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Kirigiri, because it seems she's opened up a bit and is more willing to actually talk to us rather than give us the cold shoulder all the time. Asahina because I want to hear more POOL talk. 
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 13:52 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 01:38 |
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Touko Fukawa and Kyouko Kirigiri. Fukawa because I want to know what her deal is - I still haven't forgotten that orenronen specifically alluded to her character in the beginning of the thread. As for Kirigiri, going to echo Satan in that I'm curious to see if her attitude towards us has changed.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 13:56 |
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The heir and the hall monitor. As an aside, it's interesting that Celes is willing to be so openly creepy re. the game and the benefits of playing it. If she really were plotting how to kill someone and escape, wouldn't she want to look as normal as possible right now to minimize suspicion down the road? FZH995 fucked around with this message at Dec 24, 2011 around 14:35 |
| # ? Dec 24, 2011 14:23 |
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Sakura and Asahina.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 14:39 |
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Byakuya; I really wanna know what his deal is. Celes is my favourite character right now, so I'd love to know more about her.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 14:45 |
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Celes and Aoi Since "Rodent's a guy" and "Rodent's a robot" are both taken, I will take "Rodent's just exceptionally shy" 
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 14:54 |
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OP: would it be easier for you to count the votes if everyone just voted for one candidate, and you showcased the people who finished #1 and #2? Or does that really save no labor for you?
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 14:56 |
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I'll go for Oowada and CelesFZH995 posted:As an aside, it's interesting that Celes is willing to be so openly creepy re. the game and the benefits of playing it. If she really were plotting how to kill someone and escape, wouldn't she want to look as normal as possible right now to minimize suspicion down the road? In spite of her creepiness and general detached attitude, though, most of what she's said has been in support of the least nasty, lowest risk option - living quietly at the school for the rest of their lives. She's demonstrated no interest in going up against Monobear and at the trial she seemed to give the impression that she considers killing someone to be a stupid course of action, neither of which are attitudes you'd expect from a stereotypical gambler. So either she's actually a good gambler who's capable of sensible risk/benefit analyses, or she's trying to persuade everyone else to take the safe option so she can betray them unopposed.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:10 |
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Simply Simon posted:
 I've been saying/suspecting that the hacker is a boy a while back, but this update cemented it. The question whether she wanted to take a bath really made it clear: my suspicion would have been devastated if she agreed, but now i'm absolutely sure. The whole shenanigans with registered and closely monitored separate changing rooms just put a huge blinking Vegas arrow above the issue. Voting for the Heir is tempting, but ultimately a waste. We'll have more than enough time to interview the red herring. So, i'll take the most likely persons to be involved with the next murder: Chihiro and Aoi. And i hope everyone catched that important little bit of characterisation for Gambling Chick:  If we’re going to get that kind of improvements, it isn’t so bad to have a school trial now and then. Hee hee hee...It takes a certain kind of person to crack a joke like that in light of recent developments. This is a step beyong your usual gallows humour.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:11 |
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Surely the rules about who can enter which changing room will come into play. I'll name that as the next murder scene. There are too many good possibilities for conversations for me to pick from....
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:15 |
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I'd like to see more of Fujisaki and Celes.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:19 |
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Kirigiri and Tokugawa, I think. (Can we kill Touko ourselves? Girl is completely toxic.)
