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commentaryvorg · 5 years ago

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.2

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time as chapter 6 began, some random kid called Makoto was the only genuine appreciater of fiction in the in-universe audience that we’re ever going to see, Keebo was finally using his weapons for no adequately-justified reason towards the worst possible purpose, Shuichi was keeping up the hope Kaito gave them that there’s somewhere to escape to, he and Maki were generally holding onto Kaito’s memory and fondly remembering him and it was adorable (how many of this chapter’s summary bits will I find a reason to mention Kaito in despite him being gone? as many as I damn well can), and then I lengthily complained about how pointless and inconsiderate the time limit mechanic in this chapter’s investigation is.

Now to actually properly start the investigation, beginning in Kokichi’s lab.

Shuichi: “This is more like… a child’s idea of what an evil organization would have.”

Shuichi is trying to find some kind of link to the Remnants of Despair, since that was totally Kokichi’s organisation, right. But almost everything you can examine here just shows off the fact that Kokichi’s actual organisation, D.I.C.E., was the supremest and evilest only in a very ridiculous, childlike, over-the-top way. None of it has any connection to the Remnants of Despair or to Hope’s Peak at all.

This lab was probably set to open up later than any of the others because even the in-universe writers wanted Kokichi’s true nature to be somewhat ambiguous. Since this lab more or less proves that he’s not really the supremest or evilest at all, they wanted to let Kokichi keep up his charade about that for as long as possible (or even hypothetically forever, if he got himself killed before then).

There is, of course, also the book about the history of Hope’s Peak lying on the floor. But absolutely nothing else in the lab has anything to do with Hope’s Peak, so this book is very out of place. What it clearly is is just a prop that Tsumugi hastily threw in here last chapter when she decided to use the Flashback Light to claim Kokichi was a Remnant of Despair, in order to try and make it seem like he had some kind of connection to all this stuff, on the off chance that anyone did end up seeing inside this lab. Kokichi never entered this lab and never had anything to do with this book. It’s very apparent from the rest of this lab that Kokichi was not originally supposed to have anything to do with Hope’s Peak or the Remnants of Despair. This story was never intended to be set in the Hope’s Peak universe at all until Tsumugi improvised that whole thing in chapter 5.

The pictures in the book… should by all rights be illustrations, and Shuichi should be noticing this. But the fact that he isn’t and therefore they’re apparently photographs seems unlikely to me to be a deliberate clue that actually all the Hope’s Peak stuff is real. Not with how much the out-universe writers went out of their way to point out that the files in Shuichi’s lab had illustrations for the first several of them and then photographs for the rest (and there were exactly fifty-two of them, there is no way that was not meant to be one file for every season of Danganronpa). At this point, Shuichi noting that they’re illustrations here wouldn’t even really spoil anything, since this book exists to hint to us that their memories of all the Hope’s Peak stuff are fake anyway. So this is probably just an oversight.

Or, maybe we can pretend that this universe is so Danganronpa-crazed that at some point they did a live-action recreation of the Hope’s Peak story, and photos from that were used in here to make the book seem super authentic. Wouldn’t put it past this universe.

This book also must have already existed as a prop probably several seasons ago, perhaps made for a season that always was linked to the Hope’s Peak story. Tsumugi wouldn’t have had time to actually make the whole book; she presumably just had it lying around for use here just in case.

After reading it, and having Maki show up and confirm for him that their own memories don’t quite match what’s in the book, Shuichi implicitly starts to wonder if the book is full of lies.

Shuichi: “Ah, it’s just… the afterword written on the last page… It says that these documents were collected by several esteemed researchers. This is the most thorough, accurate book written on the subject.”

Then he sees this, which apparently makes him think welp, the book must be the truth after all and maybe our memories are wrong. I’m not sure why it doesn’t also occur to him that maybe that statement about the book being accurate is just a lie to try and sell more copies of the book. That would seem to be the simplest explanation to all this. But eh, either way he’s going to get a lot more reasons to doubt their memories as we go along, so it doesn’t really matter.

Shuichi: (In order to investigate this… I need to know more about Kokichi. I found this in *his* lab, after all.)

Yeah, but that doesn’t even remotely prove that any of this Hope’s Peak stuff has anything to do with Kokichi. Come on, Shuichi, you should know better than to make assumptions like that.

A delayed-action flashback causes Shuichi to “remember” when he’d forgotten his talent and was talking to some kid who recognises him as a member of the Gofer Project.

This kid just so happens to look a lot like the Makoto from the first scene of the chapter, albeit a bit younger. This is very unnecessarily confusing! Obviously it cannot possibly be him, since that Makoto is a real person, and this kid here is just a very fictional background character in the fake backstory. There’s no way the in-universe writers planned this, either, because the real Makoto is just one of their millions of viewers and insignificant to them. This is just the out-universe writers screwing with us, perhaps trying to make us think that maybe Makoto was watching the members of the Gofer Project and cheering them on or something.

Unknown Kid: “Those people are the heroes that will save the world, right?”

Shuichi: “The Gofer Project wasn’t created to save us—! … …Never mind.”

