Persona 3/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why didn't the Main, Junpei, and Yukari bring their Evokers with them to the thugs' hangout? Unlike their normal weapons, they're small enough to conceal, and it's, at least up to that point, neither stated nor implied that Persona use is restricted to the Dark Hour. Even if they didn't want to hurt anyone, a monster flying out of your head and spewing fire will intimidate just about anyone... and isn't something they're likely to tell anyone else about, either.
    • Because it would risk blowing the Masquerade. The Kirijo Group seems to go to great lengths to cover up the existence of Personas, Shadows, and the Dark Hour. If something were to happen, questions would be asked, a link would be traced back to the Kirijo, and quite possibly the secret would eventually be fished out. Then we'd have a populace on the verge of panic and more than a few people who are still holding grudges after ten years out for blood.
  • Why doesn't Mitsuru use Honorifics? Surely as the resident Ojou she knows just how rude it is to refer to someone (who you don't have an intimate relationship with) without an honorific.
    • The honorific use in this game is limited almost entirely to "-sempai". Otherwise, except for Junpei calling Yukari "Yuka-tan", its honorific free. Mitsuru does refer to everyone by their last names though.
      • No it's not... Ken uses "-san" with just about everybody, half the time they call the dog "Koro-chan," and I know I heard some other ones pop up.
        • And also when out on a date with your current girlfriend, they almost always use your name with "-san" at the end.
          • In the Old Couple social link, they use the horoific "-chan" when referring to you.
          • Also, following MC's trip to the movies with Aigis, she refers to MC as "NAME-ninja," though that was clearly a joke.
    • Maybe the translators just thought that having her refer to everyone by last name, no honorific, would be cold and impersonal enough without adding honorifics. It's an event when she goes to first name toward the end of her Social Link.
      • As an advocate of Woolseyisms over formal equivalent translations, I would heartily approve of this... had there not been any honorifics at all. I know that a game is often translated and localised by multiple people, but it's almost as if the person writing Mitsuru's dialogue disagreed with the person writing Junpei and Ken's dialogue on the best way to do things. This shouldn't happen.
        • Or, for Wild Mass Guessing territory: Maybe Mitsuru spent a fair amount of time abroad, like in France (considering how often she sprinkles French throughout her speech), and so is somewhat more relaxed about using honorifics with the rest of the group, judging just using the last name to be polite enough?
          • ^ Not speculation actually, one of her admirers notes at one point that she has been to France and wonders if she is fulent in French.
    • It's actually left alone from the Japanese - in the Japanese version, that is, Mitsuru does the exact same thing. Everyone to her is last name/no honorifics except for Akihiko, who is first name/no honorifics. They did change things around in the translation for most of the other characters - no one ever calls Ken by his first name in the Japanese version; most of the 2nd years refer to the 3rd years [last name]-senpai rather than [first name]-san, etc. - so the point about inconsistent translation still stands.
      • The obvious explanation for why Mitsuru calls everyone the ways he does is simple- she's the sempai. It's not rude for a sempai to address her juniors this way, especially as Mitsuru has a very businesslike personality, and she calls Akihiko by his first name because they're friends and equals.
  • Once you've established a Social Link with someone, they start calling you asking you if you want to hang out on Sunday. Even Yukari does this. This would be all fine and dandy if Yukari didn't live two doors down the hall from you.
    • Eh, its Japan, thats how they roll.
      • Upstairs, and remember how much Chihiro exploded at the very notion of the Protagonist being alone with Mitsuru. They might not want to imply anything to the rest of the group. >_>
  • If I'm so bloody important, why doesn't anyone bother using recarm or a revival bead on me?
    • Because when you drop, the Shadows reunite with Nyx/the Appriser, the seal on the Appriser is gone, and the world ends without any hope of you changing it.
    • Because that would make the game easier. Megaten games are all about being Nintendo Hard.
    • It also kinda balances the fact that you can juggle your powers, strengths, and weaknesses by creating and switching your Persona. Customizing them in just the right manner can make you utterly broken most of the time.
    • Because you're Aeris, and you've been stabbed by Sephiroth.
  • What IS Elizabeth anyway? For that matter, what are the residents of the Velvet Room? They're not human, not Shadows, have little to no understanding of human society and culture yet help people out but don't save the world themselves... I like the fact that Elizabeth's whole purpose is to deduce what she is, but couldn't the game just tell us?
    • Because mysteries tend to lose their appeal once you know the answer.
    • One theory is that they are collecting the ultimate personas the Varios MC's of the franchise create for something unknown to the player since when you are about to end or has ened he says something along the lines of:"Your job is done,go home" and that scene in P4 where Igor and Margareth receive the World Arcana persona Izanagi-no-Okami is a little out of place.
    • I always wondered if she and Margaret were related to Takaya, and Igor picked them up instead of Ikutsuki; it'd explain a lot, anyway. I suspect we'll find out in later games, especially if they keep with the whole "Elizabeth went to search for a way to save the Protagonist" thing.
    • In Persona 2, Igor introduces himself as a 'servant of Philmon',the Persona universes' resident Big Good, who is made of /represents all that is good within the minds of humanity. Igor, Elizabeth, T Heodore and Margaret are either his creation or beings of a similar nature (avatars, perhaps) working towards the same goal.
      • The the main story behind the whole Persona is that Philmon and Nyarlathotep have a bet on whether humans can become enlightened beings, I think that Igor, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Theodore are just enlightened beings on the judging panel and are there because Philmon himself is forbidden from intervening (while Nyarlathotep isn't.) and sends those humans some help.
      • In Persona 4, while Margaret is talking about Elizabeth and the MC of Persona 3 she mentions that the "chains of time are loose for us residents" and several times she specifically refers to the other characters as 'humans'. That suggests that she and Elizabeth aren't human and that they might be immortal.
      • The "residents" are almost certainly not human, considering that you can watch Theodore drink a can of machine oil. His dialogue prior to the fight with him in Monad indicates that Theo himself does not know what he is, and is trying to find out; that's why he wants to fight the protagonist. (I haven't fought Elizabeth, so I don't know if she makes similar comments or not.)
  • Why is the persona Gabriel a woman? Gabriel isn't even a girl's name! (That would be Gabrielle).
    • Gabriel is a woman in certain interpretations(not sure but I think that both The Other Wiki and Gabriel's compendium record mention this), besides Karol can be a guy's name so why not have Gabriel for a girl(that and it would be even more Did Not Do the Research if they changed the name since most angels have names that end in "-el", and the ones that don't were most likely translated from Hebrew).
      • Firstly, I never said they should change the name of the angel, just the gender. Secondly, Karol and Gabriel are two different names, Gabriel being primarily a boy's name. By your logic, I guess it's perfectly acceptable to name a boy Laura.
      • The Laura thing has actually happened....
  • At the start of the game, they make a big deal out of the fact that you have to shoot yourself to summon your Persona (this is even used as an excuse to make Minato the leader initially)... But then, it never bothers anybody ever again, including a 12 year old kid! Why make a big fuss over it if it's apparently that easy after all?
    • A) They get used to it, B) they are in more dangerous battles and thus their will to live overcomes their fear, C) Ken was determined to avenge his mom (and atleast saw Shinji when his mom died), and/or D) they simply aren't vocal about their fears because they don't wanna seem useless.
    • They definitely get used to it. Early in the game, for instance, Yukari sometimes whimpers "I have to be brave" to herself before she uses her evoker in a fight. As the characters get more experienced, she gradually switches to "how do you like the new me?"
      • If I remember correctly, the characters say a unique line when they first use their persona. I remember that Yukari's is "I have to be brave". So far, that's the only time she said it.
  • Speaking of which, how did Fuuka even know how to use it at first?
    • Her persona ability is pretty much having psychic powers(some of which she is able to use without summoning her persona), maybe she read someone's mind?.
      • She might've had a similar moment to Minato, although that is pretty much WMG.
    • When Akihiko warns her that the evoker's not a weapon, she says "I know" in her Power Echoes voice, the one that later kicks in whenever she's merged with her persona. So my guess is that her mind instinctively synced up with Lucia for a moment, and she had a flash of telepathic insight about shadows, personas and evokers. Probably nothing she could put into words, but enough to know that to fight the shadows, she has to use the evoker on herself.
      • Basically, she scanned the evoker.
        • Although bizarrely I'm pretty sure there are several situations where she is seen just calling up Lucia, like when they're looking for Junpei after he's been captured. So it seems that her abilities might be so much a part of her, and so passive, that she doesn't really need the evoker.
  • It's been this long yet nobody is bothered by the fact that Death was able to officially able to enroll in the MC's high school with no issues(regarding the fact that he has 1) no real parents despite his claim to the contrary, 2)no connections to anybody that could set up false info(like the Kirijo group did for Aigis), and 3)no personal info registered with the government)? Oh and he only just got a physical body a few days before his first day of class.
    • It's clearly demonstrated in-game that he has the ability to alter people's minds; perhaps he was (consciously or otherwise) projecting some kind of Weirdness Censor to keep people from probing into his background.
      • Unconsciously, most likely. The guy had no idea who he really was until that fateful midnight encounter with Aigis.
  • During one scene, a member of your group (Junpei, I think) is punched by a thug, and keels over. They're set on fire in tartarus. Can someone explain how Fire doesn't do anything, but a punch makes you keel over?
    • I figure Persona-based enhancements are considerably less while not under the effects of the Dark Hour. Otherwise I would have never lost that goddam track meet.
      • Obviously that thug had a wind element punch and Junpei reacted acordingly
      • Except that the Kendo version of Chariot (and possibly the others) implies that the MC is good at it because of his time in Tartarus.
      • But being good at wielding a 2-h sword isn't a persona effect. The MC has experience with all of the weapons he uses prior to the game's start. And the game only implies that trekking Tartarus gives the characters a workout, they still have to run up a tall tower and use weapons after all.
      • Yes, it is. Junpei's sword stance is completely idiotic; you don't wield a BFS like a baseball bat. It works anyway because he's a Persona user.
      • Then why does he almost trip on the second part of his critical hit? It's possible to wield a sword like a bat, it's just not smart. Junpei is an idiot and the size of the weapons in P3 aren't all proportional to the characters' bodies. Also the other characters minus the MC, Mitsuru(but she's been fighting shadows since a pretty young age so getting fencing lessons isn't out of the realm of possibilities for her), Koromaru, and Shinji(though someone as strong as him probably wouldn't need training to beat someone with a blunt object) have explanations as to why they're good at wielding their given weapon(I didn't list Junpei because he is not good at wielding a sword, but there is an explanation as to why he uses it like a bat).
      • Fencing Club probably helped contribute to Mitsuru's skills.
    • MC seems to be fairly adept at punching out a few thugs in the event for lovers rank 5 even without being prepared. Perhaps he never got a chance to before Shinji appeared.
    • It's because the power of the Persona protects people from otherwordly phenomena, a concept that goes aaalll the way back to the original Persona (where unawakened characters, or characters whose Personas have been sealed away or lost, receive fatal injuries from the tiniest attacks.) Persona users are just as vulnerable as any other human to ordinary "real-world" injury, but their Personas make them resist magic and the physical attacks of Shadows (or demons, as the case may be.) How this relates to Takaya's gun and Jin's grenades, well...
      • Simple, damage done in battles is not the same as out of it, due to use of skills. Your persona could be set on fire, or you could be set on fire, or Agi could be more powerful than usual, but they would all have different outcomes. This is why no-one used a Recover skill on Minato, after he used the Great Seal.
  • So what, exactly, is the difference between all the Anthropomorphic Personifications of Death in the game? There's Thanatos, natch. Then the Reaper. Then the Appraiser/Nyx Avatar, of which Thanatos was a fragment. Then, finally, the shapeless entity within Nyx, which actually casts Death.
    • Thantos is a more like a sherpa, his job in greek mythology is to guide souls to Hades. The Reaper is kinda like a bouncer, in Tartarus at least. The Appraiser is sort of one aspect of Nyx. Nyx itself is death personified. At least, that's the impression I got.
    • In Greek mythology Nyx is actually the goddess of the night. So as far as the whole death thing is concerned...
    • Nyx in the game is the Great Shadow of Death (fundamentally, anyway; she has another role in the cosmos as well, but ultimately she's the Death Arcana), and not based on the Greek mythic figure.
