So it's been a while since I've drawn The Boys, so let's fix that with a warm-up earlier on the TAPP!timeline, before Kokichi really gets over himself enough to admit he needs help.
He and Saihara are also dancing around their last major interaction before everything flipped turnways, too. After... everything, so to speak, Shuichi isn't even sure how to approach Kokichi overall, let alone while the kid's hiding in an alcove. Kokichi isn't sure how he feels about Shuichi anymore, exactly; he wants to pick a side, to either hate him or get the resolve to reach out (in his way) and be friends again, but at this stage? He just... can't.
It's the little things, that draw them back together. Little tests of the waters between them.
The lore thickens! This is indeed a post-VR AU, the details of which I'm still working out. Much like in canon, it's unclear where the kids of "Class 79" end and the fabrication begins, albeit for separate reasons.
As far as we're concerned here, Kiyo is just... Some Guy. Like, just a dude with a sweatervest under his blazer and vague passionate professor energy. And issues, but not dangerous issues (at least to anyone else, not that most of their class is ready to look past the game. which is fully within their rights to do for the record).
Kokichi, after talking more with some upperclassmen and slowly being re-introduced to his once-friends... understands, feeling fundamentally isolated, and knowing you earned your way there. But we certainly can't allow emotional honesty, now can we?
Rantaro is a good older brother (and having issues of his own, especially with his short-term memory. It could have been far worse, granted, but... those aftershocks still strike true precisely where you'd want them least, don't they?) Kaito is still kind of a macho jackass, but he's getting the spirit.
Feel more than free to send asks about this AU if you like, I'm on a roll and trying not to lose steam
So some of Kokichi's beta designs have heterochromia and I know I'm not the first to raise the possibility he wears a color contact to hide it, but has anyone done this joke yet
Prequel to this, some indeterminate time after this.
I don't consider it an inherently romantic gesture, for the record, but Kaito gave Kokichi the jacket in this AU after v3 (assuming it was like a VR simulation "class 79" went through before starting at Hope's Peak, Or Something) since he had a lot of trouble getting to sleep. (He can't sleep on his back anymore, and was so vocal in his own disgust about the possibility of. Leaning on people *gross* just to waste time sleeping that Kaito figured it was easier [re: spared Kokichi's pride] to see if the familiarity helped at all. It does.) Kaito and Kokichi are... (acquaintances? friends? close?) Connected now. You don't go through something like the hangar and come out the other side without some kind of bond.
I think kitty's name should be Bishop. Less for any christian ties than the idea of a therapy animal 'delinquent-pet-he-does-not-have-paperwork-for-but-keeps-in-his-dorm-anyway' as an "overseer" for him to talk to in absence of wax Rantaro. Also the third most powerful chess piece (probably after Kokichi and his 'beloved') and, though he will not verbally admit it, in part after the actual good robot android from Aliens. Because, of course,
Same anon who asked about Maki, absolutely love your take on it, and I love Kokichi's assumption that if something happened all of them would cover for Maki. Because really, why would he think anyone would ever side with him when they all stood back and watched him get strangled.
With reference to this ask
See, now you got me thinking
It's not the only time he's mouthed off this day by a long shot, but it is the one that finally reaches the upper limit on Maki's stress tolerance for Kokichi "This-World-Is-Mine" Ouma. Part of her is still convinced that, even if he isn't the mastermind, he's still dangerous, obviously, have you seen the lengths he'll go to for a bit? Do you want to be on the other end when it gets real? Part of her still has trouble reconciling there's no need to stay in Survival Mode anymore.
But this is probably the first time she's stopped and noticed the glassy vacancy in his eyes when he sees her approach. No more sass, no more fight. Not against Maki (she will be the end of him, after all, so says the back of his mind. She already was. He is a dead man walking, and her hand on his throat is just death reclaiming what it is owed.)
As the aspiring SHSL-Child Caregiver, seeing you have a terrified child pinned in place of the face of malice you expected is uh.
Uh.
Kokichi, on the other hand, did not mean to let his mask slip off (and then crack against the floor tiles, always at least a bit chipped every time he tries to put it back on, to his dismay; how dare they see your genuine fear response) in front of his whole class, and is probably going to hide in his room about it to recalibrate.
