#like sometimes this fandom acts like ouma is the Only One to be allowed to have any sort of 3Dness

[neodiekido]

*gritting teeth* it's really cool how the game itself extensively deconstructs maki's "cold ruthless killer" facade for you and has kaito look into the camera and explicitly tell you what her arc was about and the fandom still mostly portrays her as at best a girlboss and at worst a dumb evil bitch (who only exists to bully kokichi, the only character who's facade isn't meant to be taken at face value)

[kawaiikichi]

Preview of Chapter 3 of Game of Cat and Mouse

Title: Game of Cat and Mouse

Fandom: Danganronpa V3

Main Pairing: Saihara x Ouma

Side Pairings: Kaito x Maki, Rantaro x Kaede, Tenko x Himiko

Summary: After returning to Japan from England to finish his college education at Hope's Peak University, Shuichi finds himself being pursued by the one and only Kokichi Ouma, who is known for having slept with half the guys on campus and has his sights set on getting Shuichi to sleep with him.

Story Link: [x]

Chapter preview is under the cut!

"I mean, you don't have to, but you do it anyway. Maybe you actually have feelings for me, Hinata-kun?" he asked.

Some of the students snickered while Hajime's cheeks flushed red.

"Wha—?! Don't be an idiot!" Hajime crossed his arms over his chest. "A-Anyway, I'm going to introduce myself to you, as well. I am Hajime Hinata, the other CA on this floor. I am currently a senior and I am double majoring in psychology and European Studies. I live next door to Nagito in Room 431 and a fun fact about myself is that I traveled to Europe once." he said.

"Alright, now that we've introduced ourselves, we're going to go over the ground rules." Nagito looked over at Hajime. "Hinata-kun? Why don't you start with the first topic of discussion?" he suggested.

"Alright. So, let's talk alcohol. I'm pretty sure you guys are smart enough. I mean, you're in college, after all. You are not allowed to have any alcohol on the premises whatsoever. Yes, I know that the frat kids get their hands on alcohol every once in a while. And to be honest, I don't really care. Alcohol is not allowed. Like, at all. If you want to drink so badly, then go do it somewhere off campus. If we catch you with alcohol, we have the right to—" Hajime glanced over at the door. "You're late." he commented.

Everyone turned their attention to the door. Shuichi turned to see who had stepped in and he locked eyes with Ouma, who had changed over into a baggy checkered hoodie, black yoga capris that shaped his legs perfectly, and black flip flops. He had his hair pulled back into a small ponytail.

He swallowed, seeing how attractive Ouma looked in such a simple outfit. Ouma stared at him for half a second before looking over at Hajime, a wide smile stretching across his lips.

"Sorry, sorry, Haji-chan! I was sooooooooo caught up in some personal business that I completely lost track of time!" he exclaimed.

Hajime breathed out an exasperated sigh.

"This is, what, the fifth time you've walked into a mandatory meeting late like this?" he reached up to rub at his temple. "I swear to God, you give me a headache sometimes with the way you act." he commented.

"Nishishi~I learned from the best, after all." Ouma said, shooting finger guns in Nagito's direction.

Nagito did the same, causing Hajime to groan.

"Ugh, I regret letting you hang out with him! Just...sit down already!" Hajime barked out.

[oumakokichi]

What do you mean every character in ndrv3 has a duality or lie behind them they're keeping? What are Ki-bo's, Angie's, Tenko's, Himiko's, Gonta's and Iruma's lies. I bring these six up for being the only ones i couldn't find a lie for, im interested in seeing what their duality is.

It’s all probably a subjective matter, but I feel that evenwith these six characters there are definitely ways to read a certain dualityinto them! The fun thing about “lies” in ndrv3 is that it doesn’t necessarilymean the characters are actively lying or trying to deceive people aboutthemselves. Sometimes the “lie” can be an aspect of their personality that eventhey��re not aware of, or simply a drastic difference in how they’re perceivedby others versus the way they actually think or feel or act.

Kiibo is one of the easiest to start with on this list—he hastwo talents by the end of the game (SHSL Robot and SHSL Hope… well, HopeRobot technically) and his entire character centers around the duality ofwanting to live and be treated as a normal high schooler while actually beingdragged around as a puppet on strings. Because he’s so tied to the killing gameshow itself and functions as an unwitting audience proxy, there’s definitely ajuxtaposition between how Kiibo himself wants to live and how he’s being usedand manipulated.

Not only that, but when he loses his ahoge (actually anantenna by which the audience votes to control certain actions of his) at theend of Chapter 5, he features a drastic switch in personality. The side ofKiibo that was willing to make super hard sacrifices and blow up an entireschool if need be was definitely always there, but constantly undermined andsilenced by the input of audience votes functioning as his “inner voice.”  There’s definitely a sense of duality betweenKiibo as we see him without anyone controlling him or trying to override hisown decisions, and Kiibo as he is once his ahoge is restored, made to feelguilty for having wanted to end the killing game and compelled to follow thewhole “hope vs. despair” dialogue.

