Goro Akechi

Goro Akechi is a playable character from Persona 5.

Appearances

 * Persona 5: Playable Character; Justice Cooperation
 * Persona 5 The Animation The Day Breakers: Cameo

Design
Goro has shaggy chin-length brown hair with bangs and brown eyes. He wears a gray coat, black and white tie, black buttons, black trousers, and black gloves.

As Crow, Goro wears a princely royal outfit with a pointed red mask resembling a long-nosed Commedia dell'arte mask (similar to a bird, hence "Crow"). Once he reveals his true allegiances, he changes his Crow outfit for a skintight, black and red armor that resembles a Featherman R uniform, with his mask built into its helmet.

Personality
Goro is a high school student who carries on a detective business. His abilities as a detective have been widely approved since not only has he solved numerous cases, but he’s also able to deal with people from the investigation agency smoothly. His handsome feature also draws himself public attention, and people comment him as “The Second Advent of Detective Prince”.

He has a strong distaste for brainwashing and condemns the very act itself on television. For reasons unknown, he also shows a significant aversion towards pancakes.

Behind this, he is actually lonely and yearned to be loved as he was neglected by both his parents since he was a child and doesn't have any friends. This loneliness pushed him to do anything his father told him to earn his acceptance, though he eventually resents his father as well and swore revenge, going as far as soiling his own hands to reach his goal.

After meeting and joining the party, for the first time he knows what it feels to be happy together with friends, particularly the protagonist whom he both admired and envied since no matter what his social standing is and how others sees him, the protagonist doesn't let any of it stopping him from making his own path. This made Goro sees the protagonist as the epitome of the very thing he could never have.

Unfortunately, his obsession to get revenge on his father and desire to be the hero of his own story overshadowed his true feeling for the party. Before fighting the party, he reveals his twisted view about how warped the current world is and dismissed the concept of friends and true justice and meaningless and sickening. He also has a narcissistic element to his personality, seeing himself as the hero by default and anyone who opposes him as the villain.

Persona 5
Goro is the illegitimate son of Masayoshi Shido, the same man responsible for the protagonist's probation period. He initially became a detective in order to receive praise from his father, due to the years of neglect Shido showed him, and is unaware that Shido was using him throughout his career. He later grew to hate his father and swore revenge. He found his chance to get revenge after discovering The Palace and started to assist in his father's goal to become Prime Minister so he can gain his trust and then manipulate his father once his father accepted him as his right-hand man.

He became so desperate for revenge that he commit crimes to solve as a detective, which gave him a fraudulent reputation as Naoto Shirogane's inheritor. He is the one responsible for causing numerous mysterious incidents that have occurred in Shibuya by causing havoc in the Palace to make the people in the real world either going berserk or an empty shell, the people he targeted were also taken care by him as lead investigator. Goro is then tasked with investigating the matter alongside prosecutor Sae Niijima, though his attention quickly turns to the Phantom Thieves of Hearts when their activities quickly become known to the public.

Prior meeting the party, Goro has been mentioned by Shadow Madarame and Shadow Kaneshiro as the guy with black mask who was controlling The Palace and doesn't care what may happen in the real world. He first met the protagonist when he is in the process of transferring to Syujin High School, greeting the protagonist when he overheard him talking with Ryuji, Anne, and Morgana. He eventually joined the Phantom Thieves to spy on them and then take them down once there's a chance.

During the climax of their heist at the Casino, Goro leaks their plans to the police, thus leading to the protagonist's eventual arrest. Shortly after Sae learns the truth about Goro, he visits the protagonist in the interrogation room, shooting the guard tasked with protecting him and subsequently the protagonist. His plan is either successful or foiled depending on the player's responses to Sae's interrogation after his long reminiscence.

In the good ending route, the protagonist and the others find out that he is the traitor after realizing that Goro is able to understand Morgana's words when he overheard them talking on their first meeting. Since only Persona users can understand Morgana's words, this means that Goro has already awakened his Persona power before he met the party.

Goro reveals that Shido's plan is to destroy the Palace of his enemies which results in their mental disorder and subsequent death, Goro would then frame the Phantom Thieves for their connection to the otherworld and be praised by the public for his false investigation. After his plan has been foiled, the protagonist and the party confront Goro in the engine room of Shidou Palace, where he reveals that he plans to snatch Shido's victory away at the last minute by revealing that he is Shido's illegitimate son and his father's habits, which would destroy Shido's credibility and cause people to lose faith in society, clamoring for a new and better system of government.

After his defeat, "Cognitive Goro" appears, revealing that he is the manifestation of how Shido views him: an obedient puppet. This angers Goro who shoots his cognitive self and then shoots the switch on the wall, closing the barrier between himself and the party so the party can proceed. He and his cognitive self then point their guns towards each other. From the other side of the wall, the party hears the true Goro's wish to right his father's heart and two gunshots. Afterwards, Goro's fate is unknown, with Futaba failing to sense his presence after the gunshot and Sae reporting him missing.

When the party confronts Shadow Shido, he confesses that he would eliminate Goro should he be elected Prime Minister because Goro knows too much about him.

Persona 5 The Animation The Day Breakers
Goro makes an appearance on TV, where he is asked his opinion on the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. His response is that whether or not they truly exist, they are criminals who should be brought to justice; he goes on to denounce their actions, and believes that forcing people to change what's in their hearts is wrong.

He is later present at the arrest of Kazuya Makigami and his gang.

Trivia

 * Goro Akechi is referenced to the name (明智 小五郎), a fictional private detective created by Japanese mystery writer  (a pseudonym for Tarō Hirai) from the story "The Case of the Murder on D. Hill" in January 1925 and continued to appear in stories for a quarter of a century. Edogawa Rampo is considered the father of the Japanese detective story and was a great admirer of Sir . Akechi is the first recurring detective character in Japanese fiction and is clearly inspired by Doyle’s.
 * His name may also be a reference to Akechi Mitsuhide, a retainer of the notorious daimyo and conqueror Oda Nobunaga who rebelled against him for reasons that are often interpreted as either disgust for Nobunaga's flaunting of bushido, the code of honor and ethics samurai were expected to follow, and/or jealousy of Nobunaga's success and fame. Both motives figure into Goro's infiltration and later betrayal of the Thieves.
 * Goro's Close Up style when he is in the player's party is similar to those from Persona 3 and Persona 4, rather than the Persona 5 style which is only used in his boss battle.
 * After Goro's defeat by the player, the way he atones by sacrificing himself alludes to Takahisa Kandori upon his defeat in the Undersea Ruins in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
 * Goro shares some similarities to Tohru Adachi from Persona 4: Both of them are detectives, they both awaken to their personas before the protagonist does, both are being manipulated by the ones who orchestrated the events of the story. However, they differ in motivation-while Adachi was motivated by boredom, spite, and jealousy of people he regarded as luckier and more talented than him, Goro is motivated by the conflicting desires to be loved and to ensure that his father is punished for his crimes, and he is shown to feel remorse for his betrayal of the Thieves after the end of his boss fight.