I’ve already written a somewhat thorough review about Persona 5, and I also have discussed it at length in a podcast. Now I’m back to talk more about Persona 5! Why, you might ask? Haven’t you covered everything you need to say about Persona 5? No, I absolutely have not. I want to talk more about the arc and treatment of Ann Takamaki within the game and in the merchandising surrounding it.
Hint: It’s not good. Spoilers below.
Let’s discuss for a moment what Ann’s arc is within the game–specifically the first palace. When we first meet Ann, she is rumored to be sleeping with a teacher named Kamoshida, and as the story continues, we learn that said teacher is physically abusing the students on his volleyball team. In addition, he is threatening to remove Ann’s best friend Shiho from her spot on the team if Ann does not sleep with him. When this fails, he rapes Shiho as a punishment to take out his anger, and she then tries to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of the school.
Ann becomes determined to do something about the teacher, and she enters the palace via following the Protagonist and Ryuji. She is taken hostage and set up in a torture device by the henchmen of Kamoshida, and we learn that he considers Ann his “Queen” and keeps a cognitive version of her in his palace, where she is dressed in a skimpy bikini and fawning over his every move. It later becomes extremely apparent that Kamoshida only sees Ann as a sexual object, and she is extremely uncomfortable with that notion. Further, when she first has her transformation in a Phantom Thief, she is distraught at the outfit she transforms into, which is her Panther costume. 
His final boss form has cognitive versions of Ann in wine glasses, and he is shown devouring young women to regain his strength. Needless to say, the entirety of Kamoshida’s palace is extremely tough on Ann. She personally blames herself a lot for what happened to Shiho, and her sexuality was exploited in a way that clearly upset her.
In the build up to the next dungeon, Yusuke, due to his lack of social understanding and intense pressure to produce a new art piece for his mentor, asks Ann to model nude for him. While he is clearly wrong for asking it, and she explicitly says she does not want to do it, it is sort of played up as a joke. This was uncomfortable given what we had literally just seen in the last dungeon. Ann does not want to be reduced to her body and sexuality. She is uncomfortable by the situation.
She is again reduced to her body later in the game when they are in Shido’s cruise ship. There is a descendent of royalty that has a vice for women, so Ryuji’s solution is to send Ann out in a bikini. 1 It is really strange and inappropriate for the game to treat Ann as a sexual object when they feel it is appropriate, when the writing of the game also indicates that she does not want it. She is also uncomfortable trying to seduce the guy and with his advances, and it’s honestly a pointless and fanservicey scene because you have to fight the guy anyway. It felt inconsistent and gross that Persona 5 has Ann arguing for agency of her own sexuality and body throughout, but then where it is “funny” or for fanservice, it’s a-okay. This is seen in the scene where Ann is sweating in the Morgana car, and the boys oogle her breasts, which she is justifiably angry about. This happens once again during the fireworks yukata scene. Ann is trying to remove excess water from her yukata and shows off her thigh. The boys leer at Ann, and it is played once again for laughs. It does not end there. There is another scene where the team goes to the beach, and when Ann comes out of the dressing room, Ryuji makes grabby hands at her breasts. Although she plays it off as Ryuji not thinking she was so bad because he has now seen her in a bikini, it was once again a strange departure from her own narrative of what she felt about her body. These are just in game ways that Ann’s own feelings and thoughts about her body and sexuality are completely disregarded for the enjoyment of men or for laughs. 2
We also as the consumer need to remember that Ann is sixteen years old in canon. She is not an adult, and it makes it even more disturbing to play through the game with these situations when she is arguing for her own agency as a teenager who is uncomfortable with the treatment she receives because of her looks. I do want to clarify–women are allowed to be sexy. I know this argument will come up, so here it is. Women are and can be sexy. However, this is not a real, actual woman making these choices in how she is presented or dressing. Even in the narrative, she argues she doesn’t want to be seen that way. This is a teenage girl that writers are making into a sexual object for laughs and fanservice despite the attempt at progressiveness in the beginning with her first dungeon.
On the topic of the gross sexualizing of Ann, the merchandise that has been revealed follows that trend. One figure in particular is the worst offender. Besides the back-breaking pose that I think is supposed to invoke her art pose3, it’s a figure that is purely fap bait.
Her pose is overtly sexy, her breasts and butt are pushed out and visible, and worst of all, they have sculpted the figure to show off her vulva. This is offensive. This is a sixteen year old girl who struggles with being sexualized and reduced to only her body, and that is exactly what this figure does with zero shame about it. There are ways to sculpt a female character in a skin tight suit without making it vulgar and sexualized.4 
This figure does not do that. It doesn’t respect the character and her narrative, it doesn’t respect that she is an underage girl, and honestly, the character of Ann and the players of Persona 5 deserve better than this nonsense.
It is strange that Ann is a character that Atlus seems to have little qualms throwing to the wolves. It was great to have a narrative in a game of a girl openly explaining what she is comfortable and uncomfortable with when it comes to her body, especially in tandem with an intense story about sexual harassment, abuse of power, rape, attempted suicide, and friendship between two girls. She is one of the strongest characters in the game, and her arc is fascinating. To have her reduced down to her body is exactly what Kamoshida did, and he was quite literally the villain of the first palace. What does that say about Atlus and the writers who allowed this treatment of Ann?
