Hikari

Hikari is a major character in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

Appearances

 * Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth: Major Character
 * Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth Roundabout Special

Design
Hikari is a young woman with short, white hair and orange eyes. She wears a black school uniform skirt with a large ribbon bow on her chest and orange stripes by the skirt, a white hat with a movie reel hair accessory, and carries a yellow megaphone. However, she doesn't seem to actually use her megaphone until she fully rehabilitates. She also has black leggings.

Her primary school self appears as a short, young girl with a pair of short twin tails, and wears an orange dress with a white uniform on the inside.

Her secondary school self appears just like her present self, but she wears a headband and a blue girl's only secondary school uniform with 4 buttons on the chest. She wears a red ribbon bow on her neck and a black skirt.

Her high school self appears just like her real self, but lacks the hat that the real person wears.

Personality
Hikari is a young woman that, at the start of the game suffers from extreme depression and self-esteem issues due to her bad past. While not directly stated to be suicidal, she has self-destructive tendencies and wished that anything that would make her stand out from others to be gone. She was not strong enough to cope with the hardships of life, which is why Nagi took her into her reality as a refuge from the outside world. Initially, she does not talk much and always stays on Nagi's side because she does not trust anyone other than her, only whispering clues to Nagi about the whereabouts of the P5 hero's teammates.

In fact before the Persona users led by the Phantom Thieves of Hearts forced a change of heart on her, she was so consumed by her past trauma, self-loathing and depression to the point that she was barely functioning as a person, disconnecting herself from reality inside her room, then inside the Cinema and expressing a complete lack of enthusiasm to live. The constant drowning in self-destruction also warps her perception towards others, resulting in her inability to differ what is actually harmful to her and what actually isn't. This causes her to develop paranoia towards her father's supposed goodwill that results in the creation of Doe, whom she perceives as a terrifying figure that she could not even get close to, and believing that Nagi is a comforting figure, not knowing that she is actually delusional and is inversely fueling her negative impulses.

As each movie is cleared, she becomes more confident and slowly opens up to the party. After they gave the first movie an appropriate ending, she regains the ability to communicate in complete sentences and after doing the same to the second one, she could respond to humorous situations with a giggle, such as when Caroline calls Kanji a gorilla. When she fully rehabilitates, she even reveals her true dream of becoming a movie director to them. She is also kind towards the party and often blushes when she is excited. Eventually after her resolve against Doe, she becomes a party member and can participate in support towards the party. The interaction with the united Persona users results in her strengthening her resolve and regaining confidence around people.

When Nagi drops off her guise and reveals her true intentions, Hikari expresses a clear desire to get her wishes of becoming a free person once again and escape from the cinema world heard by the almighty ruler of the collective unconsciousness, with the bonds of her friends agreeing in unison to overthrow her false peace. Her wish eventually gets heard after the climax of the party's final confrontation against her former caretaker, prompting her to surrender and release everyone inside her domain.

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
When Hikari was in primary school, her school had a class rabbit. However, one day the rabbit fell ill due to food poisoning. Hikari and two other students were responsible for feeding it, but none dare say a word against their teacher as she is considered a heroic figure in the class. In reality, the food that the teacher gave to the rabbit was poisonous for it. Hikari spoke against the teacher by saying that she did not commit the crime and she only warned them that the food was poisonous. The class then unanimously decrees Hikari as a bad student because her teacher said she is bad. Eventually, they pressurized Hikari to comply and apologize, which she begrudgingly does. At this period, her father has inspired her goal to become a film director.

At secondary school, Hikari was often bullied, and the bullies would draw insults on her desk and put trash on it. However, she had several friends in her school. One of them, known as Miyuki was willing to clean up the mess for her, and she asked her out to watch a dinosaur movie where a group of herbivore dinosaurs team up to use their power to overthrow the oppressing carnivorous dinosaurs. She accepts, but the rest of the girls that were her friends refuse. At the next day she had her desk drawn with insults and litter being thrown on her desk once again, and the girls kicked Hikari out of their friend group because she does not share an opinion as them. Miyuki was reluctant to betray Hikari at first, but forcefully did so due to peer pressure. She began to stare at her father's films during this period, in which she was the protagonist of one.

Due to her interest in movies, her lifelong dream is to become a film director, which is unique among the people around her age. The dream was inspired by her father who was a film director himself, and he was the only person who actually cared about Hikari's wishes. However, as she has to regularly participate in film production alongside her father, she often comes home late. Her uncle and aunt saw this and berated her, saying that she should instead be studying and working like a normal person. They detested Hikari's wishes to be unique among other people around her age and her uncle even tried to snatch the camera that her father gave to her. She began to believe that her wish to become unique from other people is an error afterwards.

