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Happy birthday, Akechi! If we go by the original Persona 5 release date, today you would have been 26 years old. If we go by the Persona 5: The Royal release date instead, today you might be 23 years old! Three years over what is considered 'adulthood' in Japan. I know you would despise my well-wishes more than anything else just because you could not bear the idea of being some video game character where your personality, your relationships, and your very fate have already been determined by somebody else, be they ATLUS writers and developers or us, the players, people who might love and despise you in equal measure.
I know that, and yet I still want to write you a birthday card, regardless. Funny how that works, no? I'll be honest with you. I love you. The way you choose your masks in order to satisfy a hungry audience, your cunning, convoluted schemes, the way you just explode when all your best-laid plans crumble around you like a house of cards, your prickly, irritable personality in what we call The Third Semester, the way you don't shy away from telling things as they are... All of these, and more, are part of why I love you. Part of, yes, but not the reason. It happened so long ago I can't even remember why I started doing it in the first place. I just know that sometime back in 2018, when akeshu content was limited to Persona 5: The Animation and the wonderful works of authors on AO3, it became a fundamental truth of my life: "The sky is blue, the Earth is round, and Val loves Akechi Goro".
Does it matter why you started doing something if it brings you joy every day? You'd argue for yes, I'd argue for no. That's just the sort of people we are. You know, I used to hate you in the beginning, when the big plot twist was revealed. Part of it was the betrayal, yes, but a bigger part of it was my unwillingness to accept just how similar we are. I watched you break down, I watched you hurt people, I watched you sacrifice yourself, and I thought, How can a person be so angry?, like a hypocrite. Very easily, in fact, when all the cards they've been handed in life are duds and all the choices they've made are bad choices.
It took me quite a few months to warm up to you, and that happened precisely because of the things I used to scorn before. How can a person be so angry turned into how can I be so angry turned into I like this, actually. Not the anger in and of itself, no, but how you had to deal with it, shoving it underneath your façade until it left you hollow and gaping on the inside, a door left swinging in an empty apartment, until it hit you all at once like a bullet in the chest. I believe I was, at the time, angrier at the wasted character potential that happened when you got killed off. All of that foreshadowing, all of those automatic rank-ups and for what? For you to truly shine just minutes before your death? I felt cheated. I wanted to see more of the 'true' you, although that's inaccurate, inasmuch as somebody can be 'truly themself'. I wanted to see more of this side of you. But most of all, I felt you deserved a happy ending, a Zuko-worthy redemption arc, a satisfying death at the very least! I did not want your story to end just yet. And so, I was left with that bitter aftertaste in my mouth until Persona 5: The Royal got officially released.
It made you so much more realer than before. Not that you didn’t feel real before, no, but there was this feeling of you being an outsider among a cast of outsiders, which always felt a bit ironic, especially considering Persona 5’s themes. I’m glad to say that’s not the case anymore! Every one of your free time events, every one of your lines, every time you declined to hang out because you were “busy” and yet you still played darts or billiards with us, all these little things about you never failed to bring a smile to my face. Your awkward social interactions, your tsundere tendencies, your emotional constipation, the little dates you’d take us on… I never felt bored with you around. Out of all the diverse characters in a JRPG, you, the celebrity detective prince moonlighting as an assassin, felt the most relatable to me. And yes, I can throw around words like character foil, and parallels, and antagonist, but they would ultimately mean nothing if it weren’t you in all those roles. I don’t want to use those terms to describe you, especially when I’m sure you’ve used them yourself to describe your relationship with our resident Trickster. That’s not the sort of behaviour I like to encourage, especially when you’re just lying to yourself, you know?
Speaking of lying to yourself, I was so very happy when it turned out you were alive after all! I nearly threw my mouse at my screen in excitement! And then, having only you and Sumi as allies while traversing a strange Palace? Seeing this new, wonderfully cynical, biting side of you? Knowing that you would still be by my side well-after dealing with Maruki’s Palace? It was a dream come true! …Which, in retrospective, should have been the first warning sign, but people choose to turn a blind eye in two very specific situations; The first: when there is something deeply wrong, something that has already happened and can no longer be prevented, no matter how hard you try or how loud you beg, with a person you care so much about it might make your heart explode. The second: when there is something deeply wrong with you. You can take a guess as to which one it was for me.
Then came Maruki, with his stupid deal, and then came the equally stupid you, who told me to reject his offer. …What are you looking at me like that for? Of course I didn’t accept it.That didn’t stop me from sobbing my eyes out until well-after the boss fight, though. My reasons for refusing weren’t the most… moral ones, I admit. There was nothing about autonomy, or fantasy vs. reality, or not wanting to be stuck at the mercy of some rando therapist sham. No, those would come later, when I would get some time and space from that whole scene. I refused, first and foremost, because you requested that from me, and because I could never deny you, no matter how much of a fight I put up against it or how much I wanted you to understand you were important, to Akiren, yes, but also to me and hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world.
So, here we are. A post-credits scene and five years later. Earlier, I mentioned wanting a redemption arc for you. That is no longer the case. The thing that makes you you is the way you unapologetically refuse to be anything other than yourself, and I don’t think you’d care for it, nor see a point in it. It was, at the time, the only way I knew to express a single desire: I want you to be happy. Not the fabricated happiness which Maruki sought out, not your own brand of short-lived mania brought on by vengeance, but well and truly happy. I want you to look back to this moment in five years, in ten, in fifty even, and think “This is neither a start, nor an ending. It’s a middle.”. If there’s anything to keep in mind from this letter, please remember that you are loved. You will always be loved, even when you are at your worst, even when you are at rock bottom, even when you feel like nothing matters anymore. I want you to feel that, because you changed my life, and I want to change yours too, even if it’s in small, insignificant ways. Happy birthday, Akechi.