- While the rest of the girls also go, it is clear who the target is here.
- It is also extremely strange that she has a tone of a dominatrix within her battle costume. The latex and boob window were far enough as it was, but having her use a whip and yell, “squeal like a pig!” while whipping the enemies is a bit uncomfortable to watch.
- but instead just looks uncomfortable
- I actually have a couple
Oh my god, nobody cares. She’s hot and wasnt designed for people like you to enjoy. Is that so hard to understand?
a lot of people do care. obviously. just bc you are an unflushed toilet doesn’t mean everyone is. is that so hard to understand?
Only stupid SJW’s care.
I care more about Ann’s character development than how she uses her sexuality (which doesn’t bother me, there is nothing wrong with being sexy and using it to her advantage).
Have you ever stopped to consider that the dominatrix persona is intentional and fitting? Ann is re-claiming (claiming?) her sexuality and she now wields it as a weapon, as power. Instead of being an object, she is in control. That is the essense of domination, be it sexual or otherwise.
not everything has to an attack on something or meant to offend someone or show something in a negative way
some things are simple in life, and nothing is simpler in life than men love hot women, that is just a fact
the character is not over sexualized, it is perfectly sexualized because it’s sexy to begin with, in real life you can’t sexualize something that is not sexy, that’s why you don’t see these video game things in real life
and can we please stop with the she’s 16 years old? A)she’s 16, but has more developed shapes than a 30 year old woman and B)in Japan 16 is well over the legal age, 13 or 14 i believe, and the game takes place in Japan and is made in Japan
I think you may be over doing it, but getting outside of the political sphere some people who hate ann thinks she is THOT and a hypocrite as she is using her body. That is something actual Persona fans have told me. I know not everyone is an SJW. Anyway, I like Ann. She is my favorite character because of confident and how she owns everything. Outside of her Phantom Thief look, she is pretty tame actually compared to the other girls in the Persona series.
Thank you for making this article. I thought Ann’s scenes, especially her awakening, were way too sexualized to be anything but sexy. I thought of the other awakenings as painful and suspenseful, but Ann’s “pain” in that scene was just sexual, including the semen-looking saliva and suggestive camera shots that the other characters did not have in their own.
I really wish Ann’s story arc was “I am more than just my looks” and not “Yeah I’m sexy, so what?” It seems kind of backwards character development. Her character seems just like a more aggressive version of Kamoshida’s shadow version of her, something I can almost see Kamoshida being in to (yuck). I wish the part of her character of wanting people to see past her looks became the central focus of her character and persona, not about “reclaiming her sexuality”. It would make more sense with her whole arc actually.
Hi, my ex and we’re discussing P5 (I know P5 R came out but haven’t played it so idk if they reworked the story to accommodate this treatment of Ann) and we both find her our fav character. Our conversation fell to a similar problem where she expressed disappointment that Panther was sexualized against her will even as her whole arc was escaping sexual abuse. I thought it was odd her persona was a manifestation of Carmen, that play being… Nowhere really near analogous to Anne’s personal journey. I thought the team must have a reason psychologically, something to do with collective unconscious, ANYTHING for this to be happening to Ann. Because if no then… Well then my ex was much more knowledgeable about how men treat women in media and I was just a well meaning idiot because YOU WOULDNT TREAT ANN LIKE THIS AFTER WHAT SHE’S BEEN THROUGH AND WHAT DRIVES HER AS A PERSON RIGHT?? It would just be gaudy, really inconsiderate, and genuinely fucked. I was so concerned that I googled this issue, found this article and am REALLY fucking distraught that she gets treated like this for the rest of the game. I REALLY wanted to like this game. I DO like this game. I am just upset that this is how they treated someone ( I know she isn’t real but I mean…). I also saw no mention about annoying Morganna is about Ann. It is crazy how whenever I hit someone weakness as Ann Morganna is off purring with delight over this girl it doesn’t need to be in the game idk why it is my ex and I both hate this cat.
This cat is the equivalent of shredded lettuce on a burrito I hate it, it ruins the composition, it adds nothing nutritional, so why does it come standard in so many burritos.
Idk
Had to vent out here.
Thank you for your article, it really cleared how naive I was up. I am extremely disappointed at her handling.
Had to throw some shade on Morganna while I was at it.
Hi! I’m really glad you took the time to comment on this with your thoughts. It was really disappointing to me how Ann was treated, and it actually makes me really happy that my article was enlightening for you. I didn’t even go into how awful Morgana’s sexualization of Ann was into this, but you’re absolutely right about that and also how awful shredded lettuce is. I’m a huge fan of Persona (I have an entire corner of my house that’s just Persona 3 art!), so I cannot even describe how utterly disappointed I was with how terribly the narrative treats very serious subjects.
Great article. I like my sexy characters if done right, my standards aren’t that high. but Persona 5 botches it so inconsistently and awkwardly with Ann and among other things that it boggles the mind.
Thank you! Yes, that’s exactly the problem. There is nothing inherently wrong with sexy characters. However, when they’re done this poorly, it just becomes a joke and offensive. Ann’s narrative is a giant mess because they can’t decide what they want to do with her.