Been thinking about Tsumugi Shirogane.
Personally, I believe she is the most interesting mastermind, simply because, compared to Junko Enoshima and Izuru Kamukura, she feels.. real. Dangerously real. Uncomfortably real.
Junko was a genius analyst who wanted out of boredom and Izuru was a genius analyst who wanted out of boredom. Tumugi however, is...a fangirl turned producer. She clings to fiction because it provides her an escape from the boring world she lives in. She is a consequence of letting fiction consume you.
Her mastermind reveal made me wonder if her in-game personality really was a persona. And of course, it very much was, since she was trying to hide the fact she was the mastermind. But I more so mean...how much of that was an act? Because when I look at Tsumugi, I see a girl who is very empty. A girl with no real personality that made her stand out, which is why she was able to keep up that "I'm so plain" role the whole game. What I mean is, any character she wanted to play would have fit her like a glove because she, as harsh as this sounds, doesn't seem to have a tangible personality. Whether it is the plain unremarkable weeb or the unhinged mastermind, she plays those roles perfectly because she wants to run away from herself. She wants excitement, and she believes she can only find it by playing a role and living amongst fictional characters she herself wrote.
And there's something tragic about that way of thinking. Obviously, the world as it is portrayed in Danganronpa V3 has bred some interesting personalities. If we believe that the students volunteered to play the game, then someone like Tsumugi existing is not that surprising. But if we apply that mindset to our real world...it gets more and more uncomfortable the more we think about it. There are people like Tsumugi out there. Bored people with empty lives who wish for the world to match their impossible standards of fantasy. She's the embodiment of a fan who went too far.
But where it gets tricky is that...her love for Danganronpa is very hollow. She's never explicitly said why she loves it so much. What does she like about it? What is so exciting about it that she died for it? Is it the executions? The character arcs? The motives? The premise? The world will never know. And I think that's the point. She stands out as an anomaly amongst all of these colorful, emotionally rich characters because she is a hollow person. Even her motivation for participating in the game is murky. She said herself before her execution that she has no interest in a world without Danganronpa...but why? What's so great about it?
She doesn't fit in with the survivors because she's like if a Danganronpa fan inserted themselves into the story but couldn't choose what role to give themselves. So they picked everything--victim, mastermind, survivor, culprit.
That's also why her Junko Enoshima cosplay sucked. It seemed as though she had only read Junko's wiki page before trying to act as her. It was a shallow, amateur attempt at trying to be her. And that's the point. It was to show that she was a cheap copy. Junko acted in a very stereotypical manner without truly being herself because she is the 53rd rendition. She has been milked for 53 seasons and her whole Despair Queen shitck has become...tacky. Overplayed.
Tsumugi is not a person. She is a patchwork of a bunch of different points of view--the hungry audience, Team Danganronpa, Junko Enoshima, Tsumugi Shirogane and the survivors. She needs to be all these different people because that's what it means to be the Ultimate Cosplayer.
She's the face of Team Danganronpa. That greedy production team that produces angst fanservice with predictable endings for an ever-demanding audience.
So who was Tsumugi Shirogane? An obsessed fan who went too far? The face of a greedy company? A plain-Jane weeb? No one knows. Just like the story she created, it's all up to interpretation.
