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The day is September 20th, 1996.
On that day, the a lone, singular JRPG was released to the public, dubbed the name "Revelations: Persona", released on the Playstation.
A successor to the successful (Shin) Megami Tensei series, on that day, that would be the first of many more entries to come.
Here we are, 25 years later. Gifted with a stories of self-exploration, understanding and acceptance, death and grief, truth and illusion, and subjugation and rebellion, all tracing back to the singular name "Persona".
But, that's not all.
Stories of death, rebirth, nihilism, hope, vice, freedom, far and wide.
This isn't merely a gift to Persona, but the entire series as a whole.
Before this thread continues, an unfathomable amount of thanks should be granted to the Persona Wank Squad (now MegaTen Wank Squad), as this couldn't have been possible without their efforts. All the researching, scans, and work couldn't have been done by one singular body, and all those who helped pushed Persona to this point in the past. Very ironic, considering above all else, the series instructs you to believe individuality is all an illusion.
So, a very warm thank you to:
@Ultima_Reality @AxisPowerRanger @Dr._whiteee @Elizhaa @MarvelFanatic119 @Solacis @Rtxthegamer @Zencha9 @HST_Master @KnightOfSunlight, and many, many more.
And, now...
Reconciling the Two Halves
For the longest time, this site has considered Persona & mainline Shin Megami Tensei to be functionally separate verses with independent cosmologies, meaning that any statements made within the context of one would not affect the ratings of other in any way. Simply put, the primary aim of this revision is to tear that down entirely and merge the two into a single setting. To that end, a blog was made detailing the exact reasonings behind this revision:
vsbattles.fandom.com
Clearly, it goes without saying that Persona and Shin Megami Tensei are set within the same universe; this is a fact, and it borders on common knowledge among the community surrounding the franchise. Indeed, Persona itself was spawned from Shin Megami Tensei If..., a spin-off that features quite a few characters and elements from the mainline franchise, most notable of which is Stephen, who appears at the very end of Akira's Route. And the protagonist of the game, Tamaki Uchida, also appears as a major character in Persona 1 and 2.
And in Persona 2, we also have plenty of references to the first game of the Devil Summoner series, such as Kyouji Kuzunoha, a major character in the game, making an appearance in the body of the local private detective, while Devil Summoner on its own makes direct mention of Gotou and Thorman, both of whom are major characters in Shin Megami Tensei I. And that's not even to get into how significant the name "Kuzunoha" becomes later on in the franchise.
Given this overwhelming amount of evidence, it becomes undeniable that Persona and Shin Megami Tensei are, objectively speaking, the exact same setting, and any differences they have only exist from a stylistic and thematic standpoint. Thus, there is absolutely no reason for them to be separated in such an unnatural and artificial manner.
With that set firmly in stone, we can now explore the ramifications of this fact in the profiles:
Demons & Personas powerscaling
An extremely widespread belief among not only this site in particular, but also the entire community of MegaTen, is that Personas are simply holograms of true Demons, which have none of their real capabilities and thus cannot receive scaling from them in any way, with this being the reason for why Persona was rated at Tier 7-5 for the longest while. This claim is not inaccurate, so to speak, but the conclusion drawn from it is very far-fetched, and the exact connection between Demons and Personas is far more tighly-knit that previously thought.
As is well-known by now, Personas in general are the images of Gods and Demons of myth that hail from the world of the Collective Unconscious, the shared sea of all mankind's souls. More precisely, they are the shape of an individual's personality, which can be awakened and summoned as an entity of great power once they are able to tame their own jungian "Shadow" and reconcile with the aspects of their psyche that they have no desire to deal with.
A thing that we should note, however, is that, ultimately, the exact same principle applies to Demons as well. For instance, Igor states in Tatsuya's additional scenario for Eternal Punishment's PSP remake that Personas and Demons are both formed out of the same archetypes that reside in the Collective Unconscious, with this being extremely relevant here because, as seen above, "Demons" in the context of Persona 2 as a whole are explicitly entities summoned directly from the Makai, being who you face during random encounters & the like.
This same sentiment is expressed in SMT If, where the protagonists fight against Lilith in the Expanse, and after she is defeated, Hazama explains that Lilith herself manifested as a reflection of Yumi's soul, filled with anger and jealousy, and in the game over screen, Charon flatly states that Demons are reflections of you. In Shin Megami Tensei IV, Lilith herself repeats this by saying that Demons as a whole are reflections of the minds and hearts of humans, with the take-away being that the two species are ultimately the same in essence, and that Demons, then, are simply incarnations of humanity's desires, with this being the final reason for why humans can mutate into Demons.
Furthermore, in Persona 2, the process of an individual being forcibly taken over by a Persona is directly referred to as "demonization", and Tatsuya's Scenario explicitly states that, when such a thing happens, a person transforms into a Demon by becoming the physical incarnation of an archetype of the collective unconscious. And in the same duology of games, Personas actually get to interact with their Demon counterparts, and all recognize them as the legitimate entities, with some (Such as Jack Frost and Pixie), even expressing their own desire to become Personas. In terms of levels, Personas and Demons are also treated as being identical, and you actually have to defeat certain Demons to unlock them as Personas later on, such as with Sakya.
To add the cherry ontop, in Persona 2 and 5, when Personas are summoned, they directly state that their powers are yours to utilize, and often cite their own feats and roles as defined in their respective mythologies as a way to illustrate that. There are several examples of that, but the most notable are:
And all of this is corroborated by Tatsuya explaining that a Persona User does, indeed, inherit all of the mythological abilities of their Persona, even things as basic as swordsmanship.
Thus, I think we can safely conclude without the slightest doubt that Demons and Personas are functionally the same, and thus should scale to one another.
Philemon and Nyarlathotep
As seen up there, the Persona 2 duology is the one installment of the series where the protagonists directly face the traditional demons seen in the rest of the series, who hail directly from the Expanse, as contrasted with Persona 3, 4 and 5, where random encounters are simply Shadows and not the "genuine" articles, so to speak.