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:23 |
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Gambler Girl and Heir Dude are the people interesting me right now.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:23 |
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... Why do so many of you have cross-dresser alarms.  Where was Hagakure during that 2nd floor exploration? NRVNQSR posted:In spite of her creepiness and general detached attitude, though, most of what she's said has been in support of the least nasty, lowest risk option - living quietly at the school for the rest of their lives. She's demonstrated no interest in going up against Monobear and at the trial she seemed to give the impression that she considers killing someone to be a stupid course of action, neither of which are attitudes you'd expect from a stereotypical gambler. Celes seems like she's hedging her bet. She's appearing non-threatening while becoming familiar with her environment, all of Monobear's rules and possible loopholes, and her fellow captives so when she does decide to go for a murder it'll be at the highest possible chance of success. Her dialogue with Monobear also seems like she's feeling him out to see how much preparation he's gone into beyond the elaborate death traps and how he thinks. I vote Celes and Asahina.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:29 |
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I'll put votes in for Aoi and Celes. I definitely get the feeling that Celes is playing the long game in this one. She won't make a move until she has as much information as possible. In order to accomplish that, I suspect that she would be more than happy to encourage someone else to engage in a killing, and then help convict them in the later trial. She's definitely got her sights set on the endgame. I've got a bad feeling about Aoi. She'll either be the next victim or the next patsy, and I'm leaning towards victim. She's too well adjusted at the moment, and the addition of the pool has pretty much cemented that. She's also got Sakura for emotional support, so I think she'd be perfectly happy staying put, and that doesn't help anyone. She's definitely on the expendable list.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:30 |
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I'm voting for Aoi and Celes too. We haven't really seen a lot about Aoi, and there's definitely something going on with Celes.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 15:34 |
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I say Touko Fukawa and Chihiro Fujisaki. Something's definitely up with Chihiro(why so evasive about changing rooms and swimming?), and Touko...Touko's just crazy, so I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:03 |
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I'll throw in my vote for Aoi and Celes.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:15 |
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I am completely unrepentant, I stand by the same votes I made during the first free activivity, let us spend time with our bros Mondo-kun and Sakura-san. Also, a bit earlier in the thread someone said that Hacker was a crossdresser/trans, and at that point I thought he was pulling poo poo out of his rear end, but after this update, I am not so sure he was.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:16 |
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Kirigiri and Fujisaki.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:19 |
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DrakePegasus on November 8 posted:Zoro's voice actor as a gang leader. It was pretty much meant to be. PhysicsFrenzy last week posted:Also like someone else mentioned previously, the hacker is a crossdresser and we're going to face an unsolvable toolkit murder at some point. HenryEx last week posted:Haha, that's spot on and explains pretty much all my gripes with the character. Explains a lot of the behaviour as well; very careful, very much acting in stereotypes á la "This is how girls act, right?". I'm not sure what's stranger as far as media representation and general prejudice goes: a female hacker or a crossdressing hacker. Called it. Only now I'm going to guess instead of a toolkit murder, it will be a changing room murder. Or she'll get gunned down by Monobear no matter which room she chooses.  Anyway, gonna keep voting for Sakura and Kirigiri. Edit: Didn't realize a certain word was offensive at first. PhysicsFrenzy fucked around with this message at Dec 24, 2011 around 20:53 |
| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:20 |
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Bocc Kob posted:... Why do so many of you have cross-dresser alarms. I guess it's kind of a thing in anime? Regardless, the way she talks it sounds like she is not only afraid of the changing rooms but there is something actually stopping her from joining Aoi. A possible twist on the obvious crossdresser setup would be that Chihiro actually is a girl but was issued a male student ID card that she's been unable to crack and is too shy to speak up about. Seems like a good way to leave her trapped in despair upupupupu etc. But she's probably just a crossdresser. Also voting Byakuya and Aoi. Gabriel Pope fucked around with this message at Dec 24, 2011 around 16:24 |
| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:22 |
