THH may be my least favourite danganronpa game but that really just says a lot about how much i love the series. i genuinely think All*Star*Apologies is the best written chapter in the entire damn franchise. to me it is perfect in every single way: the structure of its trial (the way in which toko and yasuhiro are suspected first and then the game subverts your expectations by implicating hina, sakura's best friend, as the murderer), its final twist (sakura killed herself; hina was scheming!), even the beautiful simplicity of its premise while still being exciting and mysterious to figure out (the whole locked-room mystery and the poison are not difficult or convoluted to grasp at all unlike, say, mikan's twitch livestream or kirumi's looney-tunes bullshit). the larger theme of kyoko vs byakuya vs hina, what a genuinely goated trio as a point of conflict. byakuya vs hina was already built up throughout the chapter but it goes further back than that as a throughline the entire game, that we had established byakuya as the logical superego and hina as the emotional id. what hits byakuya the most and what makes his downfall so satisfying (to us and, most likely, to kyoko) is that he was outsmarted by hina. hina, who he considers to be a stupid, overemotional idiot, tricked him fully and completely. if it weren't for kyoko the ego, the middle ground between logic and humanity, who figures out hina specifically because she is not only intelligent but also understanding of how hina feels, byakuya would have fell for the trap and died along with everyone else just like hina wanted. because byakuya never considered how hina feels. he never considers how anyone feels. for the first time he is forced to confront that living like that almost killed him.
and like i said everyone who enjoys this game must truly give hina her flowers because she is simply glorious during this chapter. like on a baseline, trying to commit what is essentially a murder-suicide because your girlfriend died and you believe yourself and everyone around you to be responsible is awesome. the fact that, when everyone else thought of sakura as a traitor, hina alone stood by her side, loyal to the end. the reveal that sakura thought of everyone as her friends, even when they hated her. maybe even when they tried to kill her. she was so selfless she sacrificed herself so everyone could stop fighting, and she was happy to do it, the exact opposite of a traitor. if i were hina, i would feel resentment as well! it's genuinely heart-rending! and there's something crazy to witness about hina, who has mostly been the bubbly upbeat genki girl, whose anger has always been righteous, just losing it in desperation as she gets found out. she is voiced by the one and only cassandra lee morris so of course she is good but jesus what a performance. ("it's over." "nothing's over! i did it! i killed sakura!") nobody ever acknowledges it because her personality is remarkably different and she is not very calm or collected or cunning, but in this vein she is almost exactly like kokichi or nagito, playing the mastermind villain to lead the group to a conclusion she believes is right. (though naturally kokichi is far more heroic than hina is being and nagito is... far beyond those two in terms of being cuckoo bananas).
her final suicide note is such a hit as well! the pain of hina falling for the fake suicide note that led her down her path of fury! i love how the game never, ever tries to villainize hina for what she does, even if it's objectively wrong. she's just a girl who lost her best and dearest friend, after days of witnessing her being suspected and ostracized by everyone around them. "i'd rather be dead than alone." but even with sakura gone she was not alone. sakura died so she wouldn't have to be alone. i'm sure that's what she realised after reading the real suicide note, just like how everyone else in the cast realised the folly of their behaviour in regards to how they treated sakura. sakura, who does not fit the mold of a typical dainty conventionally attractive girl, who was treated as an invulnerable object they could attack simply because she was physically strong, was just as human as the rest of them, and hina was the only one who recognised that. She had weaknesses, just like any other person. If she got cut, she bled. If someone hurt her, she felt it. That's weakness... that's normal...!
hina was perfect for sakura not because she recognised her strengthāafter all, everyone knew sakura was strongābut because she recognised her weakness. this alllll loops back into the overall plot the depth of sakura and hina's relationship tied into the theme of kyoko and byakuya and what it means to be truly intelligent, and it's flawless really. and in the end, this chapter also proves kyoko as one of the best detectives to ever do it, simply because of this dialogue of hers:
You still haven't realised? We don't all act according to calculations and cost-benefit diagrams. That's what makes us so complicated. That's what you don't understand, and that's why you couldn't solve this case. ... See? Didn't I tell you? When you dismiss other people's feelings, it'll always come back to bite you in the end.
and it's why it frustrates me when people portray kyoko as someone who cannot understand human emotion. she's quite the opposite. she has emotional issues herself, but that doesn't change the fact that she knows humans, and she knows humanity.
after all, she is the Ultimate Detective. and what's a detective if not a scientist of humans?
blakekathryn
titsay
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
