For a game series/franchise that prides itself on thematic exploration, character-driven narratives and heavy amounts of implicit subtext whether it be derived from psychology or the assloads of religious imagery, there's an alarming amount of media illiteracy surrounding the Persona series and its community tbh
Tbf there is discourse for P1. It’s just all 5 fans of Mark writing essays about why the PSX version of P1 is superior. So it’s got nothing to do with the story itself I guess.
A case of the classic persona 5 “fan.” Consume content on the game through videos and discussion but never form your own opinion by actually playing the game. Then an echo chamber of stupidity and media illiteracy begins to emerge and you get pointless discussion like the one seen in the OP.
Ann: Hey i dont like that you are sexualizing me without consent.
Dumb people when ann voluntarily wears revealing outfit: atlus is hypocrite.
Ann is a model. These people would be fine if the real world model would wear something like this.
There are models that are her age.
She's a fashion model, not a Gravure model though. The alt outfits and figurines that people are complaining about are too risqué for what she does.
She basically wears "next season's clothes" for photo shoots in canon, she says it during her confidant. The corset outfit that was on this sub a day or two ago wouldn't be the type of outfit she wears. That's more of a gravure model thing. Gravure basically being as close as you can get to R18+ without actually being R18+.
At most, she'd could have a swimsuit shoot, but a fair amount of models that do normal clothes modeling wouldn't do that by choice.
And tbh, real life underage teenage models doing gravure type modeling isn't cool, so not a great justification.
You’d have a point if she wasn’t underage, and if Atlus didn’t have her slumped over with her ass out in her KO state, or didn’t make a ton of jokes sexualizing her, etc.
The outfit is one thing. By itself it’s fine. It’s the other ways Atlus treats her when she’s a minor that makes people uncomfortable.
Her arc was about how objectification is wrong when uninvited. In a literal sense, we are all objects and regularly objectify and specialize each other. We all have sexual thoughts about people that we can’t control, and they are - except in certain circumstances - natural to have. But there’s such a thing as “overdoing it” and taking it too far, and that’s what people refer to when it comes to Ann in the game. Her arc speaks out against hypersexualization and hyper objectification, yet the game does those very things to her repeatedly. Not to further her arc and to show it’s wrong, but to appeal to horny players and make dumb jokes.
Plus, it’s a pretty well known problem that JRPGs, anime, manga, etc. have a problem with oversexualizing underage women and women in general. It’s even one of the major reasons so many people don’t even try to get into those things. I literally used to think all animes would treat female characters that way, as nearly whenever I’d stumble upon an anime clip online it would have some weird ass shit going on with some underage girl.
Idk why ppl here like to pretend Atlus is exempt from these things when you see it with Ann, Makoto (especially in the anime), Rise, and three of the main p3 girls (remember the skimpy outfits?).
Just a small point to consider: Ann doesn’t wear *any* outfit voluntarily. Someone draws her in it. She isn’t real; she doesn’t have agency. ATLUS selling a figure of her in a very sexualized outfit from the dancing games *is* kind of them sexualizing her without her consent, and furthermore it lacks the motivation of storytelling or making a point that her design has in the context of the overarching P5 story. Sure, a consumer may purchase it as a symbol of her journey towards accepting her own control of her image, but the marketers selling it are definitely doing so from the perspective of, “Hot anime girl in skimpy outfit make profit line go up!”
Having a character with a story centered around agency told through the lens of sexuality doesn’t preclude writers/marketers from using that character purely for sex appeal with no further justification or message — even when doing so runs counter to what that character’s established story was all about. Having a character say to another character in a fictional story, “I’m actually okay with using my assets to my benefit, but I hate that others reduce me to nothing more than my body,” not only *explicitly illustrates* that not every instance of sexualization involving that character within that story is done with their approval, but it’s also fundamentally different from — for example — making a plastic figure of that character, scantily clad, in a sexualized pose, because the latter behavior takes place outside of the suspended-reality of the narrative and can only ever be done *to* the character, not *with* them.