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Touko and Aoi. Touko seems bent on mayhem, what with her provoking the otaku and constantly being negative and angry about everything, I want to know what her deal is. Plus I still have my pet theory about her being Genocider Syo (due to her being, as one poster mentioned before, toxic, plus she seems crazy enough) and I want to see if interacting with her further will help that theory. As for Aoi, I want to talk to her because she is the sanest person so far and I want to see if she has some kind of screw loose somewhere, also as previous posters have mentioned, it seems like her time is running out.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:23 |
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Ditocoaf posted:Fujisaki's "fear of changing rooms" is a real Chekhov's gun in this chapter. She's either going to die, be the killer, or be the false suspect. This new detail almost makes me wonder whether those people suggesting she's "actually male" (or however you'd rather put it) are right -- because that would add some interesting twists via the question of which locker room she is allowed into. Of course, we'd have to see a videogame dealing with gender issues, which could either be painful or refreshing. Which would also help explain the worry about using the changing rooms. Appearing as female, but their ID card can only open the male room and if they try and follow one of the girls into that room Monobear will break out the minigun. As such, I vote you talk to the Super High-School Level Hacker to see if we can turn up some more information on this, and, uh. Have we mined out Kigiri yet? Mercury Hat posted:The fact we're all jumping to the cross dresser explanation either says something about most anime or most goons
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:28 |
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Right now, I'm curious to learn more about the Heir and the Hall Monitor. Both of them seem like authoritative characters who haven't really given any personal information out. Also, regarding the Hacker, I'm guessing that if she does turn out to be a cross-dresser, it's just going to be a result of insecurities about her size, not anything having to do with being trans or whatever. Even up against the other girls, she looks puny. Also also, I really don't get why people don't like the Doujin Artist so much. He's got a good head for details, he's passionate about his work, able to defend himself in an argument, and he doesn't seem like the sort to snap and commit murder either. Near as I can tell, people seem to hate him just because he's fat and nerdy.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:43 |
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Zereth posted:Given Monobear's fairly conservative (professed) stance on most things, guessing "the boy's".
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:44 |
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Shaezerus posted:I loving hate Fukawa and honestly hope she dies next, simply so she's gone. It's because she's so ugly, isn't it.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:50 |
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Blastinus posted:Also also, I really don't get why people don't like the Doujin Artist so much. ... Near as I can tell, people seem to hate him just because he's fat and nerdy. Pretty much. Also having that whole "Real girls are DISGUSTING, but let me tell you about all the innuendo in this situation" thing.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:58 |
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Kirigiri and Sakura because we've put the time into them. Min/Maxing is in my blood.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 16:59 |
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His whole personality so far is derived from pop culture references and fixation on creepy fetishes. They knew what they were doing when they made him. 
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:00 |
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The first chapter set up the rules about the dorms, including the showers. All of the case stemmed from that setup. This looks to be a bit more complicated, but between the changing rooms and the laptop this chapter is definitely about the hacker. Whether that means s/he is a victim, the murderer, a patsy, or the key to solving the case, the hacker is at the center of the events to come.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:05 |
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Aoi and Sakura
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:06 |
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Looks like whoever said that Hacker Girl is actually a guy in disguise is probably right, given how "she's" acting with the changing rooms. And I think we should hang out with Sakura and Kirigiri.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:10 |
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Serious Frolicking posted:The first chapter set up the rules about the dorms, including the showers. All of the case stemmed from that setup. This looks to be a bit more complicated, but between the changing rooms and the laptop this chapter is definitely about the hacker. Whether that means s/he is a victim, the murderer, a patsy, or the key to solving the case, the hacker is at the center of the events to come. I think he would have to be the murderer in the changing room because that gives him an opportunity to have the perfect alibi. Oh and I vote for Sakura and Celes.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:10 |
