#sadamoto mikiko

[darikbelochka]

Sometimes a family is a father, a mother, their teenage son and a malewife babygirl ex-yakuza

[verrixa]

An unexpected fic! Yay!!

Relationships:

• Higashi Toru & Yagami Takayuki

• Higashi Toru/Kaito Masaharu (one-sided)

• Kaito Masaharu/Yagami Takayuki (one-sided)

• Kaito Masaharu/Sadamoto Mikiko (they're not doing so well...)

Rating: T

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62473756

[rainbowtie25]

Tojoctober Day 21. Betrayal

Sad day for Kaito x Higashi shippers ✊😔

[great-kung-lao]

Kazuma Kiryu x Sayama Kaoru and Kaito Masaharu x Natsume Mikiko parallel.

[undercooked-spaghetti]

As someone who has written to infinity and beyond in the Judgment fandom, I feel like I should say a little something in terms of the Kaito Files DLC. I've briefly mentioned it here and there in my notes on my fics, but I absolutely just didn't like the DLC all that much. I liked small things here and there; I thought Mikiko and Jun were good characters, I liked that we got some Higashi lore: he used to make and serve tea for the Matsugane Family, he gets a new arcade in Ijincho (WHICH WE DON'T FIND AT ALL IN INFINITE WEALTH). BUT... a lot just felt quite lackluster and unlike what I've come to love in RGG games. LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!

First of all, it's a DLC about Kaito. Which is FINE! He's not my favorite, and at times he's really fucking dumb and I don't believe he can be a GREAT detective (or even a good MAIN protagonist for the series), but he means well and is strong. I think he's a good fit alongside Yagami and backs him up. And I guess for big Kaito fans, it's great to finally see him in action! However, the whole "you were engaged 16 years ago and you fall HARD when you're in love" feels like a last minute decision to write some bigger backstory for Kaito.

Now, we know a bit already; he joined up with Matsugane right after graduating middle-school, his dad was a drunk, he went to highschool for a year (??? He mentions it in Lost Judgment, and I guess I assume Matsugane tried to have him go, but it feels off, but whatever). It all seems to fit in with Kaito's character, but the whole engagement thing felt off only because the DLC makes such a big deal about it, shows us flashbacks of him and Mikiko, show us how much it means to Kaito... but until the DLC tells us about the engagement, it just never seems like it comes up or did anything to change his character in any way. It seems more like an afterthought rather than something that works out with an already established character. And it's not the WORST thing at all, but it just really sticks out to me.

I actually really liked the flashbacks of Kaito and Mikiko. It was clear that Kaito cared and Mikiko was a strong woman who wouldn't put up with his bullshit, but instead call him out on it. Kaito would absolutely come to her aid, but she wasn't helpless either. BUT... her introduction rubbed me the wrong way. Not for Mikiko; she was sticking up for her baby sister and doing what she could to protect her. But you can't tell me that an office worker, whether she used self-defense or not, could totally leave the Matsugane office weakened that they needed Kaito to come in and save the day because she could totally take on several yakuza by herself. I know they needed a quick way to tell us she was a no-nonsense woman, but I just felt like it was a weak way to get Kaito around to meet her.

They made it too obvious Kyoya was the bad guy. I don't know if maybe I have a sixth sense for plot-twists or maybe it's just their writing (RGG twists are never the STRONGEST, but sometimes I don't see it coming), but they kept going with every intention of making it OBVIOUS he was not a good guy. He was rich, worked a lot, and then hurt Jun because the kid was just looking at some knives he found. There was NO subtlety about Kyoya, and the fact that he somehow seemed a million times more evil than Soma just seemed annoying, mostly because beyond Kyoya wanting money and to be rich, he barely felt all that complex. Like, he felt cartoonishly evil.

It leads me to the next point that the whole game itself just seemed so predictable. I knew Kyoya was going to be the big bad, I knew Kaito wasn't REALLY gonna be Jun's dad but it would make him want to help more and more even thinking he MIGHT be, and I knew that not only was Mikiko never going to do any damage during her revenge rampage, but she would end up with Kaito. I know I said RGG twists aren't always the strongest, but I feel like despite it, they still weave an intriguing story with twists and turns that become unexpected. But I could almost see everything a mile away and none of it was particularly interesting, if I'm being honest.

