VINCE

what the hell, sure

Chihiro, although there are faults in the English localization that change the perception of the character, still has probably my favorite additional lore, as even after everything is said and done regarding their strength, they still showed immense understanding and care by creating Alter Ego within the confines of the school. Out of seemingly no materials and while considering themself the weakest of all ultimates, they were able to not only work on memory alone, but task Alter Ego with decoding information left on the laptop.

Even though it's later revealed that Junko knew about Alter Ego the entire time it still hits?

Like, having to grapple with the despair/hope/despair/hope cycle of Chihiro Dies, Alter Ego Is Found, Alter Ego Gets Destroyed, Alter Ego Saves Makoto... It was one of my favorite bits of the game and knowing that Chihiro got to be the strong person they'd always imagined themselves to be by simply JUST DOING WHAT CAME NATURALLY instead of Having to lift weights and become superficially strong just makes me a bit emo. I love Chihiro and Alter Ego deeply and I wish more people would draw fan art of the two of them.

Also I do think her and byakuya are very freak4freak. You find out from Byakuya in I THINK his free time events how he became the heir to the togami "empire", and for that he did have to go through a pretty traumatic set of situations in order to prove himself. Especially considering he was the "youngest and smallest" of the possible heirs. I'm forgetting if he actually killed his half-siblings or just beat them in all battles of will, but regardless you can see how much it affects the character and how during the game he gets increasingly more aware of the fact that he is overcompensating for his lack of self worth (or rather his complex about his self worth being correlated to his usefulness... So if he isn't useful he's worth nothing) ... And towards the end when you have to fight him in the trial for not believing that you (makoto) would disagree with him /that he would be wrong.

He also does Meticulously study the way Genocide Jack kills people in order to craft a crime scene that looks like something she may have created herself knowing full well she was in the building with all of them. At the time of playing that trial I took it to be about him framing her but it almost feels like Appreciation or Reverence because it was pretty easy and quick to prove she wasn't responsible. And he's in the library staring at the case files for like, several in game days dude.