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also yosuke is cool

maybe they're just self inserting in a really personally uplifting way

The people just like Charlie Tunoku.

It’s like. Hard for me to understand why The Protagonist is even an option in something like this

"well protagonist is Me and I'm Me and that means I'm the best"

A lot of people have to be voting purely by character design.

You know im not that shocked that the [blank self-insert for you to imagine however you'd like the protagonist to be] wins that much. There are as many p4 protagonists as there are p4 fans.

I honestly wouldn’t even say it’s a Japanese thing, I bet if you managed to poll all the people who played and liked the games, protags would rank near the top among western audiences too, just not like, the more vocal parts of fandom

I actually do think the Persona protagonists all have a fair amount of personality if you really go looking for it, Joker being the most obvious in Royal, but listing them above like 90% of the casts of each game is crazy work.

This is like how Byleth is always crazy popular in character polls for Three Houses. Yeah my favorite character is myself. I like the way they say "Buy", "Sell", and "Goodbye".

Something that I've noticed that's completely baffled me is that the silent protagonist in multiple JRPGs are often quite popular, and even some people's favorite. An attractive design or the desire to self insert can do a lot of heavy lifting unfortunately.

iirc (since i presume this poll is japan-only) the way the protags are read there is as much more of a Character than elsewhere? this is hearsay but considering how Ignored the protags are in western circles it makes some sort of sense to me

This dovetails with one of the reasons I think media literacy FEELS like it's declining; (regardless of whether or not it actually is) folks visibly reaching for the known/comforting in response to precarity rather than exploring alternate perspectives or appreciating/challenging the "other."

Could also be a lot of people are voting off how they’re written in media where they aren’t silent: anime, manga, novelizations, etc. …or just “Ha ha. Yes, me. I am cool.”