Kotone Shiomi

Kotone Shiomi
汐見 琴音
P3PPQ2P5X Artwork from Persona 3 Portable Artwork from Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth File:P5X Kotone Shiomi Artwork.png Artwork from Persona 5: The Phantom X
Other Name(s)	P3P HeroineMaterial related to Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
School(s)	Gekkoukan High School
Occupation(s)	Student
Affiliation(s)	S.E.E.S.
Arcana	The Fool Death Judgement Universe
Persona(s)	Orpheus Thanatos Orpheus Telos
Voice Actor(s)	Marina Inoue (JA) Laura Bailey(EN)
Live-Action Actor(s)	Kana AsumiPersona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Ao no Kakusei Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Gunjo no Meikyu Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Sōen no Kesshō Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Ai no Seiyaku Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Hekikū no Kanata e

Kotone Shiomi is a major character and the female protagonist of Persona 3 Portable, as well as a member and field leader of S.E.E.S. in universe. In Persona 3 Portable, her male counterpart is Makoto Yuki. The name Kotone Shiomi originated as the name of the female protagonist in the Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade stage play adaptations; the name was later adopted as her default name in the 2023 re-release of Persona 3 Portable, which the game defaults to if the text language settings are changed.

In game, Kotone acts as the Wild Card of the group, having the ability to wield and swap multiple Personas at once during battle, as well as having the ability to fuse said Personas in the Velvet Room.

Profile

Kotone Shiomi is a teenager with auburn hair and red eyes, with pins in her hair forming XXII, the Roman numeral form of the number 22, which signifies that she is the 22nd character. She wears her hair in a ponytail with her bangs styled to the right side of her face. She wears her Gekkoukan Uniform with little modification and a pair of red ATH-model headphones. She wears the same uniform with the S.E.E.S. armband and her Evoker attatched to her hip during battle with her weapon of choice being a naginata. Her other outfits often consist of the colors red and orange.

Unlike her male counterpart, Kotone is seen to be very cheerful and upbeat in many of her dialogue choices, often making jokes or being sarcastic. She's often described as dependable and tough by her teammates, being referred to as a "tomboy" at many different times by them. However, events of the game show that underneath this cheerful exterior she hides much of her sadness and depression, with the tone of her dialogue choices changing to be more similar to her male counterpart's more blatant indifference and depression.

Gameplay

For complete gameplay information, see Gameplay:Kotone Shiomi.

Kotone is a Wild Card who starts with Orpheus as her initial Persona and can wield multiple Personas in battle. By visiting the Velvet Room, she can fuse new Personas, setting her apart from her allies. Additionally, by visiting the Shinsoudo Antiques, she can use Fusion Spells to do a variety of effects. In battle, Kotone uses a naginata that deals Slash damage to her opponents. She must be in the party at all times, and dying would have players receive a game over.

Kotone would later appear in Persona Q2.

Game Appearances

Persona 3 Portable

On April 6th, 2009 in a parallel universe, Kotone moves to Tatsumi Port Island as a transfer student to Gekkoukan High School. Three days later, she enters the Dark Hour, a supernatural 25th hour where Shadows roam, is caught up in a Shadow attack on the Iwatodai Dormitory and awakens to the power of Persona, with the initial Persona Orpheus. Kotone learns that her dormmates are actually members of the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (S.E.E.S.), a group dedicated to fighting Shadows. Kotone is inducted into SEES and named their field commander due to her unique ability to control multiple Personas, the Wild Card.

Over the course of the next several months, with the aid of the inhabitants of the Velvet Room - Igor and Elizabeth (or Theodore) - Kotone leads S.E.E.S. in battle in order to bring an end to the Dark Hour and exploring Tartarus, a massive tower that appears in place of Gekkoukan High during the Dark Hour.

This section contains spoilers. (Skip Section)

Eventually, S.E.E.S. defeats the twelve fragments, but the Dark Hour is not destroyed. They learn destroying the fragments will allow Death to return to its full power and summon the maternal being, Nyx, and bring about the Fall, the end of humanity.

Death later manifests in the form of new Gekkoukan transfer student, Ryoji Mochizuki. It is revealed that in 1999, the Kirijo Group's experiments on the Shadows went disastrously awry, unleashing the most powerful shadow, Death. The Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon Aigis pursued and battled Death, causing a car crash that killed Kotone's parents and left him the sole survivor. Aigis, unable to defeat Death, sealed a portion of its power in Kotone.

Ryoji offers Kotone a choice - kill him and allow SEES to live out the remainder of their lives in blissful ignorance, or let him live and make a futile attempt to delay the inevitable. In the bad ending, Kotone kills Ryoji and is last seen ignorantly singing karaoke right before the Fall. In the good ending, Kotone spares Ryoji. On January 31st, 2010, S.E.E.S ascends to the top of Tartarus and defeats Ryoji's true form, the Nyx Avatar in battle, but are powerless to stop the Fall. Kotone ascends to face Nyx and expends all of her life force to create a seal to protect the Earth from her.

