#he did grow on me in the dr3 anime but in the game there really isnt much to work with | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oumakokichi · 3 years

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fave dr ships and why?? :0

Hmm, that’s a pretty fun question! There are so many fun character interactions in each game that there’s a lot of ships I really like, so I’ll try to briefly just touch on some of my favorites in each game!

There aren’t really any spoilers in my reply, but I’m going to include a read-more anyway because even trying to keep it brief, there were a lot of ships to cover, so it still got pretty long.

In dr1, I honestly really love naegiri. Naegi gets a lot of flack for “not being interesting enough” or “not bringing anything to the table,” but I think he worked really well as the protagonist for the first installment of the series, and I absolutely think he and Kirigiri have a lot of great chemistry. Kirigiri and Naegi’s relationship is all about finding a balance between doubt and belief, and both of them really help each other grow as people. I think their dynamic is at its best in the first game, since Kirigiri gets so much time to shine and really feels more like the deuteragonist of the series than anyone else. Plus watching Naegi try to learn how to read her stoic façade when she’s really quite emotional under the surface is so much fun.

I’m also a huge fan of aoisakura. I love everything about their interaction, and chapter 4 of dr1 is still one of the best in the whole series in my opinion. Both of them care so much about each other even from early on, and Aoi’s anger at how the others treat Sakura or talk about her like she’s hardly even a person comes across as so legitimate. It’s such a great and largely underrated ship, so I always love to see it.

I also have to say that I like kirizono quite a lot! They don’t have much in the way of interaction in canon, considering how early Maizono dies, but it’s one of those ships where I’m much more interested in the overall potential. Kirigiri seems to have a very good grasp of what Maizono was actually like as a person and what she might have been thinking in her final moments. While she uncovers the truth of the events of chapter 1, she doesn’t see Maizono as irredeemable for tricking Naegi, but merely as someone who was scared and who ultimately couldn’t go through with her own plan. She knew that Maizono was trying to help Naegi in her own way by leaving him a dying message, and I would have loved to see a detective-and-assistant duo with Kirigiri and Maizono in some alternate universe.

Other ships from dr1 that I enjoy even if I’m not super invested in them from an analysis standpoint are celesgiri (how could I not ship the original liar and detective), naekusaba (DR IF really sold me on this one), ishimondo (all around a solid, great ship), and naegami (honestly I just think the idea of Kirigiri and Togami both dating Naegi but barely tolerating each other as friends is really funny).

Sdr2 is probably the game where I wound up the least invested in shipping, but there are still a few that I like!

Hinanami isn��t quite as appealing to me as naegiri, mostly due to Nanami being used twice for Hinata’s character development, but they have some really cute moments that I do enjoy a lot, and I really love any interaction between the two of them as gamer friends. Nanami is so much more mischievous than most people give her credit for; I still can’t help remembering when I replayed sdr2 a year or two ago and got to the part with her threatening to poke Hinata’s eyes out during an investigation, and I nearly lost my shit because I didn’t remember it at all from previous playthroughs.

I’m not quite as invested in komahina as I thought I would be when I first got into DR, but I definitely don’t mind it either! I think Komaeda’s feelings for Hinata are pretty textual and undeniable; lines like “I’m in love with the hope that’s sleeping inside you” are impossible, in my opinion, to handwave as “just a friend thing,” and Megumi Ogata has all but stated outright that her character song for Komaeda is specifically about Hinata.

Of course, I definitely think Komaeda would need to work on a lot of his internalized ideas about talent and self-worth, and that he and Hinata would have to start as friends first before carrying their relationship into anything romantic, but if their really cute interation in ndrv3’s talent development plan is anything to go off of, I think Hinata definitely does want to help Komaeda value himself more and wants to be friends with him.

As for other ships that I enjoy more casually, I like twobuki (if that’s even what people are still calling Twogami/Impostor and Ibuki as a ship), sondam (all of Sonia’s nerding out about Gundam’s chuunibyou interests is honestly super adorable), nanamiki (I feel like Nanami and Mikan could honestly have a cute dynamic if Mikan weren’t under Junko’s influence), and… I actually have no idea for this ship name, but Impostor/Hinata is really sweet. This is more related to dr3, but one of the few things I did come out feeling positively about was Impostor/Mitarai, despite everything else about how the story turned out.

Finally, there’s ndrv3! There’s quite a lot of ships I really love here, so it’s actually a little hard to narrow it down.

I hardly think I need to mention saiouma at this point, since it’s the ship I talk about the most on this blog, but it’s still my favorite ship from pretty much anything ever. I love their dynamic so much: the way they both embody the themes of “truth” and “lies” within the game respectively, the way they constantly want to know more about each other while being afraid to open up or trust each other completely, and the fact that they so perfectly manage to capture the chase of the “phantom thief vs. detective” trope to the point that it was even lampshaded in Ouma’s love hotel... all of these things just make it so much fun.

It’s another ship where I just love thinking about the potential, whether in an AU where Ouma might have lived or else where the killing game never took place at all. I honestly really love ships that deal with a lot of slow-burn and both characters thinking their affections are unrequited when it turns out they’re actually both just idiots with a bad case of pining. I also really love the fact that, in my opinion, it’s a ship where Saihara would have to really take the initiative in the end—otherwise, Ouma is just going to keep trying to run away every time he drops an “I love you,” or “you’re my favorite.”

I also really, really love himiten. It’s a ship that gets a lot more flack than it deserves, in my opinion, and it’s sad to see that it’s a little underappreciated these days. There are flaws and problems within the ship, of course, but these are things that are actually addressed within the game itself. Himiko’s apathy and disregard towards Tenko’s feelings is called out pretty bluntly in the later parts of chapter 3, and she winds up mourning Tenko’s death and taking her last advice to heart more than anyone else.

Meanwhile, while Tenko certainly meant well and always had Himiko’s best interests at heart, it’s true that she came across as somewhat condescending sometimes (albeit unintentionally) by treating Himiko like a cute animal instead of a person. I think that she understood Himiko’s feelings a lot better by chapter 3, which is why she prioritized trying to let Himiko talk to Angie one more time despite her own misgivings about Angie. Tenko grew a lot more as a character than a lot of people give her credit for, and I would have loved to see any post-game scenario where Himiko and Tenko could’ve finally started a relationship on equal footing outside of the game.

I actually have two entire ships for Miu that I am equally fond of. Both kiiruma and irumatsu are really great in my opinion, in totally different ways. The sheer chaotic potential of kiiruma gets overlooked a lot of times, I think, but both of them are complete disasters. They have so much fun together and it really shows, both in canon and in the talent development plan as well. Kiibo is so wonderful and I love him so much, because you’d think he’d be the voice of reason as a “cold, logical robot”—but honestly, he’s just as messed-up and over the top as Miu. I mean, he did photograph her poop on what turned out to be a live audience national broadcast and he didn’t see anything wrong with this.

Kiibo is one of the few characters who vocally talks about missing Miu after her death in chapter 4, and he repeatedly tells her how much he appreciates her maintenance work on him both in canon and in one of their talent development scenes. In one such scene, he even mentions wanting to continue their ongoing relationship after they graduate, which I think is surprisingly sweet and adorable for the two of them. Honestly, Miu is about as wild as a DR character ever gets, and I love the idea of her and Kiibo just having fun with each other.

Meanwhile, Kaede and Miu’s dynamic is a lot more back-and-forth. Kaede spends a good part of her FTEs absolutely frustrated and fed up with Miu, but also decidedly worried for her well-being and wondering how she might get her to be more of a team player. She’s not afraid to put her foot down when Miu crosses the line, but she’s also one of the few people who’s ever been willing to stand by Miu and encourage her or actually be her friend in spite of how awful Miu is at interacting with others.

Even in the talent development plan, Kaede’s often seen together with Miu a lot, which I think is super cute and confirms that even at Hope’s Peak, she’d still be trying to make sure Miu had a friend around. And she was able to tell that, despite what a disaster Miu’s idea with the Christmas lights was, it was Miu’s own way of trying to add to the festivities and do something nice for other people. All in all, it’s one of my favorite wlw DR ships, and I really love when fanworks capture just how shy or flustered Miu got around Kaede sometimes.

Of course, I like momoharu a lot as well! It’s one of the ships that has grown on me quite a bit in my absence, mostly just because despite all of Momota’s flaws, he really does want Maki to love herself first and foremost. Maki’s own feelings for Momota are so important to her character growth and really represent her feeling as though she’s finally made a choice for the first time in her life, and it’s really heartwarming to see. Also, any ship where the girl could lift a guy up with one arm without breaking a sweat is a pretty good ship in my opinion.

As for other ndrv3 ships that I enjoy a lot, there’s saihoshi (Hoshi is extremely underrated as a character, and I adore how sweet his FTEs and salmon mode with Saihara were; it’s also another ship where I feel Saihara would have to really take the initiative to make Hoshi fully open up, which I like), amamatsu (Kaede and Amami had a lot of really funny, great interaction in chapter 1 and some fun banter in their FTEs, so I would’ve loved to see more of it), and harumatsu/kaemaki (again, they have a lot of potential and it would have been extremely interesting to see them interact more).

I also like saiibo, not so much in the way that most people ship it (their love hotel is cute, don’t get me wrong!), but mostly because Kiibo’s FTEs are the funniest set of FTEs in the whole game in my opinion, and the twist where they were both looking down on each other without the other one knowing just made my jaw drop before I started laughing my ass off. They’re almost as much of a disaster together as Kiibo and Miu are, and I think the humor in their dynamic sometimes gets overlooked.

There are even more ships that I like, and I could keep going on and on, but I should probably leave things off here. Character interactions are so much fun in DR, both because of the genuine growth and character development from a lot of the cast, but also because so many of them are so whacky and borderline cartoonish that it’s just really fun imagining further interactions between them. Thank you for the fun ask, anon!

#ask #anonymous #opinions #okay to reblog #there are probably other ships that i completely blanked out on and forgot to include #but i think this at least includes most of the ships i like!

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livewireprojects · 3 years

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I feel bad for @naegamimonth right now because I’ve been doing nothing but a shit ton of Naegami Month posts on my art blog. At least this is the last post for day 16... jfc I made so much for this day...

This is just fashion AU, it was inspired by that non-despair AU were the DR2 cast are scene kids(along with maybe Junko & Mukuro), Izuru is punk goth & DR1 cast are pastel goths in the early 2000s. Like I said(because I don’t know how to say shit) this is inspired by it but instead of the 2 casts being scene kids & pastel goths they have their own styles.

Byakuya is a hipster that loves to take selfies with his boyfriend & later their babies when the twins eventually come in. Makoto is a pastel goth still but looks kind of different from the version from the scenekids/pastel goths AU. Because this isn’t in color I couldn’t show that he has a galaxy textured hoodie jacket on.(Then again I can’t make galaxy textures very well anyway) He also has a bunny on his choker because for some reason I keep giving him Usami imagery sometimes. His sneakers are pastel green with eye balls on them... I use this to much on character designs that are pastel goths.

Honestly wasn’t sure how to dress Byakuya & this probably wasn’t what I was thinking of when I did fashion AU RPs. I dunno how to make hipster designs so I was Googling shit & searching on DA. Why did I give him a hat?

Finally at the end! I am sorry!

This comes from my favorite game series Harvest Moon(the official games are now Story of Seasons since the creators left the people with the rights to call it Harvest Moon), Makoto is dressed in the default clothes for the girl in my favorite game of the HM series Animal Parade. It’s a really nice game & I’m also a little obsessed with the wizard in this game... The only thing missing is a port/remake for the Switch... But enough with my rambling that I had to delete because it’s off topic.(It’s just rambling about my love for HMAP & why the remake of Friends of Mineral Town while good scares me on if AP got a remake because I worry they’ll edit things they shouldn’t in that game too)

So anyway Makoto is doing farm work when Usami comes over with a letter from Makoto’s boyfriend. Usami is taking Finn’s(the Harvest Sprite meant to be your guide in the game) role in this which given she’s meant to be both a magic girl bunny & a teacher is adorably perfect.as she can give advice to Makoto & enjoy their adventures around Harmonica Town & so on.

Interestingly Gill reminds me some of Byakuya but he technically is more friendly than Byakuya. Both kind of had to grow up earl as kids but for Gill it’s because the death of his mom hit his family pretty bad while Byakuya’s is from whatever shit his terrible dad did to his family. Both are also blond with blue eyes, weirdly enough Gill when he’s dressed in his sweater vest instead of his white suit vest looks a little like how I use to dress Len.

Another random thing is that this is the only HM/SoS game I know of were once you get married(to the main candidates not the special ones sadly) you get a free ticket to the island you unlock at some point. Using the ticket while with your now spouse will lead to getting a Honey Moon cutscene.(I haven’t gotten to the marriage yet & the only LP I’ve seen of this game had the guy marry Witch so I dunno how the cutscene for the honeymoon looks.(I saw the cutscene once but due to my weird memory I remember very little)

What I’m failing to get at is Byakuya & Makoto enjoying their honeymoon on the island. Cuddling together as the sea comes up the sand & touches their feet as they sit near the water. Makoto likely has a seashell from the trip on a shelf.

