#also junko and kamukura are watching mukuro die

[templegate]

Some one off doodles i wanted to share.

[theamityelf]

In your Kamakura Wrangler Au could you rank who would be the most likely to hurt/endanger Makoto to the least likely to hurt/protective of him out of the students please?

That is a great question.

Honestly, I think his greatest protector (in terms of effectiveness) would actually be Hiro. While he's not actively protecting him or staying with him most of the time, he often does little things to set the right future in motion to protect him. In general, Hiro happens to lack the kind of hollow boredom that most Kamukuras feel; like I mentioned, his vibe toward everything is just that he is watching reruns of real life. Makoto is a recurring character he likes well enough on a show he's seen plenty of times. (The only show. The only channel. But it's not a bad one. It might even be really good, if this were his first time watching.)

Plus, Makoto's luck can occasionally surprise him. One time, Makoto trips and spills food on himself, and Hiro surprises everyone by actually laughing, because wow! A new scene for once!

Second most protective, of course, is Taka. He is vigilant about making sure none of the other Kamukuras kill this innocent and normal person. I think Kyoko and Byakuya would come around to protecting Makoto, too, but initially their vibe might be more, "You won't survive here for very long, so tell me this, before you die..." Taka is protective right away.

The only catch there is, Taka values Makoto's humanity so much that there is a non-zero chance that, if he thinks the scientists will change Makoto into one of them, he might mercy-kill him. It wouldn't be his default response. He's significantly more likely to attack the scientists or whoever else is posing a danger to Makoto than Makoto himself. But if he's identified it as impossible to protect Makoto from being Kamukurified, he would view death as the kinder, more ethical alternative. It would be very quick and painless, and he would cry for the first time, after. Makoto's ability to sway Taka's view on the humanity of the Kamukuras is so, so important to how well everything goes. Though the increasing investment of Byakuya and Kyoko would be helpful.

And Chihiro would also be a big help. They're usually hiding (and as a Kamukura, they're really good at it), so Makoto's conversations with Chihiro read like conversations with a ghost, but the arc there is that gradually Chihiro starts to become a physical presence. Eventually leading to Chihiro protecting him if and when it becomes necessary. Maybe someone thinks they've gotten Makoto alone, his allies are elsewhere, and they can attack him, but lo and behold Chihiro appears and saves him.

Mukuro initially protects Makoto only from being taken away by the scientists. Her strong sense of personal loyalty from before is now expressed as a rigid bond with the new collective, meaning she is very strict about the treatment of the Kamukuras. They have been given this resource, they have negotiated his use, so the scientists are not allowed to take him. Makoto always has Taka on one side of him, but when the scientists enter the room, Mukuro immediately stands at his other side. I think the two of them don't talk all that much, but she still grows fond of him from what few conversations they do have and how positive a force he's been for the other Kamukuras.

On the other side, of course Junko might harm or kill him just on an impulse. More likely harm than kill; despair is one thing, but she does actually need the enrichment. The thing is, the more he interacts with her, and especially the more he reminds her of the past and maybe helps some of her memories return, she might start to actively enjoy despair again, instead of just feeling the impulse toward it. And this time, she's got all the talents of a Kamukura. She would be extremely thankful to him, and killing him might be an expression of that thanks. Or she might keep him on hand as she develops into her new self, with the understanding that she'll kill him when it will hurt her most. If she actually starts to care about what's happening, she can manipulate her friends' eccentricities to get Makoto to herself. (Give or take a wild Chihiro.)

Sayaka would actually be something of a problem, not because she actively bears him ill will, but because she can't handle his attempts to be present as a friend and support for her. Her way of making sense of the trauma she underwent in the Kamukura Project, and even more so the very particular brand of demeaning that is being one of many Kamukuras, is to perceive herself as the one person who doesn't need any help, support, enrichment, or anything. She's supposed to be the one who can help everyone, and then Makoto shows up and talks to her in ways no one ever has, tells her about a past self she's not supposed to yearn for, etc. If she wants or needs it, then suddenly what she went through was just a pointless thing that harmed her and not the thing that made her what the world needs. She feels she needs to take him down several pegs. But I believe she can overcome it.

Hina is a danger, but she doesn't particularly mean to be; she's just very curious and she assigns no positive or negative moral value to any means of exploring that curiosity that pops into her mind. She'll mitigate her own more destructive thoughts because the group will have made agreements as to how to engage with Makoto, but for anything they haven't made explicit agreements about, there is no guarantee she won't hurt him. Even once she considers him a friend, it would be a separate thing for her to fully understand why suffering is a thing that people actively avoid, because she just doesn't factor suffering into her own thought process at all. (She understands suffering, functionally, and she has a full grasp on the ways in which it motivates and influences people's actions, but her own relationship with suffering colors her understanding of what it means that most people avoid it. Not to mention she's an analyst who spends a lot of time around Junko; her data is skewed.)

