#cy rambles

So Masato Arakawa being the classic disabled villain who hates his disability, and having the whole miracle cure thing are both pretty obvious examples of bad disabled rep. Though half a point for not making his hatred of his disability his whole motivation at least lol. It's just a roadblock, which is still bad but not as bad I guess.

However you can not tell me Masato, the son of a Yakuza boss living in a fancy and obviously expensive apartment, the man obsessed with his appearance and specifically, the appearance of wealth and power, to the point he injected himself with dangerous experimental drugs to get away from what he saw as "weakness," couldn't get anything better than a squeaky hospital chair for the 20+ years he was using one?? There are times and places for a character to use a wheelchair like that, like if he were newly disabled or poor (though I'm not even sure that would apply here since japan does have a system to help disabled folks access mobility aids, though I don't know what it covers nor what disabilities qualify), but a rich man who's been in a wheelchair since he was 2, obsessed with appearances, in wealthy family that care dearly for him (even if the feeling is not mutual) is not one of those times. Even if he himself was so ashamed of his disability that he never looked into other options, I can't imagine Masumi Arakawa, the man who's whole thing was family and wanting to look out for his family and especially his son, wouldn't have gotten him something, literally anything, better? The squeaking in particular honestly killed me, this is a game, they had to add that in intentionally, and I'm just so confused why they went through all the added work to do that?? 😂 I made a post ages ago explaining how mobility aids in character design can tell you a lot about the character they belong to, in the same way their clothing and accessories can, and Masato's wheelchair basically undermines everything his character is about, and not in a good, thematic way like I think they were going for. A man in his circumstances in a wheelchair like that tells me his already-confirmed wealthy family doesn't care about him enough to even get him a device that meets his needs, that he's fallen on hard times, or that he doesn't really care much about the appearance of wealth, all of which is objectively untrue lol.

Infinite wealth though is where it starts getting into the so bad it's funny territory. Eiji is revealed to be faking needing a wheelchair, obviously the "untrustworthy fake" trope is bad, but everything about this reveal is so funny in clearly unintended ways.

Eiji says that he had to drug himself in order to paralyse himself, otherwise Ichiban would have seen through the ruse and I'm going to be honest, I don't think that was necessary. Ichi is the least sceptical man on the planet. If they'd said that about Kiriyu, I'd buy it, but Ichiban? his best friends in this game were a woman who drugged him, stole his documents and left him naked on the beach, and the literal second person he met upon entering the USA, who attempted to mug him at gun point. This scene also features a rival yakuza boss who was actively hunting him and the aforementioned mugger to try and kill them both. I really, really don't think he would have suspected Eiji if he didn't load himself up with lidocane. speaking of which...

Mentioning Lidocane by name as the drug he used to paralyse his lower body as part of the trick was... a choice. Lidocane can paralyse small areas, but enough to make his entire lower body paralysed would cost tens of thousands of dollars, and he would need to be paying that regularly. It also just doesn't work that way lol. it makes small areas it's applied to numb, but not truely paralysed. To cover his whole lower body he would need A LOT. Injecting it is a bit more effective if you get a major nerve but is insanely dangerous and would, ironically, probably make him actually paralysed from overuse, or kill him. Either way that's some dedication.

Also NONE OF THAT WAS NECESSARY BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE IN A WHEELCHAIR IS PARALYSED. Ambulatory wheelchair users exist and, once again, I can't see Ichiban being the kind of person to not believe Eiji if he said something to the effect of "I have a muscle weakness, so I use a wheelchair most of the time because it's safer". And if you're thinking "yeah but they were trying to mimic Masato's disability to get Ichiban to lower his guard, that's why he pretended to be paralysed!" then I'd like to point out that Masato wasn't paralysed either! They never specify what he had directly, but they describe the drug he took to cure it as a performance enhancer that boosted his muscle strength enough to let him be able to walk, and he became disabled by being left out in the cold as a baby, which implies it's probably the result of nerve damage or, more likely, a muscle weakness, not a spinal injury. So if that's right, this way would have been easier, safer and MORE likely to work on Ichi!

Also why did the fake wheelchair user have a better wheelchair user than Masato? Eiji's wheelchair was worth at least a few thousand dollars. Once again, that is some dedication 😂