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commentaryvorg · 4 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Bonus 2 - Demo

This is a commentary of the demo of DRV3 from the perspective of someone who is coming back to it after seeing the entire main game. There will be significant spoilers for the main story.

Welp, turns out that covering the demo is going to be more of a pain than I anticipated, because I didn’t already have it, and it’s no longer available in the UK store. So I’m going to have to use a Youtube video of it, which is a lot more annoying than you might think, because you have no idea how useful the game’s backlog function has been for this commentary.

I suppose I should preface this by mentioning that I did see the demo of this game before experiencing the game proper, but it was a fan translation of the Japanese demo something like a year or two earlier, so my memory of it by the time I saw the main game was pretty fuzzy. I only remembered a few things: that Kaede was the protagonist and the Ultimate Pianist, thinking it neat that we had a protagonist who was female, and who had a talent rather than being ordinary. I vaguely remembered Tenko, Himiko and Ryoma’s character quirks – I suppose thse were the ones that stuck in my mind. I remembered Kokichi being kind of a dick who kept trying to make the trial about himself and was therefore clearly this game’s answer to Nagito, because of course Kokichi had to try and be the centre of attention even in the demo and so that stuck in my mind.

And I remembered an astronaut dude who at least superficially seemed to have the kind of personality I generally like in a character – but I very firmly told myself not to get too excited about this, because this is Danganronpa and there is every chance that the narrative won’t give a fuck about how likeable he is and he’ll just get randomly, gratuitously killed off and I would regret ever getting attached to him. This, uh, may have partly influenced my belief during the main game that the narrative considered Kaito expendable and was totally going to kill him off at the slightest provocation, even after he started being very clearly important to the story.

It also very obviously did not stop me getting attached to him as the actual story progressed. I remember desperately trying to rein myself in throughout the first half of chapter 2 as Kaito became more and more adorable and good and Exactly My Kind of Character in his support of Shuichi. Then I got to the part during the investigation in which Kaito gave his speech about believing in people just because he wants to while acknowledging that there’s a risk to it that he’s simply choosing not to worry about so that he can believe wholeheartedly. This was so perfectly applicable to what had been going on in my own head with regards to getting attached to Kaito himself – I so desperately wanted to believe in him and care about him and get invested in his story, yet I was so afraid of what might happen if I did. But thanks to Kaito’s own words, I decided right then and there to not let that fear hold me back any more.

…That’s a first-time-me story that I really should have told at the time during chapter 2 but didn’t, so you’re getting it here instead. Anyway! The demo.

“Daily Life”

Kaede: (My last name roughly means “passionate red maple tree”. It doesn’t really fit me, but… I still like my last name.)

Kaede starts us off with an introduction of herself, probably trying to make this reminiscent of the DR1 opening. They can’t exactly do that in this game’s real opening, what with the whole pregame-and-reset thing. It’s pretty awkward here that she’s telling us about her last name when nobody’s going to be calling her that in English, so it’s probably for the best that didn’t stay. I think “passionate red maple tree” suits her at least a little, though – she is very passionate!

Kaede: (Huh? Wait, who am I even talking to?)

That’s a good question! There’s going to be quite a bit of sort-of fourth wall breaking in this demo. But… this is Danganronpa V3, in which a lot of what seemed like fourth wall breaking wasn’t really doing that at all. So maybe this is actually Kaede just being pushed into being all self-introductory in her inner monologue by the Flashback Light that created her, and here she’s having a brief moment of realising that makes no sense.

She finds herself waking up at a desk – again, like the original DR1 opening and less like the actual DRV3 opening. There’s no falling out of a locker and no Shuichi (not here, anyway).

“Makoto”: “Oh, are you awake? Good morning, Kaede.”

Instead, there’s… Makoto.

So here’s the thing about this demo. Makoto, and later Hajime, are randomly in it. Going into the demo with the assumption that DRV3 is in a different universe from the Hope’s Peak story makes this just seem like a silly fourth-wall-breaking thing. It also wouldn’t work to imagine this is set in the Hope’s Peak universe, because then Makoto and Hajime should both be much older than high school age, not to mention whatever shenanigans should be going on with Hajime. So it’s easiest to assume that, oh, this is just some silly uncanonical nonsense because it’s a demo and it doesn’t need to make sense.

But! Having finished DRV3 and gone back to this demo knowing the truth of the V3 story, this actually can make some kind of sense within the V3 universe. Because this is a universe where Makoto and Hajime exist as fictional characters. This whole demo could in fact be some show set up by Team Danganronpa to build hype for their new series before it properly starts, including pandering to those genwunners and twoers in the audience by featuring Makoto and Hajime – which is to say, people cosplaying as them. Hence me using inverted commas for his name in the quotes here like I did for everyone Tsumugi cosplayed in trial 6. It’s not really Makoto Naegi at all.

(This still doesn’t totally work in the canon DRV3 universe, because, given the reset and the fact that they were accidentally their pregame selves at first, it seems unlikely that Team Danganronpa would really have done this “demo” in between the reset at all. This isn’t quite something that actually happened in canon before the story we saw began – it’s more just an AU scenario that could have hypothetically happened before the main killing game started, if things had gone a little differently.)

Makoto introduces himself as the Ultimate Lucky Student and even gets a proper Ultimate title card for it.

Kaede: “Only one student in the entire country!? That’s amazing! You must be really lucky!”

No, Kaede, it doesn’t mean he’s always really lucky; that is not how luck works. He just got incredibly lucky this one time but is otherwise entirely ordinary. Luck as an actual goddamn superpower like it supposedly was for Nagito still grates on me (and there’s no convincing proof to me that Makoto also had that superpower).

Makoto mysteriously already knows Kaede’s name and talent. He explains that it’s because information about the students here is on public record – that is how the real Makoto learned about everyone in DR1, after all – but that’s probably not really the truth here, is it.

There’s a very genuinely-fourth-wall-breaky letter on the desk telling Kaede that to progress the story she just needs to come to the gym, but she can wander around and have the other students introduce themselves to her first if she wants. Obviously anyone doing this demo for the first time would want to do that – the whole point is getting to know the characters!

The layout of the school has been changed a bit in the demo to make things simpler and keep some locations a surprise. Kaede was in not Classroom B on the second floor, but Classroom A, aka the lookout classroom. Or what would function as a lookout classroom if only there was a basement, but the stairs to the basement have instead been replaced by a big red door that will lead to the trialgrounds. The stairs to the second floor are completely blocked off with an opaque shutter, so that all you can access is the first floor, and they moved the gym closer than usual to cut out the part of the corridor containing the locked things leading to Himiko and Kaito’s labs. Apparently they didn’t want to give any kind of tantalising promise of further areas that you’ll get to fully explore in the main game. Meanwhile, the front door that would lead out into the courtyard instead connects directly to the dorms, so that the demo never even shows us that they’re trapped inside a dome.

Everyone’s introductions are more or less the same as they will be in the main game, with Makoto filling in the part in the conversation that Shuichi would have played, if need be. Certain parts are left out if they were less about the character and more specifically about the main story in a way that isn’t relevant in the demo.

Rantaro is the first person we meet. Makoto says he doesn’t know Rantaro’s talent because it wasn’t on public record, but is still insistent that he definitely has a talent. This is totally because he’s just being good old hopeful Makoto and definitely not that he knows exactly what Rantaro’s talent is and why it’s being kept a secret right now, right.

Hajime is also hanging around in the corridors as if he’s a regular student. He gets “Ultimate ???” as well in his title card, even though he goes on to admit that he doesn’t have a talent. He doesn’t mention the Reserve Course, though. I guess the Ultimate Academy isn’t supposed to have one of those.

“Makoto”: “Well, Hajime, we have seniority, but… She’s the protagonist this time around.”

Ahaha, here we go. One of the things the demo very gleefully does is make a big deal of how Kaede is the protagonist. Did you know Kaede is the protagonist of this game, guys? Because she is very definitely the protagonist of this game.

This would also sort of work with the whole fiction thing, except not so much, because the in-universe protagonist is supposed to be Keebo. So this is a thing that really is just out-universely here for the sake of the demo and doesn’t quite make sense in-universe with what Team Danganronpa are doing here.

Kaede: (And also… what did they mean by ‘protagonist’?)

At least, for her part, Kaede is very confused by all this.

Shuichi is also just hanging around in the corridor like a totally regular student and not the actual protagonist of this game. I didn’t remember him from the demo at all until seeing him in the main game jogged my memory, because without him being Kaede’s investigation partner, he kinda just blends into the background like the introvert he is.

Shuichi: “I don’t even remember enrolling in this academy. But it seems I did…”

Bonus dialogue you get from talking to him again after his main introduction shows that he’s very much thinking about the important questions, though. In the main game, while nobody remembered being kidnapped, everyone’s general assumption was that they were brought here against their will and forgot how. However, in the demo, it seems most people are assuming they somehow got enrolled in this academy and are just having a slightly odd version of a school introduction. Only a few people are questioning this idea.

(Kaede actually mentioned at the very beginning that she remembered being kidnapped, but then the writing apparently forgets about that, because she never mentions it to anybody else. Nor does anyone else mention remembering something similar.)

Since there’s no outside in the demo and therefore no wall to be thinking about trying to get over, Kaito is just in the dining hall here. Everyone whose introduction in the main game is in a location that doesn’t exist in the demo just gets put somewhere random instead. Kaito’s lines about getting over the wall are therefore also removed from his introduction, which means that we sadly don’t get as much of a sense of his unshakeable determination and philosophy about not complaining when you could be trying to make things better.

Kaito: “But now that I’m thinking about it, why am I at this academy? I wanna blast off into space ASAP! Weird situations like this are only gonna slow me down…”

Kaito is also asking the important questions. Why is he doing this thing that isn’t working towards going to space? That doesn’t make any sense as something that he’d choose to do! He should be in astronaut training, not enrolling in some weird academy!

Maki immediately introduces herself and her cover-story talent rather than not wanting to do so at first. She also doesn’t have any of her lines about how she doubts they’ll be able to escape this and they shouldn’t be working together with strangers, so a lot of the hints towards her interestingness are gone from the demo, boo.

Maki: “I don’t even remember enrolling in this academy, but… Do you know what’s going on?”

At least she’s asking the important questions, too! I wonder if that “but” is a hint at her thinking “but at least this isn’t as bad as having to kill people”. Or so she thinks.

As Kaede finishes meeting everyone and is about to head into the gym…

“Makoto”: “Sorry, but this is where we part ways. I can’t go past this point. …Because you’re the protagonist now, Kaede.”

Kaede: “What?”

“Makoto”: “From here on, you’re the one who’s going to learn about this situation we’re in. You might feel despair… but I don’t want you to throw away hope!”

Oh man, the buzzwords. I’m pretty sure that even post-DR1-ending, despite literally being declared the Ultimate Hope, Makoto did not throw around these buzzwords as meaninglessly as this. This really is just someone desperately trying to sound like him, isn’t it.

It’s also very strange that apparently Makoto can’t be with her for the explanation of the killing game. You’d think, even if he already knew what was happening (which, fair enough, Makoto has done this before), he’d want to be there with Kaede to reassure her through the bad news. But he has to leave for no particular reason.

(Also, reminder, Kaede is the protagonist, you guys.)

Kaede: (Protagonist? Hope? Despair? What does any of that mean?)

Heh, I like how she’s also bewildered by the sudden buzzwords and not just the protagonist part.

For some reason it’s only Kaede and not all the other students here getting this announcement about the killing game. I guess, since this is not remotely how it happens in canon, writing sixteen characters having new reactions to this would be too much of a pain for what’s only here to justify the demo having a trial.

It does also mean that most people – including Kaede herself, since Monokuma alone doesn’t count as a witness – don’t have alibis for the “murder” that’s about to happen.

Monokuma: “While you live together, you’re all responsible for maintaining the harmony of the academy. But if someone was to disrupt that harmony…”

Geez, is this the game scrambling to justify the Killing Harmony subtitle again? I wonder what this was in Japanese. (But I’m not quite curious enough to actually check, because this is only the demo.)

Kaede: “D-Don’t mess around with us! I would never… murder anyone!”

Hee, that’s also there even though this is the demo.

Monokuma: “Don’t you see, Kaede? This is how your story begins.”

Kaede: “‘My story’? What does that even mean?”

They really are dropping hints to the whole fiction thing even in the demo. Although, again, this doesn’t work so well in an in-universe sense because Keebo is the in-universe protagonist (and because Tsumugi was definitely planning to have Kaede get herself killed in the first chapter, probably largely for the sake of Shuichi’s story.)

Monokuma then tells Kaede to go and check out her room in the dormitory. It seems he already knows that she’s going to find someone dead in there.

Kaede’s door awkwardly has Makoto and Hajime’s portraits slapped onto it as well. Monokuma shows up to explain to her that this is the “Protagonists’ Room”, for all three of them! (Did you know Kaede is the protagonist.)

Once she goes inside, everything’s a mess, with slash marks all over the furniture and walls, kind of like in the first case in DR1.

And Yasuhiro Hagakure is dead in the shower with a kitchen knife in his stomach.

“Deadly Life”

Monokuma: “Geez, this is like the second time he’s died already… Eh, you guys can just ignore that.”

As Monokuma cheekily alludes to here, this is an amusing little nod to the original demo of DR1. Apparently, to keep Sayaka’s death a surprise for the main game, they instead made Hiro the victim there. Looks like they decided to make him the victim again here!

Given the reality of the situation, this cannot really be Hiro, because he doesn’t exist. Which means that most likely, nobody is actually dead at all – this is just a Hiro cosplayer doing their best impression of a corpse.

Hajime is here to help investigate the dorm room. Kaito, Miu, Kirumi and Ryoma also show up in the room to investigate. (But apparently nobody else thought that confirming if a murder has really taken place and trying to figure out the culprit so they don’t get punished was important? Not even Shuichi?)

It’s also relevant to note that nobody looks very closely at Hiro’s “corpse” to confirm whether he’s actually dead.

Kaito: “So does this mean someone believed that the only way to get out of here… was by killing someone?”

Ryoma: “Hmph… The dead body is proof of that. There’s no way a body would end up quite like this by accident.”

Kaito: “Damn it… why’d they kill him? Why didn’t they just talk things over with us?”

Kaede: “Yeah, we haven’t searched the whole school yet. There could still be a way out of here.”

Kaito: “Yeah, that’s exactly right! And they resorted to this, right off the bat… When we find the culprit, I’m gonna punch some sense back into them!”

I love how Kaito this is. He can’t get his head around the fact that anyone would give up so quickly. He realises that they most likely just did it because they were scared and wanted to escape and therefore it’s somewhat understandable, but even then, he can’t see why they would resort to it so soon without having tried every other possible option first, including talking to everyone else and trying to co-operate. He’s not angry at the culprit for being a cold-blooded killer, but rather for being so weak, in the sense that they didn’t even want to try and get stronger, and so they did something this awful out of cowardice.

And also look at him and Kaede clearly being on the same wavelength about working together to escape and not giving up!

Kaito doesn’t contribute any Truth Bullets to this investigation, but I’m delighted that he’s here in this room anyway so we could have this little insight into the way he thinks about things like this. This is nuanced enough that people playing this demo before the main game just to get a basic sense of the characters probably aren’t really going to think much of it – but it’s here anyway, because Kaito is this nuanced and complex of a character and he would react like this in this situation, regardless of how unnecessary him doing so is to the purpose of this demo. I love Kaito so much.

Ryoma: “Going straight to an investigation? That’s pretty forward-thinking of you. Even if you’re used to seeing dead bodies, it’d be stupid not to feel anything.”

Meanwhile, Ryoma is already being perceptive and making observations about Kaede’s character, which is a very him thing to be doing.

Kaede: “But we have to do this. I don’t want everyone else to die…”

Ryoma: “Hmph… You’re rather motivated to stay alive. I wish I had… No, never mind.”

There’s also a little hint at Ryoma’s lack of motivation to live and desire to find one, which is neat!

(It’s a shame that, even though Kaito is also here and presumably overhearing this, he doesn’t comment. I’d have liked that a lot.)

The lack of any hair in the room was a clue in this case in DR1, but this time, there’s a single short brown hair here, about the colour and length of Makoto or Hajime’s. This is despite the fact that Hajime claims he’s never been in the room before now and that Kirumi cleaned all of the dorms shortly before the murder was discovered. Kaede also notes during this conversation that it’s odd she hasn’t seen Makoto since she went into the gym. Hmmm.

Just as Makoto finally shows up and is about to help Kaede investigate everywhere else, the Monokubs appear. They have not been in the demo until now. Why did they need to be in the demo at all. It would be a more favourable advertisement of the game to pretend they don’t exist, you know, demo writers! They literally do not contribute anything of value to the narrative by showing up here.

Kaito: “Buncha cowards… Trying to interrupt my investigation with their stupid crap.”

Oh, Kaito. This is basically chapter 1 Kaito, who has no sidekicks yet and is instead desperately trying to feel like he can make a difference by doing something. Hence him making a point that this is his investigation. He leans towards this kind of attitude a couple of times in the main story, too, particularly in chapter 1 when he has no sidekicks, and in chapter 4 when he’s feeling like his support of his sidekicks isn’t enough and wants to be more of an action-oriented hero. This is bound to be the reason he’s here in this room at all despite not contributing anything to the player’s investigation – because he’s trying to do something about this, even though he doesn’t really know how!

Kaito: “Whatever… If I get serious, I can solve this case in no time flat!”

I don’t like this, though. It implies that he’s currently not being serious and would ever willingly slack off from something this important. That’s not in character. Kaito is always trying his hardest and always wants people to know he’s trying his hardest; he’d never use “oh but I just wasn’t really trying” as an excuse for the gap between how much he wants to make a difference and how much he actually can. It reads like some writer is superficially trying to get across the fact that Kaito talks big without backing it up, without truly understanding why he’s that way and keeping it in line with that. It’s odd, since the conversation just earlier showed quite a nuanced understanding of Kaito’s character, as opposed to this.

(If I were playing this demo myself, I would immediately talk to Kaito again after this to see if he has anything else to say on this matter, but because I’m forced to use Youtube, I can’t see if he does. There are words that Kaito said that could have been interesting that I’m unaware of dammit this is why I’m mad I had to use Youtube for this. Admittedly it’s most likely just him repeating those lines, or continuing to be written badly… but what if it isn’t.)

Kaede asks Makoto where he went off to, and he claims he was wandering around the school trying to find a way out or at least a map to help Kaede out. That does not properly explain why he insisted he couldn’t come into the gym with her in the first place, but okay.

Hajime stays behind to guard the crime scene while Makoto accompanies Kaede out of the dorm to investigate elsewhere. Makoto is getting a lot more screentime than Hajime in this demo. Still more genwunners than twoers in this audience, apparently.

Maki: “The crime occurred in the Protagonists’ Room. Stupid name aside, that’s your room, isn’t it?”

Aha, good old Maki, always Done™ with everyone’s nonsense.

Maki: “I don’t intend to just go with the easiest answer… But at the same time… I have no reason to trust you guys either.”

This is very Maki, not wanting to trust people without a good reason but also not being so stupid and hasty as to jump to any conclusions just because she doesn’t trust anyone.

Himiko: “Kaede, is it true? Did a murder really happen?”

Apparently some of these people really didn’t actually go and check out the body for themselves. You’d think they’d want to confirm it… but to be fair, it is very believable that Himiko in particular wouldn’t.

Kokichi: “Why’d ya kill him, Kaede? Did you really wanna escape that badly?”

Of course this is Kokichi’s immediate greeting to Kaede upon seeing her during the investigation. Of course.

Kaede: “N-No! I didn’t do anything!”