Celeste will become a danger if it will help her escape, but in most circumstances it won't.

Mondo will become a danger out of agitation over changes in the status quo, since they cause him to feel a lack of control. Like Sayaka and Hina, I believe he can overcome that.

Hifumi and Leon will be more into watching from the sidelines than anything. When Makoto befriends them, they still won't be too active. Sakura I think would be pretty neutral to him. And I'm going to say Toko likes him but does nothing for him.

[home-of-chaos]

I saw your blog, i see you like danganronpa- uh- idk- can you maybe- tell me some of the things you like about danganronpa? Or anything about your danganronpa stuff maybe? 👉👈 ~ anon ♡

Oh I have so many aus for Danganronpa. I absolutely love the games and art for it (tho I cant draw the characters well.)

I loved most of the games but the remaining survivors for v3 was pretty disappointing cause I didn’t really like Maki or Himiko. Maki was too aggressive and made me feel really uncomfortable and Himiko was generally boring and tiresome to listen too. (No hate for the people who like them though.)

I genuinely loved all the protag choices for each of the games and how different they were to eachother. I appreciate they didn’t have them act the same way but gave them different backstorys and morals and I love that they all didn’t value hope in the same way. Makoto saw it as the key to defeat despair once and for all, Hajime didn’t give a shit about it, and Shuichi rejected it.

Now to ramble about aus :D

So I have like twenty aus for each game so I’m just gonna vaguely explain a handful that I favor.

Hajime Kamukura- this is an au where the experiment somewhat failed on Hajime. He kept his memories of everything. The Scientists thought the projected had failed and tried to kill him and start on someone else which led to Hajime killing them and running out. See, the experiment hadn’t been a complete fail, Hajime now had all the talents in the world. After returning to find his two best and only friends dead because of some Ultimates, Hajime’s blossoming hatred for the academy that had betrayed him only grew as he realized the Reserve Course would never be treated equally to the Ultimates. He saw the abuse they had to put up with daily and decided to take down Hope’s Peak academy once and for all and abolish the so called title of Ultimates

Dead but Not- THIS IS A VERY DARK AU WITH DARK THEMES! This au follows the events that happen in THH but Junko didn’t kill the blackens, instead, she locked them away until she was called out but the remainder of the students as the Mastermind and then released the Blackeneds back to them. But she also returned the dead victims. But now the victims were modified and altered to obsess over different things. Hifumi loves Violence and Destruction, Chihiro loves Death, Taka loves Pain and Suffering, Sayaka loves Addictions, Mukuro was still Despairful, and Sakura was supposed to crave destruction but it failed to happen. She’s the only one from the victims with morals. The school is now a maze like structure. The remaining students must find all the blackeneds and escape alive before the modified victims find and kill them all.

Hinata triplets- au where the different versions of Hajime (Hajime, Izuru, World Destroyer) are all siblings, triplets in fact. WD and Izuru were taken into Hope’s peak academy and made into what they were in the anime, WD was a killing machine, best shooter in the world. A perfect Assassin and Izuru was made into the Ultimate ultimate. They were also made to forget about eachother. WD went rouge and escaped and Izuru was broken out by Junko. Eventually the run into a destraught Hajime, claiming to be their brother. Now they have to work with Hajime and regain their memory and take down the academy before to takes them down.

Horsemen of the Apocalypse- Hajime is thé entity known as The Apocalypse. He has made four innocent people into his horsemen. No one knows where he came from or what his motives are but they do know the one thing he wants and it’s to watch the world’s slow destruction. Nagito Komaeda is the Horsemen of Death. Mikan Tsumiki is the Horsemen of Pestilence. TeruTeru Hanamura is the Horsemen of Famine. Chiaki Nanami is the Horsemen of War.

Postgame- this au takes place two years after the events in THH which was just a terrifying VR simulator show. They all live in a small city/town per request of Makoto who wanted them to stay in touch and close together. (Also thé great Tragedy still happened but Makoto and Junko managed to work together and help the remnants return to a somewhat normal way. They live in the town/city too) Pregame v3 cast also resides in this small city/town.

Lovegame- au where, instead of Despair, Junko was obsessed with love and trapped the cast of THH, V3, and SDR2 in the school in a game of Love and would give them each a somewhat romantic task per day and if they failed, they’d get punished (basically the execution except it wouldn’t kill ya, just hurt a HELL of ALOT)

Roommates- it’s just follows the lives of Chiaki Nanami, Hajime Hinata/Izuru Kamukura, and Nagito Komaeda if they were roommates together. Just a pro-komahinanami au

I am a Robot- Izuru save Chiaki instead of watching her die but now she’s a cyborg. (Part human, part robot) cause some parts of her were beyond saveable. Now she must work together with Izuru and a reluctant Servant to free her class from Junko and the despair that controls them.

