YMMV / Master Detective Archives: Rain Code

A — F

• Accidental Innuendo: Due to the artists giving her relaxed eyes, sweat, and even a bit of drool, Fubuki's "hyperventilating" sprites make her look less anxious and more flustered.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The art gallery Nail Man killing. The game posits that the Worshipper committed a copycat crime simply from being a Loony Fan of the Nail Man, but it's established that the victim had dated a lot of men. Was he one of them, and did he kill her out of jealousy?
  • At the end of Chapter 1, was Yomi having Seth taken away merely a hypocritical act of saving the Peacekeepers' face like he claims? Or was he mad because the priest dying meant they lost a source of income and he decided Seth should be his outlet for his frustrations for letting things reach this point?
  • Did Karen really have second thoughts about killing Aiko and how she benefited from it? Or was Yuma subconsciously projecting his thoughts about his own circumstances onto her? There is some evidence suggesting the former, given that Kurumi says that Karen had been acting stressed since Aiko's death.
  • Speaking of Karen, why does her Mystery Phantom appear during chapter 2's Mystery Labyrinth? Mystery Phantoms only appear when their real world counterpart is trying to obscure the truth, so what reason does she have to try and frame her own death as a suicide? Was it simply to stop Yuma from investigating further, as the truth of the case would reveal her own crimes as well? Or was she actually trying to cover for the real culprits out of guilt for what happened to Aiko, a posthumous act of atonement?
  • Once again in Chapter 2, were each of the three girls planning to take the fall for the other two should they come under suspicion by the Peacekeepers? Each of them desperately lies during GOD Shinigami and proclaims to have committed the crime all by herself (particularly, Yoshiko's Mystery Phantom claims "There weren't any accomplices!"), despite Yuma having proven that the crime can only be pulled off by them colluding.
  • During the final moments of Chapter 5, shortly before breaking their pact, Shinigami says that she's alright with being alone again after Yuma forgets about her, because her centuries trapped in the Book of Death have gotten her used to loneliness. Her voice acting seems to imply that she's putting on a brave face, but if so, is she reassuring Yuma so that he won't lose his nerve and try to stay with her in the Mystery Labyrinth, therefore dying himself? Or is she trying to reassure herself in order to convince herself to let him go?
  • Why did Enyne return the ring to the museum? Was it to spite Desuhiko? Did she take pity on Yakou? Did she refuse to claim a mark she didn't pick? Was it some combination of the above?
• Adorkable:
  • Fubuki may be The Ditz but her Nice Girl mannerisms manage to make her quite endearing.
  • Halara often slips into this whenever they get rather excited about cats.
  • Even Vivia can come across as this. He is a Lazy Bum but the way he has a habit of lying down in random places, as he is reading can make him look rather silly.
• Angst? What Angst?: Halara somehow snaps back to normal after the distress of Yakou Furio's death in Chapter 4, following spending quite a long time being locked up in Kanai Tower with the other detectives during Chapter 5, despite notably being the most affected by it out of everyone in the agency.
• Awesome Ego:
  • Halara Nightmare is a prideful, young, but mature Insufferable Genius detective who has Nerves of Steel, and holds themselves to a high standard compared to those around them. Halara is also an Action Hero who in fact has the skills to back this up, and is actually a very competent person, despite that.
  • Makoto Kagutsuchi is proud of his status as Number One's homunculus allowing him to form complex schemes, and he certainly isn't wrong for thinking this way regarding himself. The audience overall agrees to Makoto's trait of villainous masterminding and taking his actions in stride (on the surface anyway).
• Base-Breaking Character: Shinigami can be quite divisive. Some players either find her antics entertaining or annoying especially since she often makes Yuma the butt of her jokes, and even putting that aside the constant jokes she tells on her own often creates Mood Whiplash that players either appreciate or hate.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Chapter 0 is generally well liked since it's incredibly shocking to see all five Master Detectives, who gave off the impression of being important characters, just killed off like that, and the trick that the culprit used is simple but involves a nice amount of complexity for a tutorial level.
  • Chapter 2's investigation is one of the most unique and fun in the game, due to having Yuma disguise as each of the three suspects to talk to witnesses. What you can investigate and who'll give you information changes based on your current disguise, and it slowly reveals how each of the suspects is seen by those around them, and how they treat each other. For the final portion, you disguise as Martina of the Peacekeepers, giving you full access to the crime scenes and letting you boss around the Peacekeeper grunts.
  • Chapter 4 is commonly regarded as the best case, as not only is the trick that the culprit used to bypass the formidable security system incredibly clever (exploiting the Ama-Pal and Fubuki's Forte), but it also involves a lot of emotional drama resulting from the culprit's identity.
