Bleach Persona crossover?
- Thread starter Ginko
- Start date
A lot of Buddhist dieties had outright evil pasts and became protectors against whatever they used to do to people. The Protagonist in P1's persona is one of those. I can't seem to find an origin story for the Wisdom Kings, but:
"According to the esoteric doctrine of the Three Wheels, whereas Buddhas represent pure concepts and bodhisattvas teach through compassion, Wisdom Kings are the embodiment of the wheel of injunction and teach through fear, shocking nonbelievers into faith."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_Kings
Meaning teaching that illusion is bad through inflicting illusion and so on would fit.
"According to the esoteric doctrine of the Three Wheels, whereas Buddhas represent pure concepts and bodhisattvas teach through compassion, Wisdom Kings are the embodiment of the wheel of injunction and teach through fear, shocking nonbelievers into faith."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_Kings
Meaning teaching that illusion is bad through inflicting illusion and so on would fit.
Hmm? The SMT version specified him as a Wisdom King, not a boddisatva? It's possible there are different versions of his myths.
And, again, there's a lot of precedent for a supernatural being who inflicts a certain ailment becoming a good diety at whatever level who protects against that very thing. Or, since Personae are based on myths and beliefs more than facts, it's possible that Aizen inspired the Aizen Myouou myths back when he was pretending to be a good guy, and then was surprised to get summoned through the sea of souls.
A lot of personae were historical figures with myths around them (Maskados, for one), and one of the points of the game is that there's no difference between a 'real person' and a persona: we're all masks just as much as Orpheus is, and those beings/masks can have their own agendas and manifest as seperate people, like Thanatos being Ryoji in P3, not to mention Teddy in P4.
So have Aizen Myouou be the 'good guy with glasses' mask Aizen wore for all those years, and there was some sort of fusion accident and, ta da, wrong version of Aizen.
A persona is a mask, after all, and Aizen's glasses were definitly a mask.
Lots of ways to do it that would fit perfectly with the Persona mythos, magic-a-is-magic-a rules, and game mechanics.
And, well... If they can have a freaking hearth god be weak to fire, then putting Aizen in the same class of Buddhist diety as the protagonist's persona is really a minor mistake by comparison.
And, again, there's a lot of precedent for a supernatural being who inflicts a certain ailment becoming a good diety at whatever level who protects against that very thing. Or, since Personae are based on myths and beliefs more than facts, it's possible that Aizen inspired the Aizen Myouou myths back when he was pretending to be a good guy, and then was surprised to get summoned through the sea of souls.
A lot of personae were historical figures with myths around them (Maskados, for one), and one of the points of the game is that there's no difference between a 'real person' and a persona: we're all masks just as much as Orpheus is, and those beings/masks can have their own agendas and manifest as seperate people, like Thanatos being Ryoji in P3, not to mention Teddy in P4.
So have Aizen Myouou be the 'good guy with glasses' mask Aizen wore for all those years, and there was some sort of fusion accident and, ta da, wrong version of Aizen.
A persona is a mask, after all, and Aizen's glasses were definitly a mask.
Lots of ways to do it that would fit perfectly with the Persona mythos, magic-a-is-magic-a rules, and game mechanics.
And, well... If they can have a freaking hearth god be weak to fire, then putting Aizen in the same class of Buddhist diety as the protagonist's persona is really a minor mistake by comparison.
That might make sense, except that Personae are explicitly stated to be facets of one's true self. That's the whole reason why some Arcana cannot be summoned at all by some people - they simply don't represent part of who they truly are.
Remember the subtitle of the first Persona? "Be Your True Mind"?
In short - Personae may share name and looks with the real thing, but that's where similarities end. And they aren't summoning anything except part of the user's subconscious. Unless the summoner actually MET Aizen when he was allegedly a good guy (and I'm sure you can see what the problem is there...), channeling him is impossible regardless.
Remember the subtitle of the first Persona? "Be Your True Mind"?
In short - Personae may share name and looks with the real thing, but that's where similarities end. And they aren't summoning anything except part of the user's subconscious. Unless the summoner actually MET Aizen when he was allegedly a good guy (and I'm sure you can see what the problem is there...), channeling him is impossible regardless.
