The Weeaboo, The Nerd, and The Persona「PERSONA 4: GOLDEN」

Persona 4? Persona For Who?

As a Persona fan I can only experience six emotions at any given time:

Inspired

Gay

Peak

Depressed

Whimsy

Gayer

    ...From this opening alone you might be able to guess at which one I am experiencing at the moment. But I digress, hi, it has been a while; school is kicking my ass so hard that I have not had the inspiration to write very much. I do promise to get back in the swing of things though (lie).

    Welcome to the Persona 4 Golden post, though I might speak on the original a bit too... if not a bit on the entire series. This game to me has a... special quality, for a few reasons, and honestly, I think I should just get on with it.

What Kind of Weeb am I:

    I became fan of the Persona series in late 2018, during the arguable height of Persona 5's popularity. My first actual delve into becoming something of an anime fan was also at this time. I was aware of the big culture around it (As you shall see mentioned here and again) but I was not formally introduced until I watched the Ace Attorney adaptation of all things. My second anime ended up being Death Note after a recommendation.

    Prudent to say now that I am not even that big of an anime fan, because I can count the amount of ones I have watched without even using all my fingers. Strangely, I do like JRPGs and Visual Novels, and I have lost count as to how many I have played... I do not know why this is the case, but it is. Moreover I am infected with the pretentious disease, and cannot watch anything that includes too much weeb/otaku cringe. (This is twice as funny because I like Death Note.)

    Infact and I am self-reporting completely now, my anime taste is SO pretentious that I cannot stand long-running series; my favorite anime of all time is Cowboy Bebop; and I dropped almost every Slice of Life type of show I tried to watch after a few episodes. The main point here is, I have no clue how the Persona series did not turn me off, and even to this day, how I can consider it to be more sophisticated than weeb/otaku cringe.

The Crown of Olde Weebs:

    One of the very first animes I ever remember in my entire life was Persona 4 the Animation way back in 2011/12. There are very vivid memories of this anime in my head, mostly because of the... uh, conditions? Yeah, conditions I saw it in. You see I did not watch the entire anime, instead I watched episodes and glimpses from my brother's laptop. I remember he watched it with his friends and they all crowded around this laptop, hunched over in the dark, discussing the show as they watched it. 

    To me, that defined what it was like to be an anime fan in those days. What do I mean by that? I mean that era before anime became a normie (ugh forgive me for using that word) thing to watch and enjoy. When it was, for all intents and purposes, an outcast nerd's domain of expertise and obsession. I know it sounds kind of fucky when someone tries to make that distinction between nerd stuff becoming normie stuff, nevertheless I believe there is truth to that rhetoric.

    Sure, the whole image of a few guys hanging around a laptop, watching anime, is kind of— or just is— pathetic sounding. But they, and I suspect many other anime fans of that time, just did not care how it all looked... they were, much like normies are doing now, having fun. The difference was that it was also having an escape from a world that did not seem to like them all that much.

    But there is also an interesting piece to the story. These watchalongs all took place in 2012, a time I would consider to be the tail-end of that era of anime and weeb culture. Again, I really do believe that there is stock in the rhetoric that weeb culture was assimilated into a wider nerd culture that once vehemently rejected it. Just like how nerd culture was assimilated into the mainstream years before.

    That is why, and maybe erroneously, I consider Persona 4 Golden to be the crown of the end. For though it was not the last JRPG or even anime-related release of 2012, it was surely one of the biggest. Coming off the original's success, the anime's success, and the fighting game spinoff, Persona 4 Golden was ATLUS' best advertised game at the time, eclipsing their other work. It was the end of an era for them as well, and obviously the beginning of a new one, and that era was screaming Persona.

    Unsurprisingly the game was a hit and it popularized both the series (especially through let's plays) and anime stuff in general. Persona 4 is undeniably the most 'animuuu' of the entire Persona series bar none—  THOUGH that is not to say the series is not 'animuuu' it is every much so... just that Persona 4 has the distinction of being more so... for some reason. But that anime-ness is exactly the reason I think it perfectly crowns the late 2000s and early 2010s era of anime culture.

