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| “ | I never purposely aimed for the top. But there was something I had to do as the CEO. It's a long story, so I'll save it for another day. | „ |
| ~ Makoto carefully concealing his immense corruption and abuse of power from Yuma, who inquires him about his relationship with Yomi Hellsmile during the research lab investigation. |
| “ | Yuma: You may wear the mask of a saint, but it can't hide the crimes you've committed! You are the mastermind behind the global kidnapping case the WDO has been pursuing! People were abducted across the world and turned into food for homunculi at your factory! Makoto: I had no choice. They must eat in order to survive. Besides, I never took innocent people. I gathered criminals with no chance of rehabilitation, and simply accelerated their sentencing. You saw the memo as well. Besides, they were all on death row anyway. |
„ |
| ~ Makoto as to why he mass kidnapped death row inmates and turned them into food for the homunculi. |
| “ | To this city...you are the real evil, detective! If you expose the truth, many people will suffer. I won't let you do that just to satisfy your ego. No matter how hard you try to destroy this peaceful world, I'll fight back using your own brain against you. Homunculi may not be human, but they have the right to live too! I won't let anyone take that away! Even if you are Number One of the WDO! | „ |
| ~ Makoto's delusional declaration that his original counterpart is Kanai Ward's true evil. |
Makoto Kagutsuchi is the main antagonist of the 2023 adventure game Master Detective Archives: Rain Code.
He is the CEO of Amaterasu Corporation, meaning he is the immediate supervisor of Peacekeepers director Yomi Hellsmile, and the homunculus clone of Number One of the World Detective Organization. After he was created by the Unified Government as part of their conspiracy to create an immortal army of homunculi, he escaped into Kanai Ward and took over the city, covering up the disastrous results of Dr. Huesca's homunculus research in the process while the citizens forgot about the tragedy that had occurred and how they replaced themselves with defective homunculi.
How the truth is hidden is not of his concern, being willing to use any means no matter how unethical or immoral to hide this from the citizens. As a result of his misdeeds as the CEO of Amaterasu Corporation and exploitation of Number One's identity, he is the arch-nemesis of Yuma Kokohead, who is the real Number One.
In Japanese, he is voiced by Atsumi Tanezaki. In English, he is voiced by Brandon Winckler.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
In General[]
- Even though he attempts to claim otherwise, Makoto abuses his position as CEO of Amaterasu Corporation to the same extreme that his subordinate, Yomi Hellsmile, abuses his director position, using the CEO position so he can control Kanai Ward for his own malicious reasons and using any criminal methods he can to maintain it, and even views the company he's in control of as a pawn to cover for his conspiracies in precisely the same way as well. What he does is completely abnormal for any CEO of a corporation to do and his attempts to justify it establishes that he's mostly thinking only about his own problems while in his position of power above all else.
- He has no loyalty to anyone besides the defective homunculi of Kanai Ward and views everyone around him as beneath him. This includes Yomi and Dr. Huesca, the two other Amaterasu Corporation leaders as the company's security director and head researcher, of whom he also knows aren't the originals and instead their homunculus clones, as his whole scheme and true intent behind him luring the detectives to Kanai Ward revolves around secretly trying to have them eliminated, a goal that he casually conceals throughout the entire story and is only revealed after they're defeated. This reaches the point where he tries to have the city permanently isolated in order to keep anyone out of his homunculus conspiracy, uncaring for what the citizens would actually want. In fact, he claims that he would have become "death or the devil himself" in order to protect Kanai Ward were he not called out for his heinous acts by Yuma Kokohead/Number One, meaning he was indeed willing to reverse any redeeming qualities he might have had at the time if it was for Kanai Ward's sake.
- In addition to his disloyalty, he is dishonest, lying about his true identity as Number One's homunculus (as well as the first homunculus in existence and the only perfect homunculus) by hiding behind a mask as part of his scheme to cover up the truth of what occurred in Kanai Ward three years ago. The only logical reason Makoto would have to do this would be if he were expecting from the beginning to encounter his original counterpart at some point, as he'd be the only one who'd recognize Makoto as his clone upon seeing their matching faces.
