Stepping in Between Worlds || Understanding the Velvet Room

throughout all the persona games aspects of its shared universe have shifted around and just about every numbered release be it the existence of demons in the everyday world or how our leads summon their personas or even just the protagonists Arcana as well I mean right up to a persona 3 and 5 that is though even after years of universe modification and resets there exists one constant throughout all of the universes and this place has always remained the same throughout all of persona albeit under many different designs and with changing gameplay effects but it's always been a safe haven for persona users and a place where growth and evolution are made physical and of course it's always been headed by it's an ever-changing host in his assortment of entertainers that place is the velvet room [Music] No welcome to The Velvet room my dear young man so before we can get started there's one thing that you should know that's very major it is the Velvet Room a singular room there aren't multiple velvet rooms even though there are many designs of it that is because the room itself changes to match the guest who enters it in fact the same could be said about the attendants inside the Velvet Room to a certain degree though before we can get into that we should actually discuss the origin of the room itself both creatively and in universe so first off the question asked is where does the name velvet room come from well the velvet part of it comes from the material and the color you see the material velvet actually had an unusually Pleasant softness to it especially when compared to other fabrics at the time of its creation and due to this and it's higher production requirements it was usually only worn by kings and rulers so the idea of a room itself being made of this material implies that it's a rather important room or in some way otherworldly while also assuring the player that they will always be safe while inside the boundaries of this room usually [Music] now the color choice for the velvet room is actually a very interesting decision on the part of the creators this is because the velvet blue of the velvet room is a direct inverse of the color palette of the place in which the velvet room takes most of its inspiration from this being the black lodge from Twin Peaks now the lodge itself is actually a very strange room in the universe of Twin Peaks with a lot of strange occurrences and hosts but most interestingly enough the speech within the Black Lodge is twisted and deformed and this is reflected in the world between consciousness and unconsciousness where only a select few people can actually speak let alone remember their own name but alongside this direct reference to the Black Lodge the color choice actually exists as a callback to mainline smt in its Cathedral of shadows which are both blue themed and run by a weird old man who fuses demons based on the phases of the Moon now the literary origins of the name could be in reference to Edgar Allen Poe's story the mask of the Red Death in said story there are seven different rooms which represents seven different stages of life the first being birth with the Blue Room and then you have youth as purple adolescences green adult orange old age as white imminent death as violet and then death itself and the violet room being the room in which the velvet room takes its name from as the violet room was covered in velvet decor to symbolize being at peace with oncoming death also the loud clock that can be heard throughout the story of mask of the Red Death is later represented in persona 3 velvet room and given the overarching theme of death I think that's pretty understandable now the room itself in universe was created by Philemon a being who embodies the collective consciousness and is basically God in the persona universe well the one that favors freewill and humanity's choices but he created the room because of a bet with another God named me Holly Thornton who I will for convenience sake only refer to as net net from now on the bed itself was to see if humanity could overcome its destructive nature and ascend to greatness on its own and as part of this bet both fell and nap-nap agreed that neither of them could directly interfere with this process and then they both directly interfered with the process but to try to stay true to this bet Philly boy here created the velvet room and filled it with his followers in order to indirectly aid humans in their journey he also gave the room the ability to be shapen by someone's will or specifically the will of the collective unconscious and had it stored away in an area between consciousness and unconsciousness that way only those with a strong enough will to be able to shape the room would unlock the ability to perceive it also the people who could perceive it had a higher likely chance of actually helping Philemon win his bet so with that all understood and out of the way we can finally talk about the original room which appeared in Megami Eve on Roku persona which design-wise is actually quite normal compared to the ones to come later but it was the one that was meant to represent its inspiration the most it is a room surrounded by large velvet curtains and has a nice rugged floor an inside house the three permanent residents egor nameless and belladonna the latter of the two are the ones who perform the main theme of The Velvet Room and appear in every single game but only appear physically in the first suit and the