Unknown Kid: “Heroes don’t die! Heroes don’t give up! That’s why they’re still alive! Because they’re heroes!”

Well that’s a very interesting opinion of heroes this random kid has. I mean, he’s a kid, so this kind of thing is to be expected of him, but it sure seems… familiar.

This whole flashback, just as the rest of them in this chapter will be, is supposed to be for the purpose of inspiring Shuichi with the hope to keep fighting. So apparently, Tsumugi thinks that a good way to fill one of her characters with hope and make them never give up is to tell them they’re meant to be a hero and instil them with a very childlike black-and-white view on the topic, in which heroes are just completely invincible and obviously never fail or struggle at anything at all.

And that explains one hell of a lot about a certain someone.

(Like, seriously, I really love that this is here. Kaito’s irrational conviction that heroes must be perfect and invincible was something I pieced together from lots of stuff about him, but he never quite had any lines in which he explicitly said he believed that, so there was always the chance it was just my interpretation and a delightful coincidental fit but not something the writers consciously intended. But here, having this kid outright saying heroes don’t die, in a fake memory that’s meant to inspire Shuichi with hope now that Kaito’s gone, makes it seem quite a bit more likely that Kaito’s black-and-white view of heroes really was deliberately intended to be the core of his issues by the writers. This makes me very happy.)

Shuichi: (Even so… A hero, huh?)

This is the real, present Shuichi, apparently being somewhat influenced by that fake memory just like Tsumugi wanted him to be. But also… I wonder if he’s thinking about Kaito.

(You know better than to listen to that kid, Shuichi. Heroes can die, but that doesn’t make them any less of a hero.)

Maki: “Back when we abandoned our Ultimate talents to escape the Gofer Project… I… chose to walk a different path than that of an assassin… But in the end… I was dragged back. … It’s nothing. Now’s not the time to think about that.”

Aww, Maki Roll! This wasn’t specifically the point of that flashback, but it gave her memories of not being an assassin and the idea that she could choose to do something different with her life that doesn’t involve killing people! That must have hurt for her to remember that but then also remember being dragged back into it after all.

Maki joins Shuichi as he heads to the dorms to check Kokichi’s room, increasing our Friendship Power to 1. Since she’s literally with him, I thought on my first time that this meant that Shuichi can only move heavier rubble with greater Friendship Power because he has that number of friends physically helping him move it. That turns out to not be the case, since Maki will stay behind and he’ll still have the same amount of power, so apparently Friendship Power is really just Shuichi drawing on strength by thinking of his friends even when they’re not there.

But if Shuichi can get power from friends who aren’t physically with him, then really that means that he should already have infinite Friendship Power he can draw on at any time just by thinking of Kaito. You know, just logically speaking.

Relatedly, when you’re in the dorms but before you enter Kokichi’s room, you should definitely examine Kaito’s door.

Shuichi: “The impossible is possible! All you gotta do is make it so!” (Kaito… Your words inspire me, even now. Thank you… so much.)

Aaaaaaa! They were FRIENDS. Kaito meant so much to him and that is never going to stop being true and this is adorable.

What’s also great is that he says it out loud, while Maki is with him, without caring about how ridiculous it makes him sound. Maki doesn’t comment – which is to say that she clearly doesn’t think he’s being unnecessarily ridiculous at all and it probably made her smile too.

I love that this is here and I hate that the game developers apparently didn’t want us to see it because of the stupid time limit. Most people probably won’t ever see this because they’re trying to hurry and this is obviously not what they’re supposed to be examining! This is the best example of why optional dialogue is sometimes Extremely Important and shouldn’t be something you should ever be told to avoid.

I’m not resetting over this one. This canonically happened, you can’t change my mind.

Another oversight on the out-universe writers’ part is that it shouldn’t actually be possible to just walk into Kokichi’s room. All the dead students rooms get locked even if they weren’t already, and the only reason we could investigate Ryoma’s room during his case was because his room key was on his corpse. The writers have apparently forgotten that Kokichi’s room should be impossible to enter unless we get Keebo to blow up the door for us.

Once inside Kokichi’s room, Maki asks for Shuichi’s opinion on Kokichi’s theory that someone’s watching this, and Shuichi agrees that it makes sense.

Maki: “Monokuma is particularly strict about upholding the rules and livening up the killing game… Is it because someone’s watching? But we’re all that’s left of humanity, aren’t we? Even if he did say it was to show someone, no one else is alive anywhere else, right? I wonder if… someone really did infiltrate this place.”

You’re not thinking big-brain enough, Maki. One single person having infiltrated this place to put this on for their own personal entertainment does not explain why Monokuma is such a stickler for the rules. The person running this can in theory do whatever they want to the rules while still having fun. The point of keeping to the rules is for the sake of a larger audience who are not connected to the person running this, who would cry that this is unfair and potentially stop enjoying it if the rules were broken. Kokichi understood this kind of mindset well enough that he knew this straight away, which is why he had to have known that the only possible answer was that the outside world was a lie.

