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genocider-syo-is-still-my-queen · 5 years

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Danganronpa 1: Pregame au

Basically: What if the DR1 cast were fans of the Danganronpa series, and auditioned themselves? What would their old lives have been like?

Warnings: Child abuse, sexual harassment, suicide and other sensitive topics.

Makoto - just an average boy... there's nothing special about him, not at all... in fact, no one would even notice he was gone if he ended up being dying in Danganronpa. So why not go for it? There's no hope for him doing anything impressive in the real world, so maybe he can make an impact in Danganronpa. Even if it's only small. (basically still average but less optimism)

Sayaka - She'd always watched Danganronpa (her parents were busy working and just left the TV on to keep her busy) , and wished she could be like them, like the wonderful detectives that solve everything! She was a quiet girl, and kept to herself, but reckoned she could make it if they just gave her a shot. Being the protagonist and being able to get through any trial (figuratively and literally) would be a dream come true! But waiting outside the audition room, she got a little nervous and fidgety. But she had always found that singing to herself could calm her down. So she did that a little, and managed to forget all her fears. A couple of staff were staring though... was it really that bad?

Leon - never knew what he wanted to do with life. His grades were alright, but he didn't really have any jobs that related to that (especially not a lawyer). He could run relatively fast, but didn't want to spend masses of time training. He could play some guitar, but didn't want to start a band or do anything with that. All around, people were pressuring him to make decisions "You need to do this, you're so good at it!" but he didn't have any real passions... So he choose the easy way out. Danganronpa would make the decision for him.

Chihiro - never really cared what others thought of him. Sometimes he liked wearing cute dresses, sometimes he wanted to wear more masculine clothing. But he'd never doubted that he was happy with himself. Even if other people looked in mixed disgust, he brushed it all aside cause he knew he was awesome. And hey, he did have some friends! But one of these friends wasn't doing too well, and was going to join Danganronpa as an escape. Chihiro tried to convice them it was a bad idea, but they wouldn't back down. So Chihiro decided that they would audition too, so they could try to protect them a little. (it's up to interpretation who the friend is)

Mondo - always overshadowed by his older brother. He was generally a quiet kid, but had some problems with his temper when he got mad. He didn’t like it, but he often got into trouble, and no one really liked him... And he was going to be expelled if he kept this up. And his parents always seemed so disappointed, even if they never said anything... So he decided to audition for Danganronpa.

Ishimaru - was always a bit of a loner. He found social interaction hard, as he didn't always grasp when people were joking or not. And apparently, he often sounded like he was being sarcastic, even though that was never his intention. His father died when he was young, and his mother moved with his grandfather. The grandfather would often jokingly talk about how Ishimaru needed to do better in class (even though he was averaging 96%). Grandpa Ishi didn't do this with any malicious intentions, but the boy took it to heart, and tried studying harder and harder.

Eventually, the stress got too much, and he needed to take a real break. Around this time, there were commercials saying "apply now for Danganronpa: THH!" (they always gave initials but never what they stood for, build the suspense you know?). And Mamma Ishi said "Look at that, you're just the right age!" She was joking of course, she would never want her son to go through something like that. But Ishimaru was never the best as recognising what people really meant...

Hifumi - was a special case. He had been part of the online Danganronpa community for years (he was possibly too young when he got into it, but hey, the internet you know?). He was also a pretty popular fanfic writer, and had written several successful fangans. Team Danganronpa noticed this, and knew he was just about the right age now. So they contacted him directly, and made him an offer: he should join Danganronpa... as himself! Without any brainwashing to give a new personality or talent. Of course, if he ever told anyone the truth about the killing game, he'd be killed instantly. And in exchange, all of his works would legally belong to Team Danganronpa (who could capitalise off of them however they saw fit. This lead to the first magical girl spinoff, based on one of his earlier works. Also they made a couple of animated mini-series based on his fangans. They made tons)

Hifumi accepted.

Celestia - never had anything. She never had a family, she never had a home, she barely had an education. All she wanted was to have a better life. And after all she’d been through, she deserved to have it all! But there was no way to get it realistically. So she auditioned for Danganronpa. If only for a short while, she’d have the happiness she’d been craving, and the lifestyle to go with it.

Sakura Oogami had always been tall for her age. And she was often insecure about it. She also enjoyed sports, which lead to her becoming a little muscly as well - which she had always thought was unsightly for a girl. At 12 years old she was 5'10, and she soon found out why. She had a rare genetic mutation, that prevented her body from stopping her growth. But of course, this had some side effects - she wasn't going to live until 18. Sakura was understandably unhappy, but decided to do something with her life until she inevitably died. She decided to keep up the training, and started to love her muscles. She tried her best to be a good example, and do good deeds...

But then she had an idea. In her youth, she had never really had tall muscly female role models. Or if they existed - they were one dimensional 'girls who learnt to fight because they have 4 brothers' (what strong female characters). There were also the tall girls in romcoms who guys were intimidated by. Girls needed more than that... so she would be the role model! At 16, and 6'3, Sakura auditioned for Danganronpa, not caring if she survived the game or not. All she wanted... was for people to look at her and say "Wow, I wish I could be like her"

Kyoko - tried her best. After a divorce in her youth, she didn't see her father much (as her mother's family was much better off, and fought hard for custody). But she loved both her parents a lot, and always wanted to impress them. Her father seemed pleased whatever she did, and her mother always told her she was proud. Her mother's family were very involved in her life, and seemed to question everything her mother did. It was only because they wanted the best for her of course! Remember what we said about Jin? And you went and married him anyway! Look how that turned out!

As she grew older - maybe 10 years old? - Kyoko saw her extended family in a harsher light. If they never had anything nice to say, why say it? She tried to stand up for her mother, but was laughed away, and her mother was criticised for not teaching her respect for her elders. But she was spending more weekends with her father now, and her parents seemed to be getting on better than before. Not good enough that they'd try again (yet), but it was better than nothing. And for the first time in years, Kyoko was able to spend time with both parents.

Unfortunately when she was 15, Kyoko's dad was given a new job... in a different country. And he promised he would visit, those times seemed few and far between. And during one of these times... her mother killed herself. And it seemed that she had been the one shielding Kyoko all these years. Without her, all the family's expectations were placed on Kyoko, pressuring her to do things she didn't enjoy. And it had been months since she'd last heard from her father... maybe he'd forgotten about her (her family wouldn't let his letters go through)

So she signed up for Danganronpa to get away. But as fate would have it, her father visited the day she was taken away for the game. He desperately pleaded to be let in. Heck, he'd even go through the game to save his daughter! And in a way, his wish was granted. Kyoko was intended to die in chapter 5, but with a connection to an extra like this? She could survive... plus, they had been looking for a headmaster.

Byakuya - was unsatisfied with his life. His father gave him gifts, but no love. All the toys he could want! But he was too busy to celebrate Christmas together. A great TV! But never a nice meal out. Whatever he wanted, except time together. His mother had died young, and Byakuya grew up lonely. But he understood, his father was a busy man after all. His father had plenty of expectations, and Byakuya tried to live up to them. His father never smiled at him, but he was always told "You're doing well boy." and that was enough. It was his father's way of showing affection... wasn't it?

He got though life, and he did a good job of it too. He was all set up to go to the most prestigious college, and go on to take over the company... but when he though about that future... he didn't enjoy the thought of it. He only saw himself growing up exactly like his father... and he hated the thought. Now Byakuya was going through that rebellious phase. And he wanted to do something new. Something his father would never approve of... Danganronpa. He was going to reinvent his image. When people thought Togami, they wouldn't think about the finance company, they'd remember the double murderer. And maybe his father could find someone else to take over.

Aoi - wasn't happy with her body. As long as she could remember, people had made comments about how attractive she was, and how they couldn't believe how young she was, she was so mature for her age (in personality, of course)! She loved donuts, but always got comments about she shouldn't eat so much, she'd get fat. She always felt judged for her interests. "You like Danganronpa? Name the favourite colour of the first person killed in the third chapter of Danganronpa 12: Failure and Puhuhu." (which is pretty hard, cause the murder was incredibly complicated and 5 people ended up dying, but not in the order they were found (one of who killed another after their own death)). But at least on the internet, there were people who didn't treat her like that. Until she worked up the courage to post a selfie of her cosplay.

She ended up auditioning for Danganronpa, if only to say "Do I know Danganronpa? I was in it fucker." one day. But she had one request if she got in - she didn't want to wear a mini-skirt.

Hagakure - was a bum. A complete and utter waste to society. He had been held back too many times. He didn't want it to be like this, but he could just never retain information the way other people could. He tried every studying technique, every book that said "NEVER STRUGGLE IN SCHOOL AGAIN IN 5 EASY STEPS!" but it didn't work. He tried his best, but he could never do it. And he hated it. He wanted to get a good job, to make his mama proud, but he could never do it, because he was just too stupid! He was a little too old to enrol in his school (and he made the staff look bad at official inspections), so he was officially hired as a janitor and was allowed to attend classes. (But hey, seeing as he was a student, they could technically pay him less than minimum wage. They wouldn't pay the student council now, would they?)

Hagakure wanted more. He couldn't do another year of trying and failing. He couldn't take the looks his younger, better classmates gave him. He couldn't. And there was no age limit for Danganronpa... you only needed to be in high school - which he was. It was worth a shot, if only to rid the world of his utter uselessness.

Toko - couldn't go on. Her mother and father hated her. Everyone hated her. She couldn't do anything right. She took the first chance to audition, and in the process she ended up spilling her entire life story. "Ah, I'm so sorry, I bet you're not at all interested in someone like me, I'll just leave now and save you the pain." But Team Danganronpa were interested (and hey, this saved them writing their own backstory! Just change that father to another mother (they're not lesbians, it's just very convoluted) and you're ready to go!).

Toko often found herself with blank spaces in her memory. The first was when she was locked in a cupboard for an entire day, but it didn't feel that long. She assumed she just passed out from not eating enough. But that wasn't quite true. Due to her trauma, she'd developed a severe case of DID (which went undiagnosed for years). This second personality was not a serial killer, was not a psychopath, was not objectively evil, and was not [insert negative DID stereotype here]

Team Danganronpa took one look at the potential of a 'split personality' character and simultaneously thought "It's free real estate"

Mukuro and Junko - They were twins of course, and had been kicked out onto the streets. It was them against the world. But they always stayed together. They were all the other had. While Mukuro became saddened by the world, Junko became angry. But they couldn't give up. Mukuro tried to make friends, to find a small jobs she could do - even if i meant she could only buy McDonalds for the two of them every day or so. Junko didn't try as much. Sure, she did some things when she could, but she wasn't going to give more back to the world than she had to. She was mostly dependant on Mukuro still.

Mukuro wanted to create a new life. She found a job where the store manager was willing to turn a blind eye and let them stay in a small backroom. But Junko wasn't so happy. Whilst the manager was willing to let them stay for seemingly nothing, he was awfully pushy towards her. She smiled back, doing as little as she could without making him angry. She didn't want to be kicked out again.

But she ran out of patience when the manager made a request that was too much. "That room's awfully cramped for the two of you. Why don't you spend the night at my place tonight? You can even sleep on a proper bed for once." Junko knew what he wanted. And like hell she was going to let him have it. She told Mukuro they needed to go, now. She didn't say the reason, but Mukuro knew she must have a reason.

Long story short - Junko stole a car. And they drove to the audition building. "We're going to join Danganronpa." "What?" "It's better than what we have there. And we'll get nice food restocked everyday. And a school roof over our heads (unless we're in a resort DR, which would be even nicer)."

Junko and Mukuro auditioned separately, and Team Danganronpa let slip they were very interested in having a game with twins. Junko made a few comments too. "Wow, it'd be pretty tragic if one of the twins died, and the other had to live with the other's death until the final chapter." Team DR chuckled a little. "But if you try something like that...

"Please kill the one named Junko."

#danganronpa #danganronpa au #junko enoshima #kyoko kirigiri #sayaka maizono #hifumi yamada #mukuro ikusaba #DanganRonpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

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commentaryvorg · 5 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 4.3

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in chapter 4, Kokichi figured out that everything is fiction after seeing the “outside world” (and told precisely nobody, of course), we started hanging out with Himiko, Maki was incredibly aromantic despite her burgeoning crush on Kaito, and Kaito was totally fine and didn’t have any worries whatsoever. Also, Gonta came to a decision that he was going to tell everyone about next morning, so now we’re heading to the dining hall to hear from him.

On the way there, Maki very briefly continues the conversation she was having with Shuichi last night.

Maki: “You probably assumed I didn’t care… But, that wasn’t it at all.”

This is essentially her apologising for offending Shuichi by coming across like she didn’t care. It seems like she thought about it enough to realise that she unintentionally hurt him and wanted to make sure he knew that wasn’t her intention. She’s getting somewhere with this whole interpersonal-interaction, dealing-with-emotions thing!

Maki: “You’re not fit to be a detective when you assume things without listening first.”

Shuichi: “Maki…” (Then… what were you trying to do? Why did you bring it up?)

Come on, if you can’t think of at least a possible reason why she brought up your feelings for Kaede other than to be a dick, then maybe you really aren’t a very good detective. Maki gets a pass for her obliviousness on this matter because she’s apparently arospec, but you’re not the one who was having trouble comprehending the idea that people could “like” each other in this situation, Shuichi.

Shuichi also bumps into Himiko, who’s trying to figure out how to live up to Tenko’s words and become more positive, so Shuichi suggests that Himiko should do a training session in Tenko’s dojo.

Himiko: “…Will that make me positive? Can I live life facing forward?”

Shuichi: “Ah, I can’t say for certain… but it’s better than just sitting around doing nothing.”

It is absolutely thanks to Kaito that Shuichi realises exercise can be helpful and is able to pass that advice onto Himiko in turn. And he acknowledges that training isn’t going to magically fix all her problems, just like it hasn’t done for him – but it’ll still help, at least a little.

Himiko: “You’re a good person. But does that make you a good detective?”

Being a good person and being a good detective are quite different things. Of course, Shuichi is both.

Shuichi: “Ah, *apprentice* detective.”

Oh, Shuichi. He’s still not confident enough in his skills to call himself a full-fledged detective, even after having solved three class trials.

Anyway, we get to the dining hall, and Gonta is declaring his intent to fight back against Monokuma.

Tsumugi: “L-Like I said before, It’s reckless! There are still two Exisals, right!?”

Of course Tsumugi especially would want to discourage him from this sort of plan – not because it’s reckless, but because of the possibility it might succeed.

Gonta: “Watching friends disappear… Seeing everyone get weaker…”

Obviously their numbers dropping is bad, but has everyone who remains really been getting weaker? Shuichi, Maki and now Himiko have all gotten stronger as this has gone along. I think the only reason Gonta believes this is because he’s the one who’s been feeling weaker the more this goes along, due to not having been able to do anything to stop it. (And Kaito’s been getting weaker too, of course, but Gonta doesn’t know that.)

Gonta: “Waiting around, doing nothing just make more victims…”

Gonta gets it. It’s far too easy in this situation to tell yourself that surely there’s not going to be another murder because everyone here is trustworthy, and therefore not give it your all to escape because doing so seems like more of a risk than just staying here and waiting. But Gonta still realises everyone’s lives are in danger even though he blindly trusts them all, so he is willing to risk his life for this.

