Latest Famitsu Reveals Persona 4 Character #7

If Persona 4's Japanese box art is any indication of the playable characters (and so far, it is), then we can safely say that there are at least 8 Persona Users that make up your team. I covered the first six last week.

This week's Famitsu has brought us info on the 7th character: Rise Kujikawa. Rise (pronounced something closer to "lee-say") was one of the most popular idols in Japan until recently quitting for unknown reasons and moving back to her hometown of Inaba to attend Yasogami High School as a first-year student (grade 10). Note that this makes the main character, Chie, Yukiko, and Yousuke all one year her senior.

(As a side note that I failed to mention last time, the main character, Chie, Yukiko, and Yousuke are all second year students, while Kanji is a first year.)

Though you may not consider one year as significant, Japanese society is still very hierarical, and juniors are expected to look up to and respect their seniors, while seniors are expected to look out for and guide their juniors (even if it doesn't always happen that way). Having such prominant roles (i.e. ex-top idol and infamous juvenile delinquent) in a junior relationship is sure to cause some interesting dynamics in the team.

Anyways, back to the article. It seems that Rise will not be at Yasogami initially, but will eventually transfer in during the course of the year.

Though Rise will awaken to the power of her special Persona, Himiko, she will not be directly participating in battle. Like P3's Fuuka Yamagishi, Rise will take the support position, relaying information about the enemy, the conditions of the battle, and warnings and explanations about negative status effects. The article stresses that all of her support will be fully-voiced, allowing players to "listen to Rise's beautiful voice" while fending off the Shadows. (As a personal note, I'm not too sure how this differs from P3, where Fuuka made all of her reports - at least in the English version - fully voiced as well.)

Persona 4 will be available for purchase in Japan on July 10, 2008.