#IN THE END I CHOSE MOMOTA BECAUSE HE WAS THE FIRST CHARACTER I LIKED IN THE V3 GAME OUMA WAS LATER BUT MY LOVE FOR HIM IS NO LESS

[youichi21]

DON'T MAKE ME CHOOSE 😭😭😭

[dragondemoness]

Alright so Just how like Kokona Is, S/O is forced to relive a week of being murdered in countless of horrible ways.

If you've ever seen happy death day, it's kinda like that. Now because I don't want the V3 characters to die, it can be that someone killed the person killing S/O everyday to stop it, but if you wanna add anything, please do. Hopefully this is a good explanation lol

Finally, I got to this! So sorry for making you wait!

I have seen Happy Death Day, so it made writing this much easier (great movie btw)

I wasn't sure what characters you wanted me to do, or if you wanted the full cast, so I just chose five characters. Hope you enjoy!

Shuichi, Kaito, Gonta, Maki, and Tenko with an S/O Going Through a Deadly Time Loop (Happy Death Day/Yandere Simulator) 

Shuichi Saihara 

He could guess what was going on before you told him

The way you acted when you woke up, and the way you limped around because of the wounds in your legs

And when he touched you in certain spots, you would flinch away because of the pain

He was concerned, and he asked you about it as soon as he found enough evidence to approach you with

You were scared to tell him, because maybe he wouldn't believe you

But there wasn't a point in hiding it from him, and he kind of knew anyway, so you told him what was going on

Shuichi is absolutely horrified

So someone clearly has it out for you, and you have to suffer horrible deaths every day because of it

He is determined to get to the bottom of it

He has you stay with him at all times

Every time he left you alone, you died and woke back up

He's not taking risks anymore

He interviewed all your classmates, gauging their opinions of you

Then he carefully watched their interactions with you

He found out who was doing this to you pretty quickly

So he immediately got them arrested, and the killing cycle came to an end

The night the killer was arrested, he burst into tears and held you tight to him

The whole ordeal was horrifying for him, too

And even though it was over, you definitely have trauma from it

Every night, he's cuddling with you and comforting you from any nightmares you may have

Always there to assure you that you're not in the same time loop, and that life has returned to normal

The situation was awful, but you have a sweet detective boy right by your side to help you recover

Kaito Momota 

He had no idea what was happening for a good minute

But he had a feeling something was wrong

You woke up scared every morning, you flinched away from his touches, and you looked so anxious as you went about your day

He was really concerned

But it was difficult to tell him, because you were worried he either wouldn't believe you, or just wouldn't get it

But he knew something was wrong, so you had to try

When you told him, he kinda just blinked

He wasn't sure what you meant at first

But when you explained it in greater detail, he grew shocked and very anxious

And also kinda pissed that someone would do this to you

So he asked Shuichi to help you out, which he immediately agreed to

Kaito doesn't trust anyone to be near you, and he wants you with him at all times

If anyone seems even remotely threatening, he'll demand that they leave you alone

When Shuichi discovers the culprit, Kaito socks them in the face

You and Shuichi have to hold him back from punching their lights out

The killer gets arrested, and Kaito pulls you close to him, relieved that it was over

But that didn't stop the nightmares you had

He's always there to soothe you, and assure you that it was all over

Gonta Gokuhara 

He was also oblivious to what was going on

But he did notice the way you were acting

You woke up anxious and afraid in the mornings, and you brushed off his concerns and tried to go about your day

But throughout the day, you still looked stiff and anxious

You even flinched away when he tried to touch you

Poor boy was worried he hurt you

Now he was definitely sure something was wrong

And you were hesitant to tell him because you knew he would be horrified

But you couldn't stand this any longer, and you didn't want to leave him in the dark anymore

When you told him, he literally teared up

He believed every word, and he immediately grabbed you and enveloped you in a hug

Then he went to Shuichi and begged him for help

He doesn't want to leave you alone anymore

He has his arms around you pretty much every minute

When Shuichi discovers the culprit, Gonta is sad that one of his classmates, his friends, would do such a cruel thing

When the culprit is arrested, and you two are alone, he tightly wraps his arms around you while crying

Poor boy was so scared

He holds you tightly every night, for himself and for you

He'll calm your nightmares, and it's comforting to know you're there

Maki Harukawa 

She noticed your odd behavior immediately

No matter how much you tried to hide it, she noticed how anxious you were all day

And when she tried to wrap an arm around your waist, you flinched and scooted away from her, which worried her

She confronted you immediately, and you were afraid of telling her for a number of reasons

Not only would she probably not believe you, she might even think you were stupid

She noticed your anxiety and softened, telling you that she wouldn't judge you

And so, you told her what you had been going through 

At first, she asked if you were sure it wasn't just a nightmare, then you found an x-ray and showed her the wounds you attained

Now she was shocked, and pretty pissed

She wanted to know who was doing this so she could slice their head off

She approached Shuichi and basically demanded that he help

When he found out, you and him have to hold Maki back from doing something... not good

When the culprit is arrested, and you're alone, she immediately hugs you, mindful of your injuries

She doesn't like to say it, but she was terrified

She just wants to go to bed and leave the whole mess behind you

She'll soothe your nightmares and hold you every night

She'll be way more protective of you after this

Tenko Chabashira

She was also a little oblivious 

She didn't figure out something was wrong until the fifth day

By then, you were acting very strange

You were more anxious than ever, you walked like you were in pain, and you rejected all of her touches

And so, she asked you about it

You were hesitant, but you knew you needed help

When you tell her, she's terrified

She feels stupid for not noticing something was wrong sooner

Naturally, she's sure that a degenerate male is behind this

She doesn't even trust Shuichi to help you, but begrudgingly asks him at your urging

As Shuichi interviews everyone, Tenko holds you tightly, not trusting anyone

Not even the girls

And when Shuichi finds the culprit...

If they're a male, you'll have to hold her back, but not before she gets a couple of good hits in

If they're a female, she'll give them a piece of her mind

She was damn close to slapping a girl

After the whole ordeal was over, she grabbed you and clung onto you for the rest of the night, and so forth

She's there to soothe you at night, and she holds you the whole time

For your comfort, and her own

[ladylolalilly]

Ask and you shall receive!

I saw the reblog on thelemoncoffee's post about the wheel of fate and I thought I'd pitch in to soothe your curiosity. You're welcome.

I don't know if you want the wheel of fates for THH and SDR2, so for now, voila! DRV3.

Chapter 1 Victim: Ryoma Hoshi, Ultimate Tennis Pro Chapter 1 Blackened: Kirumi Tojo, Ultimate Maid

Very in-character... because this already happened in canon. With the First Blood Perk too, that's a bonus. Makes me wonder if Kirumi's gonna be a more important character now that "she made it back to the outside world." (spoilers: she died). Maybe this case'll pop up again in Trial 6 or something to clue em in?

Chapter 2 Victim: Korekiyo Shinguji, Ultimate Anthropologist Chapter 2 Blackened: Gonta Gokuhara, Ultimate Entomologist

Now this... I'm assuming Gonta got his hands on Shinguji's motive video. What could possibly be part of his video, I have no clue. But I'm assuming it reveals the fact that he's a serial killer of women. Gonta goes Chapter 4 upon learning that. We all know how that ends.

Chapter 3 First Victim: Miu Iruma, Ultimate Inventor Chapter 3 Second Victim: Kaede Akamatsu, Ultimate Pianist Chapter 3 Blackened: Maki Harukawa, Ultimate "Child Caregiver" (Assassin)

OhoHO. With the motive being the Necronomicon, this is actually pretty fitting, given Maki was trained to be an assassin as a part of a cult that hid behind religion. This'll require some twisting of character, but perhaps Maki, instead of ignoring it, came to listen to the cult. She genuinely believes in the god the cult came up with, and thus things like the Necronomicon, making her a bit. Crazier than canon. Don't know who she wanted to raise from the dead and why or why she chose a double murder or why it was these two specifically though.

Chapter 4 Victim: Tenko Chabashira, Ultimate Aikido Master Chapter 4 Blackened: Kaito Momota, Ultimate Astronaut

Nekomaru vs Gundham vibes tbh. Since Angie's still alive, I can see her and Ouma being at odds with each other a lot. I say this because it's definitely connected, this is literally two of their biggest haters.

Chapter 5 Victim: Angie Yonaga, Ultimate Artist Chapter 5 Blackened: Himiko Yumeno, Ultimate Magician

Also because of this. The traffic lights trio get a hell of a lot more screen time here huh. I see people be disappointed that Angie never got character development, but it seems here she just went on a downward spiral. Himiko might've been dragged down with her unfortunately, acting as obsessive towards Angie the same way Tenko acts towards her, if not more, depending on how messed up you wanna take this. As a Yonameno shipper, ouch. But also Himiko as the Chapter 5 blackened imo is just chefs kiss and wow Angie really did take over Ouma's role as antag huh. Or maybe they're both main antags and we just have two.

Chapter 6 Mastermind: Shuichi Saihara, Ultimate Detective Chapter 6 Sacrifice: Tsumugi Shirogane, Ultimate Cosplayer

Ah yes. The classic mastermind that 95% of the DRV3 fandom wished for and never got. This is where shit gets real funky considering the amount of sheer AUs out there, but for the sake of simplicity let's just stick to the idea that this is a TV show and they all signed up for it among other stuff. Tsumugi as the sacrifice... well, if she and Rantaro had a good relationship throughout and she acted as his support, oh boy that's kinda depressing. But if she was like. The third rival (jfc so many ANTAGS in this game) cuz this is Tsumugi we're talking about, she definitely played traitor and just wants to get to the 54th killing game already.

Survivors: •K1-B0, Ultimate Robot •Kokichi Ouma, Ultimate Supreme Leader •Rantaro Amami, Ultimate ??? (Adventurer/Survivor)

This trio... ok so Ouma actually gets to face what he's done instead of dying. That's pretty nice. Kiibo survives like he was supposed to in canon goddammit. Amami'll finally reach his full potential, bless. As the Ultimate Survivor, I really do wonder whether he'll ever remember his past games or not... Who knows, maybe he was a graduate blackened in a past game and antag Tsumugi/Saihara spilled those beans to stir shit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And that's a wrap! I know I came out of nowhere, but I was ready to rant about this as much as you were begging to know more. I gladly took the chance. Try for the opportunity.

Oh wow, this is neat! For Maki’s chapter, maybe she targeted Miu due to personal dislike, but Kaede walked in on her with the body, so she had to kill her to keep her quiet?

(And I would actually like the THH and SDR2 wheels of fate, I was curious about those too.)

[avocadoflavoredimagines]

Aam h-hey!! Can i request about Angie, Keebo, Kaito and Rantaro defending there S/o how is Últimate Pastry chef how is bit chubby by been bully by some mean girls(boys) and as reward S/O gives them a Pastry or and free stuff

Sure thing! Super sorry for the long wait for this request. I changed the rules recently to just three characters per request, so I just chose random ones from the list. If you want one of the character I excluded then you can just send in another ask for a continuation. Thanks for the request, hope you like it.

- Mod Rantaro

Angie, Keebo, and Kaito defending their Chubby Ultimate Pastry Chef S/O from bullies!

Angie Yonaga

- Angie would absolutely love your talent, thinking it’s as much of a gift from Atua as her art abilities

- She’s made her fair share of baked goods as offerings to Atua in the past, so she knows quite a lot about it and how detail oriented it can be (which just makes her even more impressed by your skill)

- She’s always willing to help you in the kitchen, whether it be just holding a bowl or gathering/buying ingredients for you to use

- She loves to watch you work and sometimes even sketches you as you do

- Angie may be carefree and bubbly most of the time, but if anyone ever made fun of you, she’d switch into full intimidation mode

- Those bullies would be cowering before her in no time, guaranteed to never mess with you again in fear of her

- She’ll always make sure you don’t forget how much of a blessing you are to her. Those bullies mean nothing in the eyes of Atua, and therefore you shouldn’t take what they’re saying to heart. They don’t know anything about you anyway, why give their words any thought?

- You’re the best thing that could’ve happened to her, and she’ll always make sure you know how much you mean to her, no matter what other people may say.

Keebo

- Being a robot and all, he can’t fully appreciate your talent and always feels a bit guilty when he’s not able to enjoy the pastries you make

- He’s considered having Dr. Idabashi implement a food eating mechanism into his hardware just to try out your sweets, but until then he can only compliment your skills on a technical level

- Though he can’t taste anything, he still loves the process and would be happy to help you out with any new recipes or experiments you’re trying out

- Since it’s really all he can do, he’d never stop supporting you! Even though he can’t taste your creations he can still evaluate their properties and help you perfect certain recipes based on ingredient ratios and things like that

- If anyone ever bullied you he would be completely shocked at first. Your weight never once affected his opinion of you, so hearing someone make fun of you for it was absolutely appalling

- For once, he does actually lose his temper (and maybe overheat a bit) and will absolutely defend you to the end

- After the whole situation is over, he’ll comfort you as best he can if you’re shaken up about it. He’ll always be there to cheer you up and remind you how much you mean to him when you feel down

Kaito Momota

- This man is so sweet! Literally the nicest boyfriend ever

- He loves food, so having an S/O who specializes in baking is like a dream come true for him

- He’ll eat literally anything you make for him and will gladly be your personal tester for new recipes if you ask

- Even though he loves food, he absolutely sucks at making it, so he’d constantly compliment you on your skills and always tell you how amazing you are

- Now... if anyone ever made fun of you because of your weight? Oh boy they’d better prepare themselves

- He‘s fiercely loyal and won’t tolerate any bullies. You bet he’ll stand up for you and make sure they never even consider picking on you again

- They don’t know anything about you, how could they judge you on something like that?

- You may have to hold him back because he certainly will not hold back on anyone who makes fun of you

- He loves you way too much to ever let that happen and will do whatever he can to make sure you’re happy (even if that includes beating up some bullies if he has to)

[oumakokichi]

Hello! Following up on the Kokichi Survives To Trial 6 - I'd like to add that he would not have been able to stop the Tsumugi and Danganronpa as Shuichi was able to. Kokichi sacrificed Gonta and Miu, he let Tenko go into that deathtrap, and he allowed Kirumi to enact a murder knowing she had her motive video - Kokichi is a character who, like Rantarou, would've sacrificed himself, akin to Ch. 5, to try again. Only Shuichi could have gotten through to the audience, and grasp "beyond" the truth.

Hi anon, I’m guessing this is in response to the question I answered the other day about “what if Ouma had survive to chapter 6 and interacted with Tsumugi”? Nothing in that post was about him reaching out to the audience or appealing to them the way Saihara did, so I’m a little confused why you seem to think that was my intention.

Also, if “being a murderer” is the only criteria keeping the audience from relating to a character’s pain, I’m sorry but Maki wouldn’t have made any sense as a survivor in that case either. Not only has she worked as an assassin for the entirety of her in-game backstory, but she also poisoned Momota and Ouma both and her actions led directly to the killing game starting back up in chapter 5. Nonetheless, Maki does survive to the end, as I believe she deserves to--not only that, but she’s even briefly playable in chapter 6 along with Himiko and Kiibo, and all of them succeed in conveying their strong emotions and their pain to the audience.

Saihara is an amazing protagonist; he’s my favorite DR protagonist, in fact, and he’s the one who first realizes the trap of picking either “hope” or “despair” in Tsumugi’s ultimatum as well as the one who first really starts appealing directly to the audience themselves. But I would hardly say he’s the “only” one who could’ve gotten through to them, because in the end, the audience ultimately sympathizes with him talking about the pain that he and all of his classmates, both survivors and the deceased, went through.

Also, I have to disagree that Ouma would choose to sacrifice himself exactly like Amami did. Not only do we not know the circumstances of “DR52″ very well, but Tsumugi’s choice is very much about choosing either ‘hope” (sacrificing two people so the other survivors can leave), or “despair” (everyone remains in the killing game and keeps living there until only two people remain). And if anything is pretty certain about Ouma, it’s that he absolutely doesn’t care about ideals like “hope vs. despair.”

In chapter 5, Ouma chooses to die under the press willingly in order to sacrifice himself yes, but I personally believe that’s because he didn’t have many other choices. In fact, his only other choice at that particular moment in time was to either die or let Momota and Maki die in his place, very similar to how he chose to manipulate Gonta and Miu to their deaths rather than die in chapter 4. In chapter 6, however, there are a lot of holes in Tsumugi’s story which I think he’d be a lot more eager to tear into rather than just willingly believing her when she says that those are the only two choices they have.

