Why Tenko Chabashira Is A Great Character Pt. 1: Tenko’s Backstory And Personality

The existential crisis that is waking up in a body that isn't your own in a life that isn't your own but it really is yours and your perception of fiction and reality has been warped so much you still believe you're the person you were written to be in the simulation even though you know that person is fake because it's the only sense of identity you have left.

It's like having two people trapped in your body the person you were in the simulation and the person you used to be.

honestly, i really hope tsumugi lied A Lot at the end of V3 because if she is even telling 90% of the truth, the survivors are exiting the game into an existential nightmare

My full essay of my rewriting Tenko’s flipping ability

Just a heads up. This is a 33-page essay about Tenko’s flipping ability, a very niche topic, and a scene that only showed up once in the game. It has some good points, of course, but it is VERY LONG and in my opinion okay in quality.

But someone asked me for it and I promised I would post it if someone asked

So if you genuinely want to read it, you can read it Here 👈

I hope you enjoy it as much as you enjoyed my original post, and if not, I'm sorry.

I Accidently Made a Game: The Origin of The Duck Game

Hey, pausing the not so regularly scheduled Danganronpa rants to talk about a passion project of mine that has complety taking over my brain for the past several months.

You ever start a joke and then wake up one day realizing it’s gone way too far? Yeah. That’s The Duck Game.

It started with a simple board game, a dumb conversation, and a Danganronpa fanfic idea that spiraled completely out of control.

And now, somehow, it’s a real, fully fleshed-out narrative RPG about the dark side of ambition, success, and power.

Let me explain.

One day, my friend Jensen brought in a board game called Abducktion by Very Special Games.

It’s a strategy game where you move colored ducks into formations to score points. The game had this story where you’re an intern at a UFO company abducting ducks, and in the single player mode you could gain promotions based on how many points you earned.

So, as my friends Jensen, and Braylon were playing, we started joking around. What if Abducktion wasn’t just a fun little game? What if the boss was actually using it to weed out the weak to find the best interns, promote them and get rid of the rest?

And that’s when I thought: Wait. This would make a great fanfic.

I didn’t want to write a fic about me and my friends, so I did the next logical thing—turn it into a Danganronpa fanfic. That same day, literally hours later, I had a draft for the first chapter, multiple endings planned, and a whole choice-based structure where readers would click links to different chapters based on their decisions.

Then I realized... that would be alot of work even for an over-obsessed Danganronpa fan.

So, I told my friend Braylon about the idea, and he said:

"If you come up with the ideas, me and my team could make it a game for you."

And just like that, me and his team partnered up. But there was one little problem:

Copyright.

I couldn’t just submit a Danganronpa fanfic as a standalone game and try to market it off as my own that would be a legal disaster.

But then I remembered—my stupid brain had already come up with HCs so OOC they twisted the characters beyond reconigtion.

So I took my favorite (sadly) non canon friend group—Tenko, Kokichi, Maki, Shuichi, Kaito, and Kaede—gave them new names, new roles, new backstories, new trauma, and new relationships and boom.

The Duck Game was born.

What started as a ha-ha funny idea spiraled into something way bigger than I ever expected.

When I was writing the idea down for the first time I literally wrote "The Duck Game, lmao no way this will go anywhere"

And now, several months later, here I am—actually making a real game. And honestly? I’m really proud of myself (which is rare, so that’s how you know this means something).

It's also really weird to be super fixated on something that isn't Danganronpa for once.

So What Is The Duck Game?

It’s a narrative-driven RPG about climbing the corporate ladder at a shady company called Luxus Enterprises. You play as Bennett Brooks, an anxious intern who slowly gets tangled in a world of corruption, power, and moral compromise.

Every decision you make shapes his relationships, his career, and who or what he ultimately becomes.

With multiple endings, branching choices, and a heavy focus on ethical repercussions, The Duck Game asks one question:

"How far would you go for success?"

If you're into narrative driven games, power struggles, and complex characters you'll love The Duck Game. It's got drama, tough choices, and dark themes, with a unique twist on corporate ambition and moral dilemmas.

It's still a WIP but I'm excited to share as it develops. Follow @theduckgameoffical for updates!

If you're intrested I'd appreciate you checking it out! Your feedback and support let me know people are invested, but no pressure.

Thank you so much for all the support you’ve shown on my rants and projects in the past—I’m really excited to work towards making The Duck Game a fully fledged game with all of your help!

I've been wanting to share my thoughts on the print on Kaito's shirt for a while now. This post is largely inspired by this one

Kaito's shirt has a print of a special type of makeup used in traditional Japanese theater. This makeup type is called Kumadori. I'm not an expert, so I'll just briefly summarize what I found about it.

