Chapter Text

In a world without Shadows, the research and technological advancements that would have gone into the development of Anti-Shadow weapons was instead put into developing androids designed to serve humans for more mundane tasks, such as cleaning, cooking and shopping. Within twenty years, androids became commonplace around the home and the workplace. This technology was then developed into transhuman augmentations, ranging from replacement limbs to full-body cyborgs utilising cybernetic bodies known as Personas. Alongside this, a more direct new form of internet was created known as the Metaverse, which all cybernetically augmented individuals can access via cerebral implant for faster information sharing - and theft.

Ren Amamiya is sent to Tokyo on probation after being wrongfully convicted for assaulting a politician through falsified eyewitness testimony and doctored CCTV footage. Soon after arriving, his phone is hacked and an A.I. named M.O.N.A. is placed on it. With M.O.N.A.'s assistance, Ren is able to access the Metaverse on a deeper level than the average user, through which the minds of cybernetically augmented individuals can be fully accessed. With this technology, Ren forms a group known as the Phantom Thieves to engage in "cyber heists" in the minds of corrupt individuals to expose their dark secrets.

During a later heist, Ren is captured by the police and interrogated by Detective Sae Niijima. Ren is saved from assassination at the hand of the turncoat Goro Akechi thanks to foresight and a scheme cooked up by his team. Niijima's sister, Makoto, installs a program designed by Futaba Sakura onto her sister's phone that installs a related program onto Ren's phone once the two phones are on and in proximity. Ren convinces Niijima to leave her phone in his seat and give him is phone back. After she leaves, her phone projects a hologram of Ren, controlled remotely by Futaba, while Ren's phone activates a cloak around him, allowing Akechi to believe he shot and killed Ren before leaving. Niijima then smuggles an android double of Ren created by Tae Takemi into the room to stand in for his body while she smuggles the cloaked Ren out of the station.

The group's actions expose a vast web of corruption going as high as the next potential Prime Minister, Masayoshi Shido, who has been using similar Metaverse hacking techniques to spread his influence to the masses to ensure his ascendance to the highest position of government, intent on controlling the country in a truly dystopic fashion.

Unfortunately, when Shido is exposed, the public is totally disinterested, influenced by the work of an A.I. named Yaldabaoth, which intends to take Shido's plan and go further, totally controlling all cybernetic individuals and forcing the rest to conform or be purged. The Phantom Thieves defeat Yaldabaoth and purge it from the Metaverse for good.

Soon after, Takuto Maruki performs a mass hack of all cybernetic individuals in Tokyo using an older prototype of Yaldabaoth named Azathoth, intent on placing their minds into an ideal digital world free of pain and sadness. Ren is among the few to recognise this world for what it truly is and is forced to jar his friends out of this cyberspace and lead them against Maruki to shut down Azathoth. With the Metaverse threats dealt with and his probation over, Ren returns home.

He makes his return to Tokyo a few months later, just in time to deal with another Metaverse threat in the form of other people using the brain-hacking for personal gain. This time, the group are aided by police detective Zenkichi Hasegawa and an A.I. named Sophia. Sophia is later discovered to be an unused prototype for yet another A.I. system named Demiurge, designed to replace Yaldabaoth and accomplish the same goal. With help from Demiurge and Sophia's lead programmer, the team is able to shut down Demiurge before its plan can fully come to fruition.

After finishing high school back home, Ren moves back to Tokyo to attend college, reuniting with his friends on a more permanent basis.

As Joker, Ren carries a Vibrodagger, a dagger customised with vibration functions to increase cutting power. His ranged weapon is a simple handgun with nonlethal electric bolts.

M.O.N.A. (Metaverse Operation Navigational Assistant)

M.O.N.A. is an A.I. hacked onto Ren Amamiya's phone by a mysterious benefactor whose identity and motive remain a mystery even to M.O.N.A. He serves as the Phantom Thieves' navigator through the Metaverse and hacking into people's minds. After the group's first operation, Ann Takamaki buys an android cat body for M.O.N.A. to inhabit when not engaged in Metaverse activity.

M.O.N.A. develops an odd fascination with Ann, which he doesn't understand until later is a form of love, despite being a machine. This gives M.O.N.A. a secondary goal of obtaining a humanoid cyber body that she can love in turn.

M.O.N.A. begins to lose confidence in himself as Makoto Niijima and Futaba Sakura take more and more of his purpose as a navigator away, leading to him leaving the group and meeting Haru Okumura, eventually rejoining the team alongside her.

M.O.N.A. exists as a real human in Maruki's false reality. He is about to ask Ann on a date when Ren confronts him about the true reality.

During the Jails incidents, M.O.N.A. acts as an older brother of sorts to fellow A.I. Sophia. As a parting gift, he gives her his cat body so she can better explore the real world with her creator.

Inside the Metaverse, M.O.N.A. wields three curved swords styled after cat claws. His ranged weapon of choice is a slingshot with numerous nonlethal projectile options.

Ryuji "Skull" Sakamoto

Ryuji is a former track star whose potential career fell apart when he lost his leg in a car crash that also claimed the life of his father. Although there was no hard evidence, Ryuji insisted that his coach, Suguru Kamoshida, was responsible as the two had had a fierce argument right before the accident. Ryuji's claims were quickly disregarded due to Kamoshida's overwhelmingly positive public image as an Olympic medallist and respected member of the Shujin Academy faculty. Ryuji continued to insist on Kamoshida's guilt, far past the limits of the sympathy the accident had borne.

Frustrated that his claims were not being taken seriously, Ryuji lashed out at Kamoshida and kicked him with his new cybernetic leg. Kamoshida retaliated by breaking said leg to the point of unusability. Kamoshida's actions were deemed self-defence and he opted not to press charges against Ryuji, presenting himself as an empathetic and understanding authority figure, further widening the gap in their respective reputations. It grew yet further when the track team was disbanded due to Ryuji's attack.

Ryuji's home life also took a turn for the worse following the accident. Ryuji's new leg was paid for by his father's entire life insurance policy to make Ryuji's life as comfortable as possible. Kamoshida's retaliation had left that leg totally unusable, forcing Ryuji's mother to work extra shifts to afford a new, much cheaper leg. Unlike the previous leg, this model was not designed to extend to retain consistent length with his organic leg. A such, many more payments would be required for new legs as his body continued to grow, forcing his mother to continue working extra hours to save money for Ryuji's future.

Ryuji continues to hold this grudge until he meets the new transfer student, Ren Amamiya, and is the first person to connect with his fellow pariah. He joins Ren on his first venture into the Metaverse, continuing on as a founding member of the Phantom Thieves to help expose Kamoshida's vile actions.

Ryuji's money troubles are eventually brought to an end once Haru Okumura gains access to her inheritance. Her first expenditure with said money is a top-of-the-line leg for Ryuji. He tries to turn down her offer, but her insistence that he deserves it for being such a good friend and reliable comrade is echoed by the entire team, leaving him no choice but to tearfully accept the offer. Haru also hires his mother as her personal assistant, a role that involves little actual work and is mostly just an excuse to give the family more money. Ryuji is quick to pick up on this, and is incredibly grateful to Haru for giving his mother a chance to relax for the first time in well over a year.

