#BOTH of them in that one chapter at seperate moments have an internal monologue about how utterly in love with vash they are | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dangan-meme-palace · 3 years

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I'd like that person to elaborate on how kaede would have been a great influence for shuichi or even maki. the more time goes on the more I feel like I'm the only one person in the fandom who wants both of them to live. and who thinks kaede can help with shuichi's arc. maybe we share opinions on that and I feel so alone with my takes I'm withering away here lol. tech if it happens that you like them both alive too you need to tell us about it, though if you don't like it, it's alright :)

On one hand I want them both to die to save them from the writers, but in a perfect world where the writers can be trusted to write I would like them to be co-protags. Whatever synergy they were having in Chapter 1 was really nice and if the story had stayed like that I think I would have really enjoyed it.

Below is how I would reimagine V3 for the sake of Kaede's survival if you're interested in an answer beyond just this ^^

Kaede and Shuichi: Co-tag Duo!

Kaede's ruthless optimismTM could be tempered by Shuichi's deductive reasoning and vice versa. It's only when he became Kaito's friend that Shuichi lost his (much needed) edge and he became more of a problem than a protag, but if Kaede were there he wouldn't become friends with Kaito in the first place so that's a problem solved.

I do think that if they were going to be co-protags, co-tags if you will, that Shuichi would need to be able to assert his opinions a bit more. One interaction where I think that he did this well was when Shuichi was trying to tell Kaede about the possibility of a traitor and she initially defaulted to her optimism before he calmly and logically explained it to her and managed to convince her of the possibility.

I think that having a man be the calm, logical one while the woman is the irrational, emotional one is a Bit (very) cliched and kinda bullshit, but working off of their characters that's really the best I got. The dynamic between Makoto and Kyoko is like the exact reverse of this so just think of a role reversal for those two if you need help imagining what my version of our co-tag duo would be like dynamic-wise, although I don't think Shuichi would be quite as cold and that Kaede would still be solid like Kyoko while Shuichi would remain weak like Makoto.

(Chapter 1 is the best example of this dynamic that I can give you but it's also the only example I can give you...)

Gameplay-wise I would have liked the option to pick either of them as my player character and play as that one throughout the game, then replay it as the other one to see how differently they saw things from one another in their internal monologues and seperate bonus events (FTEs, LHEs, SMEs) with the others and maybe some seperate hidden events as well. That makes the game a whole lot bigger, provides more content, and gives it better replayability than the original.

Maki and Kaede

I don't think Kaede and Maki would get along very well in the canon killing game, so I disagreed with that. Maki seemed to not like Kaede very much, which in turn made Kaede feel upset and guilty. That's not entirely a bad thing though, because the more Kaede's natural choices are tempered by outside factors the better.

Rather than having Maki be helped by Kaede I think Kaede should be inadvertently helped by Maki's remarks, with Maki becoming more like a fed-up babysitter (or in Maki's case, an Ultimate Caregiver) who points out the obvious to people like Kaede, Kaito, and Tenko (who all have moments where their emotions blind them to the truth) with no remorse instead of becoming a waifu prop.

I don't think she would be very chummy without her canonical character arc, but narratively not only do I think her arc wasn't necessary, I think she could have done a lot more if she were left alone or only had a small development

(okay you're all idiots, but you're my idiots, now for the love of christ stop trying to set shit on fire!!)

Maki works very well as a logical force because she's established as blunt and unafraid of telling people exactly what she thinks of them and their stupid ideas (until the writers scrap all that for waifu propism). Plus, since murder, especially sneaky murder, is literally her business of course she would be more informed than the rest about it, which gives her a reasonably good authority to tell people like Kaede off. (Think Byakuya but better and less holier-than-thou)

I don't see a good reason to take any of that away from her when it would work so well with her character to just leave her be. Her arc with Kaito kinda feels like a downgrade compared to what she could of been as I'm envisioning it. I mean, it's always been a downgrade, but especially when I think about how her character pre-development wouldn't have made the same mistakes as Maki post-development (like ch5, which was almost completely her fault)

Kaito, Kaede, and Maki

Kaito wouldn't and shouldn't be changed as a character, but only because if I were writing V3 I would want to use him as an example of what Kaede needs to try not to become, a reason for her to change and an example of what Not to do. I would want people to look at Kaito and go "oh shit Kaede could have been like that if she hadn't had a character arc about Not being like that" and appreciate Kaede and her growth even more for not ending up like him or repeating his mistakes.

Instead of having Kaito be a supporting character that acts like he's borderline the hidden protagonist of V3, he would end up being a well-intentioned antagonist. Accidentally causing problems like he does in canon, but this time we point out that these problems are, in fact, problems and that they are, in fact, his fault and use Kaede as a way to show what he could have done better and Kaito as a way to show what Kaede could have done worse.

+ maybe we throw in some verbal dressing downs from Maki because I think she would be the perfect antithesis of Kaito and that it's a shame she wasn't utilized as such in the game. If Kaede's role is "Kaito but Better" because she had people to help guide her in the right direction and Listening to them was her much needed point of growth (as the complete narrative rejection of Kaito's more self-centered approach) then Maki would be "The Opposite of Kaito" and point out all of his flaws from the other side/point of view.

Sometimes it takes one to know one, but other times having someone around with a completely different worldview and mindset point things out can make all the difference, and while Kaito wouldn't listen, Kaede would be listening (even if it wasn't always directed at her specifically) because she recognizes Kaito's flaws in herself and genuinely wants to improve herself (for her own sake and the sake of everyone's survival) by purging those flaws from herself. Self-improvement Queen!

I also think he should die. He needs to cause a bit of tension and conflict as the antag, but since we are trying to prove that Kaito is Bad and that his thinking is Dangerous, all of that previous conflict needs to come to a head with Kaito facing the consequences of his own actions and getting his comeuppance. This should also be the start of Kaede's final stages of development as this would be her ultimate proof that she Cannot keep acting the same way she did before (which was like Kaito) and that she definitely has to change for the better before something happens to her or someone she cares about.

I think this would be an organic character motivation for her development that would also shine a light on the dire consequences of the killing game and raise the stakes a bit, especially because this could've been Kaede if she had done things differently.

Conclusion

If I can't have Kaede and Shuichi remain the way they were in Chapter 1 I'd rather not have them at all, but if I could have them like that + a change in narrative direction then I'd really fucking enjoy it over what we got.

#asks #shuichi tag #kaito tag #kaede tag #maki tag

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