Shuji Ikutsuki

Shuji Ikutsuki is a character from Persona 3. He is Director of Gekkoukan High School as well as adviser to the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad.

Appearances

 * Persona 3 / FES / Portable: Major character
 * Persona 3 Manga: Major character
 * Persona 3 The Movie: Major character
 * Persona 3: the Weird Masquerade -Ao no Kakusei- / -Gunjou no Meikyuu- / -Souen no Kesshou-
 * Persona 4 Arena Ultimax : Major character
 * Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (Manga)
 * Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold Stageplay
 * Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth: Mentioned

Design
Ikutsuki is a bespectacled, middle-aged man with dark brown eyes, long wavy brown hair and a goatee. He wears a tan jacket over his brown turtleneck.

Personality
Ikutsuki, as the adviser of SEES, is a polite and sophisticated man, never needing to change his tone or manner. He is friendly, always accompanied with a gentle smile and a set of bad puns and unfunny jokes to provide comedy relief when it is needed, and perhaps not needed. As seen in the video recordings, he may also sometimes write down some puns on his status reports even if they are unwarranted or unrelated to the subject. Ikutsuki knows more than he lets on, but nonetheless he is the main source of knowledge for the group regarding all things related to the Dark Hour and thus acts as guidance for SEES.

After the defeat of the twelve Shadows, he shows a very different side of him to the party at the entrance of Tartarus. He was actually a manipulative, nihilistic and omnicidal maniac with a twisted savior complex, bearing a complete lack of remorse for the sake of complete and utter world annihilation through supernatural means. He is in fact, far from the chairman SEES knew, something Aigis comments on if asked by the protagonist. He then becomes hostile, attempting to kill the ones who relied on him and thought of him as a trustworthy figure and leaving a large psychological dent on Mitsuru by killing her father. Once that fails, he chose to jump off the roof of Tartarus and committed suicide for good, out of lunatic fervor. Judging from Sho Minazuki's treatment in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax and the fact that he had always been loyal to Kouetsu Kirijo's desire to summon Death, this might be his actual personality and the initial, friendly one was a façade.

Persona 3
Ikutsuki was a partner of Mitsuru Kirijo's grandfather Kouetsu Kirijo, and fully supported his desire of creating The Fall and the coming of Nyx to destroy all of humanity. He was one of the scientists involved in the experiments at Gekkoukan ten years ago, including the creation of Artificial Persona Users, forming Strega as well.

In the present, he is now the Chief Director of Gekkoukan High School and both chairman and adviser of the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, SEES. His proper demeanor and bad puns lead to him being considered lame by most of the students there. He is also the adviser for Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, with Mitsuru being his chief commander. He was trained to enter the Dark Hour, although he lacks a Persona so he doesn't directly fight against the Shadows. He claims that the Dark Hour will end when all twelve Arcana Shadows are destroyed.

Ikutsuki was later revealed to be actually manipulating SEES, especially Mitsuru and Akihiko Sanada regarding the elimination of the twelve Arcana Shadows, which actually does the inverse; destroying the twelve Arcana Shadows actually melds them together into Death itself who summons Nyx to destroy it, instead of eliminating the Dark Hour as he claims.



On November 4th, 2009, after his lies are discovered, on the top of Tartarus, Ikutsuki reprograms Aigis to sacrifice the members of SEES as offerings for Nyx. However, Aigis's bond with the protagonist proved too strong and she refuses to shoot SEES as a result. When Takeharu Kirijo, who had taken advantage of Aigis' inner fight, tries to shoot Ikutsuki himself, he dies as well. Aigis manages to break the programming and free SEES. Ikutsuki, lamenting his failure, falls to his death after being wounded in the stomach by a bullet. His mission to revive Death was already complete by the time Arcana Hanged Man was destroyed, and on the next day, Death appears in Gekkoukan High School taking the form of Ryoji Mochizuki.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax
He first shows up in the beginning of P3 Story Mode, where he parrots his words about the Fall before Sho cuts him down and laughs at him and his goals. Ikutsuki has been confirmed dead by SEES as they found his body. Though they are confused thanks to the copies of him that Sho Minazuki made and the similar mannerisms of the Eerie Voice.

Ikutsuki adopted Sho as a child and was his favored test subject, eventually putting a Plume of Dusk inside him in the hopes it would give him a Persona, but that resulted in Minazuki and his own Persona instead. Minazuki wouldn't obey and attempted to kill Ikutsuki for putting Sho in danger. He eventually sought to erase Minazuki, which resulted in Sho falling into a coma. Now that he was no longer useful Ikutsuki placed Sho in a hospital, where he paid the medical bills to keep him alive in this state indefinitely.

Gallery

 * Persona 3

Etymology
His Japanese name contains 月, which is the symbol for "Moon," something which plays an important role in the game. This could serve as foreshadowing because the Greater Shadows only appear on Full Moons, hinting that he is involved with their creation. Ryoji Mochizuki is another character with "Moon" in his name, and was the incarnation of Death released by Ikutsuki's plans into the real world. It also appears to tie into Sho Minazuki's Japanese name containing the same character, and Sho's Persona, Tsukiyomi, being of the Moon Arcana and the Japanese chief lunar deity. His full name (Shuji) is a homophone of “Master Director” (主事) and (Ikutsuki) means “how many months."

Etymology

 * The name Shuji means "discipline, study, conduct oneself well, master" (修) (shu) and "officer, boss" (司) (chi/ji).
 * Shuji's surname Ikutsuki means "how many, how much, how far, how long, some, several" (幾) (iku) and "moon" (月) (tsuki).

Trivia

 * Shigenori Soejima designed Ikutsuki as an adult who "your instincts tell you not to trust."
 * Ikutsuki has a lookalike in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth, the Mother Computer and its right-hand Overseer. The lookalikes share his deluded savior personality and tendency to make bad puns, but are cold and mechanical. At that time, SEES also does not realize his true nature, causing confusion among them when they first saw the lookalikes in the movie world.