LogFAQs > #922168061

All they needed to do to fix the ending was to correctly pay off Kaede's arc at the end.

- The piece of evidence they get that Kaede has a twin sister turns out to be true, instead of being a ridiculous red herring for no reason.

- Shuichi confirms the truth of this by using the insane logic of Tsumugi's cospox affliction. She got cospox when she cosplayed Kaede, but if they're all fictional characters, this shouldn't have happened, which means Kaede must be a real person.

- We see "Kaede's" audition tape, in which we get a heartfelt moment where she says, "I don't want to be an Ultimate anything... I just want to be like my sister, the most amazing person in the world." The Kaede we know is a fictional character based on the real Kaede.

- Knowing that Kaede is still alive and out there somewhere, and that she's the same awesome and inspirational person that made him a better person, Shuichi finds new resolve to stop the killing game for good and to escape to the real world.

This not only uses the whole real/fake logic in an interesting, Danganronpa-ish twist, but it also gives a nice throughline for Kaede to the end of the game, where her sacrifice at the start of the game isn't a gimmicky plot twist but a setup for Shuichi's character development at the end. Aside from the retrial of the first case Kaede is kind of irrelevant in the finale, which is too bad - it would have been a lot more interesting to give her character a reason to exist.

I literally cannot believe they set this up so nicely and they just failed to capitalize on any of it. It's so weird and anticlimactic.