Kokichi: “So you’re saying the culprit has to be either Makoto or Hajime… Because if you didn’t do it, then that’s what you’re getting at, right?”

And of course he’d also think that she’d happily turn on the two people apparently closest to her and throw them under the bus to protect herself.

He really does (most likely, not that you can ever be sure with him) seem to believe it’s one of the three of them simply because it was their room. Look who is jumping to conclusions because he doesn’t trust anyone.

(I should point out that the room was unlocked the entire time and so there is literally no concrete reason to suspect the room’s owners above anybody else.)

“Makoto”: “Did you see Hiro?”

Tsumugi: “No, I didn’t. I think I’d definitely remember seeing hair like his.”

If the students who aren’t in the room right now didn’t see the body, how does Tsumugi know what Hiro’s hair looks like? This might be a very subtle clue as to the mastermind’s identity, because of course Tsumugi would know what Hiro’s hair looks like anyway.

(I’d say that actually she could have seen him from the Monokuma File, but based on Himiko’s comment earlier, I’m not sure if everyone necessarily has a Monokuma File to even know for sure that someone’s dead?)

Shuichi: “One of us killed Hiro… That’s what Monokuma said… But… I don’t think that’s the only possibility.”

Indeed it isn’t. There’s also the possibility that nobody killed anyone.

…I still don’t know why Shuichi isn’t in the dorm room to actually confirm whether or not Hiro is dead and do a proper investigation himself. Then again, if he did, we’d immediately know this class trial is bogus, so.

Kaede: “Shuichi, do you suspect me, too?”

Shuichi: “Ah, you don’t seem like the kind of person who would kill somebody… But… until I find evidence that proves you innocent…”

Kaede: “That’s true…”

Shuichi: “S-Sorry, it’s not that I *want* to suspect you, I just…”

Kaede: “No, it’s fine… That’s what the Ultimate Detective is supposed to do…”

Aww, Shuichi. He’s caught between the part of him that hates suspecting and accusing people (even when he has no particularly strong reason to trust Kaede in this universe) and the detective side of him that knows it’s the right way to deal with this situation. I complained about him not investigating, but maybe it’s simply because he’s afraid to thanks to his issues, and without the bond with Kaede that he has in canon, he can’t overcome that fear and manage to investigate anyway. Shuichi really does only manage to be a hero with others’ help.

Kaede: “Don’t worry about me, just do your best to investigate. That’s what’s going to save us.”

Shuichi: “… …Okay.”

Kaede: (Huh? That was a dull response… What happened?)

Kaede is noticing that he doesn’t seem enthusiastic about the idea of investigating to save them! A tiny, tiny little hint at his issues, since for the most part this demo really doesn’t want to focus on Shuichi at all. (Kaede is the protagonist, after all.)

During a conversation with Kiyo, he notices something about the way Makoto is talking about the investigation and trial.

Kiyo: “…You speak as if you are familiar with the process, yes?

“Makoto”: “That’s… also something that we can talk about later.”

…

Kaede: (Does Makoto know something…? I can trust him… can’t I?)

Of course, this reads perfectly innocently to anyone who knows Makoto is the protagonist from a previous Danganronpa game, but it genuinely must look pretty suspicious to Kaede. It’s a big testament to her general optimism and belief in people that she does still trust him even after all this.

One of the knives in the kitchen went missing while Tenko and Himiko were having tea in the dining hall. This is still really brazenly ripping off the first case of the first game.

And that’s the whole investigation, so everyone abruptly assembles in the trialgrounds which are right behind the red door, no elevator or Shrine of Judgement or anything.

“Hajime”: “Monokuma… I don’t know what you’re scheming, but… I won’t let you do whatever you want!”

Monokuma: “You’re an upperclassman protagonist… I think you can come up with a better line than that.”

“Makoto”: “Hajime’s right! You can’t just do whatever you want with their lives!”

Monokuma: “Geez, that’s basically what Hajime just said! You two need punch-up writers or something! Whether this demo is exciting or not depends entirely on you!”

Bahaha, this is such a deliberate attempt at pandering on the parts of Makoto and Hajime’s cosplayers, and is also so blatantly Monokuma calling them out for being kind of bad at this.

They have an awkward situation with this trial, given that there’s eighteen students here and only sixteen podiums. Obviously the game devs didn’t want to remodel the trialgrounds to have two extra podiums just for the demo.

Monosuke: “I know! Let’s just pick two people at random and rip ‘em apart with the Exisals!”

The Exisals have not been shown or otherwise mentioned in this demo. This line must rather confuse people seeing this before the main game.

Obviously there is no actual Exisal-murdering and two people simply have to sit out. Kokichi decides out of nowhere that Keebo should sit out because of course he does, lol Keebo’s not a person or anything, and then it conveniently turns out that Rantaro was with Keebo the whole time so they can vouch for each other not being the blackened and both safely not take part. Rantaro not being part of the demo trial is probably because he’s not a part of any trials in the main game either. Keebo sitting out is… just because Kokichi is a robophobic dick, apparently. (In an in-universe sense, you’d think Monokuma would have more of an issue with this, because isn’t Keebo supposed to be the audience’s camera? More indication that he really isn’t the only camera they have, then.)

Rantaro demands that at least he and Keebo are each allowed to ask one question at the end if they don’t agree with everybody else on who the blackened is, and that in doing so they could potentially restart the discussion. This doesn’t ever matter because the demo’s going to end before the trial reaches a conclusion, but it does show that Rantaro is a very smart and cautious person.

Kaito: “I’ll be carrying your lives, too! I’ll definitely do something about all this!”

But don’t worry, Rantaro and Keebo, Kaito is going to do something about this! You know, about this whole trial. Of course he is. Definitely. Even though it’s just the demo and it doesn’t really matter, his tendency to insist this out of his desperation to be able to make a difference is still here and it’s great. I also love the way he says he’ll be carrying their lives. Like he’s bearing that burden for them.

Kaito: “And don’t worry! We’ve got the Ultimate Detective on our side!”

Also this!!! Kaito doesn’t seem to have interacted with Shuichi at all this whole demo, but that’s not going to stop him from believing in him, because with a talent like that he’s bound to be awesome, right? It is very delightfully reminiscent of the main story that Kaito says this immediately after his own bold declarations. Despite his big words and how much he genuinely intends to do his best to fulfil them (because Kaito is always trying), he knows that Shuichi’s really the one most able to save them in this situation. Kaito’s relying on and believing in Shuichi’s ability to be the real hero here. I love this tiny tiny nod to their delightful friendship dynamic in canon.

Shuichi: “Huh?”

Shuichi is not used to people believing in his detective skills. Kaito really does mean it even though he’s only just met you, Shuichi!

Class Trial

In the trial, Makoto has Rantaro’s podium and Hajime has Keebo’s. I’m quite surprised that they didn’t do it the other way around – Keebo is after all basically meant to be Robot Makoto, and that would have been one reasonable excuse for leaving him in particular out.

Things start with people throwing out some baseless ideas. Tenko of course decides someone male must have done it.

Shuichi: “We can’t rule out suspects that way… We need to look at all the possibilities.”

Shuichi, at least, is being rational about this. He doesn’t say much in this demo, but what he does say is always quite sensible.

Tenko: “Kiyo looks creepy! That’s suspicious enough for me!”

Aaaaagh coming from Tenko in particular that’s just painful. Demo why would you do this.

By the way, fun fact: the English voicework for this demo was almost certainly recorded after that for the main game. How do I know? Because of Kaito’s voice. For the earlier trials in the main game, Kaito’s voice sounds a lot rougher and growlier, which becomes less of a thing as the game goes on. It’s gradual enough that you don’t notice it while it’s happening, but going from trial 4 Kaito back to trial 1 Kaito gives quite a noticeable difference. I assume this is because his voice actor started out consciously trying to emulate his Japanese voice, which is indeed quite gruff, but then as things went along he got more into the character and developed his own instinctive feel for Kaito’s voice, one which wasn’t as growly as it started out. And here in the demo, Kaito’s voice isn’t growly at all; it sounds like his lines from trial 4, not trial 1.

(The voice actor getting more into the role has to be the only reason for the gradual shift, because really, in-universe, Kaito’s voice should have been subtly getting more rough and growly as time went by, thanks to his illness getting worse. It’d have been really fun if that had been a thing. Alas.)

Kaito: “He didn’t even have a chance to resist!”

Like in the main game, Kaito is the first person to be refuted. In trials where Shuichi is his sidekick, Kaito doesn’t tend to make any arguments at all and just sits back and lets Shuichi handle it (with the exception of trial 4, for chapter 4 reasons). But in trial 1 he didn’t have a sidekick and was instead trying to feel useful by actually contributing to the discussion despite knowing he might be wrong, kind of like in trial 4.

In the actual trial 1 in the main commentary, I explained why Kaito wasn’t being stupid even though he was wrong, but in this instance, he has simply been very rudely handed the idiot ball. Kaito was one of the people who investigated the dorm room! He saw the signs of a struggle!

Obviously, this argument is also mirroring the very first argument you refute in this case in DR1. But then they should have given this line to someone who actually wasn’t in the room and didn’t see the state of it, of which there are plenty of options. In DR1, the person who makes this argument is Chihiro, who didn’t investigate the room out of fear – and in fact, him making this assumption despite not knowing the facts was likely a sign of his issues about feeling weak, because of course he’d have been afraid of being killed by someone stronger without even being able to fight back, so he projected that onto Sayaka.

But Kaito making this argument here? Doesn’t make any sense or have any good reason for it. They’re apparently trying to have Kaito be the first person to be refuted like he is in the main game (and perhaps for similar reasons), while also having the first refuted argument in this case be the same as it was in the DR1 case. Either callback (or call-forward) alone would be fine, but doing both of them at once does not work and ends up very uncharitable towards Kaito.

Kaito: “Okay, so that room wasn’t such a mess to begin with, then.”

They try and justify this by having it so that apparently Kaito thought the room was always that messy, but no, that doesn’t justify anything. Sure, I can potentially imagine Kaito as someone with a messy room himself (though if so it’s probably the “organised chaos” type in which he knows where everything is even if nobody else would have a clue), but this was more than just a messy room here. There were slash marks everywhere! Things were outright broken! Kaito is not stupid, and it is very rude of the demo to twist him out of character in order to give people a first impression of him that makes him seem like he is.

Kaede: (The two people who fought in that room were…)

- Kaede and Shuichi

It’s ridiculous that the demo is making us do a multiple choice to figure out that Hiro fought with the culprit, what the hell, that’s a Psyche Taxi level of stupidly obvious question there… but it’s interesting that this is one of the obviously-wrong answers. There’s been absolutely no indication of any kind of connection between Kaede and Shuichi in the demo, except for this.

Kaede: “Of course, it was Hiro and the culprit.”

Kaito: “Huh!? Really!?”

No! Stop it! Stop making Kaito seem like an idiot! He is not stupid! This one doesn’t even have any kind of excuse of trying to be a call-forward to the main game! There is no reason for this!

Kaito, I am so sorry you got handed this idiot ball, please just throw it away and pretend you never saw it, you don’t deserve this.

Miu: “Who else would it be, dumbass!?”

If that was supposed to be setup to give someone an excuse to call Kaito an idiot for the further bad writing that’s about to ensue, then, this is still uncalled for. When people call Kaito an idiot, they are not meant to be actually literally right about it!

Kaito: “Who you callin’ a dumbass!? I’m Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars!”

…

Kokichi: “Hey, you two idiots over there… Stop chit-chatting and keep this discussion moving.”

Miu: “Hey! Don’t lump me in with that idiot! You’re talkin’ to the gorgeous girl genius, Miu Iruma!”

Kokichi: “Yup, you two should be lumped together. Your statements are on the same level.”

No, they really, really shouldn’t be, and this is still doing a horrible disservice to Kaito. Kaito usually reacts strongly to being called an idiot, sure, but he does not do so by talking himself up, because he is not actually insecure enough to need to “prove” he isn’t one (unlike Miu, whose boasts always reek of insecurity). Comparing him to Miu like this is making it look like Kaito only talks himself up to save face for himself and protect his own ego when it’s being battered, like she does, and that he actually is just a useless idiot beneath these empty words, especially when he really just was one thanks to that undeserved idiot ball. That is so incredibly not even remotely the point of Kaito’s character, oh my god. Please stop, demo. How can you get some of the Kaito parts so right but others so horrendously wrong.

(It makes me feel better to imagine that Kaito’s actual main writers, the ones who created a very carefully-crafted character arc full of all of his delightful issues and principles and complexities, were just, I dunno, on lunch break or something, and some clueless intern with only a very superficial knowledge of Kaito as “an idiot who talks big” got to write some of his lines here while they were out. That clueless intern is probably also the one responsible for the tiny handful of Misogyny Bullets that hit Kaito and briefly forced him out of character for one line each throughout the main story, right?)

Moving on, Kokichi begins making a big point of how he suspects everyone whom the room belonged to, because of course he does. (Look at him acting all high and mighty and more intelligent than the two supposed “idiots” and then immediately turning around and jumping to unfounded conclusions. Clearly the smartest way to handle a class trial there.)

“Makoto”: “The discussion won’t move forward if we all just point fingers. Like Shuichi said, we need to talk about all the possibilities.”

He may just be an actor pretending to be Makoto, but he’s got a goddamn point. Kokichi’s accusation flinging is never actually helpful.

Kaito: “Yeah, what he said! No way Kaede’s the culprit!”

Welcome back, Kaito, it’s good to see you again! This is a very Kaito thing for him to do. He’s barely spoken to Kaede or seen much of her in the demo, but he did have that conversation with her at the crime scene where she agreed that the culprit should have tried to work together to escape before giving up and resorting to murder. His instincts are telling him that she really meant that and really is this kind of person! He has a hunch, and he’s right, because his hunches always are!

Kokichi: “Kaito! This trial won’t go anywhere if you don’t suspect anyone!”

And this is a character dynamic involving Kaito that’s actually correct and relevant in the main game such that it makes sense to hint at it in the demo, thank you.

Shuichi: “What we have to determine now… is the murder weapon.”

And of course Shuichi is the one who’s focusing on the actual logic and getting the trial back on track instead of arguing. This was a very trial 4 exchange we just had here.

Despite Shuichi’s attempt at being sensible, everyone else then starts arguing over whether certain people could have killed him with their bare hands, because it seems that nobody who saw the body feels the need to tell them it was a goddamn knife and also apparently no-one read the Monokuma File. I guess at least Kaito smashed his idiot ball into several smaller pieces and shared it around the group.

Shuichi: “There was no indication the body was punched. I don’t believe fists were the murder weapon.”

Shuichi I know you’re hesitant about doing this detective thing and you maybe didn’t go to the scene but you clearly read the Monokuma File just tell them it was a knife please.

Ryoma: “Then our murder weapon is… the knife stabbed into his gut?”

THANK YOU RYOMA I don’t know why you didn’t say this sooner but.

Kaede: (I wonder… Was the murder weapon lodged in Hiro’s abdomen really a knife?)

Yes, Kaede, it was a fucking knife! But apparently the game wants us to be more specific about the fact that it was a kitchen knife. I don’t know if this works better in Japanese in that the word for kitchen knife doesn’t include the word “knife”, but even if so, it is still a type of knife! This is something else that was an argument made in the original DR1 case – someone says the culprit used “some random knife they had on them”, and Makoto counters that it was a kitchen knife because the more relevant point is where it came from. So really, to make this be even remotely sensible here, that should also be the question Kaede is asking herself. Not was it even a knife. What the hell.

This is specifically an excuse to demonstrate the Mind Mine minigame, which is a pretty bad example of it because the other two images that are options in it aren’t even knives. Not that Mind Mine is ever really a super justified minigame that doesn’t point out something rather obvious, but.

Another thing I remember about the fan translation of this demo that I originally watched was that this part apparently made the translator flip tables, because they broke immersion to have Kaede’s line announcing her answer also include something to the effect of “oh my god Kaede I can’t believe you had to do a whole minigame just to figure out it was a kitchen knife what the hell”. Same, though, random fan translator from years ago. Same.

Kaito: “Yeah, I caught a glimpse of it too… That was definitely a kitchen knife.”

Oh hey, look who’s capable of observing and understanding basic facts! Yes, hello, we would like to apologise for our previous misinformation and inform everyone that Kaito is, in fact, not stupid, please disregard everything you may have heard in the past few minutes implying that he is, thank you.

Shuichi: “A knife… I do remember seeing a knife in the kitchen. That could be it.”

Angie: “I see, I see… An excellent deduction from the Ultimate Detective. Well done.”

Yes, clearly, Shuichi is the only person in this room capable of realising that kitchen knives come from the kitchen. I know I said Kaito isn’t stupid, but he still obviously pales in comparison to this detective genius right here.

Shuichi: “Ah, it’s not because I’m a detective… I’m still in training…”

Shuichi is also apparently the only person sensible enough to realise that it wasn’t even a clever deduction. This is supposed to be a hint at his insecurity, but also he’s just making a very valid point.

Maki: “You really don’t need to be a detective to know that the knife came from the kitchen.”

Thank you, Maki, for being one of the only other sensible people here. God, Maki is always such a breath of fresh air.

Kokichi: “Geez, who cares about the murder weapon?”

Kaito: “What do you mean, ‘who cares’!?”

Kokichi: “We can already guess who the culprit is. There’s a super-duper huge hint already.”

Yeah, who cares about actual concrete evidence when we can randomly sling accusations around based on completely circumstantial stuff! This is so very Kokichi. I also appreciate that Kaito’s the one to question him.

After some discussion in which the three protagonists insist it wasn’t them, led largely by Maki, who of course has no qualms about suspecting them even though she’s not going to conclude it definitely was them yet…

Kokichi: “Ugh, I already told you it’s not Kaede. Suspecting her right off the bat is so mean!”

Of course, the demo’s got to also have some of Kokichi’s transparent two-faced insincerity in an attempt to make everyone else’s belief in and defense of each other sound hollow and empty. Wouldn’t be Kokichi without that.

Kaito: “Hey! You’re the one who brought it up!”

And Kaito’s the one to call him out on that, because of course he should be!

“Makoto”: “We need to talk this over more to uncover the truth. This is a test.”

Kaede: “Huh?” (This is a test…?)

The way it lingers on that comment makes it seem relevant. Maybe this is just another nod to this being a demo, which is meant to “test” players’ skills in preparation for the main game. Which could also potentially be the idea in-universe, if this is indeed being done as a test-run before they wipe everyone’s memories of this and put them in the real killing game (though as I said before, this still can’t have been quite what happened in real canon given the whole pregame reset thing).

Gonta: “Gonta not good at tough subjects… but Gonta will work hard for everyone’s sake!”

Kaede: “That’s right! We need to work together so we can overcome this class trial!”

Yaaaay, Gonta. He hasn’t really done much of note in this demo but he’s still here and doing his best! And also here’s some Kaede being very herself.

“Makoto”: “Everything’s gone smoothly so far, but…”

Kaede: “Huh? Did you say something, Makoto?”

“Makoto”: “No… it’s nothing.”

Hah, Makoto really is acting quite suspiciously now, isn’t he.

Ryoma: “Either way, we’ve got three main suspects now…”

No, we haven’t, we only ended up on this topic because of Kokichi’s random accusation slinging, can we get back to talking about the knife, please. Ryoma, you are meant to be smarter than this.

Kaito: “It’s not any of them! I believe in these guys!”

Oh, Kaito. I’m a little more surprised that his intuition is giving him a fully positive read on “Makoto” and “Hajime”, but he hasn’t interacted with them that much either and their acting has been fine so far and made them seem superficially heroic, so, eh, fair enough.

