If You Care That Persona 6 Is Green, You’re Too Far Gone

Summary

• After all the spin offs, I'm just getting over Persona 5.
• Green could represent a lot of things, just as blue, yellow, and red have symbolic undertones.
• It could even represent grass, the kind that's fun to touch.

It’s been seven and a half years since Persona 5 launched, but it doesn’t really feel that way. You can chop that half a year off immediately as most of us played the worldwide launch rather than the Japanese one, which was exactly seven years ago last week. Then there’s Royal, Strikers, Dancing in Starlight, and Tactica in the mix too, plus the upcoming 5X on mobile. It feels like Persona 5 never went away, and now Persona 6 is right around the corner… maybe.

Leaker Midori recently revealed that Persona 6’s colour scheme will be green. This is just speculation at the moment, but Midori has a good reputation within the Persona community for their strong track record of reliable leaks and insider info. The green colouring also makes sense, considering Joker was splashed with green in the 25th anniversary artwork, which many fans took as a hint at the time that Persona 6 would be going green.

What Could Green Mean For Persona 6?

Each game uses its colouration in different ways. The blue in Persona 3 has been said to symbolise adolescence and death, which are key elements in the story set in a school and involving self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Persona 4 uses yellow, which could represent warmth and happiness - a facade many of the characters present throughout the game. Then Persona 5 is red, a colour associated with the noir detective genre the game leans on, as well as danger as the gang become criminals and blood for the stolen hearts.

The problem with these associations is that they feel retrofitted. Yes, there almost certainly was a purpose behind each colour selection - despite the meme that comforted you when you failed English class, the writer mentioned the curtains were blue for a reason. But you need the plot to make sense of the colours for it to really matter.

Blue often represents coldness and isolation, yellow madness and disease, red romance and heat. On the one hand, it’s fun to theorycraft (a word we invented to make ‘guessing’ sound better) as to what green might mean. On the other hand, we have so little to go off that I just can’t bring myself to care enough.

Green, most obviously, could mean a more natural setting than the urban trappings of the series so far. But green also symbolises the opposite end of the spectrum through technology and cybernetics, especially for those of us who grew up with The Matrix. It could mean life, rebirth, and spirituality. It could mean envy or greed. It may (perhaps less so for a Japanese developer) point to a narrative obsessed with money. Maybe it’s a tease that Persona 6 is an Xbox exclusive. Your guess is as good as mine.

There Is Such A Thing As Too Much Persona Theorycrafting

Since moving away from the violence of shooting yourself in the head with P3, screens have played a notable part in activating a Persona. In P4 it was through TV screens, in P5 it was a phone app. A continuation of this theme would possibly mean a narrative built around streamers or influencers, but it’s hard to guess - sorry, theorycraft - how green could tie into this.

Maybe it’s just in tribute to Midori.

Persona 5 is a blessing and a curse. I love the game, and that love has only grown as extra installments have fleshed out the characters (and provided a way to rejoin the world without a 200 hour adventure). But it has been constantly around us for the past seven years that I don’t feel starving enough for P6. Not enough to get excited that I know it will prominently feature green, the most significant colour not yet used and one which was already teased.

I’m prepared to believe green really is the colour, as its presence on the 25th anniversary poster has little other explanation. But while, post-release, we may view green as the defining aspect of P6’s identity, right now it’s impossible to say why. We may have learned one of the most important features of Persona 6’s aesthetic and game design. But with it, we don’t seem to have learned anything at all.

Persona 6

Persona 6 is an unconfirmed mainline entry in the long-running RPG series from Atlus.