is Riko Moriyama a complex character:
a rant that got away from me a lil
okay someone made a post about how we shouldn't be calling Riko a complex character be he is Not complex or interesting. their points were essentially that Riko is a bad person that did irredeemable things and while he is a product of his dad's neglect we dont know enough about his backstory to call him complex, and people who do are speculating and making Riko into someone he isnt (if youre the person that posted that, just know i genuinely didnt wanna pick a bone w you im just opinionated asf)
so l, as a nerd that loves debates, went to repost my take on it disagreeing and explaining why. and im not gonna lie to you, it got away from me. it was meant as silly fandom discourse but i got too into it and when i read it back it could kinda be read as me being very very hostile and upset if you cant hear my exact tone. so anyway rather than repost it and bombard this stranger with my Brain I'm leaving my take on it here for you guys
———————————————————————————
i have so many feelings and emotions on this topic in general, not just about riko. and as we all known i am fully unable to Shut The Fuck Up Ever. i think there's two things here I wanna bring up as a counter argument of sorts
the first is, people in fandom often mix good person with good character. you cannot say Riko Moriyama is a good person simply because of his upbringing. His complexity (which ik is under debate rn and l'll get to it in a minute) is not an excuse, it doesn't make him a good person, but it makes him a good character. Good character meaning layers, flaws, humanity in its worse sense. I think few people in the fandom would call Andrew a good person, he does insane shit. The difference is a) we also know a lot of the good parts of him, and b) we recognize as a Character it makes him very interesting. And i think sometimes because we dont have point A with Riko, its easier to fail point B too.
now that we're clear on what the actual discussion is, if im assuming you do recognize him as a character and not a person, i think where things get muddy here is confusing complexity with two other separate ideas: being morally grey and duality.
first off, i think people have this concept of complex=morally grey isnt true. morality is a Person quality and not smth I would look at when defining if a Character is complex or not (obviously it can add to it, like if you have a villain that has good intentions or a motivation rooted in smth you can empathize with; but i dont consider it to be a crucial aspect of being complex)
now onto duality, duality implies complexity but not necessarily the other way around. let me be clearer: For a lot of aftg characters we have duality, we see their vulnerability and their harsh actions, we see them be the victim and victimizers, sometimes simultaneously or going back and forth. (being morally grey can be a form of duality but not all duality is rooted in morality which is why i make the distinction between the two)
but point is, a character doesn't always need duality to be interesting or complex. I think a lot of people take interest in Riko because he is a case study for Other General Phenomena from the real world that are interesting. among those I'm including for one the concept of inherited trauma, inherited violence. media will often show representation for victims of domestic violence where the character breaks the cycle, and that's great dont get me wrong, but thats just one of the possible arcs for a victim. Riko as a character is an example of the alternative, the representation of being part of the cycle. I just now started TSC and in just Ch1 through Jean's POV there's mentions that state straight to your face that the way Riko harms others is in direct correlation with how he himself is harmed by Tetsuji.
(direct quote from the original post: "its not really explored how it affected him or the specifics of his childhood")
and this isnt a new concept either, we've been knowing not just in fiction but just in real life how being part of an abusive generational cycle works. so i dont think his backstory Needs elaborated development into details (tho personally i would read about it). i think knowing how bad it was without gory details or specific anecdotes from his childhood is enough for us to understand his character and recognize there is something there to look into a bit.
as for "how it affected him", its right there in the text, the person he has become, that's how, youre looking at the result of his upbringing. he is one in a million, generational trauma wouldn't be a thing if for the most part people didn't break the cycle.
this is to say: to elaborate on how riko becomes violent as a product of being a victim himself would be boring considering its a common real life thing that happens, studies have been made on it, riko's story isn't special (on that front) and doesn't need to be developed in detail for us to recognize the trauma there. if we're objective, we also arent given lots of details on what Andrew went through (unless you look at the EC and the Proust lore), we just understand the general category of trauma he has, aka SA, and where he is in the present day. Nora doesn't need to do a whole analysis on the process between point a and b bc it's a common thing for victims of sexual assault to have andrew's issues.
(the og post said Riko is as bas as Proust or Drake)
and where I think he differs from Proust or Drake (again, as a character, we arent discussing him being a good person) is with Proust we simply dont know enough about him, he's not even on screen. and with Drake, we at least know something about his family life, we at least know or can infer Cass was a good mom, and his behavior isn’t a by product of parental abuse like riko. nobody is interested in a pedophile. but a victim turned victimizer, well that's something I would wanna look into more. I get that interest is subjective but like cmon the guy grew up brainwashed in a cult battling a lot of insecurities and daddy issues mixed with an insane power trip and god complex all at the same time. that as a character and story wise has levels to it.
Riko maybe has some human qualities that would make him have some duality in the audience's eyes same as other characters, but youre right in saying that we dont see it and are simply assuming. but we do know what kind of environment he grew up in, media literacy is alive and well in the fandom i think. so my point remains, even if you dont assume, there is complexity in seeing how he functions, in reading and analyzing how being raised in a cult that normalizes not only violence towards him but allowed him to be violent to others warps his mentality. i think there's complexity in his emotions being publically and famously known as Number One while being always considered worthless behind closed doors, sent off to be in the Branch Family, basically a child running around a playground, disconnected from his father or brother and beat by his uncle.
and this isnt even Gettin into the complexity of Riko within dynamics, this is just him as a standalone character. If we were to discuss his relationship with, say, Kevin, i think there’s some very complex feelings to sort through there seeing as they grew up together. but I’ll give it to you, we dont know enough about the pair and assuming there’s duality (yes duality) in their relationship as both loving brothers and in ways each other’s competition (plus the abuse) is, after all, just assuming. (the original post mentions we dont know much about their bond growing up either)
my point about him as an individual character stands tho
kaledo-art
yousharknotpass
2087
areudirty
dededos
germansingergirl
titsay
