#there has to be a parallel to him aside from maki | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

raspbeyes · 10 months

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A Long Winded Attempt to Understand Korekiyo (A Korekiyo Analysis)

How did i get here... (Why do i like this guy)

So cards on the table, i knew of korekiyo's whole creepy vibes far off in advanced before i ever touched the game. nothing in specifics, but i did go into v3 knowing korekiyo reeked of controversy in the fanbase. that resident creepy guy that stranger danger warns you of.

and yeah during my first playthrough of v3, to say i was distrubed puts it lightly. not only was he jammed into a pretty anti-climatic trial 3 (wow ur telling me the guy who started the seance MAY IN FACT be the one able to use it for his own nefarious reasons WOWOW), i was deeply distrubed by this man's blatant disregard for any human diginity or empathy.

only to see that somehow people liked him?! i chaulked it up to those people who just enjoy fictional serial killers, and since i dont enjoy that trope much, i left it that

so how did i end up late at night writing however long this post is going to be trying to analyze him

beats me but lets do a little superficial list for funsies before delving into more critical analysis territory :D

Kiyo can be kinda cool B) (in my subjective opinion)

His interest in anthropology is pretty cool and i like whenever he contributes his own musings about human customs and such. as disconnected he does seem from human life, there is an interesting paradox with his talent relating to observing human life. moreover, there's always something so amusing seeing such a collected character becoming excited over his interest, such as during fte and his talent lab during ch3 :D

small note, but there is something endearing during the ch1 investigation in his awareness of being the "creepy" one of the group. it shows his awareness of himself which idk its funny to me

He has a cool design (Minus the actual outfit for ... uh ... it's very uncomfortable parallels .____.) with him being the few dr characters who have an aspect of androgyny to themselves (aside from chihiro and sakura, but it's more like they conform to the opposite gender role than be in the middle). now while i will address why it gets more problematic, it's neat introducing a male character fully comfortable in showing feminine traits and feels no need to prove his masculinity to himself

initially, with a cast filled with either eccentric personalites like miu, kaito, or tenko to the more brooding characters like ryoma, maki, or shuichi, kiyo comfortabley takes a spot as a seemingly collected head, especially after the loss of kirumi and rantaro

again these are purely subjective, but now onto using a braincell >:)

tw: mentions of inc*st, grooming, and abuse

please click off if these topics cause discomfort to you

"I thought he would be popular"

Did you know that one of kodaka's favorite characters is korekiyo and that he was shocked by kiyo's lack of popularity

source: https://kaibutsushidousha.tumblr.com/post/187409893464/artbook-data-writer-team-interview

Kodaka: 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”

Which ... is weird especially considering the pretty abysmal character assassination near the end of kiyo's screentime in the game. Compared to prior chapter 3 killers, who usually tend to be the least sympathized for their double kills and very self-interested motives (celestia's being greed and mikan's being devotion for one person over her classmates ... and maybe lust idk??), kiyo ranks one of the worst. not just stopping at being a serial killer, he does it all for the love he feels for his sister.

Like idk about u but i would have just stopped at the serial killer part (which is an insane sentence for me to write lol)

But i think that it does make a bit of sense for kodaka's shock, as once u shift the perspective to being a writer, kiyo's character concept starts to make sense.

See i think when we consume stories, espeically linear stories, we have the subconcious assumption that the story beats we encounter had been created in that exact succession. We assume the writer creates the story in the exact linear progression of beginning, middle, and end.

but in truth, most creative processes don't work like that. ideas can date from the intialization of a story concept may not get implemented until the middle or even the end of a story. the ironic thing about stories is that even though they are a straightforward experience for the audience, they are all over the place on the writer's end.

so when we encounter the big trial 3 twist of kiyo's true nature, it feels very much like the the writing room also got to this point during drafting and had a conversation like

"Hmmm ... crap, now we gotta put a motive here. any ideas?"

"uhhh .... OH i got it. he's an actually a siscon serial killer who killed for his deceased sister :D i mean he's already creepy so it works"

"hmmm ... any other suggestions ... no? Alright sure let's go with that"

like yeah im sure no one actually thought this happened, but it definetely feels like that on the audience's side. for a character literal last 10% of screentime, the VERY LAST IMPRESSIONS OF THEM, completely make a sharp nose dive is pretty jarring. It's both parts boring because it just proves shady people looking like kiyo always should be suspected as well as shocking to know he was THAT creepy.

but let's actually shift to the possible perspective of the writing team

Amazing Monster, Wrong Genre

So what was the initial purpose the writing team had when conceptualizing korekiyo into the cast?

source: https://kaibutsushidousha.tumblr.com/post/169561747724/artbook-data-korekiyo-shinguuji

(btw shout out to this blog's translations for drv3 supplementary material it helped out a lot!!)

Kodaka: I had already decided to make chapter 3 feel like a Japanese horror movie, so I need a character who were familiar with nursery songs. As you presume, I decided to have a Super High School Level Anthropologist to fill that job.

From my understanding, it seems that in early on, kodaka wanted to have a horror theme for his new game's chapter 3. and that suddenly fully recontextualizes kiyo in this narrative. kiyo's purpose is to be the bogeyman of chapter 3, utlizing the dr formula of the double kill to heighten the feeling that a bogeyman has been let loose in the school, espeically in its most spooky chapter in the franchise.

we assume (lol im assuming u assumed this hahaha) that kiyo was first thought up as an anthropologist and then along the way of writing chapter 3, he was selected to be written off - since maybe the writing crew had no other major plot ideas for him - and just had a really strange motive stapled on.

but according to kodaka's words, korekiyo was primarily first to be a homage to japanese horror villains. kodaka really wanted this creepy atmosphere to the murder case, likely taking influence to japanese horror and its use of legends and folk tale to give his new ch3 killer a talent that can add to the overall vibe of the trial.

moreover, japanese horror is the largest influence for kiyo's conceptualization, as compared to other cultures' horror, japanese horror emphasizes supernatural and psychological horror most. The supernatural creature of the Onryō pops up a lot in japanese horror media (The Ring is the most popular example i know of, as well as the Japanese folktale, Yotsuya Kaidan), which usually is of a vengeful young woman who met an untimely death. They usually have long black hair that envelopes their face with sharp makeup to show their villainous status. This could connect to Kiyo's long black hair, a trait he shares due to his older, deceased sister.

Kodaka: Maybe it’s just me that loves this kind of underground story character too much. I thought he would be well-received among the fans of Suehiro Maruo’s mangas, but I still haven’t seen any comment saying that so far.

Now i dont know too much japanese horror media (probably cuz american lol) but Suehiro Maruo's name rang alarm bells in my head. To those out of the know and too lazy to search up, Suehiro Maruo is a prolific horror manga artist, being the mind behind the infamous book and subsequent anime adaptation, Shoujo Tsubaki. It also spawned the movie adaptation, Midori, which was banned across the world upon its release for its graphic content. This work is quintessential to maruo's works' general themes, centering on the outcasts of humanity, body horror, nihilism in the face of cruelty, and paraphilia.

So yeah ... really for the faint of heart and def would not recommend checking out at night time unless u plan on being an insomniac o__o

But it is very important in contextualizing kiyo if u take into account that Maruo's work may have been a major influence.

Maruo's works aesthetics can already be connected to kiyo's design: Korekiyo's military outfit is very reminscent of showa-era outfits, a time period that Maruo's work takes heavy influence from. The bandages wrapped around kiyo's arms could also be drawn from maruo's interest illustrating physical deformities.

However, it goes deeper when u take into account of kiyo's own ... twisted love that defines his character. maruo's work depicts a lot of disgusting acts of "desire" (desire is an understatement), displaying the horrors of humanity to the reader. the writing staff may have noticed this attribute and thought that adding such an aspect to their own horror character could increase the groteque factor.

it can come across as the writers' own weird reasoning to just insert inc*st into this random character (tho im not at all defending whatever the hell was going on with the monokubs in ch4 ugh), but under this context, it seems more like the writing team wanted to replicate the horror maruo's work evokes. i mean, while maruo's work has obviously drawn criticsm for it going too far, there still are fans of his work who defend it by saying it is in the horror genre, so what do you expect?

so we have general japanese supernatural and Maruo's work, but there is one final ingredient to our kiyo character stew (hahaha get it cuz ... his exectuion ... melting pot hahah... ill see myself out) So moving across the ocean, we arrive at the classic American horror movie, Pscyho from 1960. Specifically to the horror movie's antagonist, Norman Bateman.

And yeah, the parallels between Korekiyo and Norman are very obvious.

Both are serial killers with quiet outer personas

Both have a split personality, specifically a feminine persona, that drives their killing sprees

both have inc*stuous (for norman, it is more implied and more overtly abusive) with the sole, older female figure in their life (kiyo's being his older sister, while norman is his mother)

And to prove that norman bateman directly inspired the writers during the creative process, the villain of the light novel spin-off, Danganronpa: Kirigiri, is called Norman with the practically same character concept from the 1960 film. And the writer of this light novel? No other than Danganronpa V3's co-writer, Takekuni Kitayama.

So what did this deep dive into korekiyo's character concept prove? really it is just to show that no, the inc*st wasn't this last minute character shift but something that is, whether we like it or not, the core of kiyo's character. kiyo is a monster, and thats the reason kodaka loved writing him. it is similar to why people enjoy horror antagonists. they are these interesting character studies that are worth deep diving into the worst of humanity and to watch how the tragedy of how this villain is formed.

in a sense, like how kiyo is obssessed with observing the beauty of humanity, kiyo's conceptualization is about the supposed audience is observing the horror of humanity seen through kiyo.

but there's a bit of a monkey wrench in all of this.

kiyo is a horror character stuck in a danganronpa game, which according to wikipedia is "a mix of adventure, visual novel, detective and dating simulator elements"

whoops

Danganronpa is a game, which if u haven't checked ... is about not knowing about the murderer that might be standing next to u, hence the "detective elements". So when you have this super cool, totally spooky character that you really wanna put into your new murder mystery game, you kinda run into the problem that you cant reveal he's this terrible person from the start.

Which is what causes Kiyo to go cold turkey for the first two chapters. they couldn't just reveal him to be a serial killer right away, otherwise the audience will say korekiyo is just another, less subversive genocide jill clone. but korekiyo is a horror character, who only work when the horror about them is revealed right away. watch any horror movie, and you would be pretty upset if the monster is revealed in the last 10% of the movie. while that makes sense for a mystery novel's culprit, it can't work for the horror homage kiyo is meant to be. horror works when the antagonist has a strong horrifying prescense that adds pressure to the mc. kiyo doesn't do that because he can't do that.

not to mention the "dating sim elements". the writing staff dont just have to find a way to fit kiyo into the unsuspecting cast, they also have to make him "likeable" to some players to consider him an option for free time. its where those superficial aspects of him that i enjoy come into play. some players enjoy those traits and as the dating sim formula suggests, will become attatched to kiyo in a positive way.

.... which only further ruins kiyo's horror set up. it is the root of the issues regarding korekiyo's character and what makes me liking him so complicated. kodaka and the team really wanted to have a culprit similar to their favorite horror media to slip into their ch3 mystery set-up. i bet writing his trial 3 breakdown was cathartic since they finally were able to write the whole point of kiyo's character from the start. but the problem is that because they had to work in the parameters of a dr game which demands opposing things from its characters (having room to grow and having something likeable/redeemable about them), they created a contradictory set-up for kiyo.

sure he was creepy, but after two chapters of him not doing much except showing that its the way he chooses to express himself, it felt to me that dr was trying to send a message to not judge a book by its cover. And thats a fine message, but it never was something the writers intended, so when they actually implemented their idea, the whole point of korekiyo's charcter become lost in translation.

