10/27/20 Music Spot || Persona 3 – Heartful Cry

The Persona series is no stranger to a wide variety of great compositions, but I wanted to shine some light on this less popular track from the third entry. Heartful Cry is considered the theme of Aigis, the game’s android character. I’m a big Aigis fan, and I think this tune encapsulates her quite well. Without spoiling too much (seriously, go play Persona 3), Aigis begins as an emotionless automaton, and over the course of the game grows the closest attachment to the player character. In her journey to real feeling, she’s faced with not only the joyful parts of life, but also the sorrowful. One of the central themes of P3 is that accepting that tragedy is inevitable will make you a stronger person, and this song being a battle theme, representing Aigis’ impassioned cry to her friends, is a very powerful realization of that theme. The soft, piano intro, punctuated by percussion hits, dropping into a hard synth rock style relates a kind soul forced to be brave. The upbeat melody it swings into, followed by a return to the piano intro over the guitars is the best representation of this dissonance between what she wants and what she struggles to face.