Why I felt Hinanami was forced.

                    Spoilers? Yes.

Before I get called a crazy KomaHina fangirl who hates Chiaki and Hinanami because they get in the way of my ship, I don't even ship KomaHina, I just cringe at most of it because of how out of character it is, so please don't bring that ship into this.

Now then! Moving onto the main topic of this post, why I found Hinanami to be forced in Danganronpa 2, not only that, I'll also be covering how Chiaki's relationships and effect on everyone in general came off as forced as well.

I don't hate Chiaki either, I think she's adorable and love her character design, I'd definitely be friends with her if she was real, I just feel like she was wasted potential as a character, there could've been so much more done with her being an AI instead of just being cute perfect gamer grill with little to no personality.

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So, first I'll be starting off with their relationship in SDR2.

Up until Chapter 5, it wasn't evident or expressed at all that Hinata held special feelings for Nanami, he interacted with her more than the others since she was one of the three who helped, figured out and pointed out stuff in class trials the most, but in terms of meaningful interactions or special feelings, he expressed more special feelings towards even Mikan than he ever did for Chiaki, constantly worrying about her and the positions they ended up in twice in the game.

But when it was Chiaki's turn to executed, he reacted in a way he never had before, extremely upset and hesitant to expose the truth, he never did this with any of the others with whom he demonstrated more special feelings and care for than Chiaki, it just felt so out of nowhere.

And at the ending where Chiaki's encouragement is what pushes him to move forward towards the future? Same issue as before, why? He never had any special relationship with her.

When it came to Naegi and Kirigiri, Naegi spent the majority of his time with Kirigiri, had a lot of conversations and moments with her establishing that he cares for her the most out of the people here, and had a special relationship with her, which is why it made sense and didn't feel out of nowhere when he took that fall for Kirigiri.

Hell, even with Saihara and Kaede, despite only having one chapter together, both of them were clearly special to each other, which is why Saihara's reaction to her death made sense, no such build up, moments or establishment was there concerning Hinanami though.

It just felt shoehorned in because Nanami was the main female lead, anyone could have replaced Nanami in chapter 5 and 6 and I don't think it would've made a difference.

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• Why I found Chiaki's relationships in general forced.

There's a bit of this in SDR2, but this is most prelevant in the DR3 anime. Let's start off with this in DR2.

There's obviously this with Hinata, which I've covered above, but this was also present with everyone - especially Sonia in Chapter 5. (I've noticed all of the Nanami forcedness is in Chapter 5 unfortunately which kind of ruins the amazing complexity of the case for me.)

Everyone is extremely upset when they find out Chiaki is gonna die, especially Sonia, she was actually more upset about Nanami than she was about Gundham. Fuyuhiko, Souda and Akane were very upset as well, again, they've never reacted to someone's death this strongly before, even though they've never spent much special time with Chiaki or even spoken more than 5 or 6 lines to her in some characters cases. I get this might be because she was trapped into killing and didn't actually kill anyone, but even so, their reactions seemed a bit extreme.

I was okay with this with Mikan during Chapter 3 because it made actual sense, by treating everyone and her putting on her shy, timid and helpless face, she had everyone wrapped around her finger, she actually spent time with all the characters who stood up for her and actively manipulated them into believing that she couldn't be the killer, this wasn't the case with Chiaki.

Now moving onto where this is most prevelant - DR3, where Chiaki was somehow more perfect than her AI self.

Her death is what sinks everyone into despair, which honestly made pretty much zero sense in terms of some of the characters like Fuyuhiko or Nagito, Fuyuhiko didn't sink into despair due to his sisters death or even Peko's death, but Nanami dying is somehow enough to sink him into despair? Is the anime seriously trying to tell me Nanami mattered to Fuyuhiko more than Peko or his sister did?

Nagito, although worshipping ultimates and symbols of hope, would never sink into despair if one of his classmates died, he has practically no attachment to them and it's extremely out of character for him to sink into despair because Chiaki died.

Also the part where Izuru cries when Chiaki is dying (also the fact that she's able to talk to move after being impaled when Mukuro - the ultimate SOLDIER, died instantly), Izuru didn't even know who Nanami was, maybe he recognized that Nanami was important to Hinata? Even so, I doubt that's enough to make Izuru cry.

Why does Izuru take an interest in Chiaki anyway? She's just a nice gamer girl, why is she suddenly special to Kamakura, again, it makes no logical sense. Also the whole "A bit of Hinata was still left in Izuru thing" just... didn't work.

Chiaki just felt like this plot device in DR3 they used to make everyone fall into despair and also completely ruined her, she kind of worked in DR2 because she was an AI meant to be perfect and guide everyone towards hope, while in DR3 where they made her a real human being - which was a very bad idea in the first place, she was even more perfect than her AI self, at least her AI self had one or two flaws even if they were irrelavent and were only there to make her look cute, her DR3 self lacks even THAT.

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That ends my post on this topic! Hope you enjoyed reading it and leave your thoughts in the comments below!

(PS: You can ship Hinanami all you want, heck even I find it cute sometimes, this is just my PERSONAL OPINION on it)