what even is this

Whatever that means, in regards to a fictional character in a show about card games. 

Short answer: Pfft, no. Mortality is more complex than “good” and “bad”. And it certainly isn’t simplified in Vrains, which has a long running theme of taking responsibility for one’s actions and the consequences of both “good” and “bad” acts. (But that’s a different post I have in the works.)

It’s not so easy to break down what classifies a “bad person” in fiction, so lets instead ask a different question.

Is Ryoken a mass murderer? No. 

Was Ryoken almost a mass murderer? No. An accessory at most. 

I’ve seen some forget, or purposefully ignore, that Ryoken wasn’t the one behind the Tower of Hanoi. The program was designed by Kogami, and activated by Kogami. It was Kogami that insisted they were doing the right thing, and that humanity would someday understand. Kogami who decided thousands of lives were worth sacrificing to prevent a future tragedy. Not Ryoken. 

The reason Faust, Vyra and the others talk about how Ryoken is going to be one of history’s worst criminals after the Tower activates is because he’s the face of Hanoi, the leader in name, and Kogami is legally already dead and in the eyes of rest of the world, no longer able to commit crimes. Kogami was also going to die, again, with the network, leaving Ryoken alone to take the blame for the fallout. 

The Tower was not Ryoken’s idea or his choice, but he takes responsibility for it anyway, because that’s the kind of person he is. He doesn’t see himself as someone victimized by a controlling megalomaniac, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t. Ryoken blames himself, but he’s not as guilty as he makes himself out to be. Ryoken definitely isn’t innocent in the matter of the Tower; he was its strongest line of defense. He fed Ema and Gou to it. But if the Tower was a bomb, Ryoken wasn’t the one with his finger on the button.  

In that metaphor, he’s even the one that defuses it. Ryoken could have just let the Tower activate. He didn’t have to go back in VRAINS and give Yusaku a chance to deactivate it. No one had to tie him up and force him, like Ai suggested. Hell, there’s nothing to suggest the Tower was set up to automatically deactivate upon Ryoken’s defeat. Going by how he handed over the virus removal program early on in season 1, Ryoken most likely deactivated the tower himself out of respect for Yusaku’s victory.

Ryoken almost allowed thousands of people to die, yes, but he didn’t. During the season 1 finally, Ryoken has hit the lowest point in his life, and makes the worst mistake he’s ever made before by standing by as the Tower almost kills an inconceivable number of people, including his family and friends and himself. But it doesn’t happen, because Yusaku was there to stop Ryoken from hurting himself and everyone else. And Ryoken doesn’t keep going anyway, or try again. Even though his father died so the Tower would succeed, Ryoken still either lets it shut down or shuts it down himself. And the whole time, he must have known he was disregarding his father’s dying wish, was making his father’s sacrifice for nothing. He accepted his defeat gracefully anyway.

With no Kogami in the picture, Ryoken has shown zero interest in hurting anyone besides potentially dangerous AIs. 

First try:

Second try:

Third try:

Fourth try:

Latest try:

Season 3 Finale 

Here I am arriving two weeks late with angst.

When he wakes up, it’s all gone—Ai, his Cyberse cards, the Playmaker account. Like they never existed at all, and he’s left gasping for breath in an unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar bed. But he would recognize that ocean, those cliffs, those stars outside the window anywhere. 

The absence is a gaping maw in his perception, jolting and horrifying like missing a step on a stairwell in the dark: he knows something should be there, in the network, but the realization that there isn’t anything there leaves him reeling. 

Yusaku clutches at the strange sheets, and they are soft and smooth under his fingers—alien and unpleasant for all their finery. His hands shake, and he wants to tear at the bedding, wants to scream, wants to shatter something. As if breaking something could keep him together.

“You’re awake.” The voice is soft in a way it never has been before, but the familiar firm coldness still sits solid underneath. Yusaku does not look up at the doorway and the man standing there.

He struggles to form words. There’s so much he wants to say, to yell, but his throat seems to be closing in on itself, constricting until he thinks he might be choking on his own tongue. Against the rising pressure in his chest, he can only force out a single one: “Why?”

Ryoken is quiet for a moment, but Yusaku can feel the burn of his presence like an itch against his skin. He hears Ryoken take a deep breath and release it, and his footsteps as he enters the room. Each step closer has Yusaku’s skin prickling.

The bed dips with Ryoken’s weight on its edge, and a hand, marked by a red tattoo that makes revulsion rise in Yusaku’s gut, reaches over the covers towards him. He pushes back and away from it, and Ryoken pulls away.“I don’t really know what you’re asking.” Ryoken admits, not acknowledging the silent rejection. “If you’re asking why you’re here, I retrieved your body from Kusanagi.” Had Kusanagi handed him over without a fight? Considering what happened, he probably did. Yusaku didn’t know whether to feel betrayed or hurt. He mostly just felt raw.

“Do you remember what happened?”

Yusaku did. Remembering hurt, burned as he recalled standing still and numb and disbelieving as his lifepoints hit zero. Knowing he alone lived through it, knowing Ryoken got him to live through it, hurt even more. This was not how he wanted to be saved.

He was so sick of being the only one to be saved.

“I should be dead.” He had felt his own death before it even happened, feeling his own consciousness being swallowed and erased by the network. “You somehow retrieved my data. You could have—” His voice breaks. “You could have—the Ignis. The Cyberse.”

“We barely managed to salvage you, let alone the rest.”

