#danganalysis

[exclamaquest]

PLEASE elaborate on your "Kaito = Makoto in Tsumugi's writing" idea, cuz I was thinking about this exact thing earlier today but I would've said Keebo was the complete-misunderstanding-of-makoto character instead - they both feel like different flavours of Not-Makoto and I wanna know your thought process.

YES thank u for the opportunity to talk about this I've been thinking about it a Lot lately. Like i really think that Kaito was Tsumugi's shitty attempt at a Makoto just like how Maki was a shitty attempt at Kyoko. I've never really Gotten the whole Kiibo is shitty Makoto thing past a few things (his name, sacrificing himself to save everyone else) but once i thought about hey what if training trio is the shitty investigation trio it all made sense.

For me it seems that Kaito and Maki are notmakoto and notkyoko in very similar ways--it's like when someone wants to write the characters for a chatfic or sth but only gets the OUTWARD traits without thinking about WHY those characters have those traits. They're like the originals but very very poor understanding of the characters.

Kaito has all the same outward ingredients as Makoto--optimism, uplifting his friends, trying to do what he can to help, etc--but he doesn't have the inner scaffolding. Makoto does what he does because he has to and because he's going off of a lifetime without a talent.

He's got a totally different worldview than Makoto has. Makoto centers others for the most part: growing up without a talent, he is now surrounded by people he's always been implicitly told are superior to him. He's learning to see them as Just People, but that baked-in perception is apparent in everything he does and it gives him a very important streak of self-esteem stuff to work through. A normal complex, to borrow my good friend Prom's phrasing.

There's a lot more to be said about Makoto's character, but the gist of it is that Kaito, while he's very similar on the surface, has a totally opposite underlying motivation. Kaito is nice (sometimes), but he is in no way kind. He has an inflated self-image and genuinely believes he's a hero despite everything he does being contradictory to that. He's closed-minded, bigoted, and in general refuses to acknowledge any of his own shortcomings. He talks himself up and lifts others up not out of a place of looking at others and asking how he can actually help them, but out of an "I can fix you no matter what" mentality and a huge overestimate of his own abilities. He's very, very self-centered despite what he'd have you think, and so his optimism isn't actually focused on other people, and it only serves to blind himself and others from the reality of the situation they're in.

Makoto's learned to navigate the world in a very specific way that lets him have genuine, more realistic optimism, and that's what lets him actually be the beacon of hope--because, unlike Kaito, he's not trying to be one.

[skopostheorie]

My history in Danganalysis is evidence enough that I think the general approach to broad, philosophical ideas within Danron is impressive and well done. But one exception to this would absolutely be the dichotomy of hope and despair.

Perhaps it is because they want to use the words as much as possible so as to keep the plot memorable for those themes above all else. Hope and despair are used interchangeably with "anything that is good" and "anything that is bad", respectively, rather than that which motivates a person to move forward or see room for growth and that which demotivates, respectively.

Additionally, despair is more often than not equivalated to an extreme state of depression which, while certainly a common side part to despair, is not the same thing; someone can recognise intellectually that there is hope for their lives, the world, and so on, but feel depressed on a physical level.

Ultimately, the crux of the despair in any Killing Game is that any escape requires unconditional, trusting collaboration with one another, against the rules of an enemy who some of those required allies would rather follow to save themselves and no one else. Seeing innocents murdered and young teens under duress tortured to death for their crimes can certainly accelerate despair or even give a sort of tunnel vision on the reality of the world that can trigger despair, but thematically it cannot be considered a meaningful commentary on the matter. The problem is, this nuance is seemingly lost in how it is expressed, with the term "despair" or "hope" following these events utilised like buzzwords and correlated with negative events per se.

It bothers me a bit.

[exclamaquest]

finally put into words the general thesis statement of my Hiyoko Opinions [text if you can't read it: I express multiple times that I am incredibly uncomfortable with even the possibility of any of my classmates expressing attraction to me. Not only that, it is heavily implied that I am in fact significantly younger than my classmates. To ship me with them is both really fucking creepy AND ignoring my point as a deconstruction of the archetype of the 500 year old little girl who is meant for audience consumption that I am incredibly self-aware of my role as. It denies my message that people who are attracted to me/ship me with my classmates are the creepy ones. Just be fucking normal]

[kauntohakushaku]

Everyone is like you need to come back to Danganalysis 😭😭😭😭!!! My brother in Islam I got a rape threat for my Ishimondo essay

This image still drives me nuts it's so funny. No matter what at least this doesn't happen anymore

[exclamaquest]

if you don't mind sharing, i'm interested in your reasoning as to why leosaya would not work out

OKAY SO first off they have completely different core values lmao Leon values new experiences novelty not staying on one thing for long he has zero work ethic whatsoever which would absolutely grate on Sayaka's commitment to her goals & the things she loves and not in an opposites attract way, in a "you are my mortal enemy and i shall curse the ground you walk on" way.

