The WORST Persona Music
Crossposted from Reddit. Thankfully all the videos embedded properly on Tumblr, so you can have a live slug reaction to them.
Castle - Persona 4
The dungeon music from Persona 4 is hit and miss. The ones in the endgame are excellent, but the first few dungeons have.... really annoying repetitive music.
This track, Castle, from Yukiko's dungeon has a really nice quiet bit which is surrounded by agonizing repetitive synth noise.
The theme for Kanji's dungeon, Sauna, is also really annoying but not as grating to me. It at least feels like it should be suffocating, rather than accidentally being so.
Band song - Persona 4 Golden (Japanese version)
I think there are worse songs in the Persona 4 saga, and all of them are in the dancing games, but what makes this one egregious is you're pulled out of your normal activities to have this band meet moment, and Rise's singing isn't even that great. I do enjoy Laura Bailey's performance, but they didn't do her japanese actress much of a service. It sounds very out of tune.
Mementos - Persona 5
See, I actually like the Mementos more than the Tartarus theme. However... Tartarus's theme at least has the decency to evolve over time. Mementos's just stays like this forever in the original persona 5.
Persona 5 The Royal fixed this by making Mementos's theme evolve. I like Mementos's music in The Royal SIGNIFICANTLY MORE than Tartarus's theme in P3 Reload which drove me mildly insane by the end. It's too short.
Burning Men's Souls - Persona Trinity Soul
The funny part is that there isn't anything wrong with how this track SOUNDS. It's COMPLETLEY fine and a really good piece of music.
What's wrong is the lyrics. Oh dear god. It reminds me of the raps from Adventure Time's episode Son of Rap Bear.
"CHECK IT OUT, IM IN THE HOUSE LIKE CARPET!"
And with that, we can move onto the actually bad songs!
Shadow World (De De Mouse Remix) - Persona 4 Dancing
I have a special hatred for the persona dancing songs that are "remixes" of original songs that just slather another track on top of them. They all seem to be too busy and have the worst charting. Some of them work, like P3D's "Memories of You" Meguro Remix, but... Shadow World De De Mouse Remix doesn't even have any DANCING IN IT! How are you supposed to play to this monstrosity? It has a crappy video behind it instead. 0 out of 10 effort.
Mass Destruction (Remix) - Persona 3 Dancing
I am obsessed with this song. While most bad tracks have the reaction of "oh, I don't want to listen to that one again", this one? It is a masterpiece. Someone really thought that having epic death guitar behind Mass Destruction would make for a good dancing track.
The more you watch this video the more things wrong with it you find. The notes are so intense and almost impossible to hit, but they barely match the music at all. Nothing can path this atrocity. Ken tries dancing to this theme for about 0.5 seconds before he gives up and mashes his stick like an air guitar, and dances to some completely different song. By the end of it, the song has become keyboard mashing. You finish it. Finally you can breath.
I spent so much time trying to king crazy this song. Mass Destruction Remix has taken over my life. I listen to it again today. I end up making this post just so I can talk about it. Don't play Persona 3 Dancing. It will destroy you. All will submit to Mass Destruction Remix.
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Ken Amada: Character Analysis
Note: the analysis contains spoilers. Suicide and death are mentioned.
The theme of Persona 3 is death. All the characters in the game are related to it, directly or indirectly. To release the persona, the user must expose the brain to the limit between life and death by the guns (evokers) that are fired at the head. That the final boss, Nyx, (primal goddess of darkness in Greek mythology) is an evolution of Thanatos (death) is another important element. It is also no coincidence that the research area is called "Tartarus", the afterlife of the classical world. There are enough details about this for future analysis, but this time I want to focus on one of my favorite characters from the video game: Ken Amada.
Ken Amada is the youngest member of the SEES, being invited by Shuji Ikutsuki as a homeless orphan. Why precisely him? Well, his mother was a member of the SEES, accidentally killed by Shinjiro Aragaki on a mission. Ken saw the perfect opportunity to get revenge on his mother. He himself joins the organization demonstrating the potential of his persona, Nemesis (Greek goddess of revenge). No one knows his true intentions.
