#monokumerz

The game opens with all four of the other Monokumerz gettingalong relatively well, and only Monodam being on the outskirts of things.Monotarou describes him as someone who “has become quiet and withdrawn becauseof bullying, and who will only talk to the people he’s opened up his heart to.”There’s then a hilarious scene where he goes “Right, Monodam?” and Monodamdoesn’t respond, and the joke is that Monodam hasn’t opened up to any of hissiblings at all because they’re the ones who’ve been bullying him in the firstplace.

The subplot with the Monokumerz really kicks off at the endof Chapter 1. Right at the end of Kaede’s execution, Monodam suddenly pushesMonokid, the worst of his bullies, into the piano as the lid closes, killinghim in front of everyone. The rest of his siblings are horrified and extremelynervous around him, but at the start of Chapter 2 Monodam explains that hewants the rest of them to all be friends and get along. Monotarou and Monofunnyare hesitant but interested in his claim; Monosuke, meanwhile, tells them notto let their guards down and not to forget what he did to Monokid.

But as time progresses and Monodam continues to express hiswish to be friends with the rest of them, Monotarou and Monofunny admit thatthey didn’t like Monokid very much either, because he was loud and obnoxious(and usually drunk). They start warming up to Monodam, and in the processMonosuke starts getting a lot louder and angrier about his distrust forMonodam. Monotarou and Monofunny get cross with him as a result, but Monodamactually sticks up for him, telling them “not to bully” Monosuke and offeringto be friends with him as well—an offer which Monosuke repeteadly andemphatically rejects.

The footing between Monosuke and Monodam is really rocky bythe end of Chapter 2 as a result, so when the opportunity presents itself,Monodam throws Monosuke into the execution again, getting him killed beneathKirumi’s falling corpse. Monotarou and Monofunny are really horrified this timearound, but Monodam swears he only did it because Monosuke was being a bully.As long as they’re “friendly” with each other, they all have nothing to worryabout.

At the beginning of Chapter 3, Monodam really takes centerstage as the most memorable mascot because he quite literally hijacks thekilling game not only from his siblings but from Monokuma himself. Granted,this entire development is scripted, and obviously just an extra subplot to “makethe killing game more exciting,” so it’s not like the Monokumerz ever really doanything of their own volition. But still, even if it’s all scripted and fake,it’s a really fun development.

The Monokumerz are the only ones capable of operating theExisals. Monokuma himself can’t operate them—so Monodam pretty much saysflat-out that they don’t feel like doing whatever Monokuma wants them to doanymore and that he has no way of forcing them to. He threatens Monokuma withthe Exisals and says that the killing game is now a “friendship game,” not forthe kids of course but for himself and his siblings. Monokuma goes into a stateof catatonic shock and gets bald patches all over his fur (and stays like thatfor probably ¾ths of the chapter), and meanwhile Monodam, Monotarou, andMonofunny all go off to enjoy themselves and their newfound “friendship game.”

Of course, Monotarou and Monofunny don’t really get a say inthe matter either. Anyone who isn’t interested in “being friends” will beperceived as a bully at this point and threatened on sight. So, of course, theydon’t argue with Monodam. Monodam’s transition from quiet and unresponsive bearwho seems like the weakest link in the group to this sort of hilariouslyterrifying enforcer of friendship is great,and honestly probably the most enjoyable development that ever happened withthe Monokumerz (though Monotarou and Monofunny do have a few great moments inChapter 4 too).

However, after thedouble murder occurs in Chapter 3, Korekiyo asks what happens if there are twomurders by two separate culprits, and Monodam has absolutely no idea how torespond or handle the situation. His inability to respond to an unforeseenproblem causes Monotarou and Monofunny to immediately go ask for Monokuma’shelp, and from that point on they start ignoring Monodam pretty blatantly.Monokuma welcomes them back with open arms, Monodam is pretty obviously shakenup about this, and even when he tries talking to them directly in theinvestigation or the trial after that, they don’t even bother giving him aresponse.

It’s pretty hard not to feel sorry for him after that. Hegets progressively quieter and quieter during the trial, until eventually he’sno longer even saying “Let’s all be friends,” but is completely silent wheneverMonotarou and Monofunny are talking to each other. And when the execution rollsaround this time around, rather than continuing his reign of terror and killingeither of his remaining siblings, he runs directly into the flames for Korekiyo’sexecution and kills himself instead. He was so honestly enjoyable in the firstthree chapters that it’s really hard not to feel sad about this, since he wasthe main driving force behind all the side-developments with the Monokumerz asa whole.

Of course, at the end of the Chapter 5 trial, Monodam andall the other Monokumerz are brought back to life by Monokuma. He clarifiesthat they’re not the same Monokumerz as before, but “all-new Monokumerz” whodon’t have any of their memories and haven’t lived the same experiences as theMonokumerz who were killed before (which is beautiful foreshadowing for the waythe killing game itself works). The Monokumerz take much more of a backseatrole in Chapter 6, since it’s clear that the ringleader didn’t originally planon bringing them back but only did so in order to use the Exisals to intimidateand coerce the rest of the characters into going along with the killing game.

In the Chapter 6 trial, they’re pretty much only there to becannon fodder for Monokuma to kill off quickly. The fact that they’ve overstayedtheir welcome and “aren’t interesting or funny anymore” is blatantlylampshaded. Monokid gets killed again only a few minutes into the debate,Monodam is tragic all over again because he’s killed next despite being theonly one in the group who was actually doing anything useful or responding toSaihara’s questions, and then Monosuke gets killed off too.