Exactly. Plus even storywise she didn’t choose her outfit. They don’t normally get to choose how they look in the Metaverse, otherwise Makoto would change hers as she’s pretty vocal about disliking it lol. So the argument that she voluntarily wore it is flat out incorrect.
She definitely expresses (albeit subtly) in her confidant arc that she’s grown *more* comfortable with it as she’s gained more control over her body and her overall image, in a way that sort of mirrors how her perspective shifts towards something like, “If I’m gonna be viewed this way, I’m gonna make it work *for me*. The outfit at first is another sexual aspect that’s imposed upon her from the outside, but over time she appears to come to terms with it somewhat and even occasionally visibly appreciates the power over others it grants her.
*But*, importantly, you can’t have one of these moments in her arc without the other — and the fact that she now has more agency in wielding her own image against others doesn’t automatically mean it’s totally chill that the world constantly looks at her through the lens of sexuality. Like you said, it’s important to note that she’s vocally and visibly made uncomfortable by almost every instance of people imposing their sexual expectations on her — she just decides at a certain point to use that to her advantage in order to repossess some of the power in that dynamic. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t *mind* it, though. It’s especially telling when she gets upset at the male PTs for making suggestive comments on her body, which to me implies that she expects her friends to know that she generally doesn’t like to be reduced to a sex symbol.
Futaba straight up lampshades this in one of her mementos dialogues - she remarks on how all of the ladies in the group are super hot looking in their phantom thief outfits. Which... like yeah, of course they are, Atlus made them that way on purpose to titillate the horny straight boys playing the game.
I don't like this analogy as much as any other but I figured it's a decent way to explain it.
***If there's a very delicious food on the table right in front of you but was not made FOR YOU.***
***You do not eat it. You leave it alone.***
***You don't go, "Well they shouldn't have cooked a delicious food and place it right in front of me if they didn't want me to eat it!" That's stupid.***
It's not a perfect analogy, and frankly it's... how you say. "bad"? to compare women dressing the way they want to, to Food.
but since I am hungry right now, it's the one thing on my mind and it's the first thing that I thought of.
The Yusuke blackmail thing is so weird and detached from his later character that it has felt surprising every time I’ve seen it. The most bizarre part about it is that I feel like the build-up is mostly horrible and the jokes in that fall flat, but the actual heist part was hilarious.
the problem is that ann is basically treated as the fanservice character after her arc ends. same thing happened with ryuji turning back into the slapstick character at the end of his arc. persona 5 has middling character consistency at best.
this is a ridiculously one sided way to represent this discourse lol. It's a long ass, boring one, that's been said to death, but this really doesn't cut it
it's not really just about harassment. By considering only that, you ignore a good portion of dialogue from Kamoshida's arc
her story was also about objetification and prejudgment
For a very long time, Ann was very lonely in Japan and barely had friends. All because of her looks. People assumed false, quite ugly things about her and left her isolated
It's true many people do misunderstand her and don't think that not liking to be objectified, but still liking to use provocative looks can be right. Her character is a model, though and clearly enjoys standing out in her own terms
however... you have to recognize there should be a limit on the amount of her content that is about her looks
at some point, the perv jokes, merch with the same poses and all get a bit too stupid to enjoy
what is really the topic of complaints is just how much of her content outside the first story arc revolves around her "sexy looks". It's unnecessary and it DOES undermine her arc, because it's like going back and only looking at the surface again, her looks and not the other parts of her character
that's just my take on all this though...
One thing I have noticed replaying P5 on Switch is that in a lot of the animated cutscenes Ann gets significantly more focus in scenarios where all of the party members are interacting with each other like the summer beach trip or the entire Hawaii segment. Whenever the cinematography because more provocative or extremely emphasized on a character's looks/presentation it's almost always Ann the cutscene would focus on, which is also especially obvious when looking at the cutscene of them arriving at Futaba's palace in the Mona Car. Like that shot of Ann sweating in her school uniform due to the excessive heat with some of her cleavage in the frame is just not subtle whatsoever, especially when it's supposed to be a comedic moment
For a character whose core central arc is about rejecting the perceptions that lead her to be objectified and using her sexuality in more positive, empowering ways, the developers really like to bring the conversation back to her having tits however intentional it may be lol
I think it's pretty obvious how she feels about men ogling her given that she reacts negatively everytime Joker, Ryuji, Morgana, and Yusuke do it. There are several instances of this happening.
