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oumakokichi · 7 years

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Why do you think Togami never reached the level of popularity and number of fangirls Komaeda and Ouma have?

Probably because he was never quite as plot-relevant as theother two. Which is ironic, really, since out of the three of them, he’s theonly one that ever actually made it to survivor status in the traditionalsense.

Even though Togami gets a lot of screen time, it never feelsas if he’s the narrative focus of dr1. By contrast, it’s absolutely impossibleto ignore Komaeda and Ouma in sdr2 and ndrv3 respectively. Togami is certainlyplot-relevant, but he never manages to be quite the undeniable force thatKomaeda and Ouma do. To put it simply, Togami tends to react to things as theyarise, while Komaeda and Ouma tend to instigate things. There are hugedifferences between Komaeda and Ouma, really they’re not similar at all on mostfronts, but it’s at least true that they are both planners.

The closest we get to Togami moving the plot forwarddirectly is in Chapter 2—and even then, his entire plan is limited to exposingFukawa’s identity as Syo and not much else. He was still reacting, rather thaninstigating, for the most part, as he likely wouldn’t have had a method toexpose her if Mondo hadn’t killed Chihiro.

He took advantage of a situation that had already occurredand altered the crime scene, and his underlying objective through all of thiswas to see who in the group was still smart enough to realize that the culpritwas someone else. As he tells Naegi at the end of the second trial, by watchinghim piece the clues together and expose the truth, now he “knew who to watchout for if he ever decided to commit a murder himself.” But as we know, Togaminever actually put any such plans into action. He mostly dealt in bluffs,trying to make himself look imposing and intimidating enough that no one wouldeven think of trying to kill him, and for the most part, he had a very “mindyour own business and I’ll mind mine” mentality.

Komaeda and Ouma meanwhile are both absolutely central tomoving the plot along in their respective games. It’s impossible for thenarrative not to focus on them at some point because they are so undeniablyinvolved in everyone’s business. Komaeda is an honest-to-god force of chaos, aconflict-bringer who wants to watch the group struggle in order to achieve true“hope” in the face of “despair.” Ouma, meanwhile, puts up a chaotic façade onthe surface, all the while attempting to stop the ringleader and put an end tothe killing game once and for all.

Togami likely never achieved the same kind of popularitybecause he was never put into this kind of front-and-center role. I wouldhesitate to call him Naegi’s “rival,” despite how common it is for fanartiststo draw Togami, Komaeda, and Ouma as the “three rivals.” Togami doesn’t competewith Naegi or grow with him; aside from Chapter 2, he doesn’t even antagonizehim directly. Komaeda and Ouma are both centrally involved with Hinata andSaihara’s respective character arcs, meanwhile, making them both undeniably “rivals”of a sort.

The front-and-center, most plot-relevant character in dr1after Naegi himself is Kirigiri. She’s part of the narrative at every twist andturn and she follows Naegi’s development as he progresses through the story,encouraging him and challenging him to overcome his preconceptions andlimitations. Despite the fact that she and Naegi have an incredibly strong bondof trust, there are conflicts that arise between them—many people forget thatKirigiri was one of the mostsuspicious characters in dr1 for a time and that it was not easy for Naegi totrust her completely in Chapter 5 when it seemed like she was trying to sendhim to his death.

For these reasons, I would actually call her the rivalcharacter, rather than Togami—but people think “rival” is synonymous with “asshole,”so she doesn’t usually get drawn as such. Still, I’ve written a lot of posts onhow she and Ouma parallel each other in terms of their role in the narrativefar more than Ouma parallels any other character, so I guess I keep coming backto that interpretation.

Anyway, this is just my take on it. I personally love Togamiand his development as a character, but I can definitely understand why henever made it to the massive levels of popularity that Komaeda and Ouma did. He’snot supposed to have the same kind of narrative focus that the other two do,and his personality isn’t nearly on the same larger-than-life sort of level(which is ironic because he does think of himself as larger-than-life, whatwith all the “My name is Byakuya Togami” jokes).

Thanks for asking!

#ask #opinions #ndrv3 spoilers //#okay to reblog #arisjonesb

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grace0331 · 7 years

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Thank you very much for the answer @arisjonesb ! Well anon that asked, if you see this post, the Amami/Kaede CG is from the FTEs!

