By Mollie Taylor
Skip to main content
PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
Search PC Gamer
View Profile
Movies & TV
Gaming Industry
PC Gaming Show
Newsletter Signup
Community Guidelines
Affiliate Links
Meet the team
About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming mag
Try a single issue or save on a subscription
Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From£35.99View
Essential Hardware
PC Gaming Show
Dune: Awakening
Recommended reading
Persona 5: The Phantom X is a solid RPG, but even adding gacha can’t hide the fact that Persona 5’s been stretched awfully thin over the last 9 years
Metaphor: ReFantazio tried to make you love turn-based combat again, but it almost broke the game during development
In a world of bizarre fighting game crossovers, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has taken it up a notch with a niche Swedish DJ
Elon Musk’s latest gaming take is ruthlessly mocked by Bioshock fans: ‘Probably thinks Andrew Ryan was the hero’
Baldur’s Gate
I don’t know what I expected: Everybody’s just recreating memes in Baldur’s Gate 3’s new photo mode
You cannot beat the final boss of No Rest for the Wicked’s latest saga
Visual Novel
Promise Mascot Agency review: Absurdist management sim shows the makers of Paradise Killer are in the business of success
Persona 5: The Phantom X has blessed the community with a new sh**posting mascot so corny it eclipses the nuance around the real-world issues he represents
Mollie Taylor
2 July 2025
It’s Slammin’ time, baby.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Atlus)
There’s a new Persona shitposting mascot in town, and it’s a shoulder-barging menace who serves as a terrible example of a very real problem.
The series’ bad guys have always erred more on the side of caricature, and nobody exemplifies that more than Persona 5: The Phantom X’s first villain—former baseball prodigy turned salaryman Takeyuki Kiuchi, who saunters around Shibuya Station referring to himself as the Subway Slammer.
i loved when the subway slammer said it’s slammin time and subway slammed all over the place pic.twitter.com/S245pvX1VUJune 28, 2025
I was streaming the game to a couple of pals in Discord last week, and we couldn’t help but immediately clown on the guy. He’s got all the malevolent aura of a cartoon monster of the week—a watered-down version of Persona 5’s Kamoshida—with some cripplingly cringe dialogue that is begging to be taken the piss out of.
Related Articles
Persona 5: The Phantom X is a solid RPG, but even adding gacha can’t hide the fact that Persona 5’s been stretched awfully thin over the last 9 years
Metaphor: ReFantazio tried to make you love turn-based combat again, but it almost broke the game during development
In a world of bizarre fighting game crossovers, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has taken it up a notch with a niche Swedish DJ
Turns out we weren’t the only ones who thought the Subway Slammer was operating on some absolute buffoonery, as he’s quickly become the hottest meme target for the community.
That’s despite the fact that he’s supposed to represent a serious real-world issue which has become especially prevalent in Japan in recent years: butsukari otoko, or ‘bumping man’. The phrase describes someone who deliberately goes out of their way to shoulder-barge, push, or even punch others—most often women—using busy locations like streets or train stations to plead innocence.
People forget that the Subway Slammer beats Goku from r/OkBuddyPersona
To put it bluntly, it’s assault, and Persona 5: The Phantom X tries to very heavy-handedly showcase this when the protagonist has a ‘That’s So Raven’ moment and foresees Kuichi slamming into a woman pushing a stroller, sending her and her baby tumbling down a flight of stairs along with the implication that Kuichi kills the infant.
There are more sinister glimpses like this, but they would hit harder if the rest of Kuichi’s characterization wasn’t such a goddamn clown circus:
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.
His crashout almost entirely stems from a literal child being better at baseball than him
Corny villain lines such as: “The whole subway’s mine for the slammin’! Ahahahahahahahaha!”
He bodychecks a teenage girl so hard she gets launched, fighting-game style, and catches airtime over a train barricade
I think it’s partly thanks to this tonal whiplash—and what is either some poor writing or localisation to try and westernise what is mostly a very Japanese phenomenon—that has made Persona 5 X players go weapons free on the Subway Slammer.
“the whole subway’s mine for the slammin'” is never going to leave my brain. I felt something break up there.— @tftblpod.bsky.social (@tftblpod.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-07-02T14:53:45.047Z
There’ve been japes around the sandwich shop chain Subway—including swapping out Kuichi for Subway Guy Jared Fogle, who’s a whole real-life villain himself—comparing Kuichi’s far stupider motivations for being a corrupted little turd compared to Kamoshida, and even turning him into a Yakuza baddie. The shitposts have been goofy in a way that inherently pokes fun at the bad writing, not at the subject matter it’s trying to deal with.
I’m still plodding through the game’s first palace myself, but the Subway Slammer mercifully appears to be an anomaly in a story that I’m promised gets much better. Will that stop myself and many others from endlessly memeing on a man who can’t stop holding a grudge against a little girl’s baseball pitch? Absolutely not.
Mollie Taylor
Social Links Navigation
Features Producer
Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she’s not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
Persona 5: The Phantom X is a solid RPG, but even adding gacha can’t hide the fact that Persona 5’s been stretched awfully thin over the last 9 years
Metaphor: ReFantazio tried to make you love turn-based combat again, but it almost broke the game during development
In a world of bizarre fighting game crossovers, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has taken it up a notch with a niche Swedish DJ
Elon Musk’s latest gaming take is ruthlessly mocked by Bioshock fans: ‘Probably thinks Andrew Ryan was the hero’
I don’t know what I expected: Everybody’s just recreating memes in Baldur’s Gate 3’s new photo mode
You cannot beat the final boss of No Rest for the Wicked’s latest saga
Latest in RPG
‘It makes me cringe every time’: 25 years after Diablo 2 reshaped the RPG landscape, Diablo creator David Brevik still thinks its stamina bar sucks
I played Elden Ring Nightreign for goofy co-op shenanigans, but wound up punched in my feelings by the Revenant’s remembrance questline
Get an entire tabletop role-playing library for the price of one book, thanks to what might be the most impressive bundle of RPGs I’ve ever seen in my 22 years in the hobby
Deus Ex was a hard sell because, among other things, the Thief devs thought ‘if you give players a gun, they won’t sneak’
BG3 might be the last hurrah for the era of the Hexblade, as D&D’s 2024 rules revamp tries to dethrone the king of multiclass dips
The Blood of Dawnwalker: All the key details about Rebel Wolves’ dark fantasy action RPG
Latest in News
‘We need to do a better job’: FBC Firebreak devs are revamping progression after finding out that just 5% of players own a level 3 perk
‘Our platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger,’ Phil Spencer says, as Microsoft announces another round of mass layoffs at its gaming division
All change at the top: Corsair’s founder and long-running CEO steps down after 31 years as former company president Thi La takes over the reins
Human spirit triumphs as the Croc devs announce they want to remaster Buck Bumble and the greatest main menu theme song of all time
Turns out you can transform your very ordinary car into an actual Mario Kart controller (but you probably shouldn’t)
AMD offers an update on Project Amethyst, a Sony collaboration that’s already ‘delivered smarter, more efficient solutions like Super Resolution in FSR 4’
HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES
LATEST GAME REVIEWS
Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads
Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I’d want in my next gaming laptop
Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most
Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I’ve held in these hands
Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I’ve tested
Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 review
Razer Joro & Basilisk Mobile review
Glorious Model O Eternal review
LaCie Rugged Pro 5 SSD review
Seagate Ultra Compact review
PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.
Contact Future’s experts
Terms and conditions
Privacy policy
Cookies policy
Advertise with us
Accessibility Statement
Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury,
BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.
Please login or signup to comment
Please wait…