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Forgive me if this isn't 100% correct it's been around 4 years since I've dived into them like this.

Warning for dv3 spoilers.

Shuichi Saihara is a protagonist with a deep seeded trauma sounding the truth but due to even more traumatic circumstance he has to face this fear head on and be the one to spearhead the class trials to save as many people as he can. He has a very high intelligence and observational skills allowing him to make for an amazing detective.

He is rather socially awkward but he has a good heart and that usually endears him too the rest of the students. He has a way with words under moments of pressure that galvanizes and unifies the other students to find the truth with him.

Overall the other students see him as the "Leader" and his "role" is protagonist.

Kokichi Ouma is deadly smart antagonist, his goals aren't to just to harass Shuichi but because he understands the "show" nature of the games early on and the natural "role" the other students put him in.

A good example of this is Rantaro's immediate bad faith interpretation of Kokichi words. He also realizes that while yes Kaede and Shuichi are "leaders" the other students can and will ignore them in favor of panic and there own gain under stressful enough circumstances.

So for the reasons of:

Unifying the class against a common enemy

Fitting into his assigned role

Guiding the class trials without gaining suspicion from the other students

Making the show more interesting so the show runners don't just kill them all

He acts in ways in conflict to his own moral code and beliefs.

This is not to say he isn't a little shit or a natural born liar (he's both of those things in salmon run so he's just built like this) but that instead he has taken these qualities and dialed them up to the point of becoming antagonistic to others.

He isn't natural cruel but under these circumstances he is willing and able to do so if he believes it will save more lives.

(I believe this need to save comes from the vestigial structure of when he was the leader of DICE just like how Shuichi feels the need to save the students as their leader.)

Now to why Saiouma is a popular ship other than the previously mentioned parallels and foils.

Shuichi being the wickedly intelligent person he is sees through Kokichi's act to a degree. He understands when Kokichi is trying to lead the class trials most of the time and is willing to look for the motives behind Kokichi's actions instead of just accepting "I'm an evil liar. Ne he he~" as the truth.

This is shown to mean a lot to Kokichi and it gives him exactly 1 person in the horrible situation he's in that's even a little on his side.

Actually you don't have to go that far it's more like it gives him a singular companion that understands the cruelty of what he's doing and is still willing to offer him good will.

So they do a game of back and forth where kokichi is being as much as himself as he can be under the circumstance they're in and Shuichi trying to piece together who Kokichi actually is. What's a truth and what's a lie.

Inevitably because Shuichi doesn't have all the clues he fails to get the complete picture of Kokichi they have a pretty big falling out leading to Kokichi going through with his suicide plan.

And by the time Shuichi has enough clues to start building a rough outline kokichi is already dead leading any true understand between the two unreachable.

•°•°•°•

I feel like alot of people feel this back and forth game of their to be almost or explicitly romantic in nature.

After all there relationship is a struggle to know someone when they won't let you in and the want to be known but the inability to let it happen.

Which is inherently a huge part of alot of romantic conflicts.

It is also common theme for ships I enjoy so if you see a pattern through out the next 29 day we'll heh... You know why.