Indeed, Persona 2 actually goes deeper than Demons and into the source of their existences, by introducing a realm of the Collective Unconscious known as "Kadath Mandala", which as previously shown, is stated by Igor to be the realm where the archetypes that give rise to both Personas and Demons reside in a state of slumber. And even in the context of mainline Shin Megami Tensei, this same principle still applies, as seen in the following interview for SMT IV Apocalypse, where Yamai talks about how all Gods and Demons are born from the emotions and desires in the shared unconscious of humanity:
And this leads us to the main figures behind the Persona 2 duology: Philemon and Nyarlathotep, who, as explained in the game, essentially exist as embodiments of the Collective Unconscious, and as personifications of humanity itself, with Nyarlathotep being the archetype of existential destruction and the shadow of mankind, and Philemon being his opposite, as the embodiment of virtue and stagnancy, and due to that, they are even referred to as being primordial humans of a sort.
Ontop of that, both Igor and Zula state that the realm which they inhabit is a distant abyss that is even deeper than Kadath, much like Kadath itself is deeper than the awakened world. Meaning they are the most basic and all-enclosing of all archetypes, which are themselves explained to be the patterns and mechanisms through which humans can comprehend, discern and observe their surroundings, meaning that human Cognition itself functions through them, which is supported by Philemon being identified as the "creator of all unconscious actions."
When we accept Megami Tensei as a whole as being a single, unified setting, then these things have ramifications that extend far and wide: Since Philemon and Nyarlathotep are the primordial embodiments of the Collective Unconscious, from which every Demon, Persona and Archetype thereof is born, then it logically follows that they stand above pretty much every character in the verse, and this, most controversially, extends even to YHVH, since, as said by Yamai, even He was born from humanity's shared awareness, and Apocalypse repeatedly stresses the notion that, while He is extraordinarily powerful as The One True God, He is still simply abusing a loophole, and ultimately no different from any other demon.
The Four Worlds
As thoroughly outlined in here, Megami Tensei's cosmology as a whole is structured around the concept of the Tree of Life, a diagram supposed to represent the universe in its entirety, in both physical and metaphysical levels, as well as the process through which an unmanifest, unknowable Godhead manifests itself in order to form the world.
The Tree of Life is then divided into four spheres of existence, which each represent a stage which the sublime energy of God passes through in order to become material and independent from its divinity. And although Edogawa is unfortunately cucked out of explaining this in Persona 3, those worlds do appear in other games of the series. In Shin Megami Tensei II, The Expanse is designed entirely around the Tree of Life, and the game's developers confirm in an interview that the realms in it aren't simply named after the Ten Sefirot: They are, and inspired, the Sefirot to begin with.
dijehtranslations.wordpress.com
The worlds in question, from top to bottom, are Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah and Assiah, the fourth being the physical world, whose existential basis is provided by the worlds preceding it. And the highest, Atziluth, being curiously the one that receives the most attention from the series. Even as far back as Digital Devil Story, it was identified as being the Demon World:
And starting from Strange Journey, the Compendium entry of the Slime demon has identified it as the place from which Demons are summoned as well.
megamitensei.fandom.com
And, curiously, it's also been referred to as the world of archetypes, and as a place beyond the cycle of reincarnation, where Vairocana, the Great Sun Buddha, makes his domain. This draws an obvious connection with Kadath Mandala, since it is also both a world of archetypes and the realm where Buddhas who realized the illusory nature of the world and transcended the domain of the Ego reside, with Vairocana himself being the first Demon which the Eternal Punishment cast meets while in there, so it's blatantly obvious that Kadath and Atziluth are just different names for the same place.
While Assiah is the physical world, Atziluth, being the collective unconscious of humanity, is the world of the mind, which in the context of MegaTen is synonym with the spiritual and the astral. And this takes us to the subject of the two worlds that stand in-between them: Yetzirah and Beriah.
Going by SMT II, these two very much exist, and are a part of the Abyss governed by Lucifer as much as Atziluth itself is, which is noteworthy, since, according to the Shin Megami Tensei IV Artbook, the Expanse itself is a realm that exists in-between the material world and the world where spirits live. And the first Devil Summoner furthers that point home by introducing a realm of existence called the "Fake Astral Plane", which, according to the game:
dijehtranslations.wordpress.com
As said above, each of the Four Worlds provide the basis for the existence of the world that proceeds from it, with Atziluth/Kadath in particular containing the Fake Astral World and perceiving the entire awakened world as an illusion, ontop of being the foundation for the Ego and the conscious mind itself, which is said to be like a tiny island floating amidst the vast sea unconscious. Given that, and how SMT IV's Expanse is stated to be a world comprised by the thoughts of humanity (Which are themselves the same as the information that provides the foundation for the physical world as a whole) that exists beyond past, present and future and allows individuals to travel throughout time and into alternate timelines using it as a medium, it naturally follows that a similar relationship exists between the lower three worlds.
More than that, Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE also has tradable items called "Essences of Yetzirah", which as seen on the page (Broken english aside), are stated to be invisible in three dimensions, which further suggests that the higher worlds beyond Assiah do not reside in the same dimensional space as it.
The same game also refers to the Demon World by the kanji "魔階", as opposed to the usual "魔界", with the difference here lying on the second one: While "界" is used to indicate a world, kingdom or society in the more conventional sense of the word, "階" is used to denote a point within an hierarchical structure, such as the steps of a ladder or the floors of a building, alongside more abstract things like ranking or tiering, all of which further supports the idea that the worlds beyond Assiah and below Atziluth are indeed higher dimensions and/or planes of existence beyond the physical world.
So, we have a hierarchy of four levels of existence, the lowest of which (Assiah) is already known to be an infinite multiverse, and thus 4-D. Going upwards through this scale, this means that the highest world, Atziluth, is 7-D.
The lower-end worlds scale to Demons like The Four Devas, who have the already accepted feat of holding back the Demon World from consuming the human one through a barrier, and The White, who explicitly extended their domain, the Monochrome Forest, across the realm itself during their appearance in Shin Megami Tensei IV, both of which are Low 1-C taking the newer context into account.
