silly koi man

o The Palace (Exterior)

Nishiki’s palace is heavily story based. By which I mean his palace tells his story, similar to how the additional cutscenes in Kiwami showed his descent. That’s basically what his palace does in this au.

We start outside of the actual palace, similar to Futaba’s palace (which I referenced a lot when making his palace). This works to show his isolation, as well as to help the general narrative of his palace. The palace exterior represents everything that happened before Y1/YK1…to an extent.

The sunflowers..well I think that’s pretty obvious. Same with the koi filled stream…which you can occasionally see little trinkets and memories of the past in. As you go up the river, things start to change, however. There’s less fish, and the sunflowers start to wither and die. Occasionally, a dead fish will float past, and a potent red slowly trickles into the clear blue water, becoming more apparent until its source drifts into view.

Sohei Dojima’s bullet riddled body floats down the river, blood pouring from his wounds and tainting the river. The stream slowly succumbs to this red as the other bodies of people Nishiki killed float down the river, until the water is completely stained with blood. This is…again, pretty obvious in what it represents. At this point, the surrounding land begins to fall away to a barren, rocky landscape, which further deteriorates into a sea of floating rocks. Enter Nishiki’s palace.

o The Tower of Envy:

The koinobori may seem like an odd choice..I promise I’m not using them just because they’re koi. I decided to include them as a symbol of innocence rather than merely referencing Nishiki’s koi motif. Since koinobori are most associated with children’s day, I figured that they would be a great way of showing Nishiki’s loss of innocence, emotion, and passion as you go up the tower, each floor representing one of the events that led to Nishiki’s downfall. Also…the increasingly crude manner of how they’re strung up starts to look more and more like a fence of barbed wire…showing how Nishiki is trapped in his distortions. Speaking of the pagoda’s exterior, it may be hard to see, but there’s a dragon statue on the roof…this very specific grey dragon design will come back later so keep that in mind….

Now…I’m pretty sure the reason Nishiki’s palace as a tower is pretty obvious. But if it’s not, let me explain!

Since I’m heavily referencing an old legend, I figured a more traditional Japanese aesthetic would work really well for the theme of his palace. The pagoda works excellent as his actual palace, then, for several reasons. For one, it embodies the traditional aesthetic I’m going for. But more importantly, it further emphasises the koi’s struggle of swimming up the river…in the Tower of Envy, you have to travel up the pagoda to reach Nishiki’s shadow. And beyond the legend itself, Nishiki constantly references this idea of “getting to the top” of the Tojo clan. Nishiki himself being at the top of the pagoda serves several purposes as well, highlighting his isolation and his distortion of believing he has beaten the dragon and become one himself (this, again, will be important later). Furthermore, the reference to his final moments and his fight with Kiryu being at the top of the Millennium Tower just work way too well for his palace NOT to be a sort of tower... I would also like to point out and appreciate the storm like aura around Nishiki during his fight, showing his turbulent state of mind..hence the storm clouds around the top of his palace.

As for the palace interior, I have a few more notes. Each floor represents one of the pivotal moments in Nishiki’s descent; basically, each floor serves the same purpose as the Nishiki focused cutscenes in YK1. These moments start with Dojima’s murder and are represented most blatantly through tapestries (once again, kinda like the murals in Futaba’s palace). In these tapestries, Kiryu is represented by a dragon, and Nishiki through a koi. There’s a slight twist here though. The thing about these tapestries is that they’ve been obviously tampered with. Kiryu is scratched out of any moments he may be in, and instead, his draconic attributes are superimposed over Nishiki. There are a few things at play here. The fact that the tapestries weren’t originally made in Nishiki’s image hints at how even he doesn’t really believe in himself, and has to really force himself to adhere to this image that everyone wants him to be. Furthermore, it implies that these tapestries, representing an old legend, have been here for awhile, which gets to my idea that Nishiki has had his palace long before Y1/YK1. It’s very apparent that even in Y0, Nishiki struggles with his self loathing and inferiority complex, which is one of the main reasons for the sunflower field, which I see as the sort of “beta palace” before his distortions got so unbearable that they formed the Tower of Envy.

