Wishing I Had Strength To Stand.
Just finished the fifth chapter of Danganronpa V3!
Before starting Chapter Five, here's my wildly implausible prediction: everyone enters the dining hall, four through one door, three through another. There's a body discovery announcement. But everyone's... there? And alive?
So, at the trial, they not only have to work out the culprit; they have to work out the victim.
It's Kaito, who died and who Maki brought back with the Necronomicon, because surely that has to come into play at some point.
This isn't going to happen, but it would be sort of amazing.
Huh, going to bed with the Key of Love in my inventory doesn't seem to do anything at all.
Things are so awkward between Kaito and Shuichi! It's unbearable! Please make up before Kaito's inevitable death, guys.
I FOUND RANTARO'S LAB BUT I'M NOT ALLOWED TO GO INSIDE, NO
From the design on the door, he could be the Ultimate... Rioter? World Ender? He did say in a Free Time with Kaede that he was concerned his talent might make everyone hate him.
Awww, Keebo is speaking fondly of Miu. I'm glad someone in the cast liked her.
I like the fond little laugh Shuichi occasionally gives when someone says something silly (like Keebo saying the car wash 'looks comfortable' just now).
KEEBO THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA
GET OUT OF THE HYDRAULIC PRESS
SHUICHI DON'T AGREE TO THIS TERRIBLE PLAN
(From Tsumugi’s final Free Time event:)
Tsumugi: I didn't think our tastes would be this similar!
Shuichi: Whoa!
(Before I could react, Tsumugi grabbed my hand and swung it back and forth.)
Tsumugi: To think I'd meet someone I could talk with here! I'm really happy!
Shuichi: Y-Yeah...
Tsumugi: Ah!
Shuichi: (When she realised we were holding hands, she blushed and went still.
...But she didn't let go.)
stupid game, stop being cute, it just makes everything more painful
I was hoping to pursue Kokichi in Free Time next, but his whereabouts are unknown, so I suppose it's my duty to find out whether the robot wears underpants.
With the exception of Rantaro, all the people I've been going after in Free Times - Kaito, Maki, Tsumugi - are still alive! That's obviously a good thing - the characters I'm interested in have stuck around - but, on the other hand, it means that my Free Time options are severely limited now, because I've already done all the scenes for half the current survivors. Keebo and Himiko are the only people I actually have the option of hanging out with.
Ah, apparently you need the Key of Love in your possession during plot scenes where Shuichi goes to bed at night!
I can already tell that the Love Hotel scenes are going to make my habit of shipping every possible pairing much worse.
(I got Himiko's scene, in which she was playing out a fantasy in which Shuichi is a wolf in human form who she's fallen in love with, because this is Dangan Ronpa. I imagine Kokichi's fantasy is probably terrifying.)
I hadn’t realised you didn’t actually get to choose who you go to the hotel with. Time to prepare myself to be bombarded with randomly-chosen ships, I suppose.
Oh noooooooo, I hadn't realised I'd need to get multiple keys either! Time for endless, endless salmon fishing.
The plot lies forgotten on the floor. My life is a haze of salmon. My only goal is to bang all my classmates.
(Eventually, and regrettably, I resumed the actual plot.)
This game is definitely getting too bleak, even for Dangan Ronpa. Society collapsing in the first game: okay, I'll accept that. But 'literally all life has been destroyed' is hard to have much fun with.
I had started to wonder whether Kokichi's black-and-white scarf was a mark of affiliation with Monokuma, actually.
Tsumugi: 'H-hold on. You were the one that started all this... That's so irresponsible...' That irresponsible Kokichi, always destroying the last possibility for humanity's survival.
The protagonist of this game just slept for an entire day because he was too depressed to get out of bed. I should have remained focused on the 'bang my classmates' goal. Progressing the plot was a mistake.
KAITO DON'T GIVE SHUICHI THE 'THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN I'M GONE' SPEECH, WHAT ARE YOU PLOTTING, I WON'T LIKE IT
We... we actually are getting a case where we have to determine not just the culprit but the victim?
Poor Shuichi. The boy's flipping out.
I'm currently digging myself into denial just as ferocious as Shuichi's. KAITO'S FINE, HE JUST FAKED HIS DEATH FOR SOME REASON AND THERE WAS A BODY DISCOVERY ANNOUNCEMENT... ALSO FOR UNKNOWN REASONS, WHICH DEFINITELY AREN'T THAT KAITO KILLED KOKICHI, BECAUSE THAT'S NOT A GOOD OUTCOME EITHER.
