trialbyliar | app to glencolareef

OOC INFO
Name/Handle: Kelly
Pronouns: any
Contact:

tinybro; orbynit#4811
Reserve?: Yes

IC INFO
Name: Kokichi Ouma
Journal:

trialbyliar
Canon: Danganronpa v3
Age: 16ish
Species: Human

Canon Point: Chapter 5, post-death
Condition: Miraculously unharmed, aside from some small scars from injuries he had at the time of death

History: Supplemental wiki link

Danganronpa v3 is a weird game and the nature of it makes the backstory thing a bit complicated, but here we fucking go.

Kokichi and his classmates find themselves trapped in a killing game, where they're told they'll be trapped in the school forever, and they have to kill one of the others and get away with it to escape. Culprits who fail to get away with their murders are executed, while everyone else would executed instead they fail to find the culprit. Over the course of the game, the class tries to find the truth of why they found themselves in this situation and what's going on in the outside world while they're trapped there.

In reality, though, the whole thing is a Truman Show-esque reality TV show, one based on the popular Danganronpa franchise. The participants have their memories erased and replaced with a fabricated backstory for better entertainment value, with a scripted overarching mystery for them to solve just like in the original Danganronpa games.

Not much is known about the person Kokichi was in reality before the killing game. He presumably was an ordinary high school student who voluntarily auditioned to be part of the 53rd season of Danganronpa just like everyone else. Meanwhile, his fabricated backstory within the setting of the show is also largely unclear because of his constant lying. What we do know for sure is that, in that backstory, he led a small gang that caused playful chaos with petty nonviolent crime and pranks, and those gang members were like family to him.

Within the killing game, Kokichi is immediately wary of their situation and frames himself as an antagonistic figure early on. He manipulates the group subtly, lowkey helping the keep the peace and often playing the bad guy. Throughout the first three chapters of the game, in which three murder trials occur, Kokichi plays the trickster; he makes things more complicated for everyone and no one understands his motives, but he's not actively harmful. He frequently implies that he'd kill someone himself or falsely confesses to other murders, but it always ends up being just more of his normal lies. During the trials, he indirectly pushes discussions in the right directions to help the others discover the true culprits even while coming across as as obstacle to their success. And all the while, he investigates on his own to try to solve the mysteries of the killing game, unable to fully trust anyone with his true intentions or his suspicions about their situation.

After discovering the "truth" of the outside world – that the world was already destroyed and they were all that remained – he manipulates one of his classmates, Gonta, into killing Miu, who'd been planning to kill Kokichi. He convinces Gonta to work with him in hiding the crime, saying they should essentially mercy-kill everyone else by getting them executed for failing to guess the right culprit, so they never have to learn the truth of the outside world. But he then betrays Gonta during the trial and guides everyone to the right answer. Afterwards, he claims completely malicious intent – that he just wanted to make them all suffer – but the truth is likely that he was backed into a corner, unable to protect himself from Miu's murder plans and convinced that things could end up even worse if he aimed for a solution that left her alive, and already planning for his ultimate goal of ending the killing game.

Kokichi decides the best way to prevent further murders is to pretend to be the mastermind behind everything and reveal the truth of the outside world so no one would be motivated to kill to get out anymore. Everyone believes it easily due to all his prior antagonistic behavior, his sacrifice of Gonta fully solidifying him as the bad guy in everyone's minds. Holding one of the other students hostage, he briefly succeeds in derailing the game.

The true mastermind, in an attempt to get things back on track, enacts some manipulation of their own to get another student, Maki, to try to kill Kokichi. He's saved by his hostage, Kaito, but they're both struck with poisoned crossbow bolts in the fray. In a last ditch effort to break the killing game, Kokichi gives the only antidote to Kaito to convince/blackmail him into cooperating with Kokichi's final plan. He temporarily disables the mastermind's monitoring equipment and orchestrates his own murder at Kaito's hands – he and Kaito create a video that would make it look like Kaito was killed, and then instead killed Kokichi by crushing him in a hydraulic press. In doing so, they set up a murder with an unknown victim, and an unknowable cause of death due to the poison in his system, in an attempt to trick the mastermind into coming to the wrong conclusion. Even if they correctly deduced that Kokichi was the one who was killed, there would be no way of proving whether he was killed by Kaito using the hydraulic press or by Maki via the poison.

In his final moments, Kokichi reveals some truths to Kaito – that he'd hated the killing game from the start despite how he'd acted, and that there had to be an audience somewhere watching them. The others remain unsure of whether he was lying, but even after his death, he helps guide the others towards the truth with a will left behind in his room containing an important hint. The clues they find because of that hint, along with the truths they discover about Kokichi's backstory compared to the false memories they'd been implanted with, help the remaining students figure out the real secret of the whole killing game, and they go on to put and end to Danganronpa entirely.

