#ur fuckin wrong buckaroo!!! i want the works for my child!!!!!

[hazeldough]

the more i think about it, the more it feels to me that the series really gave haruka the short end of the stick in the end...?

i cant be the only one who thinks they made some weird ass choices for haruka’s part in Y5....... like nevermind the fact that she couldn’t brawl-- though, that’s another can of worms-- i’m talking mostly about how they did things to show how being an idol wasn’t as great as it was, but they didn’t do much to offset it??

Y6 & Y7 spoilers

the main thing that grinds my gears is the running girl mini game where haruka was running around sotenbori and the director was acting SUPER creepy towards her-- and that’s putting it mildly. no one was there-- not park, yamaura, horie, or christina, to watch out for her. the least they could’ve done was have them eye roll at the director.

yes, i’d rather them just cut ties with the program, but i imagine the industry being more complicated than that so it wouldn’t be that simple. but idk, just something to be like, “hey, this guy’s a fucking creep. and that’s not okay.” and to my knowledge, they didn’t do anything about it...? (feel free to correct me if i’m wrong and someone powered through it proving me otherwise)

what boggles me about it is that ever since kiryu (and the player) has met haruka, we’ve known her to be a kid that’s way too mature for her age-- but makes sense considering the type of trauma she’s been through. she’s observant and willing to take a stand. she pranked kiryu, date, and the florist when she played that she didn’t know what a soapland was. she slapped mine when he was ready to wreck her home.

why didn’t she notice how much that director was being a creep????

i get it that haruka can’t know everything and yes, she’s still 16, of course she wouldn’t! but it just feels so...... off, and icky. and i hate that she didn’t get a chance to be a kid or question what happened to her in her childhood in the game.

we saw her grow up, but unfortunately didn’t see her character develop as much.

yes, she has a lot of unsolved trauma from experiences, and i know she can figure it out. but how come we never got to see that??

Y6, comparatively, was a game that broke out of a lot of recurring story patterns when comparing it to previous games. i loved the story, but i also can’t help but thinking that there was so much missing out of it. they were able to fill in the gaps with Y7 with majima, saejima, and daigo, but it’s such a shame they weren’t able to give haruka the same treatment, especially with how her happiness and well being was kiryu’s main motivation in the games.

speaking of, how fucked up is it that kiryu gave daigo a letter recognizing him as his son and reuniting with him, but haruka didn’t get that? like i’m glad it happened for daigo, but why couldn’t haruka get that too? especially when kiryu was the only one from Y6 who faced the consequences for revealing the secret of hiroshima even though the hirose boys were also with him?

it SUCKS that haruka was one of the most recurring characters in the series, but she was never given a chance to really shine and grow like everyone else. like she deserved SO much better than that!!!

anyways, this whole thing started bc i was listening to loneliness loop and thought, “haha, the daigo mod was funny, but isn’t it SO weird they put haruka in that outfit for the sequence...?” 🤦‍♀️

like i love this series and i complain out of love, but also. good GOD i want everyone on the dev team to chug respect women juice like it’s the first drink after a drought. and no, the whole “kiryu won’t hit women” bit is very dated bar. i want them to treat the female characters in this franchise the same as the male characters. (yes, i’m salty that we never got a seong-hui boss fight, but that’s besides the point)

(also do not get me wrong on that brief daigo comparison at the end. i think the series could’ve done better with him too. but this aint about him right now!)

#aj rambles #hey game!! you present to me haruka as my daughter and don't think that i care her beyond just being cute and capable!! #ur fuckin wrong buckaroo!!! i want the works for my child!!!!! #tempted to put this in the tags but who wants to see me going off like this...?