#It's hard to find really compelling villains like him and Junko | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hamliet · 4 years

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Who are your top 10 female villains? And your top ten male villains? Thank you!

Oooooh. Well, in this list I am including antagonists (people I see as conflicted/not committed to like, the bad side, if there even is a bad side, but basically oppose the protagonist at some point). Also, they are in no particular order:

Female Villains:

Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire)

She's sympathetic enough so that we understand how she came to be the way she is, yet terrifying and depraved enough that we fear for the characters around her. I don't think that's an easy balance to strike for a character: if you make them likable it's hard to keep audiences from rooting for them, but the balance is struck perfectly with Cersei.

Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

As @aspoonofsugar wrote recently on Azula, I think she is a fantastic female villain. I think she is sympathetic despite her actions, and I wish the story had explored her redemption, which was clearly hinted.

Claudia (The Dragon Prince)

The first three seasons have kind of been Claudia's fall. While as a whole I don't think TDP is very well-written, I do think that Claudia, Viren, and Soren's family dynamic is a polished gem of writing that literally carries the story. I fully expect to see redemption for Claudia down the line, but not until she spirals further and further. At the end of season 3, Claudia resorts to killing someone to save her father's life when she has nothing and no one else left, and she makes this choice after her brother Soren (now redeemed himself) chooses to kill their father in front of Claudia, devastating her. Their choices are clear parallels and both are somewhat negative, somewhat sympathetic. Soren can't kill his past: he has to live with it, and Claudia can't cling to the past: she has to let it go.

Delores Umbridge (Harry Potter)

She is awful and I hate her, but you're also supposed to hate her. Her comeuppance is hilarious ad perfect, and just--I think she's a fantastic villain because she reminds every single one of us of an albeit exaggerated version of a teacher we all know.

Karren von Rosewald (Tokyo Ghoul:re)

Karren is TG:re's best written character in my opinion. Her tragic arc takes place throughout the first three arcs, which imo is also the highest point in the series. Karren just wanted to be loved, and if she had to die, at least she got to die as herself.

Nora (Noragami)

Nora! The reason I read Noragami is pretty much for Nora and her redemption arc. The fandom hates her for... reasons, but she's always been primed for redemption. Her name is in the title (which yes also refers to Yato, etc.) She's important. I wrote a few metas on Nora, notably here.

Enoshima Junko (Danganronpa)

Despair. It's fun to find a character who is, well, just plain fun, but who is also bored, despairing, cruel, and terrifying. She's unique and a brillaint character.

Toga Himiko (Boku no Hero Academia)

I'm not the first one to say that Toga is BNHA's best written female character, but I do agree that she is. She, like Junko, is fun and interesting, and she has an arc that is compelling. Her actions directly move the plot; she’s bloodthirsty and yet uniquely empathetic and compassionate.

Yoshimura Eto (Tokyo Ghoul)

Eto's backstory and her motivations were fascinating. She was one of the most complex characters in the entire story, and despite the fact that you understood why her father gave her up, you also understood her pain and justified anger at his doing so. She perfectly illustrated the divide between human and ghoul.

Male Villains:

Shigaraki Tomura (Boku no Hero Academia)

BNHA's best-written male character, imo. His backstory and the current chapters that focus on him are extremely well-done, thematic and full of character development, and detailed artistically. He gets so much focus that I can tell he's important to Horikoshi, and I'm excited to see where he goes.

Dabi (Boku no Hero Academia)

I'll admit there's a lot missing here. Namely, we don't know his identity for certain, but it seems basically certain that he's Todoroki Touya; however, we still don't have his backstory. Still, his fury at the presumed father who destroyed his family and yet has the audacity to be a "symbol of hope" is fascinating to me, and I'm excited to see how he develops as well. (Both Shigaraki and Dabi seem primed for some kind of redemption).

Adult Trio: Illumi Zoldyck, Hisoka Morow, Chrollo Lucilfer (Hunter x Hunter)

Am I counting these three as one so that I can get extra characters? Of course I am. In all honesty I really think all three of these antagonists are really well done, sympathetic and/or likable. They're the shadows of the three MCs they foil: for Illumi, Killua, for Hisoka, Gon, and for Chrollo, Kurapika. They represent the traits the three protagonists (sorry Leorio) don't want to acknowledge in themselves, and therefore their encounters with their shadows are particularly thematic and powerful. Also, one doesn't usually kill their shadow, but instead integrates with it, so I highly doubt the three of them will be killed by their respective protagonist.