Personality:

Pros:

Analytical: Kokichi is smart. It's not immediately obvious, given his often childish behavior and all his lying, but he's very cunning and perceptive. His deductive reasoning skills beat even the Ultimate Detective, often realizing the truths behind mysteries first. He comes up with insane plans on the fly, and his foresight is pretty bananas given how thoroughly he anticipated everyone's actions while setting up his own murder. He doesn't have the sheer book-smarts of some others, having to outsource projects that require engineering and technical skill, but he's clearly much more intelligent and knowledgeable than he lets on.

Ultimate Supreme Leader: Kokichi's title is frequently dismissed as nonsense, especially given how unpopular he makes himself, but he really does live up to it. His people skills are far from obvious – at a glance, he seems entirely tactless and unlikable with no traditional leadership skills at all – but Kokichi excels at understanding people and subtly orchestrating situations in a group his desired ends, all without others realizing exactly what he's doing and when he's actually helping them in a twisted way. An prime example is early in the game during the class' repeated attempts to escape. When the group's morale is at rock bottom from the hopelessness of their situation, Kokichi's the one to speak up to put an end to the struggle, albeit in a harsh way that makes him seem like the bad guy. And the next day, he puts to rest any resentment that'd built up from the protagonist pushing them by playing the bully, getting everyone mad at him instead while they all apologize to each other. Outside the killing game, he lives up to his title in a more direct way, as the leader of a small gang that are deeply loyal to him.

Playful: He's a fun person when you get over the constant lying and bullshit. Kokichi is pretty easygoing for a "supreme leader", and he leans into his youth, pointing out that it's only natural for him to be immature. He likes being chased around (though of course he prefers to antagonize people into playing with him in this manner rather than just asking for it). He loves to play games – even saying that he prefers to solve conflicts peacefully with games. While this is easily dismissed as more lying, it's implied to actually be the truth by the later reveal that his gang forbids violence. He hates the idea of being boring more than anything, and when not in life-or-death situations his priority is having fun.

Compassionate (in a way): There is a heart buried under all that bullshit. Kokichi's good at understanding people, and he often does things to indirectly make them feel better in his own weird way, like in that example of the class struggling to escape. In other examples, he pushes Himiko to stop bottling up her feelings so she can have a good cathartic cry and resolve to be more open with her emotions afterwards, and he lets his own true feelings bleed through before Gonta's execution, crying and giving Gonta some comfort in his final moments.

Driven: The guy willingly villainizes himself for the whole game and then literally kills himself in an attempt to stop the killing game. Kokichi is intense as hell and will do absolutely anything to achieve his goals.

Cons:

Chronic liar: The most obvious con of dealing with Kokichi is that he lies constantly. He leads with that fact, telling people outright that he's a liar and making no attempt to hide it. He lies both to manipulate situations and for his own amusement, sometimes harmlessly and sometimes not. He isn't truly malicious most of the time, but he's absolutely willing to play the part when needed for a greater goal. And he's also just as prone to telling the truth but disguising it as yet more lies, so knowing for sure when he's actually being honest is a struggle for most people.

Distrustful: Kokichi's true fatal flaw is his paranoia and difficulty trusting others. While he's not incapable of it – fully trusting his gang members and leaning towards potentially trusting the game's protagonist before his death – he's extremely cautious about putting his faith in others. It's easier in more ordinary circumstances, but in dangerous and potentially deadly ones he's much more likely to try to solve everything on his own. He doesn't necessarily think everyone is an enemy, but he won't trust someone without plenty of proof that it's safe to do so.

Manipulative: He's extremely manipulative, both overtly and subtly. He makes so secret of it in some circumstances, leaning into the villainous persona, but he's also very cunning in getting people to think and do what he wants without them realizing he's doing it. Fortunately, the latter tends to be for arguably benevolent purposes – or at least, for whatever constitutes the greater good in his own mind.

Mischievous: Even in the most harmless, lighthearted situations, Kokichi is an annoying, irreverent little prankster. He has a childish sense of humor and messes with people for his own amusement. It's the unfortunate flip side of his playfulness: his fun often comes at others' expense, even when it's not necessarily harmful.

Harsh: Kokichi can be extremely brutal, even in his honest or well-intended moments – even more so in those circumstances, really. He's always so determined to play the bad guy that his benevolent actions tend to be veiled in callousness to disguise his true intentions. He's the first to call out the cold, hard truths no one else wants to acknowledge and rub everyone else's noses in it until they're forced to accept it. And he bullies people relentlessly, though it's notable that he seems to tailor how extreme he gets with it to the person; he's far more vulgar and brutal to Miu, who clearly masochistically enjoys being treated that way, than he is while insulting others.

Inventory:
- The lower half of his normal uniform
- Kaito's jacket
- A set of lockpicks
- A single Electrobomb (disables electronic transmissions within 50 yards for two hours)
- His e-handbook, containing his student profile, map of his school, school rules, etc.

Powers/Abilities: No superhuman abilities

TDM Sample: ayyy