Ichiryusai Madarame

Ichiryusai Madarame is a character from Persona 5.

Appearances

 * Persona 5: Major Character

Design
Madarame wears traditional Japanese clothes, with his hair tied in a ponytail.

His Shadow Self wears traditional yellow kimono with make-up on his face (which Ryuji Sakamoto compares to a shogun). With his hair being styled in a Japanese topknot look that is closely resembles a paint brush, as well as his eyebrows, which are bushier than his normal ones. When he transforms into Azazel, he becomes a set of four paintings that show different parts of his face (two eyes, his nose, and his mouth).

Personality
"No one cares for true art... All they want are easily recognizable brands...! I'm a victim in this too...! Wouldn't you agree!? The art world revolves around money after all... You can't rise up without any money... Yusuke, you understand, don't you!? Being a poor artist is truly miserable...! I just didn't want to return to that life!"

- Madarame to Yusuke

In public, Madarame comes off as polite, humble, and soft-spoken with a passion for the arts and pride in his impressive collection of art over the years. In truth, Madarame is an amoral, greedy con man with an extremely self-centered view of the world and a bloated sense of self-importance. Having suffered years of artist's block, Madarame resorted to extortion of his pupils to maintain his fame and casted them away the minute they were of no use to him. Madarame's greed and vanity is best shown by his revelation that he allowed a pupil to die of a seizure by knowingly refusing to call an ambulance simply to acquire a painting.

He believes his advanced age and skill as a tutor gives him the right to treat his students as unpaid labor and a source of artwork to keep his fame and income (Shadow Madarame even refers to them as his livestock at one point). He has a very cynical view of art and beauty, seeing both primarily as an avenue to profit, and is extremely bitter about his lack of personal inspiration as an artist. He has no compunction about hiding artwork of his or his students and creating forgeries to sell as the original version.

Persona 5
Over the years, Madarame mentored many students, many of which lived with him in his humble shack near Shibuya. However, many found themselves ruined from their time there, losing passion in the arts or simply being casted aside once their artistic drives were depleted. Once these occurred, Madarame would search for a new prospect to continue his schemes. Among the many affected by his scheme was Natsuhiko Nakanohara who was similarly ruined and lost all passion for arts after being "mentored". One of Madarame's most famous paintings is the art piece titled "Sayuri", who inspired his most recent protégé, Yusuke Kitagawa, an orphaned boy, into entering the artistic world.

His sin is Vanity, which forms the basis of his Palace. His palace transforms his modest, run down shack into a high scale museum with crowds waiting to see the exhibits. Inside of the Palace, dozens of pictures line the exhibits comprised of the portraits of all of the students he has extorted over the years, including Natsuhiko and Yusuke.

The Phantom Thieves of Hearts plan a heist at Madarame's Palace to steal his heart after hearing numerous stories of how he has ruined the lives of his former pupils and how he is now using Yusuke for that end. Despite Yusuke's refusal to believe him, after Ann models for Yusuke in order for Morgana to infiltrate a special door, it is revealed that Madarame had never created Sayuri and that he had made numerous replicas of it. Due to his private room being inflitrated, Madarame planned on suing Ann and Yusuke for breaking and entering as well as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts for initiating the idea. However, due to his exhibit still on display, he decides to wait until it has concluded so he can prevent attracting unwanted attention.



Despite Shadow Madarame proving to be a much more clever and perceptive opponent than Suguru Kamoshida, the Thieves were able to find their way to the Treasure and send a card to the real Madarame, turning it physical. As a precaution, Shadow Madarame swaps the Sayuri painting with a covered hehenonomoheji to trick the Thieves into a trap. Thinking that he has won, he shows Yusuke the true treasure. The treasure takes the appearance of the Sayuri painting, but the lower quarter is now revealed. The painting in its original condition depicted a mother holding her newborn child. Shadow Madarame informs the group that it was Yusuke's mother who painted the original Sayuri and the baby is Yusuke. Madarame coveted the painting so much that when Yusuke's mother had a seizure, rather than call an ambulance, he simply left her alone to die, allowing him to take the painting with little opposition. To cover the picture's true intention, Madarame modified it into the Sayuri painting that he released to the public. Outraged at his former master for causing the death of his mother, Yusuke no longer feels any remorse for opposing him and with the help of the Phantom Thieves, Yusuke battles Shadow Madarame. His boss form, Azazel, takes the form of four floating paintings. Despite a difficult fight, the Phantom Thieves emerge victorious.