There’s also the fact that the way Saihara decides to respond to the audience and Tsumugi in chapter 6 is nearly identical to Ouma’s advice in his FTEs: that is to say, that sometimes you can win a game without playing it at all. Ouma is extemely intelligent, stubborn, and he never takes anyone’s word at face value without seeing hard evidence first--all of these traits combined mean that I’m pretty sure he would’ve made Tsumugi’s life hell if he’d lived long enough to reach chapte 6, albeit probably in a very different way than Saihara or the other survivors.

Anyway, this is just my take on it! I agree that Ouma definitely couldn’t, or rather wouldnt, have tried an emotional and sympathetic plea like Saihara’s, but I just don’t agree that the audience themselves wouldn’t have symapthized with him or any of the other survivors regardless of that, especially when all of the survivors get a turn to speak their piece in chapter 6.

[m-y-fandoms]

Danganronpa V3 characters Most to Least likely:

to take their S/O’s side during a scrum debate, knowing their S/O is lying

Sort of an imagine + most to least likely list due to my explanation of each scenario. Warning: spoilers for the entire game throughout.

-Mod Kokichi

Kokichi Ouma - Once he’s in love with you, he’s ride or die to the point that he doesn’t care if he or the others die for you. Plus, lying at the scrum debate and winning doesn’t technically mean the trial goes poorly or that his S/O is the culprit, it’s just a step to find more evidence and weed out traitors, and that’s just how he would justify it to himself. Plus, it’s just waaaaay more fun to spice up the trial with your lies~

Kaito Momota - He chose to love you, right? So he has to believe in you. You must have a good reason for lying, he thinks, but even if you don’t, some people are just worth dying for.

Tenko Chabashira - A similar mindset to Kaito. She will trust her S/O, believing that there’s no way you could be malicious, and wanting to believe your true heart is pure to the very end. Even if she’s not confident with her decision to support you, she’s gonna yell and fight like she is.

Kaede Akamatsu - She wouldn’t choose an S/O who would lie to save themselves and let everyone else die, so if you’re lying, it must be for a good reason.

Shuichi Saihara - A mix of Kaede and Kaito’s reasoning, he believes that he chose a good person to love, and believes in your intellect. You must be lying to twist the trial in a positive way. He did point out Kaede’s lie in the first trial reluctantly, but he just had a mild crush on her...he LOVES you, and whereas Kaede asked him to expose her lie, you were clearly wanting him on your side. He just couldn’t turn against you.

Ryoma Hoshi - He wouldn’t lie for a friend or aquaintence in a trial, being a very blunt and honest guy, but if the only person in this world who gave him a reason to live and loves him needs him on their side, you’re damn right he’s going to lie for them.

Rantarou Amami - Amami isn’t a selfish guy. He’s loved many people in his life: siblings, parents, friends, previous lovers. He knows what it means to sacrifice and even though he is the Ultimate Survivor, it was because he’s good at it, not necessarily for selfish reasons. If his little sister had been throw in this killing game or the previous one he was in, he would die for her in an instant, an he would die for you. So...he trusts you. And after a bit of a shocked expression and wondering what you’re up to, he would join in and lie with you, and he’s so confident and smooth that he might just fool the majority of your classmates.

Korekiyo Shinguji - Make no mistake, Kiyo has no trouble lying on his own behalf...but for others, no. He would be very conflcited at first, even trying, subtly and gracefully, to get you to tell the truth and sweating over your lies in the trial, because deep down, he can be a very selfish person. No one has ever wanted him in their lives and he’s a loner, so self-preservation always came first. Why stick his neck out or care about people who bully/ostracize/judge him? Why see other humans as anything other than objects of beauty, precious but ultimately not as valuable as his own life, just as an artifact would be. But...you didn’t look at him like that, like he was a creep or inquire about his mask and habits. He had fallen in love with you, realizing his relationship with his sister growing up was something traumatic and not normal, very much forced on his young mind. He had to...he had to lie for you.

Tsumugi Shirogane - As the mastermind, she can easily tell where the trial is headed and can probably make Monokuma say some stupid reason or new rule for getting you out of your lies later on, so she’s willing to lie for you in the debate, putting on her innocent and naive facade, just with a new layer of lovesick.

Miu Iruma - This would go one of two ways. 1. She genuinely doesn’t know you’re lying and sides with you, barking at your opponents in your defense, or 2. She knows you’re lying and the anger behind her words thrown at your opponents is half for them for accusing you, and half for you for being a dumbass, lying little bitch who now has dragged her into this. If you both survived this trial, she would chew you out later.

Himiko Yumeno - She doesn’t want to die, but as seen in-game, she quickly loses heart when it comes to losing people she loves or being pressured. She would hesitantly tell you to stop lying and that she trusted you, so how could you act like this, but would slowly lose the will to fight and want to take your side because she loves you, even going as far as to say something like: “Nyeh...I know S/O is lying, b-but, but I’m gonna take their side until the very end, and I’m not gonna vote for them. I...I just can’t,” while trembling softly. And shame on you for making her feel that way.

Maki Harukawa - She wouldn’t associate herself with, much less date someone who lies for the wrong reasons. She would lie for you if she felt it was necessary or for the greater good or moving the trial in the right direction, but would avoid voicing her opinion in the trial altogether unless her hand is forced. Maki is more likely to call out your bullshit bluntly and in a monotone voice, before forcing you to tell the truth to the others and own up to what you did. If you were only lying to find evidence or save face, she wouldn’t even bring it up after the trial, but if your lie was to cover for you killing someone, she would close her eyes during your execution and silently pretend it didn’t hurt as much as it did, crying later when absolutely no one could see her. They would be tears of grief over losing her one true love, and tears of anger at your selfishness and her stupidity in choosing to love you.

Angie Yonaga - “Atua says it’s alwaaaays better to speak the truth!” She says while posing her hands in a praying position. You saw how she threw Himiko under the bus in the second trial, there was no way she was lying for you or dying for your stupid lie. If it was a lie to keep the trail moving, oh well, she exposed you. If you lied and died as the culprit, oh well, it is better to be with Atua anyway, and she can find other people to be around easily. Additionally, I really see Angie as aromantic or averse to real romantic relationships. I think she would see her S/O as someone who cares about her and Atua, and is easy to manipulate, but who she admits she likes spending time with more than others. Still not lying or dying for you though.

Gonta Gokuhara - the key word here is knowing his S/O is lying. If he is convinced you’re not lying even when you are, he will take your side until convinced otherwise by his friends. He loves you so very much, but gentleman don’t lie, and he believes that his S/O should always tell the truth. “S-S/O, telling lies only hurt yourself and others. Gonta knows you are good person. Only bad people lie!” He would be heartbroken that you want him to take your side and expect him to lie, and has a very the-truth-shall-set-you-free mindset. Plus, I don’t think Gonta would think so far ahead as to see that the truth may get his beloved killed. He’s thinking of the here and now, this particular conversation. And you shouldn’t be lying to your friends.

Kirumi Tojo - If Kirumi ever let herself get close enough to you to fall in love, she would still set strict boundaries for herself, and have a very professional/master and maid type relationship with you. She would comfort you more and maybe blush at your contact or flirty advances but not reciprocate too much becasue there is a part of her that keeps every relationship in her life at a arm’s length. She won’t let herself truly love. No one can break down her wall, for that’s what makes her perfect to serve unconditionally. When realizing you’re lying, because oh, she definitely would, she would close her eyes, a small frown on her face. She’s disappointed in you, but reminds herself again why she doesn’t get close to people. She sighs, exposing your lies calmly to the others with phrases a little less cold than usual, such as: “I’m sorry, S/O, but that’s not the complete truth and I can’t allow it.”

Kiibo - Simply put, no matter his feelings toward you, Kiibo knows that in this trial, lying could lead to everyone dying. A handful of friends and himself dying for a liar is just not fair. He wouldn’t lie with or for you. In the best case scenario inside his careful and analytical mind, you are exposed for lying and it was a petty lie or doesn’t mean you’re the culprit. I the worst case scenario, it leads to your death. And while he feels the closest feeling to human love he has ever felt for you, he can’t let a bunch of innocent friends die for your lie. He would miss you, and be very depressed about losing you and maybe never try to have a relationship like this again, but his decision is what was ethically and morally right.

[kreept12]

So I saw a The Good Place AU on ao3, rewatched the show and I had so many ideas for a different take on it like seriously !

So here's a bunch of the ideas I had bc I'm losing my mind at this

First of all : Warning, there's gonna be spoilers of season 1 and probably 2 of the show, please go watch it it's so good and funny.

So all the class are residents, except Tsumugi and Kiibo. Kiibo is the equivalent of Janet. Welcome to The Good Place, yaddy yaddy, except there are 3 bad apples : Ryoma, Maki and Kokichi.

 Each one of them are given an identity that isn’t theirs and they’re trying to pull it off, for a while at least. When the day after their arrival chaos happen and they find themselves the only one without the “emergency suit”, Ryoma decide to tell Tsumugi and Kiibo, but Maki and Kokichi saw that he was a fraud too and kept him from giving himself away, because right now Tsumugi and Kiibo don’t know what’s causing all the chaos, but if Ryoma gives himself away, is sent to The Bad Place but chaos is still happening, they will know the other two are here. Ryoma ask them what’s their plan then, which Maki says they try to blend in. Try to BE good people. Kokichi doesn’t believe one bit of this but act like he does to convince Ryoma. And so begin their journey to becoming good people.

(more under the cut cause it’s kinda long)

Here a list of the soulmates btw (not ship, most of them are made for plot purpose)

Suichi Saihara | Kaede Akamatsu

Kaito Momota | Maki Harukawa

Tenko Chabashira | Korekiyo Shinguji

Ryoma Hoshi | Kirumi Tojo

Kokichi Ouma | Gonta Gokuhara

Himiko Yumeno | Miu Iruma

Angie Yonaga |  Rantaro Amami

But it turns out that trying to be a good person isn’t necessary instinctual for them, Ryoma is the one doing well but oh boy the other two are messes. Maki keeps menacing other people and her polite smile is so forced even Gonta knows it’s fake. Kokichi just keeps making pranks on the other residents because there’s no harm in a little prank (he just had problem adjusting to this new group and hates that he likes some of them so he pranks them so they get away from him and he doesn’t have to be vulnerable around them.) 

Ryoma ends up sitting them down after a few days and telling them they need help. So they debate about who would be the best fit. They end up with Korekiyo, mostly because he studies human and they guess moral are part of humen so maybe he knows the best way to be a good person, plus the guy is lonely most of the time, doesn’t gossip and creepily study and takes note of the other residents. 

They ask him and he accepts. He takes it as a new way to study human behaviour in a field he didn’t specialize during his life. (btw, here the characters are aged-up, they’re in their 20s so they can have more Life Knowledge:TM:). They chose to meet up at Korekiyo’s house to study because his soulmate, Tenko, hates his gut and never comes to visit; while the other three have way too caring soulmates that comes to visit them on a daily basis (Kaito being the more insistant, Gonta and Kirumi try to respect their personal boundaries but still, the gang doesn’t want to be interrupted by them, so at Korekiyo’s it is.

A little more about Tenko and Korekiyo. When Tsumugi introduced them to each other, Tenko was out of her mind. First, she’s a lesbian, second, she finds Korekiyo super creepy and has a bad feeling about him, worst than all other degenerate male she ever met (nevermind the fact that she says this every time she meets a new guy). Korekiyo is also unpleased by this arrangement, mainly because she’s a bit much for him. Tsumugi says soulmates aren’t always romantic, they can also take form in a strong companionship. Both are still skeptical when she leaves and basically avoid each other. Korekiyo also asked Tsumugi about other neighboorhood and if visiting is possible, since he would like to see his sister. 

(Little point here, I doubt Korekiyo might be a serial killer here, he might have thought about it but never acted on it. He’s still pretty fucked up by the abuse his sister made him go through, but he also doesn’t recognise it as abuse yet, part of his character arc would be to come to term with that)

So ! The teaching is... Sure going. Korekiyo is good at teaching the theory but oh boy if he doesn’t suck at practice. They’re sure learning, but it’s still a trainwreck and Ryoma is the only reasonnable person in this house. They need a person who is a good person naturally, and wouldn’t go tell Tsumugi their situation...

Yeah they take a look at Gonta and it’s settled. The man is way too nice to everyone and “a true gentleman never tells friends secret to others !”. They thought about Angie for a moment, she seems nice with everyone and alwyas organise parties or artistic activities to unite everyone together, but she’s close friend with Tenko and Himiko so they doubt she would let Korekiyo hang out with her friends. 

Gonta is not the best teacher. He tries his best, but even though he is nice and try his best to help everyone, he is also incredibly naive and can be mislead to do bad things pretty easily, which is what Kokichi proves within the first day his soulmate agrees to help them. They basically have a Insect Meet and Greet. Once Gonta understands he hurt his friends, he’s pretty sad and isolate himself. Ryoma would probably come talk to him. Gonta talks about how he didn’t act like a gentleman and he regrets it, which leads to a conversation about why he wants so badly to be a gentleman and their past life. Ryoma mentions how he didn’t have anything to live for back on earth, no family, no friends, no lovers. Gonta says he’ll make sure he does now, which makes Ryoma laugh. They grow closer after that, Gonta trying to spend more time with him. 

Meanwhile, Kokichi is onto something. Since he arrived here, he felt like something was wrong. Tsumugi keeps saying they have no idea what’s causing all the chaos and there’s no way someone got here by accident ? Three frauds in one go ? That’s not right. So he investigates, everyone. Their past, their actions, their words, he wants to know everything and understand what is really this place. He doesn’t trust anyone. So he used the Insect Meet and Greet to find more info while everyone is busy. That’s when he’ll cross path with Shuichi, because he sneaked into his and Kaede’s house. Shuichi become suspicious of him from there on and they develop a kind of rivalry where Shuichi knows Kokichi is up to something but doesn’t know what, and Kokichi likes to mess with him. He also likes to mess with Kiibo to ask them a myriad of questions about everything and nothing.

Kokichi : Hi Kiiboy !

Kiibo : Not a boy, but hi (bc hell yes nb Kiibo and maybe this whole thing was based of my want to write this dialogue down, but who knows really)

MEANWHILE, Maki ends up hiding with Kaito who has been trying to talk to her for a while and now she can’t leave him because there are insects everywhere outside. They sit there for a while, Kaito trying to start a conversation, but getting frustrated because she doesn’t talk back until they both lash out. Maki insists she doesn’t want to make friends, especially with him and not on the basis of them being soulmates or whatever. She adds that he doesn’t want to be friend with her, trust her. He asks why but she doesn’t answers. So he starts all over again, straighten up and introduce himself again. “Name’s Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars and totally not your soulmate.” She sniggers and introduce herself. They chit-chat for a bit and once the insects are gone, they leave. They say goodbye and Maki avoids him a bit less after this. 

The day after the Insect Meet and Greet, Kokichi arrive at Korekiyo’s home earlier than the others. He brags about how much of a shame it is that Gonta won’t work with them anymore, really it’s too bad. Except that when Ryoma arrives with Gonta in toe, his eyes are the size of saucers. In the days following, Kokichi still tries to use Gonta and make the giant hate him, which is slowly irritating Ryoma. He asks him why he keeps trusting Kokichi after everything he’s done, but Gonta says he believes Kokichi can become a good person, it’s actually the point of everything they’re doing. After a while Kokichi expends his pranks to the other frauds and Shuichi. That’s when it clicks for Korekiyo who goes to talk to him in private. He tries to ask him why he’s trying to get everyone who is close to him into hating him. Kokichi denies everything, just says it’s fun. Korekiyo just tells him it’s not doing him any good and they won’t hurt him if he let them get closer. He still prank them all, but it’s less mean. 

There is also a point where the group wonder if Miu isn’t a fraud too because of her loud mouth. She’s super annoyed by the automatic swear words blocker. She’s so loud and don’t get along at all with her soulmate Himiko who finds her exhausting. 