- Even though he is affable with the detectives throughout the majority of the game’s story, like saving them from Yomi’s wrath threefold and personally bringing Yuma to his company headquarters to investigate the lab for evidence on homunculus research, this is solely pragmatic as he is really using them as a means to oust Yomi and was willing to discard them once they played their part to prevent them from investigating into his cover-up scheme. His affability towards Nocturnal Detective Agency chief Yakou Furio and Yuma Kokohead, the detectives’ leaders, is completely subverted as he is responsible for killing the former and attempting to kill the latter for his own agenda.
- While he is able to gain the trust of Kanai Ward’s citizens, this is pragmatic on his part as he doesn’t care about their well-being as people and only uses this as a facade to cover for himself, as is the intent with most of his behavior.
- He’s extremely hypocritical, albeit in a different way than Yomi, as he claims that the detectives investigating Kanai Ward are the ones attempting to destroy it, even though he’s the one responsible for it turning into a dystopia with Yomi running around freely causing chaos as his subordinate, as well as him luring the detectives to Kanai Ward for his own ends while they were none the wiser to begin with.
- While Makoto is clearly suffering insecurities from being a created homunculus who is the only one aware of Kanai Ward being a whole population of defective homunculi who are also suffering from their biological flaws, who would also have been executed by the Unified Government due to being considered failed experiments, this does not make him a villain by proxy as he chooses to be a villain and cover up the truth for their sake after the citizens forgot their massacre of their original human counterparts, meaning he still has the personal agency to choose not to be a villain yet decides to become one anyway, and it doesn't justify the degree of heinousness in his actions.
- Even though Makoto has comedic moments to begin with, this is a result of his affable nature and is mostly a facade to conceal his true nature to the detectives, with him being played completely seriously during Chapter 5 after he reveals the true extent of his villainy. By comparison, this shift in the tone of his overall character is played in an even darker fashion than Yomi's total lack of comedic moments.
Background[]
- Three years ago, after he was created as the first homunculus in existence by Unified Government using Number One’s DNA following years of research, Makoto unintentionally influenced the creation of the defective homunculi in Kanai Ward using the citizens’ DNA, which were created by Dr. Huesca of Amaterasu Corporation in an attempt to catch up. When this resulted in all of the citizens being unknowingly replaced by their clones and then forgetting what happened, bar few who went missing, he chose to cover up the truth by any means necessary rather than tell them what happened between the gap in their memories.
- In order to return the homunculi back to normal, Makoto would create a rain cloud generator over the city that would trap the homunculi in eternal rainfall, then proceed to lie about this rain being a natural occurrence and spread rumors around about the rain altering their bodies by turning their blood pink.
- To prevent any outside interference or investigation into what happened, he blackmailed the Unified Government with their homunculus research in order to prevent them from exterminating the homunculi outright, covering up the events of everyone replacing themselves with defective homunculi by having the city isolated. As a result of this cover-up, the citizens would speculate what happened during their accidental massacre and deem the events of it as “The Blank Week Mystery”, something that would be considered taboo to discuss within Kanai Ward. He would tell the former CEO to abdicate his position to him in exchange for isolating the city so he could use it for his own ends and would refuse to provide his predecessor with the opportunity to prevent Kanai Ward's possible destruction if he didn't allow him to take charge of the company, essentially making Makoto responsible for two consecutive accounts of blackmail.
- Upon gaining the CEO position, he immediately shut down Dr. Huesca and Yomi Hellsmile’s homunculus research to prevent them from creating any further homunculi, forcing them into compliance, and hid the existence of Project: Homunculus from the world. This would lead to the doctor isolating himself and the research becoming a myth among Kanai Ward’s citizens.