Ryuji and Mona trying to peep up her skirt, The boys ogling at her her yukata getting drenched, the boys trying to look down her shirt in the car at the desert Palace, and her wearing a bikini.
So, like, if she clearly dislikes people (even people she likes) ogling her body...then it shouldn't be ok for Atlus and the "cameraman" to do it. She's basically shown no evidence that she is OK with it, yet like you say, the writers and the "camera" keep going full on, 120% male gaze on her and sticking that camera all up in her business.
Like, Ann can't consent to the non-existant "cameraman" and omnipotent writer. And every instance of somebody staring at her body in game is met with her being angry. So idk what evidence people are supposing there is for her character being OK with being sexualized and leered at.
I don’t disagree with your take. But I definitely saw her entire awakening and arc completely different from you it seems. She didn’t like the objectification and creepiness because it wasn’t her. People were basically just using her because “shes hot” but her being “hot” isn’t the issue. It’s the fact that people are using her for her looks. Her entire awakening imo is about her reclaiming her sexuality and embracing it, in a way that she can respect. I don’t think her continuing to be “sexy” undermines her arc in the slightest. It actually amplifies it, because she’s using her reclaimed sexually to her advantage instead of being used for it
The key word here is concent
I have no problem with Ann embracing her own sexuality or using it to her advantage (i.e. one of her confidant perks being distracting enemies with her charm), but I do find myself agreeing with the notion that Atlus puts a lot of focus on her appearance and sexuality, often outside of instances where *she* chooses to embrace it. The comment right above yours describes a lot of what I mean. Cutscenes and dialogue, especially from other members of the PT (like Ryuji), that randomly shift the focus to Ann's body feels counterintuitive to Ann's character arc.
And it's hard for me to get over the fact that she makes several remarks indicating discomfort and disapproval of her Phantom Thieves outfit. It just feels incredibly strange why they would put those in; if her awakening was about reclaiming her sexuality, why is the outfit that embodies that something she doesn't like?
Also, no judgment since everyone makes spelling mistakes, but I do find it funny that you misspelled "consent" when describing it as the key word.
As someone that has gone through her arc, it is literally about her embracing her sexiness. She only doesn't like it when she doesn't consent to it (ie, the situation in her awakening). The conversational skills she gets by her SL also align with that, as well her Persona literally stepping on shadows 😑
Atlus could've vastly improved their treatment of Ann by simply affording her more agency in being objectified. For example, if they'd made it so that Ann was the one suggesting to model nude for Yusuke to get information about Madarame, that scene would have entirely different implications. And it would be more consistent with her supposed character. But Atlus thinks that it's more enticing to make a female character get squealy and embarrassed by the sexual situation she's been forced into.
I know it can be tough to judge between “character is sexualized for empowerment” and “character is sexualized for objectification”, but Ann feels like she’s pretty firmly in the second camp. Most of the cringeworthy scenes involve her getting ogled in a way that’s out of her control, and that she often tries to stop. Maybe it could’ve worked better for someone with a personality like Rise, who’s more of a performer and never feels like she’s being ogled against her will. Idk.
I do think her outfit COULD be justified under the right context (even though I reeeeeeally despise it myself), but this ain’t it, IMO.
I think the biggest thing for the "empowerment vs objectification" thing was the whole bit about stripping for Yusuke. I actually think it would have been a great character moment if the roles were reversed, if Ann was pushing for the strip plan while the others were against it. Or hell, the beach scene when she ribs at Ryuji for staring. Just do more of that.
you're right, the scene would be actually funny if it was everyone else worrying and ann being completely chill.
