#tsumugi worked hard on those characters and shes making it everyone’s problem

[thebibliomancer]

Let’s talk merchandizing.

I would honestly be surprised if sending in an application to be on Danganronpa, the popular television show that literally gets away with murder, did not involve a waiver signing away the rights to your OC.

“The investigation is wrapping up and soon it will be time for another class trial! Virtual World Miu plushes now available in the online store! Squeeze her neck and she’ll say one of ten iconic lines! Order before the class trial concludes and get a Monokub plush free!”

[sammylbir]

Rewriting Tsumugi Shirogane

WARNING. The following analyses contains massive spoilers for V3. You have been warned. This only applies to V3 Mugi and not non-despair Mugi.

Ah Tsumugi Shirogane. Everyone's favorite cosplayer and one of the most underrated characters that there are. I asked ya all whom I should rewrite next, so....ya chose her. Goodie.

Since she's my fav, this is a really special post for me and I hope ya like it too. Meow meow. As always, those are my opinions and you can feel free to disagree with them.

Have fun!

Appearance:

Okay, I would trade her skirt for a pair of long black jeans. She'd also wear a pair of gloves, along with her hair being more kept and she no longer wears her blazer. She still has the same blouse and as for that, I think she looks prettier without her blazer. Is it just me? Or....

In any case, based on my Aphoragender Tsumugi Post she changes her appearance quite a lot, depending on her mood and taste. Either more masculine or boyish. She also has a bag, with all of her items she needs for styling.

Personality:

Tsumugi has in this version, a gentle demeanor. She speaks very softly and slowly and in a sophisticated manner, while also being encouraging and polite. Her otaku tendencies are a bit turned up, as she is often seen writing fan-fiction about random topics and she is not ashamed in doing that, though she is a bit taken aback when someone asks her about her interests.

However that personality of hers, is not a facade. While her true persona is far more cunning and intelligent, she does keep a gentle demeanor throughout and genuinely seems to love her creations. But only as far as the love for a pet would go and she has no problems hurting her "friends" in order to keep the Killing Game going, though she is able to mourn for her friends.

She is a control freak and hates it, when her "pets" don't do as she says. Her "love", while genuine to an extent, is pretty toxic and she will react violently if anyone defies her. In the final trial, she even mimics the survivor's voices, to break them further and yet also give some thin sweet words of encouragement. The only time when she is completely taken aback, is when her participants refuse to play her game. At that point, she suddenly sounds a lot more monotone and empty, while being even more cruel and desperate.

Past:

Now...this one's hard. Especially since V3 has no real clear truth or consistent nature. So I will base it on the idea, if Team Danganronpa really was a thing. Okay?

Tsumugi was once a nameless student, one who was constantly unhappy due to how the world worked. They saw firsthand how cruel life could be and thanks to that, Tsumugi often consumed fiction to escape reality and became obsessed with the idea of becoming someone else. Which is how they got into cosplaying.

Tsumugi is not her real name. It's one of many fake characters she created and she eventually joined Team Danganronpa, because the show gave her comfort for years to come. Danganronpa was the only thing that gave her happiness. Thanks to this, they threw away their past identity and name, to not remember their nightmarish past life.

At first, Tsumugi was hesitant to host death games themselves, but over the years they got used to it and saw it as her way of life. Their morals disappeared over the years and what remains is an amalgamation of masks over masks and false personas. Deep down, all they want is love and to truly be happy and during the final trial when Shuichi rejects them with the rest, they actually look a bit shaken and taken aback, before calmly accepting their fate and the end of the show.

Tsumugi is supposed to show, what happens when you try to fill your life with too much fiction and how hollow it can make you feel, instead of facing your unhappiness dead on. Even though there is no excuse for her crimes, Tsumugi is still a pitiful creature in the end.

Someone, who kept on believing in her fictional lie.

Trivia:

-Tsumugi can mimic voices and builts easily, thanks to her acting and sewing expertise.

-She is actually much stronger than she looks, but hides that behind a petite frame.

-Out of all the characters, she despised Kokichi the most and loved Kaede the most.

-She has no beliefs in rules or norms.

Quotes: "You have to cosplay with love. Just like with any passion, you have to do what you love, not for the sake of money or external rewards. No...you need to do it for yourself. For yourself and no one else." (Fake Persona) "Hmm.....Don't be sad, my friends. Look on the bright side. You got so close together and your love for one another will never fade. Like mine towards you. I love you so much." (Semi-True Persona) "..........And here I was trying to be nice. I won't feel any guilt now, for putting my pets in place. You need to learn some discipline now...And how you should NEVER defy me." (True Persona) "........I don't get it. I don't understand. You want to escape....and then what? You want to go back to your boring lives? Instead of living in my paradise?" (When the survivors refuse to go along with her.) "..............You worry too much for that machine. Why bother? It's not even alive. It's just full of scripts. A useless tool. How would Miu say it....'Fucking Junk'." (When Shuichi tries to free Keebo.) "..................So. This is it then. Well.......good job....Do what you want then." (Tsumugi's final words, before the destruction of the academy)

And that's it. Sorry if this rewrite was just horrible, but....I did my best. Feel free to Like and Reblog and I'll see ya soon.

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

In my opinion, V3 was honestly one of the weaker games of the franchise. And our resident asshole (/lighthearted) of the game, Kokichi, is believe it or not, not a perfectly written character.

First of all, bad start, inherently biases people who like kokichi against you

I know his plan was to end the killing game the whole time. The problem is that he doesn't have a solid motive to do so. At least not one that is clear to the viewers.

Kokichi's motive is that he hates the game, he wants to avenge the people who have died, bring pain upon those who made them suffer, this would be further accented by his motive video, which in japanese states that murder is against one of the main rules of his organization "「人を殺さない」かつ「笑える犯罪」をモットーに、愉快犯的な犯行を繰り返す”DICE"には", but in the adaption they just call them petty and nonviolent criminals which makes chapter 6 even more confusing but ANYWAY

His plan may have been to checkmate the mastermind, but his plan seems to fall apart when you realize he has no proof Monokuma would end the killing game. He’s doing this massive elaborate plan, assuming Monokuma won’t just pick a random person to execute so the game can continue.

Except he couldn't do that, with Kaede she had left a clear and open opportunity for tsumugi, but if monokuma wanted to frame someone for this murder, not only would he have to find someone who could reasonably be believed to have killed kokichi or kaito, and wouldn't be able to argue against it, that's only Maki, and with the body crushed while she poisoned them, it'd be very hard to be able to truly 100% claim it was maki, especially when the person in the exisal is taking credit. Tsumugi just made it so kaede's trapped looked like it worked, she could not do that here

Because fundamentally, this game is unfair. Kokichi assuming Monokuma would play fair makes his plan just seem redundant, as well put together as it may have been.

Kokichi's point wasn't to fix the game from the inside, he wanted to anger whoever was watching into going against the game, he's not targeting the mastermind or the people in the game, he's targeting the audience to go "thats STUPID why even BOTHER if they can't be consistent" he's not trying to beat the mastermind, he's trying to make a plot hole so obnoxious everyone stops wanting to watch, or at the very least means no one gets executed

A buddy of mine posted a similar opinion a couple days ago and got absolutely dogpiled because she wasn't absolutely praising the hydrologic press that he was crushed in

If you mean elysia-nsimp then the note count on that post is 21 at time of writing this section, with six reblogs and only five of those have any sort of interaction on it, that's not a dogpile, especially since in one post it was only in the tags and another was going "oh okay i disagree but you're valid" and at least on the post itself there wasn't really any name calling, personally, i said i didn't trust them to write kokichi in a rewrite if they think they should potentially make them an irredeemable villain and then actively linked a video essay about kokichi and common complaints about him.

Also again, bad optics, you make yourself out to be SUPER defensive and thus, not someone people want to engage with.

Info dump to me and clearly point out what exactly his motive was, based entirely on the context clues of the game. What are things that are clear as day? What can be read in between the lines? Why did he want to end the killing game? What was his motive?

It's a killing game, what more motive then "killing bad" does he honestly need? He also points out he hates the loss of control when he asks how a game one is forced to play is fun, kokichi does not like being told what to do.

So things that deny him and people around him freedom to make their own choices and do what they want are very much things kokichi wants to get rid of it. Kokichi's entire philosophy is antithetical to the existence of any game where you have no choice but to play or die, because that's boring, and takes away a right to live how one wants to live.

He also just finds it in general boring, he talks constantly throughout the game how he wants to entertain people and have fun, one of the biggest compliments kokichi can give is something "isnt boring" but he actively calls the killing game boring, then a few moments later asks kaito to confirm he wasn't boring. The killing game is a boring prison with nothing Kokichi actually likes in it, of course he wants out

I also want to point out his suicide plan wasn't his main plan, he specifically says things are ruined now thanks to the actions of Maki, this wasn't plan A, plan A was the outside world truth, this was his "im going to be dead in less then an hour" plan, which he clearly had planned in advance, but that doesn't mean he wanted it to be used

There is nothing else Kokichi can try but this, he's dying as he speaks, he asks them to hurry up because its starting to hurt to breathe, someone is going to blacken either way, there is no option left here he does not die, both of them are dead men walking, Kaito from his illness and Kokichi from poison, so he's trying to do as much damage as he can before he goes, to shoot it's credibility in the foot, and to give one final middle finger. Kokichi will die, but Kaito gets the chance to be the hero, one last time, with this plan. Plus, when it became clear that Monokuma had figured it all out thanks to Shuichi, Kaito actively left the exisal, the moment it was clear that the plan had failed, it was stopped, theoreticals of "monokuma could have done this" does not matter, because kaito proved he was willing to leave the exisal for the safety of the class.

Even if the plan failed though, it still worked in it's own right, Kaito got to inspire everyone, Maki got to live, Kaito got to give an extra middle finger to Monokuma by dying before the execution could kill him, and Kiibo.... Kiibo was very inspired by the sacrifice

Y'know what? I feel like throwing myself to the wolves today.

Hello Danganronpa fandom! I would like to hear unbiased opinions, please. Emphasis on unbiased.

In my opinion, V3 was honestly one of the weaker games of the franchise. And our resident asshole (/lighthearted) of the game, Kokichi, is believe it or not, not a perfectly written character.

Please do not come onto this post calling me a dumbass that is falling for "propaganda." I know his plan was to end the killing game the whole time. The problem is that he doesn't have a solid motive to do so. At least not one that is clear to the viewers. His plan may have been to checkmate the mastermind, but his plan seems to fall apart when you realize he has no proof Monokuma would end the killing game. He’s doing this massive elaborate plan, assuming Monokuma won’t just pick a random person to execute so the game can continue. Because fundamentally, this game is unfair. Kokichi assuming Monokuma would play fair makes his plan just seem redundant, as well put together as it may have been. A buddy of mine posted a similar opinion a couple days ago and got absolutely dogpiled because she wasn't absolutely praising the hydrologic press that he was crushed in (too soon? Nah it's been four years it's fine). In fact, one of the points made above was one I directly copy pasted got from her in specific and I took so that you as the readers could hear her without her getting all the notifications. will not be stating any names out of my respect and care for this friend. But for the love of god, don't dogpile anyone for their opinions.

The purpose of this post is to hear outsider, completely unbiased opinions about Kokichi as a character. So when replying to this post, take those biases and lock them away in a safe. You don't need to throw them away entirely, just put them away until you hit the post button. Info dump to me and clearly point out what exactly his motive was, based entirely on the context clues of the game. What are things that are clear as day? What can be read in between the lines? Why did he want to end the killing game? What was his motive? If you think you know the motive, explain to me what I apparently missed and when it happened. Provide me proof and screenshots. Just all around make it make sense without using profanity and calling me an imbecile for not understanding something that was not written in a way that was clear. I dont not want those kinds of responses, as they really do not help. And as lightheartedly as possible, calling me names in the replies over something like this really doesn't provide me with a reason to take your word for it.

And hey! If you agree with me, I would also genuinely love to hear your personal take on the whole thing and what you think could've been done better with his character. What are your ideas? What do you think would've been really cool and interesting if it had been implemented?

I do not condone the way a lot of you handled my friend's post. So please do not talk to me the same way. Please come in to this post with the assumption that I have already completed the game and I already know what happened.

I humbly await for your perspectives.

[theultimatefanficwriter]

Pride Month Headcanons!

So its Pride Month! And as a proud member of the alphabet mafia I wanna give my opinion on all the Danganronpa characters' sexualities! So let's go, starting with THH!

Trigger Happy Havoc

Makoto Naegi- Pansexual. I'm under the belief all protags are Pan. Transgender(ftm). So I have this whole hc that the reason his door was jammed was that the lock was quickly removed when they found out SHE was actually a HE and I just like the hc lol.

Sayaka Maizono- Straight. I just think she has a big thing for Makoto, but other than that she cares for her career more than a relationship.

Leon Kuwata- Bisexual, heavy female leaning. I ship him with Hiro, but honestly this fucker would probably take forever to admit he likes guys.

Chihiro Fukisaki- Gay. Dont really have a reasoning. Just my opinion lol

Mondo Oowada- Bisexual. He mentions trying to confess to girls, but come on. This guy is fruity for Taka.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru- Gay. This dude meanwhile is just straight homo. He's probably closeted in fear it would bring shame to his family name again.

Hifumi Yamada- Straight. I honestly dont think about the guy enough to give this enough thought, but the way he simps over Celeste proves he likes girls at least. Plus he kept calling Alter Ego she, so...yeah.

Celestia Ludenberg- Straight. Honestly I think she'd be homophobic? Idk i really dislike Celeste, sorry 😅 She just gives me those vibes.

Sakura Oogami- Bisexual. I wanna label her as lesbian, but Kenshiro exists 😒 Women leaning possibly

Kyoko Kirigiri- Bisexual. Though i dont personally ship her with any girls, I can see her going both ways.

Byakuya Togami- Gay. And it's a problem with his family, so he's closeted.

Yasuhiro Hagakure- Pansexual. He just wants to love someone, man lmao.

Aoi Asahina- Bisexual. Again, wanna label her as lesbian, but the Bad End exists, showing she willingly got with three guys. And she does ask Makoto to pretend to be her bf. But she leans heavily towards females imo.

Toko Fukawa/Genocide Jill- Bisexual. It was straight until she met Komaru. Then she realized "Oh shit. I'm gay." But she still has a small thing for Byakuya ig 😒

Mukuro Ikusaba- Straight. We pretend the thing with her sister doesnt exist, alright?

Junko Enoshima- Straight. And definitely homophobic.

Wow a lot of bi peeps lol. Alright, onto the next game!

Goodbye Despair

Hajime Hinata- Pansexual. Again all protags are Pan. Fight me, prove me wrong you literally cant.

Ultimate Imposter- Panromantic, Nonbinary, Asexual. Though I call Imposter he a lot, I think it's almost canon they're nonbinary. I just have stupid brain and type he first without thinking. I also dont really have a reason for thinking they're asexual? I just think they are. But they're probably panromantic in order to fit their talent better.

Teruteru Hanamura- Pansexual. He's so painfully pan. He even says his options are, and I quote, "pretty open." Dis bitch gay.

Mahiru Koizumi- Lesbian. Dont think I gotta explain myself.

Peko Pekoyama- Bisexual. She's totally dating Fuyuhiko, but I can see her having small crushes on other girls.

Hiyoko Saionji- Lesbian. Also dont think I need to explain myself.

Ibuki Mioda- Bisexual. RAGING bisexual. Also I can honestly see her being Gender Fluid as well.

Mikan Tsumiki- Bisexual. She honestly needs therapy more than she needs a relationship, and she probably doesnt really understand her own labels completely, but I think shes bi.

Nekomaru Nidai- Bisexual. Homeboy was a little TOO eager to be rubbed down by Teruteru 😏 Just kidding, though I do think Nekomaru is bi. No real reason honestly

Gundham Tanaka- Bisexual. He obviously has a thing for Sonia, and in a perfect world(i.e. my perfect world) he would be holding hands with Kazuichi daily. Speaking of holding hands he basically breaks Hajime's in the FTEs. Gay 🥰

Nagito Komaeda- Gay. He's very obviously gay coded, mostly towards Hajime though I dont personally ship that.

Chiaki Nanami- Pansexual. She loves everyone equally. Honestly she probably doesnt put too much work on her labels and would probably go by any pronouns as well, so maybe Gender Fluid?

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu- Bisexual. Like Leon I think it would take him a while to accept he likes guys, and he probably leans towards girls more, but he's definitely fruity lol.

Sonia Nevermind- Pansexual. Our girl fucks. She dont care who, she just FUCKS. 🤣 But seriously, I think she just sees love as love. As she should.

Kazuichi Souda- Gay. Transgender, (ftm). He's so very closeted, so badly even he doesnt recognize it. He probably even has internalized homophobia, probably because of his father. Not sure why I hc him as trans, I just think it fits.

Akane Owari- Straight. She probably doesnt think about it much. All she knows is she likes fighting, meat, and Coach Nekomaru.

Alright and onto the last game!

Killing Harmony

Shuichi Saihara- Pansexual, Transgender(ftm). Its. THE RULE. I didnt make it. Sue me. Also fuck it I dunno I think it fits with his whole character if he were trans. Hard to explain lol

Rantaro Amami- Biromantic, Asexual. I admittedly dont know much about Rantaro, but from what I do know, I think he would fit well with just about anyone. I dont have much of a reason for him being Ace.

Kaede Akamatsu- Pansexual. She was the protagonist first, so the rule still applies lol. But even beyond that it just fits her. Hard to explain, it just seems like it works.

Ryoma Hoshi- Straight, Asexual. I know on my ship list I said I shipped him with Gonta, but theres a reason that ship was so low. I heavily think Ryoma is straight. It's just the vibe I get from him. Maybe hes bi curious, but idk. As for the ace bit, it's really dark. I hc it's because of the trauma he endured during prison.

Kirumi Tojo- Lesbian. Idk I look at her and I think "Lesbian power. Powerful wlw moments." Dont ask me my brain just does things.

Angie Yonaga- Pansexual. She always seemed like she was flirting with Himiko and lowkey Tenko, and in the FTEs she straight up wants to get married to Shuichi so like....I dunno what you want me to say.

Tenko Chabashira- Lesbian. Literally no explanation needed.

Korekiyo Shinguji- Pansexual. Putting aside the....obvious....he finds all of humanity beautiful, so he most likely doesnt have a preference when it comes to choosing a partner. Just like with Mukuro we pretend that entire plotline never happened.

Miu Iruma- Pansexual. I see her as pretty open to everyone....Yeah. That's all I got.

Gonta Gokuharu- Bi-curious. Honestly I dont think Gonta knows what he is himself. He probably hasnt given it too much thought, if hes given it any. The best I can think of is bi-curious, assuming hes currently exploring his sexuality.

Kokichi Ouma- Gay. I dont ship him with anyone cause I personally think he'd be a bad partner to anyone he got with based off of his personality, but yeah. He gay lmao.

Kaito Momota- Pansexual. THE LUMINARY OF THE STARS IS FOR EVERYBODY! Probably took a while for him to admit he wasnt straight, but then he admitted it with his whole heart, precious thing.

Tsumugi Shirogane- Straight. Fuck I dunno I dont think about her in a positive light enough to care. Sorry I really tried 😅

Kiibo- Panromantic, Genderfluid, Asexual. Like Imposter, I've called Kiibo he all the time, including every story I put them in, but technically they have no gender. So that does make them nonbinary, but at the same time it leaves the opportunity for them to go by any pronoun they want, so I hc they go by all of them lol. I also think they just love everyone, and for the ace bit, unfortunately, robots probably dont have dicks 😔 Even if they did, I dont think he would be very interested in sex.

Himiko Yumeno- Lesbian. Despite her treatment of Tenko, her reaction at the end of chapter 3 shows she cared for her, and Angie. She probably loved them both, so, lesbian for sure.

Maki Harukawa- Straight. Kaito was probably her first ever crush, so I doubt she ever had a chance to feel out if she was anything other than straight. Even disregarding that, I dont think she'd be anything else.

Alright and those are my headcanons for all the Danganronpa characters! As a bonus, I think Komaru Naegi is a Lesbian! No real reason other than Tokomaru is top tier lol.