Shuichi: “If we can determine who took the murder weapon from the kitchen… that would clear Kaede of suspicion.”

Yes, thank you, let’s talk about the evidence. Shuichi’s is always the most sensible voice in the room. I also like how he’s thinking of it as clearing Kaede of suspicion – he really doesn’t want to think she did it.

Kirumi: “First, we should listen to Kaede and the others’ testimonies.”

This whole thing of awkwardly veering the topic onto these three suspects in particular (thanks to our convenient Kokichi in the room just wanting to be overly suspicious of everyone) is actually an excuse to demonstrate a Mass Panic Debate. Which is a horrendously bad example of one of these. They’re supposed to happen when people get so riled up at being suspected that they all talk over each other, but Kaede, Makoto and Hajime have been quite calm and level-headed about this, and each happily agree to Kirumi’s suggestion to let them testify. So they shouldn’t need to talk over each other!

And then, to make things even more confusing and distract even more from what’s supposed to be the point of a Mass Panic Debate, Monokuma and his cubs awkwardly interrupt to declare that Kaede can’t participate and they’re arbitrarily going to make someone else testify about their alibi instead of her. This is of course because Kaede is the protagonist and so can’t participate in a playable debate, and it’s also because the person they’re having testify instead is someone who actually has testimony about who took the knife and is therefore the relevant thing to shoot at. But my god, does this end up giving a completely unclear and misleading impression of what a Mass Panic Debate is even supposed to be for. When I first saw this demo, I remember being confused as hell and thinking it was pointlessly gimmicky to have three Nonstop Debates at once for no apparent reason. It completely fails to communicate the idea that these are supposed to be less about the gameplay and more about narrative tension (even if only one of the Mass Panic Debates in the main game really pulls that off to its full potential).

The third testimony in question is from Himiko, who was having tea with Tenko when somebody took the knife. Specifically, she was lecturing Tenko about the difference between real magic and a magic trick, because of course she was. It’s cute that Tenko was happy to listen to her.

Tenko doesn’t know who it was who came in, because it was a dude, and so, being Tenko, she didn’t pay him any attention beyond that. This jogs Himiko’s memory, though…

Himiko: “Nyeh… now that I think about it, someone was in the kitchen. Someone who’s no longer with us…”

…and then she decides to tell us all who it was in the vaguest possible way instead of just saying “it was Hiro” or “it was the victim”. Which is in fact a very transparent way to shoehorn in, drumroll please, the actual stupidest Psyche Taxi segment in the game, for real this time! At least if you count the demo as part of this game.

Credit to them, they actually did put Kaede in the car and not Shuichi. I think her car might be a little different, too? The idea of driving through Vegas to pick up sex workers is… basically just as out-of-character for Kaede as it was for Shuichi, given that she’s a huge piano nerd without many friends, not that that part of her character has been illustrated at all in the demo. (She’s still picking up women, but then there are a few comments Kaede makes that strongly hint she’s bi, so hey.)

The two (at least it’s only two; even they couldn’t stretch this out into three or four) questions asked here are: “Who is not here?” [Victim/Culprit] and then “Who is the victim of this case?” [Hajime/Hiro/Makoto]. Yup, they actually thought those were questions that anyone ever would have to think about at all.

…I mean, they probably didn’t really. And to be fair, this is pretty similar to how stupid actual Psyche Taxis are, so, uhh, representative demo gameplay???

Kaede: “Are you saying Hiro’s the one who went into the kitchen?”

Because obviously Kaede had to drive a taxi through her mind to figure this out, and nobody else in the room figured it out in less time than it took her to do that. And she also couldn’t possibly have just asked Himiko to clarify who she meant in the first place.

But hey, the one who took the knife from the kitchen was in fact the victim. More references to the DR1 case! I wonder if we’re supposed to think that Hiro was secretly planning murder and not just taking it for self-defence. Honestly I wouldn’t entirely put that past him; if anyone would be the kind of coward looking for an easy way out that Kaito was denouncing back in the investigation, he seems a reasonable candidate for it.

Having realised that the one who took the knife isn’t the culprit after all, suspicion falls back on the three protagonists, particularly Kaede as she discovered the body.

“Makoto”: “No, that’s wrong!”

“Hajime”: “Yeah! You’ve got that wrong!”

Monokuma: “Oh? The two leads just said their catchphrases! Finally, this is getting exciting!”

Man, this is apparently some genwunner-audience-shallowness worthy of trial 6 if they’re supposed to think that a couple of people just yelling “no, that’s wrong!” somehow makes things the height of entertainment. Admittedly the rest of the trial has not exactly been riveting, but still.

“Makoto”: “Kaede… don’t give up hope. Keep going and you’ll be able to reach the truth!”

He can’t just tell her to not give up – he has to throw in that buzzword and make sure everyone knows that this is about hope. Look, guys, he’s totally Makoto.

Kaede: “But, how do I prove my innocence?”

“Hajime”: “That’s…”

…But neither of them actually know how to do this and are just spouting meaningless protagonisty lines.

Kokichi: “Fine! I guess my decisive testimony will help us find our culprit!”

Oh boy, it’s Kokichi Making Everything About Himself time.

Gonta: “You know who culprit is? That means everyone not have to get punished!”

Aww, Gonta. Look at him naively believing everything Kokichi says, this is totally not foreshadowing for anything important and tragic in the main game, not at all.

A couple of the other slower characters also go welp, great, this means the trial can be over soon.

Shuichi: “Kokichi… if you had information like that, why didn’t you tell us sooner?”

Kokichi: “Well, if I said something that important right away, that wouldn’t be much fun.”

But at least Shuichi is still being the most sensible and realising exactly what is so fishy about this. (This is also the question he has to worry about himself with regards to his own lies that he tells in canon.)

Kokichi’s response is “lol, for fun”, though, because of course it is, and that is exactly what he would do if this testimony he’s about to give weren’t a lie. Especially considering that that’s the usual reason why he really does frequently withhold important information from everyone else in canon.

Kokichi: “Anyway… the culprit is Makoto.”

From just the text alone, this could seem like it’s deliberately being reminiscent of Kokichi’s “Well, then… the culprit is Gonta” line in canon. But alas, the delivery is completely different – which I guess is fair enough, since here he’s just lying.

Kaede: “Huh? Wh-What are you saying?”

“Makoto”: “…”

Interestingly, Makoto doesn’t immediately try to deny this.

Regardless, Kaede decides she’s going to believe in Makoto, and so she’s going to lie for him. Finally, a mechanic introduced in this demo that, A, is an actually interesting new mechanic and not a pointless minigame, and, B, is represented properly!

(There’s no Debate Scrum in this demo, sadly. I’d say it’s because they couldn’t come up with a proper excuse for one, but honestly they could probably have scraped together a short one about whether or not Makoto did it, similar to the one about Shuichi in canon.)

Kokichi: “I saw Makoto leave that room by himself! I swear!”

Wow, that totally doesn’t sound like a lie at all.

“Makoto”: “I didn’t go into that room even once… so Kokichi must be mistaken.”

“Kokichi is lying.”

There’s eight different white noise lines for this last statement, most of which are quite easily identifiable. Even though this one is less obviously so, I bet it’s Maki. It sounds like her.

So Kaede lies that she was with Makoto the entire time until the body discovery.

Kokichi: “Hmmm… Kaede, you’d rather choose a lie than the truth, just to protect Makoto?”

Kaede: “Do you have any proof to show that I’m lying, Kokichi?”

Kokichi: “Nope, none at all. I lied about seeing Makoto.”

Welp, that didn’t last long at all.

Kaito: “Why you…? Don’t mess with us!”

Again I love that Kaito is the one to call him out on this! He hates that someone would be this insincere and selfishly mess with their lives just for his own petty entertainment.

Kokichi: “I just wanted Makoto to talk, so I simply tricked him into speaking.”

Kaito: “Why beat around the bush like that?”

This is so Kaito – he’s not using the word here, but this is his concept of manliness! Don’t beat around the bush, just come straight out and tell people what you want from them! If he wanted Makoto to testify, he should have just asked him instead of being insincere and indirect and manipulating him into it.

Kokichi: “Cuz it’s still not clear where Makoto was before and after the indicent, right? Aw maaaan… I totally thought Makoto would talk if we started accusing him.”

And your lie didn’t help us clear anything up any more than just asking him directly would have done, so good fucking job, as usual. It almost seems like Kokichi’s actually acknowledging here that his lie didn’t work, but really he’s probably telling himself it totally would have worked if Kaede hadn’t jumped in with her own lie, because Kokichi can never be wrong about anything.

Some of the others point out that Kaede is also lying because she was on her own shortly after the body discovery and it’s weird that she and Makoto would split up after finding a body. Since Kaede’s lie is so provably false, it’s surprising to me that Kokichi backed down so soon on his own lie rather than just trying to disprove Kaede’s. Maybe his actual intent was that he thought Kaede was the culprit and expected her to throw Makoto under the bus to protect herself, and then when she didn’t, he realised she’s probably innocent and backed off? Maybe? But then again, Kokichi expects people to throw others under the bus to protect themselves even when they are innocent, like he was trying to get Kaito to do to Maki in trial 2, so, eh, I kinda doubt he’d see anyone not doing that as actual proof of anything. There’s too much selflessness and trust involved in that idea.

Gonta: “Huh? Kaede… tell lie?”

Aww, Gonta.

Kaede: (I need to be more convincing if I want them to believe me. I’ll remember that next time I need to lie… Of course, I hope that time never comes.)

Heh, that sure is a rather transparently this-is-just-a-demo thing for her to be thinking.

Kaito: “We just got dragged around by Kokichi’s lies… We didn’t clear a single thing up!”

Exactly! God I love like 80% of the Kaito in this demo. All of the bits that aren’t horrendously out of character are so wonderfully him.

Everyone awkwardly laments that they still don’t have any more of a clue who did it other than maybe the three owners of the room and maybe in particular Kaede for no good reason. (Come on, guys, the rooms weren’t locked, literally anybody could have seen Hiro wandering into that room and taken their chance to kill someone.)

“Makoto”: “It can’t end like this. No one wants an ending like that.”

Wow, that is so hilariously trial 6 of him. I am very sure the demo writers are doing this on purpose at this point.

Hajime decides he can prove it wasn’t Kaede, so he starts talking in very vague terms about “it” that was on the floor in the dorm, and something off about the crime scene. I’m not sure what the latter thing he’s supposed to be referring to is – Kaede’s comments in the investigation suggested there was supposedly something suspicious about the blood on the knife handle, so it might be that, but I couldn’t tell myself what was off about it. (There might not even be anything off about it, because this is about to go precisely nowhere. Then again, maybe it was the fact that it’s actually a prop knife because “Hiro” wasn’t really dead? Although “Hajime” probably wouldn’t want that to be known, would he.) The former thing is clearly the short brown hair found on the floor after Kirumi had cleaned, which suggests it is not Kaede but is instead either Makoto or Hajime.

But before Kaede can actually properly mention either of these things Hajime is vaguely alluding to, Monokuma interrupts and declares that the demo is over, and the trial abruptly ends.

So we never actually find out who supposedly killed Hiro – but I think the clues make it pretty clear that it was supposed to be Makoto.

On my first time seeing the demo, I was certain it couldn’t be Makoto because I already implicitly trusted that he’d never kill anyone. But that’s only if it was the real Makoto. Since this is just a cosplayer, and this is just a show being put on by Team Danganronpa for some very superficial demo entertainment, anything goes. I can totally see them pulling out the shocking twist that Makoto murdered someone, just for the hell of it.

All the clues point to Makoto – the hair that’s either his or Hajime’s, his extremely unexplained disappearance, plus a couple of moments in which he acted quite suspiciously, such as the way he didn’t immediately fervently plead his innocence when Kokichi claimed he had proof. And even if it had actually been a real murder, none of the people here who are real people and not cosplayers just acting would snap and give up that quickly on getting out of here without resorting to such drastic measures, just like Kaito said.

Then, right at the end of the demo, over a blank screen, there’s this.

“Makoto”: “Hey, how was… our acting?”

Monokuma: “Puhuhu, it wasn’t too shabby! I especially liked how convincingly you wasted everyone’s time!”

“Hajime”: “I was a little worried about the end there… Hope it was exciting enough. Welp, since we got through it smoothly, that’s it for today!”

Monokuma: “Smell ya later!”

“Makoto”: “Good job, everyone!”

“Hajime”: “Good job! See ya!”

…………

“Hiro”: “Heeey! Wait for meee!”

This sure is a thing. I’d actually forgotten this bit was here while coming up with my theory that the Makoto, Hajime and Hiro we see in this demo are just cosplayers and nobody died – and this basically completely proves that this idea really was what the out-universe writers were going for here.

On a first viewing of this demo without having seen the main game, Makoto asking about their acting would potentially just seem like him referring to how he and Hajime hid the fact that they’d already been in another killing game – and, perhaps, the fact that they knew Hiro wasn’t really dead and this was all staged. But even then, it’s kind of odd that they’re asking this to Monokuma, like they’re in league with him, which doesn’t seem right for them at all.

But it makes every single bit of sense after finishing the main game if you assume that they really were cosplayers just putting on this demo as a teaser for the in-universe audience. When “Makoto” asks about their acting, he’s asking if they were convincing enough as Makoto and Hajime in the first place. They work for Team Danganronpa, so of course they’re in league with Monokuma and having a casual conversation with him. And everything about the way they’re talking comes across like actors or directors being all “welp, that’s a wrap, good job out there on set today, guys, we sure made an entertaining show!”

This bit didn’t need to be in the demo at all, but it’s really fun that they put it here anyway. It’s a very subtle, cheeky little hint to the real truth of everything that nobody’s going to be able to piece together without already knowing the truth and is just going to assume is meaningless demo shenanigans until then.

Also, while obviously nobody actually died, Team Danganronpa was still presenting a fiction in which Hiro totally did die, and within that fiction they apparently still totally had it in mind that Makoto killed him. They didn’t really have to hint towards anyone having done it at all, but they still had Makoto’s actor go out of his way to put in deliberate hints that it was him. I wonder how many of the audience picked up on the hints, and how shocked they were if they did. Gasp, their precious Makoto did a murder!! How could he fall to despair like this!?

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #bonus content #demo #commentary

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swiggity-swexual-i-am-asexual · 5 years

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Wanna know some things I found out about Danganronpa??

If not, scroll past—I apologize that this is probably gonna be a long post, but it's all under a read more so it *should* be fine.

Also, spoilers.

Basically, I wanted to find out about what order they stood in during class trials, and if there were any patterns to it. There are... at least a couple of patterns here.

This takes from Danganronpa 1, 2, and V3, otherwise known as Trigger Happy Havoc, Goodbye Despair, and Killing Harmony. Please note I never got to actually play the games (hi I’m broke), but I do at least know what happens in them (with my knowledge of Goodbye Despair being the most lacking of the three).

1- This is right in front of Monokuma. Those who stood here are Aoi Asahina, Mikan Tsumiki, and Tsumugi Shirogane. Patternwise, there isn’t much. They’re all pretty different! But they all seem to have a shtick (in one word: Donuts, Cries, Plain. This does disservice to poor Mikan, tho). Also, should have been a hint to Tsumugi being... YEAH but this really doesn’t mean much. Although, if you shift Asahina to second and put the first one as the “empty” stand in the game, then it’s all filled with fairly insane women. All women regardless.

2- to the right of 1, or to our left, we have Mondo Owada, Nagito Komaeda, and Korekiyo Shinguji. Ignoring Mondo, we have the match made in hell that is Komaeda and Shinguji, or as I like to call them, Crazy Lucky and Folklore Cunt. Everyone in this spot has died, and if we count Komaeda as a blackened, then they’re all blackened. Also, all boys.

3- Kyoko Kirigiri, Ibuki Mioda, Angie Yonaga. Ignoring Kyoko (you’ll note a lot of ignoring of the first ones, don’t mind it too much), we have some pretty, ah, positive? *energetic* characters. They’re all pretty interesting characters too!! If you play the first game for the bad end, the ones in this spot die. But, again, if you play the correct end, then Kyoko is safe, and the ones in this spot are victims. They’re also usually convienient or circumstantial victims (again, ignore Kyoko). Another set of just girls.

4- Sakura Ogami, Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, Maki Harukawa. This is a spot for some SCARY, but usually secretly at least a little nice and kind of soft, characters. These are the ones that are tough as nails and definitely could (and even might) kill you, whether by their own hands or another’s. However, none of these characters have been exactly murdered (although Sakura doesn’t exactly LIVE and Kuzuryu does get injured).

5- Uh. “Junko Enoshima”, Akane Owari, Ryoma Hoshi. These are. Well. It’s a wild card. Put whoever here, but they better have SOME kind of affect on others. Two of them die, and one of them has a failed execution. Two of them directly defy Monokuma, and the third pretty much let themselves die as a victim. So...

6- Kiyotaka Ishimaru, Gundam Tanaka, Kirumi Tojo. This is an intense sort of set, although Kirumi is intense in a... different sort of way. These tend to be characters that help take care of others in some way, and they all die generally with the goal to help someone out, in some way. Ignoring Ishimaru, these guys might be gothic in some way. The ones here may have good intentions but might’ve gotten a little lost on the way. They also tend to have interesting moral codes and understandings of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.

7- Sayaka Maizono, Hiyoko Saionji, Kaito Momota. These tend to be optimistic characters with a hidden (or not so hidden) morally grey or outright “bad” side. They might be good people, they might not be, but they usually die (two in an interesting turn of events).

8- This is the Ahoge Club. This is where the main characters are. We should have never been surprised in V3 once the trial started, but ah well. Here are Makoto Naegi, Hajime Hinata, and Shuichi Saihara. The ahoge boys here are all protags, and all live. Their ideas of hope, of right or wrong... well, that’s up in the air, and maybe in the opinion of the person playing. (But if you’re making a fanfic or a fan game or what not, this is where your protag stands—it right across from Monokuma!)

9- Hifumi Yamada, Mahiru Koizumi, Miu Iruma. All victims, although two of them are a taaaaad more complex than ‘just victims’. Highly opinionated people. But also creative! Gosh this is starting to sound like a zodiac post, or one of those posts where it’s like ‘traits of different drinks, tag which one you are’. (which danganronpa trial, where you either find the culprit or die, stand are YOU??)

10- Toko Fukawa, Kazuichi Soda, Kiibo (K1-B0). These all make it to the final mastermind trial! They generally have some sort of thing that makes it harder for them to interact with others. These are emotional characters, generally. They all have some strange quirks about them, but are generally (when not taken over by, say, alternate personalities or controlled by an audience or something silly like that!) good people... goodish people.

11- Leon Kuwata, Peko Pekoyama, Tenko Chabashira. Athletic! They all die. Although, usually with certain circumstances involved. Of them, two of them have someone they’d be willing to die (or kill) for. And they do!! (I almost feel bad for Leon on this one.) They also had some kind of ‘locked room’ aspect, or more accurately, some kind of particular trick (and two of them had a sort of ‘signature’ to either their own death or to the person they killed) to their cases that helped crack it open once discovered (door knob, sword care seESAW). I think blood helped all, if not just two, figure out the actual killer in their cases. They also all had someone explicitly pointed to as the culprit in their case who was NOT the culprit.