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I'm calling Aoi Asahina as the next victim. In a story about despair going "YAY POOL! " can only do horrible things to your life expectancy.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:12 |
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Hall Monitor and Fortune Teller Guy.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:12 |
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Bocc Kob posted:His whole personality so far is derived from pop culture references and fixation on creepy fetishes. They knew what they were doing when they made him. There's no doubt in my mind that every idea he expresses in the game has appeared on Something Awful several times in the past. I don't mind him so much. There's no reason to hate on him when the other characters in the game do it so much already. He's obviously parody rather than a sincerely played anime trope like Maizono.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:13 |
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NRVNQSR posted:In spite of her creepiness and general detached attitude, though, most of what she's said has been in support of the least nasty, lowest risk option - living quietly at the school for the rest of their lives. She's demonstrated no interest in going up against Monobear and at the trial she seemed to give the impression that she considers killing someone to be a stupid course of action, neither of which are attitudes you'd expect from a stereotypical gambler. Hmm...notice how in the last update she once again insisted on no one leaving their rooms during the night? That's definitely going to come into play at some point in the future. Probably not this chapter, though, for now the focus will most likely be on Aoi and the pool.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:15 |
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Man, what a fantastic LP for a fantastic game. I’m loving the art and the writing and the tone and pretty much everything else! Aside from Enoshima dying I guess. I mean, it’s probably the first video game death in a long while that I utterly didn’t see coming, but that just makes it even sadder.  But my favourite thing about the game is that it has some very strong themes and symbolism, and I love the way it uses metaphor to tell a story. If you don’t mind, I’d like to try analyzing the writing here a little and pinning down some of the subtext present.  Enormous ol’ effortpost incoming! Space Shuttle “Hope’s Peak” One thing immediately noticeable about this game is its heavy dealing in metaphor. The metaphorical shooting was one of the most advertised features of this game, and to me it seems that isn’t the only layer of metaphor present here. For instance, let’s look at the Space Journey. As a helpful first stepping stone for this text, the game makes the connection between school and spaceships pretty open and clear. I mean, Monobear outright refers to the place as one. The idea here is not so much that our crew is literally orbiting earth right now, but rather it represents the state of mind of a (perhaps somewhat sheltered) child who is just entering a new school. Consider: The feeling of isolation as you are torn away from everything that is familiar and into an expansive new locale where everything is foreign, having to adhere to incredibly strict regulations because any tiniest mistake can and will cause you to be lost forever (we are talking Japan here, after all) is very evocative of being “lost in space”. Note also the name “Hope’s Peak”. The highest point of hope, once you reach it all that is left is to fall – into despair. Ascending and descending. The very first thing we see in the game is a super-sped-up telling of an unfortunate soul’s high school “career”: Forced against his will to try soaring to great heights by an absolute authority (Monobear being a symbol for society/law - I’ll elaborate in the next section), the boy quickly reaches the peak of his travels, and begins to fall; Unable to handle the pressure (hurr hurr), all that remains of him is a corpse. Once you hit the total bottom of despair, your final option is suicide. So what is the purpose of showing us this? Well, it sets up the rest of the game quite nicely, as it shows our story to be such a metaphor as well. Note the visual language of the school being very similar to that in the space journey video:  Oddly garish, high-saturation/low-brightness colours, strange shapes just slightly stretched out of proper perspective. Compare this to the shots we have in the first update while things are still pretty normal:  The end of the first update marks the point in which we shift from a normal narration of Naegi’s life into crazy metaph-o-vision. Chosen by the arbitrary will of fate, Naegi is strapped into the shuttle and now must avoid following the same path her predecessor did. White and black, law and aggression, dream and reality Before I get a bit more into Naegi’s situation and the role of the other students, I want to talk about Monobear, or rather, one of the game’s visual themes that he exemplifies most. White/grey and black/red is used very deliberately throughout this game. It’s kind of a classical yin/yang thing where both colours have opposite, but also complimenting associations. Monobear’s white side is soft, looks like your average teddy bear, and seems almost benign. His black side on the other hand is full of sharp detailing and shows a grin menacing with spikes of, uh, plastic I assume, creating an air of aggression and hazard. Looking at some screens:  Whiteish and diffuse background, with a black and red symbol of violence sharply in the center.  