The body is almost definitely Kaito's, which means it isn't Kaito's, unless it is Kaito's and the game's relying on us going 'too obvious, can't be him' so it can hit us in the face with NOPE, IT'S HIM. Dangan Ronpa.
The hydraulic press shouldn't be able to press a living person, so it's likely the victim was killed elsewhere and then pressed to make their body unidentifiable. So, say, Kaito might have murdered Kokichi and then used Kokichi's body to fake his own death. But I don't see why he'd fake his own death when presumably he'd end up having to attend the trial.
Alternatively, Kokichi Necronomiconed someone (SURELY that's going to come into play at some point), killed them and used them to fake Kaito's death, because ????? who knows why Kokichi does anything
(The appearance of the Flashback Light that gave them hope does make me wonder again whether Kokichi is as malicious as he makes himself out to be.)
If we have lost Kaito, I'm glad he and Shuichi had that nice little bathroom window conversation, at least. I was so worried that he would die while they weren't talking to each other.
If Kaito is the victim, it's possible that Maki is the culprit somehow, for maximum despair. But they've already done the 'killing off the two characters the protagonist has the strongest connection with in case five' thing in the second game; would they do it again?
The first sign of Kaito's haemorrhaging came after Maki hit him in Chapter Three. It's possible he realised he was dying and sacrificed himself, or provoked Kokichi into killing him, so Maki wouldn't be executed as the culprit.
(Having discovered the body last night, I woke up at five thirty and couldn't get back to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about this case. I am not at my most awake this morning.)
Look, I know we saw his body get crushed in a hydraulic press, but Kaito is fine, right?
I still haven't taken any classmates to the Hotel Kumasutra since Himiko, because Shuichi's been too unhappy to use the Key of Love in the nights since then. It's a tragedy. All that salmon-catching going to waste.
I'd like to make a note that, although the tutorial text about the Love Hotel scenes said that memories of the experience would be erased, that only seems to apply to whoever you go to the Love Hotel with. Shuichi definitely remembers, because he thought something like (L-last night, with Himiko... was that a dream? Yeah... definitely a dream...) afterwards.
I'm not saying I'm going to write fanfiction in which Shuichi finds it increasingly hard to handle the fact that he has all these memories of being intimate with the others when none of them remember a thing. I just... feel compelled to note that it's a possibility.
(One day they find a Flashback Light that brings back all their Love Hotel memories and it's EXTREMELY AWKWARD.)
(‘You seem very inspired,’ my friend observes, diplomatically. He is not a fanfiction person, but he’s been subjected to all my shipping ramblings because he’s played this game and I have to talk to someone. Poor guy.)
This game is very inspirational in terrible, terrible ways. It's dangerous for me to play because it's a murder mystery that clearly yearns to be a dating sim, and romance in fiction often doesn't interest me unless it takes place against a backdrop of horrible murder, in which case I can't get enough of it.
I feel there's a fair chance that whoever's inside the Exisal is neither Kaito nor Kokichi. I don't know why else Kokichi wouldn't have emerged when Shuichi concluded the body had to be Kaito (nooooooooo). That or Kokichi's in a really bad way (possibly due to poison?) and doesn't want them to see his appearance.
Holy crap, did Kokichi show everyone the outside world and tell them he was the mastermind just to stop them from killing each other?
Maki accidentally killed Kaito
are you serious
this game is the wooooorst
Unless it turns out that Kokichi was generous enough to kill Kaito before the poison could, thus making himself the culprit in this case instead. But, even if Maki survives this, she'll still have to live with the knowledge that she caused Kaito's death.
EVERYTHING IS AWFUL
I JUST WANTED TO TAKE EVERYONE TO THE LOVE HOTEL, WHY DOES THIS MURDER GAME HAVE TO HAVE SO MUCH MURDER IN IT
'If you show the moment of Kaito's death, of course it would lead us to believe he died.' Strong reasoning from Shuichi.