Side tangent: ... the gender thing

(honestly idk how to feel about this section but this is more of my opinion and id love to hear anyone's take on this point)

Now dr has a messy track history with gender (oh boy im talking abt gender now oof). while chihiro and sakura both are extrememly likeable characters and have traits outside of their gender expression, it doesn't change the fact that the handling of chihiro's reveal and sakura's treatment from the rest of the cast throughout the games can come across as tasteless. though i'd argue that how kiyo's gender is handled is probably the worst.

so kiyo is meant to be a strong allusion to norman bateman, and along with it, him being the "mommy's boy". trope. another similar horror example is Jason Voorhees, the antag behind Friday the 13th. The trope usually features the male character having a controlling maternal figure, usually due to the abscense of a father figure. while it usually is played for laughs (not good either), in horror specifically, it usually is the reasoning behind why the male antagonist is a killer and inhuman. There's a strong implication that because of a strong female influence in these male characters' lives, they grew up unmanly and thus dysnfunctional, worthy of being ostracised for their lack of masculinity.

and while you can argue that ofc the problamatic aspect of the trope will be present with kiyo since he is meant to be a nod to this trope, it doesn't take away from how kiyo is treated compared to other male characters. it feels very much that because of his sister's overbearing influence (i will also get to her later), kiyo's understanding of himself has become warped, so thus his gender expression is called into question.

for one, he is the only masc character during argument Armament to have his defeat sprite sexualize him. now while all argument armaments seem to be the point to sexualize characters (unfortunetly ....) look at how kaito is potrayed compared to kiyo and the framing of their defeat sprites shows the difference. kaito still is shown standing and emphasizes how wounded he is, but because of kiyo's feminine nature, it is somehow okay for him to be potrayed in a position that emphasizes his weakness.

moreover, kiyo's androgyny doesn't seem to be a seperate part of his identity but rather all a memento to his deceased sister. he mentions that his uniform is selected by his sister, and he had chosen to grow out his hair also for his sister (though that was revealed in the spin off manga, which aren't exactly canon but it falls in line with how kiyo is written). Instead of his gender expression being something he chooses to do, it is because of his very toxic love for his sister. it feels like they had to justify his androgyny, which diminishes the value it has.

He wears makeup not because he wants to but because his sister persona wants to. Yes, it is because of him being a norman bateman refrence but it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that kiyo is demonized for being feminine.

"Apologize, apologize, apologize"

but okay, if he is meant to be the norman bates character, there is no evidence to show that kiyo's older sister was abusive ... except ...

I remember when i initially finished v3 and saw posts online about korekiyo, i was a bit baffled by him being a supposed "victim". nothing from kiyo's dialgoue ever implied that he felt mistreated by his sister. he's literally in love with her, how could he possibly be abused by her?

though isnt that the red flag right there? if kiyo was abused, he may not have known due to his infatuation. So time to do a deep dive about kiyo's sister.

We don't have much time with "her" (Kiyo's sister persona), so whatever we do get of her has to be chosen to effectively convey her who she is in such a short amount of time. Though it is not directly kiyo's sister, it likely is the entry point we have to understand how kiyo viewed her.

So when does his sister persona manifest? It happens right after kiyo starts to breakdown when kaito claims it is all clear how angie's murder was planned out, likely from realizing that he is practically caught at this point. Kiyo for the first time has lost composure in the game (in line with most trial 3 culprits) , with his sister interuppting then.

Sister persona: Sweet Korekiyo, calm yourself ...

Out of the gate, kiyo's sister persona's first action is to calm kiyo down, giving him a direct command.

Sister persona: Their words are all hollow. There is no meaning to them. You must teach these ignorant children a lesson.

Right after, kiyo's sister persona discredits everyone around kiyo to ensure he is calm, trying to place kiyo above them all by calling all his classmates children. I will touch back on this later.

Skipping ahead to after kiyo is accused of angie's murder, we get this exchange.

Korekiyo: N-No ... I'm not the culprit ...! S-So ... why is everyone looking at me like I am ...? Why! Why are they!? Why is it --

Sister persona: Calm yourself, Korekiyo.

Korekiyo: Y-yes ...!

Sister persona: You mustn't raise your voice. You mustn't stutter. You mustn't lose composure. You mustn't become flustered. You mustn't waver.

Again, the moment Korekiyo starts to lose his composure, his sister persona steps in to command him to stop. Remember, out of anything the writing crew could have written for korekiyo's sister, it was her few first lines where he gives command after command to korekiyo. And we see these commands already play out with kiyo prior in the game. He never has raised his voice nor stuttered prior to trial 3 (though i could be misremembering), so him doing so now shows he is stepping out of line of what his sister previously told him, hence why she has to reassert herself.

And Kiyo ofc fully submits to his sister, having regained his compsure right after.

Sister persona: Look at their horrid faces. This sorry lot is not worth agonizing over.

We see here again the sister persona pushing others away from kiyo and placing kiyo above them. Now while this can come off as kiyo indirectly telling himself he is better than his classmates, this is the second time his sister persona says something like this, meaning it had to have been a pattern in their relationship, where his sister would push others away, and in a way, isolating him.

Korekiyo: Y-You're right... Yeah ... You're right.

Aside from how it is clear how Kiyo shows his devotion in his "sister", it also shows how he corrects himself here. When his sister said to not stutter, he initally stutters before fixing it.

Also just hearing kiyo say "yeah" just sounds so weird to me. Idk maybe he's talked more casually prior, but i feel that it is only in this trial does kiyo's speech tend to break up and sound a bit more colloquial. normally i feel he would say yes lol. but i could be wrong

Sister persona: Well said ... Good job, Korekiyo.

Korekiyo: Yes ... thanks.

After kiyo regains his compsoure to claim he won't acknowledge shuichi's accusation, his sister persona compliments him, and again we see kiyo's speech slip to a bit more colloqiual when he says "thanks" rather than "thank you". It could be that he picked up his manner of speaking from his sister as well.

After the closing arguement, we see kiyo still in distress

Korekiyo: Uh ... Uuuhhh...

Sister persona: Sweet Korekiyo, there are times when it's necessary to admit defeat.

Korekiyo: A-Admit...? ... Yeah... Okay ...

But once his sister persona tells him to admit defeat, it takes him a few moments before finally admitting to the crime. It once again displays the level of control his sister persona has over kiyo, being the only way kiyo seemed willing to acquiese.

Again, the writing staff could have written anything here for how kiyo's sister persona would work, but they chose this kind of diagloue for her, where she primiarly praises kiyo, gives commands, and isolates him.

knowing that kiyo's sister grew up sickly and without any human connections, the story kind of writes itself from there.

Without any real friends, kiyo's sister was driven desperate for an ... intimiate human connection, and the only one she had would unfortunetly be her younger brother. Due to her being an older sister, she was very strict with him, but provided him praise and comfort to keep him around her. Furthermore, she would put down kiyo's peers by praising kiyo as better than them. The line where kiyo's sister refers to everyone else as children earlier rings especially strange since kiyo is the same age as everyone there. But it gives off the idea that kiyo's sister (who obviously would be older than kiyo's classmates) called them children to make kiyo feel he is more mature, which holds its own disgusting implications.

I don't think that kiyo's sister inherently meant harm to kiyo, but it is highly likely that in her desperation, she used her power over kiyo for her own selfish needs. It fits right into the tragedy you would see in horror, where the worst of humanity seeps through, culminating into the monster we would see as the antagonist of the fiction.

(Speculative tangent here lol: I think another interesting note is how kiyo's mind seems to break into two whenever he is put into high amounts of distress. I'm not going to engage in the whole "what kind of mental illness does he have" since a) im not qualified and b) i dont even think the writing staff cared tbh but whatever he has, it is clear he has to strict personas when under intense stress. When he was backed into a wall during the trial, kiyo claims repeatedly during both the trial and the arguement arnament that he doesn't know why he is the culprit. It does seem like classic denial from any culprit, but kiyo's is different as he is demanding an answer from his sister to assure him otherwise. he stutters more and can't form full sentences while his sister persona speaks fully and more like the kiyo we are used to. It does feel like he isnt fully aware of his actions, which lines up with him when he says later he lost his mind following his sister's death. To me, Kiyo attempts to emmulate his sister to stay in touch with reality as he viewed his sister as the one in control of his world. so when he can't react properly, his mind splits where his sister becomes very literal in his mind in order to soothe himself. likely due to his overdependence on her, he couldnt image himself seperated from the only human connection he had. all im saying is that his sister is the coping mechanism that a very unstable korekiyo needs in order to stay whole.)

I can fix hi - his writing i mean

So in a very twisted way, I don't hate the decision for korekiyo to have his story center around his inc*stuous love. It definetly took a lot of straining my perspective but i do see the remnents of korekiyo, a monster born from the monsterous actions in his life, working.

but you can't potray such a backstory within the last five minutes of your character's screentime. And especially with how heavy the subject material is, some level of foreshadowing is neccessary in order to feel like this plot detail is treated with some level of respect.

but obviously the writers can't. this is just some one-off trial they just wanted to write to be spooky, not this psychological deep dive into one culprit's backstory. But they should have realized that they don't have the time to properly set this up nor execute it , so i agree with most people when it is best to cut out the inc*st. kiyo's sister should have been set up a bit more, maybe in chapter 2, where kiyo speaks a bit more of how he is influenced by his sister in his wardrobe and his talent, so she is in the back of our minds. But kiyo could refer to her in the present, so the actual twist of chapter 3 is that she is dead and that kiyo has his sister persona.

I think the sister persona makes sense, since it adds to the supernatural theming of chapter 3 and pays off what is beneath his mask. It could be a simpler story of kiyo falling into grief for a sister he admired. Maybe he feels guilt over how miserable his sister's life was, thinking he is responsible for his sister's decline health cuz u know, he probably was a kid when his sister died and kids tend to blame themselves. Really just keep it to be a normal, albeit dependent, sibling love he has, where his actions spawned from grief, not this uncomfortable combination between grief and lust.

But if the writers really were insistent that on writing inc*st so late into kiyo's screen time, i have one last-minute fix.

Its that damn cg that plays in post-trial. you know ... that one which kiyo narrates his love for his sister. The one where we see said romance, and it has this whole flowery look to it. now it can be argued it shows how kiyo is an unreliable narrator, where he has romantisized his relationship with his sister.

but i dont care. its just gross to depict this unhealthy dynamic in such an ... irresponsible way. It is like the dr staff couldnt help themselves, they just had to draw kiyo and his sister practically naked. which like no ... just dont use this as an excuse to sexualize your minor characters AGAIN

In my concept, the image can be replaced by depicting a more grim image of kiyo's relationship with his sister. show her trapped in her hospital bed, sickly and her face obscured by her unkempt, overgrown hair. But kiyo sits close by, his face cupped in her palms, with just the two of them trapped in that hospital room from the rest of humanity, with only each other.

kiyo's dialogue can overall be the same (maybe tweak a bit to show his grief more) juxtaposing his idyllic recollection to the grimmer reality we are presented. Maybe it's not the best change, but what i wish they emphasized was less of the actual inc*st and more of the horror. u know ... the supposed basis of kiyo as a character.

so yeah ... i guess i am a korekiyo fan

Korekiyo is a character that when i say i do like him, it kinda means i like the concept of him and the few parts of him, not the whole disaster we got. i know dr always struggles in fully executing their cast of characters on account that, you know ... most of them gotta die. but i do think that if the writers recongized the limitations and adapted kiyo better for the dr story structure, kiyo may have been more popular like kodaka expected.

i dont need this super large angsty story of kiyo (thats what head canons are for anyway :D ) but what i did need was just a bit more respect given to his story and him as a character. not saying you can't give kiyo any moments of comedic relief (i think because they couldnt make him too obviously evil at the beginning, the writers ended up making him a kind of comedic character in how over the top creepy he is, which i think works), but dont give the audience such a last-minute character reveal that could break just about any character, regardless of how far back in advanced the reveal was planned.

anyway i dont have any proper ending for this and i have been writing for 3 hours so yeah ty for reading if u read this far :D

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #drv3 korekiyo #korekiyo shinguji

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twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat · 3 months

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jjk chapter 253 spoilers under the cut !!