Now remember these are my opinions! If you dont agree that's fine! Just be kind!

And HAPPY PRIDE EVERYONE! 🥰🏳️‍🌈

[derireo]

lvl 100, top tier pogchamp request: mod's izuomi hcs :)))

FIRST THING that came to mind: omi is little spoon. no i will not be taking any criticisms, leave me alone!!!

ur telling me omi, being the mom of the company, is not the little spoon?? ur telling me izumi doesn't hold omi from behind and he doesn't melt in her embrace? get away from me </3 /j

omi's my main comfort character and i relate to him a lot when it comes to taking care of others. so who is taking care of him once he's done with the family??? it's izumi of course!!! izumi can u hold me too? pls.

they spend a lot of nights together in bed just talking about their day in hushed whispers, holding hands or each other's faces... it's a good way to unwind and fall asleep

and talking about SLEEP. omi is the one who always falls asleep first. it used to be izumi since she'd be constantly working and omi would scold her enough for her to begrudgingly go to bed first.

but with the presence of izumi now being a constant in omi's life, knowing that she's in bed with him, holding him tight with her hand cradling the back of his head while he presses his nose into her neck, he falls asleep like a baby. sure, his nightmares sometimes comes back and rouses the both of them from sleep, but izumi is always there to remind omi that the things being said in his dreams are simply not true.

talking about nightmares. nachi. omi can't ever seem to let him go and izumi understands that. nachi was a huge part of omi's life and the memory of him still carries on in the little things. sometimes even looking at juza is enough to throw omi into a spiral.

izumi doesn't have to, but she reminds omi that it isn't his fault. how could he have known that something like that was going to happen? he didn't have to feel guilty for taking on the dream that nachi left behind; he didn't even have to carry on his dream, but he did. is that not enough for him to know that it wasn't his fault? they were practically still kids. just reckless kids.

they visit his grave together twice a year. on his birthday and his death anniversary.

izumi arranges flowers (she learned from tsumugi) for the visit while omi makes nachi's favourite snacks to share.

ahem. onto nicer things. izumi is always looking for new hobbies to pick up, and considering omi has a lot of those, he teaches izumi as many things as she wants!

photography was probably the most fun thing to teach izumi due to all of the photos they got to take together. of course, omi was still a little camera shy, but if izumi was in the picture with him then he'd have no problem. actually; he'd be too busy staring at izumi to remember that he was supposed to be looking into the camera.

making felt dolls was out of the question because izumi is super clumsy. she's poked her fingers way too many times for omi to let her continue.

HELP AND AT THE MARKETS they'd be mistaken for a married couple. u can't tell me i'm wrong, pls, i'll cry.

and since omi is a hunk of a young man OF COURSE THE dear old ladies are going to give them extra produce and sales (when they can). izumi can't complain because if she were in their shoes she would do the exact same thing.

very cute in the kitchen when everyone else is in their rooms or not at home. they like to make a mess as long as it's not bad enough to elicit some ungodly reaction from sakyo. omi is secretly a brat (let him let out some steam!) sometimes so if izumi paints his cheek with some cake batter he will absolutely splatter izumi's face with flour as payback!

but if they're really just trying to cook then they work diligently!!! very quick!!! they taste test each other's food too which means lots of spoon feeding and teasing!! sobs.

also. omi calls izumi squishy. HE CALLS HER SQUISHY. he's all sharp lines and hard muscle so when he hugs, cuddles izumi who is all soft and smooth edges of course he's gotta call her something sweet!!! "hi, squish." he'll say sometimes if he sneaks up on her at her desk. HELP ME. GOD.

izumi doesn't rlly mind getting called squishy but tasuku called her "squidge" once and she kneed him in the side. rightfully so!!!!!!

izumi's nickname for omi is: brick. (one, bc he's got a body as hard as brick, and two, bc he's rlly oblivious sometimes) her second nickname for omi is wolfie, but only if he's in a very good mood or is in need of cuddles.

AGAIN. OMI LITTLE SPOON. SMALL CUDDLE BUDDY. and since we r on this topic. might i just add that OMI LOVES IZUMI'S THIGHS. like this isn't even nsfw it's just that omi loves her legs, help.

u know that tiktok of that girl who films herself wrapping her thighs around her boyfriend's head and he is just in absolute bliss??? THAT'S IZUOMI!!!! SO MANY IZUMI SHIPS WOULD BE THAT TIKTOK COUPLE.

izumi would be reading a book or script on the bed and omi would just crawl between her legs and lay there on his back while scrolling through the newest photos on his camera— only to fall asleep not even five minutes later. (omi can i have a turn please)

anyways these are just some hcs i have of izuomi....mind not working rn bc i’m thinking of angst stuff and a3! anniversary... if i have more, i will churn them out another day!

[icharchivist]

first: WAHHHHHHHHH 😭😭😭 I got so emotional!!! so emotional!!!! so much that I can’t even do this first second pattern bc I have SO MANY thoughts!!!!!!! I’m writing this in my notes instead of straight into the askbox so u know it’s serious business™

ok so debut night!!! I was like ahah yeah it’s a tragedy whatever it’ll be fun to start out with and then the voice acting was SO good that it knocked me out of the park and I almost cried haha. it’s crazy how good the voice acting in a3 is like I love how the dialogue and voice acting works well together bc like it’s limited but so effective!! u can so very clearly see and understand the style they’re going for. especially like tsumugi’s death scene... the Talent jumped out it really did... uh and ok so. I think I may be a littleeee confused abt the play bc I had always interpreted tasukus last lines as raphael to be like abt his being secretly in love with michael. but now that I’m actually reading the line that’s like oh don’t fall for a human it only ends in misery I know that all too well or whatever... ig the implication is that raphael was in love with another human / the same lady michael was in love with in the play. side note I had to go back and edit the proper names in instead of tasuku and tsumugi lol... but speaking of!! speaking of the voice acting and the play itself I 1) love how blatantly obvious it is when tsumugi goes for that grander, tasuku like style of delivery!! like u could just so easily feel the difference it was wild... and 2) tsuzuru is once again spot on with his writing, lol... I felt that like raphaels inability to save or help michael really parallels how tasuku feels abt tsumugi so well, and it’s wonderful that they r able to resolve things and tasuku can properly compliment him on his acting where the angels fail to do so. it’s very good. and I think the play rly highlights (for me at least) that like. to tasuku, it was tsumugi who was sort of an unreachable existence. like were he to idolize and respect someone’s acting, it would be tsumugi. and I think that like caring carries over into their roles really well, because I think in michael’s love for a human tasuku sees like... tsumugi’s style of acting. the heart that he’d lost while within the god troupe. mb I’m losing my mind a little but ah. the play rly works with their relationship so well!! im very excited to see the other winter ppl get main roles tho—same for all the troupes!!! now this ask is too long so I’ll have to do another part lol

going to start off this second part of the ask abt hisoka bc oh my GOD. hisoka. like I was just thinking “hm where r the winter troupe cgs anyways” and then BAM. hisoka CRYING???? especially since he doesn’t seem that emotional it was a really hard hit!!! and who tf is august.... ok well actually theory time!! skipping ahead to the end theres that note that like mentions December and April and. not to expose my friend but very many years ago (a couple years before a3 was launched, at the very least) she wrote this story where there were like 12 orphan assassins and they were all named after months. I remember the main dude was named dec lol. coupled with my “hisoka is capable of murder” bit? listen.... I’m not saying anything but I’m also not not saying anything if u feel me. also I feel like assassin / thief with mysterious background is a common trope!! that was silver from the pokémon adventures manga too... why is this my reference point lmao. anyways I’m unclear if assassins would make it into a3 but like.... if the yakuza and supernatural stuff makes it in...

okay moving away from conspiracy theories and into emotions!!! the quotes from like EVERY mankai actor before the final production made me SO emo... and yay!!! they won!!!! (though admittedly I almost had a heart attack when no one clapped) but they won!!!! that ending cg!!!! and I adore how sakyo immediately goes after god troupe man (I know his name is reni I just don’t feel like calling him that) for the money lol it’s just so sakyo-like. also I love the lil mixed troupe interactions!! I found the game night ch so fun.... ahh, now I wanna reread that ch since it was so good lol

all in all I was super satisfied ahh!! I am SO excited to start up spring troupe again (HELLO character development!!! and chikage) and I’m even MORE excited to get thru all the act 1 events!!!! as a final note, is there any way to reread or replay the flair conversations? I didn’t want any spoilers for the plays while I was doing the practices for them so I kinda sped thru the first time ahah...

HELLO FRIEND IM SO HAPPY TO GET SUCH A LENGHTY ASK ABOUT WINTER IM LKDJFLKDJFLKFD  Winter makes me feel shrimps emotions (i know the whole “shrimps can see more colors than humans can’t comprehend” thing has been disproved but i’m not letting go of that expression, i REALLY feel emotions humans can’t comprehend anymore and i’m going to make it everyone else’s problem)

1) First about the voice acting, rIGHT this is just so fascinating to me!!! I remember after act 2 i came back to reread the main act 1 chapter and i was so thrown out by how GOOD the voice acting was, especially for the first few troupes having to convince you they’re not comfortable or good at acting yet. Winter whole thing is that they’re more subtle and mature and you really feel that with their voice acting, Tsumugi’s voice especially knock it off the park anytime he’s on screen. 

2) Second: what does it say about me that i’ve never, ever considered your reading a possibility because i was so set on “oh Raphael you’re in love with Michael sooooo bad you see it as a tragedy already because you can see him throw his life away” i didn’t even consider “maybe Raphael went through that too”. Though i guess if we’re going with that reading i can totally see “The Woman” they let themselves consumed by easily be a representation of acting or even more the God Troupe, with Raphael/Tasuku knowing to step away before it consumes him completely while Michael/Tsumugi, by his love and passion, pushed himself until he broke, which fits and it hurtsssss god Winter plays hits so hard.

3) Third: oh god yeah when Tsumugi goes for Tasuku’s acting it’s just. It makes me SO uncomfortable, i’ve experienced this scene like three times by now and the third time i was just “can i skip it i can’t go through this again i can’t Tsumugi i love you i can’t do this”. It doesn’t match the play at all and it just throws everyone off balance, and Tsumu you could have told theM YOU WANTED TO DO THAT.... god

4) Fourth: I LOVE YOUR READING SO MUCH I LOVE IT I LOVE IT YES YOU’RE RIGHT!!! Just as we follow Tsumugi let his passion consumes him until he breaks, Tasuku’s character arc really jumps out in Raphael, like, everything you say!!!  The way Tasuku/Raphael knew how the feelings Tsumugi/Michael felt would hurt him on the long run but he didn’t know what to do about it until it was too late, the regrets and the way Raphael voices his frustrations.... Tasuku struggles to be honest without acting (Tasuku pls i love you) but having such a role really help him expressing all he feels about Tsumugi and i’m HHHH this is so good so so good!!! but yeah i also love that Tasuku finally manages to actually compliment Tsumugi naturally, that he understands he can’t let him destroys himself again and it’s just gnhhhhh Tasuku is so kind and considerate and i care about him so much....!!!

5) Fifth: “i’m losing my mind a little” winter mood, winter mood winter mood- (though every troupe’s mood tbh but Winter is gnhhhhh kdhd hdhjf??? you feel me) (i am BIASED i can’t help it TwT) but yeaH i’m looking forward to see how you react to the others plays because the roller coaster juST BEGUN!!!

Onto part 2... Winter Troupe Chapter Feels... 2!

6) Sixth: DLFJDFKLDF HISOKAAAAAAAAAA I LOVE HIM SO MUCHHHHH. Hisoka crying fucked me up so bad!! so so bad!! Like on my first read i didn’t know what to think of him as he starts out very apathic to his troupe and then the more it goes on the more you can feel he starts to open up and i’m soft for this sort of slow burn, but then this whole scene happened and it HIT ME IN THE FACE, he was crying, i was crying, we were all crying, the Unopening Door opened a flood of emotions i can’t cope with. He sounds SO VULNERABLE during that scene and i know all of the Winter Troupe united on “taking care of him” but that’s really the moment i went “i care you and i will keep taking care of you” and look at me now. Thanks funky little scene for ruining my life. I’m glad you liked it i’m aldhjflkjdfkd Hisokaaaaa.....

7) Seventh: I am not commenting on the theory but 👀 that’s so highly specific your friend has a galaxy brain i love it. and i love the idea of “well we have yakuza and supernatural entity what’s an assassin adding himself to it” dLKFJDLKF i know everyone in Mankai calls Izumi out everytime someone joins but that’d be peak. I’m not going further about what December and August and April are all about but i love this plotline sO much, the few mentions of August when Hisoka regained his memories for a minute still haunts me, the guilt he seems to feel and this pain i’m just... godddd such a good set up. I love this plotline.

8) Eigth: EMOTIONS!!  Oh GOD YEAH THE ENDING WITH ALL THE OTHER ACTORS... I cried so hard it’s just. It really shows you it’s not just the culmination of the Winter chapter but of all the act 1 main plot and it really makes you feel how much of a journey you’ve been onto!! A3 is so good at showing you the growth of its characters that especially by the end of Winter you really saw how all of them grew in their respective chapters and how cozy they felt in their new home in the remaining chapters, and the fact this chap has those defining character arc’s lines really drive home “oh my god that was a journey” i love them sO MUCH.... 

9) Ninth: wE WOOOON!!! They’re all so good i just. i’m gonna cry just thinking about it dlfdjlfk i know like, the game has so many content so you know it can’t end at the end of Winter but the suspense really was there. BUT YEAH LMAO I LOVE SAKYO DOING THAT IMMEDIATLY, man sure has the eyes on the prize and we love him for that.  AND THE GAME NIGHT SCENE they are all sO CUTE and sWEET and they’re a family now and i’m hHHHHH i love a3 a normal healthy amount that isn’t just making me cry thinking about how all of them grew so close even through mixed troupes.

10) Tenth: I am SO happy you were satisfied with the plot so far!! I’m genuinely so happy that you decided to take that journey with us and that you shared all of this with me, and i’m so so happy you liked it!! There is still so much content and all of it is so worth it! 

11) Eleventh: Yes!! The flair conversations are all readable on the Mini-Chat tab! So they’re easily accessible and they’re sorted in a way that’s easy to read so you can feel comfortable skipping the flairs if you want until you have seen the stories the flairs are all about. They’re all kinda set during the rehearsals (except for some crosstroupe conversation that wouldn’t make sense if they were like how the Summer Troupe talks with the Spring Troupe in their Flairs DKLFJDF but it’s okay what is a timeline anyway) so some of them are set pre-development and it’s wild to get back to them. I love rereading Flairs i get emotional everytime.

ANND That’s it for this ask! i had a blast reading through your thoughts and i’m so happy and excited!! i’ll send you the drive now so you can start digging through it whenever you feel like it :3c good luck grinding for act 2, meanwhile i hope you’ll have fun with all the act 1 events i compiled for you!!

(side note i need to update the drive too but it’s mostly act 2 content anyway, the only two act 1 things i need to update on it is Sakuya’s birthday card i think?? i think Itaru’s is already in act 2 so i’ll try to get around to it eventually but it’s so far away anyway) (edit: i forgot that the three cards i got for the latest revival are from act 1 DLKJFD okay so i’m missing three cards -)

The drive has backstages and event stories and it may be a lot and overwhelming ahah. Focus on the event stories for the plot and go back to the backstages whenever you feel like it, no need to read them at the same time, unless you want to in which case everything is set up for you :3c and there’s a file with cards that aren’t associated to events too so... lots of goodies hanging around. I’ll send it to you in DM ;O 

Take care and thank you so much for all your thoughts! my inbox remains wide opened for any others thoughts you may have as you go further into it :3c

[oumakokichi]

Hello I am the Tsumugi love hotel anon Thank you for answering my ask it's great to know that other people have the same problem Sorry if this sounds strange but it's hard for me to enjoy V3 without thinking about this I love Danganronpa and I like Tsumugi but this really really bothered me And I kinda don't want to assume that someone who created a series I like so much is like this I guess as a fan Do you have any advice? So sorry but I have this habit of overthinking things and just want help

Hi again anon! It’s not a strange question at all; this is sadly kind of a common dilemma to run into in most fandom spaces, and it’s perfectly normal to have conflicting feelings about these things.

The best advice I can give is to view everything through a critical lens. By this, I don’t mean “you can’t ever enjoy things casually” or “you have to hate the media you consume in order to be a Good Fan™.” I simply mean that it’s important to be aware that pretty much all media is going to be flawed on some level, and that it’s important to not brush aside those flaws when having a real discussion about the content we enjoy and consume.

Part of the reason why I love meta and analysis so much is precisely because it’s a really good way to sort through some of these more complicated feelings I have on certain topics. For as much as I love DR and as much as it’s been a huge source of enjoyment and comfort to me for quite a few years now, I’m never going to sit here and act like it doesn’t have its fair share of flaws. It’s certainly not for everyone, and I can completely understand why some people may not like it.

There’s a very fine line when discussing media too, between raising awareness that all media and content we consume is inherently flawed in some way, and simply dismissing it as okay because “well, everything is problematic in some way so it doesn’t matter.” These things do matter, and I feel like discussion of them is a very important part of critical analysis, especially when it raises awareness of potentially upsetting subject matter to people who may have been unaware of it before.

The entire love hotel scene with Tsumugi is undeniably in extremely poor taste, particularly when incest is a very real and terrible form of abuse that real survivors have suffered through. Seeing it used for nothing more than skeevy fanservice to pander to an otaku audience is deeply upsetting, particularly coming from a game that explicitly touches on the ways in which fiction can and does impact reality in very real, tangible ways.

It doesn’t help that the love hotel scenes themselves hang in a weird sort of limbo as far as their role in the game goes, either. There’s been a lot of debate in the fandom as to whether these scenes can even be considered “canon” on any level—and even if they’re not technically canon, which I think is a fair assessment given that none of the other characters even remember them after waking up and they have no real lasting impact on the plot, the decision to include them at all is still gross on some level.

In my personal opinion, the best way to determine how comfortable you are continuing to support a series or not, is to try and gauge authorial intent: why are these topics or themes included in this piece of media? What purpose do they serve? Are they contributing to a larger narrative by being included here?

To take a topical example… let’s compare this with Harry Potter. DR certainly has its flaws, and ndrv3 is no exception. Not only are certain unsavory “tropes” like incest played as either a punchline or a tool for fanservice, but even earlier parts of the series don’t hold up particularly well (like Chihiro’s “gender reveal”). These things are definitely not enjoyable parts of the narrative—but their presence in the narrative seems to stem from a larger issue of fanservice tropes in visual novels and anime overall, rather than some overarching attempt to either demonize any marginalized group or normalize harmful behavior in real life.

By contrast, through watching JK Rowling’s downward spiral on twitter in the last few years, we’ve seen her become more and more brazen about her hatred of trans people, and trans women in particular. Though she often attempted to brush these tweets aside at first as “middle-aged moments” or “accidents” where she wasn’t aware of the content being spouted by the people she was following, she’s become perhaps one of the most unapologetic T*RFs in the public consciousness.

No matter how much a series like Harry Potter may have shaped my and many other people’s childhoods in the past, it’s really impossible for me to go back to it nowadays as a trans individual. Re-reading the series with a much more critical eye shows that many of Rowling’s most harmful, offensive beliefs are not only something she spews on twitter every other month, but also downright woven into the narrative. Lines about “boys pretending to be girls to try and sneak into the dormitories” and Rita Skeeter’s “rather large, mannish hands” while she “disguises herself” to infiltrate the school premises just hit differently, knowing Rowling’s stance on trans issues and the disgusting harm that she advocates for with her huge platform.

I suppose that’s the biggest line I try to be aware of in deciding where I draw the line between enjoying a series while remaining critical of it, and just flat out refusing to support said series anymore. This line is understandably going to be different for different people, no doubt—but I think being mindful of what creators are actually doing with their platforms is the biggest indicator about the potential intentions behind their works.

The only other piece of advice I can think of to offer, and perhaps the most important one, is to simply support small creators with all the enthusiasm and love that you would for a large series. As long as we maintain a critical eye and awareness about the flaws within popular works like Danganronpa, I think it’s okay to keep enjoying said works. But there are so many content creators out there trying to contribute all kinds of meaningful works with better representation than anything we’ve seen in mainstream media, and it’s incredibly important to support these people so that their works can become better-known.