  • Chapter 5, essentially the last chapter of the game, is pretty cool not only for its creepy atmosphere in the beginning that feels as if it'd been taken from a horror game but also for the many revelations behind the overall plot and especially the plot twist that the pink blood is actually important and not a stylistic choice, unlike its use in Danganronpa.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Halara’s “I despise all of humanity equally” moment during Chapter 1’s investigation, which Yuma never brings up again in spite of being the only one to hear it.
  • During Chapter 4's investigation, Yuma has to dodge wayward spirits in the laboratory while trying to navigate to Dr. Huesca's office, an apparent side effect of Spectral Projection. This necessitates that the player study their movements and figure out a safe path. The spirits never appear or get mentioned again after reaching Dr. Huesca's lab (even when Yuma and Vivia continue to use Spectral Projection), the only time they're alluded to before is in the scene immediately before this gameplay segment, and the game doesn't have any similar mechanics oriented around dodging obstacles by moving around a space.
  • Partway through Chapter 4's Mystery Labyrinth, one of the puzzles undergoes a complete Art Shift, representing every character with a cardboard puppet on a stage with Shinigami hamming it up as a game show host. Nobody acknowledges this, and the change is undone after the puzzle with no explanation as to why it happened in the first place.
• Breather Boss: The Chapter 3 culprit. It is very easy to guess who the culprit is since the chapter involves water a whole lot, and the game makes sure to remind you of Icardi's swimming abilities. The most challenging part of the labyrinth is finding out how Icardi escaped the rooftop; after that, it is easy to narrow Icardi down as the only suspect, and his counterarguments are flimsy at best. Mechanically, they only get one Reasoning Death Match and a one-segment long GOD Shinigami battle (shorter than even the Chapter 0 culprit).
• Breather Level: Chapter 3's Mystery Labyrinth. The mystery is simpler than the previous one's, since most of the mystery is about what happened on the rooftop of the Resistance hideout, and there is less evidence to consider since the contradictions mainly involve Shachi's gun. Once the culprit's escape route is figured out, it becomes extremely easy to figure out that Icardi did it. Moreover, unlike the previous and following chapters' culprits, Icardi is far less sympathetic, so it feels more gratifying to defeat him.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Yomi Hellsmile is so Obviously Evil, and gleefully jumps over the Moral Event Horizon every time he's on screen, that it's less a matter of if he becomes a culprit than when, as there's no way the game wouldn't give you the satisfaction of taking him down. So once you reach Chapter 4 and find out someone masterminded the murder, and a Solution Key mentions Yomi having the only key to the storeroom, it's clear who the Arc Villain is.
  • Case 2's big twist that Everybody Did It is easy to see coming for a number of reasons. Each of the girls' photo fragments are obviously torn from the same picture, and once the "how" routes start leading to dead ends, it becomes obvious that the only way the crime is possible is if they worked together. Furthermore, while being disguised as Yoshiko, Kurane will outright compliment you that you performed well and promises she can keep a secret, making it that much more obvious the two of them were working together. On a meta level it's a convenient way to kill off every newly introduced character, leaving no possible loose ends to complicate things with the Peacekeeper.
  • Chapter 5 has a couple:
    • The purpose of the factory Yuma and Kurumi enter can be easily pieced together to be for turning human corpses into meat buns, well before the corpse meat is revealed. The player knows that people have been kidnapped to Kanai Ward and taken to the Restricted Area for some unknown purpose, and "meat buns are made of people" is the only real way to play a meat bun factory for any sort of ominous drama that otherwise pervades Chapter 5, so the moment it's stated that the factory is producing meat buns, the twist can be seen a mile away.
    • Regarding the Ontological Mystery, Makoto and Yomi's responsibility in triggering the plot is also an obvious twist, as well as Yuma being Number One since he is called a Master Detective, instead of a trainee, many times, and there are no consequences when he explains his Coalescence to Halara in Chapter 1. Due to how often Makoto is characterized for his suspicious demeanor and blatant manipulations In-Universe, one can only conclude that he's the one who caused the main plot to transpire... and they'd be right, because he brought the Master Detectives to Kanai Ward. As for Yomi, since he makes no attempt to hide how quickly he crosses the Moral Event Horizon, him being the cause of everything and especially Yakou's murder in Chapter 4 becomes obvious to people too.
