#salvage smallcase

[shockersalvage]

Kohei Matsudaira - Salvage Smallcase

Finally we reach the end of Kirigiriso's participation in these Showcases! It's time to tackle our hero for this story...and his unique situation!! It's Kohei Matsudaira!!

Summary

For the basics of Kohei, no matter the route, his entanglement to the plot starts the same way. Kohei is driving one night from college and takes a short cut he never took before. During his drive, he winds up meeting Kyoko Kirigiri, who ends in a ride with him towards her destination. Ultimately, though, his car is totalled and he's forced to accompany her on foot to the sight of her latest case: a mansion in the woods.

Kohei is a witness to Kirigiriso's three routes + alternate ending to canon:

The canon route - the Plant Girl Route - has him trying to survive a man eating mansion filled with carnivorous plant/human hybrids, cared for by the most successful experiment: Kyoka a bioenginerred plant/human hybrid clone of Kyoko Kirigiri that sought to sacrifice Kyoko and Kohei to her plants as 'nourishment'. In the canon ending, it's Kohei appealing to Kyoka in an attempt to turn her life around that has her give up her antagonism towards the lured in duo...but, killing herself and the Hybrids by setting the mansion on fire. Six months later, Kohei returns to the mansion to see the gravesite of Kyoka filled with white flowers and one huge one that he mistake for Kyoka.

Alternative route - Earth Defense Force Route - has him be a member of the Earth Defense Force with Kyoko, Kyoka and lead by their captain: Santa Shikiba. They fight against aliens: the Rhinogradentia, and its during this plot where it's revealed their ally - Kyoka - was an alien herself, but its thanks to Santa's actions does she reform and call off the invasion.

Joke route - Extra Scenario - A dream Kohei has after crashing his car. Kohei dreams of Kyoka and Kyoko being related, with him being called by the former to wake up the latter with a kiss. He's instead woken up by actual mouth to mouth by Santa.

Another End - an alt ending route to Plant Girl - Kyoka survives and becomes the adopted sister to Kyoko, while becoming good friends with her and Kohei.

Kohei's personality is that of a typical everyman sort, whose traits depend on what choices the player chooses. For example, he could be pervy towards Kyoko, cowardly enought to abandon Kyoko, easily timid or misled by Kyoka. From what canon route show of him the most, he is at least empathetic enough to try to connect with even a serial killer like Kyoka given his knowledge of her origins and is more than willing to give her at least a shot at turning over a new leaf.

Personal Thoughts/Rundown

Now, Kohei is difficult to properly analyze or discuss. At his core - he is a CYOA protagonist without much in the way of his personality or desires outside of being the typical average joe to Kyoko being a not-so average extraordinary detective. He's the Kirigiriso equivalent to Makoto and Yui, but lacks their core traits of being overly hopeful and justice seeking. He's basically even more of an audience surrogate than those two. As such, he can't really be gleamed for deeper meaning without it being a stretch? I mean, at best, I can consider Kohei in the canon route as being like a message that running away from the truth or not delving in to the heart of the matter as being detrimental? But, again, it feels like a stretch.

That's not to say Kohei is bad by any means. For an audience surrogate, he offers a serviceable look to Kirigiriso as the straightman/butt monkey to a lot of its oddities, which is appropriate given this is the game that has Kyoko deal with evil plant clones and aliens. He does his job well!

He's also interesting in that he's actually a guest star from another series, Otogirisu. I don't know the exact specifics of Otogirisu, aside from Kirigiriso being sort of like a sequel to it. So pretty neat origins on his part.

But, yeah, not much else to go off of beyond that. As it stands, this ends the Kirigiriso side of the misc. spin-offs - and in turn, for the next time I get back to them, I'll discuss two characters hailing from the short story - Makoto Naegi's Worst Day Ever!

[shockersalvage]

Salvage Smallcase: Ryo Oba

We interrupt the next Showcase to bring you the first of sporadic discussions! To celebrate this character's birthday, it was suggested by @drmedicsgamesurgery to make a 'showcase' for Ryo and I really liked that idea. However, given his state as being essentially a 'minor character to a semi-important character' and not having much to him, I decided he would be the first in what I like to call Salvage Smallcases!

Smallcases are Showcases that lack a proper Rundown section due to a character's dismal screentime, lack of fleshing out or non-real importance to the plot. Think of these guys as being under the Ted Chikatilo effect, except its less egregious, since these guys are supposed to be fairly unimportant in the bigger picture (instead of the plot acting as if they were important or well developed when its not the case).

