Despite being the catalyst for much of Persona 5‘s early plot, Shiho Suzui – one of the first NPCs you meet in the game – pretty much vanishes after the first conflict is resolved. Unlike Mishima, who gets an entire confidant link of his own, her appearances afterward are mostly limited to dialogue references, despite the fact that he was less integral to the story than she was. A one-time cameo near the end of Ann’s social link is all we get to see of her, and fans who fell in love with her gentle demeanor were left wanting more.
Then, Persona 5 Royal came along, promising a new vision of the game with more of everything the fans had been asking for.
[Spoilers ahead for the first Palace of Persona 5: Royal]
If you hadn’t guessed from the title, Shiho did get a few more appearances in the remastered release of the game. Tragically, this was somewhat of a monkey’s paw situation, the catch being that the most notable of her new appearances has her dressed as a sexy bunny for Kamoshida’s revamped boss fight.
(Yes, you read that right. No, we’re not going to show the outfit.)
During the battle, two of Kamoshida’s most-tormented volleyball players – Shiho and Mishima – show up to serve the ball for his charged spike attack while he verbally abuses them, driving home the fact that he is a cruel, lecherous brute. Here’s the problem with that: we already know Kamoshida is a horrible person. The game makes it very, very obvious. What does going out of their way to create that model for Shiho, an all-but-stated victim of sexual assault, add to the narrative?
By the point in time that players fight Kamoshida, it’s already clear how he views teenage girls, as well as what happened to Shiho. Did they really need to drive it in even more? To be honest, the whole thing seems like an excuse to prove that they changed something about the boss fight. If you consider the fact that the addition of cognitive Mishima already proved that they made changes, it ends up looking like an excuse to put Shiho in a bikini and lipstick.
Listen, we get it: Persona 5 is an M rated game that makes it a point to try and tackle societal issues. But there’s an extremely fine line between bolstering the narrative with details of the villain’s crimes and what can only be described (charitably) as very distasteful fanservice.
The problem with the addition of cognitive Shiho is twofold: first, it’s playing on the same disgust factor as cognitive Ann, who already existed (and had her own controversy). Second: by placing Shiho in this ‘sexy’ costume, the game is, in a way, forcing players to participate in sexualizing her. This is the same problem a lot of media runs into when trying to make statements about sexual abuse and harassment: rather than show the ugly, ugly reality of assault, viewers are instead shown all the qualities that made the victim a target.
We don’t see Shiho in rehab, we hear about it. We don’t see Shiho in the hospital, Ann tells us about her visits. We don’t see any of her recovery or emotional states; we see her in a sexy bunny costume.
P5R was a chance to go back and include more detail – breathe a little more life into all the places and characters players would be revisiting in an all-new playthrough. Atlus could have given Shiho a deeper storyline or more significant interactions with the main characters and by extension, given her a voice to talk about her trauma and regain her autonomy. This, at the very least, would have fixed up their incredibly shallow examination of misogyny and sexual harassment that they received no small amount of criticism for.
Instead, they put her in a skimpy outfit and called it a day. Bravo, Atlus.
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