  • The culprit of Halara's DLC episode is pretty easy to figure out. There's only three new living characters introduced, so it's just a matter of process of elimination. Tetra being the culprit makes no sense since she's the one who hired the detectives. Sugar can't be the culprit since she's a dog. This only leaves Jeryn and once the player learns Sugar dislikes him and he had done remodeling to the house recently, there's no room for doubt. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the How of how the murder was committed is the harder and more interesting mystery anyway.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Seeing Guillaume Hall be completely broken down by the NDA exposing the true culprits of Chapter 3 after putting Yuma, Fubuki, and Kurumi through hell by sending Peacekeepers to chase them around Kanai Ward is immensely satisfying, especially when she can't come up with a counterargument or any words and simply growls in defeat.
  • After the Master Detectives had to put up with Yomi Hellsmile's corruption and abuse of power throughout the story, see how his corruption turned the city into a horrible place to live in, and finally learn of how he played a role in Chief Yakou's death, seeing Makoto expose Yomi's crimes to the other Peacekeepers and oust him from power is nothing short of satisfying. Seeing Yomi lose the Smug Snake attitude and undergo a Villainous Breakdown as the Peacekeepers arrest him makes it all so cathartic.
• Complete Monster: Director Yomi Hellsmile's Homunculus is the head of the Peacekeepers, Kanai Ward's militaristic police force, and—unknown to him—the homunculus clone of the original Yomi Hellsmile. Carrying on his original's malevolence, he allows the Peacekeepers to accept bribes, cover up murders, and falsely imprison innocent people. After Makoto Kagutsuchi was chosen to be the new CEO of Amaterasu Corp instead of him, he had Makoto's predecessor murdered in retaliation and has been conspiring against Makoto ever since. When Yomi learns that Makoto hired several Master Detectives to investigate his crimes, he sends his advisor/hired gun to Kill and Replace Zilch Alexander, burn four Master Detectives alive, and frame hero Yuma Kokohead. If his underlings get exposed for their wrongdoings under his orders, Yomi would have them executed to save face. He physically abuses his right-hand woman and lover, Martina Electro, and orders her to be crushed into a cube when an assassination he ordered didn't go the way he wanted it to. After learning that Dr. Huesca was going to escape Kanai Ward against his wishes, Yomi frames him for the murder of Yakou Furio's wife, which he—or rather his original—had done after she had threatened to expose his corruption, knowing full well that Yakou would go on a suicide mission to avenge her. Despite his claims that he wants to protect Kanai Ward, he's nothing more than a power-mad bully who only cares about himself and outright mockingly asks what "love" even is.
• Cry for the Devil: While Yomi has absolutely nothing sympathetic about him, audiences sympathize with Makoto's extremism as the Big Bad due to him cracking under the weight of his actions when protecting Kanai Ward's homunculi, by any means necessary, in the final chapter, even though his extremism had zero limits and he was fully willing to kill off his original self (Yuma) to forever prevent the WDO from investigating Kanai Ward a few moments ago.
• Dancing Bear: Most of this game's publicity comes solely from the fact it was made by the Danganronpa devs. As not only does it have the same art designer, but also the same creator, director, and composer.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: A lot of people interpret Pucci to be autistic, given her quiet behaviour and clear dislike of loud noise.
• Disappointing Last Level: Although the story surrounding it is praised, the final chapter's Mystery Labyrinth feels weak, similar to the final trials in Danganronpa. It's a linear path consisting almost entirely of questions you were explicitly told the answers to in the preceding investigation (up to and including the identity of the Big Bad), the shortest Deduction Denouement in the game, and no GOD Shinigami segment. There are only two reveals within that aren't known beforehand, Homonculi having pink blood, and the true identities of Yuma and Makoto and the former might be a Captain Obvious Reveal depending on the player. (And has since become the game's most known aspect, so it's easy to be spoiled on in advance) The Final Boss fight itself looks cool, but is completely impossible to fail.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Despite being the one who causes everything in the game in the first place thanks to his masterminding, Makoto Kagutsuchi, and then some. He’s blatantly corrupt and his motives are not a justification for why he does the most amoral things imaginable. From a motive perspective, he is undoubtedly better than the Peacekeepers in every sense of the word and he isn’t a sociopath outright like Yomi seems to be, but he may as well be on the same level. And yet, he is excused for it because he’s a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Actually, compared to Yomi, his criminal record is actually much higher, as while Yomi could definitely be charged with abuse of power, bribery, conspiracy, and a whole lot of other things, he restricts himself to Kanai Ward, at the very least. But Makoto adds extra, blackmailing the Unified Government and deceiving an entire detective organization to capture criminals and mass-produce them into meat buns while Kanai Ward’s citizens are none the wiser. Makoto is also literally romanticized, as everyone reduces him to a Memetic Troll due to his odd behavior, an interpretation of which conveniently skips over his advanced scheming that plays a part in the plot of the entire game and is precisely why he abruptly kills Fink following the events of Chapter 4 and attempts to kill Yuma in the events of the finale. At worst, he's even declared as "not even a villain" by some, even though he fits the definition, being a criminal who antagonizes the heroes and, at that, is the leader of an Evil, Inc. organization.