If Monokuma doesn't know the cause of death, it's... actually possible that nobody died at all, right? After all, Monokuma is the one who makes body discovery announcements. Kaito just miraculously stopped being poisoned and a load of blood appeared on the hydraulic press for no reason and look goddammit my boyfriend is definitely fine.
what the fuck is this case
what the fuck
what the fuck is this case
Shuichi, are you sure fighting so hard to expose the truth is a great idea in this case?
nooooo, it didn't let me vote for myself instead of Kaito
I mean, obviously the others would have voted for Kaito, so it wouldn't have changed the result, but voting for someone else would have been a nice symbolic gesture to have the option to make.
IT COULD STILL HAVE BEEN MAKI, THERE'S STILL A CHANCE THE CULPRIT WAS MAKI
Oh, my God, of course Kokichi wrote a script for Kaito. I was thinking 'Kaito's surprisingly good at imitating Kokichi; did Kokichi tell him what to say?'
But of course. Of course Kokichi sat down, slowly dying of poisoning, and wrote lots of clever posthumous lines for himself while Kaito did all the work of actually setting up the murder. Of fucking course he did. He's Kokichi.
'I dunno what you're talking about, but... I guess I'm pretty screwed, huh?' I do love Kaito's manner of speaking (even if I do not love the fact that he's pretty screwed).
OH, GOOD, THE MONOKUBS ARE BACK. THAT MAKES UP FOR KAITO'S IMPENDING EXECUTION.
I can't believe it looked like my boyfriend was the victim for the entirety of that case, and then it turned out he was miraculously alive, and then he died immediately.
(And that he and Shuichi didn't so much as hug, come on.)
I do love how pissed off Monokuma is that he died before the end of his execution, though.
Shuichi: (Later that night...
I found myself standing in that one spot in the courtyard.
The place where Kaito and I would train together...
My heart... felt crushed. All the loss and guilt and helplessness... sinking in my chest.)
[...]
Maki: Are you lonely... now that Kaito is gone?
Shuichi: ...
Yeah... lonely.
I... I feel so lonely, and so sad I... I don’t know what to do...
noooooooo
KEEBO NO WHAT THE FUCK
Well, that was definitely a chapter.
I suspect I'm going to have to give up on the dream of finding out whether robots wear underpants.
I’m glad that it seems like humanity might not actually be extinct, at least, and that the characters are taking a less defeated attitude.
One chapter left! Where is this going to go? I'm very nervous.
Before starting Chapter Five, here's my wildly implausible prediction: everyone enters the dining hall, four through one door, three through another. There's a body discovery announcement. But everyone's... there? And alive?
So, at the trial, they not only have to work out the culprit; they have to work out the victim.
It's Kaito, who died and who Maki brought back with the Necronomicon, because surely that has to come into play at some point.
This isn't going to happen, but it would be sort of amazing.
Huh, going to bed with the Key of Love in my inventory doesn't seem to do anything at all.
Things are so awkward between Kaito and Shuichi! It's unbearable! Please make up before Kaito's inevitable death, guys.
I FOUND RANTARO'S LAB BUT I'M NOT ALLOWED TO GO INSIDE, NO
From the design on the door, he could be the Ultimate... Rioter? World Ender? He did say in a Free Time with Kaede that he was concerned his talent might make everyone hate him.
Awww, Keebo is speaking fondly of Miu. I'm glad someone in the cast liked her.
I like the fond little laugh Shuichi occasionally gives when someone says something silly (like Keebo saying the car wash 'looks comfortable' just now).
KEEBO THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA
GET OUT OF THE HYDRAULIC PRESS
SHUICHI DON'T AGREE TO THIS TERRIBLE PLAN
(From Tsumugi’s final Free Time event:)
Tsumugi: I didn't think our tastes would be this similar!
Shuichi: Whoa!
(Before I could react, Tsumugi grabbed my hand and swung it back and forth.)
Tsumugi: To think I'd meet someone I could talk with here! I'm really happy!
Shuichi: Y-Yeah...
Tsumugi: Ah!
Shuichi: (When she realised we were holding hands, she blushed and went still.
...But she didn't let go.)
stupid game, stop being cute, it just makes everything more painful
I was hoping to pursue Kokichi in Free Time next, but his whereabouts are unknown, so I suppose it's my duty to find out whether the robot wears underpants.
With the exception of Rantaro, all the people I've been going after in Free Times - Kaito, Maki, Tsumugi - are still alive! That's obviously a good thing - the characters I'm interested in have stuck around - but, on the other hand, it means that my Free Time options are severely limited now, because I've already done all the scenes for half the current survivors. Keebo and Himiko are the only people I actually have the option of hanging out with.
