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these_balls) wrote2010-04-27 11:40 pm
these_balls) wrote2010-04-27 11:40 pm
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Understand the secrets and have some fun
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Yasuhiro Hagakure | Dangan Ronpa | reserved + reapp
I've updated Hagakure's personality and strengths/weaknesses sections to explain any developments or further insights gained from Ultra Despair Hagakure. The samples are from his first time around in the game, though I feel that they still reflect his core personality well.
Player
Name: Seto
Personal Journal:
E-mail: tehseto[at]hotmail[dot]com
AIM/Plurk/Etc.:
Timezone: CST
Current Characters in Route: N/A
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Name: Yasuhiro Hagakure
Series: Dangan Ronpa
Timeline: after the events of Ultra Despair Hagakure
Canon Resource Links: Dangan Ronpa Wiki article, Hagakure's article on the DR Wiki
Hagakure's DR Wiki article has a good summary of Ultra Despair Hagakure in it as well!
Personality:
Let's start with the biggest aspect of Hagakure's character. Hagakure is the Super High-School Level Fortune Teller, so his life practically revolves around fortune-telling and other things involving the occult and supernatural. He's well-practiced in all sorts of fortune-telling methods and is very knowledgeable about all of them, such as palm-reading, tarot-reading, numerology, oneiromancy (dream-reading), crystal-gazing, conversing with spirits, etc. He also claims to have clairvoyance (the official translation reflects this by naming his title Ultimate Clairvoyant), often receiving many of his fortunes through visions. And get this you guys, his predictions and visions are extremely accurate 20% of the time! Sometimes 30%!
... No wait don't give him that look, it's amazing!
Needless to say, basically no one takes him seriously, and it actually hurts him a bit.
He's a firm believer in cryptozoology and other subjects concerning the unexplained. For example, he loves talking about cryptids like skyfish along with extraterrestrial life (true story: his burger was abducted by aliens once), but the only thing he doesn't like is ghosts. He's absolutely terrified of those. Apparently he has a large collection of OOParts, out-of-place artifacts that shouldn't have been able to be created with the technology of the time they were made. He's extremely passionate about his art, and easily gets riled up at skeptics trying to berate it.
And since we're on the topic, another big part of Hagakure's personality that is often brought up in the game is his relationship with the subject of the supernatural. It seems confusing to everyone that Hagakure says he hates the occult/supernatural while still believing in subjects that are regarded as the occult/supernatural. You see, to him, calling something "occult" or "supernatural" assumes that it don't exist or isn't confirmed by science. In his eyes, his work is real and scientific. OOParts are legitimately made by ancient supercultures, sometimes with the help of aliens. It's all just being covered up by the government because it doesn't want people to know that these things are real, but Hagakure's out there to spread the truth!
The next major trait of Hagakure's personality is, as all comic relief-designated characters tend to have, he's kind of an idiot. Okay, "kind of" is putting it lightly. Really, it's a wonder Hagakure was able to survive the entirety of this story with how dense, gullible, and irresponsible he is. This will be expanded upon in the strengths/weaknesses section, but basically, Hagakure comes across as someone who doesn't really think and just stumbles along in life. It's pretty evident when right off the bat at the beginning of the game, he doesn't take any of the red flags seriously, like everyone suddenly passing out and waking up with the school barricaded and all the exits blocked off. He doesn't take Monobear or Monobear's ultimatum that if they want to leave they have to kill someone seriously. He doesn't even take Maizono's death seriously until Junko is killed after her. That's when it finally hits him that, holy shit, he's trapped in this school and could possibly be killed like these girls. He then proceeds to do exactly what would be expected, stumble along and try not to get killed. It leads to him getting framed for murder, nearly committing murder, and nearly sending a classmate to death so he could survive within the school for life (and even that was questionable because you never know if the Mastermind is being sincere or not). His inability to stop and think gets him into a lot of trouble.
Ultra Despair Hagakure gives us some insight on just how his thought process works, and we see that he for sure has a lot of moments where he'll say things without thinking, but what's interesting is we also get to see what happens when he really gets called out on the things he says. When he actually realizes what he says can hurt someone, he learns from that. When one of his comments about Kanon's outdated way of speaking makes her cry, he genuinely does feel bad and refrains from saying it again until she actually asks him to. He begins to adapt and know when the best time to not say anything is, whether it's when giving Kanon some space and time to vent her feelings without judgment or holding back potentially dangerous questions when he knows it could risk his own safety (unfortunately, it's still painfully easy to get him to spill his guts in that regard). He's also shown to have a very hard time reacting to life-threatening situations, even after the events of the first game. He's easily paralyzed by fear, even shutting down completely in the face of death multiple times. He has a hard time fighting back against these forces, leaving Kanon to rescue him.