My best recommendation is to make sure you’re striving to support these smaller content creators: especially black artists and trans artists, who often get overlooked even when hashtags on twitter to support smaller artists are trending.

This sort of became a lengthier response than I was intending, but I felt your question deserved more of an in-depth look at the topic. I hope I was able to get my points across! Thank you for the question anon, and I really hope I could help.

[jitterbugperson]

Talentswap Au- Character Info

This is a Talentswap au, where the characters from v3 are given the talents of the characters from Trigger Happy Havoc, and are put into the same general plot and setting as the first game. The mastermind, motives, order of people murdered, victims, how they’re murdered, and who murdered them are all completely different from the first game. The personalities of the characters are similar to their canon personalities, but based on their new talents, their personalities were changed as a result of and in order to fit their new roles.

Angie Yonaga [Ultimate Clairvoyant]

She’s strange and mysterious, people don’t know a lot about her because she doesn’t share a lot about herself. Angie claims she can tell the future, and more often than not, she’s right. However, she tends not to share her readings of the future unless prompted to. She’s usually quiet, and she’s almost always smiling. At first her presence can be calming, but after a while she can be unsettling to be around as she tends to watch people without realizing it. Her gaze can be scary, and sometimes when she looks right into someone’s eyes, they feel as though she’s staring into their soul, reading their thoughts and uncovering their secrets. 

Kaito Momota [Ultimate Lucky Student]

Although his title is the “Ultimate Lucky Student”, he’s anything but. Kaito has the worst luck of anyone he knows, but despite that, he’s managed to keep his chin up and stay positive. At first, he’d tried to enroll into Hopes Peak as the Ultimate Botanist, since he had a particular love for plants and somehow managed to get every plant in his care to flourish regardless of the plant’s condition beforehand. But, because of his luck, last minute he was denied entree because all of the available spots had been filled. Except for one. He shot his last shot in the Lucky Student drawing, and somehow managed to get picked, against all odds. But that was just another trick from his rather shitty luck, and it only served to get him involved in the Killing Game. Aside from all of that, Kaito is stupidly optimistic, and is constantly trying to see the best in people, no matter the circumstances. He believes that with enough care and nurturing, anyone can flourish into a wonderful person, regardless of their circumstances and past. He has an incredible belief in anyone he considers a friend, and he’s a bit naive, so he considers most people his friend. He’s also a bit of a dumbass, despite having an extensive knowledge of a lot of things. He seems to lack a lot of common sense, while also being a little bit of a nerd when it comes to anything he likes. His mind is an enigma, half of the time he’s incredibly intelligent, and other times he has no idea what he’s doing. The entire AU is also in his point of view, so he’s the protagonist.

Kaede Akamatsu [Ultimate Affluent Progeny]

She’s the nice rich girl at your school. She always wears really nice clothes and is often nice to others, unless certain people are around. She’s sometimes a bully without realizing it because of the people she’s been raised around. She doesn’t exactly have the best role models in her life, so she has some beliefs that aren’t exactly the best. Sometime she doesn’t even realize what she’s saying is rude or hurtful, that’s just how she thinks people should treat each other. Other than that, she’s a generally pleasant person to be around, and is usually nice to people unless they give her a reason not to be. She uses sarcasm as a defense mechanism when she’s feeling threatened, nervous, scared, or anxious, so she isn’t always all buddy buddy, and her sarcasm can be scathing and hurtful if she really wants it to be. Usually however, she’s a pretty outgoing person, and has no problem making friends with her seemingly cheery personality.

Rantaro Amami [Ultimate Gambler]

Another mysterious character that’s constantly smiling, but unlike Angie, his smile isn’t one of happiness, but it seems to be more of a front, like a constant poker face to mask any emotions he may be feeling. It’s a skill he’s honed from years of gambling, and it’s turned over to his personal life, making him guard his emotions constantly without realizing it. He also has incredible luck and intuition, but he’s almost always quite about it. Outwardly, he’s charming and friendly, but underneath that exterior, he’s a little bastard man. He is always silently judging people, and as soon as the killing game is announced, he’s watching out for people who may try to get him, filing their weaknesses into his brain in case he has to face any of them. He acts like he trusts everyone, when really he trusts no one, and is doubting everyone else during every trial, although he has a much quieter way of voicing his opinions. But he’s never going to tell them that.

Gonta Gokuhara [Ultimate Moral Compass]

He’s a very good boy, a big gentle giant with a huge heart. While Kiyotaka was a moral compass through being a part of the disciplinary committee at his school and having good grades, Gonta is the moral compass by being a part of student council, as well as being class president and a part of several extracurricular activities. He doesn’t get the best grades, but he’s naturally charismatic because of his overwhelming compassion for everyone around him. This made it easy for him to gain the positions he’s in, since most people trusts that he wants whats best for everyone. He tries his best to better his school, making fundraisers for clubs and classes getting less of the budget they should, like the arts and drama. He’s the kind of person who you will feel bad if you make him cry, he’s a very sensitive baby and if you hurt his feelings he will cry.

Ryoma Hoshi [Ultimate Biker Gang Leader]

Also very quiet, he prefers to observe everyone from afar rather than through actual human interaction. He’s very untrustworthy of everyone he meets for the first time, just because of how he was raised. Often goes with his gut feelings and intuition, and because of his keen observation skills, he’s right more often than not. He’s done a lot of morally questionable things in his life, and it’s made him experienced in the art of emotional repression. Although, he’s not mean spirited or hot headed in any way, he’s more of a loner type, and likes to be alone. But if someone were to approach him and try to talk, he wouldn’t yell at them or try to leave, he’d just be a bit uncomfortable, but he’d stick it out and talk to them. Underneath his rough exterior, he has a good head, and he wants to change, the environment he grew up in just hasn’t allowed him to be anything but heartless and cold.

Kiibo Iidabashi [Ultimate Programmer]

Programming is his everything, he loves it, he could talk about it for hours if you let him. He’s a huge dork with a big heart, he would have more friends if he was more confident. He’s very sweet, but he has self-esteem and anxiety issues, so that makes it hard for him to talk to people without second-guessing himself or shutting down. He really wants friends, but his naturally timid nature and love for programming often get in the way of that, and he’s definitely been picked on for both of those before. He’s very logic oriented when it comes to life, and he’s a great problem solver, but isn’t the best when it comes to dealing with his or other’s emotions. He’s also rather dense and gullible despite his intelligence, and will often not get jokes or sarcasm unless it’s super clear or is explained to him. He also has a horrible sleep schedule, since he’s often holed up in his room working on programming, he can lose track of time and what day of the week/month it is very easily. He’s also a very sleepy boy when he’s out of his room, because sleep deprivation will make a person constantly tired.

Miu Iruma [Ultimate Fashionista]

She has the ideal body proportions and has no problem flaunting it. She’s very proud of her appearance, and makes a constant effort to keep her clothes and makeup looking their best. She does still make dirty jokes, but less than in canon. Most of her jokes are directed at herself, not exactly self-deprecating, but they hammer in the fact that she sees herself as nothing more than a pretty item. She tries to appear very self confident and like she has her shit together, but she does, in fact, not have her shit together at all. She’s very sensitive, if you insult her she’ll insult you back 10x harder, then cry in her room for 15 minutes straight. She does not take criticism well, and if you insult her she will take it to heart even if it was intended to be a joke. She won’t let it show that it hurt her, and she’ll probably even joke along with it. 

Tsumugi Shirogane [Ultimate Swimmer]

She’s a sweet girl with way too many siblings who grew up by the ocean and taught herself how to swim at a very young age. She has a lot of empathy for other people, and finds it easy to make friends because she understands people easily, having spent her life in a household with far more people than it should have housed. She’s very emotional, and very emotionally in tune with those around her, making her a grounding source for people when they’re sad. She’s good at comforting people, and knows what to do when it comes to taking care of others. She’s also a bit loud and sometimes gets carried away, having little control over her volume when she gets excited. She can get a bit possessive over her possessions, and gets a bit snippy if people touch her things or food without asking first. If you do ask, she’ll probably share, albeit, reluctantly.

Himiko Yumeno [Ultimate Pop Sensation]

She’s very small and tiny, but also very flexible and limber. She’s been in the entertainment industry as long as she can remember, and performing has been almost her entire life. She enjoys singing and dancing with her group, and considers the members her family. She has no problem showing her emotions, and she’s very sensitive, so she shows them a lot. She is very outgoing and energetic most of the time, but she she has a very short fuse energy wise and runs out of energy quickly. When she isn’t energetic, she’s tired or napping. Despite her naive first appearance, she’s actually very intuitive from interacting with so many people throughout her lifetime, and it’s not hard for her to tell if someone has good or bad intentions.

Tenko Chabashira [Ultimate Softball Player]

She’s still a huge feminist, but not as much as in canon. She loves softball, she’s incredibly passionate about it, and will say that softball is leagues better than baseball if either subject is back up. She’s very protective over the other girl students, and is especially protective over Himiko, considering they hit it off very early on. She is nice at first, but can be extremely aggressive if provoked, and it doesn’t take a lot to provoke her. She’s muscular, and could easily body check almost anyone else present. She’s emotionally tough and it’s very hard to hurt her feelings, or hurt her in general. She’s easy to get along with, as long as you respect her. If you make her mad, it’s lights out. She’s got a bat on her and she’s not afraid to use it.

Kirumi Tojo [Ultimate Martial Artist]

Kirumi is no nonsense to an extreme degree when it comes to mental and physical health, both her own and others, more so herself. She’s a bit too strict with herself, and she is almost always practicing her Martial Art skills, since Martial Arts is incredibly important to her and her family. She often has trouble talking to other and making friends, socializing is not her forte. She’s rather enjoy other people’s company in silence rather than by talking, preferring a good sparring match over a touching conversation any day. Like Kiibo, she also doesn’t get jokes a lot, but she tries to make an effort to learn more about her peers and their interests, despite not being around them a lot. She’s very observant, so it doesn’t take much to learn a lot about the people around her. She is usually tough emotionally, and it takes quite a bit to make her sad or angry. It is however, very easy to make her flustered, as giving her any form of compliments makes her immediately blush. It’s easy to make her smile if someone knows what they’re doing, and once someone finds out how she works, it’s easy to become friends with her and stay that way.

Korekiyo Shinguiji [Ultimate Writing Prodigy]

Korekiyo is best known for his vivid and terrifying horror stories, which he has an abundance of. Despite horror being his forte, he’s not creepy in the slightest. He’s actually a very nice guy, although he is a bit shy at first. He’s a kind soul and although he can be very jumpy at times, he tries his best to social with others. He’s usually quiet when he speaks, although this is mostly unintentional. He doesn’t like physical contact, but he’s a nice person to be around if someone’s looking to vent or relax. He has a calming presence about him, and he’s able to stay unusually calm during stressful situations. He also has a fun slew of random knowledge solely based on research he’s done for his horror novels, such as where most of the main arteries are located on a human body.

Maki Harukawa [Ultimate ???]

Maki doesn’t remember her talent, although she seems like she may have a suspicion as to what it may be. Maki could be best described as cold, calculating, and observant. She likes to stay in the background, watching other people interact instead of involving herself in friendships. She bottles up almost all of her feelings as a coping mechanism, so she usually comes off as heartless or emotionless at first glance. Really, she’s just horrible at processing emotions, so she just shoves them deep down to avoid confronting them. She also is incredibly distrusting of others and their intentions when people try to talk to her. Like Kirumi and Kiibo, she has problems understanding jokes, although, unlike Kirumi and Kiibo, she makes no effort to understand them, as she doesn’t really care. She’s very factually intelligent, and relies on science and logic to solve most problems. This has nothing to do with her personality, but she often does the leg bouncing/pen clicking stuff, more when she’s nervous, but she does it a lot other times too.

Kokichi Ouma [Ultimate ???]

Kokichi says he doesn’t remember his talent, but it’s implied that he may have a pretty good idea of what it is, he just thinks it’s nobody else’s business. He’s a pessimistic smartass, which immediately puts him at odds with Kaito. He finds the fact that Kaito always tries to see the good in everyone incredibly annoying, because most people just suck and there’s nothing more to it. So, naturally, Kokichi does everything in his power to piss Kaito off, just being a general nuisance. During trials he often shoots a lot of Kaito’s claims and ideas down, and it’s only more infuriating for Kaito because more often than not, Kokichi is actually right. Kokichi is smart and observant, not as much as Maki but almost to the same extent. He’s often passive aggressive towards Kaito, and he doesn’t really spend time with the others unless he’s forced to. Even then, he doesn’t talk much. He doesn’t trust anyone, and he prefers it that way, considering the situation everyone’s in. Despite being an asshole, he’s doesn’t exactly have a temper, and often keeps a level head throughout the madness. He doesn’t expression a lot of emotions, and when he does, it’s usually annoyance or disbelief at the others’ incompetence. He’s rarely truly angry though.

Shuichi Saihara [Ultimate ???]

Shuichi has no idea what his talent is, and despite trying his hardest to figure out what it is, he’s had no luck. Shuichi is a nice boy, and he smiles a lot, usually in an attempt to cheer others up. He’s quiet, but in a reserved sort of way that lets you know he’s listening, he just knows he doesn’t need to give his input in order for it to be a good conversation. He always feels really guilty when he makes someone upset or angry, and apologizes profusely to anyone he thinks he’s wronged. He’s also a bit jumpy, similarly to Korekiyo. He is very much more on the introverted side, and he greatly prefers to be alone in his room rather than mingling with others. This, mixed with the fact that he can’t remember his talent makes other wary of him at first, even though he’s just someone who’s comfortable being alone. He’s not super intelligent, but he is fairly perceptive of his surroundings, and often notices things that others don’t upon first glance. 

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.12

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 we approached the end of trial 6, everyone got to be the hero of their own story, just like Kaito once said! Shuichi used Kaede and Kaito’s words to encourage his friends to use their lives to end this, which then turned into Himiko and Maki making that decision for themselves, including Maki finally wonderfully reaching the end of her character arc and choosing to believe that her feelings are her own and they matter, just like Kaito’s efforts to help her still matter so much. Meanwhile, the audience were still being one-dimensional assholes, when it would be so much better if they’d been a reasonably relatable audience of fiction that could have been realising they’re the villains here and slowly becoming more and more on Shuichi’s side.

Tsumugi:  “Does the outside world really want that!? Do they want Danganronpa to end!? Hey! What are they saying!? What’s your inner voice saying!?”

Heh, Tsumugi is starting to sound nervous. She’s worried that they really might want Danganronpa to end after all.

…Which would have a lot more of an impact if there was any kind of impression at all that a significant amount of them have started to want that. There’ve been a tiny handful here and there who have maybe started to realise Shuichi is right, which I at least appreciate, but it would be so much better if those people had become a really noticeable voice among the rest of them by now. Shuichi should be getting through to a lot of people at this point after everything he’s been saying, and it would be lovely if that was actually happening and we could see it happening through these comments and be able to root for that part of the audience who’ve turned to Shuichi’s side!

Keebo:  “My inner voice doesn’t matter anymore! I’m going to end this game with my frie— …Hngh!?!?”

But instead. The audience. Literally. Just. Murders. Keebo. Just like that.

Tsumugi:  “See? They don’t want that kind of ending! They want the killing games to continue!”

Tsumugi says it’s about them wanting more killing games, but it’s not even that. Now that things have become a narrative mess that isn’t anything like their precious hope-versus-despair storylines, the outcome of this vote isn’t going to magically fix their ending and therefore should have very little bearing on whether or not more games happen after this one. That should be entirely down to the outside world demanding more from Team Danganronpa anyway despite how much of a mess this ending became. They shouldn’t need to murder Keebo for that!

“CTRL+ALT+KEEBO”

“cya later, hope robot…”

“Life ends in a flash LOL”

They don’t even care that they just murdered their protagonist! Not one of these comments right now is even remotely sad about this! An actual real audience that had been going through this whole story through Keebo’s eyes and loved him like an audience of fiction is supposed to love a main character would never be okay with this and wouldn’t have even considered doing this to him, especially not for such a pointless reason!

“Maybe we’re wrong…?”

You! Someone sensible, again! People like you need to be working harder to persuade everyone else of this!

The problem is, even these people who seem to be starting to realise what they’re doing are only vague and tentative about it. There’s nobody who’s confidently saying, “No, guys, Shuichi’s right, this is fucked up, we need to stop this right now.” Even with these tiny hints of it, there’s just not enough support for Shuichi’s cause in the audience here, and that’s not realistic at all.

“Shuichi isn’t a character <3”

Nope, not you, you are not on Shuichi’s side here. You do not get to be someone who seems like they’re actually acknowledging anyone here as a real person, nope nope nope.

Keebo’s body:  “Yes… My inner voice will not accept an ending without hope or despair.”

This is the only reason they killed him! Just so they can control his vote and get an ending which has arbitrarily has the word “hope” slapped onto it, even though it’s not! What’s actually happening right now is a far more compelling story than any of that bullshit would have been! It’s even a better representation of the word “hope”, because Shuichi and his friends are hoping that their sacrifice can end the killing games for good!

Tsumugi:  “Like I said, you can’t defy the audience when you’re their surrogate.”

It’s kind of cheating when he’s only not allowed to defy the audience because you programmed in a kill-switch for if he ever decided to do so. This is still not how audience surrogates actually work.

Tsumugi:  “Since Keebo kept defying the audience, they took a vote and decided… that troublesome personality of his should be erased!”

THEY JUST MURDERED HIM. This is the most infuriatingly gratuitous and pointless death in this whole game. If I cared more about Keebo’s character I would be even more annoyed, but I am still pretty damn annoyed at how unnecessary it is, when every other character’s death was given at least some kind of emotional weight and narrative reason to be happening. But this just happens because the in-universe audience is a bunch of one-dimensional non-people who’d apparently happily watch everyone die gratuitously without any meaningful story to it just to get their “hope” fix.

And since this happened as the result of an audience vote, that means that more than half of the audience right now wanted this and are still on the meaningless-hope bandwagon rather than actually being remotely persuaded by Shuichi. I wish I could say I was surprised, but with the way they’ve been babbling on in the comments, this is not surprising at all.

Shuichi:  “His personality was erased!?”

Keebo’s body:  “…”

Himiko:  “H-How cruel can you guys be? How long are you gonna play with our lives!?”

At least Shuichi and Himiko are having appropriately horrified reactions of you just killed him for no reason what the actual fuck??? Maki’s jaded enough to not have a similar outburst, but I’m sure she isn’t happy either.

Tsumugi:  “But that’s the decision of the outside world. ‘Don’t just end Danganronpa!’ ‘We supported you!’ ‘You owe us!’”

I get the feeling that the out-universe writers might have been venting a little bit here. And I do agree that this entitled mindset is rather sketchy – people paid to consume the media they’ve already consumed, but that doesn’t mean the creators owe them any more than that. Creators can make whatever content they want, and if they don’t want to make a thing any more because it’s lost its spark for them or they want to move on to something else, then that’s sad for the fans but it’s the creators’ right to do that.

Although, in-universe, we had that hint a few posts back that actually Danganronpa might already be on its last legs if this season took three years to come out. So at this point it’s probably only a handful of die-hard fans who are being this entitled, and maybe a lot of people whose comments we aren’t seeing because they don’t care enough wouldn’t be that bothered if it ended.

(Those people should still be realising if they’re watching this that Shuichi has a point and this is fucked up and be actively trying to get it to end, though.)

Keebo:  “I’m… sorry… I could not fight with you… until the end… But… your choice is not wrong… The real… enemy… is… The outside world who is enjoying this… killing game.”

I’m glad that at least Keebo’s consciousness manages to fight back for long enough to get a proper final speech to his friends. But even so. His death is the most unfair and pointless death in this whole story, and that’s saying something when Kiyo was one of the murderers.

Keebo:  “So please… use me… t-to change… To change… the… world…”

I appreciate Keebo’s willingness to still be helpful even in death, but… they shouldn’t need to use him for this.

Tsumugi:  “He’s completely erased. That makes me sad too, y’know? He was a character I created.”

