what do you think abt the claim that the japanese version (ndrv3 ch4 neo world) kokichi saying that 'he'd do anything to get the attention of someone he loved, even strangle them'.
And the next major scene cutting to a strangled Miu.
Still think that that line (english or japanase) was meant to make even the player think ouma was the culprit before the trial had even started and have some more implications abt him and miu's relationship.
I agree, it's setup for the trial and maybe shipbait if you squint. I have no idea how some people took this as proof of sai\ouma being canon.
I was deleting old screenshots of the game off of my phone and this just occured to me:
Why does the fandom shit on Tenko for wanting to believe in Himiko during the CH2 trial despite the magic show's suspicious circumstances, but not shit on Kaito for doing the same thing for Maki in the same trial? Especially when Kaito actively lies for Maki and tries to cover for her despite the evidence pointing to her.
Not to mention Shuichi, who not only went along with Kaito lying for Maki and joined in, but also immediately ruled out Kaito as a suspect without even considering the evidence in CH4's trial.
Everyone should get shit on for pulling this with lives on the line, not just Tenko. C'mon guys, you have to be consistent here.
do you think miu would've helped kokichi's plan in ch4 if she wasn't trying to kill him? like, for example, if she decided to take out shuichi instead?
No, I don't.
The thing with Gonta and Kokichi is that they both really wanted to help the cast and often put the cast before themselves. I think that their desire to help the cast is what helped Kokichi and Gonta pull themselves together, despite their overwhelming despair, to be able to put the plan into action.
However, Miu is... the exact opposite. She puts herself before the others at every single opportunity and is already really emotionally unstable as it is. If Kokichi had shown her "the secret of the outside world" Miu would be too focused on her own despair to even think about helping the others– much less be willing to be the only one left alive, trapped in the school with only monokuma for company and no where else to go, like Gonta was.
Probably everything pertaining to his plan in CH4; so the investigation, the trial itself, and the post trial dialogue with Gonta. Especially the post trial dialogue with Gonta.
CH4 was where Kokichi was in his element and it was an impressive show of talent, so I really enjoyed pouring over the details.
I'm not sure how I want to word it, but right now I'm thinking about how Kokichi did have a character arc and y'all're sleeping on it.
After all, going from:
"I'm going to survive no matter what" and trying to work with the others and help them get along by scolding Kaede after the despair road, being able to get almost everyone on his side despite his apparent obnoxiousness, calming everyone with a lie, trying to render CH2's motive useless, etc.
To:
Being suicidal, trying to mercy kill everyone, having his one partner try to kill him and his other partner die in vain rendering the leader all alone with absolutely one to help him.
And then later to:
Having everyone rally against him (the leader who's meant to be rallying) after he plotted all alone to make the campus a safe haven without telling anybody or having a partner, and an attempted murder and torturing from Maki forcing his hand into helping the cast after his suicide choosing to try and make the best of his death (and Kaito's) instead of just dragging Maki down with him.
Is quite the arc, is it not?
His resolve to make the best of the situation never changed, but certainly his number of "followers" dropped and his views on what "the best" even means changed drastically.
You talked about how Kaito's death set a hopeful/victorious tone for chapter 6 and that made me realize that his death and the aftermath of it isn't treated like a sad, tragic, major event. Kaito "winning" over Monokuma and the need that the game has for him to be inspirational at all costs distracts from the fact that it's still a death… he wasn't butchered like the other culprits but he still died. (and he was doomed and suffering all along so it's tragic in itself, but that gets glossed over.)
To talk about the trio's dynamic again, because this tone was set, neither Shuichi or Maki feel like they are grieving. They cry a bit in the courtroom, and that's the only time they felt distraught or lost. After that they talk about how he wouldn't want them to be sad, how he helped them, how they will be strong for him. It feels a bit distant and detached. They talk about Kaito more like he's been dead for some time, like the pain of losing him has subsided, whereas it should be acute, because damn, it's Kaito, their best friend, the guy that they were (both?) into, died like, five hours ago from a disease they didn't know he had until five seconds before his death. Also, it contrasts a lot with how they were leaning on Kaito for anything while he was alive.
Chapter 6 really is wacky
I agree, rather than a supremely tragic death like Kirumi or Kaede, Kaito had something more akin to a hero's sendoff.
As for how this influenced Shuichi and Maki, they suffer the most from having whatever characterization is most convenient for the writers at the time instead of anything that's cohesive or explained/justified by canon so I'm not shocked they got this kind of treatment in the end.
CH6 is where the writers had to quit milking their stagnant development and actually give the player some pay off because we're at the end and it's about time, so they're distinctly more hopeful than usual (like Kaito) and it feels super off considering they've been dragging their heels on it for ages.
Anything you’d like to share on the theory that Kokichi doesn’t have a talent
It's a braindead take unless you can show me a screenshot from the new game that somehow proves it.
