Okay class, it's time for a lesson in media literacy.
This is Ash Ketchum, the main protagonist of the anime series from the Original Series up to Pokémon Journeys.
This is Serena, the female lead of the XY series who for some reason was hailed as the Legendary Heroine.
The ship between these two is known as AmourShipping, and they are shipped together because... Serena has a canonical crush on Ash? And has met him at least once in their childhood? I'm pretty sure the latter is how it got popular even before the XY series aired its first episode. Moving right along...
...we have Goh, the second protagonist of Pokémon Journeys.
And finally, this is Chloe Cerise, a character who honestly should've been the third main character of Pokémon Journeys but for some reason she wasn't considered important enough to be treated like one.
The ship between these two is commonly known as VermilionShipping, however from what I remember hearing, that name was suggested by a racist. Plus, that name is already taken by... Blue Oak x Lt. Surge?! So instead, I will refer to this ship as BloomMewShipping (an alternate name suggested by Shadechu Νightray from Twitter).
Now I personally have no issue with anyone who ship either pairing; whatever floats your boat as they say. The problem is that some people take their ship too far. An example of this is clinging to fan theories that have long since been debunked. Allow me to explain what i mean.
These two are Liko's parents, Alex and Lucca. Note how the former looks nothing like Ash and the latter looks absolutely nothing like Serena.
These two with little Roy is his parents. Their names are unconfirmed but do they look anything like Goh and Chloe?
No they don't. They don't even have the same eye color!
For context, before Pokémon Horizons aired, people were theorizing that Liko and Roy were the offspring of Ash and Serena (or Dawn, but mostly Serena) and Goh and Chloe respectively. However that theory started to crumble the moment Alex made his debut 9 episodes into the series before collapsing completely when Lucca made her physical debut 3 episodes later.
But even before then, the fact that Diana (who was first seen in Liko's dream in episode 3) looked nothing like Grace should've been the first sign that the theory in question was incorrect. And spoiler alert: Liko's ancestry was revealed in the newest arc, and not a single ancestor has any connections with anyone from the Ash era!
Despite all of this, as well as the reveal of Roy's parents, some AmourShippers and BloomMewShippers still believe that debunked theory that Liko and Roy are related to these respective ships even to this day! What is it going to take for these foolish shippers to put their shipping biases aside and let go of that dead fan theory?!
What I'm getting at is that enough episodes of Pokémon Horizons have aired to where Liko and Roy's families being completely original characters should be common knowledge. In fact, as of this blog post, this series is so detached from the Ash era that you could even put this into the video game continuity and it would still work (with some tweaks of course)!
Liko and Roy are characters with their own feelings and dreams, NOT tools for shipping propaganda. The sooner more people learn this, the better.
And now, for another piece of Serena glazing brought to you by an entitled fan from the vocal minority.
Going over this so you don't have to.
The first point he tries to make is that the XY anime in an attempt to prove that the XY anime is "the most popular Pokémon Anime series", using an IMDB rating of it to back it up with, even though the rating in question is, like, taken from about 617 people. Not even a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of viewers the XY anime ended with, let alone started out with. Which should pretty much tell anyone that the people who are giving such praise to the XY anime are not even part of the target audience. Especially since Yo-Kai Watch has been outright beating the XY anime in the ratings throughout the latter's run.
He credits Serena to being part of the success that the XY anime had. Even though the only place where it found "success" was among the periphery online fandom. Meanwhile what her portrayal and "AmourShipping" actually did contribute to in regards to the XY anime is the alienation of the target audience. With the target audience themselves going on record to say that they weren't vibing with what "AmourShipping" was giving them. And in regards to those not among the target audience but didn't vibe with "AmourShipping" nonetheless, they knew that "AmourShipping" wasn't going to go anywhere.
He thinks that Serena "brought new things to the table", all the while already singing Serena's praises, calling her "the best PokéGirl of all time", as well as one of the best characters in the entire franchise. Pretty much blatantly ignoring what was already on the table before Serena even arrived.
He outright thinks that every female companion of Ash's after Misty but prior to Serena is somehow "a copy of Misty". Yeah, sure. Let's just ignore everything else that sets Ash's female companions besides Serena apart from each other, and just boil down their behavior to "Misty-esque". Granted, he does state that they have defining characteristics, such as May becoming a "Performer". (Uhh, dude? Coordinator, while similar, doesn't equal Performer.) But he seems to think they all have the same kind of personality Misty has, which couldn't be any further from the truth.
The attention he calls to in regards to Ash's female companions before Serena being "sassy" and "a jerk to Ash" pretty much shows his entire thought process into making this video. And why he was so reductive towards May, Dawn, and Iris. He's basically telling people here that he projects himself onto Ash, and that he doesn't think that Ash should have to put up with someone who, understandably, calls Ash out on his stupidity on a regular basis. (And in doing so, pretty much missing the point of Ash's character.) Also, was anyone that wasn't a part of the hardcore AniPoké fandom seriously getting tired of a girl being around to call Ash out on his faults? Does this guy genuinely believe that? Last I checked, before the time of the XY anime, they were getting tired of Ash, not his female companions in anything apart from getting sidelined in favor of Ash.
