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oumakokichi · 7 years

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Sorry if you've already answered this, but why is it important from a plot/writing standpoint that Shirogane is the one who technically kills Amami? If Kaede was the one who conceived of and executed the plan, then why was it necessary for Shirogane to go behind the scenes and "frame" her? Was she just there to make sure Kaede's plan didn't fail?

The main point, at least in my opinion, is to reemphasizethe central idea of ndrv3: that anything and everything can be a lie. By havingTsumugi be the one who actually killed Amami instead of Kaede, and bydiscovering this only in Chapter 6, we come full circle to the idea thatanything, even the game itself, can lie to us.

What’s more, the lie that “Kaede killed Amami” becameaccepted as “truth.” Lies, fiction, and falsehoods can and often do getelevated to the status of “reality” when they’re accepted as such. And all thendrv3 cast, the killing game audience, and Tsumugi herself, “accepted” thatKaede “was the culprit.” So that was accepted as truth for six chapters untilgetting exposed and torn down. But until that point, it was certainly regardedas the “truth.”

Kodaka had a lot of fun making ndrv3 not only a game aboutlies but a game that actually continuously lies to you, the player. Unlikeprevious DR games, which by and large maintained a certain sense of reliabilityand trustworthiness in the sense that you never had to doubt what was a “fact”and what wasn’t, ndrv3 has reveal after reveal. For the first time, we have aprotagonist who actively lies to and tricks not only the other characters butalso the player themselves—unlike Hinata, who simply had no memories of beingKamukura and who certainly never lied to the player consciously in an attemptto trick them, Kaede very deliberately goes right under Saihara and the players’noses.

The promotional art for the game and Kaede’s flaunted statuswas itself a big “lie.” It was a low blow primarily because it’s not the sortof bait-and-switch that should’ve been pulled with a female protagonistspecifically, in my opinion—but I’ll be the first one to admit that if thebait-and-switch had been the other way around, or if it had been between twomale or two female protagonists instead, then I would’ve absolutely loved it. A protagonist switch makesperfect thematic sense in a game like ndrv3; it’s just that it came at theexpense of a female character’s autonomy and potential development, and that’swhy it’s not nearly as enjoyable as it could’ve been.

Chapter 1 hits us with repeated reveals about “lies,”setting the tone for the rest of the game: no one and nothing is trustworthy,not even the things you might have taken for granted, like the protagonisthaving plot armor or always being a reliable narrator. By the time we return tothe same case in Chapter 6, we’re hit with the even bigger reveal that theentire first trial was itself a huge “lie.” There were truths mixed in withthose lies, certainly; it’s a fact that Kaede absolutely intended to take ahuman life, even if she thought it was justifiable because she only wanted tokill the ringleader. But at the end of everything, the big “truth” that Saiharaand the player exposed was itself nothing but a “lie” carefully crafted toresemble a “truth.”

It’s a huge wake-up call to the fact that Tsumugi iscertainly not above playing dirty, any more than Junko was. People still seemto think that Junko was a completely reliable mastermind who always played byher own rules and never broke them or lied at all, which confuses me to somedegree—after all, what Tsumugi did to Kaede in Chapter 1 was exactly what Junkowanted to do to Kirigiri in Chapter 5 of dr1. Junko lied and broke her ownrules all the time, even as early as Chapter 4 of dr1 where she completelyfaked Sakura’s suicide note in order to make Asahina despair and try to get herto kill everyone in the trial. Even Tsumugi’s ruthless framing in Chapter 1feels itself a little like a tender and loving imitation of Junko’s attempt toframe Naegi/Kirigiri, in my opinion.

More than rules, “despair” was Junko’s endgame, the same waythat “entertainment” could be said to be Tsumugi’s. The only reason Junkofollowed her own rules to the end of dr1 was because of the incredible,once-in-a-lifetime despair that she’d be able to taste—not because she wasstrictly adhering to a personal moral code or because she would never, everbreak the rules of her own game. Similarly, Tsumugi prioritized the “entertainment”of the outside world above all else; the game dwindling off into nothing, noone dying, and the audience getting bored without any murders occurring was theabsolute worst-case scenario for her, and something she wanted to avoid at allcosts. So she was willing to dirty her own hands if that’s what it took.

Tsumugi knew about Kaede’s plan to kill her due to thehidden cameras set up within the school, which all reported back to the MotherMonokuma in her hidden lair in the library. She also knew that Amami wassnooping around the door to that lair. She was prepared to wait and see ifKaede’s plan would actually succeed in killing Amami—but just in case it didn’t,she prepared her own back-up plan by grabbing an identical steel ball and usingit to frame Kaede. It mattered very little to her whether Kaede actually killedsomeone or not; all that mattered was that it was a “fiction” which she couldmarket as “reality” to the killing game audience.

As long as there’s no way to objectively prove, beyond ashadow of a doubt, it remains a possible truth. That’s the main idea behindSchrodinger’s Catbox, to bring this discussion back to Umineko as I alwaysinevitably do, and it’s one of the most recurring themes in ndrv3 as a whole.

Tsumugi absolutely loves engineering scenarios in which it’simpossible to disprove the things she’s saying; as long as it all exists insideher “fictional catbox,” then everything she’s saying can stand as the truth,without the characters having any way to prove her wrong. This is the reasonwhy she’s so effective at breaking their spirits in the Chapter 6 trial,because even though she’s lying through her teeth when she says she engineeredthings like their personal feelings or emotions, there’s no way for them to provethat those things are lies. So they all stand as “the truth.”

The fact that Tsumugi killed Amami instead of Kaede shedslight on just how little difference there actually is in ndrv3 between “truth”and “lies.” After all, Amami and Kaede still died because of that lie. That liehad just as real and tangible consequences as if it had been the truth. In thesame way, Tsumugi’s lies throughout the rest of the Chapter 6 trial have thevery real and tangible consequences of making almost the entire group despair andwant to give up on the spot.

All that being said though, while I love the thematic emphasisof the whole Chapter 1 trial having been a lie, I do wish that it didn’tcompletely dismiss Kaede’s autonomy all over again. It’s kind of a shame thatthe moment the group realizes Kaede’s trap didn’t work, the whole narrativeinstantly feels like it’s brushing the fact that she did actually make up hermind to kill a person under the rug all over again. They even stop bringing upAmami’s death in the trial much after finding out Kaede was framed, and thisonce again ties in with ndrv3’s somewhat glaring pitfall of often condoningmurder or attempted murder while simultaneously trying to talk about how it’snever acceptable, at all, no matter what.

I hope I was able to answer your question! Basically,Tsumugi being the culprit and framing Kaede was a narrative point meant toillustrate that anything and everything in the game could be (and often was) alie. But it was also something that perhaps wasn’t as well-handled as it could’vebeen, considering it negated one of Kaede’s really interesting flaws as acharacter and made it seem as though her trying to kill a person was of verylittle consequence—something objectively untrue because Kaede’s decision tokill was exactly what allowed Tsumugi to carry out her frame-up job and helpedspark the entire killing game up in the first place.

Thank you for asking!

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kaede akamatsu #tsumugi shirogane #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #nb lievable

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