With Angie, I would say her duality lies in the wholeemphasis on her character as this fervent, true believer vs. the fact that she’sundeniably a manipulator and someone who uses her religion and her talent bothin order to try and get what she wants. The thing that makes Angie so scary, asTenko points out in Chapter 3, is the fact that she does believe in her godwith all her heart. She does lie and manipulate and try and use people to dothings so she doesn’t have to, but it’s all the more frightening because at hercore, she also refuses to deny that her god is there and “exists” verystrongly.

She believes most of the stuff she preaches, even as shemakes some of it up on the spot, and that makes her a dangerous force to bedealt with. Not only that, but the implication that her artistic powers havesome of the same brainwashing capabilities that Mitarai’s do makes it evenscarier that she can actually “paint a picture” of whatever god it is that peoplewant to see. At her core, she’s rather like Himiko in the sense of veryfrantically, emphatically defending the existence of her god just as Himikodoes the same for the existence of magic.

With Tenko, the duality point is probably the weakest—I’dsay Tenko is one of the most straightforward and honest characters in theentire game. That’s very much the point with her, as her “wear your emotions onyour sleeve” motto is exactly what inspires Himiko to live more strongly in theend. But there’s still a case to be made for Tenko having a sort of duality inher general character.

While many of the other characters, as well as the fandomitself, rather expected Tenko to be generally unfair, rude, and horrible to theguys in the group early on in the game, she subverts these expectations bybeing one of the fairest characters (along with Kiibo) who is willing to protectpretty much everyone and sympathizes rather openly with other people’ssuffering. Tenko is juxtaposed as this very brave, physically strong girl whoalso has a softer side.

In addition to being an aikido expert, she’s also interestedin becoming an idol in her FTEs—in a sense, her “tough fighter girl vs. moresubdued sweet girl” aspect reminds me a bit of Sakura. It makes sense,considering the two of them are both martial artist characters andprotector-types as well.

With Himiko, there’s quite a lot in her entire character arcthat focuses on the fact that she’s certainly not honest with herself,especially not at first. Her lack of honesty about her own feelings is why she’stoo tired and lazy to express herself in front of other people, and a lot ofthis seems to tie in with her fears of getting hurt following her master’sdisappearance, which she talks a little bit about in her FTEs.

Himiko largely acts apathetic or unaware about thesituations that unfold around her for most of Chapters 1 through 3. Even whenothers, like Tenko, clearly admire her and want to get close to her, she’s putoff by what she perceives as Tenko sort of looking down on her and assuming shecan’t do anything on her own and needs to be protected (even though this isn’thow Tenko intends her feelings to come across at all). And the idea of openingup to people only to get hurt in the end definitely causes Himiko to continueacting and behaving very lazily all-around.

It’s not until Ouma openly accuses her of being thisdishonest with her own feelings even after Tenko’s death in the Chapter 3post-trial that Himiko actually breaks down and confronts her grief andloneliness openly. She focuses on adhering much more to Tenko’s open and honeststyle of living, but it’s still hard for Himiko to move past that part of herselfthat would rather hide things from others and never openly emote or join in ongroup pastimes. This, plus the juxtaposition of her being an entertainer atheart even though she seems so lazy and uninspired, constitutes as a certainduality in her character.

Like Tenko, Gonta is a bit harder to make a case for havinga certain duality to his character, but I believe there’s still room tointerpret a little. Especially in Chapter 4, as we see the juxtapositionbetween Gonta as he is without remembering anything, and the VR world avatarGonta who remembers absolutely everything about what he saw in the rememberlight and decided to willingly help Ouma murder Miu after being traumatized bythe state of the outside world. Both Gontas were still undeniably the real one(contrary to misinformation and fake translations that the VR world Gonta was “hacked”or “mind controlled”); the only difference was the lack of memories.

With Gonta, there’s also very much a difference between howhe’s perceived by the rest of the group vs. how he perceives himself. Gontawants more than anything to be useful to others, but is completely unsure ofhow to do so. Without having a role in the group or something he can help outwith, he feels absolutely, 100% useless. Meanwhile he’s perceived aswell-meaning and likable by the others—but it’s true that they all tend to kindof assume that he just doesn’t have that much that he can help out with, exceptfor maybe being really physically strong. This sad juxtaposition between Gontafeeling useless and helpless and the rest of the group liking him without quiteincluding him or talking to him about things because they assume he just wouldn’tunderstand is part of what makes his death so tragic, in my opinion.

