Sumire Yoshizawa

Kasumi Yoshizawa, or Sumire Yoshizawa is a playable character from Persona 5 Royal. She is a student at Shujin Academy who lives a double life as a Phantom Thieves of Hearts.

Appearances

 * Persona 5 Royal: Playable Character; Faith Confidant

Design
Kasumi has red long hair tied into a ponytail, with a red ribbon tied into a bow, a beauty mark next to her left eye and red eyes. She wears a Shujin Academy winter uniform with black pantyhose and red loafers. Her summer school uniform is modified. She wears a white dress shirt under a beige button-down with vertical lines, white socks with blue lining and orange loafers.

Her summer casual outfit consists of a celeste blouse with black polka dots, white shorts and blue and brown sandals.

As a Phantom Thief, Kasumi wears a black mask with silver highlights and has a black ribbon tied to her ponytail. Her main outfit consists of a strapless black leotard, a chain belt with two silver roses motifs and the scabbard for her rapier attached to it, a black choker and red gloves. Her black bolero jacket has gold buttons, ruffled sleeves and three floor-length coattails. She wears thigh-length hose and stiletto-heels that resemble ballet shoes on the top.

Her true form without cognitive manipulation looks the same as her fake form, although she wears glasses and her hair drops down. She also lacks the beauty mark as her older sister, which makes her identifiable even if her hair is tied like Kasumi's.

Personality
Kasumi is a cheerful, elegant and friendly person with a seemingly perfect life, as she received a Shujin scholarship. She also appears to be quite clumsy and careless, as she is shown outright missing the mark at the batting cages even if her reflexes are usually excellent, and she lets her phone's battery run out while texting the protagonist. Despite the fact that she can cook, she is unpredictable and somewhat clumsy at it, since she isn't sure about the ingredients, and she often uses stamina replenishing food due to her gymnast tendencies.

While she expresses admiration towards the protagonist and his friends, she rejects the Phantom Thieves existence. She believes that people should learn how to solve their own problems instead of relying on others. This stems from her personal issues, having been helped throughout her life.

In reality, Kasumi is incredibly stressed out by the need of success, as Shujin can revoke her scholarship as soon as she gets anything below a top score. She's also alienated by her schoolmates because her high achievements make her receive special treatment from teachers, earning jealousy and envy from her schoolmates. This is further compounded by the death of her sister, a month prior to Joker's incident with Shido, in a traffic accident. This impairs her ability to perform and presumably led to her head teacher threatening a revoke of her scholarship.

Sumire is shown to be a lot more reserved and introverted than Kasumi, since she suffered from an inferiority complex towards her near-perfect sister. It's heavily implied that the jealousy became severe depression, which caused her suicide attempt that resulted in her sister's death. She gained severe survivor's guilt as a result, even going as far as requesting Takuto to transform her into her older sister.

Profile
The Yoshizawa twins lived alongside their over-protective father and is consisted of two members, Kasumi Yoshizawa and Sumire Yoshizawa. Both sisters are on good terms with each other and had the same gymnast teacher. Kasumi was a quick learner who learned all the moves quickly, but Sumire has trouble remembering most of her moves until she ate a cup of ice cream. While Sumire is no means a bad gymnast, due to her sleeker build, better memory and higher agility, Kasumi outperforms her in virtually any way, even going as far as gaining the top performance most of the time. The jealousy against her older sister has resulted in Sumire attempting to commit suicide by letting herself ran over by a car a month prior to the protagonist's arrival to Cafe Leblanc. Sumire only survived because Kasumi took the hit and died, resulting in Sumire falling into crippling depression courtesy of survivor's guilt.

Sumire then consulted the therapist Takuto Maruki under recommendation from her parents to help her overcome her depression. She told Takuto that she did not want to do anything and the only way for her to cope with this is to live as her sister. Takuto claimed that he had such power and she accepts, transforming her into a perfect copy of Kasumi by manipulating her cognition via a persona, complete with Kasumi's talents, appearance and personality. The real Kasumi is in fact deceased, and the "Kasumi" that the player encounters is merely a result of cognitive warping using Sumire as a vessel. Sumire as Kasumi enrolled into Shujin Academy and quickly managed to obtain a scholarship thanks to fully inheriting her sister's qualities.

