How Persona 5 Royal Creates the Series’ Best Villain

Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Persona 5 Royal

The Persona series has a tradition of releasing a second “enhanced” version of each game. Persona 3 had FES and Portable, Persona 4 had Golden, and now Persona 5 has Royal. Like the past games, Persona 5 Royal is a massive rerelease filled with new content and loads of quality-of-life changes.

The biggest addition to Royal comes with two important new characters and a lengthy new story section after the end of the game. There are new story elements weaved throughout the game that build-up to the third semester and ending, and there’s an even deadlier villain for the Phantom Thieves to face.

This new villain quickly manages to be the best in the entire franchise, and easily one of the best villains seen in the JRPG genre in years. Here’s how Persona 5 Royal goes about creating its phenomenal villain.

Persona 5 Royal Builds a Relationship With Its Villain

Persona is well known for having good characters, but it’s been hard for the series’ villains to stack up to the robust main casts. That all changes with Persona 5 Royal, which creates a dynamic, complex villain who feels immediately relatable. The best way for Royal to achieve this is by making its villain, Maruki, a confidant. Maruki is introduced after the events of Kamoshida’s palace, as a counselor to help the students deal with the trauma. It’s clear from the get-go that Maruki is a genuinely kind person, and he takes time to talk to each of the members of the Phantom Thieves and tries to help them work out their problems. The counselor becomes a hit at Shujin Academy, and his Confidant relationship sees the protagonist helping Maruki with his cognitive psience research.

Maruki is a fascinating character, and like every other confidant, he has a tragic past that helps him bond with the protagonist. He also teaches the hero some incredibly useful moves like Detox, which can remove status effects, or Flow, which increases Joker’s attack and defense at the start of a battle. Unlike the other confidants, Maruki has a connection to all of the Phantom Thieves, not just Joker, giving him a unique position.

Persona 5 Royal’s Villain Isn’t So Different From the Phantom Thieves

During November Maruki leaves Shujin, and the rest of the main story plays out like normal. Once Yalbadoth is defeated, however, things take a serious turn. The Phantom Thieves wake up in an alternate reality, which they find out Maruki has created through the power of a Persona. Maruki can change people’s cognitions, and through that has gained the power to change reality itself. Each of the Phantom Thieves now live in their ideal reality; Futaba’s mom is alive, Shiho is alive and well and in volleyball, Ryuji is back on the track team, etc. In the past, Maruki’s fiance, Rumi, suffered a traumatic event and had a mental shutdown, which eventually awoke Maruki to his Persona. It’s been hinted at the entire game, but Maruki’s goal is to do away with everyone’s emotional pain, letting them live in their ideal world without any cares or worries.

At his core Maruki is a good man but is Persona, Azathoth, has warped his desire to help others. Still, the interesting thing about Maruki is that his actions aren’t all that different from the Phantom Thieves themselves. Persona 5 constantly calls the morality of the player’s actions into question, but it’s all brought to a head in the third semester. Both the Phantom Thieves and Maruki are using their powers to change people’s cognition, and follow their own “justice.” The Phantom Thieves are faced with the agonizing choice of accepting Maruki’s reality or restoring the proper reality, knowing that countless people will suffer if they do the latter.

Maruki is a fantastic subversion of Persona 5’s themes, and his power was created by the wishes of the Phantom Thieves after defeating Yalbadoth. After over 100 hours of changing hearts, the player is tasked with stopping someone essentially doing the same thing, just on a larger scale. Maruki also makes every attempt to come to to an understanding with Joker, and wants to avoid a violent confrontation at all costs. Joker was the final key that helped Maruki build his world, and Maruki wants Joker to understand his intentions.

There’s an interesting detail that helps highlight all this with the final boss theme “Throw Away Your Mask.” Every song with lyrics in Persona 5 is sung from the point of view of the Phantom Thieves. However, the final theme switches that and sings from Maruki’s point of view. The lyrics tell Joker to cast off his mask, not chase dreams that can’t come true and trust in Maruki’s power. It’s a powerful moment that drives home the relationship between Maruki and Joker, and how grateful the former is to the latter.

What makes Maruki such a great villain is that players can understand him; they’ve just spent over 100 hours fighting with the same ideology. Unlike the despicable villains of the rest of the game, there’s no pleasure in defeating Maruki. Like the best villains out there, Maruki is a kind-hearted person who’s terrible past had warped his ideals beyond recognition.

Persona 5 Royal is now available on PlayStation 4.

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