Guernica

Guernica is one of the antagonists of the Repaint Your Heart DLC in Persona 5 Tactica. She is a world-famous street artist and vandal who was sucked into the other world and was manipulated by Jerri to enforce world annihilation.
==Appearances== 
*Persona 5 Tactica: Antagonist, Supporting Character (DLC)
==Design==
Guernica has long white hair, violet eyes, bleached skin, and her arms are covered in black tattoo. She wears a black gas mask, white sports bra, wears a white coat wrapped around her waist and white pants covered with black, red, blue, and green paints. She also wears black shoes, and her pants have a mouse tail attached to it.
After being snapped out from Jerri's manipulations, Guernica is revealed to have cobalt blue hair, dark red eyes and a darker complexion like Luca's and the coat wrapped around her body becomes black.
When young, Tao looks mostly identical to Luca, although she's slightly taller and lacks a cowlick.
== Personality ==
Guernica is introduced as a vulgar, violent killer void of any morals. Her only goal is to attack the denizens of The Streets to reclaim her lost sense of artistic inspiration and is under the impression that spreading death is the only way to do so, being driven by a directionless omnicidal rage towards society. Akechi describes Guernica in this state as being nothing more than a murderous psychopath.
In actuality, Guernica was once a guerilla graffiti artist who used her art to express her rage against the unfairness and cruelty of society in disruptive, flamboyant murals that cover entire building facades with the intent of shocking society. She exposes the injustice within it in hopes of inspiring others to hope for something better. Having grown up homeless and impoverished, and lost her sister to starvation, Guernica lives with the grief of that loss, feeling as though society robbed her of what was most important to her. She uses that grief to inspire her art, and feels sympathy for others who are downtrodden and hurting. She feels a kinship towards others like her who try to combat injustice, particularly the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. However after losing her sense of inspiration, she was captured and manipulated by Jerri, and was transformed against her will into the monster that she was introduced as. After being transformed, she lost all of her memories, nearly completely forgetting everything except her rage towards society, resulting in an unbridled wrath against humanity as Jerri desired, although given the existence of the Luca copy that Jerri cannot directly remove inside the streets, there is still a shred of her that yearned for help.
After being confronted by Luca, Guernica began experiencing serious migraines, being nearly debilitated by the pain. This was the result of her true personality going to war with the false one imposed on her, and begins questioning her reality. After Jerri almost completely wipes Guernica of her entire personality, she becomes all the more powerful and violent, becoming nearly mindless and frenzied as a result. After Luca manages to restore her memories, Guernica reverts to her true personality.
==Profile ==
===Persona 5 Tactica===
Guernica was born Tao, a street orphan who was abandoned by their parents at a young age alongside her elder sister, Luca. The two had no home and had to make a living by fighting for scraps and selling trash like bottles they can find from trash. During hard times, Luca would assure that she's full even if she is clearly suffering. To get people to notice them, the siblings participated in graffiti, and once they got into it, it became their world. One they, they came across a large mural and wanted to make one themselves, so they took their entire day completing it, even forgetting to eat or drink as they are working on it. The mural would be known as their "First Statement Piece."
Unfortunately, Luca died eventually (likely because of starvation), overwhelming Tao with grief and anger. Therefore, she turned to street graffiti vandalism and rechristened herself as "Guernica". She defaced multiple public buildings in Tokyo with her graffiti anonymously, earning her worldwide fame and caught the attention by authorities and the media. There are supporters who wanted Guernica's murals to be kept for their artistic value and resonating messages and others who want it removed as quickly as possible. Her supporters call her "The People's Punk." Because of the sheer virulence and anonymity of her crimes, the police eventually asked Goro Akechi to help in investigating and potentially apprehend her.
It was by this time where Guernica was captured by Jerri, who stole, broken and discarded her heart's core (taking the form of her first statement piece with Luca split into three pieces), and was corrupted into a raging maniac who desires to annihilate humanity through her art. In actuality, Jerri is heavily implied to be a subordinate of Salmael who desires the obliteration of humanity through social chaos in exchange for eternal tranquillity and wanted a pawn to carry out her dirty work. Part of Guernica however, still wants to be freed, as shown with the copy of Luca inside her street and the graffiti of Arsène being sucked into a portal which also acts as an actual portal that summons the Phantom Thieves to save her.
The Phantom Thieves first meet Guernica with Jerri when she was slaughtering "Mouscots" on the street (actually miniature copies of Luca in rat costumes). Yoshizawa rushes right in front of her and asks her to stop killing these people, but Guernica asks her if she just walked right in front of her and tell her what to do. When Yoshizawa insisted that she stopped killing people, she tries to kill the party instead. After being seemingly cornered for the first time, she calls Jerri out to finish the party and she surrounds them with Legionnaires only for a copy of Luca to open a manhole and drop them underground, saving them.
Throughout the story, Jerri takes every opportunity possible to manipulate Guernica into encroaching the real world and enforce tranquility through bloodshed with her graffiti art. Having been learnt of the truth from the copy Luca, the party sets on a journey to collect three murals that would form a large mural she created with Guernica to save her. She would frequently attempt to halt the protagonists and Luca on their way to retrieving the murals.