The makeup itself is a dramatic pattern of symmetrical lines that highlight facial features, drawn on a base of a certain color that is applied to the face in advance. The placement of the lines and their color reflect the character's personality.

Dark red (which is what Kaito has) is used to reflect courage, bravery, and a sense of justice, but can also reflect anger and short temper.

There are many types of this makeup. The one on Kaito's print most closely resembles Suji-guma (筋隈). This style is used for roles of strong heroes full of anger, which suits Kaito perfectly.

The post I linked says that in each game there is a character in a white shirt with a red print that somehow reflects their death. Leon has a broken skull, Nagito has something resembling a spear (or toxic fumes). And Kaito has his "mask" of a hero. And technically, that's what killed him. His desire to be a hero.

He tried to act like an indestructible hero the whole time. He hid his illness from his friends. He became a murderer to save Maki. And he agreed to Kokichi's plan to give others a chance to be saved. He died from his illness in the middle of an execution, but what drove his illness to that point, and what led to his execution, was his desire to be a hero.

So in a sense, it was Kaito's heroism that led to his death.

Sites where I found information about traditional Japanese theater makeup:

1 2 3

And what the Suji-guma (筋隈) style itself looks like

If Rantarou survived first chap+

I bestow the the transgender flag onto my two favorite DRV3 characters

Hope vs Despair and How Danganronpa Shows the Fine Line Between Them

In Danganronpa, Hope vs. Despair aren't just opposing forces—they’re intertwined like yin and yang.

You can’t have one without the other. Each moment of hope carries the potential for despair, and each moment of despair can give birth to a new form of hope.

The series doesn’t just explore this dynamic; it forces the characters to confront it, shaping their growth and evolution throughout the story.

Take Makoto Naegi, for example. As the Ultimate Hope, he stands in direct contrast to Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Despair. But Makoto’s hope isn't simple optimism—it’s been tested and shaped by the despair surrounding him. His journey shows how hope can survive even in the darkest circumstances. On the flip side, Junko manipulates despair, using it as a tool to corrupt and reshape hope into something sinister. She twists the idea of hope, showing that it too can be warped when exposed to extreme despair.

Despair is often depicted as the absence of hope, like the color black, while hope is like white—full of aspirations, dreams, and ambitions. But, just as there are varying shades of black and white, hope and despair are not as clear-cut as they might seem. There are nuances, shades of gray that blur the lines, making it harder to see where one ends and the other begins.

In SDR2, the pattern continues, but with more complexity. It’s still hope vs. despair, but with the added layer of past vs. future. The characters' pasts represent despair to them, but through confronting their dark pasts, they create new hope. Their stories show that hope isn’t just about looking forward—it’s about confronting the past and using that pain to forge something better.

Then there’s Nagito Komaeda, who’s obsessed with hope. His view of hope is twisted because he believes hope can only arise from despair. For him, creating despair is the means to achieve his ideal hope, showing just how tangled these forces can become. Nagito represents the extreme, where hope and despair bleed into each other in the most disturbing way.

In V3, the lines between hope and despair are even more blurred. Monokuma’s Death Road of Despair is a perfect example of this cycle. The characters are given hope—a potential escape that’s always within reach—but as they fail repeatedly, their hope turns into despair. They begin to believe that escape was never possible, that they were wasting their time from the start.

The constant cycle of hope and despair leaves them trapped in their own feelings, forcing them to reevaluate what hope even means.

Then, we have characters like Kaede, Kaito, and Tenko, who embody hope for those around them. When they die, the survivors are filled with despair, but instead of succumbing to grief, they use their deaths as a source of strength. Their deaths become a new form of hope for the survivors, pushing them to continue the fight. The cycle isn’t over; it’s reborn from loss and pain, showing that hope can arise even from the darkest moments.

Ultimately, Danganronpa isn’t about choosing hope over despair or vice versa—it’s about understanding the complex relationship between them. Both hope and despair are essential to the human experience.

One cannot exist without the other, and each gives rise to the other in ways we may not fully understand. The characters are constantly forced to confront this reality, evolving in response to the ever-present pull of these two forces.

By rejecting the notion that hope and despair are opposites, Danganronpa teaches us that life isn’t about simple binaries. It’s about the messy, complicated truth that both hope and despair are necessary for growth, and in the end, it’s the balance between them that gives life meaning.

The ending of Danganronpa V3: Not the cliché twist people think it is.

Probably the most controversial part about V3 is the ending. I love it. I love it so much I have a shirt of it. I can see why others don’t somewhat but at the same time I’m like why?