Gonta: “Real gentleman would risk life! Gonta gladly give up life to save everyone!”

Gah, Gonta. Sacrificing your life if it means everyone else escapes is one thing, but sacrificing your life in a fight you can’t win that doesn’t get everyone else out of here is a waste and not what a gentleman should do. This isn’t a fight he can win on his own.

Kaito: “Gonta, I get how you feel, but don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself?”

Kaito definitely gets how Gonta feels. He’s someone else who would absolutely risk his life if he knew it stood even a chance of getting them out of here – but he’s less naïve than Gonta, so he knows that’s not possible right now (as far as he’s aware) and would just get Gonta pointlessly killed. (Especially since Kaito almost got himself pointlessly killed by an Exisal in chapter 1 – he hasn’t forgotten the lesson he learned from that.)

But it’s only impossible as it’s being presented here because Gonta’s strength alone isn’t enough to take on two functioning Exisals. If everyone thought like Gonta is thinking and was willing to make sacrifices to try and escape, then… well, they’d all escape within about a day. I’m looking at you, Keebo, with your jet pack and laser guns, and you, Kokichi and Miu, with your Electrohammers and Electrobombs and remote control that someone agile like Maki could slip onto the Exisals to hijack them. They already have the means to escape. The only problem is that the people who actually have those means aren’t willing to fight as hard as they can to help everyone, like Gonta is here.

Kokichi: “…More like meaningless. You shouldn’t do that.”

YOU HAVE ASKED MIU TO MAKE WEAPONS THAT CAN DISABLE EXISALS. You selfish asshole. We could all get out of here today if you actually cared about saving everyone instead of just “winning” this game and satisfying your own petty vendetta against Monokuma.

Kokichi: “And even if you did do that, it wouldn’t stop the killing game.”

Implying he knows that even if they escape, the “killing game” won’t stop – as in the overall killing game that is Danganronpa, rather than this particular one, because he’s realised what’s really going on here. (Remember when way back in chapter 1, one of his pre-free time dialogues hinted that he already suspected the game would just start over with new people if they all died? Yeah, he knows that for sure now.)

But, hey, sure, Kokichi, go ahead and tell me how your end goal of tricking Monokuma into getting a verdict wrong is going to stop the gamemakers from just starting over with a new cast like you’ve realised they do every time. That’s not going to stop the overall killing game either.

Kokichi: “Me…? The next blackened? Yeah, sure. If that would help me win, then I’d do it.”

And here’s Kokichi not-so-subtly hinting at the fact that he’s redefined “winning” this game to be something other than simply “become blackened and get away with it”. Becoming the blackened might help him “win” by his own definition of fooling Monokuma – it doesn’t seem like he’s figured out his exact plan just yet – but he also knows that it’d be possible for him to do that in other ways too.

Kokichi: “So, c’mon guys! Let’s enjoy this more! It’s not often you get to play a killing game, y’know!”

Kokichi is playing up even more than usual his lie to himself that he’s enjoying this whole thing, which is presumably his redoubled attempts to cover up the fact that he hates this killing game more than ever, now that he’s realised what’s really going on and that it’s even crueller than he already thought.

Kokichi: “So someone, start killing already! If you dooon’t, then I’ll kill someone instead! Just like I promised, got it!?”

Kaito: “Why you… That’s enough!”

(Kaito shot at Kokichi like a bullet, and…)

*bam!*

Kaito punching Kokichi here is a very different situation to the time he punched Shuichi. That time, Kaito was simply lashing out because he was deflecting his own pain over Kaede’s death and his powerlessness. But this time, Kaito’s not feeling that way and doing it out of an inability to control his emotions – he’s doing this deliberately in an attempt to help.

Kaito: “Kokichi… what the hell’s gotten into you?”

Kokichi: “…”

Kaito: “You were messed up to begin with, but this is a whole ‘nother level of weird… If you keep acting like this, I’m gonna knock your senses back into you!!!”

He’s trying to snap Kokichi out of whatever the hell has caused him to act like this. Sure, Kokichi acts bewilderingly at the best of times, but it seems like Kaito, thanks to his intuition, can sense that there’s some vague semblance of a decent person somewhere inside him. He’s almost certain that Kokichi isn’t genuinely someone who would want another killing to happen, and if he’s acting like he is, then something’s wrong with him, something which it should be possible to snap him out of and bring him back down to his usual level of not-quite-this-weird. But since it’s Kokichi, and he’s playing up his whole emotional-evasiveness thing even more than usual, simply talking to him probably isn’t going to suffice to get through those defences – so Kaito’s trying a more direct approach.

Keebo: “Kaito, please stop. There is never a good reason to commit violence. Even minor aggressions… can lead to atrocities such as murder.”

Kaito: “…”

(Keebo got through to him. Kaito dropped his clenched fist.)

Keebo got through to Kaito, but sadly Kaito did not get through to Kokichi.

Kaito: “Tch… fine. I’ll stop for now.”

The “for now” being because he’s hoping he did get through to Kokichi, but if he learns that he didn’t then he would absolutely try again. Kaito doesn’t want to just sit back and let Kokichi do anything stupid like, I don’t know, inciting a murder that somewhere way deep down inside him he doesn’t really want to happen.

(But unfortunately, this taught Kokichi that he needs to stop acting so over-the-top and pretend that he’s back to his version of normal so that Kaito will get off his back about this.)

Kaito: “But, Kokichi… I hope that whole stupid speech of yours was a lie.”

It was a lie… but a lie that he fully intends to play out until it really does get people killed.

Still, Kokichi is being very quiet right now, so maybe Kaito did get through to him just a little bit, just temporarily – buuut he’s sure going to quickly rebuild his defences and get right back to where he was before Kaito punched him.

Miu: “I’m serious, there’s no reason for Gonta to do something so reckless. Because I, Miu Iruma, the gorgeous girl genius, will save you all!”

…With your Electrohammers and Electrobombs and Exisal remote? No? Okay then. (What she’s actually saying here is that she’s going to take them to the Virtual World to totally not get all of them killed in a class trial.)

Honestly, her reason for not sharing her weapons is more justifiable than Kokichi’s. She genuinely wants to escape and would be willing to do so with everyone if it were possible – she just believes it’s not possible because she’s paranoid enough to be convinced someone will betray them and make it fail, which is why she instead plots a murder and tries to escape on her own. Kokichi is even more paranoid and terrified of betrayal, but that’s not why he doesn’t share Miu’s inventions. In his case, he doesn’t even want to escape – he just wants to “win” the killing game, which he doesn’t consider escaping to be, and is willing to sacrifice whoever he feels like he needs to to do it.

Next, it’s time to go train with Himiko! This and the second bonus scene in this chapter are most of the reason I made a point of covering the bonus scenes. Prior to this chapter, they’ve been very extraneous – I enjoyed poking fun at Kaito being ridiculous in the casino one, but it’s not like that really mattered – but these ones are significant and relevant to the character arcs going on in this chapter. It’s kind of a shame they’re only bonus scenes and some players will miss out on them.

Shuichi: “Huh? You’re here too, Gonta?”

Gonta: “Gonta wanna help Himiko!”

And Gonta came too!

Gonta: “Gonta wanna be useful, even just a little!”

This is one of the things I like the most about this scene. It’s not just about Himiko doing her best to live positively for Tenko’s sake – it’s also about how badly Gonta wants to do anything he can to help everyone. Which is, you know, kind of extremely relevant to why he does what he ends up doing in this chapter.

Himiko: “I don’t need any help…”

Gonta: “…Huh? No?”

Gonta’s expression is getting a bit unintentionally scary with his line here. He is so not okay with the notion that nobody needs him.

Himiko: “N-No… well, maybe you can help me just a little.”

Gonta: “Really? Gonta can help with something!?”

Himiko: “U-Um…”

Gonta: “Tell Gonta! Gonta do anything for Himiko!”

He is just so goddamn desperate and it’s kind of heartbreaking.

In general, Gonta’s making a lot more of his scary faces here than he usually does outside of when people mention not liking bugs. His feelings of powerlessness must be making him incredibly emotionally wound-up.

Himiko: “I need energy to use magic. And the best way to get that energy is by having someone with overflowing vitality nearby.”

Translating the Himiko-speak, she’s basically saying that it’ll help her to get motivated and energised if she’s with someone who’s always full of energy. It’s kind of like how Kaito inspires Shuichi. Gonta can help her just by being his usual self!

Himiko: “We haven’t even started and I’m already tired…”

This comes across less like Himiko’s previous habit of complaining about being tired, since she’s resolved not to do that any more, and more like she’s feeling this way specifically because Gonta being so offputtingly overzealous like he has been has kind of been more of a hindrance than a help.

Still, Himiko totally goes for it once she starts training. This illustration is really freaking cute. I love how exasperated Shuichi is and how into it Gonta is, too.

Himiko: “Don’t forget to smile for the audience!”

And see, she really is an entertainer at heart. This makes it even more likely that her nervousness before her water tank escape was just an act for the sake of the show, because she wouldn’t not smile for the audience without a good reason.

Gonta: “It important to smile, too! Smile like Gonta! Smile like gentleman!”

Gonta is so damn precious. He really is doing his best.

Shuichi: (Hey, Tenko… Can you see Himiko from wherever you are? You’ve reached her, Tenko.)

Aww. This line even still exists if you don’t have the item to trigger this scene – instead Shuichi thinks it after talking to Himiko for the conversation that would have triggered it, where she’s showing her desire to become more positive somehow. It’s nice that they kept that line there regardless.

Onto regular free time – or rather, the usual Shuichi thoughts before free time that awkwardly ignore the bonus scene that just happened.

Shuichi: (The reason Gonta said he wanted to fight Monokuma was to save his friends… I think… Miu is the same.)

Haha, nope, Miu is selfish and only doing this for her own survival.

Shuichi: (What about me? My friends die… and all I can do is solve their murder after it’s over.)

Kaito and Maki already berated you for thinking like this, Shuichi! You save everyone else after one of your friends dies!

Shuichi: “There has to be something more I can do…”

It is true that he might also be able to do more than that and figure out a way to escape before anyone else is killed. So now to go and… hang out with someone and not make any progress on escaping whatsoever. Even if I were to make Shuichi hang out with Keebo, Kokichi or Miu, it wouldn’t result in him managing to convince them to use the weapons they have to try and escape, which is really what he should be doing (not that he knows the latter two even have weapons).

Kokichi is in his room. Maybe he’s still being a little bit thoughtful after Kaito’s punch. (As I said, that won’t last.)

Kokichi: “Ouch… Kaito almost pummeled me to death…”

He punched you once; stop playing the victim to more of an extent than is warranted. An “Ow, Kaito’s punch really hurt” would be appropriate, but not this.

(While it’s not made clear here, there will be a line later indicating Kokichi knows full well that Kaito was trying to get through to him and not just being a violent bully. So him playing the victim here and acting like that’s all it’s about is doubly unwarranted… which means he’s probably doing it precisely to distract himself from what Kaito really wanted from him, isn’t he.)

Kokichi: “…Althooough, I don’t plan on dying so soon, y’know? When I become the victim… or the culprit… I’ll set up lots of tricks…”

Well, that sure was a slip of the tongue there. You’re planning on becoming the victim now, are you, Kokichi? And you’re still going to set up lots of tricks even if you do? Yeah. He’s already working on his grand plan for chapter 5. What he does in this chapter has nothing to do with wanting a mercy kill outcome and everything to do with merely facilitating his greater plan.

Kokichi: “So everyone can have loads of fun…”

Which “everyone”? The other participants of the game, or the audience that you’re now even more completely sure is watching this and getting a huge kick out of everything? Because, you know, your plan is only going to give them exactly what they want. Kokichi even seems aware of that with this line here, which makes him deciding to go through with his plan even more bewildering.

Kaito: “That Kokichi… He better not have been serious… He must just be frustrated by everything that’s happened… I think.”

Look at Kaito still trying to understand Kokichi, trying to come up with an interpretation of what’s going on in his head that makes him still be a somewhat reasonable person! He’s not too far off, but there’s a lot more going on than he’s aware of, mostly because Kokichi has a lot more information than him.

Kaito: “Well, it’s fine now. My punch probably brought him to his senses. If not… I’ll speak to him through my fists as many times as it takes!”

He really hasn’t given up on trying to get through to Kokichi if this time didn’t work. And see how he really does think of the punch he gave Kokichi as a way of trying to communicate with him.

(Kaito is hanging out on the creepy floor right now. I have no idea why; he should hate it here.)

Tsumugi: “I wonder why Gonta’s so worried about being useful to everyone.”

You should know why; it’s because you wrote him that way.

Himiko: “It’ll be meaningless if we’re saved, but Gonta loses himself.”

Aww, Himiko’s worried about Gonta! And that’s also kind of painfully foreshadowing what actually ends up happening (or what Gonta at least tries to do), gaaah.

Anyway, since he’s just been so desperate to save everyone and then did his best to help out Himiko, why don’t we hang out with Gonta? He doesn’t need to be protected from manipulation right now, but he still definitely needs a friend.

In fact, it’s interesting to note that Gonta not being manipulated by anyone right now is probably part of the reason he’s being even more desperate than usual. Back in chapters 2 and 3, Kokichi and Angie convinced Gonta that doing what they told him to would make him useful (even though it really wouldn’t), since that was what he wanted to hear so badly. But now, with nobody to reassure him that he’s totally already making a difference, Gonta is so lost.

Gonta: “Miu say she take us to world with no killing game, right? Did Miu find way out of here? How come she not tell us?”

Oh, Gonta. If only it were that simple.

This time, Shuichi decides to talk to Gonta about his talent.

Gonta: “G-Gonta nothing special. Gonta just listen to what bugs say.”

Shuichi: (He’s always so humble…)

A bit like you, right, Shuichi?

Shuichi: (And he once discovered a parasitic worm that was causing disease, and was praised as a hero.) “You’ve saved so many lives, Gonta.”

Gonta’s a hero! Even niche academic talents like his can be used to make a difference and save people! Aww. It’s just a shame that he can’t use his talent to make a difference like that in this killing game. (Although him spotting the “tiny bugs” does lead to Shuichi getting a pretty important clue in chapter 6, so there’s that!)

Shuichi: “I don’t think you need to work so hard to be a gentleman. You’re already incredible.”

Shuichi’s right. If Gonta’s definition of “gentleman” is basically just “the best person ever”, then he’s already pretty awesome just based on his talent.

Gonta: “B-But, Shuichi! Gonta must become gentleman! For forest family!”

But Gonta’s still stuck on becoming his human family’s definition of a “gentleman” so that they’ll accept his forest family.

Shuichi: “Your forest family helped you develop into the talented man you are today!”

Gonta: “That all Gonta need…?”

Shuichi: “That’s plenty, Gonta. From now on… As long as you work hard as the Ultimate Entomologist, your family will accept you.”

Damn right. Gonta’s human family shouldn’t need him to become their definition of a “gentleman”, which presumably just means casting off all the non-human habits he learned in the forest even though that’s his culture now. They should just want him to be a pretty awesome guy, which he is. Don’t be so prejudiced, Gonta’s human family.

Gonta: “… But… Gonta no help to anyone right now.”

