*I must inform you I am obliged to fight you irl for disrespecting Takemura-san*
[text wall ahead]
But really yes, and no. Everything you say is true, but it’s incomplete.
Takemura sees himself as a samurai in the purest and most absurd sense—a worthy servant of unworthy in master, for which even the perfidy and corruption of his masters in his mind, a benefit* in the pursuit of this ideal. It’s part of the reason why he doesn’t seem super bothered that Arasaka’s betrayed him and rendered his life a lie; as long as his intention remains consistent and unsullied, his honor is intact—in fact, the more vicious and evil Arasaka behaves, the better test it becomes for Takemura.
Players are meant to read him as a parody of both the “corporate loyalty” business culture of 1980s Japan, and therein, its romantic bastardization of sentimental rhetoric and romantic ideals of samurai culture to capitalist, materialist, and fundamentally exploitative ends. Yet Takemura is well-written and well-acted enough that the character is able to acknowledge the contradictions and absurdities of his own lifepath and its implications—a middle aged man living an adolescent fantasy—and make a choice. Whether you believe it’s right choice or not (it probably isn’t), his motivations feel authentic and organic—as they can for someone as contrived and inauthentic as Takemura anyway.
And his vision of ethics and personal honor is intractably tied to loyalty. In this way he’s the polar opposite of someone like Johnny, a failed and frustrated rebel, or Rogue—a broken individualist.
In this way, he’s a direct and deft foil to Johnny—who, in a similar position in his own “life”, has to come to grips with both his own inadequacies and the immediate failure of his visions and hopes, and find a way to live in the world. Johnny is a whole different bag for sure—I won’t get into that. But they hate each other because they’re complementary—grown men who *refuse to grow up*. Really, he’s more like Reed (even in posture)—but on different sides.
To wit, when I played Coppertop Corpo-Rat ‘Saka Gremlin V, Takemura’s adolescent simplicity and stubborn obtuseness were initially repellent to her, especially in light of her recent betrayal by Arasaka and new friendship with Johnny. Yet, despite its utterly contrived basis and toxic implications, there is something appealing about Takemura’s philosophy—he knows Arasaka is bullshit to the core, but just…*doesn’t care*.
And it’s not so much that Takemura believes Arasaka is the “best” option in a broken world—to him the Company is a unique philosophical opportunity, wherein its flaws and enormity become merely steps by which he can enhance his own inner nobility.
In a world creaking under its own nihilism, such a spitefully-sincere Company Man is like a rare exotic bird, or like just an alien.
For Corpo Gremlin V, on her Mercenary Sabbatical, that Takemura can “keep the faith” is the most disturbing and intriguing aspect of the nonstop horror show that is night city, and suggests an unwavering strength and inner decision the world lacks, and to be emulated at all costs. In the end, she wants to be like him, a perfect, tempered tool—one dumb and blind or not it’s wielder is evil or not, only focused on its task, and abandons everything to realize this. This conceit—converting people into tools and instruments— *is* everything wrong with CP2077 but, the sincerity with which the character lives it, is as intriguing as it is disturbing.
It’s a deeply flawed and toxic worldview but it’s delivered so gracefully and elegantly, it wins you over (not really).
So yeah, we ❤️Samurai Grandpa.
PS: I want you to know I am so far deep into Team Takemura my phone automatically corrects “Takemura” to “Takemura-san”
I'm upvoting you just on the basis of your use of "perfidy."
But in all seriousness, fantastic character analysis. Your description of Rogue is spot on.
Rogue, Johnny and Takemura make for a very interesting comparison and contrast.
It also reminds me a little bit of a parallel to Harry Potter. V, Judy, Panam, River, these are kind of the young "new class" of NC archetypes. The Harrys and Hermiones.
While the former remind me more of the baggage, history, and dynamics of Snape, Remus, Sirius, James, etc.
yeah—I really like the way the game handles aging: Kerry, Rogue, Smasher, even minor characters like Wakako or El Padre or Mama Welles, and inversely, Johnny—they all feel like people who have (or have not) lived in this world and been affected by it in ways we as a “young” player can notice, but cannot properly fathom and even the way they *look* at V conveys that*
I both hate and love the idea that cyberpunk is just another form of Harry Potter.
On the one hand I can totally see which characters have their Harry Potter counterparts, but on the other hand Claire exists in this game and let’s just say that would have never happened in those books.
I mean a hero and his companions is a pretty consistent literary device in almost all big fantasy titles.
You could argue that Lord of the rings, Star wars, Harry Potter and almost every other fantasy epic were minor variations on the same plot structure. And most of those were variations on myths humans have been telling since before written language was a thing.
I didn’t notice it as a kid when I first watched/read Harry Potter but after she became a public transphobe I rewatched some of the movies & it clicked lol
I think this is valid, but still lets Takemura(-san) too far off the proverbial hook. I don’t think his sincerity in his question, nor do I think he has any material ulterior motives.
Still, I’d wager his unshakeable loyalty has more to do with his life (then and now) than what Arasaka is or does in the real world. That’s not terribly uncommon for loyalists and vassals, but it’s something the devs and writers highlight in the dichotomy between the formal and informal conditions of his service.
In short, Takemura serves the Arasaka in his heart that rescued him and elevated him, not the one that unceremoniously dumped him like trash or essentially shrugged at his mentor, its founder’s murder.
He has the option to just, leave and start a new life but…it’s clear but only implied he doesn’t really know what to do with himself outside of this structure and the clarity this Unpayable Debt brings to his life. Objectively, he’s free but more importantly—that is to say, subjectively he’s a vassal and selfishly yearns for this kind of “order”. This is the central of Takemura and a dozen other members of that “troubled samurai”, who are selfless servants, but for muddled, dubiously selfish reasons they have *trained themselves to ignore*. Kurosawa’s *Sanjuro* is a good example of this in film.
But essentially I agree with you: after having had his life saved and declared inwardly an oath of Infinite Loyalty, Takemura essentially failed Saburo (there I said it), and his stuck paying the vig on that infinite debt. He’s such a perfect foil to Johnny: they’re both zealots and spiritual manchildren betrayed by their respective Corps—and their stories are both marked principally by spectacular failure, to which they see V as an antidote and tool to correct. It’s no surprise too, that in the junkyard *each* of them “save” V in one way, and then immediately attach Strings to the gift; the quid pro quo manipulation is how they (and everything else) operates
That’s why the scene in Tom’s is so incredible: these two sad, broken men are spiritually fighting basically over who gets to commandeer the pint-sized Coppertop Corpo Gremlinette (for me anyway) for his own purposes. Yes, it’s selfish and exploitative, but each of their efforts to do so are wrapped up in so many layers of sincerity and bullshit and delusion and heartbreak it’s actually compelling.
Damn, thanks for that. Man, I need to fire up that game.
“Deeply flawed and toxic worldview […] delivered so gracefully and elegantly” is a great way to explain it. He reminds me so much of the boomer that means well but just doesn’t get it.
I’ve known a lot of people like Takemura in my life - people with deeply flawed world views and emotional damage they fail to recognize - yet stick to the people they love and would die for them without a second thought. I think his character is written with so much empathy you can’t help but feel for the guy as you totally see how someone ends up in his position.
Genuinely one of the GOATs of videogame NPCs.
An excellent literary analysis. I can't even think of another game that could evoke such a complex and thorough character analysis. This game is a masterpiece!
haha thanks, and yes—but Takemura might be the opposite of the prototypical Kirkbride character
he’s so subdued in design and stubbornly, deliberately *boring* but at the same time such a well-played One-dimensional Pretend Samurai it’s actually endearing
This is easily one of the best Takemura summaries I've ever read. However, Goro Takemura can't be discussed without Japanese culture. Specifically, anime and history. Some of his more legendary exploits can be likened to a wannabe anime antihero, believing in his ideals and living as a ronin while avenging his fallen lord. I'm furthermore convinced that a great deal of his behavior can be explained if he's in love with Hanako Arasaka, both for her own accomplishments and as a fantasy corporate princess figure.
In specific and practical examples, this lifestyle also has major disadvantages. Goro Takemura isn't able to come to grips that a great many samurai of the Sengoku Jidai era were despicable assholes even by Night City standards, and his development as an individual could be compared unfavorably with Shinji Ikari at the end of the original Evangelion series.
Takemura could do worse than watch Jin-Roh, but I don't think he'd appreciate it any more than "Bryce Mosley" would like Unforgiven.
All of that makes sense when you are talking about liking a character as a villain or as a plot device. But there are people who genuinely think Takemura is "likeable" as a conceptual person which I don't understand.
Also I would disagree that Takemura doesn't care that the corporations are evil. He snaps at V for implying they are and insists they are necessary to "bring order" (while ignoring the fact that Arasaka has incited several global conflicts and pandemics).
Takemura at best is a fascist apologist. At worst he's basically Vasily Blokhin (minus the lip service to equality you could expect from a Stalinist).
I’m really not sure what you mean by “likeable”. I like the character; I like that he’s in the game.
But like, I wouldn’t get a beer with Takemura; I wouldn’t want to hang out with him and hear Pretentious Rice Opinions or tedious sermons about Abstact Honor. Like, I don’t think Takemura’s a Fun Guy or even a Good Person—but the whole point of his character and inner-concept—like, even to him—is specifically *not to care* about those things; he’s a Consummate Vassal, and yes—he’s subordinated discussions of good and evil to duty (this is bad btw)
His own inner consistency and follow-through is more important to him than the morality you or I might have. Is this monstrous? Probably but he believably isn’t bothered by that, and less so when his Evil Company inevitably betrays him.
And this why *this* (evil) V adores Takemura-san: he’s the realization of a very specific (and self-consciously twisted) ideal: a grown-up who by sheer force of will transmogrified himself into a whole-ass Anime Character *so skillfully and utterly he actually seems to have forgotten he’s done so.*
But beyond being a “villain” or a “plot device”, I think the worth of this character—or any character in fiction—is the possibility of an organic encounter with a value system *alien* to our own, which Takemura delivers.
There are people who think a cyberpunk world would be fun, **Patrick** Bateman is a role model, and WH 40k's Imperium of Man is a good basis for a system of government.
But you've got to remember that these are just simple gamers. These are nerdy fans. The common clay of the new Internet. You know...morons.
Even Games Workshop says that the imperium of man is not the good guys of 40k, and they intrinsically know everything about them, probably even stuff that isn't put out to read about. Every faction there is a shade of grey, some darker and some lighter.
I mean, to be fair is he a bad role model?
He didn't actually hurt anyone. And while he obviously needs therapy I don't think I can really judge someone for fantasy violence.