“Liar.” Yusaku hisses, as his eyes burn. He can’t bear to look at Ryoken, but he can’t seem to make his vision focus on his hands either. Everything is blurry. 

Ai had been scared—Ai had been so scared, but he had been brave too. “Hey, Playmaker,” Ai had asked, “what were you wishing for when you made me?”

Yusaku hadn’t been able to find the strength to answer, then, watching his legs crumble into little red flecks of light. Hadn’t been able to push out the answer while he still had a tongue to speak with.

Ai had accepted his impending deletion like his death had always been inevitable, up until the red crept up Yusaku’s soles. Ai had been shaking, quaking, screaming then—his moment of calm passing the second he registered that Yusaku was dying too. 

Something hot and wet drips down his face, and it takes a moment for Yusaku to realize he’s crying. Ryoken is much closer, suddenly, a firm and solid presence pressing into his side. There’s a hand curling gently around his neck and another on his face, thumbing away tears. Yusaku can feel himself shaking apart in Ryoken’s arms, knows he’s quivering against Ryoken’s lips as they press against his temple.

“Shh,” Ryoken shushes him, but Yusaku can barely breath around the sobs rising in his chest. “It’s over. It’s all over.”

And it was. In some ways, that was the worst part. Because Yusaku never thought he’d have to live with any sort of over, an after so ultimate and hopeless.

He wasn’t supposed to fail. And he wasn’t supposed to have to live with failure either. But now he had no choice. Ryoken had taken that decision out of his hands.

Resentment coils inside him, aged and familiar. He knows the feeling well, but it’s never been directed at this person before. It makes him feel like a child, trapped and alone with nothing but a voice in his ear all over again.

“Why only me? Why don’t you ever, ever save someone else?”You could have saved him.

Ryoken makes a noise in the back of his throat, but Yusaku can’t place it. The hand on his throat slips down and entwines its fingers between his own.

There’s ring on his finger. Yusaku notices it very suddenly, but its silver and sparkling and as dazzling as the wondrous sea outside the window. Ryoken traces his fingers over it, the warmth of his skin like fire against Yusaku’s knuckles. 

It’s a silent answer he doesn’t expect. 

And Yusaku hates it, hates it and everything it represents—but most of all he hates how much he wants it, how it makes his heart swell and his tears abate. 

Love. He never got to tell Ai that, his own answer. I wanted someone to love me.

OHHH boy, in order to talk about this, translating the entire text is necessary. So I did that.

Everyone:

Director Hashino Katsura on how the Tarot symbolize the progression of the stories of the game’s he’s made:

The story of Tarot, starting with “The Fool”

To my understanding, Tarot doesn’t simply symbolize a human life from the crib to the grave, but much rather, the individual process of proceeding in life while taking on values from the people around you, realizing that overcoming hardships with only those values is difficult, deciding to start over from Zero and finally attaining happiness that way, over and over again, in an endless circle. Seen from this perspective, the name of the Arcana Number 0, “The Fool” is not to be taken to literally mean “a foolish person”, but rather the idea of a “blank slate” who is still open to absorb many different influences.

The flow beginning from Arcana #0 and ending at Arcana#3 - namely, the “Death” Arcana of Tarot, is the them of Persona 3. The story ends after the encounter with Number 3, at which point you’re supposed to look back at the experiences and values you’ve fostered within yourself. The player, who has been projecting themselves onto the protagonist up to that point, is supposed to continue this journey from that point on in their real life. That’s the intention I had when making the game, at least.

Persona 4 is the Arcana #14, “Temperance”. It’s the story of people who have already passed the point of deciding to start over from scratch and are continuing on while trying to keep a sense of balance in their lives. You’re not supposed to just absorb the information and emotions all around you unfiltered, but think for yourself and draw your own conclusions in order to reach all the way to the True Ending. That’s how the “Temperance” theme shows in the way we constructed this game.

Catherine is a story of the Arcana #15 and 16#, “The Devil” and “The Tower”, meaning it is a story of “temptation” and “ruin”.

Persona 5 is the Arcana #17, “The Star”, the theme of rising up from “ruin” into “hope”. In the planning phase of the games, I made source to thoroughly follow this concept, but I haven’t really ever spoken about this before. I just feel like the Arcana are applicable to all these different eras (of me producing video games), which is something that can really be felt, and this sort of universal interpretation of it just intruiges me.

The final card of the Major Tarot Arcana is “The World”, which stands for the possibility of reaching fulfillment in the end, so you are ready for a new departure. The endings of Persona 3 and Persona 4 are very different in nature, but both of them depict an arrival at this goal.

That same idea lies at the core of Persona 5. The idea may overlap with those of the past games, but I sincerely hope you will be able to enjoy this new game in it’s very own way, as its very own story. That would make me very happy.

So basically, Hashino makes his games with a progressive theme in mind. He tries to tackle a new stage of humanity’s quest for happiness with every game he makes, with Persona 3 being about the “basic” idea of deciding to start over from scratch (as outlayed by the Death Arcana), and Persona 4 building from there, by examining what people do *after* they’ve decided to start over, exploring the tightrope walk of character progression. (Hence Temperance)

In between, there’s Catherine, with it’s theme of basically being at your lowest point, susceptible to temptation and destroying your own life with bad life choices.

And now we have Persona 5, with a theme of *raising up* from your lowest point, finding new hope (even if it is a naive hope) to continue on.

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