This could be true. Writers are the ones responsible for killing off their characters, but they can still feel bad about doing so in the same in-story sense that made them care about the character in the first place – the same in-story way that their audience would care and be sad, too. That said, Tsumugi really doesn’t sound very sad about this here, and clearly her audience isn’t either.

Tsumugi:  “The outside world rejects your decision. So no matter how you use your lives, it won’t change anything.”

Shuichi:  “Then… I’ll change it…”

Shuichi is finally realising that the audience isn’t going to suddenly stop wanting more killing games just because this one got a disappointing ending and therefore that he needs to change their minds entirely. It’s apparently the callous cruelty of Keebo’s murder that spurred him to realise this. This is one way in which the out-universe writers are trying to get us to think that Keebo’s death was narratively necessary – but man, it really was not. If anything, rather than letting him realise he needs to change their minds, Keebo’s murder should have told Shuichi that he shouldn’t be able to change their minds. But we’ll get to that issue in a bit.

Instead of Shuichi only realising it upon Keebo’s death, the fact that one single boring ending isn’t going to change things should, and could, have been made apparent to him much sooner, from the moment Shuichi declared he was going to abstain from voting. Tsumugi could have simply responded to that by gloating that one disappointing ending wouldn’t be enough to end the whole thing and it’d still keep going. That should be enough to make Shuichi realise that, damn, she’s right, or at least she’s likely enough to be that it’s not worth the risk of sacrificing their lives to achieve nothing at all.

(The fact that they’re willing to give their lives to end this is part of what Shuichi is using to make the appeal that this really is all real to them and they’re not just fictional characters. But that gets dampened a little when you consider that them giving their lives, on its own and without it then being used as part of these appeals for their own realness, probably wouldn’t actually end this and would be a meaningless sacrifice. This might be part of why the narrative kept trying to insist until now that them sacrificing their lives totally would end the killing game on its own: so that everyone’s willingness to do so could seem meaningful enough to be something that might persuade the audience now.)

Shuichi:  “If Keebo is doing what the outside world is telling him, we just have to convince him… I know we can change the world! We owe it to Keebo to try!”

That doesn’t make any sense! This is blatantly the out-universe writers trying to make Keebo’s death seem actually necessary for the plot when it isn’t. The audience can hear what Shuichi is saying whether Keebo is dead or not! Shuichi persuading them to change should be hypothetically possible either way; Keebo did not need to die for this.

Tsumugi:  “I said it’s impossible! For fiction to change the real world—”

Shuichi:  “The impossible is possible! All you gotta do is make it so!”

But in other, better news, KAITOOOOO!!!!!

Even though Kaito’s gone, Shuichi would never have had the confidence to do this without him. He’d never have had the confidence to do any of this without Kaito. Team Danganronpa shot themselves in the foot by including a “weak” Ultimate Detective who grows strong, because they gave him way too much potential to end up this incredibly strong in the end. But they also shot themselves in the foot by including the Luminary of the Stars to help him reach that point, because no amount of nerfing could possibly have stopped Kaito from being able to bring out this potential in Shuichi. All he does is give his sidekicks a nudge, but that nudge is absolutely vital, and nobody but Kaito could have done it as well as he did.

Tsumugi:  “…Kh!?”

Oh dear, Tsumugi, is your own writing backfiring on you? Wishing you’d nerfed Kaito even more than you already did? It wouldn’t have changed anything!

Shuichi:  “You can even… change the world. No, we *will* change the world. For ourselves, and for everyone who died.”

I love that he’s able to genuinely believe this by holding onto Kaito’s words. If Kaito were still here then he’d absolutely be believing in Shuichi’s potential to do this, after all.

(And I am desperately trying to hold onto this uplifting inspiring feeling myself before I start thinking too hard about the fact that it doesn’t actually make any sense at all that Shuichi can do this, even with all the Kaito power in the world.)

Tsumugi:  “You fought to survive this killing game! If you die now, it’s all over!”

Shuichi:  “Even if we die, it’s not the end! Our friends who died gave us their love. And we changed because of that.”

This is so lovely! Everyone who’s died so far was fighting to survive, but their deaths don’t make their efforts meaningless, precisely because of the change they’ve inspired in the people left behind. Kaito was so so terrified of dying a meaningless death, but he didn’t, even without needing his role in trial 5. Shuichi and Maki are so much stronger thanks to him than they ever would have been without him, and they’re going to keep holding onto that and making Kaito’s life matter. The same goes for Kaede and Tenko and everyone else who cared about their friends and tried to help in even the smallest way.

Having Shuichi, Maki and Himiko be the three survivors here works so well for this, because they’re the three who’ve grown the most thanks to the efforts of some of the people who died. (Perhaps this is part of why Keebo was gratuitously killed – because he hasn’t had any kind of meaningful character arc inspired by a fallen friend like that. But geez, out-universe writers, the way to fix Keebo not being written well isn’t to kill him off now that he’s extraneous to the point of your ending, it’s to write him better in the first place!)

I also adore how Shuichi talks about the love that their friends gave them. Again, he’s not talking about romance! Platonic love is equally important and more than enough to change someone, and I love that Shuichi realises this!

Shuichi:  “If we can inspire change in others, then that love will live on. That love will tear down the wall between fiction and reality, and it will live on… forever.”

This bit gets me emotional every single time I see it. Remember how I mentioned back during some of the training sessions that Kaito inspired me to start exercising every day? It’s been over a year and a half now (and again will be even more than that when this gets posted) and I’m still showing no signs of stopping. And not only that – since this happened to get mentioned on my main blog, I might as well mention it here, too – without Kaito, I’m not sure I’d have been able to finish my PhD. The process of writing up my thesis seemed terrifingly huge and impossible, but thanks to being able to imagine what Kaito would say, I refused to give up. I told myself that that impossible thing was possible and I made it so. All because of a work of fiction.

So Shuichi is so, so right, and I am living proof of that. On some level, I really wish I could tell him what Kaito’s done for me – I’m sure he’d love to know that (and Kaito would have done, too). But of course, if that was ever actually possible, then it’d mean that they weren’t truly fictional at all and would instantly make me a terrible person for having enjoyed this, so it’s better that I can’t.

And I know I’m not the only example of the world having been changed by fiction, either! Participating in fandom lets one see over and over again, at least at the best of times, that having characters you love that inspire you really can help make a positive change in your life! (High-five, training anon!) This is such an absolutely lovely sentiment and I adore that it’s the ultimate message of this trial and this game!

(I just wish so badly that this idea was actually represented in the in-universe audience’s behaviour, like, at all. That Makoto kid at the beginning of the chapter was more or less an example of someone whose life was positively influenced by Danganronpa, but nobody in this audience right now is acting even remotely like that. Man, if only we could see more examples in the audience’s comments by this point, agreeing with Shuichi about this, telling their stories of how they’ve changed because of Danganronpa – maybe even someone mentioning they’ve started to exercise because of Kaito! – it would be beautiful. Why would you ruin the opportunity for this by making this audience mindless assholes, writers. Why.)

Shuichi:  “Even if this whole story is a lie… I will use that lie to change the world!”

This is also an absolutely lovely final use of the theme of using lies! It’s like Shuichi’s going to fire a huge Lie Bullet at everyone and use that to change them for the better! The whole concept of using lies in trials was always building up to this final message of how fiction can change the world!

There’s still somewhat of a distinction between lies and fiction that they’re not quite addressing here, though. Both are untrue, but fiction is something people know is untrue and aren’t being deceived by but rather choose to pretend is true and invest in anyway. It’s through that power that fiction can change people. If someone is changed by an outright deceptive lie that they genuinely think is true, then that’s just manipulation – and perhaps it can sometimes be the case that they were changed for the better by it anyway, but it’s not quite the same thing as this.

…Plus, there’s also the fact that Shuichi and his friends and everything they’ve been through in this killing game aren’t actually lies at all on any meaningful level, but, you know. I still appreciate the reprise of that theme here.

Himiko:  “Th-That’s right! We’re not gonna just be fiction!”

You already aren’t! Your lives and your thoughts are already real; screw those assholes out there who don’t seem to be able to realise that! Shuichi’s whole speech just now is lovely because it’s so true in an out-universe sense, but it doesn’t even need to become true in an in-universe sense to justify their lives being real and having meaning.

The only level on which it does matter in-universe is with the fact that they’re going to die. By changing people and continuing to have an influence on the world, it’ll mean their deaths won’t have been for nothing, just like those of their friends weren’t.

Maki:  “Shuichi, you can change this world. Because… you’re Kaito’s sidekick.”

It’s still adorable to see Maki putting so much weight on Kaito’s belief in people. She knows now that those weren’t just empty words of his and that he really did believe in people because they genuinely did have that potential to be amazing. It’s just, dammit, Maki Roll, you’re his sidekick too! Kaito believed in you just as much as he believed in Shuichi!

Also I love that she’s using present tense. Once Kaito’s sidekick, always Kaito’s sidekick, even after he’s gone! And even though Kaito himself would say that the people who don’t need him any more only used to be his sidekicks, evidently his sidekicks themselves don’t see it that way.

(They still need the memory of Kaito, though. They’re always going to need that. His legacy is never going to be forgotten.)

…

And now for a huge emotional whiplash from all this passionate positivity as we move into the worst minigame segment of any trial ever. Oh boy do I have a fucking rant for you about this Argument Armament and how absolutely terrible it is.

First off, let’s talk gameplay mechanics. I usually really enjoy rhythm games. I like to think I’m decently good at them. But this one? I equipped the skill which doubles my health at the beginning of this trial solely for this minigame, and I needed it to survive, even with all the other things I had on that also made this minigame easier. Is it because this is a really difficult rhythm game that challenged even someone like me who’s pretty good at them? No, it’s because it’s barely a fucking rhythm game at all.

Problem one: every regular Argument Armament has music that has a very clear, distinct beat to it, making the rhythm easy to keep up with and the notes easy to hit so long as you’re paying attention. But for some stupid reason, this one has completely different music in which the beat is very subtle and difficult to keep track of, especially when it gets faster and especially when those morons in the audience are yelling so loudly that it drowns out most of the music. So that’s thing one which makes it difficult in an unfair way that’s antithetical to the point of rhythm games.

Problem two: every regular Argument Armament also does a rather neat thing of making which buttons you need to press feel intuitive by having it so that the positioning of the words on the screen is always in relation to the position of the button you need to press on the controller. This makes things a lot easier to keep up with for people unfamiliar with their controller’s button layout (like me, as I hardly ever play any PlayStation games). The first couple of sections of this trial’s Argument Armament do that too, but around the point where those idiots all start mindlessly yelling “Hope! Despair! Hope! Despair!”, it deliberately throws that out the window, and the buttons you’re supposed to press on the controller suddenly have no positional correlation with where the words are on the screen. So if you’re not instinctively familiar with your version’s controller button layout, god help you.

Which means that at that point, I’m desperately trying to remember where each button is within a split second in order to press it in time with a beat I can barely even fucking hear. Suddenly, instead of being a rhythm game, this section has instead become a non-stop series of incredibly fast quick-time events. That is never a good thing at the best of times and especially not what I want in a Danganronpa minigame, which have all up until now required at least some level of actual skill that isn’t just reflexes and controller familiarity.

This is a completely unreasonable spike in difficulty that required me to both use the temporary easy-mode of Fever Time, which I never needed before, and have a health extension, which I never needed before, just to not get a game over here, having never even come close to getting one for the entire rest of the game. Who thought this was a good idea. Who playtested this section and decided this was totally challenging in a fair way and definitely not bullshit fake difficulty that’d have people tearing their hair out in frustration, suddenly hating the game whose story they were in theory supposed to be loving more than ever in these final moments.

…Which brings me onto the narrative side of things, because even putting the gameplay aside, even if this really was a fun and legitimately challenging rhythm game that I could get behind, this does not work narratively at all.

As I’ve gleefully talked about before for the actually-good Argument Armaments, the point of them is supposed to be that the subject already knows they’re wrong, either because they’re the culprit or because they already know that the person they want to believe in is the culprit and just can’t face it. The words that Shuichi has to shoot down in the rhythm minigame represent their desperate attempts to distract Shuichi and stop him from getting any words in edgeways to be able to conclusively prove what they already know is true. That’s why, at the end, once he’s pushed through all of that, all Shuichi needs is a single sentence of proof to break them down.

And that could have worked here, if this audience had been comprised of vaguely reasonable people! Like I’ve been trying to build up in the past few posts, a far better way to write this part of the story would be to show the in-universe audience behaving essentially like a relatable audience of fiction, albeit one that engages in some very fervent cognitive dissonance in order to wilfully ignore the fact that they’ve always been watching real people die. Which would mean that they already know what they’re doing is wrong, and those viewers that haven’t been persuaded by Shuichi yet simply still don’t want to admit it, even now that they’ve become the explicit villain of this story. After all, admitting that you’ve been an awful person, that all of those deaths are partly on you, and that to make up for it you first need to give up your favourite show for good but even then that would barely begin to be enough, would be difficult to accept for a lot of people.

I wish that was what this was. But oh my god, is it really, really not.

“I’m not here for a damn lecture!”

“Preachy characters are so annoying!”

Lines such as these could, potentially, if done right, sound like desperate deflections from people who know they’re wrong and don’t want to accept it. But in the context of everything else that’s being said, and with the way they’re delivered, these are clearly people who genuinely believe they are correct to say that Shuichi has no right to be trying to change their minds, because Shuichi’s not a real person anyway.

“Is Danganronpa really gonna end???”

“You can’t just end it out of the blue like this!”

“We want more of the killing game!”

“There’s no way they’d let it end like this, right?”

These comments from near the end are some that could vaguely sound like some kind of deflection – people trying to distract themselves from the knowledge that they’re being awful by clinging to the “no but I don’t want my show to end!” even though they know full well by now that it should. But this doesn’t seem to be how these are meant to be read in this context, either. Their tone just sounds rather too entitled, like they still genuinely believe they deserve to get more killing games after all this.

“Well, hopefully there’s another season…”

Especially with this. That should be the least of everyone’s worries right now! Try thinking more about the fact that you’ve been awful fucking people!

Which is really what this would need to be about in order for this to work. The majority of comments should be directly addressing the bigger issue: that they all know and just don’t want to accept that they’re in the wrong. A lot of people should be saying things like, “We’re not the bad guys, are we?”, or something like “But it’s just fiction so it’s okay, right?”, in a tone that makes it very clear they’re in denial and know that it’s not fiction and it’s not okay and they are the bad guys here.

“Who cares if they die, they’re not real!”

Instead, this is the only statement we get along the lines of “it’s just fiction so it’s okay”, and this is clearly not said out of any kind of desperate denial. Whoever said this genuinely thinks their lives don’t matter even now.

The rest of the audience here seems to think along the same lines, because the majority of the comments we get for most of this poor excuse for an Argument Armament is just stuff to the effect of “ugh I hate where this story is going, give me a better ending!”. That should not be the point any more! They should be perfectly aware by now, if still on a level they’re unwilling to properly accept, that this isn’t about their own superficial whims for their entertainment; it’s about people’s goddamn lives, and so who cares whether they get entertained or not!

(And have I mentioned that they still should be enjoying the story that’s actually happening more than any of their hope nonsense.)

So, since this audience that we’re being presented with here clearly does not know on any level that they’re in the wrong, we have a fundamental problem with our Argument Armament. Instead of simply shooting down desperate deflections in order to tell them something they really already know, Shuichi is trying to actively persuade them of something they don’t currently believe. That is not something that was ever going to be appropriate for an Argument Armament, because all Shuichi actually does in these is yell a single sentence – sure, this time it’s multiple sentences, but that’s hardly any better. And every one of the sentences you have Shuichi yell is something that he’s already said earlier in the trial. Again, they should already know this, yet because they evidently somehow don’t, this approach should not be able to change a thing.

Shuichi should have needed to do a lot more than simply yell a handful of sentences at everyone to be able to persuade them, at least as the audience is being presented here. If he is supposed to have canonically done something more than that, then really we should have seen that in order to be able to buy that he succeeded, rather than have it be swallowed up by game mechanics. (After all, it’s not like he literally played a so-called “rhythm” game.)

And another thing is, Shuichi in particular really isn’t someone you’d think would be more notably capable of persuading the audience than anyone else. He’s amazing when it comes to detective work, sure, but he was never established to be someone especially good at persuading people to change their minds on an emotional level when logical proof isn’t going to work. That’s a job that’d be more suited to someone like Kaito, or Kaede!

But… even Kaito knew when to back down from trying to get through to someone because it wasn’t going to work. He eventually gave up on getting through to Kokichi after having tried for the entirety of chapter 4, upon realising with the way that trial ended that Kokichi was never going to accept help and be willing to change. Kaito also never even tried in the first place to get through to Monokuma, or the mastermind, and talk them out of this killing game, because that was very evidently pointless from the start.

So, I think if Kaito was here, and if he was reacting realistically to this awful mess of an audience (which, let’s face it, no-one has quite been doing, because the out-universe writers apparently don’t realise how terrible their depiction of the audience is), he’d be able to tell immediately that this is a lost cause. Kaito could only ever use his luminary powers to influence people who wanted to change, and these assholes clearly do not want to do that.

The problem, going back to just Shuichi, is this: if the audience still doesn’t even see Shuichi and his friends as being real people with lives and worth, if they can’t even acknowledge that Shuichi is a human being with the potential to have a valid point, they are never going to even listen to his argument and consider that he might have a valid point in the first place, no matter how much of one he has.

“This guy shoulda died instead of Kaede!”

This asshole, for example, literally thinks Shuichi should be dead. Therefore Shuichi is not a person of any worth at all, therefore there’s no need to listen to anything he’s saying.

“Hey, what about little miss assassin’s punishment!?”

“Just kill each other already!”

“Death is the point of Danganronpa!”

And these idiots just mindlessly want everyone to die. (I am especially in-universely infuriated and revolted by the one that seems to combine this with the “hurr durr schoolgirl assassin hot” and would apparently enjoy watching her die for that reason, ugh no fuck off you disgusting monster you don’t deserve to even see Maki ever in your life.) Because the only fun part of this story to these assholes is everyone being horribly killed, apparently? Inhuman monsters like this are never going to listen to reason! They literally just murdered Keebo for their own pathetic one-dimensional whims of how this story should end! If they can’t even understand that death is bad, even fictional deaths, we have a fundamental roadblock to our persuasion here!

Keebo’s body:  “… …”

Himiko:  “What… just happened?”

What just happened is that Shuichi did something that should have been literally, actually impossible.

And, see, the thing about Kaito’s catchphrase is that he’s not really talking about things that are literally impossible. He’s talking about things that seem impossible to you, because maybe you don’t have enough confidence in yourself, or you don’t have the skills and strength you’d need just yet. But they’re not inherently impossible if you’re willing to put in enough effort to get there. And the first step of that is letting yourself believe that it could actually be possible after all, so that you can bring yourself to put in that effort and make it so.

I’d love it if that was what this was – it’s what it ought to be, to truly honour Kaito after Shuichi invoked his words for this – but it isn’t. This should not have been possible, at all. Not with this audience that we’ve seen here, and definitely not in the way that Shuichi apparently managed to do it.

---

[Next post]

[team--mike]

Analysis/Prediction for Danganronpa: Deadication

Hey guys! I know I barely post on tumblr at all but I just thought... I have something to talk about... That's incredibly long... And about Danganronpa...

So where else to go than tumblr?

I recently started following a fangan ( @dangandeadication​ ) called Danganronpa: Deadication. If I had to pick a reason why I liked it so much, it would have to be the character design and art. Their Discord community is pretty great and involved as well. I'm a busy boy so I can't be as active there as I'd like...

You can check out part one of the prologue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5krOHv_ls4

Anyways - what is this post about?

It's about my predictions for this Killing Game. I'm not one to simply pick randomly who lives and who dies, there's a method to my madness. I have this fancy shmancy way of making predictions for Danganronpa, and it's called the Elevator Prediction! We simply take a look at the picture of the students in the elevator before the first trial, and we cross off people based on their position. Any sane artist wouldn't group all the survivors next to each other, now... Would they?...

Wait... Deadication doesn't have one of these yet...

Oh, well. I'll just use my detective instincts to place these characters based on their talent, personality, and official Danganronpa games.

