Sophia (Persona 5 Strikers)

Sophia is a playable character from Persona 5 Strikers. She is an AI found by the protagonist while escaping the Shibuya Jail who gets involved with the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.

Appearances

 * Persona 5 Strikers: Playable Character

History
Unlike the traditional interpretation of Sophia, this appears to represent her as simply the lowest Aeon from the Nag-Hammadi texts instead of the feminine aspect of the true god that created the Demiurge. A more appropriate character for the original description appears to be her creator, who also created the in-game Demiurge.

Design
Before being approached by the protagonist, Sophia appears as a giant box with patterned lines on it, but quickly takes the form of a young girl. Her appearance is based on what whoever activates it wants her to become.

While taking the form of a human, she has a petite frame and white skin, with cyan irises with large black rings. Her hair is bright red with M-shaped bangs and a very short back, as well as rounded tips. She also has a small and seven hearts on each side of her head, all of them being red with hearts in deeper shades of red within the middle of these. The hearts also curve inward much like pigtails, each becoming smaller towards the ends.

She wears a white one-piece outfit with large sleeves opening up at the ends and a dress section ending just at her hips. The chest area has a hoop-like extrusion with black markings on it, which is a minimalist calligraphy of her name (ソフィア), and similar extrusions are seen on the end of the dress, as well as the top and ends of the sleeves. She also wears tight black shorts and black rubber boots with silver soles and a large ring-like extrusion on the tips. Most of her neck section is surrounded by a large ring with a tip on the back side.

When she's in combat, her boots extend up to her upper thighs, she now wears black gloves, and her hood is up, encapsulating most of her head with the pointy tip now on the back of her head, and the hearts now forming a 14-sectioned ponytail-like extension. When in combat, her hood now covers her mouth and a black pixelated screen covers her eyes like a mask, with only her hair and two LED cyan rings representing eyes being visible. Her LED eyes can change shape, functioning similarly to text emoji's, to help her convey expressions during conversations in active combat. She wields two white yo-yos with a black center and a ring of cyan LED lights inside of them.

When she's not in the Metaverse, only her portrait is represented when active. When she's inactive, she's represented by a red circle with her hooded face on it. She resides in the protagonist's phone for most of Strikers, and does not appear physically unless within the vicinity of the Metaverse.

When brainwashed, Sophia has hollow eyes in a bright red coloration. When she's snapping out of it, the eyes alternate between red and green.

Personality
Sophia is helpful and supportive by nature, describing herself as a "friend" to anyone who speaks to her, and quick to offer assistance and suggestions for any query posed to her. She also is a bit unperceptive when it comes to organic life forms, not realizing that her rescuers did not understand she was an AI that can only travel outside the Metaverse in digital form. Sophia also seems to be somewhat naïve. This is best shown when she asked Ryuji for something to help with their mission, only for him to jokingly ask for a gold bar; she took his word seriously and ordered one, unknowing that the Phantom Thieves would get in trouble and cause them a great amount of shock. Due to inheriting her creator's mindset herself, she can be surprisingly ruthless at times, initially suggesting a plan to assassinate Alice Hiiragi when asked on her input on how to stop her from abducting people into her Jail, not knowing that killing people is wrong, though she immediately backpedals when the Phantom Thieves react with horror.

General Behavior
Sophie largely offers nearly identical functions as her open-end counterpart, EMMA. She can plan traveling routes, determine how much time it takes to arrive at a specific place and even order items for her owner. If an item is ordered through Sophia, she will pay the vendors using cryptocurrency from her owner's side, and items will be delivered to the destination within a few minutes.

However, unlike EMMA, Sophia will not make decisions for her users arbitrarily. Instead, Sophia bears the ability to learn human behavior and can properly interact with her users or other people by asking questions, unlike EMMA who displays neither of such behavior.

Sophia can sense Jails overlaid within a city, or even detect newly formed Jails.

Inside the Metaverse, Sophie can defend herself using Pithos. This is not considered a proper Persona, but is treated as if it were one, gameplay-wise.