Heh. There’s no proof of when this FTE is meant to take place canonically, or if it even really is meant to be in the main canon storyline in the first place, but this line sure does seem appropriate coming from Gonta in specifically this chapter.

Shuichi: “Gonta… you’re a more amazing person than you think you are.”

Gonta: “Sh-Shuichi!”

Gonta’s moved to tears! Aww. He really needed to hear that this chapter and I’m so glad I got the chance to have Shuichi say that to him.

Gonta: “At first, Gonta do it for forest family. But now… Gonta just wanna be gentleman.”

And why shouldn’t he? You go, Gonta. You go reach your goal.

(A goal which isn’t going to be heartbreakingly cut short by the events of this chapter, nope, not at all.)

Gonta: “Thank you so much, Shuichi. Gonta understand a lot more cuz of you. Gonta glad he meet Shuichi.”

At least he has this, before everything becomes terrible.

Gonta: “From now on, Gonta keep you and everyone else safe… like true gentleman!”

GAAAH. Yes, you will, Gonta. Yes, you will.

For the next free time slot, Kaito is in his room. If you knock on his door, he emerges while looking evasively off to the side.

Kaito: “Oh, it’s you… What’s up? You need to talk with me?”

He sounds somewhat less enthusiastic about seeing Shuichi here than he usually does, too. What we can assume from this is that he’s almost certainly just been feeling like crap and hacking up blood in his room and was really hoping not to suddenly be visited by Shuichi right now and risk letting him see. Still, he’s not going to refuse if Shuichi wants to hang out with him (and especially not if Shuichi needs to talk to him about something), because he doesn’t want to have a repeat of last chapter and make Shuichi think there’s anything wrong.

If you do hang out with Kaito here, he suggests they go to Shuichi’s room, even though Kaito just came out of his own room and hanging out in there would be the more natural thing to suggest. Sooo he’s probably got some bloodstained tissues or bedsheets or something that he can’t let Shuichi see.

Maki: “…Does Kokichi really plan on becoming the blackened? Maybe you should be more careful about letting him into your research lab. There are lots of poisons in there, so…”

Maki, as ever, is thinking pragmatically. Though she should also be worried about letting him near anything from her lab, in that case. But maybe she’s especially worried about him using poisons because she assumes he’s the kind of coward who’d rather use an indirect method of killing such as that. (Which he sure is.)

But rather than hang out with either of them yet, let’s follow up on this morning’s training and go see Himiko again. Maybe we’ll learn a tiny bit more about her master other than just that he exists.

Shuichi: “You said you had a master, did he inspire you?”

Himiko: “Hm, when I saw my master use his magic, I awakened as a mage.”

That seems to be Himiko-speak for the fact that yes, he did inspire her to become a magician! …I mean mage.

Shuichi: “Did your master also say he was a mage, not a magician?”

Himiko: “Huh? My master is known around the world as a legendary mage.”

Shuichi: “I see…” (Himiko insisting she’s a ‘mage’ is probably her master’s influence.)

That’s actually pretty cute and goes to show just how inspired by her master Himiko is, since she’s so committed to her act and she got that from him.

She goes on to talk about how her master trained her to use magic and how she worked as an assistant in his show while she trained.

Shuichi: “In any case… I’m sure your master is worried about you right now.”

(Or, you know, he would be if he actually existed, but.)

Himiko: “Well, maybe… He might… be worried…”

Shuichi: “Himiko?”

Himiko: “I’m too tired to talk. I’m going back to my room.”

…

Shuichi: (Himiko was acting strange for a minute there. I wonder what’s wrong…)

And that’s all we get to lead into the next event. Most characters have multiple different things they talk about throughout all five of their FTEs, but Himiko’s are basically all just one story, so it gets… spread out quite thinly. This is going to go somewhere, I swear. It just might not quite be the direction you expect, even if you’ve seen Himiko’s FTEs before.

---

[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 4 #daily life #free time events #commentary

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ryouverua · 6 years

Text

Trial 5 - So about that one thing... (1)

WILL THE ROBOPHOBIA NEVER CEASE FOR EVEN A MOMENT -

Investigation 1 / 2 - second half is where I put my own theories that I penned before playing the trial.

and man was I proven wrong almost instantaneously lmao - but I’m getting ahead of myself. On with the show!

Poor K1-b0, honestly. He had such a great epic speech planned, totally interrupting Monokuma’s normal opening for the trial -

- only for Monokuma to completely undercut him, aka the opening of this post. 8′D You’ll prevail over robophobia one day, K1-b0! One... day....

Good luck trying to pull that on Maki, though. 8′D

H-Hm. The fact that you’re asking that means that you’re either putting on a really good act right now, or I am so very, very wrong right out the gate. But with that said, where is the sixth person? Maybe that’s what I should call them, honestly. The Sixth Person. The Unknown Loudmouth who thrives off others’ attention. The Mysterious Purple Boy Wonder. ‘K’, if you will.

omg they... have question marks... on their faces.... Now this is definitely a first. So we’re actually going to go the whole trial without either of them, huh. Sure, one of them being gone I was half-heartedly prepared for, but both? Damn.

I’m 99% sure ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste’ is like Monokuma’s theme or something.

They are?! Have they been hiding in here the whole time??? That... is actually a really good hiding place? Though I have no idea how they’d be able to get down here before a trial was called...

There’s that same base assumption: Culprit = Mastermind = Kokichi. But what if one of those isn’t true? Or, well, two? Could it be Culprit = Mastermind? Or Culprit = Kokichi? Or just... well, neither?

Man, just... the fact that you’re trying to shut down discussion really lends itself to suspicion. I don’t think I’m drawing the wrong conclusion by saying she was the one who cleaned up after the fact, but I suppose the option of her outright killing Kokichi or mercy-killing Kaito is still a possibility? I still don’t think she’s the culprit because I don’t think she was able to get in until after the crossbow shots were fired (aka let in by Kaito) but...

Or... or if she found Kaito dead already, from illness, and then crushed the body to frame Kokichi for it... but if she thought he was the mastermind, then she would think he’d have control of the full trial and would know that selecting him as the culprit would be the wrong answer, right??? Yeah okay following that idea to the end was pointless in the end but at least I got it out of my system. >3> I also don’t think she would disrespect Kaito’s body like that tbh unless she had to, so...

Oh man are we going to get an end-of-trial reveal then? I’m just gonna be vibrating anxiously in my seat then, I suppose. look Sweetcheeks we’re in sync again!

Aaaah, the class is so small now... I mean, we don’t even have the sixth person we should have. This is sixth chapter-levels of small. what is with the number six showing up all of the sudden

I had to grab this screenshot because tell me this doesn’t give off the impression of a sniper scope lens! Maybe that’s just me? I just really like taking a moment to appreciate the design of the text in the trials ~

I didn’t think this was going to come up so early!

And the one to the back looks bad.... Was it just dripping, or do those correspond with the drag marks? It seems to imply that they do...

Shuichi and I are all about those implications and circumstantial evidence lol

Meanwhile Maki is all about that supposed ‘direct’ evidence. Which, you know, fair! .... is what I would say if I didn’t think she was participating in a cover-up. But the motive behind the coverup... just saying ‘she wants to save Kaito’ isn’t really good enough for me, because that means she’s forfeiting everyone else’s lives in the process of the trial proceeds by its own rules - which it seems to be doing.... And, yeah, everything outside is gone, and she did agree to mercy-kill everyone before they saw the flashback light, but -

Oh, that’s an interesting thought. Kaito overthrows Kokichi, accidentally killing him in the process thanks to Maki’s poisoned arrows. Kaito succumbs to illness, or is going to in short order. Monokuma AI is still up and running, and Maki thinks it’s just because it can run independently of Kokichi, maybe? So she takes advantage of it in order to mercy-kill everyone like Gonta (and maybe Kokichi) wanted last chapter, while letting Kaito die without anyone else thinking he was a murderer? Is this her using her Ultimate Assassin ability in the most compassionate way she can, maybe?

I.... don’t know if I’m 100% satisfied with that answer... but it is an answer..........

It’s not a question of wants, my dear Sweetcheeks - she needs to push this narrative. The real question is if she actually believes it herself.

i thought the answer was bloodstain whoops

Thank goodness there wasn’t. 8′\ I don’t think even Danganronpa could stylize the gruesomeness out of that.

OI MAKI WHAT ARE YOU DOING

“You think that comment about ‘the last time you touched a woman’ was bad? I’m going to show you that I can eviscerate you without even lifting a finger.”

Maki is a force to be reckoned with, damn.

ANYONE COULD BE WEARING THOSE CLOTHES! EVEN ME!

too soon? .... yeah okay

ARE THEY.... SERIOUSLY... ARGUING ABOUT HIS FASHION SENSE.... DID MAKI JUST IMPLY SHUICHI DOESN’T KNOW KAITO AT ALL AFTER ALL THIS TIME

I’M LAUGHING HOW MANY SHIP WAR TRIALS ARE WE GOING TO HAVE why can’t we all just ot3 in peace guys

They are low-key fighting about who knows Kaito the best down to how he dresses himself I cannot believe -

“HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY ENCYCLOPEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF MY BOYRFRIEND BRO!!”

“Have you ever considered he was wearing it like a cape like an absolute no-taste madman? Or reverted to the ‘tied around waist’ trend? When you two broke up, it changed him, Shuichi - it changed him!”

“Just like Kokichi Imeanwhat, you didn’t hear me say that, nope -”

also too soon probably

Defeat... but how does this defeat him? The theory I have addresses why she would be so determined/have more knowledge than she’s letting on, but it definitely doesn’t neatly answer how implicating him as the culprit would ‘defeat’ him outside of letting Kaito out unscathed. :x

Oooh, are we going to address that point now? I feel like once we’ve resolved that, we’ll be ready to start breaking things down into easier-to-solve chunks!

Oh... um... o-okay but -

WAIT REALLY? WE’RE REALLY DOING THIS?!

OH!!!!

OOOOOH HOLY SHIT!! HOLY SHIT!

S-SHROEDINGER’S MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM?!?!

WAIT WHAT

I JUST FUCKING SCREECHED -

WHAT?!?!

KAITO JUST

WHAT?!?!?!

WHAT?!?! AFTER ALL THAT WE’RE JUST - IT’S JUST - HIM?

WHY ARE *YOU* SHOCKED

or is this a ‘WHAT THE HELL WHY ARE YOU REVEALING YOURSELF’ moment?!

“YOU DUMBASS THIS WASN’T PART OF THE PLAN -”

actually oooh she said ‘Momota’ without an `ific behind it - is that a first, or did I only just notice now?

Edit: I’ve been corrected, she’s apparently not used it for a while now. I’m not surprised I just didn’t notice until now. 8′D

I.... I don’t even know what to think right now.... I thought I’d come up with something good in terms of why it was Kaito and not Kokichi, thinking it would be maybe a twist for partway through the trial or something, but then??? he just fucking busts in 15 minutes late with whatever DR’s equivalent of Starbucks is like ‘WHAT UP GUYS WHAT DID I MISS?’

?!?!?!

HOLY SHIT AGAIN

can I just say I really appreciate Hiro Shimono right now holy crap

ALSO YOU KNOW, JUST THROWN ANOTHER GENERAL ‘HOLY CRAP’ ONTO THE PILE MY HEAD IS SPINNING RIGHT NOW

I WANT TO HEAR THE ENGLISH EQUIVALENT OF THIS

but I just heard Kokichi scream something along the lines of (and I’m totally going to butcher this with my limited knowledge, I apologize): “ORE WA SHIMASEN! MINNA WO AISHITERU KARA!” Isn’t that along the lines of ‘I won’t [die], I love all of you?” or ‘Everyone loves me?” or something? man I’m totally butchering this aren’t I lol please feel free to correct me

As for the english reference we have a confirmed Sinatra fan among us - that’s some pretty great taste you’ve got there, kiddo! hey maybe the japanese one was a detective conan ED ref or maybe I’m just reaching as usual

U-Uh I don’t know about that? I find the exisals pretty impressive, personally. I bet Tsumugi is secretly fangirling as an big mecha!anime nerd.

Good question, tbh - why did Kaito’s voice come out of the exisal? I’d consider the idea of them both being in there, but... but we discovered a body, right? And bloodstains? Unless an old body was reused (and there’s precedence in the series for that), but I don’t know how they would manage it???

Also I’m mad at myself WHY did I accidentally delete the ‘cracker’ cap, japanese Kokichi literally just said ‘cracker’ out loud and it was amazing!!!

THIS REALLY IS GOING TO BE SHROEDINGER’S MECHA

..... I.... DAMN IT THAT IS A GOOD REASON. Fine, you win this round, K.

I MEAN... YEAH....

oh shit you did what now

YOU HAVE IT ON CAMERA?!

UM?!?! NO, CAN WE NOT?!?!

Oh.... Oh no.

I have questions about why the video sped up for a moment and also why he isn’t moving at all (is he??? dead before being placed there???) but I’m going to push them to the side for a moment because

oh.... no. I DIDN’T WANT TO SEE THAT ASDFKLJSDF D:

Oh dear :(

how many love interests must this boy be forced to watch die damn it

#Kaito Momota #Kokichi Ouma #Shuichi Saihara #Maki Harukawa #Himiko Yumeno #Tsumugi Shirogane #Ryou plays drv3 #spoilers #drv3 spoilers #K1-b0 #Kiibo #Keebo

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kawaiikichi · 6 years

Text

Day 1: Talent/Pregame

First post for @oumasaiweek! I have decided on doing one shots so that I can practice how to properly write Kokichi XD

It’s my first time writing anything relating to the pregame (I’ve only ever read fanfics relating to the pregame), so I hope it’s okay.

One shot is under the cut!

Summary: Kokichi and Shuichi run into each other at the Team Danganronpa building and they talk a bit before their auditons.

Kokichi was going to be late.

He hurried down the street, piece of bread in between his teeth as he held on tightly to the folder that he had with him.

He had tried to slip out of the house quietly without alerting his parents, but his mom had been in the kitchen. She kept asking him questions about where he was going at six thirty in the morning even though school was supposed to start at eight. Every time he would cook up a lie, she would then refute it. He managed to slip away after pointing out that the food she was making in a saucepan was going to burn.

He quickly turned a corner as he bumped into someone. The impact caused him and the other person to fall down.

“I-I-I-I’m so sorry! I didn’t...I didn’t see where I was going!” Kokichi exclaimed, the bread falling out of his mouth and onto his lap.

He watched as the person slowly stood up from the ground. He flinched, waiting for the person to begin beating him up.

However, he was surprised to see the person extend their hand out to them. He slowly rose his head up as the person spoke.

“Are...Are you alright?” they asked.

Kokichi examined the male that he ran into. The male had a cap over his head, shielding his eyes from view. He wore a classy uniform that looked like it belonged to an elite school. He also had a folder in his hand.

“I...yes...” Kokichi trailed off as he took the male’s hand.

The male pulled him up and Kokichi’s breath caught in his throat as they locked eyes. The deep shade of gold in the male’s eyes was enough to knock the breath out of him. He continued to stare, captivated by the color of his eyes as he cleared his throat.

“Are...Are you here for the audition, too?” he asked.

