So I'm new to the Danganronpa fandom,and there's something that's boggling my mind.Why are there so much fanworks showing Kokichi as a smol, sensitive,baby boy before the events of Danganronpa V3?Like,I know the characters got brainwashed before they got into the killing game,but how does the woosy child get turned into the gremlin bastard we know and love/hate?
man trust me I don’t know either
kokichi’s fanon pregame personality was constructed by the fandom with no basis besides like “they’re the opposite of who they are in the game”–which doesn’t make sense to me either and also has pretty much no basis as a theory, and honestly I think it’s a really shallow interpretation.
plus, I wouldn’t say brainwashed is the right word, but even so, the ending of v3 is so subjective it’s almost fully open to interpretation what actually happened. the common reception is that all of them willingly signed up for the killing game and had their personalities rewritten, but if you take it in context for the rest of the series, you can’t completely erase who a person is (look at kamukura, for example, who still vaguely remembers being hajime).
basically what I think really happened is that fans probably wanted to woobify kokichi somehow and/or justify all the trash things he did, but how I see it, kokichi is the representative for lies in the game, so if anyone is obligated to be consistent, it’s him, if that makes sense.
I think maybe the purpose of the story is to just tell its own story and that what’s outside the bubble of the story doesn’t really matter, otherwise maybe they would have been more specific and shuichi wouldn’t have ended the game on such an ambiguous note: that being whether or not tsumugi was lying and whether hope’s peak was real. the point is, kokichi represented these ambiguous possibilities for the whole game, and the acceptance of these possibilities (stated to be lies and in the most annoying way possible, but that’s beside the point) so if he was simplified down to “he’s the same as everyone else”, it just doesn’t hit right. you get what I mean?
anyway, this is just how I see it the whole thing.
saiouma phantom thief + soulmate au where you can temporarily see the prints of wherever your soulmate touches once you turn the age of 18.
when saihara’s 18th birthday comes up, all his friends are excited for him. the chances may be slim, but there’s still the possibility that his soulmate even goes to their school! wouldn’t that be something?
unfortunately, no such thing seems to be the case as a few days pass by and saihara has yet to see any prints of his soulmate’s. undeterred by this, though, his more hopeful friends assure him that he’ll find his soulmate eventually.
-
about a week after his birthday, a museum is reportedly robbed by none other than the infamous phantom thief. saihara’s uncle ends up being called to the crime scene to investigate, and brings his nephew along as well.
you can imagine saihara’s confusion when he sees that the crime scene is littered with dimly glowing footsteps, already starting to fade. the signature sign of a soulmate’s touch.
he tries to chalk it up to maybe it being one of the other examiners or forensics on the scene? but that wouldn’t make any sense, because they’re all way too old for him . . . and the footsteps are pretty small for any of the ones closer to his age. not to mention they’re already starting to fade, meaning they’ve been here a while . . . but it’s 9 in the morning, so that would mean the footsteps would have to have been made at least a couple of hours ago. who would’ve been here near the dead of night?
he ends up filing it to the back of his mind, because his uncle is starting to notice his distraction, and for some reason he can’t really explain, he feels as though this discovery might be something that’s best to keep to himself for now.
-
a day passes by, and true to the phantom thief’s M.O., a letter is sent to the police station. their pattern has always followed the same M.O.:
first, a robbery is committed; the tricky part is trying to figure out the location, because it never seems to stick to one type of place—sometimes it’s a regular old jewelry store and the next time it’s a high-end established business company that delves in tech, etc.
next, the following day after the robbery, a letter is sent by with an encrypted message (they’ve only ever managed to solve 1 out of the 7 coded letters sent, the 1 being solved by detective prodigy kirigiri kyoko).
then, the letter is always accompanied by some random object; this part at least sticks to a slightly more understandable pattern, because it’s almost always some object that one would associate with a kid—ex. one time they received a rubber duck, the next time it was a lone crayon, and the time after that was a plushie in the form of a horse.
and lastly, the most crucial part of it all that differentiates the phantom thief from so many previous masterminds of criminology: the object that was stolen is always sent back, and if it isn’t sent to the police station, it’s returned directly back into where it came from, as though it was never taken in the first place— doesn’t matter how guarded the crime scene may be, because somehow, no one ever sees anything (but why? and how?)