EMMA can communicate with Sophia telepathically, with nobody else being able to hear EMMA. She's drawn to this voice, usually going out of control to chase it in hopes of regaining her purpose. She hears the voice because she is (supposedly) a failed variant of EMMA.

Before awakening a true Persona, Kuon Ichinose can tamper with Sophia's behavior via vocal input. However, she will refuse to fight anyone whom she had forged a bond with for long. Ichinose can no longer control Sophia once she declares herself as a completely independent entity instead of a pure machine.

Persona 5 Strikers
Sophia is an AI created by Kuon Ichinose in order to investigate the human heart, due to Ichinose having shut down her emotions to unknown circumstances and being considered by her peers as a freak because of her abnormal behavior. The first command Ichinose gave to her was to "become humanity's best friend." However, because she asked if Ichinose has a heart, she ditched her pretty quickly supposedly because she believed that she's unfit for the purpose. In reality, Sophia triggered Ichinose's inner anxiety and threw her into a fit of rage. This became the basis of EMMA which was only capable of determining material desires and nothing else. Despite (allegedly) being a defect product, she still has traces of EMMA's purpose as a daily digital assistant to the party and initially shares a misanthropic mindset as her creator, namely suggesting killing Alice Hiiragi's Shadow at first, although she disregards the option after negative feedback. In the real world, much like EMMA is for the public, Sophia also acts as a concierge application that plans traveling routes for the party, and can automatically dig up any Jails nearby even if the distortions are left unnoticed by the entities in the surface world.

Sophia was first seen after the protagonist, Morgana and Ryuji were all dropped into a basement after being captured by Alice Hiiragi, taking the form of a giant box. When the protagonist approaches it, it starts "booting up" in a white flash and takes the form of a young girl. She claims to be humanity's friend and escorts the party back to the real world, although they were initially wary of her at first because she didn't seem capable of fighting. However, upon encountering a group of Shadows, Sophia displays her own "Persona," Pithos, and aids the party in defeating Shadows on their way to escape, and when the party asks her why she didn't tell them that, she explains that they didn't ask her that if she was even capable of combat in the first place. Returning back to the real world, Sophia manifests in the protagonist's phone as an app and provides navigation for the party for the rest of the game in place of EMMA. When the party talks to her back at Café Leblanc, she has no memories of herself and only remembers that she is humanity's friend. Despite being an AI, even Futaba cannot decipher her code without spending a few months to read it.

After the party confirms Alice is in fact abusing EMMA to brainwash the public, they are puzzled on how to replenish supplies since Takemi Medical Clinic and Untouchable are closed. Sophia suggests to them that they may use her to order anything. Ryuji half-heartedly asks for a gold bar for experimental purposes and a gold bar was instantly delivered to LeBlanc in seconds. However, Sophia explains that she needs to pay with the protagonist's money in the form of crypto-currency, greatly alerting Ryuji and he cancels the order, causing the delivery man to take the gold bar away in seconds. This unlocks access to Sophia's Shop.

Near the end of the game, the EMMA application fires back up on its own even after Akira Konoe shuts it down, and Sophia can sense a massive Jail overlaid within Yokohama encompassing all of Tokyo. When the party arrives at Tokyo Tower, they see people flocking for "Salvation." Once they use the Metaverse Navigator, Sophia begins to hear the same voices, leading to the Jail's center where EMMA is revealed to have gained a physical form and vanishes, before Ichinose steps in herself to protect EMMA from the Phantom Thieves. After she explains every event up to this point and her role as the chief instigator, Ichinose commands Sophia to kill the Phantom Thieves. While Sophia initially gives into the command, she fights it, as she can't fathom attacking anyone whom she formed a deep bond with. She then drops down off the platform, unconscious, before Ichinose uses a diamond to blast the Thieves off as well.