So… Kokichi’s room is a confusing mess, and I mean this in a writing sense and not just a literal one. It feels to me more like the writers just wanted to hammer home the idea that he was ~weird~ and ~eccentric~ and ~incomprehensible~, rather than that they actually had any coherent psychology in mind for Kokichi in terms of why he would have bothered to accumulate all this stuff.

Sure, it makes sense that Kokichi wanted to understand the past cases as best he could in order to both avoid being murdered and to come up with the bestest cleverest plan. Making notes about that kind of thing would make sense, but actually hoarding the evidence? Certain things, such as Miu’s modified cameras, he might hypothetically be able to put to use somehow, but how on earth is keeping the inner tube around going to help him with anything? Plus, if he was doing this to try and understand every potential kind of murder plot, shouldn’t that mean that he should have also grabbed all 52 files from Shuichi’s lab and been poring over them, since that’s a much bigger source of information than just the handful of cases from this game?

(The only actual purpose the collected evidence serves is to make it possible for Shuichi to re-use one of the photos of Rantaro later. In any other killing game, it’d most likely have been disposed of by now, but conveniently Kokichi was such a ~mysterious hoarder~ that it’s all still here!)

Maki: “…No, it’s pointless to try and understand what he was thinking.”

Yeah, in this particular instance, I think it actually is.

And why does he have this whiteboard of all of the other students, featuring who killed who and his opinions on a few of them? It may serve as a convenient partial insight into his mind for us in the audience – I’ll get to some of that in a second – but why would he have written any of this down? It is all super-basic stuff! The implication that would give is that he has severe short-term memory problems and might not have even remembered who killed who and what he thinks of some of the survivors unless he had this whiteboard, but there is absolutely no hint of him being this way in any of his dialogue ever, so, ?????

Maki is labelled as “Suspicious”, because of course she is. Kokichi didn’t trust anyone at all, but of course he still had to make a specific point of how sneaky and horrible she in particular was because assassins are bad and scary.

Keebo is labelled as “Weird”. Which proves that all of Kokichi’s robophobia and bullying of him this entire time was not any kind of elaborate lie or reverse psychology or anything that could have possibly somehow had some kind of good intent behind it, since this whiteboard was meant to be for his own eyes only. He just saw Keebo as less than a person.

Then Shuichi is singled out from the other survivors and labelled as “Trustworthy?”. And, again, why? First of all, why did Kokichi even apparently think he might be trustworthy? Shuichi had done absolutely nothing to try and reach out to Kokichi like Kaito and Gonta both did in their own ways (unless the player did Kokichi’s free time events, but Shuichi would clearly not canonically have done them of his own volition). He was every bit as openly annoyed by and dismissive of Kokichi’s bullshit as anyone else. It also can’t be that Kokichi approved of the way Shuichi was willing to use lies in trials, because he threw a tantrum as soon as Shuichi dared to use that tactic against him. The only actual reason for this I can think of is that this is caused by Kokichi’s completely irrelevant probable crush on Shuichi, which, wow, that sure is the shallowest and most arbitrary of reasons to have the least trusting character in the game apparently maybe start to trust someone, especially since literally nothing came of it.

Which is the second part of my “why?”: why did the writers do this? Like I’ve touched on before, him apparently finding Shuichi maybe-trustworthy affected absolutely nothing about how Kokichi acted and how the story unfolded. You’d think it would have led to him realising he should use Shuichi as the accomplice in his plan, but his kidnapping of Kaito proved that he fully intended to use Kaito at least from that point onwards. If anything, Kaito should be the person here who’s singled out from the rest, as Kokichi’s planned future accomplice, and possibly also labelled as tentatively trustworthy. That would have been far more meaningful and actually relevant to anything at all. (Even though the evidence last chapter did indicate that he didn’t ever actually trust Kaito.)

(Maybe the “Trustworthy?” label actually originally pointed at Gonta, and then when he did the murders and had to move Gonta’s portrait over into the murders section, Kokichi was not okay with the reminder that there used to be someone he trusted but not any more, so he wanted to put someone else’s portrait on that label to tell himself that was always the case. And he considered putting Kaito’s there first but then stubbornly decided not to because of his petty personal vendetta with him, so the only other candidate that made any vague kind of sense was Shuichi. Because, you know, this was definitely a thing he needed to do instead of just wiping off the word and definitely what the writers intended here and I am totally not overthinking this to try and make it into something other than pointless shipbait.)

Kokichi did also label the Monokubs as “Annoying”. At least that’s something we can all agree with him on.

Meanwhile there’s also a huge pile of blueprints for possible inventions to have Miu make, which actually does make sense. What also makes sense thanks to the fact that Kokichi was a massive obstructive dick (but wouldn’t make sense if he wasn’t) is how many of them are obviously unrealistic and impossible to make.

Shuichi: “He could have prepared a few fake blueprints to mask the real ones. It’s nearly impossible to check all of them… lowering the chance someone would find it.”

Maki then volunteers to tediously slog through all of these to look for anything that seems relevant, from which she’s going to discover the Bugvac, which is necessary to let us learn about the Nanokumas. Because of course Kokichi couldn’t have just left that blueprint lying around alone in plain sight in case his plan failed and someone came to his room after his death looking for things that might help them. Because Kokichi didn’t give a fuck about helping anyone but himself.

