#the kuwana fight i think is what the ryuji fight was supposed to be

[queen-of-bel]

putting together some miscellaneous lost judgment thoughts now that i’ve finished the game but i don’t feel like writing it in paragraph form so bulleted list it is

CHRIST the mitsuru storyline became a lot more heart wrenching than i expected it to be. not only does he need to come to terms with the fact that he’s been in a coma for thirteen fucking years, but the only two people who cared for him while he was in a coma are now gone. sawa has been murdered, and he’ll never be able to have a normal life with his mother again.

the soundtrack FUCKS supremely holy shit. the remix of destination had me going insane it was so fucking good

the final boss legitimately gave me chills. it was genuinely so tragic to me. it was so very clearly two men that desperately wanted to see the other’s point of view. kuwana had said that he wants yagami to convince him that yagami is correct. yagami obviously keeps driving home sawa’s murder because it’s what shows that kuwana’s version of justice isn’t without blame. it’s so easy to want to root for kuwana and side with him, but we can’t forget that sawa was cruelly murdered as collateral damage. as kaito said, there’s no right solution to this problem and yagami and kuwana both know that. they’re both searching for this perfect middle ground of their two ideals that doesn’t exist. 

i really liked that the game brought back the ministry of health and the pension plotline from the first game. it just goes to show that this huge stash of money and desire to grab it will always exist

building on that last point, that’s why i really liked that kuwana got away at the end. the main conflict of the game to me really is about “what can we do about this broken system?” and even though yagami and kuwana had different ideas of what this meant, they both at least agreed that the answer is “whatever i am feasibly able to do”. 

taking down the public security division and fixing the corruption in there wasn’t a realistic option, and yagami knows that. turning over kuwana wouldn’t accomplish anything other than playing right into the public security division’s hands. the only thing that yagami was able to do at that moment was get immediate justice for sawa. catching soma and convincing reiko to turn herself in was a huge win. that’s as much as he was able to do in the system and he knows that he can’t push his luck and try for anything bigger than that.