#Capri's theories and queries

[systematicallycapricious]

Just musing about a couple small oddities I noticed while going through the Japanese version of Ultimax. Disclaimer: I still don’t know a super-ton about the Japanese language, so these observations might not actually mean anything of importance. >_>

(And if anyone with better Japanese knowledge than I comes across this post and wants to help elucidate things, I’m always down to learn more.)

                                                            [1]

In Labrys’s arcade mode, Minazuki introduces himself as purely “ミナヅキ”, while in every other instance I can find in both story mode and arcade mode, he always introduces himself fully as “ミナヅキショウ” (like shown below with Chie).

The closest thing I can find to the contrary of his usual pattern is how he introduces himself to Adachi in “Episode Adachi” (pictured below), but even then he still gives his full name after a moment.

Meanwhile, in the English translation of Labrys’ arcade mode story, this discrepancy is entirely glossed over as Minazuki just introduces himself in his English-typical “Minazuki. Sho Minazuki”.

I haven’t checked through the manga to see if this pattern holds there too, ‘cause I’m not as familiar with its sequence of events as I am with the game and so would have to comb through it more meticulously. So there might be something there that affirms or breaks this pattern?

So yeah. I don’t really have enough sociocultural knowledge to know if him doing that is indicative of a closer relational position, of him being more disrespectful, or of it being some purely grammatical variation with little characterization meaning, though I do find it interesting from a “well, it’s an oddity of behavioral pattern if nothing else” perspective.

(Oh- and for additional context, in that scene in Labrys’ arcade story, Minazuki makes mention of how he and Labrys are the same, something that’s reiterated in one of his “spectating Labrys’ dance” voice lines in P3:DiM. Thus why it seems plausible to me that he might consider himself relationally closer to her. Though on the other hand, he might still see her as an inanimate tool as well, so not treating her with the same formality as he would a person could give credence to it being a more disrespectful form of regard instead? There’s not really enough context to tell, as even his Labrys-specific battle lines and DiM lines could be read either or both ways. :P)

                                                            [2]

In EpP4, when Minazuki stabs General Kagutsuchi and demands to know what he’s planning to do with Sho, he seemingly goes to refer to Sho as “this child(この子を)”, then pauses for a moment before changing his address to “Minazuki(皆月を)”, with “を” being a grammatical marker for the “direct object” of a conversation or sentence I think..? If there are more nuances to it than that, I haven’t learned them yet, haha. Anyways, after changing the direct object that he’s referring to, he then goes on to say the rest of the sentence.

Meanwhile, in the English translation, this is just simplified into “this boy” with no further distinction between the two apparent forms of address that the Japanese version has.

As for the manga, he just outright uses “皆月を” from the start, though, aside from dropping Kagutsuchi’s name from the dialogue boundaries, says the line exactly the same (どうするつもりだ). The English fan-scanlation on Mangadex follows in the footsteps of the English game translation in writing the line as “Just what do you intend to do with this boy?”.

Also, just for context, I think usually any other time that any character uses “皆月”, it’s translated as “Sho” rather than “that boy”? (With the exception of the manga ‘pronunciation subtitles inform you that the spoken word is entirely different than the written word’ thing where sometimes “皆月” is written but “この子” is spoken, I think.)

So yeah. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be an important characterization detail on Minazuki’s part, since this happens right after Yu gets him to realize that he's a person supporting Sho rather than Sho being totally alone, or if it’s just a negligible grammatical thing. Though, since I don’t think Minazuki ever calls Sho “皆月” outright outside of explaining Sho’s past to other characters, in which even then I think he uses “皆月翔” specifically, it kind of makes me think that him using a more direct form of address for Sho rather than an indirect one might hold some significance?

