I'll make the small point that a niche video game is still courting a significantly bigger audience than non-Pokemon/Naruto/DBZ anime is. Therefore, a lot
of the audience is not necessarily going to be versed in fanboy Japanese the same way anime fanfiction readers are going to be.
That being said, there's a point made that Persona is heavily versed in Japanese culture. If that is so, and the honourific use is limited, I find it more
excusable, with the caveat that most people still do not actually even know what "-kun" means (most, for instance, thinking that you only call boys
"kun", going all the way back to the horrid "Ranma-chan" and "Ranma-kun" shorthand for his female and male forms) and therefore
you are still not translating the meaning, just a sense of "Japaneseness" - which is still different than what is intended to be conveyed to the
audience, and thus is not really a translation.
Even if in this particular case it might be appropriate, though, that doesn't make it appropriate in most cases. Supposedly professional anime translations
using them make my teeth itch. That is not a translation. A translation conveys the same intended meaning to a foreign audience - something "Oooh,
BigTittedMaid-chan, when will Uselessloserboy-kun ever ask me out?" will never do for a non-fluent Japanese speaker. There ARE English equivalents, it
just requires work on the translator (and director's) part to get them across in English. If there's no English equivalent, you obviously can't
understand it anyway, being an English speaker, without immersing yourself in Japanese culture; which watching anime is not ever going to do.
I care less if they're in subtitles, admittedly, because subs are under more constraints space-and-tone-wise and are intended for the tiny niche fan
audience most likely to embrace (if not understand) them anyway. Still don't like them, but I find them more understandable there.
of the audience is not necessarily going to be versed in fanboy Japanese the same way anime fanfiction readers are going to be.
That being said, there's a point made that Persona is heavily versed in Japanese culture. If that is so, and the honourific use is limited, I find it more
excusable, with the caveat that most people still do not actually even know what "-kun" means (most, for instance, thinking that you only call boys
"kun", going all the way back to the horrid "Ranma-chan" and "Ranma-kun" shorthand for his female and male forms) and therefore
you are still not translating the meaning, just a sense of "Japaneseness" - which is still different than what is intended to be conveyed to the
audience, and thus is not really a translation.
Even if in this particular case it might be appropriate, though, that doesn't make it appropriate in most cases. Supposedly professional anime translations
using them make my teeth itch. That is not a translation. A translation conveys the same intended meaning to a foreign audience - something "Oooh,
BigTittedMaid-chan, when will Uselessloserboy-kun ever ask me out?" will never do for a non-fluent Japanese speaker. There ARE English equivalents, it
just requires work on the translator (and director's) part to get them across in English. If there's no English equivalent, you obviously can't
understand it anyway, being an English speaker, without immersing yourself in Japanese culture; which watching anime is not ever going to do.
I care less if they're in subtitles, admittedly, because subs are under more constraints space-and-tone-wise and are intended for the tiny niche fan
audience most likely to embrace (if not understand) them anyway. Still don't like them, but I find them more understandable there.