Highlights
- Color theming in Persona games is crucial, reflecting themes and tone. Green, the rumored color theme for Persona 6, may symbolize nature or urban corruption.
- Green holds various meanings in Japanese culture - from vitality to decay and greed - offering rich possibilities for Atlus to explore.
- Persona 6's green theme could even go beyond the traditional nature focus to explore cyberpunk, digital worlds, and technological growth.
All past Persona games have had one thematic color associated with them, and with a recent leak adding to the mounting rumors that Persona 6 will feature green as its core color theme, it’s time to look at what that might mean for the upcoming RPG. While it may seem surprising, history shows that the color Atlus chooses for Persona 6 will actually prove to be quite important.
Color has always been important to Persona. The first game in the series was layered with dusty, pale purple shades, a color traditionally associated in Japan with wisdom and spirituality—perfect for the game’s supernatural high-school setting. Persona 2 then focused on red theming, reflecting that game's angrier tone. Persona 3’s focus on blue reinforced heavy themes of death and nihilism, whereas Persona 4’s more optimistic atmosphere and focus on social gameplay was reinforced by its yellow color scheme. Most recently, the passionate, fiery Persona 5 more than lived up to its loud crimson color palette.
Persona 6 Needs to Learn From Both Kinds of Persona 5 Dungeons
Persona 6 should follow in its predecessor's footsteps when it comes to Persona 5's distinct types of dungeons for players to explore.
Persona 6 Looks to be Green
With multiple leakers—and years of fan theories—suggesting that Persona 6 will have green as a core theme, it's time to dive into what exactly that could mean for the upcoming RPG. With color symbolism varying from culture to culture, Persona’s notoriously cosmopolitan approach means there’s no shortage of meanings and emotions for Atlus to pull from for its latest installment.
In Japan there are a number of different shades of green, all with unique associations. Some examples are: scallion green (asagi), rusty celadon (sabiseiji), old bamboo (oitake-iro), young bamboo (wakatake-iro), simmered seaweed (mirucha), and Thousand-Year-old Green (Chitosemidori).
Persona 6 Could Focus On Nature
By far the most popular fan theory right now is that Persona 6’s green theming indicates the game will focus on nature. But what this will mean in practice is uncertain. While green in nature is associated with vitality, rebirth, and growth, it’s also associated with rot, reptiles, and poisons. A corpse rotting in a forest, a post-apocalyptic city reclaimed by nature, and a biblical plague of frogs are all green and natural. While the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games have always explored the eternal conflict between chaos and law, the Persona games have always had a less dialectical morality. If nature is core element of Persona 6, it might be a chance to explore how decay and rebirth are inseparable, two sides of the same green coin.
Persona 6 Could Subvert Expectations With a Totally Urban Setting
If Persona 6 is looking to subvert player expectation, it could abandon the idea of nature altogether, in favor of a more symbolic approach to green. Envy and greed are both traditionally associated with green, and green is the symbolic color of money. Leaning into this, Persona 6 could revolve around institutional corruption, personal greed, and murder in the name of wealth. Radium watches, precious emeralds, tea rituals, arsenic-infused green paint, and copper patina could all be used to reinforce the green theme in an urban setting.
Persona 6 Could Go Cyberpunk
The Matrix, Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell - if there’s anything that symbolizes classic cyberpunk, it’s old phosphor-screen computer terminals. If Persona 6 is looking to surprise everyone, reframing its green theme to focus on retrofuturistic technology, digital worlds, and radioactivity could be the way to do it. The growth traditionally associated with green could be reinterpreted as proliferation, and computer technology could be explored as a kind of mechanical nature, spreading across the world like Japanese Knotweed. This technological focus could play into themes of tradition vs modernity, exploring the digital world as the new ‘nature’ in which modern people hunt, forage, and seek shelter. Japanese BBS boards could also play a role, having originated the ‘greentext’ format.
Green Will Almost Certainly Play an Important Role in Persona 6
Color theming has become more and more important with each new Persona game. While the first few games only lightly touched on their color themes, Persona 4 and Persona 5's color palettes were important elements of those games, both thematically and aesthetically. Persona 6 will likely continue this trend, making color more important than ever before. With green having so many different connotations across the world, Atlus has a wide range of cultural and emotional elements to pull from with their next installment. But with Persona 6’s rumored release window, fans might be waiting longer than they’d like to finally see what the game’s supposed green theme is all about.
