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Persona 5, thoughts on "No Good Tora" (Sidequest spoilers)
8 years ago
So in Persona 5, you have an optional set of sidequests revolving around "No-Good Tora", an older man who is a disgraced politician. He was a member of the Japanese Diet until he was caught essentially embezzling, and lost his office. Years later, he's trying to run for office again on a platform against the abuse of power by government officials, and you can support him if you want. Near the end of the quest chain, it comes out that he was framed for the original crime (How he himself seemed unaware of that is weird but not relevant to this).
I think this is a bit of a lost chance at storytelling. "No-Good Tora"'s story arc revolves around a few concepts:
1) Redemption in a realistic sense. Redemption in fiction often comes of the form of "this character committed super-murder-genocide against the space-faeries but now sacrifices themselves to save the sky-tree of life-happiness". Whether that sort of redemption is possible or not is very difficult to make a realistic moral judgement on because it's so far removed from actual real experiences. No-Good Tora never killed anyone, nor does he need to die to prove himself. He (hypothetically) abused his office for personal gain, and now is trying to make up for that by campaigning against the same abuses he once committed.
2) Facts vs Sources. One of the more interesting bits of dialogue from the side quests is someone heckling "Why should I listen to him? He's No-Good Tora!" to which you can reply "What does it matter if he's No-Good Tora? Is he WRONG?" This really hits a nail on the head that while it's okay, often even appropriate to distrust certain sources, facts don't care who says them and ultimately a given statement can't be examined solely based on who made it.
At the end I felt the interesting plot and morals were undermined by the needless "innocent all along!" part. It wasn't even necessary (people were starting to come around to liking him again anyway despite thinking he did it).
Things to take away when writing:
Let your characters have flaws and make mistakes. People identify with an imperfect protagonist trying to set right things they've done wrong. Don't undermine that by having the mistake ultimately end up being someone else's fault, especially someone else's fault with malicious intent. And make resolving mistakes take some real effort. No-Good Tora campaigned for years to get accepted as a serious candidate for a second time, he didn't just show up and make one apology and then good to go again.
Not everything has to be super dramatic. It's easy to 'amp up' the stakes by having everything be world shattering; it's hard to bring them back down again though. This is just general advice, but it helps to keep your characters' mistakes being things us poor mortals can relate to when possible.
I think this is a bit of a lost chance at storytelling. "No-Good Tora"'s story arc revolves around a few concepts:
1) Redemption in a realistic sense. Redemption in fiction often comes of the form of "this character committed super-murder-genocide against the space-faeries but now sacrifices themselves to save the sky-tree of life-happiness". Whether that sort of redemption is possible or not is very difficult to make a realistic moral judgement on because it's so far removed from actual real experiences. No-Good Tora never killed anyone, nor does he need to die to prove himself. He (hypothetically) abused his office for personal gain, and now is trying to make up for that by campaigning against the same abuses he once committed.
2) Facts vs Sources. One of the more interesting bits of dialogue from the side quests is someone heckling "Why should I listen to him? He's No-Good Tora!" to which you can reply "What does it matter if he's No-Good Tora? Is he WRONG?" This really hits a nail on the head that while it's okay, often even appropriate to distrust certain sources, facts don't care who says them and ultimately a given statement can't be examined solely based on who made it.
At the end I felt the interesting plot and morals were undermined by the needless "innocent all along!" part. It wasn't even necessary (people were starting to come around to liking him again anyway despite thinking he did it).
Things to take away when writing:
Let your characters have flaws and make mistakes. People identify with an imperfect protagonist trying to set right things they've done wrong. Don't undermine that by having the mistake ultimately end up being someone else's fault, especially someone else's fault with malicious intent. And make resolving mistakes take some real effort. No-Good Tora campaigned for years to get accepted as a serious candidate for a second time, he didn't just show up and make one apology and then good to go again.
Not everything has to be super dramatic. It's easy to 'amp up' the stakes by having everything be world shattering; it's hard to bring them back down again though. This is just general advice, but it helps to keep your characters' mistakes being things us poor mortals can relate to when possible.
He had simply resigned rather than face an investigation which he felt was rigged against him (the whole Japanese honor thing). He felt more that the fact that he had allowed himself to be framed is where he failed as a politician, and knew once a scandal was attached to him he had little political future.