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ThePersonaseries doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to integrating deep (and often dark) themes into their games. Besides a few cameos here and there, the mainline games aren’t linked to each other, so you don’t have to play them in numerical order to understand them. However, it’s worth playing all of them to see how each one tackles the concept of Shadows and Personas differently.
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Obviously, Personas are an important part of the games, but you’re able to’t have Personas without Shadows. They’re two sides of the same coin, and though each game puts its own spin on them, there’s a common theme of acceptance revolving around them.
What Exactly Are Shadows?
The games' concepts of the Persona and Shadow come frompsychologist Carl Jung, and they have a lot to do withthe id, ego, and superego, which are parts of neurologist Sigmund Freud’s theory on how the human mind works.
The id is basically your primal instincts and desires, andyour Shadow is what manifests from a repressed id. The Shadow doesn’tcompletelyaccurately represent your inner feelings, as it has some distortion, but there is some truth to it.
InPersona 4, the Shadows in the TV world are the sides of people that they don’t want to face. Characters are very directly suppressing their id in this game. Stronger Shadows are able to take on the forms of people, and they attract smaller Shadows who want to merge with them.
When you hear what the strong Shadows say, their words are harsh and ugly. They’re letting out the person’s deepest thoughts, but those thoughts are quite exaggerated coming from them.
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For example, Yosuke’s Shadow calls him out for wanting to explore the world inside the TV solely because he wants some excitement in his life and yearns to be regarded as some sort of hero, not for the sake of his dead Senpai, as Yosuke had claimed.
After you defeat the Shadow and Yosuke accepts it as part of him, he admits that Shadow Yosuke was right about that being part of his motivation. But he also explains that a big part of his reasonisgetting justice for his Senpai, and you can see that in his dialogue and actions throughout the game. He keeps her in his mind throughout the entire game.
The same goes for Chie. Her Shadow focuses on her jealousy towards Yukiko, which is absolutely true, but the Shadow makes it sound like Chie secretly despises Yukiko.
In reality, she still cares for Yuikiko deeply and considers Yukiko her best friend whom she’d do anything for. So,you can’t completely take a Shadow’s word at face value, because they have a habit of twisting and inflating the suppressed thoughts and desires of the person in question.
Shadows In The Different Persona Games
Persona 4 focused on characters accepting their Shadows and being able to use Personas as a result, but the other games explore the subject in different ways.
InPersona 5, there’s more attention on the “desire” aspect of the id. When a person’s desire becomes distorted, it manifests into a Shadowin the Metaverse. If the desire is strong enough, that Shadow becomes a Palace ruler—an exaggerated version of how the person sees themselves—and it becomes much harder to relieve this desire.
Most of the Palace rulers are terrible people, but even regular people can get Palaces,as seen with Futabaand Sae. Palaces can disappear on their own if the ruler realizes the distortion by themselves. Otherwise, they atone for what they’ve done in real life only after their Palace’s treasure is forcibly stolen.
Related:Persona 5 Royal: All Palaces, Ranked
InPersona 3, Shadows are actually necessary to live. They’re parts of Nyx—the Harbinger of the Fall—and every person has one within themselves, unconsciously sealing her. Without a Shadow, the person becomes a victim of Apathy Syndrome—a mindless shell of themselves.
You have a chance to lose your Shadow when you yearn for death, whether consciously or not, because the seal on Nyx weakens and allows the Shadow to rejoin with her body. There’s a message in there about howeverypart of you makes you whole, including your flaws.
Are Shadows And Personas The Same?
Personas and Shadows can be seen as opposites, and there’s a lot of nuance to them in real life. But in the context of the Persona games, they’re two sides of the same coin.The Persona represents the ego, which is the middle ground between the id and superego.
Like with Shadows, there are some differences in how each Persona game handles them, but the common theme is about accepting the side of yourself you try to suppress or having a firm resolve.
You see this the most clearly in Persona 4, where the characters' Shadow selves literallytransform intotheir Personas after being accepted. In Persona 5, the characters' eyes turn yellow right before manifesting their Personas. Since yellow eyes are a staple of Shadow forms in Persona, this signifies that the characters are acknowledging their Shadows are necessary to gain their Personas. Plus, the regular Shadows you fight in battle are just Personas who’ve forgotten that they’re Personas.
In Persona 3, a vague “potential” is mentioned for being able to summon Personas, but since members of S.E.E.S use Evokers to simulate shooting themselves to summon their Personas, it may have something to do with being able to confront death, an integral part of the game’s theme.
When you put it all together, rather than being completely separate entities,Shadows become Personas under the right circumstances. The Personas can even evolve further when party members look inward and realize something new about themselves, or gain a new sense of determination.
So, even though they represent completely different sides of the spectrum, Shadows and Personas are one and the same.
In that case, you might be wondering about characters likeTeddieandMorgana. Those two are interesting cases that require their own in-depth explanations.