12- Celestia Ludenberg, Teruteru Hanamura, Kokichi Ouma. The trio of liars (although much more notably Celestia and Kokichi). They all die, and it’s usually a very, VERY convoluted case (less so for Teruteru though). Do you want a headache? Hey it’s these guys! Although they can also be very INTERESTING characters. (Again, Teruteru tends to draw the short straw, whoops.) I’d say Celestia and Kokichi are match made in hell, but seriously that title belongs to Crazy Lucky and Folklore Cunt. T r u s t m e. It’s still not a great match and I definitely want it to not happen (and if it did I’d cry and eat popcorn watching it—actually I think they meet in, like, some kind of bonus mode for V3... might need to look that up later).

13- Byakuya Togami, Sonia Nevermind, Himiko Yumeno. The Scholar, The Princess, The Mage. Ever thought 13 was unlucky? Wrong! These all live. Like. Through the *entire game*. Excluding Himiko (wow, excluding V3 for once!), these are more fine society folks, although they all tend to have strange or occult interests of some kind. They tend to be smart in some way, probably, and might have interesting ideas of what happened. They might also say strange or otherwise “out of turn” things. But they live!! Somehow!! How did no one murder Togami!!

14- Chihiro Fujisaki, Nekomaru Nidai, Kaede Akamatsu. All of you die, how unfortunate. Usually a somehow sacrificing character, and probably died with the best intentions of the group at heart. And this is why Kaede didn’t stay the Protagonist. But these characters are all caring characters (although usually in their own ways). So if you ARE making content, and you have that sweet cinnamon roll you’re going to viciously kill in horrifying ways, this is an option for you!

15- Yasuhiro Hagakure, Chiaki Nanami, Gonta Gokuhara. The cinnamon roll you put here might not die, but if you’re looking for a place to make a cinnamon roll murder, then this is the place for you! Yasuhiro actually lives, though, so there is that. The ones here might not have the best fate in store for them, unfortunately. But! They are the kind of innocent, generally secretly wise kind. Generally. They might not get along totally with their classmates, not necessarily by faults of their own (although, avoiding Yasuhiro is,,,, understandable). These characters have their shtick and they stick to it, golly gosh darn it. Also, they might not quite seem to ‘fit’ with their talent (Yasuhiro is kinda a conman despite having actual clairvoyance, Chiaki is a sleepy girl, and Gonta is by far my favorite but oh gosh he is a terrifyingly large man who cares for tiny, TINY insects). These characters are smart, but in independent, potentially obscure ways. They might also be gullible. They also might be lacking a major part of ‘common’ knowledge. ... I wrote more about these guys than intended, ha.

16- “Empty”, “Byakuya”, Rantaro Amami. These characters are NOT who they say they are, generally. There’s quite a bit of mystery to these guys!! Unfortunately, they’re always gone (or, in Empty’a case, hiding) before the first trial even begins (and have twice been the first victim). This spot is basically the first victim spot, so it has yet to ever actually have someone stand in it (maybe it’s cursed, maybe it’s *convenience*).

In short! The first ones are usually ones to watch out for, second one has some nutty (or at least intense) characters that will die in some actually insane way, third is for some misunderstood characters, fourth are the intense scary ones that will not be killed by mortal hands other than their own, fifth is for some. INTERESTING characters. Sixth is for some more interesting characters, serious and caretaking type that will definitely die edition. Seventh has some morality issues and will ALSO die probably DUE to those morality issues, eigth has our Ahoge Squad, Nineth is the very blunt victim squad. Tenth is for making it to at least the last trial with some quirky quirks, eleventh is for more definitely dying with a blade likely involved even though you are athletic and YOU KNOW BETTER, twelfth is for liars and dying, thirteenth is if you wanna live. Fourteenth is being a good person and not really deserving the death you got, fifteenth is for unusual but interesting/unique intelligence folks. And sixteenth is for if you never even made it to the trial grounds in the first trial.

And there! That’s it!! Take this! I want a nap! Tell me if you find any other patterns!!

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thestarshiphope · 6 years

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(Mod what’s your favorite character or the most fun to write and what’s your least favorite to write? Also can you please rank your most to least favorite V3 characters?)

//They’re all fun to write, honestly

//As for my personal list? I honestly don’t hate or even dislike any of the V3 cast, so I’m not sure I could even make a list. They’re all really interesting characters in their own ways. However, as for what I like about them, I can list those here.

This isn’t necessarily a list of favorites to least favorites, more of favorites to characters I feel kind of indifferent about.

1. Ryoma- Easily my favorite character in the game and I’m glad Kodaka included someone who was treated seriously, even with his goofy design. His backstory is really interesting and he acts just like how I’d expect someone like him to turn out. I’m seriously disappointed that he didn’t last past chapter 2, but his free time events and Love Across the Universe scenes helped cement him as my favorite. A guy who i want to see overcome his struggles and grow.

2. Shuichi- Shuichi is a great protagonist, and he just barely edges out Kaede if only for the fact that he lasted longer. I was glad to see him overcome this extremely timid personality of his and, even if he falters now and again, he still tries to search for the truth. And seeing him give a huge middle finger to the show’s audience was really great. I’d like to think, even after learning the truth, he still believes in Kaede and Kaito’s words to him.

2. Kaede- While she was only with us for one chapter, Kaede left her mark. I really enjoyed having her around, with her positive energy and some of her more goofy moments with the other students that really got me to laugh, especially Kiibo’s. She’s not a mary sue like some people seem to think (please learn what that term means before you use it), just someone who wanted to be friends with everyone and save their lives. Her actions also really surprised me. She was willing to kill if it meant she could save everyone, something I was not expecting whatsoever.

4. Kaito- Talk about a character I misjudged from the beginning. I thought he was gonna turn out to be just some macho meathead, but it turns out he’s the biggest bro you could possibly ask for. Even if he wasn’t the smartest or most logical character, his scenes with Shuichi and Maki were really great. I’m glad he was the kind of guy who’d reach out and help people.

5. Himiko- Another character who I’m glad I misjudged. Seeing Himiko grow from passive listlessness to actively allowing her self to feel emotions. She went through so much shit throughout the game, constantly getting framed and blamed for murders, which is why I’m so glad she made to the end.

6. Gonta- Gonta is precious and only wanted to do his best to protect everyone, and I really wish he achieved his goal of becoming a true gentleman. I have nothing else to add. Really, my only complaint with him is that his backstory honestly seemed a little too silly even for danganronpa (seriously, reptoids?), which is why I’m kinda glad it turned out to just be a fabrication.

7. Korekiyo- This guy is fucked up. Like, even more than I was expecting. But he’s also really interesting, especially during his free time events. I enjoy anthropology as well, and it was cool getting to learn things from him. He had this really creepy, but genuinely mysterious aura about him that I wanted to know more about. Come chapter 3, I was not disappointed.

8. Kiibo- Kiibo was yet another character whom I misjudged. He broke so many stereotypical views about robots in anime and games and I really liked it. He was a really nice guy, even with his comments about perceived robophobia, and I like how he and Miu were really close through most of the game. Then the sixth chapter and Kiibo started fucking shit up, which was AMAZING. Really sad he didn’t live to the very end.

9. Maki- I figured Maki was going to be an important character, and she turns out to be the true female lead of the game. Not too much to say about her, honestly. I liked seeing her really open up to everyone, her backstory, and her free time events. And seeing her smiling makes me really happy.

10. Tenko- While her constant misandry got a little grating and her free time events kinda made her look like an idiot, Tenko definitely has a lot of good qualities about her. Chapter 3 really got me to warm up toward her for everything she did for Himiko, encouraging her to not give up and to allow herself to feel emotions, which helped set the stage for her growth. Also gotta say I’m glad they didn’t go with an “I hate men because I was raped/abused” backstory like I was afraid they would.

11. Kokichi- I gotta be honest: there seems to be a trend where I don’t feel very strongly about characters that everyone else goes crazy over. Kokichi was a great villain and a hilarious troll at times, but I don’t have much to really say about him. Other than the fact that he owes me a bowl of cereal for that floorboard prank.

12. Kirumi- I don’t have very strong feelings for Kirumi. I was kind of expecting a little more from her as a character, but she seems kind of just eh to me. At least until the second trial. The reveal about her being the prime minister and her utilitarian mindset were not what I was expecting. It was a great surprise. Also, her love hotel scene is honestly my favorite. It’s just really sweet ^^

13. Miu- As helpful and as funny as Miu could be at times, she was also really, really grating and kind of unbearable with her constant vulgarities. She was certainly not one-note with that, and I’m glad we got to see extra sides of her personality, but it never really went anywhere before she died. Very disappointing.

14. Angie- She scares me. Her weirdly upbeat and energetic personality combined with this dark, cult leader-type aura she has makes me really uncomfortable, especially during her free time events, where I was just waiting for a jump scare or something. Though she does have some interesting traits in her as well, like her fascination with Saihara after he became the first person to say “no” to her. I just wish she had a bit more personality than just talking about Atua in every other sentence.

15. Rantaro- While I’m glad we got to learn more about him from his free time events and love across the universe, we got to see barely any of Rantaro’s interactions with anyone during the game, which is really disappointing. While we learned more about him later on, I really wish he had a bit of a more substantial role in the narrative.

16. Tsumugi- I don’t hate Tsumugi like a lot of people seem to. I don’t have very strong feelings about her either, since she spent the game as kind of a stereotypical otaku nerd without a lot of character development, which I’m sure was intentional. I honestly thought she was a good surprise mastermind, even if I don’t believe most of what she said is true. I like that there’s plenty of room to theorize about her as well, which I’ve done plenty of myself.

#mod talks #starship hope #Anonymous

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aurimeanswind · 7 years

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Autumn—Sunday Chats (10-1-17)

Fall has finally arrived, and boy do video games just not stop.

Podcast Train Stop

I’m curious if anyone else has tun into the issue where their podcast rotation just stops? I’ve basically stopped listening to all my podcasts except for My Brother, My Brother and Me. I am not sure why, but I’ve fallen off of all of the GiantBomb Podcasts, any other video game podcast, except for really The Easy Allies podcast. Of the group, that one that I’ve gotten into the most recently still sticks with me for whatever reason.

Maybe it’s the want to not listen to hours-long podcast recently? Which is odd because I usually binge many podcasts together back to back. I think the most likely answer is that I had fallen behind and then not been able to catch up.

This is unfortunate though because podcasts are typically my main source of news and now I am getting a little aloof with the gaming news. But I still manage to keep up thanks to the show I help host!

Has this ever happened to any of you? What do you do, try and listen to all the episodes you missed or just jump right back in?

What’s on Tap

Danganronpa V3

This is the big one. Consuming most of my time like Danganronpa is ought to do.

It’s very good y’all.

Danganronpa has a great talent of building off of its predecessors in completely unorthodox ways, essentially carrying forward concepts but in logical ways so it doesn’t seem like all of the characters are jumping to conclusions based on nothing. It just seems like this different group of people decided to take a wildly different approach. Chunsoft then ties that to the personalities and style of those same characters, and it’s a brilliant mix-mash of those intelligent designs.

These games always play with my expectations and take me by surprise, but boy... this one really is messing with me.

Not only that, they’re using loss in a way that is even more emotional and moving then it has been before, which for me has been a first in the series. I actually got choked up after the first chapter because of how this was done.

These games are so good, and Danganronpa V3 is not a disappointment by any stretch of the imagination.

Destiny 2

Finished the raid this past week, and hopefully soon will be finishing it with my original team.

We’ve run into plenty of trouble, but I know we have it in us to knock it out.

Metroid Samus Returns

Uh, y’all? It’s still so good.

Got to some of the new and added stuff to the game and it was absolutely phenomenal.

Very tense, very cool, and very, very fun. I love it.

Questions

Remember to look for my tweet with the hashtag #SundayChats in it on Sunday afternoons and reply to it with your question! That’s the way to do it!

Normally I would have asked a question to you all this week, but I’m holding it off until next week.

So, real quick, as I was going through questions, I noticed a ton of SNES-classic related questions, which reminds me I’ve been playing that too! Let me insert that real quick...

SNES Classic

It’s so cute!

This is the one I wanted, I got it, I’m v happy.

So I jumped right into Zelda A Link to the Past and played through the opening, and it’s still wonderful.

It’s fun playing on an OG SNES controller, though I do really like the classic controller form the Wii Era. The original too, not the pro, because you get a little best of both worlds.

The big one I sank the most time into was actually Super Mario RPG. It’s been so long since I played that that it’s basically a whole new game for me. Plus, I was a kid, and had no clue what the hell was happening. It’s been super funny and super fun to really see that game with fresh eyes for the first time ever.

Okay, back to questions.

Yay! I didn’t know this!

I’d say I am at about an 8.5. I really like the Jackbox games, and they’re especially fun to get a new one before ExtraLife, when we have a ton of people watching a stream and also a ton of people in the room. With the streaming improvements from JBPP3, I think this one is gonna be pretty stellar. Curious to see what games are in there. Hopefully a Quiplash 3!

This is a very gross question Tyler, not because of the subject, but because you narrowly refer to a character as a “bubble butt baddie” which, at the end of the day, I don’t even know what that narrows it down to? Like, who qualifies for that?

I dunno, but the one answer that came to mind was Miranda from Mass Effect 2.

Oh man this is a pretty good question. I never really got into Costume Quest, which, I know, is sacrilegious to say, but it’s true. The text speed was too fast? I know, dumb complaint, but I’m a terrible reader, so I couldn’t keep up.

Anyway, I’d like to think I’d either turn into some kind of lame superhero, or just straight up Banjo and Kazooie. I don’t know why, but that’s the first thing that came to my head...

Here’s the deal, there is no correct way to play video games. Full stop. You can take your time and savor something, but you can also rush through something and savor it too. Like, I played Persona 5 at what I considered to be a slow pace, because folks like Nabeshin beat it before me, because I wanted to “savor it”. That being said, I still beat it in 2 and a half weeks, and 103 hours split into two and a half weeks is still a whole lotta hours per week. But neither of us played it “wrong”.

Like, folks that get qualified as “casual” are going to be seen as the ones that play it slower, but it’s likely because they have other things they need to do. Like sleep. And eat. I don’t do these things! At least not regularly!

On the subject of Destiny 2 specifically, I think it does have minimal post-game content, mainly the Raid, the Nightfall, and Trials of the Nine. Which, like, still seems like more than the original, to be fair? There are hidden exotic quests too, and I have a feeling as we roll into Iron Banner this month, there will still be plenty for folks to do after they’ve finished the game. But ultimately the folks that charged through to 280 in the first weekend knew exactly what they were doing and got themselves into that situation. I just started up my third and final character on Destiny 2, so getting that guy up to 280 is going to be a fun trip for me still.

I dunno, there isn’t a right answer to this i think. But power through games or savor them however you like, because I think you’re the best judge of how fast or how slow you should play a game. Plus, you’ll probably put a different amount of time into a given game depending on how you feel about it, so I get it either way.

Weird. Uneasy. Aroused? Horrified.

Also, it has taken me the full twenty minutes since I screen grabbed this to now when I am typing this answer to form the line “ready to smash” in my head, and I hate me, and you, and everything.

Pumpkin Spice is trash.

I said it.

I’ll say it again.

Take your trash and get out of here.

November is right around the corner. And you know what that means?

Motherfucking Gingerbread Latte.

Aww yay! Favorite month! A lot of folks love October too because they’re into that cool spooky fog feeling! Which is rad, I am not, personally, but I do like the silly Halloween aesthetic. I just don’t like actual scary stuff. Except the occasional scary video game.

As for me, December is my favorite month, for similar reasons. It is the beginning of Winter, which is my favorite season (unpopular opinion, I know) and it’s also when Christmas and new years happens, and if we’re lucky, a bit of snowfall. Ideally, it just means I’m getting plenty of my hot cocoa on.

This a great question. and I think it comes down to what kind of game you want to play. Like, Earthbound is quirky, and with Undertale having just hit the PS4, maybe it’s time to get into that. Mario RPG is cool and timing based and funny, and it may be a great trip for folks who haven’t played it, or don’t remember it, like me! Final Fantasy 6 everyone keeps telling me is great but I haven’t been able to get into it. That said, it’s super traditional, so if that’s what you’re in the mood for, it’s calling. Secret of Mana has the edge because it’s an action RPG, so it’s different then all the rest. Knowing you like Tales, I’d start with that, since it may be the most fun! Also, goddamn is the music in that game great. But it is in all of these.

For me it was either Mario RPG so I could finally really truly play it, or Earthbound, which I was a bit too intimidated at the time commitment to jump into first. For you, Brendan? Try out Secret of Mana! And keep what I said about the rest in mind.

Baked Potato is the superior potato, IMHO. I really love just barely slicing open a baked potato, loading it up with cheese and butter, closing it back up, letting the cheese melt all in it, then cutting it open again, mashing it a bit, then eating it nice and chunky style. It’s a pure delight.

Oh, and I don’t eat the outer skin, but I’ll like rip all the potato I can off the skin, and it’s amazing. I love it.

I just fucking love potatoes though. I’d eat mashed potatoes all day if I could, I just prefer baked potatoes.

Here we go, two lists, back to back. Now since you just said top 10 SNES games I will not limit myself to the SNES classic list, but damn that’s a good one to pull from. In NO PARTICULAR ORDER.

Zelda A Link to the Past

Super Mario World

Secret of Mana

Chrono Trigger

Super Metroid

Super Mario RPG

Mario All Stars Collection

Mega Man X

Final Fantasy 2 (Final Fantasy 4)

Kirby Super Star

I know I’ll get a lot of flack for choosing FF4 over 6, but Sunday Chats readers should know my current situation with FF6. Maybe someday...

Now I do want to say this tweet turned into an N64 hatefest, which I am not a fan of, I love the N64 and the PSone, that era holds something special for me. I understand its issues, and probably in the grand scheme of things, It’s the weakest of the console generations, but there are undeniably great games for those systems.

Now, this list will be tricky, but I’ll give it a shot:

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

Super Mario 64

Zelda Ocarina of Time

Zelda Majora’s Mask

Mario Kart 64

Star Fox 64

Pokémon Snap

Yoshi’s Story

Paper Mario

Super Smash Bros

Bomberman 64

This was actually way easier than I thought it’d be. I even left out a few games that I’d have love to see on there and opted to keep the ones I really like there. I kept to the no Rare rule even for Diddy Kong Racing (better than Mario Kart 64) and DK64, even though those would definitely still make and N64 Classic.

There are few more to shoutout too, but I’ll keep my list at my 10. Boy, looking at this I’d actually totally be down for one of these.

That’s all I got. I know I am bad at covering all my segments recently, but my life has been a bit of a mess as of late. So I apologize!

But thank you for the amazing questions, I adore you all, and I am gonna go let Danganronpa eat my whole soul now.

Thank you all. From the bottom of my heart. For your support. I’ve been terrible about making things lately and you all have not waned with your patience for me. It means the world. I won’t wast your time for much longer, and hopefully this patience will breed something.

Keep it real.

#video games #gaming #n64 #classic #snes class #nes classic #snes mini #n64 classic #danganronpa #v3 #danganronpa v3

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imagine-it-danganronpa-blog · 7 years

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Can I get the danganronpa 2 boys with their s/o on St. Patrick day??? Love your NDRV3 headcanons ❤️

I’m so happy you enjoyed my NDRV3 Headcanons! I’d also love to thank you for this prompt! I hope you like it!

-Mod Kirumi

Ultimate Imposter/Byakuya Togami

Normally, he dons the guise of Byakuya but today you can tell he is in the mood for BYAKUYA VERSION GREEN

His hair is still blond but he has stuck green clips in his hair

His suit is atrociously green

He has also brought you two matching hats

Otherwise, he continues his day as Byakuya, working his butt off for the entire day.

When he comes home, he has purchased 12 shamrock shakes for the two of you??

Byakuya should know that you can't consume that many shamrock shakes!!