#ndrv3 spoilers #ndrv3 #dr #kaede akamatsu #amami rantarou #toujou kirumi #tsumigi shirogane #amamatsu

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efnewsservice · 6 years

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Can you confirm if Robbie Kay (Peter Pan) will appear in the final episodes and with who was he filming?

He is appearing in the series final but I don’t know if it’s 21 or 22. He filmed in studio so no way of knowing with who.

#ouat spoilers #arisjonesb

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koushiroxiu · 10 years

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name some blogs that you like that you don't mention much that probably don't know you like them

Okay! some sweet person left me this question like 14 hours ago but for the concert I’m just answering

I’m going to put the people I’ve never talk to, And I’ll love to talk to them

The people that don’t appear here is because at least we have a message okay? LOVE YOU ALL! Sorry if this is long

harriet-sonyas / iseklahey / arisjonesb / jpgsangster / crank-y / cuddlynewt / daaft-punkk / grief-ers / fevrecodes / killlthemaze / killzone-newt / lovemenewt / maze-runner-newt / minhosbae / newt-wasgone / newtmazer / nuggetjumpers / punknewton / poppunkminho / semi-disenchanted / shuckedfaceshank / shuckitnewt / thomassangsterslays / themazesucker / veronaprincess / toxic—blush / stilesandthefandoms / thomas-cutie-sangster / thomasansgter / newts-army

I think is is it dude

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oumakokichi · 7 years

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Hello again! i also wanted to ask what do you think of Celeste's character overall

I honestly really enjoy hercharacter! Celes is fun—her unrepentant selfishness is perhaps one of thethings I find the most fun about her, actually.

While I wish that her actualmurder plan had been done better in Chapter 3, her breakdown in the trial wasan absolute blast to see the first time around. It’s always been a little bitof a disappointment that the character in dr1 who spent the most time hyping uptheir ability to act and lie impeccably actually had the easiest-to-solve caseout of the whole game, but her reactions during the trial still served to makeher one of the most memorable culprits. My personal liking for Celes is still whyI’d probably rank dr1 Chapter 3 over Chapter 3 in either sdr2 or ndrv3.

Part of the appeal of hercharacter on a reread really is the fact that she’s not nearly as good of a liaras she makes herself out to be. She’s neither a flawless strategist and expertliar capable of pulling off a genius plan (because to be honest, her plan wasjust… bad) nor a poor, lonely child who had good intentions but was just toounskilled at befriending others. Rather, she’s scared—much more scared than she lets on. And this fear of hers is interestingbecause while it’s always just there under the surface, ready to boil overwhenever Celes talks about how much she’s “accepted” living in the schoolpeacefully, it’s never something we’re supposed to sympathize with.

Celes is pretty undeniably oneof the most unsympathetic culprits in any DR game. And again, I find thathighly enjoyable. What she did, she did for straightforward, selfishmotivations. She wanted money, shewanted to live out a dream of being waited on hand and foot by attractivebutlers, she wanted to think of herself as elegant and refined and a geniusliar with an unending winning streak. She likes to think quite highly ofherself, but most of her motivations can be summarized as “selfish highschooler with a bad case of chuunibyou.”

Even the reveal at the end ofthe Chapter 3 trial, where we learn that Taeko Yasuhiro grew up in a fairlyunrefined/poor background, doesn’t really serve to make her sympathetic. Rather,the fact that her only motivating factor for putting on the façade she does isthat she’s kind of embarrassed about being poor and not having as elegant andinteresting of a backstory as she’d like is just… pretty hilarious, actually. Shewillingly kills two people for monetary gain, and admits unapologetically thatshe’s pretty much been biding her time and waiting for this opportunity eversince the killing game began.

There were never anyattachments or emotional bonds keeping Celes back from acting on her plan theentire time in dr1. Rather, it was simply a matter of trying to gauge when andwhere would be the best time to strike, who would be the easiest targets tolure in, and whether or not killing anyone would actually net her anything outof it. If the motive hadn’t been nearly as promising towards fulfilling herdream, she likely would have just waited until a “better” motive came along.

