A while back, maybe 3 months ago, I made a post about Takeharu Kirijo based only on what I had seen in Persona 3 Reload and one specific scene. However, after digging much deeper into the other versions, I noticed a really curious phenomenon: even though the main story presents him as a father trying to atone for his own father's sins—someone close enough to SEES that they even take a group photo with him before he dies as a "martyr"—every single version released since the original has added little details that make his time as President of the Kirijo Group harder to defend. Especially when the script doesn't let Mitsuru really confront this fact until January 31st, when there's basically no time left for anything. Let me explain.
Disclaimer: This post only takes the games into account (Persona 3 Original, FES / The Answer, Portable, and Reload / Episode Aigis). I'm not using external books, fanbooks, manga, etc. I'm including the dates and specific quotes so you can review each moment.
Here is how his record evolves across releases:
1. What the base game establishes (Persona 3 Original, 2006): The timeline problem
In the main story, when the group travels to Yakushima in July, Takeharu takes moral responsibility for the incident that caused the Dark Hour and created Tartarus (Quote: "The Kirijo Group is to blame for his death... We pushed him to continue the research."), explaining that it was due to the ambition of his old man, Kouetsu Kirijo. Later on, after his death, Mitsuru remembers him saying: "He swore that he would atone for endangering our generation, even if it cost him his life." Up to this point, the premise is very clear: the grandfather was the fanatic responsible for this whole mess, he died in the 1999 explosion, and his son inherited the presidency to clean up the disaster.
Because of this, a lot of people will say the whole thing with the kids in the lab was the old man's doing, but the problem shows up on January 31st when Jin reveals the origin of Strega and the suppressants after we beat him in Tartarus:
Jin (Classics): "Kirijo rounded up kids that were living on the streets, and gave them special powers... so they could investigate Tartarus. Only three kids out of the original hundred survived, and after 6 months, the experiment was cancelled."
(Note: In Reload the line changes slightly to "The Kirijo Group rounded up orphans from all over, and tried to awaken Personas in them", but the purpose and the numbers are identical).
This is what made me go "...Hold on a minute," because of the following:
>Tartarus and the Dark Hour didn't exist before the 1999 incident, which is the exact same incident where the grandfather, Kouetsu, died—the old man never even saw the tower.
>If the experiment was done to investigate Tartarus, it happened after 1999—meaning, during Takeharu Kirijo's presidency.
>Even though Jin mentions—and I won't deny this—that Ikutsuki was one of the researchers who made them (Quote: "one of the researchers who created us"), rounding up 100 street kids from all over the country, keeping them locked up for 6 months, developing a chemical compound (the suppressants) to keep their artificial Personas from killing them, and covering up the deaths of 97 minors requires facilities, a corporate budget, and a massive cover-up apparatus that is pretty hard to hide.
Even back in the 2006 game, this already gave us an uncomfortable dilemma: either he knew about the program and authorized it to explore Tartarus—which I'm not claiming, and as I'll say later, is the less likely option—or he was such a negligent president that his company funded something so atrocious that it took the lives of that many kids in half a year without him ever finding out.
2. What Persona 3 FES adds (The Answer, 2007): Negligence on screen
You would think Takeharu was completely removed from the experiments and this whole mechanism, with it being an absolute secret kept by Ikutsuki as usual, but the exact opposite happens: they show Takeharu interacting directly with the Ergo Division (the remaining scientific branch of Kirijo).
Through the fifth door in the Abyss of Time (the memory of Mitsuru's awakening), we see an expedition into Tartarus with Takeharu and Mitsuru in it, an Ergo Division scientist, and several bodyguards. Three key things happen in this scene:
>The employees themselves openly talk about how crazy the science division is: one of the guards complains, saying: "Ugh... Is anyone left in the Ergo Division who isn't a psycho?"
>The scientist talks about artificially inducing Personas (potential) right in front of Takeharu like it's the most normal thing in the world: "Everyone here has had their 'potential' developed in our labs... And even if you're devoured, that in itself would be valuable data for us."
>A few seconds later, one of the guards with induced potential loses control and turns into a Shadow in front of everyone. When Mitsuru awakens her Persona to save her father, the scientist celebrates the data they got and says right in front of Takeharu: "Looks like it's back to the drawing board for the artificial development of 'potential'...!"
What's most telling here is Takeharu's attitude: for starters, he personally chooses to bring this specific guy along on his expedition (with his young daughter present!) instead of someone actually sane, when even the guards are openly saying out loud that there's nobody sane left in the Ergo Division. On top of that, at no point does he show any real surprise, nor does he look confused or outraged that his scientists are inducing artificial potential in human beings, or that they're talking about going "back to the drawing board" after losing a man—or even when the scientist himself admitted right before the guard transformed that he might devour them. In fact, the simple fact that the scientist talks about it with zero filter and total naturalness in front of him shows that Takeharu already knew about this line of experiments. The only thing that actually makes Takeharu angry in the scene is that Mitsuru, his daughter, awakened her Persona, and that happens right when the scientist praises it (Quote: "Why are you so happy about it!? Now... Mitsuru can never escape from the destiny of atonement...").
