ann takamaki

Player Name: Diane
Age: 18+
Contact: aghastly
Timezone: U.S. CST
Other character currently in game: Dave Strider

Character name: Ann Takamaki
Age: 17
Canon: Persona 5
Canon point: 12/24, right after a brief and kind of depressing visit to the Velvet Room, and right after being popped back into the Metaverse-world fusion, ready to introduce a god to Blazing Hell.
History: Wiki link

Three key adjectives: Upbeat, determined, compassionate

Influential Events: In case we are still warning for P5 spoilers: P5 spoilers below.

• GROWING UP TAKAMAKI
Ann mentions at some point that she once admired a villain in an anime she saw who was confident, sexy and strong enough to simply take whatever she wanted. It's kind of a side remark, but it's also the crux of Ann's aesthetic, a metaphor that manifests much more literally in a place where your thoughts and feelings are given shape.

And while she does start out with some measure of confidence, her character arc in the game is largely about truly claiming it, and using it as her weapon to fight against injustice. With bright blonde hair and blue eyes in a society that tends to devalue or reject being different in any way, and with her parents always out of the country, she's familiar with loneliness and rejection in its different forms. And it's understandable that Ann, a girl who is shunned by the vast majority of her fellow Japanese peers for the way she looks, would want to be strong enough to just brush off the ways she's been rejected and have the strength to do right for the world, and her friends.

And if Ann is anything at all, she's determined to do the right thing to help her friends.

• SHIHO (cw: suicide, sexual assault)
A girl so good she gets her own influential event. Shiho, Ann's best (and only) friend at the start of the game, is a member of the volleyball team at Shujin Academy and the person who helped spark that bit of confidence in Ann that she's had (they bonded over the both of them kind of being outcasts), and always wanted. Shiho, who was trapped in a situation she was powerless to stop, and Ann, who tried to protect her, but couldn't.

As a member of the volleyball team, Shiho was subject to constant physical abuse from the volleyball coach, Suguru Kamoshida, and nobody in charge at the school did anything to stop it. Kamoshida also used Shiho as leverage in an attempt to get Ann to engage with him sexually — and while she is seen hanging around him, something she feels she has to do to protect Shiho, it's heavily implied that she rejected his further advances.

Later, it's heavily implied that Kamoshida assaulted Shiho as a twisted way of "punishing" Ann for rejecting him. At this point, Shiho was unable to cope (she tells Ann that she "can't take this anymore") and attempts to kill herself by jumping off the roof of the school building.

This is absolutely a defining turning point for Ann — she's wracked with guilt over what happens to Shiho; she is so sick of being powerless to stop the horrifying things happening at her school, and is so ready to do whatever it takes to avenge her best friend, when she overhears Ryuji and the protagonist discussing exposing Kamoshida for the Kamoshita that he is, she immediately demands that she be allowed to help — and even follows them into the Metaverse twice, regardless of her ability to stand up to whatever she might find in there.

tl;dr, although she very clearly cares about doing right by the strangers who ask the Phantom Thieves for help, and she cares deeply about the friends she made throughout the course of the year, Shiho is the person, the driving force behind Ann's determination to reform society. In fact, if she's ever thrown down and doubting everything she's done up until this point, all one would have to do is remind her about Shiho, and she's back on her feet.

• THE WINGS OF REBELLION
In one of the aforementioned visits to Kamoshida's palace, Ann is captured, and then confronted by a version of herself that represents how Kamoshida views her: In a bikini and subservient to him, nothing more than a pretty plaything he believes he has a right to, as king of his castle and the school.

She is utterly destroyed when she finds out about Shiho's implied assault — but with a little bit of encouragement from the current lineup of Phantom Thieves, she finds her fury instead, and, righted back on her one-way trek to avenging Shiho, she answers the call of Carmen, her persona. Ann destroys the palace version of herself, and helps the team escape from a powerful guard captain with her newly awakened powers.

Awakening to her persona and ultimately stealing Kamoshida's heart as a Phantom Thief is another important turning point for Ann (we got a lot of turning points in this first palace). One, she feels that she's been granted the power to set things right in the world, and it shows in the way she carries herself. She still struggles with the guilt over what happens to Shiho, but through the course of her confidant with the protagonist, she is able to ultimately forgive herself by promising to get stronger and keep fighting — she is also more confident, upbeat, and ready to throw down against everything about society that really fucking sucks. She's also shown to occasionally have a fiery temper, which I imagine would be more difficult to express freely if you felt powerless to do so.

Another important note: Justice, in Ann's eyes, is owning up to what you've done and atoning for it. This is shown when she refuses to kill Shadow Kamoshida when he asks her to, instead demanding that he confess and face punishment for everything he's done.

• THE PHANTOM THIEVES
These people become Ann's people. A bunch of misfit teens who have been wronged by the adults in their worlds who were supposed to guide and mentor them, a bunch of misfit teens who found a way to not only get back at them, but set them right entirely. They share the same goals (stealing a heart requires a unanimous decision after all), and throughout the course of the story, they bicker, they misunderstand each other's intentions, they protect each other, they have existential crises together ... you know, the modern teenage story experience with a side of supernatural metaphysics.

It's hard to pinpoint an exact event with this group that has had the biggest impact on Ann, though that might be because it's the entire experience of being among a group of thieves that has had the biggest impact on her. Ultimately, she found her place in a world where, in the beginning, she was largely shunned. By her canon point, she's found the strength she needs to keep fighting, even in the face of absolutely ridiculous odds — in the face of quite literally being erased from existence.

Kinda sounds like the premise of Balance when you think about it. I doubt Ann, once she starts to recover from the destruction of her universe, would have any trouble folding other Reclaimers into the folds of her idea of a team.

Home's not really too strong of a word for the Phantom Thieves here. Because that's what they are to her.

Link to Samples: Link to Sample 1; Link to Sample 2

Chosen path: Bard
5 Abilities:

• Hecate, Ann's persona. In canon, this allows her to block fire and resist electricity, but for nerfing purposes, I'll suggest that it's just a minor resistance to both. She's also super weak to ice. Hecate's one skill is Agi, a low-level, single-target fire spell.
• Bardic Inspiration
• Message
• Disguise Self
• Vicious Mockery

Why this path?: Ann's canonically a pretty bad actor, but modeling is also a type of performance in itself, so to put her in a role that will involve a lot of performing has a lot of potential for mixed, and therefore fun for me, results. She can both ham it up and flop spectacularly!