Formerly Japan's imperial capital for over a millennium, nicknamed the city of ten thousand shrines, and having the good fortune to survive WWII with so much historical architecture intact, Kyoto walks the line of being a highly modernized urban center and a cultural link to the past, like two worlds already mixed: the old and the new. Smartphones are unquestionable fixtures of the new; but in a world where there's an app for everything, who could have ever guessed they'd have an app for this.
One curious tap to the app and suddenly a thin, transparent sphere is instantly expanding outwards and altering the entire landscape, sending Kyoto back into the age of the rising middle class, courtesans and geisha, samurai and sumo wrestlers: the Edo period, the time of ukiyo. The initiator finds that he/she matches the times too, clothes and appearance changed appropriately. Even the phone itself has changed into something commonplace here, like a sword or fan. (But don't panic; a hidden panel in the handle ensures that the app is still a thumb press away.) Yes, like a beat hasn't been missed, the modern smartphone user blends right in with everyone else here.
Yet taking in the surroundings now, are the where and when really as true as they are obvious? There's something too idealized here -- no strife, no social tensions, people only work when they want to yet everyone has enough money, and apparently the courtesans are just doing it for fun?? The only grievance to this utopia seems to be the recent emergence of an unknown disease -- the only disease, from what can be discerned -- which infects the victim with sludgy, plague-type symptoms until they eventually succumb and turn into monsters and reach across the dimensions into the modern world and try to drag their still-living relations down into death too at 3 AM on a stormy night. Wait, what?
Yup, this is no time travel. One way or another, it's realized that this is in fact purgatory, an idyllic queue before inevitable rebirth. But these Elysian Fields are being tarnished by a darkness, by monsters and shadows. In time -- and hopefully sooner rather than later -- our volunteered heroes will have to discover and stop it at the source. For right now, though, please just clean up the 'monsters and shadows' bit.
Existing in the same machiya in both the modern world and the floating world, this curry house doesn't seem to receive a single patron outside the new 22 (even though the downtown real estate isn't that bad!). Yet upon returning to the modern world for the first time, the app suggests going there; it even plans your route for you. So go and meet the owner, Igor, who's a weird sort of guy with a very long schnoz; but he can tell you a lot about your Apperator, your Persona, and even yourself. For instance:
- Apperator: That little app of yours not only initiates a smooth dimension switch but alerts you too when other Arcana do, giving you the option to jump across where you are currently or join straight to another Arcana's location on the other side; very importantly, it also alerts when someone in the modern world is being attacked by something from purgatory.
- Persona: That youkai is a part of you! Embrace, don't abuse.
- Yourself: You're an Arcana now, and getting to know the others is a good idea. (He won't actually tell you why, but once your social link grows on a, say, color scale of [warm] roygbiv [cold], your Persona will begin to pull off stronger moves, even combos!)