Loyal Servant- Remnant au where you follow as Servant. See, Komaeda didn’t fall to despair like the other’s when watching Chiaki die since he’s used to seeing the people he cares about, die. But he plays along, acting like he did. He won’t let Chiaki’s death go unavenged. Servant plans to kill Despair at its roots. Future Foundation is too busy being hypocritical and killing eachother so Servant takes it apon himself to end it all. He will turn the Remnants against eachother and cause them to kill eachother, he’ll manipulate Monaca into destroying the Warriors of Hope and then herself and then take down Junko. All while seeming like a simple, mindless servant.

I got more but those are my main ones.

[the-apocryphal-one]

More than a Waifu: or, an analysis on Chiaki

This was typed up for a thing over on reddit, and I decided to share it here because I already put several hours into it, no sense letting it go to waste, right? Basically, it’s an analysis on Chiaki (both of them) and why she’s an interesting and relatable character, beyond mere “waifu bait”, as she is sometimes derogatorily called.

I’m aware DR3 doesn’t have the best reputation among the fanbase, but I still think covering the Chiaki there is important for understanding AI Chiaki, and I genuinely like her. So, let’s start:

Chiaki in DR3:

We’re introduced to Chiaki Nanami in the first episode when she literally bumps into Hajime while playing her game. After a couple seconds, she mumbles that she’s okay and is ready to move on with her life when he asks if she’s playing Gala Omega. Her blank demeanor changes and she becomes super excited, talking about how it’s such a classic and asking him how many times he’s played it as she gets up in his face. At this moment, Chisa arrives to pick her up, and before she leaves, Chiaki tells Hajime she thinks having a talent isn’t a big deal—“all I have are games”, while he can “go anywhere and become anything”.

An intro should establish some character traits, and this does a good job—she’s into games, she’s got some social awkwardness issues (not noticing she’s literally walked into someone or that he’s holding his hands up when she enters his personal space), she’s kind, and she doesn’t think much of herself or her talent. She’s also got some cute, romantically-lit moments with Hajime, establishing herself as #1 love interest candidate and a potential friend/emotional support.

Over the course of DR3, she has an arc where she grows from loner to class rep (and no she did not do this in less than a day, there’s mention of multiple lunches or classes, so it took her several to put everything together), becoming the heart of Class 77 and bringing them all together. She doesn’t do this on her own, however, because she feels that she can’t make friends with games—it takes Chisa’s encouragement to get her to try, and later Chisa’s pushing and nomination for her to actually accept the class rep position. She also, as expected, becomes Hajime’s friend at Hope’s Peak, reassuring him whenever he dwells on his lack of talent. Unfortunately, she’s not able to do enough to help him, and after he gets beaten down by Juzo Sakakura in Episode 3, he goes through with the Kamukura Project, disappearing for a whole year.

Episodes 4-7 don’t show us much of Chiaki, probably because they’re very focused on first Nagito, then Junko, Ryota, and Izuru. When we do see her, she’s usually looking sad, playing a game as she waits at their old haunts. I have my grips with this section because Episode 4 should have had more focus on Class 77’s reaction to Twilight Syndrome, to say nothing of how the six-month timeskip in Episode 5 should have been an episode of itself, because that would have been a great time to show more of her leadership growth. The qualities exist, but like almost everything else, they’re brushed over. Her waiting around does, however, indicate she’s very attached to Hajime and either very patient, clingy, or both, which makes sense—her various comments in Episode 1 indicate she had no friends before HPA, and he was the first one she made.

Anyway, after Episode 7 and the Tragedy of Hope’s Peak Academy, the Reserve Course starts parading, Mikan goes missing, and to top it off, it’s raining. Nagito makes his return from his year-long suspension, telling everyone he saw Mikan on the grounds, and they all split up to look for him—Chiaki going with Nagito. They stumble across the real Ryota Mitarai and Junko Enoshima, where Nagito reveals that he plans to kill her so she can be a stepping stone for hope. Chiaki protests at the idea of killing anyone, but its all moot as Nagito spends too long on speeches and Izuru comes in and shoots him. Chiaki recognizes Izuru as Hajime, but he doesn’t recognize her, and while they’re holding gazes, Chisa comes in to rescue them! But she stays behind to cover their escape. So Chiaki half-carries Nagito back to their class, where she rallies them together to go back and save their teacher and Hajime! And here is where everything goes downhill for her, because of her.