Years of dehumanization combined results in Hikari having post-traumatic stress disorder, severe depression, self-esteem issues and a desire to commit personality suicide, or the removal of all traits that would make her unique from others. She also constantly locked herself in her room and began to develop delusions about her father after he asked her why was she like that. In reality, he simply wanted her to get out of her room to receive the notebook he bought for her (Which is actually the notebook that the player uses to map Labyrinths in this game) and kindly asked why she locked herself out, but she interpreted that as him questioning her as a deviant.

Sensing the weakness in her heart, Nagi put her into her domain in the collective unconsciousness, which appears as a twisted street filled with cinemas. She shut Hikari in one of the cinemas in her domain and allowed her to take refuge from the hardships of reality, in the price of her personal freedom and putting an end to her thoughts. The cinema would broadcast realities formed from her heart, effectively turning the movie world into Hikari's Palace, with the exception of not having any Shadow Selves inside it. All of these movies will initially only end badly. Her twisted cognition also creates Doe, a cognitive copy of her father created from that he was the only memory she wanted to keep, who broadcasts the movies in the cinema. Inside the cinema, Hikari would only watch these distorted movies alongside Nagi. Due to lack of self esteem, she always stands alongside Nagi, believing that she was the only person that she could trust with. It is the Persona user's goal to change the ending of each movie into a good one and force a change in Hikari's heart along with it so she could escape the cinema.

One day, when the Phantom Thieves of Hearts were exploring Mementos, the Morgana van loses control and ends up in one of the movie realities, the movie Kamoshidaman. After they escape with the price of an F.O.E kidnapping Makoto Niijima and Haru Okumura, they enter her cinema and Hikari and Nagi suddenly emerge from the front seat, claiming that they had watched the Thieves escape. Hikari was too shy to speak with the Thieves directly, but she has an idea on what is going on and whispers to Nagi about the whereabouts of the lost comrades. Nagi claims that she was the last customer inside the cinema and the two were trapped when Doe appeared inside it. However, she and Nagi has no idea who the Phantom Thieves are due to the women locking themselves from all electronic communication for a long time, and when confronted with the whereabouts of the P3P heroine, she does not have an idea about that person.

For each movie cleared, Hikari slowly opens up to the persona users and congratulates them for coming back safely. At one point after clearing A.I.G.I.S., she was aware of Ribbon's self-destructive, self-loathing tendencies and seeming self sacrifice to destroy her Mother Computer oppressor, and used it to express her intentions of discarding her self. In reality, Ribbon survived the sacrifice thanks to Aigis and Futaba Sakura's efforts and she begins to recognize the party as friends. Doe kidnaps Hikari and puts her into the movie ??? afterwards.

In the labyrinth she faces the three major traumas that form her movies in the cinema world and finally the delusions that everyone including her father was against her while he simply asked Hikari to stop locking herself out in her room out of goodwill, which takes the form of musical stages. The repressed memories of her tormentors are denied and confronted, then turn into Shadows that attack the party. In reality, she was not kidnapped by Doe, but she followed him into the labyrinth where she learns to overcome herself.

When the party reaches the depths of the movie, Doe reveals his intentions to keep Hikari in the Cinema forever, as her will was too weak to go out to reality. Hikari denies this wish and Doe goes berserk and attacks the party. In the battle Doe uses a dangerous attack that triple binds the entire party but Hikari joins the combat and she can remove binds from a party member. Doe was hugged by Hikari after his defeat and transforms into her father, then vanishes into light and grants her the key to escape the cinema, revealing himself as a cognitive copy created from her distorted negative desires. She was able to fully rehabilitate with the help of the persona users and get out of the depression, allowing her to gain the will to escape the cinema.

Nagi then allows Hikari and the party escape the cinema after they clear the 4th movie, stating that she did not have a choice but to let them go. However, when the party opens the cinema gates, it reveals a twisted landscape and she drops off her guise, revealing herself as a god ruling over the collective unconsciousness known as Enlil, who trapped Hikari and other people in her domain in the collective unconsciousness because they were too weak to cope with the problems in the real world, and the only way to solve this is to have her and other weak people isolated from the suffering of reality, putting an end to their thoughts. However, the party does not approve with this and Hikari joins them in turning against her former caretaker.

