#junko says it as clearly as she can in dr3

[aparticularbandit]

....

I should replay Stanley Parable just to have Junko quote it in the third fic at some point, huh

Because that relationship of "every road you travel, every choice you make or can make had been written in advance, and they all end with your death" is. that's Junko's theme in the trilogy.

It does not matter what you do or how you do it. The story ends with Junko's death. She will die. She is going to die.

Makoto's sacrifice doesn't save her. Mukuro and Matsuda following her doesn't save her. Kyoko's love will not save her, and neither will Mikan's.

It's all scripted, and it has been from the beginning, and every route ends with Junko's death because she wrote it that way.

She gave you the book, Kyoko. You read how it ends. But up against the Ultimate Analyst who knows you so well that she can predict your actions in advance, even choosing to go against what she wrote - she already knows how you will act.

And she is determined to die.

How do you fight that?

You can't.

Junko's going to die and that's the way the story ends and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.

How do you wrestle with that? How does Kyoko wrestle with that? That inevitability while other people keep sacrificing themselves to stop something that cannot - will not - stop?

[makotonaegiunderstander]

something I’ve been thinking abt is how many people think Makoto is immune to despair. I don’t think he is. I think becoming the ultimate Hope was BECAUSE he felt despair. He wouldn’t have fully reached that point without Junko. Makoto becoming such a beacon was his last attempt to avoid completely falling and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel despair, it was because he was too damn stubborn to allow everything to go to waste and he refused to sacrifice his beliefs for someone else’s. His inner monologue tells me he DID experience the same new low the other suvivors did in the final trial, but at the point where he had the choice to give up and die, he looked at the others and he looked at Junko and he couldn’t allow it to happen, not out of self preservation, but because the idea that Junko would have control over their lives made him FURIOUS. and that utter refusal to die kicked in, wether luck or otherwise, and he made the concious effort for one last push while something in him was breaking. He had to be broken in order for the Ultimate Hope to come through so aggressively, bc it could only exist in the face of the Ultimate Despair. He snapped the same way she did, but in the other direction. In what could have been his final moments he chose to embody everything Junko wasn’t, and every single optimistic and luck fueled ideal in him suddenly charged forward and pushed him. It was a combination of the final straw and a choice. Makoto isn’t immune to feeling despair, he’s just too stubborn to fall into it of his own volition. I think that’s why I like that scene in DR3 so much. People were SO SHOCKED Makoto actually fell for the tape, that he actually became despair for a moment. I saw people getting mad or disappointed, saying it was pathetic and Makoto seemed to fall from some sort of pedestal for them. Honestly part of me wonders if that sort of mentality, which clearly people had in universe, affected Makoto a bit. Like he started to see himself as less of a person, subconsciously. Prompting him to take more risks, less self preservation, act way more bold. It seems he has to be reminded a lot not to put himself in danger by his friends, to not do something too reckless. All over the place I would see in regards to that scene either this frivolous ‘oh this was just angst drama with no meaning behind it’ or ‘he can do better than that. he’s so weak’ or ‘come on, there’s no way he’d fall into despair, he’s the Ultimate Hope!’ This kind of mentality, which was kind of ironic considering Ryota was there the entire time saying the same thing and treating Makoto the same way. Like Makoto was superhuman. Like Makoto didn’t feel despair the same way ‘normal people’ did. In a way that was also how Munakata saw Makoto. Makoto stopped being a PERSON to the world when he became Ultimate Hope, he became a concept, a belief system, much the same way Junko ascended beyond herself. But the difference is that treating Makoto that way is the opposite of the reason Makoto became such a representative for hope. He wasn’t doing something no one else could. He was doing something everyone had the chance to, he just… was a little more optimistic, a little more stubborn, a little more ‘gung-ho’ about things. He just took the lead where no one else did, where no one else knew they even COULD in the face of Junko’s unstoppable force. She had overcome the biggest threats and obstacles in the world, what could one person do? And the answer Makoto found was, anything. Everything. It doesn’t all rest on Makoto, he’s just the one that was inspired to try to do what seemed like the impossible. But as evidenced by the change in his friends after that trial, it’s clearly not something only Makoto is capable of. The others pulled out of despair thanks to Makoto, but it was their choice to do so.

“But… this world is so huge, and we’re so small. What can we do…? No, we can probably do anything. Yeah! We can do anything!”

[penguwastaken]

Okay, so I wanna preface all this by saying that I'm not what one would call an "anti-brainwashing" fan of the series. While I don't really like the explanation given, I do actually consider brainwashing a much more reasonable explanation than the idea people have of Junko being a charismatic manipulator who turned Class 77 into Remnants with a silver tongue. Mainly for pragmatic reasons related to the short timeframe and consistency with DR0.

It's an idea that sounds deep and clever on paper for about five minutes. Until you actually stop and think about the sheer number of contrivances it would take for Junko to pull all that off in less than a year without Kyoko, Yasuke, Makoto, Jin, or anyone from Class 78 noticing. Radicalizing someone to become a world-ending terrorist with the relentless drive of a T-800 in that timeframe is hard enough. Doing that to 14 people in that timeframe, while avoiding detection and keeping up appearances as a normal schoolgirl in a separate class, as well as getting up to all the other nonsense with the Warriors of Hope, Izuru, and Yasuke is just fucking ridiculous. The Junko we saw in DR1 is nowhere competent enough to pull that off. Genuine brainwashing really is the most logical explanation to make all of that fit.

However, there is something I have to object to in a post you made on the topic last month. The claim that the Remnants didn't have their free will overridden. That is plainly false. The Despair Video, as well as the other brainwashing videos, clearly demonstrated that they were capable of making people commit acts that were completely against their own will. Junko showed this to Chisa with the Reserve Course student she used to test run the brainwashing's ability to make someone commit suicide. The guy did not want to do it, but his body was working against him. The same is true with the people subjected to the Hope Video, like Aoi when she was compelled to restrain Makoto.

The Remnants might not have been "mindless zombies", and were subjected to a somewhat more refined conditioning process. But it was still mind control nonetheless. It's disingenuous to claim that they can still be blamed for their actions, because no human save perhaps Izuru would have the willpower to have resisted its effects. Like if they were judged in a court of law that had a full understanding of the process' effects, no reasonably jury could hold them accountable for being unable to resist something that less than 99.99999999% of the human race could resist.

This completely ignores my message. I quite literally wrote about how the Remnants of Despair aren't to blame.

"While it is true that their ability to choose what to do remained, the fact is that they only made the decisions they made and got their despair urges in the first place was because they were brainwashed. So it is also true that the person at fault isn't them, it's Junko and her video. And that's the point, it isn't their fault that they made those choices. Some may say this is because Kodaka wanted to make them more redeemable, but I just completely disagree because it was always like this." -"DR3 makes the Remnants of Despair blameless" post

My point is that while they still maintain the ability to make choices, the only reason they make the choices they make is because they were brainwashed to crave despair.

You also mention the video used to control Aoi, however you ignore that it's a completely different video developed YEARS later. As for the man who doesn't want to kill himself, that's not him being mind controlled into doing it, that's him doing in it spite of not wanting to die. That's literally what despair is, doing horrible things you don't want to do because you crave that horrible feeling.

Please read About Brainwashing in Danganronpa and "DR3 makes the Remnants of Despair blameless" where I go into the logistics of how it actually works along with what it means for the responsibility of the Remnants of Despair.

[mozillavulpix]

everyone has their way to rewrite Danganronpa 3′s “how did Junko turn Class 77 into Ultimate Despair”, here’s my version

So basically Junko gets them all together and forces them to decide a Trolley Problem. On one end is Chiaki, and the other end is the Reserve Course. If they choose to save Chiaki, Junko will turn on the Suicide Video in the school, making everyone in the Reserve Course choose to kill themselves. And if they choose to save them, Chiaki will die. And while they’re all arguing amongst themselves, not sure of what to do, Junko makes them both happen, basically saying that people that indecisive could never be Symbols of Hope and the deaths that are happening are their punishment. And as they’re watching with horror, Junko manipulates them into deciding it’s all their fault and they should just stop caring altogether like her.

I just think it’d tie so much together:

It’s obviously a call-forward to the ending of DR2, where they have to decide whether to sacrifice themselves or the world, and find themselves unable to choose. Thematically, it’s so brilliant to have their final hurdle before being able to leave the program be a similar thing to what plunged them into Despair in the first place, and logically, it also explains how Junko was so confident that they wouldn’t be able to shut down the program - she’s already seen them fail to make a decision like this before.

It’d be a way to call out their implicitness in the dangerous mindset that Hope’s Peak drilled into them. They’d have plenty of reasons to have a gut reaction to want to save Chiaki first - they know her personally and have formed a bond as classmates, and they have Nagito with them who idolises all Ultimates. But that also means they’d be deciding the deaths of thousands of people just because ‘they’re talentless’ or ‘they don’t know them’. The fact that they can earnestly choose things like that without hesitation makes them wonder if maybe they’re the truly messed-up ones. (Which they’re not, it’s all Junko’s fault, but she’s manipulating them into thinking so.) 

Or on the other hand, if the fact they have enough empathy to want to help the Reserve Course students over Chiaki makes them ‘failures’ in this talent-obsessed society. If they can’t make the hard decisions to be Symbols of Hope, maybe they should try being Symbols of Despair instead?

It can also tie into Twilight Syndrome, Fuyuhiko’s grief over losing his sister making him determined not to let Chiaki die, but Mahiru’s grief over what happened to Sato making her wanting to protect the talentless people and insulted that Fuyuhiko would treat them as disposable victims again.

Between all that, tensions would get high, even if they overpowered Junko she would probably have plans for that, there’s no way she’d tell them how to save both of them even if she was tortured, and there’s also Nagito who could just make things way more complicated.

(Like sure, you could argue Nagito’s luck should make it so that what he wants happens, and he certainly doesn’t want Chiaki to die, but we know he falls to Despair. So Junko is clearly stronger than his luck, or at least knows how to manipulate it to her benefit)

And it’s only when that reaches a boiling pitch that Junko drops the ball, kills all of them, and tells Class 77 that this happened because of them and this messed-up world and they’d be better off joining her in the new world to come.

