Dead people they say never tell lies The living stare right at the watchers’ eyes Should they ever come to look away The reason, oh who can say?

For today’s post, we’re going to discuss the matter of the V3 auditions and whether it was true at all. Well…the tl;dr is that it’s a giant fake but I’d like you to also observe how the DR1 interviews were conducted so you get a better idea of why this is so.



Goes without saying I hope that this contains massive spoilers for both DR1 and V3.

Firstly, let’s consider what Kyoko hands over to Makoto. ‘Class #78: Urgent Interviews’. The videos are short, but from the word ‘urgent’ we understand that they were recorded for a specific purpose and they couldn’t be as long as we’d like. Furthermore, the DVD case is clearly labeled and as the school was a closed-off shelter there’s no reason to believe it was a lie especially as the identity of the recorder is clearly stated in the video: None other than Jin Kirigiri himself.

Next, observe the camera angle. Sayaka is described by Makoto as being tense and her expression never lets up even when Jin is seemingly joking with her. In other words, this is an honest interview that has nothing to hide - You can also discern the exact location this takes place in because of the background detail. So, why go through all this trouble?

It’s because Jin had to ask the students of something highly unprecedented and as he states this video would be in a sense legally binding. There’s complete transparency on the matter as shown by how Sayaka is hesitant but she accepts because she knows the situation Jin had spoken of.

Even though Makoto’s video had slightly different content, the doesn’t seem to be anything there meant to deceive; instead he says that they don’t have much of a choice which again shows that all the students gave their consent knowing the truth.

There’s also this comment:

Why is this important? It’s because Jin valued all the students under his care but this is still ultimately consent given for something horrible - He had to know that they did want this.

Also well…

There’s the matter of this Ultimate Power Cut Coincidence Plot Convenience right before a certain student should have been revealed. That establishes the authenticity of the DVD more than anything else in the DVD itself, because if it was fake Monokuma wouldn’t have done this. What was he hiding? Upupu…it’s a secret!

Moving on:

This audition of Shuichi ‘shows up’ right after Tsumugi is busy convincing the cast they don’t matter because they’re fictional or something. So say it out loud with me, this is some fucking awfully convenient timing especially when there’s no proof that it couldn’t have been taken at some other time and place - Remember what I said about the interviews? Yeah, that it happened during the timeline of The Tragedy is an important detail (I’d also like to add another point, the DR1 cast were originally not supposed to forget the consent they have given while in the case of V3 I’m pretty damned certain that unless the legal system is as rigged as the show ‘consent’ from people who technically don’t exist any more wouldn’t count as consent).

Additionally, look at this camera angle. Both the camera and lighting are from above and the entire setting is non-descript (I know a lot of people say it could be Tsumugi’s lab, but looking at the set-up of the gym the angle is also close enough to cut off the lines at the back from view and there’s lights from above), which is already suspect because you can watch just about any live audition and there’s going to be attention shown to the judges, the participant and the actual stage. You could plausibly perhaps argue that it was a self-audition except for the fact that Shuichi’s name alone is censored and runs for a long time while Kaede’s and Kaito’s weren’t; besides this there’s the matter of how Shuichi’s expression changes like so in his video while Kaede and Kaito do not:

…almost as if only one of these was a video meant to break a certain person and the other two were even more half-assed if that was possible. Plus, what is Shuichi even looking at?

To add on to this problem, remember how class 78 gave their consent to stay in the school? Tsumugi claims they’re all without an exception fans of Dangan Ronpa but…

In the first prologue, no one but an actual survivor of the killing game even knew the most basic thing of the game. Shuichi also claims to have seen previous detectives and wanted to be like them but…yeah, none of the three participants shown in these videos showed any knowledge of Dangan Ronpa nor were they enthusiastic (Bonus detail fail because if you re-check the first prologue Kaede doesn’t smile at a single point of it; neither do Shuichi or Kaito)

This is of course ridiculous, because Kaito additionally calls the game Danganronpa and he quite obviously didn’t know a lick of it when he asks Rantaro why he’s sure 16 people means everyone’s gathered. There’s also no evidence whatsoever that sign-ups exist nor did the Monocubs mention anything about being ‘selected’ even though they’re scripted to act a certain way and say certain things. That’s an important detail because if the Monocubs didn’t know about this in advance it must be because the ‘auditions’ were never supposed to have happened at all (Plus they never said that even in Tsumugi’s account), meaning it did not take place in the past, meaning it’s bullshit.

As for her claiming that Shuichi’s audition inspired them to make him into a weak detective, what kind of nonsense is that? Sure, he won’t remember it in case it’s true but why would you even bother with an audition in this case? There’s also the problem of how you know, two of these ‘auditions’ say literally nothing about what the characters want to do as ‘talented characters’.

Next we have this:

Not only is it suspect that Tsumugi recalls the prologue meaning that the Flashback Lights in certain instances wouldn’t affect certain people…Rantaro who was from the previous killing game asks Kaede if she had forgotten that he told her his name, which means that he too was unaffected. Also, Rantaro’s first thing that he recalled supposedly was the Ultimate Hunt, how interesting but wait, here’s the most interesting one because there was actually a third person who was unaffected, but you wouldn’t know who that is unless you were paying attention:

Sealed talents is related to loss of memory. Therefore, those whose talents aren’t sealed wouldn’t have lost their memories and they would be immune to the first Flashback Light. Next:

Why is this interesting? Ouma has no clue what does ‘sealed talent’ mean here but he doesn’t talk like those who had their talents ‘sealed’ who all deny they’re anything but absolutely normal people almost as if he’s out of the loop, but see…

He could not know that Kaede had definitely forgotten him and it wasn’t just a bluff, unless he remembers the prologue just like Rantaro did!

That tangent aside, the Remembering Light is never specified to make people be able to outright forget things:

‘Match other memories’. Now this would better explain the inconsistency between Shuichi et al. and not Rantaro et al. remembering or not remembering things- As I already mentioned above, Rantaro, Tsumugi and Ouma all know what their true talent is and retained their memories (And boy you’ve got another one coming if you thought Rantaro was telling the truth when he said he didn’t remember) so in this case there would have been nothing to ‘match’ in the first place.

Meanwhile, there’s no way the cast can be altered to become talented if they were normies because that would be inconsistent with their core identities as handily shown here. Even if you take into account that Kaede supposedly played the piano a lot, feats like playing for an European king would be so far out of any expectations of a normal high school girl that it just wouldn’t stick at all. (And just getting it out of the way but if you’re going to ask about the options Shuichi was given when he selected one option he never actually tested it on himself for one, and I didn’t say that the Flashback Light can’t be used to implant something false with enough preparation- I might write about it some other day).



So there you have it, an awfully long and verbose explanation about Tsumugi being the absolute Ultimate Bullshit.