this is doomed to be clumsily worded so I apologize in advance, but I think what bothers me most all the time, when ppl go "oh Kazuma was hiding something from Ryuu! And look at the way he made Ryuu come with him!" is that the framing of that most of the time makes Kazuma sound so villainous. It makes Kazuma look like a manipulative prick, when he really is anything but.
People talk about Kazuma's whole revenge plot in London like he came up the finer details himself, as if Jigoku didn't see how convenient of a person Kazuma was for his own gain and literally make the offer to someone who of course was driven by their passion and desperation for some kind of justice against a government that basically ruined his life.
Even Kazuma found the idea insane at first (don't quote me on tht entirely, I just feel like there was a line somewhere in the 2nd game where he was baffled by the offer, as he recalled it).
Like. I feel like I see too much fault placed on Kazuma's shoulders for everything, when he's just as much a victim of things. I know Ryuu to some degree is an unreliable narrator, but I want to trust in the flashback shown in 1-2, because it helps prove too, that Ryuu wasn't entirely in the dark about Kazuma. He had the smallest hint/idea that something was bothering Kazuma ever since the first trial's end, and he simply trusted Kazuma to eventually come forward on his own time. You can't really say he never would have either, because even if not right away, it clearly ate at him as he kept the details under wraps. And then with the whole fall, that chance was removed entirely.
Kazuma was afraid of what Ryuu would say to something like that too, and genuinely trusted Ryuu and thought highly of his abilities which (in his opinion) only needed to be honed slightly. His heart holds a lot of revenge, yes. And it's true ryuu didn't know the details of it, but that hardly means that Kazuma is someone vile for not showing his full self. Hes the same as anyone else whos ever had to hold something so heavy back, you can't just talk about it in the open without your heart breaking with it. Kazuma deserves compassion and patience rather than condemning
