i draw ! sometimes !

1- Quadricule of Dreams

It would be disingenuous of me to start this with anything other than the part that punched me in the gut and rapidly became my faovirte part of the whole entire route- the killing game polycule that develops between Takumi, Tsubasa, Yugamu, and Darumi. Of all the places to find a semi-canon full-fledged polycule where everyone has a dynamic with everyone and there's a genuine core bond and an endgame goal between all parties that's achieved by the end of the story, the KILLING GAME ROUTE OF A KODAKA PROJECT WAS NOT WHERE I EXPECTED IT TO BE. And I won't pretend that its execution is pure perfection, but fuck, man. A group of traumatized, kidnapped teen soldiers then forced to go through a life-or-death hunting gauntlet all finding some form of comfort in each other and adapting to love and protect each other in their own unique ways is deeply, deeply meaningful. That despite everything, it's their mutual love for each other that not only motivates them to continue, but shows them the right path to take to get to the right ending.

Takumi and Tsubasa are the most developed part of this cule, and the pairing that's very expressly canonized, but their dynamic completely won me over by the end of it, as not only do they develop and come to trust each other as friends first, they also both avoid becoming absorbed by the ship they become apart of. Tsubasa doesn't just become "Takumi's boyfriend" following their kiss, and Takumi doesn't become obsessively protective over Tsubasa and Tsubasa alone the way he had in route 0 with Nozomi/Karua. He's shown repeatedly to be fighting for Yugamu (and the others, when applicable) as well, even when it's not quite given the same level of attention. The sole exception for this that comes to mind is..... well, the "Escape Your Fate" ending. Which is very distinctly a bad ending for a reason.

Speaking of Yugami, he and Takumi were fully where I thought the route was going at first with how much emphasis they were putting in the early parts of the route. Yugamu being the sole person not to shun Takumi after the start of the game and Kurara's death, developing a bond of trust within the ASA, losing Hiruko, and subsequently learning of Yugamu's original intentions to stoke Eito's flames instead of his felt like a near-perfect setup, particularly with just how quickly Takumi was comfortable with the idea that Yugamu may have FULL-ON ALTERED HIS BODY without his knowledge. Which, speaking of, Takumi being comfortable with Yugamu's deepest-running kinks, and Yugamu going out of his way to emphasize that he refuses to go forward with said kinks without express consent, paired with nearly every pass he makes at Takumi being made in the form of an invitation Takumi has the full freedom to decline, is just so oddly refreshing from a Kodaka-made pervert character, and makes his back-and-forth with Takumi feel that much more comfortable, natural, and two-sided- this is the kind of comfortable banter that they have, even when it flusters Takumi easily.

Tsubasa and Darumi come out of fucking NOWHERE, and immediately become adorable. There's something about Tsubasa's ability to not only roll with Darumi's worst thoughts, but also indulge her in a much more wholesome softness than Darumi's ever really been allowed to receive before now, that makes me forgive the complete lack of buildup to their kiss. Darumi was the character I was the most worried about stagnating in the killing game route, ESPECIALLY following Hiruko's death, so having someone so deeply self-destructing and depressed get a taste of comfort not at the expense of her personhood and find a place in the group that doesn't leave her on the outskirts after so long living there is just the treat she needed, and Tsubasa gives her that. (There's also something to be said about Tsubasa having a preference for people that are just constantly screaming at everyone else in their heads and helping them figure out how to focus that voice.)

Takumi/Darumi's lighthearted rivalry and Tsubasa/Yugamu's friendship from the ASA can't really be forgotten either in this conversation. It doesn't escape me that Yugamu and Tsubasa, the two characters who can upgrade our weapons and potions for mechanical upgrades, become close friends and stand on either side of Takumi for most of this route, and they make it so that when all 3 of them are together, there's chemistry as a full group and not as thought they're both solely here for Takumi. Darumi and Takumi, meanwhile, end up technically rivals for Tsubasa's heart, but ultimately, neither of them are trying to force Tsubasa into a hardline decision and still trust and value each other as parts of the group by the end to be excited to live together with everyone else.

But yeah, I really like Tsubasa and her beautiful little polycule she built with her own hands :)

2- The Game Itself

One of the few things I knew about the game going in (I've been dodging and weaving spoilers as best I can, but something always slips through the cracks) was that one of the routes was going to be a killing game. Naturally, this being a Danganronpa Guy game, I assumed it'd be in the format of a Danganronpa trial-and-execution game, but I'm incredibly relieved I was wrong. I can't imagine how ridiculously outlandish a Danganronpa game would look like with a cast this collectively fucking batshit insane would look like; anybody who calls V3 too outlandish would be put to SHAME.