She can be first seen during the 12th of April trying to lend a seat for an old woman only for a man to occupy it. He then ignored her by pretending to sleep. The protagonist encourages her to speak up, but she decides not to cause a ruckus. Once exiting the train, Kasumi thanks the protagonist for his attempt to help her. Later, they meet again at school. While Kamoshida does not appear to actually harass her unlike the other girls in his volleyball group, he attempted to discourage the interaction between her and the protagonist based on the rumors about him throughout Shujin, which shocked Kasumi.

On May 5th, Kasumi is in a rush to go to the school trip when an old man is constantly pestering her asking for her number, and saying he'll give her a ride. The protagonist is walking by and notices the commotion and steps up to help her, she hides behind him and the old man leaves afterwards. Kasumi thanks the protagonist for saving her. On the field trip, she invites the protagonist to have lunch with her. Kasumi apologizes and admits that after Kamoshida told her about the protagonist's criminal record and the rumors about him, Kasumi was quite hesitant to approach him. However, after being helped and speaking to him again, Kasumi realizes that the rumors are false and believes the protagonist is a good person.

On July 17th, after hanging out with Yusuke and Ryuji at the summer fair, the protagonist meets Kasumi near a construction site where she appears depressed. It turns out she was grieving for her twin sister whom she promised to go the gymnast internationals together. However, a month prior to the protagonist's arrival to Leblanc, her sister was killed in a car accident.

On October 3rd, Kasumi is called by a teacher who told her that her scholarship may be revoked due to bad performance in the gymnastic internationals. In reality, the "bad performance" was merely a 3rd runner up. Nevertheless, the teachers thinks that Kasumi must get first place to restore the school's reputation that got tainted by Kamoshida's case, and deems the threat of revoking her scolarship would motivate Kasumi to do better despite Takuto Maruki saying that it would only be putting undue pressure onto Kasumi. When she returns to the construction site, the protagonist comes across her and accidentally triggers the Metaverse Navigator. It accidentally causes Kasumi, the protagonist and Morgana to intrude into an unknown Palace resembling a fusion between a cognitive hospital and a futuristic paradise. She meets a cognitive copy of what appears to be her sister which was quickly crushed by a Shadow that transforms into Biyarky, which chastises her for not knowing pity. This causes her to awaken Cendrillon, who defeats the Biyarky and the trio escape. Morgana then attempts to persuade her to join them. She rejects the offer.

On October 17th, Kasumi invites the protagonist up to the roof of the school for lunch. She asks him about if he will continue being a phantom thief. She expresses concern that the protagonist may get into trouble if he continues due to rumors spreading about the phantom thieves being responsible for the headmaster's death. When the protagonist and Morgana affirms their choice to continue, Kasumi respects their wishes and offers her help, if they need it.

On October 26th, Kasumi invites the protagonist to hang out with her during the Shujin school festival after the Phantom Thieves agreed to Akechi's deal. She invites Joker to dance alongside her and even goes on stage herself to perform her moves.

On November 19th, Kasumi requests to cooperate with the protagonist; She fulfills this in the Niijima's Palace final confrontation, where she assists the protagonist's escape by helping him ditch off a horde of Shadows overwhelming him.

On November 25th, she came to visit the protagonist in Cafe Leblanc and met Futaba as well, being relieved by his survival of the interrogation. She reveals that after hearing Morgana and the protagonist mentioning the day of November 19th during their talk at the rooftop, Kasumi knew they're doing something so she stalked into Niijima's Palace. She then proposes to join in and fight Shido, although this was rejected as Morgana believes that Kasumi does not know how dangerous Shido is as an opponent. It's also because Morgana doesn't want to get Kasumi involved with what's going on and she should do what she can do. Kasumi relents in exchange that the protagonist promises her that he will return safely.

She would be celebrating Hatsumode alongside Joker at the party on the first of January, When meeting Joker, she sensed something is odd. At the middle of hanging out with Joker, her father called her back to home as her family is gathering inside it.

Kasumi is first seen during this arc calling the protagonist via phone as he was speaking with Akechi and joins the protagonist and Akechi to investigate. Her Cendrillion is now at level 75.