Sure, if you stop and think about it, you’d realise none of this is Class 77′s fault and Junko is pulling all the strings, but they’re high-strung teenagers with trust issues of their own and they’d probably be too busy dealing with the whole ‘actually all of society is collapsing too’ to really reflect on it. And maybe dealing with their grief by self-sabotaging and destroying society themselves.

anyway that’s how I think you can do “they all fall to Despair” while keeping the broad strokes introduced in DR3 but making it more subtle and not “the brainwashing anime did it”

[catboyebooks]

so there's a classroom on this floor we can enter and there's another manga in here. "manga for morons! the tragedy of hope's peak academy." again, great! & i'll give the tl;dr:

this manga names kamukura as the perpetrator of the incident in question. it doesn't give a full background on kamukura but says he was allegedly a multitalented genius, referred to as "shsl hope" by the academy, who expended tons of resources on developing his talents and kept him a secret from the rest of the student body to protect their investment. anyway, according to this, kamukura murdered the thirteen members of hope's peak's student council, hope's peak tried to cover it up, and a "certain student" (junko, obviously) blew the whistle. the resulting scandal forced the school to close and incited an uprising among the reserve course students, and from there the situation grew out of control and the despair apocalypse happened etc.

i don't wanna jump way ahead here but i have to point out that we see the incident in question in dr3 and kamukura was in fact not the instigator. junko used him as a fall guy. since dr3 did retcon some stuff (nanami having been a real person they used to go to school with is a retcon, komaeda and kamukura meeting back when they were still in high school is a retcon, etc.) i don't know whether this is also a retcon or whether monokuma is just lying here, but i'm kinda leaning towards the latter. junko always denies personal responsibility for murders she didn't directly commit, and she didn't directly kill the student council, so when she speaks about her own involvement here as though all she did was leak the story i think in her mind that counts as not lying. and of course she wouldn't admit to having set kamukura up, she's clearly trying to portray kamukura as a monster so that she can break hinata by revealing that he's kamukura (i would bet that's why this manga omits the fact that kamukura was locked in an underground lab for like a year and change while his high school performed experimental brain surgeries on him. i mean, that makes him sound like the victim here, and, even though he is, we can't have that!). i guess we'll see, though, depending on how the kamukura stuff gets talked about in the rest of this chapter and depending on whether or not monokuma turns out to be lying about anything else. i'm not positive yet to what extent we're supposed to accept this info on face value

also the manga cites danganronpa zero as a source lol. i should probably reread that at some point too huh

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

To Mod: Besides the obvious characters like Mikan,Chisa,Mukuro,Mahiru and Hajime being poorly written. We also have:

-Juzo who knew Junko was guilt but didn't want to say anything because he'd be outed by his best friend. Which was dumb because the world was at stake.

- Teruteru who canonically interacted with Seiko off screen who makes god-like medicine. But the writers have him requesting aphrodisiacs from her instead of a cure for his mother. Just so they can have that gross soup scene.

-Hiyoko spiking everyone's food, you'd figured she wouldn't do that because Mahiru would be affected by the drugged soup but nope. This scene caused people to hate Teruteru even more.

-Doing absolutely nothing with the rest of Chiaki's classmates.

-Hope's Peak expelling three innocent people because of Nagito commiting terrorism with explosives.

//I'll touch on each point individually here.

It's not like what happened with Juzo doesn't make complete sense. It's still dumb, but I understand why Juzo was so reluctant. He wasn't necessarily afraid that the world would judge him for being gay, more so he was afraid Munakata would reject him. Juzo dedicated his life to Munakata in a similar way that Mukuro and Kuripa do to Makoto in Survivor. If Munakata had any reason to ostracise Juzo, Juzo then has nothing to live for. Still though, it was incredibly selfish and didn't do Juzo himself any favors. It ultimately just highlights how incredibly selfish he is, and how he's the pinnacle of how low Ultimate's can sink. Especially given how much shit he gave Hajime and the reserve course earlier in the arc, and then ends up succumbing to his own weakness, just as Hajime did before him. It goes to show that Ultimate's and normal people aren't as different as Juzo and most of the Hope's Peak denizens seem to think. In that regard, it's subtly genius, but the way it's actually carried out is a bit messy.

Yeah, the whole thing with Teruteru is a massive plot hole. You have someone who is capable of curing any disease right next to you, someone who is driven by a strong will to help people, but your dick is somehow more important to you. Not only is it a drastic oversight, but it ultimately degrades Teruteru's character, and removes the one thing that makes him a redeemable and honest man. His love for his family in the main games is so genuine, he is willing to kill a person in order to go home and help them. And whether you like Teruteru or not, if you're close with your family, no doubt you can understand his position. I don't think it's a matter of on purposefully trying to make Teruteru seem worse and more perverted, because it seems to me more like a bit of an oversight; like they sort of forgot about that plot point. The way I cover it in Survivor is with Teruteru saying either he didn't want to bother Seiko, or his mother wasn't too bad at the time, but I'm just reaching; trying to fill a plot hole that the writers made.

I don't understand why people damn Teruteru for that scene, because that CLEARLY wasn't his fault. Besides, I'd like to point out that he was honest about the "doping" with his classmates, and actually ASKED them if they wanted the added flavor. He was disappointed when they said no, but he's NOT the one at fault there. This also brings up another thing that I thought was a bit problematic, but Hiyoko and Mahiru's relationship in DR3 is HORRIFICALLY unexplored. Based on all the info in DR2 and DR3, it's heavily implied that they were just as close in the real world as they were in the Killing Game, but in every scene of DR3 where Mahiru is struggling mentally, Hiyoko is NOWHERE. Hell, the same can be said about Mikan and Ibuki. It's an important plot point in DR2 that they were involved in the Twilight Syndrome Murder Case, but when it happens in DR3, not only do we not see the damn altercation, but they aren't involved in any way, shape or form. I get that it's because they wanted to put more of a focus on Mahiru and Sato, which is the most important thing, but to wayside Mahiru's already established friends is just poor writing. You'd think they'd be by her side throughout all of it, but no. "We couldn't think of what to do for them, so we'll just not include them and fuck off."

Which ties in pretty heavily to this point of yes, the DR2 characters are STUPIDLY underused. Every moment they have in this show is poorly handled in some way, with the exception of a few episodes. They were good in Episode 1 and 2 of Despair Arc, and were great in Hope Side when they come to the Future Foundation's rescue. Aside from that, they get very few moments, and hardly any of them are good. The only members of the DR2 cast who get any sort of attention throughout most of DR3 are Hajime, Chiaki, Nagito and Imposter. And yes, they ARE the trifecta, and Imposter does need more screentime and characterization, but it's not fair on the rest of the group, who I will reiterate, are easily the most enjoyable, in-depth and interesting cast of ALL the games. They deserve better than what they got.

As much as I hate to admit it, and I know how this sounds, what happened with Nagito's attack, unfortunately, made total and complete sense. It is NO SECRET to anyone who knows how deep DR lore runs that Hope's Peak's steering committee was the true evil. Everything that was wrong with Hope's Peak that allowed Junko to take advantage of the system and destroy the world can be traced directly back to them. They cover up crimes, make poor decisions if it means protecting their school's reputation, and if things start looking bleak, they pin all the blame on Jin and Tengan. Seiko, Ruruka and Izayoi's expulsion, unfortunately, makes total sense, and it's one of the few things in Danganronpa 3 that actually DOES. The Steering Committee knew that there was more to the story and that this might have been the result of an accident. They probably knew that none of the three had actually done anything wrong. The reason why they were expelled is that it was the EASIEST possible out for THEM. After all, considering the exams at Hope's Peak were a public ordeal, it wouldn't be too hard to get an investigator in to find out the truth of the matter, but doing that risks exposing the other dark secrets that the Steering Committee tried to cover up. It was all too easy to pin the blame on Ruruka, Seiko, and Izayoi, and remove them permanently, to prevent their secrets from being outed and to preserve their reputation. Their reputation as an esteemed school, and their own personal goals took priority over everything else, and they didn't care who it hurt, especially not the three victims. This is also the reason why Nagito was only suspended as opposed to expelled as well. The reason he got off lightly is purely because of his talent. Hope's Peak were serious about researching luck, and given Nagito's insane bullshit abilities, he wasn't someone they were about to let go easily. The other three were sacrifices they could make. Nagito was not. It's not fair, and it doesn't make sense, but that's the POINT. This scene was one of the few things in DR3 that actually seemed thought through to me.

-Mod

[the-apocalypse-is-upon-us]

Of course, there's no way which you can map out the dynamics of the characters from one property to another 1:1, especially when the way even a similar theme such as the oppressive structure of society is handled so differently between them. I think the most egregious example on my part is me assigning Junko as Akio based mostly on the rough character dynamics with the Utena and Anthy parallels of the AU, completely disregarding that a) there are already characters that fit way better within Akio's character archetype and what it's trying to criticise, a major example being Haiji and b) Junko could be construed as the opposite of Akio. She is a product of the system, that managed to get this far by working within it yes, but that can also be said about a character like Shiori. It's due to Junko that Hope's Peak falls, and of course that's not taking into account all the ways that her being a female highschool student of a rebellious subculture that goes again what expectations women are supposed to fulfil within Japanese society is supposed to say about her character. You could also read into what despair means in that context and whether you're supposed to see where she is coming from or not (though with the dr3 anime ending with the reopening of Hope's peak, i think its pretty clear that DR's politics are nowhere near as well thought out as Utena's). What I'm trying to say is: Junko is pretty clearly a witch, with all the connotations that title carries in rgu, but of course in the end, all girls are like the rose bride.

Danganronpa Revolutionary Girl Utena au: Makoto is def Utena, you could also make a case for Kyoko or Aoi for The Themes™, but characterwise he fits best imo. Anthy is Mukuro and Akio is Junko, what with the shades of the sibling dynamic, their respective treatment of Makoto and the "Lets stay in the school forever" as thh's bad ending. Mikage is definitely Matsuda and Mamiya is either a) Mukuro in her Junko disguise or b) Ryoko (just to make it that extra despairful). Hajime takes a similar role to Wakaba/Keiko as in a person who realises he is ordinary and that it is stunting him and will take part in the Black Rose seminars to amend that as this universe's Kamukura project, maybe have Chiaki be his respective Utena/Nanami/Saionji. Nagito definitely has Anthy qualities and Kyoko has Juri-like qualities respectively but there isn't a specific role i can pinpoint them as. Byakuya is definitely Saionji and you could make the case that Toko is his Wakaba as well.

[s-serendipit-y]

arguing with izuru (then making up)

request: izuru and his s/o (fem or gn is fine) having an argument but then they make up?

characters: izuru kamukura

note: spoilers for the dr3 anime and trigger happy havoc and small changes to the canon timeline

i tried my best to keep it in character but i lowkey can’t see izuru apologizing 🧍🏽‍♀️but i hope you still like it

this is pretty long, i got carried away with this one 💀

——— izuru kamukura

arguing with izuru is hard

mostly because of his personality, he tries to evade any arguments with anyone since he finds it boring

so anytime he sees you getting defensive or upset he would back down letting you cool off before trying to talk to you again

but this wasn’t one of those times

you had found out the izuru was in contact with junko again, after everything she put everyone through he was talking to her again

how could you not be angry? so of course you immediately confronted him about it

at first he tried to brush you off by not responding and walking away from you but you quickly stepped in his path stopping him from walking away.

he gave you his normal deadpanned look as you look at him angrily

“your promised you wouldn’t talk to her again! how could you betray me like that? betray the future foundation?”

“the future foundation means nothing to me.”

“what about me? i thought we were supposed-“

“you’re being irrational s/o.” 

you were hurt, but you shouldn’t be surprised. he’s always been like this, yet he’s never hurt you like this before. maybe everyone was right, why would you date the ultimate hope who worked with the ultimate despair?

