Today, February 19, is Futaba Sakura’s birthday. I’m not usually the type of person to go all out on a fictional character’s birthday, but for this girl - this energetic, nerdy, wonderful gremlin of a Phantom Thief whose influence on my life has been so significant in the last year - I felt like I had to do something to commemorate this special day. Futaba is my role model, my inspiration, and honestly one of the main reasons I am here today.
I jumped onto the Persona 5 bandwagon a little late, this past mid-June 2019. I had just graduated from college, and was going through the worst depressive episode of my life. Three months before beginning the game (and two months before graduation) one of my closest college friends stopped speaking to me. The fallout caused a rift in our friend group that resulted in me losing all five of our mutual friends. Not only were these people important to me and people who were so intertwined in my academic and extracurricular activities senior year, but I shared an apartment with two of them. It was impossible for me to get any distance to heal from the “breakup”, and as a result my anxiety flared each time I went to a meeting, dining hall, and even my own house as I watched all of them hang out without me and look past me as if I wasn’t even there.
Upon graduating, I thought I would finally be free from the demons in my head in the safety of my own home. But just two weeks into the summer, my 20-year-old brother (who’s one of my best friends) was suddenly diagnosed with Stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I remembered reaching out to my friends, desperate for support during a time when everything felt like it was going to collapse around me. But they all responded with either short and generic messages or radio silence when I reached out to them. During a consultation with one of his doctor’s, my brother found out that, while the source of the cancer was unknown, the cancerous cells had been triggered due to an accident he had sustained while light designing a show I had directed a month before at our university. The guilt hit me like a truck and I couldn’t deal with the pain.
I felt completely out of control of my own body and mind, unable to push away or stop the negative thoughts that flooded my head. I convinced myself I had done this, that I was the reason my friends had become so disinterested in me and left me behind, that I had been the cause of my brother’s illness, and that I had no right to feel sad or alone. At the beginning of that summer, I found myself spending each day lying in my bed in the dark with no desire to do or feel anything. I was a walking corpse, a shell of a human.
Persona 5 was something I stumbled upon somewhat accidentally. I had been aware of the game and been interested in playing it, but never had 100 free hours to dedicate to the JRPG. Once we found out my brother had cancer, my brother and I realized we both suddenly had a ton of free time. He had been the one to suggest playing video games as a way to cope with all the chaos happening in our life, and we ended up investing in a PS4 Pro and a couple of games. While my brother decided to use his next six months of chemotherapy treatment to start playing Kingdom Hearts, I decided to finally try Persona 5.
Long story short, the game changed my life.
For a while, the game was the only reason I woke up in the morning. I had completely lost faith and interest in my own life, but Persona 5 gave me the opportunity to escape my despair and pretend I was someone else. Even though I sometimes had to stop playing in order to accompany my brother on chemotherapy treatments and other hospital visits as his main medical companion, the game was my respite and haven in an otherwise harrowing world. What got me through all of those long nights trying to sleep on that terrible hospital cot with machines beeping around me and my brother waking up continuously in pain was the knowledge that as soon as I got home, I’d be able to roam around Tokyo, fight monsters, and spend time with some really cool characters I’d started to fall in love with.
And then I met Futaba.
When I first met her, she was a hermit: a girl who confined herself to her room using only computers and video games as her escape to the outside world. She didn’t trust anyone, was prone to horrible and terrifying visions and anxiety attacks, her self-esteem was basically nonexistent, and had resolved herself to the idea that she would die alone in her bedroom with no way to stop it.
I saw myself in her. This adorable girl, who I could see had once been so excitable and giddy, whose room was full of nerdy trinkets and gadgets, and who was so smart beyond her years - had fallen into this pit of seeming inescapable despair just like me. I couldn’t believe I had found someone like me in this game that I had already grown to love so much.
As I progressed further in her story, I remember reaching the final boss of her palace. The moment where I got to watch her reclaim her inner strength and find the courage to keep going despite all the bad things in the world. I watched her stand up to her demons head-on and emerge from the flames stronger than ever as the navigator of the Phantom Thieves. And later on, as I watched her relationship with all the Thieves grow to the point where she finally found the courage to go back out into the real world, embrace her quirks and passions fully, and find real and true friends who would love and accept her no matter what, I finally felt inspired to go out and do the same.
In Futaba’s support conversations with Joker, she talks to him about a Promise List (a list of things she hopes to achieve) that she’s made in order to help her re-acclimatize herself to the real world again. Even though my time as a recluse had only been for a few months, after isolating myself from other people beyond my family for so long, I also felt a little nervous going back into the real world. I used Futaba’s Promise List as a method for myself as I started moving forward from my depressive state.
I told myself I wanted to trust people again, and that I missed having friends. I reached out to some of my old friends, people who had always been there but who I had missed when I was so focused on the people who left me. I reconnected with some of my high school friends who were now working in the same city as me. I made new friends too, allowing myself to move past the idea that I was unworthy of love and friendship.
I told myself I wanted to pursue my passions again. I signed up for acting classes, focusing on voice acting and improv work, having been so inspired by the voice actors in Persona 5, especially Erica Lindbeck, the English voice actress for Futaba. I had always been interested in voice acting, but after playing Persona 5, the desire to pursue a passion that would hopefully inspire people in the way that Erica’s voice acting for Futaba had done for me was stronger than ever.
I told myself that I wanted to find a job and make my own income. In August and September, once my brother’s cancer had become more stable and his hospital visits less frequent, I finally had the time and mental energy to do just that. I applied to and was hired by a number of online publications as a writer (including TheGamer!) and additionally started working as a production assistant at a casting office in New York City.
I told myself I wanted to give myself permission to have fun again. With my first paycheck, I bought myself a weekend pass to Anime NYC (which, at the time, was months away). I told myself if I could keep up the positive attitude and check off more little tasks on my own Promise List, Anime NYC could be my own finish line, like a final reward for completing the list.
When I went to Anime NYC in November, decked out in full Futaba cosplay, I remember wanting to cry. The overwhelming emotions of realizing how far I had come, standing in a convention hall with so many anime and video game fans, and knowing I would have never seen this if I had kept to my dark bedroom nearly had me in tears.
Nowadays, my brother is in remission and is doing just fine health-wise. My current circle of friends is wonderful and supportive of everything I love and do. I have an amazing job working as both a writer and in casting. I go to acting classes and auditions all the time and am currently working on my first voice over demo. And I’m happy - so freaking happy - all the time.
And I know that a huge reason for that is because of Futaba.
So, I want to end this with a personalized message to the best girl:
Futaba Sakura, I hope you have a wonderful birthday. Please continue to always be your beautiful, nerdy, and unapologetically wonderful self. I know you’ll continue to inspire people like me this year, and I can’t wait to watch it all unfold. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for inspiring me during the darkest time of my life. No words could ever truly convey just how grateful I am to have met you last summer. You taught me how to love myself again - and for that, I am eternally grateful.
PS - March 31 can’t come soon enough. I miss you, and can’t wait to see you again in Persona 5 Royal.