A few disclaimers before we begin:

There will be spoilers for DR1, SDR2, and DRV3

I'm explaining my thought pattern here along with each character and why I predicted what I did. I apologize if I sound overly critical - that's not my intention. I had fun thinking of these predictions and I'm looking forward to seeing how they pan out!

There's one more thing that I'd like to explain as well, and it will help contextualize some of my choices.

One of my favorite writers, Brandon Sanderson, writes some great books involving magic. I bring this up because a few ultimates here (Lucky Student, Psychic, Illusionist, Alchemist) are explicitly "magical". The extent of their abilities is unknown for the most part. Being a writer, Brandon Sanderson created rules about writing magic stories, and being a writer myself, I really took this one to heart. (reference: https://brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/)

"An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic."

What does this mean? Basically - if the magic isn't explained - it feels like magic can solve any problem at any point without warning. There's no mystery to it at all - it just happens. Explaining magic systems is a really great way to actually add to a mystery - it gives the reader rules to follow when the theories start forming in their head. Now go replace the word MAGIC with ULTIMATE... And this creates a framework for working with ultimates in mysteries. It’s so much harder for readers to solve mysteries if it isn’t what can and cannot be done in the universe.

An example of this is Tsumugi's Cospox in DRV3. Her ability was cosplay, and with it, she could basically disguise herself as any character. It was inevitable that a murder would happen with her disguised as someone else, and there was no telling when, or how... Except that they immediately explained the extent of her powers in Chapter 1 after the first killing. This took that possibility off the table - and made all the future cases that much easier by focusing our minds on what was actually relevant instead of some gotcha that wasn't explained.

Again - this is only a guideline - it's not a hard-and-fast rule that everyone has to follow - so my predictions could be off because of this. It's all guesswork anyways, and I'm sure at least half my predictions, if not all of them, will be wrong. But that's the point, isn't it? XD

Without further ado, let's get started!

Yuuma - lucky student  Ok... He's lucky so he can't die right? We don't know how lucky he is, but if we base it off the first two games, then yes, he'd basically be unkillable. There are a couple ultimates here that could get around that... But that would be weird because those ultimates are magical and it seems that Danganronpa Luck is too big a barrier... Keep in mind we've had a survivor Lucky Student and a victim Lucky Student, so what's left? Verdict - CH1 blackened

Shu - bounty hunter Here's another babyface that basically screams "Don't fuck with me!". Considering the case of Fuyuhiko I'm not pinning him as someone who has a change of heart, and considering his profession I think he's not going to be a blackened. I think that would be too obvious. So what does that leave us with? A victim. Also I'm offing him in chapter 1 because if he's not killed early then he will be a suspect in every subsequent case. Which might be a good thing, but I wouldn't want to deal with that :P  But who could possibly kill someone trained to kill... Hmmm... Verdict - CH1 victim, failed attempt to kill Yuuma

Toru - filmmaker Everyone's always comparing him to the Actor and saying that there's some important story element here since their ultimates are so similar. I can't help but think the same. I don't think this dude is the Mastermind, since that would be too obvious in my eyes, however I feel he's involved in some way. If Deadication pulls the same thing that DRV3 did with Rantaro, then they can have some backstory for this guy while also having him dead, all while throwing the suspicion off him as being involved in this game due to him dying early. Verdict - CH2 Victim

Otoha - basketball Literally Akane and Tenko. One of them died and the other survived. Maybe she's a blackened? I don't have much else to say here honestly. I guess she's cute. Verdict - CH2 blackened

Kyusho - detective Alright this is such a clear reference to Kyoko that there might be something actually relevant here - maybe this is an AU where Aoi and Kyoko mashed their names together and adopted him? Maybe the real Danganronpa is going to be mentioned in this game? I doubt both these points but they're good to bring up. So we haven't seen an evil detective yet from the other games so I'm getting that vibe from him. Especially one that doesn't explicitly commit murder... Verdict - CH2 accomplice, CH3 victim

Ayuna - psychic Ok so Psychic means either two things (1) she's a complete airhead OR (2) she's a complete airhead but also Hagakure. Considering my stance on magic powers as explained earlier, I think her powers are going to be meaningless. Maybe she sees a vision that ends up getting her killed? Verdict - CH3 Victim

Sakumi - alchemist Alchemy means either two things (1) she's another complete airhead OR (2) there will be some poison case in this game. I'm honestly feeling the latter. Alchemy is another vague ultimate that has to be explained - and I can only see this being relevant to poisoning. There hasn't been a poison double murder yet and I'm assuming that Deadication will be keeping the same format of double murder since it's classic. But I could be 100% wrong since I'm a sucker for strict guidelines. PS: She's also cute. Verdict - CH3 blackened

Reika - ??? Hmmm I wonder what it could beeee... With this illusionist/alchemist/psychic/occultist quadrafecta I'm thinking she's along a similar vibe, maybe witch or something. We haven't had a ??? blackened yet... thinking-face-intensifies... I'm thinking their ability will be revealed as the cornerstone to this case. Verdict - CH4 blackened

Minoru - barista  Ace Attorney - Godot's theme plays in the background Wait what slot didn't I assign... Oh yeah that's right Verdict - CH4 victim

Iori - gardener I have no idea. He has a Kokichi Ouma face sprite but he's also very knowledgeable about plants. He's probably gonna be a Gonta type - a Hope Boy. Verdict - Survivor

Megumi - attorney Franziska Von Karma was best girl in Ace Attorney, and now Megumi is giving me that same vibe. Now here's someone who can talk her way in a trial... As I'm pinning Kyusho as chaotic, maybe Megumi will be the voice of reason throughout the game... Although I really am suspicious of everyone. There's always a survivor with a head on their shoulders (Kirigiri, Shuichi, Hajime) Verdict - Survivor

Haru - occultist I totally feel that Haru is going to play a big part in this, and have some sort of change-of-heart that makes them a better overall person. They're also cute as well so I can't just kill them off. If at any point in the story Naohiko dies, I fully expect Haru to take his place. They're the most main-character-like out of everyone else. They'd probably take the Byakuya or Fuyuhiko slot in the survivor list. Verdict - Survivor

Keiji - surgeon Come on now you wouldn't make such a large meme NOT a survivor... I feel he's going to be very much like the survivors Kazuichi or Hagakure or Himiko - thinks he's tough shit but he really can't do a darn thing. Verdict - Survivor

Luna - arctic explorer Um I don't have much to say about her except I like her and she's super cute and I want her to survive. She's the waifu survivor like Aoi and Sonia and Maki. She's also smart as well so her surviving would actually make sense. Verdict - Survivor

Ok guys! That's it! We're done with all the predictions for Dead-

WAIT! WHAT IS IT? I'M FORGETTING ABOUT TWO CHARACTERS?

Oh yeah you're right. Whoops.

Hitomi - illusionist Ah yes, the detective's sidekick, just like Kaito and Chiaki and Sayaka. She's overly optimistic, which makes me think she's evil, but there are two reasons why I don't think she is (1) I can't possibly envision any angry or distressed Hitomi sprites AND (2) With an ultimate like Illusionist, it would be too obvious that she's a killer. Based on the principles of magic as I explained earlier, her illusion abilities should come with some set of rules. And these rules weren't explained to us in the prologue - so I'm sort of throwing her ultimate to the curb for now and ignoring its effect on the story. Which is probably wrong, but ah, what the heck. I have a bigger prediction for Hitomi based on her relationship with Naohiko as opposed to her ultimate. Verdict - CH5 victim.

Naohiko - actor The man of the hour himself, the green haired protagonist. Before we begin - let's go over what happens to the protagonists in the first three games: Makoto - survives. Hajime - survives but his past self is the mastermind Kaede - is a blackened and dies in chapter 1 Considering Kaede's case - I'm doubting that there is a protagonist switch at all in this game. I'm pretty sure that they switched during Chapter 1 because of the Hope Fragments and the character development and attachment. As much as I loved Kaede, there wasn't a real reason to have her die in a later chapter. It just wasn't a good game design choice. Now Deadication isn't a game so this might be different but I'm tossing this aside for now. There's also the possibility of Naohiko dying, but I don't think he'd be the one to die in chapter 1. The main character actually has a relevant ultimate this time - actor. One that can be used as a blackened... and a mastermind... dun dun DUN... Technically this is different from SDR2 since Izuru is his own original character and not Hajime Hinata. What I'm going to propose is slightly similar to Hajime's case but it's different in the fact that Izuru had absolutely no effect on the Killing Game other than starting it. One more thing before I explain what I think will happen to Naohiko - let's take a look at the other masterminds' goals: Junko - Inflict Despair on everyone watching Izuru - Preserve Junko and the Remnants of Despair Tsumugi - Entertain everyone watching Now there's one thing that I think is clearly missing here... And that's a personal motive, one that isn't based on world domination or entertainment. Especially because this is a fangan that doesn't explicitly have to be tied to the main series - and it's getting increasingly difficult to do so anyways. So let's recap - A personal motive that isn't based on the Hope-Despair conflict, yet also requires Despair to work properly. This one really wracked my brain but here's my theory:  Naohiko is a schizophrenic just like Toko is. However, he does not know that he has this other, "evil" side to him. There are a few reasons for this: (1) If he noticed it, he would clearly get it treated. Which spelled doom for this evil persona. (2) He's the ultimate actor. Actors retake scenes often enough and they have so many fans that it's typical if he forgets something. This evil side - let's call it Hikonao because I'm boring - has been waiting for its chance to overtake the real Naohiko - and this killing game is just that. Bring Naohiko to Despair, and then his real side and his evil side will be one and the same. So Hikonao sends a letter to Toru stating something about working with Naohiko - only if he brings 14 other ultimates to this secluded area. The letter is signed H - which implicitly brings suspicion on other characters like Haru and Hitomi. Hikonao can be doing things at nighttime or during the day that Naohiko wouldn't remember - and that could clue the reader in to what is happening... (and it also could get us to suspect Hitomi's illusions instead...) Hikonao's plan is to bring the largest possible Despair onto Naohiko - and that would climax in killing his own beloved, Hitomi. In the chapter 5 trial, Naohiko realizes that he is the one that killed Hitomi - and we have to explicitly argue that he didn't kill her, knowing this - something that hasn't been done before in a game, even with Kaede. And then, just like in game 1, Naohiko isn't actually executed due to some ambiguous reason. And then they find the letter from H, find some more stuff, and the mastermind trial. This also brings up an important point - just like the Gonta case in DRV3. If someone else's consciousness kills someone, are you guilty? I have a feeling that Naohiko will end up expelling Hikonao and everything will end happily ever after... Verdict - CH5 blackened and mastermind. Oh and he's also a survivor too

Now I know that you guys think this is a crazy crackpot theory but it's based on writing principles! Even if I'm entirely wrong, I have become a better mystery writer because of it! The more you think about these things, the more you dive deep into how these games are put together and the best way to order and position the story and killings so that things make sense together.

To those of you who have read the entire thing, thank you so so much! I appreciate it, especially since I rambled at times. I'm really looking forward to this project and I know everyone will do a great job with Deadication!

That's it for now. Team Mike, signing off!

[tigerintokyo]

IDOLiSH7 PART 3, CH 10.5

Wait For Me

(other parts in the directory)

Translation under the break.

.

Ryo: It’s about time to finish it.

Torao: What are you talking about?

Ryo: Not you. I’m talking about Trigger.

Ryo: Trigger cancelled last minute on Sound Ship. Once can be “due to unforeseen circumstances.” But twice, it’s due to their bad character.

Ryo: Trigger has a chance to recover their image with a strong performance that even Re:vale and IDOLiSH7 can’t do at the Tokyo Music Arts Fest.

Ryo: But, Trigger will be absent.

Minami: How would that happen? If you say it’s a chance of a lifetime, they should be thinking the same thing.

Ryo: Before becoming the president of this agency, I was in the trade business with a dangerous crowd. I can use my connections...

Ryo: and abduct Trigger.

Touma: ….Hey. I’d rather not be involved in a crime.

Ryo: Ahaha. It won’t involve us. Trigger are popular stars. It’s just the work of a little stalker.

Isumi: ……….heh.

Isumi: ...Anything is fine. As long as I can see that family cry.

Isumi: As long as everything they’ve done can be denied, and they fall into hopelessness.

Ryo: Ok, now then. Who wants to call Trigger?!

Torao: Do you know their numbers? I know Ryunosuke’s number though.

Ryo: My friend Momo is a little careless. His password on his smartphone is his birthday, 1111. I extracted all the phone numbers.

Touma: Oh no, I have to change my password...

Minami: You should, because nowadays, even the president of a company will extract personal information from their friend’s smartphone.

Torao: You should change it on a regular basis, in case a woman wants to peek into your phone.

Isumi: But if you change it, isn’t it hard to remember? Is this necessary….

Touma: What did you use?

Isumi: My school grade, class number, and student number.

Touma: Oh, it’s nice being a student.

Torao: But, to have your birthday as your code when you’re an entertainer is stupid. Anyone can know it from looking at your profile.

Minami: Mido-san, you know that Inumaru-san’s was his birthday too, right?

Touma: I’ll change it to a super complicated number!

Ryo: Hey everyone, let’s stop messing with our smartphones. Are you listening to me?

Toaro: Ryo-san, if you use Rabbit Chat, I’ll send you some fun stickers.

Ryo: Eh? What kind of stickers?

Minami: Shall we all add each other? Isumi-san, do you know how to do it?

Isumi: I’m not sure how to… Do it for me.

Minami: You do this and then shake it [1]…. See, everyone else, try it too.

Touma: Wait! I’m still changing my password. I’m not sure what we’re talking about now!

-

(phone rings)

Tenn: … Who’s calling? An unknown number...

Tenn: Yes?

Isumi: It’s me. Do you want to stop the attacks on Trigger?

Tenn: ……….

Isumi: After you accept our conditions, you can give it some thought. Can you come out now by yourself?

Tenn: … I got it. I’ll get ready now.

-

(phone rings)

Gaku: ...Hello? Who are you?

Touma: Wow, it’s Yaotome Gaku’s voice… I’m so freaked out I could die...

Gaku: ……….ah?

Touma: You want to help Trigger and your father, right?

Gaku: …. you….

Touma: If so, come out by yourself now. After you accept our conditions, you’ll want to do it.

Touma: Of course, don’t tell anyone else.

Gaku: I won’t. ...Where should I go?

-

(phone rings)

Tsunashi: Hello? Torao-kun?

Torao: Hey. It’s been awhile.

Tsunashi: I’ve been trying to contact you. About Hanamaki-san… And then, about your debut...

Torao: Shh. Right now, I have a secret deal for you, because you’re my friend.

Torao: There’s a way to stop the attacks on Trigger. It might be a bit dangerous, but do you want to know what it is?

Tsunashi: Of course.

Torao: I knew you would say that. Come here now without letting anyone else know. The place is...

-

Tsumugi: Today, it’s great that we could all have a day off together!

Mitsuki: We have to go and cheer on Trigger! I made cheering fans! It’ll be great to wave them at the music fest, right?

Sogo: I also brought penlights for everyone!

Yamato:  Oh! What’s that over there? It's really flashy with the Trigger logo painted on it. An ita-car [2]...?

(car pulls up)

Yamato: …. And it stopped right in front of us.

Okazaki: Hello! Is everyone doing well?

Tamaki: Okarin?! What is this car?!

Okazaki: It’s the Re:vale station wagon. We got it from the car manufacturer.

Riku: You made a Trigger ita-car?!

Yuki: Because we’re celebrities.

Momo: We did.

Nagi: Oh! Amazing! How fantastic! I also want a Kokona ita-car!

Sogo: What should I do… I just came with penlights. How embarrassing...

Mitsuki: Ah… And I was all excited over just bringing fans.

Iori: The manufacturer must’ve been surprised to specially make a car named Re:vale into a Trigger ita-car.

Momo: Let’s all cheer on Trigger together! And, I still haven’t heard back from them, but if you’re heading over there, let’s go eat together!

Riku: Yes, let’s! This morning, I tried inviting them too! But it seems like they haven’t been responding for awhile.

Sogo: They’re probably getting themselves pumped up and doing rehearsals!

(phone rings)

Momo: Ah, it’s from Kaoru-chan! ……. ……. ….eh?

Momo: Everyone, do you know where Trigger is?

Mitsuki: Where they are? They still haven’t gotten to the venue?

Momo: She says they haven’t been able to contact them since this morning...

Riku: Eh?!

-

Tsumugi: Anesagi-san, are you okay?! I heard you can’t contact the members...

Anesagi: They’re not answering any calls, and everywhere we checked, we can’t find them. The office is searching for them in full force, but...

Okazaki: It’s strange that all three of them disappeared. Did you contact the police?

Anesagi: Yeah, I filed a report, but it’s only been half of a day since we lost contact, so they said they can’t do anything about it yet.

Anesagi: ….It’s the work of that Tsukumo guy! He’s been trying to keep Trigger from getting on the stage! If anything happens to those boys...

Riku: I’ll go to Tsukumo Prod. and look for them...!

Iori: Please wait! It can become a big problem if we just jump to conclusions!

Yamato: They’re not stupid either. They’ll just put up a front like they don’t know anything.

Riku: But…!

Momo: I know you’re worried, but let’s leave it to the Yaotome Prod. staff. Everyone, it’s not good if we get in their way, so let’s leave.

Momo: Okarin, Maneko-chan [3], stay by Kaoru-chan’s side.

Tsumugi: Leave it to me…. Anesagi-san...

Okazaki: It’ll be okay, for sure.

-

Iori: If they can’t perform tonight, they can be attacked with last year’s Sound Ship incident too.

Riku: Those bullies!! They keep making Trigger look like the bad guy! Was Tenn-nii kidnapped…?

Sogo: The performance will have already finished if we wait for the police to move. Now, the police report itself is difficult to handle...

Momo: Don’t worry. I will go talk with the president at Tsukumo. I’m going to pay him back in full!

Yuki: I’ll go too.

Momo: You can’t!

Yuki: Why?

Momo: I’m really fast, right? You’re slow though, right? When that guy tries to run off, even at full speed, you’ll be left behind, Yuki.

Yuki: You're right.

Momo: And then, because I love you, I’ll stop chasing after him and just come back for you, Yuki.

Yuki: Momo...

Mitsuki: Umm, I shouldn’t be saying this to my senpai, but … Now is not the time for that!

Momo: Anyway, Yuki will be the house-sitter. You’re all good guys, so all of you are also house-sitting!

Yamato: We will go with you. The underaged [4] guys can stay behind...

Momo: No way! That guy’s really toxic! My cute IDOLiSH7 will get corrupted!!

Sogo: I didn’t even notice when we became Momo-san’s…?

Riku: Is that president that scary?! Did he treat all of Trigger really horribly too?

Momo: He doesn’t do the acts personally, because he’s really smart. But his personality is really bad.

Nagi: Why did you become close with a man like that?

Momo: He helped me when I was in trouble, so I thought he was a good person. When I didn’t have anything to live on, he even gave me delicious organic vegetables.

Iori: When Chiba-san was around, he did the same. Weren’t the members of Re:vale being fed too much then…?

Mitsuki: What about this time? Let’s all do it together, with everyone! Then, it won’t be dangerous, right?

Iori: We can’t do that! Nii-san…!

Mitsuki: I’m asking this just in case something happens, but are you guys good at fighting?

Iori: I said we can’t do that!!

Riku: I can fight!

Mitsuki: Riku is a “no.” Ossan, are you in?!

Riku: I’m not a “no”!

Yamato: This onii-san is a “NO”!

Iori: Idols getting into fights is absurd! Nii-san, you’re acting recklessly...

Mitsuki: I said it was “just in case something happens”! It’s not like we’re going to start fighting right now. How about you, Tamaki?

Tamaki: So about me, I’m big, right? So, if I let out a big “gah!” then they’ll shy away like “shuu~”

Tamaki: But, if the guy doesn’t back off, that means he’s good at fighting. So, in that case, I would shy away like “shuu~”

Mitsuki: So then which is it?!

Yamato: He’s the henchman role.

Sogo: Tamaki-kun is underaged, so if it is completely necessary, then I will go.

Yamato: You said you did kendo? What’s your best technique?

Sogo: Tsuki (thrust to the neck) [5].

Yamato: If you use tsuki on a guy with no armor, it’ll really be serious. Sou, you’re the trump card role.