There's a bit more to it than that: humans and personae are all part of the collective unconscious, sea of souls... there are a few more terms used. It's not the user's subconscious, it's humanity's. Individuals just determine what masks they are willing to wear, in a sense, and as I said Kei Nanjou's very suited to Aizen, both versions.
There's 'Be Your True Mind,' yes, but also the moral that those various masks and personae are also aspects of our true selves: we can be gods and demons, depending on the circumstances.
To Minato, Thanatos is a Persona/Mask. To Ryoji, it's his core/true self. But the Ryoji mask is also who he is, and why he turns against Nyx. Which is his true mind? Both. So is Nyx, however...
The big deal with the Wild Card in 3 & 4 is that as the fool/starting out they don't have an affinity and can channel any persona. Something like the main character in the Spiral trilogy (Chase the Morning, Gates of Noon, Cloud Castles), if you've read those.
So, human personality = persona. Human identity = the range of masks we wear and are willing to wear (who we choose to become). Aizen's already a spirit that can get channeled through vessels, that's what gigai are.
And yes, real people who are dead can get summoned as Personae - that's the identity of Kei Nanjou's ultimate persona, in fact, a character who dies early in the game.
There's 'Be Your True Mind,' yes, but also the moral that those various masks and personae are also aspects of our true selves: we can be gods and demons, depending on the circumstances.
To Minato, Thanatos is a Persona/Mask. To Ryoji, it's his core/true self. But the Ryoji mask is also who he is, and why he turns against Nyx. Which is his true mind? Both. So is Nyx, however...
The big deal with the Wild Card in 3 & 4 is that as the fool/starting out they don't have an affinity and can channel any persona. Something like the main character in the Spiral trilogy (Chase the Morning, Gates of Noon, Cloud Castles), if you've read those.
So, human personality = persona. Human identity = the range of masks we wear and are willing to wear (who we choose to become). Aizen's already a spirit that can get channeled through vessels, that's what gigai are.
And yes, real people who are dead can get summoned as Personae - that's the identity of Kei Nanjou's ultimate persona, in fact, a character who dies early in the game.
Ah, but who's to say the Yamaoka persona isn't simply the idealized memory Kei has of him?
Persona is never clear cut about what is real and what isn't - remember, a big part of the sequels' plot is the fact that imagination can come true if you believe in it hard enough.
It's hard to say whether Yamaoka is the real thing or a memory so strong it took on a life of its own in response to Kei's need. The latter, however, is particularly likely.
And the less I talk about that creepy little girl who never was, Alice, the better.
(for the uninformed, Alice was a character in the first SMT, who was raised by two demon lords and was so completely innocent she didn't realize that asking people to die so they could become zombies and play with her was BAD. Part of it was how the demons raised her, part was her simply being that clueless.)
(However, Persona is a spinoff that follows the story of SMT If..., where the nuclear catastrophe that destroys the world is AVERTED, and Alice was never born in that world. Yet she appears as a Persona... It makes no sense in that context, because she's a spirit that never appeared in that timeline. And time boundaries are the one thing that's very, very sturdy in Persona.)
Persona is never clear cut about what is real and what isn't - remember, a big part of the sequels' plot is the fact that imagination can come true if you believe in it hard enough.
It's hard to say whether Yamaoka is the real thing or a memory so strong it took on a life of its own in response to Kei's need. The latter, however, is particularly likely.
And the less I talk about that creepy little girl who never was, Alice, the better.
(for the uninformed, Alice was a character in the first SMT, who was raised by two demon lords and was so completely innocent she didn't realize that asking people to die so they could become zombies and play with her was BAD. Part of it was how the demons raised her, part was her simply being that clueless.)
(However, Persona is a spinoff that follows the story of SMT If..., where the nuclear catastrophe that destroys the world is AVERTED, and Alice was never born in that world. Yet she appears as a Persona... It makes no sense in that context, because she's a spirit that never appeared in that timeline. And time boundaries are the one thing that's very, very sturdy in Persona.)
While I haven't managed to get my hands on a translated copy of If..., the (absolutly horrible) sequel manga & the Megami Tensei wiki describe it as a side-story, taking place in the universe of SMT I & II. Characters from SMTI are encountered and such, and the nuclear holocaust was right on track to happen as of when I gave up on the manga.
