@HOOfan_1
Ryuu's a manipulator, but I think he's a benevolent one, from what we've seen so far, and is actually trying to improve things for people. Frankly, everybody in that hare-kon is either a manipulator, or Koharu - and Koharu sometimes genuinely busts out lines that sound manipulative as hell (although they're what she truly thinks), as well as learning to be a bit of a manipulator herself.
It's funny you talk about
He really screwed up an already mentally unstable Makoka.
and
Once he got what he wanted (Koharu) he had no second thoughts about basically throwing Madoka away.
, because not only is a one-time special concert the exact opposite of "letting go easily" (and exactly what you'd expect from a shoujo-genre pianist in a last-ditch attempt to win back their beloved), it's pretty clear that the main reason Ryuu let Madoka leave so easily (and prevented people from trying too hard to follow her), was because he thought that it would be bad for her to keep clinging to him as a sole support in her life forever, and that quasi-master-servant relationship - and knew that she still had a trauma about being unable to bear kids in a marriage formed for that purpose, and that she had far more potential for real growth beyond him although it wouldn't do Madoka a lick of good if she didn't discover that herself by leaving under her own will.
He gives nudges here and there (sometimes big nudges), and I'm not saying he hasn't given some bad nudges, but for the most part - he just seems to be trying to get the people he cares about to the point of determining who they are themselves, rather than by romantic, familial, business, or cultural expectations that operate off the principle of "are you making someone else happy by doing this?"
That succeeds radically well in cases like the schoolgirl (farmer's daughter) in love with the married P.E. Teacher, where both of them decide that, no, this wouldn't really make them happy, and they're glad to have a conclusive ending and move on, in a manner that gives the farmer's daughter enough courage to argue with her father until her lets her continue in her education.
Sometimes it's messier.
...although I do miss the days of Yuzu/Madoka/Koharu as a comedy trio.