There's also the part of him idolizing Sayaka--he doesn't see her for who she is, he sees her for Sayaka The Effortless Idol, which is an image she works her ass off to maintain. He doesn't think she puts any real effort into what she does, either--he's convinced he can do it just as easily (he cannot) in the same way that he coasts by without practicing because he's just that good at baseball (which would ALSO piss her off).

He says he wants to be an idol, yeah, but he doesn't want anything that comes with it, just the fame and the popularity for something he thinks he wants to do instead of baseball. And Sayaka KNOWS that, and there's no way she WOULDN'T resent him for thinking being an idol is a super easy industry to succeed in.

Sayaka knows firsthand what it takes and the guilt for it eats her up inside every day, and then some asshole fuckboy walks in and decides he's not only gonna soar to the top of the charts, but that he's gonna win her heart while doing it? She's diplomatic and customer-service-friendly, she always is, but i guarantee you inside she's seething.

Leon needs someone who can match his sharp, abrasive parts and his hedonistic nature while keeping him in check, and Sayaka needs someone who will actually see through her and challenge her on that level instead of just being incredibly annoying to be around.

[exclamaquest]

abt your hiyoko analysis (the one abt her family lying abt her age) that unfortunately lines up with some showbiz practices in Japan, bc many consider p*doph*llia to be genre, and they often cater to it. It’s not out of the question at all for her family to market her like a idol manger would, and aim at who they think will get them the most attention.

Yep, it's canon that that's what her fanbase is. It's commented on in her introduction, too--Nagito outright says it and Hajime confirms it. As gross as it is, it makes perfect sense that her family would use her for gain like that, especially considering what she says about her grandmother in later FTEs. IMO she saw the opportunity she had to leave Hiyoko's age ambiguous and ran with it.

It's also shown that her father knew damn well what would happen if her grandmother was allowed control over her, and actively worked to prevent it.

[exclamaquest]

i really enjoy and admire your hiyoko theories and analyses. but i do have a question, what would the saionji family’s motivations for getting hiyoko into hope’s peak so young be? i agree that with their power and her talent they could do it, but why couldn’t they wait? would they have already been lying to the public about her age? (sorry if you’ve talked about this before, i couldn’t find anything on it on your blog.)

I'm glad you like them!! And no you're right i haven't talked about this on my blog before, mainly bc the answer's darker than most stuff I post on here. Bc of that I'm gonna put it under a readmore with a big TW for discussion of canon p/dophilia, but nothing extremely explicit.

As we know, in canon Hiyoko's fans are for the most part creeps who are attracted to her and that her family knows about this and markets her to them for the money and the influence. I believe that a major part of the decision to send her to high school was so they could say she's a high schooler.

That absolves her fans partially of the guilt--they can rationalize it by saying "she's just a young-looking high schooler" (despite that absolutely being awful on its own). It also makes it so they don't ever have to outright lie about her age. They can respond that she's in high school without actually going into detail.

Also, they never would have had to hide her age actively in the first place! We know she was raised by her father but was kidnapped by her grandmother when she was younger. Without her birth being made gigantic news and with her father raising her for the first chunk of her life, it would be extremely easy to introduce her to high society without ever specifying when she was born. Her father accidentally did the work of obscuring that for her.

She's talented enough to perform far above her age level, and was likely homeschooled before then to accommodate the travel needed to perform. HPA would likely be the first time she was in a typical school environment as well--so other schools couldn't be reached out to for confirmation of her age.

Tl;dr they can use her being in high school to further obfuscate her exact age and make her more marketable to her fanbase by implying she just looks younger.