And to process, since. Miu, Kiyo, and Kaito were all there the first time, and they didn't say anything then. So what changed? The world may never know.
More Kokichi and Miu! I know K1-B0 is winning the poll but this made sense to me as a kind of preamble to that bit of exposition. Something about pieces of the people you've cared about staying with you.
So. Does Miu have a tattoo?
She's currently drawing it on with a marker every morning. Helps keep up morale while she focuses on building an entire android body from scratch. The machining on the parts alone is a pain in the ass, no matter how well you've mapped out the mechanisms. Hard to prototype with mostly-custom parts and very little patience.
An incomplete list of Kokichi's Room details under the cut:
This was during the game, for the record; his HPA room is also a mess, but it is a different kind of mess
The minimization of floorspace with wrappers and crumpled papers, despite his having a wastebasket, because they make noise when stepped on and it will be that much harder to try to kill him in his sleep
His contact case on the side table
Put up a drawing to hide his initial notes on the wall; he didn't fully realize they might be able to see him even in his room for a bit and then couldn't stop thinking about it
Books for Research Purposes and stray pencils, since even though he has a desk he usually lays on the floor to Scheme
Key stays in the desk drawer with miscellaneous junk he picks up around the school; he picks his lock open to keep tabs on whether or not anyone else has tried the same thing from the sound of the tumblers. this is why he's noticed miu's lock starting to fatigue
Tendency to Stack Things on Other Things (boxes, cup-stain on those boxes from setting drinks there while he draws on the floor, totes of miscellaneous items that make the room harder for not-him to navigate, beginnings of a Laundry Chair)
Probably sleeps in that chair more than the actual bed-he-does-not-make, thus it also being where he hoards soda from the cafeteria (it's right in front of the whiteboard, which isn't in frame but is there)
The horsehead goes under his pillow when he isn't there (unless he's presenting his room to be found after his possible death, of course, in which case adjacent his 'this-is-not-a-will' he also makes his bed)
Hides his monopad and a flashlight (flashback-light? unclear) in/next to the frame of his bed. Also snacks.
Mementos from each case and each killer, bold are canon:
Kaede's hairclips, the camera, the drone (offscreen), the last pictures of Rantaro
Kirumi's glove and the innertube (and those might be the piranhas in the white totes? i couldn't confirm)
One of Kiyo's many masks, the séance book, wax Rantaro
Gonta's glasses, a VR headset, the bottle of poison Miu tried to plant on him
No chapter five, since well. Well.
THOUGH the pattern has continued! In the form of Kaito's jacket, which he wears occasionally.
Sorry it's taking me a bit to answer asks, I read every one and cherish them -! I'd figured I'd doodle a bit in the answers, but then ah. This one changed course from 'whats up with shuichi' to 'actually we're overdue for exposition'.
Oh, backstory?
Since Class 79 is at Hope's Peak For Real in this AU, Danganronpa can't very well be like canon. Our solution: infighting, sabotage, and plenty of Drama! Discussion under the cut.
I'd call it a non-Despair AU; the world's not over, and I'm currently thinking V3 is the only killing game at this point in the timeline, catalyzed by good old-fashioned envy (and, truthfully, indignation that strangers get to live out your fantasy while you and your friends are stuck in the building next door... the nerve!) Our mastermind isn't exactly a master hacker, but she's also not working alone. This Team Danganronpa isn't trying to physically harm anyone, but showing off their collective capacity to coordinate and maintain a takeover like this is bound to catch the administrator's eye. All press is good press, and there's a lot (of investor funding, mostly) riding on stories of TAPP's success, so HPA is incentivized to intervene ASAP. The team did not account for the aftershocks of making their peers virtually kill each other. Rantaro is having memory issues, Miu has to catch her breath (to her chagrin), Kiibo doesn't have a body, Kokichi has his cane... and that's just the beginning.
Whoops.
TAPP is kind of like "what if instead of synthetically pouring all of the talents into just the one dude, we experimented on some charity cases to see if we can just artificially build an Ultimate from the ground-up". The tech in the flashback-lights is definitely at play here, though HPA proper wasn't planning on a full memory wipe/personality override (but kept the theoretical capability in their back pocket in case things went south as Advanced Gaslighting) but uh. A bunch of highschoolers took hold of the controls, which is how you get a bunch of kids that sound like characters. They still are.