Kokichi blinked twice, snapping out of his trance.

“Au...Audition...?” he asked.

“Yeah. For the 53rd season of Danganronpa?” the male asked, motioning to the building in front of them.

Kokichi turned, noticing that they were in front of the Team Danganronpa building.

“Oh! Ye...Yeah, I’m also here for the audition!” he replied.

Oh, how Kokichi wanted nothing more than to have the floor swallow him up.

The male cracked a grin.

“Cool! Let’s go in together.” he suggested.

Kokichi could only nod as he followed the male into the building. They were greeted by a woman at the front desk.

“Hello! Are you two here for the auditions?” she asked.

“We are!” the male said.

“Okay. Please write your names down on the clipboard here and then make your way over to the elevator at the end of the hall. Go up to the fifth floor, turn left, and continue heading down until you arrive at the Amami Conference Room.” she explained.

“Thank you so much.” the male reached for the clipboard and he handed it to Kokichi. “Here, you can write your name down first.” he said.

“Ah...th-thank you...” Kokichi stammered our as he took the clipboard from him and he wrote his name in the slot under the name Kaede Akamatsu. After he wrote his name down, he handed the clipboard over to the male.

Once he was done, he placed the clipboard on the counter.

“Thanks again!” he said.

“Of course! Good luck with the audition, you two!” she said as the two of them headed over to the elevator.

They got on and the male pressed the number five. The doors closed and the elevator began to go up. Kokichi fidgeted a little in his spot as the male cleared his throat to speak.

“So...your name is Kokichi Ouma, right?” the male asked.

Kokichi jumped, letting out a small squeak. He gripped onto his folder tightly as he spoke.

“H-H-H-H-How...? How do you...know my name...?” he asked.

“You wrote it down on the clipboard, didn’t you?” the male asked.

Gosh, couldn’t Kokichi just get swallowed up by the ground already? He really needed to stop embarrassing himself.

“Ah! O-Of course...yes, that is my name...” he trailed off.

“Cool! I’m Shuichi Saihara.” the elevator arrived on the fifth floor and they got off. “So, what talent do you want if they choose you for this season?” Shuichi asked.

“Oh...I want to be a supreme leader...” Kokichi trailed off.

“A supreme leader, huh...” Shuichi smiled. “That would certainly make things interesting! I don’t think the show has ever had a supreme leader before...” he trailed off.

Kokichi fiddled with his thumbs as Shuichi continued.

“Why that talent, specifically?” he asked.

“Ah...I decided on that one because I want to be stronger...” Kokichi trailed off.

“Stronger?” Shuichi asked.

“Yeah...You see, I get bullied at school every day. It’s mainly because I’m short and pretty meek. It’s...pretty bad. So, I want to become strong. I want to be someone who can’t get pushed around easily and who can stand their own ground.” Kokichi explained.

“I see...” Shuichi smiled. “You have a pretty strong resolve, Ouma-kun. I like it.” he said.

“Ah...Thanks, Saihara-kun...” Kokichi trailed off, reaching up to tug on one of the strands of his hair.

They neared the Amami Conference Room, where two girls were standing in line, waiting to go in for their audition. They got in line behind a blonde haired girl as Kokichi spoke.

“So...what will your talent be if they choose you, Saihara-kun?” Kokichi asked.

“I want to be the Ultimate Detective, just like Kirigiri-san from the first season!” Shuichi declared.

“Really?” Kokichi asked.

“Yeah! Kirigiri is literally the best character in all of the Danganronpa franchise.” Shuichi played with one of the corners of his folder. “However, I want to do something different as the Ultimate Detective.” he said.

Kokichi tilted his head to the side, some wispy strands of black hair falling in his face.

“Like what, Saihara-kun?” he asked.

“Do you know how the detective is usually one of the survivors?” Shuichi asked.

“I...I guess...?” Kokichi answered uncertainly.

“Well, I want to change that.” Shuichi looked at Kokichi and the smaller male swore that he saw pure insanity swirling around in Shuichi’s golden eyes. “I’m going to commit the perfect murder! I mean, nobody has ever seen a detective commit a crime before. Wouldn’t that be interesting?! And then, I’ll get executed in style!” he began to drool. “I...I’m going to work hard to make this season a thrilling one!” he gushed excitedly.

Kokichi was taken aback by the sudden change in Shuichi’s mood. What happened to the Shuichi from before? Or was that just a mask to hide who he truly is: a Danganronpa fanatic?

He let out a soft chuckle in an attempt to mask how terrified he was.

“Y-Yeah...that...that sounds really interesting...” he trailed off.

“Doesn’t it?!” Shuichi grabbed for Kokichi’s hands, startling the smaller male. “Hey, if we get in, we should commit the perfect crime together.” he proposed.

“Eh...?” Kokichi’s eyes widened as Shuichi giggled.

“It would be fantastic! So, will you?” Shuichi asked.

Kokichi swallowed, staring into the swirly eyes of Shuichi Saihara. His throat felt dry as he parted his lips to speak.

“I—“ he was cut off by the door to the conference room opening.

“Kokichi Ouma, you’re next!”

Kokichi looked at the person by the door and then back at Shuichi before pulling his hands away.

“I’ll give you an answer when we’re done.” a small smile pulled at Kokichi’s lips. “I’ll see you then.” he said.

“Yeah. Good luck, Ouma-kun!” Shuichi replied.

Kokichi let out a shaky sigh as he turned away from Shuichi and he headed into the conference room. Three people sat at a desk, two middle aged men and one teenage girl with glowing blue hair and blue eyes behind glasses. The girl looked up from her clipboard and smiled at him, a smile he knew was fake.

“Okay! Start whenever you’re ready!” she chirped.

Kokichi slowly nodded as he stared down at the ground for a bit, trying to regain his composure.

Come on, Kokichi.

You can do this.

It’s like presenting a project to the class. It’s not hard at all.

Just take deep breaths and go with it.

He let out a shaky breath before looking up at the three people sitting at the table.

Then, a small smile appeared on Kokichi’s face.

“Hello. My name is Kokichi Ouma and I am hoping to become the Ultimate Supreme Leader for the 53rd season of Danganronpa.”

#oumasaiweek #oumasai #saiouma #danganronpa v3 #saihara shuichi #ouma kokichi #day 1 #pregame/talent #tbh it's not that shippy???#the other ones will be though

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dornishsphinx · 6 years

Text

@verecunda tagged me in this a while back, and it completely slipped my mind until I saw it half-done in my notes, oops—sorry it took so long! Also, this got wordier than intended, probably because that always happens when I’m avoiding doing actual work. Oh well.

If any of you feel like ranting about your fave female characters, here’s an excuse to do so--though no pressure, of course. Tagging @zonesthesia, @bioticplaneswalker, @joyseeker6, @moonhairedgirl, @yousef-the-uber-driver, @northernpansy, @tresjoly, @xxchimericalxx, @arthoure, @mrmissmrsrandom, @gascon-en-exil, @amorremanet and anyone else reading this who feels like it!

Rules: Rules: Write your ten favourite female characters from ten different fandoms and tag ten different people.

1. Fire Emblem—Sonya

This ended up being a close tie between Sonya and Jill, but I gave this one to Sonya since I’ve actually finished her game. Sonya is amazing. A non-lord character with a connection to the villains always brings them up a notch in my estimation and it’s a damn shame she never got more than one boss conversation with her father—and none with her sisters! Her ending was initially aggravating, but I like to go with the common theory that since Duma is no longer around, talk of her becoming a witch was just hearsay. Her support with Genny is brilliant. She manages to be confident and alluring without turning into a caricature, unlike certain other unfortunate characters throughout the—mostly recent—games. And since she’s from a less popular game, she’s hardly as likely to get completely flanderised in spinoffs. Why on Earth would you ever pick Deen?

Honourable mentions: Celica (FE2/15), Lyn (FE7), Jill Fizzart (FE9/10). This isn’t counting games I’ve not actively played, though there are certain FE4 and FE10 characters who might have ended up in the mentions if I had, given what I know about them.

2. Persona—Yukino Mayuzumi

I actually wasn’t expecting to put Yukino here when I was first trying to figure out who my favourite female character from Persona was. I knew it would likely be a P2 character, since that is my favourite game in the series thus far, but then I realised how much I’ve been missing Yukino in particular while playing Eternal Punishment. The Empress arcana really does fit her: she’s a combination of tough-as-nails and motherly, and a cool older figure for the team to look up to. I especially love how she transfers the chance Saeko gave her to reform during her yankī days to Anna, years later. And that’s not even going into the revelations from her Shadow: she’s torn between two career paths, not feeling good enough to achieve either. And she gives up her Persona for Jun! That takes some serious selflessness.

Honourable mentions: Maki Sonomura (P1/2), Maya Amano (P2), Naoto Shirogane (P4), Labrys (Arena)

3. Ace Attorney—Ema Skye

This came closer than any other entry on the list, both Mia and Franziska initially taking this spot before I eventually settled on Ema. She was an interesting enough character as a kid, her peppiness and the science-obsession gimmick quickly giving way to a more complex characterisation, especially once her full involvement in SL-9 was revealed. However, the science-gimmick paid off wonderfully in AJ:AA when we see how she’s transformed into a jaded, bitter detective, her dreams of becoming a scientist crushed because she didn’t pass the exams she needed to get a career in forensics. When SOJ rolled around and she’d actually managed to get into the field, it felt earned, way more than if we’d met her SOJ self in AJ:AA.

Honourable mentions: Franziska von Karma, Mia Fey

4. Zero Escape—Lotus

Of all the characters who didn’t make it into the sequels which followed on from the original game, Lotus—along with Santa, who I’ll admit has more story-based reasons to return—is the one I miss most. She loves her daughters, fiercely enough to relentlessly investigate their kidnapping by herself for years when the police were of no use, and on top of all that, she’s a genius programmer. The moment I actively started loving Lotus was when she, clearly scared but putting on a brave face, volunteered to go in the electric chair in the torture chamber. It made you realise she genuinely is utilitarian, rather than just being out for her own survival; she’s clearly self-interested, but not completely selfish. I’m just gonna quote Uchikoshi himself: “She may seem selfish and cold, but she’s actually the most rational and sensible out of all of them. She has the intellectual ability to make very logical decisions.” She’s just the best.

Honourable mentions: Akane Kurashiki, Diana

5. Avatar—Azula

I know there are people who follow me still watching Avatar, so I’ll try and keep this as spoiler-free as I can in case they end up skimming some of this accidentally. (Though I’d definitely not recommend anyone who wants to remain completely unspoiled reads this entry on the list.)

But anyway—“Do the tides command this ship?”

The Fire Nation royal family just provides all the best characters in the series. Zuko is definitely my male fave, while his sister takes the female spot. Source of both the vast majority of best lines in the show, as well as the most Machiavellian of villainy, Azula is just awesome to watch in action, whether it be in the political, martial or personal sphere. The odd dynamic she has with Zuko is my favourite in the series, managing to be outright antagonistic, while at some moments offering the glimmer of a genuine, if warped almost beyond recognition, sibling bond. There are even more poignant moments where we’re reminded of her actual age and how her family circumstances have shaped her into what she is. She’s a complex villain, one of the best this, or any other series, has to offer.

Honourable mentions: Kuvira, Katara, Toph Beifong

6. A Song of Ice and Fire—Sarella Sand

Okay, if we’re doing a female character list, I kinda have to give the original Dornish Sphinx herself a spot on the list. Not much page space has been devoted to her as of the current date, considering our only consistent POV character in Oldtown just arrived. I’m looking forward to what she and Archmaester Marwyn get up to once GRRM finishes TWOW. The least war-hungry of the Sand Snakes, she’s not even been introduced on page as herself yet. Instead, we know her as “Alleras”, a pleasant young Dornishman of sharp intellect studying at the Citadel.

Honourable mentions: Asha Greyjoy, Sansa Stark, Arianne Martell

7. DCU—Selina Kyle

Is there any Bat-work, canon or fanon, that isn’t instantly made a dozen times better by Selina swooping in? (Okay, there are a couple of duds, but usually she’s a delightful presence.) One of DC’s best anti-hero/anti-villains.

Honourable mentions: Renée Montoya, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown

8. Danganronpa—Kyōko Kirigiri

The original Ultimate Detective herself. Cool, poised and collected, she certainly makes for a more convincing detective character than certain other later characters from the series, though Shuichi does try his best.

Honourable mentions: Kaede Akamatsu, Junko Enoshima, Chiaki Nanami

9. Doctor Who—Martha Jones

I’m scraping the barrel a little for fandoms, considering I don’t even watch the show anymore, but Martha is my favourite of all companions. I never wanted her to get with the Doctor, of course, but I appreciated how her unrequited feelings for him didn’t swallow up her entire character. She’s courageous, smart and leaves the TARDIS on her own accord, which is refreshing.

10. Arthuriana—Morgan le Fay

This is a tricky one, since Arthuriana is more a literary tradition than a fandom per se. The characters which belong to it don’t technically ever stick to one characterisation, personality or role—everyone has their own interpretation, or even several different ones. That said—yes, my favourite is Morgan, how original of me, I know. Viviane runs her competition, but since she’s all over the place—quite literally, becoming or amalgamating several different characters at once—Morgan wins. There’s a reason she’s overused in modern adaptions, though, and it’s because she’s amazing. I mean, she even got a geographical phenomenon named after her and in some traditions, she lives in a goddamn volcano. She’s at her best as Queen of Rheged, though, casually trying to murder her husband, or Guinevere, or teaching a lesson to whichever knight of the week volunteers for her obvious trap. Just never mention that modern book she’s most known for around me unless you want me to angry-cry. Also, she’s not Morgause. Let Morgause be her own character, modern media, please.

Honourable mentions: Viviane, Lynette, Ragnell

#ask meme #long post #now that i reread the rules i think i only had to put down their names oops #oh well

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xtremedespair3d · 4 years

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HajiKo Anime: Fall 2020

Where was Summer at? We needed to have a line-up as lit as this one, but alas, this cold line-up was pretty refreshing!

Okay, I probably shouldn’t come up with these ridiculous puntastic introductions just for filler and for the sake of using the “Keep reading” tab because these posts are always lengthy, but there’s nothing else I can say, I can’t just simply put the “Keep reading” tab and that’s it!

Also, there were some details on my anticipated shows and I completely forgot about them so I’m going to write them down here because I’m not even gonna bother go editing my previous post and add the things I forgot to say and tell everyone about it, nobody reads my posts anyway.

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Before I start this review, I want to say something and it’s probably not for the faint of heart depending on your prefered way of watching anime and mine may not be the absolute best if you’re a “purist,” but it’s very important. On October 1st, as soon as I published my previous Summer 2020 review the day prior and as soon as the Fall season began, HorribleSubs, the anime subs torrent site I’ve been using for a long time, has closed.

Torrenting anime is kind of a gray area for me to say this, but I’m not a shallow anime review site, so who cares? This is my personal blog and might as well say this. I’ve been torrenting anime for quite a few years now, and my go-to anime site to watch the latest shows ripped straight from big-shots like Crunchyroll, Funimation and HIDIVE, is HorribleSubs. I’ve been using random websites before but I moved to torrent anime because the torrent library site Nyaa offers a huge variety of high quality torrent anime, there are so many websites to watch anime illegally and they’re not even that good, the biggest one being KissAnime but on mid-2020, it appears that KissAnime has been closed, a lot of people who used the service are sad, meanwhile I’m laughing my ass off at them since I mainly torrent anime.

