~ Bad Perform ~

AKIHIKO SANADA

Akihiko Sanada is a senior along with Mitsuru Kirijo and Shinjiro Aragaki who attend Gekkoukan High School. He is also one of the original co-founding members of the SEES, a group of persona-users who dedicate their lives to fighting Shadows. Always appearing calm on the outside, he is full of passion on the inside. Akihiko is also the captain of the boxing team, as well as a great academic student who dedicates his daily life to physical training. He uses hand-worn weapons like gloves and knuckles in battle. His initial Persona Polydeuces, both specializing in thunder magic and debuff spells.

Akihiko grew up with Shinjiro Aragaki when they met each other at an orphanage. But then, one night, Akihiko lost his sister, Miki in a fire. Since then, he dedicated his life to training so that he can be strong enough to protect others, since he believed he failed to save Miki. When the main character's persona awakens for the first time, Akihiko cannot participate in battle for the first weeks of the game due to fighting a giant shadow while injuring himself in the process. As soon as he gets back up and recovers from his injuries, he joins the party in the fight against the Shadows. Akihiko also is a long-time friend of Shinjiro Aragaki, who quit SEES a long time ago. However, Shinjiro rejoins SEES along with its new members after Ken Amada decides to join as well.

Later in the game, it is revealed that two years ago, Mitsuru, Akihiko, and Shinjiro were fighting Shadows during the Dark Hour. On one fateful night, Shinjiro lost control of his persona, leading to the death of a woman bystander in the area. The woman happened to be Ken Amada's mother. Akihiko later figures out that Ken only joined SEES so that he can get his revenge on Shinjiro after what he did. Akihiko decided to prevent them from killing each other. The other SEES members cannot seem to find Ken and Shinjiro, but they could not take that as their priority mission because they had to defeat one of the twelve Arcana Shadows first. After defeating the Shadow, they immediately set out to look for them, with Akihiko absent during the fight, who went ahead. Ken invited Shinjiro to the same spot his persona lost control and killed Ken's mother. There, Akihiko and the others found them, with Shinjiro mortally wounded from Takaya's bullet. Takaya attempted to kill both Ken and Shinjiro, but Shinjiro used his own body as a shield to protect Ken.

Akihiko was devastated by the loss of his best friend. But he realized that Shinjiro's death wasn't a waste, and in turn gave Akihiko the courage and the strife to never give up the fight against the Shadows, and must face his fears head-on. He participated in the final battle against Nyx, and SEES was successful in saving the world from The Fall.