Akira Konoe

Akira Konoe is a character from Persona 5 Strikers. He is the CEO of the multi-billion IT company Madicce.

Akira Konoe was the CEO of the IT company Madicce, who maintains and services the nationally popular digital assistant application, EMMA.

When Konoe was young, he lived in an extremely abusive household where his father killed his mother for money and hated him to the point that he just wanted to murder him. His neighbours tried to call police in but failed because he was the CEO of Madicce. 20 years ago, his father came in to kill him, but Konoe thought it was a burglary. Konoe was watching Zephyrman at that time, so he wished for Zephyrman to kill whoever tried to kill him. Mistaking that this was a burglar, he rushed out of his room and killed him before he could.

As a grown man, Konoe took over Madicce from his father. Kuon Ichinose sold the base code of the AI EMMA app in hopes of Konoe improving it. Because of his past trauma, he wanted to modify the app to make a world devoid of crimes and thus fashioning himself as a hero. Using it, his company, Madiccebecame a billion dollar mega enterprise. After Ichinose sold EMMA to him, he loaned it to a research lab in Okinawa in order to grant it psientific knowledge, turning its denizens into fervent believers of the return of god. Eventually, the Monarch of the Jail and the chef researcher, Shuzo Ubukata was driven insane and committed suicide by jumping off a cliff (presumably) when Konoe told him to hand out his desires, which functions like a Calling Card to him. It's heavily implied that after such events, he used the application on himself, making him the Monarch of Osaka. During the events of the game, he also offered heart changing services to Jyun Owada, affecting multiple unscrupulous politicians and the Commissioneer General of the National Police Agency who opposed Owada, although he already planned on taking him down from the beginning. All of his targets happened to set foot on Osaka when he changed their hearts, as Osaka was where his Jail took place and he is only able of affecting it by himself. The Phantom Thieves of Hearts later became one of his targets of his blind pursuit of justice, using the excuse that they were hacking into EMMA and killing Shuzo Ubukata. Both crimes are fabricated and are merely used to justify his deluded crusade of justice. His final goal is to spread the Jail system worldwide so there will be no more crimes, known as "Operation Oraculi."

He first appears during a lecture in Kuon Ichinose's university, where he talks about EMMA being capable of deciding everything for its user. He seems to be a confident and charismatic businessman, and doesn't talk about any abnormalities. After he leaves, Ichinose told the party that she invited him into there.

When the Thieves return to Kyoto, Owada, being accompanied by the brainwashed Commissioneer General, strongarms Kaburagi into arresting the Thieves only for Zenkichi to halt her and take their place. He inquires Konoe the status of the Thieves' arrest and tells him to trust the Police. In reality, Konoe distrusts Owada and turns to EMMA for advice. She suggests that he should utilize a nearby Jail formed by a close one to capture them instead because the police were unable to do so. Konoe wanted to have them change the Phantom Thieves' hearts if possible, and kill them if they fail to change their hearts. Since Akane Hasegawa created a Jail right before then, this makes her the only available target. EMMA quickly creates a Jail in Kyoto and turns Akane Hasegawa into its Monarch. It then replicates a distress SNS that results in the Phantom Thieves being captured and later, confronting a manipulated Shadow Akane. He does not know that he was manipulating Akane due to EMMA not bothering to tell him about her.

He is the owner of the Osaka's Jail, which takes the form of a sci-fi utopia that makes him the sole hero of the world, for his EMMA app will wipe out all crimes. Unlike past targets, Akira actually did earn his popularity legitimately instead of using the EMMA application to artificially inflate it. In fact, when he shut down EMMA temporarily, many are so reliant on it that they request him to reopen its services. The Phantom Thieves also found out for the first time that Konoe had good intentions despite his malicious methods, and he actually had a traumatic past that motivated him to instigate the EMMA related incidents. When he talked about his very own version of absolute justice, he meant every word he said, as after a seemingly friendly conversation with Owada, he calls him a "disgusting vermin that would be removed first after this," indicating that he wanted to remove Owada from the very beginning and is just trying to catch him off guard.

Once the party defeats the Lock Keeper located in his household, they send the calling card by hijacking a Madicce Zeppelin and drop them. While at first completely unfazed by the calling card (largely because of his prideful nature and the calling card was poorly written), he realized that the plan to use Kyoto's Jailas a trap against the Phantom Thieves had failed because EMMA refused to answer his query and he throws his cellphone into the floor out of anger.

When confronted by the Phantom Thieves, Shadow Konoe explains EMMA and the Jails to the Phantom Thieves, then tries to justify his actions, telling the party that just like them, he's tired of the world's corruption and injustices, and thus he used EMMA and the Jails to create a system that ensures crime and wrongdoing can no longer exist and he is merely "systematizing" whatever the Phantom Thieves are doing. However, the Phantom Thieves rebuke him, stating that his "Operation Oraculi" disregards free will much unlike them, and that none of the people he "saved," Monarchs or the public alike, looked happy to begin with. Shadow Konoe then tries to further justify himself using the example of his father, that the Phantom Thieves are unable save people like him, but with this Jail system, he will be able to prevent anyone from ever experiencing what his father tried to do to him. This was to no avail, as even Sophiestarts chiding him for locking people in their own traumas and preventing them from moving forward.

Realizing that he can no longer get his reason through, Konoe attacks the party. He reveals his Shadow outfit, a Sentai Ranger suit modeled after Zephyrman and controls a massive armored robot named "Zephyrus Mech." After it collapses, he emerges out of the robot's debris and fights them on foot, but was defeated nonetheless. The real Konoe confesses for all of his crimes on the next day and promises to shut down the EMMA app because he used it to brainwash the public. During the next Madicce meeting, Konoe personally confesses to his staff and promises to turn himself to the police, before Zenkichi Hasegawa and Miyako Kaburagi arrive to arrest him in-person. Only now then he knew that EMMA was using the daughter of the officer who was responsible for his arrest to achieve his "salvation."

During the game's final act, it was revealed that Ichinose sold the application Konoe in hopes of his company's tech will let the application go popular so it can determine the desires of the general public, and the Phantom Thieves changing Konoe's heart merely enabled this behavior to trigger, because the public wished for EMMA to give them advice. In the game's epilogue, he gives the police valuable testimony to arrest Owada for good.