purpose of the room gameplay wise was really only to help fuse and create more powerful personas or demons to aid you in your journey so all in all it's probably the most basic version of the room now the room appearing as normal as it does in persona 1 is realistically explained by the fact that they just didn't establish a theme of the room changing to match someone's will at that point because you know it was the first game at all though it could be later explained that the room we see in persona 1 is the default form of the room as it wasn't changed by the visitors at the time because they didn't have a single collective idea like other groups of protagonists do so it's not out of the question I think that the room just didn't change to match any strong desires and this is what the default version of the room looks like and there's something later on the series that kind of helps back up this theory now this theme of a constantly changing velvet room doesn't actually pick up until after persona 2 but we do see hints of it in persona twos velvet room with the room changing to match the themes of the game that being all of the residents now work on elevated platforms and these platforms resemble that of a stage in a lounge bar and given the themes of rumors and superstition a lounge bar makes perfect sense for this games velvet room as it is a place where those themes thrive at there's another major theme that this velvet room actually sticks to but will that more when we start speaking about the attendance of the velvet room but speaking of such besides Igor getting a new sick ass couch there's also a new person appearing within the velvet room the first two velvet room attendant the demon painter or the demon artist in eternal punishment though like I said we'll talk more about him in a little bit the purpose of the velvet room gameplay-wise and persona 2 is actually a lot like the original but with a different twist on it you see it's used to help the team create new personas via cards that they earn in battle or a mutate personas that they have leveled past their efficiency though the velvet room in persona 2 like I said is only slightly different than the one in persona 1 and it isn't until persona 3 that we get a serious change in the rooms design welcome to The Velvet room my dear young man so the room in persona 3 is an elevator constantly ascending upwards and inside sits Igor now at a fortune tellers table instead of being a lazy ass on a couch and beside him is his new attendant Elizabeth or in other timelines Theodore but he isn't actually canon until PQ or Ultimax and as you can see this is the first personal tailored room in the series with the elevator motif both fitting Meany toes climb up Tartarus but also in meanie toes own personal ascension to messiaen status it is almost quite literally an elevator to heaven and then you have these small details laid about the room itself such as the four door sitting along each side of the elevator with each of these doors metaphorically representing one of the members of seize that mean until will grow a bond with over the course of the game especially when you enter the room for the first time only two of these eight doors are uncovered which is because you've only truly met Yukari and June pay at that point but also the room houses two different clocks which both metaphorically represent the seventh room of the mask of the Red Death clock but also represent both the midnight hour and the Doomsday Clock which are strongly connected to the themes of death within persona 3 and then you also have the chair that Mina toasts it's on which is designed to represent Orpheus's liar showing that he will be using personas to support him throughout his journey and now gameplay wise the room itself is actually not too much different than all the other rooms so far as you only really use it to fuse personas and check the Compendium to pull personas that you may have lost during fusion out but there's also side quests involving the attendant and helping them understand the human world another aspect of the Velvet Room changing drastically to match the protagonists and themes of the specific game that is in would become a staple for the Hoshino era of persona especially with the major changes found in persona 4 [Music] [Music] welcome to The Velvet Room MA it would seem you have a most unusual destiny line before you some introductions I'm Igor and I am quite pleased to make your acquaintance yes welcome and I will be here to accompany you on your travels you may call me Margaret now this velvet room is probably the most unique design-wise in the entire series as it takes the form of a limousine being driven through a foggy landscape and inside this limousine is of course Igor like always and next to him is Narukami zone Lee assistant Margaret and no one else now the room itself being a car with a set destination moving through a foggy terrain is representative of the investigation team or specifically you and their journey to uncover the truth within the fog of Lies created by a tsunami only ever really stopping and its travels when you or the investigation team reach a standstill in the case or when the case itself is solved and the fog is lifted alongside this the room taking the form of a limousine also plays into a secondary theme of persona 4 that being media and how it's perceived as the persona 4 team wanted to comment on the clouded fog of useless information that crowded all sorts of media these days such as celebrity