I kind of made Usami a human/Harvest Sprite form for this. I gave her Chiaki’s haircut because often times Chiaki is shown with her.(Even shown holding her in the final(I think) episode of DR3 were Hinata is likely imagining her while on his way back to the island with everyone)

I’m not as interested in DR2 as I am in DR1 but Usami/Monomi is probably my favorite character. I also keep showing an edited(because her design’s details kill me, they’re to much to draw) version of her as a plushie my kind of OC Asumi has a security blanket.(I’ll explain Asumi one day)

#naegamimonth2020 #naegami #my art

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rutilation · 4 years

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In honor of the wailing and gnashing of teeth that has occurred in the last few days for fear of potential incoming Joshua discourse, I have decided to get ahead of the curve and start discoursing about him before the anime even airs!

(--because he’s an interesting character who I didn’t really understand until several years after finishing the game.)

So, I got into the game around 2010, and while I comprehended the broad strokes of Joshua’s character, he seemed more like an inscrutable trickster than a person with relatable emotions, and his reasons for setting the plot into motion were as opaque to me as his reasons for backing off at the last second.

In particular, a big sticking point for me was his assessment of Neku. He considered him “the worst person in Shibuya” and chose him as a proxy because of that. And for years I thought that was the most ludicrous aspect of the game. If the very worst person you can find in your bustling metropolis is a grumpy teenager who only has the potential to commit murder when under duress, then how could you possibly think that it’s beyond salvation, you utterly incoherent moron! But, several years afterwards, I realized why he saw Shibuya as unsalvageable, and why he held Neku in such contempt, and the disparate elements of the character started to click into place for me.

For as much as Joshua likes to put on airs, his motivations aren’t rational in the slightest. When Joshua says that Shibuya has grown shallow and static, he’s really talking about himself, and is projecting all the things he hates about himself onto the surrounding environment. He singles out Neku not because this run-of-the-mill moody teen is objectively the worst person in Shibuya, but because he sees Neku as a younger, more naive version of himself, and in a classic example of the narcissistic element of self-hatred, being like him is the most irredeemable sin Joshua can conceive of.

Then, I started thinking about what he actually intended to accomplish with his whole plan, and specifically, the duel at the end. I don’t think Joshua had any intention of presiding over a remade Shibuya. I think he was banking on Neku killing him and taking his place, and all that stuff about hijacking Shibuya from the composer during week two was for the sole purpose of planting that idea in Neku’s head. In life, Joshua was friendless, miserable, and myopic. He had hoped that by entering the world of the reapers’ game, he might find a sense of fulfillment. But in the end, this mere change of scenery didn’t do anything to address his underlying malaise, and life felt just as empty as it did before. Thus, he sets his plan in motion, intending to pass on his awful torch to a fellow awful person.

What he didn’t count on was Neku growing as a person and gaining hope instead of losing it. Joshua wanted to end his own world, but the outcome of all his scheming was that it opened up instead. Instead of validating his grand act of self-destruction as planned, Neku refutes Joshua's worldview in a way he can't ignore or dismiss.

When I first saw the secret ending, my reaction was something along the lines of: “Aww, I guess he’s not totally heartless after all.” But looking back on it, I can’t really see it as anything other than tragic. Joshua can’t lie to himself anymore, can’t continue to protect himself with a shield of apathy and cynicism, but because of the permanence of his past choices, he can’t actually free himself from this isolated and claustrophobic world he’s created either, and that prison is made all the more painful now that he realizes how much he’s missing out on. All he can do in the secret ending is watch forlornly as that younger version of himself grows up, makes connections, and moves on, while he’s still stuck at a dead-end.

(There’s a moment during the credits of KH:3D in which Joshua is perched above the rest of the cast on a giant letter, parodying his fondness for sitting on buildings. The others soon take notice of him, and hassle him into coming down and joining them. When I noticed it, it warmed my heart a bit, and made me hopeful about the trajectory of his character, regardless of whether or not a sequel would actually materialize.)

But all that being said, what I just wrote isn’t what the fine folk in the TWEWY fandom mean when they refer to Joshua discourse. As far as I can tell, the true discursive quandary is thus: “Is Joshua, in fact, Komaeda?” Well I have bad news for you guys because, in my humble opinion, he kind of is?

Now, I realize that knowing enough to write several paragraphs about such a cursed character can be seen as me telling on myself, but in my defense, your honor, I didn’t get into danganronpa until a few years after its popularity peaked. Whatever discourse wars were waged over Komaeda and his zipper-shoes back in 2013, I was not a part of them. With that out of the way...

You know those posts that get passed around here every so often about how the concept of gifted children sucks? How it puts too much pressure on them? How it encourages them to see themselves as instrumentally rather than inherently valuable? How it leaves them anxious, depressed, and bereft of ways to cope? Well, that’s the underlying allegory of SDR2, and underneath all the wacky shenanigans that comprise your average danganronpa title, that’s what the cast is contending with. This is true of it’s protagonist, and especially true of his rival.

in much the same way that Joshua is the worst parts of Neku exaggerated and taken to their logical conclusion, Komaeda plays precisely that role for Hinata. Both characters serve as a cautionary tale for the respective toxic mindsets that these games are denouncing.

Now that I think about it, Komaeda almost seems like an evolution of the concept, because he intuits from a fairly early point in the story that the protagonist’s very essence is a refutation of his worldview. He insists on viewing Hinata as being far above him, but in actuality he realizes Hinata is in a similar situation--see his comment in one of the FTEs that Hinata feels like a miserable outsider like himself. And if someone even a little bit like him is capable of experiencing happiness and connecting with others, what then? The gap between how Komaeda wants to feel and how he actually feels is a subtle but reoccurring thread throughout the story. This, I think, is why he seems to regard Hinata with both attraction and revulsion, treating him as simultaneously an avatar of his repressed will (hence why he attempts to bolster him in the class trials,) and an object of scorn (hence the smattering of passive aggressive jabs before chapter four, and the outright antagonism from that point forward.) While Joshua fools himself until the the end of the game, Komaeda, master of doublethink that he is, seems at times self-aware of the fact that he is a foil in the literary sense, and that awareness partly informs his neurosis. His take on the character type feels a little more post-modern, I suppose?

Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Joshua were an inspiration for Komaeda’s character and role in the story. But even then, I suspect that the question is less, “Is Joshua, in fact, the same sort of character as Komaeda?” and more “Is Joshua, in fact, going to become a contemptible meme like Komeada?” To which I say, probably not. *knock on wood*

For one thing, while TWEWY will certainly experience an uptick in popularity once the anime starts airing, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will capture the nerd zeitgeist enough to turn one of its characters into a meme that transcends the story from whence it came. Furthermore, there’s more to being a tumblr sexy meme man than merely belonging to an archetype. Komaeda’s spiritual successor in DRV3 is kind of popular, but isn’t an inter-fandom joke in the same way he is, and neither are Kaworu from Eva or Ryo from Devilman, for that matter, and those are the grandfathers of the archetype in question. In addition, the other infamous tumblr sexymen that come to mind, Sans and Onceler, aren’t a part of the white-haired-anime-rival-boy archetype, and Sans isn’t even a conventionally attractive twink. I posit that the alchemy determining which characters and media tumblr loses its shit over is more varied and complicated than it appears at first glance. (Not that I actually want to devote much brainpower to that particular field of study, lol.)

Uhhhhh... in conclusion, thank you for reading my words and also the DR3 anime is trash.

#the world ends with you #twewy

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princeasimdiya12 · 4 years

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That anon is an asshole. Why do you hate Shuichi? I think he fits the theme of truth and lies, but his character development is a complete joke as he has zero struggles after his waifu dead. He never once second guess his actions in class trials and doesn’t even think of major consequences (killing the de facto prime minister and not noticing a serial killer is amoung them). His stans over analyze his actions and try to justify everything he does.

They were quite a jerkhole. I can imagine that most stans would be protective of their favorite characters if anyone were to express disapproval.

And thank you for giving me the opportunity to express my personal feelings on the matter anon. And those are some interesting reasons to dislike him but I have some other reasons.

My answers will be hidden under the “Read More” because they’re long answers. But these are my thoughts and reasons for why I hate Shuichi Saihara.

Reason 1: The Protagonist Switch was Lackluster

Right off the bat, I personally dislike that we were promised a unique and compelling protagonist like Kaede only to switch her with a generic insecure protagonist like Saihara. The use of the protag switch isn’t a bad plot twist and it can be clever, it’s just that the result of switching Kaede for someone like Saihara left a bad taste in my mouth.

I loved Kaede because she was unique as a DR protagonist. Along with having a colorful design and talent, she was assertive, confident and willing to take charge. She was actively involved in the story by stepping up as the group’s de facto leader and trying to motivate them. She was also flawed in the sense that she was quick to butt heads with others and she didn’t completely trust others or practice her own beliefs of trusting in friends. And personally, I’m not even upset that she tried to kill someone. It’s still considered something different for a DR protagonist to do, especially if it was for the greater good.

But when we get Saihara, he continues the trend of being a generic sad boy who feels insecure about his talents and wants to be stronger. Most of his screentime is spent moping about his problems and how he doesn’t feel good enough. He doesn’t have the same presence as Kaede and just stays in the background while the rest of the cast move the story as much as they can.

In all honesty, if they had introduced Saihara as the new protagonist, or at least make it so that his predecessor wasn’t as compelling as Kaede, then I wouldn’t have been too upset. At the very least I wouldn’t have gotten my hopes up for a protagonist who was actually different compared to the past protags.

Reason 2: Waifus In Refrigerators

For those that don’t know, fridging is the concept of (brutally) killing off a fictional female character in order to create an emotional impact for her male love interest and his character development.

Kaede’s death and how it impacted Saihara is textbook fridging.

I strongly detest fridging since it robs a female character of her agency and role in the story. It treats her as a tool meant to motivate her male love interest to either avenge her death or grow as a person. Kaede’s death along with her final wish is what pushes Saihara to try and beat the killing game. And from then on, Saihara will take the moment to reflect on Kaede’s tragic end and how he inspired him with her kindness. Kaede loses her identity as a complex leader who was willing to commit murder for a greater good. Everyone just remembers her as Saihara’s innocent dead love interest who inspired him to keep on fighting. It’s also worse in the 6th case when it’s revealed that Tsumugi took advantage of Kaede’s trap to kill Amami which further pushes Kaede into the image of an innocent angel that did no wrong.

And it’s also frustrating since this isn’t the only time that the Danganronpa series has killed off its female characters in order to develop their male love interests.

In SDR2, Peko dies trying to save Fuyuhiko which in turn motivates him to stop acting like a jerkhole and be more cooperative with the group.

In DR3 Future Side, Chisa is the first victim of the killing game which pushes her boyfriend Munakata to become a more direct antagonist towards Naegi for protecting the Remnants.

In the same series, Kyoko allows herself to be poisoned in order to protect Naegi. It’s through her death that Naegi decides to confront Munakata in a final showdown. And while Kyoko does get brought back to life at the end of the show, it should be noted that she was only brought back just to be part of Naegi’s happy ending package. She loses her agency and is brought back just to be his newly revived girlfriend.

In DR3 Despair Side, Chiaki is brutally killed in order for her classmates to become Remnants of Despair. But it’s her final heartwrenching moments with Izuru that inspire emotion inside of him aswell as deciding to turn against Junko.

So Kaede being killed for Saihara’s development is the fifth fridging example in this series and it sucks that Kodaka and his crew rely on this trope throughout Danganronpa.

Reason 3: The Narrative Forces You To Like Him

Another issue that I found irritating about Saihara is how everyone began praising him.

Just after the first case, everyone constantly praises and coddles Saihara for being such a great detective and for growing so much. For me, that praise feels undeserving since he barely did anything to earn it. Thinking back to each of the past protagonists, they didn’t have everyone’s respect in the beginning. They each had to work had and face adversity throughout their stories in order to earn their praise and respect. Even Kaede, who despite being a confident leader, had to deal with people frequently judging her leadership and actions. So I find it questionable that Saihara already earned everyone’s respect after solving only one case.

By having all the characters praise Saihara, the narrative pushes you to accept him as the new protagonist and recognize how awesome it is to have him. But for me, it just makes me dislike him even more. I refuse to like something just because everyone else does and it won’t take away my admiration/love for Kaede.

It’s also jarring since anytime a character has the spotlight, it somehow has to involve Saihara.

“Wow Himiko! You’re much more expressive now than before. Just like you Saihara!”

“Man, it sounds like you had a harsh life growing up Harumaki. Just like you and your detective work, eh Shuichi?”

The narrative can’t help but force Saihara to be around and praised by the people around him despite the spotlight not being on him in that given moment.

Reason 4: He’s Not a Good Detective

While Saihara’s role as a detective may fit the theme of Truth and Lies, that doesn’t mean he was good at the job. My issue being that he was unproductive and biased for the role.