As for who scales to Atziluth: According to the SMT II Demon Encyclopedia, Metatron is metaphysically the same entity as Shaddai, who is in turn equal to other Names of YHVH, such as Sabaoth and Elohim, the latter of which, in turn, is said to govern over the realm of Chokmah, which is one of the Sefirot comprising Atziluth. Meaning that everyone on Metatron's level and upwards would scale to the realm, and thus be tiered at 1-C.
There is more, though!
Archetypes
Posting this scan for the third time here, which really goes to show how important it is to MegaTen's cosmology in general. And its significance lies on a small detail on Igor's dialogue shown above: As you can see, Igor states in it that Kadath Mandala is the realm where the archetypes of Demons and Personas slumber, which he explains are the essential "images" underlying those entities, each corresponding to a single Demon.
As seen above, Atziluth, which is itself another name for the archetypal world, is often referred to as being the realm of demons, or more specifically, the place from which they are summoned forth, with this being explicitly stated both in the original Digital Devil Story novels and the Conpendium entries pertaining to the Slimes from more recent games (Such as Strange Journey, IV and Liberation Dx2.)
Speaking of Strange Journey: In it, we have Tiamat stating that Demons naturally exist as formless entities that act as dormant "seeds" living underneath the soil of reality, which are intimately connected to the thoughts and emotions of humans, and thus given shape and power by them.
Shougo Isogai, the lead writer of the game, reinstates that fact in an interview to the fan-book Schwarzwelt Reminiscences, where he clarifies that the Schwarzwelt, the setting of the game, is in fact a part of Atziluth, although one that was given form by the sins and vices of humanity.
Since Atziluth and the Kadath are already established to be the same realm, it shouldn't be too difficult to draw the connection here, especially given how Tiamat describes the formless selves of Demons as "asleep," much like Igor describes archetypes. Soul Hackers also makes reference to that point, but with slightly different wording: In it, both Tiamat and Apsu point out that, although they forms may die and change, they are ultimately entities of pure power, and so they will never disappear:
And Demons themselves are also comprised of a substance known as "Magnetite," which Tenkai states is the very essence of human emotions and desires, hailing directly from the Expanse, and which Demons need to maintain their physical forms, with this being even a gameplay mechanic in the earlier games, as the player character had a set amount of Magnetite that needed to be constantly replenished to keep their Demons summoned. All of this, obviously, substantiates the principle of Demons starting out as formless entities until human thoughts and beliefs grant them their own forms.
Since multiple incarnations of the same Demon can exist simultaneously, while Atziluth resides beyond spacetime and is thus necessarily singular in nature, this logically means that the archetypes themselves exist independently from their demonic counterparts.
And this is briefly alluded to by Lucifer both in SMT II and SMT IV. In II, he states that, when his physical form is dead, he is in a state where he exists "everywhere" and "inside of you [the player character, Aleph]" until the time comes where he'll be necessary again, which is perfectly justified under the wider cosmology, since, according to Yamai, he was born as a feature of the collective unconscious (Which itself underlies all things) representing humanity's concept of chaos and rebellion:
And in IV, he states what is effectively the same thing, but with the added detail of explicitly referring to his current self as an "incarnation."
And then we have the most explicit example of an archetype in the series: Mem Aleph.
In essence, Mem Aleph's nature is that of an archetypal entity that represents the raw, basic idea of a "Great Mother", of which every Mother Goddess is just an offshot/fragment, and which belongs to no particular mythology or religion, being instead a completely abstract being, unlike other Gods and Demons.
As Isogai explains, this nature of Mem Aleph derives from the fact that she was not as greatly affected by the outflow of human emotion that shaped all of the entities of the Schwarzwelt into mythological entities, thus allowing her to remain in her formless and abstract state to a degree, meaning that all of those characteristics would apply to other Demons as well. And this basically seals the deal on the topic of Archetypes.
The consequences of this? Practically speaking, it means that every Demon in the verse actually has a formless higher self that slumbers within the Atziluth/Kadath Mandala/The Collective Unconscious, and, as we know, Archetypes are basic units that compose the unconscious and exist as the mechanisms through which human comprehension is possible. Given this, and how the Four Worlds work, this means that all Demons should receive a 1-C key corresponding to their Archetype.
1-A
So, some of you have probably seen this scan before, from the Quantum Devil Saga series of novels:
However, pretty much no other sites that provides this as evidence bothers to showcase the context behind it, and so who exactly it applies to is a bit muddled going by that alone. This ends now.
To summarize it, this exchange occurs in Vol. 5, which begins with the protagonist, Serph, being killed and dissolved down to the sub-molecular level, which results in his consciousness disappearing from the physical world and being engulfed by a sea of nothingness. And while within this sea, he awakens, but as an omnipresent, incorporeal entity devoid of an ego, and this exchange in turn occurs:
Yeah, so, as we can gather, this realm, being the world of the unconscious where individuals who attained Nirvana and escaped the cycle of reincarnation reside in a state of no-ego, is very obviously just the Atziluth / Kadath. And the first statement above is very clear-cut 1-A. The fact that it specifically refers to superiority over the concept of dimensions & refers to such a state as fundamentally above simply being a higher-dimensional entity beyond the boundaries of the 3-D world also means that it bypasses this clause of the Tiering System FAQ, which only accounts for cases where it is unclear if the superiority in question is over "dimensions" as a whole or merely the dimensional structures physically present in the verse, and so it certainly fulfills the "All possible extensions" criterion.
To clarify some things, also: Throughout the series of novels, the location itself is often referred to as a higher dimension, and Serph himself only states that it exists beyond the concept of dimensions altogether as a possibility, but it should be noted that the later is justified in the very next page, where it is stated that all of the trivialities of the physical world were starting to catch up to his mind, which means that he was rapidly forgetting about his experience in the sea of nothingness.
And as you can see above, much earlier into the book, when his narration is focused on the period where he was resting directly in the quantum world, he notes that directions such as up and down don't exist in there, which cements that the place itself isn't just a higher-dimensional space.
This means that, at least, everyone on Metatron's level and up would be scaled to 1-A.