Many people say the fact the game is fiction makes it meaningless, but I strongly disagree. I understand that an 'it was all fake' or 'and then they woke up' ending is annoying and overused and, depending on what happens in the piece of media, just bad writing, but DRV3 isn't one of those endings.

And if you do believe the game was meaningless, then congrats you fell for Tsumugi's lies, hook line and sinker.

In the sixth trial, Shuichi talks about how even though the game was fiction, it still hurt him to see the people he cared about die.

Even though they are being told that everything they went through is meaningless, it is real to them; if they feel sadness and anger and love, it’s just as real; it’s just as meaningful as in the real world.

Another thing is the theme of the whole game is truth vs. lies, so wouldn’t it make sense for the final twist to be that what they thought was the truth is a lie?

In the first two games, the final trial ends with a battle of hope vs despair where hope always triumphs and despair is crushed, but in V3 it’s different.

Tsumugi wants them to continue the game. The fans want them to continue the game.

Choosing hope—sacrificing someone to go on to the next killing game—will just cause the cycle to repeat, but choosing despair is also bad; it causes people to give up and lose everything.

Shuichi doesn’t want Maki (and Kiibo) to have to go into another killing game, but they also don’t want to fall into despair. So he refuses to vote, and as much as Tsumugi begs and pleads, he stands his ground.

The viewers also refuse to vote, proving that fiction does have the power to change reality, a powerful message that is one of the main reasons this ending is so great.

Even though Shuichi Maki, and Himiko were fictional characters, they changed the outside world and stopped a whole franchise, a whole movement, and in real life, fiction can spread ideologies, beliefs, and concepts, and these things can spread to people like wildfire and bring people together in ways that normal methods, (like by mouth,) cannot.

That's why artists try to put messages in their art, musicians in their music, and directors in their movies and TV shows. They know that's the type of media that will have the most reach and spread the fastest.

Or even social media spreading information; it might not be the best source, but it still spreads rapidly.

Media has influenced our way of life for years, influencing our speech, thoughts, and cultures because of what it says; this is what V3 is trying to show.

Shuichi also talks about using his friends deaths and the lie of the killing game to change the world.

This is why it matters; this is the power of fiction.

Shuichi using his friends' deaths, which may have been seemingly useless anyway, to take down the show that has trapped them in a cycle of deceit and forced them to play their game.

It’s also great when you remember that Shuichi was afraid of finding the truth, and Kaede and Kaito helped him gain more confidence.

He vowed to Kaede he would end the killing game, and this man not only found the biggest truth ever, he not only ended the game, but ended the whole franchise.

If that's not character development, I don’t know what it is.

Another reason people hate the ending is the portrayal of the fans, the fans are portrayed as Danganronpa obsessed, and they are shunned by watching the senseless killing of people for entertainment.

It’s a world where everyone has become so desensitized to kids getting killed on TV that they gather around screens all over the world eager to watch the next installment; that’s why there are 53 seasons.

The fans in the ending are an exaggerated view of what Kodaka feared would happen.

It's not trying to bash the fans of today but the fans of the future if this continues and we don’t care about the deaths anymore, and we just want more because you can have too much of a good thing.

It also has good messaging about fans (and corporations) tearing a TV show or game series apart in compensation for more, deriving it from the original message.

For example, Squid Game a show about the flaws of capitalism and exploitation for entertainment, was remade into a reality show by Netflix, Mr. Beast, and Amazon Prime to capitalize on the success of Squid Game when it first came out, actively hurting real people in the process, just for the sake of making money.

The ending of V3 reminds us that the connections we make and the experiences we have give our lives meaning. And even if we only affect one person with our actions, it will be all worth it, and that's the greatest truth of them all.

It’s about freedom, the problems of beating a piece of media to death just to have more, using deceased loved ones' wishes to help move forward, and finding meaning in the things that seem meaningless.

The V3 ending is a roller coaster of emotions and a masterful experience. It serves as a great ending to a great series that keeps you on the edge of your seat, makes you feel sympathy for some fictional characters, and still holds up even eight years later.

I don't think this rant/analysis will fix the wedge in the fandom this ending has caused (we've argued about much more ignorant things in the past.) But I hope it at least resonated with you and re-kindled elements you remember loving about the ending for people who did enjoy it; and for those who didn't I hope this gives you some insight into why I and many others appreciate the ending.

So before your start to conclude that V3's ending was meaningless think to yourself-is that the truth or just the lie you were meant to believe.

The impact of Tenko’s ability on Maki and Kokichi's character arc: a continuation of me rewriting Tenko’s flipping ability.

This is a more indepth analysis of Tenko and Maki and Tenko and Kokichi's relationships. It might not make sense without the first part, but you don't have to read it to enjoy this.

