Sophia (Persona 5 Strikers)

Sophia
Also known as	Sophie (Code Name) Sophia ver1.37
Japanese Name	ソフィア ソフィー
Romaji	Sofia Sofī
First Appearance	Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers
Affiliation	Phantom Thieves of Hearts
Date of Birth	August 28 (Creation) July 25 (Reactivation)
Zodiac	Virgo
Melee Weapon	Yo-yos
Ranged Weapon	Blasters
Arcana	Hope
Persona	Pithos, Pandora
Theme	"The Heart of an AI"
Japanese VA	Misaki Kuno

"I am Sophia, a good friend to humanity"

—Sophia, Persona 5 Scramble

Sophia is a playable character from Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers. She is an AI found by the protagonist while escaping Shibuya's Jail.

Appearances

• Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers: Playable Character

History

Unlike the traditional interpretation of Sophia, this appears to represent her as simply the lowest Aeon from the Nag-Hammadi texts instead of the feminine aspect of the true god that created the Demiurge. A more appropriate character for the original description appears to be her creator, who also created the in-game Demiurge.

Design

Before being approached by the protagonist, Sophia appears as a giant box with patterned lines on it, but quickly takes the form of a young girl. Her appearance is based on whoever activates it wants her to become.

While taking the form of a human, she has a fair frame and white skin, with her irises being cyan with large black ring. Her hair is bright red with M-shaped bangs and a really short back, as well as the tips being rounded off. She also has a small ahoge and 7 hearts on each side of her head, all of the them being red with hearts in deeper shades of red within the middle of these. The hearts also curve inward much like pigtails, each becoming smaller towards the ends.

She wears a white one-piece outfit with large sleeves opening up at the ends and a dress section ending just at her hips. The chest area has a strange hoop-like extrusion with strange black markings on it, and similar extrusions are seen on the end of the dress, as well as the top and ends of the sleeves. She also wears tight black boyshorts and black boots with silver soles and a large ring-like extrusion on the tips. Most of her neck section is surrounded by a large ring with a tip on the back side.

When she's in combat, her boots are extended up to her upper thighs, she now wears black gloves, and her hood is up, encapsulating most of her head with the pointy tip now on the back of her head, and the hearts now forming a 14-sectioned ponytail like extenstion. When in combat, her hood now covers her mouth and the remaining exposed skin is colored black, with only her hair and 2 cyan ring representing eyes visible. She wields 2 white yo-yos with a black center and a ring of cyan LED lights inside of them.

When she's not in the Metaverse, only her portrait is represented when active. When she's inactive, she's represented by a red circle with her hooded face on it.

When brainwashed, Sophia has hollow eyes in a bright red coloration. When she's snapping out of it, the eyes alter between red and green.

Personality

Sophia is helpful and supportive by nature, describing herself as a "friend" to anyone who speaks to her, and quick to offer assistance and suggestions for any query posed her. She also is a bit unpreceptive when it comes to organic life forms, not realizing that her rescuers did not understand she was an AI that can only travel outside the Metaverse in digital form. Due to her naive take on human emotions, she can be surprisingly ruthless at times, initially suggesting a plan to assassinate Alice Hiiragi when asked on her input on how to stop her from abducting people into her Jail, not knowing that killing people is wrong, though she immediately backpedals when the Phantom Thieves react with horror. (Surprisingly, this is the exact mentality her creator possesses.)

Profile

Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers

Sophia is an AI created by Kuon Ichinose to order to investigate the human heart, due to Ichinose having shut down her emotions to unknown circumstances and being considered by her peers as a freak because of her abnormal behavior. The first command Ichinose given to her was to "become humanity's best friend." However, because she asked if Ichinose has a heart, she ditched her pretty quickly supposedly because she believed that she's unfit for the purpose. In reality, Sophia triggered Ichinose's inner anxiety and threw her into a fit of rage. This became the basis of EMMA which was only capable of determining material desires and nothing else. Despite being a defect product, she still has traces of EMMA's purpose as a daily digital assistant to the party and initially shares a misanthropic mindset as her creator, namely suggesting killing Alice Hiiragi's Shadow at first impression, although she comes out of it pretty quickly. She can also sense Jails while Morgana cannot.

