#saejeem

[majimaisms]

'85

[majimaisms]

[majimaisms]

kind of a shame that we don't get to see more of yuko nishikiyama in yakuza kiwami, because the parallels between kiryu going to jail so his weaker, more emotionally labile brother could take care of his sister and the majima/saejima/yasuko thing from y5 really could've gotten drawn out more

so true.... tbh i think theres many cases of missed opportunity like that in this series. i feel like theyre trying to deal with so many themes at the same time that in trying to balance them, sometimes things that had a lot of potential get sacrificed

but yeah thats a particularly good example of it. i think it's subverted in an interesting way, too, because majima situates himself as the "stronger" of the two of them and offers saejima an "out"

just like kiryu did with nishiki. both for the sake of their sick sisters. but while kiryu does actually end up going to prison for nishiki, with majima and saejima it's the other way around. majima's guilt around saejima is also informed by this, i think, because he had planned for a possibility where only one of them goes to prison -- it's just that he never thought it would be saejima. it's an added layer to that sense of "this is not how it was supposed to go" that haunts majima

it's an interesting contrast between majima and saejima vs. kiryu and nishiki too i think, because it establishes majima and saejima as equals in terms of "competence", since majima was able to climb the ranks just fine without saejima's support. and we all know what happened with nishiki. so

i don't know how much of this contrast is intentional on rggs's part and how much of it is just... the fact that dealing with the same themes within the same context is going to result in similarities regardless of intent. kyoudais is the same, etc

[majimaisms]

ok i have to make this poll now. i need to understand how my followers feel about him

how do u feel about saejima

saejima <3333 my beloved

hes cool. dont particularly care about him

neutral option

vaguely dislike him

hate his ass. fuck that guy

Voting ended onApr 23, 2025

[majimaisms]

Weirdly I couldn’t stand Saejima UNTIL Pirates in Hawaii, and now I’m all aboard like a switch flicked. Love love love your readings of him and Majima too

omg. thats incredible. honestly ive heard from quite a few people that pirates completely changed their view/reading of saejima (ME INCLUDED TO AN EXTENT) and it's really not that surprising to me, especially considering y4 and y5 remastered suffered from some very unfortunate localization choices for saejima specifically, obscuring/misrepresenting his character, and i thought pirates did a wayyy better job of portraying him accurately. so that makes sense to me. and thank you!! im so glad to hear u like my thoughts on them im always trying to understand what the fuck is going on with the two of them lmfao

some examples of the loc changes under the cut btw

left is original, right is remastered

there's stuff i dont have screenshots for, but a change that stood out to me was how he has a couple classist lines about homeless people in i think both games? but overall they made him both way more gruff and sarcastic at the same time, neither of which are. characteristics of saejima and they come together in a really unflattering way i think. doesnt exactly make him the most. likeable character

edit: @okitanoniisan provided screenshots

[majimaisms]

Hello!

Saejima poll Anon here. I know it was a while back and like. I wasn't Going to because I don't like getting into negative chat about characters people like But. Since you seemed receptive and I've had time to think I hope you don't mind me coming back with a few things.

For me he works more as a concept than as an actual character. He's super interesting up to Y4 all the nods we get to him, the stuff in 0. It's great and I was totally invested. And then he showed up, they reunited, and he had...no more narrative purpose *for me* anymore. He's kinda survived that purpose and then???

This derailed a lot of like Majima's writing as well. Sorry to get like Critical but lord knows RGG haven't know what the fuck to do with Majima sometimes, esp. since 4, and I blame the tidying up of this story line for part of it.

Rubber bullets. I know this is a huge meme but let me XD So, I actually still think the fact he tried to kill 16 people Interesting and the rubber bullets are part of RGG's protags don't kill agenda. I get that. But it's goofy and it influenced how I view him.

I think that he often comes across as an underbaked Kiryu to me and he never really gets the chance to just Be A Character on his own account? He's either a weaker written Kiryu or Majimas Bro and I don't ??? KNow anything outside of that about him really.

The Haruka Thing. Yeah it sucks yeah I hate it yeah Kiryu needs to go jog for it as well. I don't think I need to unpack it.

I suppose I get Frustrated with how he's written. He could be interesting he could be SO interesting - a Murderer seeking redemption, the reuniting with Majima the Guilt of his actions it's all THERE but it just. Doesn't come together in a way that works for me or that I find satisfying.

