Junya Kaneshiro is a character from Persona 5. He is a mafia boss who shook Shibuya with his scams.
Kaneshiro is a mafia boss and con-man who rose in the criminal underworld through clever use of blackmail. In the past, he was a poor man who barely had anything to spend, so he resorted to scamming others for money, creating a massive criminal enterprise that makes its living by scamming teenagers. His target preferences stems from his privileged beliefs, that teenagers are young, naive and easy to trick.
The situation gone so severe, to the point that the police cannot do anything against him due to him being highly elusive and well-guarded along with his vast wealth reserves. One of his scams involved having his henchmen asking high school students to deliver an envelope for him to coin lockers for a large paycheck in broad daylight, but the envelope contains drugs and after he delivers the paycheck he will constantly blackmail the victim for ridiculous sums of money with picture proof of the victim delivering the drugged envelope or else he will expose them to their school. His scams intrigue a wide portion of Tokyo including the Phantom Thieves, since no other con-men had dared scamming people in such an open and blatant fashion.
He thinks of himself as a businessman and a banker, as revealed in his Palace, a floating bank. The Phantom Thieves of Hearts plan a heist at the Kaneshiro's Palace to steal his heart under Makoto's request to prove their justice, or else she will reveal to everyone the recording that proves them to be the Phantom Thieves. At first, despite the party successfully uncovers his scams by asking his victims in Shujin Academy, they cannot even find his name despite going all over Shibuya as his henchmen refuse to give away any information. Ichiko Ohya reveals his name as Junya Kaneshiro in a personal meeting with the protagonist in a pub.
The Thieves initially had difficulty reaching his Palace as it is high up in the air and impossible to reach. However, Makoto risks herself by asking Kaneshiro's henchmen of his whereabouts in a last-ditch attempt to prove that she isn't useless, prompting the Thieves to follow her. This leads Kaneshiro to blackmail them by taking their pictures in his club and threatens to leak it to their school if they do not pay him 3 million yen within 3 weeks, adding that should they fail to pay their debt, Makoto would be forced to sell her body to pay it off. If even Makoto refuses, he will force Sae to sell herself off, since she was trying to investigate him.
His Palace is the entire Shibuya district transformed into a green atmosphere where the cognitions are the human-like ATM machines and the bank that acts as the main body of the Palace is floating in the air like a UFO sucking up every money, and his shadow is accompanied by copies of his henchmen. As it is high up in the air, it is usually impossible to reach, but due to Kaneshiro extorting the party and Makoto forced to sell her body, she becomes the "Special Customer" for the bank and they were allowed access to the palace by Kaneshiro's cognition. When the thieves enter the front door of the Palace, Makoto tells the Shadow guards that she was the special customer, and they let the party enter the reception office. However, it was revealed to be a setup, and Shadow Kaneshiro sends his guards to attack the party.
After returning to the front door of the Palace, Kaneshiro reveals his motives to turn Makoto's sister, Sae Niijima into his sex slave as well if the party fails to pay the debts. This greatly angers her and it results in her awakening, and she and the Thieves easily defeats his Shadow guards. However, due to the increasing security, the party is forced to leave.
The Thieves successfully locate Kaneshiro's treasure and send a series of calling cards all over Shibuya, causing his treasure to form. They then confront him and he transforms into Bael, which turns his eyes into compound eyes and he spurts fly-like wings from his back. After being defeated once he turns his vault into "Piggytron," a robot resembling a piggy bank but the machine was destroyed by the Thieves as well, cementing his defeat.
In Royal, he will instead start fighting on Piggytron and fight on foot after it is destroyed, in which he will summon a Hitman-for-Hire and a Bodyguard-for-Hire that he claims to had been contracted with massive sums of money, and he boasts on their incredible toughness and power. True to his word, the guards are incredibly tough, although unlike most bosses, they can be crippled by any status condition save for Brainwash, Fear and Despair. Furthermore, if his HP is low enough, he will start to shower all of his money in his bank to cripple the Phantom Thieves, only to fail as his bank runs out of money and the guards fleeing because he has no money to pay them anymore. Once he's defeated, he attempts to run into the Piggytron for more cash only for it to explode, taking him down instantly.
After the Thieves defeat Shadow Kaneshiro, he reveals there is a third party other than them who has the ability to manipulate the Palace for his own ends without caring about what happened to the people in reality.
Back in the real world, the real Kaneshiro experiences a Change of Heart and calls Makoto to tell her that he has canceled their debt and deleted the photo of them in the club, and that he has turned himself in to the police.
Kaneshiro's Treasure is his golden briefcase which takes the shape of several giant gold bars stored inside Piggytron, the mechanical piggy bank that assisted Shadow Kaneshiro during the battle against the Phantom Thieves. The Phantom Thieves take the briefcase into Cafe Leblanc where Makoto opens the lock by remembering its number combination when she saw it opened in Kaneshiro's club. They find it full of notes from "Children's Bank" which have Shadow Kaneshiro's portrait, symbolizing how Kaneshiro only tried to look like a powerful person. While they cannot use the fake money in the briefcase, the case itself is highly valuable and the party manage to pawn it off to celebrate in an expensive sushi restaurant in Ginza.
After defeating the TV Executive in Shido's Palace, he reveals that Kaneshiro was part of the conspiracy. The executive reveals that the money Kaneshiro earned from his drug trafficking scheme helped fund Shido's organization.
The Phantom Thieves would eventually encounter Kaneshiro's Shadow in the Depths of Mementos, locked in the massive cell located within the second floor alongside their other previous targets. It was revealed that the Phantom Thieves did not properly change his heart and merely reverted him into an apathetic citizen praising the Grail's eternal rule. He, alongside the other Palace owners whose hearts have been stolen, praises the cell from which he originally escaped, declaring that he is finished of acting like a bigshot and that it doesn't matter whether or not he is stupid.
In the Legacy of Chris Thorndyke, he was somehow joined by Shido because of he wanted to get revenge on the Phantom Thieves, considering that he has a score to settle, he accepts his deal and get the chance to get rid of the Niijima sisters, but what he doesn't realize that someone is also got a bone to pick with him, which that was Munehisa Iwai.
He is reprised by Jalen K. Cassell in the English dub and Takahiro Fujimoto in the Japanese dub.
THEMES[]
- Price (Persona 5) - Kaneshiro's Palace
- Bay Area (Final Fight SNES) - Vs. Kaneshiro