WAHHHHHHHHHHHHH THIS CHAPTER…….. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 one of my favs in a while i think IT WAS SO SO GOODDDDDD

FIRST OF ALL. GOJO CRUMBS 😭😭😭😭🥺🥺🥺😞😞😞😞😞😭😭😭😭🥺🥺🥺😞😞😞😞😞😭😭😭😭🥺🥺🥺😞😞😞😞😞😭😭😭😭🥺🥺🥺😞😞😞😞😞 I CRIED I SOBBED I STARTED WRITHING ON THE FLOOR IN AGONY……. OUR SWEETIE………

HE’S SOOOO CUTE…. :(((( blindfolded gojo is my favorite ever he’s SO baby…….. i miss him sm it hurts i almost teared up seeing this panel that isn’t normal human behavior 😔😔 ”don’tcha think?” SIR PLS STOPPP…….. :((((( silly little goose…… i need to kiss him all over his pretty face just to hear him giggle (doctors surround me w syringes from all sides)

ok but gojo aside (come home baby the cats miss u 💔) MAKI????????? MY GODDESS?? i ADORE the fight between her and sukuna …. she looks completely feral i’m so enamored <333 wild raccoon coded <3333

and also…… the dynamic between these two……. 😵‍💫😵‍💫 maki being the only one since gojo who sukuna seems to be taking seriously/having genuine fun with???? (all the parallels between maki and gojo have been KILLING me i’m so glad akutami agrees w me that she’s his daughter ever <3) LIKE THAT’S SOOO SICK??? maki nation getting fed silly rn

”at its core, sorcery is all skin and flesh (…) that body of yours is all marrow and bone” BANGER ASS LINE EXCUSE ME??????????? AKUTAMI??????

but it’s also soooooo interesting isn’t it….. sukuna has always had a very specific view of sorcery and how it should be, and maki’s very existence completely goes against that ideal while simultaneously acting as a genuine threat to him… i think it’s so . insanely cool that he essentially views her as an alternative to sorcery?? and it forces him to revert back to the sorcery that he favours, just to prove that it’s superior (which is why he uses black flash for the first time!! at least that’s my read of it rn)…. IT’S JUST SO GOODDDD I’M EATING IT UP‼️‼️‼️

also sidenote kinda but but but . the sukuna theories…. abt him eating his twin……… if those are true then the sukuna/maki parallels are even MORE insane bc she had to sacrifice her own twin for the sake of survival/power but would undoubtedly choose mai over her newfound strenght every single time :(( while sukuna willingly chose strenght over companionship….. yeahhhh they make me ill

what else is there to say ……. kusakabe was there. PHDJDHDJF NO BUT WDYMMMM HE’S THE STRONGEST GRADE 1 SORCERER…… SINCE WHEN 😭😭😭 ??????

jokes aside i think it makes sense considering kusakabe just so happens to Know abt a bunch of stuff he shouldn’t know abt + somehow keeps surviving ???? but i still think it’s so funny how everyone is hyping him up while he’s like . I Am Not The Strongest 💀💀 he’s so funny actually…..

….. this is smth my fuckass brother said that unfortunately made a lot of sense + made me go completely insane but. maybe the reason kusakabe keeps trying to run away is bc he wants to stay alive for his sister….. :((( bc he needs to take care of her/doesn’t want to die and leave her alone the way her son did. sob. T_T that would be kind of a genius move on akutami’s part bc it changes his comedic moments to very heartwarming ones…. i’m actually rlly excited to see where this fight goes wahhhh

anyway back to gojo .

HE’S LITERALLY SOOOO BABY I CAN’T STAND HIM …. 🥺🥺🥺🥺 i don’t think akutami will ever truly understand how perfect this design is . like. there isn’t a single other character who perfectly manages to strike the balance between cute and handsome the way blindfolded gojo does . i’m sorry but it’s true. this is what the ideal male form looks like

#anyway that’s all!! PHEWWWW feels nice to get the post chapter euphoria off my chest ….#THIS CHAPTER SLAPPEDDD it reminded me a bit of older shibuya chapters actually :3 #w the interview scene in the beginning and all too !!!#i think i mentally tapped out when yuuta was fighting (sorry yuuta nation 💔💔 unfortunately he killed my wife) but now i’m back ‼️‼️#i hope maki comes back into the battle tho…. she deserves a lot more than just one chapter smh #forever cradling this gojo panel to my chest #ari noises ✩#jjk leaks #jjk manga spoilers #jjk 253

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keouil · 4 months

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木漏れ日

“how are you this happy this early in the morning?” maki groans. 1k. yuta/maki. fluff. also on ao3.

To say Maki was not a morning person was the understatement of the century.

Her alarm had been going off for the past five minutes, and would very likely keep assaulting every fibre of her being if she didn’t at least silence the damn thing. But as it was she was entirely too comfortable snuggled up in her covers now, sirens be damned. Let it wreak havoc all over the entire compound for all she cares. If she had to wake up at the ass crack of dawn, Toge who occupied the room next to her and had sensitive hearing, should also at the very least be mildly inconvenienced. If she was going down, she was taking down everyone with her.

Not only was Maki being forced to wake up in ungodly hours no other human should ever be, she also had to trek 5 kilometers of mud and river to get to the peak of Mt. Takao. Just thinking of marching out in the morning cold made her want to call in sick and convince Yuuta to just find another hiking partner, despite Gojo’s firm insistence it had to be her because Toge has the stamina of a toddler and Panda is a chronic complainer.

Her alarm goes off again.

Maki yells into the bed.

“Remind me why I agreed to do this again?”

Yuuta turns back to face her, an easy smile tugging on his lips. While Maki felt like death warmed over and was sure her face was showing it, Yuuta was the picture of perfect posture and the very embodiment of a morning person. After ignoring her alarm for half an hour and drifting back off into sleep, it was of course that moment Yuuta chose to announce himself as her personal morning call. He banged on her door and kept asking if she was awake already and wow, doesn't the sun look so good today? Maki only barely managed to restrain herself from breaking down the door.

“Because,” Yuuta chirps gleefully. “No one knows this trail better than you do?”

“No one else hikes this trail aside from me,” Maki drawls, rubbing her swollen eyes. The lazy drag of her feet sloshing against the grass paralleled Yuuta’s steady pace. The sun was just shy of rising, streaks of aurora lights blanketing the forest. “And since when did you take up hiking anyway?”

“Since Gojo-sensei told me I needed to gain more endurance and body mass,” Yuuta peers overhead at the canopy of ikimonogari chirping through the trees. “Strength building and whatnot.”

“You have enough strength,” Maki points out.

“Not as much as you,” Yuuta shrugs.

“Well blink twice if you need help,” Maki quips back, gesturing for them to sit down at the nearest ledge. They’ve been trekking non-stop for half an hour and while she was an outdoors person, she wasn’t suicidal. “No, seriously, I know Gojo-sensei can get really persuasive.”

Yuuta laughs then, and it’s a fresh thing; like mildew springing from the earth. “No blackmailing was involved,” he crouches down next to her at the shallower end of the rock, the one with jaggier edges. “I don’t mind doing all the physical stuff.”

Maki considers this for a moment. “I don’t, either.”

Yuuta looks over at her, smiling. “I know.”

“How are you this happy this early in the morning?” Maki groans.

They were on hour two of the hike now, and Yuuta hasn’t shut up since. It’s the most Maki has heard him open his mouth since he was introduced on orientation, and it would have levelled her if she still didn’t feel so foggy at waking up so early and being forced to do brunt work right away. She was the most active member of their year when it came to sports and motor skills, but she preferred to do the work on her own time. And preferably not a time when she felt her fingers about to freeze and breathing wasn’t followed by puffs of condensed air.

“What do you mean?” Yuuta chimes at her side, oblivious to her sour mood.

“I mean,” Maki bites out, rubbing her arms at her side. “That you didn’t strike me as a morning person. At all.”

Yuuta looks amused. “It’s the eyebags, isn’t it?” he says. “It makes me look like I never sleep. Panda told me I look like a sickly Victorian boy the other day.”

“Well, actually,” Maki considers him, appraisive. “Now that you mention it..”

Yuuta waves her off. “I get it,” he concedes. “And to be fair I was an insomniac most of my life. But turns out it was just all that restless cursed energy I didn’t know how to control.”

“And now?” Maki prompts.

“Now?” Yuuta glances at her, a little shy but still looking like sunlight filtered in. There’s a slight dusting of rose on his cheeks Maki convinces herself is just because of the adrenaline. “I’ve never felt more alive.”

#yutamaki #okkotsu yuuta #zenin maki #jujutsu kaisen #fic

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missingn000 · 1 year

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hi yes this is incredibly late b/c work is shit tm but better late than never amirite

anyway, something about this chapter that leapt out at me immediately was Maki’s “uh, we are kids.” because i’m pretty sure something similar was said a couple chapters back (i can’t remember the exact instance though) and it seems to be a recurring theme in tpg: people being put into roles they don’t quite fill, not through any fault of their own, but simply because they cannot. gojo’s deification by jujutsu society is one such example, but it wasn’t something he had a say in, while nobara by comparison appears to have voluntarily taken on the task of acting(!) like an adult. she does, thankfully, end up joining maki & gang on the playground, but her conversation with higuruma undoes some of that progress:

“You treat me like a kid!”

“You are a kid!”

“And that’s enough reason to shut me out?!”

oh, higuruma… your intentions are kind, but your lack of tact is almost cruel. i think nobara’s response, coupled with the next line (“…brought a cannon and she’s not afraid to swim”) are very telling of her true feelings: even though she hates the fact that higuruma’s a murderer excluding the fact that his boss is worse, she is aware that he’s her parental figure now, and seeks (as all children do, especially those who were denied of it) emotional validation from him. higuruma really tried to pull the “being a child is not a sin” card but nobara didn’t hear the ‘not’ part lol. i find it depressingly ironic that his attempt at shielding her from the ugly truth of humanity & the entire mess with the sheriff end up widening the rift between them—it’s not… a terrible idea, in theory, but their circumstances are unique: nobara’s trying to understand & rationalise why the person she’s stuck with as a father did what he did, but she can’t do that if she’s missing some of the puzzle pieces. more accurately, higuruma won’t give them to her because the picture they complete is bleak, but she doesn’t know that!!!!

“I don’t know, Nobara. You deserve better than this.”

“You’re right, I do! But you won’t even try!”

… yeah sure kugisaki “you’re not my dad” nobara. and then, as if on cue, her phone rings with a call from her actual dad. the way she has to fight the urge to answer the call is nothing short of heartbreaking. she has to quash her own hopes, before her dad does it for her.

AAANDD THEN THEY HUGGED. THANK YOU FOR THIS. the part where higuruma wonders whether he’s about to be socked in the face reminded me of toji and maki’s hug in ch4 (yes i remembered), cus toji thought the exact same question. is this intentional please say yes. nevermind your answer is irrelevant i’m gonna start drawing parallels anyway /lh. toji & higuruma both start out extremely rough around the edges and knowing fuck all about parenting; maki & nobara both grew up with parents that didn’t love them. at least maki & toji had something to bond over (beating the shit out of other people. uh, curses. i mean curses.) nobara and higuruma on the other hand…….. lol

Also I didn’t miss the way Nobara was saved from a curse!!!! again!!!!! but the group shrugs it off, you know, as kids who literally just exorcised a curse by themselves do, and nobara’s too preoccupied with her crush on maki to feel all that offended. okay all jokes aside i think it really helps that they’re her age + she’s already interacted with them prior to this; she’s in a much better mental state than when higuruma first found her. i think it’s really cool that nobara has even more people fighting for her, which is exactly what she wants; she just hasn’t realised it, and i hope she does someday. (on an unrelated note: gotta love how maki takes centre stage and cleaves the curse in half though… her using yuuji’s sword as a platform to power herself thru the air is just 👌)

Does Nobara have anyone like that?