Ah, apparently you need the Key of Love in your possession during plot scenes where Shuichi goes to bed at night!
I can already tell that the Love Hotel scenes are going to make my habit of shipping every possible pairing much worse.
(I got Himiko's scene, in which she was playing out a fantasy in which Shuichi is a wolf in human form who she's fallen in love with, because this is Dangan Ronpa. I imagine Kokichi's fantasy is probably terrifying.)
I hadn’t realised you didn’t actually get to choose who you go to the hotel with. Time to prepare myself to be bombarded with randomly-chosen ships, I suppose.
Oh noooooooo, I hadn't realised I'd need to get multiple keys either! Time for endless, endless salmon fishing.
The plot lies forgotten on the floor. My life is a haze of salmon. My only goal is to bang all my classmates.
(Eventually, and regrettably, I resumed the actual plot.)
This game is definitely getting too bleak, even for Dangan Ronpa. Society collapsing in the first game: okay, I'll accept that. But 'literally all life has been destroyed' is hard to have much fun with.
I had started to wonder whether Kokichi's black-and-white scarf was a mark of affiliation with Monokuma, actually.
Tsumugi: 'H-hold on. You were the one that started all this... That's so irresponsible...' That irresponsible Kokichi, always destroying the last possibility for humanity's survival.
The protagonist of this game just slept for an entire day because he was too depressed to get out of bed. I should have remained focused on the 'bang my classmates' goal. Progressing the plot was a mistake.
KAITO DON'T GIVE SHUICHI THE 'THINGS TO REMEMBER WHEN I'M GONE' SPEECH, WHAT ARE YOU PLOTTING, I WON'T LIKE IT
We... we actually are getting a case where we have to determine not just the culprit but the victim?
Poor Shuichi. The boy's flipping out.
I'm currently digging myself into denial just as ferocious as Shuichi's. KAITO'S FINE, HE JUST FAKED HIS DEATH FOR SOME REASON AND THERE WAS A BODY DISCOVERY ANNOUNCEMENT... ALSO FOR UNKNOWN REASONS, WHICH DEFINITELY AREN'T THAT KAITO KILLED KOKICHI, BECAUSE THAT'S NOT A GOOD OUTCOME EITHER.
The body is almost definitely Kaito's, which means it isn't Kaito's, unless it is Kaito's and the game's relying on us going 'too obvious, can't be him' so it can hit us in the face with NOPE, IT'S HIM. Dangan Ronpa.
The hydraulic press shouldn't be able to press a living person, so it's likely the victim was killed elsewhere and then pressed to make their body unidentifiable. So, say, Kaito might have murdered Kokichi and then used Kokichi's body to fake his own death. But I don't see why he'd fake his own death when presumably he'd end up having to attend the trial.
Alternatively, Kokichi Necronomiconed someone (SURELY that's going to come into play at some point), killed them and used them to fake Kaito's death, because ????? who knows why Kokichi does anything
(The appearance of the Flashback Light that gave them hope does make me wonder again whether Kokichi is as malicious as he makes himself out to be.)
If we have lost Kaito, I'm glad he and Shuichi had that nice little bathroom window conversation, at least. I was so worried that he would die while they weren't talking to each other.
If Kaito is the victim, it's possible that Maki is the culprit somehow, for maximum despair. But they've already done the 'killing off the two characters the protagonist has the strongest connection with in case five' thing in the second game; would they do it again?
The first sign of Kaito's haemorrhaging came after Maki hit him in Chapter Three. It's possible he realised he was dying and sacrificed himself, or provoked Kokichi into killing him, so Maki wouldn't be executed as the culprit.
(Having discovered the body last night, I woke up at five thirty and couldn't get back to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about this case. I am not at my most awake this morning.)
Look, I know we saw his body get crushed in a hydraulic press, but Kaito is fine, right?
I still haven't taken any classmates to the Hotel Kumasutra since Himiko, because Shuichi's been too unhappy to use the Key of Love in the nights since then. It's a tragedy. All that salmon-catching going to waste.
I'd like to make a note that, although the tutorial text about the Love Hotel scenes said that memories of the experience would be erased, that only seems to apply to whoever you go to the Love Hotel with. Shuichi definitely remembers, because he thought something like (L-last night, with Himiko... was that a dream? Yeah... definitely a dream...) afterwards.