-
a few days pass by again, and saihara—really, he didn’t mean to, it just kinda happened—manages to actually decipher the encryption on accident. the letter reveals the location of the next place to be robbed.
he reports to his uncle that he’s accidentally solved the letter, only leaving out one important detail: the letter was covered in glowing fingerprints that only saihara could see. the theory of the phantom thief being his soulmate is so impossible, and yet, the only explanation for those prints to be on the letter would require that to be true:
the letter and objects are always sealed in an envelope, inside a package. the prints were on both the inside and outside of the box, and all over the letter and objects, which no one else could have touched directly.
all evidence is sealed into plastic bags and are never touched without the usage of gloves to avoid tainting of a crime scene or clues.
even the mail service wouldn’t have been able to touch the inside of a sealed shut package and an unopened envelope.
so naturally, just to prove that he’s just being unreasonable and that his theory is definitely not possible, saihara decides to test it.
protection units are assigned to the next targeted location, and saihara goes with his uncle to check up on the scene and once and for all debunk his theory.
it’s a gallery most known for its exhibition dedicated to a famous photographer prodigy, but saihara has never really been one for that type of art, so he can’t recall the name of them.
when his uncle isn’t looking, saihara quickly takes the opportunity to put his plan into motion. he doesn’t know where exactly the thief will strike, nor what will they take, so he opts for the entrance to one of the larger exhibitions that’s more open and bare. impossible to miss or not pass through.
then, as best as he can without really being able to tell, saihara traces his finger along the wall to write out a single question:
can you see this?
it’s a long shot, because saihara doesn’t know if his soulmate’s even 18 yet, or if the letter was even telling the truth at all and this location was just a red herring. but it’s all he’s got. and if the phantom thief truly is his soulmate, and all the circumstances are right, then they should see it, right?
saihara hopes he’s wrong.
-
he is not wrong, he finds out the next day, when he returns to the newly created crime scene and finds—much to his absolute internal shock—a response written in the form of glowing prints:
duh, of course i can! i have eyes, y’know?
-
and just when saihara thinks things can’t possibly get any more complicated, another letter is sent to the station—same M.O. and all. except this time, there’s one thing very different about this one.
on the back of the letter, in fading, glowing writing, another address is written. with it, a note.
what a coincidence that we’re tied together! life’s funny like that, so i’ll give you a freebie just this once, my detective. but if you’re gonna be my soulmate, you’ve gotta be able to keep up with me, okay? so after this, no more freebies. you wanna catch me, right? then you’ve got to work for that!
i look forward to our future chases.
-the phantom thief
saihara nearly faints as the sudden revelation that only he can see, his uncle—who’s standing right next to him—none the wiser to this development.
. . . you’ve got to be kidding him.
this ended up being longer than i meant for it to be, sorry.
cat hajime and izuru,,,,,,,,nagito shines a laser pointer in front of them and they lose their minds trying to catch it. izuru tackles hajime when the laser gets onto his face at some point. he won the contest they started but at what cost,,,,,,,,hajime’s broken nose that’s what
Hajime as a cat,,,,Nyajime,,,,,,,,,,,Hinyata,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Izuru already acts like a cat in my head honestly. The constant bored expression. The indecisiveness on literally everything (hope? despair? I dunno man I’m just bored of this room). The “I guess we’re doing this now.” attitude,,,,it’s all there.
Touch him and die. Or not sometimes. You just gotta try your luck honestly.
The only thing missing would be Izuru going absolutely bloody feral over something. I think I’m gonna borrow the concept from that one comic where Izuru has a fiery burning hatred towards sakuramochi. Like if you present him with a box he just rips it to absolute shreds and then acts like nothing happened. Hajime only mildly dislikes sakuramochi and so he’ll like refuse it politely.
Hajiji would adore getting pet but he would NEVER ask for it. Like: “hey Komaeda...I, um-“ *Komaeda immediately understands and just goes for it* “you like doing this way too much, I don’t get it.”
Izuru will just straight up ask for it. “Komaeda.” *tilts his head towards him* boom done. “....this is satisfactory.”
every day i think about that scrapped sdr2 bad end where hajime goes nuts and kills everyone on the island because it very well could have happened since if i remember correctly he’s the only protag who considers killing someone and if his ai code had glitched he could’ve ended up regaining his memories as izuru and going through with the plan out of madness or boredom
THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS
What do you think of Maki and Ouma’s relationship? I’ve seen some takes that the other characters didn’t take Maki being willingly to kill seriously even after she tried strangling Ouma and it’s part of why Saihara believed she wouldn’t do anything about Ouma before she went to kill him with the crossbow and poison.