The other thing I wanted to mention about the palace interior are the shadows inside. They’d take the shape of members of the Nishikiyama family, obviously, but there’s a catch; none of them try very hard to defend Nishiki at all…like I mean most of the shadow fights in here (if they even chose to fight instead of moping around complaining about Nishiki) are stupidly easy, especially for Kiryu. And when beaten, they’ll only complain about Nishiki more, revealing crucial elements of how to progress up to the tower, alluding to his shadow, and eventually, how to defeat him when the time comes; most of what they say will be lines from the game that Nishiki has others hear about himself, about how useless he is and how they’d be better off with Kiryu instead. There are two major reasons for this. The first is because the way I see it, Nishiki has no actual care for himself left, only for his delusion to “get to the top”; his self loathing and inferiority is so intense at this point that even in his cognition, he can’t bring his subordinates to defend him. The other reason for this is because it shows that, in some sense, Nishiki wants Kiryu to get to the top of the tower, either so Nishiki can finally beat him, or perhaps even to be saved by him. And while we’re speaking about making it to the top of the tower…

o Shadow Nishikiyama/Boss Fight:

Remember how I mentioned Nishiki’s distortion of believing he had beaten the dragon and become one? As well as the tapestries he tampered with? Well, all of those concepts are at play here. Nishiki knows, deep down, that he’s not a dragon, that he’s not Kiryu. This is represented through the only naturally occurring inhuman bits being those of a koi; all of his dragon parts are artificial and were knowingly constructed and worn to give him the appearance of a dragon. Even though he’s all alone at the top of his tower, Nishiki constantly wears these fake dragon bits in a sad effort to try to convince himself that he really is a dragon. Nishiki’s isolation here highlights his paranoia and how he won’t let anyone get close to him emotionally, as he fears they would see through his facade.

From here on out, I’m going to be making more references to Kiryu specifically instead of just the imaginary player going though Nishiki’s palace, as this is where I envisioned the most emotional and personal parts of the story going down for Kiryu. I like to think that he’s at least somewhat aware of the dragon imagery in Nishiki’s palace and how that may relate to him, but he doesn’t really see it until he sees Shadow Nishiki for the first time; he sees just how much Nishiki is trying to force himself to be “like Kiryu”.

Now, since its a palace au, and there’s been no prior minibosses or anything…there has to be a boss fight. Despite Kiryu’s desire to make up with Nishiki, he knows that the only way to get Nishiki to come around is through a fight, just like at the end of Y1/YK1. Nishiki knows this too, as he’s aware of Kiryu making his way through his palace, and has been preparing himself to finally fight the dragon; in some sense, he hopes that actually beating kiryu will make him into a real dragon.

The boss fight starts similar to any yakuza fight: lots of fist fighting and shit. Nishiki is significantly weaker than Kiryu at this point, especially since his fake dragon parts are slowing him down, hindering him. It’s also important to note that he tries to mirror Kiryu and often fails imitating his moves. Kiryu makes a conscious effort to target his fake dragon parts, hoping that by getting rid of his delusions of dragonhood, he can just have a talk with Nishiki. This only makes matters worse though, Nishiki getting more and more frantic and desperate as his dragon parts are stripped away from him. The fight ends with a bloody, shaken Nishiki, removed from his false dragon parts. In a final, desperate attempt at something, Nishiki cries his raw emotions into the sky…everything is still and quiet. Kiryu extends a hand to help Nishiki up. Nishiki is quiet…the ground starts shaking until suddenly, the river of blood leading into the tower erupts from below them, writhing and swirling around Nishiki, taking the shape of something all too familiar……

Buried in a mess of blood, bones, and mangled koi parts, Nishiki shambles towards Kiryu and once more begins his assault. This segment of the boss fight is significantly harder, considering Nishiki’s enhanced dragon form…as for his abilities/attacks, he uses his bones and has a vague control over the blood making up his body, as well as other general draconic attacks. I should mention here that even as a dragon, Nishiki isn’t that much taller than Kiryu…he’s scarier and stronger than before, for sure, but he’s still no match for Kiryu. Kiryu manages to slowly wear him down, and as Nishiki desperately lashes out with his own blood, he loses more and more of it until something catches Kiryu’s attention…some vague, glimmering orb that Kiryu feels drawn to. Saving his own energy, he focuses on dodging Nishiki’s attacks until he manages to grasp the shimmering orb sticking out of Nishiki’s body….Nishiki roars in pain, and Kiryu realizes this may be the only way of getting him to finally stop. Pulling out the orb, Nishiki’s dragon dissolves into a bloody heap on the floor, seeping through the wood, leaving Kiryu to finally, truly understand what was causing Nishiki so much pain.

o Nishiki’s Treasure:

The dragon knife..I feel like if Kiryu can finally get it, then the implications are pretty obvious; after all, the dragon on the handle of the knife is unmistakably Kiryu’s. This knife has been lodged in Nishiki’s side as long as he’s had his palace…it’s only been wedged in deeper and deeper the more he’s compared to and expected to be like Kiryu. I thought this was a particularly clever choice for a few reasons. The less meaningful one is the connection to that sharp, stabbing pain one may feel at such a painful moment, the seeds of Nishiki’s distortion and desire to be a dragon being driven deeper into him; you could say, people have been twisting the knife inside him. Now as for the more meaningful connection, the main reason I chose his treasure to be a knife. Remember this?