- Aware that the defective homunculi would revive after a day, exposing the truth of their identities, he had any that were killed transported into the restricted area of Kanai Ward so they would roam around the abandoned village while the living homunculi were none the wiser. He would do this by telling Yomi that bodies in Kanai Ward rot in the rain to convince Yomi to help him move the homunculus corpses to the restricted area in secret, allowing Makoto’s own subordinates to take the dead homunculi to said village where they would revive as vicious, flesh-hungry zombies.
- Along with isolating Kanai Ward and preventing anyone from discovering the results of the homunculus research any way he could, regardless of how many victims that came up due to the city's conditions, he also allowed Yomi to continue oppressing Kanai Ward using the Peacekeepers, uncaring for anything he did to the citizens despite claiming to want to protect them, as well as to grow into an unstoppable force that Makoto himself can't simply dismiss from his employment in Amaterasu Corporation. This would make him indirectly responsible for all of Yomi's actions during Makoto's tyranny over Kanai Ward due to neglecting to discipline him as his primary supervisor, including Yomi's attempts to cover up the cases that Number One and the other detectives would encounter during the present day events of the game.
- In order to sustain the defective homunculi, Makoto manipulated the World Detective Organization into sending death row inmates to an automated factory he built in the restricted area of the city, turning them into meat buns to be sold on Kanai Ward’s streets, something he justifies as being necessary and has no remorse for. Considering this occurred for three years straight, it’s unlikely he only killed criminals to sustain them. While this is mostly for the sake of their well-being and for them to survive, this is also so he can keep them alive and maintain his unending control over their lives.
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code[]
- Makoto personally brought the Master Detectives to Kanai Ward by creating fake mysteries so he could use them against Yomi and have him ousted from his position as Peacekeepers director because Yomi and Dr. Huesca, who created the defective homunculi in Kanai Ward, were planning to leak homunculus information to the outside world, which would motivate the UG to commit to their plan to exterminate them upon having their existence exposed to the world. This would result in Yomi conspiring to have them killed using his hitman, leaving behind Number One, who took on the identity of the real Yuma Kokohead after being possessed by death god Shinigami, Halara Nightmare, Desuhiko Thunderbolt, Fubuki Clockford, and Vivia Twilight, who would be under management from agency chief Yakou Furio. He spends his interactions with the detectives feigning ignorance and being helpful to them when he's really only using them for these ends and only reveals his true intentions after his plans to obtain more power over Kanai Ward succeed and he no longer needs them.
- Additionally, he is completely responsible for Number One deciding to erase his identity with Shinigami's supernatural influence (so he could take the false identity of "Yuma Kokohead") and letting him be possessed by her as he had to do so in order to confront Makoto inside of Kanai Ward without his true identity or his possession of Forensic Forte: Coalescence being exposed, in addition to hiring a body double to conceal his identity even further, making him the direct cause of all the conflicts that would arise from Number One having amnesia.
- In order to aid Yomi Hellsmile and Yakou Furio in successfully killing Dr. Huesca, he personally and anonymously hired Fink the Slaughter Artist to aid the latter in his murder, resulting in Yakou and the doctor’s deaths and the detectives suffering from the loss of their chief. After Fink played his part, he would kill Fink off and take his body to the restricted area despite him following Makoto’s orders, both to silence him and because he was no longer of use to him.
- Even though he successfully ousts Yomi from power and saves Martina Electro from his previous attempted execution of her, as well as Yuma and Vivia from being shot by Yomi, all of these events happen only due to pragmatic or accidental reasons and are proven to be part of his facade to cover up the truth when he reveals how little he cares for the autonomy of Kanai Ward's people immediately afterwards. As well as this, his appearance when Yomi is about to shoot the duo is clearly coordinated as he knew in advance that the presence of Fink would cause confusion in the lab and provide him with the opportunity to succeed at his main goal of removing Yomi from his organization.