While there is a character from If... in the Persona games, I saw that as the same as the way Kei Nanjou has a presence in Persona 3 even though it's not in the same universe(s) as the previous Persona games. They do have a tendency to do tributes, like the Demifiend in Digital Devil Saga and Alice in several games. While Persona 3 doesn't justify her either, the Devil Summoner games kind of do, but in those it's fairly easy to too easy to access alternate timelines.
Although that's getting off-topic...
Re. Yamaoka, I'll see if anybody says anything when I get there this playthrough that will clear it up, but, I'm fairly sure there was another occassion of ghosts being used as Personae. I can't seem to find a reference for it at the moment, however, so I can't be sure they were ghost-ghosts as opposed to what Nocturne did that time...
In the interests of staying on topic, let me restate my points:
1. Aizen-with-glasses was a mask/persona of Aizen's that could have inspired Aizen Myouou,
2. ...and is thus equivalent to Maskados et al. since:
3. Persona do not come from the individual's subconscious, but the collective unconscious.
4. Aizen-without-glasses is still a persona, as all aspects of human personalities are personae. However, he'd be a different persona from Aizen Myouou.
5. Aizen, as a shinigami, is a spirit that can be embodied in vessels, and thus would likely be easier to summon than a normal non-consenting persona. (I'd put 'real human core personality' here, except there's no such thing.)
6. It is possible to get personalities that were once part of a 'human aggregate' from the sea of souls/collective unconscious: Maskados, Yamaoka, etc. (I'm aware you disagree with this.)
7. Fusion accidents happen.
-
Given the above, I think a crossover fic with this premise is very doable. You seem to disagree, but a lot of it seems to be coming down to a matter of opinion, for instance was Yamaoka real or imaginary? That's especially difficult in the Persona universe, as we're all 'imaginary' by those standards, existing in what we show to ourselves and the world and the memories that leaves behind, which was the reason them remembering in P2:EP would have destroyed the current 'universe.'
The answer to 'is he Kei's memory or is he Yamaoka' could very well be both. Since Kei's memory would = the Yamaoka persona/mask and since that mask would be part of the sea of unconscious and that's what it's summoned from.
Of course, there's a lot of disagreement among fic writers on the Persona laws of physics. There was this one fic that Stud Minato a bit but it was tolerable, but at one point this character said they'd killed Philemon and I was all...
Because first off, they'd essentially killed him for not being able to screw the laws of physics to hand him everything he'd wanted on a silver platter instead of only 90%, he was the one that ruined it, and did he want Philemon to screw with people the way Narlathotep did?
Instead he basically handed the characters the tools to solve their own problems, and how is it bad to be treated like a freaking responsible adult? The character was basically whining about not being babied, like Philemon had been uncaring instead of demonstrating that he respected him by leaving it in his hands. (Undeserved respect, in the case of this version...)
Not to mention that the main 'verse of the fic was P3, that pointed out that Nyx and other entities on that level were pretty unkillable. You wouldn't kill Philemon with a sword, you'd kill him by going around and convincing every single person in the world that they were completly worthless and should lie down and die, given what Philemon embodies. And since people (like the fic's Minato) still seemed to have healthy egos, believed they deserved to exist and were trying to control their own destinies and make them better, Philemon would still have to be alive.
(Frankly, I wish they'd kept Philemon around. And Nyarlathotep, because seriously. A Lovecraftian cosmic horror as the final boss! How cool is that?)
I should probably just write my own crossover, except for some reason I just don't want to write Aizen. He can be an interesting character to read, but he hits a couple of my pet peeves, or maybe it's how the manga's done that does this, and I can't seem to care enough to get an Aizen muse.
While there is a character from If... in the Persona games, I saw that as the same as the way Kei Nanjou has a presence in Persona 3 even though it's not in the same universe(s) as the previous Persona games. They do have a tendency to do tributes, like the Demifiend in Digital Devil Saga and Alice in several games. While Persona 3 doesn't justify her either, the Devil Summoner games kind of do, but in those it's fairly easy to too easy to access alternate timelines.