But to get some things out of the way first, we need to address something extremely important. Namely, the canonicity of the novel. When it comes to that, the first thing one might see after a quick google search is what the Wikipedia page has to say:
en.m.wikipedia.org
To explain that, we should first establish that Quantum Devil Saga is not exactly a straight novelization of the Digital Devil Saga duology. Instead, it's the original version of the story, as envisioned by the first scenario writer of the game, Yu Godai, who had to leave the project midway through due to health issues, and eventually compilled all of her own ideas and details that were not fit to be conveyed through a video game scenario into a series of novels. As said by Yu Godai herself in the afterword of the first volume:
And for that reason, coupled with a lack of involvement from Atlus' part on the translation project, the translator, Kevin Frane, expressed that Quantum Devil Saga as a whole is more detached from the overarching Megami Tensei setting in terms of presentation and terminology, with this statement being presumably the source that wikipedia uses to say that the series itself is non-canon to the franchise's continuity. Obviously, this results in there being a great many differences between the games and the novels, even though both of them start very similarly.
However, it cannot be denied that, in spite of their differences, both continuities ultimately still derive from the same blueprint, and Yu Godai's core original ideas still remain in the games. For instance, both of them feature the idea of there being a higher plane of existence representing the deepest level of reality, in which all things are realized as one, with the main characters eventually ascending to this realm and attaining a higher state, Nirvana, at the end of the story:
youtu.be
I'll have to, again, stress the fact that Yu Godai isn't just a random scenario writer who worked on the game: She is the contractual author of the story to begin with, which is what allowed her to publish her own novels to begin with, which themselves are just compilations of the ideas she had regarding the story, which were then used as a basis to construct the narrative of the games, as well. So the characters and setting belong to her as much as they belong to Atlus.
And when it comes to the elements that are shared by both of them (Case in point: The buddhist motifs, such as the all-encompassing quantum world where Buddhas attain Nirvana), the key difference is that the novels are a medium that has far less restrictions than a video game narrative, which allows them to be developed with more detail. The author herself explained this in the afterword of Volume 1, already posted above, but the novel's translator also reiterates this in an interview:
bentobooks.com
Bento Books, the company responsible for translating the first two volumes of the novel to English, also has this tidbit as a blurb on their official description of the work, which matters very much, since it obviously made a contract with the original publisher of the novels (In this case, Hayakawa Publishing) to even start commercializing the English version, the latter of whom still is the copyright holder for it as well:
bentobooks.com
Taking all of this into consideration, I am of the belief that the statements above do very much apply to the game continuity, being simply elaborations of ideas that are already presented in its narrative, by the original author of the narrative in question, no less. Hence, if we are to accept this, 1-A is definitely warranted for all characters who scale to the Atziluth.
Miscellaneous Revisions
So, currently, every Demon profile has this description within it:
To put it bluntly, calling it "Regeneration" is very, very wrong, and "Resurrection" instead is the more apt term, since, every time a Demon returns from the grave, it is made pretty clearly that they returned to life, instead of having regenerated. The most direct example contradicting the notion that it's the latter comes from Shin Megami Tensei II, where Lucifer directly states in the Neutral Route that he will die because of his wounds that he received in his fight with Aleph.
Furthermore, it should be noted that this resurrection isn't at all applicable in combat, either, and takes a long, long time to actually happen. For instance, the Four Archangels were killed by Kazuya in SMT I, and only came back sometime before the events of SMT II, after a period of time long enough for Kazuya to actually rebuild civilization after the Great Flood that wiped out most of humanity in the first game.
Straddling away from that and into Persona 5: Early-game Palace Rulers like Kamoshida should not be Low 2-C in their human forms, since they very clearly aren't any stronger than their human selves are and depend on the Shadows under their command to carry things around. For instance, Shadow Kamoshida gets tackled into the ground by Ryuji. Sustaining their Palaces is purely hax, and doesn't even apply to the Shadow Selves anyway, since what controls and sustains the cognitive world is explicitly the Cognition of the real person in the physical world, which happens entirely on the unconscious level. The exceptions to these would be the demon forms of the Palace Rulers, who are supposed to be the embodiments of the distorted desires that gave birth to the Palaces to begin with.
This would mean the Phantom Thieves lose the Low 2-C early-game key, with the tier itself likely being moved to the mid-game category, and a new key should be made in accordance with the appropriate feats.
Still on the topic of Persona, every notable page also has this for a speed rating:
This is off of this scan, which is massive out of context. In short, "The Shadow" in the singular, referring to the general archetype, does not refer to the random encounters that you face during Persona 3, 4 and 5. Rather, it refers to Nyarlathotep, who indeed is the shadow of mankind and refers to himself as such during his dialogue with the protagonists. Thus, Immeasurable for the early-game protagonists should go as well.
And finally: Although the current early-game keys of the SMT protagonists are rated at 8-C scaling off of basic Agi spells being able to incinerate a Lham Derg. This is quite the lowball, as it stands, considering the existence of Erthys, who is the conceptual embodiment of the element of Earth, created by Human Observation assigning a mystical explanation to natural events and phenomena, as opposed to a more naturalistic one. Given that context, he should scale to 6-B based on some of the more extreme seismic phenomena that the wiki currently categorizes.
Let's start the trickster's game. Happy 25th Birthday, Persona.
On that day, the a lone, singular JRPG was released to the public, dubbed the name "Revelations: Persona", released on the Playstation.
A successor to the successful (Shin) Megami Tensei series, on that day, that would be the first of many more entries to come.
Here we are, 25 years later. Gifted with a stories of self-exploration, understanding and acceptance, death and grief, truth and illusion, and subjugation and rebellion, all tracing back to the singular name "Persona".
But, that's not all.
Stories of death, rebirth, nihilism, hope, vice, freedom, far and wide.
This isn't merely a gift to Persona, but the entire series as a whole.
Before this thread continues, an unfathomable amount of thanks should be granted to the Persona Wank Squad (now MegaTen Wank Squad), as this couldn't have been possible without their efforts. All the researching, scans, and work couldn't have been done by one singular body, and all those who helped pushed Persona to this point in the past. Very ironic, considering above all else, the series instructs you to believe individuality is all an illusion.
