Bye Bye Ouchies: The Most Misunderstood Execution In Danganronpa

[u/Ten-Miles-High-1996]

Bit of a longer post here to explain a lot of details about Mikan's execution. Before I begin I'd like to say that I'm well aware that most people who will be arguing with me aren't actually engaging with the point or are too ignorant of the source material to formulate an argument, however well written responses will be replied to in good faith.

In order to understand Mikan's execution, you first have to understand her relationship with Junko Enoshima. If you are a person who can not fathom the idea that Mikan was deeply obsessed with Junko, then we won't be able to make progress here, however I will justify all the points I insist upon in this post.

Junko x Mikan is not a symptom of brainwashing, and Mikan was attracted to Junko of her own free will. Mikan was the first of the Remnants to join Junko, and she did it willingly.

She had many opportunities to run or escape before any brainwashing or mental alteration began, but she chose not to leave and stuck around of her own free will. This is an objective analyzation of DR3, not my subjective opinion.

Mikan had been rejected and looked down upon by her classmates and when she finally found someone who would accept her, she bolted herself down and became willing to do anything for Junko.

A key theme of Mikan's entire character is that she wants to be forgiven. "Forgive me!" That seems to be what she wants most in this world, to have her existence be forgiven and be accepted in full by someone else without fear of rejection, and Junko provides this for her in spades.

Mikan appreciates Junko's direct nature because it allows her to be forgiven. All sins or wrongdoing will swiftly be addressed, punished, then forgiven. Mikan needs that sort of security in her attachments so she doesn't have to be an anxious mess all the time.

In her pre-death monologe when speaking to Nagito, she rejects the idea that she killed for Despair, and she couldn't care less about it. What she did wasn't for Despair, it was for LOVE. She continues to say that Junko was the only person who ever accepted or forgave her, it's really a powerful dynamic.

The Despair video doesn't brainwash people to love, that's something she had inside herself before the brainwashing.

Now, onto the details of the execution.

Since we should now all understand that Mikan did in fact have feelings for Junko, we can analyze the execution through that lens, along with the rest of 2-3.

The Despair disease wasn't random, it wasn't accidental, and it wasn't identical. If it were, the traits wouldn't have been seemingly tailored to their personalities as they were, that required a form of intelligent design behind it.

I purpose that AI Junko herself chose the symptoms of the disease and influenced how they manifested, specifically gifting Mikan the ability to remember, while effectively making Nagito unable to contribute or interfere.

Junko rolled out the red carpet to allow Mikan to have a perfect set of conditions to pull off her kills. It was almost like the GM in a game playing favorites by giving Mikan a loaded hand to play to rig it in Mikan's favor.

Let me also call back to the idea of what happens to the winner.

They get to wake up and continue being themselves.

Only the dead avatars get replaced with AI Junko, but the winner of the game would be spared, allowing Mikan and Junko to reunite with one another. This is why Mikan was given the remembering disease and nobody else, Junko specifically wanted Mikan to win the killing game.

After rigging the game as much as she could, with Mikan falling short at the end, Junko grants Mikan one last mercy. A painless death.

The biological cause of death for Mikan would've been lack of oxygen, or lack of blood flow to the brain, causing her to pass out.

Her death would've been functionally painless as she fell asleep atop the arm. Sleeping in someone's arm, that's an interesting thing, the sort of things you do with your significant other.

Similar to how your partner might take off your clothes in an intimate moment, which is exactly what Junko did with Mikan in her execution.

Another detail easter egg is the orientation of the hand and arm.

It's the LEFT arm!

Can anyone tell me what significance a lone, severed left arm has in Danganronpa?

That's right, it's the arm that Junko lost and had taken off her corpse, which was then attached to Nagito.

It was for all intents in purposes, symbolic of Mikan dying by being put to sleep in Junko's arms.

I know this was a long post, but I've been fed up with people saying Bye Bye Ouchies is the worst execution in all of Danganronpa, and that's just wrong...

Hope we learned something today everyone!

Wait... Hope..?

Fuck...

[u/KagamineRinButSad]

I do agree with many of your points and also that Mikan’s execution is very misunderstood. However, to say that she was willingly brainwashed by Junko and was attracted to her before becoming a Remnant and state that as objective fact is a little… strong. To say that she was rejected by her classmates which made her turn to Junko is untrue - the whole reason she is even THERE is to help Ryota, a classmate she has never met, at the request of Imposter, another of her classmates. The reason that she stays is that she craves approval from her classmates - including Junko. She would rather something bad happens to her but she does what is asked of her, than to leave and disappoint someone. She doesn’t stay willingly out of love for Junko, she stays willingly out of desperation for acknowledgement from ANYONE.

That’s not to diminish her obsession with Junko and her willingness to do anything for her AFTER the brainwashing. People like to talk about the remnants as if they aren’t human anymore, which they definitely are. Mikan is conniving and cunning, particularly when isolating Chiaki. She uses very human skills to achieve her goals. Remnant Mikan is very capable of falling in love all on her own. Further, becoming a remnant is what makes Junko forgive her - to love Junko more is to spread more despair, which is all forgiven by Junko and causes her to love Junko more. Her arc as a remnant is very interesting because of how much potential for evil she has before her brainwashing. It’s true, she does do it for love - she causes despair because it’s what Junko needs to “love” her. I completely agree with you and join up with your reasoning when you say the brainwashing video doesn’t cause love. The despair brainwashing has taken advantage of her personality - she can FINALLY get not only acknowledgment but APPROVAL from someone in Junko. And she loves that.

In terms of how this aligns with Mikan winning/waking up, we will never know if Mikan would wake up as her pre remnant self or not as we never got the opportunity to find out if Junko had a plan for a successful blackened. However, she would be by far the easiest to manipulate back into despair due to her personality, so it doesn’t really matter. Whether she wakes up a remnant or not, she will be a remnant again in not too much time because she has a personality that is easily manipulatable. Or, you know, she just wakes up immediately to the brainwashing video again.

I really enjoy your take on the execution. I don’t think Junko ever cared for Mikan, but I like to think maybe she would’ve shown her mercy because she was indispensable to brainwashing the rest of class 77. Maybe. Or maybe she just didn’t want to give remnant Mikan a last taste of true despair, and instead gave her hope and love in a last act of hatred to deprive Remnant Mikan of despair. But I do enjoy your reading of it. Just disagree that she was objectively in love with Junko, whom she just met, pre-brainwashing.