Ever since first playing Persona 5 at its worldwide release in 2017, I knew its cast was one of the most powerful elements of the masterful JRPG. The Persona characters you meet in the game are phenomenal and arguably better than nearly every other video game out there. Such is even the case for side characters such as Shinya Oda. Do you want to know? Read this Shinya Oda guide to find out!
You see, Shinya Oda is one of many Confidants in Persona 5 and Royal, being side characters that you can build a relationship with. I would argue that he is one of the most low-key characters around, not being too flashy or intriguing like some of the others.
But that is part of his appeal in having an underrated Confidant experience. Part of this comes from his almost essential skills that he grants to players who bond with him. Find out all about his Confidant and character in this Shinya Oda guide.
Bottom Line Up Front
There is nothing like schooling someone at video games; that is exactly what Shinya Oda’s character is all about. This Confidant in Persona 5 is all about the skills that put him at the top of the local arcades in Tokyo. While his story is unassuming at first, it actually gets quite deep.
It involves some difficult elements that many kids have to handle. As a reward for completing his storyline, players receive some of the most valuable combat skills that you can possibly get in Persona 5. Without a doubt, Shinya Oda is an underrated and must-try Confidant.
Shinya Oda Overview
There is a recurring theme in the Persona series I’ve noticed in my time that is not at all as flashy or evident as some of the other ones. Sure, ever since Persona 3, we’ve had those social links, typically a traitor in the main storyline, and even romance options that you can select between.
But there is another critical element of the story that some players may forget about, and that is the younger brother or sister-style character. We saw this in Persona 3 first with Ken Amada, the youngest member of the SEES team. He was like that little brother you had to watch out for in the JRPG.
This was followed up by Persona 4, with Nanako Dojima literally carrying that cast by herself. The young cousin of the main character was more like his little sister, even to the point of creating memes around the situation. What’s interesting is that Persona 5 didn’t actually stop this trend.
Contrary to how the game may seem, this trend continued, and, no, not with Futaba. She is a little bit older than the younger sibling archetype character. Instead, what Atlus did was make the kid sibling character in Persona 5 an optional person that you can, unfortunately, completely miss.
That person is none other than Shinya Oda, one of the many Confidants in Persona 5 and its Royal expanded version. This is a twist on the younger sibling character since they usually play a much larger role within the greater storyline. Still, Shinya is just there as a supporting cast member.
You can choose to seek out his Confidant or not; it’s ultimately up to you. The game will continue either way, and you can certainly beat the entire game without exploring his friendship. That said, you would be missing out on one of the most highly recommended Confidants around.
Shinya’s storyline is generally pretty good. I wouldn’t rank it in the top three of the Confidant stories and probably not even in the top five, but it gets the job done. It definitely takes some time to get going, so the real appeal here is in his skills. He has some immense skills that make him one of the most essential Confidants for players looking to get the most out of the gameplay.
Appearance Explained
Shinya Oda is an elementary school student in Persona 5. But he is sort of a pseudo-delinquent or troublemaker in that he doesn’t wear the typical school uniform that is associated with kids his age. And, let me tell you on a side note from experience of living in Japan, it is a huge no-no to not wear your school uniform after school.
It is clear from the appearance of Shinya alone that he is individualistic-minded. He wants to wear what he wants and not have anyone tell him what to do. Instead of the standard elementary school uniform, he wears his own casual clothes.
These include some rolled-up blue jeans on the bottom of his outfit. They are actually pretty lovely jeans and show a bit of style that Shinya has. These are matched up with some lighter blue sneakers that I would totally wear myself if I had them.
Shinya also has a blue sports jacket that he wears that is buttoned up. It is long-sleeved and mostly blue, but the arms are white. It is similar to a jersey, even having some words written on it. We can see that the jacket says “Noobs 16” in large letters and numbers across it.
The meaning behind this is a little obscure. Obviously, the noobs part has to do with the fact that he is schooling noobs every day at the arcades. But the 16 part is intriguing. He isn’t 16 years old, nor does it have much to do with the game that he plays.
I think the 16 is just there to represent 2016, also known as the year that Persona 5 was first released in Japan. Capping off his outfit, literally, is his red hat that has the words “get smoked” on it. This kid has all the confidence in the world, and it definitely shows.
Lastly, there is the backpack that he wears for school. It is a simple white and small red backpack that is unassuming. In the end, I would say that Shinya has great taste in colors with the blue motif throughout his clothing, giving him a unique style over the other kids his age who just wear the usual school uniform.
Key Moments
Some slight spoilers will follow, understandably so, for the Confidant storyline of Shinya Oda but not much else other than that. When Joker first meets Shinya, the latter is known as The King of the Arcades. Around Electric Town, he is the best player at the game Gun About.