    The game was quite big in JP and NA, but not where I was, at least not to my knowledge. Still, it enjoyed success in its own way in my sphere of the world. Important to note that consoles are not very easy to come by where I live, both then and now. But there was quite the knack for handhelds, especially Sony ones (Southeast Asia is still in Sony's ballpark afterall). So there were definitely people who played it. I never did on release... but you can count this and the preceeding paragraphs as the first reason the game seems to carry a special air in my opinion.

My Experience:

    The first time I ever played Persona 4 Golden was in 2021, a whole ass year when it released on Steam in June of 2020, needless to say—  but I will say it anyway—  I was extremely late to the party. But I loved it. Instantly I fell in love with the setting, characters, and story; the gameplay left much to be desired seeing as my first exposure was the original Persona 5, but it was a great game nontheless. 

    Playing the game, experiencing it. It was so damn cozy, and this is kind of an eh statement when considering the plot, but the feeling of coziness and simplicity that permeates every polygon of Inaba overpowers the darkness of a murder mystery for a lot of the game. The place, in a strange weeaboo way, feels like home. I feel like I can return there, to the setting, and feel relaxed and feel like I have made it back to a familiar place in the world. That is how cozy it is.

    Hell, I will go as far as saying and then defend myself saying it, that where I live currently STRENGTHENED that feeling of homeliness and familarity I had with Inaba. As mentioned before I live in SEA, I will avoid specifying where but it has many rural qualities to it despite having the status of a city. The streets are not asphalt, they are cement; the walls are worn by rain and other natural elements; schools and other infrastructure have the tendency to look old and maybe(?) decrepit; nature is never too far; and maddeningly, malls were and still are a popular hangout place here.

    I will not say that I was completely, flawlessly immersed, mind you, but I will say that I was definitely feeling something more than a normal interest in the JPRG game. But then again, maybe it is just a thing about being in Asia, and the Asian game having things in common with other things in Asia. Nevertheless, I was going through it, and pretty hard at that. To the point that I cried my eyes out when Snowflakes first started playing and the game was telling me it was almost time to leave.

    The connections I felt with the game did not even stop there, it was more than just familiarity, but I also felt a sense of desperation while playing. It was 2021, and I was just not having a good time, so Persona 4, having such a cheery presentation, relatively upbeat music, and a mostly feel good cast of characters... it felt like a needed break from the fuckery of the real world at that time. It reminded me of better times (literally just in 2019, two years earlier) when all did not seem so bad.

    More on the cast of characters, and I am going to be vaguer than I am usually, but I was going through some issues with my real friends at the time too... so as pathetic as it sounds... I kind of relied on the scripted friendliness and support of the Persona 4 cast. Thinking about it even now makes me sad, but it is the truth.

    Persona 4 Golden came to me at the perfect time it could have, and it really helped me get through the year without completely breaking down. It is weird to say, no doubt, but the game (along with some others) is one of the reasons I am still standing here today. This is one of the many events that made me so staunchly in favor of the notion that games are art and can affect people like any piece of art does. This is also my second reason why this game has plus aura  a special air.

Game Recognizes Game:

    To reiterate, I think this is such a good fucking game, it has flaws no doubt, but it is still extremely above board when it comes to JRPGs— I would even argue RPGs in general. This is crazy to me because the game is like a reskin (not the right word please do not kill me) of Persona 3. Really, plenty of sequels of games in the PS2 era ended up being near reskins of the last game (which were also on PS2).

    Now this is not a bad thing, we all love GTA 3; Vice City; and San Andreas, but you cannot deny that they had a lot of the same feel when it came to playing the games themselves. Similarly, Digital Devil Saga is just Nocturne; Silent Hill 3 can feel Silent Hill 2-ey; same as Metal Gear Solid 2 does with Metal Gear Solid 3. Obviously all these games are exceptional and have enough changes between them to be sequels, but I guess my point here is that these games are not like the jump between DMC2 and DMC3? (Again please do not kill me.)

