on goro akechi v2 ft screenshot evidence because people are misinterpreting like everything about him & spreading misinfo



1. He got his persona powers 2.5 years earlier than the rest of the cast, and that’s important. He was a lonely child who had gone through life with absolutely no one, having to be constantly reminded that no one ever wanted him. He had nothing in his heart but resentment for Shido because he didn’t know anything else. He approached Shido and offered to use his berserk powers(no murder involved) with the intent of stabbing him in the back later because he had nothing else to lose.

2. Shadow Shido openly brags about being the reason he was using his powers to kill, because they were Shido’s orders to begin with.

Shido also talks about continuing to use the cognitive world for evil, even when he had planned to have Akechi killed right after the election.

3. There was no way he could’ve known about the power to change hearts. Morgana is expressly the one who told Joker and Ryuji about it. Without Morgana, they wouldn’t have known. They had to take extra precaution to not trigger a mental shutdown in Kamoshida, because the method to it is pretty obtuse. There’s 2 points in the game where’s he upset about not having known about it earlier:

4. The mental shutdowns weren’t his idea, they were the orders of Shido and his political buddies.

Here’s a compilation of evidence from the cruise ship of that: http://imgur.com/a/VE61s

So, yes, well established that everything was on Shido’s orders.



No, this doesn’t mean he’s 100% free of having to deal with the consequences of his actions, because he isn’t. He’s both a perpetrator and a victim, the game straight up calls him this.

The bulk of the blame should go to the person who actually wanted them dead rather than the hitman. In this case, the hitman was an abused kid who was in a do or die situation. No, the hitman is not totally innocent, this isn’t the point of this post.

(It’s worth nothing that if Shido wanted someone dead he more than likely would’ve found a way even if Akechi had tried to walk away. This is almost directly implied, as Shido talks about continuing to use the cognitive world after the election, when if everything had gone his way, he would’ve killed Akechi at that point anyway, as evidenced earlier in this post).

Here Shido offers a deal to the thieves, after Akechi was presumed dead, confirming that cognitive world things are going on with or without him. Along with a “those who disobey me must be eliminated.” The connection here is obvious.



In the text chat they have about him after sending the calling card, Haru says she thinks he was a victim too, Anne says he was a victim they couldn’t save. Ryuji says that while he can’t forgive him, he forgives Shido even less for warping him so badly. Makoto agrees with Ryuji. Morgana says that Akechi helped them all out in the end.

This should be obvious, his infiltration of the PT and assassination of Joker were on Shido’s orders. The first thing he does after Joker’s supposed death is call Shido and says that it’s done. The SIU director shows up occasionally talking to Shido on the phone talking about how their evil plan is going swimmingly, and at one point he even says “an idea so atrocious had to come from you(Shido).” Akechi was just a convenient tool to make that happen.

(The above cap is even before they learn that Shido was Akechi’s father).

It’s also worth noting that he got his powers earlier than the rest for a reason. As Lavenza revealed, he was cherry picked to be the one to oppose Joker. Akechi says that “be it god or demon, I finally had a chance” when he was talking about his revenge against Shido. Which, is fitting, considering Yaldabaoth chose him because he was a lonely kid with nothing but resentment in his heart. He had nothing to lose, he had no way of knowing how to change hearts, of course he went after Shido and made it worse for himself. It was rigged against him from the start.

To understand a bit more about the way he was treated and why he lashed out, I advise to read about the stigma of illegitimate kids in Japan and the treatment of orphans in Japan.

He was a child who had known absolutely nothing but neglect and abuse his entire life; he was a child who was at the tender age of 14-15 when he approached Shido. He wanted to lash out and didn’t have the means to do so. And because of who his father was, because he had absolutely no way of knowing how to change hearts, he could only make it worse for himself. He didn’t decide “I hate my dad so I’m gonna go kill people to get his attention” he decided, “I hate my dad and have absolutely nothing to lose so I’m going to approach him and try to backstab him later and get myself into a situation where I would either have to die or commit atrocities to keep on going.” (It’s unclear whether he knew that Shido would have him use his powers to kill. Shadow Shido brags about being the reason for it, though, as evidenced earlier).

And no, he isn’t without regret.

Also, this Leblanc conversation post Okumura death.

The Leblanc conversation there also stands out because he goes on about it being the one place of comfort he had.

He wasn’t being 100% fake all the time. Morgana points out that he actually did like Joker, and it was true. That was the line that finally set him into full blown tantrum mode after his first boss fight. (The localization translated that as “You don’t hate Joker” when it should’ve been something more like “You cared for/grew fond of/liked Joker.)” (He also says that it helps that Sojiro treats him just like any other customer, which sticks out because he’s probably not used to being treated like an actual human being).

I think a lot of people’s problems is that they see him before and immediately after betrayal(when he’s talking to Shido) and think this means everything post betrayal was his “real self.” It wasn’t, he hates Shido, he wanted to ruin Shido, the evil villain act he put on in front of Shido was just as much of an act as he put on on TV.

He openly laments that they couldn’t have met a few years earlier, because that’s the big difference between him and the PT. While the PT had each other and other people in their lives when they awakened their powers, Akechi had absolutely no one. He had gone through his entire life all by himself and thought he was fine on his own because he thought he could never have anyone accept him for who he actually is. And this goes well past the hitman working for Shido thing. He also thought that no one would accept him if they knew about his birth or his past; as said before, in Japan, being an illegitimate kid is highly stigmatized. In his TV monologue in the cruise ship, he thinks about that fact that none of the people in the audience know he’s an “unwanted child.” And the game makes a point of his fans turning on him whenever he made mistakes. Even the girl in your class who was always going on about how handsome he is said she was embarrassed to be his fan. The public is fickle, and didn’t care about him much or at all to begin with, just the mask he put on in front of them.

