Persona 4/Characters: Difference between revisions

=== The Entire Team ===

 

* [[Badass Crew]]

* [[Berserk Button]]: Hurting Nanako is this for all of them because she basically cheered up everyone when they were depressed. When she got hurt, they couldn't forgive the person who did this to her because she was only an innocent child. She had no right to be involved in the cases.

** [[The Gadfly]]: Another possible explanation is that he's well grounded and simply likes to tease his friends by saying outrageous things with a strait face. Take your pick.

* [[The Comically Serious]]: The anime ''loves'' doing this with [http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111104041510/megamitensei/images/e/ed/Persona_4_Yu_2.jpg Narukami], as he's amusingly stoic when most people would be either laughing or screaming, such as [[It Makes Sense in Context|when he puts Teddie's head back on his body]]. Yosuke even lampshades it.

'''Narukami''': [[Confused Question Mark|Huh?]] }}

** Probably shown best when Yu and Yosuke get knocked into the river for making perverted comments to Yukiko and Chie. Yosuke is laughing and flailing about, while Yu is completely flat faced and falls like a rock.

** The OP even gets in on it with the stressed line "I believe in you". One imagines it was actually part of the point, with [[Hello, Insert Name Here]] causing the characters to refer to him as you, him, sensei, big bro, etc.

* [[The Quiet One]]: In the [[Comic Book Adaptation|manga]] where he is allowed to talk, he (as Souji) is still awfully quiet, only speaking at crucial moments and when he's the one initiating a conversation; it creates quite a parallel to his [[Silent Protagonist]] role in the game.

* [[Red Baron]]: "The [[Big Brother Complex|Sister Complex]] Kingpin of Steel" in trailers for ''[[Persona 4 Arena]]''.

* [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]]: Blue to Yosuke's red.

*** At one point, you have the option to ''[[Cordon Bleugh Chef|spray cologne on creme caramel]]''.

* [[Talking to Himself]]: [[Johnny Yong Bosch]] voices both him and Adachi. {{spoiler|And you can let the both of them duke it out after [[The Reveal]]!}}

** [[Real Men Wear Pink]]

* [[Team Chef]]: Among the Investigation Team members, he is the only one who can put together a good meal as an individual, though this is largely contingent on the player's own cooking skill.

* [[Visible Silence]]: There is a whole series of dialogue options which are ellipses (".....") in the early days of the game.

* [[Warrior Therapist]]: Because tailing a serial killer (and incidentally saving the world) doesn't mean you can't save time to deal with the psychological issues of your whole team, your family, half your school and if we consider the Fox path, half the town. The therapy is so good he can end up [[Chick Magnet|seven-timing]] and somehow convinces his uncle that since he's so great, he can marry ''his own cousin''. And let's not get started on all the [[Even the Guys Want Him|mancrushes]] he can start.

* [[White-Haired Pretty Boy]]: Well, grey-haired. Also, [[Curtains Match the Window]]

 

In his Social Link, Yosuke revealed that he initially hated Inaba, but has grown to love it and despite being hated by Saki, he did genuinely love her. He later reveals that he is jealous of the Protagonist and used the murder case to play hero and hide his insecurities. Yosuke later asks the him to punch him to get rid of his jealousy and they end up in a brawl; Yosuke realizes that he can form genuine, close relationships with people regardless of where he is, and resolves to live his life to the fullest. His Persona then evolves into Susano-O.

 

* [[Anti-Hero]]: Generally Type II on the [[Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes|Sliding Scale]].

** [[Mr. Vice Guy]]: His vices primarily being [[Small Town Boredom|bored of Inaba]] and [[Honor Before Reason|difficulty considering the ramifications of his words and actions]], which often leads to [[Moral Dissonance]] and his being on the receiving end of [[Laser-Guided Karma]].

* [[Butt Monkey]]: And he knows about this, complaining in the anime than nothing good ever happens to him/the guys of the investigation team.

* [[Calling Your Bathroom Breaks]]: At completely inopportune times.

* [[Chivalrous Pervert]]: When it comes to Rise, at least. When her shadow offers to "bare it all" for her fans, he clearly can't decide whether to be worried or excited.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]

When Yukiko was kidnapped and thrown into the Midnight Channel, it created a dungeon in the form of an European castle, while her Shadow masqueraded as a princess continually searching for a "prince" to whisk her away. The castle and her Shadow were born of her repressed yearning to break free from her designation as heiress to the Inn, instead privately wishing for someone to alleviate her responsibilities. The Protagonist, Yosuke and Chie manage to defeat her Shadow, and she becomes a member of the investigation team.

