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thinkin-bout-milgram · 1 year

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Triage: Initial Thoughts

Hello! Venus back at it again with the 4-5 AM theory time! This time we’re looking at Shidou’s second MV, Triage!

I’m going to be going through my various thoughts on everything as usual, going point by point to analyze each thing. I’ll be referencing Triage, his first MV Throwdown, and the always-fast audio drama translation by @onigiriico!

Alright, let’s do this!

Shidou’s kids died immediately, but his wife had a chance to live.

I’m basically just going to give a quick play by play of what I think happened in the video.

Surprise, Shidou has kids! And a wife, but we figured that already. They’re all very cute and all until they fade out like ghosts pretty early on. Before that happens, though, I think that, chronologically, the opening sequence of Shidou walking with some groceries happens first.

He’s just going about his day, walking around, having a great time. He’s intending to take stuff back to his family and cook dinner or whatever he usually does that we see in the cute scenes.

Then, though, he gets a phone call. He answers it (this is the untranslated “Kirisaki desu” part; please let us know if you find a full translation of what he says on the call there!) and we move on to the next scene. However, later, at 1:57, we hear the line die. I think that this is probably Shidou getting a phone call from the hospital. He sounds casual in his initial response because he probably assumes it’s work related, but once he hears what happened, he drops the line and immediately heads over.

I think Shidou’s kids must have died immediately because of Throwdown. Throwdown has absolutely no references to his kids (though he does mention liking children and stuff like that in his first audio drama, which now kinda stings) and, were he also trying to save them, I’m sure there would’ve been at least some references.

I think it’s far more likely that, whatever happened, both his kids died immediately, but his wife was in a condition where he could still try to save her. That’s when Throwdown occurs. Shidou probably focused intensely on trying to save his wife as a way to cope with the death of his children. Then, after his wife officially died, it really hit him that he had nothing left, and he was forced to process it. That’s when he started feeling all the guilt and wishing for death.

This isn’t really relevant, but my best bet is a car crash. It seems like a likely and viable way that his kids could’ve died instantly while the wife could’ve kept living. As a minor note on that, he’s also walking back with groceries, which could indicate that someone else (the rest of his family) might’ve had a car. I don’t remember if Shidou mentions anything about driving or anything like that at any time, but if I had to call a method of death right now, that’s what I’d go for.

NOTE: I do want to disclaim this by saying it’s also possible that one of his kids was the flower person in Throwdown. He gives a receipt to one of his kids, so that could make some sense. I need to go back and compare the flower person in Throwdown with the people in Shidou’s family now that they have appearances. I also need to reread his first audio drama; he says something about it being fitting that Es is judging him, which could check out if his crime relates to trying to save his kid instead. If I am wrong and it was one of his kids that he was trying to save, then everything about what I’m saying still checks out; just swap everything I say about his wife with one of the kids.

Shidou purposefully showed us the least forgivable parts of his crime in Throwdown.

Looking back on it, Shidou painted himself in an awful light in Throwdown, and I’m sure it was intentional. After all, he was trying to get us to give him a guilty verdict. If you say that a prisoner like Muu might have been altering what part of her story we received in order to get her desired verdict in the first round (innocent), Shidou could absolutely do the same thing with a guilty verdict.

He doesn’t show us any of the context of his loved ones and how much he loved them; that was all stuff we had to read between the lines of. We see him butchering plant after plant only to end in horrific failure without ever seeing him succeed at anything surgical. (He still should’ve hypothetically been saving lives while doing all of this; it’s not like he was ONLY killing people.)

He even shows us the horrified reactions of the loved ones of patients he killed. I can only imagine that he would do that if he was trying to spark a negative reaction in us.

In contrast, this MV is very straightforwardly showing how the day he lost his family went for Shidou and directly examines what verdict Shidou wants (more on this later). I think, therefore, that this is probably a much more honest view of the situation than Throwdown, at least in terms of how Shidou perceives the truth.

Shidou is constantly plagued by the guilt of what happened.

The simplest way to explain this is with this image:

When showing Shidou’s family turning to ghosts, he views the man that he used to be as dying with them. Shidou, as he was, is dead. Still, what happened clearly still impacts him. That’s pretty obvious, but I’m talking down to the details. He mentions kids and liking them in both of his audio dramas. Further, take this lovely image:

Pancakes. Shidou made pancakes for his kids. In BOTH Minigrams 3 (Pancake) and 24 (Pancake: a Second Trial) Shidou is directly shown talking about pancakes and their relation to children. He really wants Amane, the young child, to try some. It seems like he used to make pancakes for his kids before they died. He’s very clearly not recovered in any sense. That’s not surprising, but it’s still something to point out.

Triage takes place almost entirely before and after Throwdown.

That sounds a little confusing, but all I mean is that Throwdown is completely isolated from this MV. Some parts of this MV happen before the events of Throwdown; those are the ones featuring Shidou’s wife and kids, as well as the ones where he simply looks younger. The other parts are clearly looking back at the same time frame, but are from Shidou’s present perspective, here in Milgram. Those are the ones where he reflects on his verdict or directly addresses what verdict he wants.

Most directly, I think the part at 2:14 indicates this. Shidou, looking back on the death he caused (knives in the pomegranates and other food, dead flowers, receipts from the surgeries that we also saw in Throwdown), says “I want to be INNOCENT / I want to live.” That’s him, in the Milgram prison, right now, coming to terms with the fact that he actually, genuinely wants to live right now.

In the audio drama, he’s clearly conflicted. He still says that he wants to die, that he wants to atone for his sins and that dying is the only way he can make it up to the people he killed. He also, though, says that, at least for right now, he wants to live. Futa and especially Mahiru are on death’s door, and there’s no telling what other injury might occur. He believes he’s essential to saving lives within the Milgram prison (and I think he’s 100% right).