Upon investigating the Palace, one of the monitors display the details of her sister's death during a month prior to the game's beginning, revealing her name to be "Sumire Yoshizawa." Starting of this point she would have headaches trying to relive her memories. Reaching further will display one of Kasumi's victories where she would congratulate her sister as she promised to get the championships with her.

As an attempt to discourage the party in his salvation plan, Takuto, the master of the Palace reveals that Kasumi was the "sister" who died in the accident and not Sumire as well as contents of the accident that resulted in the transformation. Due to this shocking revelation, Kasumi reverts back to Sumire, although all of her abilities as Kasumi cannot be taken back. Sumire then is confiscated by Takuto as the party denied his salvation plan.

When the protagonist and Akechi return to Takuto's Palace and reject his offer of a happy world, he awakens Sumire into Kasumi; Due to denial, she fights the protagonist one on one. After then Takuto forcefully takes off her mask and drives it berserk, forcing the duo to fight a berserk Cendrillion. While this proved fruitless as Cendrillion is in severe denial and constantly absorbs the Biyarky near her, the duo were left outmatched until the other party members who broke free from Takuto's illusion came in and assisted the duo in defeating it. Once this is done for he restores Sumire as Kasumi in order to allow them more well prepared to combat him. She reappears in the real world at the next day as Sumire and is distressed by the amalgamation of her memories.

Sumire meets the protagonist once again and reveals that she agreed with Takuto for the sole reason that she cannot cope with her sister's death. After eavesdropping on the party's conversation with Lavenza, Sumire is inspired by how he and the others are determined to face their pain instead of running away, so she resolves to face her sadness and overcome it as her own person.

When she officially joins the party at Maruki's Palace, her codename is "Violet" and her name becomes "Yoshizawa Sumire." During her true awakening, Kasumi transforms into Cendrillion and was fused alongside it. Additionally, inside the Metaverse she takes the form of Kasumi as Takuto cannot remove Kasumi from Sumire and Kasumi is where all of Sumire's combat abilities reside.

After Takuto's defeat and the collapse of his cognitive manipulation powers, if the protagonist maxes Sumire's confidant on the third semester, she will be seen requesting her coach to get him out of juvenile hall. After Valentines' Day, she would be leaving Tokyo to Paris, but will return on the 14th of March and if the protagonist maxes her confidant and has entered a romance route with her, he can date her. In the epilogue, she meets the protagonist at the train station and bids him farewell before he departs.

Confidant
Kasumi's Confidant can be established during the 5/20 field trip. The Confidant only has five ranks instead of ten. The protagonist is not given access to the arcana's ultimate Persona due to it being a false arcana. The protagonist can only hang out with Kasumi by responding to her SNS invitations; Her confidant is not available in the overworld.

Even if her Faith confidant is "maxed," she can be invited for a hangout.

Kasumi's confidant will become "real" after Kasumi has became Cendrillion and the original Kasumi is revealed to be Sumire. The portrait of her confidant has became Sumire's portrait instead of Kasumi's, and she will be available in the overworld. Completing Sumire's confidant will unlock the fusion of Maria and transmogrify Cendrillon into Vanadis. Afterwards, her overworld portrait will resemble Kasumi.

Etymology
Kasumi is often translated as "mist," but it also can be translated as "flowers" or "blossoms." Her surname of Yoshizawa does not have any direct meaning but was the same surname as, famous for being considered the creator of origami.

Trivia

 * Kasumi's bond with the protagonist is reminsicent to Tohru Adachi's bond with Yu Narukami. Both have an unusual Arcana with differing conditions, with Yu being able to bond with Adachi at different times of the day depending on the rank and Kasumi only possessing five ranks in her Confidant. Additionally, their bonds change at certain points, with Adachi's Social Link changing from Jester to Hunger after Yu confronts him alone in the TV World and Kasumi's Confidant revealing the remaining five ranks after Shido undergoes a change of heart.
 * Her codename is "Violet." Violet flowers are known as "Sumire" in Japanese.
 * Kasumi is similar to Rei, as both are actually deceased and had their desires fulfilled by a major antagonist with no clear malicious intent that fulfill this wish by creating illusions. They also fall into complete despair once the illusions break. However, while Rei is disembodied, Kasumi lives on her sister Sumire.
 * Sumire does not need her glasses to see.

Appearances in Other media

 * : Playable Character (Collaboration event)