First, let’s just start with the fact that she didn’t tell anyone where they were going, or even leave this to the authorities. We know they have cell phones, we see her using hers as a light, and we know there are police. Hell, someone should have stayed behind with Nagito, who is half-conscious and just got shot in the chest—probably Mikan since she’s the nurse. Nobody in Class 77 thinks of this, but I hold Chiaki the most accountable since she’s their leader. She was warned several times—first by Chisa herself telling her to leave, then by Peko coming in injured from her fight with Mukuro, and then by Nagito Komaeda telling them to give up (and while he says he was testing her, she has no way of knowing that at the time)—and she still charged in, without a real plan and without a way out if things went wrong. She genuinely believed they could do this, that the power of their bonds as a class would triumph and save the day like in one of her video games. So no need for planning, right? Wrong.

Her attempted rescue goes exactly as well as you’d expect—Junko outplays them, separates Chiaki from the group, traps her in a dungeon, and then brutally tortures her to death while making Class 77 watch. It’s still really sad two years later and I’m not going to cover everything she goes through, but even here she still shows her grit and determination as she struggles on through a lot of wounds to make it to the end. Which is a trap, of course, and she’s impaled several times over. With that, Junko successfully brainwashes Class 77 into despair—which is a sticky issue among the franchise, and one I’m not gonna get into more than to point out that it was a combination of the brainwashing and the death that made them Ultimate Despair; Chiaki’s death on its own wouldn’t have worked.

Izuru comes in to talk to her, at which point she starts crying as she talks about how she regrets not being able to help anyone, how she doesn’t want to die, and how she just wanted to play games with him again. After she stops moving, he then picks up her hairpin and cries too, and is seen carrying it around with him after. It’s been established multiple times in Dangan Ronpa that people who lose their memories still carry feelings; Ryoko is still in love with Yasuke, Toko and Genocider both share their feelings for Byakuya and friendship for Komaru, and both the DR and SDR2 casts reform their bonds very quickly. So Izuru retaining Hajime’s feelings for Chiaki follows the series’ trend.

That’s pretty much the end of her story, except for two things—one, her struggle, speech, and death motivate Izuru to examine hope as something that could bring unpredictability into his life, which is why he masterminds the Killing School Trip. And two, in said Killing School Trip, there’s an AI who scans the patients’ memories so it can form their ideal person. As it happens, the entire class had an ideal person in mind, leading to…

AI Chiaki:

AI Chiaki stays in the background for most of the prologue—she doesn’t make herself a huge presence, like the Imposter or Nagito. Hajime’s introduction to her is similar to her DR3 counterpart, in that she’s gaming and there are some long pauses where she doesn’t respond, but it’s also relatively different. For one, she starts to nod off near the end of the conversation, and for another she stays relatively calm all throughout it. I mention this because while she’s based off human!Chiaki, she’s not the same person as her, and has her own differences—two of them being, she falls asleep a lot (theorized to be because she’s an AI and ‘loading’, but there’s no real proof of that), and she’s far calmer and more rational. The fact they aren’t the same person is something I think needs to be emphasized, because I know there are some people who consider them the same character.

In the first chapter, she’s relatively minor, keeping to herself. The moment she first starts to stand out is at the party, where she offers to stand guard with Monomi, and after the Imposter is murdered, where she uses her knowledge of video games to suggest keeping watch at the crime scene. She’s useful throughout the trial, but her big moment comes around the time Nagito reveals himself to not be your “ally character” like you’d thought, which I think is good timing. She makes the deduction that the ‘killer’ found their way to the table using the lamp cord, which stops everyone from giving up and moves the case forward.

After this, she becomes more important during the chapters—she’s Hajime’s primary investigation partner in Chapter 2, she helps him investigate the hospital in Chapter 3, she puts together what she thinks is a map of the Funhouse in Chapter 4, she stops Hajime from going into the Final Dead Room in that same chapter, and she’s a trial-point-getter up until her death. Before I cover that, I’m going to cover something else—her personality, or why calling her a Mary Sue is just using a stupid blanket term that doesn’t even make sense—*deep breath*

AI Chiaki is strange. If you’ve heard the term ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’, she’s like that, except instead of drawing the protagonist in with her strangeness, she irritates him. She’s either falling asleep when they investigate a new area, or she’s got her head in the clouds. And when she wants people to go somewhere, like to or from the ruins in Chapter 2, she gets a little forceful about making sure they go to that place. In the first two chapters, Hajime makes several inward comments about how annoying or pushy she is. Even after he’s warmed to her, he still gets baffled by her train of thought, sometimes wondering, “what even is this conversation?” She’s also kind of childish, which makes sense since she hasn’t been alive very long—during the Chapter 3 investigation, she tries to pull a prank on Hajime by pretending she wants him to gouge his eyes out before turning on the light in a room, because it’d be embarrassing if he “saw”. It’s like something in a bad anime, and it falls flat on its face. The writing and drawings in her diary are sloppy and crude, more akin to what you’d see from a pre-schooler than a teenage girl. This quirkiness is endearing on the surface, but in-universe, it’s not.

