??????

Thank you! I have no problem with people reading and being inspired by my essays - that's why I wrote them, really, so it's actually very flattering - so go right ahead.

And, for future reference: you don't need to ask first! I appreciate the credit given, and the credit given is enough on its own.

Alright! I'm assuming that by "character profiles" you mean translations of the things written about each character in the canon artbooks...in which case, all that I'm aware of is listed here, and I'll update that post once I find anything else.

If there are any translations that aren't on there, though, then I must not know that they exist...and if I don't know that they exist, I can't help you find them. Sorry! There are things being translated all the time, though, so if it's not up there yet then it might be one day soon.

And if you want untranslated scans of the artbook: here they are. You can also buy a physical copy of the book here!

Hm, well...Komaeda has a pretty big role in SDR2. The first question to answer here would be "why are characters with a lot of screentime so popular in fandom?" I'd probably say it's because people get more of a chance to be exposed to their favorite character traits in a character who shows up a lot, since they don't have to go out of their way to be presented with them...in other words, people can leave SDR2 with plenty of evidence and dialogue on which to form a solid opinion about Komaeda. Some of those people will find that Komaeda is the type of character they enjoy seeing, so they'll list him as their favorite character. So, if one of the minor characters in the game had as large and complex a role as he did, you could assume that the amount of fans they would have would also grow proportionally, simply due to a larger amount of the people who like that kind of character being matched up with the character themselves.

...I personally gravitate towards minor characters, though, so I can't really know for sure...

But I would say that the sheer number of Komaeda fans could be probably explained by a combination of the amount of screentime he has, the varied ways he influences the plot during that screentime...and the exponential growth factor inherent in fanbases, too. People become invested in Komaeda, then their friends hear a lot about Komaeda from them, then they become invested in Komaeda too...and there's a lot of Komaeda fanfiction and fanart and so on out there, so even people who don't know any Komaeda fans personally would be reminded of his existence constantly during their time in the fandom, which might bring them to look back and think "you know, Komaeda really is a great character"...and then things just balloon from there. If the number of Komaeda fans seems disproportionately large compared to the number of fans of other characters, it's only because there were slightly more people who liked Komaeda than other characters from the beginning, and then fandom growth took it from there.

As for why individual people like Komaeda, I can't really answer that. There are a lot of different reasons why people might like him, because there are a lot of different approaches people might take in enjoying a character, I think. Some people might like characters with complex attitudes and value systems so that they can challenge themselves in trying to unravel them, and will naturally gravitate to those characters who display those kinds of complex behaviors; some people might like characters they can sympathize with, and will naturally gravitate to those characters they can best relate to; some people might like humor in their fandoms, and will naturally gravitate to those characters who provide the most humorous moments; some people might like tear-jerkers in their fandoms, and will naturally gravitate to those characters who provide the most opportunity for sad realizations and headcanons and fan material. Some people might look at a character as they would a friend, and some people might look at a character as they would a puzzle or a question, and some people might look at a character as they would a stranger or a celebrity, and some people might look at a character as they would the author themselves...

The space fictional characters occupy in our minds is kind of weird, if you think about it; they don't affect things in real life the way real people do, but they're not as abstract as other abstract things are. Different people cross that gap in different ways.

As in...in general? Do you mean "what would that change about their personality", or "what would Hope's Peak do with them", or "how would that affect how they think of themselves?" There are a few ways I could interpret this question. I interpreted this as the third one first, so I tried sorting them into groups, but:

Characters who would/might have some sense of self-esteem without the ability to do their talent (respective to their current level of self-esteem): Kuwata, Yamada, Asahina (would probably depend on whether she lost the ability just to swim, or whether she lost the ability for physical activity altogether), Hagakure, Enoshima (although, would not being SHSL Gyaru anymore imply just having someone overtake her in the world of fashion, or would it imply completely losing her charisma/ability to read people/ability to manipulate people?), Naegi, Fukawa (if "not being a SHSL Literary Girl" just implies people not buying her books; if unable to write anything, at all, ever, move down to category four)

