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... I ship it
Get on it modders
I love how politically incorrect this game is. MC is canonically straight, period. Kanji's questioning of his own sexuality was a misunderstanding because he thought Naoto was a boy, and Naoto gains persona powers after accepting the fact that she's a woman despite her desire to become a man. Not only that, her desire to modify her body is literally depicted as a villain who must be defeated. Absolutely based. This is one of the reasons I'm turning more and more to Japanese media for entertainment recently. A game like this would be impossible to produce in the West today because the woke media would ♥♥♥♥ all over it.
that would never happen with girls. . .
onto the phobia thing. I played through the entirety of the PS2 version and still can't tell if the game ks phobic or not.
there's a kind of hidden undertone between many interactions, like woth daisuke + kou and with chie + yukiko.
i mean, obviously chie and yukiko can fall in love with theboy MC and yukiko's shadow self is obsessed with finding a boyfriend, but then the 2 of them are also really close.
the reason i can't tell if it's phobic or not is because what if they "could" have had intimate feeling but then the writers went "nah, that's messed up" and decided not to? in the scene where you showdown with yukiko's shadow self, she says "3 princes before me" and yosuke is like "there's me and MC, but who's the third?" and teddy speaks up "obviously me!" , but then shadow Yukiko says "Chie is the third prince".
then there's Kanji, who's shaow self is super flaming. . and Kanji is confused the eintire game, but then everyone makes jokes at his expense, giving him ♥♥♥♥ over it and he gets pissed at them constantly insisting he's not really like that and it's just because he was scared to talk to girls and he liked to sew and got bullied by girls over it.
but then he also seems like he has a crush on Naoto, whom he thinks is a boy and that probably confused him further
which brings us to naoto, who is so obviously a girl from the first moment you meet her (i'll admit i i'm not the best judge, since I was fooled by the gas station attendant . . .)
Naoto dresses like a boy, acts like a boy and presents as a boy using male pronouns. .
but then it's revealed that she only did that because she mistakenly viewed her passion for detective work to be a distincly male profession and didn't think she would be accepted as a female, so it seems like she was fully committed to presenting in society as the male gender role. .until the main character came along and taught her that it's okaymto be a girl. . you can even romance her and "convince" her to be more girly (although she is super uncomfortable with it, she tries to do it to make him happy, even going as far as to put on a skirt at xmas just for him. . or he can tell her he likes her just the way she is and she breathes relief saying thank you for accepting me as i am) which is pretty positive and i hate that word "woke" but maybe that's the closest thing(?)and i'm not using it derogatory, i think that is the most positive way to do things. she accepts herself as a female but continues to present as her most comfortable self, being true to herself.
there aren't just 2 distinct roles. a girl can be straight and not trans and still choose to have a masculine presentation. .
society still hasn't got to the point where a straight male and identify as male but prefer an outward female presentation. .
which brings to the cultural festival. I dunno why the whole beauty pageant was even a thing, it's like they shoehorned it in there just to make jokes.
the thing with the boys crossdressed was just weird. especially the reactions of the audience , kids saying "this is wrong on so many levels". and "wow, i thought he was cool, but then he did this?" . .or maybe that whole scene was just a setup to showoff how cute Teddy is. and Teddy isn't even human, he's a shadow and we don't know how old he is. He looks like a beautiful teenaged boy, but he might really be a dirty old man.
teddy is obviously straight in that he is male and only interested in girls and then multiple times Kanji expresses a desire to "pet" teddy and teddy angrily rejects his advances. . .as if to suggest something deeper?
dunno, maybe i'm just reading too much into it.
i'm just saying i'm confused. i can't tell if the overall message is "pro" or "con"
edit also JP media is more comfortable talking about these thungs than US. I read that in Sailor Moon, there were multiple "L" relationships and even a boy to girl trans who was a boy but wears the skirted sailor costume that the girls wear, but in the US version, they took all the GLBT stuff out and just made the L's into siblings or something, i dunno, i didn't watch that show. I was already in college when the show came out and hinestly, i think you are never too old to watch cartoons, but at the time, i just wasn't interested in anime.
The problems the characters have of course, is overblown by their shadows that take these problems and warp them into something even worse, which I think is why so many people do get the wrong idea and think Kanji is gay or Naoto is trans. But there will always be trolls who just like getting a rise out of people and are miserable human beings.
I do have my own bias, that is that i'm all for people expressing their true selves, which maybe that's what this game is about. being true to yourself and accepting every aspect of yourself, no matter how uncomfortable that dark side makes you feel.
edit : as for MC romancing all the girls. .maybe it's the hair. Chicks can't resist the Beiber hair. .
