Summary: A school trial begins to find Chihiro Fujisaki’s murderer. Byakuya Togami suggests that the culprit was Genocider Syo before being contradicted by Genocider Syo herself when it is revealed Syo is Touko Fukawa’s alternate personality. After more discussion, Mondo Oowada is decided as the culprit. Kiyotaka Ishimaru defends him. It is revealed that Chihiro Fujisaki was actually a male and that Mondo Oowada ‘killed’ his own brother. Oowada is dragged away for his execution,’Motorcycle Death Cage’, which Ishimaru is incredibly upset about.
Impression:
Huh. Well. A lot happened in this episode didn’t it?
Let us begin. Point number 1. This episode’s ‘case’ wasn’t as ‘surprising’ as episode 3’s. The twists and turns? Yeah, they were kind of obvious. The overall conclusion? Not as shocking as the one prior. I don’t know… I understand that this is a game to anime adaptation and that means the cases have to be ‘obvious’ so that the player can actually figure them out, but after indulging in western thriller mysteries and detective dramas for so long I can’t help but feel cheated when a case in solved in one episode and without so much as a breather. Even the Phoenix Wright games do it better than this and they’re also from Japan!
That aside, point number 2:
“And I don’t see Fujisaki having a dark secret – she just seems too precious to want to hide something. Or maybe her secret is that she’s actually a boy.”
– Charlmeister (Danganronpa Episode 4 Review)
She called it… Admittedly the whole ‘cute girl is actually a boy’ scenario is becoming overplayed as of late and if Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai (and Boku no Pico!) taught me anything, it’s that you can’t trust anyone in anime! They’re either a boy pretending to be a girl or the opposite… I just don’t know who to trust anymore! What if my waifu turns out to be a husbando… Ugh… But I digress, the reveal that Fujisaki is actually a boy was probably more shocking for some than others depending on how much anime each respective person has watched and, well, either way it was a nice little plot point that added a bit of spice (or sausage…) into the mixture.
And another thing…! Why was anyone willing to kill for those dark secrets. I get it Oowada, you killed your brother and you didn’t want people to know, but was killing Fujisaki (out of rage, might I add) really the way to go about it? Because he wanted to be strong? I’m sorry, but no one would react that way, it’s just not realistic… and another thing, Naegi wet the bed until he was five? I don’t get it. Is Monokuma doing this on purpose? Why were some of the secrets darker than others? Is it because he knows who is going to ‘snap’ (so to speak) and make the ‘game’ more interesting? At this point I don’t know if this is some f*cked up social experiment or just… well, a game? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Genocider Syo… I’m glad Fukawa has finally been made interesting, y’know? For a while there I was certain she’d be the next to die… but now? Now I’m sure she’ll escape. That whole ‘split personality’ ordeal is definitely going to help her survive Monokuma’s messed up game… that said, people might start targeting her now, deeming her a ‘danger’ or ‘deserving of death’. Oh! And I loved how Genocider Syo made Togami squirm in this episode… it was beautiful to see that pompous ass knocked down a few pegs! And whilst I’m sure Togami has everything under control, for a minute there I did doubt him… only for a minute however…
Oh! I just remembered something. How did Oowada know about Genocider Syo’s killing method? I thought that was a key part of the case? Sure, he might have f*cked up on the whole scissors thing, but I thought the whole ‘Syo crucifies her victims’ part was ‘private knowledge’? Am I being an idiot…? Did I overlook something? That’s why I why I doubted Togami in the first place, y’know? And it’s never actually explained why Oowada wrote “Bloodbath Fever” on the wall… I guess we’re left to speculate that he did it to frame Genocider Syo (who, might I add, he didn’t even know was a part of the group..?).
One quick thing… the bromance between Oowada and Ishimaru was strong… so strong! It shall be forever missed.
Let’s wrap this up. This second case of the series wasn’t ‘the best’ but then again it wasn’t entirely horrible either. I’m still blaming a lack of character development (character development is something that we did get a lot of in the last episode so I’m not going blame it entirely) for the way the series is going so far and I simply hope that now that the cast has been reduced somewhat, we’re going to get some more personal touches to character interactions… like that bromance!
I agree, this court case was ridiculously rushed. I wish it had been given two episodes to let the evidence breathe, but eh. Also, how did you figure the case out so easily?? For me, it was one red herring after another until the final reveal.
Gonna miss the bros.
“How did Oowada know about Genocider Syo’s killing method?” He didn’t. Only stuff Oowada did was kill Fujisaki in a fit of insecure jealous rage, instantly regret it, move the evidence from the boys’ changing room to the girls’, and both leave Fujisaki’s body and destroy his ID in order to keep his promise to hide his gender.
Togami came across Fujisaki’s corpse after Oowada left, decided to spice it up a little (because reasons), and left the scene while upupu-ing into the night.
…All right. So he had actual reasons, though it’s stupidly risky to frame another student when a wrong conviction could get you killed. Anyway, those reasons are to complicate the murder, allowing those who are great at detective work to shine (and therefore his greatest enemy) and unveil that Genocider Syo was in the school, alive and dangerous.
“Why were some of the secrets darker than others?” Naegi is legit boring, so his darkest secret is being a bedwetter. And some people have more to hide than others, therefore their secrets may be darker.
@hee7
Yeah I think it’s kind of stupid of Togami to go out of his way to make it look like a Genocider Syo murder. The reasoning of testing everyone doesn’t even make sense. There was no healthy outcome to the case. Even if he knew who the killer was it goes through majority vote so if everyone else believed it was Genocider Syo he would still have been killed along with them.
@Chris
I don’t think that they did a bad job rushing the court case because I honestly would have been bored if they split this up into two episodes. I think one episode of pure evidence speculation consisting of only dialogue would kind of have killed the pacing. I just wish that the court case itself made more sense. As you said Oowada killing someone on a fit of rage isn’t realistic at all. Especially when you actually hear his story of how his brother died saving his life. I guess they were trying to play off his ‘hot headed personality’. I’m starting to like this series less and less each episode.