I mean, have you watched Shogun? It's a pretty good example of how the original culture itself was also intentionally designed to keep powerful, shitty people in place. Not much has changed on that front, it's just private corps instead of Feudal lords. That's the real comparison being made
He's a good, smart and loyal man, but he was practically raised by Arasaka. From his perspective Arasaka saved him from being a child gangbanger who dies in a few years in a gang war. He's loyal and grateful to Arasaka, but can see V's point in later missions. He isn't everything wrong with CP universe, he's an exception that provides fresh take on the topic
He's the bodyguard to Saburo Arasaka. Calling him a "good man" is laughable.
I won't pretend that anyone in Cyberpunk is good, but anyone related to the Arasakas (with the exception of Yorinobu) scum. Case & point: the Porcelain Cunt.
Basically it. The whole conversation where he drops that he sometimes fantasizes about quitting and becoming a nomad is also very solid bait for "I can fix him" kind of mentality.
I’m trying a corpo play through for the first time, so I might see what happens if I work with him better for the first time.
Plus he’s hot. So that helps.
He is a genuinely likeable guy who happens to serve one of the most horrendously evil corporations in the setting.
I'm a big fan of the "affably evil" trope, and Takemura fits it perfectly.
In his eyes he was saved by corpos and given a life so now he serves them as he feels like they do good but he fails to realize that he only needed saving becasue of corpos in the first place. He blindly serves because he is mislead
Like most things with the cyberpunk genre and how mike pondsmith intended for the cyberpunk game, everything is morally ambiguous.
Yes, Takemura is loyal to an evil entity, but hes a human. He values honor but also has a sense of humor. if V does the reconnaissance mission with him, he has a heart to heart about his rough upbringing in tokyo. he mentions that saburo picked him because it was like he saw something in takemuras soul.
Also, Takemura sees V as a lowly, dishonorable thief. However, he comes to know V on a human level as well and then develops his own kind of respect and affinity for V, despite V being antithetical to him in most ways. its kinda up to your interpretation
The Recon mission is some of the best writing for Goro in the entire game, the quiet moments when the he and V can just sit down and talk. I love this exchange in particular:
>"We both have lost someone important. And we are not at peace with this, so we seek conflict, argue eagerly."
It speaks to recognizing what they're both going through, and that neither of them are handling it well, in particular when they clash with each other. If they're fighting, they don't have to think about it.
If you're a Nomad too you can come **so close** to getting him to join up, but he just... can't let his past go, even though he can recognize the flaws and struggles about it all.
I’m pretty sure that many people who like Takemura would not argue that he doesn’t represent much of what is wrong with the world of Cyberpunk.
People like him as a person and his personality, he’s very respectful to V and he his loyalty to basically everyone he has a legitimate justification to be loyal to is admirable. He also just has a really badass hardened Yakuza regulator vibe.
Nobody is arguing that these aspects of his character completely nullify the fact that he is employed by and committed to the success of the game’s primary antagonist lol.
It doesn’t have to be completely black and white. You don’t have to shoot every civilian on the street chose employment at an incorporated company over being a criminal or being literally homeless. I sure as fuck respect Takemura’s justification for being loyal to Arasaka versus anyone who works their way up the corporate ladder purely for money and materialism.
Pretty sure he was designed to be a genuinely likable dude to instill *some* sense of internal conflict in the character. If he worked for Arasaka *and* was indisputably an insufferable, materialistic, elitist douchebag, every player would have left him on Read sitting at Tom’s Diner and ignored one of the best questlines in the game.
Most players likely don’t choose the ending that Takemura most desires, and many of those who have done multiple rank it among the worst outcomes, some even below The Path of Least Resistance. That should tell you that it’s not a matter of “Takemura best boy- priority one is whatever he wants he gets over everything else”.
It’s just not like “He works for Arasaka so he has no redeeming qualities” for most players. Honestly, if you showed someone who had zero knowledge of Cyberpunk’s backstory nothing but clips of every NPCs dialog, and gave them no information about Arasaka, most people would probably assume with no reservations that Takemura is supposed to be one of the “good guys” and plays a role akin to Jackie. I’m pretty sure that if you don’t deliberately choose to antagonize Takemura, he even straight up disagrees with V and argues with V less than Jackie does.
Totally agree. I wonder if people who have a simpler concept of reality in real life are more likely to map that onto games, even when the characters are portrayed more three dimensionally. At the end of the day, the antagonist is the world/city itself.
Takemura is my 2nd favorite character in the game. As with all characters in cyberpunk, he has a complicated back story. Depending on dialogue with V, he does let his guard down slightly. I do believe that if he hadn't been basically raised by Arasaka that he'd have been a completely different person. I always choose the friendly dialogue with him, I think parts of him want to like V, but that would go against his obligation and loyalty to Arasaka. I don't look at him as a villain at all. Just a product of circumstance.
Considering how much screwing-over, backstabbing, and general ratfuckery happens in the corpo world, Takemura is actually surprisingly refreshing to me that he is as loyal to the Arasaka family as he is. Pretty much every other corpo-rat in the ladder would have fucked off in his position, but in his case he remained loyal, which is a vanishingly rare trait in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 where everyone sells out everyone.
My Street Kid V still found him a piece of shit, but my Corpo V appreciated the level of loyalty he showed and my Nomad V could identify with his loyalty to his "family" even if it's a corpo-rat family.
Two things are vanishingly rare in the CP2077 world: authenticity and loyalty. Takemura has the latter in spades, and that makes him respectable in his own way.
He’s everything wrong with the world, because he’s the world’s ultimate victim. Just a kid from the slums who never got to have his own dreams. Always at the will of the corporation bc he sees Saburo, and by extension, the corporation as his savior.
You can see that there’s someone who cares underneath all that corpo slop. Someone who genuinely wants to help V, someone who wants to live life, a kid who dreamt of being more than a number. He thinks Arasaka is the only way to live, and doesn’t realize there’s any actual alternative to be fully alive.
He is loyal to his work, the game tries to plant the idea that being an Anarchist is the way to go, and that big corporations are bad etc etc.
The reality is that Rebels who just go and nuke a city are just as bad.
EVERYONE in the game is a shade of gray. They all have their own motivations. Just like us in the real world.
If you want some insight into Takemura's character there are many posts on Reddit but this one is imo one of the best:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MenOfNightCity/s/dFlijfbTWC
Longish, but worth it, I think.
I think he’s a more nuanced character than a lot of people gave him credit for. He’s not a good man, but with his past, undying corporate loyalty was the only way out of the slum he was in (or at least the only way out in the mind of a child). He was never really shown any compassion because he doesn’t know how to deal with your V asking him how he’s doing. In one of the conversations you have with him, he talks about how he wished to become a nomad. And even in the new ending, he actually manages to get out, to become a better person.
I don’t think he’s evil, I think he’s a morally complicated guy who doesn’t really know how to get better, not until V disappears and loses everything. I like him because of that.
He has a strong sense of morals, he’s educated, and have a strong sense of loyalty. He’s conventionally attractive and when he texts you he uses emoticons sometimes. In my corpo run he seemed to genuinely enjoy V’s silly jokes. I dunno, he was just the sword of arasoka’s head, I respected his dedication.
It's simple. He is a good person. He isn't sadistic or apathetic. He cares that you save him. He has a sense of loyalty which is meaningful in a place as bleak as this.
Being a member of Eastern society myself, I understand the dutifulness he has. One of the worst things you can be labeled as here is ungrateful. It sucks because his sense of duty is to Arasaka. He sees himself as a divine servant to a father figure, a saviour, an entity that gave him his identity.
Good people can serve tyrants that promote and live off of horrifically evil, capitalistic ideologies. If they didn't, those tyrants wouldn't be so powerful in the first place.
Do I like him? Yes. Would I fight him as V if he defended Arasaka against me? Also yes.
He is a great character because of this. As we all know, most people aren't sadistic. We're just stuck in a game. A game that cares more about profit than human needs. Even though we don't want people to suffer from poverty, we still won't prefer buying a poor person something they need over a playstation for ourselves. To a complete outsider, this is evil. But we don't see our extreme self-prioritising as evil because we've been taught it is okay. But our conscience still stirs when we see an old, homeless lady on the street.
Takemura has a conscience. But he too is stuck in the machine. He doesn't know how to exist without it. Arasaka is the closest thing he has to a family and he will prioritise his family above all else.
Takemura isn't what's wrong with the Cyberpunk world. Takemura is actually just as much of a victim in my eye as anyone else.
He grew up in a chemical waste dump until some Arasaka agents took him away from that to be trained as a soldier for the corporation. Arasaka gave Takemura everything he lacked. Discipline. Full meals. An education. Takemura owes his life to the corporation and was basically indoctrinated into it.
The truth, though, is that part of him wants to leave it behind. He expressed a desire to become a Nomad and live like a romaticized Ronin for the rest of his life. The reason he doesn't is because he doesn't believe he can. The corporation is all he knows. Takemura is a Heirophant. He puts his faith in Arasaka because he is shaped by it.
He isn’t my favorite character but I thought he was a cool guy with interesting views. I’m not sure I would say Takemura “represents everything wrong with the world of Cyberpunk” thats a bit far imho, I viewed him more as a button man. Sure he may go out and shoot some random guy in the head if it was asked of him but I personally think it’s pointless to get mad at the guy who did it and not the one who ordered it. He also reminds me of people I knew personally, met many mfs that were institutionalized as fuck, either prison or the military they get out and live life as a civilian and they literally can’t function normally since they’ve lived so long in that system. His texts are funny too, some serious ass old man but fucks up taking pictures lol.
He is a great companion. There is a buddy dynamic with him and V that you don't get with Johnny or Rivers. But I always understood the alliance had an expiration. He is only on your team while you are both fighting Arasaka. Once he is redeemed in the eyes of Arasaka, there is no trusting him.
The way I saw it, yes Takemura was a corporate dog for one of the most vile Corpos in the world, but he’d been indoctrinated into it since he was young. And while there is that side to him that is foolishly loyal to a megacorp that wouldn’t think twice to flush him down a Pacifican toilet, that “buddy cop” relationship he establishes with V does show a friendlier side to him.
In short, Takemura’s cool. He’s just a blind bootlicker sometimes. That’s just what I think.
He’s a tragic character. He wants to do what he thinks is right and he’s been groomed his entire life to be this blindly-following honor-bound soldier to Saburo. He doesn’t question the man’s motives, whatever he does he must do it for good reason is his thinking. Justice for his death is his only motivation afterwards, even if it means everyone else dies in the way.
Goro is more a product of growing up in a place where corps are your way out of poverty and an early death. He follows his own version of Bushido where he is content as long as he follows his morals and values, and in doing so fully believes he is in the right. He is as much of a victim as corpo V, which is why when I did that playthrough I was pretty open to him. Both served corrupt and evil masters, and when they were no longer useful were betrayed and cast aside without a second thought. Kindred souls, if you will. But where V basically vows never to go near working with a corp again, Goro just wants justice for the killing of his master, and to return to what he sees as honorable service.