Characters who wouldn't have much self-esteem without the ability to do their talent: Fujisaki, Oowada (although, first of all, would losing the ability to perform his talent imply someone else becoming the leader of the Crazy Diamonds, or him being kicked out of the Crazy Diamonds entirely?), Ikusaba (assuming "not being a SHSL Soldier" means being incapable of fighting entirely, e.g. becoming bedridden)

Characters who wouldn't have much of an identity without the ability to do their talent, but might still invent some source of self-esteem elsewhere: Celes, Togami (would depend on circumstances in which he stopped counting as SHSL Heir; being disowned and rejected totally could knock him down into the category below, but I feel like his pride's more resilient than people sometimes give him credit for, and just losing something like "the right to lead the Togami family" or "the ability to play the stock market" would probably only inspire him to create his own business conglomerate/unsolved-cases armchair detective group/whatever else is available to him)

Characters who wouldn't have much of an identity or self-esteem without the ability to do their talent: Maizono, Oogami, Kirigiri (first of all, does becoming bad at detective work mean that she's incapable of drawing good conclusions about other people based on what she observes, and does that imply that either everyone around her has suddenly stopped behaving in a human-like way, or that she's suddenly stopped being able to recognize human behavior? because I think that would just be really surreal, first of all)

(Based on their states of mind when first entering Hope's Peak, and not including SDR2 characters, because between Hinata and Komaeda, the question gets a lot more complicated...and also, because including them would make this answer much, much longer than is really necessary. I guess I'll leave them as an exercise for the reader.)

...These didn't come out as clear-cut as I would have liked, but I could probably elaborate on any one of these. I think I understand what kind of general pattern you're getting at, but reactions would still differ a lot from character to character, and their talents are often too linked to the way their minds work to disentangle one from the other entirely.

I mean, some of the talents in DR/SDR2 are related primarily to how others perceive them: you can't be the best idol in the business unless other people say you're the best idol in the business, you can't be the best writer in your field unless people like and buy your books, and so on. And then there are the talents that are related to nothing but the character's physical aptitude - you're only the best at MMA if you beat everyone else you fight, regardless of whether people recognize you for this or not - and talents that are related to nothing but the character's mental aptitude - you're the best detective if the solutions you come up with for cases consistently match up with the truth of those cases, and that's it. For the latter two categories, especially the third, it's hard to imagine someone losing their aptitude for that talent without something going really wrong with either the actions they take in their daily lives or the way they think about things in their daily lives, which would imply a whole host of unrelated brain changes. Right?

And if by "losing their talent" one just means "losing the distinction of being the best-ever high schooler at that talent", without actually losing any real aptitude in that talent - for example, if someone else arrived on the scene that just happened to be slightly better than them -  that would only make any meaningful difference for the kids whose talents are nothing but being #1, and that's not a lot of them. (You can be a really, really good, useful programmer without being the best one - it'd be kind of hard to rank every programmer in the world as above or below one another, anyway.) The rest of them would either just start working towards beating the new kid, or they would just go about their lives as usual.

...Unless you do mean the second option I thought of for how to interpret this, as in, "what would Hope's Peak do with them". In which case...I have no idea. Maybe they'd take the kid out of their classes and focus solely on raising them back to their previous level? Maybe they'd expel the kid and replace them with the new best high school kid with their talent? Maybe they'd just put a few researchers in that kid's classes and let them sit in the back taking notes on their talent's deterioration? I can't think of any canon hints that would support one reading or another. I mean, you could say "Hope's Peak has limited funds and they should only focus their energies on researching the truest talents, so it would be in their best interests to expel slackers immediately", but you could say "Hope's Peak wants to research talent from a number of different angles, so it would be in their best interests to research how talent grows and how talent deteriorates", too. ...Maybe I should reread SDR2 with this question in mind, though, and see if I find anything.

(Also, I kept having to remind myself that I'm sorting these based on what they'd be like if they lost their talent as they are, not based on what they'd be like if they never found their talent at all; those answers end up as some other thing altogether.)

