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danganronpa_alumni May. 30th, 2025 08:36 pm)
abyssal_sylph posting in danganronpa_alumni May. 30th, 2025 08:36 pm){Originally posted on my own journal here, crossposting it here because why not?}
I keep remembering that Kiyo from DanganRonpa V3 resonates with Medusa & it keeps driving me insane (Note: a lot of these observations have been informed or taken from![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
doritofalls on their tag “Korekiyo Shinguji”, so give those a look if you want).
CW/TW: major discussions of CSA, incestuous grooming, serial killing of women & similar themes.
For those who are aware that some versions of the myth of Medusa involve her being raped by Posiodon and then turned into a gorgon by Athena & see the connection I did, you likely know where this is going. If you don’t &/or aren’t convinced that Kiyo resonates with Medusa for any reason outside of what he states in the FTE, please hear me out.
In his 4rth Free Time Event, Korekiyo mentions that Medusa is the myth he resonates most with after Shuichi asks him what his favorite myth. The reason Korekiyo gives is something about humanity’s relationship with nature & death. But I will try to explain why this connection might be deeper & relate to his relationship with his sister.
Now many people might take what Korekiyo says on face value; he was in love with his sister, she loved him back, they had a romantic-sexual relationship & after her death he started killing women to give her friends in the afterlife. But to that I have a big question;
When did this relationship start?
Ignoring some time weirdness caused by the fact this is a simulation for entertainment by Team DR, we can assume Korekiyo is meant to be 17/18-ish, as he’s supposed to be a high school student when he is chosen for the Gopher Project. And in-game he claims that he very close to killing exactly 100 women to befriend his sister.
But do you think about how much time that must’ve taken???
Kiyo isn’t killing in 1920s USA, which is a giant country with lacking law-enforcement, he’s killing in Japan (a fairly small country) in what we can assume is the modern day. He also wants to make sure the girls he kills would be good friends for his sister (I will also note that it can be assumed to be in his sister’s age range, since he never complains about his victims’ ages). So he must have taken time to befriend random people (since it’s canon that he traveled a lot), get close enough to those women to get them to trust him, make a plan to kill them, hide or destroy the body before having to avoid getting arrested or even assumed to be involved with the disappeared girl (which, from what little I know of the Japanese law, is very hard).
It’s honestly very hard to believe he could’ve killed a girl even every week, which would still take almost 2 years, so between travel time, checking the girls’ good-friend-for-sister levels. He also mentions that he started killing people after he started hearing his sister, which from his FTEs we can tell happened a while after her death in a near-death experience. Even just taking it from a girl a week to every two weeks successfully finding a girl that trusts him & killing them, it would take, what? Almost 4 years? Which would make him 13-15. And Considering Korekiyo is aware that he’s not the most approachable person, we can assume it might’ve taken even longer which
When did Korekiyo & his sister’s relationship start?
Doritofalls has also noted that while the sister personality is taking, Korekiyo’s speech seems to change. He usually speaks in a vocabulary-heavy & long sentence running way. But when the sister personality is speaking, he speaks in much shorter sentences and with a stutter that he doesn’t show anywhere else.
His Love Hotel scene also brings the consensuality of the relationship in question. The hotel’s whole thing is that Shuichi goes into somebody’s dreams, and then play the part of their ideal lover. Korekiyo’s is NOT with his sister or even somebody playing pretend to be her (which considering Tsumugi has an incest fantasy, I find telling). Instead he pretends it’s somebody who understands he’s emotionally unavailable & whom he either has a BDSM relationship with where they do non-con play, or he can straight up abuse himself. I prefer the former, because he doesn’t show privy behavior outside of the Love Hotel scene. But it does end up implying that Korekiyo’s ideal lover, to HIM, is not his sister.
Despite all of this he speaks very fondly of his sister. But we also know next to nothing about his parents or any other caretaker. And while Japan is much more okay letting their children go out on their own, wouldn’t any good caretaker eventually realise that Kiyo keeps running into places where murders keep happening? Regardless, I think Kiyo was likely groomed by his sister, possibly from a very young age, since he lacks understanding on why this would be bad.
So we’ve established that Kiyo has likely been sexually abused by his sister. But what does this have to do with Medusa?
Basically, Medusa is often viewed as a monster, and to many of the ancient greeks she would’ve just that. Ancient Greece had… views, on relationships & sex that made it that consent didn’t actually matter all that much (the pottery image for kidnapping & marriage basically being the same for example). So Medusa being a lady who turned men to stone would’ve been enough justification to kill her, no matter the backstory. But also from what I know, the earliest writer of the Medusa as rape-victim, came from Ovid, somebody whom had consistent record of putting the gods as awful people who abuse & hurt the mortals most chances they get (seemingly born in part from Ovid’s own experiences with authority). So he likely wrote the Medusa story as one of her being hurt by one god & then punished by the other.
Is it a stretch to say Kiyo is subconsciously aware that what happened to him was abuse & is resonating Medusa for that reason? Maybe. But also the fact that Korekiyo kills specifically women whom his sister would’ve considered possible friends might end up implying that a part of why he kills is to gain back an idea of control of the situation he was stuck in, similar to his Love Hotel scene. This way, he became a monster thanks to the person he seems to worship, but viewing what happened to him as a “gift”, he can hurt people with because it’s what She wanted.