Although, as a counterpoint to that, we also don’t ever really see him directly conversing or interacting with Sho outside of a couple scenes in the manga and a couple lines in P3:DiM, so maybe he does call Sho by name more regularly and we just don’t get to see it. For example, in the P4U2 DNA Comics anthology, there’s quite a few times where Minazuki directly addresses Sho by his family name, but the anthology is non-canon as far as I know, so I can’t really count it. :T

Also, I haven’t extensively combed through every last instance for this point, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt, as some things may have fallen through the cracks. ^^;

                                Addendum: P4U2 Stageplay

I’m putting the stageplay in a separate section here mostly because 1) I don’t know how “canon” it’s considered and 2) my phonetic Japanese comprehension still needs a lot of work and I don’t have subtitles like I do with the game. Also I kind of wrote-up everything above before remembering that it existed. <_<;

Anyways, going through it with my limited comprehension, I can say that Minazuki sticks with his “ミナヅキショウ” full introduction and sticks to referring to Sho as “彼(him)” and “この子(this child)” throughout his appearances... with a single exception. In a flashback to when Minazuki confronts Ikutsuki with Tsukiyomi, Minazuki at one point says “翔(Shou)” specifically. However, as I don’t know the rest of the words preceding it, I don’t really know if he’s referring to Sho, of whom he kind of yeeted out of the body a bit beforehand, or if he’s referring to himself since he shares a name with Sho.

And as for what he says to Kagutsuchi just before he gets possessed, he actually seems to say just “どうするつもりだ、カグツチ？”, bringing the three variations full-circle by keeping Kagu’s name but nixing any direct reference to Sho.

#Capri's theories and queries #SystematicRambles #ミナヅキショウ #Sho Minazuki

[fanficandtheories]

Let’s talk about Damen’s grief (Part one)

(Part two, Part three)

It’s never talked about as much as Laurent’s grief or trauma. Damen is always the powerful, determined, makes-ends-meet type of guy. A much lesser attributed factor to his character is his grief. No one talks about how much he changes through the trilogy and his grief is the only tether to his old life. Let me explain. (Probably in more than one post, I’ll see)

That right place to start would be in Ios, after the trial.

This whole section is particularly difficult. Through out the trilogy, Damen is called a dumb brute/a naive fool/an arrogant prince who didn’t see the treachery seeping through his family, this is either directly said (Laurent) or politely implied (Nikandros). But in reality, Damen never had a reason to see a possibility for treachery. He never saw himself as holding a bigger power that could be stolen, by being the heir. At least not in Kastor. He always strived to please his brother and father, who were the bigger powers in his life, who he thought were better than him. He looked up to them as people who were trying to teach him to be a better king. Kastor and Theomedes were one and the same in his mind’s eye. He took the throne as a responsibility, a job that had to be done right, rather than a ✨privilege✨.

It’s so sad when he tries not to feel small waiting in the slave baths, like Kastor could even hold a candle to his forest fire. It’s down right depressing when he mentions the similarity Kastor has with Theomedes, that semblance of family, the blind desperation for family. He can’t even get himself to digest the facts of his life in hopes of keeping his brother. He just fought through nations to come back home. He finally faces Kastor and he can’t even get himself to do anything, because he can only see his father, who is ✨dead and buried✨.

Like I said, his grief is what tethers him to his old life/his family. A blind hope really, but I wouldn’t blame him for grappling to home after months in Vere.

This exchange from the night he was captured is painful af. I always forget that Damen was never allowed to mourn for his father. Because this happens, and then he wakes up in an enemy nation. He lowers his sword, he lowers his fucking sword, the most renowned fighter in Akielos only had to hear of his father to put his guard down. That’s what family means to Damen.

I’ll save the pain of recounting every thing Laurent does when Damen is in Vere. Like, dude just lost his father and got kicked out of his country, but Laurent just tries to press salt into that wound. No one questions it and the cruelty of it is lost on us because ofc ✨trauma and revenge✨ on Laurent’s part. (This is why the flogging is one of the most unsettling things about their relationship for me, because it’s never handled properly… just swept under the carpet with that bath scene in the summer palace) But there are moments in Arles when damen’s home sickness comes up in overwhelming waves, like these, when he thinks of the betrayal, the loss, and the danger in Vere.

Then, the ride to Delpha, and falling for Laurent, of all people. Plain bad news for his grief.

Damen is called a playboy prince who likes blondes so often that we forget that falling in love with the enemy was equally difficult for Damen as much as it was for Laurent. Because Damen never knew that Laurent knew who he was, so imagine falling for someone who had you whipped (pun-intended) for no reason but your nationality. *Stomach churning, bile rising nausea*

In the book, when Damen finds out Laurent knew all along, he says laurent must’ve been in some state of delusion and loneliness to have slept with him at Ravenel. Funny how that same logic goes for him. He thinks he tolerates so much crap from Laurent, for no reason but ✨Akielos✨, all the while falling desperately for him.

