When it comes to the Persona series, there is one group that most everyone knows these days, even if they have not played any of the games before. The Phantom Thieves are the most popular and famous group of heroes in the Persona franchise. This Phantom Thieves Persona guide is here to introduce you to some of the most iconic video game characters of all time.
In the Phantom Thieves Persona guide, I will show you everything you should know about this superpowered team of high school students. This includes the reasons for their fame, who their members are, and what their goal is in Persona 5. For anyone new to the Persona series or just want to find out more about the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, you are in the right place.
Bottom Line Up Front
The Phantom Thieves is a group of high schoolers who are there to steal the hearts of bad guys everywhere. In the events of Persona 5, the main characters form this band of Robin Hood-esque thieves.
Their goal is to enter the Metaverse that only they can and take down the adults who are tormenting Japanese society. They do this by stealing their hearts and changing their minds in the real world.
This is through the power of the Persona that they are able to summon. The Phantom Thieves grow over the course of Persona 5 and even get new members in the Royal version and Persona 5 Strikers sequel game. Here are all of the members of the Phantom Thieves, but keep in mind that there are some spoilers involved:
The Phantom Thieves is a group of the main playable characters from Persona 5. Many of the Persona games have their own respective teams that the main character is part of and Persona 5 is no different. However, what is probably most unique about this game’s team is that they operate on a massive scale.
They are not just focused on a single town or region but the entire country of Japan and even the world as a whole. The scale that the Phantom Thieves operate on is much larger than anything before it. Even still, they are comprised of just a few mostly high school students who are otherwise normal people.
The Phantom Thieves are unique in that they each have the ability to summon their Persona. This manifestation of the other-self is the gateway for the members to enter the Metaverse. It is there that they are able to secretly go about their thievery business in trying to save the world.
The entire plot and themes of Persona 5 revolve around this group from start to finish. Players have the chance to see the group form and expand as it adds new members over time. The Phantom Thieves eventually become a family to each other, as many of them are outcasts or beaten down by the current society.
Together, they are able to break free from the chains of society and make real change around them. This allows them to have fame on an immense level thanks to the power of the internet. While not everyone loves the Phantom Thieves in Persona 5, there is no doubting that they have a benevolent goal. And you get to be part of the entire mission along the way.
That mission is to stop the evil people who are tormenting society and making everything worse for the citizens of Japan. Everyone from high school coaches to famous artists to gang members and more is on the table for being targeted as an enemy of the Phantom Thieves.
Their goal is to enter the Metaverse and use their Persona powers to find the hidden heart of that bad person. They then steal that heart in the form of a treasure that is unique to each target after sending their signature calling card in the real world.
With the metaphorical heart of the person stolen in the Metaverse, this will then change their actions in the real world. They will have a literal change of heart to turn away from their evil deeds. This usually results in massive changes to the victims of that person and even society as a whole.
The Phantom Thieves undertake their missions in the flashiest way possible, showing off their skills and not shying away from sending out calling cards where everyone can see it happen. While they all have the same goal, each individual member of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts has their own personal motivations, dreams, and backstory.
Phantom Thieves Members
To help you get to know all of the Phantom Thieves members, I am going to break down each and every one of them. What you should keep in mind, though, is that this will essentially spoil some of the people who join the group later on in the story.
I will, however, refrain from unnecessary story spoilers in this section. It is meant to just be a place to learn about the characters and a general overview of each of them. You will find out about their personalities, some of their backstories when they join the group, and much more. Let’s start stealing those hearts!
When it comes to the Phantom Thieves, there is likely one person that players think of first: Joker. Canonically named Ren Amamiya after the fact, Joker is the player character that you take the role of in Persona 5. As the lead protagonist, it is eventually your job to become the de facto leader of the Phantom Thieves.
Joker is a high school student who ends up in the big city of Tokyo after an incident occurs with him prior to the start of the game. Already on his last legs, so to speak, he has the chance to rehabilitate himself. In the middle of this, he is able to help others who are dealing with their own issues.
Becoming friends with the talking (totally not) cat, Morgana, best bro, Ryuji, and aspiring model, Ann, they help to eventually form the Phantom Thieves. Joker is the one that everyone in the group looks to for the strategy of what to do next, both in their mission and in battle. Joker is his codename on the team.
