In 2009, Persona 3 Portable introduced the female protagonist, three years after the base game arrived. The game shifted from the perspective of a moody male protagonist that kept to himself to an energetic female one that made connections across the community. A♏s a teenager gripping my P🍨layStation Portable in the back of my mom’s car on the way home from the beach, this was my escape.
I had recently moved across state line𝓡s and felt as though my own Social Links had broken. It was difficult to make new connections since I was homeschooled for a while after moving, and being introverte♋d didn’t help. However, I could turn on my console and meet with friends after school at Tatsumi Port Island instead.
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In her route, P3P’s fema🐭le protagonist could blend relationships with teammates and classmates seamlessly, perf🐻ectly filling the gaps that the original story left. With Persona 3 Portable, you could spend time with both male and female teammates after school and get to know them in ways like never before. Having Social Links with individual SEES members made the connections much more personal, and I spent every opportunity after school with Shinjiro Aragaki. My days felt complete.
And then Persona 3 Reload was announced. I scoured the web for all the information I could find, and everything looked ꧟as go🔜od as I dreamed it would be. The only problem is that someone was missing: the female protagonist.
Amid the vivid blue themes, there’s no splash of pink. The familiar menus and Social Links are gone. Even with rumors of The Answer from Persona 3 FES being added later as DLC,ꦅ the female protagonist remains missing, and a game that is otherwise perfect suffers for it.
Moments from her route are taken and spliced into the hangouts with your party members like Akihiko and Shinjiro. The relationship🃏s you form with the members of SEES are integral to the story for the female protagonist, making her a unifying leader against the Fall and the shadows. Her absence 🅰is painful, especially when glimmers of her legacy are scattered throughout the game.
Whether it’s Elizabeth mentioning 😼her “useless” brother T🍰heodore while idling in her requests menu or hearing Akihiko explain his history with Shinjiro and Miki, those moments should belong to the female protagonist Kotone Shiomi alone. To take them from her and give them to the male protagonist is an insult.
It’s canon that Theodore exists as a Velvet Room Attendant, though he is only ever seen in that role by Kotone despite being mentioned elsewhere in the series. The commonly accepted theory is that Kotone is from an alternate universe, but Personaཧ 3 Reload was the perfect opportunity to clarify that and bring her into the light once again.
Her inclusion would create the definitive version of the game that fans have been begging for, and excluding her is cruel given that the fans love her and Atlus knows that she’s around. There’s plenty of official art including her and the oܫther members of SEES. Instead, Kotone is kept in the shadows for no apparent reason.
We now have Persona 3, Persona 3 FES, Persona 3 Portable, and Person🔜a 3 Reload, and no agreed upon definitive version.
Persona 3 Reload already revamped and adjusted certain elements like Junpei’s perverted tendencies, so it would have been the ideal chance to break the 🔯female protag𓂃onist away from misogynistic values. For many, myself included, Persona 3 Portable was our first introduction to the Persona series as a whole, and the female pr൩otagonist was our f𝓀irst experience with that world. To have her stripped away as if she doesn’t matter highlights more than just a development issue, but a mindset issue.
Playing as a female protagonist also enhanced Junpei’s character, as you forced him to confront his toxic masculinity and realize your worth on the team. His initial gripe with you being the leader reveals a deeper issue withi🐲n himself that he recognizes and moves past. As the male protagonist, this manifests in jealousy of your leadership skills and robs Junpei of thisꦍ character development.
Behind Kotone’s demure nature was a force to be reckoned with, and while it didn’t change the outcome of the game, it made you feel like you could shape your own fate. Persona games almost exclusively feature male protagonists, with Kotone joined only by Persona 2’s Maya as a female lead. Without her, this chance to unify all installments of Persona 3🤪 has been squandered.
While she may have been a Persona 3 Portable gimmick to Atlus, it’s clear that she means a lot more to the people who played the game and 𝓰identified with her. Hopefully, there will be DLC for her in the near future. Until then, I’ll hold onto my PlayStation Vita so I can enjoy the nostalgia.
