#this one is twofold because it's toxic in itself but also my reaction to it is toxic too

[cherrygarden]

what is tumblr for if not to share extremely toxic facts about one's person

[oumakokichi]

I hear around a lot that Momota is both an hypocrite and extremely loyal to his ideals, I was wondering if you could explain how these two traits can coexist without entering a contradiction

That’s a pretty good question, anon! Walking contradictionsare kind of a recurring theme with ndrv3, I feel. When you have a game whosecentral theme is “truth vs. lies,” there’s going to be a lot of focus on thegap between what people say and what they mean, what defines them as a person,and where their own personal failings lie. Many lies, after all, are ones thatcharacters either tell themselves subconsciously or unintentionally—therebyresulting in many characters who are well-intentioned but nonetheless still somewhathypocritical in their behaviors.

This response will be somewhat twofold, as I feel like partof Momota’s hypocrisy was designed as an intentional character flaw, and partof it was a result more of Kodaka’s mistakes as a writer by failing to address asmany of Momota’s flaws as he should have.

The first part is somewhat easier to put into words: namely,loyalty and hypocrisy are bothintentionally some of Momota’s more noticeable character traits. It’s easy tosee these traits when playing the game: it’s a fact that Momota is quick tostand up for others, even to the point of putting his blind faith in themimmediately.

Not only does he demonstrate this with Maki, most notablywhen he stands up for her in the Chapter 2 trial despite knowing nothing abouther, but also with Kaede in Chapter 1, and with Saihara several times, startingaround Chapter 2. Momota is quick to sort out who his friends and enemies are;when he’s made up his mind that he likes someone, he likes them, and even cold,hard facts can do little to sway his opinion (if Chapter 4 is any evidence ofthat). He bases his decisions on emotion, rather than reason or logic, and thismeans that he’s inclined to stick by how he feels about people, rather thanwhat the facts are saying.

It also means that he’s almost unflinchingly loyal when itcomes to the people he’s decided to call a friend. This isn’t such a surprisingtrait for him to have, given that Momota’s character is intentionally based onthe tropes and characteristics of a “heroic shounen protagonist.” There’s a lotof lampshading of this in the actual game—not only does he call himself “theprotagonist” repeatedly, but even his character design itself alludes to it.The color and design on his shirt is meant to resemble that of a kabuki actor,playing the part of a protagonist.

In just about every shounen series that’s ever been written,themes like unflinching trust and belief in one’s friends and loyalty to one’sown ideals and ambitions are very, very common. Gurren Lagann is perhaps thebest example of this, as Momota’s catchphrase is meant to be a throwback toKamina, who fulfilled a similar role of “inspirational hero” to Simon as Momotadoes to Saihara. Therefore, the fact that Momota is an extremely trusting,loyal, and steadfast individual who doesn’t easily sway from his ideals orbelief in others makes perfect sense—and that stubbornness itself is actually,simultaneously the cause of his hypocrisy, in my opinion.

His unwavering, immovable belief in others is itself adouble-edged sword. As I mentioned earlier, nothing proves this better thanChapter 4. While believing in others and having faith in people is certainly animportant ideal to strive for, ndrv3 makes it very clear that being on theopposite end of paranoia or blind faith can often lead to disasters. Characterslike Kirigiri and Nanami also emphasize in their respective games that trulygetting to know others actually involves doubting them first, in order to trulybe able to rule them out from suspicion. Avoiding that doubt entirely meansskipping a vital step in the process of getting to know someone.

But Momota refuses to recognize that doubt or suspicion arenecessary elements, especially in a killing game that they’ve all been forcedto play. He likes who he likes, and hates who he hates, and absolutely nothingshort of a miracle is ever able to make him change his mind. This is why, evenwhen shown concrete, hard proof that Ouma absolutely couldn’t have murdered Miu in Chapter 4, he still maintains thatOuma must have done it, somehow—because he hates Ouma, and he likes Gonta.Therefore, in his mind, the murder is already “solved” regardless of what theevidence says. Ouma is the “bad guy,” Gonta is the “good guy.”

This hypocrisy of his in deciding things based on rawemotion rather than logic or facts is somewhat brought up by the narrative.Despite the fact that he claimed to want to help Saihara embrace his talent asa detective, it’s also clear in Chapter 4 that the moment Saihara “sides” withsomeone who Momota doesn’t personally agree with (even though Saihara trulydidn’t side with either Ouma or Momota, but tried to find a middle ground), hissupport and encouragement become… well, far more limited.