Meruem (Hunter x Hunter)

Yes, again, HxH. It has great antagonists. But Meruem's development is literally one of the most powerful I've ever read about. I don't know anyone who starts his story not loathing him, hoping he dies, and then by the end of it, ebfore you've even realized it's happening, you're crying for him and Komugi. His arc explores human nature at its finest, most horrific, and ultimately most beautiful.

Furuta Nimura (Tokyo Ghoul:re)

Furuta's a fantastic villain whom I wish got a better ending (not even redeemed really, but just... something more). He was so damaged by the system of an unfair world that he made it his life goal to become the villain and burn the system down, destroy it no matter what it took--and also hoped to destroy himself in the process, as he was born knowing he would die young and longed for it. I wish he had been forced to live.

Mori Ougai (Bungo Stray Dogs)

Mori's utilitarianism is chilling. He's not exactly unlikable, despite being absolutely morally repugnant, and the Beast AU from Asagiri himself shows us that Mori is certainly capable of a positive life and positive change; however, within the canonical story, I don't see that for him. He's been set up IMO as the final boss of the series, and his habit of targeting the most vulnerable (especially children) to control people is almost certainly going to bite Dazai in the ass eventually.

Eren Jaeger (Shingeki no Kyojin)

I can't believe I'm writing this. I don't know what to call Eren: he's the protagonist, and he's sunk to becoming the final boss. While it's possible he, like Furuta and like Lelouch of Code Geass, is playing the villain, I really hope not, as I think the themes are much more powerful if Eren sincerely believes what he proclaims to believe. He's a kid who has always wanted to fight for freedom and for the people around him, and now we're seeing the dark side of those traits, wherein he's destroying the world via genocide to save the people close to him. He's driven by fear and by anger at the cruelty and unfairness of the world, and he's forgotten the beauty of it. I hope Mikasa can remind him before the end.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Bungo Stray Dogs)

MY BOY. Look if a character is named after my very favorite real-life author, I must stan. But actually I do think Fyodor is well written and a master manipulator. He's modeled after my favorite character in all of fiction, Dostoyesvky's Demons' Alexei Kirillov. He really seems to want human connection, to live, and has forgotten that empathy is an important and necessary part of both of those. I hope--and think it is likely given BSD's prolific redemption arcs--that he will remember eventually.

Lee Yut-Lung (Banana Fish)

Again,, he's less a villain than an antagonist. Like Ash, the main character, he is a teenage boy betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect him and abused his whole entire life. He's driven by a desperate need to be loved and jealousy that Ash is loved while he is not. His ending, when Sing finally tells him he will in fact be staying by Yut-Lung's side and will help Yut-Lung redeem himself, "because you're in pain... your soul's bleeding, even now" is literally the perfect ending for him.

Jin Guangyao (Mo Dao Zu Shi)

I've written a lot on Jin Guangyao, but he's a walking tragedy. He ties with Wei Wuxian, the protagonist, as my favorite, and the reason is because they are two sides of the same coin--in fact, they're the same side of the same coin. They're not very different, and the fact that he finally at least got empathy in the end and was able to push the person he loved most to safety because of that--well. Brb time to cry.

#ask hamliet #long post #villains #lists #faves #Anonymous

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a-student-out-of-time · 4 years

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//That's called a Mary Sue. And speaking of that, is there any other character in the Danganronpa canon you considered one aside from Chiaki?

//Hoo boy. That’s a term I think is really misapplied to a lotof situations. I never actually said Chiaki’s a Mary Sue, andthat’s because I don’t think any incarnation of her is one.

//”Mary Sue” is such an overused and yet misunderstood conceptthat people use. And oftentimes, it gets thrown around becauseit feels like it adds validity to criticism that I feel is franklyunearned. The reason for that is because Sueness isn’t acharacter problem, but symptomatic of a bigger writing problem.

//See, a lot of people think Sues are just unrealisticallyoverpowered, have no serious flaws, every person in the storyloves them no matter what they do, etc. but you can use thosetropes well with some quality writing and apply those to pretty muchany protagonist character from anime or superhero stories, butusually they don’t get called Mary Sues or Gary Stus or whatever.