However, after a confrontation with Luca, Guernica would find herself suffering from migraines and forced to retreat. From this point on, Jerri slowly loses her grip on Guernica, and even as she applies more and more pressure unto her, it comes out with declining success.
When the party successfully gathers three murals and reaches Jerri's room, Jerri summons a berserk Guernica who is near-mindless. However, after she's defeated the last time, the copy Luca sacrifices herself to restore Guernica's memories. Guernica mistakes the copy Luca as the real article, as she assures her younger sister that she's fine and content vanishing as Guernica breaks into tears. After being restored to normal, she assists the party in defeating Jerri, unlocking blue tiles for them to walk atop of using her paint gun. In the middle of the battle, Jerri proved to be too much of a match against the party. Despite her claims that she has full control over her world, Guernica taunts that she doesn't because of the Luca copy she cannot directly eradicate out of it. She defaces her and turns the entire floor into terrain that the party can freely walk through.
After Jerri's defeat, she gives her thanks to the Phantom Theives and tells them that they will meet again even if their memories of this event will be wiped before she and the party returns to the real world.
Once back in the real world, Guernica returns to her old antics, defacing a government building with a large mural and catching the attention of the media. She ensures to herself that she will meet the Phantom Thieves again with a smile. Meanwhile, Minister Kasukabe and his son are watching the broadcast and discussed about her newest mural and the impact it would cause.
==Gallery ==
P5T Guernica Character Art.png|
P5T Guernica with mask.png|
P5T Guernica 1.png|
P5T Guernica 2.png|
P5T Guernica 4.png|
P5T Guernica and Jerry 1.png|Guernica and Jerri
Jerri defaced by Guernica.png|Guernica defacing Jerri
P5T Guernica concept art 1.png|Concept art
P5T Guernica concept art 2.png|Concept art
P5T Guernica concept art 3.png|Concept art
P5T Guernica concept art 4.png|Concept art
P5T Guernica gun concept art.png|Guernica's gun concept art
==Etymology==
*Her nickname is based on 's oil painting, , which was drawn by Picasso after the bombing of the Basque town Guernica to warn people about the terrors of war. This correlates to her bloodthirsty nature when under Jerri's influence, but also symbolizes how she was only corrupted into the deal, and worldwide annihilation is not what she originally desired.
==Trivia==
*Guernica is an avid fan and supporter of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts.
*Guenica's character arc bares resemblance to both Yoshizawa's and Akechi's own arcs.
**Like Akechi, Guernica was considered an outcast by society, but later became widely recognized because of her talents, which shes use to expose injustice, albeit in different forms. Both harbor a seething hatred for society and grieve the loss of a loved one who died a preventable death brought on by societal neglect. Both are driven to become violent murderers by abusive, prideful, manipulative authority figures (Masoyoshi Shido and Jerri, respectively) who are part of grand conspiracy to warp cognition of the masses out of a distorted purpose of fulfilling society's subconscious desires, and serve (unknowingly or knowingly) the god who embodies that societal desire (Yaldabaoth, and Salmael, respectively). Finally, both have a deep love for heroes of justice and desired to be one themselves, but have lost sight of it by the time they are introduced. However, while Akechi abandoned his own sense of justice on his own will out of a blind desire of revenge, Guernica was outright brainwashed and had her memories removed to further Jerri's goals.
**Like Yoshizawa, Guernica has lost her elder sister, and copes very poorly with that loss. Both are talented individuals who shared their talent with their sisters (with the sisters being the reason they involved themselves talent in the first place), and are now struggling with self-doubt and inspiration in the face of perceived failures. Both of them have been manipulated by a trusted authority figure, having their heart, memories and entire identity warped in accordance to a wish they made, robbing them of their ability to face or even acknowledge that loss. The beings who manipulated them, Takuto Maruki and Jerri, are powerful beings with the ability to warp cognition, and orchestrate grandiose schemes to manipulate the masses under the pretense of their betterment and lasting peace, but would ultimately harm them one way or another. Both end up at odds with their sisters in some form and are eventually forced to confront the cognitive memory of their sisters, who eventually become a part of them and give them strength to keep moving forward, and both are compelled by their manipulators to act in an antagonistic role. The difference is that Maruki manipulated Yoshizawa's cognition out of a warped, yet genuine desire to help her, and only drove her to attack Joker and Akechi as a brief deterant, while Jerri is an evil deity who is really only using Guernica to her own ends.
**She also shares similarities with Joker: Guernica is a victim of the unfairness of society, and both are arbitrarily marked as trash for reasons out of their control. She uses a form of extravagant vigilante justice to combat and shed light onto the injustice outside the purview of the law, much like Joker does. Also like Joker, she also unknowingly became a pawn in a larger scheme of a malevolent god, seeking to control the will of the masses due to their collective wish for false stability over true justice. Both of them are granted power by these gods, but eventually rebel against them and help to defeat them.
* Her artwork has the ability to resonate with people's hearts and bring forth their emotions. However, it's implied that this power is actually bestowed by Jerri.
*She is fought for a total of four times in the game, the most of any non-respawning boss in the Persona series.
==References ==
Category:Persona 5 Tactica Characters
Category:Persona 5 Tactica Enemies
Category:Persona 5 Tactica Allies