Persona 3 FTW

The silent protagonist of Persona 3 FTW in action

Persona 3 FTW is a webcomic based on the game Persona 3 written and drawn by J.C. Scott aka Strain42. Every day, one or more (often 5 for boss fights, even 20 for the games final boss events.) comics are posted involving the events of the day in the game. For instance, the captioned comic was posted on June 8th and shows the aftermath of a boss fight on that day in the game.

The comic has been completed (three times), covering the events of The Journey, The Answer, and Persona 3 F, which focuses on the Female Protagonist; on April 6, 2011, the comic was declared be completely finished. The comic enjoys high popularity on Drunk Duck, consistently ranking in the top ten comics during periods of high comic output; on January 6th, 2010, the comic first attained the number 1 ranking on Drunk Duck. According to Strain42, more than 4.5 million views have been recorded from the first page to the last.

The author is also working on both a sequel involving Persona 4 (Persona 4 TW), Persona (Persona Won) and Raidou Kuzunoha the 19th. On Superbowl Sunday 2010, the author posted the first comic for one day only (the day holding special significance to him as a gamer) and on April 11th 2010, as a special promotion for a one year wait the author posted the first 5 comics of Persona 4 TW for the day.

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Persona 3 FTW provides examples of:

• Adaptation Distillation: All the social link and plot stuff is there, it's just funnier.
• Affectionate Parody
• Alternate Character Interpretation: The comic interprets many characters differtly than the game; notably, the MC is a Cloudcuckoolander to the extreme, while the FeMC is a Cloudcuckoolander but quite violent.
• Anticlimax Boss: The Strega battle during the Hanged Man Shadow boss fight just had the group push Takaya and Jin off the bridge.
  • The solo-Jin battle consisted of the MC critical hitting Jin, then wiping him out with an all out attack. Word of God confirms this is what happened when he loaded the battle from a save file.
• Art Evolution: Compare the first comics with the recent ones.
  • In fact, compare the comic above to this one with the FeMC. The evolution's subtle, but it's there.
• As You Know: Played with Ikutsuki.
• Audio Erotica: Takaya. The author's quite enraptured by Derek Stephen Prince's voice.
• Ax Crazy: The MC in this strip. Or whenever he's around Bebe.
• Blatant Lies: Yukari denying the fact she may or may not have bought a sex toy online.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The normal portrayal of the FeMC is as a cute, Cloudcuckoolander, but violent girl. Including tearing off the pigtails of a girl who harassed her friend.
• Big Ball of Violence
• Big Eater: The best way to the MC's heart is through his stomach.
• Butt Monkey: Ken during The Answer. He seems to escape this in the main plot because he's Out of Focus. FeMC, however...
• Cat Smile
• Catch Phrase: For Akihiko: Ya dumb broad.
  • "Like, I know, right?!" from your basic random schoolgirls to Ryoji.
• Character Exaggeration: For everyone.
• Cloudcuckoolander: The Main Character (both male and female), without saying a single word, though the female occasionally acts as the Only Sane Woman.
• Creepy Child: ( Pharos.)
  • But he gave MC a ( Chocolate platypus!)
• Cute Bruiser: The FeMC. Isn't she just adorable when she hurts people who tick her off?
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: 'Back at the Legion of Doom'
• Even the Guys Want Him: It's all in the voice, for Takaya
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Throughout the course of the comic, the story contains a lot of MC/Aigis and just recently, FeMC/Shinjiro (to the point of giving Shinjiro a Two-week long Social Link Arc).
• Fastball Special: The FeMC does this with Koromaru against a would-be shrine vandal.
• Filler: Not a Filler Strip, but rather on time comics that are filling in for days that the game pretty much just skips over. This can mainly be seen on the internship arc.
• Funny Background Event: The MC's table catching fire, which is also a Shout-Out to Zero Punctuation.
• Guns Are Worthless: In the final battle against Takaya, Akihiko wonders if Shinjiro's bones were made of cookies.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: Akihiko's Love Epiphany in FeMC's Star Rank 9 ends up being the victim of this.
• Hidden Object Game: The boss battles.
• Hypocritical Humor: In FeMC Justice 4, Scott states only Akihiko should say "Ya dumb broad", despite Jin saying it back when he was defeated by the male MC and co.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The majority of The Journey and The Answer have very reference/in joke filled page titles.
• Infinite Bread: TAKE THE BREAD!!!
• Innocent Innuendo: 'It's too big. I'm pulling out.'
• Likes Older Women: Kenji, even more than in the game. "If she were like 30 years older..."
• Lovable Sex Maniac/Stalker with a Crush: Aigis
• Love At First Sight: The Female MC, for Shinjiro.
• Jumping the Shark: Summer Uniforms, apparently.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Kaz's leg being twisted unnaturally? LET'S GET SOME TACOS
• Meganekko: Chihiro.
• Mister Seahorse: This is pretty much how Fuuka and Akihiko rationalize both the existence of Ryoji/Pharos and the MC's weird cravings.
• Noodle Incident: Just how and why did Fuuka set manga on fire?
• Otaku: Bebe
• Pass the Popcorn
• Running Gag: Every social link has, at some point, a frame involving the main character and the person with whom he is having the social link skipping off into the distance. For some social links this is ill-advised for the person in question (Chariot) and others it really just doesn't work out at all (Tower, Death, Sun, FeMC's Star, FeMC's Moon).
  • Aigis' tendency to dry-hump and/or make out with the MC whenever possible.
  • Almost ALL of the damage received by the characters in the entire series can be summed up in only one word: "Ow."
  • The author repeatingly inserting himself as a cameo'd toy version of himself, or off-handedly mentioning him or his own comic.
• Sanity Slippage: Tanaka (whose rival is a coconut) gets more and more insane as the Devil Social Link progresses.
• Screw Yourself: Well technically they didn't GET that far, but the MC and FeMC making out caused an Earthshattering Kaboom.
• Shout-Out: Alternate title to this comic? Pup Fiction
  • And all the Maya comics are a Shout-Out to Zero Punctuation in art style.
  • The final devil rank has a Monty Python joke.
  • Shut up Ken. Though unlike the series, he gets to finish his "No you shut up!" Probably because it was Yukari. Also in his Flash Back:

Police Officer: You kids and your anime and your video games and your anime based off of video games.

• Step Three: Profit: This ill-conceived plan.
• Trigger Happy: Chihiro oh so much.
• Wall of Text: Used for a laugh with Maya
• The Voiceless: The MCs have absolutely no dialogue apart from invoking their Persona for the first time.
• With Friends Like These...: The MC is not the greatest friend ever.
• Your Head Asplode: Apparently, listening to the Chairman's puns for the first time causes this.
• Your Mom: Aigis's response to Akihiko asking why she couldn't open the door in the Chariot/Justice boss fight.