Personality

AKA What the hell happened in the spinoffs?

Persona 3

Akihiko is the second member of SEES (after Mitsuru) and the third party member the player meets. Specifically after he is chased down and almost murdered by the Magician Arcana.

He generally acts as an unflappable upperclassman with a competitive spirit that makes it hard for him to back down from a fight. His trauma pushes him hard in pursuit of physical strength often at the expense of other goals though it is often implied that he is a good student who keeps his grades up. He's comfortable both leading and following, though perfers the latter as it lets him focus on his own goals.

When Yukari accuses Akihiko of fighting Shadows just because he wants to get into fights it is hard to tell if this was something he was even aware of himself and that strength had stopped being a means to an end and started being the end itself. This moment is a part of his character development and the death of Shinji are what finally push him to change the way he approaches challenges in the world.

Physical strength remains important, but in service to the more human goals that he has.

There are some implicit sinister moments to his personality in both the game but especially in the anime where he seems to play a certain level of bad cop when trying to get information from Strega member Chidori using veiled threats when she won't talk.

Finally, perhaps my favourite part of Akihiko's whole vibe is that, in general he's just a kinda weird guy. His hyperfixation on his goals despite being mobbed by his fan club. Wearing a Speedo to the beach episode because it's better for swimming. Akihiko more or less always does what he thinks is best with complete confidence. Operation Babe Hunt is the only time we see him waver and his response is of course to try and learn to pick up girls 'properly'.

PQ/Q2

In Persona Q/Q2 the weirder personality traits of the whole cast are generally overemphasized presumably to give the games a lighter tone (though some of the major plot points in those games are anything but light making these characters tweaks a bit jarring at times).

The result of this tone shift does a real number on Akihiko in particular and a character who is pretty intelligent and genial in the core games is portrayed as a somewhat two dimensional gym bro obsessed with pushing competition (with Shinji and the Shadows especially) to an almost unhinged degree. Not to mention the PROTEIN. Every time our boy pops up on screen you can bet it's to challenge something to a fight or mention the nutritional value of a protein shake. This admittedly dims a lot of what makes him my fave but taken as a goofy parody (and set before the main plot points in P3 that develop his character) I love the gameplay of the PQ games enough that I can kinda roll my eyes and move on.

P4AU

Sadly, P4AU seems at least slightly inspired by the weirder take of Akihiko established in PQ/Q2 where he's hyperfixated on protein and getting into unwinnable fights in general. In P4AU, this is extra weird because the game isn't leaning into caricature quite as much as the PQ series - and PQ can lean on the fact that it's set before major character growth. It's as if all of the development of the original Persona games is sucked out of him and instead of the guy who learns that physical strength is not meaningful without the mental resolve to back it up we have the guy who runs in guns blazing embodying the D&D character trait best known as "Lawful Stupid". Even worse, of course, is that he decides that he wants to be a cop. This is despite the fact that the only cop he seems to know is one who opted to sell a bunch of weapons to minors. Or perhaps... because of it?

At least this time the protein gave him gains, right, squad?

Trinity Soul

I have not yet watched Trinity Soul so have no comment! I'll post an update when I get to it though so watch this space!