Sogo: Understood.

Mitsuki: How about Nagi?

Nagi: No problem. But, since I left my magical stick at home, I can’t use my full power.

Tamaki: Nagicchi, way back, before the Trigger live concert, you protected the tower from terrorists after all.

Mitsuki: We’re not gonna fall for that story. How many times are you going to tell it?!

Tamaki: It really happened!

Yamato: Yuki-san, can you fight?

Yuki: Despite how I look, I’m a black belt.

Yamato: That’s got to be a lie!

Yuki: Yup.

Yamato: …. Indoorsy Yuki-san is with Riku as the childhood sweetheart roles. If you cheer for us from the bench, we’ll get energized.

Riku & Yuki: Fure fure!

Iori: You cannot do this! I do not accept this!

Momo: That’s right! If anything happens to you guys, I won’t be able to face Ban-san again!!

Momo: Ah…. If Ban-san hates me, I can’t go on living.

Mitsuki: It’s okay! We’re just looking for Trigger, like normal!

Mitsuki: If, in the very unlikely chance, you get yourself into some trouble, at that time, you have to keep the Basic Idol Rules!

Momo: Basic rules?

Mitsuki: Basic Idol Rule, #1! Even if you pick a fight...

Tamaki: Do not strike unless you’ve been stricken!

Mitsuki: Basic Idol Rule #2! If regular people see you...

Yamato: We’re “filming.”

Mitsuki: Basic Idol Rule #3! The face...

Nagi: I will defend it with my life.

Mitsuki: If we just keep these, then it’ll be fine! After all, we all don’t want to see Trigger being treated like this anymore, right?!

Mitsuki: If you let the Yaotome Prod. people handle it, it could take a weird turn for the worst. Let’s take care of it ourselves!

Iori: ………. You really aren’t going to do anything violent, right?

Mitsuki: Yeah! Don’t worry, Iori!

Iori: ……. I’m worried.

Momo: Don’t get into any bad situations… Ban-san will kill me.

Riku: Tenn-nii, wait for me. I will definitely save you...!

-end-

Next chapter

T/N

1. A popular messaging app in Japan called LINE allows friends to add each other on the app by shaking their phones next to each other. I guess Rabbit Chat also has this function. [youtube video]

2. ita-car (or itasha, see: itabag): a car decorated extensively for a famous person or character, in this case for Trigger. [wikipedia]

3. Maneko-chan: Momo’s pet name for the player. It combines “manager” (pronounced maneejyaa) and ko (Japanese for “child,” can be used to refer to people younger than the speaker; also often used in girl’s names).

4. Underaged in Japan is under the age of 20. [wikipedia]

5. Tsuki is a technique in kendo in which the sword tip is thrusted directly at the throat and gains a point if successful. [wikipedia] [youtube video of the technique]

(Please do not use my translations without permission. Do not copy & paste them. I don't actually know anything about kendo. Sorry if it seems like I did.)

[saccharinedanganimagines]

Pregame Headcanons for Shuichi, Kiibo, Rantaro and Kokichi

Thank you to the anon who requested this one!

I’m still figuring out where I stand in the great “If Danganronpa was really just a TV show VS if Tsumugi lied and everything’s real” debate. 

Uhh this turned really analytical. But this is just my personal take on pregame character personalities.

These headcanons are loosely based on the characters’ first lines in the prologue, before they transformed into Ultimates.

I believe that their Ultimate Talents correspond with their true personalities and way of facing life. I think that their titles were given to them based on what they were like- only now, their traits are amplified. 

Personalities twisted into extremities or vice versa.

So, if Kaede secretly liked seeing people smile prior NDRV3- regardless if she thought that everyone around her was rotten- in the killing game, this turns into a deep passion to actively try to make people smile through her talent.

I’ll try to give my best reasons for these headcanons! Sorry if it’s a little messy, but I hope you guys take something out of my rambles!

~ Mod Ouma

Rantaro Amami

His first title was Ultimate Adventurer.

It was likely that he did trust people and that he even enjoyed meeting new friends. 

An adventurer is always up for new and exciting events. 

Pregame Rantaro could be an adrenaline junkie.

He visits the sketchiest parts of town to hang out with friends or goes bike racing. He knows doing stuff like this was dangerous, but he thinks he can get away with it.

NDRV3-Rantaro’s goal to find his sisters leads me to believe that he greatly valued the relationships that he did have and he may have been greedy over them too. That way, whenever he faces betrayal, he’d spiral deeply into suspicion and attempt to isolate himself and escape emotional pain.

I think he wouldn’t have restricted himself from having meaningful relationships with people either. He’s the type of guy to let things happen and just witness it. 

This will build a foundation for an ultimate who learned the hard way that he should always be wary.

He was a delinquent and a trouble maker, he had to learn how to get by somehow. This could account for his observant and wary nature.

Based on how distrusting he is and how desperate he appears to win the killing game, by then, I could only assume that he won the 52nd killing game by depending on very few people.

At some point, after experiencing Danganronpa-grade anime betrayals, he lost trust in everyone around him.

He looked out for himself, that’s how he earned his title as the Ultimate Survivor.

If it counts as pregame, after be won and became the SHSL Survivor, deprived himself of relationships, because that’s what always lowered most people’s chances of survival in Danganronpa.

Real life struggles and Danganronpa struggles are two types of despair. And compared to the latter, Rantaro would have more easily adapted to the former circumstances.

It’s also possible that he didn’t live in luxury.

An adventurer adapts to his environment, regardless of how dangerous it is. 

Rantaro may have had financial issues. This could justify his independent and self-sustaining nature in the game.

Pregame Rantaro was an opportunist through and through who he sought any type of reward due to his rough life. This made his fall into the despair of distrust and extreme independence as a survivor more dramatic.

Kokichi Ouma

He cares a lot about his friends.

Hell, even strangers.

I like to think that in his group of friends, he took up the leader role.

Perhaps this was because everyone’s awkward or codependent on each other. 

It was like a small self-fulfilling prophecy, one where he was the main character who helps everyone.

He was really attuned to what his friends are feeling and try his best to help with their moods.

Slow day in school? Why don’t we all hang out in an arcade later? Oh, maybe we all should play some Jenga? Hmm, oh! How about a game of ‘2 truths and a lie’!

He lets his friends beat him at chess, even though he could wipe them out with only a few moves.

He puts others before himself.

Oh, you heard or saw something scary?

“Do you want me to go check?”

He’s secretly an emotionally weak person, but he puts on a face because he knows his friends are the same way.

He has to be strong when no one else is. Little things like his own insecurities will only get in the way!

A lot of people will be intimidated with Kokichi because he often has an indecipherable, blank look on his face.

But then he also smiles really genuinely and can seem approachable.

He’s fond of people who stays strong in their standing. He wants to see them continue to be this way. He supports them and helps them grow as a sort of leader and #1 fan.

Which is why in the game, he pushes and prods Kaede, Shuichi, and Kaito- testing to see if any of them will falter. Trying to make sure they are who they say they are.

He’s really attached to his friends, so much so that he considers distancing himself a little. But he’s selfish enough in that regard to keep pestering them for friendship.

He also feels an almost self-righteous passion to watch over them.

This is the foundation for DICE in NDRV3.

Shuichi Saihara

He keeps his head down so much that you’ll rarely see his eyes.

But he’s actually really polite! Not so different from the SHSL detective, eh?

He likes to watch people debate and talk about morality, politics, and crime.

He doesn’t talk often, but when he does, he makes really good arguments in a conversation.

He’s like a gun with a silencer.

This is mostly because he’s not used to talking about his own interests.

And probably because he has a pretty twisted passion.

In the killing game, he’s the Ultimate Detective, before it, he was just Shuichi Saihara, a boy who liked solving difficult things.

Pregame Shuichi is basically NDVR3 Shuichi without most of his morals and with only his shy nature holding him back.

You have to know the hammer to hit the nail.

To solve a problem, is to learn how it works by trying to understand what or who caused it.

Even if he has to stoop down to their pattern of thinking. That’s his philosophy.

It’s like a self-righteous high, mentally committing a crime just so he knows how it went and how to solve it from there.

Not that he truly could, he’s no detective or judge.

His eyes become deathly bored and dull at the very thought of an easy mystery.

But that only serves to contrast how his eyes brighten at the mere mention of a true, clever mastermind to mentally challenge him.

It seems like fun and games to him, but he’s well aware that murder is a heavy crime.

That’s, ironically, also his justification for why he does what he does.

Kiibo/K1-B0

I believe he may have had a sort of hot-and-cold type of personality.

Perhaps he was struggling to develop his own identity and moral standing.

He may have been naive and socially awkward while being exposed to may different views in society- it could have confused him.

He’s very self-righteous in his beliefs, but also contradictory and changing.

One day, he’ll believe that persistently pushing support onto people is good.

Then tomorrow, he’ll believe that leaving people to grow and develop on their own would be preferable.

That’s why he’s the perfect fit as the viewer’s surrogate. And it’s why he’s a robot. He’s an ever-lasting debate of beliefs.

Pregame Kiibo may have aspired to be an optimistic and headstrong person for the sake of those who cares for him. Much like K1-B0 of the game.

He would often back down on a challenge to prove his worth as an individual.

But at the same time, he encourages others to do the same.

That’s the inspiration for his dislike for robophobia. It’s reminiscent of the type of discrimination associated with identity.

Which makes him perfect for the role of Hope.

Hope can burn bright, but it can also smother.

This is the inspiration for K1-B0’s programming towards ensuring that hope won- even if it meant sacrificing Shuichi, Maki and Himiko.

Pregame Kiibo died protecting his beliefs.

It caught the mastermin’ds attention.

NDRV3′s end theme revolved around a copy-cat crime, which means, Kiibo was picked out of other people because he’s like an epitome of the struggle of hope and despair.

Of course, Kiibo resisted.

His determination to fight despair was what hit the nail on his coffin.

He values personal integrity the most, doing the right things at the right times. For himself and for others around him.

His personality was altered into gradual extremities throughout the game, and was made into an AI.

He demonstrated what hope is. He was the embodiment of the fanbase’s conflict of interests.

And that’s being the cornerstone of despair whilst being the hope to fight against it.

[nctsukashii-archive-blog]

Most disliked arc (chapter)? Why?

The saltiest cracker you know is me, Bepsi!10. Most disliked arc (in this case, chapter)? Why? 

I bet you saw this shit comin a mile away huh?

Chapter 2.

Now, it might surprise you, but Hoshi dying isn’t even the worst part of the chapter for me. That’s more emotionally gut punching me and my hopes and dreams that joke characters can live past chapter 3. Actually, Hoshi is without a doubt the BEST part of Chapter 2 even with his death, just because of how amazingly he’s written. 

Sadly, even Hoshi cannot save this chapter from showing just how RUSHED and UNPOLISHED it is. Because holy jeEZ THERE’S A LOT WRONG (albeit it’s personal opinion for the most part). So while you may know them, or may learn something new from my opinion, that’s all cool! Under the cut as Chapter 2 is dissected and torn into to learn why it is sadly, my least fav of V3.

- RUSHED.

Now, this is really easy to see, and I’m sure many others have noticed it as well, but it bears a lot of repeating because it’s a problem. Chapter 2 was rushed to high heavens, in the sense that it mainly serves to push the plot along and nothing more. Things happen too quickly in the story at that point, and while the rest of the game is better off for it, this is the ONLY chapter that REALLY does it so blatantly, and it feels very choking as a result of it.- Tenko’s attachment to Himiko needed to happen, absolutely, but I feel like more should have been done in Chapter 1 to show Tenko trying to talk to her more? Maybe, “OOO maybe himiko wants to be my friend??” and more interactions that show that Tenko isn’t just attaching herself to Himiko b/c she’s “the creepy gay” character. - Toujou becoming the fucking supermaid. This one is the most obvious, but mmm. Everyone relying on her suddenly feels super forced, as characters like Shinguuji and Hoshi and even Maki herself, all ask Toujou to do something for them. It feels out of character for them, and the fact that THAT interaction is the MOST she gets in Chapter 2 before the trial is fucking trash and I’ll explain why in a later point, but you can just TELL that they needed SOMETHING to give her ANY story relevance, and it hurts her character a LOT. - Kaito suddenly wanting to help Maki’s super fucking weird. Maybe if it showed Kaito like “sorry Shuichi maybe later, I wanna try talking to Maki” more in this Chapter to really see that he wants to help her, or even just him going more like “hey Shuichi wanna include Maki in our training? I feel like she could use it.” or ANYTHING that mentions Kaito reaching out to Maki more. Because as it is now, it feels like he’s suddenly placing an all or nothing bet and it makes him, p unlikable at that point b/c Shuichi just goes with it for seemingly no reason because “yeah I guess i gotta progress the plot”. - Those are the main points. Maki is done surprisingly well, actually, she’s really good here. Being sus like that and actually not letting you do FTE’s was cool, and i liked it a lot. Angie’s slow buildup was also pretty good as well, but I think they coulda put Tsumugi in w/ Himiko at some point so it’s not ‘suddenly everyone’s brainwashed!’ in chapter 3, as a slower buildup would do it good! Or at least, more buildup, I should say.

- CLUNKY.

This one is a bit harder to explain, and it goes in hand with the pacing issue, but lemme try. Some of the events and dialogue in Chapter 2 just feel, really clunky? Like, Shuichi’s an emotional guy and I totally understand that, but I don’t think he’d just spill his feelings to the guy that punched him for showing weakness not even 2 days ago? I dunno, maybe it’s just me. It feels like a lot of Chapter 2 was glued into the story as requirements rather than actually to tell a story. It comes in a lot of ways, as previously mentioned a lot of relationships are just ‘suddenly there’ rather than actually built up, IE Kaito and Maki, Tenko and Himiko, etc... and it makes the entire Chapter feel like it’s meshed together with ideas that Kodaka REALLY wanted to be in the game or knew would happen later on, but just couldn’t fit them in, so he shoved them in an early chapter and hoped for the best.

- TOUJOU’S ABILITY TO DO JACK DIDDLY SHIT IN TERMS OF STORY.

Somehow, they managed to make one of the stars of this chapter barely active in it. Can you fucking believe that? Like, no really, if you work off of fan translations I want you to open the translation you have, hit CONTROL+F and search for Toujou and see like, the 30 lines she has before the trial. It’s so MINIMAL, it’s so BASIC, and in those 30 sentences she’s treated like a PLOT DEVICE rather than a CHARACTER. I’m sure a bit of the reason as to why Toujou isn’t as popular as most of the other girls is just how hard the Chapter hits her in terms of not giving her any character development (even in the bonus interaction she’s just “i do this for my job” for fucc sake). Like, even if it was played for a laugh that she’s just so constantly work-focused, or the writing took it as a bit of a punchline for some dry humor (”hey toujou what’re ya doin?” “working.” and just have awkward eye contact and the ‘WOW this is awkward’ thought in Shuichi’s head after a few “...” between the both of them as it happens. easy comedy. see???) it at least would make her seem somewhat important compared to the cast. Honestly, it’s like the Tsumugi Effect but in 2 chapters instead of 6. By doing nothing in terms of plot, she basically puts on this huge fucking sign that says “HEY GUYS IM NOT STORY RELEVANT BECAUSE NOTHING IS HAPPENING TO ME SO I WILL PROBABLY DIE AS A KILLER OR VICTIM” Her trial behavior is really hit or miss as well, because some might find her ruthlessness to be really cool and makes her actually fucking interesting at any point in the story, while others might find it unlikable, excessively cruel, or just out of character for Toujou no matter how desperate she may be. Let alone that her US demographic prolly tanked quite a lot w/ her story focusing on POLITICS of all things (one of the three no-no’s in any conversation), making her very very hard to like, besides on an aesthetic level. Let alone her FTE’s are the worst in the game, as you still barely learn anything about her outside of “im a maid and im good at my job” or other points that the main story already tells you (besides that she once coddled a man so hard he became dependent and that her only weakness is not cutting konjac right ever). It just makes her feel like a barren and incomplete character.

- TOUJOU’S ABILITY TO DO EVERYTHING SO WELL SHE CAN EVEN FUCK HERSELF OVER AMAZINGLY.

Everyone has heard me go on and on about this, but if it doesn’t get said no one will know it so I keep repeating it until the end of time.By making her plan so complex, she basically fucks herself. By making a crime that only someone as competent as her could accomplish, it fucks her because only she can do it. XD. Literally, who do you think would have been able to do all that shit in one night? Saihara’s too weak to drown Hoshi. Don’t fight me on this, because if you seriously believe the detective in training with little self defense training (he worked on infidelity and missing pet/kid cases for fuck sake, his life isn’t really on the line all that often so he prolly wouldn’t know or have to train all that much to protect himself) can take the tennis player that killed over 200 people and has been playing tennis basically all his life (enough to go INTERNATIONAL in MIDDLE SCHOOL) in a fight, we’re gunna need to have a talk.Gonta’s too heavy to use the ropeway.Kiibo’s too heavy to use the ropeway and too weak to carry Hoshi’s body.Himiko’s too weak to drown someone and attempt to shove them in the staircase (which I will touch on real soon here on why even attempting to frame her the way Toujou tried to was dumb as shit).Angie’s... lbr here, prolly missing a few too many tools in her toolbox to really think of a ropeway to kill Hoshi with.Shinguuji’s too weak (and before I get arguments on this, if u think this underweight twig of a man can take out Hoshi when Hoshi’s prolly faster than him and could just run ur wrong)Maki who was the Child Caregiver at the time would be seen as too weak to do anything to Hoshi too (even if she lifts kids, again, Hoshi is fucking rIPPED and has killer legs)Ouma’s too weak (i mean he’s underweight and looks like a twig)Kaito’s a fucking moron when it comes to master plans and wouldn’t have been able to plain something like a ropeway murder (let alone his idol complex wouldn’t have let him kill Hoshi most likely... unless it was a Mondo situation but that’s a later talk)Tenko’s also a fucking moron when it comes to long term planning let alone she wouldn’t touch a man unless to flip him to death, which makes the ropeway seem almost pointlessTsumugi’s too weak to (i mean... rlly. u rlly think she could take him down? under the assumption she isn’t the mastermind ofc at this point in the story, but even then sneak murdering all the kills seems kinda.... eh? too hard for her to do.) Miu’s also a fucking moron that wouldn’t think of using a ropeway (actually, she prolly woulda done the smarter option and just pushed Hoshi’s body out his fucking window since a ropeway would be too much effort)By process of COMMON SENSE, only Toujou would make something so NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED in an attempt to murder a guy. 

- THE DUMBEST PLAN ON EARTH AND HOW YOU COULD PLAN A SIMILAR MURDER AND GET AWAY WITH IT EASY. 