In the meantime, the fact thatCeles was harboring such a desperate urge to get back to the outside worldwhile being the most willing to suggest they “live peacefully” within theschool is extremely fun. Where the fear and desperation is much easier to see inmost characters fairly early on (like Maizono, for example), Celes’ strategy oftrying to lower everyone’s guards by acting as if she was totally adjusted totheir current situation and acting as if “this is just the way things are goingto be from now on” was really interesting.

The part in her breakdown whereNaegi and the others bring up how seemingly well-adjusted to their school lifeshe had been and she quite literally screams that that was so obviously a liewas one of the most fun parts in the entire Chapter 3 trial (in my opinion,anyway). Unlike characters like Ouma or Junko, and even Kirigiri, who truly dowear facades so much that they become almost indistinguishable from their realfeelings, Celes was never as skilled at lying either to others or herself asshe pretended to be.

When forced into a corner andput into a situation where the odds aren’t promising at all, Celes shows such adrastic distinction between her usual behavior and the sort of screaming,swearing, losing-her-cool behavior she starts throwing out left and right atthe trial. Even when she and the rest of the students know that just blindlyyelling and trying to act intimidating won’t actually change anyone’s mindsabout her being the culprit, it’s the last recourse of a scared, selfish personwho doesn’t want to die and can’t stand the fact that she was caught in theact.

Very similar to Ruruka, Celesis someone who I don’t doubt can occasionally have company she’s fond of orprefers, but is ultimately someone who’s always going to prioritize herself andher own wants and needs first. When push comes to shove, she’s going to trygetting what she wants, doing things to save her own ass, and never lettinganyone or anything hold her back. She’s not afraid to play up any routine oract, be it refined, elegant, and composed, or scared, shaking damsel indistress, but always under the surface she’s very cold, ruthless, and willingto sacrifice others for anything that would benefit herself.

She’s so enamored with the ideaof herself being “special” or “different” from the rest that that’s one reasonher execution has always been a favorite of mine. Unlike many executionsengineered to be as slow and torturous as possible, the fun of Celes’ executionis that it’s a sort of subversion on these things. It starts out in the mostideal way for someone like Celes possible: she seems like she’s going to get togo out exactly as she would’ve wanted, looking like a real witch, sufferingcalmly through an elegant burning at the stake.

But that’s not what would causedespair to someone like Celes. Despair is the realization on her face when thefiretruck comes hurtling at her and smashes that elegant and refined atmosphereto pieces. Having an execution that’s brought to an end abruptly, brutally, andwithout anything “elegant” about it in the least, is exactly what she wantedthe least. And that’s something Junko clearly knew, and her execution is soobviously tailored to make her horrified and despair at the very last minute.

Celes is the first real glimpseof a sort of unrepentant, selfishly motivated culprit we get in the entirefranchise, and I think that’s part of why she sticks around and makes such animpression on the fanbase even now. The fact that she has a great design, a funexecution, and a memorable breakdown at the trial has contributed to hergetting lots of fanart even nowadays. She’s a fan favorite ever since the gamelaunched, I’m pretty sure; even when other people were disappointed at how easyChapter 3 was to solve, it was still fun,and that’s what really contributed to it being impossible to hate Celes.

This is my take on her, anyway!She’s honestly entertaining as an antagonist, a sort of mid-boss if you willsince Junko is the even biggerunsympathetic figure of dr1. I really love Celes and I haven’t had a chance totalk about her much in-depth, so thank you for asking! Thank you for stoppingby!

#dangan ronpa #danganronpa #celestia ludenberg #celes ludenberg #taeko yasuhiro #my meta #okay to reblog #it's really fun to get questions on some of the characters from other dr games sometimes!#arisjonesb

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oumakokichi · 7 years

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What do you think of Ouma's beta designs? do you like them more or less than the version we see in the game?

I’ve talked a little bit aboutthem in another ask, but I really love all his beta designs!

I think beta design C isprobably most people’s favorite, and I have to admit it’s probably the best aesthetically.The black nail polish looks really good as a whole, and the shirt and pantslook much less awkward than his final design. I really like the effect of theplaid too, and of course, the heterochromia is a lot of fun, if a little bittoo close to a Monokuma gijinka for comfort.

