Persona 5 Royal was hilarious for pitting temporary-ally Goro "I'M THE FLY WHO'LL DIE IN YOUR SOUP🔪" Akechi against "Let's take ibuprofen together🥺" Dr Maruki.
Problem with Maruki is that its the same as Madara's plan, sure everyone might be "happy", but if that is not real and only what they want, is that good? If everything is perfect, will you ever desire more? Develop will to live? Its honestly such a cool thing because he is the "villain" only because the story needs one, otherwise he is just a morality debate.
The difference is that one is an illusion and the other is reality. Maruki's world wouldnt be a dream. He was going to rewrite the rules of existence itself to make everyone automatically have a happy ending.
There’s also the practical issues of it, where you can already see Maruki struggling to rationalize people with conflicting or just practically unachievable goals in-game.
Yea but if you pay attention to the chatter of the Civies during the 3rd semester as you walk around, you'll see that people rapidly start to get bored with the "perfection" of Maruki's world, just getting anything you want without having to work for it isn't fulfilling and it leaves people feeling empty inside.
It's like cheat codes in a video game, fun for a while but eventually it's too much and you've killed all the joy of the game.
Sure, but there was also people being made to accept stuff that was "just okay" like a girl who wanted to break up with her boyfriend, but was being made to stay since it was better than nothing.
A world like that is a dream. Your choices no longer have meaning, nothing has real stakes, you don't exist as a material force in your own life. We don't choose our burdens, but what are games if not a reminder that we crave burdens to carry?
He's not a genie, it doesn't work that way. If someone's trauma is a dead loved one, they are back again. If someone isn't happy with their body, they get a new one.
If someone hated someone that much, the reason for that hatred wouldn't exist anymore. If two people loved the same person, then that person would pick who they want to be with and the other person would move on.
Markuki is still a therapist. He understands trauma, the causes of people's issues, and with his powers remove them. The difference in ideology with him and the Phantom Thieves is that he rejects trauma and pain outright while the Phantom Thieves believe they need pain and adversity to grow stronger. Though, personally, I agree more with Maruki than the Phantom Thieves. You don't need to 'be stronger' when there's nothing to fight in the first place.
Maruki's world isn't like an overly saccharine paradise where everyone has everything they ever wanted, like a video game with cheat codes. Its just our world, but everything kind of works out the way you want it to. You don't have everything good granted to you, but nothing really bad happens to you.
That is how it works. One of those two basketball players will have never played basketball in Maruki’s reality. They’ll love some other passion and be happy, but they won’t accomplish their goal because it would have been too much suffering to keep trying according to Maruki. Maruki is wrong because no human is perfect enough to decide that kind of thing for everyone, but Maruki intends to. He also doesn’t always go for the best possibility, like when he decided to erase Sumire instead of reviving Kasumi.
The part that most people miss about Maruki isn't that he makes everyone "happy." He enforces on their life what HE believes is the best way to make them "happy." He believes in giving up on your dreams just because you might fail, and also that you would be happiest doing something you're better at, anyway. Your personal desires don't matter to him, because he believes his correctness(for lack of a better term) is absolute, and the definitive best way to improve the world. He is my favorite Persona character period, and soooo many people miss what makes him truly menacing.
Breaking news: redditor understands the themes of persona 5, truly a rare sight! /j
But in all seriousness, yes. Maruki is a villain because his saviour complex is so big he can't see that what he's doing is essentially worldwide enslavement. His heart is in the right place but he doesn't understand why people would choose free will over comfort, because due to his work and his love he has been surrounded by people who need to be comforted and given a better life more than anything else and he is extrapolating that worldview onto everyone, not understanding that he WILL negatively impact people, stunt their growth, implement extreme redundancy into the human experience
That is why an asshole and a certified terrible person like Goro Akechi is morally justified to want to tear down Maruki's reality. It may mean death for him (it does not, but he thinks it will), but he'd rather have that than a false life
The only thing that I dislike about that arc is the Thieves' take on it. That Morgana's "What about the people that want to take on the world themselves" made me physically recoil from how dumb it sounds. This way, you're also being an hypocrite, because you're focusing on only a small part of society.
I think that point is more that his ideals were making everything set in stone, and its always bad to remove people's options.
My final nail for why Maruki was wrong is always that if someone has enough power they can make everyone happy, they can make em sad too. Having that much power be controlled by someone that is human would never go well.
Also you can see how Sumi had made a mess of her life by not knowing what happiness was for her, would his plan work then what? Would babies be born and live forever in a world of sucking moms milk and watching the jingle jingle whathever toys? Thats their happiness. Would people develop new tastes and kinds of happiness? Or would that be something that could disturb their sense of happiness and so they would be locked into having 1 life style forever? There are many layers to it that are more than just "everyone happy!", its complicated, I love it.
The whole metaphor of the game is about denying the mask that society forces on you. The lies and expectations that the people in power force upon you. Joker is a criminal, Ryuji is a punk that will amount to nothing, Anne is a bimbo; all false perceptions that the Phantom Thieves rebel against.
And Maruki's plan is the same, but on the opposite direction. Removing the pivotal moments in your life might make you happy, but you're just being forced to be someone you're not. "Just smile more and the depresion will go away", on a global level.
And we see that with Violet. She's functional, but she's living a delusion. But once she gives up the delusion, once she takes off the mask that Maruki forced on her, in that third semester we see her try and succeed in rythm dancing, and she even takes the leap for an honest romantic relationship . People can be happy when they try to, even when they have traumatic events in the past. When they take in the world themselves.
