For the last two decades, hot springs scenes have been a staple of the Persona RPG series, just like social links and exam week. Beginning with 2006’s Persona 3, the series always takes its ensemble cast of high-school pals on a vacation. On paper, it’s a way for players to get to know the cast in a more relaxed and informal setting, but in practice it’s mostly a transparent excuse to see the pretty girls wearing very little clothing while they giggle and praise each other’s shapely bods.
Several weeks after Atlus officially revealed Persona 6 at the Xbox Showcase, fans on Reddit have been speculating about what the next installment will be like. This week’s hottest topic? Hot springs. Turns out, nobody really enjoys these scenes. Some people tolerate them, while many, many others never want to see another “hilarious” misunderstanding between teens in various states of undress.
“Just include a hot spring scene to make the gooners happy but don’t do the tired ‘girls and boys have misunderstanding, girls beat up boys.’ joke no one has laughed at in 20 years,” wrote one commenter on the post above. This isn’t an oversimplification: this is pretty much exactly what happens in the hot springs scenes in Persona 3, Persona 4, and the Phantom Thieves’ tactical RPG spinoff Persona 5 Strikers.
It’s not that people find these interludes particularly offensive — they’re just dated and unfunny. Hot springs generally have gender-segregated schedules: there are separate windows of time for men and women, as you’re generally bathing in the nude. In the Persona series, there’s always some kind of mix-up with this schedule. Inevitably, the men overhear the women complementing one another’s bodies in a fanciful “just us girls” way that exists only in fiction written by men. Instead of announcing their presence from the start, the boys are scared into silence, sending the girls into a rage when they inevitably discover them lurking around. If you’ve watched one of these scenes, you’ve seen ’em all.
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