Goro Akechi is a playable character from Persona 5. He is a public celebrity, touted by his fans and the media as the second coming of the detective prince (after the first appeared in Persona 4), and is investigating the mysterious Phantom Thieves of Hearts case sensationalizing Japan.

During the course of the story, Akechi would condemn the Phantom Thieves' actions in an effort to influence public opinion against them. He temporarily cooperates with them for professional reasons, using the codename Crow. He also acts as the protagonist's rival.

Akechi has shaggy, neck length brown hair with bangs and reddish-brown eyes. He wears a tan peacoat with black buttons, striped black and white tie, black pants, black gloves and black loafers. His casual winter outfit consists of a white long sleeve shirt with flaps under a blue argyle sweater vest, beige pants and brown shoes.

As Crow, Akechi wears a princely pure-white regalia with red accents and a red, long-nosed mask. His mask motif resembles a long-nosed Venetian mask. His image is a combination of a noble's attire, and a uniform worn by cavalry or guards of honor. As with his Robin Hood Persona, it's meant to give the feeling of putting on the air of a champion of justice, with nothing to do with being a Phantom Thief, robber or burglar of any sort, invoking the image of being at the front of a stage to contrast the protagonist's image of being more of a backstage actor.

Once he reveals his true intentions, Akechi swaps his princely garb for a body-covering, black and dark blue striped outfit. In this form, he has several black studded belts strapped around his legs and arms, a short black cape and clawed gauntlets. He also wears a dark enclosed knight helmet, with a black mask tinted red, resembling a sharp beak, which breaks after his defeat. Much like with Loki's design, it alludes to a lack of agency, and is meant to give a chaotic feeling and invoke the question "what's the real you?"

During the third semester in Royal, Akechi seems to have replaced his broken mask with a blue-black version. On days off, he wears a green vest and white collar shirt, both under a brown coat with black buttons, and blue pants while retaining his gloves and loafers. On school days, Akechi wears a tan coat with a red and gray plaid scarf tucked underneath, while keeping his black gloves, pants and shoes from his detective uniform.

"None of these people know that I was an undesirable child. I wanted people to rely on me... I wanted to be needed... I devoted myself to my studies, acted as an honor student, and made my name as an ace detective. And thanks to the Nav app and the Persona bestowed upon me by the gods... I managed to dispose of any who got in my way."
—Akechi thinking about himself, Persona 5

In public and with all of his relations, Akechi appears to be well-mannered, friendly, humble and charismatic. His achievement of being a high-school detective, coupled with his handsome features, makes him highly popular among the general public and he is commented to be "The Second Coming of the Detective Prince." His intelligence and smooth-talk earned him enough trust from the police to conduct his own investigation despite his young age, working with Sae Niijima, who fully trusts him to assist her in her investigation.

He presents himself as having a strong sense of justice, disapproving of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts for their methods. He is candid in expressing his disagreement, but he wants to hear about other people's views in an honest fashion. He quotes Hegel on this, citing that "advancement cannot occur without both thesis and antithesis." He finds an interest in the protagonist because he speaks his mind.

This identity, as well as his cheery disposition, however, are nothing short of a fraud that he carefully crafted to grant him a public image and mask his real personality. Due to having been born an illegitimate child, he would be despised by others as he would be nothing more than a scandal for them, even ruining his mother's life and driving her to suicide. He would subsequently be placement into child institutions, Akechi grew up a lonely child and a "nobody" who yearned to be loved; this feeling persisted into his teenage years. The stigma of being an illegitimate child, while also heavily implied to be an impulsive mistake on Shido's part, has haunted Akechi and become the basis of his incredibly misanthropic worldview as well as his legitimate self-loathing.

Akechi's desperation for acknowledgement leads him to study hard to become perfect and develop his outward Detective Prince image in hope to be accepted by people around him. Even while having developed an overwhelming fanbase, Akechi is still disliked among individuals for his affiliation, as he's become quite obviously a fraudulent hero of sorts: not only does the more honest Sojiro Sakura dislike him for his work with the police, but the Phantom Thieves of Hearts themselves find him a menace as his public views and remarks are nothing more than a hindrance to them.

Even the public's support doesn't fill the hole in his heart, as he knows he's loved only if he upholds the pretense of being a charismatic idol detective rather than a bastard child; his fans are quick to turn on him anyway if he makes mistakes, such as when the Phantom Thieves triumphed over Kaneshiro and Medjed.