#revisiting dr1

[tobiasdrake]

I love the first case of Danganronpa. Right out of the starting gate, the sheer quantity of expectations played with is intense.

So the game's like, "Here you go, meet Sayaka. She's the Maya of this game. She'll be your assistant and help you solve crimes and have witty banter with Makoto. And maybe even love interest? Who knows!"

Subversion: But she's clearly playing you pretty much from the start. Like. You can feel it in every single interaction. She is marinating the shit out of Makoto. Practically every conversation is dripping with manipulation. She's going to murder someone, and she's going to use you as her cover. She is building trust and codependency for her alibi.

And then she comes to you and asks to use your room because "someone's after her" allegedly. And it's like. Yeah. Yeah, this is it. The obvious manipulator who's been playing you from the start is obviously manipulating. She's going to kill someone and let the body be found in your room. This is the other shoe coming down.

Double Subversion: And. Then. The next morning, she's dead. What the fuck? Apparently the person who's after her managed to break into your room and kill her! Holy shit! She's not the first killer after all! She's the first victim!? What!?

This changes e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. Was she really marinating Makoto? Or was she just nice, and this whole murder mystery scenario made you paranoid? Everything is different now. Maybe you should have trusted her. Maybe you should have tried harder. Maybe....

Triple Subversion: Oh, no, she actually was marinating Makoto. Yeah, she actually was the killer. Everything was exactly what you thought it was when you were reading between the lines of her "niceness".

It's just that her murder scheme went awry and she wound up on the receiving end of it. She is the killer here but her intended victim wound up killing her instead. (But don't feel too bad for her victim because he actually had the chance to walk away and chose homicidal retaliation instead.)

Like. This is a fantastic opening case. I love it. I love what they did to players, even to savvy players who are able to stay ahead of the twists and turns. This is a well-written murder.

[zipsunz]

merch leftovers from the 2022-2023 kaito, kaede, and wlw danganronpa zines will be available in stock on 11/23 at 12 PM PST! 🤍🖤

[ bigcartel ]

[funishment-time]

now that i'm halfway-ish thru V3: revisiting my OG predictions

YET TO BE SEEN:

Shuichi survives

Miu survives

Kokichi survives

Rantaro is a) some kind of robot or clone, b) related to Junko somehow, or c) an antagonist or villain

Gonta is a murderer

Gonta kills Kaito

Kaito is a victim

Keebo is a victim

Tsumugi is a mastermind/related to mastermind

Himiko is a mastermind/related to mastermind

Himiko is a murderer

Himiko manipulated into doing something awful

Junko is in the game

Alter Ego is in the game

Miu has breakdown over Keebo in some way

Ryoma related to other characters in DR universe somehow

DISPROVEN:

Kork survives

Maki kills Angie and/or Tenko

Kirumi kills Keebo

Himiko kills Ryoma

I WAS RIGHT BITCHES:

Angie is a victim, case 3

Tenko is a victim, case 3

Kirumi is a murderer

Ryoma is a victim

Tenko has yuri subtext

KINDA BUT NOT IN THE WAY I EXPECTED:

Maki is a murderer

Game is an AU retelling of DR1 (symbolically, imo)

not bad so far

[eroguron0nsense]

A Celestia Ludenberg observation from revisiting DR1

I think a lot of people have rightfully observed that Celeste's final moments in DR1, in which she's heavily heavily implied to have been forcing her smile and composure before she's dragged off to her demise, and her free time events implying that she's likely from a pretty boring, working class family in Togichi who secretly misses her hometown and its gyoza are pretty indicative of the fact that she's got hidden depths and deep-seated insecurity (not to mention her willingness to give everyone else a shot at getting out by protecting Alter Ego). She's almost on the verge of opening up to Makoto by the end of her free time if you put in the effort to get to know her, the implication being that with a bit of time and different circumstances she could have been able to ditch her overblown alter ego and be loved by her classmates for who she really was.

