anyways i think his different portraits are sort of meant to signify how he sees himself as this cool badass journalist dude but is really this dorky weirdo who talks to his pet turtle and often embarasses himself
The last one hit hard, the fact that he was so talkitive and voiced his thoughts on everything throughout the game and by the end he just says nothing is uneasy. Hope my man has it better in FSR, he deserves it.
Nice lining up all of his portraits in an order where it seems he’s turning. I wonder if the artists intended for them to be viewed in that way, especially with old Tokio. There’s one missing, but I understand for the sake of the amount of songs used.
In my opinion, complete mental breakdown. With the way he called Slash his own alter ego (and him being explicitly stated to have DID/multiple personalities), I think the Red Room was literally just his own internal fight and decision on what he wants to do with his mind and self. Hence the decision to remove the Silver Eye which put him in more or less emotional stasis, and his greater focus and clarity in how he talked and acted from that point onward. It was just an artistic depiction of his breakdown and fight against himself. Meru's intervention was to represent how even when you're dealing with your own self, you still don't have to be alone, as the presence of other people- even in memory, as I believe she had passed on by that point- can be what saves you from killing yourself (represented by Slash, Tokio's alter ego, attempting to kill him in the RPG format). That's just my interpretation, at least.
