Ken Amada

Ken Amada is a playable character from Persona 3. He is the youngest member of SEES, and one of the two who doesn't attend Gekkoukan High School until he attends its middle school branch in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax two years later.

Appearances

 * Persona 3 / FES: Playable Character
 * Persona 3 Portable: Playable Character; Justice Social Link (Female protagonist only.)
 * Persona 3 (Manga): Major Character
 * Persona 3 The Movie 
 * Persona 4 Arena Ultimax: Playable Character (paired with Koromaru)
 * Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth: Playable Character

Design
Ken has styled short brown hair and eyes. An elementary student, he is short for his age. At school and Tartarus, he wears a school uniform of Gekkoukan Elementary, with an orange jacket under his Gekkoukan jacket, and tennis shoes with white socks. On weekends off, he is seen wearing a long orange turtleneck sweater shirt with light orange sleeves and tan shorts. On the summer days off, he wears a black turtleneck shirt underneath his orange and black jersey and black shorts.

In Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Ken is now 13 years old and consequently has grown taller from his last appearance. His hair remains mostly unchanged in style, but is slightly longer. Ken now wears the standard uniform of Gekkoukan Middle School, brown shoes, a wristwatch on right wrist, and an armband with "Student Council" written on it on his left arm. He no longer wears his orange jacket, which now is worn by Koromaru, or the shorts he wore as an elementary student.

His "tv glasses" are a pair of light beige glasses.

Personality
Despite his young age, Ken is very intelligent and mature. He is honest, diligent, and deeply caring towards his peers, particularly the members of S.E.E.S.. He is very polite to others, and never misses a chance to show respect where respect is due. He has a strong dislike towards milk, but he forces himself to drink it so he can become taller. Ken notes that one of the reasons he uses spears in battle is so that he'll be on even ground with an adult.

Although Ken is very mature, he still has several qualities that fit with his age. He finds a role-model in Akihiko Sanada, whom he admires for his boxing and fighting talents, often referring to him as "Sanada-san" as a form of respect to his senpai. He also likes to watch a children's show, Phoenix Rangers, on Sundays. In the Female Protagonist's route, he acts shy towards the Main Character, due to the crush he develops on her if the right choices are made during his Social Link.

He replaces Chihiro Fushimi's Social Link if the player chooses the Female protagonist's route.

During the October Full Moon Event, his reason for joining S.E.E.S is revealed: he confesses to Shinjiro that he is lonely and vengeful, desperate to avenge the killer of his mother-- who turns out to be Shinjiro. After Shinjiro sacrifices himself to save him, Ken becomes depressed and guilty, losing his reason to live. However, Akihiko confronts Ken, allowing him to overcome his past and forgive Shinjiro. This event changes Ken dramatically, allowing him to obtain his ultimate Persona.

Persona 3
He is mature, but sometimes he is too precocious for his own good. He uses long spears to make up for his short stature. His Personas are equally as large (being the largest of the Personas) to contrast his short stature, and can be used for healing, or to cast Light-based spells that occasionally instantly kill the enemy. He can also use single target Zio spells and physical skills.

Ikutsuki invites Ken to live in the SEES dorm because he is an orphan with no home to return to. He is revealed to have the potential to wield a Persona and is asked to join the team. Initially, the Main Character and his friends believe that Ken joined SEES out of altruism, but his true intentions are far darker. Ken's mother was accidentally killed by Shinjiro during a SEES mission, and Ken infiltrates SEES in order to kill him.

During Ken's inevitable confrontation with Shinjiro, Takaya intervenes and reveals that Ken has been planning to commit suicide after slaying his nemesis. He also reveals that Strega has been supplying Shinjiro with special drugs to control his Persona, and that the drugs will soon kill him. This completely shatters Ken’s hopes of revenge. After a brief fight between Shinjiro and Takaya, the Strega leader takes a shot at Ken. Shinjiro jumps in front of the bullet. Dying, he reminds Ken that he is still a child with a whole life ahead of him and a future that can be about more than vengeance. Shinjiro's last words inspire Ken to fight for the future his mother would have wanted for him.

In FES, it's revealed Ken drinks milk often in his free time when he's training his spear skills. He chose the Spear as his weapon to make up his lack of height, but is constantly drinking milk to get taller, to the point it makes him sick due to his dislike of being so short. He is also secretly a fan of the show Featherman R that is occasionally on TV in the Lounge, and collects the figurines fanatically.

Differences between the English and Japanese version
Ken is portrayed as being more polite and having more remorse over Shinjiro's death in the Japanese version compared to his portrayal in the English version. In fact, in the Japanese version of Persona 3, it is made very clear that Ken feels remorse by outright saying that he no longer wants to kill Shinjiro anyway. The English version however takes a more subtle approach to the scene where he laments over the fact that he can no longer be the one to take revenge on Shinjiro while crying afterwards, suggesting that he is somewhat dishonest in the English version.

The Answer
At the start of "The Answer", Ken is one of the few SEES members still staying in the dorm. Early on, he gets attacked by Metis because of a misunderstanding. During the debate to determine what to do with the keys, Ken sides with Akihiko, feeling the past shouldn't be tampered with. He believes that the Protagonist died because he used all his powers to protect everyone, and by tampering with the past, it would be disrespectful to his sacrifice.

In the flashback during The Answer regarding his past, he's seen in a police station telling the officer about the happenings of the night when he lost his mother. He tells him about a "monster", but the officer doesn't believe him at all, and then tells him that his mother's killer was a driver; everything was an accident. Ken responds angrily but he's brushed off by the policeman. This, most likely, as is revealed in the next scene, was the result of the standard procedure the Kirijo Group took when regarding to Shadow-related deaths in using recent or nearby incidents as cover. Mitsuru apologizes to Ken for that.