“maybe we shouldn’t be together then.”

you storm out of his dorm a heavily feeling in your chest. was this despair? is this what junko craves? it’s almost unbearable.

little did you know izuru had the same heavily feeling in his chest.

it’s been days since you and izuru had last talked

everyone else could notice the tension between you two, you were clearly ignoring him and he would always keep an watchful eye on you

he could tell that you were still mad at him but at the same time he could tell how sad you were

and deep down, he missed you so much

you were the only one that actually helped him open up his emotions so now that he got the feeling to you may be gone, he hates this feeling and all izuru want is to be near you again

so he would wait until you were in you back at your dorm before coming to visit you

“oh, what are you doing here?” you say when you first open the door

“i’ve come to apologize, i invalidated your feelings and that was wrong of me. you mean a lot to me s/o and i don’t want to lose you.”

you turn away from his gaze, of course you were happy that he reached out but there was on thing you needed to know:

“what did you and junko talk about that one night?”

“you.”

you were surprised. you? what could junko possibly want with you.

“her ideal are to spread despair across the world and she failed once, the future foundation restored everything. but that won’t stop her, how boring she threatened to harm you and i would not let that happen.”

you open your door wider letting him inside

“izuru, i don’t know what to say, i’m so-“

“you have no reason to apologize. it’s was my fault, i thought the best possible outcome was to not tell you but for once i was wrong.”

“can i hug you izuru?” you whisper standing in front of him

he doesn’t even respond only pulling you against his chest his long dark hair closing around you.

“is there any way you’d allow me to fix things?” he mutter

you sigh wrapping your arms around him pulling him tighter against you

“i want to fix things too, i should’ve trusted you more.”

[hopeymchope]

There is actually a multi part video by GamingMagic13 who explains everything wrong about DR3 better than I ever could. (If you ever get the time I suggest watching it) But mainly bc DR3 ended with absolutely no resolution with specific characters. Plus, the world was still in an awful state. :/

*looks it up* Oh JESUS CHRIST. It's a SIX-AND-A-HALF-HOUR video series tearing down something I deeply love!

.....yeah, I can't imagine subjecting myself to that, sorry.

I guess I'll just say that yes, not every single character's issues are resolved. If you sat around telling a story that was just checking a bunch of boxes on what's still out there (Does Nekomaru still have his heart problem? Does Nagito really have a brain tumor? Are we going to somehow resolve those medical issues? What is the state of Sonia's country after her activities as a Remnant of Despair? Etc), it wouldn't be much of a coherent narrative. Honestly, almost every story I've ever read/watched/played has left some unseen element of resolution that I would've liked to personally see, but I get why they do it. For a lot of viewers/readers/players, the interest is gone when the major conflict is resolved, y'know?

By the end of it, though, what's really still left open that leaves the world in a bad place? There's one BIG thing, obviously: The masked/mind-controlled kids running around Towa City. The fact that we never know if that issue is resolved or how DOES irk me.

Aside from that, however...

We know that the destroyed air quality is resolved by the final epilogue scenes, because we are shown as such. No, we aren't given any dropped lines about how this happened ("It's a good thing Souda engineered that machine that can absorb and clean the air!" or something), but I also don't think we especially needed it.

The big-name capital-R "Remnants of Despair" aren't running rampant over the world and are, in fact, on a journey of atonement for their previous crimes.

There are still stragglers, of course, but we are directly told that the remnants that remain are "exactly that — remnants."

I guess we don't know for sure what the state of various world governments and authorities is, but I also don't think that's something we needed, personally. I suppose we could've thrown some text on-screen about it at the end?

Naegi becoming the head of the New Hope's Peak is something that is very much left open to interpretation, admittedly. You could see this as a bad thing if you agree that Hope's Peak's fixation on "talent" was actually hurting people overall AND you legitimately believe that Naegi would be so foolish as to continue that exact same approach/policy. But since the show gives you no hints as to how the school now operates or what Naegi is doing with it, the assumption that it's bad or good is entirely on the viewer. It honestly never occurred to me that Naegi would continue the exact same fixation with "talented" individuals when *I* saw it; I was surprised when I saw a bunch of people online just assuming that it must be exactly the same as the old Hope's Peak. That's a weird leap to make when the series seemed to clearly be telling us that A) the obsession with natural-born talent was bad and B) the ending was clearly meant to be happy/positive based on the tone of the visuals and music.

By the time DR3 rolled around, most fans were like "Did Junko never sleep or what?" After three games we were expected to believe that she planned and executed the overall destruction of society, the Student Council Killing Game, the Hope's Peak Killing School Life, the Jabberwock Island/Neo World Killing Game, the epic disaster in Towa City — a wide variety of events that seemingly involved her getting close to/personally manipulating all the Warriors of Hope AND all of class 77-B in addition to creating her own A.I., arranging for a wide swath of robots to serve her whims and also rampage across the land, learning how to remove people's specific memories and executing on that, etc etc etc. You get the idea. It was pretty damn insane to even wrap your mind around, and I appreciated that DR3 invests time in showing us how so much of this was pulled off without ever breaking continuity. In particular, there's a pretty clever workaround on one major issue...

At the end of DR2, Junko insists that she manipulated the entire DR2 cast one by one into willfully giving into despair. Naegi insists that they were just brainwashed. And lo: One of the most popular complaints about DR3 is that "Omg I can't believe they introduced brainwashing and used it to explain the DR2 cast being evil." Which... should I once more list all the ways that this was set up in advance of DR3? OH SURE: We already mentioned the dialogue from Naegi. But the biggest foreshadow of this is Danganronpa 0, the light novel that Kodaka himself wrote which came out BEFORE DR2 RELEASED, in which we see a horde of Reserve Course students being brainwashed by some edited videotape showing the Student Council Killing Game. This is exactly where DR3 pulls from and is more than enough justification for this all by itself, but I could also cite that brainwashing was already present in the games themselves if you just remember the aforementioned kids in Towa City - y'know, the ones all brainwashed and controlled by something shown inside their Monokuma masks. And doesn't this explanation helpfully free up a lot of time for Junko's numerous plots?

[tempoaryblogformightyjensblog]

Danganronpa 3:Despair arc review

So here is my thoughts on the despair arc

It is not a good DR2 prequel

People have debated the brainwashing stuff and whether it was a good or bad idea. I am already in the latter camp..but here is the thing, I have seen less debate over whether it was done well even if  we were going to do this. If this had to be where the story went, is it well executed?

No...its really not 

Junko just happens to stumble on this dude who just so happens to be skilled enough in video making that she can use it to perfect her brainwashing techniques. 

Why write it like  that? What exactly was her Plan before she met him?

The series is also not very consistent with how the Brainwashing works, the guy she makes kill himself was clearly aware of what was happening and was begging for it to stop, but  the other brainwashed people act fundamentally changed as people. Who they are was altered and  rewired into wanting despair.

And here is the fundamental issue with it...its about the Remnants of despair...but its not really about them

The only ones who really influence the plot are Nagito,Hajime,and Chiaki

We get a little more on Imposter but that is fairly easy sense we never really got to know the real him in the actual game. 

It features the other characters, but it does not explore the other characters. It does not really explore who they are as people nor  do who they are as people have much impact on the plot.

The death of Fuyuhiko’s sister and how this affects the characters involved are glossed over. Even though the game itself made a pretty big deal about that. 

A lot of the characters hidden depths and such are never really gone into. Which is a real shame as it could have added a lot, like going more into Hiyoko’s tragic past and such to win her more of the fandom. 

They feel like background props in what is supposed to be their story

Now...Do I hate it? No not really. There is plenty of fun stuff, its entertaining enough and at its worst its just kind of dumb or average in some spaces.

That is why  I started this by saying its a bad Danganronpa 2 prequel. 

That is this series worst flaw, its less the series itself  as much as what it is connected to. Its an entertaining if glaringly flawed series....That is connected to what many consider the  best game in the series, and covering the major plot twists that game had. That is  really the biggest problem. less what it is, and more what is is connected too and the things it was  handling. 

I think this series real problem is that it is part of DR3 at all

I remember that series American Horror story, its this anthology series where each season has its own story. One season was called ‘Double Feature’, its gimmick was that it was 2 storylines in one season. The first and second half both being their own things. As a throwback to old ‘Double Feature’s horror fans would watch

The problem came with how many felt this made both stories suffer, people said that both storylines could have used more time to breath.

I feel like this might have a similar issue, I feel like this  should have had its own  series instead of it being half of a series and thus sharing it with the actual Danganronpa 3

There is plenty of stuff to work with and it is something  that really needs time to fully flesh out.

Anyways, that is my review,I ‘hope’ it was nice to read!

[tuulikannel]

Everything Wrong with the Danganronpa 3 Anime (and what little I liked about it)

Okay… I’m late to the party and I bet others have voiced all my complaints before, but I just needed to vent, so here we go. Warning: this got long. And contains SPOILERS not only for DR3 but also DR2 and DR2.5.

Also, these are just my opinions. You’re free to disagree. If you in fact loved the anime, good for you! I wish I’d be able to. ^^;; (I'd also like to point out that I've seen it only once, and I might misremember some things, or maybe have misunderstood something, so feel free to correct me.)

(And one more disclaimer: I’m just venting here, ok? Do keep that in mind…)

Despair Side

Junko. How to write characters who are smarter than you is a question I too have struggled with. One thing I know, this is not the way to do it. Junko says in DR2 that she knows 17,082 ways of bringing people to despair. Clearly an exaggeration, and after all, here she needed only one: a brainwashing video. Okay, sure, I think some brainwashing via means like this simply has to also take place. Especially that’s true in the larger picture, with the masses, but also with our cast, to make them go as crazy as they did… but it being the only thing? Huh. I was expecting a master manipulator, but nah. What happened to her “charismatic ability to attract people” to her case, her “power to change other people’s values”, like all other leaders who are obsessed with their ideals? Ok, Monokuma’s – in other words, Junko’s – words. Ofc she would paint herself in that light. But can you blame me being disappointed to find out that she’s nothing but a fake? She didn’t need a single ounce of charisma to do what she did. Monokuma claimed he’s telling us the truth in ch 6 of DR2, but in the end almost everything was one big, fat lie. “She controlled their despair by taking advantage of their love, hate, grudges, anything really.” Yeah right.

Mukuro. If Junko doesn’t live up to her character, neither does Mukuro. She pretty much loses everything that made her interesting here and becomes nothing but a punching bag (with an incestuous twist). That’s pretty much all I have to say about her in DR3, which is sad in itself. >_>

Anyway, talking about the brainwashing… This removes all guilt from everyone involved. Yay, the characters we love are pure and innocent, they didn’t have this despair sleeping inside of them for Junko to wake up, they were just her poor victims. And maybe because of this they don’t have to deal with any trauma either, cause they sure seem to be perfectly happy in the end.

The trauma and the lack of it, both physical and mental… in the end, no one else but Nagito and Fuyuhiko had mutilated their bodies (or if they had, it wasn’t visible). That’s fine… but in that case, I think Makoto & co really should have told them that when they were freaking out about their bodies being messed up. Also, someone (Akane, probably, for it'd be serious despair for her) supposedly starved themself nearly to death, but there's no sign of something like that, either. It’s just like… this anime really downplays everything we learned in DR2, and nothing that happened in it really matters at all.