Even after telling Saihara to believe in himself and his ownreasoning repeatedly ever since Chapter 2, when the end result is somethingtragic or unfortunate (like Gonta being the culprit), Momota doesn’t want tobelieve it at all. He instead switches to telling Saihara to “open his eyes,”questioning his theories and his reliability at almost every point in thetrial. He even goes as far as to threaten to punch him again, because he’s soentirely convinced that his own trust in Gonta is correct and that Saihara mustbe in the wrong this time.

This hypocritical stance is somewhat alluded to andforeshadowed throughout even the earlier parts of Chapter 4, where it becomesevident that Momota is far less comfortable with Saihara actually becomingrelied upon and trusted by the rest of the group. Saihara’s role as the SHSLDetective means that, by Chapter 4, the others are slowly coming to trust himand rely on him—even too much, perhaps, to the point where they aren’t reallythinking or looking for clues on their own, but instead feel that Saihara cansolve the case on his own.

Momota, who up until this point had played the role of theinspirational figure, quoting very Kamina-like lines of “believe in the me whobelieves in you,” looks obviously uncomfortable or goes somewhat silent at mostof these lines from the others in Chapter 4. His FTEs also show that he has atendency to rely on his “sidekicks,” rather than the other way around; he takescredit for most of the accomplishments of others, including politicians, idols,and baseball players. The easiest explanation for this behavior is that inaddition to genuinely wanting to help others improve and better themselves—well,he also wanted the actions of others to reflect well on himself.

Personally, I don’t fault him very much for having thisflaw. This sort of subconscious, unintentional hypocrisy and jealousy issomething that I feel is extremely human. Jealousy is a normal, human reaction,and very often it’s not something we feel intentionally. It’s not impossible tobe a genuinely good friend and want the best for someone while also having moresubconscious, negative emotions. Momota himself admits that this is basicallywhat happened shortly before his execution in Chapter 5. He acknowledges thathe was jealous of Saihara’s talent and the way in which the others were relyingon him, and that it was unfair of him to lash out at him in Chapter 4 the waythat he did.

This covers the range of loyalty and hypocrisy assimultaneous existing traits in Momota’s character. I do think that to someextent, this walking contradiction was something deliberately written andcrafted by Kodaka—after all, it’s very clear that most of Momota’s charisma isbaseless, and that while he’s a genuinely good, inspirational person, he’s alsoincredibly quick to judge, and often fails to think things through. He has nosolid plans in mind most of the time, fails to take facts and evidence intoaccount as they arise, and is very clearly meant to parallel Ouma’s unrelentingparanoia with his own blind faith in the people he likes.

However… I do think that a certain degree of Momota’shypocrisy stems more from Kodaka’s own hypocrisy as a writer, rather than beingincluded as a deliberate character flaw. There are many flaws which Momotaexhibits throughout the game which aren’t actually addressed as flaws at all bythe narrative.

Toxic masculinity is a prime example; many of Momota’s “solutions”to the problems Saihara, Gonta, and Hoshi experience involve the idea of “manningup.” Being emotional or “weak” is seen as “unmanly,” and therefore,undesirable. Crying, feeling depressed or suicidal, and talking about one’sproblems are all seen as signs of “weakness,” and things that a “man shouldn’tdo.” Meanwhile, much of his advice for Maki is the opposite; much of hiscriticism of her is that she’s “not girly enough,” or that she’s “doing thingsa girl shouldn’t do.”

Rather than describing her backstory and the trauma sheendured as something horrible that no human being should ever have to gothrough, much of Momota’s dialogue simply boils down to how “a girl shouldn’tkill people,” or “a girl shouldn’t use deadly weapons.” Even his initial trustin her and decision to “rip off her mask” is because, as he says in Chapter 3, “hejust can’t believe a weak-looking girl like her killed people for a living.”

This makes the entire dynamic between them somewhatfrustrating to watch in later chapters, as a relationship that could easilyhave been about a child soldier coming to view herself as a human being ratherthan a tool is instead shoehorned into a stereotypical narrative about a cold, “unfeeling”girl discovering her “maidenly” side through falling in love.