  • To a lesser extent, Yomi is romanticized by a small portion of fans for some unknown reason. It’s likely due to his false charms, but even then, those charms are a thin disguise for how much of an utter psychopath he is.
  • To an even lesser extent, and not even one of the villains, Halara Nightmare is romanticized as being more innocent than they actually are due to the sole fact of having an affinity for cats and dogs and teasing romantic connections to Yuma, despite Halara's primary traits being that they're an unapologetic cynic who talks down to everyone they meet and most certainly refuses to have any meaningful relationships with anyone due to the fear of betrayal.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite a smaller role in the story than many other detectives, Zilch Alexander is popular with many fans for his striking design and being The Comically Serious, getting a lot of fanart. Perhaps aided by being the only member of the cast introduced on the train to have a role later on, as well as his prominence within that case both as one of the first to talk to Yuma and as its antagonist.
  • Pucci is extremely popular with the audience for being adorable, relatable, and her Ship Tease with The Protagonist. Fans were heartbroken when she turned out dead.
• Epileptic Trees: With the game being a Spiritual Successor to Danganronpa and a major reveal being that pink blood belongs to homunculi, quite a lot of fans have joked or seriously theorized that Danganronpa's characters are homunculi, disregarding the facts that in Danganronpa blood is described and sometimes appears as red in-universe and homunculi are Weakened by the Light.
• Evil Is Cool: The true Big Bad, Makoto Kagutsuchi, CEO of Amaterasu Corporation, is the homunculus clone of the WDO's Number One. As a result, he's also an extremely precise strategist and manipulator who plays his cards right and decides when it's most appropriate to personally take action for himself. The entire game pretty much hinges on his plan to lure the Master Detectives to Kanai Ward, as without his lures, they wouldn't have been gathered there in the first place, but as for why he gathered them there? He used them as pawns so they would oppose Yomi and allow Makoto the opening to overthrow him from his position as director of the Peacekeepers, and the detectives in question were none the wiser that it was his true goal all along.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The main setting and plot of the game allows this to thrive, as the story can take the Ontological Mystery and make it absolutely anything besides the canon, since it's not set in stone from the start, in comparison to Danganronpa, at least, while still retaining the identity of the original Nocturnal Detective Agency the plot focuses on. Additionally, there are many off-screen moments that occur, and the duration the NDA remain in Kanai Ward is unknown too, allowing for many things to occur in-between.
  • The ending has tons of this. What will Yuma / Number One do with his new outlook on life? Will Kurumi manage to track him down and return the Book of Death to him? Will Kurumi open the Book of Death and meet Shinigami herself? Where will the other surviving Nocturnal Detective Agency members go now that their Kanai Ward assignment is over? How will Kanai Ward change (beyond what we see in the Epilogue) now that the population knows of their true natures? How will the rest of the world react to the discovery of an entire city of immortal homunculi? And what is going on in the new city Yuma arrives in during The Stinger?
• Fan Nickname:
  • Due to his name and hair design, Yuma Kokohead is often called the Coconut Head.
  • Makoto Kagutsuchi is quite often called a "silly little guy" by the more questionable side of the game's community. While he's certainly a jokester in canon, he absolutely isn't one in truth, being the game's Big Bad, though he still continues to be polite despite this. Following his reveal, however, he actually stops joking from that point forth and takes the situation seriously, so the "silliness" part doesn't apply in the slightest.
• Fanon Welding: Many have connected the continuity of this game to the original Danganronpa franchise solely due to Kazutaka Kodaka creating this game as its Spiritual Successor and also reusing certain pre-existing elements from the original Danganronpa.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Vivia/Yakou has gained a notable amount of popularity. This is probably due to their roles in Chapter 4. Their close bond is also emphasized heavily in Vivia’s DLC case, showing that his kindness is literally one of the things keeping Vivia alive.
  • Halara/Fubuki, AKA "Clockmare". This ship is somewhat contradictory to canon, though they are still friends. Since Halara is a confirmed misanthrope, and Halara already shows contempt for Yuma's occasional absent-mindedness, one can assume that Halara actually applies that same logic to Fubuki, even if it isn't shown, and probably has it worse for Fubuki. Halara is even on the receiving end of it at the beginning of Chapter 2 when they are completely misinterpreted as being Chief Yakou due to sitting in his chair, a moment of stupidity on Fubuki's end that Halara actually has to be the butt of. The only time that Halara seemingly shows any external compassion towards Fubuki out of the entire game appears to be when advising her not to abuse her rewind powers and to save it as a last resort in Chapter 4, but otherwise, the two of them outright ignore each other or just see each other on neutral terms. Halara does play a very active role in helping Fubuki throughout her DLC case, though, and even makes up an excuse to do so for free.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Oddly, a portion of the audience members in the game's online audience ship Yomi and Yakou (despite Yomi being Yakou's Arch-Enemy and ruining his life), and there are people who also ship Yomi with the CEO and his sworn rival for power Makoto Kagutsuchi himself. This is despite every single person listed here showing antagonism towards each other, outright hating each other at worst.
