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oumakokichi · 7 years

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I've been reading your metas and I want to say that they're really well thought and impressively intensive! Got a question that I'm not sure if you've answered however: if Ouma was meant to be a "pawn of the mastermind" and had despair imbued into his talent, do you think his amazing intellect might have come from actually having the SHSL Analyst talent along with his Leader talent?

I think it’s a distinct possibility! Ouma’s despair role isinteresting, because clearly it’s something he himself wasn’t the most awareof. Or rather, while he suspected himself of having been the intendedfigurehead for the real mastermind, and he knew he clearly had things abouthimself that were fitting for an “evil Supreme Leader,” etc., he didn’t knowabout hope vs. despair terminology, because those things weren’t something thatTsumugi actually busted out as her trump card until Chapter 5.

So while Ouma definitely seems to have been someone Tsumugiwanted to manipulate and use as a pawn the entire way through, I don’t think heactually was supposed to know or think of himself as SHSL Despair until thevery end. Had everything gone according to Tsumugi’s plans (meaning if Oumahadn’t been nearly as big of a pain in her ass as he was), she probably plannedto corner Ouma with a remember light specifically designed and entailed forhim, to make him “remember” about how he was “the successor of Junko Enoshima”and encourage him to go full Remants of Despair Leader, claim credit foreverything, and ultimately be “defeated and talked down by students of Hope’sPeak Academy,” only to kill himself in a fit of despair just like Junko did.

I’d bet that that’s quite literally how the script waswritten, if you will, not least of all because Tsumugi and the other charactersmake plenty of allusions to expecting “Ouma” (meaning Momota in the Exisal) tokill himself just like Junko at the end of their discussion.

Of course, it’s doubtful that the brainwashing ever workedon Ouma in the first place the same as it did among his classmates, precisely because he was twisted so far from hisoriginal character and the original state of things. As someone whose “evil organization”was actually ten kids running around, with a motto like “we don’t kill people,”pulling “laughable crimes” that got nobody hurt, it’s clear that trying toactually turn him into a sadistic, horrible mastermind character was mostlikely intended as some kind of message, or punishment.

Ouma’s clothing and treatment, the location of his lab, andthe entire role planned for him in the game went above and beyond what wasplanned for or expected of any of the other characters. As smart as he is, hewas bound to notice the discrepancy between his real memories and the things he“remembered” only because the remember lights told him they were real. So evenif Tsumugi had actually gotten this far, it’s an interesting question ofwhether it would’ve worked or not. Either way, that was clearly just her idealscenario, because she felt Ouma would have played the role of Junko-likevillain so perfectly.

And if he actually had been given some kind of SHSL Analysttalent or something very similar as a “surefire way” to try and make himdespair, because that’s exactly what happened to characters like Junko andKamukura…well, that would explain a lotactually. If the innate ability to see ahead and predict things and knoweverything leads to boredom, and boredom inevitably leads to despair, then thatwould perhaps have been Ouma’s “given talent.” I could see him having been apretty smart and perceptive kid even pre-game, but this kind of talent woulddefinitely take things to the next level, and explain why he’s able to predictjust as much as he is, to the point that it’s actually a little terrifying.

It wouldn’t be the first time ndrv3 had a lot of imagerywith “dual talents,” either. Ryouma quite literally has two talents at once,and two labs to embody them. As the survivor of a previous killing game show,Amami is speculated to have been “given” the SHSL Adventure title his firsttime around, and he earned “SHSL Survivor” as his talent for entry into thesecond one. Kiibo is clearly meant to have been “a SHSL Robot” by virtue of hisexistence, which is perhaps the closest thing to Naegi’s uncontrollable andun-asked for SHSL Good Luck, and he was supposed to become SHSL Hope later onin the game the way Tsumugi planned for Ouma to be SHSL Despair.

Ouma having “two talents,” or at least the fact that hisfirst talent was more of a cover for something else we can’t quite know about,seems like it wouldn’t be very far from the mark at all. After all, Junko, whowas known as a SHSL Gyaru, and who actually introduces herself as SHSL Despair,honestly does trace all the way back to being a SHSL Analyst, and that itselfis the cause of her despair.

There seem to be quite a lot of hints too that while Ouma iscertainly good at leading, and can and will do so from the shadows ratheraggressively, his SHSL Supreme Leader title is blatantly a lie of some sort.Kaede questions as much within his first two FTEs, and I believe even in thedemo and in his introduction, Naegi mentioned that the only information he hadaccess to about Ouma was just what were on the entry-level files available toall students. Saihara also brings up not being able to find any clues orinformation on Ouma being a real-life “evil Supreme Leader” of anything—and ifthe detective can’t find clues to the mystery, it likely means they don’t exist,because clues have to be presented.

