Akira Konoe

Akira Konoe
Also known as	Armor Zephyrus (Robot) Hero Akira
Japanese Name	近衛 明 このえ あきら アーマー・ゼフィルセ ヒーロー・アキラ
Romaji	Konoe Akira Zefirusu Āmā Zefirusu
First Appearance	Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers
Japanese VA	Tōru Ōkawa

Akira Konoe is a character from Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers.

Appearances

• Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers: Major Character (Antagonist)

Personality

Being suffered from extreme household abuse because of an influential father that would potentially kill him, with justice only served once he put him down by accident, Konoe grown to become a firm believer of Justice, and believes that all crime in the world must be wiped out. While possessing a noble goal, he is highly misanthropic about it and has no qualms using a child to capture threats and cooperating with a corrupt politician with the intent of taking him down, effectively making him no different from a criminal. When Ichinose sold him EMMA, he decided that it should be used to stop crime and wrongdoing and thus modified it with the Jail function, kickstarting the events of the game as many who felt downtrodden or oppressed abuse it to give themselves artificial popularity and self-ego.

Despite this, he still seems to care about his employees and is in no means, a corrupt corporate executive. His cooperation with Jun Owada is also a deliberate ruse to take him down, as he already had the power to do so much unlike the similarly aligned Goro Akechi. True to his word, he is an actual defender of justice and this is not an act; he just uses morally repugnant methods to enforce his own version of it. He is also very fond of an obscure copy of Phoenix Ranger Featherman R known as Zephyrman, which unlike Featherman who enforces justice in a group, is a sole enforcer of justice, symbolizing that he prefers to enforce his own version of justice on solitude instead of the Persona user's true justice and values of friendship.

Profile

Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers

Akira Konoe lived in an extremely abusive household where his father killed his mother for money and hated him to the point that he just wanted to murder him. His neighbours tried to call police in but failed because he was the CEO of Madicce. 20 years ago, his father came into kill him. He thought that it was a burglary and he was watching Zephyrman during that time, and he wished for Zephyrman to kill whoever tried to kill him. Mistaking that this was a burglar, he killed him before he could.

When he grew up, he took over Madicce from his father. Kuon Ichinose sold the base code of the AI EMMA app in hopes of Konoe improving it. Konoe improved it and turned it into an app that allows personal revenge, creating Jails all over Japan. This stems from his past trauma, resulting in him modifying the app to make a world devoid of crimes and fashioning himself as a hero. Using it, his company, Madicce became a billion dollar mega enterprise. During the events of the game, he also offered heart changing services to Jun Owada, although he already planned on taking Owada down from the beginning. The Phantom Thieves of Hearts later became one of his targets of his blind pursuit of justice, using the excuse that they were hacking into EMMA and killing the King of Okinawa. Both crimes are fabricated and are merely used to justify his deluded crusade of justice.

He first appears during a talk show in Kuon Ichinose's university, where he talks about EMMA being capable of deciding everything for its user. He seems to be a confident and charismatic businessman, and doesn't talk about any abnormalities.

When the Thieves return to Kyoto, Akira uses EMMA to manifest a Jail to capture the Phantom Thieves, dragging Zenkichi Hasegawa's daughter, Akane Hasegawa in because she used the EMMA app in an attempt to "save her."

He is the owner of the Osaka's Jail, which takes the form of a sci-fi utopia that makes him the sole hero of the world, for his EMMA app will wipe out all crimes.

Once the party defeats the Lock Keeper located in his household, they send the calling card by hijacking a Madicce Zeppelin and drop them. While at first completely unfazed by the calling card, he realized that the plan to use Kyoto's Jail as a trap against the Phantom Thieves had failed and he throws his cellphone into the floor out of anger.

The party chides him for not being very different from his father and he becomes enraged, transforming into Zephyrman and controls a massive armored robot named "Armor Zephyrus." After it collapses, he emerges out of the robot's debris and transforms into Hero Akira and fights them on foot, but was defeated nonetheless. He then confesses for all of his crimes and promises to shut down the EMMA app because he used it to brainwash the public. During the next Madicce meeting, Konoe personally confesses to his staff and promises to turn himself to the police, before Zenkichi Hasegawa and Miyako Kaburagi arrive to arrest him personally.

Gallery

Akira Konoe holding a conference about EMMA

Zephyrus, the King of Osaka's Jail

Etymology

His first name, Akira (明) means "Bright" and his last name, Konoe (近衛) means "Guard." This indicates that he is a firm defender of justice; while this is in fact, true as EMMA helped the wronged to regain their fame, it is also distorted and radical as he forcefully removes all crimes in the world by means of mass mind control, all while allowing the users of EMMA to commit wrongs on an unprecedented scale.

Trivia

• Akira Konoe is the first human target to be completely unfazed by any calling card; it was the EMMA app's failure from capturing the Thieves that alerted him.
• Konoe's savior complex, as well as his status as a secondary accomplice is similar to that of Kunino-sagiri.
• Hero Akira's design and ability to drive mecha is a reference to sentai genre superheroes.