Persona 4 Revival won't change Kanji and Naoto's controversial storylines

Atlus has confirmed that Persona 4 Revival, due out in February, will not meaningfully rework the storylines of Kanji and Naoto — the two characters whose arcs have long drawn criticism for how they handle queerness and gender identity.

In an interview with Ungeek, General Producer Kazuhisa Wada defended the original writing: "The story of Kanji [and Naoto] can seemingly be a little bit iffy at times, but if you look at it deeper, you'd understand that it's a whole more sincere story. So even back then and now, we can send these stories out with confidence." Director Daisuke Yajima added that the team deliberately kept the characters' personalities and identities intact — "we didn't want to change their own personalities and identities" — while focusing on making them look better visually. Both developers did acknowledge that certain scenes lacked backstory, and Yajima confirmed that Revival adds small contextual details to "support the story and address the lack of understanding," though no major rewrites are planned.

The criticism around these two characters is longstanding. Kanji is strongly implied to be bisexual throughout his arc — his hidden dungeon is literally a men-only bathhouse — but his storyline ultimately resolves by insisting he isn't queer at all, just a guy who likes knitting and struggles with toxic masculinity. It's a reading that many players find undercuts what could have been a genuinely affirming arc. Naoto's storyline follows a similar pattern: introduced as someone who presents masculine and seems deeply uncomfortable with femininity, their arc eventually frames the masculine presentation purely as a professional strategy rather than engaging with what many fans read as a trans or nonbinary identity. Persona 4 originally launched in 2008, and while some of its awkwardness reflects the era, the series has continued to handle queerness inconsistently in subsequent entries.

Fans who were hoping Revival would modernize these arcs will be disappointed. The additions Yajima described sound more like scene-setting than any substantive reframing, and Wada's confidence that players will come around once they experience the stories suggests Atlus sees no problem worth fixing. Whether that position lands well with a 2026 audience remains to be seen.