Toujou’s plan is fucking dumb when you can think of SO many other ways to get Hoshi killed with more leeway as to who coulda done it. So I bring up the window in his lab, because literally you could just push him out of it and the fall would prolly splatter that midget cunt on the ground no problem. Hell, even handcuff him. Nearly anyone could have pushed Hoshi out of the window, meaning there’s a possibility that Maki or Kaito could have done it w/o that stupid fucking ropeway let alone anyone at night (or hell even during the DAY since time of death was obscured), and it wouldn’t LEAVE THE FUCKING GLOVE.MMMM OKAY RANT HERE REAL QUICK I MEAN IT THAT FUCKING TRASH BAG GLOVE IRRITATES ME. Like, hhh I know Kodaka wanted to make a case where something like the glove gets the killer caught, but HOLY SHIT was it poor to use in a case like this. It not only feels like it’s out of place for her not to just get it in the morning, but why the fuck would she use her gloves anyways?? Why not use Hoshi’s hat? Anyone could use Hoshi’s hat as hand protection down the moronic ropeway and since it’s a beanie it’s prolly made of more strong material than I guess whatever her shit gloves are made of, since they tore like fuckin trash when she went down the ropeway. As someone that wears cut and heat protection gloves because of my job, the gloves she uses are HORRIBLY inefficient (let alone if she’s cleaning before touching food w/ them on... like please don’t that can cause so many health problems) to try and stop ropeburn. She could have also just poisoned everyone, or killed them all in their sleep, to make her job easier on herself. Can’t have a trial if no one’s there after all right? No one would suspect Toujou working on her fuckin job to come and snap their necks during the night or w/e, or poison their food before the show. But also framing Himiko is really fucking dumb. Like, she expects me to believe that Himiko, who is only 2 more pounds than Hoshi mind you, managed to drown him and stuff him in that staircase, and pull him out during the show in under a minute. LOL no. Hoshi looks like he can break her arms like fucking toothpicks without even trying?? Let alone her laziness makes it look REALLY hard for her to have planned a fucking murder. The fact that like, the first hour of the trial wants me to believe Himiko could be the killer is asinine, just because of how basically fucking illogical it is.What Toujou could have done instead, was leave his body drowned in the sink. Yeah, it’d be harder because not everyone can drown Hoshi (ie. Himiko and Ouma and prolly a few others that are considered sticks or weak), but there are a lot of people who could, and drowning someone is a lot easier than the stupid ropeway piranha bullshit. OR PUSH HIM OUT HIS WINDOW. JUST KILL EVERYONE THAT WAY COME ON.Actually, she coulda killed two people easy. Just have someone gullible like Saihara come to meet her at night in the lab after she’s already pushed Hoshi out the window (or even just come running to his room with a bullshit excuse that she saw a shadow ‘running away’ and saw that something happened in the tennis lab) and push him out the window too. Boom, makes it look like a murder gone wrong, and the only alibi that’d be able to testify about the events is hers. Easy win, everyone else gets executed.I get it, in the end, it needs to be a solvable mystery in a mystery game, but it ends up making Toujou look like a complete moron as a result of it, which is unfortunate.

- MOTIVE VIDEOS ARE RIGGED AS SHIT.

Upon learning what hers and Hoshi’s are, it seems almost rigged that they would have to be the killer and victim respectively. Hoshi’s telling him to ‘kys’ and Toujou’s saying ‘lol go kill someone’ makes it like... even if everyone else saw theirs that they’d be like.. the only two to really act on theirs besides MAYBE Miu or POSSIBLY Angie. And then we also see Ouma’s?? And his is just actively “lol u don’t kill bitch but u should do it anyways” making it seem almost counter productive. Like, bitch it just said Ouma made a rule that no killing was a thing and u genuinely expect his ass to break that? ha. The odds were stacked against the two of them, which makes it only seem more forced in the long run. Which is great from a meta standpoint, but a story can be meta while still being fun, enjoyable, and flowing functionally and logically. Which this chapter isn’t really.

- THE SADLY NOT REDEEMING BUT STILL SUPER GOOD HOSHI FACTOR.

Now, the one thing that I can praise this chapter for really well despite all its shortcomings is Hoshi’s characterization and his story. For one chapter he really makes a hard hit at the time, and it’s easy to become engrossed in his little background story about him wanting to find a reason to live. The real cherry on top is his writing and his interactions with the few people he interacts with. with Kaito, it really shows the disposition that Kaito has against him and just how Hoshi is so understanding of others and like... nice. Even when he wants a goal that goes against everyone, he still respects them. “I won’t do something reckless to endanger everyone.”, and acknowledging that it’s an entirely selfish reason why he wants to find the videos and will still not hurt anyone to do it. He may have threatened to show Maki’s video to everyone in exchange for his own from her, but he never hits her or directly harms / threatens her w/ violence or anything extremely dirty. It’s respectable. Ohhh, and Saihara’s dynamic with him is just so sPOT ON HERE. Between the great advice and compliments in general he has for Saihara such as “the world can be bright for someone that’s looked down for so long, be careful” and “you’re confident compared to before, like a weight is lifted off your back. it’s a good look for you” and other such flattery, to Hoshi being a bit more open to Saihara about his feelings (feeling jealous about everyone else having a reason to live, wanting to find one himself, openly admitting he feels he has no purpose in his life and wants to find a reason to be happy like everyone else, etc.). But this dynamic goes both ways, as Saihara also can read Hoshi super fucking well. Like, seeing the Tennis Lab is a great example of it. When Hoshi states the past is behind him, Saihara thinks to himself ‘but then why are you looking at the court with such sad eyes Hoshi-kun?’ and it’s like, just really nice that Saihara’s not dense? Like, Hoshi expresses himself pretty poetically, with the way he talks and whatnot, acting like a wise sage type w/ endless wisdom all the time, so Saihara being able to read past all the flowery language to just hear “god i miss tennis” or “im depressed” is really REALLY refreshing, and a nice balance to see. If you do Hoshi’s FTE’s it personally makes it even better, but that’s not a requirement so moving on. Even just Saihara asking him things like “are you doing well?” or “Is this what you want?” or “or just the small but surprisingly deep talks they just seem to have with one another are tiny details that really complete the dynamic that they can both read each other and can react to one another super well. It feels balanced between the both of them, even in Chapter 1, and it’s a shame Hoshi had to die because I would have LOVED to see how far it could go and how much it could have been expanded on in the later chapters. 

Sadly however, no matter how great Hoshi is, it can’t save Chappie 2 from it’s endless faults and gripes that I have with it, that ultimately make the story less entertaining as a result.

[shsl-shipper-gamer-fangirl]

A/N: I feel like Kaede would have shared the SHSL Hope title if she was in dr1. Okay but if Kirigiri was in v3 she wouldn’t do a half-ass detective investigation. She’d test out traps and know a rigged game when she sees one. SPOILERS on the mastermind.

Other switch AUs: luckster | togami | naegi | troublemaker | detective | maid | liar | protagonist dr1/sdr2 | protagonist dr1/ndrv3 | protagonist sdr2/ndrv3 | heroine dr1/ndrv3 | heroine sdr2/ndrv3 | fem protag dr:ae/ndrv3 | mastermind

Heroine in the Wrong Game - Kaede and Kyouko

“We’re going to be alright. If we all just work together, I’m sure that we can get through this!”

She says this for the nth time already. She’ll say it as many times as she needs to. Sure it took them a few trials and more dead bodies than one would have liked, but she thinks that maybe she’s finally getting through them.

“Might I remind you that one of us is the killer? I don’t care if you peasants start holding hands but do not include me in your incompetent schemes.” Byakuya brushed her off just like he always did whenever she brought up cooperation.

“Geez, would it kill you to get off your high horse for once!” Kaede huffed at him.

“How dare you t-talk back to Master Byakuya, you… y-you bitch!” Touko yelled the insult with surprising volume especially on the last word.

“Bitch?!” Kaede was offended but she knew better than to engage in a pointless verbal warfare with the writer. She sighed. “I really shouldn’t be the one you’re shouting at. You could at least hear me out first.”

“Don’t worry, Kaede-chin! I’m placing my bets on you! My fortunes say that you’re on the right track. I’ll take the payment in cash later!” Hagakure gave her a thumbs up.

“Are you extorting money from me in exchange for your support?” Kaede asked disbelievingly. She tries not to think about the fact that his fortunes are only correct 30% of the time and how those aren’t exactly great odds.

“I don’t know… Our friends just keep on dying. Worse is that we just keep on finding out a friend who’s betrayed us every time. I don’t think what we do makes any difference.” Asahina admiited hopelessly.

“You’ve got that wrong!” Kaede shouted in protest. But despite her loud yell, her next sentence is soft and comforting. “I know. It’s frustrating and sad and heartbreaking finding corpses of our friends and… finding out that they were murdered by… our friends too. But we can’t just let it end here. If we did then that would mean that we lost. Haven’t we already lost enough? I don’t want us to lose any more.”

“I agree. It’s too early to give up. I know we’ve been fighting for so long now but just because we haven’t won yet doesn’t mean we already lost.” Makoto seconded her speech with one of his own.  "We can’t lose hope. As long as we hold onto the hope that we can still get out of this together, we’ll be fine. I just know it!“

"Wow, you’re really great at this motivational thing. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said it was your talent.” Kaede stared at him in awe and respect.

“Well, optimism is my one redeeming quality.” Makoto sheepishly scratched his head at the sudden attention. “Your words honestly touched me too. That’s why I want to support you with all I’ve got. I’m sure that if you hold on to those words, to that hope, everyone else will eventually listen to you too!”

Kaede’s still working on getting her classmates together but she thinks she’s getting there. One person at a time.

“Alright, team! We can do this! We have the enemy outnumbered!”

Meanwhile, in another class…

“We’re not voting.”

She says it so suddenly and with so much authority that it has the whole class uncharacteristically quiet.

“Nyeh? What do you mean, we’re not voting?” Himiko although being the slowest among them, was surprisingly quick on the uptake. It must have been the shock.

“Exactly what it means.” Kyouko calmly confirmed.

“Gonta is confused. Don’t we need to vote?” Gonta asked, scratching his head in thought.

“We were TOLD that we need to vote,” Kyouko clarified. “There is however, no real reason for us to vote immediately other than a time limit ill-imposed on us.”

“So what? Are you telling us to just die all because you thought we could get away with not voting? Why the hell should we listen to Kyoucum here?” Miu loudly expressed her concerns with all the unnecessary insults.

“I’m telling you not to vote because this is a trap.” Kyouko narrowed her eyes. “Clearly, not all of the mysteries have been solved yet and we’re already asked to vote. Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”

“Does it matter? We already figured out that it was Shuichi who did it.” Maki countered, eager to just get this over with.

“No, we didn’t figure out anything concrete. He’s only the suspect not the culprit.” Kyouko corrected her. “We have yet to confirm if his trap did in fact work.”

“But there’s no other way that Rantaro could have been killed, right?” Kirumi asked in an effort to further the discussion.

“Not necessarily. I have a theory…” Kyouko paused, placing a hand on her chin in thought. “I would like to discuss it with all of you first before we finalized our votes.”

“Listen, I know you two are buddies because you’re both detectives but there’s a limit as to how much you should protect your friends…” Ryoma warned her darkly.

“It’s precisely because I’m a detective that I can’t let this slide so easily.” Kyouko counters vehemently. “Jumping to conclusions without irrefutable evidence is just sloppy work. Whether or not Shuichi is my friend is irrelevant. I am a detective first and foremost, and I am here to solve ALL mysteries.”

“That’s enough, Kyouko.” Shuichi who has been quiet all this time, finally spoke up. His hand was trembling as it clutched his hat. “I’ve… I’ve already accepted my crime. There’s no need to prolong the inevitable. Just vote for me… and all of you can survive.”

“…” Kyouko just stared at him. Disappointed. She let out an audible sigh. “And you call yourself a detective?”

“I… Does it matter anymore?” Shuichi sadly smiled. “You’re clearly a better detective than I am, Kyouko. If it’s you, I’m sure the whole class would be fine even with me gone.”

“…If you have nothing better to contribute then I suggest you just observe. You should know better than to just rely on confessions without any concrete proof.” Kyouko pointed out. “I don’t care which of us is the better detective. As long as you also hold the title, I suggest you stop acting like a victim and start acting like a detective.”

“As expected of Kyouko-san! Between her and the degenerate male, she is clearly the more superior detective!” Tenko squealed.

“While it does not wound me to hear your support, I would like to keep this strictly professional.” Kyouko brushed a few locks behind her ear, hiding her embarrassment. “Any opinions of either of our work ethics should be decided only after we’ve proven ourselves in this trial.”

“Kukuku… How beautiful! Spoken like a true detective! You have truly risen to your role! It fills me to the brim with excitement thinking of just what is the solution to this mystery you so desire to earnestly solve!” Korekiyo laughed.

“…Let’s move along.” Kyouko did not want to humor him.

“Nyahaha! Atua has a question! See, Angie has been thinking this whole time… Isn’t it strange? Isn’t it strange? Angie said it twice for effect haha! How come we get to have two detectives hmmmm?” Angie asked with a coy smile.

“That’s… actually a good question.” Kyouko doesn’t deny it even if it brings the heat to her. “There is no necessity to have a duplicate in terms of talent. This redundancy has been bothering me ever since I learned of what my true talent is.”

“Yeah, usually getting doubles in characters counts as lazy writing but apparently it doesn’t count if one of them is a fan favorite.” Tsumugi casually drops.

“Who cares if there are two detectives? They’re different people anyways so there shouldn’t be a problem.” Kaito innocently reasoned.

“No, that’s wrong.” Kyouko objected. “There’s nothing inherently wrong or suspicious with having two detectives gathered however… given our circumstances, it should have been obvious that we were all selected to have unique talents. And yet, we have two people with the same talent. For what reason?”

“Ah, but wasn’t your title originally SHSL ???, Kyouko? You couldn’t remember your talent like Rantaro but you eventually figured it out during his body’s investigation.” Kiibo brought up.

“That’s another mystery. Two people who can’t remember their talent. We may never know what Rantaro’s talent was but mine has been revealed to be exactly the same as Shuichi’s.” Kyouko bit the inside of her cheek in frustration. “There are so many redundancies to ignore.”

“You’re thinking too hard on this, Miss Detective! There’s obviously a simple solution to this!” Kokichi tutted and then smiled sweetly. “And that is… You’re lyiiiiing!”

“…Would you care to explain your theory?” Kyouko encouraged him, unfazed by the accusation.

“You keep pointing out all these weird character points but if you look at the source, they’re all about you! Who’s to say that you really can’t remember what your talent is? Maybe you just faked that story once you heard our beloved Rantaro introduce himself as not remembering his. Who’s to say that your real talent is at being a detective? Maybe you’re just that good at shadowing what our poor Shuichi does. See, you say it’s weird but really, it’s not. You’ve just been lying to us! And I hate liars!”

“Well that was… certainly less farfetched than most of your lies.” Kyouko admitted that much. “But that just now was a lie too, isn’t it? You don’t really believe I’m lying.”

“Awww, you seriously are better than Shuu-chan.” Kokichi pouted but she could see through his feigned disappointment. “Welp! Guess there’s no use in you pretending anymore either. Now that we’ve cleared up your suspicion, Kyou-chan, I think it’s safe to start pointing fingers at the mastermind!”

“M-Mastermind?” Shuichi looked on with horror. “But the trap failed! It didn’t kill the mastermind, it only killed Rantaro instead!”

“Again, do not let me repeat this more than necessary. While it is unfortunate that Rantaro has been killed, it has yet to be confirmed that it was your shot put ball that did it.” Kyouko stared at Shuichi with an unreadable expression. “You set up the trap to lure the mastermind, right? Your original goal was to kill them after. In a way, the trap had only been fifty percent effective.”

“Fifty percent?” Shuichi’s eyes widened in shock. “The mastermind is obviously not dead since we’re having a trial so… does that mean… you really did figure out who?”

“Yes, I’ve had my list of suspects but after enough evidence has been presented in this trial, I have narrowed it down to one.” Kyouko crossed her arms. “There’s still a possibility that my theory is wrong but that is why this trial exists. That’s all the more reason we should not vote and continue discussing instead.”

“Nishishi! Don’t keep us waiting in suspense, Kyou-chan!” Kokichi cheerfully interjects. “Tell us already who’s the sicko that had us trapped in this stupid killing game!”

“Very well. Given all the evidence at hand, there is a concerning possibility that the mastermind is none other than…” Kyouko scans the trial room until her eyes land on a particular someone. “Tsumugi Shirogane.”

…

“Eh?”

“WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?”

“Tsumugi’s whereabouts during the murder had been the most suspicious. That alone shouldn’t have been sufficient but her actions during the whole trial had led me to believe that she has been steering this trial to serve a goal that’s more than just our survival.” Kyouko narrowed her eyes at the now quiet supposedly plain girl. “Isn’t that right, Tsumugi?”

…

“Oh, dear… It’s only the first trial and we already have a mastermind reveal…” Tsumugi sighed, resigned to this lazy writing. “This is what we get when we let the fans choose a comeback character.”

Kyouko casually flips her hair.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of mystery you throw. I’ll solve them all.”

The two heroines continued to struggle with trials of their own and unbeknownst to them that they were in the wrong class.

[dangankink-blog]

Fanservice Ronpa!

Chapter 1: “Kaede Fatamatsu” A.K.A “The Beginning”

(The following story contains a bunch of things that might not be of your best liking such as: slob, obesity, etc., as well as V3 spoilers bad writng Also possbly very OOC things)

It all Started with a note from the producers.

“Dear Miss Shirogane

After making extensive research and data collecting, we have come to the conlusion that Danganronpa’s renewed 53rd season may be cancelled unless massive changes are made to the characters that star in it.

Our ratings have dropped massively in the last few seasons, we need something new to call the attention of the public. Something defying, interesting, and that will undeniably raise our ratings.

Our best wishes,

Team Danganronpa’s staff”

“Massive changes to the characters?”

“Ratings dropping?!”

“Oh, why? Why is everyone seeing less in Danganronpa’s magestic design?”

Tsumugi lamented herself, looking and sounding severely frustrated before slapping herself in the face.

“Chin up, Shirogane!”

“It’s in your hands to keep this wonderful series alive for the world to see!”

“But I’ll need to change so much, and our cast is ready to air already we’re set up and the script needs massive cha--!” She stopped, then mentally repeated her own words, over and over again before a devious grin settled in her face

“Massive....”

Day 3 of the Mutual Killing Semester and no casualties have happened

Kaede Akamatsu was happy, as she layed on her buttom, just outside of the isolated academy.

She had banded her classmates together and was planning to meet up with Shuichi to start piano lessons later that day, what could go wrong?

Monokuma had lost to the power of her optmism and magic words, she was sure of it!

Her thoughts, however, were interrupted soon enough by a piece of paper hitting the back of her head

“Huh, what?!”

She said, looking everywhere, crumpled up paper in her hand as she looked everywhere for the mysterious note writer.

And yes she found no one....

Surely someone was just shy, she told herself before expanding and reading the paper, which quickly piqued her attention.

In shaky handwriting and a perfumed paper, The note read the following

“Dear Kaede

I’ve found something important, a clue to getting out of here, even!

Don’t tell anyone, Monokuma could find out.

Meet me in the shrine in a few hours”

No signature. Anyone would have thought that was weird....

But Kaede beamed with determination

“Surely this is from Shuichi! If he says it could save us, whatever it is it will probably let us leave!” She thought, crushing the paper in her hand.

A few hours later, Kaede walked towards the shrine making sure no one followed her. She made sure to show up earlier than asked, just in case it proved important.

She waited..and waited....And then...She felt something sting her behind, a yelp sounding as the response to the immediate pain, only for it to be followed by drowziness....extreme drowziness...

Kaede woke up, tied to a chair and in an obscured room.

“Wuh....where....” She slurred out, still half asleep

“...Wh...WHERE AM I?!” She yelled, in sudden realization. “HELLO?! SOMEONE?! HELP ME! I’M--” She stopped suddenly, Monokuma’s trademark laugh resonating through the room

“M-Monokuma?!”

“Well, finally you woke up! I was starting to think you had turned nto Kaedead! Upupupupu!”

Kaede couldn’t help but cringe at the bad pun

“Well, okay then. I guess not everyone can bear a perfectly good sense of humor!”

“What do you want, Monokuma?” Kaede demanded

“I ruined your plan and you’ll break your own rules to get rid of me?” She asked, trying to play smartass about the situation.

“Oh, boohoo. Little miss piano thinks I’m ruined, My life is sooooooo done for!” he cackled, looking like he was definitely enjoying the situation.

“You didn’t ruin a thing, you Kaediot! I mean, who do you take me for?!”

“I’m nothing but a fair, square and filled up bear! You hear? You’re here for a different kind of dealio, compadre!”

“You see, I’ve been having a few issues keeping my children calm, you know”

“Being a single papa bear of five is hard! Everyone always going on and on and on about how being a mama bear is hard, no one thinks about us papa bears I tell you!”

Kaede seemed to be taking this insultingly. He kidnapped her just to complain about his children...? Is this how he planned to get rid of the one who ruined his plans?. However, she also had a tinge of fear to her face.

She was at his mercy. This could hurt a lot...She was afraid, but tried to keep her defiant look, for her friends!

“Fine, fine, I’ll get to the point!”

“You see, my small little poor little kubz cant get entertainment anymore! And our super duper special surprise for all of you is taking way longer than we expeced...Puhuh...That’s so bad, they’re just tearing my fluff out, those bastards! The most despairful situation ever! They even keep emptying the fridge with how bored they are and how much running they do trying to keep themselves entertained!”