Morgana
Morgana is the talking animal-like mascot for this game and you could even argue the cheerleader for the group. The Phantom Thieves would not have nearly as much heart or memorabilia if there wasn’t Morgana. He is one of the first members of the group, meeting the team when they stumble into the Metaverse.
While his circumstances are mysterious at first, Morgana is a valuable team member. He is not only the most dramatic on the team but a strong fighter and tactician. He plays the role of the supporter of the team during the early parts of the story. Morgana has the codename, Mona, in the group.
Ryuji
There seems to always be that best bro character in the modern Persona games and Ryuji plays that role in the Phantom Thieves. The blond delinquent might mess around a lot at school but he at least takes his duties as a thief quite seriously.
Codenamed Skull within the Metaverse, Ryuji might be dumb a lot of the time but he is a powerful fighter. He also brings the team together a lot of the time, though likely due to them being against him.
Ann
Ann is the fourth and final original member of the Phantom Thieves. A high school girl who is working to become a model, she has beauty and a little bit of brains, too. Known as Panther, she is the Catwoman of the group, knowing her worth and not holding back from being who she is.
Yusuke
After the forming of the original group, Yusuke Kitagawa is the first new member to join the Phantom Thieves. He is a struggling high school artist who has a prodigy level of skill to his name.
But a tragic past is holding him back from being who he is. Though Yusuke has the trouble of falling by the wayside in the Phantom Thieves, his randomly quick remarks add some flair to the team.
Makoto
Makoto is the brains behind much of the Phantom Thieves’ operations. At school, she is the student council president, and, within the Thieves, she is the Queen. After certain circumstances with a particular gangster get her involved in the group, she is able to let go of her goody-two-shoes attitude and become a thief herself.
Futaba
Futaba is the youngest member of the Phantom Thieves, being around middle school age rather than high school age. However, she does not go to school as everyone else does. Instead, she is a shut-in staying home and being on her computer all the time.
In fact, Futaba suffers from issues that come from her past that have led to her not being able to leave the house at all. In turn, though, she is a literal tech genius who is one of the most famous hackers in the world.
The Phantom Thieves eventually catch her eye and she joins them as the permanent support for the group. Without Futaba/Oracle’s unmatched assistance, they would be lost when it comes to missions and battles.
Haru
Haru Okumura is a quiet senior in high school who joins the Phantom Thieves. Overall, she is a surprisingly simple and average girl. However, the notable part about her is that she is the daughter of Okumura Foods, a massive conglomerate that is based in Japan.
With the weight of expectations upon her, she finds that she is liberated within the Metaverse where she can be whoever she wants. At first, she is known as the Beauty Thief but later becomes Noir once she formally joins the Phantom Thieves as the sole psy user.
Akechi
Finally, the last member to join the Phantom Thieves in the original game is Goro Akechi. A high school-aged student, he does not actually attend school. Instead, he is a genius detective who is the second coming of the Detective Prince.
Goro Akechi begins his journey in Persona 5 by investigating the Phantom Thieves. Once he meets up with them in the Metaverse, though, he eventually joins the team as the original final member. Codenamed Crow, he is one of the strongest fighters in the group and a flashy addition to the team.
Persona 5 Royal Added a New Member
While that previous group of nine characters was the original Phantom Thieves, they are not the only members. Persona 5 Royal came out and added to the game significantly, representing the best possible version of the game that you can play right now.
In the midst of this, it added a few new characters, storylines, and even an entire epilogue section of the game’s main story. As part of this, players were treated to a new party member in Kasumi who joined as the 10th member of the group. Here is what you should know about her.
Kasumi
In Persona 5 Royal, Kasumi formally joins the group after Akechi does during the new third semester. However, she is teased a couple of times prior to that during the main story of the game. She is given the codename Violet in the group and has her own Persona that she has access to.
She is a ballet dancer with a traumatic past that still haunts her to this day. The main story of the final section of Royal has to do with this exact trauma and a new villain that she helps to take down as a member of the Phantom Thieves.
Persona 5 Strikers Added Two Phantom Thieves Members
And if that was still not enough, then there was Persona 5 Strikers. This spin-off game from the developers of the Dynasty Warriors series took the Persona franchise in a new direction. Instead of having a turn-based JRPG, this game was focused on making it an action RPG.