So, a very warm thank you to:
@Ultima_Reality @AxisPowerRanger @Dr._whiteee @Elizhaa @MarvelFanatic119 @Solacis @Rtxthegamer @Zencha9 @HST_Master @KnightOfSunlight, and many, many more.
And, now...
Reconciling the Two Halves
For the longest time, this site has considered Persona & mainline Shin Megami Tensei to be functionally separate verses with independent cosmologies, meaning that any statements made within the context of one would not affect the ratings of other in any way. Simply put, the primary aim of this revision is to tear that down entirely and merge the two into a single setting. To that end, a blog was made detailing the exact reasonings behind this revision:
Megami Tensei Cosmology Blog
vsbattles.fandom.com
Clearly, it goes without saying that Persona and Shin Megami Tensei are set within the same universe; this is a fact, and it borders on common knowledge among the community surrounding the franchise. Indeed, Persona itself was spawned from Shin Megami Tensei If..., a spin-off that features quite a few characters and elements from the mainline franchise, most notable of which is Stephen, who appears at the very end of Akira's Route. And the protagonist of the game, Tamaki Uchida, also appears as a major character in Persona 1 and 2.
And in Persona 2, we also have plenty of references to the first game of the Devil Summoner series, such as Kyouji Kuzunoha, a major character in the game, making an appearance in the body of the local private detective, while Devil Summoner on its own makes direct mention of Gotou and Thorman, both of whom are major characters in Shin Megami Tensei I. And that's not even to get into how significant the name "Kuzunoha" becomes later on in the franchise.
Given this overwhelming amount of evidence, it becomes undeniable that Persona and Shin Megami Tensei are, objectively speaking, the exact same setting, and any differences they have only exist from a stylistic and thematic standpoint. Thus, there is absolutely no reason for them to be separated in such an unnatural and artificial manner.
With that set firmly in stone, we can now explore the ramifications of this fact in the profiles:
Demons & Personas powerscaling
An extremely widespread belief among not only this site in particular, but also the entire community of MegaTen, is that Personas are simply holograms of true Demons, which have none of their real capabilities and thus cannot receive scaling from them in any way, with this being the reason for why Persona was rated at Tier 7-5 for the longest while. This claim is not inaccurate, so to speak, but the conclusion drawn from it is very far-fetched, and the exact connection between Demons and Personas is far more tighly-knit that previously thought.
As is well-known by now, Personas in general are the images of Gods and Demons of myth that hail from the world of the Collective Unconscious, the shared sea of all mankind's souls. More precisely, they are the shape of an individual's personality, which can be awakened and summoned as an entity of great power once they are able to tame their own jungian "Shadow" and reconcile with the aspects of their psyche that they have no desire to deal with.
A thing that we should note, however, is that, ultimately, the exact same principle applies to Demons as well. For instance, Igor states in Tatsuya's additional scenario for Eternal Punishment's PSP remake that Personas and Demons are both formed out of the same archetypes that reside in the Collective Unconscious, with this being extremely relevant here because, as seen above, "Demons" in the context of Persona 2 as a whole are explicitly entities summoned directly from the Makai, being who you face during random encounters & the like.
This same sentiment is expressed in SMT If, where the protagonists fight against Lilith in the Expanse, and after she is defeated, Hazama explains that Lilith herself manifested as a reflection of Yumi's soul, filled with anger and jealousy, and in the game over screen, Charon flatly states that Demons are reflections of you. In Shin Megami Tensei IV, Lilith herself repeats this by saying that Demons as a whole are reflections of the minds and hearts of humans, with the take-away being that the two species are ultimately the same in essence, and that Demons, then, are simply incarnations of humanity's desires, with this being the final reason for why humans can mutate into Demons.
Furthermore, in Persona 2, the process of an individual being forcibly taken over by a Persona is directly referred to as "demonization", and Tatsuya's Scenario explicitly states that, when such a thing happens, a person transforms into a Demon by becoming the physical incarnation of an archetype of the collective unconscious. And in the same duology of games, Personas actually get to interact with their Demon counterparts, and all recognize them as the legitimate entities, with some (Such as Jack Frost and Pixie), even expressing their own desire to become Personas. In terms of levels, Personas and Demons are also treated as being identical, and you actually have to defeat certain Demons to unlock them as Personas later on, such as with Sakya.
To add the cherry ontop, in Persona 2 and 5, when Personas are summoned, they directly state that their powers are yours to utilize, and often cite their own feats and roles as defined in their respective mythologies as a way to illustrate that. There are several examples of that, but the most notable are:
- Mada stating that his endless power that can swallow the entire universe is yours.
- Ouroboros talking about bestowing the entirety of her infinite energy upon you.
- Virochana saying that he is "the vision of space itself", and that you are thus the body of the universe.
- Shiva stating that you now wield his power of destruction and rebirth, referencing his role as the one who destroys the universe so that it can be reborn.
- Kohryu saying that, with his power, you are capable of moving all of creation.
- Gaia stating that, since she is the foundation of the earth, and you are her, then you are the world itself as well.
- Skurd saying that the future of all existence that she weaves is yours to control, and Verdandi likewise stating that her control over the present belongs to you now.
And all of this is corroborated by Tatsuya explaining that a Persona User does, indeed, inherit all of the mythological abilities of their Persona, even things as basic as swordsmanship.
Thus, I think we can safely conclude without the slightest doubt that Demons and Personas are functionally the same, and thus should scale to one another.
Philemon and Nyarlathotep
As seen up there, the Persona 2 duology is the one installment of the series where the protagonists directly face the traditional demons seen in the rest of the series, who hail directly from the Expanse, as contrasted with Persona 3, 4 and 5, where random encounters are simply Shadows and not the "genuine" articles, so to speak.