Because falling for Laurent also meant questioning his own beliefs, discarding the sadness of his fathers death and staying quiet when Laurent openly insults his father, his country, and him. (Laurent’s such a cinnamon roll, but I fucking hate him sometimes, esp for what he did to Damen)

Exhibit A

Laurent spitting about Theomedes’ murder (something Damen didn’t know) at Ravenel, intentionally, knowing it would hurt Damen, talking about Damen as ✨Damianos✨. Which is Laurent fighting back, defending himself, also being petty, sure, but hurting Damen mostly. And Damen, being Damen, does not place a single ounce of blame on Laurent for what he is feeling in that moment. He just internalises the grief, and the guilt onto his own family, thinks of his lost barbarian father, and the traitorous brother. He still wants to help Laurent. Fuck. Because, then he politely raises his hands asking the guards to arrest him after he punches Laurent in grief.

Yes, Laurent apologises, but that too comes with him telling Damen that he was in fact glad when Theomedes and Damianos died. Like I said, salt in the wound, leaving Damen to feel the grief and guilt tenfold.

#captive prince #damen x laurent #c s pacat #damen of akielos #c.s. pacat #cs pacat #kings rising #laurent of vere #prince’s gambit #capri #nikandros #capri queries #capri theories #capri theory #fan theory #griefandloss #damen #laurent

[systematicallycapricious]

Out of curiosity, does anyone know exactly what's going on in this part of the P4U2/P4AU manga? I've been trying to figure it out for several weeks now, and the best I can comprehend is that somehow Minazuki got so startled by the sudden gun fired at him (understandably) that he faltered on whatever he does to keep control over Sho's body/consciousness (demonstrated by the gripping of his forehead/resting his head in his palm, a visual indicator used up until this point to signal that a switch of consciousnesses was occurring, and “No... Not yet...!” panel followed by Sho's sudden violent rage.. although for the stuff before Sho’s rage, I'm still not sure if that's wholly 'spoken' or 'thought' dialog, nor if it's definitely Minazuki and not Sho or Adachi, or even a combination of characters, though I think it'd make less sense if it was exclusively Sho or Adachi? :?), seemed like he was speaking to Sho for a moment, ..and then somehow Sho suddenly knew what had been going on despite otherwise demonstrating a lack of awareness of what goes on when he's not controlling his body..?

I get that the scene in the game required this to be Sho out at this point so he could pummel Adachi and then have his confrontation with Yu and all of that, and that they might be somewhat limited on pages they can either produce or include in these manga issues so maybe there could have just not been enough time/space to explain it better, but... is that actually how that occurred? Or am I missing something (like maybe their matters of consciousness are supposed to be somewhat more gradient or something, like how Minazuki seemingly used their body's left hand in stopping Sho from using their right hand to knife their face despite not being the one in explicit control of their body at the moment, so maybe Sho had just overheard Minazuki's comment about trusting Adachi having been a bad idea and assumed from there or something?), or?

(If that is actually what happened though, then for one, that's something I'll have to keep in mind for future characterizations and musings... but for two, on Sho's sudden comprehension/awareness of the situation, how and why even? Is it just a case of 'needed for plot so just accept it as fictional entertainment', a lack of resources available to be expended on showcasing or explaining it better, or actually meant to be a feature? And how does that even work if it's intended? That would also be important for future musings and characterizations. :T)

EDIT: I got a possible answer to this! I wrote a post for it [here].

#question #Sho Minazuki #P4AU/P4U2 manga #legit if people know I'd also like to know; I don't mean these rhetorically quq; #Capri's dense at interpreting comics sometimes <_<; #Capri's theories and queries

[systematicallycapricious]

Update to my prior Vol.3 manga-things questioning post (and subsequently some theories on how Sho and Minazuki function system-wise)

For the other people who were curious about what was going on in that part of the manga too, I've recently had carnage-scissors give me his take on it! So this is like part-my interpretation and part-what he posited.

Basically, my questions/confusions boiled down to:

Why is Sho suddenly front(in this case, the one with dominant control over their body)?