At the same time, it is meant to be a direct, canonical story sequel to the original Persona 5. While it did not feature Akechi or Kasumi in the game due to joining the team late, it did feature two new party members, instead. Again, this is pretty hefty spoilers for these two characters joining the party so please bear that in mind.
Sophia
Sophia is humanity’s companion in Persona 5 Strikers and the first new member of the Phantom Thieves in that game. She is not a human at all but an android who looks like a real person. However, there is a lot of mystery surrounding her character when she first joins.
She is quite curious about humans and learning more about them. Even still, she has her own individual personality and a rather cheery one at that.
The final member period of the Phantom Thieves is also one of the most unique in Zenkichi Hasegawa. Late into Persona 5 Strikers, Zenkichi becomes a member formally of the group. He is the only adult on the team and is an investigator who works for the police in Japan.
Investigating the new threat in Persona 5 Strikers, he strikes a deal with the Thieves to help them in their work as a collaborator initially. In the end, though, he awakens to his own Persona abilities and helps them in the fight as the true final member (barring any new Persona 5 games or spin-offs) of the Phantom Thieves.
History of the Phantom Thieves
The Phantom Thieves have a rich history, encompassing the entirety of the longest Persona game to date. With many players needing 90 or even 100 or more hours to finish just the main story and not even all of the optional content, the history of the Phantom Thieves is an insane one.
I am going to give you a rundown of the history of this group from why it was founded in the first place to each of the new members that join it. I will also lightly touch upon the endings of all three of the main Persona 5 games in the series so please keep that in mind. While I will not reveal too many major story moments and twists, be sure to avoid this completely if you do not want any spoilers at all from the game.
Original Group
The story of Persona 5 begins with Joker (or Ren Amamiya as he is also known), Ryuji, and Morgana meeting one another. They are the initial members of the Phantom Thieves prior to their actual formal formation. They help in the events that are surrounding their high school.
With the tragic happenings at their school, they end up in the Metaverse and discover their powers. With the eventual help of Ann, the fourth member of the group to join and the first female thief, they are able to close up the case surrounding the high school volleyball coach.
After the conclusion of that event, they celebrate their hard-earned thievery and monetary rewards by heading to a fancy buffet restaurant. While there, the four members of the group decide to form the Phantom Thieves officially, with the formal name being one that the player is able to decide (though this really does not matter all that much).
With the four of them now forming the Phantom Thieves, they decide to continue using their powers for good. They form the plan to take on another mission to stop a bad guy from doing evil things. Though their goals are initially rather small in size, it quickly begins to grow into something much more.
Growing in Fame
After their first mission together, the Phantom Thieves then decide to tackle the issue of a troubled young artist named Yusuke whom they meet. The tragic past of this character is resolved and the villain in his life is dealt with as the group adds a fifth member to the team.
It is not long before this starts to stir up attention in the media as the Phantom Thieves have now shown their hands by taking down a more famous person. This leads to them wanting to go even bigger and garner even more glory by taking down a gangster who is terrorizing Tokyo.
Through the mission to take down this much more infamous target, they employ the services of Makoto, the student council president and all-around best student at their high school. At this point, the Phantom Thieves are starting to become fully formed in their ideals and goals.
After dealing with the gangster, the Phantom Thieves find themselves within the sights of groups around the world. This even includes the most famous hacker in the world who is revealed to be Futaba and eventually joins their group. From there, they gain the assistance of Haru, the daughter of a corporate CEO, and help her deal with a particularly personal enemy.
Finally, the police get involved and the Japanese society wishes to take down the Phantom Thieves who they believe are actually committing horrible crimes. In the midst of this, the final member of the original game and genius boy detective, Goro Akechi, joins the group.
Saving the World Multiple Times
With their group now complete (at least in the main game), the Phantom Thieves are able to avoid imprisonment and are able to save the world not once but twice within the same game. That is all the while not truly getting the recognition and credit they deserve for everything.
And that is all before including the events of later games. In Persona 5 Royal, the story expands and the Phantom Thieves gain another member in the dancer with a tragic past, Kasumi. Alongside her, they deal with her trauma while also saving the world once more.
And then in the events of Persona 5 Strikers, a new threat is on the horizon in the Metaverse. The Phantom Thieves have to reunite to stop this threat and eventually gain some new allies. It first begins with Sophia and later Zenkichi (the only adult to join the group) where they save society once more and without anyone even knowing.