Although that's getting off-topic...
Re. Yamaoka, I'll see if anybody says anything when I get there this playthrough that will clear it up, but, I'm fairly sure there was another occassion of ghosts being used as Personae. I can't seem to find a reference for it at the moment, however, so I can't be sure they were ghost-ghosts as opposed to what Nocturne did that time...
In the interests of staying on topic, let me restate my points:
1. Aizen-with-glasses was a mask/persona of Aizen's that could have inspired Aizen Myouou,
2. ...and is thus equivalent to Maskados et al. since:
3. Persona do not come from the individual's subconscious, but the collective unconscious.
4. Aizen-without-glasses is still a persona, as all aspects of human personalities are personae. However, he'd be a different persona from Aizen Myouou.
5. Aizen, as a shinigami, is a spirit that can be embodied in vessels, and thus would likely be easier to summon than a normal non-consenting persona. (I'd put 'real human core personality' here, except there's no such thing.)
6. It is possible to get personalities that were once part of a 'human aggregate' from the sea of souls/collective unconscious: Maskados, Yamaoka, etc. (I'm aware you disagree with this.)
7. Fusion accidents happen.
-
Given the above, I think a crossover fic with this premise is very doable. You seem to disagree, but a lot of it seems to be coming down to a matter of opinion, for instance was Yamaoka real or imaginary? That's especially difficult in the Persona universe, as we're all 'imaginary' by those standards, existing in what we show to ourselves and the world and the memories that leaves behind, which was the reason them remembering in P2:EP would have destroyed the current 'universe.'
The answer to 'is he Kei's memory or is he Yamaoka' could very well be both. Since Kei's memory would = the Yamaoka persona/mask and since that mask would be part of the sea of unconscious and that's what it's summoned from.
Of course, there's a lot of disagreement among fic writers on the Persona laws of physics. There was this one fic that Stud Minato a bit but it was tolerable, but at one point this character said they'd killed Philemon and I was all...
Because first off, they'd essentially killed him for not being able to screw the laws of physics to hand him everything he'd wanted on a silver platter instead of only 90%, he was the one that ruined it, and did he want Philemon to screw with people the way Narlathotep did?
Instead he basically handed the characters the tools to solve their own problems, and how is it bad to be treated like a freaking responsible adult? The character was basically whining about not being babied, like Philemon had been uncaring instead of demonstrating that he respected him by leaving it in his hands. (Undeserved respect, in the case of this version...)
Not to mention that the main 'verse of the fic was P3, that pointed out that Nyx and other entities on that level were pretty unkillable. You wouldn't kill Philemon with a sword, you'd kill him by going around and convincing every single person in the world that they were completly worthless and should lie down and die, given what Philemon embodies. And since people (like the fic's Minato) still seemed to have healthy egos, believed they deserved to exist and were trying to control their own destinies and make them better, Philemon would still have to be alive.
(Frankly, I wish they'd kept Philemon around. And Nyarlathotep, because seriously. A Lovecraftian cosmic horror as the final boss! How cool is that?)
I should probably just write my own crossover, except for some reason I just don't want to write Aizen. He can be an interesting character to read, but he hits a couple of my pet peeves, or maybe it's how the manga's done that does this, and I can't seem to care enough to get an Aizen muse.
If Aizen is an equivalent of Masakado, you just made your argument exponentially worse, because Masakado is NEVER playable in any way, shape or form in any of the Megaten games. I suggest trying a different analogy.
Also, FYI the Persona universe IS the same from P1 to P4. Atlus snuck in a random piece of NPC talk where people comment on an incident somewhere across the country where somehow rumors started becoming real, then mention the hype died down after a while (ie, after Maya & co. put an end to it by defeating Nyarlie). Following that, Philemon disappeared from Persona history, but even Igor mentions he had served other Persona users in the past. A case can be made for Nyarlie's defeat and Philemon's disappearance being the reason why personae work so differently between P3 and P4, too. But as a rule, Megaten games in the same continuity all share the same universe.