Also at some point, after Korekiyo began to understand that he was abused by his sister, Tsumugi reaches out to him. She give him a letter from his sister. She tells him visiting is not authorised yet, but she managed to negotiate postal communication just for him. He doesn’t take it well. At all. He has a mental breakdown, having flash-back and being terrorised of what to do with this letter. He doesn’t leave his home anymore and doesn’t answer to anybody, the group can’t have class with him. Everyone is getting worried and ends up asking Tenko for helps. They don’t really think he’ll talk to her but they really tried everything else. Himiko slides a word in their favor and Tenko agrees. She goes to the house, knocks and tells him to open. He doesn’t. She stays in front of the door for a while. After a few hours, Korekiyo finally asks what she wants. She says she wants to make sure he’s not dying or something. He says she heard his voice so now she knows he’s not dead, she can leave. But she doesn’t. She asks him to open the door, that it’s typical degenerate male behavior to lock themselves up and not face their emotions. She’s about to say he’s an idiot for making everyone worry like that, but the words die in her throat as the door opens and she sees her soulmate. He’s a mess. He lets her in. He sits down on the floor, she follows. After a few minutes she asks what’s going on. He tells her about how he recently found out what he always believed was false and maybe someone he cares a lot about actually hurt him a lot. He talks about his sister, about what he thought. He says he was wrong but don’t go in the details, he can’t for now. He cries and lose his composure again, which rings a billion alarms and raise his sister voice in his mind. Tenko instinctively reach her hand out and tries to stroke his hairs in a reassuring paterms. After a while, he calms himself and show her the letter, tells her he doesn’t know what to do. She takes it, rise to her feet and help him up. She goes to the chimney, light up a fire and give him back to him. “You don’t have to worry about this if it doesn’t exist anymore”. He let it falls into the flames and they both watch it burns until they are only ashes left. 

Korekiyo still needs some time, but he slowly let the other back. Tenko also go to talk to Tsumugi, telling her to cut the postal communication thing. She seems disapointed but agrees. 

After that they both start to get better. Tenko slowly try to have a better view on guys, she understands maybe not all of them are bad, like all women are perfect. Korekiyo is slowly opening up to others, slowly trying to move on from the abuse. It’s slow, for both of them, Tenko stops calling guys degenerate, but keeps the male, Korekiyo drops the hat, but keep the rest of the uniform. They’re making progress and supporting each other in little ways. 

Maybe the cast of Danganronpa 2 can be the demons (you know bc of Ultimate despair and all, and maybe the survivors of the game can be the demons that would end up agreeing with the humans) but I didn’t thought too much on this.

ANYWAY that’s a few things in my mind. If some of you are interested I’ll probably answer questions about it or post more if I have ideas. Maybe draw, who knows ! Hope some of you liked my ideas

[charlietheepicwriter7]

I’m remembering that you like NDRV3 now, which assumably means you also like DR in general??? Hence what I like to refer to as- The Three Hopes AU! Because I don’t have a better name, and we were shafted when they didn’t let Kaede be a protagonist and get called a symbol of Hope (yes I’m still bitter). Also this gets kinda dark- Which is fair, I think, it’s DR- But it’s probably coming dangerously close to that Yandere Mariharem AU of yours.

So! Here, the casts of DR1, SDR2, and NDRV3 are combined in one Killing Game, turning them into a 48 person group and therefore upping the amount of killings in that timespan- Assumably, the NDRV3 group becomes another class that attends Hope’s Peak. Like in canon, however, everyone has their memories wiped, so they don’t actually remember being classmates or friends.

Since so many people are participating in the Killing Game, there are some modified rules and patterns- There are more trials (anywhere from 9 to 15, depending on how you’d like to play things), and the number of survivors would also escalate, though it still feels like very few in comparison to how many people started (again, anywhere from 9 to 15, probably- They’re solid numbers, I can’t help it).

Also as a result of so many people, three groups end up forming- Initially, they were formed before the Killing Game was announced, and each faction would be headed by one of the protagonists (Makoto, Hajime, and Kaede). There’d be sixteen people per group, just to keep it even, and different people from each class would be in different groups. I’m still torn on why the factions would form, though- Either they’re formed by the students themselves, just to keep track of everyone, and Monokuma just rolls with it, or maybe the Mastermind splits them up? Either way, it’s against the rules to attack people in your faction, because that just seems like something Monokuma would do to get more despair.

Here’s where it gets... Darker. See, I feel like the large groups, and the splits, when combined with the isolation and the motives and the fact that some of the people there aren’t exactly stable, would... Ah. Become a bit fanatical, when it comes to what they might come to see as a figurehead for their group. It isn’t an immediate things, to be clear- It’s brought about through a lot of stress and desperation and the need to cling to something, more than anything.

Which. Basically makes Kaede, Hajime, and Makoto the targets of a bunch of platonic and/or romantic yanderes, I suppose- Depending on what you ship, or just what you think is interesting. Whoops? Either way, Monokuma isn’t above using them for motives (IE- Someone kill someone else or your leaders will all die).

Moving on, though- Here’s what I have for the factions so far! I have reasons for each person, if you’re interested, though a lot of them I haven’t sorted yet.

Kaede’s Faction

From the Class of 79

— Kaede Akamatsu, the Super High School Level Pianist (Leader)

— Shūichi Saihara, the Super High School Level Detective

— Kokichi Ōma, the Super High School Level Supreme Leader

— Rantarō Amami, the Super High School Level Survivor

— ???

From the Class of 78

— Nagito Komaeda, the Super High School Level Good Luck

— ???

From the Class of 77

— Tōko Fukawa | Genocide Jack, the Super High School Level Writer | Serial Killer

— Kiyotaka Ishimaru, the Super High School Level Moral Compass

— ???

Makoto’s Faction

From the Class of 78

— Makoto Naegi, the Super High School Level Good Luck (Leader)

— Kyoko Kirigiri, the Super High School Level Detective

— Sayaka Maizono, the Super High School Level Idol

— Junko Enoshima, the Super High School Level Fashionista | Analyst

— Mukuro Ikusaba, the Super High School Level Soldier

— ???

From the Class of 79

— Kirumi Tōjō, the Super High School Level Maid

— ???

From the Class of 77

— Mahiru Koizumi, the Super High School Level Photographer

— [Redacted], the Super High School Level Imposter

— ???

Hajime’s Faction

From the Class of 77

— Hajime Hinata, the Super High School Level ??? (Leader)

— Nanami Chiaki, the Super High School Level Gamer

— ???

From the Class of 78

— Leon Kuwata, the Super High School Level Baseball Player

— Yasuhiro Hagakure, the Super High School Level Fortune Teller

— ???

From the Class of 79

— Korekiyo Shingūji, the Super High School Level Anthropologist

— Tsumugi Shirogane, the Super High School Level Cosplayer

— Anjī Yonaga, the Super High School Level Artist

— ???

Unsorted

— Celeste Ludenburg, the Super High School Level Gambler

— Hifumi Yamada, the Super High School Level Doujin Author

— Byakuya Togami, the Super High School Level Heir

— Chihiro Fujisaki, the Super High School Level Programmer

— Aoi Asahina, the Super High School Level Swimming Pro

— Mondo Ōwada, the Super High School Level Gang Leader

— Sakura Ōgami, the Super High School Level Martial Artist

— Gundham Tanaka, the Super High School Level Animal Breeder

— Sonia Nevermind, the Super High School Level Princess

— Kazuichi Souda, the Super High School Level Mechanic

— Hiyoko Saionji, the Super High School Level Traditional Dancer

— Teruteru Hanamura, the Super High School Level Cook

— Peko Pekoyama, the Super High School Level Swordswoman

— Fuyuhiko Kuzuryū, the Super High School Level Yakuza

— Akane Owari, the Super High School Level Gymnast

— Nekomaru Nidai, the Super High School Level Coach

— Mikan Tsumiki, the Super High School Level Nurse

— Ibuki Mioda, the Super High School Level Musician

— Maki Harukawa, the Super High School Level Child Caretaker | Assassin

— Kaito Momota, the Super High School Level Astronaut

— Miu Iruma, the Super High School Level Inventor

— K1-B0, the Super High School Level Robot

— Tenko Chabashira, the Super High School Level Aikido Master

— Ryōma Hoshi, the Super High School Level Tennis Player

— Himiko Yumeno, the Super High School Level Magician

— Gonta Gokuhara, the Super High School Level Entomologist

... This got long. I am so, so sorry- Super interested in hearing your opinion, though, so I couldn’t help it. Thanks for responding, if you decide to!!!

This sounds like a really cool idea. We love the yanderes and dark here!

The first thing that kinda worries me is the large cast. This is 48 characters to develop and, with three protagonists, you’d be constantly be switching between point’s of view. Of course, protagonists don’t have to be the same as point of view characters, so you could switch the PoV each chapter? Just to give each character some screen time. 

I’m curious about why factions exist rather than how they’re formed. It’s really weird that there are three separate leaders when everyone should be unified by the goal of escaping. Perhaps the mastermind chose them? Maybe only the group leaders can officially vote at trials; like, the group will decide who they want to vote for and the leader is supposed to choose what the majority wants?

(I think the game Zero Time Dilemma does something similar to this? Three groups that have a leader and the leader needs to choose to kill another team or not). 

How long a would this killing game last? assuming there’s a trial every 5 days, that’s 45 to 75 days! 

What’s the motive behind the killing game? is it the same as DR1, where someone just wants the world to witness Hope’s Peak suffer? 

Team opinion time:

A bit curious who the mastermind is if Junko is on Makoto’s team.

I was a bit confused as to why you put Komaeda on Kaede’s team, but thinking about it, it makes sense. She is the only protag with a real talent after all, since Hajime doesn’t know his. 

Put Byakuya on either Kaede or Hajime’s team--he’s the type to try and overthrow the leader, and those too would actually stand up against Togami (which would make for a great “falling into yandere” moment for him). 

Assuming members choose their teams,  Fuyuhiko could go to Kaede’s team bc she looks kinda like his sister and that makes him want to protect her.

You could do a star crossed lovers thing, where two members of a canon-ish couple are on two different teams. This forces them to confront the feelings they have for their partner and their leader. 

Mikan should be on Makoto’s team. He’s really nice and caring, which would bring out her obsessiveness quickly. 

***************

Anyway, this sounds really cool! Tag me when you write it? ;)

[elyvorg]

Kaito Momota: The Man Who Apologised Too Much

Yes, you read that title correctly, and yes, I am 100% serious right now. There seems to be this bizarre myth in this fandom (at least from what I’ve seen, and even from people who appear to like Kaito enough to have thought about him a decent amount) that Kaito believes, out of some kind of toxic masculinity, that men shouldn’t ever apologise, and therefore he never does so himself until right at the end as a supposed sign of his growth. This could not be further from the actual truth about how Kaito feels and acts and grows with regards to the topic of apologising. I am here to thoroughly debunk that ridiculous myth and talk about what’s really going on with Kaito and apologies, which is practically the complete opposite of that and far, far more interesting.

(I should also make it clear that I’m not doing this because I’m trying to insist that Kaito is perfect and without fault. If he actually did have a toxic masculinity thing going on that he needed to unlearn, I’d be totally okay with that, because that’d be him having flaws and therefore being a perfectly good character even if he’s a somewhat less good person as a result. It’s just that these are not remotely the issues Kaito has in canon, and I want to shed some light on what’s actually going on here. It still involves him being very messed up, I promise, just in a completely different way!)

Don’t make yourself feel bad!

The best illustration of Kaito’s principles on apologising is early in chapter 1. After everyone gets emotionally beaten down by the escape tunnel, half the group proceeds to blame Kaede as if she should never have encouraged them to keep trying it in the first place. Kaede agrees that it’s all her fault and apologises to them – but Kaito immediately questions why she’s doing that when she didn’t do anything wrong. Yes, things happened to turn out badly as a result of her encouragement, but she didn’t mean for that to happen when she decided to encourage everyone. It was not a mistake for Kaede to want everyone to try and escape, and she should never be made to feel like she ought to apologise for that. So Kaito tells her, phrased like this is advice he’s regularly given to people in the past, “Listen up. Don’t apologize for something that’s not your fault! It’ll just make you feel bad!”

This line not only very clearly states what Kaito’s principles on this are, but it also shows part of why he feels so strongly about this – because it’s about self-care. Kaito is always trying to encourage people to be kind to themselves and to stay positive, to not wallow in negative feelings when they could be thinking instead about what they can do to make things better. This also extends to not blaming themselves and making themselves feel like something’s their fault when it isn’t, and apologising for said thing is liable to make someone do that. Kaito advocates not apologising when something isn’t one’s fault for the sake of the mental health of the person who would be giving the apology, which deserves to be looked out for just as much as that of the person who would be receiving the apology.

(Also note that Kaito’s saying this to Kaede despite her not being a man, and he doesn’t bring up the concept of manliness at all while doing so, because this whole thing is actually not even remotely about gender to him, as I’ll go into more in a bit.)

This is very similar in principle to the type of advice that Kaito gives Shuichi (even though he never directly mentions apologies while doing so, which is a fact that will be important later). Especially after Kaede’s death, Shuichi’s biggest problem is blaming himself for all the bad things that happened, when all he did was try his hardest to find the truth, which isn’t a bad thing to do at all. Even though his deduction was wrong and the mastermind didn’t come to the hidden door, he tried his best to figure things out with what he had and it’s not his fault he wasn’t quite correct. Even though Kaede was executed because Shuichi uncovered her crime, he sure as hell didn’t want that to happen to her and was just trying to save the maximum number of people from this killing game’s rules. Kaito’s support of Shuichi focuses on trying to stop him from blaming himself about this kind of thing, because he should be pursuing the truth, that’s what they need in a killing game like this, and so he should be proud of himself for being the one who can do that for everyone, rather than beating himself up over it.

And, to skip way ahead to a part of chapter 5 for a moment, this idea is also relevant when Kaito jumps in the way of Maki’s arrow that was meant for Kokichi. Moments later, he learns that the arrow was poisoned, that Kokichi was already dying from her first poison arrow anyway and that he just made things worse by getting himself fatally poisoned too (at least, as far as he knows until Kokichi starts explaining his plan) – but Kaito never once apologises for or shows any regret over making that jump. He didn’t and couldn’t have known the arrows were poisoned, so in that situation, leaping to protect Kokichi was the best thing he could have done and therefore not a mistake. The fact that it turned out the arrows were poisoned and his actions only (apparently) made things worse was not his fault, and at least on this occasion, Kaito understands that and doesn’t go and make himself feel bad over this.

Take responsibility!

Getting back to chapter 1 – the next morning after the tunnel incident, people are still blaming Kaede for it, and Kaito is still arguing that they shouldn’t and she shouldn’t apologise. But this time, Kaede clarifies what she actually did wrong: she got so overly focused on the tunnel that she didn’t consider how everyone was feeling. While simply trying to escape was not a mistake, getting so into it that she overlooked everyone’s exhaustion and kept pushing them past their limits was. When Kaede apologises for doing that, Kaito accepts things and drops the subject.

After all, Kaito also strongly advocates taking responsibility, which means that you should apologise when you did genuinely make a mistake. We can see this in this same chapter 1 conversation when Kaito complains that everyone was blaming Kaede without taking responsibility themselves. Even though Kaede was the most forceful in pushing them into it, everyone else still chose to listen to her and try the tunnel of their own volition. So their resulting exhaustion was still partly on them, and they should be acknowledging their own mistake in doing that, rather than running away from their responsibility by pinning it all on Kaede.

And Kaito is perfectly capable of putting this into practice himself, as we see at the beginning of chapter 2 where he very clearly and openly apologises to Shuichi for punching him at the end of the trial the night before. At the time, Kaito’s words made it sound like he’d punched Shuichi to try and push him to stand up to Monokuma more – but really he just did it because he couldn’t deal with his own pain over Kaede’s death and lashed out. After having a night to calm down and think it over, Kaito realised that he was never going to help like that and he shouldn’t have lost control of himself, so he takes responsibility for his mistake and apologises to Shuichi as soon as he can. He even seems somewhat hesitant when Shuichi readily accepts his apology, as if he was expecting Shuichi to be more upset at his actions than this.

So: Kaito very evidently believes that you should apologise when you have made a mistake. In that circumstance, the you-feeling-bad that comes from apologising is worthwhile, because at least it’ll help you learn from that mistake in order to be able to make better choices in future and hopefully not let it happen again. After all, self-improvement is also a big thing that Kaito’s always trying to encourage! It’s only when you genuinely aren’t in the wrong that he advocates not apologising, because that’ll make you feel bad for no good reason and possibly end up inclined to avoid choices in future aren’t actually bad choices at all. This entire thing from Kaito is all about helping people, just like Kaito is always trying to do.

