Tae Takemi

Tae Takemi is a character in Persona 5. She is a back alley doctor who owns a clinic in Yongen-Jaya, not far from Café Leblanc. Her clinic serves as the player's medicine booth throughout the game.

Appearances

 * Persona 5 / Royal: Supporting Character; Death Confidant
 * Persona 5 (Manga): Cameo
 * Persona 5: Mementos Mission: Supporting Character
 * Persona 5 The Animation: Supporting Character
 * Persona 5 Comic à La Carte: Major Character
 * Persona 5 the Animation Dengeki Comic Anthology

Design
Takemi has dark blue hair in a messy bob-cut with blunt bangs and brown eyes. She has red nail polish on both her fingers and toes. She is fairly short, standing only slightly taller than Futaba Sakura without her heels.

Her outfit consists of a typical white lab-coat that is worn over a short dark green dress. She accessorizes with a red grommet belt, a black studded necklace choker which connects to multiple necklaces, and strappy black platform high heels.

In her casual outfit, she still wears her choker and necklace. She wears a bracelet, short black jacket, a blue dress with a white spiderweb design, and black ripped leggings alongside matching black ankle boots. She is noted by Morgana to have an "interesting fashion sense."

During the third semester in Persona 5 Royal, she has a new winter outfit: a black leather jacket with a fur neck, black leather gloves, a black top, a red skirt, and switches her ripped leggings for intact leggings.

Personality
Takemi is a somewhat eccentric young woman. She dresses like a punk and has a morbid sense of humor, reacting with glee when she gets the protagonist to try out a new medicine, watching him squirm. Due to her bad reputation, she can easily tell when one of her patients has an ulterior motive, as those kind of patients are all she gets. Her reputation as "the Plague" has made her highly cynical and insecure, claiming that she's only good for making experimental drugs, even after being praised for curing a young girl.

Despite her dark sense of humor, Takemi is nevertheless a very kind and caring person, as one would expect from a doctor; although she gets annoyed at the protagonist for his attempted deception, she decides to make a deal with him afterwards, saying she'll give him medicines to recover his health. After he agrees to become her assistant, she frequently checks on him to out of concern for his health. However, she never calls him by his name, instead referring to him as "[her] little guinea pig," a name she continues to use even after they start dating (if the protagonist chooses to date her).

Takemi is also very knowledgeable about traditional Shinto prayer rituals, which is shown when the protagonist takes Ann Takamaki to Meiji Shrine, which results in a scene where the two meet each other.

Persona 5
Tae Takemi is the owner of Takemi Medical Clinic in Yongen-Jaya, which acts as the main supply for the party's recovery items in the game. She believes in her own theory of pharmaceutics and sells barely legal prescriptions to her patients secretly. She originally worked for a university but was fired after she was scapegoated for a disastrous medical trial she advised against.

After the completion of Futaba's Palace, the protagonist calls Takemi. After a brief examination, Takemi states that Futaba has unnaturally low stamina and strength, most likely due to her shut-in nature.

Confidant

 * To see Takemi's Confidant's dialogue options, see Confidant/Tae Takemi
 * For the list of items in Takemi's Clinic, see Takemi Medical Clinic

Takemi's Confidant progresses through the protagonist working as the test subject of her clinical trial. This Confidant can be unlocked on April 18th, but reaching rank 2 requires Guts of at least rank 2 (Bold). Going past rank 7 of her Confidant will also require Charm rank 4 (Charismatic). Taking part in her clinical trials will raise the protagonist's Courage at certain ranks.

Takemi's story revolves around the protagonist trying to make use of her special medicine for the Phantom Thieves' fights in the Metaverse under the pretense of helping relieve stress for his exams. While she realizes his deception from the get-go and warns him of the cost, he convinces her by volunteering as her assistant and is subjected to shady, experimental drugs as she admits that she needs a teenage volunteer. The clinic is eventually visited by a father and his daughter suffering from what was believed to be bronchitis, but she realizes it is a rarer disease and manages to suppress its symptoms for the time being. Takemi eventually reveals her past in more detail to the protagonist; she was developing a drug for Crawford-Ende's when someone used it without her overseeing the procedure and was removed from her position, succeeded by Oyamada, the Chief of Staff at a university hospital at East Shinjuku.

Oyamada rushed the procedure and put the patient, Miwa, into critical condition; in a panic, he blamed Takemi for his problems, causing her to become infamous in the medical community. As such, the medicine she was giving to the protagonist was the same drug she was developing. Due to helping resolve the girl's issues, her reputation starts to make a turn for the better, eventually getting Oyamada's attention. He threatens her into compliance to shut the illegal clinic down and claims that Miwa had died, spiraling her into a depression. Oyamada begins pressuring her suppliers to stop business with her, prompting the protagonist to intervene and change Oyamada's heart.

