Anyway, I'm... okay with the Okumura storyline. We're building up more on the conspiracy angle introduced and hinted in the previous dungeon, but splitting the focus between two main characters ends up, I think, having this part of the story feel more about Morgana than the new party member Haru. I do think it's important to give Morgana some focus since he's been around since the beginning and his personality is 'mysterious but cute', but I also do feel like they really did rush through Haru's story, Haru's introduction and her jackass father and fiancé at an insanely rapid pace. It's not bad, but I do feel like it was handled a bit too quickly for my taste.
Technically only the last boss and a miniboss came from the 'Okumura Palace', but eh.
I feel like this one has some content because the Royal-exclusive teammate, Yoshizawa Kasumi, gets her awakening rather randomly in the middle of the Okumura 'arc'. I know Kasumi is an addition in Royal, and while I appreciate that her story is built up over the base game's story (so she wouldn't literally come out of nowhere like Haru did) it's actually surprising to see her awaken in an event in the middle of the Okumura 'month'. I'll reserve judgment until I've seen the rest of her story, though!
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Cendrillon
"If those really are the shoes you've chosen... then we'll dance to the end."
- Arcana: Faith
An... interesting Persona, I guess? This is another one that feels very much like a traditional JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Stand, next to Goemon and Zorro. I guess we have been spoiled with the previous couple of player Personas being a motorbike, a UFO and a giant headless dress with a grinning gatling-gun machine gremlin underneath. Cendrillon's design is pretty pleasant-looking, this ashen-black-skinned female figure with a fancy cape, a jewel-like dress and a lower body and legs made out of crystal or diamond. She represents the 'Holy' type, and with Joker's default Persona Arsene having 'Curse', this means all the elements are accounted for.
Cendrillon is the French adaptation of the classic European folk tale Cinderella, which itself originated from Greek. "Cendrillon" is actually the most famous version and introduced many things that became synonymous with the tale, such as the fairy godmother and the glass slippers. The Cendrillon tale is adapted by Charles Perrault, and this would lead to several operas, and ultimately the Disney film. Cendrillon is not the main character's tale, but rather a demeaning nickname given from her evil step-family, since she was covered in ash (cendre, cinders) because she was forced to sleep next to a fireplace.
And... there's a sense of rebellion against destiny, I guess? When her step-family bullies and oppresses her, Cendrillon still ends up going to the ball, albeit with the aid of a supernatural fairy godmother? It's clear that Kasumi's story is barely being told at this point of the game, but so far the honour student that always gets "you're not good enough to be exceptional" tossed in her face and struggling with so much pressure despite the effort she puts in... yeah, that's... that's honestly pretty damn heartbreaking. I won't really say too much because the game kind of shuffles Kasumi off to the side until she'll become relevant later down the line, though.
Byakhee
- Monster Name: Evil Synthetic Organism
- Arcana: Moon
Byakhee, in the Cthulhu Mythos, are the servants of the Great Old One called Hastur the Unspeakable (who we won't cover here, but I can really go all in on ol' King in Yellow if you wanted to). The 'Byakhee Birds' are described as a horde of 'tame, trained hybrid winged things that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember', with the narrator of the story that the Byakhee first appeared in going down a long list of what they're not, and describing how they flopped limply with webbed feet and membranous wings, being used as mounts by riders that carry them through the vacuum of space.
I've seen various different interpretations of the Byakhee, but they've mostly been variants of giant birds or giant flesh-dragons... and Persona elected to go for a strange, giant bug-humanoid. I wasn't super-impressed when I first saw the Byakhee for the first time until I realized what the anatomy of this thing is! Originally, I thought that the 'head' is that little black thing where a human head would be, which just makes the Byakhee into a rather boring demon-man. And then I realized the whole 'chest' is a giant wasp head, which is a lot more clear when you see the Byakhee from the sides. That's a nice bit of making the Byakhee look familiar ('oh, a bug monster!') while the strange anatomy adds to the weirdness of this thing. Byakhee's got an abdomen butt, and little writhing worms in the place of fingers, and little bat wings. Yes, the bat wings aren't consistent with the bug-man theme, but this is a Cthulhu mythos creature. Inconsistency is the name of the game!
Hecatoncheires
- Monster Name: Hundred Armed Watcher
- Arcana: Hanged Man
I do really like the absurdities of the Hundred-Handed Giants, and always loved when they show up in modern media. God of War had a pretty great adaptation that goes the monstrous way, making a hideous multi-limbed flesh demon. Final Fantasy XIII elected to interpret the multiple arms as barrels in a transforming mecha-thing that can turn into a gatling gun.
But this interpretation is pretty cool, too! Obviously they can't really animate all 100 hands, and I think there's a bit less than twenty here. But merely having a green-bodies multi-armed naked giant really isn't that interesting compared to the rest of Persona's bestiary. The padlock on the Hecatoncheires' neck is a nice touch to their imprisonment in Greek myth, but easily the coolest and most disturbing thing about this design are the multiple fused heads with eyeballs that don't exactly sync up with the thee mouths. It's a nice nod to the 'fifty heads' part of the Hecatoncheires myth, which I felt often gets overlooked! Pretty creepy. I like this guy.
Melchizedek
- Monster Name: Pagan Saviour
- Arcana: Justice
Serving as a miniboss in Okumura's Palace, this guy is Melchizedek! And... Melchizedek is an interesting character from the Bible. In the Bible, Melchizedek appears for a short passage in the book of Genesis, being described as a king and a priest of the most high God who blesses Abram; and would be mentioned a couple more times in the Psalms and Hebrews -- notably a passage that says Jesus Christ is a 'priest forever in the Order of Melchizedek'.
