#i want kiwami so bad but i need to be more responsible and save $ i have so many bills due next month

[yo9urt]

casting spell of Make This Video Game Go On Sale

[majimemegoro]

kiryu meta, remastered

im reposting & remastering this because its one of my most important posts but for some reason never shows up in searches and i need to be able to find it sometimes. im making some minor changes and additions but ill put a link to the original in the reblogs. also the codeword is whackusbonkus and thats what ill search if i ever cant find this on my blog. also i am censoring any words that tumblr might think are Bad Words, again to make the post more likely to show up in my blog search.

*HERE BE SPOILERS FOR KIWAMI 2/Y2* 

I wrote the original in response to an anonymous ask that said:

I finished YK2 and while I loved it, that ending got me rolling my eyes and sighing "UGH MEN". Massive [no] measuring context ever. What was the point? And don't get me started with the "Haruka will understand". Understand what Kiryu? That instead of taking the elevator, get to a hospital and save yourself you decided to have a pointless fight that served no purpose or whatsoever knowing full well you would leave her alone in this world? Like, I get that’s not the true ending. But damn it’s just such a stupid move. Kiryu I love you but that was dumb as [dumb]. (SORRY FOR THE RANT)          

now buckle your seatbelt this is where the rambling starts. OK SO I totally get where you’re coming from and I think your criticisms are totally legitimate, but i actually had a completely different reaction to this part and i consider it one of the best ending sequences in the series (if not the best). Ill try to explain why.

For me, Y2 is the story of kiryu trying to die.

We see him go to meet with the omi when everyone is telling him its certain death. we see him trying to get kaoru to take his life as some kind of stupid reparation for his negligible involvement in the death of her parents at the age of twelve. (TWELVE.) we see him pull a knife out of his gut wound. then at the end theres a) the fight with ryuji and b) the fact that he doesn’t take the chance to leave before the bomb goes off. there might be other examples but i can’t remember. So over the whole game we watch kiryu trying to die, at first in the service of “worthwhile” projects, in the service of utility and honor, but none of it pans out and we see his self-destructive behavior gradually become more pointless, e.g., the knife. but hes still alive.

then in the ending sequence at the top of kamurocho hills, we reach the - in a way natural - conclusion of that. kiryu is left with the absolute thinnest justification for seeking death, a sort of existentially (in the sense of the specific philosophy) valuable activity that is valuable/honorable/meaningful at all only because he decides it is. only because he can’t see beyond not wanting to live. only because he knows that going out with dignity in the midst of a crisis is a “good” way to die. so he gives up on even pretending to have altruistic motivations and he admits to himself at least on some level that, yeah, he wants to help people, but he also wants to die. and people have been helped - the day has been saved as much as it could be - so now he can die.

I think thats why he stays to fight ryuji. on some level it is absolutely a shallow machismo contest, but its also kiryu grabbing onto the only thing he can see that has meaning. its also kiryu getting a way out that will feel strong and dignified and almost metaphysically important. it’s su*cidal ideation masquerading as thymos. physical combat makes an apt stand-in for meaningful activity because it is inherently tied to life and death: physical combat can make a division between life and death, and life and death are important, so fighting ryuji must be important too, right? and then he can die, right? and then-

and yeah, he’s going to be leaving haruka behind. he doesn’t have a justification for that. but i think he really can’t see beyond just wanting things to stop.

is it selfish? yes, in a way. is it psychologically compelling? I say absolutely.

YOU’RE WELCOME FOR THE RANT

(interestingly, I think the soundtrack supports this interpretation - A Scattered Moment is NOT the background music for an *purgatory announcer voice* EPIC MANLINESS CONTEST !!! its the background music for something that is sad and almost beautiful - something trying to be beautiful - and impossible to stop.)

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

*sigh* I love him... oh, hey there tumblr! It’s been awhile, sorry about that. Been drinking a big ol’ glass of Loving Kiryu juice tho so it’s time for some Kiryu Opinions with Lemon. Sit’ya down and gather close. 