What I haven't seen as many people talk about, however, is the fact that this almost certainly did happen prior to The Tragedy and everyone's memory erasure/imprisonment, because when Hifumi regains his memories and wants to name his killer in his final moments, he specifically uses her birth name, indicating that a) he had known her very well personally, because God knows the Celeste we meet would have never let that information slip, and b) this is more speculative but I suspect that, having regained his memories, he might have expected everyone else to recognize who Taeko Yasuhiro was in his delirious state. Hifumi–someone Celeste is rightfully repulsed by far more so than the rest of her classmates, and refuses any actual friendship to beyond manipulating him–had known her well enough to know Taeko Yasuhiro, and she'd let her guard down enough around to tell him that information, and presumably so does the rest of the class. Evidently, when Celeste was given the brief opportunity to form real friendships with her classmates and voluntarily sealed herself into Hope's Peak to live with them rather than take her chances outside, she'd learned to open up and genuinely trust them in ways we almost see her do with Makoto, and every single bit of that development is wiped from her mind and stolen from her as she's pushed to kill former friends who might very well be the first people she'd been able to be herself around.

[bigjumpervibes]

Day 4: Free Day (AU Bleach) ⚔️

The rest of the days will be posted late and randomly ORZ I didn’t really like my day 3 and it stumped me so there’s a backlog ✍️

But ANYWAY I decided to use the free day as an opportunity to combine my current fixation on Bleach with Soudam and drew them as Ulquiorra and Grimmjow (I wanted to draw Sonia as Orihime but decided not to add more onto my pile)

I’d like to revisit this one day as I can see some fun parallels with the remnants as Espada, Junko as Aizen, Mukuro as Tosen, Izuru as Gin, the Dr1 crew as the Gotei 13 🤔

References Below

[mmani-e]

If you had to choose, who are your favorite DR1 characters to draw designs for in Demix 1?

Hi hello, thanks for the ask!

The obvious answer is that I absolutely loved drawing all of them. Designing them from the wonderful character designs already in the game was an amazing time, and a great way to really stretch my creative muscles. And looking at all my drawings I've really gotten to remember something fun about all of them while I was drawing them.

But if I had to categorize all my favorites, I'd say that Mukuro, Sakura, Makoto, and Kyoko all fit in that category.

Mukuro I believe is the character design I would change the least. The biker jacket, the folded sleeves, and her skirt and leggings all go together extra perfectly for me. She's a minimalist person, her base design is literally just a schoolgirl with a military camo vest. So for demix she'd just be the same but with a biker vest. It just makes sense, if there is a single design that I made that I believe is the most sensible and in line with the character, it'd be that one.

Sakura is in a similar boat. But she's not perfect. Sometimes I kick myself over the fact that Sakura could've probably worked better as the Ultimate Affluent Progeny. Like Sakura in a blingin' suit, wouldn't it be crazy? Either way, designing a muscle-bound nerd was very fun. And the moment I realized Sakura's scars could be translated into impacted nanofibers for chips blew my brain. It was literally just perfect. There were many "Eureka" points through that whole project, but that moment with Sakura was probably the biggest or second biggest.

Makoto's was tough. For a guy so plain it was hard to come up with anything. So I just imagined a very nice librarian. If I could revisit that design I would give him a school patch on the vest. Half of the brilliance of this design is probably just the red buttons, which are actually bullets that his Alter uses. Which kind of brings rise to several questions, if Makoto even in his lucid state fills his jacket with bullets, or if his alter spends some time to load himself with extra bullets, which either way, Lucid Makoto is able to get rid of any time he wants - so why doesn't he?

Kyoko's was super fun mostly for the fact that - before anyone else in the cast - she existed first. And exists as the first drawing for a reason. I've held onto Kyoko's concept since the original Demix drawings. I loved everything about her design, and all the purple and orange in her design naturally fits for the rich, almost royal vibe I wanted to give her. So drawing her was like watching a concept be perfected before my eyes.

[windcarvedlyre]

While I'm talking about DR3 and its handling of themes, does anyone else feel like danganronpa's ideas of 'hope' and 'despair' became a bit flanderised sometimes?