Since realising this about Kaito and thinking about it a lot, I’ve actually been making something of an effort in my own life to catch myself whenever I’m feeling inclined to apologise for something and ask myself if I really should be doing so according to what Kaito would say. Even if I end up concluding that I did in fact make a mistake that I should have been able to foresee and avoid, which I therefore do apologise for, this lets me properly think about what the mistake was. That way, not only can I keep that mistake in mind to try and avoid in future, but I also don’t end up feeling like anything else about the situation that I couldn’t actually help was somehow my fault as well. This is really emotionally healthy advice that I think everyone should try and follow! Kaito is so good.

(There is admittedly another angle to this. Sometimes, even if person A genuinely didn’t meant to hurt person B, person B was still hurt enough that they deserve an apology just for the sake of acknowledging that the hurt happened and that it mattered even if it was unintentional. In that type of case, I do believe that the person responsible should apologise even if it was genuinely an accident, for the sake of the mental health of the person who was hurt. But in that case, it shouldn’t be an “I’m sorry that I did this” if their actions weren’t inherently wrong; it should be an “I’m sorry that you were hurt because of something I did”. Kaito is never seen addressing this angle, but I really think that’s just because it doesn’t happen to come up, and that if you asked him about this, he’d agree with what I’m saying here.)

Be sure of yourself! (whether or not you’re literally a man)

But what does all this even have to do with manliness, then? Well, the short answer is “really not actually that much”, because the only times Kaito ever brings manliness into this apologising thing is when he’s giving this advice to Gonta.

The most notable example of this is during trial 1. After Gonta’s been cleared of suspicion, Kokichi’s dickery makes Gonta literally apologise for not being the murderer. Naturally Kaito takes issue with him doing that, so he tells Gonta, “A man shouldn’t apologize so easily!”. And the key part of this sentence which apparently some people completely overlook is the “so easily”. Kaito would never have uttered that sentence without that part, because he does not even remotely believe that a man shouldn’t apologise at all. What he’s actually saying here is exactly the same thing he was saying to Kaede – don’t apologise when you’re genuinely not in the wrong. Not being a murderer is obviously not a mistake and not something anyone should ever have to feel like they should apologise for and make themselves feel bad over for no sensible reason! Nobody else would have remotely let themselves be led by Kokichi into apologising for being innocent – but Gonta in particular is so tragically unsure of himself and of what he should be doing that when Kokichi implied he’d done something wrong, he immediately assumed he must have done and apologised without question.

Making this also about being a “man” does seem uncalled for, but Kaito does this for two reasons. One is because being sure of yourself is a big part of what his concept of manliness is about. Kaito believes that, ideally, people should think for themselves and know for themselves what’s right and wrong. If they were wrong, they should acknowledge it and own up to that (taking responsibility is also a big part of this manliness thing for Kaito) – but if they were in the right, they should be able to stand up for themselves and not back down from what they believe in. It’s exactly the same concept I’ve already talked about with regards to apologies, just framed in a way that’s about conviction instead of self-care. Gonta is an incredibly kind person who’s always trying to do the right thing, which Kaito can respect a lot, but it bothers Kaito that someone as good as that has such a hard time seeing what the right thing is in the first place. Gonta ought to be able to have enough conviction to stand up for himself and tell Kokichi, “no, I didn’t do anything wrong, stop trying to make me feel bad for not murdering anyone.”

And note how in the previous paragraph when talking about Kaito’s beliefs on this, I said “people”, not “men”, because neither this nor anything else about Kaito’s concept of manliness (which I’m not going into in any more detail here, because this post is about the apology thing) has anything inherently to do with gender. Literally the only thing gendered about Kaito’s concept of manliness is the word he uses for it. It’s really more like a kind of moral code that he always tries to stick to, one which can apply to anyone regardless of gender, except for some reason or another he somehow ended up using that word to encapsulate it. Unfortunately, this has the side-effect of giving it rather less morally-sound implications to anyone who doesn’t bother to pay any attention to what Kaito’s actually talking about every time he mentions it.

However, Kaito’s concept of manliness is almost always something he only has for himself, because following that code is personally important to him. He doesn’t inflict it on others if he doesn’t think they’d buy into it – after all, the concept of conviction is a lot less important in helping people’s mental health than the concept of self-care is. So the other reason Kaito brings manliness into the apology thing in this context is only because it’s Gonta. Gonta has his own very similar thing about being a gentleman, which isn’t quite the same as Kaito’s concept of manliness, but there is a lot of overlap, especially when it comes to sincerity and integrity. Kaito mentions manliness to Gonta in particular only because he believes that idea might actually resonate with Gonta and help him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have done, just like he didn’t when telling Kaede not to apologise, and just like he almost never does to Shuichi while giving him advice, even though Shuichi is also male.

Another point at which Kaito tells Gonta that a man shouldn’t apologise so easily (again, so easily; he never omits that part) is during the investigation of case 2. Gonta apologises for being too scared to jump into the water tank to save Ryoma from the piranhas, but Kaito points out that the piranhas would just have eaten him too. Gonta staying put and keeping himself safe was the right thing to do, not a mistake that he should be apologising for and making himself feel bad over when there really wasn’t anything more he could have done to save Ryoma. Later, Gonta apologises again for not watching the tank better because he didn’t see Ryoma in there before the piranhas fell in, and Kaito gives him the same line – because Gonta is so tragically convinced that he’s wrong about everything that he automatically assumes he was mistaken in what he saw and blames himself, without considering that maybe there just genuinely wasn’t anything to see. And the last time Kaito says this to Gonta is at the beginning of chapter 3 when Kokichi tells Gonta, “Nothing good ever happens when you try to help,” and Gonta agrees and apologises… for always trying to help? Obviously that’s not something he should ever apologise for, even if his efforts don’t always work out so well. Kaito would hate it for Gonta to start thinking because of this that he really shouldn’t ever be trying to help!

There’s more on this general idea in that investigation 2 conversation when Shuichi points out that it was impossible to save Ryoma anyway because he was already dead by then according to the Monokuma File, and Gonta admits he didn’t even read the file because he doesn’t think he’s smart enough to understand it. Really, Gonta is not nearly as stupid as he thinks and would have been perfectly able to understand “the cause of death was drowning”. But because he’s so unsure of himself, he didn’t even try, which is exactly the problem with Gonta being this way! Kaito picks up on this and tells him, “If you think you can’t help, then work till you can!” – because, again, Kaito is always trying to encourage people not to wallow in the pain of what they couldn’t do but instead to focus on what they can do going forward.

And that’s exactly the kind of thing that Kaito’s apology principle is all about. Its purpose is to help people stay positive and work constructively to improve themselves. Kaito’s not-actually-gendered concept of manliness is only tangentially connected to this, only even gets brought up when Gonta’s involved, and isn’t really the point at all.

(Heck, if Kaito did consciously think about gender while considering his apology thing, he is smart enough that he’d most likely realise that, in terms of the way people are socialised to behave, it generally tends to be women who apologise too easily and men who don’t apologise enough. So, if anything, he’d frame his usual advice about when not to apologise to be a little more geared towards women, and make more of an overt point about how men should take responsibility instead. The fact that he doesn’t do this is a strong indicator that he just hasn’t taken gender into account at all when it comes to this.)

How Kaito starts to get it wrong

So, having firmly established Kaito’s principles about not apologising when you’re not in the wrong and why he feels so strongly about this, now for the fun part. As in, the part where he repeatedly breaks these principles himself. Everyone should already know how much of a delightful hypocrite Kaito is when it comes to following his own advice, and yep, that applies to this, too.

This begins in chapter 3, as Kaito becomes afflicted by his phobia of ghosts and gets so anxious and nauseous that it completely tanks his mental strength and ability to do much of anything. He apologises so many times during this part of the story: for not being able to hang out with Shuichi, for not being able to be there for him and Maki at training, for not being able to help Shuichi investigate – even though the reason why he can’t do those things is not his fault and he hasn’t done anything wrong. Sure, it sucks that he can’t be there for his sidekicks, but that is not remotely what he wanted to happen and if he had his way and wasn’t so horribly mentally ill then he absolutely would still be there for them. This thoroughly checks out, according to Kaito’s own principles about this, as Not Something To Apologise For.

(…Okay, so it’s slightly more complicated than that since his main issue in this chapter is not a literal sickness but a phobia. That’s something that it’s easier for Kaito to tell himself he should be able to fight against, since it’s all in his head, and therefore it’s his fault if he can’t, right? But, obviously Kaito is trying to fight against it in order to be there for his sidekicks. The only possible mistake here would be him not even trying at all, but Kaito is never not trying. So if he still can’t manage to overcome his phobia despite giving it his best effort, then that isn’t his fault at all.)

But Kaito apologises for it anyway, repeatedly. A lot of these are just casual “sorry”s and “my bad”s peppered into his dialogue that are easy to miss, which might read simply as something he’s doing unconsciously without really thinking about his principles at all. Yet at one point he straight-up approaches Shuichi and makes a whole point of the fact that he thinks he needs to apologise for not coming to training. So it’s not just unconscious – Kaito actively feels like he’s doing something wrong that he ought to take responsibility for and accept feeling bad about so that he can do better in future. Except, how is he ever going to be able to do better in future when his “mistake” is, effectively, “being sick”? Kaito is just going to make himself feel an obligation to be less sick, and that he’s still failing and still ought to feel bad if he continues to be sick anyway, which… well, we know how that’s going to end up for him.

Aaaaand it sure does during chapter 4 as well. Kaito doesn’t apologise nearly as much in this chapter as he did in chapter 3, presumably because he’s able to be there for his sidekicks again and appear on the surface as if he’s totally fine and isn’t doing anything “wrong” at all. But a few unnecessary apologies still slip through here and there. One is when he has to briefly leave a training session for what is totally just using the bathroom and definitely not coughing up any blood. Since using the bathroom isn’t something even Kaito’s warped logic would think of as “doing something wrong”, he’s really apologising for being sick and dying and letting that get in the way of training his sidekicks. Similarly, he apologises at the end of trial 4, after he’s coughed up blood in front of everyone and needs to head back to his room. Again, apologising simply for being visibly ill in front of them. Kaito, no.

The reason Kaito is so convinced that he apparently ought to feel bad and apologise for these things is rooted in the core of his issues, namely his unrealistically perfect standards for heroes. (If you haven’t read that other Kaito analysis post of mine I just linked, you probably should, because it’s going to get increasingly relevant to this post from here on.) A hero like Kaito must be flawlessly strong and never let his sidekicks down no matter what, and anything else is unacceptable. Being weak is a “mistake” for Kaito, even if it’s a type of weakness that isn’t rooted in his choices and is entirely outside of his control. Not being able to be there for his sidekicks is a “mistake” for Kaito, no matter how hard he’s trying to be there and never wanted to be incapable of it. He genuinely feels like he should apologise for these things, because he deserves to feel bad about it, and he needs to do better somehow, even if there’s literally no actual way for him to do so.

Just like every other bit of advice he gives to others, Kaito’s whole principle of not apologising when you’re not in the wrong is about emotional self-care – so it’s only to be expected that he’d be just as bad at following this himself as he is with every other part of his own advice. Because Kaito is horrendous at actually looking after his own well-being when he needs to, emotionally as well as physically.

(And really that’s Kaito’s only actual mistake in this situation: not looking after himself, including not telling his sidekicks what’s going on with him and letting them help. Maybe that should warrant an apology. After all, the reason he avoids them in chapter 3 is less because of his phobia of ghosts itself and more because he doesn’t want them to see that he’s afraid of ghosts. So in that sense, technically he’s skipping out on their training for reasons that actually are him being in the wrong. But that’s definitely never what Kaito thinks he’s apologising for on any of these occasions, now, is it.)

How Kaito gets it wrong in the other direction

Things get even more interesting as we move into chapter 5, in the aftermath of the nightmare that was Gonta’s trial. Shuichi is under the impression that the reason Kaito is avoiding him is because he’s angry at Shuichi for pursuing Gonta’s guilt, almost like he’s wanting Shuichi to apologise for it before talking to him again. But Shuichi asserts privately to Maki that he doesn’t think it would be right for him to apologise when it was the only thing he could do to keep everyone else alive. Of course it’s not Shuichi’s fault that Gonta being the culprit was the truth, nor that Gonta got executed as a result of his crime being uncovered. Shuichi didn’t want any of the awful things to happen and only did what needed to be done to save as many lives as possible.

Sound familiar? Yep, that’s precisely Kaito’s principles on when not to apologise right there. So it is literally not possible that Kaito could actually be expecting an apology from Shuichi; he’d understand perfectly well that Shuichi doesn’t deserve to make himself feel bad when he did what a detective should always do and saved everyone. Credit to Shuichi for being self-assured enough by this point to be able to stand up for what he did and assert that he shouldn’t apologise. The reason he’s so self-assured now is almost certainly thanks to Kaito and all the general advice Kaito has been giving him about not blaming himself and being proud of his detective work. But, because Kaito never specifically mentioned the apology thing while giving Shuichi advice, Shuichi doesn’t consciously realise that Kaito would obviously feel the same way about this. (Shuichi was there when Kaito explained these principles to Kaede in chapter 1, but apparently it didn’t stick with him, perhaps because at the time he wasn’t yet reliant on Kaito.) Which sadly leaves Shuichi floundering in the unresolvable situation of believing Kaito wants him to apologise while refusing to back down on the fact that he shouldn’t, rather than realising that Kaito’s problem is something else entirely that might potentially be fixed just by talking to him.

The problem, or part of it at least, is that Kaito is the one who should be apologising for his actions in Gonta’s trial. He lashed out at Shuichi and made reaching the truth even more difficult and painful for him than it already was, even though he knew deep down that Gonta really was the culprit and that proving this was the only way to save everyone else. Kaito had promised repeatedly before the trial that he’d always be there for Shuichi to help carry his burdens, and yet he actively did the opposite of that when it mattered most.

But Kaito doesn’t apologise for that for most of this chapter. This is the only instance in the whole story in which Kaito breaks his principles on apologising in the opposite way to normal, by not apologising when he is in the wrong. Yet it’s not remotely that he doesn’t even believe he should; of course he knows he should, given how much he cares about taking responsibility. It’s just that the pain he feels over having failed Shuichi so badly in that trial hurts so much that he can’t bear to face up to it and talk about it. He’s essentially being a coward, by running away from that pain, and there’s no way he doesn’t realise that. The reason Kaito avoids Shuichi (at least if I were to frame it in a way that’s about the topic of this post) is because he knows he needs to apologise but can’t.

How Kaito gets it wrong in two ways at once

However, Kaito does not need to apologise for everything he did in the trial. The part where he simply couldn’t bear to face the truth of Gonta’s guilt like Shuichi could is not his fault. That’s just a weakness he has that he can’t help, because he’s Kaito – of course it would be so, so hard for him to accept that someone like Gonta could have committed murder, especially without understanding why or even being able to see any indications of guilt in the amnesiac Gonta’s behaviour. And the part where he felt jealous of Shuichi for being so much stronger than him in being able to face this truth where he couldn’t is also not his fault – Kaito can’t help feeling that way, after all. Apologising for either of those things would be like apologising for being the person he is. The only part that was somewhat under Kaito’s control was the part where he allowed this pain and jealousy to cause him to lash out at Shuichi and actively make things more difficult for him. So that’s the only part which is meaningfully his fault and something he should apologise for.

But it doesn’t seem like Kaito understands that, either. Just like he did when he was apologising for being sick, he appears to believe that simply being weaker than Shuichi is something that counts as a “mistake” on his part and needs to be part of the apology he owes him. The reason I’m so sure that Kaito wants to apologise for this, even though he doesn’t actually do so for the first half of chapter 5, is that he spends the first part of the chapter fixating on a Very Heroic Plan to help everyone escape, in which he makes more of a point of it being his plan than of making it as likely as possible to succeed. Kaito is really doing this is in a desperate attempt to prove himself to Shuichi and show that he can be just as strong and heroic as him after all. An optional line of dialogue from Kaito just before they head into the escape tunnel implies that he may well finally be ready to talk to Shuichi again once they’re out of here – as if he believes that by helping them escape, that’ll be enough to make his apology worth something.