//No, what really defines Sueness is that they warp the reality ofthe story around them. A character can be at the center of a story,but a Mary Sue warps the story so the entire universe revolvesaround them, whether it’s showing how great they are, how evilthey are, how much their life sucks, etc. That’s fundamentallywhat makes a Mary Sue or Gary Stu what they are: they’re at thecenter of everything and everything has to be about them insome way, shape, or form.

//Supporting casts, villains, side characters, plot, themes, allof it revolves around what the Sue does. All morals are defined aswhat the Sue thinks is right. All situations are resolved because ofwhat the Sue does. It’s all about them. Nothing else matters,nothing else exists.

//Now let’s look at Human Chiaki. She starts off as a quietgamer girl who originally didn’t have friends, but managed to getcloser to her classmates and bring everybody together throughher love of games. She opens up, has a great time with them, andbecomes their de facto leader, and also gets a lot of friendshipscenes with Hajime. All of which become poignantly tragic when shedies and everyone falls into despair.

//That’s it, really. That’s not a Mary Sue, that’s just afairly flat character. And really, you can make the same argumentabout everyone in Class 77: they’re side characters in a storythat should be about them. And even when theytalk about how great she is, not everything revolves around Chiaki.Hell, she’s not even around in a few episodes of despair side andthere’s plenty of moments when nobody talks about her.

//That’s one of the things that bugs me when people complainabout DR3. Hajime didn’t choose to become Izurujust to impress Chiaki, she was a small part of his ever-growinglist of insecurities. She didn’t solve every single issue inClass 77, she didn’t stop Junko, she couldn’t save anyone, andmost critically, she actually did kinda assist ingetting everyone to fall into despair by encouraging themto save Chisa. That lead them right into that trap.

//Human Chiaki isn’t a Mary Sue, she’s a nice girl leader typesadly suffering from a serious case of underdevelopment Andit’s disappointing that people jump to “mary sue”to explain why, when really the issue is that she wasn’t givenmuch to do along with everyone else. DR3 Despair Sidereally revolves around Chisa, Ryota, and Junko.

//I actually liked Chisa, so I don’t have too many complaintsabout her other than disappointment in how her character arc ended.

//Ryota bugs me because he was created just to be the explanationfor how all this happened and they pour on all this angst and sadnessto make you feel for him when we literally didn’t know him untilthis anime existed. And honestly, if the anime didn’t spend somuch time trying to make us feel bad for him and dropped the stupidbrainwashing, I’d probably be more sympathetic. I at least applaudthem for going with him actually creating the brainwashing anime andit was completely his own fault.

//And that brings me to Junko. She’s really the closest to a Suein this situation, and frankly a lot of DR. It always has to comeback around to her, her schemes, her plans, her boredom, hermanipulation, her pulling the strings in some way, shape, or form.And DR3 really is the worst example of it, where she gets awaywith her plans completely unimpeded. Yet was too lazy to actually doanything, so went with “lol brainwashing.”

//The fact that the DR fandom has “It was really Junko allalong” and that they actually reference that fact in V3 is proofthat this franchise has a serious issue with revolving the situationaround a character that...frankly bores and annoys the hell out ofme.

//Junko just isn’t an interesting enough character in my opinionto hold this status as total and complete mastermind of everything.Not even in SDR2, which I actually really liked. It’shonestly everything that happens around her and because of herthat I find far more interesting. She sets into motion so much coolstuff and it’s really the people motivated to these things by heractions that make DR interesting.

//She’s supposed to be this profoundly intelligent manipulativemastermind, and I applaud Kodaka for not giving her a backstory asan excuse, but let me ask this: do we ever actually see heruse any manipulation techniques? Do we see her successfully turn orconvince anyone on screen? Do we see her successfully playing puppetmaster? Not really.

//The most we get are people saying she did or it happeninglargely off-screen. And what she does on screen in DR3 is just usingsomeone else’s creations and skills to achieve her own goals.Beyond that, most of what we get is her rambling about despair overand over to the point that it stops sounding like a word. Herattempts at manipulation always felt hollow to me, and maybe it’sbecause I’ve heard a ton of villain speeches before, but I wascompletely unphazed by all of her pseudophilosophical ramblings.

//That’s not just a dig at her. Characters that only everwhine about how life is boring, without meaning, imperfect, too hard,or whatever always annoy me. And especially when their logic forwhat they’re doing boils down to petty childishness andself-centered entitlement. I could write an essay about how muchI despise Adachi from Person 4 and completely fail to get why so manypeople love him, but that’d be getting off topic.

