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More than a year ago, my friend Mike introduced me to the Shin Megami Tensei series in the form of Persona 3.  It took me more than 100 hours to finish The Journey and The Answer, and now I’ve gotten sucked into Persona 4.  Sorry, everyone who wants to spend time with me!

There isn’t really space here for an adequate review of this complex JRPG, but what I do want to talk about is the world of the television within the game.

In Persona 4 you play a character who discovers that someone is killing people by throwing them into a foggy land within “the television.”  In this land, people’s fears and hidden desires manifest in the form of monsters known as “Shadows,” and those who are thrown into the television are usually killed by their Shadows.  The protagonist and his friends have discovered that by defeating their own Shadows they gain the ability to defeat those of other people, and they are seeking the identity of the mysterious murderer.

What interests me is that when people are thrown in the discord in their hearts creates an entire landscape.  When a shy girl who hates being pursued by men finds herself there, her world becomes a “Bachelorette”-style game show featuring her as a man-hungry princess.  A man struggling with his sexual identity finds that he is trapped with his Shadow in a steamy all-male bathhouse.

This is not a place we can physically visit, but it has made me closely examine my own inner landscape.  If I could travel to the land behind the television and confront my own Shadow…what would my world look like?  Would I be able to accept that my Shadow is part of myself, or would I reject it like the victims in the game and be devoured?  I like to think that I would be able to overcome it!

To what landscape would you travel if forced to confront your  Shadow?