    Refocusing from that tangent, Persona 4 Golden carries a lot of over from the previous game, these things were okay at the time and still kind of are... but to be direct, the dungeons are boring and the battles and events can feel way too slow. Especially if you are playing this after Persona 5 like I did. At the very least, you can give direct commands to your party members, and reversal is practically nonexistent save for two social links. Some mechanics, though, are just terrible, like the Velvet Room and overworld requests; the material gathering; and especially the FOX.

    It plays extremely smoothly if not a bit aged in some aspects. This is most likely because the game (P4G) is built off of ATLUS' 6th big venture on the PS2, plus all the improvements on the Vita, now modernized in a port for PC. But goddamn, is it a smooth experience nontheless. I encountered ZERO problems, literally no bugs since the game came out on Steam. Like, yeah, you turn with the triggers VERY slowly, and the field attack can feel like it is working against you, but then traversing these environments and the speed of the menus are great.

    Battling is surprisingly good and not as monotonous for an older JRPG as I felt it would have been, yet still it has a slower pace compared to the newer ATLUS titles. It is not at all Pokémon levels of mind-numbingness though. Infact I think it is, like a lot of Megaten battling systems, actually addicting to a degree. Because the strategy of it is more than just weakness and strength, but also in buffing, party order planning, which Personas you have fused, and what items or equipement are in your disposal. It is more than just attack, wait for the enemy, then attack again, repeat ad infinitum.

    Dungeons, are ugh- dungeons are not so good, they are glorified levels of Tartarus that suck a little bit more because some of them have badly executed gimmicks. Not deal breakers, mind you, but enough for me to groan in dread and tedium every time I play through them. It does not help at all that most levels, save some scripted ones, are randomly generated and feel like I am drilling through my skull with a spoon to play through. At the very least Tartarus had the excuse of being shifty-wifty, like Dracula's castle, I have no clue why a TV world does not have pre-fabricated dungeons that act sort of like filming sets.

    Oh well... to be more positive again, the strength of Persona has always been style and its unique blend of life-sim and dungeon-crawling fun. This blend is, throughout the games, probably the MOST genius staple in a franchise EVER. I remember playing SMT 3 for the first time and being burnt out by the combat, a crumb of story, then more combat gameplay loop. I do not just want to dungeon-crawl and do minigames in a JRPG with an interesting world or/and characters; I wish also to interact with it and Persona gives me that to some extent. But it is not without issue... The strength meets the weakness in that, MODERN PERSONA IS SO TERRIBLY PACED.

   But pacing is an issue for another paragraph... instead, how about that life-sim? Well that system only works if Inaba and its inhabitants make it worthwhile to engage with. To that, good news, because Inaba is probably my second favorite setting in the entirety of Megaten, only beaten by Sumaru City. I think they nailed the feeling of being in a rural Asian town; which even when you are not in Japan, share a lot of similarities with eachother. Again, I felt at home here, like the name could be changed to something closer to where I am from and it would be 70% accurate.

    Those who live in this small town are colorful, with some caveats. I would say that most of the social links are worth experiencing for their subplots, with my favorites being Kanji, Yumi, Kou/Daisuke, and Ai. But again, caveats because there are some pretty forgettable ones like Shu, Hisano, Eri, and Naoki. Not that their stories are bad per se, but that they are often left to the wayside when you consider how well the main team and their social links, plus the iconic ones like Dojima, Nanako, (again) Ai, and Kou/Daisuke, develop.

    Inaba as a setting is the most unique, in my opinion at least, among the entire series, trumping even good old Sumaru, which earns the distinction of the most wild one. Moreover, within Megaten it is also quite unique, to the point I would put it up there with the Junkyard, Vortex World, Amami City, and fictionalized Taishou Japan. Truly, and this is because none (correct me if I am wrong) of the games are set in a smaller, rural town. THIS IS KIND OF SAD, BECAUSE I LOVE THE VIBE OF A SMALLER RURAL TOWN.

