Sumire Yoshizawa. Oh good lord

June 6, 2022

Just as a note since I feel obligated to clarify this every single time I make a long thing about Persona 5. I am a big Akira Truther. Meaning I just call the lovely dual-named protagonist of this game Akira Kurusu and not Ren Amamiya. I just know a guy named Ren and it would be a little weird for me to use his name in reference to a character when I could simply use the other name lol… I just wanted to clarify that before we get into this. I know it isn’t about him but I’m incapable of staying on topic so he comes up

Sumire and the PLOT the NARRATIVE

My very favorite way of character analyzing is writing about what their purpose in the story is. What did her being in the story accomplish? What role did she play?

In relation to the entire story, she’s a lot of foreshadowing. She foreshadows the idea of someone being, for lack of a better word, brainwashed by our very own Takuto Maruki, and the dangers of this. When she was deluded into thinking she was her dead sister, there was obviously something wrong. Most notably, her social link page is very different from all the other social links.

Here is a comparison:

The colors of her tarot card are inverted, and there are only 5 available level ups. It’s pretty obvious here that there is going to be something important happening with her, because every single other social link, even the most inconsequential ones that are absolutely unnecessary to complete the game, have 10 level up events. Her first 5 available events are about building confidence in herself, which in and of themselves foreshadow her not being who she thinks she is.

In an event with Goro Akechi as well as the protagonist Akira Kurusu, she says that she believes that the only way to create lasting change in a person is for them to do it themselves. This is opposite to what was done to her. In an effort to “fix” her, Maruki brainwashed her into living as her dead sister, since she probably mentioned to him that she always looked up to her and resented her a little bit for being so much better. She represents the dangers of Maruki’s methods, and how unstable they can be.

The “Royal Trio”

Akira Kurusu, Goro Akechi, and Sumire Yoshizawa are known as the Royal Trio. This is, pretty obviously if you’ve played the game, because they’re the main characters of third semester, which is the addition from Persona 5 Royal. They are also a really great trio, as people and as characters. They all parallel each other and act as foils for each other in different ways. Also whichever literature word means parallel but negative but not a foil. Contrast? I think so.

This scene, which I mentioned and linked earlier, really does draw a parallel between Goro and Sumire. They both oppose the Phantom Thieves. Both Goro and Sumire are concerned about the “free will” aspect of the Thieves’ methods of bettering society. This could be because both of them are being sort of controlled by someone/something else manipulating their life and their decisions.

Goro was forced into the role of antagonist by some god, and he was like fifteen. It’s pretty well known that everyone thinks that they’re inherently evil at 15, so when he was given supernatural powers and basically forced by the universe into the role of being actually evil, he kinda fell into it and can’t find his way out of it. Sumire was forced into NOT getting over her issues on her own. While she wasn’t cosmically manipulated into a gay little rivalry on which the weight of the world rests, she was still supernaturally manipulated into giving up herself, giving up her personality and feelings and past in favor of “happiness.” Sumire and Goro both show two different sides of the negatives to the whole Phantom-Thieves-mind-control thing.

A big theme with the game is this idea of free will, especially in the third semester, and Goro and Sumire are contrasting representations of that theme. Both Sumire and Goro were forced to be someone that they did not want to be. Sumire was forced to basically be traumatized for a second time when she found out what she was forced to believe was fake, but this time she also had been brainwashed for like a year which is also not great for the psyche. Goro… he died. He thinks he died, at the very least. I’m not going to say he “did it on purpose” but he definitely did do it a little bit on purpose. He couldn’t separate himself from the revenge driven hitman/cosmic chess piece that he created, and after accomplishing his life goal of killing his asshole father, he had nothing left to be. So, he died. And, when he found himself alive in the Maruki Fake Reality, he was so fucking mad, and he knew that his academic best friend/worst enemy/codependent rival/jazz bro would NOT happily let him go.

And that difference between their post-revelation attitudes is what makes them work so great together as characters. Sumire is joyful to be in the state she is, finally free of her delusions and ready to become a happier person. In contrast, Goro surrendered himself to his (perceived) fate of Being Evil Until He Killed His Father, And Then He Doesn’t Exist Anymore, and couldn’t imagine a world where he was still alive. He did not want to become a better, happier person.

That’s the biggest difference between Sumire and Goro: their willingness to become a better person, and their motivations for having the same aversion. Goro carefully crafted this for himself, and as he thought that he wanted it, he didn’t want to get out of it and go back to a normal life. Sumire did not go into therapy thinking, “getting brainwashed is a sacrifice I have to make to be happy.” Goro knew that he was screwing himself over when he decided to become the assistant/hitman to his corrupt politician father. Sumire didn’t. This is why their attitudes are the way that they are later in the game.

AKIRA. Protagonist of all protagonists.

Akira’s whole thing is trying to be someone else, all the time. He tries to be whoever the person he’s with needs at the moment. A real blood from the concrete type of guy but for literally everybody he meets. Now here’s the thing with him and Sumire, especially in the first chunk of the game when she is living as her late sister. They are both what happens when you’re made to be as convenient to other people as possible, in a way. Akira does it to himself—he doesn’t know how to be a person outside of helping other people, it seems. There is more, but This Is Not About Him. Sumire, on the other hand, was sort of forced into it. Let me explain.

When Kasumi died, Sumire was devastated, as most would be. She thought that she killed her, she was inconsolable. Maruki, with the intention of doing good, basically forced her into “getting better” by making her something else. Something easier to deal with. He didn’t want to deal with Sumire Yoshizawa, little sister with an inferiority complex who just watched her older sister/role model die to save her. He wanted to deal with (Sumire’s idea of) Kasumi Yoshizawa, perfect happy girl who looked upon her younger sister as someone below her to be pitied and treated as a little kid, who was sad when her sister died but she didn’t care enough to be debilitated by it. Maruki didn’t want to coach her through grief and trauma, he wanted an easy success story for his research. He wanted a case to boost his ego, something to prove that his ideas were good. Takuto Maruki did not give a single shit about the well being of Sumire Yoshizawa, as much as he convinced himself that he did. She was changed to be more convenient to him.

And this is where Akira and Sumire are very similar. One of them may be under a supernatural brainwashing thing, but the point still stands that they are both changing themselves in order to be easier to deal with.

Despite trying very very hard to be tolerable and liked by everyone else, they both face a lot of hatred from the world. Sumire is resented by her peers at school because she gets “special treatment” (she goes to gymnastics competitions during school hours and because of this she gets to take tests on different days). Akira, as we all know, is seen as a criminal because he got wrongly accused of a crime and the shitbag former PE teacher leaked that information to everyone in the school.

Honestly, this applies to Goro too. This whole carefully curating exactly what other people see about him in order to be seen the way that he wants to be seen. That’s a way in which Akira and Goro both kind of contrast against Sumire—they both are consciously curating their persona (haha get it) while she is forced into hers.

I feel like I should make a chart or something here.

The return of my charts. I am incapable of not making charts like this. By the way this is literally the best art I have made in my whole entire life.

Anyway, I guess this is the end of this. I’ve never been good at conclusions.