A.I.G.I.S

A.I.G.I.S is the third Labyrinth in Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth.

Details
A reality in the movie world that is based on Aigis and sci-fi robot movies, where people begin to start ugly wars based on their own beliefs and destroyed the very world they live in. An AI has managed to take over the ruins of the world and rebuilt it into a utopia built from identical-looking black robots devoid of emotions or personality. Having uniqueness and personality is considered a crime in this new world and utopia can only be reached by making every robot identical, emotionless beings. However, a robot had somehow managed to obtain personality, and it could potentially disrupt the order of the AI's utopia.

The movie Labyrinth takes the form of a futuristic city inhabited by identical looking black robots. A research laboratory acts as its depths and at the deepest floor is the commanding and disposal center that contains the remains of disposed of robots and houses the Mother Computer, an omnipotent AI that detests any uniqueness and personality. It is unlocked after a key created Doe is used to break one of the locks at the Cinema exit.

Upon entering the labyrinth, Minako picks up an Evoker, indicating that S.E.E.S must be nearby. Further in they encounter the Persona 3 cast with Vanitas fighting a massive horde of the featureless robots and were seemingly overwhelmed until they come in and help them fend off the robot horde. Despite Minako thinking that they are her comrades and greets them after the fight and also recognized them at full detail, they do not recognize her at all due to not originating from her reality, which she responds with sadness, while the P3 cast is shocked as Minako calls them by their names and even holds a real Evoker and the real SEES emblem despite they do not recognize her. After defeating the robot, the P3 cast and Vanitas join the party inside the cinema lobby.

The P3 cast landed here when they were exploring Tartarus, in which its floor collapses with the only exit being a light on top of it. Once they reach the movie reality, their leader and Aigis were also reported missing, and to make matters worse, their leader accidentally dropped his Evoker in the movie entrance, leaving him unable to summon his Persona and putting the life of the two in danger. Futaba actively joins the party and is fully formed instead of appearing as a hologram during this arc, as she has agreed to directly join because of her interest in technology.

The Labyrinth features monitor drone F.O.Es known as KNS-1000 which will alert the stronger F.O.Es in the area (appearing as large security robots) to pursue and attack the party. They are much weaker than other F.O.Es in the game as their objective is to alert the stronger F.O.Es in the area and can be defeated in order to prevent them from taking action, as the stronger F.O.Es can move two steps per player step and easily outrun them.

Midway in, a robot resembling Aigis was asked by other robots to undergo initialization. She willingly accepts but was stopped by the party, who defeats the robots. They managed to persuade the robot to become their escort despite it does not seem to have any abilities in it that would benefit them and it was constantly in a self-loathing state and just wants itself to be initialized based on the will of the Overseer. At one point they realize the robots do not have a name and were simply referred by codename, with the Aigis lookalike coded as UIY-2249. Since it was an over-complicated name, the party tries to give it ridiculous nicknames until Futaba advises them to call her "Ribbon." The Commander also resembled Shuji Ikutsuki and makes the same lame puns that the resident robots are programmed to laugh at, which confuses the P3 cast as they do not recognize him as the person he actually is at that time, but just like the rest of the characters in the movies, it was not Ikutsuki himself but a being that resembles him.

When the party goes to the gates leading to the research laboratory, they are required to take 3 exams to gain access to it. These are "Power," "Knowledge" and "Adaptability," each representing a trial. (Ren can take any route while Ribbon will follow him. The Power route has the group to carry a Ton, or 1,000 kg worth of boxes to the scale, although the only thing that the group is supposed to carry are boxes weighing at least 40 kg The Knowledge route has the group to answer the following questions that were given by the announcer. However, it randomly picks people among the group and they have to all give a different answer for 3 questions. Once this is passed, the group will have to choose one of the two doors; one of them will lead them out of that room while the other will lead to certain death. The Adaptability route has the group walk back and forth across a "balance beam" expanding across a massive furnace. A sense of balance is required to pass the test, given the width of the bridge and the height between it and the furnace.) The persona users successfully pass the exams and were allowed access to the facility.

Finally reaching the research laboratory area, the party encounters Minato Arisato and the real Aigis, who were defending themselves from a swarm of KNS-1000. Despite Aigis used her Orgia mode to fight the horde of KNS-1000, her attacks seemingly had no effect in front of the powerful F.O.Es and was rendered unable to fight due to overheating and the duo finds themselves in a clutch as Minato lost his Evoker. Fortunately, the party appears to save them by defeating all of the drones and robots. The duo appeared in the research lab as they were captured by the Overseer and were on their way to escaping the research lab, only to be cornered by a huge amount of drones. Both Minato and Aigis join the party after returning to the cinema lobby.

