#I hope I was coherent I think I mightve just been gushing for a bit

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

OKAY OKAY, I've been reading your Ch4 text posts, and I was gonna just comment, but it got so long, and I was ITCHING to interact so-

Honestly, I think the big reason Ch4 is underappreciated is because of just how divisive Ch4 is as a WHOLE.

Ch5 and Ch6 in a lot of ways are a lot more straight forward!! Especially in characterization. It could (and frequently is) argued what Kaito and Kokichi's motivations are in Ch5, and how they are meant to be interpreted- but it's super open-ended and people can really easily view it the way THEY want to. Kaito and Kokichi can so easily fall into what the viewer WANTS them to be.

Ch4, on the other hand, fundamentally challenges how the characters view each other and, more importantly, how the AUDIENCE sees the characters. For example if you have hated Kokichi since the start, its easy to write him off in ch5 and say he deserved it, but in ch4 you have to confront the fact that Miu was planning to take him out, and that he was SCARED. I've seen people argue the fact that Kokichi SHOULDN'T have been scared as a way to justify how they feel about him and Ch4.

And of course the major Ch4 elephant in the room: A lot of people have to grapple with (or chose to ignore) the real tragedy Gonta faced, because it would mean fully embracing how complicated he is as a character. A lot of people wanted a straightforward: perfect wholesome character was manipulated by an evil villain to kill and faced the consequences, but that's just not what happened. Gonta is a genuinely kind soul and was placed between a rock and a hard place, and whether or not Kokichi had TOLD him... would have been deeply affected by losing another friend, one he thought HE was close with. He lost his memory, not because he was stupid, but because he didn't have the same DOMINANT HAND as everyone else and got his wires mixed up. There's so much to be said about Gonta in chapter 4 but all of it involves a mental confrontation with the fact that he's a human being with free will, who can make both informed decisions and mistakes.

I keep using the word "confront," because that really is what chapter 4 is. Confrontational. Kaito embodies someone who can't handle that confrontation, Shuichi has to cope with the truth and confronting others WITH that truth (including a perpetrator that forgot what he did-), Kokichi has to confront the horrors of the outside world alongside the fact that someone he trusted and worked alongside is planning to kill him, he has to confront the fact that Gonta lost his memory and the fact everyone thinks that Kokichi is just trying to frame his friend, and Gonta has to confront so much of that alongside Kokichi as well as what he, himself did. Something he IS willing to take responsibility for because he recognizes his OWN agency.

(Repeating my thesis like this is a report -) Chapter 4 is incredibly hard to swallow and harder to digest, and because of that gets overshadowed by the following chapters that have a lot more ambiguity and room to pack in as much interpretation as the audience can imagine. There's no fun in wondering how Miu's last moments played out, unlike wondering what REALLY happened in the hangar. Interpretations can be played around with a LOT when it comes to pregame characters, but it's a lot less fun to place blame in a situation full of people who were only trying to defend themselves. To fully appreciate Chapter 4 you have to be open minded to the fact that characters can do "bad" things and it doesn't make them bad people, and that situations can be deeply and blatantly unfair to those you love and those you hate alike.

It's a really complicated chapter, I see you in being obsessed with it, thank you for coming to my Ted talk lol.

(I didnt even know you could send asks this long holy hell!!)

I can see that ch5 and ch6 have a long more areas of wiggle room and ambiguity to play around in. It's no surprise hangar fics are so common. I guess that makes a good deal of sense- the interest in ch4 is less in "What happened that we didnt see" and more the implications of what concretely happened on the characters and their motivations/inner thoughts for doing what they did.

An image I have in my head extremely vividly of trial 4 is Kaito, Shuichi, and Kokichi arguing with eachother (metaphorically with truth bullets- Ideals vs Truth vs Lies (Ive been struggling to think of an art composition along this theme since I finished the damn chapter a year ago ghdsjkf)) with Gonta in the centre in the crossfire. It is a BRUTAL chapter for all of these characters. But within that there is so much to dig into. What was going through Kaito's head as it became increasingly clear Gonta could not be innocent? How did Shuichi deal with his number one support lashing out and rejecting him like he did? What the genuine fuck was going through Kokichi's head?

I'm going to be fully honest here (so I apologize if this is a bit blunt or anything I am trying my best), but I REALLY struggle to grapple with Kokichi's role in ch4 wrt gonta in any type of sympathetic light. With Miu and Kokichi I see the complexity in its entirety. It's heartbreaking to think that those two were friends and Miu chose to target him in her desperation, and Kokichi had to deal with the fact that she was trying to kill him AND with whatever he saw from the truth of the outside world. But when it comes to Gonta.. I almost feel like I can't talk about it objectively. Even just thinking about the trial from that perspective makes my stomach turn in knots. But there is an amount of fun in that yknow?? I cannot tell you how many hours I've spent trying to unravel all that, especially before I played ch5 5 months after I finished trial 4.

The fun and the interest in trial 4 is that its so complex. There's no one complete villain and there's no one true hero, despite what a superficial look at the chapter might tell you (especially pre ch5). Putting these characters in situations where they're so outside of what their standard role in v3 had been so far is so entertaining to me.

Miu asking Kokichi not to struggle as she betrays him (what caused her desperation to get to this point?). Kokichi pushing past being just mischievous and perhaps insensitive to being downright cruel (and what caused the change in his behaviour). Kaito's righteous anger and rejection of Shuichi, his desperation to defend Gonta. (fun fact- they used a sprite for Kaito here that is only used twice in the game AFAIR, once when Gonta is proved without a shadow of a doubt to be guilty, again when he saw the truth of the outside world. It's one of my favourite Kaito sprites). Shuichi having to push through the trial with his only support being Kokichi (which he does not necessarily want) and Kiibo with everyone else against him. The subversion of what Gonta had been saying about himself, and what his classmates had been implying about him the entire time, that he is not stupid, and they've all been brushing him aside because of their own preconceptions, hurting him in the process. It drives me insane. It's so good.

You're so so right, and thank you for this ask. This is the kind of analysis of ch4 that I ADORE.