Hello everyone, and welcome to my first proposal. For my first ever proposal, I wish to bring in another villain from a very popular Japanese video game franchise, who I feel like passes the heinous standards but is just too tragic to be NPE dude to his dark and troubled background, as well as possessing a quality that prevents him from achieving the NPE status. Also, thanks to Flowman777 for giving me another chance at this.
So, ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce: Masataka Ebina.
What's the Work?
Like a Dragon is an action-adventure RPG drama video game franchise published by Sega, which follows the story of Ichiban Kasuga, a former yakuza of the Arakawa Family of the Tojo Clan, as he and his friends go on a series of adventures, following the end of the yakuza era.
Previously, it was known as Yakuza (aka the Yakuza Saga), a awesome beat-em-up drama video game series that follows the story of Kazuma Kiryu, a former legendary yakuza known as the "Dragon of Dojima" and the Fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan, who tries to escape his yakuza lifestyle, but is dragged into conflict whenever it involves the Tojo Clan and trying thwart conspiracies that just doesn't threaten the Tojo Clan, but his loved ones in general. Following Yakuza 6 (the grand finale of the Yakuza Saga), Kiryu fakes his death and becomes an agent of the Daidoji faction. He does make his return in the Like a Dragon Saga, where he serves as one of the overarching protagonists… until he makes his return as a main protagonist once again.
For this moment, we are diving into Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, a 2024 sequel to the 2019 video game Yakuza: Like a Dragon and its 2023 spin-off Like a Dragon: Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Three years after the Great Dissolution, Kasuga and his friends have been living good honest lives, with Kasuga trying to help many former yakuza members to live honest lives. A year later however, their lives get into trouble when a VTuber, Hisoka Tatara, begins spreading false rumors regarding Kasuga and as a result, has led to him getting fired from his job. To make matters more troubling, the Seiryu clan begins growing in numbers, due to recruiting a lot of ex-yakuza members. Kasuga later receives a request to go to Hawaii to see Akane, Arakawa's former lover and Kasuga's biological mother. After arriving at Honolulu, Hawaii, he reunites with Kiryu, who is on a mission to locate Akane. During their time in Hawaii, they discover a conspiracy that threatens to kill every one of the ex-yakuza members, with one of the main conspirators being this man himself: Masataka Ebina.
Who is Masataka Ebina? What has he done?
Masataka Ebina is one of the main antagonists of the entire game (more specifically, he's the main antagonist of the Yokohama Arc and the overarching antagonist of the Hawaii Arc).
Background
He was born as Masataka Hikawa around January 1977, being the son of Yuriko Hikawa and Masumi Arakawa, with the latter being unaware of his son's existence since he left his mother by herself due to having bad blood with the Hikawa Clan. As a single frail mother, Yuriko struggled to raise Ebina properly, and the former Hikawa Family members paid her no mind as they left the clan to either live out their lives or join a new family. Because of this, Ebina heavily resented Arakawa for abandoning his mother and the Hikawa Family, and the Yakuza underworld as a whole, calling them out for their talks of Yakuza bonds being thicker than blood, while ignoring hima and his mother. When he was a middle school student, Ebina's mother passed away due to her health, with her last request to Ebina to not hate Arakawa and the Hikawa Family, But Ebina, consumed by grief and rage, did not understand why and ignored her request, as he went on to seek vengeance on Arakawa and the Yakuza underworld. As an adult, he would go on to join the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and became an elite bureaucrat, driven by his desire to eradicate the Yakuza. But in 2019, he learned news of the Great Dissolution and later Arakawa's demise. He was enraged and devastated that the Yakuza now suddenly became ordinary civilians, now being theoretically treated as one, and the fact he could not be able to kill his father with his own hands. Driven by his rage and believing he could never get the chance for revenge, he began to theorized his ways to exact his revenge. He later came up with an idea to rally up large groups of former Yakuza members at his disposal and have them all killed to satisfy his vengeful desire. To do this, he would join the Seiryu Clan and was quickly promoted as captain by Mamoru Takabe, thanks to his earnings. Around some point, he became acquainted with the Overseer of the Hawaiian criminal underworld and the Sage of Palekana, Bryce Fairchild, and the two forge an alliance.
Around 2021, Takabe was arrested which was thanks to Ebina as part of his plan to take over the clan as Acting Chairman. Through Bryce, he met Eiji Mitamura, a former member of Bleach Japan and someone who also held a grudge on the yakuza. To destroy the yakuza's lives, Eiji took a VTuber Channel called Tatara Channel owned by Hisoka Tatara and spread false information regarding the former Yakuza members, resulting in them being fired from their jobs. This even included Kasuga, alongside his friends Kokichi Adachi and Yu Nanaba. Ebina would also free Jo Sawashiro from his prison and with little convincing, Ebina got him to join the clan.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Ebina first appears when Ichiban, Adachi, and Nanba infiltrated the Seiryu Clan headquarters where he reveals himself as the acting chairman of the clan, as well as having been the captain of the clan, having joined the clan after the Great Dissolution. He later takes the three to a warehouse where he reveals that because of the Five Year Ex-Yakuza Clause, many former Yakuza members are unable to find work and lives on the streets, to which the chairman Takabe tried to provide a way to give them a honest living.