Sophia was first seen after the protagonist, Morgana and Ryuji were all dropped into a basement after being captured by Alice Hiiragi, in which she takes the form of a giant box. Once the protagonist approaches the box, it starts "booting up" in a white flash and took the form of a young girl. She claims to be humanity's friend and escorts the party back to the real world, beating Shadows in the process. She then manifests in the protagonist's phone as an app and provides navigation for the party. When the party talks to her back at Café Leblanc, she has no memories of herself and only remembers that she is humanity's friend. Despite being an AI, even Futaba cannot decipher her code without spending a few months to read it.

EMMA can communicate with Sophia telepathically, with nobody else being able to hear EMMA's side of the confrontation. She's drawn to these voices, usually going out of control to chase them in hopes of regaining her purpose. She hears those voices, because she is a failed variant of EMMA.

Near the end of the game, the EMMA application fires back up on its own even after Konoe shut it down, and Sophia can sense a massive Jail overlaid within Yokohama to all of Tokyo. When the party arrives to Tokyo Tower, they see people flocking for "Salvation." Once they use the Metaverse Navigator, Sophia began to hear the same voices, leading to the Jail's center where EMMA was revealed to have gained a physical form and vanishes, before Ichinose steps in herself to protect EMMA from the Phantom Thieves. After she explains all events up to this point and her role as the chief instigator, Ichinose issues a command to Sophia and tells her to kill the Phantom Thieves. While Sophia did give into the command, she gives up pretty quickly because she can't fathom attacking anyone whom she formed a deep bond with and drops into a cliff unconscious, before Ichinose uses a diamond to blast them off as well.

Upon climbing back to the location where the hostile encounter with Ichinose took place, she summons a massive mob attack against the Phantom Thieves enough to exterminate them once again with the Diamond-shaped weapon, only for Sophia to arrive and block the attack. Sophia then proceeds to deny her, stating that the human heart is important to understanding human desires, and she might be better in understanding them because she can understand the human heart, while EMMA cannot. Sophia then proceeds to awaken Pithos into its true form, Pandora to combat her creator, with Ichinose sending a Hecatoncheir as a last obstacle. Once this is defeated as well, Sophia successfully convinces her creator to reform and assist in defeating EMMA once and for all.

Near the end of the game, Ichinose invites the party out to the Shibuya square in order to explain her next action. She requests the protagonist to hand Sophia over so she could better understand humans as a whole, with Sophia consenting to the decision. As Sophia parts with the protagonist to Ichinose, the post credits scene shows a silhouette of the AI happily hanging out with her formerly misanthropic creator.

Etymology

Her name is a pun on the word software, referencing how she only exists in the Metaverse inside of the app.

Gallery

Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers

Sophia's Close Up Concept art Concept art 2 Sophia's status screen art Character art Valentine's Day Illustration of Sophia and Morgana (Tweet) Sophia with the protagonist and Zenkichi on the Weekly Famitsu Magazine Issue #1629 cover Artwork of Sophia and Zenkichi for P5S's release by Shigenori Soejima Sophie Pre-Release Wallpaper (576x1024) Artwork of Sophia and Morgana for P5S's Taiwanese demo release Artwork of Sophia celebrating P5S's Taiwanese release by @amatizqueen (Facebook) Sophia in battle Sophia masked Sophia awakening Pandora Sophia's Showtime Sophia as a box Sophia as a box Sophia's booting code Sophia's prompt before assuming a human form Sophia when taking a human form Sophia meeting the protagonist Sophia's Shop Sophia with plus-shaped star-eyes Sophia with blank eyes

Other
Artwork of Sophia and Sumire on celebrating the sales of P5R and P5S. (Tweet)

Videos

Sophia's Persona 5 Scramble: The Phantom Strikers Trailer

In Other Languages

Language	Titles
English	Sophia	Sophie
Japanese	ソフィア (Sofia)	ソフィー (Sofī)
Korean	소피아 (Sopia)	소피 (Sopi)
Traditional Chinese	蘇菲亞 (Sū fēi yà)	SOPHIE

Trivia

• In some Gnostic schools, "Sophia" is the name of the true god who created the Demiurge. This ties into how she is a more empathetic and perceptive version of EMMA, whose true form is the False God Demiurge. (In this case however, she seems to represent the lowest Aeon.)
• Much like Jose, she calls Morgana a "Tanuki."
• Sophie is the second instance in the Persona 5 series where a Persona user had a persona before (and was actually able to use it) but had received an awakening later, with the latter being considered the official awakening. The first instance occurred to Takuto Maruki and Azathoth, who simply required exposure to the Metaverse to awaken.
• Sophia's birthday, August 28, is also the final in-game day of Persona 5 Scramble.