Actually, nobody apart from the periphery demographic actually "fell immediately in love with Serena". And those who did immediately fall in love with her didn't do so because of her personality. It was because of her crush on Ash, and because of marketing. Her actual personality is nothing to sneeze at, and is pretty much not only nothing like her source material counterpart, but also pretty much what you would expect from a character with no depth to her personality beyond "I'm girly because I'm a girl". Also, "kind" and "caring" literally describe ALL of Ash's female companions. Whereas "independent" describes ALL of Ash's female companions EXCEPT Serena. "Kind to everyone" and "not afraid to express how she was feeling" isn't unique to her. (The latter is definitely one of the reasons why Misty is popular. And Serena definitely seemed afraid to express how she's feeling around Ash.) And she's definitely nowhere near the first to be friendly towards everyone and ready to extend a helping hand whenever anyone is in trouble. (Again. That's literally a reason why Misty is popular to begin with.) Not to mention, Serena wasn't bratty? This dude never saw how Serena feels about her mother. And again with the "not a jerk to Ash" bit. Heck, he even brings up when she cares for Ash when he's sick as though it hadn't been done before, when it has by Misty. It's like he doesn't actually give a crap about Serena's actual character, is more interested in the fact that the showrunners made her only purpose on the show to be to make Ash look good, and is only gassing her up both to make her look better than she is, and because he feels like she's the perfect character to make Ash look good; pretty much a regular pastime for guys like him at this point. It also shows a double standard in regards to his thought process. If the female traveling companion of Ash is her own character and made out to be his equal, then anything she does, even if beneficial for Ash, is automatically bad. But if that female traveling companion is instead made specifically to make Ash look good, as though as she were a typical female character in a Shounen anime, then anything that she does, even if it harms Ash in any way, is automatically good.
Also, if things did end up changing for the better in regards to Ash's female companions, they did so in spite of Serena, not because of her. Mallow, Lana, and Lillie, were all pretty much close representations of if not direct translations of their source material counterparts. Chloe, an AniPoké OC, is pretty much the only one that comes after AniPoké Serena who is the most similar to her in terms of characterization. But, despite her doing the similarities she has with Serena better than Serena did, the reaction the periphery demographic actually has towards her (read: Chloe is disliked by the periphery audience for being "too boring", "aimless", "decided upon a goal that defeated the purpose of her character", etc.) only succeeds in showcasing said demographic's hypocrisy towards her.
WRT the unnecessary shade towards Misty's direction, saying that she would not have cared, and that she would have thrown Ash "in the deep end", this literally reinforces what I'm saying about Serena fans thinking that whatever a female traveling companion of Ash's does to Ash in their eyes is automatically bad if she's made out to be his equal and dares to be her own character. Because that's not what Misty would do at all. He completely doesn't understand her character. She would have and has helped Ash whenever he's sick. On that note, what is it with Serena fans and slinging mud at Misty? I swear. They feel threatened by her.
He's right about Serena's "relationship" with Ash being a reason why she's "popular" among the periphery audience. But what he doesn't realize is that the same reason why she's "popular" is also her biggest flaw as a character. Like, he doesn't even question how Serena is able to remember Ash despite it being so long since she supposedly last saw him. (2-5 years before the XY anime, and for a very brief moment at that.) He also ignores that all of the flashbacks to Serena meeting Ash at Oak's Summer Camp are exclusively from Serena's PoV, as well as not questioning how Ash and Serena didn't stay in touch if they supposedly knew each other. And how does he figure that the writers loved Serena when, if they had their way, Serena wouldn't have been given the characterization that she was given? Calling it "wholesome" and "what gave fans diabetes" is just basically talking about the frosting covering the the cake that tastes like stale air. He then rambles on about how Serena sees Ash as a "selfless hero", pretty much talking about Serena's blind worship of him, and downplaying how over-the-top it is compared to the complements Ash got from other girls. Even calling Serena constantly blushing around Ash, and Ash giving her the kind of compliment that he'll give May and Dawn "wholesome" rather than seeing it as the hard-to-watch mess that it is. And again, putting the emphasis on Serena seeing Ash as both "someone who's good at battling", and "someone with a good soul", shows that he doesn't really care about Serena's character, and that he's ignored that other girls have seen Ash as someone with a good soul before without blindly worshipping him. And I struggle to see how anyone can call something so blatantly shipfic-y in an official work "special". He is right about how we're not going to to see something like Ash and Serena again. To which I say: GREAT! "AmourShipping" was a bad idea from the get-go, and should serve as a cautionary tale.
