Persona 5 is a Japanese Role-playing game released by Atlus in 2016. The main characters are ordinary Japanese high school students, but they have magic powers. They can use the power of personas, which appears as the images of famous creatures or people in myths and enter other people’ s minds to fight with evil personas by stealing the treasure in the maze built by evil guys’ persona. The characters in Persona 5 are phantom thieves (or gentleman thieves), who “has inherited wealth and is characterized by impeccable manners, charm, courteousness, and the avoidance of physical force or intimidation to steal” (Wikipedia). Through the metaphor of persona that insinuates the phenomenon in Japanese society, Persona 5 expresses a striving towards the freedom of personality, body and thought.

The narration of characters fighting with their own persona masks conveys the courage of breaking the chains on the mind resulted from other’ s stereotype. Persona mask is a psychological concept raised by Carl Gustav Jung. Jung described the public face of the individual as the Persona, drawing on the Greek masks of ancient drama. Persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, a kind of mask designed to ‘impress and conceal’ and to meet societal demands (Johanna Fawkes 2). A persona mask is necessary for communication and getting along with others. But if people are too addicted to playing such social roles and neglect real personality, there will be a conflict between their mind and their persona mask.

All main characters in Persona 5 have a persona mask due to other people’ s stereotype of them. And thus, they all have chains on the mind. Even if they are treated badly, they don’t have the courage to fight or do things against’ s their own will because they have negatively accepted other people’ s label on themselves. For example, Akira Kurusu was slandered by a senator and was sent to Tokyo. In Tokyo, nearly everybody considered him as a dangerous guy and was hostile to him. To make himself look less dangerous, Kurusu chose to become silent and avoid communication with others. This is Kurusu’ s persona mask that he wore to maintain social activity. And this persona mask resulted from other’ s stereotype of him. As other main characters, before awakening the interior persona power, Kurusu needed to confront his persona mask directly and break the chains brought by prejudice. The persona power that each character owns is the metaphor of different pursuit towards the freedom of mind. Kurusu’ s persona power is Arsène Lupin, a gentleman cambrioleur and anarchist, which implies Kurusu’ s determination to fight with chain on his mind that was essentially caused by corrupt government.

The persona mask generated by stereotype and prejudice is the allusion to Japanese school bully. According to a Japanese school bully survey from Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology shows that “The number exceeded 320,000 in the 2016 school year ending in March, up nearly 100,000 from 2015”, school bullying has become an extremely serious societal problem (NHK, Bullying in Japan Reaches Highest Level on Record). Nevertheless, the majority of these students suffered non-violence bullying instead of violence. Non-violence bullying contains isolation, insult, discrimination, etc. The difference between Japanese school bullying and school bullying in other country is that Japanese students are more likely to endure bullying because they strongly believe that they should behave as what parents and teachers expect. They are often required to make friends with other students and be vigorous. Thus they dare not to tell adults they are suffering bullying and have to behave normally (Kishida, いじめで死なせない, Chapter 3). Moreover, Japanese people have really strong collective ideas. Student thinks he/she must fit in the group, no matter how the group actually think about him/her. Therefore, Japanese students often have strong persona mask to cater for other people.

The game uses embedded narrative in environmental storytelling to the stereotype and prejudice, in order to emphasize the courage of pursuing the freedom of mind. Embedded narrative is a kind of environmental storytelling, which Carson explains as “The story element is infused into the physical space” (Henry Jenkins 5). And embedded narrative means the environmental storytelling which “embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene” (Henry Jenkins 5). Embedded narrative “depends on scrambling the pieces of a linear story and allowing us to reconstruct the plot through our acts of detection, speculation, exploration, and decryption” (Henry Jenkins 10). Except for important NPCs, nearly all NPCs show a strong indifference and hostility to Kurusu, especially in school. When Kurusu is in the classroom, no students are willing to sit near him. When he is in the passage, the students will group together, staring at him and whispering. When he enters the library, the librarian will request him to sit in the corner and don’t freak out other students. Also, Kurusu’ s mind world is a prison. These embedded narratives show the stereotype and prejudice that Kurusu is suffering and explain Kurusu’ s taciturnity. In addition, they make Kurusu’s pursuit toward liberation from other’ s stereotype.

