Briarhenge

Writing, musings, and other stuff that catches my eye. Read a dieselpunk fantasy in the Black Mark series. Amazon Prime members can read for free. Notable Tags #Anime Review #Archaeology #Art #Black Mark #Classic Cars #Comic Books #Gaming #Gardening #Music #Nature #Science #Writing Fandoms Avatar: The Last Airbender DC Comics Doctor Who Final Fantasy Log Horizon Madoka Magica Marvel Mushishi RWBY Star Trek Star Wars Studio Ghibli

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The Majima Family spans a number of businesses, both legit and not so much. Goro Majima definitely looks the part of his self-proclaimed "businessman of the night" role, but he can't do everything himself. Minami seems to handle the underworld side of things. Then there's Nishida handling the construction business, who's been with Majima since Yakuza 2. He looks like a dude who drives a minivan and lives in the suburbs, but he's Majima's right-hand man. Despite his unassuming appearance and harmless demeanor, he's gotta be sporting tattoos and a mean punch under that plain purple shirt. I'm happy to see that Nishida was put into Yakuza Kiwami as the poor sap who gets to call Kiryu on Majima's behalf during their district-wide game of hide-and-go-fight.

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Some painting practice featuring Majima Goro from the Yakuza game series and his obnoxious jacket.

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Here, have a garbage doodle. This all started with a conversation about a post-Yakuza Dead Souls timeline. Saejima missed out on the zombie outbreak, so Majima might want to take his sworn brother out for a little monster hunting in the subterranea and do a little mop up work. That prompted a Supernatural joke, then another one... And this scene from that second season trickster episode is what got stuck in my head out of all of the possible scenes. I am so sorry.

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One more from the Yakuza 0 Club Sunshine pile. This is the only way I can explain Hino being the same height as Majima during their pre-battle face-off sequence. Curbstomping Strawberry Shortdouche’s club afterwards was a treat.

More Club Sunshine fancomics, if you missed them:

As You Like It

Sunshine’s Golden Girl

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Favorite Movies: Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

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Dammit, now I have that song stuck in my head.

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Majima’s change from 0 to 1-onwards

I’ve seen a load of people complain about his change in character after Yakuza 0 (mainly on the Youtube comments) and I felt that I needed to make this post just to try and explain my reasoning as to why he becomes the way he is. I’m not saying you have to like Majima’s change in character, but I hope this helps with understanding that this change isn’t sudden and/or OOC. 

Disclaimer: This is going to contain massive spoilers for Yakuza 0 and minor spoilers for the other games. I’m also not saying this is absolute, this is just my speculation using the evidence I do have (which even I can say isn’t a lot as Y0 is the game I started with, I just read up a lot about these boys).

First and foremost: Majimas loves to fight. 

It’s obvious as heck even in Yakuza 0, and it’s basically shown during multiple moments in the entire series that Majima adores fighting. However, in Y0 specifically, his love to fight and urge to let loose is obvious through certain heat moves. Some focus on his facial expression, and that my friends is the face of someone who likes punching people, no doubt about it. I’m pretty sure various NPCs talk about how they notice the way Majima wants to let loose as well. And if you’ve seen the newly adapted scene where Kiryu and Majima meet in Kiwami, he literally attacks Kiryu both by slapping him and then whaling on him with his umbrella in an attempt to get Kiryu to fight back. This backfires, but the promise of a future battle gets him all excited. Majima Everywhere leads onto this, but that’s mostly Majima testing Kiryu’s resolve in the only way he really knows how. 

I can’t say he’s always been ‘unhinged’ (we’ll get to that shortly) but there’s definitely a desire to answer problems with his fists throughout the entirety of Y0. 

Secondly: Saejima and being kicked out of the family 

Okay this is gonna be a hefty bit of info bear with me here. In Y0 we get to see the backstory behind why Majima’s working at The Grand. He’s working to pay back into the clan, because he didn’t want to betray Saejima (who is still in prison). I can’t remember exactly where I read this, but I saw somewhere that Majima is specifically working to get up the ranks of the Tojo family to try and get Saejima out of prison. It makes sense to me. He uses fear and intimidation to climb up the ranks of the yakuza so that one day he’s got enough power to get Saejima out of prison. (I admit this is with no knowledge of how Saejima breaks out of prison in Y4, so feel free to disagree with me here!)

This brings us onto how we start Y0, and that’s The Grand. Simply put, you can’t be the infamous Mad Dog if you’re forced to work a civilian lifestyle. Majima is being made to act calm and collected and somewhat serious because of his work as the manager. If he decides to let loose completely, his chances of being brought back into his clan are ruined. Play the game, and you’ll have a chance to get back into that old lifestyle you so dearly loved. 

Thirdly: Good ol’ Nishitani. (Spoilers abound so this is going under a read more).

Keep reading

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More Yakuza 0, this time here’s a Club Sunshine substory featuring Majima, Yuki, Ai, and the Obatarian. Is it cheesy enough? I hope it’s cheesy enough.

If Tumblr is turning the resolution to garbage for you, I’ve posted this on my deviantart, as well

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A bunch of Majima roughs for a project that became more ambitious than I expected (as always).