A hunting competition, on the other hand, blended in pretty well with the established setting with the invaders, and made for some really fun scheming from the ASA. Between every unnecessarily long cut of "Detach yourself..... It's just work.... Detach yourself.... It's... just work...." Takumi was doing his best to push that braincell into a corner and lock tf in, and while I'd initially thought keeping track of the rankings would get tedious, they do a good job of keeping it in the background while actual shit is going on until that exact background thought it became would turn into a detriment. The bees and sponsor-in-a-weird-astronaut-beesuit were confusing, sure, but like, fuck it. We're fighting human bioexperiments with blood missiles launched from my blood car to protect a 16-year-old baby until the government's Kill That Baby project finishes buffering and launches the Baby Blood Nukes. Weird bees ain't shit. The game functions with pretty clear guidelines, and hidden rules that both aren't difficult to ascertain and make sense within the narrative. Cool beans.

3- Eito Aotsuki

I'm operating under the assumption that his just. Being here? Is going to be paid off in one of the other routes (and simultaneously, depending on your choices, this could've then been the payoff for other players who played this later on!) but fuck if I wasn't confused! And laughing! This reveal was so fucking funny oh my GOD. Of COURSE it's fuckign. Eito Aotsuki. Who else would it be? Someone with a motive that goes beyond just "hates you hates you hates you hates you hates you"??? NO! You'll get "The entire population is so fucked, thank god I'm the only normal one" AND YOU'LL GODDAMN LIKE IT!!!!

Maybe this retroactively becomes more meaningful and intriguing- I genuinely hope it does!- but as it stands, it's so laughably out of pocket that it just reads as one of the people that worked on this game seeing that half the game is decided by killing Eito right away and going "Unacceptable. You will fit my evil twink into your plot expeditiously" and BOOM you get successor plotline. I feel like I should be angry with this, but it's honestly so thrown in there that I can't even. It's just so.... needy of him. You really can't go without reminding us how much you hate us 5ever, huh, buddy? Do you need to go to the calm-down cage? I'm assuming that's where you go when we spare you, not that I'm doing that until I've gotten every ending possible squeezed out of the 'kill Eito' part of the map :^)

4- Nozomi's Family

I thought the vampiric nursing thing was cool. I thought it was cool! It was neato. I'm struggling to articulate it. I think what it comes down to is, vampirism and cannibalism as a metaphor for love has always been, in my opinion, a pretty fucking sick way of looking at relationships. Usually, this is used in a way that denotes a toxic drain or a desire to possess in a romantic or sexual relationship, but seeing it in a mother/daughter context and doubling it as a 'nursing' was a bold choice that I kind of just wasn't expecting from this route. This game doing cannibal/vampire shit with the blood, yeah, no, we started absorbing hemoanima at the start of the game. But I completely wasn't expecting it with this context, and I have to give Kyohei Oyama his flowers for doing it in a way that didn't put me off. Instead, it acts as a demonstration on the trauma Nozomi has faced from her mother's actions, and the parasitic relationship that motherhood is sort of expected to be. Nozomi feeds on Eva, and Eva not only doesn't argue with it- she demands it. She disregards her health and safety at the expense of protecting Nozomi because Nozomi's just never had that before, and Nozomi in turn learns from Eva about the world on Earth's surface and is taught empathy and mercy for Eva's people, relying on Eva as a source of information by literally having her history beamed into her mind.

And following Eva's death, she doesn't give up or fall right back into her old habits- not completely, anyways- as when Takumi and Tsubasa introduce her to Kamyuhn, she finds her role reversed, and now gets to be the protector for Kamyuhn (and later unnamed HemoBaby) under the promise that it won't come at the expense of herself. Her birth mother had swung too far into her projects and left her to both need to be cared for, and need to care for others. And while Kamyuhn is competent on her own, human connection and someone making the conscious choice to dote on her like a child, rather than a divine being, is something she wants more than she says aloud, if her excitement at the news of possibly having a sister is anything to go by. They're a family bound together in the choice to rely on each other from opposing sides of a war- jointly seeing the humanity in each other across layers of propaganda through the very weapon meant to drive them apart.

