Access to a video script for a video that likely won't be made (Patreon)

As explained in my monthly log, I finished this script a long time ago but I've never been totally happy with it so I probably won't turn it into a video. But I figured I'd share it in case anyone is interested.

The Messages of Persona 5 Royal’s True Ending

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I was a bit hesitant to pick up Persona 5 Royal. While it definitely isn’t without its blemishes, I really enjoyed the vanilla game and thought that it was both a ton of fun and a story packed with meaningful messages and amazing presentation, as I discussed in my video on the series. But on the other hand, it is also an enormous story and a huge timesink. And in hearing that this new version would not alter the vast majority of that, it was tough for me to scrounge up the motivation for what I thought would be a slightly improved and glorified replay. To put it bluntly, there is a big barrier to entry here, because with the limited time that we have, not everyone, even those who really like Persona 5, is going to want to play through roughly a hundred hours of a game that has such a large portion that is identical to the original version. It’s totally understandable, and as I said, I had these reservations as well. But it’s that smaller portion that ISN’T identical, and the new narrative seeds planted during the timespan of April to December in-game, that yield a brilliant third semester with a conclusion to the story that is as epic and meaningful as it is sobering. For something that was added on, you may expect it to feel out of place or inconsistent thematically - but that couldn’t be further from the truth, and it establishes Persona 5 Royal’s third semester and true ending as an impactful and cohesive addition to the story. And while there are substantial additions to the narrative through Yoshizawa and the increased role for Akechi, the crux of why this conclusion works so well is down to Maruki.

Though part of this was a PR move, Maruki is hired as the school’s psychological councelor to help students to deal with the stresses of the Kamoshida situation as well as anything else that may be bothering them. He is a kind, compassionate, adorably awkward and empathetic man. From the beginning, he makes it clear that he is there to help everyone, and while there are initial suspicions that he may have ulterior motives or some hidden malice, he just continues on with his counseling and proves to be just what he says he is: A genuinely caring person. Though, the specifics and nuances of how he goes about his philosophy, along with the reason those ideals came to be in the first place, are very telling and very important for setting the stage for later events.

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Just a little while after first meeting him, Joker learns a little bit of who Maruki is - a man deeply concerned about the concept of internal agony, and who is very fixated on the question of how to cure an individuals pain of the heart, how to help them and save them from suffering and emotional turmoil. He laments that try as we might, it’s just impossible to genuinely understand someone else’s emotional pain. We can attempt to relate and empathize, but in the end only we truly know how we feel and no amount of communication gives anyone enough perspective to know what someone else is experiencing. Maruki finds this fact agonizing and is motivated from the beginning to make the world a more empathetic and compassionate place, through pondering and experimenting with how this can be achieved. How to fix this eternal dilemma that would make life so much more harmonious.

And we later find out that he feels this way primarily because of an event in his past - Maruki was once engaged with a woman named Rumi. However, one day, Rumi’s parents were murdered during a robbery. This scarred Rumi and sent her into a shock, causing her to experience a mental breakdown which resulted in her memories being permanently tainted. Maruki found that Rumi was unable to recognize him or remember their love when he talked to her, and she was never able to recover from this. Her perception of reality was entirely shifted as a result of her terrible pain, and this completely turned his life upside down. However, this fueled his determination to combat this sort of thing and helped him form the beginnings of his philosophy. From here, he vowed to fight back against the unfairness of reality and it became his cause to dismiss the cruelness that the world thrust upon it’s denizens.

And ironically, through continuously nurturing these ideals, he found himself thinking of the very thing that took Rumi from him as beautiful from another perspective. For Maruki, the idea of perceptions of reality changing due to cognition can be wondrous. If we look at the flip side of his tragedy, we can see that the human heart can feel or experience different things due to thinking about things differently. Our cognitive world can then, as a result, affect our happiness, and it does on a daily basis. All it takes is a shift in viewpoint. It’s a wealth of potential that can lead to holistic joy and healing for others, if tapped into the right way. And Maruki vows to find this, as he begins his journey into researching cognitive pscience, explores the facets of the multiverse and cognition, and learns through his interactions with Joker and the rest of the students.

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In his farewell speech during his last day as Shujin counselor, Maruki says something very important and indicative - that no one is obligated to have to face an unfair reality that they have no choice but to confront. It’s okay to find alternates, to escape from the trials that the world puts us through. Whether or not one agrees with this, it is a statement born of true empathy from Maruki - existence is a miracle, and we all deserve to be happy even if it’s a happiness that hinges on escapism and artificiality. The power and impact of that happiness is what’s important, not the origin - And he hopes for everyone to find this happiness one way or another.

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And before he takes his leave, he reveals to Joker that he knew he was a phantom thief the whole time, or at least had strong suspicions. But he never reported this or even thought of stopping him, because he believed in his morals and intentions. And the reason for that is that his goals were the same - to help free society from this darkness and fix the pain of the world. And he says here that even though he may have a different path, the two were kindred spirits. He sincerely hopes for he and Joker to meet again, and wonders if he could offer a helping hand.. even if Joker may think it’s meddlesome. He then leaves, and we don’t hear from him again for the remainder of the Vanilla game’s story events.

However, after defeating Yaldabaoth, the new year brings a slew of confusion for Joker. After navigating a dream in which a strange voice questions his defiance and unwillingness to accept some vague concept of truth, he wakes up to find a bunch of weird shit has happened. Morgana is a human. Futaba’s mother, Wakaba, is alive. Haru’s father, President Okumura, is alive. Ryuji is a part of the track team. Makoto’s father is alive and well. Yusuke has been taken in by a now compassionate Madarame. Everything is different and living in some new reality where the sad events of their past have corrected themselves. But Joker and Akechi eventually see themselves to be the only ones unaffected, and they meet up with Yoshizawa to discover the truth.

