#but it lowkey bugs me if the whole basis for it is that they weren't super nice to each other in the last case lmao

[thenon-fictiondays]

IT HAS COME TO MY ATTENTION THAT SOME OF YALL ARE INTERPRETING MY FAVE CHARACTERS WRONG-

no im jk this is not an attack post but. I have noticed some interesting takes on Ryuunosuke's and Kazuma's characterizations in 2-4 and 2-5 and I wanted to slide in my 2 cents as always. I feel like there's a fair chunk of the fandom that judge Kazuma (and even Ryuu) pretty harshly for what happened in that case, even to the extent of saying they're bad/immoral people. So here's some thoughts/rants on fanon interpretation and ways I feel these characters (and their relationship) are often misrepresented.

Something that I see tossed around a lot is the idea that Kazuma manipulated Ryuunosuke into becoming an attorney so he could defend him in England, and I just don't think this is an accurate assessment of the case. First of all, that's just a super unhinged plan for a number of reasons, and Kazuma isn't that reckless. Second, Kazuma fully intended to go to England as a defense attorney himself. He didn't manipulate Ryuunosuke to become a lawyer beyond just telling him "you'd make a good lawyer". We don't know exactly how he planned for everything to go down once they got to England, but presumably he'd work as a defense lawyer and investigate his father's death, possibly with Ryuunosuke's assistance. It only ended up the way it did because of Kazuma losing his memories and being made a prosecutor by Stronghart, and Ryuunosuke being similarly guided to become a defense lawyer by Sherlock. None of that was planned by Kazuma, so it doesn't sit right that people act like he was the mastermind behind all this and intentionally manipulated Ryuunosuke into enacting his schemes. Keep in mind, he had suggested Ryuunosuke come with him to England before case 1, when they were talking in the restaurant; in other words, before he had any idea that Ryuunosuke might make a good lawyer.

Then in the final case, knowing how dedicated Ryuunosuke is to finding the truth, Kazuma wanted him to solve the case together with him in court, because he knew there was a lot going on behind the scenes and that there was a lot of potential for the truth to be manipulated, and he trusted Ryuunosuke more than anyone else to be the opposing attorney. Yeah, he went a little bit off the rails during the trial, but at the end of the day, he is a righteous person, no matter how strongly he wanted to get revenge on Barok for Genshin's death. If he truly only cared about revenge, he wouldn't have asked Ryuunosuke to be Barok's lawyer; he would've let Barok go without an attorney. And, as I said in this post, I think he knew that his judgement was clouded by hatred, and that he trusted Ryuunosuke to not let him obscure the truth because of his vendetta.

And there's another point that can't be overlooked, which is that if Kazuma's goal of going to England to uncover the truth was the only thing he cared about, he wouldn't have put that on the line to defend Ryuunosuke–but he did, because protecting Ryuunosuke was more important to him than solving the case of his father's death. So I don't think the takeaway from 2-4/5 should be that "Kazuma is a manipulative, vengeful jerk that only cares about avenging his father's death" or that "Kazuma doesn't care about Ryuunosuke and only used him to cover his ass while he fucked shit up in England". The takeaway is that Kazuma is a deeply traumatized 24 year old human being with a strong sense of morality and justice yet is nevertheless prone to human error, that tries to be perfect but makes mistakes when emotional (but who doesn't?), that's aware of how messed up the situation is and how easily injustice might occur, and relies on his friend, who he trusts more than anyone, to help him get through it.

Also, I don't think the takeaway from Ryuunosuke saying "I'm not doing this for you" was that he hates Kazuma or doesn't care about him anymore, I think it's supposed to be that he recognizes that this is much bigger than Kazuma himself, and his priority is to find the truth and securing justice, rather than satisfying Kazuma's revenge plot (which is the same as Kazuma's, though ofc in the beginning he believes they're one and the same). "I'm not doing this for you" was such a powerful line, and it told us so much about how Ryuu has developed throughout the series. He's not defending Barok in this trial because Kazuma asked him to, he's doing it because he believes Barok deserves a solid defense. He's not pursuing the truth despite the danger of doing so for Kazuma's sake, he's doing it because he believes it's the right thing to do and it's worth the risk.

This is already way too long so I'll shut up now lmao I'm not gonna tell other people how to interact with canon, but I do think some of you do a disservice to these characters by simply trying to put them into categories of "good", "bad", "love", and "hate"