While he did set up that trap in Chapter 1 to catch the mastermind, he doesn’t do anything as proactive in the later chapters. He spent most if not all of his time going to training with Kaito and moping about his problems. It goes on like this for 4 chapters and it takes Kiibo threatening to blow up the school before he actually gets to work on solving the mystery of the killing game. As a detective, you’d think he would put more effort into actually solving the mysteries of the killing game or try to put some thought on who the mastermind could be.

The biased part comes with how he interacts with others and how he’s more critical of people based on how they treat him. Saihar has a tendency to be very judgmental towards the students and doesn’t look at the entire picture.

He writes off Ouma as the embodiment of lies and doesn’t bother trying to learn more about him or his true motivations.

And on the opposite side, he openly praises his friends while blatantly ignoring the problematic things they’d done throughout the story.

He considers Kaede to be an inspirational role model despite how she betrayed him and wanted to commit murder behind his back.

He worships Kaito and treats him as a perfect hero despite never noticing his ongoing illness or the fact that Kaito didn’t trust his friends enough to reveal his own insecurities.

He deems Maki a reliable friend despite the fact that she went behind his and everyone’s back in order to kill Ouma and was willing to gamble everyone else’s lives if it meant taking revenge on the supreme leader.

Shouldn’t a detective be more persistent when presented with a mystery while also acknowledging all the sides (both good and bad) of a given person? If his personal bias was treated as a flaw by the narrative, then that would actually give his character significant depth. Especially if he worked on managing his biases and learning to acknowledge all the sides. But it isn’t treated as a bad problem.

For me, the fact that he’s supposed to be a detective who “grows stronger” and is so good at his job despite all of this really rubs me the wrong way. If anything, it shows me that he’s really bad at the job.

Also, I would like to bring up that I don’t count him investigating the murder cases as being a good detective. Why? Because Hajime and his class in SDR2 were able to solve their class trials without a detective figure. Being a detective, or having one, doesn’t make solving the class trials any easier.

Reason 5: An Unnecessary Cliche

Personally, I really see no reason for why Saihara’s character needed to be the generic insecure protagonist for this particular installment of Danganronpa. It’s the same cliche storyline featured in a grand majority of anime and light novels. It’s repetitive and irritating knowing that so many stories focus primarily on a sad generic boy who doesn’t feel good enough and wants to be stronger.

It’s also worth mentioning that in comparison, the past protagonists at least had narrative reasons for why they were generic and insecure in the first place.

For Naegi, he was the first protagonist of the installment and his normalcy was meant to contrast the extremely talented and radically different students he’d be involved with. As the game progresses, he uses his normalness to bond with the students and rally them together in the name of hope.

For Hajime, he’s treated as a deconstruction of the generic insecure protagonist. It’s because his feelings of inferiority and longing to be special that he decides to accept Hope’s Peak’s experimentation and become Izuru Kamakura: an incredibly talented super-being who lost his humanity.

For Komaru, she was regarded as an ordinary girl that had the potential to lead others which is recognized by the adult resistance and Monaca. So throughout the game, both sides were pushing her into becoming either the next symbol of Hope like Naegi or next symbol of despair like Junko. But she ultimately decides to be neither of them and wants to be her own person.

There were reasons for why each of these protagonists were considered generic and insecure as it contributed to the narratives. But for Saihara, there’s really no solid reason for why he’s the only normal one of the V3 cast. And everyone is more than happy to praise him as the best one out of the cast despite doing so little to earn it. At most, Tsumugi reveals that Saihara being an insecure boy who grew stronger thanks to his friends was for the sake of a fictional storyline. Obviously it was meant to mentally break him but it honestly feels like a weak reason to keep the trend of a generic insecure sad boy. Not to mention there are other reasons for why I believe this doesn’t work.

The setup for the “Danganronpa is a fictional TV show” twist didn’t have enough buildup so it doesn’t make the cliche that strong.

Saihara still continues the role of the insecure boy who grows strong and saves the day. While Tsumugi states that his role was written for him, Saihara still continues the tropes of his archetype by saving the day. It’s ultimately because of him that he’s able to convince his friends and the viewing audience to give up on Danganronpa. It was the writer’s way of having their cake and eating it.

If the reveal was meant to be a shot at how it’s become a cliche, then why not live up to it? If they wanted to show how Danganronpa was running for too long or how it’s cliches were getting old, then why not commit to those ideas? Instead of having everyone praise and worship Saihara, make them question if they’re really going to depend on a generic guy to save them. Instead of being just a cute quirk, actually show the negative sides of Saihara’s anxiety and depression and how they would hinder him from participating in trial discussions. Maybe even have Kaito lose his temper at Saihara because of how much he mopes around.

There’s so many ways they could have gone with deconstructing Saihara’s stereotype or showcasing how it’s become old and stale. So it feels disappointing that they never went that far.

And another reason for why I dislike his characterization is because it brings to mind Ryota Mitarai from the DR3 anime. Just like Saihara, Mitarai is a main character who’s described as generic, insecure and spends most of his time whining about how useless he is. Despite this, he manages to survive the killing game since the other more unique characters are killed or move the events of the story. I personally found Mitarai to be a frustrating character. I detest characters who constantly whine about how useless or miserable they are as a means of getting sympathy from the audience. So having to deal with Saihara who more or less shares multiple characteristics with Mitarai felt very exhausting.

Conclusion

So those would be my reasons for why I hate/strongly dislike Saihara. I can admit that alot of these reasons weren’t so much because of Saihara or his actions but how he was written throughout the story. He still did alot of things I didn’t like don’t get me wrong, but alot of fault can be traced to the writers and how they decided to write him and Kaede’s characters. I still find his archetype as a generic insecure boy who mopes around to be an unappealing archetype but I’m sure most of his fans would suggest otherwise.

If you’ve managed to read everything here, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to do so. I can’t imagine many people would want to read a critical post targeted towards one of the most beloved characters in Danganronpa. So thank you for doing so.

And as always, if you agree or disagree with anything I’ve written, you’re more than welcome to reblog this with your comments. I’m always up for friendly discussions.

#dangan ronpa #danganronpa #ndrv3 #new danganronpa v3 #dr critical #anon #analysis

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a-student-out-of-time · 4 years

Note

//That's called a Mary Sue. And speaking of that, is there any other character in the Danganronpa canon you considered one aside from Chiaki?

//Hoo boy. That’s a term I think is really misapplied to a lotof situations. I never actually said Chiaki’s a Mary Sue, andthat’s because I don’t think any incarnation of her is one.

//”Mary Sue” is such an overused and yet misunderstood conceptthat people use. And oftentimes, it gets thrown around becauseit feels like it adds validity to criticism that I feel is franklyunearned. The reason for that is because Sueness isn’t acharacter problem, but symptomatic of a bigger writing problem.

//See, a lot of people think Sues are just unrealisticallyoverpowered, have no serious flaws, every person in the storyloves them no matter what they do, etc. but you can use thosetropes well with some quality writing and apply those to pretty muchany protagonist character from anime or superhero stories, butusually they don’t get called Mary Sues or Gary Stus or whatever.

//No, what really defines Sueness is that they warp the reality ofthe story around them. A character can be at the center of a story,but a Mary Sue warps the story so the entire universe revolvesaround them, whether it’s showing how great they are, how evilthey are, how much their life sucks, etc. That’s fundamentallywhat makes a Mary Sue or Gary Stu what they are: they’re at thecenter of everything and everything has to be about them insome way, shape, or form.

//Supporting casts, villains, side characters, plot, themes, allof it revolves around what the Sue does. All morals are defined aswhat the Sue thinks is right. All situations are resolved because ofwhat the Sue does. It’s all about them. Nothing else matters,nothing else exists.

//Now let’s look at Human Chiaki. She starts off as a quietgamer girl who originally didn’t have friends, but managed to getcloser to her classmates and bring everybody together throughher love of games. She opens up, has a great time with them, andbecomes their de facto leader, and also gets a lot of friendshipscenes with Hajime. All of which become poignantly tragic when shedies and everyone falls into despair.

//That’s it, really. That’s not a Mary Sue, that’s just afairly flat character. And really, you can make the same argumentabout everyone in Class 77: they’re side characters in a storythat should be about them. And even when theytalk about how great she is, not everything revolves around Chiaki.Hell, she’s not even around in a few episodes of despair side andthere’s plenty of moments when nobody talks about her.

//That’s one of the things that bugs me when people complainabout DR3. Hajime didn’t choose to become Izurujust to impress Chiaki, she was a small part of his ever-growinglist of insecurities. She didn’t solve every single issue inClass 77, she didn’t stop Junko, she couldn’t save anyone, andmost critically, she actually did kinda assist ingetting everyone to fall into despair by encouraging themto save Chisa. That lead them right into that trap.

//Human Chiaki isn’t a Mary Sue, she’s a nice girl leader typesadly suffering from a serious case of underdevelopment Andit’s disappointing that people jump to “mary sue”to explain why, when really the issue is that she wasn’t givenmuch to do along with everyone else. DR3 Despair Sidereally revolves around Chisa, Ryota, and Junko.

//I actually liked Chisa, so I don’t have too many complaintsabout her other than disappointment in how her character arc ended.

//Ryota bugs me because he was created just to be the explanationfor how all this happened and they pour on all this angst and sadnessto make you feel for him when we literally didn’t know him untilthis anime existed. And honestly, if the anime didn’t spend somuch time trying to make us feel bad for him and dropped the stupidbrainwashing, I’d probably be more sympathetic. I at least applaudthem for going with him actually creating the brainwashing anime andit was completely his own fault.

//And that brings me to Junko. She’s really the closest to a Suein this situation, and frankly a lot of DR. It always has to comeback around to her, her schemes, her plans, her boredom, hermanipulation, her pulling the strings in some way, shape, or form.And DR3 really is the worst example of it, where she gets awaywith her plans completely unimpeded. Yet was too lazy to actually doanything, so went with “lol brainwashing.”

//The fact that the DR fandom has “It was really Junko allalong” and that they actually reference that fact in V3 is proofthat this franchise has a serious issue with revolving the situationaround a character that...frankly bores and annoys the hell out ofme.

//Junko just isn’t an interesting enough character in my opinionto hold this status as total and complete mastermind of everything.Not even in SDR2, which I actually really liked. It’shonestly everything that happens around her and because of herthat I find far more interesting. She sets into motion so much coolstuff and it’s really the people motivated to these things by heractions that make DR interesting.

//She’s supposed to be this profoundly intelligent manipulativemastermind, and I applaud Kodaka for not giving her a backstory asan excuse, but let me ask this: do we ever actually see heruse any manipulation techniques? Do we see her successfully turn orconvince anyone on screen? Do we see her successfully playing puppetmaster? Not really.

//The most we get are people saying she did or it happeninglargely off-screen. And what she does on screen in DR3 is just usingsomeone else’s creations and skills to achieve her own goals.Beyond that, most of what we get is her rambling about despair overand over to the point that it stops sounding like a word. Herattempts at manipulation always felt hollow to me, and maybe it’sbecause I’ve heard a ton of villain speeches before, but I wascompletely unphazed by all of her pseudophilosophical ramblings.

//That’s not just a dig at her. Characters that only everwhine about how life is boring, without meaning, imperfect, too hard,or whatever always annoy me. And especially when their logic forwhat they’re doing boils down to petty childishness andself-centered entitlement. I could write an essay about how muchI despise Adachi from Person 4 and completely fail to get why so manypeople love him, but that’d be getting off topic.

//Point is, based on the definition I provided, Junko is far moreof a Mary Sue than Chiaki is and the issues with DR3 go beyondcharacterization and extend more to having too little time towork with everything they have and devoting it to thewrong elements. DR3 feels like a fist draft that was madeinto a final product.

//And also, that’s not me saying you shouldn’t like Junko. Ifyou like her and think she’s a compelling villain, go for it. Morepower to you. I’m not one to tell you which characters you can andcan’t like, I’m just explaining my opinion.

//I’d also prefer if people stop tossing around “marysue” like it’s a shortcut to criticism without analyzing what itactually means. It’s less of a character problem and more of anoverall writing problem. Your story should not be an eventhorizon bent around the singularity of a single character.

#mod talks #mod rambles #a student out of time #mary sue is an overused and yet misunderstood term #Anonymous

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kaibutsushidousha · 5 years

Text

Artbook Data - Writer Team Interview

I really saved the best for last with this one. This interview was a wild ride, with at least two big pieces of fandom common knowledge being proven wrong.

Interviewees:

Yoshinori Terasawa: The producer for the Danganronpa series. Tasked with the challange of organizing this ragtag band of weirdoes while fighting schedule and budget. This time his title on the credits changed.

Kazutaka Kodaka: The writer, and one of the series’ creators. He created this game in paralell with writing scripts for the anime. Also experienced in writing novels and manga.

Takayuki Sugawara: Involved with the series’ development since the first game. For V3, aside from giving the order for the game to happen and offering many ideas, he also wrote all the secret lie routes for the Class Trial.