Finally, with Miu, there’s quite a lot of duality with herstatus in the group and behavior vs. the actual usefulness of her talent.Despite the fact that she certainly has a big mouth and a distinct lack of commonsense, she’s very smart where itcounts. Her talent is absolutely nothing to sneeze at: it’s one of the mostuseful talents we’ve seen in any DR game, up there perhaps with Chihiro’s. Theability Miu has to literally invent her way out of any situation makes her apowerful ally, as Ouma picked up on—and also a formidable enemy, which was partof the problem in Chapter 4.

Miu certainly didn’t seemlike the type of character who would be absolutely essential to gettingeveryone out of the killing game. Aside from her (very, very reluctant)agreement to help set up the cameras in Chapter 1 for Saihara and Kaede, thefact that she was so obviously not a team player and so brash and rude and loudmade it seem as if she was mostly going to be around only in a comic reliefsort of scenario. But as it turns out, her inventions are the most essentialthing to getting the rest of the group through the game alive, and what allowsthem to uncover the truth for themselves in Chapter 6. There’s a certain ironyin the fact that a character who was so paranoid and distrusting of others wasactually one of the most necessary people in the group by the end of the game.

Not only that, but Miu is all about talking big and actingvery arrogantly, only to back down at the slightest provocation. The fact thatshe likes having people talk back toher and getting bossed around is, I think, meant to highlight the fact that she’sgot a paper-thin façade of toughness and once you scratch that a little, she’spretty timid (and she’s got a bunch of kinks, but that’s a given).

This is just how I see it, of course! It’s all a matter ofcharacter interpretation, but I feel like the point of ndrv3’s cast being socomplex and interesting is exactly what makes it fun to pick things apart likethis. Thank you for asking, and I hope I could clear up your question!

[oumakokichi]

Hello! I just wanted to say that i'm a big fan of your metas! But anyways, i wanted to ask if you could maybe tell me more about what's known of Maki? Like, how big her character development is and how you interpret her personality. And i'm really curious about her ingame backstory! Sorry if it's a bit much, i'm just really curious^^'

Thank you! And don’t worry at all, it’s not too much. Ireally enjoy getting to answer these kinds of questions!

As far as Maki goes, she’s a really excellent character inmy opinion! She’s certainly flawed—her lack of impulse control, her coldness,and her legitimately ruthless behavior winds up getting the whole group intotrouble on more than one occasion. I have perhaps a few problems with how her growthand development is handled at times, and I wish that so much of it wasn’tcontingent on Momota, but I’d still say that by Chapter 6 especially, Maki hascome a long way.

I’ll try discussing what’s known about her and the ways inwhich she grows and develops under the read more! This will involve spoilersfor pretty much the whole game so be careful if you want to avoid gettingthoroughly spoiled!

I’ve mentioned before in a few meta posts but I’m honestlyreally pleased with the fact that Maki wound up being a survivor, even thoughher survival has been a point of contention for many fans. I’ve always beeninterested in seeing a character who was used to taking orders or not thinkingfor themselves making it through to the end, and Maki is the closest we’vegotten to that.

Like Mukuro and Peko before her, Maki is someone who’s beentrained since childhood to be a human weapon, someone who does what she’s toldwithout thinking about it and has never been allowed to think or want thingsfor herself. Like both of them, she views herself in very inhuman terms: sheflat-out tells Saihara after getting to know him and Momota a little betterthat she honestly considers Kiibo more human than herself. Her in-gamebackstory is, of course, entirely responsible for this, which is an interestinglook at how the remember lights and assigned in-game backstories can still haveheavy consequences on the characters’ self-perception and tendency to behave acertain way.

Maki was scouted to become an assassin from a young age inher in-game backstory. She grew up in an orphanage and doesn’t remember much ofanything about her life before going there, not even her own parents’ faces. Afew scouts came to the orphanage one day under the guise of “playing” with thechildren; the truth however was that children with no families or loved onesto miss them would make the best potential recruits to mold into trainedkillers, and they were all young enough that it’d be easy to teach them not totalk back or question orders.

Maki was the only one who met their requirements and wastaken away from the orphanage in order to start her assassin training, allwithout any personal say in the matter. This lack of personal say-so anddecision-making is the primary recurring theme among her backstory. It’s thislack of choice in her own life that jumpstarts her entire character arc ofdevelopment, because right from the beginning, she’s someone who feels that she’snot allowed any choices in her ownlife. Most of her role in ndrv3 revolves around gradually getting a taste ofchoice and freedom and making both good and bad decisions accordingly, as shebecomes rather intoxicated with the idea of falling in love with Momota out ofher own free will.

At first, it’s clear that she’s rather uncomfortable withMomota’s attempts to befriend her (and to a lesser degree, Saihara’s, since he’sless insistent about it). Similar to Togami, she’s very much the character whotries distancing herself from the group completely in the first few chapters.Because she thinks of herself as a “tool” only good for killing, there’sundeniably a large degree of self-loathing and resentment. Her refusal to getclose to people isn’t only because she’s not a trusting individual by nature,but also quite simply because she doesn’t think she deserves to get close tothem in the first place, as Momota points out after the Chapter 5 trial.