In this case, Team DR is like at least 3 at most 10 disgruntled teens in the Reserve Course tired of being overlooked. More looking for mischief than harm, but hey, if they can convince the interlopers being Ultimates isn't worth it and they should leave the school after all this and free up the floorspace? They won't argue. One of the things that strikes me about DR as a series is how its internal logic is less concerned with logistics than matching the emotional weight of what it can be like to be growing up and going through high school, so I'm trying to lean in that direction. I'm not completely sure what all this means for the THH and SDR2 crews, precisely, but we'll cross/burn that bridge when we get to it I guess!
This comic taught me a lot of new tools and techniques, hence it feels to me like it took forever but I am super stubborn and couldn't work on something else until the script in my head was actualized, which turned into 'the whole thing being done'.
There's a lot of easter eggs and little jokes in the first page in particular, should you seek them! Consider this another 'cut' in case you want to try and read the Small Handwriting on Rantaro and Miu's desks for yourself.
First:
I already brought up some of them in the WIP so I'll try not to repeat too much and just link here
Kokichi could join the toast, but doesn't (and yet he still sits with everyone). Kiibo doesn't drink anything at all but does want to be in the toast, so he gets a bluetooth speaker. Surely he will blast some vocaloid shortly.
That's Kaito's notebook Kichi is doodling in; Kaito draws a bunch of stars, and I tried to sort-of-almost emulate the drawing on Kichis whiteboard and also get across that it lacks line confidence (sketch over and over the same lines) and he keeps creasing the paper because post-press it doesn't take much activity for his hands to hurt. Also kinda wanted to imply that Kaito not only knows Ouma has his notebook, but probably gave it to him because he's learned it's inevitable Kichi will tease him and draw in it and at least being upfront about it he won't manage to hurt himself trying to steal it (phantom thief or not!) Kokichi's pride is a little hurt at first, but it becomes another of their small routines they don't acknowledge out loud that nevertheless are a kind of familiar comfort for both of them.
Space debris at terminal velocity is no joke man even a paint chip won't just crack your helmet (which you'd only survive via cartoon logic and presumably-magic duct tape) but easily crack your skull at least. I did a project on it in high school once, I should really look for it tbh
Rantaro’s To Do
Set up weekly meeting
Check what is up w/ Kiyo
Make sure Kichi goes to therapy this week
Call Rillianne
Rantaro’s Reminders
Blue: Class
Red: Study
Cyan: ‘Council (or w/e)’
Green: ‘Travel Nerd Time >:P’
Purple: ‘Hang out w/ me ~!’
Orange: Group Project
Yellow: ‘Call ur family this week, srsly’
Miu’s Notes (“Polygraph Improvements”)
Before install into K1-B0’s new body, improve algorithm for fig. (figurative) speech.
Consult Ishimaru?
- Gonta can get in contact
ALSO
I really did make some actual charts based on data from the character bios comparing things like height, birthdate, etc. vs. victim, killer, or survivor status (tho that is a gantt chart template and not filled in, oop). TL;DR the most interesting one to me is this:
Where basically when you account for how many students across the games are stated to have each blood type and the proportion of those students in a certain role, things are pretty even (AB has so few students its bars arent really representative of a trend, I just included them anyway) the type Os are disproportionately likely to be killers. For the record, there's one confirmed type O victim, and it's Nagito. I have no idea what this means. But if I am blursed with this knowledge, now you are too!
The code in tsumugis glasses isnt an easter egg bc i was getting tired and frustrated but the pods are roughly (no kiibo shifts things a bit) in class trial configuration, and on the base layer before all the Rest Of The Panel got added you could kind of tell who's who. Not so much anymore, so: Saihara has his hat on, for the record, and Kokichi is on his side while everyone else is on their back. Might even be a little restless, the feeling of underlying unreality playing substitute for some of (only some of, they're still being monitored) the surveillance anxiety. Fun!
And hey, as always, and especially if you've gotten this far: Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!