As Hikari successfully rehabilitates from her depression, she is now willing to socialize with the party and acts as a combat support. She expresses her true wishes of becoming a film director and exchanges opinions with the party. When Enlil kicks the party back into the cinema lobby as a last warning, she and the other party members consider themselves as a Phantom Thieves of Hearts and try to "steal" Enlil's heart. They also found 4 of the reel hairs that contains Hikari's movie of positivity and devises a plan to replace Enlil's film of negativity with them, fighting a projection of the 4 former bosses before the projections can be replaced. They successfully replace the projections and the movie world is purified, with Kamoshidaman fighting for real justice, the Herbivore Dinosaurs actually respecting Yosukesaurus, Ribbon teaching a group of colored robots to love flowers, and the high school Hikari making Doe disappear by expressing her desire to get out of the cinema.

The party then confronts the enraged Enlil. In the middle of the fight, Hikari announces her wish to free the weak from her reality. Enlil is angered by the "betrayal" and transforms into a godly, muscular eagle-like being, and she easily removes the entire party despite their efforts in beating her, leaving Hikari alone to face the almighty administrator. Despite the navigators told her to run, she refuses and confronts Enlil alone. Enlil first chastises her, then stood completely still. After three turns, she manages to summon the four protagonists back thanks to her determination to escape the cinema and the protagonists unleash one last combo attack to defeat Enlil, forcing her to surrender. Enlil admits defeat as Hikari rallied the voices of the people to turn against her and transforms back into the black haired Nagi and vanishing into light, but not before telling Hikari again that she is a ruler of the collective unconsciousness and she will return as long as humanity wishes for her to. This destroys Enlil's domain and the people who were trapped in it were freed and returned to their real world.

As Hikari realizes that she would be parting from her first actual friends, she is drown in tears and wants to give her notebook as a farewell gift to the party, but they returned it back to her because it was her precious memories and they said without it her film would not be complete. She then parts with the persona users and leaves from the exit of the cinema back into her reality.

Now returning into reality, she wakes up as if she had a dream and saw her father in the living room. She announces her plans to make a film about her personal growth and her father approves. During the next day, both versions of the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad and the Investigation Team receives movie CDs from an unknown source, with the Investigation Team version being implied to be Junessic Land.

After the credits roll, the Phantom Thieves save for Goro Akechi receive an invitation to a film festival for high school students. They attend, and Hikari steps from her seat into the dais of the auditorium where she announces a movie about her growth. This implies that Hikari came from the same reality as the Persona 5 cast.

Etymology
"Hikari" literally translates to "Light" in Japanese.

Trivia

 * Hikari is similar to Futaba Sakura, as both initially shut themselves out from reality due to trauma, were initially completely incapable of socializing with others, used to have self-destructive tendencies, delusions that their beloved parents were acting against them and their relatives dehumanized them and were a part of their trauma. The cognitive copy of their parents that they both loved and developed delusions with also acted as bosses at the fourth stage of their respective games. They make a full rehabilitation and socialize with the party after they clear out their distorted negative desires. Both were also known to have unusual talents for people during their age, with Hikari being film production and Futaba being computers and technology.
 * Hikari's condition is the exact opposite of Rei's; While Rei is a dead person with a living spirit, Hikari can be considered a living person with a "dead" spirit.
 * Hikari is one of the few characters associated with a player's combat party that lack a Shadow Self in-game, especially after Persona 3. Her Shadow Self is never mentioned nor does it appear anywhere in the game, while most other characters past this point receive Shadow Selves in one way or another, such as the fake versions of S.E.E.S. and the Persona 2 cast who were created via unnatural means, natural shadow selves such as Best Friend and the Shadow Selves of the Investigation Team that are born from repressed negative thoughts, and the Personas of the Phantom Thieves who are basically their Shadow Selves fused with their host.
 * It should be noted that the younger versions of Hikari seen in ??? do not qualify as Shadow Selves or Shadows of any sort, as they lack any traits that Shadow Selves have such as mocking their hosts or yellow eyes, and in fact, some of their actions are the reverse of, or are not at all Shadow Self behavior, such as accepting their host's denial towards them, a lack of hostility towards the party and their host and acting in the exact same way as their host would without any alterations or exaggerations. Therefore, they are more closer to recordings or cognitive copies built by the real Hikari's memories.
 * While not directly stated to be a Palace owner, the movie world Hikari's heart creates possesses traits commonly seen in actual Palaces, such as being created by the memories and the distorted desires of its host and the existence of cognitive existences of people related to her inside it.