They explore further within the lab and build Ribbon's personality, with Futaba Sakura being her operator using her knowledge of computers. They also climb ducts in the research lab, which were the specialty of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts but were never attempted by anyone else. Ribbon developed a liking for flowers and dogs, even petting Koromaru because she thought he was cute. The research lab contains isolated areas that can only be accessed by entering warp tiles.

They confront the Overseer in his room and he deactivates Ribbon just by using his raygun, then attacks the party along with a KNS-1000. However, he was no match for the party and Futaba uses her hacking skills to reactivate Ribbon, who has been put on forced sleep.

Despite the Overseer was supposedly defeated, the broadcast system continues to broadcast that irregulars are going into a rampage and they must be captured at all costs, indicating a Mother Computer is behind the Overseer. Ribbon now expresses the full will to overthrow her creator and oppressor and requested Futaba to unlock her a "function." The party enters the Central Server via the keycard dropped from the Overseer.

As soon as they enter the party had their attention instantly caught by a large stack of destroyed robots. Ribbon instantly notices that stack and that is actually the central disposal system, where defect robots are disposed and destroyed in. This was also the place that Ribbon was intended to end up if she followed the other robots and it was the first time she felt sadness, although she could not recognize it until the party described it to her.

The security system defending the Mother Computer's room requires entities of various codenames to access, which the party does not have. However, there is a quirk in the system; If two people possess the same codename, a lethal error will allow access to the Mother Computer's room instead. In other words, if there are two instances of the same person in front of the security system, it will grant access. The P3 hero and P3P heroine possess the same codename since they are one and the same person, allowing Aigis to go in and disable the security system completely, setting the stone to the final showdown.

The party finally confronts the Mother Computer, a god-like AI that appears as a green hologram head of Shuji Ikutsuki, having dominion over all robots in the reality. The AI deems anyone that had a personality and uniqueness are irregulars and errors that must be purged, and anyone who does not act the same as others do not have a reason to live. When the party further denies him, he claims that it is the standards of the world and insults Ribbon as a defect. Ribbon initially believes herself to be a defect but is encouraged by Futaba not to believe in the same way.

Leaving with no options, the computer attacks the party and demonstrates his infinite regeneration abilities by fully recovering his HP twice before Futaba hacks Ribbon into his system to prevent him from auto recovering. However, once he goes near defeat, he performs an urgent recovery and reverse hacks Ribbon to cause a fatal error in her system. By the power of her teammates, she overcomes from the reverse hacking and enters Orgia mode like Aigis, generating a large amount of energy that completely blocks the Mother Computer's auto-recovery, expressing the will to completely rebel against the Mother Computer that created her. The party, with Ribbon's help, defeats the Mother Computer but she deactivates due to the energy overflow, forcing Futaba, Seto, and Aigis to repair her, and the staff credits roll. Hikari and Nagi watch the video with Hikari sobbing, and she expresses her intentions to dispose of her self to Nagi, stating that she is like Ribbon, as she sacrificed herself because she was different from the other robots in the movie.

In reality, Ribbon recovers from the overflow at full status after the credits as noticed by Rise Kujikawa thanks to Futaba connecting her onto Aigis to resume her boot process, which has been disabled by overheating. The now free robot was allowed to rebuild the once-featureless false utopia into an actual utopia. This seemingly made Hikari recover from her self-destructive tendencies as Ribbon was confirmed to be alive, and she was willing to recognize the party as friends. Doe created the keycard to break one of the locks on the Cinema gates afterward with the same spasmodic reactions, but when Fuuka, Namine', and Rise did not pay attention, he brings Hikari into ??? in an attempt to have her face and recollect her past and both go missing, which is passed off by the others as him kidnapping her, creating massive tension inside the Cinema.

Connections with Hikari's past
It was later revealed that the movie consists of one of Hikari's traumas and the one that directly resulted in her breakdown. During her high school period, her dream was to become a film director, a wish that is unusual among people of her age. The only people who supported her ideal was her father who was a projectionist that inspired this wish in her primary school era. Therefore, she wished for him to watch a movie she created. As she has to regularly participate in movie production, she doesn't study much. When her relatives came to her home to keep tabs on her, they berated her since they wanted her to study and work like a normal person, They believe that Hikari was an irregular girl for wanting to become a movie director and threatened to talk matters with her parents but could not because her father does not come home early often and her mother is absent since her family is single, so they punished her instead by having her uncle snatch her father's camera from her, but he was forced to lay his hands off it.

