Persona Series and What You Can Get From It

10 min readMay 30, 2021

As cheesy as it sounds, I think the Persona Series is more than just high schoolers kicking shadow’s ass.

What Is The Persona Series?

First off, let’s talk about what is the Persona Series. Persona Series is a series (duh) of games called Persona. There are 6 of them (if you count Persona 2 Eternal Punishment as a different game). These games are created by Atlus from Japan. As far as I know, the Persona Series is based on Carl Jung’s psychology.

The game is about high schoolers saving the world with the power of Persona. You play as the main character/protagonist that you named for yourself. Along the way, you get more comrades with you as you continue your journey. Every installment of the game is unrelated, so you can pick up the game from the middle (like Persona 3) or the latest (Persona 5).

Persona 3, 4, and 5 are the most popular ones and I also encouraged you to pick up the games, if you haven’t, from one of those three. It is also the one where I’ll talk about since I haven’t played Persona 1 and 2.

What Persona 3, 4, and 5 Have In Common?

I want to touch on more of the moral side (if you can say that). In my opinion, these 3 games try to show one of the many problems in our society, especially regarding how one should do to obtain a fulfilled life. Persona 3, 4, and 5 have different themes, but their theme is about things that weaken us as a human. Persona 3 talk about death, Persona 4 talk about lies and the media, and Persona 5 talk about the condition of modern society and freedom. They’re different yet the same in regards to the point they want to address and that is offering a different perspective to see these problems. Let’s talk in more detail.

Persona 3

“No one can escape time; it delivers us all to the same end. You can’t plug your ears and cover your eyes.”

Persona 3 is a dark game. One of the first scenes that you see when you play the game is a girl putting a gun into her head, struggling to pull the trigger. It has a bittersweet ending. Persona 3 is all about death — at least in my opinion. But what do I mean by death? Is it to avoid death? To have a nice life before death comes? I like to think about it as appreciating life. Wait isn’t it about death? Then why it’s about appreciating life? Well, to put it simply, the game is about remembering that you’ll die someday — it’s the game slogan, Memento Mori.

However, just saying that it’s about knowing you’ll die someday doesn’t have the same ring as appreciating life because knowing that you’ll die someday does not necessarily give our life meaning. Yes, you might do good deeds, try to leave a legacy so people can remember you, but still, I can’t help it something is missing. I think that knowing that you’ll die someday, while it can have an impact like things that I mentioned previously, can also lead to the other side of the spectrum. Of course, it depends on the moral standing that you hold, however, I’m not here to debate about that so let’s stick with the universal norms that most society has. Appreciating life on the other hand already includes the knowing- you’ll- die- someday- thing. But by appreciating life, we would not fall to the other side of the spectrum. I think that what differentiates SEES (the Protagonist teams) and Strega (The enemy in the game). Both of them aware of death — their whole life-oriented with that — however, SEES is the one that represents that awareness by appreciating life while Strega is the other one.

By appreciating life, we know how beautiful life is, what are our values as a human, and what I think the most important, the courage to control your own life. By knowing our value as humans, knowing what makes life beautiful, we realize what we want to do with our life while only knowing we’ll die someday, we don’t have that courage. We’re only slaves for our fear of death. You might have a successful life by becoming a slave to your fear, but I think your life will never felt fulfilled. Why? Because your life is not free. You do things only to satisfied your future self, not the one here, right now, in the present time. In this game, the Protagonist die at the end of the game, however, he dies in his own term, in his own free will. His life is short and full of traumatic things, but in the end, he had a fulfilled life. Why? Because he pulls the trigger, gladly.

Throughout the game, we’ll see the development of the Protagonist and SEES to come to this realization. Watching and experiencing that development in this game is a beautiful thing.

Persona 4

“The truth is something that is chosen and grasped… Something discovered with one’s vision and will.

Only by gaining that does the seeker become truth himself, a cord that connects past and future.”

Unlike Persona 3 with its dark theme, Persona 4 is the brightest of the three. It’s yellow — the prime color of this game — already indicated that. Fun fact, Persona 4 is actually my first Persona game. I think Persona 4 is all about truth and the media. This game is heavily filled with television and always mentioning about the importance of the truth — it’s even written in the opening song of Persona 4 Golden.

There might be some questions like what I mean by media? is it like the press? Well, partly. I like to think the media in this context is for anything we can get information and it includes ourselves. Yes, we, are the manifestation of the media itself because we are capable of constructing information to create new information. So what’s the catch? Like I mention before, Persona 4 is about truth and media. In the game, we are forced to solve a murder case. However, this murder case is related to this mysterious thing called The Midnight Channel.

The Midnight Channel is a mysterious channel that only appears when it’s raining at midnight. From this channel, we, as a player, get clues and information about the murder — about who’s the next victim. This is where the truth and media get to play. We get our information but is it true? We construct this information to create new information for us but is it true?

Along the journey, the Protagonist and his team will treat it like it is true. However, when we get near the end, especially the date 12/3, the date where determine whether we get a “good” or “bad” ending, the Protagonist and his team start questioning their own knowledge. And this is the point that I like the most about the game and like to share it today. Every day we consume information and construct new information, but have we ever stop and think is it true? Do we actually know everything related to this piece of information?

