Part 67: Episode 7 - Future Side, Episode 4: Who is a liar

As we begin the fourth episode of Future Side, Monokuma treats us to a recap for some reason!



It also has this tidbit, which is amazing.



With the recap and opening skipped, we begin with chair thrower Juzo and Kyoko's gang.



Kazuo steps forward and asks if it isn't a bit soon to be resorting to violence. Juzo replies that if Makoto is with the Remnants, his buddies must be too, so they all need to be dealt with. Kazuo says that maybe Juzo should listen to reason, and Juzo basically tells Kazuo to fuck off with that shit, he doesn't take his orders from Kazuo anyway, but from Kyosuke.



Juzo throws the other chair, but misses, hitting an exposed water pipe instead.



So Juzo instead charges Kazuo, throwing his coat at him for some reason...



...and also he's suddenly behind Kazuo somehow? He kicks him in the back, anyway.



He then grabs the chair and wants to smack the fuck out of Kyoko, which prompts Ryota to run in and kind of ineffectually attempt to do something. He gets smacked away, landing on Kyoko in the process...



...to be precise, landing right on one of her feet, which can't help. So of course, with Juzo now standing above the two, chair in hand...



...we switch scenes to Sonozuke and Ruruka being chased down by Seiko.



Sonozuke apparently has exploding knives that got stuck in the wall with the intent of blowing up Seiko...



...but it doesn't work.



Meanwhile, Aoi and Miaya get spooked by the explosions and head to find cover, with Miaya displaying some damn impressive traction with that wheelchair.



Meanwhile meanwhile, Juzo is still standing with that chair raised. Don't try to reason out how this shit works on a timeline. But then, Juzo notices something behind him.





A needle shooting straight at him! He manages to dodge it.



And as a figure emerges from the fog, we find that we are witnesses of the rare instant archetype shift.



Kazuo has now decided to whip out the "secret badass old man" type.



He gets a chair thrown at him...



...but somehow seems to slow time or has inhuman reaction times or something like that to the point where he just casually stops it...



...and sends it screaming back in Juzo's direction.



He makes a move towards Juzo, who attempts to punch him, but suddenly stops, giving room for Kazuo to taunt him...





...and then elbow the shit out of him, sending Juzo flying and knocking him out.



So yeah, I don't think anybody expected that to happen.



And then he's right back to his old type, cracking his back with a "young people today...".



Juzo then gets tied up so he can't follow them anymore.



Aoi and Miaya then find Kyoko's group, leading to a happy reunion. Aoi asks Kyoko if she's hurt, to which Kyoko replies that it's nothing.



This sets Ryota off on a self-loathing bit, with him saying that he's sorry, and that whenever he tries to help anyone, he just causes them more pain, and how he can't be like Makoto.



Kyoko and Aoi cheer him up by saying that he doesn't have to be like Makoto, he just has to be himself, and reminding him of when he also stepped up for Aoi when Juzo was about to beat her up. Then, they are interrupted by Kyosuke speaking on the intercom!



Turns out he only captured Makoto instead of straight up Highlandering him, as one might have assumed. He announces that he's on the verge of executing Makoto, which has Aoi freaking out. Kyoko declares it an obvious trap, but also says that she's going to go and talk with Kyosuke, since there must be a reason he hasn't killed Makoto yet, so there should be room to negotiate.



However, Kazuo then declares that he'll be going.



Next, we cut to Makoto. As a side note, there's occasionally this type of shot coming from above through some sort of implied hole in the ceiling. This was the subject of so much debate back when this first aired, with the idea being that there was somebody else in the building that would turn out to be the attacker, that kind of stuff. I can just say now, this is a complete and utter red herring. The only reason it's here is to fuck with people.



Anyway, Makoto awakes to the sight of a katana.