Do you think that could have been avoided had they taken her first attempt to kill Ouma seriously beyond Kaito stopping Maki more for her sake than the others?
This is a pretty fun question, anon! I’ve gotten a lot of messages asking me to compare and contrast Ouma with characters like Saihara or Momota, but I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me about his dynamic with Maki! I actually think they both play a pretty similar role in the story, which is precisely why they butt heads so much and don’t get along.
Going into a more full analysis of their similarities, differences, and the sort of relationship they had in the story will require a lot of spoilers and will probably get pretty long, so I’ll discuss the rest under a read-more just in case!
It’s probably easiest to start with the fact that Maki and Ouma have one of the most antagonistic relationships out of the entire cast of ndrv3. They spend most of the game at odds with one another, starting from the chapter 2 trial and continuing all the way to chapter 5, when Maki finally kills Ouma.
I’m not entirely sure that there’s ever been a rockier, more antagonistic relationship that’s lasted for so long in a DR game. Togami and Asahina were slightly similar in dr1, particularly as Asahina did try to kill him in the trial when she believed he was responsible for Sakura’s suicide, but all of their conflict is resolved more or less neatly by chapter 4, and Togami even apologizes for his former behavior. Similarly, Akane and Komaeda certainly don’t get along in sdr2, but I wouldn’t say they had a personal grudge against each other the way Maki and Ouma do—the way Akane resorts to instinctive violence to try and shut Komaeda up whenever he’s riling the group up is somewhat similar, but Komaeda doesn’t seem to feel particularly resentful towards her.
So immediately, Maki and Ouma’s dynamic stands out as one of the rockiest and most antagonistic relationships in any of the DR games. From the moment Ouma exposes her as the SHSL Assassin to the rest of the group, the resentment between them feels like a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment, and it’s not really a surprise that everyone else gets dragged in when that conflict finally reaches a boil in chapter 5.
So, why do they get along so poorly? Why do they seem to hate each other so much? Personally, I think it’s because each of them considers the other the biggest potential threat in the killing game. They’re both incredibly suspicious of other people by nature, and seem to resent the rest of their classmates for “not taking the threat seriously enough,” which is a big part of why they’re constantly at odds with one another.
In Ouma’s case, he seems to find Maki suspicious almost right from the start. He doesn’t expose the fact that she’s an assassin to everyone until the very end of chapter 2, but he clearly knows throughout the entirety of the chapter 2 trial, as he keeps alluding to how much of a threat she might be and how she might have even had an opportunity to kill Hoshi herself. He even goes as far as to try and pit her and Momota against each other in a “game of suspicion” where they both try and prove that the other must have been the culprit. Clearly, he really wants everyone to think of her as a threatening and suspicious person even before he provides them with clear proof as to why that is.
Bizarrely enough, there’s even some evidence that Ouma may have known about Maki’s talent from before chapter 2 as well. In chapter 3, Saihara asks him directly if he found out about Maki being an assassin by watching her motive video, which Ouma denies. He then says an extremely cryptic line about how, “if you look at it from my perspective, it’s obvious that I knew the whole time,” then quickly changes the subject and brushes it off when Saihara presses him for further details.
If this is the case and Ouma actually knew about Maki being the SHSL Assassin from before chapter 2, this would mean that he quite literally may have known about her talent the entire time. This would mean that he may have either put two and two together and guessed her talent from his own explorations around the school (which would be difficult, as Maki was constantly in her lab for most of chapter 2 in order to keep people from discovering her secret), or else he “remembered” her talent from the start. Whether he “remembered” in the sense of knowing what talent she might have requested as part of the reality show, or whether he actually knew her from Hope’s Peak isn’t too important: what matters most about this little scene is that it’s pretty clear he knew that she was an assassin trained to kill people, and that he thought she was incredibly dangerous for trying to keep it a secret from everyone else.