He's absolutely the Ultimate Leader and there are several moments that prove it:
When he scolded Kaede for her bad leadership in the despair road so that everyone wouldn't lose morale.
When he lulled most of the group into a sense of calm by falsely claiming that Monokuma was perma-dead.
When he tried to prevent CH2's murder by forcing the cast to have a viewing party, partnering with Gonta to do so.
When he hinted at Kiibo multiple times to use his robot abilities to get them out, accurately assessing Kiibo's ability to get them free if CH6 is anything to go by.
When he called out Shuichi for lying and covering for Maki because it could've gotten everyone killed.
When he made himself into an antagonistic figure because he was accurately able to read Monokuma's intent to destroy their hope and chose to be the lesser evil for the group, even though it cast suspicion on him and put a target on his back, instead of letting the cast face the full brunt of TDR's attempts to break their spirits.
When he blew Maki's cover and kept reminding the cast to be wary, despite having the option to stay silent and not cause a very angry and deadly assassin to hold a grudge against him, because he knew she had the most potential out of the cast to get everyone killed by winning the game.
Literally all of CH4, but especially during the investigation and the trial. Read my analysis post about his plan, it's such a good moment but it'll take too long to elaborate in a way that can do it justice.
When he was literally the only one resolute enough to not fall in line with Kaito's shitty leadership by the end of the game, standing his ground even though it pit everyone against him.
When he- amidst his despair and suicidal thoughts, right after his only friends died and his would-be final plan failed- found a way to keep the mastermind and Kaito in check in order to turn the school into a safe haven from the apocalypse.
When he managed to blackmail Kaito, his biggest detractor, into working with him with nothing but his quick wit and charisma while suffering from painful poison and crossbow bolt wounds.
When he saved the girl who literally attempted (and kinda succeeded) to torture him to death despite having the option to take her out with him, instead choosing to sacrifice himself slowly and painfully to try and help a cast of people who vilified him and didn't even care that he had died.
Whatever the fuck else I can't think of off the top of my head.
Kokichi proves throughout the entire game that he cares about the cast, even more than himself, despite their hatred and violence towards him– showing them a compassion that they never afford him even when he's at his breaking point and it's painfully obvious that he's struggling on his own.
Not just that, but he can also accurately predict the casts's actions and emotions, assess their abilities, read their intentions, plan thorough countermeasures, and use multiple methods to lead them to the truth (or the conclusion he wants them to reach) even when they are turned against him.
Explain to me how an ability that is this good and thoroughly laid out by the writers could be anything but his ultimate talent. Ya can't, because it can't be anything but that.
Would Kokichi have been on board with sacrificing themselves to stop the killing games in the last chapter?
Honestly? If he couldn't come up with an alternative solution then probably.
If they're fictional characters and there isn't hope for all of them to live lives outside the killing game then ending their suffering and effecting change that stops the suffering of others is the next best thing he could hope for; not living miserably, not dying for nothing, and stopping TDR.
It would be in line with what he did in CH4– try to preemptively prevent the cast from suffering– and what he did in CH5– try to stop the mastermind even at the cost of his own life when he was backed into a corner.
Obviously Kokichi wouldn't be fine with everyone dying when there's a better way, but I'm not sure if there was a better option available to them, or if he would have been able to think of it, so he probably would've gone with it and that would be perfectly in character for him. Even more so than the others to be honest.
not only the pacing of Maki getting close to him and falling for him is off and also it has some good moments in the early stages but it worsens with time.
Their interactions begin with Maki having quite the negative opinion of Kaito, she complains that he's dragging her places, harassing her, yanking her arm and not letting her go... Even if Kaito is defending her and inviting her to hang out with him, none of that has any effect on Maki and she still dislikes him.
Then Kaito is absent for a few days, and when he disappears and he comes back... well Maki appreciates him. She clearly worries about him and why he's absent and says she wants to keep up the training sessions when Kaito wants to change the training time or cancel the sessions altogether.
Kaito is back for investigation time, but after he jumps on Maki he's away again. Chapter 4 begins, and the trio spend time together and finally Maki has that conversation with Shuichi when she hints that she has fallen for someone in the killing game.
The writing has Maki be cold and indifferent to Kaito, then doesn't let her spend any significant time with him for most of chapter 3 cuz they keep yanking him away from us, and then even in chapter 4 when Kaito is really back, they all hang out as a group, and Maki can't have, like heart-to-heart conversations with Kaito that would have justified her falling for him. She falls for Kaito after a week of interacting, her opinion on Kaito changes from really bad to really good in two days, and they weren't interacting (or not enough) for most of that time, for all of that to happen.