And the last point he tries to make is how the female traveling companions of Ash prior to Serena "didn't really have any much if any impact". Like, what does he mean by this? Story? On Ash? Misty pretty much played a big part in why Ash is as great of a trainer as he is now, and is why he's alive. She was responsible helping Ash discover the entrance to Cinnabar Gym. May was pretty much responsible for picking up the slack whenever Ash wasn't around, and had her own arc. Dawn was chosen by Mesprit to defend Sinnoh. And "mainly used as comedic relief or to fill in that 'girl' spot for the rest of the series"? How does he think that this somehow doesn't apply to Serena? And I don't know how he thinks that Iris is a step in the right direction when, while a breath of fresh air compared to Dawn and May, when she isn't exactly treading new ground. And he's just glazing Serena by saying that she's had a bigger purpose in the story as it progressed when it really wouldn't be different without her as it is with her. And as far as "providing a completely different contrast compared to a Pokémon Trainer" is concerned, Lillie does that job far better due to being her own character and coming across as human as Misty while having her own arc herself, whereas Serena just comes across as no different from a Bond Girl or a one-off "love-interest" for Jim Kirk that isn't named Carol Marcus. He then goes on to praise Showcases, even though they're pretty much a dumbed down Pokémon Contest rip-off. And how does she lose time and time again when her only notable loss is her first ever Showcase, which she didn't really learn anything from? And her impact on Ash's character as a whole is basically non-existent, given that she doesn't even cross Ash's mind in Journeys when he thought about his travels in Kalos, and even almost ran past her like how Shulk ran past Melia. And he fails to realize that Serena actually did to Ash something that would help someone speedrun the ending of a friendship with a depressed person in real life, making his situation about her than about him. Plus, Ash would have gotten out of his funk without her "help". And the entire scene got retconned in Journeys, anyways. And honestly. What "lessons" did she give him that he didn't or shouldn't already know before the XY anime? Her role in helping shape Ash into the trainer who would go on to win the world championship is negligible. And in case he didn't notice, the Ash following the XY anime IS the same Ash from all the way back in Indigo League but grown up mentally, and definitely not due to anything that Serena actually did. Also, Ash learned the lesson that "it's okay to lose" all the way back in Orange Islands, where Serena doesn't even make an appearance. Instead, Ash learned that lesson from LORELEI, and in a later episode, Misty reiterated the lesson that Lorelei taught him. And once again, saying that Serena "beat the jerk and sassy trope" shows his lack of care towards Serena. The fact that he even brings up the "kiss", which even Yajima himself said could have been a whisper in Ash's ear for all he knew, is emblematic of how he really sees Serena.
And really? Does he really have the audacity to ask "how could you not love her"? He's clearly spent no time outside of the echo chamber, and no time in circles where Serena is criticized because of how her character was mishandled. And he definitely spoke to nobody who actually likes Serena as a character that feels like her potential as a character was outright wasted by the direction the showrunners took with her.
As for what I think about Serena's character? I think that she sucks. Period.
Because I encountered this criticism again, the one that claims that Raava and Vaatu represent a misunderstanding and misappliance of what Yin and Yang is meant to be and that by introducing them as these straight up pure good/God and pure evil/Satan type spirits, and having the good/God spirit merge with Wan to make him the Avatar that all later Avatars are reincarnated from, Bryke contrdicted all the previous lore and worldbuilding of Avatar: The Last Airbender and fundamentally broke the whole Avatar mythology by making the Avatar all about the conquest of evil and destruction to ensure the reign of goodness and peace rather than about keeping balance.
Ironically, this is a complete misreading of the canonical text.
Yeah, this is up there with "the Lion Turtles giving people elements to wield contradicts what was established about the original benders!" as a take that miscontrues what was canonically told and shown to us in that two-parter. It's 2025, I cannot believe I'm still seeing this.
I don't know whether or not Bryke was going for a Yin/Yang thing when they made Raava and Vaatu, but if so, they did not succeed because that's not what they come off as at all. THIS was Yin/Yang:
Raava and Vaatu are actually incarnations of "two sides of one/the same coin". It's an idiom that means two seemingly completely different things are actually closely related aspects of the same thing, emphasizing that while things might appear separate or even polar opposite to one another, they can in truth be interconnected and inseparable from each other, and this comes implicitly with the understanding that too much of either thing in great excess will lead to the exact same result. Such is the case with what Raava and Vaatu embody, where their light and darkness needs to co-exist.
They have the same design but with different coloring, looking like one could fit on top of the other and be the other side of a singular entity. They're introduced to us in their default state - literally tied together by their tails. In the age before the Avatar's existence, no spirit or human was specifically assigned the task of keeping balance within the realms or restoring the balance whenever it was lost, so Raava and Vaatu were just the natural cornerstone of balance. So long as they remained connected and not separate from each other, they upheld the balance. They were the balance. Vaatu's natural instincts always led him to seeking freedom from Raava, but every Harmonic Convergence period she was sure to beat him and keep him in his place. By severing their connection and allowing Vaatu on his own to run amuck near the time of Harmonic Convergeance, Wan disrupted that seemingly unshakable balance, and it was thrown off because Vaatu was the one attempting to conquer Raava, to extinguish his other half completely so that he could spread chaos, ruination and darkness upon the world unchecked. The reason Avatar Wan then "conquering" Vaatu did not similarly throw off the balance is because Raava had just melded with Wan's human spirit and this birthed the singular Avatar Spirit, with the human side of this spirit essentially serving as Vaatu's replacement for what reigns in and rounds out the harmonious, oderly spirit, making the Avatar the new keeper of balance in place of the Raava/Vaatu union. But as Raava and Vaatu are two halves of a singular whole that now had to exist apart from each other - or cease to exist as its original self at all in Raava's case - the world's balance was left very fragile, making it crucial that the Avatar live on and on through different lives to keep the balance and serve as the bridge between two realms.
