#that doesn’t make you any less smart or driven or anything else people will spout at you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

oumakokichi · 7 years

Note

(1/4) I have a criticism of your meta, if you don't mind! You talk a lot about how Ouma is a fundamentally harmless person underneath all his talk, but with his actions in game, I really don't see that. When push comes to shove, Ouma is calculating and shrewd. He has Miu killed simply because he values his life over hers and she made up her mind to murder without even attempting to talk to her or talk to someone else about it. Though it's to stop the killing game itself, he throws everyone into

This is a pretty long ask and will require a very longresponse, so I’ll probably go ahead and insert a read more right off the bat!It’ll be difficult to talk about all of this at length without discussing hugespoilers for the whole game, so anyone seeking to avoid spoilers should onlyread if they’re comfortable with that!

In any case, I’m a little confused by this ask, mostlybecause I’ve never said that Ouma is “literally harmless.” At his core, Ouma issomeone who would prefer not to harmothers if possible. That doesn’t mean he won’t, if push comes to shove. Oumaspends most of Chapters 1-5 trying to convince the other characters and evenhimself that he is fundamentally a person who believes the ends justify themeans. I’ve talked at length in many, many pieces of meta about Ouma’scalculating nature, his cold practicality, and his willingness to make veryhard choices when his back is up against the wall.

However, none of this negates the fact that Ouma is someonewho very much detests having to hurt others. All the evidence we’re presentedwith in-game, from his motive video to his final speech just before his death,even to his FTEs where he quite literally calls himself a pacifist and alludesto how hard it is to “keep the peace from the shadows,” implies that if therewere no killing game, no danger, and no paranoia, Ouma wouldn’t hurt anyone, atall. The situation, the killing game itself, is what prompts his behavior—becauseOuma is all about facades, and posturizing himself as a cold, calculating,infallible strategist is as much a façade to protect himself as it isa genuine part of his personality.

Saying that Ouma had Miu killed “simply because he valuedhis life over hers” is a massive oversimplification of the situation in Chapter4 and shows a lack of understanding of what kind of mindset the killing gameprompted, not just from Ouma but from everyone.It is absolutely true that Ouma refused to talk to Miu or the rest of the group—becausehe was paranoid, and absolutely could not bring himself to trust any of themonce he knew Miu had made up her mind to commit murder. It’s also true that hisparanoia, while understandable, does not excuse his actions.

However, it is once again also true that this kind of behavior is something pretty much everycharacter in ndrv3 does, not just Ouma. Amami, Kaede, Miu, Kirumi, and nearlyevery other character not only in ndrv3 but even in previous DR installments haveall been driven by paranoia, fear, and desperation, because every singlekilling game is intentionally designed with the purpose of making it impossiblefor the characters to genuinely trust in one another, whatever they might havespouted about “working together” or “believing in each other.”

Trying to say that his only reason for doing what he did in Chapter 4 was because he “valued his life over Miu’s” also fails to acknowledge the fact that Miu was very, very capable. While she’s certainly not the brightest and lacks common sense, her talent is one of the most incredibly useful not only in ndrv3 but in any DR game—and it was also one of the most dangerous. Miu was capable of building remotes that could hijack Exisals, electric bombs that could disable hidden cameras, and electric hammers that could deactivate just about any electronic device.

Even if Ouma had talked to her or any of the rest of the group and managed to avoid her first murder attempt, she simply would’ve bided her time and come up with another plan. And she was absolutely, 100% willing to kill not only Ouma but all the rest of the group—she became willing to to do so the moment she decided she had to get out of the school, because winning in a school trial means getting everyone else executed in the process.

If Miu’s plan had succeeded and she had killed Ouma, she very likely would have gotten away with it. Between her full control over the VR world, the fact that she could manipulate and delete evidence at will, the fact that she was setting Momota up pretty cleverly, and the fact that, if she were alive, Saihara and the others would never have had access to the VR world programming or understood what Miu had programmed (like setting Ouma’s avatar to become immobile when she touched him), she really did stand a good chance at getting away with murder. If that had happened, then absolutely everyone, not just Ouma, would have died.

Ouma recognized her as a potential threat, not only to his own safety but to the group’s safety, the moment he realized that she had made up her mind to kill him. While what he did was still definitely cold and in the interest of self-preservation, it was also undeniably a move to eliminate a potential threat to the group. Once he decided that he could no longer trust Miu, he couldn’t ever go back to trusting her. Even if he averted one potential disaster, from his perspective, there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t just keep coming back again and again with new and inventive plans.

And that is why he decided that he had to take her out of the game at all costs. But doing so and getting away with murder himself would also have meant sacrificing everyone else’s lives. He could easily have done this if he wanted to, because he was clearly smart enough. And yet, he didn’t. So we can assume that Ouma’s actions in Chapter 4, ruthless though they were, were also something he did in the group’s best interest. Paranoid as he was, completely unwilling to trust Miu or anyone else in the group, he still did what he did in order to try and keep as many people as possible alive, while making what he saw as “necessary sacrifices.” And what he did isn’t excusable, because he still got two people killed. But it is understandable.

I have seen many, many people ask why Ouma failed to talk toMiu or the other characters about her plan to kill him. I have seen almost noone ask why Miu (or anyone else in any DR game who has ever made up their mindto commit murder in advance) failed to talk to the people around her or ask forhelp before making the conscious decision to commit murder.

Ouma and Miu were bothparanoid, both desperate (Ouma to end the killing game, Miu to return to theoutside world), and yet it is interesting to me how more people seem to holdOuma solely accountable for the events in Chapter 4 despite the fact that Miuwas the one who made up her mind to kill first. Even though Miu’s actions put the entire group’s lives at risk, not just one or two people’s, almost no one seems to address the fact that Ouma was retaliating against a very real, prevalent threat which had no ready solution or easy way out.

And his retaliation certainlyisn’t excusable—but considering Miu was the one who ended their temporaryalliance, refused to build anything else for him, and told him flat-out thathis plan to fight against Monokuma and the Monokumerz wasn’t going to work, itis understandable why he could no longer trust her. It is perfectly possible to understand a character’s actionsand mindset without excusing their choices or behavior.

As for his actions in Chapter 5, yes, it’s true that hethrows everyone into a state of “suicidal despair” in order to grind thekilling game to a halt. It’s also true that he tried just about every singleother alternative course of action before getting to that point, constantlywarning them not to trust each other blindly, advising them that using theremember lights and cooperating together wasn’t going to end the game, andrefusing to tell them about the state of the outside world in Chapter 4. Butall the characters continuously kept asking, refusing to believe that it could “possiblybe that bad,” even insinuating that Ouma had been making the whole thing up.

Ouma crushed all of them with the horrible, unchangeable,depressing “truth of the outside world” in Chapter 5 for two reasons. The firstand most obvious reason was in order to eliminate all their reasons for wantingto return to the outside world; without that, there was no more incentive tokill. The second reason was because even after the events of Chapter 4, evenafter everything that happened to Gonta in the trial, the other charactersstill failed to comprehend that the truth could be painful, undesirable, and,under certain circumstances, less valuable than lies. Having been repeatedlytold to “stop lying,” and having seen the group act as though lies wereunequivocally bad and truth was unequivocally good, Ouma responded with “thetruth they all wanted so much.”

There is undeniably a certain layer of pettiness andresentment beneath his actions, despite the fact that he was doing it forpractical reasons as well. And that’s what makes him a good character, in myopinion. Being petty and resentful is perfectly understandable, consideringOuma is prideful, arrogant, and cynical. He felt as though he’d been carryingthe entire weight of stopping the killing game on his shoulders the entiretime, and refused to split the burden among others, due in equal parts to hisown paranoia and to his assumption that he was smarter and more capable thanmost of the rest of the group. He resented them for not understanding the cluesthat he’d left for them, even for ignoring his point-blank advice, and so inChapter 5 we see a lot of his flaws really brought to light, like his pride andhis arrogance.

The “truth of the outside world” was a last-resort measurethat Ouma quite obviously tried to avoid at all costs. Had he really felt no guiltover showing it to them, then he would’ve just crushed them with it as early asChapter 4, when he first saw it for himself after snatching the key card andcompleting the platformer mini-game on his own. But instead, he tried to avoidshowing it to them at all costs—because he knew it was something that Monokumahad presented to them as a motive to kill, and Ouma didn’t want it being usedas such.

