!!!!SPOILERS FOR GHOST OF YOTEI!!!!
I finished playing Ghost of Yotei and I'm genuinely fucking devastated. Out of all the characters that didn't deserve to die, Jubei, the one who deserved to die the least, is like the only one to get fucking killed in this game.
There is something genuinely so tragic about that. Atsu gave her life away for her vengeance because she thought she had nothing left. She'd go to the mainland and train and fight and stay alive more through luck than anything else in order to come back strong enough to kill the Yotei Six for what they did to her family. She would play her mother's shamisen when she returns home. She would strengthen her blade in her father's forge. She would stack rocks like her brother because he liked doing it when he was a child.
She has absolutely nothing but her vengeance and she tells us herself that once she kills the Yotei Six, she'll join her family on death. Suicide.
But then she meets her brother once more. He was never dead, just like her. But Jubei was of a more gentle breed than Atsu could ever be. Jubei would see the sprouting of seedlings in scorched earth while Atsu would be blinded by tears of visceral rage and see only smoke and ash.
Jubei decided to live a different kind of life. He became a Samurai and well respected for being as kind as he is fair. He builds his life to be a protector of the north. Lord Kitamori. He has a beautiful estate inside the walls of the castle. He has men who respect him. He had a wife, even though she would later die. And he has a wonderful daughter.
As Atsu says: he did well for himself.
Unlike Atsu, who is so torn up for revenge, Jubei sees what else life has to offer and decided that that is far more valuable than vengeance.
Atsu says she has no one left. She says that she is doing it all for her family. But her family didn't all die. Jubei and his niece is right there and her world must be tearing itself apart because she dedicated her life to this quest of vengeance but now she sees that she isn't completely alone. Her brother is still alive and he is doing well.
But she is too obsessed with vengeance. It doesn't even really matter that he is alive or not. It doesn't even matter is she makes things worse for him and the life he built. She exists only for vengeance. And this happens over and over again throughout the story, whether its completely disregarding him or using him for her own means. It's like her brother doesn't even exist because he's been dead for so long to her.
So then comes the stand at Matsumae castle against the Dragon. He begs her to let it go, to help him save his home and her niece and focus on the living. But Atsu can't do that. She abandons him for her vengeance, a vengeance that he was a reason for, and she kills the Dragon, sure, but at the cost of everything.
Only then does she see that she made a mistake once her brother and Oyuki are captured. And Jubei is tortured. He is weak. And Atsu saves him and begs him to help her and he agrees, even if begrudgingly because though she may abandon him for the dead, he will never abandon her because she is the living.
So even though when she fights Saito, she tells him to leave, he jumps back in to save her like the wolf once he realizes that Saito is overpowering her. Because unlike Atsu, he could never abandon his sister.
And that just fucking kills me because Atsu finding Jubei and Kiku is perhaps the best thing that could ever happen to her because after she gets her shit together, she realizes that they are the reason to keep living and she gives up her sword for a more peaceful life.
For Jubei, finding Atsu alive is the worst thing that could've happened to her because he lost everything. His home, his strength, and then his life because he values the living far more than vengeance for the dead.
He did so well for himself and it was all ripped away from him because his sister was so hellbent on revenge that she could only see his worldview when it was far too late.