(A wild guess: Shuichi and Maki's training conversations about Kaito during his absence are supposed to replace... the interactions that should've happened between Kaito/Maki. You know, Shuichi keeps telling her how Kaito's training and support are changing his life, yeah yeah... and that's why Maki is all soft and admirative when they meet again, I guess.)
Why the writers avoided genuine interactions between Maki and Kaito where she would grow to like him in an organic way, I dunno, but the whole writing for the trio is rushed, off and lazy... Kaito is absent in this chapter for no good reason in my opinion (he's so ill there, but then he carries on pretty well almost till chapter 6?) especially considering that's the chapter where they're building up momo/haru and the trio, and that makes no sense and makes everything needlessly complicated.
Now, on their dynamic worsening with time. At this early stage of momo/haru, even if she's grown to like him for no reason, Maki is still able to see Kaito's flaws, and call him out when needed or when he's acting weird or lying. Whether it is Kaito flaking out on them, his unexplained absence and his lies about it, or the fact that he's not doing his push-ups during training, or when she tells Shuichi during the chapter 3 investigation that he's useful for something at least, compared to Kaito... Maki can put him in his place.
Fast forward to chapter 5 and Maki has become a true follower of Kaito. She takes his side over Shuichi's after the two fall out, despite Kaito fucking up big time and risking everyone's lives and Shuichi coming up with facts and truth. There's the moment when Kaito tells her that women shouldn't handle weapons, and she doesn't react to the insult, and just after she teaches that guy how to use a weapon I guess? She has asked him before why he's checking the weapons, she knows that's not normal stuff for Kaito, but she doesn't push more than that. I'm sure there's other times, especially in this chapter, when Maki felt that he was up to no good and she just let him go ahead. I don't know why she doesn't talk to him anymore?
She has a different personality than Shuichi, it looked like she could handle Kaito's bullshit (and was doing it in the beginning), and in the end momo/haru turned like Shuichi and Kaito's follower-leader "I just follow you passively and don't communicate and question" dynamic.
Considering how in the first game we got a chapter showing the awful effects of toxic masculinity, I’m shocked we got a character that tried to enforce that and is portrayed as someone to look up to in V3
Especially when he could just... Not Be Like That? Make someone else be an asshole and– GASP!– have your major support character be an actually decent guy.
Like even Maki could've taken over for that part given that her job requires cutting off your emotions, never being seen as weak, having no relationships, and dealing with your pain alone. There was no need to make Kaito, the character you want everyone to idolize, Like That when you have the perfect opportunity to do it with Maki, a character it would make sense for backstory-wise and who was already planned to have a character arc about similar issues anyway.
It would be more understandable and forgivable coming from Maki's POV, but nope! We're expected to empathize with and support the never-improving, ever-stagnant Kaito, whose only excuse is being raised by his loving grandparents.
Like if they absolutely HAD to have these traits present, Maki was RIGHT THERE.
Idk sounds like a no-brainer to me but what do I know lmao
Can we talk about how the workout squad sucks actually? Specifically for Maki.
Under the cut for length:
People will sit and complain about things they think are ""forced"" but then see no problems with the fact that Maki, who is a literal assassin known for keeping secrets and being cold– opened up during her SECOND dialogue with Shuichi as if that would ever make sense when she:
Doesn't care about Shuichi in the slightest and has no reason to trust him.
Didn't want to be there in the first place and was forced to come by Kaito (who flaked out anyways.)
They will also see no problems with the fact that Kaito forced her to hang out with him by annoying her until she caved in (and then started pissing her off on purpose because he assumed he knew what was best for her better than she did herself!!) And, because they see nothing wrong with this, they will also completely overlook the fact that in the beginning Maki completely and utterly made it clear she wanted Kaito to leave her alone but was later retconned by the writers into loving the same aspects that she previously hated him for.
Maki not only deserved better, but needs better not only because her character deals with extremely heavy topics (child abuse & torture, and the aftermath of said topics) that demand respect but also because her established character all but breaks down entirely the moment Kaito's mere name is mentioned in a 50ft radius of her.
The only relationship that's genuinely forced is the workout trio, and more often than not it's Maki who has to bend over backwards and bite the OOC bullet to make this poorly written dynamic ""function"" (which it doesn't really) and I'd like to know why more people aren't talking about this.
Ou/goku is not toxic. Period. Gonta knew what he was doing, had every chance to decide not to do it, and he still went with it anyway because after seeing the flashback light he believed that the only way out from this despair was death. Saying otherwise infantilizes him and insults his agency.
Kokichi, who also truly believed that the only way out of this despair was death, showed Gonta what he believed was the truth and– hold onto your hats because this is gonna totally be super toxic guys /s– asked Gonta for help with a plan to try and spare everyone from the same suicidal despair that they felt, a "despair that makes you want to die."
It would be manipulation if Gonta was blackmailed or if he were otherwise forced/coerced into agreeing... but he wasn't.
