I will just get right to it, is anyone else bothered by how popular Akechi is with the fan base to this game?

Akechi is a serial killer who has a kill count that - if you include all the casualties from the train car accident in the beginning of the game - is probably close to 100 people. He murdered Futaba's mother, which led to Shido getting her research and forging the will that led to Futaba's suicidal depression, He killed Haru's dad, and though they're kind of dicks, he also murdered the Principal and the SIU Director as well. To top all of this off, he TRIES TO MURDER YOU AS WELL - and succeeds if you get the bad ending! That's not even mentioning that he's not really a genius or a detective, since the only reason he's considered as such is because he's investigating the people he made go insane.

Despite all of this, I see this weird trend with people loving him. He has a sad backstory, sure, but that hardly forgives him for everything listed above. A lot of people on reddit liked the guy, a lot of people here do, a lot of people on tvtropes love him, and I just don't fucking get it. I mean, I liked fighting against him because I loved how maniacal he is in his final encounter, but beyond that, he's a despicable character.

I think I now understand how Alan Moore felt when people said that they wished Rorschach won in Watchmen.

I understand this is a game, and that people are entitled to their opinions, and I shouldn't be bothered by something this dumb, but man... I don't know, it just kind of bothers me.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Frankly it's surprising to me as well. I feel that Adachi was way more sympathetic despite him still being a scumbag.

He was far from my favorite, but I very much disagree with the idea that just because he's a despicable person, you shouldn't like him as a character.

I'm on team Fuck Akechi, nothing but a 2 bit Naoto knockoff.

A lot of people like a lot of weird things.

As far as why, my guess would be that it's because he's a pretty compelling villain. And the way they handle his turn after Sae's palace is pretty good.

Akechi didn't murder Futaba's mother, he would have been a small child at the time. He's still a student just slightly older than Futaba.

I've been largely steering clear of fanbase discussions on these characters, but some of it might be a "love to hate" kind of thing. There are definitely characters in other media that are just so deliciously evil that you can't help but love them, even if they're pure evil. He's also kind of a pretty boy, so some fangirls and fanboys are inevitably going to fall in love with him regardless what horrible things he does, because that always happens. There's been more despicable characters than Akechi that people still swoon over.

Personally I don't think they did quite enough with him to really love him in either sense, but I like him more than Adachi at least.

I completely agree. The one part of the story that really bothered me was the way the characters react to Akechi's death. I was genuinely concerned for a moment there that he was going to survive and join the party again based on the way everyone was so distressed by his sacrifice. That would have been a step too far for me.

Luckily he did die with his moment of (somewhat) redemption at the end with his noble sacrifice. Still, despite that I definitely don't feel like that redeemed his character in any meaningful way, and the fandom that has sprung up around him is completely insane as far I'm concerned.

Pretty much a lot about Akechi I just don't get. The way the characters seemed to have forgiven him postmortem, and even seemed to be mourning his death is just nonsensical. Similarly, the fan response is equally nonsensical.

@evildeadron: I think he did? If I'm remembering right, Wakaba's death was said to be only a year or two before the events of the game.

People love murder I guess idk

@spunkyhepanda: Hmm. I was under the impression that it was a lot earlier than that.

I dunno, a lot of the positive comments I see about him are kinda tongue-in-cheek with people already in the know saying things like, "hey, this seems like a very nice, non-suspicious boy that loves pancakes" in the same way I would see people jokingly talk about Adachi and cabbages. Then again, yeah, there's always the fans out there that gravitate to these edgelord "fuck the world" characters.

The only thing I like about Akechi are the meme pictures with him wearing Oda's GET SMOKED hat. But then again, I think that hat is funny on just about anyone. I have simple tastes, I guess.

@ll_exile_ll: From what I recall the characters mostly just felt sympathy for him as yet another victim of Shido rather than actually forgiving him for what he'd done. Although it did seem to wrap up a little too quickly and I would have appreciated a stronger sense of mixed emotions. (From Ryuji at the very least. I mean c'mon.)

If they ever release an updated P5 I'm like 95% they'll add some extra scenario for Akechi to delve deeper into his character. Much like Adachi, that last minute twist leaves too little time for his character arc to grow.

@redyoshi:

I dunno man, I think Akechi pretty much sucks. He's super obvious as a villain from his character design alone(a vaguely smiling, Light Yagami-looking JUSTICE dude with the wardrobe of Damon Gant the same age as you in a game you play as thieves), which means the whole mystery about the killer's identity and who the traitor is gonna be is a complete non-starter. His every appearance throughout the game is frustrating because I know he's a bad guy but the characters don't get a clue until 90 hours in.

