Local Min Jeung Kinnie

Interests:

(AKA everything you're welcome to flood my askbox with :D)

-DRDT. Obviously.

-Project: Eden's Garden and Danganronpa: One Shot are the next two I post the most about.

-Mainline Danganronpa, DRA and SDRA2, DR (He)artless Deceit.

-Milgram. Though you should probably go to the sideblog for that :p

-FNAF. This thing grabbed hold of me in 2014 and will not let go. Probable cause of my likely insanity, given I'm well-versed in the lore.

-BNHA. The hundreds of thousands of words I've written for class 1-B are the reason for the "fanfic" the "ff" stands for in my name :)

-SCP. Been reading a whole lot of articles, they're very fun.

-Life Series SMP. My favorite perspective ever is Double Life Pearl, if you're curious. I always watch her perspective first :)

Smaller interests also include Slay the Princess, Disventure Camp, JJK, Class of 09 (mainly OG and Re-Up I don't really like Flipside), Reality Resort, Undertale/Deltarune, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe (haven't thought about this one in a while though), and more I'm probably forgetting.

Post Highlight Reel:

-DRDT Secret Masterpost. Generally a good idea to check this out before any of my more unhinged thoughts.

-DRDT CH2 PT2 Analysis. Probably my best post ever, 28k words of mental illness.

-Mai Akasaki Analysis. Really love this one. I consider it a great introduction to Mai's character, and contains some theories I love a lot.

Amendments: Arrow in her numeral (ft cider-est) (Rb) - Matching phone charms (ft wist-eri) (Rb) - Mai flower discovery by the-fox-in-the-socks (0% my post but pretty important)

-Literature Girl Insane Analysis Video. Two and a half hours of sheer insanity, though reading the Mai post first is recommended.

Amendments: Post CH2 PT2 Update (Corrigendum).

-About Page Text Analysis. (Ask). Shorter than the others, but I think it's important enough to be listed here.

Update: where did it go.

-DROS Prologue & CH1 Analysis. Similar to the DRDT CH2 Part 2 Analysis, also pretty good imo.

-DRDT reacts to "I fucked your mom last night." Behold, my most popular post ever.

-Eden!Culprit Levi!Accomplice Theory. Although this was proven wrong, I'm still pretty proud of it and consider it a good theory for the time.

-Proving MonoTVid canon with LGI. Objectively the best post I've ever made.

Recommended Reads

Smaller theories I still recommend you read, especially if you want a full understanding of my beliefs when it comes to DRDT.

-Recap Foil analysis. (Ask) My thoughts on the really good theory that the CH1 recap video shows off some important pairs of character foils.

-DRDT Playlist Guesses. What the fuck is desk rotation???

-Thoughts on Min's secret. (Pre-CH2 PT2 Ask) A bit of Min analysis, and a basic theory on how exactly she pulled off her motive secret.

-"Mai Order" Analysis and observations on the CH2 PT1 QnA. (Rb) This one's just funny.

-Survivor Predictions. (Ask) Self-explanatory.

-Thoughts on Teruko’s plan to end the killing game. (Pre-CH2 Ep16 Ask) Holy shit I kinda got something right???

-The Deal with Whit, according to me. (Rb) I just like how this analysis came out :v

The Girl

Because of Course It Starts With the Girl

Let's not beat around the bush here. Susie's in a weird position when it comes to the Prophecy. On the one hand, Ralsei's never questioned her place in the trio of heroes, and the girl is inextricably linked to Susie's signature Rude Buster by the panel which is literally named after the attack in the files.

On the other hand, the Girl is depicted holding a sword, which Susie doesn't use, and Ralsei even says that Susie's "supposed to equip ribbons."

In context, it's even worse. The Girl's panel is the last one shown, right before Susie starts talking about how awesome it is she's part of the Prophecy.

Susie [CH4]: Gotta be honest, Kris. I've never... I've never really gotten picked... ... for anything before. No one ever wanted to be my partner in class. ... Even got chosen last in gym. But this...? This is like... Something else, y'know? Something... important. Kris... before, I didn't think I could be a hero. I wasn't good enough. I mean, I was... bad. I still kinda am bad. In some ways, I guess. But now, I... I got hope crossed on my heart. Hope, written in truth. Written somewhere... Written somewhere no one can erase!

By showing you a panel of the Girl with an un-Susie-like sword, then having Susie talk about this, it kinda feels like the game wants you to think Susie is not part of the Prophecy, to add tension to that scene. At least, that's how I felt playing through it the first time.

These weird inconsistencies have led many to speculate that perhaps Noelle is actually meant to be the Girl. It's not something I'll get into too much here, but the idea is that she can equip ribbons, and there's actually some swords she can equip. Not in regular gameplay, mind you, but she can equip the Jingle Blade and the Black Shard if you change your file. Of course, it's possible to argue the Black Shard isn't a sword since the icon for it is a triangle, but the Jingle Blade is 100% a sword.

However, I find this to be pretty weak. Noelle uses rings, the Jingle Blade and Black Shard are exceptions. And if you're going by exceptions, who's to say there won't be a sword in a future chapter that Susie can equip? The Girl also notably doesn't have antlers in her picture. Plus, the Girl is still associated with Rude Buster. And while some argue there might actually be two Girls in the Prophecy (something I'll discuss later), if there really is only one, you need to factor that spell in somewhere. Noelle can't cast Rude Buster, and while you can argue it's like Susie with the sword and she might end up learning to cast it later, having a really nice character whose entire thing is that she isn't decisive use a spell defined by "rudeness," by rejection of what is typically expected of her... would go kinda hard as a climax to her arc actually. I think I kinda disproved my argument oops. Look, the point is that Noelle can't use Rude Buster any more than Susie can use a sword. If they can, it's something we've yet to see.

Because of all of this, I still believe Susie is the most likely candidate for being the Girl, at least in the main route. However, the ribbons are still a problem for her, there's no confirmed sword she could wield, and Rude Buster isn't an unique spell to her. We see Gerson cast it (or at least, a spell that looks damn near identical except for color), so there's definitely a possibility for another girl to end up using it. Again, including Noelle potentially. Thus, if we want to look for other possible candidates beyond Susie, we would need to look at a girl who is "rude" enough to be as proficient with Rude magic as her. This doesn't mean they have to be mean, just irreverent, defiant and generally uninterested in being perceived as respectable and dignified, like Susie and Gerson.

So, to recap all this, for the Prophecy to perfectly line up, you'd need a girl who uses swords and whose personality matches the profile of a Rude Buster user; brazen, irreverent and confident. Ribbons are hard to determine, which is why they're secondary. But given Noelle can't use Rude Buster, there's no good candidate for it, then. Right?

Wait.

The Final Tragedy and December Holiday

(Don't worry I'll explain the antlers)

So, two things. First, I know "the knight which makes with blackened knife" is already a character in the Prophecy. That's something I'll address later, once I've actually explained what I think is going on, so I'll have to ask you to bear with me on that one.

Second, yes I'm assuming the Knight is Dess. Or, at the very least, connected primarily to Dess, regardless of whether it's literally her or a twisted clone or whatever the hell. It's technically not necessary, but it's the way this theory works best. So, if you don't believe Dess!Knight, which is perfectly respectable, feel free not to believe this theory either!

With that out of the way, what am I smoking this time? Am I really about to say Dess is the Girl from Prophecy? Well, yes. I believe Dess was the Girl from Prophecy. If she's the Knight, we know she wields swords, and her personality fits the archetype of a confident and rebellious Rude Buster user. I can't speak on the ribbon thing because Dess has never been in the party, but I should bring up just in case that Noelle feels the White Ribbon item "feels familiar." So... maybe there's a secondhand connection to Dess there. Could also be Kris' paper shuriken or something, though.

Noelle [Equipping WhiteRibbon]: ...feels familiar.

But of course, if we're looking at rude women wielding swords, I could just as easily point to Carol. Is there any other reason to believe Dess would be connected to the Prophecy? Well, perhaps.

First, let's establish a little of Delta Rune symbolism. Thanks to the carpet on Kris' Dark World room's floor, we can infer that the triangles of the Delta Rune each represent a Hero. Since Ralsei made the room, he colored the triangles according to who he believes each of the Heroes is. The left triangle is colored purple for the Girl, the middle one is green for the Prince (and pointing down because he's a Darkner presumably), and the right one is blue for the Cage.

... Okay the left's more pink than purple but the point stands. It's the same color as Susie's skin in the Dark World, that's the Girl's triangle.

With that in mind, I'd like to take a quick look at the little bit we have of the Prophecy's End.

So. Interesting use of the triangles here. The rightmost two are tilted but chilling overall, and the left is completely shattered.

Listen I am certainly not the first person to point this out, but if you're talking about a "final tragedy" and showing me the triangle associated specifically with the girl breaking, it's not hard for me to assume that what you're telling me is that the final tragedy is that something bad happens to the Girl. Specifics be damned, that looks like the most obvious conclusion to draw from the panel.

And it's not the only panel that might point to this. Recall the panel with Rude Buster I showed before: "And last, was the girl. At last, was the girl." People have rightfully pointed out that this makes no sense in the context of introducing the heroes, because the Girl is ostensibly the second one. If the Rude Buster panel is part of the hero introduction, you get something like (if you allow me to shorten panels for brevity):

Three heroes stand at the world's end.

First, the Cage.

At last, the Girl.

Second, the Girl.

Third, the Prince.

It's kinda weird. What some people have taken from this is that this panel might actually imply a fourth person, separate from the three heroes. So:

Three heroes stand at the world's end.

First, the Cage.

Second, the Girl.

Third, the Prince.

At last, the (other) girl.

Valid idea! However, to me, it seems weird to refer to two different characters with the same pseudonym. What I find more likely is that the Rude Buster panel is just from a completely different part of the Prophecy. And with the wording of "and last/at last", combined with the Final Tragedy being that something bad happens to the Girl, we can try to put together a picture of what it may mean.

Let's think about what Susie said when she saw the tale's end: if something bad is supposed to happen to the girl, then Ralsei and Kris would try to stop it. So, it's possible that something happens to incapacitate the Cage and the Prince at a critical point, and the Girl must sacrifice herself to stop the end of the world. The panels would end up looking a little like this:

Three heroes stand at the world's end.

Cage, Girl, Prince.

[Some other stuff]

The Cage knelt in quiet, and beaten laid the Prince.

And last, was the girl. At last, was the Girl.

Alone against the dark, she faced her fate.

The last Prophecy. The story's end.

And then. When all hope is lost for the tale, the Final Tragedy unveils.

To save the worlds, there is only one way.

[Something bad happens to the Girl]

Only then, will the worlds be saved.

... Look the tense the Prophecy's written in is pretty inconsistent, it bothers me just as much as you but I've elected to ignore it because I really don't think it means anything.

Excusing my pretty poor rhyming and understanding that the exact wording will be different, you can kinda see the idea, right? And if I haven't completely lost you yet, you can probably tell where I'm going with this. Something bad happened to Dess. Something bad happens to the Girl. It could be connected.

Of course, this wouldn't be evidence on its own. It's entirely possible that, even if Dess' fate is similar to the Girl's, that's only for narrative reasons. Some kind of parallel drawn between the two to enhance the themes of the story, there's definitely a couple ways that could work.

Except. There is a way to connect Dess to the Prophecy's end directly. Because if you backtrack after Susie breaks the panel, you can get this infamous interaction.

Narrator: (It seems the way is blocked.) (You put out your hand...) (And, just out of view, just perfectly out of view, Another hand pressed against yours And pushed you back.)

As you may know, when that dialogue appears, the game plays the sound of a guitar at 0% volume. Dess is the character most directly associated with guitars, so this associates the message to Dess. Which means there is a clear reference to Dess in the room where we first hear of the Prophecy's End and the Final Tragedy. There are many reasons this could be here, but one of them certainly is that Dess is associated to the Final Tragedy. Possibly, because she was the Girl from Prophecy and suffered whatever fate that Final Tragedy refers to.

In fact, the specific horrible fate Dess suffered is becoming whatever the hell the Knight is, right? She became extremely powerful, but twisted and monstrous. And if you'll recall, part of the Prophecy is that "LOVE finds its way to the Girl." There's an obvious double meaning there. Either we're talking about regular old wholesome love, or we're talking about Level of Violence. And both in Undertale Geno and Deltarune Weird Route, we see how obtaining power by hurting others desensitizes people to violence, turning them into something horrible. Just like Dess.

Not only that, but you could also argue a connection between Dess and the Prophecy thanks to the lyrics of Raise up your Bat. Because of course I'm doing lyric analysis I can't fucking escape it.

[Raise up your Bat] Come follow me into the dark With your heart as the ark Which shall shine you the way Because I'm with you in the dark With your heart as my mark Which shall guide you the way, through the waves

This is a very Dess coded song, with all the imagery of bats and the like. Specifically, it may be a song written by Dess. And she's asking someone to "follow her into the dark" with "their heart as the ark which shall shine them the way." That sounds a lot like Dess may have been having adventures with someone with a shining Soul capable of shining through the darkness, doesn't it? So, Dess may have been doing Prophecy stuff.

Finally, and most shocking of all! A song commonly associated with Dess is Lost Girl.

... I don't think this is good evidence I just think it's funny.

So, there's some evidence that Dess might have been the Girl from Prophecy, and thus the Prophecy already happened. However, the Prophecy is also happening now, as in, during the period of time we play through. Like, there's a lot of Prophecy panels that are way too close to the events of the game to dismiss. The "lord of screens cleaved red by blade," the Lancer one about him saying "toothpaste then boy," all the panels with the music notes to solve the puzzles in CH4, and that's only some of the examples. It's too much for me to say that our three heroes aren't at least partially doing Prophecy stuff. That's without bringing up that, again, the Girl we've seen doesn't have antlers. Plus, the Knight is a character in the Prophecy ostensibly separate from the Girl, and the way they're described is very similar to how we see them in the game.

To explain all this is, let's finally get to the titular Loop aspect of the theory!

A Story Retold

Look at the actual last panel of the Prophecy.

I said before that the left triangle breaking would imply something bad happened to the Girl, yet the left triangle at the end is perfectly fine. This would be pretty bad for the theory, if it were the only weird thing about this panel.

However, there's also a certain other symbol that shouldn't be here. Supposedly, the Prophecy ends with the Heroes banishing the Angel's Heaven. In fact, there's an entire panel talking about how the Angel itself will be banished and "meet its desire." So, why is the Angel symbol, the circle with wings, still there?

One way to explain this is that it doesn't mean anything. It's the end of the Delta Rune prophecy, so you show the Delta Rune, no matter what actually happened. This is reasonable.

However, it is also possible that it's implying something more. It could be implying that the Prophecy will repeat. A new Angel will appear and a new Girl will join the squad to help banish it, thus we show the Delta Rune with both the Angel and the Girl chilling.

Now, this isn't the strongest evidence, but it does give us a basis of what the theory looks like. The Prophecy is actually a story that repeats over and over with different "characters", and possibly different events altogether.

With this established, it's not unreasonable that "the bad thing that happens to the Girl" is turning into the Knight in some way. Since the story repeats, it's entirely possible for one person to fulfill different roles in each "loop." Dess was the Girl, and now is (to some extent) the Knight. Putting it all together, a possible way for the Prophecy to end is:

And then. When all hope is lost for the tale, the Final Tragedy unveils.

To save the worlds, there is only one way.

The Girl must fall to violence, and grab the blackened blade. A fallen hero knighted to begin the story again.

Only then, will the worlds be saved.

Susie [End of CH4 Dark World]: Like something like that would happen. I wouldn't let it happen... Kris wouldn't let it happen... And obviously YOU wouldn't let it happen.

"I wouldn't let myself fall so far, and Kris wouldn't let me. And obviously, you, Ralsei, the one who kept trying to steer me away from violence the entire time, you wouldn't let it happen."

(Admittedly the panel might have to be a little easier to understand for Susie to immediately get it but again exact wording will vary)

So, there it is. The full thesis statement of Prophecy Loop:

The Prophecy is an event (or sequence of events) that has happened several times and will continue to occur unless interrupted. It starts when the Knight causes the world to almost end by bringing forth the Angel's Heaven, and three heroes (Cage, Girl, Prince) work to banish that Angel. Then, the Girl who stops the end of the world in one "run" goes on to become the Knight of the following "run," making the story repeat all over.

This is... a pretty big leap, admittedly. Like, I'd like to say everything I've said is somewhat reasonable at least, but I'm reading a lot into tiny details for my evidence. And unfortunately, there's not that much I can do there.

The Girl is probably the most well defined part of the Prophecy by the nature of having the most panels, and that means working with the rest of the Prophecy to prove Prophecy Loop is really difficult. The Prince is so infamously under-detailed that there's not a lot I can do to speculate who could have taken the role back when Dess was the Girl, and the Angel and/or Player are such a can of worms that I don't really want to discuss them until I can make sure the theory isn't actively falling apart from every other angle.

Really, the Cage having "human parts" is possibly the best info we have on any other potential heroes, but it's still not much by itself. To really use the Cage for this theory, you'd need to find evidence that an otherworldly entity possessed a human character before the events of the game, and it's not like that exists, right?

... Am I really doing the same transition twice-?

The Cage

I bet you expected me to bring the Vessel into it, but it's actually just Kris again

So why does Kris have that birdcage? I could be wrong on this, but I somehow doubt they actually had a bird. Not to mention the dialogue that "it's seen a few crashes" even before we started playing the game, implying it's contained a rebellious version of Kris' soul more than once.

I am not the first to suggest that this could mean Kris has been controlled by something other than us in the past, and has had to use that birdcage to contain their soul in the same way they do when we're around. This could also connect to why they become noticeably more withdrawn after Dess' disappearance (though that could just be trauma, it might also be related to an unknown entity entering their body then leaving), why Carol was obsessed with heart-shaped objects before we came around (assuming she knows of this other entity controlling Kris), why Kris had moments where they would "go still" and go to play the piano without anyone looking (this is odd in general, but the idea is that these were moments where Kris regained control and started impulsively playing the piano like in the Light World segment of CH4), etc. The issue with this idea has always been that it's a little hard to tell what exactly takes control of Kris. Is it Gaster? Toby Fox himself? Chara somehow?

Well, if Prophecy Loop is true, that gives a pretty straightforward explanation to what happened there. Kris may have been the Cage of the old run as well, so they just contained the previous "Player" there.

(Putting Player in quotations for mysterious reasons I'll address later. Again, gigantic can of worms there)

Plus, it is generally assumed they were involved in Dess' disappearance somehow (mainly because of all the weirdness surrounding them and the bunker, and the existence of a save file ostensibly made by Kris). One way to explain that involvement is if Kris was part of an old "run" of the Prophecy.

And here's where I would tell you that this is evidence for Prophecy Loop with 100% certainty, but not so fast. The big issue here is that we know so little about this hypothetical prior entity controlling Kris that there's no way to link it to a Player or Player-like character. All of the evidence I have for Kris being the old Cage is just about them being controlled in general, and I struggle to find anything more specific than that. It could be evidence for them being the old Cage, but it could also be evidence for some other thing, is the point.

However, maybe I'm looking at this wrong. We don't know shit about the hypothetical old "Player", so we can't argue Kris was the old Cage through that. However, perhaps we can compare Kris themselves to the new Cage. Or rather, the thing that was supposed to be the new Cage.

Sub-Theory: Alright I'm actually bringing the Vessel into it this time

This next part isn't strictly necessary to believe Prophecy Loop, but it does add some interesting stuff to the story imo.

Let's begin by taking a step back and looking at the GONER MAKER sequence. We see the red soul appear, and then we create a Vessel, with the help of (someone who is presumed to be) Gaster. However, someone other than so-called-Gaster (judging by the difference in speech) discards the Vessel and puts the soul in Kris, causing them to be the Cage in the version of the Prophecy we play through.

Giving assumed-to-be-Gaster wanted you to create the Vessel, and the same individual calls the game/narrative "their Deltarune" after CH4, it's not hard to assume that the Vessel was actually meant to be the new run's Cage. However, someone decided this shouldn't be so, and instead threw the soul into the body of the old run's Cage, Kris. I presume this is somehow the work of the Knight Conspiracy, so Carol/Dess/Knight-who-is-and-isn't-Dess/Kris/Asgore(?)/ERAM(???)/Secret Sixth Option, because they want to do something with the Prophecy and Kris being the Cage benefits whatever plans they have. I don't think it's too much of a stretch, seeing as Carol is clearly interested in Kris and the soul, so forgive me if I can't explain it in full detail. It's kinda besides the point, anyway.

The bigger takeaway is that the new run's Cage was supposed to be a Vessel, which leads to the question of whether it's possible that the old run's Cage was also a Vessel. Indeed, Prophecy Loop can be somewhat connected to Kris-Vessel theory. If you don't know what that is, I'll leave a link to a SpookyDood video discussing it, but the idea is pretty straightforward; Kris may have been born as a Vessel, but gained individuality after they were "colored in with care" like the monochrome copies of the Flying Aces. The main pieces of evidence come from Egg rooms and associations made to Goners in those rooms; there's dialogue that can be read as calling Kris a "knockoff" and there being grey that they can't wash away (copies are monochrome and Goners are monochrome, etc). The idea is that Kris' arc involves rejecting the role they were born into by becoming an individual beyond their original purpose as a mere Vessel, which sorta parallels Susie and Ralsei directly fighting the Prophecy, etc.

The main problems with Kris-Vessel as it is currently understood (that Kris is the Vessel from the GONER MAKER sequence) come from... well, the GONER MAKER sequence. For starters, the fact that it doesn't do shit. Kris is completely unaffected by the entire process, which is odd if they're made directly from it. More importantly, the fact that calling the Vessel 'Kris' yields the response "AN INTERESTING COINCIDENCE," and calling the Creator 'Kris' has the big WD himself saying "YOU ARE ABOUT TO MEET SOMEONE VERY, VERY WONDERFUL." These responses are similar to things that happen if you name the Vessel/Creator after other characters in the game. Assuming somewhat linear time in the scene, it implies that Kris is already an existing entity separate from the Vessel before GONER MAKER ends.

This is a problem if Kris comes from the GONER MAKER, for sure. However, Prophecy Loop can avoid this by saying that Kris is not the Vessel, but a Vessel. Kris already exists before GONER MAKER because they were made before we arrived, but they're still a Vessel, explaining all the Goner imagery in the egg rooms.

And that leads to a sort of theory symbiosis between Prophecy Loop and Kris-Vessel. Prophecy Loop fixes some issues Kris-Vessel runs into, and Kris-Vessel in turn provides evidence for Prophecy Loop. The argument is that if Kris is a Vessel, and they're not related to GONER MAKER for the reasons stated previously, then the only way this can work is if they were a Vessel created prior to the events of the game, which suggests an old run of the Prophecy. So, evidence that Kris is a Vessel can be spun into Prophecy Loop evidence to some extent.

How much do I believe this? Well, eh... I've always been a bit iffy on Kris-Vessel seeing how detailed Kris' childhood backstory is. But I do think a lot of the evidence for Kris-Vessel is pretty compelling, and I can see the vision narratively even when I know it's controversial, so I think it's worth considering.

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With this, I've officially ran through the main arguments about how Prophecy Loop works and why one would believe it. So, before we can go any further with the idea, we have to ask, does this even make sense?

Thematic Implications and Logistical Issues

Overanalyzing Prophecy panels, weird guitar dialogue and birdcages is cool and all, but Deltarune is a story, so our conclusions have to work as a story. What we have to ask is, how would the events of the Prophecy repeating further the themes of Deltarune?

And, well, you're smart. You've seen the way I presented the theory. You know what I'm angling for from a thematic sense, I imagine.

Gerson [Post Hammer of Justice win]: You remind me a bit of someone I used to know. Susie: ... Who Gerson: Just a character from that old story... Susie:... Lord of the Hammer, huh. Hell if I'm reading that. ... though, wait a sec. Isn't that... what Dragon Blazers was based on? Gerson: Yep, yep. And so they changed parts of the story. Of course, the biggest fans got mad... but, isn't it interesting? The book was already just an interpretation of something else. Stories can be retold. They can be changed... That's what I believe.

(Hey look it's one of the quotes in the image I used!)

A big point brought up in CH4 is the power of retelling a story, of changing it to bring forth a different vision. The Prophecy is, in itself, a story. It gets retold in Lord of the Hammer, then Dragon Blazers retells it again. What Prophecy Loop suggests, then, is that it is literally retold when it repeats. And maybe some things change. Maybe Dess never saw a lord of screens or a queen's unstoppable chariot, maybe the old Girl had antlers and Susie doesn't, but the main point of the story is still retold (I'll elaborate more on this in a moment, I'll just finish the point first).

And so, with all those potential ways it can be told, it's up to those writing it to define its ending. Except, they never do.

