Stop It. Dont Look At Me. What Do You Know? Get Out Of My Sight!

Stop it. Don’t look at me. What do you know? Get out of my sight!

In previous Persona 4 Adachi posts you noted that he was of a specific generation (you had a special name for it but I can't remember it now) and that this contributed to his entitlement issues regarding his victims. Can you expand on this and what it means for him? From what I gather he was in the generation that was about to enter the work force when the 90s economy crashed but I'm not 100% sure?

Exactly! What I am talking about, is the effects of the Japanese Asset Price Bubble and the so-called “Lost Decade” that resulted of it. 

The details are very complex, so I can’t go in very deeply right now, but basically, during the 80s, thanks to some fortunate alignments in international currency trends, Japan’s economy was booming and asset speculation became extremely popular with the country’s population as a ways of accumulating a lot of money very quickly. People would buy assets as their life ensurance, companies would base their finances entirely on them, etc.

This gave rise to/stabilized a culture, where “lifetime employment” was seen as the norm, unemployment was very low and it was believed that as long as you just graduate a good college you’re *determined* to have a comfortable living for the rest of your life. This mindset, again, gave rise to a nation of soccer moms (and dads) who conditioned their kids to do nothing but focus on studying, studying, studying all day, because, hey, once you got a job, you never have to worry about anything in your life and can chill anyway, kid!

Of course, as things tend to do, this eventually escalated past the point of no return. The bubble popped, and Japan’s economy dipped tremendously.

As a result of that, all these kids who’d been hounded about with the promise of eternal job security were now left standing on the shambles of a world view built on broken promises. Not only did many adults who had invested their entire fortunes in assets commit suicide, young high school and college graduates were barely off any better. These kids had to spend the 90s slowly but surely realizing their were raised to live a pipe dream and, well, yeah. It mentally destroyed many of them.

Adachi is one of these kids. As his social link makes clear, his mother’s upbringing of him not only lead into him having an existential crisis after losing his position at the metropolitan police force and being demoted, it also left his emotional growth severely stunted and had him fail to develop any social skills whatsoever, in a world that now required such skills more than ever.

This is why especially in Japan, so many players who were “90s kids” find him so relatable. Because many have been have been through this sort of premature midlife crisis and can imagine how they might have ended up just as insane as him if they hadn’t learned how to deal with the stress from it their own way (if they *did* learn to do that.)

I love Adachi Tohru

i have artblock.. i think so anyway

Persona 4: adachi gets sent to prison for his crimes

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax: adachi is unwillingly dragged out of prison by an angsty teen to assist him in his crimes and does all he can to go Back to prison

Persona 5 Arena: adachi is broken out of prison and forced to participate in more persona nonsense by another emo teen he doesn’t care about

Persona 6 Arena: guess what? adachi is forced into more persona shenanigans. the guards are worried about how he keeps breaking out. Adachi is even more worried.

Persona 32 Arena: adachi is sick and tired of being broken out of prison every other day for more supernatural magic bullshit. he’s on his hands and knees begging you to not redeem him. he doesn’t want redemption, he wants to live out his days dutifully in prison. aigis’ twelfth robot cousin shoots him in the leg. angry emo antognist teen #32 tries to use adachi to rule the world. adachi has never hated teenagers more. he’s come to expect that next weekend he’ll be forced to save the world and give Yu Narukami the finger again. No, narukami, he is not “valid”, he wants you to stop insisting that. adachi hasn’t slept in years.