• Fountain of Memes: The most memetic character in the game appears to be Makoto Kagutsuchi due to being an affable Bunny-Ears Lawyer with a quirky personality who dances around any questions about who he really is, though it's on the condition of the audience ignoring his status as the Big Bad.

H — W

• Harsher in Hindsight: The Nocturnal Detective Agency is hosted on a submarine, which is blown up partway through the story with its occupants still on board and their fates left uncertain for most of the following chapter. Earlier the same month this game would release, the Titan submarine fiasco would happen, which disappeared for a few days before the submarine's implosion and the resulting deaths were finally confirmed.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The English dub contains multiple references to Among Us, which had been a part of internet culture for a few years by that point and was widely seen as past its prime in terms of popularity. However, within the same week as the game's release, CBS Studios announced that they were working on an animated adaptation of the game, bringing it back into the limelight.
• Ho Yay:
  • The student in the lighting staff in Chapter 2 is practically swooning over Yoshiko, as seen when you talk to her while disguised as the honor student. As the player never sees the real Yoshiko interacting with the girl at any point in the chapter, one has to wonder if she's aware of those feelings, and whether or not she reciprocates if she does.
  • One sidequest during Chapter 3 at Aetheria Academy has Yuma finding out who's stalking Hana (the teacher that Desuhiko disguised as during Chapter 2). It turns out to be the music teacher, who Desuhiko had flirted with while in his Hana disguise. Once she's found out, it turns out the music teacher didn't know what to do in response as nobody had ever said they liked her before and so she resorted to stalking, but once the situation is cleared up (by convincing her she misunderstood something platonic as a love confession), both teachers continue on neutral terms, but that hasn't stopped some fans from shipping them anyways.
• I Knew It!: Most fans could see from the start that Makoto Kagutsuchi was actually a villain, due to his Obviously Evil appearance. Not so much that he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist, though.
• Inferred Holocaust: Though the game's ending is completely unambiguously light and is a positive for all Kanai Ward residents, everyone seemingly lives in bliss while not being bothered by the fact that there are zombies of Kanai Ward's dead defective homunculi residents still trapped in the abandoned village within the restricted area together, never being able to die and constantly living as a mindless undead.
• Informed Attribute: Some fans, particularly English speaking ones, don't buy that there's any ambiguity around Halara's gender, finding their build, face and voice to be firmly, if not aggressively, feminine, with little in the way of clear masculine indicators. If not for Halara's bio and a handful of lines of dialogue, many would have thought of them as female and wouldn't have questioned this assumption at any point. This is partly a case of Lost in Translation, as Halara uses masculine pronouns in Japanese.
• Informed Wrongness: In the final battle, when Yuma discovers that the reason the detectives are in Kanai Ward is Makoto seeing Yomi as a threat to Kanai Ward and how he used them as pawns, Yuma makes Makoto out as the bad guy for this manipulative behavior on his part. Indeed, Makoto using the detectives as bait was quite a dirty move, and trying to take a position of power for himself is ultimately a very evil goal, but trying to get rid of Yomi is seen as the wrong thing to do, since Yuma condemns Makoto for doing this during their battle. This is in spite of Yomi being a genuine threat to the city's conditions (especially since Makoto being removed from his position as CEO would allow Yomi to take his place) and a murderous abuser that made Kanai Ward a horrendously dystopian land to live in, and Yuma himself personally experiencing Yomi's evil alongside his friends, meaning that Makoto seeing him as a threat was more than a sensible perception. When Yuma says this, Makoto doesn't get a chance to argue his side of the story in complete detail (beyond what he already said) and he moves onto the detectives that Makoto kidnapped instead.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: One common complaint is that the mysteries of this game are simpler than those in the later Danganronpa installments, so it's easy to get ten steps ahead of the characters and figure out the case as they go through the Mystery Labyrinth. Unlike Danganronpa, there aren't any harder difficulty settings for the skill-based minigames either, as Shinigami will disregard whatever option you chose at the beginning of the game. The former is lessened by the last murder case, which is by far the most complex case and features a few clever twists such as Yakou's use of a hitman to disguise the fact that he was destined to die from the poison.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A common criticism of the DLC sub-stories is this, as it only takes around half an hour to beat, and only boasts a single gameplay section to break up the cutscenes and dialogue. While it is only a cheap $5 and it does offer a fun little return to Kanai Ward for those who had already beaten the game before the DLC's release, it can still feel lacking with its minimal cast and simple story.