//Point is, based on the definition I provided, Junko is far moreof a Mary Sue than Chiaki is and the issues with DR3 go beyondcharacterization and extend more to having too little time towork with everything they have and devoting it to thewrong elements. DR3 feels like a fist draft that was madeinto a final product.

//And also, that’s not me saying you shouldn’t like Junko. Ifyou like her and think she’s a compelling villain, go for it. Morepower to you. I’m not one to tell you which characters you can andcan’t like, I’m just explaining my opinion.

//I’d also prefer if people stop tossing around “marysue” like it’s a shortcut to criticism without analyzing what itactually means. It’s less of a character problem and more of anoverall writing problem. Your story should not be an eventhorizon bent around the singularity of a single character.

#mod talks #mod rambles #a student out of time #mary sue is an overused and yet misunderstood term #Anonymous

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murasaki-murasame · 6 years

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Danganronpa V3 Liveblog Part 13 [Chapter 4 - Deadly Life]

I think it took me nearly half of this entire post to actually start talking about the investigation and the murder case as a whole because I got deep into Retrospective Mode [tm], lol. The latter part of this might seem disjointed and confusing because I kept rewriting parts of it, and in general I’ve been writing this post on and off for hours now while doing other stuff so I wasn’t perfectly keeping track of the flow of it.

Thoughts under the cut.

Before I talk about this part, I kinda forgot to actually talk about the plot-related hints we got in the last part. There was so much other stuff to talk about that I kinda forgot to get around to that part.

So now we have a whole collection of assorted vague hints about what happened before the killing game and what the state of the outside world is, and the question is how they interconnect. I might be forgetting some stuff, but to list it out a bit, we have the hints about Rantarou being a survivor from a previous killing game who actively wanted to participate in this one. We have the references to the Ultimate Hunt that was seemingly about hunting down and possibly killing Ultimates, which seemed to lead to everyone voluntarily undergoing amnesia in order to forget their talents and become ‘normal people’ who won’t be hunted anymore. We have the weird flashback to what seemed to be a joint funeral for the main cast, which is strange for a variety of reasons, including the question of why they’d be grouped together if they were all from different schools. We have the memories of meteorites falling to Earth and threatening some sort of apocalyptic scenario. We have the memories of a cult or some such that popped up at the time, preaching that mankind deserved damnation. We have references to a plan called the Gofer Project that was apparently designed to stop the meteorties but somehow failed. And now we have the whole scenario of everyone stuck in this walled-in academy playing a killing game. Which is obviously normal enough for this franchise, but the really weird thing is that Monokuma’s been very consistent in saying that ‘nothing exists outside of the End Wall’, and that because of that point, he’s not doing this out of a desire to broadcast the killing game to the outside world. Which throws a lot of things into question, since the goal of the killing games has basically always been to instill despair in the population by having it be publicly broadcasted.

It’s also worth remembering that the game started with what seemed to be some kind of time loop where, originally, everyone woke up in regular uniforms and no memories of even their talents, but then when they met Monokuma and the Monokubs, things got ‘reset’ somehow, and things started over in the exact same way, but with everyone wearing their more unique and personalized uniforms, and with memories of their talents. Kaede and Shuichi also woke up in classroom closets that were placed right next to each other, which still feels a bit fishy to me. Oh, and I imagine that sometime after this, Rantarou probably found and watched the video that his past self seemingly left for him, and that was probably how he knew about the Ultimate Hunt at the start of the game. I forget if he knew that in the ‘original loop’, though. And on the note of him, we still don’t know what his talent is.

There’s also been all sorts of fairly wild theories thrown about in-story about what might be going on, mostly involving the idea that maybe everyone really did die, and they’re currently in some kind of afterlife, which would at least explain certain fantastical things that have happened.

We also have a mysterious tile in the courtyard with writing on it that fills in more and more each chapter. Not sure what to make of that yet, but it seems to be saying something about the state of the world.

And in terms of various references made to the state of the outside world, it might be important to remember that Kirumi’s whole motive in chapter two involved her remembering that the prime minister of Japan had decided to make her the de facto prime minister in order to have her assist in saving the country. Which, in hindsight, sounds like it might have related to her being called into the Gofer Project, somehow. The question then is what happened to her after that, and how things lead to her being involved in the joint funeral everyone remembers, and her being part of this killing game just like everyone else.

