A.I.G.I.S

A.I.G.I.S. is the third labyrinth in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

Details
A reality in the movie world that is based on Aigis and sci-fi robot movies. In the reality of the movie, people begin to start ugly wars based on their own beliefs and destroyed the very world they live in. An AI has managed to take over the ruins of the world and rebuilt it into an utopia built from identical-looking black robots devoid of emotions or personality. Having uniqueness and personality is considered a crime in this new world and utopia can only be reached by making every robot identical, emotionless beings. However, a robot had somehow managed to obtain personality, and it could potentially disrupt the order of the AI's utopia. The movie Labyrinth takes the form of a futuristic city inhabited by identical looking black robots. A research laboratory acts as its depths and at the deepest floor is the commanding and disposal center that contains the remains of disposed robots and houses the Mother Computer, an omnipotent AI that detests any uniqueness and personality.

The party enters this labyrinth after Doe creates the key to its theater. Upon entering, they encounter the Persona 3 cast fighting a massive horde of the featureless robots and were seemingly overwhelmed until they come in and help them fend off the robot horde. Despite the P3P heroine thinks that they are her comrades and greets them after the fight and also recognized them at full detail, they do not recognize her at all due to not originating from her reality, which she responds with sadness, while the P3 cast is shocked as the P3P heroine calls them by their names and even holds a real Evoker and the real SEES emblem despite they do not recognize her. After defeating the robot, the P3 cast joins the party inside the cinema lobby.

The P3 cast landed to here when they were exploring Tartarus, in which its floor collapses with the only exit being a light on top of it. Once they reach the movie reality, their leader and Aigis were also reported missing, and to make matters worse, their leader accidentally dropped his Evoker in the movie entrance, leaving him unable to summon his Persona and putting the life of the two in danger.

The Labyrinth features monitor drone F.O.Es known as KNS-1000 which will alert the stronger F.O.Es in the area (appearing as large security robots) to pursue and attack the party. They are much weaker than other F.O.Es in the game as their objective is to alert the stronger F.O.Es in the area and can be defeated in order to prevent them from taking action.

They also encountered a robot that resembles Aigis, who was asked by other robots to undergo initialization. She willingly accepts but was stopped by the party, who defeats the robots. They managed to persuade the robot to become their escort despite it does not seem to have any abilities in it that would benefit them and it was constantly in a self-loathing state and just wants itself to be initialized based on the will of the commander. At one point they realize the robots do not have a name and were simply referred by codename, with the Aigis lookalike coded as UIY-2249. Since it was an over-complicated name, the party heeds Futaba's advice and called her "Ribbon" instead. The Commander also resembled Shuji Ikutsuki, which confuses the P3 cast as they do not recognize him as the person he actually is at that time, but just like the rest of the characters in the movies, it was not Ikutsuki himself but a being that resembles him.

When the party goes to the gates leading to the research laboratory, they are required to take 3 exams to gain access to it. These are "Power," "Knowledge" and "Adaptability," each representing a trial. The P5 hero can take any route while Ribbon will follow him. The persona users successfully pass the exams and were allowed access to the facility.

The party enters the research laboratory and encounters the P3 hero and the real Aigis, who were defending themselves from a swarm of KNS-1000. Despite Aigis used her orgia mode to fight the horde of KNS-1000, her attacks seemingly had no effect in front of the powerful F.O.Es and was rendered unable to fight due to overheating and the duo finds themselves in a clutch before the party appears to save them. Both the P3 hero and Aigis join the party after returning to the cinema lobby.

They explore further within the lab upon the next entry and begin to build Ribbon's personality, with Futaba Sakura being her operator using her knowledge of computers. They also climb ducts in the research lab, which were the speciality of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts but were never attempted by anyone else. Ribbon also developed a liking for flowers and dogs, even petting Koromaru because she thought he was cute. The research lab contains isolated areas that can only be accessed by entering warp tiles.

They confront the commander in his room and he deactivates Ribbon just by using his raygun, then attacks the party along with a KNS-1000. However, he was no match for the party and Futaba uses her hacking skills to reactivate Ribbon, who has been put on forced sleep.

Despite the commander was supposedly defeated, the broadcast system continues to broadcast that irregulars are going into a rampage and they must be captured at all costs, indicating a Mother Computer is behind the commander. Ribbon now expresses full will to overthrow her creator and oppressor and the party enters its room via the keycard dropped from the commander.

At the depths of the labyrinth, the party had their attention instantly caught by a large stack of destroyed robots. Ribbon instantly notices that stack and that is actually the central disposal system, where defect robots are disposed and destroyed in. This was also the place that Ribbon was intended to end up if she followed the other robots and it was the first time she felt sadness, although she could not recognize it until the party described it to her.

At the passage leading to the gate of the Mother Computer, a security system requires entities of various codenames to access, which the party does not have. However there is a quirk in the system; If two people possess the same codename, a lethal error will allow access to the Mother Computer's room instead. The P3 hero and P3P heroine possess such codenames, allowing Aigis to go in and disable the security system completely, setting the stone to the final showdown.