But given time, she does warm up to the idea of makingfriends and (most importantly) falling in love. After acknowledging the factthat the one remaining question about her old life at the orphanage is “howwould things be now if I’d never left,” she definitely seems to come to termswith the fact that the killing game might well be a situation in which she can “startanew,” so to speak. She’s the SHSL Assassin and her talent makes her aterrifying force, to be sure, but since she’s no longer working for anyone ortaking orders from anyone, the idea arises that she can actually, legitimatelychoose her own path in this scenario, despite how bizarre and messed upeverything around them is.

This unprecedented level of choice in her life leads to asurprising amount of reckless impulsiveness from her. Many people in the fandomstill, I think, regard Maki as someone meant to parallel Kirigiri because they’reboth essentially the main female leads of their respective stories, but I don’tthink this comparison quite works. Where Kirigiri unarguably has a very coolcomposure that can’t often be broken, Maki’s seemingly cool façade is brokenquite easily. Her coldness is very surface-level, and under that surface shehas a dangerous temper which can provoke very dangerous, real consequences.

Ouma tries to out her talent to the rest of the group withvery good reason: she has killed before and she is prone to killing again. Herinstinct, because of the ruthless training she went through and because it’sall she’s ever known, is to resort to violence and murder whenever things startgoing astray. And that makes her a very real risk in something as dangerous asthe killing game. But the danger she poses to the rest of the group often getsdownplayed because no one wants to believe it; they instead choose to believein the whole “blind optimism trust your friends without ever doubting them”routine which is ultimately what leads to such horrible consequences in Chapter5 in particular.

I personally really, honestly like the fact that Maki is soreckless, impulsive, and flawed. Her flaws, including her coldness andimpoliteness to others, as well as the very real threat she presents to therest of the group, are often highly praised qualities in male characters, and I’mglad to see them in a female character for once, even though it is sad to seeher receive so much hate in the tag.

Maki can be frustrating sometimes but that’s exactly whatmakes her a good character. There arethings that could perhaps have been handled better in her arc though, and oneof the things I wish had been more addressed was the fact that she was cold andruthless enough to intentionally attempt to get everyone killed in the Chapter5 trial—sadly her treatment of them in the trial gets almost completely brushedunder the rug after the fact, again because most of her actions are attributedto revolving around Momota.

But I would have honestly really enjoyed seeing a few pointsof contention in Chapter 6 at first between Maki and the rest of the groupsince she did, very knowingly, try to kill all of them, and that would haveadded another layer of impact to her decision to try and sacrifice herself forthe sake of the “hope” choice in the Chapter 6 trial. It would have made for aninteresting sort of atonement arc, rather than the narrative trying to act asif she had nothing to really atone for because her intentions were “in theright place.”

Still, the fact that she’s one of the first “tool/weapon”characters who actually makes it all the way to the end as a survivor, and thefact that she’s so unconventional to the usual “main female  DR lead” trope is highly enjoyable. Maki’sbrusqueness and even her impulsiveness is one of the things that keeps the plotprogressing the way it does, and she’s definitely a good character in her ownright. She messes up, she makes big mistakes—and she pays for it, as the consequencesin Chapter 5 show.

The “reveal” in Chapter 6 about how all of the characters’memories, thoughts, and even romantic feelings were “all Tsumugi’s doing” andpart of her “scenarios” hits particularly hard with regards to Maki. As someonewho was only just beginning to find her own sense of self and come to termswith her past and the ways in which it left her feeling permanently scarred andmessed up, the idea that all of this too was just her following someone else’swhims is too much to bear. Even when she thought she was acting on her own forthe first time, even those feelings were just “part of someone else’s scenario”(they weren’t, but that’s what Tsumugi wants her to think anyway).

She’s motivated to stand strong and put an end to thekilling game not by either hope or despair in the end, but by Saihara’s firmreminder of Momota’s last words, and of his promise that the experiences theylived through really did have meaning. Even if they’re all fictionalexistences, even if their memories or backstories were implanted by someoneelse, Maki is done with having others decide her life for her; her feelingshave real meaning to her and that’s all that really matters in the end. And it’ssuch a satisfying conclusion to her character arc to witness, considering I don’tthink it’s something she would have been capable of coming to terms with priorto Chapter 6.

Anyway, there’s a lot to talk about with Maki—she’sextremely interesting, flawed, and developed, and I probably haven’t eventouched on everything there is. I hope I was able to get some of my thoughtsacross though. Thank you so much for stopping by, and again, it’s always reallyfun to be able to answer these sorts of questions!