When Monofunny and Monotarou are once again the last twoMonokumerz left alive, they try pleading with Monokuma repeatedly to sparethem, to which he replies, “Ah, just shut up, we’re getting to the best part!No one even cares what you have to say anyway!” Which is… well, again, it’spretty much just the “Poochie” trope of how mascot characters are often throwninto shows and media in a cheap attempt to rope people in or hook them on a newseason. So it illustrates pretty directly that the Monokumerz don’t really haveany actual arcs of character development but are mostly there to be used asplot devices and follow along a pre-written script for entertainment value.

Regardless of that though, Monodam really is the mostenjoyable one out of the bunch. Monokid is barely present in the narrative,makes crude and gross comments where he is, and exists to be awful and dislikedby his other siblings. Monosuke is obnoxiously outspoken about distrustingMonodam and turns down all his offers of getting along (and having to translatehis Kansai-ben is an added pain in my ass). Monotarou and Monofunny have somepretty good moments but there’s also some really uncomfortable jokes in Chapter4 (Monotarou loses his memories and suddenly thinks he’s Monofunny’s abusive husbandinstead of her brother).

Quite a lot of the best and most illuminating hints aboutthe killing game show come from scenes where they’re involved, in my opinion. Ithink a lot of it has to do with the fact that they’re so clearly there for entertainment. In a show with 53 ongoingseasons, my best guess is that new and inventive twists had to be pulled withthe mascots so that people didn’t get simply bored of Monokuma on his own. AndMonomi was a fairly successful addition to sdr2—part of the fun for each newseason was probably thinking up new mascots to rope people in, adhering to asmany fictional tropes as possible in order to get people interested or excited.

I think I might have mentioned it in a post a long time agothat I wrote about the Monokumerz, but I feel like they’re essentiallycommentary on the fact that TV (especially cheap reality TV) will often usemascots as an attempt to keep the show ongoing without actually contributinganything new or exciting to the plot. To put it in Simpsons terms, it’d be Poochiethe Dog syndrome. And like with Poochie, it’s hilarious in ndrv3 because it’slampshaded to hell and back and all of them get killed off brutally only to getbrought back later down the line like it’s nothing.

Considering how most of the Monokumerz scenes involve bothgenre tropes (super sentai in particular) and parody scenes, it makes sensethat they’d give some of the best little bits of foreshadowing about thereality TV twist. Every single Monokuma theater is a parody of a famous moviescene; some of them even involve Monodam directly rather than Monokuma himself.Clearly it doesn’t matter which mascot is talking, as long as any of themascots constantly allude to the fact that ndrv3 has a lot to do with televised entertainment.

Even the fact that a lot of the jokes with the Monokumerzare often crass and gross and really bottom-of-the-barrel stuff is…well, partof it is still just there for the sake of being actually gross, but I think atleast some part of it is also a reflection of how this kind of humor and thesekinds of plot twists are often super popular when they’re part of reality showsor other entertainment. Himiko even admits to the fact that she loves cheap plot twists and dramaticdevelopments in her favorite soap operas. So the Monokumerz are definitelysupposed to be lampshading that kind of thing, I think.

It’s funny because as useless as they ultimately are, and asmuch as they’re supposed to be intentionally annoying mascot characters who youwant to get killed off, I still found myself at least getting attached to a fewof them. I was actually super glad when they got back in Chapter 5, if onlybecause of Monodam, who managed to steal the spotlight as the absolute best DRmascot character ever.

So, from what we know about Tsumugi’s big reveal asthe mastermind is that the entirety of the killing game was actually a realityshow in order to reenact the super popular DR franchise which is, in the ndrv3universe, fictional and a huge success. The show is in its 53rd season(hence, V as the Roman numeral for 5), and, like with any reality show, inorder to keep it successful and the ratings up, a huge number of plot twists,surprises, characters, and unforgettable events are required.

The entire twist is very tongue-in-cheek about theways in which obsession with fictional dynamics can lead to horriblederailments of a franchise and its installments, and Tsumugi in particular (westill don’t know much about how the rest of the producers felt about heractions, or if she even sort of got majorly carried away beyond what theyexpected her to do in her mastermind role) is not above cheating as long as itmeans the show can go on. Her first and only real goal is in making sure thatthe show remains hugely successful, so that she can continue throwing herselfinto her obsession with emulating all the worst parts of fiction and livingvicariously through these ideals that she’s put on a pedestal.

The Monokumerz are, in my opinion, about as cheesy ofa representation of unnecessary mascot characters created strictly to “boostratings” and to try to “save the show” as it can get. They’re all superone-dimensional, super caricatured, and the fact that they’re all so annoyingand even more mascot-like than Monokuma is by design. After all, how many timeshas it been on a long-running show that new mascot characters have been whippedup hurriedly in some attempt to give them cute, caricature-like traits for anaudience to latch onto in the hopes that they’ll draw in new viewers and keepold ones entertained? The Simpsons even had a whole episode addressing thiswith Poochie the dog, and I feel like the Monokumerz are actually supposed tobe something along a similar line of thought.

In a show that’s been running for supposedly 53seasons or episodes or what have you, this kind of character creation is aninevitable and desperate part of trying to keep the audience attached—and a badone at that, hence why it’s subverted with the Monokumerz all dying horriblyand dynamically in every single execution and then coming back around as ifnothing happened, etc. Tsumugi and the other producers were trying to add “extraside characters” and a “subplot” for longtime audience viewers to keep up with:the Monokumerz have drama and infighting within their dynamic, they go arounddoing wacky reenactments and parodies of famous movies and commercials, and theentire subplot with them in-game revolves around trying to keep the ndrv3audience watching the game guessing which one of the Monokumerz is going to dienext.