Psyching myself up because shipping asks are not the place for me to glaze characters so I have to make the aside to glaze Aoi Asahina who is for sure my favourite character in Danganronpa 1 (Sakura is a close second but otherwise it's not even a contest)
I had a period of making posts about Danganronpa 1 where it doesn't look like it because I barely if at all talk about Aoi, but in the background I am very appreciating her existence. It's just that it's tough to sell why Aoi Asahina is cool to me right off the bat because the first instinct is SHE'S SUCH A GIRLIEEEE which makes it sound like it's just a matter of liking the fact that she's energetic but the fact that she's such a girlie just really matters in the context of Danganronpa 1. Aoi is still quirky compared to Makoto, but this intensity doesn't make her too outside of the norm that we can't relate to her, so at least personally Aoi was often the person I could most understand in the cast. In the Aoi vs Byakuya debacle throughout the game, I was pretty much always team Aoi but even besides that bias, Aoi is an interesting presence in Danganronpa 1 because she serves as an important emotional anchor there.
Aoi is juxtaposed with Byakuya throughout the game, mainly from how they continuously clash over how to approach the killing game. While Byakuya's development stands out in Chapter 4, to say that Aoi's character was only in service of it isn't true because Chapter 4 is also the culmination of Aoi's actions, and the fact that while Byakuya looked at matters logically and with the idea that people only care about themselves, Aoi is someone who prizes her own emotions and abides by them even if it doesn't necessarily benefit her.
Aoi is also the person we get to see crying about being in the killing game in Chapter 3, where we note that even someone like her has the flashing thought of murdering someone to leave the academy, but that she tries her best to contain this and think of something else. Sakura was a pillar of support for Aoi during this time, and the moment she's outed as the traitor, most people around her can't bring themselves to trust her, and Aoi gets to read the fake will from Monokuma leading her to believe Sakura took her own life from the despair of these circumstances. The fact that Aoi deliberately messes with the crime scene and tries to deceive everyone into getting the culprit wrong for Chapter 4 is a powerful moment because not only does it touch on the general overarching idea in Danganronpa 1 that anyone can be led to do terrible things in the worst of circumstances but that this doesn't make them bad people, but also because it's the moment where she outsmarts Byakuya.
Rather, that's part of the point of Chapter 4 to begin with. Byakuya perceived himself as superior to everyone else, that in terms of reasoning he is steps ahead of the game, and dismissed Aoi entirely, calling her outburst just a woman being hysterical while choosing not to mingle because he felt there was no benefit to trusting others in a world that is mainly competitive. Kyoko warns him of the price of underestimating human emotion, and that comes in exactly by Byakuya having been played by that very hysterical woman. This is because it was Byakuya who pushed for the deduction that Aoi was the culprit who killed Sakura, which had been part of Aoi's intention to begin with. She messed with the crime scene to make it so that it isn't possible to tell the death was a suicide, and Byakuya doesn't see the merit in Sakura taking her own life so he takes that bait, believing he cracked the case and Aoi was someone acting purely in self-interest, but it was the precise opposite, where her actions were not only self-destructive, but they were meant to actively harm everybody else, too.
To me, this is one of the more interesting parts of Danganronpa 1 because it touches on the overarching idea that anyone can be driven to do terrible acts under the worst of circumstances, but that doesn't make them terrible people. Sayaka is the first example of this, and isn't the last. Aoi's grief takes shape in Chapter 4 where the injustice she feels was enacted upon her friend in the killing game can only be washed away by the deaths of everyone present based on the fake will she read. Aoi was still distraught over Sakura's death to the point she wasn't thinking rationally. Danganronpa as a whole likes to address feelings that aren't clear black and white and aren't rational, and Aoi is one of those characters who have a moment in the series that is marked by the purely irrational nature of human emotion, where normally she would have never done something like this, but being in a killing game, and with the way she saw her friend getting shunned by everyone, she acted to have everyone perish. The most powerful part is, even though he was about to get involved in this too despite having only believed in Sakura wholeheartedly, Makoto forgives her.
The point being because he understands how she feels, where she's coming from. We know that it was the circumstances that battered her and that she's acting irrationally because of it. Makoto suffers watching her desperate to be labelled the culprit, but the point of it is that she is forgiven, and that Aoi is then given strength by the truth behind Sakura's death. This was personally the most compelling part of the game for me, because of the point it's trying to make. Aoi isn't the character positioned as requiring fundamental change because while her actions were wrong, the principle is correct, as emotion has a strong stake in the actions of people and being in tune with this is important. I feel like Aoi is slept on because her character doesn't become different after the events of Chapter 4, but the point of characterization isn't always for the change of a character, but it always is about expanding on that character. Through Chapter 4, I did get more out of Aoi, from the way she reacted to Sakura's death, the fact that she deceived everyone, the way that she was screaming desperately because she couldn't think clearly in her emotional state, and the way even someone as peppy as her can be wracked with negative feelings that cause harm bigger than what Byakuya did in Chapter 2.
Which by the way is a fun recreational potential parallel we can think of, as Byakuya also is messing with the crime scene and deceiving everyone, but ends up found out and his actions are perplexing to Makoto, contrasting with Aoi who did the same but the outcome and reception are different. I think this could be a time someone could go like In other words Byakuya did nothing wrong?? but here is where I would posit that Aoi's grief is something that we can empathize with, whereas Byakuya's actions were because he thought of the situation as a game, and this difference between them is what sets apart how they're perceived. Either way, that itself could be its own ramble, so as you can see, there's juice that can be squeezed about Aoi's role in the narrative, and it's based exactly on the fact that she's such a girlie. That girlie outsmarted Byakuya. That girlie was about to kill everyone to avenge her friend. That girlie was trying her best and Sakura's death was a last straw, but that process of trying is something we can understand as an audience. So, the part where she is that girlie is part of the reason why I like her in Danganronpa. Also since she is such a girlie she says cutie things and is cheerful I also enjoy that--