5- Takemaru's Little Ducklings

Mother Hen Takemaru being the only one to look at the killing game and thinking "hey I'm gonna make sure the MIDDLE SCHOOLERS don't get killed" and then drawing any lines he has to to keep said kids from getting dragged into any more life-threatening nonsense than they already have been is very telling to the kind of guy he is. It's not so surprising considering his character introduction was him being the one to raise the question of what was going to happen to the young kids and elderly who literally couldn't fight back in the complex, a complex that they all remembered in utter chaos. And while it was admittedly annoying hearing him call us cursed and a jinx on the basis of poor luck and circumstance, you can't really argue with results. Kako and Ima both survive the full game, and that's solely because of him. Nobody else was stepping up to bat for these actual children, after all.

Kako and Ima basically do nothing besides stand behind Takemaru and yesman him until he's dead, and they're accepted back into the group with little to no real struggle. I kind of want to be upset about this- no, I am- but at the same time, they're children, especially comparatively to the rest of the cast. They're children who've survived harsh conditions their entire life, and then they survived these new conditions because an adult in their life stuck his neck out to help. So their making it through to the end and being accepted as part of the group again because Takumi never fully gave up on his pack mentality is... It fits within the story, considering Takumi looped expressly to save as many people as he possibly could. I'm amazed more attention wasn't brought onto this; it stayed completely background because Takumi wasn't there for it.

What I really wish had come up more, though, was Takumi's regret with Takemaru specifically. Takemaru was one of his first allies in the original timeline, and pretty consistently remained one. He hyped Takumi up to save everyone else when he set out to travel through time, he stood up for Kako, he was a stable rock for the group. To have that wrenched from him because of Takumi's poor choices and alienating him, as well as that alienation leading to him choosing death, is something that I really feel should've given Takumi more turmoil, in addition to every other death of someone who'd survived in the original timeline. And conversely, Ima managed to make it to the end this time around, no thanks whatsoever to him. We're not even gonna mention that?

(For that matter, we're not gonna touch on childhood-best-friend NOZOMI surviving? I feel like we're not making a big enough deal out of this, even if I do prefer their platonic dynamic to any weirdly romantically charged one.)

6- The Endings

The Killing Game Route has 8 endings, 7 bad and 1 good. Thankfully, the one good is actually the one great, and is surprisingly hopeful (until you see that its name is a DR reference. It's less surprising then.) And the 7 bad range from good-bad to Escape Your Fate ending.

The good ending of the killing game route is the perfect encapsulation of everything the route is trying to say- we never see the end because what matters is the people you keep fighting to make it to the end with, the siblings survive without having to sacrifice each other, the adoptive siblings successfully protected each other, the quadricule's dream of living together in dreary domestic poverty is intact, pushing them forward, keeping them afloat as we approach the mysterious satellite. The mission to go through all 100 days to completion fails, but success would mean genocide so nobody gives a shit. What matters is that they survived, and that they survived together. That the love matters and motivates just as much with the living as it does with the dead.

The Escape Your Fate ending features Takumi deciding "but fuck everybody else, I have a girrrrrrlfrieeeeeend" and tricking Tsubasa into abandoning Yugamu, Darumi, Nozomi, and everyone else just so he doesn't cave and stab children and Takemaru. This then leads to Tsubasa getting her blood drained while asleep and defenseless as he's oblivious. What the fuck Takumi.

Most of the other endings are relatively on beat with the route's theme of protecting the ones you love at the cost of your life in a both literal and metaphorical sense- if he refuses the hand Yugamu extends, he dies. If Takumi abandons Hiruko, he dies. If he refuses to respect Moko's love for Nozomi, the Academy collapses. If he kills the baby for his blood and forgets their friendship, he dooms the entire surviving group to death at the hands of V'exhness. Escape Your Fate also follows this pattern- it just makes me more upset than the others. It makes the narrative feel cohesive, even when the endings themselves are clearly 'WRONG ANSWER, TRY AGAIN?'

7- Characters

Most of the characters who were significant players in this route got glow-ups. Tsubasa, for example, was already my favorite, but now she's like.... double-triple my favorite, good Lord. Her character arc as she learns to stand up for herself not from a sick pouch-induced minigame, but because the fighting spirit of the people around her inspires her to make change in herself, is sooooo good, especially from the lens that she was one of the first to believe in Takumi after Gaku's death prior to the true start of the route. She's a good voice of reason following her arc in the early-to-mid game, and quickly establishes herself as a lead to such an extent that I'm really gonna struggle not to look to her in other routes as a main character. I don't know how I'm gonna handle it when I come across a route she dies in.

