Shin Megami Tensei 5's Incompetent Critique of the Law Route

Boil the art of debate down long enough to get to its rudimentary basics, and you find 2 elementary strategies that are employed when trying to persuade an audience: talking up your own side of the issue, and discrediting the opposing viewpoint.  Because we’re a contrary and, let’s face it, oftentimes stupid species, it can often be the case that convincing someone that your side is right is not nearly as effective and reliable as simply convincing them that the other sides are wrong.  If you want an example, look no further than the United States’ presidential elections, which have, for the entirety of my lifetime and far before even that, had their outcomes determined less by citizens voting for a candidate whom they believe in than by citizens voting against a candidate whom they despise.  If we ever as a collective nation decided to vote solely based on which political asshole we most believe in rather than which one we think has the best chance of beating the political asshole we hate, this 2-party nightmare we’ve been locked into for most of a century would be dispelled lickity-split, and we’d all be better off for it.  But because we’re easier to manipulate with enmity than with unity, that’s unlikely to happen.

The Shin Megami Tensei series has naturally made use of both basic sides of debate when its advocates for Law, Chaos, and Neutrality make their arguments to a game’s protagonist.  Even though Shin Megami Tensei 5 is reluctant to perform even the most minimal narrative labors expected of it, the game nonetheless does manage to halfheartedly go through a few motions of its philosophical emissaries making their cases for their faction and against the others.  And it’s on this point that we see not only that SMT5 is, as I have accused, barely written at all, but also that what stunted scraps of storytelling it does possess are often, as I have also previously accused,  poorly written, too.  Because Shin Megami Tensei 5’s Chaos advocates’ criticism of the side of Law is completely and clearly incompetent.

Atsuta, the flat, emotionless, shallow, pea-brained dipshit that SMT5 has the audacity to put forth as its Chaos Hero, makes the claim that Dazai, the hapless helpless hopeless goon that SMT5 has the audacity to put forth as its Law Hero, only believes that the world needs God Almighty because Dazai has stopped thinking for himself.  And under normal circumstances, this is the easy slam-dunk go-to criticism that the Shin Megami Tensei series is fond of leveling against its Law faction.  While I would argue strenuously that it’s a grossly oversimplified misrepresentation of 1 of the major motivations for choosing to side with Law in SMT, it’s at the same time quite impossible to argue in most of the titles that there’s not at least some merit to this accusation.  Many of the major Law figures in the series are basically hard-coded to follow God’s will, and the Heroes who partner with them are frequently doing so in large part out of a trust in and reliance on The Big Man to know what’s best for all.  Hell, I can’t even deny that my personal favor for Law over Chaos in SMT may be at least in some small part influenced by Christian concepts impacted upon me during formative years in my childhood.  There’s a fun and intelligent debate to be had about the line between mindless obedience and healthy and laudable faith as they apply to a character’s and one’s own choice to side with God and His Law, and I myself certainly see it as much closer to an admirable and reasoned display of faith than dull subservience...but it’s still a vulnerable chink in SMT Law’s armor.  Atsuta and his patron may completely lack the inclination and the logical capacity to actually explain why their version of Chaos is a good idea (or even makes any sense at all), but they at least can levy the golden standard personal attack against their ideological opponents.

Except that this time, it’s not accurate.  In fact, the claim that Dazai only advocates for Law because he’s stopped thinking for himself is blatantly incorrect to the point of exposing just how incompetently, stupidly ignorant the game’s writers were of their own damn work.  Because Dazai is literally the only character in the game who we actually SEE contemplate, in even the smallest regard, the world’s situation and what path must be taken forward!

Oh, sure, there’s a little bit here and there in Dazai’s dialogue over SMT5’s course that tells the audience that he’d rather be a follower to a leader better equipped to make decisions than to have to give input on future actions.  There’s even a conversation he has with the protagonist in which he hallucinates that Koshimizu ever asks his subordinates for their opinions on his orders, something which never happens nor is even hinted to be consistent to Koshimizu’s personality and leadership style, and Dazai laments that he’d rather not have to be a part of such a discussion when he doesn’t feel personally qualified to be.  The preference for following instead of leading is definitely shown to be there in Dazai.

