I know celebrities are just richer, more out-of-touch versions of us peasants, but I do admit I get a bit of a kick out of seeing them obsessing over the same videogames as me—Keke Palmer playing The Sims and Tekken, Doja Cat’s current journey through Final Fantasy 14, that one time Lady Gaga played Bayonetta.
But there is perhaps no bigger celebrity nerd than artist The Weeknd. I mean, his Instagram profile picture is literally drawn by Final Fantasy royalty Yoshitaka Amano, y’all. The Weeknd knows ball. I’m not at all jealous, by the way.
But perhaps my favourite The Weeknd arc has been his journey with the Persona series since earlier this year. He’s been posting an absurd amount of his time playing the games over on his alt Instagram account, and it’s been an absolute joy to see him becoming just as obsessed with the series as I am.
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He’s been making his way through both Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Royal, but it’s the latter game that really seems to have grabbed his attention. Particularly Tae Takemi, the doctor who you take all sorts of odd medicine from and, more importantly, serves as one of the game’s romance options.
What started as sharing his devastation at fumbling her romance option has now progressed into a full case of Down Bad, and The Weeknd’s Tae Takemi craze has known no bounds. Pop over to his Instagram stories and you’re almost guaranteed to see something about her on there—as I write this, there’s a surprisingly excellent mashup of his song Popular and Butterfly Kiss, the song that plays while in Takemi’s clinic.
He’s been posting goofy little tweets too—like one where he responds to a post of somebody getting his vinyl signed by Takemi’s voice actress with a clip from his own music video where he’s sobbing while typing “PLEASE talk to me!” All with Takemi’s face edited over it, of course.
The biggest one yet, though, is what I can only assume is a Photoshopped image of him with a giant Tae Takemi tattoo blasted over his upper arm. It doesn’t quite look real enough to be legit, and scouring some recent concert vids makes me pretty certain this is just once again The Weeknd Tae-posting to hell and back. But hey, would I be surprised if he actually got it? Absolutely not.
The Weeknd’s even had the pleasure of visiting the Atlus offices to play a little bit of Persona 4 Revival early, as well as scope out what’s going on with Persona 6. Once again, definitely not insanely jealous or anything.
It has sparked questions of whether he’ll end up featuring on Persona 6’s soundtrack, though. For those not familiar with the series, Atlus tends to go for a pretty distinct sound with each game in the series, and a lot of that tight branding and audio identity comes from sticking to just one or two artists each time. You could play just the vocals from a Persona game and immediately clock which one it’s from based purely on who is singing it.
And of course, with The Weekend’s current obsession and Atlus visit, people are wondering whether he’ll show up. I couldn’t imagine Atlus dedicating just a small track to him, but I also can’t imagine an entire score with his vocals behind it. With Persona 6 looking like a grittier theme this time, The Weeknd’s vocals are maybe a little too soft for the vibe. But hey, who knows? Maybe we’ll be seeing him on the soundtrack after all.
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