After entering a mysterious new palace, they find a huge, luxurious clinic of sorts that accepts all types of patients and allows them to quote unquote become happy. The workers and patients here all speak of finding this salvation, and though the message seems positive, it’s all a bit strange and cultish. It doesn’t feel quite right. It is here where we learn the revelations of Yoshizawa’s past, though as she searches for the truth that the palace teases to her, she’s told by workers here that there’s no point in looking for sadness and pain, even if it is genuine truth. The voice of Maruki suddenly appears and says the same, encouraging her to return to her current reality and avoid this heartache that comes with the truth.

We then learn that Maruki has gained the power to alter reality into a more painless one, one that people wish for. He shows us the truth of Yoshizawa and asks everyone to choose a reality here, offering all involved the chance of a blissful dream-like escape to a personal heaven - a false reality, a fake truth and a fake life. It is clear that he has found a method to go along with the ideals he held all this time, and has at the same time exaggerated those ideals - believing that pleasant, warm lies are a better alternate to an ugly truth. And being granted the power to control the reality that people see, Maruki views this as his duty, to create a paradise for everyone where no one feels any pain due to this dream world.

It’s an intent that is wholly good, but it’s the methods here where he and our party butt heads on. While the party confronted the true ugliness of the world and attempted to enact a true change within it by defeating Yaldabaoth and rejecting the false freedom of indolence, Maruki instead believes in artificially changing the realities of the populace to make them live in a dream world. Joker believes in healing the world through changing it, Maruki believes in healing the world through avoiding the truth. But while both of these may bring happiness, only one of these is real and earned, and only one is true progress. And it’s a blind spot that Maruki refuses to see a problem with. To him, it doesn’t matter that it’s all false and he doesn’t care, as long as there is no pain for anyone.

While his distortions were exaggerated, Maruki is a good man, and what’s notable is that while the other palace leaders we fought had given in to their extreme darkness, Maruki was never full of the malice that characterized the others. His desire is to save humanity through this artificial cognition. His distortion is a utopia. It was just a little too much, because while well-intended, this is not a true freedom, and instead is another subset of the indolence of the masses that we defeated earlier on. It isn’t just lying down and accepting a lack of agency as Yaldabaoth encouraged, but it is indulging in a world and not using your power for your own wishes. There is no control here, no agency, and as such this is something of a dead life of passivity and detachment where no happiness is earned. If he gets what he wants, with Mementos merging with the real world, Maruki’s actualized dream world will become the new reality. Forcing people to live in this fake world with no means to wake up. And that is too far. It is removing the agency that the party has sought to advocate, the agency that they inspired in the public after defeating the Grail and that will lead society to progress.

And in the end, this agency and ability to change the world is what Persona 5 is advocating. Not running away from these troubles, but coming together and tackling these things head on. And Maruki opposes Joker sadly because he views him as an obstacle to genuine world peace. Genuinely and regretfully. And in order to defend what he believes is the path to a righteous world, he must do whatever he can to oppose Joker. He resorts to unsavory methods, and he admits to not knowing if he is right, but this is what he feels is right. And he will do anything to defend that. The music for Maruki’s palace, entitled a Gentle Madman, is what I view as a terrific encapsulation of this third semester through capturing the spirit and tone of this prolonged fight with Maruki. In this illustrious palace, in our final mission, we have a song here that is appropriately grand and regal and epic.. but it is also melancholic, and quite sad at the same time, almost mourning the fact that things have come to this. Maruki isn’t the hero of the game because he becomes distorted by his ideals and fails to see the truths of freedom and other perspectives. But he is the result of what this world can turn a genuinely great human being into. Someone who just goes too far in search of a grand solution to the pain that this world can bring, and fails to realize the value and potency of slowly but surely making little positive changes and gradually changing perception in society. And the party realize this too. That they are happy.. but running away. And that isn’t true happiness, nor does it solve anything. So they all break through the illusion and aspire to prove him wrong through one last heist.

It’s easy to sympathize with Maruki - his ideals are formed from his horrors at the truth of the world, a world that took the love of his life away from him through changing her cognition. Her cognition changing negatively impacted everything about her and his life. This cognition change, while immaterial, was very real, and had lasting effects. So why not flip that, and turn it into a positive one? Could that not lead to widespread happiness? He feels genuine pain and empathy at the pain of others, so he wants to heal all of it. But he doesn’t see that this happiness is a farce. It’s false. It may feel real and tangible, but it is not earned and it does not acknowledge any attempts to try to fix society’s problems true problems. And in the end, that is just another form of running away. And he acknowledges this, and admitted that he saw escape as a primary solution all the way back during his farewell speech. But he just doesn’t see another way. He hates fighting someone with the same goal as him, but he can’t give up and stop what he’s started. He genuinely views it as a path to peace, and it takes the party stopping him for him to finally give up on his crusade. He believes until the end, until it is literally impossible for him to continue on, because that’s how important healing the world is to him. But we help him to realize the flaws of this, and through example, help him to believe that maybe we don’t need some revolutionary dreamworld to change the world. Maybe through controlling our destinies and grasping things with our won two hands, through little acts of kindness and little shifts in perception from everyone, the world just might be able to heal on it’s own. Is this a surefire thing? Of course not. But we have learned through our journey that sitting on our asses and indulging in hopelessness of falsities is no way to live life, and we transfer that lesson onto Maruki. A man hurt by the world, who only ever became as distorted as he did because of how big of a heart he had. But a man who, by the end, is also able to see the beauty in situating himself in reality, and going day by day, taking the pain and pleasure and darkness and light, and shouldering it all in service of a better world. Many thanks for watching.