Shun Sasaki: This game’s director. Kodaka’s right-hand man, with the important role of transmitting Kodaka’s thoughts to the staff. The many bonus modes were all made at Sasaki’s idea.

The inital theme was going to be Psychoamerican, with the game being set on a desert!?

Interviewer: It has been a month since the game was released (interview recorded in February 23, 2017), so how much have your thoughts changed since the game’s release?

Kazutaka Kodaka: Not much.

I: Then it must mean everything, including the fan reactions, was just as expected.

KK: Yeah. I was wishing for an unexpected reaction, but everything went just as expected, for better or for worse.

I: How about you, Terasawa?

YT: Kodaka says “just as expected”, but I was thinking the game would be a little bit more well received. You know, when I look at the timeline, I see more critical opinions than I imagined I would.

I: That said, I’m getting the impression that we’re getting more and more positive reviews, compared to how it was immediately after launch.

YT: We’re feeling this too. I’m very thankful that one month after launch, the positive opinion have been getting gradually more vocal.

I: How about you, Sasaki?

SS: Same as Kodaka, no big changes. I'm just still stunned that it’s over.

TS: I’m the opposite of Sasaki. We’ve always finished Danganronpa on the edge of the deadline, but this one we were REALLY improving everywhere we could until the very last second. I feel like the production is still not over even now. Maybe we’re all lying when we said we made it in time (laughs).

I: Was V3 really this hard? When did the project start?

KK: It was late into Ultra Despair Girls’ production. Sugawara called me about a new project and ...

I: So it was Sugawara, not Terasawa.

KK: For some reason, he never calls me directly. Always has someone relaying his message to me. Then me and Sugawara started coming up with some content and wrote the project pitch. It was completely different from what’s now.

YT: It was going to be set in a desert.

I: A desert!? Do deserts have schools?

KK: The design theme at the time was Psychoamerican, so we thought it should be in a desert.

YT: If I recall right, it was going to be a desert where a Future Foundation was stranded...

KK: And so we made the project pitch with loads of American-ish stuff, like Vegas neon lights. I can’t remember much of the details.

YT: But even back then, Kodaka already had the game’s direction and that ending in mind.

I: So the ending idea stayed the same through the how development cycle. Was it Terasawa or Sugawara who asked you to make the V3 project?

KK: It was more the company itself than Terasawa.

YT: Yeah. I was the one who directly asked for it, but the very company was pointing out that it was about time for a new number Danganronpa sequel. At the time, the DR:AE development cycle was approaching its climax, so everyone was at the mood of “What are making next?” and the next cycle started very naturally.

I: I see. Then, was moving away from the Kibougamine series also decide from the beginning?

KK: Yes. No one ever considered continuing the Kibougamine series with V3.

TS: The Future Foundation ship I mentioned earlier would be set up as the ship from the DR2 ending for a twist of “haha, it was a different ship all along”. It was a red herring planned to draw the fans’ interest.

I: And why did you change settings?

KK: We all know DR1 and 2 follow each other chronologically as the Kibougamine series, but at first I never said they did. When I say from the start that it’s a sequel, the fans start expecting characters from the previous games. But personally I’m not a fan of having a previous survivor in the killing game, having to experience the murders, investigations and Class Trials all over again. I thought that when I made the next numbered title I should reboot the setting and characters.

I: Let me get this right, all you had defined back at the project pitch stage was doing a reboot and the story’s ending. Yes?

TS: Yeah. We didn’t have a concrete idea of how we would present the ending, but it we were settled on the direction that it was something that would make the player part of the plot.

I: And how exactly did lies, one of the game’s main themes, entered the stage?

TS: We had decided from the start that we would have the lie mechanic. Lying was actually a gimmick I came up with for DR2 and I really wanted the chance to include it for real in a next game.

I: Any other elements decided from the start?

KK: I think we decided the true meaning of “V3” in our first discussion. Did we? I vaguely recall we see saying it would be clever if V3 actually meant 53.

I: I agree, I was impressed when I played it!

KK: It’s just the part that the first game were also fictional in-universe and that V3 was the 53rd Danganronpa game that we came up with later. At the time we just though of the initial clever curveball. This was back before we had the idea to make the DR3 anime. We went with the name V3 just for this joke, then later we thought “If this is DRV3, the anime should be DR3”.

I: The game was decided first, huh. And how exactly did the “New” and the “Everyone’s Killing Game New Semester” came about?

KK: When we had to present the game for the Sony Press Conference (September 15th, 2015), we thought we should add something before the title, like the Super in Super Danganronpa 2. So we went with “New”.

YT: But for the first logo we wrote “NEW” in English letters.

I: And you already had the subtitle back then.

KK: The subtitle was also put together on a rush for the Sony Press Conference. We basically just added the “Everyone’s” there because the ending was pretty much completely planned at that point.

YT: We need to have these big presentations like the Sony Press Conference, because otherwise we never settle on a title (pained laughter).

The design theme changes to Psychocool! The production finally starts for real.

I: Now I have several questions about the contents of the game. We know you have the decided on the title, then presented the game under the final design theme of “Psychocool”. For what reason did you decide against the “Psychoamerican” theme?

KK: To be honest with you, Psychoamerican was never a design theme I was really serious about...

TS: We just needed something to pitch a project with.

YT: Every good project pitch has a few bluffs on it.

KK: At the time I was busy with Ultra Despair Girls, so I decided to leave the theme decisions for later. But after watching Sugawara’s presentation at the project meeting, I may have regretted neglecting the subject (pained laughter).

TS: That’s because my project file on the meeting as a blank piece of paper (laughs).

I: (laughs) Suguwara, did you really explain the entire project with a blank paper?

TS: No, each page had a head title. “Scrum Debate” was one, for example. And did the explanations with just that. Judging by the participants’ reaction, the overall tone of the meeting was “What the heck is going on here...?” (pained laughter).

I: And after all these hardships, you settled on the Psychocool theme. What was the deciding factor here?

KK: We started putting some actual thought into it, notice how hard it would be to deal with a desert setting, and decided the American part wouldn’t work. At the time I was considering given a more adult image to it, so we decided on Psychostylish. But we didn’t go very far with this theme, did we?

SS: I don’t think we did.

KK: So, the players who experienced DR1′s Psychopop in their teens grew into adulthood with DR2′s Psychotropical, and now cooled down after their growth... That’s why V3′s theme became Psychocool.

I: So it had a more mature image.

YT: But us changing themes 2 or 3 times before made things hell for the graphics team, since we wouldn’t settle on a direction already.

SS: Because before we decided on the Psychocool theme, the designers had already started working with no design concept. Kodaka already some ideas in mind for a ruined school with growing vegetation and some machines in it, but without any concrete direction, they had to redo their work multiple times.

I: I’ll ask about the design concept in more detail in the designer team interview. The next question is about the story. Is “what could be a lie” something you think about in the earlier plot planning stages?

KK: Include some lie elements back in the plot planning, but there’s nothing that was always meant to be interpreted as a lie. It all started in a project meeting where Sugawara said “I want to use lies”, but without any concrete idea of would that be implemented into gameplay. Later, when I started planning the plot, I was looking back at the project file and the discussion notes, scavenging for content I could use and found that I could use lies to fill the gaps in my plot. And so was born my liar character, Kokichi Ouma.

I: Usually the characters make the plot, but sometimes the plot can make a character.

KK: They are just robots instead of characters, but the same goes for the Exisals. They came from a joke idea told in the project meeting.

TS: We mentioned the Exisal as a mascot replacement for Monokuma. “Next mascot should be a monkey” (laughs).

KK: But not having Monokuma as the mascot feels wrong to me. Yeah, we were rebooting the characters and the setting, but I think changing too much does more harm than good, so I decided to keep Monokuma as the mascot without a second thought.

I: About what you just mentioned about Ouma, did you create all the characters as you were planning the plot?

KK: Yes. I thought 16 was the perfect number of students, as it was in DR2. Before I had any plot, I asked Komatsuzaki for some designs based on his impressions. I was planning the plot as I was receiving the designs and came up with the details along the way, I think.

I: At what point did you decide on the dual protagonist scheme with Kaede Akamatsu and Shuuichi Saihara?

KK: I can’t remember when exactly I decided that it was doable, but I’ve been wanting to do it from very early on. I was thinking that if I could do it, it would make for an awesome chapter 1.

I: The Ikebukuro Namjatown had a poll to guess who would survive. Harukawa was first, Saihara was second and Akamatsu was third, so I thought the fans saw it coming.

KK: I was also weirded out by how high Saihara was, but then I heard about the unfortunate hatless Saihara sprite visible in the PV. Since the ahoge is the symbol of the Danganronpa protagonist, I’m pretty sure this spoiled the twist.

YT: You didn’t notice it when the PV came out?

KK: I didn’t. Sasaki told me about it later and I was like “Oh no, really...?” (laughs).

YT: I see, because it very early on in the video.

SS: It was. What a shame...

KK: That said, a lot of characters were predicted wrong. Our survivor Himiko Yumeno got the very last place.

YT: She reestablished balance.

I: Yeah. Just look at our presented protagonist Akamatsu. While there were a lot of people thinking she was safe because she’s the protagonist, there were also a lot suspecting even the protagonist could die.

KK: I think the majority was predicting Akamatsu would die. But I think that as they watched the PVs and play the demo, a lot of them noticed how we made all the Class Trial assets for her and started thinking “Yeah, of course she wouldn’t die”. At very least, I think not many people predicted she would be executed as the culprit in the Class Trial.

This is how the 16 students watching the new Class Trial were born

I: In this interview for Danganronpa 2, you mentioned that Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu was supposed to die along the way, but as you were finishing your plot he became a survivor. Did V3 also have a character like Kuzuryuu?

SS: I’m pretty sure no character was changed. Though I vaguely recall we changing the order in which they died as the murder tricks demanded.

TS: When Kodaka was thinking of the murder trick for chapter 1, he asked me “What SHSL should we kill off?”. I answered “Killing the detective would be a shocker”.

KK: For context, I wasn’t too sure if it was ok for Saihara to be the Super High School Level Detective. Because Detective Saihara would mean a protagonist title ripping off Kyouko Kirigiri’s. But I ultimately accepted the idea of him being a detective.

I: I see. So this didn’t have any big changes like DR2 had. Was there any student talent or character trait that you decided on based on their murder tricks?

KK: I always plan the characters and the tricks at the same time. And this time I planned part of the tricks along with Kitayama. Whenever we discussed, I just told him “This is the culprit, this is the victim and this is the type of case I want” and he would come up with the details for me. Otherwise none of us would know what to do with his murder tricks.

I: If any other character had their characterization changed along the way, like you said Ouma did, tell us about it.

KK: I changed Harukawa’s title after seeing the finished desing. I kept her title as Super High School Level Child Caregiver, but made her actually an assassin.

SS: I remember you going with Bounty Hunter Harukawa before you changed it to Assassin.

KK: You’re right. She looked so out of the ordinary in that illustration that I thought she would work out as assassin and changed it, if I recall right. I tend to change my plot points a lot, so that’s why it’s always better to do all part of my work at the same time.

I: Is Kodaka always this nonchalant when talking about major plot changes?

SS: Yeah, he just comes out of nowhere and “I made Harukawa an assassin”.

TS: The script still wasn’t finished at the time, so even I didn’t know the reason for the change, I could say is “Really?” (laughs).

SS: Though I like her a little better as an assassin than as a bounty hunter.

I: Yeah, that’s not a situation where you can say “no” for no reason (pained laughter). By the way, Ouma and Harukawa are super popular. Did you expect them to this many fans?

KK: Sure, Harukawa got a lot of attention on the first teaser visual, and she’s a tsundere character very easy to understand, so I thought she would be popular. And Ouma is remarkably “Danganronpa”. When he is doing so much work to get things his way and getting many big scenes in the process, it’s no surprise he would get popular.

I: I think Kaito Momota got even more big scenes than he did. Not to mention his story role was pretty important.

KK: Momota was a character I was much more unoptimistically hoping to be popular. Because in the previous games I never had any characters as super friendly as him and Gonta Gokuhara. When I was writing the script, Sugawara or Sasaki told “This cast is our tightest group of friends so far”. Now that I think about it, I guess this strongly influenced my decision to put Momota as the leader. Byakuya Togami from DR1 would be constantly on the edge if he was there.

I: He sure would (laughs). Opposite question now, what character did you think was less popular than you thought they would be?

YT: Less than expected? I guess Ryouma Hoshi? Just my personal opinion though, I understand it’s because he died too soon.

KK: A lot of people I know love Hoshi.

TS: I know lot of Hoshi fans too.

KK: To me, the most unexpectedly unpopular character was Korekiyo Shinguuji, not Hoshi. I mean, his uniform is awesome and his unstable relationship with his sister feels like a classic underground movie. Shinguuji is one of my personal favorites and I thought he would be popular. But the people playing the game called him “gross” (pained laughter).

I: Shinguuji, one-of-a-kind as he is, he’s really not for everyone.

