Lost Judgment

A 2021 videogame by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios, Lost Judgement is a game about proving a middle-aged police officer didn't molest a Hot Mom in a Japanese subway. It is a followup to the prior title Judgment. Both games are also part of the Like a Dragon franchise, with this game taking place between the seventh and eighth LaD title.

Three years after the events of the last game, Kamurochou detectives Takayuki Yagami and Masaharu Kaito are asked for help from their friends Sugiura and Tsukumo in their own detective business in Ijincho, Yokohama. They were hired by a school director to investigate a case of bullying in the director's school, Seiryo High. The job ends easily as they discover that bullying indeed happened and intervene with to help the victim, a high school student called Mami Koda.

Meanwhile, Saori Shirosaki and Issei Hoshino are defending Akihiro Ehara, a middle-aged police officer accused of molesting a housewife, Yui Mamiya. With overwhelming evidence against him and Ehara's lax attitude toward defending himself, he is quickly and easily sentenced to prison, though with a small sentence given it was his first criminal offense. However, just after that, Ehara reveals in public the identity of a corpse recently discovered in Ijincho: Hiro Mikoshiba, a man who was accused of bullying Ehara's son, leading to his suicide, and also a teacher in Seiryo High.

Saori believes Ehara killed Mikoshiba and is using the sexual battery charge to use it as an alibi, as the time of the murder was determined to be around the same time Ehara was supposedly seen on the same wagon as Mamiya. She seeks Yagami's help to solve the question of how he did to it.

Directed by Yutaka Ito. Published by Sega.

Received a few DLC later, including adding some substories and a Kaito Files mode, with a new plot centered around Yagami's partner Masaharu Kaito in a plot set after the main game.

Tropes used in Lost Judgment include:

Berserk Button: Saori of all the heroes is the one especially enraged by Ehara because for her nothing is more enraging than someone using her status as a woman as a stepping stone for their objectives.
Big Bad Duumvirate: Hidemi Bando and Yu Kitakata. One is a Serial Killer who hunts down bullies that drove their victims to attempt suicide, the other is a corrupt government official who helped in founding a criminal syndicate to control the Japanese underworld to his own ends.
Blatant Lies: Borscht Kalashnikov's backstory of being descended from ninjas who ran away to Russia hundreds of years ago from Japan is quickly called implausible for Yagami, considering how harsh that journey would be for two people back at that point.
Courtroom Antic: Ehara starts a furor in the intro by confirming someone was murdered around the time he is to be arraigned on a molesting charge. As it was part of his plan to humiliate the legal system for not intervening to deal with his son's killer. Even if the victim he identified was traced back to him later, they'd be too embarrassed to change his walking for a lesser charge and he'd walk free knowing he made a fool of the legal system. Finding this out and preventing it from going off without a hitch is the crux of most of the plot.
- Ironically, a chance to pull off a repeat is offered to Ehara to solve the true case, by his own defense counsel no less.
Co-Dragons: Kitakata's former students all help him in killing bullies without any hierarchy between them.
Diabolus Ex Machina: Reiko's son wakes up just as his mother decides to deliver herself to the authorities and end Bando's scheme, making everything worse to both Yagami and Kuwana.
The Dragon: Kazuki Soma is working for Bando, and unlike him he is more hands-on, willing to kill using his own hands despite having a bunch of minions in RK.
Driven to Suicide: A recurrent theme in the story is students who try suicide after being bullied, with Toshiro Ehara and Reiko's son Mitsuru being the most relevant to the main storyline.
Exact Words: Played very darkly by Soma concerning Sawa being asleep. He just didn't add how permanent said sleep was.
Foil: Bando and Kitakata aren't so different in their methods as they appear: both at least believe their actions lead to better consequences, and both use blackmail to control people. However, Kitakata is a vigilante acting entirely outside the limits of the law that can perfectly go hands-on to fulfill his objectives, while Bando is a government official using said government's apparatus to commit crimes and never lifts a finger.
Foreshadowing: RK foreshadow plot developments in Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It's in fact both a contemporary and forerunner of other government-run criminal groups with connections to corrupt officials with some degree of state backing.
Hero Antagonist:
- Kyoko Amasawa almost gets Yagami caught early in the game, as she suspects Yagami is a sexual pervert since he is planting cameras all over her high school. This is Played for Laughs.
- On a more serious note, Kisuke Watanabe and Sadao Takano are just trying to do their jobs the best as they can, but bureaucracy or simply his role as prosecutor in Takano's case makes them oppose Yagami.
Hot Mom: Yui Mamiya is very easy on the eyes and has a six-year-old son. Some characters comment on how the fact she is very pretty makes it easier to believe Ehara molested her.
Hypocrite: Akihiro Ehara negates guilt in Yoko Sawa's death because it was only indirectly caused by his murder of Mikoshiba. Yagami points out that Mikoshiba only indirectly caused the death of Ehara's son.
Karma Houdini: Yagami allows Kuwana to walk away so Soma can't become this, as the latter killed Sawa but the first is a much more convenient offender for Public Security, who was already manipulating the investigation of the murder of the high school teacher to pin the blame on the handyman. It is implied in the ending Kuwana decided to quit being a vigilante killer, so while he does walk for his own crimes, at least he will cease to commit more.
Late Arrival Spoiler: The dissolution of the Tojo and Omi from Yakuza: Like a Dragon is casually revealed in the intro.
Le Parkour: A gameplay mechanic in some areas requires doing this to get around, but it's only scripted for certain areas.
Meaningful Name:
- "Red Knife" is what RK actually means; red is one of the national colors of Japan; turns out the whole organization is being manipulated, without the knowledge of most of the gang, by members of the Japanese government. The name is purposely Western for another reason, to distance it from the yakuza that it was meant to be a successor to.
- Mamiya can mean among other things "demon". As it turns out, Yui Mamiya is neither as benevolent nor innocent as she looks.
- On a more humorous note, one of the few notable traits about Mami is her large breasts, which some students attribute to being the cause behind her bullying by other girls.
- "The Professor" from the School Stories isn't just an alias, it's a very big clue to their true identity. It's the alias of Amasawa's rival, who also reads Sherlock Holmes, specifically referring to Professor Moriarity.
- Kyoko Amasawa's dog Ranpo is named after "Edogawa Ranpo" a Japanese mystery writer who was influenced in his works by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Melee à Trois: Yagami and his allies, Kuwana and his minions, and Bando and RK fight for their own objectives with only temporary truces between the first and the second.
Mole in Charge: Soma is actually a mole inside RK, put in there by the government to control the organization so Bando could have awareness of the Japanese underworld and control their offenses to a "reasonable" level. In fact, considering how Akutsu describes Soma's powers of "foreknowledge", it's all but said RK was always like that, and that Soma is one of their founders.
Non-Action Big Bad: Bando would never go to the field under the risk of exposing himself, so he has RK do much of the heavy work for him while he delivers threats and provides political cover to make certain public records vanish to RK's benefit.
Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: RK purposely invokes this trope. Unlike the more formal Yakuza, they are a hangure, or "half-grey" organization, meaning they are harder to bust and identify under Japanese anti-gang laws. They also lack outward symbols of identification like the yakuza, wearing all manner of dress, not having formal ritual or ceremonies, and avoiding conspicuous displays of influence or wealth. They do however have some government backers most are unaware of, courtesy of their nominal leader Kazuki Soma being a plant on behalf of the Japanese Public Safety division to keep tabs on them and manipulate them to be a shadow army under government control.
Red Herring: An almost literal one: it's at first implied RK is an acronym for Reiko Kusumoto, and that she is somehow behind them. Actually, it's an acronym for "Red Knife".
Sensual Slav: Sofiya Kalashnikov, a Russian "kunoichi" who works for her brother's "ninja" dojo. She is very pretty and wears a very flattering outfit. This is deconstructed, as her brother casually reveals to Yagami that he is perfectly aware that her main function is keeping his students in the dojo in the vague hope she will answer their affections.
Serial Killer: Kitakata is never seen directly murdering someone, but his modus operandi(selecting for death those accused of bullying as his targets) and the fact he plans all the stages of the homicide, selecting the victim, planning their capture, and determining how they will be killed, qualifies him as one.
Spotting the Thread: Several of these incidents prove important.
- Ehara's story is seemingly foolproof. Careful investigation reveals several dangling threads, that when added up, prove it false. Specifically, it's revealed the whole groping incident was expertly staged with outside help so he could appear to be in two places at once, thus allowing him to murder Mikoshiba and be caught later on a much lesser charge.
- A vital piece of evidence is hidden in a place that requires remembering an early detail and spotting the discrepancy. Specifically, Kuwana vapes, and thus a cigarette pack in his home makes no sense. It's actually concealing some evidence.
- A later reveal adds a whole new dimension to the story, specifically when Watanabe reveals certain video footage of an earlier incident was doctored. Knowing who could have done so and who benefited helps a lot of details fall into place.
- Several early incidents become a retroactive case of this when all the seemingly unrelated people involved are revealed to have all gone to the same school. Extrapolating backward with this knowledge makes a lot of Kuwana's actions make a lot more sense.
Starter Villain: Kosuke has little to do with the plot and serves almost solely as a way of acclimating the player to the game's mechanics by tracking and then fighting him.
We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future: The story hinges on a few elements of this trope being Deconstructed.
- Ehara's true goals hinged on several uses of this trope. He needed to appear to be in two places at once at times that conflicted, having committed crimes both times, but being caught for the lesser charge while releasing evidence of the far more serious one later. The plan was to embarrass the legal system into perverting justice by making them unable to act on the more serious charge. He accomplishes this via a stand-in being seen on camera in one place while committing the crimes seen at the other location, then later switches places with the double to make his alibi airtight and to make sure he was nailed publicly for a very minor molesting charge to later dodge justice for a far more justified murder charge. Exposing how the deception hinged on playing this trope straight is key to exposing the true crime for punishment.
- Related to the first example, the legal system is unable to move forward with reexamining the case because all records they have on the conflicting evidence are copies of the original, and they cite this trope making it impossible to verify the truth and thus change any of the charges. This is later solved via a WORM (Write Once, Read Many) archive that solves the legal issues and provides a certifiable original record that meets the scrutiny of the court.
- A case of using selective editing to remove vital information is also important. Key footage relating to the murder of Yoko Sawa is explicitly tampered with to excise any display of the true killer while framing another party. Despite the obvious discrepancies of this footage, the fact the legal system is forced to accept it as true despite questions tips the hand of the party responsible. Specifically, this exposes RK and Kazuki Soma as having friends in positions to make legal archives of public cameras go away, and this makes clear what was a gang of thugs has government sponsors.