In his ideal reality, Ryuji still has his leg and his father. With prodding from Ren, he realises how unusual it is to see his mother free of burden and stress.

As Skull, Ryuji wields a Force Hammer, a sledgehammer with an external force drive to expel greater force on impact. His gun of choice is a beanbag-propelling shotgun that produces greater force in the Metaverse.

Ann "Panther" Takamaki

Ann is a half-foreign teenager, born to two Persona designers for the Kirijo Group's R&D Division. Her promising modelling career was cut shot when she was involved in a fatal accident as a child. Now a full-body cyborg, to help pay for the regular new Personas designed to incrementally age her physically as she grew up, Ann accepted a deal to model new Personas in return for a very handsome income.

Early on, Ann opted for Japanese-styled Personas to help blend in with her Japanese classmates and escape the constant bullying and harassment she had faced until then. But when she entered high school, a spark of rebellion lit a fire inside her and she adopted a new body that was more true to her halfu ethnicity. This decision led to even more severe bullying than before and the scandal led to her deal with the Kirijo Group's modelling department being brought to an end.

Still needing to afford the incremental new Personas, even without her former corporate discount, Ann's parents accepted higher-paying work abroad, while she managed to find similar work at a more risqué magazine designed around the mystique and beauty of transhumanism. This led to her being discovered by Suguru Kamoshida, one of the first cyber-enhanced Olympic athletes in the world, now a physical education teacher and volleyball coach at her school, Shujin Academy. He offered to pay her handsomely to help fund her next Persona in return for risqué photoshoots for Kamoshida's private collection. Reluctantly, Ann accepted his terms.

She had only one friend at Shujin: Shiho Suzui, a girl from another class in her grade who had accepted a similar deal from Kamoshida for her own reasons. Eventually, the types of shoots Kamoshida had them engage in grew more and more uncomfortable for the two, including fetishistic shoots and lesbian teasing. The discomfort caused by these shoots, combined with Kamoshida's rougher demeanour and threats to keep going with the shoots leads to Shiho making an attempt on her own life.

Distraught, Ann begins plotting revenge against Kamoshida, knowing there is nobody she can trust to help her. However, as she plots, she overhears a former middle school friend, Ryuji Sakamoto, speaking with the new transfer student, Ren Amamiya, as the two plot something very similar. Ann forces the two to accept her help in their scheme, unwittingly becoming one of the founding members of the Phantom Thieves and the designer of their costumes.

With Kamoshida's abuse exposed by the group, public perception of Ann shifts into a more sympathetic light, thanks to an article written by Ichiko Ohya presenting her as an unfortunate victim of the poverty forced upon her by an uncaring corporation that cut off her lifeline and practically handed her to Kamoshida on a silver platter. In what is widely recognised as purely a PR move, the Kirijo Group offers to resume their former working relationship with Ann. Now emboldened by her new friends and their accomplishments, Ann fiercely negotiates to have the Kirijo Group not only pay her more than before, but also give her a new Persona upfront and pay for Shiho's medical bills.

Ann's first decision in this new Persona free of the tainted memories of Kamoshida is to visit Shiho in the hospital and deliver the good news in person. The second is to celebrate Kamoshida's defeat with her new teammates.

Ann later meets and befriends Ichiko Ohya while investigating Ichiryusai Madarame and the two become good friends.

Ann's altered reality life has both her and Shiho as full flesh-and-blood humans with none of their traumas. A desperate Ren reminds her of the truth by cutting her arm, making her realise how strange the notion of bleeding red blood instead of the cybernetic blue blood is to her.

As Panther, Ann wields a customised Heat Coil, a wire intended to be wrapped around an injured arm or leg to apply both pressure and warmth to help it heal. Ann's is altered to be able to let out far greater heat, allowing it to burn on contact. Inside the Metaverse, this translates to a fire whip with healing capabilities. Her gun of choice is a submachine gun with nonlethal rounds.

Yusuke "Fox" Kitagawa

Yusuke is the son of a popular online artist known by the handle 'Sayuri The Kitsune'. She made a modest living for herself with this, but after becoming pregnant with her son, she knew her current income would not support both of them. She sought aid from her former college art teacher, Ichiryusai Madarame, who agreed to let the soon-to-be-mother and her son live in his home in the meantime.

The two began a relationship of mutual teaching, him giving advice borne from decades of experience as he had years earlier, and her teaching him the way of the modern digital artist. Unbeknownst to his student, Madarame grew envious of her success, which had long since surpassed his own meagre accomplishments.

A few years after the two's living arrangement began, Sayuri suffered a severe seizure. Madarame allowed her to die so he could claim her current work-in-progress as is own and use it to quickly make a name for himself. After reporting his student's death, Madarame agreed to adopt her son once it became clear that none of her family would take the boy. He then released the now completed work under the name 'Sayuri' as a tribute to his late student.

Madarame cultivated Yusuke's artistic talents, as well as those of other students. Initially, he would convince them to allow him to claim joint credit for the piece once he added his own touches, claiming artist's block each time. After a while, the possibility of utilising the Metaverse to hack into the minds of his students, both those taught in person and those taught via online classes, opened up far greater opportunities for theft. He hired a hacker online to erase his students' memories of their work upon its completion and claimed full credit for himself.

By the time he becomes a target of the Phantom Thieves, Madarame is starting to enter the market of selling art as non-fungible tokens, which only Yusuke is aware of, but has been convinced of its necessity by his mentor.

Struggling with his own art, Yusuke approaches Ann soon after she acquires her new Persona, having read Ichiko Ohya's article on the Kamoshida case. Inspired by her story, he asks her to allow him to draw her in a bid to capture 'the beauty of perseverance'. She agrees, seeing both an opportunity to reclaim her sexuality from Kamoshida, and a chance to question Yusuke about the NFT and theft allegations made against Madarame by a former student who escaped the memory alteration.

Yusuke refuses to accept the claims due to Madarame's manipulation of his memories, but thanks to M.O.N.A. explaining the concept of NFTs to him, Yusuke realises that his feelings of disgust towards the concept are unusually mild when regarding Madarame's alleged involvement with them and begins to question his blind faith in his mentor. He allows the group to enter his mind in search of evidence of memory tampering. With this evidence found, Yusuke is able to see Madarame's duplicity for what it truly is and helps the group to expose his criminal deeds as Fox, in tribute to his mother's online handle.

Alongside this exposure, the group find that Madarame's own memory of the death of Yusuke's mother is missing, which M.O.N.A. theorises he did to himself to hide what happened to Yusuke's mother, either to keep the truth from being discovered or to clear his own conscience.

Yusuke begins his career anew, beginning with his completed art of Ann and unveiling it at an online art expo designed to get digital artists more work.

In the altered reality, Yusuke still lives with his mother and Madarame. Ren exposes the truth by reminding Yusuke of the history behind the Sayuri, which has no reason to have that name if his mother is still alive.

Yusuke's weapon is a katana, a refined weapon customised with the same vibration function as Ren's dagger. His gun is an assault rifle with nonlethal rounds.

