i felt like drawing rain code again so here are some doodles
i think most people in the fandom assume yuma's real hair is purple and makoto is the one who dyed his hair? but i honestly always assumed the opposite since the double has long gray hair as well. idk
shoutout to copy abilities in media, gotta be one of my favorite genders. first time i saw yuma sensing aphex use his forte, i knew i was in for a treat.
in fact, the fortes are interesting in general. i absolutely love how well-established the rules and limitations are for each one: fubuki cannot rewind time further after doing so once, halara cannot see living beings in their postcognition, vivia cannot touch anything in spectral mode, desuhiko gets exhausted when he's disguised for too long, and yuma....
wait actually what are the limitations of coalescence?
shinigami tells yuma that, with coalescence, he can only use it if he gets consent from the other party and holds hands with them as he uses it. those are some pretty good limitations, i'd say. they fit very well with yuma's arc about depending on others, too!
except... neither of those limitations are true. makoto has the same exact powers as yuma, yet he thoroughly breaks both of those rules.
first of all, he uses it to copy the handwriting (put a pin in this btw) of the other master detectives while they are unconscious. now, im sure we're all aware of this, but being unconscious is, notably, not giving consent. yet makoto seems to have no issue taking their abilities in such a state. extremely naughty of him.
but, if we look at the scene in the ch 5 bathhouse, he still asks yuma to "give me a hand" like some sort of fae creature pulling a "Your name, please?" trick. perhaps an argument could be made that the person doesn't have to give consent, but you can't use coalescence if they actively deny you. so...
Rule #1 - To use coalescence, you need the other party to not not give consent.
so how about that second rule? you need to hold hands, right? i think that's somewhat true, but yuma is definitely under the misconception that you need to be holding hands the whole time. this is wonderful to me, by the way. how terrible life would be if he wasn't adorably holding hands with his friends... but of course, it's not necessary, because makoto only needed to grasp yuma's hand for a little bit to gain all the benefits of the mystery labyrinth.... except getting his own big titty goth gf. sorry, pal. anyway,
Rule #2 - Hand-to-hand contact is required to activate coalescence, but it doesn't need to be maintained.
we kinda knew this from the start, though didn't we? not only were all the other master detectives able to enter and stay in the labyrinth (put a pin in this too) without keeping a hold on him the whole time, but also yuma could sense the other fortes being used on the amaterasu express without holding hands at all...
wait why the fuck could he do that? also, why does he never do it again??? is sensing fortes a part of coalescence? is it because of his nebulous mind-fuck bond with shinigami still not setting itself in stone? did the writers simply forget he could do that? once he reaches kanai ward, he doesn't sense when any of the other detectives use their abilities unless he's holding hands with them. does the rain cause some interference? what the fuck was up with this? okay, whatever.
Rule #3 - Without holding hands, those with coalescence can still sense when other fortes are being used in close proximity... sometimes.
with that wishy-washy rule set in place, let's unpin the thing about the detectives sharing yuma's access to the labyrinth. shinigami tells yuma that coalescence "works both ways" when used, which is really interesting to me. in this case, it automatically gives the mystery labyrinth access to his friends without yuma consciously doing so, which implies a lack of control over what the other party gains from him when he uses coalescence. but this raises another question: what would the other person gain from him if he doesn't have the book of death's pact?
when makoto uses it on him, yuma gains nothing new, but that could just be because makoto has nothing to give that yuma doesn't have. what happened to people that pre-game number one used coalescence on? did they temporarily gain a weaker version of it? did they get imperceptively better deductive reasoning skills? did they gain some extra trauma? either way, im interested in how this "both ways" thing works when yuma doesn't have shinigami equipped.
Rule #4 - Coalescence works both ways. If the user takes an ability, they will unconsciously give an ability in return.
now it's time to unpin the part where we mention that makoto uses coalescence to copy handwriting, because this opens a whole other can of worms. the whole game, i was under the impression that coalescence only copied fortes. or, at least, i thought it exclusively copied supernatural abilities, since the labyrinth is technically not a forte. then again, desuhiko claims his forte isn't supernatural, so i guess that's on me.
but still... handwriting? that's a very mundane thing to copy. what else can he copy? skills? trades? physical abilities? could he hold hands with neurosurgeon and get the job done just as well? if he held hands with halara and chose to target their fighting skills instead of postcognition, would he, too, be able to take out a hoard of peacekeepers?
i can say one thing almost certainly: he can't just copy over knowledge. as in, if someone knows something about the case, he can't just shake their hand and get the answer transplanted into him. he doesn't even get the knowledge of how the fortes he borrows works- everyone has to tell him the rules. so it seems to be limited to skills and abilities, even though we could theoretically blur the definition of what makes a "skill" and what constitutes as "knowledge."
but that's not all, is it? one of the strangest usages of coalescence we see is when yuma shares fubuki's power. it's never yuma who's rewinding time. it's fubuki, but yuma instead gives her a support buff in stamina by sharing the burden of her exhaustion debuff. and while he never seems to be nearly as tired as she is (cowardice from the dev team for not giving us suspiciously flushed and sweaty sprites for yuma like they do with fubuki), from this alone we learn that coalescence doesn't just copy abilities, but it copies... feelings too?? does this mean he could reasonably act as a healing salve to anyone who's exhausted- not just forte users- by sharing it with them? at the very least, he can share the burden (or boon possibly?) of any side effects or drawbacks of someone else's forte. that just makes me curious about what'd happen if he used coalescence on someone who's forte has a drawback of making them horny. who said that.
Rule #5 - Coalescence copies fortes, skills, supernatural abilities, and can even lessen the side effects of abilities through sharing.
edit: i forgot about one more rule, but the game outright tells you this one and it's indisputable, so i won't go into any deep analysis. still, for the sake of completion:
Rule #6 - Coalescence can only hold one ability at a time. Copying a new ability will automatically overwrite a previously stored one.
and that's it, i think. these are all the rules and limitations of coalescence. absolutely busted ability too, especially in a world with heavy limitations like melami's or zange's. but with that in mind...
why did shinigami lie?
or, well, i guess a better question would be "why was she mistaken about its limits?" my theory is that number one lied to her about those limitations on purpose.
we all saw how makoto used coalescence- with lots and lots of trickery. while his grand scheme through the whole game plan could not have been done alone, he still uses people quite extensively, especially the detectives.
i used to always wonder if number one even used coalescence, because there's something real ironic about it being the ability of Number "I Work Alone" One von RainCode. knowing what i do now, i think he used it like makoto- tricking people into grabbing his hand and using their skills as a means to an end. he never considered it "working together" because it truly isn't.
but when he forms a pact with shinigami, he tells her the rules of coalescence. and he lies. he lies by making a set of rules that'd force his amnesiac self to depend on others, and i genuinely love that.
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