‘Persona 5 Royal’ and the Case for Suffering

Their choice is between what is unearned and what’s been hard-won. What would you choose?

A couple of my coworkers at the video game store teased me when I said I wanted to buy Persona 5 Royal. “Haven’t you already played Persona 5 like three times?”

Well, yeah. But there’s new stuff in Royal.

“You better hope the new stuff is good.”

Post-Royal playthrough, I honestly couldn’t tell you if the new stuff is “good.” I was too busy getting wrung out emotionally by it to notice. There’s something inherently ridiculous about being moved to tears by a Japanese RPG about teenagers with metaphysical powers, but I will not be sheepish. If a video game rerelease has touched me, what can I do about it now? We do not choose what speaks to us.

Royal’s primary story addition to the original Persona 5 includes two new characters: student Kasumi Yoshizawa and school counselor Takuto Maruki. They’re woven into the original game’s story, then become the focus of a new chapter inserted after Persona 5 classic’s final boss. (Mild spoilers from here on out!) Yoshizawa, like the ensemble cast of the Phantom Thieves, has been the object of some of fate’s cruelest twists—as to be expected from a game all about finding the strength to respond to tragedy and injustice. But she lacks the intrinsic fighting spirit that motivates the original protagonists to struggle on. Maruki sees his role as a counselor as an opportunity to help others evade their pain rather than confront it, so he encourages Yoshizawa as she burrows her way into comforting delusion, wherein she finds some relief.

“Don’t judge her,” Maruki pleads once the alarming extent of Yoshizawa’s disconnect with reality is revealed. “This is just evidence of how painful life is for her.” There are plenty more blatantly malicious characters in Persona 5, but these two and their relationship disturbed me most.

Usually, when I have this kind of visceral negative reaction to a person or character, it’s because they remind me of a past version of myself I’ve outgrown. Sure enough, when I was younger, I too avoided engaging with my problems. The details of my own sob story are both superfluous and uninteresting, but I used to be much like Yoshizawa in that I believed I couldn’t play the hand I was dealt before I’d even tried to. Like her, my resentment of past pains and fear of future ones held me back more than my circumstances ever could, and I refused to see it. So I did not initially find Yoshizawa and Maruki welcome additions to the game. Their respective inabilities to tolerate and witness suffering embarrassed me.

My old therapist occasionally suggested that a personality quirk or mental tendency I didn’t hate about myself was actually the consequence—the reward, even—of something I’d experienced in the past. I used to bristle at this. If the way I think and the things I do are even partly products of everything that’s happened to me, I am forced to concede that I gained something from my hardships. That perhaps I am not merely a victim to my circumstances. I may be the beneficiary of them. This is an impossible thing to see before you’re ready to see it. I should go easier on Yoshizawa.

Maruki describes reality as “merciless,” and I do not disagree. The world of Persona 5 is dark. Many prominent characters have at least one murdered parent, and just about all have been abused in some capacity by an authority figure. (Who can forget Haru’s father attempting to practically sex traffick her?) It’s the same in real life—horrifying things happen all the time to people who haven’t done anything wrong. When someone protests that their lot is not fair, “Life’s not fair” is often the retort. A sympathetic response? Perhaps not. But a true one? Absolutely. Not everything that feels like a punishment is one. (If you play your video games on high difficulty, you understand this.) For me, the strongest anchor during life’s random, senseless gales of cruelty is remembering that the unshakable self-reliance on the other side of suffering has always been worth everything I had to give up.

There’s a key difference between the performative confidence we generate to convince ourselves we are capable and the surety that organically grows every time we solve a problem or withstand a trial. The former will vanish and must always be conjured anew. The latter is stable —its stores may be drawn upon at any time. But we suffer repeatedly to gather it. That is the price, and it’s one I have decided I’m willing to pay. Unlike the characters in Persona 5, I have never just-barely saved Japan from the controlling clutch of a malevolent god, but I can imagine how empowering it would be to clear a challenge of this scale. If my own mundane losses and private struggles have so strengthened me, the Phantom Thieves must feel invincible at the end of their cosmic battle with Yaldabaoth, the sin of sloth made manifest.