I’m still glad they went withhis final design instead, though. The black might look better aesthetically,but white makes a lot more sense in Ouma’s color scheme. The white really makesthe effect of his scarf pop a lot more too, since his hair is dark; it’s a loteasier to get a chess theme from his current design than it is from the betas,even though the scarf is present in most of them. Considering how essentialchess and games are to his character, I really like that.

I’m also glad they decided tomake him just the slightest bit taller than some of his earlier beta designs.Ouma might be childish in nature and appearance, but Shiro Himono really excelsas a voice actor at switching from super playful, bratty tones of voice to muchdeeper, more adult-sounding voices. Ouma might be young, but he’s still a highschooler. So I like the fact that his current design has just the right blendof young-looking without making him seem overlychildish.

Finally, my biggest flaw withthe beta designs is that none of them really give off the ratty and tatteredimpression nearly as well as his current design. It’s a lot harder to get theimpression of Ouma as someone who bluffs about nearly everything from some ofhis other outfits—I honestly don’t even know what they were going for with theskeleton hoodie in beta design A, other than Kodaka probably thought it lookedcool and edgy but then Undertale came out so he scrapped it immediately.

The super tattered edges on hisscarf and at the edge of his shirt and its neckline really do give theimpression of someone who looks very intimidating on the surface—but when youstrip it all away, it’s nothing but a bluff. I don’t think that was an aspectof Ouma’s character that really got finalized until later, so it makes sensethat it really only shows through with his final design, but I’m glad they madeit the way they did.

All in all, there are aspectsof each of his beta designs that I really like and enjoy seeing in fanart, butI still do enjoy his final design the best! Still, the more Oumas, the merrier.They’re all really cute.

#ask #opinions #i don't think there are any spoilers in this just some implications #okay to reblog #arisjonesb

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oumakokichi · 7 years

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Hi! what are your opinions overall on Ouma and Celeste conversation in bonus mode? would they be friends outside the killing game?

I really enjoyed that bonus mode conversation between them!Honestly it was really entertaining to read.

As for whether or not they would be friends… now that’s aninteresting question.

I took their bonus mode interaction as an interesting lookat what it means to be a “liar” in different ways. I love Ouma and Celes bothas characters, but I feel it’s pretty unarguable that Ouma is a much betterliar than she is—dr1 Chapter 3 is pretty clear proof that for all of Celes’bluffs, she’s really unable to perform under high pressure, and that she’salways much closer to losing her cool than she appears usually.

So it’s really fun to see them interact because Ouma is thebetter liar between them, a real liar actually, and he knows it, and he knowsthat she knows it too, and she gets pretty clearly pissed off by him.

Celes’ lies are much more beginner-level from Ouma’sperspective, I think. She certainly thinks of herself as an accomplished liarin keeping with her gambler title, but there’s ultimately nothing about herselfthat she can really hide from Ouma. Within just a few minutes of theminteracting, it becomes very apparent that he knows pretty much everythingabout her: from when she’s actually really pissed off and itching to yell athim, to her real name (since he calls her Yasuhiro-chan pretty cheekily at onepoint).

By contrast, there’s absolutely nothing about Ouma thatCeles knows. I’m sure she’d love to get her hands on some actual informationabout him—most of the characters in the bonus mode pretty clearly don’t knowanything at all about Ouma, and they don’t even know how much of what they do know is true or a lie. Ouma’sbackground, his family history, his “secret organization,” even his real talent,these are all things that Celes is absolutely clueless about.

Ouma’s lies are pretty clearly something she can’t seethrough at all, and that certainly piques her gambler’s fancy I think. He’s sointentionally infuriating and such a brat on purpose that I think that’sexactly why she wanted to gamble with him at the end, just to see if she couldwin. After all, Celes is a character highly motivated by money, and also byhaving advantageous information over other people. She views pretty mucheveryone around her as a potential opponent and someone to “win” against (andin that sense I think she and Ouma are actually similar in viewing most thingsas a “game”), so the idea of winning over someone as cryptic and annoying asOuma really sounded appealing to her.