Gerson [During Hammer of Justice Fight]: Yes, the old tale, based upon the prophecy... Lord of the Hammer. Susie: Think I heard about it. What happens? [...] Gerson: There was only one more chapter... After that, It all stopped. That next book, it never did get written. The story, it became so grand, so overwhelming, Some say it swallowed up the author himself. The ones who could write the next, the youth, the pen was lying there for them to pick up. To make the next page. ...they never did. The bell's ringin' now. Seems we've reached the final rounds. So... how do you think it all ends? No, how do you want it to end? Susie: An ending, huh... ...If I could choose I guess... I wouldn't have an ending! It's just better if stuff just... goes on forever, right?

(Oh my Angel it's the other line I used!)

If we assume that the Prophecy never truly ends, but simply resets, we can draw a pretty clear link to Lord of the Hammer, can't we? Lord of the Hammer never got finished, but instead, it got retold in the form of Dragon Blazers. Similarly, Dess' Prophecy run stopped with the Final Tragedy, potentially the sixth and final written chapter of Lord of the Hammer, but that didn't end the overarching loop, the larger story. Instead, the "narrative" of the Prophecy ended up repeating, getting "retold," with Susie and her gang.

And Susie's mindset here is presumably the mindset of every Girl before her. Instead of ending the narrative decisively, stopping the repeating Prophecy in some way, they just let it go on forever. They choose not to have an ending, so the story gets retold from the start. This could connect with some major themes of the game, such as the refusal to move on from the past. The world itself is "stuck" in this loop in the same way that the Holiday home is "stuck in the holidays", Carol and Asgore and Kris specifically being stuck to the entire Dess situation, Tenna is stuck back in the good old days, even Alvin with Gerson, etc.

The climax of the game, the CH7 that goes beyond Lord of the Hammer's final chapter, will potentially include Susie breaking free from this cycle by deciding to make her own ending. That would be why there's so much emphasis on Susie being different from the Girl in Prophecy. It's not that she's not the Girl, is that she's different from all the Girls who came before her.

However, anyone can make a Deltarune fanfic sorta following the themes of the story. The next question to raise is does this actually work from a logistical standpoint?

This is the elaboration of the differences between Prophecy "runs" I mentioned earlier. See, there's some pretty big issues with that idea, which I'm sure some of you are already concerned about.

Before talking about that, is it possible that every Prophecy panel we see applies to every "run" of the Prophecy? Well, no. Dess has antlers, so the images we have of the Girl don't match her. And the Girl is explicitly a monster so we can't even dodge the issue with Human Dess Theory. Thus, at the very least, the Girl's panels must change, and at that point any panel can change.

This raises two issues. For one, the church's religion around the Prophecy. It seems the church considers the Prophecy a one and done event, meaning their knowledge can't change over time, and that's not great for the idea that the Prophecy changes. If they know the Girl is antler-less, then Dess was never a Girl candidate, for example.

The second problem is arguably bigger, however, and that is that the possibility of panels changing kinda throws all our evidence out the window. I said the Girl might be Dess because she uses swords, but I'm ignoring that the Girl doesn't have antlers. So it seems like I'm picking and choosing what is consistent across different "runs" and what isn't to fit the theory, thus making the arguments sorta ass.

There is a way around it, though, albeit not the best workaround ever. And it comes from something Catty says in her church speech.

Catty [CH4 Church speech]: [The hero with horns]'s honestly SO cute. I mean, there, like, aren't any pictures, but like...

There it is. You see it? The fact that there aren't any pictures in the church's version means the knowledge the church possesses and the knowledge the CH4 panels show is different.

What could this mean? Well, put it like this. If the church only possesses limited knowledge of the Prophecy, it's entirely possible their knowledge is universal to all versions of the Prophecy. The three heroes and the Angel, as seen in the symbol, the horns of the Third Hero... maybe these things are consistent across all versions of the Prophecy. Notably, the heroes plural having swords is one of these hypothetically consistent points:

Catty [CH4 Church speech]: There's, like, these heroes, and they're like, SO cool. They have like, swords and stuff?

So that particular argument for Dess being the previous Girl stands. The Rude Buster point gets shakier, but you still have the connection between the text box with the guitar noise and the end of the Prophecy, plus all the non-Prophecy panel related evidence like Raise up your Bat. Not to mention the birdcage exists sorta separate from the Prophecy anyway. Basically, yes some points are made weaker by the assumption that the Prophecy changes, but not all of them.

What is it that changes between iterations, then? Well, the specifics. What the Girl looks like, Jockington growing a beard, the piano notes... all of these are things that the Church may not know, because they apply only to our "run." Ralsei presumably has this more specific knowledge as well, but (as far as we know) he hasn't been around to see previous runs of the Prophecy, so he'd have no clue about the "looping" aspect unless the Final Tragedy makes it clear.

The next logistical problem to address is... well, the old "Player." I sorta acted like this theory can explain the previous entity possessing Kris, except, it really doesn't? Like, Kris being possessed by a "Player" doesn't actually tell us much about said "Player" or their nature.

I mean, it can't be a real life human like us, right? Unless Toby Fox himself is gonna end up inserted in the story as the old Player, I got no clue how that could work. So it could be a fictional character who still views Deltarune as fiction, so like, a layer of reality above the Deltarune story, but still below ours.

... Goddamnit, the best candidate is Gaster. It sorta works with the way Gerson describes retelling stories, right? Gaster "played through" the Prophecy, and now he's helping us experience our own version of it. He's the Dragon Blazers devs, who read Lord of the Hammer and made the video game after it. It's kind of a massive reach that has basically no evidence, but it kinda works as a bandaid fix? If you ignore Undertale lore because I have legitimately no idea how to tie that into this???

Yeah listen this is certainly the biggest hole in the theory for now. If you wish to disregard this theory on that basis, feel free to do so. The reason it isn't terribly damning for me is... well, there's a difference between "it can't work" and "I can't figure out how to make it work," and this to me feels like the latter. Like, the issue isn't that it's physically impossible or that there's evidence disproving a previous Player-like entity- if anything, the birdcage is evidence for it. And Gaster specifically being the old Player feels like it could work, even I struggle to connect it to Undertale lore. The issue is that this whole thing is such an abstract and confounding concept that I can't theorize anything about it without just making shit up. So, it may work if it gets approached from the right angle, but I can't tell what that angle is.

Is this all shaky? Oh, definitely. I never said this theory was perfect. There's not, like, an abundance of evidence, and there's probably even more logistical problems I'm not thinking about. I just think it's a possibility worth considering considering, as there is a bit of evidence, it's issues aren't completely damning, and I think it makes for a cool story if nothing else, especially given the narrative emphasis on retelling stories and being stuck in the past.

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So, we have the general concept of the theory, we established why it can work narratively, and we addressed some of its potential issues. However, there's still a bit more to be discussed in regards to what this theory could mean for different aspects of the narrative. The rest of the post should be treated more as sub-theories of Prophecy Loop than part of the main argument. Basically, I'm about to go completely insane, so feel free to disregard the following theories while still believing Prophecy Loop, if you're so inclined.

But if you're willing to put up with my mad ramblings, then I'm happy to oblige. After all, there's a couple characters from Prophecy I haven't talked about yet, aren't there? The Prince, the Angel, and the Knight. I have my own thoughts about who each of the old versions of these characters could be, but they're... pretty out there. If Prophecy Loop is true, I fully believe Dess is the old Girl and Kris is the old Cage, but I am not certain about these other roles. But I'll still talk about them, of course! I'll go in descending order of sanity, starting with a guess that is... funnier more than it is likely.

The Knight

All your theories are TRUE!!!

So, I originally didn't think much about the old Knight when putting the theory together. Frankly, I just figured that we wouldn't know who they were. Like, as much as the Angel is the one who gets banished in the end, I somehow doubted that the Knight who "dueled with the Heroes strife by strife" would be around as well. So, I believe the theory works even if we have no clue who the old Knight is.

But, well. If we're going for completionism... Carol does have a blackened sword.

(To be clear it could be a sheath but Asgore does talk about Black Shards while standing directly in front of it so)

I mentioned it offhandedly before, but it's true. If your metric for who a Girl from Prophecy could be is "a girl who is rude and uses swords," then Carol would fit the description. And because the Girl turns into the Knight at the end of the Prophecy per this theory, then if Carol was the Girl of the run before the Dess run, she would be the Knight when Dess was the Girl. It would explain the sword, but it could also tie into her obsession with the Soul. How? No clue! Even if this is miraculously true, there are some things I doubt we'd be able to answer right now, and this is one of them.

Of course, Carol as the Knight of the old run would have to have a very different MO from the Knight we see in Deltarune. Given she and Dess coexisted to some degree, it would be impossible for Carol to be off aura-farming in the dark the whole time like our beloved Knight does. But as I said before, details of the Prophecy can change between runs, so this isn't super damning.

Do I fully believe this? Eh, not particularly. I just think it'd be extremely funny if Carol!Knight and Dess!Knight turn out to both be true to an extent. "Everyone wins" type ending.

In any case, we know so little about Carol that I can't say much more, which is why this is more a funny aside than a full on sub-theory. However, the next part is gonna require a bit more thought.

The Angel

Or: watch as I fumble around with the easiest theory layup in history

So, I do have some things to say about the Angel in regards to Prophecy Loop, but they require a good deal of introduction before we get there. Basically, I need to tell you what I believe about the Angel in a general sense before going into the theory specific stuff. Bear with me for a second, I swear I'll circle back to Prophecy Loop (heh) eventually.

Let's review what we know of the Angel. They're a powerful, eldritch being who unnerves anyone who stares into their visage. There's an interaction with the Angel doll in Rudy's room in CH1 where Kris is unsettled by its lack of facial features, and the gang does not enjoy what the Angel looks like in the Prophecy panels.

Susie [Angel Prophecy Panel]: Hey, below the words, that picture... What the hell... is that supposed to be...? Ralsei: That... that's the Angel, Susie. What... to my understanding, it actually looks like. Susie: ... I... I dunno about that, man.

Interacting with the Prophecy Panel again: (It's a prophecy...) (...Looking at it made you feel strange. You did not investigate further.)

The Angel is also usually described as "watching over" the world of Deltarune.

Catty [CH4 Church speech]: Oh my god, so like, the Angel, that's watching over all of us?

Combine that with the Soul being hidden under an Angel doll in CH4, and the door in Ralsei's castle that has a heart surrounded by wings, and it seems easy to deduce the Angel is just the Player.

And yeah, this works well enough. We're otherworldly, we're "watching over" the world in the sense we're looking at it from the outside, the save points constantly reference a vague power of ours, and the featurelessness can be attributed to the fact we're all different. So, yeah, there's nothing complicated about the Angel, at least in the current run of the Prophecy.

...

Enter Noelle.

Noelle [CH2, Ferris Wheel]: It's a dream, right? I'd grow big angel wings, And fly as I can, gazing back at it all...

Noelle [CH4 Holiday Home]: Um, oh, haha, those? I've had those since I was a little kid... They're from when I was the Angel in the Holiday Pageant. ... But I liked them so much, I just... kept wearing them.

Noelle [CH2 Weird, FreezeRing scene]: Huh...? A ring...? Faha, sorry, I don't think WE need something like that! Addison: C'mon, angel! You can't get stronger without good equipment!

Spamton [CH2 Weird, 0 left]: [Angel], [Angel] ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THE [Ring] of [Thorns]?

[Snow] When it snows, Me and my sister and everyone have a contest To make the biggest snow angel of all. We lie on the ground and spread out our arms And wave them until we get a shape just like us. I'm the smallest Even smaller than Kris But I don’t lose. Because, after we stand up to look Dess always tells me, "Hey, look, Elly! Yours has more hidden underneath!" And pushes away all the snow I couldn't reach So I have the biggest wings of all. I wish it could snow whenever I wanted.

Every other Angel reference in this damn game links back to Noelle in some way and it is confounding. That's without mentioning this bullshit:

"Ring" of Heaven's call, specifically showing a circle with wings so it can be interpreted as a double meaning with the ring of a phone call and the rings people wear on their fingers. And Noelle is the ring user.

And, like, this all feels like a layup for Prophecy Loop, right? Ostensibly, if there are two Girls, two Princes (we'll get to that), and there were supposed to be two Cages, there would also be two Angels. And it just so happens there are two big Angel candidates, us and Noelle. Easy, right?

Except, there's obviously some big problems there. For one, both us and Noelle would be Angels of the new run, so we still don't have an old Angel. For two, Noelle and the Player are extremely different entities with entirely different powers and roles. As much as she's connected to the Angel, the actual descriptions of the being as an eldritch entity that's unnerving to perceive just don't fit Noelle. So, let me tell you a few possibilities about how I believe this issue can be resolved.

Possibility #1: Noelle as a Symbolic Angel

It is entirely possible that Noelle will only be symbolically tied to the Angel, and that no events in the story will literally make them the same thing. How? Idk, but it's possible. We just don't have the understanding of the Angel we would need to definitively state whether Noelle works as a parallel to it or not. If we're going with Player Angel, then Noelle being a gamer interested in secrets and glitches could certainly be relevant, at least. Additionally... uh...

Okay I can't actually comment that much more about this. If the connection is only symbolic, we'd need to know more about the actual Angel to connect it to Noelle. The real reason I'm bringing up the possibility is so you know I'm aware of it, and you should be aware of it too in case it ends up being the real reason for the connections. However, when narrative analysis becomes impossible, we turn to theories!

Possibility #2: Noelle as the Angel's Servant

"The ring of Heaven's call" isn't something isolated to the one Prophecy panel. There is also an Organikk in the Sacred Moss hallway that says:

Organikk [CH4 Sacred Moss hallway]: Who will call the girl who snows?

Combined with the ring imagery in the "ring of Heaven's call" panel, it's not hard to assume that Heaven will call the girl who snows, aka Noelle. From this, a possibility is that Noelle won't be the Angel, but rather do something on the Angel's orders. Maybe it's something that will come up later in the Normal Route, maybe it's Weird Route exclusive, but the point remains the same.

This is certainly a possibility, but one I don't find all that likely. The lines that connect Noelle to the Angel don't imply that Noelle will be at the Angel's side, they all imply Noelle is the Angel. She's the one growing wings, the one wearing the costume, the one Addison refers to as "angel"... Spamton could be debatable as speaking to the Player instead of Noelle, but given the only time he talks about the Angel directly is when Noelle's involved, that would be a little strange.

Which leaves us with the possibility I'm probably leaning on the most.

Possibility #3: Noelle as an Ascended Angel

To summarize our conclusions so far, Noelle will be the Angel, but she currently doesn't possess the Angel's characteristics. From this, it could be deduced that she may become the Angel. In other words, the Angel is a position that a character will "ascend" into, as opposed to something like the roles of the Cage and the Girl and the Prince of the Dark which are more pre-ordained. Again, whether this will happen in Normal Route, Weird Route, or both, I have no clue, but that's beside the point.

This certainly fits the idea that Noelle will be "called" by Heaven in some way, a sort of divine calling to be the Angel. Symbolically, it also makes sense with Dess specifically being the one to make the wings of Noelle's snow angels bigger. The idea there is that the Knight is pushing forward the Prophecy by doing Knight things, which could include pushing Noelle into the Angel's role, "giving her wings."

And this even fits with the way the Angel is described in the Undertale version of the Delta Rune Prophecy. Given Undertale and Deltarune are "parallel stories", I think it's not an insane stretch to say that the Angels described in both their versions of the Prophecy may be similar. In case you need a refresher, here's that game's version of the Angel:

Waterfall Plaque [Undertale]: However... There is a prophecy. The Angel... The One Who Has Seen The Surface... They will return. And the underground will go empty.

(I wonder if anyone's checking the links and seeing the moment I kinda gave up and started linking text dumps as a whole lmao)

The general understanding is that this can either mean "the Angel breaks the barrier and monsters leave the underground" for the Pacifist Route, and "the Angel kills everyone" for the Geno Route. Now, Frisk/Chara/The Player can to an extent be said to apply for those two routes, but Undertale has more than two endings. The underground doesn't empty on a Neutral Route, implying that if you do that route, either the Prophecy fails, or the Angel is just someone not seen in the game. In other words, the Angel may be a different person in Neutral than in Pacifist and Geno, at least if you assume that the Prophecy can't straight up fail.

And it's not just the Neutral Route, actually. Note the wording of "The One Who Has Seen The Surface" returning to the Underground to empty it. For Frisk and the Player, the "returning" part only applies if you take resets into account, but I personally feel like that's very iffy (the rest of the world wouldn't see it as "returning" if they can't remember they left), especially since doing a Geno route first technically would invalidate the Prophecy.

So, perhaps the Angel is just Chara, who has both seen the surface and been to the Underground before the events of the game, so they're "returning" no matter what. And for Geno, this works quite well. Although we're the ones guiding Chara at the start, they definitely help a bit, walking through puzzles and swinging a few times there at the end. The idea of a "fallen Angel" also fits with Chara calling themselves a "demon."

But in Pacifist, you could argue there's actually a better Angel candidate than Frisk, Chara and the Player. Asriel. He has also seen the surface, as he walked out with Chara's corpse that one time, he returns by coming back to life, and he's the one who breaks the barrier to empty the underground. Actually, he fits both sides of the Prophecy, as he first empties the underground by taking everyone's souls, then also empties it by breaking the barrier. And not only does it work, it almost feels like the direct implication, as Asriel takes a very Angel-like form at the end, with infinite power and big ass wings.

To recap, the best candidate for the Angel Pacifist is Asriel, the best Geno Angel candidate is probably Chara, and Neutral needs a different person to take the role. Which means that the title of "Angel" might not be something you're born into, but something you obtain. In particular, you could attach it to the idea of "reaching the absolute."

Chara [Undertale Geno Ending]: Now, we have reached the absolute.

Check Asriel: The Absolute GOD of Hyperdeath!

What's noteworthy is that both of these characters require Player intervention to become "absolute." You can't reach the Asriel fight without resetting after a Neutral Ending, and Chara can't do a Geno route without you guiding them to guide Frisk into killing everyone (or something, the possession system in Undertale is weird lol). So, the Player guides an in-universe character to obtain massive power, which turns them into the Angel. Sound familiar?

YOU [CH4 Weird Route]: Noelle will get stronger.

This interpretation of Noelle becoming the Angel because we made her stronger helps solve all the issues we had before. The Player is connected to the role of the Angel because we're the ones who make it happen, explaining the Angel doll on our Soul and the wings on the door with the Soul. But Noelle is still the one actually turning into the Angel, explaining all her connections to growing wings and just the Angel in general. To put it differently, the Angel is an in-universe character, but the Angel's power comes from us.

Now, does this happen in the Normal Route, Weird Route, both? I have no clue! But it doesn't matter. I don't blame you if you've forgotten, but the point of this whole thing was to talk about the Angel as it pertains to Prophecy Loop, and which route Noelle becomes the Angel in doesn't really matter for that theory. Because the important takeaway from all this rambling is that people can become the Angel, which gives us a better idea of what to look for when thinking of the Angel which Dess, Kris and the old Prince supposedly banished in this theory.

Ignoring what I said before, my first idea was Gaster, because of course it was. He's got demon connections with the abundance of the number 6 around him and the whole connection between the Depths and Hell, so you could say he's a fallen Angel. And that could connect to this book which appears to talk of the origin of... something darkness related, probably Shadow Crystals.

Peculiar Book [CH4 Roots room]: And so wept the fallen star, making rivers with its tears. Then, slowly, from the bitter water, something grew. It looked like glass.

Fallen star, fallen Angel, word association, boom, Gaster. Plus, Shadow Crystals may be connected to him, and they're born from tears, and an Organikk before the "who will call the girl who snows" Organikk says:

Organikk [CH4 Sacred Moss hallway]: Why does the Angel make its cry?

So you can see how my mind went there. I certainly think this is a possibility, especially because Gaster is literally the only person I can think of that would constantly be watching over the Deltarune world (even the Player has a limited perspective, after all), and the only one guiding fate as some lines from the churchgoers imply it does.

Alvin [CH4 Start]: The poor man. It seems the Angel has made a difficult path for him...

However, it's possible the church is just wrong. I mean, this theory in general makes them wrong about the idea the Prophecy is a one and done event, so why not this as well? I don't love the argument, but there is legitimately no good way to reconcile the Angel watching over everyone with Noelle's associations, so allow me to sorta disregard this detail.

But, uhm. There might be a better candidate. Except I almost don't want to bring it up, because I think this probably enters top 5 most insane things I've said in this blog and that's a very real accomplishment. Still, there's no shame in theorizing I suppose. The same way there's no shame in an Egg.

The Forgotten Man as the Previous Angel

So I'm definitely losing my mind here but I swear there's connections I see them in the walls.

By the way, to clarify, I don't believe the Forgotten Man and Gaster are the same person, which I imagine should be obvious given I'm bringing them up as separate guesses :p Feel free to believe they're both the old Angel if you think they're the same, but their speech patterns are just way too different for me to be able to believe it without issue (heh). Among other things, really, but the speech patterns are the big one. I could accept Forgotten Man being Deltarune Gaster separate from Voice-from-GONER-MAKER-Gaster, but I don't see those two being the same.

That aside, let's go over some characteristics here. The Forgotten Man is someone that Kris doesn't like thinking about, and whose face Kris impulsively covers with a tree when they draw him. So, unnerving for Kris to look at, that's similar to the Angel's visage being unsettling. Plus, it's sort of implied that this man is connected to something traumatic in Kris' childhood, given the whole therapy motif of the fourth Egg room. That could hypothetically be the banishment of the previous Angel since it lead to Dess'... situation, so it's another potential connection. The Forgotten Man is (kind of) sometimes seen looking at us through windows and stuff, so you could kinda argue he's "watching over" Kris, if nothing else. The Forgotten Man is also... well, Forgotten, which for all we know may be what happens to the Angel if it gets banished. And both Noelle and the Man are heavily associated with easter eggs and video game mysteries in general, so there's a loose connection between our potential new Angel and the Man.

But these could easily be coincidences. There are some bigger pieces of evidence here. See, I said before that the Girl and the Cage were the only things that really provided a bunch of evidence for this theory. I lied. It's just that the other piece of evidence is kinda out there. Let's look at the Forgotten Man's CH3 appearance, and this particular story he tells.

Forgotten Man [CH3]: ONCE UPON A TIME, THE WHOLE WORLD LOOKED LIKE THIS. DO YOU THINK SO? [Prompt: Yes / No] [If yes] REALLY, YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING SO ABSURD? / [If no] OF COURSE NOT. IT'S JUST A STORY AFTER ALL. [If yes] I'M HAPPY TO HEAR IT. LET ME CONTINUE / [If no] NOW, LET ME CONTINUE... WELL, THE WORLD CHANGED, SOCIETY WAS DEVELOPED. THE EARTH WAS COVERED IN WATER, DINOSAURS APPEARED, AN ICE AGE. HM... ACTUALLY, THERE ARE STILL DINOSAURS... IS IT MIXED UP? IN ANY CASE, THIS ISLAND IS THE ONLY PLACE LEFT I CAN TALK.

Listen I feel like I'm going more and more insane the more I look at this damn dialogue, but there's a way you can spin this into Prophecy Loop evidence. Let me explain how I interpret these events he's describing:

-The whole world looked like this: Since the "place" in question is stylized like an old videogame and connected to Kris' childhood, I interpret this to mean "to you, the world used to look like this."

-The world changed, society was developed: Kris grows up, I guess.

-Dinosaurs appeared: Somehow I doubt this is about Alphys, so it may be referring to Susie entering Kris' life.

-The Earth was covered in water: Here we get to the Prophecy Loop stuff. See, there's an association in Deltarune between water and darkness. Darkness comes from Dark Fountains, Shadow Crystals "move like water in your hands" and probably come from the tears of the fallen star (note also that Titan Spawn "smell like rotten glass"), shadows slip off the Shadow Mantle "like water", the texture used in the GONER MAKER sequence is called DEPTH and is a picture of the ocean, Jevil talks about "Hell's roar bubbling from the depths", and there may be more associations I'm forgetting. So, the Earth getting covered in water could actually be an allegory for the Roaring, where it gets covered in Darkness.

-An ice age: The most speculative, but the idea is that Noelle has ice magic, so the Angel as a concept may be connected to "Ice Ages." This is especially likely because of the idea that the "light in your Soul" will still be "shining in the cold" even when "the shadows start to grow" from the lyrics of Don't Forget.

[Don't Forget] When the light is running low And the shadows start to grow And the places that you know Seem like fantasy There's a light inside your soul That's still shining in the cold

Shadows start to grow -> Roaring. Roaring + "Still shining in the cold" -> Roaring is cold.

Alternatively, Dess presumably had ice magic as well, so it could be related to her final actions as the Girl or something.

So, when you take it like that, what's it mean? At first, it kinda just feels like foreshadowing of the Prophecy. Not necessarily talking about a previous loop, just something that may happen in the future. However, the key line here is "there are still dinosaurs." The implication is that it's surprising there are still dinosaurs after the Ice Age, which naturally implies that the dinosaurs must come after the ice age, whatever that is. Which means if the way the Man originally tells it is mixed up, a "fixed" version could be:

The world looked "like this" (Kris' childhood).