Yaldabaoth’s defeat is where the original Persona 5 ends, but in Royal, the Thieves are then presented with the chance to undo everything they’ve suffered in the game so far. In this newly added final chapter, Maruki has learned to alter reality and commit the world to an existence in which the greatest losses and challenges of his associates never occurred: Members of the Phantom Thieves get dead relatives back, reunite with lost friends, have all the things they’ve longed for most.

At first blush, the choice of whether or not to accept Maruki’s reality looks like a Matrix-style Good World vs. Real World dilemma. But the Thieves are not being asked to choose between the blue pill of comfort and the red pill of truth. Truth is whatever they choose. Their choice is between what is unearned and what’s been hard-won. We think we want what is easy, but when we get it, how often do we feel anxious, dissatisfied, or unnerved because we know we did not work for it? The soul yearns to apply itself, to go out on a limb for what it believes in.

Now, just because the bad stuff of life can fire-forge us to new levels of resilience, this does not mean the undeserved good can never also inspire us to try harder. (Certainly, the times I’ve felt most compelled to be diligent and conscientious have been when someone placed unearned faith in me and I wanted to come through for them.) But, this only works if we’ve cultivated a spiritual resourcefulness that seeks to use all things in the service of growth. If we don’t put in the work, contentment will always elude us.

We think we want what is easy, but when we get it, how often do we feel anxious, dissatisfied, or unnerved because we know we did not work for it?

In his The Consolation of Philosophy, the Roman statesman and philosopher Boethius personifies Fortune as a dual-natured dealer of both pain and blessing, who remains “constant to her own inconstancy.” Every spell of bad or good luck must eventually turn over, and so Boethius impresses upon his readers that whatever Fortune gives is worth exactly as much as it is made use of. Whether our situation is “good” or “bad” has very little to do with how constructive it can be. That part is up to us, and the reason Boethius concludes that “ill fortune is better for men than good” is because good fortune is too easy to take for granted.

In Royal’s “bad” ending (in which you elect not to fight Maruki and to accept his new reality), the characters have their losses and obstacles erased—a debilitating injury never occurred, a dead parent is alive and well—and state their intentions to “be together forever.” Rather than separately moving on to their respective next phases of life as in the game’s “true” ending, in this reality, the Phantom Thieves pick lives of no challenge, no risk, and no growth. We cannot know what we are capable of if we have never been tested, and these characters have never been tested.

Without their suffering, the Phantom Thieves are not the Phantom Thieves. The persona each one commands in battle cannot even be accessed until its user has been taken beyond the confines of what they thought they could endure and resolved to face it down regardless. Without their suffering, our heroes are just a clique of normal teens with no need to worry about unjust gods or murderous politicians.

This is, of course, not an inherently bad thing to be, but after watching these kids willingly step up to the plate to do the unthinkable and survive over and over again, it’s wildly uncomfortable to see them lost in the haze of complacency. Their happiness is hollow in a way they can’t quite articulate—but the player can. We know how much potential they really have.

What makes Royal’s bad ending still a tempting option is that the Phantom Thieves and their leader, Joker, aren’t being asked to choose a reality solely for themselves. Maruki has seen fit to “fix” as many lives as he can, including those of the friends, family, and loved ones of the Thieves. This is not a personal dilemma for the player, for Joker. Maruki has made it everyone’s problem.

The ego is tricky. It conceals its narcissistic designs under a veil of charity and benevolence. It convinces you that you are doing what is right. Maruki clearly really wants to help, and he clearly really believes in the salvation he offers. But the longer he goes unchecked, the stronger his conviction that he and he alone can save humanity grows. Sometimes, even highly destructive delusions originate as minor, self-inflicted mind tricks by someone seeking the empowerment to survive a world they see as cold. Maruki only oversteps because he cares—regardless, he oversteps.

