I know I seem all over the place with whether I think the characters/series are consciously cacophobic, or if they abuse beautiful girls or what. In general, that's just due to the flippity way that the games present this whole thing. I think there's some subconscious cacophobia/understanding of beauty = human value going on, but I think it's largely shit over by the casual attempts to please the average player, and genuinely just falling victim to a lot of systematic nonsense surrounding this, and so you end up with nonsense characters that are kinda both at once, ala Ann.
The bottom line here is that I WISH the Phantom Thieves would be on my side, but I know they wouldn't be canonically, because of this flaw in the portrayal, and that's what pisses me off so much.
Like, I think Persona is, on SOME level, aware that they're presenting a very cacophobic point of view. They constantly depict beauty as something of a "curse" which people, girls especially, need to weaponise against others, they're constantly depicting girls who are abused over being conventionally good-looking, grow to resent the fact, and then grow to understand that "no, wait, this is my sense of value. Fuck off if you don't like it". They're constantly displaying ugly-looking people as villains & they seem to, broadly speaking, present a very strong "beauty = goodness", "ugliness = badness" thing (I get that this is a fictional trope, more than anything else, but even so, Persona's understanding of this really does feel like it goes beyond a trope. Persona 5 just OOZES with a "beauty is the way of the world" vibe, from many angles.). Like, Ann's character, in particularly, seems especially formed around her finding value in beauty.
And the entire series is centralised around the Velvet Room and Igor. I've brought this up and analysed it before, how the Velvet Room and it's attendants seem to be, whether consciously or not, reflective of the series central idea of "beauty is goodness". To make it brief, having Igor essentially be the "master" of the Velvet Room, but barely having him actually be the "face" of it is a very cacophobic idea, on its surface; essentially, the attendants are the real masters, and this is reflective of beautiful women overcoming their oppression at the hands of ugly men (obviously I'm not saying Igor is purposefully oppressing his attendants; this is more just a reflective idea of "beauty will stop being a slave and will become the real masters") And it's reflective of the core theme, that Persona seems to present, of beautiful people fighting back. That's the basic gist of it anyway (I can go a lot deeper into this, as there's a LOT of small bits and pieces of evidence backs up that this whole "the attendant is the real master, because they're beautiful, and Igor isn't" thing was intended as something the player subconsciously picks up on, but I really can't be asked right now. I might write up about this theory in detail at some point, or even make a youtube video about it, because I think this is a legitimately interesting point, and is the strongest evidence I can notice for Persona's cacophobic theming)
Which more or less seems to be an indicator to me that the developers are aware of their whole theming, and are doing it somewhat on purpose. But it's honestly hard to say. It's hard to tell what the hell ANYONE knows about this, since most people seem to be entirely unable to present a coherent stance on this whole topic.
What is clear is that they clearly understand that beautiful women have a rough time of it. They understand this is mostly caused by ugly looking people. They understand to some extent that when ugly-looking people are granted freedom it leads to bad things. They grasp that beauty is nessecary, and that it should be protected at all costs.
And, speaking from someone who feels like I do, Persona 5 comes across to me as ludicrously cacophobic feeling. I mean, from certain aspects of Ann's character, to Yusuke's beauty-shtick, to general design style, and a lot of the lines from the characters. It feels cacophobic/anti-ugly to the extreme. But the problem is whether this is being done with any sort of conscious intent, and how much is me just projecting as a cacophobe. And the problem is that, despite feeling this way, a lot of what's being presented doesn't align with/feels like it somehow betrays that feeling. That's part of the whole frustration I have with Persona in general, and it's that which is behind the theming of my Ugly People Must Suffer fanfic (and will be explored more deeply in the follow up that I plan to write. It's going to get very interesting, given that the story has gone balls-to-the-walls meta, having Ann & the Phantom Thieves directly interacting with the Persona fandom itself.)
I think the issue, though, is more the fact that Persona is just being reflective of a strange dichotomy that a lot of people actually have about this whole thing.
Honestly, I feel like if you were to ask the average person "is Persona 5 anti-ugliness?", they'd say yes, without a second thought. Because it just clearly is, everything about it angles itself from that. If you were to be like, "Does Persona 5 understand that ugly looking people are worthless?", that's when the answers would become more varied. And the fact that there's even any sort of...difference that occurs between those two in peoples heads is the problem.
To me, that's very indicative of a society where people are kidding themselves, a society where people are trying to ignore the truth. You make up bullshit to lick each others wounds, and keep one another happy. But at the end of the day, it's built on nothing but lies. This endless limbo is so glaringly obvious.
And, of course, I'm not saying that I think most people are secretly housing some sort of desire to see ugly people get hurt. In fact, I think most of you idiots genuinely kid yourselves into feeling either niceties for or housing some level of "human value" within, ugly people. The problem is that the world is too damn nice to them. But in the end, being nice doesn't make for a stable world, and you just need to accept that MAYBE ugliness should just rot away and die. Ugly looking people are a plague and they need to be dealt with.
If only Persona could actually present something like this as a plotline. I know they have the ability-As much as I knock the writing of Persona 5, I don't think that's necessarily due to bad writing, it's more due to the writers not having a full grasp on how to depict a character like Ann in a way that isn't very crowd-pleasing, trying to write around a bunch of weird societal nonsense so that they don't upset anyone, and generally not being conscious of more socially stigmatised aspects to a character like Ann. Setting aside all other issues here, even if I was to look at only the "anti-sexism/weaponing beauty & sex appeal" aspects of Ann's character that I like, Ann's character is still very surface level in that regard. This isn't a knock against Persona 5 itself, as I don't think this is necessarily an indicator of bad writing, it's more a fanbase issue. But let's be fair, a lot of people act like Persona 5 came out in the 1980s. The entire thing is very "any sane person would agree" regarding all it's social commentary. All the aspects that could be considered social taboos to speak about stopped being so ages ago. Ann's character depiction really didn't break any big taboos about how women should be treated (or even hafus, for that matter) for 2016, even for Japanese society. I mean, don't get me wrong, it was saying something that could've pissed off some bigoted incels, sure, and that's great. But, again, that feels very surface level regarding that. This whole thing of how Persona tends to present a very standard layer of "breaking social taboo" isn't really a knock on the games, like I said (although I do think that it's an indication of the writers making Ann a character that just. has all vague intention shoved into her at once, to be a total crowd pleaser), but even so, I think that there IS an element in there of being too scared to make any deeper points with characters like Ann about making her a legitimate femme fatale character, due to all of the female characters being purposefully presented as cute waifu dolls.
There's a potential for a really good cacophobic Persona character, and a really good storyline about how outta appearance indicates value, and how vile ugly-looking people are, if they have the balls to go through with it. Have a character like Ann, or like Rise, and really angle it in a way that isn't completely undermined by you feeling the need to make sure she doesn't step on the toes of male/insecure-female players. Just go full in on it.