scandals cynicism or all three combined all these parts of modern day media that fog any sort of truth that any of these sources want to cover but they also recognize not everyone who could see this fog in the media was in the right so they showed that even in a metaphorically safe space someone isn't void of clouding their judgement as seen through all the alcohol that litters the inside of the limo velvet room showing that even when someone thinks they're safe from the fog they can easily be clouded by other things inside of a safe area which is easily a representation of one of the moral choices that the player makes during the game where you think you know who the killer is and you try to act on that but your actions may be clouded by emotions which is much like the violent reactionary actions of a drunk now gameplay-wise the velvet room doesn't actually change all that much from persona 3 but the one changes instead of moon phases persona fours what room is affected by the weather as it is the only honest force in the entire game therefore more emphasizing the truth aspect of the story but also like in persona 3 you can take requests from your personal attendant and an interesting little detail actually about the velvet room itself the limousines license plate contains the area code in which CJ young lived the man who inspired the creation of Philemon so that was just like a little neat detail now over these past few velvet rooms we've seen rooms created specifically to help a guests journey but what if a room itself was twisted and deformed take it over forcibly by someone who isn't a servant of Philemon and instead of a room made to help humanity's growth it was a room designed to imprison outliers who may aid in humanity's growth no longer a velvet room more of a velvet prison of sorts [Music] now trickster welcome to my velvet room so the prison room from persona 5 is actually a very strange velvet room as it wasn't originally intended to imprison Akira but had its intentions twisted and modified by Yale Tibet a Demiurge who broke into the room in order to lead humanity to ruin the room itself became a prison which gifted people would be held and would be led down a path that Liotta Beth was most pleased by as he also took the form of Igor and tour the attendant into two different creations that he could puppet to keep his illusion going all the while chaining down anyone with the ability to overpower him and tricking them down the path that he so chooses all while referring to them as the tricksters and with the whole prison aesthetic of Akira's velvet room being a front for Yale Tibet submission we never really learned what his true velvet room form would have been but we do get a glimpse at what might have been through his true attendant lavenza and his final persona the ultimate judge sent an L Akira's prison cell was never meant for him he would have been the one who was imprisoning the guilty though speaking of attendants let's actually start talking about the residents of the velvet room starting with D three permanent residents that being nameless the pianist belladonna the singer and Igor the host nameless and belladonna even though not visible in persona 3 through 5 are in fact still in the Velvet Room and their song is what allows Igor to connect to the demon world and summon forth personas or demons as you see funny enough originally Igor used to use a phone to call up demons based on the phone numbers he found in the back of the tarot cards which represented them though over time Igor managed to contact them through different means such as fortune-telling and if you haven't picked up on the themes of their names yet I'll tell you they're all in reference to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or other classic horror movie icons starting of course with Igor the most obvious as he is the loyal servant of anyone who enters the velvet room and Philemon much like his name counterpart is the loyal servant of Victor Frankenstein and Count Dracula in the classic Universal monster movie franchise as he takes his design specifically from the Martin Thielmann Igor with a long nose buggy-eyed and demeanor and also the fact that there is no Egor in the original Frankenstein novel and belladonna follows suit with Igor being named after Bela Lugosi not only the most recognizable Count Dracula but also one of the many actors who played an embodiment of Igor at some point albeit a very different Igor than the Igor that Igor is based off of but an Igor nonetheless her purpose in the velvet room is to calm the souls of all who enter be it guests or demon and if it is a demon this allows nameless and Igor to convert them into personas and speaking of nameless he is the blindfolded pianist who gets his name from the nameless blind man who meets them befriends the monster from Frankenstein as he does so through his sweet sounds of music which calm a scared and injured Beast and then he teaches them to speak and read helping shape a monster into something much more nameless does much of the same by playing his piano in sync with belladonna singing to calm any monster who enters but also using the piano to help Igor in the conversion process of the demon to persona and as it stands he's probably the most important member of The Velvet Room given that he is the first thing you hear as you enter the room itself but over time the velvet room has more than just its permanent habitats and introduces a few attendants as the years go by the first attendant of The Velvet