#neither leon or sayaka were innocent but neither of them were bad people.

[the-apocryphal-one]

I don’t know if the last one ever submitted since I got an error message so just to be safe, I’ll send it again.  You can delete this if you got it anyway.

For the “Leon thing being written upside-down”, it was the same in the Japanese version?  That definitely works more there, but couldn’t the localizers have changed it or something?  Make it so part of the blood was wiped away, or smeared, and it would be harder to tell?  That might have been able to fix up the problem easily enough.  Ah, well.  There are definitely some people who hadn’t picked up on it.  Not because they’re dumb or anything of course, but because they think differently.

I’m going to kind of skim through the second, third, and fourth case because they’re not very interesting to talk about.  It was mostly the mid-game stuff so it would probably be the most boring part of the game if I ever decided to replay DR for whatever reason that might be.  I'm not saying it was bad–in fact, I was very invested in what happened to Chihiro, and the double-murders was a really fun aspect to everything.  

Sakura’s death had the most emotional investment–especially since I had been talking to her a little more on my free time periods, and I like how the ideas for the culprits were flying all over the place, complete with three different confessions.  I thought what happened was kind of obvious but it was still pretty neat, and I liked it.  Hina wanting to kill everyone as punishment for “killing” her best friend was an interesting take too.  I could definitely see where she was coming from.  When Hina confessed, my first thought was that Sakura had gotten Hina to poison her protein drink so Hina’d have “murdered” her, Sakura would write a suicide note, everyone would think it was a suicide, vote Sakura, and Hina would be able to escape the school.  Hina confessed because she wouldn’t be able to handle herself with the knowledge that she’d helped Sakura to kill herself, then killed everyone else in the school in the process.  It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as that, but that would have flown, right?

The gameplay for the trials was as fun, as always.  I like being able to use other people’s statements as truth bullets.  That always manages to spice up the gameplay.  The rhythm mini-game is probably the most fun.  Whenever I’m firing the truth bullets, I usually end up applying Ace Attorney logic to things and that sometimes screws me up.  The Hangman’s Gambit is kind of lame.  I still haven’t forgiven it for calling DID “schizo”.  I get why they couldn’t make the player spell out the entire thing, or DID, but why did they use Hangman’s Gambit for it at all?  I’m going to just say this is something that was really hard to localize/translate and it worked at least a little better in the Japanese version of the game.

I just don’t have much else to say about this portion of the game, except Celeste’s execution was so suiting to her character; it was very elegant, but just as brutal as I expected from this game.  The creators have done such a great job on putting together these creative executions which is…worrying, but I’ll just not think about it and just enjoy them for what they are.

Anyway, I’ve gotten to the first free time period after the fourth trial and I’m pretty sure this is where the game’s story starts to pick up.  Things are moving a lot faster, and there’s a lot more stuff being introduced.  Like the sixteenth student, Sakura hinting that the Mastermind probably did something to us, sneaking into locked areas with Kyoko, etc..  

The sixteenth student was pretty easy to guess (an extra stand in the courtroom “just for decoration”?  Yeah, okay, game) but it’s a neat idea and I really want to know were the game’s going with it.  I don’t have any idea what they might do, but I’m thinking the sixteenth student was the same person who attacked Makoto in the secret room?  On the other hand I’m not sure, because they apparently get killed in chapter five.  I don’t think they’d kill off a character that quickly, would they?  Sayaka and Leon were kind of necessary, and Junko was to demonstrate that anyone could die so don’t mess around with us.  Unless, of course, chapter six is actually the final chapter and “chapter seven” is just an epilogue or something.

Something that was introduced in in between the second and third trials was “The Tragedy”, I think it was?  Talked about something horrible that happened a year ago, and the school had to shut down about it.  It was dropped until we were able to find that nightmare fuel bloody classroom, complete with body outlines.  Interestingly, the blood is red and not pink.  I’ve thought up until now that the artists did the pink blood for artsy reasons, but now that I’ve seen actual red blood, I’m starting to think that’s not the case.  Byakuya brought up how the blood changed color but since it’s been hinting at that the Mastermind might have done something to the students’ memories/bodies, that could just be one of the things he/she did.  Is the students’ blood somehow different than normal blood?  Are these characters already dead or something and stuck in purgatory?  Cyborgs?  Is that why their blood doesn’t look red like blood’s supposed to?  Questions, questions.  If they are in fact altered in some way, the body outlines might be the characters that we’ve seen thus far.  Someone cracked, then went on a rampage, killing what could possibly be some of the characters in the game.  Most specifically, Kyoko, Makoto, and possibly the mystery sixteenth student.  Whatever her name was.  That is, of course, if Kyoko isn’t the sixteenth student herself and is acting in as one of the students that didn’t miraculously survive the slaughter.

That’s all I can remember what I wanted to speculate about, so I’ll talk about the characters next.