Saying that Ouma “didn’t have much regard to the fact thatthey were willing to kill themselves” is blatantly untrue, and ignores the factthat he clearly didn’t want them to kill themselves, or again, he’d have justlet them use the key card for themselves in Chapter 4, or told them about the “truthof the outside world” when they asked him about it the first time in thepost-trial. He tried using many, many alternatives before resorting to thatparticular trump card because he knew the toll it would take on them. And in the end, he was willing to use that “truth”—which ofcourse demonstrates his “ends justify the means” mindset once again.

As someone who was extremely resourceful, calculating, andwho attempted to remain cold and objective at every turn, Ouma knew the damage thatthat “truth” could do to the others. The fact that he didn’t want to use it andactively avoided using it as long as he could is proof that he certainly didn’twant to use such a cruel tactic if possible. But the fact remains that he was willing to use it. I’ve called Ouma “morallygrey” many times, and this kind of juxtaposition between what he wants to doand what he’s willing to do is exactly why.

As for the accusations about “manipulating Momota,” thisseems to be the biggest misunderstanding in need of clearing up. Havingtranslated the Chapter 5 post-trial myself (you can read it here, if you’dlike), I can say pretty clearly that trying to act as though Ouma forced Momotainto his plan or manipulated him is a huge generalization and misunderstanding.In the end, Momota went along with Ouma’s plan willingly. He admits to thishimself, when Maki accuses Ouma of having forced Momota into doing it “for hersake.” Momota says that he went along with Ouma’s plan because he wanted to, because he honestly thoughtOuma’s “crazy-ass plan” had a very good chance of working.

Ouma was not the one who poisoned Momota, nor is heresponsible for Momota’s disease. While it’s true that he certainly set himselfup as the ringleader in Chapter 5, it’s equally true that he made it painfullyapparent that “the killing game was over,” that he “as the ringleader” wasn’tinterested in any of them anymore, and that they could do “whatever they wanted”because he had “gotten bored” of the game. He was directly responsible formaking himself hated and for making it impossible for the others to trust him,but he was not responsible for Maki’s decision to barge into the machinery bayin order to try and kill him.

Maki was tricked into doing so in part by the ringleader,who intentionally used the Hope’s Peak remember light in order to make her andeveryone else think that Ouma was the leader of the “Remnants of Despair” and a“Junko 2.0” figure. This retaliation was something Ouma himself admits he neversaw coming—he couldn’t have seen it coming, in fact, because he was holed up inthe machinery bay with Momota at the time, in order to make him “cool his head,”since Momota was the #1 instigator of reckless action and the one he believedwould rile the group up or potentially lift everyone’s spirits after seeing the“truth of the outside world.”

Due to Maki’s talent as the SHSL Assassin and the fact that,at least in her in-game backstory, she had lived all her life believing thatthe easiest way to deal with a potential threat is to eliminate it entirely,the ringleader knew that she would be the perfect easily-manipulated pawn tosend against Ouma. And Maki herself, due to her own recklessness and failure tothink things through, because she’s someone who has been taught to act andtake orders rather than to think for herself, carries some weight of responsibility,because she chose to go kill Oumaafter lying point-blank to the rest of the group and telling them to theirfaces that she wouldn’t.

Maki is the one responsible for poisoning both Ouma and Momota. Manipulated or not, she doesdeserve to take responsibility for her own actions just as much as Ouma or anyother character in DR does. Whether she meant to or not, she still poisonedMomota—not bringing any antidote with her at all is an oversight on her part,not Ouma’s, and it’s even more proof of the fact that Maki is far more recklessthan her seemingly cold and composed façade would suggest.

Once they were both poisoned, things quickly became a lose-lose situation. There was only one antidote, so someone had to die. Chapter 5 isan intentional parallel of the way in which Ouma’s back was up against the wallin Chapter 4, and he had to come down to a decision of either sacrificingothers’ lives in order to live on, or letting himself die. Except this timearound, he chose to die.

For all that Ouma was quick on his feet and was able tothink up a strategy to use against the ringleader in only a matter of minutesafter being poisoned, the fact remains that he had no way to force Momota tocooperate with him. He could bluff, he could smirk and pretend to be a villainall the way to the end, and he could lay out the facts as coldly as possible,but there was absolutely no way for him to force Momota’s hand.