The two talk. Kyosuke tells Makoto he's using him as bait - whoever tries to rescue him is obviously not to be trusted. Kyosuke also brings up a new line of thinking by asking Makoto what the most terrifying outcome for this game is. Makoto takes the simple answer - everybody getting killed. But Kyosuke has actually thought this through a bit more. See, there's nothing in the rules that says the attacker can't just stop killing. So Kyosuke sets up this scenario:



Imagine the game would end after Kyosuke was killed. People would assume that Kyosuke was the attacker. But like he just pointed out, that doesn't have to be the case. So instead, the attacker leaves with the rest of the survivors and is hailed as a hero that defeated despair. Essentially, it's the exact same scenario that he earlier accused Makoto of being involved in with the events of DR1.



So with Kyosuke, the presumptive next-in-line, dead, and Kazuo old, it would seem obvious that Future Foundation would rally around Makoto as its leader - the guy that now survived not one, but two killing games of despair. This will lead to the enemies' control over the foundation being all but absolute, with the attacker, as one of the survivors, using Makoto to entrench themselves in the foundation's leadership. So Kyosuke declares that Makoto and all those that would try to use him must be killed. Makoto retorts that that would just mean he would have to kill everybody.



Kyosuke... doesn't really fight the point, basically just declaring that while people die, what he created at Future Foundation will endure. Makoto calls him mad, and Kyosuke just asks if Junko was defeated without sacrifice, to which Makoto has no answer.



Kyosuke then finds his katana shot out of his hand.



The cavalry has arrived.



Of course, we then cut to Kyoko walking somewhere.



We get a brief flashback of some additional things Kazuo said we didn't see originally. The main gist is that he's taking the job of defusing the Makoto situation because Kyoko has another job she is well suited for. The gang splits up with Ryota accompanying Kyoko, and Aoi and Miaya accompanying Kazuo.



So Kyoko makes her way back to the meeting room where it all started...



...only to run into Koichi. He says that in a situation like this, the best place to be is with a world-class sleuth.



So I suppose he figured he'd be most likely to run into the Ultimate Detective by staying where the corpses are, since Kyoko would want to take a closer look at them.



Meanwhile, back in the monitoring room, Kazuo implies the reason Kyosuke is the way he is is because of his love of Chisa, then uses his needle shooting thing - whatever it is - to lay down suppressive fire...



...which allows Aoi to grab Makoto and bring him to safety.



Kazuo tells the others to get somewhere safe, he can hold his own. He also expresses his full confidence in Makoto, saying there's no doubt in his mind that he is the Ultimate Hope, and that he leaves the others in his hands.



Back in the meeting room, Ryota asks Kyoko about what kind of person comes up with something like the killing game. Kyoko has no answer because there's not enough information to go on.



Somewhere else, Juzo spotted Aoi, Makoto and Miaya and gives chase.



While following them, he spots Kazuo and Kyosuke, who have been moving through the building during their fight, and wants to help Kyosuke, who just tells him to not get involved and follow Makoto instead. Juzo acquiesces.



Again somewhere else, Ruruka and Sonosuke are trying to block a door in order to keep themselves away from Seiko.



It doesn't really work. Ruruka tries to play the nostalgia card, bringing up to Seiko that they used to be best friends. Seiko throws it right back in her face, declaring that best friends don't let each other get expelled from Hope's Peak - so seems like that's what's driving the beef between these two, Ruruka apparently got Seiko expelled in some way. Sonosuke then brings up that he and Ruruka got expelled too, and probably got a lot more flak than Seiko did. She doesn't really care. Ruruka and Sonosuke then continue running.



Back at the main fight scene, Kazuo manages to catch Kyosuke's katana and straight up throws him with it.



The two proceed to have a philosophy-off, with Kazuo declaring Kyosuke both cynical and naive, a combination that will cost lives. Kyosuke continues his "damn the torpedoes" approach of all casualties being acceptable in destroying despair, and that sacrifices need to be made. Kazuo then asks if Chisa was one of those sacrifices, which sets Kyosuke off and has him charging Kazuo...





...who then proceeds to just straight block his katana like he don't give a fuck and throw Kyosuke off the walkway with himself.



Back with Makoto's gang, Aoi, who is out of breath, thinks they've ran far enough to be safe, but Miaya says that someone is following them, but she says she'll take care of it, declaring that Makoto's positive outlook has rubbed off on her and that Makoto and Aoi should have a little faith in their soulmate. She also says that her body is ready.



So Juzo gets to run into Miaya. Now, how is a wheelchair-bound girl going to fight an Ultimate Boxer?





With MOTHERFUCKING WHEELCHAIR ROCKET LAUNCHERS!





Juzo did not see that coming.



Back with Kazuo and Kyosuke, the fall seems to have left Kazuo in a bit of a worse state than he probably expected, being impaled and all.



Kyosuke, meanwhile, has survived it rather well. Kyosuke talks about how he completely misjudged Kazuo as just some old guy that did basically nothing, leaving Kyosuke to shoulder most of the burden, and that he had been ready to kill Kazuo for quite some time, but now that Kazuo showed his fangs, Kyosuke had a change of heart and wants to know what's going on in Kazuo's head.



Meanwhile, Juzo has survived being shot with rocket launchers.



Miaya announces that she will now use her seven secret weapons and begins to announce her first one.



Alas, Juzo isn't stupid and takes the opportunity to knock Miaya over with a kick. Figuring she's dealt with, he leaves.



We then take a close look at Miaya's eyes.





Close enough to see that her pupil is capable of growing and shrinking like a camera would, with the appropriate sound effect.



And somewhere else, there is a girl that is viewing that camera. She complains about this turn of events...



...and about having to reboot. Now, who would have a keyboard with a Monokuma return key?



Iiiiiit's Monaca! And on that, we end the episode. So, this reveal was a lot of fun to see unfold live. A few notes:

- You can't immediately tell that it's Monaca even though the VA in the dub is the same. The reason being that she actually has two distinct voices - a "normal" voice that doesn't sound like the one from UDG, and the one from UDG, which is higher-pitched and now sounds fake compared to her "normal" voice. I actually like this a lot - essentially implying that all this time, Monaca has been putting on a fake voice to sound even more innocent and harmless, only letting her real voice come through when she's hiding god knows where and is only talking to herself - though she does fall back into the fake voice regularly.

- There was a fair bit of talk about Miaya being Monaca the moment the characters were revealed. Though people were more thinking along the lines of Miaya actually being Monaca, not Miaya being a robot controlled by Monaca. I suppose the generally similar look, the fact that she's wheelchair-bound and only speaks through a computer program were enough red flags.

- There was also a fair bit of different talk after this reveal. Basically, there was a lot of this going on:



Not a lot of people had played UDG at that point in time - it was a Vita-exclusive spinoff that wasn't well received, so a lot of people just skipped it without giving a second thought to it, which led to a lot of people being confused who this green haired girl is and why other people (like me) were so excited about her showing up. I'll admit, I was super happy when this happened. There was a realistic chance that DR3 could just entirely ignore UDG, since its story doesn't have too much of an impact on the bigger picture beyond setting up Monaca as Junko II, and even that could be entirely ignored by just making Junko the mastermind again by way of some other bullshit reason why she's still around. So this was a genuine surprise to me.

Anyway, that's it for this episode of Future Side. Next time, back to Despair Side, where things are starting to take a turn for the dark.

What the fuck just happened?: Seiko continues to attack Ruruka and Sonozuke, and we get some backstory. Juzo continues attacking Kyoko and her group, but is stopped when Kazuo suddenly turns super badass. Kyosuke turns out to have captured Makoto to use him as bait. Kazuo attacks Kyosuke, allowing Aoi and Miaya to rescue Makoto and flee. In fighting Kyosuke, Kazuo ended up impaled on some debris, but Kyosuke is no longer interested in killing Kazuo. Juzo chases Makoto and ends up facing off with Miaya. He knocks Miaya over, and it's revealed she is a robot that is being controlled by Monaca.