Japanese city of Tatsumi Port Island, which the Kirijo Corporation built and funded. Experiments conducted ten years prior to the game's events created the Dark Hour, a period of time that exists between days. During the Dark Hour, most people are turned into coffins and are unaware of it; however, there is a select group of people who aren't.In addition, reality is warped; Gekkoukan High School, where most characters attend school during the day, becomes a labyrinthine tower called Tartarus, where monsters called Shadows roam the area and prey on the minds of those still conscious leaving them in near-catatonic states outside of the Dark Hour.The "Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad," or SEES, was formed by a group of high schoolers to investigate and learn about the Dark Hour, Shadows, and Tartarus. They are capable of summoning beings called Personas to combat Shadows, which the instruction manual describes as being "a second soul that dwells deep within a person's heart. It is an entirely different personality that emerges when a person is confronted with something from outside this world.