Crane's blog :D

Writing Backlog:

Tsumugi-Darumi compare/contrast (can't be done until THL is complete)

Tokonalysis (ongoing)

DR Execution comparisons

Sakuranalysis

OC Backstory- Haru Suzuki

Leonalysis

Game Backlog:

DR2x2 (dropping everything to play this once it releases)

Kill/Cure Beautiful Vice (waiting on ch 1 release)

THL (4/21 routes complete)

Shuten Order (0/5 routes complete)

Kumitantei (if I take long enough I can play the full game at once 💀)

Character Analyses: Taka, Mondo, Sayaka, Hiro, Junko, Hifumi, Toko(WIP)

Asks are (almost) always open! Anons may go down for brief periods after I release a complete analysis though, for preventative measures. The analyses are meant to be as objective as possible, which means they go into some dark shit from time to time. DR is a dark series sometimes lol.

Transfem Chihiro propaganda: unreliable narrator, misogyny breakdown, personal interpretations,

My top 10 DR characters: Tsumugi Shirogane, Toko Fukawa, Sayaka Maizono, Komaru Naegi, Chiaki Nanami, Akane Owari, Maki Harukawa, Peko Pekoyama, Himiko Yumeno, Ryoko Otonashi

I am and always will be a "blue-haired girls VA'd by Dorothy Fahn in their localization" defender. Someone's gotta do it 🫡

My top 10 DR ships: Syomaru, Komahinanami, Kuzupekowari, Sakuraoi, Junkan, Leosaya, Fujisaba, Shiromeno, Shinsai, Irumatsu

Fav QPR hcs: Fuyukanidai, Chifumi, Saimakimeno, Tsumiotaposter, Traffic-Light-Trio, Sakazome

+ my sexuality and gender headcanons for anyone interested :D (update I now hc Shuichi as transfem)

I'm watching through the full Pokémon anime! And I'm making a review of each season and movie as I go. Here's a link to the masterpost

I've also been reviewing each THL route as I go if you'd like to read those

My tags:

crane-talk: mostly either me talking about my writing. Usually has updates about my analyseries

crane-talks: same thing as above but there's an 's' at the end

crane campaign: I run a DnD campaign with some friends, and I like to yap about my evil DM plans that they don't know about. If you're one of my players, block this tag plz, ik at least one of you is on here <3

crane's perfect au: little rambles about my ideal Danganronpa au, including but not limited to Celeste Protag, Mikan Mastermind, Angie Antag, etc

dangancoffee: Starbucks orders themed after Danganronpa and fangan characters!

shsl love: any posts about Chiaki Nanami. She's literally the SHSL Love guys

crane's ocs: any posts talking about or drawing my ocs :D I have those btw

screaming at my moots: when I'm yapping about nothing in particular or complaining or whatever

crane-plays: me playing games for the first time and live posting & reacting, essentially

tddr: Danganronpa characters but they're on total drama Island. Why? Uh, for fun, mind your beeswax

crane-plays-2x2: a tag for specifically playing Danganronpa 2x2 once it drops. Be prepared! I will be screaming in digital public about this game >:)

crane-watching: for watching shows/movies instead of playing games. Currently watching the Pokemon anime (Johto League Champions)

crane-replays: for the inevitable multiple replays of the Danganronpa games and other games out there in the world, but mostly you and I both know it'll be Danganronpa games

Sideblogs:

@vi-gilante-1010 (critical blog, rarely used)

@cranes-crack-characters (charactourney)

1- Worldbuilding

Kanai Ward is by far my favorite setting we've ever gotten in a Kodaka series. Being familiar with Danganronpa, Tribe Nine, and THL, I didn't have very high expectations, but the combination of the maps, the music, the sidequests, and the constant presence of others made Kanai Ward feel like a real, lived-in city with people that had dynamic lives outside of the story, all without pulling away from the plot at hand. If anything, the believability of the people found in Kanai Ward only enhanced the story's biggest twist. It helps that despite the gloominess of the constant rain, the design is gorgeous. They make good use of the neon lighting and the depressing nature of the city to make some really beautiful scenery. I mean, just look at this shot from Kamasaki district.

And did I mention the sidequests? The sidequests were great. Getting to follow up on characters from past cases like the nun and Iruka and help them recover was awesome, and so were the smaller cases with unnamed characters processing their own tragedies, like the ghost attempting to protect the children of Kanai Ward or the man deluding himself into believing his girlfriend was still alive. It feels like a lot of time and care was put into making Kanai Ward and its residents, and that sort of thing goes a really long way.