Shuichi: “M-Maki… … …Thank you.”

Maki: “…No problem.”

This exchange when Maki agrees to do this is a small thing, but it’s adorable. They’re smiling at each other! Maki is happy to be helpful and no longer being all dismissive about it! They are friends and Maki has grown so much.

Then there’s Kokichi’s motive video, which is by far the most meaningful insight into Kokichi that there is in this whole room.

Monokuma: “He caused mayhem the world over as the leader of the secret organization, D.I.C.E. And by ‘mayhem’, I mean petty nonviolent crimes and harmless pranks.”

So this is the other big localisation change around Kokichi: in the original Japanese, it made a point about how D.I.C.E. had an explicit motto of “don’t kill people”. And, again, I really don’t think it matters at all that this was removed. We can already very clearly tell from the way they did nothing but petty nonviolent pranks that Kokichi was not in fact the sadistic bastard he claimed to be at the end of chapter 4. From that, him being against killing people should be common sense and not need to be spelled out for us.

In fact, if D.I.C.E. really did have an explicit motto of “we don’t kill anyone!”, that just reads as incredibly fucking suspicious, and maybe they’re saying that because actually they really do kill people behind the scenes. Which, sure, could also be a double-bluff prank to make you think they might kill people when they really genuinely don’t. But at that point, it can no longer be taken as a legitimate, sincere statement of their principles (because lol what is sincerity, this is Kokichi) like the original apparently wanted us to think of it as. Removing that line from the localisation is, if anything, an improvement in how Kokichi comes across.

Monokuma: “Anyway, Kokichi had ten loyal goons working for him.”

Looks like Monokuma, or the writers, can’t count. There’s ten people in this picture including Kokichi. He only had nine goons.

Monokuma: “These goons were like friends and family… The most important people in his life…”

So apparently, despite his blatant massive trust issues, Kokichi did actually have people he cared about! Perhaps the fact that he was their leader somewhat mitigated his issues here, because he could hide behind the fact that they were just following his orders and tell himself it didn’t have anything to do with him trusting them. Plus the fact that they probably constantly played pranks on each other for fun would let Kokichi tell himself that he didn’t really trust them because he was always on guard for them potentially pranking him, even though said pranks would be petty and lighthearted and their way of showing affection and not anything close to the kind of betrayal he really fears. This was probably the best kind of relationship Kokichi could ever have with anyone, one in which he could genuinely trust them and care about them deep down while being able to tell himself on the surface that it’s not really affection or trust at all so that he wouldn’t be constantly terrified of being betrayed. On the flip side, since they weren’t regular friends whom he had no choice but to accept that he trusted, that meant that they never actually helped him get over his trust issues, and so he still had those issues in full force.

This also goes to show that Kokichi’s constant lying trickster nature is not necessarily always an asshole thing. If everyone he targets with his tricks is in on the joke and on board with potentially being pranked because they personally find that kind of thing fun, then it’s cool and they can all have a great time! Imagining the ridiculous pranking shenanigans that D.I.C.E. got up to with each other is honestly kind of adorable, and that’s the only time you’ll ever hear me use that word for Kokichi. What makes Kokichi a dick in the context he’s seen in in this game is that he’s doing this kind of stuff to people who don’t want it. Which is of course also the kind of thing D.I.C.E. does to other people and what I was getting at when I said that Kokichi kind of did already enjoy people’s suffering, albeit in a far, far more petty and relatively harmless way.

Plus, this could partially explain why Kokichi was always so infuriatingly entitled and self-righteous and incapable of admitting when he was wrong about anything. He was used to being essentially surrounded by yes-men, people who looked up to him as The Coolest Prankster Ever and probably constantly agreed that he was right about everything as a result. He may well have got so used to being unquestionably right all the time that he automatically kept insisting as much even when in the company of people who didn’t agree with everything he said. Doesn’t make him any less infuriating for it, but I appreciate that there’s at least a potential reason for that particular part of him.

This motive video is pretty half-assed as a motive, though. Kirumi’s was an actual Flashback Light giving her new memories, and Kaito’s had the “oh no something bad’s happened to your loved ones” part tacked on at the end as an afterthought while the real attempted motive was his grandparents telling him to live, but this one’s just as basic as it gets. It shows a picture of his goons trapped and seemingly injured, but that could easily be faked. Kokichi in particular is going to be aware of how easily fakeable that is, especially when it could even be something his goons might decide to do just to mess with him (though he’d be a lot more mad about such a prank than usual for reasons he’d never admit, because god forbid he acknowledge that he was genuinely worried about them). It doesn’t seem like the gamemakers were trying very hard to get Kokichi to murder someone at all. Which is perhaps because they already figured that he’d most likely be planning something far more elaborate than just a straight-up murder and wouldn’t need an extra motive in order to do so.

Of course, Kokichi’s goons didn’t ever actually exist… and it’s very possible that he realised that himself before he died. I wonder if that was part of why he seemingly snapped in chapter 4, if he’d realised as much – here were these people he felt like he could trust, even if he wasn’t quite wording it in that way to himself, but whoops, actually they’re just a lie too and he never should have “trusted” them in the first place. Like even they’d “betrayed” him.

