#krad.

dark vc i hate that fucker <- literally only thing ever dark legitimately 500% hates

aka do you want the short version or the long version because i never have any confidence in putting together character analysis. whatever. i can only try as the dungeon master of dna lore ig.

< boring basic plot exposition details first. krad and dark were originally supposed to be just one artwork (the kokuyoku) and the hikari [artist]'s penultimate masterpiece that the og hikari ancestor basically spent his entire life and metaphorical dr frankensteinian soul on.

< og niwa fucks everything up on accident by trying to steal the kokuyoku right as the ritual-that-gives-art-life was going on. the kokuyoku's ripped into two 'parts' and the magic ends up flowing into the og hikari and niwa's bodies instead. dark is born and absorbs the niwa's love, krad's born from the hikari's overwhelming sorrow. you can imagine the overwhelming sorrow bit doesn't exactly make for a friendly character

< the process also apparently sucks mega ass forever because dark's described as miserable and having 'felt as if one of his wings were ripped off' for the loooooongest time before daisuke came around and started getting to know him. i've meta'd over this in regards to dark because for him it's having to confront his own existence as some fucked up Gotdamn Creature pretty much doomed to be trapped in its own circumstantial loneliness forever, but this is opposite krad who doesn't care at ALL about the whole friendship or host-merging thing and SOLELY wants to re-merge with dark so he can return to being the 'kokuyoku' and thereby complete, as a 'perfected' work of art. both of them end up hella pushy when it comes to their hosts- dark to menacingly merge with his tamers so he can have his own body (only at first before again he and daisuke warmed up to one another, but it was still a thing,) and krad to hurry up and capture dark so he can go back to being a perfect work of art.

< goes almost without saying by now that in general krad and dark are a dichotomy (in case the black cunty vkei fits vs white homophobic homosexual catholic looks didn't make any of that obvious enough.) krad's overall generally played as a manifestation of the hikari's hatred and grief and absurdly destructive perfectionist/possessive tendencies to dark's pandora-box hope and despair. both of them are involved and manifest only with the feeling of love, but for krad that subsequently equates to strictly controlling and imprisoning others (and again, the hikari are the artists, the creators and the cops) whereas dark (the phantom thief) never ever wants to do any of that.

< dark literally says to satoshi at one point that krad is a 'simple monster' while he (dark, himself,) is a 'complicated' one. he is in fact complicated with complicated feelings over the hikari artworks in general because since none of them are properly 'loved' they're all going ballistic from the untreated zero-therapy-without-niwa-daisuke shoujo emotional issues

< back to the perfectionism for a minute too. if dark's paradise lost's lucifer, the fallen angel 'tainted' by human compassion and love, then krad's the divine cruelty of a rigid and absolute heaven. to krad, callous cruelty and solitude are both beautiful and noble, and he praises satoshi (hell, even dark) for the times he's never cared about or rejected others while nonstop abusing dark (both physically and verbally; all of the injuries/death attempts daisuke's ever gotten have 98% been from krad) for his sentimentality and hidden vulnerable wishes for intimacy. krad vc friends?? you want friends? like some kind of idiot? moron. stupid. you're a broken artwork. nobody thinks this way

< krad's girlboss game is literally insaaaaane. it's insane it's insane it's insane. dark might talk like a guy who chugs monster for breakfast lunch and dinner but in some ways he's very earnest. in the light novels and drama cds for example, he toys around and plays very clever with his words, but he never, ever, on technicality and against daisuke's (hell if not everybody's) own accusations, lies. contrast krad. even in the drama CDs krad is always, ALWAYS preying on the vulnerability of individual bonds OR forcing inaccurate perceptions (such as saying dark wants to destroy the world or whatever which obviously [to us as the audience] dark is not doing that-) to have his way. he literally says at one point that he loves to watch people have their most precious things taken away, so yeah. sicko. freak.

< whenever the angels manifest it's supposed to take a huge, massive toll on their host's bodies, but dark's curse blunts agony into just strong discomfort by relying on the niwa's love whereas krad being krad never has any problems pretty much ripping his tamers open from the inside out. then krad starts throwing fireballs and shitting lightning which ALSO absolutely ruins his host's bodies since magic within the context of DN is not Meant to be Real. dark for all his beef with krad personally actually genuinely feels pain for and empathizes with the hikari (or at least satoshi,) so there's that too.