While the two spirits themselves don't factor into much of TLoK after Book Two, the thing about them embodying two sides of the same coin and how too much of either one of them in great excess should be avoided if there's to be a proper balance is a huge running theme through Book Three and Book Four with its villains. The Red Lotus wanted to spread complete and total chaos throughout the world, which was shown to be a bad thing, and in direct response, the Earth Empire rose and wanted to establish complete and total order in the world through controlling fascist overreach, which was shown to be just as bad. One is Vaatu to the extreme and the other is Raava to the extreme, and they're both enemies of balance that the Avatar has to stop. Yes, the conflicts are Good VS Evil, but they have nuances to them that take them far beyond "light, order and harmony is Pure Good while darkness, chaos and destruction is Pure Evil."
Lastly, even the idea of these spirits as Pure Good and Pure Evil is flawed. Vaatu was disappointingly pretty damn super evil due to the whole "directly conspiring with Unalaq to become a Dark Avatar, doom humanity and reign over spirits in a darkened, desolate world" thing that was just written and handled poorly in general, but Raava? She was not "Pure Good" whatsoever. There was nothing that much differentiated her from all the other high-and-mighty human hating spirits we were shown, and her concerns about Vaatu going loose from her were all about duty, adherence to status quo, and self preservation rather than about morality or concern for who Vaatu might harm. Though she understood morals and virtues, Raava was just as amoral in her approach as Vaatu, but she actually grew beyond her inititally static nature by seeing firsthand the virtues that humans like Wan were capable of having and acting upon, and as Wan was taking care of her in a weakened state, she was humbled.
Whether or not Vaatu is capable of similar growth, we may yet see in Avatar: Seven Havens. But the overall point is that there's more to these spirits than simplistic Good VS Evil, their presence doesn't render the Avatar a being of conquest over a being of balance, and their existence doesn't contradict Avatar lore nearly as much as TLoK antis like to make out. Regardless whether or not you felt we needed to see how it all began, the narrative of "Beginnings" is very much consistent with the mythology of the Avatar as it had always been.
There's this sub-genre of character around these parts that I can only label the "Deserved Better Blorbo", and every time this character type shows up, every time without fail, it's a morally dark character who's done terrible things to other characters who also did not deserve that treatment from them, but for whom their stans will interpret canon in a way (sometimes to the point of disregarding canon altogether or flat out making shit up) that absolves them of being truly at fault and responsible for their own decisions to commit bad actions, and so because these villains (according to the stans) either never actually did anything that was truly wrong to begin with or did wrong only due to terrible internal and environmental circumstances that "made them" do it (most often trauma and/or some form of abuse, so it overlaps with "Bad Victims"), they are to be considered "secretly" 100% pure and innocent deep down inside and Not At Fault for their worst deeds, their suffering matters inherently more than the suffering of other characters (including those who've suffered at their hands), and they are automatically owed a redemption arc, the forgiveness of others, and living happily ever after in the end: that's specifically the "better" that they "deserve", and so if they don't get it, it's affront to the character, their stans, good storytelling, and all real life victims of trauma and abuse everywhere that the stans decided were all embodied and reflected by this singular character.
Now these are all characters that I like (mostly - I've got more mixed feelings on Adam Taurus, Viren, and Chloe Bourgeois), but I am just sick to death of these standoms. Even for some (Hans, Azula, Lotor, Dany, Chloe, and Shigaraki) who I agree deserved better treatment than they were given after a certain point! Feeling like a character got "done dirty" and "deserved better" is a natural audience reaction, so I'm not begrudging anyone of just that alone. But to trash an entire work of fiction and all the care and passion and effort that might've gone into its creation just because you personally did not vibe with the canonical portrayal and ending given to a single character, and to act as though that character was just innately owed "better" from their writers/creators just because you latched onto something about them that made them your personal problematic fave, when it's really about you believing you were owed the writer(s) telling their own story in the way you wanted it to be told rather than how they wanted it (and created it) to be told, is just the height of toxic, entitled, parasocial fandom, online and offline. When your fave is problematic, it's best to acknowledge the fave's problems and love them for them rather than in spite of them and don't try to rationalize away all their worst qualities and deeds while laser-focusing on their Freudian Excuses and more sympathetic qualities just so you can get to say "they deserved better" without any nagging shame and cognitive dissonance. And when a narrative's writer decides that the most suitable ending for your fave to be given isn't necessarily a happy one, then accept that's just how it is even if you personally dislike it and would not have done the same had you been the one handling that character and telling that story. In the end, none of it is real!
(And btw, I hate that I had to have Belos of all people pictured among these characters, but since there were Philip Wittebane stans who bitched about how his character got ended, he actually does count for this. Varian is also a ludicrous case because he DID get a redemption arc and happy ending, but it wasn't enough for some!)
I would like to start off by saying that there's a difference between shipping for fun and obsessing over shipping to an unhealthy degree. The latter is what leads to ship wars, forgetting the point of a series (especially in media where romance isn't the central focus), and even toxic takes such as these:
First of all, many fandoms have their fair share of toxic shippers and to deny that is just pure ignorance. If toxic AmourShippers didn't exist, then what do you call the ones who harassed the writers for not letting Serena dance with Ash in Party Dancecapades, attack other people who don't support their ship or those who don't like Serena, kept arguing that Liko was Ash and Serena's daughter even after that theory was debunked early on, demonize characters like Goh to make Serena look better, or even hate a character to the point of wanting them purged from all forms of Pokémon media for the sole crime of liking the same guy as Serena, especially when said character existed before her?! The person behind the above tweets is a prime example of a toxic AmourShipper.
