#Nankidai is a masterful writer fr

[five-crows-in-a-trenchcoat]

I think that despite the amount we meme the unforgettable opening scene of yttd, what with the iconic ‘do you know what a majority vote is?’ that we never really talk about the true purpose of it.

We see that scene before we know ANYTHING about the other characters, even sara and joe. And right at the end of course we hear the gunshot and see shin’s face after the talk with shadsou. We don’t know the context of it yet, but as the player we IMMEDIATELY know that this man cannot be trusted. Or even that it was us that he shot in some type of vision. And we know the stakes are already high because someone already died seconds ago. We don’t know then that it’s actually from his perspective and not ours.

So when we as the viewer see him all sweet and friendly the first assumption is ‘this is a facade, and soon enough he’ll reveal his true colours as the antagonist. If I’m not careful, he might shoot me like he shot me at the start.’ Sara doesn’t know this, but we as the player do. So we’re satisfied when we’re proven right even if it irks us. And even if we know that what we saw at the start was shin’s first trial, the cgs at the start of the chapters, like gin strapped to the wheel at the beginning of 2-1, keeps us guessing of whether that might actually happen or not.

What we don’t really talk about is that the opening scene also works in reverse. And it’s EXACTLY the way shin views sara, down to a T. He sees simulations of her killing him, and before he’s even met her for the first time he’s thinking that this girl cannot be trusted. And when he meets her and she’s friendly his first assumption is ‘this is a facade, and soon enough she’ll reveal she’ll true colours as the villain. If I’m not careful she might stab me like she stabbed me in the simulations.’ Even the nightmare we see from shin at the start of 2-2 parallels that questioning of ‘Is that stabbing going to happen?’ And from the cgs we got from Nankidai, it just might.

And even when we already know shin sees sara as the villain in the logic route, as bad as even midori, I don’t think he’s going to be as satisfied.