    On style, the whole of it from UI to general presentation, as per Golden, contrasts heavily with the actual plot of the game. It is a juxtaposition where the town is bright and happy, and the UI is playful and almost childlike, but the plot is quite dark and depressing; remember, the game starts with a news report talking about a relationship falling apart and a murder going on. This entire design ethos flies completely in the face of the original Persona 4, which in terms of environment, is extremely gloomy and muddied, and in terms of UI, is restricted to the original yellows, browns, and blacks.

    Persona 4 on the PS2 is so sinister looking, and let me say this now, but the juxtaposition still does exist, just no longer in the presentation, but in the characters. The investigation team are of course, unchanged for the most part from the original to Golden, and obviously so, you cannot really rewrite the game just for a rerelease. Do I prefer the original look? No, actually... I think that Golden is the superior package through and through. Do not get it twisted, both games nail the presentation, I just think that Golden's makes much more sense.

    See, the plot is PRACTICALLY BEGGING for some kind of contrast to exist between what the town seems to be at a first glance, and what the town is actually like, plus the mystery and otherworld. The music (and this will be discussed in the music section too) does this masterfully, because through the poppy and upbeat sounds, there lies an off-ness in the lyrical themes and actual melody. In the original game you had two aspects doing the contrasting which are the aforementioned music and then the characters. In Golden however, not only are the music and characters doing juxtapositions, now even the visuals are, which ties the former aspects even more tightly together. It is light versus dark in all aspects of the game.

    Now for pacing. Fuck! Pacing has always been the bane of the modern iteration of the series (and arguably MOST JRPGs), because most modern JRPG games tend to be over 60 hours long, unless you are Persona 5 (sigh), and also because the story is just... slow, even compared to other modern JRPGs. Persona is not quite the action packed kind of story like Final Fantasy, Tales, Ys,  even Metaphor the new ATLUS game, or even fucking Trails which is pretty damn slow too. Persona is a fellow that needs attention and patience. If you give it that, IT IS SO GOOD, if not, it is so meh.

    And the thing about that is, modern Persona had some of the fastest stories of the older JRPG generation. Which means that Persona is getting slower when everyone else is getting faster... that sucks. So I hope that Persona 6, whenever it does come out, has a faster paced story. But then again, the life-sim system is like THE MAIN reason this issue of pacing even happened, so it becomes a whole dichotomy of how do we do this staple system without fucking our pacing. I really hope P-Studio can figure this out before the next Persona game.

    Oh finally, story. In terms of the actual plot and story of the game. I am hooked. Murder and kidnapping mysteries in a foggy, small, rural town, plus the supernatural, plus-plus the balancing of a double life and all the drama that entails, plus-plus-plus a subplot about a broken family? This game was made to scratch an itch in my brain, let me tell you that. The story of this game is, how do I put it? The kind of story that inspires you to write your own story type of good. It hits just right for me and the emotional parts are offset by (maybe too much) humor and bright parts, that is not just depression the game, but more akin to life the game.

    Life is not a path of darkness and suffering all the time, much as I like to say, or as much as other people like to say. It is happy and sad, angry and peaceful. Life is not locked to one emotion at any given time, and Persona 4 Golden of all fucking games is, in my opinion, the best at illustrating that within the entire series. None of the jokes and gags (no matter how cringy they get) are misplaced or out of character. Emotional and heavy scenes or events are allowed to breathe and develop again back into lighter ones.

    One of the best things ever is that characters treat the murders with the amount of gravitas they deserve. And when someone actually dies, even if it happens to only a few characters, it feels like you and the team have been blindsided. But the game does not let you wallow in the mystery, and that might sound stupid since the main plot is that mystery, but it really is not. Because even if the pacing is completely destroyed by these parts in the game, all the sections where everything is going well and you have a beachy time, a bandy time, or a hot-springsy time, that all makes you care about the characters. At the very least, more than if the game was all focused on the mystery for the entire duration.

    And JUST REAL QUICK, I want to address the whole thing about how the game feels too centered around Yu Narukami, that all the characters are on his taint. Anyone who says that, I feel, has never felt what it is like to live as a highschooler in a town where the only thing to do is to go to the mall or hang out with your group of friends. The investigation team, as it were, is SO realistic to the teenage middle of nowhere in  rural (or rural adjacent in my case) Asia experience. 

