Misaimed Fandom / Persona

• Persona 3:
  • Yukari Takeba's actions in The Answer are seen by many fans as proof she was a horrible Bitch in Sheep's Clothing all along. While it's true that her actions are meant to be viewed as wrong, the game makes it clear she's irrational over the loss of someone extremely close to her, and dealing with personal loss is a major theme of the game. When she eventually opens up to her friends about it, they're able to help her through it and she comes out a better person. Her detractors ignore her epiphany and consider her a nothing more than a cruel, jealous Alpha Bitch, and downplay her moments of niceness during the main story.
    
    Ironically, the same people who insist that Yukari was stupid and wrong for wanting to resurrect the Protagonist are the same ones clamoring for the Protagonist to be added to the roster of Persona 4: Arena, despite said game existing within the canon universe of Persona 3 and Persona 4... and thus demanding the exact same thing as Yukari did in The Answer.
  • Similarly, Ken Amada was decried as having crossed the Moral Event Horizon for wishing to kill Shinjiro to try and avenge her mother, with them wishing the former had died on October 4th instead. Issue is, the whole point of this in the story is that Ken comes to terms with the fact that this was a very unhealthy way to try and make peace with losing his mother, and Shinjiro himself had no qualms about dying in order to atone and went out on his own terms to protect him from Takaya... who ironically went completely ignored by these players despite having been the one to kill Shinjiro in the end. In time, both Yukari and Ken were Vindicated by History, but they still receive a lot of flack from players.
• Persona 4:
  • Tohru Adachi is a serial-killing, misogynistic, egocentric "police dick" (no, seriously, that's a canon title) whose attitude towards women is summed up in his fandom-popular phrase from Persona 4 (which he never actually said in that game), "bitches and whores". For some reason though, there's a vast majority of the fanbase who actually considers him "not that bad." Never mind the fact that he's completely sexist, he's also a complete psychopath, who cannot be described in any other way than "fucked in the head." This isn't helped by the fact there's an ending in the game where the player character can pick to act as Adachi's accomplice. Again, this ending wasn't supposed to feel rewarding. It's specially designed to be a "you're a screwed up person" ending. The writers explicitly stated numerous times that the entire idea of Adachi was to design someone the player would end up loathing, who could be considered without any real question or debate as being a "bad guy", who everyone and their dog wouldn't like by the end of the game, especially to be in contrast with Persona 3, where some of the real villains have good intentions. Adachi, however, was designed to be completely evil, with next to no real redeeming factors left by the end of the game. Persona 4: Arena Ultimax, however, softens up on him a bit, making him willing to go out of his way to make sure he actually faces justice for his crimes and that the case isn't just thrown out because of some completely unrelated supernatural shenanigans, and ending with him beginning to come around to the Investigation Team's way of thinking.
  • Many people mistakenly believe that a person's Shadow shows the absolute truth about a person, when in fact it represents a twisted and exaggerated version of a person's personal issues. This misconception has led to some characters being appreciated for the wrong reasons:
    • Naoto Shirogane's Shadow takes the form of a Mad Scientist who is preparing to perform a "bodily alteration procedure" on the real Naoto to turn her into a male. This has led some fans to insist that Naoto is actually a transgender man, even though she affirms in-game that she's a girl and she disguises herself as a boy to be taken seriously as a detective. Shadow Naoto merely represents Naoto's misguided belief that she needs to be a man in order to be a proper detective, something which is clearly wrong. Her character is supposed to be commentary on Japan's strict gender roles, not gender identity, something that was missed by Western fans. Some even argue that the only reason she isn't canonically trans is because the writers themselves were too transphobic to make a trans character, therefore she's actually "supposed" to be trans and the canon should be disregarded in favor of "reclaiming" the perceived trans representation from the supposed bigots. None of this is supported at all by the games script in any language and doesn't line up with her characterization either.
    • Shadow Kanji takes the form of a Camp Gay man (and before that, there are a few moments that portray Kanji as Ambiguously Gay). Because of this, the fandom has a tendency to fixate on Kanji's ambiguous sexuality as the be-all, end-all of his problems, when the game makes it clear that, as much as his sexuality is a part of his problems with himself, his real problem is with acceptance of his whole personality — especially his "unmanly" hobbies and interests — both from himself and from other people; the Camp Gay thing is because he worries that others (both men and women) will see him as gay if he embraces his love of textile crafts. Essentially, the fans Flanderize him into "the token Gay Guy", when his actual story is how he simply isn't sure how to view himself in relation to Japan's strict viewpoints on gender roles. His Shadow is also touted as if it's absolute truth that he's gay — except that again, Kanji's arc is about how arbitrary gender and sexuality expectations are forced upon someone... and thus the fandom doing it is exactly what caused his problem to begin with.
    • Kanji, along with the existence of the Yaoi Genre or the presence of the Yaoi Fangirl trope, are also touted as proof that Japan is perfectly accepting of homosexuality... Except that many instances of yaoi is seen as niche at best in Japan, the genre itself is aimed at straight people — and Japan is actually not nearly as LGBT-friendly as many people believe it to be. In fact, a lot of Kanji's issues stem from how Japanese society rejects him for being Ambiguously Gay, Yosuke's teasing him about it is a Berserk Button for Kanji, and in addition to having a crush on Naoto, also shows interest in Yukiko early on.