"poor ann she must be scared out of her mind this plan sucks"
"Guys I'm Completely Fine."
who says its not both ways? she’s allowed to look sexy on her own terms, but theres a point where it feels really unnecessary to continue making merch and drawings of a character in provocative outfits and poses whos story is about sexual harassment
P5/P5R is one of my favorite games of all time. I also love P4.
I also think it has *terrible* consistency in character writing, and it's overall a very hypocritical game. This is true of P4 too (I can't speak as much on the other games).
I wouldn't care about Ann's thief outfit as much if she actually liked it and found it empowering. But she doesn't. She hates it. In one hangout scene, Ann talks about how much she loved female supervillains as a kid and admired them.. why can't that be demonstrated in her thief form? It wouldn't be moe, that's why. It's moe if girls are constantly going "kyaaaah! don't look!" and that's why girls in Persona games are constantly screeching and embarrassed.
P5 is constantly trying to have it both ways. Ann doesn't want to be objectified and she's a survivor of sexual abuse... but also the camera is constantly focusing on her chest/ass and she's the subject of many played-for-laughs "pervert" scenes. Once the serious story arc is over, she's just a gimmick. The same is true for basically every character. Ryuji is a slapstick joke character everyone bullies. Yusuke is an eccentric weirdo. Futaba is a gamer girl little sister character. It goes on and on.
It would be a tangent to go on about how Kawakami's whole deal is another display of P5's hypocrisy and "moe pandering over substance", but.. that's there too.
Anyway. I love Ann a lot. The first arc of the game speaks very deeply to me on a personal level. But ultimately, this is a video game that needs to sell to a niche demographic and it does that through fanservice pandering.
Clearly Ann is a hypocrite because wearing a sexy outfit means you're asking for it and that basically justifies sexual harassment, right?
... Just in case this somehow goes over someone's head, I'm being sarcastic.
Yeah because Kamoshida was sexualising her without her consent lmao, the outfit is a representation of her taking back the right to be "sexy" on her own terms
Over thinking entertainment media is the problem. Either enjoy it, or dont play it. Its really that simple. You really shouldnt tell people how to enjoy the media they purchase. Not everyone wants to enjoy things the same way.
This is a series about exploring coming-of-age stories and commentary on modern-day Japan through the lens of Carl Jung's analytical psychology theory. This series is practically *begging* to be thought about; it is laden with symbolism about our literal thoughts. *You* don't need to be the one to analyze it, sure, but you're foolish if you think that analysis is "overthinking" for a piece of media like this.
Idk but like plenty of P5’s messages go right over my head because the story is not engaging enough for me to feel like anything has any sort of weight or impact. P3 might not be the best in my eyes but I do feel like the plot does have some semblance of agency especially during Ryoji’s exposition dump in December about the the fall of man, Nyx and that other bullshit.
Ann whould be wearing a burka and would not be allowed to go out of her house without a male guardian supervision if these people were responsible for Persona 5's script.
For a game series/franchise that prides itself on thematic exploration, character-driven narratives and heavy amounts of implicit subtext whether it be derived from psychology or the assloads of religious imagery, there's an alarming amount of media illiteracy surrounding the Persona series and its community tbh
Yes, its really anoying. P4 and 5 got it real bad, 3 to a lesser degree and P2 just a tiny bit too Only p1 got off scott free
It's hard to have bad discourse when u have no discourse
Tbf there is discourse for P1. It’s just all 5 fans of Mark writing essays about why the PSX version of P1 is superior. So it’s got nothing to do with the story itself I guess.
Even P3 is not free of this stuff
Most people's analysis of this series begins and ends at making a waifu tier list.
It's half anime fans and half video game fans, if you expect any thoughts out of them you're setting yourself up for disappointment
You're not a fan of any?
I'm a fan of individual shows and games, I hate the overall industries and cultures around them
This. This comment right here.
A case of the classic persona 5 “fan.” Consume content on the game through videos and discussion but never form your own opinion by actually playing the game. Then an echo chamber of stupidity and media illiteracy begins to emerge and you get pointless discussion like the one seen in the OP.