In most situations though, Hagakure is a pretty carefree guy. He likes to sit back and enjoy life, and ignore all the horrible things going on when he can. Most of the time he prefers to keep an upbeat attitude, but it's pretty difficult to do inside a school of mutual killing or in a world ravaged by despair and killer Monobears, so instead he just comes off as really delusional. Hey, no one's actually going to get killed, the school just staged it all as a joke! Aside from that though, in his free time events he likes to make conversations lighthearted and just talk about stuff that doesn't have to do with killing classmates. Granted, most of the things he likes to talk about make no sense to his classmates.
Now, at the beginning of the game, Hagakure admits that he was held back three years. Surprisingly enough, it has nothing to do with how dense he is. All ridiculousness aside, he's a decent student. What got him held back had to do with his SHSL skill. While he is a pretty good fortune-teller and he predictions do come true sometimes, he has a bad habit of spending money on supernatural artifacts he believes are real. Bad spending habits means he has to make money to support that habit. And because of that, he pushes the truths about his skill just a little too far. Meaning, yes, sometimes he does con more gullible people for his services, charging far more than he really should be. And the following story is the main insight into Hagakure's background that we get. He pulled this stunt on a rich girl, and it came back to bite him on the ass. Long story short, he spent three years on the run from gangs and whatnot with a huge debt and target on his back. This is a good representation of a lot of his traits. He honestly sees nothing wrong with conning people sometimes, and he didn't think, "hey, maybe this is a bad idea and I could get in major trouble for this!" Then there's the whole fact that he went and spent all that stolen money on fake objects. Talk about gullible. The worst part about it all is that he didn't have any friends to talk him out of these terrible ideas.
... So let's be honest, Hagakure is pretty difficult to understand to most people, and the main reason for that is from his interests and SHSL skill. He refers to those things a lot in conversations, like bringing up the story of cattle mutilation and aliens during a conversation about whether or not he believes in the occult, or his belief in chapter 5 that Kirigiri is an advanced model of ghost, leaving his fellow students clueless as to what he's trying to say. There have been multiple occasions where a student will outright say they don't get him at all. He's one of the only students who didn't really bond with anyone except for Naegi if you do free time events, and even then, Naegi only got more confused by Hagakure the further he got to know him. So he's something of a black sheep to the rest of the class. It's not hard to believe then, that he didn't have any friends at all before coming to Hope's Peak.
As we learn more about Hagakure in Ultra Despair Hagakure, we see that even after the events of the game, all aspects of his personality remain intact. But he does gain a rather important aspect to add on top of it all: he gains the qualities of a protagonist in his own right. At least, a little bit. After having to be saved by Kanon so many times, when Kanon herself is in trouble he is able to answer the call to try do something himself for a change, and not expect to be saved or simply cave in to despair. He realizes who he is: a member of the Future Foundation. He's survived through so much already, and now he's supposed to be able to save people, even if his fortunes tell him there's a good chance that he can't. Even with the odds stacked against them both, he attempts to save himself and Kanon from certain death and succeeds. Even if he can be pretty reckless, in this particular moment it really paid off. Sometimes you just gotta rely on the power of hope, y'know?
So while Hagakure's core self, the occult-loving gullible idiot that he is, remains, Ultra Despair Hagakure shows that he's able to grow and rise to the occasion to show his strengths when needed.
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Strengths:
+ Despite all of the controversy around his craft and how shady he himself sounds when talking about it, Hagakure is actually a pretty good fortune teller. After all, he wouldn't be the Super High-School Level Fortune Teller if he was a complete fraud. It's true that he has pushed the envelope when it comes to his skills and has gotten away with charging absurd amounts for his services. He gets plenty of clients though because surprise, even though his fortunes don't come true all of the time, some of them do and have been a big help for his clients. Some of his predictions in the main story have even come true. One well-noted one is when he predicts that he and Naegi's children will have the same mother. This actually happens if you get the Bad End in the first game, where Asahina mothers all of the guys' kids. Another fortune comes true in Ultra Despair Hagakure and it actually saves Hagakure and Kanon's lives. So while 20-30% accuracy sounds pretty lame, when you consider the fact that Hagakure's fortunes actually can come true, that's pretty amazing.
+ For all of his idiocy, he does have some smart moments. During the third trial, he was able to bring up the concern of the murder weapon for one of the victims, providing a very good point about how the heck the killer killed one of the victims when the supposed murder weapons were apparently in another room on another floor. Even though the true murder weapon ended up coming from the room the murder took place in, it was a good line of reasoning and the students were pretty shocked he actually came up with it. He's also shown to be pretty decent with technology, figuring out how to safely dismantle a Monobear and understanding the hacking guns in DRAE.
