Persona 5 attackers has been gone for just over a week, so I feel very comfortable saying:
Thank God for Wolf!
Wolf (born Zenkichi Hasegawa) is the newest and only adult member of the Phantom Thieves. There are adults who help the Phantom Thieves and keep their secret, but even Strikers, there was never an adult user.
And I love him. Much.
I worried about him when he started around the Phantom Thieves. Although there are some well-grown people, such as the owner of Café Leblanc Sojiro or Dr. Takemi, adults have always been the villains in the Persona 5 Series. So, when a new one, not even a policeman, started hanging around Strikers, I thought it was going to be a problem. Great, another character to cling to just so the writers make him bad. That is Dr. Maruki all over again.
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However, despite some scenes in which it seemed painfully clear that Mr. Hasegawa was playing the Strikers gang for his own benefit, he turned out to be one of the good guys. Assisted by Tom Taylorson’s spectacular voice talents, Mr. Hasegawa has a complicated voicearm over him. He is not as serious as most adult Thieves’ allies. When interacting with his young partners in crime, he takes jokes about his age or lack of style. Finally, a persona user for grown people!
THE Persona 5 series presents the ultimate power fantasy: How much better could life be if shit people just realized they were being shit and stopped? At the Persona 5 and Real, this conflict was represented as adults x children. Adults are given carte blanche to be shitty, and the only people who notice or care are helpless teenagers. Because of this, Phantom Thieves don’t trust them – adults are the ones who are supposed to have the power to do justice to idiots, but they don’t. When Kamoshida was abusing children in Persona 5, none of the administrators interfered, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. This calcified the idea that adults are ignorant or accomplices.
But Wolf’s presence on the team adds nuances. It helps the Phantom Thieves to understand that even all powerful and rule-making adults can suffer under the yoke of oppression and manipulation, and that it is better to work together than to fight. When his own daughter turned on him for failing to arrest his mother’s killer, Hasegawa reveals that he has compromised his sense of justice to keep her safe. Then, after waking up to his persona working closely with the Ghost Thieves, he can finally bring his wife’s killer – who is also responsible for all the heart-changing antics – to justice. Collaboration between adults and children saved the day.
In addition, the man makes the Wolf look good when he fights.
The cowboy costume? Throwing those pistols? Swinging that huge shit sword? Calling himself “Lobo” ?? Wow! He’s hot, not in that hotly sexy way, but that single dad, crumbs in bed, charmingly clumsy. And he has massive DBE – body energy of the father. Mr. Hasegawa is basically a Japanese version of Jim Hopper’s Weird stuff. And thank you God he grew up, so I don’t feel bad about saying that Lobo is hot. Thanks Strikers, for finally letting me be free of guilt.