I could be reaching- the series has always been incredibly hammy in how it uses the terms- but in DR1 they still felt somewhat grounded in the words' actual definitions and in DR2 Komaeda fixating on an abstracted conflict between 'hope' and 'despair' was presented as a bad thing. Thinking 'hope' is synonymous with 'talent' was part of the problem, but even without that he'd feel like an intentional twisted parody of Naegi. He takes the thematic conflict between hope and despair too literally; to him the concepts were less states of mind, more grand causes, and so no amount of suffering became unacceptable to him if it made for a more interesting narrative in the end.

But sometimes later additions to the series... kind of sound like him? Maybe I should revisit DR3 and give it more of a chance, but I felt like the entire narrative approached 'hope' and 'despair' in some of the ways Komaeda does. Like it kept throwing those words at me as a substitute for actual depth, because hey, it's Danganronpa, right? That's what you're here for, right? Especially considering how little interest the writers showed in non-Ultimates besides Hinata as people, making 'hope' feel genuinely associated with talent to some degree.

Similarly, in DRV3, what did it mean for the survivors to reject both hope and despair? Stripped of those words, their choice was to break out of the narrative's control, not let their reality being potentially fake get to them, and face the unknown together. Is that not 'hope'? Is that not emotionally identical to both previous games' endings? Does that not make the game's use of 'hope' completely divorced from its meaning?

If the themes were handled more coherently I could see that being done intentionally- exploring whether the series started with a good message and lost its way, and/or asking whether 'hope' is hollow if your struggles, your eventual triumph over them, everything was contrived for others' entertainment- but I feel like if that was the case the DRV3 characters should reclaim hope and reject false definitions or exploitation of it instead of rejecting hope itself. Because again, with feeling, what does that mean???

[znvade]

When I was still HUGE on making videos, I made this one series called Essence of Hope where the plot was pretty much that v3 were recruits for HPA students but never ended ip being able to attend because of the Tragedy

The character cast would’ve been survivors of DR1, the DR2 cast as despairs, and ofc v3

Thinking of revisiting it because it was genuinely very fun to center a plot around but it’s also highly self-indulgent so I’d have to see lol

[bratspike]

What do you think really happened to Ilsa in DR1?

i am 100% confident that she is alive!!!!!! first of all i just don’t truly believe that tom would want to finish part 2 without having rebecca involved. listen to the rogue nation commentary track to see what i mean (or just look for him talking about her literally anywhere) (or wait for my post on the topic).

second, ilsa is perfectly set up to be a Ghost and a Shadow (two terms that are repeated not only in dr but also throughout the series) in dr2. luther tells ethan that he’s going offline to try to figure out the entity, but the entity does know he’s still a player even if he’s not currently on the map.

ilsa. ilsa, though. by faking her death ilsa fulfills ethan’s ‘written’ fate of losing someone he cares about and gabriel and the entity will both believe their plan, their story, gets to continue on. but ilsa is still alive. ilsa is operating in the dark and she is going to be the key (hah) to everything in dr2. she is going to reappear and save the day and the entire theater is going to go apeshit

it’s genuinely just what makes the most sense and is the most in line with the story that tom and mcq are trying to tell. their refrain is “story is king!” they said it about rogue nation and they’re saying it about dead reckoning. this is a story about revisiting the past in order to move forward. we are being taken to the first movie yes, but also even further, to an ethan we’ve never seen before. ethan’s past is coming back to him but ilsa remains his future. she’s always been his future (come away with me), he just hasn’t been ready to see it.

dr1 was the entity’s movie — we were seeing what it wanted us to see, we were following its script, looking at its shots and editing decisions. ethan said we can’t trust anything outside of this conversation in venice and that was an instruction to us, too! ilsa guided the knife into her chest. every glance between ilsa and ethan in venice now seems like a goodbye (for now). a be safe (because i won’t be able to know where you are or if you’re still alive). he said run as FAR as you can. he wasn’t talking about venice.

luther and ilsa have always been aligned and now they are going to be their own team. they will return to save ethan and benjis asses and ethan will kill the entity and then. and then. they’ll get to choose what to do next. and ethan will say ‘i’m coming with you.’ and ilsa will say ‘i know.’

[ecogirl2759]

It's time.

So, I have decided to formally retire from FireAlpaca and will not be revisiting any of my old works made on that app (just because of personal preference). SO, I've decided to share some of my favorite WIPs that I had hoped to finish once upon a time lol.

I'm gonna be tagging all the characters that show up btw, so sorry if this comes up as you're peacefully scrolling your fandom tags hehe.

Please check the tags for the characters/fandoms and decide if you wanna open this post.

So yeah, have a couple of old sketches from 2-5 years ago :D

[Uncolored blood in one of them jsyk]

This one felt appropriate to put first lol I was really liking the way it was turning out... and then I lost motivation lol. Think this is from 2 years ago-ish.

Here's another of my OC. I was going to make a super cool battle illustration with super cool effects and super cool lighting and I gave up almost instantly lol. SHE HAS NO WRISTS!!

This is one I made for Drawfest 2, like, 2 years ago now, I think. I thought it was coming along kinda nice except I couldn't get the perspective to look right so my character ended up looking huge lmao.

Here's ANOTHER of my OC. This one is really old lol. I've redesigned her now and I don't use this shading style anymore, so I retired this profile picture really early on.

Ok, last one of this OC. This was going to be one of many sprites that I was making to use in videos and stuff, but I, once again, lost my motivation hehe. Looks REALLY bad tho so idc.

Now for some fandom junk!

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Pico jumpscare I got really into Pico's school way back when and never saw any fanart for his death screen. So I wanted to try my hand at it. Got through the lineart before I decided I didn't like it and was not skilled enough to salvage it so I gave up. Might redraw this in the future though!

Haha mind the huge empty space on this one.

This was going to be a picture of Gregory and Freddy from FNaF Security Breach (made this around the time the game came out), but I quickly realized I couldn't draw animatronics and quit lol. You can kinda see the stripe on Gregory's shirt, but my sketching abilities back then were awful so it's a little hard.

ASJKFHSABFHJBF I ALMOST FORGOT I WAS DRAWING HIMMM!! This bean is a character from To Your Eternity, an anime I randomly found on Netflix once and fell in love with (I quit at the weird scene in the prison tho, remind me to finish it). HE WAS SO CUTE I JUST HAD TO DRAW HIM <3 Also this isn't the ball, this is the boy. I just didn't get to his eyes.

MULTIFANDOM IDEAAAAA

So me and my sister were talking a few years ago, and I think one of us misspoke and said "Coffee shot" instead of "Coffee shop," so this AU was born.

It's a coffee shop called the Coffee Shot staffed by characters that love guns and have guns and shoot guns and I love them. The shop is frequented by characters from other franchises (in this case Danganronpa), and it's got the best coffee and the best theming you've ever seen >:)

Characters from left to right: Pico (FNF), Kiyotaka Ishimaru (DR1), Mondo Owada (DR1), Lance (EBF5)

Here's another MultiFandom picture :D

This one was based on Pinterest lol. I have boards for both of these franchises, but they kept wanting to save these two characters to each other's boards lol. SO I wanted to make a style swap with them! Didn't end up finishing it, though, but I do want to come back to it!

Characters: Kiyotaka Ishimaru (Danganronpa), Ranma Saotome (Ranma 1/2)

Aaaaand then just take some Danganronpa stuff.

This first one is actually the second piece of fanart I ever did for this game, but I quit really quick because I SCREWED UP TAKA'S HAIR AND DIDN'T WANNA REDO IT BECAUSE EVERY TIME I TRIED IT LOOKED FUNKY SO NOW HE'S JUST FUZZY. AND THE BACKGROUND EWWW I FORGOT IT LOOKED LIKE THIS

And then this one is of the same two characters but based on a fanfic I read once. It was a Beauty and the Beast one. It was really fun to read. I liked it. It's on Wattpad if you're interested. I quit on this picture really quick tho. Made the sketch on Photoshop 2 years ago, transferred the sketch to FireAlpaca, then realized the sketch sucked and didn't bother trying again.