Her Free-Time Events also show that she lacks a lot of basic knowledge about the world, like what Girls’ Day is or where milk comes from, and mentions the flaw tied back to that strangeness—she doesn’t get dating sims. Or, to be more serious, she doesn’t get people. In her words, she’s not good at games where she has to maintain relationships and guess what characters are feeling. She can be good at the latter (which I’ll mention below), but she also makes her share of misses (as mentioned above) and isn’t the greatest at knowing when to share her guesses. She’s nervous about how people will react when she does something, and feels she’s best standing on the sidelines. This is why she doesn’t take a leadership role except in trials—the Imposter tries first, so she doesn’t feel it necessary, and after he dies the group just…splinters. You’ve got Kazuichi and Nekomaru tying up Nagito, Akane running off to fight Monokuma, Fuyuhiko sulking on his own, Hiyoko bullying Mikan, they’re a mess. She’s good at games dealing with calculations, so she can handle the trials, but she doesn’t feel like she can handle her classmates, so she doesn’t try—and this ties back to her human counterpart well. Yes, human!Chiaki became class rep, but only after being pushed to by Chisa. Without that push, she would have stayed on her own, like AI Chiaki does. It’s a nice little character trait that got strengthened by the anime, in my opinion.

So she’s kind of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, except her strangeness isn’t what makes Hajime like and rely on her more—it’s the moments where she’s kind and sensible. Like her human counterpart, she has a strong moral compass, and whenever she displays it, that’s when Hajime’s impressed. She’s usually compassionate towards the murderers and even jerks like Hiyoko or pre-development Fuyuhiko. She’s insightful, if a bit insensitive, like when she suggests the reason Fuyuhiko lived isn’t because of luck, but because Peko deliberately sacrificed herself for him, while Fuyuhiko is in the room and feeling depressed that is Peko is dead. Surprise, surprise, being reminded that Peko died for him makes his mood take a dive and he just wants to be left alone. She also has a very firm stance on killing: it’s wrong.

Throughout the game, AI Chiaki makes declarations that she hates the murders and won’t allow it to happen, but she frequently fails to accomplish this. In Chapter 1, she stands guard, but she’s at the completely wrong area to stop a murder (and even if she were in the cabin, she probably couldn’t have stopped it anyway). In Chapter 2, she plays the game, but doesn’t get the special prize before Fuyuhiko. In Chapter 3, she tries to find a cure for the despair disease with everyone else, but a murder happens first. In Chapter 4, there’s nothing to be done except starve to death. Her efforts are either wasted or not good enough.

Chapter 5 is the first time where she really could have made a difference—the conflict of that chapter is that Nagito is seeking the Future Foundation ‘traitor’, which is her, and takes increasingly drastic measures to do so. First by blowing up the hotel, then by threatening to blow up an island, and finally by masterminding his own death to get everyone but the traitor executed. As Chiaki herself muses in the final trial, if the traitor had revealed themselves, maybe Nagito wouldn’t have gone so far…except she literally couldn’t, because it was against her programming. When she was able to earlier help, her actions weren’t enough to prevent a killing; now that her actions could have prevented it, she is unable to do them. All she can do is drop a butt-ton of hints that she’s the traitor, forcing Hajime to oust her in order to save everyone else.

And there’s the crux. For all her declarations, all her tries, she’s powerless. Her programming, her very nature, makes her powerless. She could break it enough to think that she wanted to save everyone, and that’s incredible, but she needed the others’ help to complete her sacrifice. If Hajime hadn’t gone along with her, or if her diary hadn’t been found to prove she was the traitor, would she have been able to convince them anyway? We don’t know. What we do know is that her thinking freely is a miracle, yet she was still bound by her coding.

Her execution probably highlights the differences between her and her human counterpart the best—while human!Chiaki is crying, gasping in pain, and screaming, AI Chiaki keeps a relatively blank face all throughout. She doesn’t panic or flinch when the huge tank is bearing down on her, nor when Tetris blocks are falling all around her. She tries to escape, but when she has nowhere to run, she accepts it. She goes to her death willingly and with a smile, whereas human!Chiaki had a more, well, human reaction of not wanting to die.