KK: Meh, whatever, I don’t wriite characters trying to make them popular. Be it for Momota or for Shinguuji, I was thinking I would personally love if they became popular but that was not the goal. In fact, the only character I wrote with the popularity polls in mind was Miu Iruma, and the goal there was to get her the last place! I think this gave her strong character quirks, not mention that trying to make everyone popular makes the cast weird and lacking in variety.

I: I see. Speaking of Shinguuji, I felt that while his motive was quite unrelatable, most of the other students had sympathetic motives. Was that on purpose?

KK: For the motives, I was just trying to avoid a repeat of what happened with Mikan Tsumiki. Yeah, I know Shinguuji’s was close. But this time most of the motives were based on their murder tricks. The first thing I did was give a definite theme for each murder trick: chapter 1 is the protagonist being the culprit, chapter 2 was a fusion of murder trick and magic trick, chapter 3 was a new death during the investigation, chapter 4 was the culprit not knowing that he is the culprit, and chapter 5 was the culprit and the victim working together. That makes chapter 2 the only outlier. I just really wanted to use the twist that Kirumi Toujou was the Prime Minister. I also absolutely wanted to have piranhas in my story (laughs).

I: (laughs) Another big difference I notice is that I couldn’t predict the culprits based on the murder tricks.

KK: That part was very intentional. I really didn’t want any moments of “I don’t know the trick, but the culprit is this guy” the best I could. Chapter 3 was easy to figure out, but I think chapter 2′s clever hooks did a lot better.

Kodaka is Barack Obama!? The personality felt by Megumi Hayashibara.

I: Sayaka Kanda voicing Akamatsu was a highly discussed topic. How exactly did you decide that?

KK: The initial was to have (non-voice) actors playing the role of the two protagonists. After many twists and tuns, we had only Kanda voicing Akamatsu.

YT: She had a great performance as Junko Enoshima in Danganronpa THE STAGE. I invited her to the Akamatsu with high expectations, not only because she obviously a very talented actress, but also because she is so associated with Junko Enoshima that it would give the fans a lot to speculate about.

I: Another big surprise was the other protagonist Saihara being Megumi Hayashibara. Hayashibara is not someone most people would imagine voicing a boy...

KK: Hayashibara was my personal request. It looked difficult at first, but ultimately she accepted it. She might have been initially wary but then felt it was okay because she shares a lot of history with Ogata and Takayama, who voiced the previous protagonist.

I: I see. Not that you mention it, in a previous interview Hayashibara made a comment about you: “He’s like President Obama”. She didn’t elaborate on that, so please tell us why!

KK: When we were recording chapter 6, Hayashibara asked me “Does Danganronpa always ends like this?”. I answered “It’s not always like this.” and the conversation continued from there. After I created Danganronpa, many other stories with death games started appearing. I know death games are exciting and easy to employ, but so many of them didn’t think their endings through or were just the using the game as a sadistic system to kill characters. Then, as I was analyzing what it means to “truly escape the death game”, I reached the conclusion that it’s the characters upsetting the death game itself. As I explained to her how I made that ending because I had to take responsibility for creating Danganronpa, Hayashibara said “Wonderful!”...

I: And where does President Obama come in?

KK: Hayashibara talked about one time when President Obama dismantle bomb facilities in the US to say “It’s important to take responsibility for what you make”, so I answered “Then I’m Obama?” (laughs).

I: (laughs) What a conversation.

KK: Hayashibara seemed to be very convinced by this explation, seeing how she put even more power into her chapter 6 performance.

I: Saihara’s chapter 6 voice acting was indeed on fire. Speaking of chapter 6, I was really surprised by the twist of having the DR1 and 2 characters there. Was that decided from the start?

KK: I didn’t even considered it when I was planning the plot. The idea came to me only when I started writting chapter 6′s script.

YT: That’s pretty late into the process.

KK: I was thinking that just Tsumugi Shirogane’s cosplays would be too weak to express the mastermind’s threat level. As I was thinking on how could I make her a character on par with Enoshima, since the ending was going to be that, I had my epiphany: “She should cosplay every character before her!”. And if I want a perfect cosplay, I would need the real voices. When I talked to Terasawa about how awesome she would be if she could cosplay even voices, and how much of a visual punch it would be to have all previous characters, his reaction was “Wait a minute...”.

I: I can see how he wouldn’t be ready for that.

KK: I was doing the recordings for the DR3 anime at the time, so I was naive enough to believe asking for just a couple additional lines would be enough.

YT: Life is not that easy (laughs).

I: (laughs) But everything worked at the end.

KK: I have to admit, I did some emotional blackmail there. Saying “I already started the script, I can’t go with any other twist now”. I had already resigned to the fact that we couldn’t have everyone, but in the end, the entire cast came to the recordings.

I: Impressive work, Terasawa.

YT: After Kodaka’s blackmail, I had to do my part, too. The result was splendid and very meaningful to the game, but we can’t use that in promotional material, so, from a cost efficiency standpoint, it was really bad (pained laughter).

KK: But one problem I would want to fix if I had a chance is how this made her total dialogue really long. I could have made it all a lot more concise, but you know, leaving one character with only two lines who be such a waste.

I: That said, I think the result was splendid. Just as you wanted, it made Shirogane a lot more awesome, in my opinion. On the topic of Shirogane, was making Super High School Level Cosplayer the mastermind talent decided from the start?

KK: Yes. The mastermind being a cosplayer came first from that ending punchline where she asserts that their entire world is part of her cosplay. Also because I really wanted to have a cosplayer character somewhere.

The Love Hotel was born from a cancelled game mechanic!?

I: Our next topic will be the setting and the special scenes. Starting from how the Kibougamine Academy was rebooted into the Saishuu Academy. Tell us how the academy was created.

KK: I think didn’t put any school name on the project pitch. The thing is, V3 is a project initiated under the idea of being something of a culmination of the series, of putting an end into everything, so we went with the name Saishuu, which carries the nuances of both “final” and “talents being locked up”. Another neat detail I only noticed now is that it’s kanji form is pretty easy to write (才囚).

I: You’re praising yourself too much (laughs).

KK: I love Saishuu Academy’s name, but I like its emblem just as much. The design includes a subtle prisoner aesthetic and a Monokuma. Though I wonder, how will the localization handle this? (pained laughter).

I: That’s a good question (laughs). Then, how was the academy’s design decided?

KK: I only asked them to make the wall. The wall was my utmost priority.

TS: I remember that this wall got its birdcage style because I suggested to include a jail or birdcage motif. V3′s school has a prison atmosphere, but prisons still have sports grounds and whatnot, you know? Because of this, we decided to make the Saishuu Academy with explorable areas outside the school building.

I: The Saishuu Academy has a lot of strange areas. A casino is already bad enough, but it has even a love hotel...

KK: Whose idea was the love hotel again?

SS: It was based on Sugawara’s idea of nighttime raids, from the project pitch.

TS: Oh yeah, at the time we had a set rule where you could only solve the academy’s mysteries at nighttime. The idea was to explore the academy at night and investigate the mysteries, but you could also peek into the students’ rooms.

YT: Yeah, I was thinking of making an investigation game like this.

KK: The problem was that this was going to make the game too lenghty, so we left the parts where you enter the students’ for dialogue as the Love Hotel.

SS: Yeah, and since we thought it would be nice to have an element where you can flirt with the characters, they became those erotic scenes...

I: I see (laughs). Did you write the Love Hotel scenes, Kodaka?

KK: I gave the Love Hotel scenes to a substitute writer. Except their version were really not acceptable, so I had to rewrite them myself (pained laughter).

I: What an interaction to have. Enough about character scenes. We also had many new secret routes in the Class Trials.How exactly were these secret routes created?

SS: The secret routes exist because we wanted to incorporate the Lie Bullet into the story, not only the gameplay. But lying is something we kind of needed to convince most players to do. You know, we needed to add moments where the player would want to lie. And all thanks to Sugawara, we could do it.

I: You wrote the secret routes, didn’t you, Sugawara?

KK: I was too busy with everything else. Since already had semi-done scripts for the proper route, I let Sugawara have his ideas based on that.

TS: That said, I was also piled up with other jobs, so I had other developers do some bits, like pointing me out where I could lie. Some pointers I followed straight, while others I had to rethink. I tried to include as many secret routes as I could, but this was a work I couldn’t get done in time for the voice recordings.

I: I think making secret routes is hard even when the proper route script is complete...

TS: It was relatively easy to make the new content for the secret routes. The difficult is how to get back to the original route.

KK: I tried not to touch on Sugawara’s scripts too much, but I did edit some character word choices or some parts where the topic got too long.

I: How did the fans react to the secret routes?

KK: I didn’t hear much about it.

YT: I often check Twitter for fan opinions, but that’s never really tweeted about.

TS: I think a lot of people don’t notice where they can lie to get a secret route. I did make them change the song for the Debate where you can do Perjury, but that’s not listed or hinted in any tutorial, so...

KK: Not to mention it’s a really minor change, so I find it pretty difficult to notice on your first go.

The mystery novelist Kitayama adds even more well polished murder tricks

I: Since we are talking about Class Trials, I would like to ask about the murder tricks. First, tell me how Kitayama joined the party.

KK: Once I knew I would have to work on this and the DR3 anime at the same time, I thought I would have to ask someone for help, since the time I would have on the scripts would shorten. I thought that if I could smoothly get all the murder tricks decided, I could handle both scripts just fine, but unfortunately the discussion went for much longer than I expected. In the end I didn’t gain any time from all this, but thanks to Kitayama joining me, we boast higher quality.

I: How was your work?

KK: I told Kitayama the trick themes for each chapter and had him come up with the howdunnit. With that, Sugawara and Sasaki’s developer team can plot out the trick, then I check it all and put it together as the script.

I: Was there anything big you had to fix?

KK: Depends on the chapter. For chapter 1 I pretty much used Kitayama’s idea exactly as it was. Even the “I tossed away what I was holding” descriptor was left exactly as Kitayama wrote it. On the other hand, chapter 2 was very different from the initial draft.

SS: The chapter 2 trick was the water slider instead of the ropeway using the floating tube, right?

KK: Yeah, that one. Lining up a lot of floating tube to make the corpse slide on them. Then she would only have to cut the rope connecting them and that would leave just countless floating tubes on the pool. I fought finding the tubes during the investigation would be a fun idea, but when it came the time to script it, I got a lot questions. “Is this really enough water pressure to make a corpse silde?”. “Won’t she get wet from the water on the gaps between tubes?”. “Are sure the corpse can enter the fish tank?”.

YT: I’m a physics major, so this bothers me a lot. One little detail like this can ruin the whole case for me, so I made sure to comment everything I noticed.

KK: Yeah, so I had to change to the whole water slider trick into a ropeway trick. Sasaki, you’re the one who argued the most against this, weren’t you?

SS: I was (laughs). I had to plot the trick for chapter 2. So when Kodaka told me “The water slide won’t work”, I was like “Really...?”.

I: The script is where you start to notice the problems.

KK: More exactly, the plotting stage doesn’t put all that attention to detail. Because the workload for plotting a trick as a lot bigger than it sounds. And we’re definitely not gaining any time if I happen to see plans before they’re ready...So, the issues only start showing up when I’m doing the script.

SS: In chapter 2, even my idea to gather all the students together, the Insect Meet-and-Greet, caused some back-and-forth.

KK: Yes, I let the developer come up with the finer details, like for example the reason why all students gathered together. So, for this one I was like “What’s an Insect Meet-and-Greet even supposed to be?”. Then he explained to me that the group would be assembled to look at Gonta’s insects, but I still had no idea why they would do that. I still wanted to do it, it was a fun idea, so I implemented Gonta’s Insect Meet-and-Greet on the form of Gonta kidnapping the students under Ouma’s orders.

I: Do you have any other case of struggles to connect a trick’s dots?

KK: Chapter 3, handled by Sugawara, also took a lot of time.

TS: I used Kitayama’s idea for the main trick using the seesaw, but we needed to change all the steps that lead to the crime, and that was the time consuming part.

KK: Oh yeah, we changed the seance ritual.

TS: At first, the trick was that the students would all hold hands and sing Kagome Kagome together, while the culprit would stomp the floorboard. But if that were the case, when the culprit stomped the floorboard, the people holding his hands would feel the movement, you see...

I: And that’s why you had to edit. Next is chapter 4, how was it?

KK: Chapter 4 also had a murder trick by Kitayama, but it was a trick using a rope. Since we changed chapter 2 into the ropeway, that would make chapter 4′s a repeat. While we were thinking of how to make a ropeless trick, one the developers gave the looping world idea, so I created the trick using the loop.

I: Chapter 4′s trick was an idea that made a really good use out of the game world. Was there any reason to change the characters’ visual into the chibi models?

KK: I was born because we wanted to make a game inside a game. At first, we wanted to make a fully 3D world.

YT: You were calling it “VR”, weren’t you?

TS: But then its main gimmick became the loop trick, so we had to give up because a loop would be too hard and far too costly to portray in 3D.

SS: We also considered using the bonus modes’ 8-bit sprites, but the consesus what that those were too visually unimpressive, so we made new ones, if I recall correctly.

