Sho Minazuki

Sho Minazuki is a character appearing in Persona 4: Ultimax, and the main antagonist. He claims to be the culprit behind the Red Mist incident in Inaba. While Sho himself can't use a Persona, and is jealous of Persona users, he has a second personality that can use the Persona Tsukiyomi.

LOTM: Mageddon Trilogy[]

LOTM: Tales from the Ultra Despair Knight[]

LOTM: Darkmageddon[]

Backstory[]

Sho Minazuki is an orphan who was once one of Shuji Ikutsuki's test subjects, much like the future members of Strega. Due to his unusually aggressive tendencies and tremendous fighting potential, Ikutsuki regarded Sho as his favorite test subject. As part of the experiment, named "Project Puppetmaster," Ikutsuki isolated Sho from the world to prevent him from forming ordinary bonds and ensure that he would become the ideal soldier, relying on combat alone to connect to others. Sho came to bond with Ikutsuki and view him as a father figure even so, a role which Ikutsuki accepted as a means to manipulate Sho.

In an attempt to induce a Persona in Sho using a Plume of Dusk, a second soul was born within Sho, referred to as "Minazuki." Ikutsuki took an interest in Minazuki, who developed a Persona independently of Sho, but found him to be a highly uncooperative subject. After Minazuki attempted to kill Ikutsuki for his abuse and manipulation of Sho, a second experiment was attempted to "erase" Minazuki while leaving his Persona behind. It ended in failure, however, and left Sho into a vegetative state. Ikutsuki placed him in an Inaba hospital on life support afterwards to allow time for him to discover a means to revive Sho for further experimentation. Sho awakened several years after Ikutsuki's death, and interpreted Ikutsuki's actions as him simply having thrown him away when he was no longer useful.

After leaving the hospital and settling in Inaba before the serial murders began, Sho developed an interest in the case and followed the investigation team around in secret, feeling that perhaps they might be able to understand him. He eventually judged this an impossibility, however, and fell into bitterness and despair. He shrugs off the notion that any person can be truly trusted or relied upon, concluding that those who do are both weaklings and fools. Sho comes to yearn for a world in which only he exists. Hinokagutsuchi manifests and responds to this wish, stating that in return for Sho and Minazuki's assistance in giving him a body, he will make Sho's world of solitude a reality.

Appearance[]

Sho is a young man with bright red hair, blue eyes and has a cross-shaped scar across his face. He wears a Yasogami High school uniform and an olive green button-down shirt with black collar and cuffs and a yellow band on one sleeve emblazoned with a black star inside a circle. He wears the uniform jacket around his waist. His sneakers are yellow and black. His "TV world glasses" are a pair of shades. He wields a pair of katanas that have finger rings on each hilt, and the blade of each katana has a serrated edge in a section just before the hilt.

When harnessing the Malevolent Entity's power, Sho's eyes and scar glow red. In the True Ending, however, his eyes and scar glow blue.

In the manga adaption, Sho is revealed to have many scars scattered over his entire body. He also wears a necklace with a crescent moon key. As a child test subject, he is shown barefoot, wearing only a white hospital gown and shorts. In the epilogue during his travels around the country, he wears a sports singlet with a jacket tied on his waist, a three quarter pants, shoes and a small pouch bag on his back.

Personality[]

Due to careful grooming as a child test subject in Persona-related experiments, Sho is a young man with a vicious streak and a lust for fighting. He is puerile, caustic, extremely volatile, and easily bored. Through Shuji Ikutsuki's influence, Sho developed a habit of making puns. Raised in near-isolation, Sho was never properly socialized, and thus finds it difficult to relate to others in a typical fashion; combat is ingrained in him as his primary means of social connection, but this is not a tendency that serves him well among ordinary people.

Sho is highly misanthropic and wishes for a world in which only he lives. Ever since Ikutsuki "threw" Sho away as a failed experiment, Sho developed a deep mistrust of others' intentions, eventually doubting the authenticity of any and all human bonds, viewing them as a crutch others cling to when they're too weak to stand alone.

Minazuki is a second soul that inhabits Sho's body, born of a Plume of Dusk embedded in Sho's brain. He is composed, methodical, callous and manipulative, while also being protective of, and entirely devoted to, Sho. Both individuals are aware of one other, with Minazuki able to communicate with Sho as a voice inside his head. Minazuki is also able to possess Sho's body, generally reserved for times when Sho is in some sort of peril or unstable state of mind. Sho has no memory of anything that happens while Minazuki is in control.