namely oriented around the way that your main character and his asshole buddy simply don't care as she endures all kinds of garbage through the first palace completion.
Can you explain what you mean here? Because the Ann in the Palace isn't actually Ann, and they comment pretty explicitly on how ridiculous and disgusting it is that the Palace owner's view of Ann is that representation. Meanwhile, in the real world, Ann gets plenty of concern from the MC and Ryuji.
I have no clue what it is you're referencing with this.
virtually no effort is put into considering setting up "slut shaming" as the cover story as if that's something where it ever made sense for the burden of proof to be on Ann.
That wasn't coming from the player character nor Ryuji, but from the schoolmates. And it's the major theme of the game, that people prejudge others, don't care to find out the truth, and even refuse to change their beliefs after the truth comes out.
Of course, the cheesecake and degradation built into the first palace boss is ostensibly excused around "well that's a bad guy", but you'd think just once what gets a bad guy's rocks off wouldn't coincidentally square up with titillating teenage boys.
So...did you not play the game? Or something?
I mean, first off, the Palace is a representation of how he views the school. And second...that's the first Palace. There are like six others. None of which fall under this idea you've painted that all bad guys want sex as a way please male gamers.
The game has you playing for what feels like centuries with one woman on the team (who is of course romanceable because every woman must be open for business to the PC). Again "that's just how these games are" doesn't hold water; they could always be different if the aspiration was there, just as "it's in her character to wear a leather catsuit" didn't have to be written that way. P3 for instance, felt like it had female voices much more present and earlier, even without the female protagonist in the portable version. Either way, what P5 is doing now just isn't that great; representation matters, and it makes the creepy scenes described before that much worse to have Ann on her own.
First teammate is male, then female, then male, then female, then female, then female.
But life's too short to play games that think "mature storylines" means shoving juvenile bullshit in my face alongside deadly serious themes. This gives the lie to the idea that I should continue to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they are doing, as they keep crashing the story into more heavy-duty ideas and demanding more slack from me.
Mmk, you later say you're not saying anyone is a bad person for enjoying the game, but you're making it pretty clear here that anyone playing this is wasting their life.
Also, is it really GAY PANIC when he was hauled away by two men who implied sexual things would happen?
Wouldn't that be gays as predators, a completely different and still harmful trope?
Here's the thing:
I fully agree with some of the complaints you've made about the game here. That's why I only quoted the ones that don't square up with my 179:58 hours spent in the game.
And obviously, you do you, play what you want, don't play what you don't want, whatever.
But I will say throwing away this game for a sequence (that I already outlined above, with the bold, right there, is problematic) which makes up roughly 60 seconds of a nearly 200-hour long game, is...all I can say is I suggest against it.
Maybe you'll call me something bad or whatever, I don't care. I'm just as woke as you are, and discussed the problematic parts of this game at length with friends who played it. But I also had at least a dozen times I was brought to full on tears, and this game kind of inspired me to make changes in my life and be a better person.
And hopefully you won't give up on this comment before reading this part in bold for you to notice that I didn't once bring up anything about culture or excuse anything.