These games, too, take place in the same continuity as If. The very name 'Kuzunoha' should also ring a bell for some, since it features prominently in the Raidou Kuzunoha vs duology, which branches off of Devil Summoner and revolves around the eponymous protagonist, who is a member of a clan of assassins dedicated to defeating and controlling demons and otherworldly forces from the astral plane. The player character, Tamaki Uchida, even appears as a supporting character both in Megami Ibunroku Persona (The first game of the series) and Persona 2, the latter of which show her working at the Kuzunoha Detective Agency, which is run by a man directly stated to be Kyouji Kuzunoha, a character from the first Devil Summoner game possessing the body of the local private detective.

This is particularly relevant because, as mentioned before, the Persona series was spawned off of this game in the first place, and in fact takes place in the same continuity as it. is very much a prim and proper entry of Shin Megami Tensei that takes place in the same overall universe as it, with familiar demons being summoned by the protagonist, and characters from previous games of the series appearing, such as the Neutral Hero from SMT I making an appearance as an optional boss fight, and most importantly, Stephen appearing at the very end of the game. In order to trace a chronological relationship between Shin Megami Tensei and Persona, we should firstly address the game from which the latter series was spawned to begin with: That being Shin Megami Tensei: If., released as a parallel story for the series after Shin Megami Tensei I and II.įrom start to finish, If. Now, without further addo, we'll start by going through the exact timeline of the series:įrom Shin Megami Tensei to Persona and Back

Moreover, the series is obviously still ongoing, and is not going to end anytime soon, thus, you all should unfortunately consider this blog a permanent Work-In-Progress, and not a complete outlook on the setting. Take note, also, that the Megami Tensei franchise is, well, quite big, and there is a myriad of untranslated material that I haven't got my hands on as of yet. To put it simply, the purpose of this blog is to break down that barrier and piece together the cosmologies of the two series in a coherent fashion, which is a pretty easy task, all things considered: As disjointed and seemingly inconsistent this franchise is, every entry ultimately makes use of the exact same overarching themes and motifs, just interpreted slightly differently to better suit the style and presentation of each individual game, and so, you should think of this as an Explanation Blog for Megami Tensei as a whole, and not just Shin Megami Tensei.īefore carrying on, I, of course, would also like to give my thanks to everyone from the Persona Wank Squad, which extends into a lot more people than those links, and inspired me to make this page to begin with. Regardless of that, there is a relatively large number of people who believe that Persona is only connected to the larger universe of MegaTen through recurring gameplay elements and characters, and, indeed, this very site seems to treat them as functionally separate verses with different cosmologies, despite also acknowledging them as taking place in the same universe. Most importantly, I also realized that I had been focusing only on a single part of the puzzle, while neglecting other elements of the franchise that were also fundamental to understanding the wider setting: As has been known for a long while, Persona is a spin-off of Shin Megami Tensei, and one of the many disparate series that comprise the wider universe of the Megami Tensei franchise, though it is undeniably the most well-known installment of the series.

2 From Shin Megami Tensei to Persona and BackĪs you can see, this is a new Blog Post written with the intent of exploring the mechanics and cosmology of the series that, on this site, you all have come to know solely as Shin Megami Tensei, and although I did write another post attempting to explain it a few years ago, my standards grew a bit higher as time passed, until I frankly came to despise that thing with all of my strength, same with my previous work on the series' profiles.

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