Persona 3/Characters/S.E.E.S./Aigis

Voiced by: Maaya Sakamoto (Japanese) and Karen Strassman (English)

During SEES's summer vacation, they're alerted to a dangerous Anti-Shadow weapon that's escaped the Kirijo lab and asked to retrieve it. When asked if they have permission to destroy it if it can't be contained, Ikutsuki laughs nervously and replies that he seriously doubts that'd be possible. Thankfully for the heroes, the weapon in question turns out to be Aigis, a Ridiculously Human Robot with a human mind and persona, as well as a harmless and seemingly inexplicable attachment to the main character that Ikutsuki attributes to a minor glitch in her software. The last survivor of a series of battle androids created to help contain the Shadows gathered by the Kirijo Group ten years ago, she's now allowed to live in the SEES dorms (where she also proves to have some telepathic ability, as she can understand Koromaru perfectly) and to even enroll in the main characters' class by posing as a new transfer student, all while gradually exploring her own interests and latent humanity.

It turns out that Aigis was pivotal in averting the apocalypse ten years ago when she faced Death's weakened form on the Moonlight Bridge, immediately after the destruction of the Ergo Research Lab. Unable to defeat Death directly, she instead forced it into the 6 year-old main character, who happened to also be on the bridge that night, and used him as a living seal. Her memories were severely damaged after the battle, and her desire to stay close to the main character and protect him had stemmed from her unconscious awareness that he's the only thing standing in the way of Death's return. Once Death does return in the form of Ryoji Mochizuki, she tries to redeem herself by defeating him head-on, and fails, nearly destroying herself again in the process. Left shaken by her defeat, she's encouraged by the others to see herself as a person instead of a weapon, and she finds her affection for the main character growing beyond the mere necessity of preserving his life.

In FES and Portable, Aigis has her own Social Link, Aeon.

• Action Girl: The biggest example in the game after the Female Protagonist, especially in The Answer.
• The Atoner: When she regains her memory, she feels a lot of guilt towards the main character for sealing Death inside them.
• Badass Adorable: Junpei sums it up best:

Junpei: She's so cute, but she's a robot.