It’s fun because while she and Ouma seem very similar on asurface level, I think there are actually far too many differences between themfor them to really get along as friends. Celes clearly was starting to getpissed off by Ouma’s cheeky behavior and the amount of information he knewabout her despite her best efforts to remain mysterious. Meanwhile, she herselfis so cold and ruthless at her core; even if none of the characters haveactually committed murder in the bonus modes because it’s all a happy schoollife scenario where no one dies, I don’t doubt that their core personalitiesare still very much the same as ever.

Given Ouma’s clear hatred for murderers and people who arewilling to toy with others’ lives, I don’t doubt that he would never reallywant to actively befriend someone like Celes, who will willingly sell otherpeople out with little to no incentive other than personal gain. I think partof why he was enjoying annoying her somuch and dropping little hints about how much he knew about her is preciselybecause he just wanted to piss her off in particular.

That being said, I do think he was having fun with it. WhileI don’t think either of them would regard one another as a friend, I don’tdoubt Ouma at least was enjoying himself in finding someone else who waswilling to play games with him—the opportunity to wipe the floor with her wasprobably an added bonus.

The conversation ended before we could see whether theyactually did gamble or not, but if they decided to, I wouldn’t hold out veryhigh hopes of Celes winning. In the official art of her playing mahjongg withJin Kirigiri, Naegi, and Komaeda, Komaeda won the match by getting so luckythat he literally came out with the luckiest, rarest hand in the entire game.

Consider that in the bonus mode between Komaeda and Ouma,Ouma actually won whatever game he and Komaeda had been playing (or at leastgot Komaeda to forfeit while he started talking about all the personalinformation he hadn’t been able to find on Ouma), and it’s pretty clear thatwhen Ouma plays to win, he leaves absolutely nothing up to risk or chancewhatsoever. Celes loves to gamble and take bets, and her strengths lie in beingable to continually stack those bets. But I’d say that someone like Ouma who’sboth more talented at strategizing and at lying, would probably win against hereasily.

The most they could probably do is drink tea together, andeven then I don’t doubt Ouma would love to try pranking the hell out of her bymaking her tea all wrong. They’re a duo who look similar and potentiallyfriendly on the surface, but most of their dialogue is pretty biting and loadedonce they start snarking for more than five seconds. But that in and of itselfwas fun, so I really did enjoy seeing just how sarcastic they were being witheach other!

Thank you for asking!

#ask #opinions #i don't think there's actually any spoilers in this one #okay to reblog #arisjonesb

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oumakokichi · 7 years

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Hi! can you do an analisis on Shirogane the same way you did with Ouma? I love reading your posts

Thank you so much! I’m sorry to have left this message forso late, but I wanted to go through absolutely every inch of the Chapter 6trial from start to finish really carefully before answering this, because Ifeel like Tsumugi deserves a really full, well-done analysis, and I wanted tobe able to write one to the best of my ability!

Tsumugi has jumped up in my character rankings since gettingto actually see her in action for myself. She’s a fantastic antagonist,absolutely fascinating as a character, and she is just all around fun to watch in the final trial. There’sso much about her that leaves room for speculation—the entire ending andepilogue is all about speculation, after all, and there’s no way to really besure with her, because like with much of ndrv3, she’s someone who wants to puther entire existence into a “catbox” of sorts and make sure the mystery can’tever really be solved for sure.

I don’t think anyone would be reading this post if they didn’talready know a bit about Tsumugi’s character and the things that happen in thelater chapters, but just in case, this post will contain heavy spoilers forChapter 6, so don’t read past the read more if you’re not comfortable!

So I’ve talked a bit before about how one of the mostfantastic and enjoyable things with Tsumugi is that she’s not Junko. We finallyfor the first time in the core series have a well-written, effective antagonistwho is not the same as Junko, who was foreshadowed very well in advance, andwho was among the group the whole time. Compared to twists like “mastermindTengan,” which was the single biggest letdown dr3 had to offer, the twist withTsumugi is outstanding.

It’s so hard to pin down exactly what makes “her,” becauseher being is entirely comprised of fiction. We see her for the first fivechapters, hiding in plain sight, clearly prone to human error and makingmistakes where she shouldn’t be, and without knowing anything about her as themastermind, it’s easy to buy into exactly the kind of act that she’s trying toplay: that she’s boring, plain, thatshe doesn’t contribute anything, isn’t worth paying attention to because she justflies right under the radar.