Yes. Yes, she does. Chi you’re drawing so many parallels here and I’m gonna throttle you. please don’t pit higuruma against a special grade…unless it’s toji, that’d be funny. who lets their kid bring a sword to school anyway?? tbf, it’s Phantom Guardian; i adore the idea that yuki’s cursed energy is with her, at all times…

btw yuuji is my fave if the pfp wasn’t obvious enough, and i cherish every crumb of his characterisation i get. i love the way he’s able to de-escalate any social situation because of how emotionally perceptive he is. kinda want to put him in a room with yuuta and maki and see what happens lmfao 💀💀

okay that concludes my horrendously long ramble. thank you for making it this far if u did. cheers

HIII KAY OH MY GOD??? THIS ANALYSIS IS SOOOO i put it into a word counter out of curiosity and the website said the reading level was college graduate so. 100000/10 analytical skills the curtains were indeed not just blue

response below cut this got long as hell

you're totally right that "uh, we are kids" was said in an earlier chapter! maki says it to megumi when toji gives the kiddos the stuffed animals he got for them at the zoo, and maki suggests they play with them:

Megumi turns up his nose. “Playing with stuffed animals is for kids.”

Come on. Maki slants an eyebrow. “Uh, we are kids.”

megumi is another child who had to grow up way too fast before gojo took him in, and now has to make up for lost time that he doesn't know quite yet how to reclaim. it's so cool you noticed this parallel between them, because it's gonna be super important in the upcoming chapter!!

it's so true that all of the tpg kids (and initial teenagers that are now in their low twenties) had some aspect of childhood taken away from them. isolated from the villagers, nobara tried to shed her own childlike qualities because she thought she had no choice but to take care of herself, especially because of the yet-to-be-revealed circumstances of her parents' disappearance.

and god....yeah, higuruma really has no idea how to handle that. i've said it before and i'll say it again: it's so, so important to me that he's genuinely terrible at this. he's the pinnacle of right idea, wrong execution: he wants to fix the ills of society but does it in the worst possible way, and he wants to shield nobara from how dark and terrible the world is by telling her she's just incapable of understanding it altogether. he doesn't want her to know all the pointless cruelty in the world. he doesn't want her to know he killed the sheriff to free her from the countryside. higuruma shutting her out is his way of protecting her, but the way he carries out his protection almost does more harm than good. almost.

PLEASE THEIR HUG....you're not delusional to draw that parallel between nobara & higuruma and maki & toji!! nobara and maki are the two tpg kids that have the most on-screen clashes with their parents, yet despite their initial doubts towards their parental figures, they still crave that emotional validation. after a lifetime of being shunned, finally, someone cares about them -- only nobara is half-convinced higuruma doesn't. i think some part of her does know he cares, but it's a part she refuses to acknowledge because she doesn't want to be let down by her father. not again.

nobara's confrontation with the curse was so!!!!! i really wanted to follow up with yuuta telling maki that nobara cares more about actions than words, so maki demonstrates her sorcery abilities rather than just saying it. maki's words post-fight, however, do end up having an impact on nobara: she's able to correct any misconceptions before nobara even has the chance to draw them. this will also be important as nobara's character develops!!

maki carrying the phantom guardian with her stems a lot from toji's desire for her to be able to protect herself, even in his absence. especially after the kids meet mahito in shibuya back in ch12, both nanami and toji don't want their kiddos to be unarmed, hence why yuuji also has playful cloud stuffed into his backpack.

YUUJI MY CHILD. MY SON. his emotional intelligence + crumbs that he blames himself for his family's doom even though it hasn't even happened yet. the first yuuji angst moment of many, many, MANY more

as for higuruma vs some special grade where he'd have to hurt himself in order to protect nobara...huh. yeah. sure would be interesting if that happened someday

alright, i'll conclude my horrendously long reply here. also sorry for the sukuna rant in DMs last night i think i was on something else

#kay tag #tpg

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tired-sapphic · 11 months

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my top 10 jujutsu kaisen characters as of now:

[PART 2/2]

[part 1 here]

(manga spoilers ahead)

5. yuta oGOATsu

at some point he was actually my no.1 but that was when the jjk 0 brain rot(i was obsessed w that volume) was real. he is just THAT dude, idk what to tell you. his growth from a scared little dude to a powerful little dude with an actual will to live was nice to see. i love his relationship with maki, i can't say I ship them but if they end up together then i'd be pretty happy(..so maybe i do ship them? idk). also love his dynamic w gojo. idk i just love him, he's cool. if the current anime season ends on him saying he's there to kill yuji, that'd be fucking hilarious, i live for drama.

4. maki

MY GOAT. she had a tough upbringing in that fucked up misogynistic household and said "fuck yall, i'll kill u all" n she did. goal-oriented. joking aside, i love her dynamic w her sister mai (great character). i wish she had a better relationship w her bcs they used to be so cute growing up but nevertheless, despite their anger and frustration, their love for each other never dwindled n u know what? that's how sisters are. that particular chapter w mai has to be one of my favorites. the parallel w toji is smth that i also really like. her story is sad as hell and i just want her to be happy in the future.

3. mahito

mahito being top 3 is a choice but that's just how it is when u have good taste. one of the most entertaining and ,imo, hilarious characters. i've always thought his powers were cool simply because of how creative and adaptable they are. he's childish and extremely dangerous and to me that's a good combo. just a really good villain. my headcanon is that if u play uno with him he'll secretly start eating some of his cards so he'll win.

2. megumi

i loved him back when he was constantly getting his ass beat and love him now. seeing his domain expansion for the 1st time had me so hyped i literally got up from my seat when i was watching it lmao. great seeing him learn how to utilize his shadows. also love his relationship w gojo so the current fight in the manga is stressing me out (i'll be mad as hell if he never finds out who his dad is). his friendship w yuji is so pure, i want them to reunite again so bad

1. sukuna

my favourite character. he has this kind of confidence one can only have when they'reTHIS powerful. i like that there's no sad backstory trying to humanize him in any way, like no that guy is just straight up evil lmao. his dynamic with uraume has always been so interesting to me and i love watching them interact. he's scary and has no hesitations when it comes to offing people but he's not illogical. it's clear that he values strength (and "true" jujutsu) a lot but at the same time has shown respect towards the curse jogo who is obviously less powerful than him (can't wait to see that fight animated). his relationship with kenjaku is kind of interesting. idk why but i never thought they would be cool like that lmao. his DE, malevolent shrine, is the coolest DE imo. he's just so fascinating to me and it's very entertaining seeing just how strong his presence is. one of my favourite earlier scenes is him taking over yuji in ep.4 or 5 and the special grade just fucking shaking from fear before he even did anything lmao. also interesting how he didn't seem to have intentions of killing that curse, not until the curse tried to fight. he dislikes when people don't "know their place" which is evident when mahito went into his domain twice (he was also cool w the idea of him and mahito laughing at itadori so it's not like he kills curses for no reason, i feel like as long a curse doesn't try to do too much and shows him respect, he'll probably won't kill them..? lmao) idk i just want to crawl into his head and explore his mind. ah and he's also a foodie 😁

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk #maki zenin #yuta okkotsu #mahito #megumi fushiguro #sukuna #ryoumen sukuna #miaposts

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linkspooky · 3 years

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TOJI AND MAKI

The parallels between the two outcasts of the zenin clan have already been pointed out plenty of times in canon, for example they're both incredibly buff. However, I thought I would take a deeer look at both characters, as they share both a role as the abused child that destroys the system that created them, and the same fatal flaw.

1. The Child Who is Not Embraced by the Village Will Burn it Down to Feel its Warmth

"The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas" is a 1973 work of short philosophical fiction, about a summer festival in the utopian ity of OMelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child. The idea is written around the idea of the scapegoat, a reoccurring trope in stories where someone innocent is blamed, or outcast for the mistakes of other characters.

All of this to say that both Maki and Toji represent the archetype of the scapegoats of their generation. Just like the child of Omelas, all of the problems in the Zenin household are blamed on one child.

This is something Ogi does to Maki directly, and also Naoya recognizes that the other members of the clan did to Toji. They were unable to face their own inferiority, so they blamed it on a scapegoat. Ogi blames his failure to become the head of the clan on his children. The entire clan is unable to recognize Toji's strength, because it would make them question their traditionally held notions of strength, Toji requires the use of weapons and can fight without cursed techniques, which means the cursed techniques they were born with don't make them inherently better with other people.

This is also related to Gojo's criticisms of Jujutsu Society at large, of which the Zenin Household is a very toxic microcosm of. Gojo's critique is that the previous generation will sacrifice the lives of the younger generation, to maintain their power, and in the name of pointless tradition. In the Zenin family "tradition" is the idea that inherited curse technique determines a person's worth.

Their entire system is built around one, keeping cursed techniques in the clan, and two, passing down inherited curse techniques from father to child. Which would go farther to explain the treatment of women by the clan, but we're not getting into that this time. Basically, the "peace" and the "superiority" of the household are built on the idea of marking and scapegoating an outsider, that is anyone who doesn't fit in with the clan's traditions. "If you are not of the Zenin Clan you are not a sorcerer, and if you are not a sorcerer then you are not even Human". That quote alone should explain how Maki and Toji were both treated as subhuman 'monkeys' by everyone around them.

However, the story shows us by both Toji and Maki snapping how terrible these abusive power structures are. One person cannot handle all of that alone, so they snap. Of course they snap. It's not a sign of who Toji and Maki are as people, but rather how no one deserves to be treated that way. A major reocurring theme in Jujutsu Kaisen is no one person alone, can take responsibility for everything, not even Gojo who is the strongest can save everyone he wants to save or be responsible for all of society he needs allies too. Toji, and Maki without allies, they snap and lash out against the same abusive power structure that created them. They are so thoroughly othered by everyone around them, that they embrace their own inhumanity, Maki becomes a weapon bent on killing her family even murdering her own mother, and Toji outright calls himself a monkey.

This is also why Toji is referred to as the "destroyer of destinies" there are two reasons for this. One, Gege is making a thematic point here. The abusive system built on othering and excluding children among other things doesn't actually provide the stability it promises. The center does not hold. The abuse of the system perpetuates and only leads to more destruction. Toji's outcasting isn't something that just hurt Toji alone, everyone felt the consequences of it because the abusive system proliferates and only causes further destruction. The second reason is a Jungian idea on which the story is based on. Toji himself is much like a curse created by the actions of his entire family. If Mahito is created from the fear humans have for each other and acts as the shadow of humanity representing their dark side, Toji metaphorically represents the combined shadow and dark side of the zenin clan. In Watch Man, Rorsarch monologues about how the accumulated filth of all of the abuses that happen in the city will one day rise up and affect everyone.

"This city is afraid of me, I have seen it's true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will form up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout save us and I'll look down and whisper no."

This is expressing the same Jungian idea, a society that ignores these problems will only cause the muck to rise up further and further until it affects everyone. The Zenin clan was a microcosm for the abuses of Jujutsu Society as a whole, they weren't the only ones affected by their abuse because abuse perpetuates. They endured it until they snapped and then acted out that abuse. The Jungian idea put forth is that this sort of reckoning was always going to happen, as long as the Zenin clan continues to create these outcasts in order to hold themselves up as superior, another Toji will happen.

2. Love is the Worst Curse of Them All

Toji and Maki also share the same flaw as people. Their abuse revolved around the idea of outcasting them from the rest of the family, othering them, continually putting them down and also most likely not even doing the job of raising them as children or providing them with the help they needed. We don't see much of it, but in the databook apparently Toji regularly had cursed spirits sicked on him to mock him, and Maki was locked in the cursed spirit room as punishment.

This taught them not only do they need to be strong on their own, but also in order to prove themselves they both thought they needed to be stronger than anyone else in the clan. Toji left Jujutsu Society as a whole, whereas Maki just left the house, both of them with the motivation of proving themselves stronger than the people who looked down on them.

This strong sense of individualism is their greatest strength, and also their weakness, as the situation is more complicated than being stronger than a bully. Maki and Toji are made to feel alone because of their abuse, however, neither Maki nor Toji suffer their abuse alone.

Mai was abused right alongside Maki, they were both outcasts due to being twins. There's no point in arguing which one of them had it worse, because Ogi was perfectly willing to kill both daughters right alongside each other. Maki does and doesn't remember that Mai is right alongside her in her abuse, it's... a bit complicated.