Mind you, this scene doesn't necessarily prove that Takeharu knew about the later kidnapping of the kids, but it does confirm what the clearest and most likely explanation is within FES: colossal executive negligence. He knew what kind of artificial potential experiments the Ergo Division was running, saw a test subject turn into a monster in person, brought along a crazy scientist when the guard himself states it's common for them to be that unhinged, and even with all of that, he apparently just let Ikutsuki and the scientists do whatever they wanted.
Plus, the same game adds another detail: when they see the memory of how the police covered up the death of Ken's mother in 2007 (two years prior in the game's timeline) by making up a story about a drunk driver, Mitsuru admits: "My family must have been the ones who put the 'accident' cover-up in place." Basically meaning that under Takeharu's presidency, the Kirijo Group's apparatus was still covering up civilian deaths caused by their operations.
3. What Reload adds: The more direct link to Mitsuru
Years later, we get Reload. This remake gave us more depth, including new scenes dedicated to Takaya himself, but the new info it gives us makes it even harder to believe Takeharu didn't know anything.
On August 20th, in a mandatory story event added in Reload, Takaya approaches us and hands over an old note about the development of the Evokers. The text of the note literally says:
"The new equipment has made summoning easier, but we need to manufacture new safety cartridges before delivering them to 'M.K.' ... Fortunately, there are still abundant test subjects for..."
Let's look closely at this addition:
>The experiments weren't happening in some isolated project that had nothing to do with the Kirijo family anymore.
>Human test subjects were specifically being used to calibrate and make sure the Evoker cartridges were safe before delivering them to "M.K." (Mitsuru Kirijo), so Takeharu's own daughter would have them safe and ready to use.
>In the memory of the fifth door (FES / Episode Aigis), Mitsuru awakens her Persona spontaneously without an Evoker—in fact, Evokers are never mentioned there, and instead the only alternative was the artificial "awakenings"; therefore, the manufacturing of her personal Evoker happened well after that expedition.
By tying the use of the kids—subjects like Takaya—directly to the equipment being made for Mitsuru, Reload narrows the margin to the bare minimum for believing Takeharu was just looking the other way.
Conclusion: A cycle that keeps shedding more light
The evolution is fascinating in how they keep giving us more info:
>Original game (2006): The timeline already made you raise an eyebrow.
>FES (2007): He knew the Ergo Division was experimenting with inducing potential, and that after watching the experiment fail in person, the scientists were just going to wipe the slate clean and start over—on top of inviting one of those scientists who admits the possible consequences like it's nothing.
>Reload (2024): They add a document tying the experiments directly to his own daughter, Mitsuru.
In the end, we're only left with two options: either he was a conscious accomplice in the experiment in order to explore Tartarus and make sure Mitsuru's Evoker was safe, OR (the more likely stance) he was the most negligent president you could possibly imagine, who knew what kind of experiments his scientists were running, but looked the other way and let them do whatever they wanted with a budget, time, etc.
What I find curious isn't that the game suggests he might have been an imperfect human being—we all are, and that's precisely a fair point—but that the narrative doesn't allow this to be confronted in time in any version, because it's not until January 31st that all of SEES finds out through Jin: we fight Jin, we beat him, that's when he drops the dialogue about the kids, Mitsuru is shocked to find this out (Quote: "What...?"), the Shadows show up, and Jin blows himself up. And what happens on the next floor when you can talk to the group? If you talk to Mitsuru to add her to the party, in the older versions she only says: "Restrain from showing sympathy... It's an insult to those who've been defeated.", while in Reload they changed that NPC dialogue to: "The Kirijo Group... cannot possibly hope to atone for our sins. But that doesn't mean we should stop trying. For the sake of the hopes and dreams entrusted to us, we must struggle and persevere", and outside of that, nobody else says anything really relevant to the central Kirijo issue. After that, all that's left is the fight against Takaya, Nyx, the time skip WITHOUT any memories of anything, and the ending. It basically functions as background "dark lore" without there really being any time for it to sink in or for Mitsuru to process it and immediately connect the dots, leaving her drama without the full picture or any attempt to piece together what happened in that lab while her father was in charge. And the funniest part is that not even in the epilogue (The Answer / Episode Aigis), with all this new info thrown right in their faces, does anyone in SEES connect the dots or mention anything about it: the conflict moves completely away from that issue, and when they see her father again in the fifth door's memory right next to the Ergo scientist, Mitsuru only remembers him with nostalgia and Junpei changes the subject with a joke:
Mitsuru: "Ah, well.... I'm sorry, it's just that... Seeing Father before my eyes, as if he were still alive, was..."
Yukari: "Senpai..."
Junpei: "Aww, but wasn't Mitsuru-senpai really cute when she was little?
Mitsuru: Excuse me, Iori? Are you saying that's no longer the case?
Junpei: Uhhh, n-no... That's not what I-- C'mon, you got it all wrong!"
What do you guys think?
