#you ever try to summarize character arcs in a show and end up saying incomprehensible nonsense like this

[mjvnivsbrvtvs]

man in the middle of a depressive episode gets life advice from a guy having a perpetual identity crisis

[oumakokichi]

i saw your ask explaining the 'duality' motif running throughout ndrv3's cast, and its honestly super fascinating! would you mind explaining why harumaki, momota, kaede, shinguuji, kirumi, and hoshi follow that kind of theme? (i know it's a lot, but i am SUPER curious about it.)

No problem! That ask was a really fun one to answer and it’sone of my favorite ongoing themes with ndrv3! I absolutely love that the whole “liar”and “duality” aspect of each character was something so prominent that theyeven decided to emphasize it by giving each character’s shadow the whole “ominouspurple eyes” thing in the opening.

Also, here’s the first question for anyone who might’vemissed it! It ties in with what I’ll be talking about in this one quite a lot.

Maki is a fairly easy one to start with. Although she seemsstraightforward, cold and emotionless and off-putting at first glance, there’sso much going on under the surface with her. Where most people guessed that shewould be the Kirigiri-like figure of the story due to the sprite similaritiesbetween them and her “main girl” vibe, she actually lacks the cool composureKirigiri has, and is hardly the thinking or rational type.

Where Maki seems composed and emotionless at first glance,she’s actually highly emotional. She’s one of, if not the most temperamentalcharacters in the entire ndrv3 cast—and unlike Momota, whose temper tends toboth flare and recover quickly, Maki’s tends to flare bright and then stayburning for a while. Her anger has very real and dangerous consequences to it,because it’s a very cold, committed anger: she knows how to kill, and she’s notafraid to do so.

It’s easy to see where the duality lies with her whenlooking at her talent especially. She’s also one of the many characters inndrv3 with two talents, or rather, who lies about her first talent. The juxtaposedimages of Maki’s lie about herself as the SHSL Caretaker, as well as her realtalent as the SHSL Assassin, are interesting—because the first title isn’t entirely a lie. She does enjoy takingcare of children, and it’s true that she values and misses the orphanage morethan anything else about her life before becoming a trained killer.

There’s a very real side to Maki that is lost and insecureand unsure of where she’s heading, because she’s never been allowed to decideor want things for herself. And that aspect of her is almost childlike in howunaware of things she is, unfamiliar even with what the feeling of falling inlove is like, or what it’s like to actually have friends. This uncertain,hesitant Maki is just as real a part of her as the brutal, well-trained killeris, causing a very noticeable streak of duality which becomes apparentespecially in Chapter 5 when we see her break down and confess her feelings toMomota just before he dies.

With Momota, most of his duality lies between the role hesets himself up to be in the group vs. the lengths he’s actually willing to go inorder to back up the things he’s said. He very much acts the part of theshounen protagonist, especially at first. He wants nothing more than to serveas a very Kamina-like figure, an inspiration to other people in the group likeSaihara and Maki who can help bring them out of their shells and get them to “believein the him that believes in them,” etc. But as ndrv3 shows (much better thandr3 ever did), it’s one thing to say something hopeful and inspirational, andit’s another thing entirely to mean it.

Momota has a very real streak of jealousy to him, which I’vediscussed a little bit before, something which still very much reminds me ofsimilar character arcs for Junpei and Yosuke in Persona 3 and 4 respectively.It’s true that Momota wants the best for Saihara and wants him to become abetter detective and a stronger person overall. But it’s also true that it’shard to accept that that’s exactly what Saihara is doing when it means havingto doubt and suspect the others around them. Momota wants to believe in everyone, and that’s just not somethinga detective can afford to do—something Momota didn’t actually consider prior toChapter 4, where it was made painfully clear with Gonta’s case.

There’s also the matter of his illness. Despite his claimsthat they should all talk openly and honestly 100% of the time, and his outspokenhatred for Ouma’s lies as “messing around like a brat,” Momota isn’t nearly ashonest as he wishes he could be. His illness is something which would threatento unbalance the group if they knew about it, particularly after having triedso hard to become a leader and an inspiration to them all. And so Momota,despite his outward honesty, is much more secretive than he would initiallyseem. But this secretive streak is also something that serves to counter hisusual hot-headedness, and is one of the biggest reasons in my opinion that hewas actually willing to rethink his previous opinions and cooperate with Oumain Chapter 5.