This is backed up by his reactions to her talking a little bit about her past at the beginning of chapter 3. When Maki explains that she’s been trained to kill people all her life and that she isn’t afraid to kill in self-defense if necessary, Ouma does express sympathy for some of the hardships she’s gone through. He notes that it sounds like she had a hellish life and that he feels sorry for her, but he immediately bounces back by saying that those hardships probably shaped her into someone who doesn’t fully understand the value of human life. Ouma isn’t beyond sympathizing with her, but he definitely thinks that the threat she poses is far too big to ignore, and that’s the single biggest reason he exposed her talent to the rest of the group.
This sense of conflict and resentment even ties in with what we know from Ouma’s motive video. Ouma and DICE had an absolute taboo against murder; not killing people was their single biggest rule, and this explains quite a lot about some of Ouma’s morals within the killing game itself. Even when he can understand his classmates’ motives, Ouma judges most of the murderers throughout the game pretty harshly. No matter who kills, whether it’s Kaede, Toujou, or even his own culpability in manipulating Miu and Gonta to their deaths, Ouma makes it pretty clear that he thinks there’s a “line” people shouldn’t cross when it comes to taking a life. He even alludes to as much in chapter 5, when he discusses how Miu “was going to cross that line” when she made up her mind to try and escape from the school.
Ouma thought of Maki as a huge threat to their safety. He was paranoid of pretty much everyone, but his paranoia towards Maki is especially noticeable, as he’s clearly hung up on the fact that she’s murdered people before, and might potentially murder someone again with very little provocation. Ironically, he’s so incredibly distrustful of Maki that it actually blinds him to even bigger threats, like the ringleader. Even when he wants to confront the ringleader and stop the killing game, so much of his time and effort is spent clashing with Maki and trying to get everyone to understand that she’s a threat that he pays very little attention to Tsumugi. (To be fair, of course, Tsumugi is very good at flying under the radar and her “plain character” façade is like kryptonite to someone like Ouma, who gets bored extremely easily.)
From Maki’s perspective, however, all of Ouma’s plans and schemes are almost completely incomprehensible. Looking at things from her point of view, he singles her out in the chapter 2 trial for almost no reason at all, tries to pit her against the rest of her classmates, and then continues to single her out even after the trial is over, finally exposing her biggest secret in front of everyone. He taunts her so much that he almost seems hostile, and it’s not like he ever stops to explain his reasoning to her or tries to convince her to confess her talent to everyone himself.
Maki completely loses her cool at this crucial moment at the end of the chapter 2 trial, and grabs Ouma by the throat to choke him. To some degree, Ouma is right: she is a threat, and it took very little provocation to make her almost kill him. This is likely the reason he chose to reveal her secret in front of everyone, rather than privately, because it takes Momota and everyone else talking her down and trying to convince her what a bad idea it is to commit murder in front of them all before she finally drops him.
However, it’s important to note that Maki is aware of the danger she poses. She isolates herself from the group from the very beginning of the game and tries not to get close to anyone. This is in part because she doesn’t want anyone uncovering her secret and trying to kill her, yes, but it’s also just as much because she doesn’t want to kill or hurt anyone. She’s aware of how incredibly messed up her childhood has been, and how having her emotions stomped out from a young age has made her more apathetic to murder and death than any normal person should be.
Maki completely hates herself for being a murderer, but feels completely hopeless in the sense that she never had a choice in the matter. All of her decisions were essentially made for her, and she was abused and dehumanized from such a young age that she feels she’s all but lost touch with her humanity now and that it’s too late for her. This self-loathing she feels for herself and the blood on her hands is interesting, particularly since she and Ouma actually have this in common after chapter 4. Neither of them wanted to kill anyone, but they both have crossed that “un-crossable line” I mentioned earlier, and both of them hate themselves for it.
Given that Maki tries so hard to distance herself from everyone else and wants to keep her talent a secret, it’s understandable then that she’s extremely pissed when Ouma exposes her to the rest of the group. His plan is to uncover her trump card and reveal that they had a very real threat lurking in their midst, but from her perspective he’s made everyone openly hostile to her and caused unnecessary tension, again for seemingly no reason. According what she shares in chapter 3 with everyone else, people have actually become a threat and tried to kill her only after discovering that she’s an assassin, so she feels as if the amount of risk has now increased exponentially.
Feeling agitated, distrustful, and probably more than a little lonely, Maki does the only thing that she can, and tells everyone else to just stay away from her if they know what’s good for them. This way, none of them will try to kill her, and she won’t wind up hurting or killing anyone else. I think it’s pretty obvious that she wants to keep from harming anyone else if possible, but again, she doesn’t feel she has any real choice in it and that it’s only a matter of time before she’s forced to kill in self-defense.