As for the takes in question, those are by far the stupidest takes I have ever heard of. If the reasoning for erasing Misty from all media is just so Serena can have Ash all to herself, then not only does it sound selfish, there's also a lot of holes with that take.
For one thing, even if Misty was unavailable, there's still other options like Dawn or Lana for Ash in the anime series. For another thing, while i can't speak of the Pokémon Pocket Monsters manga due to how scarce information on the later series is online, Serena has nothing to do with Red (the basis for Ash) in the core series games or the Pokémon Adventures manga. And even if they did meet, she's likely too young for him since, unlike Pokémon the Series, both the games and the Adventures manga actually flow through the passage of time.
There's also other forms of media featuring Misty that don't feature Serena because they cover a single generation or so before Generation VI, such as the Pokémon Zensho manga which only covers the events of Generation I.
And then there's the idea of Serena replacing Misty in Gen 1, which makes ZERO sense whatsoever. As a reminder, Misty was introduced in Pokémon Red and Green, which were released in Japan in 1996, with the anime series airing in the following year. Serena was introduced as the female player character in Pokémon X and Y, which were released in 2013, with the XY series airing in the same year. That's 16 YEARS after the anime series started!
Also, by suggesting that Serena should've been the female option for the Gen 1 games, they're practically saying that she should've replaced Leaf in the remakes, Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. I'm sure that Leaf wasn't brought up, but that's literally what it sounds like by that stupid logic.
Another person on Twitter has once said that shipping has rotted some people's minds, and with awful takes like this, they have a point. If all you care about is who Ash ends up with, then you're not really fans of the series or even Ash as a character. This not only applies to AmourShipping, but also every other ship involving Ash as well.
What I'm about to say can also apply to a lot of other franchises, but what more people need to understand, if not realize, is that romance was never the point of Pokémon. I know the whole "who should date who" thing can be fun to think about, but don't get too caught up in that stuff. Either enjoy Pokémon for what it is or find something else to enjoy.
It's also best to accept that Ash is not a ladies man, and that no ship involving him will ever be canon. Besides, some things are best left to the imagination, because not everything needs a canon answer.
SDRA2 Chapter 3 is the chapter of the game everyone either loves or absolutely hates, or has a love-hate relationship with. It's the one with the Otonokoji Twins front and center of the murder case and its outcome, so of course I'm going to have something of a bias towards it myself even though I can pinpoint a slew of problems in it, many of them being severe unforced errors on LINUJ's part, that ultimately makes it fall victim to the typical Third Case Syndrome by the end.
And I bring it up now because of a post I read that ranked it dead last among all Danganronpa + Fanganronpa third chapters, for reasons that seem about right and also for reasons that seem (to me at least) completely wrong. And I really don't think it deserves that placement since I feel V3 and even DRA did a lot worse in their third chapters.
That’s no exaggeration. LINUJ has stated that his ideas for this chapter of SDRA2 changed after he saw V3′s, which gave him the inspiration for this part of the game.
Uh, not quite. I think this is a misrepresentation of what he said. When LINUJ created Hibiki and Kanade, he had them as the Double Blackened of Chapter 3 in mind from the start - that was to be their main purpose. The only thing that changed about Chapter 3 as we got it versus what he'd initially came up with was how Kanade's villainous nature was revealed. The twist that she was the truly evil twin fixated on secretly controlling and abusing her sister was always the plan, but the extra twist that she was a psychopathic serial killer with a high body count who was obsessively infatuated with her sister and had even killed their parents was added in because the similar twist done with Korekiyo in V3, for some reason I do not get, impressed LINUJ and made him want to do his own version of that.
Not only is this the worst Chapter 3 out of them all, this is honestly one of the worst pieces of media in anything Danganronpa-related that I’ve ever seen. I mean that genuinely, not out of anger, but out of disgust and disappointment.
Pure emotion-driven hyperbole. When Ultra Despair Girls' third chapter, V3's third and its final chapter, this game's final chapter, and the entirety of the DR3 anime exist, this doesn't even come close to scratching the surface of All Time Worst Stuff In Danganronpa.
First of all, this trial is too long. I can accept that trials would need to go on for a while in these circumstances, but six hours? SIX HOURS?! And most of that time is spent with Kanade arguing with Syobai over small, petty details. There is so much that goes on here that can only be explained with either heavy-handed exposition or handwaves of “Fuck you, she’s smart” or “fuck you, I’m lucky.”
YES. That actually might be my biggest gripe with this chapter, and it's one I have about Chapter 6 as well. The trial drags on and on and on for so long, it just wipes you out by the end, so it ends up harder to enjoy stuff you otherwise might've enjoyed better and it makes the problematic areas that much more frustrating. Three to four hours to complete one of these trials is the most I'm willing to spend. SIX is pushing it far beyond the limit. Initially, I'd thought Chapter 3 might be my second favorite case in the game behind Chapter 4, and it is the first case where I actually game a damn about the victim of the murder, but that goddamn Class Trial just holds it back too much.
When Kanade and Hibiki (in her puppet state) murder Setsuka, they stab her with such synchronized timing, milliseconds apart, that Monocrow can’t even decide which happened first. And this was never addressed or shown at any point beforehand, just vaguely referenced here and there. If there had been similar scenes with Kanade and Hibiki demonstrating their synchronization, even just one or two, I would’ve been more willing to believe it.