2- Plot

Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret and the Great Global Mystery, almost in conjunction with the worldbuilding, felt pretty tight-knit as well. There are a couple of contrivances here and there (how did Makoto and/or the Amaterasu homunculi discard the remains of all the bodies before the general populace were fully awake? Uhhhhhh dw about it) (real Yuma just so happened to perfect a ramen recipe that perfectly replicates the homunculi's nutritional needs offscreen and by accident? Sure I'll take it) but the clue-ins within the environment like the pink blood and the addicting meat buns were clever tie-ins, especially when targeting an audience that's already used to pink blood as a stylistic choice. And of course, the whole "citywide failed experiment leading to an entire replacement of people with homunculi safely contained within artificial rain" story had solid logic given the setting, was difficult but not impossible to figure out given the evidence, and paced out pretty well on the overall. The individual cases in chapters 0-3 also did a good job of setting up the stakes, threats, and clues, as well as making the city as a whole more sympathetic.

3- Characters

With the exception of Desuhiko, I wouldn't put a single main character below an A tier ranking. Yuma is by far the highlight as lead, and easily the best male protagonist Kodaka ever has made and probably will ever make, but supporting characters like Vivia and Halara were top notch as well. Makoto's story was incredibly tragic, and I loved the ways you can tell he and Yuma came from the same person in their shared desires to bring people happiness even when their unique circumstances have brought them down very different paths. Fubuki and Kurumi were also quite delightful, and I enjoyed the both of them a ton. Even Yomi, who's absolutely despicable, is despicable with a lot of intention behind him, and thus, is a well-established villain.

4- Shinigami

Shinigami is my favorite character in Rain Code, for a few reasons. Having a death god that's so unabashedly needy and clingy while simultaneously jabbing at Yuma for being needy as well is relentlessly funny. Having a death god that gets a magical girl transformation from blob to sexy princess is fucking amazing. Having a death god with a magical girl style execution with black wings and a piano riff is even more fucking amazing. Her being a rampant misogynist who hates the poor is so incredibly indicative of a being that's so removed from human society that she can't fathom the strife humans go through. Her arc of growing to care about human beings and feel compassion for them, to the point where she can't even bring herself to harm Chief Yakou's soul when reaping him, doing so because of Yuma's influence, it completely caught me off guard until it was happening in front of my face, and yet in retrospect it makes so much sense. Her petty one-sided rivalries with the other girls solely on the basis that they were taking attention away from her was annoying, until Fubuki came in and kicked the door down with the power of considering Shinigami's feelings at the end of the ch 3 Mystery Labyrinth after a slew of confused back-and-forth between them. Even the worst of her lends itself to the best of her, I think.

I won't lie. For a long while, I was sort of holding my breath and waiting for some grand reveal that Shinigami's pact with Yuma had taken more than he knew, that she was going to end up being somehow tied to the mysteries of Kanai Ward, maybe she'd end up the final boss, etc. The Vivia arc definitely didn't help my fear of that, at least not for the first half. But what I got instead was so much better- a literal goddess of death going from total apathetic joy at seeking out the deaths of humans, to willingly ending her pact with her favorite human being for the sake of him living. Those two things don't cancel each other out, persay, but she's a little bit kinder at the end than she was at the beginning, and for a centuries-old goddess, that means a lot.

Also, she's sexy as hell. I'm.... a simple creature. Seriously, what 5-course meal was Komatsuzaki cooking with the sex appeal of this cast????? This is but the natural endpoint of finally having grown adult characters instead of teenagers; you get Halara and Shinigami and Vivia and Fubuki and Martina.

5- Critiques

I'll just put them in a list for organization's sake

Desuhiko, the adult pervert, crossdresses to enter the all-girls' school even when he didn't need to; Yuma was the one who needed access. On top of that, he shoved Yuma into his backpack without asking first and told him he'd be gentle over his screams. Kodaka, you are not beating the transmisogynist allegations. Their having to disguise as women was a problem decided on by real people while making the game, and they could've just as easily made the school have male faculty or even just..... had Yuma (and Makoto by proxy) be women from the outset, thus only needing a uniform.

The other characters pushing Yuma/Kurumi is retroactively so weird once you know he's a grown ass man and she's still 16

Hearing the results in the epilogue from the people of Kanai Ward was cute and all, but I would've liked to at least see Makoto's emergency broadcast. His accountability being offscreen was disappointing

I mentioned this earlier, but I'll be a bit more specific here- Yuma and Makoto did not know that real Yuma had managed to find a ramen recipe that could replace the human meat buns. As far as the two of them were concerned, they were gonna tell all of the homunculi the truth of who they were and then either continue harvesting death row inmates, or let them starve while they scrambled for an ethical food source. They got so fucking lucky with that, and I feel like even the smallest interaction with overhearing real Yuma's customers say they "haven't even gone for meat buns in days" because of how much they love his ramen would've covered that

I wish we'd been able to explore the rest of Kanai Ward in the epilogue outside of Kamasaki. I'd've loved to see how characters like Iruka and Makoto were doing after the truth was out

Conclusion