Lurker > Suprak the Stud

Likeumyour evidence that it wasnt you was that you saw someone else do it? You know who has no reason to believe you? Literally everyone at the trial. There is some circumstantial evidence pointing at Mondo, sure, but do you really think your fellow classmates are going to believe this when 1) you continuously insult them, 2) you taunt them by telling youre going to kill on a daily basis, and 3) you admit to doing all the other extra stuff around the murder (other than moving the crime scene) for the benefit of nothing else than making things more difficult? No one is going to believe that. When you point evidence at yourself, you cant just later go lol just kidding and expect people to believe you. This is such a colossally stupid plan with no benefit. Do you want to see who is good at deduction and solving these murders? Just dont disclose the fact that you saw Mondo do it. You get mostly the same information and dont risk dying to get it.

I mean, I know I just went on this huge aside here, but that isnt even the main reason I dont like Byakuya. I dont like him because hes annoying, and pompous, and just kind of an asshole. His big face turn at the end consists of him still being mostly an asshole at all times, but just not an asshole that is constantly threatening to kill us. Hey. Byakuya. That isnt a face turn. Thats just you doing the bare minimum to be a normal, functioning member of society. Hes supposed to have this big moment in the fourth case where he realizes the error of his ways (which, again, is triggered by him being dumb and not bothering to actually think through all the evidence because he is so sure of his superiority), and the pay off is 1) he says please when he asks for Kyoko to tell him what he missed in case 4 and 2) he now deigns to bless us with his presence which is something I was perfectly fine going without. He isnt significantly better than he was before his face turn. He just isnt actively planning to murder us now. He still talks down to us even though he continuously does dumb things (arbitrarily forcing Kyoko to give up her key because she cant remember anything) or makes stupid oversights (somehow forgetting he had Kyokos key so she couldnt have gotten into her room). He still has gross interactions with Toko. He still is basically the same character that I didnt like before, just a slightly less toned down version of it.

This should also explain a bit why a couple of other characters were so low. Ultimate Imposter is annoying enough as a concept, but he was imitating someone I didnt particularly like in the first place. Fuyuhiko was giving me Byakuya flashbacks, but just a redundant version of it. I just dont like this character archetype, I think is my biggest problem. The snob elitist who talks down to everyone but then sort of realizes the error of his ways and vows to be slightly less snobby and slightly less elitist maybe if he feels like it. Hes always acting like were lucky to be talking to him, which was absolutely not the impression I was getting from talking to him. He spends four whole cases as essentially a one note character who was lab created to be hateable. It is kinda hard to put that genie back in the bottle at this point, and by the time they tried to make him more likeable it was basically too late. He was another character, like Toko, that the first game forced me to lug around against my will.

As for why he is this high even though I just wrote a mini-essay complaining about him, he does get slightly more tolerable in the final case. He still isnt humbled, but he is at least humbled to the point where he doesnt sound like a trust fund douche every single time he talks. Maybe all my hatred was concentrated at Toko at that point, but he wasnt as annoying in the fifth case and definitely a bit better in the sixth and I probably wouldnt have minded as much if I didnt have all these negative feelings toward him stored at that point. His role also at least makes sense in the context of the game. You need a character like this for tension, even if I didnt think he was executed all that well. I dont mind the idea behind him if they had toned down a couple of things just slightly. Oh, and his voice actor I found to be a lot better than Fuyuhiko. I could honestly swap these two, but the main thing to me came down to liking the voice actor here better.

---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

#32: Byakuya Togami
Main Cast (Male) Ranking: 12/16
Survivor Ranking: 9/11
Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Affluent Prodigy
Actual Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Affluent Asshole

Welcome to part two of my three part series characters Suprak hates that you like and will get you to stop reading my rankings because of my terrible opinions. I apologize in advance. Well, not really advance, anymore. I apologize halfway through. I actually thought placing Byakuya this low was more controversial than Fuyuhiko, but based on some recent responses I might actually be wrong about that and more people hate Byakuya than I thought. Well, ok, I dont totally hate him. This tier is really for characters I more have a notable dislike for even though they do some good stuff every once in a while. That happens to pretty much perfectly describe how I feel about Byakuya, so in a way he is the perfect embodiment of this tier.

I mightve been a bit unfair with my clue, as Byakuya is probably not the guy that stands out when you think of really stupid characters. There are some painfully dumb characters that make it out of these games alive, and Byakuya at least isnt accusing people of being ghosts or drooling in the corner while everyone is investigating. I will stand by my accusation though, as I think Byakuya does some of the dumbest things of any character in either game. And what is annoying is how the game keeps insisting he is smart, when his every action is serving as evidence to the contrary. Maybe it would be safer to say he is less dumb and more so egotistical that he cannot fathom how other people think and it leads him to doing a series of really dumb actions throughout the course of the game but it still leads to so many dumb things.