He even directly references this in the song lyrics, talking about “extracting the fang.” The fang is clearly Kotoko, given that Milgram has referred to the damage Kotoko does with fang imagery before and given that that’s what he’s currently healing. He has to be the one to save them because he’s the only one who can; as a result, to save lives, he has to care about his life right now. While he’s still unsure of what final verdict he wants, he knows that he needs to stay alive, at least going into trial 3.

VOTE: INNOCENT

Personally, this one’s a no-brainer. Es theorizes in the audio drama that Shidou only harvested organs from braindead patients, and though he never outright confirms it, based on his responses, it seems to me like that’s true. That means his crime isn’t as severe as we initially thought it was.

Additionally, he’s right; he is indispensable to us right now. He outright says in the audio drama that if he stops giving Mahiru care, she’ll die, whether or not anything else happens to her. That basically tells us that voting Shidou guilty means Mahiru dies. That’s not good, and I’d rather avoid prisoner death when we think it’s possible.

I also just don’t think it’s smart to change verdicts on him here. If we decide that, after all is said and done, we can’t forgive Shidou, we should do that with the third verdict. Here, we want to leave both options open. Right now, Shidou is torn between wanting to live and wanting to die. If we switch to guilty, we’ll ruin any chance he has at recovering a will to live and a will to atone through any means other than death. If we want to preserve the option of forgiving him in the end, I think we have to forgive him here. We can debate whether his actions were forgivable or not in the last round.

#admin venus #milgram #ミルグラム #kirisaki shidou #shidou kirisaki #milgram theory #i'd like to apologize if this is incoherent #i moved around a bunch of paragraphs and i don't wanna proofread rn #i have to pack and go home for spring break tomorrow and it's already 5 am #the lights only just came back on recently #it's been a power out for a while over here which is why the other admins were talking about battery so much #also the mv didn't have english subs right at the drop so we watched in french for a hot minute #that was fun #also apologies if i'm too much of a shidou apologist but legit i feel like his crime is at least extremely understandable #and he does genuinely seem to want to help #the audio drama made me emo though ngl #like... oh... THAT'S why you were commenting on Es being a kid and all that so much...#i lost my train of thought. anyways have your initial thoughts #i'm gonna try to get the futa/mu/shidou full theories up over the next week or so cause break

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good-beanswrites · 3 months

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I mentioned this in the AO3 comments, but:

What does Fuuta think about how Es treated Amane at the end of her interrogation? (Still not completely sure what happened)

And in trial 2, what does he think now that Kotoko has joined the ranks of "people who have been hit by Es" while he has not? (And Amane, if she didn't already count)

Yessss thank you :3 I always enjoy LCSyS questions (even if I take forever to reply to comments and things LMAO) Though, some details apply outside of the au too

Well. I don’t know if it really needs to be said for Fuuta, but yeah, he is pissed 😅 Even if she wasn’t directly hit, he would be just as riled up that she was treated so roughly. (Ah, I’m once again tempted to write up my mv machine post, but) basically I picture the machine itself locking the prisoner in place with sudden restraints. There were reactions of shock and fear, as if it were affecting them immediately, and prisoners like Fuuta and Muu would definitely run from it if they could. So I believe that moment in Amane’s first interrogation is just Es standing over her and rubbing it in. There’s no direct harm, but the fact that they are so smug about her helplessness is just as psychologically painful.

I don’t know if Amane would really go into detail about her interrogation (the others who were hit seem the type to come right out and say it), but she mentions it during the trial hiatus debriefing. Fuuta is furious: “why didn’t you say something sooner?? I would have kicked their ass right then and there!” His outburst is the very reason she doesn’t tell him that she was hit in T2. She knows he’ll get himself into more trouble, and she feels pressured to bear it on her own. She ends up pulling him aside and telling him during the second hiatus. He has to tone down his explosion a bit to focus on comforting her more than cursing Es. Though I don’t know exactly what will happen, the knowledge that she was hit drives him to stand by her side in T3 and defend her every chance he gets, affecting whatever changes we already are getting hints of.

He feels equally upset when Kotoko mentions getting hit, and Kotoko's nonchalance allows him to do a full rant. She doesn’t seem that phased, and admits it makes sense they would have an extreme reaction to her violence. She says that she deserved it, and Fuuta of all people stumbles over his words to tell her that she didn’t – violence does not deserve more violence. (He’s learning, folks!) In the privacy of his own thoughts, the poor guy is mortified. He would be grateful if he didn't keep comparing himself with the others who didn't get hit. “Do I look as fragile and girly as Yuno, Muu, and Mahiru?” “Do they not see me as a threat?” “Do they pity me or something?” He makes up his mind to be a big, manly threat in T3 and be taken seriously enough to get hit. (He can only learn so much at a time, folks.)

#milgram #lights camera sing your sins #thanks for the question! im glad you asked on here too because i probably wouldve held back on ao3 #also right after im done posting these i am sitting down and writing my mv machine post!!! no one else will care but i keep wanting to!!!#outside of the au fuuta would think kotoko getting hit Was deserved but i think hed think twice about it #hes starting to pick up on the whole cycles of violence thing: es hurting kotoko for hurting fuuta for hurting killcheroy who was doing har #but he cant fathom why amane gets caught up in all of this and hes LIVID #it draws him closer to her even without the religious aspect #they both just want to protect the other in the way they think is best :')#and yeah even in canon i think kotoko isnt too phased by the hit -- her language is force after all #she may not think she deserves it per se but she respects es for showing their power like she did #and hey who knows! maybe fuuta comparing himself against the girls is what finally kicks off her transition <3 #fuuta kajiyama #amane momose #kotoko yuzuriha

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