Persona 5: The Phantom Xslammed into the Western gacha gaming scene last month. With it came a divisive figure: Takeyuki Kiuchi. Better known as the Subway Slammer. The moment Kiuchi declared that the entire Subway was his “for the slammin”, the memes started to pour in from all over the internet.
But what started off as dumb fun started to dictate the discourse. I’ve come across several instances of people insisting that Kiuchi is a terribly written character, and it typically boils down to that iconic meme, and the inevitable comparison to Persona 5’s Kamoshida as both are the first major antagonists you encounter across each game. Despite the jeers, I think Kiuchi deserves a little more love. In fact, he may actually be a better introductory villain than Kamoshida ever was.
Introductory Villains, Stakes, And Subway Slammin’
Allow me to set the stage for our unsavory salaryman. Kiuchi is introduced as a petty menace. While Wonder is learning about the shadow realm, Kiuchi is aggressively bumping into women on the subway platform. However, it isn’t long before his actions start to escalate. Soon he’s shoving people onto the tracks, and thanks to Wonder’s unique ability to glimpse potential futures, we see that he will grow more emboldened, with these escalations continuing until tragedy strikes (read: infanticide and manslaughter).
The stakes are firmly established here. Kiuchi is a malignant problem, and he’s one we need to deal withbeforethe consequences become more dire. Now, let’s think back to Kamoshida. By the time we confront him, he’s already routinely physically assaulting multiple children, and has sexually assaulted at least one of them, driving them to make an attempt on their own life.
That’s how our confrontation with Kamoshidabegins,and it casts a shadow across the rest of the game. Not because Kamoshida is a bad villain per se, but because every villain that appears after him lowers the stakes. The art plagiarist and greedy capitalist bosses just don’t hit the same when your launching-off point is someone as ghoulishly evil as Kamoshida.
Kiuchi Reflects The Times
But that’s not the only point of comparison I want to talk about here. Every scene involving Kamoshida serves one purpose, to show him as unrelentingly evil. Which is inevitable when you are dealing with a villain as repulsive as Kamoshida. We really don’t want to get to know him better, we want to stick him in a cage and shove said cage into a river. But since Kiuchi is a little more buffoonish, and his actions a little less repulsive, the game can explore his character.
We get to see Kiuchi’s journey from his perspective while exploring his palace, and as we do so, we see that things aren’t quite what we had first believed them to be. Initially, he is presented as a resentful salaryman who feels like his baseball career was ruined by our first Phantom Thief recruit, Motoha Arai. But the further down the rabbit hole we go, the more layers of Kiuchi’s psyche are peeled back.
We see that his issues are less to do with one baseball incident, and more to do with his inability to take any responsibility for his actions. Throughout his life, he has squandered his opportunities, and chosen to blame women for all his own personal failures. His whole subway slamming schtick is the impotent lashing out of an entitled loser.
Given how the Bro Rogan podcast sphere has gradually consumed the minds of young men, Kiuchi’s story ends up feeling surprisingly contemporary. And the whole subway shoving angle? Though it is comically exaggerated, it isn’t as far-fetched as you might believe.The Butsukari Otoko, or the ‘bumping man’, is a real issue that has cropped up in Japan, but has since started to become an issue all over. And just like with Kiuchi, since there is plausible deniability, the police are often hesitant to intervene.
Persona Has Never Shied Away From Being A Little Silly
Now, is the Subway Slammer silly? Yes. He isverysilly. But, also… aren’t most villains in the Persona franchise? When people first started laughing at Kiuchi, I was laughing alongside them. I don’t even really see it as a criticism. This is the kind of thing I play modern Persona games for.
Persona villainsloveto give over-the-top, melodramatic villain speeches. Half the time, their motivations are thin and cartoonish. That’s been the vibe of the series for a while now. Even Kamoshida, as grotesque as he is, gives a villain’s monologue in the teachers lounge, declaring that your character’s futures are his to take. It’s all very camp, and I love the series for its willingness to be a little absurd.
Kiuchi is worthy of being memed on. He said that the entire subway is his for the slammin’, after all. But a character being a little absurd doesn’t actually make them terribly written. In fact, it helps to disarm the player, and makes him more approachable from a character study perspective. No one wants to get inside the head of a guy who’s sexually assaulting children, but I was certainly more amenable to learning what makes the guy who bumps into people on the subway tick.
And best of all, Kiuchi leaves plenty of room for a more gradual ramp towards truly villainous foes as the game progresses, something his Persona 5 precursor made much more difficult. Though, considering how the second villain in P5X feels like he was ripped from an alternate draft of Ratatouille, thatmaynot be in the cards.