Introduction

Tenko is the sun, bright, loud, beloved, and emotional, Maki and Kokichi are the moons, the liars, the ones who build up walls to hide their true selves, the loners.

Realistically, that analogy was supposed to be with Kaito, but we’re not talking about him, and I think Tenko could in some ways be a better mentor figure for Maki (Kokichi and Shuichi.)

Tenko is like Kaito but soft in the ways he is rough, less abrasive. Tenko relates to Maki and Kokichi in a different way than Kaito, of course. Kaito Maki and Kokichi are like three peas in a pod, but Tenko would be able to listen to help to heal in a different way than Kaito can.

Tenko’s flipping ability doesn’t take away from Kaito’s role; it adds to it and gives more time for Kokichi and Maki to flesh out before or during their development with Kaito.

Kokichi’s mask doesn’t have to break like it did in chapter five, but we can see him become more defensive and isolated.

Maki doesn’t have to shed her stone-cold assassin behavior and break down like in chapters five and six, but she can start to become more vulnerable.

Maki's growth with Tenko

Maki and Tenko could spar together and have chats about Maki’s past that even though Tenko didn’t agree with murder, she knows that Maki was forced into it and is still a good person deserving of love and affection and would be like a second Kaito there for her, especially since Kaito is deteriorating because of his illness.

I believe that Maki could also help Tenko, especially since their backstories are so similar, talking about her crime and opening up about her distrust for the men she saw on the streets and the ones her master told her about, and Maki would help keep Tenko grounded and help her open up more.

I always thought it was a missed opportunity only giving Maki and Tenko one interaction in the game.

I love the parallels between her and Maki's backstories and their characters as a whole.

From the get-go, both didn’t really have a say in their lives; their childhoods started out similar with both getting abandoned but then had two separate paths: a savior and a killer, one embracing their role and the other rejecting it.

I want Maki and Tenko to have long, profound talks about strength and being vulnerable. I want Tenko to flip Maki and give her a whole new outlook on her life.

I want them to talk about Tenko’s vigilantism, Maki's childhood friend, the burden that they both place on themselves to protect those they care about even if it means harming others.

I want Tenko to grab Maki's hands, which have been coated with blood countless times, even with her strong morals against murder, and tell Maki she trusts her and cares about her.

Kokichi’s arc with Tenko

With Kokichi after flipping him, making him vulnerable and out in the open, Kokichi runs away at first but soon realizes the strength of Tenko’s ability and has her help him with his plans, he being the one that suggests she flip Tsumugi.

They would hang out, even though the others give them weird looks, especially since Tenko knows Kokichi’s true intentions. But like everyone else, Kokichi pushes Tenko away, putting back up his facade as a villain, betraying Tenko before her death, leaving him to run right back to Himiko.

Who she still cared about helping but took her mind off the jealousy of Himiko gravitating to Angie more than her by hanging out with Kokichi.

Kokichi would also tell Tenko that she’s lying to herself and too concerned about the others to care about herself and that mentality is going to get her killed.

(While he holds his script to his chest, knowing what’s coming two chapters from now.)

After Tenko died, Kokichi felt regretful but chose to keep it away from the others, still knowing that Tenko was one of his only true friends in the game, the only person who truly understood him (until chapter five), but that having friends in a killing game was a mistake and would only make him more weak and vulnerable.

Kokichi and Tenko’s friendship

Outside the narrative I have created, I want more Tenko-Kokichi shenanigans.

I like the fact that both sacrificed themselves to help/save someone else, and both died in a dark, claustrophobic environment alone.

I also like how they're more like each other than they both realize.

I think Kokichi could point out Tenko's altruism as a flaw and also call her out as a hypocrite, and he would definitely bash her for her relationship with Himiko, and I think Tenko could start to crack the mask, the facade that is Kokichi Oma.

I love their dynamic so much I just don't know how to explain it:

Two people who actively hate each other but have good chemistry and are constantly hanging out with each other to the confusion and expense of the others.

They insult each other all the time, but if anyone else insults either one of them, they would beat that person up.

They're normally making jokes at each other's expense but sometimes get serious with each other and actually give good advice and comfort.

Probably my second, maybe third favorite Tenko-male friendship (my first is Tenko and Shuichi).

They would be so chaotic together; I wish they would have gotten more time to hang out.

Tenko's missed opportunities

Tenko should have hung out with more people who weren't Himiko (and Shuichi) in the game. Her flipping ability and emotional depth could have allowed pivotal shifts in the narrative as well as doing work for her and many others' character arcs and developments.

(And just be really cool; give my girl more screen time, damn it.)