first off thank you everyone for playing with me even though i was not around nearly as much as i should have been... why did my work have to start exploding in every way possible these last couple of weeks

but man! MY BOY!! i'm not gonna lie i had reservations at first bc i was just coming off of having blitzed through the kiryu saga and i'd been wanting to play kiryu for a while... but then i finished y7 right around interest check going up AND then iw came out and i was like oh i'm doomed

i got distracted bc a spider decided to come at me anyway

yes i love kiryu but ichiban won me over SO FAST especially as i played through y7 bc like. ok. a huge theme of kiryu's character arc is him taking on burdens and holding himself fully accountable when there are people who are trying so hard to help him-- yes some of this is kind of addressed in y4 and 5 where there are other protags, but ultimately

it's just him! he's a one man army, and physically he CAN pull it off, but man needs to just learn to accept help

ichiban, in contrast, from the SECOND you start playing as him, is all ABOUT accepting new people as friends and treating them with kindness rather than violence

not to say that kiryu doesn't do that! but from the whole change in gameplay to turn-based combat with a party, like, ichiban just does not hesitate to trust and accept

and that's the same energy he wholeheartedly brought into sprace-- he was always looking to try and believe there was some way to work together and figure things out. he knows he's naive for doing so but he'd rather be naive than pessimistic any day

i know i played up his silly side a lot bc it's fun and that's honestly why i got into the series at all in the first place, but i promise there's so much depth to his character that's more than just punch guy with funny hair

like the image says at his core he just loves making people happy. so much shit has happened to him over his life that he really should just be a broken shell of a man! like, he was an orphan who grew up raised by pimps and prostitutes and shady corner store owners

he dropped out of high school and became a thug, he joined a low-tier yakuza family bc he had nothing else to turn to and just so happened to cross paths with a man who became his everything, he went to jail for 18 years for a murder he didn't commit, he came back out to find he'd been abandoned and also that aforementioned man fucking shot him point blank

but he never gave up because, when he was a kid, he found escapism through video games and dreamed of becoming a hero like the main characters in his rpgs! whenever things got hard for them, they persevered through it and progressed in their stories and leveled up

actually ok nvm i'm 1) dying bc it's so fucking hot here right now and it's actually making it hard for me to think 2) becoming more self-conscious about being all over the place bc i don't know how to organize my thoughts so i'm gonna stop now and maybe. come back to this later. gomen

You were weaving your words pretty well so far, yup. Just wanted to say an encouraging word on that regard

please my plurk is a stream of consciousness disaster you're fine

sits here chin in hands i loved ichiban and i wanna read whatever you have to say about him

I THINK I HAVE COME TO THE CONCLUSION that I cannot focus enough to sit down and talk at length but I promise if you come into my dms I will not shut up about him

Or idk maybe I'll just use this for rambling when the fancy strikes me. I'm going home early today bc I have a dentist appt so maybe

i'm already there so feel free to ramble forever lmao