This plan is revealed in the warehouse, where Ebina explains that the clan has been using the warehouse to gather "trash" around the globe, such as evidence of a president's adultery or illicit money transfers and secretly stores them for safekeeping and will dispose them if a client requests it. He also reveals that Takabe intended to coordinate with all the remaining Yakuza organizations and dissolve them, in which would be the Second Great Dissolution and should it succeed, the Yakuza will truly become a thing of the past. He also proposes to work with Kasuga and the others in hopes of achieving Masumi's last dream of giving the Yakuza a normal life. Before they left, Ebina also introduces Sawashiro to Kasuga, Adachi, and Nanba, much to their shock and confusion.
However, throughout the game, Kiryu Kazama, alongside Adachi, Nanba, and Saeko, and Seonhee goes to meet with Ebina and Sawashiro, where it is later revealed that Ebina actually got the idea for a waste management business from Palekana, which also runs a similar business on Nele Island, although he claims he has no knowledge of Palekana hunting down Ichiban's mother Akane. However, he and Sawashiro corroborate with the VTuber Hisoka Tatara of Kiryu being, as well as claims of him reviving the Tojo Clan, revealing his status to the world. However, Sawashiro, who was going behind Ebina's back, reveals to Kiryu and his team of Ebina's plan, which involved in using Kasuga to draw out Akane as bait as a favor for his partner Bryce and he made a deal with him to store all of Japan's nuclear waste on Nele Island, which will allow the Japanese government to resume their nuclear industry, and the two amassing wealth. Later on in the series, Ebina announces on the Tatara's channel that he will disband the Seiryu Clan and that they will be reborn as the nonprofit organization Bleach Japan, as well as revealing his partnership with Palekana and his plan to pass their Yakuza rehabilitation program to the government. However, it is revealed that it was pre-recorded and it was used to draw in Kiryu and his team to the Tojo Clan headquarters, further exposing him as a result. Afterwards, he proceeds to murder Masafumi Narasaki and then burns down the Tojo Clan headquarters, destroying the sacred place that held the clan for many years, with Kiryu later on sadly learning of its destruction.
In the finale of the game, Ebina contacts Kiryu and Kasuga, revealing that the rehabilitation program has been approved by the government and that he is holding Sawashiro hostage in the iconic location of the franchise; the Millennium Tower. This leads to the group spitting up into two: while Kasuga and his team (Adachi, Joon-gi, Tomizawa, and Chitose) would confront Bryce at Nele's Island, Kiryu and his team (Nanba, Saeko, Zhao, and Seonhee) would head to the tower, rescue Sawashiro, and defeat Bryce and end his plan once and for all.
Following Bryce's defeat and Chitose's confession of being Tatara and how her VTube channel was being use by Eiji for selfish reasons, Kiryu and his group finally confronts Ebina, and finds a battered and barely alive Sawashiro. Ebina then reveals his past and his plan for vengeance; which is forcing the hundreds of former Yakuza members on Nele Island with the nuclear waste disposal there, slowly torturing them with radiation poisoning and then die as a result. Eventually, Kiryu and his team battles Ebina, and after a tough battle, Kiryu defeats Ebina. Ebina then demands Kiryu to kill him as he gives off a rant about the Yakuza and how he will only crawl back up like the rest of the other yakuza. However, Kiryu spares as he sympathizes with Ebina's anger, while tearfully begging Ebina to give the Yakuza, including himself, a chance to atone for their mistakes and even goes so far to apologize to Ebina, before going unconscious. Afterwards, Ebina is arrested for his crimes and after hearing Kiryu's words, decides to let go of his vengeful desires.
Heinous Standards
Ok, as I and some users have mention, the Like a Dragon franchise has a high amount of heinous standards, which ranges from murder to destruction to rape, and the franchise doesn't really hold on its heinous standards. For more info on the villains who passed the standards here, you can read these three proposals regarding our antagonists of this franchise.
But I can tell you without a doubt that Ebina definitely passes the heinous standards big time. How so? Well, allow me to explain why.
First, there's his main goal. He wishes to eradicate all of the former Yakuza just to satisfy his vengeful grudge towards them. And how exactly does he commit this? Well, Ebina has been manipulating former Yakuza members to join the Seiryu Clan in a false sense of security that he would unleash a grand plan to officially reform them. And he managed to gather HUNDREDS of former Yakuza members. And then, he forms an alliance with Bryce to use Nele Island as wasting ground for nuclear waste, and send all hundreds of these former Yakuza to the island where they'll be force to work at the island while being slowly infected with radioactive poison til they eventually die. While there are many extreme cases of death and torture in the LAD franchise, this right is by far one of the worst examples yet. And the fact he got hundreds of these guys and tried to have them have all slowly tortured to death makes him even worse.