I think that’s a good enough run-down of all the clues we have. There’s certain other mysteries and plots twists in the making that I can already guess about, like Kokichi probably actually being the Ultimate Prisoner, but I don’t know how much that sort of thing relates to the ‘overall story’.

Obviously it’s pretty difficult to piece these clues and hints together coherently, but the thing that keeps sticking out to me the most is that this is apparently intended to be a proper continuation/conclusion to the Hope’s Peak Saga, and not a reboot of some kind. So the question then is, how exactly did the events of the Hope’s Peak Saga set up this game’s story? It’s really hard to tell, especially since things seemed to be on a more or less good path after the DR3 anime, with Naegi becoming the new headmaster of Hope’s Peak, the whole DR2 crew being alive, Junko presumably being entirely destroyed, etc. I’m not entirely sure how that situation could have devolved enough to get us to what sounds like a literally apocalyptic scenario that also involved some kind of mass murdering/capturing of Ultimates. I mean the meteorites could have just been a really unfortunate natural disaster, but the Ultimate Hunt is what really sticks out to me. It kinda sounds like what happened around the time period of DR0 and Despair Arc, with the untalented people lashing out against Hope’s Peak academy.

I can’t really figure out where this is going. There’s way too many seemingly unconnected and wildly different sorts of plot threads to consider. Like, on the one hand you have some kind of literal apocalypse going on, and then you have some kind of revolt against the Ultimates, and then you have the implication that the V3 cast died and are in the afterlife, and then you have the references to some kind of prior killing game we haven’t heard about before, and it’s just really difficult to tell how the heck these things relate to each other. It’s also, as said, difficult to guess what Monokuma’s motive is intended to be this time. I also can’t help but wonder who’s going to be the Mastermind this time. In the last two games it was Junko, but I highly doubt it’s gonna be her. I guess it could technically be Monaca [or however you spell her name], since she’s still kinda a hanging thread, but I prefer the idea of her sticking to being a space NEET.

I should say that even if there’s still one or two spoilers I have relating to character deaths, I genuinely have no idea where the actual story is going to go, beyond the fact that it’s apparently really controversial and polarizing. That’s what everyone seems to be saying, at least. Which still feels weird to me, especially since I’ve seen people say that it’s even more divisive than DR2′s ending, which I thought was already incredibly love or hate because of how it involved plot points like virtual reality simulations and Junko being the villain for a second time. I wonder how this game could top that one. Thankfully it sounds like most people still like the ending even if they acknowledge that it’s somehow divisive, but it all sounds so make-or-break that I can’t help but be afraid that it might retroactively ruin my opinion on the game as a whole.

And on that note, I do really like the game thus far. It’s not perfect, but for the most part it’s really good. It’s really refreshing to finally be playing one of these games for myself instead of just watching LPs of them.

There’s a whole lot of things already that are pretty divisive, especially Kaede’s death, and I can’t blame anyone for being put off by points like that. But I just can’t help but like the game a lot. I think a big part of it is that I really love this game’s cast, especially the main trio [if you want to call them that] of Shuichi, Kaito, and Maki. I’ve talked about them before, but I really truly love them as characters. I get why a lot of people are probably bored by Shuichi as a protagonist, especially after the Kaede bait-and-switch, but I love him. I find his development and his emotional struggles to be really compelling. I’ve liked him as a character from the start, but I also can’t deny that him clearly being gay as fuck also makes me love him even more. It’s just a really nice feeling to be able to play a game with a protagonist who I actually feel like I can identify with on this specific level. But I promised myself I wouldn’t go on another big discussion rant thing so I’ll just cut myself off right here, lol.

I’m not entirely sure how I’d compare this game’s cast to DR2′s, but I think I definitely prefer them to DR1′s cast. I don’t really have any interest in pitting them against each other, but it’s hard not to make the comparison when your feelings toward each game’s casts hugely dictates how you feel about each game as a whole. DR2 definitely had more of a focus on being more fun and light-hearted and friendly than DR1, which I think helped make that game’s cast feel more likeable, but V3 is going for something in the middle. At least by this point I like most of the cast members in V3. I think the only characters who I actively dislike are Kiyo and Kokichi. I wouldn’t really like Miu or Angie as people in real life, but they’re at least fun and interesting enough for me to like them as characters. Kiyo was basically just outright unpleasant from start to finish, though, and his whole presence in the story was capped off with a bizarre and disturbing backstory about incest and ritualistic serial killings. And I just kinda . . . hate Kokichi. A lot. He’s slightly endearing sometimes but oh man especially with how this chapter’s going I just kinda despise him. Thankfully I’m clearly meant to hate him.