Class 77 falling into despair as they did was such a letdown. Yeah, this is still about the brainwashing. Just for the record, I’m not complaining about them being brainwashed, per se. I’m complaining about the method of that brainwashing. My biggest problem here is that there’s no individuality. Basically the entire class (apart from Mikan, Chiaki, and the imposter) are treated as just the same faceless mass. In DR2, I could see hints for basically each character of where their despair might spring from, but none of that is needed. They’re a perfectly happy bunch of kids before they see this single video. Which brings me to…

Sato’s death. Now, that could have been the moment to start the downhill. First, Mahiru’s best friend kills Fuyuhiko’s sister for her sake. Then, Fuyuhiko kills said friend. But they seem to get over this without too much trouble. Ultimately, it doesn’t really have any far-reaching consequences at all. (Unless you count Nagito’s stupid act of terrorism as one, I guess.)

Twilight Syndrome Murder Case in general was weird in the anime. I’m not even sure what truly happened there, it was just rushed over. The scene with Mahiru and Sato wasn’t like in DR2. Did Mahiru take those photos? Was Sato the murderer? Did Fuyuhiko kill her? What’s the truth of this case?

Nagito being an outsider in the class. (Well, tbh, I guess this makes sense. I still don’t have to like it.) I get it that they didn’t like to hang out with him after the first trial in DR2, and I bet he’s always been a weirdo, but I was really hoping to see him be a part of the group at least a bit more strongly than he was. They didn’t care much at all that he was gone, and Chiaki was the only one to welcome him back when he returned. No wonder he was dreaming about having friends in DR2.5…

Izuru being a bystander. It kind of feels like the point of this anime is to show us that they’re all good people through and through and haven’t done anything bad (except maybe after being brainwashed into totally different people). Surprise, surprise! Monokuma lied to us about Izuru’s involvement in the deaths of the student council too! Well, to be honest, it wasn’t a complete surprise to me that the version he provided us in DR2 wasn’t quite truthful (even though he repeatedly claimed otherwise!) I was wondering about it back then, in fact. But still. Izuru just is there. He doesn’t do anything. Well, he kills that one single person who attacks him at the end of the scene where the student council members murder each other. Oh, and I guess he tries to kill Nagito. Speaking of which…

Izuru meeting Nagito. Ok, I know that Junko wiped Nagito’s memory, which is the reason he doesn’t recognize Izuru on the boat in chapter 0 of DR2. But this doesn’t change the fact that when this meeting took place, I couldn’t really enjoy that otherwise quite brilliant scene, cause I was just going like “wtf, how can this happen?!” And then it’s all explained away with basically one single sentence, much later on.

Overall, the memory swipe thing is, in my opinion, used a bit too much here. It becomes such a cheap plot device – anything can happen, cause we just make them forget about it. Did Junko even really have time to do that there, for the entire class? And I don’t get why Izuru asked her to do it in the first place. He said something about meeting the class soon again, and that it would be boring if they knew each other. Why? The first thought I had was that he was talking about the island, but honestly, no one knew anything about that going to happen yet at this point, and I refuse to believe that Izuru could predict all that. That’s getting ridiculous. And even if he could, Izuru wasn’t on the island as himself but as Hajime, and they had anyway forgotten all that happened during their school life, so… it’s just utterly pointless. I can’t help feeling that the makers just really wanted for this meeting to take place, and then used this by now rather worn plot device to make Nagito forget all about it. It just makes no sense to me. They could have just made that scene so that Nagito never clearly sees Izuru. Problem solved, and no need for any pointless mind swipes.

The deaths of the student council. That… happened way too easily. Just how horrifying secrets can high schoolers have that they’d go crazy and start killing like that? And even if one does, for heavens’ sake, there’s a roomful of people, someone just grab her. Ok, Mukuro’s there and she has a gun. She shot someone. She’s the ultimate soldier. They are in trouble, I give you that. But to cave in that quickly and just start murdering each other even without any brainwashing just makes no sense on any level. I’m sorry, Hajime, I much prefer the version where Izuru killed them all.

Btw, just how big is the reserve course? 2,357 reserve course students committed mass suicide (if we trust the numbers Monokuma provided. Maybe he exaggerated. Maybe it’s just a random number, just like that 17,082 earlier.) But as the reserve course has existed only for two years, if that number applies, even with huge classes of 49 people each, there’d be at least 24 classes each year. That’s some real revenue they’re aiming for there, all I can say. I sort of thought that number would also include alumni or something. (Also... someone should have told the reserve course students they shouldn't open strange files sent from unknown people.)

Chiaki’s death. Oh, I love her. I also think that killing her is an excellent way to try to break her classmates. But it being the only way… nah. There were so many relationships they talked about in the FTE’s of DR2 that could have been used (Hiyoko's father, Teruteru's mother, Ibuki's band members, Nekomaru’s hospital mate etc.) but they just made everything center on Chiaki. Kind of… lazy. And the death itself… in a sense, it’s such a fitting end for a gamer. Just, when the hell did Junko build that maze thing basically underneath the schoolyard without anyone noticing it at all? This is even more ridiculous than the DR1 executions. It’s just not possible. The deaths worked in the game setting, and there Junko had had time to prepare everything without anyone getting in the way and she had people like the Ultimate Mechanic helping her, but here… maybe it’s just me, but I wish it’d be something more realistic.

People being stupid and/or spineless for the sake of the plot. Sakakura letting Junko to bully him to lie to Munakata about something as big as this for such a reason? So she has a photo of him looking at Munakata’s picture with a smile? Oh the horror. Say it’s fake. Say you were just looking at the picture of your best friend. Can’t you smile at that? Or man up and confess to him yourself. Yukizome going underground without letting anyone know what she’s up to. Are you suicidal, girl? At least answer the damn phone and let them know where you're going before starting to explore mysterious underground passages by yourself. You're supposed to be the adult here, try to be a bit more sensible and responsible, would you? Being a teacher and being a superhero are two different things. You're not Korosensei. And the kids too, in fact. What are they doing, going after their teacher like that without informing anyone? Call the freaking police! But nope, even though most of them have no combat abilities whatsoever (and one of their strongest fighters was already once defeated!), they just have to go after her by themselves – carrying an injured person with them, to boot. What are they thinking? Ok, I get it, they're kids. But still.

Future Side

The plot. The leader of the Future Foundation arranges the killing game thing to make Mitarai share the hope brainwashing video with the world? This is the lousiest plan ever. If he really couldn’t convince Mitarai to do that any other way, after the world has pretty much literally ended, how could he be so sure that this would work? He might have caused all that killing just for nothing. In fact, Mitarai wasn’t even supposed to be there, and I wonder if he would have still done that in the end, if he hadn’t witnessed it all firsthand.

The utter dysfunctionality of the Future Foundation. And how unreasonable and idiotic these people are. How has this lot been able to fight the Despairs and be successful about it? They don’t seem to be capable of any kind of cooperation, and half of them hate the other half enough to literally murder them. Even that confectionery girl doesn’t trust someone completely loyal to her enough to believe he woulnd’t kill her, but murders him instead, just in case. Sure, I get it, she has this betrayal trauma, but still. What the actual fuck. (Okay, so they’re totally unaware that they’ve got despair lurking among them, which might be partly behind the dysfunctionality, but even so.) …moreover, this anime introduces so many people, but I remember the names of only a few. They’re just a bunch of pointless characters who’ve got pointless subplots and who die pointless deaths. 12 episodes simply wasn’t enough to give a cast this big enough time to develop meaningfully.

Munakata’s motives… don’t make any sense whatsoever. That guy doesn’t make any sense, at least not in the future arc. He’s fine in the despair arc, but here… he’s just crazy. (And yeah, maybe he’s supposed to be that, but even so, I just struggled to understand him a bit too much.) I guess he thinks the hope Makoto represents is a false hope and therefore dangerous, which is why he wants to kill Makoto? Something like that, but overall, he’s simply nuts, and not in a good way. The whole trial thing is a farce from the beginning.

Daisaku Bandai, the Ultimate Farmer… the first colored character in the series, and this is his talent. In addition, with his appearance and mannerisms, he’s such a… simply put, racist stereotype. Apparently (according to a databook about DR3) his character is based on Uncle Tom, which… might not be the best source material for creating black characters. >_> And we have him for one episode, until he dies because of the unfairest ?? code of them all.

The DG codes or whatever they were called, can’t remember and don’t really care. Can we say plot device? Yes we can. They’re mainly just used to kill off fodder characters and force plot twists to happen. Maybe they bring along some interesting scenes, too, but overall they're just... nah. ...Zero Escape used these bracelets so much better, tbh.

Fake deaths of Hina and Kyoko. Three fake deaths in 12 episodes is three two too many! Hina’s case was just silly, but ok I guess. It sure was startling, anyway, when it seemed she had died. Then, when the same thing happened with Kyoko (in Makoto’s nightmare, but there was no way we could tell it was a dream before it ended), it was getting a bit frustrating, but I could have forgiven that – if she had stayed dead once she dies the second time, that is. I mean, I love her and I’m happy she lives, but this is getting ridiculous. Where did she get that medicine, anyway? How did she know it might help? Well, I guess she found it on that pharmacist’s body when she was examining her… (and here’s the real question, how and when did the pharmacist… Seiko, was it? have the means and time to develop that medicine?) Anyway, betting her life on an unknown medicine like that is just reckless. In Kyoko’s place, I would have done what Sakakura did and cut off my hand. Yeah, that’s extremely reckless too, and likely to lead to death in those conditions, but still a better option in my mind. Also, in Monokuma’s words, “Well, nobody’s gonna appreciate a game where you don’t die when you’re supposed to, right?” Right.

Btw, Kyoko! What the hell. Dear girl. Why didn’t you examine properly that fake exit place? You could have done what Sakakura did in the end and ended the game right there and then. You’re smarter than this.

Ultra Despair Girls episode. I’m saying this as someone who liked both the game (for the most part) (def not all parts, you know >_>) and Toko & Komaru: that was complete waste of time. The only thing it gave us was a fanserivice shot of Komaru’s panties. (Why?) As I said before, at 12 episodes the Future side is too short to begin with, and there really wasn’t room for a filler episode like that. Besides… Monaca flying off into space… in that van… is maybe supposed to be funny, but to me it was so stupid it almost hurts. And even by game standards, Komaru and Toko surviving that fall without a scratch is ridiculous. (Also, can’t those two seriously find some new clothes anywhere? ^^;;) (All that said, it was kinda fun to see them again.)

Timeline. More than a complaint, this is something I’m simply a bit confused about. How long passed betwen UDG and DR2? It sounds like not too long. Everything seemed to be ready for DR2 then: Izuru got Junko AI from Kuro&Shirokuma, Nagito told Monaca that he has to be somewhere soon. And still Nagito had enough time to make Monaca so fed up with both hope & despair? Boy he’s efficient. XD

…actually, the timeline is a bit of a mess, really… after DR2, that is. I mean… that much time can’t have passed between Makoto & co leaving Jabberwock island and the farce Makoto’s trial. But still the DR2 gang’s ready to come for help very quickly. So they all have to wake up and be rehabilitated (after spending over a month in a coma-like state), almost in a matter of days. And Nagito gets that robotic arm of his, too, literally right after he wakes up, apparently… (it seems to happen just in time for him to catch the boat with the others.) Oh well. Maybe Hajizuru had already made it for him. Whatever. Onward.

