Dissecting Akechi.

I wanted to cross post this, but reddit decided to be a dick and say "url is wrong" or whatever

So we were discussing this in the church of Kasumi (for reasons) and I came up with this. Enjoy.

Akechi's thing is that he has a lone-wolf mentality, so he is supposed to be completely independent from everybody. However, his actions up till now are dictated by his hatred towards Shido, so he is completely dependent on that one goal (and Shido himself, to twist it that way), so he is a hypocrite.

Amamiya, on the other hand, was also scammed by Shido, but was independent. Persona 5 the Original for some unknown reason presents it as if "friendship is everything," which Royal fixes, because that isn't the theme of Persona 5. Amamiya's character was that of a bird in a free flight who doesn't care about anything but his own ideology and justice. He couldn't care less about avenging himself until Shido became the target of the Thieves in general. He wasn't dictated by any hatred and his heart, as Akechi states, is free.

Akechi detests him because Amamiya was the proof of Akechi's hypocrisy, proof that Akechi's plan to avenge Shido was against a lone-wolf mentality he exhibited, because Amamiya was exactly the same as him, yet he was more successful in life, without doing all the mental shutdown shenanigans.

When Akechi decided to take the shot for the Thieves, it wasn't him trying to get redemption (as many people assume), it was him admitting defeat before Amamiya, admitting to his own hypocrisy. His cognitive counterpart kept saying "I will do everything for the Captain," which represented how Akechi was willing to do everything for his revenge, so when Akechi killed his cognitive self, he closed the door on his hypocrisy and admitted that Amamiya's way of living was right all along.

tl;dr Akechi was so obsessed with hatred while claiming that he is independent and free, but Joker who was also scammed by Shido didn't bear that hatred and was instead free, so Akechi hated that Ren is "free" and he ain't. But then Akechi realized that Ren was right in not parttaking in revenge and thus decided to betray Shido last moment and take a shot for the PT, letting them escape and change Shido's heart.