[Persona 3] After watching OSP's Trope Talk video on Fridging, I gotta ask; does Chidori's death count as Fridging?

I'd argue absolutely, but I wanna see other peoples thoughts.

yeah, I'd say so, especially with the P3P's option to bring her back?

Trope Talk: Fridging

video if people are curious

Note to self watch this vid to form opinion

She was given no real agency or dreams (for narrative reasons, but that still leads her to be willing to die for Junpei), and it's more about her impact on him than the loss of her over all.

Oh yeah, absolutely fridging.

Same with Yosuke's crush.

And you could almost count Shiho from P5.

if it wasn;t for Ann's social link with Shiho I suppose

Exactly.

I don't think Yosuke's crush counts, mostly because P4 is a murder mystery so we needed a death and it had to be related to Yosuke enough for us to see his Shadow

like yeah, she was absolutely just a plot device, but I don't think that always means a character was fridged

(I never played P3 so I can't speak there)

Eh, okay so a bit more purposeful than most examples, but still kinda counts.

Red does mention it's a bit nebulous at times, but Saki's death can be fridge-y... though I argue doing Naoki and Yosuke's social links helps a touch with that.

especially Naoki, cause his is all about her loss and how it affected the family

yeah the social links make it a little hard to judge with Persona games :|a

since it's there! you just gotta like. do it

but with Chidori...

it's pretty obvious they put her in the deep freeze

like they literally designed her to be 'sad girl who dies'

I'd argue with that but I'm a fan, so lol

well I mean, that's what I remember reading in her art profile...

she was designed to be sort of dark and sad, and her entire narrative arc was dying for someone she loved, cause she was gonna die soonish anyway, that's what I mean 8D;;

oh yeah, that's her role, I just mean there's more to her personality than just "being sad" haha

I mean, at its most basic, fridging is killing a female character solely to motivate a male character in a way that's unrelated to her own character arc so like you could make an argument for Chidori just having a boring arc but a crush dying to drive a murder mystery was absolutely fridged imo

Okay I watched the whole thing and I paid attention throughout and I don't think Chidori was fridged. Imo of the three mentioned Persona girls, the only one that was really fridged was Saki, precisely because her death affects basically no one in the plot except a tertiary character who's not himself plot relevant

(sorry Naoki) and Yosuke felt to me likely he was grieving the relationship he had with her in his head more than he was grieving her as a person.

I wish I could elaborate a LOT more about Chidori and I feel I have a lot more to say about her, and some about Shiho, but my thoughts are all jumbled and unorganized and really, I should be working right now.

with Shiho I feel like that there was a clear focus on her pain as well as Ann's made it not a full fridging, even though it definitely was to an extent.

but obviously it never fully was since she doesn't straight up die

Hm, I’d still argue Saki wasn’t fridged imo because change her to just a close male friend and the results would be almost the same. He’s also aware he didn’t have a relationship with her, he just really appreciated that she was nice to him when everyone else literally weren’t. He’s even aware that it may have been fake.

Chidori I feel could have gone both ways

Sure, if it was a male character, but these types of characters are almost always female lol. I can think of like, one male character I would describe as being fridged and it was so incongruous that I think of it every time even though it happened like 20 years ago lol

Yeah... almost always female, or disposable guardian figures, like Luke's aunt and uncle... and Dragon!Luke's uncle in Star Wars with Dragons--I mean Eragon.

That's true, mentor is the most dangerous role in fantasy