The party finally confronts the Mother Computer, a god-like AI that appears as a green hologram head of Shuji Ikutsuki, having dominion over all robots in the reality. The AI deems anyone that had a personality and uniqueness are irregulars and errors that must be purged, and anyone who does not act the same as others do not have a reason to live. When the party further denies him, he claims that it is the standards of the world and insults Ribbon as a defect. Ribbon initially believes herself to be a defect, but is encouraged by Futaba not to believe in the same way.

Leaving with no options, the computer attacks the party and demonstrates his infinite regeneration abilities by fully recovering his HP twice before Futaba hacks Ribbon into his system to prevent him from auto recovering. However as his HP drops to 0 he automatically recovers again and reverse hacks ribbon to cause a fatal error in her system. By the power of her teammates, she overcomes from the reverse hacking and enters orgia mode like Aigis, generating a large amount of energy that completely blocks the Mother Computer's auto recovery, expressing the will to completely rebel against the Mother Computer that created her. The party, with Ribbon's help, defeats the Mother Computer but she deactivates due to the energy overflow, forcing Futaba and Aigis to repair her, and the staff credits roll. Hikari and Nagi watch the video with Hikari sobbing, and she expresses her intentions to dispose her self to Nagi, stating that she wanted to be like Ribbon.

In reality, Ribbon recovers from the overflow at full status after the credits as noticed by Rise Kujikawa, and the now free robot was allowed to rebuild the once-featureless false utopia into an actual utopia. This seemingly made Hikari recover from her self-destructive tendencies as Ribbon was confirmed to be alive, and she was willing to recognize the party as friends. Doe created the keycard to break one the locks on the Cinema gates afterwards with the same spasmic reactions, but when Fuuka and Rise did not pay attention, he brings Hikari into ??? in an attempt to have her face and recollect her past and both go missing, which is passed off by the others as him kidnapping her.

Connections with Hikari's past
It was later revealed that the movie is consisted of one of Hikari's traumas and the one that directly resulted in her breakdown. During her high school period, her dream was to become a film director, a wish that is unusual among people of her age. The only people who supported her ideal was her father (He was also the person to inspire this wish in her primary school era), who was a film director himself. As she has to regularly participate at her father's movie production, she would come home late often. Her relatives knew about this and berated her. Instead, they wanted her to study and work like a normal person, and they believe that Hikari was an irregular girl and threatened to talk matters with her father but could not because he does not come home early often. So they punished her instead and her uncle attempted to snatch her father's camera from her, but was forced to lay his hands off it.

Hikari began to believe that her dream of being a film director is an error and an irregular and the denial of uniqueness combined with her past traumas fuels her depression to the point that she wished to commit personality suicide, or completely disposing any traits that made her stood off from others. Giving up the desire to live as a person, she locked herself out in her room and isolated herself from reality afterwards. She also became agitated when someone asks why she was like that because all of her tormentors denied her using that phrase, and fell into a complete breakdown when her father used it to make her get out of her confines and receive the notebook he bought for her, taking her father asking her why she locked herself in her room as a threat, despite it was out of goodwill. It was implied that she broke also because she thought that her relatives had successfully talked her father into believing that she was abnormal.

She views her relatives as the Mother Computer and the robot commander that detested any form of uniqueness among her and the self loathing but unique Ribbon as herself and their behavior is based on their real life counterparts, effectively making them cognitive existences of them. The robot commander that resembled Shuji Ikutsuki also shares the same hairdo and trenchcoat as her aunt. The high school copy of Hikari repeatedly calling herself an error for pursuing her own goals forms Ribbon's self loathing personality, and her intended fate to be scrapped and disposed as a defect can be attributed to Hikari's wish of committing personality suicide.

Trivia

 * A.I.G.I.S. represents a problem in modern society, continuing the Persona 5 theme. It represents a lack of uniqueness and personality in one's lifestyle in exchange for less turmoil. The movie reality is inhabited with identical, black worker robots that are devoid of any personality and features, referring to modern society chaining itself to an infinite cycle of school and work, causing stagnation to masquerade as peace. Beings with uniqueness and personality such as Ribbon are detested by modern society due to the common belief that going outside the chains of work and school will certainly result in turmoil and failure, which is seen when the commander and Mother Computer repeatedly calls Ribbon an error and a defect for having a personality and actively seeks for her removal, because her unique qualities disrupt their own vision of an utopia. After such detesting, the ambitions turn into those of self-loathing as they begin to doubt if they could even reach their goals, and wishes to return back to the chains of school and work, just like how Ribbon detested her own uniqueness and wished to be simply scrapped and destroyed when the party first encounters her.
 * The Mother Computer and the commander appearing as Shuji Ikutsuki and Ribbon appearing as Aigis are also related to the main line Persona 3 lore, as Ikutsuki attempted to reprogram Aigis to capture S.E.E.S and offer them as sacrifices for Death but she broke free from the programming due to her inner protective desires for the protagonist rebelling against it and freed S.E.E.S. instead, causing Ikutsuki to commit suicide. Ribbon in the movie was also responsible for rebelling against her Mother Computer oppressor and directly leading to its downfall.
 * A.I.G.I.S. is similar to Okumura's Palace, as both are futuristic utopias built from distorted thoughts and desires whose main inhabitants are robots devoid of any personality. They also contain cognitive copies of people that do not differ much from their real selves in terms of personality and behavior.