Wasn't the entire deal with Kanade and Hibiki that they're basically the Ultimate Twins Duo? Hibiki's the vocalist while Kanade's the guitarist, and the two of them perform as a pair in perfect harmony and synchronization with each other, regardless of how dysfunctional their relationship is outside of their work? If Hibiki's singing and Kanade's guitar playing are normally perfectly in sync, I don't get why it's suddenly this super huge stretch to believe they could stab a body in perfect sync. Their whole shtick set this up. Admittedly, it would have felt a lot more sensible without that "puppet state" thing and if the twins had been using a single knife to end Setsuka's life rather than multiple stabs with two knives done in perfect sync.
Likewise, another element of Kanade’s murder plot is that she’s apparently good at throwing. I’m a bit more lenient toward this one, as I recall there might’ve been a scene where she was throwing darts and Hibiki was like “She’s the best at darts!” It’s not much, but it’s better.
The dart throwing scene happened in this very chapter. Still wish there'd been a little bit more to it, though. Like if Kanade needed Hibiki to keep her steady as she thrusted her arm to throw, and this again would work better if Hibiki was in a more right state of mind.
Kanade, who manages to be both a ridiculous genius and completely incompetent at the same time. She describes herself as a perfectionist and makes sure to think about every detail of her plan beforehand, from timetables to which handbooks they need, every shot she needs to make, every tool they need, etc. And yet she leaves behind a bottle of antibiotics. One that proves to be a crucial piece of evidence in incriminating her. If she were really meticulous, she could’ve taken stock of everything she’d brought in her medical kit beforehand and then checked to see if she had it all before they left. But she didn’t, and it’s even acknowledged that it was a stupid mistake.
This acts as though Kanade leaving behind something that would serve as an incriminating clue was some totally random careless and stupid error by Kanade that completely contradicts the narrative of her as some evil genius perfectionist who's always many steps ahead of everyone because she is so thoroughly meticulous and precise in her every thought, word, deed, and objective, and yes, it's acknowledged in-universe even by Kanade as being a shockingly, uncharacteristically sloppy move on her end. The supposition is that it's some "Sora has Divine Luck" bullshit, but honestly Kanade's right, that really doesn't make sense - I refuse to believe that Divine Luck could've interfered at a crime scene Sora was nowhere close to just so that Sora could then have something to incriminate the twins with at the Class Trial. What I think happened given how things played out afterwards is that Kanade, totally subconsciously, dropped that antibiotics bottle where she did for any one of the investigators to find so that if any of the students were smart enough, it would lead them to both her AND Hibiki so that they'd go down together and Kanade would get to revel in Hibiki's despair as they were both put to death. So it wasn't Kanade being not a genius after all, it was her being the Riddler playing a stupidly convoluted 4D Chess gambit that compulsively leads behind a clue that could blow the entire murder plan apart but gain a double execution to go out on her terms.
Add to that the pins that they needed that also got them incriminated. Where did they come from? The bags Hibiki stuffed into her shirt to pad her chest and make herself look like Kanade, which contained Setsuka’s disembodied hands.
That part was weird. The whole "dismemberment and then moving the dismembered body" angle in the murder is a double edged sword because it makes the crime, who did it, where it was carried out and how it was carried out so difficult to determine, which made it a nearly perfect crime on Kanade's part, but it also means figuring that shit out lengthens the trial way too much. A lot of fat in how the body was taken apart and how those parts were moved where, by what, and at what time should've been trimmed so that the pace would be hastened considerably and we could move on to what matters more.
Setsuka’s death is absolutely horrifying and works in the moment, but things like Kanade’s reveal of being a serial killer, while foreshadowed decently, are only really effective on a first viewing. The more you think about it, the less it actually makes sense and the more it hurts both her image and the logic of her plot.
I don't think the reveal of her being a serial killer was foreshadowed decently, or at all. There was plenty of foreshadowing for Kanade being a villain, including one who's seen dead bodies before because she's taken lives before, but not a serial killer. And it never really made sense in the moment and it only gets more nonsensical the more thought you give it. Her exaggerating, embelishing and straight up making shit up to fuck with people honestly makes more sense.
And I’m going to be genuine about this: this chapter is also guilty of serial killer glorification. It doesn’t matter if it frames her in a negative light or paints it as horrific, this was LINUJ trying to make her as shocking and horrific as possible, but also making her into a genius who gets everything she wants at the expense of all the people she’d hurt. The narration goes out of its way to refer to Kanade as a genius multiple times. And the fact that she was the second most popular character in a poll really shows what I’m talking about.
This is clearly a personal hangup that the OP has. I noticed that they don't have a lot of fondness for the more morally black characters in this franchise and doesn't care for the "Evil Is Cool" trope when applied to sadistic mass murderers, calling it "glorification" here. Given my noted villain love, I really cannot feel the same. Kanade being an evil genius who applies herself to nigh perfection at everything she does and ends up claiming victory even in defeat makes her an impressively scary, almost twistedly commendable character as much as she is a despicable, horrific and vile person. That's why she's so popular; she earned it.
To be clear, I don’t like how much focus Genocider Syo gets in the canon games, especially with how they’re played for comic relief more than anything. However, the difference is that Toko actually has a character that grows and develops beyond Syo, Syo doesn’t actually kill any of the main characters (still highly questionable but given how desperate the Tragedy is, I can accept that) and it’s made pretty clear in UDG that even she has some humanity in her. Syo has a sense of decency and compassion, shared with Toko, that grants her some humanity. That is not the case with Kanade, who is a monster through and through.