    • The personas are a reflection of the person and emerge from the sea of your soul. With that in mind, I'd say the persona Thanatos is a separate reflection of the Appraiser within the MC's soul, due to them being one for so long. Gathering the shadows together is what creates the Appraiser, so the Reaper in Tartarus might be a sort of pre-Appraiser that manifests when you stay on one floor long enough for the shadows to react to your intrusion by merging together and forming him. The real Appraiser was formed when the Kirijo researchers deliberately collected enough shadows to push them from shadows to Reaper to outright Appraiser, and of course, the Appraiser is an avatar of Nyx (which means all the shadows are fragments of the Appraiser, waiting to be put together, which is what Ryoji meant by "I'm the embodiment of all shadows").
      • Actually if you really think about it there's a good chance that the Reaper is trying to free the Appraiser. By hunting down your party to slaughter them the Reaper can automatically let Death out, freeing the shadows to merge and join into the Appraiser. It's actually fairly likely that the Reaper is simply an aspect of Death or the Appraiser, same thing really, that was left over after Aigis' sealing. When she crammed it into what would become its host a bit was left over that became said monstrosity who ruins our days.
    • This troper always thought about the Reaper as a completely separate entity from the whole Thanatos-Appraiser-Nyx mess : she figured The Reaper was the personnification of Death by humans, that is, how we normally represent it (hence its scarecrow-like appearance), while Nyx is the real deal - the concept of Absolute Death itself, unfathomable by human minds (hence its extremely conceptual final appearance).
  • During the opening of the game... the whole "Dark Hour" thing. Where everything turns into coffins, and blood covers the streets, and nothing is working, and the main character just walks towards the dorm with nothing more than a "Huh?" Someone explain that to me please? Because if it were me in that situation, I would not walk nonchalantly to the dorms. It would be more of a sprint of terror.
    • Balls of STEEL. That's the only explanation as Junpei cried in terror every night until Akihiko approached him.
      • The MC experienced the Dark Hour every night since he was a kid, he's used to it. Junpei became aware of it quite recently.
      • The whole "seeing the Dark Hour since he was a kid" thing can also explain why the guy is so damn quiet (hey, gameplay and story integration!). I mean, he was, what, six or seven when Death was sealed inside him? Kids tend to talk about what they see without any sort of reservations, I bet people thought he had problems at the hospital when he's telling all the nurses about how everything turns "weird" at midnight. Eventually, you just tend to stop talking about it when people start looking at you like you're crazy (see: Tidus and Zanarkand in Final Fantasy X). Plus, the poor kid lost his parents and was essentially mind-raped by Aigis. That trauma combined with seeing things that other people don't see - it's no wonder he guy's so quiet, he probably felt lonely, outcast, and thought he was a freak until the events of Persona 3. Oh, yeah, that also explains why, when Mitsuru and Ikutsuki were "observing" him at the beginning of the game, he apparently had no first-time symptoms - no memory loss or disorientation, etc. And why he's "lived in many different places".
        • A good example of this kind of situation would be young Shiki from Tsukihime when he awoke at the hospital. After a time of adaptation, Shiki doesn't talk about the strange lines he see.
    • The way he looks around wide-eyed at the coffins as he's walking, and then back down at the map to the dorm kinda suggested to me that it's his first time in the Dark Hour, and doesn't know what the heck's going on with the city. He's just not experiencing the emotional breakdown that the rest of SEES talked about and Junpei went through (carrying the spirit of Death around inside you has its advantages). I took the way he earlier looked up at the train station's lights turning off with a sigh as him mistaking the Dark Hour for the station closing and the workers turning the lights off on him, though it could also mean he's used to the Dark Hour and knows it's happening again (carrying the spirit of Death around inside you might have its disadvantages, too).
      • Minato is surprised when he sees the coffins and things, but his Expression is too low enough for him to show anything more than Dull Surprise. Unfortunately, he's in the wrong game to raise it to normal levels.
        • The Dark Hour is a phenomenon that seems to be entirely centered around that particular location where the Kirijo group did its research. That and the surrounding area are likely so tainted by the Shadows that it's become a bigger thing than it ever was before. It was probably initially like the TV World - accessed by a very particular medium only - until the group started doing its fateful research. Otherwise the MC would be more familiar with Pharos as well since he only pops up once you experience the Dark Hour and his other appearances are during that same time. So it's far more likely that he's only seeing it for the first time. His disproportionately cool response is probably a side effect of having Death itself inside of him for ten years. I can't imagine that does great things for your emotional balance. He'd probably barely bat an eye if a car accident happened right in front of him... or he had to pick up a gun to shoot himself in the head to kill a giant shadow monster that appeared out of nowhere.
          • Incorrect sir. Yakushima vacation, after Yukari freaks out. Junpei comes to get the two of you because the Dark Hour is about to start, and Yukari says, "Oh right, the Dark Hour happens no matter where you are..." A far more likely scenario is that the protagonist's sleep habits have adapted to avoid experiencing the Dark Hour--in other words, he goes to sleep before midnight all the time. Thus this is the first time in a while he's seen it, so it takes him aback. For his part, Pharos only woke up when he comes back to the city, so he really is new. Remember you can ask Yukari "Does that kid live here too?" after you meet her.
    • As one other explanation, there are actual psychological disorders where one fails to differentiate reality from dreams. It's entirely possible that the MC has been thinking the entire time that the Dark Hour was merely a recurring "dream" he was having, which he thought was so outlandish that it couldn't possibly be true. This sort of creates it's own Weirdness Censor, in that the MC was simply believing anything out of the ordinary to merely be his own brain going nuts. It's only after meeting other people who experience the Dark Hour as well that the MC figures out it's reality. And just how long the Dark Hour has been real.
  • Why is Yukari so concerned about you looking up if she is wearing something so short that it shows everything when she runs
    • She doesn't wanna admit that, despite her attitude, she dresses like a tease.
    • Since you're the leader and she runs behind you, there usually isn't anyone else running in her wake, whereas she was the first one climbing onto the subway car.
  • Why are all the evokers for humans made into guns? If they can make one in the shape of a collar, why not make them into something that isn't illegal?
    • Because the shape is needed. The Evoker summons the user's Persona by forcing them to undergo mental stress. They attribute the Evoker's shape to a gun, and when you pull the trigger of a gun, you shoot. So by putting the "gun" to their head and firing, they're forced to overcome the primal fear of death, and the Persona is summoned in the process.
      • So how do they make one into the shape of a collar?
      • It makes no real sense. The above explanation is a Handwave, why would pulling the trigger of an obvious toy gun cause mental trauma? FES Retcons this by making the evokers run on magic feathers...
        • I think the above theory was only in the manga, as a form of symbolism it fits Jungian psychology. Plot wise? Maybe It Runs on Nonsensoleum.
    • The opening scene with Yukari using the evoker in the bathroom seemed to make it clear that it feels like a gunshot to the head for them. It's not like lifting a toy gun and pulling the trigger, it's the experience of having your brains blown out, the experience of dying, that summons the persona. The evoker's Applied Phlebotinum just makes it possible to do it more than once.
    • So that Akihiko would join them. Mitsuru says this in words. It's all Akihiko's fault.
      • It's not clear that Mitsuru's specifically saying that it's the reason Evokers look like guns - she only says that she chose her approach to get Akihiko's attention.
  • Why do we never get to talk to Akihiko at school? We can see everyone else somewhere if we bother to look around, but never him.
    • Akihiko is an exercise junkie, he's most likely either working out at a gym or practicing boxing. Though they should have really made him more buff so it'd be more apparent.
      • Hold It! This troper having been a part of a Japanese (college) boxing team can attest- japanese boxers are toned rather than bulky. The maximum weight one can fight at is Middleweight, 75 kilos (165 pounds). Bulking up to be a strong Heavyweight is not a Japanese thing. They also don't cut weight pre-fight as dramatically; my experience was, on average, only 2-3 kilos (five pounds). Akihiko looks just like what I'd expect him to look like.
    • This is rectified in P3P, at least in the female protagonist's route.
  • After all the buildup to the school festival, it feels like they were originally going to go through with it but had to cut it out due to some reason or other. Is this true, or am I reading too much into it? It just seems like a perfect opportunity for another romantic Social Link event or something.
    • IIRC, the main focus was the Maid Cafe. They might have just decided to axe it in favor of maid costumes equips for all the girls instead of an event with just the cafe and one or two girls in costume.
  • The lack of Shout Outs in the movie festival! What's with that?
  • In the event for fortune rank 2, the guy tells Fukka to spend time outside, then tells her she shouldn't be walking home. What?
    • Perhaps he meant she needed the air and sunlight (that girl is rather pale), but didn't want her exerting herself?
      • If memory serves, he offered to pay a limo to take her home and asked her to take her shirt off. He's either nuts or has a weird sense of humor.
        • Weird sense of humor seems most probable. If listening to what he and Hidetoshi are talking about in their room on the Kyoto trip doesn't say anything about that, I don't know what does.
  • Why, why, besides possibly Rule of Cool, does Koramaru fight with a knife held between his teeth? He's a dog, just bite the enemies already! They could still upgrade his attack stat by just giving it a boost every few levels and, while the image does look cool, who teaches their dog to fight with a knife? That must have been one seriously badass shrine priest...
    • There is no "besides Rule of Cool". That's the whole point of Rule of Cool; there doesn't have to be a "besides".
    • Okay, then I won't cut the makers a break, and we'll instead say it's not that cool. Any better answers?
    • Would YOU bite a Shadow? What if it's toxic? What if you tear off a fragment and it leads to Body Horror? Or maybe it just tastes bad. Regardless, touching a Shadow with your naked skin (or fang) sounds like a very bad idea when Shadows are made of coalesced emotion mixed in with a heavy dose of nihilism. Even Akihiko and MC wear gloves when fighting Shadows rather than touch them directly. Heck, for all we know, biting at the Shadows attacking the Shrine contributed to Koro-chan's injuries in the first place.
    • He's still attacking the shadows with his open mouth, so it doesn't seem like much of an improvement, but I guess whoever trained Koramaru might have done so for that reason (to be fair, I wouldn't exactly sic my dog on a Shadow either, and the knife might've just been a quickly improvised solution until Koramaru proved to be really good at it). So the only question now is who did the training. Maybe Shinji, if there was a time gap between the gang adopting Koramaru and his first available night in Tartarus? Or maybe the priest himself, if he had the potential and had been fighting shadows alongside Krioramaru for awhile before he died...
  • Yukari's reactions to Fuuka and Ken joining SEES are just plain weird. When Fuuka eagerly joins and happily takes over their Tartarus missions and organizing their upstairs meetings, Yukari spends several weeks fretting about Mitsuru "making" Fuuka join and whether Fuuka should really be on the team. But when Ikutsuki eagerly presents 10 year-old Ken as their newest member, and handwaves any protest about his age with "hey, he asked if he could join", she's happy about it! Was Yukari just jealous that she's not the only girl (well, besides Mitsuru) in SEES anymore?
    • At that point in the story Yukari wasn't trusting of Mitsuru(i.e. not even wanting to stay with her when they went to search for Fuuka), after the story arc where they meet Aigis she lightens up.
    • And Yukari already had known Ken for a few months at that point (if you visit the shrine on Sundays you can see her and Junpei talking to Ken before he moves in, even), and might have just felt more confident in his abilities and maturity. With Fuuka, she didn't know her, and Fuuka had that reputation for being weak and sickly... (as well as the asking to join/being "forced" thing)
  • Why can't we join the same club as any of the other members of SEES besides Fuuka?
    • Presumably the clubs you can join are the only ones that have space for extra members.
      • You can join Student Council with Mitsuru.
  • Couldn't they have healed Akihiko's wounds from the beginning of the game, or does Dia not work that way?
    • My friends and I have always jokingly assumed Mitsuru refused to let him heal it with magic because she was angry he led a Shadow to the dorms/wrecked the place.
  • You are told not to mention SEES to Ken initially. Aigis joins before Ken does and makes no effort to avoid being seen. "Oh hi Ken, ignore Aigis, she is, um, uh... a cosplayer!"
    • I could understand Aigis making no effort if they didn't mention Ken to her before. She might have thought they were already considering him (or just not being aware of how weird she really is when going back to Iwatodai; wasn't she just put away and in sleep mode until they came to Yakushima?) so decided to get to know him, but the others should have done something.
    • Ken does before joining make clear that he knows Aigis is a robot... he explicitly (and casually) comments about it in the lounge. And it's also really clear that he knows about Personas, the Dark Hour, and all that long before joining... Heck, Ikutsuki even introduces him as a potential SEES candidate while he's standing right there. I was under the impression that Mitsuru asks you not to tell him about SEES missions more than letting him know the stuff exists.