Oh wait, never mind. He's purchased *1 shamrock shake for you and *11 shamrock shakes for himself

You spend the rest of the day leaning on his shoulder and drinking the sugar filled green shake

He feels pity on you because you can't drink anymore than that

Teruteru Hanamura

Matcha buns!! You absolutely love to eat Matcha buns!! And they are green tea Matcha buns!!

Of course, he has tried to make it shaped like a butt. Does it really matter? They're matcha buns!!

The next meal of the day, lunch time, Teruteru is wearing a cute hat and and has a new green apron

He's made transforming egg pea rice which consist of scrambled eggs, golden duck soup stock that melts over the green pea rice, and the sexiest fragrance in the world

The food is so amazing that it feels like your clothes are flying off with every bite

Thankfully they aren't, but you savour each and every bite. Before you know it, you've eaten three bowls of it

Teruteru is so happy that you loved his food!!

Finally, for dinner, you are escorted downstairs in a blindfold

Teruteru also had fuzzy handcuffs to go with it but you refused.

And the moment you step into the kitchen and take your blindfold off, your boyfriend has set up the table so you can watch him cook! It's a live performance!

What makes it better is that he brought one of those leprechaun costumes, but he had put his own kinky twist onto the costume.

It looks a bit hideous but hilarious, the costume, that is, but you can ignore it while munching the green appetizers.

And Teruteru starts to get ready to cook the ingredients

But where is the meat? Typically, Teruteru’s dishes include plenty of meat because of the flavour

You are about to ask him when he pulls out an ENTIRE FUCKING ROAST PIG

WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET THAT

ITS ONLY ST PATRICK'S DAY YOU DON'T NEED TO COOK THAT MUCH

STOP PEERING INTO THE DEAD ASSHOLE ALREADY

Nekomaru Nidai

The day starts like normal. You get up, put on something green, go downstairs, and go out for a jog with Nekomaru

But today, Nekomaru takes you down a different path?

You’re so excited. Does this mean that he is taking you down a harder path? Have you finally leveled up??

He stops and you look at where you are.

It’s a little private area within a forest, filled with soft flowers and silky grass

And Nekomaru is smiling so triumphantly because he is so happy that you love it

In a tree near the back, there is a bucket of chocolate coins, placed there for you from Nekomaru!!

You thank him so much! You can not believe that he did all this for you!

He tells you not to thank him, it was something that he was supposed to do for his loved one!

But the moment you step forward to claim the chocolates, Nekomaru steps in your way!

He tells you to take off your green shoes and your green shirt! You comply, used to following his training orders, and he takes off his green whistle and green jacket.

“S/O, THIS TRAINING AREA WILL BE THE LOCATION OF TODAY’S FIGHT! NO GREEN OUTFITS WILL ENSURE FAIR PLAY!”

He’s preparing to go higher than 10% this time. And you are so ready to fight!! You’ve been training for this moment!!

You both get an equal amount of pinches into each other. Nekomaru is so proud! Until you zone out for one millisecond and he smacks you in the stomach

He checks out whether you’re okay, and he is so relieved when you stand right back up!

You get chocolates as a reward for such a good fight!

DARK LORD Gundam Tanaka

You woke up to your Gundam alarm in the morning

“FIGHT ME, YOU FOUL GREEN MAN!”

Well that's definitely a new line you haven't heard before

You get up from your bed to see what going on and

It's just the green footprint stickers that you stuck on the floor, hamster bed, hamster toilet, and hamster house

Last night, after Gundam fell asleep, you thought it was funny to stick stickers and put washable green footsteps all over the place

Which reminds you to immediately pinch him after you change into a fuzzy green sweater

He just kinda gives his best “what are you doing, brave but foolish human” stare

Most people typically find that look scary but it's a bit hard to pull that off without guy-liner and gundams current silly bed head

You explain that it is St. Patrick's day and that you are supposed to pinch people who aren't wearing green. You also explain that there are little green men who usually cause mischief and that the holiday is typically associated with gold and rainbows

He stops listening after “little troubling green men”

His eyes light up. He is so going to trap the one who SABOTAGED HIS HAMSTER HOUSE

You try to tell him that you were the one who put the decorations up but he! will! not! listen!

He sets up a trap involving a Popsicle sticks, green paint, string, hamster food, his rings and circles of destruction, hot glue, pencils, gunpowder, pens, paper, more stickers, green ink, and chocolate wrappers

He keeps hidden underneath the covers until he notices out of the corner of his eyes that there are small green hamster footprints leaving his line of sight

His new conclusion?

The leprechaun can shapeshift into a hamster.

Gundam Tanaka will find and catch the leprechaun

After four hours, four fucking hours of fucking doofus, the trap activates. You can hear explosions and gundam’s proud war cry

You honestly don't believe him when he exclaims to you proudly that he has caught the leprechaun! But you walk into the room and there are actually small hamster footsteps that you did not make?!

Gundam lifts the trap and...

It's just one of his hamsters that probably accidentally stepped into the ink pad

Gundam = amazed that one of his hamsters was actually a dark lord known as the leprechaun and he will not stop boasting to you about his power

He's so adorkable that you can't not smile at him.

Nagito Komaeda

So he's already wearing green, which mean you don't have to pinch him, so is that lucky or unlucky?

You're wearing a shirt that's literally asking him to kiss you, is that lucky or unlucky?

Today is a day that is surrounded by four leaf clovers, is that lUCKY or uNLUCKY?

Because if this is all supposed to be lucky, then something bad will happen really soon

He's holding your hand and keeping you close to him all day. He tries to keep it as low key as possible that he is so scared about losing you, so he refuses to have anymore good luck come into his way.

Which means he won't kiss you but he promised several kisses when you two get home again. Where he knows that you can be safer.

Out for a walk? Gotta hold hands.

Going to get a burger from a restaurant? Hold hands while eating.

Needing a number two bathroom break?

By now your hand is probably sweating

You do understand his clingyness though. It is really sweet but seriously? Just because you need a bathroom break and there is a possibility of bad shit happening does not mean that you need a bathroom buddy!! You tell him that in nicer terms though

When you exit the washroom, he is so relieved

You didn't die because of him. Today is wayyy too lucky

What he does ignore is how in the washrooms, the green paint on the walls were wet and you slipped and got wet, thick, green wall paint all over yourself (and you didn't want to tell him just in case he felt bad.)

But that's okay

So now he is kissing your cheeks because he just loves how soft they are but

He honestly didn't notice green paint all over you??

So now his mouth is covered in paint too??

Which is probably poisonous and toxic when ingested??

Fuck

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu

As a member of the yakuza, he didn't get to celebrate many holidays

So when you pinch him he just swears

Why the fuck are you pinching him? Do you think you have the authority to do that?? Yeah sure, your bravery is admirable and absolutely fucking adorable but that is one thing you do not do to the heir of the yakuza.

You've also triggered Peko and she is hiding outside of the house waiting for Fuyuhiko’s signal

You try to explain as quickly as possible that it's st Patrick's day and that you supposedly get pinched if you don't wear green.

That's such a stupid rule. Why green? Does it even help that much?

He changes his entire outfit so it’s green anyways

He finds one of your green shirts and wears it because no matter how much you prod him, he will not wear the Kiss Me I'm Irish shirt

In return, he will allow you to paint a four leaf clover on his collarbone

“Make it look manly”

But as the day goes on, and you two hang out with the rest of the 77th class of Hope’s Peak, Fuyuhiko gets into the spirit.

He's started to try and find different ways to get Nagito to take off his hoodie so he can PINCH THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF HIM

He teams up with Kazuichi and draws green mustaches all over Gundam’s face

But he claims it's a new discipline method for the Yakuza and he wants to test it out on his classmates and you

It's so adorable because he has shyly requested to put stickers all over your face and you let him. He's also painted you green eyebrows and a cool dragon

The dragon he has doodled on your face would have been great if it wasn't in a shape of a mustache

When you get home, he acts as if the whole day was childish and ridiculous. But it was definitely “childishly fun.” And he is so ready to have another day like that again. He asks you again and again whether you will do it next year and he is blushing and grinning non stop

He’s so thankful to have such a fun S/O

And next year he plans on catching a leprechaun

Kazuichi Soda

He's on top of every single holiday

So obviously, he gets prepared for St. Patrick's Day wayyyyy earlier than you do

You wake up to a miniature mechanical leprechaun spitting chocolate coins out of his mouth

The coins all have “Kiss me” written all over them. At that moment, you know who prepared this special gift for you!

In the kitchen, Kazuichi is making breakfast for you! Also, his pink hair now has some streaks of green.

But he is covered in oil and rust so you aren’t sure whether the food is safe

He’s literally made green eggs and ham for you, and the egg is actually cooked thoroughly! He’s also made green milk, which he promises is not rotten.

He swears it's just food colouring! No way would he ever hurt his s/o!

When you go to hang out with his classmates, he is pinching every stranger!

And everyone else is pinching him back because your boyfriend simply doesn’t have enough green on him

An hour later, he is practically begging you to step in and help him. You give him your green scarf.

But now everyone is pinching you!

Solution? Both of you wear the scarf at the same time!

Now not even Hiyoko has an excuse to pinch someone! (and her pinches are really hard Dx)

It gives him an excuse to kiss you in public without being too embarrassed too!

Hajime (Hajimeme) Hinata

He really doesn't celebrate st Patrick's day

Nonetheless, he will still go along with you. He does think the pinching is a little stupid, but whatever

But when everyone keeps pinching him, he decides he has had enough! He is wearing a green tie, so he shouldn't be pinched!

No one is listening to him except for you. You try to explain that the green tie isn't enough for st Patrick's day with friends.

It's surely just a childish thing! He doesn't care too much.

That is, until you remind him that Nagito and Akane and Nekomaru are coming. Getting pinched by them would be—

You two are now going shopping for some green clothes and he really needs you to drive him so u say yes ON THE CONDITION THAT YOU GET TO PICK HIS CLOTHES

You prank him a bit by purchasing a Kiss Me I'm Irish shirt

Hajime is so red and flustered it's adorable but you make it clear that you are the only one who can kiss this pillar of salt/meme (as a form of not sincere apology)

Yeah, that's right.

But maybe you have forgotten that a certain someone was coming

Screw off Nagito. You aren't supposed to take that shirt seriously.

Please stop trying to kiss Hajime

Stap

Gosh dammit Nagito

#i feel like i bullied nagito #dr2 #danganronpa 2 #danganronpa #danganronpa imagines #danganronpa 2 imagines #ultimate imposter #byakuya twogami #teruteru hanumura kin #teruteru hanamura #nekomaru nidai #gundam tanaka #nagito komaeda #fuyuhiko kuzuryuu #kazuichi souda #hajime hinata #self insert #st patricks day

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horrible-monstrosity · 6 years

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Adventures in reviewing games I haven't actually played

so it took me something to figure out why i really didn't like danganronpa, and that something was 9 doors 9 people 9 etc. i'm totally not just salty that chihiro dies early, r e a l l y

to begin with without even comparing I can already say Danganronpa is visually... terrible. The characters look mildewed, for lack of a better term. The backgrounds are clunky as shit, weirdly proportioned, brightly colored eyesores. Usually I'm pretty down for thing in weird unrealistic reality-breaking styles, but this just looks like... chunky ass...

Next, the characters... aside from looking completely unappealing, they're all bizarre unlikable stereotypes. I remember seeing someone claiming that's the "point", that the characters seem like stereotypes and treat each other like stereotypes because you supposed to get to know them and then you care when they die, and also they barely interact with each other because only you know their true selves because it's a deep meaning thing about stereotypes, but... it kinda doesn't seem like they actually manage to get beyond that. And also then of course they eventually die and then they stop developing. But we'll get to that. On the other hand, compare that to the 999 characters... it's a vibrant cast of tropey but still fairly unique characters with nice eyecatching designs. You get a taste of their personalities immediately via first the main guy's stupid little nicknames for them all and then through their reactions to his little snap assessment of them. Throughout the game they banter with and bounce off each other and continue being vibrant lovable characters and it's fucking beautiful. You could probably compare it to Higurashi with the great contrast between the characters dicking around with each other and the deeply serious and horrifying moments... hah, no wonder I liked 999 so much P:

And the final problem is that, and this is gonna sound really fuckin stupid for a sec, it's that people keep fucking dying in Danganronpa. No, really, lemme explain. So first off characters are slated to die regularly not only to fuel the court thing but as a direct result of it. If you're expecting at least two characters to die ever chapter or arc, it becomes routine. Plus the fact that the murders are slightly contrived- just put a bunch of people in a building and be like "lol kill each other", and instead of outright fighting and rioting you get single distinct clean murder events? It's fucking weird.

The other problem is, if you introduce a cast of characters we're all supposed to like and put them in mortal danger, people're gonna want to see them all come out alive somehow. DR addresses this with... a deus ex machina where you can get the key to the fucking exit out of a vending machine at the start of the game and just fucking leave. lol whut I dunno, maybe that was in one of the other games, not the first one which is the only one I ever bothered to even try watching. But the point is, the writers/designers decided to pander to the audience, but instead of thinking it out and allowing you to maybe affect events somehow I don't fucking know they went with a fucking stupid magic plot token.

In 999 meanwhile, while there's indications you've taken the wrong path long before you get to the killin', the whole point is to get as many people as possible out alive, so that problem is nipped in the bud. Not only does that lead to a more satisfying good ending, the bad ends are a wild fucking ride of bloodshed and death and it's fucking amazding okay

I... I dunno, man, the things just bug me.

... But as it turns out, that whole thing was just prologue to me bitching about 999's inferior sequel Virtue's Last Reward!

So VLR is like... basically, it's like if the writers decided to do exactly the same thing as the first game but amped up to eleven, and put no thought into it beyond that.

Immediately out of the gate you can tell the characters just aren't up to snuff. Compared to 999, the group introduction is just... like, there? It's like, oh, here's a person, here's a person. It's pretty weak compared to its predecessor. And then robot comes in with unconscious Clover because why. As far as I can tell, there's no reason for her to be unconscious except le drama, and in exchange... well, her character introduction is even weaker than everyone else's. Because she's unconscious and can't do shit. Her character and the writing are undermined for nothing of any worth. I mean maybe they'll hack up a reason for it later, but I really doubt it'll be as good as say June collapsing with a fever whenever you made a bad choice in 999, for two reasons. For one it's just... a one-trait plot point. June's collapses are interesting because, as it turns out, she has a fever then because she's literally burning up in another timeline. But Clover is just... out cold. Just that. It's literally a boilerplate sitcom drama trope. It's nothing. And then secondly it only happened once with no apparent cause so even bothering to explain it would be a waste of fucking time. So I almost hope it's never explained or even referred to again, except that's still stupid so I guess we're just fucked either way huh?

After that, the game's own design prevents anything like the interactions between groups in 999 by forcing the cast off into minimal itty bitty little groups of three. Man, that just damages it. There's very little of the cast interacting with... well, each other. Yeah sure you get to see enough of each character individually throughout the story branches when you pair up with them but they really don't feel genuine as a group. It's really lacking.

Oh, but then we can get into something that's just the pinnacle-example of the writing problems with VLR... the door-choosing scenes. Just... no, oh no... Every single damn one of them... there's a time limit. The characters know damn well there's a time limit, but they manage to get right up to the very last second boringly agonizingly going over every single combination of who makes what color... then boringly arguing over who goes which what... one time they literally just turn to mister main character at the last second and tell you to choose and they all just go with it because lolwritinghowdoidothisshitfuckingkillme In 999 meanwhile, a lot of the group/door deciding scenes *start off* with characters laying out who they do or absolutely don't want to group up with, or with characters picking out which door they want, and *then* trying to work out groups... you know, the *characters* take precedence rather than the look at muh clever plot mechanics u guise did u know that basic colors? The main character being the arbiter because he's a conduit for the player's input was done much more naturally, usually due to you being the tiebreaker vote or the like. And yes, once they get through the doors there's a silly little time limit thing while they run around looking for the second bracelet thing, but it's given much less focus so it's fine. Ugh... it's just, it's so painful to watch this game trying to go through the motions of its predecessor so exactly (the characters must choose a group for the doors but there's conflict!!) and still failing so hard. It's not so much the same motions as it is following the same path by writhing along the floor and occasionally sticking its ass in the air and screeching.

Mechanically, 999's "morphic resonance" and its interaction with the player's ability to replay scenarios with different choices is... one-for-one replaced with a much more generic and obvious concept that's then massively overused. In 999 morphic resonance is very much a unique trait of the narrative- it's built up to with various odd stories and conversations, based on events both real and invented, leading to the climactic moments where it's first revealed to be the lynchpin of the entire story and then used to save day. Not to mention it's a concept I don't think I've ever heard of outside of the game. It's pretty fucking fascinating, I'm saying.

In VLR meanwhile it's just like... hey, guys, quantum mechanics! Every second of every day, it's quantum mechanics!... But guys, guys, did I mention... quantum mechaniiiiiiiiiiiicfs- meh. Seriously, I'm... almost entirely sure I've seen a branching paths story use quantum mechanics to be "meta" with the fact that the game you're playing has the game mechanics in it before. It's basically baby's first smart-sounding complicated science thing that everyone basically already has a basic idea of (entanglement and spooky distance and shit).

But to make up for underdoing it on the actual ideas front, they decide to just massively overuse it. Nearly ever fucking "ending" I've seen so far has been "ha ha go quantum fuck yourself in another branch before you know how to do this one". Apparently only two endings out of go fuck yourself so many can actually be obtained from the start, and there's no real indication of which path you should take to get them (and it is *should* take unless you think perpetual bullshit and disappointment is some sort of necessary game and story feature). There's one fucking "ending" where the way out is to just fucking immediately go back a scene and watch it again. Just one. It's the one where Alice stabs herself, which happens in other timelines (or she tries to anyway) but only in this one do you do this thing because... it's a fucking misused overused gimmick! And look how clever we are in this single idea- what, polishing it? lol nope man go fuck yaself! aaaaaaaaaauuhghg- Also, you'd think *someone* would have thought "man all this quantum connectedness bullshit sure never happened to me in my normal life, I wonder what changed?" Again this isn't a problem in 999 at all because they use it sparingly instead of spamming it all over the place. Instead we get people wondering if the entire fucking universe outside of the box they're trapped in isn't the REAL shcrodinger's box *sarcastic mind blown ptcheeeeeww*

And then this is all just boilerplated on over the original Nonary game concept. Like, why does it still have to be the number nine? You're talking about quantum pairs and the binary between ally and betray, but the quantum entanglement system has to be awkwardly grafted onto the group of nine by having only some of them pair up and aaaaahksdjhguhdkhgkjdhgudrhg Why not change it to something relevant, like a power of two?

... No, seriously, let me just fix this entire setup in a hot fucking second. Let me introduce to you... THE BINARY GAME. So to fucking start off with you have eight characters, or fuck it have sixteen of them. If you want to "sequelify" things compared to the previous game just go fucking whole hog into it. Besides, having more characters might help with having smaller groups interacting at a time. So now your smaller groups are... larger. Anyway, you have eight or sixteen or maybe fifteen characters (because something zero indexing). They're quantum paired off and made to share their "destiny" or whatever the rabbit said (basically forced to ally regardless of how much they might dislike each other). Those pairs then pair off with another pair for the puzzle rooms who they can choose to betray/ally later on, forming a double standard of sorts that could be interesting. If you go with fifteen characters, the "zero"th one is the one missing (because of course). The 15th or whoever ends up without a partner has some dead relative/loved one as a backstory element and are particularly lonely or isolated, or are seen as suspicious by the others, but this is just thematic/a red herring and they aren't connected to New Zero.