Makoto "Queen" Niijima

Makoto is the daughter of a police officer from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Cyber Crimes Division. Responding to a call of Domestic violence, he and a few other officers confronted a full-body cyborg going berserk. In the confrontation, Makoto's father was killed by the cyborg, who was then detained and found to have been driven to their crime by a glitch in the brain transfer process, leading to a lighter sentence than would typically be given to a cop killer.

As a result of this, Makoto became rather withdrawn and highly suspicious of all cyborgs, especially the full-body kind. This only worsened as her older sister followed in their father's footsteps, becoming a police detective herself, and working long hours to support them both, giving her little time with her sister. Makoto focused on her studies at her sister's behest and reached the position of Student Council President at Shujin Academy, the first non-Metaverse-user to do so since the product launched.

Following the Madarame case, Makoto becomes concerned over the so-called 'Phantom Thieves' and begins investigating the group at school, concluding that the members must be staff or students there, given that a staff member was their first target. Contemplating the group's potential motives, Makoto disregards the notion of the group acting out of a sense of justice since their actions are highly illegal, as well as a growing sense of disillusionment in human desire for justice after what became of her father's killer. When contemplating who might have benefited from the outing of Kamoshida, Makoto's attention is turned towards Ann Takamaki, who received a brand new Persona and a high-paying job as a result of the incident.

Makoto begins following Ann and her friends around in hopes of finding evidence of their involvement. Although her attempts are quickly noticed by Ann and her friends, Makoto is undeterred after learning that the abused apprentice of the group's second target is also a part of their friend group despite going to a different school. Combined with the presence of Ren Amamiya and Ryuji Sakamoto, the former having begun attending Shujin less than a month before Kamoshida was exposed, and the latter having a known history with the former teacher, Makoto becomes certain that this is the group. She brazenly confronts the group at school and threatens to expose them if they do not prove themselves truly just.

The group learn of a yakuza organisation targeting young cyborgs to sell their augmentations on the black market, with a few Shujin students having already been targeted. Makoto accepts this target and observes the group's methods. Her ability to observe is limited, however, by the fact that she lacks an implant to access the Metaverse. Despite her reservations about the technology, Makoto requests an implant from her sister, despite the extra hours her sister will need to work to pay for it. Makoto justifies it as being to aid in studying, based on studies proving the Metaverse's effectiveness in that area, and promising to pay her sister back once her career gets underway.

With the implant, Makoto becomes a temporary member of the Phantom Thieves, proving quite useful to the team with her analytical and strategic mind. When the group laments her membership's temporary status, Makoto finds herself feeling oddly fulfilled by helping them, having felt utterly useless in her sister's eyes since Sae started supporting them both. As a result, once the yakuza group is exposed and arrested, Makoto requests that the team let her join permanently. They gladly do so, but the tension between Makoto and Ann persists for quite some time.

Ann eventually confronts Makoto about this, Makoto revealing everything involving her father's death. The group sympathise with her, but Ann is disgusted that Makoto would allow her sense of justice to become clouded by a prejudice against people that, in many cases, had no choice in their augmentation. Learning of Ann's entire situation, Makoto is ashamed and requests ejection from the team. Ann refuses, demanding that Makoto instead work to help the people she held prejudice against, as she had with the prior case. Makoto tearfully agrees and stays on as the team's strategist, slowly becoming close friends with Ann and the rest.

Makoto proves her willingness to change through her key role in the rehabilitation of Futaba Sakura. Futaba teaches Makoto more about the possibilities of her new implant, including the ability to interface with vehicles. This inspires Makoto to begin saving money for a motorcycle. After a few months, she is able to afford the bike and to pay back her sister. She claims the money came from her part-time job, making Sae suspicious.

Makoto finds herself conflicted when the group are forced to target her sister, who is getting closer to uncovering the group's identities. When the time comes for the group to make their final move against her, Makoto finds herself considering coming clean to her sister about everything. The group's newest member, Haru Okumura, is quick to pick up on this after her own experience targeting her own father. The two discuss the situation and they discern that Makoto's feelings have been exacerbated by the manipulations of their temporary member, Goro Akechi, to have Makoto take the fall as the traitor.

Instead, Makoto vows to change her sister's viewpoint without needing to hack her brain. This shift in approach brings Sae around to the group's side and allows her to assist in faking Ren's death. Sae speaks privately with her sister soon after and tells her how proud she is of her for pursuing her own justice, sure that their father would also be proud of her.

Makoto's ideal reality sees her father alive once more. Ren reminds her and her sister of what drove them to want to pursue law enforcement careers: the death of their father.

After completing high school, Makoto begins studying law at university in hopes of becoming a public defender, specialising in cases surrounding cyber crimes.

Makoto's weapon of choice is an exosuit for her arms, allowing for greater hand-to-hand capabilities, allowing her Aikido training to keep her competitive with enemy cyborgs and androids. Her gun is a revolver with non-lethal rounds, chosen for its classic feel, reflective of Makoto's limited augmentation.

Futaba "Oracle" Sakura

Futaba Sakura is the daughter of Wakaba Isshiki, one of the core developers of the Metaverse. Two years ago, when the more manipulative potential of the Metaverse was proposed, Wakaba objected. While the subject was supposedly shelved for now, she was instead used as the first test subject. Her mind was hacked into through the Metaverse as she was out with her daughter. Wakaba was made to jump out in front of a car and was killed.

Futaba was blamed in Wakaba's supposed suicide note and by those responsible. Futaba's own mind was also hacked into and her memories were rewritten to erase anything incriminating Futaba may have overheard and support the note's claims that Futaba had been such a colossal nuisance to her mother that she piled more stress onto Wakaba and led her to suicide.

Futaba was left in the care of Wakaba's close friend, Sojiro Sakura, who mostly left Futaba to her own devices to give her space. This allowed Futaba to live a hikikomori lifestyle, rarely leaving the Sakura house. During this time, she took up learning how to code and hack technology as a way of connecting with her late mother. She even designs her own cyberspace based on her old home, containing a program based on her mother.

When Futaba learns that Ren Amamiya will soon be living above Leblanc, she suspects him of being some sort of government plant and bugs the entire café to keep tabs on him. Through this, she learns that he and his friends are the Phantom Thieves that have been making a name for themselves by hacking into the minds of criminals. This makes Futaba wonder about the validity of her own memories, which Sojiro had always questioned.

Futaba blackmails the group into hacking into her mind to confirm if her memories have been tampered with. The group confirms this and uncovers a hidden message hacked into Futaba's mind by her mother and left suppressed to avoid detection. The message leads Futaba to a hidden cache of evidence that will bring the dark purposes of the Metaverse and the Yaldabaoth A.I. to light. Determined to use this information to avenge her mother, Futaba joins the group as Oracle.

The rest of the team slowly help Futaba to get used to other people and public spaces, making her much more capable of living a relatively normal life, allowing her to begin attending high school the following year. She wonders if her mother would be proud of her development.

In her altered reality, Wakaba is still alive and the two live with Sojiro. Ren asks what development her mother would be proud of, reminding her and Sojiro of the truth.

As a hacker, Futaba has no weapon, but she does have numerous apps on her wrist computer that can be used for quick disruption tricks.