Finally, AI Chiaki makes an appearance to Hajime in the last trial, when he’s spiraling into despair and doubt over all the pressure being placed on him. She delivers a speech about how he’s not part of the game and can make his own future, while reassuring him that she knows he’s scared and that she will never disappear so long as they keep moving forward. She also acts more like her human counterpart here, reciting words human Chiaki told Izuru (“If you just do it, things will work out okay!”) and referencing that she knew him in the past. The scene is pretty ambiguous about whether she’s really there or just Hajime’s hallucination/memories, and I think it’s the better for it, honestly. However, some small part of her is able to help him defeat AI Junko, as shown by her declaring “no, that’s wrong!” in time with him, and she answers his thanks (after he’s gone, of course) with a declaration that she’ll always be watching them…from somewhere. It’s a poignant moment made more poignant when you compare it to last chapter; then, who and what she was—a traitor and an AI—stopped her from preventing a disaster, and it was only with Hajime’s help that she was able to successfully sacrifice herself. Here, who and what she is—Chiaki Nanami, Hajime’s emotional support/love interest/friend/potential ghost or hallucination—is what enables her to successfully prevent a disaster, and she’s able to lift Hajime up on her own.

She doesn’t show up in Side:Hope for more than a brief moment, and fun fact, it’s still ambiguous if she’s really there and if Hajime can see her or not—his dialogue is written in a way that could be construed as him talking to himself. Her brief screentime has her explaining what I explained at the beginning—that she’s an AI who took on Chiaki’s form from their memories—and that this is the future she gave her life for. She then fades away with a smile as Hajime rejoins the rest of the class.

Conclusion:

Frankly, I think there’s a lot to love about Chiaki. She’s a socially-awkward gamer, which is something a lot of us either like (being gamers) or can relate to. She has an arc about growing from that loner to someone who can be counted on. She’s a sweetheart who does her best to help her friends succeed; sometimes that isn’t enough, like DR3 Chiaki, and sometimes she needs help herself, like AI Chiaki, but she doesn’t let it stop her from still trying. There are stumbles in DR3 Chiaki’s writing, but I still believe she’s a good character, and that both she and her AI counterpart have nice relationships with Hajime and Class 77. They’re great girls, and I hope this analysis helped fans remember what we love about Chiaki beyond “she’s my waifu”.

[oumakokichi]

Hi! So, about bonus modes, what do you think about Junko and Ouma event? And also, can you talk more about similarities between them? Thank you for answering!

This is a really fun ask! The bonus mode event between themwas incredibly amusing, and interesting too. Comun translated it here, foranyone who hasn’t read it yet!

Their event is incredibly light-hearted, making it anabsolute blast to read, with poor Gonta caught in the middle, confused abouteverything as usual. I think a lot of people were expecting it to be an eventin which the two of them would gang up on Gonta and make his life utter hell(despair, if you will), but funnily enough, it pretty much plays out as Junkopicking on Gonta, Ouma showing up and picking on Junko right back, the two ofthem snarking at each other back and forth, and Gonta being completely lost asto what’s going on.

Despite the lighthearted tone of it, there are a few prettybig indicators that they really don’tlike each other as much as they’re pretending to. Or rather, Ouma really doesn’tseem to like Junko. He opens the conversation by comparing Junko to Miu rightaway—and considering he and Junko both hate Miu pretty openly (Junko actuallyputs aside her goal of despair for five seconds to beat Miu at ping-pong inanother bonus mode segment), that’s a pretty big insult. Junko even says it’s “sodespair-inducing it makes her want to die.”

Then Ouma proceeds to flaunt what he knows about hersecrets, which is usually how he goes about trying to piss everyone off. He didthe same thing with Celes in their bonus mode interaction, revealing that heknew her real name and that she wasn’t nearly as good of a liar as she makesherself out to be. With Junko, he reveals that he knows about Mukuroimpersonating her, and implies knowing about several other “Junkos.” For goodmeasure, he also throws a dig at her about “not being Togami-chan,” sinceTogami also has an impersonator up and walking around.

Junko pretty much takes this all in stride, snarking backpretty cheerfully about all her alter-egos, impersonators, and personas, beforetacking in a “that’s a lie, though.” It’s a hilarious dig at Ouma’s usualcatchphrase and it does seem to work at pissing him off, leaving Gonta unableto calm them down or understand what’s going on while the two of them keepsnarking.

The whole point of their bonus mode interaction is tohighlight just how similar they are—toosimilar to get along, actually. They know exactly how the other thinks andbehaves, they know exactly which things will piss the other off, and they’reaware of all the other’s little quirks and secrets. While they’re capable ofjoking and remaining seemingly light-hearted on the surface, it’s pretty clearthat all the “my bestest friend Enoshima-chan” and “my beloved Enoshima-chan”comments from Ouma are meant sarcastically, always tacked on “lovingly” rightafter an attempt to piss her off.

I touched on it just a little in the last post I wrote, buttheir similarities are interesting. Ndrv3 intentionally sets Ouma up to seemlike “Junko 2.0” at first glance, so it makes sense that he would have so muchin common with her on the surface. Both of them are extremely perceptive andintelligent; like Junko, Ouma very likely does have some type of SHSL Analysiswhich helps him predict and plan to the extent that he does. Both of them hate boredom. They can’t stand to beignored or left out of the spotlight for more than a few minutes at most.