Portable
Ken is a Social Link of the Justice Arcana for the female protagonist. His events are available starting from September 1 and take place on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. However, Ken is overtly shy about the idea of spending time with a girl, especially one who is older than him, and his Social Link events will not start unless the protagonist has the maximum courage level of 6. Her courage will rub off on Ken and allow him to overcome his initial shyness. Pending on the player's choices, Ken will fall in love with the protagonist over the course of the Social Link.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
Ken is confirmed as a playable character fighting with Koromaru as a pair. He is shown to be in middle school by now and is also much taller. He is an honor student and is part of the student council. He has also been shown to now play soccer (and also being somewhat popular with the ladies). Like Yukari, he was called in to rescue Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Aigis.

Play-Style
In gameplay, Ken works as a "dividual" (as TV Tropes would say) with Koromaru, thus, almost similar to Shadow Labrys and a few other characters of avatar-fighter fame (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure characters and BlazBlue's Carl and Relius Clover), Koromaru acts as his active "puppet" extention, making it effectively controlling two characters at once, as opposed to some of the other JoJo characters (like Shadow Dio) and the rest of the P4U2 cast, who are all passive with their avatars/Personas.

This is also added along with the fact that Ken's C and D moves only use Koromaru (C makes him attack, and D calls him back), as Ken only uses his Persona in a few select attacks (like his Gigantic Impact). Ken's arsenal is limited, but with his long-range spear, wisely used pokes with slow startup and notable lag can easily deal with opponents from full-screen, and his close range pokes are decent as well with okay combo ability (especially if one manages to "sandwich" the opponent between himself and Koromaru, which is much easier due to Koromaru as an active "avatar puppet" as opposed to being passive).

Koromaru also has his own gauge which acts as his health bar, in that he will be knocked out for a while should he suffer too many hits. Koromaru like Ken, also has very few attacks that use his Persona.

Ken's only SMT series spells are Vile Assault, Mediarama, Thunder Reign, and Hamaon (which is only used along with Koromaru's Mudoon during their Instant Kill/Mortal Blow).

Due to Ken not relying on his Persona as much, especially with his limited move list involving it, he has the lowest amount of Persona Cards/Units in comparison to most characters, which is a measly 2.

Battle Quotes
thumb|right|300px|Ken Amada English Battle Quotes
 * "Nemesis!" (Summoning Persona)
 * "This is what my power is meant to be used for!" (Summoning Nemesis)
 * "Don't underestimate me because of my age!" (Summoning Persona for the first time)
 * "Kala-Nemi!" (Summoning Persona)
 * "Watch this." (Summoning Persona)
 * "Appear!" (Summoning Persona)
 * "Here's our chance! Let's do it!" (Requesting All-Out Attack)
 * "Understood!" (After confirming All-Out Attack)
 * "I'm going, too!" (Requesting Co-Op attack)
 * "That wasn't good." (Using a Support Ability)
 * "Please, help me!" (After attacking, enemy survives)
 * "Oh, crap!" (After attacking, enemy survives)
 * "Check this out." (Summoning Nemesis)
 * "Here goes!" (Summoning Nemesis)
 * "It's time to get serious!" (Summoning Kala-Nemi)
 * "Don't worry, I'm fine." (Battle won with low HP)
 * "Not bad." (Cheering on MC)
 * "Another, another!" (Any party member gets "1 more")
 * "That was amazing, Mitsuru-san!" (Mitsuru gets "1 more")
 * "Yes yes yes, my skill level has increased!" (Level Up)
 * "Slash attacks wont work!" (Enemy resistant to Slash)
 * "Hey! Physical attacks aren't working!" (Enemy resistant to Strike)
 * "Pierce attacks wont work!" (Enemy resistant to Pierce)
 * "Fire attacks are useless!" (Enemy resistant to Fire)
 * "Ice doesn't seem to work." (Enemy resistant to Ice)
 * "Wind attacks are a waste of time." (Enemy resistant to Wind)
 * "Electricity wont do much damage." (Enemy resistant to Electricity)
 * "Light attacks are useless!" (Enemy resistant to Light)
 * "Darkness isn't working?!" (Enemy resistant to Darkness)
 * "Almighty skills won't work?! No fair!" (Enemy resistant to Almighty)
 * "There's nothing we can do!?" (Final Nyx Battle)

Trivia

 * The Shirt of Chivalry, a type of costume for males in FES and P3P, is noted for the kanji symbols on their back that symbolizes the character. Ken's Kanji means "grudge" (怨), representing his dark past and his ambitions of revenge.
 * In Ken's initial design, Ken's weapon of choice was darts instead of spears.
 * Ken's recording in The Journey hints that Ken is lactose-intolerant, as his stomach hurts after he drinks cow's milk out of a carton.
 * In the Persona 3 Portable Club Book, it is revealed that Ken frequents Baofu's rumor website.
 * In Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Ken is described by the announcer as a severe patient of "Chūnibyō" (, lit. "Junior High Second Year/Middle School Syndrome"), which is a phrase that picked up in usage as derogatory Japanese net slang for adolescents going through puberty, in particular referring to the hyper-self conscious and melodramatic phase that is common among junior high students as they attempt to define themselves as adults. This also tends to be rumored as an increase in hyperactive imagination from some circles of info and portrayals.