#lorillee.txt

[lorillee]

[lorillee]

something that makes me kind of sad is that a lot of people seem to attribute future trunks’ shockingly polite personality exclusively to the lack of vegeta influence when bulma as we know her is very much a world class hater herself. like idk its making me lowkey crazy thinking about future bulma trying to curb those traits in both herself and trunks to prevent him from becoming too much like his father and rushing to an early grave

[lorillee]

ok i was going to make a post on this later at some nebulous point but im thinking about it now so i will share. anyways my vision on this goes somewhat as follows: sometime post buu saga the z fighters are having like a get together barbecue something or another. there is, of course, alcohol. bulma gets lowkey drunk and is maybe not thinking all the way through some of the decisions shes making here so we're just going to have to be a little forgiving. of course everyone is familiar with the freakish metabolism of your average saiyan - considering they all seem to eat enough to feed a bus of full grown adults it stands to reason that their alcohol tolerance is at least marginally better than any earth shmuck youd pick up off the street. and. obviously. bulma is a Scientist. considering shes never seen her alien husband so much as touch a beer in the more than a decade that theyve known each other - well, you cant fault her for being a little curious.

the main issue, of course, is vegeta himself. hes insane about maintaining control over his faculties at every given point in time (understandably so, given everything thats happened to him, ever,) and getting him to consume any sort of alcohol at all, let alone to the point of being shitfaced drunk, is going to be a tremendously hard sell. which is why its incredibly convenient that goku also happens to be present at this get together - not only does this mean that she has two case studies in terms of saiyan alcohol tolerance, but quite possibly the easiest way to get vegeta to do anything that he doesnt want to do is a threat to his ego. so with a little bit of wheedling and a whole lot of youre just going to stand there and let everybody think youre scared of getting your ass beat by Goku???? vegeta cracks under the pressure and a truly diabolical drinking contest ensues. ungodly amounts of alcohol are consumed that night.

after this its kind of a tossup for who you think would be funnier to win but im admittedly camp vegeta mostly because hes literally like 2/3rds gokus size. but when goku finally conks out vegeta is at the point where he can barely stand up straight, and stumbles out to some corner of the yard to stare off into space and contemplate at what point, exactly, his life got so derailed. theres a number of ways you could play drunk vegeta and im open to other interpretations but i think extremely maudlin is the funniest to me. bulma, at this point a bit more sober and feeling maybe kind of bad for having goaded vegeta into stepping out of his comfort zone like this primarily to satisfy her own curiosity and also because she thought it would be really funny, goes over to keep an eye on him. she sits down and immediately gets hit with a barely coherent concerningly sentimental drunken ramble which, on one hand, is really cute given its such a rare occasion to see this side of her husband, but, on the other. well her husband is Vegeta. so it kind of freaks her the hell out. And then he starts throwing up everywhere and kills the moment and well lets just say after this they agree that maybe alcohol adventures are better enjoyed by other people.

[lorillee]

Anybody else ever think about it all or really just me

[lorillee]

WHY DOES DAIGO BETRAY MAJIMA. AND OTHERS <- this was originally going to be a section in the y4 retrospective i never ended up making. so i guess im just going to share it now

i said in my liveblog this was primarily about ego but this is WRONG this is wrong actually. well ok its not entirely incorrect but its only part of the puzzle because hes also kind of trying to become majima

to back up a bit. daigo is profoundly unpopular in-universe and this has been an extremely hammered in fact throughout his entire chairmanship. i think this does bother him like he literally tells kiryu even if he had the option he wouldnt give the tojo back to him because hes too proud for that. but also i dont think its enough of an issue for him to throw everyone under the bus like that.