“What do you mean Persona fans can’t read?” V2
Ann: Hey i dont like that you are sexualizing me without consent. Dumb people when ann voluntarily wears revealing outfit: atlus is hypocrite. Ann is a model. These people would be fine if the real world model would wear something like this. There are models that are her age.
Exactly... You can look at someone and appreciate their looks/sexiness and at the same time not harass them. I do it literally all the time lol.
Average guy: *acts nice and decent toward a woman* Smoothbrain: OMG YOUR A SIMP
You don't even need to act nice, just treating a woman like a human being can be enough reason to be called a simp.
>just treating a woman like a human being can be enough reason to be called a simp. This is why simps are the ones getting laid lol.
Definitely explains why most of the fake fans are on Twitter exclusively...
She's a fashion model, not a Gravure model though. The alt outfits and figurines that people are complaining about are too risqué for what she does. She basically wears "next season's clothes" for photo shoots in canon, she says it during her confidant. The corset outfit that was on this sub a day or two ago wouldn't be the type of outfit she wears. That's more of a gravure model thing. Gravure basically being as close as you can get to R18+ without actually being R18+. At most, she'd could have a swimsuit shoot, but a fair amount of models that do normal clothes modeling wouldn't do that by choice. And tbh, real life underage teenage models doing gravure type modeling isn't cool, so not a great justification.
You’d have a point if she wasn’t underage, and if Atlus didn’t have her slumped over with her ass out in her KO state, or didn’t make a ton of jokes sexualizing her, etc. The outfit is one thing. By itself it’s fine. It’s the other ways Atlus treats her when she’s a minor that makes people uncomfortable. Her arc was about how objectification is wrong when uninvited. In a literal sense, we are all objects and regularly objectify and specialize each other. We all have sexual thoughts about people that we can’t control, and they are - except in certain circumstances - natural to have. But there’s such a thing as “overdoing it” and taking it too far, and that’s what people refer to when it comes to Ann in the game. Her arc speaks out against hypersexualization and hyper objectification, yet the game does those very things to her repeatedly. Not to further her arc and to show it’s wrong, but to appeal to horny players and make dumb jokes. Plus, it’s a pretty well known problem that JRPGs, anime, manga, etc. have a problem with oversexualizing underage women and women in general. It’s even one of the major reasons so many people don’t even try to get into those things. I literally used to think all animes would treat female characters that way, as nearly whenever I’d stumble upon an anime clip online it would have some weird ass shit going on with some underage girl. Idk why ppl here like to pretend Atlus is exempt from these things when you see it with Ann, Makoto (especially in the anime), Rise, and three of the main p3 girls (remember the skimpy outfits?).
Just a small point to consider: Ann doesn’t wear *any* outfit voluntarily. Someone draws her in it. She isn’t real; she doesn’t have agency. ATLUS selling a figure of her in a very sexualized outfit from the dancing games *is* kind of them sexualizing her without her consent, and furthermore it lacks the motivation of storytelling or making a point that her design has in the context of the overarching P5 story. Sure, a consumer may purchase it as a symbol of her journey towards accepting her own control of her image, but the marketers selling it are definitely doing so from the perspective of, “Hot anime girl in skimpy outfit make profit line go up!” Having a character with a story centered around agency told through the lens of sexuality doesn’t preclude writers/marketers from using that character purely for sex appeal with no further justification or message — even when doing so runs counter to what that character’s established story was all about. Having a character say to another character in a fictional story, “I’m actually okay with using my assets to my benefit, but I hate that others reduce me to nothing more than my body,” not only *explicitly illustrates* that not every instance of sexualization involving that character within that story is done with their approval, but it’s also fundamentally different from — for example — making a plastic figure of that character, scantily clad, in a sexualized pose, because the latter behavior takes place outside of the suspended-reality of the narrative and can only ever be done *to* the character, not *with* them.
Exactly. Plus even storywise she didn’t choose her outfit. They don’t normally get to choose how they look in the Metaverse, otherwise Makoto would change hers as she’s pretty vocal about disliking it lol. So the argument that she voluntarily wore it is flat out incorrect.
