APPLICATION

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> CHARACTER INFORMATION
NAME: Goro Akechi
CANON: Persona 5
AGE: 18
CANON POINT: Post-gate coming down in the engine room, separating him from the team. (Pre-death.)

HISTORY: Fan wiki.
PERSONALITY: Outwardly, Akechi is a polite young detective who revels in his celebrity as the Second Coming of the Detective Prince. He has no friends among his peers—that is, other teenage students in Tokyo— because he tends to ingratiate himself among other adults so that he can gain their favor. These actions allow him to propel himself toward a position with some clout. He offers just enough of his real story to the world so others sympathize with him. Anyone who knows Akechi's story knows that he was a child left in Japan's child care system, unloved and left as a mark on some wealthy man's history. No one knows who that man is, and Akechi hasn't shared. His mother committed suicide when he was young thanks to being abandoned by that man. It is a rather tragic backstory, and having revealed just enough of it adds to Akechi's celebrity mystique.

The reality is much darker, painting an incredibly lonely child who feels as if he's been abandoned by the corrupt systems of the world around him. Rather than becoming a hero to right the wrongs of his world, he grew up resenting it instead. He saw the ugliness in other people, and came to hate them for it. When he's granted a special power when he's fifteen going on sixteen to enter a different world and impact the one he knows, he believes he's now acquired the means to change the world. He comes up with a plan to propel himself into fame by solving the very cases that he causes thanks to this special power, thus gaining the admiration and love of the world itself. His real plan—as nonsensical as it is—involves aiding his biological father in climbing the political ranks until he can become Japan's Prime Minister. By time he would get elected, Akechi would reveal to him—and the rest of the world—that this man was the one who abandoned him, and would thus lead to his disgrace in turn. In every way, this plan doesn't make sense, and it's horrid, considering the amount of terrible things that Akechi has to do along the way. But he fully commits, blinding himself by his end goal.

Just as Akechi goes about his plan a little blind, he's also unable to grasp the self-awareness necessary to see the contradiction of how he presents himself to the world. That presentation is the aforementioned polite young detective—a mask he wears to gain the favor of others (specifically: adults). Since he's been dismissed and forgotten by Japan's society, he does everything in his power to play to people in positions of power. He's desperate to be liked. Even if he might tell himself that all of these adults in his life are fools that he's playing, he's hurt when they reject him and he's clearly trying to seek a place among them. The reality is that Akechi sets himself up for failure, either intentionally or otherwise: he tries to gain the favor of adults who see him as nothing but a kid, rather than trying to befriend kids his own age. He separates himself from the very people who could understand him and even see through him to get what he really wants in the world: genuine care, adoration, and affection. Instead, he wastes his time trying to play a role among adults—he wants them to need him in their lives, and goes as far as to ensure he has conversation topics (largely focused around food) to get them to spend time with him. He develops a reputation in high-end restaurants for being a bit of a foodie, but this experience ultimately makes him feel empty.

Another aspect of that public persona involves Akechi's outright drive for justice. To the world, he doesn't want people to be manipulated or hurt against their will. He doesn't believe it's right for someone to have their own beliefs forced upon another. There is some truth to what he says here: as someone dismissed and forgotten by the world, he doesn't want anyone else trampled under foot. The problem is that he is far more guilty of this than the Phantom Thieves, and his father is even worse about it. He aids his father in subjugating society, setting aside guilt and remorse to help him so that he can complete his final goal to subvert expectations there. His justice is ultimately selfish, but shaped by the world around him. He doesn't like the ugly world he sees and believes there's no hope in it, so he wants to set them up for disappointment—to see what it means to love and vote for a man like his father, and to see them turn against it. It's all about contradictions, and he's there to bring them to light.

There is little about Akechi's justice that's actually just because of the way that he doesn't allow himself to feel guilt, as well as the twisted way he goes about what he does to his father's political opponents. Not only that, but he helps the people adjacent to his father further themselves so they can further his father's goals. What does he do, exactly? Akechi murders a lot of people. These are called mental shutdowns, and the one time the audience sees him commit this action, he's laughing. The other thing he does is cause people to go berserk. These circumstances vary. One man causes a massive train accident. Another man starts to release photos around work. The overall goal for these latter cases is for Akechi to diminish someone's place in the world. If someone gets hurt—as many people did during the train accident—then it doesn't matter. He justifies these actions to himself by believing that most people he screws over are corrupt. In many cases, they are—but that doesn't excuse the end result of his actions.

After all, the plot of Persona 5 is about kids a lot like Akechi trying to bring these people to justice. Their means of doing it isn't unlike Akechi's: they go into that same special world with powers, and force change and remorse upon the distorted cognitions. The difference is that they don't hurt other people along the way. The only people hurt by these actions are the people themselves. Akechi could have done this all along, but his hatred for the world had blinded him to seeking out any other answers. No, they weren't available to him, but it's apparent that when he temporarily joins the Phantom Thieves that he saw that there was only one way to do things. The Phantom Thieves showed him a different way, but by then it was too late. Akechi was too close to accomplishing his goal. Nothing would stop him.