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SO

There's all my sketches. The ones that I'm willing to share, that is.

Let this be a lesson that not all of your pictures are going to go the way you want to. Your sketches are going to be messy, your lineart isn't going to match up, your colors are going to look funky, and your shading is going to want to make you rip out your hair sometimes.

I think what's important is to make sure that all that stuff doesn't discourage you.

If you give up all together, you'll never know what you'd've been able to produce if you hadn't.

If a picture isn't working for you, find out why. Then quit that picture, practice, and come back. You'll be able to compare yourself to your own art instead of other people's, which will give you a clearer sense of how far you've come.

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SORRY DIDN'T MEAN TO GO ON A RANT THERE

I think I'll shoot to redraw some of these next year. I definitely want to come back to that Pico one, the style swap one, the Coffee Shot, and the Christmas one.

Don't really have time for that now, but that's now on my New Year's Resolution list lol.

If you're reading this, thanks for looking at my old crappy art. It feels nice to share <3

[rachaelmayo]

This is Deep Rising 6 from 2001 - a post-college project inspired by the spectacular mandarin goby, a small coral reef fish. I wanted to echo the long, narrow format that I used for DR1, so this board was cut into this shape deliberately this time.

I made this with watercolor, primarily, and some colored pencil overlays. To my 20+-years-older eyes, it looks pretty rough, but the groundwork is in place now for where I'd be taking my art in years to come.

I lost track of some of the details as I was working through the coloring, so as an experiment, I went back over parts of it with black ink. In (many years later) retrospect, I should have chosen a color other than black! I've since learned how to re-capture linework in a way that is less jarring. That makes DR6 a good learning project for the beginnings of the "rescue" technique, even if it is not my best finished work.

I think this is another project that I'd like to revisit and revise with my current skill set. I love the colors and patterns, and now I know that I could do them justice.

[tobiasdrake]

Also, while I'm shitposting about that first case in DR1, I love that Makoto gets to come in and investigate the crime scene even though everybody thinks he did it. Like. Some characters are even outright going, "Why do we even need a trial when it was clearly Makoto? Can we just vote Makoto right now?"

Mondo and Sakura are in there to prevent tampering, so there's nothing wrong with letting him poke around. But also they're pretty sure he did it. Everyone's pretty sure he did it.

So I always imagine, as Makoto's investigating, that Mondo's just shadowing him from like a foot and a half behind. Makoto crouches down to look at stuff on the ground, and Mondo's looming over him. Watching.

[aptronyms]

neon who’s your favorite and least favorite DR characters from each game please I want to draw when given time

OOO i havent thought about that in forever uhhmmm for dr1 my favorites are toko and ishimaru and my least favorite is hifumi, sdr2 my favorite is mikan and my least favorite is teruteru, and in ndrv3 my favorite is tenko and my least favorite is hard. ive never rlly been big on rantaro but hes only my least fav bc all the other ndrv3 characters r so very good. also im gonna add in udg just to say i LOVE jataro so much and hes my sweet baby boy and ALSO FUCK HAIJI TOWA. HAIJI TOWA FUCKING SUCKS! and those are my onions ^_^

[hajihiko]

heya! i’ve been following ur blog for a little while now, and i just wanna first say how pretty it is!! <333 (i especially love the way u draw kazuichi and sonia but that’s because i’m biased lol-)

anyway, i wanted to ask u, what r ur thoughts on the dr1 survivors?? i personally really love them, it seems kinda like how much u seem to really like the dr2 survivors :)

double anyway, i hope you have a great day!!! :D

Hi sorry this is super old but thank you!