I'm not saying I'm going to write fanfiction in which Shuichi finds it increasingly hard to handle the fact that he has all these memories of being intimate with the others when none of them remember a thing. I just... feel compelled to note that it's a possibility.
(One day they find a Flashback Light that brings back all their Love Hotel memories and it's EXTREMELY AWKWARD.)
(‘You seem very inspired,’ my friend observes, diplomatically. He is not a fanfiction person, but he’s been subjected to all my shipping ramblings because he’s played this game and I have to talk to someone. Poor guy.)
This game is very inspirational in terrible, terrible ways. It's dangerous for me to play because it's a murder mystery that clearly yearns to be a dating sim, and romance in fiction often doesn't interest me unless it takes place against a backdrop of horrible murder, in which case I can't get enough of it.
I feel there's a fair chance that whoever's inside the Exisal is neither Kaito nor Kokichi. I don't know why else Kokichi wouldn't have emerged when Shuichi concluded the body had to be Kaito (nooooooooo). That or Kokichi's in a really bad way (possibly due to poison?) and doesn't want them to see his appearance.
Holy crap, did Kokichi show everyone the outside world and tell them he was the mastermind just to stop them from killing each other?
Maki accidentally killed Kaito
are you serious
this game is the wooooorst
Unless it turns out that Kokichi was generous enough to kill Kaito before the poison could, thus making himself the culprit in this case instead. But, even if Maki survives this, she'll still have to live with the knowledge that she caused Kaito's death.
EVERYTHING IS AWFUL
I JUST WANTED TO TAKE EVERYONE TO THE LOVE HOTEL, WHY DOES THIS MURDER GAME HAVE TO HAVE SO MUCH MURDER IN IT
'If you show the moment of Kaito's death, of course it would lead us to believe he died.' Strong reasoning from Shuichi.
If Monokuma doesn't know the cause of death, it's... actually possible that nobody died at all, right? After all, Monokuma is the one who makes body discovery announcements. Kaito just miraculously stopped being poisoned and a load of blood appeared on the hydraulic press for no reason and look goddammit my boyfriend is definitely fine.
what the fuck is this case
what the fuck
what the fuck is this case
Shuichi, are you sure fighting so hard to expose the truth is a great idea in this case?
nooooo, it didn't let me vote for myself instead of Kaito
I mean, obviously the others would have voted for Kaito, so it wouldn't have changed the result, but voting for someone else would have been a nice symbolic gesture to have the option to make.
IT COULD STILL HAVE BEEN MAKI, THERE'S STILL A CHANCE THE CULPRIT WAS MAKI
Oh, my God, of course Kokichi wrote a script for Kaito. I was thinking 'Kaito's surprisingly good at imitating Kokichi; did Kokichi tell him what to say?'
But of course. Of course Kokichi sat down, slowly dying of poisoning, and wrote lots of clever posthumous lines for himself while Kaito did all the work of actually setting up the murder. Of fucking course he did. He's Kokichi.
'I dunno what you're talking about, but... I guess I'm pretty screwed, huh?' I do love Kaito's manner of speaking (even if I do not love the fact that he's pretty screwed).
OH, GOOD, THE MONOKUBS ARE BACK. THAT MAKES UP FOR KAITO'S IMPENDING EXECUTION.
I can't believe it looked like my boyfriend was the victim for the entirety of that case, and then it turned out he was miraculously alive, and then he died immediately.
(And that he and Shuichi didn't so much as hug, come on.)
I do love how pissed off Monokuma is that he died before the end of his execution, though.
Shuichi: (Later that night...
I found myself standing in that one spot in the courtyard.
The place where Kaito and I would train together...
My heart... felt crushed. All the loss and guilt and helplessness... sinking in my chest.)
[...]
Maki: Are you lonely... now that Kaito is gone?
Shuichi: ...
Yeah... lonely.
I... I feel so lonely, and so sad I... I don’t know what to do...
noooooooo
KEEBO NO WHAT THE FUCK
Well, that was definitely a chapter.
I suspect I'm going to have to give up on the dream of finding out whether robots wear underpants.
I’m glad that it seems like humanity might not actually be extinct, at least, and that the characters are taking a less defeated attitude.
One chapter left! Where is this going to go? I'm very nervous.