  • Aigis has recoil when firing a railgun. I don't know a lot about railguns, but I am pretty sure they don't operate in a way that has recoil (a seris of magnets moving a projectile at high speeds IIRC. how does that work in the dark hour anyways?)
    • There's a railgun? Also it works in the dark hour because it's being powered by Aigis. Apparently the Kirijo group found a way to make some electronics work in the dark hour.
      • There is a weapon for Aigis called "Railgun". It may be chest (normal) only though. Though I guess running the same way Aigis does works fine.
      • I'm pretty sure you can buy it from Kurosawa. Sources list around level 55, but I can only say I got it right around the end of November.
    • As long as the gun is exerting force on the projectile, the projectile exerts force on the gun. Doesn't matter whether it uses combustion or magnetism. You only avoid recoil with weapons like rockets, which move by burning fuel and don't depend on the gun as anything more than a glorified carrying case.
  • When looking for the key to the Gym, why does Yukari go 'Mind if I borrow this?' when you're the only two people there?
    • She's joking.
  • Why can't you offer Chihiro some of the countless yen you have to buy the book?
    • Being the person she is, she probably wouldn't have accepted the offer in the first place.
    • The Let's Play addresses this nicely in saying that Minato felt it wisest not to mention that he had several million yen in his pockets from plundering the depths of the school at midnight.
  • There's no Hug Junpei button. Why isn't there a Hug Junpei button?!
    • For that matter there needs to be a Hug Everyone button. (Oooor just about everyone. Nonetheless!)
  • If the "execution" is being frozen via Mitsuru's Persona, what about Ryoji?
    • Since Ryoji's not a member of SEES and isn't in on The Masquerade, she doesn't have the same authority over him as she does with the rest of the guys. She probably just scared him off with a glare and a stern warning about reporting him to the teachers, and then turned back around to deal with the other three personally once he was gone. And if what happened to Aigis when she tried to attack Ryoji with her persona is any indication, that's probably a very good thing.
    • I always assumed she kicked them in the nuts.
      • In the PSP version this isn't the case because they explicitly talk about how it took the guys a "long time to defrost", etc. but that still leaves the problem with Ryoji. The above explanation is probably the best bet... even though Ryoji stated that the execution was terrible as well, and that leads us to think she did more than shake a finger at him.
    • Ryoji's Weirdness Censor backfired on him. The "I belong here; this is normal; don't worry about it" vibes were so strong that Mitsuru's mind never even registered the fact that she shouldn't be using her Persona around him. And since the censor seems to affect him as much as anyone else, he never questioned the matter either (until he came into his own power, at which point it all made sense anyway).
  • Why, after they get back into fieldwork do Mitsuru and Akihiko still allow the New Guy to be the leader rather than the more experienced seniors?
    • They've seen him in action and decided he was a good enough leader to continue on. I guess it'd be better to train him more than have the rest of the team screwed if the seniors got put out of commission during a battle.
    • I take it that because it is difficult to order his use of Wild Card (opposed to the fairly constant abilities of allys) work, they thought it would be easier to have him work it into the plan.
    • In addition, Protagonist was the only combat leader that Yukari and Junpei had worked under, and they didn't have time to retrain them to their leadership style outside Tartarus.
  • What exactly was the reason for Thanatos coming out of Orpheus in the beginning of the game? Was it just because of Ryoji being sealed inside him?
    • Yes. And probably because, since it was the first time the Protagonist manifested his Persona, the immense trauma (and probably more than a bit of nudging from Pharos) made the other Persona burst through. Considering how long it was cooped up in there, more than likely it took the first chance at freedom and ran with it.
    • Also, since defeating the arcana shadows absorbs them back into Death and the MC was nowhere near strong enough to fight one of them on his own, Pharos/Death/Ryoji had a good reason for jumping in to make sure he didn't lose. It's interesting to wonder, though, whether it was just trying to absorb The Magician, or if it was also acting out of genuine concern for the MC.
    • Rule of Cool was the reason.
  • In the Empress Social Link Mitsuru says she has never been in a theater before, except she was during summer vacation.
    • FES retcon, since original did not have Summer Movie options. Purely a Slip-Up.
  • Why does the police station stock and sell Aigis customized arm cannons?
    • It isn't the police station, it's a weapons collector who happens to be a policeman. That doesn't answer the question though.
      • Actually, it is the police station. Check in the game. Just sayin'.
    • The Kirijo group is supplying him with them, according to The Answer.
  • If Yukari's concerned with people looking up her skirt, even if she is usually in the back, why is her skirt so high up? Mitsuru's and Fuuka's outfits easily show that the skirt is barely above the knee, yet Yukari's is all the way up her thighs!
    • She was only concerned about it because she was going up a ladder and had Junpei right behind her; if he looked up while she was getting to the top, he would see up her skirt no matter what length it was.
  • Akihiko and Ken spend most of The Journey dealing with the stuff in their pasts on various levels, and have a noticeable focus on doing things for the sake of those they've lost. Mitsuru and Yukari spend the second half of the Journey talking about their futures, not looking back, and embracing their new selves. Why are these views reversed for The Answer?
    • Accumulated stress over fighting Shadows over time, having to go back to that after a period of normalcy, massive amounts of survivor's guilt over The MC's death, high tension over fighting in the Abyss of Time, and then suddenly being handed what appears to be a perfect Reset Button. To be frank, the closest ones to thinking straight are Aigis, Metis, Junpei, and Fuuka, and that's just barely. I don't think it's supposed to make sense, because it's the characters basically breaking down and letting things they normally would never say or do happen.
  • How did Koromaru get all the way up to the top of the tower to stop Ikutsuki? They were at the top of Tartarus, but the blocks haven't all been unlocked at that point, right? So how did he get up there? Did Igor and Elizabeth open up the sections to let him through, just this once, or did Koromaru somehow figure out how to use the teleporter thing?
    • They were on top of the school observatory, if there's any shred of truth to the news reports (they said Ikutsuki's body was found at the base of the observatory, and they assumed he fell off by accident while stargazing). You can see Tartarus looming behind them, so that'd make sense, and the observatory might have had an easy way to get to the top from the outside, like a fire escape.
      • First, don't fire escapes usually have the ladder pulled up off the ground unless they're being used, or is there a different setup in Japan? Second, how would he know to get up there? Koro-chan's a smart doggie, but that's pushing it a little. Third, keep in mind that the news reports haven't exactly been all that accurate thus far. Remember Shinji and Takeharu Kirijo?
        • The game does pepper you with "the mystery of the school observatory!" text shortly before the event, and never again afterwards, so you're meant to infer that indeed they were on top of it (or its transmogrified, Dark Hour version, anyway. The base levels of Tartarus seems to encompass the entire school campus, and sections of it might not necessarily reach as high as the central tower.) Whether or not it's an un-transformed school building or a transformed version thereof, Koromaru might have just taken the stairs inside the building to get to the roof. Who says he had to take an outside route? From what we know of dogs in media, it's easy to infer that he just followed the scent from the dorm to the observatory, and up whatever route Ikutsuki and Aigis took to the roof. Also, the news reports about Shinjiro and Takeharu Kirijo were deliberately manipulated by the Kirijo Group to preserve The Masquerade. Likewise, there's no need for them to hide where Ikutsuki met his end, just how. Both situations are perfectly consistent with the protagonists' needs and context.
      • Many fire escapes use stairs, not ladders, and aren't ever locked: I'd just assume an outside route because you'd think Ikutsuki and Aigis would at least close the door on their way up to the roof. But if they didn't, or a latch didn't catch, or Koromaru found a way to get the door open himself (and I've seen real-life dogs come up with creative ways to get a door open, so it's possible), then yeah, he could have just followed their trail inside.
    • The actual movie of the event clears all doubt: they're on top of the school observatory, with the main tower of Tartarus looming high above them. This official image displays the observatory standing quite separate from Tartarus itself. The only question is, how Koromaru found them. If the observatory structure is part of Tartarus... he just climbed up. It's merely a lot of stairs. Otherwise, he found his way inside an ordinary building. Ikutsuki probably didn't think anyone would follow (it IS the Dark Hour) and neglected to bar the way.
      • You don't need the video to make it clear. Simply paying attention makes it clear- the game outright, in text, on screen, for everyone to see, says that you are on top of the observatory.
  • In the answer, why did Aigis fight Junpei and Koromaru? Both groups agreed that Yukari's idea was wrong, but they didnt have any real quarrel with each other. What were they fighting for?
    • Aigis wanted to see what happened to the MC, but Junpei feared it could mess up something, Aigis wanted to use the key, regardless of purpose, Junpei wanted to leave everything as it is. Also, they HAD to figth each other because at that time Akihiko and Ken were already soul-trapped
      • But Aigis didn't decide what she wanted to do until after that fight, so that couldn't have been a reason.
      • Before the battle, Aigis hadn't decided what she wanted to do, so Junpei probably didn't want to give up his key when there was still the possibility that Aigis would choose to go back to the past like Yukari and Mitsuru.
      • Metis explains that once one individual becomes turned into the flames in The Colliseum, they can't be restored until a winner is decided.(And if they waste time, the fires will burn out and those people will die.) In order to save them, they have no choice but to fight.
  • Why is the item for Hermit captured on a cellphone instead of the high quality and handiness of the "print screen" key?
    • He did use the print screen key. He just sent it to his cellphone as well.
  • Okay, you go to the film festival with Fuuka, she gets really curious about an iron she saw in the film. But, the survailance system in the dorm has to work in some way that's fundamentally different from all the stuff that stops working during the dark hour. Plus, she lives in the same dorm as a sapient robot. She sees more interesting stuff every day, and she's curious about an iron?
    • I guess it's that the iron is more useful in common-daily life.
    • She's also very shy and doesn't like to upset people, so even though she's probably immensely curious about Aigis and the Dark Hour equipment, she'd feel uncomfortable asking Aigis questions about how she works, or speaking out of turn to Mitsuru or Ikutsuki.
      • OR Fuuka is just ridiculously curious. The fact that she found that interesting does not mean she doesnt find Aigis or the Dark Hour interesting anymore.
  • Why did they leave the honorifics in? It just sounds awkward.
    • It fit perfectly with high school anime atmosphere, nothing weird with that.
    • Same reason some pro manga translators do it. Number one, there's nuances related to honorific usage that get lost due to English not really having anything comparable. Number two, the market for the product is niche enough that they don't have to worry about anyone not understanding them. Number three, the market in question is so narrow its primarily composed of otaku, japanophiles, and the like, most of whom prefer such things to be left in.
    • Going too far in reverse of the Macekere of the last time somebody translated a Persona game?
  • So what happened to everyone at the end of The Answer? Half of them are still orphans, and the other half still come from broken homes.
    • Life gose on as it was suppose to in the end of The Journey. The Answer doesn't deal with their personal life at all.
      • And we could say they matured from all those problems (and some of them are fixed by/because the MC, like Yukari ´s case) and, maybe the kirijo group helped them economically, regardless of what happens after, the game ends there and there is where it ends.
      • Also, Akihiko does appears in Trinity Soul anime. So you might find some clue about him there.
  • Who thought recuriting a 10 year old to fight horror monsters, and endure mentally an dpyshically drianing ordeals was a good idea? Particurly when said 10 year old lost his mommy to another member of the group?
    • Ikutsuki did. No one else but Akihiko and Mitsuru knew of that time, and they were clearly against it but Ikutsuki went on talking about the tests that showed his potential, since getting more members to defeat shadows and get closer to Nyx was probably what he thinking of.
  • Why does Persona 4 get so much crap about supposdly having an idiot plot and an obvious villan, when the people in this game also do stupid crap (see above) and the villain is far more obvious? Is it because Persona 4 has so much more depth? Or does the horror atmosphere and clichestorm of anime cliches give it a free pass? I mean I didn't know Adachi was the villain, and it wasn't that obvious from any clue in game, but I knew the chair person was evil the SECOND i heard his voice, witht he creepy smile, unnatural niceness and the fact he doesn't really help you. Yet everyone obeys him mindlessly and no one things to yell IDIOT PLOT at Persona 3?
    • What would they think he was up to? There wasn't any indication he had anything to gain from the Dark Hour. Really, assuming, "He sounds weird! Everything he's told us is a lie and will kill everyone!" is not a logical procession of thought. Nothing Ikutsuki's actually doing peg him as a villain, just some of his mannerisms. And the game has already established Igor as someone who's obviously evil, but isn't. But let's say they did make the inductive leap and figured out he was evil, what should they have done? Kill him and hope the Dark Hour goes away? Break into the school and dynamite it?