The Kaito Files

Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Kyoya Sadamoto is discovered to be the true mastermind of the plot and a lot of hints are dropped prior so the player can figure this out on their own.
Even Evil Has Standards:
- The scumbag rival detective agency Kaito has to deal with may not be opposed to doing things like the yakuza they used to be, but even they consider Kyoyo Sadamoto scum and are willing to team up with Kaito to stop him.
- Kenmochi seems like a drunkard thug and a possible rapist and doesn't try to fight either implication. In truth, he's a decent man who was tricked into committing murder haunted by the deaths he unwittingly was gulled into committing, thus the drinking to bury the pain. He also despite staging a scene to make himself look like a rapist never hurt the woman in question. When he discovers Kyoya Sadamoto, a man he thought was his friend, was the Big Bad who tricked him into committing murder, he dies taking Kyoya with him for his crimes.
Expy: Gameplay-wise, Kaito plays much like Kiryu does in the main series, with his combat movesets being slightly altered versions from Kiryu's Brawler and Beast movesets.
Mundane Solution: The Running Gag of Yagami's office being commandeered by some unwanted hijacker is foiled via this trope. Kaito simply calls the cops on the guys who did it and they are forced to flee by default.
Mutual Kill: The Big Bad is taken out in this fashion though unusually there is a bit of delay in the trope. Specifically, Kyoya Sadamoto had poisoned Kenmochi prior and the poison had left Kenmochi too weak to strike back initially, but he manages to summon the last of his strength to give Sadamoto a Neck Snapp before dying at the same time as he finally succumbs to the poison for good.
Not Me This Time: A large part of the plot is predicated on this trope. Mikiko Sadamoto is pegged as a Serial Killer, which is supported by their being at the right places and times to kill all the apparent victims. The subversion reveals a lot about the real killer. Kyoya Sadamoto was discovered a few years prior to the story to have been a monster behind the murders in the backstory by his wife and she intended to off him as his associates for their crimes. Kyoya's plan in response hinged on killing the same associates to cover his tracks and pinning the blame on his wife.