This is what I like with games like Danganronpa; your opinions of the characters change throughout! Tenko must’ve been like a wobbly line graph for me. I was a little sceptical at first, but thought it was at least interesting that if you’re going to go the “RRRR I HATE MEN” route that you were playing as a female protagonist so that wasn’t the only interaction you were getting with her. Then chapter 1 happened, so my estimation went down again. Then by the end of the chapter 3 I really quite liked her.
(I'll always love the fact that he took the important measure of writing all those witty and brilliant posthumous lines for himself while slowly dying)
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but there a few moments where there are some really odd “Kokichi” lines in that trial, and people make comments like “What century are you from again?” I like to assume that those moments are when Kaito is trying to ad lib Kokichi, but since he finds the guy utterly incomphrensible, it’s just way off the mark, then he’s like –sigh “Back to the script…”
I don’t think Kokichi did nothing wrong (I don’t think any character does nothing wrong), but I do find him very interesting. One thing I like is that with the lie theme with him, it’s really hard to get a read on what’s really going on with him; it’s very interpretable. Does he always intend to sacrifice Gonta, or does he get so frustrated that Shuichi’s playing him at his lie game and will be believed over him? He obviously picks up the plan at some point to pretend to be the mastermind (possibly initially for causing chaos reasons, but I think he genuinely doesn’t like the game so overperforms how much he does like it) and eventually makes the decision to reveal what he knows in an attempt at halting the game. He makes the decision to sacrifice Gonta for that, to channel people’s hate and give a common enemy, then takes away their reason to kill. But does he always intend to do that when he starts the plan, or no? I think there was an element of self-defense in there, but it’s very much second to progressing his own agenda. He feels he can’t trust anybody, therefore he goes about a solution in his usual inexplicable ways.
Then later he basically kidnaps Kaito. On the surface, that’s because Kaito’s the one who does want to fight against him and causes the most danger. But what is he actually planning to do with him? He can’t keep him there forever. Was he planning the crazy murder plot anyway but it got pushed forward with the situation with Maki (which also provided incentive to Kaito)? Did he intend to use the fact that Kaito was dying to incentivise him initially? (Rarr, I’m the mastermind, but you can effectively kill me without consequence since you’re nearly dead anyway, and it’ll save all your friends!). Who knows?
(Kokichi’s voice acting is consistently excellent, too. The screaming at Gonta is one of the first times the emotion sounds real, too – “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, WE HAD A SIMPLE PLAN, EVEN YOU CAN DO THAT”. Poor Gonta, though. :( )
The Kokichi and Komaeda comparison is interesting because depending on which way you look at it, Komaeda’s version may be considered worse. Kokichi targets the most vulnerable member of the group, but he does get him to consent to committing murder (albeit through manipulation of the facts). Gonta knows what’s he’s agreed to do, even if we don’t see so much of that because trial!Gonta has forgotten about it because of something that was outside of Kokichi’s careful control. On the other hand, Komaeda manufactures a situation which puts his own life at risk and puts the others in a situation where they need to put that fire out. This then makes somebody commit murder while completely unaware that they’ve done so, with no intentions, and no motive, and it’s only because of their own conscience that everybody doesn’t end up dead. Sure, Komaeda isn’t actually intending to kill the murderer – just everyone else – but they’re completely unaware of the situation in contrast to Gonta.
Not judging – I like both Kokichi and Komaeda a lot - but when you analyse it there’s really not a whole lot between them in regards to the chapter 5 gambits.
Re: the ending. A lot of people seem to take the ending of DRV3 as it having took place in virtual reality, and then all of the people will end up waking up. When I played it and we got to the twist, I read it as far more horrifying: as a literal brainwashing that was making people actually murder people in the real world, no VR involved. Just… it’s so many years in the future, our version of reality TV is now literally killing people on TV for the sake of narrative, and that people signing up for the show knew the risks of that. Now –that- would be some nightmare fuel.