Based on this, it appears that Kaito thinks he needs to make up for being weaker than Shuichi in the trial before he can apologise to him. Which means that the weakness itself is evidently one of the things he’s intending to apologise for. He wants to prove that he’s stronger than that now, so that when he does eventually give the apology he owes, he won’t be emptily apologising for something that he’s still doing. This is the problem with believing you should apologise for things that aren’t your fault and that you couldn’t help – it makes you feel like you should be able to do better when you genuinely can’t. That just leaves you floundering helplessly in your perceived uselessness, and Kaito didn’t feel like he had the right to apologise from that position.

If Kaito didn’t believe that him simply being weaker than Shuichi was part of what he did wrong in the trial, he wouldn’t have felt the need to prove himself like this, and I really believe he might have been able to bite the bullet and apologise for his actual mistake on the first day of chapter 5. But, precisely because he’d convinced himself that he had to apologise for something that he didn’t need to and couldn’t fix, Kaito kept putting off that apology, including the part that he actually should have been apologising for, for what might even have ended up being forever if plot events hadn’t got in the way and changed things.

In short: during early chapter 5, Kaito manages to fuck up his own apology principles in both possible directions at once, both by not being able to apologise when he has made a mistake, and yet also by still believing that he should be apologising for something that genuinely isn’t his fault. Kaito’s issues make him into such a delightful hypocrite and I love it.

How Kaito gets it right again at last

At the end of trial 5, Kaito finally does give Shuichi the apology he’s owed him for the whole chapter. It’s great that he found the courage to do so and didn’t leave things unresolved, but that’s not the part that’s a sign of Kaito’s growth. It was always a given that Kaito would apologise in the end, because he always knew he needed to take responsibility for his mistakes.

The best part of Kaito’s final apology to Shuichi, the part that really does show how he’s grown, is the fact that, while giving it, he doesn’t unnecessarily apologise for anything he shouldn’t. The only thing he apologises for here is being too hard on Shuichi during Gonta’s trial: the lashing out that was his fault because it was under his control. He mentions being jealous of and feeling inferior to Shuichi, but he does not apologise for those feelings that he couldn’t help, because those aren’t his fault – he only brings it up to help Shuichi understand why he lashed out, and nothing else.

After two and a half chapters of internally beating himself up for not being a good enough hero, feeling like he should apologise and he should feel bad for “failing” Shuichi simply due to being an actual human being with weaknesses and struggles, Kaito has finally realised that that’s wrong. He’s accepted at last that things not going as perfectly for him and his heroism as he wished they would isn’t his fault, not if he gave it everything he had the whole way, which of course he always did. It’s an absolutely lovely sign that Kaito’s managed to make at least some progress with his issues about heroes just before the end.

…And then he goes and apologises to Maki, twice, for dying on her – not even in the sense that he’s about to be executed, which could be argued to be his fault, but simply in the sense that his illness is going to kill him no matter what. Of course Maki is hurting, but that isn’t Kaito’s fault and is the last thing he ever wanted to do to her, so it’s not something he needs to make himself feel any worse over than he already does! Granted, one of these is phrased as an “I’m sorry that you’re hurting” type of apology I mentioned earlier that doesn’t frame Kaito himself as responsible for Maki’s pain. But the other is literally, “My bad for making you cry like that,” which, no. God damn it, Kaito, you selfless idiot, you were doing so well.

[twisted-lies]

Could I get a matchup for Danganronpa? I’d prefer a V3 character as the first choice, but if not that’s totally ok! I’m a minor who is in highschool and I have both dark brown hair and eyes, with glasses. I’m pretty self conscious of my appearance, but I still love to make friends, even if I don’t have a lot! I’m pretty chill, and usually am outgoing and take the leader role inside my friend group. I like to draw and play video games, and watch mostly anime. Sorry if I missed anything!

I kin assign you with...

Kaede Akamatsu

Firstly I thought of Kaede Akamatsu, Kaede took the leadership role at they very start and can be pretty outgoing if she trusts you or knows you well enough. She's also a little more laid back or chill. She took a chance on Shuichi so I'd say she probably likes to try and make friends even if she won't end out with very many.

Kaito Momota

Secondly I thought of Kaito Momota, Kaito, like Kaede, likes to try and lead people and keep them on their feet and happy if he can. Even if he may not be the smartest going about it. I'd say he likes to make friends because he chose to try and become friends with Shuichi and Maki, even after he knew Maki's real ultimate.

Akane Owari

Lastly I thought of Akane Owari, Akane, like you, have brown hair and eyes. She's also pretty outgoing and would tend to take charge if she can. She also tries to be helpful even if she's not sometimes. She also likes to try and make friends and is pretty kind to the people she meets, not wanting to scare them away.

I hope you're satisfied with your results!

If you want me to change Akane to a V3 character just let me know and I will!

[kaibutsushidousha]

Artbook Data - Design Team Interview

All left now for my artbook translation series are the three big interviews. The finale is approaching. I’ll do design, then development, then writing. Expect them to take even longer than usual, since they are all huge.

Notes:

I have no idea why Komatsuzaki is not being interviewed

Nakao is the main character designer and illustrator for Zanki Zero. Basically their Komatsuzaki.

Interviewees:

Tatsuya Marutani: One of the old school members, being part of the team since DR1′s development. He was DR1′s director, and from DR2 onwards, he has been managing the budget, schedule, etc. as the production manager. 

Satoshi “parori” Kawabara: Like Marutani, a member since DR1. He worked in all games of the series as a scenery designer and in V3 he is the leader of the scenery design team. He also personally made the 3D models for all the buildings.

Ayumi Sugita: Designer for some UI elements, like the title screen and the school badge. The woman behind the perjury mechanic, all new Class Trial minigames and all the replaceable e-Handbook backgrounds.

Ayako Nakao: Worked as an UI designer since DR1′s development. In V3, she handled the Class Trial interfaces, mainly the Nonstop Debates. She’s the one who incorporated the Psychocool vibe to the UI.

How to decipher a complicated design theme? The designers’ battle starts!

Interviewer: We are starting the interview with the design team. Why don’t you start by telling us which parts each of you do?

Tatsuya Marutani: I was DR1′s and I participated in DR2 and DRAE as a production manager. My role in V3 stayed the same. I’m in charge of budgeting and supervising designs, cutscenes, CGs and et cetera.

I: Not to mention being the leader of the design team.

TM: I don’t do anything this hard. I let every branch of the team have its own leader.

I: I see. Next Kouno-san, please.

Satoshi Kawabara: I have been the leader of the scenery design team since DR1. We don’t have a team specialized in building 3D models, so aside from the scenery models, we’re also in charge of making all other 3D models. But someone else is making the characters.

I: So, you make the 3D models for the places and buildings, got it. Next up, Sugita-san, please.

Ayumi Sugita: I joined in DR2 late stages of production and was in charge of making the interfaces for DRAE and DRV3. I created the designs for the title menu, the the e-Handbook menu and few of the Class Trial interfaces.

I: Last but not least, what do you do, Nakao-san?

Ayako Nakao: I did interfaces for DR1 and 2 and this time I was in charge of the Nonstop Debates.

I: Now that we know what everyone do, I want to start this by asking about what a concept all sides of design share in common. The design theme for V3 was “Psychocool”, Kawabara-san can you give us a few words about it?

SK: Not really. Each team branch interpreted “Psychocool” their own way and used their own concept as the basis for their designs. Then we discussed it with the others and reached a final consensus. Psychocool is a word our group made up, so it’s only natural that everyone understands it as something different. So I think I can’t speak for everyone because every team branch would give you different answer.

I: Don’t the design teams communicate with each other to maintain a visual consistency? 

SK: We communicate, of course, but we never reached a concrete image of Psychocool.

I: Yeah, that’s vague.

SK: DR1′s Psychopop theme gave me its fair share of questions, then 2′s Psychotropical made even less sense. Then comes V3 with its Psychocool and I could just think “what the heck am I supposed to do with this?” (laughs). 

AN: In 1 and 2 I just went with my own interpretation and it all turned out ok in the end. I thought the characters and the scenery would show the “psycho” side and for my interfaces I just had to worry about showing the “pop” or “tropical” sides. Back in 2 I even tried to add an ukelele to the interface to increase the tropicality.

I: So you each find your own interpretation and insert it into the design. I’ve heard that the development this time was very chaotic for the design team because the theme was suddenly changed from Psychoamerican to Psychocool.

SK: There were some more beside Psychoamerican. Psychostylish if I recall right?

AN: It went from Psychoamerican to Psychostylish to Psychocool. 

SK: Whatever it were, design directions can’t be decided without a concept keyword, so there work proceeded by each team branch throwing in their design under the most recent theme. 

TM: The work with the scenery always starts with Kawabara messaging me saying “I got the new theme. I have no idea what it means.”. We get some orders from the script writer, like “I want this to feel more cyberpunk than steampunk”, “more green, more nature”, so we take what we get and expand on it. Then, after we get to read the finished script, we adapt what needs to be adapted to it and that’s pretty much it. We don’t let the Psychocool theme restrict us too much on the earlier stages.

I: And how does the interface design proceeds?

AN: The DR1 and 2 interfaces used warm colors like gold and orange. But, since the theme this time was “cool”, I chose colder colors. I think we got an overall more “cool”, more subdued vibe.

The Saishuu Academy grounds’ multiple design concepts.

I: Now I have a few questions about the scenery design. The stage this time is a school inside a dome. How was the scenery design planned around this idea?

SK: Since the plot was planned, it was already decided it would be a space sorrounded by a prison-like wall. But another keyword I received was “spaceship”, so I decided to add some more cyberpunk and futuristic elements by making it into a dome, and then, since the school’s name contained the word “captive”, I covered the dome with a birdcage.

I: Sugawara-san said in his own interview that the birdcage was his idea.

SK: By the way, the birdcage idea was also used for the shrine that leads to the trial grounds. To be honest, after we made the wall into a birdcage, I checked it to see how it looked from the garden. It was so giant that we couldn’t tell it was a birdcage. And so, I made the trial shrine into a smaller birdcage to make everyone notice the bigger birdcage. As a result, entering the trial can be bizarrely described as entering a little birdcage inside a birdcage.

I: Didn’t expect the shrine to have this much of a secret to it. Did you first design the exterior of the buildings and then the interiors?

SK: That’s how it usually goes, but this time we still hadn’t planned how big the school would be, so we didn’t know what we would need to have outside. The sports ground we made early on was never used in the story, so we removed it from the layout, but on the other hand, the more we developed the script, the more new places we needed in the school building. 

TM: The twist of Ki-bo destroying the school in chapter 6 was a last minute decision, so that caught us off guard.

SK: Oh, it did. Good we hadn’t started making a 7th floor back at the time (laughs)

I: Nice you didn’t have to throw an entire floor away (laughs) You said you had to add a lot to the school, so how big it was originally?

SK: At first it only had 3 floors. For the building scenery, I wanted to make it similar to Kibougamine or just a regular traditional public school, while still trying to give the fans a different feel to it.

I: And then you kept adding new floors nonstop. 

SK: Yes. The script for a new chapter said “4th floor” then the next said “5th”. In the end, I had to scale it up to 6 floors. The script gave me some tips saying the 4th floor was “Japanese”, “creepy and scary”, “mythological horror”, so I took my notes and adjusted its image accordingly. Following this notes and adding my own psycho elements, I made the 4th floor and Shinguuji’s lab. 

I: The 4th floor was really the most impressive made. DR:AE had that graveyard stage with a similar taste, but this floor was even scarier.

SK: Having fun with what you’re creating is a tradition in the DanganRonpa scenery team. The 4th floor was about mythological horror, so I could add a direct reference to Village of Eight Gravestones. When something had to add something there, we all tested to make it as scary as we could. I even put some broken Kṣitigarbha statues from pictures I found on the internet. The picture was really good, so I used it as the base for the whole theme.

I: The broken statues did have this impact. With Kodaka-san’s precise theming and your efforts, you managed to make every floor after the 4th one also have a unique tone to them. 

SK: The theme for the 5th floor was much more clear because Kodaka wrote a game’s title on the instructions. (laughs). And also “angels and demons”, if i recall right. Holding my suspictions that the plot would bring up something about duality, I assumed that the 5th floor would be explored when the story was approaching its climax and designed it to have a bigger atmosphere of climatic grandeur. 

I: I see, and finally the 6th floor?

SK: It was decided that the 6th floor, containing Momota’s lab, would be open at the same time as the cyberpunk area outside. Therefore, they got a near-future and spaceish vibe.  By the way, Momota’s lab was initially supposed to be on the 3rd floor. It was going to be a rocket punched through the school’s wall, and inside it would look like a control room. But then the script mentioned a room that you had to climb all the way from the bottom of the school to the top, so I thought I should make the interior of the rocket into a giant staircase, and Momota’s lab came to be as it is today.

I: Now that we’re on the subject, I would like to about the students’ labs. The labs are unique for each student, but what did you have in mind when designing them? The talents?

SK: Believe it or not, for the labs we received barely any instructions. We were left to design them however we wanted. We took from many points from the students’ characterization and designs to solidify the ideas we wanted and sent our own designs. One example I remember is that I received the request of “I want Yumeno’s lab to have a feeling of both real magic and magic tricks” and I had to make all the hard work of finding this balance. The first version I did looked like an illusionist’s warehouse, so I got it had “not enough real magic”. The labs were all like this, taking numerous attempts to get perfect as they are now.

I: Was the process for this similar to the student rooms in DR1 and 2?

SK: The students’ rooms all had the same size, so all had to do is add some accessories inside to differentiate them. This time I had no restrictions about the room’s size, so I didn’t make the mistake of treating them like the standardized bedrooms. For example, for Momota’s lab I thought “make it space-like. A planetarium maybe”, then you go to Gonta’s lab and it’s a bothanical park (laughs). I was trying to think outside of the box as much as I could.

I: How did you think for characters whose concept was difficult to expand. For example, the Super High School Level Survivor Rantarou Amami sounds like a challenge to me...

SK: It was said in the story that Amami’s room was “death game-like”. I had to keep asking myself “what is ‘death game-like’?”. 

TM: Because this game is a death game.

I: It sure is (laughs)

SK: So I based the design on LIAR GAME (a manga about deceiving other in a psychological battle. Has a TV drama and a movie adaptation) and added a more bloody vibe and horror elements, making Amami’s room.

I: Also, I heard from Kodaka-san that Saihara’s lab had 52 books containing all the murder tricks used on the previous DanganRonpas. 

SK: The furniture and items have their places decided by the boss. For every room, I draw my draft only after reading the story’s script, understanding the characteristics of the room and doing all the research I need to design its scenery. I give this draft for the planners to check, and they give me the ok, I can send it to Kodaka. I think the books idea came along somewhere along this back and forth. 

I: I see. Another question about the student bedrooms. Aside from the protagonists (Akamatsu and Saihara), we also see Ouma’s bedroom. It’s filled with random items from the previous cases all over. How did you get that from Ouma’s character quirks?

SK: In the other games’ story, the bedrooms were provided by Monokuma to reflect each student’s talent and character quirks. But here we have the student labs for that, so we didn’t think much about personalizing the bedrooms. For Ouma’s bedroom, I just consulted with the planner in charge of it to make it fulfills all of the conditions it needed to. 

The Saishuu Academy’s gigantic map is fully loaded with its designer’s imagination!

I: One of the new elements of the maps is that they are filled with many breakable objects with Monocoins inside. As the scenery designer, you get choose which objects are breakeable, right?

SK: When I first designed the maps, no objects were breakable. But now that the scenery is more realistic, the charm of the 2.5D effect got weaker, so we decided to include this feature as a way to highlight it. From this point on, I began considering what is slapable in all future drafts, but I have no idea when it was decided that they would have Monocoins.

I: The DanganRonpa series seems to have a lot of those “things that just happened and no one knows how” (laughs). What it difficult to make all this scenery, as you put it, more realistic?

SK: Not more difficult, just more time consuming. Like, before I could just make an object pop out of the background and that was ok because “it’s 2.5D”, but this time I needed a more natural presentation. For example, to make a room before, I had to build its 3D and make it 2.5D. This time, I had to add natural-looking lighting to the 3D room I built and then drop the 2.5D objects there in a way that emphasized this lighting. Lots of new steps were added to the process.

I: So instead of getting harder, you just had a bigger workload because that’s naturally necessary for realism. 