And after you've got all that sorted have Alice-standin stabbing herself and you undoing it be the first significant quantum bullshit event that happens, effectively serving as a tutorial moment instead of shoehorned "look how clever I am u guise" bullshit.

After that, all the bullshit about "but what if humans are the real robot??" can be actually tied into the "binary" theme- New Zero's trying to make the "point" that if you boil a person's thoughts and feelings down to only two options (the prisoner's dilemma game) it supposedly becomes predictable, and all humans are just meat robots and shit. This is probably delivered in an extremely cynical way, like that people who'll always betray are proof humans are all evil and people who always ally are overly trusting fools. And people who'll ally or betray depending on the opponent or the situation, well they're just etc etc The player's ability to go back in time and change their choice is a "shrodinger's cat", in that no matter what you do the bunny will claim he knew you'd do that all along. And of course the final statement of this thing is that if you accept all the complexities of le human you'd see they're so much more than roburts. And then you just fucking play with the concepts. Binary numbers, binary options, binary pairs, quantum particle entanglement, going beyond two options like some quantum computing shit, do the gender binary by making Luna a trap, whatever! And for the endings you have like two or three or four that lead to "true" endings and are "to be continued" off if you don't get some of the bad endings and find out things first. You know, instead of the opposite of that.

Look, there, I fucking fixed it. fucking hell

What else can I bitch about?... Well, there's some just dumb shit like the one time some of them found a HWACKEY QHWACKEY AUSTRALIAN ROBURT that talked about deep philosophical shit with a wacky accent! Or it tries to, anyway, all it says is some boilerplate I'm-14-and-this-is-deep shit about how *maybe you're the robots* because... like, your arms move, or something. Seriously, that's it. And it just goes on and on for fucking forever, saying nothing of any fucking value in any of it.

Clover and Alice as far as I can tell are just there as like continuity-bait characters. Like hey guys remember that time we had a good game and these characters were there (or Clover was there and Alice was kinda this... thing)??? Remember how you liked them?? Well, now they're here, too! Effort done, everyone likes the sequel now, we can stop trying. It hasn't been covered in the game yet but apparently Alice's backstory is... fucking stupid. Like, the obscure fictional "all-ice" rumor from the original games that was an invented piece of deepest lore that informed the plot and feel of the game... uh now it's just some rumor everyone knows and kids tease Alice because she was kangs n Alice and shiet. It's like they tried to surpass the most obvious, boring, boilerplate thing they could do with that girl who appeared as a gag at the end of 999 and create a character truly out of nothing. And of course it doesn't fucking mean anything, it's just look at how clever we are obsessing over random shit from out previous success. Did Trigger write this game?

Everyone seems to fucking hate the main character. If you choose to downvote someone everyone gets bitchy at you about it, including Phi who probably told you to do it when she's partnered with you. But if someone downvotes you they're all just like "it's perfectly understandable to look out for yourself I don't know why you're upset lol". If anyone else (so far Quark and Phi) gets 9 post karma, which is what you need to get out of there, they'll just let them wander around because they totally wouldn't abandon us here lol but if you get 9 points they FUCKING MURDER YOU. And this one fucking baffled me for a while- despite loving to go on and on about the most useless of fucking shit all of the fucking time the game decides to not remind you that opening the 9 door kills everyone who doesn't have 9 points yet until fucking forever later (or, given that it's multiple paths, just at some completely random point in the story). So for the longest fucking time it just seems like they decide to kill you out of spite.

Oh, and everyone also seems to also fucking hate Dio. Like, wow, he gets kinda snippy with people and votes "betray" all of like twice in each timeline before people start physically assaulting him to prevent him from voting. It's not like people might get selfish and snippy when they're in a life-and-death situation, nooo, that's not totally understandable at all. Better yet the thing goes on about the prisoner's dilemma as this great big moral... dilemma- oh, do you choose "ally" or you choose "betray"?? oh man the choices!!- but when Dio is just like "fuck it I pick betray" and everyone just goes HOW FUCKING DARE YOU REEEEEEEEEEEEE--- (And yes, I've read the spoilers about him... it sounds absolutely fucking retarded.)

Speaking of which Dio's "I'm a ringleader lol" shctick seems like an entirely weaker imitation of 999's wacky character designs. 999 had characters who were eyecatching but not too over-the-top in appearances, which the main character raised an eyebrow at at the beginning but it becomes strangely normal as you go along. Sounds great, right? Well in VLR we have... ringleader guy for no reason, kid with cinderblocks on his fucking head, Clover and Alice looking FUCKING TERRIBLE... and then completely normal boring designs like old man guy. What the fuck? Seriously, in 999 you look at Lotus and in one second you know she's dressed as a bellydancer. You don't know why she is, but she is. In VLR you look at Alice and she's a... what? She doesn't even look like a stripper like Clover kinda does, she just looks retarded.

#vidya bitching

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commentaryvorg · 5 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 4.12

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 trial 4 (trial 4!!), Kaito’s increasingly desperate attempts to be helpful were wrong again, Gonta was still trying his hardest in the background to keep up with what was going on, Kokichi would not stop subtly jabbing at Kaito’s jealousy of Shuichi oh my god (and it was great), and Shuichi did indeed singlehandedly save everyone by… taking frustratingly long to figure out the nature of the Virtual World and deducing it all in a backwards order that made no sense.

But he did figure it out in the end, somehow, so we’re starting from the intermission and moving onto discovering who used Miu’s plan against her for murder.

Kaito: “More importantly… let’s continue the conversation where we left off.”

Kaito is once again doing his thing of trying to guide the conversation, getting everyone on the same page and knowing where they’re heading next. It’s the best kind of contributions he can give in trials since he’s not great at the deductions themselves (and since Shuichi apparently doesn’t need his encouragement any more). Even though he’s also been trying too hard to prove he totally is good at deductions this trial, at least he still realises he can do this.

Kokichi: “And in order to figure that out, we need to understand Miu’s actions… So, let’s discuss her murder scheme step-by-step!”

Kaito: “I know that’s important, but hearing you lead the conversation really pisses me off.”

…But then Kokichi happens to be trying to even take that away from Kaito here, and is doing it better than him because he’s mentioning more specific things that they need to discuss, and Kaito is Not Happy about that.

(I imagine it would also bother Kaito a little bit if Shuichi were the one to be leading the conversation here, but there’s no way he would ever admit to that. At least Kokichi is a target at which he can openly vent his frustrations about everything he’s been made to feel lately.)

Kokichi: “Let’s see, Miu manipulated the Virtual World to use it as part of her murder plan…”

Kaito: “Don’t just ignore me and start anyway…”

Kokichi: “If she had succeeded, she would’ve gone past the wall between the chapel and the mansion…”

And then Kokichi knows exactly how to continue to get under Kaito’s skin – by completely ignoring him like he’s insignificant. All of the times he did the thing by praising Shuichi while not even mentioning Kaito at all were perhaps arguably a better way of doing so than the times he did mention Kaito – because Kaito is so unimportant that he’s not even worthy of mention, right?

Kokichi: “…Then secretly passed through the wall she installed and took advantage of the loop. […] Oh yeah… Kaito was probably logged out around that time, too.”

If Miu had any sense, she’d have logged Kaito out before walking through the wall to remove the chance of him seeing her on the mansion side. (Especially since she did end up getting seen on that side by Tsumugi and, as it turns out, also Gonta.)

Himiko: “She was smart… But she was also really, really dumb.”

This is a very good way of summing it up. Miu had the creative, technological kind of smarts to make inventions and come up with this plan, sure, but in almost every other way she was a gigantic idiot. Especially when it came to interpersonal intelligence. All of the mistakes that led to her plan failing, or to the fact that she would inevitably have been found out even if she’d succeeded in killing Kokichi, were down to her massively misunderstanding the people involved. She was completely oblivious to the fact that obviously Kokichi never really trusted her enough to walk into her trap, and that obviously Kaito is not the sort of person to commit murder and no-one would be willing to believe that, and that obviously Shuichi was going to figure out everything in the trial especially if the scapegoat was Kaito.

Gonta: “N-No say such mean things. Killing game bad, not Miu. Miu not bad person. Gonta think we coulda been friends, if things different.”

Aww, Gonta. I get what he’s trying to say – it was only the killing game that drove Miu to murder and she wasn’t inherently a bad person. But she was still incredibly self-absorbed and unpleasant to be around and nobody would have wanted to be around her if they weren’t trapped in a school with her. Sorry, Gonta.

Kaito: “But how did the culprit send Miu’s avatar through the wall? I mean, it’s not like they coulda thrown her.”

Gonta: “Gonta not throw her!”

It’s okay, Gonta, nobody is around any more to be a dick about you throwing dead bodies just because you’re strong, you don’t need to jump to defend yourself on that matter.

(…even though it… actually is pretty close to what happened.)

Gonta: “Physical strength… equalized? That problem! Gonta no can protect everyone if that happens!”

Another big hint at what’s really going on. He had pretty much this exact reaction in the Virtual World when he first heard about this, and yet here he is, having it again as if he’s only just hearing this now for the first time. Gonta may be slow to pick up on things, but he’s not forgetful like this.

Himiko: “Geez, keep up with us.”

But everyone else basically is just putting a blanket judgement of “stupid” on Gonta and assuming that justifies him being forgetful too.

Shuichi: “I think the sound came from Miu’s avatar hitting the chapel wall… The hammer, cell phone and lattice were there, but they were too small to make that noise.”

This is Shuichi’s answer to a multiple choice question in which you’re meant to state which out of Miu or the three objects around her hit the wall to make the loud sound. Which is pretty silly, because all four of those things hit the wall; does it really matter which of them was the one that was big enough to make a noise when it did so?

Kokichi: “But why did it hit the wall with such force? Can you guys figure it out?”

Kaito: “Hold on, Kokichi. What’s up with the way you’re talkin’? Why are you talking like you know everything?”

Kaito’s intuition strikes again! …Okay, to be fair, in this particular instance it definitely does not take an Official Luminary of the Stars Hunch™ to realise that Kokichi has clearly been talking like he already knows exactly what happened (and Gonta also noticed a similar thing from Kokichi last post), but still, this is Kaito doing one of the things he does best in trials and it deserves to be pointed out.

Kokichi: “More importantly, we gotta solve the mystery! Fighting among friends is a waste of time.”

Kaito: “‘Friends’? Us?”

And this is Kokichi doing his usual shtick of giving empty words about teamwork and co-operation to try and make everyone else’s words along similar lines sound just as empty.

Honestly, Kokichi, you had an opportunity right there to yet again make a point of how only Shuichi can solve this mystery, and you didn’t? At least jabbing at Kaito’s jealousy is a recent thing that makes a refreshing change from what you’ve been doing non-stop for the previous three chapters, come on.

Kokichi: “Hey, Shuichi… As your partner, I’ll give you a little hint.”

Shuichi: “…You’ll what?”

Kokichi: “Since the mansion was on top of a hill, the roof was pretty high up, right? Past the brick handrail, the roof was at a pretty steep slope. And the slope faced the chapel wall. On top of that, there was snow on the roof. If the culprit needed force to move the body, I wonder how they did it?”

That’s barely a “hint” so much as it’s just a lengthy description of the roof, including the brick handrail that Kokichi couldn’t possibly have seen unless he’d been there, thus proving his earlier claim of not having gone there to be a lie. Which, considering Shuichi has perfectly well seen the roof himself and doesn’t need this description, really seems more to me like Kokichi is deliberately trying to give Shuichi the ammo to prove that he’s been up there.

(also, again, fuck off Kokichi, “partners” don’t withhold the things they know like this. What you’re doing with Shuichi right now is not “working together” with him, it’s patronising him.)

Shuichi: (Kokichi’s talking as if he’s got the whole thing figured out already… But I can’t let him distract me. I need to solve this case.)

That’s not a “distraction”, Shuichi! Kokichi’s jabs at Kaito last time were one thing, but the fact that Kokichi clearly already knows how the body was moved is a meaningful point related to the case that should be included in your deductions and not just disregarded! Turn down that Ultimate Detective tunnel vision just a little.

Kaito: “Nah, man. Even with the slope and the snow, Miu’s body wouldn’t have slid—”

Kokichi: “Wrong. It would slide.”

Kaito tries contributing an actual idea again – one which is perfectly reasonable given that he hasn’t figured out there was anything that could have been used as a sled – and Kokichi just immediately cuts him off and tells him he’s wrong without actually telling him why. (Because he’s leaving the “why” part for Shuichi to figure out.)

Kokichi: “Non, non! It would slide!”

Kaito: “It wouldn’t slide! Just like Maki Roll said!”

Kokichi: “It would slide! Just like Shumai said!”

Children. Calm down.

Gonta: “Lots of snow piled up on roof… but not frozen solid, right?”

(Gonta is still trying to make sure he’s got a good mental image of everything they’re talking about so that he can help!)

Kokichi: “You just need a sled or skis to cut the friction!”

Kaito: “There was nothing like that around, though!”

Kaito Refutations: 3!

It’s pretty notable here that the game makes you refute Kaito and not agree with Kokichi when it would also have made perfect sense to put an agree spot on Kokichi’s statement there. The writers don’t just want to make this part about Shuichi having to seemingly be on Kokichi’s side, they want to make it about him seemingly not being on Kaito’s side as well.

It’s also… questionable that Kaito makes this claim in the first place. He searched the rooftop before the murder and then investigated the chapel after; he should know that the lattice was there. Clearly he never figured it was used as a sled during the investigation, but it shouldn’t be too hard to piece it together now. So apparently Kaito doesn’t want to try and piece it together because he’s annoyed at Kokichi having butted in and called him wrong and argued with him about this and he just wants to be right about something for once, dammit.

Kokichi is still not praising Shuichi about how brilliant he is for having figured out the sled thing and I am very disappointed in him. Or rather, I’m disappointed in the out-universe writers for not continuing with the subtle jabbing at Kaito’s issues that I was greatly enjoying last time and see no reason not to continue with here. Especially since this time Shuichi figured out the truth while directly refuting Kaito! That’d be the perfect opportunity for it!

Not that Kokichi hasn’t still been getting under Kaito’s skin plenty in other ways, but, like, The Thing! I miss The Thing and its delightful subtlety.

Kokichi: “Also, I never went to the roof, not even for the meeting.”

…

Kokichi: “It all began when Miu showed us the map.”

…

Kokichi: “That’s probably what happened. The culprit killed her on the locked roof.”

The game makes you do a Mind Mine to select which of these three past statements of Kokichi’s was a lie. For one thing, this is a really weird excuse for a Mind Mine because that’s supposed to be about images, but the much sillier thing about it is the three statements it makes you choose from. The two incorrect options here are just Kokichi stating assumptions about what happened in the case and therefore can’t even be lies. Only one of them is an actual testimony about something he did that he therefore could have lied about! It could kind of be a fun puzzle to be shown multiple statements Kokichi made about his actions and have to figure out which one of them you can prove to be a lie. But the way this is, you don’t even need to remember the information that proves he did go to the roof in order to know that that’s the only statement that can even be false.

(also noooo Mind Mine has four colours now; I get really addicted to the version in the casino with only three colours, but the hardest difficulty adds a fourth colour which makes it way too easy to mess up and therefore not as fun any more. Not that the trial version is as fun anyway since you can just break the single pieces which means there’s no incentive to think about things, but.)

So anyway, Kokichi’s lengthy description of the roof, particularly the part about the brick handrail, is what proves he was lying about never going there.

Kokichi: “I-I-I… d-didn’t… I already t-told you that b-before…”

Gonta: “Why you look so nervous?”

Keebo: “Is this a sincere reaction?”

It’s not, of course. But the thing is, Kokichi has never had this specific kind of reaction before, so it actually seems a little bit more plausible than it usually does that this could be genuine and this is what he sounds like when he’s truly been caught out. What I would want to say Kokichi is doing here is that he’s trying to make it seem like he genuinely has been caught out – because if he really wanted the mercy kill outcome, then the best way to do so would be to have everyone eventually decide he did it, but for him to put up enough resistance to it that it seems like this isn’t the outcome he wants.

Of course, since Kokichi really doesn’t want the mercy kill outcome at all because he’s been gradually sabotaging it this whole time by being helpful and is shortly going to completely shatter it with his own two hands, I don’t quite understand why he’s bothering to act this way. For fun, I guess.

Kokichi: “Oh, wait! I remember now! That thing Himiko said!”

Himiko: “Nyeh!? M-Me!?”

Kokichi: “At the start of the class trial, I remember you saying the handrail was made of bricks.”

To anyone who’s uncertain, nope, Himiko very definitely didn’t say that. I’d have pointed it out if it’d been there.

Kokichi: “Gotta be more careful there, Himiko!”

Himiko: “I-Is it my fault…?”

No, Himiko, because you didn’t say it! Stand up for your own actions more! Be more sure of yourself!

Gonta: “Himiko really say that?”

But here’s Gonta – who’s the worst at being sure of himself and would definitely have doubted his own actions if he’d been the one in Himiko’s position right now – being pretty damn sure she didn’t say that. Like I’ve been saying, he’s confused as hell about the Virtual World, but he’s still been paying attention to everyone around him. And especially because his only source of information for what the Virtual World is like has been the descriptions people have given of it, he would know that he didn’t picture that roof as having a brick handrail until Kokichi said so.

Kokichi: “She tooootally said that!”

Kaito: “No she didn’t!”

Kokichi: “Yes, she did!”

Kaito: “She did not!”

Kokichi: “She did too!”

Kaito: “Then when!? Tell me how long ago! In hours, minutes and seconds!”

Whoa, geez, again, children. Kaito just really wants to be right about something – which he is this time, but unfortunately this one is basically impossible to conclusively prove.

(I suppose Keebo’s recording function wouldn’t help much either, because to prove Himiko didn’t say a thing would require listening to the entire trial up to this point.)

Maki: “How much longer are you going to behave like this?”

And in comes the Ultimate Child Caregiver to break up the argument. Seems appropriate.

Shuichi starts to think as if this isn’t enough to prove that Kokichi went to the roof, but the thing is, it kind of is. This isn’t like an Ace Attorney trial where conclusive evidence is necessary. The only thing that’s necessary here is to convince everyone else – and everyone else is pretty damn sure that Himiko did not say that and Kokichi is lying through his teeth right now. No matter how stubborn Kokichi decides to be, it won’t change that fact. If he wanted, Shuichi could just continue the discussion all like, “Okay, so we all agree Kokichi went to the roof, right? Which means…” and completely ignore Kokichi’s obviously-lying protests that he didn’t, and there’d be nothing Kokichi could do to stop them.

Shuichi: (But if he’s being this stubborn, it makes me think he has something to hide. To get him to show his hand, I have to prove he was on the roof.)

This reasoning does kind of make sense, though. Shuichi wants Kokichi to tell everyone whatever it is that he’s hiding instead of having to painstakingly try and figure it out himself (which he could still do, if he thought about it and realised that oh wait, Kokichi couldn’t physically touch Miu could he). So he wants to force Kokichi out of the “la la la I can’t hear you” state he’s in and get him to stop messing around.

Kaito: “I’ve had enough of your lies, man!”

Kokichi: “I’m not lying!”

“Are you done arguing yet?”

Heh, Maki’s still trying to play child caregiver here.

Kokichi: “I didn’t go to the roof!”

“Just fess up already!”

…

Kokichi: “The rooftop door was locked and I couldn’t open it!”

“That’s enough lies!”

And Kaito is still furiously trying to get Kokichi to confess even in the white noise.

(Trying to get Kokichi to confess is also Shuichi’s goal during this debate – he just has a rather cleverer way of going about it than simply yelling at him and hoping it’ll work.)

