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Emma uploaded the wrong worm cluster

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Not my best work but I just wanted to draw Majima :')

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The SEGA Cooro™ Cute Mascot Plushies will be available at the New Sega Store Tokyo on 7/18

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Is There Nuance to the Park-Majima Situation?

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great analysis to be done (and being done) on both Park and Majima. I absolutely get why Majima’s characterization in particular invites fans to analyze and reconcile the writing decisions that went into it. No one should have to shake their heads the whole time to show they don’t support Majima’s actions, either. I was a diehard Majima fan not long ago and I’m a fan of characters who’ve done worse now. Trust me, I understand, and all I’m asking for is the same understanding in return.

With all that said, I still believe the nuance Yokoyama depicted their relationship with originally is contrived and falls apart if you believe in reproductive rights, and that some arguments that aim to introduce more nuance are either rhetorically flawed or based in misconceptions.

Let’s at least start off on the same page here: Yakuza 5’s critical error in portraying Park and Majima’s relationship was bothsidesing what led to their divorce. Park is punished on every level for her choice to have an abortion. She loses her dream, her marriage, and even her ability to have children altogether. She reflects upon it with regret as a youthful mistake, a “sacrifice.” She valued her dream over a clump of tissue—their “unborn child” as many would see it—and paid the price as though it were equivalent exchange. She can never be happy as a consequence of her choice. It’s not unlike how the series approaches portraying the yakuza.

Park did absolutely nothing to warrant that. She had no responsibility to tell Majima (in advance or at all) and no responsibility to carry the pregnancy to term. He had no right to hit her even if it was “the only time” and no right to expect her to perform reproductive labor at the expense of her career. If he valued her career to begin with, he shouldn’t have pursued the marriage at all. I imagine he would agree at least with that much. I would hope we can all agree.

For all that I expect we do agree, though, and for all that I truly do believe these discussions are carried out in good faith and with due consideration, there are points where the rhetoric overlaps with the rhetoric behind Yakuza 5’s bothsidesing. That's because a number of arguments ultimately boil down to introducing culpability on Park’s part and introducing mitigating circumstances on Majima’s. But Majima (and in turn Yokoyama’s) position that Majima is owed reproductive labor, owed advance notice, owed any kind of notice in any way is just not one that merits serious deliberation.

One common argument is that, statistically, what happened is “to be expected.” I don’t mean from them as characters—I’ll leave character analysis to the pros—but in general. Anyone would have been upset at what Park did, any marriage would have crumbled, and so on. I don’t want to call it an appeal to normalcy since it’s not always used to justify Majima’s actions, but in my opinion, it exaggerates the prevalence of certain aspects of their relationship and of Majima’s actions, and so makes them out to be more accepted at the time than they necessarily were.

Let’s consider the statistics in Japan. Where possible, I’ve consulted sources that specifically cover the same year or at least decade. I’m short on time writing this, so by all means do your own research.

An age difference greater than seven years in marriages is uncommon, but accepted. Domestic violence is not uncommon, especially for women coming from troubled backgrounds. Japan was one of the first countries to legalize abortion and has some of the lowest rates of teen pregnancy in the world, as well as low rates of abortion. Among women who get abortions, women Park’s age are about as likely to get them as women in their forties, both being the least likely groups overall.

What I believe to be the most important consideration, though, is that it is illegal in Japan for a married woman to get an abortion without spousal consent. It’s not important because it applies to Park—she’s concealing her marriage, she can get around that requirement. It’s important because of the societal attitudes it reflects.

Even now, to avoid litigation, to uphold their interpretation of the law, and to “preserve the rights of men,” many doctors seek consent even from unmarried partners, which is not a legal requirement. This law is considered one of the biggest obstacles to abortion access for women in Japan, and many doctors, though not the majority, agree it should be upheld. This is despite a very low rate of actual disputes with doctors arising (just 6.3%), and despite a low rate of husbands outright denying an abortion (11.3%). Although this is recent research, it is consistent with research published in the USA in 1999 and 2025 suggesting equally low rates of partner dissatisfaction with abortions.

Some aspects of their relationship were “normal,” but others weren’t. It’s not “normal” in a partnership that wasn’t otherwise abusive for Majima to even be dissatisfied with Park’s abortion, let alone to have such an extreme reaction as hitting her and divorcing her over it. For Yokoyama to spend so much time establishing the reasoning behind Majima’s reaction, to narratively punish Park to the degree he does, serves to do nothing but establish a gray area for the sake of establishing a gray area and keep him from fully crossing the “moral event horizon.”

As a narrative device, it's no different from Saejima’s “Temptation” cutscene (yes, that’s what it’s called) in Yakuza 4 and the reasoning Kiryu goes on to offers for it. It is rooted in nothing but Yokoyama’s own values around “preserving the rights of men” and around women having abortions for “selfish” reasons. Even in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, which features a far more nuanced and compassionate take on abortion from Yokoyama than Yakuza 5, no abortion actually took place and the one that would have would’ve been economically-motivated.

So while we’re talking about nuance, I hope there’s still room to say not everything benefits from nuance and not every devil needs an advocate.

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yakuza 5 (2012)

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this will get to the right people

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pick up the xb ball

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the no meme has expanded

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okay so, definitely the most interesting thing i found in the dead souls text files (and honestly the one thing i'd been looking for) is what this line was in japanese

the original line is:

フッ…… わしは天涯孤独の身やさかい、 こないな体験は新鮮でええわ。

the phrase they translated as "not having a family" is 天涯孤独

so yknow. make of that what i you will i suppose. i get the sense he wouldnt say that if he was *rejecting* living relatives as family, so i do think he really doesnt have any living relatives. and i think it's been that way for a loooong time, because the context for this conversation is dads taking baths with their kids when they're little, and he's saying that bathing with someone is a novelty to him, so i have to assume he hasn't experienced that for himself as a kid *because* he didn't have parents growing up

edit: this is also the exact same phrase he uses in y4 during the '85 flashback scene, where he says he won't be "leaving anyone behind"

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Raidou releass in a few days

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a animation of raiden i made for fun

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lunch break, hee ho

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EVERY Stranger Than Heaven trailer detail (that I spotted). Many thanks to @risu5waffles for letting me bother her for a quote and to my voice actor SayersTheArtist!

TL;DW:

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Through this thick fog, I spot a familiar face...

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Never forgiving akats*ki for a lot of reasons but particularly for never letting the t9 dev team expand on their dynamic it was genuinly so fucking funny