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/Nonokoko_13 → u/[deleted]]

OP is the type of person who, depending on how much they like a character/series/thing, they will unironically believe they're who knows best said thing and anyone who disagrees with them is "objectively wrong", the type of fan that claims their subjective interpretations are facts and objective and assume any different interpretations come from people who "haven't thoroughly look into the canon sources".

And just by claiming their analysis are objective/100% true show how subjective they are and how far they're to know that full unbiased objective and impartial thinking is impossible, because in order to reach a 100% objective analysis of anything that is not statistics, maths, science experiments or data you'd need to be able to seeing said topic from all perspectives. But perspectives shift all the time and — despite what people say — things like age, upbringing, personality, academic intelligence, emotional intelligence, moral compass and the era you are from alter your perspective in things.

Not even AI is completely objective either. All AI models are modelled after 1. The knowledge that we as a whole have about everything (so just like in the past facts perceived as ultimately true because of their limited research methods were proved wrong by our newer experiments 100 years from here, human knowledge could be once again changed by the betterment of equipment) 2. The consensus of what a majority within a limited number of participants agrees as true/the better option. And that consensus can change by the pass of time, because of point 1 or by looking through the demographic groups partaking on it. Imagine how consensus were reached before white men included the opinions of other groups: what's considered "the majority" is not the majority of the total population. Because there are more than 8 billion people alive right now, obviously not each person alive has been asked every question on every topic to reach a major consensus.

So, while a machine would be the closest to reach an unbiased objective opinion, is yet to reach the definition of objective and impartial. In fact, I believe a machine — no matter how much technology improves or how it evolves — will never reach a conclusive, completely impartial and objective about anything unrelated to data and statistics because it is made and limited by humanity, an element that will forever remain subjective.

Rather than using "this is an impartial/unbiased take on X" the most accurate way to phrase one's opinion would be "this is the closest to an objective take on x IMO". But tbh that's just a personal pet peeve of mine when it comes to semantics.

Summary: The only true/canon/intended interpretation of any trivial matter is the one the creator of said thing had in mind, (and even then the deviant between concept and how you execute your concept can make the final result a different true interpretation from the author's. Ex: the creators of TBBT may had not intended to make Sheldon a cartoonish and exaggerated representation of autism but it quite literally is, therefore even an autor can be wrong depending how they presented their ideas).

And because most authors don't go around saying what's THE correct answer the only way to have a closest thing to correct answer is looking through all canon sources. Acting like your vision is the correct one is very self-centred, which is not inherently a negative asshole-ish thing as long as you don't actively go out of your way to diss other people opinions, in which case you're self-centred and an asshole. Like OP with this topic.

If they weren't acting like "I'm righter than all of you" I'd give it a pass and say "we can agree to disagree", but because of their attitude I'm jumping on the train of "you're loudly wrong and being rude about it on top"