The Earth is covered in water (old run Roaring).

An ice age (Angel and/or Dess make it snow).

Society developed (Kris grew up - this can go wherever btw).

Dinosaurs appeared (Susie shows up).

This would suggest a prior loop. The only reason I don't consider very strong is that it's so vague that you can take it many other ways. If Dess' death isn't actually related to the Prophecy, the "ice age" could be her death, and the Earth being covered in water could actually come after the dinosaurs, so Prophecy Loop can easily be argued around here.

But if the ice age is related to the old run, that could mean the Forgotten Man knows of the previous loop, at which point him being directly connected to it by being the Angel feels more likely.

And for the last piece of evidence, the one thing that made me decide this theory was substantial enough to mention, is this little passage from Noelle's blog in the Sweepstakes.

Egg blog post: A white egg showed up on my screen, but there was a message with it. "SPECIAL" [...] The next day when I opened the game, the egg was gone, with a message that said it "left home due to happiness." Usually the message is "(pet) left home due to sadness" and only happens because you neglected your pet. It's not supposed to happen because you were nice XD One last thing! The egg actually had a name but I don't remember what it was.

So, this egg is obviously connected to the Forgotten Man, down to Noelle forgetting the egg's name. And this egg leaves the world because it becomes happy. Does that remind you of someone?

The Angel also leaves the world when it becomes happy, when it meets its desire.

I'm actively losing my mind.

And you wanna know the craziest part? Forgotten Man as the old Angel already makes negative sense. And Gaster as the old Player, that thing I mentioned before as the best option we had, also makes negative sense. But if you take that negative logic and multiply against itself, you achieve positive speculative power, a Reverse Theorizing Technique if you will.

Because Gaster and the Forgotten Man have connections even if I don't believe they're the same person. The way they show up, their connections to Easter Eggs, idfk the egg in Papyrus' date scene??? And just like we and the current Angel might be connected, it would make sense for the old Angel and the old Player to have these connections as well.

????????

Okay look I've officially lost the thread. Let's pull it back. Do I believe the Forgotten Man is actually the old Angel? No. We need to go like nine levels of theorizing deep to actually reach that conclusion, the likelihood that I somehow managed to nail each and every prediction along the way is obscenely low. But hey, it's fun! Theorizing's fun and makes me happy so even if I'm wrong! I like making these insane ass connections! I swear I'm mentally stable!

... What do you mean this isn't even the most insane guess of the remaining old members of the Prophecy???

The Prince

Mr. Prince please take off the hood

Okay, so like, what do we know of the Prince? Well, they're probably male ("prince", not "royal heir" or "princess"), are a Darkner of importance (at least I assume they're not some random Guei or something), and (assuming it isn't a Ralsei specific thing) have fire magic. Additionally, from Catty's retelling we can potentially infer they have horns.

Catty [CH4 Start]: There's, like, these heroes, and they're like, SO cool. They have like, swords and stuff? And there's one with like, ummm, horns? He's honestly SO cute. I mean, there, like, aren't any pictures, but like...

Tbf the horn point is debatable because "there aren't any pictures," but I'm taking that's more about the cuteness than the very specific attribute of horns. She knew about the swords, if nothing else, so there's gotta be some descriptions there.

So, cool, fits Ralsei. He has horns, we see him use fire magic in the LightUp ACT against Balthizard, he's a prince and a Darkner of importance. The constant use of the hood in the panels is peculiar, but the relevance is debatable since Ms. Prophecy Breaker Susie is the one who asked Ralsei to remove it.

The first question is: Is it possible that Ralsei is the old Prince? The same way that Kris is also the old Cage?

Ralsei [Start of CH1 Dark World]: I've been waiting alone here... Um... my whole life for you two to arrive.

Okay so no. We gotta find a different guy.

With it all on the table, though, there's really not many other people it fits. I mean, forgive me if I'm a little presumptuous, but I somehow doubt Lanino is the old Prince.

What a reasonable person would tell you at this point is that we likely haven't met the old Prince yet, even if Prophecy Loop is true. We have three chapters left, plenty of time to introduce this hypothetical character.

...However, I am actually insane. I think I've already proven that, at least. So there is a potential guess here.

Because if you're talking fire magic, "horns" and a figure hidden under clothes, there is one Dark World resident that could take up the mantle. In a very literal sense.

Hooh boy.

i'm not dignifying this with a proper title what in the hell am i talking about

(Allow me to ignore the FRIEND allegations for a bit, I'll address them later)

So, ERAM! That's what I'm calling this thing because it's the coolest name it has! What a guess!

Like I said, I'm only really confident on Dess as the old Girl and Kris as the old Cage (if Prophecy Loop is true at all, anyway), and I'm a lot shakier on Carol as the old Knight, maybe Gaster as the old Player and the Forgotten Man as the old Angel. But I will be genuinely shocked if ERAM as the old Prince ends up having any credence. It literally started from the observation that this thing has fire attacks, which really isn't strong at all. And while I brought up its sprite having horn-like things, it's very debatable whether those really are horns or if I'm hallucinating. The best point of the ones I mentioned is probably the fact we've only ever seen them hidden under the Shadow Mantle, the same way the Prince is always depicted wearing a cloak, and that's a pretty crazy reach as well. However, there is a little more to note here, so let me tap into the insanity a little more.

The main argument for this is, perhaps surprisingly, ERAM's strange amount of knowledge about the Weird Route. On a regular run, ERAM says this upon starting the fight:

Do you honestly think it'll get you what you want...? ... no, part of you is just... enjoying this, isn't it? Oh, don't make that sour face. I can see in the dark, you know!

However, in the Weird Route, two extra lines are added.

Do you honestly think it'll get you what you want...? ... no, part of you is just... enjoying this, isn't it? The same part of you that enjoyed yesterday. Knowing you could say it wasn't really you. Oh, don't make that sour face. I can see in the dark, you know!

This is noteworthy because ERAM is the only character who seems to be aware of the Weird Route events without being directly tied to them.

In my mind, there's two ways to explain how this happens. One, it could connect to the whole "I can see in the dark" thing, potentially implying ERAM possesses a higher degree of awareness of what goes on in different Dark Worlds than other Darkners. Two, perhaps ERAM is able to move through different Dark Worlds at will, and just so happened to be watching from the shadows when Noelle was getting stronger. And both of these possibilities are very real, because a certain other character displays these traits.

Ralsei [Start of CH2]: I felt a dark presence and hurried over!

Ralsei [Start of CH3]: I felt a dark presence and hurried here...

And when I said before that ERAM was the only person who knew of the Weird Route without being involved in it, well, I kinda lied. Again. Because Ralsei's dialogue also changes.

Ralsei [CH3, Ask how Ralsei's doing -> Go to Festival with Noelle]: Noelle...? Um, I'm sure if Susie was with you, too... Noelle would probably really appreciate it! I'm sure the three of you would have a lot of fun! Umm, if it's... the three of you.

Ralsei [CH3 Weird Route, same place]: N... Noelle? Kris, I... I think that's... ... A bad choice. I mean, I'm sorry! A bad choice to, make alone. Noelle, might want to go with Susie... I hope you can... figure out a nice solution!

This isn't even the only example, just the first one I grabbed. So, a question arises. Did Ralsei figure out what's going on by seeing how Noelle and Kris acted, or is he using his weird "dark presence intuition" thing to "sense" that something's off there? Because if it's the latter, if Ralsei can "see in the dark" in the same way that ERAM somehow "saw" what Kris did in the Cyber World, that's a clear connection between the new Prince and ERAM.

To expand on this idea of ERAM possessing strange knowledge, you know how Ralsei is very aware of the Player? Which means we could potentially argue the Prince is just generally aware of meta elements? Well... ERAM appears to ostensibly be working with Kris, and yet still kills them if we lose the fight.

ERAM [After defeat]: Haha... well, enough of that! We both have work to do!

Because of that, you could argue it's possible ERAM knows about resets. There are fights in the game where you don't die on a game over (Susie-Lancer tag team, Hammer of Justice, Knight), so it's entirely possible to beat Kris without killing them. And yet, ERAM still does it, potentially implying ERAM knows Kris will come back safely even if the Soul breaks.

The issue with this as Prince evidence is that... well, Kris had a save file. They probably know about resets, and thus ERAM might have learnt about it from them. You can actually use the same "working with Kris but still kills them" argument while looking at the Knight knife barrage right before the start of the Second Sanctuary to argue for the Knight knowing about resets (which I do believe but that's besides the point), and the Knight is certainly not a Prince.

However, as I said, it might not be vague omniscience explaining ERAM's knowledge, it could also be inter-Dark World travel. In fact, you could argue that ERAM must have inter-Dark World travel no matter what, as they apparently managed to steal the Shadow Mantle from Seam before the TV World opened. That means ERAM was in Castle Town to steal the Mantle, then traveled to TV World mysteriously.

Seam [CH2 Talk]: ... Unless you use the power of the Shadow Mantle. Here, it may look like an old scrap of cloth, but... ... eh? I can't find it. Did someone... take it...?

Again, that also connects to Ralsei directly, but there's an even deeper connection. Because if you're talking about someone with a strange amount of knowledge who is capable of easily traveling between different areas, then the Prince's hood starts looking very familiar.

Listen we gotta address this at some point. I get that maybe this is just how Toby wants cloaks like these to look like, but why would the CH4 panels bring attention to it if it means nothing?

What I'm suggesting is that the Prince's cloak looks like Undertale's Riverperson's because they're connected by their strange knowledge ("man who speaks in hands", "man from another world", "the Angel is coming", "the song from the sea," etc. for Riverperson, all of what ERAM and Ralsei know for them) and their ability to "fast travel." You can even connect the fact Riverperson moves through... well, a river, to the idea that darkness in Deltarune works like water, which I mentioned before. Fuck, you can connect this to (as silly as the name is) toilet theory, the idea that the sewers of Hometown have some kind of Dark World connection that allows for fast travel between Dark Worlds. "Fast travel through water that a cloaked person uses," what a peculiar concept!

I will mention, btw, there's a very strong counterpoint to this. The fact that Lancer and Rouxls also seem to possess Dark World fast travel. Last I checked, Kris and Susie never took them out of Castle Town before CH3, and yet they show up in TV World all the same. So if these two can do it, it's very possible Dark World fast travel just isn't that important, and it's something Darkners can just do.

That said, the counterpoint to the counterpoint is that Lancer might be able to do it because he is technically a "Prince from the Dark" even if he lacks the horns of the actual Prince from Prophecy, and Rouxls might be able to do it by the nature of being the Rules Card. Or Kris just brought them over during the hand washing scene. Everything we know about this mysterious ability to go from one Dark World to another without going through the Light World is very iffy in general, so take it as you will.

As a final piece of potential evidence before we talk about what this could mean, note the vending machine in the Star changing room. From this machine, you can buy TV Slop, and a "SMILE." This option disappears after completing the Sword Route. You could technically argue it might be ERAM smiling, as the main things that change between the start of the third game and the end of the Sword Route are Ramb and ERAM's presences in the Dark World, and Ramb isn't in the vending machine. And what is the SMILE option labeled?

Always at your humble service.

A very Ralsei-like line, to be sure.

So, we have the theory, and the evidence, regardless of how shaky it is. What could this mean for the story?

Well, note how ERAM is pleased when they see Kris being violent. This is a clear contrast to Ralsei, who generally prefers peace.

ERAM [After defeat]: There! That's what I wanted to see! Flickering red, like pretty little flames... Your eyes can't hide it, Kris. Without play... The knife grows dull.

The idea that "the knife grows dull" implies the knife was sharp at some point, so ERAM has seen Kris being violent. Going with the idea of Kris having been through the Prophecy's events at some point or another, that could be referring to Kris helping Dess increase her LOVE for the Final Tragedy. Of course, that has the issue that ERAM talks about the knife growing dull even if you've been doing a violent route, but, uh. I don't know if there's any way to make the line make sense in that case, unless you mean Kris fighting alone specifically is what prevents the blade from going dull, for some reason.

What does this mean? It would mean that ERAM works as a sort of thematic opposite of Ralsei, a character foil if you will.

The Prophecy requires violence for LOVE to make its way to the Girl, right? That's why Ralsei believes being peaceful could help change its course. By that logic, then, ERAM wishing for violence is them going along with the Prophecy. This would set up an interesting conflict if they ever meet, where ERAM believes, for one reason or another, that violence and continuing the Prophecy cycle is good, while Ralsei wishes to fight it. But of course, we're reaching the point where this is more straight up fanfic than theory, so perhaps I should leave it here for now.

So, with it all together, how likely is ERAM as the old Prince looking? Well... not very. A lot of these points are kinda fucking insane, and I'm assigning to the Third Hero a lot from Ralsei's abilities that may very well be related to Ralsei himself and not his status as the Prince. Even with things we know about the Prince from the Prophecy itself, the fire and the horns and the cloak, ERAM fitting could easily be a coincidence. It's sort of a demonic entity, no shit it has fire attacks and horn-like things on their sprite, and it's a mystery, so it makes sense to hide its form. But, if Prophecy Loop is true, and we've already met the old Prince, ERAM would be my first guess as to who they are.

Finally, to address the pink and yellow elephant I said I would, what if ERAM is just FRIEND? I'm not getting into it because it's not really relevant to the larger theory, but it is true that there's a lot of connections there. And, like, I guess it wouldn't be completely impossible for FRIEND to be the old Prince, but there are a lot of Prophecy segments that read weird if they are, and certain things about them that don't exactly fit the idea of a more or less regular Darkner. Like, the general assumption is that FRIEND is a cat and their tail is the "tail of hell", and that Dess and Kris followed them before whatever happened happened, right? So, what, Ralsei is secretly hiding that he's a demon or something?

Ralsei [Upon equipping Jevilstail]: I'm a good devil, OK?

... Th-That doesn't count it's just because of the item! I cannot be going this fucking insane!!! Next I'll tell you that the "pointed tail of hell" might be a scarf and that's the connection!!! Don't believe my lies I'm actively losing my mind!!!

To actually make a point that makes sense: I'm not that convinced ERAM is FRIEND, frankly. And by the way, yes, there are "new run" Prophecy panels that may be talking about FRIEND. But that can easily be explained. If the "tail of hell" led Kris and Dess to the bunker, well, maybe the "tail of hell" will also lead Kris and Susie to the bunker. In other words, FRIEND is not too important for this particular theory. Which is good because I have no clue what the hell their deal is.

Closing Argument

I know that was a lot, so let's do a quick recap of everything we talked about in this post. Of course, some things are more important and likely for the theory than others, so here's how we're gonna do this.

In regular text, the main arguments of Prophecy Loop, as well as a bit of dramatic flair. If you're gonna walk out of this post believing anything, believe this. Of course, it's still a theory and may very well be wrong, but if anything in this post is correct, it's likely the stuff written like this.

In italics, sub-theories. Things that fit pretty well with the theory, but aren't necessary for it to function.

In italics and bold, insane reaches I'm making just to fill in the gaps, which I suspect to most likely be proven wrong even if the rest ends up being accurate.

Let's go!

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-Prophecy Loop: START!-

-There is a story whispered among shadows, foretold by space and time. A story of three Heroes which take arms against a Knight to banish the Angel's Heaven. Most believe this to be a Prophecy of one particular point in history.

-However, in reality, the Prophecy never "ends." It repeats. Whenever an Angel is banished, whenever a Knight is defeated, new ones take their place. And just like before, three new Heroes appear to stop the end of the world once more.

-Meet Carol, the oldest Knight we have knowledge of. She raises her blackened sword, and works to bring forth the Roaring. However, she will not go unopposed.

-In an alternate world, a scientist investigates a darkness powerful enough to generate negative photon readings. Unfortunately, he falls into his creation, and becomes shattered across time and space. Due to this event, he reaches the world of Deltarune. But to interact with it, WD Gaster needs a Vessel to inhabit, becoming the "Player."

-This Vessel is named "Kris." They are as colorless as the rest of Gaster's followers, but their existence grows beyond the "Player's" design by the love of those around them.

-After a playful early childhood, the "Player" eventually reaches Kris, and they become the Cage with human parts. They begin learning to live with this new foreign entity inside them, getting a birdcage to contain the Soul whenever it gets too annoying, and occasionally playing piano when they get control of their body back.

-But the Cage has a destiny, to fight the Roaring alongside the Girl. And that is none other than their dear deer friend December Holiday. She leads her younger friend into the dark, using Kris' shining heart as the ark to shine them the way.

-There, they meet the Prince of the Dark.

-This is ERAM, a being made with knowledge of the Prophecy, and the power to wade through the dark like a ferryperson travels atop a river's stream. They know their role, to help the Heroes earn the LOVE needed to fulfill their destiny. They need to get stronger. And so, they encourage Dess and Kris to find enjoyment in fighting.

-LOVE, as in Level of Violence, finds its way to the Girl. Dess becomes an extremely strong fighter.

-In the background, Gaster in some way leads a certain Man to earn power of his own. This Man reaches the absolute, and turns into an unrecognizable eldritch being who is unnerving to look at. The soon to be Forgotten Man becomes the Angel.

-The final showdown begins between the Heroes, the Knight and/or the Angel. At world's end, the Heroes are incapacitated one by one. The Cage kneels in silence, defeated lays the Prince.

-And last was the Girl. At last, was the Girl. She stands alone, facing her inescapable fate. The final Prophecy. The story's end. When all hope is lost for the tale, the Final Tragedy unveils. To save the worlds, there is only one way. The Girl turns on the light, and the story starts again. Only then, will the worlds be saved.

-The Knight is defeated. The Angel, banished, finally meets with its desire. It leaves the world due to happiness. But in exchange, Dess' body becomes distorted and irreparable, and she turns into the new Knight.

-Of course, Carol and Kris aren't too happy about this. Kris struggles to live, both due to the grief of the loss of Dess, and the lack of strings making it hard for them to function. And Carol begins obsessing over the Soul potentially able to drive the darkness back, to "fix" her daughter perhaps. ERAM is satisfied. Gaster feels ???

-But the Prophecy must begin anew, for the story was never finished. In destroying the Girl, it consumed the "writer" whole, after all.

-Gaster contacts us to become the new Player, the one with the power to drive the darkness back. He originally means for the Vessel we create to be our Cage, but something goes wrong. For some reason, someone decides Kris will be the Cage once more. And so it was.

-With this, a new Prince of the Dark is born. Ralsei, shaped after the Cage's brother for Angel knows what reasons. However, perhaps because of this connection to Asriel, perhaps not, this Prince wishes to fight back against the Prophecy. There can't just be one ending, predetermined by fate. The Girl won't fall to violence, Ralsei will ensure it.

-And he's in luck, because the Girl this time around is none other than Susie. Different from what the Prophecy expects, and fully ready to ignore what people want her to be like.

-The events of Deltarune unfold. The new Heroes go through the Prophecy, and for a while, everything aligns. But as Susie learns more of the Prophecy, as Ralsei becomes more confident, their burning desire to fight fate itself grows into an inferno.

-In some way, the Player causes Noelle to reach/almost reach the absolute, becoming or coming close to ascending into the status of Angel.

-The final showdown begins. But this time, the Heroes won't accept the hand fate lent them.

-Kris, the "Cage", born only as a Vessel for someone else to interact with the world, has grown past their creator's initial intentions. They are their own person now, with their own desires and skills, and they would really like their hands back, thank you. They need to play the piano for Susie and Ralsei to hear, after all.

-Ralsei, the "Prince", born only as a guide and servant to the lightners he accompanies, a simple tutorial for violence and nothing else, has grown beyond a simple shadow on the wall. He is Kris and Susie's friend, dang it, he means something to them, and he will make sure everyone's still around at the end to enjoy the friendship in full.

-And Susie. Susie, who everyone expected to fall to violence like every other Girl before her. The rebellious and aggressive and lost and lost and lost Girl, expected to fail to write the ending, expected to just allow everything to go on forever. She will show them wrong. She will take that pen of hope she carries, and will finally put an end to the cycle of grief and violence. I don't know how yet, but I'm not worried. I trust Susie's ideas.

-The Prophecy, as a story, has been retold many times. It is the Lord of the Hammer, it is Dragon Blazers. It is the story of Dess and Kris, sung in Raise up your Bat and Don't Forget. And it is the story of Deltarune, of Kris and Susie and Ralsei growing alongside one another. For years, people failed to write an ending. The story consumed the authors, and so it just got retold and retold and retold.

-Until now. Now, there will be only one ending. And it will be one written by the greatest Heroes of all time: the $!$? Squad.

... We could have used a better name (_ _ ///)

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Okay so that was more dramatic than it needed to be probably, but I needed to cover up the theory in narrative flair to hide how nonsensical parts of it are lmao. I'd say I hope it wasn't too cringy, but honestly I don't think I care if it was.

In any case, some closing thoughts. This isn't the most likely theory I've ever proposed, but I also don't think it's my most insane one. Well, the main idea at least, I don't know about all the bold and italics parts. The themes of stories being retold in different ways, the Gerson foreshadowing that it might have to be Susie to finally give an ending to the story, and all the other shit going on with Kris and Dess are a solid enough foundation for me to put this out there for peer review, if nothing else.

... Angel above this was meant to be on the shorter end of my posts. What's worse is that it genuinely might be. I just kept finding shit to talk about, this game's too fun to theorize about ToT

Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know that I've already analyzed a playlist like this before, right? I didn't struggle for literal years putting together the Danganronpa One Shot playlist guesses, and I even managed to get like half of them right.

Well, there's two reasons for that. One is simply that I did the DROS one when DROS was starting CH3, which is technically a bit more context than we have for DRDT right now. Two is that the DROS playlist... made sense. This one doesn't.

What do I mean by that? Simply put, every song in the DROS playlist had not only plenty of lyrics, but also either a very specific message it conveyed, or a story it followed. There were exceptions, but they were far and few between, so you could assign most of them on lyrical analysis and then sort out the rest with some vague process of elimination.

There's three songs in the DRDT playlist that, even when put together, don't have any more than 7 lines of actual words. There's also one or two that are in Japanese and don't have easily accessible translations, not to mention the possibility of conflicting translations. There's several songs that have either a vague message or just very little imagery to go off of, which makes them hard to assign. All this and more makes the DRDT playlist a bit of a headache.

So! Instead of assigning only one character to each song right off the bat, I'm going to do something a little different. I'm first going to talk about every possibility I can see for each song, then only at the end try to arrange them in a way that makes sense. I feel like letting you see my entire thought process instead of just the end result is going to be the best way to communicate why exactly I reach the conclusions I do.

I'll start with the songs that I find are relatively easy to assign, then slowly make my way to the harder songs. The song number refers to their placement on the playlist, which I don't believe is particularly important, but I'll keep track of it regardless.

Though, before we start, huge shout-out to demodraws0606, gleamingtempest, googledetective, venus-is-thinking and accirax for making their own posts about this before me! There are definitely more out there, but they're the ones that helped me the most when reaching the conclusions I'll present here. Check out their posts in the links, they're very good!

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Song #4 - cartoons

Prime Suspect: Rose Reaching: Teruko

They're calling it the most Rose coded song in history. Not only is it about the singer feeling detached from reality and the world, but it expresses the point through a bunch of drawing and animation allegories.

Abstraction's how I live my day to day Sketchy lines upon an empty page Hard to explain, and to express Forever just a work in progress

Can't tell you how I feel when nothing seems real It's all just cartoons in my head And everything's unseen like the fastest inbetween It's all just cartoons in my head

Rose is an artist, and she regularly has issues with memory and telling apart what's real and what isn't.

Rose [2-5]: My dreams are strange. My memories, my imaginations, my fears... They all mix into one until I can no longer tell what's real.

I mean, yeah. This is Rose's.

You might be wondering about the "Reaching" section thing. Basically, in case I run out of characters or songs, it's nice to write down any character that's even tangentially related to the song. Teruko has talked about herself and others in the context of "characters in a show" in a couple of occasions, which arguably fits the idea of "none of this is real, just cartoons in my head."

Teruko [2-1]: You all have the misfortune of being "characters" in a story where I'm the "protagonist." Because of that, you're all doomed.

Hehe I found a way to get yellow text back >:)

Again, this is an insane reach, don't take it too seriously. I really doubt Teruko genuinely doesn't think of this whole thing as real. The point is that if I'm absolutely forced to put Rose somewhere else, I have this to fall back on, even if it's silly.

Song #7 - Shun-ran (Spring Storm)

Prime Suspect: Arei Reaching: David

Translation used linked here.

Shun-ran opens by telling us that the singer lives behind a facade.

I was covered in false images, just like God

In particular, they project an aggressive image, always looking for a chance to take out their anger on others.

I won’t pay attention to small fry For one such as I, affecting composure, to speak Is because I become angry easily, watching hawk-like for my chance

They "summon a spring storm" (presumably lash out in some kind of way), but they're upset at their violence.

I summoned the spring storm and then cried. My heart was wounded.

They feel the need to continue their aggressive act, even though their anger has long faded. They've forgotten how to live without that facade.