Komaru’s warning to Makoto. “Hey big bro, this person we have no reason to trust just said that someone’s gonna die cause of you.” “Omg, I’m the worst, I never meant for that to happen! T_T” …I just can’t. Makoto! It hasn’t even happened yet! If you’re so worried about it, why don’t you even try to find out what it’s about? Take action! At least try to stop it from happening!

The whole thing with Mitarai uploading his video. 30 min load time? How does it take that long? How big is the video? A few seconds of it seem to be enough to brainwash people, anyway. Ok, I get it, they need to give time for people to reach him. And of course, he cancels the upload at the last seconds. (cliché much…) Of course it’s nice that they can talk him out of it and get him to do that himself, but in that kind of situation where you overpower a single guy 15-1, you really don’t need to cut it that close.

And finally, I just have to mention this… the red blood. Why? I haven’t been able to figure out a single proper reason for this. First I thought that maybe the blood is pink in the games due to stricter censorship in Japan – in the games, kids die, but here they’re adults, so maybe that’s why the blood can be red? That sounds kind of stupid though, and they could have kept the pink blood just for consistency’s sake. (Maybe there are different standards for games and animation? I don’t know.)

Anyway, Twilight Murder Syndrome in the game had red blood and a realistic image of a dead girl, so I really don’t know about that censorship theory. There I don’t mind the red blood, though. On the contrary. I thought it was really funny how in that game inside the game, blood was red and characters were drawn quite realistically. Kind of like… what is realistic to us, is in the DR world considered some weird anime style. XD Having red blood in the future arc kinda ruins this. One theory I’ve heard was that the blood is pink during the time of Junko’s influence or something like that, but I honestly don’t get that at all. Despair turns blood pink?

And if it’s red just so they could play the silly ketchup trick on Hina, I will scream. >_>

ETA: apparently the blood was pink cause it added to the psycho-pop feeling of the game. Why not just to keep it like that?

Hope side

Do I like it or hate it? I don’t know. The trouble with the hope arc… it feels like such a fan wish fulfillment episode. Yeah, I’m falling for it too… it’s fun to see all the DR2 people doing their thing. But even so. I don’t know. Some parts of it just feel pretty silly. And all these people… seem so happy. Which is great. But I’d wish to see a bit of that trauma they must have… I mean, even if it was all due to brainwashing, they’ve done horrible things. Murdered people. Their families. And then there’s all the stuff that happened in DR2. Are they really over it all, just like that?

Things I liked in the anime

Umm.

Chiaki. <3 And her friendship with Hajime. I’ve heard some people complain that it was boring, but seriously… that’s the best kind of friendship there is. Where you can just be in someone's company, totally relaxed like that, and the silences are never awkward. I could easily see that relationship to develop into something more.

Yukizome. Most of the time. Except when she was being an idiot. Or when she came back from teaching the reserve course, just saying that oh, she suffered there so much. That was really disappointing, I didn’t take her to be an ass like that. >_>

I did complain about Izuru being a bystander, but in a way I really like his apathetic attitude.

Fuyuhiko’s little sister being part of the reserve course. That was a really good explanation for the silly Ultimate Little Sister title.

The first episode of despair arc was quite fun… (even though it’s ridiculous that attending classes isn’t mandatory in this school. Great that they’ve time to develop their talents, but they truly don’t have to learn anything else? Seriously? Why is this school considered so great again? XD)

Nagito meeting Makoto! XD Never change, my darling nutcase. 💜 (That said, I’m gonna take that boy to therapy.)

(Heh. It genuinely seems to be so that there wasn't anything in the Future side that I would have liked.)

Hmm. Anything else on my mind…?

Oh oh oh! What’s up with Chiaki at the end, though? Is Hajime now also the Ultimate Medium who can converse with the dead whenever he wants to? Does Chiaki (the AI version) somehow live on in his mind? What the hell was that!? I truly love her, but she if anyone should have stayed properly dead. Death isn't as cheap as this in Danganronpa…

And one more thing about which I’ve been wondering for long, already before watching this anime: what about Hajime’s family? Did his parents have any idea of what was going on with their (underage) son? Didn’t they wonder how he just disappeared? Or did they actually consent to all this?

Huh. Now I’m done, I guess. I said it’d be long. I hope I didn’t forget anything… and, uh, congrats if you managed to read through my entire rant, I guess? ^^;

[piyoduki]

Hinata and Kamukura

(wow what a creative title)

Just a place for me to dump my thoughts on these two, and why they are so important to each other... This is another really long essay analysis thingy.

Spoiler warning for... everything. :p

1. Reserve Course

Hinata is an ordinary guy who loved and admired Hope’s Peak Academy. He loves talent, and wishes he could attain a talent and become someone recognised by society.

Hinata always calls himself normal, and says there’s nothing noteworthy about him. But unlike Naegi, Hinata was not satisfied with being normal. Hinata was obsessed with talent, because he believed he needed one to become someone he could be proud of, to be acknowledged by others. That was why he wanted to enter Hope’s Peak Academy so much.

(Horror game protagonist?)

DR’s society is one that puts talented individuals, the best of the best, above everyone else. SDR2 and DR3 give us a look at just how the other people in this world, the ones who were not chosen by Hope’s Peak Academy, feel. Hinata is the one who represents the hopes and despairs of the common people.

Hinata’s hopes about the school were quickly dashed when he realises just how they were treated in comparison to the Main Course students, aka the Ultimates. It’s also interesting that despite claiming to love the school, Hinata doesn’t actually know how the Reserve Course differs from the Main Course. It appears that Hinata believed that he would be able to get a talent and become an Ultimate even if he entered through the Reserve Course. Either the school hid the dark reality of the Reserve Course (which wouldn’t be surprising), or Hinata didn’t actually dig deeper in his research. Especially considering he did not even try to apply for the position of Ultimate Luck (he did not even know about that, actually), I believe that Hinata is someone who doesn’t like to confront his greatest fears or worries, and by choosing to remain ignorant, he can hold on to his rosy image of a school that can make his dreams come true. 

Of course, he can’t be ignorant of the truth once he’s actually in the school. Already, he can see a clear difference in how they were treated. The Main Course students are allowed to move between schools easily, but he (and the other Reserve Course students) get beaten up just for trying to enter the building? When his friend and classmate gets murdered by another Reserve Course student, that student then gets murdered by a Main Course student... who never got any sort of punishment? Two Reserve Course students lost their lives and the Main Course student who committed the same grave crime got their crime covered up? (Off-topic but isn’t it weird that Komaeda gets expelled for property damage but Fuyuhiko gets no punishment for MURDER... are the yakuza that powerful? Or more like why does DR3 want to make fun of Komaeda so much?)

And those are just what we see on screen. There is clearly some animosity between Main and Reserve Course students given Hinata’s class seemed very annoyed and hostile towards Koizumi when she went to visit Sato. The whole atmosphere of the Reserve Course is gloomy and depressing, compared to the Main Course where they were skipping class, throwing parties and playing games... We can infer what other micro-aggressions and unfair treatment the Reserve Course students felt when compared to the Main Course.

I have seen some people say that Hinata went through with the Kamukura Project because he wanted to impress Nanami... which I strongly disagree with. If anything it looked like he wanted to avoid her because he knew she would try to stop him. Hinata was fed up with being treated like second-rate trash. Not to mention he already has the pressure of his parents having to pay high school fees (that the Main Course most likely didn’t need to, given there are a few students in debt), so dropping out would disappoint them (and Hinata is stubborn and doesn’t give up easily once he’s decided to stick to something). Natsumi dying was simply the last straw. When he’s given the chance to become the person he’s always dreamed of becoming, a person full of talent, at this point where Hinata was at his lowest, there isn’t anything holding him back anymore. He is no longer afraid of something going wrong, because he’d already seen his classmates DIE, and the perpetrator with an Ultimate talent got to walk away scot-free. If he doesn’t take this chance now, he might end up the same way.

And he most likely would have, given all 2375 Reserve Course students committed a mass suicide. 2357 people who were not even named, or treated as individuals, who were just lumped into one number without any identity beyond having no talent.

By deciding to take part in the Kamukura Project, Hinata was able to live.

2. Kamukura Izuru Project

Or not really, because Hinata got his memories and consciousness erased. Can walking around as an emotionless shell really be called ‘living’? Junko implied that some messed up stuff happened to Hinata during the process, and I don’t know much about brain surgery... but we can imagine it was very painful and not ethical. Like Junko said, in order to completely rewrite Hinata’s personality, the researchers would have to go through drastic measure to accomplish something like that.

When did Hinata stopped being Hinata and when did he become Kamukura? We don’t know. But Hinata could feel everything when he was still Hinata. The fear, anger, regrets, pain, isolation... the feeling when he starts to realise he’s becoming numb. The feeling when he realises he can’t remember certain things. Soon the time will come when he can’t even remember anything. And he doesn’t even care anymore, because his emotions had been repressed to such an extent. (Does he even need anaesthesia to be operated on if he doesn’t feel pain? Hmm.)

He is now called Kamukura Izuru by the scientists who created him. Just like the other Reserve Course students, Hinata’s identity was erased and discarded. 

In V3′s UTDP, Kamukura introduces himself in this way, basically showing he doesn’t really feel like he has a sense of identity either.

Kamukura is the proud product of the scientists’ hard work. Yet he is a secret who cannot be shown to the world, not just yet. The school claims it is to protect such rare talent, that he would somehow be mankind’s saviour. But it would surely tarnish Hope’s Peak Academy’s reputation, if the rest of the world knew what kind of lengths they went through to create such artificial hope anyway. And who knows just how much more they could push Kamukura’s talents? If Junko didn’t take over the school and call out to him, who knows what would happen to Kamukura? Would they dispose of him once their success was recorded and it might be too dangerous to keep a human experiment around? Would they fear the very being that they had created, that could easily overpower them if he wanted to? Would Kamukura, who had no motivation or reason to live, even care if he were to get killed...?

Kamukura was locked up in a dark room with just a bed. We can assume he was only let out to undergo tests and such. He was given the bare minimum for survival, and because Kamukura had no motivations, he did not want or need anything else... but he was extremely bored. Kamukura’s whole life was confined to his empty room and the lab. He could definitely escape if he wanted to, but what point was there in leaving? He could predict everything that would happen. To him, the outside world was probably as boring as the world inside the lab, or at least not worth the effort of sneaking out or escaping. (Although he did sneak out once in the DR3 anthology... and as you might have guessed, he found it boring.) 

Junko is the one who gave Kamukura a motivation. She promised him the thrills and excitement of a world filled with despair. Kamukura had nothing to lose by going along with her plans, and in the best case scenario she would be correct and perhaps he might just feel something through despair. 

Despite being apathetic and having all the talents... Kamukura does want to feel something. Because nothing surprises him, because he can predict everything, because he doesn’t feel challenged by anything, because he finds everything boring, Kamukura wants to find that something that can make him feel. And Junko promised he could find it through despair.