Indeed, Persona 2 actually goes deeper than Demons and into the source of their existences, by introducing a realm of the Collective Unconscious known as "Kadath Mandala", which as previously shown, is stated by Igor to be the realm where the archetypes that give rise to both Personas and Demons reside in a state of slumber. And even in the context of mainline Shin Megami Tensei, this same principle still applies, as seen in the following interview for SMT IV Apocalypse, where Yamai talks about how all Gods and Demons are born from the emotions and desires in the shared unconscious of humanity:
And this leads us to the main figures behind the Persona 2 duology: Philemon and Nyarlathotep, who, as explained in the game, essentially exist as embodiments of the Collective Unconscious, and as personifications of humanity itself, with Nyarlathotep being the archetype of existential destruction and the shadow of mankind, and Philemon being his opposite, as the embodiment of virtue and stagnancy, and due to that, they are even referred to as being primordial humans of a sort.
Ontop of that, both Igor and Zula state that the realm which they inhabit is a distant abyss that is even deeper than Kadath, much like Kadath itself is deeper than the awakened world. Meaning they are the most basic and all-enclosing of all archetypes, which are themselves explained to be the patterns and mechanisms through which humans can comprehend, discern and observe their surroundings, meaning that human Cognition itself functions through them, which is supported by Philemon being identified as the "creator of all unconscious actions."
When we accept Megami Tensei as a whole as being a single, unified setting, then these things have ramifications that extend far and wide: Since Philemon and Nyarlathotep are the primordial embodiments of the Collective Unconscious, from which every Demon, Persona and Archetype thereof is born, then it logically follows that they stand above pretty much every character in the verse, and this, most controversially, extends even to YHVH, since, as said by Yamai, even He was born from humanity's shared awareness, and Apocalypse repeatedly stresses the notion that, while He is extraordinarily powerful as The One True God, He is still simply abusing a loophole, and ultimately no different from any other demon.
The Four Worlds
As thoroughly outlined in here, Megami Tensei's cosmology as a whole is structured around the concept of the Tree of Life, a diagram supposed to represent the universe in its entirety, in both physical and metaphysical levels, as well as the process through which an unmanifest, unknowable Godhead manifests itself in order to form the world.
The Tree of Life is then divided into four spheres of existence, which each represent a stage which the sublime energy of God passes through in order to become material and independent from its divinity. And although Edogawa is unfortunately cucked out of explaining this in Persona 3, those worlds do appear in other games of the series. In Shin Megami Tensei II, The Expanse is designed entirely around the Tree of Life, and the game's developers confirm in an interview that the realms in it aren't simply named after the Ten Sefirot: They are, and inspired, the Sefirot to begin with.
Kaneko, Cozy, Narisawa Shin Megami Tensei II Interview [Akuma Daijiten]
Shin Megami Tensei II interview – Akuma Daijiten [Okada Kouji, Kaneko Kazuma, Itou Ryuutarou] Creators’ Talk Okada Kouji: Shin Megami Tensei II chief programmer and project leader. Kan…
dijehtranslations.wordpress.com
The worlds in question, from top to bottom, are Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah and Assiah, the fourth being the physical world, whose existential basis is provided by the worlds preceding it. And the highest, Atziluth, being curiously the one that receives the most attention from the series. Even as far back as Digital Devil Story, it was identified as being the Demon World:
And starting from Strange Journey, the Compendium entry of the Slime demon has identified it as the place from which Demons are summoned as well.
Slime
Slime is a demon in the series. A slime, also commonly called ooze, are common types of monsters in many fantasy roleplaying games. True to their name, they don't usually have any distinct shape and appear as large masses of gelatinous fluid. Slimes and oozes vary between mediums, with some...
megamitensei.fandom.com
And, curiously, it's also been referred to as the world of archetypes, and as a place beyond the cycle of reincarnation, where Vairocana, the Great Sun Buddha, makes his domain. This draws an obvious connection with Kadath Mandala, since it is also both a world of archetypes and the realm where Buddhas who realized the illusory nature of the world and transcended the domain of the Ego reside, with Vairocana himself being the first Demon which the Eternal Punishment cast meets while in there, so it's blatantly obvious that Kadath and Atziluth are just different names for the same place.
While Assiah is the physical world, Atziluth, being the collective unconscious of humanity, is the world of the mind, which in the context of MegaTen is synonym with the spiritual and the astral. And this takes us to the subject of the two worlds that stand in-between them: Yetzirah and Beriah.
Going by SMT II, these two very much exist, and are a part of the Abyss governed by Lucifer as much as Atziluth itself is, which is noteworthy, since, according to the Shin Megami Tensei IV Artbook, the Expanse itself is a realm that exists in-between the material world and the world where spirits live. And the first Devil Summoner furthers that point home by introducing a realm of existence called the "Fake Astral Plane", which, according to the game:
Discarded messages/dialogue in Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner
Wow, another translation, so fast? Amazing. Today’s translation is exactly as the title says. The usual (now dead?) website had a section where the site owner transcribed data found on the Se…
dijehtranslations.wordpress.com
As said above, each of the Four Worlds provide the basis for the existence of the world that proceeds from it, with Atziluth/Kadath in particular containing the Fake Astral World and perceiving the entire awakened world as an illusion, ontop of being the foundation for the Ego and the conscious mind itself, which is said to be like a tiny island floating amidst the vast sea unconscious. Given that, and how SMT IV's Expanse is stated to be a world comprised by the thoughts of humanity (Which are themselves the same as the information that provides the foundation for the physical world as a whole) that exists beyond past, present and future and allows individuals to travel throughout time and into alternate timelines using it as a medium, it naturally follows that a similar relationship exists between the lower three worlds.
More than that, Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE also has tradable items called "Essences of Yetzirah", which as seen on the page (Broken english aside), are stated to be invisible in three dimensions, which further suggests that the higher worlds beyond Assiah do not reside in the same dimensional space as it.
The same game also refers to the Demon World by the kanji "魔階", as opposed to the usual "魔界", with the difference here lying on the second one: While "界" is used to indicate a world, kingdom or society in the more conventional sense of the word, "階" is used to denote a point within an hierarchical structure, such as the steps of a ladder or the floors of a building, alongside more abstract things like ranking or tiering, all of which further supports the idea that the worlds beyond Assiah and below Atziluth are indeed higher dimensions and/or planes of existence beyond the physical world.