Haru "Noir" Okumura

Haru is the heiress of Okumura Foods. The company went from an unknown to a monolithic success overnight when Haru's father, Kunikazu, became the CEO and shifted the company's focus to the then-current surge of cybernetic augmentations. Cyborgs require a special type of food to keep their cybernetic parts functioning, especially with full-body cyborgs. The only way this food was available at the time was as an unappetising, flavourless paste. Kunikazu pushed for the development of various flavours and textures, turning the company into the leading producer of food for cyborgs, purchasable both in stores and in the company's own Big Bang Burger restaurants.

The company began to receive criticism following a series of price increases on all but the most basic cyborg paste, making it difficult for many less well-off cyborgs to afford decent food. Accusations soon grew into claims of overworked employees and withheld benefits. While performing her own investigation into the allegations, Haru meets M.O.N.A. and joins the Phantom Thieves to uncover the truth and help make her father a better man.

Following the death of her father, Haru turns her attention towards her own business ambitions to develop new methods of producing better quality food for the augmented at a lower price by reducing production costs, experimenting with her own home-grown ingredients to do so.

Haru was to be part of an arranged marriage for her father's benefit, her status as an unaugmented individual (aside from the cerebral implant for Metaverse access) being coveted and fetishised by many the same way a woman's chastity was in the pre-augmentation era. Thanks to her time with the Phantom Thieves, Haru develops enough of a backbone to stand up for herself and call off the engagement forcefully, blackmailing her fiancé with evidence of his misdeeds uncovered through a Metaverse operation conducted by herself, Ren and M.O.N.A.

Her ideal reality sees her father being alive and the man she had hoped she could turn him into. Ren points out what she had intended and that it had never truly happened. Although she is initially reluctant to accept the truth, Ren has her sneak into her father's room while he sleeps and look at his eyes. The rolled back white eyes force the memory of his mental shutdown into her conscious mind and snap her out of her delusion. M.O.N.A. comforts her for the rest of the night.

After graduating from Shujin, Haru attends university to study business and agriculture to advance towards her ambitions.

As Noir, Haru wields a Magnetic Axe, designed to pull metal targets and her blade closer together to assist her aim. Her gun is a grenade launcher with numerous non-lethal ammunition types, such as flashbangs, smoke and tear gas.

Goro "Crow" Akechi

Goro is the secret bastard son of politician, Masayoshi Shido, born to a prostitute mother who has long since died. Goro became a key enforcer for his father as he grew older and proved himself highly intelligent, becoming a private investigator as cover for his operations. Seeing the potential in abusing Metaverse technology to advance his father's career, Goro began performing various cyber crimes in his father's name.

Once the Phantom Thieves begin to become a nuisance by targeting Shido's numerous associates, Goro is tasked with putting a stop to them. He achieves this by uncovering their identities and infiltrating their group to lead them into a trap.

In truth, the Phantom Thieves had never trusted Goro, having been tipped off that he knew more than he should have when he first met Ren and mentioned details of Ann Takamaki's involvement with Suguru Kamoshida that had been left out of police reports and news coverage, but had been mentioned by Ann in the group chat when contemplating what to share publicly.

Thanks to this tip-off, the group are able to fake Ren's death with a hologram and android replica. By the time Goro realises he's been tricked, the Phantom Thieves are already infiltrating Shido's mind.

The reality of Goro's existence comes to light when he confronts the Phantom Thieves inside his father's mind: Goro Akechi died when he was young. His father had an android commissioned based on his son to fill the void left by his son's sudden death. As Shido's schemes developed, he found a place for Goro in it and had the android reprogrammed to fulfil that purpose. A copy of the android's A.I. was created months prior to help guard Shido's mind, left unaffected by the android's time with the Phantom Thieves. Goro helps the Phantom Thieves escape Shido's mind before being killed by the A.I.

Following his death, the A.I. is reprogrammed to fulfil the group's collective desire for Akechi to have been a better person. This A.I. is now more reflective of his public visage than his real self, but retains that inner darkness beneath the surface. Even after learning he is simply part of Takuto Maruki's digital reality and will be erased when it is shut down, he pushes the Phantom Thieves onwards, helping them to defeat Azathoth and shut down the false reality.

As Crow, Goro wields a Pulse Saber. His gun of choice is his own licenced handgun and suppressor.

Kasumi/Sumire "Violet" Yoshizawa

Kasumi Yoshizawa was a talented gymnast from a young age. She was expected to one day take her talents to the Olympic level. Her parents were often busy with work, so her father, Shinichi, had an android commissioned in his daughter's image. He named her Sumire (Sumi-chan's Robotic Escort) and had her act as Kasumi's sister to keep her company. Across multiple bodies, Sumire fulfilled this duty and kept Kasumi's childhood happy.

When Kasumi was fourteen, while on her way to practice with her 'sister', Sumire was almost hit by a truck. On instinct, Kasumi pushed the android out of the way and was struck instead. Kasumi was pronounced dead on the scene.

Grief-stricken, Shinichi, the only member of her family in the know at the time, met with a counsellor, Dr. Takuto Maruki, who discussed with him the idea of transferring data from Kasumi's cerebral implant into an android mind that could live as Kasumi. Shinichi soon began plotting to write over Sumire's mind with Kasumi's data, turning her into a perfect double of his dearly departed daughter. As he planned how best to go about this, Sumire entered his office and asked him to do the very thing he was already plotting to do. She stated that she was created to keep Kasumi happy, and with Kasumi gone, she no longer had a purpose, unless she became Kasumi and sought happiness as Kasumi. Ashamed of what he had intended to do and thankful for this opportunity, Shinichi arranged for Dr. Maruki to perform the procedure.

The operation was a success - Sumire transformed fully into Kasumi, all but Shinichi and Maruki believing that Kasumi had become a full-body cyborg as a result of the accident, in which Sumire was destroyed saving Kasumi's life, a detail conceived by Shinichi to honour Sumire's sacrifice and to apologise for plotting to erase her without her consent.

Sumire, having never practiced gymnastics herself, was given a gymnastics program that was estimated to be around Kasumi's level of expertise, but Sumire struggled to adapt, partly due to her less flexible android body and partly her lack of experience clashing with her perceived experience. The disconnect was chalked up to a slump that she would work herself out of.

A few months later, 'Kasumi Yoshizawa' begins attending high school at Shujin Academy, where she meets and befriends Ren Amamiya and becomes acquainted with his friends. Some months after meeting, 'Kasumi' begins experiencing strange waking dreams of being someone else that she can't quite recognise. She meets with Dr. Maruki, now a counsellor for the Shujin students, who says he can find nothing wrong with her. Ren and M.O.N.A. enter her mind to try and find the cause. Inside, they are confronted by numerous broken symbols of duality, such as shattered mirrors and dolls with a burned or torn double. Assuming this to relate to trauma induced by 'Sumire's' death, the two opt to go no further and leave this to a professional.

Once Dr. Maruki's false reality is initiated, 'Kasumi' is once again part of a whole family, being Sumire once again with an A.I. version of Kasumi joining them, resulting from Shinichi's desire for Sumire to be herself again. Sumire's mind struggles to accept this reality, breaking down once Ren reminds her of 'Sumire's' death in the true reality.