He thought he could never have real bonds because of his upbringing.

5. Shido would’ve killed him if he had tried to walk away. This is established after this line, after Shido was telling him to go “deal with anyone [Akechi finds] suspicious.” Akechi replied to this by saying that they should wait a week until after the election, after in Akechi’s mind, he wouldn’t have to listen to Shido anymore. (He was trying to stall)

“Do you know what it means to defy me?” is also a valid translation here. Right here it’s established that if he had tried to walk away, he would’ve been killed.

It’s also worth noting that Akechi said that as if he was terrified to question him.

No, I’m not saying he did nothing wrong at all. The fact that he did it at all disqualifies him from doing nothing wrong, but, it’s important to consider how little of a choice he had in his actions.

His real thief outfit is one striped like a prison outfit, with belts binding his limbs. The symbolism there is obvious.

The Design Works description for Loki is also worth bringing up:

“Loki’s true form is unknown. I gave him a design in which you can’t tell if more of the pattern is white or black, and I had thought of and considered giving him this feeling of not being able to tell which side he was on. The design motif is the "dazzle camoflauge” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage) that was used on WWI warships. The camoflauge was meant to make the size and shape of the warship difficult to discern. In addition to that, the horns that protrude from the eyes I based off a snail parasite, and it emphasizes the unpleasantness of this feeling of not knowing where the individual[’s true self] is (like where the parasite ends and the host begins, I presume). I thought it might interesting if people could get this feeling of “who is the real you?”, as Akechi might say.”



How little independence he actually had is the entire point.

6. Shido, deep down, knew Akechi was his son and used that to manipulate him. Shido says he suspected as much because Akechi resembles his mother. Shido admits to using his childish need for acceptance and praise to manipulate him(which also ties back into his lonely upbringing), it’s why Akechi thought that Shido trusted him. Like I said in the last post, he’s a worst case scenario for the subject matter the entire game covers - someone who was in a situation where he couldn’t do anything about ends up walking down the same path as his abusers when given the means to do something, because he had no positive influences or support system to know what to do otherwise. He had no way of knowing what to do.

He was a child who was abused and manipulated just as(if not moreso) by rotten adults just as everyone in the PT was. In the end, he wasn’t so different from them. The main difference is that he was cherry picked by a false god to be set on a bad path from the start.

If you wanna take all of this and say “cool motive, still murder” then fine. But, context is everything, especially when in context, he was in a do or die situation where he had to act as a hitman for the person who actually wanted the targets dead. Especially when the entire game is about abusive power dynamics, especially when it comes to the power adults have over the youth. Him being the only teenage antagonist is very, very relevant. It’s almost appalling how many people I see list a number of reasons to vehemently hate Akechi and then list Shido off in a passing “yeah that guy was a dick I guess” because that’s deliberately missing the point. In the end, he wasn’t so different than the PT. He was abused and manipulated by the rotten adults just as much(if not more so). The same rotten adult that also had a hand in the lives of other party members, even.

You don’t have to like him, you don’t even have to feel sympathy for him, but, the amount of people I’ve seen that nigh have to be deliberately misinterpreting his situation is kind of exhausting.

He goes after the PT in the cruise ship only after he learns that they were going after Shido. A big character fault is his pride, and he said how he wanted to be the one to “personally take responsibility for Masayoshi Shido by thrusting him into a living hell.” It was his literal life’s mission. He admitted he was jealous of Joker; he said that he was jealous because Joker’s heart was always free, and his wasn’t. He saw Joker as the epitome of everything he could never have; someone who was surrounded by comrades who cared about him and could be acknowledged as heroes. He clung to his want for revenge against Shido, he clung to his false fame because it brought him the praise and attention he’d been denied his whole life. His childish want for love & praise was another very fatal character flaw. Which, again, ties into his traumatic upbringing.

Then, in come Cognitive Akechi. Cognitive Akechi informs the real Akechi that Shido was going to kill him right after the election anyway, because he never had Shido’s trust to begin with. He never would’ve been able to take Shido down alone. He thought he was fine on his own because loneliness was the only thing he’d ever known.

He realized what an idiot he was, he calls himself just that. He never could’ve done anything alone. Cognitive Akechi then gives him another chance to be the person Shido wants him to be.

And he turns around and shoots cognitive Goro, raises the partition wall, and says that if they had tried to fight cognitive Goro and his shadows while protecting him in his injured state and making sure he doesn’t get killed, they would’ve all been annihilated. He gave his life for the people that shattered his belief that the only way he could ever be accepted if he was putting on an act, in a final standoff against the manifestation of the puppet he used to be, and removed himself from the cycle of abuse instead of letting it go on any longer.

He was finally able to let go off his want for revenge and false flame he clung to because it brought him the praise and admiration he’d been denied so heavily as a child. Because in the end, he wasn’t so different from the rest of them, the difference was that he was cherry picked by a false god to be the bad guy. His death was nigh the only choice he’d ever been able to make for himself.

omake: his angry critical cutin and black actual outfit fit in far better with the PT than his white princely outfit and p3/p4 style cutin ever did