• Jerkass Dissonance: In the real world, Halara Nightmare's greed and high demand for their clients would be met with negative review from the people they interact with (and possibly from the WDO's leader for behavior on the job). Befriending them would not go as well as it does in the game proper either, with it being difficult to interact without causing an argument with them thanks to their challenging misanthropy towards others. However, as Halara is a fictional character, they are quite liked for being a Brutally Honest Jerk with a Heart of Gold, mostly due to Halara's over-the-top performance.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Most people do in fact come to this game for the plot, but for the most part, it's mostly due to Shinigami and her loony, charismatic image and wanting to see a humorous, amoral sidekick act like a humorous, amoral sidekick. Even before the game's release, people were drawn in by how much of a Shameless Fanservice Girl she was promoted as being and were mostly lured in by her pleasing image. And of course, her blatantly disrespectful attitude doesn't stop people from finding her entertaining.
  • Alongside Shinigami, despite playing through the whole game, there are a group of fans who outright worship Makoto Kagutsuchi and seem him as the only thing worth coming for. That is, despite him being the Big Bad and the one character to actually root against besides Yomi.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Perhaps due to being the main character, Yuma has been shipped with nearly everyone. The characters he has been shipped with include Shinigami, Halara, Desuhiko, Fubuki, Vivia, Yakou, Kurumi, Pucci, Zilch, Yomi, and Makoto.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Like the secondary antagonist would kill off the Master Detectives of the Nocturnal Detective Agency at the end of Chapter 2 before the Ontological Mystery has been solved.
• Magnificent Bastard: Makoto Kagutsuchi is the CEO of Amaterasu Corporation and the homunculus of Number One. After being created by the UG, he escaped from them and headed to Kanai Ward, where he found the city overrun with berserk homunculi and created a rain cloud generator to protect them. After becoming CEO of Amaterasu and securing Kanai Ward’s isolation as a result of negotiations with the UG, he pretended to be Number One to kidnap criminals for the food supply of Kanai Ward and invited the Master Detectives to Kanai Ward to interfere with Yomi so that he could personally remove him from his position. He also lured out his original and encouraged him to solve the mysteries of Kanai Ward so he could personally duel Yuma in the Mystery Labyrinth and take his position as Number One for himself. In the end, despite losing, he still gets his ultimate goal of safety for Kanai Ward and its homunculi and he remains in power as CEO, striving to atone for his crimes.
• Memetic Loser: Though it's mostly through online Vine edits than anything else, Seth Burroughs of the Peacekeepers has been depicted as Yomi's most hated employee thanks to Yomi throwing him to the dogs for taking bribes from the Nail Man/the priest in Chapter 1 under Yomi's orders, and Yomi's defeat at the end of Chapter 4 has been shown as Seth's indirect retaliation. This is despite Seth being quite competent as a villain, being ready to arrest the detectives at a moment's notice, so it quite undermines his threat level.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Many fans have commented on Yuma looking like Makoto and Kyoko’s child, thanks to his design having features that resemble both of them (him having Idiot Hair like Makoto and him having purple hair like Kyoko for example). Even better, during the events of Chapter 2, Yuma is forced to disguise himself as a girl alongside Desuhiko in order to infiltrate Kurumi's all-girls school. His disguise as a girl makes him a dead-ringer for Kyoko. Finally, if we assume that his homunculus clone goes by his original real name, then his name is Makoto. Plenty of fanfic writers could easily spin that as him being Makoto and Kyoko's grandson who was named after his grandfather.
  • "I am so naive that the servants call me "dummy thicc" behind my back." Courtesy of Fubuki.
• Moe:
  • Fubuki is a kind sweet girl, who’s Cloudcuckoolander behaviour makes her come across as adorable in many people’s eyes. Being voiced by Xanthe Huynh also helps.
  • Halara's "worried uncertainty" sprite, featuring an expression of genuine worry and concern with a half-closed circular mouth, which looks rather endearing on someone typically characterized by emotional distance. Along with this, Halara's "sad" sprite, eyes closed and brows dropped with a sense of defeat, which also shows an expression of sadness in Halara that can almost draw in viewer sympathy.
  • While investigating the mansion in Chapter 1, Halara's response to Yuma accidentally taking the photo of the cat out of their pocket, that being a Luminescent Blush accompanied by shocked embarrassment, is surprisingly endearing.
