#Kiryu had Already turned to leave but daigo and saejima tried to convince him not to. and majima didn't say Anything

[kenzan-brainrot-mp4]

My ass has Not been drawing because I'm trying to get through Infinite Wealth as fast as possible but oughh kazumaji, oh the way things change

The fact that these two scenes are 16 Years Apart is crazy.

The fact that it took 16 years, 5 games, and countless instances of Kiryu leaving for Majima to finally just outright tell him "don't leave", whereas before he would've just stayed quiet.

The fact that Majima stayed silent in Yakuza 3 when Kiryu was leaving to live a new, free life while leaving Majima to take care of his responsibilities, meanwhile in IW he speaks up when Kiryu leaves to go throw his remaining life away for the yakuza while leaving the 3jimas to their quiet (if admittedly miserable) new lives. ohhh they make me sick

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

Hi! I happened to stumble across your analyses on both Majima and Saejima and boy am I blown away by them! You captured their personalities so well it’s awespiring. Is there a chance you’ll write a post about Kiryu as well? It’s just that originally I’ve had a hard time liking him as a character because of the numerous mistakes he has made across the series (and the fact that others don’t really address them for some reason). Despite that I’m a huge fan of kazumaji and that’s why I feel conflicted sometimes. Anyway, I would really like to hear your thoughts about it!

Awww, you’re very kind ^^; Thanks for asking for more c: So, the reason why I haven’t yet made a post about Kiryu is NOT due to my lack of feelings about him, it’s quite the opposite. I have essays worth of feelings about Kiryu and just... have not found the time to really give those feelings credit ^^; But, since you ask and you’re having a hard time with his character, let me at least start. 

As a preamble, let me first say that there’s a difference between a character making a mistake and the writing making a mistake. This is not to say Kiryu never makes mistakes, far from it. I have a lot of feelings about Kiryu’s mistakes, they’re one of the reasons I love him, but a lot of the more egregious fuck ups are the writers making weak or poorly thought out choices. For example, like you point out, Kiryu makes mistakes and no one ever calls him out for it... that’s a writing flaw, not a problem with Kiryu. 

(Please note that to give my best reading of Kiryu, I’m going to reference as many games as I have seen, which is through game 6. If you do not wish to be spoiled through at least game 5 (I never reference game 6 if I can help it), do not read further.)

Continuing with that example... I cannot tell you how simultaneously OVERJOYED and FURIOUS I am about game 3 when Mine, MINE YOSHITAKA, a character who was introduced that game and then never appears again, is the only person who criticizes Kiryu’s decisions when he has DEMONSTRABLY made bad ones! Like, Mine’s criticisms are ENTIRELY valid, but because they come out of his mouth it’s hard to say if the audience is meant to sympathize or not. Especially since Mine is sort of the antagonist of that game and he’s not really pitched as a sympathetic character. You have to really be willing to be critical of Kiryu to hear what Mine’s saying there and agree with him. The way the scene is played, you’re sort of supposed to still identify with Kiryu and insist that he’s never done anything wrong ever, even though he’s put all of his friends in a vulnerable position and IS arguably to blame for the state Daigo’s in now, as Mine points out. 

And the writing is on some level aware that it is Kiryu’s fault or they wouldn’t have brought it up. They wouldn’t have had Mine say that if they didn’t see that problem. But the problem is they’re afraid of letting Kiryu be flawed. They’re afraid that if Kiryu’s wrong, even once, he won’t be The Good Guy anymore and the audience won’t like him anymore. This is weak and cowardly writing. Characters aren’t compelling because they’re never wrong, characters are compelling from what they do when they’re wrong. Any character who’s never wrong is unrealistic and, ultimately, boring. We all fuck up, we’re all only human. You ultimately will not identify with an infallible god because they would make choices you wouldn’t. I’m sure we can all think of characters who were pitched to us as infallible that, sooner or later, we ended up hating because of this very trait. So trying to pitch Kiryu as infallible is a ginormous mistake. But an understandable one, especially in a franchise that depends on the likability of its main character. But this means that they don’t trust their own writing, they don’t trust Kiryu’s inherent appeal and they fuck up the story around refusing to take risks. It’s one of the most heartbreaking writing decisions for me that those words come out of Mine’s mouth and not one of Kiryu’s friends. 

