Arknights x Persona 3 Reload: Makoto, Aigis and Koromaru

Arknights' Persona 3 Reload crossover now has a name, a banner and a roster. The Side Story is called 月行水上 (Moonlight Over Water), it's set in Laterano, and it brings Makoto, Aigis and Yukari to the headhunting pool alongside a free Koromaru.

One thing before anything else: this is the Chinese server. Hypergryph announced the collaboration for CN, and Yostar has not announced dates for Global, JP or KR. Arknights content has historically reached Global roughly six months after CN. If you're playing the Global client, nothing in this article is coming to your account in September.

That said, everything below is what Global eventually receives — and knowing the banner structure half a year early is genuinely useful for planning. Here's the full picture.

The Side Story

Moonlight Over Water received its promotional PV on 29 August 2026, confirming the collaboration has moved past the teaser stage it occupied since the Summer Carnival 2026 broadcast in July.

The event is set in Laterano, and producer notes place the story after the nation's recent farewell — under a strange moonlight that dulls the city's lamps. The original teaser leaned hard on Persona 3 iconography: the blue-and-white palette, an Evoker, Laterano's Funerary Hall cut against a dark street beneath a green Dark Hour moon, S.E.E.S. insignia, Koromaru's paw prints and the protagonist's MP3 player.

Unlocking the event requires clearing main story 1-10 — an early requirement most accounts cleared long ago.

Official copy places the start in early September, with a note that the timing can shift.

The banner: Makoto, Aigis and Yukari

The limited pool is 石白深蓝之夜, rendered in English as Holy City Spring Students Headhunting. Its structure:

• Makoto takes 50% of the 6-star rate
• Aigis and Yukari share 50% of the 5-star rate
• Makoto is guaranteed every 120 pulls, after which the count resets
• A 5-star catch-up triggers after 50 pulls without a featured 5-star
• A one-time rule ensures the second featured 5-star you receive is the other one — so you can't be handed two copies of the same unit before seeing both

For anyone who hasn't played Persona 3: Makoto is the protagonist, a transfer student who leads S.E.E.S. against the Shadows during the Dark Hour. Aigis is an anti-Shadow android. Yukari is an archer and one of the earliest party members.

A note to avoid confusion, since both crossovers are running in the same season: this Makoto is the Persona 3 protagonist, not Makoto Niijima from Persona 5, who appeared as Queen in NIKKE's Persona collaboration earlier this month. Different character, different game, same name.

Classes and skill kits for all three have not been published.

Koromaru is the strange one

The free Operator is Koromaru — the Shiba Inu who fights Shadows alongside S.E.E.S. with his own Persona, Cerberus.

He arrives as a 1-star Operator, and that's genuinely unusual. Arknights reserves 1-star rarity for a tiny handful of units with simple abilities and very low deployment costs. Koromaru is the first collaboration character ever released at that rarity.

Two things follow from it.

He isn't on the limited banner. He's obtained through the event itself rather than through pulls, which separates his acquisition entirely from the gacha decision.

His practical role is unknown. 1-star Operators in Arknights are typically utility pieces rather than carries, but Hypergryph has not published his class or skills. Whether he's a novelty or an actually useful low-cost deployment is unanswered.

The permanence rule matters

Here's the detail that should shape how anyone plans for this — CN now, Global later.

None of the gacha collaboration Operators enter the Standard pool, Kernel, or Recruitment after the event ends.

That's a harder limitation than most Arknights banners carry. Necrass, for instance, sits in the permanent Standard Headhunting pool and remains obtainable indefinitely — her rate-up is temporary but she isn't. Makoto, Aigis and Yukari have no such fallback. When the collaboration window closes, they're gone from every acquisition route in the game.

Collaboration Operators in Arknights have historically returned only through reruns, and reruns of licensed crossovers are far less predictable than reruns of first-party events, since they depend on the licence still being active.

If you want them, the collaboration window is the window.

Free pulls and the expiry date

CN players receive roughly 30 free pulls for the collaboration:

• 10 daily "Once Upon a Full Moon" headhunting tickets, distributed one per day through in-game mail
• Two ten-pull tickets from a 10-day sign-in event

All of these expire on 18 September at 03:59.

That expiry is worth noting for what it implies. Ten daily tickets distributed one per day, expiring on the 18th, means the campaign has to begin around the 5th to complete — which is consistent with the "early September" framing and the reason community estimates have landed there.

It also means the daily tickets are a login commitment, not a bulk claim. Miss days and you receive fewer pulls, with no catch-up.

What isn't announced

• Global, JP and KR release dates. Not announced by Yostar.
• The exact CN start date. "Early September," subject to change.
• Koromaru's class and skills.
• Classes and kits for Makoto, Aigis and Yukari.
• Whether additional S.E.E.S. members appear as Operators or as story-only characters.
• Event stage structure, shop contents and medal conditions.

What Global players should do

Nothing urgent. That's the honest answer, and it's worth stating plainly rather than manufacturing urgency.

The useful preparation is longer-term. Collaboration Operators don't enter the permanent pool, which makes this the kind of banner worth saving Orundum for well in advance — and a six-month runway is an unusually generous amount of notice. Players who bank steadily from now will arrive at the Global window with a full pity cycle available rather than scrambling.

Don't act on CN-sourced kit data when it appears. Balance adjustments between CN and Global releases are routine, and half a year is enough time for numbers to change. CN kit information tells you what a unit does; it doesn't reliably tell you what it will do on your server.

Watch for the Global announcement rather than the CN release. The CN launch in September will produce a wave of coverage that doesn't apply to your account. The announcement that matters for Global players hasn't happened yet.

Building the roster before it arrives

A collaboration window is a poor time to discover your Orundum reserve is thin or your roster lacks the class coverage a new Side Story's stages demand — and six months is enough runway to fix both properly. Browse verified Arknights accounts if you'd rather build from a developed roster with reserves already banked, keep material farming and daily progression moving with Arknights hourly services, or clear the harder stages and medal conditions through Arknights boosting while you wait for the Global window.

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