君は絶望という名の希望に微笑む

I was replaying SDR2 on the Vita today and noticed this sprite of Komaeda that seemed familiar yet…different.

The regular version's still in the game, at least in non-trial segments...

...but the one in the trial definitely looks different. And it's consistent, too - that version seems to be used every time that sprite comes up in a trial.

Abuse is abuse whether it’s intentional or not ok. you can’t magically wave a wand and say ‘this person didn’t mean it!!’ and have it go away that’s not how it works. you know that right? it doesn’t matter whether the abuser meant it or intended it or wanted it — if someone is mistreating another person it is not ok, whether it’s ‘on purpose’ or not. this is not something komaeda can’t control. you can control being a dickbag. you can control being super excited about hope and talent and all that.

even if, hypothetically, they ~couldn’t~ control it, it’s still abusive. it’s still abusive! it doesn’t matter what the abuser thinks it matters what the person being abused thinks! wow

komaeda has literally outright said that their intentions are to push everyone to the limit and see what their ~hope and talent~ do like how is that, an ok thing to do. komaeda wants to kick people down to see them scramble back up. remember literally all of the first trial where they planned to kill someone and just see what happened cause they wanted to kickstart hope. with murder. what a nice person they knew who it was the entire time and everything lmao just keep that bit a secret

i’m not going to play your quote game because fuck that

i was under the impression that the theme of sdr2 was more like ‘having good intentions while being a manipulative douchebag fucks shit up’ or ‘you have to overcome people who drag you down even if you think they’re friends’ or w/e.

the whole point of komaeda nagito is that they’re an asshole idgi

Komaeda IS DISABLED

HE HAS FRONTOTEMPORAL DEMENTIA WHICH CAUSES A LOT OF HIS HOPE OBSESSION FOR FUCK’S SAKE

It causes him to act outside of his own personal control- therefore the intent isn’t magic rule of thumb doesn’t always APPLY to his actions. Because a lot of those actions are ones that he actually has no freaking control over, because of a DISEASE which forces him to act that way, get hyper-obsessed over the idea of hope, and he’s unable to see HOW toxic it is as a result and also how he upsets people with his actions. That is something he LAMENTS and says he cannot fucking help. It is not ABUSE, because he is not consciously causing GRIEF to other people. No, he believes he is trying to help everyone. He believes that people can grow STRONGER using hope the way he does. He thinks that’s common SENSE.

It is literally fucking spelled out for you in the first trial you dimwit.

i really don’t think that someone having a brain disease or a disability necessary excuses their manipulative toxic behavior. it can cause it but it doesn’t excuse it

i may be wrong. i don’t know, i’m not an expert on this sort of thing and that’s really my responsibility. but

2. It doesn't excuse any sort of questionable actions, no, but it does need to be kept in mind. Frontotemporal dementia, the condition Komaeda has, twists a person's behavior; one of the main ways that shows is through an inability to tell when something is considered inappropriate (often leading to saying things that can be taken as rude or hurtful when they aren't remotely intended to be either, or doing things that others would see as not entirely rational). Developing an obsessive fixation on something is one of the more prominent symptoms, too.

I'd really suggest reading at least this article written by a doctor with FTD, as it gives a lot of insight on it. What I'll say here is that it definitely qualifies as a disability, since it gradually breaks down a person's ability to regulate their emotions and their ability to interact with others - literally, as it's essentially a form of brain rot.

Gaslighting, the form of abuse you mentioned, is an intentional, extremely harmful and often long-term form of mental abuse. It's willfully manipulating someone in a way that drives them to think they may seriously be insane. None of what Komaeda does during the game comes even remotely close to qualifying as that, and considering that the series' staff have emphasized over and over that he's a well-intentioned, genuinely friendly person, I can guarantee you that he isn't supposed to be seen as some horrible manipulative bastard who'd do something of that caliber.