The game is a giant allegory for Jungian psychology. There's an important but subtle distinction between acknowledging every part of yourself and accepting every part of yourself. You have to acknowledge your weaknesses and shortcomings, for example, so that you can be aware of when you're manifesting them and choose to REJECT them. Thus, when you acknowledge your weakness and become aware of it you can turn it into strength. That's exactly why a character's shadow sort of becomes their persona once it has been both acknowledged and DEFEATED. The symbolism is very on-the-nose. The game's dialogue even confirms this unequivocally. I don't remember the precise line, but someone in the Velvet Room explains that when the shadow self is brought under the control of the ego it becomes a Persona, a source of great strength. The idea isn't that you're already OK as you are and you should just accept yourself. The idea is to face yourself, defeat yourself, and improve yourself.
But back to the game's text. Even if Kanji didn't turn out to be explicitly gay, his entire character arc is about how he's worried that he does't fit into the traditional stereotype of a "manly man" because he loves to paint and sew do traditionally feminine hobbies. So, to compensate for this, he tries to be all cool and badass and pick fights and just generally act like how he thinks society expects manly men to act. His shadow explicitly asks "what does it mean to be manly" in the context of juxtaposing being seen as manly in the eyes of others vs your own personal perception. And, when he defeats his shadow and you pursue his social link, it's entirely about how pursuing hobbies that don't fit traditional gender roles is not only okay but actually good and makes his life significantly better. Kanji's entire character arc is about how toxic masculinity is bad! Whoops!
the thing is , what is the "message" that the writers are sending.
like with Kanji's shadow. it's obviously the G in GLBT and in the scenes before you go in to save him, your character can ask him if anything "strange" happened to him and he flips out like "what's that supposed to mean? are you calling me strange?!"
and then while doing the investigation to find info on him so teddy can locate him, you run into Naoto and Naoto says "he hates being referred to as an ODD person"
"strange" and "odd" are bth synonyms for "queer", so the game is saying he hates being called that.
why does it hurt him so much?
i do get it that he is confused because he likes to sew and that's a result of his family business in textiles.
he was always made to feel ashamed of that part of himself that likes that and when you save him, he finally accepts that part of himself , but then there's still the gay subtext. is he or isn't he?
when he sees yosuke and MC in their swimsuits, he gets a nosebleed and in anime, that's symbolic when a character sees someone they are attracted to, they get a nosebleed. could kanji be attracted to MC? (nobody can resist the Bieber hair)
but then it seems more like he has a crush on naoto. but then he thought Naoto was a boy and then Naoto can be romanced by MC. .
in persona 3, there was that french kid who also liked to sew and in his story arc, he sews a kimono. but then, there is no gay subtext there. he is straight and is never made to feel at all ashamed of his interest as he shouldn't be ashamed. he also loves samurai culture and japan culture as a whole.
kimono are worn by men and women alike, so it's not even crossdressing. . .
but i digressed.
back to kanji. i get it, he's straight, but is the message trying to say "accept yourself" or is it saying "if you think you are gay, maybe you're just confused and need a little push to get back on the straight"?
which is why i kinda can't tell if it's "woke" or "phobic", because it's open to interpretations.
again with Naoto, it seems like she was presenting as male, but then it goes on to say she was just confused, because she thought she had to do that to pursue her interests, but now she has been freed, that she can express her "true self" , which is to identify as a straight female, so it the message that "she's not GLBT, she's just confused" or is it "be true to yourself"?
I just try to interpret it in a way that fits my values.
i like the idea of being true to ones self, but how do the writers interpret that?
Unless I'm forgetting something the only characters who refer to the shadow self as "the true self" are the shadows themselves, and they're lying. The other characters generally refer to them as "other" selves. This is reinforced by dialogue in the game, including even the MC's dialogue options. After the battles with Shadow Yosuke, Chie and Yukiko you get options to say things like, "You're more than that thing." or "That's only one part of you." The shadow self is part of the self, but it isn't the "true self".
No, Kanji does not "generally act like how he thinks society expects manly men to act." You have it completely backwards. Kanji is angry at society for not accepting him and he is acting out in rebellion and behaving in precisely the ways that society does NOT want him to behave: short-tempered, quick to violence, emotional, belligerent to police, etc. In other words the problem isn't society, the problem is Kanji. If you have any doubt that this was the writers' intended message then think about the Golden epilogue. When you go back to Inaba after a year away you learn that Kanji has stopped bleaching his hair and has a adopted a VERY conformist (and typically masculine) style of dress. The symbolism is pretty straight forward: grow up, get over yourself, let go of your resentment and integrate into functional society. BASED.
"is he or isn't he?"
He's not. The only reason he was having (and surpressing) those particular thoughts about himself was because he was attracted to Naoto and thought she was (a very effeminate) boy.
"when he sees yosuke and MC in their swimsuits, he gets a nosebleed"
I've seen that scene several times and my impression was always that he got the nosebleed from looking at the girls. The alternative never even occurred to me as a possibility.
"can't tell if it's "woke" or "phobic"
Definitely not woke. It pretty much used a flamboyant gay caricature as a comedic prop, and one that you have to beat up to progress. Definitely "problematic"
"I just try to interpret it in a way that fits my values"
You can interpret whatever you want however you want but you should consider the possibility that the writers have significantly different values from you.