The ending I think is what truly soured me to it all. They're on a rooftop, Kyoya has been subdued, and Mikiko is seconds away from shooting him and getting her revenge because Kyoya had his "bestie" Kenmochi burn down her family's house (which apparently he assumed the house would be empty which is why he was okay with it, but he never checked and was really upset he killed people. OKAY?). Kaito stops her and mentions that Jun would be alone, and Kyoya was already in a bad spot and she could end her rampage, so Mikiko DOESN'T shoot him. And it's weird because she already had the detectives (which we never heard about until the DLC) watch Jun while she planned to infiltrate the party. So like, what were her plans for her kid once she DID get her revenge? It's mentioned a lot that despite it all, she loved Jun and tried to always be there for him before her disappearance, but suddenly she needs KAITO to bring up that her kid would watch her shoot his father and then she'd be in jail. Whatever. Kenmochi strangles Kyoya, DIES HIMSELF FROM THE POISON (Kyoya is super evil by the way and poisoned and killed EVERYONE. BECAUSE. HE. IS. EVIL!!!!), Jun is likely traumatized from watching it (plus all the trauma from EVERYTHING ELSE), and... it doesn't get brought up how much that'll fuck him up. Whether his dad was the most evillest villain or not, it's gonna fuck Jun up. And even when Jun talks to Kaito on the roof about wanting to be strong to protect those he cares about, he barely seems affected by watching people die RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM. YIKES!

AND THEN DON'T WORRY! Mikiko ends up with Kaito in the end! Because not only did the doctor who cared for her during her amnesia fall for her, but for some stupid reason, despite Mikiko now being free from her rampage to pick up the pieces of all the shit she's been through, the best thing to do is to saddle her with a man! AND WHAT BETTER WAY THAN TO FIGHT FOR HER LIKE SHE'S JUST A PRIZE TO BE WON?

And it's mostly for comedic effect I guess, since of course this rando RIPPED doctor would never win the girl when the protagonist is RIGHT THERE, but it's just... so stupid. They just go with Kaito despite EVERYTHING THAT WENT ON like it'll all be okay. And I think that's what really fucking chaps my hide. It felt like Jun's the only one who grew (KIND OF. He got over his fear of knives, I GUESS), and they all lived happily ever after. And don't get me wrong, I like a happy ending too, but it just felt too perfect. Nothing ever felt tense, it never felt like anything was at stake, no one seems all that hurt by anything that has happened (except, again, JUN). On paper I think the outline for the plot seems okay. But man, it just felt like a way to give Kaito some attention because... I dunno, maybe fans were sad he wasn't in Lost Judgment for half the game due to his stab wound?

I know I'm in the minority here. I want the guys to be happy because they've all been through shit, but man, I don't know, it felt too perfectly weaved to end the way it did. Despite how much I liked Kaito/Mikiko, it just feels like it's a leap for Mikiko to uproot her and Jun's lives after ALL THAT SHIT, to go live with Kaito all because... LOVE CONQUERS ALL!!!!111 It just felt so trite and unbelievable given what I'm accustomed to, I guess. I believe Mikiko would see how much Kaito would have changed in so many years, but she has a lot more going on and a lot to unpack, I just guess I don't see her as being so charmed and wooed after everything that had gone on just because Kaito won some stupid dick measuring contest FOR HER LOVE! It felt like they just wanted to have some form of wrap-up, and we got... this. I've seen a lot of talk about how Kaito wouldn't be so bad as a main character, and I FULLY disagree. I think he's a strong side character, but he doesn't feel smart enough to carry a game of mystery and intrigue. I know it was after the fact, but we saw how it went in Gaiden when he was the lead on a case; he had it all wrong and was running off before he heard a client's full story, and then ALSO throwing Higashi under a bus for not picking up that they had been tricked by a yakuza family.

There's a lot of little things that annoyed me as well, such as random woman working at Charles despite part of Higashi's character is that with the Family dissolved, he's been working toward getting Charles profitable so he can hire his guys to work for him because he cared so much about them. And it's not so much that he has a woman working, but more that she's only there so she can be a damsel in distress to show off Jun's character as fighting for what's right and protecting those who don't have the strength to protect themselves. They ditched some small established character lore to create lore for a new character when they could have done it a million other ways. It's a nitpick, but I'm a huge Higashi fan and entitled to my opinion.

I also hated Hoshino's bit. I could see him helping Kaito out on a case, but then he talks about troubles in his and Saori's relationship, how there's distance between them, which is also mentioned here and there in Lost Judgment as well but never taken further. So of course, Kaito says Hoshino should propose. WHY? Who the fuck knows, I guess to foreshadow the upcoming backstory. It's stupid. It's. All. So. Stupid.

Mikiko randomly snooping through Kyoya's laptop and finding evidence he was behind her family's death just also felt lazy. To be fair, I can't quite remember why it was explained she was snooping around, but with how meticulous and calculating they made Kyoya out to be, I just couldn't see him keeping any kind of documentation about it, especially not somewhere where his family could find it so easily. It felt too convenient.

Phew! I had to get it out of my system. I've been playing Lost Judgment here and there, and the stupid DLC stares me in the face when I open the phone, and it's annoying. I nearly gave up on the DLC after the first chapter because I was just so uninvested in it, but I pushed through because achievements and man. It just didn't feel like it got better. And not only was it too formulaic and predictable, the difficulty spike just felt odd. Like fighting as Kaito was fun, but the enemies felt like a chore to get past to the point that I set the difficulty to easy just so I could get through it faster.

