Wasn't maruki's whole schtick trying to make some kind of twisted brain-in-a-jar stagnant utopia that robs human agency?

I wouldn't know because I put my playthrough of P5R on pause like last year because I can't be bothered to take time waiting to charge my controller and play in the same day

Can I play Persona 5 Royal and just skip that stuff easily?

Aw shit glad I never got around to Royal then

I read Maruki as an anarchist-adjacent critique of the dangers of forcing everyone to conform to the same idea of happiness and good. Not too far off from some of the anarchist critiques of MLs I've seen.

I don't think it's libertarian really.

Is this seriously what happens? You’re telling me now for the first time

The good news is that P5’s late game was such a slog that I have no desire to go through it again with Royal

what? maruki had good intentions but his reality was viscerally uncomfortable in a way similar to the pleasure cube comic. i dont see how stopping himm makes the phantom thieves "libertarian status-quo warriors"

you're framing vanilla p5 better than it was lol. It boiled down to fighting corrupt individuals, but not the system that created these individuals. Yk the usual mainstream rhetoric that "the system is perfect! Its just the corrupted individuals!".

Also maruki was a cringe idealist, he was so scared of change that he created these immutable alternate realities for each person where nothing ever happens and they don't experience any kind of struggle. Without struggle there is no growth/development, pure anti-dialectics.