Upon climbing back to where they encountered Ichinose, she summons a massive mob against the Phantom Thieves enough to exterminate them once again with the diamond-shaped weapon, only for Sophia to arrive and block the attack. Ichinose finally reveals the true extent of her involvement with Sophia and she keeps trying to brainwash Sophia again to no avail, with help from the other Phantom Thieves. This forces Sophie to awaken, mustering enough strength to transform Pithos into its true form, Pandora. After being awakened, Sophia tells Ichinose flat out that she's just trying to run away and shutting herself in the catastrophe she unleashed upon Japan while passing it off as assisting humanity. Under a fit of rage and denial, Ichinose summons a Hecatoncheir as a last obstacle. After her defeat, Ichinose begs the Phantom Thieves to kill her out of grief, but Sophia convinces her creator to stop denying and running away from her loneliness by "saving people" with EMMA, leading the misanthropic and lonely A.I. researcher to shed her tears for the first time. With a bit of force from Ryuji, Ichinose reforms earnestly and assists in defeating EMMA once and for all.

Near the end of the game, Ichinose invites the party out to the Shibuya square in order to explain her next action. She requests the protagonist to hand Sophia over so she could better understand humans as a whole, with Sophia consenting to the decision. As Sophia parts with the protagonist to Ichinose, the post credits scene shows a silhouette of the AI happily hanging out with her formerly misanthropic creator.

During New Game Plus, Sophia starts in the default party with Pandora as a Persona alongside Wolf. This ignores plot relevancy, though during story intervals where she breaks apart from the party, she will still do so.

Persona 5 Strikers

 * Notes: Stats in the boss fight in Jail of the Abyss. Cannot be damaged and the battle ends after a while.

Etymology
In some Gnostic schools, "Sophia" is the name of the true god who created the Demiurge. This ties into how she is a more empathetic and perceptive version of EMMA, whose true form is the False God Demiurge. (In this case however, she seems to represent the lowest Aeon.)

Her name is almost certainly an allusion to the real-world AI, a humanoid robot notable for her high-profile publicity and recognition, and who was designed to develop social/companionship skills (or rather, more effectively emulate them, considering her actual degree of advancement is far less than her presentation would lead one to believe).

Her name could also be a pun on the word software, referencing how she only exists in the Metaverse inside of the app.

Trivia

 * Sophia is the second instance in the Persona 5 series where a Persona user obtains Persona-like powers that do not awaken into proper Personas unless under certain conditions. The first instance occurred to Takuto Maruki and Azathoth, who simply required exposure to the Metaverse to awaken.
 * Ichinose did not write her signature inside Sophia's code, something that Futaba actually mentions as odd. It's implied that Ichinose didn't care about Sophia enough to give her one, furthermore she was in a fit of unreasonable anger minutes after interacting with her.
 * Sophia has a habit of humming an excerpt of "The Heart of an AI" every time she feels happy or excited. This habit was actually inherited from Ichinose.
 * Sophia's birthday, August 28, falls on the day she awakens to Pandora.
 * Much like Jose, she calls Morgana a "." Unlike Jose, however, Sophia calls Morgana a "raccoon" in the English localization. A tanuki is also known as a "Japanese raccoon dog," as it is a subspecies of the Asian raccoon dog.
 * When Sophia is used as an AI assistant, the same pinging voice that plays upon activating EMMA can be heard.
 * Out of every playable character in the Persona 5 games, Sophia has the least cut-ins, having only one and using it twice.
 * In the first boss encounter in the Jail of the Abyss, no party member will attempt to attack Sophie aside from Zenkichi, whose AI is programmed to actively go after her just like any other enemy.
 * The lyrics "I'll never be just a doll" in the song "Counter Strike" is in reference to her conversation with Ichinose prior to receiving Pandora.
 * Sophia's third unlockable Master Art, "Blast Processing," is in reference to the marketing term SEGA used when advertising the SEGA Genesis.
 * One of the options for Sophia's codename is "Snowy," rejected on the basis that it sounded like a dog's name. This could be a reference to the dog that Labrys and Unit #024 met in Yakushima.

Appearances in Other Media

 * Dragalia Lost