It is my hope that players saw Kanji as an unfortunate soul who suffered from prejudice based on his appearance.

Kanji maintains a self-imposed distance between himself and others by playing the role of "chaotic rebel". When designing Kanji, I tried to channel images of outlaws. The skull on his shirt is his way of announcing just how "bad" he is, along with his pierced ears and dyed hair. I literally filled Kanji's design with trademarks of a rebel. The overkill and ridiculously obvious things like the skull shirt and the way he wears his gakuran are all meant to hint at the fact that this is just a facade put on by someone who doesn't really know what being a badass is all about. By overdoing the rebel look, I was able to make Kanji more than an average hoodlum, and mold him into a sort of comical presence. Based on these hints and his dialogue, I'm sure the players quickly surmised that he's actually a nice guy.
Kanji is suspected of many things, including belonging to a biker gang, being a bully, and being homosexual. I gave Kanji a naturally intimidating face because I thought it would make sense as far as people making up rumors about him based solely on his looks. Plus, the idea that someone who looks so scary actually turns out to be a really nice guy is also much more interesting story-wise. Designing an intimidating face involved elements like narrowed eyes, and a lack of open space between the eyebrows and eyelids. There are two things about Kanji's design that I'm always very aware of when drawing him. The first is the slightly concave appearance of his forehead. This was just one of those details that I thought would make him look tougher and more violent. The other is his hairline… I have this tendency to place his hairline farther and farther back every time I draw him, and it got to the point where the staff started trading jokes about Kanji and his male pattern baldness. That's why I always consciously push his hairline forward when I'm drawing him. (laughs)
Take-Mikazuchi is the god of lightning, so the Persona's arms are massive generators. The skeleton paint job is there to match him up with Kanji's shirt and general preference, but also because seeing flashes of a person's skeleton is a common effect when someone is hit by lightning. Of course, some people point out that, because Take-Mikazuchi is the one who looks like a skeleton, it's him who's getting struck by lightning, not the one who's striking others with it. (laughs) I guess you could say I added a bit of a comical touch to his design to match that of Kanji's. I picture Kanji being all, "Look! He's a skeleton! How cool is that!?" Rokuten Maoh's design was based on Nobunaga Oda, with the pointy bits on his face meant to represent Nobunaga's mustache, and the round piece on his head meant to represent Nobunaga's helmet. The flame decals all over his body were supposed to match Kanji's tank top, and I imagined him being all happy about it, saying, "That looks so American! My Persona is badass!" But once again, some people pointed out that this may be taken as a joke about how Nobunaga was burned to death within Honno-ji. (laughs)

[Soejima]