Why does Sho seem to know what's going on when Minazuki was the one priorly shown to be in control of their body?

Who's speaking on that one page?

And the answers to those were;

--2--

Sho and Minazuki actually experience more co-consciousness/co-presence than is let on about throughout most of the canon stories, having developed the ability to do so more over time. Meaning, initially they likely weren’t so great at it, so you’d get more of Minazuki having a difficult time taking/retaining front for himself (like is shown in the flashbacks to their childhood in the lab), more of Sho losing time/experiencing amnesia when Minazuki takes the front (like is shown many times throughout the game and manga), later on perhaps more of Sho having a harder time taking front from Minazuki if Minazuki doesn’t want to yield it to him, and etc.

So Sho happens to know what had been going on in this scene prior to taking front for himself as, after recovering from passing out, he had been around in the background of their headspace with Minazuki not yet wanting to cede control back to him. Technically, he could have instead chosen to ignore whatever was going on in the outer-world, but given his intrigue in Adachi, Minazuki’s interactions with Adachi caught his attention. (Alternatively, he could have had some other reason for paying attention as well, such as maybe antsiness, ‘well, I can’t do anything else in this situation’, or interest in their plan being so close to complete, but with his past actions towards Adachi, some sort of trust or idolization being at play here seems to be a pretty likely option?)

Also of note: In at least the DNA Media Comics P4U2 anthology, a couple of those stories actually do feature Sho and Minazuki as being more co-present. I don’t think they’re considered canon? But it’s still pretty neat to note.

--1--

So, taking point 2 into account, Sho probably was able to snatch front from Minazuki here because A) Sho was incandescent with rage and hatred at Adachi for that moment of betrayal, more so than Minazuki could probably hold up against, and B) (my personal theory) because their shared body was already in a ‘fight or flight’ state after the gunshot, so with their background of more or less being trained to be a soldier, of course their instinctual reaction would be to immediately fight. (If you observe Sho’s appearance and behaviors in the following scene of pummeling Adachi, you can actually see a lot of indicators to this notion; wide eyes, physical tension/a readiness to retaliate, aggression, raised voice volume/quickened speech, sweating, etc. Like those are also indicators of just anger too, but I feel like it’s kicked up a notch from/a bit more primitive than prior displays of anger illustrated by the manga? It could just be my imagination though... although Minazuki dropping his sword seems like a pretty convincing argument for the shock that precedes fight or flight to me. I mean– Minazuki, of all people, dropping his weapon in a hostile situation? Plus also the widened eyes, freezing in place, etc. etc.)

Then, after that point, Minazuki likely either wasn’t able to take front back for the same reasons that Sho was able to snatch it in the first place, or else just decided that they would be better off with Sho getting his rage out of his system, though it was more likely the former than the latter considering Minazuki had been visibly opposed to Sho taking control when he did.

--3-- 

..Which leads to the last point! Everything from “Ugh...” to “Not yet..!” (on the page I’ll re-include below) is in fact Minazuki speaking out loud, and his dialogue is directed at Sho, who as we now established was co-con/co-present at the time and, in this moment, probably giving some sort of internal indication that he was trying to assume body control in his anger. (’Internal indication’ potentially ranging from innate knowledge of that being what was happening, some kind of mental or physical pressure, irate verbal shouting (internally), maybe a sudden flood of anger accompanying a contention for front, etc. etc. possibilities that vary a lot per individual system and instance.)

----

And then, using this interpretation of things as the basis, moments such as the face-scarring scene suddenly make a lot more sense, because it would be within their realm of capability to be able to take such actions. It also might change the context of some of the scenes to being more indicative to co-presence or co-fronting as well, buut that also could just be me looking too closely and seeing nonexistent things again. <w<;

So yeah! There’s probably other possible answers to these questions as well, but at the very least I find this one quite intriguing, so I figured I’d share it. uwu

--------------

EDIT: Adding in a few weeks later after I’ve learned a little more about the Japanese language, I’ve also learned about this:

The self-pronoun “ore ( 俺 )” is being used in this speech bubble, which out of the three speakers, only Minazuki uses. Sho and Adachi both use “boku ( 僕 )” (unless I’ve missed some instance of Adachi using “ore” I guess? I haven’t looked into it particularly deeply thus far, so it’s always possible. :P). [Insert some kind of concluding sentence here because I presently do not have one.]

