LogFAQs > #950728043

#36: Hifumi Yamada
Main Cast (Male) Ranking: 14/16
Victim Ranking: 11/12
Killer Ranking: 10/11
Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Fanfic Creator
Actual Ultimate Ability: Ultimate Lumpy Virgin

Ive seen a lot of Danganronpa ranking lists lately, and I feel like this is my least controversial opinion. I have not seen one list that has Hifumi high on it, and that is because Hifumi sucks. He is one of the most consistently annoying characters in either game, and if evil scientists had experimented for years to try and come up with some way to make people hate Danganronpa, Im not sure they couldve done a better job than Hifumi. There are a couple of segments with Hifumi that I dont completely hate, but for the most part Hifumi is this unfortunate combination of pointless and annoying and he doesnt really add anything to the game other than being a gross pervert.

I really struggle with just about every scene that has Hifumi in it, because I simply do not care about what Hifumi has to say, ever. Its rough, because no matter what you are talking about, he finds a way to bring it back to his own stupid shit. You ever have a friend that clearly just wants to tell you a story and theyre like oh speaking of pants here is this one time I rode a motorcycle and I was wearing pants at the time no I wasnt just trying to have any excuse for a segue. Every single thing that gets brought up inevitably is somehow brought back to his love of 2D female characters or fanfiction or Princess Piggy or taking first place in competitive getting people to hate you competitions. He literally will not shut up about how much he loves 2D. There are parts where you are in a trial, fighting for your lives, mourning over the death of one of your friends, and Hifumis addition is like ANIME TITTIES. Having Hifumi around is essentially no different than carrying around an alarm that periodically lets you know it has never had sex before. Like everything minutes the alarm goes IM A VIRGIN or every thirty minutes Hifumi goes I AM ONLY ATTRACTED TO 2-D!!! and it basically accomplishes the same goal here.

His character design is also just kind of gross. It was almost certainly intentionally so, but intentionally gross is still gross and I think of all the characters in either game, I like his design the least. He looks like a lumpy garbage back that someone stuck two toothpicks on. Like an evil wizard brought a bean bag chair to life and cursed it to never have sex. I remember seeing his character design and just thinking oh this guy isnt making it through the game. Not just because everyone was going to want to kill him, but because I didnt think his heart could take it. Hed be the only character in Danganronpa to die of natural causes. A huge sticking point in Chapter 3 of the first game is the fact that Hifumi is so fat that it shouldve been impossible for anyone to move him and honestly if you die and your friends first thought is who had access to the industrial strength equipment necessary to move the corpse? then they probably have already been planning for your funeral for some time. It is like the developers wanted to make the fanfic character look as gross and unlikeable as possible. Which, like, sure, but at the same time I feel like that is unnecessarily mean.

But thats not even really what Im getting at when Im talking about how little I like the actual artistic design of the character. His face is justdumb. Like he has this big dumb ugly face and I hate looking at it. He has this weird cat or walrus design in the face area and at times he only looks vaguely sort of human. His pose where he is turned to the side and his tie is flying up in the air has to be my least favorite character animation in either game. And then his horny face animation is almost just as bad. Him drooling and sweating is not really an image I ever wanted to see. I just sort of hate most of his animation. His standard animation isnt terrible if they were just going for a stereotypical geek/nerd, but I feel like they didnt put as much thought into animating him as they did some of the others. Like, they just wanted to make him look as bad as possible, and by that metric I guess they succeeded.

Also, and this has nothing to do with his ranking, but literally until I was writing this I thought he was the Ultimate Fanfic Author. Like, as in he wrote fanfic. Apparently in the Japanese version he was the Super High School Level Fanzine Artist, which is something totally different. It is weird that they changed this, because I dont think Fanfic Creator really means quite the same thing. Like I literally just finished watching a walkthrough for the game and thought the same thing. I dont think the game quite details exactly what the hell it is Hifumi does unless I was just trying my best to ignore him, which is strange because everyone elses talent is laid out with extreme clarity. It almost feels like they didnt care enough about Hifumi to detail his backstory all the way through, and if thats the case, hey I get it. Knowing that he draws fanfic rather than writes fanfic doesnt change my opinion of him at all, other than making his obsession with loudly yelling out about how he is only attracted to 2D women all the creepier because it makes it sound like he now draws things he masturbates to.

It is also unfortunate that at the points where Hifumi actually does have sort of meaningful impact on the story, it is almost consistently awful. His weird fight with Taka over Alter Ego is dumb for several reasons, but it is especially dumb from Hifumis perspective. This is the one thing that they thing can save them, the dying act of Chihiro that might actually help them escape, and he jeopardizes the whole thing by being obsessed with a computer program with a face. At least for Taka it makes sense. Take uses Alter Ego to see the face of his dead friend and try in some desperate fashion to have some sort of connection with this person that died in front of his eyes like a day ago. Hifumi uses it because 2D girls make his nether regions feel funny and he cant reach them himself without some sort of broom handle. Hifumi is so pathetic he is willing to risk everything so he talk to an AI about anime. He comes off as even more annoying than usual, and I have never wanted to punch a video game character more than when he squels like a pig when Kyoko is yelling at him.

Hes also a moron and might legit be the dumbest killer in either game. He is so easily manipulated by Celeste to do something that doesnt really make sense. I at least can kind of see why he thinks hes doing the right thing, and lashing out at Taka because he thinks he stole Alter Ego and also abused Celeste and was threatening her is a bit more noble than some of the other motivations in the game. But his stupid obsession with Alter Ego blinds him to the fact that Celeste is very clearly manipulating him, and this whole thing couldve been cleared up by the crazy idea of talking to literally any one else. I do love that his stupidity and obsession with being the ultimate dweeb winds up sinking Celeste because of how he insisted on making this bizarre stupid robot costume no one but him wouldve made and he makes like twenty different mistakes in carrying out the plan. It would be like if you got partnered with someone for a science assignment and your partner ate the paper and doused the lab in gasoline. Him killing Taka also straight up sucks because I feel like Taka hadnt finished his character arc yet and it just kinda got cut short because Hifumi is a big dumb fat jerk.

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Moops?
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