- Once Yomi is removed from power, he tricks Yuma into carrying a smoke box into the Nocturnal Detective Agency and knocks the surviving detectives out, while also showing them fake footage of their organization's HQ being destroyed in a terror attack, so he can take Yuma and Kurumi Wendy to the restricted area, where they are continuously attacked by the zombified homunculi roaming around the village and manipulated into revealing the truth by Makoto himself, while the remaining others were trapped in his penthouse. It's implied that if he weren't redeemed, he would have also left the detectives in his penthouse as the WDO, a global detective organization that would allow him to travel anywhere beyond Kanai Ward without it appearing suspicious, would've been under his control once he killed Yuma. Additionally, the scene where Makoto knocks out the detectives is played in a completely dark tone and is depicted as the darkest scene in the game, considering it's the first open sign of his villainy for the audience itself.
- While Yuma roams around the restricted area to investigate the truth of his crimes, Makoto continuously taunts him over the speaker and tries to discourage him from discovering the truth of Kanai Ward, all while following behind him in the background.
- Makoto sets up fake corpses of Yuma’s friends to convince him that they had been eaten by zombified homunculi, using his Coalescence to fake their handwriting and provide information on Kanai Ward’s past to Yuma.
- In order to enter the Mystery Labyrinth and reactivate his rain cloud generator after Yuma disables it, he tricks Yuma into holding hands with him after getting permission to do so by allowing him to activate his copied Forensic Forte: Coalescence, the only route he has inside as it connects with Yuma's pact with Shinigami and the Labyrinth itself by proxy, specifically asking him to "Lend a hand." When he forces Yuma to prematurely summon the Labyrinth by threatening to shoot him, he follows him inside with the intent to battle him. This would eventually lead to Yuma being forced to sever his pact with Shinigami when Makoto has to exit the Mystery Labyrinth to tell the truth of Kanai Ward to the citizens, since Yuma not reaping his soul meant the Labyrinth would remain alongside any of its occupants, leaving Yuma alone and without any memories of his death god ally.
- When confronting him in the Mystery Labyrinth, after stabbing his Mystery Phantom from behind following the final Deduction Denouement sequence, he continuously attempts to justify his crimes to Yuma even as Yuma is calling him out for his misdeeds, while perfectly aware they make him a criminal and that what he's doing is immoral. He does this while also posing as a Mystery Phantom before Yuma to conceal that he snuck into the Labyrinth using his Coalescence, an ability he received from the copied DNA of Yuma, the original Number One. This self-justification continues even into the end of Yuma’s final speech against him and during his breakdown.
- He coldly guilt-trips Yuma into nearly committing suicide inside of the Mystery Labyrinth so he can take control of the World Detective Organization for himself solely so he can keep Kanai Ward forever isolated from the world, claiming him to be Kanai Ward’s evil so he feels inadequate enough to submit to his whims. His plan to kill him off would have succeeded had Shinigami not returned Yuma’s motivation by telling him why he agreed for her to possess him.
- Even after redeeming himself, he still attempts to maintain his control over Kanai Ward despite the homunculi now living in more freedom than before by mostly forcing them to rely on Amaterasu Corporation products to survive, as opposed to allowing them to decide how they should live knowing the truth of their existence. This only shows that he continues to lack any real faith in their ability to be self-sufficient even though he claims to now trust them with the truth of their existence and is evidence that he retains his desire to lord over the residents.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- He is an anti-villain and an extremist who honestly wants to protect the city of Kanai Ward from the outside world and keep the defective homunculi from being scrutinized for their existence, with him having no motive for his actions besides this, also meaning that for all of his villainy, he sincerely cares about the homunculi, though he makes it extremely clear that they're the only ones he gives any semblance of empathy to with everyone else instead being seen as a pawn for him to use, which prevents him from being Near Pure Evil as there is an extreme emphasis on his altruistic goals.
- Makoto makes this clear to Yuma when confronted over this, desperately claiming that Yuma must believe him that all he wants to do is to protect Kanai Ward, and unlike Yomi, he is telling the truth when he makes this claim and his desperate claims of wanting to do so are supposed to portray Makoto sympathetically. Even though he doesn’t view the homunculi as people, not having their best interests in mind, and has an extremely anti-social mindset towards them by being uncaring towards them as people, he is loyal to the homunculi themselves, no matter how insincere his desire to help them may appear to be, and he refuses to cause harm to them as a collective (with even his worst actions not being with the intent to actually harm them).