 

 

In the the earlier stages of her Social Link, Yukiko still desires to leave Inaba and pursue interior design to learn to fend for herself. However, friendly teasing from the Inn's staff and pestering from an [[Paparazzi|irresponsible TV crew]] who want to make a program that will ruin the reputation of the Inn eventually made her realize that she had a supportive family and friends that she wants to help and defend. She resolves to accept her duty and manage the inn, evolving her Persona. She is also a possible [[Love Interest]] for the Protagonist depending on player actions in the S. Link.

 

* [[Action Girl]]

* [[Armor-Piercing Slap]]

* [[The Chick]]: Shares this position with Rise.

* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: She has, on more than one occasion, been shown to have a somewhat ''out there'' thought process.

* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: The anime occasionally shows her taking a level in snark. Particularly against [[Butt Monkey|Yosuke]]:

{{quote|'''Yosuke''': (at Junes, with the rest of the gang) Still, don't you feel sorry for Nanako, bringing her here of all places?

* [[Lethal Chef]]: Not always lethal, as she manages to make "flavorless" food later on. The stuff she gives to the Protagonist, however... well, you need a high Courage stat to actually eat it, so [[Take Our Word for It|let's leave it at that]].

* [[Lonely Rich Kid]]: Before meeting Chie.

* [[Meet Cute]]: Techically their ''second'' meeting, but the Protagonist runs into her when she's wearing a Kimono. Subverted if the player decides not to romance her.

* [[Non-Indicative Name]]: "Yuki" is a name more often associated with "snow". Although, she initially feels that it's a [[Meaningful Name]] because she's "worthless" like snow.

* [[The Ojou]]: Of a generations-old inn.

* [[Tomboy and Girly Girl]]: The girly girl to Chie's tomboy.

* [[Tsundere]]: Shows shades of being a Type-B in the game (mainly getting violent when the males act perverted), but is definitely a Type-B in the Anime.

* [[Yamato Nadeshiko]]: Played with. She fits the archetype, then her Shadow deconstructs it and shows its opposite. She ultimately shows a modern version of this trope: [[Proper Lady|softspoken, strongwilled and polite]] yet [[Plucky Girl|not afraid to stand up to herself]] and [[Silk Hiding Steel|get dangerous if necessary]], as an unfortunate group of [[Paparazzi]] discovered.

 

** [[Camp Gay]]: Shadow Kanji.

** [[Macho Camp]]: Shadow Kanji's minions.

** [[Badass Normal]]: Prior to being a Persona user.

* [[Berserk Button]]: Implying that he's gay. Or insulting Naoto.

As Teddie is a Shadow himself, his own Shadow is a much larger version of him, with a crack in its face showing something squirming under the surface (a visualization of Teddie's fears about his origin).

 

 

* [[An Ice Person|An Ice]] [[A Worldwide Punomenon|Bear-sona]]

** [[Tomboyish Name]]: Even called out by her Shadow.

** [[One of the Boys]]: She pretty much grew like a boy, never caring for dolls and dresses, but more for action figures and boyish stuff. This is reflected in her dungeon, which is designed like the lair of a tokusatsu villain. (She doesn't look down on the other girls for being more feminine, though.)

* [[Vocal Evolution]]: Subverted in the anime. After [[The Reveal]], [[Romi Paku]]'s tone switches to a slightly more feminine tone of voice... and almost immediately reverts to the usual deep tone.

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: The Investigation Team's response to her [[Batman Gambit]].

== S-Links and Major [[NPCs]] ==

=== Igor ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' Isamu Tanonaka (Japanese) and [[Dan Woren]] (English)}}

 

 

=== Ryotaro Dojima ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' [[Unsho Ishizuka]] (Japanese) and David Lodge (English)}}

 

 

=== Nanako Dojima ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' [[Akemi Kanda]] (Japanese) and [[Karen Strassman]] (English)}}

 

* [[Adult Fear]]: Her Social Link touches pretty close on how awful it is to watch your spouse die before you, as well as the pain of old age and having a loved one suffer from memory loss.