If Momota had wanted to, he could’ve turned Ouma down at anytime. Ouma would die from the poison, and Maki would be executed as a result,for a crime she did commit and was fully, 100% accountable for. Ouma didn’t make Maki poison him—he was more shockedthan anyone that she came barging in, even asking her point-blank “do youhonestly like killing so much?”, because he couldn’t fathom why she would startthe killing game up again, until he pieced together that she must’ve beenmanipulated into it later on.

Saying that Ouma “manipulated” Momota into cooperating withhim fails to acknowledge the fact that if Ouma had really, genuinely not caredabout Maki or Momota’s lives, he would’ve just drunk the antidote for himself.He could still have pulled off absolutely everything about his Exisal plan byhimself, without needing Momota’s help for it at all. He could’ve still used theelectric bomb, and between the disease and the poison, Momota would’ve diedquickly. Ouma could’ve shot the video of Momota’s body under the press, thencrushed it under the press himself, eliminating all ways to check what Momota’sactual cause of death was. Then he could’ve easily holed up inside one of theExisals and attended the trial himself, and used the voice-changer to pretend to be both Momota and himself, posing a catbox riddle toMonokuma in order to try and one-up the ringleader and stop the killing game.

This course of action was perfectly available to him, andOuma knew it. Still, he chose to die. He chose to let himself die, in directcontrast with his attempt to keep living in Chapter 4. He knew the full gravityof what he did to Miu and Gonta, knew it was a betrayal of everything he andDICE stood for, and absolutely could notbring himself to make that same decision again. His cold practicality andwillingness to make sacrifices only went so far—while he was perfectly capableof making those sacrifices in theory and even bringing himself to do them asingle time, he couldn’t bring himself to use the same underhanded tactics asecond time.

He most certainly doesn’t “willingly send Momota to hisexecution.” If Momota didn’t want to cooperate with his plan, he wouldn’t havecooperated, regardless of the fact that Ouma saved his life with the antidote orthat Maki would die instead. Again, Momota emphasizes the fact that he went along with Ouma’s planwillingly. Momota is hardly the kind of person that can be coerced ormanipulated into doing anything he doesn’t want to do. If he hadn’t honestlythought Ouma’s plan stood a good chance at working, and if he hadn’t felt likegoing along with it, no one and nothing, not even Ouma, could’ve forced him to cooperate.

Not only that, but had Ouma’s plan actually been pulled offwithout a hitch (that is to say, if Momota and Ouma had actually been willingto put everyone’s lives on the line for real, instead of just bluffing aboutit), Momota stood a very good chance of not getting executed at all. Momota is in fact the onlyculprit in any DR game presented with a flat-out opportunity to not getexecuted—because it’s true that if Monokuma had guessed the culprit and victimincorrectly and voted for the wrong person, he would no longer have theauthority to execute anyone, since his credibility as the game master would benonexistent.

Momota was dying from his disease either way. That diseaseisn’t something Ouma caused or exacerbated; it was clearly getting worse on itsown, from Chapter 3 and onward. He didn’t have much time left, and he knew it,and that is also part of the reason he decided to cooperate willingly, becausehe knew he didn’t have much to lose, and he would rather use his life to try andtake down the ringleader too.

While Ouma had a perfect opportunity to throw Momota andMaki under the bus and keep living, he refused to do so. Instead of “willingly sendingMomota to his execution” or “manipulating him into cooperating with him,” he gaveMomota a point-blank choice: he could either let Maki be executed for a crimeshe absolutely did commit and was responsible for, or he could team up with himand they could both try to use their lives to at least make a dent in stoppingthe killing game.

Momota was able to go out a hero, beloved by the rest of thegroup, able to say his final goodbyes and make amends with Saihara. He wentout exactly the way he wanted to, knowing that he was flipping a massive middlefinger to the ringleader, to Monokuma, and to the killing game audience. WhileOuma certainly does many morally grey things and has said and done manyhorrible, awful things, Momota’s death is not something he’s responsible for.Trying to generalize Ouma’s plan inChapter 5 as something “manipulative” or “coercive” completely ignores the fact that Ouma himself died willingly so thatMaki didn’t have to, and so that Momota could at least stand a very good chanceat not being executed and could reunite with his friends and say his farewellsat the very end.

