Junya Kaneshiro

Junya Kaneshiro is a character from Persona 5.

Appearances

 * Persona 5: Major Character (Antagonist)
 * Persona 5 The Animation: Major Character (Antagonist)

Design
Kaneshiro is a short and overweight man with long slicked back brown hair. He normally wears the typical cheap suit of a higher-up in organized crime and typically wears golden jewelry.

Shadow Kaneshiro has violet skin, wears a silver business suit and has a mustache. His hair is black and has a bang covering the right side of his face.

When he transforms into Bael, his eyes become large orange compound ones and he grows insect wings, developing some fly-like behaviors (constantly twitching and rubbing his hands together). In the second phase of his fight he converts his Palace's main safe into Piggytron, a mech resembling a piggy bank, to pilot. Piggytron itself has several weapons like machine guns and missiles, and can retract its limbs to become a ball that Bael will roll at the Phantom Thieves.

Personality
Kaneshiro is a ruthless, callous, and greedy crime lord, obsessed with accumulating wealth and money. He even dedicates a giant room that filled with a large amount of money which disturbs Ryuji Sakamoto and disgusts Makoto Niijima. Makoto claims he's "nothing but a disgusting fly swarming to dirty money" and a "money-grubbing asshole." He claims to have a habit of spending to calm himself down, then blackmailing the persons responsible for his stress to recoup the loss.

His Shadow Self (who, like the other targets, is nearly identical to his real-world identity) later reveals that he believes that selflessness is a weakness with no place in monetary matters, a philosophy he picked up when he was a much poorer man. He has something of a victim complex, viewing society's prejudice towards the overweight and poor as responsible for driving him to a life of crime. It is also possible he may have body image issues because his Shadow calls himself "ugly," although he could be merely to having an "ugly" heart.

Unlike Suguru Kamoshida, Ichiryusai Madarame and Masayoshi Shido whom at least tried to give themselves a public image, Kaneshiro does not make any attempts to hide his crimes and true personality as he is out the the police's ability of management and thus views himself as an untouchable person, although as mentioned before he is insecure on the inside.



As with other major targets, he is themed after one of the Seven Deadly Sins, in his case Gluttony; Kaneshiro is already wealthy beyond any real desire for higher living and spends only as much as he needs to in order to remain at his socioeconomic bracket and run his branch of the mafia, but demands more and more money for the sake of squandering it for his own amusement (this differs from the sin of Greed, as he doesn't actually desire to do anything with his finances beyond acquiring more of it, as opposed to Kunikazu Okumura, who has actual ambitions and goals in mind).

Persona 5
Kaneshiro is a mafia boss who rose in the criminal underworld through clever use of blackmail. Even the police cannot do anything against him due to him being highly elusive and well-guarded along with his vast wealth reserves. One of his scams involved having his henchmen asking high school students to deliver an envelope for him to coin lockers for a large paycheck, but the envelope contains drugs and after he delivers the paycheck he will constantly blackmail the victim for ridiculous sums of money with picture proof of the victim delivering the drugged envelope or else he will expose them to their school.

He thinks of himself as a businessman and a banker, as revealed in his Palace, a floating bank. The Phantom Thieves of Hearts plan a heist at the Kaneshiro's Palace to steal his heart under Makoto's request to prove their justice, or else she will reveal to everyone the recording that proves them to be the Phantom Thieves. When the Thieves have difficulty locating him, Makoto risks herself by asking Kaneshiro's henchmen of his whereabouts, prompting the Thieves to follow her. This leads Kaneshiro to blackmail them by taking their pictures in his club and threatens to leak it to their school if they do not pay him 3 million yen within 3 weeks, adding that should they fail to pay their debt, Makoto would be forced to sell her body to pay off his debt.

His Palace is the entire Shibuya district transformed into a green atmosphere where the cognitions are the human like ATM machines and the bank is floating in the air like a UFO sucking up every money.

After the Thieves defeat Shadow Kaneshiro, he reveals there is a third party other than them who has the ability to manipulate the Palace for his own ends without caring about what happened to the people in reality.

Soon afterward he calls Makoto to tell her that he has canceled their debt and deleted the photo of them in the club, and that he has turned himself in to the police.

Kaneshiro's Treasure is his golden briefcase which takes the shape of several giant gold bars stored inside Piggytron, the mechanical piggy bank that assisted Shadow Kaneshiro during the battle against the Phantom Thieves. The Phantom Thieves take the briefcase into Cafe Leblanc where Makoto opens the lock by remembering its number combination when she saw it opened in Kaneshiro's club. They find it full of notes from "Children's Bank" which have Shadow Kaneshiro's portrait, symbolizing how Kaneshiro only tried to look like a powerful person. While they cannot use the money in the briefcase as they are fake money, they managed to pawn it off to celebrate in an expensive sushi restaurant in Ginza.

After defeating the TV Executive in Shido's Palace, he reveals that Kaneshiro was apart of the conspiracy. The executive reveals that the money Kaneshiro earned from his drug trafficking scheme helped fund Shido's organization.

The Phantom Thieves would eventually encounter Kaneshiro's Shadow in the depths of Mementos, locked in a cell alongside their other previous targets. He, alongside the other Palace owners who's hearts have been stolen, praises the cell from which he originally escaped, declaring that he is finished of acting like a bigshot and that it doesn't matter whether or not he is stupid.

Persona 5 The Animation
Junya's counterpart in the anime adaptation of the game doesn't differ too much from his main counterpart. The differences begin to vary in the battle against his Shadow Self. In it, The Phantom Thieves burn the money in the bank in order to lure Junya out of Piggytron. Also his arrest is shown more in depth.