It's been a while since I revisited ca on DR1 stuff but:

(Warning! Some disproving opinions)

Makoto: precious, reminds me of Sora, cant help but love him, very much would not survive without a little help from his friends (this is a compliment think it's a huge part of his character). Like him more after the anime. Hajimes little-big brother.

Kyoko: never been a huge fan of Reserved Fancy Clever girl type, but I think she won me over a bit more in the anime? Like, im glad she lived.... but I think her death would have been very in-character and character building at the same time.

Aoi: my fuckingfhfh GIRL I love her I'm biased as fuck. Did she ever use her talent much? No. Did she like, do a whole lot? I dont think so. But do I adore her?? Yeah I do. Wlw girl and also her "oooh!!" offended soundbyte is so cute also she was ready to take everyone down for the girl she loved that is so peak wlw shes Got It. Didnt she hit Byakuya?? Go girl.

Yasuhiro: stupid idiot man that I nonetheless enjoy. His design is the best of the survivors (not from any standpoint but my own as I simply really like the way he looks, clothes n all), fun shapes, gives good idea of character) . Most fun/gimmicky talent that was underutilised. Someone give him the connection he craves and like a hamburger

Toko: Not a huge fan tbh. Voice acting was rly good but she makes me uncomfortable (this is a me thing, I'm just super not comfy with any master-servant sexy thing).

Syo: More fun but most of what I remember from watching the playthrough is 'that's not how DID works.....' I think Syo and Toko both get way more development in that other game tho this is just what I remember. Also never been a fan of the whole, serial killer thing, it's not cool to me I dont like it.

Byakuya: apparently he got redeemed a little but I only remember fuckinggggg hating his character lmao. Again this was a few years ago and I was much less invested than I am now! But, rich tall asshole boy who just kinda snidely says things?? noooooo taste my blade.

[magioftheseas]

Celes/Saya VS Kiri/zono VS Celes/giri, what's your ranking Magi :D ?

AAAAAAAAAAAA TOUGH CALL BUT ULTIMATELYYYY

Celesgiri for the two working well off one another and just having a good dynamic in canon while Celes was there.

Kirizono for Kirigiri showing a deep understanding towards Maizono that caused my kokoro to brokoro. (Still my favorite of the three! But I am a fair judge I like to think.)

CeleSaya is last. Sorry. They just didn’t interact or respond to one another at all…as far as I can remember. Still a good ship is good. :’D

[thefoolsprocession]

I remember seeing a post of urs a while back about Danganronpa being lackluster when you think back on it in comparison to uchikoshi works.

It's been a while since I played dr but I remember playing it after ze & feeling let down by the mystery itself among other things

what specifically do you think didn't work for you when thinking back or was just not well written? I'd just love to hear ur thoughts ❤️

Spoilers for danganronpa, zero escape, and aitsf:

For starters, Uchikoshi puts a lot more care into his characters. None of the characters are there purely for tropes or to act purely as a ploy for the protagonist. Even Lotus and Alice, who come off as “Cunning boob lady” have a whole lot more going on beneath the surface, with Lotus potentially being a single mother of twin girls, and Alice willing to stop at nothing to avenge her father (and of course they are both insanely smart). I feel like he also puts some very deep and insightful real-world commentary with his villains (Ace being a CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Dio being a religious extremist, and Saito being the spoiled son of a wealthy politician) which definitely makes them a lot more interesting to analyse. The ableism is very very unfortunate (wrt to Saito, Mira, and Ace) but that is one of the few major downsides to Uchikoshi’s writing. Emphasis on FEW.