SK: You got it. The hardware changing from the PSP to the PS4/Vita also added to the workload, as those have a better graphics. That’s what lead to the lighting work I just mentioned.

I: I’m looking at the earlies drafts for the scenery design and the tone here feels a lot lighter than in the final version. Was the Saishuu Academy going to be completely different from how it is?

SK: When I drew these earliest draft, we is still hadn’t decided on the direction we were going for. All I had was an instruction: “I want it to look like a portrait in a 3D map”, so I made these designs only to look portrait-ish. Besides, since I didn’t get any proper orders for the school, I just drew two patterns of options for everything.

I: What were the concepts for them?

SK: At first I didn’t what direction to take to make it different from Kibougamine Academy. For the first 3 floors, I took Kibougamine’s basic concept of a prestigious public school with a tangible history and took it even further, resulting in a pompous, almost church-like building. ((upper image in the link above))

I: Gorgeous and luxurious. And the other one?

SK: The other one was more modern university. Universities nowadays have some classrooms with no walls or windows, and that felt very liberating, so I how I thought it would be fun to draw a place like this. ((lower image in the link)) So I drew this draft but it turned we couldn’t make a school this open because with make the murder tricks more difficult to create. I made this concept hoping it wouldn’t be approved. I’m glad my idea was ditched (laughs). 

I: (laughs) Speaking of ditched scenery ideas, any others you want to talk about?

SK: The biggest thing is that in the first draft the wall surrounding the school was going to have an opening with a giant waterfall coming out of it, and a pond below it. We were planning for the waterfall to make a pretty rainbow but one day it was suddenly not there anymore.

I: And how exactly was this waterfall supposed to be used in the story?

SK: Remember that little path going behing the school? It was originally going to be much more unnecessarily long, going through the middle of a mazey forest seperated from the school. However, the forest part would be boring if it was just all green all the time, so someone had the idea to add the waterfall. Ultimately we decided to shorten down that path, so the waterfall was ditched. And then the provisory gym was ditched. 

I: Why was the gym ditched?

SK: The murder trick for chapter 2 needed it. It was merged with the pool area and demanded design changes to accomodate it. That said, I was probably going to have to change it anyways because the old version was based on the not yet made New National Stadium (laughs).

I: (laughs) Scenery designs does have its fair share of parodies and references. Like that statue of that ninja...

SK: The lines in the script also pushed the reference, so I think the scenery team decided to hit it as close to the original as copyright allowed. Being an object provided by Monokuma, we had the liberty to go a little crazy with it, so we went all in with the ninja statue and the stone tablet in front of the pool. 

I: And so, you weren’t forbbiden for neither the statue nor the tablet. 

SK: No, I was forbidden for the ninja statue. As I mentioned on the dev blog, it was originally much more identical to the real deal. Naturally, this would cause copyright issues, so I was forbidden by someone even higher up than Producer Terazawa. By the way, we included quite a few references not only in the maps but in the cutscenes too. I hope you readers replay the story to find all of them.

Making it comfortable and pleasant to play: The feelings incorporated into V3′s interface

I: Alright, now I want to ask about the interface designs. What do you need to discuss before you start working on the UIs?

AN: The game flow (daily life -> investigation -> class trial) never changes, but that doesn’t mean all games should have the same interface. The first step in design is deciding on the base color to fit the theme. Also, for 2 we could make flater designs because the PSP’s resolution was lower, but on the PS4/Vita’s higher resolution, the images would feel empty will if we designed then like we did before. That’s were have our fun thinking about what new effects we should use in the new UI, like for example grunge (the spotted design effect).

SK: The UI never gets done in the first try, does it?

AS: Never. Especially for the non-Trial part. I can’t even count how many we changed it (pained laughter).

AN: It took the longest for us to figure out how to fit 3 characters on the same dialogue. 

AS: The first thing we discussed is how to include this set-up that allows for 3 characters on the same screen. And we finally got the first screen ready to be our template, we built our UI around it until the higher-ups said “No, this feels wrong” and threw it away. Another big problem was V3′s much higher ammount of dialogue UIs. In DR2 it only changed for day and night, but in V3, aside from the timeframe changes, we also have different UIs for the daily life and investigation. 

I: You’re quite the perfectionists about this. So, when you don’t have a clear answer for the interface, what basic principles do you follow?

AN: The only possible principle: trial and error. For example, we once add TV show elements to the Class Trial debate interface. It was idea made considering the endgame twist, but it was forbidden for being “too much”. Our first map interface also had the same TV theme to it, so that was also scrapped along with all other TV-related ideas we had. After that, we started thinking only of “cool” as our design theme. 

I: I see you had a lot of working problems, but overall did you how your new options expanded your creative liberty?

AN: Oh, tell me. As I said before the resolution now is a lot higher. If we tried adding grunge back on the PSP days, every screen would get blurry and ugly. Now everything looks pretty on the screen. Me and Sugita were pretty hyped that we could use the grunge effect now (laughs).

SK: You two did great. Like with all the ideas you added to the Trial debates.

AS: But the first months gave us gestaltzerfall. “What’s an interface”, we asked (laughs).

I: Thinking of DanganRonpa design is harder than for other games?

TM: All titles care about their design. It’s just that DanganRonpa can afford spending a longer time thinking about its designs. There as lot of adding new aspects and taking them back, but other titles are just as hard.

I: And has that ever lead to argue with Kodaka-san about...

TM: All the time.

SK: I think everyone in the team really trusts each other. 

TM: Yeah, because whenever someone in the team has a cool idea they really want to use, we all do everything we can to add it. That’s how we made DanganRonpa 1 and we got a lot of praise from the players for it.

SK: That’s the part that matters. In DR1 we really went beyond what’s reasonable, but since the players loved it, I can’t think we did anything wrong. That’s why I always trying doing the most unreasonable things they ask me.

I: Can you recall any of those unreasonable requests?

SK: V3 was full of those. Changing the colors of the staircase was quite work, for one. After the entire game was pretty much done and ready for release, I got the sudden request saying “I want to add more colors like the were in 1 and 2. Give a crazy color to the staircases”.

AS: Oh, that’s right. When I first played the game, I thought “The staircases were not this color”.

TM: Because of this, we had to redraw a bit of the scenery, some story CGs and Climax Inferences.

I: Even under this conditions, you never say no?

SK: If we can do we want to do it.

TM: But naturally, it’s not easy having to rearrange the schedule and budget.

The Class Trial gimmicks achieved a huge power-up

I: Next up, I want to ask about the Class Trial designs. I was really impressed by the huge power up V3 got when it came to how the words were displayed and moved.

AN: That was the first idea we had to make this game’s presentation’s richer than the previous entries. The planner in charge complained a bit when I said he must come up different movements for every sentence, but I got him to do his best (laughs).

I: The fonts got a lot more varied, too.

AN: At first we did it with only one font, just like in the first two games. After we started decorating the text with flowers and magic circles around the characters, we had the idea to change the fonts as well. So we prepared 3 different fonts, but that was still not enough. After begging our programmer hard enough, we ultimately added 20 new fonts to the game.

I: Lots of new elements were added to the Class Trial, like the Panic Debates, Perjury and the Debate Scrum. How hard it was to introduce those?

AN: We had a lot to take away from the Panic Debate. We built the set up and when we excitedly went to test, it was really hard to display different characters in 3 separate cameras and have words come out of them. We removed a lot from it not to overload the game and had to release this oversimplified version. It was difficult compromise.

I: I see. How about the Perjury mechanic?

AS: I did the Perjury design. I took really long before it got how it is now. I was asked to do something that looked different from everything we had in a Class Trial before, so I had no idea what to do. I desperately searched for hints in the script and the illustrations, until I found my epiphany in that one Ouma sprite where is face turns pitch black. When people lie, something in them change. Ouma is the embodiment of lie in V3, so it figures that his change, this color inversion, is what gave shape to the lie mode.

AN: Oh yeah, I remember the perjury prototype screen was titled “OumaColors” (laughs).

AS: I used’s Ouma’s purple (laughs). And the eyes with “lie” written on it to reflect the character’s hesitant mind was Kouno-san’s idea. It was there to give a feeling of “Everyone is watching you lie!”.

I: Perjury is filled behind-the-scene secrets!

AN: The Debate Scrum doesn’t have any interesting origin story like the Perjury has, but we had some trouble trying to differentiate from the standard Nonstop Debate. We added the part at the end were you have to push the rockets after everyone matched the discussion topics. I don’t know why we settled with rockets, we were just suggested to do something that moves and the rockets were the first idea that came up.

I: One last thing about the Class Trial. In chapter 6, we have a couple unique designs and interfaces. Did you just have this idea when reading the script? Has the story helped you defining these designs?

SK: Everything was decided on the spot when building chapter 6.

AN: Yes. We brought pretty much everyone to discuss this part. Now that you mentioned, I absolutely can’t remember why we made the final Ki-bo Argument Armament in 3D. He was so hard to make. I made all the system to add him in 2D like every other AA character, but then I got told “Drop that for now, Ki-bo might have a different visual from everyone else”. I never expected Ki-bo to be the only one in 3D.

The minigame design were also all pitched with full force!

I: All teams told me in their respective interviews that they faced difficulties with chapter 6. Anyways, our next topic is the minigames and the in-game games. Please tell us why the room with the Monomono Machine looks so African?

SK: The reason is incredibly simple. The initial plan was to make the Monomono Machine more cyberpunk-looking, to match the game’s previous cyberpunk design. But we reconsidered because putting cyberpunk objects in a cyberpunk area is not interesting. So make the pieces in our composition more mismatched, we went with the African imagery. 

AS: A shocking clash of opposites.

TM: But why Africa specifically?

SK: I can’t remember why I chose Africa, but I do remember why I didn’t want the school store to look like a school store. Back in DR1 I made just a normal school store with unexpected products on the shelves, like paper lanterns and Western armor, but I found it funny. This time, I decided to reverse my joke, making a room that looks nothing like a school store and filling the shelves with the most commonplace products. And that how it came to Africa. 

AS: Oh, so that was the reason for Africa. I remember when I was trying to come up with a design for the Monomono Machine. I asked how the store room looked like and you just said “Africa” with no further elaboration. Despite the millions of questions in my head, I still designed all the wallpapers for the Monomono Machine keeping the African motif (laughs). 

SK: Sorry for designing the school store without consulting. I didn’t even think about the Monomono Machine...

AS: You don’t need to apologize, it was fun to design!

I: So, about the minigames, was that whole setup where you can play all the Class Trial minigames (redesign) at the Casino planned from the start?

AN: Yes. Some of the Trial minigames were hard, so we made the Casino as place where you could practice them in a fun way. The redesign were made to create a more fun atmosphere, since keeping the same designs would make the player feel like they are still playing the Class Trial.

I: I see. And then you added the Casino-originals: the Monomono Slots and the Salmon Fishing.

AN: We just wanted to make one new game for the Casino. The jackpot animation for the Monomono Slots was entirely handdrawn, so I’m glad it got okayed. Also, please notice that the frame for the Salmon Fish is decorated with roe. 

I: That’s right! There’s roe in the frames.

AN: In the beta version we had an animation for the eggs hatching when you beat the game. But we couldn’t include it in the final version, so I thought people wouldn’t notice the eggs, hence why I’m raising this appeal for them. 

I: More fans to the roe. Also, still talking about the Casino, I heard from the planning team that the e-Handbook wallpapers available as prizes there were quite popular with the fans.

AS: Making that many was worth the effort. At first we were only going to have 20 of them, considering “16 students + α”, but I was requested to make more of them because the Casino didn’t have enough prizes, so by the end of it, there were 40 Handbook wallpapers in total.

I: Double the original plan. Was it hard to make this many new patterns?

AS: It was fun (laughs). The wallpapers are prizes you have to buy from the Casino, so I wanted let everyone be happy with the one they picked. I started by making a pink one because Akamatsu was a girl and a blue one because Saihara was a boy, then I started making new ones with colors tied to the character quirks of the rest of the cast, considering both their design colors and some keywords. Then I made the Dangan Salmon Team and the Love Hotel ones borrowing elements from those designs. Same with the DR1, 2 and AE ones. Then the more original ones with my own original material. I get filled with emotion when reading tweets of people enjoying their wallpaper of their favorite character.

I: That’s the good part of being a creator. Anything you else want to say about the Casino room?

SK: A casino and a love hotel are not installations you should have at a school, so they off in the academy’s grounds. So, I made them not visible in the area where you can see the school building.

I: It was a trick to preserve the beauty of the school grounds, huh. Now, tell me which extra lenghts did you have to go to make the Death Road of Despair and the program world from chapter 4.

AN: The interface made the assets for the DRoD. Since I was told we would have a 2D sidescroller, I prepared the controllable chibi characters. Since this is a bonus mode, it was possible to just use the 8bit sprites we already had, but I decided it was better to make the sprites I did since those are actually facing the right side.

AS: We also had to make running and jumping sprites for 16 characters. It was very time-consuming. 

TM: Making all of this for 16 is impressive. It’s a strange amount of effort for a minigame that ends so fast (laughs). 

I: And how long did the chibi charas in the virtual world take to make?

TM: Those didn’t take as much effort because they were a lot less varied, both in movement patterns and in number of characters. However, the program world is practically a whole different game, so it took a lot of time to balance the size of the world and the movement speed. 

SK: The sceneries in the program world were partially made in 3D. We needed to use special test cameras to check everything regarding the characters’ movement speeds and scenery gimmicks. Only after all of that is done that I can start drawing.

I: Oh, remembered the program world had unique text boxes. 

AS: We changed the entire interface, to emphazise that that was a different world. Aside from the text box, we changed the BGM name visualizer and change the movement format from omnidirectional to vertical and horizontal only. Also, you know how the characters change expressions during conversations? We drew all of those expressions ourselves. I added the sweatdrops and effects because I wanted the characters to stay expressive even inside the program.

TM: It was costly but the development was so fun I think it was worth the price. As you would expect, there was heavy discussion about the Death Road of Despair, since we would need to make way too many new assets for such minor parts of the story and I’m not sure I agree (laughs). But this, the setting of the entirety of chapter 4, is much more clearly worth its price.

What are the interface and menu easter eggs layed by the design team!?

I:Time for the final question: anything to say about secrets or easter eggs you all put into the game, like the salmon roe Sugita mentioned earlier?

SK: Half of the images of real people in chapter 6 are people from our firm. We even included some people who appear in public often, like Terazawa-san and Sasaki. Have fun looking for them. 

AN: I’m pretty sure we also included one person wearing a Monokuma head in there.

I: But there are foreigners in those pictures too, no?

SK: The plot says the whole world is watching, so it would be weird if we only had pictures of Asian people. So we use stock pictures for half of them. All the foreigner and elders there were stock pictures. We also included a few family members of the staff in charge of editing said stock pics. 

I: I see. Anything else?

AS: Remember how characters appear in the background of the gallery menus? There are some rules to which characters appear. For example, the Saihara without the hat won’t appear before you beat chapter 1. Also, one character in particular doesn’t appear before you complete the story. I would love if you checked who it is for yourself. Then there’s the easter egg on the title menu.

I: What did you hide there?

AS: There’s a lot of objects on top of the building on the title menu. Every time you beat a chapter, a new object related to the chapter in question gets added. I think a lot of people don’t go back to the title menu that often, so when they realized, the place is already packed with stuff. 

TM: I didn’t go back to title menu before I finished the game.

I: That’s what I call hidden content. Now, one message to the fans, please.

TM: I think this was better than DR1 and DR2, both in plot, volume and pacing. And I can proudly brag that this is the entry that best shows what DanganRonpa is about. I believe you’ll discover many new by playing the game from the start after reading this book, so I would love if you replayed it.

SK: In my many years in the gaming industry, I very often thought about how I live wanting to make something that moves someone’s heart. This game said every word it had to say, so I strongly a decent amount of hearts were moved by it. I hope V3 is a game that leaves lasting marks on the players’ hearts, be them from positive emotions or from negative.

AS: Probably very few people pay attention to a game’s interface. But I am interested in interfaces from a professional standpoint, so once I played DR1 I realized that this was the kind of interface I wanted to make and I started dreaming of working on the DanganRonpa series. The dream came true in DR2 and in V3 I was left in charge of many of the interfaces. I’m extremely glad it happened, but I gotta say I faced a fair amounts of challenges. It was a great experience. I thought the hardest I could to make this interfaces, so please pay attention while you search the easter eggs in the game.