Besides that, it should be noted that he and Eiji are responsible for ruining the former Yakuza members' lives in the first place as he had Eiji slander about them with the latter using the Tatara Channel owned by VTuber Hisoka Tatara (who is actually Chitose) to spread false rumors about Kasuga and the other ex-yakuza members, leading to them being fired from their jobs and not being able to find work, due to being a Yakuza in the past. The same happened to Daigo and his security consolidation, with the company being shut down and forcing him, Majima, and Saejima to hide away from the media. And those who are associated with them also got their lives ruined, with Adachi and Kasuga being a good example, as the two lost their jobs due to their relations to Kasuga. And this was all part of Ebina's plan to gather the ex-yakuza members so he could send them to their deaths. And even now, he continues to have Eiji slander about Kasuga, Kiryu, and their allies, with one notable example being that of framing Kiryu and the Heroes of Tomorrow of being anti-reformists, turning the media against them, and of course, revealing to the world that Kiryu is alive.
It should be also noted that because of Ebina, Bryce was able to continue on with his attempted plans to blackmail the entire world leaders to gain global influence to become a "god", by making a deal where Bryce stores the nuclear waste at his island, Ebina would send the yakuza he gathered to the island to force them to work there while the radioactive waste slowly tortures and kills them all with no escape. His alliance with Ebina also involved him in having Eiji assist him in kidnapping the young Lani to help prevent the heroes from removing Bryce from being the Sage of Palekana, which also led to the deaths of both Hanakawa and Wong Tou.
Ebina also has done some personal nasty things himself, such as killing Narasaki (although the guy was an ass so he deserved it), capturing and torturing Sawashiro (to the point that his right eye is damaged), and burning the Tojo Clan Headquaters, a sacred location that housed the Tojo Clan members for years, which added a personal villainy towards Kiryu since despite being a ex-yakuza, he was still loyal to the Tojo Clan and seeing the headquarters destroyed hurts him. He even attempts to kill Kiryu and his team during the finale, although despite the hard conflict he gave them, he was eventually defeated.
As far as resources goes, I'd say he has no issue there, given that he is the acting chairman of Seiryu Clan and has hundreds of followers under his command, as well as having ties to the Japanese government due to using his clan as a "waste management" company storing information and objects for them, and being a former officer of Tokyo PD with his past career allowing him to gain access to confidential information on Japan's organized crime and other factions such as the Daidoji faction, having Eiji use the Tatara Channel to spread the information around the media.
So yeah, I'd say with full confidence he passes the heinous standards rather easily.
What makes him Inconsistent?
Despite his heinous crimes of trying to commit genocide on hundreds of ex-yakuza members and ruining their lives, alongside the main characters', there are several factors that make him heinous, but not too heinous to make him a NPE character.
The first and foremost is his tragedy and his motivations. As a child, Ebina lived a terrible life due to him and his mother being forced to live by themselves, since the former Hirakawa family pay them no attention. His mother struggled to raise Ebina properly due to her frail health and in her last moments, she tried to plead to her son to not hate his father or the Yakuza. But Ebina's hatred towards his father and the Yakuza as a whole proved too strong for him and as result, he decide to extract his revenge on them for ruining his life and avenge his mother, which shows that even though he did see her as a fool for wanting to forgive Masumi, he still genuinely loved her and her death was one of the main catalysts on why he wants the Yakuza eradicated.
And the other thing that plays a part in his tragedy is his self-loathing of himself. Despite wanting to get his vengeance on the Yakuza, he knows deep down on how much of a hypocrite he is, since he was willing to join with the same criminal underworld he loathes to get his chance at revenge, even getting a tattoo on himself. He also knows that even after if he would get his vengeance, it would deprive him a target to vent his anger upon and will leave him no satisfaction whatsoever, an outcome that his mother greatly feared and try to prevent. It's even revealed that his plan to destroy all of the Yakuza even included himself, which is more evident when after being defeated, he demanded Kiryu to finish him or else he will simply crawl back up like all the other Yakuza did.
Speaking of which, his defeat is heavily portrayed with sympathy as Ebina simply goes in a emotional rant about the Yakuza and even demands Kiryu to finish him off. However, Kiryu instead apologizes and begs Ebina to give the Yakuza a chance to atone, which promotes Ebina to let go of his vengeful desires. And not to mention how the music score is played in a somber and emotional tone, which further showcases how Ebina's defeat is portrayed with complete sympathy rather than satisfaction.
Overall, Ebina is just way too tragic and sympathetic. While his actions and methods were heavily wrong and does seem enough to make him NPE, his tragedy is just too much for him to be completely that, especially given that Kiryu and Kasuga understands his pain, with the former realizing that Ebina was a victim of Kiryu's poor decision to abandon his responsibilities as the Fourth Chairman of the Tojo Clan, lamenting that he could've help Ebina had he changed the Yakuza back then.
Final Verdict
A big yes to one of the best Like a Dragon villains yet.