KK: Also because to make the trick work we need to make the game in 2.5D, not 2D. Most of us thought it would be difficult to use the 8-bit sprites under that circumstances.

I: And for the chapter 5 trick, the twist where the victim and the culprit were in cahoots was very original, and I honestly couldn’t tell which of them was the culprit until the very end.

YT: That one is the hardest to figure out.

KK: I’m glad I could put the Exisal to good use in the 5th trick, with the victim and the culprit switching places. Also, I loaded chapter 5 with a large amount of information to distract you from the truth, so you being confused about it is exactly what we wanted.

The feelings imbued in the shocking finale. And an intriguing plan for the future!?

I: From this part on, I will be asking about the controversial chapter 6 and your plans for the future. I was told that when you were writting the chapter 6 script you added many extra animations and cutscenes of the school being destroyed.

KK: At the plot planning stage, the only thing I had planned for chapter 6 was the endgame. Only when I actually reached that part in the script that I saw I didn’t know how lead the path to that. In DR2 I prepared some surprises to thrill the fans, like Kibougamine Academy appearing and whatnot. I wanted this game to have an element like this. And that’s when I arranged a meeting with all of Sasaki’s developers. I said “I put Kibougamine in DR2′s finale, so now I want V3 to have a set up as good as that”.

SS: Everyone agreed we should have one, of course.

KK: And that’s where I suggested we should explode Saishuu Academy. With Ki-bo appearing to help us around at the tightest moments, fighting the Exisals and all that. I talked with Sasaki’s team to ask if they could do it, they said “I think we can” and I answered “Nice” (laughs).

I: (laughs) That said, I think that was hard on who was managing the budget and schedule...

YT: You get me. There was suddenly a lot more to make.

KK: But we weren’t behind on the deadlines, were we?

SS: That’s right, we weren’t.

YT: That’s not how it works! (laughs)

Everyone: (laughs)

I: Chapter 6 had a lot more animated cutscenes too, hadn’t it?

KK: I wasn’t expecting that. You know that scene where Ki-bo first appears, flying to the glass? I was think that was going to be just some CG, not a fully animated cutscene. So it was a good surprise, like “Are you really making him this cool? Thank you!”.

YT: And his cutscene was quite a long one, at that.

SS: A CG would be too weak and unconvicing for this. We decided we should have this animated to give it the impact it deserved.

I: And I assume the same goes for all the add cutscene. Was the idea of slapping away the block-pathing debris conceived and added for the same reason?

SS: It was. Honestly, there was so much more we wanted to do but didn’t have time to...

KK: To be completely honest, I was thinking chapter 6 was going to be a lot more visually simplistic than that. But once we started we didn’t want to stop. I’m glad the finished version is this much better than I imagined.

I: Speaking of chapter 6, can I ask Kodaka to explain the ending?

KK: I went with that ending because I wanted to change where the player stands in V3. In 1 and 2 the player was an outside observer to the killing game. But in V3 I wanted the player to experience the same shock as Saihara and take part in the debate from the same position as him. Then, as Saihara is shocked to learn “This world was fictional. The Akamatsu and Momota I believed in were all fiction”, the player would also be hit with the fact “Everything I played so far is fictional”. But it’s a fact that everything you played so far still resonated with you and you gained a lot from it, so I was hoping you could synchro yourself with Saihara and take his side in the argument after he gets back in his feet. I was thinking that it if the player and the characters could outgrow this fiction, it could even create a new relationship between player and game.

I: I see. So that’s what you were thinking.

KK: I prepared a lot of tricks to make it easier for the player to sync up with Saihara, like Ki-bo’s “Do you want to save?”. Just empathizing with the characters was not enough for chapter 6, I want to share their point of view. That why, to make it harder to insert and emphatize in one specific person, I shuffled the POV with everyone.

I: I think the finale intentionally avoids stating what’s the truth and what is a lie. Do all of you in the production staff share the same answer to this mystery?

YT: Kodaka might have the answer on his mind, but I think we don’t need to know. We don’t even know if we can take everything Kodaka says as correct. See, the real right answer is the answer you came up with yourself.

I: You mean you just want everyone to think of the answer with their own personal interpretations?

YT: Also, I want to take this moments to tell all the fans that we never had the slightest intent to tarnish or insult the past games. We still think of Danganronpa 1 and 2 as our very beloved children. We love all 3 games from the bottom of our hearts.

I: Kodaka said before that V3 is a culmination and an end to everything, but will the Danganronpa series continue?

YT: Like with the first two games, we are completely burned out after finishing it, so, honestly, we don’t have any solid plans for a next game yet. However, as a producer, I want to answer to the fans’ support and expectations. I need to think long and hard about the future of Danganronpa.

I: What could this future be holding for us...?

YT: Who knows. DR1-2 Reload and Ultra Despair Girls will be ported to the PS4 this year, so I think we’ll get many new fans. If something in this trend incites Kodaka’s desire to write, we could be having a new game. Or at least that’s what I expect. I hope our fans expect the same.

I: I’ll be looking forward to it. Now, one message from all of you to the fans.

KK: Thank you for buying this artbook. How about replaying once more now that you know the game better? Or even better, buy another copy of the game and the book!

TS: I think there’s always something of value, be it good or bad, in someone playing a videogame for the first time. So the words I want to say here are the same words of gratitude said since the old days: THANK YOU FOR PLAYING.

SS: I saw a lot of intense critical commentary both for and against this game, so I’m very happy that this game managed to make this many people feel something about it. I believe leaving you wanting to talk about of you felt is one of the more characteristic traits of Danganronpa, so I love that you can enjoy exchanging your opinions.

#artbook translations #kazutaka kodaka #Yoshinori Terasawa #shun sasaki #takayuki sugawara #'blank project file' sugawara is truly the chiyomaru of spike #kodaka completely forgot sakura in that comment about momota and gonta #why is hayashibara like this?#a lot of dramatic irony in context of too kyo existing

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tantkill · 5 years

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Misconception: Kirigiri is cold-hearted, manipulative and utterly lacking in emotions or sympathy for others outside of their use to her in solving mysteries

MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT KIRIGIRI ||

This is honestly the greatest misconceptions regarding Kirigiri mostly because the ones who believe this only go by how wikipedia writes her, as well as watching only the anime. Yes I say this because of how little information we are delivered in the anime and that’s why watching the anime is the WORST METHOD of getting interested in the Danganronpa cast. Kirigiri is one of the characters where you’ll fail to receive much and just reduced to a tacky summary in the animation while the gameplay offers more about her character, especially the Free Time Events ( believe me, Wikipedia of these characters is not going to give the true depths about them AT ALL ). Even watching a gameplay on Youtube is a step of improvement into understanding these characters since they upload the most important part of these characters: their Free Time Events. Wikipedia is a site where you can edit it as much as you want so are you going to entrust the word of people who possibly have a bias on the characters? Nope so the game is the only means of understanding! Now that I’ve added my little touch to how I feel about the birth of this misconception in full, I’ll be proving that this is a false misconception with actual game screenshots!

Kirigiri is cold-hearted and utterly lacking in emotions or sympathy

It’s a crime apparently to most people of a character being mysterious or the capability to conceal her emotions while misinterpreting it as being ‘cold-hearted’. The whole concept of Kirigiri concealing her emotions and hiding them is by how she stated that people who are far worse are capable of taking advantage of it. Her movements itself don’t ever suggest Kirigiri had ill-intentions from the start nor was she obligated to reveal it before people who were supposedly ‘strangers’ from the beginning. She acted upon an instinct where there’s no gain from letting others you don’t know how you’re feeling, especially if you’re being foolishly open. It sounds harsh coming from her mouth by how she stated it to Naegi but really she’s trying to properly educate him how his trust can be taken advantage ( spoiler alert: Maizono did just that and it basically opens a wound that guess what was mended by?

Kirigiri herself. Quite frankly, she wasn’t too thrilled to speak ‘noble’ of someone who did implant betrayal as being someone who experienced that kind of sensation…knowing how unpleasant it feels but the relation itself is what made Kirigiri feel she had to ) Being in a killing game doesn’t necessarily entitle every person to be absolutely trusting or kind to everyone. Everyone had their distrust and it expanded with every killing. If Kirigiri was being cold-hearted, you’d think she would make it obvious by fully interacting with everyone but she kept herself distant because of her condition. Kirigiri had practically her entire existence erased from her, subconsciously enacting her detective skills as if it was second nature, all the while keeping a cool head during the trials. She didn’t have a reason to not act as if she wasn’t cold-hearted but also displayed no such thing. Even Kirigiri’s intention of speaking with Naegi to move forward the betrayal he underwent showed the consideration she carried for him. From the beginning of the trial, she asked for him to figure it out and uncover the truth.

Sure the results of it might have left a scar but Kirigiri acknowledged the potential of his ability and went far to say ‘he was the kind of person they needed in order to press forward from this desperate situation’. I’m pretty certain this is another demonstration of Kirigiri’s attempts at being sympathetic all while pushing Naegi to move past those deaths. No, it wasn’t an enforced means of looking at it that way. This was a foreshadowing of the toll it’d take for Naegi to carry everyone’s deaths: SURVIVOR GUILT WILL BECOME HIS DESPAIR ( this was seen in Naegi’s brainwashing film in DR3 Future Arc where Kirigiri tried to make him move forward these deaths instead of keeping them; keeping these deaths will pile up and believing this was all his fault ). KIRIGIRI IS AWARE OF THE TOLL EMOTIONS HAVE ON ANOTHER PERSON BECAUSE, AS WE SHALL SEE, SHE DOES POSSESS EMOTIONS.

Now let’s move on to the ‘UTTERLY LACKING IN EMOTIONS AND SYMPATHY’ part…

Ahhhh Kirigiri is comical enough that she humors people who have this misconception with her own intake about the matter. This is why I adore her to bits for practically saying ‘How clever of you to say such things when I have already stated before I don’t need to entertain your type of ideal waifu by being heavily emotional. What part of I prefer to conceal my emotions do you not understand? You realize characters like this exist right? No? Okay then’.

Apparently characters who have a stoic/enigma trait going about them, or the favored kuudere personification, are charged with being uninteresting or something is wrong with them for not being the emotional messes tsundere characters tend to be. Kirigiri’s Free Time Events gives us a more thorough understanding that she constantly emphasizes about being the kind of person who doesn’t wish to expose her emotions. She accepts these circumstances, accepts this motive for hiding them even if she acknowledges the other’s people intake on the matter, all while shooting down their assumptions. Without fully knowing she was a detective who did this for good intentions, Kirigiri was aware of taking this perspective when communicating with other people.

As stated before, they were PUT IN A KILLING GAME WHERE YOU WERE FOOLED TO BELIEVE THEY’RE ABSOLUTE STRANGERS AND MEMORIES OF BONDING WITH A HANDFUL OF EACH OTHER WERE TAKEN AWAY. Enoshima’s drive for manipulating everyone into accepting the motives and killing their own friends was a sadly successful tactic, dividing them at every chapter though they struggled to try and put some amount of trust. Each time, their trust was sourly mistaken which is what made the despair grow around them until the sixth trial.

Knowing this, Kirigiri instinctively knew this predicament felt like something similar and why she presents herself with this stoic persona while trying to solve the mysteries surrounding the school. Her motive was to obtain her memories as there wasn’t a reason to fully state it when someone must have been behind their ‘imprisonment’. Every character had a practical excuse for behaving as they did: wary of one another and only communicating with who they felt to have bonded with. Kirigiri, on the other hand, was only seen speaking with Naegi alone because of his foolishly open book persona. That itself gave her the confidence into at least cooperating with him, however she rarely expressed her emotions. This ties with her profession as a detective and we shall see why it connects to how Kirigiri’s personality is shaped. She didn’t become ‘emotionless’ as a way to make enemies. Rather, the following gives us an understanding to why she hides her emotions. She clearly states…

Reading your emotions easily by the enemy is the worst predicament for any good detective. In other words, Kirigiri won’t let someone who is the culprit to know what she’s capable of feeling. Reading her like an open book means inviting a chance at outsmarting her or the worst case scenery ENDING HER LIFE. People keep neglecting the motives behind Kirigiri’s ‘concealment of her emotions’ by forgetting she’s a detective. Even her views of what a good detective is not out of mocking or degrading other fellow detectives; this is simply stating her pride as a Kirigiri detective. She states along Chapter 6 during her aiding Naegi from escaping the trash pit about her pride as one. Her family had always taken pride in their legacy and mentioned it was SACRED. This is everything Kirigiri is, thus making her character of the stoic woman who people don’t appreciate or misunderstand to great lengths.

Kirigiri is manipulative…for others outside of their use to her in solving mysteries

It’s crucial to see Kirigiri’s standing of her neutral alignment as it plays a part to how she sees herself when it comes to a person. Being manipulative isn’t part of a neutral state where she doesn’t benefit from doing it as a means to obtain the absolute truth. People argued she was during the Fifth Trial because Kirigiri went against Naegi. Immediate standing goes to Naegi because he’s the protagonist and it seems like Kirigiri was playing a Maizono ‘backstabbing card’ against him. That is where PEOPLE ARE WRONG TO MAKE THIS ASSUMPTION.