Byakuya is positioned as the villain early in the game, which could be sort of fun. Some upcoming spoilers, but I did like how they did this with Nagito in the second game. But Byakuya doesnt work nearly as well because Byakuya, despite loudly announcing every chance he gets that he and he alone understands how this game works, has no fucking clue how this game works. He keeps announcing how he will kill someone and how it will be glorious, and it ranks up with the dumbest action taken by any character in either game. When Fuyuhiko does this in the second game, I got more of the impression that he was bluffing. Hey guys Im a big tough yukuza and I do big tough things because Im a big tough guy and not two toddlers sitting on each others shoulders in an expensive suit. With Byakuya though, it is pretty clear he means it. He talks about it in his free time events, he brings it up multiple times throughout the course of the game, and he loudly proclaims it every chance he gets in a group setting. The game wants you to know that Byakuya is out to kill someone and is meant to be that element of danger (and the constant red herring) in the back of your mind. Oh shoot someone is dead well Byakuya said he wanted to murder someone by drowning them in his Scrooge McDuck money binmaybe it was him sort of thing. By doing this though, they make Byakuya look like an idiot.

I could not stop thinking that the absolute DUMBEST way to pull this off is to tell everyone you were going to do it before you do it. It serves no purpose. If youre not an idiot, you do it like Celeste. You tell everyone how great it is and how we need to get used to living here even if you hate living here. Thats devious mastermind stuff right there. Byakuya saying Im going to win this game by murdering someone is like going up to someone and saying Im going to throw a surprise party for you two weeks before your birthday so you're surprised. Now, part of this isnt his fault as a character. Part of this is on the writers for not thinking how to add in that element of danger. Nagito is great because hes insane and doesnt care if people know hes up to crazy stuff. Byakuya, who at least outwardly says he wants to win the game, hampers his chances of doing so by telling everyone. Now, of course he keeps telling everyone so chapter 4 can be more dramatic when he gets mad at tells Monokuma hes bowing out of the game and is going to fight him and him alone. His whole character was set up for that late game face turn, but the way they set him up as a heel comes off clumsy. He can be a rich jerk and a snob and an elitist asshole (and he is, even later in the game). Fine! Great! Perfect! What he cant do is be the super smart character and the character loudly telling everyone how he is going to murder when the plan needs to be to get away with murder. Part of this can be explained away by the fact he is an egotistic bastard that thinks he is so much smarter than everyone else he doesnt care that hes tipping his hand. But it is precisely because of his ego that he is so 1) annoying and 2) dumb.

Oh, and speaking of dumb, what I really want to talk about with Byakuya is the single dumbest red herring in either game. Dumber than Hiro passed out in a robot costume. Dumber than whatever the hell Peko was trying to do in case 2. Dumber than anything else you can think of. Byakuyas plot to implicate Toko and then himself to figure out who the smart characters were and who he needed to watch out for was one of the most eye-rolling moments for me in either game. Not because I thought the writing was bad or because it didnt fit Byakuyas character, but because it did fit his character and really cemented my thoughts of him being an egotistic idiot. He frames Toko and himself for a crime after seeing Mondo walk away from Chihiros corpse. He lazily implicates Toko, which he assumes will then implicate himself, and he does this all because otherwise the case would be too easy and he wouldnt know who his true worthy opponents were in this game. Im just going to go out on a limb here and say framing yourself for a murder when the punishment is death is shockingly stupid when you have no reasonable escape plan.

I meanwhat exactly was his plan here if someone didnt figure it out?

condescending Byakuya voice Of course you fools would think it was me. You and your commoner brains. But now is when I pull back the curtain so even your ant sized brains can understand
Mondo Nah, were ready to vote now.
Makoto Yeah Monokuma lets vote
Byakuya, surprised pose Wait, hold on. See, the truth is Mondo committed the murder! I saw him walking away from the body.
Makoto But how would he know about the Genocide Jack stuff?
Byakuya Ah, ok. I see how that might be an issue. Heres the thing though. I did all that stuff. All the set up and finding a paint brush so I could make BLOODLUST look like it came out of a typewriter and then I took Chihiros corpse and I posed it so you would THINK it was Toko and then would THINK it was me but it wasnt really.
Makoto ok, yeah were ready to vote now.

---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

3 Doors Down - Kryptonite

---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Up next: Quite arguably the dumbest survivor.

---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Oh duh. Thanks for posting that. I forgot to mention that in the first post but yes no later spoilers please!

---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

Suprak the Stud posted...

DEFINITIVE.

Sorry man I don't make the rules.


---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."

DEFINITIVE. Sorry if you disagree but this is the canon version of the rankings. I called it first so it counts.

I finished playing Danganronpa 2 in my playthrough topic and I am now doing the very hard business of ranking all the cases and characters from the first two games while I finish up Demons Souls prior to starting Ultra Despair Girls. I just finished playing Danganronpa 2 and finished a re-watch of the first game less than a month ago so everything is relatively fresh in my head. I have some fairly cookie cutter opinions but also some that will likely get me yelled at if I ever bump into the manifestation of the official Danganronpa fandom.

Feel free to post your rankings and/or yell at my bad opinions! Actually, scratch that second thing.

THE RANKINGS THUS FAR:

M&M In A Bowl Full Of Skittles Tier:
40) Toko Fukawa
39) Ultimate Imposter

Scrappy Doo Tier:
38) Teruteru Hanamura
37) Natsumi Kuzuryu
36) Hifumi Yamada
35) Sato

Drinking Almond Milk When I Thought It Was Supposed To Be Regular Milk Tier:
34) Monomi
33) Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu
32) I'm debating between two characters so I can't even give a clue yet. This will either by my shortest write up or one of my longest, though.

---

Moops?
"I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."