If anything did come across that way, there's a good chance that it's a translation problem. A lot of Komaeda's dialogue relies on wording that's easy to lose when translated to English. I've seen that come up with several of the translations floating around, and it can change the tone of his lines pretty dramatically.

If you can think of any specific instances, I'd be willing to take a look at the original text for comparison. At the moment, though, I honestly can't think of any instances that qualify as genuinely abusive, let alone to the point of qualifying as gaslighting - and since accusations of this nature are a very touchy subject given Komaeda's FTD, it'd probably be for the best to confirm if it's based on a mistranslation.

Since Chapter 1 came up already - it's been confirmed by now that he never aimed to kill someone else, but that he wanted to let himself be killed so one of the others would have the chance to escape the island instead of having everyone waste away on the islands (a thought he's notably terrified by). Not the most rational decision, but proper reasoning is another thing that's affected by his condition.

see.. the reason I ask

Expecting to be accused of murder doesn't automatically mean he's going to be capable of handling being accused. Remember that the reactions from everyone when suspicion shifted to him were pretty severe - it's easily possible that some of the reactions struck more of a nerve than he'd expected.

As for why I got that impression myself, two reasons. The first would be how it's portrayed in-game: he starts off handling it fairly well initially, but his composure starts both visibly and audibly slipping as more of the students chime in with more (and increasingly aggressive) accusations, culminating in Hinata's (rather upset) final accusation even prompting the sprite officially labeled as "disorder/confusion" - one of three in the entire game (the other two being when he's panicking about the Despair Disease just before passing out, and when panicking about the dangers of fighter aircrafts in Dangan Island).

In contrast to the dramatics that follow that meltdown, to his speech earlier in the trial, and even to his actions in the later chapters, it comes across as more of a genuine outburst than a forced attempt at drawing suspicion to himself.

The other reason would be that even in the manga adaptations, he comes across as genuinely distressed as the accusations pile up (1, 2, 3, 4; 1, 2, 3; 1, 2, 3).

Regarding Hanamura, Komaeda wasn’t really trying to take the fall for him so much as further dilute the mystery and make sure whichever hope prevailed was stronger. I’m sure you know this, but even so, it’s probably best to clarify for the sake of discussion.

...No, he was trying to take the fall for Hanamura. Hanamura's attempt to kill him already proved that he held a strong hope, and because of that and the fact that Komaeda feels he should've died rather than Togami, he offers to cover for Hanamura so that Hanamura can escape. The 超高校級の幸運と希望と絶望 manga basically spells that out (1, 2, 3), as does the regular manga (1, 2).

He doesn't start flip-flopping between the two sides until after the first evidence that he wasn't the culprit comes to light, and it's not until close to the end of the trial that he stops trying to deflect suspicion from Hanamura (which he pretty much outright announces once he does; it's a few lines before Hanamura devolves into borderline gibberish).

Anyway.

That first scene definitely isn't an instance of FTD-influenced behavior, aside from maybe blurting out his thoughts instead of keeping them to himself. The culprit line is, more likely than not, either a simple slip of memory (which do happen; that doesn't have to be tied to a mental condition), or him intentionally acting suspicious. Considering how close to his speech that happens, I'd suspect the latter myself, but that's just my opinion.

...In fact, given the rest of that part (and the second part you quoted), I'd say it's almost definitely him acting suspicious on purpose. Being inconsistent about what he says is pretty strange, and since he was trying to cover for Hanamura, it makes sense that he'd try to draw suspicion to himself through small things like that.

I’d like to see what other explanation you may have for this, though it’d be nice if you talked less about “impression,” as I’ve noticed you tend to, and more about facts.

see.. the reason I ask

That is what those "gaslighting" accusations were about? The traitor speculation in Chapter 4 and Souda's reactions to it?

...You're kidding me, right? Even ignoring the fact that's twisting the actual events during that part immensely, that is not what gaslighting is. At all.

