this guy comes behind your bar wyd

it has come to my attention that people may not have noticed this as quickly as i did

i did reblog a post a while ago comparing adachi's work suit in RGG8 to kashiwagi's bartender waistcoat pattern, but we ended up getting another buckwild fashion choice from adachi from the same game:

which doesn't really come across as much on its own - after all, you can chalk it up to just being a similar colour scheme.

however, looking back at the other things i've noticed over time, it starts to feel like it might not be just a coincidence.

take the ties here:

this was admittedly pure cope for me before 8 came out, because i see this tie pattern a LOT across the games and we all should know by now how often RGGS reuse assets, but this example is a little unique in that the stripes on the knot run perpendicular to the stripes on the rest of the tie - adachi's default enforcer outfits use the same colour scheme on the tie, except all of the stripes run parallel. i'd have to check the other ties like this i've seen to know if it truly is a unique case, but it's something to consider nonetheless.

the last thing of course being the suit pattern, which startledpixel posted a while ago around the time the character renders got posted on the IW website:

i'm not saying anything is concrete - perhaps RGG men in their sixties-or-thereabouts just have similar taste in formal wear. but it's kind of wild that it's happened three times now between the bartender and his sole regular of however many years.

You don't have boops on so please accept this ask as a boop from me (I wub u)

I am sorry for having no whimsy but I'm glad you guys having fun <3 a b... a boop from me to you <3

Howdy Howdy happy TDOV + Easter! I have a bit of an announcement!

Throughout these past years, I’ve been making increasing and increasing posts for work because my apartment kept increasing rent/ threatening me with eviction! Although I love my job and the place I live I’m far away from my family, but my lease is finally up this June! Which means I can finally shoot for something more affordable!! And as luck would have it my best friend @katohiroshi is also in need of moving out of her place! She's been going through a real bad rough patch recently as she had recently lost her father who in turn left her and her mother with a lot of debt (and he destroyed her credit); her household hasn't always been the most positive or accepting of her so finally being able to live in a household where she can be herself is something really important right now! So, we'd really appreciate any support at all as this will hopefully fix the current problems we've both been experiencing! I am an autistic transman with ADHD and Bipolar so I'm intending to move closer to a job with better healthcare coverage, while my current job is great It didn't cover everything and also hemmed and hawwed at moving me up despite constantly alluding to it. Dani is autistic with ADHD and with BPD. we’re both going to between jobs for the moving process and so any help would be super appreciated! Especially since Dani's family has never been the most financially helpful, My commissions are currently open and I am more than happy to negotiate prices right now! You can support us through ko-fi.com/bunster and if you want any money to go to Dani directly just note it’s for her otherwise it’ll be used towards the move/rent! And for commissions, you can contact me directly! Thank you for your time, any little bit really helps as we're both struggling artists who just want to live !

Hey it’s your pal Bunster! My commissions are opening! You should consider commissioning me, your pal who needs money!  You could also take a gander at my shop or tip me on Kofi where I’ll do sketch Requests! 

Howdy Howdy happy TDOV + Easter! I have a bit of an announcement!

Throughout these past years, I’ve been making increasing and increasing posts for work because my apartment kept increasing rent/ threatening me with eviction! Although I love my job and the place I live I’m far away from my family, but my lease is finally up this June! Which means I can finally shoot for something more affordable!! And as luck would have it my best friend @katohiroshi is also in need of moving out of her place! She's been going through a real bad rough patch recently as she had recently lost her father who in turn left her and her mother with a lot of debt (and he destroyed her credit); her household hasn't always been the most positive or accepting of her so finally being able to live in a household where she can be herself is something really important right now! So, we'd really appreciate any support at all as this will hopefully fix the current problems we've both been experiencing! I am an autistic transman with ADHD and Bipolar so I'm intending to move closer to a job with better healthcare coverage, while my current job is great It didn't cover everything and also hemmed and hawwed at moving me up despite constantly alluding to it. Dani is autistic with ADHD and with BPD. we’re both going to between jobs for the moving process and so any help would be super appreciated! Especially since Dani's family has never been the most financially helpful, My commissions are currently open and I am more than happy to negotiate prices right now! You can support us through ko-fi.com/bunster and if you want any money to go to Dani directly just note it’s for her otherwise it’ll be used towards the move/rent! And for commissions, you can contact me directly! Thank you for your time, any little bit really helps as we're both struggling artists who just want to live !

