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Character Name; Yukari Takeba
Canon; Persona 3
Canon Point; March 23, 2010 (after "The Journey", before "The Answer")
Age; 17 (birthday: 10/19/1992)

House; Freya
Power; Charm

Personality; Yukari is usually a popular, pretty, and cheerful high school girl who likes the color pink, worries about what she eats, gets pretty good grades, and spends a few too many afternoons shopping. But she's also sometimes a hot-tempered, suspicious, and occasionally spiteful girl who goes out to a dark tower and shoots monsters with a bow, barely trusts anyone, resents her mother for seemingly moving on after her father's death, and wants desperately to find out why her father died; and she frequently switches between these two moods. This dichotomy stems largely from two conflicts: balancing her desire for independence with her desire to be able to rely on someone, and balancing her inner desire to resolve the past with her outer desire to be a normal girl in the present.

Independence, in Yukari's view, is associated with her concept of personal strength, and defined in contrast to what she feels is her mother's lack of responsibility. Her mother has 'moved on', as I put it before, by, according to Yukari's description, "running away from life, jumping from guy to guy" (Social Link Level 4). Yukari resents this more than anything else. She evidently feels that her pain is greater than her mother's, the proof being that her mother has moved on with other men, even though "she wasn't always like that," Yukari says (SL L3). And in the female protagonist's social link, where the two are closer from the beginning, she offhandedly mentions that "my mom really liked flowers, so she always bought a lot of them. She'd decorate with the ones I'd pick, too.That's probably why I like them so much..." (P3P SL L2). It's not that she always favored her father over her mother. They seem to have had a happy life until his untimely death. And, importantly, Yukari doesn't blame her mother for not loving her husband--only for "running away to forget [her] problems." (SL L4) It would only be running away from the problem of her husband's death if it was a problem for her--if she did love Yukari's father and simply didn't have the ability to deal with his death alone, let alone to help her daughter get through it. Because of that, Yukari felt she had to get through it alone--and furthermore, that she did, succeeding both academically and socially (as it's clear that she is doing at Gekkoukan), which led to an even lower opinion of her mother's strength.

However, there are two sides to that issue, and we only see one of them. We never see her mother on screen, and, on the few times we get an impression of her, she seems contrite, asking Yukari's permission to remarry, even though Yukari's tone is hostile from the start. This makes it hard to tell what really took place. Is Yukari's description accurate? Did her mother let her down by being weak, drowning her fear of being alone with other men, and neglect her daughter? Or did Yukari as a child simply take her mother's behavior as a personal betrayal without understanding that there might be reasons behind it--without understanding that, for example, people grieve in different ways, for different lengths; or that the pressures on a single mother (including practical needs) are different from those on her daughter? What happened to her as a child would undoubtedly be indelible, and whatever small pains she and her mother might have inflicted on each other, even unintentionally, would be magnified into longstanding scars. We can't know which it is, and in fact, most probably, it's a mixture of both: hence why her mother feels the need to "apologiz[e] for everything that's happened,"and yet why Yukari also recognizes belatedly that by avoiding and resenting her mother, she, too, has been avoiding a problem: "It's probably about time I talked to her... Nothing well change if I just run away..." (SL L8). After that, she expresses that analysis herself, in fact: "Deep down inside, I think she still misses Dad. She couldn't handle it... Losing someone so important to her... That's why she needed someone to lean on..." (SL L8). Those are words which might as well apply to Yukari herself. By the end of The Journey, Yukari has started to truly empathize with her mother, recognizing that her own reactions may bear some blame for the rift with her mother. It's not all done, of course. She muses to Minato in her epilogue: "What if we end up hurting each other even more? I don't wanna hurt her feelings... I still haven't sorted all this out inside." But she's become stronger just by considering her mother's position, as well as by trusting herself to rely on Minato.

Of course, getting to that point--where she could rely on someone, namely Minato--was a laborious effort. Caught between the desire to have someone else to trust and the desire not to need anyone else, she sometimes became moody and arbitrary. She described this to the female protagonist as "a part of me that's really unsentimental" and that "didn't want anybody to get involved with me", even while another part of her had the desire to have "someone understand what I was going through" and "take special care of me for once." (P3P SL L6) When she was confronted with muggers who took her wallet, she tried to get out of the situation herself rather than ask Minato (a close friend even at the time) for help, despite being overmatched. In fact, the problem was exacerbated when it was Minato: she particularly didn't want to be seen relying on a boy friend (or a boyfriend), since her problem with her mother was specifically that she relied on other men to get her through her problems. Her relationship with Minato developed only as she could control both of these sides of her: the one which didn't want to need him at all, and the one which almost immediately sought him out as someone who'd also had a parent die (both, in fact). She came to rely on him as she didn't or couldn't rely on anyone else: "I'll feel more confident just by having you around," she says in her epilogue. It seems like that had put her on a path to resolve the first major conflict she faced.