Ever wondered how I usually watch anime that aren’t licensed by Funimation, Sentai, etc.? Torrent, that’s why.

The closure of HorribleSubs is quite shocking considering I’ve been using the site for a while, but there’s other sites like Erai-Raws, although not as good as HorribleSubs as they can be very late, but they still get the job done. Sometimes I browse on Nyaa to look for any other sub groups that have the newly released anime I want to watch, but sometimes they can bring pretty awful quality.

I had briefly used Erai-Raws for a while, which was my alternative whenever HorribleSubs was slow, but even Erai-Raws can be very slow at times, so I switched to SubsPlease which at first I had seen torrents from them uploaded on Nyaa and they’re probably the first group to upload torrents of this season’s anime I watched, so I switched to SubsPlease and I gotta say, I’m really really impressed with SubsPlease, they truly are the best website, they really live up on being the better HorribleSubs and Erai-Raws.

Let me give you a quick rundown on why SubsPlease is absolutely better than HorribleSubs and Erai-Raws:

They have a schedule tab on the left page and they waste no time on uploading new seasonal anime, which they are rips from Crunchyroll and Funimation (I don’t know if they rip stuff from HIDIVE too and who knows if they’ll rip Netflix stuff too but we’ll see).

Although on November 19th, for some reason SubsPlease took so damn long on having the latest Guraburu episode, it only took a few hours, but seriously, I do not condone the tardiness and I hope they don’t make this same screw-up or be worse in the future. And then on November 27th, they also took too long with an episode of Assault Lily Bouquet, I don’t watch that series but the tardiness, come on...

The website automatically detects my timezone, even after the daylight saving time, which is really amazing.

And most importantly:

Dark theme! Well, Erai-Raws’ website is dark by default and there’s nothing wrong with it, but since I treat SubsPlease more like a successor of HorribleSubs, having a dark theme on their website is something HorribleSubs always lacked. Dark theme is the future! Not just it’s easier for my eyes, but dark theme is just cool.

I should also point out that on December 9th, Crunchyroll was actually bought by Funimation, this may or may not sound like a win-win situation, it sounds impressive and guess the tables have turned considering their previous team-up which didn’t last long and now they’re back, but I don’t have high hopes for this move overall, just as long as they don’t go too extreme with piracy DMCAs and worst-case-scenario nuking Nyaa or any subs sites like SubsPlease and Erai, I’m okay with it.

Anyways, enough talk with all the anime torrenting, but still, let’s press F to pay respect to HorribleSubs. HorribleSubs closing with the first episode of Higurashi (They were still uploading episodes of ongoing series for a little bit but we don’t count those) sounds like they definitely ended with a bang.

One more thing before I talk about my review for this Fall 2020 season as well as talking about my line-up for Winter 2021, let’s talk about my birthday. So, how was it? It was great, it’s always better when you happen to have friends who make lovely pictures for you, even if it’s usually a day early or some may not always deliver screenshots (Because most of my friends are Japanese and a Filipino who make Custom Order Maid 3D2 content) but at least I get something.

As for the actual day, well, it was alright, it started off quite stressful with reuploading my birthday picture with numerous fixes over and over and played some Among Us with friends, and then I did have fun just going out with my family and have lunch, so that was something.

But to be brutally honest, most of my fun was already taken away the day prior with all of my Japanese and Filipino friends sending me their COM3D2 pictures to me, that’s a big problem, their timezone is like way ahead of me and they lived on October 4th, so everyone pretty much celebrates my birthday so early and as much as I like it, it starts to lose the fun for what I’m supposed to be on my actual birthday.

My birthday should officially be October 5th in their timezones so I would tell everyone in my actual day that it is my birthday, and I should stop having this habit of telling everyone it’s my birthday, I say it’s pretentions but at the very moment I end up doing so anyways.

Actually, the most fun I would have had in my birthday was if Venom: Let There be Carnage hadn’t been delayed if only COVID didn’t exist, that seriously should have been the main thing that would have made my birthday but without it, my birthday has become shallow overall. But whatever, at least I did have a pretty good lunch, only to make my stomach hurt for a week.

So for the future of my birthday, I probably should stay quiet in telling Japanese people about my birthday being in October 4th in their timezone, at least some who don’t know, I’ll start going crazy about my birthday in my actual day. I really hope there’s something really exciting in my birthday and beyond, too bad there’s no movies to watch next year (Although I could wait to see Dune in my birthday since it comes out in October 1st, so it’s kinda close--And my birthday in 2021 is in Monday, lovely...).

Also, we do not talk about the day Travis Touchdown was announced in Super Smash Ultimate as a Mii fighter, the timing, which happened a day before my birthday, and the choice of making him a Mii fighter are the worst thing they’ve ever done and now I’ve 100% lost care for Smash, if I had any care to begin with, I’ll NEVER forgive you, Sakurai! 😡

That is until October 28th that the Switch ports of the first two No More Heroes games have been released! Aah, what a relief! I might have NMH3 next year, but having the first two games on Switch now is an absolute win and the most important thing right now! (SOMEONE GIVE ME A SWITCH!) Actually, now it seems like NMH1 and 2 will be coming out to PC as well, I GUESS I WON’T NEED A SWITCH AT THE MOMENT, THEN!

After I publish this post, please look forward to my New Year post in the next few days as well.

ANYWAYS, let’s start with the reviews!

Fall 2020 Review

(Higher resolution)

Akudama Drive: Call me biased since I’m a Danganronpa fan, but THIS! THIS IS IT! THE ANIME THAT SAVES 2020! THE ONE OF MANY TOOKYO GAMES PROJECT THAT HAS FIRST SOLD ME FINALLY RELEASED AND IT’S ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING I WANTED!

Ahem, sorry about that, but it’s true, I ABSOLUTELY loved this series.

It’s got really great characters and their designs are great, it’s got kick ass opening and ending themes (Although the OP theme is the most important highlight), the animation is very aesthetically pleasing too, and then... AT LAST WE GET TO SEE A PREVIEW OF THE DANGANRONPA COLLAB ART AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY MY #1 AOTS!!! THEN ON DECEMBER 1ST, THE FULL ART IS SHOWN!!!

Another thing I like about the series are the titles of the episodes which they’re all movie titles, especially the episodes “Mission Impossible” and “The Shining,” especially The Shining because it definitely lives up to its name and goes all out with the most obvious references anyone would know.

As much as I love Akudama Drive, I have some complaints!

First off, in terms of the universe, I kinda wish the characters didn’t go by codenames and it would be nicer if they had real names or have them revealed at some point (Which they didn’t, sadly), this makes me feel like watching Goblin Slayer all over again. I mean, there are some things where I’m okay with the characters just having codenames for varying reasons (Hiding their identities or remain mysterious), but this one kind of doesn’t work a bit.

Another which I may take back is the lack of fan arts, somewhere like episode 4 or something, I thought I wouldn’t see fan art of Akudama Drive which I thought nobody watches the series, but one random person miraculously saved my life by giving this one fan art, not only it’s a good fan art, IT’S A CROSSOVER FAN ART WITH DANGANRONPA, ABSOLTUELY PREDATING THE REVEAL OF THE ACTUAL CROSSOVER ART!

Then I searched through Twitter and Pixiv and there’s quite a lot of decent fan arts! (Especially on Pixiv since it usually has god awful fan art, but not all the Akudama Drive fan arts were all that bad, not perfect, but it was something). Searching for Akudama Drive fan arts on Twitter would be extremely hard, especially when there can be way better fan art but without the Japanese hashtag, but even so, I can still find plenty of good fan arts with the hashtag. If anyone has more good Akudama Drive fan arts, please give them to me.

Well, these are nitpicks that are rather meaningless, the real complaint I have is the heavy censorship on any violent moment, like, the most hardcore bloody scenes or something. This is something I’m never going to understand with Japanese censorship, like, I’m okay with the censorship in porn, but the gore is something that hits close to home for me since I’ve always liked blood and gore but it just feels like whatever people like doing with violent video games, anime and manga, it just feels very limited. Not to mention there’s some weird inconsistency in some Japanese media that some can show gore uncensored and others censored, I’m so confused.

I also wish the ending was a little more satisfactory, even though I’m sad about all the Akudama dying, something about the ending is a little left to be desired and raises a lot of questions.

The healing factor kids are save now, but it came at the cost of our Akudama bros’ lives. 😭

By the way, there’s a manga adaptation that came out when the anime was supposed to come out back in July, it’s monthly and I would absolutely read it legit in this site called Renta and the chapters are quite cheap to rent or buy, which is really nice. I would like to read it but I’d like to buy the full volumes of it whenever they’re gonna come out.

Anyways, after the series ends, I hope we get to see new info in the Kazutaka Kodaka projects with Rui Komatsuzaki character designs soon, and I really hope Kodaka would make more original anime like Akudama Drive (As long as the characters are designed by Rui Komatsuzaki, I can’t look at anything Kodaka without Komatsuzaki character designs, no matter the concept).

Oh, by the way, even Osomatsu-san season 3 promoted Akudama Drive! (I mean, they’re both made by Pierrot, but to see something like this is just uncanny)

Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni - Gou: First of all, the title is actually not “New,” the true title is actually “Gou,” which supposedly this is a brand new entry, this is interesting, the secrecy behind the series and how it was marketed certainly makes for a really great series, but since I’ve never experienced Higurashi in my life, I feel left out. I mean supposedly because from what I hear this isn’t even a remake but rather a new entry, but whatever site I heard that from is probably an unreliable nobody source that I know of, so I’m not entirely sure on that one.

Second of all, before I go into details on my impressions with the series, as someone who never grew up with the original anime nor the visual novels, there’s something I forgot to address in the previous post, Higurashi Gou is animated by Passione, which they impressed me with High School DxD Hero and Citrus. Although sometimes the character designs does throw me off a little, and I saw a comment on Nyaa within the HorribleSubs upload of the episode that the art style reminded of the commentor to Monogatari, which it does look Monogatari-ish and I can’t unsee that now.

Now for my impressions, since I pretty much know the nature of the Higurashi series, I didn’t have that much of high expectations, so there’s not much to say about it. Although even if I’m familiar with the messed up nature, I wasn’t really familiar with the characters and the story, so I guess this is my one way to go with it. As of late, YouTube has randomly been recommending me comparison videos of some moments from the series so far and I’m usually biased towards newer stuff that look cleaner, so I’m definitely take the 2020 side (Which leads me to believe this IS a remake of an adaptation or something).

One thing that did disappoint me, however, is that the Eiko Shimamiya opening theme from the original series was only used once at the end of the first episode, I was kinda sad this isn’t used for the rest of the series, but it was kind of expected to make new theme songs.

If I have the time and desire to do so, I wish I would watch the original Higurashi series and maybe rewatch Gou for like a side-to-side comparison visually and perhaps narratively as well. (And what about the VNs? Eh, I’ll probably never get the mental capacity and time to do so, sorry.)

D4DJ First Mix: Since this is already a new franchise beginning, I thought I would give this an A (just like other Sanzigen titles this year but for varying reasons), but as of the writing of this episode after episode 5 premiered, this series immediately went from A to S! This is my #2 Sanzigen anime of the year, #1 being of course Bandori season 3.

One thing I’d like to point out is that the background characters throughout the series are entirely CG! Looks like Sanzigen has finally delivered God’s work for once! Except there are times when MINOR characters, like the owners of Cafe Vynil and even the Happy Around girls when they were kids are still hand drawn. I don’t know why but I just realized I constantly talk about how much hand drawn characters I have to point out in literally everything Sanzigen makes, so apologies about that.

When I started watching the first episode, I literally got familiar vibes to that of Argonavis with the main character (or in this case, multiple main characters being Happy Around) going to a live concert, but it’s a little different. Instead of the main character being motivated to becoming a musician and go to the concert he went when he was a kid, instead the main character (Being Rinku) went to this concert and remembers WOW WAR TONIGHT, Maho, however, does have the desire of going to the same concert Rinku went when she was a kid.

That kinda sounds more like Argonavis but with more accessibility and well, something that appeals more to audiences because I’m still baffled that out of every Sanzigen title that came out this year, no company, and I mean, NO COMPANY, has officially licensed Argonavis at all! Leaving the series mainly being fansubbed. I think it may be for the better that Argonavis isn’t officially licensed because not everyone would like the series because not everyone is fond of the concept of a male equivalent of Bandori (If it works for Idolmaster, it wouldn’t for Bandori IMO).

Hopefully they’ll make just as many seasons and movies like Bandori if this is going to be Bushiroad’s next big franchise.

Osomatsu-san season 3: After 5 long years, Osomatsu-san continues to deliver some really good laughs and being bizarre.

Wait, it’s been 5 years, why hasn’t Osomatsu-san season 3 addressed a 5th anniversary of sorts? 5 years is an important milestone!

Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter season 2: Sure, Osomatsu-san season 3 is definitely the better comedy of the season (Which forgot to mention it would top Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter season 2 along with Uzaki-chan), but that doesn’t mean Healing Chapter season 2 wouldn’t give me a lot of laughs (Which I think it gives me more laughs than Osomatsu-san sometimes).

They definitely improved this season with a lot of things, new characters, extended runtime which they really listened, and G11 now speaks. The first season will always be iconic, but I definitely think this season is beyond better.

However, as much as I loved this season, that is until I watched episode 12 where right before watching it, I just realized we had come this far until the very end of the season, time went flying so fast I felt like this season ended way too soon. Even if the season had a longer runtime for episodes, but for some reason it kinda feels like it didn’t do anything to me. I was pretty confused with M16′s character throughout that episode as well.

Then there was this teaser with 6P62 in episode 8. Was this supposed to mean something or did they just randomly threw this scene out of nowhere?

This finale doesn’t ruin the season overall, like I said, it improves the first season and I had plenty of laughs, but I need to process this. Once I watch the Japanese, I’ll probably get a better impression of it, and yes, the Japanese dub is indeed happening. It is coming in Spring 2021 as well, I wish it would come out in January 2021, like how the first season in Chinese dub started in late July 2019 and then the Japanese dub came out in my birthday, October 4th, I actually saw this coming but I guess the Spring 2021 release is fine, I suppose.

Despite the somewhat weak ending, I repeat, I still think this is absolutely better than the first season.

With the trend of wasting new characters in comedy shows, I absolutely award Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter season 2 as the one new comedy season that absolutely did not waste new characters like DEFY and Sangvis Ferri! 🏆

Surprisingly there was no surprise Madness Chapter season 2 or anything, which it’s for the best and I guess that’s just to show how that series wasn’t as popular as Healing Chapter, even though it’s supposed to be like an adaptation of the game’s 4koma, but the animation is so cheap and people prefer the more wholesome series like Healing Chapter, which is probably why it’s so popular.

(Although I kinda wish they picked Architect from the villain roster, I like Architect more than pretty much every Sangvis character. Although I guess Hunter, Executioner and Scarecrow are like the most popular characters or they’re important to the story? I don’t know, I just like Architect because she’s cuter)

Hoping for season 3 if the Healing Chapter series continues to grow popular and hopefully the 6P62 teaser can be paid off.

