Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5's Haru Sure Does Get the Shaft

Man, Haru kinda gets screwed by Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5’s writers, doesn’t she?

I mean, to start with, there’s the most obvious and glaring way that the game fails her: she’s only recruited about halfway through the game’s story--and that’s only if you include the post-game adventure with Maruki that the rerelease adds.  That’s not necessarily an insurmountable hurdle for a character to overcome when trying to fit into a group’s dynamic and endear themselves to the player, but in a game which is so strongly motivated by and reliant upon its main cast and their personalities to stay in motion and invest the player, it’s a tough obstacle.  Being introduced at something like 2/3rds of the way through the main game means that Haru’s having to break into an established friendly group dynamic more than be adopted into it, and she doesn’t have the shared history of the rest of the party that provides opportunities for in-jokes and friendly banter.  Hell, she even suffers for this timing as a romantic option; practically half the love interest scenes in the main game occur before Haru's even present to be romanced.

Now, the timing of Haru’s recruitment is an almost universally agreed-upon weakness of Persona 5, so this isn’t news, but I do want to point out something that I don’t see mentioned too often when people complain about this failing: it’s not just the lack of time and opportunity she has to become a part of the team dynamic and establish her character to the player.  It’s also the nature of this lacking period of time.  The time remaining to Persona 5’s main narrative after Haru’s introduction is not like that which has preceded it--the following arcs of the game are those of Sae, Shido, and the dumb Holy Grail thing.  Essentially, immediately following Haru’s joining the team, the main story suddenly comes a-knocking, things start heating up, and the Phantom Thieves’ efforts are dedicated to events and threats whose stakes are ever-increasing.  The arc of stopping Haru’s father is the last business-as-usual chapter of the game, and the tension and focus on the Thieves’ surviving the traps laid for them, discovering and overcoming their true enemy, and facing off against some superfluous supernatural mastermind semi-deity keeps the party too busy, too focused on the necessary here and now, for the same kind of character-building moments and asides that the rest of the cast benefited from earlier in the game.*  Not only is Haru given very limited time to really establish herself as a true part of the Phantom Thieves, but the quality of that time provided to her is unsuitable for that purpose--the time for establishing the cast has clearly just expired at that point, and the game is expecting the player to be fully engrossed in the major events of the plot’s climax.

Another problematic angle to this lack of development time: Haru has a singular style and personality, but that great character is subtle in almost all facets, and needs time for it to really shine.  You can’t immediately tell that her personality’s seemingly plain exterior is hiding a hardcore warrior goddess with just the faintest touch of bloodlust that she has fully in control, nor appreciate her being an earnest, real-life heroine who wants to share the bounties of this world with all its people.  While most of the cast’s shticks and personalities are overt and easily recognizable, Haru’s qualities and persona are less forward, subtle.  Spinoffs like Q2 and Strikers have thankfully provided the extra time that a lighter touch character like Haru needs, and helped audiences realize after the fact just how cool she is, but the original game gives barely any time to really get a feel for her, and of the entire cast, she’s the one who most needs that time!

Worsening this problem is the fact that what parts of SMT Persona 5’s narrative ARE dedicated to Haru, frequently treat her as an afterthought.  I mean, look at the way she enters into the game’s narrative and joins the Phantom Thieves!  Yusuke, Futaba, Makoto, each of their introduction arcs had a clear and undiluted focus on them--who they were, why they were Phantom Thief material, how they awoke to their spirit of justice and rebellion against the ills of society, what made them tick.  From the start of the Madarame portion of the story to its finish, there’s never a doubt that the emotional and spiritual lynchpin character is Yusuke.  Makoto’s internal war between the docility expected of her in response to the impossible expectations the world makes of her and her burning need to see right done is the only major relevant character development during the events with Kaneshiro.  And the entirety of the Medjed arc is dedicated to establishing and exploring Futaba’s character (not to mention much of the intermission that follows it).