His reputation is unmatched, except for the small fact that he was recently dethroned by a cheater. Unfortunately, with no way to take him down at the time, he continues his goal of getting better and smoking everyone that challenges him.
Shinya finds solace in his reign of terror as the Gun About King. However, outside of the arcades, he is actually not at all as confident or harsh-speaking. He deals with a lot of struggles at home and at school, which is why it seems likely that he skips classes at times.
He deals with a lot of bullies at school that make his life miserable, and it doesn’t help that his mother makes it worse. Though she is a loving and caring mom, she makes everything even harder for Shinya by fighting back against his school and the bullies.
She becomes harsher over time, resulting in even threatening Joker when he gets to know Shinya on a deeper level. The relationship with Shinya is a difficult one that is eventually resolved, but only through Joker and the rest of the Phantom Thieves changing his mother’s heart.
Much of Shinya’s story is pretty complicated, a lot like the rest of Persona 5, in that there are many layers to it. You can sometimes understand the “antagonist” in the storyline, like his mother. It is great at capturing the sometimes strained relationships between parent and child. However, it takes some time to get going, more so than most Confidants.
Voice Actor
Shinya Oda has a few different voice actors, even in English, due to the disparity between the cast in the video games and the anime adaptation. For both Persona 5 and Royal, the voice of the young video game king is Barbara Goodson.
Here’s what’s pretty wild about Goodson. Many people know Johnny Yong Bosch as a former Power Ranger-turned-voice actor and protagonist of Persona 4. What some may not know is that he is far from the only member of that series to do games.
The infamous Rita Repulsa, the main antagonist of the Power Rangers, voices Shinya Oda in the games. Another popular role for her is Chiyo in the Naruto series, including the anime and video game adaptations. On the other hand, the anime oddly enough saw Eden Riegel take over.
Riegel was a star on All My Children and has also done quite a bit of voice acting. Some of my favorite roles of hers include Estelle in Tales of Vesperia and Diana in Zero Time Dilemma. Ironically, this is far from her only role in the Persona games, including Persona 5 itself.
Prior to Persona 5, she was the wonderful Marie in Persona 4 Golden. While she did not voice Shinya Oda in the game, she did voice another Confidant, Hifumi Togo.
Meanwhile, hopping across the pond to Japan, the Japanese voice actor for Shinya Oda is Aki Kaneda. She is no stranger to the Persona series herself. Though she is not in the other games, she played a role in the Persona Trinity Soul anime.
This anime series is one that many Persona fans may not even know about. I know of it, but I’ve never watched it myself, despite being a Persona and anime fan. In fact, I’ve seen the Persona 3 movies and not this, despite it being a sequel to Persona 3.
This is due to how hard it is to find and watch legally these days. It is basically impossible outside of paying exorbitant prices for the DVDs. But I hope to see it at some point and experience Kaneda’s role in it, plus the much older version of Akihiko Sanada.
Confidant Explained
The crux of Shinya Oda’s story in Persona 5 comes from his Confidant. He has a totally optional Confidant that is actually a little bit annoying and confusing to unlock, so it is quite easy to miss him in the game, especially how late he shows up. Thankfully, I’ve got your back. Here’s when to unlock him, how to do so, and everything else you need to know about Shinya Oda’s Confidant.
How to Unlock Shinya Oda’s Confidant
First off, before you can do anything else, you need to unlock the ability to complete the Shinya Oda Confidant. The Tower Confidant is one of the more obscure characters in Persona 5. Without a doubt, if you don’t complete every little detail of the JRPG or look up guides, there is a strong chance you will miss out on this character.
This is partly due to the fact that it takes forever to even unlock the Shinya Oda Confidant. You aren’t able to even start his relationship until a massive chunk of the way through the game. It all starts on September 4, at the earliest, when you are finally able to meet Shinya and build your relationship with him.
You can’t even start his Confidant before this point, which is crazy since you are essentially more than halfway done with the game at that point. Given that most of the game’s events come to a conclusion at the end of the year, minus what happens in Royal’s third semester, this is pretty wild.
This means that players not only deal with having to wait a very long time to unlock Shinya and his various Confidant abilities, but your deadline is sharper since you don’t have the breadth of time to do it like the others. It also makes it unfortunate that you can’t use his gun skills in battle until this point, reducing the effectiveness of some of them in the process.
Mementos Request Explained
On September 4, when you can finally unlock Shinya Oda at the earliest, here is what you need to do. You know those Mementos requests that you get from people for the Phantom Thieves? You should receive a new one that you can accept and take on that is called Winners Don’t Use Cheats.
The key here is to engage in this Mementos request right from the start, which is unique for a Confidant. Usually, you don’t get a request from the Confidants until much deeper into the relationship. But this Mementos request is required for even unlocking Shinya in the first place.