I’ve recently been informed that writing Kiryu is hard. This came as a surprise to me because Kiryu is very intuitive for me to wield. Like, there’s a certain amount of pressure with writing any protag, especially one who so defines a series and a universe, even now. But I just... don’t struggle with him. All of his decisions are intuitively relatable for me. 

But hearing that Kiryu was deceptively complicated made me stop and thinking about what about him appeals to me, what I find easy to move with him. I don’t know about any of you, but when I struggle to write a character, it’s because I struggle to understand their motivations. (Note that I said understand, which doesn’t necessarily mean agree with.) If I can’t explain to myself why a character is Like That, how the hell am I going to explain it to anyone else? How will I move them believably if I don’t know why they’re moving? 

So this got me thinking about... why Kiryu is Like That. 

One of the important things for me, whenever I have Kiryu in a scene, is that Kiryu is always in the Present. This is not true for many, many characters. Many people are reliving the past or hoping for the future. But in any given scene, even if Kiryu should be thinking about other things, what he responds to is the present, the here and now. That is first and foremost what motivates him. Whatever is happening right in front of him takes precedence. Both past events and future consequences mean very little to him compared to that. 

This is drastically different, as I said, from characters like Majima, who is nearly always living in the past. A strange thing for me to say about a character as self-aware as him, but being self-aware and being in the Present are two different things. But I’m not here to talk about him today. 

This is not to say that Kiryu is ignorant or foolhardy or callous. Kiryu does not deny the past its meaning or charge in blindly without an awareness of the consequences. He knows consequences will come, he simply accepts them faster than you might expect. And Kiryu is deeply affected by the past and does spend a great deal of time thinking about the past. But that’s not how his decisions get made. Many people are so afraid of or so hurt by the past, that all of their present decisions are predetermined by what has happened to them before. And that makes sense, we all learn from experience and react to it. It’s just a matter of which pieces of information any one of us is choosing to evaluate per decision. And rather than looking to past pain and past failures, or past successes, Kiryu gives deference to the most recent information. Part of the reason for this is that the only pattern Kiryu sees in the past is his failures. If everything he did before failed, why the hell would he do that again? And part of the reason is because the past is dead to Kiryu. 

I said before some people live in the past. They play it out every day, trying to redeem themselves, hoping for a different ending. If they just do it right this time, things will be different, things will be better. Other people believe in do-overs. Kiryu doesn’t. Kiryu internalized when he was young that there are no do-overs. Sometimes you get one shot and you live with the consequences. That’s what Kiryu believes. When he entered the yakuza, that was the ethos instilled in him. If you make a call, you stand by it and you live with it, good, bad, or break even. Kiryu believes that, even to this day. And in his defense, many of the decisions he’s had to make were like that. Any time he made a bad call, the consequences were permanent. Any mistake he made, he could lose a friend, he could lose a war. And when he made that decision, he had to be ready for those consequences. That’s what he learned. So for him there are no do-overs. The past is dead. It’s not an active, dynamic thing that he could change, even if he wanted to. He can’t bring Nishiki back to life, he can’t save Tachibana, he can’t un-orphan Haruka. Those decisions are made and gone. 

He’s not a fool and he won’t torture himself thinking about what he could have done differently. He accepts that these are the consequences. Sometimes you’re wrong and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. In some ways, this helps Kiryu let go. It means he’s never trying to save someone who’s already dead. It means he doesn’t dwell in regret. This gives him the ability to move forward. If he couldn’t do this, he never would have gotten up from the end of Kiwami 1. But Nishiki’s dead and there’s nothing he can do about it. So he doesn’t try. That’s the downside. Kiryu never goes back. He never tries to make it better, even for himself. Because he doesn’t think there is a way. It’s too painful to even consider that. Who is there to forgive him? Who is there to let him try again? The dead don’t talk. Kiryu accepts that he cannot change the past. Instead he flees from it. 

