Persona Hentai
Persona, previously marketed as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona outside of Japan, is a video game franchise developed and primarily published by Atlus, and owned by Sega. Focusing around a series of role-playing video games, Persona is a spin-off from Atlus' Megami Tensei franchise. The first entry in the series, Revelations: Persona, was released in 1996 for the PlayStation. The series has seen several more games since, with the most recent main entry being 2019's Persona 5 Royal.
Persona began as a spin-off based on the positively-received high school setting of Shin Megami Tensei If... (1994). Persona's core features include a group of students as the main cast, a silent protagonist similar to the mainline Megami Tensei franchise, and combat using Personas. Since the release of Persona 3 in 2006, the main series has used a social simulation function called Social Links, which are directly linked to how Personas evolve. Character designs are by series co-creator Kazuma Kaneko (Persona and the Persona 2 duology) and Shigenori Soejima (Persona 3 onwards). Its overall theme is exploration of the human psyche and how the characters find their true selves. The series' recurring concepts and design elements draw on Jungian psychology, psychological personas and tarot cards, along with religion, mythology, and literature themes and influences.
Revelations: Persona was the first role-playing Megami Tensei game to be released outside of Japan. Beginning with Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, the English localizations began to remain faithful to the Japanese versions at the insistence of Atlus. The series is highly popular internationally, becoming the best-known Megami Tensei spin-off and establishing Atlus and the Megami Tensei franchise in North America. Following the release of Persona 3 and 4, the series also established a strong following in Europe. The series has since gone on to sell over 15 million copies worldwide, outselling its parent franchise. There have been numerous adaptations, including anime series, films, novelizations, mangas, stage plays, radio dramas, and musical concerts.
The Persona series takes place in modern-day Japan and focuses on a group of high school students, with the exception to this being Eternal Punishment, which focused on a group of adults. The setting has been described as urban fantasy, with extraordinary events happening in otherwise normal locations. The typical setting used is a city, with a noted exception being the rural town setting of Persona 4. Although they are typically stand-alone games that only share thematic elements, the Persona games share a continuity, with elements from previous games turning up in later ones. Persona and the Persona 2 games shared narrative elements which were concluded with Eternal Punishment, so Persona 3 started out with a fresh setting and characters. The first in the series is Persona, set in the year 1996. This is followed by the events of Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment in 1999. At the end of Innocent Sin, the main characters rewrite events to avert the destruction of Earth, creating the Eternal Punishment reality, with the original reality becoming an isolated Other Side. Persona 3 and subsequent games stem from Eternal Punishment. Persona 3 is set from 2009 to 2010, and Persona 4 is set from 2011 to 2012. The Persona 4 Arena games and Dancing All Night take place in the months following Persona 4. In contrast, Persona 5 is set in a non-specific year referred to as "20XX". The Persona Q series takes place in a separate enclosed world in which the characters of Persona 3, 4, and 5 are drawn into from their respective time periods. Dialogue in Q2 also suggests that Persona 5 takes place only a few years after 4.
A central concept for the series is the collective unconscious, a place generated by the hearts of humanity and from which Personas are born. According to the official Persona Club P3 book, the collective unconscious was generated by the primitive life on Earth as a means of containing the spiritual essence of Nyx, a space-born being whose presence would cause the death of all life on Earth. Her body was damaged by the impact and became the moon, while her psyche was left on the surface and locked away at the heart of the collective unconscious. The fragments of Nyx's psyche, known as "Shadows", are both a threat and a crucial part of humanity's existence. To further help defend against hostile Shadows, people generated the deities that exist within the collective unconscious, many of which manifest as Personas. Nyx appears in Persona 3 as the antagonist. The major dungeon locations in each game are generated by the latent wishes and desires of humans and are generally used by another force for their own ends. A recurring location appearing in most of the games is the "Velvet Room", a place between reality and unconsciousness created by Philemon that changes form depending on the psyche of its current guest. Its inhabitants, led by an enigmatic old man called Igor, aid the main characters by helping them hone their Persona abilities. While normally inaccessible and invisible to all except those who forged a contract with the room, others can be summoned alongside the guest, intentionally or otherwise.
The main character of each Persona game is a silent protagonist representing the player, with a manner described by the series' director as "silent and cool". When the writer for new story content in Eternal Punishment's PSP version wished for the main character to have spoken dialogue, this was vetoed as it went against the series tradition. Two recurring characters generated by the collective unconscious are Philemon and Nyarlathotep, the respective representatives of the positive and negative traits of humanity. In Innocent Sin, the two reveal that they are engaged in a proxy contest as to whether humanity can embrace its contradictory feelings and find a higher purpose before destroying itself. Philemon makes appearances in later Persona games as a blue butterfly. Many of the major antagonists in the series are personifications of death generated by the human subconscious. The central theme of the Persona series is exploration of the human psyche and the main characters discovering their true selves. The stories generally focus on the main cast's interpersonal relationships and psychologies. There is also an underlying focus on "the human soul".
Many of the concepts and characters within the series (Personas, Shadows, Philemon) use Jungian psychology and archetypes. A recurring motif are the "masks" people wear during everyday life, which ties back to their Personas. This motif was more overtly expressed in Persona 5 through the main casts' use of masks in their thief guises. The dual lives of the main casts are directly inspired by these themes. Each game also includes specific themes and motifs. Persona 2 focuses on the effect of rumors on the fabric of reality (referred to by the developers as "the power of Kotodama"); Persona 3 employs themes involving depression and the darkness within people; Persona 4 focuses on how gossip and the media influences people's views of others; and Persona 5 shows how the main characters pursue personal freedom in a restrictive modern society. A recurring element in the earlier entries is "The Butterfly Dream", a famous story by the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou. It ties in with the series' themes, and also with Philemon's frequent appearances as a butterfly. Philemon's original appearance was based on Zhuang Zhou. The character Nyarlathotep is based on the character of the same name from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, and the Mythos as a whole is frequently referenced in Persona 2. The Velvet Room was based on the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks, while Igor and his assistants are all named after characters from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein and its adaptations.