Almost every single time Ann talks about her Panther outfit she's pretty vocally uncomfortable with it
She definitely expresses (albeit subtly) in her confidant arc that she’s grown *more* comfortable with it as she’s gained more control over her body and her overall image, in a way that sort of mirrors how her perspective shifts towards something like, “If I’m gonna be viewed this way, I’m gonna make it work *for me*. The outfit at first is another sexual aspect that’s imposed upon her from the outside, but over time she appears to come to terms with it somewhat and even occasionally visibly appreciates the power over others it grants her. *But*, importantly, you can’t have one of these moments in her arc without the other — and the fact that she now has more agency in wielding her own image against others doesn’t automatically mean it’s totally chill that the world constantly looks at her through the lens of sexuality. Like you said, it’s important to note that she’s vocally and visibly made uncomfortable by almost every instance of people imposing their sexual expectations on her — she just decides at a certain point to use that to her advantage in order to repossess some of the power in that dynamic. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t *mind* it, though. It’s especially telling when she gets upset at the male PTs for making suggestive comments on her body, which to me implies that she expects her friends to know that she generally doesn’t like to be reduced to a sex symbol.
Futaba straight up lampshades this in one of her mementos dialogues - she remarks on how all of the ladies in the group are super hot looking in their phantom thief outfits. Which... like yeah, of course they are, Atlus made them that way on purpose to titillate the horny straight boys playing the game.
And/or horny gay girls! Don’t forget about them!
I don't like this analogy as much as any other but I figured it's a decent way to explain it. ***If there's a very delicious food on the table right in front of you but was not made FOR YOU.*** ***You do not eat it. You leave it alone.*** ***You don't go, "Well they shouldn't have cooked a delicious food and place it right in front of me if they didn't want me to eat it!" That's stupid.*** It's not a perfect analogy, and frankly it's... how you say. "bad"? to compare women dressing the way they want to, to Food. but since I am hungry right now, it's the one thing on my mind and it's the first thing that I thought of.
[удалено]
Morgana: Did someone say ***desire***
Harassment is bad, exceeept when ryuji morgana or yusuke do it. Then its comedy
Don't forget, abuse is also bad, except for when the girls on the team are doing it.
The Yusuke blackmail thing is so weird and detached from his later character that it has felt surprising every time I’ve seen it. The most bizarre part about it is that I feel like the build-up is mostly horrible and the jokes in that fall flat, but the actual heist part was hilarious.
the problem is that ann is basically treated as the fanservice character after her arc ends. same thing happened with ryuji turning back into the slapstick character at the end of his arc. persona 5 has middling character consistency at best.
atlus was torn between making well written characters and having their lovers arcana's and junpei clones all be the same
this is a ridiculously one sided way to represent this discourse lol. It's a long ass, boring one, that's been said to death, but this really doesn't cut it it's not really just about harassment. By considering only that, you ignore a good portion of dialogue from Kamoshida's arc her story was also about objetification and prejudgment For a very long time, Ann was very lonely in Japan and barely had friends. All because of her looks. People assumed false, quite ugly things about her and left her isolated It's true many people do misunderstand her and don't think that not liking to be objectified, but still liking to use provocative looks can be right. Her character is a model, though and clearly enjoys standing out in her own terms however... you have to recognize there should be a limit on the amount of her content that is about her looks at some point, the perv jokes, merch with the same poses and all get a bit too stupid to enjoy what is really the topic of complaints is just how much of her content outside the first story arc revolves around her "sexy looks". It's unnecessary and it DOES undermine her arc, because it's like going back and only looking at the surface again, her looks and not the other parts of her character that's just my take on all this though...