After his shadow is defeated, Shadow Madarame clings onto the Sayuri painting and pleas to Yusuke to spare him. Though Yusuke does, he tells the Shadow to return to the real Madarame and repent for all the damage he caused. Yusuke then takes the Sayuri painting with him out of the Palace. As the Palace collapses, Shadow Madarame lets the Phantom Thieves know about a black masked person who had also infiltrated his Palace.

On June 5th, the real Madarame admits at a press conference that he plagiarized his own pupil's work. As he weeps heavily from the guilt of all the suffering he caused, Madarame turns himself into the police to atone for his abuse of his former pupils and his plagiarism. Much of the nation is shocked by this revelation and Madarame loses all credibility and respect from both the Art community and the population itself. The revelation of his crimes also draws attention to the Phantom Thieves by the public and inspires Yusuke to continue his work with the Phantom Thieves.

Strategy
Madarame cycles between two phases throughout his battle. First, Madarame takes on the appearance of four different portraits; two eye portraits, a nose portrait, and a mouth portrait. Each portrait will absorb specific attacks; the eyes absorb Fire, Ice, Elec, and Wind attacks, the nose absorbs Psychokinesis, Nuclear, Bless and Curse attacks, and the mouth absorbs Physical and Gun attacks.

After defeating all four portraits, Shadow Madarame appears in his normal form and is automatically put into a Hold Up for a rush down. Madarame spends two full turns in this form. He deals pitiful damage and needs to be defeated in this form to complete the battle.

Once Shadow Madarame has cycled through both forms once, the portrait version gains a new attack calls Artist's Grace which coats a party member in black paint. This status ailment lasts three turns and makes them weak to all forms of attacks. The portraits usually cast Rakunda right after using this skill, causing the painted individual to take even more damage. The portraits also will revive a painting that is downed to 25% health, forcing the player to defeat them all in a single round to draw out Shadow Madarame once more.

If the player does not defeat Shadow Madarame after a second cycle, a new prompt is given to the players on the third cycle. A party member in battle can be sent to use some nearby black paint cans to inflict the same conditions onto the Portraits as the party members had endured. It takes roughly three rounds for the character to use the paint on Shadow Madarame. The player must distract him in the meantime by attacking the portraits until then in order for this advantage to take place.

Stats
Shadow Madarame =

Painter's Eye =

Painter's Nose =

Painter's Mouth=

Battle Quotes

 * "Now... let's begin, you vermin!"
 * "Stupid brats."
 * "Take this!"
 * "Dammit... I'm the great Madarame... The Madarame who gathers a full crowd every time he opens an exhibit! I'm not someone that worthless brats like you are allowed to defy...!"
 * "Damn brats!"
 * "Grrr.... impertinent brats...! It seems you need a good whipping to make you understand!"
 * "Dammit... Dammit... Stop it, you brats, or else...!"

Etymology
Ichiryū (一流) means "top-notch". Sai (斎) is a suffix for male given name or title which more commonly appears in classical literature. Madarame (斑目) means "speckle-eye".

Trivia

 * Madarame's forging the theft of the painting "Sayuri" is an allusion to the actual painting which is believed by some critic that its worldwide recognition was largely contributed by its theft instead of its technical aspects.
 * While Azazel is not associated with any sin in Judeo-Christianity, he being Shadow Madarame's battle form and association with paintings fits his role in mythology. He is generally taken to be one of the Watchers, angels who fell separately from Lucifer's rebellion when they taught humanity forbidden knowledge out of lust for human women-Azazel is credited with teaching the techniques for blacksmithing weapons and the art of cosmetics, especially makeup and mascara. This fits with Madarame being a formerly skilled painter who now parasitizes his own students for the sake of his vanity.
 * Madarame's motif shares similar origins from Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the loyal retainer to Oda Nobunaga. Like Hideyoshi, both were notorious for living off the talents of other people. Yusuke's persona Goemon was known for his failed assassination attempt on Hideyoshi and like Goemon, Yusuke's clumsy offer of having Ann as a model forces him to uncover the truth about Madarame.
 * In the Japanese version, Shadow Madarame's unique skill "Madara-Megido" is still pronounced "Megido" but the skill name is rendered in kanji "目偽怒" instead of katakana "メギド" with each syllable given a random kanji. It loosely means "Eye-Fake-Anger".
 * Most of Azazel's "unique attacks" are renamed versions of basic spells-Maelstorm is Garu, Thunderclap is Zio, and Dust Flurry is Garula. This ties into Madarame's plagiarism, with him rechristening spells that are not his property as "uniquely" his own.