Strategy
During the fight with Shadow Kaneshiro, he initially fights the Phantom Thieves on foot as Bael. He doesn't do a lot of damage or take a lot of punishment before he goes down, but his ability to inflict Fear can delay the progress of the fight a bit. Once this form's health is depleted, a Hold Up and All-Out Attack are automatically initiated, advancing the fight to the next phase.

At this point, Bael will convert his vault into Piggytron and begin fighting the party from there. Defeating Piggytron will complete the boss fight. It primarily uses physical attacks and occasionally a strong Fire attack, while Fear Gas can debilitate the party by spreading Fear across them. Avoid bringing Yusuke to the fight to prevent Piggytron from getting One Mores too often, and keep Energy Drop or Energy Shower handy to remove Fear.

After enough of Piggytron's health is depleted (and a few times afterwards), Bael will convert the mech into a ball-like form and then hop on top of it, rolling it at the party for massive amounts of damage after a turn of inactivity, and will probably down a party member even if they are guarding. The Thieves must damage Bael enough while he is gathering speed to knock him off, causing him to lose control of Piggytron and end up flattening himself (though he recovers quickly and hops back in). Go all-out with attacks that hit multiple targets to both interrupt Super VIP Form and deplete Piggytron's health.

After he has attempted this twice in the fight, Morgana realizes that as a Shadow, Bael possesses no self-control. A Special Order then becomes available where one of the Thieves can distract him with a very valuable item. This not only interrupts Super VIP Form, but also keeps Bael occupied for several turns and leaves Piggytron completely defenseless. It is recommended to only do this as a last resort, such as if 3 or more party members are in Fear status and the player is certain they won't be able to damage Bael enough. Also, the items that the party members attempt to offer are different, so some party members will attempt to offer not-as valuable items such as Life Stone, which will cause the special operation to automatically fail.

Bael will go after:


 * Soma - Fully restores HP and SP to all allies.
 * Hiranya - Cures all non-special ailments for one ally.
 * Physical/Magic Ointment - Reflects one Physical/Magic Attack for one Party Member.

These are unknown but offerable:


 * Soul Food - Fully restores SP to one ally.
 * Idaten Ofuda - Raises Accuracy/Evasion for all allies for three turns.

Stats
Bael=

Piggytron=

Battle Quotes

 * "Hehehehe! Bein' young is such a crime! They're naive, they're reckless, and on top of that, they don't even realize how stupid they are. Now I couldn't just sit back and not cash in on those idiots, right?"
 * "Eat this!"
 * "Stop whimpering like a baby!"
 * "Whooa!? Gyaaaah! Friggin'... punks!" (Super VIP Form is interrupted by attacking him)
 * "Ahahaha! Yeh're just gonna keep goin' at this to the bitter end, huh? No more games then. I ain't gonna forgive yeh punks for this."
 * "Ngh... Aaagh... D-Dammit...! Yeh goddamn punks...!"
 * "Tch... The hell? Yeh punks're stronger than you look... Looks like I gotta bring out my big guns...!"
 * "Hehehe... We'll see about that... Time to roll out...! Here he is... My guardian robot! Gyahahahahaha! Yeh ready to die!? It ain't a pig, yo! This is my Palace's swine-model defensive mechanoid, Piggytron! Goin' against me's a real bad crime, yeh know? It's time for yeh all to go to hell!"
 * "Yeh punks're really pissin' me off! Yeh called my Piggytron a pig earlier, right? Were yeh talkin' about me too when you said that? If you were... Imma tear yeh all to shreds! Go, Piggytron! Super VIP Fooorm!"
 * "How's this!? Can't even speak 'cause of how scary my Piggytron is, huh? Gyahahahaha!"
 * "Dammit... How dare yeh hurt my Piggytron so much...! My Piggytron's gonna lose...? No, that's impossible!"
 * "Hm...? What is that!? It's got the shine of somethin' pricey! Go collect it, Piggytron! R-Right away! ...Wh-Whoooaaa! Th-This'll make us a fortune! Damn good find, yo! Oooh, this ain't half bad, yo! Maybe I can pick up a girl or two once I pawn this thing off..." (if item is given)

Etymology
Jun (潤) is usually for composing phrases like "profit" (利潤) or "damp" (湿潤); Ya (矢) means "arrow." Kaneshiro (金城) means "castle of money/gold."

Trivia

 * Kaneshiro shares the chubby appearance with (与沢 翼) in reality, a hedonistic entrepreneur who earned his initial fortune when he was 17 years old. One of his controversial businesses was an expensive course which taught the way of "earning 100 million yen in just 1 second."
 * In the Japanese version, the exact phrase used by Makoto to label Kaneshiro "money-grubbing asshole" is "narikin" (成り金) which means "upstart." When the two kanjis are reversed, it looks very similar to Kaneshiro's surname (金城) and also the kanjis of "" and "" share the same Sino-Japanese pronunciations, namely "jō" and "sei."
 * Kaneshiro's Japanese voice actor, Kazunari Tanaka, is the second voice talent who died of sickness around the initial release date of the game. The first is Chihaya Mifune's voice actress, Miyu Matsuki. Atlus Japan's Persona announcement Twitter account issued a eulogy to Tanaka's sudden death at the age of 49 on October 11th, 2016
 * Bael's battle theme is initially the mid-boss theme "Keeper of Lust" on foot, but it becomes the normal boss theme "Blooming Villain" once Piggytron is activated.
 * In human form, Shadow Kaneshiro speaks in a stereotypical upper-class and clear fashion, but as Bael he reverts to a more casual vernacular and frequent use of slang. In other words he is literally "acting fly."
 * During his boss fight, when the all out attack is prompted, should Joker be afficted with fear, it gets cured.
 * Despite the fact that it is possible for the protagonist to earn over 3 million yen in Persona 5, there is no option to pay Kaneshiro that sum of money when he extorts the Thieves in the nightclub.