- In addition to the homunculi, he also seemingly cares for Martina to some degree as he allows her to decide her own path in life after he pragmatically saves her from Yomi, meaning that him saving her wasn't entirely for the purpose of ousting Yomi and Martina is an employee he actually empathizes with.
- He has a tragic backstory and reasoning that motivates him to go to the extremes that he does to begin with, even though his actions are far beyond justifying any of it:
- As Number One's homunculus, when he saw his own kind being reduced to a mere experimental failure, he thought that defending them was the only way to save them, which would involve hiding the truth than exposing it. This contrasted the mindset of his original self and twisted him into an extremely cynical version of the individual who trusts no one and only relies on himself that he was based on, forcing himself into stressfully taking on responsibilities to save them from their fate of being vilified by the rest of the world by committing many disturbing, immoral acts for the sake of protecting them, convincing himself that this was his supposed path in life upon being created.
- As Yomi's superior and the only one aware of the results of his homunculus research, his desire to protect the homunculi also led to a growing hatred for Yomi and the way that he lords over Kanai Ward with no regard for their lives at all, with the man claiming himself to be a hero when Makoto is fully aware of the truth that he's as far from one as he can possibly be, being a psychopath who instigated much of Amaterasu's corruption before Makoto took charge as CEO and enabled it further for his own ends.
- He himself also clarifies that he and the defective homunculi weren't created of their own will and had their existence forced onto them, this applying to the homunculi in Kanai Ward even with their amnesia, determining that they'd have to deal with many plights existing as mere artificial humans for the rest of their lives. Preferring not to have them deal with the horror of this knowledge, he believed that hiding the truth was the only way to save them from any psychological damage regarding their unwanted existence―which, despite Makoto's own efforts, only caused them to live horrible lives anyway as they didn't even know what they were to begin with, as they all had amnesia collectively and his belief that lying to them through any extreme measures possible to save them deluded him into thinking it was his only way to save them, even if there were other "solutions" in mind that would help them better.
- In addition to the above, for all of Makoto's heinousness, he is also merely an extension of the Unified Government, Dr. Huesca, and Yomi Hellsmile's prior homunculus research that began ten years ago, having been created by the UG using someone else's DNA for their own nefarious purposes of creating an immortal army, and Project: Homunculus, the project that was previously directed by the latter two which was partially influenced by Makoto's creation that led to the creation of the defective homunculi to begin with, was not conducted under his supervision. This means that despite hiding the results of the homunculus research, he is both a result of it himself and had no direct involvement in the tragic outcomes of it whatsoever.
- He has some semblance of actual standards despite his heinousness:
- He isn't a complete liar as he willingly describes most of his backstory and rivalry with Yomi with some capacity of honesty and a lack of resistance against the detectives, such as how the two of them were trying to reach the top of the corporate ladder against one another until Makoto surpassed him by becoming the CEO and how homunculi were previously researched in Kanai Ward.
- While it's mostly an excuse to alleviate responsibility for his own misdeeds, he opposes Yomi's abusive behavior over Kanai Ward's citizens and his general lack of standards or care towards others, holding all of his actions against him as well. This much is evident not only in his secret plan to oust him (for personal reasons, however) but also him addressing Yomi as the unrestrained and power-hungry director he actually is, something that some other characters refuse to do despite Yomi's blatant negative traits. The only other characters to directly address Yomi's corruption without fear of being targeted by him in this way are Yakou and Yuma, the leaders for the detectives. It's implied that the other defective homunculi taken to the restricted area following their off-screen deaths that aren't homunculi that Yuma encountered during his visit to Kanai Ward that are seen in the restricted area were indirectly killed by his subordinate Yomi as a result of his desire to target and kill the innocent regardless of their guilt, something that would very much annoy Makoto as someone legitimately trying to protect the citizens.