In all the meta that I’ve written, I’ve never once tried toimply that Ouma is completely innocent or harmless. Quite the opposite: I likethe fact that Ouma is such a complex character, with complex motivations. Hismoral ambiguity is what makes him fascinating, and I’ve always stressed thathis actions are certainly not excusable. They’re not supposed to be excusable;the narrative never once acts as though Ouma is some completely innocent,precious child. He’s actively called out by the narrative, especially forcrossing the line in Chapters 4 and 5. It’s absolutely true that he’s not “totallyharmless” by any means, and that to call him as such would be erasing severalvery important flaws necessary to understanding his character—and that’s why I’venever once called him such.

There is, in my opinion, a huge difference between saying acharacter doesn’t like or enjoy human suffering, and saying that they’re “totallyharmless.” It is an undeniable fact that Ouma only did what he did because hefelt the situation they were in, the killing game itself, warranted it. It’salso a fact that he chose to act the way that he did, and that many of theconsequences he suffered in the end were as a result of his own actions, a “reapwhat you sow” kind of tragic outcome where no one could ever trust orunderstand him because he intentionally made himself into an enigma and amystery.

Still, understanding that Ouma genuinely hated death,killing, and suffering is vital to understanding his entire character, notoptional. If it were unimportant, then such a fact would never have beenpresented in Chapter 6, well after his death. His motive video clearly showsthat he and DICE’s motto was to not kill people, to commit “laughable crimes”and pranks for fun. If we were truly left to interpret Ouma’s morals andmotivations however we wanted, then Kodaka could’ve have just left things asthey were in Chapter 5, leaving the question of whether he was telling thetruth when he said he hated the killing game in a catbox of sorts.

But his motive video, all the evidence he collected in hisroom, his whiteboard, and the entire trail of breadcrumbs he left in order tokeep everyone else alive even after his death, directly proves that he was, infact, telling the truth. For all his bluffs, all his facades as both an evilringleader and a cold, calculating strategist, Ouma was still someone who athis core hated the killing game and the suffering that it caused so much thathe cried from frustration as he died. He’s called “pure” by Momota in theChapter 3 trial, and is stated to have a “childish innocence that makes himhard to hate” both by Kaede and Saihara in their FTEs.

That “innocence,” if you will, is exactly why he valuedhuman lives so much, and what makes him so fascinating—because we have had verycold and calculating characters in DR before, but none who were so incrediblyhuman at their core as Ouma. If Ouma truly does have some kind of SHSL Analysisas a talent (and I still believe that all the evidence says he does), then hecertainly parallels both Junko and Kamukura on several fronts. But despite hisparallels with them, he never actually becomes someone like them. Even thoughhe constantly seeks out things that “aren’t boring,” he never once turns to “despair”as the escape from that boredom. His childishness, his fun-loving streak, and hisgenuine love of human life is what sets him apart, and what makes him the mostfascinating as a character.

It’s true that he does do and say horrible, awful things.Many of the characters in DR do, for that matter. And unlike several characterswhose flaws are never quite addressed or are given an entirely free pass by thenarrative, Ouma is constantly called out within the narrative. We’re neversupposed to excuse his actions—but we are encouraged to understand them, whichis why it’s so easy to catch underlying meanings and hints and clues in hisdialogue when replaying the game. Like Beatrice from Umineko, Ouma is acharacter who changes drastically depending on how you look at him. That’s partof the appeal, I suppose.

In any case, thisresponse has gotten very long, so I’ll stop for now, but I hope I was able toaddress all the points I needed to. I completely agree that it’s necessary tokeep in mind the fact that Ouma can be ruthless, cold, and practical, and thathe’s willing to do and say awful things in order to accomplish his goals nomatter the cost, particularly in Chapter 4. But I disagree that emphasizing hismotivations is the same as calling him “totally harmless.” Motive iseverything, after all. To put it in Umineko terms, understanding the motive andwhy Ouma does the things he does is the same as understanding “the heart.”

There’s a huge difference between acharacter who does cold and ruthless things for the sake of being chaotic,antagonistic, or hostile, and a character who does them as part of a carefullycrafted façade because they genuinely can’t stand the killing game andeverything it stands for. And that difference is exactly what sets Ouma apartfrom the many characters who he’s set up to parallel, and why I find him soincredibly interesting as a character.

I hope I explained myself well. Thanks for asking, anon!

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kokichi ouma #ouma kokichi #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #phew this got long #i think it's probably the longest piece of meta i've written actually #i'd be really happy if people could read or reblog this one since i put quite a lot of effort into the response!#anonymous

127 notes · View notes