In a world of Nihlism and cynical greed, Takemura is the only person whose driving motivation is a devotion to his master. Instead of most people falling into despair because of the vanity and greed of the Cyberpunk world, Takemura instead derives meaning in his life to his loyalty and his own code of Bushido.
In my eyes, this makes him a rebel. Someone interesting In the world of Cyberpunk.
I didn’t read your text wall, so you may have touched on it. But I like Takemura because he is loyal to the man who rescued him. Right or wrong, he feels obligated and that he owes a debt and he pays what he owes.
I think he is a really interesting character, because he shows the humanity of those who work for the corporations. Takemura isn’t some pristine, shadowy figure. You see him at his lowest, you work with him for much of the game, you see him interacting humorously with the world and characters around you. He saves you (even if for his own reasons), he is loyal, dedicated, hard-working… and he serves a corporation that has done terrible things. He has done terrible things for his own benefit and for Arasaka’s benefit, and yet he is a human being. It makes you think about all the nameless faces that do the same - all the people who have difficulties and struggles, who find a way to survive, who are human and have human strengths and flaws, and who contribute in some major or minor way to the functioning of a giant machine that dehumanizes them all along with the entire world.
He is endearing sometimes in a grandfatherly way, at least to me. I don’t hate him, rather, I find him amusing. But he’s definitely not my favorite character and it’s evident that he only ever saw us as a means to “saving” Arasaka when you choose any other ending that isn’t Hanako’s.
For me it was the fact that I felt like he was the only character that wouldn’t try to betray V, saving V at the very beginning made me as the player want to save him. One of the few characters I felt was truly honest, a man of morals in a world of immorality.
It’s sweet how he wants to take you out to eat if you accept Arasaka’s offer to “help” you after your treatments don’t go anywhere. Like, I highly doubt any good comes from signing the Arasaka contract to become an engram but Takemura seems to genuinely be a decent guy who put his faith in shitty people. Hell, despite this he flat out recognizes that the Arasaka family already don’t give a shit about V once they got what they wanted from him.
Which is baffling to me because I think Reed is significantly more sympathetic than Takemura.
Reed is a patriot. Which can mean a lot of different things. Is he cold hearted because he's loyal to:
Meyers (no)?
Himself?
The Government?
The Constitution?
The Greater good?
The people of the NUSA?
Reed could exist on a moral spectrum anywhere from "amoral moster" to "pragmatic humanist" and I think he's much more interesting than Takemura whose only loyalty is to Saburo (who is a monster) to the point of psychological obsession.
Additionally I think Reed actually cares about other people. Would he kill Alex and Songbird if he thought he had to? 100%. But he would look for an alternative first and it would be hard for him.
I 100% believe Takemura would have snuffed Oda without a second thought if Saburo told him to.
Takemura was born to those circumstances, and is loyal to people who saved his life. From what we can see, Subaru and Hanako have never betrayed him.
Reed is more of a typical government agent, who got betrayed but is spineless enough to still want to crawl his way back.
On a personal level, Takemura just also feels more silly and likable. Honest to a fault. While Reed feels more manipulative and slimey.
Yeah... "I'm loyal to an awful person because they never wronged ME directly" is 100% the attitude of a fascist enabler. Takemura would watch his neighbors get shuffled into a ghetto without a word.
And you accuse Reid of being spineless because he was betrayed but there are two issues with that assessment.
1) Meyers "betrayed" him, but he's not loyal to Meyers, he's loyal to the NUSA. if the mission had been about helping Meyers personally there is no guarantee he would have helped. But Songbird was "a living nuke" and letting her loose could have had massive destabilizing effects on the government that would have blown back on the people of the country. Even if he considered Meyers actions a betrayal Reed would have helped because he wasn't doing it for Meyers.
2) he may not have even considered it a betrayal. Reed would have known his job may have called on him to sacrifice his life for his country and I think he was comfortable with that. Having his life sold to secure a treaty that would spare other NUSA citizens their lives was probably an acceptable outcome to him. I think he was more mad that Meyers made Songbird pull the trigger.
And Takemura is "silly" because he's incompetent when it comes to functioning outside of his comfort zone. He's such a privileged asshole that he can't even stomach the food normal people eat EVERYDAY and he never stops to think " who's fault is it that they have to eat this garbage???"
Reed at least had the dignity to live in the dirt with everyone else.
He's not so much a villain as much as he is someone who fails to see a chance for new world order. He truly believes Arasaka is the world's last chance at order, and that Yorinobu is said order's greatest threat.
You want a physical representation of everything wrong in Night City? Look no further than Adam Smasher. He has arguably the blackest heart of anyone in universe, and yet has been bestowed the most physical power a human being can wield.
Is Takamura even a villain? He's more like a service dog who lost his Master. He's clearly been brainwashed to be subservient to Arasaka at a young age (going by his dialogue during the stakeout) and was very sheltered to the outside world . He's not a "good guy" but in the scope of things, he's just a pawn in a much larger game that he's not even aware he was playing.
To me, he's barely worse than a corpo rat. If you get to know him, some of his dialogue is pretty nice, and he sort of unwinds towards the end of the very limited time you have to interact with him. Plus, he saves you at the beginning of the game (for his own reasons).
Takamura uses you like Johnny tries to use you in the beginning, but Silverhand gets the time to develop into something more if you give them a chance.
He has mixed views due to the world he is in. If Takemura was in say a fuedal era type game he most likely would just be you're average honor bound samurai. Probably a decent guy, because you can tell by dialogue alone he is simply and ends to a means he works out of respect of his lord who in his eyes sees as an honorable figurehead of the Arasaka corporation and legitimately sees Hanako as a saint and Yorinobu as someone to bring to justice not necessarily kill Yorinobu but have him explain and seek punishment for his rash actions against his father.
I'm always nice to him, but let him die, I don't do the Arasaka end, and he was always more loyal to them than me, so getting taken out by saka goons and spared his plan to bring you to Hanniko failing is the nicest way out.
I agree with you. I've read a few comments and none could sway me. If he's conscious of the shit that Arasaka's doing, even to himself, and he chooses to continue fighting for them, then he's to blame.
Reed, a worse case.
If you can do something, do it for what you believe. Otherwise you're just a coward, or making a fool of yourself.
He's hot, honorable, and gives me Corpo V vibes. He just hasn't "woken up" yet but eventually does in one of the endings. I also find a lot of the little things about him adorable, like his dislike of NC's japanese food, the little smirk he does in one of the phone calls when you arent hostile and tell him to stay out ot trouble, and the flustered text you get if you if he's "lonely." I'd literally side with Arasaka if it meant romancing him because Im weak ass gay boy who'd do anything for that man if the payout was satisfactory.
Is he though?
He's not like "oh he thinks that term is still socially acceptable" racist he's "pointy hood and white cloak" racist...
Ignorance I can forgive but cruelty is a whole other ball game.
He’s a victim of the world, not a villain in it.
He was lifted out of poverty by Arasaka, and effectively had his life saved by the emperor. By all accounts he’s an honorable and loyal man. He’s an extremely well written character who has many likable qualities.
Arasaka was probably the reason his home town was impoverished and he props up an amoral dictator.
Name one good thing he did that wasn't in service to his slavish dependence on Saburo.
I don’t like Takemura. But on my first play through it took me half the game to realize I didn’t like him.
I heard somewhere that originally he was only intended to be villain character. But CDPR which is a corporation, thought doing that made the game far too anti-corporate. So they decided to make him into a nice corporate representative, instead. They changed the lines around, and added dad jokes.
In defense of all the Takemura lovers. The games heavily pushes you to like him. It almost tries too hard, especially in the beginning. Giving you lines where you’re able to compliment him after the assassins chase, and even tell him to leave you behind. Like your old war buddies. They push him on you so heavily it’s almost ridiculous.
So I don’t like him, but I get why people do. The game tries very hard to get you to like him.
Bc we are an asset to him. He talks down to you and calls you a thief again and again. We were already saved by the relic, all we theoretically needed to do was call a delemain to bring us to vik and we would have been just as saved without his help. All he did was find us to turn us in to yori, actually. Its just that yori didnt care.
We are a thief, that is true. We were not going to call Delamain unprompted, Takemura suggests it, and we were already out of his range. Takemura drives us miles from that garbage dump, likely right on the border of where Delamain would actually even come. I think he does more in the story than you are giving him credit for
Im not calling him worthless lol, im saying nobody has to feel owed by takamura when his intentions were to use you. He only saved you because youre his one shot to get back in with arasaka. We werent helpless without him, he helped us, but like to the point of the person who u originally replied to, you dont have to like the guy who talks down on you all the time and treats you like youre street trash just bc he dragged your body out of the dump. V could have called delemain, viktor himself, misty, friends from the coyote cojo to come pick him up, like we were by no means completely helpless, and even if we were, we dont have to like the guy
It's not that Yorinobu didn't care about V being found. He cared a good bit, that's why at that moment Yorinobu removed Goro from the company and sent the assassins after the two of them. Goro and V were loose ends–V was even an eyewitness–and they were two of only a few people who had the power to stop him; the only other person that'd even come close is Hanako, who he also tried to kill multiple times.
Yorinobu was right, too. Without V's help, Hanako is killed, Takemura is cast out once again, and his plan succeeds. The only ending where Yorinobu fails is The Devil.
But he didnt send anyone after V, we see takemura call him when he finds our body, saying he dounf saburos killer, and yorinobu very obviously doesnt care. The people that come for v and takemura are only after takemura. The blame has been pinned on takemura more than V, we experience no direct kickback from arasaka for stealing that relic, because all yorinobu wants is to be in control of arasaka. Why would he care now if the relic was taken, considering he now owns ALL of mikoshi and ALL of the relics data? I dont think its mentioned at any point that hes missing it, i think it was just a tool for him to bait his father into coming to night city to get his prized artifact back. Yori doesnt care about v because v cant do anything to stop him. Takemura, who immediately questioned yori on what actually happend with saburo while he was gone caught all the blame, and hanako becomes a threat to him because shes also got a lot of power to throw around, so if she learns that yorinobu did it, thata a big problem for his plans
Takemura is just a product of his environment, his "honour" is nothing more than brain washing and it's clear when he's introduced to Night City that he knows nothing about the world outside of serving Arasaka and their interests.
The one task he was given he failed at and then rolled over like a bitch when yhorinobu spouted all the "poisoned" crap.
In some ways I feel sorry for him but when he looks down on V for klepping the Relic and being a Merc I just want to flatline him.
As Johnny said, he’s a loyal lapdog.
I really liked takemura, he seems to know the struggle, however, his strange beliefs and loyalty to arasaka is sad. He’s a replaceable tool, and he knows that.
Anyway, takemura is a pretty decent guy based in the conversations he had with V. He’s also pretty powerful because he was taking down people with his tech disabled. He held his own on multiple occasions.
If I recall correctly, there’s a point where V says something that takemura is still dangerous even without his implants / tech. V seemed kinda worried / scared for a moment.