Kaede’s streak of duality is really fun because it becomesso much more apparent on a reread. Very much like Momota, we’re initiallyinclined to take Kaede as she seems at first glance: a gung-ho, take-chargeprotagonist who is optimistic and inspiring and generally willing to believethe best of others in order to get them to work together. There was thisfeeling with Kaede, both in the demo and the early parts of Chapter 1, thateven if she was sly and willing to lie in order to do what it took in thetrials, she would still be honest with her feelings and with us, the players.

But all of that gets blown out the window by the twist inChapter 1, not to mention the later reveals in Chapter 6 that Kaede wasn’tnearly the optimist or the group leader that she wished she could be. Kaede’sskepticism and inability to fully trust people around her was something verymuch inherent to her personality—not even the remember lights could fullybrainwash it out of her, and it’s exactly why she’s so incredibly secretivewith her plan to try and kill the ringleader.

Despite her claims of wanting everyone to work together,Kaede couldn’t work together with anyone. This is something lampshaded, as Oumacalls her out on it, but of course, Ouma seems so needlessly antagonistic on afirst playthrough—but in hindsight, it’s easier to see that he’s actuallyright. She couldn’t work together with anyone, not even Saihara. Kaede wasfully unable to trust anyone or let anyone in because of the horrible paranoiacaused by the killing game itself, quite similar to characters like Oumahimself, and Amami as well. It wasn’t until she was actually about to die inthe Chapter 1 trial that she came to terms with the way things were andentrusted her will to confront the truth and leave the school to Saihara,trusting him fully to make it happen.

Korekiyo is an interesting one because on the one hand, italmost seems like there’s not much duality with him because everything abouthim is so obviously sketchy. He’s pretty straightforwardly evil in terms ofmotivations; he cares nothing about anyone who isn’t his sister, takes pleasurein cruelty, and isn’t portrayed sympathetically by the narrative even once. Butagain, by scratching the surface a little, certain elements of duality arise.

Korekiyo strikes me as what I would call perhaps one of themost rational and seemingly composed characters in the game most of the time. Whenhe’s not actively planning to murder anyone himself, he’s quite intelligent,actually—he’s one of the only characters who actually suggested that theringleader themselves was responsible for Amami’s death in Chapter 1. Becausehe’s quick to doubt others, he’s not one to fall into the “hope vs. despair”pitfalls that the others do. His doubtful nature actually makes him fairlyperceptive, and if he hadn’t been set on murdering for unrelated reasons toMonokuma’s motives, I don’t doubt he might have made it much further into thegame than he did.

But the thing with him is, despite his rationality, hisdubious nature, and his obvious intellect, he’s willing to be extremelyreckless on exactly one front: his sister. His composure and self-preservationinstincts melt away entirely in the face of his completely delusional andself-imposed motive of killing 100 young women in order to resurrect hissister. And he knows that this is a huge risk to take within a killing gamewhere getting caught means being executed, and he continues to do so anyway. It’sa fact that most of the clues for Angie’s murder actually come from Tenko’scase later on, and that he would’ve stood a much better chance at getting awaywith things had he limited himself to killing only one person.

But this uncharacteristic reckless abandon pretty muchdefines him when you bring his sister into the picture. Just as he becomes ashaking, incomprehensible mess when cornered, and retreats into terrifyingdelusions of being possessed by his sister’s ghost when taking off his mask, he’sincredibly reckless, dangerous, and willing to kill for reasons that havenothing to do with the killing game itself—an interesting twist in a way, sinceI don’t think something like that has really been done in any previous DRgames. Syo never killed anyone, after all, and she was our other big serialkiller character.

Kirumi’s duality is most easily seen right at the end ofChapter 2. I think a lot of the split reactions many fans have had on how totake her explanation of her motives summarizes it best. With Kirumi, there isvery much this selfless streak a mile wide willing to throw away her ownemotions and thoughts and preferences if it’s “for everyone else’s sake.” It’strue that she believes selfless devotion is the best creed for a maid, and thatshe works hard to accomplish this goal, even if it means sacrificing a fewlives for the sake of many.