Gaslighting is mentally abusing someone through false information to make the victim doubt their own sanity. Like making them think they've been stealing things from others in their sleep by moving objects to their room at night, or claiming they're just hallucinating when they see the lights flicker, and doing that sort of thing over and over and overwhile trying to convince them they're just losing their mind until they start to believe exactly that. Actual gaslighting is a really serious form of abuse.

That part in Chapter 4? That was the result of a discussion regarding the traitor leading to Komaeda mentioning that he thinks Hinata's the most likely candidate for that (because he's the only one who doesn't know his talent, and because he doesn't act suspicious beyond that - logic dictates that the traitor would want to blend in with the other students, after all), with Souda immediately latching on to that possibility and overreacting to it, with Souda then taking the Surprise House mess as further "evidence," since Hinata was the one who suggested taking the train to it (because Monokuma had mentioned that another file might be found there, namely the one that might have his talent listed in it).

Overreacting and getting super fixated on an initial suspicion that's not necessarily backed by any concrete evidence is what Souda does. If Komaeda hadn't mentioned the possibility that Hinata's the traitor himself, it'd have come up anyway sooner or later, and he'd still have reacted like that. What he did wasn't "egging Souda on to suspect Hinata," and it sure as hell wasn't even remotely close to actual gaslighting.

...mrr. That rant aside, to address the actual question...

I'm going to be honest: in my opinion, trying to separate what of Komaeda's behavior is affected by his frontotemporal dementia and what isn't (or is the result of other factors) really isn't a good idea. FTD doesn't just selectively affect random actions of his - it's more of an underlying factor that alters how he acts and perceives in general. It shows the most in terms of his ability to make decisions (his choices tend to be a bit more skewed toward extreme approaches than those of a regular person, for example), his ability to notice how his behavior affects others, even in casual circumstances (which is really limited; he tends to have serious trouble telling how his actions affect others unless he's blatantly told, and even then he doesn't always seem to fully grasp why the actions of someone like him would affect others that way), and his stunted tact (see the many many times he ends up saying something he really shouldn't have or expresses himself really badly; this sort of goes hand in hand with the previous one, though), but ultimately, for the Komaeda we see in the game, it doesn't affect just these things - it's an omnipresent influence, though how much of a problem it is obviously varies.

Think of it as more akin to depression. One way or another, it'll affect most (if not all) of your thoughts and actions, but just how much that influence affects you varies. Sometimes it'll just leave you unable to enjoy what you're doing, other times it'll make you say awful things to others that you'd never even think to say while healthy, and other times still it can lead to you doing something that brings harm to yourself or those around you.

The difference is that while depression's curable, and can - to some extent - be kept in check with antidepressants, frontotemporal dementia is incurable, gets progressively worse, and while it's possible to try to keep some of the behavioral symptoms in check with medication, you can't do anything about the cause that way, so the symptoms will eventually get worse even if you do that.

As for that particular part of Chapter 1... the manga adaptations all made it look like a legitimate meltdown, too - at least up until the outburst of laughter (the one with the accompanying CG in-game). The impression I got was that the meltdown was his reaction to being accused (which he clearly had trouble handling), and when he managed to recompose himself, he lapsed into (rather careful - there's a lot of very cautious wording on his part during this bit) intentional dramatics to try to draw more suspicion to himself, since he was trying to take the fall for Hanamura as agreed before the trial. (Notably, while his initial post-meltdown outburst is pretty over the top, he mellows out again a bit as soon as Tsumiki interrupts the attempted vote to speak up about the inconsistency between the knife he planted and the murder weapon.)

This is Logan, Jessica’s calico cat. She comes running if she hears someone cry or yell to cheer them up, she sleeps next to her owner’s pillow, she jumps on the fridge and swipes at her until she can brush against her - basically, she’s a wonderful cat.

She’s also suffering from feline cancer, and will probably die if nothing’s done about it.