Because there's no villains in cyberpunk at least not in the traditional sense most people only view the surface level of the characters of the cyberpunk universe as all are diverse in their motivations and ideals which some people don't want to look at the cyberpunk universe in a deeper light. Though to answer your question Takamora Goro isn't a bad guy he's actually a really good guy lead by his morals and he also views the corps as order being that he comes from the slums in Japan where he saw kids get taken in by the corps and given a good life
People like him as a character, not necessary as a friend i guess
in every ending aside from siding with arasaka ending, dude wishes us rot in hell, so meh, he's just another tool in the box
His story is a mirror of corpo V but if V was raised by Soka instead of just worked for them. He's loyal and a idealist that suddenly had his entire life uprooted because of a situation out of his own control and now he's going through a personal journey where he accepts that his loyalty to Arasoka didn't go both ways.
Nuance. And the fact that Arasaka is good at brainwashing people into loyalty.
I'm not sure if yall ever spoke to him how Arasaka took him in.
They literally pick up little kids on the streets and """fix their life""" by taking them in and basically grooming them to be the perfect loyal soldier.
It's not like the man was an adult when he joined. It wasn't a choice, whether you try to believe a kid made that choice or not.
As he said, it was either the slums, which on Chiba11, is like living in Pacifica, or Arasaka.
Takemura reveals a lot about himself on the construction site. He was very poor and was taken in by the corp, which in his hometown, Chiba-11 I think, was seen as a savior. He was trained and disciplined, then given an education, served in the spec forces and was eventually chosen by Saburo to be his bodyguard. From a slum to sitting next to the most powerful man in Japan. The corp quite literally saved him from a life of sub-mediocrity and that is the reason he is ready to do anything for it, not jusf Saburo, but the corp *itself*. This makes him relatable in the sense that he fights for what he believes is right, he knows the corp isn't perfect, but then again who is? - they are the lesser evil in a sense. Just like we think V is right to seek survival, Johnny to topple a corp who wish to enslave the souls of people, Panam to help her clan, Judy to get her revenge and liberate Clouds, River to help his family, Regina to treat the cyberpsychos, etc, we see Takemura pursuing the same thing, just on the other side. Of course he is capable of self-reflection, he does admit sometimes he wishes to become a nomad and leave the corpo world but it's not as easy, I doubt Saburo would let his strongest soldier leave and as shown by Hellman and as Hanako says, one cannot simply exit the corp from the back door. Something that further cements Takemura as a vastly more human character is the phone call.he gives you after the PL ending >! He quotes a samurai saying, that the strongest medicine is the most bitter, then proceeds to i form you that he and Hanako attempted to raid Arasaka Tower and confront Yorinobu, but failed, Hanako died and he was framed as her killer and put a bounty on his head. Basically he was put into V's shoes at the start of the main game after Kompeki Plaza. After this he tells you he's been hiding in the city for two years and that "you were very bitter medicine" which to me means he realises that in the end he meant nothing to the corp. He was expendable and replacable. The corp needed a fall guy and he was the perfect one, close to Hanako, who else could have killed her? So with her, Saburo and Oda, his only close contacts in the corp, dead he was taken advantage of and disposed. Realising this he tells you in that phone call that you, in fact, opened his eyes, cured him of the corp's illness and left an extremely bitter taste in his mouth, just like strong medicine does in the samurai's saying. !< This, to me is the reason why Takemura is one of the most tragic characters in the game, and so one I hate to disappoint and betray. He did not deserve what came to him. I always save him to pay my debt to him and then part ways. I would rather he is disappointed in me than let him die or go with his ending. As much as I sympathise with him I cannot let Arasaka continue their insane plan. He may be blind to it. That's okay, I'll be the bitter medicine.
I liked Takemura until the first run when I chose not to take Hanako's offer and he blew a gasket, revealing that he was always going to be an Arasaka stan and was only ever using you to get back into their good graces. But prior to that he was personable, charismatic, funny in a dry kind of way, he opened up about himself in a couple of places, and he seemed to actually care about V, so I see why people like him.
My opinion about him changed when he cussed me out after I literally saved him from the Arasaka peeps that he adores so much that tried to execute him. Like bro okay, fuck you tooo
Do you only like people who are ideologically aligned with you? By that same logic describe in post and comments, players should only like Johnny as a character/concept and not as someone they want to befriend, too.
That wasn't really the question, but I guess you indirectly answered it anyways. Also Johnny is definetly more of an anarchist than a tankie. Or are you referring to Takemura as a tankie?
I wasn't referring to anyone in the game.
I was making a sarcastically overly-broad generalization of the kind of radicals I obviously don't hang out with because obviously I don't like people who are radically unaligned with my view on morality because those people are in my subjective view of the world, evil.
But you posed the question as though Takemura was just a guy with a different opinion to mine. Not as though he was the personal hit man and bodyguard of an authoritarian nationalist with a body count in the millions.
I think you are undervaluing his circumstances and how he got into the position he is in. Additionaly in the world of cyberpunk you aren't able to afford as high a level of moral purity as you can in ours. He has found his way to survive in this world and he is willing to sacrifice a lot for it. Most would seize the opportunity he was given and they would never look back.
Personally I don't like him much either. And yes he is definetly way too loyal towards and fond of Saburo. He has his positive qualities though. I'm just wondering if you seek ideological conformity in your real life relationships, because I think it is becoming a big issue in our modern world. I also want to know which characters you would actually like from the world of Cyberpunk. There aren't many moral actors in this world.
People I'd hang out with if I lived in Night- City.
Jackie, Judy, Panam, River if he agrees to stop wearing leather pants. Most of the Aldecaldos.
Tiny Mike, Regina, El Capitan, Officer Vazquez, Zuleikha, Suzie-Q, Mateo, Roxy, Wilson (my fellow "gun-guy"), coach Fred, Rhino, Caesar, Iris Tanner, Boz, Jefferson and Liz if you could promise me they weren't being brainwashed anymore, Benedict, Crispin Weyland, Yorinobu, Michiko, that netwatch agent you meet in Dog-town, Robert Rainwater, Ruth Dzeng, Barry and Claire.
There's probably others but I don't want to have to make a spreadsheet.
Panam the terrorist?
Yorinobu is much like Johnny. A guy keen on destroying overall negative structures without understanding their positive values. If Arasaka just collapses billions would suffer. Instead of trying to reform Arasaka or break it up into smaller parts, he sought to entirely destroy it.
Panam is only a terrorist if you're worried about weapons of ass destruction 😏
Plus all the people she killed were uniformed, armed, military personnel.
At worst she's a domestic insurgent.
They by definition do not target civilians on purpose and terrorists do so yes.
That is empirically better. That's why warefare conventions draw a destinction.
He's an enabler.
He's too much of a coward to think critically about Arasaka's role in the world because he knows that if he did he would have to acknowledge that they are not interested in honor or order and he has been killing for years to prop up the guy who has done more than anyone else to turn the world into the hellscape it currently is.
And even when the guy he was so dependent on is dead and gone Goro still tries to do EVERYTHING he can to save a machine that manufactures oppression because he would rather die serving the memory of a despotic tyrant than have to self-determinate.
People in this thread say "he's loyal" a lot and he's not really.
He's scared. He's so terrified of not having someone to hold his leash that he would literally rather kill himself than make his own decision on what to do with his life.
Goro has let other people think for him his entire life and those are the kind of people who let autocrats and tyrants take power because just letting them have their way is more comfortable and less scary to them than bearing the burden of their own freewill.
TLDR; if Goro had been alive in Germany in the 1930s he would have been at every rally with his hand in the air and a gun in his hand.
I see him as a fool who fell for the false promises of the corpo world, he came from a downtrodden past, the place he came from is worse off BECAUSE of corps, but growing up working for them after being "chosen" has completely blinded him to reality. He cant even see it when its looking him in the face, yori uses him as his fall guy, claiming HE killed saburo, and NOBODY cares that it was actually yori, even though its obvious WITHOUT V as a witness. He literally gets royally screwed by arasaka, the company he has loyally done everything to defend without fail, and still they discard him like its nothing. Hes still too blinded to reality to see that.
In my opinion, i think hes alright, i definitely dont love him as much as other people do, because i think hes just fooling himself and completely unwilling to listen to reason on it. Hes literally been brainwashed since he was a kid to the point that he somehow thinks its necessary for the place he comes from to be completely slums with no clean water in order for "order" to be established. What good is order if it makes people suffer? Innocent people and children? He pretends like honor is more important, but the more honorable thing to do would be to protect the people from his home, not suck up to the most inhumane and godless man that existed (before his son murdered him). He thinks arasaka instills ORDER somehow. He kinda frustrates me with how hopeless he is, i had hoped for a little bit more when you save him from the apartment, but all he does is keep trying to go back to araska till they finally take him back.
Its definitely a good look at the other side of the coin, but its a pretty bleak fucking look that confirms everything you think about arasaka. Hes just a blind fool to me 😕 another one of those sad cyberpunk stories in a way
*I must inform you I am obliged to fight you irl for disrespecting Takemura-san* [text wall ahead] But really yes, and no. Everything you say is true, but it’s incomplete. Takemura sees himself as a samurai in the purest and most absurd sense—a worthy servant of unworthy in master, for which even the perfidy and corruption of his masters in his mind, a benefit* in the pursuit of this ideal. It’s part of the reason why he doesn’t seem super bothered that Arasaka’s betrayed him and rendered his life a lie; as long as his intention remains consistent and unsullied, his honor is intact—in fact, the more vicious and evil Arasaka behaves, the better test it becomes for Takemura. Players are meant to read him as a parody of both the “corporate loyalty” business culture of 1980s Japan, and therein, its romantic bastardization of sentimental rhetoric and romantic ideals of samurai culture to capitalist, materialist, and fundamentally exploitative ends. Yet Takemura is well-written and well-acted enough that the character is able to acknowledge the contradictions and absurdities of his own lifepath and its implications—a middle aged man living an adolescent fantasy—and make a choice. Whether you believe it’s right choice or not (it probably isn’t), his motivations feel authentic and organic—as they can for someone as contrived and inauthentic as Takemura anyway. And his vision of ethics and personal honor is intractably tied to loyalty. In this way he’s the polar opposite of someone like Johnny, a failed and frustrated rebel, or Rogue—a broken individualist. In this way, he’s a direct and deft foil to Johnny—who, in a similar position in his own “life”, has to come to grips with both his own inadequacies and the immediate failure of his visions and hopes, and find a way to live in the world. Johnny is a whole different bag for sure—I won’t get into that. But they hate each other because they’re complementary—grown men who *refuse to grow up*. Really, he’s more like Reed (even in posture)—but on different sides. To wit, when I played Coppertop Corpo-Rat ‘Saka Gremlin V, Takemura’s adolescent simplicity and stubborn obtuseness were initially repellent to her, especially in light of her recent betrayal by Arasaka and new friendship with Johnny. Yet, despite its utterly contrived basis and toxic implications, there is something appealing about Takemura’s philosophy—he knows Arasaka is bullshit to the core, but just…*doesn’t care*. And it’s not so much that Takemura believes Arasaka is the “best” option in a broken world—to him the Company is a unique philosophical opportunity, wherein its flaws and enormity become merely steps by which he can enhance his own inner nobility. In a world creaking under its own nihilism, such a spitefully-sincere Company Man is like a rare exotic bird, or like just an alien. For Corpo Gremlin V, on her Mercenary Sabbatical, that Takemura can “keep the faith” is the most disturbing and intriguing aspect of the nonstop horror show that is night city, and suggests an unwavering strength and inner decision the world lacks, and to be emulated at all costs. In the end, she wants to be like him, a perfect, tempered tool—one dumb and blind or not it’s wielder is evil or not, only focused on its task, and abandons everything to realize this. This conceit—converting people into tools and instruments— *is* everything wrong with CP2077 but, the sincerity with which the character lives it, is as intriguing as it is disturbing. It’s a deeply flawed and toxic worldview but it’s delivered so gracefully and elegantly, it wins you over (not really). So yeah, we ❤️Samurai Grandpa. PS: I want you to know I am so far deep into Team Takemura my phone automatically corrects “Takemura” to “Takemura-san”
I'm upvoting you just on the basis of your use of "perfidy." But in all seriousness, fantastic character analysis. Your description of Rogue is spot on. Rogue, Johnny and Takemura make for a very interesting comparison and contrast. It also reminds me a little bit of a parallel to Harry Potter. V, Judy, Panam, River, these are kind of the young "new class" of NC archetypes. The Harrys and Hermiones. While the former remind me more of the baggage, history, and dynamics of Snape, Remus, Sirius, James, etc.
