#let's see...

What made Trigger Happy Havoc click for me in the first place was Kyoko Kirigiri. The Prisoner's Dilemma concept was intriguing, but the aesthetic was so bonkers and the characters were so dumb that I wouldn't have stuck around if not for this one serious girl getting down to business. The game made me care about her, even as it made sure I understood that no one is safe and anybody could die tomorrow. I didn't realize I was falling into a trap until Chapter 5 teased her as the murder victim. The thought of continuing the story without her--with dumb ol' Byakuya replacing her as the deuteragonist--was intolerable, but I had to keep going to see if she was actually dead. This made Makoto's feelings about the case--all the grief, confusion, and self-doubt--more palpable, which sucked me in further. By the time the story hinted at Kyoko's feelings about what she's put Makoto through, I was all in.

Goodbye Despair couldn't recapture that vibe with me, and I've finally decided that's because it just doesn't have an analogue to Kyoko. To be clear, it was sensible not to rehash the characters from the first game. But Kyoko as a character is optimized for Danganronpa as a ludonarrative, and vice-versa--doing a sequel with one but not the other was a tall order. Because DR2 isn't about rescuing a tsundere girl from her own cynicism, it had to be about something else, and I felt it struggled in that area.

Killing Harmony seems to find a balance, revisiting what worked with Kyoko without simply copying it. Maki is not Kyoko, and Kaito isn't Makoto. Setting them both up as deuteragonists for Shuichi, each with their own secrets withheld from the player, helps set them apart. But they have a similar story arc, where Kaito reaches out to Maki for no real reason except his stubborn optimism, and Maki can't easily express how much that means to her. And, just like DR1, Chapter 5 blows that up, making us watch as one of them apparently discovers the other has been murdered. Except in V3, it's the grumpy one who has to find a way to move forward without the sunshine one. I really like that change.

Maki's dialogue (and Erica Mendez's performance) is really firing on all cylinders for me in Chapter 5. There are times when I'm not sure she personally cares if she lives or dies, but then she'll make it clear that she's not going to lay down and give up. (I can't tell if that's just because of Kaito or something deeper in her character.) So the worst part about discovering Kaito's body is knowing she's devastated, even when she can't really express that. When Shuichi holds out hope Kaito isn't the victim, and Maki can't, it's so sad. When the kids finally conclude Kaito must be the victim, it's like losing him all over again, and you see the blue despair stuff over her face and it's just...ugh. The Exisal pretending to be Kaito calls her "Maki Roll" and she loses her cool about it, and I just wish she could get a hug, but she'd only take it from one person, and barring a miracle he's just gone, man. It's heavy.

I suspect if I was watching DRV3 cold, all of this wouldn't hit me so hard. But thinking about Kyoko for four years has me thinking about these scenes in terms of what Maki doesn't say, how she doesn't react, and what's going on in her head that she won't share. She's going through a lot more than she's letting on, except unlike Kyoko in DR1, the other kids can kinda tell, even if they don't understand. (Shout-out to Dorothy Elias-Fahn for the way she read "Th-There's now way she is [the culprit]! 'Cause...why would she kill Kaito!?")