Minor note -- how freaking long is Scooby's neck?
Many, many comparisons
have been made between Persona 4 and Scooby-Doo. The first five party members you get are a
goofy guy who gets no respect, the de facto leader of curiously handsome
appeal, a short-haired girl who does a fair share of the legwork, and a
long-haired girl of some semblance of wealth and beauty who may be an untapped
(?) sexual dynamo. And to top that off,
you partner up with a talking animal with an unusual speech pattern -- adding
“kuma” (Japanese for bear) to most sentences in the original version, and
making bear puns in the US version.
Several dozen times more lethal than a snack-loaded Scooby-Doo.
I’d argue that Persona
4 is one of the greatest games ever made…but I’ll save that debate for a later
date. For now, let’s talk about our
Japanese Shaggy doppelganger, Yosuke.
(A query: Is he really
a doppelganger if there are no underscored implications of drug use at
play? Well, whatever. Spoilers to follow.)
Yosuke Hanamura (Persona 4)
Broccupation: City Boy, Stooge, and Dark Avenger
When you first meet
Yosuke (and indeed, for the first few hours of the game), he’s what scientists
colloquially call a bitch. He crashes
after he screws up a bike ride. He gets
stuck in a trash can. He gets wrecked by
one of the girls in class for breaking her kung-fu DVD -- with the lessons
therein used to ruin his day. He endures
a “critical hit to the nads.” It’s hard
to take him seriously, between his constant abuse by reality itself and his
tendency to fall into the Junpei-isms (i.e. love of fast cars and hot women)
typical for someone his age.
But you’ll cut through
this shallow veneer soon enough. It’s
not long before you discover he’s the son of a manager of the local
Wal-Mart-esque megastore, Junes -- and the fact that their place is driving all
the family shops around town out of business is a rather sore point. And in more ways than one; Yosuke’s from the
city, and the move from there to the boondocks depresses him. The only highlight? His new crush, Saki, who works at the
megastore alongside him. Isn’t that
nice?
And then -- in case
you’ve forgotten that you’re playing a Japanese game -- Saki’s corpse is found
hanging from a telephone pole, prompting the two-guys-one-girl trio to head
into the distorted, monster-infested world inside a TV to investigate.
You follow me? Good.
Because now things get interesting.
In a sequence that
would make Carl Jung raise his eyebrows in shock, Yosuke has to face an
embodiment of his darker self -- his innermost thoughts and drives made
real. It was the same circumstance that
killed Saki; those that continuously reject their true selves…well, just watch
the video.
And that’s -- for lack
of a better word -- the gimmick behind Persona
4. Head into the TV world, face your
monster form or get murdered. By game’s
end, you’ll have “I am a shadow…the true self…” burned into your memory. It’s enough to make you wonder what sort of
form your Shadow (and subsequently, your Persona) would take if you were ever
in that situation. I imagine mine would
look something like a turtle with rocket launchers…but I digress. The important thing is that by facing his
other half, Yosuke gains power and a new outlook on life. And he’s rewarded with power; the guy who you
once doubted could walk until he was fifteen can now do crazy flips, spin like
a tornado, and kill demons with wrenches.
(He upgrades to twin knives once you get enough money, of course.) I remember playing through the game and
thinking that Yosuke was almost unfairly good; he was almost as strong as the
bruiser Junpei, but moved faster, had better magic, and could even heal party
members. He was a jack-of-all-trades
that had spent the past eight years wrestling tigers and eating five dozen eggs
for breakfast.
No one approves diets like Gaston.
Much like Junpei,
Yosuke’s story arc doesn’t end there.
Unlike Persona 3, Persona 4
put a greater focus on forming relationships with your party. At the first rank of a “Social Link,” your
party members would take a lethal blow for you; if you die the game’s over, so
naturally the others want to prevent that.
(Side note: Final Fantasy XIII
would choose to utterly ignore this valuable feature come 2010.) The only cost? Taking time out of your schedule to hang out
with your party members.
It’s in these Social
Link sequences that your party members’ story arcs continue to develop. Even though Yosuke -- for example --
confronted his dark side, that doesn’t mean he’ll never doubt himself or worry
about his morality again. Far from
it. If anything, facing off with a
Shadow only opens a character’s mind to the darkness within; the Social Link is
a way for them to start coping with it. In
Yosuke’s sequence, you not only help him learn to adjust to life in the country
(and accepting the people therein for their own sake, not just playing hero for
the lulz), but also learn the depths to which he loved Saki. You also get to punch him in the face, which
triggers the evolution of his Persona into a crazy flaming disco guy.
It's canon.
Now bear this in mind:
everyone that gets thrown into the TV world -- except for you, the protagonist
-- has to face their Shadow self. As
Teddie suggests, Saki had to face the same nightmare Yosuke did, but she didn’t
have the fortune of coming with a gray-haired teenager swinging a golf club. With his main squeeze (who as it turns out,
utterly detested him) now gone, Yosuke resolves to solve the mystery plaguing
the town with the protagonist’s help.
Right here is where I have to draw a line, however; I would argue that
it’s not the protagonist who’s the leader, but Yosuke. In terms of
parallels, Freddy is to P4’s protagonist as Shaggy is to Yosuke. While the former is the technical leader who doles out commands, the latter is the actual
breadwinner, and of far more significance to solving the mystery than any other
character. The only difference is that
you could say, maybe, that P4’s protag has a tighter relationship to the
talking mascot…though on the other hand, Yosuke and Teddie have plenty of
moments together.
