Is Ryoken a “bad person”?
Whatever that means, in regards to a fictional character in a show about card games.
Short answer: Pfft, no. Mortality is more complex than “good” and “bad”. And it certainly isn’t simplified in Vrains, which has a long running theme of taking responsibility for one’s actions and the consequences of both “good” and “bad” acts. (But that’s a different post I have in the works.)
It’s not so easy to break down what classifies a “bad person” in fiction, so lets instead ask a different question.
Is Ryoken a mass murderer? No.
Was Ryoken almost a mass murderer? No. An accessory at most.
I’ve seen some forget, or purposefully ignore, that Ryoken wasn’t the one behind the Tower of Hanoi. The program was designed by Kogami, and activated by Kogami. It was Kogami that insisted they were doing the right thing, and that humanity would someday understand. Kogami who decided thousands of lives were worth sacrificing to prevent a future tragedy. Not Ryoken.
The reason Faust, Vyra and the others talk about how Ryoken is going to be one of history’s worst criminals after the Tower activates is because he’s the face of Hanoi, the leader in name, and Kogami is legally already dead and in the eyes of rest of the world, no longer able to commit crimes. Kogami was also going to die, again, with the network, leaving Ryoken alone to take the blame for the fallout.
The Tower was not Ryoken’s idea or his choice, but he takes responsibility for it anyway, because that’s the kind of person he is. He doesn’t see himself as someone victimized by a controlling megalomaniac, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t. Ryoken blames himself, but he’s not as guilty as he makes himself out to be. Ryoken definitely isn’t innocent in the matter of the Tower; he was its strongest line of defense. He fed Ema and Gou to it. But if the Tower was a bomb, Ryoken wasn’t the one with his finger on the button.
In that metaphor, he’s even the one that defuses it. Ryoken could have just let the Tower activate. He didn’t have to go back in VRAINS and give Yusaku a chance to deactivate it. No one had to tie him up and force him, like Ai suggested. Hell, there’s nothing to suggest the Tower was set up to automatically deactivate upon Ryoken’s defeat. Going by how he handed over the virus removal program early on in season 1, Ryoken most likely deactivated the tower himself out of respect for Yusaku’s victory.
Ryoken almost allowed thousands of people to die, yes, but he didn’t. During the season 1 finally, Ryoken has hit the lowest point in his life, and makes the worst mistake he’s ever made before by standing by as the Tower almost kills an inconceivable number of people, including his family and friends and himself. But it doesn’t happen, because Yusaku was there to stop Ryoken from hurting himself and everyone else. And Ryoken doesn’t keep going anyway, or try again. Even though his father died so the Tower would succeed, Ryoken still either lets it shut down or shuts it down himself. And the whole time, he must have known he was disregarding his father’s dying wish, was making his father’s sacrifice for nothing. He accepted his defeat gracefully anyway.
With no Kogami in the picture, Ryoken has shown zero interest in hurting anyone besides potentially dangerous AIs.