I mention this because Makiaated reason why is that she would have hated herself if she stayed inside that household with Maki. She put pursuit of becoming a stronger sorcerer above her relationship with her sister.

Maki later states "I can't create a place where Mai would feel like she belongs". I don't believe that was always her intention from the start that she secretly left the household for Mai's sake, and wanted to get stronger to create a place where Mai belongs, because Maki's always been really clear she was doing it for her own sake. I think rather after the loss she suffered in Shibuya, and also the fight she had with her sister in the school met, that she came to change her mind and realized she wasn't just in this alone. She changed her mind, that she wanted to be together with Mai, but she didn't change it in time and tragedy struck.

I mention this because Maki and Toji both share the same tragic flaw. Both of them have no idea how to be close even to the people they love, so they end up pushing away the ones they love the most. Maki continually shows behavior of pushing away Mai, and in Toji's case he does everything he can to try to show himself he doesn't love his son.

Maki continually pushes away her sister Mai. Mai reacts to getting pushed away in a not-so-healthy way. Toji full on deadbeats his son. He doesn't raise him or participate in his life to the point where Megumi can't remember his face or name at all. Toji did everything he could to try to give Megumi to someone else, anyone else other than him and avoided his responsibility as a father.

It doesn't come from malice on Toji and Maki's part, but rather it's a less savory aspect of their abuse. Both Toji and Maki believe themselves to be worthless, and that they can't be accepted or loved. They've internalized the way the clan has treated them. They are so isolated that this comes out in how they treated their closest loved ones, their response is to always push them away and isolate themselves further. Toji narrates this, he chose to throw his son aside because he wanted to affirm himself and prove that he was better than Jujutsu Society. Maki says to Mai that she left the house and left Mai because staying would have meant hating herself.

They are both trying desperately to prove themselves as individually strong, to the point where loving anyone else, or even requiring that love from someone is a weakness. They prove they are strong by avoiding the vulnerability of loving someone else. Toji and Maki both try to separate themselves from their heart in order to become even more physically stronger. For Toji his heart was his son Megumi who he did everything to distance himself, forgetting his name, selling him to the Zenin clan, while at the same time paradoxically believing that he was somehow protecting Megumi and arranging for things that would have been better than Toji just stepping up as a father and taking care of him.

At the same time Maki pushes Mai away when Mai does not want that, and believes that also she can return to the clan and make it a safe place for her sister by being individually stronger than everyone else.

They both approach their loved ones this way, because they were taught that one, they are unworthy of love, and they choose to try to get stronger by throwing away anything that might make them vulnerable.

TWhich is why Maki breaks so hard, and lashes out at everyone when Mai is gone, because Maki believed that keeping Mai separate from herself and protecting her was her way of showing love.

However, Mai and Megumi are like... people. They're people entirely separate from Maki and Toji and also affected by their actions. Megumi was neglected his entire lives, whereas Mai didn't get to have a relationship with her sister and felt like she was worthless and only holding her sister back. This is the central idea of Toji and Maki's abuse narrative, that abuse is complicated, and abuse proliferates and hurts people you don't even intend for it to hurt. It has consequences. Megumi suffers the consequences of the Zenin family's abuse because it turned Toji into such an unfit and emotionally immature father. Mai was being abused alongside Maki, and even ended up dying from her abuser's hand as her father Ogi beat her half to death and locked her in a room. Now, as a consequence Maki is lashing out at everything around her. That's also why the connection between Toji and Maki is drawn, to show that as long as the abusive institution still stands, it's just going to keep creating more outcasts like Toji and Maki.

#toji zenin #maki zenin #jujutsu sorcerer #jjk meta #jujutsu kaisen meta #jujutsu kaisen theory #zenin maki #mai zenin #zenin mai #megumi fushigoro #fushigoro megumi

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kationella · 2 years

Note

What would it look like if Persona 1 and 2 had social links?

Honestly, I don't see how Social Links would work in those two; not because I'm not interested in the idea, I would love to hang out more with everyone, but because of the storytelling.

Let's say that it's hard to hang around the city with your homies when your entire school has been teleported to another dimension. Plus, I'm 60% sure P1 takes place in the span of two days (three if I'm pushing it). The only way would be to add extra content or a DLC where you can just fool around out of the main story.

I can see Social Links being implemented in P2, though. The game gives glimpses of possible subplots you could help to solve, like the entire Masked Circle's parental issues, for example. Aside from the joke that the game takes place in Tatsuya's Worst Day Ever, the story allows for one to imagine it happening in the span of one year, like P3-5. Both P1 and P2 would need for new characters to be made to fill all the Arcana spots.

As for who would be the Social Links, well:

Magician: Yuka Ayase

Priestess: Maki Sonomura

Empress: Yukino Mayuzumi

Emperor: Naoya Toudou

Hierophant: Kei Nanjo

Chariot: Masao Inaba

Justice: Hidehiko Uesugi

Death: Reiji Kido

Judgement: Eriko Kirishima

Other possible Social Links could include Takami, Tadashi, Tamaki, Kenta, maybe Chisato or Igor himself (he deserves a Social Link, at least allow him to have one in P1). Maybe Yoshino too? I just want her to have more spotlight due to the Yoshino-is-Chidori's-mom theory.

P2: IS

Lovers: Lisa Silverman

Fortune: Jun Kurosu (I imagine this one to rank up automatically with Jun as Joker up until you save him at Rank 4 or 5. After that it becomes a normal Social Link. Jun already gets his backstory and other stuff explained in the normal game)

Death: Eikichi Mishina

Tower: Anna Yoshizaka

Moon: Maya Amano

Sun: Tatsuya Suou

Other possible Social Links could include Todoroki/Kuzunoha, Trish, Noriko, Ixquic, Chika and Philemon (I want this one so bad. Especially since it would be impossible to have him as a Link in EP, since he can't properly manifest anymore).

I didn't include Katsuya since their brotherly issues don't get resolved until EP. Plus, I wanted to keep the Childhood Problems vs. Adulthood Problems from IS and EP.

P2: EP

Justice: Katsuya Suou

Hanged Man: Baofu

Star: Ulala Serizawa

Moon: Maya Amano

Sun: Tatsuya Suou (same with Jun in the last one, Tatsuya's Link ranks up automatically up until he joins the party. We already got a taste of his relationship with Maya in the last game)

Other possible Social Links could include Shiori, Okamura, Lieutenant General Zula (cat) and the Time Count (as a parallel to Philemon's). Instead of attending school you have to show up to work. Maybe a new Link could be one of Maya's co-workers?

Finally, I think it could be cool if depending on which Social Links you completed in IS are the individuals who remember the Other Side in the EP epilogue.

Thanks for the ask!

#persona 1 #persona 2 #ask #answer #naoya toudou #tatsuya suou #maya amano #thoughts

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420technoblazeit · 2 years

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no but like. tsumugi as a villain had no flavor whatsoever. idk if they were going for a makoto parallel with her whole 'oh i'm so boring' shtick but it kinda came off as the writers being self aware about their bad characterisation and going through with it anyway. it was so lazy. the whole appeal of the traitor concept is that this person you trusted, who you got to know on a personal level and connect with, was always planning to backstab you

but at no point in time did i feel like i really connected with her. she was just kinda there to have funny reactions and make nerdy references. which is fine as a character trait but that's not a substitute for a personality. and i think the writers were hoping that by making her pop culture savvy everyone would immediately like her. but even the playthrough gamers i've watched who liked her at first eventually got bored of that shtick. and aside from that she doesn't have any substance at all

the only real appeal tsumugi has is what she represents in the context of team danganronpa and the outside world. the idea that she pre-determined the first three cases and messed with everyone's memories and personality is horrifying. more than the previous two games, that means that everyone in v3 was stripped of their free will. worse yet it's broadcast to an audience that finds entertainment in it and in a sick twisted way wants to be them. it's the terror of knowing that your very identity is a lie given to you by the people who watched you suffer all this time and profited from it

like tsumugi did have really good moments! the part where she tells maki that she was always meant to fall in love with kaito was fucked up! especially because from maki's perspective that was the only thing she'd ever chosen for herself. at her core she's a lonely person who had all her relationships taken away from her, and then kaito dies and she has to question for feelings for him as well. and it's in front of an audience. all that pain and grief is broadcast for everyone to see

so i don't think the ending plot twist of v3 was necessarily bad. the problem i have with it is that the people it wouldve mattered most to are already dead. ryoma and kirumi's entire trial was on the basis of false memories. kaede was literally framed and falsely executed. kiibo was built only to be used as a camera to watch the killing game and carry out the wishes of the audience. i want to see how they would have reacted to the plot twist and to the idea that the people they are now are just pre-written characters. idk i feel like they could have done more with the concept if the whole thing was a virtual world or something

#the pig squeals #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #tsumugi shirogane #drv3 spoilers #danganronpa spoilers #danganronpa kh #danganronpa killing harmony #killing harmony #long post

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bootlickerhawks · 3 years

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Twice/Hawks Anon: I saw a disturbing interview snippet of how Gege plans to end JJK, so #25 for the ask game. How would you end JJK?

Oof did you read the interview where Gege says he’ll either kill 1 person of the main squad or only leave 1 person from the main squad alive? That interview’s been haunting me since I read abt it 😭

How would you end JJK?

I’m pretty sure that Yuuji will die at the end of JJK however I do hope he dies as an old man surrounded by his loved ones ;w; I think it would make for a nice parallel to his grandfather’s death.

I don’t have any concrete ideas for Megumi or Nobara but I do hope that they survive till the end of the series.

Maki would become head of the Zenin clan and help bring some much needed change. Hopefully Maki and Mai will have set aside their differences and could work together towards that goal. Also PLEASE let Yuuta be Maki’s right hand man/bodyguard!

I hope Miwa finds happiness and becomes rich so she can provide for her family.

I want Todo to become a Zumba dance teacher.

MANGA SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

Getou would grab control of his body long enough for someone, most likely Gojo, to finish him off (gotta love that satosugu angst ;w;).

I used to think that Gojo wouldn’t die at the end of JJK but I could see him disappearing after the main story once he feels that the next generation has a handle on things and will carry out his dream.

If Gojo were to die after disappearing I could see him dying kneeling in front of Getou’s grave with a smile on his face (yes this is a clear reference to when Hohenheim died in front of Trisha’s grave in FMAB). welp looks like I wasn’t done with the satosugu angst

(Ask game)

#asks #jjk asks #jjk spoilers #jjk hcs #idk what i want to happen to sukuna #ask game #ask game: salty ask list #thx for the ask! :D #twice/hawks anon

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

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So, finally, over a chapter late, here’s that chapter 5 bonus ramble I vaguely promised way back, about the similarities and parallels between trial 5 and trial 1! There are a lot. Have I ever mentioned I love how cohesive (most of) this game’s writing is.

The first and most obvious parallel is just how incredibly similar Kaede and Kaito are as people. Both of them try as much as they can to take charge and encourage everyone else to stay positive and proactive and keep looking for a way out of this situation, and both of them take Shuichi in particular under their wing and end up being the two biggest influences on him that inspire him throughout the story.

Kaito himself even notices a lot of the ways in which Kaede is similar to him during the first chapter. She has the same kind of ability and desire to lead and encourage everyone, just like Kaito always wants to do – and she’s perhaps just a little bit better at it than him. Kaito may not like to admit that he’s not quite as good at this as her, but he does end up admiring her for it all the same.

The next big obvious parallel with the cases themselves is that the culprit did it because they were selflessly trying to end the killing game and save everyone, even if it meant becoming a murderer themselves. Admittedly, four of the blackeneds in this game commit their murder out of selflessness, but Kaede and Kaito parallel each other even more closely for this reason. Kirumi and Gonta were instead working within the framework of the killing game, trying to get away with it in order to achieve their goals of “saving everyone”. But Kaede and Kaito were trying to use their crimes to dismantle the killing game itself.

