#...unless it reset while i wasn't looking which could be an explanation

[oumakokichi]

After reading so much of ur metas about how Ouma isn't evil and is very caring and empathic, I forgot something. Ouma sees the killing game as a, well game right? But I'm not sure why or if that's really true. If anything, due to his hatred against killing, wouldn't he be the one most against seeing the killing game as an actual game? And wasn't it stated that Ouma was the first character to see the killing game as an actual game? Idk why this but that feels important.. or maybe it's not?

This is a really good point to bring up anon, and a greatquestion! If it seems like Ouma’s stance as a whole on the killing game andgames in general is a bit contradictory, it’s because… well, it is!

Ouma is a pretty contradictory character overall. Ratherthan being solely a “good person” or a “bad person,” he’s a well-intentionedperson aiming to end the killing game but willing to do extremely morallyquestionable things in order to do so. He claims he “hates jokes and lies” onseveral occasions, yet at the same time embraces them and in fact needs “gentle lies” in order to cope withthe harshness of reality. Considering that almost the entirety of his design ispresented in “blacks” and “whites,” it’s highly ironic that he himself as acharacter is largely morally grey.

He does view the killing game as a game to be played andwon. Kodaka also did confirm that he’s the first character in the series to doso. And yet, it’s also true that he resents the suffering and killing he andhis classmates are subjected to, and hates the audience and the ringleader bothfor getting off to it all. This discrepancy is something that’s alluded to insome of the earlier chapters, and is shown the most prominently in Chapters 4and 5, with his whole “I’m the big evil ringleader” speech.

A large part of it boils down to the rift between the façadeOuma wears in front of his classmates, and his true feelings and intentionsabout things. In-game, there’s rarely a moment we see him with his façade loweredentirely. Even when he does put his act on hold for a few moments, or let a fewglimpses show of what he’s thinking, it’s largely because he knows the othercharacters will just think he’s lying anyway (and something Kodaka knew theplayers would think, too).

That façade is something Ouma wears very deliberately, likea mask, in order to pursue his objectives. A lot of his dialogue even early onheavily implies that he’s not having nearly as much fun as he pretends to,despite claiming to enjoy the killing game so much. One of the NISAlocalization lines that I really enjoyed from Chapter 1 so far was the linewhere he advises Saihara to just “hit the reset button on his feelings” inorder to be “happy and cheerful” again. The line stood out to me quite a lotconsidering Chapter 5 already all but confirms Ouma was pretty much beating hisreal feelings down with a stick while pretending to enjoy himself immensely thewhole time.

There’s also his speech in Chapter 2, when Saihara asks himwhy he had Gonta capture them all and bring them to his lab. He goes on a longrant about how games should “only be played in hard mode,” and how he “doesn’tuse the run-away option ever in an RPG.” He states pretty much word for wordthat he doesn’t just want to make it through the killing game, he wants to completelyovercome it and win (I think the localization went with “crush it,” which isalso pretty good).

He also drops quite a few other hints in this speech, includingthe fact that “death games like this are impossible to clear unless you makeyourself get excited about them.” He also says that he figured there was “nopoint in complaining,” so he decided to “look on the bright side and have funwith it.” This pretty much summarizes a lot of his mindset pre-Chapter 4, in myopinion. He very decidedly wanted to put an end to the killing game pretty muchfrom the start—and he also decided to try tackling it as a game in order topsych himself up about it.

The flashback scenes Momota provides in the Chapter 5post-trial also confirm that Ouma’s decision to view the whole situation as agame was little more than a coping mechanism in order for him to continuemaking progress. He directly states that it was “a lie he had to tell himself,or else he couldn’t have survived.”

Ndrv3 deals heavily with the idea of “lies” that eventually “become”reality as long as everyone believes they’re true. As a result, I think Ouma’s “lie”to himself was at least half-parts true. While he did hate killing andsuffering, and while he did want the killing game to end, I think theredefinitely was a part of him that enjoyed the hurdles and challenges of thekilling game from a game theory perspective.

His ability to maneuver strategically and treat things as agame is one reason I’m still fairly convinced his real talent might besomething along the lines of SHSL Chessmaster, or some variation anyway.Considering his design (the scarf especially), his name (made up of thecharacters for “King” and “Horse”), the emphasis Kodaka put on him as someonewho thinks of things in terms of “games,” and the fact that his ability to readand guess his classmates’ behaviors and dialogue reads very similarly toguessing an opponent’s move in a game, all signs point to the fact that he did,to some degree, think of things in very logical, practical terms. Again, thisis an extremely contradictory point to his very empathetic side, and is part ofwhat makes him all the more complex as a character.

In the Chapter 2 trial, Ouma has yet another speech that’spretty enlightening about his behavior, particularly when it comes to hisparanoia and way of viewing the killing game. He states that “in order toexpose a liar, you have to corner them psychologically”—it’s clear to see thenthat he definitely was playing the game by trying to read his opponents’ movesand putting himself in their shoes. This kind of chessboard thinking is yetanother common part of his game theory mindset; it’s exactly what he does lateron, trying to expose the ringleader by pretending to be the ringleader and forcing them to make a mistake with theirlies.

By Chapter 4, after forcing Miu and Gonta to die in order toavoid dying himself (and in order to avoid everyone else getting killed in theclass trial), I do think Ouma was extremely disgusted with that part ofhimself, however. What had seemed like a dangerous but maneuverable game forthe first few chapters became all-around horrible for everyone involved when hewas forced to stain his hands. Knowing that he and DICE were morally againstkilling makes the fact that he saw no other recourse in Chapter 4 other than tosacrifice two lives all the more striking—particularly when he has anopportunity to do the same exact thing to Momota and Maki both in Chapter 5 butopts to die willingly instead, unable to bring himself to make those kinds ofsacrifices a second time.

Ouma’s villain speech in the Chapter 4 post-trial reads withquite a lot of self-loathing on a reread. It’s hard not to look at his lineabout how he’s “someone who enjoys watching people suffer for no reason” andsee that he’s drawing more than a few similarities with himself and the killinggame audience that he hates so much. In forcing himself to act the part of thevillain, he was very well aware by that point that he had crossed too manylines to be uncrossed, and felt, in his opinion at least, that he was no betterthan the ringleader that he was trying to stop.

To sum it all up, he’s a huge mess of walking contradictionsfrom start to finish. He’s both shrewd and clumsy, analytical and childish,self-sacrificing and annoyingly bratty and self-serving. It’s very true that hedoes view the killing game through the lens of a much bigger game overall,which is one of the many things that helps him catch on to the fact that it’sall supposed to be a show for an audience to view much, much earlier thananyone else. He’s definitely able to think of even his classmates in terms of “pawns”or “sacrifices” to be made, as Chapter 4 shows—but it’s just as true that hedeeply resented this part of himself whenever those sacrifices grew too great,and that much of his talk about “enjoying” the game was a lie to help movehimself forward.

I hope this helps explain things a bit more. Thank you forasking, anon! This was a really great question that I wanted to provide alengthier explanation for, so I’m glad if I could help. Thanks for stopping by!