Now that Shuichi’s done in Kokichi’s room, Maki’s going to stay behind to check the blueprints without him.

Maki: “We rely on you the most, especially in this situation. After all, you’re… Kaito’s sidekick…”

So are you, Maki Roll! Why are you still forgetting that!?

But it’s lovely the way that Maki is acknowledging how important and reliable Shuichi is, and that she’s doing so because she knows that Kaito brought that potential out of him. Aww. Shuichi may have been the better hero in the end, but that’s still only because of everything Kaito did to help him reach that point.

Before he leaves, Maki shows him an envelope from Kokichi labelled “This isn’t a will.” In other words, it’s a will. He totally knew he was planning on dying but apparently didn’t quite want to admit that to himself when he wrote this.

Shuichi: “He left us this information in case his plan failed…”

Maki: “…He did? I don’t think he would do something like that.”

Maki knows what’s up. If he’d actually cared about giving them all the information he possibly could, Maki wouldn’t need to be staying behind to pore through all his ridiculous diversion blueprints right now because the important ones would be in plain sight and labelled as potentially useful to them.

Also, we’d have the last Electrobomb and the Exisal remote in our hands and Keebo wouldn’t need to be fighting any Exisals at all. Don’t forget that!

The only thing the envelope contains is a note pointing them towards the second message, meaning the “twins b” to match the original “horse a” that Kokichi edited. Wow! How incredibly useful! The full clue to a puzzle that Kokichi never even knew existed, because he’d never been inside Rantaro’s lab! And a puzzle which could have been solved fast enough with brute force anyway when we already have the one clue.

Once again, even in death, Kokichi is the most frustratingly unhelpful person even when he is actually being slightly helpful. The gap between how much he bothered to help and how much he was capable of helping is and has always been absolutely immense. He did not care.

After checking out said message in the boiler room, Shuichi has another flashback in which Makoto – the fictional one this time, as headmaster of the new Hope’s Peak – told him not to give up on hope.

Shuichi: “I’m going to do everything I can… No giving up…” (I won’t give up on hope… I need to keep hope alive…)

And this is real, present Shuichi, unfortunately apparently being a little brainwashed by that. The real reason he needs to not give up is because Kaito believed in him and wanted him to survive and end this, as did all of his other friends who’ve died. It’s got nothing to do with this backstory that barely has any connection with this killing game anyway. Keeping hope alive purely for the sake of “hope” itself is tautological and meaningless. It should be about what they’re hoping for, which is to survive and escape and find somewhere to live.

Next is Rantaro’s lab, which contains a round table with sixteen chairs, much like a class trialground. Not sure what’s with all the rest of the weird décor of frames and notes hanging from everywhere, but at least the table part is relevant to his “talent”.

Himiko’s here to help Shuichi investigate this room.

Himiko: “Be happy! The legendary mage is your sidekick!”

It’s adorable of her to reference Kaito like this! She knows that Shuichi and Maki were Kaito’s sidekicks, so she’s trying to help Shuichi hold onto the strength Kaito gave him by bringing that concept back – while also acknowledging that Shuichi is the real hero whom everyone’s relying on, so this is her being his sidekick. (Evidently she never figured out what Kaito actually meant by that word and is using the normal-person definition of it here.) Himiko is an entertainer by trade, so it’s only fitting that she’d try to help Shuichi by influencing his mood and trying to cheer him up just like Kaito did!

(It’s also amusingly appropriate considering the whole deal with her free time events and how her relationship with her master was very reminiscent of Shuichi’s relationship with Kaito. Himiko’s had some practice in this “sidekick” role herself.)

There is quite a lot of interesting bonus dialogue with Himiko in this room and you can bet I’m going to be going through all of it.

Himiko: “Maybe… That Keebo isn’t the real one! It’s probably his spare, K2-B1, AKA, ‘K-toobie’!”

This is probably meant to be a Nier: Automata reference – I haven’t played it but I gather there’s a major robot character in that called 2B (who incidentally shares a voice actor with Kirumi). But that aside, if Keebo actually had an evil version of himself, I think it’d probably be an evil twin sister, named Z2-B0, or “Zedtubo”.

…“Kibou” means “hope” and “zetsubou” means “despair”. That’s the joke. I realise it’s not a great joke when it has to be explained for anyone who doesn’t know those Japanese words, but it’s a fun coincidence how it’s also possible to make the Japanese for despair out of a bunch of numbers and letters. Z is even pronounced “zed” and not “zee” in Japanese, just like in British English.

I guess this is also a fun fact about the point of Keebo’s name for anyone who didn’t know. His whole hope thing is extremely unsubtle in Japanese. I also always felt that his appearance was meant to somewhat resemble Makoto, so Keebo’s hypothetical evil twin sister Zedtubo would probably have big poofy robo-pigtails.

The rest of Himiko’s optional dialogue comes from her giving you a series of hints for the puzzle.

Himiko: “Hm, there’s a technique mages use when casting spells. For example, when we cast big spells, we add a bunch of flashy over-the-top stuff. We have the audience focus on all that stuff… to hide the source of our magic.”