See what I just said about a bias against morally black characters.
Kanade, by contrast, is not capable of unconditional love; she’s an incestuous, manipulative, stalking, psychopathic control-freak.
Sure, but being a narcissistic sociopath incapable of unconditional love isn't necessarily where all that other stuff directly flows from. Kanade wanted to love Hibiki and for Hibiki to love her since they're like each other's mirror image, but Hibiki's insecurity and envy of Kanade got in the way and made her lash out, driving Kanade's want for her sister to be her special someone to the point of obsession, all because the girls' parents were negligent as fuck and concerned more with raising two Ultimates who could gain them credit and money than nurturing two people who were part of their family. LINUJ tried to push the "Kanade's a demon" angle, but much like Monaca Towa, there's still an inherent humanity to her backstory and in all the factors that shaped her into the monstrous person she is.
Additionally, Kanade’s death isn’t true justice, it’s her getting to die with a smile on her face knowing that she ruined countless lives and has her sister die with her too.
As I've said before, yes and that was the whole point. Executions of the Blackened are never meant to be "justice" in this franchise, and this is one where it's played up as an unarguable injustice. Kanade is beyond the mentality and emotions that would put her in despair at the prospect of getting brutally killed alongside her twin sister, and the fact that said twin sister is despairing over it right there with her is what gives her the greatest rush of joy she could hope to go out on. And as she ensured that she and Hibiki were in perfect sync when they killed Setsuka, thus ensuring they'd both have to be voted for as the Blackened in order for it to be the correct verdict, there was really never a chance left that Kanade could completely lose here. If it makes you feel disgusted, disturbed, uncomfortable and frustrated, good! It was meant to! You don't have to like it for that, but you do need to take it as what it is.
Fuck this chapter and what it did to Hibiki.
If by "what it did to Hibiki" you mean stripping her of any agency in her role in the murder mystery and trial, and making her suffer the worst despair with absolutely no attempts at comfort from anyone around her because they all act like she was equally guilty of the murder even when she wasn't then yes, absolutely fuck that shit.
If you mean killing her off? Well, I already covered that.
She was the biggest victim in all of this, even worse than Setsuka. At least Setsuka wasn’t aware of what was happening and died before she was chopped into pieces. Meanwhile, Hibiki not only learns that she’s partially responsible for it, she gets next to no sympathy from the rest of the cast for what happened, then learns her serial killer sister has been killing and torturing people her whole life to isolate her. And then gets to learn Kanade killed their parents before being dragged off to their double execution, screaming for help the whole time.
I like that she did at least fight back and bludgeon Kanade during the execution and try to set herself free rather than just take it. Problem is that it now kind of doesn't match up with her earlier demeanor over what all had just happened and how unready she was to face death and how she was bawling and screaming out for anyone to save her.
And this was after a ton of character growth and development I was far more interested in and impressed with. When I saw this chapter play out, I didn’t see a tragedy with her or an engaging villain, I saw a frustrating shock-baity twist that left me disgusted, confused and annoyed. Two great characters died to glorify another shitty repetition of the serial killer plot beat, and somehow Kanade is the one who gets all the attention and all the popularity.
Already covered why Kanade came out of this so beloved and well remembered, but I also have to address this idea that Hibiki's character development getting thrown away with her life is a huge affront to the characters and the story that needn't have happened. As I've made clear, Hibiki and Kanade were always set to kill together and die together, so what you ought to be blaming LINUJ for here is giving Hibiki that humanizing character growth and setting her up for further development she'd end up not recieving. If he knew in advance that both these girls had to be dead by the end of Chapter 3, he should've written both of their arcs in a way designed to lead to that point rather than have one of them seemingly going in a different direction only for her to get dragged back in the direction of her unrealistically evil and crazy twin sister's plot.
And to make matters worse, she was actually planning on framing Iroha. Iroha. A girl whose only real method of attack is crying and pushing someone off a balcony. Did she seriously think anyone would buy that she not only killed Setsuka, but dismembered her and set her body up in a weird way?
Another stupid part of the trial that ought to have been exised, though I will say that the "pushing someone off a balcony" part didn't happen yet and the very fact that Iroha was a member of Void, thus expected to attempt murder at some point, adds a layer of irony to what Kanade was trying to pull there.
Not that it matters, since her attempt at framing Iroha- knocking her out with spiked coffee- failed because she doesn’t even like coffee. This girl is not as meticulous or careful as she thinks she is.
Even a genius will have their off moments, especially a young one.
But do you want to know what the worst aspect of this Chapter 3 is? I could maybe overlook all the other details- all of them- if this weren’t the case. It’s how completely irrelevant this chapter is in the greater story.
Unfortunately yes. Chapter 3 always tends to be the least relevant to anything and does the least to advance the overarching story, but this one ends up taking it a whole new extreme level. Kanade setting fire to Setsuka's letter and us never learning what Setsuka had found out and written in it sort of symbolizes the whole deal. Nothing was gained by anyone in-story from this ordeal, we're just left with three characters less than the cast we began the chapter with and a darker, more untrusting and unsettled atmosphere going forward.
