🚀 ˚ ✦ * ♟️ * ˚ . 🎲 🤖 . ˚ ✦ ♠️, ˚ * 🛩

YES. GOOD. THE BOY IS PRESENT WE BEGIN er

But let's have a look at slightly older Boy #2 here (Joker, of course, ties for Boy #1, while Morgana is a cat). Sojiro is being a bit weird in general here, and if you're like me, you might have missed it. Sojiro reacts to Akechi like a stranger: "oh, someone's ignored the closed sign and walked in..."

But Sojiro knows Akechi. He knows exactly what he did on 11/20, and before. He knows he worked for Shido. He knows he murdered Wakaba—Wakaba who, of course, is right there in Leblanc with them on 1/2.

I don't think Sojiro ever expresses an in-game opinion on Akechi after 11/20 (he certainly allows him back into Leblanc in January, so he may be deferring to Futaba like everyone else) but before the big November reveal, he likes him. He approves of him. If you talk to him when Akechi is at Leblanc for confidant 6, he'll tell you so:

(translator's note—学費 gakuhi, "tuition fees". If Akechi told Sojiro this, the chances that it is the whole truth are remote IMO—though I am attracted to the image of pre-evil Akechi working from a young-ish age to put himself through private school.)

Now, Akechi does not exactly endear himself to Sojiro on 8/28, when they first meet. But a week on, it seems as if Sojiro is at least trying to give Akechi a fair crack of the whip, and has maybe decided he's not so bad after all.

Later, on 10/22 when Akechi is on TV, Sojiro will ask if you ever heard from him again. You have, of course, likely not seen him since around 9/3 itself.

meanwhile in maruki's reality

Even within Maruki's reality, Sojiro is present for the explanation of how Akechi survived and turned himself in, on 12/25:

I can believe Sojiro missed most of the conversation, behind the counter like that, but no way did he miss Futaba's freakout here. He presumably knows who Akechi is at this point.

But by 1/2? He's forgotten. Wakaba is back, Morgana is human, everyone is happy, and nobody remembers that things were ever any other way, sure.

Akechi, though? He was never there. They never had that talk about school fees at the counter. Akechi never popped up on TV. If he was friends with Joker, Joker never brought him to Leblanc—or, in the original reality, Akechi never visited without an ulterior motive, meaning that when his crimes were erased from history, he never showed up at all. Not even for one of those shitty summer hangouts that waste a day.

So. Maruki ending Pleasant Boy is:

not a celebrity;

not familiar to Sojiro, because he never visited Leblanc;

not close enough to Joker yet to have spent time at Leblanc;

not a criminal and not dead, obvs.

Without the connection to Shido, he's not a famous detective, and maybe that was also intentional on Maruki's end. Being a detective was sorta a means to an end. Being a celebrity seems like more of a thorn in his side than anything.

Part of him wants to take accountability, even if he never outright says it, and I can't imagine anything worse for Aketchi than Maruki's reality. Sure he spends time in jail, but I imagine he's out the moment that the rest of the world catches up. Because there's no crimes to be erased.

It's cool watching Maruki trying to "fix" Aketchi without forcibly taking full control, but Aketchi holds onto his anger and sense of justice, because at the time that we meet him in the story, his anger was the only thing he had that was truly his own, before we reminded him of justice.

Pokémon AU, anyone?

my sense of direction does not rely on visuals at all, i do not need to have been in the area before, it's more like a sixth sense or gut feeling. i can be blindfolded and spun around in a building and still know which way is west. i can tell we missed our turn/exit even when i'm not looking at the road. i have been known to wake up exactly 2-3 blocks away from our distination without interfearance if i fell asleep in the car. the one thing i can't fucking do is tell where the fuck i'm at in a video game.

like i've seen plenty where Kokichi is a phantom thief, and a few where DICE is much much bigger than canon (and those usually are also phantom thief aus) but what about normal DICE?

what about this gang of clowns who, while commiting very minor crimes (shoplifting, grafitti, house egging/TPing, disturbance of peace), coordinate so insanely well together they can't be tracked down. they're so good and such a thorn in the police's sides Shuichi gets hired to track them down and finally dish out punishments.

Shuichi- while mainly trying to get Kokichi cause he's the suspected leader and would be the most importaint to arrest- now has the oprotunity to interact with the rest of DICE more. make him get cornered by like three of them, have them work together to set up a trip trap Kokichi leads him into, let him get to know the others just as much as he does Kokichi.

Saiouma is still possible, as he can totally fall for Kokichi after one too many destractions where he flirts with Shuichi, but let DICE get a peice of the chaos too.