The unwieldy order of canon "priority" I personally like to use: Golden > the P4 side of Ultimax > Aigis' Arena story mode > Yosuke's Arena story mode > the P4 side of Q > DAN > The Magician > everything else.
Maxed social links with everyone, most importantly all the characters Yosuke would have been or become aware of (himself, schoolmates, the Dojimas, Marie, Adachi, Shu and the fox).
Magician hit max at some point around July.
Marie was rescued, so everybody remembers her.
Yu's birthday is sometime around August, making Yosuke the oldest on the team.
It was Yu who sat on the girls' side during the culture festival group date.
Yu went skiing with the guys in February, and spent time with them on Valentine's Day after blowing off many, many dates.
Yu got really into fusing and used most of his compendium in battle at least once.
Yu tried to get everyone to fight with at least one of the less obscure patently ridiculous weapons at some point, and with Kanji's school desk succeeded.
General headcanon
Something ambient in the TV world besides the fog induces the same sort of fight or flight response that an Evoker is designed to, except it's constant and everywhere. This gives a handwavey explanation for why the kidnapping victims seem to have a worse time than most of the people around town in December, but more importantly would imply that there's nothing inherently stopping any of the P4 kids from summoning Personas in the real world apart from a lack of training.
Lack of training is the reason the P4 teams' evolved Personas appear to be temporary. (They don't appear in the sequels, and they don't start out evolved in Q even though one or two characters make reference to events that happened in their maxed social links.) Once the potential is unlocked, the evolved forms can be summoned at any time, but it requires particular and usually unnecessary focus.
The reason Yosuke "can't eat" tofu is because he's picky about its texture and appearance, not allergies or another health reason. His professed distaste for fish is along similar lines; if it's cooked through and the eyes / skin / fins aren't obvious, he doesn't whine as much. (Alternatively, when someone else is paying.)
Swords in a food court aside, he has a clean criminal record. He was always pretty well-behaved even before coming under all the scrutiny he did in Inaba; his parents' complaints that he doesn't get the grades he could get and occasionally leaves his "reading material" out in the open are basically the biggest complaints they have, at least when he's not punching people on riverbanks.
He was a quieter, nerdier kid before friends and environment around the start of middle school nudged him into being more gregarious. That span of time is also when he stopped watching toku religiously and started doing things with his hair (which is naturally a darker brown).
Power rundown in absence of power nerfs/alterations
The P4 canon cash cow consists of one JRPG-slash-relationship-sim and its remake, one fighting-game-plus-visual-novel and its sequel, a JRPG-slash-dungeon-crawler in which the JRPG parts work a little differently to the original, and a straight-up rhythm game which nobody believes is real long after its international release dates. To make all of that fit into one skillset, you either handwave to hell and back, or you get to overthinking. I'm a fan of both, so the below is just meant as a canon-unfamiliar starting point.
Mechanics
Yosuke fights chiefly by summoning his Persona, same as the other playable characters in this canon. By outward appearances, it's a personalised demon-looking creature that can materialise and dematerialise nearby as he wills. Its entrances are sudden, accompanied by blue light, a loud noise similar to breaking glass, and sometimes the appearance of a glittering tarot card immediately beforehand. Its disappearances can be equally sudden, or it might fade more gradually into empty air - it's up to the user. Generally, it's kept around just long enough to achieve what it was summoned for - cast one spell, block one blow, hit something at a given moment - then dismissed again. Longer, shounen-style sequences are possible (and favoured more in the non-videogame spinoffs), but more mentally taxing.
Persona summoning doesn't have a verbal invocation as such, but it does require a specific kind of mental focus, so when it's left to instinct there's normally some kind of screaming going on. The most common is the word "Persona!" itself, though there are plenty of other possibilities: the Persona's name, a skill name, a simple command ("Go!", "Let's do this!", "Give me power!"...), something generically action-ish ("Throwdown!", "Dodge this!"...), or just a wordless yell. Reflexive, semi-involuntary Persona summoning without the shouting can also happen, but pretty much only when the user believes their life is in danger; summoning by pure accident mostly doesn't happen. In contrast, accidentally failing to summon is perfectly plausible if the user is too tired, under emotional stress, distracted, or something like that.
The link between Persona and Persona-user goes further than just issuing commands: technically, they're one and the same being. Injuring the Persona will hurt the person using it, and its weaknesses will adversely affect the user even while it's out of sight. Yosuke specifically is weak to electricity-based attacks, which hurt him more than other Persona-users and have a high chance of disrupting what he was about to do. On the flip side, a Persona's increased strength and endurance transfer over to the user as well - a Persona-wielding regular human without formal training can damage creatures impervious to conventional weapons with little difficulty, and (fortunately for the P4 cast) stand up to purpose-built combat robots with only slightly more.
Most Persona-users can only summon one fixed Persona except under particularly weird circumstances. Its appearance reflects the user's psyche, though most of them also borrow a name and some details from mythology and other bits of culture that the user has absorbed. (For example, Yosuke's Persona is Jiraiya, a ten-foot-tall humanoid figure that takes design elements from ninjas and toku heroes among other things.) At moments of great personal development, it can metamorphose into something more powerful, but it will revert to its base form in weeks, days or even right away if there's no pressing need for its strength.
