Hundred Line Theory
Okay, not my usual kind of post, but I just have to get this out there. This theory concerns the SDU's personalities and looks, and posits a possible origin story for both.
I know it's long, but please stay with me.
Short summary: scientists are not writers.
MAJOR SPOILERS!
Question: If the entire SDU cast are clones of Shion, why do they all look so different? And: If the entire SDU were made in labs to fight this war, why are their personalities so volatile and different? Why not make 20 little Kamukura Izurus - you know, at Kamukura hospital?
Answer: There were secondary donors - for both genes and memories.
Toward the end of the Rebellion route, it's revealed that the entire SDU cast's memories are completely fake and fabricated by the scientists that made them in the secret labs of Kamukura hospital, and that genetically, they are all clones of Shion.
The game claims that this makes them siblings, genetically, which is not true. Siblings are not clones of each other - they share just about half with each other, genetically. If they're clones, they're all genetically exactly the same as Shion. If they're siblings, they're all exactly 50% Shion. Considering that they all look incredibly different, stand at different heights, have different skin-, eye- and hair colors, and that it's safe to assume they don't all share the same sex, I'm going to posit here that they are not clones of Shion. They are genetically siblings.
Okay, duh, that's not a very interesting theory. I'm sure most others also thought this. But then, the real question becomes clear: if it wasn't exclusively Shion's genetic material used... Then who else was involved?
Even more interesting than that is the question of their fabricated memories, though. Who fabricated those and, like, why?
Many have pointed out that the SDU's backgrounds prime them to be soldiers. Children who have no money, children from unstable family backgrounds, children who want to prove themselves, children who have been abused before - all of this makes the members of the SDU with these backgrounds easy to groom and manipulate. Give them a little bit of praise, they're starving for it. Yell at them, they'll react to it. It's pretty good commentary about the kinds of at-risk youth who end up in the military, and how and why they become so emotionally blunted and able to dehumanize and murder other people deemed 'enemies', and that's all very good, but, let me be frank.
If I'm a scientist at Kamukura Hospital, I'm not making any of these freaks if I can help it, I'm making 20 little Kamukura Izuru's from Danganronpa.
Look how much trouble they cause! They're all super unstable! Like, okay, they're good to manipulate, but why go through that trouble? If you can write their backstories, their personalities, then write it as such: I am XYZ, I have no feelings, I listen to all commands, and I don't question any weirdness. Done and dusted. Easy peasy. So, why not?? What scientist at Kamukura Hospital came up with Darumi, and why?
The answer? The memories are real. Just not for the SDU.
Walk with me here.
I'm a scientist. I'm not a writer. I need these pod babies to be soldiers, and as such, they need to be people. I do not have the ability or the means to "write" someone's memories - does technology like that even exist? People's brains aren't computer chips, after all. I have all these empty puppets, and I need to give them some sort of motivation to fight, ideally on the side of humanity. I can maybe subliminally influence them to have some fake memories, but a whole fake life?
In the Killing Game route, Nozomi drinks Eva's blood, and they share memories. Their whole lives, all of a sudden in each others brains. We know hemoanima can do this.
The scientists at Kamukura hospital did just that. They got together a bunch of volunteers and literally fed their memories to the SDU!
I mean, it's perfect, isn't it? Let's say the procedure is very risky. It also needs to be very hush-hush, since we know the general population doesn't know about anything at all. To get volunteers, wouldn't you promise anything in exchange for secrecy and not many questions asked? Especially a lot of money?
Who would volunteer to a procedure like that?
A poor kid with 20 mouths to feed, of course. He may have been out of work for a period of time, and he's under a lot of pressure. He'd do most anything for money.
A kid who is abused at home, who was failed by all the adults in her life and who has given up, who desperately wants to be part of the plot of an anime and who doesn't value her life very much. Maybe CPS was called for once, and she was in the hospital, knowing they wouldn't help her in any way that would last? Maybe she heard about it then?
Siblings, maybe, who desperately want to escape selling other things to survive?
A delinquent, agreeing in exchange of shortening a juvie sentence?
I can do this for all of them. Kyoshika was raised in the woods with nothing but manga for comfort, of course she'd think this was a reasonable thing to ask of her. Just a normal anime plotline! Moko may have been injured and unable to fight, convinced to at least donate her strength to someone else. Or she could have done it in place of someone else, or just because she's so noble. Shouma's parents are doctors, aren't they? One snide comment about how brave and useful the volunteers are, and he'd have done it. Tsubasa is bonded most to her grandpa, which is a species known to get sick and die easily. Maybe she needs money for his medical bills, or to keep the shop open? Hiruko I'm not sure about, I'll be honest with you guys. I'll get to Yugamu later.