    • You never hang out at Gamefaqs do you? Besides, Adachi being the culprit is still an idiot plot because you don't even find out until the end and you only find out through a lucky guess.
    • There's nothing lucky about it, you find out through process of elimination. It can't be your party members or your social links, Dojima or Nanako, or the Mitsuo and Nametame, The only person left who was plausible was Adachi.
    • Besides the mannerisms there isn't anything in Persona 3 to suggest that there was a human involved, whereas Persona 4 made it clear from the start that a human was responsible. You might even say that the games had it in reverse orders with Ikutsuki's treachery not being too obvious until midway through and the supernatural problem more obvious and in Persona 4 the serial killer being obvious while Izanami comes (mostly) out of nowhere.
  • Okay, so what exactly are the Shadows? I've played P3 and a little bit of P4 (just fought Shadow Kanji), and I've been trying to figure out what exactly a Shadow is. As far as I can remember, there's a couple things I know for sure about Shadows: a) they're "fragments" of Nyx; and b) they seem to be related to the human psyche somehow: everyone appears to have a Shadow inside, and if they're able to face and "tame" it, it turns into what's known as a Persona. It also makes sense that the SEES needed Evokers to force their Persona out, because they haven't gone through the process of "facing themselves" like the members of the investigation team did on P4. Also, the Shadows (the 12 bosses, to be more specific) seemed to feed off people's minds in P3 (like this scene suggests), making them go BSOD (Apathy Syndrome), though that's probably just what Nyx would do to kill off everyone, and that's why they did it. Turns out my text ended up quite confusing.Okay, so how would you sum all of that up into one convincing definition of what a Shadows is? I'm curious to see your theories.
    • Negative emotion coalescing into physical form, with a tendency to form Eldritch Abomination-level aggregates when a large enough group are unified by a common sentiment or negative will. Known aggregates include Nyarlathotep, Erebus, Nyx, and Izanami.
      • So Shadows are initially created by the human psyche, and then evolve into the beings that are fought in the game? If so, how do they break out from the people's minds? When they die, perhaps?
      • No, we know from boss battles of Persona 4 that they take form well before death. They're just usually restricted to sub-dimensions that exist deep within the human collective unconscious (also known as The Land Inside The TV), until a powerful enough aggregate (or human foolishness) can create temporary gateways to the real world such as is found in The Dark Hour of P3 and The Fog of P4. Why they take the forms like that is just an aspect of that world within our minds; Philemon and Igor are similar aggregate products of positive emotion beings, so we know that it happens to all emotions, although negative ones are generally the only ones that get agressive enough to start killing and thus get notice.
        • Damn, you're good. Your explanation makes complete sense to me, I've no more doubts. On "positive energy beings", though, I can see how Philemon fits the description (though I don't know much about him), but... Igor, really? He always seemed more like a neutral party to me, like some entity that only provided helpless humans some power so they could fight for themselves because he was interested in seeing how things would turn out (quite frankly, just for the lulz). He never even seemed to worry about the fate of his guests at all, so I never really pictured him as a good guy.
        • Igor is kinda neutral-acting, but he's literally a puppet animated by the power of Philemon, so if Philemon is a positive-energy being, then Igor is too by default. He just can't help out directly due to The Rules, whatever those are.
          • And when push comes to shove, Igor does go out of his way to help. At the end of P3, he essentially saved the world from Nyx: he can't interfere directly, but he yanks the MC out of what should have been his final moments to give him the Great Seal, and does so apparently on his own initiative. Without his last-minute intervention, the Fall would have gone uninterrupted.
      • Also (and I'd meant to add this comment forever), that phrasing is a great unifying interpretation of it all. I'd imagine that's probably exactly how the Kirijo Group's research files on Shadows, Nyx and the rest of the major enemies reads.
  • Isn't it kind of weird how the only weapons the MC can't equip are guns and knives; that is to say, the two kinds of weapon a person's most likely to use in this day and age?
    • The guns make sense because they're Aigis's arm-mounted weaponry: there's probably no external trigger that he could pull, or any comfortable way to hold the weapon. The knife's a little more puzzling, but I guess if he's going to use a bladed weapon at all, he'd just rather go all-out and use a sword.
    • Additionally, actual guns would be hard to get (to say the least) due to Japan's gun control laws (which raises questions as to how Takaya managed to get a hold of a S&M .500...)
      • Well, STREGA got their powers from Kirijo- either Takaya obtained it thanks to their rule-screwing or he just got it by some other illegal means. He is a hitman.
    • Also, there's the gun-like evokers. Carrying an actual gun would mean that the MC could accidentally shoot himself in the head when he tries to summon his Persona. [And that would be very bad. As for the knives, my guess is that he just thinks that they're outclassed by the other weapons and simply doesn't want to use them.
  • How the hell is Aigis able to beat up the entire party in the cutscene. I mean thats ridiculous abuse of Cutscene Power to the Max
    • Maybe they just didn't want to attack a fellow SEES member and tried to figure out a way to make her snap out of it, but then failed and got all beaten up? Alternatively, it could just be because she was armed with guns, and well, look what happened to Shinji.
      • To be fair Aigis is arguably the second most powerful party member outside the MC. She's only weak to Electricity which only Akihiko and the MC can use so she's likely to take them out first. The the rest of the party kind of falls in line. Plus there's Orgia Mode which could probably take out most of the party.
  • Why are none of the main character's school social links available a week before exams? Are they just that busy studying that they can't be bother to talk to the MC? How do the MC's classmates get away before you can talk to them? Do they teleport out of the class?
    • They're busy. They don't want to hang out, they have more important things to do.
  • What happens to vehicles during the dark hour? Do they just come to a halt when it starts? But then why aren't planes crashing when that happens? Are they just magically suspended in midair, then promptly regain all their momentum when the Dark Hour ends? I don't think most planes are capable of gliding for an hour, plus they'd get horribly off course if they did.
    • Yeah, stuff like that doesn't make sense if you think too hard about it. Even if the cars' engines shut down, wouldn't they keep racing along on momentum, causing countless inexplicable wrecks every night? And then there's airplanes, like you said. Though they make it sound like the Dark Hour's stil set in the real world, the only way for it to make sense is if Time Stands Still during the Dark Hour. Despite the dialogue, it isn't so much an electricity-deprived hidden hour as it is a parallel Dark World where everything's mystically frozen (that's kinda born out by Fuuka's experience in Tartarus, where "Dark Hour time" kept running smoothly from night to night and causing Time Dilation effects).
      • Except Mitsurus bike....
      • I thought the "Time Stands Still" explanation was fairly clear. The Dark Hour is something that only those with the Potential can slip into and experience. It occurs instantaneously for everyone else, including vehicles and electricity. So yes, from the perspective of a Persona user (and Ikutsuki) cars and planes are frozen in place, whether they're on the road or mid-air. But they're really not --it's the Persona user (and Ikutsuki) who's moving through a sliver of time. Which is precisely why the monorail incident was so dangerous --the Shadows managed to take it over, and therefore make it move within the Dark Hour. From the point of view of the passengers, the conductor, and any random onlooker, the monorail "teleported" from one station to another. If MC hadn't stopped it, it would have (from a normal person's perspective) "teleported right into another train and wrecked it," and all the people inside both trains would've been killed instantly at exactly midnight. Similarly, it's not that electricity doesn't work, but that electricity also flows according to normal time; it takes very special technology to create machinery (like Aigis and the bike) that can also slip into that instantaneous dimensional sliver without its flow of electricity being interrupted. My guess? It's because Aigis can manifest a Persona, and the bike was probably infused with some Shadow-like essence (in the same way the monorail was able to move within the Dark Hour spacetime after being possessed.)
    • Actually, during the first full moon boss battle, the train is stopped dead halfway through its run. This implies that machines are frozen in place because they are just like regular people. They don't experience the dark hour. If a shadow or a persona acts on the machine, then something happens.
  • Chernobog is a Slavic deity. Why the hell does it look like the forbidden lovechild of a mushroom and a samurai?
    • Same reason why Metatron and Sandalphon look like robots instead of: an angel with 36 wings and a million eyes and mouths all over his body, and tall enough that it would take "500 years to walk the length of his body," respectively.
  • S.E.E.S. is supposed to be masquerading as a school club. So just what does the school think they do in their club? And why hasn't anyone else tried to join?
    • Narratively, it's supposed to represent the naive approach Mitsuru (and thus everyone else) is taking to Tartarus at first, treating it mostly like a game or an average after-school event. This is why Akihiko is kind of torn on how sanguine he is about it - he wants revenge on the Shadows but he knows it isn't just a game. It's the same reason Shinji is disgusted with SEES as he knows it isn't just a game. It still makes no sense that nobody else tries to join "normally", though.
    • In addition to the above (which is a good point, especially about Shinji's attitude), I think it's mostly just an administrative trick to make the paperwork for keeping them in a separate dorm and under Ikutsuki's supervision work: on paper, it's because they're in the "S.E.E.S.", but the rest of the students don't try to join because the SEES members don't really talk about it or make any show of being in a club besides the ones they're already in. If anyone does push the issue of why they're in a separate dorm and what SEES means, Mitsuru can just claim it's an invitation-only academic club, and she has the authority and mystique to pull it off (though that'd probably spark a lot of rumors - that there's no such gossip suggests nobody's ever brought it up, or noticed that there's an extra club hidden in the school's fine print).
  • They changed the method of Persona summoning from Tarot cards to Boom! Headshot!? Like Executive Meddling in reverse?
    • Philemon's been greatly weakened and reduced in power by the defeat of Nyarlathotep. It takes a lot more to get a Persona materialized in the human plane now than it used to- and tarot cards don't have as much mystical force as psychological trauma does.
      • That's logical in-universe, but I was referring more to the Real Life development of the game. According to the Megami Tensei Wiki, P3 was originally going to feature Tarot cards for Persona summoning, then for some reason it got changed to Evokers at some point during development. If the change was due to Executive Meddling, it seems like the opposite of how executives normally meddle (i.e. "Don't let underage kids shoot themselves in the head, that's bad for sales").
        • It was probably a creative decision. The whole game is about death wishes, confronting one's own mortality and the conflict between nihilism and hope, so having the characters symbolically face death each time they summon a persona furthers the theme. And from a narrative standpoint, the persona summonings are being done via Kirijo Group research, so having SEES using Kirijo technology makes more sense than tarot cards. The creators instead saved the tarot cards for persona-users who use purely mystical summoning methods, like Elizabeth in P3 and the cast in P4.
  • In the description, it says Koromaru's wings are made from angel wings. Where in the heck did they get angel wings from?
    • Maybe they ask MC to summon Angel persona?
  • "Didn't your parents die ten years around then?" Well fuck you Pharos. This is never brought up AGAIN. Why does Pharos bother making a link between your parents death and the creation of Tartarus and then not ever explain said link. It doesn't even feel mysterious it justs feels like the creators just kinda forgot they mentioned it.
    • That was subtly answered later in the game. Check out the flashback cutscene between Aigis and Ryoji again. Chibi MC is standing on the bridge beside a burning car. His parents got killed in the crossfire of Aigis and Ryoji's first battle, which happened ten years ago, like Pharos said. Minato survived and escaped from the wreckage, and Aigis took advantage of his presence to trap Death.
  • What was Yukari going to do with her Persona once she summoned it against the Magician shadow? It only knew Dia.
    • She used Garu against it (those swirling pillars that sprout to the sides of the Magician.) Small continuity error/plot hole/rule of cool, maybe.
      • Actually in P3P there were Agi spells being thrown around. Agilao to be precise. So Yukari was just being an idiot or that was the first time she summoned and she didn't know what it could do.
        • I don't understand your point. It was Magician using Agi to fight against Yukari (who didn't even get to attack at all in the PSP version.) In the original animation, it merely dodged her Garu and attacked her with its knives to send her flying. What's this about Yukari being an idiot or not knowing what Isis could do? Just chalk it up to Cutscene Power to the Max or Gameplay and Story Segregation for why she used Garu about two or three levels too early. Anyway, yes, it was the first time she summoned, and Awakening apparently lets Persona users access additional power for a brief time.
        • No, that's what I meant. I know the Magician was the one throwing around Agilaos. But there are no Garu's is my point. I guess I should've been more clear. What I mean is, she may not have summoned in the original and FES. That may have been Magician nuking.