[Clip grabbed from here, btw!]

#P4AU/P4U2 manga #Sho Minazuki #Capri's theories and queries #//wishing for more headspace scenes intensifies

[systematicallycapricious]

Just rambling about a couple things I noticed in the P4U2/P4AU manga while I was trying to find some stuff for Hi-no-Kagutsuchi.

Minazuki slew the reanimated remains of 024 when he awakened to Tsukiyomi. When I first read through this, I thought it was just a generic robot like the ones in Scarlet Memories(Ch13) that just happened to have the same hairstyle due to being the same generation. But no, this is the only one drawn like this in the manga I think, and it matches 024 perfectly. And she’s missing an eye! And an arm, but that eye is right there. Q^Q

The rings in Sho’s eyes seem to be caused by the Plume of Dusk’s awakening? Or like actualization or something? By that I mean the initial gain/formation of sentience, not every time Minazuki takes control of their body. Because almost every drawing of him as a child in this, where the eyes are visible anyway, those rings are absent. Then when Minazuki first awakens to Tsukiyomi, suddenly they’re there... and then suddenly they’re gone when he ends up reverting control back to Sho. There seems to have been enough room to draw them if they were supposed to still be there, so where did they go?

According to the game, Labrys specifically;

“He(Minazuki) was still unstable then and got captured. After that, Ikutsuki tried to erase Minazuki-kun while leaving the Persona.”

So perhaps it was due to him still coming into a stable existence? Which would kind of reflect in how Minazuki saving Sho during the ch13 combat chamber flashback seemed to be something more survival-instinctual and less really something coherent I guess, and why it began and ended so abruptly. (There wasn’t really a ‘personality’ to speak of yet, just that innate instinct of living things to struggle against impending harm and death... Which kind of now makes me wonder if Minazuki saw Sho’s body as his own when he first awakened to a sentience/consciousness, given there potentially wasn’t really time or a potential level of coherence to learn otherwise. Plumes consider themselves whatever they’re in the physical form of when it comes to sentience, so a human body would just, at first, be... a body, and by association it must be the Plume’s body, right? Then it wouldn’t just be “this is Sho’s body” from the start.. {Capri, you’ve been writing a similar scenario for how many months, and you just now consider that possibility? /)_-;} That understanding would come later. ..And also that makes me wonder now if Plumes inherently know that they’re Plumes when they become sentient enough to think/feel such things, or if they only learn that fact if an outside force enlightens them on the matter. Huh..)

And explain why the rings remain beyond that point I suppose... After all, Minazuki is, presumably, always aware and conscious after whatever point he fully stabilizes/solidifies, while when he’s not yet like that they fade when his consciousness does. Or, alternatively, just a stable soul versus one that’s kind of fluctuating in and out of existence I guess (maybe kind of like a kindling flame?)? (And additionally explain why they would match the ASSWs’ eyes, that also have those rings in them and more developed/sentient Plumes of Dusk within them? Though the rings were still drawn on the rebuilt 5th gens, whom I’m not sure if they actually have Plumes at this point or not (since they were removed during Labrys’s story, but were they put back in for the purposes of Sho’s past? Can ASSWs still logistically function with missing Plume/personality module components, since they’re still technically just robots and computers alongside that? :?), so maybe not? I guess on the ASSW’s they could instead be indicative of like camera lenses or something, since their eyes are artificial? But they were also included pretty prominently on other supernatural entities from the Sea of Souls/Collective Unconsciousness such as the Velvet Siblings and any and all Shadow-selves/replicas included, soo...)

Although then there’s these two pictures as well, so ???? They’re offhand, so there’s not really any context I can scour for clues for clarification on this. :T Sho went into his coma when they tried to remove Minazuki post-Awakening, so it doesn’t seem likely that these would be from after that? I guess it could be from before the Awakening but after that one specific combat test though? :? I suppose all that can be done on that is speculation.

Completely unrelatedly to that, Kanji just ripping a Shadow apart with his bare hands. ..in the middle of the torrent of Shadows, but regardless. Dang dude.