Kirigiri didn’t manipulate as the trial itself was a manipulation itself to turn the outcome under Enoshima’s favor where she was looking for a viable reason to execute her. People didn’t play the game if they can’t understand the reasons behind Kirigiri’s attempts at pointing the finger at Naegi was due to this being a trial that ends the mystery all together. She acknowledges in putting the mystery above saving Naegi’s life but truthfully THERE WAS NO OTHER WAY. If you chose to pursuit the lie, there’s the bad ending for you if Kirigiri dies. In reality, this trial’s evidence was manipulated by Enoshima though Kirigiri manages to at least witness how screwed up it was which is why she’s desperately trying to survive. If we’re going for the anime, before the trial begins, she states to Naegi how this would become a trial that determines her survival and how she must come out of it alive. She realized the absolute truth behind it and it honestly pained her having to choose her own life against Naegi. In the end, Kirigiri jumped god knows how long that fall was without hesitation and saved Naegi from starving to death.

tltr; kirigiri is not cold-hearted, nor manipulative and utterly lacking in emotions or sympathy for others outside of their use to her in solving mysteries. she is a complex character who carries a stoic persona though when you truly earn her trust, kirigiri shall bless you with her emotions and not betray you.

#✖ ┇ ❝ what lies as truth ( prompts )#✖ ┇ ❝ anonymous inquires ( cold cases )#✖ ┇ ❝ inquiries hold depth ( cases responded )#long post tw #meta post

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magioftheseas · 5 years

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Kamukoma for 1,3 and 9?

1. If you had to change the pairing’s very first meeting, how would you change it?

As much as I love Chapter 0, I did always want them to have met earlier and to have had some kind of relationship while they were remnants together.

And then dr3 happened! And it gave me that!

And then it took it away before doing…anything…with it.

…

I would have liked some damn fucking followup on that, yeah, obviously. Especially since it literally makes no sense at all, even by the anime’s own logic, to remove that from Kamukura’s memories when like… Nanami died afterwards…and if he forgets about meeting Komaeda, he’ll forget about her, too…

So yeah, that was just…

Stupid. Really especially fucking stupid, even for dr3.

3. What is your favorite AU/prompt idea/trope for your pairing?

Lol. It’s as I just said. I wanted them to have a relationship during despair times. And I’m still going to pretend that they did because fuck Kodaka being a total coward and hack.

There’s just something really nice about the idea of these two sticking together in weird anti-Junko solidarity but not having the best relationship for…obvious reasons.

Admittedly, I also just really like Kamukura latched onto Komaeda like a duckling while Komaeda’s less than emotionally available. There’s also just something funny about Komaeda being friends with a living Deus Ex Machina but like, unable to really do much with it because Kamukura would rather observe than act, which frustrates Komaeda to no end. So he’s even less than less than emotionally available.

It’s messed up. But I really dig it.

9. Favorite aspect of them/their relationship dynamics?

That they’re both willing to give their lives to end despair in severely fucked up ways. What a similarity to have. But Kamukura’s still worse than Komaeda because not only did he have zero intention to spare ANYONE from the whole simulated killing game funtimes, this p much makes him responsible for everything Komaeda did because, like, Komaeda wouldn’t have done any of that…if not for the killing game being a thing…and it’s explicitly Kamukura’s fault for making it a thing.

And that makes for some interesting potential because Komaeda would be like, the only character, that probably isn’t fully disgusted with Kamukura for pulling that. Because, well, he wanted everyone to die, too, so he’d be a hypocrite. The only thing that would upset him was Naegi’s trio getting involved and Junko AI potentially gaining control of their bodies, and even that would be complicated, given the circumstances because like…y’all really think the Future Foundation wouldn’t hunt them down if they weren’t already on their way…

But, yeah. There’s that mess.

But what I also just really like is how Kamukura is literally everything Komaeda ever wanted, being someone who can counter his luck. Like that’s, huge. More than the talent, more than hope, there’s nothing that Komaeda could find more incredible than that.

…and Kamukura has the kind of personality that Komaeda would totally fucking hate.

It’s “he was perfect until he opened his mouth” and I think that’s beautiful.

And I just really like the idea of Komaeda being prissy with him but still staying around him because he lowkey really likes having someone who his luck can’t touch. It’s frustrating, but he really needs that kind of stability in his life and, well, Kamukura also isn’t cruel to him so…maybe it’s also just…really nice to be in someone else’s presence without being scorned and disdained by them?

It’s weird, but it’s comforting, much as Komaeda wishes that Kamukura could be a little more motivated. And, honestly, Kamukura needs someone to bitch at him to be more motivated and to have more initiative. It would also help that Komaeda would probably fuss over him, too. And Kamukura might be mildly curious about Komaeda’s abject refusal to ask anything of him besides “do something anything for your own sake”.

And Komaeda just quietly spending time in his presence and appreciating having moments of peace without having to worry while Kamukura contemplates things is just….a nice image. I hope they can grow to be good friends.

…yeah.

Whoops, I babbled.

#I was curious how long it would take me to bitch about dr3 #like...four asks...#that's great #Magi answers #Magi headcanon #anonymous #sdr2 spoilers #dr3 spoilers #dr3 negativity #KamuKoma

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noddytheornithopod · 5 years

Text

At the Start of Danganronpa 2 Chapter 4.

So... a despair disease. That’s pretty creepy.

Kuzuryu comes back with an eyepatch, but in his place Nekomaru is mortally wounded, and at the end of the chapter comes back... as a robot? This is some pretty wild shit.

The thing with Mikan sleeping with Hajime was super weird.

More parallels with the first game in that we have a double murder. Hiyoko dying I didn’t mourn much since she was annoying, but Ibuki was sometimes fun if occasionally a bit too noisy and wild.

Wow, Monokuma’s Wizard of Oz ripoff really DID suck hard. What even was that, lol.

Ibuki’s despair disease condition was so obviously a part of the murder, but I was surprised nobody talked about it.

Hajime has a weird dream furthering the idea he was a reserve student, I guess.

The third trial was something alright... MIKAN was the killer this time? In hindsight, setting up the timid easily frightened character to murder someone seems like such an obvious twist, but like Hajime and everyone else... I completely fell for it. I did wonder if she contracted despair disease, but holy shit she’s so good at acting as her normal self that I never suspected anything from her. It’s a shame too, I was growing to like her, I felt bad for her. :P When she stopped acting as her usual timid self, it was clear something was wrong, but wow I never expected it to be so creepy. When she became the prime suspect, despair disease was the only thing that made sense to me, and well...

Since I’ve seen DR3 I have the feeling Mikan’s beloved might be Junko or someone affiliated with her, but I’m still obviously unsure and I really do have lots of questions. Seriously though, that was one hell of a twist. It’s apparent she reverted to her Ultimate Despair mode when she regained her memories based on what Monomi said and what I know from the anime. Still... pretty creepy shit.

World Ender is the Future Foundation, eh? Is Monokuma just calling them that because he’s against them? He claims World Ender, well, ended the world though, so IDK what’s up with that yet (unless it’s bullshit and it was just the Ultimate Despair).

Nagito actually is pissed off at Mikan for once. Wow, he certainly was being weird still though.

Again going off the DR3 anime, I have the feeling Chiaki is the Future Foundation traitor (though Monomi of course is still with them), because I remember her dying, so her being here is kind of weird if she’s supposedly dead.

Looks like we’re going to get some more clues about everything soon, including what Hajime’s deal actually could be.

#danganronpa 2

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danganronpa2 · 6 years

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prime #s!

thank u jay for my life. v3 spoilers ahead!

2. Favourite protagonist?i wonder… who could it possibly be……

3. Favourite antagonistic character?izuru is on the villains wiki so he’s technically an antagonist! anyway i think he’s great as a commentary on the education system and the value that society places on talent, prioritizing success over morals or mental health. i know he wasn’t ever supposed to be a fully fleshed-out character but i love him and his stupid hair and his emo red eyes and his weird formal way of speaking and his awkward sitting positions and his rude deadpan almost-humor and

5. Best girl?nanami!! dr3 did her so dirty i love my oblivous smart sleepy rude kindhearted girl

7. Favourite class trial from all the games?sdr2 ch1 because komaeda_laughing_for_7_seconds.mp3

13. What’s your opinion on the Danganronpa 3 anime?i’ll leave the angry essays behind in 2016 where they belong, but i still think the brainwashing is the worst decision in the entire franchise and totally invalidates the message of sdr2. plus it butchered some of my favorite characters. and almost all of the new characters were awful. and rebuilding hope’s peak is stupid. also mitarai sucks. kamukura kamukura yas queen

17. Do you have an OT3? Which one?komahinanami i guess? i think kirigiri/naegi/mukuro is cute too

19. Who do you think is an underrated character?twogami, hoshi, and sakura! they’re all really good and loveable characters who get ignored because they’re not attractive

23. Favourite mascot?monokuma?? idk???? usami is sweet but i genuinely think monokuma is really funny esp in the first game

29. Which character should survived in your opinion?KAEDE AKAMATSU

31. Is there a character you think who shouldn’t have survived but did?yumeno. also munakata die bitch

37. Favourite minor character?natsumi was somehow better than every other dr3 character in the single episode of screentime she got

41. Person you’ve never expected to become a culprit but they became? (Doesn’t include Chiaki)gokuhara!! i’m still so mad like it doesn’t matter how manipulative ouma is, i genuinely cannot believe gokuhara would ever do that

53. Favourite game end?i know i keep answering sdr2 for these but it’s sdr2

59. Favourite moment?“sorry i was born stupid”

61. Character who looks like the love child of ???maizono+togami=shirogane

67. Which character would you never want to meet in real life?most of them…. honestly……… komaeda and izuru are two of my favorites but i wouldn’t want to meet them irl because neither of them would like me and i would also fear for my life

71. Character you can relate to?hinata! growing up in a hyper competitive academic environment with crushing self-esteem issues will do that

73. Character who deserved better?owari! great backstory and opportunity for development but not much really happened

79. Which character has the cutest design?chihiro, yuuta, or angie

83. Least favourite chapter?v3 chapter 4

89. Least favourite Danganronpa 3 character?toss-up between munakata and mitarai because i absolutely despise both of them and they both survived. at least ruruka died

97. Overrated ship which is your NOTP?i don’t HATE saiouma but it’s really. not great. offbrand komahina with a side of gratuitous edge. gay ship for straights. weird baiting. i’m sorry

#ndrv3 spoilers #sdr2 spoilers #this is so long sorry if youre on mobile #txrot #asking alexandra

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mic-and-cheese · 6 years

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Because you seem to be in a ranting mood, and the fact you reblogged that whole thing about Despair Arc, can we agree that it basically focuses on Chiaki 100% and tries to make her someone every loves but doesn't have like any interaction with at all? //Excuse me if you don't agree but this is something that I personally think//

