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supergenial · 4 years

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The Most Dangerous Predator in P5

Recently I came across some mildly spicy twitter mini-drama regarding the character Kawakami from Persona 5. On one hand you had people saying she's bad because she's a predator, and on the other you had people saying she's good because she's a depressed mommy gf with feet or whatever. Seeing as I previously took an extensive dump on another famous jrpg teacher, I found it rather interesting and thought I might as well chime in on this one too, so let's dive a bit into it.

For starters, I am generally ok with people hating Kawakami, as personally I'm more of a Makoto man myself (though there's way more reasons to hate her considering her career choice). I am also ok with people despising fictional characters for basically any reason, as I think hatred towards fictional characters isn't a particularly big deal or anything to get riled up about. What I find particular about this particular case with Kawakami is the idea that she is the exact same as Kamoshida, the other pedophilic teacher in the game, because if anything I find that she is the opposite

1) The role of Power in Persona 5

Persona 5 entirely revolves around the idea of Palaces, manifestations on a different plane of the psychological state of people in the regular plane of existence. These palaces spring up mainly because of the Power people hold over other people. Kamoshida holds absolute power over his students and the school, Madarame holds power over Yusuke and his disciples, that boring Yakuza guy had power over the entire city, Haru's dad has power over a billion dollar conglomerate, Sae has power over the court system and Bald Man has power over the country's politics. (Sorry, I played this when it came out and can’t be bothered to look up the names.)

The whole idea of palaces is to manifest that awful situation when someone holds absolute power over a certain place or a certain group of people with little to no consequence to keep their true nature in check. Now, the reason why pedophilia is wrong is very self-evident to anyone not residing in the bottom-right partition of the political compass, but it's fair to say that a big factor of why we find it so infuriating is how unjust and despicable it is due the sheer Power an adult can have over a minor, being able to physically overpower them in some cases, or psychologically manipulate them ("grooming") in others.

Hence it is a bit ridiculous to say this is Joker's relationship with Kawakami. Their relationship starts with Joker finding out about her embarrasing secret job. At this very moment a power relationship is built as Joker can easily ruin her entire life by simultaneously destroying her social standing while also taking away her already slim sources of income. It is because she understands this that Kawakami decides to follow along with whatever Joker says, as she literally has surrendered all power to him in this unfortunate twist of fate.

This can be clearly observed in the gameplay as the progression of her social link results in all sorts of perks that obviously have very little to no benefit for her. She cooks, makes tools, coffee, laundry, and even lets Joker slack off in class, oftentimes seeming rather bothered by having to be stuck doing these tasks. A further point can be made that their relationship of power is further exacerbated by their economical standing, as Joker (through the player's gameplay input) quickly becomes rich and one of her most reliant sources of income. He is not only blackmailing her, but is also taking advantage of how poor she is to coerce her into following his word. What a gem of a capitalist we have in our hands here.

Even if their relationship may possibly end in a lovers relationship, it is somewhat fair to assume that the start of this relationship was irreparably tainted. She absolutely had to be subservient to the guy because she had no other option, even if she does develop legitimate feelings eventually, you could still say that Joker has effectively groomed her into being his partner

If she was merely trying to get closer to him and groom him into his personal sex pet, her preferential treatment towards him would've started significantly earlier in the game as opposed to her openly showing disdain towards his presence, yet it is by Joker's action that any of these developments can be achieved for he holds all the power. This comes as no surprise for as I have previously stated elsewhere:

2) Player avatars are inherently creepy

If you've read my Byleth diatribe you already know where I'm coming from. There I argued that Byleth was creepy not by nature of being a teacher who can date their students, but rather because they are a player avatar with no personality who can mind control other characters into liking them. This is no different from Joker.

Merely by choosing to spend time with other characters these will inherently feel indebted to Joker, eventually unlocking social links that are merely soliloquys by the subjects in which the whole notion that they are multidimensional and interesting characters falls apart once you see them pour their soul out for someone whose reply will merely amount to two or three words, yet somehow will gain their utmost respect by uttering these generic replies.

So yeah, basically I just found it interesting because this is exactly the example that I mentioned on that one occasion, I said Byleth would be creepy even if they were a student who's dating a teacher, and this is exactly that same case, but they just had to double down on it and write an explicitly exploitative relationship where the player character acts in the exact same way that the game's villains do, but I guess without the framing of the palace and the magical monster fights Persona fans just get confused as to who's the good or the bad guy. Bravo Atlus, looking forward to SMTV in 2030!

Some additional less relevant points:

-Kawakami’s still a pedophile! Perfectly valid to hate her for that imo, personally I won’t because of the above, but you do you.

-I’m aware it’s a very small twitter poll and that at large the fanbase is much more likely to defend her than to attack her, hell I only found this one out because someone was dunking on it and had way more retweets than the original

-Again, I don’t think you’re inherently creepy for playing these games, they’re ultimately good fun and they’re in fashion, just keep a critical eye out for why words are bad, rather than obsessing over the actual words.

-What the actual fuck, how was Morgana that low? Even on a rigged poll they should be second place at best, no excuses.

#persona 5 #deep analysis #lmao imagine talking about persona 5 in 2020 the year of our lord jesus christ #tw: grooming and stuff that's adjacent to grooming

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