And Minazuki with a gun is terrifying and we should all be glad that he doesn’t have nor use one on the regular. That is all. xP

#SystematicRambles #P4AU/P4U2 manga #Capri's theories and queries

[systematicallycapricious]

Does the Labrys and Minazuki friendship agenda exist? Specifically Minazuki, not Sho. If so, where does one find it? If not, then may I make the case by pointing to various Labrys and Minazuki interactions in canon and say “there’s clearly something going on here and I think that it deserves to be explored more”? //points to P4U2 and P3:DiM voicelines. //points to Labrys’s P4U2 Arcade Mode run. //points to P4AU (and somewhat P4U? I forget for certain) Story Mode interactions; especially in EpP3.

Seriously. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I swear he talks to Labrys differently than he does everyone else (I’m not sure if Aigis is included in this as well or not?). And of course Labrys outreaches the same offer of pardon and support to Minazuki, specifically, as well as Sho, even if she has to beat him down first for both of their sakes.

Side note: Special mention goes to [this] Labrys and Aigis interaction in Aigis’s AC Mode run because I’m not sure of what to make of that random attack on Labrys in regards to this topic. Given the mention of a Plume reaction being sensed and being able to suddenly sneak up on people being a thing attributed to Minazuki and Tsukiyomi in this game, it leads me to think that it was Minazuki’s doing? (Though a Plume can be sensed in both Sho and Minazuki, so it’s primarily the latter that I’m basing that off of.) Alas, there’s not really much context for the event itself, as it happened off-screen, so I guess there’s really no way of knowing.

#Labrys #Sho Minazuki #ミナヅキショウ #Labrys & Minazuki #Capri's theories and queries

[systematicallycapricious]

Small wondering that could probably double as an AU-detail?

Spoilers for Persona 4, the Persona 4 Arena series, and the Persona 4 Arena Ultimax manga adaptation below the cut!

Okay so, I’m not sure if there’s anything in canon material that answers this question in any capacity or not, but so far I don’t think I’ve come across anything that does? I might just be forgetting, haven’t yet gotten to it, or unaware that it’s actually considered canon though.

Anyways, it’s been bugging me for a little while, how there seems to be some similarities between the ways Sho and General Teddie, and Minazuki and Kagutsuchi, conduct themselves. Which I suppose on some level makes sense, as Kagu is the embodiment of solitude and selfishness and all, and Teddie is already kind of exuberant and joke-loving so a somewhat more maleficent iteration of him would probably seem similar to Sho’s general demeanor. Or maybe I’m just imagining things that don’t exist, which is always a possibility. But going off of the ‘what if it actually means something’... What if Kagutsuchi was largely, or entirely, spawned from Sho and Minazuki? Yes, not just Sho. Though it’s more-so theory and headcanon as well than fact, I think that Minazuki likely was lonely to some degree as well, even if he might not consciously/purposefully recognize it. The “solitude” choices at the apex of Episodes P4 and P3 in Ultimax kind of allude to this, I think. After all, EpP4′s highlights how Minazuki feels as if he’s ‘just a strong consciousness that only exists here (that being in Sho’s mind/body, presumably)’, and how he is “no one”, which if you start to think about what that really entails, seems like it might be very lonely indeed. Who could recognize someone, something, that just lives within another person, essentially? And as for EpP3′s, that also highlights another truth about Minazuki’s existence too, I believe. Sho has Minazuki to turn to, but who does Minazuki have to turn to himself? To watch out for him? You could say “Sho”, but the question is, would he actually?

That’s getting a bit off topic though. So. In canon, Kagutsuchi mentions that he was “born when this town was enshrouded with fog”. Also in canon, Sho states that “Then right when that case was just about closed, that thing spoke to me. It asked if I wanted to destroy the world.” Now, if Sho observed the true whole case, his words could theoretically be referring to Izanami. But if he’s referring only to Adachi, then I believe that would place the time he’s referring to around... The end of December 2011, maybe January of 2012? I don’t recall exactly when they called the serial murders case truly ‘resolved’ after arresting Adachi for the crime. Then! If you take a look at the Ultimax manga adaptation, if you take the contents of Sho’s nightmare in chapters 13/14 as being temporally accurate, it appears to be implied that Kagutsuchi did indeed speak to Sho around that latter possible timeframe, given the scene shown of Sho observing Yu, Yosuke, and Chie during the time the townsfolk were freaking out about the fog. *Granted, there’s no given sense of temporal continuity between the end of the town scene and the start of the scene where Sho’s back at the safehouse, so it could be unrelated and more so a “example of one of the numerous times where Sho was upset by bonds-related things --- the culmination of times like those” kind of thing. (Though also maybe contrary to that but maybe conducive to that, in chapter 34 of the manga, Sho also says that “But I was wrong. I realized you had everything I could never hope to attain. That’s when the ‘voice’ first spoke to me. It asked if I wished to see this world perish.” So... it could have been referring to that scene in specific, or it could’ve been referring to an overall conclusion.) But if the two sources are combined, it seems to strengthen that theory.

