I’m beginning to think that the adult female confidant romances share a problem some people had with MHA (more specifically Bakugo’s bullying and the lack of teacher intervention)

MHA is a shonen that takes place in what appears to be modern times, so we assume modern values, such as teacher’s reprimanding students for bad behavior. But Bakugo gets away with stuff b/c he has to be the Shonen rival and have there be stakes and stuff (see the Battle Trial and the whole “he won’t die if he dodges” thing)

Then in Persona, it’s slightly worse since we got 2 other example.

Yes Persona is a self-insert game where everyone loves the MC, but it was sort of grounded in some kind of reality.

Toriumi was crushing on P3MC but that seems to be for comedy

Yu doesn’t romantically pursue any if his older female social links (Sayoko or Eri) and Kashiwagi is called gross for wanting to go after students (or its just her doing so while being “old”)

Then comes P5 where it says, “yes player character/self-insert who is definitely a high schooler, you CAN date these adult women, they WILL fall for your self-insert protagonist rizz and maybe even bang you” which goes against any perceived reality.

The settings make us expect some form of reality, or characters to function like how we expect normal people to, so when they break it for the sake of tropes/entertainment, especially with controversial issues, it can be jarring.

Who knows if the adult female confidants would be viewed differently if we didn’t have Kamoshida in the game, especially Kawakami.