Out of the various mascot characters for the Persona games, few are as equally lovable and mysterious as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Persona 4's Teddie (or Kuma, if you prefer). A big blue mascot bear in a clownish red suit, Teddie is a certifiable goofball who exhibits a variety of bizarre abilities, not to mention a bit of a numbskull who imprints on less-than-savory ideas and concepts.
However, silly though he may be, Teddie's very being hides a maelstrom of questions and mysteries, at the center of which lies a very poignant question: what exactly does it mean to be a person? Teddie found the answer to that question after many trials with his friends, so let's trace back the timeline to find some answers of our own.
Warning: Maꦜjor spoilers for the Persona series ah꧑ead
3 How Did Teddie Meet The Investigation Team? ꦇ
Teddie first ܫcrossed paths with the burgeoning Investigation Team by accident. Yu, Yosuke, and Chie had accidentally stumbled into the TV♏ world while Yu was showing off his strange ability to enter a TV, and after some roaming around, they met Teddie in the central hub area. Teddie was annoyed by their presence, as it was irritating the local Shadow population, so he opened the way back through the TV and sent them on their way.
When Yu and Yosuke returned to the other world to seek answers on Saki Konishi's death, Teddie suspected they were raising a ruckus in his home on purpose and threatened to trap them, but after some communication and Yu's awakening to his Persona, Izanagi, he decided he 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:preferred being friends instead.
As the Investigation Team came and went from the other world, rescuing the kidnapped victims, Teddie acted as the group's support. Using his natural ability to sense Shadows (or smell them, as he put it), he was able to aid the Persona users in fighting them off. However, as time went on, the Shadows became harder for Teddie to sense, which made it difficult for him to help fight them, not to mention track down the kidnapped victims. This came to a head in the fight against Rise's Shadow, whose own scanning capabilities far outclassed Teddie's. The Investigation Team couldn't defeat her, but in a last-ditch effort, Teddie self-destructed to beat her back.
This worked but opened up a new problem. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Shadow Teddie manifested, tormenting Teddie with his own unknown nature, and attempted to kill the Investigation Team. Thanks to Rise's newly-awakened Persona, though, they were able to defeat it, and Teddie, unsure of himself but willing to learn, accepted his Shadow and gained his own Persona, Kintoki-Douji. Going forward, he became a full member of the team, battling Shadows on the front line. At this point, Teddie managed to "grow" a human body within his suit, allowing him to move about freely in the real world.
2 🦋🦄 What Is Teddie?
The most obvious question regarding Teddie is what he actually is. After all, an animated mascot costume isn't something you just see walking around every day. As Shadow Teddie reveals, Teddie is in fact a Shadow himself. He is a natural denizen of the other world and made of the same amorphous mass as all the hostile Shadows encountered within it. This is why, when the team gets health screenings at Naoto's behest, Teddie's x-ray comes up as a shadowy splotch.
Even after he "grows" a human body, neither that body nor his usual mascot costume is made of organic material. This also explains how Teddie can sense other Shadows, as well as humans within the other world. He's just smelling other creatures similar to himself, and when he smells something obviously different, then it must be a human.
This does beg a question, though: if Teddie is a Shadow, where did Shadow Teddie come from? There is an answer to this: when he's first encountered, Teddie has a very reserved personality because he's not used to interacting with sentient creatures. The other Shadows didn't talk or interact with him, so he had no reason to think about anything. As far as he knew, he just existed in a foggy place, and that was all that mattered.
Once he started talking with the Investigation Team, he began asking questions. "Why am I here?" "What's the difference between 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:me and these people?" "Why is this place like this?" As the old saying goes, he thinks; therefore, he is. To possess enough of a sense of self to question the world around him g🦹ave Teddie a true ego, and with a true ego comes a Shadow.
1 Where Did Teddie Come From? ♋
Here's where things get tricky. A Shadow developing its own ego, let alone becoming a Persona-user, is completely unprecedented. Even Igor, upon meeting Teddie in the Velvet Room after Nanako's supposed death, is pleasantly surprised such a thing could even happen. During this meeting, Teddie explains that he took on his cartoonish form instinctively because he wanted humans to like him, but the problem with that is that, as previously stated, Teddie didn't know what a human was until he met Yu and company.
So where did Teddie actually come from? We're speculating a bit here, but there are a couple of possibilities. Firstly, Teddie could just be an ordinary Shadow, as said. Shadows aren't inherently malevolent creatures; they're just the sides of us we don't want to show to our peers. As such, it's possible that Teddie is the Shadow of someone in the real world somewhere, someone who perhaps felt ashamed of themselves and secretly longed to be a more approachable person. If that is the case, it's anyone's guess what effect removing Teddie from the other world had on them, but that's another conversation.
The second possibility stems from some later-series knowledge. Specifically, based on what we know 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:of Morgana's origins in Persona 5, it's possible that Teddie was deliberately created by the denizens of the Velvet Room to serve as Yu's guide on his Fool's Journey. The game specifically notes that Igor has a "meaningful smile" when talking about Teddie, so he could've just been playing coy. Alternatively, he could have been created as an observer of sorts by Izanami to view the outcome of her experiment to understand humanity. This would explain the external force that Rise felt during the team's battle against Shadow Teddie.
Whatever his origin, Teddie is essentially a cognitive c🐎onstruct made real. Personal actualization inflicted him with despair for a brief time, but with the support of his friends, he blossomed into a true human, perhaps not physically, but most certainly in every way that matters.