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The Ebihara Thread
This thread should be pretty short. A lot of unreasonable hate is surrounding this character. It's mostly based around how she acts when you first meet her and start her social link. And I think that's pretty fucking stupid.
Those scenes were there only to portray how Ai was so that her change later could be more affective. So that the player could be more affected by it and see how far she's come.
A reason I like this character in particular is because Ai deals with issues actual girls in real life deal with. Girls all over the world till this day deal with beauty standards and wanting people to care about them. So they put on make up and do things that-
Pretty people do. In other words they lie to themselves just to make friends. They do bad things and they try to get as much attention as possible so that people will have a reason to give them affection and validation.
I also noticed that Ai deals with the struggle of stereotypes. Similar to Kanji and Naoto. Rumors and speculation are spread about her aswell. Like how the boys in gym talk about how she has a sugar daddy.
One thing that I like about her social link is how it can take a few turns. It makes her character feel pretty unique. After hearing that Kou or Daisuke aren't interested she goes to commit suicide and after you stop her the game gives you the ability to date her or reject her.
If you accept her suggestion here the game punishes you by sending you into a relationship where Ai questions if you and her are really okay together as a couple. She's always suspicious and to be honest most people playing Persona 4 in general will be dating multiple girls.
I like this because it punishes the player for not doing the right thing here in a way and taking advantage of her when she was down at her worst. She eventually breaks up with you because she cares too much about you to make you suffer through a bad relationship like that.
She then also goes on to change the way she acts towards others and she decides to be herself and not the people she sees in magazines. She decided to be herself which is what Persona is all about. Accepting the true you and embracing it.
To be honest it feels like a majority of people who played Persona 4 and started this social link either skipped through her dialogue or just didn't do her social link. It's like how people skip through Mishima and Ohya's social link because they're annoying or ugly.
I think also another reason why some people hate Ai is the fact that she doesn't immediately treat you like you're special. When she does though it's because she needs someone there for her and needs someone to help her out.
I think the logic Persona fans work on is that when characters treat you like you're a normal person and not the hottest fucking thing on earth they hate their guts to an unnecessary degree.
But if a character does treat you like you're the hottest shit to ever be seen by their eyeballs then they're annoying and are horrible characters.
The games don't really help since they're kinda made in a way to make the protagonists always seem special and always be the best at everything they do. They never truly fail, They never truly have any flaws, and they're always treated as special people
So the moment a character doesn't treat them that way they immediately become annoyed or want to ignore the character entirely because it doesn't make them feel good about themselves. Thats just speculation though.
I still think Ai should be mentioned whenever "What's the best social links in P4" or "What are the best characters from P4?" Questions come up because she has issues better and much more realistic than half of the main casts.