    Let me tell you right now, if something as crazy as the Midnight Channel happened where I am from, and I was Yu Narukami, and I had any friends... fuck- then obviously we would be hanging out around eachother almost all the time. Literally, the only other things we could do as an alternative is walk around town, hang at some random ass place, go to the mall, play some videogames, or stay at school for a bit longer... all together, because it sucks to do these things alone as a highschooler in rural Asia.

    Anyway that is it for the general game discussion.

An Entire Section on the Music:

    It will not do to speak on Persona and not have an entire section dedicated to discussing the music, and even as someone who knows sweet F.A. on anything related to music theory; composition; and etc, I think that anyone who hears these tracks will agree that they are awesome. So I have heard Persona 4 music called a few things but I like to describe it as(and this is a hideously uneducated term) Japanese Pop, Rock, and Electronic with small allusions(?) to Hip-hop and Funk. I have no clue if that makes any sense, but that is the vibe I get when listening to most of the soundtrack. 

    To be more specific(?)... It has guitars, drums, pianos, synths, and a whole lot of instruments; it can be beat-focused (like Hip-hop), more melodic (like Pop), or just paying attention to both at the same time (like Rock); the lyrics are most often sung irregardless to the beat, though that is not to say that there are no tracks with lyrics being delivered by beat. Overall this description (which is probably painful to read through both as a normal person or a person with musical knowledge), as I write it, feels right on par with what I described the whole soundtrack to feel like. But on another, more cheesy level, the soundtrack really just feels like Inaba.

    I have no clue how Shoji Meguro did it, but the general sound of the music just elicits an image of a smaller, more cut-off, yet friendly-seeming town, with hints of a genuinely dark undercurrent, and it feels like some kind of longing or yearning. Really, it is like a force so sorrowfully angry or despaired and disappointed is permeating the contrastingly upbeat and poppy sound of the music. Moreover, a lot of the lyrical theme of the songs are about longing or wishfulness, whether it be towards a person, a concept, or a time.

    Now obviously, if you are composing for anything, you want the music to reflect the whole thing, it should not be surprising that the music has the identity of the setting and plot in the composition... it is just how Persona soundtracks are able to embody the idea of each game perfectly, which surprises me. Shoji Meguro is a genuine GOD when it comes to this; it happened with Nocturne where all the songs of that game feel like a religious experience but for those who worship hell and demons; or in Persona 5 wherein the tracks embody the overwhelming suspicion and the picaresque-ness of the whole ordeal, it is a very rebellious soundtrack that makes you feel like you are doing something you should not be.

    To bring this all to a cohesive statement, I believe that Persona 4's soundtrack expertly characterizes Inaba, the mystery within, and the actors therein as much as the plot, setting, and writing does. Like a well-composed and thought-out classical piece, all it takes is a listen to get the picture of what Inaba, its people, and the goings-on in it, are like and how they develop over the course of the story. Every melody and beat, in my opinion, that exists in that soundtrack serve the purpose of telling you the story of Persona 4, without explicitly telling it to you. (AND THIS GOES FOR MUCH OF SHOJI MEGURO'S WORK AT ATLUS, I SWEAR)

Oddly Specific Thoughts:

    Now for my favorite part of any post, my oddly specific thoughts on one specific story-moment/piece/event of a game. Now I must mention, I feel a lot of things about a lot of moments in this game and all Persona games, so picking this was hard. That being said, stepping out to see Inaba completely blanketed in thick snow and having Snowflakes playing in the background; the piano playing the moment you load in, was one of the most poignant moments in the entire game... and there was zero dialogue or incident involved. Damn.

    SPOILERS, by the way...

    Winter, though I have never felt it in my life (SEA things), is practically a universal signifier for: as it rolls in, the end of things; as it persists, the struggle of things; and as it thaws, the rebirth of things. The placement of winter in this game, where it comes in after the whole ordeal with the true culprit and the Yomotsu Hirasaka dungeon, it feels like this is the end of things, and in a way it is. By this point in the game the school year is near the end of its course, your social links would ideally all be at ranks eight or completely maxed, and all main points of conflict are resolved.

