thing I made for the spikechun valentine hashtag on twitter (my username is chalcoporos)

Special tutorial how to kiss Nanami by Kamukura Izuru

compilation of danganronpa memes ive made

flop

Why a lot of “criticism” regarding Chiaki Nanami is utter nonsense.

Disclaimer: There are two types of criticism I won’t be covering. Those are:

Subjective ones, like if you just not like her for reason you know. That’s valid, no one should be forced to like/dislike something.

Shipping reasons. Shipping wars for the navy to handle, not me.

With that being said, I shall begin.

Chiaki is a pretty popular character, one of the most popular in the series. Unfortunately, she also gets some (targeted) flak, especially in some circles (more often than not reddit). But the thing is, where as other characters get flak for understandable reasons, Chiaki gets hate for….either very poor reasons or just flat out irrational hate. I will cover some of the more common annoying things said to her and I will try to debunk it. Let us begin.

“Waifu bait / She’s meant to be likable, therefore bad!!!” (god I HATE that one):

“Waifu bait” is a meaningless, thoughtless and horribly sexist label that no one who wants to be taken seriously should use. It can be basically described as “this girl character bad because she kind/likable” or something. Because apparently, it’s a bad thing to have a character likable, even though writers often try their damnest to make their characters likable, sympathetic or at the very least cool. Having a work filled with unlikable characters (do not mistake it for complex, different definitions) just makes the work unpleasant to read. It’s not fun. The “she’s meant to be likable therefore bad” also falls flat on the surface because Kodaka himself said that he cannot write a character that he doesn’t like in some way. It’s also pretty sexist that only women get targeted here, I have seldom seen the term “husbando-bait” in comparison. It’s like there’s an aversion to kind women for some audiences (aka reddit). That term is also pretty terrible because how easy it is to slap on a character just to dismiss them instead of properly analyzing them. Chiaki seems to get the short stick of analysis a lot of times, although there are exceptions.

To summarize this one: it’s a term that shouldn’t be used in a serious discussion.

“Mary Sue” / “She’s perfect / no character flaws / no depth”

No, far from it, Chiaki (both versions) has quite a lot of character flaws. I’ve gotten into detail more here, but to summarize her:

Chiaki is a socially awkward/anxious girl that believes she’s perpetually trapped in her talent, despite absolutely adoring the thing she is hyperfixiated at.

Of course, there’s far more to her (contrary to what some, including that video say), than that, but that’s gonna be a good summary for her. I’ve gotten into more detail about some of interesting observations regarding her here, but there’s another thing to discuss at the moment.

“Mary sue”, just like its other more anime counterpart, is a horribly sexist and meaningless label that it really only applies to fanfiction, and it’s usually used towards very specific types of characters.

Mary sues are known to be:

adored by everyone

Chiaki is only really loved by her class, Chisa and Hajime, but that’s about it. No one else and even then, the only people she really got close to and opened up are Hajime and Chisa, And that’s just DR3 incarnation, in DR2, people were a lot more hostile to her).

Being the entire center of the universe

In Chiaki’s case, it’s actually the opposite here. She is often pushed away in both DR2 and DR3. It’s especially glaring in DR3, where she’s supposed to be the main star but DR3 decided that some….things I have choice words for them should be focused (I’m looking at you, episode four). That being said, there is a character that makes an entire franchise revolve around them and it’s this one. (Don’t worry, I can go in-depth with that one) But as the things are now, Chiaki has her own arc in both game and anime, but there’s plethora of arcs that are separated, such as Chisa’s investigation of Hope’s peak and whatever that arc was in episode 4 of side despair.

Being able to magically solve everything by themselves

In DR3, there’s one huge factor regarding almost everything that is often forgotten in a lot of discussion:

Yep, Chisa Yukizome (her non-despair iteration was great, I wish we could have seen more of her) is by far the biggest factor in Chiaki’s arc. Her opening up more to discover new friendships, her taking care of her class and even trying to rescue her, everything can be attributed to Chisa. It actually makes a great contrast compared to DR2, where Chiaki couldn’t really hold the group together. I guess it shows how one mentor figure can change a lot.

Actually in Nanami’s own words, she didn’t magically solve everything (in fact….everything went to shittersville for her), she just “talked more than she used to”.

In short: Mary sue is an outdated and specific term, and Chiaki is NOT a Mary Sue. Far from it, actually.

“She’s a gamer, therefore she is pandering!!!” (Yes, some folk use that against her)

Not only is hating a character because of a talent a really shallow view on a characterization as a whole, it also misses the entire point of the franchise. Danganronpa is about how there’s more to people than just what talent they had. It’s also weird that she’s the only one that’s hated because of her talent, I haven’t seen others being dunked on. I guess it shows that it’s not exactly a good idea to hate something for what talent they have.

“Hating a popular character because they’re popular.”

It’s…not exactly productive but it happens. What else to say than….those people need to find better reasons to dislike something than that. Being “shoved in the face” doesn’t work because it’s the internet, you can choose what content are you going to see.

“Human Nanami wasn’t supposed to exist / it ruins her character”

This one is one of the more contentious one, but I have to disagree with that notion heavily. Nowhere was it really implied that her character traits come from that she’s an AI. In fact, as very flawed as Hope arc was, the explanation on how DR2 Nanami came to be does make sense. She was based on memories, similar to how Amadeus is in Steins;Gate, except that instead of being based on a person’s memories, she was based around memories from others. It’s that how both Nanami’s tend to differ a lot. Kodaka even said that in the climax of DR2, Chiaki felt like an entirely different person than we knew her from most of the game and that was one of the reasons why he went with DR3 Nanami. If anything, DR2 and DR3 complement each while they also contrast each other. This is gonna be a long one, so that topic will be for another post.

In conclusion, a lot of criticism for Chiaki is unfair at best and irrational and flat out false information at worst. She does have writing flaws, make no mistake, such as how often she gets pushed away and inheriting DR3′s own flaws (lack of focus and too speedy pace), but other than that, there isn’t much justice done to her. She deserves a lot better than how fandom treats her.

because i prefer these two as a couple to chiaki and hinata (what can i say? ‘extra life’ really spoke to me) but i still wanted that sweet sweet angst

<3 glad you enjoyed the fic!

Some Hinanami, because they deserve happiness after what the anime did to them <3

Also, I just thought the concept was cute, even if it didn’t come out how I’d hoped it would :,)

Kamunana (before)

*spoon feeds you Kamunami*

I don’t wanna die

I will never disappear

mermaid AU