#but somehow the issue always turns into some stupid unrelated bs when it hits the tumblr battlefields

[fungi-maestro]

Internet mutual thrice removed: did you hear about the newest person with bizarre/disgusting/repulsive beliefs & behaviors that we just found in a weird corner of the internet and are dragging around publically where no one has heard of them and no one wants to see that shit? You have to have an opinion on this btw.

People in real life: did you hear it's going to be in the 50s next week?

[oumakokichi]

I will be quite honest: after reading all of Kaito's FTE, I really enjoyed how much the writers of DRV3 completely demolished Kaito's shounen protagonist BS and exposed it for the terrible kind of blind optimism that it is. Also, the way Kaito talks to Shuichi during his last FTE about how Shuichi's horrible guilt from exposing a murderer who was perfectly justified in taking revenge and basically just dismisses Shuichi by calling his guilt stupid really irritates me because it's like Kaito neve

This ask for some reason only showed me the first part when it sent but when I refreshed, there was the second part, sitting in my inbox. (I think the amount of asks I get sometimes just makes my inbox do weird things).

For people who haven’t yet read Momota’s FTEs, you can find them in my Free Time Event tag, here!

Anyway, this is a really good ask and I’ve taken my timeresponding because there’s a lot to address.

I want to start off by saying that I do like Momota as acharacter. I think he means well, I find his interactions pretty humorous, andhis contributions in Chapter 5 are extremely memorable. I haven’t made it asecret that I do like and enjoy Momota—so by responding to this ask, I want tomake it clear that this is an analysis of his flaws and the things that couldhave been done better, not my attempt to hate on him or anything.

Momota is a good character, but I think he could have beendone better. I agree with youentirely, anon; in fact, one of my biggest faults with Momota as a character isthat I think the subversion of the “shounen protagonist” trope should have been…well, more of an actual subversion.

Momota is perhaps one of the characters with which hisintended role in the game is played the straightest. I understand what Kodakawas going for with implementing a character who thinks of himself as theprotagonist and the main character, only to have to come to terms with the factthat he’s not. And in theory, it works quite well. But the problem is, Momota’splot relevance and hero syndrome gets amped up far too much for it to reallycount as a proper subversion.

The biggest problem with calling it a subversion is the factthat at some point, everything in the game, everything in the narrative, getsattributed to Momota. And this isn’t wrong on its own necessarily—if thecharacters had actually realized further down the line or addressed the factthat Momota wasn’t quite as much of a successful leader as they were making himout to be or responsible for the things they were crediting him with, thatwould be one thing. But it’s just never addressed.

At some point, the characters all, for the most part, creditMomota with doing nearly everything. Maki’s character development and growth asan individual? That’s Momota’s doing. Keeping everyone alive? That’s Momota’sdoing. Even knowing the full facts about the Chapter 5 trial and the fact thatmost of the lines Momota was saying in the Exisal were scripted by Ouma, mostof the characters attribute the plan as if it were something Momota helped tocreate himself, rather than something he agreed to.

A female character’s entire character arc is boiled down to,“she’s only changing because she’s in love,” so much so that it gets kind ofpainful to read at some point. Tsumugi says it, Saihara says it, pretty muchall the characters imply it at one point or another. Maki’s autonomy and chanceto shine on her own as a character who can grow and develop for reasonsunrelated to Momota is overshadowed entirely with, “well she’s changing, yeah,but really this is all thanks toMomota.”

Meanwhile, it’s true that Momota does want to keep everyonealive and help them, yes—but ndrv3 spends so much time emphasizing the factthat blind optimism and trust and cooperation are all incredibly dangerous andshouldn’t be played right into, yet never seems to properly address Momota’sfaults in particular for playing into these things the most.

His reckless, shounen protagonist behavior gets them allinto trouble more than once. Chapter 4 is where things come to the biggestboiling point, as you pointed out. His reckless and stubborn refusal to changehis opinion or doubt someone like Gonta even when concrete evidence was rightin front of him literally put all the group’s lives at risk. Had he been moreconvincing than Saihara, had the group decided to follow Momota’s opinioninstead and vote for Ouma, they would all have been killed.

This is something that I think Momota definitely realized hewas in the wrong for later on and felt guilty about—but even still, most ofChapter 5 is spent with him avoiding the issue entirely. He continues referringto Saihara by last name instead of the more familiar first-name basis by whichhe’d been calling him exclusively ever since halfway through Chapter 2, avoidseye contact or bringing up the things he said at the Chapter 4 trial wheneverpossible, and doesn’t actually apologize for the things he said until very latein the game, during the Chapter 5 post-trial.

What’s more, the narrative continues to act as if Saiharahimself was somehow at fault for how things turned out in the Chapter 4 trial,even though it was clear that he wasn’t siding with Ouma at all but simplytrying to be objective as a detective. Momota not only berated and insultedSaihara at the Chapter 4 trial, but also threatened to hit him again, tellinghim to “open his eyes,” and see that “Gonta wasn’t the culprit”—but thesethings get brushed almost entirely under the rug by Chapter 5 in favor ofacting as if the awkward period of not talking to each other was somehow both their faults instead of somethingthat Momota had done to Saihara.

This is what it means for a narrative to give a character afree pass. It’s perfectly fine for a character to make mistakes—it’s justpreferable that those mistakes are addressed in some way and the character isheld accountable. But at some point it becomes pretty apparent that Momota isn’texactly held to the same standard of accountability as some of the othercharacters by the narrative. There’s this definite feeling by some of the laterchapters that even when Momota is wrong, he’s also right somehow. Most of the figures who we see disagree with him infact are either killed off incredibly earlier (Ryouma comes to mind), or elsepurposely portrayed in an antagonistic and hostile light, in order tounderscore why everyone else in the group thinks they’re wrong, like Ouma.