More washed-out, white colouring, here creating a dreamlike, idealized atmosphere.  Hitting a ball, a most basic act of aggression, painted in red and black. This picture has some more things of note in its composition, I’ll get back to that at some point.  Ishimaru’s design is predominantly white, befitting of the person who is pretty much the anthropomorphic personification of order. Compare to the others who are more of a 50/50 mix of white and black/red.  Black, sharp spears. ( ) The censorship muddles the visual theme here somewhat. Those are just a few of the first ones I thought of, there’s a lot more examples (for example in the character designs). What it comes down to is that Dangan Ronpa associates white with law and society, but also with a certain dreamlikeness, idealization and confusion. The fact that all these two unrelated concepts are conflated in the game’s imagery is the first sign of a certain contempt the game, or rather, Naegi as the focal person and narrator, expresses for the rules of society, considering a truly ordered community an idealistic, self-contradicting dream that is rendered an impossibility by people abusing these laws, or the laws themselves only serving to create suffering. I’m starting to touch on one of the game’s biggest themes here, I’ll have to put that off until everything is in place for now. The black color by comparison is simple and straightforward: Violence, aggression, attacking hitting shootingstabbingexecuting! Upupupupu! However, as a corollary to white being unreal, black also represents reality. There’s enough on this to get its own section, so let’s get back to Monobear for a bit. Monobear is a construct symbolizing all of these concepts to an extreme degree, simultaneously. To most people “order” and “murder” are completely contradictory things. If you want things to not get hosed, murdering someone is the last thing you want to do. There’s only one organization that can decide that killing is an adequate way to keep order, and that’s the government. But Monobear isn’t just that. As noted, he also represents the being that forces children into the cruel, succeed-or-die system that is Japan’s real life schools. What would that be? Well, if you don’t go to school, you can’t be of any worth to society, so I guess you could speak of basic social necessity. And that’s what I mean when I say Monobear is the absolute authority: He’s not just a single instance. He is one and he is many, he is government, judges, juries and executioners, he is the upper classes, the employers and everyone responsible for keeping the insatiable machine of society running, he is the absolute, all-surrounding, near omnipotent force of the system, structured and lawful, but also demanding, cruel, and not accepting of any breaks from the order he created, and he can and will never die because he’s an infinite, self-propagating, symbolic nightmare engine. That’s one of the many reasons he’s so effective as an antagonist, because he plays on the resentment against the seedier parts of the system that I’m sure every one of us 99% felt at some point. Also this segment would have been perfect for injecting some stuff Foucault wrote about schools being a totalitarian system, if I could understand a single drat word he wrote. (Also also Monobear being voiced by a childhood icon is significant because cartoons are one of societies’ ways to instill social values at a young age) Violence = Rationality Naegi is our focal character and narrator. Everything we see, we see through the lens of her worldview. In fact, I noted that the game was a metaphor, but it’s a bit less simple than that: The game is a representation of Naegi’s subconscious. This is a bit difficult to explain, but it’s like the realm you enter into when you’re dreaming. Dreams are your brain’s method of subconsciously processing real life, translating your outside experiences into ideas and symbols it can understand. So basically, the themes and metaphors present in this story aren’t “objective” ones, supposed to communicate ideas between game developer and player, but rather they’re very specific to Naegi and how she processes the outside world, for instance reducing a concept as nebulous as society into a single antagonistic figure. Naegi also has some… Odd views on assault and violence. The link between reasoning and literal murder is another one of these things the game makes pretty explicit, starting with shooting evidence into people’s heads, but it goes further than that.  