Today I'm covering a new franchise. Well at least a new franchise for Game Theory.
It's actually a really old franchise.
An old franchise with self contradictory lore.
And a very dedicated and very protective fanbase.
A fanbase that I have no doubt is sure to hate whatever I say in this episode regardless of how much research I do. (Probably)
Poking holes in the theory as a result of that aforementioned contradictory lore.
It's also a franchise with enemies that look like *this* or *this*.
Where teenagers unleash their powers by doing *this.*
*Big Boom*
So you just know that the YouTube monetization bots are gonna be all over this episode.
So the bots are gonna hate it, the fans are gonna hate it, and the people who don't know the series probably didn't click on this in the first place. (True)
Which leads to perhaps the biggest question about today's episode.
Not so much what happened to Yu's shadow in Persona 4.
But WHY the F*** did I choose to do this episode?
*Music*
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory!
"Glutton for Punishment" and the flagellation stick I'm beating myself with today is none other than...
PERSONA
A part of the Megami Tensei franchise! A franchise that's one of the longest-running in gaming history,
but also one that's been coasting under most players' radars for that same amount of time.
Or, at least it was, until the critical acclaim for Persona 5 last year.
Which put a big ol' spotlight on this mainstay of the JRPG scene.
Getting for "Persona 5 from Atlus" mentioned in the same breath as normie approved giants of gaming, like "Zelda: Breath of the Wild" "and Mario Odyssey"
Now for those of you who haven't played it, know that it is absolutely a worthy contender for game of the year.
And absolutely worth 100 hours or so it's gonna take to get through all the dungeon grinding, heart stealing and social link building.
But today I wanted to rewind it back. All the way back a decade. To 2008.
Yeah! 2008 was a decade ago. To dive deep into its equally worthy predecessor Persona 4.
In an attempt to expose the shadowy mystery lurking behind it's very cute
And most un'bear'ably adorable fluff ball, Teddie.
Now a bit of a recap for those of you who haven't played Persona 4.
Or honestly those of you who've forgotten all the details because like I said it HAS been a decade.
Sorry, I don't mean to rub it in or anything. Time affects me, too, you know.
Oh boy. Do I ever know. Oh, and uh, inevitably this video gets into spoiler territory.
So a final warning if you are planning to play this game
But somehow haven't managed to get around to it sometime in the past 10 years.
To you guys I only have four words to say "SPOILER ALERT" and "TIME MANAGEMENT"
Alright, so the story of Persona 4 revolves around our main character, who we learn is named Yu Narukami, from the anime and spin-offs.
And a group of high school misfits as they try to stop a serial murderer.
Who as you can see has got some designs to die for.
To solve the murders you and the Scooby Gang, who I henceforth deemed the "Sc'YU'by Gang." Discovers something called the [midnight channel].
A Japan-ified version of [Adult Swim] that shows kidnapped victims live and on your screen 12 o'clock Japanese Time, 8 o'clock a.m. in Pacific, and 9 o'clock Mountain and Central.
Hoping to save victims that they see on the midnight channel the ScYUby Gang head over to their local department store.
"Everyday's great at your Junes!"
To find a TV big enough to jump into. Remember this was back in 2008, when not everyone had a giant flat screen panel on their wall.
Inside the TV world they meet Teddie, a half-bear half-Kinder egg.
Teddie is technically a shadow. Defined as suppressed human thoughts given physical form.
But unlike the rest of the shadows in the TV world,
he seems less interested in attacking the ScYUby Gang,
and more interested in acting as some sort of kind, cuddly tour-guide.
From there the game boils down to a basic formula.
Someone disapears, the ScYUby Gang goes to rescue him inside the [midnight channel], the person they went in to rescue is forced to confront the parts of their own personality that they hate the most
and after a boss fight coupled with a bit of self-reflection they accept their shadow and gain a PERSONA.
Roll Credits.
And just so were clear, a persona is just like a shadow.
It's a manifestation of a person's inner thoughts but a persona is actually tamed and trained.
It's kind of like a mask for somebody to use to face hardships.
And from a gameplay standpoint it can be called upon in battle to unleash magic powers.
Now all the main characters in the game go through this process.
And I do mean EVERYONE.
Even Teddie, who we learned through his social link was himself a shadow when all of this started
"I was just a shadow in that world."
He eventually faces a shadow version of himself and gains a persona of his own. Everyone goes through this process.
