Taro Namatame (生田目 太郎, Namatame Tarō) is a character in Persona 4. Once a city council secretary, his affair with announcer Mayumi Yamano began a chain of important events.
Being a city council secretary, Namatame was married to renowned enka singer Misuzu Hiiragi. However, her popularity had put a strain in their relationship. Seeking solace, he met with TV announcer Mayumi Yamano while the announcer was doing interviews with candidates for the next election.
Namatame found out that they both had come from the town of Inaba. Both understood their passion on work, and eventually began an intimate relationship. However, the affair was exposed and a scandal erupted, which led to the end of his career and his marriage. Both he and his wife Hiiragi affirmed that the enka singer chose to nullify their marriage. Namatame then fled to his hometown.
Seeing that the affair had cause a great deal of grief for Yamano, who was getting bad publicity during afternoon shows and had her shows and appearances canceled, Namatame wanted to apologize to her. However, he failed to contact her. Namatame begun to drink heavily to wash away his guilt.
Recalling a rumor of a bizarre channel that showed one's soulmate, Namatame sat one night in front of the television and finally saw Yamano. In the channel, Yamano appeared to be in pain. In his disbelief and anxiety, Namatame touched the screen, and discovered that he could reach literally into the television.
Dismissing it as fatigue, Namatame rested and went to the city to work the next day. He was fired on the spot, just as he had expected. He went back to Inaba, where his father offered him work with the family's delivery service to alleviate his grief. However, his grief worsens when Yamano's dead body was discovered hanging amongst television antennas.
Grieving Yamano's death, he sat in front of the television again to see a Yasogami High School student appearing in the Midnight Channel. As he had been following the news on Yamano, he realized she was Saki Konishi, the student who found Yamano's dead body. Convinced that the channel was a portent of imminent death, he tried to warn Konishi, to no avail. The next day, he learned that Konishi had died, the same way as Yamano.
Namatame tried contacting the police, and got through to Detective Adachi. Adachi suggested that Namatame keep whoever was shown on the channel safe somewhere. As he was trying to figure out where a safe place could be, another person was shown on the channel. It was Yukiko Amagi, daughter of the Amagi Inn. Namatame thought the girl in the channel was smiling, and decided to place her inside the television, where he believes she will be safe.
He first kidnaps Yukiko and placed her in the television. Days later, Yukiko apparently survived the killings, and Namatame was convinced that he should repeat the process every time a person appears in the channel. His job as a deliveryman was a perfect front for his "mission" to save people. His latest mission - to "save" Nanako Dojima - was almost thwarted, however, when her father pursued him. In desperation, he fled with Nanako into the television.
This, however, was the turning point for him. Namatame had never realized that the place inside the television was grotesque and abominable. He could not find his way out, and discovered that a bunch of teenagers are after him. When they finally cornered him, he was caught up in his "mission to save" complex and was possessed by his own Shadow, which transformed after merging with other Shadows into the entity called Kunino-sagiri.
However, the Investigation Team proved to be more than a match for him, and he was defeated and sent to the hospital under police custody. He woke up in the hospital bed one night, and was scared of what had transpired. Suddenly, the Team appeared, apparently angry at him for hurting the little girl, and apparently sending Nanako to her death. The Team was about to hurl him into the television that was in his room, and was motivated to do so when an image of him appeared in the television, mocking the Team's attempt to stop his "mission".
In the Bad Ending, when his image in the television appeared, the boys were riled up and had no doubt it was Namatame's fault, despite his own miserable attempt to deny it. Namatame gets thrown into the television and apparently died in the channel.
However, should the protagonist manage to keep everyone calm, Namatame was spared this fate. Detective Adachi decided to transport Namatame out in a couple of days, apparently without Dojima's authority. Namatame rested, and had a visit from the Team the next day.
Here, the Team managed to convince Namatame that they too could enter the television, and had reason to believe that he was not the real culprit. Namatame believed them and reveals his entire role, up to the point of Nanako's "rescue attempt". He also convinces the Team that he loved Yamano with all his heart and would not think of murdering her or hurt her in anyway, notwithstanding all the other three students he had kidnapped. He finds out from the Team that all this while his mission had only brought the people he "saved" closer to their deaths. He apologizes profusely and asks the Team to capture the real culprit - the one who had murdered Yamano and Konishi.
He was transported out of the hospital the next day, and his immediate fate is left unknown.
Trivia:
If the player visits the Samegawa Riverbed on certain days, Namatame will be sitting on the rocks, if the player speaks too him, he will say "Who in the world could've done such a... [pause] It's horrible... too horrible... [pause] .....", if the player visits the Shopping District on certain days, Namatame will be in the southern part, and when spoken too, he will respond with "Why...? I just had an affair, and look what it turned into... [pause] Mayumi... Forgive me..." Other lines of dialogue include "I was fired from work in spring... But I'm helping with the family business now. The life here is nice too..." After the completion of Mitsuo Kubo's dungeon Namatame will have this to say, "The incidents...Are they really over...? Everything was really that boy's fault?" and later in the game Namatame wll say; "If the police can't gather the evidence...Mayumi... won't be able to rest in peace...I hope... that justice will be served..."
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