Burn the Witch: I’m still surprised how this adaptation came out shortly after the manga serialization was launched, which means it was on the work for some time, did Tite Kubo give the animators his drafts or early copies of the three chapters of the manga serialization early before it come out or something?!

Anyways, it was quite a great adaptation, I liked it, the animation was clean, I like the performances, etc. Although I do wish they should have adapted the one-shot instead since it’s pretty much the prologue of the story, although one-shots usually aren’t what the actual stories supposed to be, it’s kind of like a prototype of sorts, but this wasn’t a prototype at all, but oh well.

Golden Kamuy season 3: Around November 1st, I randomly read through all my previous Tumblr posts and even talking things out about my retrospective thoughts in stuff I reviewed (Some hold up, some don’t), with the first two seasons of Golden Kamuy, I gave it a B- overall because I was kinda spoiled with some of the hate around it and gratuitously CG animals, but retroactively, it’s still a very good series, the action, the worldbuilding, the characters and especially the bizarre humor are the best part.

Although to be honest, I like the storyline from the first two seasons better, but I’m glad things have turned out well in the end this season.

Munou na Nana: For a show that came out on my birthday, I guess this was alright overall, when I watched the first episode, I was quite surprised with the twist and that’s pretty much what the entire series is. Still, I wasn’t highly impressed, but it was alright at best. Like, I think it was best worth watching the premiere on my birthday, otherwise I wouldn’t be committed on watching the entire series because I usually drop anime that don’t convince me on my birthday.

At first I thought Rena from Higurashi and Nana would be a cute but deadly waifu combo, which they still are but I prefer Rena over Nana because I’m not pretty sure about her as a character before, she’s quite smart but I definitely wouldn’t cross paths with her ever, she at least had some hilarious faces throughout the series too. That is until the last few episodes is where I’m starting to like Nana now?

There’s another thing I liked about the series is that how earlier episodes were character focused, like dedicated to Nana’s victims before Nana kills them, later episodes have become more serialized or something.

Probably the worst thing I can come up with (And I seriously wish anyone else, especially anime journalist sites, the journalists themselves or normies would say this), is that Munou na Nana is basically Among Us the anime. Kyoya always sus’d Nana, and Nana was the Impostor all along. Pink is hella sus. (Yeah, this is stupid, moving on) But then, the final episode came out and... it ended... in quite a shocking fashion, and this is probably the best episode in the series.

If there’s one thing I have to complaint about this series, is that the official Funimation subtitles can be cringey and don’t make sense with what the characters actually say sometimes, what the hell were the official subbers thinking? I wouldn’t rewatch the series but I’m sure fansubbers would do a much better job with the writing in the Blu-Ray rips.

But then, the final episode came out and... it ended... in quite a shocking fashion, and in my opinion this is probably the best episode in the series, although even if I liked the episode very much now after watching it, there are some things I was pretty confused by, but whatever. Now this episode for sure makes me think about the series in retrospect, probably not the best anime to come out in my birthday, the first most of it was decent but this episode delivered quite a punch!

First the series started in a shocking fashion which I had no expectations for the series at the time, now the series ended in a shocking fashion. Who would have thought?

Danmachi season 3: Throughout the middle of the season, I thought this would be my least favorite storyline of the series ever, but I think it turned out pretty good in the end, I usually like beginnings than climaxes. I kinda felt similarly with Golden Kamuy as mentioned above, but both have solid climaxes.

Call me crazy, but I feel like Danmachi doesn’t feel as relevant as it used to be back when the first season came out and it was quite memed a lot, particularly with Hestia’s boob ribbon and the tooth brushing from the opening or something, those were the good old days.

Although I do admire how we’ve come this far with quite a lot of Danmachi anime over the last 5 years, from the first season in 2015, the Sword Oratoria spin-off in 2017, last year’s season 2 and now season 3. There’s this two year pattern but season 3 this year feels different.

Toji no Miko Tomishibi: On November 1st (Día de los Muertos), before watching the latest episode of Munou na Nana (or Talentless Nana as I called the series in the previous post), I knew I was definitely gonna forget about the first part of the OVA, so I watched the first part of the OVA after watching Munou na Nana and I guess it was okay, not really great but not bad either, but there was one thing I immediately noticed is that the character designs in the OVA look completely different than the TV series.

Before (TV series):

After (OVA):

The OVA character designs look a lot less like Yoshinori Shizuma’s art style like the TV series replicated. That is probably because the OVA was made by a different studio than the TV series. The TV series was made by Studio Gokumi and the OVA was made by Project No.9.

But even if they’re both made by different studios, part of the visuals kind of look similar in a way or something? I also noticed the Aradama aren’t CG in the OVA like in the TV series.

I was happy to see Kanami and Hiyori in the OVAs too, I always liked them better than pretty much everyone else, especially the characters from the mobile game which are the main stars here who are my least favorites, so I guess there are some characters I like in a series I’m otherwise lukewarm with.

The second part, however... It didn’t do much service to me, as the animation has gotten really horrible, the writing was terrible (And no, I’m talking about the subs, I’m talking about actual writing), and even if this served as the finale of the OVA, the pacing felt way fast for it being the last half of the OVA.

I’m not sure I should hope for more Toji no Miko anime in the future, I really hope this should be the last and never hear about Toji no Miko again.

Guraburu: This is probably the blandest Cygames adaptation yet. I mean, sure, you could say that it’s nowhere near bad (Same with Princess Connect Re:Dive), but for some reason this series wasn’t really that funny for me, definitely the worst comedy of the season when we have great ones like Osomatsu-san and Girls’ Frontline Healing Chapter. I think the Guranburu 4koma work best when they’re just still images, making an anime out of this just doesn’t work.

Then there’s the animation, I’m very conflicted with it. On one hand, it tries to replicate the art style of the 4koma very well, but when it comes to the motion, it just looks very cheap, almost as if it was animated on Flash, it’s kind of like Queen Bee tier animation. Even gacha 4koma adaptations like FGO’s Manga de Wakaru is does absolute justice to the art, it's hilarious and it's very pleasing to look at.

The subtitles writing can also be a little weird as well, though probably not as god awful as Munou na Nana can get, right? (No wonder people say dubs are usually better written, but I couldn’t care less about dubs in general)

As for the comedy, sometimes it was funny, but I wasn’t really impressed, I don’t think this is a case of “comedy is subjective” (or might be), if the animation were better, I would have laughed along with the jokes.

If you want better examples of anime adaptations based on gacha games’ 4koma, just watch FGO’s Manga de Wakaru instead, like I previously mentioned, and then the upcoming Azur Lane Bisoku Zenshin (If you’re one of those people who hate Azur Lane: The Animation which I hope you’re not).

This was me throughout the series...

(Although this and Lyria’s “See? You just said something nonsensical.” are the only good moments I liked which these make for good reaction images from a series I find otherwise bland.)

I just realized I haven’t put any anime I didn’t like or hated in D or E, so this might as well be the first and ONLY anime of 2020 being D tier! Congratulations! We’ve finally found a bad anime of the year that’s D or E-tier worthy for once! I’m impressed, most of the anime I watched this year aren’t really all god awful compared to last year, all the anime I watched, even the ones that let me down and downright disliked weren’t all god awful, so this year turned out quite a blessing in disguise with my anime experience for an otherwise terrible year for literally everything.

Honorable mentions

Attack on Titan: The Final Season: As of the publishing of this post, we’re literally four episodes into the season and I’d hardly call this as an AOTS in 2020, as the tier on my TierMaker image suggests, this gonna be more like the Best Anime of 2021, there’s no way after four episodes, this season should immediately be AOTY material, or who knows.

There’s one thing I forgot to mention in the previous post and that is the surprising studio change from Studio WIT to MAPPA, at first when I saw the poster of the season, I was very skeptical and confused as to why did they change studios from WIT to MAPPA, before I even noticed the trailer was actually there when this was announced, I was very skeptical, then I saw the trailer and I thought I was impressed, it seemed on par with what WIT did, but upon watching the actual first episode in fullscreen this time, I think it looks alright but it’s got some good parts so far like the rotoscope animation. Some of the character designs look a bit different too, but I don’t know if it’s just me. I just hope it’s not a repeat of One Punch Man season 2 where JC Staff did a horrible job and ended up being my #2 worst AOTY 2019 just for the animation quality alone. That’s not to say I’m shitting on MAPPA just yet, let’s wait until the very end so I can get a better judge of what’s the animation to come.

And then in episode 2, there were flashbacks from the previous seasons with the WIT animation. I think I’ve come at a point where I really started to get fed up with this trend. It’s not just lazy copy and pasting scenes from previous seasons, but it’s just really heartbreaking seeing those clips of the previous seasons done by better studios compared to the actual season we’re watching done by another studio.

The OP and ED are absolute bangers too. As for the OP, it’s still not Linked Horizon but it sounds good, and I love how it has now being parodied to death with footage from World War and even one of 2020. The ED is pretty good too and that one’s actually released in full first, sometimes I listen either the OP or the ED quite a lot Oh, and I found out the band that did the OP made... This. Uh... Okay... (Before you complaint, I don’t think it’s a bad song, but the backstory behind it just makes me feel uncomfortable. Oh and they did the ED theme for season 2 which I didn’t even know and forgot about the song)

The most shocking part is, from what I heard, this season is going to be 16 episodes long. I mean, it sounds a little better than 13 episodes like season 2, but is that even going to be enough considering the manga is nearly about to end? It should end pretty soon but the final season of the anime is ending in March and who knows if by that time the manga would have ended and who knows if MAPPA will be able to catch up by adapting this season with JUST 16 episodes, or they would probably end up making movies that cover the manga’s finale, I DON’T KNOW!

So far MAPPA’s animation has been okay for me, it can be a bit of hit or miss but they’re doing an alright job, but of course, WIT will always be the best, althugh sometimes even seasons 2 and 3 can get a little stale, but WIT will always be better. They pretty much worked hard into the series and lately they’ve been working in a lot of projects, so it must have been very difficult if they were able to work on AoT The Final Season and everything else all at once. Thank you WIT.

Fire Force season 2: After two seasons, Fire Foce is one of the best and worst works David Production has ever done. My thoughts into the story and stuff goes the same if I were to read the manga, I like the story, the worldbuilding, etc. But my biggest criticism in the anime’s part is the animation, sometimes even in the second season can still be a bit slow and poorly paced, but at least it’s not as dreadful as the first season, but even so, there’s still some great sakuga moments.

With that being said about the animation, I hope this doesn’t affect David Productions in the future, such as the upcoming second seasons of Cells at Work and potentially the JoJo Stone Ocean anime. (And whatever else David Production makes but honestly I don’t give a shit)

Hmmm, I feel like I’m missing something, oh yeah, what about the Dragon’s Dogma anime? Well, I wasn’t interested on wanting to watch it. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear it would be shitty, even from hardcore Dragon’s Dogma players.

Arknights Holy Knight Light: This was quite the most surprising thing ever to come out of the 1st anniversary livestreams from the Japanese and English Arknights YouTube channels, the first time I started watching it, I couldn’t help but fanboy out of this with what was happening, this OVA is worth rewatching a billion times as a New Year movie!

Since I don’t have time or not planning to add this into my actual tier lists, might as well say that this is definitely S tier!

(This last honorable mentionis more like a last minute addition since I had planned to publish this post this Sunday, the 27th, which you’re probably reading now. This was written on the 26th.)

Anyways, let’s get into the most anticipated releases of Winter 2021!

Anticipated anime of Winter 2021

Note that I’m not talking about my anticipated anime of 2021 overall, as I’ll be discussing that in the next post which is my New Year 2020 review, so for now, let’s talk about the Winter 2021 releases!

Azur Lane Bisoku Zenshin - January 11th: Over the course of this 2020 after the finale episodes came out, I became extremely bummed out and spoiled on the fact that a lot of people (Especially the Western Azur Lane community) absolutely HATE Azur Lane: The Animation. I mean, sure, the animation kinda got bad at times but that doesn’t make it automatically trash, and neither should the story (Which I think the animation is more troublesome than the story).

I of course had always known Azur Lane The Animation might be hated, at least from the Western community, from the day it was first broadcast, I’ve seen nothing but praise from the Japanese community, and it was going that way for the entire series, that’s what I always relied on and it has beared with me until I started talking to the official Discord server about it and it was quite a shitstorm.

I could go on and on with ranting about why Azur Lane The Animation isn’t garbage for billions of times, over and over, from the many references from the game to fan service at its absolute best. especially that they actually featured official Azur Lane nudity in the Blu-Rays, and speaking of the Blu-Rays, they offered very cool costumes. You might say having exclusive costumes in the Blu-Rays would scream ALTA being a cash grab, shut up, it’s not, people of course religiously buy the Blu-Rays for whatever purpose. Shit animation my ass! Shit characterization my ass! Shit story my ass! Identity crisis my ass! Fuck everyone whoever talks shit about Azur Lane The Animation and even if I were to forget about it for a while, I’m bound to come across someone who’s gonna be like “Azur Lane has an anime too but it’s shit,” and I’m gonna yell at their asses off!

After making animated trailers, not only for Azur Lane but even Arknights too, this is the first major TV series release from Yostar’s new animation studio, Yostar Pictures, but they won’t operate alone, so they’re collaboration with another studio known as CANDY BOX. which seems to be a relatively new studio, but this isn’t the first time Yostar Pictures is collaborating with another studio, they also work with Madhouse for some trailers, including trailer for the third anniversary as well as the Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation collab trailer. YOSTAR PICTURES COLLABORATING WITH MADHOUSE, HOW COOL IS THAT?! THAT’S A DREAM TEAM FROM STUDIOS I LIKE!

Imagine if Azur Lane The Animation would get a second season (Dear god, please do. I loved this season more than anything, fuck what people say) that is animated in the same style as these trailers, the series could recover and it would be redeemed for the Western community (I may jinx this one out since I said the same thing with the very first animated commercial made by Sunrise, and then ALTAS was animated by Bibury Animation Studio, I’m not really disappointed, though).

What if an Arknights series from Yostar Pictures x Madhouse too? That would be amazing and they even teased about it. Actually, around this Christmas when the first anniversary livestreams were happening, they actually released an OVA which is sort of New Year-themed at the end BUT IT’S SO COOL, I’M GOING TO BE REWATCHING THIS A BILLION TIMES!

Anyways, I’m sorry for going off topic with Azur Lane The Animation instead of what I was supposed to be talking about, Bisoku Zenshin.

It’s been like 2 years since I started following the series, mainly on the Japanese Azur Lane Twitter account and I can’t remember what were the first chapters even like, the only things I remember is this one chapter where Takao actually having animal ears. 2 years later, the English Azur Lane Twitter account is finally catching up with English translations of the 4koma, but the problem is that it’s 2 years and so many chapters behind from JP, going from the first chapter, it may or may not help me remember what were the first chapters like and hopefully they’ll be adapted in the series, I probably should pay attention.