So she puts him into the Student Council Killing Game where he just... stands around and watch them. It isn’t until the very end when a bullet grazes his cheek where he gets somewhat surprised, and kills the student in self defence.

Junko uses him as a scapegoat to blame the killing of the student council on, and Kamukura starts to show signs of annoyance at being used. Eventually Junko kills Nanami, and Hinata’s subconscious reacts to the death of yet another of his friends, causing Kamukura to tear up. Although he is confused by the reaction, he holds on to her hairpin as a reminder. Hinata was still not truly gone, and he caused Kamukura to feel the most emotion he had felt in his short years of existence. 

In UDG, Kamukura aggressively rips out Junko’s AI in annoyance, showing that he isn’t truly emotionless and he does dislike being used in such a matter. It’s also possible he was disappointed as despair did not really make him feel much. Still he goes along with her plan to infect the NWP and turn it into a killing game, but mostly to use it as a final showdown between hope and despair.

I say ‘final’, because the two options would both lead to Kamukura being erased and replaced by a different person.

3. Neo World Program and the Virtual Killing Game

Kamukura knew that he would not be able to take part in SDR2′s killing game, and told Komaeda that in Chapter 0. He knew that his previous self (Hinata) would be used as the avatar, so once again he could only watch from afar (was he even conscious?).

Kamukura went in knowing that if the rehabilitation of the Remnants of Despair was a success, then Hinata would live on as Hinata, and his memories and identity of Kamukura Izuru might be suppressed and erased (sound familiar?). If Junko’s plan succeeded, then she would upload her AI into all of the Remnant’s bodies and continue spreading despair. 

Kamukura, before that point, had barely found a reason to live. But it still wasn’t strong enough to convince him. So if he were going to die, then at the very least he wanted to see if hope or despair could really excite him. If not, then at that point, would there be anything that could make him feel anything? Perhaps nothing would change even if he were to disappear. If he were to just keep being used by others to achieve such a boring, predictable hope or despair, then maybe he didn’t mind just dying. Perhaps, since death is what made him able to feel something, by putting himself in such a situation, he might even feel the fear of death itself?

And so Kamukura Izuru hijacked the NWP and Hinata Hajime was pulled out from the deepest recesses of his mind, and was able to live in the NWP.

But this Hinata isn’t the Hinata that is all too aware of the reality of being a talentless person in a world loved by talent. This Hinata is a fellow student in a class full of Ultimates. SDR2′s Hinata wanted to believe that he has a talent. When he sees the rest of the students, how they act, how some of them got to the school of his dreams through something like luck? Helped by Komaeda’s supportive words, Hinata believes that he must have just forgotten his talent due to the shock of suddenly waking up on a deserted island. Not to mention his memory of entering the school felt fuzzy in the first place, so it must be true. Since he was surrounded by Ultimates, he had to have one too. 

That’s why, in SDR2, Hinata presents himself as a person who is more confident in himself. He sees himself as an equal to all the Ultimates, compared to Komaeda who clearly views himself as beneath the others. Hinata is able to feel comfortable making sarcastic remarks and comments about the others, because he believes he is just like them. But as the game progresses, Hinata starts to doubt himself. In Chapter 3, he starts to have some hazy memories that he tried to suppress.

It’s possible that he might have contracted the Despair Disease from Tsumiki and was starting to remember his past, before he entered Hope’s Peak Academy. Either way, as usual, Hinata continues to ignore his problems and negative thoughts.

When he hears about the traitor, while he did not want to believe it, he started to think it might be him. After all, he was the only one here who did not remember their talent. If he forgot something so important, perhaps it’s possible that he forgot he was the traitor as well. Despite his attempts to fit in with everyone, Hinata still felt left out from the others. 

But Hinata continued to believe he was not the traitor, that his talent would come to him eventually, because he didn’t want to face what would happen IF he were the traitor. In Chapter 4, he reacts negatively to Komaeda and Souda suspecting him of being the traitor. He started acting more depressed and impulsive, not helped by the fact he had gone without food and being trapped in the Funhouse for a few days. Not to mention, he was the one who pushed everyone to go to the Funhouse so they could find the truth of their missing memories, in other words his talent. 

Hinata became desperate, when he heard that there was a chance he might find out the truth through the Final Dead Room, he was ready to risk his life and go inside, but Nanami stopped him just in time. It’s very possible Nanami knew about his past to be better equipped to help him in his recovery. Or at the very least, it’s likely she knew he did not have a talent, and did not want him to get hurt if he found out the truth. 

Unfortunately for them, Komaeda does get access to the secret files by playing roulette at Komaeda-level difficulty. Besides the details about them being Ultimate Despair, Komaeda also finds out the true talents of the Imposter and Hinata, which he promptly rubs in Hinata’s face probably in an attempt to make himself feel better about being the very embodiment of what he hates. 

Hinata is shocked and in denial about it for a short while, because it came so suddenly, and from Komaeda, no less. But he could not run away from the truth forever. He should have expected it, being the only one who did not know his talent was just too suspicious. He should know better than anyone, how much he wanted a talent, how much importance he placed on talent. Forgetting was just a convenient excuse to make himself feel better. But that did not make it hurt any less. He was a fraud, a nobody, and this reality crushed Hinata’s fake confidence. The act he put up around the class crumbled. Komaeda constantly bringing up his lack of talent, mocking and insulting him did not help. But he had a murder to solve, and a genocidal Komaeda to deal with the next chapter. Hinata had no time to mope about and take it all in, he had to keep fighting for his survival.

Hinata had already lost hope when he found out about his lack of talent, but Komaeda starts tp be more aggressive in trying to expose the traitor’s identity. And once again Hinata starts to wonder if he were actually the traitor.

Komaeda gave them no time to rest and immediately told the remaining students about his plan to blow up the island. So they worked together to stop him, and found his gruesome dead body, and worked to find the murderer.

In the middle of the investigation, we once again see how pained Hinata felt when he confirms that he was in fact a talentless Reserve Course student.

“Why... why am I here with the other Ultimates?” 

Eventually, they find out Komaeda’s death was not just a simple suicide, and they found out Komaeda’s true plan was to expose the traitor and execute them (which they later found was the exact opposite of what he wanted). Because Hinata knew Komaeda’s true personality, he knew that Komaeda wouldn’t die in such a meaningless way, so Hinata suspected there had to be something more to his death. Hinata was forced to expose Nanami as the traitor, through Monomi’s diary that included that moment that only Nanami should know about... Nanami, who noticed he was feeling anxious and being suspected of being the traitor, who left her group to find him because she was worried for him, who convinced him not to take the risk and leave the Final Dead Room, who told him not to listen to Komaeda mocking him. 

Also, when Hinata saw that scene in the diary, he pretended not to acknowledge it and thought he shouldn’t bring it up to Nanami, because he wanted to avoid a potential problem once again, until he was forced to confront it in the trial. 

With both Komaeda and Nanami gone, Hinata and the others are left exhausted and empty. But the time was up, and they could finally leave...? Even if Hinata wanted to completely give up now, the doors to freedom were (supposedly) finally open and it would be a waste not to at least give it a look. 

A tired Hinata enters the mysterious Future Foundation building, and slowly pieces together the truth behind this killing game. In the final trial, we finally learn about Hinata’s backstory through Junko happily telling him that he is not merely a talentless Reserve Course student, but also a human experiment and his real self is no longer the same person standing in the class trial. The Future Foundation members are also shocked that Hinata and Kamukura were apparently the same person. Hinata’s first reaction is understandably denial, who would believe that they would go through something so messed up for the sake of hope and talent? Especially after Junko adds that Kamukura was the one who killed the student council members and kickstarted the tragedy.

But the seeds of doubt were already planted into Hinata. Junko easily uses Hinata’s fears to deter him from going along with the Forced Shutdown sequence. After all, by going through with it, he and the others would lose their memories of the virtual killing game, meaning he would go back to being Kamukura Izuru. For Hinata, this means that he would cease to exist. Again. 

Junko brings up the fact that the Future Foundation want them to do the Forced Shutdown for their own desires, wanting to stop her from taking over the world, but is it really worth the cost of sacrificing their own lives and memories? 

Hinata has a breakdown because how is he supposed to choose? Between sacrificing himself or saving the world, just because some people say so? He is afraid. He doesn’t want to disappear. He suddenly got put into this spot where the only choices are to die or destroy the world. Both Junko and the Future Foundation are only thinking of their own goals. The Future Foundation might give false reassurance that everything will be fine even if they go back to being Ultimate Despair, but will it really? They conveniently don’t bring up the fact that Hinata won’t even exist anymore in an attempt to convince them to go along with their plan to defeat Junko. As Junko mentioned, do these people even care about him and the others?

Hinata refuses to choose, because he cannot handle it anymore. The burden is too great, and Hinata would rather just give up. Once again, he is unable to face his issues head on and chooses to avoid them. 

Hinata imagines an ending where the class is happy and back on Jabberwock Island. But Nanami snaps him out of it and confronts him. Hinata tells him his worries, tells him that he wants to give up, and adds that if they go through with the Forced Shutdown, everyone would forget about her too. Nanami tells him that no matter what, the future she and everyone fought for would still remain, and that Hinata should believe in himself and stop being so indecisive. Nanami tells him that they are the only ones who can decide their own future, and if they can’t choose one of the two options, to create their own future. 

Hinata confronts his impression of Kamukura, or rather, his own negative feelings projected onto Kamukura’s avatar. His feelings of being talentless, being useless, being unable to change anything, being betrayed, his denial of being Kamukura Izuru. Hinata finally faces his own feelings head on and realises how uncool he is to act like that and keep moping about.

Thanks to Nanami’s encouragement, Hinata was able to overcome his feelings and awaken. Finally, Hinata has stopped running away and has decided to fight for a new future. He says that he is not Kamukura Izuru, but Hinata Hajime, and argues that they don’t have to stick to the two choices presented to them, that they can and will create their own future that they can be proud of. Hinata convinces the other survivors to do the same, and they go through with the Forced Shutdown sequence. Usami appears and defeats Junko, and the survivors wake up from the NWP.

3.5. World Destroyer

This technically happened before DR3, so I’ll put this here. With Kamukura’s talents, Hinata was able to create the AI of World Destroyer, who was given Kamukura’s personality to be as efficient and ruthless in his job as possible. And he was modelled after Hinata’s avatar because... well there are a lot of theories, but personally I think it’s because Kamukura’s hair physics would be a bigger pain to work with then Hinata’s short hair.

Okay that was a joke, but my interpretation the reason is that they wanted to pick someone who is distant from the other students, so that they wouldn’t get too attached or get emotionally hurt when WD shoots them and wakes them up. So they went with Hinata since the students won’t have any memories of him before the killing game (which seems to be where their minds are trapped within). 

It’s possible that Hinata might sometimes feel as if he were not truly a part of the class, as everyone except him shared some memories of their time in Hope’s Peak Academy or being Remnants of Despair (that they may or may not have regained). We already know he thinks that he is different from everyone else. Not to mention, he might have also felt responsible for causing them to die in the NWP since it was Kamukura who injected Junko’s AI into it, so he tried to wake them from their coma. 