+ He can be somewhat persuasive when he puts effort into it. He pretty much has to be when fortune-telling is often regarded as a hoax. He has to convince people that what he's doing is legit, and sometimes it requires forcing his predictions upon them to leave them confused and wanting more. It happens in his first free time event with Naegi, when Naegi is obviously skeptical of Hagakure's ability, so he tells Naegi the fortune about their future kids. Naegi, horrified by Hagakure's prediction, actually asks if it's going to really come true instead of outright casting it aside as bullshit. He even considers forfeiting more money to get another fortune from Hagakure before realizing that it might be a trap.
+ He has moments of bravery and clarity when he realizes when he has to be in control of his own future. As I detailed in his personality section, he's able to save himself and Kanon when it seemed like they were doomed. He's also grown to be pretty forgiving and understanding when he needs to be. Even though Kanon tries to kill him, he still chooses to save her life because he seems to be at least somewhat understanding of her motivations and is willing to look past the killing attempt.
Weaknesses:
- He's absolutely terrible with finances. Terrible. For god's sake, he swindled a rich girl out of a good sum of money so he could dump it all into a collection of fake OOParts (except they're totally not fake, so it was all worth it!). The whole reason he was held back three years in school was because he was on the run from lawsuits and gang members after his organs to pay back his debt. This is probably the reason why he charges such ridiculous prices for his fortune readings, because he's in such a bad financial situation. Ultra Despair Hagakure shows that he's grown somewhat single-minded when it comes to paying off his enormous debt, believing that even though the world is in shambles that he still needs to clear his name because he survived the killing game. There's a good chance that the yakuza is still out there looking for him! He begins his Future Foundation mission by leaving the group and looking for things to take and sell to relieve his debt, and latches onto Kanon fairly early because she saved him, and also because he believes getting her to safety means more money for him in the long run because her father is very rich.
- He has no sense of tact at all. He tends to say horrible things without realizing how horrible they are. For example, let's take one of his shining moments from chapter 4: Hagakure believed that he was the one who killed Sakura since he struck her with a glass bottle and fled the room, and she ended up dead. During the trial, when the group concludes that Hagakure was not the one to kill her due to her having multiple head wounds, the only thing he can say is, "This is wonderful! I didn't kill the Ogre after all!" right in front of Asahina, who was extremely close to Sakura. In his last free time event, he even asks Naegi if he can take some of his organs or citizenship to sell in order to pay back his debt like there's nothing wrong with the idea at all.
As I said in the personality section above, he does get a little better about this later on in Ultra Despair Hagakure though, but only if he's actually called out for it.
- Tying in with the tact thing, in general, Hagakure really doesn't put much thought into the things he says, and that often puts him in a lot of danger. In chapter 3, he got framed for a double murder. The murderer was supposedly wearing a strange robot costume, and Hagakure got stuffed into said costume, built exactly to match his body, therefore making it seem like he constructed the outfit himself. He then went on to make a comment about how it's rude to insult someone's designs when he Asahina said the costume looked stupid. Obviously that made him look pretty suspicious. He performed exactly how the true culprit wanted him to, casting all the suspicion onto himself. In general, he doesn't think a lot of things through, going with whatever argument sounds the most compelling during trials, even if they end up being false, and drawing hasty conclusions about revelations in the trials. When he doesn't completely understand the situation, he'll also come up with completely absurd arguments of his own that completely derail the discussion. This is why a lot of the students think he's pretty idiotic.
Again, this does get relieved a little bit in Ultra Despair Hagakure, though he's still not very transparent with his emotions. Kanon is quick to detect his paranoia and he easily blurts out a question about Future Foundation to her, revealing that he went through her purse without her permission and discovered the bad feelings she had been harboring about the organization. Iiit doesn't end well for him.
- He's really, really gullible. Despite it being repeatedly confirmed that there is no way to escape the school, he still believes a mysterious note he receives that someone has discovered a hole in the building escape through. This leads to him getting knocked out and framed for murder. He also easily falls for obvious tricks by the Mastermind, such as in chapter 6 when Monobear gives everyone a "clue" to the truths behind what's going on at Hope's Peak, which lead him to believe that everyone in the school was conspiring against him. It was all a trap of course, and only two of the students were able to see through it. Hagakure of course, was not one of them. Then there's the entirety of his OOPart collection and the crystal ball he has that gets broken at the beginning of the game. He genuinely believes there are rare and powerful artifacts, and that it's amazing how he was able to order them off of the internet with such ease. The crystal ball wasn't even made of crystal like he thought.