The general idea is to go as soon as you can to Mementos once you have this request. To do so, head to Shibuya and find out the identity of the cheater. Then in Mementos, find the cheater and attempt to take his shadow down in battle like in the many other requests before this one.
Except, there is a twist this time around. There is nothing that you can do to damage or defeat the cheater at this time. They really are so good at cheating that they have even somehow cheated Mementos itself. From there, you can find Shinya at the arcades in Akihabara.
He will then want to meet the Phantom Thieves in exchange for helping with the cheater request. After this point, you want to talk to Futaba, and she will offer to help contact Shinya as part of the Phantom Thieves.
Then, finally following all of this, speaking to Shinya again once the Phantom Thieves have contacted him will allow you to start his actual Confidant once and for all. I know it is absolutely insane that it took this long, but we’re here.
Availability
After unlocking Shinya Oda’s Confidant, you can raise your ranks with him on the following days:
- Monday: Daytime
- Tuesday: Daytime
- Thursday: Daytime
- Saturday: Daytime
- Rainy days: Day or night at the arcade
You will be able to find Shinya Oda at his usual spot at the arcades in Akihabara on those respective days. As always, make the right conversation choices you think the kid would like to progress in the friendship as fast as possible, especially given the small window of time.
Tower Confidant Ranks
As a reward for completing Shinya Oda’s Confidant, you will receive some special skills. And this is where the real fun begins, and that is why I highly recommend his ranks to everyone. He is the master of the Gun About arcade game, so he will teach you some valuable skills that help with gunfights in the Metaverse.
Here are all of the skills that you learn across the different ranks of the Shinya Oda Confidant. Keep in mind that not all ranks will offer you new abilities, but the faster that you do these ranks, the faster you will be able to take advantage of these skills:
- Rank 1: Down Shot – This is an insane ability that lets you shoot all of your bullets to instantly down an enemy. There is no understating how important this skill is, especially in some of the boss fights. If you aren’t a gun user like I was, this is a great way to use up the bullets that are going to waste.
- Rank 2: Bullet Hail – Once the party has ambushed some enemies in battle, you will sometimes have an All-Out Attack that you can use that uses your team’s guns.
- Rank 3: Warning Shot – With this more passive skill, it will make it slightly easier to recruit Personas during negotiations. They will be occasionally afraid of the warning shot and more readily agree to join your party.
- Rank 5: Ammo Pouch – This is a simple and, therefore, unexciting ability. All it does is up the total number of bullets that you can hold in your ammo pouch at once. If you’re not into using the gun skills in the game, this might be useless to you.
- Rank 6: Cheap Shot – This is essentially an upgrade for the Down Shot that you learned at the first Confidant rank. Instead of requiring you to use up all of your bullets for the Down Shot, you will now have some still left over. This effectively means that you could possibly use this insanely powerful attack twice sometimes.
- Rank 8: Electric Slug – This is a simple upgrade ability for the Bullet Hail from Confidant rank 2. It doesn’t honestly do all that much but just makes the special gun All-Out Attack slightly more powerful than before. If you find yourself ambushing enemies a lot, it might make those fights even easier.
- Rank 10: Oda Special – This is the final skill you learn, and it is Shinya Oda’s signature ability. This nearly broken ability will allow all of Joker’s gun-based attacks and skills to completely bypass all resistances that an enemy could have to it and damage them. Even if they are immune to gun skills, this will render that immunity a dud. There are some truly hard fights that you face that this makes a whole lot easier. The only downside to it is that it is only available for Joker’s attacks, for some odd reason.
FAQs
Question: How do you start Shinya Oda in Persona 5?
Answer: The TL;DR is that you can unlock Shinya Oda beginning on September 4. Accept the Winners Don’t Use Cheats request in Mementos, and it will eventually lead you to him.
Question: What days is Shinya available?
Answer: These are the days and times that Shinya Oda is available for hanging out in Persona 5 and Royal:
• Monday: Daytime
• Tuesday: Daytime
• Thursday: Daytime
• Saturday: Daytime
Rainy days: Day or night at the arcade
Question: Who has Tower Arcana Persona 5?
Answer: The Tower Arcana is represented by Shinya Oda, the star of this guide, in Persona 5 and the Royal version.
Conclusion
If you are an older sibling or just love having the best gameplay options possible, checking out the Shinya Oda Confidant in Persona 5 is a must. Honestly, it is possible to experience all Confidants fully in Persona 5 Royal in your first playthrough (I did it myself!), so there is no excuse for missing out on Shinya’s storyline.
I enjoyed the younger and older sibling dynamic that happens between Shinya and Joker in Persona 5 as the Confidant ranks go on. However, I will admit that it is definitely as impressive as the similar relationships that happened in both Persona 3 and 4. If you want something more traditional, honestly better, and a little bit more crucial to the overall plot, check out the relationship between Yu Narukami from Persona 4 and his “little sister,” Nanako.
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