It would also be manipulation if Kokichi was knowlingly lying to Gonta about the outside world... but he wasn't.
Rewatching CH2 and I just realized that Kaito also repeatedly rang the doorbell to Shuichi's dorm and didn't tell Shuichi anything about where they were going or what was going to happen there, just like Kaito did to Maki. So apparently this is a pattern of behavior for him and he just thinks this is fine?? Yikes.
The difference between Maki and Shuichi is that Shuichi stupidly, immediately went with it despite literally wondering if he was going to be murdered and Maki only reluctantly went after she realized that Kaito wouldn't stop ringing the bell every night until she gave up and even then she still kinda tried to bail on them lmao.
This is stupid because as a physically weak detective Shuichi has a huge target on his back and no way to defend himself from someone like Kaito while Maki is more than capable of subduing Kaito or running away, the only she has to worry about being "what if she accidentally kills him while trying to subdue him?" Shuichi should have been just as if not more reluctant than Maki was.
For a detective Shuichi sure has no sense of caution or like any self preservation instincts.
Some thoughts about Maki's character and her potential:
Under the cut for length:
Maki and Shuichi have such a forced dynamic it's unreal.
Like most of the time Maki is blunt, cold, and insults him kind of a lot, but then Shuichi will slide in a remark about Kaito and suddenly they're best friends. The switch is so bizarre to me and it almost feels unnatural in a way. I'm also a little surprised that Shuichi still considers Maki to be his friend when they don't really connect outside of Kaito-related things and she near-constantly insults his intelligence and skills.
However, despite this strange dynamic, I almost wish there had been more of it. Maki's apathy, while harsh, could've lead to some actual development for Shuichi because she's one of the only ones who points out his flaws without brushing them off. Those moments don't lead to anything in the narrative –likely to make room for Kaito to "help" Shuichi instead– but there were a few times where it felt like Shuichi could've really reflected on himself (if given the opportunity by the writers) because of Maki.
This is part of the reason why I really think that Maki could have made a really good antagonist– or at the very least, I would have loved to see her make an actual impact on the story instead of being Kaito's designated prop character, because she really did have the potential. But no, alas, she's been held back and nerfed instead.
I wanna make it clear that I don't think that Maki's potential was ruined soley by Kaito, because that kind of sounds like that's what I'm implying, but I'm not. Kaito did affect a lot of her character in a negative way, but honestly she was held back just as much by the writers. She was never allowed to impact the story outside of her designated role, which didn't afford her much of a chance to really shine or hold any significance to the narrative as it should of considering she was literally one of only THREE (3!) survivors.
I would also like to add that Maki's agency as a character that can impact the narrative is continually stripped down and undermined by having her every action dictated by whether or not Kaito approves. The writers treat Maki like a child looking to their parents for approval rather than an independent person (that literally just met Kaito like what a few days ago?) with her own views and desires and it's depressing to see her go from a lonely but still independent person to a watered-down hangers on that can only do things if they revolve around Kaito in some way. It's to the point that I'd be surprised she was able to go to the bathroom without raising her hand and asking Kaito for permission first.
Despite every trait and every bit of potential she had as a character, the only things that were focused on by the narrative were her past and her crush so she could be Kaito's fixer-upper, which I believe was a bit of a waste in all honesty. Personally, I think she aided the story more before she developed rather than after, and I'm a bit bitter about it. Sure, she was mean, (and still is honestly) but a character doesn't have to be nice in order to be good, y'know?
Maki was better-suited to the narrative before she met Kaito, and that's partly Kaito's fault for influencing her and partly the writers' fault for not realizing the amount of potential she had in areas outside of Kaito. The lack of narrative impact is a sign that they only saw her as Kaito's love interest and prop, rather than a character who could have really shined if the focus had been shifted away from Kaito trying to fix her and more towards the girl herself.
Maki, even though her development was heartwarming, was ruined by her character arc. It's not a bad thing that she opened up more, but if that's the only time she has the spotlight on her, if that's the only thing they'll let shine, then I would rather have her stay the way she was during Chapter 1.
Finding a good balance between her straight-forward, no-fucks-given personality and her newfound compassion for others would have been the way to go, because both benefit her character in different ways, but if I could only choose one I would pick no development because that would have more narrative benefits. Her place in the story could've been more defined and prominent in either case, just please god focus on more things than a trauma she never truly recovers from and a crush that only served to make her inconsistent because they both go absolutely nowhere.
TL;DR?
I believe that if Maki had been a sort of antagonistic-support character focused on pointing out the flaws and inconsistencies in other characters, causing them to reflect and change for the better, she would have shined so much more than she was able to in canon because she would have been able to impact the other characters and add to the logical side of the "emotions vs logic" struggle which is a core source of tension for the story.
Fuck whoever had the idea to attach her to Kaito instead.