My rage and other such things vanished long ago but though I perform my act, I’m ignorant.

However, the song has a happy ending. The singer is able to destroy their facade and live in peace.

I pledged a ceasefire. My personality peeled off and fell because I have the courage to accept disappointment.

And just in case this wasn't already reading like the most Arei coded song in history to you, the song ends on the note that the reason the singer was able to shed their false images was because they met someone they considered an idiot for going against their worldview, but who eventually helps them "wake up."

I called you an idiot. Like smoke, you made me uncomfortable. I looked at you and woke up.

Arei [2-5]: I can't stand that naivety of hers! I can't stand how easy it is for [Eden] to make friends! Someone like her clearly has never had to fight so that others wouldn't look down on her! It's not fair! It's not fair that she can be kind and trusting and naive and no one takes advantage of that! That's not how it works! That's never been how it works for me!

Do I need to actually explain this? We've all watched DRDT, I take it. Arei put up a mean and insulting front so she wouldn't get hurt, but eventually grows past that facade and becomes nicer thanks to Eden. If I didn't know better I'd think Arei was deadass written after the song. Hell, her sisters are called Fuyuko and Natsuko, which respectively mean "winter child" and "summer child", so her getting the "spring storm" makes sense even from that angle.

David's here because of the constant mentions of facades and because technically you could replace Eden with Xander and the song doesn't completely fall apart. But David's pre-killing game persona is not that of an aggressive spring storm, so the whole "ceasefire" thing doesn't work for him as well as it does for Arei. Thus, our favorite Bowler gets this song!

Song #11 - Hi-Fi Evolution Theory*

Prime Suspect: Veronika Reaching: Xander, J, Future Context

*Song name translated from Japanese, exact wording may vary

This is one of the songs that doesn't have a translation I could easily find. Thankfully, even with just Google Translate to guide us, it's not that hard to see who gets this one. This song shows the singer talking to someone, asking if they're tired of living the way they are. They consider the way of living of that someone to be kind of pitiful and awful, and essentially tells them that they don't plan on living like them (at least that's how I interpret "if you want to die, do it alone").

Hey hey, are you getting tired of it? Hey hey, why don't you stop always hanging your head?

Your brain is rusty Doing tasks you don't want to do "This is a happy way of life" I don't know anything else, if you want to die, do it alone

Instead, the singer proposes moving past society's expectations and living according to their own desires. This is the "evolution theory" of the title, as the singer believes those who live according to their whims to be stronger than the rest.

It seems this world is dominated by the weak Bending reason and raising their voices "That's just how your life is" I don't know about the others; expectations are futile.

At this rate, we'll drown A yearning that won't fade, driving us mad Unable to spread our wings now Do we look like clowns? History changes like that Let's keep evolving from here The Earth too

A high-fidelity, easygoing view of life But it's fine to have fun, right?

I have no clue what "high-fidelity" is meant to mean in this context, but it's there.

It's not hard to see how this fits Veronika. Although at the start of the series she's a bit more self-conscious, she slowly shifts into a character who truly has no regard for people's expectations of "normal" behavior. She regularly acts purely on whims, and generally has a pretty easygoing view of life. Thus, this is most likely Vero's song.

Xander and J are mentioned because they, too, go against society's expectations, but I wouldn't call either of them particularly easygoing. The focus on "fun" in the song fits Vero far more than those two.

What you might be wondering about is the "Future Context" thing I put in the "Reaching" department. Basically, I believe there are many songs here that may refer to events later in the series, which would make it impossible for us to correctly assign the song at this time. This is what "Future Context" as a possible suspect means, "there is a chance we can't properly assign it right now." Think of Shun-ran, and how there would've basically been no way to give that to Arei during CH1 unless you hard read her character arc. Technically this could apply to all the songs, but there's some where this is a bit more likely than in others.

In the case of Hi-fi Evolution Theory, because the song is so Veronika-coded, it is also inherently mastermind-coded. There is a non-zero chance that (provided they're different characters) this song is meant to go to the mastermind, who may also be acting on their whims against society for all we know. Because we don't know who the mastermind is, we can't assign it safely.

Do I believe that's likely? No. Veronika fits the song so well that there's really no need to bend over backwards with assumptions about the mastermind and their motivations to explain it, even when the video has a famously black and white chess board front and center. I'm happy to just let Vero have this!

Song #9 - Undead Enemy

Prime Suspect: David Reaching: Min

For whatever reason, he put on a mask symbolizing the leading role he had yearned for in the past. And from the next day onward, the unhappy boy's smile did not falter, he was even loved by someone.

So like do I keep going or is that enough to convince you this is David's.

I mean, an "unhappy boy" puts on a mask that allows others to smile and laugh, making him loved by people. He desires their love even though he also resents them.

Laugh and sneer, you prisoners, at the good fortune that came to those who smiled, and its messengers too. Slander and criticize,and then, I won't need anyone else. Just leave me alone.

I can hear it from far away, sobbing choked up tears stained by angry roars. Just stop it everybody. Don't leave me alone.

David [2-11]: People who are born lazy, useless and stupid will stay that way until they die. If you were able to "improve" yourself into a better person, then it only means you were a better person to begin with. Aaaaand with that, my career is officially in the trash.

I mean. It fits him even better than Literature Girl Insane, and that's an achievement. The only reason to even consider Min is because of the repeated theme of perfection and references to school in the song.

An equation on the abacus, connections rattle and clatter. 1 mark? 100 marks? 10 marks? Oh my, a failing mark? 1 mark? 100 marks? 10 marks? …and how about you?

But like. Everything else about the song is so incredibly David coded that there's no reason not to give it to him.

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These first four are the songs I'm most confident on. That means that if there are any other songs that fit these characters in a vacuum, I will push them to the Reaching tier no matter what, because the song would need to fit better than these. That's difficult.

However, there are two more songs that I find have one prime suspect that stands above other characters. I could see myself being wrong on them, which is why I won't just default to the Reaching tier with them, but still.

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Song #2 - Sing Along

Prime Suspect: Teruko Reaching: David, Future Context

The song talks about how the singer loved someone who hurt them and left them.

I can't go on livin' alone now that you're gone You done me wrong, so here's your song Now sing along, baby Well, I know you know that you're killin' me But it's worth it just to see you smile Tell 'em to carve my name in the barstool, baby You know I'm gonna be here a while

So, Teruko with Xander and to an extent Min. This line in particular fits very well with her fatalistic attitude and generally pessimistic outlook on life.

Compromise is made out of peace But history's made out of violence After the war of the worlds has ceased All that's left is the deafenin' silence

(All that's left is silence??? -> Silence -> Mai dislikes silence!!!- I'm insane)

David could actually work pretty well with Xander and possibly Arei too, but he's so locked into Undead Enemy that any other song you want to give him is gonna be a reach.

However, "Future Context" is actually very relevant for this particular song. At the end of the day, the only thing we have here is someone feeling bitter at someone even after their departure (which in a killing game is probably gonna be death). Do you realize how likely it is that this ends up applying to multiple characters? Already, it might apply to Levi feeling frustrated at Ace's behavior before his death. Eden's also lost people, and the only reason she's not mentioned is because she's not really bitter towards them. I still think Teruko is the most likely, because betrayal is something that's pretty integral to her character and is likely to continue being that way for a while, but there's certainly a possibility that someone else ends up making more sense here.

Song #6 - A Mistaken Belief of Love

Prime Suspect: Arturo Secondary Suspects: Future Context Reaching: Whit, Xander, Charles

Alright so those of you who've already read other people's opinions are probably raising your eyebrows because whaaat is this guess. And yeah, at first glance it looks weird, but I swear it makes sense.

The first thing I need to establish before we go any further is that the song isn't strictly about romantic love. Like, yes, you can take it that way because all songs can be interpreted in many ways, but it's not what the song is originally about. Instead, the song is actually about the love between a cat and its owner. Yes, like, deadass a pet. Although the cat is represented as a cat-person throughout most of the video, the ending makes it clear that it is indeed a straight up cat.

In fact, the song might actually be based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, "The Black Cat." It helps with context, but I'll mostly focus on the actual song.

To put the story in chronological order, it starts with the owner being neglectful towards the cat, no matter how much the cat loved them.

“Hey, do you still love me?” The answer to this pantomime-like question Is still smoldering beneath the surface I’ll always be suspicious about it Tonight, the anti-satisfactionist sneers, “you won’t return to the gap in your bed, or your clean and tidy little room.”

The cat doubts the love because the owner doesn't return to "the gap in their bed," their place in their shared room. This neglect comes from the owner's problems, namely alcoholism, though the video shows a few other vices visually, like smoking.

With your ego swelled by a feeling of omnipotence, don’t drink for three straight days Just about everything is drunk and unsteady

This eventually culminates with the owner... presumably killing the cat in a drunken rage. It's not ultra clear in the video, but that's what it looks like, and it's what happens in The Black Cat, so. The cat dies, is the important thing.

Just about everything is drunk and unsteady I’m not there, I’m not there, “that’s right!” you say I’m the one who coughed up blood!

However, the cat's spirit lives on, and begins haunting the owner. This is actually what's shown during most of the video. The cat's anger comes from its mistaken belief that its owner loved it enough to care for it.

Weak, without exception, if we just play peekaboo Then, I’ll kill you at our rendezvous I just wanted to mistakenly believe that you loved me

There’s no mistake, you’re no exception, hey, if I die, I’ll leave you my precuneus, my pennies, everything I just wanted to mistakenly believe that you loved me

The precuneus is a part of the brain which (among other things) deals with self-consciousness, including comparing your own personality to that of others. Feel free to interpret that however you want, it's not that relevant for us. All we need to understand is that the cat leaves a part of itself with the owner.

Now, it's hard to apply a lot of this to DRDT directly. As far as we know, no one has drinking problems, and no one's killed a cat. However, I believe the main points we can take away are these:

The owner killed the cat.

The cat believed the owner loved them.

The owner is haunted by the cat's death.

You can see why "Future Context" is such a big possibility here. A situation like this can easily happen within the killing game. For example, imagine that in CH3, somehow, Hu ends up killing Nico, but doesn't get executed for some reason or another. Nico fits the cat theming, would've believed that Hu at least liked them, and their death would obviously haunt Hu. At that point, the song would go to... well one of them, I'm not sure which one :v

Do I think that particular scenario is likely? Not really, but it helps to illustrate that an event like the one in the song can happen.

However, it's not necessary. Because I'd argue that there's a character who already fits this song. Arturo, because of Felicity.

Let's review this. The cat loved the owner, just like Felicity admired her brother, as stated in a deleted part of a Q&A answer. However, the owner often left the cat on its own, neglecting it, similar to how Arturo abandoned Felicity. And while Arturo didn't directly kill Felicity, he certainly blames himself for her death. It haunts him, just like the cat's death haunts the owner.

Arturo's Motive Secret: Your younger sister killed herself because of you. You should have never left.

It's not crazy to say, based on what we know, that Felicity committed suicide because she "mistakenly believed" her brother loved her, and stopped believing that when he left.

The counterargument here is that it's a little strange for the song to have large sections sung from the perspective of a side character, as opposed to the singer being the DRDT character related to the song like in most of the other songs. However, given some of the other songs we're gonna see, I wouldn't rely on patterns for these things lol.

As for Xander, Charles and Whit, well. They're some of the only characters who we know have dead people in their backstories who could've had "a mistaken belief of love" (so no poison victims for Min because they presumably didn't know her) and who might actually be haunted by the deaths (so no Levi because he's remorseless). However, we know fuck all about Elliot, Xander doesn't strictly blame himself for his family's death so much as he just feels survivor's guilt over it, and I don't really think Whit's mom could have "mistakenly" believed he loved her, seeing as he does appreciate her very much. So, uh, unless future context gives us extra possibilities, I'm going with Arturo!

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My confidence in my guesses is about to take a dive off a cliff. Here we get to the songs that really caused me to procrastinate on this post for years lmao.

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Song #5 - asymptotic

Prime Suspect: Whit Secondary Suspect: Min Reaching: Charles

Officially the first song with a whole two suspects! Asymptotic is a silly little love song, themed around math, about two lovers who can never get together.

I think you're curvilinear A real nice graph to see You're a cutie face in x-y space Not imaginary

We're asymptotic, we're on it Till the end of linear time Asymptotic, divided By the smallest slimmest line Asymptotic, obliquely Here's the point of this speech As close as we could ever get You'll be just out of reach

In case you're not caught up on your math, an asymptote of a curve is a line that the curve infinitely approaches, but never intersects. For example, take the function 1/x, graphed in the image for the song, and make x tend to infinity. That means, make x a big ass number. Then, 1/x becomes really close to 0, right? In fact, if you tell me any positive number larger than 0 (call it ε), and I can tell you a number x' such that not only is 1/x' smaller than ε, but 1/x is smaller than ε for any x larger than x'. However, what you can't do is name a value of x such that 1/x is exactly zero. So the curve 1/x approaches the straight line y = 0, but never touches it.

And yeah, this is pretty Whit coded.

Whit's Profile: Unfortunately for Whit Young, he seems to lack all luck when it comes to finding a relationship himself.

Whit can try all he wants to get into a relationship, but for one reason or another, he never actually manages to establish the relationship. So he and his crushes can always get very close, but they never end up "touching". Additionally, Whit has some connection to math, or at least computer science and data analysis.

Whit [2-7]: Machine learning! We both like machine learning! Charles: Machine learning is the use of computer algorithms that have the ability to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. [...] Machine learning also has its uses in matchmaking, or any fields in which one may need to process a large number of individuals.

However, there's a much easier way to connect math to Whit. It's also the reason Charles is in the "Reaching" part. The Ultimate Chemist is Whit's most plot relevant love interest at the moment, and Chemist -> Science -> Math. Sure, chemistry is (to my understanding and depending on the specific branch) not the most math heavy of sciences, which is why Charles is in the "reaching" tier, but it's close enough.

And the song really does make a lot of sense if you take it as Whit singing it to Charles. Like, you look at these corny ass, immensely pun dense lyrics and tell me they're not some bullshit Whit would say to try and put the moves on Charles.

I think you're curvilinear A real nice graph to see You're a cutie face in x-y space Not imaginary The limits are infinitely great I wish that we could cosine But that'll have to wait

It's derivative to say You're integral to me We're off on our own tangents Fading constantly

So, the Matchmaker gets what is probably the most explicitly romantic song in the playlist. Makes enough sense, right?

Well, eh. There's an issue with it, which is that it feels reductive. Like, Whit definitely has some other shit going on. Giving him a song based exclusively on one line in his profile, which hasn't even come up in the main series yet, feels very strange.

But you could argue this is a problem with asymptotic itself, as opposed to specifically the Whit guess. DRDT characters are all very complex and have a lot of shit going on, giving any of them a love song that has very little else going on is always gonna feel like a disservice.

And when taking that into account, you could argue that being reductive actually fits Whit, in a way. A big part of his character is that he always ignores complicated situations and feelings, right? So why not give him a song that brushes aside all his other issues and focuses only in his misfortune with romance, arguably the least of his issues?

The other argument you can make is that... well, these songs don't have to be a full encapsulation of the characters. I'll point you again to the three songs that have almost no lyrics; those ones can only hope to encapsulate a character's vibe, and little else. It'd be unfair to ask every song to capture the entirety of a character when those three could never do it. And for what it's worth, I'd argue asymptotic's silly goofy sound fits Whit pretty decently.

Still, it's worth keeping our options open. And while giving the Matchmaker a love song makes sense, it makes just as much sense to give the Student a math song. The question is, how would it work? As much as I love Terumin, their relationship doesn't have the same kind of explicitly romantic undertones that Charwhit has imo. And none of the other Min ships are particularly prominent in canon, either.

But perhaps we don't need the romantic undertones. It's possible this is meant to be about Min and Teruko in a more general sense, in that Min wanted to be closer to Teruko, but Teruko was distrusting as ever and ends up pushing her away, especially after the first trial. That could certainly work, especially as Min's secret quote is directly about Teruko. However, I'm not super convinced by this possibility because Min... just didn't actually express that much interest on getting close to Teruko before her death, imo. She wanted to save her, sure, but that was an impulsive decision. She doesn't really express the sort of eternal yearning the song talks about. They hung out, like, once before Xander's murder attempt, and Eden and Rose were there too.

On the other hand, you could abstract the person the song is about to just be an allegory of Min's goals. Not being the Ultimate Student, because she did achieve that, but rather making something worthwhile with her life, like becoming a teacher. The issue I have here is that while this fits the whole "the lines don't touch" idea, it sorta fails at the "infinitely close" aspect of an asymptote. Min doesn't fail at becoming a teacher because she could never have reached her goal even with infinite time, as the song would suggest, she fails because she dies before she can.

What I'm arguing is that the situation looks like this:

I'm having fun with the math song >:)

Per Whit's profile, he's "fated" to have bad luck in relationships. No matter how hard he tries or how long he spends trying, he just has bad luck with romance. Meanwhile, Min could have reached her goals, only she got killed before she could. Arguably, she could have also gotten closer to Teruko, if you consider that her goal. So she's not asymptotic, she's a curve cut short. Does that make sense?

However, I am being a little pedantic, and the song itself already does some amount of math butchering (why are you talking about "divided by the smallest thinnest line" then showing two curves that diverge in literal opposite direction on screen-), so you can probably get away with the wiggle room. These are both still very good interpretations, even if I personally prefer the Whit one. That's why Min is still a secondary suspect!

Also I would be lying if I said I'm not a little biased. I don't really like asymptotic that much and Min's my favorite character so I'm more likely to look for reasons to give it to a different character xD

Also Charles is here, should probably elaborate. Well, I mentioned it before, but Chemistry -> Science -> Math, is the logic. The issue here is that from Charles' perspective, there's no reason to believe he would be "asymptotic" to the Charwhit endgame. If he wanted to date the guy, he could just ask, no reason to believe they would always be separated and parallel. The one who has bad luck in romance is Whit, after all. So, uh. Moving on!

Song #3 - RUNAWAY

Main Suspects: Future Context, Charles Secondary Suspects: Teruko Reaching:

Chat we have a problem.

I find that everything I am is Everything I should be

Chat this line disqualifies the entire cast how do I proceed.

Indeed, this song has the peculiar problem of being too damn happy for this cast of 16 crashouts (and before you mention Eden, fork). That's why I genuinely considering finding a way to put Mai in the playlist, because she's just the happiest and least troubled character here, or she was until They Got Her ig. Twas' not but a fleeting thought, however, since the songs are ostensibly about the main cast.

However, let's not panic. What is the song actually about, if I'm saying it's so happy? It's effectively about facing your flaws, acknowledging them, but still loving yourself despite them. The song starts with the singer pointing out their own flaws, and feeling bad about them. They're silly flaws, but flaws regardless.

I've been searching, nothing's working I've been tripping, no one's perfect Chasing vision, just the surface Shirt's on backwards, not on purpose I've been learning, something bigger Expectations, feet were failing

However, they then face themselves and decide that despite these flaws, everything will be okay. They don't need to be perfect ("redirecting my perfection somewhere else"). That's "the promise"... I think.

Staring into my reflection Redirecting my perfection somewhere else (Ohh, ohh, oh) When there isn't any progress Lean on truth inside the promise, it is well (Ohh, ohh, oh)

Despite these flaws, they see a bright future for themselves, filled with empty pages ready to be filled. They are content with themselves, even in their imperfections.

I hold my life out in front of me Dreams of who I want to be I'm seeing every empty page I find that everything I am is Everything I should be I don't need to run away

With this, they finally begin growing past their doubts, and learn to love themselves.

Something's working, heart is turning Vision's clear, and still I'm learning That what I am, what I am, what I am, what I am Is something more than I can plan

So... it's cooked. Like, it's way too happy a song for anyone here, right? The only thing that makes sense is that this is talking about the end of a character's arc, thus, Future Context is the only real possibility.

Or at least, that's what I thought, until I read googledetective's post where they called out Charles as a possibility, and I saw the vision. Just like the singer, Charles originally had very high standards for both himself and the people he interacted with, dismissing most of his classmates out of hand because of their talents. After CH1, however, Charles is arguably the character most willing to confront his flaws without running away from them. He acknowledges his original attitude of a loner was bad, he gives the secret he receives to Teruko to account for the possibility of getting incapacitated by his hemophobia/necrophobia, and he even starts learning basic adulting skills like cooking and laundry with the help of Whit. Sure, he's still arrogant about his intelligence, but to be fair to him what competition does he have beyond Teruko and maybe Rose?

Additionally, out of every crashout in this cast, Charles is arguably the one most comfortable with himself. He's never really showed much self-doubt after CH1, trusting his abilities while still keeping his flaws in mind. And if you argue that the RUNAWAY haver must 1. Confront their flaws, and 2. Be comfortable with themselves, it becomes clear why Charles is one of the only options. Characters like Whit may be pretty happy with themselves, but avoid their flaws, while people like Eden can face their issues, but don't feel fantastic (thinking about Eden's guilt over Min and Arei's deaths here).

Finally, there's one last reason to give this to Charles, but it's related to some "deeper" lore. I know I talked about the storyline in A Mistaken Belief of Love, but that was because it was directly included in the lyrics. RUNAWAY's video has an extra story sort of running in the background of the song's more general statement, so whether or not dev took it into account is certainly up in the air. However, I still wanted to address it because look at this description:

1960 - 26 year old Jessica Avet opens a stack of 20 letters from her father, J Francis Avet, addressed to her before he was drafted in 1940. Francis left his 6 year old daughter knowing he might not ever return, so wrote with the intension [sic] for Jess to read a letter on her birthday every year for 20 years. Jess never read a single one, until her 26th birthday.

So, this person has a family member who died when they were young, but they kinda ignored them for years and only faced them when they were much older? That's so Charles coded it's incredible. I'm this close to outright theorizing that CH3 is gonna have him receiving a letter from Elliot or something.

Charles is not the only option, however. Again, at any point a character could just... have an arc where they face their flaws and suddenly they fit here too. That's why Teruko in particular is a suspect; if anyone's getting a happy ending, it's probably her due to protag privilege, so she's the likeliest to have an arc that fits RUNAWAY. Something to watch out for, I guess.

Song #8 - Yesman

Prime Suspects: Ace, Nico, Min Secondary Suspects: Arturo, Xander Reaching: David

Me when I'm a DRDT character and my recap foil gets a song-

Okay so we have a problem chat. It's the everlasting problem that has plagued, like, every song analysis post in my Tumblr backlog. The issue that translation is very hard! Because there are quite a few different translations online, but a lot of them have some pretty big differences with the official English captions of the original video (the one on the DRDT playlist is a cover). There's a decent chance some of these translations have slightly different meanings, which could change interpretations of the song. I'm making the executive decision to use the translation in the captions on the og video for this analysis, please don't kill me if you prefer to take other translations into account T_T

Anyways. The song is a dialogue between two characters, which I believe may have names within the storyline of the song but which I'm going to call Flower and Miku after the Vocaloid used for their lyrics, because it's funnier that way. Flower is the titular "yesman", someone who behaves exactly the way society wants them to without pushing against it, even if they hate that life.

Flower: Hiding a selfish, angry laughter Pitted malt of selling complaints Hiding a casual abstention It's okay if I dance forever, right?

"I just want to live normally Isn't that lovely?"

"Ordinary person, extraordinary person, there's not much of a difference, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes, if I just nod it'll be fine I want to live fair and square Do you understand?"

Miku, meanwhile, is someone who isn't like that. She calls flower out for being "caught in the trap" of disillusionment.

Miku: Yes, face to face with things I hate "I have no euphemism, I hate this" The you that says these is still a ghoul, truly great "Well, I didn't have motivation from the beginning By now, there's no meaning of going back" Saying these, you were caught in your own trap

The "ghoul" imagery connects to the chorus, where Flower is directly compared to the living dead.

Undead, Undead! Beside you Undead, Undead! Dancing 'till the morning Undead, Undead! Peace at any price I'm just a performing blockhead

Side note, because this is kinda relevant for DRDT related discussion, the word translated here as "blockhead", 朴念仁さ (read: bokunenjin), can also be translated to something like "introvert", which you might see in other translations.

In any case, Flower initially dislikes Miku for being the "disappointment" society believes Miku to be, but she eventually realizes that she doesn't want to feel that way. That's the view of a critical "adult."

Flower: The "disappointment" label that was attached to you some day I can't get it out of my head Somehow, by the time I realized I turned into one of those useless critics called adults

Then Miku... does some yuri stuff? I think? Idk what's actually going on here.

Miku: Being surrounded and taken care of wasn't an ideal I'm okay with being inside of your heart, when it's not lonely I want to lower the curtain as if I am going to sleep

Regardless. In the video, the character Flower represents ends up breaking everything around them, as if finally being free from those expectations. However, the lyrics don't seem to reflect this all that much? So I'm a little confused at that part.