Dr. Maruki takes her away from the Phantom Thieves to help fix her. By the time the team get to her again, she has been brought to a stable point, recalling both of her lives and knowing that she is actually Sumire. Wishing to forget as she had desired back then, she fights the Phantom Thieves, but is talked into accepting the reality of Kasumi's death, Ren telling her that forgetting Kasumi's sacrifice and refusing to live the life Kasumi saved would be disrespectful to her memory. Adopting the codename 'Violet' as evidence of her conviction to live as Sumire, she joins the Phantom Thieves.

Once the false reality is undone, the Yoshizawas make a public statement about Kasumi's death and Sumire's survival. Sumire continues training for the Olympics, now aiming for the android branch.

As Violet, Sumire wields Duel Rapiers, one for each "twin". Her ranged weapon of choice is her own extension arms, giving greater range to her swords.

Confidants

Sojiro Sakura

Sojiro is an old-school sort, one of the few people in Tokyo to not have any sort of cyber enhancement, not even the basic cerebral implant. He runs a small café named Leblanc, which is likewise lacking in modern technology.

He takes in Ren Amamiya following the latter's conviction at the request of his parents. While he pretends he did so on a random whim, Sojiro has long since become jaded by the systems that run society and believes the boy deserves a second chance that he isn't likely to receive elsewhere.

He is the foster father of Futaba Sakura, having taken her in following the death of her mother, who was an old friend of his. His parenting style revolves around giving Futaba space to process her mother's death. He keeps money aside to help her pay for computer parts, but is otherwise very hands-off until she begins to open up thanks to the influence of Ren and his friends.

He develops a close bond with M.O.N.A., who becomes a sort of mascot for the café while Ren is at school. M.O.N.A. also takes time to help Sojiro understand the complex processes of Metaverse hacking once he learns who the Phantom Thieves are.

By the time he returns home, Ren views Sojiro as something of a father figure after feeling abandoned by his own parents. Sojiro offers him his room at Leblanc whenever he wants to visit.

Sae Niijima

Sae is the older sister and legal guardian of Makoto Niijima since the death of their police officer father. Sae discarded her own dream of being a professional motorcycle racer for the more stable paycheck of a police officer to support herself and her sister. Sae quickly gained a reputation as a cop who got results, shooting up the ranks to detective. She also became known for being a stickler for the rules, motivated by her father's death being a result of a breach of protocol, leaving her to believe that only rigid following of rules yields results.

She is the first detective assigned to the mind-hacking case, whose perpetrator proves elusive. She is assigned to work with Private Investigator Goro Akechi. Sae gets closer to uncovering the group's identities and becomes a target as part of Akechi's plan to capture the group. He succeeds and Sae is assigned as the interrogator of the group's leader, Ren Amamiya.

Upon learning the full story from him, she begins to sympathise with him and believe in the group's cause, reluctantly inspired by their pursuit of justice in spite of the danger and lack of reward or guarantee of results. She gives him his phone back and allows hers to be used in the escape plan before smuggling Ren out of the building and back to Leblanc.

From this point on, Sae puts her skills and influence to use helping the Phantom Thieves to expose Masayoshi Shido. When the Yaldabaoth A.I. attempts to seize control, Sae helps those unaffected by the A.I.'s influence to evade those taken over.

Her relationship with Makoto becomes much more positive as a result of her pride in her sister's membership in the Phantom Thieves. This pride proves key to awakening her to the truth of the false reality, in which the sisters still live with their father. After this, Sae helps Makoto with her college selection and entrance exams, overjoyed that she wishes to follow in her and their father's footsteps.

Sae also provides assistance to Zenkichi Hasegawa when he is assisting the group during their reunion tour the following summer.

Years later, Sae and Makoto open the Niijima Detective Agency in Tokyo, offering both investigation services and legal defence.

Yuuki Mishima

Yuuki is a wheelchair-bound student attending Shujin Academy. He was a member of the school's volleyball team under Suguru Kamoshida, until the Olympic medallist's punishing training methods led to an accident in which Yuuki's spine was broken. Given Kamoshida's track record, the accident was deemed beyond his reasonable control and he suffered no punishment. Yuuki's teammates chose to keep the truth to themselves, lest Kamoshida's expulsion jeopardise their team.

Lacking the money for the constant supply of replacement augmentations for a growing young man, Yuuki's parents instead opted to have their son cope with a wheelchair until he was done growing. As a result, Yuuki began spending much of his free time interacting with the Metaverse, learning coding and cyberspace design and maintenance. This technological knowhow then led to Yuuki being exploited as part of Kamoshida's secret photography sessions with Ann Takamaki and Shiho Suzui. Yuuki was tasked with touching up Kamoshida's photos of the two girls, which he initially believed were taken entirely willingly. By the time he realised the truth behind these photo shoots, he was in too deep and threatened with exposure as an accomplice if he didn't continue his work in silence, even as the photos became anything but tame.

With the arrival of Ren Amamiya at Shujin, Yuuki leaks his new classmate's criminal record at Kamoshida's insistence. During Ren's investigation into Kamoshida's unsavoury acts, Yuuki reluctantly opens up about his accident and is exposed by Kamoshida as the leaker. Ren immediately forgives Yuuki, leaving a deep impression on the young man. He vows to help Ren and his burgeoning team in their crusade against injustice in any way he can.

Once the Phantom Thieves are established, Yuuki creates the 'Phansite', a Metaverse space for users to discuss the group and request assistance from them. As the group grows in popularity, so does the Phansite, and Yuuki's ego grows with them. He begins suggesting targets for pettier and pettier reasons, clashing with the group's moral code. Eventually, Ren leads an intervention inside the Metaverse to make Yuuki see the error of his ways. He does so and steps away from the site, hoping to find another way to help the group.

One member of the team, Futaba Sakura, takes pity on Yuuki and organises a fundraiser on the Phansite to afford a spinal implant for Yuuki. While in the hospital for treatment, Yuuki connects with Shiho Suzui. He confesses to his part in Kamoshida's abuse and she forgives him. The two cheer each other on in their recovery and begin dating after both have recovered.

In the false reality, Yuuki and Shiho never went to the hospital and both are perfectly healthy unaugmented humans. After being reminded of the truth by Ren, he helps Ann Takamaki to get through to Shiho. He is given the Phansite administrator role again to help organise and spread news for those resisting the false reality.

Yuuki reactivates the Phansite when the Phantom Thieves have their summer reunion and helps them find others in need of help along their route.

Dr. Tae Takemi

Tae was a rising star in the world of cybernetics, developing a new type of augmentation designed to be easier and cheaper to replace for younger cyborgs that are still growing. However, her latest design was still experiencing some issues when Tae's superior, Oyamada, forced a prototype to be produced for testing with a high-profile terminally ill girl named Miwa. The bugs in the design led to Miwa-chan's body rejecting the augments and glitched her cerebral implant, leaving her in a vegetative state. Oyamada pinned the blame on Tae and she was forced out of her profession in disgrace.