I feel like one of the core things to understand aboutTsumugi is this: that while the Tsumugi we see for most of the game, the “boringand plain” one who slips right by without catching anyone’s notice is certainly“the real” Tsumugi, from her own perspective, it’s just one more character that she plays.

Tsumugi is completely marked and defined as a character andas an antagonist by her complete inability to distinguish reality from fiction.The reason it’s so hard to tell how much of what she says is a lie and how muchis true (without catching very specific hints) is because she really, reallydoesn’t care. She makes anything and everything into a “lie” or “reality”according to whatever scenario she’s trying to pull, and she can start weavingnew scenarios from nothing at only a moment’s notice, true to her SHSLCosplayer ability. Tsumugi Shirogane is a person to us as the people playingthe game, and to the other characters around her. But to herself, “TsumugiShirogane” is just one more character she plays among an ensemble of fiction,as she tries to keep maintaining a fictional world in a fictional game for thesake of the only thing that feels enjoyable to her anymore.

In the Chapter 6 trial, it’s easy to sort of fall into thistrap where everything Tsumugi is saying gets taken as a sort of “truth bomb”and even when it sounds horrible and we want to deny it, we brace ourselves toprobably admit it was true, because that’s how things were with Junko. Junkohad a few lies here and there in her own final trial and showdown in dr1, butfor the most part she dropped truth after horrible truth, from everything aboutthe state of the outside world to the fact that the Togami family had fallen,and both the players and the characters in dr1 sort of had to take her at herword at some point because she was such a force of nature.

But Tsumugi is no force of nature, but merely an imitationof one. She is all about imitation. She emphasizes that her cosplays arethemselves “perfect imitations of the real thing.” The only way she canpossibly achieve that result is if she has no “real thing” of her own. Only bydiscarding one’s “true” sense of self and throwing oneself into fictionentirely can one achieve this perfect ability to camouflage and even believe orhonestly feel “what the characters are feeling.” Tsumugi has no real sense ofself, because she relies on Danganronpa, and on fiction, to give it to her.

She’s just absolutely fascinating. Certainly, she admiresJunko. She understands Junko, and she wouldn’t be able to emulate Junko ormimic her so perfectly in the trials without knowing how vital Junko is as acharacter to DR. In some ways, it’s even true that Tsumugi does crave “despair”in very much the same way that Junko does—because despair itself is such aconstant, vital presence in DR overall. Without “despair,” there’s no DR asTsumugi knows it. That’s the entire reason she tried to pull the stunt with theremember light in Chapter 5, and convince the group that they were all tied toHope’s Peak Academy.

But it’s not justabout despair. It’s about “hope vs. despair,” and it’s about the core,essential ideals that make DR what it is. The desire to see that conflict, tosee the suffering and then the climactic resolution, and to see the characters’resolve and how they overcome these things again and again, is precisely whatis being commented on, and it’s those desires that have let the killing gameshow in ndrv3 go on for as long as 53 seasons.

Junko’s primary goal in dr1 was to prove her theory aboutdespair right, to show that even the “hope” of the world with the 78thClass from Hope’s Peak would kill each other and fall into despair with onlythe slightest provocation, and to pull all of this from behind the scenes andget away with it as long as possible. Although she came to accept being “defeated”by hope because it was so despair-inducing, and allowed herself to go to herown execution, getting caught and beaten wasn’t within Junko’s calculations,and it wasn’t what she wanted.

But getting caught is exactlywhat Tsumugi wanted, once the game is clearly getting to its final stages. Itdidn’t have to be her: it could have very well been Ouma, as she trieddesperately to set him up to be the Junko-figure of Chapter 5. It could havebeen “Kaede’s twin sister.” It could have been a million different fictionalscenarios that she kept planning on the spot, lying about, coming up with,because fiction has so much infinite potential to her—unlike reality, which hasnothing at all worth living in.

Once everyone was in need of a mastermind in Chapter 6,Tsumugi was more than happy to step up to the plate herself. She was fine withexposing herself, and leaving extremely obvious clues that would get the gameto that point, because the trial itselfwas her goal, not making her classmates despair or suffer. The trial is part ofthe show, and the show is everything to her. It’s the most exciting, climatic,popular part of the entire killing game broadcast. It’s the reason people reliedon Danganronpa, on the killing game broadcast, and she wanted to put on that show, and was willing to do anything andeverything, and break any and every rule in order to do it.