Although from what I’ve seen in the trailers and the character reveals which so far they revealed Formidable, Baltimore, Spee, etc, I’m not really sure if this series is going to actually adapt the 4koma from the very beginning, well, I don’t remember what were the first chapters like, so hopefully once I start seeing the series and try to find the first few chapters, this can be a faithful adaptation. Although, honestly, I wouldn’t mind if this were an original story using the same foundation, I just want to watch more Azur Lane anime with whatever stories they can come up with.

Cells at Work! season 2 and Cells at Work! BLACK - January 9th: What’s better than having a second season of Cells at Work and have an adaptation of the spin-off, Cells at Work BLACK? HAVE BOTH OF THEM AIRED BACK-TO-BACK IN ONE HOUR! That is such a perfect way to celebrate the series with a new season and spin-off! It kinda reminds me of the good old days when I used to watch Danganronpa 3 Hope and Despair Arcs almost simultaneously, just with two days apart, but with Cells at Work and BLACK, we’re getting ONE HOUR!

As previously mentioned in Fire Force season 2, I really hope David Production can keep their shit together with the animation in future shows, most specifically Cells at Work season 2. I’m not animation expert but I’m sure it’ll be pretty much the exact same team of animators who did the first season, so I really hope the series won’t have a very deteriorating tone and direction like Fire Force suffered so badly in the first season last year.

With Cells at Work BLACK, if you haven’t guessed from the title, this is a darker spin-off of the vanilla Cells at Work series. The vanilla series is already violent but it keeps a light spirited tone, BLACK, however, is downright edgy. We’re having quite the Ying and Yang of two series. I’m surprised that David Production isn’t doing BLACK like the vanilla series, although I think it’s for the better because they’ve been working on other stuff like JoJo and Fire Force, and with this different studio doing BLACK, I’m impressed with how the visuals look so far.

And female White Blood Cell is cute.

Quintessential Quintuplets season 2 - January 7th: I’m surprised how long it has been for season 2 to come out, at first I thought it would come out this Winter 2020 but nothing came out of it and I was already thinking it would have been delayed, then a few months later we finally got some info but the most surprising thing is that they actually changed studios to Bibury Animation Studio.

Given that this is Bibury Animation Studio, the same one that did Azur Lane The Animation, like I previously mentioned in Azur Lane Bisoku Zenshin, PLEASE GIVE BIBURY A CHANCE! THEY DID NOTHING WRONG!

When I looked at the visuals and looking at the character trailers, it actually looks quite promising, the first season wasn’t visually the best, so this has potential.

Project Scard: Scar on the Praeter - January 8th: Actually, this 2021, GoHands is going to release two TV series, this first one being an original anime series, and the second one which was supposed to be for April being Tokyo Babylon, an adaptation of CLAMP’s manga series of the same name. Tokyo Babylon was delayed until further notice because apparently costume designs were referenced without permission, that is such an outlandish reason. Besides, what kind of costume references? And permission from who or what? So vague. I could have gotten two GoHands shows in two seasons in a row!

Anyway, let’s first talk about Project Scard which that’s what it’s gonna come out first. I’m happy to see that GoHands is doing more original series, but there’s a problem: This one is apparently not related to Hand Shakers at all!

And no, this is not a case of misleading marketing with the trailers tricking me this could still be secretly a sequel of Hand Shakers like W’z did (Although I don’t think I payed attention to the W’z trailers at all until I started watching the series), I definitely see this series entirely standalone for once based on the characters and the setting, which I’m very disappointed that this isn’t a threequel to Hand Shakers. Everyone hated Hand Shakers and W’z was GoHands’ EXTREMELY worst selling anime, I really loved the series and I liked their stories, the world had so much potential!

Anyways, I may be sad this isn’t a new Hand Shakers entry, I should at least enjoy this series for what it is, not everyone’s going to like this one for sure since the animation is more akin to Hand Shakers, which would turn many people off.

With what I said about Bibury Animation Studio with Quintuplets S2, people should also give GoHands a chance! THEY DID NOTHING WRONG!!!

I’m honestly feeling more excited about Tokyo Bablyon than this, but we’ll get into more details in the New Year post.

Bungou Stray Dogs Wan! - January 12th: There may not be a new season of the main series as of late, but an adaptation of a chibi spin-off is quite surprising, since I really like Bungou Stray Dogs, I’m of course watching this!

(Now that I think about it, I don’t really think Bungou Stray Dogs a huge part of my life... 🤔)

Promised Neverland season 2 - January 7th: With the manga now ended a few months ago, should we expect future seasons so they would adapt the finale?

Beastars season 2 - January 5th: I always victimize Beastars when criticizing Sanzigen’s syndrome of having hand drawn background characters (Even D4DJ was so close on breaking the syndrome, it has CG background characters but there’s still some minor characters that are still hand drawn, the most baffling part is the main characters when they were kids), but that aside, it doesn’t really affect the story or anything, just ranting.

Yuru Camp season 2 - January 7th: I literally forgot the spin-off series, Heya Camp, existed, and since that one was a short series, I feel like it wasn’t enough, so it’s finally time for season 2 to come out!

I also forgot about the movie, so maybe once season 2 ends, there might be some info on it?

Re:Zero season 2 second cour - January 6th: It hasn’t been long but it still feels weird having to wait a while for the next part of the season, at least it’s not in production that would take forever like Magia Record.

Dr. Stone: Stone Wars - January 14th: A few months ago, I randomly watched a couple of episodes of Dr. Stone, but on the night of December 6th, I have decided to start binging the first season, then I finished it and... WHY DID I SLEEP ON IT IN 2019?! THIS IS GREAT! I was already impressed by the 3 episodes I randomly watched at some point, but after watching the series fully, I couldn’t be more impressed than ever, it’s making me feel like the time I binged Shield Hero and I was just as amazed (which lead to the disappointment of Isekai Quartet 2 wasting the Shield Hero characters hard).

That is it for my Fall 2020 review as well as my anticipated anime of 2021!

Final thoughts on 2020 in anime

I want to give my final thoughts on this overall year in anime: As previously mentioned, I was absolutely impressed that there was almost not a single anime I didn’t like that I would consider D or E, even for a year that has done me more harm than good, this year has delivered quite a lot of good anime, even if some of them disappointed me. BUT! Want to know what are my top anime of the year? You’ll have to find out in the New Year post to see what are my contenders!

Check out my Carrd.

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kunop · 8 years

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holy shit I’m watching the first chapter of the ndrv3 playthrough and Kaede x Saihara is so strong that I’m scared. Since this is danganronpa, he’s either going to die or he’s going to betray Kaede.

ch1 spoilers & rant under the cut

HOLY SHIT THEY’RE SO CUTE AND I NEVER THOUGHT I’LL BE SHIPPING THEM, BUT I AM.

The way they support each other is just so,,, such a healthy relationship... But it really worries me that they’re being coupled together so early in the game. It just means that something is bound to happen that’ll leave me either betrayed or heartbroken.

In chapter one, Saihara already trusts Kaede enough to tell her about his backstory and the reason why he likes to keep his hat on all the time. And honestly, I thought this was his death flag when this flashback story triggered. But we all know who ended up dying...surprisingly... I’m pretty sure everyone who was following the fanmitsu and official ndrv3 leaks was surprised when they saw the dead body.

But, anyway, he’s comfortable enough to tell Kaede his insecurities-- How come he has such low self esteem: his father owned a detective agency and he just helped out. In his FTE#1, he tells Kaede how they’re just silly small things. But then, one day there was a murder investigation that he was part of. He claims that he was only named SHSL Detective because he was able to solve the case before the local police were able to. Of course, Kaede compliments him on this that “even so, solving a murder is amazing.” He denies it and says that because of this case, he’s been afraid [of the truth and therefore he will never be a true detective]. He describes himself as the villain in the case for even solving this murder. In that particular case, the murderer was avenging his family member who committed suicide because of the victim. So, the murderer was furious when he was caught by Shuichi and because of that, Shuichi has been haunted by those angry eyes ever since; making him unable to look into anyone’s eyes.

“I hated it, hated it, I couldn’t bear those eyes”

And here on, he rants on about being scared of the truth and being a terrible detective when Kaede tries to console him.

And the best part is how they interacted. Kaede notices Saihara’s hands shaking while he tells her about himself.

And her first reaction was to grab his hand, even though her hands were shaking too, from nervousness of their plan and just being scared in general of their situation.

She attempts to calm him down by talking about the piano and how if there was a piano here, he could play Debssy’s Claire de Lune (english: moonlight) and how fitting it would be for him. I also want to mention that the BGM being played in the background of this CG sounds like a remixed version of Debussy’s original. But idk, maybe it’s just me.

But anyway, she says something along the lines of

“Oh, maybe you’ve realised that my hands are shaking too... But if you [saihara-kun] weren’t here, I wouldn’t be able to do anything at all. I’m really glad that you’re here. Because of you, I can look forward. If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t have the courage to stand up to the mastermind. So, have a little more confidence in yourself. I believe in you, so you should believe in yourself.”

It’s not a Rem-tier support & pick-me-up, but it’s still touching none the less.

and pretty effective too.

And then Kaede finishes the consoling with a “Besides, people who wear hats are cool.” im scREaMING

“So, when we leave here, I want to see how you look like without a hat”

tHAT LITTLE BLUSHHHHH zzzz im deceased

And then during the investigation. Wow, kodaka just sailed the ship. On chapter one. Which is why im clenching and steeling myself for the heartbreak BEACUSE THE LAST TIME HE DID THIS IN CHAPTER ONE WE GET BETRAYED BY MAIZONO ;;;;;;;;;;;

He starts ranting about his theories and why Amami died where he did and etc. when he notices Kaede doesn’t look so peachy so he instantly turns his attention to her and asks if she’s okay.

He tries his own hand at consolation; he explains that this needs to happen, they need to investigate the corpse and there’s no way around it etcetc. So, Kaede just says it’s fine, she understands and she’ll go along with it “for the dead Amami-kun and those who are still alive and to stop the mastermind”.

So Saihara says he’ll help as much as he can and he’ll support her in the investigation.

And then he adds “besides, I’m a detective” as an after thought in the next line.

Now, right after you click on Amami’s body to investigate, Shuichi takes over almost right away.

“Don’t worry. Leave it to me.”

He doesn’t want to make Kaede suffer looking at a dead body any more than necessary. He also repeats himself saying “I said I’ll support you.”

“Saying such cool things.”

It makes my heart beat... a bit.

Kaede starts crying when she thinks back to her last conversation with Amami, saying that it would’ve been nice to work together if they were thinking the same thing.

Saihara looks away and sweats a bit while giving Kaede a concrete explanation. Basically, saying that Amami was just like him, he found out there was a secret door and wanted to keep it a secret because, while they were alike, they had one difference. Saihara trusted Kaede and wasn’t alone in the planning, unlike Amami who went for it on his own.

As he said this, he held his had towards me. I took his hand and he pulled me toward him.

I’m not sure but it just sounds like a descriptive way of saying “we hugged.”

but probably not since I’m sure they’ll have a CG for it. But instead, we get a zoom in effect towards Saihara’s sprite after that line.

and so Saihara finally completely calms Kaede down.

This was how far i got into the game before I just couldn’t take it and had to make a rant about these two. Honestly, I did not expect myself to be shipping them. I really thought the game was going to do an Amami/Kaede ship with a side of Maki/Kaede, so this really is a shock to me. And well... I guess this ends my rant.

#ndrv3 #ndrv3 spoilers #saihara shuuichi #kaede akamatsu #saimatsu #chapter 1 #rant #character relationships analysis #but only up to chap 1 im not done with the whole thing yet #I still got the trial left #so this is just live ranting

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murasaki-murasame · 7 years

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Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 2 [Chapter 1 - Daily Life]

Yeah I may as well put the rest of this under a read-more right from the start since I wanna get right into spoilers.

Just to jump right to the end of what I played because it’s the elephant in the room, I called Rantarou being the first death before the game even came out in Japan. But I think everyone did. It was really obvious that either he was going to survive for most/all of the game, or be killed off immediately to troll everyone because he’s set up as being so mysterious and presumably plot-important. I’m not really angry about it, but it’s just kinda funny that I called this nearly a year in advance. Thankfully the rest of the game should be less predictable than this, since this was the only real thing I confidently predicted back then. Also for the record I had no actual, genuine idea about this in advance, it was just a guess of mine.

It’s weird that in the demo version they had him [and Keebo] sit out of the trial, when he ended up not surviving long enough to take part in a trial in the main game.

Either way, it’s at least kinda amusing that he died immediately when he felt so similar to Komaeda. Obviously it’s still lame to see him die so soon, but at least his character played out differently to Komaeda.

[Also for the record I’m hoping that Kokichi saying ‘my dearest Rantarou’ was just him making an inappropriate joke, because hoo boy it was bad enough when DR3 ended with the Bury Your Gays trope. I’d be genuinely angry if this game STARTED with it. I’m pretty sure it’s just a joke, but it does remind me that Kokichi/Rantarou was actually a relatively popular crack ship in the fandom, at least back before the game came out in Japan]

I stopped playing directly when the investigation officially started [so technically I played a few minutes of the Deadly Life segment but that was because the game didn’t let me save for a while], so I can’t exactly speculate much about the case, and I don’t want to. I’ll save that for after I play the investigation, since I’ll actually have proper clues to work with then. I know that the investigation part will probably be a lot shorter than this part, but I want to take a break between it and the trial so that I get a chance to sit down and post some speculation before I go through the trial and figure out what happened. So my next post might be a bit short. Maybe. Knowing me, it probably won’t be.

Since I was scared this would happen, I tried to talk to him as much as possible, but I only managed to have one actual scene with him. I also had one with Shuichi. Now that Rantarou’s out the way, I guess Shuichi will be the person I prioritize most in free time events. Not sure who else I’d go with. I’m kinda curious about Keebo since his backstory seems interesting, but I dunno. I kinda want to see what Kokichi’s deal is, but part of me also feels like he’s probably gonna stick around for a long time so I’m less inclined to prioritize him. Maybe I should talk to Maki more, since she seems like the type who I’ll need to really get to know before I see more sides to them.

Overall, I was sorta surprised by how much I really liked this part. I mean, I’m a big fan of the series in general, but I’ve been a bit worried about whether or not I’d actually enjoy this game and it’s cast. Thankfully those fears are getting dissipated. I was also afraid that it’d feel too similar to the first two games, but there’s enough different things happening that it’s enjoyable.

One of the things that surprised me most was the motive. Or, well, motives. I did not expect the stakes to get so high that quickly. The whole idea of ‘the first murder will happen consequence-free’ is actually really interesting, and an effective way of motivating a murder. But it definitely makes Monokuma seem way more desperate than he used to be. Especially when, like a day after the first motive, he was like ‘oh and if nobody dies soon, you all die’. At that point he’s literally forcing people’s hands, more or less. Which isn’t a criticism, really. It’s an interesting approach to take. Especially since nobody ended up actually using that motive to kill. The whole part where nobody outed themselves as being Rantarou’s killer, and Monokuma announced that they’d hold a class trial in that case, was really intriguing. It’s really making it hard to guess at the culprit’s motive.

On a similar sort of note, I was not expecting the part where Ryoma suggested that somebody murder him so they could escape and find help. I thought at first that he’d just generally suggest the idea of someone going through with murdering someone, but I probably should have expected him to be all self-sacrificial, given his attitude. I said it last time, but I REALLY like Ryoma as a character thus far.