But SDRA2′s? It feels like a completely separate story shoved in the middle of the existing one. Kanade has no connection to the Voids or Mikado, not to Utsuro, not to the Despairs, not to any outside groups, not to Hope’s Peak, not even the Tragedy itself plays any role in her character. All she wants is to control Hibiki, and she only did all this because she was losing that control.
If I recall, that really was LINUJ's whole idea. He acknowledged that Chapter 3 always stands as "the midway point" of any DR story, as that's where the first half concludes and the second half begins, so he wanted to present a case with a worthy mid-game culprit and something that clearly marked the first half we'd played through as distinct from the second half still to come, those distinct factors being that we didn't know much about Void in Half 1 but they're far less shrouded in mystery in Half 2, and that the Otonokoji twins are around for their own little sub-story arc for Half 1, and they're not in Half 2. Kanade as a villain with no connection to anything else took care of both those distinction needs. The problem is that LINUJ forgot to account for what the end of the twins' arc would actually do to impact the setting and characters in a way that would linger on enough to justify its whole existence, and to directly segue the events of the first half into the events of the second. It's just sort of its own little story that suddenly eats up all the focus in this chapter, then it goes away and things in the main story continue on as though it hadn't even happened. It's just a strange and disturbing detour.
When you peel away all the shock value, Kanade is ultimately, like every serial killer out there, a painfully flat and boring character with shitty motivations to be a shitty human being. Her entire personality revolves around her creepy obsession with Hibiki; there is nothing deeper there, and LINUJ has even said that Kanade would’ve killed herself if Hibiki died. I don’t find someone like that very appealing nor interesting.
You hate serial killers and really evil characters, so of course she doesn't appeal to you or interest you much. Others will differ, as we can scratch that "flat and borng" surface of that "shitty human being" to find something a little deeper and sadder in that creepy obsession with her twin sister, to make us ponder what might have been done to stop this person and possibly set them straight prior to tragedy. Also have to roll my eyes at "LINUJ has even said..." - why do we care what LINUJ has said about information he decided to reveal outside of the game and its story? It's almost as though Kanade will be held to a standard no other of LINUJ's characters are held to simply because you hate her and don't wish to acknowledge her nuances.
I can name about three things: Hibiki’s puppet state foreshadowing Yuki’s transformation, the implication that more time had passed than they’d realized and her burning Setsuka’s note. The latter is the only piece of the story that actually feels like it connects this chapter to the others. But after Kanade and Hibiki are gone, they’re barely even mentioned and it’s clear how little impact they had.
I don't think any of those really work, especially Setsuka's note since there's nothing later in the story that lets us know what information she'd wanted to convey in it. Maybe LINUJ could've had Mikado been inspired by how Kanade almost had everyone fooled into making the wrong vote and that played a part in his plan in Chapter 5, as well as finding some way to link Hibiki to something that becomes more crucial in the end. Little things to make this an invaluable section of the story instead of a cul-de-sac that leads absolutely nowhere.
There’s also Iroha being revealed as a Void at the end of the Chapter, but that has nothing to do with Kanade and it really could’ve been placed anywhere, or even just left out entirely.
But the fact is that it was placed right at the end of this and is tied directly to how Iroha hadn't attempted a kill yet but was set up to take the fall for Kanade's murder in this chapter. That is one thing that Chapter 3 contains that needs to be seen to make sense of the stuff we get with Iroha in the later chapters.
What this means is that this is the only chapter 3 where you can skip it and miss basically nothing. Think about that: 1/6th of SDRA2- a full 16%- is completely irrelevant to the overarching story, all for the sake of emulating the worst part of V3. Granted, I don’t know how much better LINUJ’s original plan would’ve been, but I have my doubts it could be worse.
If you skipped it, you'd be left wondering where the fuck Setsuka and the twins went. Obviously. And I think DR2's Chapter 3 is just as fillery as this one, as the mystery part of it starts after Nekomaru is taken off to be healed and after it's over, Nekomaru's released from his care and back with us as a robot, which matters for Chapter 4. The entire detour with Despair Disease, Monokuma's movie, and Mikan's murders ultimately had no relevence, as while they do foreshadow things, they're never directly called back to once those foreshadowed things get their payoff. As for LINUJ's "original plan", there is one part about it that I feel would have been worse and so it's absolutely to the characters' benefit that he chose to forgo it in favor of a Korekiyo knockoff - originally, Kanade was going to reveal that she'd always hated Hibiki rather than being in lust with her, and that her goal was to make her suffer in despair and then die as the ultimate "fuck you" to her. Such a reveal would've been like "Really? You actually hated the twin sister who constantly picks on you, insults and demans you, bosses you around, and makes herself the center of everything you two do together? What a shocker! Never thought you had that in you!" It's way too expected and would've rendered the twins relationship into just a worse version of Hiyoko and Mikan. Kanade having fallen in love with the idea of a loving and obedient twin sister who she could treat like a pet and have power over was the more unexpected and interesting direction to take. It just needed stronger execution and less crazy serial killer puppeteer nonsense.
Bottom Line is? LINUJ is a writer in desparate need of an editor, IDK.
Full context: the "remorseless criminal" was also a KID, the same age as the other kid. And this pro-IRL terrorism fanatic was ecstatic about the kid dying a self-sacrificial death because child suicide is alright when it's the right type of kid who's dying.