* [[Easy Amnesia]]: Harshly subverted in her backstory, where her aging husband contracts dementia and forgets he ever loved her.

* [[It's All Junk]]: When the Protagonist recovers the letters she wrote to her husband, Hisano attempts to burn them. In the anime, it's a flower-pattern hairclip that she tosses into the river that's later stuck into the fins of the Guardian, but Yu, after many misadventures, gets the hairclip back. She actually keeps it.

* [[I Was Quite a Looker]]: A brief flashback in the anime shows her to be this.

* [[Hello, Nurse!]]

* [[Hospital Hottie]]

** Before that she dated a married doctor older than her. It didn't end well.

* [[Really Gets Around]]/[[Workaholic]]: Pre- and post-[[Character Development]].

* [[The "B" Grade]]: Fear of getting a B and disappointing his mother is what eventually drives Shu to {{spoiler|cheat on a test}}

* [[Cram School]]: Previously attended this, but quit because it ''wasn't rigorous enough''.

* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Has quite the breakdown in the anime.

* [[I Just Want to Have Friends]]: In the anime, replacing the tension between him and his mother.

== Minor [[NPCs]] ==

=== Kinshiro Morooka ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' Osamu Ryutani (Japansese) and [[Kirk Thornton]] (English)}}

 

 

=== Hanako Ohtani ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' Ryou Agawa (Japanese) and Jessica Straus (English)}}

 

 

=== Noriko Kashiwagi ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' [[Sayaka Ohara]] (Japanese, game), [[Hitomi Nabatame]] (Japanese, anime) and [[Mary Elizabeth McGlynn]] (English)}}

 

* [[Anything That Moves]]

* [[The Cameo]]: Makes one during "Operation Babe Hunt" in ''[[Persona 3|Persona 3 Portable]]''. As you would expect, [[Hilarity Ensues]].

* [[Gag Boobs]]: In the Anime.

* [[Expy]]: She could easily be mistaken for a parallel universe equivalent of [[DearS|Mitsuka-sensei]].

* [[Jerkass]]

* [[Older Than They Look]]: Implied that she's considerably older than she looks and acts.

* [[Sensei-chan]]: [[Deconstructed Trope|Deconstructed]]. Her immaturity is not treated an endearing characteristic and is seen by the students as a desperate act to act young.

* [[Small Name, Big Ego]]: Is earnestly shocked when she loses the beauty pageant, despite being regarded as a creepy old hag by her students. It's also ''the reason'' she's a [[Christmas Cake]]. No wonder [[Birds of a Feather|she and Hanako get along well]].

 

=== Chihiro Fushimi ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' [[Ai Maeda]] (Japanese) and [[Wendee Lee]] (English)}}

 

* [[The Cameo]]: During Yasogami's field trip to Tatsumi.

* [[Dude Magnet]]: Both Yosuke ''and'' [[Ambiguously Gay|Kanji]] quickly become attracted to her.

* [[Meganekko]]

* [[She's All Grown Up]]

 

=== Aika Nakamura ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' [[Aoi Yuki]] (Japanese)}}

 

== Antagonists '''(MAJOR SPOILERS)''' ==

=== Mitsuo Kubo ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' Tsuyoshi Takahashi (Japanese), [[Kyle Hebert]] (English)}}

 

 

=== Taro Namatame ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' Koji Haramaki (Japanese) and J. B. Blanc (English)}}

 

* [[Drowning My Sorrows]]: His initial coping mechanism to the leaking of his affair with Mayumi.

* [[Forced to Watch]]: Sorta. In the anime he witnessed {{spoiler|Mayumi's death in the Midnight Channel}} and tried to save her {{spoiler|via attempting to take her hand through the TV right before it happened}}, but he failed to {{spoiler|bring her back}}.

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: After he realizes that his actions could have potentially killed more people.

* [[Obliviously Evil]]: Subverted oh so very hard.

 

=== Tohru Adachi/[[Comic Book Adaptation|Tamotsu Adachi]] ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' [[Mitsuaki Madono]] (Japanese) and [[Johnny Yong Bosch]] (English)}}

 

 

* [[The Atoner]]: Becomes this to some degree in the True Ending by sending a letter stating his suspicions about a higher being orchestrating the entire thing, after being recently convicted for his crimes.