{*Edit: …Also adding this in later, but as I was rereading the manga to find something for a friend, I realized that the scene where Sho presumably makes contact with Kagutsuchi shows the full moon in the starry sky through the ceiling (and it is legitimately the sky as far as I know). …That wouldn’t be possible if Inaba was still so foggy. /)_<; I think most of my point still stands, but this likely undermines that specific aspect of it.}

It would also make sense given it would take a bit of time to come up with and prepare for the scheme that Minazuki conjured-up, as well as the fact that the fog was somewhat of a merge between the TV World and the real world, thus, logically, supernatural entities would to be able to form easier or more directly from strong enough thoughts and emotions during this time, and to be able to communicate with people outside of the TV World easier too. (Given Kagu started out without a permanent tangible body, unlike Izanami who could interact with others as the gas station attendant, that might have played a large part in why he was able to contact Sho and Minazuki in the first place?) The effects the fog and Ameno Sagiri (I think?) had on the people in Inaba already provided the general ideas and perceptions of the populace (which is important for a world which reflects the thoughts and desires of man) required to found an entity like Kagutsuchi, via the “everyone averts their eyes from the world and lives only for themselves as Shadows” intention of the worlds-merge (or something to that effect), but it kind of seems like Sho and Minazuki were a significant driving force to his full actualization?

So, if we’re now operating under the assumption that Kagutsuchi came at least in a large part from Sho and Minazuki, it would explain why Kagu besought Sho specifically. Minazuki having a Persona or being a Plume himself could have factored into it to some degree as well, given to create and tame the Shadows necessary for recreating his body, Kagu needed power and a strong enough force of will or obedience, not to mention a vessel he could fuse all of that to (and Plumes are made of the same stuff as Shadows... though also technically everyone has a piece of Nyx in them thanks to their Shadows, so I’m not sure how much of a difference that makes). But there was theoretically a whole host of other humans in the Inaba region/town of Inaba that Kagutsuchi could have approached as well. Also adding to that, the amount of familiarity Kagu seems to have with the Investigation Team could’ve stemmed from everything Sho had seen up until that point. After all, if Kagutsuchi had just come into existence then, unless Sho or Minazuki went on at length about the Investigation Team to him (which is possible), or else Kagu just has some kind of supernatural abilities to acquire or inherently know that information, how would he have attained that information for himself?

And to tie this back around to the initial observation, it would explain why he can act and think so uncannily similar to the two at times. (And for extra tidbits, might potentially explain why both Kagutsuchi and Minazuki were planning on betraying the other for their own self gain, and how Kagu saw through Minazuki before Minazuki saw through Kagu. But again, that could just be a general archetype of mindset thing I suppose. They’re both of the type to do whatever it takes for their own self-gain, or in Minazuki’s case, gain for Sho technically.)

To add a counterpoint to my above argument though, it’s also entirely possible still that Sho and/or Minazuki just happened to share the same or similar mindset to Kagutsuchi’s domains the strongest out of any of the other potential people in Inaba. I’d assume that the vast majority of Inaba residents wouldn’t actually care to see the world ended when in their right states of mind, so they would lack the convictions to go through with such a thing, not to mention have any supernaturally-relevant abilities to do anything about it. So that would probably render any similarities in demeanor as entirely coincidence?

#Sho Minazuki #HinoKagutsuchi (Persona) #Capri's Persona-AU Musings #or maybe Capri's Persona-Canon Questioning? #you could take it as either I guess #maybe the answer to this is some well-known thing and I've just entirely missed it? #Capri's theories and queries