However, then something happens which puts her and Ouma at odds with each other even more… which is to say, Momota and Saihara befriend her. While the rest of the group shun Maki pretty coldly for most of chapter 3, Momota instantly wants to strike up a friendship with her and begins trying to drag her along to his and Saihara’s “training sessions.” This isn’t too surprising to us, the player, considering Momota is the character who best represents the ideal of “believing in everyone unconditionally,” but it does come as a pretty big surprise to Ouma.
Ouma was already pretty taken aback that Momota was willing to stake everything on Maki’s evidence in chapter 2 without any evidence to back him up whatsoever, and the fact that Momota and Saihara both quickly befriend her even after it’s revealed that she’s an assassin leaves him completely baffled—and probably frustrated too, in my opinion
Almost all of Ouma’s decisions are in some way based on paranoia and distrust: he’s far too skeptical and afraid of being betrayed by others to ever fully open up to or cooperate with anyone during the killing game. The biggest reason he exposed Maki’s talent was because he wanted everyone else to understand that she presented a very real threat to their safety and avoid her if necessary. So the fact that multiple people get close to and befriend Maki even after discovering that she’s killed people doesn’t make any sense to him whatsoever.
A lot of his hostility towards Maki comes from thinking of her as a murderer and a threat, but there’s also an undeniable sense that he’s very jealous of her. After all, he and she are both fundamentally distrustful people. They both prefer to work alone, and they both dislike opening up to others or potentially exposing “weaknesses” that might be taken advantage of. In spite of all that, though, Maki gains friends in the killing game, while Ouma continues to be alone almost constantly.
Saihara’s “you’re alone, and you always will be” line at the end of the chapter 4 trial might be about the fact that Momota has friends who are worried about him and who care about him in that particular moment, but it’s a consistent theme with Ouma’s character that he’s alone most of the rest of the time, too. It’s hard not to find parallels between him and Maki in that sense, as she too is someone who’s spent most of her life self-isolating and pushing people away to avoid getting hurt and hurting others in return. The only difference is, even Maki is finally making steps towards opening up to and trusting others the longer the game progresses, while Ouma has almost completely destroyed all of his previous alliances and ruined any potential friendships he might have had by the end of chapter 4.
This sense of jealousy shows itself in other ways, too. Ouma seems to constantly pop up in chapter 3, as though trying to remind Saihara that he’s there too after seeing Saihara, Maki, and Momota become closer friends. Even his “Shuumai” nickname for Saihara is a clear jab at Momota’s “Harumaki” nickname for Maki—despite pushing people away at every turn, Ouma definitely wanted what Maki was starting to have.
These parallels between them continue through most of the game, including chapter 5, when the confrontation between them finally reaches its peak and all hell breaks loose. Up until then, the two of them definitely resented each other and thought of each other as suspicious and a potential threat, but neither of them really escalated that conflict much farther after chapter 2. This all changes, of course, when Ouma tries to put a stop to the killing game by pretending to be the ringleader.
Ouma’s intention was to strip the game away from the real ringleader by crushing everyone’s morale and making them too miserable to continue with the killing game anymore. He decided to actively play the villain in a way that would keep everyone else too depressed to want to leave the school anymore, hoping that it would prevent the real ringleader from providing them any other motives for murder. What he didn’t account for, though, were two things: Maki’s resilience, and Tsumugi’s ability to improvise.
While she was certainly horrified by the reveals about the outside world, Maki definitely seems like the character the least shaken up by the sight Ouma presents in chapter 5. I personally think this is because Maki already lived such a horrible, hellish life, as mentioned earlier. She spent such a huge portion of her life already feeling that she didn’t have any free will and her life had no value, so seeing the state of the outside world left her with more of a desire to “take the ringleader down with her,” rather than to just give up immediately the way Saihara and everyone else does. This, combined with her romantic feelings for Momota and her concern for his safety since Ouma had him in the Exisal bay, is what leads her to wander around the school looking for any sort of clue or useful tool for their situation—at which point she finds the Hope’s Peak flashback light that Tsumugi planted for her.