After changing Oyamada's heart, he reveals that he felt he was not suitable for his position; while he genuinely wanted to help people, he became jealous of Takemi's success and innovations, getting the fame and prestige he wanted in only a few years and thus claimed the drug she was developing as his own. He also reveals that Miwa was not dead, having transferred her to another hospital to avoid hurting his hospital's reputation. Takemi's patients inform her of Oyamada's resignment while the protagonist informs her that Miwa is alive and well, rekindling her hope as she resumes development of the drug. She then gets in contact with the hospital taking care of Miwa and submits her notes and drug to them. The representative is impressed with her skills and offers her a position at their hospital, which she accepts; however, she would have to close her clinic, but urges her patients to register at the hospital she's working at so she could continue treating them. By this time, she realizes that the protagonist's claim to use medicine for the exams is a farce and that he's a member of the Phantom Thieves, but due to his aid in helping with the drug and stopping Oyamada's machinations, continues supporting their cause and keeps his identity as a Phantom Thief secret.

Takemi's Romance route requires the protagonist to reply with one of these responeses: "I'm glad you did" in rank 6, "I'm your ally" in rank 7, or "It's for Miwa-chan" in rank 7. If they do not, she will reject the protagonist's confession in rank 9, saying "You're really kind. Or, perhaps faithful is a better word?"

Takemi's farewell gift to the protagonist on the last day after maxing her Confidant is a Dog Tag. This item allows the protagonist the ability to buy all items that she sells in her shop from the start of New Game+. The protagonist will still need to raise her Confidant to Rank 7 to unlock her discounts. If the protagonist pursues a romantic relationship with Takemi, she will gift the protagonist a Muffler on Christmas, allowing the protagonist to earn more points when using a Death Persona during their Confidant in NG+, and Takemi's Chocolate on Valentine's Day, which fully restores SP to one ally when consumed.

Following the protagonist's imprisonment in Juvenile Hall, if the protagonist completes her Confidant, Tae will be seen talking with Miwa's physician, intending to use the protagonist's name in the upcoming conference due to his contribution to helping develop the medicine for Miwa and asks him to help prove the protagonist's innocence.

Persona 5 Royal
Tae first appears on the afternoon of April 9th, walking past the protagonist on the way to her clinic upon his arrival in Yongen-Jaya.

Persona 5 Strikers
Takemi's clinic is closed during the summer as she is gone to attend an academic conference. Most of its functions are instead available in Sophia's Shop.

Persona 5 Mementos Missions
Takemi is first referenced in the third chapter of the manga as a request on the Phan-Site. Here she is initially a suspect in the poison attempt on the idol director Shiro Asakura as one of her remedies may have been the poison. Initially, Ren doesn't believe the accusations remembering Takemi's past with Shoichi Oyamada. However this is briefly switched over to belief when Ryuji and Ann burst into Leblanc, stating they saw blue faced children with blood coming from their mouths in Takemi's waiting room, believing them to be victims. At that moment Yusuke collapses after taking a drink made by Takemi, further giving credit to the rumors. This confusion is then cleared up with Takemi's appearance, stating that Yusuke collapsed from a combination of light dehydration and an unbalanced diet. The blue faced children were actually wearing zombie makeup for Halloween. Ryuji and Ann apologize to her for their misunderstanding, but she forgives them, stating that it's okay and she doesn't mind.

Takemi appears again in a later chapters, as she coincidentally meets with Ryuji and Makoto at a potential Mementos target's house. The target turns out to be a ill patient being treated by Takemi. To her surprise, the patient had died while taking the drug that she had prepared. It is later revealed upon her inspection that the drug she provided was tampered with, with traces of poison being injected via syringe into the drug capsule. She states that the tampering could be done by even an amateur, but wonders how they obtained the poison.

Persona 5 Comic à La Carte
Takemi appears as a minor character in multiple chapters of Persona 5 Comic à La Carte but also has an entire chapter where she is the main character, that being chapter 11 by yuztan titled Tae Takemi's Suffering. Tae Takemi's Suffering follows Takemi as she deals with the problems of the Phantom Thieves, specifically Ryuji, Ann, Yusuke and Makoto.

Etymology
Tae Takemi could be a reference to (武見 太郎), a male physician from 1930 to 1982. Tarō Takemi fought for equality for the weak and persuaded the Ministry of Health and Welfare to list many medicines of (medical study originated from China) as recognized prescriptions.


 * The name Tae means "exquisite, strange, queer, mystery, miracle, excellent, delicate, charming, mysterious, odd, peculiar, unusual, bizarre, inexplicable, abnormal, irregular" (妙).
 * Tae's surname Takemi means "military, martial" (武) (take) and "see, hopes, chances, idea, opinion, look at, visible" (見) (mi).

Trivia

 * Her nickname in the medical community, the Plague, is inspired by the (fitting her Arcana). The phenomenon killed 75-200 million people (between 30 to 60% of the population) in Europe.
 * Hidden data in the game indicates that it is intended to be possible to doubt or break Takemi's Confidant. If this happens, the protagonist cannot buy high grade medicine from her.