Kurara might seem the least likely candidate, but I'd actually disagree. Yes, her family is rich, but does that really protect you? In the first place, her family is a huge supplier to the military, so they'd definitely know about the entire project. Kurara loves and admires her family, and desperately wants to honor them. Despite this, she's young, maybe the youngest in her family, and extremely shy. She has to wear a mask at all times. Isn't that an embarrassment? How can she find a way to prove her worth? Well, this, of course. Look how brave she is, mom and dad.
And do I even have to say anything about Eito? No volunteering necessary. We already know his parents agreed to any experimental procedure. What if they thought this might fix him? What if they thought it might suck the disorder right out of him? What if they didn't tell the scientists about the specifics of the disorder - or maybe the scientists didn't take it seriously?
Now you have someone else's whole life as a template, and you can just add to it a little bit though subliminal messaging or other manipulation. Let's take Eito for an example.
You take a traumatized child who wasn't socialized well and had to grow up in the hospital. You assume he's going to be happy to be part of a friend group and integrate well enough into the unit, so you leave his personality mostly alone. He likes to read, so you subliminally influence his memories to include a lot more specific books. Fantasy novels to escape into... You want those hero-slays-monster stories to idealize war and preservation. The kingdom needs to be saved, the rightful king needs to be put back on the throne. I love fantasy, but a lot of books' conflict is not about changing the world so much as it is about changing the world back (to a past that never was... doesn't that sound familiar?) - you want Eito to be influenced by this and want to retake the Earth, want to reinstate what once was.
Hell, maybe they even gave him the history book that made him hate humanity. If they didn't know about his disorder, maybe they thought he'd read it and think: humanity is amazing. I want to protect my people too - I want to be a war hero too.
Small twists to existing personalities to make them into bloodthirsty soldiers. That's what I'm proposing happened to all of them.
But what about Takumi?
I've thought about this. What about Takumi? I've come up with a few different approaches.
On the one hand, we don't see any memories of his dad, despite knowing he exists. There's a chance Takumi's memory donor was the child of a scientist, and that scientist didn't want to appear in his memories, so Takumi's dad is absent. I do like this, since it gives him a parallel to Nozomi, and that would be kind of cool.
If Karua is a real girl, she's big into conspiracy theories and going outside, to Earth. He might have done it for her. I'm gonna be honest, I like this one the least, because Karua to me makes the most sense as a completely fictional character. She's too perfect - a frail girl to protect, who wants to see the stars and the earth, and oh, won't you go fight a war for her? For her? To protect her? Please, Takkun?... She reads as propaganda to me, all the parts of her that aren't Nozomi.
So, my theory. Takumi is the only one who's completely fake.
After creating fake personalities on top of existing ones, they were able to make one all by themselves. I like this for a few reasons: for one, it could be a reason for some of the SDU's wilder backstories. As the scientists grew bolder and more confident, they implanted and messed with more and more stuff, and so, from a real kid who survived child abuse and maybe has violent impulses and struggles with hypersexuality, they created... a teenage assassin who's a walking talking HunterXHunter reference.
Wouldn't that be fucked up? If they have fun with it after a while?
The second reason is that I think Takumi's intended "role" in the SDU is as the one who upholds the status quo.
There's already a really good theory that Eito was supposed to be the leader of the SDU, with Moko as the leader of the kids at 2LDA, and Hiruko and Takemaru as assisting leaders, one for the boys and one for the girls. That theory also posits Takumi as having the role of manipulator, the good cop, the one who can talk people into things without having to outright give commands. I love that theory.
I would like to add to this that the reason why Takumi is so perfect for this role is because his very existence makes the other kids abnormal.
Think about it. If everyone has a crazy backstory, if everyone was abused or has abused, that is normal. You can't manipulate and groom them based on that anymore. On top of that, you're trying to re-establish humanity on Earth, here. The SDU doesn't just need to fight, it also needs to reproduce and uphold human culture: it needs to reproduce what is and isn't normal, what is and isn't a normal family, who is and isn't crazy.
It needs to still have a patriarchy. And Takumi will protect you. He will be your dad. You can rely on him!
Takumi is the closest thing to what I would make if I were tasked with making soldiers for the SDU. He's normal. He has a girl at home who's perfect, who he needs to protect. She lost her dad, and everyone needs a dad, so he will be her dad. His only instinct is to protect and preserve and be normal. He judges you if you're not normal. He's literally normal.
They made Takumi in a lab to make sure the others knew their place.
Thank you for reading.