Other than that, I think the only characters I feel ambivalent about are Tsumugi, Keebo, and to a lesser extent Gonta and Himiko. But Himiko’s definitely getting up there with her recent development, and I have a soft spot for Gonta even though he really is kinda pointless as a character. So it’s mostly Tsumugi and Keebo who I just don’t feel much of anything for.

I actively like everyone else to anyone degree or another.

Anyway I should finally start talking about the actual specific part I just played, lol.

But before I do that, I wanna say that I decided to get the skill that lets me focus on one conversation at a time in mass panic debates. I still feel a bit hesitant about it, since I haven’t really had trouble with any of those parts yet, and I’m a bit worried that with this skill I might just get hyper-focused on one conversation at a time, and it might take longer to figure out the answer. We’ll see. I might take it off after this trial if I dislike it. I was debating between it and the one about revealing the first keyword in each scrum debate. That would have been really helpful earlier in the game, but as the game goes on those parts get a lot easier since the number of participants decreases. So unless they add in multiple rounds of it, I feel like that skill is just getting progressively less useful.

Either way, let’s just get to actually talking about this investigation segment.

I figured that this case was going to get a lot more complicated in this segment, and that it’d involve the implication that Miu died inside the virtual world and not outside of it, and lo and behold, that’s what happened.

There’s a lot to unpack here about how this case is set up, so I’ll just cut right to the main point and say that I think a major plot twist is going to be that the virtual world is actually arranged so that the big wall is in the middle of it, and the ‘world loading screen’ is actually more of a set-up to do with the edges of the map being connected like a portal. Basically if you just take Miu’s map and swap the two sections then you get what’s clearly meant to be the actual layout. So we actually have a scenario where the chapel and the mansion are relatively close to each other, with a wall between them. This explains why Shuichi and Tsumugi heard Keebo’s voice, because it wasn’t actually being interrupted by the world loading screen since they were well away from it. I guess we just have to assume that sound can somehow pass easily through the wall.

This also explains what happened with the signboard. I think I commented on it seeming a bit odd, but I didn’t think about it too much. But I probably should have guessed what was happening based on the flow of the river, and the fact that the signboard was stuck on the left side of the rock in the river, and not the right side. So instead of the signboard going down the river and then traveling left, it actually traveled right, looped around via the world loading screen at the edge of the map, and continued traveling right along the river until it hit the left side of the rock. I think they also established that objects, though not humans, can travel through the wall, so the signboard wouldn’t have been obstructed by that.

And obviously it also explains how Miu could have been seen near the mansion. With what we learned about the modifications she made to herself, she clearly just moved through the wall and thus immediately ended up near the mansion, where she got seen. Then everyone heard the crash of something hitting the chapel, and her presumably being killed.

One of the major points I noticed with all the evidence we got in this part is that it’s incredibly obvious Miu set this up as an opportunity for her to murder somebody, and that somebody was probably Kokichi. She obviously rewrote and lied about the game’s set-up in order to make it easy for her to navigate the map without anyone else being able to, and the rule about Kokichi freezing if she touches him was probably so that she could stop him from running away or resisting her. It’s also why she knocked away the signboard, to make sure everyone was as isolated as possible.

So I guess the big question is what exactly went wrong with her plan. And that answer probably also lies in Kokichi, who obviously knew what she was planning, and probably used his key card thing, and/or whatever he got from it, to mess with her plans and get her killed instead. I’m not entirely sure how, though. I’m also not even entirely sure if Kokichi is the one that killed her. He just seems too obvious, and as I’ve said before, I doubt he’ll die this [relatively] early. He seems too pivotal to the group dynamic to not stick around longer.