(I am about to seriously rant about EVERYTHING I've been thinking about lately, so be warned)Yeah, I have to agree with you there. I don't really like Chiaki much to be honest, but I would be able to put up with the series being about her if it were just executed better (no pun intended jfc). Despair arc could have been better for what it was if it didn't ignore already existing character dymanics for the sake of forcing Chiaki to be a central character to everyone, despite pretty much everyone already having someone that they'd naturally be more invested in than the girl that they played video games with once (ex, mentors, family, close friends). Maybe I'm just not seeing it for what it is because I just don't connect to her. Maybe she is a good main character, I don't know, but what I do know is that it honestly felt forced to me. But that's just one of my main gripes in Danganronpa in general. It's a franchise that has no choice but to be character driven because of the nature of the premise, yet it only focuses on 2-3 main characters? I understand that the series also can't rely too much on fleshing out everyone because the majority of them are going to die anyway, but I feel like there's an equallibrium between character driven and lack of character development that Danganronpa just hasn't mastered yet? Idk the story of the games are phenominal, but the characters feel really weak sometimes? Especially when you can tell that characters have so much potential if different things had just been highlighted. Of course when I say that the first character that comes to mind is Teruteru (mostly because I'm invested enough in his character to see his potential, but I'm sure most if not all of the other characters have untapped potential). Reading between the lines of Teruteru's backstory I and many others have noticed that there's a story there about a boy who was forced to grow up too fast and didn't have the guideance he needed, all while having to deal with selfish, overachieving younger siblings who are in harmful conditions that make him feel like he has to resort to their level of sexual behavior just to feel good about himself, and hiding who he really is in the process. Sure, maybe not all of these things connect to one another in reality, but regardless of the narrative created to explain his character, there's no doubt that there's something deeper than "that one pervert character".And then there's the fate of the remnants of despair. I know it's not really on topic with the rest of my rant but I did say I'd be talking about everything on my mind, but I had hoped I could have transitioned to the topic better. Either way, I'm really happy the remnants lived! And not just because it means that some of my favorite characters lived. As nice and mushy as it would have been if the remnants just fucked off to Jabberwock Island and lived happily ever after (which Hope arc seems to communicate) I think it's good that they lived even just based on the implications of their situation. Think about it. They're going to have to live the rest of their lives seperated from their homes and (remaining) family and friends, unable to achieve their dreams that they went to Hopes Peak to fulfill in the first place. They're going to have to live with being known as nothing more than terrorists by the entire world and by those who previously loved and supported them, instead of as victims in a situation far out of their control. They're going to have to live with the fact that they committed atrocious acts against their loved ones, themselves, and the world, with some of them even having to live with the physical manefestations of those atrocities (ex. Nagito's arm, Fuyuhiko's eye, and those are just the ones actually mentioned). Not to mention we don't know the exact state that (the real) Jabberwock islands are in. For all we know, the place is a wasteland unsuitable for life? I really do want the remnants to be happy in the end which kinda contradicts everything I just said, but saying that they got off scot-free is downright false, even if it's not directly stated in the anime.And of course I can't mention the remnants without talking about the brainwashing video and Chiaki's execution too. Not gonna lie, it felt like a cop out. I'm glad that Chiaki ended up being a real person, but even through my own opinions about her, Despair arc felt like a major disservice to her character, despite how much they tried to show how much everyone loved her, because it really just boiled down to "kill off a beloved character for shock value." Maybe I could have accepted it for what it was if we hadn't been previously told that Junko corrupted them individually and they joined Ultimate Despair on their own accord (to be honest I don't remember any canon material that says or hints at Junko individually breaking the 77th class, so forgive me if I get something wrong, but that's a different topic) but at this point, DR3 just disregarded its own canon for a cop out. Now it wasn't a horrible cop out, being unwillingly brainwashed brings an interesting narrative about how they took the blame for the Future Foundation killing game despite being victims of their own unwilling actions, which I'll admit, I really enjoy from a story perspective. But on the other side, the story of the 77th class being exploited for their weaknesses and then finding the strength to reform themselves after escaping the Neo World Program is really good too!! Really my biggest issue with the canon storyline is that it felt lazy, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was. I can see them merits in its "flaws" though it's the implications of those flaws that breaks the narrative. Even though I've been ranting for a while, I don't really blame Kodaka for going the route he did. I think I see what he was going for, and though I would have preferred a story that was actually about what the remnants actually did while they were despairs (which, is also an entirely different topic) I can accept DR3 for what it is. I can say that from this rant I've noticed that Danganronpa is a series that relies really heavily on its implications due to the lack of fleshing out certain aspects, for better or for worse.Man I wish I could write like this for class

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kimmysfandomblog · 6 years

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So Nae/giri, Kamu/koma, Toukomaru and Kii/ruma for the ship meme ? :P You can do all of them or pick the ones you want to talk about, I just wanted to give you one ship per game ~

Thank you so much for the ask Serahne!!! :D I’d be more than happy to do them all!!!

From here: https://kimmysfandomblog.tumblr.com/post/168063250112/send-me-a-ship-and-ill-give-you-my-brutally

Since there’s 4, I’m gonna have to put it under the cut! And they got very long, sorry ^^;

obviously, V3 spoilers for the last one!

Nae/giri (+)

So, funny thing about me: I actually started DR with the Animation (I hadn’t even known a game existed at the time). Anyways, because it’s an anime, you don’t get those free time events, and everything is much, much faster. Basically…. I’m a real dunce when it comes to romance, so I hadn’t even realized Nae/giri was pretty heavily hinted at ^^; I spent most of the time thinking Kirigiri was gonna betray Naegi (which… I mean I wasn’t completely wrong, kinda? XD She didn’t mean to throw him under the bus at all, of course).

Now, I didn’t ship anyone in DR by the time I finished the anime. I’d seen it mostly as friendships, and that Naegi and Kirigiri’s was the strongest one. I don’t know when exactly it sprung on me that, hey, this is a ship!!!, but my best guess is that it wasn’t until I stumbled across DR again when it came out on Steam. A let’s player I kind of visit occasionally was playing the game and I got sucked into nostalgia, and he did Kirigiri’s FTEs. It was probably during that time that I recognized this was definitely a ship, one that was practically canon, and that actually, I’m okay with it, and even like it! If two characters like each other, and can support each other this well, then why not?

I’m not the biggest Naeg/iri fan (that spot for favorite DR1 ship belongs to another pairing, but admittedly it’s more of a pre-canon ship). I’ll admit, a part of me still thinks Naegi forgives Kirigiri too easily after all he’d been through, but if he gave her a hard time, he wouldn’t be Naegi! And I was a little salty she threw him under the bus, but Kirigiri made a mistake, acknowledges it, and even returns the favor back to him! It wasn’t even really her fault (she clearly didn’t know what would happen or she would have definitely let herself be sacrificed), so I forgive her, too!

If DR3 proved anything about Naeg/iri, it’s that Naegi and Kirigiri very clearly care for one another, and are able to balance each other out. They understand each other so well, and I’d say they definitely like, probably even love, each other. So, given canon events throughout the series, I ship it! It’s been good for both of them, the way I see it! I sincerely hope they continue to care and love each other post canon, too. They both deserve happiness after all they’ve been through together!

Kamu/Koma (-)

Okay, this one… this one actually irks me, I’m sorry to say. I know Kamukura is Hinata, and I definitely ship Koma/Hina, but Kamu/Koma…. it’s very different. I’ve read Kamu/Koma fics, and seen the fanart, (and sometimes I actually like the fanwork). I get why people like it. However, to me, it’s a very unbalanced ship.

Ko’s obsession with Hope and Talent, with Kamukura being the embodiment of Talent, and of the Hope Ko originally fixates on, makes it much too unbalanced because Kamukura is given all the power in this relationship. Not only that, but it would be Ko constantly trying to be useful to Kamukura, or trying to make things interesting for Kamukura. And Kamukura, well, I can’t see him reciprocating or giving back much. Kamukura’s kinda weird, as in he’s pretty selfish in a way. Maybe he’d do things back for Ko, but would he mean it? Would Ko even know if Kamukura cared? It doesn’t help that the majority of the fanworks don’t really do anything to disprove how I feel their relationship would work. People write/draw fanart for Kamu/Koma using this power play: Ko revering Kamukura like a god, doing demeaning things for him, or being like his housewife or maid or something, and Kamukura kind of staring blankly back, or barely reciprocating or acknowledging any of it. It’s also portrayed very sexually (?), with no amount of fluff, and I end up feeling sorry for Ko. I really can’t ship something this one-sided where only one person has affection for the other, or at the very least, where it’s difficult to see how affectionate one is for the other.

And, I suppose, another thing is just the fact that I like Haji way more than Kamukura. Sometimes Kamu/Koma shippers portray Haji as the one losing out, the third wheel left behind, or even saying Kamukura should have fully returned. I’m glad, in the end, Haji is seemingly acting like he’s mostly Haji to his friends.

However, I admit that besides how I see the Kamu/Koma dynamic playing out… the really extreme shippers were the reason I can’t stand it most of the time. More than a year ago now, there was this huge shipping war, and at least to me, with the people I was following at the time, it seemed like it was mostly between extreme Kamu/Koma shippers against the extreme Hina/Nami shippers. The sheer hatred and pride at being so hateful disgusted me. I unfollowed a few people that I used to like because of all these scathing remarks against Nami (by that I mean DR2 Nami) and basically mocking the fans for liking and defending her, and then being proud of it, even celebrating it in a congratulating post to themselves. I mean, I know now it was aimed at the Nami lovers that were just as bad as they were being, but it still hurts either way. I wasn’t following anyone that was strictly Hina/Nami at the time, but I did see a lot of Ko discourse flying around, too (and heavily disagreed with them of course). Even after that, people were tagging their hate for Nami and Ko, and the ships. I couldn’t escape it. Maybe I’m over-imagining it, but that’s how I feel about it. I’m glad it’s settled down now that V3 is mostly distracting people from it these days.

As for how I feel about Kamu/Koma today, sometimes seeing Kamu/Koma (or Hina/Nami) makes me cringe, and other times, I find it okay (though it’s mostly the former. I always felt weird about Kamu/Koma because of the power dynamic).

Unrelated: Weirdly enough, even though I don’t like Hina/Nami, I ended up liking Kamu/Nami, but only because AI Kamukura exists ^^; I actually participated in Kamu/Nami week, too, and… yeah I actually like it. My guilty pleasure ship, lol. Just... not so much for Hina/Nami. DR3 Hina/Nami was that bad.

Sorry that answer was very negative, but brutal honesty right? I know I have followers that ship it, and I don’t really mind as long as no one is trying to force me to like it or see it!

Toko/maru (+)

Well, I didn’t like Another Episode as a whole that much, but I did like the interactions between Toko and Komaru a lot. Their friendship was just so good! They were able to help each other, see the faults in each other, and call them out. Komaru helps Toko learn to trust her through her genuine kindness and loyalty, and Toko helps Komaru find solutions and helps break Komaru’s habit of seeing herself as just a normal girl with no way to change what happens around her.

And the ending, where Toko decides to stay with Komaru instead of leaving with Togami? It makes me feel a lot of joy, honestly. Nothing against ToFu, but her choosing Komaru over Togami was great! Like, from what I remember of her FTE’s Toko has had trouble trusting people. Neither of her moms wanted her, and she was even dated as a part of a dare. Her moms and that boy both treated her nicely, but they actually didn’t like her (actually I wonder about the moms, but I’ll have to revisit those FTEs eventually). The reason she is so infatuated with Togami probably has to do with how rudely he treats her, on top of being the SHSL Heir. If he got with her, it would be like a romance novel come to life, and he wouldn’t be pretending to like her. However, it’s unrealistic the way it is in canon. Togami may be getting better, but at least at the point canon left off, he still needs some work.

I’m very glad Toko has Komaru. Komaru treats her normally instead of being scared off or angry at Toko’s accusations and jokes, and she openly shows how much she cares about Toko. I can see Tokomaru both as a strong friendship, or a future romantic relationship, given time. And, based on the one DR3 episode, it seems like their bond has done nothing but grow! They trust in each other and work really well together. May they remain this close or more post-canon!

Kii/ruma (+)

I don’t know if anyone was expecting this to be appealing? I usually don’t like the characters that spew vulgarities, so I thought I’d never like Miu. I was so wrong! And, knowing what I did, I never thought I’d ship her with Kiibo, who’s just… so pure??? I remember, back when I was trying to avoid spoilers, that one CG where Miu was apparently performing maintenance came up, and I totally misjudged it.

However, this game… it subverted my expectations. The CG was not as uncomfortable as I thought! Miu got a bit too close, and I’m 99% sure she knew what she was saying and how it could sound, and Kiibo just came for maintenance, and he doesn’t really get the double meanings to her words, but somehow ends up saying things that could be suggestive too XD It was so funny! I honestly thought, upon getting spoiled that CG before playing, that he wasn’t consenting to whatever was going on, but while I can’t say it was “innocent,” it was clearly not that bad. And after that, Miu is introduced to the Neo World Program and Kiibo gets jealous of the computer XD To try to get the most out of my V3 experience, I actually went up to every character each FT to get their “FTE starter,” so I know he’s always been either in the hall right before the computer room, or (not much farther away from there) next to the three empty rooms. I’m pretty sure the first FTE of that chapter, he even gets defensive over his not-jealousy of a computer, lol!!! There was also that part in Chapter 4, before going to the Virtual World, Monotaro calls Kiibo “Daddy” and Miu “Mommy” XD and even after her death, he was so sad he wished he could cry for her, which just punches me in the feels… and from what I remember in Trial 4, Kiibo was pretty much trying to defend her as the others pretty much admitted to not caring that much about her? I’d need to replay that trial, but that’s what I took from it in regards to Miu. Also, I guess another reason I like it is because Ouma bullies both of them, so they are similar in that regard haha.

I guess, maybe as the sole complaint, I wonder how Miu felt about Kiibo? I mean, clearly, she was interested in him because he’s a robot, but I wonder how she felt about Kiibo as a person? I think she respected Kiibo, but I can’t gauge how much she liked him from what I remember of the game. She was certainly proud and happy to give him upgrades, and Kiibo doesn’t seem to mind so much when she does, even though he hates sci-fi things, or generally any reminder he’s not as human as he’d like to be. She always kept her upgrades rather simple, and he was always so proud to have them! Maybe she wanted to add all that fancy gear from his Ultimate Lab, but didn’t push him when he said no. Maybe that’s why he was fond of her?

Kii/ruma’s a really cute ship to me! It’s probably more funny, than cute (but the fanart is so very cute...), but either way, I still really like it! And well, it’s about one of the only ships I care about in V3 as well, hahaha. It didn’t seem forced, I didn’t really feel like it was necessarily one-sided, and their dynamic was great and interesting!!! I should really check out those anthologies sometime to see if there’s any more Kii/ruma in it, hahaha.

#serahne #mehere #ask meme #thanks again for the ask! <3 #ship hate #???#For those that don't want to read it all: + / - / + / +#long post #queued

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