#content warnings because dr3 is terrible

[magioftheseas]

Apologies for the inconvenience but I was looking at one of your dr3 despair arc posts and was curious: how does the anime mistreat Komaeda’s characterization?

Komaeda’s just immediately mistreated by his class on the outset when in the game that was for like, y’know the very understandable reason that he got two people killed. They were still too harsh in the game mind you, but here it’s like...what the actual fuck is their problem. Like yeah, he’s weird but have you seen the rest of them? Not to mention dr3 does an incredibly gross thing by having Satou be even fucking creepier than Komaeda is and yet Koizumi’s super into that when canonically she only ever saw herself as normal bUT I DIGRESS...

It’s just super ableist that “bullying is okay because this person is weird! haha!” and we’re supposed to think the sdr2 kids are innocent baby victims so it’s even more obnoxious that they’re still shithead fuckers who happily tolerate attempted rape, drugging, AND MURDER, but not Komaeda’s weird-ass remarks.

When it comes to Komaeda himself though, the anime is...very strange because while yeah he’s more extreme than he should be in his focused episode, you can just act like while the bombs were real, he didn’t plan on there being any casualties or anyone getting hurt besides the building. (Considering Ruruka and Seiko were fucking a-okay with zero injuries or scarring despite being literally right on top of the bomb, there’s also that.) It’s not bad, per say, but it is kinda shallow save for a few good bits of character writing like Komaeda bracing himself when he’s hit. Between that and the go jars in his bag (characterization only found in the artbook), the storyboarder cared about him if no one else.

It’s kind of a gag episode anyway though and clearly isn’t meant to be taken all that seriously...beyond Chisa being a fucking hypocrite that Komaeda blowing up a building is The Worst Thing while Nidai and Owari wrecking the entire wall of their classroom is whatever. Again, the standards of dr3 are fucking dumb and tend to be biased against Komaeda just because he was an antagonistic force in sdr2 when like...he’s not one in dr3. It lacks any real awareness or nuance and is super annoying.

Also, it implied Komaeda was hopesexual which is bad when that shit’s a coping mechanism, not a fetish. Obligatory bitching about the stupid brainwashing also goes here. But yeah, the issue here is that dr3 implies that having bad social skills due to dementia is worthy of derision and abuse (but murder, assault, harassment, and attempted rape are okay) which is pretty...not great. Komaeda’s character writing itself while weird in places (seriously what the fuck was with that shower scene when Komaeda’s canonically terrified of planes), it’s overall not the worst bastardization that dr3 has to offer. That dubious honor goes to the aforementioned Koizumi who is NOTHING like her sdr2 self and to Saionji in which the writers just completely fucking missed why she was the way she was.

I have much bigger problems with zhen than Komaeda, but yeah Komaeda’s my baby so this shit miffs me.