After awakening persona power, the characters can enter bad guys’ mind and destroy the evil persona inside, which represents the spirit of resisting injustice brought by adults who utilized power to play with rules. The characters suffered injustice brought by adults who played with rules but had the power to hide the truth and escape punishment. However, the characters have the magic power to enter these adults’ mind and “steal” their evil desires, which are usually the object that the evil guy values best. After the characters who called themselves “phantom thieves” steal the treasure (the object), the evil adults will repent and be a good guy. And then the persecution on the characters will be gone. For example, Kurusu’ s P.E. teacher Kamoshida, who was a powerful teacher in the school, attempted sexual assault. Kurusu and his friends censured him but Kamoshida threatened them that he will expel them. Kurusu and his friends transformed into phantom thieves and entered Kamoshida’ s spirit world. His spirit world was a gigantic palace and he was the king. All the students were the slaves. The phantom thieves stole the treasure, which was the avatar of Kamoshida’ s evil desire. The palace crushed and Kamoshida in the real world repented as well as became a good guy.

These evil adults and their personas are allusions to real Japanese events. For example, Kamoshida is the allusion of Tai, who was a volleyball teacher in a high school. He insulted, punched and committed sexual harassment to more than 26 female students (MoreNews, 田井哲彦教諭を懲戒免職処分). And the famous artist whose art works were actually did by his students in the game is the allusion of Mamoru Samuragochi, who was the writer of the music in Onimusha and Resident Evil, and was referred to as “Japanese Beethoven”. In February 5th 2014, his ghost writer confessed that Mamoru did not write his own music (The Japan Times, Samuragochi’s Ghostwriter Speaks). Though most of these people in the real events have been reported and discussed, very few have received punishment, especially those politicians and entrepreneurs. They were still doing bad things.

The game gives the player agency to enforce justice and pursue innocent people’ s physical freedom. Agency is “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” (Janet Murray 126). The characters in Persona 5 were designed as picaresque heroes, which means roguish people who are in low social status, “goes through a series of episodic adventures” and embodies “physical, moral, economic and social freedom despite the constraints the struggle for survival imposes on him” (Bill Phillips 1-2). In many picaresque novels (not picaresque heroes’ novel), due to the low social status and upper class’s oppression, the characters had to utilize cheating and greasiness to survive, and finally became evil guys. In contrary, though the characters are of low social class and suffering oppression, they have maintained their innocence and kindness. The “phantom thieves” use magic power to punish the wicked of high class instead of normal mundane methods. In this way, the game gives the player agency to punish the evil guys and help the poor people, while at the same time do not need to negotiate with or give in to invincible and powerful people. They lead a wandering life but stick to their conscience. The game does not only enable the player to help characters to get rid of their oppression, but also satisfy the players’ aspiration to deal with the real Japanese societal events and give those bad guys who are at large real penalty and free the innocence who are being oppressed.

The last mission that phantom thieves executed was changing the crowd’ s collective unconsciousness and popular mind. This part of narrative shows the pursuit of the freedom of thought. As phantom thieves beat more and more evil guys, the favorability rating about them online were getting higher and more and more people began to believe in them. However, when they stole the treasure of desire from a senator, who was highly trusted and respected and almost came into power in Japan, and made him repent, the crowds refused to trust his confession. It turned out that the crowds were used to depend on the senator and trusted him so much that the senator would make Japan great again. The assistants of the senator including famous politicians, professors and doctors, seized the chance and told the crowds that the senator was just too stressful. Instead, phantom thieves were evil people who wanted to prevent the crowds from happiness. The crowds did not support phantom thieves anymore. Therefore, they had to enter Mementos dungeon, which was built upon the crowd’ s collective unconsciousness. It is a concept raised by Carl Jung and “identical and present in all individuals and represents ‘a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature’” (Mackey-Kallis, Susan 1). They found an evil god in the deep of Mementos dungeon. He was created by the humans’ s laziness and unwillingness to think independently and inmost desire to be led by others.