(This reply will contain DR1 spoilers, mostly in the links. If you don't want to see the spoilers, don't click on any of the links below!)

A number of possible reasons:

Some people might have given up on Yamada's character as soon as he started making lewd and/or sexually objectifying comments towards women, out loud, in the presence of women, and occasionally directed towards one of the women present. (The first time he does this fits all four criteria.) That's kind of a deal-breaker for most people when seen in real life, so it's fair that it might be kind of a deal-breaker for people when seen in fictional characters, too...you can argue that it's "just a character flaw" or that "characters don't have to be good people to be likable characters", but this is one of those things that depends more on gut feeling than on moral principle. Some people aren't uncomfortable with the same things in fiction that they'd be uncomfortable with when seen in real life, and some people are, and there are a lot of reasons for why that might be. I like Yamada, but I don't think that I can argue him out of that one.

Some people might be like the above group, but instead of giving up entirely on Yamada, they just chose to stop paying attention to Yamada after that point. There are a lot of characters in Dangan Ronpa, and there are a lot of people who just happen to only be interested in having a small handful of favorite characters at a time, so the less important characters in Dangan Ronpa end up naturally falling to the wayside...these people might have favorite characters in other series that are as bad or worse than Yamada, and they're willing to ignore those characters' flaws in order to appreciate their other character traits, but Yamada makes them uncomfortable once and they're no longer interested in expending their mental energy on understanding him.

Although there are plenty of people who might identify with some aspects of him (finding comfort in fictional characters, taking pride in one's knowledge of what would really only be useless trivia outside of one's fandom, actively participating in fandom in general), they might find the general presentation of his character to be repulsive. (Both the way he acts - he is written as kind of embarrassingly out-of-touch with reality, after all, and that's not even going into his social skills - and the way others react to him - even Naegi's pretty rude towards him.) Ultimately they might conclude, either subconsciously or consciously, that the in-game jokes at Yamada's expense are directed at them, too, and feel uncomfortable or hostile towards Yamada's presence as a result. (I kind of wonder if there's any noticeable pattern of correlation between people who like Yamada as a character and people who like Watamote as a show...I think Dangan Ronpa might be a little more unforgiving in its' jokes towards Yamada than Watamote's jokes are towards Kuroki, but it is a little close.)

Some people might have not been able to respect Yamada as a character because he's fat/they find him physically unattractive, and their lack of respect for him makes them unwilling to care about him, and that's basically it. ...That's not why every person who dislikes Yamada feels that way about him, and there are plenty of people who get understandably angry when someone suggests that it is, but it's hard to say that that's not part of it. How many fat and/or ugly characters can you think of that have the respect of both the author and the fandom? Media's existed for a long time, and we have plenty of established visual markers in media that mean "this character is evil" or "this character is kind" or whatever, and making a character fat or unattractive doesn't often mark anything good. And people learn those visual markers whether they consciously mean to or not. If people didn't immediately associate a hooked nose and sharp eyes and booming hysterical laugh and hunched posture with villainy, there'd be no reason why children's stories would keep giving their villains those characteristics. ...You see what I'm getting at?

And some of it might just be that there are so many other characters in Dangan Ronpa. I already kind of covered this in bullet two, but each person can only have so many favorite characters, right? And some people are more likely to become interested in many characters, and some people are more likely to only become interested in one character at a time, and many people are somewhere in between. Yamada has to compete with characters who get a lot more screentime than he does.

...I think that should cover most of it. There are probably a countless number of reasons for why any particular person would dislike any particular character, but the bullet points above should cover why people don't much like Yamada, in general.

Thank you! I have started a psychology class this year (not really anything special as far as classes go, just an intro class, but the textbook is really interesting), but I've always had an interest in the field, too.