Hinata (and Kamukura) had to shoulder the huge burden of saving these people, with the hopes of all the other survivors resting on him. Did he think, he was the only one who could do something like that? With all these talents, he could finally be of use to his friends? Despite people like Nanami constantly telling him that it’s okay not to have a talent, it’s only because he became Kamukura, that he obtained all this talent, that he was able to bring everyone back to life.

Having to deal with the pressure that you will be responsible for all these people’s lives, knowing that it’s your fault but not really that they ended up like this, having to deal with living the rest of your life with another person in your mind, knowing that you finally got what you always wanted but you caused so many people and yourself so much pain... That is something only Hinata Hajime would feel.

4. Kamukura, Hinata and the Future

(This section will contain a lot of rambling headcanons based on how they get along after the events of SDR2/DR3. Also me being confused by DR3′s writing.)

When Hinata wakes up from the simulation, it is heavily implied that Kamukura’s personality is still present within him, as he occasionally mentions being bored (like when the Future Foundation members come after them). Even though he cut his hair, and continues to mainly present himself as Hinata, he retains Kamukura’s talents and shares a body and mind with him.

There are a few confusing things about SDR2 and DR3, such as the fact Naegi and friends don’t know Kamukura and Hinata were the same person, even though Naegi would have likely needed to meet Kamukura to ‘capture’ him, and in the visions Kamukura retained his appearance when talking to Komaeda on the boat to the real Jabberwock Island. It would be kind of suspicious to see that Kamukura was not present in the simulation but instead a completely different person, yet the Future Foundation talk as if they did not know Kamukura even existed...? Why would a random Reserve Course student be in the simulation instead? You would think they would know the identities of who they were going to upload into a rehabilitation programme... or at least put two-and-two together and do some research into this Hinata Hajime person? Anyway I digressed.

I believe that Kamukura was able to also get what he wanted. While he might also have known about the Forced Shutdown sequence, I feel like he might still see it as a non-answer (it may be the Future Foundation’s hope, but he and the other Remnants would go back to being despair anyway). But I don’t think he would have expected Hinata to retain his personality (and possibly memories of the killing game) as well. (Or is it just Kamukura acting as Hinata? We will never know why it seems like the SDR2 cast reverted to their in-game personalities despite the Forced Shutdown being unable to retain those memories...) Either way, I think Kamukura would not have predicted such a thing, because it... defies logic. Seriously how did they even fuse? Why does Hinata have heterochromia?? Did the program malfunction and a miracle happen?? I guess so.

Hinata can still feel emotions, but probably a lot less than he would before, because his brain has been messed with to suppress emotions. But for Kamukura, who had felt nothing his entire life, to be able to feel what it is like to ‘feel’, even just a little, is exactly the kind of stimulus he had been looking for. 

And for Hinata, to go from being a talentless nobody, to becoming possibly the only survivor of the Reserve Course, to be suddenly equipped with all these skills and talents... I imagine it must have overloaded him, to suddenly wake up and feel so foreign in your own body. To suddenly realise there is someone else besides him, in his own brain, and that someone be an emotionless, apathetic, harsh, judgemental person... but still a person.

As I mentioned before, I think Hinata felt responsible for putting the class through the killing game. Even if it wasn’t technically him, because it was him that became Kamukura, he caused them to suffer to such an extent... But at the same time, because it was him, because it was Kamukura, he was able to use his foreign talents for something he wanted to do - to save his friends. For once, his identity as the Ultimate Hope was not being taken advantage of by someone else, but he was able to use it for his own wishes. For once, Hinata was able to regain control of his, of Kamukura’s, talents. Because of Kamukura, Hinata was able to live, face his regrets and save his friends.

For Kamukura, I think that he has finally found a meaning to his life. To be able to feel Hinata’s conviction in wanting to rescue his comatose friends. To want to use his talents that he previously would find boring. To want to live and keep existing. Hinata has shown him that things that he can’t predict do exist. Because of Hinata, Kamukura was able to find his purpose. 

Hinata, who had always doubted himself, his identity, had to suddenly wake up as two people in the same body. He had to come to terms with the fact that he was different from everyone else, that he had gone through some things people would never be able to understand. He had to learn how accept this was how he would be for the rest of his life, to accept Kamukura as a part of himself. And similarly, Kamukura would also have to accept Hinata as a part of him, rather than just his past that did not matter, Hinata exists and is here right now. 

Also, since Kamukura technically only existed for a few years, despite having so much knowledge, he is still lacking in experience. So Hinata would still have things to show and teach him. I also think that Kamukura has low energy due to his lack of motivation, which was why he barely moves about, only sees the value in ‘efficient’ actions, prefers to stand back and observe others, and that is why Hinata is the one that takes the lead in their body after SDR2. 

(Stealthy edit but I totally missed this part in the OVA, but Hinata confirms they are both him, meaning they’ve both come to terms with each other and has accepted the other as a part of themselves. :D)

Hinata needs Kamukura, and Kamukura needs Hinata. Without one of them, the other would not exist, and they make up for what the other lacks. 

Bonus: Cute Stuff

To end this off, here are some miscellaneous cute facts about these two!

Kamukura talks in a more polite way than Hinata

They have two colours of underwear, blue and red/pink with white sakura patterns

Kodaka made a tweet that suggested Hinata Hajime’s name could be read similarly to Kamukura [Hi (ka) -nata (muku) Hajime (kura)]

Kamukura’s hair follows a similar pattern to Hinata’s hair (ahoge, the one pointy middle strand)

Hinata’s stop/cancel sign in his eyes transforms to a target sign when he becomes Kamukura (two prongs) and awakened Hinata (three prongs!!)

Hinata’s official watch has black and red clock hands... :]

Anyway, thanks for reading if you somehow made it this far! This ended up being.... extremely long and rambly... and I might have repeated my points a few times... but I hope you still enjoyed it! :’D

[idiotwhotalkstoomuch]

Explanation on DR3 Brainwashing

I admit it felt a bit cheap at first glance but it suddenly makes so much sense once you look into Junko’s character

This could be considered DR0 spoilers but it’s outright stated in the anime so it’s safe

Something common I see is

“WASTED OPPORTUNITY”

And while I admit it would’ve been cool to see Junko break these people down one by one something to remember is while the idea is cool would Junko even do it?

People tend to see “can” as “did” in Danganronpa which is something that should not be done

While it’s true with Junko’s super analytical abilities she CAN manipulate all of them one by one but did she?

No and here’s why

Junko’s whole character is defined by despair but the question is.... why is she so obsessed with despair?

Despair is a feeling of emotional feel over loss or anything that can cause them grief

Examples are the loss of loved ones and the failure of something you worked hard on

Junko has been born with extreme intelligence and can be talented at anything and see through anything and anyone with no issues and hardly any effort which bored the shit out of her

She likes to use despair as a way to not feel the boredom of knowing everything and to let it consume her by any means necessary

Examples are (okay there are actual DR0 spoilers now so stop looking at this paragraph if you’re sensitive): Killing Mukuro Ikusaba, her beloved twin sister and killing Yasuke Matsuda, her childhood friend and the one she loved most

These actions cure her boredom because she can predict it but the emotional pain she feels of losing these people are wonderful to her.

Now.... WHY THE H E L L would the crazy bitch who literally kills her loved ones waste her time manipulating those 15 fuckers when she can just brainwash them?

I’m not gonna say she was always gonna do brainwashing but her meeting Mitarai is what caused her to decide brainwashing

She can see through anyone’s character immediately due to her powerful analytical talent so she already knows everything about everyone without even speaking to them.

Well maybe not everything but she already has a solid idea.

She even went for people who were kinda transparent in their character like Mikan and Chisa first

Mikan clearly had mental issues and Junko saw it and just took her cause she was easy.

Chisa was clearly devoted to her class, her friends and the children of Hope’s peak which makes it easy to use the student council killing game on her.

People say this devalues her targeting the 77th class since she could’ve brainwashed ANYONE

N o

Just

N o

She chose the 77th class because of their tragic and traumatic pasts would make them mentally weaker than a normal person and make them easier to brainwash

Why do you think she resorted to lobotomy on Chisa?

Chisa had a stronger mental state on them and the reserve course were all insecure and sad blue fucks the despair video did the job

To put it simply, Junko manipulating the 77th class would give her the last thing she wants

Boredom

People say “ohhh but that brings her despair!”

NO IT DOES NOT

Despair and boredom are different. Boredom is numb misery and despair is emotional and mental destruction. Very different

Brainwashing was quick and easy and she could get straight to her despair without the pointless road of talking to 15 people who she already knew what to do and say to make them her bitches

It’s like playing a visual novel already knowing the full plot and the effects of every choice made. There’s no point

Saying that brainwashing devalues Junko is devaluing Junko’s character which is defined by despair and boredom

(This rant just came out because I actually like the brainwashing now and want to see more content of it so here’s outing the reason)

[kokichi-and-co-imagine-blog]

Because I Finished Binging Persona 4 Golden About A Month Ago And I’m Still Not Over It:

So hi everyone. Yes, I still exist. No, I’ve not become Cryptid 2.0 just yet. (If we’re being perfectly honest I probably should have put that on the last Mod answer I did. Oh well.)

Anyway, this year has been... well you all know. However, there was at least one golden ray of hope amidst the sea of despair. 

As the title suggest, I’m of course referring to Persona 4 Golden’s port to Steam.

I LOVED this game. Absolutely adored it. And it clearly wasn’t just me; the response this port got has seemed to catch Sega’s attention. We can only hope, but I think this may mean more ports in the future. About time.

Now, obviously after playing this game I got to thinking a bit. Specifically, what if the Persona users ended up in Hope’s Peak? What would their ultimate titles be? How would they interact with other members of the DR cast (not including DRV3. Still haven’t played it, know all about the plot but not enough about the characters to figure out interactions here)? So, I’m going to go over that right here, in the first of a... okay a many many part post.

Yeah, I know, kinda a let down that I can’t have it all at once but as I was writing it up I realized that this was going to end up being huge. I couldn’t do it all in one post. I thought that maybe I could then divide it by game and have three posts, but as I finished doing just two members of SEES I realized that wouldn’t work either. There’s just too much to write about. So, due to this, I’ll be doing a single post per character and when it comes to relationships with canon characetrs I’m going to try and limit the amounts of characters to just 3 to 5, depending on how much there is to say.

Anyway, without further ado,

Presenting: SEES, the Investigation Team and the Phantom Thieves as SHSLs/Ultimates!

(The title isn’t exactly amazing I know.)

Group 1: SEES

Part 1: The Protagonist(s)

Makoto Yuki/Minato Arisato/Hamuko Yuki/Minako Arisato: 

SHSL Luck/Ultimate Lucky Student: I figure this makes sense for all the Wildcards. In Makoto’s/Hamuko’s case specifically, we got the fact that they survived the car crash that killed their parents, we got the fact that they were ‘lucky’ enough to end up in the Velvet Room and be a Wildcard and ‘lucky’ enough (or unlucky) to be caught up in the Dark Hour insanity. Plus the ‘luck’ of being able to find meaning to life again with SEES. 