Yugamu was another massive glow-up; he was sort of just there in route 0. Smart cookie, down for organplay, but just sort of there so that the 2nd-to-Last girls wouldn't immediately be mistaken for a yuri-cule. And yet, he becomes the most consistently dependable and devoted character in the cast, with a running undercurrent of that same flavor of self-blame for every misfortune that befalls the group Takumi feels when it comes to those he considers his friends. His flaws and quirks don't disappear- far from it- but he's not flanderized into just those gags either, and his fierce loyalty to people like Kyoshika and Takumi made him a bright spot in my playthrough that I didn't anticipate.

Of course, I have to give flowers to the 2nd-to-Last girls as well (an exception being Kurara, who dies at the start of the route) for their time in the game as well. The girl group felt like a really natural group despite their very differing personalities, and similarly to Moko in route 0, you could feel how losing Kurara shook them; there's a distinct absence within them, a differently-shaped hole from the one Moko had left behind, and it can be attributed well to the fact that we actually saw all of them together as Takumi's friends prior to the game this time around. Moko is a character I'm eager to see last longer in other routes; not only was she awesome in combat, but she had a sunny outlook I really enjoyed and I need her and Nozomi to kiss. Kyoshika was an utter delight while we had her, and grabbed me by the throat a la Supreme Overlord of Ice with her warrior's confidence to face her death aided by Yugamu to save everyone. She's growing on me the more time that passes.

Darumi finally got her killing game!!!! Good for her, I say. Even better, though, that she found a dream to continue living for once it ended. For all her love of eroges, I'm honestly surprised she hadn't already thought about it, but maybe it's moreso a matter of self-assurance to try. Darumi is a pretty violent depiction of how bad depression and physical/mental abuse can effect someone, and how deeply dark the coping mechanisms people in that situation can find comfort in. It's fitting, then, that it's not the killing game itself that inspires her newfound will. If anything, the killing game worsened things, fulfilling her unrealistic pipe dream and showing off just how empty and unsatisfying it was. Hiruko dies at her hands, at Hiruko's own request even, and all it does is secure her inability to die in self-destructive indulgence. She disappeared for the mid-game and I thought "damn, really, that's it?" up until Takumi approached her for help and it started coming into clear focus. Darumi's salvation was never going to be through ugly death and misery, but through human connection, something she's never felt in any sort of positive light. Her family and childhood was deeply abusive, and Hiruko begged her to kill her, even when she was trying to protect her. Murder and suicide and death as a comfort is a fiction- and it should've stayed a fiction. Which is exactly why Darumi's reality gets to become a comfortable polyhouse with crummy conditions built on love, and a dream to create a work of fiction that can reach people like her who need that sort of escapism. It's incredibly poignant for her character, and makes her feel all the more rounded out. A far cry from being reduced to a "when's the killing game?" gag in route 0.

(Damn, I had more to say about Darumi's arc than I thought)

8- Takumi Sumino

I'd still say I'm not his biggest fan, but Takumi was a lot more bearable of a protagonist than he got to be in route 0. His relationships within the group felt more fleshed out and grounded, less reliant on tropes (Nozomi ily but I'm looking at you), and he just generally felt like less of an asshole. I'll never get over him watching Ima stab Takemaru and threatening to "retrain" Kako when she asked him permission to fight and then siding with Ima about it, but thank god there's no massive fumble like that in this arc. Takumi's generally spacey and slower to pick up on things than some of the other lead cast members, but he has a lot of heart that I could feel the absence of previously around most of the cast in route 0. He feels like he's earned the protagonist role now, and his arc being centered around trying to save as many of his friends as possible even when they hate him, that love turning him to commit atrocities that make him sick to think about, and finding the will to continue because he's loved in turn is a good arc, and of course, fits well into the theme.

Conclusion

While I doubt I'd tell anybody to drop the full $60 on this game for the Killing Game Route alone, I'd definitely encourage anybody curious to find a no-commentary playthrough that includes every "bad ending" along the way. This was an engaging, thought out, meaningful story with a major focus on the different forms of human connection and love that can shape and save lives of those touched by it, and a queer undercurrent that can't be denied(even if they were afraid to follow through and give us that one vulnerable conversation that'd lead to the polycule being undeniably canon).