His regular portrait has got those uncanny eyes that Mishima also shares. He talks in a fake, annoying voice(In Japanese). He becomes an assassin because he's got daddy issues, and murders two of the main cast's parents. His red mask is so ugly. When you fight him, he goes Anime Hysterical in the same shitty way Adachi did, minus the rapeyness. I never got that there was a difference between the mental breakdowns and psychotic breakdowns before his fight and don't really see what difference it makes. He's okay as a villain, but his saving grace is that he's third from the top at best rather than being the main one. He's a smalltime assassin one step above a dude that delivers bombs to places someone wants to blow up, more a delivery man than an evil genius.

I can understand why people might sympathize with him in the sense that he had a somewhat crappy childhood, but every single person in this game was mistreated by shitty adults and very few of them started a murdering business in retaliation. For me his highlights were the scene where he executes Joker, which was pretty rough to watch, and the scene where he sacrifices himself. I felt a little sad for him at that point, and the execution scene was both exciting and then really fun once the trick was revealed.

God I hated him from the goddamn second he mentioned fucking cake. Well, hate is a bit too strong of a word for that time. I instantly distrusted him and ever since that moment I just fucking knew he was probably the killer, and if not, he was at least working with them. And then I grew to hate him. That asshole not-Adachi ruining the name of Detective Prince.

I'll agree on his whole look being alright - dude reminds me of Light a ton and he kinda rocks that outfit, but god just fuck everything else about him.

Also I kept going "Really, everyone? Fucking really? You're actually caring about this motherfucker right now? Like, yeah his past is totally shitty but so is everyone elses and guess what? They didn't fucking murder people! And he also just tried to kill us! After literally trying to shoot me in the head like a month earlier! Stop caring damnit!" during his whole "redemption" bit.

If there was a Renegade option I would've hit that so goddamn hard during that scene. Spam that trigger. Just no, fuck you, you literally insane murderer. We just kicked your ass so incredibly hard, but now you gets to save us from...this...other you? And...shadows? Pretty sure we could take them all on at once and be fine.

...wow that was a lot more than I initially thought I was going to write. I guess I just really hated him. Hell I even bought him shitty armor and sold what he had simply out of spite when he was in the party. And just sold anything else that was for him.

Insanely petty, yes, but it felt great.

@redhotchilimist: Right-click, aaaand saved.

You mentioned him going anime crazy, and that was exactly the point where I stopped even caring about him as a villain let alone as a character, because oh my goodness, can they give it a rest already with that crazy eyes, unhinged psycho face popping up for almost any villain. Shido was much more effective for me because that guy was just so full of himself he didn't need that extra dimension of I'M CRAZY.

@random45: I don't know about being bothered by it but I don't understand why anyone would like him. Maybe it's the stupid pancakes thing that makes him endearing to some, but he's a generic over the top anime villain.

Also want to rant about how they tried to redeem him at the end, right after the Thieves went all power of friendship. There's a part where Yusuke says something to the effect of "I might have ended up like him if i hadn't found you all."

WUT

I was just bothered about how poor of a villain he was. He would have been way better to me if he was just a psychopath, but them trying to hamfist a bunch of his past in a talking sequence and trying to pain him as someone that can be redeemed was fucking horrible and one of the major problems I have with Persona 5. The dude killed so many people, including some directly connected to cast members who matter, and thought he had shot you in the fucking head...YOU DON'T REDEEM THAT. And the fact you can call out he will be a bad guy from the very first meeting really took all mystery away from the beginning set up of "who turned on the group". The entire tone of the game and doubley so for how they paint Akechi is one of the reasons I put P5 under P3 and P4 in my personal rankings. Adachi he was not!

He reminds me a lot of Light from Death Note. He looks incredibly similar and also has a disturbing amount of people that genuinely like him, even though both of them are sub-human pieces of trash.

@takayamasama: Adachi was worse imo. His turn to creepy raper guy felt way more forced and rushed. They fixed it a bit with the extra scenario's in Golden and I even kinda started to like him in Ultimax (in a joyous evil "The Joker" kind of way), but I think he was a poorly handled villain in vanilla P4. And don't forget they even kinda tried to redeem him too.

