Hello. Justin here and welcome to the Otaku Mind where today I’m talking about Persona 4. If I haven’t made it clear by now I love the Persona games. 3, 4, and 5 in particular are my all-time favorite games. Yet despite this, I’ve often overlooked Persona 4 and in my vs blogs put it last place. Because of this, many think I don’t like Persona 4 so much, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I love Persona 4. Even before 5 came out this was the game I was recommending people play first if they’re getting into the series. In my opinion, it’s the best place to start, followed by 5, and then 3. So for this blog I’m going to talk about the one area I think this game does better than the other two, the villain. Everyone has praised Persona 4 for it’s characters and yes there are a lot of great and endearing characters in this game. It’s how the game got so popular in the first place. We all related to these characters in one way or another and knew people who were like them. Chances are you were Yosuke, a nice guy who had a hard time fitting into his new surroundings. Or you were Yukiko, someone who had all these expectations thrusted upon you at a young age and felt liked a caged bird with no freedom. Or you were like Kanji and Naoto. Confused and mislabeled by everyone around you and unsure of how to be yourself. Whatever character you relate to, it’s the villain of this game who rises above them and makes this title so memorable in my mind. Let’s talk about him.
So after the success of Persona 3, Atlus quickly got to work on Persona 4. Nothing much was changed from the team who did Persona 3. Aside from a new singer and bringing in fans to give feedback on what they wanted to see improved from the third game. One of the things the creators wanted to do was give the player a definitive goal to keep them motivated and not retread their predecessor. That’s not to say Persona 3 didn’t have a goal per se, but it took a minute before we had a definitive goal in the game to strive for. I mean after the last full moon shadow fight the game kind of felt directionless on where to go next. Persona 4 never really had that problem. Throughout the game our goal remained the same, find the person behind the murders and bring them to justice. Mysteries are always a good way to keep people interested in your story. Especially murder mysteries. Everyone has theories on who the true culprit is and what their motivation for doing it was. People keep continuing the story to see if new evidence comes to support their theory and if not they form a new theory. When it finally gets revealed who the true culprit is and they use all the clues to explain why it’s them you instantly become intrigued and go back and rewatch scenes realizing all the small details you missed and how the answer was always in front of you the whole time. I’ve thought about this for quite some time but this game’s plot and story is similar to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4. Think about it, they both have 4 in their name, they take place in small towns, and revolve around murder with the killer being the guy you suspect the least or who hides in the background. This in turn leads to the one thing I feel the game does better than Persona 3 and 5. The villain.
Persona 3 and 5 have decent villains all together. Major arcana shadows are well designed and the corrupted adults we face off against are all entertaining to some degree and represent real world corruption. However, Persona 4’s villain puts them all to shame and that villain is, Adachi. When you first meet Adachi he comes across as a bumbling detective who can’t keep his mouth shut and as a harmless guy. But when you finally get a chance to look over all the evidence and reveal the true culprit it all makes sense why it would be Adachi. When Adachi is finally exposed as the true culprit the façade that he’s created for himself disappears and we finally see who he truly is. A very insidious man who is intelligent, nihilistic, and a possible sex offender (he did try to sexually assault two women. One of them a high schooler). Seeing Adachi reveal his true colors and how he has been secretly manipulating the events behind the scenes is both terrifying and brilliant at the same time. He has no remorse for his actions nor does he care about what happens next. He’s not trying to use his powers to become rich, prove a point, rule the world, or for the sake of evil. He just wants to watch the world burn. Nowhere is this reflected more than in his dungeon. If Nanako’s dungeon is a fairytale version of Heaven reflecting the sadness she feels from losing her mom, but knowing she’s in a better place, then Adachi’s dungeon is a rendition of Hell. In Adachi’s dungeon we see a desolate and destroyed Inaba deprived of any life and hope with Adachi taunting you every step of the way and even creating rules and stipulations that you have to follow in order to advance. The theme of his dungeon perfectly encompassing the personality of Adachi and the dungeon.
What makes Adachi great is the fact that he’s a representation of you. Adachi is us. Or rather a part of us that we could have become. In the Persona 4 Golden anime they expand on Adachi’s past and we see what he was like. Adachi was someone who believed that if he buckled down and focused on his studies he would be successful and get the praise and recognition he deserved. Pretty much what everyone is told to do in their youth. However, Adachi chose to isolate himself from everyone around him. In his mind, they were all idiots wasting their time goofing off and having fun. Even when Dojima, Nanako, Yu, and the others come up to him and showed that they truly did care for him he still rejected them. It was all pointless to him, all that matter to him were results and he could get those results, but results mean nothing if nobody knows who you are and there’s no one there to share the results with. Another great thing about Adachi is that he had the same potential as Yu and this is represented by his arcana. One interesting thing I like about Persona 4 is that it had 3 individuals with the wild card power. Yu, Adachi, and Namatame, but ironically only one of them was able to reawaken the wild card to it’s true power. Yu became the Fool arcana, going on a journey and creating his world through his interactions with everyone around him. He opened himself up to everyone and they in turn opened themselves up to him. Adachi and Namatame became the Jester. Now when people saw Adachi as the Jester arcana in Golden they all thought this was something Atlus made up, but nope, this is a real arcana in the Thoth Deck of tarot cards. The common deck of tarot cards is called the Rider-Waite Deck. The Thoth Deck is an alternative deck with a few changes here and there. One of them being the Jester who takes the spot of the Fool. Unlike the Fool who opens themselves up to others, the Jester isolates themselves, is misguided, and refuses to work with others resulting in a misuse of powers and causing trouble. Namatame misused his powers and caused trouble for others. However, near the end of the game we see him turn over a new leaf and open himself up to others to go down the path of the Fool. Meanwhile, Adachi had full knowledge of his powers and chose to isolate himself from everyone believing they were beneath him. Once Adachi’s façade is done his arcana shifts from The Jester to the Hunger arcana because he ruined his full potential. He got drunk off his own power and abused it. I truly believe everyone has unlimited potential into what they can do and be. It’s up to them to decide on how they want to use it. Some will be like Yu and follow a good path from the start. Others will be like Namatame and start down a wrong path but find others who steer them in the right direction. Or we’ll get some people like Adachi who go down the wrong path and isolate themselves from others because their pride won’t allow them to let anyone else be close to them. Adachi’s path is destructive, I’ve seen people take his path in real life and don’t wish it on anyone.
In the end, Adachi is a great villain because of how relatable he is. While I think there are times I want to see villains just be straight up evil with no redeemable quality, I have to admit that when you make a villain relatable and do it right you achieve great things and that’s what Atlus did with Adachi. He’s one of the best villains in videogame history and Atlus has tried hard to recreate him. Just look at Akechi in Persona 5. They desperately wanted him to be their next Adachi. While that was a good attempt, Adachi is still the best in my opinion. So yeah, Persona 3 may have the best story and Persona 5 is the most stylist, but Persona 4 beats them when it comes to villains. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.