The second conflict I mentioned, between her inner concern with the past and outer concern with the present, arises because of the real reason she's in SEES--namely, finding out what happened to her father in the Kirijo Group 'accident.' After ten years, she had gotten no closer to understanding, and was on the verge of giving up, thinking she should move on, as shown in her cutscene in The Answer: "It's already been 10 years... I wonder if I should just give up." But then a letter from her father (a time capsule) came--renewing her uncomfortable position between wanting to resolve her past and move on to the future. It's because of her attachment to the past that she is different from most of the girls around Gekkoukan. Junpei says "she's actually pretty popular," and she is fairly girly (in ways I mentioned before) but much of that is 'the facade used to overcome life's hardships', as they say. Yukari isn't genuinely close with anyone before the start of the game, distrusting Mitsuru because of her link with the Kirijo Group, being genuinely annoyed by Junpei (rather than the more playful dynamic that develops over time), and showing no evidence of any particular girl friends she's close with--despite her seeming popularity. At the same time, she clearly keeps up with the outside culture: she knows what's fashionable or cute, and she knows how to be flirty--as when she mentions in seeming distress that she "has to" dress up in a maid costume, even though she eventually is disappointed when it doesn't happen, or when she tells Minato very early on: "Actually, any flowers would be fine if they were from you, Minato-kun.... Psych!" (SL L2)

Her attachment to the past is part of the stubbornness and impulsiveness that characterizes her elsewhere, too. If she were less stubborn, she might have given up and moved on; if she were less impulsive, she might have reflected more on whether she wanted to go down that road in the first place. These traits mean that Yukari is not the kind of girl who easily hides what she feels. She has a good heart, and often cares more about what others feel than other member of SEES do. For example, she tries to minimize the pressure put on Minato, Fuuka, and Ken to join SEES in the first place ("Wait, you can't ask him like that! Who could say no...?" for Minato; "You know, we're not trying to pressure you, so if you need some time to think about it..." for Fuuka; and "Hey, I hope Ken-kun won't be involved in this" for Ken), concerns which no one else brings up, and which there's no real reason to think are in bad faith, since she clearly does want Minato around. She also mentions how much she dislikes bullies, and she does her best to stand up to them (e.g., when her wallet is stolen, when they encounter the 'punks' behind Port Island Station--even though that also demonstrates her stubbornness in making Minato and Junpei go to a known danger zone). At the same time, she also isn't the best at concealing her fear: she has trouble early on with the ritual 'suicide' of the Evokers, stammers when they first go on missions, and puts on a very bad impression of not being scared of ghosts.

This second conflict, of choosing between the past and the present (or future), is highlighted most clearly in The Answer -- a situation that also bears upon the first major conflict. Because she had come to rely on Minato, she was totally devastated at his death. The Answer, although after this canon point, shows clearly that Yukari withdrew again into a state where she shunned the other members of SEES, to whom she had been growing closer; she kept herself busy and distracted by going to cram school classes, telling herself that she needed to move forward: "If we don't keep our eyes forward, it was all a waste of time," she says. In other words, she has been forced to abandon her past love for Minato, because there's nothing else to be done. He died inexplicably in front of their eyes; there was no accident, only hunches, and no way to investigate. Still, it's clear that she can't convince her heart of hearts to really move forward. In the end, she is the only one who really wants to go back in time to try to redo the fight that led to Minato's death. However, she kept repeating the mantra "move forward" to herself, for three reasons: because she believes there really is nothing else to do; because she doesn't want to admit to how much she relied on him; and, of course, just because it hurts her so much. When she thinks there is a chance of saving him, she throws it all to the wind: she's literally willing to chance the world's destruction again if it means she might be able to save him: "I don't care about anything else! I just wanna see him again!" she says. She's in a bad state: jealous of Aigis, who was with him when he died and who inherited his power, angry at her friends who don't seem to care as much (like her mother did), and frustrated with herself. So, yeah, it's a fun canon point.

Yukari's Permissions

Threadjacking: Always!
Backtagging: Always! Let me know if I dropped something, I probably just missed it.
Hugging/kissing: Be prepared to get punched if you try it, but go ahead.
Punching/fighting: If the situation calls for it, go for it! Yukari isn't a complete pushover, but she is just a fairly athletic teenage girl.
Using your powers on her/injuring her: Let me know if it's anything serious; if it's not major or noticeable by her, go for it.