AN: I can say with confidence that V3 is the culmination of everything our dear series represents. It was the first time we could develop a game of the series on the PS4 and we could make more detailed interfaces because of it. Explore every nook and cranny of it.

[96percentdone]

Anon if you’re wondering why I’m doing it like this it’s because I don’t want this showing up in the shi//rog//ane searches. I am going to rail very hard on her character. If you like her, you were warned.

To be quite frank I think literally anyone would have made a more interesting ringleader. Okay, that’s a lie. Except for Ouma and Harumaki and Yonaga, I think anyone else would have made a better ringleader. I’m gonna explain why, first starting briefly with why I think Ouma and Harumaki would have made worse ringleaders.

Ouma is quite simple: his entire character gimmick is “pretending to be an obvious mastermind only to end up NOT being the mastermind and is fundamentally against the killing game to begin with.” This is is just too good to ruin. Harukawa’s is less complicated in that she’s an assassin, so making her the ringleader would be boring and obvious. Like yeah okay of course the surprise assassin was the organiser of the killing game big fuckin whoop. And finally Yonaga, and the big reason for that is her character gimmick is “scary exotic foreigner” and cults and it’s a lot of racist shit and tbh I think even if you took a lot of that out, making the one foreign coded character (in a Japanese environment) your ringleader is asking for trouble. Don’t do that. 

The biggest reason I think shi//ro//gane fails not only as a DR mastermind, but as a character, is because she’s boring as shit and has no personality. It’s not even an accident she has no personality. in v3 characters tend to revolve around a gimmick, and her gimmick is literally being a non-entity. She constantly talks about being plain, and for most of the game her big thing each chapter is just...going with the gimmick of the chapter. That and she makes anime references that feel kind of forced and personally not how people tend to make references. And then in her big chapter, where she was the revealed to be the mastermind, she spends most of it pretending to be other pre-existing characters with more personality. 

Some people think the center of her personality is on fandom, and it’s a commentary on it, and on passion. To which I say: fucking where. Okay, I understand exactly where that potential lies, and in her free time events there’s definitely more of that. But I personally think that if I need to read the free time events (which are entirely optional you could play v3 without ever doing a fte, nevermind specifically hers) to feel like a character has a personality, then you didn’t write a well written character. 

What is there in the main story to suggest this? She makes constant poorly done anime references, and there’s one forced fanservice consplay scene. I’m blown away by this. It never feels like this is important to her, because it’s always played as like a joke or an event where her talent is just the excuse for fanservice in the ch1 scene. What else is there? Does she talk about her love for fandom and cosplay? Is she looking for excuses to dress people up in her various cosplays in the main story? No! Fuck I mean we even unlock her room and the mandatory conversation you have with her with that weird ass cg is about her bar life, not her fandom life. Like they go out of the way to not talk about it meaningfully in the one place it would be more than apt to do so. Seriously?

Chapter 6 is better at making her fandom commentary. You could argue that her constantly shifting into previous characters and rambling on and on about her love of dangan ronpa is fandom commentary. And yeah I guess it is. But it’s weak as fuck. It’s backed by like jack shit from the earlier chapters, and she has to talk about this because this is the big plan for ch6. It’s the ch6 gimmick! And then ch6 is an inconsistent mess of lies and contradictions that canon can’t explain, and she says some things (like the cosplaycat killer line) that imply she faked all that too so like. More following the chapter’s gimmick? would you believe? I would!

That’s the big problem with Shi//ro//ga//ne. Her gimmick is her entire personality, and that gimmick is not having one. That’s why she just does the big thing of every chapter, that’s why she’s so forgettable and doesn’t stand out and is “plain”, that’s why she constantly cosplays as other dr characters, and that’s why at the end of the chapter she goes “haha I pulled another great trick” without elaborating. Her thing is having no existing personality. Just being whatever the story needs. And maybe someone out there will be like “but that just shows her passion for DR and--” no. No what it is is just cheap and lazy writing, and again possibly not even true. 

And this has bad effects on writing a meaningful mastermind, particularly since we spent the entire game with her. She does nothing the entire time and doesn’t stand out, and particularly with v3′s writing where characters generally only become important in the chapter they die, by the time you get to ch6 it’s so obvious she’s going to be the ringleader. Harukawa’s had an arc (albeit a shitty one), Yumeno had an arc, Saihara is your protag for realsies who had an arc (albeit half-assed and not focused on what would have made it strong), and Kiibo is clearly having his big moment right now, so that leaves Shir//o//gane being saved up for something huge. Like the ringleader. She becomes obvious because she’s nothing. And then her reveal means nothing because she had no personality to get invested in because her gimmick was having no personality. And also they do nothing with her and chapter six is a poorly written garbage fest that makes no fucking sense.

She’s a bad mastermind because she’s a bad character, and she’s a bad character because her personality is a nonexistent thing that’s entirely up for grabs since she’s faked it all and her gimmick is just not being an interesting person. 

And this makes effectively anyone else a better ringleader, because anyone else in the game has more to their personality than she does. I’ll even explain why everyone excluding the previously mentioned three will make better antagonists before getting to my main ideal pick. In order of deaths!

Amami: he’s a mystery man right? that kinda seems to point against him but like play up the he died first trying to stop the killing game angle and it turns out he faked it or something just to get it started. He could take or leave killing Akamatsu off, but she chose trial, so she had to go. revise his videos a little so he looks a little sketchy, but even more like a victim trying to do good.

Akamatsu: if you just take out the fuckin “she has a twin bit” in ch6 and have it turn out she faked like her entire execution just so she looks like she’s entirely uninvolved, only to turn out she did kill Amami but with entirely different means, would that be cool or what? like it’d be the triple Akamatsu twist whammy. also wouldn’t waste her as a character cause she wouldn’t die for manpain to be your wife.

Hoshi: so yeah he’s kinda got the “I’m depressed because i’ve killed” shit working against him but you can easily rework that into a big old lie (hey look it’s the themes of the game some more wild). he’s still depressed in real life but his outlet for that was violence, so killing game.

Toujou: literally she gets power hungry and sick of constantly having to tend to the whims of everyone around her. her loving serving people was the big lie. she’s more interested in serving herself and the audience. Simple. Effective. Subverts her character in a meaningful but still relevant way.

Chabashira: she’s super honest and open about her emotions right? To an almost childlike way? fuck yeah you could make that ringleader shit. She wants to bring out the best in people emotionally, except she actually thinks the best way to do that is trauma. But she doesn’t really actually care about your emotional wellbeing, and that becomes apparent throughout the trial. her big fuckin lie. amazing.

Shinguuji: see this is tough and i’m tempted to put him in the not-mastermindable category because of chapter 3 which was. eugh. But okay see we’re just gonna take out all the weird incest serial killer shit. shinguuji’s gimmick anyway is that he’s detached and more interested in observing the people around him like an onlooker than he is partaking. smart but doesn’t give much a shit. this is easily played up to ringleader levels just. “I wanted to put humans in a society I made myself to play god and observe them to my heats content” simple. not as thematic, but hey it’s consistent.

Iruma: okay so canonically. Iruma is kinda a bitch. I mean this positively she’s kinda funny even if the sex jokes gross me out. She’s paranoid and kinda narcissistic and super weak to criticism and bites people in an attempt to make them not bite her. So what if it turns out like that’s just...fake. she’s actually just rude mean and crude not as some kinda backwards defense mechanism (we’re taking out the kink) it’s just because she likes being mean and crude. She seems so weak willed as a person but it turns out she orchestrated and “invented” the killing games just to keep attention on her and put people through hell. I’m not totally confident in this one I’m sure others can come up with better but fuck I mean it’s not shi//ro//ga//ne.

Gokuhara: this is easy he’s not actually a gentleman at all! it’s a big lie! a ploy to make him sympathetic and likeable! He went along with Ouma’s shit just because he thought it was amusing! The world at large decided he couldn’t be a gentleman, so he decided to be the biggest brute you can find and run killing game where he makes himself look good in comparison to everyone else. you’d have to rewrite ch6 a lot but it’d be better than canon anyway lmfao

Momota: now Momota’s my second favourite ringleader choice not gonna lie. This is just because the narrative plays him up as your shsl best friend and you get very invested in him (despite his uh....glaring toxic masculinity problems which we’re taking out because they add nothing to his character). His big thing is being a supportive believer. a shounen protag. but it’s all bullshit! Have the real Momota be the audition tape asshole. Or he doesn’t even have to be that it’s just his big thing will be that huge punch of betrayal that won’t compare except for with my #1 pick. But we’ll get to them very soon.

Kiibo: Y’know those posts that talk about how AIs are actually going to be very pure with their best interest in being serving humanity? I want that for Kiibo, but in a super warped and twisted way. Kiibo in his desire to be seen as a human and respected by them, starts feeding the twisted desires of the masses with the torture porn they crave in the form of a killing game, because this will make him be accepted as one of them. But he still ends up being a kind of subservient AI who never escapes that role, so now the killing game runs partially on hate, and partially on the thin remains of hope he has. I think this is kinda fun.

Yumeno: Yumeno is great because she has that whole arc where she learns to be open with her feelings and honest with herself right? Well we’re gonna make that just. a big old lie. She just doesn’t give a shit, so fuck it she’ll do this killing game shit too.

And finally, top pick: Saihara. Saihara would be the literal best option. Keep the protagonist switch. Akamatsu dies, we take Saihara as protagonist now. He gets played out basically the same. We play thinking we’re playing an insecure detective with some issues with the truth (and some issues with lies that aren’t capitalised on as well but hey that’s not actually entirely necessary for this scenario). We think Saihara is trying to carry on Akamatsu’s wish, because he says he would, and he solves all the cases and seems to be interested in saving everyone.

But...it’s a lie. Like in chapter 1 we were playing with an unreliable narrator the whole game. Saihara’s focus on the mystery versus trying to guarantee their lives in the game now gets played for “of course he’s focused on those this is his show. It’s what he lives for.” Saihara created a killing game to have an endless set of murder mysteries to solve, and he doesn’t really care about the people, but their potential in creating a good story. Maybe he’s even the pre-game fanboy too if we’re keeping that trick. And the narrative insisting on framing him as good through the use of the cast becomes a clever trick to hide his motivations.It’d be another unreliable narrator, and the best way to capitalize on the themes of the game. More lies. 

Not to mention it would make the Akamatsu thing especially brutal, because you play as him to frame her for a crime it will turn out she did not actually commit. The replay value of the game at LARGE would be through the roof, all because of this trick. It’d be fucking fascinating, and it would just destroy dangan ronpa formula. We’ll have not only a murder protagonist, but a mastermind protagonist. Listen. LISTEN. This is the best possible ringleader selection. I will fight you. dkgjrngdjkn

Okay I went on long enough we’re gonna call it a day. I hope this more than answered your questions!

[chichorie]

what are your pre-game headcanons about the cast??

theres a LOT of characters to go through so ill try to keep this as short as possible but, its still probably gonna end up kinda long. so basically im gonna list some people who i think would be most important in a pregame setting and maybe then some.

ndrv3 spoilers!!!!

kaede akamatsu: 

“i’d be perfect for a killing game. i dont have any faith in humanity” says a lot about her, and i really like that she says this with a chipper tone and a smile on her face. she might have had a personality similar to ingame kokichi. 

kaede is also kind of mean to shuichi in the prologue, yelling at him to shut up while he’s panicking for very valid reasons (they just got fucking kidnapped). shes probably impatient, rude, and dislikes working together with others.

she also says that she thinks the world is very rotten so shes also rather cynical. like most of the pregame cast, i think she would have to have a very bad past to be willing to participate in a game as dangerous as dangaronpa and essentially throw away her life.

shuichi saihara:

in the audition, hes very timid, very nervous and stutters a lot. in the prologue, hes prone to panic easily and does not speak/carry himself in a confident way. much like ingame shuichi.

i do think he has some kind of survival experience, or knows how to escape easily in some kind of bad situation as he led kaede through the halls with the exisals without getting caught.

he’s very passionate about danganronpa, willing to do whatever it takes to participate. its basically his whole life. i think he mightve been sucked into it because of a bad homelife, watching it as a kind of escape. (”tings might be bad for me but there are people who have it worse”)

decides to participate because hes tired of living in the real world and wants something new and exciting. he doesnt really care if he dies in the killing game because its better than continuing to live the life he already is.

tsumugi shirogane:

i think she worked for danganronpa since she was kind of young, either making costumes or acting as junko during the final trial. i dont think she ever participated in a game until the very last season.

shes kind of a loner and doesnt view herself in a good way. she thinks shes boring and uses her fictional characters to give herself something to live for. her characters have more life than she does, in her eyes.

after being given full permission to go wild with season 53, i think she did most of the planning. she wrote the script, picked 14 students from the auditions, wrote their characters, designed outfits, etc. she really wanted to make sure she made her first season the very best one the world has ever seen.

she was the one who decided rantaro would have to participate in season 53, and also asked team danganronpa to create kiibo to serve as the audience’s proxy. she herself decided to join as the 16th student because she really wanted to be able to live in a fictional world that she created.

k1-b0:

doesnt really care about danganronpa. he just knows he has a job to do and has no say in being in the game or not.

likely in some kind of testing stage, making sure his ai can develop properly in the game setting and trying out different personalities for him to take on. teaching him basic things like speech and action.

is likely rather quiet. he doesnt say a word in the prologue and probably doesnt speak unless he is spoken to.

unlike ingame kiibo, he only views himself as a tool and doesnt think he is very humanlike at all.

rantaro amami:

this ones kind of hard because he was already in a past danganronpa, so his personality in the prologue is likely that of the ultimate adventurer from season 52, and not the rantaro amami who auditioned for that season.

hes cool and level headed, having been able to survive the past killing game. he can see things from all angles and doesnt let emotion or bias get in the way from his goals and his survival.

hes also selfless and willing to sacrifice his own freedom if it means someone else can escape the killing game. i think he’s ok with dying if it means he can help someone.

kaito momota:

a very scary guy. not friendly at all. you probably do not want to bump into him in any kind of situation.

very strong and can likely win any kind of fight. he probably likes fighting, too. he says hes willing to kill everyone if it means winning danganronpa.

greedy, didnt join the game for any reason other than the prize money. he chose the rold of ultimate astronaut because he wanted to be something flashy and cool.

miu iruma:

shes still rather brash and has thin patience, as seen from the prologue, but i dont think she’s a very sexual person. she doesnt like to make jokes or innuendos simply because she didnt have time for it.

she chose the role of ultimate inventor because she wanted to be recognized for something other than her beauty. she wanted to prove that she was more than a pretty face and had what it takes to win.

unfortunately, is often looked past due to her nice body, and has to use it to get people to pay attention to her, even if she doesnt like it. its likely the only reason she got into the game, much to her dismay.

[jinjojess]

Jess’s V3 Ending Thoughts I

Okay, going to talk a bit about my raw feelings on the ending so far. After I go back and play more and digested it a little more, I may have more to say.

Things I Liked

It contextualized the really frustrating writing calls made earlier in the game, like why HaruMaki’s entire character revolves around this random crush she developed with no satisfactory build up or why Akamatsu basically exists just to build Saihara’s confidence or why there was a goddamn double murder in the third chapter etc. I still would have preferred a game that was solidly written start to finish that didn’t rely on tropes for large chunks of the narrative, but at the very least I can laugh it off now and go “Oh, Shirogane, you’re such a terrible fic writer.”

It did something different, which is always appreciated. The game was taking this idea of choosing a different option than hope or despair that SDR2 introduced and the idea of landing on an unsatisfactory ending on purpose from DR:AE and tried to go further with it.

I really liked that the game itself identified that the audience’s dogged demanding of a hopeful ending is one of the things that drags the series down.

I like that all of Shirogane’s sprites post mastermind reveal show that she’s got bags under her eyes. It’s a small detail, but it really shows how tiresome the DR formula is making everyone, even people who purport to love it.

I like that having the characters sign up willingly to participate eases one of the major issues this game had, namely that there were too many goddamn cinnamon rolls in the cast. Like literally everyone but Shinguuji pretty much was Too Good and holy god is that unrealistic and boring. Showing that they too were super fans who made a dumb, short-sighted decision redeemed them a bit for me.

So I know a lot of people probably have issues with the “we know nothing really about these characters” thing, but honestly I’m totally cool with it. It’s like Kodaka dumped a box of colorful Legos at my feet and I can now build anything my imagination desires. 

