Atlus's 2006 role-playing video game Persona 3 focuses on the exploits of the Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad (SEES), a group of high-schoolers defending their home city from monsters known as Shadows. Persona 3 is set in a fictional Japanese city in the year 2009. Due to past events, there is a hidden period between one day and the next, known as the "Dark Hour", during which most people become unconscious (a state the game calls "Transmogrification", symbolized by normal people turning into floating coffins), and Shadows feed on the minds of those still aware of their surroundings. In addition, a large tower called Tartarus, filled with Shadows, rises out of the ground during the Dark Hour. SEES is composed of students attending Gekkoukan High School. The player names and controls the game's protagonist, who leads SEES in its exploration of Tartarus. Persona 3 mixes elements of role-playing and simulation games: during the day, the player attends school, and is able to spend time with other characters, forming relationships known as Social Links. These Social Links, when formed, have gameplay benefits, increasing the player's proficiency in battle.
To combat Shadows, each member of SEES is capable of summoning a Persona, a being which is a manifestation of one's psyche. Persona-users summon their Personas by firing a gun-like object called an Evoker at their head. Shigenori Soejima designed the world and cast of Persona 3. The members of SEES include Yukari Takeba, a popular girl; Junpei Iori, a class clown and the Protagonist's best friend; Akihiko Sanada, the captain of Gekkoukan's boxing team; Mitsuru Kirijo, Gekkoukan's student council president; Fuuka Yamagishi, a shy girl who takes on a support role in battle; Aigis, a female android designed to fight Shadows; Ken Amada, an elementary school student whose mother was killed by a Persona-user; Koromaru, a dog capable of summoning a Persona; and Shinjiro Aragaki, a returning member of SEES who had previously left the team. The group encounters other Persona-users who are working against their efforts to eradicate Shadows, Tartarus, and the Dark Hour.
Atlus released an enhanced version of Persona 3 entitled Persona 3: FES. The new game makes revisions to the original gameplay of Persona 3 (referred to as "The Journey"), and adds a new epilogue to the original story, entitled "The Answer". The Answer introduces a new character, Metis, an anti-Shadow weapon like Aigis. In 2009 Atlus released a PlayStation Portable remake of Persona 3 entitled Persona 3 Portable, which adds more characters, including appearances by characters from the successor to Persona 3, Persona 4, released in 2008. Several Persona 3 characters also went on to make appearances in 2012's Persona 4 Arena and 2014's Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, both set two years after the events of "The Answer".