#ikeda

well. i changed his outfit mostly for design reasons. the original was too basic for my own tastes, but moreso i didn't like the colors. it was too matchy-matchy with his hair and the color scheme is VERY small, ignoring his eyes and including white as part of it. i tried including his eye colors in his shirt. i couldn't find a reason why ikeda was given clothes for the killing game and to be completely honest i also couldn't find a reason within myself to keep it. tried making him look more formal or well-kempt at the very least since you would think an art forger is good at charming people

with the writing, i kept the part about his father using him for money because i thought it could be potentially interesting, though i removed the parts about his age regression and implied sexual abuse because in the context of what von did it makes me uncomfortable and says a lot about von's... attractions. like genuinely when i came across something super out of pocket my first thought was "This woman has some CRAZY kinks." his motivations for art forgery are kind of based on han van meegeren

for his role in the story, i do think he would make a good antagonist due to his pessimistic atittude towards the game, though i dont think he would be alone. it would make a more interesting narrative imo if the cast was split between trusting eachother and fighting against the game, or playing by the rules and giving in to killing for survival. his talk criticizing everybody for being too trusting at chapter 1 would incite a major argument, one side wanting people to trust eachother (ruka, matthias, shishikura, denden), one side believing that people are inclined to and WILL murder (ikeda, kumada, maekawa, tei) and a group in the middle that is neither fully trusting nor fully hostile (ogura, isoda, akiba, hirose, ouno, youhei, yaitabashi, nishiguchi).

now, for chapter 3 i decided to play a little bit with the 2 victims trope. from an outsider perspective it would seem like theres two victims, but the cast quickly figure out that ikeda is the killer. basically misao in my version keeps her room temperature very cold, because it reminds her of home and its ideal for ice sculpting. there was an opportunity to rewrite and play with despair disease and von missed it, so i wouldve used it here. basically ikeda gets the despair disease, and whatever it does to him, maybe convince the afflicted that if they kill they can get all they've ever wanted, it gives him reason to kill and he decides to target denden: everybody else is either grouped up or possiby able to overpower him alone. so he breaks into her room, ready to kill, and is surprised to find that she can fight back. ikeda successfully delivers a fatal blow but not before being incapacitated by denden, either being hurt by a collapsing ice sculpture or denden fighting back. ikeda is stuck in place and has no ability to leave, and as the night goes on he succumbs to hypothermia, with denden having already died from her wounds

without further ado, backstory: