So Let's Talk About Kanji

I have always viewed Kanji's story as a tale of fear and internalized homophobia placed onto him by society and especially his peers (don't worry, we'll get to Yosuke.) To give my quick interpretation, Kanji is a dude who happens to be into sewing and other "girly" crafts and thus puts on a more aggressive outward appearance to fight off being labeled as "gay" due to his interests. At the peak of this fear, Kanji meets the male-presenting Naoto. Kanji develops a huge crush on Naoto leading him to actually question his sexuality for the first time, sending him down the spiral of self hatred and doubt that we see in the Bad Bad Bathouse dungeon. The gang later finds out that Naoto is a woman, leaving both Kanji and the player to question his sexuality.

I always really enjoyed and related to this arc for Kanji. I dealt with a similar situation when I was young where I assumed that my interests somehow defined my sexuality. Learning that this was not the case and taking back ownership of my identity was a big part of growing up. I really like how Kanji's actual sexuality is mostly unknown by the end of his arc. As far as we (and maybe he) know, he is Naoto-sexual and that's about it. This is great! You don't have to have everything figured out when you are 16-17 years old. Let your heart guide you!

So now let's address Yosuke. They gotta fix this piece of shit's arc in the remake. Yosuke spends most of the game being pervy to the female cast, straight up homophobic to Kanji, and having a maybe not so healthy rivalry with Yu. My biggest hope is that they really lean into the fact that Yosuke is a piece of shit at the start of the game and then he actually learns and improves himself by the end. He is still in high school, so I don't expect him to magically become a fully formed adult in less than a year's time, but I hope the writers are up to the task of recognizing the unaddressed misogyny and homophobia from the original and then showing genuine growth.

Please give me y'all's interpretations and opinions on Kanji's arc. Is Yosuke an irredeemable piece of shit or maybe I am overreacting?

I definitely don't think my view of these characters is the only correct one and would love to hear more opinions.

Thanks for reading! Peace!

P.S. This is my first time writing a "community article." I don't know if this is where this belongs or if it would be better off as a forum post. My main goal is to start a discussion and get others' opinions since this is a topic that I'm sure will come up over the next 8 monts and is very intresting to me. Thx whoever reviews these things!