Hello Hello!

Sorry for the holdup, the first 2 weeks of year 2 were (and still are) hitting me hard, so I wasn’t super ready to start. But we’re here!

It’s nice to be back :).

So, many many things I’ve been up to, but for this post, I’ll start simple,and leave the stuff about how the vacation has been for l8r (since its quite late now anyways):

I finished danganronpa v3 :0. (spoilers for the game)

I WAS RIGHT.

It certainly wasnt exactly how I envisioned it, and honestly by kokichi’s trial I was quite confused as to wtf was going on for a moment, but in the end it turned out that the students were all just normal kids wanting to play danganronpa, THATS SO SICK, WTF.

I really liked the twist honestly, I thought it was really fun! Everyone I was playing with had started dogging on Tsumugi at around gonta’s case, and so it was just this constant wait as to WHAT THE HELL SHE WOULD EVER DO.

Since the first chapter, where she mentions her odd condition, it’s been basically zilch, other than for the occasional help in trials or comment, she never had an arc or anything, so for her to end up having been the mastermind was quite exhilarating after waiting on her big moment.

Honestly didnt land with everybody, there was a lot of debate as to whether it felt earned (same for the ending) but I lean toward it having done a good job, despite being at times a total mess.

I will say one thing that wasnt contested though, the fact of the matter that kaede never killed rantaro, I cant speak for everyone but I thought that was awesome as well.

It’s not past, monokuma (in this case moreso tsumugi but i really just mean gamemaster of each game), at least in the first game, to break the rules when there’s a crisis (see exhibit A: trigger happy havoc chapter 5) but to have totally thrown a wrench into kaede’s death was a hell of an impact.

Because when you think about it, YEA, IN WHAT UNIVERSE WOULD THE BALL HIT?

Even assuming it does, do we really think kaede of all people could do it? Perfectly place every book on several shelves in such a way that it falls straight on the dome of someone on the other side of the room, straight in the middle, ASSUMING THEYRE PERFECTLY IN THE MIDDLE TO GET HIT AT THE RIGHT TIME?

It’s a dumb plan, perhaps the smartest dumb plan ive ever seen.

And for what it’s worth, I love that that fact feeds into the narrative. Kaede was never the type to kill either, of course it’d fail!

But to make sure that the game continues, all tsumugi had to do was make it look like it worked, and I think it payed off as a fun twist.

Now if only they kept some level of realism like that with the THIRD TRIAL (cause what do you mean HE SPUN A DOLL TO CLOSE A DOOR) and maybe I’d be singing the game’s praises even more, but I digress.

On that though, there were also a few sour notes. Aside from everything i mentioned just now, and kokichi’s trial, which I thought for the most part was great and made me think much more favorably of kokichi’s character than before, the pacing of the chapter was a little bit slow for my liking personally.

The game has that issue in a couple of areas, but I only really felt it dragged me down a bit there.

And as for the third trial, the more I sit on it the more I start to despise it. I mean I like the idea of the 2nd murder, a cool seesaw contraption with lots of thought put into the murder, but why did he even bother? HE ALREADY GOT A BS LOCKED ROOM MURDER.

One which, mind you, was totally undeserved.

Then you go and tell me that he just wants to do another murder even though it conflicts with the WHOLE POINT OF KILLING, that to get his sister friends in the afterlife.

>:/.

I mean, seriously? Split personality with his sister? It was just so horribly handled too with all the weird abusive shenanigans, genuinely dont see how it couldve been predicted, and even if this sort of thing doesnt need to be solve-able ahead of time, it was so poorly done it just left a sour taste in my mouth that grew the more I sat on it.

So yea, a nice but mixed bag. Overall, I thought the game was a good time. From the gonta trial which was a hell of a heart tug, the intrigue of the 2nd trial, and of course chapters 5 and onwards, I enjoyed my time with the game.

I do wish it had been a bit snappier at times, and there were some weird writing decisions to say the least, I came away from it having enjoyed it. Especially shuichi’s arc.

I really came away from this loving shuichi as a character. From someone who’s been put down early in life, who views himself poorly, coming to believe in himself and his abilities through the people around him was a treat.

Even knowing it was an arc, entirely produced ahead of time for viewership, that doesnt take away what he’d learned. He carries his lessons with him going into the new world, alongside maki and himiko, incidentally another two favorites of mine.

So yea, good game, fun time :).

Anyways, that’s gonna be all from me for now, I’ve gotta get going for uni. Before I go though, here’s a little something I made over the vacation, alongside everything else I got up to:

Its a small website!

I ended up spending some time roughly thinking & drawing it out and making it to the best of my ability, it was both my first real web dev project and my first time using a real image editing app, gimp in my case, and I had a lot of fun both following the web dev guide and getting the kirby up on the site too!

Im quite excited to continue coding in javascript too, and to eventually come back to this site too and fully flesh out the concept. I’ve stopped for now but only really because the uni course is having us code a lot of kotlin at the moment! Once the load is slightly reduced on uni work and particularly the programming aspects though, im hoping to hop right back on this.

Again, a lot we’ve gotta delve into, but I’ll save it for next post. See if you can run the mini site and play with it to your hearts content!

(for the simple how-to, just unzip and double click on index.html, and it should open the site locally on your browser. Otherwise feel free to inspect the rest of the code too)

Thats all from me for now. See you all next week :).