She’s talking about misdirection! She’s doing so in a way which continues to insist that it’s totally real magic, of course, but this is proof that she really is a genuine magician and knows all of the tricks they employ to make what isn’t really magic seem like magic to the audience. It’s neat to have this here to show she does actually know her stuff and all of the mage talk is just part of her constant act.

Himiko: “Of course, the source of my magic is very advanced, y’know? Even if the source of magic for my spells was leaked, not just anyone could copy them!”

I definitely believe that. After all, she became even better at magic than her master in the end, and he was the best, wasn’t he?

Upon hearing this hint, Shuichi goes on to explicitly remember that Kokichi’s message used to say “horse a”, and this matches with “twins b”, thus the solution. And then the game developers still wrote more optional “hint” dialogue past this, even though absolutely nobody should ever need it and it would waste their precious time limit to see it.

Himiko: “Then let’s try it out! As your sidekick, I’ll watch over you!”

Shuichi: “My sidekick watching over me…”

Shuichi has a rather bewildered sort-of smile here, so we can imagine that he’s thinking of how Kaito felt to have his sidekicks with him. …At least, if Kaito was ever the one to be doing a thing while his sidekicks watched, which was never really what “sidekick” meant to him. On the other hand, Kaito did plenty of watching over Shuichi while he did detectivey things, so Himiko’s line still kind of works to remind him of Kaito.

Himiko: “At times like these, the truth will hit you like a bullet! You just need to read it!”

Shuichi: “Like a bullet?”

Himiko: “Nyeh? What am I saying? Those words just came to me… from somewhere.”

Heh. Look at all of the brainwashing these Flashback Lights can do, to make someone make unintentional Danganronpa references without knowing why. I really like the acknowledgement that Himiko has no idea why she said that, proving that this reference was deliberate on the in-universe writers’ part as well and actually legitimately caused by brainwashing.

Himiko: “Those are the words that suddenly came to me, but… what in the world do they mean?”

Yeah, it’s not like anything here has had anything to do with bullets at all, right? The only guns there’ve been are in Maki’s lab, and those ones don’t even fire real bullets!

Anyway, let’s move onto actually solving the puzzle and watching Rantaro’s video to himself.

Shuichi: “The video was clearly recorded in Rantaro’s lab. But we were only able to get inside this room just now.”

Okay, wait a goddamn second. If this video of Rantaro was recorded in this lab, how? The lab wasn’t just locked, it also wasn’t built until chapter 5, or 4 at the latest. Uhhh???? Thaaat’s probably another oversight. I mean, maybe he was just made to record it in a room with similar décor to the lab in order to be more mysterious and confusing for himself if he found the video, but.

(Shuichi says it’s clearly Rantaro’s lab, but the actual background in the video is too vague for us to be able to confirm how similar it looks.)

Rantaro: “Now, Monokuma probably already told you this, but just in case… The killing game will continue until there are only two people left. Now, the important part of that rule is that—”

*buzz!*

Rantaro: “Hahaha… Looks like they didn’t want me sayin’ that, huh?”

Presumably what Rantaro was about to say about that rule, since it’s the only way in which the rule ends up relevant, is that this is why he’s here in another killing game and not in the outside world. Shuichi figures out during the trial that Rantaro must have been in a similar situation to the one they end up in, where the mastermind refuses to let more than two of them escape and everyone extra has to be “punished”, which in this case means going through it all again. So Rantaro chose to sacrifice himself to let two of his friends escape, thinking he’d just be killed for it, and now here he is.

Just imagine how the Rantaro recording this video must have felt, though. He’s just gone through the hell of watching most of his friends kill each other. He finally manages to at least see two of them survive and escape, only to realise that they’re just going to do another killing game anyway, and he’s going to be put through it all over again. Not only that, but his memory of all of his previous friends and how much they all suffered is going to be completely erased, like none of what he’s just been through even mattered. And on top of that, the gamemakers make him acutely aware that they have complete power over him and he’s not allowed to say anything that might actually be clear and helpful to his future self. He just has to desperately hope that maybe future-him will manage to figure it out and do something with the vague clues he’ll have.

(When really this whole Survivor Perk thing was just one big handicap designed to get him killed off as early as possible.)

Rantaro: “You’re the Ultimate Survivor. You survived the last killing game.”

Which is to say, this isn’t really a normal talent at all. It’s not that Rantaro is so super talented at surviving killing games that he survived several. He just survived the one, which any given person has a small but reasonable chance of doing. He’s only been given the title of “Ultimate Survivor” as a statement of the fact that he’s from the previous killing game, since they like to theme everything around these Ultimate talents. He does still have his original talent that he had in his first killing game, since he wouldn’t have been the Ultimate Survivor then – but they’re going to erase his memory of both his Ultimate titles just to make him more mysterious and suspicious and handicap him even more.

Rantaro: “Anyone who finds out who you are is gonna come for you… So watch your back. Trust no one.”

Geez, what happened to Rantaro in his previous game that made him think this was the best approach? Because it is not. If people find out who he is, surely they’re actually going to think, “damn, this isn’t the first killing game? How many have there been?” and probably be even more determined to do something about it instead of just playing along and killing each other.