Pokémon Information
Affiliation: Trainer
Starter: Elgyem at lvl 30 (previous starter)
Password: Cherries Strudel
Samples
First Person Sample:
--LIENS!
[The first view from the feed is a PokeGear crashing to the ground, only to be quickly picked up by its owner. A terrified young man with impossibly huge hair shakily holds the 'Gear in both hands.]
H-Hello? Is anyone there?! Please gods, let someone be there... I need help right now! I'm having a close encounter of the fourth kind! I've been abducted by aliens, dude!!
[He whirls the 'Gear's camera around to show a tiny Elgyem, who is staring up at its trainer confusedly. That stare only causes Hagakure to back up more as he brings the focus back on him.]
I was just leaving my school for the first time in like a year, and all of the sudden I woke up here! It totally got me, man!! And it won't even take me to its leader! Ooooh, this is not what I wanted when I said I was gonna start a completely new life after getting out of there!
[He's practically panicking at this point, but all of the sudden his eyes go wide, and he moves to slam his hands over his ears and nearly drops the 'Gear again in the process.]
It just talked to me in my head!! Oh no, it's trying to read my mind!
[We can't have that you guys, it could learn all the ~top-secret government secrets~ he has stored away! In reality, the Elgyem is just saying he's not going to hurt Hagakure.
Hagakure tries to back up even further, hoping that maybe he can back out of the alien's telepathic range.]
Stay out of my head! Those secrets don't belong to you, dude!
[He grips the 'Gear with a wild, desperate look in his eyes.]
You guys gotta get here and help me out right away! It could try to probe me next! That's their next process, right? I don't wanna go through that, okay?! I'm begging you, please help me!
[The final moments of the feed show the Elgyem shaking its head in a defeated manner before it cuts out. Well, isn't this going to be an adventure?]
Third Person Sample:
It had been about two months since Hagakure arrived in Johto, and honestly, it wasn't half bad once he figured out that he hadn't been abducted by aliens for horrible experimentation and some of his classmates were here with him. Even though they had no way of knowing how or why they were in this world, at least it beat being stuck in a school where the students were being forced to kill each other. He got to do whatever the heck he wanted, explore cool and exciting new places, and he had acquired some awesome animals with powers that he could battle with! He always knew such things existed outside of video games, he just didn't know where the government was hiding them. Maybe they were importing them from this world!
But as awesome as Johto and the rest of the Pokemon world was, something was deeply troubling Hagakure. Ever since he arrived, he felt some disturbance in his abilities. The spiritual plane was no longer as clear as it was back on Earth. His visions were starting to become quite hazy, and they were happening less frequently. He wasn't able to remember many of his prophetic dreams. It was nearly impossible to converse with the spirits he used to. All of these signs and more told him that this world was doing something to him, and frankly, it terrified him. His ability as a star fortune-teller was one of the only things he had that was truly special, and he didn't know what he would do if he lost it.
It was because of this that he found himself standing at the doors of the Saffron City gym that chilly morning. All bundled up and with his Elgyem in his arms, he gazed at the gym with uncertainty. This was the gym where Sabrina resides. Known for her affinity with Psychic-type Pokemon, she is said have possessed psychic abilities from an early age. From telekinesis to seeing into the future, she is regarded as the go-to person for all things psychic in this world. Hagakure figured if she has abilities like him, she might know why his abilities had diminished somewhat after coming to this world. Maybe this world has different energies and she could even help him access them to bring his abilities back!
Part of Hagakure was nervous, though. He'd never met another true diviner like himself before. What if she thought lesser of him because he couldn't channel his abilities as well in this world? What if she wouldn't talk to him unless he defeated her in battle? He was sure he wouldn't win; he hadn't yet learned to battle with his Pokemon correctly. Or worse, what if she couldn't do anything for him in the end?
Well...he wasn't going to find out unless he actually set foot into the gym. Besides, he did manage to have a small vision when he woke up that morning. The vision—crystal clear for the first time in weeks—told him that he would be able to receive help from Sabrina. There was a twenty percent chance of that coming true, but he hoped it would be more like a thirty percent chance just this one time. He needed this badly.
He took a deep breath and looked down at his Elgyem with a small smirk.
"A diviner seeking out advice from another diviner...sounds kinda ironic, huh?"
If Grey the Elgyem could smile, he would. Instead, he merely gave his trainer a few telepathic words of encouragement. This would be the last day he would have to worry about his abilities. From now on, he would have the best psychic support he could ever get.
And on that high note, Hagakure and his Pokemon stepped through the sliding doors of the gym to meet their destiny.
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