And with both Kaede and Kaito, they only went so far as to murder because they were on a time limit. They ideally would have liked to find a way to end the killing game without murdering anyone at all. But they were running out of time and couldn’t come up with a better plan in the time they had left, so they grew desperate enough to resort to murder. Killing one person for the sake of ending things was better than not getting to end it at all, at least if that one person was either the one responsible for putting them though this in the first place, or someone else who was already willing to die.

Kaito: “So you’re saying… everything you did was because you were thinking of us? And you hid that you killed him just to stay and help us…? How did things—”

This is something Kaito says to Kaede at the end of her trial, which is a delightful match to exactly what he ends up doing in his. But one part of it I also like that I didn’t talk about in the main commentary is the last part – because what Kaito was presumably about to say before he was cut off is something like, “How did things come to this?” How did someone like Kaede get so desperate that she would resort to murder?

Kaito admired Kaede perhaps a little too much thanks to how, like him, she was so determined to never give up on getting out of here and so strongly against the killing game in principle. It never crossed Kaito’s mind that Kaede could just give up like this, not on getting out of here at all, but on doing so without stooping as low as the people trapping them here in the first place.

What Kaito didn’t realise until the end of her trial was that, while Kaede was an incredible person, she was still fallible and human. When there’s a time limit staring you in the face, when you know you’ll never get to save everyone if you don’t do so right now, and when your usual efforts to help have been ineffective in the past (thanks to the escape tunnel fiasco) leading you to feel like they’re just going to fail this time too… anyone would get desperate enough to resort to things they never normally would.

Kaito was also a lot more fallible and human than he ever liked people to think he was, and that’s exactly why he resorted to murder in the end, too. His time limit was a lot less selfless than Kaede’s in that it was only a time limit for his life, which he’d already given up on, and everyone else would have continued to live even if he’d done nothing (putting Maki aside, because Kaito made it clear he’d have done this even if her life hadn’t been on the line). But all the same, he’d had much longer than Kaede to be slowly beaten down and made to feel crushingly inferior and useless in terms of helping everyone around him, to the point that seeing his time closing in on what felt like a meaningless death made him just as desperate to beat that time limit and make at least some kind of difference towards saving everyone in the end.

(Even then, no matter how desperate he was, since it was only for his own chance to save everyone, I don’t believe Kaito would ever have resorted to killing someone who wasn’t literally asking to be killed. But his time limit was necessary to make him desperate enough to even be willing to do that.)

Then, in the class trial, the culprit only hides their crime because they're trying to achieve a specific, most optimal outcome (unmasking the mastermind / tricking Monokuma into breaking the rules (or at least making it clear there’s an audience)). Although in Kaede’s case this was a desperate plan B to try and make the most of things after realising she’d killed an innocent, while in Kaito’s case this was the plan from the start.

Kaede: “And if that happens… Everyone will be executed… I definitely won’t let that happen, even if it costs me my life!”

Kaito: “If you guys get it wrong and Monokuma gets it right… Then you’ll all get punished. There’s no way I can let that happen.”

But they never once intend to let everyone else get executed. If it ever seems that the plan is going badly and people are about to vote incorrectly, they know they can just reveal themselves and confess so that nobody except them dies. In some ways, they’re less scared than anyone else usually is during a class trial, because they already know from the beginning that they are the only person who’s going to die at the end… and compared to the alternative, that’s fine by them.

As the trial reaches its conclusion, Shuichi has to deal with the fact that his detective skills are telling him his best friend committed murder – yet his belief in his friend makes him certain they did it for everyone’s sake all the same.

Tsumugi: “But you were the one that said she did it, right?”

Shuichi: “Yes, I did say that. But murder in cold blood is just not in her character… I truly believe that! I believe in her!”

Shuichi: (I believe in my own logic… And… I believe in Kaito… […] I believe in you, Kaito. Not as a detective… but as Shuichi Saihara.)

He’s able to have a rational detective’s outlook to allow him to reach the truth, while still having that more emotion-driven side at the same time; he doesn’t have to throw away Shuichi Saihara to be the Ultimate Detective. And believing in people is not always the wrong thing to do in a killing game, not even when the person you believe in turns out to have murdered someone.

Even as Shuichi uncovers their crime and condemns them to be executed, the culprit still doesn’t stop encouraging and praising Shuichi for figuring this all out with his awesome detective skills.

Shuichi: “No! That’s not true, Kaede! You were trying to save all of—”

Kaede: “Nice job, Shuichi! I didn’t expect any less!”

Shuichi: “…What?”

Kaede: “You were super reliable back there! But you still have a long way to go. You need to be more assertive. If you did that more often, you’d be a pretty cool guy.”

Shuichi: “Kaito, no!”

Kaito: “It’s just like you to figure it all out, Shuichi. You’re really something else. So all you gotta do is believe in your reasoning. That’s what detectives do.”

They don’t even remotely want to make this about how they feel over becoming a murderer and their impending execution, nor about how they felt at Shuichi ruining what they were trying to do and condemning them to death. The only thing that matters to them is that Shuichi continues to grow and have confidence in himself, both because his detective skills are going to be what protects everyone else and gets them out of here, but also just because they care about him as their best friend.

Shuichi: “Kaede… why? Why are you smiling like that…? Why are you still trying to get me to be brave? Why, Kaede? Why are you thinking about everyone except yourself!? If you had just been less selfless, you wouldn’t have had to murder… Why…? Why do you do that?”

I especially love this. This is something Shuichi says to Kaede at the end of her trial – but with nothing but the name changed, he could so easily have said these exact words at the end of Kaito’s trial too.

(There is no deep reason why, for either of them. Both of them are genuinely just that incredibly, painfully, self-destructively selfless of a person. That’s simply who they are.)

Once the vote has been passed, the culprit is just happy that everyone voted correctly, not caring one bit about what it means for them.

Kaede: “Good…”

Kaito: “Wh-What…? Good? What do you mean, good!? Is this how you want it to end!?”

Kaede: “Not really, but… it could have turned out a lot worse. So this is fine, too.”

Tenko: “I-It’s not fine! This is super horrible! The worst ever!”

Shuichi: “…”

Maki: “…”

Kaito: “So you all got it right, huh? Even Shuichi and Maki Roll voted for me… What a relief! Well, I knew you guys wouldn’t get it wrong.”

…

Kaito: “Hey, c’mon guys… Don’t look so sad… You guys got it right. It’s all good.”

Even as the rest of the class is horrified at how their friend could be okay with this when they killed someone and they’re about to die, it doesn’t matter to the culprit so long as everyone else is going to be safe.

(And I love that Kaito himself is one of the most prominent ones reacting that way to Kaede the first time around.)

When Monokuma announces that it’s punishment time, everyone tries to fight the Exisals to prevent the execution, only for the culprit to stop them.

Kaito: “Like hell am I just gonna sit here and do what you say! Kaede fought with her life on the line! And so will I!”

Gonta: “Gonta will face you all! Times like this are why Gonta became strong! Gentlemen never back down, and neither will Gonta!”

Tenko: “Th-This is the perfect chance to test out my Neo-Aikido skills on machines!”

Shuichi: “Y-Yeah! I’ll help! I can—”

Maki: “…I won’t let you… I won’t let you kill Kaito!”

…

Kaito: “N-No… Stop…”

Shuichi: “No, Kaito, I can’t! I can’t let you die, Kaito! I don’t care if you’re sick! I don’t care if you’re dying! I won’t let Monokuma touch you!”

Including Shuichi desperately trying to throw himself into fighting despite knowing that he has absolutely no skill in that area whatsoever, because he just cannot bear the thought of losing his best friend.

(And, again, featuring Kaito being the one of the main people who tries to defend Kaede, despite where he’ll be standing the next time something like this happens.)

Kaede: “Everyone, stop!!! Please… just stop.”

Shuichi: “But Kaede…

Kaede: “Enough, you guys… I’ve… already prepared myself.”

Maki: “That’s why I won’t let you kill Kaito! I absolutely won’t let you!”

Kaito: “… Maki Roll… I’m sorry… but that’s not an option. I don’t have as much time left as you think…”

But the culprit is already prepared for the fact that they’re going to die here and doesn't want anyone else to even risk getting themselves killed on their behalf.

The culprit doesn’t want Shuichi to feel guilty for anything and wants him to keep being strong, mostly for his sake but also partly for themselves, to make it easier for them to face their deaths with courage.

Kaede: “Please, don’t say it’s your fault… It’ll be harder for me…”

Kaito: “Hey, hey… don’t cry. Can’t you send me off with one last smile? You guys, too. I’m not gonna allow any tears. Send me off with a bang.”

…Not that they admit that to any great extent, of course, because they don’t want this to be about them. Kaede only briefly mentions in that one sentence that Shuichi blaming himself will make it harder for her to die knowing he’s going to keep hurting. And Kaito doesn’t mention it at all – but that has to be the reason he doesn’t want anyone to cry for him, because he knows that, for their sake, crying would be the healthiest way for them to express their emotions over this.

The culprit, despite being ready to die, hasn't given up. They have the utmost faith in Shuichi and the others’ ability to carry on their wishes and end the killing game. They die believing that everything’s going to be okay after they’re gone, somehow, eventually – and they’re right.

Kaede: “Shuichi, you better not lose. You can’t lose to this killing game! I know you can beat it!”

Kaito: “But let me just say this to the true mastermind controlling Monokuma… You better get ready! My friends aren’t gonna lose to you!”

Including both of them believing their friends won’t “lose” to the mastermind, not because this is a game, but because it’s a fight.

Kaede: “End this ridiculous killing game, survive, and get the hell out of this place!”

Kaito: “I’ll leave the rest to you guys! End this ridiculous killing game!”

Both of them even use the exact same wording of “end this ridiculous killing game”! Of course they’d both think a game where people are forced to kill each other doesn’t deserve to be called anything more than ridiculous.

And finally, Shuichi ends both chapters by doing something that reminds him of his friend and what they’d done for him or wanted to do for him.

He uses that as a chance to grieve, but also to think about his gratitude to them and how determined he is to keep fighting and carry on their wishes. They were his FRIENDS and they both meant the world to him. Kaede and Kaito are the best.

#danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #kaede akamatsu #kaito momota #bonus ramble #chapter 6 bonus ramble still coming hopefully #may take a while; my idea for it is a bit ambitious

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venus-says · 5 years

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Kamen Rider OOO Episodes 01-16

I never expected a show aimed at boys would have THIS many scenes centered around male underwear.

The second series on my "watch all of kamen rider" madness! Yay!

The first word that comes to my mind when it comes to OOO is: weird. But it's not weird in a bad way, for the most of it anyway. I'll try best to not make many comparisons to either W or Zero-One, but just as a point of reference for this first statement, I'll mention them for a minute. W and Zero-One touch bases that I'm familiar with (detective stories, futuristic settings, etc.) while OOO is somewhat completely new to me so most of the time I wasn't ready for some of the things that were happening. But like I said, this is a good thing. I really enjoyed watching this first part, it had a few stumbles, but overall it was a great experience. To bring the comparison again, I didn't enjoy it as much as W's first part but I enjoyed it more than I'm enjoying this first third of Zero-One.

The plot of this season is quite interesting, it reminds me of Doki Doki Precure at some points (you can really draw the parallel of selfishness and altruism in both shows), though I wish some things had been established sooner and I feel like the thing with the core medals is a bit confusing, the plot is very engaging. They took a page from W's book, and most of the "weekly cases" are dealt in two episodes, but they also improve in this formula because even in the MOTW plots we can see the overall arc being formed and no episode was left without a hook for the next what makes the whole experience way better and more interesting to follow. If I was watching this weekly this structure would definitely make me excited to always get back to this season, and watching it now after the show is over makes me want to binge-watch everything in one sitting even though that's impossible. So, great stuff.

If there are things I don't like about the plot and the structure it would be, the weird commercial breaks, some of the weekly stories have characters that make them very weak, the many antagonist forces that make things feel overcrowded at times, and a problem I have with most shows when a new hero is about to come in that is when the show makes the protagonists weaker/less effective just to highlight how good the new member of the cast is. But that aside, I pretty much like everything. The comedy, the absurdness, the drama, and the action have had a very good balance so far so OOOs hold many positive points to its name.

