the amount of times i've seen people ignore what the PT actually say in that part is staggering. haru, futaba, ryuji and makoto explicitly say they don't forgive him, with futaba blaming shido more for what happened to her mom because he was the one with actual personal beef with her. yusuke openly reprimands him for his actions, he just also recognizes what warped him, that he could've turned out like him, and blows up at shido. ann's always been more sympathetic to him, but that's in her nature and she doesn't forgive him either, she just tries to get him to team up with them because they're fighting the same guy anyway (and in the jp version she calls that taking responsibility [for his actions] with them). joker's a player avatar, but is still willing to make a deal for his sake.
the only one you can sort say forgives him is morgana in the localization because of what he says after the followup chat, and that's a huge translation error. that weird "i think in his heart he might not have been so bad" doesn't exist at all in the original text, he just says "i'm sure he really..." and trails off. idk what the fuck happened there.
but just because they don't forgive him doesn't mean they're not okay with giving him another chance. one of the core themes of the game is that people should atone for their actions. the word for "change of heart" can even be read as "reforming" in the sense of changing for the better and making up for one's actions. persona users can't have palaces, so they try to change akechi's heart by offering him a chance to make up for his actions instead.
thinking it's bad writing is fine, imo the whole sequence felt like it needed more buildup, but idk why so many people act like "unwilling to forgive him" and "willing to give him a chance to atone" are irreconcilable traits for the PT and keep complaining about one or the other when the game shows both are true (and the latter is one of the themes the entire game is built around).
"imo the whole sequence felt like it needed more buildup"
to the game dev's credit, i read that they had trouble implementing akechi's social link precisely because he had such sporadic screentime (and presumingly his eventual death), and that's why they decided to make his automatic. for a game that is one big time constraint, i think they did the best they could with any buildup toward that moment. i can't imagine we would've heard about his backstory and motivations at any other moment, without being under the amount of stress he was in that scene. certainly it was possible, but it might have involved changing up other story elements, we don't know. i personally agree with you, i'm simply acknowledging the difficulty his character probably brought to the story flow.
also slightly off-topic about the morgana line. i notice japanese media really like to have those no-substance one-liners that just trail off, or don't really begin anything in the first place (like "sore wa...", or the speaker's pronoun, or just an effort. so many efforts). i wouldn't say it's a huge mistranslation, more that they made a guess about what morgana might've said. it's not that far off, imo.
yeah, that came up in the maniax book iirc. originally they considered making him an optional co-op/confidant, not a story one, but when they finalized his role in the story, they ran into trouble figuring out how to wrap things up for him, so they made it automatic instead. there's some evidence of that in the game's files too: a couple of his scenes had lines added or changed, there's a ton of unused lines in his last scene, and there's some leftovers in the text files for leblanc (lines for him dropping by the cafe after working with the PT, and morgana calling him by first name instead) and demon negotiation files (there's a couple references to an unfinished akechi palace in-between the 6th and 7th one that they didn't tidy up in those files) that suggest they wanted to do more with him but ran out of time.
a lot of late-game stuff is kind of a mess, really. unused text, scenes that are completely out of order in the actual files, an entire unused game over sequence for the last palace suggesting it should've had a missable deadline, etc. really feels like they were forced to rush the game out at the tail end of the development time they had. makes me wonder if the anime's going to work in some of the things they couldn't include.
re: morgana's line, imo it's a pretty big mistranslation. in the jp version he's clearly considering saying something, but trails off (there's an entire extra "..." textbox after the unfinished line), then he switches subjects to focusing on the upcoming thievery operation instead. i don't have a link to the scene in jp on hand, but here's a transcript of that set of lines:
it's not a no-substance filler sentence, but morgana thinking about saying something and then deciding against it. i've also never seen anyone in the japanese fandom guess the sentence the localization ran with (usually it's something tying to morgana's earlier comments about him), and i've seen that one line color a lot of eng player's impressions of that sequence poorly.
christ this fandom never shuts up about ~~~mistranslations~~~. english and japanese are two completely different languages. atlus is allowed freedom with their translations. it's called "localization" for a reason. suck it up and shut up
Japanese is a language where a lot about a sentence is assumed and generally understood. A Japanese person would read that line and know more or less exactly what Morgana was implying. But since fragmented lines like that in English don't work out as well nor sound as natural, it absolutely makes sense for them to localize it so the meaning is captured and understood by the English speaking audience.