          • But the animation's clearly Garu in the cutscene: it's the green spiraling wind effect shooting out of the ground. They may have changed it in the PSP version for that very reason, or just to replace the knife attacks with an existing game engine attack, but in the PlayStation 2 cutscene, Garu is being used, and presumably it's not the Magician since it'd use Agi spells. In the PlayStation 2 version, she's just using Garu a little early thanks to Cutscene Power to the Max or her first-summoning adrenaline boost.
            • Actually there's no rule that magician arcana shadows can only use agi skills, and its clearly not yukari using them as she wasn't able to use the evoker due to fear.
              • I just checked again and it appears that in FES at least the spirals are blue and come every time Yukari pulls the trigger. The same blue that comes out the other side of his head as "a spiral of dust" when the MC uses the Evoker and fully summons his Persona. This same dust effect also occurs in regular battle summoning. It appears to me that the spirals are Yukari's failed Io summonings. When he wakes up in the hospital, Yukari mentions that the Magician fight was her first time fighting the Shadows. Akihiko says when they first go to Tartarus that MC is the leader partially since he can easily summon his Persona unlike Junpei and Yukari.
  • This just occurred to me but... The Dark Hour occurs during midnight in Japan? So this means on the otherside of the world there is a Bright Hour which is the world tinted in green and with blood and people trans-coffins-ed, but with the sun burning brightly in the sky? And if you move to an area that is just exactly between two different timehours, would you get a Dark Hour at 0:30 AM?
    • Sure. Why not?
    • Bout the only thing this troper can think of that doesn't involve horrible time snarls. The Dark Hour occurs for one hour all at the same time throughout the entire world.
      • It kind of sucks for MC that it's Midnight in Japan, then, doesn't it? I mean, I imagine the atmosphere around there would be better if- wai a second, new question came to me: Daylight Saving Time. Do the shadows all remember to fasten their watches during the course of the game?
      • It's possible that, since the experiment that started the whole thing happened at Gekkoukan High, the Dark Hour doesn't actually occur everywhere in the world, only in a specific area centered on Tatsumi Port Island and presumably wide enough to encompass most of Japan. The game is never quite clear on this - Yukari does say "it doesn't matter where you are," but the characters are already established to not really know a lot about how the Dark Hour works, and we only hear news from Japan. The affected area might not be big enough for time zones to be an issue. (As for Daylight Savings, your guess is as good as mine.)
      • Alternatively, if the Dark Hour does occur everywhere, it always occurs at midnight regardless of the location due to the metaphysical significance of midnight and the change from one day to the next. It's all tied into the human subconscious, after all.
      • I've always believed "Dark Hour" (or "Shadow Time" in the Japanese version) to be an in-game Woolseyism to refer to this effect, or a misnomer deliberately created by the characters to refer to it easily, but is not in fact an actual "hour," much less an effect that occurs everywhere in the world at whatever time. Rather like how we have expressions like "the eleventh hour" or "the final hour" and these are only intended to mean "moment" rather than a true measure of time. In my interpretation, the time-travel experiments performed by the Kirijo Group in Tatsumi Port Island opened up a gateway leading into humanity's collective consciousness, where Shadows reside; every midnight, and only in the vicinity of Port Island, those with the Potential slip into this pocket (for everyone else, the rollover is instantaneous, but people who function during the DH see them as coffins.) Then, at the end of the game, Nyx forces open this gateway wide open and the entire city, if not beyond, is sucked into the pocket of consciousness to witness her arrival.
        • However Junpei states in a way that leaves no doubts during the going-to-the-beach arc that they have to return to the mansion before the Dark Hour, since no matter where you are it always happens at the same time. In fact I think I've got a save file just before that, let me check. Edit: Here, the actual quotes:

Junpei: It's almost... *gasp* the Dark Hour, so you should get back.
Yukari: Huh? Oh, yeah, that's right...
Junpei: ...Hm? Ahn... Did I miss something?
Yukari: I-I almost forgot... It doesn't matter where you are when the Dark Hour comes...
Junpei: Sheesh, it's just common sense! Even I remembered.

      • It only leaves no doubt if you assume the characters know how the Dark Hour works for certain, which... they really don't.
        • They must know enough at least about it's AoE. It's something they experience first hand, after all.
      • Why? Of all of them, only Mitsuru is remotely likely to have done very much traveling. The rest of them experience the Dark Hour firsthand, sure - in Japan. Which does nothing to counter the possibility that, since the accident that started the whole thing took place in Japan, the area affected by the Dark Hour likewise is centered on Japan and, while it might cover most of that country, doesn't necessarily span the whole globe. Or that, in accordance with the other theory explained above, that it happens at midnight no matter where you are because it's linked to the human subconscious. Junpei in particular is a pretty bad source since he has an established tendency to want to sound more like he knows what he's talking about than he actually does (see also his "every Persona user should know about that" comments on the day that he joins, and his telling Chidori that he's the leader of SEES).
        • But Yukari also agreed with Junpei. I mean, it'd be one thing for her to say "Well, better safe than sorry, let's go back", but the way she answered, with "I almost forgot...", implies she does know what she was talking about. Also Yuka-tan doesn't say things just to get attention luke Junpei does.
        • I'm amazed everyone's making it so complicated. Like Yukari said, it happens wherever you are and, like Ikutsuki said, it's effectively the 25th hour of the day. Like all the other hours of the day, it's sweeping forward through each time zone, a compressed line that's synchronized with the ordinary midnight line. It'd happen wherever you are, and it'd happen at local midnight. So when it's the Dark Hour in Japan, it's the middle of the day in America. When it's lunch time in Japan, the Dark Hour's happening over in the U.S. It still works like any other hour of the day, just a "dark" hour immediately following midnight that most people don't know about. As for whether SEES knows what they're talking about, the Kirijo Group's been studying the Dark Hour for ten years. I'm sure one of the first things they did was try to establish a geographic boundary for it, and Mitsuru would know how that turned out.
        • But that also means time stops in the whole world during each Dark Hour. Think about it: If someone in the US is having a phone talk with someone in Japan, and then the Dark Hour comes in either, what'd happen? Or people living on the timezone boundaries, wouldn't they notice their neighbour's transmogrified(spelt?) timezone? And of course there is the matter that all plane leaving a country scheduled t arrive at time X would in fact come in in time X + 1 hour for each Dark hour it bumps in it'd way home. The solution is that anytime the Dark Hour happens anywhere in the world, time freezes for all human beings, be them transmogrified or not. For that to happen, we'd have to have 24 timestops each day, for each different Dark Hour in each time zone. Sounds more complicated than my original theory of there having only one Dark Hour in Japan that expands to the whole world, freezing other countries in the Bright Hour, the Slightly Dark Hour, and the Hour That Is Not Quite As Dark As The Dark Hour But Still Very Dark I'll Have You Know.
          • Nobody who's not experiencing the Dark Hour is aware of the Dark Hour. For the rest of the world, time skips over the Dark Hour and long-distance phone calls continue as normal. It's only people with the Potential (or summoned by the Shadows) inside the Dark Hour who feel it. Think of it as an effect that sweeps over an area: anyone susceptible to the effect shifts into "dark hour mode" for an hour, and then goes back into "normal time" mode. Anyone who wasn't susceptible to the effect, or was outside the time zone, never noticed anything wrong because they never went into "dark hour mode". From the perspective of people on the outside, it comes and goes in less than a millisecond.
          • I know. But for that to work, time would have to freeze outside the Dark Hour, at least from the perspective of those who have the Potential.
            • It probably looks like it does. I doubt it's possible to place a phone call, even with a specially made phone, to the outside world from inside the Dark Hour. To SEES and other Potentials, it looks like the world's standing still for an hour. In reality, they're just experiencing the normally almost-instant Dark Hour as a full hour, as if time had stopped. For everyone else, the Dark Hour is just a tiny sliver of time immediately after 12:00am: for them, it happens so fast that they never notice it.
              • Hm, and in that sense, you might be onto something as in "what would SEES see if they could hypothetically board a plane when the Dark Hour hits and fly across the world before it ends"? My guess is that the sky would still look dark to them, but maybe they'd see a weird "bright bloody hour". But if Mitsuru flew to New York for the weekend during ordinary time and then waited, she wouldn't enter the Dark Hour during the middle of the day. It'd still happen when her clock strikes midnight.
              • And then comes the really annoying questions that we make just to annoy: What if the SEES members went to a spaceship and landed on another planet? Would there be a Dark Hour when the planet was in it's equivalent of Midnight?
                • Yukari comments during the Yakushima trip that the Dark Hour occurs no matter where you are. My assumption is that as "midnight" travels across the planet, every segment experiences a Dark Hour that ends after a random amount of time. Likely the Dark Hour *you* experience ends after that amount of time passes, even if you've traveled to a different time zone. IE time is relative.
    • Well seeing as how the Dark Hour originated in the school it makes sense that the "Midnight" its connected to is THEIR midnight. On the subject of DST I think they would just keep their clocks tuned to the same time. Changing your clocks and risking being out alone in the dark hour because you thought it was only 11pm would be a bad thing. If someone happened to look at their watch they can just say they forgot to change it or they keep it that time to remember what time it is in the timezone where a friend/family member is.
      • Japan doesn't participate in DST, so there's no danger of that.
  • The original game heavily implies, if not outright states, that the accident that killed Ken's mother happened at the station outskirts area, which is why both Shinjiro and Ken return there often and why Ken demands that Shinjiro meet him there on October 4th. This already raises the question of what an eight-year-old and his mom were doing in such an apparently unsavory area at midnight, but then The Answer further complicates matters by stating that the accident involved Castor plowing into and collapsing the Amadas' house. Are we really meant to believe that they had a house there, next door to the bar and the seedy mahjongg parlor?
    • It's possible that there was a house (or apartment) there, and the bar and the parlor moved in after the accident. It didn't become a seedy, dangerous place until after the event.
      • It's also possible that they simply did live next to a bar and a gambling den, especially if his mother couldn't afford anything better. Happens in real life quite often.
  • In the Film Festival, Fuuka's is Sci-fi and it increases... charm. Mitsuru's is a love story and it increases... academics. Shouldn't them be, uh, switched around?
    • Hm... maybe Fuuka gushed happily through the sci-fi movie, and so your charm increased because you'd impressed her so much, and Mitsuru lectured you nonstop during the love story, so you ended up improving your academics.
      • Confirmed by the follow up dialogue.
  • What happens if someone is holding an wired phone and the Dark Hour strikes? Does the phone fall down, float in place, or is there a comical hole for the wire to go inside the coffin?
  • I suppose this isn't really something that bugs me so much as simple curiosity: has anyone managed to reverse or break an S.Link by two-timing in the female protagonist's route? As far as I've been able to determine so far, it doesn't seem to be possible, but I haven't managed to hit all the flags on Ken's yet so I don't know if that would make a difference.
    • AFAIK, Persona 3 Portable doesn't reverse social links.
      • That may explain it, then... although it's definitely still possible to break them.
        • Only 1 social link on the female's side can be reversed. Prompting Akihiko to realize that he loves the protagonist, only to have her then refuse him, breaks the Star s.link completely.
  • why doesn't SEES just use the MC's door in The Answer to go back to before the game started and not destroy any full moon shadows, get rid of both Ikutski and Strega so there is no way for the Death Arcana from reforming and thus prevent The Fall from ever happening?
    • Lose-lose situation. If they went back to prevent the destruction of the Full Moon Shadows, then Tartarus would still exist, lesser Shadows would still crawl out of it, people would still suffer Apathy Syndrome, and the FM Shadows themselves would still cause untold damage to Port Island and anywhere else they scattered to. Also, if you don't defeat Priestess in April, she'll still be around to wreak havoc throughout April and May, and then Empress and Emperor come out, and then Hierophant and Lovers, and by November you have TWELVE Shadows (or eleven, allowing Magician's destruction) running around freely and eating up people's psyches and turning them into the Lost. Even though Yukari's father urged people not to mess with them, these Shadows would have eventually destroyed everyone in the city, if not beyond.
  • Just before Ikutsuki's betrayal why doesn't Mitsuru's father also turn into a coffin at the Dark Hour? He can't use a Persona himself.
    • Neither Ikutsuki nor Mitsuru's father ever transmogrify, though his assistants do. Ikutsuki refers to a few people retaining their form in the Dark Hour without being able to use a persona, like him, but that the two of them can both coincidentally do it seems like a stretch. I always guessed that it's because they were at ground zero when the lab exploded, and were permenantly changed by it.