Talking about characters, our main protagonist this time, Eiji, while not as charismatic as I would like is still a sweetheart. His lifestyle is a bit questionable, and he has a bit of the Aida Mana syndrome where he gives himself way too much sometimes, also the show doesn't make a good job on keeping his clothes on brand - I mean the dude apparently has only two underwear and one pair of pants but somehow he has many top options and we never know where he keeps all those shirts and tunics - but I really like him. I think what I like the most about him is that at first glance he could seem like the standard "dumb protagonist" but he's actually pretty smart and his smartness doesn't affect his emotional drive which is great.

Sadly his partners on the good side aren't as good. Ankh has a very difficult personality which makes him VERY hard to like, every time he opens up his mouth to babble about his medals I just wanna shove 30 popsicles on his mouth to make him shut up. My biggest problem with him is that we haven't seen him change not even for a bit in all of these episodes and I'm afraid that when they decide to make an emotional climax with him it won't work as well and it'll just ruin what could be a strong moment. Though I love how Eiji knows exactly how to keep him in check, that's another sign of how great Eiji is. Accompanying Ankh we have Hina who's just boring as hell, I don't know if this is a problem of the character or the actress but she really bores me to death, not even her quirk of being insanely strong that could be very fun works with me, which's a shame. And the last character of this group is the owner of Cous Coussier that is a very good minor character that helps to make Ankh and Hina bearable sometimes.

Moving to the antagonists, the GREED are the typical villainous team so I don't have a lot to say about them, their designs are cool and I like that each one has a very strong personality trait and their greediness makes for a very interesting plot point when Kazari decides to betray them. The MOTW are weird as hell, I'm very grossed out every time that coin slot appear on people, but I like that there are different types of them each one works on a different way and it is quite interesting to see how each type feeds on the desires of the population, my favorites are the parasite type and the Mezools' ones. It makes me sad that apparently Mezool and Gamel were the first ones to be defeated because they're my favorites, I think the group has lost a lot from their defeat.

The next antagonists are the Kougami Foundation, and I really love them. Kousei is just as charismatic (or maybe even more) charismatic as Ryuubei was and watching him is a true joy. Maybe it's just my love for baking that draws me to him, but I really think he's a great bad guy. Another great asset Kougami has is the secretary, I don't remember her name but the fact she seems completely apathetic to everything that goes on in that company to me is just hilarious, I'd love to be her friend (I'm sure she's amazing at throwing shade). The weakest link of this company is without a doubt Gotou, he severely lacks in personality and his turmoil of not thinking Eiji is suitable to be Os just because he's jealous since he wants to be the savior of the world makes him sound like an immature kid rather than an interesting character.

Coming as the (unnecessary) third antagonist we have Professor Maki who just makes me want to bang my head against a concrete wall. Like, I really don't know WHY they had to make him a villain, he makes me have war flashbacks of W when they changed the role of final villains from the Sonozaki family to that very boring, soulless guy from Foundation X. And it makes me even madder that they did this change WHEN THEY HAVE A PERFECT SET OF VILLAINS ALREADY IN GREED AND KOUGAMI. All this guy has going for him is that creepy ass doll that will definitely give me nightmares, but other than that he's just completely uninteresting.

Talking about riders, when I saw it on W's movie I really wasn't into Os design, but now I've grown used to it. The medals gimmick is also pretty fun and it gives a good variety of forms the main rider can have, though I think this thing of each Greed having 9 core medals is more complicated than it needed to be, and I really dislike how arbitrary the system of getting core medals from the Greed/O's seem to be, it's also very hard to keep track of who has each medal with how easy the lose and get new ones. I really like the gadgets from this season, I love the idea of everything being on a vending machine, the bike looks really cool, and I LOVE the candroids to death, I'd love to buy a few of them if I wasn't so broke. XD On the other hand, the transformation belt I horrendous, and not even the "sixth ranger" could save it this time because that gashapon belt is just hilarious and I can't take it seriously.

And speaking of said "sixth ranger" here's probably the element I hated the most from these sixteen episodes. Much likely Doki Doki precure, they pulled a Regina/Cure Ace thing where they build-up for Gotou to be the new rider, but comes episode 16 and Kamen Rider Birth is actually A DIFFERENT COMPLETELY NEW GUY. Do I like Gotou or his "arc" that would lead to his possible transformation? Absolutely no. But having that would've been way better than seeing an unknown guy, who came out of the ether, become the new rider. I REALLY hate new members who come out of nowhere, and to top it off the milkshake of hate they made this new guy steal that spotlight of a guy they had been building up for at least 4 episodes prior.

I usually ended these with specific points of specific episodes, but I really covered everything I had to say and If I went on each episode it would be to just point out a few unnecessary nitpicks, so I'll skip doing it this time. I hate to end on such a salty note, especially considering that I genuinely like this show so far, but there was no way to escape from it, I'll try to watch fewer videos of the NerdECrafter before I write next week's post to see if I come here with less salt in my veins, I promise. XD

And these were my first impressions of OOO, thanks for sticking with me for another week and I'll hopefully see you, folks, very soon. Bye bye~.

#Kamen Rider OOO #kamen rider

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rubberduckyrye · 5 years

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(User sent in an ask asking to make them anonymous, so I deleted the OG post and am remaking it here to accommodate)

Aside from Kokichi’s treatment being pretty unfair, there’s a lot I’d rather see changed in V3 specifically.

First and foremost, Maki’s writing needs some heavy tweaking. She gets away with everything, quite literally, and her arc is dissatisfying because of that. I’d either want to write Maki as a flip on the trope of “love can change a person for the better” and have Maki basically immune to all of Kaito’s help, and instead remains a cold hearted killer who can’t be swayed, or I’d want her to answer for her mistakes. Especially the issue of chapter five where she tries to kill everyone in the remaining class just as an attempt to kill “Kokichi” and frankly aside from the Kokichi aspect, it really bothers me that this was just. Brushed over and not addressed. Like at all.

I’d also really would like to tweak Gonta’s arc, or rather, not take away this big boy’s freedom of choice. Aside from the aspect that Kokichi gets blamed for Gonta’s decision, I just find this incredibly uncomfortable for Gonta. Like he’s reduced to a stupid innocent baby cinnamon roll who can literally do no harm and tbh, I really like the idea of Gonta being a pure hearted person who still resorted to murder. I think people think these two things cannot coexist, but good people can make bad choices and Gonta shouldn’t be an exception to this. He’s also smart, like he’s a scientist for fuck’s sake, he might not be great socially but the game treating him like a big dumb ass hurts my soul.

I’d want to change Korekiyo’s incest plot. Not to remove the incest part, in actuality, that part makes the most sense to me when compared to the serial killer plot. The serial killer plot came from no where, had no foreshadowing in the slightest, and didn’t make any sense whatsoever when you think about how Korekiyo could have gotten away with literal murder in the first chapter. Why I would keep the incest plot? Because I interpret that as him being a victim of abuse, and his love for his sister being conditioned into him and something he has to unlearn and grow from.

Tenko’s writing is another example of something I’d like to change, and that is based off of my friend’s interpretation (which you can find at @heart-ruled tbh it’s really good) and point out that everything Tenko thinks she knows about Akido is a lie, and imply her master was gaslighting her and mentally abusing her in general. I’d really love to write a thing of my own where Tenko realizes this and tries to grow as a person from it and unlearns her violent misandry. That or at least have her misandry stem from being abused instead of her taking on the idea that men are pigs because her master “teased” her about it… Also, no predatory lesbian writing, please, thank you–

Angie is a character that also needs a huge overhaul–her entire character is a gross, racist caricature and her back story needs a total wipe and reset. Also I really liked this one comic of Kokichi and Angie (idr who made it) that showed their parallels and I’d probably write Angie to be more obviously like Kokichi except which her own flavor and story.

I think what Kodaka tried to pull off, the meta and ambiguity, just did Not Work and came out very wrong. I’d probably redo the entire plot twist and ending to V3 to reveal that Tsumugi was full of shit and yeah.

I also want to tweak other characters in more minor ways, like Kirumi and Ryoma, and give them a bit more of a fleshed out story–especially Kirumi.

Honestly there’s a lot I would change, and a lot of writing in V3 to be critical of. I like a lot of base ideas Kodaka came up with, and some things are very wonderfully written–but other aspects are very, very awful, especially things like the racism in Angie’s writing. That’s a very Big Bad.

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ryouverua · 5 years

Text

Trial 6 - ”hello, world!” (6)

Time to pick up the fallen torch.

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

K.... K1-b0? This - this must be you, right?

I’ve been waiting for this moment since the beginning of the chapter 3 trial! Finally, the explanation I’ve been craving! If - if the inner voice is coming into play now - it might actually be a benevolent force, right? Maybe? At this point we just need something to keep us moving forward...

Yes!!!

..... Oops.

“And please choose the right answer this time.”

Okay okay, jeez -

K1... K1-b0? W-Why not - ?

...... remedy the situation. Not save... but fix...???

Voices??? It’s plural now? Does that include me, the player?

K1-b0! Your moment has finally come, with no more lasers or explosions required! hopefully

WAIT

WE’RE OFFICIALLY IN HIS POV NOW???

This is incredibly late game for a protagonist switch b-but okay! also oh god what does that say about Sweetcheeks’s condition -

I’m glad we haven’t completely lost Shuichi. ): He really does look like he’s not with us, though. How can we help him? I joke about how much I love this sprite, but it’s awful seeing him like this.

But apparently Shuichi’s been relegated to the sidelines entirely now, because K1-b0 is entirely focused on Jun - Tsumugi. Oh boy, I almost started thinking of her as Junko. I will not let her hide behind her characters, damn it!

Yes! Yes, exactly! She can’t have it both ways!

YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE ANNOYED YOU APPARENTLY WROTE HIM TO BE THIS WAY!!!

Ooh? Yeah, the text is changing at the bottom...

U U H I’M SORRY YOU CAN’T JUST DROP A BOMB LIKE THAT SO ABRUPTLY -

TSUMUGI LET HIM HAVE HIS COOL MOMENT

HE LITERALLY JUST GOT HIS MOMENT IN THE SUN DON’T JUST UNDERCUT HIM OUT OF NOWHERE

no seriously she didn’t even give him a chance to build up momentum

The way she’s able to just dismiss him so casually like that, just completely trivializing him, is absolutely brutal. also what plotline lol -

I-I mean I’m joking, he has had a ‘coming to terms with his status as a robot amongst humans and accepting himself’ plotline! Sorta! It’s just been pretty.... well, behind the scenes. I just wished we got to see more of you and Miu together at the very least.

Wait -

He’s been the actual audience’s surrogate? That.... that means his ahoge....... really is the connection to the outside... but also, the only thing holding him back from going kamikaze??? It’s basically an outside force that’s been suppressing his free will?

Oh shit... is that why the game switched us to this POV, for that reveal? Well-damn-played, DRV3!

.....

wow this is getting worse and worse, huh

ALSO OH NO WAY TO SMASH HIS FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM INTO PIECES

“You know all those hi~lar~ious asides everyone had at your expense about you being no more important than your average kitchen appliance? Guess what - ! They were r i g h t!”

Somehow I wonder if it would have been better if it was the mastermind’s will. At least it would assign him some sense of importance, even if that stinging feeling of betraying his friends would be there. At least he wouldn’t literally just be the subject of some nameless audiences’ whims - as it is, he’s basically been relegated to the status of ‘plaything’.

From Chapter 3 onward, when I was thinking about it, I wasn’t sure originally if I should consider it a force for good or evil - it seemed to be generally benevolent and since he didn’t take any actions against anyone, it was generally okay for me to discard it as an extension of ‘a mastermind whose goal was for everyone to be at odds with each other/kill each other’. He was always one of the most willing to cooperate with the others, too! I even considered if any of his actions had indirectly caused tension or murder, and I couldn’t find any instances where he did. But if he’s been at the beck and call of a third party, who’s been directing him for the sake of entertainment? Well, that’s a completely different story. In that context... everything makes... a lot more sense...

