What do you think of that Kaito confession? I HIGHLY disagree with it personally but I guess Ouma does suffer a bit in terms of his narrative payoff- dunno how to explain this but it's like he has stuff going on which is never extrapolated on, whereas Kaito doesn't seem to lose nuance and maybe seems more whole, outside of the narrative? I think that's what they meant, but... idk, this is just me guessing.
my brain has been so scattered for the last.... forever that for a few minutes I wasn't sure what you were talking about oops -
I'm actually interpreting the confession a bit differently - I think it's coming from a place of, 'Kokichi has stuff going on that the player isn't privy to, but is very obviously dangled in front of the player by the narrative since he's clearly the rival/enigma of the game' vs 'Kaito has a lot going on aside from bro + illness, but in stark contrast to Kokichi, the game doesn't challenge you to dig deeper than that on replay'. Which... actually seems valid to me! Kokichi is the big mystery of the game and the game begs you to look at his actions throughout to see if you can parse through it for a bigger picture (other notable examples would be Kaede, Korekiyo and Tsumugi, for obvious reasons), while characters like Kaito (and Gonta, for another example) are pretty boldly presented in a certain light without that same obvious, 'can you BELIEVE what you missed without knowing x, y and z?! Isn't it so obvious why their character arcs went the way they did on rewatch?'
It's an interesting take, and I think it reflects more of a frustration at how very often, Kokichi (and occasionally Shuichi) are the only ones afforded the label 'complex character' when there's a lot you can dig into for all of them - and because drv3 doesn't advertise that or heavily hint in-game about those subtler character moments for most characters outside Kokichi and the others mentioned above, it is trickier to 'solve' them (or rather, much easier to take the trope they play to at face value without any extra thought).