Shinjiro Aragaki accepts the proposal to return to SEES when he knows that Ken is inside, perhaps because he wants to fix things, perhaps because of regret. But the fact is that both he and Ken live together without mentioning what happened.
Ken is waiting for the anniversary of his mother's death, on October 4. That night, which curiously coincides with a mission since there is a full moon, Ken asks Shinjiro to meet him in the alley where the accident took place.
Ken fails to carry out his wish. Takaya Sakaki intervenes and explains to Ken how Shinjiro is slowly approaching death due to the pills he takes to suppress his powers.
The night ends with a magnificent plot twist: Shinjiro gives his life to save Ken from Takaya, to which Ken cries with mixed feelings.
These are the events: let us now turn to the psychology of the character.
His mother is murdered, being he a spectator of what happened. Faced with the pain of such a brutal loss, Ken's first thought is suicide. The only thing holding him back is the sadness her late mother would feel knowing that he had taken his own life (but in any case, it is mentioned that he wanted to kill himself after murdering Shinjiro. The bloody thought hasn't left his mind). Lost and aimless, he needs to cling to something to move forward, but the pain does not allow him to think about himself; the conclusion is therefore revenge.
For two years, Ken has tried to fight that duel every day: drawing strength from the rage and hatred, forging a shell both inside and out, fantasizing about the moment of stabbing his mother's killer. And with all this killing him little by little inside him, because hatred, more than harming the one on whom it is projected, harms the thinker himself.
And you will say: well, it is a common revenge story that we can see in many series. But everything gets drastically worse when we remember that Ken Amada is only TEN YEARS OLD. What's more, if his mother's murder was two years before the events of the game, this all started when he was 8.
While his classmates were learning to divide, he was fighting the lost of his mother and also against himself. While his friends were playing tag, he was meticulously calculating ways to assassinate the killer, thinking how he could best honor the memory of his mother.
Ken doesn't trust adults. He mentions (I couldn't find the moment, sorry) that when he went to tell a police officer what had happened, he blamed it on a hallucination due to the trauma of the kid. He understood, then, that he was alone in all this: it was a task that he had to carry out in the most absolute silence. (However, Ken gets along perfectly with Koromaru. The dog will be his battle partner in the later fighting game Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.)
Can you imagine the maturity and strength required to cope with all this on your own? The split between Ken and the other kids his age is obvious: the boy has grown up too fast, and that can sometimes be a real curse.
When Ken understands that he will not be able to kill Shinjiro, he decides to give his own life: his journey has ended here because without revenge he has lost the reason to live. But to add more to the frustration, it is Shinjiro who saves Ken by giving his life for him. How must Ken feel about this? Completely useless and confused. He probably feels that Shinjiro has not only taken his mother's life from him, but also the will to decide on his own life. And of course, he must be lonely. Very lonely
After a few words with Akihiko Sanada, Ken understands that his desire for revenge has been an excuse all this time for not accepting the death of his mother. Finally, he decides to live for his mother and for Shinjiro. This is the moment when his persona evolves into Kala-Nemi, the Vedic god of the wheel of time… (Although the god is a rakshasa, that is, a demon. This could also point to the dark nature that Ken will always keep inside him.)
Therefore, at just 10 years old, Ken Amada has overcome the trauma of seeing his mother being murdered and has learned that hate leads nowhere. For that he has had to suffer the unbridled desire for revenge and suicide. How many adults have been able to achieve this maturity? It would be wonderful if everyone could reach this state of worldview, but every path is different. Although he is a science fiction child, I believe that Ken Amada can be an inspiration to achieve that spiritual wisdom that makes life better.
Death is a sensitive matter for all human beings, and that's why I think it's a game that Persona 3 is a game that touches your heart. All the stories deserve credit, but I think Ken Amada's stands out above the rest. I know that he is a character that can cause irritation (he is a repellent boy, although in my opinion, that makes him even more adorable), but with this analysis I would like you to reflect on his feelings to understand his character a little more, taking into account above all the following: he is only a ten year old boy.
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