This flashback light is really the catalyst that completely sets everything else into action. Because of Tsumugi’s quick improvisation, Maki and everyone else go from believing that Ouma is the ringleader to believing that he’s a Remnant of Despair and the personal successor to Junko Enoshima herself. The threat level is amped up tenfold: Ouma is no longer thought of as someone responsible for a single, horrible killing game, but for the destruction of humanity itself. It’s also the first time that he’s also associated with “despair,” as the flashback light paints him as someone who, like Junko, is fickle in his obsession and impossible to reason with.
This flashback light is ultimately the reason Maki goes from distrusting Ouma, to thinking that he’s a threat who needs to be eliminated immediately. In part, it’s because Ouma has Momota with him, and she’s clearly alarmed at the idea of what Ouma might do to Momota in such close quarters. She doesn’t know that Momota is unharmed and doing relatively okay; from her perspective, he’s in a lot of immediate danger. It’s also, I think, because she’s someone who has been trained to “eliminate targets” for her entire life.
This is the first point in the game where Maki really feels that her assassin talent can actually contribute to something “useful.” Instead of carrying out hits for money or because someone else told her to, she would be eliminating a “dangerous member of society” and getting revenge on the person who “started the killing game” and “destroyed humanity.” This is very likely the sort of reaction Tsumugi was trying to prompt from her; I’m sure she left the flashback light out hoping that nearly anyone would see it, but Maki was absolutely her best bet, as she was the character best equipped to actually kickstart the killing game back into action.
It’s honestly fascinating that chapter 5 reaches its height in part because of Ouma openly playing the villain and pretending to be a huge threat, while Maki herself embraces the role of “someone who eliminates threats.” The two of them are so perfectly opposed to each other as narrative foils in this chapter especially: Ouma is at his most calculating and sly, relying on all his secret plans to end the killing game, and Maki is at her most reckless and instinctive, relying on all of her assassin training to break down the doors of the Exisal bay so she can stop Ouma herself.
I also agree with you 100% anon that no one else really took Maki’s abilities as an assassin and history of killing people seriously prior to this chapter. Interestingly, though, Momota’s line where he warns Maki to stop choking Ouma the second time around in chapter 5 is actually a mistranslation. In the localization, they translated the line as “you’ll get killed if you don’t stop,” but in the original Japanese what he actually says is, “if you don’t stop, you’re really gonna kill him.” Aside from that though, it really is pretty clear that most of the group don’t actually think that she would really go through with it, and this complete unfounded confidence really gets torn apart in chapter 5.
This is in part because so much of Maki and the training trio’s arc centers around the theme of “dangerous belief.” In the same way that Ouma’s constant paranoia was debilitating and only hurt himself in the end, the complete and utter belief that Saihara and Momota have in Maki to always do the right thing and not hurt anyone is sort of a double-edged sword.
On the one hand, it’s this belief and kindness that helps Maki to slowly grow past her trauma and become a more open and trusting person. But this sort of belief without question is also what makes it possible for Maki to ignore the rest of the group’s plan to talk Ouma down in chapter 5 and storm the Exisal bay herself. Despite Ouma and even Maki herself telling the others multiple times that she was absolutely capable of killing people and would act if she saw a potential threat, the rest of the group didn’t take those warnings seriously enough.
The result is that it takes Saihara a considerable amount of time in the chapter 5 trial to put two and two together and realize that Maki isn’t just willing to kill Ouma, but potentially ready to kill all of them by trying to force an incorrect vote, that way she can “take the ringleader down with her.” He and most of the other characters are so blindsided by Ouma pretending to be the ringleader that they completely overlook doubting or suspecting anyone else in their group of doing anything wrong—and they almost pay the price for it in the trial.
If Saihara or the others had been more willing to doubt Maki and each other, it is actually possible that they might have successfully talked her down, or at least prevented her from flat-out storming the Exisal bay. I don’t mean “doubting her completely” either, as that would’ve been no different from Ouma’s complete and total paranoia. But if they had kept a closer eye on her and considered that she really did have the training and the motivation necessary to kill someone, chapter 5 could have turned out quite differently.
In a way, Maki and Ouma’s relationship coming to such a huge conflict in chapter 5 is sort of the embodiment of the dangerous of extreme belief vs. extreme doubt. A lot of people, myself included, have talked about how Momota and Ouma manage to put aside their differences in chapter 5 and finally work together, but I haven’t seen nearly as many people touch on how in this chapter Maki, a character who (by that point) the others “believed in” without question, finally faces off against Ouma, a character who “distrusts others” with no exceptions. Considering how much these themes of “believing in people too much” or “suspecting them too much” come up again and again in ndrv3, I do think this parallel between them was deliberate.
