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  Spoilers for Innocent Sin will definitely follow, so don't read if you want to play the game and find out for yourself. Consider yourself warned if you've only played Batsu. (A lot of the details of his backstory come from the game guide and the conversations between Kaneko Kazuma and Satomi Tadashi, if you're wondering.) PERSONALITY Suou Tatsuya is a senior at Seven Sisters High School. Introverted and aloof, he's considered to be the coolest guy in Sevens, but he doesn't have any actual friends as a result. His coldness makes people assume that he hates everyone around him, but that's not actually true. He's kind of spacy, more of a dumbass than the Main in Persona 1. Also, in contrast to the hero of Persona 1, Tatsuya is far more restrained physically; look at how neat his hair is compared to the Persona 1 Hero's bed-head. His haircut is called a "metti-cut" - none of us can find out what the hell that is. (Kaneko and Satomi joke that it's like a helmet, and he can slip it off at night.) The Sevens uniform is based on the Adidas jersey that Kaneko Kazuma has at home. *laugh* (Check out the matching pants.) Tatsuya's a nice boy, really he is, but he can be blunt and callous when people are slowing the group down. He doesn't exactly have the delicate touch when it comes to emotional issues, and seems to squirm when he's caught in a position where he has to comfort or inspire people. He's extremely uncomfortable with Lisa's single-minded pursuit of him, and initially is almost terrified to be left alone with her. He's not cold-hearted, he just seems to be rather shy and requires plenty of personal space. When he was a kid, he was a lot more outgoing and talkative, but he's grown up to be a pretty silent person. Tatsuya isn't a born leader or even a particularly decisive person, but he's more or less forced into being the leader of this group. When they were children, Jun was the natural leader, really. Tatsuya's most precious possessions are his second-hand motorcycle and the lighter he got from a childhood friend. He lost touch of that friend ten years ago, but the lighter is a precious memento of their friendship. It is inscribed with the engrish phrase "Being the most important can't be seen in the eyes." (That means "The most important things can't be seen with the eyes," which is a quote from Jun's favorite book, The Little Prince.) His best friend will always be Jun; they're pretty much two sides of the same coin and understand each other better than the rest of the group does. Now, that brings us to another question: Is Tatsuya REALLY as gay as we make him out to be? Well, that depends; I hashed this out with Kya. Tatsuya is a directionless person with no idea of who he really is; that's what his Shadow accuses him of. So in a sense, he's who you make him. If you want him to be gay, boy is he ever gay. If you want him to be straight, he's straight. It's up to the player to decide. We basically decided that Jun was the best choice for him based on the personalities of the people involved, past history, etc etc. I think Lisa is way too outgoing for him, and Maya - well, I can't buy that she's interested in Tsumi, or even in Batsu. Jun is basically defined as 'the person who understands him best;' his shadow, his clone, his doppelganger. But you can do what you like in your game. :D (For what it's worth, Kaneko Kazuma doesn't buy the Tatsuya x Maya pairing either, although Satomi Tadashi seems to like it; Kaneko says that two airheaded, spontaneous people like Tatsuya and Maya wouldn't work well together. Kaneko seems to strongly support Tatsuya x Jun, and even got Satomi to admit it. XD) Since Tatsuya has no friends other than the other Masquerade members, it must be very hard for him to lose them at the end of Tsumi... HISTORY massive spoilers follow. got that? good. Tatsuya first met the other Masquerade members at Araya Shrine at the age of eight. His brother had dumped him at the shrine and told him to stay there while he (Katsuya) went to see the festival. (FWIW, Katsuya's not really a nice older brother in Tsumi. He's adorable in Batsu, but kind of an impatient jerk in Tsumi. It makes Tatsuya's reactions to Katsuya in Batsu a LOT MORE UNDERSTANDABLE if you've played Tsumi; you're seeing Katsuya as Tatsuya sees him (a nagging, mean person), whereas in Batsu, you see them as a third party would see them.) At the shrine, Tatsuya met a little boy and they became friends there. They decided to play a game based on the sentai show "Phoenix Corps Featherman," with Tatsuya as the Red Hawk and Jun as the Black Falcon. A blonde gaijin girl and a chubby boy from the sushi shop joined their game, and they called themselves the Masquerade. Jun and Tatsuya were best friends, and did almost everything together. They exchanged keepsakes from their fathers - Tatsuya gave Jun his father's watch, and Jun gave Tatsuya his father's lighter. The Masquerade saw a middle-school girl at the shrine one day, and adopted her as the unofficial fifth member of the Masquerade. Tatsuya and Jun were especially close to Big Sis, and promised each other to always protect her. She, for her part, taught them weird German poetry, mothered Jun, and taught the kids a game to show them what they were going to be in the future - "Persona-sama." Big Sis also said that Jun and Tatsuya were like Doppelgangers, the light and dark version of the same person. They all idolized and loved her like a real older sister, so the Masquerade was devastated when Big Sis announced that she was going to move away and couldn't come play any more. The other three kids decided that if they locked Big Sis in Araya overnight, she couldn't leave them. When Tatsuya protested, they locked him in with her, and left, intending to return the next day and let them out. That night, Big Sis and Tatsuya played together in the shrine. Outside, an insane student from Seven Sisters, Sudou Tatsuya the Chaneller - the future King Leo - decided to burn down the shrine so that he could watch the pretty flames. When the shrine was set on fire, Tacchan escaped and tried to stop Leo, but Leo stabbed him in the back while Big Sis pounded on the door from the inside. Tacchan reacted by spontaneously summoning his persona, Vulcanus, who burned away half of Leo's face and presumably chased him away. Big Sis managed to escape on her own, but I guess Tacchan didn't know that...he repressed the memory of this traumatic incident. Soon after that, I believe, Tatsuya's father was on the trail of the serial arsonist, and came close to fingering Sudou Tatsuya as the culprit. As you know from Batsu, Leo's daddy is a big politician, so he arranged for Mr. Suou to be framed and forced to resign from the police force in disgrace. Sudou threatened the Suou family, so Tatsuya's dad was forced to keep quiet. Tatsuya had idolized his father, and couldn't understand why his father had done something so weak and spineless. He was angry that his mother didn't protest and quietly accepted her fate. His older brother reacted by becoming a super-student and a perfect son and a dedicated cop, and nagged Tatsuya mercilessly about his grades (since, as we find out in Batsu, Katsuya is angry because he threw away his own dreams to support Tatsuya). Tatsuya grew to resent his perfect older brother and always felt inferior to him. Since he couldn't stand his entire family, he spent all his free time with part-time jobs, trying to earn enough money to be financially independent. In middle school, Tatsuya's persona-ability reawakened when he was fighting some delinquents, and he almost killed the other boys. Ever since then, he became afraid of himself and became the introverted, lonely person that he is today. But he's still tall and handsome, and Ginko thinks he'd make a great trophy boyfriend, so she chases him and he runs. (Oh, they resolve that one way or another by the end of the game, and she grows up and realizes that she's terrifying the poor boy.) It takes two whole games before you fully find out what's wrong with Tatsuya, and for him to properly resolve his Issues. |