I like Shirogane as the one pulling the strings. I think it works pretty well and thank god she got something significant to do in the end.

Nate disagrees, but I kind of find the idea of a society obsessed with an element of pop culture to the point where they want to bring it to life in an unhealthy way to be kind of funny and appropriate for a DR game.

I respected the decision to have all the characters die at the end to stop the series, and the way the formula got entirely deconstructed. (See below for the caveat to this.)

Things I Didn’t Like

What the FUCK was that epilogue?! Not only does it undercut the narrative significance of what happened right before the credits (Saihara: “No, we have to die because our deaths will make a statement.” *two minutes later* Saihara: “No, it’s totally cool we survived.” YOU CAN’T HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, SAIHARA!), it’s basically the hopeful ending the audience wanted. If the audience chose to spare you at the end so you can continue living, then that’s functionally the same as a hope ending, guys. You haven’t changed shit in that case.

Speaking of, I don’t know that they can say they “changed the world” really. I mean, you made the ending boring so people stopped watching. How do you know they didn’t jump ship on DR but latched onto a completely different series to get their fix? What, is DR the ONLY killing game media in town?

Saihara’s bit in the epilogue about how they TOTALLY deserve to live now and about how the fact that they signed up willingly could have been a lie was so fucking bad oh my god. If you take away the fact that the characters signed up willingly, you now fall into the trap DR3 did, i.e., shirking consequences. “Sure, there’s video evidence of me applying to participate in this killing game of my own volition, but I’m a Good Person who’d never do such a thing, and so I am choosing to doubt that ever happened if not just outright deny it!” It boils down to the same issue I had with Mirai-hen: everyone always thinks they’re Naegi, never that they’re Munakata.

Nate and I discussed this on stream, but this ending is super fucking unfair to Shirogane. Her crime was giving these ungrateful kids what they wanted, and then they turned on her and we’re supposed to rah rah that they let her die because...?

The ending message is so confused here. Like at first I thought they were going with a “be careful to keep reality and fiction separate in your mind, lest you go too far” which is a good, necessary message. I mean, look at how Tumblr will harass living, breathing people over fictional shit. That makes perfect sense with the set up: fictional killing games are all well and good, but when you cross the line and start using actual flesh-and-blood people, you’ve gone too far. However, by the end we start getting hokey lines like “You don’t believe in the power of fiction?” and “Fiction can change the world!” Uh, yes, Kodaka. No one is arguing that it can’t. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t think fiction can inspire or have an emotional impact on people. We have already proved that via the fact that people like Makoto in that one quick real world segment were finding strength and courage because of the DR series. So why beat this dead horse?

On that topic, if your endgame moral is literally “fiction has an impact on reality despite being fictional” then having the characters be flesh-and-blood people detracts from your message. If a character who never existed outside the confines of the game and was nothing but binary and pixels was struggling to escape their own narrative, then it would have had more weight. As is, the message is still coming across as “the problem with this is that you are involving real people” (if not straight up going Tumblr Purity Brigade, though I doubt that was Kodaka’s intention).

Dear everyone who told me Saihara HAD to be the protag: please show your work. Because he didn’t. “But he came up with the idea to not choose either side! It was because he was weak and relying on his friends!” People. Please. Do you really not see how that could easily have been reframed to work with Akamatsu? “I’ve been dragging everyone around so much this entire time that I never stopped to listen to the anyone else, and all that I got for the trouble was that the killing game continued. So this time I decided to stay quiet and listen instead, and when I heard Kiibo-kun and Maki-chan say they would sacrifice themselves, I got an idea.” And then she has to let the other remaining survivors choose for themselves instead of choosing for them. It’s really not hard to make a justification for any other character. When people said that it HAD to be Saihara as the protag, I thought it was because he was the true mastermind and had set this up as an elaborate punishment for people he knew were guilty of crimes who had gotten away with them (which given all of the DRK-ness in his backstory, would have made a lot of sense). Or something. You know, a scenario where it really would have had to have been him. As it stands, it only has to be him because the story says so, which if you pay attention to my arguments about Naegi-Stu, you should know is not a justification to me.

Someone with a sense of artistic integrity would end the series here, having deconstructed it to this point.

Unanswered Questions I Still Have

I still find it really strange how some people were able to actually make use of their talents--I think it would have been more cohesive if no one ever did anything all that impressive. Like it works with, say, Akamatsu (who never actually plays piano) or Yumeno (whose entire schtick is kind of being a fraud) or Momota (again, fraud) or Saihara (who is doing things in the game that were literally done by Joe Schmoes in previous games), but for Iruma or HaruMaki or Hoshi, placebo effect only goes so far. I don’t think it can suddenly make you able to upgrade a robot repeatedly or do 100 push-ups in a few minutes or flashstep.

On that note, what is the deal with Kiibo? Is he actually a robot that the DR Team made to be the audience stand in? If that’s the case, why does he look human in the prologue? What would they have done if he got murdered earlier on?

Who is controlling Monokuma? Just another staff member? Does he have an independent AI?

What would they have done if Shirogane had died earlier? I mean I assume this is why she avoided latching onto any particular group and was such a non-entity during the game but still...she was a girl and therefore at risk of Shinguuji.

Still unsure if the outside world of V3 is intended to be our world or not. If it is, then we hardly are a world without strife or despair. If it isn’t...what the hell is the point? Who cares about some fictional other outside world that has nothing in common with the one we inhabit? “Here’s how fiction affects reality! ...oh but not OUR reality, this reality I made up for the purposes of this story.”

What was the deal with the tech helmet things we saw on Akamatsu and Saihara? Was that supposed to be them “entering” the “world of DR”? Or was that the true first memory light thing? If Saihara said in that section that he wanted to die with everyone, was the significance that he signed up because he was suicidal? (I assume that’s why Yumeno signed up...she’s been dropping not-so-subtle hints all game that she suffers from depression.) Why didn’t that get explored more?

So these are my knee-jerk immediate feelings on the ending so far. On one hand there were things I really, really liked about it and things I appreciated that it tried to do, and on the other there are things that I think just plain didn’t work.

More later after I play through myself some.

P.S. Bonus mode is pretty great. Can’t wait to play on my own.

[oumakokichi]

How do you feel about the line where Saihara says that Kokichi is the embodiment of lies? Personally I dont like it very much.

Hello anon! That’s actually a pretty fun question, in my opinion! It’s interesting that you don’t particularly like the line; I actually like it quite a bit, but I think this is because I didn’t personally interpret it as negatively as some people might have.

There are a few reasons as to why I think it’s actually a pretty fitting note to end on chapter 5, and most of them involve touching on Ouma’s actions throughout the game, as well as what Kodaka had in store for him, so as per usual I’ll put the rest of this under a read-more. Watch out for spoilers when reading!

I think perhaps the biggest reason I didn’t feel like Saihara’s line about Ouma embodying the concept of lies was meant to be negative or harsh is because this is the exact same thing Kodaka himself has been saying about Ouma the whole time. I recently re-reblogged Comun’s (@kaibutsushidousha) translation of Ouma’s official art book pages, and it’s stated pretty word for word there: Ouma is the single character who personifies ndrv3’s themes of lying, and for this reason, Kodaka put a lot of thought and effort into writing him.

It’s not like lying itself was an entirely new mechanic to Danganronpa; it is, after all, a murder mystery game about finding culprits and exposing lies and inconsistencies in trials. However, ndrv3 is the first game in the series to actually flesh out the mechanic of lying, even going so far as to allow you, the player, to commit perjury during the trial—not even allowing, really, but adding at least one mandatory perjury per trial, because even Saihara cannot get by in this game without lying.

Where dr1 and sdr2 were much more focused on a very different narrative involving the ideas of natural talent, usefulness to society, and cycles of hope and despair, ndrv3’s themes instead shift to focus on truth, lies, and the all-too-blurry line between them. Where the previous two games usually presented lies in a fairly straightforward manner (usually limited to lies told by culprits during trials, or by the mastermind directly), ndrv3’s entire focus is on lies from the very start.

The game lies to you about who your main protagonist is going to be, it lies to you about how trustworthy the flashback lights are—it even plays on the your expectations directly in later chapters, by suddenly seeing to tie directly in with the Hope’s Peak arc despite Kodaka saying that it wouldn’t, only to subvert those expectations again and reveal that it was all another lie. Everything, from the truth of the outside world, to whether the characters’ talents and memories are real at all, is called into question, and I absolutely love it, personally.

This level of open-ended speculation is something I believe Kodaka wanted to preserve with Ouma’s character. Because in the end, the point of ndrv3 isn’t to say “lies bad, truth good.” Like Ouma himself, it’s all a bit more complicated than that. Because lies themselves aren’t inherently negative, or harmful, I don’t think Kodaka wanted to give too much away about Ouma’s own lies. Doing so would erase some of the mystery surrounding his character, and would present the facts in a way that was much too straightforward compared to the rest of the game.

This is why most of the clues we do get about his real intentions and motivations are limited to a few definitive facts: that Ouma and DICE were pacifists with a very strong moral taboo against murder, that he wasn’t a Remnant of Despair, and that he loved games and pranks. Almost everything else about him is something we have to guess, evaluating his earlier quotes and weighing it against the information we have by the end of chapter 6, and trying to decide if we believe him or not. Essentially, Ouma is a puzzle and we’re trying to guess what the full picture looks like with only half the pieces.

From a writing standpoint, I think this decision makes sense, especially considering how badly Ouma himself wanted to remain a mystery. So many of his lines throughout the game put emphasis on how much he values lies as a form of free will; it’s clear that he found the ability to choose whether to tell the truth or not extremely important. Presenting us with too many clear-cut facts about him, or having every single character arrive at the same, definitive conclusion about how they felt towards him, would have been dragging the cat out of Schrodinger’s catbox, so to speak.

When Saihara describes Ouma as someone who truly embodied the concept of lies at the end of the trial in chapter 5, I personally felt that this was a great way to summarize Saihara’s own conflicting feelings towards Ouma at that point in time. We know, for a fact, that Saihara didn’t hate him, even despite the things he did. As I mentioned, the localization changed this line, but in the original dialogue of the game, Saihara explicitly refers to Ouma as a “friend” (“nakama”).

Clearly, he never wanted to see Ouma die—but at the same time, he still doesn’t exactly know how to feel about Ouma. Ouma presented a very contradictory picture to the rest of his classmates, particularly if we only look at the end of chapter 5, without any of the subsequent reveals in chapter 6.

He was extremely childish and playful, yet cold and calculating at times. He was willing to sacrifice two people in order to keep himself alive in chapter 4, yet willingly let Momota take the antidote and chose to die under the press in chapter 5, even though he easily could have let Momota and Maki die instead. He often pretended to enjoy the killing game and take pleasure in his classmates’ suffering, yet at the end claimed that he hated it all along.

In my opinion, pretty much anyone would be confused and conflicted in Saihara’s situation. In the time that they knew each other, Ouma followed up nearly every word out of his mouth with, “but that’s a lie though!”, regardless of whether he was telling the truth or not. Considering how little they actually knew about Ouma at this point in time, it’s understandable that Saihara and most of the others would feel as though he remained an incomprehensible liar even in death.

Keep in mind too, that by the end of chapter 5, Saihara and everyone else was still very much under the impression that Ouma was still a Remnant of Despair and Junko’s personal successor. They already realized that he wasn’t the real ringleader of the game, but it wasn’t until discovering his motive video in chapter 6 that Saihara started to reevaluate more of his assumptions about Ouma. Meanwhile Himiko, Maki, and Kiibo don’t discover that Ouma wasn’t actually a Remnant until nearly halfway through the chapter 6 trial, when Saihara puts forth his discoveries.

Considering the fact that they still believed him to be a Remnant of Despair and essentially “Junko 2.0,” Saihara’s conclusion that Ouma was someone he couldn’t fully understand while he was alive, who truly seemed to represent the idea of “lying” itself, feels rather lenient. He could have written him off as a horrible person for his actions and refused to refer to him as a friend… but instead his words sound more curious than anything else, and just a little bit sad.

A huge reason that Saihara, and for that matter all of the other characters, could never fully understand Ouma or his motives is simply because Ouma wouldn’t let them. Due to paranoia and mistrust, Ouma refused to let anyone else in or open up to others, and this is the biggest reason for his downfall in chapters 4 and 5. I can’t help but remember the end of Saihara’s FTEs with Ouma, where he muses that even if he reaches out his hand, Ouma still won’t actually take it—and that’s exactly what happens in the main story, too. It’s downright impossible to help or understand someone who won’t accept your help or let you in.

All in all, I think Kodaka wanted players to feel extremely conflicted at this point in the story. We do, of course, get a few bits and pieces of information about Ouma later on in chapter 6 that help shed a much clearer light on some of his actions, but that’s only if we take that information and go back through the story with it in mind. At the time of Ouma’s death, I think Kodaka really wanted to capture the feeling of someone who remained so mysterious and told so many lies that it was just downright  frustrating, trying to figure out how much of what he said was true or not.

Considering Saihara himself goes on to adopt a very similar opinion towards lies to Ouma’s, I can’t help but think that his comparison of Ouma to the concept of “lies” was never inherently a bad thing. Lies are, after all, meaningful. They’re a morally grey area, absolutely capable of being twisted and used to hurt others, but also just as capable of comforting others, and influencing the world in very powerful ways. By the end of the game, Saihara’s opinion on lies isn’t a black-or-white outlook of “they’re always bad,” or “they’re always good.” Instead, he recognizes that lies are much more complicated than that—much like his opinion towards Ouma himself.

In any case, this was a very fun question to discuss anon! I find it interesting how people’s opinions towards Saihara’s narration at the end of chapter 5 really differs, and I still wonder if part of it has to do with how much harsher the localization made him seem by cutting out the part about him considering Ouma a friend. It’s really interesting how much people’s opinions on this part also tend to tie in with their feelings towards ndrv3’s ending in general, considering the theme of “truth and lies” really kicks up a notch from this point on in the story. Thank you for leaving such a fun question!

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

V3 Chapter 5 spoilers

These are my thoughts about the person who was murdered in Chapter 5 so please don’t read this if you haven’t seen or played it yet ! Starting now.

I was just thinking about how the Chapter 5 murder really struck me and everytime you mention Momota and Ouma I’ll talk about how I love them for a while and then suddenly freak out upon remembering these two kids are dead. And I honestly loved this Chapter. Man, I love me some good despair. And seriously, I think the choice of Momota and Ouma dying together and somehow helping each other out (Ouma giving Momota’s last instants a purpose since he was gonna die anyway, and Momota of course playing his part of the deal until the end) was the most amazing way they could have used the relationship between these two characters. (Also there’s that thing about Monokuma telling Ouma he would survive very long, and Momota he would die early in the game, while in the end they both die around the same time, Ouma being first) Now, the thing I’ve been thinking about recently too, is how Ouma would have reacted to the ending of the game. I can’t help but thinking that it would have been amazing to see him realise that he was being lied to, discover who the mastermind was, and also realise pretty much everything about the ending, from how his real self actually chose to take part in the killing game, and everything he thought was true was a lie - which would be absolutely freaky for a master of lies like him, who thought he was handling the situation perfectly; he knew many things about the virtual world for sure, but didn’t know anything about reality. And I’m not sure what would have been more interesting in the end : the death he got, that I really found interesting and well written (and heartbreaking, but that might just be me), or his reaction upon realising that he had been lied to and wrong from the start. I wonder if he would have kept his “evil” persona or if he would have honestly, for once, expressed his feelings. I wonder if he would have been upset until the very end or if he would have learned to accept things. If he would have been overwhelmed or if he would have managed to find the trick against the watchers from outside (which would have made much more sense to me than weak old Saihara finding that out all by himself, along with the strenght to fight). I also would have loved to see his reaction to Kiibo being ... everything special about him that you only discover by the end of the game. And since I have to consider the horror that is the epilogue canon, I’ll say that Ouma’s last reactions would have been far more interesting to hear than... like... Harukawa’s. (whom I love but becomes so dumb in the last chapter, and especially trial) Also maybe he could have pushed Yumeno’s character development a bit further by stating something about her hesitation and weakness in comparison with the others. Anyway. I don’t know. I guess it’s because Ouma is such an interesting character, that both endings for him would have been interesting. But I guess Momota’s death would have been nothing without his.