“So, I thought and thought and thought and thought and thought and thought and-- Look, just picture me with glasses in a reflexive pose for two and a half days!”

“So basically, what I’m trying to say is that”

“I’ll be giving them a lesson! And you, my dear Kaede, the girl that banded the students of the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles singlehandedly, will be my assistant!”

“W-Wait, what?” Kaede asked, confused

“Less questions and more working, we have people to enter-- ahem... I mean, teach, Kaede!”

And swiftly, the kubs covered the scene with a curtain and acted like they were putting on a play

Monophanie held up a cardboard sign that read “The problem of a modern kink!” as childish music played

The curtain opened up, the scenery completely different and Kaede just looking bamboozled, yells for help muffled by a piece of cloth as the kubz took seat in a circle infront of Monokuma, who was sitting with a book and glasses infront of a control panel.

“Now then, my dead children. It’s Papa Kuma’s storytime!”

The kubz cheered happily

“Today’s story will be...The blonde, the witch and the King!”

“Once upon a time, there was a selfess blonde, who never gave herself some private time!”

“She was always running around, here and there! She helped the emo! She helped the crazy religious bastard!”

“She even went and helped the evil midget!”

“One day, the benevolent King of the town they aaaaaaaall inhabited, King Monokuma the great, saw how much the poor peasant of a blonde was working herself, and chose to reward her!”

”MMPH?!” tried to yell Kaede, confused as the cloth covering her mouth was slowly untied by Monosuke, cackling

“’ I invite thee to my castle for a banquet in your honor, lady Blonde!’ Said the always generous king! ‘A banquet as the reward for your selflessness!’ he remarked!”

“ ‘Oh, your beariness! I’d love to!’ said the peasant blonde.”

“ ‘We’ll offer you as much as you can eat! With no limits!’ He said. And so, they got on their way to the wonderful King’s feast! However, it wasn’t true that everyone was happy with lady Blonde’s actions!”

“People from the rest of the kingdom groaned angrily! So angrily they hides the blue witch to punish the blonde for her actions!”

“ ‘We’re tired of lady blonde!’ they said. ‘She’s just one more of these noble peasant wannabes!’ said some of the younger ones!”

“The blue witch, being as honorable and loving as she was, accepted the job!”

“ ‘I’ll use my magic to forever transform the blonde for being so deceivingly nice!’ and with a movement of the fingers, it was done!”

“Finally at the banquet, with all the food ready, the blonde layed happily, ready to enjoy her peaceful reward!”

“First, she had a slice of pie!”

As monokuma said this, the cloth was dropped, Kaede aiming to yell again...before having pie shoved into her mouth and forced to swallow...It was like blueberry...it tasted really good too!.

“She loved it! So she went to have a chicken leg next, balanced meal after all!”

As soon as Kaede tried to breathe from swallowing the pie, chicken meat was shoved into her maw and she was once again forced to swallow. She looked in pain, she was stressed! What was going on?!

“She loved the chicken too! In a bit of an impulsive decision, she went to eat some steamed tuna!”

It didn’t even wait this time. She was asphixiating but she couldn’t return the food. It was literally being shoved perfectly so she would swallow, with a small window to breathe in between.

She was nervous, she was crying...but she was...enjoying it?

She was confused, blatantly so. The food was so delicious!...It’s almost like it was numbing her senses and...making her hungried....a-and...m-making her horny? Just what was in these things?!

“So lost she was in the foods taste she started to shove several things in! From meat to veggies, to ramen! Pie! Muffins! The king didn’t think much, but lady blonde? She was eating and eating but she knew deep inside something was wrong!”

Giving Kaede just enough time to breathe and react, she was about to complain. That was too much for her to eat so quickly!

“Wai--ULMPH?!” She barely had a chance to say anything, and now she had a tube shoved in. And the food started flowing in, directly into her maw and then stomach.

As it kept coming, a small, taut stomach started to show through her sweater.

Monokuma didn’t stop.

Kaede was being fored to eat and eat without much rest. Just enough to keep her alive.

It hurt. It hurt so much...but she also felt hotter...hungried...

Chicken, Ramen, several flavors of pie, several flavor of cake...

At one point, Kaede gave in to the bears actions and started gulping, if only because she wanted more time to breathe, to stop filling her stomach.

It had started to peek from under her sweater and shirt by the time Monokuma reached the “The end” part of the book and she felt like she was going to blow up...before the darkness returned.

Hours later, she woke up...in a feast table? Her stomach had digested everything already, the pounds having packed on already. Kaede looked horrified at her new fluffness

“Wh-What is this...?!” She asked, before Monokuma once again showed up...with a lamp and a syringe this time

“If it isn’t lady blonde! That was a wonderful show, Kaede! Everyone loved it!”

“L-Loved it?! Show?! W-What?!”

“Don’t worry! Doooon’t worry!”

“You played like a star, now time to eat like one!” He said before shoving another piece of food in the blonde’s mouth.

This time the food felt...different to Kaede.

It was entrancing...addictive....no! She can’t give--

And then, Monokuma flashed her with a lamp

If she could feel her brain, she would feel everything rewiring. Readjusting...Moving over and over again....

And before she knew it...she had tons more of food in her maw....

She felt horrified...What was she doing?! It was like her body was in automatic. She was eating and eating....And then across the table she saw what...looked like a fat, hedious version of herself.

“...Are you going to deny this to us, Kaede?”

She got herself to stop

“W-What....Who?”

“I’m you...I’m what we really want...”

“Admit it...you’ve always been turned on by this...”

“Have you forgotten the many nights blubber was our only companion?”

“The soft landing for the piano freak....?”

Kaede thought about it....It felt like she did’t know what she meant...but at the same time like it was the truth

Before her thoughts her interrupted by a loud PHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT seemingly coming from the wider her across the table....And the same had the face of a pleasure unknown to her...the smell was rancid, horrible....but....why was she feeling so good? Why was she rejoicing in this

“I...I’m not....into this....”

“Are you so stubborn that you deny your own pleasures to your- BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAP...huff....self?”

Not only did the fat Kaede burp...she burped in kaede’s face.

Kaede blushed a bright pink. This wasn’t what she wanted! Not at all! It wasn’t! What was even going on?! Was this a dream?!.

She was still flying through her thoughts as the fat version of herself was stuffing food into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed...and chewed and swallowed...

(I don’t want this...I don’t want this!) She would keep telling herself...More and more food shoveled into her maw.

After a while, an ejection of gas occurred....but this time from her own rump.

She had lost herself in a muffled pleasure, only to be completely embarrassed by it immediately....She was still in denial...still in...denial....still in... deni...al?

She looked back at reality. Her plump self wasnt shoving food in anymore....she was.

The fatter Kaede was glutting herself. Kaede watched intently between chews....She looked so happy...So...sexy....And then before she realized it...she was eating faster.....Her conscience and will vanishing as she ate and ate...seemingly with a bottomless appetite.

It got to the point where she didn’t care she was farting and burping. She wanted to fill her gut...She was so HUNGRY...Hungry to feel good!

Days passed after Kaede’s mysterious disappearance before she suddenly showed up again. Everyone was baffled, outside of the cafeteria.

It smelled like someone had died and they hadn’t even reached the door yet!

Then, suddenly, the door flapped open with the sound of a mighty ‘PLLLLRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT’ and an oddly sensual moan.

Everyone stared in awe.

Kaede had grown massive.

The woman needed two chairs just for her buttcheeks, Her clothes looked like someone had played paintball with her as the shield splotches of several sauces all over her body and chins as she just glutted herself full.

As Kirumi and Ryoma took determination to confront the gigantic blonde, everyone stared even more in confusion as Kaede lift a doughy thigh, along with the blubbery buttcheek, and farted once more, rancid, cheesy blast hitting Ryoma and Kirumi completely in the face before they got her attention.

“Oh, BWRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP-i guys!” She said, chubby face smiling, looking a bit like a clown with all that sauce on her face before she let out a few tiny burps.

“Huff....Were you going to cook something? I’m starving!”

Tsumugi secretly smiled. The first target of Operation Kink service begginning...

[oumakokichi]

Hello ! Do you think it can be considered canon that Ouma has something for Saihara ? And if so, do you think it was really relevant to the story to hint at that ? (That one sentence about him not letting go of someone he fancies in Chapter 4 literaly came out of nowhere and was never mentioned again, but I might have missed something) I personally kinda ship it but do wonder if it was really important to make it a thing.

I’ve answered a bunch of questions along this line ofthought before but yes, I would say Ouma’s feelings for Saihara are canon.There are a bunch of characters with canonically confirmed one-sided feelingsin the DR franchise, so I wouldn’t consider this anything new. If anything, itwas a pleasant surprise to see yet another canonically confirmed gay characterin the franchise, and so soon after Juzo, too (before ndrv3 came out, I was personallyworried it was going to be a long, long time before we got another explicitlygay character).

Ouma’s confession in Chapter 4 isn’t something I would say “cameout of nowhere,” particularly as there are plenty of indications in him takinga much greater interest in Saihara ever since the start of Chapter 2. I thinkin Chapter 1, it’s fair to say that he wasn’t particularly interested though—especiallybecause Saihara was still very much acting the part that Tsumugi had intendedfor him, by being scared of everything, “weaker than anyone,” to put it in herwords.

It is particularly worth noting though that pretty much assoon as Saihara takes his hat off in Chapter 2 and begins deliberately actingin a different way than what was “pre-written” for his character, Ouma startstaking a much bigger interest in him. The “my beloved Saihara-chan” commentsalso start as early as Chapter 2, and teasing or not, I would say it’s stillnoteworthy that he begins expecting a lot more from Saihara as a detective andas an individual both.

There’s also his behavior towards Saihara in Chapter 3,which is arguably one of the chapters where Ouma interacts the most withSaihara by virtue of not yet having begun his own villain routine. Withoutacting so openly hostile and antagonistic the way that he does in Chapter 4,his interactions with Saihara are considerably more playful and even thoughtful.

One of the scenes that’s caught my interest for a while nowis one in which Ouma mentions that he doesn’t actually want to resurrect Amamifor the “transfer student” motive. Surprised, Saihara asks why not, and after abrief pause, Ouma explicitly says that it’s “because he’s thinking of hisbeloved Saihara-chan.” He says he’s pretty sure Saihara would rather resurrectKaede if he had a choice, and that he would rather do what makes Saihara happy—afterwhich, of course, he playfully tacks on a “that’s a lie, though!” But sincethere was no reason for him to bring up that particular conversation in thefirst place, and since he was acting quite serious for most of thatconversation, I firmly believe he was telling the truth.

That little exchange isn’t one I see brought up a lot, but Ido think it’s an excellent glimpse at the way Ouma works, always letting littlesnippets of the truth show before passing it off as a lie because he knows thatno one will believe him anyway as long as he makes the credibility of his ownwords go down. It also highlights the fact that he’s an extremely caringperson, no matter how much he pretends otherwise. Since we know that it’s canonthat Ouma hated the killing game, and hated death and murder in general, it makessense then to think that he was thinking long and hard about the “transferstudent” motive and how getting a chance to meet and talk with the deceasedagain might actually be a chance to bring some closure.

There are also, of course, his FTEs and bonus mode contentas well. While the bonus mode isn’t canon, the FTEs are at least deeply tied toboth his character and the story, and to dismiss those as “not canon” feelssomewhat hasty to me. His FTEs are filled with a considerable amount offoreshadowing for the whole game, and help to shed some light on just why it isthat he starts finding Saihara so incredibly interesting starting from Chapter2 and culminating with their blowout in Chapter 4.

One of the highest possible compliments someone like Oumacan pay to anyone else is to call them “interesting,” or “not boring.” Thereare many indications that he may actually have had some kind of SHSL Analysis.His script in Chapter 5 (which he wrote literally in the span of about twohours) is so incredibly detailed and lengthy that it’s, in my opinion,unexplainable without him having some talent that would allow him to predicthis classmates to that degree—and the only talents we’ve seen along those linesare Junko’s and Kamukura’s. Looking at it from that perspective, it makes sensewhy Ouma brings up words like “boring” and “interesting” so much, as well aswhy he constantly seeks out things that are fun or catch his interest.

This is exactly what he does in his FTEs, especially withSaihara. His first two FTEs with Kaede involve him mostly offering to team upwith her, pissing her off, and her shooting him down. In short, neither of themreally feels like they’re on the same wavelength with each other, and while Ithink he did respect her judging by his final send-off to her in Chapter 1, Ithink her inability to realize that he was posing her a mystery also frustratedhim. In his second FTE with her, he even tells her point-blank that it’s “nothis problem” if she keeps rejecting his offer, and looks disappointed and boredwhen she rejects him for the final time.

By contrast, his FTEs with Saihara are marked withexclamations of surprise and comments about how “interesting” Saihara’sreactions are. Certain dialogue options (especially the more forward andassertive ones) have him remarking “Huuuh, that was completely different fromwhat I thought you’d say!”

Even the entire premise for his FTEs is basically achallenge to someone as weak and timid as Saihara: by posing a “threat” that he’llhave to kill Saihara after a certain number of FTEs now that he knows about his“secret, evil organization,” the easier solution would certainly be for Saiharato just avoid him and never finish those FTEs. So each continuation and eachnew FTE requires Saihara to step forward out of his comfort zone and seek himout if he wants to know anything more about him.

Those small steps of progress and those surprisingly orunexpected comments are basically rewarded with Ouma messing around and playinggames with him for a number of FTEs, finally culminating in the last FTE wherehe loses the knife game that he proposes on purpose, let’s Saihara bandage himup, and then dramatically exclaims that “Oh nooo, I lost so I guess that meansSaihara-chan wins!” Not only is there a lot of excellent Chapter 6foreshadowing (about games that can be won without being played), but there’salso plenty of reason to believe that Ouma really, genuinely did enjoy his timewith Saihara.

He says outright that since Saihara’s been thinking abouthim so much, always wondering why he said certain things or acted a certainway, Saihara’s “heart is full of him,” and “since he has Saihara-chan’s heart,he doesn’t need his life anymore.” This perfectly meshes with his behavior inChapter 4 and other parts of the game: Ouma was clearly curious about Saiharaand wanted to know more about him while also teasing and playing with him, buthe also didn’t want to let him in too closely or allow him to know anythingabout himself.

Basically, Saihara’s ability to act in unpredictable orsurprising ways was the thing that Ouma found the most interesting andappealing about him. It’s undeniably canon that Ouma couldn’t figure him out—notonly do his FTEs suggest it, but Chapter 6 confirms it, with the whiteboard inOuma’s room. Saihara’s picture is set aside from the rest of the group, withthe words “Can’t figure him out?” beneath it. So his whiteboard is yet anotherpiece of evidence backing up the fact that he had feelings for Saihara.

He had feelings, andI think those feelings were something that surprised even himself—whichprobably wasn’t a feeling he was accustomed to considering how much he wascapable of predicting other people’s behavior and various outcomes andscenarios. He was interested in Saihara, clearly, but he also couldn’t fully,100% trust him, or anyone else in the killing game for that matter.

His attempt to force Saihara into joining forces with him inChapter 4 was spurred on not only by his interest in him, which had beendeveloping over the last few chapters, but also the fact that Saihara was (fromhis perspective) the only one who had actually been doing anything productivefor the group, saving everyone constantly in all the trials. Saihara was farmore skilled as a detective than he wanted to admit to himself, due to his owninsecurities, and Ouma saw that and recognized it. But he was also far tooparanoid want to team up with anyone else,which is why he tried to make Saihara cut all ties with the rest of the group.He wanted to work with him, specifically, and no one else.

If you ask me whether I think it was important to the storyor necessary to make it a thing… well, in my opinion, yes, I think it was.Because Ouma’s own emotions, and Saihara’s ability to surprise him, are twothings that Ouma can never fully predict or take into account. And in Chapter 4both of those things come back around to surprise him and to make him finallyshut his mouth when he’s acting horribly in the Chapter 4 post-trial.

One of the most important things about Ouma’s character isthe fact that no matter how infallible he acted, and no matter how convincinghis villain routine was, he was ultimately very, very human at heart. Irecently wrote a post explaining his empathy, and while that empathy helps toset him apart from characters on a much colder, more analytical scale likeJunko and Kamukura, it also makes him vulnerable in a way that those charactersare not.

Unlike Junko and Kamukura, Ouma understands other people’sfeelings perfectly well, and doesn’t enjoy the thought of hurting them. Were hetruly as evil or chaotic as he pretended to be, I’m sure it wouldn’t have beena problem for him to kill any, if not all, of his classmates, moresoconsidering how many tools he had that they never even knew about until thelater chapters. But he never did. His conscience is one of his most redeemingqualities, but it was also a hindrance at times when he wanted to be cold andcalculating and unfeeling. Chapter 4 is the coldest he gets, and Ouma at hismost morally grey—but it’s incredibly telling that even though he has a perfectopportunity to let Maki and Momota both die in his place in Chapter 5, justlike he did with Miu and Gonta, he’s unable to actually do so again.

Then there’s Komaeda, who Ouma still gets compared to quitea lot despite being relatively dissimilar to him in terms of his mindset andactions both. But one of the most notable differences that sets them apart isKomaeda’s inexplicable luck. While it’s true that his luck cycles between thegood and the bad, it’s still a trait that’s more like a force of nature, and itstill makes Komaeda into a larger-than-life figure whose luck would alwayscarry him through his schemes and plans for factors that were outside of hiscontrol.

Ouma, by contrast, has nothing like that to swing things inhis favor. He’s smart—very, very smart, incredibly so. But he has no luck tosway things for him, and so he leaves almost nothing to chance. He calculatesand plans—but he’s unable to make the hard sacrifices that he wants to, whichis ultimately why he chooses to go to his own death willingly rather than keepon sacrificing others. His chessmaster act is ultimately just that: an act. The fact is that Ouma wasn’t aSupreme Leader of anything but a bunch of harmless, silly pranksters, and whilehis bluff was incredible, he was very, very human and vulnerable at his core.And even though he himself might’ve liked to think he was actually someinfallible, ruthless, strategic chessmaster, his own emotions did, I think,catch him off guard.

His confession scene with Saihara shows how even though hewas clearly able to recognize that he had feelings, he also wasn’t able tofully account for how his shitty behavior might be making Saihara feel. Hethought if he kept pushing, Saihara would have to come around and join himsooner or later, and that that they could team up without him fully putting histrust in Saihara or opening up to him. What he didn’t expect was for Saihara to get pissed at him, put his footdown, and call him out on being pathetic and lonely because his actions weredriving everyone else away.

Despite having a comeback to everyone else’s angry remarksin the Chapter 4 post-trial, Saihara’s comment is the only one that leaves himunable to respond. He tries, then goes silent and blank, then finally says he’sgotten bored and walks off. And I think it’s because Saihara’s comment was one of the only ones that genuinelygot through to him. I think he was surprised to realize that Saihara’s comment actuallyhurt, and that he was torn between his own feelings of guilt (both over what hedid to Miu and Gonta, as well as how he began acting towards the rest of thegroup) and his incessant need to keep playing the villain and carrying out hisplan to strike back at the ringleader.

There are all of these reasons, plus the fact that, as I’vediscussed in a lot of other pieces of meta, Ouma’s confession scene iscompletely unskippable. Unlike his FTEs or the bonus mode, it was shown in acompletely story-related, plot-relevant scene. Not only was Saihara himself notaround, but no other characters were at all, meaning that Ouma was completelyalone in that scene. Without anyone else to overhear him, I think it’s safe tosay that there was no reason for him to lie.

His wording was also explicitly romantic. The phrase “sukini natta hito” is used almost exclusively for romantic situations (includingmany love songs and shoujo manga), and is even the exact same phrase Maki usesto describe herself falling in love with Momota in the Chapter 5 post-trial. Itdoesn’t make much sense to me to call it a “hint” when it’s Ouma saying it, buttake it explicitly at face value when Maki says it. Considering how much “love”itself is an extremely important motivating factor for many of the charactersin ndrv3, I think it’s very intentional that there are all these one-sidedconfirmed feelings in the game which drive the characters to do what they do.

Anyway, this has gotten really long so I’ll leave it at thisfor now, but I hope this answered your question! It was really fun to write aresponse to; I love looking in-depth with Saihara and Ouma’s dynamic. Thank youfor stopping by!