Unfortunately, this mindset is never once really, trulyaddressed as outdated or flawed by the narrative. Saihara is encouraged tobecome more like Momota, rather than Momota being encouraged to tone down someof his more hyper-masculine ways. When the results for the first ndrv3popularity poll were released in Japan, Kodaka even noted in an interview thathe was surprised Momota didn’t place higher—a pretty clear indication that hedidn’t see much wrong with Momota’s mindset or intend for those aspects of hischaracter to be treated as flaws.

Even more frustrating still, NISA’s localization oftenremoved even these flaws entirely from the game. Much of Momota’s toxicmasculinity was toned down considerably for the localization, resulting inconsiderably tamer dialogue from him. There are two examples I can think of offthe top of my head.

The first is a more well-known one which I’ve discussedbefore: in the original version of the game, in Chapter 2, Momota callsKorekiyo the word “okama,” a word that’s essentially a slur on par with thef-slur or the t-slur, and associated with heavily homophobic/transphobicsentiment. It’s often aimed towards flamboyantly gay men, or trans women, whoare unfortunately seen as “not real women” and are lumped into the samecategory as “gay men.”

It’s frustrating enough that this slur was used for comicrelief in the original version of the game, but the localization doesn’tinclude it at all. Instead, Momota calls Korekiyo “girly,” which doesn’tcapture the same negative sentiment at all. As a gay and trans person myself, I’mpersonally all for removing slurs—the problem is that I’m pretty sure the slurwas removed mostly to improve reception of Momota’s character in the west, rather thanbecause the slur was offensive in the first place. After all, plenty of slurswere added to the localization by other translators (Miu’s being perhaps themost notable, with more than 6 additions of the r-slur that weren’t in theoriginal, and that’s just what I’ve counted so far). And I think it’s worth noting that Momota’s reception in the western fandom has, in fact, been far more positive than it was in Japan.

The second example I can think of is in Momota’s FTEs, whichI translated some time before the localization released. In the final FTE,Momota refers to Saihara’s entire backstory (including his trauma from havingruined a man’s attempts at revenge and sent him to jail) as “kudaranai”—a wordwhich is very noticeably not polite or formal, and often translated as “stupid,”“worthless,” “idiotic,” etc. It’s a very blunt, straightforward assessment,hence why there’s an option in the dialogue for Saihara to get very, very madat Momota and tell him off—but in the localization, “kudaranai” was translatedas “trivial.”

There’s a world of difference between telling someone, “It’sreally stupid for you to be traumatized over something like that,” and “That’sa very trivial thing to be traumatized over.” In fact, the localization’sphrasing was so absurdly polite that it actually made Saihara’s angry responseseem like a drastic overreaction, rather than something justified. This is notthe only time Momota’s dialogue was shifted to seem far more polite or lessblunt, but simply one that I remember stuck the most with me, as I hadtranslated those FTEs myself and therefore remembered very well what kinds ofdialogue Momota used in the original Japanese.

These flaws, both with the original writing and thelocalization, result in Momota having a few very noticeable flaws to hischaracter which aren’t ever actually brought up by the other characters or questioned.Given that Momota’s role in the story is meant to be heroic, inspirational, anduplifting to Saihara and Maki (two out of three of the survivors), this meansthat many of his more serious flaws are somewhat brushed under the rug by theend in order to remember him better as the sort of grand, larger-than-life herohe wanted to go out as.

This is what therefore results in a sense of hypocrisy abouthis character and role within the story. While it’s true that hypocrisy is oneof his actual character traits, it’s also true that it wasn’t exactly handledas a flaw or called out in the same way that it would’ve been for a lesscentral, heroic figure to the plot. Even his jealousy of Saihara, which Imentioned was addressed near the tail end of Chapter 5, is especiallyhandwaved, and only brought up within the last few minutes of the post-trial.

None of this is to say that Momota isn’t a good character,of course! He’s extremely important to the plot of ndrv3, and I don’t thinkthere’s any denying that he’s a good person inclined to seek out the best inothers and inspire them. All of his positive traits are definitely there:loyalty, ambition, and unwavering faith in his friends. But it’s also true thathypocrisy is a very recurring theme with his character—both within thenarrative and outside of it, from the standpoint of Kodaka as a writer simplyfailing to call out or address certain character flaws.

This has gotten pretty long, so I’ll stop for now, but Ihope I could help answer your question, anon! Thank you for stopping by!