From Betamax to Personas
- JP de la Rama
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Rediscovering Filipino Mythology Through Nostalgia & Game Design
“Nostalgia reminds us where we came from, but mythology reminds us who we are. Revive the stories — and you revive the soul of a culture.”
Setting the Stage
Lately, I’ve been replaying the Persona series—not because it’s trending, not because of hype cycles, but because it feels like coming home.
I grew up on Shin Megami Tensei, toggling between PS2, PS4, and now the Switch.
These games aren’t just games—they’re time machines.
The aesthetics, the cityscapes, the jazz tracks, the turn-based battles, even the school-life mechanics… everything screams 90s to early 2000s nostalgia.
It’s strange; every time I boot up a Persona title, I don’t just remember the game—I remember who I was when I first played it.
High school. Late nights. Burned discs. Betamax tapes. Cheap snacks. Childhood curiosity.
And somewhere between battling Shadows and fusing Personas, something woke up inside me again:
The storyteller who never left.
The Forgotten Stories We Were Supposed to Tell
Persona is built on mythologies—Greek, Norse, Japanese, Hindu, Sumerian, you name it.
You can literally fuse Thor and Pazuzu like some cosmic Pokémon alchemist.
And honestly? It's brilliant.
But something hit me while playing:
Why do we know more about Yokais than Manananggals?
Why do kids recognize Odin but not Bakunawa?
Why is a Tanuki more familiar now than a Tikbalang?
Somewhere along the way, our own myths got overshadowed by Western media, Japanese pop culture, and everything the algorithm feeds our youth.
Even in classrooms, ask kids about folklore, and most will shrug.
Ask them about anime monsters? They’ll list 30 without blinking.
But I remember my childhood differently.
I grew up hearing stories from my Lolo and Lolas—whispers of creatures in the dark, the creation myths of our islands, the monsters hiding in the bamboo groves, the gods of storms, oceans, and mountains.
These stories were our inheritance.
Our identity.
And now… they’re fading.
As an artist, that hurts more than any algorithm, AI generator, or unstable economy.
Because stories—our stories—are supposed to be the soul of a culture.
Reviving Myth Through Art, One Story at a Time
That’s when it clicked:
Why not fuse my two worlds?
Why not do for Filipino mythology what Persona did for world mythology?
Japan has been doing this since the 60s.
They built entire industries around their folklore—Yokai, Kami, Oni, Kaiju.
Now the whole world consumes it.
So why can't we?
Why can’t our kids grow up with the same awe we once felt listening to tales of the Kapre hiding in the trees or the Bakunawa swallowing the moon?
That’s why I chose to shape Zamora around our own myths.
Not to imitate—not to Westernize—not to “marketize”—but to preserve, elevate, and reintroduce the stories that raised us.
From now on, I’m doubling down.
Philippine myths, monsters, legends, and gods—they will be the centerpiece of my storytelling.
My way of contributing to a cultural revival we badly need.
And if you want to see this mission come alive…
Start with Zamora.
Read it.
Share it.
Talk about it.
Because our myths deserve a second life—and our artists deserve to be the ones telling them.
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