I'm not sure if I could really pinpoint any pop science book I've read or psychology topic I've learned that's really helped me when it comes to analyzing characters, though...more often, what helps me understand one piece of fiction is another. (There have been some pop philosophy and pop history books I've found enlightening with regards to fiction, too, though! I had some thoughts recently about a certain SHSL Despair based on something I read a while back about Dadaist philosophy, actually...) It's kind of like...psychology represents a sort of "objective" view of human nature, or at least as objective as a just-barely-started field of human knowledge can be...but any given work of fiction represents a view of human nature from the mind of that particular story's author. Each story is a different set of thoughts about people, and the more of them you read, the more you can start catching those thoughts in other stories, or applying those thoughts to stories that hold the opposite view, and so on...psychology is more focused on finding general patterns, but literature is a really personal thing.

Psychology is still a useful lens through which to examine fiction, though. I'm currently pretty excited to watch the Dangan MBTI blog grow (note: DR1/SDR2/possibly DR0 spoilers within), regardless of whatever criticisms you might give to MBTI as a complete personality test, and it's not like authors get their ideas about human nature from thin air, anyway; they're getting their information about the world from the same place psychology is, the only difference is the author's own biases. There are a few things I've learned in psych class that I've taken with kind of an attitude of "oh, so is that why people write characters that way?"

Oh, well, I already got to this one! So I hope you had the chance to see it. (I'll do Naegi's hand if I ever see it around, but I hear that Naegi is right at the point where the two pages of the book converge, so it might be really difficult to get a clear scan. I'm not even sure if his entire hand is visible, or if Jin Kirigiri's back is obstructing the view, or if it's possible to guess what Naegi's hand is even without seeing the entire thing.)

...And, current analysis requests:

(Some of those posts should be back up again, by the way! I try to go back and fix broken links when I can, but it's a lot more time-consuming than just adding in new links, so sometimes I fix them more often than other times.)

(Also, this list doesn't include the requests for the Kuwata essay, from...a while ago...and the Fujisaki essay request that someone else made...also a while ago.)

An asterisk (*) means that I have notes about the voice clips for that particular character. Scroll down to see them! (Also, if you want to submit any notes for me to add here, shoot me an ask.)

ALL VOICE CLIP FOLDERS AT ONCE:

STILL SORTED BY CHARACTER, JUST COMBINED INTO ONE REALLY LARGE FOLDER

SDR2 Characters:

Usami/Monomi

Monokuma

Teruteru Hanamura

Hanamura's mother

Mahiru Koizumi

Peko Pekoyama

Unknown Female Voice*

Ibuki Mioda

Hiyoko Saionji

Mikan Tsumiki

Nekomaru Nidai

Gundam Tanaka

Nagito Komaeda

Chiaki Nanami

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu

Akane Owari

Kazuichi Souda

Sonia Nevermind

Hajime Hinata*

DR1 Return Characters:

Junko Enoshima

Kyouko Kirigiri

Makoto Naegi 

Togami/Twogami:

Byakuya Togami*

Notes:

Unknown Female Voice: This is the narrator of the movie Monobear put on in Chapter 3, probably. I'm almost positive.

Togami: Twogami's non-Togami voice clip (you know, from CH6...) is 8532.AT3.mp3, and every number afterwards is Twogami's Togami voice. (8550.AT3.mp3 is higher pitched than his normal Togami voice, too. I think it might be from his Dangan Island ending, or something.) For example, "P...Porkfeet?" is 8549.AT3.mp3. Everything before 8532, then, is original Togami.

Hinata: I already put a download link to this folder before the cut, but here are some additional notes I took while listening through all of them, for a friend:

1553 - Nanami

1649 - We're...SHSL Despair?!

1662 - STOPPPPPP

1745 - Hinatascream.mp3

1748 - Hinatawon'tbelieveit.mp3

1766 - broken laughter

1770 - even broken-er laughter

1807-1816 - echoey Kamukura voice

1888 - the SORE WA CHIGAU ZO! clip with Nanami + Hinata

1934, 1935, 1936 - Three voice clips, in a row, of Hinata being worried about Kuzuryuu.

1940-1944 - Hinata is ＤＹＩＮＧ