Takuto Maruki

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

Appearances

 * Persona 5 Royal: Major Character; Consultant Confidant, Final Boss

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.

In reality, he is conducting experiments to remove all of humanity's suffering due to being possessed by rogue personas that formed from his extreme grief. These personas grant him powers to change reality to its own favor and he used to use their abilities to help people cope with depression or trauma by giving them whatever they wanted. Eventually after understanding what the Phantom Thieves of Hearts wanted, as well as the Day of Reckoning activating his personas fully, he conducts his experiments after Yaldabaoth's fall, taking his place as the world's savior, unaware that he can revive Mementos and make it impossible to remove, as well as making him no different from Yaldabaoth himself. Despite this, he genuinely wishes to make people happy. Instead of forcing his view on the Phantom Thieves, he tries to persuade them several times to accept the reality he created of their own will, only using force if he absolutely has no other choice.

It was heavily implied that his personality prior to the Day of Reckoning is his genuine personality, and he used to only utilize his powers to cure crippling mental conditions instead of for complete stagnation. This holds true even for Sumire Yoshizawa's transformation. His deluded savior complex is merely due to the day of reckoning driving his persona berserk combined with multiple personal failures, causing his beliefs to be distorted to its third semester form. It is also implied that Yaldabaoth's advance might had been engineered his insanity, as his palace never appears in Oodaiba prior to Kunikazu Okumura's death.

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, he manifested Adam Kadmon as a persona and made a deal with it. After the deal is made, Rumi fully recovered from her depression, but has completely forgotten about him. As to not remind Rumi of her grief, Takuto cut his ties with her.

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 his cognition warping powers from Azathoth 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 as she requested him to do so.

Takuto later become 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 personally bids the protagonist farewell.

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. Yaldabaoth's activities causes Adam Kadomon to corrupt and manifest as Azathoth who tells him to carry out his plans. After Yaldabaoth's fall, he erects his Palace and was partially taken over by Azathoth, transforming him completely into a madman that is merely a shadow of his former self.

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 in his Palace, he warns Joker, Akechi, and Kasumi 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 Joker 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 see how the rest of the Phantom Thieves' lives are in the reality he created in hope of changing their minds 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.

The deadline of the infiltration of his palace is 30 days; If the party fails to meet this deadline, on the next day Takuto will consult the protagonist and tell him about his pain and sleep forever. When he wakes up, his phone runs out of battery, his room is ridden with cowebs, he has no motivation to do anything and even Lavenza fails to contact him.

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 current Akechi is a fake he created based on the protagonist's regret. He then 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 compound 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 Adam Kadmon. He fights the party on foot, then fuses himself into Adam and renders himself invincible until Futaba located his weakness. All of the protagonist's party members help fend off Adam'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 Joker rescues him by holding his hand. Both Takuto and the protagonist leave the Oodaiba 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 presumed to have indeed died (alongside Futaba's mother and anyone else who was alive due to the palace's existence) and Sumire no longer has Kasumi overlayed on her.

His treasure is a fire torch that represents wisdom that he uses to restore Azathoth into Adam Kadmon. Once in the real world, it reveals itself to be actually a newsletter about Rumi's murder. The protagonist keeps it as a Memento with him.

At the end of the game, he is shown to have become a taxi driver and assists him and his friends to drive the protagonist back to the train station while the others are distracting the agents following the protagonist. Takuto reveals that he decided to face his life head-on like the protagonist and his friends are before bidding him farewell.

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.
 * Takuto is so far the first character to be completely controlled by a rogue persona.
 * Takuto's desire to help people is similar to Namatame's desire to "save" people who showed up during the Midnight Channel. They both wanted to help people in their own ways but both had major consequences because of that they also both thought of them selves as a "savior." Takuto thought of himself one by improving people's lives but because of that it makes people run away from reality, while Namatame thought that the people he put in TV's was a way to keep the victims safe from the killer, although his misunderstanding of the channel resulted in the fulfillment of the murder cases instead. However, while Namatame's powers are clearly and ignorantly used for the ill-benefit of others, Takuto used to utilize his powers to genuinely benefit others before he becomes insane, in which he uses his expanded powers for clear misguided intent.
 * Takuto is one of the very few final bosses in the Megami Tensei franchise that are completely human.
 * Takuto is similar to Zen from Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth, as both possess incredibly powerful memory warping and illusion creating powers that they used to help a girl in despair to cope with their personal traumas. The illusions break once they are exposed. However, when he becomes insane, he takes on traits that are nearly identical to Enlil's.
 * Takuto is the only Confidant in the game to be affected by Yaldabaoth's distortions even when it is maxed, although it affects him differently from other people due to unique circumistances.
 * Takuto's Personas behave drastically differently from other personas. Not only their abilities can be used in the real world whenever its owner pleases, they are extremely unstable and can go rogue. Additionally, when he summons a persona, the persona is tangible instead of only appearing when attacking.
 * When Tokyo is affected by Takuto's cognition warping powers at the third semester, the black and white on the in-game dates invert.