#yakuza 0 spoilers

[koimurocho]

Ough

[pinkgibbon]

family business

after the events of yakuza 0 they become business partners and run the best massage/real estate company the world has ever seen

[absolutedisasterr]

I was kind of thinking, when Majima was in his twenties, everyone just kinda knew he was a nice guy.

Thinking about how in Y0, Shimano apparently knew Majima enough to know he wouldn’t have it in him to kill an innocent girl like Makoto. How he instead would go out of his way to protect her and keep her safe because she didn’t deserve to be pulled into all of this.

Going back even farther to when they had hoards of men to keep Majima away from Saejima the day of the hit because they suspected he wouldn’t have wanted to abandon Saejima no matter what.

Did Majima start speaking in a Kansai dialect because he wanted to seem more intimidating than he actually was? Is Yakuza 0 just a game where Majima realizes that any kindness he shows will just be taken advantage of by others? So he decides to try to stamp it out completely? And when he meets Kiryu, he’s so enamoured with him because he’s finally met someone who’s strong enough to freely and unwaveringly show kindness no matter how people try to take advantage of it.

[heavendraven]

doodle for savedatateam's penultimate yakuza 0 episode (go watch their highlights on youtube!!) (spoilers below the cut)

[athenaholmesartistsguild]

A sort of throwaway line from Yakuza 0 has been haunting my brain recently and it's Sagawa telling Majima that he doesn't have to go back to the Tojo Clan. He's a civilian now. He could just... be a civilian.

Which like. Considering Sagawa's personality and his interactions with Majima, it initially kinda comes off as taunting instead of a genuine conversation. Especially since Sagawa just renegged on his deal to get Majima back into the Tojo Clan. He's just being a piece of shit (which Sagawa is-- to be clear)

But then. Sagawa's giving Majima the hit and he's pretty clear that Majima can say no. He's super adamant that Majima doesn't have to do it if he doesn't think he can.

But when you pair it with the previous line...

Sagawa didn't want Majima to go back to the Tojo Clan, did he?

At the very end of the game, Sagawa says him and Majima had some good times so I think he genuinely enjoyed having Majima around and wanted him to stay in Sotenbori (in less of a captive-type context).

And there are just so many implications with this?

Like. Sagawa is completely incapable of caring for people in a healthy, unselfish way. He can't even admit that he needs someone; he has to try and convince them to stick around because that level of vulnerability is incomprehensible to him.

But he also doesn't know how to treat the people he cares about. He's controlling. He's abusive. He gets violent really quickly. He's manipulative. He is literally holding someone hostage and using them for borderline slave labor.

He is incapable of forming positive relationships with people. All of his relationships exist on a hierarchy where someone has power over the other person.

There will always be the bird in the cage and the person who owns the bird.

[cottoncandylesbo]

damn yakuza is a more violent series than i thought 😨

[propaganda101]

objectively the funniest memoirs are tachibana and oda's just because of the contrast between them

[bother-blame]

Nishikiyama Akira in YAKUZA 0

[daily-rgg-posting]

Top 10 Yakuza scenes that go crazy (for sure makes it to top 5)

[gamerism]

iv been having so many thoughts about "Spare me the pretty speech. You just used me to do yer dirty work. Same as Patriarch Shimano did." and majima's refusal to kill shimano on sera's orders immediately thereafter. one puppet master or another...

[rarawrites]

you at the beginning of the shift:

vs. you at the end of the shift:

[designernishiki]

for real tho? especially if you consider tachibana kiryu’s equivalent to makoto in majima’s side of the story, i really believe something in kiryu snapped when tachibana died just as much as something did in majima later on when makoto got shot– if not more. the mad dog persona was a conscious choice that didn’t come about the second majima snapped and fought everyone tojo hq, but kiryu was straight up ready to kill a man by the time he was fighting shibusawa, no persona or anything to blame it on. arguably he went off the rails way sooner and held it together for way less time than majima managed to.