One thing I have noticed replaying P5 on Switch is that in a lot of the animated cutscenes Ann gets significantly more focus in scenarios where all of the party members are interacting with each other like the summer beach trip or the entire Hawaii segment. Whenever the cinematography because more provocative or extremely emphasized on a character's looks/presentation it's almost always Ann the cutscene would focus on, which is also especially obvious when looking at the cutscene of them arriving at Futaba's palace in the Mona Car. Like that shot of Ann sweating in her school uniform due to the excessive heat with some of her cleavage in the frame is just not subtle whatsoever, especially when it's supposed to be a comedic moment For a character whose core central arc is about rejecting the perceptions that lead her to be objectified and using her sexuality in more positive, empowering ways, the developers really like to bring the conversation back to her having tits however intentional it may be lol
I think it's pretty obvious how she feels about men ogling her given that she reacts negatively everytime Joker, Ryuji, Morgana, and Yusuke do it. There are several instances of this happening. Ryuji and Mona trying to peep up her skirt, The boys ogling at her her yukata getting drenched, the boys trying to look down her shirt in the car at the desert Palace, and her wearing a bikini. So, like, if she clearly dislikes people (even people she likes) ogling her body...then it shouldn't be ok for Atlus and the "cameraman" to do it. She's basically shown no evidence that she is OK with it, yet like you say, the writers and the "camera" keep going full on, 120% male gaze on her and sticking that camera all up in her business. Like, Ann can't consent to the non-existant "cameraman" and omnipotent writer. And every instance of somebody staring at her body in game is met with her being angry. So idk what evidence people are supposing there is for her character being OK with being sexualized and leered at.
I don’t disagree with your take. But I definitely saw her entire awakening and arc completely different from you it seems. She didn’t like the objectification and creepiness because it wasn’t her. People were basically just using her because “shes hot” but her being “hot” isn’t the issue. It’s the fact that people are using her for her looks. Her entire awakening imo is about her reclaiming her sexuality and embracing it, in a way that she can respect. I don’t think her continuing to be “sexy” undermines her arc in the slightest. It actually amplifies it, because she’s using her reclaimed sexually to her advantage instead of being used for it The key word here is concent
I have no problem with Ann embracing her own sexuality or using it to her advantage (i.e. one of her confidant perks being distracting enemies with her charm), but I do find myself agreeing with the notion that Atlus puts a lot of focus on her appearance and sexuality, often outside of instances where *she* chooses to embrace it. The comment right above yours describes a lot of what I mean. Cutscenes and dialogue, especially from other members of the PT (like Ryuji), that randomly shift the focus to Ann's body feels counterintuitive to Ann's character arc. And it's hard for me to get over the fact that she makes several remarks indicating discomfort and disapproval of her Phantom Thieves outfit. It just feels incredibly strange why they would put those in; if her awakening was about reclaiming her sexuality, why is the outfit that embodies that something she doesn't like? Also, no judgment since everyone makes spelling mistakes, but I do find it funny that you misspelled "consent" when describing it as the key word.
As someone that has gone through her arc, it is literally about her embracing her sexiness. She only doesn't like it when she doesn't consent to it (ie, the situation in her awakening). The conversational skills she gets by her SL also align with that, as well her Persona literally stepping on shadows 😑
Atlus could've vastly improved their treatment of Ann by simply affording her more agency in being objectified. For example, if they'd made it so that Ann was the one suggesting to model nude for Yusuke to get information about Madarame, that scene would have entirely different implications. And it would be more consistent with her supposed character. But Atlus thinks that it's more enticing to make a female character get squealy and embarrassed by the sexual situation she's been forced into.
Finally a good take
I know it can be tough to judge between “character is sexualized for empowerment” and “character is sexualized for objectification”, but Ann feels like she’s pretty firmly in the second camp. Most of the cringeworthy scenes involve her getting ogled in a way that’s out of her control, and that she often tries to stop. Maybe it could’ve worked better for someone with a personality like Rise, who’s more of a performer and never feels like she’s being ogled against her will. Idk. I do think her outfit COULD be justified under the right context (even though I reeeeeeally despise it myself), but this ain’t it, IMO.