      • Ikutsuki mentions at one point that he was taught how to enter the Dark Hour without a Persona. Presumably Mitsuru's father has a similar method.
        • I checked the script, he never said anything about learning it. The closest thing he said is "although rare, there are those who can function during the Dark Hour. Some may even awaken to a power that enables them to fight the Shadows," implying that there are people who can function in the Dark Hour without a persona. He later confirms that with "as you know, I can't summon a persona".
          • I know I heard it mentioned somewhere in the game that he learned it. It may have only been in the female protagonist's scenario in Portable.
            • Update re:Ikutsuki entering the Dark Hour. This is taken directly from his dialogue in P3P, April 22, in the dorm, and shows up in both the male and female protagonist's games: "However, in order to perform my research, I was taught how to enter the Dark Hour." Word of Game, yo.
  • Technology doesn't work during the dark hour. I understand that the monorail worked in the Dark Hour because shadows were tampering with it, Mitsuru's motorcycle was Hand Waved as "it's special" and the control room consoles can probably be Hand Waved the same way since they're both property of S.E.E.S. and the Kirijo Group... But why were the street lights clearly working during Shinjiro's death scene? Are they "special" too?
    • Rule of Drama and It's been completely mocked in Persona 3 FTW
      • Alternatively it could be because the Dark Hour had ended by that time.
        • Since the animated cutscenes were replaced with regular portrait dialog in P3P this might not apply (since IIRC you couldn't see that the streetlights were on, I'd need to play through that scene again to check), but if you're playing as a girl and max out the moon link, the characters do comment that they need to get Shinjiro to the hospital right away but can't because it's the Dark Hour and everybody in the hospital would be transmogrified.
    • Maybe the Kirijo company also built the electricity grid for the lampposts, some philanthropic something-or-other.
  • Alright, so I've always wondered... what does happen if you don't max out any social links by the end of the game? Considering it's The Power of Friendship that grants you the Universe Arcana and the ability to seal Nyx.
    • Even if you don't, you still have the Fool, Death, and Judgment maxed. Haven't seen the scene for myself though.
  • Perhaps there's an explanation for this, but I consider this a bit of Fridge Logic. If Chidori's power allows her to heal her own cuts and other wounds, then why can't she just heal the damage done to her body as a result of the suppressant's side effects? Do her powers not work on internal damage or what? Someone help me out here.
    • The suppressants work on Personas, which are an explicitly supernatural phenomenon, and she's only seen healing mundane wounds. She can heal your body, but she can't do jack about the damage done by the suppressants to your body/soul linkup.
      • In her revival scene, the damage is explicitly stated to have been physical damage to her endocrine system and other organs done by the suppressants (now healed). Why she could heal it when bringing herself back to life and not before is never explained, but might have something to do with either her change of attitude or lack of a Persona. Perhaps by being suicidal and self destructive before, she was subconsciously keeping herself from healing the damage from the suppressants.
      • Cast From HP theory aside, it would be a bit of a vicious cycle. It's her Persona power that lets her heal, but if she needs to control her Persona with suppressants to even use those healing powers, then she'll heal up and drug up and have to heal up again.
  • Why didn't Shinji's armor protect him. you can get bullet proof vests, and they aren't that powerful in comparison to what you can get later. he'd have some broken bones, but not likely death.
    • If you check his room afterward, you'll find he left all his gear behind that night. So he wasn't wearing any armor, almost certainly because he went there intending to die, if not in that particular manner.
      • I thought those were just his personal effects, collected there for any family or friends to pick up after the fact.
      • It's all the equipment he was wearing, presumably to avert Wutai Theft, but it also neatly explains why he wasn't protected. If you have him equipped with Mjolnir or a rare accessory, it's nice to get those back.
  • Given the importance the game places on the concepts of death, living life, experiencing changes, and the acceptance thereof, what possessed the producers to add a " let's revive Chidori!" optional quest? Even if it's there only as an option, doesn't it kind of break the Aesop the entire rest of the game was trying to convey?
    • Your Mileage May Vary. Personally, I was hoping to have Chidori as a party member, but after finding out she doesn't have any memories of her time with SEES and Sterga, I got the impression that she was reincarnated into a new, better life away from the dark hour, in a representation of the Death Arcana's spiritual death/new journey.
    • The gloom-breaking attraction of Everybody Lives possessed the producer, and maybe a bit of Ensemble Darkhorse in the case of Shinjiro in P3P. In FES: The Answer, Junpei still talks as if the sidequest never happened, though. If it makes you feel better, the MC still dies for real every time, in either form s/he finds hirmself.
  • On 5/23, Akihiko breaks it to everyone that Fuuka might join them. He knows her name, and that she's a second-year. Yukari's heard of her. Junpei's seen her around. Almost two weeks later, it's Shinjiro of all people who has to be the one to tell them that Fuuka's missing and might be dead. How could the SEES not have kept up with how/what their potential new recruit was doing, or even where she was?
    • The school had her officially listed as out sick, thanks to Ekoda. She also had a history of being sickly. It probably didn't occur to them to question the official story at the time. It's likely the only reason Shinji knew was because the girls who knew the story was bullshit were behind Port Island Station every night and talked about it - a source of information that wouldn't normally be available to SEES.
  • In The Answer, why does no one propose going back in time and simply stopping the experiment that created Death in the first place? It's not like that's much more of a temporal paradox. Instead they seem convinced their only options are "do nothing" and "go back and prevent MC's sacrifice." Maybe I missed a piece of optional dialog somewhere that explains it, but this bugged the hell out of me.
    • How? From what we known, Mitsuru's granpa is madman and definity won't just stop if his grandaugther beg him. By force? The SEES persona are emerged from experience with Dark Hour. Stop the experiment mean they can't use persona (and incase of Aigis, cease from existence). It WILL creat time paradox, huge one.
      • First, I didn't say it bugged me that they didn't do it. It bugs me that no one even brings it up as a possibility. Please read what I've typed, thanks. Second, preventing the MC's sacrifice creates just as big a temporal paradox - without Nyx's defeat, no one would be alive to go back in time in the first place. No one brings this up, either. Clearly, they weren't thinking in terms of paradoxes, so there's no reason for them not to consider other time travel options.
    • The Abyss of Time was created out of the S.E.E.S. team's collective hopes, fears and desires. While it did affect all their lives, the event itself would have been too unfamiliar to the SEES for them to make any emotional, psychological, or temporal link.
      • You're both arguing why it wouldn't work, which is really not what this particular Just Bugs Me is about. Again, it's that not a single one of the characters says "hey, going back to just before a battle we already found out is hopeless is a bad idea. Why don't we try preventing the MC from moving to Iwatodai? Or prevent the accident entirely?" No one voices a single alternative plan to the suicidally stupid plan vs. do nothing. Really? None of them could come up with even a slightly less stupid plan? Even if it was impossible, none of them even try to come up with alternatives.

        To be perfectly clear, the information gained later in The Answer makes it clear the the MC's sacrifice was the only way to stave off an inevitable cataclysm. Stopping the experiment wouldn't have stopped the Fall, it just would have delayed it (possibly a lot, but still a delay only). I don't in any way think the characters should have traveled through time and tried to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. But given the player's and character's knowledge before they find out the truth, then it's perfectly reasonable to try and find a way to have their cake and eat it, too.

        However, to address your point: First, I'm not sure that's true. The expirement had a very big impact on both Mitsuru's and Yukari's lives. But it's really irrelevant - they don't need to go back to the time of the expiriment exactly, just some time before it. Which means they have 7-8 years of experiences each to select from (minus Ken and probably Aigis). Given that I can name at least three experiences before I turned 7 that had a big impact on me as a person, it doesn't seem that unlikely that at least one of the characters has at least one childhood event that fits the bill.
        • As big an impact as witnessing the MC's sacrifice, or even their Persona awakenings? I doubt it.
        • Who says it has to be? Nowhere in canon does it say that it only takes them to the penultimate impact(s) in their life. In fact, the opposite is implied - the first door takes them to a place to shop for food. Somehow, I doubt that the remote threat of starving to death (opposed to the immediate threats of death they've faced quite literally hundreds of times) was the most important event in their lives to date. The theory supported by canon is that it takes them to the time most on their minds when they enter. If more minds are focused on it, then that one gains priority. Thus, they go to Pawlonia Mall when they need food and "overide" it to the MC's sacrifice when they all want to see that, but see individual pasts when they don't have a consensus on when they're going.
          • Ah...suddenly remember it. It was said in game, after you saw Ken's past, Metis explain that they can't interact with the scene because only Ken was present in the event. So does several past scene later, they can interact with the Mall because it's emerge from their desire of food and supply and isn't connect to specify time period (as time slowly shift forward beyond that door).
        • The door led to the mall so that they could get weapons. It was still there after the key combo because as Mitsuru said, they still had an enemy to fight. They all knew it, subconsciously. The whole setup was related to their deepest grievance, which was the death of the MC.
        • If it did take them to any time, as long as it was most on their minds, then... Well, first it wasn't on their minds at all, because they didn't think to try it. But mostly they are grieving for their friend, and the fabric of reality put widening cracks all over their dorm floor. And the latter is the direct effect of the former. Why complicate the solution?
  • Why, after knowing that Takaya uses guns instead of personas to settle things, do SEES not try to counter it in some way? Sorry, but Shinjiro's and Chidori's deaths are not at all believable; they rely heavily on Gameplay and Story Segregation. When Takaya fights you, he doesn't shoot you dead with a gun, though that'd be the fastest way. Why need Personas when you can shoot and throw friggin' grenades at people? And SEES members don't learn from Shinjiro's death; when going up against Chidori, knowing that the others might be present, they don't even get a bulletproof vest. Anyways this entire use of guns makes the game stupid; why indulge in Persona battles when guns are so effective?
    • But Personas don't only attack, they provide elemental affinities that include fire and pierce attacks. Aigis always has armor, and according to the FES opening Akihiko can dodge bullets. Takaya's not much of a marksman to begin with, and how much ammo does he have? Shinjiro did have a bulletproof vest, but left all his equipment in his room the night he died, presumably because he wanted to die.
    • You forgot to mention that Takaya walks around shirtless in front of Aigis, who has a rocket launcher for an arm. I'm guessing there's some kind of honor code going on here.
  • Uh... What does Yukari do during All Out Attacks? Beat people with her bow?
    • I always figured she stabbed them with her arrows.
    • Watch her when you have the party set to start fights on their own; she fires straight ahead repeatedly even though shes standing on top of the shadow in a rather awkward looking manner.
  • Mr. Ekoda. Do we have a Nice Job Breaking It, Jerkass trope? How he handled the Fuuka situation was bad enough, but what he does to Saori in P3P... Ugh! Might as well dub him P3's own personal King Moron...
  • The Kirijo Group's technology bugs me. Trains don't work during the Dark Hour. Okay. Buses? Lights? Cell phones? No? Alright. Mitsuru's bike does because it's special? Why not. The MC's mp3 player works? That bothers me too, but fine. Okay then. Why doesn't anyone suggest that they're made a special car? Or medical devices? Or walkie talkies to people that can't use Personae? Gun shot wounds from shirtless hippies do NOT cause instant death. Oh no, it's the Dark Hour hospitals aren't open! I get it, but if this is an issue, then why OH WHY was it not fixed BEFORE two people died? It bugs me that once they realzied BULLETS HURT they didn't plan away around them when they KNEW Takaya was still running around with an itchy trigger finger.
    • MC's mp3 player doesn't work. It very specifically shuts off when he arrives at the Iwatodai station, and it very specifically turns back on, on its own and exactly where it was, when normal time resumes at the dorm. As for medical equipment, it's likely that the Kirijou group figured that, since Shadow attacks can be healed easily by entities of the same nature (Personas,) and the only threat during the Dark Hour came from Shadows, there was no need to build specialized equipment. And Shadows didn't usually venture far from Tartarus anyway, so the bike was all they really needed, too. Hell, for all we know, Mitsuru's bike ran on the same technology as Aigis does, or was even a practical test of those principles.
  • The thing that always bugged me the most in this game is how answering questions in class worked. If you give Junpei an answer it raises your charm because everyone realizes you are smart. I can see that, but why does answering a question right raise your academics? Obviously you already knew the answer, you don't learn by repeating something you know already. I believe that should have raised your Charm as well and getting an answer WRONG and being corrected should raise Academics.
    • YOU, the player, probably know the answer already. MC is probably guessing at the answers, and his/her Academics raise because a correct guess made him/her learn something. Being wrong and having to be corrected don't raise it just because it's a gameplay contrivance (i.e. you don't get a reward for failing at a task.)