So with that out of the way, let's delve into Hajiki's buddy!

Summary

Ryo Oba is Hajiki Yaki's friend who he occasionally brings along to help him bust illegal casinos. Ryo was originally one of these illicit gamblers, having had a bad childhood and a poor education. Ultimately, his career as a gambler ended after he had a kid with his girlfriend and lost miserably to the rising gambler herself: Celestia Ludenberg.

When Hajiki became a member of Yui Samidare's team, and volunteered to take on the GOODBYE Bar of the 12 Duel Noir Challenge, Hajiki opted to get his buddy to come along with him, since Ryo knew the area of the bar better.

Together, and with Gunzo Arai (who worked for the insurance company that owned the bar) they traveled to the location. Before they could enter, Hajiki would receive a call from Katsumi Kodama, a Target that was tied up in the bar. The three rush in but, little did they know, that they triggered a trap that had Katsumi stabbed by a poisoned knife. As such, Katsumi is found injured, but seemingly still alive. Ryo is panicking given that he has much to lose due to just becoming a father, but is still able to listen to Hajiki when his friend asks him to stay on-guard to block the door and even able to point Hajiki to the only possible exit: one that would lead into an alleyway. Thinking the culprit must have ran off, Hajiki would rush into the alley, despite his friend's protest...

Unfortunately, for Ryo, Hajiki would later run into the Victim of the Libra Girls Academy Duel Noir - his teammate Sachi Mizuiyama - and would be killed by her. As for Katsumi, he too would succumb to the poisoned knife. What Ryo and Hajiki didn't know was that the culprit of the GOODBYE Bar was the Scorpio Victim of the 12 Duel Noir Challenge and the other person who tagged along with them: Gunzo - who killed Katsumi because the guy murdered his Dad for an insurance premium.

While the case would be solved, Ryo would not show up again the Danganronpa Kirigiri series. Ryo held a friendly attitude with Hajiki, being more than willing to work with him, mostly for casino busting. Yet, he is not nearly as equipped to handle serious situations, like murder, and panics at the thought of getting in trouble for his involvement. His retirement from gambling, and reasons for it, suggests he's the type to quit when he knows he can't hope to measure against someone better than himself, and if there are people more important that require him to be better.

Personal Thoughts

One of the things I love concerning the supplementary or side material of Danganronpa is when they do nods to the mainline titles. Be it in the form of cameos or just references that they exist.

In this case, I really enjoyed DRK just having some of its original cast mention how the other Ultimates were active. From Yuzen bringing up the Ult. Imposter in DRK2 and Chihiro's programming getting stolen for use in DRK 6. And, likewise, we have DRK 5 having Celeste be the reason Ryo quit gambling (which is just funny to me)! Like with the Mukuro Cult I find it as a nice way to make the world of Danganronpa feel bigger, showing that these guys we got to know of in-game really had an influence on the world they lived in.

Though, outside of that, Ryo's treatment in DRK, is rather depressing when you stop to think about it. He's just trying to help his friend out but ends up not only having his buddy bludgeoned to death soon after leaving the crime scene, but the Target ends up dying on him as well. And the only other living witness to these events? Yeah, the person he's with is a murderer who could easily kill him if need be. Thankfully, its implied that doesn't happen, but he's left in a pretty low point for the plot...which doesn't focus on him again. After Hajiki dies, and unlike the St. Anne students or the M.R.S of DRK who have some bearing on the plot beyond their Duel Noir, so dies Ryo's involvement in the proceedings.

He doesn't even get to know who killed him or be there for Sachi being taken down, and the main cast never gets to interact with him. He's pretty much just collateral damage that doesn't get a chance to be more than that unlike the students who became detectives or the MRS who were the ones to defeat Sachi. He's just abandoned by the plot. Honestly, I find it kind of disheartening, because Ryo could have served as 'something' to keep Hajiki's memory going even after death.

Perhaps have him join Salvador and Kyoko's anti-Duel Noir team in the epilogue (throw in the MRS in there too...and heck maybe that broke college student from Sachi's) as a means to honor Hajiki dying trying to help and make up for not being there to save him. It would mean that there was 'weight' to a death that that I've long since felt was just an author writing out the extras they no longer need in favor of Team Samidare just being about Yui and Kyoko again. But, that isn't what happened, so what we have is just a neat extra who gives an entertaining reference and fades into the void once the kinda-ish important character they were with croaks. An unfortunate situation, but that's the fate of a Smallcase character.

Next Time: Kirigiriso returns with a certain plant as our topic of interest!