However, other cultures and religious like the Babylonian Talmud present Melchizedek as an alternate name for Shem, son of Noah. The Qumran Scrolls associate Melchizedek as a name for the archangel Michael. And in Gnosticism, Melchizedek is noted to be the 'saviour of the angels', having ascended to heaven without dying. This last bit is why the primary inspiration for Persona's depiction of Melchizedek, and why his monster name is a 'Pagan Savior'.
I do find Melchizedek's depiction to be refreshingly different from the other angels that have mostly been traditional or medieval (with the exception of the BDSM naked basic Angel, of course). Melchizedek wears like an Ultraman-style bodysuit, right down to a glowing core on his chest, and he's got golden armour pieces on his limbs and covering his head as a featureless helmet. Oh, and he's got metal wings, too. A very interesting-looking robotic or tokusatsu angel, and I do
Shadow Okumura
- Monster Name: Okumura "Mammon" Kunikazu, Sinner of Greed
- Arcana: N/A
So yeah, we arrive at Okumura Kunikazu, the main villain of this arc. He represents the sin of greed, and not just being greedy for money either, but for power. (Kaneshiro, whose palace was all about money, represents gluttony because he doesn't actually need the money and he just likes having it). Kunikazu is shown as a ruthless businessman who views his workers as essentially, well, robots on an assembly line, to be discarded and literally recycled as fuel for his 'spaceship', a representation of his desire to go to space. The game later reveals other shady stuff he does, which involves sabotage... and, of course, since our POV is from his daughter, him just trying to marry off poor Haru to the unnamed gigantic dickbag just to further his political career, even willing to essentially force Haru to 'live with' him as his lover. The game words this as Haru being 'sold off'.
Interestingly, Kunikazu is the first of our 'Shadows' to not transform, staying in his humanoid mode. But what a humanoid form! Other than the blue skin, that body looks like a dead ringer for the old Darth Vader outfit, albeit the buttons on his chest are a bit more silly-looking. He's also got a stupid giant Mysterio bubble over his head with antennae and a head-sock, and there's just such a heavy old-school sci-fi vibe to him. I love him.
And in a move that I really should've seen coming, Okumura... he just keeps summoning waves and waves of the unique robot enemies we fought earlier in the game, and never actually transforms into a big 'demon' form like Kaneshiro, Madarame or Kamoshida. He just sits on his hoverchair in the background tossing buffs. Which is more annoying than it sounds, though after you take out his literal army of robots, all you need is to just bop Kunikazu in the head to soundly defeat him.
The game identifies his 'demon' name as Mammon, and we're finally kinda back to the naming scheme of having each main antagonist being named after one of the Arch-Devils that represent the Seven Deadly Sins? Except Madarame already used a 'lesser' sin as Azazel and Futaba/Wakaba doesn't even get a demon name. Anyway, Mammon is the Demon Prince of Greed. His name literally translates to 'money', taken from a passage in the Bible where "you cannot serve both God and money/Mammon", with some translations of the Bible taking the term literally as the name of a demon.
And, like many other demons, in the Middle Ages, stories about Mammon grew as people wrote about this technically-a-mistranslation. Thanks to the Divine Comedy, Mammon basically got associated with a lot of tropes given to Pluto/Hades, like the association of digging up wealth from the underworld.
Execurobo & Cognitive Okumura Haru
And... yeah, we've talked about the Corporobos before, all of them having served as sub-bosses in the dungeon. But this time, Okumura sends the Corporobos to us in waves, and you have to deal the killing blow to them in a single turn. The problem gets exacerbated because there's a 30-minute timer that really discourages me from 'turtling' the fight (which was what I did with the Sphinx boss fight) and Okumura keeps giving 'Sacrifice Orders' where one of the four robots will blow up. I think this is the first boss fight that I felt to be actually hard, and the length of the fight (remember, a 30-minute timer is sometimes not enough!) meant that it was rather frustrating to fight him again. I ended up really having to pay attention to when to switch out characters (thanks, Hifumi Togo), when to do a Baton Pass, doing a Defense Down or Null Buffs on the enemy (so they all fall at the same time), and even using attack items just to trigger certain effects. Nice!
After taking out several waves of the lesser robots, Okumura finally summons the "Execurobo", the black-coloured guy with no weaknesses and a ginormous amount of HP. I get it, because 'executive' and 'execute'! Execurobo would be a footnote if not for the hilarious 'super move', the Big Bang Order. It's a typical 'Solarbeam' style move where the Execurobo basically telegraphs that he's going to do a big attack next turn... and it's a hilarious giant mascot burger flying in like an advertisement. Except it's one hell of a bomb that will wipe out your party if you're not guarding.
...except if you're afflicted by the 'Hunger' status, which is something that Okumura can do to you with his skills. Most of the time you're just praying that the skill doesn't hit, except when the Execurobo is summoning the Big Bang Order. The implication is that your hungry character eats the burger bomb.
And interestingly, a Cognitive version of Haru shows up, initially as a generic blue-skinned secretary and one that's a complete yes-man to Kunikazu. After all of his minions are exhausted, Kunikazu tosses Haru into the battlefield, where she morphs into a more robotic form with a single leg, and orders her to blow up. Kind of tragic, yeah, and a very nice addition to Royal. Cognitive Haru isn't part of the original Persona 5, with the implication that she's became so irrelevant in Kunikazu's mind that she's not even worthy of remembering... but Royal interprets Haru as just another minion that Kunikazu will willingly order to blow up for his ambitions. I'm not sure which interpretation is more depressing.
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