Kiryu and Haruka's father-daughter relationship

Spoiler warning: Major spoilers for the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series through Infinite Wealth, plus the ending of Mafia. In Yakuza, one of the elements that I haven't talked about so far is Kiryu and his relationship with his daughter, Haruka. Even though she's not his biological daughter, she might as well be. She's his adoptive daughter, and as soon as he meets her, he takes on the role of her protector and her guardian. Pretty much her father. Their relationship is one of my favorites in all the video games I've ever played. The way they portrayed him as this loving father is just an amazing dynamic, and it's one of my favorite things about the series. It brings a lot of emotion to it. One of the reasons I fell in love with Yakuza was Kiryu himself. Everything about the way they created that character, his story, the honor he has in his heart, and the loyalty he has to the people he cares about. Then they bring Haruka into his life, and you get to see so much more of him. You go from Kiryu the yakuza to Kiryu the father who's just trying to survive and protect his daughter. There are so many moments throughout the games that highlight that relationship. Sometimes you're just walking down the street holding her hand, going to the arcade, getting something to eat, and doing stuff together as a family. Then he'll get into a fight with some thugs, and she's standing in the background cheering him on. Those are some of the best moments in Yakuza history to me. I could have spent a lot more time doing that. For all the big fights and everything else happening in these games, some of the moments I remember most are just Kiryu and Haruka spending time together. That's why I really wish that era of their relationship had lasted a lot longer. A lot of times when we're dealing with fiction, we don't get what we want. Stories go in the direction the writers choose. I'm a writer myself. I write novels and short stories, and I'm a big believer in discovery writing. I know stories sometimes take on a life of their own while you're writing them. But I still feel like this series did Kiryu dirty. He could never stop getting pulled back into that life. He'd get somewhere close to having peace, and then something else would happen. Eventually he fakes his death, and Haruka has to live with being told her father is dead even though he's still out there. That situation carries on into the later games. Then he gets cancer. I understand why he makes some of those choices. He's trying to protect the people he loves. But after a while, I just wanted him to be allowed to live with them. The orphanage was what I wanted for him. He should have been able to have his adventures and then go home. Grow older with Haruka and the other kids, watch them build their own lives, and eventually get to be there for his grandson. I'm not opposed to something happening that forces him to leave the orphanage or even protect it from a distance. I just wish the end result had been him coming back and having that life with his family. Even Haruka gets put through so much. To me, she has one of the sweetest hearts in the series. Then she becomes involved with Yuta, who's part of the yakuza, has Haruto, and ends up being hit by a car and left in a coma. She does get to return to Morning Glory with her family, but Kiryu can't be there with them. He's left watching from a distance. That's the part that gets me. You spend all this time getting attached to these people, and when there's finally a chance for them to be together, he has to walk away again. I'm not a stranger to bad endings or sad endings. Look at Mafia. Tommy thinks he's gotten away and built a life with his family, and years later two men pull up and gun him down while he's watering his lawn. I understand that stories about the criminal underworld aren't always going to give everybody the happy ending they wanted. But sometimes I get so attached to a character that I want to see them have some semblance of happiness. Kiryu is one of those characters for me. I've seen other people talking about this in the forums too, wishing he'd been allowed to settle down or that we'd gotten more time with him and Haruka together. Everybody's going to have a different opinion about where his story should have gone. For me, there were points where I would have been happy for him to go back to the orphanage and stay there. As much as I like seeing him come back, because he's one of my favorite characters, I don't always like what bringing him back means for his life. By Infinite Wealth, the cancer is taking so much out of him, and he's still out there fighting and doing what he thinks he needs to do. At the end, he's in the hospital getting treatment. Haruka and Haruto come to visit, and he's using his own name again. I'm glad there's hope there. I want him to have more time with them. But we don't actually get that reunion on screen, and we don't know how his treatment will turn out. Even if he gets that peace now, he can't go back and have those years with Haruka when she was little. He can't get back all the time he lost being away from the orphanage. That's what bothers me most. So much of the life I wanted for him has already passed him by. Even his love life has been a mess. Losing Yumi, then having things with Kaoru go the way they did. It feels like the man has spent most of his life losing people or having to leave them behind. That father-daughter dynamic is hard to find in a game at the same level. Pragmata is one of the few that comes close for me, and it's another one I wanted to mention here. Hugh and Diana have an amazing relationship. At times it almost feels like a babysitter simulator, which makes it a little different from what Kiryu and Haruka have. But watching him take care of her and seeing that connection develop was a big part of why I loved it. Pragmata was shorter than I was hoping, and a little flat in certain areas, but it was still an amazing game and probably one of my favorites. That relationship did a lot for me. With Kiryu and Haruka, though, we've had so many games to get attached to them. We've watched her grow up. We've spent time walking around with her, taking her places, and seeing the way he cares for her. That's why everything that happens afterward hits as hard as it does. There are some beautiful moments in their story that stand out to me more than almost anything else I've played. I just wish we'd gotten more of them. More time with Kiryu being her dad, and eventually being there for Haruto, without something always taking him away. Anyway, those are my two cents. Yakuza is still one of my favorite series, and Kiryu and Haruka are a big reason why. I just wanted a better life for them.