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Don’t miss the Obatarian’s substory, because you’ll want her for the Yakuza 0 Cabaret Club minigame. Granny got game, consistently bringing in the yen. However, you don’t get to fix up her looks in the pretty princess dress-up mode. She may be a top earner, but she’s not a platinum girl. I’d like the option to at least makeover the gold level girls, even if it means that there’s no training missions with them.

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Just scattered attempts to get used to drawing Majima's interesting face. Bonus Sagawa included.

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The below is just me thinking too hard on stuff that doesn't really matter, but I enjoy the brain exercise. So, here is a musing regarding Yakuza 2 and 3 (and onward, considering how big of a background thing this is). Kamurocho Hills couldn't just be something that Majima did on a whim. It's likely that it was a Shimano project that was already underway by the time 2005 rolled around. It takes time and a lot of money to purchase land, especially if it was originally a park. It takes time and money to establish a construction company. It also takes time and a lot of money to make commercial building plans and put it through the bureaucratic approval process. So, why would Shimano start a project to rival the Millenium Tower, beyond the simple pursuit of wealth? Power. Once the Hills is complete, he would not only have a huge income source from the rents, but also control over Purgatory, which is right beneath it. With that kind of money/power base, Shimano could set himself up to take on the role of the next clan chairman or, if that fails, challenge and eventually break a weakened Tojo Clan directly with his own clan. As Shimano's right-hand man, Majima would know all of this, even if he wasn't directly told. After the turmoil of the first Yakuza game leaving many in the clan dead, including Shimano, and the chairman seat filled by a former Omi man, Majima would find little more than residual loyalties binding him to the Tojo. He flat out states that he doesn't trust Terada and didn't like the way Terada led the clan. So, instead of assuming the role of the second patriarch of the Shimano Family, Majima takes his Majima Family out of the Tojo Clan and independent. That Majima was the one who owned Kamurocho Hills means that Shimano set up everything involved in the project in Majima's name to provide a layer of protective separation between the Hills and Shimano's other assets and set up Majima to take the fall should the venture go bad. The Tojo Clan did not have either the strength or the resolve to stop Majima's departure, which would further reinforce Majima's decision. He continues with the Kamurocho Hills project, establishing his own powerbase on Tojo's doorstep. With his ownership stake in Purgatory, he has funds to keep the project afloat during any points of construction cashflow shortages. Kiryu securing Majima's oath of loyalty to Daigo with a fight probably saved the Tojo Clan from a near immediate demise and prevented the rise of a Majima Clan from its fractured ruins.

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I'm over halfway through watching a let's play of Yakuza 4, a game I have to play for myself one of these days (PS4 remaster please?). Between the flashbacks of Y0 and Y4, Saejima's reaction to eyepatch off, and the glimpse of the closed eyelid behind sunglasses in Y0, I'm getting a better picture of the state of Majima's missing eye and why he doesn't wear a prosthetic. 

The eyelid is intact and doesn't seem fused, so it should be able to open. Saejima's reaction to eyepatch off also makes more sense if it can open, otherwise there would be more of a confused moment to a closed eye beneath. Majima took a tanto to the eye, so that's a ruptured globe and then some, which means no eyeball left in the socket. The yakuza that did it wasn't gentle about it, so he probably made scarred hamburger out of the muscles that held and controlled the eye. Not to mention that Majima's captors in the hole wouldn't have been nice enough to leave the socket alone during their torture parties. Any prosthetic would be a motionless dead thing inside his eyelid and probably be more distracting to those he interacts with than the eyepatch as they try to figure out what is wrong with his eye. On top of that, Majima wouldn't appreciate looking really derpy.

Majima by Y4 time might have a prosthetic eye laying about somewhere. He seems fond of disguises, despite his distinctive features. Saejima is a man from another time and might want to see his sworn brother look more like the one in his memory. It doesn't quite work.

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Yakuza 0 again, this time featuring Kiryu and Nugget. What had to be going through Marina's mind when Kiryu walks through the office door with a live chicken, introduces the bird as Nugget, and announces that it will join the team as a manager? I imagine that the only reason why he did that was because he wasn't allowed to keep pets in his tiny, beer and instant noodle filled apartment. Good call. Wait, is Kiryu going to feed Nugget beer and instant noodles?

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Another doodle out of the pile featuring the Cabaret Club minigame in Yakuza 0. The thought of Majima, Mr. Janky Eyepatch himself, getting the girls ready for showtime still cracks me up.

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I'm still playing Yakuza 0 and sinking more hours than I expected into it. The Cabaret management minigame substories have interesting little character details in them, though I got a little frustrated with having to guess what the hostess wants to hear in order to get the better XP reward. One of the little humanizing details was Mana's hay fever. I was surprised that Majima didn't mention his own allergies and joke about fighting her for the tissues.

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【手书】如龙0【剧透注意】 by 真岛组组员J

Song is Tokio by Kenji Sawada (沢田研二)

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I've been playing Yakuza 0 and loving nearly every moment of it. I'm currently at the Cabaret Club management minigame, which could be its own standalone game. Sometimes it's a scramble to keep up with all of the tables when half or more of them need attention at once. Run, janky eyepatch man! Of course, the minigame doesn't stop there. The thought of skeevy, one-eyed bastard Majima playing pretty princess dress-up and makeover party amuses me to no end. Especially considering the, uh, interesting options to dress the hostesses in. Yuki might need a little convincing for some of these styles. Maybe some leading by example, though wearing it better might not help.