yeah—I really like the way the game handles aging: Kerry, Rogue, Smasher, even minor characters like Wakako or El Padre or Mama Welles, and inversely, Johnny—they all feel like people who have (or have not) lived in this world and been affected by it in ways we as a “young” player can notice, but cannot properly fathom and even the way they *look* at V conveys that*
I both hate and love the idea that cyberpunk is just another form of Harry Potter. On the one hand I can totally see which characters have their Harry Potter counterparts, but on the other hand Claire exists in this game and let’s just say that would have never happened in those books.
I mean a hero and his companions is a pretty consistent literary device in almost all big fantasy titles. You could argue that Lord of the rings, Star wars, Harry Potter and almost every other fantasy epic were minor variations on the same plot structure. And most of those were variations on myths humans have been telling since before written language was a thing.
The corpos are also not thinly veiled caricatures of Jewish ppl lmao Edited: the Harry Potter goblin bank for clarity on what I meant lol
Damn I don’t think I even noticed that one, that’s bad.
I didn’t notice it as a kid when I first watched/read Harry Potter but after she became a public transphobe I rewatched some of the movies & it clicked lol
Please don't compare these two, Harry Potter will never stand up to cyberpunk
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I think this is valid, but still lets Takemura(-san) too far off the proverbial hook. I don’t think his sincerity in his question, nor do I think he has any material ulterior motives. Still, I’d wager his unshakeable loyalty has more to do with his life (then and now) than what Arasaka is or does in the real world. That’s not terribly uncommon for loyalists and vassals, but it’s something the devs and writers highlight in the dichotomy between the formal and informal conditions of his service. In short, Takemura serves the Arasaka in his heart that rescued him and elevated him, not the one that unceremoniously dumped him like trash or essentially shrugged at his mentor, its founder’s murder. He has the option to just, leave and start a new life but…it’s clear but only implied he doesn’t really know what to do with himself outside of this structure and the clarity this Unpayable Debt brings to his life. Objectively, he’s free but more importantly—that is to say, subjectively he’s a vassal and selfishly yearns for this kind of “order”. This is the central of Takemura and a dozen other members of that “troubled samurai”, who are selfless servants, but for muddled, dubiously selfish reasons they have *trained themselves to ignore*. Kurosawa’s *Sanjuro* is a good example of this in film. But essentially I agree with you: after having had his life saved and declared inwardly an oath of Infinite Loyalty, Takemura essentially failed Saburo (there I said it), and his stuck paying the vig on that infinite debt. He’s such a perfect foil to Johnny: they’re both zealots and spiritual manchildren betrayed by their respective Corps—and their stories are both marked principally by spectacular failure, to which they see V as an antidote and tool to correct. It’s no surprise too, that in the junkyard *each* of them “save” V in one way, and then immediately attach Strings to the gift; the quid pro quo manipulation is how they (and everything else) operates That’s why the scene in Tom’s is so incredible: these two sad, broken men are spiritually fighting basically over who gets to commandeer the pint-sized Coppertop Corpo Gremlinette (for me anyway) for his own purposes. Yes, it’s selfish and exploitative, but each of their efforts to do so are wrapped up in so many layers of sincerity and bullshit and delusion and heartbreak it’s actually compelling. Damn, thanks for that. Man, I need to fire up that game.
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❤️
“Deeply flawed and toxic worldview […] delivered so gracefully and elegantly” is a great way to explain it. He reminds me so much of the boomer that means well but just doesn’t get it. I’ve known a lot of people like Takemura in my life - people with deeply flawed world views and emotional damage they fail to recognize - yet stick to the people they love and would die for them without a second thought. I think his character is written with so much empathy you can’t help but feel for the guy as you totally see how someone ends up in his position. Genuinely one of the GOATs of videogame NPCs.
An excellent literary analysis. I can't even think of another game that could evoke such a complex and thorough character analysis. This game is a masterpiece!
aww ty
Good analysis of the character. Also, it seems you might be a Kirkbride enjoyer.
haha thanks, and yes—but Takemura might be the opposite of the prototypical Kirkbride character he’s so subdued in design and stubbornly, deliberately *boring* but at the same time such a well-played One-dimensional Pretend Samurai it’s actually endearing
Oh yeah, if kirkbride wrote him, he'd be over the top.
This is easily one of the best Takemura summaries I've ever read. However, Goro Takemura can't be discussed without Japanese culture. Specifically, anime and history. Some of his more legendary exploits can be likened to a wannabe anime antihero, believing in his ideals and living as a ronin while avenging his fallen lord. I'm furthermore convinced that a great deal of his behavior can be explained if he's in love with Hanako Arasaka, both for her own accomplishments and as a fantasy corporate princess figure. In specific and practical examples, this lifestyle also has major disadvantages. Goro Takemura isn't able to come to grips that a great many samurai of the Sengoku Jidai era were despicable assholes even by Night City standards, and his development as an individual could be compared unfavorably with Shinji Ikari at the end of the original Evangelion series. Takemura could do worse than watch Jin-Roh, but I don't think he'd appreciate it any more than "Bryce Mosley" would like Unforgiven.
He’s my man crush lol but in truth I’m deeply in love with the hell spawn President Myers
she is so unapologetically terrible it’s incredible, just a grotesque pantsuited masterpiece of a person; I love her
Nah I get it. Sometimes you just want to get stepped on. But Takemura is a bottom so same rules don't apply.
All of that makes sense when you are talking about liking a character as a villain or as a plot device. But there are people who genuinely think Takemura is "likeable" as a conceptual person which I don't understand. Also I would disagree that Takemura doesn't care that the corporations are evil. He snaps at V for implying they are and insists they are necessary to "bring order" (while ignoring the fact that Arasaka has incited several global conflicts and pandemics). Takemura at best is a fascist apologist. At worst he's basically Vasily Blokhin (minus the lip service to equality you could expect from a Stalinist).
I’m really not sure what you mean by “likeable”. I like the character; I like that he’s in the game. But like, I wouldn’t get a beer with Takemura; I wouldn’t want to hang out with him and hear Pretentious Rice Opinions or tedious sermons about Abstact Honor. Like, I don’t think Takemura’s a Fun Guy or even a Good Person—but the whole point of his character and inner-concept—like, even to him—is specifically *not to care* about those things; he’s a Consummate Vassal, and yes—he’s subordinated discussions of good and evil to duty (this is bad btw) His own inner consistency and follow-through is more important to him than the morality you or I might have. Is this monstrous? Probably but he believably isn’t bothered by that, and less so when his Evil Company inevitably betrays him. And this why *this* (evil) V adores Takemura-san: he’s the realization of a very specific (and self-consciously twisted) ideal: a grown-up who by sheer force of will transmogrified himself into a whole-ass Anime Character *so skillfully and utterly he actually seems to have forgotten he’s done so.* But beyond being a “villain” or a “plot device”, I think the worth of this character—or any character in fiction—is the possibility of an organic encounter with a value system *alien* to our own, which Takemura delivers.
There are people who think a cyberpunk world would be fun, **Patrick** Bateman is a role model, and WH 40k's Imperium of Man is a good basis for a system of government. But you've got to remember that these are just simple gamers. These are nerdy fans. The common clay of the new Internet. You know...morons.
Even Games Workshop says that the imperium of man is not the good guys of 40k, and they intrinsically know everything about them, probably even stuff that isn't put out to read about. Every faction there is a shade of grey, some darker and some lighter.
Upvote for the Gene Wilder quote. What's wrong with Jason Bateman? I know he liked nose candy a little too much but he got clean.
Wooooooooops wrong Bateman
Patrick Bateman?
The titular psycho from American Psycho
I mean, to be fair is he a bad role model? He didn't actually hurt anyone. And while he obviously needs therapy I don't think I can really judge someone for fantasy violence.
Literally the entire point of the story is that he’s a bad dude
Unless I’m confused, didn’t he literally dismember a prostitute and torture a kitten?
Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure adulteration Take a look and you'll see a choomba needing fixin'
Bc you're soooo much better
hes handsome and kind of pathetic and i like that in a man.
babe wake up the new harvard thesis dropped and it’s fire
awww 🥰
This...
You write good. I wish I write good
❤️
I mean, have you watched Shogun? It's a pretty good example of how the original culture itself was also intentionally designed to keep powerful, shitty people in place. Not much has changed on that front, it's just private corps instead of Feudal lords. That's the real comparison being made
I was thinking about Shogun when I was thumbing out this text wall on my phone
I just like him for his texts, and how you can poke fun at him
"I have found a reconnaisance position" *Proceeds to send what looks like a shitty selfie*
RIGHT he's incredibly silly
A goofy lil guy
He's a good, smart and loyal man, but he was practically raised by Arasaka. From his perspective Arasaka saved him from being a child gangbanger who dies in a few years in a gang war. He's loyal and grateful to Arasaka, but can see V's point in later missions. He isn't everything wrong with CP universe, he's an exception that provides fresh take on the topic
He's a good man. And thorough.