Akechi's tunnel vision prevents him from getting the one thing he wants most in the world: true companionship and friendship. There are numerous instances where he looks put out by not being wanted by the world, especially when he's on the other side of the Phantom Thieves' popularity. He notices when people don't want him around, and he knows that people rarely genuinely like him. But despite all this, he still has his moments of trying to sincerely develop bonds with the Phantom Thieves. Whether he fully recognizes it or not, he approaches them early on because he wants to strike up a friendly conversation. After he forces his way onto the team via blackmail, he shows off during the sole dungeon they spend together. His mannerisms in battle play to this showy nature, as he wants to be liked, and can't help but do things to try to get the people around him to like him. He's clever, eagerly taking control of the situations so that the other Phantom Thieves will see him as indispensable. Of course, his plan is to betray them—but that doesn't change things.

The thing is, Akechi is clever. He's motivated, ambitious, and incredibly talented at just about anything he sets his mind to—with the exception of handling social situations. That's in part because he's deployed his skills in the exact wrong arenas. He's managed in the Metaverse for two years without any help. Joker requires a whole team around him to succeed, but Akechi's resilience means that he is able to go it alone. That doesn't mean that it's necessarily a good idea, but he manages. He can do strategy, figure out puzzles, and survive all the while. Outside of the Metaverse, he's articulate, good at presenting a face to the public, and he goes it alone in the world with little assistance. Even though his plan is faulty, he does pull it off. There is a lot about Akechi that could be liked and admired.

The problem with Akechi is that it all comes down to his desperation. Incidentally, this is the name of the ability that drives shadows and people to berserk. It's desperation that drives his actions: desperation to be liked, desperation to screw over his father, desperation to be needed by that man all the while, desperation to appeal to the screwed up social mores of the world where he grew up, and desperation to carry out a screwed up plan once he comes up with it, allowing nothing to get in his way. His desperation is truly what leads to that tunnel vision. He fails to see that his father intends to kill him, not caring that his puppet might be his son (his father doesn't know for certain until it's told to him, but it comes as no surprise). He fails to see that the Phantom Thieves are plotting against him the entire time until it's too late. Above all else, his desperation leads him to hurting countless people. Goro Akechi is a serial killer. His actions are twisted, but he does approach his father himself to undertake his long, long game. He comes to that screwed up game on his own, and his father is all too eager to let him do it.

In the lead up to his final moments, Akechi sees the error of his ways. He starts out bragging about his power and what he's capable of accomplishing, but in the end, he knows that he's an ugly, twisted and unlikable person. He rejects the Phantom Thieves and their teamwork, declaring that they're beneath him. In truth, he wants them to like him and has a hard time admitting it—and especially wants their leader, Joker, to like him. However, he believes that he's exactly what the world has seen him as the entire time: an unwanted child who's the son of a famous politician's mistress. As such, he's baffled when the Phantom Thieves refuse to kill him and instead invite him to help take down his father. In those final moments, it seems like Akechi could change, and he commits a selfless action to preserve their justice rather than his own, locking them away from an encroaching danger.

This action proves that Akechi is capable of change, but he doesn't have the opportunity to prove it. The thing is, he has eighteen years of reinforced viewpoints that need to be overturned and changed. That may need to come first.
CRAU: N/A

SPECIES: Human
APPEARANCE: Here.
SKILLS:

Firearms: It's obvious that unlike the rest of the Phantom Thieves, Akechi has real life experience with using firearms. When he handles a gun in what he perceives to be reality, he does it quite easily.

Fencing/swords: Akechi's weapon of choice is a saber, and his movement shows that he's had some training in this arena. He's capable of sword play, essentially.

Physical training: Akechi is an accomplished combatant who's been fighting alone in dangerous situations for years. He also regularly rides a bike and goes rock climbing.

Resilience: Thanks to the above, he's also quite good at handling difficult situations, both mentally and physically.

Intellect: Akechi is a genius, albeit one with an incredibly distorted cognition. He's intelligent in a lot of ways. He's someone who can solve puzzles and carry out certain plans without needing to inform others. He can easily get people caught in his "traps," so to speak.

Reconnaissance: Akechi treats life like a constant recon mission, and rides his bike around the city to find interesting stories.

Foodie Whether or not he enjoys it, Akechi is someone who's good at finding the latest trends and having something interesting to say about it. He's very patient about it all.

NEW POWER: Mental inducement, with the seed power involving him injecting someone with a temporary need to go berserk for five minutes. This power requires him to touch the person in question. Going berserk depends on the individual in question, and what it means for them to enter that state.
POWER REASONING: Akechi desperately wants to change the mindset of people around him, outright utilizing an ability called "desperation" in canon to do that. The mindset he actually wants is for people to like him—which is why I'm starting him off with a seed that won't make that easy for him. In time, he may be able to induce the mindset he wants from someone, or may lead his power down an even darker path that mirrors his canon abilities.