Masayoshi Shido

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	This article contains major spoilers for the following media:
	Persona 5
	Persona 5 Royal
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For this character's Shadow, see Shadow Shido.

Masayoshi Shido
獅童正義
Portrait from Persona 5
Age	53
Occupation(s)	Politician
Affiliation(s)	United Future Party
Voice Actor(s)	Shūichi Ikeda (JA) Keith Silverstein (EN)

Masayoshi Shido is a character in Persona 5.

Profile

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Shido is a Japanese politician seeking to become the prime minister.

Game Appearances

Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal

In the spring of 2014, he met Goro Akechi. Having already awakened his Persona, and having his own agenda for aiding Shido's political aspirations, Akechi offered his services as a psychic hitman. Shido wished to control all information about the Metaverse and Cognitive Psience, so he stole the research on cognitive psience conducted by Wakaba Isshiki and ordered Akechi to induce a mental shutdown in her. Akechi carried out this attack on 21 August 2014.

In the early spring of 2016, Shido visited the hometown of Ren Amamiya to engage in a money-laundering scheme, with the help of a local woman. One night, after drinking excessively, he got into a physical altercation with that woman, which Ren overheard. Ren, fearing for the woman's safety, ran up to Shido and pulled on his shoulder; in his drunken state, Shido fell hard on his nose and had Ren arrested for assault.

Over the next few months Shido and his conspiracy used Akechi's powers to induce mental shutdowns and psychotic breakdowns to advance Shido's agenda of becoming Prime Minister of Japan. Most notably, in early April he ordered a mental shutdown on a bus driver to make him drive down an opposing lane while passengers were on board, and on a train engineer to cause an accident on the subway, leading to the resignation of the then-Minister of Transport.

In early May of 2016, Shido learned about Suguru Kamoshida's change of heart and ordered some of his minions to investigate it; among them were a TV station president, and IT company president, and some Yakuza men. A few days after Kamoshida's confession and arrest, Shido arranged a meeting with them at the Wilton Hotel in Shibuya. By sheer coincidence Ren, Ryuji, and Ann were eating lunch at the Wilton that day, and Shido had a brief encounter with Ren himself on one of the upper floors of the hotel, though they did not recognize each other.

Later in May Goro Akechi is sent to investigate the Phantom Thieves. By the time of Ichiryusai Madarame's change of heart, Akechi had spied on the Phantom Thieves closely enough to see and hear Morgana speaking in the Metaverse.

With the loss of revenue from Madarame's forgeries and the downfall of Junya Kaneshiro, Shido started to see the Phantom Thieves as a threat to his political ambitions. He devised a plan to raise the Phantom Thieves' reputation astronomically by staging an online beef between them and the hacker group Medjed, and then to bring it crashing down by inducing a mental shutdown to coincide with one of their changes of heart. The plan worked perfectly; the Phantom Thieves' reputation skyrocketed after Futaba defeated Medjed, and nosedived after the mental shutdown of the president of Okumura Foods, Kunikazu Okumura.

Finally, Shido and Akechi laid a plan to put an end to the Phantom Thieves for good. Unable to pin any crime on Ren or the rest of the Phantom Thieves in reality, and with Sae Niijima investigating the mental shutdowns as well as the Phantom Thieves, Shido told Akechi to make an offer to the Phantom Thieves that they couldn't refuse: One last heist to steal Niijima's heart before disbanding. On 19 November 2016, the day of the heist, Akechi had the police waiting outside the Palace to catch the Phantom Thieves in the act.

But the Phantom Thieves had scattered, and the police only caught Ren. The next day, Akechi carried out the last stage of his and Shido's plan: To steal the guard's gun, kill the guard and Ren, and make it look like a suicide. That plan, too, seemed to go perfectly.

But the Phantom Thieves had devised a plan of their own, ensuring that Joker would survive Akechi's attack while appearing to be dead. A few days or weeks later, before Election Day in 2016, Shido started having doubts about the loyalty of his top five underlings. When he expressed those concerns to Akechi, Akechi noted with alarm that it would raise too much suspicion to arrange so many accidents so soon before Election Day.

Soon after that, every monitor screen in Japan was hacked with a message from the Phantom Thieves, revealing that Ren had survived, and exposing Shido as the mastermind behind all of the psychotic breakdowns and mental shutdowns over the last two and a half years.

By the time of Election Day, Shido's heart had been changed, and he confessed to the crimes. But he had still won the election in a landslide, and it would take more than his confession to have him arrested; it would also take testimony from a law-abiding citizen who had been wronged by him.

After serving a few months in juvenile detention for his crimes as a Phantom Thief, Ren testifies against Shido with help from Sae Niijima, forever ruining Shido's political ambitions.

Trivia

• In the Persona 5 Design Works, Soejima mentions how Shido gets compared to Char Aznable from Mobile Suit Gundam though that was not what he had in mind while designing Shido. Instead, Soejima was trying to make him look like a special enemy by giving him a mask similar to the ones worn by the protagonists. Char has a white mask helmet and a golden mech similar to Shido's cognition, and both characters are voiced by Shuichi Ikeda. Shido's English voice actor Keith Silverstein has also voiced Char in Gundam spinoffs.

Nomenclature

Names in Other Languages

Language	Name	Meaning
English	Masayoshi Shido
Japanese	獅童 正義
Simplified Chinese	狮童 正义
Traditional Chinese	獅童 正義

Gallery

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  Masayoshi Shido Angry Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido Drunk Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido Hurt Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido Nervous Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido Sad Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido Smiling Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido Surprised Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido (Malicious) Angry Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido (Malicious) Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido (Malicious) Smiling Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido (Bleeding) Drunk Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido (No Glasses) Hurt Portrait
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  Masayoshi Shido (No Glasses) Sad Portrait