#i like to think daigo always wants to honor kiryu's name and the sort

[todayisafridaynight]

Unsure if I've shown you this one before or not but "Dial Drunk" by Noah Kahan is on my Daigo playlist. The lines "I ain't proud of all the punches that I've thrown/in the name of someone I no longer know/for the shame of being young, drunk, and alone" are part of the chorus and it uhhhh gets it

Also includes themes of someone you love but who has left you behind/you've not moved on from refusing to answer your calls. Idk you're the Daigo guy to me so I thought I'd share teehee 💕

ooooh yeah baby that could work. i see the vision HELL YEAH

[skysquid22]

Came to a revelation about Daigo’s character while I was half awake.

His anger is a massive part of his character and the fact he is/seems so controlled and mellowed once he’s Chairman is a bit of a testament to Kiryu’s power to inspire others (look at Mine and Hamazaki). But I think that anger is always there, no matter how we see Daigo. The Fudo Myo-o tattoo alone represents a deity who, in one translation, has a name meaning ‘Violent Wrathful One’ and slays ghosts and spirits with his fierce anger. Chosen for Y2 Daigo because of his position to be a leader someday and his anger, despite on the surface him embodying apathy more at the start. Kiryu is the one that forces him into a more active position and their first goal working together is making peace with with the Omi, but Daigo the entire time lashes out. He constantly fights Ryuji to varying degrees of success and later I think the more powerful display of anger comes out against Koji Shindo, the second Nishikiyama patriarch.

Murder undeniably is a pretty big deal to the main characters of these games and practically is the linchpin to the plot of 0. Y1 and Y2 don’t treat as serious because different writing at the time but nonetheless I’m going to meta-ize the fact that Daigo outright kills Shindo. He shot him to disarm him for aiming to kill Yayoi then shot him dead after yelling at him for nearly fucking over the Tojo Clan and probably also likely as revenge for Shindo forcing himself upon his mom. The only reason he doesn’t shoot him more despite the second shot being a death blow is because Kiryu steps in to curb his anger (pull his gun down and shake his head).

[More under the cut.]

Before Kiryu kicks his ass out of apathy, Daigo was in the midst of a decade long struggle to come to terms with his father’s death, the majority of the time where he believed his hero had done the deed. He had to have been pissed off beyond compare and had no way to come to terms with it directly so he burned off his rage like many men in the series—getting into stupid fights. His impulsiveness got him into the set up by Ryuji, landing him in jail for five years. Even before all this, going back to Y0, he’s being a brat because he’s angry over no one treating him like a person, only as the son of the patriarch. His father was neglecting him because of his job and considering that Yayoi was active enough in the Clan to be the acting Chairman, she was probably in the same boat of neglect. Kiryu, his only friend basically, got kicked out of the Clan and yes Daigo says that it’s no reason for him and Kiryu to not hang out again he does phrase it as a question. At the very least, he’s unsure and worried that he’s going to be alone. It makes sense he decides to get apathetic about it and not care who wants to be his friend, but that apathy comes from his anger over feeling trapped in a situation.

People shit on Daigo a lot for making bad decisions but I think his decision making skills comes from two sources. Trying to be like Kiryu and trying to not let his own anger fuck over the situation, as the times before where he’s done that has either made the situation worse for himself (hating fake friends but giving into fake friends bc he’s lashing out) or he killed someone for it. That has to be hanging over his consciousness, or at least I’m going to treat him like it does with how the rest of the series treats murder. Kiryu being his hero sets up a lot of shitty actions on Kiryu’s part that Daigo follows because of course he will it’s Kiryu (who in fairness does help him sort his shit out it just also comes with consequences). Regardless of Daigo coming to honor the job of Chairman or not, it was a shitty thing to push the responsibility of the job from Kiryu to Daigo. Daigo needed direction at the time and it’s not a stretch to say that Chairman would’ve been a fit for him (and Kiryu ended up being right), it wasn’t what Daigo was looking for at the time. He didn’t need or want or care for the Tojo Clan until Kiryu knocked some sense into him. I’m arguing both sides here because Kiryu’s decision worked out well, but it was still a shitty decision since Daigo was pushed into taking the role at the start. Responsibility trumps over personal wants. As the series goes on, Daigo still looks up to Kiryu, but actively looks to him for advice on how to handle the Tojo Clan. Again it’s a situation that makes sense from both sides.

Daigo’s job is to lead the Clan, he can’t rely on Kiryu’s council or leading hand as he did for him during Y2. It’s a distance that Daigo has to learn to establish. I’m not saying it’s bad that Daigo makes exceptions for Kiryu, but it is to be reliant on him. This was sort of a crux in Mine’s argument in Y3–that the Tojo Clan had priority over Kiryu, especially considering that Kiryu was no longer in the Clan. The massive core to this back and forth argument (how much should Kiryu help Daigo out) is the fact that Kiryu was the Fourth Chairman. He had just as much responsibility to the Clan as Daigo does and while Daigo chooses to lead, Kiryu passed the buck to Terada (which lets be honest was the most short-sighted and one of the stupidest decisions on his part). It flatly comes across as Kiryu not wanting to take the responsibility of his position and that reasoning influences every single interaction with Daigo from then on. Yes, Daigo is a sound choice to become Sixth Chairman, yes also Kiryu did it because he didn’t want to take responsibility to be Chairman himself (hi Mine, you were right on this). Yes, Daigo needed to not rely on his hero, a person he idolized so much despite spending nearly a decade confusingly hating, yes also Kiryu should’ve given him council when requested because it would’ve likely helped the situation more than hurt it and also it kept the connection between them. Daigo saw Kiryu as a friend when he had none, then as his fallen hero, then back to being his hero for saving him from his own self destruction tendencies, then… that last part stagnates. Kiryu’s connection to Daigo when he’s Chairman is distant and not at all close. Considering the reaching out efforts Daigo makes, it makes more sense that Daigo is the one with the father complex upon Kiryu and not the other way around. Kiryu never reaches out to Daigo for anything other than Work(tm) and even then it’s only out of a response to more external pressures AND after Daigo tries to reach out. His letter to Kiryu comes as a result of reuniting with Haruka in Y6, it’s not much of his own resolve to reach out naturally.

All of this is to say—how could Daigo not be incredibly angry? During his time as Chairman he seems composed, slipping out into normal anger or being worried since he’s struggling with the job, but considering his former displays of anger up to that point I think it’s a miracle Daigo didn’t have a midlife crisis and cracked. He has to be full of rage, but managing to keep it under wraps because appearances are important. His life has always revolved around what others have expected for him, never once getting a say in what he wants to do from the start. Instead of his hero worship snapping, he clung even harder to it to make up for the fact that he had no one else to turn to. His same hero writes him a letter after his death about how he saw him as a son to him despite only being there for him when it was convenient and also when it also served to benefit himself. (Some dad, huh…) I want to see Daigo angry at Kiryu, I want him to grow outside of the garden Kiryu made for him.