Again, arguably a stretch, but I still go insane over it.
I keep remembering that Kiyo from DanganRonpa V3 resonates with Medusa & it keeps driving me insane (Note: a lot of these observations have been informed or taken from
CW/TW: major discussions of CSA, incestuous grooming, serial killing of women & similar themes.
For those who are aware that some versions of the myth of Medusa involve her being raped by Posiodon and then turned into a gorgon by Athena & see the connection I did, you likely know where this is going. If you don’t &/or aren’t convinced that Kiyo resonates with Medusa for any reason outside of what he states in the FTE, please hear me out.
In his 4rth Free Time Event, Korekiyo mentions that Medusa is the myth he resonates most with after Shuichi asks him what his favorite myth. The reason Korekiyo gives is something about humanity’s relationship with nature & death. But I will try to explain why this connection might be deeper & relate to his relationship with his sister.
Now many people might take what Korekiyo says on face value; he was in love with his sister, she loved him back, they had a romantic-sexual relationship & after her death he started killing women to give her friends in the afterlife. But to that I have a big question;
When did this relationship start?
Ignoring some time weirdness caused by the fact this is a simulation for entertainment by Team DR, we can assume Korekiyo is meant to be 17/18-ish, as he’s supposed to be a high school student when he is chosen for the Gopher Project. And in-game he claims that he very close to killing exactly 100 women to befriend his sister.
But do you think about how much time that must’ve taken???
Kiyo isn’t killing in 1920s USA, which is a giant country with lacking law-enforcement, he’s killing in Japan (a fairly small country) in what we can assume is the modern day. He also wants to make sure the girls he kills would be good friends for his sister (I will also note that it can be assumed to be in his sister’s age range, since he never complains about his victims’ ages). So he must have taken time to befriend random people (since it’s canon that he traveled a lot), get close enough to those women to get them to trust him, make a plan to kill them, hide or destroy the body before having to avoid getting arrested or even assumed to be involved with the disappeared girl (which, from what little I know of the Japanese law, is very hard).
It’s honestly very hard to believe he could’ve killed a girl even every week, which would still take almost 2 years, so between travel time, checking the girls’ good-friend-for-sister levels. He also mentions that he started killing people after he started hearing his sister, which from his FTEs we can tell happened a while after her death in a near-death experience. Even just taking it from a girl a week to every two weeks successfully finding a girl that trusts him & killing them, it would take, what? Almost 4 years? Which would make him 13-15. And Considering Korekiyo is aware that he’s not the most approachable person, we can assume it might’ve taken even longer which
When did Korekiyo & his sister’s relationship start?
Doritofalls has also noted that while the sister personality is taking, Korekiyo’s speech seems to change. He usually speaks in a vocabulary-heavy & long sentence running way. But when the sister personality is speaking, he speaks in much shorter sentences and with a stutter that he doesn’t show anywhere else.
His Love Hotel scene also brings the consensuality of the relationship in question. The hotel’s whole thing is that Shuichi goes into somebody’s dreams, and then play the part of their ideal lover. Korekiyo’s is NOT with his sister or even somebody playing pretend to be her (which considering Tsumugi has an incest fantasy, I find telling). Instead he pretends it’s somebody who understands he’s emotionally unavailable & whom he either has a BDSM relationship with where they do non-con play, or he can straight up abuse himself. I prefer the former, because he doesn’t show privy behavior outside of the Love Hotel scene. But it does end up implying that Korekiyo’s ideal lover, to HIM, is not his sister.
Despite all of this he speaks very fondly of his sister. But we also know next to nothing about his parents or any other caretaker. And while Japan is much more okay letting their children go out on their own, wouldn’t any good caretaker eventually realise that Kiyo keeps running into places where murders keep happening? Regardless, I think Kiyo was likely groomed by his sister, possibly from a very young age, since he lacks understanding on why this would be bad.
So we’ve established that Kiyo has likely been sexually abused by his sister. But what does this have to do with Medusa?
Basically, Medusa is often viewed as a monster, and to many of the ancient greeks she would’ve just that. Ancient Greece had… views, on relationships & sex that made it that consent didn’t actually matter all that much (the pottery image for kidnapping & marriage basically being the same for example). So Medusa being a lady who turned men to stone would’ve been enough justification to kill her, no matter the backstory. But also from what I know, the earliest writer of the Medusa as rape-victim, came from Ovid, somebody whom had consistent record of putting the gods as awful people who abuse & hurt the mortals most chances they get (seemingly born in part from Ovid’s own experiences with authority). So he likely wrote the Medusa story as one of her being hurt by one god & then punished by the other.
Is it a stretch to say Kiyo is subconsciously aware that what happened to him was abuse & is resonating Medusa for that reason? Maybe. But also the fact that Korekiyo kills specifically women whom his sister would’ve considered possible friends might end up implying that a part of why he kills is to gain back an idea of control of the situation he was stuck in, similar to his Love Hotel scene. This way, he became a monster thanks to the person he seems to worship, but viewing what happened to him as a “gift”, he can hurt people with because it’s what She wanted.
Again, arguably a stretch, but I still go insane over it.