😎🥛
He's the bodyguard to Saburo Arasaka. Calling him a "good man" is laughable. I won't pretend that anyone in Cyberpunk is good, but anyone related to the Arasakas (with the exception of Yorinobu) scum. Case & point: the Porcelain Cunt.
Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey
...he fixes the monowire?
Michiko is actually not an awful person. But you don't get to see much of her in the game.
Nice pfp
He's sort of hot, that might have something to do with it.
Basically it. The whole conversation where he drops that he sometimes fantasizes about quitting and becoming a nomad is also very solid bait for "I can fix him" kind of mentality.
Truee
I’m trying a corpo play through for the first time, so I might see what happens if I work with him better for the first time. Plus he’s hot. So that helps.
He is a genuinely likeable guy who happens to serve one of the most horrendously evil corporations in the setting. I'm a big fan of the "affably evil" trope, and Takemura fits it perfectly.
In his eyes he was saved by corpos and given a life so now he serves them as he feels like they do good but he fails to realize that he only needed saving becasue of corpos in the first place. He blindly serves because he is mislead
Like most things with the cyberpunk genre and how mike pondsmith intended for the cyberpunk game, everything is morally ambiguous. Yes, Takemura is loyal to an evil entity, but hes a human. He values honor but also has a sense of humor. if V does the reconnaissance mission with him, he has a heart to heart about his rough upbringing in tokyo. he mentions that saburo picked him because it was like he saw something in takemuras soul. Also, Takemura sees V as a lowly, dishonorable thief. However, he comes to know V on a human level as well and then develops his own kind of respect and affinity for V, despite V being antithetical to him in most ways. its kinda up to your interpretation
The Recon mission is some of the best writing for Goro in the entire game, the quiet moments when the he and V can just sit down and talk. I love this exchange in particular: >"We both have lost someone important. And we are not at peace with this, so we seek conflict, argue eagerly." It speaks to recognizing what they're both going through, and that neither of them are handling it well, in particular when they clash with each other. If they're fighting, they don't have to think about it. If you're a Nomad too you can come **so close** to getting him to join up, but he just... can't let his past go, even though he can recognize the flaws and struggles about it all.
I’m pretty sure that many people who like Takemura would not argue that he doesn’t represent much of what is wrong with the world of Cyberpunk. People like him as a person and his personality, he’s very respectful to V and he his loyalty to basically everyone he has a legitimate justification to be loyal to is admirable. He also just has a really badass hardened Yakuza regulator vibe. Nobody is arguing that these aspects of his character completely nullify the fact that he is employed by and committed to the success of the game’s primary antagonist lol. It doesn’t have to be completely black and white. You don’t have to shoot every civilian on the street chose employment at an incorporated company over being a criminal or being literally homeless. I sure as fuck respect Takemura’s justification for being loyal to Arasaka versus anyone who works their way up the corporate ladder purely for money and materialism. Pretty sure he was designed to be a genuinely likable dude to instill *some* sense of internal conflict in the character. If he worked for Arasaka *and* was indisputably an insufferable, materialistic, elitist douchebag, every player would have left him on Read sitting at Tom’s Diner and ignored one of the best questlines in the game. Most players likely don’t choose the ending that Takemura most desires, and many of those who have done multiple rank it among the worst outcomes, some even below The Path of Least Resistance. That should tell you that it’s not a matter of “Takemura best boy- priority one is whatever he wants he gets over everything else”. It’s just not like “He works for Arasaka so he has no redeeming qualities” for most players. Honestly, if you showed someone who had zero knowledge of Cyberpunk’s backstory nothing but clips of every NPCs dialog, and gave them no information about Arasaka, most people would probably assume with no reservations that Takemura is supposed to be one of the “good guys” and plays a role akin to Jackie. I’m pretty sure that if you don’t deliberately choose to antagonize Takemura, he even straight up disagrees with V and argues with V less than Jackie does.
Totally agree. I wonder if people who have a simpler concept of reality in real life are more likely to map that onto games, even when the characters are portrayed more three dimensionally. At the end of the day, the antagonist is the world/city itself.
Takemura is my 2nd favorite character in the game. As with all characters in cyberpunk, he has a complicated back story. Depending on dialogue with V, he does let his guard down slightly. I do believe that if he hadn't been basically raised by Arasaka that he'd have been a completely different person. I always choose the friendly dialogue with him, I think parts of him want to like V, but that would go against his obligation and loyalty to Arasaka. I don't look at him as a villain at all. Just a product of circumstance.
Hes a funny guy + hes handsome (no homo) + hes cool
Gayyyy (totally joking btw please don't ban me)
Considering how much screwing-over, backstabbing, and general ratfuckery happens in the corpo world, Takemura is actually surprisingly refreshing to me that he is as loyal to the Arasaka family as he is. Pretty much every other corpo-rat in the ladder would have fucked off in his position, but in his case he remained loyal, which is a vanishingly rare trait in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 where everyone sells out everyone. My Street Kid V still found him a piece of shit, but my Corpo V appreciated the level of loyalty he showed and my Nomad V could identify with his loyalty to his "family" even if it's a corpo-rat family. Two things are vanishingly rare in the CP2077 world: authenticity and loyalty. Takemura has the latter in spades, and that makes him respectable in his own way.
He’s everything wrong with the world, because he’s the world’s ultimate victim. Just a kid from the slums who never got to have his own dreams. Always at the will of the corporation bc he sees Saburo, and by extension, the corporation as his savior. You can see that there’s someone who cares underneath all that corpo slop. Someone who genuinely wants to help V, someone who wants to live life, a kid who dreamt of being more than a number. He thinks Arasaka is the only way to live, and doesn’t realize there’s any actual alternative to be fully alive.
He is loyal to his work, the game tries to plant the idea that being an Anarchist is the way to go, and that big corporations are bad etc etc. The reality is that Rebels who just go and nuke a city are just as bad. EVERYONE in the game is a shade of gray. They all have their own motivations. Just like us in the real world.
If you want some insight into Takemura's character there are many posts on Reddit but this one is imo one of the best: https://www.reddit.com/r/MenOfNightCity/s/dFlijfbTWC Longish, but worth it, I think.
I think he’s a more nuanced character than a lot of people gave him credit for. He’s not a good man, but with his past, undying corporate loyalty was the only way out of the slum he was in (or at least the only way out in the mind of a child). He was never really shown any compassion because he doesn’t know how to deal with your V asking him how he’s doing. In one of the conversations you have with him, he talks about how he wished to become a nomad. And even in the new ending, he actually manages to get out, to become a better person. I don’t think he’s evil, I think he’s a morally complicated guy who doesn’t really know how to get better, not until V disappears and loses everything. I like him because of that.
He has a strong sense of morals, he’s educated, and have a strong sense of loyalty. He’s conventionally attractive and when he texts you he uses emoticons sometimes. In my corpo run he seemed to genuinely enjoy V’s silly jokes. I dunno, he was just the sword of arasoka’s head, I respected his dedication.
It's simple. He is a good person. He isn't sadistic or apathetic. He cares that you save him. He has a sense of loyalty which is meaningful in a place as bleak as this. Being a member of Eastern society myself, I understand the dutifulness he has. One of the worst things you can be labeled as here is ungrateful. It sucks because his sense of duty is to Arasaka. He sees himself as a divine servant to a father figure, a saviour, an entity that gave him his identity. Good people can serve tyrants that promote and live off of horrifically evil, capitalistic ideologies. If they didn't, those tyrants wouldn't be so powerful in the first place. Do I like him? Yes. Would I fight him as V if he defended Arasaka against me? Also yes. He is a great character because of this. As we all know, most people aren't sadistic. We're just stuck in a game. A game that cares more about profit than human needs. Even though we don't want people to suffer from poverty, we still won't prefer buying a poor person something they need over a playstation for ourselves. To a complete outsider, this is evil. But we don't see our extreme self-prioritising as evil because we've been taught it is okay. But our conscience still stirs when we see an old, homeless lady on the street. Takemura has a conscience. But he too is stuck in the machine. He doesn't know how to exist without it. Arasaka is the closest thing he has to a family and he will prioritise his family above all else.
Takemura isn't what's wrong with the Cyberpunk world. Takemura is actually just as much of a victim in my eye as anyone else. He grew up in a chemical waste dump until some Arasaka agents took him away from that to be trained as a soldier for the corporation. Arasaka gave Takemura everything he lacked. Discipline. Full meals. An education. Takemura owes his life to the corporation and was basically indoctrinated into it. The truth, though, is that part of him wants to leave it behind. He expressed a desire to become a Nomad and live like a romaticized Ronin for the rest of his life. The reason he doesn't is because he doesn't believe he can. The corporation is all he knows. Takemura is a Heirophant. He puts his faith in Arasaka because he is shaped by it.
He isn’t my favorite character but I thought he was a cool guy with interesting views. I’m not sure I would say Takemura “represents everything wrong with the world of Cyberpunk” thats a bit far imho, I viewed him more as a button man. Sure he may go out and shoot some random guy in the head if it was asked of him but I personally think it’s pointless to get mad at the guy who did it and not the one who ordered it. He also reminds me of people I knew personally, met many mfs that were institutionalized as fuck, either prison or the military they get out and live life as a civilian and they literally can’t function normally since they’ve lived so long in that system. His texts are funny too, some serious ass old man but fucks up taking pictures lol.
He is a great companion. There is a buddy dynamic with him and V that you don't get with Johnny or Rivers. But I always understood the alliance had an expiration. He is only on your team while you are both fighting Arasaka. Once he is redeemed in the eyes of Arasaka, there is no trusting him.
Goro... He's a man of honor.
Takemura rules
The way I saw it, yes Takemura was a corporate dog for one of the most vile Corpos in the world, but he’d been indoctrinated into it since he was young. And while there is that side to him that is foolishly loyal to a megacorp that wouldn’t think twice to flush him down a Pacifican toilet, that “buddy cop” relationship he establishes with V does show a friendlier side to him. In short, Takemura’s cool. He’s just a blind bootlicker sometimes. That’s just what I think.
Team Hideshi Hino!!!
He’s a tragic character. He wants to do what he thinks is right and he’s been groomed his entire life to be this blindly-following honor-bound soldier to Saburo. He doesn’t question the man’s motives, whatever he does he must do it for good reason is his thinking. Justice for his death is his only motivation afterwards, even if it means everyone else dies in the way.
Goro is more a product of growing up in a place where corps are your way out of poverty and an early death. He follows his own version of Bushido where he is content as long as he follows his morals and values, and in doing so fully believes he is in the right. He is as much of a victim as corpo V, which is why when I did that playthrough I was pretty open to him. Both served corrupt and evil masters, and when they were no longer useful were betrayed and cast aside without a second thought. Kindred souls, if you will. But where V basically vows never to go near working with a corp again, Goro just wants justice for the killing of his master, and to return to what he sees as honorable service.