[exclamaquest]

While I do heavily agree that Hiyoko is a subversion of the 500 year old lolli trope, I myself who is undoubtedly close to her age, cannot understand why people consider her an actual child? I respect your opinion of course since you’re perfectly valid in your interpretation of her character, but she overall is just canonically the same age as her classmates! If you want to exclude the anime as evidence I don’t blame you, but in game it’s shows Hiyoko having her growth spurt! Personally that’s a smidgen of evidence pointing towards the fact she’s a high schooler! Also, this isn’t me bursting a blood vessel over this conversation, I just wanted to see if I could argue my case with someone who seems level headed with their own!

so, it's not fully true that she's canonically the same age. there is in fact textual evidence to the contrary!

maki refers to her as a child in utdp (with the caveat "regardless of age", but it strikes a very personal chord with hiyoko, who in response decides to run away instead of waiting for mahiru), multiple people reference the fact that she looks and acts much younger that she really is consistently (including "are you sure she's a high schooler?", which is a line of questioning hajime doesn't bring up for anyone else) unlike when it's brought up only once or twice for the other younger-looking characters, and most damning of all, she slips up and, in a moment of emotion, refers to herself as a child.

this is only a few of the pieces of evidence--there's also her fanbase, and the fact that hajime at no point is attracted to her (like he is to the other girls). in fact, the ending of her island mode (where most people have romance) has her comparing hajime to her father.

there's also the fact that she can't get dressed on her own, which imo very much also points to her being a kid.

and actually, the growth spurt is evidence she's younger in and of itself! going by her entering HPA at 11 or 12, her growth spurt would come at roughly 13 or 14, which is the average time that most afab people have their growth spurts--much more likely than her being an extremely late bloomer and having it at 16-17.

there's a lot of ways she COULD have entered young, too! her family has a LOT of influence and money--it's VERY likely that the school was swayed by that, especially if she displayed an immense talent at a very young age.

and i'd like to remind you as well: nowhere in the hpa manifesto admission requirements does it say age. it simply says the person must currently be attending high school. hiyoko could very well be taking high school level classes!

i'm not trying to force you to see my pov, and ofc yours is valid, but i hope this can be a bit more information as to the evidence in canon that she's much younger than the others!

[exclamaquest]

Do you think hiyoko would have internal misogyny? Like she the young one out of her class and most of the girls in her class are pretty feminine that along with her mindset of trying to be mature and can see it being a issue

i mean yeah she was absolutely brought up with the ideal of the Perfect Demure Elegant Woman impressed onto her as a way of fulfilling the role of the Saionji Heiress without much regard for how Hiyoko is as a person. she's. DEFINITELY very jealous of others who she sees as performing femininity + responsibility better than she is (see: her entire shtick with HATING Sonia and trying to get Hajime to hurt her on her behalf).

which honestly brings up another point--without this toxic ideal of femininity she wouldn't hate Sonia nearly as much. Sonia is another heiress, and she is strong and capable and performing all of her roles pitch-perfectly (in Hiyoko's eyes). she hates Sonia because she can never be Sonia. like. it would honestly be very interesting to have them discuss the ideals they're BOTH living up to and the pressures of being an heiress postgame and feeling like a figurehead (sonia) vs actually being one (hiyoko).

that got away from me sorry but tl;dr yes for fucking sure that's something that HUGELY affects who she is and how she navigates the world! to quote the ever fantastic erin mckeown in their song mirrors break back--

[exclamaquest]

I'm going to say right off the bat that I am not actually too heated about this, I just thought it might be interesting to talk about if you're willing. If this is getting on your nerves just say so and I will never ask you about your Tsumugi take again. After all we are in the end just strangers chatting about a game :) ( I am so sorry to flood your inbox but now I'm committed to this so. Ignore the others if you want to! Also this is old news but I couldn't send for a few days so here I go.)

I would like to point out that Tsumugi, in canon, shares similarities with Hifumi (fiction>reality & fandom active). They were both played off as just weebs, except for Tsumugi's masterminding. Canonically, Hifumi would be as likely to be a gross creepy fan as Tsumugi- but obviously, thats dumb as shit and he deserves better. The thing im having difficulty understanding is why you would disregard canon's nonsense when it concerns Hifumi, but emphasize that aspect in your perception of Tsumugi.

If the masterminding is what villifies her, I could bring up Junko again or point to the ambiguity of the mm role- between V3's convoluted 'none of it was real!' and your clear apathy towards strict canon (which i totally support), I do not see a reason you wouldnt apply similar logic to that you used on the other characters I mentioned to Tsumugi instead of writing her off as a gross fujoshi or whatever. Im not trying to make you like her, but it seems unfair to reduce her to the worst possible traits she could have when you have expanded on and humanized so many other dr characters. (ugh i had to split the last paragraph into 2. im so sorry about that)

response under the cut bc this sucker got LONGGGGG

first off no need to apologize! i love discussion & dialogue and you bring up some good points! it's true i haven't talked about her in a very positive light on my blog, and that i've reduced her publicly. i HAVE done a lot of thinking about her and i agree that like.. i haven't expressed it on my blog as much as i have in private GKDSKGDS and mainly that's because like...i just don't think she's interesting. yes, she's complicated like any other dr character but she just...doesn't interest me. like, hifumi interests me because of the fanon him vs the canon him and how they differ rather strikingly.