A minor point of
contention, of course. Like other SMT games, the protag is silent (though
his speech is implied through menu choices and such). But like any good politician, he delegates
the hard work to Yosuke -- in this case, maybe too much. Yosuke does a fair deal of the detective
work, from summing up to making deductions.
It’s his store that you use as a base of operations, and he goes on a
stakeout…even if it ends poorly. And
because the protag doesn’t talk, it’s Yosuke who calls out to the Shadow-facing
victims more often than not. And again,
because he’s such an effective party member it’s likely that he can cover
whatever base your customized protag can’t.
In short, Yosuke is all over this business, to the point where at times,
the protag feels a little redundant.
Doubly so; remember, Yosuke’s the one with a definite motivation --
avenging Saki -- from the first few hours of the game onward. He sees you as a partner. While he argues that he can’t put an end to
the murders without your help, it’s likely that you can’t do the same without
him, either.
The same applies for your impossibly stylish inner selves.
Unfortunately, Yosuke’s
drive eventually comes back to bite you in the ass. In a game where “reaching out to the truth”
is the overarching theme, you’ll be put to the test; having finally nabbed the
(suspected) culprit, you get grilled on your understanding of the mystery and
be forced to make a decision. Pull it
off, and you’ll be on your way to the game’s good -- and eventually, true --
ending. Screw up, and it’s an automatic bad ending; said ending implies that
the town gets absorbed by a fog containing millions of monsters, and the folk
become mindless, slobbering predators of eldritch character. So…yeah, you probably don’t want that.
In a twist, it’s Yosuke
who does all the grilling -- and you see a level of frenzy in him that’s simply
shocking. You have a suspect -- all
things considered, the likely culprit -- in your custody. He’s been flinging people into the very
dangerous TV world of his own accord, and even tried to kill you in yet another
strange boss fight (raisin-hued hippie angel with a giant halo that flashes
peace signs and his fortunately-missing genitalia FTW!). And most of all, he’s done some serious harm
to one of your own; it’s likely that she won’t make it out alive. Yosuke, with all this fresh on his mind,
takes the game into one of its darkest moments:
he proposes that you and the others throw him into the TV world -- just
as he supposedly did to a half dozen others.
My first response was “Yosuke,
why? I thought we were friends!” Looking back, I suppose I can understand what
the writers were going for. Yosuke’s
heart got kicked in the junk by this whole murder business, and you know he’s
been trying to prevent that from happening again no matter what -- he wants to
spare others from the pain he’s endured.
But this guy’s latest strike nearly led to a more harrowing loss. You see, the victim in this case wasn’t some
girl he had a crush on. It was the
protag’s young cousin. The same
six-year-old girl you and the gang got to know over the course of roughly sixty
hours of game time.
Mess with Nanako, and you gotta go.
Yosuke spirals into a
rage of massive proportions. Normally
calm about matters (if a little flippant), it’s a wonder he didn’t pull out his
knives and gut the culprit right there. His
solution is only slightly more humane, if only because he doesn’t want to get
his hands dirty -- and provide his friends with the same outlet for revenge,
thereby increasing his chances of winning them over. In spite of his anger, he’s still on top of
his game; his understanding of the mystery gives everyone (the player included)
reason to believe that you’ve got the perp.
But it’s still your job to outmaneuver him, in spite of choices and dialogue
that suggest otherwise. It’s not only to
find out who’s really behind it all, but a means to help Yosuke -- to protect
him from doing something he’ll regret.
One wonders what might have sparked such a
change; from my perspective, it seems pretty obvious. If it was only Saki that had gotten the worst
of it, I doubt Yosuke would go ballistic as he did. No, the real breaking point was that he went
after an innocent girl -- your little cousin.
Emphasis on YOUR; what he did was a measure of loyalty, an effort to assuage
the wrongs done to the protag. And then
you realize just how dangerous a strong friendship can be: he would gladly kill
a man for the sake of one of his friends.
It’s admirable. Misguided, but
admirable.
Among many, many, many other things.
But he wouldn’t be a bro
if he wasn’t ready to take the plunge.
By his own admission, Yosuke owes you a lot (least of all his
life). You help him overcome his demons,
fight alongside him to stop big ugly demons, endure Mystery Food X with him, dress in drag to entertain their peers, and much more. And you feel the same way, no doubt. Yosuke will die for you in combat, help you
lay the smackdown on enemies, and even pick you back up if you’re hit with an
attack you’re weak against (not to mention bitch-slapping you if you’ve got a
status ailment). You’re partners in this
thing, through and through. Yosuke’s
loyalty to the cause and his pal are undeniable, but I say that the feelings
you as a player have for him are even more powerful. At game’s start, the protag is the new guy in
town, and Yosuke’s all too willing to show him the ropes. He doesn’t want the protag to have the same
longing for city life that he once had; indeed, you barely think about what the
protag’s life was like before the game proper.
Conversely, Yosuke’s capability as a fighter, an entertainer, and a
plain old pal makes him an indispensable tool in enjoying the game and its
story. You like Yosuke and want to save
him from harm, and even help him move past the troubles in his heart. Yosuke likes you, and he wants to make sure
your stay in town is pleasant and fulfilling.
United by fate, you’ll tough out any threat that come your way.
Two bad dudes, fighting
side by side. That’s the way it was
meant to be -- because Yosuke’s your bro.
Next time, your
peaceful days are over as we take a look at 2009’s Devil Survivor. Be sure to
survive until then, all right?
No comments:
Post a Comment