Undead, Undead! Same as usual I'm just a dancing blockhead Moaning/singing* x2! Begging 'till death Moaning/singing x2! I want to finish with you Moaning/singing x2! Don't fall into here Into a waiting blockhead Ah, this life is the best

*In the video, the Japanese writing says "moaning", but there's also English writing saying "singing'". This works because homophones rule

Look, the details aren't completely important. What we need to look for, assuming we take Flower to be the "main character" of the song, is a character who is a "yes man" and does what people expect them to, even if they hate it.

When I first got that, my immediate thought was Ace. He's stated he hates horse riding, but still does it out of performance anxiety whenever he's forced to. So, a complete yesman in that regard. Adding onto that, he's the character that best fits the "undead" chanting, having survived a murder attempt. Even LGI calls it out, with his numeral being attached to the phrase "a cat has 9 lives."

However, Nico works well too. They're also forced into a particular role by society, having to hide their gender identity, even if they hate being called a boy or a girl. They arguably also work better with the idea that the singer ends up rejecting society's pressures in the end, as they have come out as nonbinary, while Ace never got a chance to quit horse-riding. They're not as connected to the "undead" imagery, but they do work better with the "introvert" translation of 朴念仁さ.

But if you're talking about introverts who succumb to societal pressures, you have to mention Societal Pressure Girl. Min shows clear contempt towards her talent in her Bonus Episode, so the connection is made pretty clear there. Additionally, she works best with Flower's insults towards Miku, because of Xander. Flower and Miku beefing over different ideals on fighting against expectations is extremely reminiscent of Min's clashes with Xander throughout the entirety of their stay in the killing game. Especially since, like Miku and Flower end up agreeing on how much dancing to society's tune sucks, Min and Xander actually sorta agree on how pointless the Student talent is.

In fact, Xander also manages to sneak in as a suspect just because of these clashes. If Min is Flower, then Xander is Hatsune Miku (put that in the "out of context theorists" compilation), so he is technically connected to the song. The only reason he's secondary is because I'd expect Flower to be the one connected to the DRDT character, as she's the titular "Yesman," but still.

Why did I put Arturo as a secondary suspect. I'm writing this a few hours after writing his name there, so... I forgot why I did it. Like, I think I was cooking something about beauty standards and how they could be related to societal pressures, but like. Arturo doesn't hate beauty standards. Chat I've reached the point where my theorizing is incomprehensible even to me, is it all over?

Anyways, at least David as an option is a bit clearer. All the reasons he fits with Yesman are the same for why he fits with Undead Enemy, the only reason he's in "reaching" is because Undead Enemy just fits him better overall.

Song #12 - tip toes

Main Suspects: Min Secondary Suspects: Hu, Arturo, Charles Reaching: J, David

At the risk of sounding a little pretentious, you know how our world has a bunch of superficial symbols of status? Well, the singer is someone who achieved something like that, and indeed feels pride over it. However, they're not super happy with it. They wish they could be more earnest and follow their real desires instead of these symbols of status. They want to be "set free from wanting things they don't need." Think, like, a famous singer living a luxurious life, but hating how superficial it all is.

Demanding my mind be set free From wanting the things I don't need My pride is hiding its lies behind all the dreams Living inside Delusion is weighing me down It's taking the hope that I found And giving me nothing back

The feeling is creeping in slow It's feeding my need to be known And giving me nothing back

The "delusion" here is a delusion of grandeur taking away their true dreams and passions, it's the "need to be known" that's "giving them nothing back". However, it's not easy for them to let go of the pride associated with these superficial status symbols, causing an internal conflict they describe as a "heart attack."

Heart attack, so now I'm on my Tip toes, trying to see past my ego I'm reaching for something more than this feeling of being important Leaving my heart behind, it's bleeding But still my pride is screaming My future will listen to me Listen to me, listen to me Will I always know this divide? Living most of this war inside Take this ghost of me with the tide to die And release my heart to come alive

They want something more substantial than this meaningless status, this "feeling of being important" that's making them "leave their heart behind", but their pride is making it difficult, "screaming" for them not to give that up. They lament over this divide, wishing they could take this superficial "ghost" of themselves to die and fully follow their heart. And we don't have any more lines so we kinda gotta work with this.

With the way I described the song, you can probably guess which character I'm angling towards. Because if there is a symbol of status that someone has that they feel is superficial and meaningless, that has to be the title of the Ultimate Student. Because an Ultimate title, a spot in Hope's Peak, is obviously an extremely important symbol of status. And yet, in her Bonus Episode, Min makes it clear that she doesn't find her title to be as meaningful as others', because it's sorta inherently unsubstantial. She expresses a clear desire to grow past the title, to do something more with her life, something more than this title that does little more than make her appear important and well known.

And yet, Min doesn't just completely dismiss her title. Whenever Xander expressed his clear hatred of the title and what it stands for, Min was always quick to defend her lifestyle and argue for the importance of her talent, even though she fundamentally agreed with Xander. This is where the "ego" comes in. A part of Min does still feel proud of her accomplishments as the Ultimate Student, even when another part of her thinks it's an useless title, so it's hurtful when someone insults that. And it's not something she lets go of easily, as illustrated by the fact she continued studying even within the killing game.

This is why I put Min as the only main suspect, because I find her to be the best example of the song's conflict. She clearly expresses both the pride and the feeling that the thing she's proud of is stupid and worthless. However, the song is much more vague than I've been treating it as, so other options can definitely fit here as well.

In particular, Hu and Arturo could both easily fit this song in the near future. "The feeling of being important" is something that Hu explicitly looks for, wanting to be seen as reliable by the others. And of course, Arturo chases status more so than he chases beauty, as he quickly went from not thinking about J at all to immediately becoming obsessed when he learnt who her mother was.

However, they share the same problem; this song only works for them if you assume they'll go through a certain character arc. Currently, neither Hu or Arturo actually feel conflicted over their "pride." Hu sees nothing wrong about wanting to be seen as reliable and important, and Arturo has expressed regret over very little beyond his sister's death and catching Veronika's attention. For the song to work, then, you need to assume that either Hu will begin loving herself regardless of what others think of her, or Arturo will look past his desire for status and search for something more meaningful. And even if you feel comfortable assuming that, the fact Min effectively starts the killing game already fitting the song makes me lean towards her more than these two, you feel?

Charles, meanwhile, has already grown past his pride as one of the only "real" Ultimates that he expressed during the Prologue, so he fits a bit better in that sense. He realized the Ultimate thing was not the most important thing ever in the face of stuff like basic adulting skills, he "looked past his ego" and learnt to rely in others.

But there is a reason that he's not a prime suspect. His blinding pride and his desire for something more meaningful never truly coexist. In CH1, he's arrogant and self-important, but he doesn't show a desire to grow past that. And in CH2, he's already pretty much completely let go of his "feeling of being important" as one of the few "true" Ultimates. And even if you argue it could be referring to how he still considers himself smarter than anyone else, we then run into the same problem as CH1, because he has no desire to let go of that. The conflict, if it ever existed, ended before it became relevant.

On another note, David once again faces the funny situation of being really fitting for a song, but getting put in "Reaching" because of Undead Enemy. He feels his talent is just as useless as Min considers hers, and he definitely looks for something more meaningful by following Xander. But again, Undead Enemy.

Finally, J is here as someone who let go of a whole lot of status to follow her passions, but like. If she ever felt conflicted about leaving her status behind, we sure as hell never see it. The only reason I'm even mentioning her is that the only other song I mentioned her in is Hi-fi Evolution Theory so I kinda have to start giving her some options lmao.

Song #16 - Good Grief

Prime Suspects: Eden, Whit Secondary Suspects: Xander, Teruko, Future Context Reaching: David

Stated directly by its writers, this song is about how confusing grief is. The song is about someone who lost someone else.

Watching through my fingers x2 Shut my eyes and count to ten It goes in one ear out the other, oh One ear out the other, oh Burning bright right till the end Now you'll be missing from the photographs Missing from the photographs Watching through my fingers x2 In my thoughts, you're far away And you are whistling a melody Whistling a melody Crystallising clear as day Oh, I can picture you so easily Picture you so easily

They're "watching through their fingers" either because they're scared to confront the death, they're crying with their hands on their face, or both. Now, this loss makes them feel very sad and hopeless, of course:

What's gonna be left of the world if you're not in it? What's gonna be left of the world, oh? Every minute and every hour I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more Every stumble and each misfire I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more

However, because of how intense their grief is, this sadness isn't simple. It's interrupted by moments of intense emotions in general, including a weird euphoria when being reminded of the lighter moments in that person's life. That's why when they're "caught off guard by your favorite song", they begin "dancing at the funeral." It's representing the way people might laugh and joke about silly stories of the dead to celebrate their life, for example.

Caught off-guard by your favourite song Oh, I'll be dancing at a funeral Dancing at a funeral Sleeping in the clothes you love It's such a shame we had to see them burn Shame we had to see them burn

You might have to excuse me I've lost control of all my senses And you might have to excuse me I've lost control of all my words So get drunk, call me a fool Put me in my place, put me in my place Pick me up, up off the floor Put me in my place, put me in my place

Which gets us into the very obvious problem that a song about grief in a killing game might as well be a song about water in a school of fish. It can end up applying to basically anyone, provided the right people die. Hence why Future Context is a suspect. But if you ask me, this idea of laughing about better times to celebrate a person's life in the wake of their death makes me think of one conversation in particular, at least for now.

Eden [2-3]: You know, being in this kitchen, it reminds me of that time that you, I, Rose, and Min were baking together. You remember that, right? Teruko: ... Of course I remember. Eden: We had a ton of fun back then! Baking, decorating, and chatting... I could tell everyone really enjoyed it! But then... When you dropped that cake, and Min had to clean up the mess... Because of that, she ended up having to kill Xander.

The conversation continues, but you get the idea. Combine that with Arei, and it looks like Eden will be doing a whole lot of grieving in the near future. And with her being an intensely emotional person, it makes sense that she'd embody the entire massive spectrum of emotions grief can bring. Also this is literally the first time I've brought her up I need to give her some songs already.

However, Eden works if you take the intended meaning of the song. Because if you read the lyrics divorced from the writers' statements, then you can actually interpret it as someone ignoring their grief. The dancing in the funeral, the shutting eyes and looking through fingers, the "picture you so easily", the sleeping in clothes they loved, the losing control of the senses... It certainly gives off Whit "looking away" from his mother's death energy. The fact this is grief he felt before the killing game also arguably gives him points, as it is an integral part of his character from the start, as opposed to Eden who only starts feeling grief during the killing game. But at the same time, the fact that the song does acknowledge the death at all ("you'll be missing from the photographs", "I miss you more") is a little strange when Whit ignores the issue so much he deadass forgets his mom is dead at all. So. There's that counterargument.

Similar to Whit, Xander also feels grief before the killing game, which is why he's here, but unfortunately we just don't know enough about how he feels about his family to make him a prime suspect. And Teruko is here on the basis that she will definitely feel a good amount of grief over the course of the killing game, on top of whatever the hell she's going to feel about Mai's very likely death. But because it hasn't been shown yet, I don't want to put her as a Prime Suspect for now.

And David is here because look at tally 5 dawg my guy's grieving. But for the fiftieth time this post, Undead Enemy pushes him to the Reaching tier. I'm starting to wonder if maybe always disqualifying him was a bad move but oh well.

Song #10 - Drawing Pins

Prime Suspect: Levi, Nico Secondary Suspects: Teruko, Hu Reaching: Min, Rose, Future Context

This song is about someone who feels stuck in an awful situation, "held down by drawing pins."

I'm held down by drawing pins They pierce the skin

Additionally, the singer feels they can't understand the person they're speaking to. Apparently, this person has done something to them, and the singer can't understand why they did it.

Lights are on but no one's in - When you talk I don't feel like I belong - Here at all Tell me what you did it What you did it What you did it for 'Cause I can't figure it out

Finally, the singer wants to be loved by the person they're speaking to.

What do I have to do To be loved, loved by you

And... that's it. You can see why this is so difficult to determine. The song's very vague, and the emotions it expresses are pretty common amongst the cast.

Still, if you're talking about people feel like they "don't belong here at all", you're probably looking at Levi and Nico. They both have issues understanding people and their actions, fitting the whole "lights are on but no one's in when you talk" and "tell me what you did it for" thing. And they've both been stuck in unfavorable positions, being unable to freely discuss a part of themselves. Particularly, Nico didn't feel comfortable sharing their gender identity at the start, and Levi didn't feel comfortable sharing his low empathy. The desire to feel loved can then be abstracted to being accepted for Nico and being seen as a good person for Levi, though I give the slight edge to Levi here in terms of who it fits more.

As for secondary suspects, we go to Hu. She fits with the desire to be loved while being stuck in the unfortunate position of mental health issues which led her to attempt suicide several times, and you could argue she struggles to understand Nico's and David's actions for the chorus. However, I feel like that might be recency bias, if that makes sense? Like, Hu not understanding people isn't as core a part of her character as it is for Levi and Nico, the David and Nico situations are just particular cases where she struggles to see the other person's perspective. It feels to me like that aspect of lack of understanding only feels really relevant because it's one of the last things we've seen of Hu's character as of the end of CH2.

The same can be said about Teruko, but at least "why did Xander try to kill her" seems to be a highly important question for the storyline as a whole, so it would make a bit more sense to draw attention to it with that chorus. And her misfortune is certainly something that "pins her down," so it tracks. She's not a primary suspect solely because I think this fits Levi and Nico better, not because there's too many problems with it.

Going to the final category, Min and Rose work in the sense that they're the most directly "under drawing pins" in the sense that XF-Ture Tech and the Spurling Foundation have forced them into horrible positions, but they really struggle with the "tell me what you did it for" thing. Also, cartoons exists, so Rose has better options. On the other hand, if we're going to accept that said chorus is about a particular point in the killing game, like Xander's attempted murder or the Nico and David situations, then we have to acknowledge the possibility that something like that will happen again, and more suspects will enter the list. So, Future Context.

Song #13 - Polygonal

Prime Suspects: Teruko, Ace, Hu Secondary Suspects: Nico, Levi, Xander Reaching: David, Charles, Arei

The second song without an easily accessible translation, so we're gonna have to put our faith in Google Translate once more. And unlike Hi-fi, this one's a little hard to understand.

This song is about... uh... it's, like. So it's. Hm. Uh... self-loathing?

Ah, a life full of failures And so time melts away again

Ah, a life full of regrets And yet another anchor appears The scenery I can't see is still Stained bright red Everyone wants to laugh with someone

Okay, that's a start. The self-loathing causes the singer to grow jealous of... just, like, someone. From my understanding, they call themselves a mirror, because they... presumably are trying to replicate behavior?

Narrow-mindedness. You saw the "white" personality and dreams Unable to love them properly This rotten mirror Was jealous of someone I hate you, who grows straight and tall

My understanding here is that the "white" personality and dreams are, like, a facade of "good" born from the singer trying to replicate the person they're jealous of ("rotten mirror"). Or the "white" personality is actually the real personality of the singer, but they feel it cannot be loved regardless. The main idea is the whole "reflection" and "unable to be loved" thing, at least from my interpretation. The singer's trying to be a "mirror" of good people to be loved?

This pain that we can see "Melting away like a mirage" In a prison no one sees Alone, we Rot away

Okay, okay. We're making progress. Again, the singer doesn't feel "seen", their pain is sorta festering away from sight and causing them to rot, right? That's what's going on? Maybe we can understand the chorus now?

Ah, this light that shines only on me It hurts so much I feel dizzy and want to vomit The auditory hallucinations that never stop today, endless delusions Beyond the never-ending nightmare The urge to scream and someone's amplified sobs It's on the other side of the mirror Many voices that seem about to burst Resonating through the mirror, that's my pain

What the fuck is happening.

Okay let's take it one line at a time. "Light that shines only on me" is a spotlight, so the singer feels put... on a spotlight. They feel like the center of attention, but they don't like it ("it hurts so much"). Because of the whole "delusion" talk, it reads to me in a sort of self-destructively self-centered way, if that makes sense. They feel like everyone's judging them, basically? That's presumably what the "auditory hallucinations" would be, the thought that other people are judging and talking shit. Am I making sense or making shit up.

What's on the other side of the mirror? Well, if the mirror is sort of the singer pretending to be similar to other people... then they are the person beyond the mirror, screaming and sobbing with a voice about to burst.

Okay, okay! Again, hidden pain, etc.

The lingering echo, terribly dull Those eyes reflected in loneliness It turned "purple" A bruise I don't remember getting A green corpse And this memory that is eating away at me, a melancholy that frightens me

Why are we bringing memory into it. Why is purple in quotes. Am I losing my mind.

Uh... would you all forgive me if I just let this little part go as "the singer is vaguely depressed about the past"? I'm struggling with the imagery around here.

Okay, uh. So as a summary, the singer feels they can't be loved, put on a spotlight and constantly judged. So they put up a front of a "mirror" which you take however you want. They hide pain behind that mirror. They're jealous of the people who can stand themselves. Memory bullshit.

I think why you can see why this is such a problem. Unlike other songs, which are so vague that it's impossible to draw much meaning from them, this song is so detailed that no character can fit it perfectly. And that's without mentioning that a lot of the song is up to interpretation, so a lot of what I said might not even apply.

Arguably, Ace fits the best here. He does feel constantly judged as if he's on a spotlight, he hides his fear of death, he wants to be loved even if he tries to put distance between himself and others, he expressed jealousy over Arei, and... the memory thing can maybe go with Taylor?

But that doesn't mean he fits perfectly. Even beyond the stretch for the memory connection, Ace's issue is that the mirror, in his case, is only concealing things. I wouldn't really argue he's "reflecting" anything. Unless you say he's replicating everyone else's aggression, but... he's usually the one starting shit, so I don't think that works very well.

Teruko here is essentially the same thing as Ace, with the feeling of being unloved despite wanting to connect to people, the hidden pain, and the feeling of a spotlight (see: her referring to herself as the "protagonist"). She's a stronger guess in the "memory bullshit" department with all she's forgotten (incident of her back scar, Mai's name, prosopagnosia), but she arguably doesn't care as much about being judged (outwardly, at least, but also she doesn't respect a lot of people's opinions). And she still has the issue of the mirror not making a whole lot of sense, seeing as she generally does her own thing.

Hu, meanwhile, fits perfectly with the mirror imagery.

Hu [2-6]: You see, when my parents were younger, they often visited a local lake. Supposedly, the water was so still that it perfectly reflected the sky and the many butterflies that flew above the lake during those quiet morning hours. They had many fond memories of that place and wanted to work it into my name. My last and first name can be translated into something like "still lake."

See? It's not just that, but Hu also (arguably) goes along with David's ideas during CH2, in a way "reflecting" them. She's mirroring the actions of someone she considers good and upstanding, even if "jealous" is maybe too strong of a way to put how she felt about David before 2-11. And the reason she does this is out of a desperate desire to be loved, to be seen as reliable. She is extremely worried about what other people think of her, far more than Ace and Teruko imo, to the point where the main reason she doesn't want her secret revealed is that she doesn't want it to make her seem less reliable. So, the "hidden pain" part is obvious.

Finally, the memory thing sorta works with the idea that she's hurting either herself or others without realizing, as she does by talking over Nico. "A bruise she doesn't remember" might just mean she doesn't see the damage she did to her relationship with Nico until it's too late. A little bit of a stretch, but not the worst imo.

And speaking of "not noticing you're hurting someone until it's too late," that's where our secondary suspects of Levi and Nico come in. They both struggle to understand how others think, and as a result end up mostly "reflecting" behavior of those they respect, though Levi much more than Nico given the Pet Therapist mostly does their own thing. The "hidden pain" and "constantly judged" things works better for Nico, but the "memory bullshit" part might work better with Levi "oh yeah I forgot I killed my dad" Fontana. It works, but I don't see it as much as the first three.

So... what about Xander? Well, he's kinda a suspect mainly because the imagery fits him extremely well. "Rotting" gets brought up a lot, and Xander's family was described as "rotting." The video shows someone... not having the greatest time, fitting that again. And his family's deaths are the clearest idea of what "a memory eating away at [the singer]" could be referring to.

"Hiding pain" behind a "mirror" would need some assumptions, but you could argue that following the Chariton incident, Xander became more like his idol David pretended to be; a "mirror" of his idol to hide his survivor's guilt. Shaky, but works. The spotlight and "feeling constantly judged" thing... are ever shakier, but Xander has been known to do some bad things because he trusts himself (see: attacking Teruko), which could be seen as a sort of self-centered attitude. In this case, feeling bad about the spotlight is a little defeatist, like he hates that he's the center of all these hard decisions, but he's only like that because he trusts his judgement over others'? Something like that. There's a lot of assumptions made there, some of which I don't believe mind you, which is why he's only a secondary suspect. However, you can work around it all, so he's not "reaching."

Speaking of that category, though. David and Arei actually fit extremely well given they're foils of Teruko and Ace in the relevant aspects, and the only reason they're not prime suspects is because Shun-ran and Undead Enemy exist. Finally, Charles is here because "a bruise I don't remember getting" sounded like Elliot to me on a first listen (or, first read-through of the lyrics), and even though the rest of the song doesn't fit too well imo, it's enough to consider it at least.

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With this, we've officially run out of songs that make any degree of sense. The next three songs are the "quasi-instrumentals" that have basically no lyrics, which means we're gonna have to do this by vibe check alone. Save me.

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Song #1 - Diamond is Unbreakable (Main Theme)

Prime Suspects: Xander, J, Ace Secondary Suspects: Levi, Teruko Reaching: Charles

This song is pretty "punchy" and groovy. It's energetic and somewhat aggressive. I'm struggling to describe the vibe, but from that alone you can see why Xander, J and Ace are options.

Teruko is a secondary suspect because I think the vibe fits well, but not as well as the other three, and because the idea of something being "unbreakable" fits her whole Ultimate Luck making her survive anything. Levi is here because he's big and muscular like Jojo characters, and the vibe doesn't not fit him.

Charles is here because diamond is, uh, a material, so like chemistry and shit.

Oh dear God the quality of the guesses somehow fell even harder than before T_T

Song #14 - Spitfire (05 Version)

Prime Suspects: J, Xander, Ace Secondary Suspects: Levi, Teruko Reaching: Veronika, Arei

It's the same suspects I'm not making a new graphic lmao

This song has (count them!) two lines.

If I was in World War Two they'd call me Spitfire 'Cause you know that I can

... Well then!

The song is loud and extremely abrasive. It has its chiller and more melodic moments, but it's mostly just a bunch of screaming over harsh sounds. So, again. Xander, Ace, J, and to an extent Levi and Teruko. Though, if it helps, the Spitfire was a British plane, so... Xander evidence? I don't fucking know man.

Veronika and Arei are here because I've lost control of my life.

Song #15 - desk rotation

Prime Suspects: fuck if i know dude Reaching: Nico, J, Whit, Charles, David, Eden, Arturo, Min, Veronika, Rose, Teruko

And here we have it, the song in the playlist without any lyrics at all! dev this song has 23k views on YT what is this incomprehensible ball knowledge you posses?

Anyways, the song is- I don't fucking know, it's a bunch of noise and it's sorta kinda upbeat? Not to say it's bad, I think it kinda bangs but my music taste is sorta trash so idk if I'm the best judge of that.

Look you saw the list. The song's vibe is so absurdly indescribable that it can basically fit anyone if you look at it a certain way. And what the fuck else am I supposed to say here? Min could have it because Student -> Desks -> desk rotation? Nico because it has no words and they have trouble communicating? We've completely lost the thread. It's probably going to have to come down to process of elimination. It is what it is, I guess.

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Final Verdict

With all of this, we can reach a conclusion I'm decently comfortable with. Sort of.

See, for a lot of these songs, even if I think there are multiple people that fit well, it's convenient to choose one person over the other for the playlist overall to work better. I think Yesman works great with both Ace and Min, but Min is a great choice for tip toes. Meanwhile Ace's other songs are all pretty heavily contested, so I'm giving Yesman to Ace, which in turn means I can also give Polygonal to Hu without too much issue. Similarly, I could see Good Grief for Whit, but Eden's been absent basically the entire post while Whit at least has asymptotic, so to Eden Good Grief goes.

The surprising issue is Drawing Pins. Nico and Levi haven't shown up a lot aside the quasi-instrumentals for Levi, which means the playlist can work well with either of them on the song. Ultimately, I'm going to give the song to Levi because I think it fits a bit better, but I'll also give an alternate solution with Nico on Drawing Pins to cover my bases.

With that stated, here's the final list!

