Throwing together all of my Fuuta thoughts/theories into one post now that Backdraft has been out for a couple days and I’ve watched it probably no less than 800 times by now.
Before I hop into the murder, I want to point out a few things about Fuuta’s personality that are important to understand. The first is about his family life. He implies that his mother left him and his father, saying that he doesn’t remember much about his mother since his parents divorced. He then goes on to insult his father, calling him a “weak, pathetic fogey”. He also seems to be pretty lonely in real life, as he’s always shown alone in Bring It On.
Both this loneliness and his dislike of showing weakness drives what I believe to be his desire to have a bold outward persona— an idealized self that is a brave leader who enacts justice and defends the weak. In both Bring It On and Backdraft, we see this concept of Fuuta having two senses of self.
In Backdraft, after Fuuta reflects on his guilty vote, he sees another, more confident version of himself approaching his victim, Killcheroy.
Another thing to consider is that in Bring It On, the knight version of Fuuta has certain physical characteristics changed. In real life, Fuuta is really short (165 cm/5’4), wears baggy clothes, and covers most of his face with a mask. However, his knight version is clearly just as tall, if not taller, than his peers, wears tight-fitting armor, and his face is completely unobstructed.
Fuuta wants us to believe that he’s fearless, that he jumps into these situations with nothing but courage in his heart and at the end of the day, he’s a hero. But in reality, he's a timid, cowardly person and he knows it.
In Backdraft, we see that he has trouble keeping up his "brave defender of justice" persona, with his lip quivering before eventually grinning.
I think that this persona can help explain the order of the prisoners that we see in Backdraft. It seems to be that the closer the prisoner is to Fuuta, the higher his opinion is of them, or perhaps it signifies how comfortable he is with them.
It makes sense that Haruka is right next to Fuuta, as Fuuta has said from the beginning that he feels he needs to look out for Haruka since Haruka is younger. If we look at who the last prisoners are, Kotoko is at the end (for obvious reasons), but Kazui is even further past Kotoko.
It may seem odd that the man who stopped the woman from nearly murdering Fuuta would be last on the list, but given how much Fuuta hates being perceived as weak, I think that he just genuinely feels ashamed around Kazui. It’s nothing against Kazui specifically, but all of a sudden Fuuta has become the very person he hates— “weak and pathetic”. Kazui has seen him in his most vulnerable state, and that’s just something that Fuuta cannot stand.
Speaking of this lineup, I think it’s also interesting that Muu is so close to him, especially considering that there haven’t been many Muu/Fuuta interactions in Milgram so far. That being said, Muu was a victim of extreme bullying, and Fuuta views himself as a defender of justice, so it’s reasonable to assume that Muu is someone Fuuta sympathizes with.
This leads me to the million dollar question that everyone is dying to know. What exactly did Killcheroy do?
I made a post about this recently, but tldr; I think Killcheroy was posting pictures of someone without their permission with the intent of bullying/harassing them. Killcheroy keeps bringing up these loopholes as to why it’s okay for her to post the photo, but the fact that she needs to bring up these loopholes means that this picture really shouldn’t be on the internet in the first place, and she knows it.
Fuuta is also very harsh towards Killcheroy, saying that she’s not going to get off easy just because she’s a middle school student. When you consider that the last person Fuuta went after was a sexual harasser, it makes me think that Killcheroy is engaging in some really bad behavior, and bullying seems like just the thing that would provoke such a strong response from Fuuta.
This is also where Fuuta starts really fucking up.
I believe that Fuuta decided to do the classic “eye for an eye” route, and posted a picture of the girl’s house online. We see in Bring It On that he says it was easy to figure out where she lives, and in Undercover, we see him taking a photo of a house.
In Backdraft as well, when he spray paints over the cartoon of Killcheroy, he leaves her face visible for everyone to see. I think this signifies him doxxing her in a way that he hasn’t done before with other people he’s gone after in the past.
Killcheroy leaned pretty heavily on the “it’s just a picture!” excuse, so I think that’s probably how Fuuta justified posting the picture of her house.
It’s also worth noting that the amount of paint Fuuta used for Killcheroy in Backdraft is significantly less than the amount of paint he used for the other people, which means that Fuuta may have… gone easy on Killcheroy? I really think he just wanted her to see what it felt like when people post personal pictures without consent, but didn’t think anything much would come from it, which is why he immediately walks away without looking back, as he did with the other paintings.
What he didn’t expect was the amount of people who would join in.
This is another reason I think Killcheroy was a bully. Bullying is one of the worst things that a child can do, and people always love when a bully gets what’s coming to them. It would explain why the internet descended so quickly onto Killcheroy and vilified her. As soon as we see people ganging on Killcheroy, we immediately see Fuuta becoming scared of what he’s done.
Now everyone is harassing this young girl who did something bad, but she didn’t deserve to get this much hate from so many strangers. He begins questioning his actions, as we can see with the lyrics changing from “burn, burn!” to “burn, burn?”
Unfortunately for Fuuta, things are about to get much worse.
We see Killcheroy choking before eventually crumbling away, signifying her death. However, I don’t think that she took her own life. The main reason I believe this is because when we see Fuuta’s murder reenacted with Es, Es’ shoes are still on, implying that Killcheroy did not commit suicide (unlike Mahiru’s and Kazui’s victims, both of whom have Es’ shoes removed during the reenactment).
What I think happened instead is that someone physically went to Killcheroy’s house, and set it ablaze, either intentionally or accidentally. We have a lot of fire/burning symbolism all throughout Fuuta’s trials that just hasn’t been accounted for yet, and if Killcheroy didn’t kill herself, then her dying in a house fire makes the most sense.
One more thing I want to touch on is how Fuuta views his own involvement in Killcheroy’s death. While he hasn’t completely come around to the idea that he caused it, he is certainly less adamant than he was in the first trial. On the website for his S2 voice lines, he actually says “I’m not guilty… I think.”
This is a stark contrast to his S1 voice lines where he says
“Murderer? That’s not my fault. That’s not me. I didn’t kill someone. Right? Isn’t that right?”
This question to Es is repeated in his first voice drama:
“That’s stupid. I haven’t killed anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. … I didn’t. I … didn’t, right?”
Instead of looking to Es to validate his “innocence”, as he was in the first trial, Fuuta is now tackling his denial in a way we never have seen him do before. It’s no longer about Es viewing Fuuta as guilty or not. It’s Fuuta himself openly challening his view that he’s innocent. It’s a small step, but it is a step in the right direction.
He also says in the S2 voice lines: “What I did could have had absolutely nothing to do with that person’s death - you don’t know!”
Again, this isn’t a complete admission of guilt, but by saying “could have”, it implies that he’s aware there is a chance that his actions led to someone’s death, and he no longer is saying it’s impossible that he’s killed someone.
Another thing I find interesting is the “moribound” line in Backdraft. In the Chinese translation, it actually was translated to something along the lines of “I was involved in death”, with the “I” part explicitly stated. If this translation is accurate, then this would mark the first time Fuuta admits he’s involved with Killcheroy’s death, even though he still is denying any fault in it.
I really hope Fuuta is voted to be forgiven overall. He did something really stupid, but it wasn’t malicious. He started showing fear and guilt the moment that people started piling on Killcheroy, proving that he didn’t just feel bad once he learned someone died. Even the official Milgram website says that he’s a timid but good person. I still think he deserved the first unforgivable vote, but he’s ultimately still a salvageable person.
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