FAQs
Question: What are the Phantom Thieves’ Personas based on?
Answer: Basically all of the Phantom Thieves members’ Personas are based on actual thieves. Be it real thieves from history or famous fictional burglars, they all have their roots in this area. It is meant to evoke the idea that the Phantom Thieves are stealing items themselves, even if it is for good reasons. Here is a quick rundown of the Personas for each of them. Joker’s first Persona is Arsene, which is based on the French fictional thief known as Arsene Lupin. Originally created by Maurice Leblanc, the altruistic character has appeared in books, movies, TV shows, and even anime.
Morgana has the Persona known as Zorro, who is based on the classic masked vigilante. For Ryuji, his Persona is Captain Kidd, the real Scottish pirate from the 17th century. Ann has the Persona Carmen, which is not necessarily a traditional thief but about the fictional Carmen from the fiction book about the seductive woman. There are other similar situations like these for the rest of the Phantom Thieves.
Question: What happens if you sell out the Phantom Thieves?
Answer: This particular question is a somewhat spoiler-filled one so you should keep that in mind. With that warning out of the way, there comes a point in the main story of Persona 5 where you do have the opportunity to sell out your Phantom Thieves friends if you want to.
Obviously, this is not something that Joker would canonically do since the Thieves are his best friends so it is something that the player should probably not attempt themselves. This is especially true if you would like to continue the main story of the game.
As such, you might be wondering what happens if you do sell out the Phantom Thieves at this particular moment. Should you choose to give in and tell the police the truth, you will receive an early ending to the game. It is pretty easy to avoid this bad ending but you do have multiple chances to sell out your team in this specific section.
The bad ending is a short one that ends soon after you sell out the identities of the Phantom Thieves members and will not end well at all. It might be worth viewing on YouTube or something for the novelty of finding out how it all ends but that’s about it. I mean, come on, who could be so heartless as to sell out their best friends who are just trying to save the world?
Question: Will the Phantom Thieves be in Persona 6?
Answer: While I am able to definitively answer the first two FAQs, this is the difficult one. Since we know nothing about the next Persona game, it is impossible to give a complete answer to this question. In fact, Persona 6 has not even been officially confirmed, though it is likely going to come out soon enough after the success of 5.
When it likely does release someday, the question of whether or not the Phantom Thieves will be in it is an interesting one. Thus far, the series has had an interesting relationship with its past games. Despite being numbered sequels, they are all essentially standalone titles, with the exception of the Persona 2 duology.
That said, there are almost endless references and even cameos from past games in each title. But not playing that previous game does not take away at all from these moments since they are so small and insignificant at times. In that way, it seems inevitable that the Phantom Thieves will be referenced in some way at least in Persona 6.
After all, Persona 5 is the biggest game in the series so ignoring it would be a shame and I doubt Atlus would do that. However, this could just come in the form of a news channel segment with a particular character or a poster of Ann as a supermodel, for instance.
Those are the standard references that we get in Persona games. That said, I would like to see a much more significant Phantom Thieves appearance in Persona 6, personally. We have seen party members from past games return as playable characters before but only in the case of Persona 1 and 2.
That has not happened since and I think it is high time for that to change. I am absolutely biased but I would love to see either Akechi or Kasumi (or both) return in Persona 6 as playable characters in the party. Even with Royal, they still had far less time than everyone else while being the best two Phantom Thieves members around. We could even see a Persona 2 situation where depending on the gender of your character or another choice, it determines which one joins the party.
Conclusion
The Phantom Thieves are, without a doubt, one of the greatest video game teams of all time. There is so much to love about the Persona 5 cast and the family-like group they have established. Though their actions are not perfect at times, their intentions and goals are for the betterment of society.
There is a lot of time that is spent with the members of the Phantom Thieves in Persona 5. Now that you have a good idea of who they all are, it is time to find out more about the general overview and gameplay for Persona 5 itself. If you’re looking for more knowledge about this game to get you ready to play it, this is the place to be.
Cody is a writer who discovered the Persona series about 10 years ago. As a huge Pokemon fan growing up, he was recommended to check it out on his PSP. He started with the very first game and when in sequential order before catching up with Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden cemented his love for the series. He was proud to be able to eventually spread his passion into the Shin Megami Tensei series and be there in time for the launch of Persona 5, which is one of his favorite games of all time.