Carl Jung defined psychological maturation as in individuation, “the process by which a person becomes a psychological ‘individual,’ that is, a separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole.’” (Mackey-Kallis, Susan 1). In Persona 5, the essence of collective unconsciousness is unreflective, unthinking and escapism. It is the inner chain that prevent people themselves from thinking independently. There are two types of individuation in Persona 5. One is due to the over desire to power, money and sex, just as the senator, the volleyball teacher and other evil people. The desire forced them to think how to play with power to satisfy themselves. The other is more Socratic. Phantoms thieves have courage to face up to their souls. They will not conceal the flaws of reality, or pretend they are much better than what they look like, or blame them on someone else at all. Most importantly, they refuse to follow the crowds’ popular mind. It is in fact a hard process to do that. In Gustave Le Bon’ s “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular”, he stated that “because men differ more widely in intelligence than in feelings, the mental unity of a crowd is sympathetic, thus crowds are to a very great extent subject to hypnotic influence” and that “crowds are inpatient of any obstacle interposed between suggestion and act; they desire to carry a purpose into immediate effect”(Giddings 1). In addition, Gustave Le Bon declared that the crowds desire a leader who “take care to lay things before the crowd as a whole, and will carefully avoid any attempt to justify them on grounds of reason or to explain their origin.” (Giddings 1).

The crowds in Persona 5 keeps blaming on the police and the politicians, praying for a perfect leader, and at the same time, blindly trust the thoughts that powerful people infuse to them. These people are the allusions to real Japanese politicians and crowds. Take 2 channel as an example. This is the biggest online message board in Japan. The user can post a message anonymously without creating an account. 2 Channel is full of anger, complaint, rumors. People vent their disappointment to the government and society. Meanwhile, people speak irresponsibly through internet and anonymity and are driven by negative moods. For example, in the post “内閣危機管理監は警察の天下り利権ゆえ廃止せよ” , the 38th post blamed all the corruption of government to Japanese Emperor. The post stated that Japan should have a better leader to make society revolution. Some other posts blamed corruptions to Cabinet and police station and believed Japanese should have a brand new Cabinet. The posts then became more and more excited and irrational. If the user researches keyword like “the police”, “government”, “emperor”, the majority of posts are complaint. The example of 2 Channel shows that many Japanese hope to have a perfect leader to guide them, as well as the crowds’ thoughts are easily influenced sympathetically. In addition, the crowd hate those who play with rules, but the crowd don’t have the courage to protest. This is the reason why 2 Channel is so popular, as most of the posts are anonymous.

Persona 5 utilizes procedural rhetoric to presents the hard process of being independent from collective unconsciousness and the crowd’s popular mind. Procedural rhetoric is “the practice of using processes persuasively, just as verbal rhetoric is the practice of using oratory persuasively and visual rhetoric is the practice of using images persuasively” (Ian Bogost 28). In short, procedural rhetoric makes the game more demonstrative. When beat the first evil guy, a fan of phantom thieves built a website for them. The website was about the favorability rate of phantom thieves. At first, the rate was low and messages on the website showed that people lacked faith in phantom thieves. With the number of bad guys who repented increased, the support rate increased. More and more people believe they could rely on phantom thieves and phantom thieves would do justice. This change gave phantom thieves motivation to punish evil people. However, they were greatly driven by the crowd’ s moods. They became anxious about their support rate and were eager to help people not because they were doing justice, but were satisfying the crowd. But when they were really about to bring revolution, the crowd feared and refused to trust them at all. They finally came to realize the truth that the crowd hated the present rules but had to rely on them. They dared not to raise revolution and took responsibility. When the politician was not their salvation, they chose to let “god” to control their destiny. They encouraged people to fight against the evil god and with the power of people’ s belief, they finally defeated the evil god. The process of gradually being driven by the crowd’ mood and influenced sympathetically makes it demonstrative that it is a hard process to be independent from popular mind; but in the end fighting for free the popular mind from the prison of fear, unthinkingness and laziness conveys that people should break the chains on mind due to the crowd’ s popular mind and think independently instead of following a leader and pretend living in a perfect world. The game expresses the pursuit to the freedom of thoughts.

In conclusion, Persona 5 uses Carl Jung’ s concept of persona, alludes to real Japanese events and society, expresses the pursuit to the freedom of mind, body and thoughts by embedded narrative, agency and procedural rhetoric. The game creates vivid characters who are iconoclastic. In the ending of Persona 5, the society returned to normal. The evil god was gone, and phantom thieves became mere stories. It was hard to tell whether the crowd’ s popular mind and collective unconsciousness were changed, since the game had a negative view about them. But through the story of phantom thieves, Persona 5 gives the players the courage to explore, take responsibility and face up to their souls.

Citation

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Bill Phillips “There must be some way out of here”: The picaresque hero of the gospels, Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, Vol. 20, Nº 2, 1998, Page 177-182

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