Persona 5 Royal
This review contains spoilers
To play Persona 5 Royal is to enter a vast, stylistically overwhelming simulation of the modern disciplinary society. It is a text that understands, with terrifying clarity, that the prison is no longer a distinct building on the edge of town; it has dissolved into the very atmosphere of the metropolis. The game presents a Tokyo that functions as a total institution, a seamlessly integrated "carceral archipelago" where the subway, the classroom, and the smartphone screen are all mechanisms of surveillance and normalization. Here, power is not merely held by corrupt politicians; it is fluid, capillary, and everywhere.
The narrative commences, appropriately, with the production of a delinquent. The protagonist is not a criminal by nature but is manufactured into one by the legal apparatus—branded, exiled, and placed under the stewardship of a guardian. His rehabilitation, occurring within the Velvet Room, is the game’s most on-the-nose metaphor for the disciplinary society. He is literally an inmate, stripped of his name, dressed in stripes, and subjected to the gaze of the warden. Yet, this "rehabilitation" is paradoxical. To regain his freedom, he must submit to a rigorous schedule of self-optimization. He must increase his "social stats"—Knowledge, Charm, Guts—effectively turning himself into a product, a docile body capable of functioning efficiently within the very economy that rejected him.
However, the game’s true brilliance lies in its spatialization of the collective unconscious: Mementos. This is the Panopticon inverted. In Bentham’s design, the few watch the many; in the era of the "Phan-Site" and the smartphone, the many watch the few, and crucially, they watch themselves. The public in Persona 5 Royal suffers from a slothful desire to be governed. They crave the "algorithmic consensus." The brilliance of the Phantom Thieves’ methodology—the "change of heart"—must be scrutinized not as a liberation, but as a competing technology of power. When the Thieves steal a treasure, they are forcing a rupture in the subject’s psyche, compelling a public confession. It is a weaponized form of the Christian pastoral tradition: the subject is made to speak the truth of their sin before the congregation. The Thieves do not dismantle the structure of judgment; they merely seize the gavel.
It is in the Royal expansion’s third semester, however, that the game elevates its discourse from simple rebellion to a critique of biopolitics. We are introduced to Dr. Maruki, a figure representing the ultimate evolution of power: the therapeutic state. Maruki does not wish to punish; he wishes to cure. His reality is a world without friction, pain, or trauma—a world where the "norm" is absolute happiness.
This is the terrifying face of modern "pastoral power." Maruki acts as the shepherd who knows the secrets of every sheep and guides them to a pasture of lobotomized contentment. His dominance is far more insidious than the authoritarianism of the base game’s villain, Shido. Shido represents the sovereign power that kills; Maruki represents the biopower that "makes live." He offers a velvet cage where the subject is stripped of the capacity for tragedy, and therefore, the capacity for meaning. The conflict between the Thieves and Maruki is thus a philosophical war over the definition of freedom. The Thieves argue for a dangerous liberty—the right to suffer, to fail, and to possess a history scarred by trauma—against a sanitized, administrative utopia.
Ultimately, Persona 5 Royal serves as a manual of "counter-conduct." It acknowledges that we are trapped in webs of power—educational, medical, legal, and digital. Yet, it suggests that resistance is possible not by escaping the system (which is impossible), but by hijacking its aesthetics and turning one’s life into a work of art. By donning the mask, the protagonist does not hide his identity; he constructs a new self, a "technology of the self" that refuses the identity imposed by the state. In a world of enforced transparency and digital surveillance, the game argues that the only true rebellion is the masterful curation of one’s own persona.
The narrative commences, appropriately, with the production of a delinquent. The protagonist is not a criminal by nature but is manufactured into one by the legal apparatus—branded, exiled, and placed under the stewardship of a guardian. His rehabilitation, occurring within the Velvet Room, is the game’s most on-the-nose metaphor for the disciplinary society. He is literally an inmate, stripped of his name, dressed in stripes, and subjected to the gaze of the warden. Yet, this "rehabilitation" is paradoxical. To regain his freedom, he must submit to a rigorous schedule of self-optimization. He must increase his "social stats"—Knowledge, Charm, Guts—effectively turning himself into a product, a docile body capable of functioning efficiently within the very economy that rejected him.
However, the game’s true brilliance lies in its spatialization of the collective unconscious: Mementos. This is the Panopticon inverted. In Bentham’s design, the few watch the many; in the era of the "Phan-Site" and the smartphone, the many watch the few, and crucially, they watch themselves. The public in Persona 5 Royal suffers from a slothful desire to be governed. They crave the "algorithmic consensus." The brilliance of the Phantom Thieves’ methodology—the "change of heart"—must be scrutinized not as a liberation, but as a competing technology of power. When the Thieves steal a treasure, they are forcing a rupture in the subject’s psyche, compelling a public confession. It is a weaponized form of the Christian pastoral tradition: the subject is made to speak the truth of their sin before the congregation. The Thieves do not dismantle the structure of judgment; they merely seize the gavel.
It is in the Royal expansion’s third semester, however, that the game elevates its discourse from simple rebellion to a critique of biopolitics. We are introduced to Dr. Maruki, a figure representing the ultimate evolution of power: the therapeutic state. Maruki does not wish to punish; he wishes to cure. His reality is a world without friction, pain, or trauma—a world where the "norm" is absolute happiness.
This is the terrifying face of modern "pastoral power." Maruki acts as the shepherd who knows the secrets of every sheep and guides them to a pasture of lobotomized contentment. His dominance is far more insidious than the authoritarianism of the base game’s villain, Shido. Shido represents the sovereign power that kills; Maruki represents the biopower that "makes live." He offers a velvet cage where the subject is stripped of the capacity for tragedy, and therefore, the capacity for meaning. The conflict between the Thieves and Maruki is thus a philosophical war over the definition of freedom. The Thieves argue for a dangerous liberty—the right to suffer, to fail, and to possess a history scarred by trauma—against a sanitized, administrative utopia.
Ultimately, Persona 5 Royal serves as a manual of "counter-conduct." It acknowledges that we are trapped in webs of power—educational, medical, legal, and digital. Yet, it suggests that resistance is possible not by escaping the system (which is impossible), but by hijacking its aesthetics and turning one’s life into a work of art. By donning the mask, the protagonist does not hide his identity; he constructs a new self, a "technology of the self" that refuses the identity imposed by the state. In a world of enforced transparency and digital surveillance, the game argues that the only true rebellion is the masterful curation of one’s own persona.
Mini Review: Persona 5 Royal frames Tokyo as a digital Panopticon, where power saturates the subway and smartphone. The protagonist’s "rehabilitation" serves to manufacture "docile bodies," while the Thieves’ justice weaponizes the forced confession. The narrative critiques the modern craving for a therapeutic state—a "pastoral power" that seeks to sanitize human friction. Resistance is found in "counter-conduct": refusing the identity imposed by the system and using the mask to craft life as a work of art.
Watch the Trailer