The way Miu’s body ended up makes me feel like she basically slid down the mansion roof on the lattice thing, and she flew through the wall and smashed into the chapel wall. I might be under-estimating the distance between the two buildings, but signs point to her having been up on the roof, and the layout of where her body ended up makes it seem like she crashed into the chapel wall at high speeds while holding the cell-phone and hammer and riding the lattice, and everything ended up flung about at the base of the chapel wall. Which I guess raises the question of how that happened. I feel like either she did it in an attempt to escape that back-fired and lead to her dying upon hitting the chapel, or she was somehow pushed off the roof by the killer. In which case she could have either been alive or dead by that time. It’d seem more difficult to set up that scenario if she was alive, so maybe she got killed on the roof, and then the killer pushed her off the roof using the lattice to make it look like she’d been killed near the chapel.

I guess the obvious conclusion to draw then is that she went up to the roof, met Kokichi, and then got killed by him, and since he probably knew about all the tricks with the virtual world, he set up her body to make it look like she’d been killed by the chapel, which would have seemingly removed him from suspicion.

I at least think that he’s going out of his way to implicate Kaito, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he remotely logged Kaito out in order to make him suspicious. It’s at least obvious that someone used the phone to log Kaito out, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kokichi did it, and then planted the phone on Miu to make it seem like another thing that he couldn’t have possibly done. He might have needed to steal the phone off her, but that wouldn’t be too hard I guess. Though the whole ‘he freezes if she touches her’ rule might make that pretty difficult. I’m not sure.

It definitely seems like a big part of this case will boil down to whether we believe Kokichi’s or Kaito’s testimonies, but I can’t help but trust Kaito more. Especially since, if we take the log-in/log-out report and the stated time of death at face value, then he logged out over an hour before Miu died. And anyway, she clearly died IN the game, and not long before everyone found her body, so if Kaito really had logged out way before then and hadn’t logged in, I don’t really think he could have killed her. But part of me can’t help but worry that maybe Kokichi set up some sort of plan so that Kaito would somehow end up killing Miu without intending to. Possibly something to do with the ‘avatar error’. Maybe Kokichi tampered with Kaito’s avatar before the program started, or something.

I’m not sure what to make of the detail with the roof door lock, but clearly Miu got up there somehow, and Kaito got logged off early enough that he might have just not seen anyone come up after he left.

The worrying thing here is that, even if Kaito doesn’t seem like he actually did it, I also find it hard to suspect Kokichi, but I can’t really imagine anyone else having done it. Knowing the gist of the trick, I think that Maki, Keebo, and Himiko are free of suspicion since 1: they all seemed genuinely unaware of the trick, and 2: even if they were aware of it, as far as we know at the moment none of them could have moved through the wall of crossed the river, so if Miu really did die on the mansion roof, or get pushed off the mansion roof and die upon hitting the chapel wall, then the killer must have one way or another been stationed in the mansion part of the map. So, ignoring the possibility of someone in the chapel group knowing more than they’re letting on, we can probably write those three off the list, and focus on the five people stationed in the mansion.

We can presumably immediately cross Shuichi off the list, and I feel really hesitant to suspect Tsumugi or Gonta when they seem so innocent and motive-less, which just . . . gets us right back to Kokichi and Kaito. And honestly I’d be willing to expect that the game would prefer to keep Kokichi around so that he can continue being an antagonist, while killing Kaito off in this chapter just to make us all feel miserable. So even if I doubt that Kaito willingly murdered Miu, I wouldn’t be surprised if even via some sort of manipulation or technicality he ends up being the killer. It’d be lame if it was the character who immediately got suspected, though, even if it might play out differently than what we might expect. It’d also feel more than a bit lame for the game to kill off yet another person who Shuichi believes in. It’d just feel a bit too much like a repeat of the Kaede thing, but far less clever and unexpected. And considering how Kaede’s death was emotionally difficult to deal with when she just had like one and a half chapter’s worth of screen-time and interaction with Shuichi, Kaito’s been by his side for the entire game since her death, so it’d hurt a lot more, but in a way that’d feel sorta . . . unnecessarily tragic. Especially if it really is to do with Kokichi manipulating things to basically force Kaito to be a culprit without his knowledge. That’d feel a whole lot more shallow than Kaede intentionally murdering Rantarou in a sincere attempt to save everyone. It’d just seem like a kinda lame repeat of that whole thing with much less of the substance.

I mean, as I said, it’d definitely hurt more because there’s been more set-up and development between them, but it’d just make me more annoyed at the game if that’s where this is going, rather than sad but on board with what the game was doing, like how I felt with Kaede’s death. It’s kinda difficult to explain, but I guess it’s just the difference between something feeling natural and something feeling forced.

