Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5's Social Links' Need for Phantom Thief Intervention

Social Links definitely number among my favorite parts of the SMT Persona series, as I’ve mentioned before.  They help immerse the player in the setting and culture of the game, exemplify and explore the games’ Tarot theme, and tell some compelling, moving stories of human nature, drama, and our connections to one another.  Some of the best moments of this series have been during the Social Link side-stories; hell, some of my best moments with RPGs, period, have been provided by these personal, poignant vignettes.  With that said, they’re not all winners.  Plenty of Social Links are boring, or tell a very cliched story that doesn’t really mean very much, or are tonally contradictory to their characters or game...hell, a few are just outright bad stories altogether.  And interestingly, in Persona 5, there’s a flaw in the overall approach that the game takes to resolving the Social Links’ conflicts, which lessens their quality overall.

While each Social Link is its own entity in SMT Persona 5, there’s a commonality to almost all of the ones for characters who are not a part of the Phantom Thieves: sooner or later, there comes a point at which main character Ren has to use his powers to induce a change of heart in someone who’s causing problems for the Social Link’s star (or, in Mishima’s case, induce that change in the story’s central figure himself).  This event, which happens late in the Social Link, is required for the tale to progress to its conclusion, and is used as a way of revealing Ren’s superhero identity to his friends, as they realize that only a Phantom Thief could have forced the one tormenting them to back down, and that only Ren knew knew the situation well enough to be that Thief.  The 1 exception to this rule is Tora of The Sun Arcana, whose Social Link progresses to its end without such an intervention.

But having this nearly universal requirement for Phantom Thief intervention to solve the problems of those Links who aren’t already a part of the group is ultimately detrimental.  Okay, sure, it’s refreshing to some degree to see it acknowledged in a JRPG that determination all on its own doesn’t always solve everything, but at the same time, making it clear that their problems couldn’t have been solved without cognitive superheroes swooping in to save the day weakens the stories of several individuals by taking the agency of their own tale out of their hands.  Now, this is fine enough for, say, Ohya’s story, where she’s genuinely an active, working participant in her tale who’s proactively resisted capitulating for as long as she can, but individuals like Chihaya and Sojiro, for example, seem less like they’ve been able to change by their own merit for the better, and more that they’ve simply been lucky enough to have Ren around to hold their hand and fight their battles for them.

I was really thrown for a loop at the point in Kawakami’s story in which she confronts the parents who have been emotionally (and also in the normal sense) blackmailing her, full of determination and conviction to pull herself out of this hell she’s been trapped in...and then they just completely shut her down, and she backs off with a whimper.  It feels like a weird narrative bait-and-switch, and inconsistent with the personal story of growth that Kawakami’s been going through in this Link, as well as contrary to the support Ren’s given to her on this matter.  The situation’s just a transparent and jarring bending of the narrative to allow Ren to settle the matter as a Phantom Thief, and the fact that he has to do so after Kawakami utterly failed to take charge of her own life within her own story cheapens that tale, as well as her development and resolution, because for all the nice sentiments and feel-good confidence in her future that comes later, at the end of the day, this Social Link is now a story in which its protagonist was tested, and she broke under that trial.  It doesn’t feel like a win that Ren helped Kawakami achieve, but a win that he handed to her because plot convenience stole her autonomy from her.

It’s not like I want Ren to be a non-participant in these Social Links, of course.  That’s just as harmful to these vignettes; the whole idea of these things is that the connections that the protagonist makes and the facets of the human experience that he observes and participates in broaden his horizons, empowering him by developing the psyche (which is the source of Persona abilities).  So Ren shouldn’t just sit there like a lump while stuff goes on around him.  But he should be the vital support in his friend’s life, a key to the confidant making positive changes for themselves and growing, NOT the crutch that they tangibly couldn’t have made it without.

In addition to robbing several characters of the agency that would fulfill their development and appropriately progress their stories, this approach is also mildly counter to a major theme of the overall game, too.  It is, after all, demonstrating these characters’ inability to successfully stand tall and solve their problems as individuals, necessitating the intervention of a conveniently benevolent acquaintance.  And yeah, normally there’s absolutely nothing wrong with demonstrating that the individual has limitations and that there’s no shame, only potential success, in allowing others who care for you to share your burdens and help you with them...but Persona 5 is an unflinching, staunch proponent of the value of the individual, arguing time after time against the knee-jerk collectivist instinct of its culture to dismiss, shun, or even punish those who stand for themselves.  And yet this game that glorifies its heroes as individuals who could be pushed no further by the injustices of the world and decided to stand against the ills of their society in spite of the meek compliance that was expected of them, insists on neutering roughly a third of its Social Link cast by having a superhero swoop in to save them from their problems, ruining their ability to embody the game’s message as they clearly should have.  It’s quite perplexing.

Not to mention, it also lessens the feeling of authenticity and uniqueness to make the Social Links so formulaic.  It’s not nearly as bad as the Rank 11s in the DLC, but still.

And what’s gained by doing this, anyway?  What benefit is there in having Ren constantly change the hearts of his friends’ tormentors?  Certainly we don’t need, by the point that you can reach anyone’s later Social Link stages, any further proof of Ren’s being a defender of justice and the weak.  We absolutely weren’t lacking for mini-boss experiences on the gameplay side.  Yeah, okay, it provides a clue to each Social Link character through which they glean Ren’s identity as a Phantom Thief, but surely there were other ways to accomplish this, at least for some individuals!  Kawakami’s had enough proximity to the events with Kamoshida that it’d be believable for her to put 2 and 2 together, Hifumi is, if not the genius she had thought she was, at least still a smart enough strategist that she could credibly figure it out herself, Ren’s pretenses for needing Tae’s services are so flimsy that it’d be less believable for her not to deduce his identity, Sojiro finds out during the main plot anyway...hell, while I actually think that Ohya and Shinya did legitimately need Ren’s intervention, she’s an investigative journalist and Shinya already knows Ren is personally tied to the Phantom Thieves, so they’d have no problem surmising his secret, either.  As Tora’s having inferred Ren’s secret all on his own shows, there’s really no need for this formulaic taking away of characters’ agency just because we want everyone in Ren’s life to know who he really is.

...Hell, with the shocking lack of effort that most of the team puts into protecting their anonymity, it’s almost surprising that it takes Ren’s acquaintances as long as it does to glean his secret identity.  Each of them is really just 1 inconveniently timed call away from hearing Ryuji hollering at Ren over the phone what the location, date, time, dress code, and parking validation policies are for their next Phantom Thief meeting.

Anyway, that’s essentially all I got on this.  It’s not a huge flaw, I suppose, but all the same, forcing Ren’s intervention to be the only viable solution to so many of the Social Links’ conflicts really takes the agency of the Links’ stars away from them, and as a result weakens what should have been their inspiring stories of growth and betterment.  I certainly think it’s safe to say that Tae, Chihaya, Iwai, Hifumi, and especially Sojiro and Kawakami,* would all have had better, more meaningful personal tales if Ren’s assistance had been moral support and advice, as previous Persona protagonists were generally restricted to, and they had been allowed to find the courage and determination to solve their own dilemmas.















* And honestly, even if the Phantom Thief intervention does seem warranted for Ohya and Mishima, an alternative for each, like Ohya finding a loophole and Mishima being reasoned out of his unhealthy mindset, would still probably have been better.

Shinya I’ll at least fully allow for the change of heart being necessary, though.  It’s a tough place to be the kid of a Karen, and it’s more believable that he needed a savior to mind-zap his mom back to normalcy than that he could convince her himself.