Because it’s Kiryu’s friends who deserve to get to say that. It’s Kiryu’s friends, the people who are directly affected by his actions and the people who CARE about Kiryu, who have the right to criticize him. Not some fucking young blood with a chip on his shoulder. Having Mine say it makes the criticism look biased an illegitimate when it isn’t. I understand the writing impulse to not let us criticize Kiryu, but think how much more compelling it would be to show that Kiryu’s relationships are strong enough to handle criticism. That the trust and love is there for a friend to come to Kiryu with this and to force Kiryu to confront himself and listen rather than ignore the problems and insist that he’s never done anything wrong. But to make that call, to let us doubt Kiryu, you, as the writer, have to trust your story, you have to trust your character, and, worst of all, you have to trust your audience. Many many writers of popular media do not trust their audiences. They don’t trust that if they let you doubt, you’ll come with them and see where the story leads. They’re afraid you’ll lose interest and turn away. Many writers feel that they cannot take the risk of trusting their writing for fear of losing their base and therefore their income.

And, again, part of the issue is the aims of the story. At the end of the day, RGG is here to produce a fighting video game, that’s it. Wrapping that up in a compelling story makes it more sellable, but their primary focus isn’t the story itself. It’s getting you to buy a fighting video game. If the mechanics aren’t up to par, if they fights aren’t cool and interesting, the rest doesn’t matter. RGG came up with a story to link the games together and invested in making an interesting protag, but it was to sell the games. If the point of this story was the story, I think we’d be seeing different writing decisions and maybe some of these flaws could have been avoided. And I don’t actually mean to point this out as a criticism and say why aren’t they creating art for art’s sake? I mean it really as a grain of salt that I personally use to try not to hold the writing here up to the standard that I would a novel or something. That may not be useful perspective for anyone else, but it’s a thing I like to keep in mind. 

So, part of what we see in Kiryu is that the writing fucking sucks. And it’s fair not to want to redeem Kiryu’s character or dig deeper into him when the writing hasn’t provided you with much. So no one feel bad if you’re not persuaded by my assessment, I’m not here to shame or convince anyone, I’m just offering my two cents. 

And now alllll of that said... Let’s talk about my boy, Kiryu Kazuma. 

I said earlier that characters are compelling based on how they react to mistakes, how they deal with them. Let me tell you, Kiryu is aware that he’s made mistakes. And he has regrets. 

What I find compelling about Kiryu is that he tries so fucking hard to do the right thing, all the fucking time. What I find compelling about Kiryu is that he wants so much to make people happy, to make people proud of him. He is scared all the time of doing wrong by people and making himself untrustworthy, making himself scary. He has lost so much, he has lost everything and he still gets up every goddamn day and tries. 

Does he fuck up? YES. ABSOLUTELY. ALL THE FUCKING TIME. But he gets up. Every. Fucking. Day. And tries. And you can’t buy that. You can’t ask for that. That’s just who he is, a guy who tries. 

I don’t... have time to explain the depths of my love for Kiryu, but let’s take my favorite Kiryu, what I think the best characterization of Kiryu is in the entire fucking series: game 5. Game 5 Kiryu is my favorite fucking Kiryu, including 1, including Zero, bar fucking none. I fucking love game 5 Kiryu. 

And Game 5 begins with a colossal mistake. 

Before the game starts, Kiryu is convinced, either earnestly or nefariously, to leave his little family and specifically abandon AHEM release his daughter Haruka to someone else. This is the stupidest fucking thing Kiryu’s done since giving up the chairmanship. But he does it because he is told that he is a greater threat to his family WITH them than abandoning them. I want you to think about that. Kiryu loves his family so much he would sooner leave them than do them harm. I need to remind you that Kiryu has already destroyed and rebuilt his own life once already. He has repeatedly given up everything for his dream of having a family and for all his beautiful kids more than once. And he just loves his little Okinawa home so much, he can’t stand the idea that he would bring it harm, so he fucks off. This is categorically the wrong decision and any other reasonable adult would know this. I’m sure you yourself understand intuitively why a parent, no matter how dubious, can’t just leave a brood of underage children to fend for themselves in the world.

