Velvet Room

From MegatenWiki

The Velvet Room (ベルベットルーム) is a special facility can be accessed throughout the Persona series. As its name suggests, the room is decorated by blue velvet. The Velvet Room changes its layout with each game - in the first two games, it appears as a ballroom, in Persona 3, it appears as an elevator, and in Persona 4, it is inside a well-appointed limousine. In the former two circumstances, the Velvet Room's state of constant motion are a metaphor for the main character's journey. Its residents, who are well-dressed, address themselves the servants of Philemon. They are friendly and willing to offer any help to the chosen Persona users. Primarily, the Velvet Room is the place to summon new Personae. Other services vary between games.

[edit] Residents of Velvet Room

• Igor (イゴール): Master of Velvet room, a marionette given life by Philemon. His noticeable appearance comes from his Tengu/Pinocchio-like long nose. In Persona 1 and 2, he dials his devil cell-phone to listen to a touching story and cry to summon a new Persona. In Persona 3 and 4, he just shuffles the cards in the air, encasing them in a magic circle to initiate the fusion process.
• Nameless (Nanashi / ナナシ / 名無氏): A pianist in suite who playing various pieces. In order to concentrate on performance, he covers his eyes. Nameless also has an obsession with numbering, which is parodied in the Persona 2 Drama CD.
• Belladonna: A soprano in Persona 1 and 2 sings the song accompanied with Nameless. She covers her ears in order to concentrate on her performance.
• Demon Artist: Only available in Persona 2. At the player's request, he will convert the Free Tarot cards into any other arcana card, except for Fool and minor arcana. He is a self portrait of series artist Kazuma Kaneko. He wears shades despite the already dim light of the room. This may be a handicap similar to what the other denizens of the Velvet Room employ to concentrate on their roles.
• Elizabeth (エリザベス): Only appears in Persona 3. A mysterious "elevator girl" who doesn't understand many things about the outside world. She gives optional quests to player and rewards you with items or money, which usually has to do with retrieval of objects from and outside Tartarus that is mostly for her personal uses. In FES, the player will occasionally have the option to take her out on a date to show her what the outside world is like. She is also the optional super-boss of the games, which requires tricky timing to defeat. In battle she uses multiple Personas like the protagonist, and one of her Personas is a Pixie that has Diarahan and Megidolaon(possible reference to the 'super Pixie' in Nocturne). Persona 4 reveals that Elizabeth departed the Velvet Room after the events in FES.
• Margaret : Elizabeth's elder sister who takes her place at Igor's side for Persona 4. She is also a Social Link and the player has to fuse Personas with specific skills for her to gain ranks, much like some of Elizabeth's quests in P3. Despite her serious appearence, she proves to have a strange sense of humor and constantly attempts to makes puns that fall flat. Like her sister she also happens to be an optional boss, saying that she wants to know for herself why Elizabeth left despite her own search for 'the answer' as a resident of the Velvet Room.

[edit] Music

There is 1 original theme composed by Shoji Meguro - Poem of All Humans' Soul - which is revised in each Persona sequence. The theme in P1 and P2 is a piano piece with soprano singing the melody, thus the 'original' version of the theme. The Velvet Room in P2 also plays other classical pieces including Beethoven's piano Sonata No.8 (first half of first movement only), Debussy's Clair de Lune, Erik Satie's Gymnopédie 1, etc. They're chosen randomly when each time player enters. The full-orchestral version of Velvet Room in P3 is revised based on Poem of All Humans' Soul of P1 arrange album, while P4 reuses P3s. The English name of the Velvet Room theme is 'Aria of the Soul'.

In P3, the Velvet Room theme is also rearranged to a battle rock version with soprano singing the 2nd half part, Battle of All Humans' Soul, played during the second to last battle. (This is the de facto last battle where the player can actually fight the enemy, the true last battle is a scripted one.) In P3 OST there's a bonus track of arranged Velvet Room theme, Blues in the Velvet Room, which is a shorter blues version. In P4 OST there's a bonus track called Electronica In Velvet Room with the vocal part seemingly sung by Miku of Yamaha Vocaloid.