But the fact of the matter is that of Atsuta, Dazai, and that shortsighted laughable clown Yakumo--not to mention the Nahobino himself--Dazai is the ONLY faction representative in Shin Megami Tensei 5 to actually be seen weighing his options, stressing out about what needs to be done for the world, and taking the steps to come to the conclusion that his faction is the best course to follow.  Yakumo will haughtily deign to briefly outline why he believes in his cause, and his partner Nuwa will later neatly deliver the brusque, inadequate little sob story of how Yakumo became such a violently sanctimonious prick, but he’s long since determined his stance on the world by the time of the game’s events.  Atsuta, meanwhile, doesn’t do the audience even that small service, instead just going along with Koshimizu’s Chaos plan without questioning it or himself even once.  But Dazai we see express concern about the future of Tokyo and the world, debate with himself what to do to bring the order he thinks the world needs back now that it’s confirmed that God is dead, and persuade Abdiel to defy the letter of God’s law (which dictated that there would be no more Nahobinos) in order preserve its spirit, talking her into becoming a fallen angel to accomplish God’s will in ways she could not as the champion who outlived Him.  It may still be rushed and it may still be laughably over the top and the origin of Dazai’s boner for YHWH may still be a mystery, but at the very least we do SEE Dazai actually think about the cause he’s going to champion before committing to it, he can explain (albeit simplistically) in his own words why he believes in his cause instead of just parroting Daddy Koshimizu’s propaganda, and he can point to his experience with a practical example of the Chaos faction’s goal as evidence of why it won’t work.

And not for nothing, but the way Dazai goes about pursuing his goal of restoring God’s order is not something you could call thoughtless.  Sure, most of the time, pulling for Law in SMT does just boil down to “Do what the angel says and shut the fuck up,” not exactly a course of action that necessitates an inventive mind.  But after thinking about his position, Dazai does enough creative thinking to conclude that God’s function and value can still be restored by replacing Him with an equal rather than getting stuck on the fact that He was killed, and then is innovative enough to conceive and propose a plan to Abdiel to get her to join him in this pursuit, and argue for that plan well enough that the archangel of God’s will embraces the need to betray God’s law as the only way to serve it.  The mere idea of a fallen angel being the only one who can do right by God’s memory is by itself a clear case of thinking outside the box, for that matter.  Wouldn’t the act of defying God’s expressly stated command for the sake of restoring God’s big picture be the very opposite of what Dazai would do if he weren’t thinking for himself?

And it’s Atsuta who has the gall to make this claim.  Atsuta, the eternal lapdog of Koshimizu, who never gives the slightest indication that he possesses the basic human capacity to think critically about his actions or the orders he’s given.  Atsuta, the guy who’s the exact same character at the end of the game as he is at its beginning, blandly defined by the trait of a dogged determination to protect Tokyo and an equally unrelenting determination not to consider for himself how that goal should manifest.  He’s accusing someone else of choosing thoughtless obedience.

I’m not even really all that annoyed with Atsuta, honestly.  He just isn’t even human enough to warrant it; the guy’s closer to an inanimate object than he is a facsimile of a person.  I might as well get upset with a napkin.  But I certainly can get frustrated with the creators of the game for this blatant, blindingly-obviously boneheaded criticism of Dazai.  The “you don’t think for yourself” criticism is, as I mentioned, the go-to for the Chaos crowd in SMT, and because Atlus simply couldn’t find it in itself to actually do its job, it just grabbed the fall-back and didn’t consider the matter any further than that.  A single, passing glance at the script for SMT5 would have been enough to realize, for the writers--if there really were any--that the scenario they had in their gross sloth created was the exact opposite of one in which that criticism would have been applicable, but they just couldn’t be bothered to give even that glance.  It’s not like there was all that much there to have to reread!  I’ve seen more verbose manifestos on the back of some cereal boxes than certain entire chapters of this game’s script can boast.  It’s like Shin Megami Tensei 5 is a parody of itself--its authors threw out a pre-made criticism that used to mean something in the series, they did it reflexively and without a thought, and it turned out to be a condemnation of that very action.