So, we have a hierarchy of four levels of existence, the lowest of which (Assiah) is already known to be an infinite multiverse, and thus 4-D. Going upwards through this scale, this means that the highest world, Atziluth, is 7-D.
The lower-end worlds scale to Demons like The Four Devas, who have the already accepted feat of holding back the Demon World from consuming the human one through a barrier, and The White, who explicitly extended their domain, the Monochrome Forest, across the realm itself during their appearance in Shin Megami Tensei IV, both of which are Low 1-C taking the newer context into account.
As for who scales to Atziluth: According to the SMT II Demon Encyclopedia, Metatron is metaphysically the same entity as Shaddai, who is in turn equal to other Names of YHVH, such as Sabaoth and Elohim, the latter of which, in turn, is said to govern over the realm of Chokmah, which is one of the Sefirot comprising Atziluth. Meaning that everyone on Metatron's level and upwards would scale to the realm, and thus be tiered at 1-C.
There is more, though!
Archetypes
Posting this scan for the third time here, which really goes to show how important it is to MegaTen's cosmology in general. And its significance lies on a small detail on Igor's dialogue shown above: As you can see, Igor states in it that Kadath Mandala is the realm where the archetypes of Demons and Personas slumber, which he explains are the essential "images" underlying those entities, each corresponding to a single Demon.
As seen above, Atziluth, which is itself another name for the archetypal world, is often referred to as being the realm of demons, or more specifically, the place from which they are summoned forth, with this being explicitly stated both in the original Digital Devil Story novels and the Conpendium entries pertaining to the Slimes from more recent games (Such as Strange Journey, IV and Liberation Dx2.)
Speaking of Strange Journey: In it, we have Tiamat stating that Demons naturally exist as formless entities that act as dormant "seeds" living underneath the soil of reality, which are intimately connected to the thoughts and emotions of humans, and thus given shape and power by them.
Shougo Isogai, the lead writer of the game, reinstates that fact in an interview to the fan-book Schwarzwelt Reminiscences, where he clarifies that the Schwarzwelt, the setting of the game, is in fact a part of Atziluth, although one that was given form by the sins and vices of humanity.
Since Atziluth and the Kadath are already established to be the same realm, it shouldn't be too difficult to draw the connection here, especially given how Tiamat describes the formless selves of Demons as "asleep," much like Igor describes archetypes. Soul Hackers also makes reference to that point, but with slightly different wording: In it, both Tiamat and Apsu point out that, although they forms may die and change, they are ultimately entities of pure power, and so they will never disappear:
And Demons themselves are also comprised of a substance known as "Magnetite," which Tenkai states is the very essence of human emotions and desires, hailing directly from the Expanse, and which Demons need to maintain their physical forms, with this being even a gameplay mechanic in the earlier games, as the player character had a set amount of Magnetite that needed to be constantly replenished to keep their Demons summoned. All of this, obviously, substantiates the principle of Demons starting out as formless entities until human thoughts and beliefs grant them their own forms.
Since multiple incarnations of the same Demon can exist simultaneously, while Atziluth resides beyond spacetime and is thus necessarily singular in nature, this logically means that the archetypes themselves exist independently from their demonic counterparts.
And this is briefly alluded to by Lucifer both in SMT II and SMT IV. In II, he states that, when his physical form is dead, he is in a state where he exists "everywhere" and "inside of you [the player character, Aleph]" until the time comes where he'll be necessary again, which is perfectly justified under the wider cosmology, since, according to Yamai, he was born as a feature of the collective unconscious (Which itself underlies all things) representing humanity's concept of chaos and rebellion:
Shin Megami Tensei II - Update 51
Let's Play Shin Megami Tensei II by Luisfe - Part 51
lparchive.org
And in IV, he states what is effectively the same thing, but with the added detail of explicitly referring to his current self as an "incarnation."
And then we have the most explicit example of an archetype in the series: Mem Aleph.
In essence, Mem Aleph's nature is that of an archetypal entity that represents the raw, basic idea of a "Great Mother", of which every Mother Goddess is just an offshot/fragment, and which belongs to no particular mythology or religion, being instead a completely abstract being, unlike other Gods and Demons.
As Isogai explains, this nature of Mem Aleph derives from the fact that she was not as greatly affected by the outflow of human emotion that shaped all of the entities of the Schwarzwelt into mythological entities, thus allowing her to remain in her formless and abstract state to a degree, meaning that all of those characteristics would apply to other Demons as well. And this basically seals the deal on the topic of Archetypes.
The consequences of this? Practically speaking, it means that every Demon in the verse actually has a formless higher self that slumbers within the Atziluth/Kadath Mandala/The Collective Unconscious, and, as we know, Archetypes are basic units that compose the unconscious and exist as the mechanisms through which human comprehension is possible. Given this, and how the Four Worlds work, this means that all Demons should receive a 1-C key corresponding to their Archetype.
1-A
So, some of you have probably seen this scan before, from the Quantum Devil Saga series of novels:
However, pretty much no other sites that provides this as evidence bothers to showcase the context behind it, and so who exactly it applies to is a bit muddled going by that alone. This ends now.
To summarize it, this exchange occurs in Vol. 5, which begins with the protagonist, Serph, being killed and dissolved down to the sub-molecular level, which results in his consciousness disappearing from the physical world and being engulfed by a sea of nothingness. And while within this sea, he awakens, but as an omnipresent, incorporeal entity devoid of an ego, and this exchange in turn occurs:
Yeah, so, as we can gather, this realm, being the world of the unconscious where individuals who attained Nirvana and escaped the cycle of reincarnation reside in a state of no-ego, is very obviously just the Atziluth / Kadath. And the first statement above is very clear-cut 1-A. The fact that it specifically refers to superiority over the concept of dimensions & refers to such a state as fundamentally above simply being a higher-dimensional entity beyond the boundaries of the 3-D world also means that it bypasses this clause of the Tiering System FAQ, which only accounts for cases where it is unclear if the superiority in question is over "dimensions" as a whole or merely the dimensional structures physically present in the verse, and so it certainly fulfills the "All possible extensions" criterion.