Everyone praises the writing, and I'll say the writing was fine. They told the story they wanted to, it wasn't necessarily even a bad story, they even gave us some good characters in Jun and Mikiko, but it just didn't quite feel like a Ryu ga Gotoku story. It felt devoid of any real tension, intrigue, and it never left me feeling like I HAD to know more and at the edge of my seat. I'm glad it came free if you bought the Judgment Collection, because paying any big amount for the DLC would've been a slap in the face.

ANYWAY, Higashi lore was the best part of the DLC for me and it showed what a big heart he has despite trying to keep his edges. Love that for him!

[skyqueen3]

11 for the first thing!

11. my endgame pairing

Since apparently endgame = current canon ship still together, I've has to move away from wrestling for this one.

Kaito and Mikiko, Lost Judgment: The Kaito Files

[questintheskies]

Best female ever created by RGG

[aleksikesa]

▸Games Played in 2024

Lost Judgment: The Kaito Files (2022) dev. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio

[theashenphoenix]

KAITO MASAHARU & SADAMOTO MIKIKO LOST JUDGMENT: THE KAITO FILES (2022)

[atmiek]

[rggdriptournament]

ROUND #90: MURDER, SHE COAT

REMEMBER! IT'S NOT ABOUT WHO YOU LIKE MORE! IT'S ABOUT WHO'S SERVING!

[majimassqueaktoy]

Kaito saving his love interests work colleagues.

[fabiansociety]

dang, not only did she survive to the end of the game, she and kaito got to walk off into the credits together, that's a bold romantic decision for this series

it would have been nice if that had happened as a result of a conversation between the two characters — for such a central figure in both the mystery and kaito's life, it's very noticeable that her backstory is conveyed by the doctor who cared for her and the detective she hired, rather than as a conversation she and kaito had, and the restarting of their relationship comes not from her and kaito interacting but because kaito and the doctor had a fistfight in the front yard over who gets to court her, which is… pretty gross.

but whatever, the relationship was well-established in flashbacks, and kaito's little speech about how precarious his non-yakuza life is, and her quietly supportive but also challenging response of "we'll have to figure that out," was the most romantic the yakuza series has ever been. i'm intrigued where they go with this in future games, i really hope she sticks around.

kaito's relationship with mikiko in the kaito files might be one of the better heterosexual couples in the rgg franchise? it hits a lot of the same beats as yumi's arc did in yakuza kiwami, but mikiko gets to be present for more of it, and you get to see her deploy violence repeatedly, and that makes a big difference. emotion in this series is conveyed through violence in a way that would be horrific in the real world, but since this is a video game it gives things a heightened operatic quality where the brutality conveys a strength of emotion that the little computer puppets struggle to convey with just their acting. women are consistently locked out of that level of emotiveness in the series, relegated to either civilian pacifism, witness, or victim, without any of the combat-centric, player-driven fights that cement the male relationships. like, male characters in these games fight to demonstrate their love for each other, or their agency in the plot: think saejima's fight with baba, or majima's courtship of kiryu in the majima everywhere system, or daigo fighting shinada. women don't get to fight like that in the franchise, so it leaves the relationships much flatter by comparison. mikiko isn't fighting kaito—or at least she hasn't, yet, at where i am in the narrative, though i've really got my fingers crossed for a climactic fight instead of a death—but she *does* get to pursue her own violent revenge against the people that murdered her family, the same as the male characters.

there's a whole separate essay to write about the way that the series punishes women who achieve this level of violent narrative agency (similar to the way women who get superpowers in superhero movies are insistently cured of them by the end of the movie), but after YLAD i'm really hoping this side story doesn't go back to that well yet again. it's a game *about* righteous violence! let your women be righteously violent!

[finalbossanalysis]

Final Boss Analysis #3

Yasutaka Shirakaba

Lost Judgment: The Kaito Files

Guess who just finished The Kaito Files? Here we have a shorter analysis compared to the last two, but he's a noteworthy and unique final boss in RGG nonetheless.

Shirakaba is not a Judgment Final Boss

Throughout the Judgment games, we've seen a stark contrast between the final bosses of the Yakuza games, and those of the Judgment games. While Yakuza titles usually consist of manly men ripping their shirts off to duke it out for their ideals, the trend of Judgment final bosses seems that they're going to be more dark characters, like Kuroiwa, Kyoya Sadamoto, and partly Kuwana.

Shirakaba clearly does not fit the description of dark, or mysterious. He's timid and lonely, but he's good hearted, and strong enough to protect those he cares about. Keeping Mikiko in the dark was questionable at first, but when you learn the alternative is her getting gutted by Sadamoto, it actually seems pretty reasonable.