    This part of the game is thoroughly wrought with an overwhelming and frankly heartwrenching bittersweetness. Yes, the mystery is over, the culprit knows justice, the obligatory god boss fight is done, and most of the characters have finished their arcs, including your social links. But the gane which you have loved for over 60-70 hours is coming to a close, and with it, the illusion of Inaba and its people. I mentioned crying at this point, and that is because I did not want that illusion, one so comforting and homely, to shatter and for me to be left again in the isolation I was in.

    The song itself is melancholy personified, whenever I do listen to it, it brings the image of relief that the worst is now and forever over, but that I am losing so much of myself along with it. That I am coming to a point where the past can no longer be leaned back on, and though the future will be before me, with as much potential and ambition as it brings, it will still be known much emptier and affected by my losses for as long as I continue to remember what came before, good and bad. With the problem obviously being that I can never forget what came before, because of how high the highs were and how it made me who I am in the present.

    Huh... Persona really has a way with your feelings, and I really think that this end to the game-

    WAIT!

    When I said that all main points of conflict are resolved... I lied, there is one left. Marie. So assuming you got her social link to rank 10 before now, you will ask, how can this be the end of things when one of the important cast members have literally disappeared, and when even the game, through Margaret, acknowledges that? Well that is because there is one last adventure to go on. The Hollow Forest, though suffering from many of Persona 4's gameplay faults, is one of my favorite dungeons in the entire series.

    Created from the mind of Marie, this dungeon is placed in the middle of the whole winter arc that this game has created... remember what I said in the first paragraph? Yeah, my thesis for this is based on winter's symbolism. So if the beginning is the end of everything that came before; the entire past year, then this mid-section is the struggle. The struggle of what? Of Marie, who in regaining her memories, or everything she thought she wanted, finds out that she was but a means to, what was supposed to be, a nice little end.

    Throughout the story she was actually a piece of Izanami, playing the role of eyes for another piece, Ameno-Sagiri, she was to monitor the world and allow him to know the people's wishes. Which means the fog that threatened Yu and his friends; her friends, was in some ways, even though she did not remember or never even knew, her fault. To add insult to injury, she was to be the vessel which would have absorb the fog if ever Ameno-Sagiri knew defeat, storing it for another day. 

    Keyword is 'would have', but unexpectedly the fog she absorbed began to overpower her, and if it ever won, it would disperse the fog back into Inaba, and perhaps the entire world. Leaving everyone, including the Investigation Team, utterly blindsided and with practically no way to fight it back. After all, they had already cleared the TV World and fought off Izanami. This fog would be ownerless and unstoppable.

    There is the struggle, Marie knew she became a ticking time bomb against the world she came to love, both to know it and to experience it. Obviously she did not want to destory the world and seeing as this is the first time in her immortal life she knows the dread of death, and that the outcome is the same for her in the end... She decides to minimize the casualities by banishing herself to a Hollow Forest, to the origin of the colorless and destructive fog.

    

    Obviously then, the end of winter and the dungeon is the rebirth of everything. 

    That is all well and good, but what is my point here? The structure completed itself, is it all about how I connected the final arc of Persona 4 Golden to what winter means in three different parts? Yes... actually. It is amazing to me that ATLUS was able to synthesize what winter means in one complete arc of a game when most stories only use winter for one of those purposes. Really, it all ties everything together too in a real sense, because the dungeon makes you completely forget the game is ending and makes you look forward to the conclusion... much like how the thawing of winter makes it easier to put what you had lost behind and look forward to when spring comes up. It is, in my humble opinion, genius.

The Conclusion:

    I think that Persona 4 Golden is one of the greatest games of all time, it masterfully marries most of its elements to create a truly immersive experience. Nothing in the game feels like it detracts from the overall thematic concept of Persona 4 and what story it is trying to tell... yes, even the length of the game works in its favor. More than just being one of the greatest games to me, it is also one of the most important to me because of the extent that I was able to emotionally interface and intuit from it. I love Persona 4 Golden, and I will always love it.

    Thank you for reading. - Z