Rantaro never actually saw this message of his so this didn’t end up affecting anything, but that would not have helped.

Rantaro: “You wanted this killing game, so you have to win no matter what.”

I mentioned last time we saw this message at the beginning of chapter 4 that him talking about “winning” doesn’t really make sense and that this line was probably written more to be a teaser in chapter 4 than to make sense now. But I suppose it could be possible that he did “want” it – maybe when he made his sacrifice, he was already aware that the punishment would be this rather than death, and so he chose it in the hope that he might be able to do something to end the killing game for good. Calling that “winning” is still very off, though. He was not Kokichi, after all.

Shuichi: “He was the Ultimate Survivor… An expert at death games…”

Himiko: “Th-Then… why did he die so quickly?”

Because he wasn’t an expert at them at all. The “Ultimate” in his title was just for show. He’d only been in one and had lost all memory of that.

Shuichi suggests that the reason he died is because of what he said about how anyone who finds out his identity would come for him. From that, they decide that, since the mastermind would have known his identity, maybe the mastermind set him up to be killed. Which sure is coming to the right conclusion for totally the wrong reasons. Obviously the mastermind always knew his identity, so this has nothing to do with Rantaro’s warning of “don’t let anyone find out who you are or they might kill you”. Shuichi’s essentially suggesting that the mastermind killed Rantaro because they were afraid of his amazing killing game talents, but really, if that was a problem to them, they could have just not included him in this killing game.

Then we get another flashback, this time of Shuichi talking to his supposed friends at Hope’s Peak. These guys look like the absolute most generic ordinary dudes ever, even though they’re supposed to be Hope’s Peak students and should be Ultimates at something, which generally, in a Danganronpa universe, would make them look a lot more distinctive even with the Hope’s Peak uniforms.

Classmate 1: “Now that I think about it… 16 boys and girls going on a space trip together… You guys gonna do it?”

Yes, Classmate 1, that is literally the point, since they’re going to need to repopulate whatever new planet they land on.

Classmate 1: “If things get too rough, then just remember all the fun times we had together.”

Yeah, all those fun times that we as an audience totally have every reason to care about! Shuichi still probably doesn’t even properly “remember” any of it, either. This is the same kind of writing problem chapter 5’s Flashback Light had in that it’s acting like we’re supposed to care about these characters we’ve only just seen who had literally no importance to Shuichi until just now – but this time, that problem is a lot more apparent to us in the out-universe audience because we don’t know these guys either. They’re not even given names! And, of course, that’s still very much the out-universe writers’ point here.

It’s even more clearly out-universely deliberate when you remember how Shuichi said himself at the end of chapter 5 that his hope comes from all of his friends in here, both those still with him and those who’ve died. That is more than enough to keep him going. These randomers are completely not necessary to inspire him with anything, no matter how much Tsumugi is trying to pretend that her backstory is so super important.

My favourite one is Classmate 2, the one who’s already pretty badly sick, but presumably not too close to dying or he wouldn’t even be able to be in school. Because this is the virus Kaito had, and so this shows us how bad it actually is, even probably like a week or two before the end. Check out the voice acting for this scene and listen to how absolutely miserable this guy sounds. Which means that Kaito himself had to have felt at least this awful beneath it all, but he fought through it and refused to show a single hint of it because he was stubborn and selfless and idiotically convinced that he could not afford to worry his friends or let them see any kind of weakness. Kaito was incredible.

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mystech-master · 7 years ago

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Blazblue Drives

Okay so I have been thinking about the Drives in Blazblue a lot, probably WAY more than I should.

pointless idea/rambling bellow for those who even care

In game, the Drives are described as “ an individual ability per character that can be activated by pressing the D button. It is a system where every character has one unique ability or mechanic during gameplay. Activating Overdrive will generally enhance this ability for that character.”

In Lore, they are described as “ the materialization of a soul’s power, made via the power of the Azure.” IMO, that sounds very similar to the Semblances from RWBY.

So what Drives to characters have in-game that could ALSO be their in story Drives.

Ragna: Soul Eater is not his actual Drive, rather it is the result of the Azure Grimoire’s power.

Jin: Frost Bite is simply Jin using Yukianesa’s power, as show in his battle with Tsubaki in CS’ story doesn’t allow you to use Drive attacks when Yukianesa isn’t working in-story. This is the first kind of non-story Drive, which I shall refer to as an “Equipment Drive” where the Drive is simply a character using their weapon/object of power they have.

Noel: Chain Revolver involves her chaining (ha) together attacks, this is more of a “Technique Drive”, which I shall use to refer to a Drive that could simply be look at as that character’s own fighting style/technique..