The Duel

Here we have two shirtless manly men duking it out for their ideals. See? Yakuza final boss.

Mikiko and Jun are finally safe. However, Shirakaba still has unconfessed feelings for Mikiko, even though he knows he will probably get turned down, he resolves he needs to get it off his chest anyway, even if it ends in denial. Knowing Kaito, and his feelings for Mikiko, he sends him a letter, asking him for a duel, giving Kaito a chance to show Mikiko his dedication, and Shirakaba a chance to show off the guns he was secretly packing all along.

The Theme: Duel Of Love

The soft guitar, violin, and piano take the center stage here, backed by an electric guitar and some subtler electronic sounds. It has feelings of happiness, determination, and finality. There is no "off" sounding note here. Everything down to the instrumentation seems intentional, not hiding anything from the listener. Other Yakuza final bosses can be well intentioned, but are usually held back by ambition, emotion, or jealousy. But I can say with confidence to Shirakaba is a good man, through and through. (A first for Yakuza final bosses. (Kinda))

Fighting Style

Shirakaba's style is karate, and he is exceptionally skilled. Sadly most of his moveset is borrowed from Shibusawa from 0, but he does have a few unique attacks to keep you on your toes. Once you drain all his health, he'll regenerate everything, and enter heat mode.

Heat Aura

Shirakaba's aura is pure white, untainted by any ill will, or anger. It's kind of reminiscent of Kiryu's Legend Style aura from 0.

After The Duel

After losing to Kaito, he simply accepts defeat, thanking Kaito for helping him communicate his feeling for Mikiko.

Conclusion

Well, that's another one checked off the list. Apologies for the shorter format here. Next up i'll probably take a look at Tsuneo Iwami from 6, or maybe i'll do a non-Yakuza villain.

Blah blah leave comment for boss ok bye

[woundedheartwithin]

You know, I’m a little worried that rgg is just planning on writing Yagami out of the next game

Mild spoilers under the cut

Given how popular the series was in Japan (due in no small part to who exactly portrayed Yagami), I don’t see them just hanging the series up in the event that Kimura Takuya’s agency refuses to come to the table. He was the initial draw, of course, but the series earned its own fan base in the west by having arguably the best writing and gameplay out of any Yakuza/RGG game to date. As much as I hate saying this, Kimura is not needed for another installment to be a success, especially given how viciously some folks seem to hate Yagami just in general, and Kimura’s agency is not giving rgg any reasons to believe that he’s not expendable

But from a canon point of view, LJ being set in Ijincho with Sugiura and Tsukumo’s shiny new detective agency is scary, actually, if you think about the implications, and the Kaito Files kinda confirmed it for me too. Sugiura, one of the main characters of both games, is now in Yokohama. Higashi, another main character in both games, opened another branch of Charles in Ijincho, as well (per the Kaito Files). The crew at Genda Law Office and Mafuyu’s roles in LJ were negligible, aside from Saori (who is technically a player character, and so a main character, and who stated in LJ that she felt like she was being underestimated by both her client and her coworkers)

Kaito, yet another main character, has a brand new family, and there is no way Mikiko actually agreed to move into Kaito’s shitty Kamurocho apartment with all her money and whatever money she got from her dirtbag husband’s estate. That leaves an opening for Kaito to just move to Yokohama with his family. And Yokohama 99 only has one field detective and a pretty high profile win under their belt, so honestly I don’t think it’s all that much of a stretch to see Kaito start working there instead because they need the manpower, and Kamurocho is now too far away to reasonably commute. It’s also pretty reasonable to assume that Jun already goes to school in Yokohama (hell he and Mikiko probably live there) because of his father’s connections with the city (that reunion being held at the Blu Marino every year). I don’t think it was ever explicitly stated that Sadamoto was based in Yokohama, but the implication is there

Not to mention, if the series moved to Ijincho full time, Yagami has stated that he likes working and living in Kamurocho, and his only remaining father figure is still there. I don’t see him leaving, even for Kaito

Idk it’s kinda scary honestly, because Yagami is far and away my favorite character (for more than just his looks I promise), and I love the other characters with all my heart, but I do not want to see Yagami just left behind in Kamurocho while the gang up and moves to Ijincho. And with the whole Saori being engaged to Hoshino angle, I could totally see that souring and Saori bailing to Yokohama as well, especially since she’s expressed quite a bit of discontent at being overlooked and underestimated already. If her relationship with Hoshino goes belly up, I could see her stepping back from Genda’s office entirely and moving to get a fresh start

[undercooked-spaghetti]

I know I talk a lot of shit about the Kaito Files DLC, but I did like Jun and Mikiko.

Just everything else felt pretty meh and formulaic.