Even in additional bonus content meant mostly for humor, Komaeda of all people can’t find asingle thing on Ouma being a Supreme Leader, or on any kind of actual secret,evil organization. The interaction between Komaeda and Ouma was likely meantfor comic relief, to some degree, but I think it was a valuable hint that therereally is no way Ouma could be leading any kind of actual crime organization orbe any kind of Supreme Leader in real life, because if there were anyinformation at all, Komaeda would be able to find it. Komaeda’s luck works insuch a way that he finds absolutely anything and everything he wants, as longas it exists to be found. So the logical conclusion is…it doesn’t exist.

All of this tells us that him having an actual hidden talentis extremely likely, and that this talent itself was likely how he was “imbuedwith despair” and meant to be turned into Tsumugi’s “pawn.” SHSL Analyst is alikely one, although given that Ouma is still considerably nerfed down comparedto Junko and Kamukura, I’d like to think perhaps he was given a slightvariation of this.

Which is how I present to you my own theory, which of courseis tentative, but I think it would fit: SHSL Chessmaster.

Where Junko’s analysis (and Kamukura’s) works largely bybeing able to take in absolutely every single bit of information in the hereand now, and being constantly, continuously aware of what almost every singleperson is planning and thinking and doing and therefore “knowing” what’s goingto happen to them as a result, Ouma works much more with hypotheticals. Hesticks to chessboard theory, treats everything around him as a game to be won,and predicts according to future “moves,” always having to look at hisclassmates as though they are pieces to be moved around or avoided depending ontheir most likely set of actions.

This means that sometimes he’s looking so far ahead at the “nextmoves” that he actually gets a little distracted in the here and now. Helegitimately just gets way too far ahead of himself and has to remind himselfconstantly that the other characters aren’t quite following him, and thenbacktracks and tries to bait them into realizing something or other (usuallyvery impatiently).

A perfect example of this was in Chapter 4, when it wasalready so obvious to him that he couldn’t have murdered Miu right from thestart of the trial that he seems legitimately just caught off guard and blankfor a second when Himiko reminds him that of course he has reason to lie tothem about it, because he’s a suspect. He pauses quite a long time in thatmoment before kind of forcing himself to rewind and come down to their levelfor a bit, because he was so far off in his own plans that it’s hard to go atwhat must seem like such a slower pace.

SHSL Chessmaster would make perfect sense in my own opinion,considering his black and white imagery, the checkered scarf looking like agameboard, and the fact that his name references two chess pieces, the King andthe Knight. The part of him that is extremely cold and calculating existsprecisely because this kind of cold, hard logic is what he excels at—and in themeantime, the fact that he can only really excel when he’s playing things “as agame” would explain why he tries so hard to counteract the boredom by spicingthings up and making everything fun, because lighthearted pranks are so essential to his character.

If Ouma were a chessmaster, and I personally think he was,he was a fascinating one, because despite how easy it would have been to “winthe game” from the perspective of Tsumugi’s and the usual killing game rules,he wanted to play by his own rules. He snatched control of Tsumugi’s game farbeyond what he was supposed to do, tried to grind the game to a halt, andultimately refused to play the part of any pawn. And when he had everyopportunity to “remove pieces” that might have made his life easier, like Maki,he stopped, because he had done that kind of thing before with Gonta and Miu,and was no longer finding the game worth playing. Resorting to those kinds oftactics was unforgivable to him, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it again,and that’s why he took his own piece off the chessboard at the very endinstead.

Anyway, I’m getting super long with this so I’ll go aheadand stop, but this was so much fun to write about, and I really enjoyed it! Ifeel like SHSL Chessmaster is very, very close to what Kodaka at least intendedfor players to get out of Ouma, or at least understand that it’s a talent thatis supposed to be “like Junko’s but different,” because Ouma went so far offthe rails of what any other character in DR has done before, and intentionallytried to fight the killing game and the mastermind every step of the wayinstead of just doing what they wanted him to do. Thank you so much for givingme a chance to write about this, anon!

#ndrv3 #drv3 #new danganronpa v3 #kokichi ouma #ouma kokichi #ndrv3 spoilers //#my meta #okay to reblog #this was...such a fun piece of meta to write #like i really really enjoyed having a chance to talk about my theories on this #anonymous

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