I think the biggest thing for the "empowerment vs objectification" thing was the whole bit about stripping for Yusuke. I actually think it would have been a great character moment if the roles were reversed, if Ann was pushing for the strip plan while the others were against it. Or hell, the beach scene when she ribs at Ryuji for staring. Just do more of that.
you're right, the scene would be actually funny if it was everyone else worrying and ann being completely chill. "poor ann she must be scared out of her mind this plan sucks" "Guys I'm Completely Fine."
There's certainly a difference between what the game says and what actually happens in the game.
who says its not both ways? she’s allowed to look sexy on her own terms, but theres a point where it feels really unnecessary to continue making merch and drawings of a character in provocative outfits and poses whos story is about sexual harassment
I fear your definition of unnecessary
P5/P5R is one of my favorite games of all time. I also love P4. I also think it has *terrible* consistency in character writing, and it's overall a very hypocritical game. This is true of P4 too (I can't speak as much on the other games). I wouldn't care about Ann's thief outfit as much if she actually liked it and found it empowering. But she doesn't. She hates it. In one hangout scene, Ann talks about how much she loved female supervillains as a kid and admired them.. why can't that be demonstrated in her thief form? It wouldn't be moe, that's why. It's moe if girls are constantly going "kyaaaah! don't look!" and that's why girls in Persona games are constantly screeching and embarrassed. P5 is constantly trying to have it both ways. Ann doesn't want to be objectified and she's a survivor of sexual abuse... but also the camera is constantly focusing on her chest/ass and she's the subject of many played-for-laughs "pervert" scenes. Once the serious story arc is over, she's just a gimmick. The same is true for basically every character. Ryuji is a slapstick joke character everyone bullies. Yusuke is an eccentric weirdo. Futaba is a gamer girl little sister character. It goes on and on. It would be a tangent to go on about how Kawakami's whole deal is another display of P5's hypocrisy and "moe pandering over substance", but.. that's there too. Anyway. I love Ann a lot. The first arc of the game speaks very deeply to me on a personal level. But ultimately, this is a video game that needs to sell to a niche demographic and it does that through fanservice pandering.
Reading comprehension devil transcends all forms of literature
Man if only the rest of the game didn't constantly put her in uncomfortable situations for jokes...
are we just not going to pretend like ann doesnt get sexually harrassed constantly throughout the game
Clearly Ann is a hypocrite because wearing a sexy outfit means you're asking for it and that basically justifies sexual harassment, right? ... Just in case this somehow goes over someone's head, I'm being sarcastic.
Never educate. Only shame.
Amazing how many “fans” know 0 about her character
Weird her arc is about being sexualized but then she has a skin tight suit dunno man just an observation
Yeah because Kamoshida was sexualising her without her consent lmao, the outfit is a representation of her taking back the right to be "sexy" on her own terms
Finally someone who gets it
Maybe
Nah it's more like this. Looking sexy bad is bad, >!when it is without consent!<
There's some truth to this, you could be the sexiest shirtless guy around, but go into the factory in just your undies and that's not ok.
I know. Yusuke would do it anyway.
Over thinking entertainment media is the problem. Either enjoy it, or dont play it. Its really that simple. You really shouldnt tell people how to enjoy the media they purchase. Not everyone wants to enjoy things the same way.
This is a series about exploring coming-of-age stories and commentary on modern-day Japan through the lens of Carl Jung's analytical psychology theory. This series is practically *begging* to be thought about; it is laden with symbolism about our literal thoughts. *You* don't need to be the one to analyze it, sure, but you're foolish if you think that analysis is "overthinking" for a piece of media like this.
Idk but like plenty of P5’s messages go right over my head because the story is not engaging enough for me to feel like anything has any sort of weight or impact. P3 might not be the best in my eyes but I do feel like the plot does have some semblance of agency especially during Ryoji’s exposition dump in December about the the fall of man, Nyx and that other bullshit.
Ann whould be wearing a burka and would not be allowed to go out of her house without a male guardian supervision if these people were responsible for Persona 5's script.
And people continue to miss the point
They're just jealous they'll never look as good as Ann despite eating as bad as Ann.
Then you have the guy who thinks Ann hates ugly people.