What does this have to do with obtaining a fulfilled life as I said before in things Persona 3, 4, and 5 have in common? The game portrayed that most people just kind of OK with the information they have and they received. They think they have a fulfilled life with things they know. I guess ignorance is bliss term could fit perfectly. However, the game tries to tell us that by not knowing, you’ll not have a fulfilled life.

This is because we can’t move forward as an individual and as humanity itself. Think about it, does know only what you want to know will get you anywhere? Let’s say you’re a person that loves your country. You know how great your country handling the pandemic, how great the industry is moving, etc. Those types of information are what you want to know about your country and you don’t care about the issues your country has like for example massive corruption from public officials, discrimination and racism in your country’s society, etc. Your country is moving forward on one part while also moving backward on the other part. It’s not moving anywhere. If you’re a person that loves your own country, of course, you want your country to develop, to moving forward. This doesn’t only apply to a country but also to ourself as an individual.

If we only want to know about what good about ourselves without ever facing uncomfortable truth about ourselves, we never get anywhere, we keep moving in the same place every time. And this is what the game tries to portray. A society where its people only want to know what they want to know, comfortable lies, but don’t want to deal with things they don’t know, an uncomfortable truth. And it’s the Protagonist with his team’s job to fix this condition.

By facing this uncomfortable truth, we could advance as a human. By telling ourselves that ignorance is NOT bliss, we could have a fulfilled life.

Persona 5

“Steal Back Your Future.”

Persona 5 is the most popular one from the entire series. The game’s been delayed several times and when it actually comes out, the entire internet loses its mind. Jokes aside, Persona 5 is not as bright as Persona 4 but also not as dark as Persona 3. Persona 5 deals with the condition of modern society and freedom. You played as a high school boy that wrongly accuses of assault. In this game, you and your team — The Phantom Thieves of Hearts — steal other people’s hearts, what that means is that you take their corrupt desire and I guess kind of like purified that person’s heart. Throughout the game, the people around you, the Protagonist, look at you as someone dangerous and not to be dealt with.

So what do I mean by the game deals with modern society? Persona 5 premise in my opinion is about reforming society. The problem with modern society in this game is that they don’t want to think for themselves. It’s much more comfortable and nice to just be a prisoner that follows what the master of the prison said. Who is the master of the prison? In the game is Jaldabaoth and Jaldabaoth is a manifestation of sloth. So yes, the master of the prison is human sloth or laziness

Seems pretty boring on the surface, but laziness in this context I think points out the problem with utilitarianism. For example, it’s easy to just accept the result of a court even though the prosecutor doesn’t have enough proof to convict the defendant yet he/she got convicted anyway — if society deems it is better to be like that than so be it, it’s much easier to ignore the problem that is happening in your school instead of trying to address it — the whole school are OK with it so it’s better for everyone like that, it’s easy to just blame the victims of a tragedy rather than finding out the cause of the tragedy and solve it — if the public felt more at ease knowing there is someone to blame than it’s a better condition for everyone, etc.

The problem with laziness starts to take its form I believe. The laziness and utilitarian attitude that modern society has caused a lot of problems because it forced us to compromise our morals and beliefs. Just follow what society told you and you’ll have a good life and a fulfilled life, but is it? Does compromising or even putting aside our morals and beliefs will lead us to a good and fulfilled life? Persona 5 answer that by emphasizing the importance of individualism. Prioritizing our morals and beliefs. I’m not denying that you should compromise something in your life, however, I believe that we need to prioritize what our morals and beliefs said. Do our morals and belief is right absolutely? Of course not, throughout our life, we’ll change our moral standing as we learn more, however, fighting for our moral stand and ended up wrong will lead us to a more fulfilled life rather than blindly following and compromising what society told.

Of course, there are boundaries when fighting for your moral stand, but as long as you want to learn from your mistake, things will be OK. That’s what every member of Phantom Thief has to go through. Another point in Persona 5 is freedom, especially the extra stories in Persona 5 Royal.

In Persona 5 Royal, the cast lives in an alternate reality created by Maruki. In this alternate reality, every wishes the cast has become true. However, the Protagonist felt like this is wrong because this means we are not free. This intrigued me because it rises one of the oldest questions humanity has, are we free? And what does it mean to be free? The Phantom Thief stands regarding this question and Maruki is brilliantly shown through the lyrics of I believe (The Phantom Thief) and Throw Away Your Mask (Maruki). I encourage you to check them out.

Unfortunately, I don’t really have an answer to this yet. This question is such an old and big question that I think I’m not capable of answering it now. However, I love how the game can bring up that questions.

Persona 5 is a heavy and long game, but, the theme, the plot, and the development of the cast make it a very beautiful game.

Conclusion

The Persona Series, especially the third, fourth, and fifth, tackles a problem that most of society has and offers an answer to that problem. All of them does not necessarily correct, but it does offer a different perspective that I think worth thinking about. It’s not easy to include such problems in a game and offers a perspective on how to see these problems. That’s what I get from this series and that’s why The Persona Series is a beautiful game series.