Stats
It's hard to pin down exactly how physically capable these characters are once you account for their Personas, but it's slightly clearer that if they're unable to summon, they revert to being their ordinary teenager selves. Without his Persona, Yosuke is explicitly noted to be kind of weedy even by anime dude standards, and while he might have the build to be decent at basketball or something with practice, he's never been hugely interested. Most of the exercise he normally gets is from biking around town or heavy lifting at work.
With his Persona, he's... still not the heaviest hitter. His stamina is slightly lower than the main character, and his mental fortitude is worse than the more dedicated caster characters. His signature traits are speed, accuracy and evasion - not so obvious in the original game, where all his stats are quite close to each other except for horrendous luck, but exaggerated in every sequel and midquel since. He might carry lighter weapons than other characters, favouring kunai and daggers, but it matters less when he can throw them around with impunity, flip through the air with little effort and rush opponents down before they see it coming. Of course, his Persona can hit things too.
Offensive magic
No matter what form it's in, Yosuke's Persona specialises in wind magic. He can use it to augment his regular attacks as well as casting from a distance, and he's pretty used to both by now.
Don't mind the silly spell names in this series - they arrive in his head basically on instinct whenever he casts them. Characters from other Megami Tensei spinoffs or mainline games may well recognise some of them if he calls them out, though not all of them.
Garu, Garula, Garudyne: Your standard JRPG single-target wind spells, from weakest to strongest - Garu causes a single strong gust, while Garudyne is more like a brief localised tornado.
Magaru, Magarula, Magarudyne: The same but much wider in radius, capable of hitting all enemies in one shot. Correspondingly, the multi-target spells cause more mental fatigue than their single-target equivalents.
Tentarafoo: A thick, green-glittering cloud of smoke that can engulf multiple enemies, possibly causing disorientation or panic. Non-damaging, but he frequently uses it to set up other attacks.
Support magic
This is usually what Yosuke ends up doing when not fighting solo or dogpiling on an enemy's weakness. He's actually decent at it - he gets a variety of skills, and buffs in general tend to be damn important in Megami Tensei games - but it's not as flashy as straight-up combat.
In-game, all temporary buffs last for exactly three rounds of combat - enough time for several flurries of attacks with proper coordination, even with the enemy acting in between.
Dekaja: A brief light show that dispels all enemies' stat buffs.
Dia, Diarama: Standard JRPG single-target healing spells. Diarama, the stronger of the two, is only a mid-tier spell; Yosuke is at best a backup healer. These can alleviate physical fatigue and patch up minor surface wounds, but they can't keep a person going forever and they are explicitly unhelpful for serious injuries like gunshots (hello, P3 players).
Sukukaja, Masukukaja: Temporary agility buffs in the form of a flickering green glow. Sukukaja affects one person at a time, generally Yosuke himself unless someone else is in charge of tactics, while Masukukaja is more taxing but can affect an entire group. Yosuke in particular has just enough experience to really exploit the boost and sprint to places he otherwise couldn't in the blink of an eye, but pretty much anyone can take advantage of the enhanced speed and reaction time.
Trafuri: A technique to ensure escape from a fight, something like an inoffensive smoke bomb.
Wind Break: An unfortunately named skill, it temporarily nullifies the resistance of something that takes decreased damage from wind magic. It's... a little difficult to translate into anything less JRPG.
Extra skills
These are assorted skills Yosuke picks up outside of the original game. Most of them don't have much presence in spinoffs and other adaptations, and I tend to assume he doesn't have access to them unless his evolved Personas are in play. But hey, completionism!
Youthful Wind: A mass agility buff that simultaneously refreshes and heals surface wounds. The signature move of Takehaya Susano-o, Yosuke's fully-evolved Persona. It also apparently compels him while summoning to scream even more embarrassing things than usual.
Jinpugeki, Reppu Strike, Kamikaze Strike: His Persona strikes at a single enemy with blades of air rather than gusts. Not as damaging as the standard spells without some equipment tweaking, but often more useful since it's less taxing on the mind and may hit a weak point where spells couldn't.
Makajam: A spell that attempts to seal an enemy's magic, distorting the air as it does. It's not too accurate.
Megido: Yeah, I don't know why the remake gave him this either. A small explosion of white light that can damage groups of enemies, it isn't as damaging as other spells and takes a lot of mental energy to cast, but it pierces all elemental resistances.
Green Wall: Confers temporarily improved resistance to wind magic on a group of people.
Makara Break: If an enemy has set up a barrier to reflect magic, this dispels it with little fanfare. Depending on your interpretation of magic barrier, this could be a little overpowered or even more hopelessly JRPG than the rest.
Diarahan: The top-tier healing spell that he didn't originally get, patching up all shallow wounds and fully refreshing stamina. It's still only single-target, though.
Junes Bomber: A dumb little tag team spell that requires combining powers with a specific other character's Persona. Drops a giant bomb onto the battlefield that pierces elemental resistance.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