Red background, sharp and stark lines – the same sort of visual language I pointed out as being symbolic for aggression and assault. But for the real kicker, take a look at the top right panel here:  Maizano launches forward, the intent to murder burning in her eyes – using practically the same visual language as the objection screen. Even with the different art styles, the game portrays these two actions visually as completely equal. Think about it: The trial ends with the murderer being executed, and Naegi is doing her best to make this happen. She is quite literally (well, as literally as this game gets) using her reasoning as a weapon, stabbing again and again until her knife finds its victim. Look:   The moment of Maizano’s murder in the middle panel and Leon being thoroughly logically defeated – again, almost identical visual language! And then there’s the rhythm minigame. It seemed like an odd inclusion at first, but it makes perfect sense: The instant in which all reason flies out of the window and all that remains is Naegi beating on Leon again and again and again as the world around them devolves into a blood-splattered surrealist delirium. People found the execution scene uncomfortable, but this minigame made me even more uneasy, because it is literally the same thing, only this time it’s the protagonist standing at the trigger. What we see is not a trial, it’s a graphic murder. To Naegi, violence and logical arguments are the same thing. To use some incredibly anime terms, both actions involve displacing someone else's reality with your own, showing yourself to be stronger, more skilled, more real than your opponent. And by the end of the game, the person with the highest bodycount aside from Monobear will be Naegi herself. I fully expect Monobear to give her poo poo for it before the game is over, too. (Yes, Naegi is acting in defence of herself and others, but the first case makes it perfectly clear that murder in self defence is still murder under Monobear’s absolute law.) Persona! Now that I’ve written way too much about the game’s general themes, let’s get to the here and now. We established that the game is a metaphor, but when we frame the events like this, an immediate question pops to mind: Who or what are the other students supposed to represent? I’m going to discount them being real people. A lot of them are just a little too stereotypical, and come on, does ultragoon look like a real person to you? Unless he’s a skinny nerd wearing a hamster-shaped flesh suit. I, uh, can’t entirely discount that possibility I guess. Anyway, a few of them seem to be based on real people from the media (see the first update, our only anchor to reality in this crazy place), but my theory is that they are constructs of Naegi’s subconscious. To get back to the visuals, look at the character designs: Every one of them has at least some white aspects to their designs, except Naegi. (her socks don’t count because who the gently caress wears white socks to a dark shirt? Uughh) Considering what I wrote before, the obvious conclusion is that Naegi is the only fully real person in the cast. So what are the others then? Think back to our conversation with Enoshima ( ) and the bit about finding your dreams. Now consider Naegi’s ability to take on the traits of those she spends extended time with. “Good Luck”, what is good luck but the potential for good things to happen? That and Naegi’s name meaning “sapling” – what it comes down to is that Naegi, in a way, represents a degree of untapped potential, a child at the beginning of the crossroads of life having to find its path. The conclusion on the identity of the others follows naturally: They are mental constructs symbolizing wishes, dreams and ideals, potential end goals of the path of young adult life. They’re Jungian Personae that Naegi, wishing to find her place in society, is considering to begin projecting from her mind into reality. The more time she spends with one of these ideals (i.e. training a related skill in reality), the more of the associated Persona seeps into her personality, behaviour and abilities.So why the murders? Well, Naegi seems pretty convinced that she can only choose one Persona in the end. After all, you can’t be a gambling gang leading fortune telling baseball playing high school idol, that’s just silly. For Naegi, choosing to pursue one of her dreams means discarding all the others. And that’s what graduation is. Someone who succeeds at graduating will be released to the public – they leave the confines of Naegi’s mind and, through her performance, become publically displayed reality. And when someone succeeds at doing so, everyone else has to die, as they no longer have a place in this world. Now, you’re probably wondering why I insist on using female pronouns for Naegi. Well, think about it – what sort of young boy would seriously consider not just building multiple female Personae, but pursuing a path in life that is traditionally female-only like being an idol or a fashion girl? Only the kind of boy who is not a boy at all, of course. All these theories about Fujisaki being male-bodied (and, in fact, the game’s open attempts to bring us to this conclusion, completely regardless of whether she’ll turn out to be) become very appropriate in this light. The only reason Naegi has built male personae as well at all is because she’s still young and struggling with accepting her gender identity for herself, probably hoping it to simply be a phase or fetish that she can ignore and have it go away. Notice how the female Personae are, on average, more transgressive and aggressive towards society than the male ones(and greater in number!): Celes who lies and possibly cheats in order to screw people out of their lawfully-gotten fortune, Sakura who breaks all our ideas of female gender performance and physically overpowers everyone she drat well wants, Chihiro who I’ll probably make a whole big writeup for if she manages to survive this next trial, and Kirigiri whose experience with using her reason as a weapon puts Naegi completely to shame. Compare this to the weak-hearted rebellion against societal expectations of the Ultragoon and the gang leader who simply switched from the official structured system to a