Takuto Maruki

Takuto Maruki is a non-playable character from Persona 5 Royal.

Appearances

 * Persona 5 Royal: Major Character; Consultant Confidant

Design
Takuto is a bespectacled young man that has brown, short unkempt hair and wears a blue suit with a blue checkered tie along with a white coat. He also wears light brown slacks and sandals.

Personality
Takuto appears to be a counselor who cares about the students in the school and sympathizes with Suguru Kamoshida's victims. As a counselor, he is quite friendly to those who reach out to him. He is also highly clumsy, quirky and is prone to messing up in comedic situations, unlike most of the the other teachers who have no-nonsense, regular personalities. He is quite popular with the Thieves and even Yusuke from Kosei High School comes to Shujin to take his counseling. Effectively making him a popular figure among students and one of the Thieves' greatest sponsors. However, he does not like Kobayakawa due to him using the students for profit. He also appears to be a skilled cook.

Persona 5 Royal
During his past, Takuto's ex-girlfriend Rumi got her entire family murdered and was affected by catatonic depression, which motivated his research of cognitive pscience so he could stop atrocious crimes like this. When he was in extreme grief, an almighty being of wisdom approached him and made a deal with him, and after the deal is made, Rumi fully recovered from her depression, but has completely forgotten about him.

Later on, he got his cognitive psience research rejected thanks to it being completely original research with no former proof. Therefore, he quit university and went onto his own variant of cognitive psience. Eventually, his research reveals that use of cognitive psience might be dangerous. While at first terrified, he continues to use this power to assist people and make a better world and opened a clinic, eventually using his power on a girl known as Sumire Yoshizawa, gaining an understanding that she lost her sister Kasumi and wished to live as her, transforming Sumire into Kasumi via his cognition manipulating powers.

Takuto Maruki is the student counselor at Shujin Academy and one of the protagonist's Confidants. Takuto is hired by Kobayakawa in order to improve the students' mental health after dealing with the exposure of the Kamoshida incident. When he is presented in the auditorium, he makes a clumsy speech before being pushed aside by Kobayakawa to end the assembly.

Since then, he regularly meets up with members of the Phantom Thieves and has encountered all of its members save for Akechi.

Takuto will leave Shujin on November 18th, during which he gives a speech for the students to avoid pain and negativity and live strong. He then bids the protagonist farewell.

Takuto was later revealed to be the main mastermind of the Third Semester events, where it was revealed that he is a Persona user who was bestowed a persona by a great being to grant wishes to others in a delusional attempt to end all of their pain by granting them eternal happiness.

When approaching him, he warns the party not to approach him or they will see the pain of reality.

As the party ignores his multiple warnings, he decides to play back the accident to Kasumi to let her fully recollect her memories and experience pain in an attempt to make the party reconsider their actions. The shocking revelation results in Kasumi transforming back into Sumire. After the protagonist and Akechi deny his reality, he takes Sumire via a Shadow and orders it to attack, transforming it into Hastur. After the confrontation, he requests them to snap all of them out of the dream and come back on Janurary 9th.

When the duo come back to meet him on Janurary 9th, he offers them a deal to allow the protagonist to accept the reality. Accepting this offer will trigger a new bad ending. Should the protagonist refuse, Sumire will be in full denial of the mass awakening and fights him alone as Kasumi. Once this gets through, Takuto will separate her Persona from her and make it go berserk, forcing it to attack the party. Once it is done for and Kasumi reverts into Sumire, he realizes that all speaking is worthless and tells the party to change his heart as he deeply realizes the errors of his ways. He then changes Sumire back into Kasumi just to allow the party a fighting chance, and tells them to meet him on Febuary 9th.

It was revealed by Lavenza that as he meets the Thieves on consultant sessions, he has realized what they actually want and the thoughts had increased his powers, to the point that he began to fill in the gaps of Yaldabaoth and revives Mementos for his own use. If he is not stopped within a month, this new Mementos will completely fuse into the real world and become impossible to remove. By her persuasion, the Thieves made up the desire to defeat Takuto once and for all.

A final recording reveals that on the 24th of December, he told his professor that Masayoshi Shido had stolen his final essay for nefarious purposes while Yaldabaoth's control plan began to appear. This unconsciously activates his Persona who tells him to carry out his plans and he becomes insane afterwards, causing him to erect his Palace and run the mysterious entity's salvation plan.

After locating his treasure, the Phantom Thieves decide to let the protagonist send a calling card to Takuto on his own. The date is locked at Feburary 3rd regardless of prior completion. Once the date comes, he will personally pay a visit to the protagonist, in which he insists that his methods are correct and reveals that Rumi is living happily in the reality he is in. As Akechi comes in, he also stated that the real Akechi is taken hostage and the current one is fake before he sends a calling card and tells the protagonist to meet him at his Palace for a final fight.

He then invites the party to battle him on top of the Garden of Eden, in which he manifests his Persona Azathoth to attack the party as well as making him nearly invulnerable. His persona manifests behind him consistently and it must be destroyed in order to end the fight. To further compund this, he has four tentacles that constantly buff him or render Azathoth invulnerable. Once Azathoth is defeated the party escapes the collapsed palace while holding his treasure, a torch, only for him to combat the party again by transforming Azathoth into Adamkadomon. He fights the party on foot, then fuses himself into Adamkadomon and renders himself invincible until Futaba located his weakness. All of the protagonist's members help fend of Adamkadomon's final attack while the protagonist targets its head and destroys it. His Palace then collapses, although he is still capable of using a cable to pull down the protagonist and in disbelief of his salvation plan, he confronts him by fist, as when a Palace collapses the Metaverse cannot be used anymore.

Takuto was outmatched by the protagonist in a fist fight and slowly drops to his death, although he rescues him by holding his hand. Both Takuto and the protagonist leave the Odaiba via Morgana's helicopter form afterwards.

Due to the destruction of his incredibly powerful cognition warping powers, all are reset to normal; The protagonist is now in Juvenile Hall making a testimony against Shido, with all of his maxed confidants (Including ones that he maxed on the third semester) supporting his release, Akechi vanishes as he is proven dead and Sumire no longer has Kasumi overlayed on her.

Confidant
Takuto's Confidant is enacted after his speech in the Shujin auditorium. He can be met at any time after school and does not require a matching Persona. Additionally, the final rank is automatic on November 18th should the protagonist advance his Confidant to Rank 9 prior to that date. His Confidant mainly unlocks bonuses in combat and increases the protagonist's max SP every time he consults him. Maxing this confidant unlocks Vohu Manah.

Trivia

 * Takuto's desire to fuse the real world with Mementos is similar to Adachi's desire to fuse it with the TV world. However, their reasons for doing so conflict. Takuto's goal was to improve people's lives, while Adachi wanted to turn humanity into shadows.