however for tsumugi like...i can't really see a disconnect other than some people making her Only Evil and Only Ever Evil when in reality she's...very much being hurt by danganronpa too and she doesn't really grasp the full consequences of her own actions bc of it being normalized etc in the world she grew up in + her fandom-y lens, and you're right, it's a LOT like how Hifumi sees things through his lens of his special interest but also. he had moments where you saw through that shit to his genuine self. tsumugi...doesn't get that.

which i understand is partially because of her whole ough im so plain schtick but also like. they do manage to make some background characters interesting! like rantaro! you don't learn a lot about him and he dies really quickly but he's still compelling and you WANT to learn more about him. tsumugi is just...painfully uninteresting.

and honestly? i think she was a shit mastermind choice. again i realize im a hypocrite coming from a standpoint of liking junko, but i really dont think she makes a good mastermind. which i know is part of the point of her being the mastermind in the first place, but much like a LOT of v3's overarching themes, it falls flat. it really feels there's no real compelling reason for her to enact this other than she likes danganronpa etc etc etc and that she's got Fandom Brainrot (like a lot of the fans). idk.

and on the junko point--even without me changing her for personal interest, junko was ALREADY an interesting character. That foundation is necessary. If i find tsumugi boring, i cant ever expand upon her because it will always be boring to me, yknow?

and like again like...i DO try to see her as a fleshed out human--and i have tried to flesh her out. she's just...still uninteresting to me. and im sorry if it seemed like i hadnt, i just dont really tend to talk in depth about the characters that i find uninteresting

to sum it up sorry if my jokes seemed like my genuine interpretation of her character /gen, i have thought about her at length and i really just kinda don't like her for a whole lot of reasons but also me being petty GKDSKGDS i do appreciate the essay tho it's given me some stuff 2 think about & feel free 2 talk to me at any time i love writing shit like this even when it takes an assload of time.

[exclamaquest]

Since you don’t know d3 well I want to tell you that Kokichi is pretty much a hybrid of hiyoko and maybe nagito.....

It make you think that Kokichi and hiyoko are similar but people like Kokichi more...... :/

gonna have to disagree with you on this one chief after consultation with my ndrv3 Enjoyer friends kokichi is far more mature than hiyoko ever was he's got the emotional maturity he just uses it in not the best ways whereas hiyoko acts like y'know a 12 year old

also hiyoko is incredibly genuine she says what she thinks even (especially) when it's a terrible idea whereas everything kokichi says is carefully calculated and filtered

kokichi is an older teen playing 4d chess and hiyoko is a 12 year old eating the pieces

[skopostheorie]

Something has possessed me to write a Danganalysis again let's see where this goes

[skopostheorie]

Another week, another Danganalysis! This one's Saionji, a big favourite of mine.

[skopostheorie]

I miss being a Danganalysis account and getting rape threats for writing about Ishimondo

[skopostheorie]

i hope i dont come off as annoying, do you have any of your old danganronpa analysis on you? Im sorry if this is a bother, i just really loveee reading more into character depth and about how some people view them

Not a bother at all!! I looooove attention 💖💖💖💖💖 astaghfirullah etc.

Anyways, you can find em all at ishimondoaustralia.carrd.co :^] My tag #danronposting on here also has a few. And finally, the Archive so to speak is my Danganalysis account, @ishimondo.com.au!

[skopostheorie]

Regarding ur post about using she pronouns for fujisaki... are u talking abt how people talk about the fact that ppl ignore the masculinity narrative in favour of making chihiro trans or smth else?? Mostly asking bc I have a habit of misreading things like a dumbass lol :[ thank you for your time

i see fujisaki as a trans woman!!! lemme just make that clear first!!! this will never change!! wallahi!

nah nah what i MEANT is like. say someone (e.g. me) makes a post. and they divide it into boys and girls. and fujisaki is on the girls side. and all evidence shows that that someone has played the game in its entirety and knows what happens (again e.g. me since im literally a danganalysis acct). and fujisaki is on the girls side still. and some dumbass, KNOWING what they’re doing, is just like.... “you mean he :3″ or something wrt fujisaki.

it’s so fucking annoyign because you have to literally be under a rock to not understand why someone would still see fujisaki as a girl despite whatever canon wants you to believe. like its so . feigning ignorance to mock sm1 like think for two minutes please??? as to why someone would choose to ignore canon statements and see fujisaki as a woman??? idk how to word it it’s just like. get a life damn.