[art-soboro]

his limb

uuuuuuhhhhhh sooooooo this has been bouncing around in my head for a While now. i'm genuinely unsure about this idea/execution still but at the same time i really wanted to see this put on paper. so i'm glad it's finally out yippee!! anyway i want to show these thumbnail notes specifically cus they're funny to me

also fun fact i threw together a 10k yen bill brush for this pic specifically. who knows though maybe ill find more use for it in the future. holler if you'd like to have it! (is for CSP though)

[swinging-through-the-stars]

he's gone

[athenaholmesartistsguild]

Sometimes I wonder how intentional the neurodivergent coding of certain Yakuza characters is.

With Kiryu I don't think it was intentional at first. I think he started as a stone-faced guy who was also just a little clueless (Because that's a pretty silly juxtaposition, writing-wise), but I've noticed as the series progresses there's little quirks or jokes that seem to intentionally code him as autistic-- and not in a mean way (which I love).

Like. When you're talking to one of the hostesses in the cabaret minigame in K2, she mentions wanting to be a mangaka, and Kiryu offers to help.

If you select the 'be an expression model' option Kiryu 'auditions' by making little noises for the different emotions he's trying to do and it's really obvious that he's not really changing his face much. Because he's just not an expressive guy. Because he's autistic!!!

There's the pizza substory from 0 which if you know, you know (and if you don't know, here you go).

If you select all the wrong answers in the producer substory (also in 0), the entire scene feels like an autistic person trying to understand obtuse industry lingo and everyone else getting angry at him for not speaking this hidden language (a reality for many autistic people).

And there's countless other examples that I can't name off the top of my head, but trust me, they're there.

And then there's Ichiban who is so ADHD it brings me joy. And I would just chalk his behaviors to just being a juxtaposition to Kiryu (Ichi's big, loud, and intense while Kiryu's quiet, reserved, and keeps to himself), but there are so many little things that are way too specific for me to ignore.

Firstly, when Ichi wants something he wants it NOW. The Peking Duck scene with Arakawa comes to mind, but also, when he's trying to get Masato’s 'girlfriend' to come to their table, and he resorts to like. Shouting at the guy after her client's like. "Nah. I'm talking to her for a bit." He's feelin' his feelings and good god are those feelings intense.

He seems to struggle with working memory issues such as the scene where he's talking about being Masato's caretaker and then Jo calls him like, immediately after, goes 'hey, you were supposed to take the young master out tonight' and Ichi's like 'oh my god? It completely slipped my mind!'

Ichiban's super creative and clever, but that out-of-the-box thinking is occasionally hampered by him missing little details. Like when he just takes a civilian's wallet, instead of the money they owed because 'Jo only said to bring back the wallet'. But then when he tries to use the money Masato gave him, it doesn't occur to him to take off the band indicating that the money came from Masato’s bank.

He's also pretty impulsive!! The scene where he jumps right into the Korean Mafia's line of fire is a big standout. He literally thought of the first thing that came to mind and did it.

There's also him gameifying his entire life. This example could be argued to be more of an autistic trait (especially the turn-based combat aspect), but ADHDers can also have those super intense interests that you never quite let go of. And gamification of certain tasks is often recommended for ADHDers.

and then there's so many small things that I can't quite explain that just stand out as ADHD behavior.

I honestly don't think Ichiban was ever written to be neurotypical. His character just feels so, authentically ADHD in such a kind way that just can't be accidental.

Although there could've been a writer who was just 'basing Ichiban off their own experiences' and 'their own experiences' just happened to be ADHD. I wouldn't know anything about that.

One more character before I go: Majima's actions in 0 (specifically throwing away the bag of murder goodies Lee gave him) makes way more sense if he has ADHD. He's got this bag of shit he does not want and he needs to get rid of it now. He was feelin' his feelings, okay?!

[cottoncandylesbo]

this might be one of the best games i've ever played.