Diamond is Unbreakable (Main Theme) - Xander. Confidence Rating: 2.0/10

Sing Along - Teruko Confidence Rating: 7.0/10

RUNAWAY - Charles Confidence Rating: 4.5/10

cartoons- Rose Confidence Rating: 9.5/10

asymptotic - Whit Confidence Rating: 5.0/10

アイアルの勘違い (A Mistaken Belief of Love) - Arturo Confidence Rating: 6.5/10

春嵐 (Shunran) - Arei Confidence Rating: 9.5/10

イヱスマン (Yesman) - Ace Confidence Rating: 5.0/10

アンデッドエネミー (Undead Enemy) - David Confidence Rating: 9.0/10

Drawing Pins - Levi Confidence Rating: 2.0/10 (low because of Nico, not because it doesn't fit)

ハイファイ進化論 (Hi-fi Evolution Theory) - Veronika Confidence Rating: 9.3/10

tip toes - Min Confidence Rating: 4.5/10

ポリゴナル (Polygonal) - Hu Confidence Rating: 3.0/10

Spitfire (05 Version) - J Confidence Rating: 1.0/10

desk rotation - Nico Confidence Rating: 0.0/10

Good Grief - Eden Confidence Rating: 4.0/10

Alternative: Nico on Drawing Pins

Drawing Pins - Nico Diamond is Unbreakable (Main Theme) - Levi Spitfire (05 Version) - Xander desk rotation - J Everything else is the same

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And there we have it! Clearly, I'm not particularly confident on most of this, but I think it's a pretty reasonable solution. I wonder if the dev will ever reveal which was which, or if we'll never get to know just how wrong I was.

Prisoner 01 - Shinku Kutsuki

Starting with our protagonist! And man, what a protagonist he is! He is such a piece of shit, just an absolute asshole. I love him! I like my characters fucked up and haunted by both the narrative and their actions, what can I say.

Shinku's main appeal is that he can't go a day without fucking something up. Either he's failing to do something because he's frozen with indecision and fear, or he's massively projecting his friends onto other friends to find comfort without properly confronting his grief, or he's doing self-interested and cowardly things like incinerating Dracul's pin and lying to Ismene about it, or he's finding novel and unique ways to destroy his life! And then he goes and refuses to understand Takiko to the point where I basically had to ignore everything he was thinking and saying at the end of the second trial so as to not go even more insane than the trial was already making me.

And, like, I get it. The situation's pretty bad, it makes sense all his worse traits would come out, since they mainly come from his tendency to do the easier thing as opposed to the best thing. And that's obviously going to backfire with the games theme of shallow comforts being insufficient to truly be happy and stuff.

He has his moments, of course, I don't wanna make it seem like it's all bad. Helping Molly, even if it came from basically pretending she was Dracul, was a good thing for him to do, especially once she managed to start working on her own flaws and Shinku tried to follow her steps. He has some nice moments in some of the FTEs I've watched, even if he also blunders around once every FTE. Dropping the Akari dare when Takiko had her conversation with Asuga in the showers was a neat gesture, if nothing else. He obviously helps in trials even when it hurts him, like accusing Dracul, which at least shows his self-preservation can override his aversion to facing grief.

... Okay the bar is kinda in hell if one of the only good things I can think of to say about him as a person is that he's good at trials. Like yeah no shit he's the player character he has to be good at them xD

Look I'm sure there's more example of Shinku being a decent person, I just don't want to comb through the entire series to find them. Besides, who likes Shinku for his good moments? If you're a Shinku fan, you're probably enthralled by his pathetic nature and tendency to screw shit up. It's almost morbidly fun to see how bad he can make things for himself, even if we're still hoping for a happy ending. It's me, I'm Shinku fans, I think he's competing with Lyra for third favorite character atm.

There's also the whole Akari situation, which is pretty unclear to me but I find very engaging. Maybe there's out of series content I'm missing, maybe not, but oh well. At the moment, the most I can say is that Shinku seemed like a pretty shitty brother, but in a very realistic way, which is cool. Obviously I have questions about what exactly happened to push Akari to that point, although we already have a couple hints (mainly with how their parents seemed to favor Shinku? And Shinku was just generally shitty and dismissive. I got that impression but I could be misremembering something). And I have even more questions about why she seems so important to the killing game as a whole. Although, "FF is really curious about the mysterious girl whose death is both probably the protagonist's fault and likely integral to the origins of the killing game" shouldn't be a surprise given how much I like Despair Time's Mai lmao. Not that Akari and Mai even seem that similar as characters, it's just funny their position in the narrative is kinda similar lol.

Although I do have to wonder if Akari is even Shinku's crime, given her suicide was one of Shinku's Truths in the second motive. But like, it has to be, right? It doesn't really make all the sense in the world for there to be all this buildup about Akari and how much Emilia is pissed about her specifically, only for then to be revealed that Shinku's actual crime is shoplifting a bag of chips or something.

Anyways, it is like, impossible to determine what the hell to vote the guy without getting to the crime reveal, not only because of the crime itself but because it's impossible to know what the situation's gonna look like to gauge which verdict would cause the least harm. Still, I imagine a Worthy won't be great for his mental state given it would give him the chance to deny any wrongdoing and avoid facing his guilt and regret and stuff, I'd fully expect him to sweep everything under the rug if that was his verdict. However, I have no idea what a Corrupt vote would do to him, and I have a massive Worthy bias so it's very likely I end up leaning that way anyways. Depends on stuff leading up to the vote, I guess.

I feel like I could talk for a bit longer about this guy and the other two but I'm gonna move on anyways lol.

Prisoner 05: Dracul Tremblay

Ah, sweet little guy who is very much a murderer! Dracul's like the opposite of Shinku, in the sense that he's very cool and nice even though he has issues, while Shinku is mostly issues with some nice moments in between.

But yeah. Maybe I'm about to say something crazy, but as of now Dracul to me mainly feels like "theme setup" man. His main thing is how he avoids thinking of reality by mostly focusing on escapism, to the point where he even murders someone without thinking too hard about it, and then Shinku and Molly have a huge arc about that in the following chapter. Then, the reason he does most things he does is for the sake of his sisters, and Shinku caused his sister to commit suicide. So, you know. He has a pretty defined role in the narrative and he fulfills it, so I like him!

Also, he's just funny. I liked his dynamic with Ismene and Shinku while it lasted, and well, it's always nice to occasionally have a positive and uplifting guy on screen!

Although I should probably address the murder. It's... a character point for sure, even if it mostly boils down to "wanted to help his family" which is kinda his motivation in general. I mostly think it's good narratively because it leads to some pretty good conflict between Shinku and Zeke. Not to mention the conflict it brings Ismene, who now had to confront the whole mentality about murder she'd been building the entire time. It's a pretty good showing for a first killer, all in all!

He was also not my favorite character when he became the CH1 killer, unlike literally more than half of all fangan CH1 killers I've seen. Which is only 9 total but it's weird that it happened in 5. DRANTE made it 50/50 and then it happened again in Marcescence T_T So, thanks for taking one for the team? One of these days it'll swing the other way, I hope.

Anyways, what the hell would the vote for Dracul even do? I'm curious about his crime, but like. He's dead. Is there any reason to even vote for him? He's Worthy in my heart, I guess, but I don't know what voting would so so :p

Prisoner 09: Fu Wang

He bothered Takiko so I hate him (this is a joke).

Anyways, I feel we're at a bit of an awkward spot to talk about Fu, at least as someone who's yet to see all the outside the game content. Like, last we saw of him we learnt he's the damn mastermind, which ostensibly should re-contextualize a whole lot of his actions. Assuming he isn't just bluffing about that, which is a possibility I'll get to in a second.

Except, not a whole lot has changed. Fu has always been an opportunistic asshole who does whatever he can to his benefit, even if it hurts others. We may not yet know the full story of why he's helping run this whole operation (I refuse to believe it's just cash), but it's not something he wouldn't do, you feel?

The question that follows from that is whether he was bluffing or not. It's not, like, impossible that Fu got the idea to play mastermind from Asuga and Mononeko and Emilia decided to go for it for the views. I acknowledge it as a possibility, because if anyone's pulling that it would be Fu, but I think it's looking unlikely. Both Mononeko and Emilia were quick to jump on the Fu train, Mononeko defending Fu from Zeke frame one and all, which is especially suspicious given Emilia's hatred of Ultimates. And then you have out of game shit like this:

Like what's the point of this interaction if he's not actually the mm you feel? Maybe I'm silly for not seeing the vision, but I'll assume Fu wasn't actually bluffing moving forward.

Which is what makes a lot of the stuff that does happen in the game feel... very weird. Like, yeah, I said him being the mastermind by itself isn't deviating from his usual behavior, but there's still a couple of interactions that have me scratching my head a little with that context.

Like, he seemed pretty genuine in his worry that something bad might have already happened to Tian when Lyra brought up that the first motive videos were probably pre-recorded (from my recollection I haven't gone to check so I might be wrong lmao), his talk with Lyra about how he hopes he gets Corrupt so as to not lose all faith in humanity, even the conversation I quoted above where he seems to have conflicting sentiments about Takiko, all obviously show his emotions towards the killing game and his actions are a bit more complicated than "this shit kinda profitable!" And God knows what's up with his attempted murder of Taka. Would he have tried to get away with it, even if that ended the game early? Would he have thrown the trial to keep it going, and fake his execution? If he tried to win but failed, would his execution be real or faked? Did the first death even stop the first motive, or is it like Lyra said and all the videos were prerecorded? Because if it's the latter, did something really happen to Tian? Is Fu getting strong armed into this through Tian, linking back to the Milgram experiment (real life one, not the web series) about compliance? Am I losing my mind? Possibly!

So, like I said, bit of a weird spot to talk about him from an analysis sense. From just a character sense, though, I enjoy him very much! He does his job well as a conflict bringer, what can I say. It's also always funny when he starts dropping some genuinely thought provoking advice so it looks like he wants to fall into the "asshole with a heart of gold" trope, only to then immediately remind you that all that glitters is not so. His clear self-loathing through the veneer of confidence and genuine non-repentance is always a fun combination. And hey, while he was alive, he made Takiko mad, which gave us Takiko content! So that's a plus in my books lmao.

Also, he seems like a great foil to Shinku, which is a very important thing for a major antagonist! His FTEs show a lot of those foils. Fu is opportunistic and always tries to get an advantage when he can without thinking too much about it, while Shinku is always very hesitant and second guesses everything. More importantly, they both do their best to live comfortably, even at the expense of others, which is a point of similarity that can be used to highlight the flaws and potential development of our main character. In his FTEs, Fu makes it clear that when he wants to spend a lot of time with someone, like when marrying them, he looks for people who challenge him, while Shinku always shies away from confrontation. Obviously you also have the aspect of projecting different people on others, Takiko specifically (Tian and Akari), as well as general accidental self-sabotage all the time, and probably a lot more stuff I'm missing. He's a great mastermind pick, basically.

... I'm gonna be real I don't think I paid all the attention I could have to Fu in my first playthrough, so I'll probably have more to say about him once I watch some reaction videos to experience the story again or something. Actually, that's something you can say about all of these three. But for now, I'll leave it at that!

Oh yeah verdict. Regardless of what his crime actually is, the killing game is kinda the worst thing anyone in the prison has done I'm pretty sure, so like, the Corrupt feels easy. Admittedly making the others take care of his food and stuff again would kinda suck, but somehow I doubt the wardens will stay to the side if the prisoners just refuse to help Fu, so probably nothing bad there. And that's assuming he'll even be restricted the same way the other Corrupts were, which is not really certain with him being the mastermind and all that. I somehow doubt the vote will be so simple (if it even happens; again, mastermind), but as of now, I don't know what kinda shit would need to be pulled for a Worthy to be even a possible consideration here. He's not trying to improve, he's not going to care about the verdict either way, and he's unlikely to get hurt by a Corrupt. Worthy would just confuse him, and also make everyone else in the prison mad lol.

-

Why is the acronym DRANTE anyways? Was DRAL taken or something? Or is it because the pre-reboot version was also DRANTE? lol

I'll preface this by saying that I only got into the game recently, aka by the time CH3 voting had already closed, so I'll always be speaking with some hindsight even if I try to account for it. As in, I'll try to always vote based only on info accessible to voters before the verdict, because I think that's the fairest way of doing it, but it's very difficult to do that.

On the other hand, I'm also working with less info than I'd like. I haven't gone over most FTEs or all those birthday posts I saw looking for the verdict percentages, and from Milgram experience that kinda info tends to be pretty important (and yeah sorry I'm gonna bring Milgram up a lot because it's the best frame of reference I have for how this works lmao). I may say really stupid shit based on the fact that I just haven't interacted with the material enough to reach proper conclusions. Basically:

WARNING: Potentially L takes ahead!

Plus, with all that in mind, it's really hard to judge how I would have voted with different information, especially when I have no idea what fandom discussion looked like at the time, so this is more a guesstimation lol.

Also, notably, I'm very Forgiven er, Worthy leaning. See: me fully believing in the full Forgiven sweep for Milgram's 3rd trial. That would've definitely affected my voting, especially after the first round of verdicts when the consequences of Corrupt votes became clear. Assuming they weren't clear before I'm actually not sure. It's something that's gonna come up a lot, so I figured I'd mention at the start.

Anyways!

Prisoner 07: Taka Takahiro

Crime: Workplace abuse of his staff, to the point of physical harm and human rights violations. This include direct verbal abuse. Many of his old workers actually helped get him on the prison. Official Verdict: 70.1% Corrupt Personal Vote: Corrupt

I find that when people vote with a critical lack of information, a big part of how they vote is influenced by the blanks they can fill in. I mean, yeah no duh, but what I mean is that sometimes the assumptions people make outweigh the actual text. When you're presented with a big shot TV personality abusing staff, your first assumption is that they did it only out of greed or lack of care, and you're not going to look for a more detailed explanation because that's enough to explain it. It's not like murder, which is such a drastic action that people tend to look for drastic justifications. It's just a shitty thing to do, that real people do for usually selfish reasons, so it feels unnecessary to come up with ways to justify it.

I am not immune to this, mind you. That's why I would have voted with the majority here. Taka is a funny and entertaining character, but he didn't do much in the prologue to avoid allegations of being a bad person, he's just humorous. Thus, the logic of the vote is simple. He did something really bad, we had no motive to suspect he did it for good reasons, and he hadn't done anything inside the prison to justify us reconsidering the vote.

Additionally, while he didn't express much remorse in his profile, he also didn't necessarily believe himself to be justified.

Taka's Profile: He went completely quiet when we asked about his crime, seemingly annoyed we were ruining his fun.

There's no big moral contradiction if he gets voted Corrupt, I think, so it's easier for him to accept he may have done something wrong. I'll elaborate on what I mean by that later, but for now we're chilling. Combined with his fear of being cancelled, it could be inferred that he would pay attention to the audience's opinion, making the vote more likely to be effective.

And this seems to have been the right decision*!

*Note: There are usually no straight up right and wrong decisions in these cases, only "less bad" options lol

I mean, taking away someone's autonomy and making them endure shocks is never a good thing, but at least Taka eventually grew as a person, even if he suffered a whole lot on the way there. If someone took something positive away from a Corrupt vote, it was certainly Taka. Then again, maybe he would've gotten there eventually just with Asuga being mad at him, but I fear a Worthy verdict would've only increased tension between them, and they may not have ever been able to make up before something bad happened.

Overall, reasonable verdict, I agree with the majority opinion here!

Prisoner 11: Mint Byrne

Crime: Consistently poisoned his father to keep him bed-bound, despite his father being the main income source for the family. Mint collected health insurance money from this. Official Verdict: 77.5% Worthy Personal Vote: Worthy

Remember how I said the way blanks are filled is very important? Yeah that. Mint is shown in the Prologue to be a very nice and generally inoffensive character, so when people hear he did something as drastic as poisoning his own father, the assumption is that he must have had good reasons to do so. This assumption outweighs anything we get told, and the Worthy verdict happens. Especially when Mint was stated to fear alcoholics in his character profile, which could suggest his father was abusive, and of course that makes the crime quite sympathetic.

I know that sounds like I believe a Worthy verdict is presumptuous and reckless, but as you saw, I actually agree with it. This is not necessarily because I would've been 100% sure that Mint was in the right here, mind you, but rather because I would've wholeheartedly believed there was a lot of context we were missing. And I don't want to hurt someone when there's that much context missing, not without a possibility of a revote. Of course, I don't think we knew what the consequences of a Corrupt would've been, but, uh. After Milgram, I think I would've erred on the side of caution with that.

Now, you can argue I'm a hypocrite there, as there was also missing context in the Taka case. But like I said, I'm not immune to the importance of blank spaces. With the statement that Taka wasn't just neglectful, but also directly insulting towards his staff, making it appear that he just didn't care about them at all, it certainly feels like there was less missing context than with Mint. At the very least, the missing context didn't feel as important. I hope that makes sense.

I believe this verdict was good! Mint stayed pretty chill for the rest of time he was alive, and while he grew to resent his mother, I don't believe that's necessarily a horrible development. At least, it wouldn't be worse than depriving him of human rights. Or, deprive him further, seeing the prison isn't exactly compliant with those in general. So, another W maybe?

Prisoner 08: Ismene Circe

Crime: Tricked her university friends into a plot to kill a professor none of them liked and hide the evidence. Ismene wanted to move on without thinking about it much, but her friends suffered. In particular, Kota, who could've become an Ultimate, ended up dropping out of university because of the trauma. Ismene still believes the professor deserved to die. Official Verdict: 61.4% Worthy Personal Vote: Very Hesitantly Corrupt

Ah, our favorite character with a variable number of 'e's in her name depending on who's pronouncing it! (I am relatively sure it's Is - mee - nee, but I certainly didn't read it that way for a while lol)

I'm choosing to distinguish between straight up Worthy/Corrupt and Hesitantly Worthy/Corrupt to make it clear from the jump that some votes would've been harder than others. Of course, the actual verdict doesn't care if you vote hesitantly or not, so you could argue it doesn't matter, but still.

During the Prologue, Ismene showed herself as a level-headed and generally reasonable individual. It stands to reason, then, that her friends would also be mostly level-headed and reasonable, Dracul excluded due to extenuating circumstances. If they all hated the professor, then surely the professor did something really bad, right? That's the assumption that I imagine carried this verdict.

You would think, then, that I would've voted her the same way I would've voted Mint. There's a lot of critical missing context, right? We don't know what the professor did. We don't know what other things Ismene tried to do to stop the professor before escalating to murder. Doesn't it make more sense to go for the safer Worthy vote, instead of risking real damage to her without the full story?

These are very valid arguments, and I actually did consider jotting Ismene down as Worthy. They're the reason I put her down as Very Hesitantly Corrupt, instead of just Corrupt. But there's two main differences between her crime and Mint's that make it harder for me to justify the Worthy vote.

First, Mint didn't kill his father. The poisoning was reversible, to the point where the moment Mint got taken away, his father got better. Ismene (presumably) can't bring her professor back from the dead, no matter what. And that was a conscious decision on her part, this shit was first degree. That means Ismene was fully convinced that the guy had to go and nothing could have ever made him better, and it's important not to just take her perspective for it. There are a lot of steps to take between inaction and straight up murder of the professor, after all. Now, I would give Ismene the benefit of the doubt and say that she and her friends probably tried everything they could to stop their professor's bad actions before the murder, but I also have to account for the possibility that there may have been better options on the table. At this point, she already goes from my default vote of Worthy to Hesitantly Worthy.

Second, Mint didn't involve innocents.

Listen, I'm a Danganronpa fan. I can come up with a million and one ways to justify a murder. Again, it's such a drastic action to take that when you tell me it was done by someone like Ismene, who in the Prologue seemed extremely level-headed and reasonable even if she later had her crashout moments, I'm gonna assume there was a drastic situation at hand. But when you ask me to come up with a reason that Ismene would involve her friends without telling them what was going on... it's not something I've ever had to justify before, you know? So it's harder to come up with reasonable explanations off the dome.

The professor was drunk, so it's unlikely they were needed to ensure his death in the murder plan. Hell, even with the one image we had of Kota, he didn't exactly strike me as someone who would be particularly useful in a plan to kill a guy, so that's further evidence that wasn't the reason she involved them. Maybe they could've helped with the clean-up, but... again, Danganronpa fan. I've seen people clean up crime scenes on their own pretty well, all things considered. And involving more people only increases the chance someone breaks and spills the beans. This means it's hard to justify the involvement of her friends as a logistical thing where it would've made the murder easier to get away with.

That would imply there were other reasons behind the involvement of her friends, but none of them make Ismene look good. The easiest assumption is that she wanted to manipulate her friends into staying together by sorta bonding over this, or something. Maybe this is hindsight creeping in even when I'm trying to avoid it, seeing as we now know the reasons she did it and they are not great, but I really don't see how this would've ever been a good idea.

Finally, looking at the remorse aspect... Per her profile:

She not only believes she did nothing wrong when it comes to her crime but firmly believes she actively did the right thing. When we mentioned Kota she seemed to falter on this stance.

So she thinks she's right, but has doubts, at least regarding the involvement of her friends. I'm bringing this up because I actually believe this is, like, close to the ideal mindset to vote someone Corrupt.

If someone already considers themselves in the wrong, there's no reason to vote them Corrupt, they already got the right idea. If someone fully believes themselves right, however, it's likely they're just gonna think the audience is stupid after getting voted Corrupt and they would ignore the verdict. It's certainly happened a few times in Milgram! So what you're really looking for (assuming the situation isn't immediately forgivable or unforgivable in your eyes) is someone who generally thinks they're right, but will still listen if you confront them with some of their faults. So, Ismene, who considers herself right about the murder, but has doubts about the involvement of her friends. It's not the most reliable method to pick a verdict here, but it helps to inform my decision a bit more.

As for what verdict would've been better... honestly no clue. I don't have the best read on Ismene's character, unfortunately. Again, I'm new to these guys. And while I think it's possible she'd be able to grow more from a Corrupt verdict because she'd be forced to confront the issue of her friends' involvement sooner, does that really justify taking away her free access to food, showers, etc.? I... don't really think so??? So maybe Worthy was the right call here, seeing as Ismene managed to grow as a character without the extra push. Then again, we still have her being a less extreme Kotoko Yuzuhira after the Worthy verdict, so it's definitely arguable.

Again, I was very divided on this. A good enough Tumblr post could've easily swayed me one direction or another. But for now at least, I think this is what I would've done.

Prisoner 02: Lyra Shatel

Crime: She's done a lot of questionable things to get drugs. From distributing drugs, ditching people when things got dangerous, all the way to accepting Ultimate status despite having been anti-Ultimate for a while. She's never really tried to change. Official Verdict: 50.2% Corrupt Personal Vote: Worthy

When possible, I like to vote in the way I feel has the best chance of a good outcome for the prisoners. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't, but it's typically what I aim for.

Of course, this wasn't exactly feasible in the Prologue, where the consequences of a Corrupt verdict were unknown (I think) and we had so little info on the characters that predicting how they'd react to either verdict would have been impossible. This is why my Prologue verdicts mainly came down to the crimes themselves.

However, now that we've reached CH1, seen the consequences of a Corrupt, and got to spend a bit more time with the characters, voting based on the expected outcome becomes a little more reliable. This is all to say there's probably going to be a shift in how I approach these votes, as the crime takes a backseat to the impact I expect the vote to have on the prisoner and their life.

And Lyra's definitely someone you have to vote on expected outcome, because her crime is so damn vague that we may as well have gotten no info on it at all. Like yeah some of this shit sounds pretty bad but I have even less context than with Ismene and Mint. Mononeko's not the most reliable narrator, so unless it gives me an exact description of what happened, I'm going to take its descriptions with a pile of salt. And there's nothing exact about the retelling of Lyra's crime(s).

Partly because of that vagueness, I knew from the moment I heard Lyra's crime that it would be a damn near 50/50 split. Because Lyra is like if there were good reasons to vote Yuno Kashiki Unforgiven beyond "giving her what she wants." Mind you, at the time, I didn't even know the votes were real. Don't ask me why I didn't think they were, but I legitimately thought the creator just made up a verdict. I just figured that Lyra was such an obvious near 50/50 that it made complete sense to give her that close a verdict, even if you were making up the numbers. It surprises me even less that actual voting lead to a damn 50.2% vote, which is closer than any Milgram vote so far btw.

Lyra's crime, vague as its description ended up being, is not the most horrible, but it's not trivially forgivable either. She's a fun and entertaining character, but not in the way Mint or Asuga are, where they're enjoyable in part because of how positive of a presence they are. Lyra's entertaining because she's a bit of a Mean Girl, which wins her points with the people voting their favorites Worthy no matter what, but isn't winning her favors for those voting based on how "nice" a character is. She does generally questionable things like enabling Zeke, but she also has her moments of kindness. She directly said she wanted a Corrupt vote, and some people clearly listened to her, but there's also those who believe in voting as a way to challenge the prisoners' preconceptions, who I imagine voted her Worthy instead.

But despite me knowing how close the vote would be, I always knew damn well I would have voted her Worthy. And this isn't because this is a true 50/50 and I'm Worthy leaning, but because I could see no reason to believe a Corrupt verdict would lead to a better outcome than a Worthy one. I could obviously be wrong about that, naturally, but still.

I mean. Bro look at this conversation.

