starting off, with Megami Ibunroku: Persona starts at 3, we have Naoya Todo, the canonical manga name for the protagonist that we’ll be using for the rest of this video. As the first game in the series, Persona 1 is about as barebones as the series can get, although difficult at times, it’s more due to its dungeon crawling nature and high encounter rate rather than actual difficult battles. Most of the game is spent in combat and there’s very little actual storytelling compared to the following games, that said we don’t get to learn all that much about Naoya as a person – which for a silent protagonist is probably exactly how much we want to learn. However, it does come to light that Naoya had a twin brother that died at a younger age in a tragic accident, being struck by a truck – causing grief and mental anguish for the Todo sibling’s mother. Naoya goes on to manifest a shadow, created from the guilt harbored inside related to his brother, Kazuya’s death.
For a silent protagonist in a game, who’s remake has about 15 minutes of cinematic cutscenes, being the first in a series, that’s actually a decent backstory we’re looking at. But as far as projecting yourself onto the protagonist, it seems like there’s a bit too much going on. Sure, some players may relate to the events Naoya had suffered through, but many may just see him as a character in the story like everyone else.
Persona 2
Persona 2, kind of has a weird thing going on with it, where the protagonist of Innocent Sin, while silent, becomes talkative in Eternal Punishment, and vice versa. But we’ll actually be skipping over Maya Amano, as she was a developed character prior to her role as a protagonist, so her story and attitude are already fairly fleshed out. Instead, we’ll be focusing on the original Persona 2, Innocent Sin’s Tatsuya Suou. Much like Naoya from Persona 1, there’s some tragic stuff going on behind Tatsuya’s projected tough exterior, like a family he doesn’t get a long with and a habit of striking a lighter given to him by a long-lost friend, Jun Kurosu. As kids, we end up detached from those we care about a lot, whether it’s because we move or they move, or family’s break apart due to a variety of reasons – but as much as some people try to hide the terrible feeling of loss from us at a young age, we’re going to experience it eventually, some younger than others, some at an oddly older age than others It’s also fairly common to have issues within the family where at some point in time, someone isn’t getting a long with someone else. Tatsuya nails the relatablility section of this test and is easy to project onto I believe, but there’s one selling point that I think Tatsuya has over all the protagonists in this series – you can decide his sexual orientation. In a series, which would later allow you to romance your social links, it’s kind of odd that there’s no gay options for any of the protagonists – but Tatsuya was allowed this choice with Jun Kurosu. So, if that’s your cup of tea, Tatsuya actually has you covered – it would be great to see a modern re-release of this game complete with the new social link system added into the next game – but I can settle for the PSP versions now that a full English patch is available for Eternal Punishment.
Persona 3
Finally, we’re starting the series off with Persona 3. Okay, I think it’s about time that I stop that joke, isn’t it? We all know Persona started with 5 now. Anyway, Makoto Yuki from Persona 3 is very similar to Naoya, having his parents stripped away from him a decade before his story begins in the game. He also sports your classic anti-social boys look from the early 2000s, probably listening to My Chemical Romance or AFI through his headphones, he’s not the talkative type. His female counterpart from Persona 3 Portable however shares his backstory, but has opposite his personality. The downside to both of these characters, and the characters I’ll go on to talk about from Persona 4 and 5 – were mentioned before when talking about Tatsuya from Persona 2. While the female protagonist of Persona 3 does have similar social link dialogue in some cases to Makoto, there’s no actual setting to make her date the female characters, but it’s the closest the modern games go to making this sort of step.
Persona 4
Persona 4’s Yu Narukami is probably the most projectable protagonist so far, while he does go on to talk in future installments of the game such as Persona 4 Arena and Persona 4 Dancing All Night, we’re only going to be focusing on his primary appearance in Persona 4. Much like Makoto and Tatsuya, Yu is a transfer student enrolling in his school, but it’s set in a small town, and he comes from the big city. Now, I might not have the best opinion on this sort of thing, but living in New York, and let me be clear, not New York City, it’s super common to see people moving from the city, up into smaller, rural areas – I can imagine due to the costs of the city itself, it’s probably very similar to other places in the country, and even the world. In fact, that’s about all the game gives us on Narukami’s existence. His entire personality is shapeable through your choices as a player, the only downside is his romance options are entirely hetereosexual, which is a shame because his best friend, Yosuke, was meant to be a romance option but ended up getting cut from the game, which not only does great things for the protagonist but contextualizes a lot of Yosuke’s behavior throughout the story of Persona 4.
Persona 5
And now the moment we’ve been dying to get to, Ren Amamiya, the most current protagonist of the Persona franchise, from Persona 5. Unfortunately, just like Naoya and Makoto, Ren’s just got a lot going on. Being framed for a crime he didn’t commit, being taken in for an interrogation and maintaining a cocky attitude throughout the story, bringing us to that illusion of choice I mentioned earlier. I suppose, Ren’s place in the spectrum of silent protagonists is to be the power fantasy of the group, because that’s what he excels at best. It would feel great to be Joker, at least up until you’re caught, but then it would feel great again to fight back against what had you troubled in the first place. Like I mentioned with every other character, there’s a severe lack of choice with Ren’s romance options, characters like Yusuke and Akechi could have been perfect for that sort of thing. But, there’s always being hopeful with Persona 6. If anything comes out of the complaints of Atlus being bigoted towards the members of the LGBT community, I suppose I hope that’s what it brings, more choice for the player.
So where does that leave us? Well, in terms of projectable protagonists, I’d say that I think Yu Narukami and Tatsuya Suou nail the job, maybe not perfectly, but as close to perfect as this series has gotten. There are elements about each character, or the game they appear in, that prevent them from being a complete blank slate. In fact, if Yu was able to romance Yosuke, I’d consider that he would be number one. But, the fact that Tatsuya has more going on behind the scenes than Yu does, keeps me from naming him number one as well. Do you think a different character nailed the silent protagonist job better? Unfortunately, I’d have to disagree with you, they did their jobs well in their games, but if it’s not Yu or Tatsuya, they just exist as characters in the story to me – but leave your opinions down below.