Honest opinions about the character of the boy, the legend, the absolute egg, Shimano Futoshi himself? - shimano-futoshi
Love to hate him, very meme-etic. Bad person. Good potential for humour, realized. Good potential as a villain, squandered by how little he gets to do in the games.
Also imo the most important character to take into account when trying to analyze Majima’s character and history. [spoilers for Y0, Y1/Kiwami, Y2/YK2, Y5 follow!] Majima isn’t the Mad Dog of Shimano through a coincidence. Majima becomes the mad dog in my interpretation in order to protect himself by not being easily manipulatable like he was in Y0; Shimano made Majima by giving him this need. I go off about this a lot, but because Majima has these very flashy instances of trauma (his time in the Hole and being controlled by Sagawa) we tend to downplay the fact that by the time we see majima in Y1/kiwami he’s spent nearly 20 years (20 years!!) with Shimano as his only consistent relationship. (Other contenders: Mirei, Kiryu, Nishiki, Nishida, Kashiwagi. His relationship with Mirei didn't last long; Kiryu spent a decade in jail and wasn’t close enough to majima to even know about Saejima or Makoto or Mirei; we have no solid evidence that he was even reasonably as close to Nishiki, Nishida, or Kashiwagi.) We know that Shimano doesn’t treat Majima uh, very nicely. In Y1/kiwami we see how Majima ends up (brutally beating his own boys for not laughing at a joke, kidnapping a child, assaulting one of the worker’s at Shangri-La). In Y2/YK2 we see how drastically Majima changes after Shimano’s death (still unhinged and violent but suddenly not taking it out on bystanders????? suddenly engaged in constructive projects instead of just mayhem and orders-following??????). Watching Shimano can tell us a lot about Majima.
ill shut up now idk if any of this even makes sense
tldr; Shimano may not be a brilliant character in the canon content we have, but he is a Really Freaking Important character. people who are interested in Majima shouldn't ignore Shimano even if they think he’s boring or uninteresting as a character in his own right. Shimano is the single most important person for making Majima who he is, and that makes him fascinating to me.