But Haru?  Haru has to share her introduction to the Phantom Thieves with Morgana’s pity-party arc.  And “share” is a generous way of putting it, because Morgana’s little hissy-fit** is the primary motivating factor for the Phantom Thieves’ entry into the Okumura part of the story; Haru’s first introduction is basically as a tool that Morgana’s using as a way of flaunting how little he needs his former comrades!  Yes, to be sure, past the early phase of the Okumura arc, it’s Haru whose character is (rightly) the focus as the team works to correct her father’s evil ways...but that introduction of a character as a rebel for justice is a pivotal, crucial moment for each Phantom Thief, and Haru’s had to play second fiddle to an entirely different character’s development, one who’s already had the entire game’s time to establish and advance himself!***  Haru’s introduction, induction, and awakening are rushed through, sideshows to Morgana’s Self Esteem bit.  The writers treat Haru as an afterthought in the introduction of her own main arc of the story!

And then there’s her Social Link.  While it’s not a 1:1 copy or anything, and it’s fine enough in its own right I guess, it’s kind of hard to not to notice, as I’ve mentioned previously, that Haru’s Social Link’s story has the same foundations as Persona 3’s Mitsuru.  It’s a tale of a high-class woman out to experience new things, stressing out about what her and her company’s future will be, engaged for political reasons to a self-important asshole, who will learn the self-confidence she needs to take her future in her own hands and ditch her shitty fiance thanks to the protagonist’s encouragement--sound familiar?  Persona 5’s writers thankfully didn’t just do a copy-paste, at least, Haru takes this in a different direction than Mitsuru and with a different perspective, but there’s no denying that even if they didn’t completely plagiarize themselves, Atlus did, at the very least, reuse the same narrative template for Haru as they had used for Mitsuru.

And not for nothing, but this whole timing situation kind of sucks for her even from an in-universe perspective.  Because man, did Haru ever miss out on the fun days of being a Phantom Thief.  I mean, the poor woman’s experience with being a crusader of underground justice has been finding out that her father is 1 of the more evil people on the planet, with an overlap of her being sold off as sexual property solely to further his own interests, then watching her father die horribly on national television in what should have been her first big moment of victory as a Phantom Thief.  She then becomes Public Enemy #1 along with the rest of her new friends after having been promised that everyone in the world would think she’s awesome, because she just so happened to join up with the gang at the moment that public opinion swings a hard fucking left on the Phantom Thieves.  

Yeah, so after finding out that her parent’s a monster and her existence was designed solely to be used for his benefit, Haru gets to split her shifts at the Stress Factory between being terrified that she got into the Phantom Thieves just in the nick of time to be arrested and put on trial, and being forced to learn on her feet how to lead a multinational corporation while completely changing it to the point that it’s actually ethical.  Ryuji’s over here complaining a few chapters ago about having to do some homework when he’s trying to concentrate on being a loved pop-culture phenomenon, and meanwhile Haru’s trying to juggle 80% of the shitty parts of being Batman!  Dammit, all the girl wanted was to get to dress up like a fancy tea-time musketeer while she put some good into the world!  

This is the shit that makes supervillains.  I legit would completely understand and even forgive Haru if she’d turned full-on evil just as a result of how shitty her life became the moment she tried out fighting for justice.

Just...damn, Persona 5 writers, what is your deal with this girl?












* And for the record, the extra time in the rerelease’s post-game adventure doesn’t help all that much, either.  It, too, is largely fixated on the events and ramifications of Maruki’s bid to (benevolently) control the world, and what time it has for focusing on characters and interrelationships is largely given to Yoshizawa and, unfathomably, fucking Akechi of all people.


** Goddamit I’m so masterfully clever.


*** And, for that matter, isn’t even all that interesting to begin with.  Look, I’m sorry, I like the guy and he does, to be sure, serve a very important function to the heart and atmosphere of Persona 5, but...Morgana is a pretty mid character, at best.