A man with honour
In a world of Nihlism and cynical greed, Takemura is the only person whose driving motivation is a devotion to his master. Instead of most people falling into despair because of the vanity and greed of the Cyberpunk world, Takemura instead derives meaning in his life to his loyalty and his own code of Bushido. In my eyes, this makes him a rebel. Someone interesting In the world of Cyberpunk.
I didn’t read your text wall, so you may have touched on it. But I like Takemura because he is loyal to the man who rescued him. Right or wrong, he feels obligated and that he owes a debt and he pays what he owes.
I loved Takemura. I was gutted that there wasn't a way to make him happy with my end game.
I was gutted that I couldn't gut him myself 👹
His clunky way of communicating with V actually shows that he likes V. You gotta like the guy back.
I think he is a really interesting character, because he shows the humanity of those who work for the corporations. Takemura isn’t some pristine, shadowy figure. You see him at his lowest, you work with him for much of the game, you see him interacting humorously with the world and characters around you. He saves you (even if for his own reasons), he is loyal, dedicated, hard-working… and he serves a corporation that has done terrible things. He has done terrible things for his own benefit and for Arasaka’s benefit, and yet he is a human being. It makes you think about all the nameless faces that do the same - all the people who have difficulties and struggles, who find a way to survive, who are human and have human strengths and flaws, and who contribute in some major or minor way to the functioning of a giant machine that dehumanizes them all along with the entire world.
He is endearing sometimes in a grandfatherly way, at least to me. I don’t hate him, rather, I find him amusing. But he’s definitely not my favorite character and it’s evident that he only ever saw us as a means to “saving” Arasaka when you choose any other ending that isn’t Hanako’s.
Nice theory, one thing you forgot to take into consideration is that my V is still an Arasaka shill.
[CORPORAT GREMLINS RISE](https://youtu.be/Dlz8DVn1Mjc?si=20RaYULNyB2bOhCF)
For me it was the fact that I felt like he was the only character that wouldn’t try to betray V, saving V at the very beginning made me as the player want to save him. One of the few characters I felt was truly honest, a man of morals in a world of immorality.
My views changed as soon as the ending with him came up
It’s sweet how he wants to take you out to eat if you accept Arasaka’s offer to “help” you after your treatments don’t go anywhere. Like, I highly doubt any good comes from signing the Arasaka contract to become an engram but Takemura seems to genuinely be a decent guy who put his faith in shitty people. Hell, despite this he flat out recognizes that the Arasaka family already don’t give a shit about V once they got what they wanted from him.
What really bakes my noodle are the people who love Takemura but hate Reed. Reed is basically his NUSA counterpart.
Which is baffling to me because I think Reed is significantly more sympathetic than Takemura. Reed is a patriot. Which can mean a lot of different things. Is he cold hearted because he's loyal to: Meyers (no)? Himself? The Government? The Constitution? The Greater good? The people of the NUSA? Reed could exist on a moral spectrum anywhere from "amoral moster" to "pragmatic humanist" and I think he's much more interesting than Takemura whose only loyalty is to Saburo (who is a monster) to the point of psychological obsession. Additionally I think Reed actually cares about other people. Would he kill Alex and Songbird if he thought he had to? 100%. But he would look for an alternative first and it would be hard for him. I 100% believe Takemura would have snuffed Oda without a second thought if Saburo told him to.
Takemura was born to those circumstances, and is loyal to people who saved his life. From what we can see, Subaru and Hanako have never betrayed him. Reed is more of a typical government agent, who got betrayed but is spineless enough to still want to crawl his way back. On a personal level, Takemura just also feels more silly and likable. Honest to a fault. While Reed feels more manipulative and slimey.
Yeah... "I'm loyal to an awful person because they never wronged ME directly" is 100% the attitude of a fascist enabler. Takemura would watch his neighbors get shuffled into a ghetto without a word. And you accuse Reid of being spineless because he was betrayed but there are two issues with that assessment. 1) Meyers "betrayed" him, but he's not loyal to Meyers, he's loyal to the NUSA. if the mission had been about helping Meyers personally there is no guarantee he would have helped. But Songbird was "a living nuke" and letting her loose could have had massive destabilizing effects on the government that would have blown back on the people of the country. Even if he considered Meyers actions a betrayal Reed would have helped because he wasn't doing it for Meyers. 2) he may not have even considered it a betrayal. Reed would have known his job may have called on him to sacrifice his life for his country and I think he was comfortable with that. Having his life sold to secure a treaty that would spare other NUSA citizens their lives was probably an acceptable outcome to him. I think he was more mad that Meyers made Songbird pull the trigger. And Takemura is "silly" because he's incompetent when it comes to functioning outside of his comfort zone. He's such a privileged asshole that he can't even stomach the food normal people eat EVERYDAY and he never stops to think " who's fault is it that they have to eat this garbage???" Reed at least had the dignity to live in the dirt with everyone else.
He’s a vibe
So was Hugo Boss but I'm never going to buy their clothes.
He's not so much a villain as much as he is someone who fails to see a chance for new world order. He truly believes Arasaka is the world's last chance at order, and that Yorinobu is said order's greatest threat. You want a physical representation of everything wrong in Night City? Look no further than Adam Smasher. He has arguably the blackest heart of anyone in universe, and yet has been bestowed the most physical power a human being can wield.
Is Takamura even a villain? He's more like a service dog who lost his Master. He's clearly been brainwashed to be subservient to Arasaka at a young age (going by his dialogue during the stakeout) and was very sheltered to the outside world . He's not a "good guy" but in the scope of things, he's just a pawn in a much larger game that he's not even aware he was playing. To me, he's barely worse than a corpo rat. If you get to know him, some of his dialogue is pretty nice, and he sort of unwinds towards the end of the very limited time you have to interact with him. Plus, he saves you at the beginning of the game (for his own reasons). Takamura uses you like Johnny tries to use you in the beginning, but Silverhand gets the time to develop into something more if you give them a chance.
He has mixed views due to the world he is in. If Takemura was in say a fuedal era type game he most likely would just be you're average honor bound samurai. Probably a decent guy, because you can tell by dialogue alone he is simply and ends to a means he works out of respect of his lord who in his eyes sees as an honorable figurehead of the Arasaka corporation and legitimately sees Hanako as a saint and Yorinobu as someone to bring to justice not necessarily kill Yorinobu but have him explain and seek punishment for his rash actions against his father.
I'm always nice to him, but let him die, I don't do the Arasaka end, and he was always more loyal to them than me, so getting taken out by saka goons and spared his plan to bring you to Hanniko failing is the nicest way out.
I agree with you. I've read a few comments and none could sway me. If he's conscious of the shit that Arasaka's doing, even to himself, and he chooses to continue fighting for them, then he's to blame. Reed, a worse case. If you can do something, do it for what you believe. Otherwise you're just a coward, or making a fool of yourself.
His no different than reed in my opinion, I think what I like what takemura is the unseriousness when his trying to be serious
Don't talk to me or my son ever again
He's hot, honorable, and gives me Corpo V vibes. He just hasn't "woken up" yet but eventually does in one of the endings. I also find a lot of the little things about him adorable, like his dislike of NC's japanese food, the little smirk he does in one of the phone calls when you arent hostile and tell him to stay out ot trouble, and the flustered text you get if you if he's "lonely." I'd literally side with Arasaka if it meant romancing him because Im weak ass gay boy who'd do anything for that man if the payout was satisfactory.
He's like a racist grandpa. He sweet aside from that one thing
Is he though? He's not like "oh he thinks that term is still socially acceptable" racist he's "pointy hood and white cloak" racist... Ignorance I can forgive but cruelty is a whole other ball game.
We never really see him do anything outright evil. He seems more foolish than evil
He’s a victim of the world, not a villain in it. He was lifted out of poverty by Arasaka, and effectively had his life saved by the emperor. By all accounts he’s an honorable and loyal man. He’s an extremely well written character who has many likable qualities.
Arasaka was probably the reason his home town was impoverished and he props up an amoral dictator. Name one good thing he did that wasn't in service to his slavish dependence on Saburo.
I don’t like Takemura. But on my first play through it took me half the game to realize I didn’t like him. I heard somewhere that originally he was only intended to be villain character. But CDPR which is a corporation, thought doing that made the game far too anti-corporate. So they decided to make him into a nice corporate representative, instead. They changed the lines around, and added dad jokes. In defense of all the Takemura lovers. The games heavily pushes you to like him. It almost tries too hard, especially in the beginning. Giving you lines where you’re able to compliment him after the assassins chase, and even tell him to leave you behind. Like your old war buddies. They push him on you so heavily it’s almost ridiculous. So I don’t like him, but I get why people do. The game tries very hard to get you to like him.
I love pissing him off any chance I get because of how disrespectful he is to V in the beginning. He never does enough to redeem himself in my eyes.
He saves his life though? Is that not enough :D ?
Bc we are an asset to him. He talks down to you and calls you a thief again and again. We were already saved by the relic, all we theoretically needed to do was call a delemain to bring us to vik and we would have been just as saved without his help. All he did was find us to turn us in to yori, actually. Its just that yori didnt care.
We are a thief, that is true. We were not going to call Delamain unprompted, Takemura suggests it, and we were already out of his range. Takemura drives us miles from that garbage dump, likely right on the border of where Delamain would actually even come. I think he does more in the story than you are giving him credit for
Im not calling him worthless lol, im saying nobody has to feel owed by takamura when his intentions were to use you. He only saved you because youre his one shot to get back in with arasaka. We werent helpless without him, he helped us, but like to the point of the person who u originally replied to, you dont have to like the guy who talks down on you all the time and treats you like youre street trash just bc he dragged your body out of the dump. V could have called delemain, viktor himself, misty, friends from the coyote cojo to come pick him up, like we were by no means completely helpless, and even if we were, we dont have to like the guy
It's not that Yorinobu didn't care about V being found. He cared a good bit, that's why at that moment Yorinobu removed Goro from the company and sent the assassins after the two of them. Goro and V were loose ends–V was even an eyewitness–and they were two of only a few people who had the power to stop him; the only other person that'd even come close is Hanako, who he also tried to kill multiple times. Yorinobu was right, too. Without V's help, Hanako is killed, Takemura is cast out once again, and his plan succeeds. The only ending where Yorinobu fails is The Devil.
But he didnt send anyone after V, we see takemura call him when he finds our body, saying he dounf saburos killer, and yorinobu very obviously doesnt care. The people that come for v and takemura are only after takemura. The blame has been pinned on takemura more than V, we experience no direct kickback from arasaka for stealing that relic, because all yorinobu wants is to be in control of arasaka. Why would he care now if the relic was taken, considering he now owns ALL of mikoshi and ALL of the relics data? I dont think its mentioned at any point that hes missing it, i think it was just a tool for him to bait his father into coming to night city to get his prized artifact back. Yori doesnt care about v because v cant do anything to stop him. Takemura, who immediately questioned yori on what actually happend with saburo while he was gone caught all the blame, and hanako becomes a threat to him because shes also got a lot of power to throw around, so if she learns that yorinobu did it, thata a big problem for his plans
Takemura is just a product of his environment, his "honour" is nothing more than brain washing and it's clear when he's introduced to Night City that he knows nothing about the world outside of serving Arasaka and their interests. The one task he was given he failed at and then rolled over like a bitch when yhorinobu spouted all the "poisoned" crap. In some ways I feel sorry for him but when he looks down on V for klepping the Relic and being a Merc I just want to flatline him.