Unfortunately, Jessica can’t afford the treatment to save Logan on her own - she’s an insulin-dependent diabetic and just doesn’t have the money to cover the costs for the treatment on top of her already high living costs. She’s been trying to raise donations to help save Logan for the last few months, with little success, and in the meantime Logan’s condition has gotten bad enough that she keeps bleeding from her tumor.

So I’d like to make a request on her behalf, to everyone who’s reading this:

If you can, please donate to Logan’s treatment! If you can’t, please help spread the word!

Let me get this straight.

Unless the artist specifically puts a warning on both their pixiv account, twitter or whatever else site they use for sharing art…it means it’s ok to treat the material (be it just sketches or rough drafts) as to be free for anyone to re-post as much as they want?

Is that the logic at work here?

.

.

.

No. Just no.

Respecting another persons work includes giving them the rights to be the only one to decide what happens to it. If you are going to use lack of awareness and language barriers for your own gain like this, then you are nothing more but a thief.

please please please refrain from posting カラ子's (pixiv) pictures on tumblr. i’ve seen their artwork in the tags several times with thousands of notes as well.

I personally asked them on their twitter about how they feel about their illustrations being reposted on tumblr and they replied saying that they don’t have a tumblr, so please help them remove reposts. It’s extremely rude and disrespectful to the artist when people post their work, not only without their permission, but their unfinished work as well. 

Okay, time for a rant.

There’s one thing that bugs me about some SDR2 fans, and that’s those that think Komaeda has dementia and lymphoma, despite the plot holes in the game that would be caused if he had. I honestly think the majority of those that believe that he is suffering from those two...

----

I addressed a lot of this in my personal thoughts on what Komaeda said already, but I'll try to elaborate a bit here.

1. The life expectancy

First of all, Komaeda's life expectancy of "half a year to a year" was an estimate, and those can be off - quite possibly by a fair bit, as there have been people who've outlived their original life expectancy by literally years. The thought of him potentially living a few years past his original life expectancy might be strange at first, but it's far from impossible. Add Komaeda's luck, which has a track record of causing a lot of improbable things to happen, and it's even more likely.

Aside from that, his life expectancy was based on two conditions. Of the two, malignant lymphoma is more likely to be fatal... but it's also treatable, and since we do know that Kibougamine has medical facilities, it's not impossible that he might have received treatment for it during his time there.

That would leave his frontotemporal dementia, which isn't curable. The average life expectancy for that is anywhere from two years to a decade, and it's not unheard of for people with it to potentially live even longer than that if it's a slowly-progressing variant. Komaeda does exhibit a large number of the earlier symptoms in the game (a few samples are mentioned in the link near the start of this post), so there's a good chance that he does, indeed, have a slowly-progressing variant of FTD.

2. Hinata's remark

Hinata's remark is definitely NOT the game hinting at anything. It's literally just one of his thoughts, colored by his own suspicions of Komaeda - it's pretty clear that in the main story (and only the main story, as they're on pretty friendly terms in Dangan Island), Hinata has trouble trusting Komaeda after the events of the first chapter, and this same distrust leads to him completely misunderstanding him a few times (most notably in Chapter 5, where he gets Komaeda's actual intentions so horribly wrong that Monokuma outright mocks him for it). If anything, that line just shows that Komaeda's line about the book he read threw Hinata off - prior to that, he does actually seem to believe Komaeda, to the point of starting to reconsider if his actions were really unforgivable in light of what he just learned.

Hinata also definitely did not recognize the aborted confession as such - the student ID's recap for the event makes that pretty clear.

The "lie" here, if anything, would be Komaeda's attempt to paint what he told Hinata as a lie, and that's more him being evasive than anything.

3. "Komaeda lies a lot!"

If there's one thing Spike has been highlighting a lot, it's that Komaeda is actually a pretty honest person. The game itself already establishes that to some extent: the Despair Disease, which seems to invert the affected person's most prominent personality trait, turns him into a liar. His internal narration when we play as him in Chapter 4 corresponds perfectly to the things he says and does. In Dangan Island, there isn't even a single instance of him lying or being malicious in any way.