The reason why she’s so terrifyingly effective as anantagonist is not because she’s a super analytical, super infallible force ofnature like Junko. Tsumugi can be wrong about things, is often blindsided orcaught off guard by developments she didn’t foresee. She’s very, veryintelligent, but she’s not Junko or Kamukura or Ouma levels of intelligent. Herintelligence is very human. But what’s terrifying is that she doesn’t need tobe right about everything or able to predict everything, because she “weaves” a new fiction and a new web oflies at every single turn.

It doesn’t matter if she didn’t see certain things coming,because she knows that within this world which is essentially an unopenedcatbox to the rest of the characters, there’s no way for them to prove that she’swrong. Not objectively, about everything. If they catch her off guard and takeher plans in a new direction that she didn’t see coming, she just takes creditfor it anyway. They’re all just “scenarios” she can put to use and utilize tomake sure that DR and the killing game broadcast continue.

While her words and claims have left a lot of peopleconfused on how much can be trusted, the more I pored over the Chapter 6 trial,the easier I found it to tell when she was lying on at least a few points. Herclaims about Ouma as a “pawn of the mastermind,” for instance, have left manypeople wondering if this was actually true or if it’s just a bluff—and I cansay with relative certainty that it’s the latter.

Ouma’s stunt with the Exisal and all the things he pulledbehind her back and all the ways in which he got in her way were not supposed to happen according to heroriginal scenarios. He was supposed to be compliant, easy-to-manipulate, and alittle puppet on strings for her to shape up into the real mastermind, becauseshe felt his character would have “matched” with Junko’s so well. So when thecharacters begin realizing things about not only her being the mastermind, butabout the truth of the world around them and their memories being implanted,she rolls with it. She retcons his role. She lies her ass off, basically,because that’s her element.

The wording she uses specifically, rather than “pawn of themastermind,” is more along the lines of “he was a blind devotee to a god.” Sheeven says all of this as Junko, still perfectly in character; the rest of thecast by this point were not anywhere near realizing that the world wasfictional or that they were in an actual reality show broadcast. She’s not evensaying this as a producer of the show; she’s saying this from a role in whichshe’s written Junko to be “the realone,” and she was just posing as “Tsumugi,the fake character,” hiding among the cast and pulling strings “just like shedid with the Hope’s Peak killing game.”

Her lines about Ouma are specifically said whilein-character as Junko, who is “like a god of despair” and a force of nature whoshook the entire world. And that makes it surprisingly easy to see that this isa revisionary tactic made to get back at Ouma, precisely because Saihara andthe rest were pointing out just how much he’d gotten in her way. He ruined aperfectly good fictional scenario she had planned, from her perspective, so shegets back at him by revising him and claiming his character was “just areligious acolyte” all along and that he was a “huge fanboy who had Junko ashis idol.” And all of this is so blatantly untrue because Ouma had no ideaabout Junko, or about the Hope’s Peak memories from the remember light. This isliterally just Tsumugi being simultaneously petty and brilliant at revising her own story, and I love it.

There’s at least a few other of these similar points whereit’s pretty easy to tell that she’s lying, in my opinion. One of them revolvesMomota and Maki, and I’m going to save that for a later explanation, becausethere are a few questions about the Momota and Maki relationship in my inboxcurrently. But there are other points in the trial where she switches fromrelatively believable explanations which fit with the objective proof we gotfrom characters like Amami or Ouma, to taking credit for anything andeverything, almost desperately, and those are the points that strike me as theweakest in her claims.

The state of the outside world is just one example. When therest of the characters reflect briefly on how they saw the scene of itdestroyed and horrific with their own two eyes, Tsumugi happily claims that itwas all a “set” prepared by the killing game staff, a perfect imitationachieved by her talent. But when the group immediately rebounds, thinking thatat least if the world is fine and peaceful then that means they actually havepeople and places to go back to, she really, really starts revising her story.She absolutely latches onto trying to prove that they’re “just fictional,” that“all the people and places they remember are fictional,” that they “havenowhere to go back to.”