I know that in my last post I had my whole discussion-rant-ramble-thing about the prospect of Shuichi being gay, and that I said I didn’t really wanna talk about that sort of thing much since it’s the type of thing I’ve talked about a lot over the last year or so in relation to other fandoms, but on a sort of related note to all that, this whole chapter really feels like it’s heading in the direction of being one big complicated gay love triangle. In the sense of Shuichi being into Kaito, and Kokichi being violently jealous of Kaito because he wants Shuichi for himself. The moment at the end of the daily life part that I mentioned in my last post seems to be pretty bluntly pointing at him more or less being a yandere who’s obsessed with Shuichi, and in this section he got even more aggressive about pinning all the suspicion on Kaito and getting him away from Shuichi so he could replace him as Shuichi’s investigation partner. It’s at least pretty clear that he has an issue with Kaito specifically, which is why he decided to pin all this on him and not someone else.

[Fake edit: I ended up talking about Gay Stuff [tm] again for like three or four paragraphs so if I wind up being completely wrong and all of this is completely pointless to even discuss or speculate about, you can skip past it.]

If that’s basically Kokichi’s motive in setting all this up, then it makes me wonder if/how it might come up during the trial. And, as an extension of that, it’d make me wonder if the game might explicitly acknowledge Shuichi’s crush on Kaito for what it is. It’d be hard not to, if it’s a major part of what made Kokichi want to take Kaito out like this, if that’s what he’s doing. Mostly I just hope that it doesn’t get handled in a way like ‘Shuichi’s feelings for Kaito are ~pure and platonic~, but Kokichi? The crazy evil antagonist who has misogyny issues and probably has a criminal record? Yeah he’s gay’. That’d just be incredibly groan-worthy. It’d at least work better if the game acknowledged that both of them are gay, so the framing of it is less ‘Kokichi is gay and evil while Shuichi is straight and good’ and more ‘Kokichi is just, as an individual, a bad person’. That’d work better. It’d still be all sorts of painful if this chapter really does end with us finding out that Kokichi really was able to set Kaito up for being executed simply because he saw him as a romantic rival, but still. Not that I’m sitting here holding my breath in the hopes that maybe this will finally be the video game that has a gay male protagonist, or anything. I don’t even expect the game to acknowledge him as potentially being bi. In general I’m bracing myself for the worst, if only because it feels like this’ll end with Kaito dying, and that would be fundamentally horrible to sit through.

Even though I can’t help but worry about potential issues with framing and presentation and blahblahblah if Kokichi does end up basically being a gay yandere, it’d be interesting if it ends up showing off a more . . . petty and selfish and child-like side to himself, to crack that facade of him being some sort of cool and calculated manipulator who’s always above everyone else. It’d be messy, but I kinda like the idea of us seeing a more messy and unstable side to his personality, especially in a trial setting.

I didn’t really want to go on another whole spiel about this sorta thing immediately after what I said in my last post, but I guess this is technically about a different character so whatever. And for the most part, if I end up somehow being right about this, even though I almost don’t want to be, then it’s probably for the best that I get my thoughts down before the trial happens so that I can say that I called it in advance. And if I’m wrong then it just preserves my wrongness for posterity, like my glorious fuck-up in Chapter 2 which I still feel embarrassed about.

ANYWAY, that whole topic aside, I may as well wrap this up because this post has been going on for far too long. I’m not really sure I have a solid grasp on HOW the murder happened, exactly, beyond the idea of Miu maybe getting killed on the roof and then getting pushed off the roof and into the chapel wall, but I’m still sticking to the idea that the only real suspects I can think of are Kokichi and Kaito, and specifically I can’t help but imagine that Kokichi somehow things up so that Kaito would kill Miu without even intending to. Somehow. Maybe I’m just being paranoid and bracing myself for the most depressing option. Though I guess the most depressing option would be if Kaito turns out to be, like, genuinely evil or something and is lying about everything. I guess that’d technically be a lot more depressing. But considering how I’m completely clueless about certain pieces of evidence like the toilet paper, the roof door lock, the unique attribute of Kokichi’s avatar, and the set-up with the visors, I’m probably going to wind up confused and overwhelmed by a majority of this trial and it’s explanation of how this murder happened. Oh well.

#murasaki rambles #danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa v3 spoilers #I continue to surprise myself with how these posts just keep being unnecessarily long #then again it's not like these are professional reviews or anything so it's fine

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