Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, where we discuss the wasted potential of our favourite
plotlines.
As I've hinted before, I have a serious issue with how Irene Lew has been handled in the
modern Ninja Gaiden series. Irene debuted in the original NES Ninja Gaiden as Ryu's
love interest and CIA liaison. She retained this role for the rest of the trilogy and
eventually married Ryu afterwards, as confirmed by the OVA and Ryu's DOA1 bio.
The modern Ninja Gaiden series, as I understand it, was intended as a prequel to the classics,
presumably as an excuse to take the Bond Girl approach with each new game without trampling
on the official marriage. Once Itagaki was replaced by Hayashi, however, things changed.
In Dead or Alive Dimensions, Agent Sonia from modern NGII returned and was identified as
Irene, bringing the canonicity of the older games into question. Are the events of the
original trilogy altered to fit with the new stuff but still mostly canon, or are they
completely wiped? To this day, it's still not clear.
But this is a fairly small gripe, in the grand scheme of things. After all, Ryu's wife is
back. Sure, they aren't currently married, but with NGIII promising to put a greater
emphasis on the story, with a romantic element as a key part of it, it'll be nice to see
that relationship build from here, right?
Terminator: "Wrong."
Yeah, despite them going out of their way to retcon Sonia into being Irene and having
Hayate and Ayane make comments that make it clear they can tell Ryu and Irene's relationship
is more than just work associates, Irene is nowhere to be seen in NGIII.
Elena Fisher: "Last Year's model."
Nathan Drake: "Haha. Cute."
They brought her back for Razor's Edge as a supporting character for Ayane's levels,
and even imply she's still into Ryu, but she doesn't once interact with the man she was
married to in the original continuity. They brought back Robert for a cameo, which is
a fucking deep cut, but they couldn't do anything with Irene? Let me put it another way: in
the modern era, Irene Lew, primary love interest and eventual wife of Ryu Hayabusa in the classic
games, spent more time with Ryu and gave more of an indication that she had feelings for
him when she wasn't even Irene!
This would be like if, after establishing that Michelle Jones also goes by "MJ" in Spider-Man:
Homecoming, thereby establishing her as the MCU equivalent of classic Spidey love interest
and wife, Mary Jane Watson, they then dropped her and introduced a new love interest in
Far From Home. Like, why bother establishing a new version of the classic love interest
if she's going to hold no greater significance to the story afterwards?
To fully understand the problem here, you need to know the full context. Ninja Gaiden
1 was one of the first games, if not the first, to ever use cutscenes to tell its narrative
beyond just setting up the premise. And a big part of that original narrative was the
love story between Ryu and Irene. The game ends with the two embracing after the evil
is defeated, for god's sake. These two can unironically be considered gaming royalty
for that. Especially when I can't think of a single other example of a married couple
in games that fight side-by-side, outside of Dynasty Warriors and Uncharted 4.
An yet, after reintroducing Irene in the modern era, the central love story of the very next
game is between Ryu and a new character, Mizuki McCloud. Now, don't get me wrong, I like Mizuki.
She's the best woman of the modern era of NG and she has a lot of potential for future
appearances, especially if they rip off Lady from DMC4SE to make her playable. But, there
really is no reason to introduce a new, very similar character to Irene right after bringing
Irene back. Ninja Gaiden III's story wouldn't even really change all that much if it was
Irene in place of Mizuki. And, in fact, one part of the story would actually make a lot
more sense if that were the case.
So, let's imagine NGIII brought back Irene. Ideally, I'd have not made her and Sonia the
same character, and instead had Ryu and Irene still be married, but let's imagine that Dimensions
still made the revelation. In this game, Irene has the exact same role and even design as
Mizuki (aside from eye colour, but that changed in this game anyway, so...). After all, Irene
was also a brunette in the old games, so we can say she stopped dyeing her hair since
Dimensions, and any differences in her look here are just down to the art style change.
In the real game, a British terrorist organisation enacts a terror attack in London and, for
some reason that I doubt even makes sense to the writers, the Japanese Self-Defence
Force take on the task of dealing with them. Not, I dunno, MI5? The SDF only seems to be
there because Ryu is called out by name and he happens to live in Japan. Does this mean
that, if Ryu had moved to Russia for a few years, the KGB would get involved? Sure, the
SDF does do peacekeeping work for NATO, but there are more obvious choices to handle this
particular incident.
If the game wasn't concerned with trying to propagate the Japanese master race and instead
brought Irene back as the female lead and love interest, we'd then have the CIA getting
involved. Not only is there the well-known friendship between the US and UK to justify
it, but Irene, having worked with Ryu a number of times in the past, would be the obvious
liaison between him and whichever organisation is going to deal with this threat.
From here, Irene can just take Mizuki's entire role and backstory. After all, we know so
little about current Irene that revealing she adopted her dead sister's daughter and
now raises her as her own isn't a stretch, and we can say that Ryu didn't know about
it because he's always kept Irene at arm's length. But now, through a combination of
having to wait on the ship for intel to arrive to tell him his next destination (when he's
historically know exactly where to go to complete his missions) and him being in a more emotionally
vulnerable place because of the curse and the question of whether or not he's a monster,
Ryu and Irene spend a lot more time together and he lets his guard down around her, allowing
her to support him emotionally until the two are fully in love with each other by the climax.
And after Ryu saves the day and rescues Canna, instead of just running off for his next adventure
like this was Sonic Adventure 1, Ryu and Irene cement their relationship with a kiss, and
Ryu takes to helping Irene raise Canna. I mean, it's hard to take your claims about
the importance of the story seriously when it ends with no changes to the status quo,
with all the characters basically exactly where they were at the start of the narrative.
Fuck you.
And from here, if NG or DOA ever did a timeskip, Canna could one day become a ninja-soldier
character who uses skills and tools from both of her foster parents. And hell, Team Ninja
would never need to worry about funding again, since Sony would absolutely be onboard for
funding another dad simulator.
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Today's recommended video is #1016 Dead or Alive Dimensions (3DS) Unplayable Characters
(3/6): Irene Lew playthrough by AdmiralMcFish - Bosses and Hidden Characters. Quite a mouthful,
eh? And yet it takes longer to say than the writers spent thinking about Irene post-Dimensions.