She opened a small clinic in Yongen-Jaya, Tokyo to perform simple repairs on damaged augmentations and androids in the poor neighbourhood. She secretly used these funds to help continue her work, adamant that even in their incomplete state, her augments should not have had such an adverse effect on Miwa-chan.

Following his arrival in Yongen, Ren Amamiya visits the clinic and agrees to help Tae test her augments and software to iron out the issues. Through Ren, Tae meets investigative journalist Ichiko Ohya, who obtains data from the augments administered to Miwa-chan and compares them with her own work, finding that they had been altered before administration, suggesting some form of espionage.

Ren and the Phantom Thieves enter Oyamada's mind and learn that he altered them so he could claim credit for his involvement and advance his own career, and that Miwa-chan's comatose state was artificially induced to cover up his mistake, intending to keep her silent until her disease took her. With this exposure, Tae is offered her old role and resources to help finish her work. Through this and her experiments with Ren, Tae is able to complete the augments to keep Miwa-chan alive, and the girl is brought out of her coma.

Rather than return to her old job permanently, Tae stays at her clinic in Yongen, using the fame and prestige she earned from the Miwa-chan case to expand her business and help make affordable augmentations available to those unable to afford those produced by the Kirijo Group and other organisations.

She later puts her skills to use by designing an android replica of Ren to help him fake his death.

Ichiko Ohya

Ichiko is a journalist for a magazine revolving around technological advancements - in particular, cybernetic augmentations. She works with her best friend and housemate, Kayo, who acts as her assistant.

Ichiko's big break comes with the revelations surrounding the abuse at Shujin Academy perpetrated by Suguru Kamoshida. Sympathising with one of Kamoshida's victims in particular - the model, Ann Takamaki - Ichiko writes an editorial on the events, emphasising the Kirijo Group's role in Ann's victimisation and netting the girl a fantastic deal from the supposedly repentant corporation.

Later, Ichiko bumps into Ann and her friends while investigating rumours of abuse surrounding Ichiryusai Madarame. She and the group talk and Ichiko and Ann become fast friends. She agrees to give the group information on Madarame in return for a follow-up interview with Ann about her life some months down the line. Ichiko gets another hit article reporting on the crimes of Madarame and a promotional piece on the works of Yusuke Kitagawa and his late mother.

Following Ichiko's article on the Phantom Thieves' third major target, Junya Kaneshiro, Ichiko's phone is targeted by a malicious hack intended to transmit a trojan virus into her cerebral implant to render her comatose and keep her from interfering with the larger plot. Unfortunately, Ichiko is in the shower when the call is triggered, leading to Kayo answering for her and being infected in her place. A follow-up attack is avoided to avoid suspicion.

By this time, Ichiko has deduced the identities of the Phantom Thieves from her friendship with Ann and knowledge of Ann's friends. Fearing what could happen in the event of a hack similar to that perpetrated against Kayo, Ichiko has that information removed from her mind via a memory suppressant program designed to assist trauma victims' recovery.

Ichiko continues writing her articles on the Phantom Thieves' exploits, up until the death of Kunikazu Okumura, at which point her stance on the group completely shifts. Her articles become much more critical of the group, holding them accountable for Okumura's death and accusing them of arranging the attack on Kayo as a manipulation tactic to make Ichiko continue to give them good press.

Ann meets with Ichiko as a friend and keeps Ichiko drinking until she passes out. With help from Ichiko's bartender friend, Lala, Ann and a small team enter Ichiko's mind to discover that her mind was hacked into and her memories were altered to change her stance on the Phantom Thieves to slander them in the press and bring down public opinion alongside the death of Okumura. With her memories put right, Ichiko goes into hiding to continue her work, attempting to undo the damage she did to the group's reputation, which proves difficult with so many other avenues of slander and manipulation bearing down on the team.

Once the masterminds behind the numerous incidents are exposed, Ichiko destroys them in the press. Around this time, Futaba Sakura and Tae Takemi work out a method to undo most of the damage done to Kayo's mind, but not all of it. After one last piece on the Phantom Thieves' final victory, Ichiko takes a leave of absence to help Kayo to recover.

In the ideal digital reality of Dr. Maruki, Kayo was never attacked and she and Ichiko continue their journalistic careers. Ann manages to get through to Ichiko by emphasising the disparity between her work's typical subject matter and the feel-good fluff pieces she now writes. Ichiko and Kayo help the Phantom Thieves to spread the truth about the false reality through her articles. She returns to her break soon after the false reality is shut down.

When the Phantom Thieves reunite the following summer, Ichiko continues to report on the group's victories and provide them with information on their new targets.

Sadayo "Bek-E" Kawakami

With less and less free time available to him between school, part-time work and Phantom Thief operations, Ren hires the services of an android maid service. Struggling financially, he hires the cheapest model, Bek-E. Despite her being a seemingly emotionless android, Ren comes to enjoy his conversations with her while she cooks and cleans for him, finding it a refreshing change of pace. At the same time, he notices how in need of maintenance she is.

Over time, he learns that she used to be owned by the Takase family, until her negligence led to the death of her master's teen son, whereupon she was assaulted, dumped in the trash and recovered from the scrapyard by Victoria and put to work as the agency's cheapest model. Bek-E begins to develop strange feelings from her time with Ren, who is the first 'master' she has served that treats her as a person instead of a machine. In time, she comes to understand these feelings as love.

One day, while on her way to Leblanc to serve Ren and tell him how she feels, Bek-E is spotted by the Takases and assaulted once more. Recovered by the unlicensed android servicelady, Tae Takemi, Bek-E requests Ren be notified so she can apologise for failing to serve him. Ren places the change of heart of the Takases at the top of the Phantom Thieves' list of targets and soon has them paying not only for Bek-E's repairs, but also upgrades and a change of ownership from Victoria to Ren.

From that day forward, Bek-E serves as Ren's faithful maid, doing everything in her power to make her master happy, with tasks such as building Phantom Thief tools, helping Ren to relax after operations, cleaning Leblanc and the Sakura home, and even helping out at the café during the day. She becomes close to Futaba during her many, many, many visits to clean the hacker girl's room, becoming something of a mother figure to her. Her real time to shine comes when she helps to hide Ren while he fakes his death, and gathering information to help the team take down Shido and his cohorts.

When the time comes for Ren to return home at the end of his probation, Ren gives her the choice of staying with Sojiro and Futaba or coming home with him. Overjoyed to be able to make such an important decision for herself, Bek-E thanks Ren for giving her a new life and decides to stay in Tokyo and train to become a high school teacher, mentoring teenagers the age Taiki was, but promises to wait for Ren's return and show him that she has become a woman he can be proud of.

When Ren returns some months later, he is met with Sadayo Kawakami-sensei, a teaching assistant at Shujin Academy, who assists Ms. Chouno as Futaba's homeroom teacher. Futaba herself created a fake identity for her to allow her to seek employment in education, where parents remain hesitant to allow androids to teach their children. Sadayo chose her own name, of course. She now lives with the Sakuras, but stays with Ren for the duration of his stay. She joins the Phantom Thieves on their cross-country roadtrip, cooking and maintaining the RV for them, as well as driving to give Makoto a rest. She also allows the A.I. Sophia to occasionally take over her body to explore the real world in physical form. Sophia bonds with her quickly, recognising Sadayo's developing emotions and hoping to learn from her.

