making them kiss passionately in my mind

If there's one thing that bothered me the most when playing through YTTD, it was the survival rates for all the candidates. I feel as though most are relatively reasonable, and could be thought out fairly well.

There are a few on here I would contest, but those will be saved for a later analysis. My biggest concern here would be Naomichi's. He barely beat's Keiji's by a whopping 0.4% but I personally feel like something is amiss here. There's the very obvious fact that Naomichi can singlehandedly beat every single person on this list on a 1 on 1 fight (He supplexed Qtaro for crying out loud. No one stands a single chance). However aside from this I do not think it would warrant such a high survival rate.

Think about it for a second. Do you really think, if Naomichi had survived his first trial, that he would've had a good chance of beating the death game? We know from not only his minisode but throughout moments in chapter 3 that he's not the brightest. Obviously he's not dimwitted, but we know from the game that he is rash, quick to action, and easily angered. He does not fully think through his actions before going with them.

Case 1: The Maple Fight

Throughout this fight, we must not physically engage with Maple whatsoever. She is a complete and utter danger to the group, with no current way to defeat her the only option is to reason with her. During the fight, whenever we choose Naomichi to act, we see him agonizing over the fact he just can't straight up fight her. Naomichi is a man of action, we know this as from his minisode and his career as a boxer, he thinks of actions as his way to interact with others and engage in conflict.

That's why at the end of the fight, when Sara is unable to reconcile with Maple and the group is at a complete loss as to what to do, he doesn't think twice to go up and try to crush her head. He reasoned that, since her attacks come from behind her, this close range means he's not in danger. He doesn't stop to consider the fact that she might have another means to attack, or that she could even lock him in a similar move he did her using the black tendrils coming out from her. The entirety of this time he's been itching to just get in and deal with her the way he knows how to, and ultimately pays the consequences for not thinking it through.

Case 2: Revenge against Gruusem

During Naomichi's early career as a boxer, we find that he highly respected and admired Kobushi, the mentor that introduced him to the sport. After witnessing the defeat of his fellow boxer, Naomichi was understandably upset. Although it's after beating the boxer that incapacitated his mentor that something in Naomichi was set off.

Put yourself in Naomichi's place for a moment. You have just defeated the boxer that had brutally beaten the mentor you had looked up to since you were in middle school. A mentor who had teased you about being first rate and second rate fighters, something you've already internalized. A mentor who previously had beaten you and showed you up in power. You have internalized these ideas of being strong and weak for years, and now, just now you are riding the high of a fight and the context of it. You are a hot headed, quick to action punk with adrenaline coursing through your veins and anger deep in your heart.

Naomichi only takes a moment to think, but he does not think over whether he should or shouldn't. He thinks only of his next action. He makes the fight personal and beats Gruusem without a second of hesitation. This goes beyond just being an unsportsmanlike act, this is downright cruel and unjust behavior. Naomichi loses complete control of himself and as a result, completely cripples someone.

Though, it's during this act that we get what convinced me of Naomichi's character and survival rate. The lines that follow him beating Gruusem go as follows.

This kind of line gives me chills, specifically coming from him. Because as of before the episode release, I refused to believe he had the second highest survival rate. And to an extent I still do, but I'll get to that in a moment. What's important here is we finally get to see the unwavering spirit of Naomichi's strive for strength and power. He is fully bought into the line of reasoning that the strong eat the weak, and that by being strong he is in that position of power. This line makes it so interesting that he gets paired with Kanna/Shin, two candidates who are known for their weakness. Additionally, this line implies that he saw himself as weak before, which is why he so urgently and passionately sought the path to strength. If given the right push he would absolutely overpower anyone in his way, hence the nickname Convertible of Destruction. How right this nickname would be.

However, despite having such a strong spirit and me being convinced of his chance in surviving the death game, I still refuse to believe he'd have such a high percent. As proven in my two cases, Naomichi is a rash decision maker. He wouldn't be able to fully rationally think through the schemes and lies other characters would enact. He would respond as he normally would, with action and threats. However, I refuse to believe that he would, if given the chance, get away with fighting and beating the other candidates and participants to incapacity or death. If the Memorandum Theory is to be the route Nankidai is taking, there is no chance Naomichi would've gotten away with violently winning the death game. The death game was set up so intricately and carefully, the floormasters are all there for a reason. Even without considering the Memorandum Theory, it's difficult to think that they'd let him win like this. For as much as Midori endorses a bloodbath of a game, in reality there could be no such case. The death game must be played, the death game must adhere to the strict rules that have been put in place.

Which brings me to my final point. The survival rates for all the participants have been toyed with in some way. This isn't a new idea, as the Memorandum Theory suggests the same thing. I would like to suggest that rather being some sort of interference either with simulations or otherwise, it was a simple case of switching around the rates. There's the possibility of some being deliberately written wrong, but I think it's more likely the case that a few were switched. Given everything I've laid out here and what we know in canon, I personally would assign Naomichi a survival rate starting anywhere from 7% and as low as 5%, so putting him in the range from no higher than Mai Tsurugi and as low as Ranmaru Kageyama.