But here’s the thing: Kiryu’s made a number of dumbass decisions that have led him to this point in his life. He doesn’t have any adult, peer friends to counsel him about this. He’s deliberately estranged himself from Majima, from Date, from all the people who could have helped him out here and told him not to. And deep down Kiryu’s always been worried that he was unworthy of this. He’s always been afraid that he didn’t really deserve to be happy, deserve his little family of innocents. And the plot SURE AS FUCK has confirmed that for him, repeatedly putting the kids in danger and reminding him that you can never actually leave the yakuza. Kiryu knows he’s fucked up. He knows adopting his family was a mistake, but it was too late, what was he gonna do now? But here comes this little insidious voice confirming his worst fears, telling him he needs to go, and Kiryu listens. He has no one else to listen to and he’s been so beaten down by the plot by this point, he’s lost so fucking much now, that he doesn’t have the strength to believe in himself anymore. So he goes. Believing that he is doing the right thing.

And then, as it always does, the plot comes for him, telling Kiryu he needs to come help, telling Kiryu only he can fix it. And Kiryu, for the first time in his life, puts his foot down. He’s so fucking tired, he won’t fucking do it, not one more time. Because every time he gets his ass up to help, what happens? Someone else dies. Someone else dies and it’s Kiryu’s fault all over again, and it’s Nishiki all over again, and Kiryu can barely fucking live with himself for all the guilt that he feels. He starts to help and he just loses. Every fucking time. So this time, no, this time he won’t do it. He can’t do it anymore. He just wants... everyone to be okay. And he’s so sure that everyone would be better off without him. 

If that’s a huge screaming red flag for anyone else IT SHOULD BE. Kiryu is in a depression spiral. He’s suicidal. He’s cut himself off from all his meaningful relationships, he’s not participating in his favorite hobbies, he’s alone and isolated in a new city where he doesn’t know anyone. He’s Not Doing Good. Game 5 is about finally, FINALLY confronting Kiryu’s demons, all the pent up unresolved guilt and turmoil that we never fucking addressed for 5 games running. (And if you’re hearing Bitter Resentment in the way the games have handled Kiryu’s emotional reactions OH BOY YOU BETCHA but that’s for another post.)

So Kiryu finally says no. He won’t fucking do it. But the plot comes for the fucking carotid. It’s Majima. It’s Majima. The only person Kiryu really, truly trusts. The person Kiryu was relying on to still be there, to be strong, to do the things Kiryu couldn’t. It’s Majima this time. And Kiryu loses his goddamn mind. That was the one thing you had left to take from him, his belief in Majima, and you took it. Kiryu nearly has a psychotic break at the news and decides, fine. Fine. I’ll go fix this, and then I can die. Then it’s over. Because there ain’t nothing left for him now. 

And he does. Kiryu gets his ass down there, he solves the fucking problem, and then he does his level best to die there. Because it’s what he feels he deserves. He’s let down everyone. All those losses, all those people... they’re his fault. If he was really the hero, he could have saved them. If he was really a good person, these tragedies wouldn’t keep happening. It must be his fault. Fuck, even Majima died, even Majima... and he wasn’t even there, he couldn’t even have helped him, he just... He abandoned him. And Kiryu feels intensely that guilt and grief for his mistakes and his missed opportunities. And all he can think to do with that feeling... is die. It’s what Nishiki did before him. It’s what Kazama did before that. That’s what you do when you’ve fucked up and you don’t know how to fix it. You die. Then no one has to deal with you anymore.

But Haruka. His daughter. The best thing he ever did. She’s up there on stage and she loves him. She still loves him and wants him to be her dad. She’s been with him the whole time, she knows all about it. And she’s not scared. And she doesn’t think he’s bad. Maybe... maybe he can stay alive then. Maybe it’s okay if Haruka is still his daughter. And against all belief, he finds his way back to Haruka. He stays alive for her. He won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. And maybe... he can learn to do something different this time.

Kiryu... makes mistakes all the time. But he knows. And he feels so guilty. The writing doesn’t always do a great job of showing it. We don’t process Nishiki the way we should. We kill Rikiya for no reason. We forget that game 3 should have been TRIGGERING AS SHIT. And we awkwardly no homo out of Kiryu’s most important relationship while still insisting that it is Kiryu’s most important relationship. The writing is spotty and flawed and sometimes you can barely piece together a coherent narrative out of it. 

But at its white burning core is a guy who just keeps trying. Who gets up the next day and tries again. Because he’s lost so much. Because he loves so much. Because he believes there is value in being nice to people and being a good person. And I love that.