Game:

Persona 5 (2016)

Duration: 12:24

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So Persona 5 Royal is finally on Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox, and PS5. Is it? This is good news for fans of Joker, Morgana, and the rest of the PHantom Thieves, but it's also good news for fans of The Wizard of Of, because Persona 5 borrows more than a little inspiration from the 1939 adaptation of L Frank Baum's modern fairy tale.

It's not clear how much of this borrowing was intentional, but at least some of it was. One of the game's songs features a lyric which specifically refers to the Tinman from Oz, proof positive that at least someone working on this game recognised the link between these two stories.

Both Persona 5 and The Wizard of Oz are about children standing up to corrupt adults. Both stories are about travelling into a subconscious world filled with mirror-images of people from the regular world. Both stories involve a protagonist who helps others along the way to achieving their goal of going home.

This video features more than a little of Salman Rushdie's article on The Wizard of Oz from The New Yorker, which can be read in its entirety here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/05/11/out-of-kansas

Mr Rushdie has yet to make a public statement about Persona 5 Royal on the Nintendo Switch, but, taking a stab in the dark, we have to assume that he would hate it.

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