Kaito: “Liars burn in hell, y’know?”

Kaito. Calm down and think for a second about what you’re saying there.

His thing two parts ago in which he denounced specific kinds of lies that Kokichi tells was not that hypocritical, because Kaito genuinely never tells the kind of lie he was talking about there. But this is just referring to any lying, and… yeah, you’ve been telling a few lies of your own lately, Kaito. Not to mention the lie he and Shuichi told to protect Maki back in trial 2.

(Still, he’s saying this here because he’s riled up. This is very much not a properly-thought-out statement of his principles.)

Shuichi lies about having been to the salon and not seen Kokichi in there, which kiiiinda begs the usual “why didn’t you mention this sooner” question that a lot of this game’s required lies have. No-one points that out, though.

Kokichi: “I see… You use underhanded tactics too. Huh, Shuichi?”

Kokichi, you are the one who was baiting him into lying about this when you discussed during the investigation how there were no witnesses to prove you were or weren’t in the salon. You have no right to be calling him out on doing exactly what you wanted him to do.

Kokichi: “So, who are you guys gonna believe? Shuichi… or me?”

This is a misleading false dichotomy. He’s presenting it like one of the two of them must be telling the truth and that therefore if Shuichi is lying that means Kokichi definitely isn’t, which of course is not the case.

Kaito: “Well of course I’m gonna believe Shuichi!”

Keebo: “I believe Shuichi 100%!”

Maki: “The one who’s not Kokichi.”

I love Maki’s response here. To everyone else, it’s more about how much they believe in Shuichi, but Maki, while she of course does also believe in Shuichi, doesn’t care that it’s specifically him and would rather make a point of how she’d believe anyone over Kokichi. Maki is so blunt and it’s great.

Tsumugi: “But to go to the salon, Shuichi would need to pass by me in the dining room… Umm… I wonder why I didn’t notice Shuichi there…”

Shuichi: “…”

Tsumugi: “Oh well. I’ll believe Shuichi anyway. He’s usually right about stuff.”

And here’s a delightful little hint towards the mastermind’s identity! Tsumugi is only pretending to be confused and vague and really knows full well that Shuichi must be lying. She lets it slide because this situation that’s playing out is an interesting story, and she’d rather see where it goes than just cut Shuichi off and go back to the stalemate things were at before.

I actually caught on my first time through just how suspicious Tsumugi is acting here – there’s something different about her voice that made me suddenly feel, at least in this moment, that her vagueness was just an act and she was a lot more cunning than she seemed. Even if she is genuinely just doing this because she knows Shuichi is onto something and doesn’t want to get in the way, her going about it this underhandedly reveals a side to her that’s completely different from the person she usually seems to be.

At the time, though, I just thought this was a hint that she’d killed Miu (my brain went on to make up something about how the sled had a delayed-release mechanism so she could fake her alibi with Shuichi, despite there being zero evidence for such a thing). When this case was over and that was wrong I temporarily forgot about this bit and only remembered again during chapter 6 once I realised she was in fact the mastermind, but I am still proud of myself for sort of noticing it here.

Also, this behaviour from Tsumugi is in fact very Kokichi-like. The whole “that’s weird but I guess Shuichi wouldn’t lie to us right” with the subtext of “I totally know you’re lying and just don’t want to bring it up” is precisely the kind of thing Kokichi has done multiple times. You’d think that if anyone could pick up on this clue to the mastermind’s identity, it’d be Kokichi. If he truly cared about figuring out who the mastermind is, I feel like he’d be paying enough attention to the others’ behaviour to notice this. But apparently not; he’s too wrapped up in his own plan which doesn’t actually require him to know who the mastermind is in order to “defeat” them.

Gonta: “Sorry, but… Gonta believe Shuichi, too.”

Kokichi: “Ah, I see… I wanted at least Gonta to believe me…”

I went over this before when a similar thing happened: this is Kokichi hinting at him and Gonta being in on this together, but if Gonta really did remember then it would help their cause for him to act like he thinks Kokichi did it. Stop being an unnecessary dick, Kokichi, that’s all you’re doing here.

Kokichi: “Why do you guys hate lies that much?”

…Nobody ever really said they did. Nobody other than Kaito, who hates a specific flavour of lying and has already made his stance on that apparent – but he clearly doesn’t hate all kinds of lies, for obvious reasons. The other people Kokichi is saying this to include Shuichi, who has lied multiple times to try and reach the truth and Kokichi has been aware of every instance of that, Maki, who lied about her talent in order to protect herself, and Himiko, whose entire talent involves lying to make things more entertaining and fun for people. (And Tsumugi, who is constantly lying through her teeth, but that one Kokichi isn’t aware of.)

Kokichi: “There’s only one truth, but endless possibilities for lies, y’know?”

So here he’s basically trying to say that the infinite possibilities of lies are more interesting and fun than the singular truth, and I can see where he’s coming from, since that’s the point of fiction. But that kind of lie is harmless because people know they’re really lies and just choose to pretend to believe and invest in them anyway because that’s more fun. That’s why Himiko keeps insisting her magic is real. That’s why Kaito pretends his childhood games were real, and why he wanted to buy into Himiko’s magic – until people’s lives started riding on knowing the truth, that is.

Kokichi: “And some of them are only white lies, or lies to be kind to people…”

Like the lies Kaito has been telling to hide his illness. Like the lies Shuichi has told in trials to protect innocent people and reach the truth.

(Also, remember Kokichi insisting back in trial 3 that you never know how malicious people’s reasons for having secrets could be and so you might as well just assume everyone’s malicious? Does he really believe it’s possible for others to lie for a good reason, or is he just saying that to justify his own constant lying?)

Kokichi: “If you deny all of that *just* because it’s a lie…”

No-one ever did. All they’re denying is your lie right now about not going to the roof, because it’s getting in the way of reaching the goddamn truth and letting all but one of us not freaking die.

Kokichi: “Then that means you guys are just terrible at being lied to! Seriously, the worst!”

Kokichi’s putting on an evil face here, like suddenly he’s happy that everyone doesn’t like lies because this lets him trick them more. Remember the most recent Monokuma Theater about how liars supposedly keep encouraging honesty so there’ll be more gullible honest people they can deceive? This kind of reminds me of that.

This is Kokichi backpedalling as usual. His speech up to this point was acting like he was upset at people hating lies (even though nobody does and he was really just throwing a tantrum because they’re refusing to believe his one extremely obstructive lie here), but now he’s turning around and claiming that actually this is fine, he’s not upset about anything at all and never was!

Kokichi: “Okay, fine! I’ll tell you if you wanna know that badly. Consider this my revenge.”

Gonta: “Revenge?”

Yeah, revenge. Aside from his massive trust issues and pathological conviction that everyone is secretly a terrible person, the other force that drives most of Kokichi’s actions in this story is his desire for petty, vindictive revenge against people he feels have wronged him in some way. That’s why he’s doing this entire elaborate scheme to eventually try and beat Monokuma at his own game, which getting Miu and Gonta killed here is only the first step in.

Kokichi: “You got some balls lying to me. I’m gonna take away your fun for pissing me off, Shuichi. I won’t let you do any detective work, or deduction, or mystery solving, or anything!”

Shuichi was never here to have fun, you moron. He doesn’t care if you solve the mystery for him just so long as it’s the truth and therefore the maximum number of people can survive. You already know that he only cares about saving everyone; you’ve mentioned it before! (But of course everything’s got to be about fun, because Kokichi is obsessed with how much fun he’s very definitely totally having with this, so that must be the first thing on everyone else’s mind too, right?)

It’s also ridiculously hypocritical of him that he’s so annoyed at Shuichi lying to him. When that’s what Kokichi does all the time. When he was just claiming that lies aren’t inherently bad if they’re told for good reasons. When during previous trials he’s tried to insist that the lies he told would help to find the culprit (even though they didn’t and Shuichi is better at using lies to reach the truth than Kokichi has ever been).

But it’s not all that surprising, because it’s been a recurring idea a few times that Kokichi can’t take what he dishes out – that things are all good when he’s doing something to other people, but when someone does the same thing to him, it’s suddenly not “fun” any more. His reaction when Gonta turned the bugs against him during the Insect Meet and Greet comes to mind, for example.

So Kokichi confesses to his plan to sabotage Miu’s murder plot with his own, including his co-operation with Monokuma. It would have been appropriate if this had been the moment where Monokuma dropped the weird pretending-to-be-depressed thing he’d been doing for the first half of this trial (or, at least, it’d have made it seem like there was some actual point to that being a thing in the first place)… but actually it’s not, because he dropped that act a little earlier for the sake of doing a pointless non-sequitur bit about Sonic the Hedgehog of all things. Why.

Monokuma: “Kokichi and I had a “quid pro quo” relationship. Technically, that doesn’t violate the rules!”

Indeed, it doesn’t. The rules only state Monokuma can’t directly participate in a murder, but all he was doing here was essentially redoing this chapter’s motive presentation in a way more likely to make an interesting story, based on Kokichi’s suggestion. It could be argued that it’s unfair for him to present a motive in a way that clearly favours a specific person becoming blackened as a result – but all of the motives have done that.

Kokichi: “I told you, I’m gonna get in the way by taking away the mystery-solving fun. If I can’t win this game, then I’ll make it boring for everyone! That’s my revenge!”

Yeah, except the only people who are having fun solving the mystery right now are the audience. If you wanted to take away their fun (and they really, really should be your targets for revenge right now), then you could have, I don’t know, not created a fun mystery for them to solve in the first place? Revealing the truth here may cut short the mystery-solving, but it still gives the audience an interesting story. Nothing about what’s about to happen from here is in any way boring.

In fact, the most boring outcome possible as things stand is probably for Kokichi to insist that he did it and then for everyone except Gonta to get abruptly executed, possibly without anyone ever understanding why. That’d be a hell of a frustrating rocks-fall-(nearly)-everybody-dies ending for the audience.

(Still, while he’s going about it in a terrible way, note his focus on revenge again. That’s a major thing for him.)

Kokichi: “Well, then… The culprit is Gonta.”

So… Kokichi doesn’t want the mercy kill outcome, right? That should be self-evident, right?

If I were writing this commentary in a vacuum and had never seen any of the fandom’s thoughts on Kokichi, then I wouldn’t have even been mentioning this as we went along because it shouldn’t even be worthy of dispute, purely because of this line here. There are plenty of other parts that also support this, some of which I’ve mentioned as this case went along (he’s been deliberately leading Shuichi to the truth this whole time), some of which I brought up back when he saw the outside world (he knows it’s all a lie), and some of which will come up later. But regardless of all the other evidence, this moment alone should be more than enough to confirm it. Yet apparently there are a reasonable number of people who genuinely believe Kokichi actually wanted the mercy kill outcome, and I just… ??????????

(To be completely clear, I’m not at all upset at anyone who thinks that, just… extremely confused. I understand the desire to believe it, because it would be a pretty interesting story, but it is very clearly not the story we have here.)

I admittedly haven’t delved too deep into trying to find people’s reasons for thinking this, but there’s one argument I have seen attempting to justify this moment here. The argument is that Kokichi genuinely wanted the mercy kill up until this point, and then this was him realising that oh no, looks like it’s never going to work and Shuichi is definitely going to find the truth no matter what he does, so he might as well bail on it and move onto Plan B of pretending he’s evil so he can pretend to be the mastermind.

But if Kokichi really was going to feel and act that way, this wouldn’t be the moment to do it. Shuichi is not at all close to finding the truth right now – currently he’s zeroing in on the idea that Kokichi did it, which would be good for the plan. It’s still possible that at some point down the line Shuichi will figure out Kokichi couldn’t have murdered Miu and then use a process of elimination to point to Gonta, but that hasn’t even begun to happen yet! Now is not even remotely the time to give up! If Kokichi really, genuinely cared about protecting everyone from the despairing truth, like Gonta did so badly that he was driven to murder despite being the sweetest loveliest person ever, then there is no way he would ever give up this easily. Anyone who truly cared about this would keep on fighting for that outcome with everything they had until the last possible moment, because even the tiniest chance of success is better than the alternative.

So basically, if one does decide to take the interpretation that Kokichi cares about mercy-killing everyone to save them from the despairing truth, then he is also evidently absolutely terrible at actually following through on that desire to save everyone, because this would be him giving up not even at the first hurdle but before he’s really reached any hurdles at all.

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 4.11

Last time, as trial 4 (trial 4!) began, Gonta was doing a very big confuse but still trying his hardest to understand and be helpful, Kaito’s own attempts to be helpful started up what’s going to be a long string of him being wrong about the case, Kokichi was so desperate to make his point about it being stupid to trust people that he kind of shot himself in the foot with it and perhaps also finally realised that making it to Kaito was always hopeless, and Kaito absolutely refused to compromise on his convictions about staying true to himself and believing in people, because he is Good.

Those last parts derailed the actual deductions for a while, but we’re resuming here now that everyone’s starting to talk about whether or not Kokichi really met Miu on the rooftop.

Kokichi: “Here’s my answer – I never met up with Miu.”

Gonta: “Hm? You didn’t?”

Aww, look at Gonta still trying to piece together a picture of what happened. Plus, to Kokichi, this would seem like Gonta going “huh, okay, I guess you’re going to lie about that part, I’ll make sure to keep my lies consistent with that”, even though that’s not what he’s doing at all.

Kokichi: “I tried to go to the roof to meet up with her, but the door was locked.”

…

Kokichi: “Also, I never went to the roof, not even for the meeting.”

These two lines confused me on my first time through as being seemingly contradictory – I assumed by “not even for the meeting” he meant that he didn’t even go up the stairs and try to open the door to reach the meeting place, which blatantly contradicted what he’d said only a few lines ago. It’s probably a bit of a mistranslation and is supposed to mean something like, “Also, I never went to the roof for anything other than the meeting either.”

Maki: “But, was the door to the roof actually locked? When I was on the roof before logging out, the door wasn’t locked.”

Presumably she’s talking about when she went to check if Kaito was there. It’s a bit much for her to assume the door would still have been locked from the outside after the murder had happened and the culprit had left, since she doesn’t know the culprit could have left by climbing down. Kokichi could have actually told Gonta to lock the door behind him before sliding the body and climbing down, to create something of a locked room mystery. Doing so would have made it literally impossible to get back onto the rooftop to investigate it, though, so maybe that’s why he didn’t.

Kaito: “When I went to the roof, it wasn’t locked, so you gotta be lying.”

That argument… doesn’t make sense, Kaito, you were there before the murder ever happened. Anyone else could have come to the roof and locked it after you were logged out.

Kokichi: “What good would it be if I lied? I don’t wanna die either, y’know!”

Himiko: “Lying would do you a lot of good if you’re the culprit.”

For someone who’s not the blackened and doesn’t want to die (yet), Kokichi sure is doing a lot of unnecessary lying just to drag this out and fuck with people anyway.

Kokichi: “Oh! Mm-hm, I see! I didn’t realise that!”

Kaito: “What kinda response is that!? That’s suspicious as hell!”

Shuichi: “Wait, there’s no point in arguing about that now. The truth will come out eventually. Before we get to that, we need to discover the truth behind Miu’s death.”

I like the contrast here between Kaito being riled up and needlessly argumentative, and Shuichi being rational and logical and actually moving the discussion along.

Kokichi: “Wow, Shuichi! You know your way around this game! Yes, keep up the hard work! The fate of our lives rests in your hands!”

Aaaand here we go. Kokichi Doing The Thing Count: 4! I knew he continued to do this a bunch of times during the trial and was pretty surprised I got through my entire previous post’s worth of the trial without it happening.

As a reminder, or in case you didn’t see the previous posts during the investigation where I started this count: this is about Kaito. Kokichi is targeting Kaito’s feelings of jealousy and inferiority to Shuichi by stressing how great Shuichi is and how he’s the only person who can save everyone. The last time he did this he made it obvious who it was about by also calling Kaito useless and annoying in the same breath, but even when he’s not mentioning Kaito at all, it’s still targeted at him. Kokichi does this praising Shuichi thing so many times during this case and only this case; it really being about Kaito’s issues is the only plausible reason for that.

Himiko: “If you look at where her avatar fell… it’s right next to the chapel.”

“So she *was* at chapel!”

Look at Gonta still trying to understand and piece everything together in his head! I’m pretty sure he’s being way more talkative in the white noise in this trial than in any other.

(Also, kudos to the localisation team; in Japanese, Gonta’s white noise lines wouldn’t be as easily identifiable because he has a normal speech pattern, but they’re still picking up on which lines are his and localising them into his speech pattern based on their content.)

Maki: “There was no bridge over the river.”

Keebo: “A bridge would be the only way to get across.”

“No can swim across?”

He’s trying to make suggestions and be helpful! Swimming across must have been an option with this river they’re talking about, right?

Himiko: “It won’t be that easy to figure out. It’s called a secret method for a reason.”

Kokichi: “No worries, guys! As long as we leave it to Shuichi, everything will be a-okay!”

Shuichi: (…What?)

Kokichi Doing The Thing Count: 5. Man, that didn’t take long to happen again. Shuichi also seems to be slightly picking up on the fact that this is odd of him to do.

Kaito: “What are you saying? We can’t just rely on Shuichi all the time. This class trial’s for all of us! We’re here to solve this together!”

And, see, it’s working. It’s getting to Kaito, just a little. Back in trial 2 he was all about focusing on Shuichi in order to give him the confidence that he could do this. But now he knows Shuichi doesn’t need that any more. Instead, it’s bothering Kaito that it really is pretty much all down to Shuichi, and that nobody else (especially not him) is all that necessary to solve this, so he’s trying to insist that that’s not the case.

Kokichi: “Nee-heehee… You would just slow down Shuichi.”

Kaito: “Shut up!”

Kokichi, come on, you were at least being subtle about it a second ago.

(I like how Kaito doesn’t even have a proper comeback.)

Shuichi: (…I don’t have time to deal with Kokichi. Right now, I need to focus on the case.)

Shuichi definitely seems to have noted something odd about Kokichi’s behaviour – but, to be fair, this particular behaviour isn’t relevant to the actual case.

Gonta: “Or, instead of bridge… Miu use some kinda vehicle to go over!”

“Like a plane?”

“Like a rocket?”

KAITO NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO BE A GIGANTIC SPACE DORK.

I can only imagine that it was probably Tsumugi who suggested a plane, because nobody should be seriously suggesting that, but she might say something like that anyway if it was a reference to something – and then apparently Kaito jumped on that and was all no! rockets are cooler! even though it makes even less sense to cross a river in a rocket. What a doofus.

This is possibly my favourite piece of white noise just in terms of how adorably ridiculous it is – the text is even vertical and flying upwards, like a rocket! – and I am very sad that none of the many blind LPers I’ve watched play this game have ever noticed and remarked on it. It’s not something you need a second playthrough to appreciate, and it deserves to be noticed, dammit!

(Also, again, points to Gonta for trying to understand and contribute suggestions even though he’s never seen this river himself!)

That was the game briefly interrupting the deeply issuey Kaito content for some extremely silly Kaito content. And now, back to his issues.

Shuichi: “We *do* know that that wall was set so that only objects could pass through…”

Kaito: “Don’t be naive, Shuichi!”

Kaito butts in mid-sentence here for his Rebuttal Showdown. The way Shuichi was talking, he was almost certainly just about to explain that Miu turned herself into an object in order to walk through that wall. Kaito would usually have enough faith in Shuichi to believe he’d have a reason for saying something that seems impossible at first glance and wait for him to finish. But here, he’s desperate to prove that Kokichi’s wrong and Shuichi can’t quite do everything all by himself, so he jumps in the second he hears something that doesn’t make sense to him.