Because he believes he is too weak to suffer, he believes everyone is too weak to suffer. And now Maruki has found their cure; never mind what it actually entails. In his final speech to the student body he counsels, Maruki says cryptically, “If your situation ever becomes too painful to endure, remember: It’s okay for you to escape your problem. I don’t want a single one of you to think that an unfair reality you’ve been forced into is the only one that you have to live.”

Most of us find it uncomfortable to stand by as others are forced to take their punches. Even when there is nothing material or meaningful for us to contribute, it can feel wrong to see someone suffer and not get involved. Still, overempathizing can be just as dysfunctional as underempathizing. We have a responsibility to learn what Maruki could not :  To force our help on someone who doesn’t need or want it is to disempower them for the sake of our desired self-image.

Even when our endeavors to amend what is callous and cruel in society are genuine, the ego seeps in. Instead of simply helping those who suffer to regain the strength and stability they need to continue their fight, we sometimes also diminish them with pity and coddling. We cast them as one-dimensional mascots for injustice and misfortune until, like Maruki, we identify them entirely by what they have lost so that we can play their savior.

To force our help on someone who doesn’t need or want it is to disempower them for the sake of our desired self-image. 

I often think of people like Tamir Rice’s mother, Samaria, ultimately cowed and silenced and infantilized by the very activists and attorneys who reached out to help in the wake of her harrowing loss. This aligns with what I’ve repeatedly observed in activist and organizing spaces. Most people want to feel righteous and heroic so badly that it distorts their ability to see that what is truly needed is usually something humbler and quieter than what we’d imagined ourselves doing. It is only our place to be the hero in our own stories, never someone else’s.

The truth is that we can help each other, but we cannot save each other. Think about it: If I am stronger than I know, you are too. We must respect this.

In Royal’s true ending, Joker and the Phantom Thieves fight Maruki, even though they aren’t the only ones who must make sacrifices to restore the old time line. Because they know they are strong enough to suffer, they know everyone is strong enough to suffer. When I finished the game, I reacted so emotionally because I really believe this too. Every person who is afraid of pain can still survive it. I was, and I did.

Everyone is strong enough to suffer—and what’s more is that they deserve to. They deserve to know they have the capacity to fight a god. Each one of the Phantom Thieves (even Yoshizawa, in the end) independently comes to the decision to defend and claim their pain before they face down Maruki together. The unshakable self-reliance on the other side of suffering is worth everything they had to give up.

Recently, I’ve noticed some tangible consequences of the evolution of my view of suffering. For example, whenever I’m reminded of old betrayals and resentments, I find they’ve ceased to inspire anything stronger than mild irritation. After all, didn’t everyone who hurt me, in the act of hurting me, teach me something I now benefit from knowing? Or, when unanticipated challenges appear, I rarely feel the panicked urge to flee anymore. Haven’t I already solved hundreds of problems just like this one and lived to tell the tale? For a while, I couldn’t hone in on why I’d changed. I had been anxious and cynical for so long. Then, somehow, I found peace, seemingly by accident.

Finishing Royal is what finally crystallized this transformation for me. In watching my internal journey externally played back to me by anime teens, I was able to snap the pieces into place. I see exactly what has changed in me. I now believe that suffering in all its forms — loss, pain, challenge, disappointment, abandonment, all of it — is not a categorical evil to shun. Suffering is not even a functional inevitability, the occupational hazard of living we must reach a begrudging truce with. It’s a favor. We need it. I can’t imagine my life, my personality, or my relationships without suffering, but I know they would lose their texture and depth. Without suffering, without evolution, our lives are flat and faint. Camus said the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. I may go so far as to say it is the only thing that can.

You can’t be a normal teen, but you get to fight a god. How cool is that?