Room is the demon painter slash artists the only Velvet Room character who doesn't have a Frankensteiner movie monster reference in him instead he is an in-house reference to series artist koneko who is the artist behind all of the demon designs in SMT and persona right up until about persona 4 he also isn't a creation of Igor or Philemon he is just a human who originally lived in Samburu City but hasn't lived there or in the human world for several decades at this point meaning he's gone past the point of being human a while ago much like nameless he claims to be about 200 years old the demon painter was introduced to the Velvet Room due to the themes of memories and their importance in persona 2 as through his mastery of art he helps create tarot cards for the player which are physical embodiments of memories for both humans and demons he does this by painting over blank cards or free spaces in someone's memory and creating a brand new set of memories for them to use and with those new memories come new personas he also is only limited by his inability to mimic the full Arcana and the for minor suits which are cup Wan coin and sword besides that he can mimic just about every single Arcana and he's a very useful asset for the players and from here we reach the second set of attendants from persona 3 with Elizabeth and Theodore who design wise are based off of bellhops given the elevator theme of the velvet room and they both get their names from two different characters in Frankenstein I'm going to start with Elizabeth Elizabeth gets her name from Elizabeth lavenza the sister-in-law of dr. Victor Frankenstein and throughout the story would encourage Victor to act as positively as he can as a force for Humanity to cleanse himself of the guilt for creating the monster this is reflected in the multitude of letters and requests that Elizabeth gives you during the game encouraging Minato to climb to Tartarus and cleanse himself of sin now originally she wasn't really part of a big plan happy family that we seen later on in the Velvet Room but she did gain a sister and a brother and speaking of her brother let's talk about Theodore Theodore gets his name from dr. Theodore Bowman from the ghost of Frankenstein originally the teacher of Ludwig Frankenstein but now the assistant bohmer believes himself to be more knowledgeable than his former student which leads him to try to overthrow his position and take control of the lab resulting in his inevitable death this is partly reflected by Theodore's overconfidence in his understanding of the human world while ending up being more clueless than any of the other attendants Theodore also is the lowest in the pecking order in just about every way being only cannon and spin-off games like persona Q and persona 4 arena Ultimax in space on ice the movie the game Theodore doesn't really seem to have a purpose other than comic relief him even explaining that his two sisters bully him quite frequently with both Elizabeth and Margaret feeding him dog food without actually ever telling him until after he ate it but speaking of Margaret she's actually the only assistant who appears in persona 4 taking up the role after her sister vanishes at the end of persona 3 she dresses like a secretary or a manager and has a personalities very similar to such and given the themes of persona 4 and the Velvet Room she has likely used manager in the sense she also like her sister carries around leg or a massive book which contains the players compendium of all the demons that they've met she also seems to be the most expressive of all the Velvet Room attendants actually seeming to have a grasp on the outside world much better than Elizabeth indeed or do but she also is the least serious of the three given her tendency to mock Igor and having the persona for crew literally strike Jojo poses in persona q this mix of seriousness and silliness makes her come off as the most adult of all the Velvet Room attendants Margaret gets her name from Margaret Walter Saville a bit of a non character from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the recipient of the letters written by the narrator about the events of this story but it's actually later been understood that Margaret Savile is a stand-in name for Mary Shelley making the character more important than it actually was and sort of making the first real self insert character in any major cultural work of fiction Margaret is a reflection of this by being the most precognitive attendant in the entire game series making her come off as an author of persona 4 story in a way she manages to have a solid grasp on the outside world without ever actually visiting it and I mean she is the one who gave Narukami the plot item he needed so he could unlock his true persona she knew everything was going to happen before it ever actually did and she even manages to show up and other stories specifically in persona 3 portable where she manages to show up and mess with that timeline too and this is even more apparent in persona 4 the animation when Margaret is the one who has to come and knock the sense into Narukami making sure that he doesn't just bend over and accept a never ending never progressing life of Lies just so he can stay safe she needed to make sure her story ended on a positive note though with Margaret this closes out the original Velvet Room family as over time they were travel outside the room for a multitude of different reasons specifically with Elizabeth helping to help find a way to help me neato