Kaito: “Hmph, you don’t even realise your mistake? Are you losing your edge?”

There’s an edge to Kaito’s voice here that we only hear a few times, specifically when he’s jealous of Shuichi. He almost certainly knows that Shuichi hasn’t really made a mistake and already has the answer to this, and somewhere inside him he hates that Shuichi is so much more on top of things than he’ll ever be.

I really like how he’s staying as positive as he can and not letting his jealousy turn him against Shuichi, though. Even as Kaito’s trying to insist Shuichi made a mistake that Kaito doesn’t truly believe he made, he’s not saying it means Shuichi isn’t awesome any more – “losing your edge” acknowledges his awesomeness and just means he’s currently slightly less awesome than he usually is.

Kaito: “Oh well! My sidekick’s mistakes are my mistakes! I’ll make it right!”

See, look, he’s helping! So long as Shuichi made a mistake, that means that Kaito can help him with it and still be useful! That’s what he’s supposed to always be there to do for his sidekick, right?

(This is rather delightfully like his final FTE where he insisted Shuichi needed to talk to him about his problems when he really actually didn’t.)

Remember Gonta’s Rebuttal Showdown last time, which was all about him trying to be useful in the slightest way even though he knew he didn’t fully understand the case? That’s almost exactly the same thing that Kaito’s doing here. Just like the bonus scenes during the Daily Life were parallels of each other and both showed Gonta and Kaito’s desperation to be useful, this trial’s two Rebuttal Showdowns are doing that, too. I love the way this chapter handles Gonta and Kaito so much.

Kaito: “We gotta take a whole new approach here!”

Kaito, what does that even mean? Do you have an approach in mind? Or are you just trying to sound big and impressive and like you know what you’re talking about when you actually wouldn’t have a clue how to fix Shuichi’s “mistake” if he’d even made one in the first place?

Shuichi: (What’s on Kaito’s mind?)

Oh, Shuichi, if only you really knew.

Kaito: “You get it? So let’s go through this one more time.”

More words to sound big and impressive even though he definitely doesn’t know how going through it all again is going to achieve anything and find something new.

By the way…

Kaito Refutations: 2. Let’s keep a count of these as well, why not? (I’ve actually counted these before and know what the final tally will be, but this count is worth sharing, too!)

Kokichi: “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Kaito. We need to listen to everything Shuichi says. I already told you. The more you try, the more you cause us trouble. It’s soooo totally lame that your own sidekick is dissing you!”

Unfortunately, Kokichi sort of has a point. If Kaito hadn’t been so overzealous, then we wouldn’t have wasted time here because Shuichi would have explained it much more quickly than he did while discussing it with Kaito. Not that it really matters that he wasted a minute or two of time, since the trials don’t have a time limit, but the real blow is that Kaito just once again only made himself look more wrong and obviously inferior next to Shuichi than he would have done if he hadn’t even tried to help in the first place.

(Should I count this as Kokichi doing the thing? He’s not strictly praising Shuichi, but he’s still trying to hurt Kaito in a way that revolves around him being inferior to Shuichi. Yeah, that should totally count, shush. Kokichi Doing The Thing Count: 6.)

Shuichi: “Kokichi, enough! I wasn’t arguing with him, I was just explaining—”

Kaito: “Heh, I don’t care. That doesn’t bother me at all.”

Kaito’s got his evasive face for this line, and his tone of voice makes it very clear that he does care and it very much does bother him.

Kaito: “It just means even I make mistakes. Don’t worry about it, Shuichi.”

Yet in literally his very next line, he’s back to his big grin and thumbs up, and his voice genuinely sounds like he’s not worried about it. It has to be a façade, but it’s impressive how quickly he put it back up. He’s trying his hardest to push this aside and not let it get to him, and definitely to not let it get in the way of his friendship with Shuichi.

Shuichi: “O-Okay…”

Shuichi still seems a little sceptical and worried here, but unfortunately he doesn’t really have the time right now to be trying to figure out how Kaito is feeling.

Kokichi: “Nee-heehee… It’s pretty funny seeing Kaito try to act all tough like this.”

Oh my god, Kokichi, you’re still not done? Of course you also have to point out that Kaito was only pretending to be fine to cover up how much it got to him so that everyone knows he’s not as okay as he seems. Of course.

They move on to trying to figure out what the point of Miu being able to walk through the wall was, which begins a long sequence of Shuichi being annoyingly slow on the uptake about the looping world.

Kokichi calls Miu a bunch of vulgar things that I refuse to quote here in order to manipulate Monotaro into jumping to defend her and confirm that she wasn’t lying about there being nothing past the wall. This is more of Kokichi being deliberately helpful towards Shuichi figuring out Miu’s plan. It’s almost like he wants them to eventually realise Gonta did it and is actively sabotaging the mercy kill or something.

(It is weird that Monotaro knows there was nothing past the wall but doesn’t know the world was a loop. But, you know, got to give the players a game to play.)

Gonta: “Gonta will help, even though Gonta not know what you’re talking about!”

Oh, poor Gonta. He genuinely has no clue, but he doesn’t want to let that stop him helping!

This should not be as hard as it is for Shuichi to figure out. As soon as he considers the fact that they heard sounds from the mansion that actually occurred by the chapel, and that Miu was presumably killed on the mansion roof but ended up next to the chapel, he should immediately come to the conclusion that the mansion and chapel are in fact closer to each other than we’ve been led to believe. Especially because Shuichi was the one to pick up on the relevance of the fact that Miu made the map, so he should already be considering that the layout of the world isn’t necessarily how Miu wanted them to think it is.

Kokichi: “There was another mysterious phenomenon in the Virtual World, wasn’t there?”

Gonta: “Kokichi talk like he notice something… Pretending not to know?”

Look at Gonta noticing Kokichi’s strange behaviour! He’s utterly clueless as to everything regarding the Virtual World, but perhaps because of that, he’s paying much closer attention to the people in the trial and is able to notice how they’re acting and still be just a tiny bit useful that way.

Kokichi: “Even Gonta is suspicious of me? I always thought you would be the one to trust me!”

Kokichi’s obviously saying this because he believes Gonta remembers and is still supposedly on a “team” with him to try and get this mercy kill. But if that were true, then it would help their cause for Gonta to act like he thinks Kokichi did it! He’s just being a dick even though this would hypothetically be Gonta being clever and helping the plan!

This might be more deflection. Never mind that it’d make sense for Gonta to pretend to suspect Kokichi for the sake of the plan, how dare Gonta even vaguely remind Kokichi that he’s also guilty here.

(There may also be a tiny grain of real truth in here drawing from the very heavily suppressed part of Kokichi that actually appreciates the way Gonta has always trusted him despite everything. More on that a lot later.)

Gonta: “S-Sorry! Gonta not mean it like that!”

But of course Gonta doesn’t really think Kokichi did it (because he doesn’t really want to face the idea that anyone did it – he’s even more about believing in everyone than Kaito is) and really just said it to point out that Kokichi was being unhelpful.

And now for possibly the stupidest Psyche Taxi segment, where the entire “new deduction” we make is “oh look the signboard ended up apparently in the opposite direction than you’d expect based on the river flow”. Such deduction. Much logic. I would have assumed that the point of this was to figure out something meaningful – like, when it asks “Compared to the river’s current, which way did the signboard float?”, you’re meant to say “with the current”, because it did float with the current, that’s how currents work, and then the real question is how the current could have brought it to the mansion side anyway. Or when it asks you “Where is the end of the river?”, you’re meant to give the correct answer of “the transition point”, because while the river is really an endless loop, if any part of it counts as an end then it’s there. But no. No thinking ahead or piecing things together allowed here, just point out what is blatantly obviously in front of you while ignoring what you might already know to be the real truth.

Kokichi: “I dunno. But Shuichi should know, right?”

Shuichi: “What?”

Kokichi: “We would be in a lot of trouble if you didn’t. The only one who can solve this mystery and save us all… is you!”

My god, Kokichi, leave Kaito the fuck alone already.

(Kokichi Doing The Thing Count: 7.)

Kaito: “…”

Here’s the camera panning to Kaito saying nothing with his evasive expression, making it clear that while Kokichi didn’t mention him this time, this is still very much about Kaito.

(To reiterate, while I am in-universely frustrated at Kokichi for being such a dick to Kaito, on an out-universe level, I absolutely love this. Look at how much the writers are thinking about Kaito’s character arc and contributing to it in even the subtlest of ways! It’s so good.)

Shuichi: (How could the signboard pass through the wall but end up on the mansion side? What would explain that?)

Kokichi: “Leave it to me, Shuichi! I, your partner, will give you hints in times of trouble!”

It’s still ridiculous to me that Shuichi even needs one. Come on, Shuichi, literally every one of these pieces of evidence you’ve been discussing indicates that the mansion and chapel are actually very close to each other, this is not hard.

(also fuck off, Kokichi, you’re not his partner and you never will be.)

Kokichi: “This is the Virtual World. We should throw away all of our common sense, okaaay?”

This isn’t even that helpful of a hint! Apparently what Shuichi really needs to hear as a hint is the idea that the mansion and chapel must be close to each other, or the idea that our understanding of the world’s layout based on Miu’s map might be wrong (which Shuichi himself should already know, grr). Kokichi’s hint here only really makes sense if you already know he’s getting at the world being a loop, but if you don’t know that then this isn’t really going to get anyone any closer to realising that, because there’s so many other possible ideas from throwing away common sense that aren’t that.

From the hint, Shuichi somehow figures out the ends of the river are connected, and from this he figures out that the supposed two vertical walls are actually the same wall, because Miu only set up one, and from this he is finally, finally going to figure out the whole world is a loop. This is the completely backwards way to figure it out. There is no reason to even think that these two very separate-looking walls are the same wall unless you already know about the loop. The world being a loop should be the first thing you realise that then leads to realising that the wall is singular.

Kokichi: “See, didn’t I tell you? Everything *is* connected.”

Kaito: “Dammit, Kokichi! Just tell us—”

Kaito can clearly tell that Kokichi has already got this whole thing figured out, so he is quite right to be pissed off at Kokichi for being a dick and leading everyone along instead of just being properly fucking helpful and telling us the answer.

(But of course Kokichi’s got to do it this way, because he’s got to let everyone see how awesome and indispensable Shuichi is, riiiight? And by everyone, I mean Kaito.)

Tsumugi: “Just like in old games, right!? Like, for example… When a character goes off the left side of the screen and reappears on the right.”

I would say that Tsumugi should have been able to help figure this out due to her nerdy knowledge of such games. But of course, she most likely already knew the whole time. Miu set up the wall and all, but Team Danganronpa designed the Virtual World, including the fact that it loops. Tsumugi was very quiet throughout this entire meandering debacle, probably because she didn’t want to accidentally let slip that she knew.

Tsumugi: “Huh? It doesn’t explain everything, does it? Cuz we still don’t know why we heard that one sound or Keebo’s voice.”

So in the end, the sounds aren’t being used to deduce that the world is a loop; instead we’re using the established fact that the world is a loop to deduce why the sounds happened like they did. That is so backwards to how this deduction should be, my god!

Shuichi: “Actually, if we know that the world is a loop, we can explain that as well.”

Gonta: “Huh? Really?”

Shuichi: “Yes, but first we need to be clear *where* the loop starts.”

No, we don’t. Technically the loop doesn’t even start anywhere, because it’s a loop. All we need to be clear about to understand the deal with the sounds is that there wasn’t another loading zone inside the wall, and therefore sounds could go through it. Based on the loop existing, we should have already figured out that the mansion and chapel were next to each other. Geez.

(And, really, we should have figured out the mansion and chapel were next to each other first based on the sounds and used that to deduce that the loop exists, graghrghjr.)

Kokichi: “Mwa-hahahahahaha!!! Impressive, Shuichi! For you to get this far! Yes! Yeeeesss! You are useful, indeed!”

Kaito: “‘For you to get this far’? What are you, some villain pulling the strings?”

I’m going to be charitable and not count this one, because this seems to be more about Kokichi playing up his evil villain thing and therefore presumably vaguely attempting to back up his future lie at the end of the trial.

Kokichi: “But we solved this mystery, thanks to Shuichi! All hail our saviour!”

However, this…

Kokichi, Leave Kaito The Fuck Alone Count: 8.

Tsumugi: “Yeah. If Shuichi wasn’t here, then we never would’ve solved this mystery.”

Himiko: “That’s right! Good work, Shuichi!”

Gonta: “Thanks, Shuichi! You saved us!”

Shuichi: “Ah… You’re welcome.”

Kaito: “…”

Aaaand Kokichi set everyone else off. Guess which face Kaito is making again there. While nobody else is deliberately doing this to get under Kaito’s skin, this is not helping. Usually praising Shuichi and telling him how awesome he is would be Kaito’s thing, but now that Shuichi’s become so obviously awesome that everybody can see it, it’s like he doesn’t even need Kaito for that any more.

(Not that Kaito has stopped believing that about Shuichi. He knows they’re right; he just hates to admit it now that all it does is make him think about how awesome he isn’t.)

{Later addendum edit: Let me just further clarify why Kokichi Doing The Thing here so obviously has to be about Kaito, even aside from how Kaito is frequently shown reacting to it and how Kokichi occasionally directly puts Kaito down in the same breath while doing it. See, it literally doesn’t even make any sense being about Shuichi in the first place.

One could see all this as an attempt by Kokichi to have some kind of effect on Shuichi – I don’t know, to try and gain favour with him, or to try and put pressure on him by making him feel like he’s carrying everyone’s burdens, or something. But whatever Kokichi would hypothetically have been trying to do to Shuichi here was never going to work on him, because Kokichi’s words talking up Shuichi are so screamingly insincere. It is blatantly transparent that, even as he’s praising Shuichi as their sole saviour and the only person who can solve the case, Kokichi already had it all figured out first and doesn’t mean a single word of his praise. Shuichi’s not dumb enough to fall for that and actually think that Kokichi genuinely sees him this way. And Kokichi should not be dumb enough to ever think that he would, either.

But from Kaito’s perspective, it doesn’t matter how sincere Kokichi is or isn’t being about Shuichi, because Kaito genuinely does see Shuichi this way. Kokichi once had a line that went, “Whether I’m lying or not, what I’m saying is still true,” which actually does make sense if you parse it as: “whether I sincerely believe what I’m saying or not, it’s still true to somebody listening.” And that’s what he's doing to Kaito here. Kokichi very obviously doesn’t really see Shuichi as their sole saviour – but him talking about Shuichi that way, blatantly insincere as it is, constantly forces Kaito to think about and confront the way he genuinely feels about Shuichi.}

Kokichi: “Actually… this culprit hunt just got to the exciting part! Even if we know all the tricks, it’s pretty meaningless if we don’t find the culprit. That’s how a class trial works, after all!”

Gonta: “Kokichi talking like Monokuma again…”

And again, Gonta, who’s confused as hell by all this stuff about Virtual Worlds and loops but can at least pay attention to the people in front of him, notices the way Kokichi is acting and points it out.

Kaito: “Tch… No matter what you say, I’m not gonna believe your lies… I’m gonna believe in everyone! That’s how I’m gonna reach the truth!”

Aaaa, Kaito. The way he says this kind of out of nowhere feels like he’s just desperately trying to cling to the one thing he knows he still has – his belief in others – because by this point it’s been hammered home that his deductive skills are useless in comparison to Shuichi’s and Shuichi apparently doesn’t even need him for encouragement or support any more.

And it seems he’s also still clinging to the thought that Kokichi did it, because that way his belief in everyone except Kokichi will still be able to help him reach the truth.

Kokichi: “Nee-heehee… I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

Yeah, aren’t you just looking forward to watching Kaito fall apart.

(I mean. So am I. But I’m watching a fictional character do what fictional characters do best. Kokichi is watching a real person suffer, so he kind of is a bit of a sadistic asshole. Not as much of one as he’s going to claim he is, but that’s not going to be completely a lie either.)

Let’s talk about this a bit more, actually. Kokichi just dropped a heavy hint that he’s expecting Kaito to have a bad time as the trial reaches its climax (this comment comes just after Kaito’s outburst so it’s clearly about him), and that he’s excited to watch that unfold. There’s two potential reasons for him looking forward to this: that he just thinks it’s fun to watch Kaito in particular suffer, or that Kaito being incapable of accepting Gonta’s guilt will totally spell Kokichi’s victory in their ongoing clash of values about trusting versus suspecting people, even if Kaito won’t admit it.

The second of these does seem like the more likely one for him to care about, given how much Kokichi’s everything has revolved around trying to prove that point this whole time. It could potentially be argued that all of Kokichi’s doing the thing to draw out Kaito’s insecurities has also been in aid of making Kaito’s upcoming breakdown as spectacular as possible in order to prove Kokichi’s point most effectively. But I don’t quite think that’s it, because as we saw last time, Kokichi isn’t actually that good at carefully plotting out the best way to prove his point. He’s just kind of blindly, automatically flailing around at doing so even in ways that he should realise clearly aren’t that great if he’d think about it for a second.

Which means that Kokichi jabbing at Kaito’s insecurities like he’s been doing this part is presumably just for the sake of it to watch him squirm, with no real goal in mind beyond that. And honestly there doesn’t have to be much more of a reason than “for the sake of it”, because it’s basically the same as all of the bullying and being a dick to people Kokichi always does – Kaito is a very inviting target for that right now given that he’s emotionally vulnerable and he gives satisfyingly noticeable reactions when prodded. If Kokichi’s being more subtle about this than he usually is, it’s only because Kaito’s insecurities are more subtle than most people’s. There is a bit more of a personal angle to this than his usual bullying since Kokichi has such a beef with Kaito’s values, but the jabbing at him because of that isn’t especially connected to trying to prove his point.

So, to the question of if Kokichi is looking forward to Kaito falling apart for the sake of watching him suffer or for the sake of proving a point? I think it’s a bit of both, but also that those two reasons are pretty separate and both just things Kokichi is kind of instinctively doing because that’s what he’s like, without having much of a calculated plan in doing so.

Shuichi: (What is Kokichi’s plan here? He’s definitely prodding at Kaito on purpose.)

It’s a little strange that Shuichi picks up on this. Sure, Kaito just reacted at Kokichi, but Kokichi hadn’t done anything to specifically provoke that out of him. And for Shuichi to understand that Kokichi praising him has actually been purposeful prodding at Kaito, he’d need to understand that Kaito is jealous of him, which he very definitely never has any idea about until Kaito admits it to him. (Why would Kaito ever be jealous of him? It’s Kaito who gave Shuichi the strength to do all these things he’s been doing!)

The only times Kokichi has been doing the thing in a way that was clearly him making it about Kaito were times 5 and 6, which was a while ago given that we’re at 8 now. So I guess Shuichi was just paying attention to those explicit jabs at Kaito from earlier (he did seem to be noticing it at one point) and is finally having a moment to stop and reflect on it now.

(However Shuichi managed to notice it, this is also the writers drawing attention to what Kokichi has been doing to Kaito, making it even more clearly deliberate and something they care about enough that they do want people to be aware of it even if it’s subtle.)

Shuichi: (Well, there’s no time for distractions like him.)

While Shuichi definitely should be worried if he thinks Kokichi is trying to get under Kaito’s skin… it’s also true that he doesn’t really have time for it in the middle of a trial. Got to have that Ultimate Detective tunnel vision in order to reach the truth. Maki warned him not to forget who he is, but maybe that’s kind of happening a little right now.

That and he definitely doesn’t understand the extent to which Kokichi’s prodding is actually getting to Kaito. He’d assume that Kaito can just brush it off and remain mostly okay, because Kaito’s always okay, right?

(Kaito is not okay.)

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