world's oomfiest crime boss

i think i need to finally rip those substories apart. going to start with chapter 8 since obviously that comes first

beware, it's long. mentions of a substory in ch.12, but nothing main plot-related beyond ch.8

edit: i'm a bit tired and i'm letting off steam by doing this so i think my wording outside the readmore is a bit aggressive but i assure you this is a 1.6k word lovepost

first thing i did was have a look at nanba's line about kashiwagi being a sweet guy deep down, because i'm told tsuruno's line about him being a "scary-ass bartender" wasn't totally faithful to the intent of the original, but i think it (and all of the other ones i checked here) are, for the most part, close enough. i may get into the others more later. from what i can gather nanba just says, "the bartender is kinda scary, but he's a good person so you'll be alright/don't worry," sort of thing.

but the way kiryu and kashiwagi stop when they see each other is shocking to the core. you get some nice sort of establishing shots of the top of the bar counter and kashiwagi polishing a glass before they show his face (potentially also where kiryu's eyes went first?) and then the next time you see his hands he's paused right in the middle of what he was doing. he's practiced (or seen) enough that his jaw doesn't drop the way kiryu's does, but he has to purse his lips a little in an attempt to stop them from quivering. it takes until nanba asks if they've met before for him to scramble inside his head for something to say, and only then is he able to lead the conversation on (but not without his voice catching in his throat a little bit). the game never says this outright, but the way kashiwagi is as shocked as kiryu is when he walks into survive definitely says to me that he'd also found out kiryu "died" in 2016

kiryu's eyebrows tremble quite visibly after kashiwagi speaks up for the first time to deny they'd met before - how could he say that, with that voice? - but he rolls with it, much to his (what i'm reading as) visible dismay. but then he pulls out this unnecessarily deep bow to kashiwagi?? and i didn't think much of it at the time, but this comment i found on a youtube video recontextualised the entire exchange to me:

literally driving me insane. kiryu's SO choked up over this and trying desperately not to show it. there's simply no other reason for kiryu of all people to be bowing so deeply to someone he's "just met" and "mistaken" the identity of.

kashiwagi's next line (jpn: いいえ、どうかお気になさらず) is a bit contentious to me, but i can't tell at this point if i'm nitpicking too hard or not - it seems to translate fairly literally to "no, please don't worry," but he's subtitled as saying "please. it happens to the best of us," which is (again) close enough but it feels like another one of those strange lines that got edited a bit too hard. i don't think the inferred meaning of "no, it's ok, there's nothing you could have done differently" is totally lost, but you take a slightly different route to get there, kind of thing?

it also doesn't really account for the way bowing to people like that isn't as much of a thing outside east asia. of course, most people with a cursory knowledge of japanese culture are aware of the existence of bowing, but the nuances of its use here i feel could have been made slightly more obvious in localisation to get that point across. absolutely not to the point of making it glaringly obvious, but easier to infer for people who aren't totally immersed in japanese culture.*

kashiwagi, in his infinite wisdom, whips out his next trick: to say he just has one of those faces. with a huge scar running right across the middle. i don't want to say he's pissing about with the tone of the cutscene and his delivery, but it really is an absurd thing to say (and he knows it).

and then they just go back to staring at each other... kiryu's eyebrows are still going and kashiwagi's lip twitches again and i'm so glad they let this game cook for so long because all of the animations have had such thought and care put into them. it's BARELY noticeable and i've been obsessively playing back each close-up of their faces where they're not talking trying to catch any miniscule movements they make.

this next part felt heinous to watch back after seonhee's fifth drink link because who ELSE but her would also know who kashiwagi is? she knows exactly what's happening between the two of them, and swoops in to save them from another awkward staring contest. she's lying through her teeth in front of saeko and nanba, which honestly just makes me wonder what kashiwagi's conditions for hiding his identity are if he's not telling the party. i can't imagine it'd be tojo clan related since the great dissolution had happened four years ago by this point, but the daidoji kashiwagi theories i've seen floating around feel equally ridiculous to me. what use does daidoji have for a guy in (probably) his sixties who's spent the last decade of his life running an empty bar on purpose? (he's still holding the glass and towel still in his hands at this point.)

