Hear Me Out- I Was Thinking About How In Strikers All The Thieves Have Different Outfits, And Notably

Makoto & Haru!

I wish Ryuji Sakamoto was right.

Ratiorine!

Hahaha I would never do that ( @checkerstheboard @avendoki @turretangel What character do I remind you guys of? 😊)

my friends open drawing requests and i bow my head with shame and avoid eye contact as i ask for the character they Already Knew I Would Ask For

Quick rant about Akiren, because I see many different interpretations of him (some I agree with, some I don't) but one that I don't see very often is this.

Yes, he loves his friends and cares for them. But imagine this- his home life was very uneventful, and considering how his family doesn't bother to reach out after his arrest, I'd imagine they see him as a lost cause. They gave up, or his worth is conditional. They love him conditionally. Being raised like that affects you as a person, and I like to imagine that after Igor told him that he now has to fill the role of a hero preventing ruin, and his bonds with people give him the strength he needs to do so, he embraces it. He embraces feeling important and valued, being admired, being the protagonist. Suddenly he has the world on his shoulders, and these people look up to him and admire and love him for it. Every dialogue response he chooses is his own thoughts, but he chooses what gives him more points. What people want to hear. He helps people so they look up to him, because he loves the attention and filling the role of the hero.

Especially since he's not very expressive, and he's nominated as the leader just because he fills the role the best. He embraces attention but he rejects vulnerability. It really feels like he cares for the image of a leader. It takes him a long time to see his role as anything other than the hero he loves being. I would say around Futaba's palace is when he starts to truly care for the Thieves, which is why by the Casino arc he chooses to protect their identities and risk his lives for them. He does eventually come to care for them, but he's supposed to be a leader. He's important suddenly. Playing the leader is selfish, but as the same time, as the leader he doesn't GET to be selfish. Playing the hero means he has to be empathetic, and that's where the selfishness lies. The intentions. Only once he risks his life for them does his true heroism shine. It's not about people relying on him, it's about him protecting them.

It's even better because after Futaba's palace when he fully starts to care, Morgana leaves and their decision to save Morgana is purely because they value their team. Morgana is his friend, so they must protect him. It's not a prerequisite of heroism to put aside their goals for Morgana.

And this interpretation makes 2/2 even more interesting, because he's given the opportunity to get the one thing he wished for. He can make the selfish choice. Doing so would give up not only his hero role, but also would betray and abandon everyone he cares about. 2/2 is like a checkpoint where he remembers how the Thieves formed and how at some point, his priorities shifted from being the protagonist and hero admired by all, to wanting to protect the people close to him. He has to reconcile with why. He has to think "It's not about me being selfish for once by taking Maruki's deal, it's about the fact that I care for these people and I don't want to hurt and betray them."

So yeah, I love this interpretation of Akiren Kurumiya and I would love to see more of this, please and thank you.

Got banned from the Little Ceasers. Call that a little Cease-and-Desisters

The last tag you originally put got me thinking about Hereward again, and dammit we NEED to rant about this later because I'm so interested

are you still there? are you still you?

This is why his introduction cutscene is so hilarious to me. It starts with showing this devastating and tragic subway accident on the news, and then the next thing you know there's this silly teenage detective thoroughly disappointed that his coworker is subjecting him to conveyor belt sushi. It's so funny to me that this face is literally him right after his most recent heinous crime broke the news:

P5r has a lot of writing flaws generally But you have to admit. no matter how you view his character “highly marketable anime Pretty Boy who keeps going ‘woaww Protagonist you’re so interesting <33’ is actually a hired assassin and is acting like that because he’s actively planning your murder” is an objectively hilarious plot point

I agree with this completely, but I want to add some things. I think something that I've seen people not realize is that in this framework Maruki has no care for the dead. He never cared about Kasumi, or about the sibling's bond with each other, because if he did he could have just brought Kasumi back or tried even a little bit to understand the underlying truth behind Sumire's grief stricken warped perception of her late sister. Instead, Maruki facilitates what she claims she wants, which is to become this warped perception of her sister. To match the strength she idolized. It's the same with Akechi. Akechi's wishes don't matter, Maruki wants to repay Ren for unintentionally giving him the key to accomplishing his goals, and to an extent he sees himself in Ren. Just like how Maruki didn't attempt to understand the truth behind the bond of the Yoshizawa siblings, he didn't attempt to understand the bond between Ren and Akechi. It's not enough that Akechi is alive and """"happy"""" with Ren, they had a unique dynamic fueled by their experiences, and Maruki's shallow understanding of them and what they "want" could never accurately replicate it. He thinks sanding off Akechi's jaded worldview and trauma will make him easier to love, and we know that's not true. Not to Ren. Akechi's autonomy is not granted to him because it would in Maruki's eyes, defeat the purpose of bringing him back as the perfect companion he thinks Ren always wanted but could never have.

This is a big reason why I have problems with people who claim to love shuake but also believe Maruki is right or prefer the bad ending narrative wise. It's feeding into the same toxicity Maruki does. Maruki doesn't value Akechi individually, he is only present as a ghostly giftwrapped puppet for Ren to love. People tend to fall into the trap that Maruki's reality provides, and that's that "look at this character you have grown attached to. Don't you want them happy?" So they are forced to deal with the cognitive dissonance of safe comfort for the character, or what the character would want. Anyone who claims to love Akechi and Ren together but prefers the bad ending doesn't actually care about the bond they have. It's because they play as Ren and they want his "happiness".

Adding onto this because I've yapped for this long so I might as well, I could apply this to any of the other thieves as well. Someone might spend the entire game wishing for Ann to be happy with Shiho, and then when Maruki provides that of course they would consider accepting the deal. But they seem to forget that the only reason they became attached to Ann in the first place is because of the experiences she went through in the course of the game. The Ann they grew to love is NOT the Ann that has Shiho in Maruki's reality. It's an important distinction to make.

forever thinking about royal’s bad ending. my thing with it is that maruki doesn’t necessarily give anyone what they want most, he gives them what’s most appropriate for them to want within a maruki-approved framework. iirc there’s a really interesting text sequence in the game where he just straight up changes someone’s career because they’re not “good” at it, regardless of whether that’s what they actually want. why struggle at all? ever? right?

and so ultimately i don’t think goro akechi’s greatest wish is necessarily ren. i think it’s a wish for sure, but his greatest wish is his own agency. despite any regrets he has and the fact that shido and yaldabaoth treated him like a pawn, he's generally pretty adamant about owning his choices and their consequences. he doesn't want that erased. and instead, you end up with pleasant boy™ if you take maruki’s deal. maybe maruki (incorrectly) thinks sanding off all of akechi’s rough edges will make him easier for ren to love. but the crux of it is really that maruki has to essentially lobotomize him to preserve the illusion of his perfect reality, because their ideologies are so diametrically opposed that akechi would spend every waking moment fighting back.

this isn’t to undermine ren’s importance to akechi btw — he explicitly acknowledges that he wishes they had met earlier, and there are countless moments throughout their confidant that underscore how much it means to him that they mirror each other so well. he absolutely does want more time with ren, just not under these circumstances.

and that’s also what makes ren’s choice on 2/2 doubly devastating. he knows that either way he loses akechi. and if he takes maruki’s deal, he loses him knowing that his last moments with the real akechi involved the two of them being unforgivably out of sync.

if the version of akechi in the third semester is just Joker's 'ideal' version of him (rather than the og akechi actually being alive) then that implies he likes akechi crazy. He saw akechi's reveal as a complete maniac and thought that was cool.

Akechi comes back in maruki's world just as insane and angry as he was in the engine room and joker LIKES that.