* [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing|Asshole in Sheep's Clothing]]

* [[Ax Crazy]]

** And when his [[True Colors]] are shown, he becomes more like [[X Meets Y|the lovechild of]] Light and [[Code Geass|Lelouch]]. Ironic considering who voices the latter in the English version.

* [[Detective Mole]]

* [[The Ditz]]: Or at least, [[Obfuscating Stupidity|plays a very good one]].

* [[Evilly Affable]]: He's an loopy, [[Ax Crazy]] [[Serial Killer]]. That said, he's pretty funny.

* [[I Never Said It Was Poison]]: See [[Saying Too Much]] below.

* [[Kick the Dog]]: "I was just trying to punish the stupid bitch a little for betraying me."

* [[Living with the Villain]]: Your biggest hint to finding the killer is the fact that he's welcome at the Dojima household any time.

* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: He first manipulated Namatame into attempting to commit the murders with delusions of messianic grandeur, then tries to manipulate the Investigation Team into [[Red Herring|chasing after Namatame]].

* [[Psychopathic Manchild]]: Outright called immature by Naoto and Yukiko. Despite his claims to the contrary, it's quite clear that he's basically throwing a massive temper tantrum.

* [[Saying Too Much]]: "Namatame was the one who '''threw them in'''!"

** He's actually meant to be a counterpart to the main character in the sense that the MC uses his power to help people, while Adachi uses his power to harm. This is more apparent in the anime where [[Persona 4: The Animation|Yu]] has his own personality.

* [[Slasher Smile]]: Once you when chase him into the Midnight Channel.

 

=== Izanami ===

{{quote|'''Voiced by:''' [[Daisuke Namikawa]] and [[Romi Park]] (Japanese), [[Ryusei Nakao]] (Japanese, as Ameno-Sagiri, [[Persona 4: The Animation]]), [[Karen Strassman]] (English)}}

 

An extremely ancient and powerful [[Anthropomorphic Personification|manifestation]] of the [[Carl Jung|collective unconscious]] styled after a goddess from [[Japanese Mythology|traditional Japanese folklore]], [[Schrodinger's Butterfly|or perhaps its basis]]. You initially hear her name during a class lecture midway through the game. The wife of the god Izanagi, she died in childbirth. Saddened by her death, Izanagi visted the underworld, Yomotsu Hirasaka, and persuaded her to return to the living with him. But as they began to leave the darkness of the underworld, Izanagi saw that Izanami's body had become a rotting corpse, and terrified ran from her. Enraged, Izanami sent various creatures that chased after Izanagi as he fled the underworld. However they were unable to catch him, and once he reached the surface again Izanagi sealed the entrance with a boulder. Now even angrier, Izanami threatened she would curse 1,000 people to die every day unless she was freed, but Izanagi responded that in that case each day he would give life to 1,500 new ones.

 

 

In the True Ending, after Adachi and Ameno-Sagiri are defeated, the Protagonist may surmise that something about the case still seems unresolved, and traces the events in Inaba back to Izanami, who has been watching the events in Inaba unfold [[Full-Body Disguise|as the local gas station's attendant]]. She reveals that Ameno-Sagiri was merely an alter-ego that she created long ago, and she still plans on continuing her plan even without Adachi's help.

* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: She genuinely wants to make the world a better place for humans. The problem is that she really does not understand them all that well, and the "true desire" she perceived came from a misogynistic loon.

* [[Character Portrait]]: It's worth noting that even though she's the third character you meet and appears on rainy days throughout the entire game, she doesn't get a portrait until ''after'' you've figured out she's the one responsible for everything that happened in The True Ending.

* [[Chekhov's Gunman]]: In her human form. The game is actually very subtle about it (see [[Character Portrait]] above).

** [[King Incognito]]

* [[God Couple]]: With Izanagi.

* [[Graceful Loser]]: "Children of man... Well done...!"

* [[Humanoid Abomination]]

* [[Humanity on Trial]]: Her motivation for giving the Protagonist, Namatame and Adachi their powers.

* [[The Unfettered]]

* [[The Virus]]: How her fog works, slowly turning humanity into Shadows.

* [[Worthy Opponent]]: Lauds the Investigation Team's efforts after they defeat her.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Persona 4]]

[[Category:Characters]]