Yeah. Yeaahh. The knife represents this moment specifically as the moment Nishiki snapped and his distortions took over. Furthermore, YK1 implied that in this scene nishiki was about to kill himself. By having the knife in his abdomen, where he was aiming and the way to presumably stab himself, Nishiki essentially killed his real self in place of this false shadow version of himself who believed he was a dragon. So..take a moment to process that.

Kiryu is hit incredibly hard by this revelation. Once the treasure is finally out of Nishiki, he can see things for what they really are…and he can finally find it in himself to accept Kiryu’s help out of the tower. Well..whether he wants to or not, Kiryu’s carrying him out before the tower collapses.

At this point, I don’t have too many specific story notes. All I know is they escape the palace before it collapses, and find a way to make up in the real world. Oh, and I guess now is a good time to mention his treasure in the real world is the Kazama family pin…I feel this is pretty appropriate considering that I interpret a lot of his distortions coming from the yakuza life, and even from Kazama himself who very blatantly favors Kiryu..so it serves a sort of dual purpose as to the start of his distortions. I would go more in depth with this but like I said, I think it’s pretty self explanatory.

Back in the real world, Nishiki’s distortions are mostly gone through the destruction of his palace, but his habits and ways of thinking are still very much in tact. Basically what I’m trying to say here is he’s not immediately better. He still has a long way to go, but this time Kiryu’s here to help him, which honestly helps Kiryu since it’s obvious from Y2/YK2 that he feels immensely guilty and even responsible for Nishiki’s downfall. The two make up and help each other heal because god damnit they deserve a happy ending…

o Music Inspirations:

That was a lot..if I’m being completely honest this au has been very emotionally draining to work on because of how personal some of this got. So I’ll try to end this on a lighter, more reflective note. Music! I have lots of ideas and inspiration for how the music during his palace might sound. I highly recommend listening to some of these since they’re very pretty and helped me get into a mindset where I could work on this…

I’m not a composer at all but! I do have a general idea for what his palace theme might be like. For the Tower of Envy, For Your Sake will be woven in and out of the overall palace theme kind of like how Life Will Change is woven into Counterfiet Phantom. And to be honest I imagine most of the theme being like For Your Sake, but just a little different to better fit the Persona 5 vibe and stuff I guess…and yes, it definitely gets more intense as you climb up the tower…and I’m thinking the intensity will come through a sort of deafening silence, the music getting slightly out of tune, quieter, with instruments being gently dropped, which once again plays into Nishiki’s isolation, loneliness, and loss. I also love the idea that despite the lack of music near the top, you can hear the sounds of the tower creaking, heavy rain, and the distant rumble of thunder.

For the palace exterior, I have a few ideas. The first bit will be sort of melancholy and relaxed, playing softly in the background as you can hear general outside ambience like the bubbling stream, the sunflowers rustling in the wind, and the songs of insects and birds. My major inspiration is a blend of Pentimento, In the Light, and the first part of Passage, all by Toshifumi Hinata (which, can I just say…his music is so pretty….). The theme changes to something more akin to Impromptu after seeing the first body, and continues to intensify until it transitions into the Tower of Envy theme.

I don’t have boss fight themes.. sorry, I’m not that versed in music to think of anything beyond the palace themes..although it would really hurt to weave Judgement and Tonight in there somewhere…hmmm…. Maybe I’ll revisit this someday with a clearer idea of the boss fight but for now, this is what I’ve got.

If you made it to this point, wow! Thank you for taking the time to read my ridiculously detailed thoughts about this silly little au! Nishiki means a lot to me and by extension, so does this au…especially since his struggle is so damn personal to me…. All that being said… thanks for sticking around (:

kiwami-era Mine's color palette pulls from Daigo's color palette. also i put him under k2 for my own sanity even though iirc the model's in k1

He also lacks his natural red highlights during that period & that is a deliberate choice on my part. Which I guess implies he's...dying his hair lmfao

In a similar vein to the kiwami Mine thing, Daigo's DS dress pulls from Mine's color palette!

post-y3 Daigo is doing. Bad. bringing back the blush from his k2 alcoholism days + using the darker shadow color for his eyes + no highlights. It takes until about y7 for him to somewhat recover ghdjsghdks

same shirt color for ryuji + kaoru in y0

kaoru adding the additional piercings + dyed streaks post-k2

Legally required to scrinkle Ryuji for DS. guess losing an arm did a number on the poor guy HJKHJKEWT

I'm required to point out kiwami Nishiki's lil anglerfish lure every time. also his fishbone earrings. #slay

Also as a fun note, the only characters here with actual normal ass circular pupils are Nishiki and Daigo. love it when ppl are vaguely creaturey.

+ blood moment lets gooo