The Persona games are know for their complex characters, and Naoto’s is a good example of character design. Naoto’s story is coming to terms with the truth that she can be a woman and a brilliant detective, moving beyond the protective “boy-genius detective” persona they had constructed. A self esteem support to avoid any further trauma. The temporary disguise as a male detective slowly became a permanent behaviour. Rewarded with praise for their work, Naoto’s sense of self efficacy would have increased. Naoto adopted male coded behaviour and dress to reduces pressure from enforced gender roles.
Detectives who are women experience unnecessary challenges to their capacity to solve crimes because gender roles in workplaces value logic from people presenting as male, and devalue logical analysis from people presenting as female, or as non-binary, or as any presentation that does not include 20th to 21st century masculine traits. Without delving too deeply into Naoto’s psyche, under workplace pressure Naoto would experience some self esteem impact.
PERSONA 4 GOLDEN CHARACTERS PROFESSIONAL
To briefly analyse Naoto’s character – alongside enforced, professional challenges, Naoto is brilliant but young, and has experienced significant loss in their life. It makes sense that Naoto’s arc would recruit some of the gender disguise tropes commonly found in Anime. Gender fluidity appears more often in Manga and Anime. Alongside the cultural timeline, Japan’s perspective on gender is also entirely different from the context I applied to analysing Naoto’s character. Diversity was still emerging as important in our culture nine years ago. Persona 4 was created before 2008 (the game was released on July 10 2008). In 2017, more film and games star more transgender characters, and employ trans folk as actors and writers, compared to content produced 10 to 15 years ago. However, I began to consider the context. To me, this was a missed opportunity for diversity in games. I was initially frustrated with the revelation that Naoto’s struggle was professional, and not on gender identity. It became clear that Naoto’s gender identity struggles tie into society gender roles instead of exploring transgender issues. With Netflix shows like Sens8, and The OA, and comics such as Shutter, all featuring transgender characters, I was expecting Naoto’s character to explore issues of gender identity. Having viewed films and read comics with characters who identify as transgender, I assumed Naoto was a transgender character. While playing Persona 4, I had a strong reaction to Naoto Shirogane’s character, so I have written a brief summary of the context behind Naoto, and a brief analysis of their character. Spoiler Warning – The following short character analysis contains spoilers for Naoto Shirogane’s character in Persona 4.
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