Junko’s hatred for boredom and her inability to lay low or pretendto be bland and unnoticeable is the whole reason why she was incapable ofactually trying to blend in among her classmates in dr1, choosing instead toact as the mastermind from afar. This very much parallels the way in which Oumaputs on his villain façade in ndrv3, unable to keep himself away from the groupeven after dropping lines about how “evil” and “malicious” he was.

Despite having literally acted the villain only days beforeat the end of the Chapter 4 trial, in Chapter 5 Ouma continues snooping around,even eavesdropping on the group’s conversations in the cafeteria to try and seewhat they’re up to and to try and help them surreptitiously. He’s so unable tokeep himself away from people and so clearly bored without human interaction,it’s kind of hilarious in its own way.

Because of how smart they are and how much they’re bothcapable of knowing and predicting almost everything around them, it makes sensethat they would both get bored very, very fast. Knowing everything is like acurse within the DR universe, and it’s this painful, tedious, soul-crushingboredom that causes characters like Junko, Ouma, and even Kamukura to seek anescape of some sort.

The similarities, of course, end with the approach they eachtake to escaping that boredom. Junko’s whole character, and her journey from “RyoukoOtonashi” to “Junko Enoshima,” centers around the idea that boredom isabsolutely inescapable and unavoidable without despair. Despair is the onepoint of uncertainty and predictability, the only thing “fun” or “interesting”in the amount of chaos and suffering it causes. Despair makes people react inways they ordinarily would never even consider, and can flip the entire world,people’s entire personalities, upside-down. Junko tries to convince Kamukurathat this approach is the only way to ease the boredom he suffers from as well,talking at-length about how similar they both are, how she knows what he’sgoing for, and how she knows that heknows that she’s right.

Ouma, however, is my favorite character not only in the DRfranchise but in anything ever at this point because he’s absolutelyfascinating in how he handles the exact same problem. Where Junko, and Kamukurato a lesser extent, both accepted that boredom was an inescapable poison withonly despair as its cure, Ouma rejects that premise right from the start. Oumaseeks anything and everything fun and interesting, relying on neither hope nordespair but on games. It’s part ofwhy he loves stupid, silly little pranks where no one gets hurt: his childishnature itself is what helps to keep him from caving in and succumbing to thatboredom and the idea that maybe despair really is the only “cure” to boredom.

Ouma is the only character in the entire franchise who wasso intentionally and deliberately set up to be a force of despair, suffering,and chaos, and who instead rejected all of these things, without ever onceneeding to fall into the same “hope vs. despair” debate that the Hope’s Peakarc centers around. Despite having very likely been given a talent similar toJunko’s in the hopes of making him an antagonistic figure right from the game’sstart, despite having been framed and set-up by Tsumugi in a million differentways, he takes all that “despair” within himself and only wants to turn it back on the killing game audience and theringleader themselves.

His hatred for human suffering, pain, and death is so coreto his entire personality that he could never once bring himself to find it “funny”or “interesting.” He absolutely hates murders with a passion; the finality ofdeath and the ease with which people can be manipulated into doing horrible,awful things to each other is something that bores him. He calls the entirekilling game “boring” just before his death, and can’t stand the idea of peoplegetting off on others’ pain and suffering.

His villain speech in Chapter 4 hits very hard and painfullyon a reread with the understanding that he was addressing the killing game audienceand being self-deprecating. All ofhis comments, about how his “personality is corrupted,” about how “there arepeople like that in this world too, people who spread malice for no reason,”are very clearly pointed towards the people who have been watching the ndrv3cast struggle and suffer this entire time, and at himself for having to pretendto enjoy this sort of thing so much.

He knows he’s acting, to be sure, but his own uncertaintyabout where his lies end and the truth begins means that he does in fact have acertain degree of self-loathing due to how easilyhe’s able to pretend to be this kind of villain. Lies can “become” reality ifthey’re accepted as such, and part of Ouma was always afraid that he wouldcross the line and actually become the kind of horrible, cruel villain that hepretended to be.

But that pang of conscience in him is exactly whatdifferentiates him from Junko the most. Where Junko has absolutely no remorseand is willing to throw everything on the line for the sake of despair and “makingthings more interesting,” Ouma never manages to discard his humanity. He’sbrilliant, calculating, and cunning, but he’s also full to the brim with empathy and love. The tragedy of his entirecharacter is how loving and caring he was as a person while also being sounwilling to trust, because the situation made it impossible for him to trustor rely on anyone at all.

