LogFAQs > #950332487

#39: ???
Main Cast (Male?) Ranking: 16/16
Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Imposter
Actual Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloon That Made A Wish To Be A Real Boy

I have a lot of things to say about some upcoming characters, and there are going to be quite a few that I either do not like or I am perfectly ambivalent about. There are also some really interesting characters in these first two games and some that really left a mark on me long after I was done playing the game. You get attached to these characters in one way or another, and you don't want to see them die. And then there are some that you are sort of hoping die because it means the characters you like will get to live to see another chapter. So for all of the good things and bad things I am about to say about the other 38 characters on this list, they have one distinct advantage over ??? And that is that they are all characters, and ??? is a gimmick.

I don't have anything to say about ??? because there is nothing to say about ??? He or she or this escaped pile of hamsters that snuck their way into a human suit is given exactly zero actual personality or sense of character or anything of the sort. ??? is meant to be a funhouse mirror reflection of how he sees Byakuya, literally and figuratively in this sense. He has no personality of his own because he is mimicking another character who you may or may not even like. So he doesn't get actual characterization or growth or an arc or anything interesting like that, and only exists in this game to give it another shocking twist near the end. The things you like or hate about ??? are solely because they are things you like or hate about Byakuya. Almost all of the students here are a reflection of their ultimate ability in some way, but ??? is the only one where he is his ultimate ability, and nothing else.

You can go through his entire free time events and his entire Island Mode character arc, and you get a couple of little glimmers of what might be unique, distinct personality outside of him pretending to be Byakuya. There is the one line of dialogue in Hajime's nightmare delusion before Chiaki shows up where ??? says something along the lines of "now can I introduce myself" in the world's worst southern (?) accent, and then a couple of lines at the very end of Island Mode where he basically acknowledges he is an imposter and might not want to be an imposter any longer. That's it. Those are the very few times where he is doing something other than just imitating Byakuya, and even in these scenes his mannerisms and inflections are those that Byakuya could use. There are a lot of ways you could describe Byakuya, but the only way you can describe ??? is "trying to be Byakuya and failing."

You might want to give him points because he heroically sacrifices himself for Nagito, but again that isn't ??? That is him playing the role of Byakuya. It would like if you gave Chris Evans humanitarian awards for all of the people he saved as Captain America because you thought those were historical documentaries. He isn't trying to save Nagito as ??? He is saving Nagito because that's what he thinks Byakuya would do. Also, it is HIS fault he dies and HIS fault Nagito's plan almost works because he is an idiot. He gets a note saying "I will kill tonight" and doesn't tell anyone because he thinks that might cause distrust to foment. Hey. Moron. DISTRUST SHOULD FOMENT. It is like if an arsonist shows up in your neighborhood with a box of matches and a can of gasoline and you decide not to tell your neighbors because they might be worried about the arsonist. You should be worried about the arsonist, and everyone should be taking preventative measures to stop the arsonist from arson-ing their house.

Instead, ??? doesn't tell anyone, gets everyone together in a small room, and somehow doesn't check 1) the kitchen or 2) the fucking lunatic setting up the event for weapons before letting everyone else in. ??? checks the kitchen mid-party, which is too late, and doesn't ever check Nagito at all. His gross idiocy set his murder in motion because he's pretending to be Byakuya but can't do it because Byakuya isn't a drooling moron. So I refuse to give him credit for doing anything this case when he was only doing it as part of his act and he messed up like eight different things that lead to him getting murdered.

But all of this is only enough to put him in the next to last tier. What lands ??? in the very bottom tier is he only exists as a gimmick to trick you into thinking Danganronpa 2 had the balls to kill off a popular character right away. That's the only reason the "Ultimate Imposter" exists. That's what I mean when I say ??? is a gimmick. He's put in the game as way for the developers to have their cake and eat it too. Now they get the shock of killing Byakuya off without actually killing Byakuya off. It is cheap and a little cowardly, and it makes me look back at the first case in this game less fondly because of it. I was shocked when they killed off Byakuya. And somewhat annoyed when in case 5 they go "lol just kidding it was just a fat guy".

This is also totally not related to him getting ranked at 39, but ??? is also a terrible imposter. I brought this up multiple times in the playthrough, but he isn't even the best imposter in this game. Mikan does a better job impersonating Ibuki because she at least knows how silhouettes work. Mikan can pass for Ibuki with a bag on her head. ??? cannot pass for Byakuya unless he has an industrial sized bag meant for carrying small tractors. He puts all this effort into becoming these other people, learning their history and getting their mannerisms down perfectly, but then he eats the entire buffet Teruteru cooks as a means of "searching for evidence". I imagine some scene that got deleted from the final game where Kyoko and Makoto are watching the first case play out in horror while Byakuya is cursing under his breath about how this dude looks nothing like him and he's going to pull the plug on his chamber himself.

Another thing I thought of is both Byakuya and ??? attended Hope's Peak at the same time. That means, maybe Byakuya's sophomore year, there was a day when he was walking down the hallway and saw a mirrored image of himself, but now gigantically fat. How fucking confused would you be if you were just walking somewhere and all of a sudden there was a dude that looked exactly like you except it looked like he was having an extremely bad reaction to being stung by a swarm of bees? It makes the fact this dude is the Ultimate Imposter all the more bizarre, because he's impersonating someone who is going to the same school as him. How many times did Byakuya have to deal with the joke where one of his friends were like "hey which one of you is the real Byakuya hahaha" while looking back and forth between Byakuya and ??? in fake confusion. How annoying were classes? The professor would ask Byakuya a question and then ??? would start speaking up and Byakuya would have to tell him to shut the hell up. Where there ever any screaming matches in the hallways where Byakuya told him to cut this shit out its been going on for two years and is ruining his life while ??? stood there dumbfounded still pretending to be Byakuya?

These are the kind of scenes I want to see. Instead all we get is ??? idiotically bungling his attempt to protect everyone and getting himself murdered instead. His entire highlight is confusing me into thinking I had witnessed the much more interesting death of a much more interesting character. RIP Ultimate Imposter, whoever the hell you are.

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