- Though this is also to make excuses for himself, he refuses to harm the innocent unless he feels like he has no other option but to do so to achieve his goals, such as his indirect murder of Yakou Furio and attempted murder of Number One, of whom he was clearly driven into targeting purely out of desperation to protect Kanai Ward. This likely didn't stop him from possibly killing innocent people alongside other criminals to feed Kanai Ward's homunculi either, as he was also trying to feed them however he possibly could regardless of ethics.
- His plan to take over the World Detective Organization is not a world domination plot as his desires extend no further than Kanai Ward because he only wishes to protect its homunculi and nothing more than that, meaning that even though he has the opportunity to dominate everyone on a global scale once he has the global organization under his command, he decides he should only constrain himself to Kanai Ward because he has no real reason to take control of everything globally.
- He is genuinely affable despite his villainy, speaking politely with anyone he interacts with and even teasing and joking around with them, albeit as a way to cover for himself. While Makoto's actions are clearly only pragmatic, his personality is sincerely friendly and not intended to lower people's guard. This is too detracting for him to be taken seriously as a threat prior to the events of Chapter 5 as he provides many exaggerated gestures and plenty of humorous dialogue, contrasting his overtly antagonistic true self.
- Even though he did intend to kill Yuma, he claims that he was using the Mystery Labyrinth to negotiate answers to Kanai Ward’s mysteries and would have been willing to sacrifice himself if Yuma’s answer was better. Makoto makes hints towards his desire to resolve Kanai Ward's issues more ethically by allowing Yuma to expose his true identity, even though this doesn't benefit him in any way whatsoever, even displaying satisfaction in him finding out the truth, showing that, unlike Yomi, when lording over Kanai Ward as Amaterasu Corporation's CEO, he isn't truly satisfied with his position of authority or the many burdens he has to deal with while in it due to his immensely corrupt practices. In the end, however, he agrees with Yuma that the only way to solve them is to let Kanai Ward decide, a plan that he follows through with. As Shinigami notes, this would solve the Mystery Labyrinth from the outside and prevent Makoto’s soul from being reaped as punishment.
- He redeems himself at the end of the game by reversing all of his heinous acts, such as describing the truth in detail, including all of his crimes, negotiating with the UG not to kill the defective homunculi, freeing Kanai Ward from isolation, and generally providing for the health of the homunculi by any means necessary. It's also made quite clear that Makoto now empathizes with the homunculi as people with their own thoughts and emotions than as only unfortunate homunculi, unlike what he did prior, showing he legitimately wants to improve Kanai Ward following the years of corruption that invaded the city, which was largely his own fault. He also allows the detectives to return to Kanai Ward in the event that another mystery is created in the city after coming to an agreement with them, and permits Kurumi to leave Kanai Ward so she can search for Number One after he gave her a note regarding his departure alongside the Book of Death.
- He is honorable as he decides against killing Halara, Desuhiko, Fubuki, and Vivia when they served their purpose as his pawns for him to use to oust Yomi for attempting to leak homunculus information to the outside world, instead trapping them in his penthouse in Kanai Tower while Kurumi and Yuma roam around the abandoned village in the restricted area, despite the fact that outright eliminating them would benefit his plans more.
Trivia[]
- He is the only Master Detective Archives: Rain Code villain to be Inconsistently Heinous.
- He is the first and currently only main antagonist written by Kazutaka Kodaka to be Inconsistently Heinous.
- He is the second Spike Chunsoft main antagonist to be Inconsistently Heinous, the first being Delta, the mastermind behind the events of the Zero Escape series. Additionally, he is the second Spike Chunsoft main antagonist to set the heinous standards for their work despite their inconsistencies and surpass a Pure Evil villain in plot influence: In Delta's case, he surpasses Gentarou Hongou, and in Makoto's case, he surpasses Yomi Hellsmile.
External Links[]
- Makoto Kagutsuchi on the Villains Wiki