I have issues with how they handled Akechi, but at least his turn felt a little more natural and his reasons for being a psychopath felt a little more...well not justified, but logical I guess.

You are right about that, there are definitely evil characters that can be great characters despite how horrible they are.

I think what bothers me is that I was reading TVtropes, and some guy mentioned how Akechi 'redeemed' himself at the end, and I was just sort of like... No he didn't. I mean, he saved you, but he wasn't redeemed in any sense. I guess I can't blame people too much though, since in the freaking game they really drive home the sympathy angle in his death scene.

@redhotchilimist said:

@redyoshi:

Thank you for helping me decide on a new avatar.

It's fiction. You can like characters for any reason. It doesn't really matter.

The Punisher is one of my favorite characters in comics, and he's a horrible person.

I never liked Akechi because he was a black hole of terrible, garbage writing. Even before he's revealed as a fraud, he never does or says anything of value, but has the whole game talking him up like he's the author self-insert character in a shitty fan-fic. It was bizarre and seemed completely out of tone with all the other characters.

I see it kinda weird that people are so willing to issue death penalty to Akechi. Persona 5 is a game all about taking shitty and some cases seemingly irredeemable people and having them confess on their crimes and have law deal with the appropriate punishment part. I, at least, saw Akechi's "redemption" scene as Phantom Thieves trying to cause a change of heart for the one person with whom they can't just use magic to do it.

Wait people like Akechi? Sure I can see the Japanese fans being into him (him being bishy and evil), but so far from what I've seen the western fans hate him with a passion. But then again I'm probably in an echo chamber.

I felt confused after seeing the post boss battle cut-scene. The way your team was mourning him it made me feel like I missed something, like "Wait, this is the guy who was behind all those murders, right? That's who you're crying for?" I didn't really get it. Not only were the things he had done atrocious, but his reasoning was ridiculous on top of that. I had absolutely zero sympathy for his character by the end of his arc.

Loki looked pretty cool, though.

Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Leatherface etc etc are insanely popular and beyond awful "people". Nothing new here.

People like him? Really? If so, I don't get it. I guess it's so obvious that he's the bad guy that maybe it's a "love to hate" kinda thing as some others have mentioned. It's not like he's a likeable character before the incredibly obvious reveal that he's the traitor, with his "overly nice yet insufferably smug" detective boy personality that just screams "I'm secretly evil." That doesn't really work for me, and neither does his last scene where he "sacrifices" himself. Dude's a murderer and his back story isn't sympathetic enough to really justify the amount of pity everyone in the Phantom Thieves throw his way after that. At the very least they didn't go the route of giving him any sort of real redemption, like showing up during the last boss or whatever.

I feel like it wasn't immediately obvious that Adachi was a sociopath and a murderer, at least not until the second or third veiled threat that "maybe you should stop investigating this stuff." I might have to replay Persona 4 to remember specifics, honestly.

He learns Debilitate which I was super stoked about. Then he left the party and I was super bummed about not having his Debilitate anymore. That's about the extent of my affection for Akechi.

I think it's mostly sympathy. Basically the both the main character and Akechi are setup into a "game" to fail. The protagonist's story is full of cool social links, while Akechi's full of misanthropy and vengeance; for which "Igor" had intended. Maybe it's just me, but I could see it as the will of a cruel god. Something a little more excusable? I could be getting that wrong. I may have forgotten something in that whole conversation near the Igor reveal.

One other thing I can think of is the dub. Did you play with the English or Japanese dub? Maybe the voice helped with the character (un)likeability.

@rastopher: I know right, freeing up the main character's turn to not use debilitate is the best.

He doesn't have shit on Adachi that's for sure.

Well, he's got my favorite All out attack-finish, but that's about it. Not much sympathy for the dude.

My best guess is that people either forget or forgave him for the large amount of murders/people he hospitalised.

During his crazy stuff I got bored and was just wanted him to hury up so i could destroy him, and after i couldn't beleive everyone was like "Oh no, not the murderer, i just suddenly liked him". I will say that at least for me his second fight was probably the hardest for me in the game (not including NG+ or reaper fight).

I also was super exited for the scene where he dies in the real world and everyone see's it, but then I realised that his body was on the meta-verse.

So to sum-up Akechi - He sucks on every level.

@redyoshi: @planetfunksquad: You're welcome!

@rodin: I can only assume the body appeared on a TV antenna in Inaba.