As you mentioned, there is a lot in Momota’s FTEs and in hischaracter in general that doesn’t quite get addressed, at all. Most of it canbe summed up as toxic masculinity that never gets called out or treated as aflaw by the narrative. Momota’s entire method of dealing with problems is “shapeup, get over it, stop being so weak”—but this almost entirely translates to “stopbeing such a sissy/such a girl.”

Whenever anyone disagrees with him, his solution is to getloud, reckless, even violent, often threatening to hit people. The whole “hittingpeople to make them ‘snap out of it’” trope is already tired and overdone, inmy opinion, but it’s especially telling that it’s treated as something we’resupposed to see as inspirational and uplifting by the narrative, rather thansomething uncalled for or unnecessarily violent. Even Momota’s apology toSaihara at the start of Chapter 2 is rushed and doesn’t really address the rootof the problem.

For instance, look at his reasons for training with Saiharacompared to his reasons for training with Maki. With Saihara, the problem isthat Saihara is “too weak.” He’s “fragile,” “too emotional,” he seems like “toomuch of a sissy” to actually carry on Kaede’s will. Momota wants to train thosething right out of him and “make him into a real man.” It’s one thing toacknowledge that Saihara’s anxiety and dependency is something holding him backand preventing him from moving forward even when he promised Kaede, but it’scouched entirely in terms of masculinity, “becoming more manly,” etc.

By contrast, Maki is someone who he welcomes into theirgroup because he notices how hard she is on herself and wants her to come toterms with her backstory and move past it, yes—but also his reasons areentirely centered around the idea that there’s something wrong with girls specificallybeing trained to kill.

The reason he asks about Maki’s time at the orphanage isbecause he thinks it’s “more natural for women to take care of children than touse weapons,” and that’s pretty straightforwardly misogynistic. It’s notsomething that’s ever once brought up as a problem, either. There’s never anyacknowledgment of the fact that Maki’s backstory is fucked up because she was achild who was trained to kill. It’s always instead about how she was a girl who was trained to kill.

Even the whole optional event where she discusses a targetshe was sent to kill at a cosplay convention is framed in a way that made me sortof uncomfortable, because it was supposed to be “cute” and “humorous” that shewas swarmed with tons of otaku photographers who mistook her for a cosplayer.Even when she talks about how horrible the punishment she got was for failing tokill the target afterwards, it’s something Saihara and Momota laugh about as ifit was a cute and endearing story, rather than a story about a kid gettingabused horribly by the assassin network she was forced into.

Again, all of this feels less like a subversion of theshounen protagonist role which Momota embodies and more like… playing it 100%straight with no punchline and no criticism. I don’t think Momota is the worstndrv3 character by any means, or even a bad character, but I do think there wasa lot of room for improvement with him, and it’s one of the reasons he’s gonesomewhat further down on my character ranking than the first time I used thesorter. I still like him—quite a lot, in fact! But I feel as if the narrativespends too much time trying to make me like him without quite addressing thethings he does wrong, and I’d rather have seen his character used to subvertsome of the more overdone tropes in shounen fiction.

His last FTE with Saihara, as you pointed out, feels like itplays right into all of these things I’ve mentioned. It’s all very nice andwell that he agrees to help Saihara and wants to support him “because Saiharais his assistant,” but it still ends on a note of there being… not very equalfooting between the two of them. Saihara says it might happen “someday,eventually,” but there is this very real sense of Momota not exactly takingSaihara’s thoughts or feelings into consideration.

And again, I feel like Chapter 4 does tackle the issue ofMomota looking down on Saihara somewhat, because we see clearly then that eventhough Momota kept telling Saihara to follow his own reasoning as a detective,he wasn’t prepared to actually accept that reasoning when it led to a conclusionhe didn’t like, such as Gonta being the culprit.

But whereas the issues of jealousy and subconsciouslylooking down on someone close to you are handled pretty regularly in Personagames, with Junpei and Yosuke both, the entire jealousy issue is both revealedand resolved in about five seconds in the Chapter 5 post-trial. There was verylittle time spent addressing it, and since Momota dies immediately afterward,there’s never any coming back to the issue or touching on it again, whereaswith Junpei and Yosuke, their jealousy of the protagonist was something thatwas worked through and moved on from over the course of the entire game,culminating with their friendship being healthier and stronger for it afterresolving the issue.

All of this leads me to back where I started, I suppose, insaying that I think Momota is a really good character and I do like him, butthere were definitely things left to be desired. I think these particular flawsand the lack of innovation and subversion is probably why Momota scored a bitlower on the Japanese popularity poll too, in hindsight (though I also think it’sstill partly due to Japanese fanartists not liking his design as much). Momotais fun and great and I do think he means the best, but the Kamina-trope hasbeen done before. In a franchise built on subverting tropes and clichés, thereneeds to be more of an actual subversion in my opinion, rather than playingright into all the same pitfalls that these tropes have offered in other media.

Anyway, this is my take on it. This ask was very good and Ireally did enjoy the chance to think critically on Momota’s character and writeup an analysis like this. I enjoy discussing ndrv3 and its cast quite a lot—discussingthe things that I think could’ve been done better is part of the fun, too! Thankyou for asking anon!