I like Makoto a fudge more.  I don’t dislike him, but I don’t really like him, either.  He’s not as dense as he was in the first trial so that’s probably the main reason.  I remember he said that neither of the killers in trial three were entirely innocent, which is a good change of pace from last time.  I can’t really tell if it’s inconsistent writing, or him growing as a character because he hasn’t really changed all that much.  He’s still a little personality-less, but like I said before, I don’t dislike him at all.  The player’s mostly here to experience the ride with him and that’s fine.  The other characters are zany enough to keep me interested so everything won’t get stale.

Kyoko’s interesting, and probably my favorite of the students so far.  She seems to be the female lead next to Makoto.  I don’t have much to say about her.  I’m glad she’s not giving me the answers to everything anymore but still helpful.  I have a star next to her name in my character profile thing so I guess that means I’ve talked to her to the maximum amount?

Genocide Jill’s…fun, I guess?  Seeing her murder victims and how brutal she was to them really makes her a little too psychotic to entirely enjoy the brand of humor she’s supposed to be bringing to the table.  She can still be pretty funny sometimes though.  Her random spouting of a website during a “testimony” was really funny.  Still, though, she’s still pretty entertaining a lot of the time.

Byakuya’s a Grade A Asshole although I’d rather him not die soon because we’re running low on students.  The potential murderer will always have him to kill and not me.

I like Hina.  She has a fun personality.

Hiro’s dumb.  There’s nothing I have to say on him.  He’s just so useless and pointless to the plot.  …But he’s also another person that someone can kill that isn’t me.  I take back what I said about him being pointless.  He still has his uses.

And Monokuma is still the most entertaining character in the game.  I liked the advertisement he shoved in my face during the theater thing.  His emoticons, fourth wall leaning, and sometimes outright fourth wall breaking make him that much more entertaining.  Yeah, I just said it was hard for me to swallow Genocide Jill’s brand of humor because of how psychotic she was, but her brand of psycho is very different than Monokuma’s.  Also, he pulled the Censored for Comedy trope.  How can I not love him forever?

This is as long as I want to go.  I probably made a bunch of typos and run-on sentences so I apologize.  In my defense, it’s late and I want to be able to write all this down before I forget.  Yeesh,  I can only imagine how much I’ll want to talk about everything once I finish the game. XD

Meanwhile… must…resist…from…going…to…TV…Tropes…

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It was the exact same. I’m not sure why they didn’t change it, maybe censorship laws or something...but then again it is the first case, so it’s probably not all too bad to have it easy for the audience. The real mystery comes from figuring out Sayaka’s role in it, in my opinion.

Personally I found case 2 the hardest, and cases 3 and 4 easy to guess the culprit--though Aoi claiming to have killed Sakura did throw me off, and I started wondering whether she had or why. I like the idea you came up with, though, my best was “maybe she was way more gutted over her being the mole than anyone else? and killed her for ‘betraying’ her?” Either way it was still very emotional. Chihiro’s trial still sticks as my favorite though, the little guy was so fascinating and important and had some real depth.

Hangman’s Gambit is a bane on all players, haha. Like I guess they did “schizo” for convenience (since DID would be really easy), but from what I hear it was more accurate in the original Japanese version.

I liked Celeste’s execution a lot, too. Monokuma setting it up to be the grand death she’d love, only to switch out by having her die a common death she’d hate, is very trollish and clever of him. Not to mention the visuals are probably my favorite.

Yep, this is the part of the story where everything really starts rolling towards the climax!

Chapter six is the last chapter. As for the sixteenth student and the masked attacker...that’s one of the grand mysteries of the school!

No, the blood being pink is just a stylistic choice--I think the blood there is red there to signify that it’s dried. They were going to go with all red blood originally, but had to change it to avoid a higher rating. That said...there is something wrong with the students, that Monokuma has done. You’ll find out what eventually :)

Makoto is kind of vanilla, but I like him because genuinely nice, male characters are kind of rare. He is a bit static, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a problem since it lets him be a “normal” point for the audience.

Yep, that’s what it means. And yes, Kyoko’s one of my favs too. I really liked her argument with Makoto in Chapter 4, it was petty and hypocritical and really humanized her. Her mentor/friend relationship with him works really well, and they play off each other’s weakness.

Toko and Jill are also favorites of mine, for reasons I can’t say. But they are a set of the most interesting characters in the game.

Byakuya’s still a giant dick, but I was actually kinda warming up to him at the end, if only because Toko/Jill’s stalking brought some needed levity.

I never took that much of a liking to Aoi, for some reason. She’s sweet, but just didn’t interest me as much as everyone else around her, I guess.

LOL, you’re not alone in your thoughts on Hiro. I was sick to death of him by the time Chapter 5 rolled around, like “YOU’RE alive but Kiyotaka and Chihiro aren’t?!” At least Byakuya contributes to trials.

Monokuma will always be one of the best characters in the franchise. Always.

Again, it’s no problem, and I still love hearing people’s thoughts on it! Seeing everyone’s speculations and guesses is a lot of fun, and it makes me happy to know you’re enjoying this great game so much :)

Resist! It’s worth it! (Especially since TvTropes doesn’t hide spoilers for any of the DR entries except the newest one)

#dangan ronpa #submission #answers