In terms of mystery writing, a lot of the twists in dr don’t really hold a candle to the twists in zero escape and aitsf? I don’t think that’s entirely Kodaka’s fault though, considering they are very different settings. But I didn’t exactly feel shocked to hear about the timeskip in dr1. It was incredibly predictable. The simulation reveal was EXTREMELY cool in sdr2, and it’s part of the reason why sdr2 is my favourite from the main trilogy (that and Chiaki and Hajime are two of my favourite characters). As for V3, well that’s a whole other kettle of fish that I won’t get into (mostly because I’m extremely conflicted about a LOT of things that happened in that game). V3 puts quite a big damper on the rest of the series from the get-go by killing off the female protagonist for the male protagonist’s development (a move that becomes increasingly more shitty as time goes on) and really V3 just doesn’t really improve from there. In fact, up until the last trial, it really just goes downhill. The Truman Show reveal was pretty clever and it gave the series the necessary conclusion it needed (despite a fuck ton of complaints) but apart from that V3 just. Kinda sucks. A boring character who sits in the background and occasionally makes good quips or snarky comments doesn’t make for a good twist villain. Ace on the other hand, plays a pretty major role throughout the entirety of 999. He just comes off as a wise and kind old man with a quick wit at first before rapidly becoming sinister and cartoonishly evil after the reveal. Santa too is incredibly interesting after you revisit 999. Santa being smug and rude is a great way to misdirect the player. It makes us THINK he’s evil, and if you got the Coffin route on your first run like I did, it makes you think he’s the Big Bad, only to discover by the end of the game that he was actually doing all that to save his sister and punish the people who abused him. It’s upsetting that he didn’t make any sort of reappearance in zero time dilemma and he was only mentioned in one conversation between Junpei and Akane (honestly they should have swapped Carlos for Santa that would have interesting).

As for aitsf I could ramble all fucking day about that game. But for starters I think the art is just ten times better than any of the other games I mentioned (with the exception of 999 because I think the way that game is stylised is perfect) and the character writing AND voice acting is absolutely incredible. The fact that several of the voice actors had to do their voices in multiple different ways, such as Saito!Boss, Date!Boss, Date!Saito, Saito!Date, even Saito!Iris to an extent. Even though Saito was pretending to be Iris there are still noticeable differences in her demeanor, for instance Saito!Iris is a lot more reserved and doesn’t act as excited all the time as regular Iris.

I think the number one difference in character writing though which separates Uchikoshi and Kodaka’s writing is how they write children. I’m not even gonna begin to say how awful Ultra Despair Girls is (iykyk), but even when it comes to teenagers or the younger characters (Hiyoko in particular comes to mind), Uchikoshi is just so much better at writing them. Iris actually FEELS like a teenager. And even though Mizuki and Quark are both very clever and mature for their age, it’s still obvious that they are children in the way that they act. Meanwhile, while Hiyoko definitely exhibits a lot of child-like behaviour, the fact that a lot of people misconstrue that and somehow believe she’s the same age as the others, kinda shows that Kodaka kinda failed to make that more obvious (however I do agree that there’s a fuck-ton of subtext to suggest that Hiyoko is a lot younger). Mizuki and Quark are just far better handled for so many reasons. Mizuki is probably one of the best-written characters like, ever. Which is why I’m sooo excited for Nirvana Initiative

Moreover, I think Uchikoshi just does a better job at writing women, and is a bet more sensitive than Kodaka is with certain topics (for instance, although Mama isn’t perfect, she’s a damn sight better than what happened to Chihiro). Hitomi is by far one of the best written female characters I think I’ve ever seen. Boss is fantastic, Clover is fantastic, and above all else, AKANE KURASHIKI IS FUCKING FANTASTIC. Akane is DEFINITELY the quintessential “morally grey female character” and Uchikoshi did such a good job at delivering that. Our sympathy for her in 999 conflicts her coldness in VLR, and again it’s challenged in ZTD (although I disagree heavily with the way Akane was written in ZTD they had some good points). ZTD Akane and Junpei are very interesting because Junpei is resentful and nihilistic, and Akane is forced to live with the realisation that it was, for the most part, HER FAULT. She loves him, but she put him through so much trauma. ZTD kinda hit the nail in the coffin and made everyone realise that Junpei and Akane were just never meant to be together. It’s a disaster waiting to happen (DIVORCE JOKES!!!)

And finally, all three iterations of Zero are just far more interesting than Junko and Monokuma. Okay sorry that was really long but I hope this all made sense byyeeeee