.... Except for his Chapter 5 actions??? He nearly got Shuichi to take him out twice??

Wait, actually - oh, this does change how I might look at him from this point on. How often would he consult the voice? Do the decisions override his own every time? Does that mean he can only make a move at the behest of the audience????

THE WAY HE PUT IT IS EVEN MORE DEMEANING

fhgh I guess that answers one of my questions

THE GIMMICK....

every production buzzword thrown in makes my stomach drop more

S-Shit the last time he had his ‘short-circuiting’ sprite was when Kokichi did his mastermind reveal in tandem with the ‘outside world’ reveal - D:

A.... Are you trying to make them feel bad for you, because I don’t think it’s working -

omg I just realized there would totally be twitter threads and reddit posts and stuff dedicated to this, and I’m trying to imagine the rage!posts that would swarm them as users ran to the internet to bitch about how ‘the robot totally isn’t responding to us anymore!’ and ‘I bet they’re rigging it so the ending goes the way they want! What a cop out ending!’ and hell, one of those more topical ‘let 👏 us 👏 control 👏 the 👏 robot 👏 you 👏 cowards 👏’

K1-B0 WAS THE CAMERA?!?!

..................................

glances at my computer monitor, then back here

ahahaha I am officially part of the outside world!mastermind tomfoolery oh god I’m so sorry everyone

Wait.... wait. Wait! So the Nanokumas’ footage is for the mastermind’s exclusive use? Really?

I... I was under the impression that if this audience was watching everyone, they’d have access to everything....

Then how different would this all look from only K1-b0′s eyes?! Did he know about Kaito’s training, for example? About Kaede and Shuichi’s practical inseparability in the first chapter? Wow, how different would this entire thing look from K1-b0′s exclusive POV?

I’m sorry what?

okay okay she’s going off on a despair rant which is - y’know, great, you do you and whatever - but I think it just turned my brain off a little bit. Like I just got catapulted back to DR1.

A-Are we really turning back to the whole ‘Junko persona’ idea? That she took on that role specifically, and by taking on the role as ‘Junko Enoshima’ she feels obligated to follow it through to the end? B-But...... but??? For a show??? That’s... no, that can’t be right, that’s weird, that’s stupid, that can’t be right....

You gotta admire her dedication to the craft I-I MEAN NO

WHAT THE HELL TSUMUGI

THAT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH MOTIVE

WHAT THE HELL IS THAT KIND OF REASON

SHUT THE FUCK UP KOMAEDA AND DON’T LOOK SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS oh that actually felt pretty good

i say this as someone whose previous favourite was komaeda it was very love/hate don’t @ me

Oh hey, the opening music is on! Is this the big turnabout we’ve been waiting for? It’s.... so.... weird that it’s coming from K1b0 now? Also wasn’t this sort of the plot of the DR3 anime via the Ultimate Animator or -

I??? I guess??? Weren’t they all just screaming DESPAIR at Shuichi a minute ago??? Isn’t it their comments on the screen???

Inspirational and all but -

I’m GoINg to cHOkE anD DiE

ULTIMATE HOPE ROBOT

FJKGHSDKLFJ

WHAT ARE YOU KIDDING ME

oh shit well there’s text saying Hope now so I guess something has changed out there

I believe it’s called déjà vu.

No seriously, am I hallucinating? Is this not what led to the whole final vote in DR1 or am I going crazy? Is this... what is.... happening........???? And Shuichi has just completely BSoDed in the corner??? Like, is he disassociating right now? Where is he?

It’s interesting that she looks happy here compared to angry Junko. She looked excited earlier when K1-b0 challenged her too (her new jazz-hands!sprite, lol) too, and her voice is on the brink of. Uh. I’m just going to say it’s getting very.... passionate. Is she just that confident or...?

Oh hey their sprites mirror each other. Parallels. :D

I like how Tsumugi is having Makoto say this part ~

But this brings up a good question... how exactly is this so-called final battle going to work? If they can’t fight for the right to leave, then what can they do?

alksdfj Himiko and Maki have also been so quiet this so time - I almost forgot they were there. K1-b0 and Tsumugi are basically the only ones doing the talking and between all the cosplays it feels like there are way more people here than there actually are - which is the point, I think? It really adds to that oppressive, ‘everyone is against you four’ atmosphere.

“- DETAILS DETAILS anyway it’s happening I don’t really care, now about that special vote ~”

This -

This is literally DR1?!?!

This.... this is strange. There has to be incentive to vote one way or the other. Is she going to tie ‘vote for K1-b0’ and ‘you’ll be forced into a world where you can’t/shouldn’t exist’ together vs ‘Vote for Tsumugi′ and ‘stay inside forever’? That’s.... what happened in the others, right?

Shuichi, mentally clocked out but occasionally checking back in so he doesn’t miss anything important: Wow this is absolute bullshit

Yeah... there’s no way they weren’t going to find a way to tempt you to vote for K1-b0. Okay, lay it on us.

YOU’RE GOING TO MAKE THEM KEEP GOING?!?!

“Ugh why did I let myself get lured back into the conversation by my bitchin’ ‘Lazy Parallel World’ theme song I’m going to mentally check out again because everything hurts and I want to die -”

There.... there aren’t....??

THAT’S NOT ENCOURAGING omg I missed that catchphrase it always made me laugh

I??? I don’t know if I can trust that??? If you can literally make flashback lights to override their old memories - if you can force it on them, whether they’re willing or not - if you can delete the last 24 hours, you could make them do something again??? T-Though if Tsumugi is gone... but then again, there’s a whole team of people behind this apparently! Her being gone means nothing!

“So you cannot leave this place.” Is it? Is it literally, physically impossible to leave this place? That’s the real question. the impossible is possible all you gotta do is make it so... s o b

HOW EVIL CAN YOU GET

HOW COULD YOU NOT EVEN GIVE THEM A POSSIBILITY OF RETURNING TO THEIR ORIGINAL SELVES

WHY WOULD ANYONE MAKE SOMETHING LIKE THAT WHY WOULD THAT BE OKAY FOR A PUBLICLY TELEVISED TV SHOW

For that matter this whole damn series sounds like a snuff film, if actually people are involved. Dear lord, even if they are actually adults - and I desperately hope that if this is true, that the outside world is actually like this, and watches this for fun, then they have a ‘18+’ rule for auditions (actually considering the love hotel exists they must be at least 18 ggh) - even the survivors.... have been killed, in a sense. Their previous selves have been killed. They were dead the moment they entered the world...

So either 16 people consented to ‘dying’ in an existential sense as well as possibly a physical sense, or 16 people were kidnapped and ‘killed’ for the entertainment of the world. I.... I actually... do at least believe, no matter what, that there is a depraved audience viewing this from somewhere. There’s no way there isn’t - this feedback via comments, the scene with that kid Makoto watching this at the beginning of this chapter - those are true. And they were more than okay with the idea of these people dying for their entertainment, even the so-called winners.

You can only create new identities, not recover them... I, I dunno. Somehow that’s so much more soul-crushing than a lot of the other things that have come up this trial.

t-the way his voice is breaking skdlfjgh -

W HA T!?

WHAT THE FU -

WHY?! WHY?! WHY MUST IT ONLY BE TWO, EVERY TIME?! WHY HAVE YOU BEEN SO DETERMINED TO ONLY HAVE TWO PEOPLE SURVIVE TO THE END?!

H.... How the hell.... are they supposed to do that?! Is that how you’re doing it?! Putting the burden of the decision on them, in order to break them?!

H-HE LITERALLY SOUNDS LIKE HE’S GOING TO BREAK DOWN SOBBING ANY SECOND I CAN’T TAKE MUCH MORE OF THIS

She is really trying to push that point, huh... but there it is. They can escape to the ‘outside world’. That is a cold comfort at this point, but...

They...... I don’t. I don’t know. I wouldn’t be able to do this - look my classmates in the eyes and condemn them. I guess this somehow managed to be worse than DR1.

K1-B0 NO

fml of course the only potential option would be students choosing self-sacrifice

I... I’m glad Shuichi is showing concern. I’ve noticed it a few times, how finally in the last chapter or so that he’s been observant of K1-b0′s well-being where the others haven’t been.

But I’m getting distracted - that’s not the point! FML I know he’s been shown those extremist tendencies towards the vague ideal of hope and destroying the despair, I - between this and the ‘destroying the school’ rampage he went on - what is he aiming for? You’re saying that you’re trying to defeat despair, but what is that? Is hope just the opposite of despair? Is despair just whatever Tsumugi says it is, so we’re immediately opposed to it, as the representatives of hope? Are you fighting for them to escape? Why is everyone surviving together ‘living despairful lives’ if Tsumugi is gone and they aren’t trying to kill each other anymore? What makes it that way? Why is this considered ‘defeating despair’? What does that even mean?

I... I guess K1-b0 would be punished anyway if they voted for him, but.... still....

Ugh, I get it. I get that kibou is hope, and that K1-b0 is therefore hope, and that we’re fighting for him to win or... something.... uhghghgh

DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE SHUICHI

This was such an uncomfortable parade of ~ideal waifus~ sdlkfjsdf especially when we were getting into the ‘super tiny/cute’ territory because I have absolutely no interest in that whatsoever also I accidentally deleted Mahiru’s cameo sorry -

.... I wonder if this would’ve been more effective if I was the target audience for this? Either way, ending on Junko was still an offsetting choice, right? Right??

..........

Wait for that matter, who was this aimed for? Who out of Maki, Himiko or Shuichi would have fallen for that? Even if you believe that Maki or Himiko have an interest in women, nothing about the types they showed or may have shown interest in the game (Maki @ Kaito, Himiko @ Angie, Tenko and hell, even Kokichi) would lend them to the girls Tsumugi just cosplayed as? And even Shuichi’s strongest interest were in Kaede and Kaito - so who is Tsumugi trying to appeal to here?!

Oh shit we’re going into a mass panic debate! Okay, okay okay - !

.... Oh. Oh boy, I have to shoot down every mention of despair. Uh, okay -

OMFG I missed the screenshot but Monokuma started shilling their merch and their website I cannot even deal with how they’ll occasionally devolve into corporate shilling it’s so good -

But!!! We’ve got better things to do than get caught up in Monokuma’s commercializing of the class trial!

MAKI

NO MAKI WHY

ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE UP FOR LAST CHAPTER IS THAT WHAT’S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

omg

are you telling me

you’re not even doing this out of guilt

it’s spite

you’re doing this out of spite

you’re sacrificing yourself purely ou t of spite

MAKI HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE MAKI, AGAIN??? AGAIN?!?!?!”

“LET ME KILL SOMEONE SAIHARA IT’S MY DAMN TALENT FFS -”

DOES THIS SCREENSHOT SAY ‘SHUICHI LOOKS YUMMY <3′ YOU’RE RUINING THE MOMENT

okay I’m not going to feel right until I write down the new set of comments

Makiiii

my darling assassin T_T

Hope lives on!

Shuichi looks yummy <3

Well said!

Another hope loop?

Hope is contagious!

Two steps forward...

Don’t lose to despair!

Don’t tempt Maki’s fate...

That’s my Maki.

Hope must go on!

Maki, darling...

;_; I’m gonna cry...

Hope vs despair!

one vote for Keebo!

tfw you’re in despair

ALL OF THESE TEARS

Assassiiiiiiiin

I am living for these comments and I would have killed to see the comments for the Chapter 5 trial - hell, the Chapter 4 trial. that’s what let’s plays and YT comments are for I suppose -

tbh I think if that one that keeps lusting after Shuichi comes to help we’re going to need a restraining order

o-oh?!

AAAAAAH

NO DON’T

MAKE ME FIGHT HIM

MY ACTUAL SOUL BRO

is............... Is that -

Clair de Lune playing......?!

#Ryou plays drv3 #Kiibo #Shuichi Saihara #Keebo #Tsumugi Shirogane #Himiko Yumeno #Maki Harukawa #spoilers #drv3 spoilers #K1-b0

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