Alternative SHSL/Ultimate: -While I was hoping to do this for all the Wildcards, we happen to run into a major issue from the start. Simply put, it is VERY difficult to think up an alternative talent for these two due to how their Social Links and personality choices are. None of the clubs they join can really be argued is ‘their’ amazing talent and unlike Yu they aren’t exactly the most... sociable/friendly of the Wildcards. At least Makoto isn’t given his portrayal in spin-offs and other media that give him his own voice and just general dialogue options (I’m pretty sure there are more harsh ones for him than there are for Yu). I can only assume similar for Hamuko. And as much as I kinda want to, SHSL/Ultimate Savior only works if they aren’t actually around and are busy being a door. Plus the people who decide on that wouldn’t know that they’re busy being a door. So yeah, gonna have to leave this one empty sadly.

Unlike Makoto’s hilarious stream of Lucky/Unlucky incidents and Nagito’s own INSANE cases, Makoto and Hamuko are rather... ‘normal’ for Lucky Students. In fact, one would think they’d be reserve course students. The truth is very few people besides themselves even realize the full ‘depth’  to their luckiness. If anyone else even. I have no doubt the Steering Committee is quite annoyed about this and questions if the raffle messed up somehow this year. In addition, this means that there is a LOT of enmity from all sides towards these two. The Reserve Course despises them because these two are basically just them just having been lucky enough to win the raffle AND NOTHING ELSE. On the other side, there are plenty in the Talent Course who look down on them even more than a typical lucky student. And it doesn’t help that at least in Makoto’s case he would likely not bother going to far out of his way to try and bridge any gaps with these people.

Major relationships within the DR cast: From the get-go we know that as Wildcards these two are potentially limitless in ideas for interaction with characters and forming relationships. Bearing that in mind, I think there are a few very specific characters they’d have some connection to: -Hajime Hinata: As stated above, the ‘luck’ that Makoto and Hamuko have is very different from the typical lucky student’s and they don’t even seem to fit the ‘ultimate’ moniker. As such, I could seem them gravitating towards Hajime due to simply feeling like they really don’t belong here, even more than Makoto (Naegi) and unlike a lot of the reserve course, Hajime just doesn’t seem like the type of guy to really fault them for winning the raffle. Bonus in Makoto’s (Yuki) case as he just drips sarcasm and bit of apathy and I imagine he’d get along well with Hajime’s own personality.  -Sonia Nevermind and Gundham Tanaka: Assuming a full crossover with personas, the full collective unconscious and such, both Sonia and Gundham would have a very similar fascination with these two. Sonia’s interest in the occult would make her very interested in any Wildcard and the tarots that they inevitably would have her draw if she tried (like Igor). While that may be slightly interesting to Gundham though there is a far more pressing matter for him. Because if he does have some supernatural connection there is no doubt in my mind he’d somehow catch on to these two harboring death and be very interested in it. -Junko Enoshima: Junko is... difficult to figure out here. On the plain surface (or in a crossover without the supernatural bits of Persona) there’s no reason Junko should have any special interest in these two over anyone else without having very special knowledge that not even freaking Itkutski seemed to have. On the other hand, should Junko find out about their wildcard and how it works she would be keeping a VERY close eye on them, realizing that she cannot leave them be since their S.Links would be far too dangerous against despair. And then there’s the giant elephant in the room. Should Junko discover that the two are harboring the literal manifestation of humanity’s desire for death there is no way in hell Junko would ever ignore that. And considering the BS Junko is able to pull, I could conceive it possible that she would somehow find out. As such, I would put it like this. If Junko never finds out about their ‘gifts’ she wouldn’t care. If she found out about the Wildcard somehow and what it meant (I don’t know, Nyarlothep decides to be a bit more involved in his bet with Philemon and pushes Junko in the right direction) she’d be very on top of them, perhaps even actively sabotaging their abilities to form S.Link or trying to break them, thereby inflicting a decent bit of psychological damage to them and thinking that could drive them to despair (which I don’t think it could since Makoto at least would be far too apathetic to really be in despair but that’s a bit up to interpretation how such things would affect a wildcard). Should she find out about Death, then all hell breaks loose as she would try and probably team up with someone like Ikutski to make The Fall occur for the ultimate final despair. Because not even the Tragedy was the absolute end of the world. The Fall though? That’s game over. -Nagito Komaeda: Nagito is yet another difficult option. If he knew what was really going on with them he would probably worship the ground the step on, even moreso than most ‘Ultimates’. However, he doesn’t have a reason to (though with his BS luck who knows, he may accidentally stumble onto all the secrets). Without knowing, we get into a problem. Nagito already looks down on himself as not being a ‘real’ ultimate. So, how does he look at other lucky students? I need to sit down and watch DR3 and see if there are any major interactions between him and Makoto before Makoto becomes the Ultimate Hope and see how he treats him. Even if he does treat him well though, Makoto at least has very obvious cases of good/bad luck even if it isn’t on the level of Nagito’s. These two though? It would be near non-existent. And that maybe enough to cause Nagito to despise them, perhaps even more than his disgust towards the Reserve Course. These two won the raffle and yet show as much ‘talent’ as a reserve course student? I could see him looking at it as a bigger mockery than the reserve course itself. As such, there would for sure be something there with Nagito but I can’t be certain if it would be a decent relationship with another lucky student or an animosity that’s the worst we’d ever seen from him. 

[catboyebooks]

right, well. we've had a lot of information thrown at us in very short order in this trial, it's been a hell of a lot to take in, so i think we need to pump the brakes and take a closer look at all this. the dr1 crowd has been brief with their explanations because they feel pressed for time, and junko of course is trying to manipulate the situation by making things look as dire as possible. let's go over some points:

the bulk of the info we get on what this group was like / what they did back in their despair terrorism days came from Fake Naegi, who obviously isn't a reliable source. i don't think the stuff he said was outright fabricated (not junko's style) but it's clear that the information he delivered was aimed at shocking and disturbing them and isn't an objective account of their pasts. naegi (real) later says the group was brainwashed, and not to skip ahead and talk about dr3, but he's right. junko kinda confirms it, too; she does describe what she did to the group as "breaking" them, and in general we know people won't go along with her agenda unless forced/traumatized into it. this certainly paints the group's past actions in a different, more sympathetic light, but they haven't had much time to focus on that in this discussion.

naegi, the real one, also says that the deleted VR avatars of their "dead" friends can't be recovered, which i'm sure he's not lying about but it's important to remember that we already know they weren't deleted! with the sole exception of komaeda, every "dead" killing game participant reappeared at some point while the simulation was glitching at the end of chapter 5. their data is clearly still in here. no one's yet thought of this, and, since no one perceived the glitching as unusual at the time it was happening, i'm not sure they can think of this?

the group has been dissuaded from leaving VR by fake!naegi and junko both telling them their irl bodies are different, implying that they all mutilated themselves. we later find out that this isn't true. komaeda cut off his hand, kuzuryuu gouged out his own eye, but we don't know of any self-mutilation that went on beyond that. otherwise, it's like... well, i guess they'd all be a little different irl now, time has passed, there was an apocalypse going on, so i'm guessing for most of them they might have some new scars or something and other changes are normal aging. also hinata has a surgical scar and a really impressive head of hair irl and they did some fucked up shit to his brain. but the picture isn't quite as dire as the one junko and fake!naegi paint for the group.

despite junko's claim that kamukura put her in VR to help her achieve her goals, kamukura in chapter 0 says he aims to use junko like she used him. we still know very little about kamukura and don't know what his plan was here, but it's clear that he did have his own motivations for doing this, distinct from (and most likely opposed to) junko's.

junko also claims that if they force shutdown the program the "dead" people will be comatose irl. she does not explain how or why this would be the case, and the dr1 trio does not confirm or deny it. earlier (prior to the trial) naegi said that because the neo world program is so experimental and they didn't have time to test it, and it was never designed to account for things like death/violence, he can't be entirely certain how this all works. for those same reasons, it's likely junko also doesn't know for sure but has gone with the glass-half-empty interpretation of the situation, as she always does.

togami speculates that junko is the one ultimately responsible for the student council killing each other, not kamukura. dr3 later confirms he's right and, again, junko doesn't really deny this, she just says it's mean of them to blame her (pretty typical junko response).

junko says that in real life hinata is no longer hinata and can never go back to being hinata because hope's peak surgically eradicated his previous identity... but that obviously isn't true, because this VR avatar version of hinata was reconstructed from kamukura's irl brain, and his personality + all his memories prior to arriving at hope's peak are intact.

essentially, there's more nuance to (and more reason to be hopeful about) the situation than anybody has yet acknowledged. i remember how this ends — junko is defeated, the survivors leave, they do get to keep their memories after all, everyone lives except nanami who was not real to begin with, etc. — but i don't remember very much about how the rest of this trial plays out, so i don't know how much of what i've just mentioned above will get directly addressed and i'm very curious to see.

i'm gonna continue in a minute but i might actually wanna say a thing about junko first. i've been having a lot of Thoughts on her this trial. what a fun character for real

[dangan-meme-palace]

I like Naegi but i agree with your critique. It feels as if they're trying to shove us how he is always right on what to do when he sometimes clearly isn't. To me he doesn't at least try to see and understand the viewpoint of those who strongly disagree with him like Munakata, someone who was personally affected by the tragedy. He shouldn't always have to make all the decisions, I'm guessing that's why Kirigiri became a branch leader, when he often relies on trust and feelings.

The narrative treats Makoto as Jesus-kun and it shows.

I love(/s) how he tried to spare Junko and no one flat out decked him for having the audacity to say that after:

They were almost brainwashed by Junko during the Hope Vs. Despair part of the final trial

She killed just about everyone and everything they held dear

Togami is built like a twig, but since he gets so emotional over his family name during that trial you would think that since Makoto tried the spare the girl who was talking shit about his Proud Family NameTM he would at least try to punch him. Like c'mon Byakuya, he's a tiny dork! You can take him!

More seriously though, I'm really upset that DR3 was the only time Makoto's morals were seriously questioned (are none of the characters allowed to have thoughts beyond what the protagonist deems fair?) and that the person who was questioning his morals was someone who was set up to be the villain for the audience because:

He was Condescending and MeanTM to Makoto and the characters that the audience likes and is familiar with

He doesn't talk it out with Makoto when Makoto does that whole intercom bit and instead gets "irrationally" angry if the narrative tone is anything to go by

His whole design makes him look cold and uncaring, and the narrative pushes that idea with the points below

He tried to kill Juzo after the audience learns that Juzo loves him

He's trying to kill characters that we, as the audience, like and enjoy (counting the Remnants AND Makoto and Co.)

He doesn't agree with Makoto, who we as the audience have been taught is Always Right Because He Was The Good Hero Protagonist Guy That One Time

The show is actively villainizing the one Non-Junko person (which is to say someone that hasn't done World Endingly Horrible Things that automatically would make someone a Villain) that challenges Makoto's ideals at length, with actual strife caused by the disagreement that gets to be on screen for more than a second, because Jesus Protagonist-kun is Always Right and you must Never stray from his teachings or else You are Mean and Bad like the Bad Scary Mean Man.

-tech