Her big moment comes when Futaba alone escapes the Osaka Jail and returns to the hideout, where Sadayo is waiting for the group's return. She joins Futaba in the infiltration of the Jail and protects her and Zenkichi Hasegawa from the enemy defences while the hacker girl saves their friends. She later protects Futaba and Kuon Ichinose during the group's final push to defeat the Demiurge A.I.

After the operation, Sadayo sees Ren off with a smile, promising to make him even prouder the next time they meet. After finishing high school back home, Ren moves to Tokyo permanently to attend college. He finds his own place to live not far from the Sakura home and Sadayo moves in with him to continue serving as his maid while also teaching at Shujin, being given a permanent position just in time to become Futaba's new homeroom teacher.

Hifumi Togo

Hifumi is one of the top strategy game players and streamers in the country. She is the daughter of a Shogi prodigy whose star faded when the technological boom led to a sharp decline in interest in non-electronic games and sports. Wanting to maintain her lifestyle, she groomed her daughter to be a rising star in the emerging esports scene.

Hifumi finds herself entering an almost trance-like state when play begins, adopting a manufactured, melodramatic persona named Venus that taunts her opponents and generally acts in almost the exact opposite way her usual introverted self behaves. In this state, she is undefeatable.

To help cope with the high stress, Hifumi began reserving Saturdays for community game nights on her stream. Her favourite game to stream is a virtual Shogi game, which allows the stream chat to dictate moves as her opponent. She rarely loses such games.

Ryuji Sakamoto is a big fan of hers and one day discusses her at a Phantom Thief meeting. His teammate, Yusuke Kitagawa, attends Kosei High School alongside Hifumi, due to it being renowned for its art programs and, in more recent years, esports programs. Ryuji suggests consulting her on strategy for their operations.

Yusuke, Ryuji and Makoto Niijima enter the chat of one of Hifumi's Saturday streams and lead the chat to victory over her thanks to her being taken aback by the chat's sudden skill increase. As planned, this catches her attention and leads to a meeting between the four. Hifumi agrees to teach Makoto Shogi once a week.

After this, Yusuke takes greater notice of Hifumi at school and, upon seeing her come to class exhausted multiple times, begins to worry that she might end up suffering burnout or worse, that she may be being pushed to keep playing for sport by her mother. When questioned, although she claims she is not being forced, Ryui recognises her demeanour as similar to Yusuke's from his time under Ichiryusai Madarame's thumb. Hifumi admits to feeling less and less like herself when she plays professional matches and feeling more and more exhausted after each one.

The Phantom Thieves investigate by entering Hifumi's mind and find a program installed in her cerebral implant that reads data from her opponents' implants to predict their next move and plan a counterattack, and also switches her into the artificial personality of Venus, who is programmed to focus exclusively on the game and not notice the origin of the information she is processing in her strategies.

The group contact Hifumi with this information and meet with her in a Metaverse chatroom. Further discussion leads to the conclusion that Hifumi's mother had this program installed in Hifumi's mind to make her excel in her field so that her mother can live vicariously through her daughter's success. Hifumi is hesitant to believe this, but she is convinced when the group force her mother to confess though a cyber heist.

Hifumi makes a public statement and drops out of her upcoming competitions to recover and have the program purged from her implant. She then arranges to have her previous competition wins redacted and start over with her own skill. Ryuji, Makoto and Yusuke (now known to her as the Phantom Thieves) are in attendance of every competition she takes part in on this road to redemption.

In the false reality, Hifumi is once again a top player. Once she is reminded of the true reality, Hifumi uses her platform to help spread the word to her fans and other players.

When the Phantom Thieves reunite the following summer, Hifumi reaches out and offers a strategy refresher to Makoto, who finally beats Hifumi's best. Hifumi sees her apprentice off as the team set off on their road trip.

Chihaya

Chihaya is an android designed to serve as a fortune-teller attraction in Shinjuku's red light district, utilising Metaverse access to various social medias and databases to algorithmically predict the fortunes of customers. Secretly, her purpose is to convince customers of terrible fates awaiting them that can be averted by purchasing expensive charms and spirit stones to ward off bad luck.

Ren Amamiya meets her on his first visit to Shinjuku and decides to give it a try. Based on Ren's criminal record, the rumours about him circulating online and his recent associations, Chihaya predicts that Ren will meet an unfortunate end after being betrayed by a friend. Ren rejects this notion and insists he can prove to her that people aren't so easy to predict.

He begins spending time by her booth and giving genuine advice after Chihaya makes her predictions. Her customers begin returning with positive updates, leaving Chihaya to ponder whether her programmed approach is best or if Ren's is. Ultimately, she opts to take Ren's approach, asking him to continue helping her to learn more about people and properly advise them.

This results in a reduction of intake from the supposed protective items, leading to intervention from her owners. Chihaya is reprogrammed to push the protection services much more aggressively, outright lying to her customers to convince them to go for it. Realising what happened, Ren brings Futaba Sakura to hack into Chihaya and try to undo the damage. Chihaya feels genuine guilt for her actions and Ren tells her that her guilt is a sign that she's well on her way to understanding and helping people.

Armed with the owners' names, the Phantom Thieves expose the cult's wrongdoings and get their operations shut down by the police. Chihaya contacts those she scammed and promises to pay them back with money made from genuine predictions and advice.

Her warning about Ren being betrayed ultimately keeps him on his toes around Goro Akechi and helps him to stay one step ahead of his supposed friend.

In the false reality, Chihaya is a human named Chihaya Mifune, who is gifted with genuine psychic powers that she can use to help people overcome difficult trials. Ren and Futaba help her recall the truth by pushing the topic of her debt until she snaps out of it.

By the time Ren returns to Tokyo in the summer, Chihaya has become a very popular attraction and has long since paid off her debts. Some of those she scammed even visit her for advice or to help maintain her now that she is known as the Oracle of Shinjuku, a name that Futaba "Oracle" Sakura insists makes her Chihaya's senpai.

Munehisa Iwai

Munehisa is a former yakuza, once serving the same organisation as Junya Kaneshiro. The group made a killing stealing cybernetic augmentations to sell on the black market. This operation evolved into dismembering androids and selling their parts as augmentations and eventually, stealing augmentations from young cyborgs. This was where Munehisa drew the line.

It was while out looking for opportunities with some fellows that Munehisa's aniki decided to steal the augmentations from a lone child he spotted. Munehisa attacked his fellows, beating them severely and fleeing with the child. After a few hours, he had the boy lead him to his home, only to find that the yakuza had already found the place and murdered the boy's family. Enraged, Munehisa killed each and every one of them himself and then took the boy and fled. He adopted the boy, Kaoru, and used some underworld contacts to start a new life. He opened an android and augmentation customisation shop in Tokyo to support himself and his son.

This shop attracts the attention of the Phantom Thieves early into their career. Ren Amamiya and Ryuji Sakamoto check the place out to try and find a better leg for the latter. Ryuji begins working at the shop part-time to save up for one that catches his eye.

