Joker has a multitude of romantic pursuits in Persona 5, and while some have shades of "OMG stepbro!" or feature concerning age gaps, all of them are straight. If one of the societal symptoms of toxic masculinity is men bottling their feelings up, another is the labelling of men and boys who don't conform to these toxic standards as feminine or gay. Then again, boys are allowed to be close friends without being gay. You can also use Joker's responses to flirt with Ryuji, even if just for a joke, and the pair do have an undeniable chemistry and physical closeness. In some ways, making Joker and Ryuji gay in fanfiction is relatively harmless - people write all kinds of ships in fanfiction, and shipping two characters who are clearly extremely close to each other makes sense. Persona 5 gave us Joker and Ryuji, but speculating about their queerness has always been a little uncomfortable. Less likely is Persona 6 getting a queer love interest, but after Persona 5 had some electric queer chemistry without the follow through, the next game is crying out for some representation.
And by 'likely', I mean I really, really hope they are. With Persona 5 kicking the game into another stratosphere in the West, it's likely that these issues will be ironed out. Likewise, no one that you're kinda sorta maybe related to should be in the mix. If the protagonist of Persona 6 is underage, all the love interests should be too. Related: The Original Persona Games Deserve More Love For The 25th AnniversaryĪll of these issues have fairly straightforward fixes. Oh, and one of them is kind of your step-sister? I mean, not really - you meet her for the first time in the game, and you aren't related by blood, nor marriage or adoption - but the game presents a big brother-little sister dynamic only to then have it turn romantic, and that's just a bit odd. It also has a frequent problem with giving female characters agency and while each individual character gets respect, Joker's ability to play the field diminishes this. This is a game where the first villain is a teacher who has been grooming and abusing his students. Many involve player-character Joker, a minor, dating full-grown adults, including his homeroom teacher. On the other hand, several of the romances in Persona 5, for example, are extremely problematic. Each interaction comes with its own specific cutscene, and each romance includes several interactions, so the love stories become a major part of the overall narrative. No simple approval rating or gift giving is required much like real life, if you want to win someone's heart, you need to spend time with them, learn their interests, open up to them, and be responsive as they do the same to you. On the one hand, they are some of the most well developed and in-depth romances seen in video games.