To clarify some things, also: Throughout the series of novels, the location itself is often referred to as a higher dimension, and Serph himself only states that it exists beyond the concept of dimensions altogether as a possibility, but it should be noted that the later is justified in the very next page, where it is stated that all of the trivialities of the physical world were starting to catch up to his mind, which means that he was rapidly forgetting about his experience in the sea of nothingness.
And as you can see above, much earlier into the book, when his narration is focused on the period where he was resting directly in the quantum world, he notes that directions such as up and down don't exist in there, which cements that the place itself isn't just a higher-dimensional space.
This means that, at least, everyone on Metatron's level and up would be scaled to 1-A.
But to get some things out of the way first, we need to address something extremely important. Namely, the canonicity of the novel. When it comes to that, the first thing one might see after a quick google search is what the Wikipedia page has to say:
Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner, Vol. 1 - Wikipedia
To explain that, we should first establish that Quantum Devil Saga is not exactly a straight novelization of the Digital Devil Saga duology. Instead, it's the original version of the story, as envisioned by the first scenario writer of the game, Yu Godai, who had to leave the project midway through due to health issues, and eventually compilled all of her own ideas and details that were not fit to be conveyed through a video game scenario into a series of novels. As said by Yu Godai herself in the afterword of the first volume:
And for that reason, coupled with a lack of involvement from Atlus' part on the translation project, the translator, Kevin Frane, expressed that Quantum Devil Saga as a whole is more detached from the overarching Megami Tensei setting in terms of presentation and terminology, with this statement being presumably the source that wikipedia uses to say that the series itself is non-canon to the franchise's continuity. Obviously, this results in there being a great many differences between the games and the novels, even though both of them start very similarly.
However, it cannot be denied that, in spite of their differences, both continuities ultimately still derive from the same blueprint, and Yu Godai's core original ideas still remain in the games. For instance, both of them feature the idea of there being a higher plane of existence representing the deepest level of reality, in which all things are realized as one, with the main characters eventually ascending to this realm and attaining a higher state, Nirvana, at the end of the story:
Digital Devil Saga 2 Cut-Scene: 51a [Ending]
Digital Devil Saga 2: Avatar Tuner.Cut-Scene: 51a Ending.Full Play List:http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=546B3A05424A3896
youtu.be
I'll have to, again, stress the fact that Yu Godai isn't just a random scenario writer who worked on the game: She is the contractual author of the story to begin with, which is what allowed her to publish her own novels to begin with, which themselves are just compilations of the ideas she had regarding the story, which were then used as a basis to construct the narrative of the games, as well. So the characters and setting belong to her as much as they belong to Atlus.
And when it comes to the elements that are shared by both of them (Case in point: The buddhist motifs, such as the all-encompassing quantum world where Buddhas attain Nirvana), the key difference is that the novels are a medium that has far less restrictions than a video game narrative, which allows them to be developed with more detail. The author herself explained this in the afterword of Volume 1, already posted above, but the novel's translator also reiterates this in an interview:
Kevin Frane interview
Bento Books, the company responsible for translating the first two volumes of the novel to English, also has this tidbit as a blurb on their official description of the work, which matters very much, since it obviously made a contract with the original publisher of the novels (In this case, Hayakawa Publishing) to even start commercializing the English version, the latter of whom still is the copyright holder for it as well:
Avatar Tuner
Taking all of this into consideration, I am of the belief that the statements above do very much apply to the game continuity, being simply elaborations of ideas that are already presented in its narrative, by the original author of the narrative in question, no less. Hence, if we are to accept this, 1-A is definitely warranted for all characters who scale to the Atziluth.
Miscellaneous Revisions
So, currently, every Demon profile has this description within it:
To put it bluntly, calling it "Regeneration" is very, very wrong, and "Resurrection" instead is the more apt term, since, every time a Demon returns from the grave, it is made pretty clearly that they returned to life, instead of having regenerated. The most direct example contradicting the notion that it's the latter comes from Shin Megami Tensei II, where Lucifer directly states in the Neutral Route that he will die because of his wounds that he received in his fight with Aleph.
Furthermore, it should be noted that this resurrection isn't at all applicable in combat, either, and takes a long, long time to actually happen. For instance, the Four Archangels were killed by Kazuya in SMT I, and only came back sometime before the events of SMT II, after a period of time long enough for Kazuya to actually rebuild civilization after the Great Flood that wiped out most of humanity in the first game.
Straddling away from that and into Persona 5: Early-game Palace Rulers like Kamoshida should not be Low 2-C in their human forms, since they very clearly aren't any stronger than their human selves are and depend on the Shadows under their command to carry things around. For instance, Shadow Kamoshida gets tackled into the ground by Ryuji. Sustaining their Palaces is purely hax, and doesn't even apply to the Shadow Selves anyway, since what controls and sustains the cognitive world is explicitly the Cognition of the real person in the physical world, which happens entirely on the unconscious level. The exceptions to these would be the demon forms of the Palace Rulers, who are supposed to be the embodiments of the distorted desires that gave birth to the Palaces to begin with.
This would mean the Phantom Thieves lose the Low 2-C early-game key, with the tier itself likely being moved to the mid-game category, and a new key should be made in accordance with the appropriate feats.
Still on the topic of Persona, every notable page also has this for a speed rating:
This is off of this scan, which is massive out of context. In short, "The Shadow" in the singular, referring to the general archetype, does not refer to the random encounters that you face during Persona 3, 4 and 5. Rather, it refers to Nyarlathotep, who indeed is the shadow of mankind and refers to himself as such during his dialogue with the protagonists. Thus, Immeasurable for the early-game protagonists should go as well.
And finally: Although the current early-game keys of the SMT protagonists are rated at 8-C scaling off of basic Agi spells being able to incinerate a Lham Derg. This is quite the lowball, as it stands, considering the existence of Erthys, who is the conceptual embodiment of the element of Earth, created by Human Observation assigning a mystical explanation to natural events and phenomena, as opposed to a more naturalistic one. Given that context, he should scale to 6-B based on some of the more extreme seismic phenomena that the wiki currently categorizes.
Let's start the trickster's game. Happy 25th Birthday, Persona.
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