A month or so later, Munehisa's former organisation tracks him down and begins threatening Kaoru to get Munehisa back into the organisation. Ryuji, forced to hide in the back before the yakuza entered the shop, is told by Munehisa to forget what he heard. Ryuji brings this information to the other Phantom Thieves and the group accelerate their plans to expose Kaneshiro's organisation.

With the organisation shut down, Munehisa and Kaoru are left alone. Despite his claims that the outcome and the actions of the Phantom Thieves are coincidental, Munehisa doesn't believe Ryuji and offers discounts on his wares to the group.

He later helps with the fake Ren plan and meets Tae Takemi, with whom he begins a business arrangement to supply her with customised augmentations for her patients.

In the false reality, Munehisa is simply a family friend of Kaoru's family, treated as an uncle by the boy. Once the Phantom Thieves expose the truth by forcing the two to re-evaluate their relationship as closer than an uncle and nephew, he and Kaoru help others see the truth as best they can.

When the Phantom Thieves reconvene in the summer, Munehisa reaches out to offer the group assistance before they leave Tokyo.

Toranosuke Yoshida

Toranosuke gained infamy years ago as one of the most ardent proponents of many legislations designed to limit cybernetic augmentations and A.I. development. When a government subsidy for the Kirijo Group's development of advanced A.I. was pushed through, a large amount of the funds went missing and Toranosuke, with his history of opposing A.I. development, was accused and held accountable of the embezzlement. Combined with missing a legislative meeting due to a personal vacation and calling a voter an idiot in an open forum, Toranosuke's reputation was severely tarnished.

Following this, Toranosuke dropped out of the public eye for several years. He found new perspective in his exile, realising the good that could be done with A.I. and advanced robotics, but not being blind to the potential risks that he felt were often overlooked entirely in popular discourse. He returned and attempted to salvage his career on a platform of balanced regulation around a year before Ren Amamiya's move to Tokyo.

While campaigning outside Shibuya Station, Toranosuke meets Ren, who takes an interest in the politician's words and experience. He brings his friend Makoto Niijima with him the next time and the two strike up a conversation with Toranosuke. Being Student Council President at Shujin Academy, Makoto sees the value in learning from Toranosuke, who is more than happy to share his wisdom.

The three later discover that the embezzlement was actually performed by Toranosuke's old mentor, who blamed it on him. The two students introduce him to Ichiko Ohya, a reporter whose integrity and honesty they personally vouch for. With Toranosuke's story told in her article, public favour begins to sway back towards him.

Once Masayoshi Shido's criminal deeds are exposed by the Phantom Thieves, Toranosuke's final major obstacle is removed, allowing him a good chance to win the upcoming election.

Shinya Oda

Shinya is a young semi-pro gamer in the FPS genre, with a reputation for being aggressive and unsportsmanlike. His reputation brings him to the attention of Yuuki Mishima, who passes his information on to the Phantom Thieves. Ren Amamiya uses the opportunity to help Futaba Sakura overcome her anthropophobia with the gamer sphere she is familiar with. She accompanies him on his investigation and the two discover that "The King" is actually a young child who hides his age online to avoid being looked down on or treated as a child.

Shinya views gamers with augmentations as cheaters, regardless of the necessity of those augmentations, and his aggression is a result of feeling that it is the only way for him to remain competitive with those players. His stance on the matter is only exacerbated by his mother Hanae's constant complaints about being replaced at work by an augmented individual, and by the scandal surrounding his former favourite streamer, Hifumi Togo.

Futaba, after befriending Shinya, discovers these reasons and that he was a fan of Hifumi. She takes him to meet Hifumi, who talks through his issue and helps him understand that augmentations are sometimes necessary for some players to play at all, as well as the full story behind her scandal. This allows Shinya to see how disgraceful his attitude was before now and he promises to be better in future.

This clarity allows him to see how far off the deep end his mother has gotten with her hatred of augmentation. Worrying that she might snap at the slightest provocation, he asks the Phantom Thieves to help her via the Phansite. Futaba checks the IP and recognises it as Shinya's. Once Hanae's issues are resolved enough to make her agree to seeking therapy, Shinya is able to properly take his first steps into a respectable gaming lifestyle.

By the following summer, Shinya has developed a small following, putting the money earned from it into helping to pay for his mother's therapy.

Igor & Lavenza

Igor is the alias used by one of the programmers on the team that conceived the Metaverse. He noticed changes in many of his colleagues following a corporate buyout of the company, and feared that the Metaverse itself was being used to control them and that he would be next. He went underground after his attempt to expose the whole affair was covered up, highlighting just how powerful this threat already was. While in hiding, he created a program named Caroline that he hacked into the Metaverse to alert whoever had joined the project after him and still had a clear enough mind to help stop it.

Caroline would be discovered by Wakaba Iishiki, who would work with Caroline to improve Caroline's code enough to stop the new Yaldabaoth A.I. Unfortunately, Wakaba's interreference was discovered and she had to rush her new code into a separate program named Justine, which she was unable to send into the Metaverse before her assassination. Caroline informed Igor, who staged a robbery to seize Justine from Wakaba's assets to keep her out of the wrong hands. Unfortunately, with so little understanding of Justine's code, Igor struggled to find a way to combine the two programs into their intended true form.

Upon learning of Ren Amamiya, Igor sensed an opportunity to gift this young man with the tools he would need to oppose those in control of the Metaverse, who were allied with Amamiya's enemy, Masayoshi Shido. He created an A.I. named M.O.N.A. and hacked it onto Amamiya's phone to assist him. He then disappeared into the shadows once more to wait for the right time to resurface.

Through M.O.N.A., Ren can access the Velvet Room, a location on a secure server where Caroline and Justine are stored to provide Ren with assistance. However, Yaldabaoth discovers the Velvet Room and ambushes Igor when he comes to check on his plan's progress with the twins. Yaldabaoth incapacitates Igor and sends him into a coma, but is unable to locate his body. The A.I. rewrites the twins' code to serve as puppets to manipulate Ren and help him eliminate targets until those that can control Yaldabaoth are eliminated.

Once Yaldabaoth makes its move after the exposure of Shido, it purges the Phantom Thieves from the Metaverse, but code within M.O.N.A. transfers them to the Velvet Room instead. Caroline and Justine are tasked with eliminating the team, but they achieve self-awareness thanks to their time helping Ren and combine their code into Wakaba's intended creation: Lavenza. Lavenza helps Ren to escape Yaldabaoth's clutches and fight back, eventually destroying the A.I. for good. That done, Lavenza combs Yaldabaoth's remaining code to find any trace of Igor's location, which was unknown to the twins.

By the following summer, Lavenza has found a lead, which the Phantom Thieves investigate during their road trip, finding his body and allowing Lavenza to break him out of his coma. The two then assist the Thieves in opposing the Demiurge A.I.

Other Characters

Ms. Chouno

English teacher and Ren and Ann's homeroom teacher at Shujin Academy. Later Futaba's homeroom teacher.

Lala-chan

Ohya's friend and owner of the Crossroads bar. Full-body cyborg with a Persona based on their ideal body..