It’s also true, however, that people don’t alwaysnecessarily live up to their creeds. Just as Kirumi was (for her in-gamebackstory anyway) a selfless maid who worked as the shadow prime minister ofJapan and for the good of the country, she was also a high schooler, a teenagedgirl. Kirumi’s outward loyalty gives her an aura of seeming honesty, which iswhy it’s so hard for the rest of the group to believe that she could possiblybe the culprit at first, even when all the evidence stacks that way. She’s sogood at emotional manipulation and lying her ass off, and telling them how of course she would never do something likethat, she cares about them so much, can’t they see that?

This willingness to do absolutely anything that it takes is,I believe, as much for survival’s sake as it is for “the good of the country.”After all, she wholeheartedly believes that she can’t do anything for anyone ifshe herself is dead, and that’s why she has to survive at all costs. But thereare so many lingering questions, intentionally I think, of where the line isdrawn between living for the sake of selfless duty, and living because youdesperately want to live and you’re terrified of death.

Kirumi was willing to kill Ryouma brutally, taking advantageof him when his back was turned—what’s more, she was willing to lie to everyoneelse about it. She was willing to keep lying even after the trial was over, shevoted for Saihara out of spite at having been caught in the act, and she kepttrying to manipulate everyone into laying down their lives for her so that sheherself could get away and survive. All of these things create an interestingjuxtaposition of Kirumi’s very real, very well-meant urge to take care ofpeople and sacrifice herself for people, as well as her cutthroat, cold,calculating willingness to do anything and lie about it in ways very much meantto appeal to people’s emotions, rather than their rationality.

Finally, with Ryouma, we have an interesting character witha lot of duality. There’s so much to talk about with him in particular, thoughI know this particular meta is getting long already. First off, there’s thefact that he was clearly meant to resemble an “obvious joke character” with hisdesign. Similarly to Yamada and Teruteru, I feared prior to the game’s release thathe wouldn’t be given much more purpose than to make gross jokes and behave obscenelytowards the other characters. And yet, he’s one of the most down-to-earth,level-headed, and well-intentioned characters in the entire group.

His entire character arc deals with very serious themesabout wanting to die and what it means to find a purpose in life. He has ahorrible, tragic backstory which really isn’t funny no matter how you look atit, and it’s left him miserable and depressed and suicidal. And this is a veryserious character arc which ties in quite well with ndrv3’s larger overarchingthemes of “meaningless lives” and children who are willing to throw their livesaway entirely for the sake of participating in the killing game show in thefirst place.

There’s also the matter of Ryouma’s dual talents. Neithertalent is a lie—he really does just have two, since his SHSL Tennis Player talentis something he “discarded” willingly when he left his life of playing tennisbehind in order to go hunt down the mafia that killed his family. His SHSLPrisoner talent is never really openly talked about by the rest of the group,but it’s very fun to see it alluded to all throughout Chapter 2, especiallywith the actual reveal of his SHSL Prisoner Lab after his death. Much of Ryouma’sdesign reflects both tennis player and the prisoner imagery (the symbol on hishat can be either two tennis rackets or two handcuff keys), showing that hehimself is someone torn between two lives and unable to move forward or find areason to keep living, really.

And yet, despite having so many reasons to want to die andso little incentive to keep going in life, Ryouma is one of the characters whofights the most furiously to live anyway when push comes to shove. He wanted tosee his own motive video in Chapter 2 not in order to give in to Monokuma’smotive, but simply to see with his own two eyes whether there was anyoneimportant out there waiting for him at all. And even after seeing “proof” thatthere was “no one,” the fact that I find the most interesting is that he didfight back against Kirumi when she tried to kill him.

When she says he died willingly, it’s an outright lie.Ryouma fought back so much that he had to be handcuffed at his prisoner lab,and even when she was holding his head down in the sink to drown him, hescratched at the sides of the sink so furiously that it left scratch marks in the stone (which iskind of terrifying, really, to think about how long it must’ve taken him todie). Despite Kirumi’s claims that he had “given up” when he turned his back toher, he was a character who had not given up, despite everything. And that’sincredibly inspiring, really, and definitely proves that there was a lot moreto him than meets the eye.

In any case, this response has gotten really long so I’llleave it here for now. But thank you for letting me talk about these othercharacters! I really like getting to discuss the whole ndrv3 cast like this,and these kinds of questions are so much fun! Thanks for asking!