Today on P5T, I was right, Jade was right, the boss continues to be absolutely the worst, and we’ve learned some new stuff!
All the freed citizens refer to her as “Lady Yuki”, so Ann questions whether or not she’s married. This offends the hats. XD
But yes! She used to be married to Yoshiki! So that means she is, in fact, Toshiro’s mother! I was correct. And once Yuki takes the captives to safety, Toshiro explains what happened to his mother. He had a rough childhood.
But he came up with a plan to spend some more time with her! He would sneak her out of the hospital, and they would go to the amusement park together. His mother went along with this plan, and they had a great day. At least until they left.
His mother passed away soon after, and his father put the blame for his mother’s death on him. To the point of trying to poison his memories of his mother. Like an absolute fucker.
But… there are so many Thieves who don’t have moms. Futaba, Haru, Makoto, Yusuke… So Futaba and Yusuke are able to talk him down and reassure him that they’re sure his mother didn’t hate him.
With that settled, they charge onwards through the castle to confront Yoshiki himself. He’s horrible, he sets up a whole thing where you have to keep fighting your way across the room towards him to deal more damage, and most of his attacks can knock you back. Which is great when you have to be crossing raised platforms.
The TVs are cool. Very nice P4 vibes.
After we get down to the last hit, the game does that thing where it’s like “oh noooo, we’re going to be overrun if we don’t do somethingggg” while I’m just over here like, “No? I’m fine? I just need to do one more fight?” But it paves the way for a dramatic moment where Yuki and all the citizens return to bust in and overwhelm Yoshiki so we can get the last hit in.
He doesn’t go down, though. He stays up and keeps talking. All the TVs are showing the revolution happening outside, where the city is burning and the citizens are fighting to the last. The Thieves are finally hit with the realization that when they do things, there can be negative consequences regardless of their good intentions. We’re not going to go into this too much because this is P5 and we do not dig into the grey morality of the Phantom Thieves, but in this specific instance, I’m going to say it’s fine to not dig, because instead we get Yoshiki taking the opposite extreme.
Says the man working his citizens to death running the power grid so he can keep his fucking surveillance cameras running. Like, fucking hell. Dude. At least this carnage is because of the citizens fighting for their future, and not because you’re torturing them.
Then he starts laying into Toshiro like an absolute monster. I wonder how much older Toshiro is than Akira Konoe. They could have been ‘murdering our abusive fathers’ buddies as children.
And as one last parting shot, he barfs up a massive laser and tries to blast Toshiro. But Yuki shoves Toshiro out of the way and takes the hit, and once again, there is blood pooling on the floor. Yoshiki is a dick about it, of course.
Immediately afterwards, he dissolves. So like, were you hanging on through sheer force of will just to blast him? But before she dies, Yuki assures him that she has never resented him. She was glad she got to spend that time with him, because she loved him. It was really, really cute, actually.
...Knight, huh? Damn it Atlus. XDDDDD
The country is now free, the hatpeople are happy, the Thieves are mobbed with thanks again, and Erina is still having a mild existential crisis. Because if that was Toshiro’s mom, what is she?
But we’re heading for the next door, and crossing our fingers that it either takes us back to Erina’s world, or home.
…………..oh god. It’s a school.
Erina feels like the atmosphere is suffocating, but many of the Thieves don’t notice any difference. Toshiro doesn’t recognize the place, but they’re used to that, so they decide to go inside and see what’s going on. Inside the school, they return to their street clothes, and the halls are deserted, but they find a weird door.
Obviously we gotta go through the weird door, and on the other side, we find Hell! Hell is made of lava and speakers.
So the gimmick for this place is that there are speaker enemies on the battlefield, and they announce “rules” that you can’t break while you’re in their range, otherwise you’ll incur a penalty (which is being knocked out of cover so the other enemies can wallop you). After we manage to get out of the hellpocket, we meet this Kingdom’s hatpeople, who are all in school uniforms. They’ve formed the Rebel Club to fight the tyrant who has taken over the school, which is some kind of… fire-themed guy.
I’ve got a couple theories here. The tyrant might be a delinquent, a bully, that sort of thing. Might be some uncaring school administrator. Might be Toshiro himself, off the rails because of his father’s expectations. He was probably student council president. You know he was.
So we’ve gotta go get four keys to unlock the door to the final boss, where the exit to the school probably is. Because all the hatstudents are trapped here too. Each of the keys is in one of those hellpockets, so it’s off to the courtyard to get the first one. After a tough battle, we find…
...oh. So it’s like a Jail core. Not an actual key, but a significant object to the person. Time for a flashback! And wow, I was right, he was student council president! He got beaten up trying to protect another kid! And he… uh… oh…
I’m not gonna lie, this feels very ‘unrealized childhood crush’ to me. Erina realizes that this is probably why she’s been feeling so weird in the school. And everyone realizes that they really need more info, and getting the keys will probably clear up more of Toshiro’s memories.
Apparently Eri is just like Erina, though. Strong sense of justice, strong urge to jump in and help regardless of danger, all that good stuff. I was going to say that there’s nothing in canon that says we can’t take Erina back to our world at the end of this, but apparently there is a real equivalent to Erina out there. And she’d probably be a better fiancee than Marie by leaps and bounds.
So that’s the third Kingdom! We will see who the boss ends up being.
Other notes:
There doesn't seem to be a human person here so far.
I love Ann’s surprised sprite.
I love that Toshiro has just reached the point of rolling with all this.
We MIGHT have gotten a vague Maruki allusion.
I got my Danger Noodle! I love Yurlunger. XD
5 notes
·
View notes