Everyone... except for the fearless leader of the group
YOU... YU not Y O U
Although it is you playing as YU so you could also apply in that sentence. Sure! YU gets himself a persona.
In fact he gets his first, but his just shows up right before the tutorial fight where he battles some generic enemies.
He just hears the voice telling him to "Call forth what is within."
And he gets his persona without ever having to fight a stupid-looking boss
Throughout the entirety of the game, we never actually meet Yu's shadow and that set my theorist sense tingling.
It's just such an odd pattern to break.
Everyone else needs to meet and accept their shadow in order to gain a persona
But Yu, the main character of the game, completely neglects this part of the process
But he must have a shadow somewhere right?
That is the whole point of this game! Coming to terms with the parts of you that you don't want to acknowledge.
So then where is it?
Where is Yu's shadow?
Well I'm here today to say that it's been staring us in the face THE ENTIRE GAME!
That's right. What I'm proposing is that Teddie, sweet, lovable, cuddly
humpty-dumpty-esque Teddie is secretly Yu's former shadow.
Now, that first might seem like me trying to put together pieces that don't really belong to try and retrofit an answer.
We have one character who for no apparent reason is missing a shadow,
and we have another character who was a former shadow who has himself a mysterious backstory that he just so happens to not remember.
Add the two together, stir well and boom! You got yourself a theory, but that's not the way it's gonna work here.
I mean sure it's definitely suspicious, and it's initially what got me looking in this direction,
but the connections between Teddie and Yu are written into the very fabric of the gameplay.
Let's look at the facts: In Persona 4's true end,
the final climactic battle begins with Yu hearing the voices of people he's closest to. To use the in-game text
directly, "The hearts of those you've formed the deepest bonds with become your strength." These words of encouragement
come from everyone that Yu's maxed out a social link with. The characters that you as the player have spent the most time with come
to lend you their strength in his moment of greatest need. It is a beautiful sequence with even minor
characters like the shrine fox coming in to lend their support, if you spend enough time with them.
I get all emotional just watching it, but the thing is you can totally play this game like an anti-social a-hole
You can still get to the ending of the game without spending time with anyone at school, or your family at home in this scenario,
no one will come to support you in that final battle because you failed to max out all their social links.
Well no one except for one person-bear-egg-thing. You guessed it. It's Teddie. Yes,
Even if you intentionally play the game like a jerk becoming the king of turds to rule over all turdville, Teddie's social link
will always be maxed out by the end of the game. You as Yu can reject
everyone! Everyone except for Teddie.
It is impossible to become the world's Savior without Teddie's support. The game literally won't allow it to happen.
There is no separating the two. As Tom Cruise said, "You complete me." Almost like a shadow and it's owner.
But that's not all. One part of the game that often goes overlooked is the Velvet Room.
A place that exists between consciousness and subconsciousness.
Where Yu meets the creepy lookin' Igor and his assistant Margaret (ahem). To do things like fuse
Personas and get long-winded lectures about the games themes during our first visit to this shagadelic ride we learned that it's a place that's only
Accessible to those who've received a special invitation quote from the game "Only those who are bound by a contract
may enter." and in Persona 4 the only people able to enter this room throughout the entirety of the game
are Yu, Igor and Igor's assistant.
We never never once see anyone else enter the Velvet Room. No one at least
except for Teddie. He seems to just
stumble into it, almost as if completely by accident, and there and you just sit around and have a conversation
Now remember, Teddie is a being who
started off as a shadow and seems to have no real history before humans entered the TV realm.
He has NO connections to Igor and his contract.
So it makes absolutely zero sense that he'd be able to enter the Velvet Room when no one else can
Unless you consider that there's something more to his identity remember shadows are a part of the original
person. The parts of themselves that they don't want to confront. If Teddie
is Yu's shadow that means that Teddie literally is Yu, or at least a part of Yu.
