https://goo.gl/images/DVUdQf
futaba did have best arc though imho. lightweight upset they never fully went into it
LOL
https://goo.gl/images/DVUdQf
futaba did have best arc though imho. lightweight upset they never fully went into it
I mean sure, all of what you've said more or less lines up on paper, but there are things you didn't consider, like how Futaba is actually a good character in practice. To start, Futaba's arc is undeniably solid, making up one of the biggest emotional cores of the game. Her subsequent involvement and character development in the main narrative is great and her dialogue manages to shine in a game that largely has a substandard localization (the english localization managed to tone down the gamer lingo too). Honestly, Futaba is easily one of the better characters in this game, despite her cliched trappings. One more thing:
No, i'd say agoraphobia and suicidal thoughts are pretty undesirable traits that force otaku to confront mental illness and escapism. Sure, there are a handful of "look at how quirky she is!" but Futaba's problems are (surprisingly) treated fairly seriously. It's also weird how you bring up Ohya's drinking problem when that aspect of her is almost entirely played for laughs.
At the very least it should end with Sojiro having a switchblade threatening to gut Joker like a fish lol (yall know he carries dressed like that).
Dude, fucking Sojiro just rolls over and lets you date her like it's nothing (and is totally okay if you cheat on her, WHAT)
If it were Dojima, Joker would receive the asskicking of his lifetime
The Futaba arc is not a big emotional core of the game at all. The driving theme and message behind the story of P5 is 'taking action to change the world'. You could subtract Futaba and tie her mother's character to Sojiro, and she would be wholly irrelevant to the main narrative.I mean sure, all of what you've said more or less lines up on paper, but there are things you didn't consider, like how Futaba is actually a good character in practice. To start, Futaba's arc is undeniably solid, making up one of the biggest emotional cores of the game. Her subsequent involvement and character development in the main narrative is great and her dialogue manages to shine in a game that largely has a substandard localization (the english localization managed to tone down the gamer lingo too). Honestly, Futaba is easily one of the better characters in this game, despite her cliched trappings. One more thing:
No, i'd say agoraphobia and suicidal thoughts are pretty undesirable traits that force otaku to confront mental illness and escapism. Sure, there are a handful of "look at how quirky she is!" but Futaba's problems are (surprisingly) treated fairly seriously. It's also weird how you bring up Ohya's drinking problem when that aspect of her is almost entirely played for laughs.
The Futaba arc is not a big emotional core of the game at all. The driving theme and message behind the story of P5 is 'taking action to change the world'. You could subtract Futaba and tie her mother's character to Sojiro, and she would be wholly irrelevant to the main narrative.
Another way to look at Futaba's arc from the design perspective is how much effort they expended on this particular waifu character compared to further development of say Yusuke, Ann, or Haru, or even using some time to clean up Akechi.
Considering that Futaba is created to literally be a dream waifu, saying her arc is solid is like saying all those combined aspects of pandering are okay because they wrote a decent story to go with it. If that's the case, then why even complain about fanservice problems in any game, if the story is solid?
To put in a different way, would 'Futaba' enjoy as high a position in the polls if she was a male character who has the same story, the same mannerisms, the same confidante? If what otaku playing the game had to confront wasn't a wish fulfillment waifu, but a suicidal nerdy male?
No, such a male Futaba would not. Futaba gets more leniency because she is a waifu. Male players would see this character in a male form as weak, sissy, and annoying. Just look at the amount of complaints about Akechi and Ryuji, and the amount of people automatically handwaving Akechi's popularity as a result of fujoshi. Hilariously, the same is probably true of Futaba, but with otaku.
Otaku having to confront mental illness and escapism in the form of a dateable young, innocent waifu is not confronting mental illness and escapism at all. It's putting an escapist wrapper around serious problems that will be seen as a gateway to getting an unrealistic girl.
(especially since the decisions they made with Akechi were questionable from the ground up).
Kawakami is my babe , she should be #1.
Neko Shogun was robbed.
Glad to see my girl Kawakami placing high.
The Futaba arc is not a big emotional core of the game at all. The driving theme and message behind the story of P5 is 'taking action to change the world'. You could subtract Futaba and tie her mother's character to Sojiro, and she would be wholly irrelevant to the main narrative.
The game isn't P4 but that's still a major theme:You've gotta be able to face yourself before you can face the world.