He pretends to be heartless, cold, and evil, but his liesare so easy to see through when you know that he wants to stop the killing gameand that he’s absolutely, morally against killing or hurting people. Making anysacrifices at all and treating people’s lives as a game took too big a toll onhim; what he had to do to Miu and Gonta in order to stay alive in Chapter 4 is somethingthat weighed on him. Even though he had every opportunity to stay alive inChapter 5 by using similarly underhanded methods, he couldn’t bring himself todo so, and that’s undeniable proof, in my opinion, of just how human he reallywas.

Ndrv3 sets Ouma up to seem like “Junko 2.0” beforebrilliantly deconstructing and subverting both the players’ and characters’expectations (even if it takes the characters until Chapter 6 before theyactually realize that Ouma wasn’t even a Remnant of Despair…). They certainlydo have similar aspects to their personalities—I don’t doubt Ouma was someonewith the potential to be every bit like Junko, which is probably exactly whatTsumugi wanted from him. But through personal choice, he remained someone verydifferent from her, going against all Tsumugi’s expectations for him and tryingeverything in his power to ruin the entire killing game.

This was so much fun to write a response to, I’m really gladI was able to do so. Thank you for stopping by anon, and I hope I was able to answerthe question pretty well!

[junkobears]

Mukuro, Hajime and Maki for the ask meme ?

You got it! This is also going under a read more because LONG POST and also #DRV3 spoilers for Harukawa’s section, do NOT read this post if you’re waiting for September/haven’t finished V3 yet.

Mukuro

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would banghogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff (loyal to Junko to the fucking extreme??? busy doing all the grunt work constantly??? She can only be Hufflepuff)best quality: Her FTEs are the best in the entire series, they’re not going to be topped anytime soon IMO. And her twisted, complicated relationship with Junko just hits all my fucking buttons... god their entrance scene in DR3 was PERFECT.worst quality: I don’t like her being shipped romantically with Naegi in IF personally... I wish the decision to leave Junko there had been based on her bonds with ALL her classmates, I guess.ship them with: Junko (drag me), Celes, Maizono, brotp them with: Kirigiri, Pekoyama, Naegi, Ishimaru, Owada, all the DR1s needs to stay away from: spears, not getting more screentimemisc. thoughts: She needs to sing the entire soundtrack to a future DR game/installment otherwise I’m going to riot. I have listened to her cover of Tsubasa o Kudasai too many times.

Hinata

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would banghogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff (idk I feel he’s the most coolheaded/logical protagonist so far... he’s quite clever and intelligent in the trials. Plus I don’t feel the other three houses suit him lol. This one I’m not entirely sure about.)best quality: He is so endearing and relatable with all his snarky-but-caring interactions with his crazy classmates, all the FTEs with him as protagonist are enjoyable in some form. And he was a huge improvement over Naegi as a protagonist with an actual character arc and development.worst quality: his motivations for doing the Kamukura project changing from ‘insecure deluded fanboy for Hope’s Peak/talent’ to ‘NANAMI GOTTA BE PROUD OF ME’ even when she yelled at him for caring too much about talent... DR3 why. Unnecessary

ship them with: Nanami, Koizumi, Sonia, Kuzuryuubrotp them with: All the other DR2s, Kirigiri (I have this little headcanon where she watches him during DR2 or in AU territory and is impressed with his deduction/critical thinking skills and takes him on as her detective apprentice, and he is secretly brimming with joy at a SHSL noticing his skills. It makes me happy haha)needs to stay away from: Horrible DR3 retcons ruining his character arc, Kamukura by extensionmisc. thoughts: I enjoy both his Japanese and English voices a LOT. And his design is charming in its simplicity. Works really well!

Harukawa

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would banghogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff (she basically embodies all the negative traits of a Gryffindor, lol. Reckless decisions that endanger everyone around her with her barely budging on her beliefs, tries to solve problems in her own way when it clearly won’t work, etc.)best quality: Responding to literally everyone and everything who gets in her way with “Do you want to die?” is amazing and it never gets oldworst quality: I was a little disappointed with the Assassin talent reveal, even though it worked well within the story and explained her behaviours. But I kind of just wanted her to be a simple childminder who has Issues over it, and that be the crux of her arc. It was unique and had a lot of potential IMO.ship them with: Akamatsu, brotp them with: Mukuro, Kirumi, Sonia, Pekoyama, Yumeno, Momota, Saihara I GUESSneeds to stay away from: This fucking fandom’s ridiculous hateboner for hermisc. thoughts: The hate I’m seeing for Harukawa everywhere is actually ridiculous, and proves to me that this fandom still can’t accept female characters who don’t play nice in the slightest and make reckless, life-threatening decisions constantly, whereas male characters who do the same stuff get adored and justified for it. It really pisses me off. Harukawa is a great character who just gets to be shit and emotionally-stunted the whole time and I love her for that.