Obviously like you don't agree and that's fine xD Just another viewpoint.

i absolutely do not mind! i was actually wondering if u would ever elaborate lol. thank you for sharing your thoughts!

a lot of rambling under the cut, to spare the ppl who don't care to hear it lol

i actually find it v interesting that someone's feelings about a character can be influenced by like, frustrations about the way they're written? or rather, of course that can happen, but the opposite seems to happen just as often where those frustrations turn into an obsession with the character and you want to see them reach their potential, through fanfic or headcanons. and i wonder what the deciding factor is. maybe just whether or not you find the character personally sympathetic or relatable?

because i share your frustrations about him tbh, the rubber bullets thing drives me crazy and i'm too pissed off at y4 in general to be able to laugh at it (including the haruka thing. yes. yeah.). underbaked kiryu is interesting because they basically *were* setting saejima up to be that (here's an excerpt that talks about it) but i don't see him as being underbaked so much as. very different from kiryu in some key aspects, especially in that he's not unhealthy in the ways kiryu is. i kinda wonder if they planned for him to be the ichiban of the series before ichiban, to be the guy to carry the torch after kiryu so to speak. (also, that excerpt includes yokoyama saying they *also* wanted saejima to stay as a murderer, but that it didn't work out, so that's interesting too)

majima def got sidelined after y5, but so did saejima and daigo -- and i don't think that was necessarily because of their reunion. majima was a huge part of y5 and it was like. THE majima game to me honestly. i think them not knowing what to do with the jimas is a result of their priorities about what kinds of stories they wanna tell changing. if the reunion was meant to tidy up majima's story, i feel like that was a very small part of it. also like, again this is a matter of personal preference of course, but i really like that majima is so aimless after the reunion. it's thematically perfect for a character like majima to me, and i see it as a new *era* of majima's story (here's a post about that if you wanna read more about it btw). they just didn't wanna focus on that because it's... not the kind of story they wanna tell i think. not one they wanna focus on, at any rate. majima's life is *bleak*, in the most banal way possible, and they want their games to be inspiring. it's maybe more accurate to say that the role of the yakuza in the narrative changed after y5, and majima got hit by that. i am also curious if your frustrations about this have affected your feelings about majima btw!

i will say i think it is this tonal shift between y5 and y6 that derailed things, where they didn't follow up on ideas they had been setting up. i mean saejima was a protagonist in two games for gods sake and immediately after that he became a side character you see like, 4-5 times in total in the next three games but like i said, i dont think this was unique to saejima, and i was like. just sad that we didn't get to see more of him. lmao

also you are definitely not alone in feeling like saejima was written weakly, and i think the reason for that is because he *was* -- except it wasn't rggs' writing but the loc team's. there is something very wrong with *specifically* saejima's parts in y4 and y5 remastered, i talked a bit about this here. and i think, going back to my initial question about the "deciding factor", this is where saejima was really done dirty because his character was completely misrepresented -- his quirks, his *human* side, the things we all love other rgg characters for, the things that make them relatable. a lot of things in rgg are communicated to the audience through these things, they're very subtle about *characterization*. and saejima just didn't get any of that, or his characterization contradicted itself too much to be compelling (where he's being all gruff and stoic for most of the in-game dialogue and then there's main story cutscenes where he's crying in front of a room full or people or giving speeches about dreams)

please don't take this as me trying to refute any of your points btw, i just wanted to share my own thoughts on the stuff you pointed out. i think what it comes down to is your first point, that he had no narrative purpose *for you* anymore. which is fair! i personally enjoyed the themes they were exploring through saejima and found them profound and inspiring, also he's totally my kind of character lol. in the end it's all just personal preference

[majimaisms]

gonna take me a while to finish picking through your essay on majima's series arc, but it did prick me to a thought re: majima's guilt over not being with saejima at the hit. it's not just that he wasn't there for his mate, not just survivor's guilt, but very specifically the guilt of being considered more valuable to the clan than saejima. saejima threw his life away for… literally nothing, by design, and majima wasn't allowed to. having the people that destroyed saejima's life value him more is an unspeakable horror, particularly the idea that saejima might think that majima agrees with them

oh i hadn't even considered that angle. that's such a good point. i also have the feeling that majima suspected/theorized shimano had an active hand in orchestrating that whole scenario, with the goal of getting the opportunity to "break" majima and ensure his loyalty, obtaining a priceless weapon in the process. separating him from saejima was a necessary step to achieving this. considering he does pretty much exactly this in y0, demonstrating that he knows majima better than himself and planning accordingly, it seems very likely to me that '85 was another instance of this.

so the fact that majima specifically returned to shimano's family, and became his captain... if saejima heard that, majima's guilt about what youre talking about would be about a million times worse with the knowledge that he swore an oath to shimano specifically, who was one of the people who originally decided majima was more valuable than saejima

[majimaisms]

guy who is delicate inside. btw