    • I guess thats true. Good Point.
  • Aren't shadows immune to weapons? I mean the guards in Mitsuru's flashback are unable to stop the shadows with their guns. So, why can the party members hurt just using their weapons?
    • I guess the explanation is same way that Persona enhanced your strength. Somehow it amplifies the weapon.
    • I see. I thought it was somehow connected to the power of persona. I remember Junpei saying that only persona-users can see hidden effects on weapons.
  • Why does Pharos' contract become the ticket into the Velvet Room? Does this mean that he's working with Philemon or something?
    • Maybe the it wasn't a contract with Philemon, but with Nyx since he is Thanathos and thus a part of the Nyx-Avatar. The same thing countS for the P4-MC since he shook the hand of Izanami and thus formed a contract per handshake
  • So...did it just not occur to anyone to just, oh I don't know, heal Shinjiro? Even at Level 1, Yukari had the means to heal every type of injury under the sun (Including pierce attacks, which a gunshot wound should fall under). Not to mention the MC carrying around beads that literally bring people back from the dead.
    • I have no defense on using Dia to heal the wound. But the bead's item description said it only cure unconscious, not dead.
    • I think Dia moves can only work with shadow related injuries. Thats my guess.
      • I was toying with that, but Dia also works on injuries inflicted by the members of Strega, so it should have been able to work on Shinji. Maybe the wound was simply too severe to work with, given that Shinji didn't have his armour on him at the time, so Dia wouldn't have worked?
        • This is the implication in the audio dramas. Healing skills are handy, but they do have a limit. It seems that they're only good for healing superficial injuries, and can't do anything about something as severe as a fatal bullet wound.
      • Gameplay and Story Segregation. While dumb (and probably something they should have explained away by saying that Strega interfered) it's a common part of many games.
  • I'm rather interested why the characters in SMT:Persona and Persona2(IS and EP) can use their Personas anytime they want in their cities, but the chars of Persona3 and Persona4 have to go to a specific location (Thartarus, Abyss of Time, Midnight Channel) and/or at a specific time (dark hour). Is there a special reason for that? And before you say: "Maybe they didn't want to use their Personas outside of Thartarus/Midnight Channel" In Persona4 Rise clearly wanted to use her persona at the field trip (she was drunk though).
    • Well, the characters in Persona 1 and Persona 2 met with Philemon (And did the Master Persona game, if I'm remembering correctly), so maybe that gave them the ability to use their Personas anywhere.
      • You think? You might be right but Word of God states that the other MC (of P3 and P4) eventually met Philemon in Form of a Butterfly. But your Theory is actually quite plausible
        • Nono, Word of God is that Philemon is present in the world of P3 and P4, as the butterfly motif can attest, but neither MC ever actually met him, much less directly interact with him like the protagonists of P1 and P2 did.
      • We need to remember that during P1 and P2, the corruption of the demons/shadows went to the real world. In P3, it is only evident during the Dark Hour and in P4 it was only evident inside the TV World.
    • What exactly do you mean by use? Like, the persona fully out or something like that? Fuuka's able to use her persona's scanning ability at Yakushima during the daytime.
      • The cities in P1/2 are hardly normal. One is being radically altered by a reality warping machine, and the other is being affected by Nyarlathotep's presence. The assumption I had was that Personas are difficult to acquire and summon unless the world is being affected by the Other Side.
    • In Persona 3 the MC does use his Persona outside the Dark Hour, to kill Ryoji. I don't know about P4, but in P3 it seems they can use them, but never really have a need to. No Shadows during the day, and summoning a Persona to take on a bunch of thugs would break The Masquerade.
      • The dialouge during certain scenes also seems to indicate that summoning a persona during the day time is possible, and the opening animation has Yukari practicing (and failing to pull the trigger) during the evening. Then there is when the Persona's evlove, but that could just be for effect.
    • As for P4, the part the original poster mentioned seems to be more jokingly. She shouts it out, but it doesn't seem like she is really trying to summon it at all. And when the Persona's evolve, the characters all act like they can see their Persona's change. Basically, in both games it seems that its possible for them to summon their persona whenever, but just isn't practical as they have no reason to. Whenever their is reason to, the situation prevents it.
  • Where is Mitsuru's mom? Did she die? Or did she leave? I heard that Mitsuru speaks to her in the New Moon/Full Moon drama CDs but is that true?
  • And speaking of the original Persona, the Night Queen in the Snow Queen Quest is supposed to be Nyx. Now in that game, she was a malevolent being with the desire to bring an "endless night." In here she would cause it but she isn't malevolent anymore and has a Blue and Orange Morality about saving people from their despair. These are supposed to take place in the same verse! What gives?
    • While the Night Queen in Persona does have the same sprite design as Nyx in Soul Hackers, her manifestation through those two games and Persona 3 is more of a passing reference, an in-franchise Shout-Out, than a direct line of continuity --for instance, Thanatos is a strange blobby monster with a sickle-like knife in Persona, nothing more than a random encounter. So, we can't really say that the Night Queen is supposed to be her. Persona 1 and 2 are explicitly one same universe, as are Persona 3 and 4, but the links between these two continuities are vague at best. All we know for certain is that the Kirijo family is an offshoot of the Nanjo family, and that Trish's Show references some characters from P2 as missable injokes, but there are just as many contradictory elements between the two lines --and the nature of Nyx/the Night Queen as well as the Fall/the Eternal Night being precisely one of such contradictions. You might as well ask why the Metatron from Strange Journey plays a very different role from the Metatron in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne.
    • Looks like we have a case of Did Not Do the Research here. Thanatos is not a random encounter, but an outright boss of, well, the Thanatos Tower. As for Nyx and the Night Queen, let's compare Nyx Avatar and the Night Queen instead: Both are actively trying to bring forth the Fall/Eternal Night. Sure, it's because of humanity's feelings somehow, but that doesn't change the fact that both of them are clearly trying to destroy humanity, and openly attacks the MC and their party. Nyx Avatar is (slightly) more "friendly" to the party, but this is only because of it's time as Ryoji. I think most of the "contradiction" comes from people thinking of the Night Queen as "Nyx" when the closest thing, in-universe at least with P3 in consideration, would be to a "proto-Nyx Avatar", or an earlier Appraiser, which would make sense to me, since Erebus didn't just appear overnight. As for why the Fall/Eternal Night hasn't happened yet, well, remember that the Night Queen was sealed in a mask for hundreds of years. If that is too "fanwanky" for you (and I apologize if it came off that way), consider the fact that the Snow Queen Quest's canon status isn't as "solid" as the SEBEC quest, since the only reference to it in later games is the whole "Toro has a Persona" thing, which admitingly has very little to do with the SQQ's main plot.
  • So how could both 8-year old Ken and his mother experience the Dark Hour on the night of her death? I mean, Ken didn't really "awaken," per se, until after she died, yes? And I doubt his mother possessed the Potential, unless they were simply pulled into the Dark Hour, miraculously, at the same time?
    • Bigger coincidences have happened. We've seen people just randomly enter the Dark hour (like the poor schlub in the opening cutscene) and not always with the potential (Like Ikutsuki) and typically with poor consequences (like... every single victim of the Apathy Syndrome.) So the only real difference this time was one of the two experiencing the Dark Hour was saved from the Shadows by Persona Users. The other was killed by one.
    • It's possible that they had transmogrified into coffins as well, but the battle between SEES and the Shadows demolished the house with the coffins still in them (the scenario Mitsuru first warns about during the monorail incident.) This, or just the direct contact with the nearby Personas, could have pulled them into the Dark Hour (and given Ken the Potential) just in time for Mrs. Amada to pass away.
    • That's a viable point, but it doesn't explain how Ken could claim to have seen his mother die and to witness enough of the event to give a description of Shinji's Persona. So neither of them could have been Transmogrified into coffins at the time; otherwise, he might have just watched a coffin crumble, and I don't see that being too traumatizing. I mean, while his mother still dies, I feel his scarring about the entire situation is more understandable if he literally watched her die in front of him instead of a coffin being destroyed. I don't know. It all just seems like a convenient coincidence for both of them to enter at the same time, the same place, when the ordeal is going on.
      • Actually, anyone that gets pulled into the Dark Hour turns back into human form, just like that one guy that was eaten by Shadows or the whole city in the ending. IIRC, Mitsuru says that people transmogrified into coffins are safe from Shadow attacks, but if the environment around them crumbles, they get hurt anyway. If the battle between the early SEES and those Shadows indeed pulled the Amadas in, and Mrs. Amada was injured as a result...
  • On the subject of Ken, what in the world happened to his father? Or Mitsuru's mother, for that matter?
    • I'm pretty sure Ken mentioned something about his mother being "the only one he has" or something along those lines. So his father is probably either divorced, dead or missing.
  • Why is it assumed by everyone, Strega, SEES and Ikutsuki alike, that killing all the Full Moon Shadows would get rid of their powers along with the Dark Hour? The two are not exclusive, as demonstrated by Chidori having her powers outside of the Dark Hour, damn near all the heroes evolving their Personas in broad daylight, the known effects of Shadows carrying over into the day as Apathy Syndrome, and of course, Death itself hitching a ride in MC for 10 friggin' years and Ryoji existing outside the Dark Hour at all! Granted, those last two incidents were only revealed in full after all the Full Moon Shadows were beat, but Aigas would still have known about them. Thus, there are numerous examples of Persona and Shadow based powers existing outside this one timeframe. Then, Strega shows up out of nowhere and says getting rid of the Dark Hour equates to getting rid of all these powers in a clear case of No Ontological Inertia! How does this make any sense, and for that matter, why does everyone believe Strega???
    • Before I reply, just a couple of corrections: Ryoji didn't even exist before Hanged Man was defeated and Pharos went bye-bye, and Aigis was only built to fight Shadows after the Full Moon Shadows and the Dark Hour came into existence, so she wouldn't really know anything about this. Also, Apathy Syndrome is the result of a Shadow eating away your self, so of course it would persist both in and out of the Dark Hour. Now, for the actual answer: Everyone who ever got a Persona awakened to it during the Dark Hour, not outside of it --being able to use it or evolve it during daytime could just be an indicator of willpower or mastery of the Persona, but its origins are still rooted in the Collective Unconscious that (as far as P3 and P4 are concerned) is inaccessible in the "real world." And, of course, it turned out that they were all right. Taking away one's memories of the Dark Hour (which happened in both endings, and apparently would have happened if the initial "defeat all Shadows, eliminate Dark Hour" plan) DID result in everyone losing the ability to summon Personas. Maybe they still have them, but they no longer remember having them, nor do they remember Awakening nor learning how to summon them, so for all intents and purposes losing the Dark Hour does mean losing your Personas.
    • In addition to the above: the idea that killing the Full Moon Shadows would do away with the Dark Hour and the characters' Personas was not something that everyone just assumed. They had documented proof already of the tendency of people to forget everything that happens during and related to the Dark Hour even if they're not transmogrified: for example, Natsuki forgetting about her experiences during the June full moon event. Once Ikutsuki told them that defeating the Full Moon Shadows would do away with the Dark Hour, all of the information SEES had up to that point indicated that they would also forget their experiences related to it, including their Personas.
  • A day isn't exactly 24 hours long, it's 24 hours give or take a few minutes. Shouldn't the Dark Hour begin at a slightly different time each night rather than 12am sharp?
    • There's the issue of different time zones and daylight savings time, too, for that matter. I think this was already brought up somewhere else, but a straightforward answer would be nice, nonetheless.
      • Well, they never say it doesn't start a few minutes before or after midnight, nor do they say it isn't effected by daylight savings. Best assumption is that it always starts roughly around the same time.
  • How come the Shadows don't go past the Death arcana?
    • Probably thematic reasons. Even though in real-life tarot readings the Death card is hardly ever actually taken to mean literal death and the SMT guys probably know that.
  • The concept of Erebus has been bothering me for a while. It is stated in-game that Erebus is the accumulated malice of every human being in the world wishing for death and thus is created in order to reawaken Nyx as a result. Fuuka states that Erebus is not a Shadow, yet in The Answer and Persona 4 we learn that Shadows are the physical manifestations of human emotions, which Erebus should technically be by this definition if he is created by the collective human unconscious desire for death, and yet he's not a Shadow. Was Fuuka wrong to say this? Was he originally a Shadow that evolved beyond normal Shadows like Teddie did? Or is there no real explanation for it? If there isn't, I will feel quite annoyed by this fact and feel as if Erebus is simply a contrived rehash of the Nyx Avatar for The Answer story.