So we have the canon SMT verse (and yes, Nocturne is likely directly tied to it since it's commonly accepted that Hijiri is SMT2's Aleph being punished by God), the Persona verse which (according to both the Megaten wiki, fans who own the Japanese databooks and Word of god itself, though we dirty Westerners wouldn't hear much of those - helps to have Japanese friends who are obsessed with the games) stemmed from the change in main SMT continuity where the nuclear disaster was averted (by the way, Persona does have an offshoot - the Revelations: the Demon Slayer GBC game, which plays more like a traditional SMT game than a Persona game, go figure), the DemiKids verse, the Devil Summoner verse (although Raidou Kuzunoha takes place decades before Soul Hackers and might be an offshoot continuity itself like If... was to canon SMT), Devil Survivor and Last Bible, and there may be a couple I forgot too.
Each series has its own continuity, but games are generally tied to each other strongly, and some are loosely connected through backstory. For instance, DemiKids was a world where demons befriended humans instead of being hostile, which is a large part of why the kids aren't all that surprised by friendly demons and Lucifer is a notable good guy instead of being on the fence.
So, uh, yeah...
Also, FYI the Persona universe IS the same from P1 to P4. Atlus snuck in a random piece of NPC talk where people comment on an incident somewhere across the country where somehow rumors started becoming real, then mention the hype died down after a while (ie, after Maya & co. put an end to it by defeating Nyarlie). Following that, Philemon disappeared from Persona history, but even Igor mentions he had served other Persona users in the past. A case can be made for Nyarlie's defeat and Philemon's disappearance being the reason why personae work so differently between P3 and P4, too. But as a rule, Megaten games in the same continuity all share the same universe.
So we have the canon SMT verse (and yes, Nocturne is likely directly tied to it since it's commonly accepted that Hijiri is SMT2's Aleph being punished by God), the Persona verse which (according to both the Megaten wiki, fans who own the Japanese databooks and Word of god itself, though we dirty Westerners wouldn't hear much of those - helps to have Japanese friends who are obsessed with the games) stemmed from the change in main SMT continuity where the nuclear disaster was averted (by the way, Persona does have an offshoot - the Revelations: the Demon Slayer GBC game, which plays more like a traditional SMT game than a Persona game, go figure), the DemiKids verse, the Devil Summoner verse (although Raidou Kuzunoha takes place decades before Soul Hackers and might be an offshoot continuity itself like If... was to canon SMT), Devil Survivor and Last Bible, and there may be a couple I forgot too.
Each series has its own continuity, but games are generally tied to each other strongly, and some are loosely connected through backstory. For instance, DemiKids was a world where demons befriended humans instead of being hostile, which is a large part of why the kids aren't all that surprised by friendly demons and Lucifer is a notable good guy instead of being on the fence.
So, uh, yeah...
http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Masakado
He is playable in three, although hard to unlock in two of them, including P3&4.
Sorry, I have a horrible memory for names and kept misspelling it.
If P3 takes place in the Persona 1 & 2 continuity, then why are the events of one of the previous games only fiction in it? Yes, SMT does mess with minds that way, so you could say it's the future of the EP universe and one of the characters turned it into a game idea, but you'd think that would be asking for armageddon...
I thought I'd heard somewhere when P3 came out that it had been confirmed by Word of God to be a reboot, like SMT is of MT and P1/2 are of SMT, but since I can't find the source of that...
I thought for some reason that I'd requested this in the games section and couldn't find the post until I saw the link at the top of my profile... sorry to take so long to respond. I've lurked for awhile but I've only recently started actually posting.
He is playable in three, although hard to unlock in two of them, including P3&4.
Sorry, I have a horrible memory for names and kept misspelling it.
If P3 takes place in the Persona 1 & 2 continuity, then why are the events of one of the previous games only fiction in it? Yes, SMT does mess with minds that way, so you could say it's the future of the EP universe and one of the characters turned it into a game idea, but you'd think that would be asking for armageddon...
I thought I'd heard somewhere when P3 came out that it had been confirmed by Word of God to be a reboot, like SMT is of MT and P1/2 are of SMT, but since I can't find the source of that...
I thought for some reason that I'd requested this in the games section and couldn't find the post until I saw the link at the top of my profile... sorry to take so long to respond. I've lurked for awhile but I've only recently started actually posting.