    • Extra Credits gets in on this — in their sexual diversity episode, they praise Atlus for writing a gay character and praise Kanji because a tough guy with a feminine side who is gay (and comes to terms about it) makes him different than the other tough guys with feminine sides in their eyes. The bit about the acceptance of his personality is rarely mentioned at all, and they even bring up Naoto as an example in this episode but don't go in because they feel it would be too spoilerific.
  • Some players complain about Yukiko's decision to give up on a chance to pursue an interior decorating career outside Inaba and instead inherit her family's inn, viewing it as a betrayal of her character arc, in which she becomes more independent. This is missing the point of Yukiko's Character Development — her desire to leave was the result of hating the idea that she had to inherit the inn because she was the heir, and after she accepts her shadow and thus her ability to make her own choices, she realizes that she was never trapped in the first place (something reflected by her Shadow turning into a bird in an open cage), because her family and the inn staff would support her even if she did leave. After that, she makes the decision to stay and inherit the inn in gratitude to the people who gave her a loving and supportive childhood. This video analyzes Yukiko's character and explains why her decision to stay in Inaba makes sense for her.
• Persona 5:
  • The Phantom Thieves have an In-Universe misaimed fandom online. When the fansite is first put up, the requests for the protagonists to solve are mostly personal problems and small in scale compared to what they wanted, which is people who are well-respected by society and getting away with their crimes because of their status and power. As they gain more popularity, and make it clearer to the public that their goal is to target societal corruption, the fandom is still misaimed as they become more focused on bloodshed, as shown when they congratulate the Thieves for killing Kunizaku Okumura during a live broadcast, despite his death being a set up by The Conspiracy, then start demanding the Thieves be killed as retribution. The Phantom Thieves eventually realize after Okumura's death that their fandom doesn't care about their goal of reforming society.
  • Mishima goes through this as his character arc. He initially becomes a fan of the Phantom Thieves because they saved him from Kamoshida and sets up the Phansite so that others in similar situations to him can request the Phantom Thieves' help, but eventually the power goes to his head, and he starts suggesting targets for his personal gain (i.e. an actor Mishima assumes must be a jerk just because he's popular). He grows past this after the Thieves talk sense into his shadow, and once again suggests Mementos targets who genuinely committed horrible crimes and would otherwise get away with them.
  • One portion of the Western fandom believes that the game should have offered an option to execute the targets. This goes in complete contrast to their modus operandi to be Phantom Thieves of Hearts, meaning they steal the heart of their target and force them to admit and atone for their sins, and that not killing their targets is what sets them apart from the Black Mask; if they killed, it'd be much easier for the Conspiracy to frame them for the Black Mask's actions. They completely ignore the fact that Ann was close to killing Kamoshida's Shadow, but when his Shadow actually offered her to kill him, she chose to not go through with it. She wanted Kamoshida to admit his crimes in person, have him live with his heroic reputation as an Olympic gold medalist ruined, and have everyone know what a horrible person he really is. And given the Thieves' reactions to Okumura dying because his Shadow was killed, it's clear that this is not the result they would've wanted to begin with.
  • Taking the argument to the other extreme, some of the fans think that the "take your heart" treatment is the be-all end-all for any corrupt criminal. The Phantom Thieves start questioning how legitimate this is of an answer in-universe when they see taking their targets' hearts only made them miserable Empty Shells instead of working towards internal reform, and several major targets are shown coming to the Heel Realization on their own without any need to take their hearts, underlining the major theme of change starting from within. The bad ending emphasizes this by having the Thieves decide to police everyone in Tokyo through their abilities because they can't trust the populace to reform on their own. Persona 5 Strikers even lacks the heart-stealing aspect of its major antagonists for this reason (and because the Jail Monarchs aren't as utterly horrible as Palace Rulers). Yet despite these risks, and in some cases because of them (better they be spiritually lobotomized and eternally guilt-ridden than corrupt and unchecked), and because it looks impossibly cool when they do it, fans want the Phantom Thieves to keep up their thievery.
  • Persona 5 Strikers has another In-Universe example. Akane Hasegawa (who, to be fair, is a little kid whose mother's killer escaped justice thanks to his connections to Shido) becomes a big fan of the Phantom Thieves, believing them as promoting all rebels as heroes and all authority figures as villains. While it's true that the Thieves' rebellion helped a lot of people and they targeted horrible people in power, this was more correlation than causation; the Thieves went after criminals who otherwise couldn't be brought to justice, and it just so happens that a lot of these people were getting away with crimes by abusing positions of authority. While they do have an anti-authoritarian streak, they recognize that there are people in the legal system who are totally innocent; in fact, though the character has no way to know this, their plan to trick the Conspiracy depended on getting Sae, a prosecutor, on their side.

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