    • Shadows are facets of the human psyche while Erebus is the manifestation of humanity's grief and negative emotion, so they are fundamentally different things.
    • And how does all this work with Nyarlathotep, who seemed to at least partially represent of humanity’s desire for destruction (self and others) back in Persona 2 and was explicitly the shadow of humanity as a collective?
      • Nyarlatothep and Philemon are Shadows of mankind's collective subconscious of such distilled, focused essence that they became powerful enough to have their own Ego (such as Persona 4's Izanami (humanity's self-deception) and Teddie (humanity's idealism).) As such, they collected godlike power and an inexhaustible (if not eternal) existence rooted on the existence of the human mind itself. Erebus is much more basic, more primal force, and as such he's nowhere capable of forming its own Ego. At best, he's just one facet of what constituted Nyarlatothep, and a Giant Mook version of the regular Shadows at worst. Or, to put it another way, Nyarlatothep is that part of mankind that seeks its own destruction in direct opposition to mankind's enlightment. He is the mankind that wishes to be annihilated to prove that life itself is meaningless. Erebus is the part of mankind that just wants to die, nothing more.
  • So when the school needs a substitute teacher, the school nurse steps in and gives a magic lesson. Fine -- beats leaving the students with nothing to do. Except that, when exam time comes around, the magic lessons are on the exams. Since when are there exams on substitute lessons that have nothing to do with the normal course? Do they have separate exams for each class, because Mr. Ekoda was absent on Monday but not Tuesday and so class 2-E but not 2-D got to hear about divination instead?
  • How the heck does Vision Quest work? I thought only the MC could see the door? How do the party members get in there? And what's with the Power Door? How did Shinji get in there!? Is he a figment of the MC's imagination or something?
    • Gameplay answer: Something extra to do after you beat the game. Take on stronger versions of the Full Moon bosses. Storyline answer: It's either not canon at all - since in P4 Margaret hasn't met the boy Elizabeth spoke of - or Margaret is using her power to put his friends in there...
  • If this game follows Translation Convention, and we're assuming everyone's speaking Japanese...what's Bebe speaking when he uses Gratuitous Japanese?
    • Gratuitous English?
      • So then why would he ask for the English word for something and use that constantly?
    • I take it as the Translation Convention's way of indicating that Bebe is a) not fluent in Japanese yet and b) a great big weeaboo, not as a direct Keep It Foreign indication of use of gratuitous foreign language. It's my understanding that in the original Japanese text, he speaks in a lot of katakana and with odd pronouns and honorifics like "sessha" (a samurai pronoun) and "-dono," which aren't really possible to convert directly into an English-language equivalent, so instead we get Gratuitous Japanese (which is probably how Bebe talks when he's using his native French).
    • Word of God says that Bebe talks like he's in a samurai movie. If I can wager a guess, he's using outdated words (I have a friend who explained to me that plenty of words became obsolete around the 50s or so).
  • At the Playable Epilogue, when you talk to Yukari and Junpei, they'll say how you never were close to the senpai that lived in the dorm. But if you had the Lover's route with Akihiko, he'll talk about how he fell in love with you. So...being in a relationship doesn't count as close?
  • So after Shinjiro gets shot and falls into a coma, I'd assume he'd need life support. If so what would happen during the dark hour? Couldn't an entire hour without life support when comatose be fatal? We know that people with the potential experience the dark hour even when sleeping so surely Shinjiro, even when comatose, would experience it as well? Maybe it's Fridge Brilliance in that it explains why it took him so long to wake up.
  • Considering how Aigis resisted the Nyx-induced Laser-Guided Amnesia in both endings[1],would she even be subject to Apathy Syndrome at all? Because the fact that she remembers everything and is unable to do anything about the Fall in the Bad Ending is Fridge Horror enough, but if the Fall occurs and she's left standing, how long would she hold up as the only sentient being on Earth, surrounded by billions of the Lost (which include ALL HER FRIENDS)?
    • Well she's a robot, Apathy Syndrome wouldn't affect her anyway. And yeah that horror is kind of the point. It's the bad ending, after all. And presumably she'd hold up as long as a robot can without maintenance from humans.
    • after you fight Nyx avatar, the cutscene shows one of the people pulled into the dark hour dissolving into the same puddle of goo that The Magician and all other shadows become after theyre killt. Their won't be shitloads of lost around, best case senario is those puddles evoporate and aigis is left completely alone; worst case is she is left alone, AND has to walk though black puddles of goo that was once people.
  • "FES" is short for "festival", so, uh...what festival is it referencing?
    • Celebration of the SMT series best-selling game to date?
    • The culture festival that got canceled due to typhoon? FES did add maid outfits for everyone...
  • Why was Shinjiro taking the persona-suppressing drugs? He was a natural Persona user, he doesn't have any need to suppress his Persona.
    • Because, after the accident that killed Ken's mother, he doesn't want to give his Persona the chance to manifest at all. (Yes, even if he already has conscious control over it and needs an Evoker to summon it. He's probably just that paranoid about it coming out and hurting someone.)
  • Why are there no Shadows pertaining to the post-Death Arcana? I mean, the Tower enemies fit Tower more than Heirophant, and there could be some cool Devil shadow. I don't mean Full Moon bosses, since that would make the way too long, just why no regular Shadows?
    • This was asked a little further up the page.
  • Why do the English localizations for Persona 3 and Persona 4 refer to "Personas" in menus and such when we've got the perfectly good plural "Personae?" Makes this troper cringe every time.
    • Aesthetic reasons. I forget where I read that (maybe on this wiki somewhere?), but that's the reason as far as I can remember.
      • Because Personae is used for literary works. Which a video game is not. They are both technically correct pluralizations however.
  • All right, on the Lovers Full Moon mission, Yukari (or Akihiko, or Junpei) are taking showers during the Dark Hour. I'm sure that's because the game creators needed an excuse to get them naked (-ahem- in towels), but then, our past experience tells us that water changes into blood during the Dark Hour. Or at least looks like it does. (The ocean looks like a sea of blood during the Dark Hour, so I'm hoping it's still water, and not actual blood.) So why in the world are they showering in what looks like blood? Or, since in the cutscene it looked like normal water, how is the water in the shower unaffected while all other water is?
    • A wizard - or rather, The Lovers Shadow - did it. Fuuka does state "It's the source of the mind manipulation", so chances are it made the water "real" to make Yukari/Akihiko/Junpei shower and thus lead to the Fem C embracing their desires. Bear in mind it's the Dark Hour and the shower works, yet the Priestess Shadow was able to control the monorail, thus it's not too much of a stretch for the Lovers to turn the shower and not make it blood. That and being covered in blood isn't a fetish most sane people have...
  • Why is Ken wearing the Gekkoukan High School blazer? Is there a kindergarten (or whatever) school? Considering he's only 10, it seems unlikely the High School would make a blazer that size, and if it was to show he was in S.E.E.S, that's what the armbands are for. So far I'm assuming that Gekkoukan has more than just a high school and probably has a Junior High too.
    • I saw some scans of Japanese character blogs (from Famitsu, I think). Most of the party's, including Koromaru's, are labeled as being on the Gekkoukan High School network, but Ken's is for Gekkoukan Private Elementary School.
  • How is Aigis, a robot, able to cry? I understand that she is designed to be humanoid so that she can have a persona, but I strongly doubt that the Kirijo group ever considered that she'd become completely self-aware again and suddenly have use of tear ducts and mucus membranes.
    • Tears From a Stone --played entirely for Rule of Symbolism. Just like her having human ears instead of round actuators during the final ending scene. Well, either that, or the her creators really DID have faith that one day she'd Become a Real Boy. Or girl. Whatever. And that the inner persona (the one she was given so she could manifest a Persona) would develop real emotions that would necessitate this sort of physical response. Personally, I think it's just symbolism, but then there's The Answer and Metis to consider...
    • I think they went overboard with the technology and created the first convincing android. But decided to tell noone or keep records about the project.
  • I'm surprised how this hasn't come up yet, but how does killing Ryoji cause the end of the world!?!
    • It doesn't. Ryoji is only a projection of Nyx, who comes down to Earth regardless of your choices. However, when you kill Ryoji, it takes away your ability to enter the Dark Hour, as well as any memories associated to the Dark Hour --that is, your Personas (you might still have them, but don't remember them,) the bonds you painstakingly built throughout the ordeal, and the knowledge that Nyx is coming. Therefore, when the Fall occurs, you have no idea what it IS, and no way to prevent it.
  • In the opening cutscene why does the MC not react to the coffins and blood besides, "Huh. Oh well."? I've heard theories that he's experienced the dark hour before, but that doesn't make any sense. If he has, then why don't you have the option to respond positively when Ikutsuki asks you if you'd believe that days have more than 24 hours?
    • My personal impression (might be tied to personal experience) is that he's just THAT apathetic. I've always been under the impression that the MC is meant to seem depressed (as in clinically depressed), which, considering the themes of the game, is quite plausible. I always felt him overly calm about everything, he seems to talk very little compared to whoever he's talking with (though that might just be a side-effect of Silent Protagonist) and, Pharos's encouragements aside, he actually managed put (what looked like) a gun to his head only after seeing Yukari do it. Long story short, I think his lack of reaction during the intro cutscene is actually an excellent way of establishing his character, and it appears completely consistent to me.
  • When the gang have sushi after killing the Hanged Man Shadow, Fuuka asks Koromaru if he's happy to get all the meat. Later, Junpei tries to give him some fish but Yukari yells at him, saying he'll get sick. Why doesn't she get mad at Fuuka first, then?
    • I always took that to mean that, since they know Koromaru can't eat sushi with them, they ordered some meat specially for him and Fuuka's comment was there to point this out to the audience (otherwise, the Headscratcher would be "Why are they feeding a dog sushi?") Junpei being Junpei, he would've tried to feed him fish from their own food.
  • Somewhat minor in the grand scheme of things, but Fe MC's naginata really makes me tilt my head. The other characters all have reasons to wield the weapons they do (school clubs, battle droid, using it like a baseball bat, etc.) and even the male MC's versatility makes some sense, especially if he joins the kendo team. But what experience could Fe MC possibly have that lets her use such a specific weapon so well? Was she on the field hockey team at her last school? And that first night, where the heck was Yukari keeping it? I know, I know, Rule of Cool, but it raises so many questions...
    • Well, I doubt it was something we were supposed to think about in too much detail...but my guess is that they happened to have a hockey stick lying around (maybe it was from a previous dorm resident who wasn't part of SEES?), Yukari thought it'd do and grabbed it, and gave it to her. And using a hockey stick in the proper way wouldn't necessarily give someone skill with naginatas, so I assume she either A: used actual naginata in training, in Japan this is actually common amongst women - there are some sports events involving it B: just kinda self-taught herself...naginatas aren't difficult weaons to use, and maybe she had an idea of how to use it from watching others in anime/games/manga/tv?
  • How can Aigis wear shoes when she has no feet?
    • Specially modified shoes, most likely.
  • What is wrong with Yukari's hair? It's long in cutscenes, and it's short in gameplay and character portraits. Were the creators arguing over her character design or something?
    • She's simply Off-Model. In general, the anime segments in P3: The Journey don't... exactly have the best quality. Characters are lanky and drawn flat from a distance, and Yukari's hair is hilariously inconsistent. They got considerably better by The Answer, and they finally achieved consistent, on-model animation by P4.
  • Why did Strega feels like it's appropriate to introduce themselves to the Heroes? Couldn't they just lock the door without letting the heroes know? Therefore the heroes won't know what going on. For all they would know is that a shadow locked the door.
    • They probably couldn't understand why anyone would want to get rid of the "gift" of summoning Personas, so they wanted to meet the party face to face and state their intentions in order to figure out SEES' motivations. Also, intimidation. SEES now knows that there are "evil" Persona users that will try to stop their mission.
    • Besides which, screwing with people appears to be half the reason Takaya does anything, so of course he'd take the opportunity to taunt SEES when it presents itself, especially since getting intel from Shinjiro means he and Strega know about SEES when SEES knows nothing about them and can only react with the basic "wtf?" that is their ingame reaction.
  • If Metis is, in reality, Aigis' repressed or rejected emotions after MC's death, taken humanoid form, wouldn't that essentially make her Aigis' Shadow (minus the yellow eyes)?
  1. ↑ her own pre-game amnesia was due to a Heroic RROD when sealing Death, and unrelated to Apathy Syndrome
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