*extreme Zizek voice*

Perhaps it is a commentary on the state of the public's cognitive perception in reality, that they saw a wounded child who wished to pursue truth and justice so much that that character is the one who appeared before them, and that perception is the one they revere. After all, Akechi himself was a pawn of forces both inside and beyond his scope of knowledge, and tried to become his own person, even if that meant the murder of many people. However, in the end, the perception of Akechi as a hero detective was what won out, so that is the version the fanbase will remember.

It does make some kind of sense for the other characters to empathize with his situation. Sure, they all had shitty adults in their lives but they had good supporting ones too. It seems Akechi was surrounded by terrible people from a very young age. That being said, their empathy does go too far for sure. There should've been a bit more scolding rage in that scene but it was fine nonetheless.

I personally found the scene where he randomly starts telling his backstory in the cafe to be more of a problem. It just felt so weird and out of place.

I too wasn't aware there was any popular opinion about the guy beyond weabs who like them some handsome bishi boys. I say fuck Akechi. You could see his heel turn coming from a mile away if you were paying even the slightest bit of attention during his early scenes. Any time I interacted with him after Okumura's murder I was screaming at him on my TV. It doesn't matter to me that he tried to redeem himself at the end of his arc, he murdered one of MY teammate's parents, dared to join MY team after ordering us to disband, and then tried to kill ME. Good riddance to this goddamn poser. I think as others pointed out his saving grace is that he's not the lead bad guy. Something I pointed out in another thread that I kind of liked is that he felt like a throwback to the first Persona game, where you also fight a corporate sell out Persona-user.

I found that part incredibly weird too. "Mmm this is good coffee. By the way, did I tell you that I was a bastard born out of wedlock because my asshole dad didn't want to deal with a kid?" I swear I almost did a spit take.

@dochaus: Now that I think about it, Akechi's infrequent appearances at the cafe and that dialogue probably meant that he actually had regular social link; changed to an automatically progressing social link.

Yup. It's pretty unfortunate that they went right back to "evil cop" after the Adachi heel turn.

Also, they really couldn't have come up with a more original nickname for him than "Detective Prince," which was already given to Naoto in 4? In my first playthrough, there were some news segments talking about him and I thought they were talking about Naoto, forcing me to make a pretty unfavorable comparison between Akechi and Naoto (whom I didn't really like, but man, I'd take her over Akechi any day).

Sign me up for team "fuck that guy" as well. He does have the best victory dance in the game though. I'll give him that.

It doesn't make any sense and I love it!

Building character through animations is pretty damn impressive through the game:

He shot you in the head.

He murdered Haru's father. Maybe Futaba's mother. As well as like 15+ more people.

I mean honestly if given the choice I wouldn't have killed him myself - just dealt with him like the others and let him rot in prison. But I sure as shit didn't feel anything positive towards him even during his death. Yeah, I can see that scene as them trying to change his heart, but he's still a garbage person. I think it's mostly the fact that the characters seem to near instantly forgive him because he had a shitty past because of shitty adults.

Also, he shot you in the fucking head.

I was actively talking to my tv after the akechi fight, when the team was trying to convert him, get the fuck out of here with that, the guy is a straight up mass murdere and basically shot a version of the main character in the head and now my team is trying to find some redeeming quality in him, what the actual fuck..

That said, I haven't seen anyone outside the game excusing him or his actions.

@afabs515: iirc Akechi is hailed as the "Second Coming of the Detective Prince" in some optional TV dialogue, and it's established that Persona 4 characters are still doing their respective things in this universe, so I think it was a decision to have him be the new heartthrob/prodigy following in Naoto's footsteps. Though it's never mentioned if Akechi and Naoto have met each other.

Yeah, there are a bunch of posters for a Rise concert around town and you can get some optional TV dialogue mentioning she's in her early 20s. The persona 4 crew is still out there years later, doing their thing.

Oh I guess I didn't see/misread that dialogue. I just saw him being referred to as the Detective Prince. Never saw anything about the "Second Coming" stuff. That's alright then.

To add to this:

Despite the game claiming to take place in "20XX," the calendar used is the 2016 calendar, which puts the start of the game 4 years after the end of Persona 4. They probably planned to have the game set a couple years in the future as they always do, but when their 2014 release date turned into 2016 in Japan / 2017 in the West, they decided not to surface that the game is set in 2016. Being set in 2016 puts the Persona 4 cast at about 20/21 years old and the Persona 3 cast at 23/24 during Persona 5.