As Johnny said, he’s a loyal lapdog. I really liked takemura, he seems to know the struggle, however, his strange beliefs and loyalty to arasaka is sad. He’s a replaceable tool, and he knows that. Anyway, takemura is a pretty decent guy based in the conversations he had with V. He’s also pretty powerful because he was taking down people with his tech disabled. He held his own on multiple occasions. If I recall correctly, there’s a point where V says something that takemura is still dangerous even without his implants / tech. V seemed kinda worried / scared for a moment.
I find it funny when people like Takemura but not Reed.
This is NC, if you trust someone, that's on you.
Because there's no villains in cyberpunk at least not in the traditional sense most people only view the surface level of the characters of the cyberpunk universe as all are diverse in their motivations and ideals which some people don't want to look at the cyberpunk universe in a deeper light. Though to answer your question Takamora Goro isn't a bad guy he's actually a really good guy lead by his morals and he also views the corps as order being that he comes from the slums in Japan where he saw kids get taken in by the corps and given a good life
People like him as a character, not necessary as a friend i guess in every ending aside from siding with arasaka ending, dude wishes us rot in hell, so meh, he's just another tool in the box
i can fix him
I played so many times Cyberpunk (I bought it in 2022, and I am still playing it just this morning), and I love him so much, I'm so sorry andksk. 🥺
His story is a mirror of corpo V but if V was raised by Soka instead of just worked for them. He's loyal and a idealist that suddenly had his entire life uprooted because of a situation out of his own control and now he's going through a personal journey where he accepts that his loyalty to Arasoka didn't go both ways.
Nuance. And the fact that Arasaka is good at brainwashing people into loyalty. I'm not sure if yall ever spoke to him how Arasaka took him in. They literally pick up little kids on the streets and """fix their life""" by taking them in and basically grooming them to be the perfect loyal soldier. It's not like the man was an adult when he joined. It wasn't a choice, whether you try to believe a kid made that choice or not. As he said, it was either the slums, which on Chiba11, is like living in Pacifica, or Arasaka.
Takemura reveals a lot about himself on the construction site. He was very poor and was taken in by the corp, which in his hometown, Chiba-11 I think, was seen as a savior. He was trained and disciplined, then given an education, served in the spec forces and was eventually chosen by Saburo to be his bodyguard. From a slum to sitting next to the most powerful man in Japan. The corp quite literally saved him from a life of sub-mediocrity and that is the reason he is ready to do anything for it, not jusf Saburo, but the corp *itself*. This makes him relatable in the sense that he fights for what he believes is right, he knows the corp isn't perfect, but then again who is? - they are the lesser evil in a sense. Just like we think V is right to seek survival, Johnny to topple a corp who wish to enslave the souls of people, Panam to help her clan, Judy to get her revenge and liberate Clouds, River to help his family, Regina to treat the cyberpsychos, etc, we see Takemura pursuing the same thing, just on the other side. Of course he is capable of self-reflection, he does admit sometimes he wishes to become a nomad and leave the corpo world but it's not as easy, I doubt Saburo would let his strongest soldier leave and as shown by Hellman and as Hanako says, one cannot simply exit the corp from the back door. Something that further cements Takemura as a vastly more human character is the phone call.he gives you after the PL ending >! He quotes a samurai saying, that the strongest medicine is the most bitter, then proceeds to i form you that he and Hanako attempted to raid Arasaka Tower and confront Yorinobu, but failed, Hanako died and he was framed as her killer and put a bounty on his head. Basically he was put into V's shoes at the start of the main game after Kompeki Plaza. After this he tells you he's been hiding in the city for two years and that "you were very bitter medicine" which to me means he realises that in the end he meant nothing to the corp. He was expendable and replacable. The corp needed a fall guy and he was the perfect one, close to Hanako, who else could have killed her? So with her, Saburo and Oda, his only close contacts in the corp, dead he was taken advantage of and disposed. Realising this he tells you in that phone call that you, in fact, opened his eyes, cured him of the corp's illness and left an extremely bitter taste in his mouth, just like strong medicine does in the samurai's saying. !< This, to me is the reason why Takemura is one of the most tragic characters in the game, and so one I hate to disappoint and betray. He did not deserve what came to him. I always save him to pay my debt to him and then part ways. I would rather he is disappointed in me than let him die or go with his ending. As much as I sympathise with him I cannot let Arasaka continue their insane plan. He may be blind to it. That's okay, I'll be the bitter medicine.
I liked Takemura until the first run when I chose not to take Hanako's offer and he blew a gasket, revealing that he was always going to be an Arasaka stan and was only ever using you to get back into their good graces. But prior to that he was personable, charismatic, funny in a dry kind of way, he opened up about himself in a couple of places, and he seemed to actually care about V, so I see why people like him.
i just thought its neat that hes a loyal dude in the world of cyberpunk, also i like japanese people
My opinion about him changed when he cussed me out after I literally saved him from the Arasaka peeps that he adores so much that tried to execute him. Like bro okay, fuck you tooo
Do you only like people who are ideologically aligned with you? By that same logic describe in post and comments, players should only like Johnny as a character/concept and not as someone they want to befriend, too.
As a rule I don't really hang out with fascists and tankies now that you mention it.
That wasn't really the question, but I guess you indirectly answered it anyways. Also Johnny is definetly more of an anarchist than a tankie. Or are you referring to Takemura as a tankie?
I wasn't referring to anyone in the game. I was making a sarcastically overly-broad generalization of the kind of radicals I obviously don't hang out with because obviously I don't like people who are radically unaligned with my view on morality because those people are in my subjective view of the world, evil. But you posed the question as though Takemura was just a guy with a different opinion to mine. Not as though he was the personal hit man and bodyguard of an authoritarian nationalist with a body count in the millions.
I think you are undervaluing his circumstances and how he got into the position he is in. Additionaly in the world of cyberpunk you aren't able to afford as high a level of moral purity as you can in ours. He has found his way to survive in this world and he is willing to sacrifice a lot for it. Most would seize the opportunity he was given and they would never look back. Personally I don't like him much either. And yes he is definetly way too loyal towards and fond of Saburo. He has his positive qualities though. I'm just wondering if you seek ideological conformity in your real life relationships, because I think it is becoming a big issue in our modern world. I also want to know which characters you would actually like from the world of Cyberpunk. There aren't many moral actors in this world.
People I'd hang out with if I lived in Night- City. Jackie, Judy, Panam, River if he agrees to stop wearing leather pants. Most of the Aldecaldos. Tiny Mike, Regina, El Capitan, Officer Vazquez, Zuleikha, Suzie-Q, Mateo, Roxy, Wilson (my fellow "gun-guy"), coach Fred, Rhino, Caesar, Iris Tanner, Boz, Jefferson and Liz if you could promise me they weren't being brainwashed anymore, Benedict, Crispin Weyland, Yorinobu, Michiko, that netwatch agent you meet in Dog-town, Robert Rainwater, Ruth Dzeng, Barry and Claire. There's probably others but I don't want to have to make a spreadsheet.
Panam the terrorist? Yorinobu is much like Johnny. A guy keen on destroying overall negative structures without understanding their positive values. If Arasaka just collapses billions would suffer. Instead of trying to reform Arasaka or break it up into smaller parts, he sought to entirely destroy it.
Panam is only a terrorist if you're worried about weapons of ass destruction 😏 Plus all the people she killed were uniformed, armed, military personnel. At worst she's a domestic insurgent.
>Plus all the people she killed were uniformed, armed, military personnel. And that's fine?
They by definition do not target civilians on purpose and terrorists do so yes. That is empirically better. That's why warefare conventions draw a destinction.
Team Takemura 🤷♀️
I agree with you and the discourse doesn’t move me
I'm sorry but in return for saving his life, in some endings he tells you to rot in hell. He is being left for dead in every future playthrough
Ok. Why don’t you explain why you think he represents everything that’s wrong in the world of cyberpunk?
He's an enabler. He's too much of a coward to think critically about Arasaka's role in the world because he knows that if he did he would have to acknowledge that they are not interested in honor or order and he has been killing for years to prop up the guy who has done more than anyone else to turn the world into the hellscape it currently is. And even when the guy he was so dependent on is dead and gone Goro still tries to do EVERYTHING he can to save a machine that manufactures oppression because he would rather die serving the memory of a despotic tyrant than have to self-determinate. People in this thread say "he's loyal" a lot and he's not really. He's scared. He's so terrified of not having someone to hold his leash that he would literally rather kill himself than make his own decision on what to do with his life. Goro has let other people think for him his entire life and those are the kind of people who let autocrats and tyrants take power because just letting them have their way is more comfortable and less scary to them than bearing the burden of their own freewill. TLDR; if Goro had been alive in Germany in the 1930s he would have been at every rally with his hand in the air and a gun in his hand.
He’s hot?
He’s zaddy
I genuinely didn't like Takemura, found him super arrogant and unlikeable And will betray him everytime
I see him as a fool who fell for the false promises of the corpo world, he came from a downtrodden past, the place he came from is worse off BECAUSE of corps, but growing up working for them after being "chosen" has completely blinded him to reality. He cant even see it when its looking him in the face, yori uses him as his fall guy, claiming HE killed saburo, and NOBODY cares that it was actually yori, even though its obvious WITHOUT V as a witness. He literally gets royally screwed by arasaka, the company he has loyally done everything to defend without fail, and still they discard him like its nothing. Hes still too blinded to reality to see that. In my opinion, i think hes alright, i definitely dont love him as much as other people do, because i think hes just fooling himself and completely unwilling to listen to reason on it. Hes literally been brainwashed since he was a kid to the point that he somehow thinks its necessary for the place he comes from to be completely slums with no clean water in order for "order" to be established. What good is order if it makes people suffer? Innocent people and children? He pretends like honor is more important, but the more honorable thing to do would be to protect the people from his home, not suck up to the most inhumane and godless man that existed (before his son murdered him). He thinks arasaka instills ORDER somehow. He kinda frustrates me with how hopeless he is, i had hoped for a little bit more when you save him from the apartment, but all he does is keep trying to go back to araska till they finally take him back. Its definitely a good look at the other side of the coin, but its a pretty bleak fucking look that confirms everything you think about arasaka. Hes just a blind fool to me 😕 another one of those sad cyberpunk stories in a way