WARNING: Contains Massive Persona 3 Spoilers
"You don't have to save the world to find meaning in life" - Aigis
December and January. The end of an old year, and the beginning of the new. The members of SEES were full of high hopes that the defeat of the last shadow would finally put an end to the apathy syndrome taking hold of the town, and finally end the nightmare that has affected their lives for the last 10 years. It was all supposed to end that night, on the moonlight bridge.
But it didn't. The nightmare began again. The treason of the man they trusted the most, as well as the truth behind the reason for them to fight, had just shattered their world. It didn't end that night on moonlight bridge. Whatever hope they had that night, transformed into hopelessness.
Ryouji foretells the arrival of Nyx, the one who cannot be defeated. The one who would bring about The Fall. No matter what, Nyx cannot be defeated. How, indeed, does one win against the impossible?
It came perhaps as a shock to gamers that the game would put it into your face much earlier than the immediate end: the final boss cannot really be defeated. Not perhaps in the sense that you could not beat the game, but in the essence of the plot, the boss of it all could not be defeated and killed. Nyx was one such creature. The Harbinger of the Fall, he could not be stopped, which meant that Nyx will eventually bring the end about. The characters realize this in the midst of the cold winter months. They would have to spend the remainder of the days, until January 31, pondering their will to even fight.
How does one find hope within hopelessness?
It is probably irrational to believe that what is preordained to be definite and absolute could even be changed. It sounds silly at times to even fight something that cannot be defeated, much less even killed. Each of the lead characters of SEES ponders the very point of challenging an immortal being as they seek out a way to prevent the eventual fall of the human race. They try to convince themselves that what Ryouji said was just an exaggeration, that maybe perhaps Nyx was just very strong, but still defeatable. But again, what if Ryouji was right all along, and that fighting Nyx was simply a futile attempt to delay the demise of the human race?
If that is so, then what is the point of even challenging such a being? Wouldn't it simply be more convenient to await the end of it all, when humanity is wiped off the map in one fell swoop?
The fact of the matter is, the lead character is even given a choice: he could kill Ryouji, and all memories of the Fall and the Shadows would disappear with him. They could simply forget that the end was nigh, and live out the rest of their lives blissfully ignorant of the end to come. With one man's death, one could eke out an existence without the catatonic terror that would accompany full knowledge of the absolute end.
But of course, the hero could choose not to end Ryouji's life, which I believe is the canon path to take for the plot, and live on knowing full well what is to come.
For the remainder of the game, 2 months spanning the fall of the last shadow to the descent of Nyx, the characters must once again hope against all odds. They could either choose to await the inevitable silently, or they could resist it with their being, with their desire to live on and to survive. Again, however, how can one convince oneself to fight and utter hopelessness?
One could argue that one should fight anyway, because if you fight and lose, you'd just die a few days ahead of everyone else. This is perhaps an easier rationalization to do so, but clearly enough the characters don't think this way. There is no doubt in my mind this is the flimsiest rationalization one could make about fighting the odds, for doing so, one would clearly be geared at expecting utter defeat at the hands of this beast. This completely destroys the essence of fighting until the end.
You could also argue that it is simply human nature to resist death to the end. That even if the odds are beyond all means, man is geared to fight on and on, throwing himself on the impenetrable wall again and again until nothing of him is left. Again I think that this isn't the way they decided to fight. They did not believe that it was a matter of instinct or intrinsic survival desires. It was, for me, much more than that. If this were true, then the fear that had prevented them from deciding their course of action immediately would not have been. Clearly they had massive amounts of fears, doubts and frustrations about fighting the powerful Nyx. If they ran on purely instinct to fight, then a decision would have been made much sooner. The desire to live was part of their decision, but not exactly the catalyst for their inevitable choice.
So what, then, made them decide to fight?
I think it is because, indeed, they did find a little bit of hope within hopelessness. It is clichéd, I would have to admit, but is not somewhat mysterious that common people like you and I have found the simplest answers in the darkness of an overwhelming truth? In the last two months of the game the characters wrestled in themselves the point in even fighting Nyx, asking themselves if there was even any possibility of defeating the bringer of the Fall. If he was indeed immortal, then wouldn't that mean all sense of reasoning for victory would simply be a pipe dream?
And yet... what if Nyx could be defeated? What if there was a small glimmer of the possible within the impossible? What if victory, even if in another sense of the word, could be achieved? What if hope does exist in the infinite void of hopelessness?
It is in the realm of the abstract, I think, that the heroes of Persona 3 found their answers. Of course logic can't be tossed out the window, but man has that uncanny ability to go beyond logic. Through the realm of abstractions man can reason and believe beyond the structured order of the universe, and simply believe beyond reality.
And so they hoped and they believed. Even if Nyx was perceived to be undefeatable, they wanted believe that there was a way to win, that they could somehow stop the Fall. If reality could not provide them the answers they searched for, they decided to create their own answers. They believed that there was nothing in the world that was truly absolute, that an answer could be found within themselves of the world pointed otherwise. The end may be coming, but as long as they believed that a way to stop it could even possibly exist, they would fight for it until the very end.
And so they would once again climb that tower founded on the hopelessness of mankind. At the top awaited the undefeatable, ready to be defeated.
It is because they believed that, maybe for that one important battle, the only thing more powerful than utter hopelessness, is a little bit of hope.
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