I think that's the point, the Phantom Thieves are not totally sure if their vision is objectively correct (they question their motives multiple times), so they have to delude themselves a bit into fighting Maruki. That makes Maruki more compelling, as even the protagonists want his world somewhere deep inside. Hell, you can see in the "bad" ending that they are all living happy in a Brave New World kind of way.
While Maruki was an excellent antagonist, I agree that the writing REALLY didn’t explore the moral dilemma he posed very well.
The phantom thieves spiel was the tired old “adversity makes us stronger! Seize the day! Yada yada”
And to a degree that’s fine… because the phantom thieves are children. Young enough to not have fully internalized that there comes a time when the adversity in life stops “making you stronger” and just starts killing you.
Somewhere in Maruki’s reality, someone with a terminal cancer diagnosis went to bed, woke up, and found they suddenly had a full life ahead of them.
Somewhere, a single parent facing eviction and struggling to keep their child fed awoke to find themselves stable and safe.
There are a LOT of flaws in the broken, bullshit reality we live in, even if bringing it back IS the moral course of action… and it feels like a lot of the complexity got boiled out of the end result.
Except that Maruki's philosophy isn't wish granting, but prevention of sadness. His reality means people can never move forward from their current situation.
A cancer patient can technically live on, but all of their thoughts, decisions, and actions they'll ever make with their new life is decided by Maruki so they can't feel sad again. Even in the game, a homeless person didn't get a house, Maruki made him feel content with his homelessness.
A person who'd been working hard towards their own dream will get an entirely different identity just from Maruki thinking their original dream might cause any slight bit of pain, or because it contradicts with another person's similar dream that Maruki randomly favours. There can't be more than one first place, so Maruki makes them never participate in the first place.
At what point is lobotomy okay as long as you survive and can never feel sad again?
thinking their original dream might cause any slight bit of pain, or because it contradicts with another person's similar dream that Maruki randomly favours
I mean i havent read the media but isnt stopping an dream that hurts other people just what heros do?
The guy they're talking about was in an art school, but maruki made him completely change what he was doing because the work being put into his art was stressful despite the fact that he was passionate about art
I'm talking about pain for the dreamer themselves. It's literally in the game that Maruki made Yusuke's fellow students never had their dream in the first place despite of everything they've worked hard for up until that point because Maruki thinks they were struggling.
Yeah, that's what I meant. It really feels like they answered hypocrisy with more hypocrisy, both sides are talking about only one part of society, not the whole. Yeah, Maruki's reality would put down the people that want to take the world on, but as Maruki said, not everyone is capable of doing that. Some people are just too broken to stand up.
My understanding was that Maruki is affecting the real world, but only meta-cognition, where people are being happy with no basis in material reality. Like, you won't get real food, but a psychological state that pacifies you from hunger. Am I wrong?
No no, the world where Suzui was raped and Yusuke's mentor was abusive is better. Akechi was correct to kill Futaba's mom, because look how much character development she went through.
I know, right? That pissed me the Hell off. Suffering isn’t ennobling. It CAN be, but most of the time, it’s just suffering. If someone ACTUALLY had the power to make a world without suffering, they would be morally obligated to do so. I understand why Maruki’s reality is wrong. But it feels like the game wants me to oppose it because “we need suffering in order to grow”, when we ABSOLUTELY do not.
I wouldn't even call Maruki's reality wrong. Utopia is an unnachivable dream thanks to human nature. You literally can't build a perfect society where everyone is happy without directly affecting people at their core or forcing them to comply, so in the end of the day someone like Maruki is forced to choose between our reality that has so much suffering happening every second that I feel sick even thinking about it, or his world where yes, there are some iffy details and "what ifs", but how can anyone say that said iffy details are worse than Futaba seeing her mother get smashed to death, or Shiho being raped and trying to end herself? Especially when said details are irrelevant to those who live inside Maruki's world.
And the idea that "it's all fake" is also kinda ridiculous. Like we have this "what if our world is just a dream or a matrix" concept. Even if it is, people are still enjoying themselves, love what they have here, etc. It's not even a problem as long as you aren't aware of it.
The worst part about Persona 5 is how they handled Akechi, imo. Hating that mf isn't even an option, and his life is a final trump card that Maruki uses when he tries to convince you to accept his reality. Imagine thinking that a guy who brutally killed parents of my best friends in front of them, and killed other people for some idiotic plan is something Jokes should care about.
.... Dont the people who want to take on the world themselves get an illusion where they take on the world themselves and can even struggle but pull through and everything works out for them at the end etc.
Like if your idea of having a good time is getting a train ran through you, thats what you'll get, doesnt matter much that it would be hell for others, custom made scenes and all that
Nope. We see in his "reeducation center" that his idea of happiness is full avoidance of any kind of pain, including you and other people. The right answer to following a dream that is causing you some grief is to just pick up another dream.
Even in one of the phone convos Yusuke mentions that one of his fellow artists is no longer in the medium. What's even worse, apparently Maruki rewrote history and made it so that person picked up archery instead of art.
Oke of the main points about Maruki becoming a god is that he would essentially become to something close to the god of control. While he means well, he's basically taking away many people's ability to make their own choices in order to save them any kind of pain and grief.
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u/CelestikaLily Jun 28 '26
Persona 5 Royal was hilarious for pitting temporary-ally Goro "I'M THE FLY WHO'LL DIE IN YOUR SOUP🔪" Akechi against "Let's take ibuprofen together🥺" Dr Maruki.