The game isn't P4 but that's still a major theme:
-Ann's dungeon has her facing how the world sees her and how she internalized that view of herself and got herself into a losing game with Kamoshida, thinking she could use her body to help her friend and be able stay one step ahead of him so as to not have to fully sacrifice herself in that way. You have her breaking the rules of that game and flipping the power dynamic through the palace adventure and she is able to look at herself in a healthier way and also reconsider what she was getting herself into. They don't follow this initial arc up well, with a relatively limp confidant and the off-key objectification of her thereafter, but it was a good start and there is something in that cloud being lifted from her.
-Ryuji is less-satisfying in this respect as I don't think his Kamoshida arc so much as his confidant feeds into him trying to come to terms with his anger and violence. And that arc fits uncomfortably in the main game.
-Yusuke is again about internalizing his own abuse, like Ann. He struggles against you solving his problems, which he alternately denies and thinks he deserves. He continues to struggle with just what his Madarame relationship throughout the course of the game, but he is made to face and accept his victimhood in his arc.
-Makoto is doing the things she 'ought' to do as society sees it but she is made aware of a distance between her justice and the justice of those who get ahead in society. Her sister is a key touchstone here: warped by following the avenues of power and success, which Makoto herself is walking obediently along. Enter the phantom thieves, Kamoshida, the drug trafficking involving minors, and the way the adults seek to use her and this comes to a head and she finds catharsis and justice with you all.
Etc.
Futaba fits right in. She's just a victim of her own delusions and morbidity, brought on by traumatic events and hints that she should think that way from people in power.
-Ryuji is less-satisfying in this respect as I don't think his Kamoshida arc so much as his confidant feeds into him trying to come to terms with his anger and violence. And that arc fits uncomfortably in the main game.
I don't think his Confidant is about him coming to terms with his anger and violence, but rather, doing right by the track team and reaffirming his place in the world. It's the former that really drives him during his Confidant. He's able to endure so much abuse from his ex-teammates because he doesn't want to experience a repeat of what happened last time. Still, people aren't perfect, and Ryuji ends up falling into some bad habits in the main game. But that's intentional; it's genuinely difficult to truly change yourself.
With Ryuji, there's no main realization that leads him to becoming a better person like the others. Even after the Kamoshida arc, he uses the fact that he's a Phantom Thief as a crutch to make himself feel better, becoming obsessed with the status and power it provides. It's only at the very end where he redoubles his efforts to truly becoming a better person, culminating in the end where you can clearly tell he's gained a much better understanding of himself.
That said, he still doesn't really have his life figured out like the others. But that's okay too.
Life's one big [strike[marathon[/s] curving track after all.
I'm thinking about the moments in his confidant where Ryuji uses the MC as some sort of calming token. He sets you up as the guy who can tell him to calm down and he will. It is pretty arbitrary and has little to do with what you actually do.
He wants to come to terms with his guilt with respect to what happened to his team-mates and how he failed himself too. He wants to be able to take the shit people give him, which in this case he thinks he actually deserves, and in those sorts of scenes in the confidant he lets you be "his good angel" to push himself through.
So it's about doing right by them but it is also trying to be calm. The two are intertwined because he associates his violence with selfishness.
I feel like they mostly botched the "fame" arc, putting it off mostly on Morgana. Ryuji is puffing himself up being a Phantom Thief and trying to get bigger and bigger and this obsession with size feeds into that thing with Morgana. But they never really peel that onion back wrt him, instead he's just an ass in that story line and the thrust of the whole thing is just that Morgana belongs with you all and has been feeling useless as his Metaverse knowledge is mostly passe now and he's not much of a planner, thanks to Makoto, nor directing your battles, thanks to Futaba, anymore either. He's in a rut wrt his usefulness and he's also not making any progress on his search for himself, which ties right into his frustration at just how shallow his metaverse knowledge seems to be. They don't use this to reflect back on Ryuji at all.
I also don't feel that the fame story this whole thing feeds into reaches an end point that says much about him, in particular. Rather, they just sort of pull the plug on it with the death of Haru's dad. Ryuji does react quite violently to this and you have to stop him so that constructive work can be done, but there isn't much talking time given to undermining the lust for fame thing. You just sort of say "we lost our way" and move on.