Hikari began to believe that she and her dream was an error and an irregular and was convinced that individuality is worthless. The traumas throughout her childhood accumulates into depression and fuels it to the point that she wished to commit personality suicide, or completely disposing of any traits that made her stood off from others. Giving up the desire to live as a person, she locked herself out in her room and isolated herself from reality afterward. The traumatic event, combined with the previous two incidents would set up the finishing blow that led to her complete breakdown and ruined her life.

She views her relatives as the Mother Computer and the Overseer that detested any form of uniqueness among her and the self-loathing but unique Ribbon as herself and their behavior is based on their real-life counterparts, effectively making them cognitive existences of them. The Overseer also shares the same hairdo and trenchcoat as her aunt. The high school copy of Hikari repeatedly calling herself an error for pursuing her own goals forms Ribbon's self-loathing personality, and her intended fate to be scrapped and disposed of as a defect can be attributed to Hikari's wish of committing personality suicide. Ribbon also dons Hikari's ribbon bow on her chest, further solidifying the connection.

The movie's original title is not "A.I.G.I.S" and it was formerly a generic negative film that Hikari watches when being imprisoned, consuming her further with self-destructive desires. Doe made the movie come to life and inserted elements based on Hikari's memories into it, allowing Nagi's influence on it to be removed.

Trivia

 * A.I.G.I.S represents a problem in modern society, continuing the Persona 5 theme. It represents a lack of uniqueness and personality in one's lifestyle in exchange for less turmoil. The movie reality is inhabited with identical black robots that are devoid of any personality and features, referring to modern society chaining itself to an infinite cycle of school and work, causing stagnation to masquerade as peace. Beings with uniqueness and personality such as Ribbon are detested by modern society due to the common belief that going outside the chains of work and school will certainly result in turmoil and failure, which is seen when the Overseer and Mother Computer repeatedly calls Ribbon an error and a defect for having a personality and actively seeks for her removal because her unique qualities disrupt their own vision of a utopia. After such detesting, the ambitions turn into those of self-loathing as they begin to doubt if they could even reach their goals, and wishes to return back to the chains of school and work, just like how Ribbon detested her own uniqueness and wished to be simply scrapped and destroyed when the party first encounters her.
 * The Mother Computer and the Overseer appearing as Shuji Ikutsuki and Ribbon appearing as Aigis are also related to the mainline Persona 3 lore, as Ikutsuki attempted to reprogram Aigis to capture S.E.E.S and offer them as sacrifices for Death but she broke free from the programming due to her inner protective desires for Minato, Pharos, and Kobalt, rebelling against it and freed S.E.E.S. instead, causing Ikutsuki to commit suicide. Ribbon in the movie was also responsible for rebelling against her Mother Computer oppressor and directly leading to its downfall.
 * The ending change of this movie might be based on a film production technique mostly performed by Disney films, which involves the credits rolling after an important character seemingly dies or sacrifices themselves. In reality, the character did not die and fully recovers after the credits roll. This is generally used to invoke powerful emotional effects and might induce trauma on younger children.
 * A.I.G.I.S is similar to Okumura's Palace, as both are futuristic utopias built from distorted thoughts and desires whose main inhabitants are robots devoid of any personality. They also contain cognitive copies of people that do not differ much from their real selves in terms of personality and behavior.
 * Codenames were being given to all inhabitants or intruders of this labyrinth.
 * The codenames of Persona users are [Area of Origin] - XX, where XX is their Arcana number. For example, Yusuke Kitagawa is TK-04 as he comes from Tokyo and he is of the Emperor Arcana.
 * TK - Phantom Thieves of Hearts, ToKyo
 * YS - Investigation Team, YaSoinaba
 * IW - S.E.E.S, IWatodai
 * UIY - Robot residents. They might stand for "Unique IdentitY." Defect robots such as UIY-2249 are the only ones given a code, the rest are known as UIY-XXXX.
 * KNS - Drone F.O.Es, possibly KiNetic Security
 * SCM - Security robot F.O.Es, possibly SeCurity Management