Kotone spends the next two months living a peaceful life with her friends, growing more tired and weaker as the days go by, before passing away peacefully in Aigis' arms on March 5, 2010.

End of spoilers.

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth

The P3P Heroine appears in a cutscene in the first dungeon "Kamoshidaman" on the third floor. After defeating a Shadow with the Phantom Thieves, she explains she is a Persona-User just like them. She had mysteriously entered the Cinema Labyrinth just like the Phantom Thieves, but got separated from her team in the process. Her priority is to find and reunite with them again. She joins the Phantom Thieves and becomes an available Party member.

After the second dungeon, a film teaser hinting at the third dungeon shows a robot oddly reminiscent of Aigis. The movie itself is even directly named after her. The P3P Heroine becomes excited and theorizes her team could be in this movie, just like the Investigation Team in the prior dungeon. Shortly after entering the third dungeon she meets S.E.E.S. during a desperate fight. She addresses them in familiar terms, but S.E.E.S. is confused how she knows them. After the fight it is revealed that this is a different S.E.E.S. from another universe. The P3P Heroine is upset by this, but tries to not show that.

On the third floor of the dungeon, S.E.E.S. is reunited with Aigis and the P3 Hero. After the P3P Heroine and the P3 Hero interact, they realize they are the same person from different universes.

Throughout the game, the P3P Heroine acts overly familiar towards S.E.E.S. but said team is unnerved by that. Multiple members of S.E.E.S. think of her as a good friend, but express frustration on being unable to reciprocate the same familiarity. They note that it must be very lonely for her. The Phantom Thieves notice how she hides her pain and confront her about it. After that, different members of S.E.E.S. (notably Yukari Takeba, Fuuka Yamagishi and Junpei Iori) try to approach her to befriend her. Through this, the P3P Heroine establishes a real friendship with the alternate S.E.E.S.

At the end of the game, the P3P Heroine has mutual respect with the P3 Hero and shakes hands with him as they leave to their original world.

Audio Drama Appearances

Drama CD Persona 3 Portable Vol.1

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Novel Appearances

Persona 3 Portable: Velvet Blue

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This novel focuses on the female protagonist's relationships with the Velvet Room attendants.

Stage Appearances

Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Ao no Kakusei

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Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Gunjo no Meikyu

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Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Sōen no Kesshō

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Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Ai no Seiyaku

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Persona 3: The Weird Masquerade: Hekikū no Kanata e

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Trivia

• Screenshots in the manual for Persona 3 Portable show menus with Kotone's name set as "Kheri."
  • The screenshot on the back cover of the Korean edition shows Kotone's name as "Megumi Kayano" from Persona: Trinity Soul.
• Famitsu.com's Persona 3 Portable special page shows her name as "Lunako Gekko".
• Unlike other Persona protagonists, whose names originate from their respective anime adaptations, the name "Kotone Shiomi" originates from a stage play.
  • The name was also used in the 2020 Puzzle & Dragons × Persona collaboration prior to the 2023 release of Persona 3 Portable.
• Kotone is not a playable protagonist option in Persona 3 Reload but she was considered. She was ultimately not included because it would have cost much more than including The Answer as DLC.
• Kotone is nicknamed "Hamuko" by the Japanese community. This comes from promotional materials before Portable's release where she had the placeholder name "主人 公子" (surname 主人 and given name 公子). Together they form the word for protagonist (主人公) along with the suffix 子 often used in girls' names. The first character of the given name taken by itself (公子) was broken down by fans into the katakana ハ and ム, and fans began calling her by the name ハム子 which is pronounced "Hamuko".
  • "Hamuko" is also used in dummy data of Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth to refer to her.
  • In the Korean version of Persona 5 Royal, the fusion result screen displays the long-haired Orpheus Picaro's name as "Orpheus Picaro Hamuko".
• After her appearance, one of Margaret's lines referring to the Persona 3 protagonist was changed to be gender-neutral in the release of Persona 4 Golden, but the English version retained the original translation from Persona 4, so this change was not implemented. Also in Persona 4 Arena, gender-neutral terms are used when referring to the protagonist.
• Like the other protagonists, her birthday, height, and other details are left undefined because she is meant to be the player.
• Her appearance in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth was inspired by a fan-drawn illustration that the producer saw at the Persona 20th Festival.
• For the 30th anniversary celebration of the Persona series at Sea Paradise, both Kotone and Makoto Yuki are drawn with a bottlenose dolphin.

Nomenclature

The kanji of the family name mean "tide watching" and the given name means "the sound of a koto (a Japanese string instrument)."

Names in Other Languages

Language	Name	Meaning
English	Female main characterPersona 3 Portable
	Kotone Shiomi
	P3P HeroineMaterial related to Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth
Japanese	汐見 琴音 Shiomi Kotone	Kotone Shiomi
	P3女性主人公Material related to Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth Pīsurī josei shujinkō	P3 female protagonist
Simplified Chinese	汐见 琴音 Xījiàn Qínyīn
Traditional Chinese	汐見 琴音 Xījiàn Qínyīn
Korean	시오미 코토네

Gallery

See Gallery