Both of these were a great opportunity for a Junpei-like arc, which explored the kinds of things you are talking about--using SEES as a crutch in that case--to good effect. It also explored jealousy about roles and importance in the group, which is what Ryuji is expressing with the whole Morgana thing: an acute sensitivity to the worth of members, which despite, his obsession with fame and his relative lack of usefulness, oddly stops short of his own door.
Moreover, it doesn't seem in conversation with his confidant. The arc is not well-mobilized towards Ryuji's coming to grips with being very self-focused and allowing his feelings at the moment to make him lash out. I feel that's a thing he does in confidant and doesn't do outside of it so much.
As to the bolded, IDK if it is so much about being complete by the end of the story (idt that describes them all and I think, for example, it describes Ann too well, so it can be a bad thing) so much as their development and struggles are better written into the story or at least not conflicted by it.
You sort of get the prequel to the confidant in Kamoshida Ryuji, but the growth in perspective and self control in the confidant is not really born out in the main story. The others mostly have stronger stories at their dungeon and aren't saddled with that mess of an arc in the middle.
Edit: Forgot to add this, but about the series' problem with romaceable characters, and something that bothered me a lot in particular, is that Kawakami's confidant could have been an awesome take on the realities of sex workers, but it's very sloppily handled and obviously just a roundabout, afterthought story to justify the most fetishistic (and arguably the most fucked up) romance option in the game. Sigh.
Well.... At least I'm not the only one who liked Ohya, I guess :
I don't know how Kawakami's link could've been handled any differently. Going after anyone other than her tormentors wouldn't have changed her fortune in the slightest. Now, if you want to talk about the dangers of a teacher being too emotionally invested in her students, I guess there's something to chew on there.
Yea, Becky was the most egregious example, but none of the adults (and Futaba) should have had romance options. At best, if they really wanted to explore the ramifications of you dating an older person (Which of course they didn't, they're there first and foremost to pander), then they could maybe leave Chihaya as an option... I guess. They're all (Except for Ohya) cool ladies, but I'm just left wishing it was never a thing, especially concerning the first arc.!
Haru's Voice is so damn annoying that I would like to mute her constantly.
Yeah I agree that the option to date older women shouldn't be a thing at all, but Chihaya felt like the most "harmless" choice so leaving her to explore the ramifications of a dynamic like that, as you say, could have been cool if handled well, but I don't think they cared about that angle in the slightest.
As an aside, I find it really hard to like Tae at all. Sure she's not a bad person, but the whole relationship with Joker, even leaving romance out, is pretty over the top and creepy lol. She comes off as someone I'd never want to get near to in real life, ever. So weird...
... At least she's not Ohya though lmao. What a shit character.
You're saying that Kawakami is only available to Joker because she's loose, and not because he made an effort to pull her butt out of the fire when no one else gave her a second glance? I don't agree with that at all.It could have been far better in my eyes if she wasn't a romance option and you found out about her part time job in a different way that didn't involve being a customer yourself. The way it is in the game is just an ultra fetishistic romance option that has a tragic backstory only as an excuse for the romance option in question to "make sense".
You are now my enemy.
You're saying that Kawakami is only available to Joker because she's loose, and not because he made an effort to pull her butt out of the fire when no one else gave her a second glance? I don't agree with that at all.
I'll give you the sex worker thing being a slap to the face, but I think the maid thing is pretty much in line with her need to take care of others and probably among the most low-key of side jobs she could've taken.I'm not questioning the reason she falls for him, I'm saying the option to romance her shouldn't be there at all because it's quite obvious that her whole gimmick of being a maid as a side job is only a thing to make her an attractive romance option for the player and not to add anything to her character or make any sort of statement about people who go through similar stuff in real life.
I mean the fact that she's a dateable adult, and your teacher at that is already bad enough, but to also make her a sex worker is adding insult to injury.
I can live with that.
I can't live with her voice tho
I'll give you the sex worker thing being a slap to the face, but I think the maid thing is pretty much in line with her need to take care of others and probably among the most low-key of side jobs she could've taken.
Well.... At least I'm not the only one who liked Ohya, I guess :\
Mara needs more vote errection.
Can't comment on her character since I didn't do her confidant ( will do in new game plus) but I imagine most people didn't vote for her because her confidant had the worst abilities and it was in a different district.