#rival-chan

I...have been watching a lot of Yandere Simulator videos lately... ``</c

and it is because of this character! <X/

Let’s start off with the very first teaser we received of The Mysterious Obstacle.

From this we can easily deduce that The Mysterious Obstacle is a female student, since she is wearing the female uniform. Good? Good.

Next piece of evidence is this.

“Protective; Can be seen by unlocking all student information by pressing the S key in the debug menu and checking the second reserved student slot.”

How does this tie into the above? Well, in the teaser image the Mysterious Obstacle can be seen reaching for the armed Ayano. In this slot--reserved for the Mysterious Obstacle--the Personality is listed as Protective, and the Self-Defense as Invincible. 

This explains what’s going on in the teaser image; the Mysterious Obstacle isn’t just trying to stop Ayano--she’s trying to protect Osana! Hence her personality-- Protective.

Now, next evidence.

Here we see teaser images of the Mysterious Obstacle. In his blog post, YandereDev states he purposely used a silhouetted, nondescript model to represent the Mysterious Obstacle. More on why that matters later.

I know what you’re thinking. “Well, maybe that’s Osana’s stalker! I mean, she’s just following Osana around.”

However, you must remember: Osana’s stalker calls her in school. If the Mysterious Obstacle, a student at Akademi High, were Osana’s stalker, why would she call her when they’re in the same vicinity? Also, from Osana’s phone call we can tell she’s very hostile towards her stalker. but in two of the preview images, Osana is perfectly okay with being around the Mysterious Obstacle.

“Well why does that matter kokona-octodogs?” It matters because it means the Mysterious Obstacle is not Osana’s stalker.

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s examine the preview images. The Mysterious Obstacle is either watching Osana from afar or standing nearby.

Remember the Personality from the Reserved Slot? It’s Protective.

That means the Mysterious Obstacle isn’t creeping around--she’s watching over Osana!

Let me backtrack to YD blogpost from March 28, 2017. Under bug fixes, we find this interesting note:

“Changed one line of text in Budo’s profile. This change is actually related to Osana. Have fun theorizing how!“

In-game, Budo’s profile reads as:

“President of the Martial Arts Club. Inherited the club after defeating the previous president.”

And then there’s this information on his character page from the official website:

“Budo became the leader of the Martial Arts Club after defeating the club's previous leader, who resigned after being beaten by her own pupil. There are rumors that the reason why Budo dedicated himself to martial arts is because he developed powerful romantic feelings for the club's previous leader, and desperately wanted to impress her. Budo always changes the subject when asked about this topic, neither confirming nor denying the rumors.”

Look back to the Reserved slot. What is listed in Self-Defense? Invincible.

What is former president of the Martial Arts club? Powerful. What is the Mysterious Obstacle? Powerful. Surely that cannot be a coincidence. 

Therefore: the Mysterious Obstacle is so powerful because she’s the former president of the Martial Arts Club.

Now... how does this relate to Rival-chan? Let’s begin with this:

Gee that pose looks famil--wait!

Same pose. Very interesting.

“Isn’t that a little circumstantial” Aren’t all theories circumstantial? That being said, let me ask you something: have you realize we haven’t gotten a single preview image of the Mysterious Obstacle? Not even a silhouette? We’ve gotten preview images of the Student Council, the Delinquents, the Bullies... but strangle enough, we haven’t received a single preview of the Mysterious Obstacle. Why is that?

Because Rival-chan is the Mysterious Obstacle of course! If YD showed us a preview or even a silhouette of the Mysterious Obstacle we could easily tell it is Rival-chan (she has a pretty distinct silhouette). Therefore, YD has purposely kept hush-hush on information regarding the Mysterious Obstacle.

And again, her Self-Defense is listed as Invincible. What’s another word for invincible?

Indestructible. 

And you know what else? Osana and Rival-chan look very similar in appearance. 

“Well duh, Osana was based around Rival-chan’s design” True, true, I won’t deny that. BUT perhaps this makes Rival-chan perfect for the role of the Mysterious Obstacle? Osana and Rival-chan look so much alike because they are BFFs--of course they’d have similar tastes!

TLDR; *incoherent ramblings from a sleep-deprived dweeb on how Rival-chan is the Mysterious Obstacle*