Lyra [CH1]: ...Truth is, I'm not a good person. Fu: Ditto. Lyra: That isn't like, self-loathing anything, it's just stating facts. I'm fundamentally a bad person. I've accepted that about myself, it's just part of who I am. [...] It's not going to magically make me a good person if I throw a bitchfit about throwing someone I don't really know anymore under the bus and honestly? I'm comfortable being who I am, it would seem unfair if I was a good person at this stage-

Lyra doesn't make an attempt to change because she already considers herself irredeemable. If you're into some of the fangans I'm into (this is mainly a Despair Time blog), this is a mindset you should be quite familiar with, and one which you should know is bad to be in. Voting Lyra Corrupt would only validate her beliefs, give her an excuse to continue being horrible without even trying to be better. Voting her Worthy wouldn't magically fix everything, but it would at least help in getting her out of that mindset. Hopefully.

Now, you might say that getting Corrupt is what Lyra wanted. This is true. It is also true that Lyra is an extremely self-destructive character. Generally, always giving a self-destructive person what they want is a good way to ensure they continue self-destructing, at least in my opinion.

Of course, it could've backfired. Lyra might have resented the audience for ignoring her feelings and voting her Worthy. However, I'm gonna be real, I'm more okay with Lyra hating me than with her hating herself. Only one of these two things actually have a tangible effect on someone's life, ignoring for a moment that Lyra is fictional lol. So, not a particularly compelling argument.

The bigger concern is that Lyra probably wouldn't listen to a Worthy verdict if it was too overwhelming. Like, she'd think we voted her that way because of superficial things like looking hot or something. But that's not something we can easily draw her away from. The decision, in my opinion, is between a verdict she might not care about initially but that could eventually challenge her harmful self-perception, or a verdict that validates her worldviews and enables her self-destruction by actively making her life much harder. I prefer the former.

Looking at canon, I think the best option was funnily enough just "near 50/50" independent of verdict. I am fully of the opinion that a true 50/50 is pretty much statistically impossible (if an odd number of people vote the possibility is already out, that's 50% of cases already gone before getting into how difficult coordinating an even number of people to vote a certain way is), but because these guys get to know the percentage, you can differentiate between a decisive vote in either direction and a close vote. Lyra needed a close vote to see that people were taking her seriously, but still believed she was redeemable. And she got that. Mind you, I think it'd have been better if she was 50.2% Worthy to avoid the lack of freedom issues, but from a character development standpoint, this outcome was pretty good!

Prisoner 04: Takiko Uchiyama

Crime: She subtly manipulated her fanbase to harass people she didn't like, without caring what they did as a result. This led to several people being chased off the internet, and even one or two suicides. Takiko is remorseless, and believes the ones who died deserved it. Official Verdict: 51.0% Corrupt Personal Vote: Worthy

Ooooh boy.

I need to preface this by saying that Takiko is far and away my favorite character. Like, it's not close. We're talking around the level of some of my other all time favorites here, like DRDT's Min or Milgram's Amane. Because of that, arguing about her verdict rationally is incredibly difficult for me. Even when trying to account for every bias in the book, I'm not going to be perfectly logical. I'm well aware some of this can even come off a hypocritical and contradictory to my Corrupt votes, because if I'm honest with myself I'm kinda leading with a Worthy vote and then working backwards to justify it, instead of building an opinion from the ground up. Basically:

WARNING: Potentially extremely L takes ahead.

I tried to be logical, I cannot guarantee I succeeded.

To clarify, I respect the Corrupt vote. I believe the vote was difficult, and ultimately I'm not going to get too pressed over some pixels on the screen. I can easily admit that there's valid perspectives I struggle to see as a result of my bias, even beyond all the people who might've voted without thinking too hard about it.

So, to approach this, let's start by talking about the crime itself. Just like with Ismene and Mint, we're missing context. We don't really know what reasons Takiko had for doing what she did, and while Mononeko never accuses her victims of anything bad, Takiko's lifestyle makes it pretty likely that she had good reasons sometimes. The big thing that doesn't help Takiko here is that the blanks can be filled in with pretty unflattering things. We Dangan fans are used to seeing somewhat justified murders, but a lot of us have also seen people get harassed online for very stupid shit, so it feels difficult to assume Takiko always had a good reason. Also, I imagine a lot of us are Milgram fans as well, and there's a character there who definitely didn't have a good reason for starting a harassment campaign, so.

However, one other aspect to consider about the crime itself is repeatability. The point of a Corrupt vote is to change behavior, meaning if the behavior has to change anyways, the vote is redundant.

Even if Taka's crime became public, he could always find people desperate enough to work for him regardless and abuse them again if he didn't learn his lesson. And Ismene could always find people who didn't know about the broadcast to befriend and manipulate, again if she didn't grow past that. But Takiko needs a large and dedicated fanbase to harass people. If her crime became public, she at least would need to switch tactics, as her "cute and innocent" persona would sorta fall apart entirely. Would it be impossible? No, because she could probably keep a few of the more dedicated fans and sometimes that's enough to be a problem, but it would probably be harder, which is a consideration.

But this is sorta all about the crime itself. I said I vote on outcome mostly, so what outcome could we have expected?

Let's start with what is possibly one of the best Takiko!Worthy arguments in my opinion: prison behavior. All throughout CH1, Takiko showed herself as one of the most positive influences to prison morale. She was always supportive and helpful, not to mention a good friend to the other big morale booster, Asuga. You could say it was all an act to get Worthy and she'd get worse after getting that verdict, but Takiko was like that even before Mononeko showed up, so the idea doesn't hold up. I do believe Takiko should be held accountable eventually, but is the prison a good time to do it? She's being an extremely good person. Giving her a Corrupt verdict would make it much harder for her to maintain that attitude, and there were already clear signs she would end up crashing out eventually. And if Takiko crashes out because of the Corrupt, you're losing out on someone that's great at conflict de-escalation and generally very helpful to others' mental health, making it likelier for other bad things to happen.

But I've been dancing around the big question. Would Takiko grow as a person from a Corrupt verdict? Well, let's look at what she thought of her crime in her profile:

Despite her positive attitude she seemingly has no remorse for her crime, almost seeming proud of it when interrogated. She doesn't believe she's done anything wrong.

At first, you might look at this and say that she would. Because it would help her realize what she's done is wrong, right?

But remember what I said before. In my opinion, for a Corrupt to work, the prisoner already has to feel some kind of remorse. Otherwise, we run the risk of them ignoring the verdict entirely. You need to keep in mind that the nebulous audience is not a very respected presence amongst the prisoners. Asuga already told Takiko not to worry so much about what they think. Because of that, if the audience does something that greatly contradicts someone's worldview, they're likely to stick to their worldview and just assume the audience is stupid or uninformed or both.

The thing to determine is whether Takiko is oblivious to the harm she caused, or if she knows others would see it as bad. If she's never considered she might be wrong, then when she's confronted with that fact, she might change her mind, and a Corrupt is justified. But if she already knows other people would judge her for her crime, and she still feels no remorse, then a Corrupt is redundant.

I know this reasoning seems very counterintuitive, but I genuinely believe in it. In fact, canon already made it apparent why it's logical. Takiko did know the audience could end up voting her Corrupt, but she still believed herself justified. So when she was voted Corrupt, nothing changed. Her worldview was, in her eyes, proven right, and the only thing the Corrupt did was make her mental health deteriorate to the point she killed someone.

And this isn't just hindsight talking. I already knew voting someone Corrupt in this situation is a bad idea. Because Takiko was effectively Trial 1 Amane.

Now, I imagine a lot of people who are into DRANTE are also into Milgram, but I'll explain the situation for anyone who might not be aware.

Milgram spoilers ahead

CW for this section: Cult indoctrination

Amane, age 12 as of entering Milgram, was raised in a cult. During T1, it was believed she had been manipulated into killing a fellow cult member under orders of some higher ups or something. Regardless of how wrong this ended up being, it was the prevalent belief at the time, because her story hadn't been made very clear.

CW over

Amane fully believed herself innocent, but she also understood that this was because of her beliefs. Beliefs that she knew were not universal.

Amane ended up being 51.66% Unforgiven, and from what I've seen, this is widely regarded as one of the biggest voting blunders in Milgram history. An understandable one, mind you, because voters had no idea what the votes did back in T1, but a blunder nonetheless. Instead of making Amane realize what she did wrong, it reinforced the "us vs them" mentality she was raised under, making her disregard the audience's opinion entirely in favor of doubling down on her pre-existing beliefs. This caused her mental health to quickly deteriorate until the point where she ended up killing a fellow prisoner.

This might sound familiar.

Takiko already knew plenty of people would consider her Corrupt, and yet she still felt she did nothing wrong, just like Amane. And when she was voted Corrupt, it only reinforced her pre-existing beliefs that others would always judge her harshly, just like Amane. The added stress of the vote caused her to quickly deteriorate to the point of killing a fellow prisoner, just like Amane.

Milgram spoilers over

The point is that voting to "make them realize they did something wrong" is a terrible idea if the prisoner is already aware that what they did might be judged harshly by others.

So we return to the question I posed earlier: did Takiko know others would think her Corrupt, or did she actually not realize she'd done anything wrong? And... look, one of these options just makes a lot more sense.

For starters, Takiko has always been characterized as smart and very aware of her standing, even in CH1. To assume that someone characterized as this aware of the horrors of humanity just wouldn't know that sending people to harass others would be seen as bad... it feels strange.

But there's more to it than vibes. The crime announcement had Mononeko explicitly stating that Takiko acted "unaware" of what she was doing. This is notable because, at minimum, it means that Takiko knew her actions didn't fit her innocent and endlessly kind little sister persona. And if she realized that much, it's not crazy to assume that she knew it'd be considered a straight up bad thing.

Finally, there's the scene where Takiko talks to audience directly. Why would she be doing that? The justification she gives in the scene is that she just feels happy when she makes other people happy, which is possible, but it's not the only option. The other reason, which she could be hiding, is that she suspected the audience would vote her Corrupt, and she wanted to sway them into a Worthy. And if that's the case, again, you fall into the same issue. She knows others would judge her harshly, but still thinks she's justified, so the Corrupt is redundant.

In short, to think that Takiko never even considered she might have done something bad, you need to assume that one of the most self-aware members of the prison is completely unaware of what she will look like when her crime is revealed, despite the fact that she knew she had to hide her intentions when doing it to keep up her persona, on top of assuming that she's 100% genuine in her desire to make the audience happy just because she feels nice when she helps people. It's... a lot. I think, therefore, that it wasn't crazy to infer that Takiko was in a Trial 1 Amane situation, which is the best shorthand I have for "make her Worthy or she's gonna crash the hell out."

And the crashout from a Corrupt should have been noticeable from a mile away. Takiko was already clearly moving towards a breakdown, and she specifically fears powerlessness. She was already pretty powerless in the prison, and a Corrupt would make her more powerless. And in a killing game, there's a very clear way that someone can regain power over their situation.

To be clear, I do think Takiko should be held accountable, because what she did is bad, but like. There's a time and a place, you know? It becomes a matter of risk assessment at some point. A Worthy runs the risk of making Takiko even prouder of her crime than she already is, which doesn't really change the status quo within the prison, and Takiko's CH1 status quo is all things considered very good for the cast. A Corrupt not only directly hurts her (especially seeing that I'm pretty sure there were already a few hints of her eating disorder), it also runs the risk of her doing something drastic to regain power of her situation.

With all of that considered, combined with my natural Worthy bias and favorite character privilege bias, I can't really see myself voting anything but Worthy.

And... do I have to clarify that I think a Worthy verdict would've been better? I can think of few worse outcomes to a Takiko vote than having her mental state deteriorate to the point she killed someone, first degree. I don't even know if a Worthy would've stopped that necessarily, not with how many other crashout worthy moments Takiko experienced in CH2, but I really don't think the Corrupt helped you feel? Again, the vote was difficult, so I don't hold it against anyone, but still.

Did this make any sense? I think this part is probably the most illogical and hindsight-y of the entire post, but it's really hard to account for favorite character bias on top of trying to avoid hindsight on the character whose CH2 FTEs I fully completed in my playthrough (I'm normal about her shut up). I'm so sorry ToT

Prisoner 12: Molly 'Maiko' Yuzuki

Crime: After being scouted as an Ultimate, she did everything in her power to get her friend Yui to be the Ultimate Idol. This included sabotaging competition, going as far as hospitalizing a 16 year old. Yui eventually became the Ultimate Idol, but not the way she wanted, and cut Molly off. Despite that, Molly continued to cyberstalk Yui and pretend to be her friend, without realizing that her desperation is what drove them apart from the beginning. Official Verdict: 78.5% Corrupt Personal Vote: Very Hesitantly Corrupt

Yeah so remember my philosophy on the ideal Corrupt vote? Molly clearly had some doubts about where she stood with Yui, but had yet to fully accept she'd done anything wrong. Corrupt pushes her in the right direction, while Worthy would've validated a harmful perspective that she was on the verge of overcoming. And to an extent, it kinda worked, right? She ended up moving past Yui and started a growth arc, at least before she got killed.

Admittedly, the suicide attempt was really regrettable, and it shows Worthy definitely had an argument based on her fragile mental state. Like Lyra said, this prison isn't exactly the best place for development, so it could be argued that protecting Molly would've been worth it over trying to get her to improve. This is why I would've been "very hesitant." Taking away someone's independence is really bad, especially without the ability of a re-vote to help her after her hypothetical development.

So why would I have gone for Corrupt anyways? Well... uh. This is gonna sound bad, but here goes. See, every reason I'd have for voting Molly Worthy is a reason to vote anyone else Worthy. A Corrupt vote's consequences are bad, and everyone's mental states are in a delicate position. And as stupid as it's gonna sound, from the perspective that this is a game with a cool mechanic, I kinda want to actually engage with the system. If I voted Molly Worthy, I'd have to vote everyone else Worthy, because those reasons apply to everyone. I'm already going for the inno sweep on Milgram, I wouldn't want to go inno sweep here too.

I recognize that this is not a rational reason to vote one way or another, mind you. Like, this is fully me throwing away all pretense of fairness just because I want to make an actually meaningful decision at some point, instead of just defaulting to Worthy the entire time. I'm- I'm really sorry Molly fans, but I can't really control how I feel about this. It's probably pretty obvious that I never cared too much about this character if I'm this uninterested in accounting for bias, I'm deeply sorry about that.

Like come on, I wrote like 15000 paragraphs on my girl Takiko, tried to look at the arguments for voting one way or the other from every perspective I could think of, and I've barely done any actual thinking in this section. I'm not even accounting for the real issue that I don't care too much about this character so I'm voting on instinct more than logic. Surely there's some other interesting point of discussion to argue my verdict I can bring up before-

Prisoner 03: Ezekiel Elias

Crime: Bullied others getting into stunt acting to attempt extremely dangerous stunts, to the point where many got injured or died. Zeke doesn't even consider it a crime. Official Verdict: 56.1% Worthy Personal Vote: Hesitantly Worthy

The issue with Zeke is that this feels more like a problem with the circles he runs in than a "him" problem you feel? Like, yeah, Mononeko can paint it as Zeke personally going up to all Ultimate hopefuls and daring them to try stunts beyond their league, but that's sorta ultimately motivated by the culture around him of needing to be the "manliest man around" or whatever. Because of that, I suspect if we tried to vote him Corrupt, all he'd think is that the audience "doesn't get it." Similar to Takiko, I guess.

Again, it comes down to my belief that a Corrupt verdict is only really useful if the person in question already suspects what they're doing is wrong, but can't get themselves to admit it. Zeke is hard-headed. Maybe I'm getting the wrong vibe here, but to the best of my understanding, he's unlikely to do anything other than scoff and tell us to fuck off if he gets a Corrupt. Especially because I doubt he holds the audience in any sort of high regard. Again, this is kind of a vibe check because I haven't dived too deep into these characters yet, but it's the impression I get. I know he's more insecure than he lets on, but I don't know if this is where he's insecure, you feel? Even in his profile, he doesn't seem to care too much for calling his actions a "crime."

And once you see that a Corrupt isn't going to "make him realize what he did is wrong" (that damn phrase again), then at that point you're just torturing the guy for no reason. Add in that Lyra's kinda dependent on him, and it seems pretty clear that Worthy is a good move for damage reduction.

Then again, you could argue that forcing Lyra and Zeke out of their codependent comfort zone would be a good move, but I don't know if that's a safe bet. Increasing the tension between them and Ismene by having Zeke be Corrupt is already dangerous, but it gets worse when you realize that the others might not help with the "food and other necessities" issue either. Alora's verdict was up in the air, Shinku dislikes Zeke, Fu had his heel turn... taking it all into account, Lyra and Zeke run the risk of becoming dependent on Asuga (assuming she even got Worthy, which apparently was not as certain as I thought writing this). At that point you're just trading one relation of dependence for another, and potentially driving Asuga to burnout. My point is that the situation would be kinda cooked if Zeke got Corrupt, at least by my best estimation.

To be clear, this is not ideal. No votes at this stage can be. The codependence issue with Lyra, the fact that Zeke's crime is pretty bad, all this and more is why the vote is Hesitantly Worthy, not just Worthy. But my Worthy lean shows again. There are reasons a Corrupt isn't ideal, which means I default to the option that does the least damage, and it's the one that doesn't involved controlled shocks.

I obviously can't speak on which verdict would've been better without CH3, so... we'll have to see, I guess!

Prisoner 06: Alora Alenius

Crime: Under orders from a young age, she performed unethical human experimentation on terminally ill patients while pretending to treat them. Additionally, Alora did her best to keep a patient named Lillith alive despite her desires. When she died after months of unnecessary suffering, Alora created an AI chatbot to always listen to her voice. Official Verdict: 50.6% Corrupt Personal Vote: what the fuck (Hesitantly Worthy)

Okay so like how do you approach this. It's, like, no contest the worst thing we've heard so far. It's bad enough that for a moment I wondered if I should just ignore my usual focus on outcomes and just vote Corrupt for the crime.

But, no, that's a knee-jerk reaction, let's think about it a bit more. For one, Alora's the medic, so she gets the Shidou Kirisaki leniency of "if we make her Corrupt people might die." No one's in critical critical condition for now, assuming Asuga's injury isn't worse than I'm remembering, but that doesn't mean they won't be! In similar fashion, Alora is just one of the most reasonable people we have under normal circumstances. Forgoing her help based on her being a massive crashout when things get bad (Lillith and Taka) isn't exactly going to help most of the time. If anything, attacking her at this point would likely make her more prone to rash actions, and when Alora takes rash action, shit gets bad. Mind you, I doubt she's going to be in the best of mental states no matter what, but there's a difference between "suffering from grief" and "suffering from grief and Corrupt."

However, Alora's main character flaw is that she believes her opinion to have more worth than others, even if she doesn't say it outright. She wanted Lillith alive above Lillith's wishes, she wanted Taka's suffering to stop without asking him. Reaffirming her with a Worthy verdict may make this a bigger problem.

Except. You'd need to assume that Alora would just. Forget the entire middle part of the 2nd trial where people called her out on that. Would a Worthy verdict override that in her mind? Or would she continue to grow despite the verdict? I honestly don't know if I have a clear enough read on her to tell, but I lean on her growing regardless.

Then you throw in that most of her crime can be blamed on her horrible upbringing pushing her to do all those horrible stuff and desensitizing her once she met Lillith, yet she still ends up clearly thinking that she fucked up with Lillith (assuming her actions with Taka are indication she changed her mind from back then), and it seems like she has enough regrets for a Corrupt to potentially be redundant.

And now, does all of this clear her? Well, maybe not, but it does mean that she's not an ideal Corrupt vote. And if I already struggled to vote Molly Corrupt despite being "ideal," do you think I'm going to be able to condemn Alora?

Indeed, with the complexity of the case laid out, we go back to the usual arguments. Alora's mental state is in a highly precarious position, and a Corrupt vote has horrible implications on her human rights. With all that in mind, my Worthy bias basically carries her into the vote. It's still hesitant because I'm not sure I actually understand her character properly? And I feel like there's a lot of aspects I'm not considering??? But from what I've gathered, it's enough for me to avoid Corrupt, if nothing else.

Prisoner 10: Asuga Saintil

Crime: She embezzled funds and performed charity fraud to fund her circus. She also did it in a way to implicate her entire circus with her, so that if she got caught, all of them would be convicted together. Official Verdict: 71.3% Worthy Personal Vote: Worthy

You know, I was going to say that at least we can end off on an easy Worthy vote, but apparently shit's more complicated than I thought? I decided to look around a little for these last two prisoners, you know, for funsies, and apparently I'm missing fucking mountains of context that explain why Asuga isn't closer to 80% Worthy, like I sorta expected her to be. Mainly, some people believe that she's done much worse than this, and the only reason her crime is seemingly not as bad as other people's is that the Anti Ultimate Movement and/or Emilia are biased towards her.

Still, uh. I'm gonna be so real, I don't know if the group would recover after a Corrupt Asuga. Ismene isn't going to regain the group's trust easily even if she stops causing problems, Shinku's losing his mind, Fu's the mastermind, Lyra and Zeke are themselves, Alora has been discredited... like I'm gonna be real if we vote the last generally positive presence Corrupt it might actually be over. Group morale is an important consideration when their escape planner has just revealed she's actually shit outta ideas to get out.

Plus, even if for some reason or another you think whatever Asuga's got going on is worth taking away her independence, she actually seems to have a similar problem to Takiko. She's very confident she loves her circus, she doesn't care about the rich people she steals from- she doesn't really think she's doing anything that wrong. So again, the argument for the Corrupt vote is to "make her realize she did something wrong". And I'm gonna be real, after Takiko and Milgram, I'm a little traumatized on that reasoning! So, no! I would argue more here, but that reasoning is so inherently worrying to me, especially when applied to a character that has some pretty valid reasons to crash out (Taka and Takiko just died), that I don't think anything would convince me of a Corrupt vote.

Let the outside world handle Asuga when all her exploits are made public, the prison might genuinely fall apart without her. Even if that's not enough to get a Worthy verdict on its own, it's still certainly enough to put her in a position where the Usual Arguments carry her the rest of the way. Precarious mental state after Taka and Takiko's deaths, a Corrupt vote is sort of a human rights violation, we've heard the story. Worthy bias showing through again.

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I'm gonna be real I don't know if I cooked an acceptable meal, or if I've never cooked less. Writing for a new fandom is hard because I'm not too confident on character reads and I feel generally uninformed since I haven't seen everything there is to see here. But oh well, I tried. Leave your votes in the notes, should FF be Corrupt or are they Worthy of Redemption for these takes???

Here's a full map of all the red stars I spotted. Mind you, I may have missed some, because some of these are genuinely like a damn pixel big. The ones surrounded by dotted circles are the hardest to see, though that's obviously subjective, so you may want to just treat them all the same. I also pointed out two blue stars, but idk what they're about.

Idk if Tumblr's gonna kill some of the smaller stars, please double check with the actual CG if you want to verify. Here's the "star map" that results from this.

I tried checking over a couple constellations to see if they matched, but couldn't find anything particularly notable. Though admittedly, I didn't try for very long, and I've always been kinda ass at identifying them. I'm posting this mainly to see if any of you can come up with better ideas. A la my Teruko's drawing post.

That said, I... suspect this might not mean anything, and it's just some weird artifacting thing or whatever. It's kind of an insane thing to expect anyone to realize, especially if the pattern is meant to include the harder to see dots.

To be fair, though, the fact there's none in a big chunk of the window, as well as none I could find on the right window, could be an argument against that, as it can may indicate these ones were placed intentionally. Another reason I'm posting this is to see if anyone with more knowledge of how online images work can tell me if these are just, like, a thing that can happen sometimes because of some weird ass compression thing. Notably, one star (bottom left) seems to be over a tree in the foreground, which could indicate they're not intentional.

...Actually never mind it might just be visible thanks to the gaps in the leaves. It just looked weird to me lol.

The Final Moments

Starting at the end is always fun!

???: Will you forget what you've done, I wonder?¹⁹ ???: Of course. ???: I was satisfied so I'll disappear!

Footnote 19: A dialogue between two individuals that serves as a discussion of moral and philosophical issues.

So, in my original analysis of all this, I came to the conclusion that this is potentially Teruko asking David if he'll forget what he's done, referring to either his conversation with Arei (not applicable anymore, given he didn't really do much to her) or just him trying to get everyone killed in the trial. "Forgetting" in this context would mean moving past without caring about it, probably, so Teruko's asking if David is just going to act like this whole thing never happened. David is replying that he is, because he's pretending none of this whole thing matters to him.

Alongside this conversation, David is seen first in his "cheery" persona, then his "evil" persona, then disappearing. One way to interpret this is that this is some representation of his arc, appearing happy and supportive at first, then crashing out, then dying at some point.

However, the conclusion I came to was that the thing "disappearing" probably wouldn't be David himself (because holy spoiler for CH3 otherwise), but potentially his "evil" persona. A big point in my analysis was that David was pretending to be much worse than he actually is during that trial, what with pretending not to care about Arei at all among other things. After the trial, once annoying people to vote for him stopped being useful, he might retire this more evil persona, and start acting closer to his real feelings. Which would still be meaner and more cynical than his pre-crashout self, but likely not as outwardly malicious and heartless.

And, well. We do have a funny CH3 sneak peak regarding this.

To be fair, he is absolutely playing it up in this clip, but it does seem like he might put the bed hair away? So yeah, there's that. Basically David's gonna chill out a little, maybe. Again, I don't have much hope that he'll be nice or even non-antagonistic, but there's a difference between "chronic shittalker and shit-stirrer that is mean the whole time" and "I killed Arei and never gave a single flying fuck about her."

Again, this is a big maybe. David was still very antagonistic after he got absolved of guilt, so while potentially we're not gonna get another "weather spell" line, we're definitely still gonna see things like the whole "I need Teruko to distrust others" bs. So the idea that he'll "disappear" in another way seems a bit stronger now. It actually could be as simple as him wishing to get killed alongside everyone by losing a class trial, for example.

In any case, yeah, these final moments are definitely pretty haunting, I wouldn't be 100% surprised if the guy does die in CH3 lmao.

Xander & David

"Oh my god, these two" is definitely right lmao. Their dynamic does, in fact, go crazy.

I don't think they knew each other before Hope's Peak, given how their first meeting in the killing game went-

David [Prologue-2]: Sir, is everything alright? You gave me quite a scare- Xander: I know you! Mr. David Chiem, right? David: Yes, that's me, although I don't believe we've met before. Xander: No, we haven't, but I'm a massive fan of your speeches!

-but you're right that they knew of each other before Hope's Peak and the killing game. Xander made his adoration of David no secret (see the quote above), and David has very heavily implied he has pre-killing game knowledge about Xander that the others don't.

David [2-12]: After all, it's still unbelievable to me... ...That I'm the only person here who remembered him. Even if you all lost a year of memories for this killing game, there's no reason you shouldn't have recognized who he was...

Xander was a public figure with some kind of political impact, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that David just knew some of his work. That's probably part of the reason he became so important to David; the guy started the killing game already admiring Xander to some extent.

And like you said, the whole Fox from the Little Prince thing is a great description of their relationship.

To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...

David and Xander are sort of celebrities and thus one wouldn't usually consider them "men like a hundred thousand other men," but the beauty in their friendship is that they see each other as normal people that are made special by their connection to one another, just like the fox and the prince. And just like the rose and the prince as well:

Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes... It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important

Admittedly the quote in the video shows up with Charles' numeral and doesn't mention the rose but the point stands lol.

Diana & The Cast List

It's probably a good idea to explain the cast list before getting into the Diana Debacle. In case anyone needs a reminder, the cast list refers to this part of the MV.

The text to the side reads: "(i.e. these 7 are the only characters who make an appearance)." The general consensus on this is that it refers exclusively to the MV, and the characters are separated into main and supporting cast only by their importance to LGI. David is obviously important, and Xander gets a lot of focus too, so they're main cast. The others have briefer showings; Teruko and Mai appear only in portraits, Arei and Hu are some of the hands clapping in the "applause" scene, and "Ms. Naegi"... we'll discuss it a bit more in a moment, but she's at least probably the hand from the "translation needed" part.

In case the "applause hands" aren't clear (it did take a while for people to notice lmao), note that the top one's left hand has the same plectra ("claws" to play the guzheng) that Hu wears, while the bottom one (to the side in the MV) has Arei's infamous bowling glove on its left.

In any case, that's the deal with the cast list imo. But it does lead to a big question about a certain someone. If those 7 are the only ones to appear, then who is this?

When you say that there's a theory that Diana is Ms. Naegi, what I assume you mean is that there's a theory this person is Ms. Naegi. After all, Diana's last name is presumably Chiem, thus they're not literally the same person. However, this character from LGI is commonly believed to be Diana, although there's a possibility this is Ms. Naegi.

And yeah, Ms. Naegi actually has a very strong argument here. For one, she's in the cast list when Diana isn't. Actually, if we take the cast list at face value, this has to be Ms. Naegi. It also helps that Mystery Girl is shown in black and white just like Xander later in the video, and Xander and Ms. Naegi are both the characters shown in the "translation needed" scene.

You can also argue that her attire points to Ms Naegi. Mystery Girl is dressed very formally, and while it makes sense for David to think of the (presumed) HP principal in that outfit, it'd make more sense to see his sister in more... homely attire, no?

The context also helps Ms Naegi. Right before Mystery Girl shows up, we see this:

The "so called ideal country" could very well be Hope's Peak, a place that is meant to be the pinnacle of humanity's hope but is actually kinda shady and stuff (see: Levi's backstory). Thus, it seems like it makes a lot of sense to show Ms Naegi here.

However, this isn't inherently damning for the Diana idea. I'll explain the cast list issue in a bit, and focus on the other things for know.

See, we know very little about Diana, so it isn't hard to come up with explanations for why she'd be shown the way she is. To explain the formal attire, perhaps she was simply a hard worker whose work ethic inspired David, meaning David remembers her for her professionalism or something. And she could have tried to help David in some way when they were growing up, leading him to a "so called ideal country." Maybe she's the one who got him into inspirational speaking, hoping that he could move past his "no one can change" mentality by helping others grow and improve. The promise of a world capable of change is the "ideal country", the Inspirational Speaking is "the track" to it, and Diana is the reason David took that path. None of this can be proven, of course, but it can't be disproven, either.

And there are reasons people think this might be Diana. In particular, the similarities between Mystery Girl and David in the video come to mind.

Same head tilt, similar face and eye shape, and something I hadn't put together before going for the screenshot, David is explicitly shown pixelated immediately after Mystery Girl's appearance, who herself is drawn in a pixel art style. And yes, the pixellation starts at the start of the whole "if we escaped from the tunnel" pre-chorus, but the fact it extends past Mystery Girl might be notable. There's definitely some kind of connection the video tries to draw between David and Mystery Girl, and that connection could very well be that they're siblings.

Plus, there's this.

In CH2 Ep13, Arei is shown holding David's hand the same way Mystery Girl did in LGI. She tilts her head the other way, but that's a pretty minor difference. The important thing is that there's some connection between Arei and Mystery Girl. And Arei is a peer telling David to improve as a person, which fits with a sister trying to help her brother improve, but seems harder to connect to a headmaster offering David a Hope's Peak position.

The connection resonates even further because of Arei's backstory. Note how her motive secret places a certain emphasis on blackmail and rumors of her sisters:

Blackmail, rumors, lying, stealing, slander. You did everything you could to ruin your sisters' lives.

And in her conversation with David, she reveals she has blackmail on David (she knows his motive secret), but chooses not to use it. It's arguable that this situation is meant to show her growth, her changing from someone willing to do anything to get her way to someone who is just trying to be less shitty. And in that case, David is literally taking the place of Arei's sisters. If the sibling connection goes both ways, then Arei might be filling in for Diana, and thus, her connection to Mystery Girl here implies Diana is Mystery Girl.

And speaking of connections to other members of the cast, possibly the most damning connection is the fact Mystery Girl's eyes look a lot like Xander's.

Notice the gradient from orange to black starting from the bottom. And while this connection once again makes sense for a sister David looked up to, it brings problems for Ms Naegi. That is, because Ms Naegi is shown as directly opposed to Xander in the "translation needed" scene. It's strange that the eye thing would suggest similarities between Mystery Girl and Xander, while that other scene would show them as opposite, so this can be used to argue that the HP letter person is different from Mystery Girl.

On top of all of this, there's a bit of a meta reason to doubt this is "Ms Naegi." As of yet, Ms Naegi is a bit of an ominous character. Ignoring Mystery Girl for a moment, Ms Naegi's name is cut off in the cast list (not to mention she's the only one in that list without an established first name), we saw her hand in the "translation needed" scene, and that's it. However, she can be assumed to be a relatively relevant character in the story. Beyond things like Levi's backstory showing that HP has some complexity in this universe, the second Bonus Episode makes it clear that Xander went to HP for some kind of specific reason, and Mai was looking for documents related to that.

Unnamed Classmate [BE2]: If you set out to do something, then never give up on that, no matter what obstacles stand in your way. Even if it's risky or against the rules, as long as it's for a good cause... I'll trust that you know to do the right thing. Xander: Yeah. Of course. That's why I've come to Hope's Peak, isn't it? UC: ...? Oh, speaking of Hope's Peak, I need to ask Xander if he found that document I asked him to look for.

So like, something's up with Hope's Peak. And if we're being so secretive about it all, does it really make sense to reveal Ms Naegi's design here? She's apparently a rather important antagonistic figure, as opposed to Diana. Assuming Diana exists, she is likely a character that holds relevance only to David, so revealing her in David's MV is a logical decision.

However, none of this is disqualifying for Ms Naegi, either. The similarities can just be explained as an art style thing; although I'd argue DRDT does a good job giving characters distinct faces all things considered, the DR artstyle does mean that there's only so many ways a character can look.

(How many times am I gonna put the same image in this post lmao)

Maybe I'm just bad at telling apart drawn faces (which tbf would make sense given my prosopagnosia xp), but these all look pretty similar to me, and those two are just the first examples I found.

The meta argument isn't great either, especially without knowing how relevant Ms Naegi actually is to the story. The MV already revealed that Ms Naegi exists at least, why not reveal her design as well?

As for the connections to Arei and Xander, they're explained in the same way the Diana side can explain the "ideal country" issue. We know fuck all about Ms Naegi, so it's not hard to come up with ways she could connect to those characters. Maybe Ms Naegi also knew David saw himself as irredeemable and wanted him to improve like Arei, and while she may be opposed to Xander in goals and views, they might be similar in their passion and conviction in chasing those goals. Just spitballing here, there's definitely more ways to connect them. It's just that... well, again. Nothing can be proven, nothing can be disproven.

And even through all of that, I've yet to explain what is arguably the biggest issue for the Diana theory, the cast list. I said it before; taking it at face value would immediately imply this is Ms Naegi. And honestly, if Diana was a more regular character, I'd be okay with saying that. But Diana is in a bit of a strange position, because of the Fuckass Footnote of Doom:

Footnote 11: I admit to lying. There is no one named 〇〇〇〇〇 〇〇〇〇〇. I am, and always have been, an only child.

As you probably know, those circles only really make sense with "Diana Chiem" or "David Chiem." And given how absolutely insane you have to go to justify that being "David", the circles are probably Diana.

This is a strange detail that extends even beyond the MV. When DRDTdev was asked to give extra info on the sibling characters of the cast in the CH2 PT1 Q&A, they gave info on Ryan Rosales, Elliot Cuevas, and Fuyuko and Natsuko Nageishi. They also gave info on Felicity Giles but then deleted that part of the answer, here's a reblog with the evidence that the Felicity part existed at some point. However, nothing on Diana, being (I believe) the only sibling character that has been named in the main series not to get mentioned in this response.

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Maybe it's just because she's not important, but it could also be because she doesn't exist, or because she's too important. Teruko's brother wasn't mentioned here either, after all.

Let's focus on the idea she doesn't exist at all for a moment. Would it make sense for David to be lying about Diana just for the sake of the trial? Well, while you could certainly look for a 3 million IQ master manipulator move to explain it, the simplest answer is no. That'd be silly. He has no reason at all to make up a sister on the spot, especially when the cast is looking for someone who has a sister.

So if it's not for the trial, it could be a more long standing lie. As in, David publicly claims to have a sister for some reason, and the cast might call him out if he didn't repeat the lie during the trial. What reasons would David have to lie about having a sister to the public?

Well, maybe it's... hiding a girlfriend? David's bi, so he could have one, but maybe the public wouldn't like him being romantically involved, like an idol sort of deal. So he pretends his girlfriend is actually his sister. However, there's no evidence for this, and the sentence "Diana is David's girlfriend" feels horrible to write and even think about, so we're just gonna pretend I never said this and move on.

The other option is that David's trans and Diana's his deadname. I don't know if I've ever explicitly mentioned it, but I've always thought it was a pretty real possibility. Being trans is difficult, especially for a celebrity, so it would make sense for David to pretend "Diana" is his sister to hide this fact for anyone looking into his past. Again, not a whole lot of evidence, but the simplicity makes it a very appealing theory. Occam's Razor, and all that.

That's not to say it isn't without its caveats, though. For one, if "Diana" and David are the same person, then they'd share a birthday, so it would make more sense for David to claim having a twin sister, not an older one. You could argue he can be claiming she's an older twin by a minute or something, and just omitted the twin part for brevity in the trial, but... eh, it's a little iffy.

Possibly the bigger issue is that... well, we've already had a "character is secretly trans" plot twist, with Nico. It's not impossible to repeat the twist with some differences, I guess, but it does feel a little strange. Especially doing it this way. Maybe I'm just insane because of how much I've looked at LGI, but the whole "Diana doesn't exist" thing feels a little too important to just be an overall pretty minor detail in David's backstory. I mean, look at the context where the footnote shows up.

I... to this day have no idea what the hell the "suspicious gaps" thing is about, so I'm gonna ignore that and look at the rest of the context.

Right after the Xander related "I hate the things I love, and love the things I hate" scene, you have the "suspicious gaps" frame, with footnote 11, followed immediately by a quote from Catch-22.

He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.

The quote basically says that it's the spirit that gives life meaning, as an oversimplification. It can be assumed to be related to the stuff that came before, as it doesn't really fit that amazingly with what comes after, the whole "I think therefore I am disturbed, if you doubt brittle things are broken" section. You'd probably need to go all the way to the whole "God is dead" part to connect it, but that's several lines away. It would've made more sense to put the quote closer to that part if that's what we were going for.

Instead, the quote seems to fit pretty great with Xander, who died but whose spirit lives on through David in a sense. The issue is that Diana's footnote is in the middle fucking shit up. There was nothing stopping DRDTdev from putting the quote after "I hate the things I love" and before "suspicious gaps," so the fact that that isn't the actual order could imply that we are meant to connect all three things together.

And like, it's not that hard. Maybe Diana is also someone David hates and loves like Xander (Mystery Girl does have his eyes), so the footnote is disowning her, potentially because of something that happened in Hope's Peak time. What that thing could be is beyond me for now, but it's not all that relevant for the current discussion.

What is important is that all the context around the footnote gives it a certain amount of importance that arguably shouldn't be discarded. If all that footnote meant was that David is trans and Diana isn't real, why not put the footnote somewhere like "if you doubt brittle things are broken" (implying something you take for granted falls apart if you think about it more, like the idea David has a sister), or "move aside, just like that and disappear!" (a bit weirder, but it's like David's making "Diana" disappear (???)), or just put something in the background that's related and put the footnote there? The point is that there were options, and instead of taking them, DRDTdev put the footnote next to some very strange context. In other words, the mystery of what the hell the deal with Diana is might be meant as one of the larger mysteries of the MV.

Or I'm just losing it and Diana really isn't important, I think I've lost the ability to judge my own sanity :p

In any case, I feel like we've gotten a little off track, so let's go back to the cast list issue. We said before that taking it at face value immediately implies the Mystery Girl is Ms Naegi, because Diana isn't in the cast list. However, this whole "is Diana even real" conundrum means we can't 100% take the cast list at face value. After all, if Diana's existence is meant to remain a pretty large mystery after the MV, then she likely wouldn't be in the cast list even if she did show up in the video. The point is that both the footnote and the cast list are ignoring the existence of Diana. Whether that's because Diana really doesn't exist, or if the truth is more complicated, is what is kind of impossible to determine atm.

And that leaves us back at Mystery Girl. To recap what we've talked about:

-The cast list appears to imply Mystery Girl is Ms Naegi, but Diana's position as Schrödinger's Sister makes it possible to argue that this isn't 100% reliable.

-The connections between Arei, Xander and Mystery Girl seem to make more sense with Diana. But without knowing anything about Ms Naegi, there's no way to prove they don't connect to her.

-The whole "so-called ideal country" context right before Mystery Girl's appearance could imply a connection between her and HP, pointing at Ms Naegi. But without knowing anything about Diana, there's no way to prove it doesn't connect to her as well.

-Mystery Girl is dressed formally, which fits how David would think of Ms Naegi better than how he'd think of Diana, but again, it's impossible to discount the possibility that Diana just dresses formally on the regular and this is how David imagines her.

-Mystery Girl and David look very similar, which could imply they're siblings, but it could also just be limitations of the art style.

-The fact Ms Naegi is apparently very lore relevant makes it weird to think she'd be revealed like this, but there may be good reasons to do so we just don't know about.

-Diana might not exist, and it would be impossible for her to be Mystery Girl if she doesn't exist. However, maybe she does, because the context of the 11th footnote gives the mystery of Diana a certain weight.

As you can see, it's kind of a mess. Diana is a disaster in theory crafting terms, Ms Naegi is completely inscrutable, and Mystery Girl is... well, mysterious.

If you ask me... well, I think I used to believe this was Diana with the possibility of Ms Naegi in the back of my head, but over time I've started to believe more in the Ms Naegi direction. In my opinion, the arguments for Ms Naegi (mainly the clothes and the "ideal country" context, I still don't think the cast list is super damning) are a lot more straightforward and harder to work around than the arguments for Diana (vague resemblance to David, narrative connections to a character we know nothing about, "weirdness"). But I don't think it's a guaranteed thing, I'm still pretty 50/50 on the whole thing overall.

Man, you'd think it'd be hard to talk so much about a character that might not exist, but my yapping ability continues to impress me. We can move on now, though!

The Sixth Bullet

Here's the referenced meaflet post, it's a good and short read!

The matter of the sixth bullet is definitely something I've thought about in the past. In case anyone needs a refresher, it comes from the background item montage, where we're asked to find six bullets, only to be told by a hint in a book nearby that we can't. And indeed, only five bullets can be found on the screen.

The natural conclusion is that the sixth bullet is probably in something, and that could very well be David's head with what the blood splatter over his face looks like. You would think the gun might have fired it, but... the gun doesn't really seem to be pointing at anything.

Okay well it could be pointing at the traffic light or the snake but y'know. I don't think it's that big of a deal for this, though, as it's still aiming in the general direction of David. And well, I've argued that the gun may be aimed at Mai's portrait, so it's not like I'm gonna complain about theories that don't care too much about the exact aim of the gun lmao.

There's some ways to interpret this. For one, if we just take bullets as an abstract concept, we could talk about truth bullets and say that maybe Teruko is the one who shot David? But that's a bit of a stretch, and I don't really know where we'd go from there anyways, so.

The more obvious connection is to Xander. The gun in the video is labeled "(not) a prop gun," clearly connecting it to the rebel's actually fake gun in the killing game. So you're supposed to understand the gun is connected to Xander, but can shoot. And it's not hard to see how Xander could have "killed" David, there's like a billion ways to take it.

One way is the literal aspect, where Xander's ideals led David to try throwing his life away. Then there's the more metaphorical sense, where Xander changed David as a person and thus "killed the old David" if that makes sense. You can even combine the literal and metaphorical through the Tally 5 dialogue. "I threw away my humanity for an ideal I couldn't understand," David says. Thus, for Xander, he "died"/became "no one", connecting it to the words over the blood splatter on his face. I could probably keep going, but I like the "David became no one by throwing away his humanity for Xander's ideals" interpretation, so I'll go with it!

I'll also mention something accirax said in the reblogs of meaflet's post. The idea that we can't find the sixth bullet might have further implications, such as "we can't see inside David's head (understand him)", which fits with a lot of the theming of LGI, or that because the bullet represents Xander's ideals, we're never gonna understand them. There's some fun interpretations to play around with here!

Mai as a Mirror

Well, you're not insane for noticing that! A lot of the Mai quotes do seem related to personal failings of each of these characters. Let's go over the clearest examples!

Rose: She remembers everything that is important to others.

Rose is notably forgetful, Mai isn't.

Arturo: A girl who sees the beauty in everyone.

Half of Arturo's lines are him calling someone else ugly :v

Ace: A girl who had a bright future.

A big part of Ace's character is that he felt he had no control over his life, so Mai having a clear and bright future is sorta the opposite of that.

Arei: She doesn't like it when her friends fight.

While post-redemption arc Arei was obviously nicer, CH1 Arei was certainly a shit-stirrer that enjoyed conflict in a gremlin sorta way.

David: She forgives everyone.

Like you said, David is pretty hateful and doesn't think people can change, so Mai forgiving everyone is a big contrast.

Charles: A girl who loves her family.

I pushed this one to the end because I'm relatively sure Charles does love the family he knows he has, at least to some level (he's never complained about them much, if nothing else). However, you can still argue that Charles doesn't "love" Elliot on account of Charles not knowing the guy exists lmao.

However, while the "mirror" idea works for a lot of these, it's not really universal. Some of other quotes point out similarities between Mai and the characters the quotes are about, and these characters don't differ too much from Mai's established personality in any other way, either.

Hu: A girl who wanted to keep everyone safe.

This one's maybe arguable because you can say that Hu picks favorites, so it's a flaw of hers that she doesn't focus on the safety of "everyone." However, Hu does generally want people to be safe, so it's iffy.

Xander: She couldn't stand to do nothing.

This is the one that really doesn't work. Xander is defined as a guy that can't stand to do nothing, it'd be weird to argue his "inner side" is somehow someone who doesn't take action. Of course, you could relate it to how Xander didn't do anything about his family's deaths, but that was something he had no knowledge of until after it happened, so it doesn't really work imo. He didn't "stand to do nothing", he just didn't know there was anything to do.

These two lines serve as counterexamples to the idea that Mai is somehow the opposite of everyone's "inner side." Even if you look at the characters in general, Teruko directly compares Xander to Mai, so it'd be a little strange to say that and then say Mai is fundamentally different from him.

Xander always reminded me of that girl. Perhaps that's why I'm thinking about her now. They looked similar, with that same red hair and smile. And... they both wanted to help, didn't they?

I think this whole "mirror" thing is more the result of Mai being presented (for now at least) as someone without any flaws beyond recklessness. These lines are meant to help you understand how incredible this girl was, so they use flawed characters to contrast with Mai's strengths, as a way to highlight those strengths. Similarly, the lines drawing similarities between Mai and Hu and Xander help us visualize Mai's personality by giving us a frame of reference. She has a similar desire to keep people safe as Hu does (or at least, as Start of Series Hu did), and a similar drive and passion to Xander.

And even lines that aren't related to a particular characteristic of a character, are still connected to the character in a different way. Let's go over them!

Teruko: Some years ago, she was searching for someone named 'Teruko Tawaki.'

Well, this one's trivial. It literally mentions Teruko by name, obviously it's Teruko's.

Levi: A girl with a floral tattoo on her arm.

The Personal Stylist gets a purely physical description, fittingly. It's extra fitting given Levi is a very practical person. If he was asked to talk about Mai, I'd bet that he'd start with physical characteristics before saying anything about her personality.

Whit: A girl with many friends.

I didn't know whether to put this as a possible reflection or as a similarity, as we don't know much about Whit's social life pre-killing game, so I put it in neither. I'm pretty sure he gets this line because interpersonal connections in general are pretty important for the Ultimate Matchmaker, but he's friendly enough that I can't really imagine him not having many friends pre-killing game, so it could just straight up be a similarity.

Eden: She kept calling the number, even though no one picked it up.

*Insert the regularly scheduled crashout about how this quote makes no sense and still keeps me up at night.*

In seriousness, this one's probably gonna make more sense later, we just lack critical information for now. Hopefully. If the series ends and we still don't know what the deal with this was... let's just say, the clock population will be affected (/notserious).

For now, it's worth noting that Eden's insistence on befriending Teruko despite her protests could be connected to Mai calling who-knows-who over and over again, even though they didn't pick up. So, another similarity.

J: She kept it a secret, and told no one.

J is the first character to have their secret revealed to the whole cast, and it's one that she would've kept even in HP time, so of course she gets this line.

Nico: Everyone confided in her.

Again, Nico's character arc in the killing game is closely tied to secrets, which is why they get this line.

Min: An average girl with nothing special at all about her.

Also didn't know whether to count this as an opposite, because Min is really not average in any metric, or as a similarity, because Min doesn't consider the Ultimate Student talent as impressive and above average as the others. But the latter makes a bit more sense with how Min sees herself, so I'd go with that. Also, in Min's Bonus Episode, we saw how Mai appreciates the normal things about the cast beyond their Ultimate titles, so there's yet another connection to Min.

Veronika: A girl who didn't foresee the consequences.

You could also count it as a similarity, since Veronika doesn't strike me as the most forward thinking of people, but I've always figured that Vero gets this line because the line is creepy and Veronika is creepy lol.

MonoTV: It's all your fault.

Lore relevant, but not relevant for this discussion lmao.

So, what's the verdict? The lines are connected to the characters, so they sometimes highlight differences between Mai and the characters, at which point you could say Mai is sorta their "mirror." However, Mai also has plenty of similarities to the cast. Eden's insistence in connecting with her friends, Hu's desire to save, Xander's drive and passion, Whit's friendliness, Min's sorta averageness, potentially Veronika's recklessness, etc. And even past the quotes, you can easily draw similarities to other things, like how Arei's "inner side" (her nicer side post redemption) is forgiving and hopeful. In other words, good observation, it's just more of a case to case basis than an universal thing!

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