LogFAQs > #950297510

I added a couple minor characters I want to talk about to get to an even 40.

#40: Toko Fukawa
Main Cast (Female) Ranking: 16/16
Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Writing Prodigy
Actual Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Weird Kid In Class That You Got Partnered Up With That One Time And They Spent The Whole Assignment Muttering Under Their Breath About Chads And Stacys And Telling You Not To Come To School On Monday

It has been a while since I have played the first Danganronpa game, and although I am in the process of watching someone else play it just for fun, I haven't finished it yet. So, I admit, some of my write ups for first game characters might not be as detailed as the sequel just because I fully remember my gut reaction to characters in the second game much better. And for the first game, I am sort of using a combination of vague recollections of certain events combined with recent impressions from this watch through (which is biased by how I remember feeling about certain characters going into it).

But I FUCKING hate Toko. I know people say she is more entertaining in Ultra Despair Girls, but I haven't played Ultra Despair Girls so this is just a Toko from Danganronpa 1 ranking. This is one thing that is clear to me now as it was when I originally played the game. Part of it is just her design, and I hate the way she looks both as Toko and as Genocide Jack. I know the fact they made her so plain and boring is meant to contrast with her serial killer persona, but I don't like the way that persona looks either. That weird long stupid lizard tongue that just kinda hangs out of the side of her mouth in some animations has to be a bottom three pose for me in the entire series.

Her personality is also at the absolute bottom of the cast list, with only one or two real possible exceptions. She's unnecessarily mean to the cast, and in ways that aren't really fun or interesting or seem to have a point other than to highlight how shitty she is on a day to day basis. She calls other female characters whores multiple times because they have the audacity to not dress like a 18th century Puritan corpse. There's nothing fun or lively about her character when she's Toko. Even in Danganronpa 1, which is clearly the lesser of the two casts, she sticks out as being particularly dull. These other characters have these big personalities, and her whole schtick is that sex is scary and people are out to get her and WHAT THE HECK IS YOUR PROBLEM. She is the kid at school that sat at the table by themselves, and you think is kinda sad so you go over to talk to them, only to immediately realize why they were at that table by themselves and all the other kids were right to bully them.

Genocide Jack certainly has more personality, but unfortunately that personality can be best summarized as "dumb". You would think that an actual serial killer would add some actual suspense to things, like the role that Nagito plays in the second game. But unlike Nagito, the rest of the cast doesn't seem to really give Genocide Jack the apprehension she deserves. In fact, Genocide Jack is almost entirely treated as this weird comic relief character but I just never really found them all that funny. Either I am annoyed with this character as Genocide Jack, or I'm really annoyed at them with Toko, and the whole character is a mess from design to characterization to personality.

But more than this, more than her annoying personality and her general shittiness to those around her, is the fact that I hate the role she plays in the game. I hate the serial killer reveal and I hate how they keep her around for the entire game after that. We're supposed to believe this little child somehow has murdered countless men to the point that she has become the most famous serial killer of all time? I know I'm talking about a game that requires a certain level of suspension of disbelief, but the fact that the Ultimate Writing Prodigy is also the Ultimate Serial Killer is just a coincidence that is so dumb that it is now like six years after I played the first game and I'm still clearly complaining about it.

It also complicates the morality in this game. Ok so Junko is bad because she is causing the sort of cataclysmic event, but Toko is one of the heroes because...what? She didn't kill anyone for the two weeks she was trapped at the school? You nkow what is the second saddest, most terrible, most awful event to ever transpire in this universe? The hundreds of men that have been murdered by Toko along the eastern seaboard of Japan in the years leading up to these games. She is absolutely no better than Junko, and the game seems to write her into the story almost solely for a stupid misdirect in the second case but then just allows her to stick around, annoying you for the rest of the game. She is an incel, an angry, pathetic incel, and I don't even mean this as in exaggeration. She exclusively kills men that she's attracted to because she had been hanging around the 4chan board for too long and took all their LARPing for a manifesto. So not only is it not at all believable she is the (second) greatest killer ever to live in Japan, the game just sort of skirts past all the murky moral complications for the sake of making the same joke over and over again about how she is obsessed with Byakuya. And, again, the only reason this is done for the story is for a terrible misdirect near the beginning of the game.

I fully understand that the Danganronpa series operates on its own sort of zany logic, and I get that. In fact, that's one of the things I love about the series. Sure, a high school girl caused the almost end of the world by being a lunatic. Love it and I'm on board. Sure, there is a computer system that allows you to upload personalities, and download new personalities from it back on to people. Sounds great. There are crazy murderous teddy bears and people getting fired out of rockets and I'm on board for all of this. But just because a series or work of fiction is outlandish, it doesn't mean it gets a pass for every outlandish thing it does. I want it to make sense within the context of the universe and I want the character to feel like they belong within the set of rules that universe defines. And I feel like no one really treats Toko the way they should treat Toko. The cast of Danganronpa is more afraid of Sakura than they are of Toko, a literal SERIAL KILLER who HAS MURDERED BEFORE AND WILL MURDER AGAIN.

Toko is a serial killer that everyone treats like she is a woman trying to recruit you to her MLM business on Facebook. It is all eye rolls and mild annoyance. At the end of Danganronpa 2, Kyoko reminds Byakuya that Toko is waiting for him when he returns and he lets out an exasperated "don't remind me." Byakuya, you should be fucking terrified. This is a girl that has murdered exclusively men she has had a crush on and she is so good at it that literally everyone knows her. She should be a villain, not comic relief. I feel this is one step away from Byakuya going "Oh, Toko!" while she mugs to the camera and the laugh track from the Big Bang Theory plays in the background.

There is just nothing I like about Toko. I hate her design. I hate Genocide Jack's design. I hate the fact we're supposed to believe she's murdered an entire city's worth of handsome men. I hate that she is a female incel. I hate how useless she is in all the cases. I hate that she muddles the morality of this universe simply by existing. I hate how she treats everyone as Toko. I hate her weird repressed sexuality that is somehow creepier than the two actual perverts that exist within these games. Most of all, I hate the fact that apparently we're not supposed to hate her.

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