Apparently a Hashino/Soejima interview was translated. They said they were never able to have just a friendship with a girl and Soejima even said he ‘never saw girls in that way’. It explains so much about slinks/confidants and the romance in P3-P5 :) ._.

nenilein:

Oh god, no, no, no! A few things:

a) This interview wasn’t translated recently, it has been well-known about ever since shortly after Persona 4′s initial release

b) Hashino and Soejima did NOT say that they didn’t think one couldn’t be friends with women in that interview. Rather, they explained that they, personally, grew up in a time when peer groups in Japan were extremely strictly separated by gender, and being purely platonic friends with someone of the opposite gender without any interest in pursuing a relationship as a teenager was seen as odd, if not downright ridiculous. How bad was it? Well, in the early 2000s, when a “trend” emerged of men actually being friends with women, rather than just trying to flirt with them, that “trend” was seen as so special, it was given it’s own name: Soushoku-danji, “herbivorous guys”.  In Hashino’s generation, just “hanging out” with girls as friends without expecting to eventually date them just. Did not. Happen. Because of that, people of their generation have a very, very poor grasp on intergender friendships and had trouble writing them in any way that did not include flirting. So when Hashino and Soejima gave that interview, they weren’t saying “lol, but girls have cooties and stuff”, they were admitting their own shortcomings and that they see that the world around them has changed, causing their writing/character building to regrettably fall short in that respect due to their upbringing.

c) Precisely because of that, after Persona 3, Hashino added a LOT of younger talent to the writing team, who could help with writing more believable, up-to-date intergender friendships than the previous team could. Among them is Azusa Kido, a woman who has been responsible for coordinating pretty much all of the Social Links ever since Persona 4, directed the entirety of Persona 3 Portable’s FeMC route AND wrote almost all of Persona Q by herself. She was brought in partially with the intent of fixing the issues with the characterization with male-female friendships in Persona 3, and she did so masterfully in my opinion. Now, due to her being busy with Persona Q when P5 was written, she sadly was not involved with the game’s main scenario, however, according to the credits, she was still hugely responsible for the Confidantes in the game.

So, no, this interview does NOT explain the issues with the romances in Persona 4 or Persona 5 or puts the blame for them entirely on Hashino or Soejima. At most, it shows that the problem with the romances is ingrained so intrinsically in how the games are written, that not even bringing in new talent has been able to alleviate the problem. 

EDIT (Clarification):

Kido was already on the Persona Team before P4′s production, however, her involvement in P3 was a lot more low-key than her involvement in P4, where she was given a lot more responsibility. Along with her promotion during P4′s development, new writers were brought in as well, many of them recruited from P3′s fanbase, according to Hashino.