like in essence i think this is about self sufficiency in the same vein that majima approaches it. like majima has carefully constructed his life in such a way that hes not dependent on anybody else and can survive even if everyone leaves or turns on him because of Well Everything, and will also cut other people off if he views them as potential targets or liabilities (makoto, park, sunshine cast, kicking saejima out of the tojo in y5, etc)

now back to daigo theres two things we want to think about: 1) the rggo story and 2) the events of y3

for point number one honestly usually im kind of hesitant to include bonus material discussions in analysis for decisions the characters make in the games but we have so little in terms of material to work with for majima and daigo that since because its (dubiously/unless proven otherwise) canon im going to talk about it anyways. you really should read it but if you havent for whatever reason the basic plot is that nobody in the tojo is accepting daigo as the new chairman due to his lack of experience/general ability, and majima (just having returned on kiryus request) is beating the shit out of anybody who criticizes daigo. which is obviously doing nobody any favors. daigo tells him to knock it off and majima laughs at him and says Um LOL grow a spine maybe and ill consider it. it eventually gets to the point where majima attempts to kill a patriarch for trying to have daigo assassinated, and daigo tries to step in only to be told that he has to beat majima in a purgatory cage match if he wants majima to finally submit. they fight, daigo obviously loses but impresses majima enough with his mindset and willpower that majima pretends to lose in the end, which sends a message to the rest of the tojo that daigo is strong enough to collar even the mad dog so maybe get off his back.

now obviously you can make an argument that the spectacle of majima causing trouble and eventually having to be subdued by daigo was necessary for the impact that majima wanted (namely, getting tojo goons to have some bare amount of respect for their chairman). but like also Was it really necessary if that was all. i think its pretty easy to read in the idea that majima is also sending a message to daigo - that he cant blindly rely on the people around him to keep him safe. the only way he's going to survive in this world is by his own two hands.

^and so onto point number two. given the entire events of y3 which involved 1) mine betraying the clan 2) kashiwagi & mine dying and 3) kiryu showing up briefly for the finale and then leaving again. between all this and the fact that majima pretty demonstrably was trying to teach him lesson that "you cant become blindly reliant on the people around you" from the moment he stepped back into the tojo. its actually kind of no surprise the moment the clan had another crisis daigo immediately starts making sacrifices out of people left and right

like. "if i dont keep it safe, who will" <- daigo feels that he cannot rely on anybody else because they will leave him one way or another. he cant become dependent on them because thats a liability for him, because when they leave the tojo will crumble. so honestly it makes perfect sense he'd throw majima under the bus for the money because frankly the money cant leave him, and the money cant be a liability like a person is and if he sends majima to prison this is one less person who he has a personal connection to that he has to worry about. like if that makes sense

"i have to rebuild from the ground up" <- he has to rebuild the tojo and rebuild his life in a way that is not dependent on others. in a way thats entirely self sufficient. in a way that wont fall apart when they all leave. and wow Now who is this sounding like……………………..

[lorillee]

anyways upon finishing y5 again one of the most striking things to me in this game was kind of the insane amount of kiryu and haruka parallels they go for. like im sure its been spoken about to death before but im new here so im going to soapbox anyways but like even just the overarching storyline: haruka has a dream (becoming an idol) and a mentor/parental figure appears in her life who shares her troubled past as an orphan and has a personal investment in this dream (park) and sets her on a path to the top which she accepts briefly (the dream line concert) but upon realizing that embracing this will cause her to have to abandon her adopted family (kiryu + morning glory) at the end of the game she runs out from it to choose them instead and Now wait a minute I think ive played this story before (KIRYU ITS KIRYU ITS THE PLOT OF YAKUZA 1). and even just smaller things too like its crazy how theyre constantly paralleled i didnt get a screenshot of it but in the haruka substory where shes doing the interview and answering a bunch of anonymous questions that are clearly from the morning glory kids one of them is from taichi i think and it asks something to the extent of "two people who are basically our father and mother have left us and i'm trying to hold down the fort while theyre gone, do you have any advice" or something and if you pick the dialogue option thats something along the lines of "just keep holding on" haruka says shame on those two people for abandoning you <- like theyre literally framed in parallel for leaving even if its to keep morning glory afloat its crazy. and the way she handles the letter situation too is exactly like how kiryu would like

