[Warning: MAJOR spoilers for the events of Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal]
Akechi Goro is, perh🅺aps, the singular most controversial and divisive character in the Persona 5 fandom— and, arguably, in the entire Persona franchise itself. Reactions to him vary wildly, ranging from a vehement hatred of him as one of the 🍷main villains of the story to a vigorous defense of him as a rightful member of the Phantom Thieves, as much as the other protagonists are.
Admittedly, I was in the former group— I despised Akechi and was quite happy that he very rarely appear🌠ed with the Phantom Thieves in any official ensemble art. No ꦓmatter his “change of heart” at the end of the game, I simply could not forgive him for murdering Haru’s father and Futaba’s mother. To me, he was an unredeemable murderer who was only so beloved by virtue of being a pretty, light-skinned and thin male character a💜nd that was the end of tha𒊎t. It wasn’t until I played Persona 5 Royal that I realized:
Everything that I hate about Akechi? Not actually h🧸is fa💧ult.
The Classic Rival Character Foil
The thing is, he’s written as a foil to Joker in order to drive home a major theme of the game: the importance of human connection in an unjust world. The beginnings of their stories are very similar: both are dealt unjust hands by an unsympathetic system, then abruptly given an incredible power to influence others. The only difference is that Joker managed to find like-minded souls to share this power and 🥂responsibility with, while Akechi remained alone.
The game demonstrates that this one difference— solitude or companionship— makes all the difference between a hero and a villain. Akechi fell to the desperation of his situation, while Joker went on to fight for the sake of his friends, and by extension, others who were also victimized by the system. In essence, his character is meant to show the tragedy of how tho🌊se who are traumatized by the system are isolated from help and one another. The heinousness of his crimes add more weight to the cruelty he suffered, because what in the world could motivate a fifteen 🦋year old to commit murder and willingly destroy another child’s life?
Yes— by ♎all accounts,✅ Akechi was only fifteen when he infiltrated the Metaverse to orchestrate Isshiki Wakaba’s death in front of Futaba’s very own eyes.
His young age doesn’t excuse his actions: but they do emphasize how horribly he had been treated to be𓃲 pushed to a crime that horrible. That’s the thing: his tragedy speaks for itself. He does not need to be forgiven or redeemed to be a sympathetic character: his story and his actions already make it so.
Woobifying A Perfectly Good Antagonist
I’m perfectly capable of enjoying a complex antagonist who has been pushed to extremes due to abuse: an example that comes to mind is Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. She begins and ends the series as a pretty reprehensible antagonist who is revealed to be the way she is due to the abuse of her father and loss of her mother. While she’s not one of my favorite characters, I certainl﷽y do hold her in high regard as an incredibly compelling figure.
By all accounts, this s꧑hould b𝐆e true for Akechi, as well— he is a compelling character. When I put my bias aside, I find his coldly calculated mannerisms absolutely fascinating, and his rage at his abuser r🔜elatable. While playing through P5R, I realised that the reason he inspires such a bad taste in my mouth is how he’s treated by every other character.
His final scene in the original storyline of Persona 5 is the biggest offender— after absolutely no effort at redemp💫tion ꧙or even remorse on his part, the entire team simply forgives him and asks him to join th𓂃em. This, I consider an absolutely unforgivable flaw in the writing, as the team includes not one, but two people whose parents he killed— with one murder setting off a plan to intentionally ruin Futaba’s life.
It’s not that I don’t think v🍎illains can be redeemed. It’s just that I think that, 💯at the very, very least, they should🍌 regret their ac﷽tions in order to justify such a reaction from the protagonists. But no, he stands by what he’s done to the end and his only regret is that he allowed himself to be manipulated by Shido.
Persona 5 Royal’s decision to take him out of the fridge just makes it worse: instead of using his new month of being alive again to start to smooth things over with the rest of the team, he just… does not care that he caused harm to others and the audience, somehow, 💧is ex💖pected to respect his strong will to stand by his decisions. And we would have been, if the other characters were written to respond in kind to this: however, Futaba and Haru, his two biggest victims, barely react to him more than to call him cold-blooded in a slightly awed manner.
This is what infuriates me: instead of holding him accountable for his actions and emphasizing the nature of how cruelty, isolation, and trauma turned him into another cog in the cycle of abuse, they just… trample over two other characters’ narrative arcs to turn him into a tropey anti-hero with barely any depth. It is simultaneously a disservice to his character and to Haru and Futaba: by trivializing the validity of t☂heir anger, it ♉trivializes the weight of his actions and by extension, the gravity of the cruelty he endured.
The “Perfect” Detective Prince
Akechi himself is an incredibly compelling character that I could enjoy: the problem is that now, he’s only come to represent the inability of media to allow girls to be angry at anyone other than safe, designated targets. It stings that the victims are Futaba and Haru in particular, because their stories centred around findin♍g their voice and recla𝔍iming their right to be angry at those who have wronged them. By forcing them to forgive Akechi instantly, the game undermines itself and their characteꦬrs.
It feels all too much like they’re not permitted to be angry at a, again, light-skinned and thin male character who has not been deemed a safe, one-dimensional evil— a trend we see much too often in media. It’s tiring and trite🍌, and only serves to render him that much less compelling. Atlus had a real chance to create a sympathetic yet unapologetic antagonist here to explore the cyclical nature of anger and abuse— but, as with many other things, they fumbled their incredible potential to create a truly insightful narrative. Go figure.