• Big Damn Heroes: In the second movie, she saves Makoto and Yukari from Shadows on the Yakushima beach.
• Bodyguard Crush: Towards the protagonist.
• Breakout Character:
  • Aigis is one of the most popular characters of the game, and possibly of the Persona franchise as a whole. So popular, in fact, that she was made into the main character of the expansion, The Answer. Also, with Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight using her as a logo, she is officially the mascot for P3. She's treated as the main representative and main character of the Persona 3 cast almost every time they appear, and receives the most merchandise of any Persona character in the third game.
  • The movie adaptations were rewritten to give her more scenes that weren't in the game, and unlike Persona 4's adaptation which had No Romantic Resolution, Aigis becomes the protagonist's Implied Love Interest.
  • She's also the only representative of P3 to appear in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle's Episode Mode alongside the cast of P4. The other playable P3 characters don't have this honor.
• Broken Bird: Becomes one in The Answer due to the protagonist's death, to the point that she's decided not to go back to school and wishes to return to being a mere machine. She gets better by the end.
• Changing of the Guard; She inherits both the dead protagonist's Wild Card and leadership role in The Answer.
• The Comically Serious: See No Social Skills below.
• Compulsory School Age: Justified with good measure. Not only can she protect the protagonist this way much better, she also gets to experience more of her human side by interaction with other people.
• Declaration of Protection: She tells the protagonist that will protect them. He still dies.
• Deuteragonist: While not an official example, Aigis has the most relevance to the story out of all the party members, being the only one with a crucial role in the protagonist's origins. She also takes over as The Heroine in The Answer, so it could be argued that she's the real main character. All of this despite being the last of the party members to be introduced, if not the last to join.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Her final rank up in the S. Link doesn't have a sex scene, since it's pretty unlikely she'd have been built with the necessary equipment for that. Instead, there is an incredibly subtle moment where she undresses, bares her (Papillon) heart, and says she would like your genetic information burned inside her. Yup.
• Dynamic Character: She unquestionably changes the most out of anyone in the game. She's introduced as a mere machine whose personality is simply to follow orders. After gaining emotions, however, she becomes a much more complex character, and learns to understand her new feelings. The Answer takes this even further, in which she develops into a sweet, gentle, empathetic and strong-hearted girl with a talent for leadership.
• Emotionless Girl: At first. She develops emotions after being repaired.
• Finger Gun: Her submachine guns.
• First Girl After All: As it turns out, she was the one who created the MC's destiny from the beginning.
• Gayngst: While she supposedly doesn't identify as female for the male MC and stresses out over being a robot instead, with the female MC she starts to worry about them being the same gender, assuming her feelings can't be reciprocated due to her apparent gender.
• The Gunslinger: All of her weapons are forms of firearms - from her finger machine guns, a Hand Cannon, and a rifle.
• Hair of Gold: Fits this trope after Character Development leads her to become more human.
• Her Heart Will Go On: The main theme of the end of the game and The Answer. Aigis gains the strength to move on with her friends and cherish the short time she had with him instead of falling into despair. Even by the time Persona 4 Arena happens she still thinks about him all the time, but she uses those feelings to give her strength.
• Heroic BSOD: Goes into a very long and justified one after the protagonist's death, even wanting to return to being a mere machine. She gets better by the end of The Answer.
• Heroic Resolve: After being repaired, Aigis initially desires for the group to kill Ryoji, as she believes it's pointless to waste their lives fighting Nyx, and now believes her life is without meaning as she can't defeat the Shadows. After realising that meaning in life can be a lot simpler than saving the world, however, she decides to live on and decide her own fate, triggering the evolution of her Persona.
• I Am a Monster: When her Social Link opens, she spends some time angsting about how she has a human heart but a mechanical body and can thus be neither a person nor a weapon. Eventually, she does see one bright spot in the fact that she's a robot, which means she won't die of old age and thus will always be there for the protagonist.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: If you Social Link with her, she worries her relationship with the protagonist will get in the way of him having such a bond with a normal girl.
• Jack of All Trades: Her strengths generally lay in her ability to provide the Kaja series of party buffs, negate party debuffs and provide some healing support. She's also a decent physical attacker and has a fairly robust stat line, making her more difficult to take down than many flimsier party members like Yukari or Ken.
• Leitmotif: "Heartful Cry" and its various remixes from The Answer onward. The movie series gave her a slow piano piece that plays during her emotional moments with Makoto.
• Magikarp Power: When she first joins you, her skillset is rather lackluster, with a handful of physical attacks, some buff spells that at that point overlap with others' and no elemental spells whatsoever. Her usefulness skyrockets later on when she gains access to healing spells, rounds out her buff selection and widens the gap in physical stats between her and other party members. Amusingly coincidental with her Character Development.
• Master of Unlocking: Pre-Character Development Aigis has a bad habit of breaking into the main character's dorm room by picking the lock on his door, such as when she first moves in with the party and later as seen in a recording when she was breaking into his room at night to check on him while he had a fever. She even notes that she is getting quite good at it and is able to break her lock picking record each time.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is derived from "Aegis", the mythological shield, and she is driven by a strong desire to protect the protagonist (though this eventually extends to everyone).
• Mighty Glacier: An odd variant; although she has some of the highest HP and Attack power in the game, she also has access to some of the highest level healing spells.
• Mind Control Eyes: When she's controlled by Ikutsuki on November 4th.
• More Dakka: Extremely apparent in Persona 4 Arena, where she has a crapton of guns and projectiles she keeps in Hammerspace.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Upon regaining her memories, she's appalled with herself for having sealed Death inside the protagonists, at which point you have the option of telling her she did the right thing.
• My Greatest Failure: Her story in The Answer is mostly her coming to terms with not being able to prevent the Protagonist's death..
• Nice Girl: Is this in spades after being repaired by the Kirijo Group and developing emotions. She's very polite and kind and deeply cherishes her friends.
• No Social Skills: As a result of having no emotions, Aigis's social skills are more-or-less non-existent; it's frequently noted on-screen that while she may look human, she is far from passing as one. She is prone to doing very strange and socially unacceptable things, such as breaking into the protagonist's room to wake him up and requesting to be on standby in their room, which Yukari calls her out for. She grows out of this after gaining emotions. 
• The Protagonist: In The Answer, making her the first Persona MC to be voiced in cutscenes in the main story, rather than being a Heroic Mime.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: She falls into this role easier assuming that the female protagonist is chosen, on account of the fact that the male protagonist is ALSO a Rei expy, though she fits most of the criteria, from gradually developing emotions to being the main character's Love Interest.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: A justified case. If she didn't look like a human, her mind wouldn't self-identify as human, and she wouldn't be able to use a Persona.
• Robo Speak: Her speech starts out extremely stilted and robotic (in the English version, anyway). Sort of like GlaDOS without the filter.
• Robot Girl: If most of her skin is covered, she can pass for human. If not, she has some extremely obvious joints. Even without that, her head and neck are clearly robotic. In something of a deconstruction, the group initially believes her attraction to the protagonist is the result of there being something wrong with her programming, and so her words aren't taken seriously until it's too late.
• Robot Maid: When you present her the maid uniform to equip (given out in FES as a reward), she clearly states that it's the one she already wore before at the lab. In other words, the super-powerful battle android that she is also acted as an obedient maid servant before you found her (and can continue so even afterward).
• Rocket Punch: One of her weapon options.
• Shoot the Dog: Her sealing the final Shadow in the Protagonist ten years before the story started. She comes to regret this after gaining emotions.
• Shout-Out: Whenever Aigis performs a Critical Hit, she says "Hasta la vista".
• Single-Target Sexuality: She finds herself in love with the MC, regardless of their gender. In Persona Q, if she's chosen as the destined partner of Yu Narukami, she will refuse, insisting Makoto is her most important person.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Quite a bit of humor is drawn from her attempts to blend in with humans. While she gets better at it over the course of the game, she still has her moments. By the time Persona 4 Arena happens, it's hard to tell when her little slip-ups are legitimate or her messing with people at the times that the story doesn't show her thought process.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: This conversation:

Junpei: Wait, does that mean... this dog's a Persona-user!? Aigis: He says, "This is a place of peace, so I protected it." Junpei: Uh, Aigis? Don't tell me you can translate dog language too... Aigis: Canines do not have their own language. However, speech is not the only means of communication.

• • Aigis starts to lose the ability to understand Koromaru as she becomes more human as humans cannot understand animals. She regains most of this ability post-Persona 3 due to accepting her unique existence as a living machine.
  • Arena reveals that this is because it was inherited from the 5th Generation Anti-Shadow weapons, one of whom took time to communicate with a puppy named Snowy. In Ultimax Aigis meets him, now an old dog.

• Stalker with a Crush: She follows the protagonist around, picks his lock enough to start setting records about it, and watches him sleeping for hours on end. However, she does have a non-romance based reason, even if she can't remember it.
• Super Mode: By activating Orgia Mode, Aigis increases her attack power greatly. Deconstructed, as she has to cool down after using it and is vulnerable during this period.
• Super Strength: Being a robot, she can lift objects weighing several tonnes.
• Taking the Bullet: Her main role in Q is to guard the party, and she learns a few passives that can reduce the damage she takes on top of her good Vitality stat. This role is retained in Q2 but downplayed in favor of giving her Nuclear skills, and also to prevent her from overshadowing Ryuji and Kanji who can serve a similar function.
• Taking Up the Mantle: In The Answer, she gains recently deceased Protagonist's Wild Card ability, Orpheus and the role as Player Character.
• What Is This Thing You Call Love?: She struggles with this during her S. Link, but only a little.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Discussed, with it being a major part of her Social Link. She gains human emotions after being repaired by the Kirijo Group, and so frequently talks about things that are new to her or that she never gave any thought to before, such whether or not she likes something or the importance of a shrine. She states that she now understands that living beings are guided by feelings rather than facts, and that was what guided Koromaru to stay at his master's shrine long after his death. She also grows to view her room as unwelcoming, and can't believe she used to think it was normal. After being bitten by a dog, which ends up hurting it instead, Aigis is reminded of an important truth; while her heart may become more human, her body will forever remain mechanical. In a cruel twist of irony, the more human Aigis becomes, the more she realises she will never truly be one, resulting in her having an identity crisis. Eventually, however, she realises what had pained her; as a machine, she cannot die and so she will inevitably outlive the protagonist, whom she has fallen in love with, but if that is the case, she can stay by his side until then.