Coming back to Kokichi: that guy is so difficult to write, given it’s so hard to get a handle on his thoughts. I found a whole 2 interesting fics about him. One was a time loop (I love time travel!), where every time he dies in the game he wakes up back at the beginning of DRV3 (it’s where he gets all the information for his board of what’s going on). And my ultimate favourite, an AU of sorts where DR1 did exist. It’s a sequel to that and Kokichi, last surviving member of DICE, has been arrested for being a Remnant of Despair (because he’s admitted to it, obviously) even though he barely knows what that is. And because Kokichi will never back down from any lie, he just keeps getting into more and more trouble. Meanwhile, Shuichi’s trying to find him innocent of the whole being a Remnant of Despair thing, but Kokichi doesn’t want to know and is too busy trying to manipulate everybody else around him so he can escape because he’s constantly looking to run while burying himself in more lies.
no subject
(I'll always love the fact that he took the important measure of writing all those witty and brilliant posthumous lines for himself while slowly dying)
I don’t know if it’s intentional, but there a few moments where there are some really odd “Kokichi” lines in that trial, and people make comments like “What century are you from again?” I like to assume that those moments are when Kaito is trying to ad lib Kokichi, but since he finds the guy utterly incomphrensible, it’s just way off the mark, then he’s like –sigh “Back to the script…”
I don’t think Kokichi did nothing wrong (I don’t think any character does nothing wrong), but I do find him very interesting. One thing I like is that with the lie theme with him, it’s really hard to get a read on what’s really going on with him; it’s very interpretable. Does he always intend to sacrifice Gonta, or does he get so frustrated that Shuichi’s playing him at his lie game and will be believed over him? He obviously picks up the plan at some point to pretend to be the mastermind (possibly initially for causing chaos reasons, but I think he genuinely doesn’t like the game so overperforms how much he does like it) and eventually makes the decision to reveal what he knows in an attempt at halting the game. He makes the decision to sacrifice Gonta for that, to channel people’s hate and give a common enemy, then takes away their reason to kill. But does he always intend to do that when he starts the plan, or no? I think there was an element of self-defense in there, but it’s very much second to progressing his own agenda. He feels he can’t trust anybody, therefore he goes about a solution in his usual inexplicable ways.
Then later he basically kidnaps Kaito. On the surface, that’s because Kaito’s the one who does want to fight against him and causes the most danger. But what is he actually planning to do with him? He can’t keep him there forever. Was he planning the crazy murder plot anyway but it got pushed forward with the situation with Maki (which also provided incentive to Kaito)? Did he intend to use the fact that Kaito was dying to incentivise him initially? (Rarr, I’m the mastermind, but you can effectively kill me without consequence since you’re nearly dead anyway, and it’ll save all your friends!). Who knows?
(Kokichi’s voice acting is consistently excellent, too. The screaming at Gonta is one of the first times the emotion sounds real, too – “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, WE HAD A SIMPLE PLAN, EVEN YOU CAN DO THAT”. Poor Gonta, though. :( )
The Kokichi and Komaeda comparison is interesting because depending on which way you look at it, Komaeda’s version may be considered worse. Kokichi targets the most vulnerable member of the group, but he does get him to consent to committing murder (albeit through manipulation of the facts). Gonta knows what’s he’s agreed to do, even if we don’t see so much of that because trial!Gonta has forgotten about it because of something that was outside of Kokichi’s careful control. On the other hand, Komaeda manufactures a situation which puts his own life at risk and puts the others in a situation where they need to put that fire out. This then makes somebody commit murder while completely unaware that they’ve done so, with no intentions, and no motive, and it’s only because of their own conscience that everybody doesn’t end up dead. Sure, Komaeda isn’t actually intending to kill the murderer – just everyone else – but they’re completely unaware of the situation in contrast to Gonta.
Not judging – I like both Kokichi and Komaeda a lot - but when you analyse it there’s really not a whole lot between them in regards to the chapter 5 gambits.
Re: the ending. A lot of people seem to take the ending of DRV3 as it having took place in virtual reality, and then all of the people will end up waking up. When I played it and we got to the twist, I read it as far more horrifying: as a literal brainwashing that was making people actually murder people in the real world, no VR involved. Just… it’s so many years in the future, our version of reality TV is now literally killing people on TV for the sake of narrative, and that people signing up for the show knew the risks of that. Now –that- would be some nightmare fuel.
Coming back to Kokichi: that guy is so difficult to write, given it’s so hard to get a handle on his thoughts. I found a whole 2 interesting fics about him. One was a time loop (I love time travel!), where every time he dies in the game he wakes up back at the beginning of DRV3 (it’s where he gets all the information for his board of what’s going on). And my ultimate favourite, an AU of sorts where DR1 did exist. It’s a sequel to that and Kokichi, last surviving member of DICE, has been arrested for being a Remnant of Despair (because he’s admitted to it, obviously) even though he barely knows what that is. And because Kokichi will never back down from any lie, he just keeps getting into more and more trouble. Meanwhile, Shuichi’s trying to find him innocent of the whole being a Remnant of Despair thing, but Kokichi doesn’t want to know and is too busy trying to manipulate everybody else around him so he can escape because he’s constantly looking to run while burying himself in more lies.
-timydamonkey