"In the end, he saved everyone. Surely, he really..." is what the sentence translates to. And while they could have kept it that way in English, it still sounds more vague to an English speaker, whereas in Japanese "kitto" implies that Morgana feels very strongly that what he thinks is really the case: "He saved everyone in the end, so (surely his heart must have been in the right place)".
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wankgate2018-04-01 12:13 pm
ayrt, mo' persona 5 spoilers
(Anonymous) 2018-04-14 06:42 am (UTC)(link)the only one you can sort say forgives him is morgana in the localization because of what he says after the followup chat, and that's a huge translation error. that weird "i think in his heart he might not have been so bad" doesn't exist at all in the original text, he just says "i'm sure he really..." and trails off. idk what the fuck happened there.
but just because they don't forgive him doesn't mean they're not okay with giving him another chance. one of the core themes of the game is that people should atone for their actions. the word for "change of heart" can even be read as "reforming" in the sense of changing for the better and making up for one's actions. persona users can't have palaces, so they try to change akechi's heart by offering him a chance to make up for his actions instead.
thinking it's bad writing is fine, imo the whole sequence felt like it needed more buildup, but idk why so many people act like "unwilling to forgive him" and "willing to give him a chance to atone" are irreconcilable traits for the PT and keep complaining about one or the other when the game shows both are true (and the latter is one of the themes the entire game is built around).
da, still spoilers
(Anonymous) 2018-04-14 11:12 am (UTC)(link)to the game dev's credit, i read that they had trouble implementing akechi's social link precisely because he had such sporadic screentime (and presumingly his eventual death), and that's why they decided to make his automatic. for a game that is one big time constraint, i think they did the best they could with any buildup toward that moment. i can't imagine we would've heard about his backstory and motivations at any other moment, without being under the amount of stress he was in that scene. certainly it was possible, but it might have involved changing up other story elements, we don't know. i personally agree with you, i'm simply acknowledging the difficulty his character probably brought to the story flow.
also slightly off-topic about the morgana line. i notice japanese media really like to have those no-substance one-liners that just trail off, or don't really begin anything in the first place (like "sore wa...", or the speaker's pronoun, or just an effort. so many efforts). i wouldn't say it's a huge mistranslation, more that they made a guess about what morgana might've said. it's not that far off, imo.
ayrt, more spoilers
(Anonymous) 2018-04-14 08:15 pm (UTC)(link)a lot of late-game stuff is kind of a mess, really. unused text, scenes that are completely out of order in the actual files, an entire unused game over sequence for the last palace suggesting it should've had a missable deadline, etc. really feels like they were forced to rush the game out at the tail end of the development time they had. makes me wonder if the anime's going to work in some of the things they couldn't include.
re: morgana's line, imo it's a pretty big mistranslation. in the jp version he's clearly considering saying something, but trails off (there's an entire extra "..." textbox after the unfinished line), then he switches subjects to focusing on the upcoming thievery operation instead. i don't have a link to the scene in jp on hand, but here's a transcript of that set of lines:
it's not a no-substance filler sentence, but morgana thinking about saying something and then deciding against it. i've also never seen anyone in the japanese fandom guess the sentence the localization ran with (usually it's something tying to morgana's earlier comments about him), and i've seen that one line color a lot of eng player's impressions of that sequence poorly.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2018-04-15 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)dda
(Anonymous) 2018-04-15 05:28 pm (UTC)(link)"In the end, he saved everyone. Surely, he really..." is what the sentence translates to. And while they could have kept it that way in English, it still sounds more vague to an English speaker, whereas in Japanese "kitto" implies that Morgana feels very strongly that what he thinks is really the case: "He saved everyone in the end, so (surely his heart must have been in the right place)".
+1
(Anonymous) 2018-04-15 08:55 pm (UTC)(link)