  • Kurumi is a kind and dependable girl who provides Yuma help with investigations and emotional support. Her Fun Personified personality makes her quite adorable and likeable.
• Moral Event Horizon: Yomi Hellsmile immediately crosses this before the actual story even begins when he masterminds the deaths of countless Master Detectives entering Kanai Ward to prevent them from investigating the place, but he does what can be considered worse than this over the course of the story. He's hardly a paragon during his introduction in Chapter 1, but it's not until the end of Chapter 2 that he absolutely pole-vaults across this line. How does he respond to the news that Martina- his second-in-command, who he has constantly claimed he cares dearly about and who clearly adores him to the point of borderline worship- was upstaged in her investigation of the Aetheria Academy murders by the detectives? He promptly orders her immediate execution via being thrown into a compacter, after which he intends to carry around the cube of her compacted flesh in his pocket. Small wonder that this leads to Martina turning on Yomi and helping Makoto to overthrow him. And then the later chapters reveal that he actually crossed this a long time ago, in much, MUCH worse fashion than initially believed when it turns out he's the Greater-Scope Villain behind virtually everything bad that happens in the game's backstory.
• Narm:
  • Yuma's opening philosophical narrations for each chapter in English comes off as blank and disinterested rather than dramatic and enlightening due to Lucien Dodge's flat voice acting.
  • During the otherwise devastating scene of Chief Yakou’s death as Desuhiko and Fubuki cry over him, Desuhiko’s sprite has him crying Ocular Gushers in a way that can feel awkward and ruin the mood for some.
• Nausea Fuel: A big portion of Chapter 5 runs on this, both In-Universe and out. Those "meat buns" the characters have been eating all game? The ones everyone talks about as being the delicious signature food of Kanai Ward? All of the meat in them comes from human corpses. At the very least the citizens of Kanai Ward are homunculi who can safely digest- and indeed require- human meat; let's just hope Yuma and the other visiting detectives didn't try any...
• No Yay: In Desuhiko’s own DLC he seemingly goes as far as to continue to make flirtations comments to a child… The way his lines are delivered in the scene doesn’t exactly help.
• Obvious Judas: The Big Bad and Final Boss of the game, Makoto Kagutsuchi, is constantly advertised with his distinctive ominous mystery and he is pretty much the only Amaterasu Corporation associate in the story who tries to hide himself from others (as opposed to Yomi) and has obvious ulterior motives behind his supposed friendliness, which the game even lampshades repeatedly. Turns out he's not only responsible for Kanai Ward's isolation, which is also what directly led to the deaths of the Master Detectives in Chapter 0, but he also brought the Master Detectives to Kanai Ward and played his cards to oust Yomi from power and take control of Kanai Ward for himself, and also gave Yakou Furio the requirements to fake his cause of death in Chapter 4 by telling him about Fink, whom Yakou used to hide the fact that he was going to die from the gas chamber in Dr. Huesca's security system, all so Makoto could find a file of evidence to use against Yomi. After all the chaos, he even abducts the remaining agents and fakes their deaths, which eventually leads to Makoto confronting Yuma and going on a Motive Rant.
• Padding: Chapter 3. The only things that happen in the chapter that actually matter are Yuma meeting Makoto at the start of the chapter, and Makoto gifting the NDA a new sub to replace the one that got blown up at the end of Chapter 2. Other than that, nothing that happens during this chapter has any relevance to the overall plot. The Resistance is introduced, but is snuffed out almost immediately after, and the principal characters all either die or cease to have any relevance to the plot. Yuma is framed as a terrorist bomber but proves his innocence, and nobody holds it against him in the later chapters. Mamarumamon District opens up to the player, but it gets flooded and then immediately ceases to have any story relevance after. Even the two plot-relevant things that happen (meeting Makoto and getting a new sub) could have easily been moved to Chapter 4 with no significant rewrites. Ultimately, the main purpose of chapter 3 is to serve as Fubuki's Focus Episode.
• Player Punch: The discovery of Yakou Furio being Chapter 4’s culprit, despite also being its second victim, is possibly the most tragic moment in the whole story.
• Quirky Work: A technicolor cyberpunk game about detectives with unexplained supernatural dispositions, an Alternate Universe that revolves around solving mysteries to prevent more mysteries from being created, a corrupt corporation owned by a guy wearing a mask who is a clone of the protagonist (allowing him to also conduct a mass kidnapping using a detective organization), and a city of eternal darkness and rain in which the rain is used to protect defective homunculi from going on a berseker rampage. Surprisingly, yes, this game was not made by insane people.
