#mizuki? i think mainly bc we don't know much about her other than she's fine with dating woman LOL

[yamatonikado]

Also i think the reason why the wonder killers look the way they do is because of the perception of them. People’s perceptions of traumatic events are always warped, some more than others. That’s the reason why some of these wonder killer designs are so wacky. In the beginning of the series, the Acca’s explain that the wonder killers take the place of the girls traumas (or ultimate reasons for why they committed suicide). So far each of the wonder killers have been fairly straightforward (overbearing coach, molester, stalker) but their designs have been really over the top all with the exception of one. 

Put under a read more bc it’s kinda long as i talk about each girls wonder killer/analyze them below the cut!

I think the fantastical over the top elements of the wonder killers is the way the girls bury and perceive their traumas. I’m gonna get a bit lengthy here, but hear me out. Minami’s wonder killer was her coach, however; Minami was very much in denial that her coach was ever bad/in the wrong. She is always apologizing to the coach. The ultimate reason she died was because of the verbal, mental, and even physical abuse she suffered from her coach constantly obsessing over and controlling every aspect of her life. That’s what it looks like from the outside, however; Minami never specifically acknowledged that the coach’s actions were abuse. She always deferred it onto a specific failing she did onto her self (her body changes because of puberty, and instead of accepting it she internalizes it as her fault because her coach said so). This perception of her coach is warped, and so is the coach’s form as her killer. 

This can be said for all the girl’s too. Their wonder killers and the traumatic events that killed them are understood, but not explicitly interacted with. 

Miwa’s killer is her molester, and that makes sense. It’s straightforward that her killer is the man who induced trauma onto her, however; if that’s the case how come in the train car, she tells Momoe that more of her guilt and warped thinking were words echoed to her by her mother? What drove Miwa to suicide wasn’t just her molester (like she initially thought) it was the lack of support she received from her family when she took the initiative to come forward about it. It’s the lack of support from her mother, someone that blamed her and side stepped her feelings (when confronting her wonder killer she was echoing words/reasoning said by her mother). Miwa blames her molester for her suicide and her family’s downfall, but she’s isn’t acknowledging the entire truth behind the incident she suffered from. 

It’s why Mako and Miko’s wonder killer is such an abstract monster with every other superpower under the sun. Their wonder kill isn’t from their own trauma, it’s how they perceived Yuyu felt from their stalker. They don’t know Yuyu personally, they don’t know how they felt before committing suicide, they have a wonder killer that they based on their perception of what it was that killed Yuyu/them. It might also be why the wonder kill stopped attacking them and started dancing to Yuyu’s song. Mako wholeheartedly believes that no fan of Yuyu would incite violence in Yuyu’s presence, and that’s why the monster/wonder killer stopped what they were doing and did exactly that. The killer acts on how the girls understand them to act, because they stem from the girl’s own understanding of their trauma.

Yae’s wonder killer is oddly abstract because she’s the only one that can see her. Yae mentions her friends abandoning her (which might be why the monster wears a school uniform) but ultimately her trauma stems from an extremely warped source and unexplainable perception of what killed her. Ayaka’s wonder killer is the same, I’m guessing he’s an abusive cult/religious leader that took in runaway kids, however she doesn’t see him as a creepy dude. Look at her body language as he confronts her and speaks to her about people loving her. She has moments where she acknowledges him as a loser and fights back, but ultimately she thinks he holds some power over her (which is why he’s in an inflated ego suit). 

And now I know you’re thinking about Kurumi and Aoi. The two girls with the most realistic of the two wonder killers. 

I’ll start with Aoi, who at first glance has a mystical wonder killer. But as the fight continues it’s revealed that the wonder killer, is Aoi herself (her own hair, her own beauty). Aoi’s wonder killer is a mix of the realistic and the fantastical because of two things 1) Aoi says she killed herself due to the society’s unrealistic beauty standards and her inability to stay beautiful, as she’s reached the peak of her youth (which is the fantastical) and 2) Aoi understands that the reason she took her life is because of her own vanity (the reality/realistic). She blames herself for dying due to this desire of hers to be forever beautiful, to die at her prime before she becomes obsessed with her looks/youth like her mother. Her hair, a symbol of her pride, is what she knows kills her, and that’s why it takes the form of her wonder killer. It’s why she cries when Neiru tells her that no one can call her pretty anymore. She’s partly able to acknowledges the truth of what killed her and she that died for such a silly reason. Still her perception is warped because her philosophy of beauty is so deeply ingrained into her psyche. 

And Kurumi. Well Kurumi’s wonder killer is so realistic because Kurumi is able to accurately acknowledge what caused her trauma and suicide. She mentions her friend group turning their back on her, throwing words like knives at her behind her back. She mentions her friends being superficial, which is why the wonder killer is a female student with a blurred out face (signifying that she doesn’t even know who the person hurting her even is, either because she doesn’t know them deeply or because it was multiple different people doing it). Not even that, but while Kurumi has one wonder killer, the killer also took form of multiple other girls (the ones writing die on the locker). Kurumi is one of the only girls whose perception of her trauma is fully acknowledged for what it is. A bunch of high school girls that don’t even know her, that continue to harass her and hurt her with sharp words and insults. 

I’m not saying Kurumi is better than the other girls are identifying what’s wrong. All the girls are right in what killed them. I just think Kurumi has a better understanding of what happened to her and how she really felt. She seems to be really reflective of what happened to her and even gives Ai advice. Kurumi is affected by her trauma, but she’s able to clearly label what caused it. 

Miwa is able to talk about her trauma, but unlike Kurumi, she refuses to interact with it at a deeper level. She never acknowledges how what her mom says upsets her, she only echoes what is said. If she were still alive, it might take her years of therapy to understand how she really felt and how the molestation (which was more of a trigger event) affected her. I feel like a lot of the girls in the show are able to acknowledge, “this is why I died” but they have yet to reflect on how it made them feel and how it might be different from the reality of the situation.

That being said, we could also argue that the wonder killers take on the form of people that have motives that can be clearly understood or imagined. The motives of a malicious clique of teenage girls is easier to imagine and deal with than the warped love of a coach you view as a parental figure. It’s something tangible you can believe unlike a serial molester in a position of power over you and your family. You can understand young girls being jealous over a boy, but you can never understand a saesang fan-like stalker. It’s an easier motive to digest and understand than these societal problems that very much do kill young girls today, which may be why the easier the trauma is to digest from an outsider perspective, the clearer its design is. But that may be another theory for another day, as we see more wonder killers in the coming episodes. 

TDLR; Part of the reason why i think the wonder kills have such odd design choices is because they’re a reflection of how the girls interpret, perceive, and acknowledge their trauma. The better equipped the girls are at understanding and or labelling their trauma, the more realistic their wonder killers are. The more warped the perception of their trauma is, the more fantastical, unrealistic, monstrous their wonder killers become.