It’s because to Tsumugi, the last thing she wants is themopening her catbox. With her fictional world exactly the way it is, she can sayanything and have it be considered true—because there’s no way to proveotherwise. It’s the perfect set-up for writing millions and millions offictional scenarios, as opposed to “a single unchanging truth.” But the momentthe group thinks about wanting to get out, wanting to see the outside world forthemselves, that means the catbox ceases to exist, all the fictional scenariosfade, and only the truth remains. If there weren’t very obvious flaws in herstory or things that would immediately come to light and be proven when thegroup got to the outside world and checked, then she wouldn’t try so hard to crush their willpower and getthem to accept staying in the killing game instead.

The things she targets (their friends, their families, theirloved ones, their homes, their emotions and feelings) by saying that they’reall fake, fictional, that they never existed in real life, are all the thingsthat really, truly take away their will to investigate or go on. Knowing thatthey weren’t actually Hope’s Peak Academy students or that they didn’t haveSHSL talents shocked them, sure, but once they got over the initial shock, theywere all sort of back to being excited about the prospect that they had a home.That there might be somewhere for them to go.

Tsumugi immediately noticed that, and pinpointed the thingsinstead that might give them willpower or strength to go on, by claiming all of it was fiction, all of it was her doing. These claimsare so large, so over the top, and it’s precisely why it’s easier for me tothink of it as a lie than her other claims, which actually matched perfectlywith evidence provided from Ouma’s or Amami’s labs, or things other charactershad said or done. If there weren’t actually some real life counterparts orsimilarities with their memories that would give them incentive to end thekilling game, there wouldn’t have been any reason for Tsumugi to have targetedthose things so hard and sospecifically in order to try and keep them from wanting to go out.

Tsumugi is a character who thrives on the fictional in orderto “elevate” it to the level of reality. Fiction is her everything; it’sreality that’s meaningless. As long as she can continue creating new scenarios,new lies, new works of fiction to counteract boring, bland, meaninglessreality, she has her niche, and that itself is her meaning to go on. Butwithout that…there’s nothing. Once it’s all stripped away, she literally wouldrather go straight to her death, because “there’s no point in a world withoutDanganronpa.” There’s no point in a world in which she can’t keep creatinginfinite new fictional scenarios and seeing the same grand climax unfold againand again.

This itself is a terrifyingidea for an antagonist, and I love it. She was absolutely astounding from startto finish in Chapter 6, and watching her come slowly to the forefront, puttingon a spectacular act, and ultimately blasting both the characters’ and the players’subversions out of the water because her objectives were so different fromanything that previous antagonists have done, was so much fun.

The only way to fight against her, an antagonist who thriveson lies and presents them as “truth” because there’s no way to disprove her, isto come up with your own lies, and to accept them as your own reality. Just asthere was no way for the other characters to objectively disprove Tsumugi’s “truths”about the outside world, there was no way for her, in the end, to disprove their“truths,” that their lives had real meaning and that the experiences they wentthrough were very real for them. Once again, the Umineko resemblance was verystrong, and I loved every bit of it.

Tsumugi is always going to be a hard-to-read antagonist,because her entire character wanted to stay in that catbox forever, and shepreferred dying willingly to being dragged out into “the truth.” There’s no wayto ever eliminate doubt and suspicion over all her words. But I think inkeeping with the themes of ndrv3 overall, it’s a safe bet that there are plentyof lies and truths in the things shesaid, because that’s the way it’s been with her every step of the way, and withpretty much every other character in the game besides.

I’ve seen many people so far trying to determine whetherJunko or Tsumugi was “better” or “more effective” as an antagonist, but I haveto say, I think it’s a lost cause. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Bothof them have different mindsets, goals, processes. Both of them are terrifyingand incredibly well-written in their own right, and I think Tsumugi will get somuch more recognition and appreciation from the fanbase once the English localizationcomes out and people can appreciate in full just how much of a terrifically fun,lying asshole she really is.

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #tsumugi shirogane #shirogane tsumugi #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #thank you so much for asking this and again i'm sorry it took so long!#i'm really thankful for the translations and screencaps you've been posting in the past too! it's a huge help!#arisjonesb

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