and free his soul from the lock of Nick's though speaking of relatives and Elizabeth specifically we reach the final set of attendants this being Karolina and Justine and their true form lavenza now the twins are actually a single being ripped into two along with their design being twisted and distorted by Elka Beth and his new distorted view of the velvet room they were forced to wear prison uniforms and berate their new inmate aka the guest of the Velva room Oh each of them missing a different eye shows their incompleteness but most importantly is the detail about their hat as together they contain the letters for oxymoron which given how each of their personalities are a polar opposite of each other is there one being ripped into two they end up cancelling each other out but also in the sense that their existence is an oxymoron as they are a dominating servant and now each of them get their name like all the other attendants from a Frankenstein character Jeff Steen from a little girl who moved in with Frankenstein at the age of 12 and was unjustly executed for a murder that the monster committed and Carolina gets her name from Victor's mother an eccentric woman whose dying wish was for her son to marry a woman that woman being Elizabeth lavenza which is why when the twins fused together back into lavenza it's via execution combining both of their names together to create the lavenza character which is also why if you defeat the twins prior to them becoming lavenza she will actually confess her feelings to Akira speaking of lavenza we actually only see a very little bit of her during the entirety of the run of the game as she only appears for like I believe only a day's worth of time all we know about her at that point is that she was the newest attendant of The Velvet Room and instead of a prison guard outfit she was given a maid like design and she carries a leg one more compendium and not a clipboard compendium though we can't assume that she was at least considerably powerful because even when broken apart into two separate beings she was still able to take butterfly form and guide us like her masters master also much like a loser Beth in persona 3 lavenza help encourages Akira in the Phantom thieves to continue on in their journey even when things seem completely hopeless and now before I wrap up I should also mention some other things Marie has nothing to do with The Velvet room she is a rogue deity who accidentally stumbled into the room she has no connection to it in any way and she's also [ __ ] and Morgana isn't technically an attendant well sort of being one he was created last second as an attempt for Igor to make someone who could guide a cure to overcome in yalta Beth's influence so he's sort of a semi attendant but lastly I want to talk about that thing I brought up when I was speaking about persona One's Velvet Room and how the persona q velvet room kind of hints at the fact that persona one's velvet room is the default version of The Velvet Room because as we see in persona q the velvet room gets locked into a time rift and in this time rift the room maintains a more persona 1 and 2's design with the only thing from persona 3 or 4 in it is yours fortune-telling table that Margaret uses which gives off the idea that the persona 1 version of the room is likely the base form of the velvet room and also how could I forget to mention the most important version of the Velvet Room the one that appears in persona 4 dancing all night now you see it takes the form of a dance club not because of the atmosphere and dancing happy mood that persona 4 dancing all night has but it's a metaphorical Club which Atlas was using to repeatedly beat the dead horse of an IP that was persona 4 at the time it was actually in universe cry for help to the players and with that that completes her journey throughout the history and understanding of the Velvet Room and all of its attendants and I know I didn't cover absolutely everything this video is long enough as it is I know there's individual journeys that characters like Elizabeth take outside of the velvet room that could play more into their character but I'm gonna save that for a video all by itself I mean I mean Elizabeth is a pretty strong contender for one of the best characters in persona and I hope you enjoyed this time together but before you go if you liked this video and like the fun more videos like it in the future I have a patreon at patreon.com slash money not the bad guy this video was a huge undertaking and it's probably the longest one I've done in a long while so it would really help if you'd go there maybe like three dollars I do a lot smaller projects than this usually but this was like a big project that I've been wanting to do and if you would ever want to return to a velvet room of your own well first you must purchase a copy of shimoneta a boring world with the concept of dirty jokes doesn't exist at Funimation comm slash shows less human-headed a boring world over the concentrated rope doesn't exist buy yourself a copy of human on it and it cut inside each copy comes with a key to your own personal velvet room

Channel: Meti『Not The Bad Guy』

Views: 307,597

Keywords: Velvet Room, Stepping in Between Worlds, Persona 1, Persona 2, Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5, Igor, Belladonna, Nameless, Demon Painter, Elizabeth, Margret, Carline and Justine, Persona Fusion, Philemon, Persona 4 Dancing All Night

Id: m2ky3FpL1zM

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Tue May 22 2018