Mu-12: As Mu IS Noel, she should have the same Drive, but NOPE. Steins Gunner has her place floating laser turrets. Now this COULD be seen as an equipment Drive, but I could also see it being just a function she’s unlocked as being “The Kusanagi”. So kind of in the middle about this

Rachel: Our first official Drive user. Silpheed allows Rachel to control the wind. Not it isn’t wind magic, it’s her Drive, but she DOES have Lighting magic.,

Taokaka: Her Drive is Dancing Edge, which makes her launch in a torpedo like fashion towards her foes. Now this could simply be her pouncing, but looking at her Overdrive ‘Almost Becoming Two! Meow!” she seems to be moving so fast she creates an afterimage which allows her to attack twice. So her Drive could basically allow her super speed.

Carl: His Automaton Drive is simply him manipulating Nirvana. So that makes it an Equipment Drive

Litchi: Same with Litchi and her Mantenbō, it’s just her controlling her staff.

Arakune: His Crimson Drive could work. He builds up his curse gauge and then summons bugs. I get a real Plague of Egypt vibe with this. So yeah, bug curse COULD work as an actual in story power.

Tager: His Voltic Battler Drive could simply be him using his Electromagnetism. I mean come on S7 is supposed to be the Science > Ars Magus/Magic team, or course Tager’s not gonna use an actual Drive.

Bang: Burning Heart makes Bang deliver flaming attacks which charge up his “Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan” meter. The flaming attacks could be it honestly.

Hakumen: His Slaying God Drive, is a block followed by a counter attack. Very much a “Technique Drive”, seeing as that could just be his fighting style.

Nu-13: Sword Summoner is either an acutal Drive, or just a Murakumo function, much like Mu’s thing.

Valkenhayn: His Werwolf Drive could simply be him using his Lycanthrope blood. It is simply his magic at work, as his species was made by magic, much like another character down the line.

Jubei: He is fairly new and I don’t really get his Drive, so this is a bit iffy. His Shiranui Drive (or Sea Fire when Translated/localized), according to the wikia is “A slashing attack that crosses up and leaves a black mark on the opponent, which eventually disappears.” Apparently this mark allows him to warp behind the opponent during two of his DDS. I have no idea how this could be made in story.

Tsubaki: She has two, which makes no sense (as her Tsubaki and Izayoi forms), First, her Install Drive is her charging up the Install gauge. Which could simply be the Izayoi charging up, I recall the way that she gets her bad ending sin CS, is to use Drive Attacks which means her overusing the Izayoi and thus dying. As Izayoi (who is the same person thus has the same soul and thus should have the same Drive) her Drive is Gain Art, which basically activates flight mode (also Gain Art apparently has like 3 other meanings in Blazblue, so there’s that crap).

Makoto: Her Impact Drive allows her to charge attacks, I think I heard somewhere that Impact was the name of her tonfa (which she uses like gloves/gauntlets for some reason so what do we classify them?). So, Equipment Drive.

Hazama: Ouroboros is him using his Nox, Equipment Drive.

Terumi: Force Eater, from what I’ve read on the wikia, his attacks increase the Heat Gauge w/o giving any heat to the opponent. Not too sure how this could be in story.

Kokonoe: her Drive is her Graviton, which is just her using another gadget. Like Tager, she is Team Science so she might HAVE a drive, but she refuses to use it.

Lambda: Much like Nu, Sword Summoner Revision could either be her Drive, or just her Murakumo-ness.

Platinum: Just her using Muchōrin, Magical Symphony is her summoning things using the Nox’s power to materialize matter.

Relius: Now he not only has a game Drive, but he also has a Story Drive. In Game he has Detonator which summons Ignis, so he has an Equipment Drive like Carl. But apparently, his real Drive is what allows him to create all those Marionette arms.

Nine: Her Drive, The Abyss Diver, is just her using Magic. Magic is not a Drive.

Izanami: She IS a Drive so this probably isn’t one, but she seems to be enough of her own person, IDK. Her Sand Shine <Exodus Ark> Drive lets her shoot that halo thing on her back. So I GUESS its an Equipment Drive.

Bullet: Her Lock On Drive lets her target and launch at opponents, which increases her Heat Level. In my mind, this is almost an opposite of Yang’s Semblance from RWBY. Increasing strength the more you hit someone, unlike Yang who gets stronger the more SHE gets hit.

Amane: I THINK his Drive is an Equipment Drive, his Spiral Drive has him drill his opponent with his ribbons, but all of hid attacks are shifting his ribbons into shit.

Celica: Her Drive Minerva is her just using the bot, Equipment Drive. She has Healing Magic anyways

Hibiki: His Double Chase could be very similar to Blake’s Semblance from RWBY, creating a shadowy double.

Kagura: Black Gale is just switching stances, Technique Drives

Es: Her Crest Arts COULD be a Drive (I do not feel like explaining the difference between the Drives of the o.g. series, and the XBlaze series), as it says her sword’s massive sheathe absorbs Seither, those Crests could just be made of the seithr it absorbs, so it COULD be an Equipment Drive.

Naoto: he canonically has the Bloodedge Drive. He’s good.

Susano’o: His Drive, God of Military Arts, has him unlock his attacks. Not too sure how this could go in story as a Drive. Plus he’s a god, he doesn’t need a Drive.

AND THAT is everyone. Those are the characters who have Drives that are either JUST gameplay or could be in Story Drives.

So tell me, if you could give a character a Drive IN-LORE, what would you give them.

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