Extra materials and commentary make that even clearer. Ogata, his voice actress (who notably influenced his character a bit), considers him a honest person. Komaeda's chapter of the Dangan Island manga (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) showcases his helpful nature, which is also mentioned in the Setting Material Collection. His official profile notes that he seemingly holds no ill will, with more recent versions of it (such as his profile in the September issue of Famitsu) removing the "seemingly," a change that's retained in Jin's description of him in the mini-novel included with volume 1 of the anime. His own spinoff manga, 超高校級の幸運と希望と絶望, shows the same overlap between his thoughts and the things he says/does as his segment in Chapter 4 but for the rest of the story, and clarifies a lot of his actions a bit more than the game itself did.

There aren't actually a lot of instances where Komaeda definitely lied, and they're all out of necessity. In Chapter 2, he lies to gather the people mentioned in Twilight Syndrome's credits at the airport, which he admits and apologizes for - but that was literally necessary for the investigation at the time. In Chapter 3, he "lies" about the rope being unimportant - it was unimportant at the time, and in addition to that, he and Hinata were having that conversation in front of Tsumiki, who was the person he suspected from the get-go. Pointing out the rope's potential importance right away could have led to her making excuses, which would've made it much harder to actually convict her for her actions. The last is in Chapter 4, about the contents of the file he received - the last scene of the chapter makes it clear that he lied because he didn't want the others to be burdened by the truth (aka their status as SHSL Despair), and he's pretty clearly surprised that nobody called his lie.

"Lying about murdering people before"... I'm not sure what you're referring to here. If you're referring to how his luck caused the deaths of people around him (such as his parents), that's not a lie; that's all but outright confirmed in the Setting Material Collection and flat-out confirmed (twice, now) in his spinoff manga. If you're referring to his line about how he's going to commit a murder when Teruteru confronts him in Chapter 1 - mistranslation. The original line is a question, giving the line a "that's what it seems like to you, doesn't it?" sort of tone. Even if we ignore that, though, he was trying to get himself murdered so at least one of the students would have a chance to escape the island, so regardless of how you look at it, that wasn't a lie.

And as for his plan in Chapter 5... I think you may want to reread that chapter again. His plan wasn't "let's get everyone killed for the sake of hope." It was "try to have everyone but the traitor executed because we're SHSL Despair and our existence could threaten the world." Tsumiki already relapsed, after all, and Owari got pretty close. The Future Foundation had the same view - the remnants of SHSL Despair need to die, or otherwise the Incident will continue. That's why Naegi got in trouble with them for sheltering the remnants instead.

It's still a pretty morally questionable plan, but he definitely wasn't trying to get everyone killed just for the sake of hope itself.

4. The newer materials

Aside from emphasizing Komaeda's honest nature, there's been a fair number of extra materials that made it increasingly clear that Komaeda wasn't lying about anything - not about his past, and not about his conditions.

The very first chapter of his spinoff manga confirmed his story about the death of his parents, which the Setting Material Collection also heavily hinted at, and which the game itself hinted at with his reaction to the aircrafts at the Jabberwock Army facilities in Dangan Island.

The most recent chapter had a nightmare sequence that also showcased a few things - the death of Komaeda's parents is included here too, albeit in more detail.

It also showed the kidnapping, which was already hinted at in-game by his negative reactions to the gag ball and to movies with serial killers in Dangan Island.

And, most importantly for this post, it also showed the moment he received the diagnosis for his conditions - something the game itself hinted at with his behavior (which matches up very well with the earlier symptoms of frontotemporal dementia), and by Kamukura's comment about Komaeda having "the stench of someone at their life's end," and which the Setting Material Collection also supported by not-so-subtly hinting that the color of his hair and his sickly pale skin are likely the result of poor health.