he perks up again when seonhee railroads them all into getting the karaoke going, and it's really... nice? to see a man like kashiwagi expressing his gratitude for them being there so openly. he mentions it himself in a later conversation, but being a yakuza meant he was never really allowed to show much emotion. the HLA was his side gig kiryu never even found out about until after the helicopter attack, and the other patriarchs in Y3 called him "soft" for working to resolve conflict rather than instigate it, but 7 and 8 are the only times you get to see him wholeheartedly express things like pleasure and joy on screen. it's refreshing to see, and even more so after he says he consciously had to repress himself to get by before. i'd done a whole thing before this game came out about how he IS a deeply caring man under his harsh exterior and i'll tell you now i'm feeling extremely validated by his appearances here.

kiryu bows again as he walks past the bar to sit down - this time just his head - and kashiwagi hangs his head in return. both nanba and seonhee turn and catch him looking down with the glass still held awkwardly in his hands, and i'd imagine seeing him like that is something completely new to everyone in the room at that moment. it cuts away and he finally finds himself again, and he goes back to polishing the glass. he's stood there for the better part of a minute and a half with a glass in his hand not even doing anything with it, just out of pure shock and awe. i'm honestly not sure who handled that exchange worse (comparatively) out of the two of them.

next part doesn't have as much for me to go crazy about, but that look they exchange while kiryu is up singing makes me melt every time. every movement they make says so much. two brothers who each thought the other was dead meeting again for the first time in nearly fifteen years while kiryu ticks one of his favourite pastimes off his bucket list.

what's making me really mad, however, is the choice to use the "singable" english dub lyrics to bakamitai in the subtitles, because when you look at the more literal translation listed on the RGG Fandom wiki (only showing the lines he sings in full here):

Went chasing a dream and got hurt

Poorly disguised behind a joyless smile

"I love you" is hardly ever said

Tongue-tied and downright self-conscious

But even so, even so, why is it

"Goodbye" came so naturally?

It's no use, no use, no use at all

and the line re-recorded for this scene:

So then what are they, these tears—what a fool

bakamitai is vague on purpose. ostensibly and according to the wiki it's about a woman reflecting on her relationship with an ex, but the lyrics omit gendered pronouns at the beginning, and no women actually sing this song in the games... karaoke is one of the few methods kiryu has to really express his feelings, and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that, here, he's singing about himself, about kashiwagi, to kashiwagi. and the official translated lyrics don't hit anywhere close to the same in this regard.

now i will admit i've been having some difficulty discerning kiryu's tone in this last part i'm going to talk about. he gets annoyed that everyone was chatting through his song, and goes to sit down and lecture them. my first thought as i originally watched this was that he queued judgement himself, but looking back now and thinking about how stuck in his own head kiryu can get, i'm not so sure that was the case.

once again it was a youtube comment that got me thinking (so thanks for that), but he does seem so genuinely annoyed that he wants to sit down and drink again - which he does, but then the song starts up and he drawls out this どうゆう意味だなぁ？and i can't tell if it's meant to be sarcastic (which would line up with him having queued the song himself) or... incensed? exasperated? i can't think of a good word for it, but it's that kind of fake-annoyed only a good friend or sibling can drag out of you, which would imply he really had planned to sit down, and kashiwagi started his favourite song to cheer him up and get everyone going again.

i think i like the second option better.

new rgg fans will never know what they missed back in ye olden days of the fandom (like, 2019), doubly so now that scott strichart's deleted his twitter and jon riesenbach's privated. twitter was so fucking fun and then whatever-the-hell at sega of america happened and caused a fucking snowball effect and now we have shitass localization and resulting discourse that makes every release nigh unbearable, misinformation, confusion, people complaining about "bad writing/mischaracterization" not realizing it's because of the shitass english loc, i'm sitting here like jesus christ these loc bitches massacred saejima's character voice, people will never see him as he was intended, as original yakuza 5 localization Correctly painted him, and now they're coming for kiryu. god help us. we used to be a proper fandom. before everyone was subjected to the remastered localizations and shaky eng characterization. no one had even played yakuza 3-5, people still called morning glory "sunshine" orphanage, kiryu was our only protagonist and people still called him "boring", it was beautiful...

anyway gaiden uses affective instead of effective because the current localization team is full of careless dumbasses who don't give a fuck about ensuring they're using correct english grammar and this is not an isolated incident

This is something I've been wondering about:

neither of us could be free until after arakawa was gone

i don't have a whole lot prepared for this week but i love them <3

a couple of sillay cat guys

Could you possibly tag your Daidoji AU post? I would like to be able to easily find it as well any further posts in the future!

Very optimistic outlook on my future output for this AU but o7 #daidoji au

Snoopy and Woodstok: Gaiden

a silly drawing a friend gave me permission to draw

Lesser-known agents of Daidoji...