What´s the deal wit the guns?

[Exarch_Alpha]

Is it explained eventually why you hae to commit pseudo suicide to make personas work? IIRC I can´t remember it being explained in the beggining.

[Endora]

The only explanation I had came from "Persona Q", another title of the series (DS console) and it's said that "by facing their own dead one can avoken their hiden power".
But I don't remember if the charmain explains something in this game.

[KuraiRex]

Funny thing about those guns. In the original P3 they explain why they use them. Like Endora said 'by facing their own death one can awaken to their hidden power'.

When P3 FES came out that line was removed for some reason and it doesn't appear or explained in P3P version. At the time, parents were upset with the game and seeing kids have guns. So, I have no idea if that was Atlus way of getting rid of the problem by taking out the explanation in the game or something else.

Either way, only the original P3 and Persona Q actually tell the player why the characters use the gun to shoot themselves.

[Endora]

In fact it is as KuraiRex said, it seems my memory was a bit out of the mark, so I guess I'll have to play it again :)

[Seraphita]

They're evokers anyway. They don't shoot bullets. Whatever they shoot is what is used to bring out the personas. Holding a gun to your head is still a morally scary thing to do, which is why Yukari flips hard trying to do it the first time. Still, it is required to become strong.

[Terra]

The general idea behind it is that Personas can only be invoked during times of great stress.

Now, why it would continue being stressful when you've been doing it for 10 months and do it like maybe a hundred times a night, that's another question.

[Rutia]

That is the trigger of determination. It's written in the official Persona 3 book [www.amazon.com] in page 134. The theme of 3 is death and what it means to live. Therefore, battles in 3 are always dangerous with the constant risk of death as part of the story. Only those who have overcome the fear of death and made the decision to fight can summon a Persona in 3. The trigger for this is the act of shooting oneself, symbolizing the triumph over the fear of death.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo page 134 [ibb.co]. if you do read Japanese.
roughly speaking in English,

Interviewer: Death, isn't it?
Fukushima: Yes, it is. But most people don't know how cows and pigs are killed. They unconsciously avoid thinking about it. I was surprised to find that I myself had never thought about it. We unconsciously avoid it to that extent. If you have seen such a death, or the symbolic shadow of death, then...
Interviewer: So your persona is about how to deal with that death. You need both fear and determination to manifest that persona, so you use a summoning device in the form of a gun.
Hashino: I think many young people have thought, "I will die someday," but that feeling probably ends there. For example, if someone thinks, "My weakness is being lazy," and reflects on it one night, they will forget it the next day. And they'll slap themselves and say, "This is bad!" It's the same kind of trigger, or rather, external support is needed to give yourself a boost. You don't have to say, "I can control my persona! Persona!" and summon it. You have to remember what's etched in your heart every time. It's like a businessman sticking motivational words on a sticky note on his desktop. The form doesn't matter, but Fukushima happened to love guns...
Fukushima: Hahaha.
Hashino: Russian roulette is a game where you put one bullet in a revolver and point it at your head, and whoever pulls the trigger dies. It's a bit facile, but it's a way to prepare for death...

[Icedfate]

i blew the dust off my old denuvo free ps2 version of p3 fes to finally play it and see what it's about and yeah, i've been sitting here asking the same question why do they shoot themself in the head.

i googled it and came across several conversations on gamefaqs about it.
it seems what i gathered is that it's a symbolic gesture, like even though they aren't "real" guns, the act of putting it to your head and pulling the trigger causes that near death trauma, which is what activates the personas.

at one point, Junpei Iori even questions he, he says "why do the evokers have to look like guns?", but it didn't get expanded upon.
granted, i only started playing it last night and only just finished the first month of the game.

it is also said that FES explains more through the anime cutscenes that are absent in the original and the psp versions, of which i assume this is the psp version and therefore doesn't have "the answer" epilogue or the anime cutscenes(?), but it has the alternate female protagonist(?)

still it is a but weird that having to symbolically commit suicide repeatedly is required to use your powers, especially with how often they do it, you would think they get used to it and it would lose its impact.
except for the very first time (in an anime cutscene where the protag learns to do it), While in combat, they seem to be able to do it without hesitation.

one user suggested the devs just wrote it in there to be "edgy" and yeah, i do think the game tries too hard to be "edgy", like with the emo hair on the male protagonist and the overall dark theme of the combats. they made an edgelord main character, so obviously they needed him to do edgelord stuff like shooting himself in the head. .

it's ironic though, how the male protag looks like That One Kid who sits in the back of class listending to depressing musics and having no friends, always sitting in the dark thinking about suicide,
but then this main character subverts that by going around and making friends and paying attention in class and excelling in academia and building social contacts and becoming popular and athletic which all seems to be the opposite of what the "edgelord emo kid" would be doing in real life, lol.

[Jinx]

It's symbolic. I don't think there's any in-game reason for it beyond it being a functional shape, hence why Koromaru and Aigis don't have gun-shaped evokers.

[Waifu4Life]

This topic reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syoJhiXLRPc&list=LL&index=1

[Exarch_Alpha]

Accurate. Persona is full of BS sometimes lol

(well... ALL JAPANESE RPGs)

[mutantbeth]

the theme of p3 is the fear of death. Pointing a gun to your head and pulling the trigger fits with that