Shadow Mitsuo



Shadow Mitsuo is an enemy Boss in Persona 4, found in the Endgame section of the Void Quest dungeon in the Midnight Channel.

Appearances

 * Persona 4: Shadow

Profile
Shadow Mitsuo was found within the Void Quest dungeon being scolded by Mitsuo Kubo for not responding to his claims. The party had trouble at first figuring out which one was the Shadow. However, when Mitsuo notices the party's appearance, he brags about how he had "killed" the past murder victims, and that the Shadow is nothing but an impostor.

With that response, the Shadow gathers all other Shadows in the area and switches into its true form, a floating baby with computer scripts encircling its head. In battle, the Shadow summons masses of floating bits to form a hard outer shell, "Mitsuo the Hero", an 8-bit knight character, acting as its barrier from attacks. It represents his immaturity, and his inability to face the real world by hiding behind video games.

Unusually, once the Investigative Team destroys Shadow Mitsuo, the real Mitsuo keeps denying it, being thoroughly glad it was destroyed and adhering to his false claims of murder. The Shadow, defeated and denied, responds by fading away, as Mitsuo's ego was so corrupted it became impossible for him to accept his dark side.

Symbolism
As with all boss Shadows, Shadow Mitsuo embodies the reversed form of its Arcana, in this case Hermit. The reversed Hermit Arcana represents a socially isolated person who has failed to master himself or come to terms with his isolation. As a result, he is both narcisstic and delusional, distainful of other people but paradoxially in need of their attentions for self-validation. Its use of a shell (Mitsuo the Hero) represents Mitsuo's need to project a false image to the world of a powerful being devoid of fault, when in reality it is a warped parody of both a young child (weakness and immaturity) and an asthetic (it's disdain for the world around it), incapable of using physical attacks.

When it speaks in human form, it has a very deep and menacing voice, but when it speaks in it's shadow form, its voice sounds synthetic and atonal. This is another way it represents the reversed Hermit, as the being it projects (it's human form) seems realistic and powerful, but the being it truly is is just an emotionless machine. Since Mitsuo himself is very similar to his Shadow-and the Arcana it represents-in personality, the party is intially unsure of which Mitsuo is the real person or the Shadow in his form. When it is defeated, Mitsuo shows the qualities associated with reversed Hermit when he refuses to confront it, showing both willful ignorance and a lack of self-control. Thus, it disappears, since Mitsuo has embraced the worst parts of his personality by wilfully denying his Shadow multiple times, therefore becoming the Shadow itself.