LIKE HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE SEEN THIS STUNT PULLED WITH KIRYU its CRAZYYYY like theyre so instinctually self sacrificial they feel like they CANT rely on anybody else they CANT get anybody else involved because so many people have already gotten hurt on their account they cant bear to be responsible for it again, even if those people would willingly accept that fate to help them. like even as far back to kiwami 1 these parallels still exist but theyre highlighted in such detail in this game like

[lorillee]

was daigo aware that majimas death was fake? <- months ago this question was posed to me and since itd been a while since i played y5 and i also only absorbed maybe 50% of the plot at best on my first runthrough i wasnt really confident that i could give an answer i believed in. but this has now changed.

its difficult to make a fully confident assertion on this due to how frankly little we know about what majima spent half this game doing, but im honestly really inclined to say that daigo was not privy to at least majima planning on faking his death due to the insane risk factor. like both kitakata and baba were very much under the impression that he was dead; kitakata was physically present for majimas "death" and did not give even the slightest impression that he thought majima was still alive, and baba, being one of the key players in kurosawas plan, would have been enough in the loop to know that it was one of kurosawas men that "killed" him - when he's talking to saejima about it he seems very confident that majimas death was of their doing. so it was clearly very believable to someone whos almost definitely seen people die before, and i find it difficult to imagine majima would have been able to pull this off unless he had actually been close to dying. additionally it seems highly unlikely that majimas attempted assassin was someone in league with him and katsuya so as to "kill" majima but make sure he was not going to die, because katsuya wasnt completely confident in his guess that this entire thing was kurosawas plan. if the fakeout death was an airtight plot and the assassin was a double agent, katsuya wouldve known without a doubt that kurosawa was the mastermind and frankly none of this elaborate scheme would have been necessary. not to mention the fact that the letter was given to katsuya before any of this even occurred - majima was not 1000% confident in the fact that he'd live past the assassination attempt to send it himself.

setting daigos (relative) softness and personal relationship with majima aside, it would be insane for him to approve of this because he needs majima. its always pretty emphasized but especially in y5 we get to hear a lot of peoples opinions on daigo being the chairman and absolutely none of them are positive - people think hes too inexperienced, too young, and too weak to lead, and after the disaster that was y4 he's tremendously unpopular. the only reason he hasnt gotten overthrown is because of majimas support - the combined strength of both majima himself and his clan makes it impossible for the rest of the tojo to dethrone daigo. but if the plan goes even slightly askew and majima dies in this insane plot to try and smoke out the real mastermind, regardless of whether or not the mastermind is defeated, forget about leading it because daigo would be doing good to just make it out of the tojo alive. if majima dies, he dies, and since theres literally nobody else even remotely qualified enough to lead, the tojo dies too. i think daigo absolutely would have viewed the plan as infinitely too risky and would have vetoed it without question, so majima just. Did not tell him.

the only real hole in this that i can think of is the fact that at the end of y5 daigo and katsuya come up to the millenium tower together, implying some sort of relationship has already been established - i find it somewhat difficult to believe they would have connected over their shared goal to bring down kurosawa in the hospital, especially considering they were both in critical condition literally the day before. the timeline is too short and relies far too much on coincidence and them being bizarrely trusting of each other. i think its pretty easy to conclude they werent fully in league with each other prior to the ending because during the first kurosawa confrontation they seem to have independently come to the conclusion that kurosawa was running this whole show, so i feel like what makes the most sense to me is that majima disclosed part of his and katsuyas plan to bring out the mastermind (notably leaving out the majima-fakes-his-death scheme), so daigo is aware that katsuya is someone he can trust to some extent, but not someone hes directly contacted or in general connected to until they meet at the hospital and go track down kurosawa together at the finale. anyways well thats #MyOpinion on this topic but id love to hear if people have other takes…… Let me know………

[lorillee]

WHAT DID THEY MEAN BY THIS