I think it’s really interesting that despite how much conflict there was between them and how much they disliked each other, I don’t think they actually hated each other, at least not by the end of the game. I’ve pointed this out in a few other posts, but Ouma had every opportunity to let Maki take the fall in chapter 5 if he had really wanted to. He could have drunk the antidote himself the way that he pretended to, waited for Momota to die from Maki’s poison and crushed his body under the press, then hidden inside the Exisal and attended the trial himself.
It still would’ve been possible to mislead everyone about who was the victim and the culprit, and in the worst case scenario that he was exposed, he could easily have thrown Maki under the bus and revealed that she killed Momota instead. He had an entire opportunity to let her be executed, and he still didn’t do it. I firmly believe this is because he was unwilling to dirty his hands anymore after what he did to Gonta and Miu in chapter 4, and I believe it does show that he cared about all of his classmates when he claimed to be doing things for their sake, including Maki.
As for Maki, while she certainly hates Ouma and thinks he’s a horrible, awful person for most of the game, especially chapter 5, I do think she revises this opinion somewhat by chapter 6. When she and Saihara are investigating Ouma’s room, she volunteers to stay behind and go through the rest of his plans looking for any relevant clues or information. And I think a lot of the things she saw in his room sort of shook her preconceptions about him: prior to this, she thought he was a Remnant of Despair who got off on seeing other people suffer, but his room revealed a side of him that was much more childish and playful.
This is further supported by her reaction to finding out that Ouma was never a Remnant of Despair at all: when Saihara finally proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt in the chapter 6 trial, Maki looks deeply shaken up. I think that a lot of the reveals about Ouma, his childish nature, and the fact that he never actually wanted to hurt or kill anyone left her really conflicted about how to feel towards him. But at the very least, I don’t think she honestly hated him by then, and she most likely regretted how she was manipulated into killing him at that point.
Finally, there’s one last interesting similarity of note between the two of them. This isn’t something that’s ever directly addressed within the main game, so it doesn’t really fit anywhere in the rest of this analysis, but I do personally believe that both of them are orphans. Maki is canonically an orphan, as we know, but with Ouma this is simply speculation
We don’t know anything about Ouma’s family life for certain, but it’s true that his torn and ragged clothes combined with the fact that DICE are listed as “the most important people in his life, friends bordering on family” to him definitely seem to suggest that his biological family isn’t around anymore. As early as chapter 1, he says that “no one would be sad if he died.” He also alludes to “killing his parents and brother” in one of his FTEs, and while I certainly doubt he killed them (in part because of DICE’s “no killing” rule, but also because he talks about it so lightly), it’s definitely true that they’re not shown anywhere in his motive video.
Even in the talent development plan, he completely dodges the question when Momota asks him why he’s not going home for the holidays. Considering Momota’s own home life is pretty unusual, as he lives with his grandparents, it seems pretty likely that Ouma’s home life is equally unusual in some way. There’s also the fact that DICE are very likely a reference to an anime by the same name (D.I.C.E.)—an anime which is specifically about an organization made up of orphans who also happen to be themed around clowns and card games.
Given all of these implications, I do personally think it’s very likely that Ouma is meant to be an orphan, which makes for a very interesting parallel with Maki. If it’s true, it really drives home the idea of how alone both of them were at the start of the killing game, as well as how hard it was for them to open up to and trust other people after losing so many people close to them in the past.
I’ve even seen some people theorize that Maki and Ouma may have been from the same orphanage and that perhaps Ouma ran away while Maki stayed there. While there’s nothing to officially back this up, it’s still a fun theory regardless. It also would tie in quite well with the theme of “free will” between the two of them, as Ouma in particular values free will and hates the idea of being forced to do anything or having choices made for him, while Maki is someone who feels as though all of her choices have been made for her by other people her entire life.
These are just a few of the most interesting points I personally felt were worth bringing up about their relationship. I’m really glad to see that there are people out there who want to know more about the dynamic between them and the relationship they had, because they’re both such great characters in their own right! Thank you for the question anon, this was a really fun analysis to write up!
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