Therefore he too would be bound by the same contract that Yu is under and thus able to get inside the
Velvet Room and if that wasn't enough what's even more interesting is that this happens at a point the game when Teddie is beginning to
question the very nature of his own identity - coincidence? I
think not. In fact, the first thing that Teddie says to you upon entering the Velvet Room is "I've been thinking all this time who
I really am." Oh really? Maybe the answer is staring you quite
literally in the face. Now, just to address a counter-argument
That's probably already coming is that other people enter the Velvet Room in other Persona games: Minato in 3 and pretty much everyone in 2 as just some
examples, but remember the Velvet Room that we see in Persona 4 is unique
It looks like the interior of limousine making it physically
distinct from the booth like appearance of the Velvet Room from earlier Persona games when Igor meets you for the first time in refers to
This place being off-limits to anyone who hasn't entered into a contract with him
He's referring to that
specific place that specific Velvet Room with the limousine appearance. Notice how none of the other Velvet Rooms have that sort of contractual stipulation
So the rules of one room in a past game shouldn't necessarily apply to the way that Persona 4's room chooses to operates
Counter-argument #2 : "Teddie isn't Yu's Shadow because Yu doesn't have a shadow! Yu is
special, he's the Chosen One." and I could totally see why you might think that. Over the course of the game,
we learn that not just anyone can enter the TV World, as we find out the only way that people can enter the Midnight Channel
is by going with someone who's been granted this special gift from the gods.
Yu just so happens to possess the gift, so maybe the fact that Yu has the God's blessing explains
why all his friends encounter their Shadow in the TV World while he never has to.
It's an explanation that would make sense if we didn't have evidence directly to the contrary.
You see, it's revealed that only
three people have received the TV gift: Yu is one. The other two are Namatame and Adachi, the villains of the story
responsible for throwing innocent victims into the TV World. And it's here that the
explanation of "Yu is special"
doesn't hold up because both Namatame and Adachi have the gift, but both
still have Shadows who appear in the TV Land. Namatame and Adachi both merged with their shadows when you fight him as
bosses. Yu is one of a kind; he's a paradox.
He has a Persona,
but no Shadow,
and he's literally the
only one who's
like this. The unusual connection between Yu and Teddie even makes sense when you view it through the lense of the game's theme.
One of the things that the Persona games love to do is play with the idea of tarot cards. Each relationship
that's expressed in the game as a Social Link is represented as one of the major Arcana Tarot
Cards. Someone call in Miss Cleo because that a big deal in this series. What- I don't even know what- that was like
italian mixed with f a i l,
Call in Miss Cleo because Tarot Cards are a big deal in the series and one of the things that makes the Persona games really special
is the incredible attention to detail in the way that the game matches different characters and Social Links to Arcana that parallel their
attributes. Yu's Arcana at the top of the game is The Fool, which represents innocence, divine inspiration, madness, freedom, spontaneity,
inexperience, chaos and creativity. In nearly every regard, he's the embodiment of a blank slate. Now, if the player reaches the True End, Yu's Persona
ascends to The World Arcana, a representation of totality, a symbol of fulfilment, wholeness,
harmony. This lines up with what's happening in the story when Yu's Persona ascends.
He's literally becoming the Savior of The World. Now look at Teddie's Arcana, The Star, which is associated with hope, self-confidence, faith,
altruism, luck, generosity, peace and joy. These match exactly with what we know about Teddie.
He's all about cheering people on, getting along with others, but in addition to matching Teddie's personalities,
these are the exact traits that Yu has to adopt for himself in his evolution from spontaneous,
inexperienced Fool to Hero of The World. He needs to take the world's burdens upon himself.
That in many ways is the ultimate in altruism and generosity,
He also needs to become a symbol of hope as the world places their faith in him: again, all features that Teddie already has and
that Yu wouldn't have, but his Shadow, his unacknowledged past, probably would. So taking all this evidence into consideration
I think here's how it worked: When Yu was selected by the gods to receive his gift and the special Persona, it left his true
Shadow, Teddie, with no home and no purpose. He'd been kicked to the curb. It left Teddie free to develop into his own
furry kinder egg.
It's how a confirmed former shadow with no memory of his owner and a lingering identity
crisis is able to do the things shadows would never be able to do that we see Teddie do in this game, like cross into
the real world and gain his own Persona, get into the Velvet Room without a
contract. Not only does theorizing that Teddie is Yu's Shadow answers two of the game's biggest unsolved mysteries, it also fits with the game's
Arcana themes and overall game mechanics. As the True Ending shows, Yu and Teddie share an unbreakable link, an unbreakable
Social Link, and considering that Persona 4 is a game all about forming bonds with other people
But most importantly forming bonds with yourself. I can't think of a better way to demonstrate
Exactly that well outside of making it a bit more obvious
So it doesn't take a theory ten years after the fact to expose the truth, but hey
That's just a theory a game theory
(A Little Nightmares theory should be done!)