different one, and you can see that choosing a male Persona would mean acting in accordance of law and the ideas of our society, while going with a female one would mean discarding it and picking your own path in life, damning what society says. And now that that’s out of the way, I still haven’t answered why this process of choosing a Persona is framed as a game of murders and trials. I’ll get to that now. Genocider Syo Naegi has a bit of a morbid fascination with murder. Framing her ability to think rationally, a skill she probably puts to use a lot in reality, as being forceful and violent, even lethal, would make any therapist somewhat uncomfortable. So where does this come from? Well, I think we can trace this back to our most famous murderer. But let’s talk about Dostoevsy’s Crime and Punishment instead. If you haven’t read Crime and Punishment yet, you may want to alleviate that this instant (you uncultured swine). To cut it down to the relevant part, our person of interest is the protagonist, Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov had a bit of a thing for Nietzsche, or rather, Nietsche’s idea of the Übermensch. You see, not entirely understanding the finer implications of Nietzsche’s writing, Raskolnikov believed the Uberman to be a human being free from law and the constraints of society, able to choose his own path in all things regardless of what the people around him thought not only be able to get away with it, but also become a powerful leader. On some level, Raskolnikov believed himself to be this Uberman, which is how he initially attempted to justify his murder of Alyona Ivanovna – after all, the death of a single cog in the system is meaningless compared to the life of a great personality, right? Well, no as it turns out, but that’s not what matters right now. Genocider Syo is the man Raskolnikov was dreaming about : A man who respects nothing but his own wishes, breaking the oldest law of humanity with his actions and continuously getting away. Presumably he’s an incredibly charismatic sort, and probably already has a following of sorts on the internet. His treatment as an outsider to the school implies that he is a real person in Naegi’s world. What does this have to do with her? Well, Naegi’s transsexuality presents a bit of a problem, a bit of a huge one. Raskolnikov’s obsession with killing was ultimately born simply out of grief and a mild lack of sanity, and in being together with Sofia, who symbolises goodness and support and sunshine and puppies, managed to reform and return to the lawful structures of society (have fun in Siberia, pal). But the source of Naegi’s despair is not something she can just wish away with a bit of support from her peers: Your gender identity and falsely-assigned body stay with you forever. On some level, she wants to remain true to the eyes of law, to always stand up, bow and sit down, to accept her male body as being hers, but she knows this isn’t going to happen. You can’t be transsexual and just sort of keep living, sooner or later the grief is going to kill you, plain and simple. Therefore, the only option she sees is to spit on society’s idea that your gender equals your assigned sex, to cut herself off from her family, friends and any hope for future success within the system*, in fact, become an enemy of the system itself, become a detached Übermensch just like Genocider Syo! There’s a reason Kirigiri is so important to the game’s plot, and the game once again openly implies that she has some relation to Syo himself, and it’s because her Persona is built upon Naegi’s conceptions of what he must be like, and what she must become like if she wants to follow in his footsteps. Needless to say, Naegi doesn’t have her poo poo much more together than Raskolnikov did. Her despair-born obsession with becoming an enemy of society ended up completely colouring her perceptions of the world, and is the reason why she sends off discarded Personae in such a gruesome and cruel manner. When she sees that one of her Personae is too weak, too full of doubt to survive out in the real world, what other fate can they deserve but execution? Monobear may have been the one to put Naegi into her situation, but she is the one passing judgment onto her own mental constructs. *actually I don’t think Japan is quite that grim as far as life as a trans person is concerned. You’re still going to have more poo poo luck than a cis person, but it isn’t, say, USA levels of awful. I guess Naegi is just embellishing the terribleness of her future life in her grief. That should be the basics. One of the great things about this game though is the fact that the metaphor is detailed enough that you can actually reverse-engineer it and see what’s equivalently happening in Naegi’s reality. If this post wasn’t incomprehensibly terrible, I’d like to follow it up with a detailed account of the first murder and why the three Personae who ended up being erased did so, and maybe a bit of a character rundown. Please excuse any strange wording as well, English isn’t my first language and writing 7-page essays on silly video games tends to stretch my linguistic ability to its limits.
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:16 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 01:38 |
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drat, you must have alot of free time on your hand 
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| # ? Dec 24, 2011 17:20 |
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