I said I wouldn’t speculate much about the murder, but lol I can’t help myself now that I’ve seen the body. I can only make vague judgments about it, though. Like how it seems pretty obvious that Rantarou wasn’t directly murdered by someone, but instead somebody probably set a metal ball on the bookcase so that it’d roll off and hit his head when it opened. Maybe that’s just my first guess because Kaede already brought up the idea of Rube Goldberg machines earlier in the chapter. It’d also explain how the murder will remain mysterious even with photographic evidence. There probably wasn’t anyone else in the room. I assume that Monokuma would still consider the identity of the hypothetical ball-placer to be the culprit, so then the big mystery is figuring out who did that, when there’s presumably no evidence. But then again the ball could have only, in this scenario, been placed on the bookcase after the equipment was set up, otherwise Shuichi would have noticed it at the time, or the alarm would have gone off. Unless he’s the killer, which I’m really doubting.

Ignoring the option of Shuichi being the killer, he and Kaede at least have alibis. I don’t know if anyone else would have. I’ve kinda forgotten if the equipment got placed early in the morning, or right before those two hid in the classroom, so I’m not sure what time frame to work with for this one, in terms of figuring out alibis.

I feel like the seven people who went to the game room are probably being set up as people who all have mutually-verified alibis, at least. Which leaves like seven other people.

Oh well, I won’t think about it too hard until I finish the investigation.

On the topic of Shuichi, I also really like him as a character. I liked him after the prologue, but learning a bit more of his story made me like him even more. He’s a really interesting take on a detective character. I’m glad he’s not just another Kirigiri. I can really get why he feels so uncomfortable about the idea of pursuing the truth, when he ended up exposing someone who did a revenge-killing for sympathetic reasons.

I also just really like his dynamic with Kaede. They’re just adorable and mutually supportive and I love it. I’m not gonna lie, I kinda low-key ship them already. I have low standards for this sorta thing, lol.

Kaede’s also pretty interesting as a protagonist, especially in terms of how people react to her. It was kinda sad seeing everyone [well, nearly everyone] hate her for being optimistic and leader-y and wanting everyone to keep trying to escape. Considering how it’s already giving her confidence issues, I wonder if that’ll be an ongoing thing, with most of the cast not wanting to be bossed around by her. I couldn’t really blame them after how the Death Road of Despair part went, but they still took it too far.

Also on that note, fuck the Death Road of Despair. That was so awful to experience. Considering how the story played out, I imagine that the game was genuinely rigged against you, and it sure as hell felt like it. I hope that if this game ever shows up again in a less evil context, the controls aren’t so weirdly floaty and hard to control. I kinda wish I could have recorded the way my reaction to it went from ‘oh this sounds simple, just run and rump’ to ‘wait the fuck why is everyone dead’ in ten seconds.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying seeing more of the characters, and seeing them start to form their own dynamics and stuff. It’s only just starting, but it’s already interesting to watch unfold. I’m especially surprised by how Tenko pretty much immediately got a crush on Himiko and is now just following her around and acting so excited about the idea of magic. It’s really endearing me to her.

This part also continued to reaffirm my love for Gonta. He’s an incredibly sweet boy who doesn’t deserve the death that he’s presumably going to experience. He tries his best.

I’m happy that Kaito is at least trying to be on Kaede’s side. He’s a good dude thus far.

Conversely, I probably should have expected that Maki would be rude and unsociable. I’ll probably still try and spend free time with her and get to know her, though. It makes me feel like there’s something really interesting under her cold exterior that I’d never get to see if I just avoided her.

Angie’s kinda starting to creep me out, which I wasn’t expecting. Like, the blood sacrifice joke was one thing, but now she’s talking about happily accepting imminent death because Atua will welcome her into his kingdom, or Atua punishing liars, and stuff. But then again she also unironically says bye-onara and that makes me really like her.

I guess I may as well comment on Rantarou’s character in general, since this might be my last time to. I wish I could have gotten to know him better, but the one event I had with him didn’t tell me much. I’m still not sure what to make of him. He’s also kinda creepy, but I still like him. I’m not gonna deny that most of my bias toward him is still because I love [most of] his design, though. I wonder if we’ll ever learn what his talent was, since that’s still a mystery. Maybe it’ll be a plot point during the trial. I’m also curious about the fact that he seemed to have some memories related to the Ultimate Hunt, which is still suspicious to me in general as a concept. I really can’t help but feel like this game is set in some future post-DR3 where the rest of society decided to criminalize talent or something. Or they had a grudge against the whole Ultimate Initiative, and Hope’s Peak Academy, and thus they decided to hunt down everyone related to it, or something. Who knows.

I’m really surprised by the fact that none of the characters have said anything about the implication of them being criminals, with how they’re in an academy for Gifted Juveniles. You’d think that’d raise some questions from them.

Also, I wonder if everyone’s labs are going to be actual places we can at least see on the map. I think thus far we can only see Kaede’s and Miu’s rooms. Maybe the rest will open up as time goes on. On the note of their labs, I should check and see if I can go to Kaede’s one now. I kinda forgot to check it out. I think I tried to check once but the plot was railroading me elsewhere and I forgot about it after that.

Oh, and before I forget, I didn’t miss that one line from one of the Monokubs where they were obviously teasing at what’s going on in the big picture, but basically blotting out the important info. I can’t quite remember exactly what he said, though, but I remember it seeming immediately important.

And also, on the note of Monokuma, that one Monokuma Theater joking about the idea of getting confused about what happened and in what part of a long-running franchise really felt like a self-deprecating joke about how long this series has gotten. [Also the Yokai Watch reference was pretty hilarious]

I guess that’s all I have to say for now. I’ll probably just play the investigation part tomorrow, even if it might be kinda short, and then I’ll do the trial the day after. I don’t really have any predictions about who the killer is, other than that Shuichi seems really damn suspicious right about now.

#murasaki rambles #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers

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the-apocryphal-one · 7 years

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SO I FINISHED THE GAME AND…

It was…umm…wow, I don’t even know what to say. My mind’s kind of on overdrive even though I decided to wait a few hours so I could slow down a little but I’m still…wow. THAT TRIAL. I’m an incoherent mess right now.

Well I’ll start with Junko because I don’t know where to begin with Hajime. I’ll leave him for last because I’ll probably end up babbling about him the most.

JUNKO’S BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER. Seriously, she is the best. I love Junko so much. I’d never, ever want to meet someone like her in real life of course and I think she’s a terrible person in every sense of the word, but she is such an entertaining villain and I love her so much. Seriously, she is one of the best villains in the history of villains. Her design’s great, her voice and the way she talks is great, her fourth wall jokes are great, turning into a gigantic version of herself and getting a 3D model is great, her plan is so crazy, so Junko, I just have to love it. She’s such a fantastic villain and I don’t know how future games will ever be able to beat her. She’s a good villain, but she doesn’t make me want to root for her and it’s still satisfying as hell to beat her. Junko’s great. She’s probably the one who “improved” Hangman’s Gambit considering how unfair it is. I sure felt tons of despair whenever I played it. The ONE thing I didn’t think the creators took advantage of was her saying she could imitate the characters’ friends’ personalities. She could have just started talking as their friends just to mess with the characters. Chiaki when she’s talking to Hajime, Peko to Fuyuhiko, and so on. Maybe it would need more time or something so they weren’t able to do it, but I’d have really liked seeing that. She’s already emotionally tormenting them. Why not a little more? It would have been nice to see.

Akane was…the longer she was one of the survivors, the less I tolerated her. I might just be bitter because some of my favorites were killed off but she’s just not entertaining. I can’t even remember her name half of the time. Sigh, she could have so easily been Ibuki…

Kazuichi was likable. I’m sure if I did more free time events with him I’d have definitely enjoyed him more, but I liked him. Nothing too much stands out about him, but there really isn’t too much to dislike or even say about him for me. I think the most I remember about him is the bear trap teeth and “Are my words being displayed on a screen right now?!” Trial six got meta.

I liked Sonia too, more than Kazuichi. She was by far more entertaining than him, and actually did stuff. I got a kick out of her being a weeb. I’m glad she was a survivor.

Fuyuhiko didn’t die, and I’m happy. That means he can show up again and that’s good. Unless I’m forgetting something, he was the only survivor to have a character arc so it makes sense why I’d get attached to him. I’ve talked about him before so I won’t go too much into him.

Never did I think I would be so happy to see Makoto. Ever. He always seems to shine at the endgame, huh? Seeing Byakuya again makes me wonder why I missed him. Geez, he’s such a jerk. But it’s okay because Kyoko! Kyoko’s the best and seeing her again made me really happy. I’m sad there was no Toko but I’ll live. She was referenced in the epilogue so I’ll take it.

Nagito’s still nuts, except now that I know more about him, he’s somehow even more crazy. He hacked his arm off just so he could have Junko’s arm? What the hell? Like, wasn’t Junko crushed to death? How does that even work? Of course that’s not even scratching the surface of what other people did to her crushed-to-death corpse. I think I’ll just avoid talking about that, though…

And finally, HAJIME. OH, HAJIME. YOU’RE THE REASON I WAS LEFT STARING BLANKLY AT MY COMPUTER SCREEN WONDERING WHAT’S GOING ON.

When you said Hajime’s voice actor really shone late-game, holy crap, you really meant it. I am so glad that I decided to play the game with the English dub (other than not having to read the Nonstop Debate text flying around). I wouldn’t have been nearly as affected by hearing Hajime’s breakdown with just words on a screen. I’m not saying his Japanese VA is bad at all, but it’s more effective when you can understand what’s being said, y'know?

Just imagine finding out that you’re arguably on par with pretty much evil incarnate. His breakdown was just so bad, the final portion of the trial was dedicated to it, which was definitely a good choice. In fact, the climax of his character arc was given more focus than the climax of the game. And I liked it. Seeing him just completely shut down was…I don’t know how to describe it. It was unnerving, in a way, I think is one way to describe it. It makes you think that him and Nagito are probably more alike than he wants to admit. Or, at least, pre-game Hajime was a lot like Nagito. Both were willing to go to drastic ends to become “useful”, and that was what killed them in the end.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Izuru Kamukura was an invented person put in Hajime’s brain, right? He was never a person who died then his personality was reinvented then slapped on this random high school student? I kind of got that from Junko’s line of “Izuru Kamukura 1.0” but I want to be sure.

I really have no idea what else to say about him because there’s so much that can be said. I’m sure words will come to me in a few days when I’m able to properly digest everything. And, I don’t know, watching Danganronpa 3 over the weekend.

But I think the biggest tragedy out of all of this was Hajime losing all of his monocoins. I wasn’t even able to spend all the ones I had collected. It was over 500, I think. All the things I could have bought…

OH, AND AGAIN WITH THE EPIC FORESHADOWING!! In the first game it was a random PhotoShop mention, and in this game it was the characters talking about these plot twists about mystery novels where the detective or the protagonist turns out to be the Big Bad all along. The foreshadowing in both of these games is absolutely amazing and I love it. Hajime’s (or rather, Izuru?) not just the villain of his game, he’s one of the main villains in the entire series.

I have a few questions, though. How did he not revert back to Izuru when he helped shut down the game? How did all the other survivors not completely revert back to their Ultimate Despair selves? Why did his hair randomly change color? I get it was because if they did, the game wouldn’t exactly have too much closure, but I don’t really get it. I’ll probably go back and replay the sixth chapter again at some point, but I’d like to hear your explanation(s) for it first.

I don’t have much to say about the plot because I think I mostly said it all with Hajime, since he’s so closely tied to it.

So yeah, this game was amazing. Yeah, I liked the gameplay better in the first game, but everything else is just so fantastic, it doesn’t even matter because I loved everything else about it so much.

—-

:D :D :D :D

I TOLD YOU TRIAL SIX WAS WORTH IT

Man I never even thought of Junko pretending to be the deceased students. Makes me sad she actually didn’t. But yep, I was happy to see her return (only because I felt she worked well here too. I wouldn’t want her to become like Ganondorf and always be the final boss). She does an epic job of breaking our cast down one by one. And lol, yep, that’s a good explanation why Hangman’s Gambit it so much worse! She’s doing it to drink our tears.

Haha, I’m glad you like the survivors more than me. Agree with you about Akane, but Kazuichi’s Sonia-stalking became way too much and Sonia’s always just kind of been there for me. Hajime and Fuyuhiko were the only ones I liked.

Lmao Byakuya comes back and you go right back to hating him! But I’m glad you liked Makoto and Kyoko’s cameo!

Nagito just really loves and hates Junko. Junko was crushed, but I honestly believe that Nagito’s luck just preserved enough of her body for him to hack her arm off.

HAJIME IS A FANTASTIC CHARACTER AND A PRECIOUS BABY. NOW YOU TOO HAVE BEEN ENLIGHTENED.

JYB is so magnificent in Trial 6, it’s one of my favorite performances ever. The pure agony in his voice is heartbreaking. And it’s really what cemented Hajime as my favorite protagonist (that and the revelations of Trial 6 in general). Like, he wanted to be special so much he sacrificed his humanity for it, only to have a hand in destroying the world. That would shake up anyone!

Right, Izuru Kamukura, the one you see in Chapter 0, is an entirely new persona who was only ‘born’ when Hajime went through the surgeries. There was a predecessor, the founder of the school–that’s who Junko is referring to when she says “Izuru Kamukura 1.0″. He’s long dead and has nothing to do with Izuru Kamukura, result of the Hope Cultivation Project.

There was even more foreshadowing in DR0, the novel I suggested reading! It’s where Izuru first gets set up. Interestingly, some of what is revealed there contradicts some of what Junko claims about him here. Take that to mean what you will.

Who says he didn’t revert to Izuru? :) He’s got every talent, I’m sure Ultimate Actor is in there as well…

Okay, serious answer, the power of hope/friendship/belief in yourself is why he and the others are okay. They basically woke up with their memories of what happened in the simulation and their real memories, and they decided to do what Chiaki said and make their own future. Basically, sheer will is why they can fight back against despair. Cheesy, but they deserve it.

Why did his hair go from brown to black, or black to brown? …I really have no idea. He might have dyed it back to brown, but I don’t know why it changed color in the first place.

I have three things to say about watching Danganronpa 3 (looking forward to your thoughts on that too)! First, the episode order is Future 1 -> Despair 1 -> Future 2 -> Despair 2 etc. Don’t watch all of one side first, stuff that happens in the other arc will get spoiled that way. Side:Future covers Makoto and the DR1 cast after the events of SDR2, while Side:Despair shows how the world (and the SDR2 cast) fell to despair.

Second, contrary to playing the games in English, I’d suggest watching the subbed version first. This is because the dub, while not bad…is hilarious. It’s so hilarious it loses some of the serious emotion. It’s like an Abridged series (I’m not joking). It’s worth a watch, but second.

Third, there is an episode of Side:Future that references the events of the gaiden game Ultra Despair Girls, so it’s recommended to have some knowledge of what happens there. If you’re too impatient to play it, you can get away with watching the cutscenes on Youtube.

I’m glad you loved this game so much, and congrats on beating it! Sorry the gameplay never became your thing, but like you said everything else is just so, so good. It’s still my favorite to this day.

#submission #answers #sdr2

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