Kasumi Deserved Better in Persona 5 Royal

Kasumi Yoshizawa, or Violet, is a character exclusive to Persona 5 Royal, with promotional material hyping her up prior to the game’s debut in 2019. However, despite her status as the shiny new girl, the narrative treats her so poorly compared to other characters in her wheelhouse—think Marie, Theo, and Metis—that I can’t help but like her out of pity. Kasumi is a good character; I just wish Atlus framed her story a bit better.

As a note, this entire article will go into major spoilers for the third semester of Persona 5 Royal.

From April until December (the vanilla portion of Persona 5), Kasumi Yoshizawa is your junior. She’s really good at gymnastics and awakens to a Persona of her own after she falls into the Metaverse with Joker. Life isn’t all perfect for this star gymnast though. She had a sister named Sumire who died in a tragic accident a short while back. Because the vanilla portion of Persona 5 Royal remains more or less unchanged from the base game, Kasumi doesn’t play a large part in the story until the new plotline in the third semester. You learn very early on in the Royal Palace that Kasumi Yoshizawa died. The “Kasumi Yoshizawa” you’ve known all this time is actually Sumire Yoshizawa, whom Maruki accidentally brainwashed with his actualization powers into thinking she’s Kasumi.

Once Sumire recovers her personality and identity, you can see her for how she actually is. She’s not the peppy and cheery junior that Joker knew for most of the school year. In reality, Sumire has a lot of issues she’s unable to mask or suppress. Her anxieties poked through even as Kasumi. But as Sumire, she’s obviously depressed and suffers from her self-worth issues and guilt. In the story proper, she recovers and faces off against Maruki. But considering how long she’s lived as Kasumi and how she never got the chance to deal with her sister’s death in a healthy way, I doubt that Sumire’s journey to recovery is anywhere close to being done. Royal made me like Sumire in a way that I never did Kasumi, but it’s because I wanted her to get the satisfying closure everyone else did.

I thought for sure that the reveal of Maruki’s brainwashing was to link her to the plot, as well as to show how terrible actualization is. The thing is, the game seems to want you to view Maruki with sympathy. Most of the characters express how sad it is that he lost his girlfriend, and Sumire mentions at multiple points that she believes Maruki’s intentions were good and genuine. She even states that he did help her. While a game’s views don’t always have to reflect the player’s, this bizarre values dissonance dogs me every time I think about Sumire as a character. It feels odd that the game never fully acknowledges how many lines Maruki crossed. In retrospect, that’s kind of par for the course in Persona 5, where the writing will introduce genuinely interesting story beats and themes, but never delve deep enough into them.

Sumire frames Maruki’s help as a positive thing, because it gave her time to step away from the trauma for a bit and recover. Now, I’m no psychologist or therapist by any means. But the idea of simply forgetting who you are and taking on a new identity in order to forget about a horrible death in your family doesn’t seem like a healthy coping mechanism. My understanding is that Sumire was not aware on any level that she’s actually Sumire; she fully, both consciously and unconsciously, thought herself as Kasumi. So her talking as if she (Sumire) remained conscious within the Kasumi personality felt strange considering how the game described her brainwashing. No matter how it works though, I found it very eyebrow-raising how quickly Sumire defended and justified Maruki’s actions for him. The way he violated her was vile within the context of the plot.

“Violated” is a strong word. But it’s the closest to the severe ick I felt during the flashback to Maruki using his powers on her. The way that Sumire went from borderline suicidal to bright and peppy in a heartbeat was so creepy. No amount of the game trying to convince me it was good will get me to accept that. It’s not just the forced erasure of Sumire’s identity. It’s the fact that Sumire hated herself even when Kasumi was alive, and Maruki’s idea of helping her inadvertently created the internal narrative that she was the one to die. That Kasumi did deserve to be the one to survive. Sumire is so much better than me because if my therapist did that to me, I wouldn’t be saying anything positive about him at all, dead girlfriend be damned.

In my opinion, Maruki is a complex and interesting character. I understand why he has a lot of fans and it’s not just because my timeline is full of people who love older anime men. Part of why Maruki is fascinating is that he’s the well-intentioned extremist type of villain. His methods have their flaws, but when Maruki says he’s trying to help someone, he’s telling the truth. Unfortunately, his multiple hang-ups from his past prevent him from seeing the errors in his ways, as well as justify them in his head. These kinds of villains are interesting because it forces the story to present an issue in shades of gray and grey, rather than pure black and white. But what makes them interesting is that they need to have some grounds to stand on.

Daisy from Bioshock Infinite, Amon from The Legend of Korra, and Sunday from Honkai: Star Rail all had a point in their motivations. It was hard to think they’re completely in the wrong. With Daisy and Amon, it felt like the writers realized this and made them irredeemably evil rather than try to write their way out of this moral quandary. In Maruki’s case, I felt like the Sumire brainwashing was his version of Daisy murdering a child. Except…the game never seems to condemn him too much for this. In fact, the framing of the narrative and the characters’ dialogue felt like the game was railroading you into thinking Maruki is just a misguided friend. But it was impossible for me to sympathize with him and think he’s in the right in any way when Sumire seemed like a textbook example of “Hey, actualization is wrong.”

Beyond Maruki, something that bothers me about Persona 5 Royal is what Atlus did (and didn’t do) for Sumire’s personality and design. As a character, Sumire is fine. But my feelings about Sumire never extend beyond how I feel about Haru. They’re both inoffensively pleasant and sweet, with enough depth that I know their basic goals and motivations, but not enough that I can connect with them like I can with Ann or Yusuke. The game did not dedicate nearly enough time to them and this is likely due to the lack of fluff in Persona 5.

Haru did get more scenes and chances at characterization in Royal, and I don’t mind her social link as much as I disliked Makoto’s. But I wish we got to spend more time with her as a person before the Phantom Thieves’ situation became so dire that Shido and Yaldabaoth took up the story. It’s the same thing with Sumire. In Sumire’s case, she doesn’t even have as many Confidant levels and spin-offs to explore who she really is without Kasumi’s mask.

Even worse is her Phantom Thief outfit. When we only knew what she looks like as Violet, some people theorized that Persona 5 Royal would be like Persona 3 Portable and let you play as a girl. That’s how similar her outfit is to Joker’s. Though the game does kind of give an in-story explanation as to why they look like each other, I don’t understand why Sumire can’t have gotten another outfit after she regains her true self. Even in the Metaverse, we can’t see who Sumire really is as a person because her spirit of rebellion takes cues from some dude. Is that power limited to Wild Cards or something?

To this day, I believe Sumire should’ve gotten a new thief outfit (with the option to switch back to her original black one). As well, Cendrillon should’ve turned into Vanadis after she recovers her true identity and then Vanadis can evolve to Ella after maxing out the Faith Confidant. Her story is fraught with identity issues, so you’d figure that a Persona system focused on one’s true self would eat that right up. Alas, justice for Sumire. She deserved better if Atlus isn’t going to do anything with her in spin-offs.

Persona 5 Royal is readily available on the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Windows PC.