This is an opposite defensive maneuver from trying to relive the past, he’s trying to outrun it. If he never has to make those decisions again, then he can never fuck up like that again. It’s why he refuses to be chairman, it’s why he hates being in Kamurocho. It’s all a constant reminder of his mistakes and how much they cost. And Kiryu’s defensive strategy is sometimes overactive, deciding that he can’t fix situations that haven’t yet burnt to the ground. He always assumes people won’t forgive him, that they don’t want him to try. He always assumes his failure is enough to ruin all the relationships he has. Why would you forgive someone who ruined your life? Kiryu doesn’t know why you would and doesn’t think you should. He’s paranoid about failing the people he loves and he believes that if he has failed you, you rightfully don’t love him anymore and wouldn’t want to see him. He sees his mistakes too big to know how small they are to you. So he runs from good relationships because he thinks he’s already failed them, he thinks he’s already made too many mistakes and he doesn’t deserve that relationship anymore. Maybe he never did. 

And the more faith people put in him the worse this is. People treat Kiryu like he’s a god, a savior. And every time it makes Kiryu’s heart sore. He’s not afraid of his own power; he’s actually fairly confident in his abilities and has a good grasp of their reach. But seeing how much people trust him... it makes every mistake cost more. Kiryu worries because he knows he is human. No matter what anyone else thinks, he’s still just a guy. He sees himself as just a guy, maybe better trained or more gifted than some, but just a normal, mortal, flawed human being like anyone else. He knows he makes mistakes. He knows he will make mistakes again. And what if he makes a mistake that affects you? What if he’s wrong and it fucks you over? And how betrayed your trust is, how your faith in him falters... then you’ll finally see he was never worthy of it to begin with. Then you’ll feel deceived because he couldn’t live up to your expectations. 

Kiryu doesn’t want to hurt you like that, hurt anyone like that. He takes the expectations on him very seriously. He knows you’re only asking because you do need help. He knows you’re very sincere. And he badly wants to do right by you. But if he... if he fucks up, that doesn’t hurt him, it hurts you. And sometimes he can’t bear that. He can’t bear failing people, being responsible for their disappointment and hurt and ruined situation. 

It’s not that Kiryu wants to be reassured that he’s doing okay. People who want reassurance want to do the job they have. Kiryu hates this job. He hates being in the position to save or damn people. He hates the potential of getting it wrong and it mattering so much. And he would rather not help than risk it sometimes. His heart aches every time he’s asked again because that means... there’s no one else. It means he’s still the best you’ve got. And you deserve better, you deserve more than what he is. He’s just some guy and he’s not sure he can be what you need. He doesn’t trust himself to do it right. He wants you to have someone who WILL be there every time, who CAN weather it all. He doesn’t think he can. 

He will still help, because there’s no one else, because he does understand that if he doesn’t worse things will happen. And he’ll become responsible by not having stepped in. But this is why he’s inconsistent, he doesn’t think he can do more, he doesn’t trust himself. And he gets scared of how much people believe in him. 

He really doesn’t think that people could still love him, knowing he’s just some guy. He’s scared that if he isn’t perfect, like he’s supposed to be, like everyone wants him to be... everyone will feel betrayed. So he runs away to Okinawa to do something entirely different. But even then he’s scared of fucking up. He’s taken on all these young lives who depend on him and he’s waiting, he’s just waiting, to have someone tell him he’s a bad father, that he’s failed them, that he’s fucking up. And when that happens, he runs away again, so he won’t hurt them anymore. And because he doesn’t deserve to have relationships that bring him comfort and joy, he doesn’t deserve to feel useful and good, because he isn’t. He’s always been a failure. 

Kiryu carries the pressure on him EXCEEDINGLY well. He almost never breaks down. But he has those break downs. He has anxiety. He worries about fucking up. His confidence curves towards stables, but when he hits a rocky point... he’s unmoored. He’s left without any reassurance that he does know what he’s doing, that he is doing okay, that he hasn’t failed every relationship he’s ever had. People still love him and forgive him and want to be with him. Want to help him try again. 

I might even go so far to say that Kiryu has Imposter Syndrome. He has ex-gifted kid syndrome. Brought up with high expectations and high standards, more talented than his peers, launched into the stratosphere when he was still young, all of his personality moorings ripped away... He’s constantly just trying to be a good person, the best he knows how. And he takes it very, very hard when he falls short of what he was told all his life he could be. He doesn’t believe he ever achieved it.

I love Kiryu. I hope this helped show why.