It’s the only time he’s ever had with his sister and he uses it to give her the purpose he was deprived of for so long. The best villainous quality about Ryuji Goda is that, as he lies dying on the roof of a construction site looming high over Kamurocho, he sheds his rough exterior for tenderness. It’s a necessary performance that’s been going on for so long that it’s become impossible to exit stage left. In the moment, it feels as if he’s got some sort of alternate agenda, but in hindsight after finishing the game, I think it’s easy to see that there was always some semblance of kindness, or at least decency, bubbling below the surface with Ryuji, which is what ultimately makes him such a good bad guy. He spares Kiryu in Stardust, he kills Sengoku for kidnapping Haruka, and he shoots Takashima before he can take out Kiryu and Sayama. There are moments where Ryuji displays real sincerity in Kiwami 2.
Sayama has no idea why they’re acting like this, but the answer is simple - they’re yakuza through and through. It’s as if neither of them want to kill the other, and yet both of them know that what they want is irrelevant in the face of what needs to be done. Kiryu even says Ryuji reminds him of an old friend, perfectly capturing the fact that, in another life, they could have been best buds.
I mean, it’s a Yakuza game - how couldn’t there be a topless fist fight where both competitors have two bullets each in them? It’s different to other Yakuza fights, though, because it feels as if these two men who were taught by circumstance to hate each other have finally arrived at a mutual, unwavering sense of respect for one another. Obviously Kiryu and Ryuji have one last showdown before the end. Sure enough, Ryuji is more instinctive than rational, but that only furthers my point that he’s lying here - it’s a basic instinct for self-preservation and a necessary means of actualizing his desire for victory or death. He bangs on about fate, and how the path he chose to walk was unavoidable, but I’m convinced that’s pride more so than logic or truth. “If only I had known,” he says to Sayama. Obviously this whole situation is interrupted by Terada, and then Takashima, but it remains remarkable past that point, too.Īfter everything plays out and it’s just Kiryu, Ryuji, and Sayama left standing, it’s hard not to see good in the man who is ultimately the bad guy. Everything he has ever known - every single factor that has driven him to this point - collapses with devastatingly immense force. He laments being abandoned by his own mother before Jin tells him that, actually, he begged her to let him raise Ryuji instead. He says that he grew up in the shadow of Jin and the only way out of it was to surpass him. He opens up, explaining why he needs to become the one true Dragon in order for his life to have any meaning. It’s not until he learns that Sayama is his sister - a “little sister” in a world where he thought he had no living family - that something happens to him. This is what motivates him, feeding his insurmountable ambition, but it’s also a curse he’s forced to bear. He remembers the night he lost his parents during the Dojima raid on the Jingweon Mafia 26 years prior, meaning that he knows Jingweon blood runs through his veins. Raised by Jin Goda, the legendary fifth chairman of the Omi Alliance, Ryuji grows up feeling as if he is completely alone in this world. While it initially comes across as if Ryuji is some sort of unfeeling monster, what’s actually going on in his head is extremely different. Simply put, he doesn’t give a shit - except he does, as evidenced by his final showdown with the Dragon of Dojima and all of the ridiculous revelations surrounding it. He’s calm and collected until he’s not, at which point his presence - his aura - exerts a pervasive sense of dread and death. I know that sentence looks as if it was written by a four-year-old, but it’s true. I’d nearly go so far as to say that every single scene Ryuji contributes to is Yakuza at its best - but it’s the last act, which transpires over the course of around an hour, where the Dragon of Kansai (don’t tell him I said that) truly gets to shine. I was fascinated by Ryuji the whole way through Kiwami 2 - the scene where he straight up slices Sengoku’s chest open and kicks him from the top of Osaka Castle is phenomenal, as is the one where he gets his buds to throw millions of yen on the ground at Terada’s actually-very-fake funeral. But there’s more to this than a big man with a golden dragon on his back shooting someone.
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