Kanji Tatsumi, the ambiguously gay gangster from last year's Persona 4 has my nuts in a twist. Well, not him exactly, just who ever was responsible for handling the delivery of his story in Atlus' latest installment. Persona is one of those games that you either love or hate. This game is VERY Japanese. By day you attend high school with gameplay centered around a relationship sim allowing you to build your social links with friends and teachers which in turn make you stronger in battle after school. I understand to some this may be a recipe for boredom but what hooked me to the Persona eries in the first place was the subtle irony of each character and the stories held within. If your imagination and powers of empathy are above par than Persona will be a richer experience. This is not simply Animal Crossing for adults it is a rich, artistic personal journey akin to the choose your own adventure books I remember as a kid. Atlus has truly taken a step towards more artful interactive story telling in games by giving the human condition a digital playground to battle it's demons. This is why my nuts are so twisted. Perhaps it is because I myself came out in High School in the nineties or maybe it is because when you take a story a sensitive as Coming Out in a modern high school I believe one has a some big responsibilites, one of respect and one of taste.

In Persona 4 we have Kanji who is the town trouble maker. Tattoos and attitude. He will beat the shit out of you if you even look at him funny. Through the story we already know about the Midnight Channel, a show that appears at midnight on rainy nights in the town of Inaba. This show reveals what is in a person's heart, their inner most desires. Kanji appears on the show in a towel in a bathhouse hanging out with men, "ONLY" men and implying sexual desires with them. His voice is feminine and singsongy. The gameplay takes the player into the TV to a bathhouse dungeon where after battling Kanji's shadow self he come to grips with his feelings and admits that the shadow self is also him. So essentially he comes out to himself in front of his friends; a very tender moment indeed. Not two lines later he is talking about how he really doesn't like guys and thinks a girl is cute and for the rest of the story his liking guys is joked about in a jocular way periodically for comic relief. Here's the URL if you'd like to see for yourself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NOu5BvQZWQ

Now why make his journey about a bathhouse at all? If this kid's pathology is truly about lack of discipline and fear of woman why not have his dungeon be a boot camp military excursion or a trip to "charm school" with cooking classes and floral arrangements! ? Why the bathhouse? Why even suggest that this has anything to do with being gay? I remember the moments leading up to his "coming out" so excited to have an experience similar to my own well represented in a game only to be disappointed with his retraction. I do not feel Atlus had any intention of being disrespectful but I feel that is important in our current social climate for us to be softly vigilant about our public posturing. As Gay men and woman we are no longer in relegation of playing second banana but are starting to become an integral part of the socioeconomic conversation. With gay marriage on the rise our actions are closely watched by others so when I see something so obviously half baked I begin to wish the writers of Persona 4 would have just left well enough alone and made Kanji just some dude who likes to sow. Video games are being positioned to become a substantial form of media in the next 50 years. The current boom in "casual gaming" is a testament to that potential. The newer gamers of today may well be the hardcore gamers of tomorrow. This being said I feel we have a much larger responsiblity in voicing how we portray ourselves in game. Sigh... Nuts relieved :-)