• Realism-Induced Horror: The game is a very realistic portrayal of what it's like to be under the manipulation of a real-life Control Freak in the context of corporate abuse. In terms of Yomi Hellsmile and the Peacekeepers, his refusal to let anyone get in his way, even if he has to mastermind murder to eliminate any oppposition, is scarily accurate to how far someone can go if they're outright abusive towards others in the real world (though they usually don't go as far as he does). In another sense, Makoto Kagutsuchi, the Big Bad, is the one who sent the detectives to Kanai Ward in the first place as part of his own agenda, because he is willingly abusing his own powers as part of his scheme to control Kanai Ward, as he is another Control Freak like Yomi, and he does not see the detectives as his acquaintances as a result, only his pawns. This, too, is also rather accurate to controlling behavior.
• Ron the Death Eater: Yuma Kokohead is frequently demonized by fans once they learn the motives of the Big Bad because of his pact with Shinigami and apparent "self-righteousness" in trying to battle them. Of course, this is despite him still being a Nice Guy and apparently also being a more heroic variant of the Well-Intentioned Extremist kind as he's actually Number One of the WDO and his clone is said Big Bad, who is also a Well-Intentioned Extremist but gets his evilness downplayed by sympathizers and Yuma is seen as being in the wrong for being his vigliante self in a Wretched Hive like Kanai Ward where crime is rampant and the Police Are Useless. The Big Bad in question is Makoto Kagutsuchi. The original Number One was actually required to counter Makoto using the methods that he did as there was no other way, and even besides that, Makoto is the one who sent him to Kanai Ward from the start as part of his elaborate plot, so in reality, he's to blame for Yuma's extremism and how he chose to react to Makoto.
• Scrappy Mechanic: If you choose to replay a chapter from the mystery labyrinth and then equip the HP boosting skills, the game increases the HP bar without adding the HP. This means you not only don't get the benefit from these skills, but they now actually hurt your final score, as the game assumes the missing HP is from the player having taken a lot of damage. And those thinking they can simply ignore said skills and buy every other skill will be in for a nasty surprise, since the root skill needed to unlock all the branches is an HP boosting skill. While they can choose not to actually equip it, muscle memory can mess things up unintentionally.
• Shock Fatigue: The game is very prone to making everything dramatic or serious for the sake of its plot. However, it applies said drama all the time, which eventually causes it to lose its effect by the time of the finale when you find out who the Big Bad is and why they've been doing everything. Most of this can be attributed to predictability, what with most of the mysteries being simplistic, or with incredibly blatant answers, and therefore lacking any surprise by the time of the reveal.
• Shocking Moments: Despite the aforementioned, pretty much everyone who played this game for a Let's Play is shown reacting with surprise to Makoto revealing himself to be Evil All Along at the end of Chapter 4 and knocking out the detectives with the gift he gave to Yuma after meeting him in Huesca's critical lab.
• Signature Scene:
  • From Chapter 0, Yuma entering the dining car immediately after finding Zilch's body in the infirmary to discover Melami's burned corpse on the floor, giving the first indication that all five of the other detectives on the train have been killed off before Chapter 1.
  • The Reveal in Chapter 5 that the iconic "pink blood" on loan from the Danganronpa series was not just a style quirk this time absolutely floored the player base and became one of the most memorable moments of the entire game.
  • In Chapter 5, Yuma realizing that Makoto managed to enter the Mystery Labyrinth somehow, with Makoto revealing his true nature following that.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Yuma’s 3D model occasionally fails to load its animations, causing it to switch between positions in most scenes.
  • Halara’s “forward-facing anger” portraits feature two variants, one normal and the other blue with stress. In the latter, Halara’s chin is compressed inward.
  • In Chapter 0, when Melami fails to contact the WDO due to no signal on her phone her hair can briefly be seen clipping through her shoulder as she shakes her head.
  • In Chapter 4, the model of the file of Yomi’s trades that Makoto holds after Chapter 4’s Mystery Labyrinth momentarily disappears when Makoto lowers his arm.
  • Also in Chapter 4, when Halara turns their head to face the detectives upon recalling evidence of a potential kidnapping case happening in Kanai Ward, the shot from behind shows their hair clipping through the hood of their raincoat.
  • In the epilogue, Halara’s model clips through the camera for a brief moment in the close shot of them placing their 1-shien coin on Chief Yakou’s desk.
  • A minor case in the epilogue. Vivia, being his usual lazy self, tries to stow away in a suitcase out of hope that someone will unwittingly pull him along and transport him. But no one does that for him, and after the other detectives leave, Vivia gets out of the suitcase, bids Kurumi farewell, and leaves, seemingly leaving the suitcase behind. Right afterwards, the camera shows the whole office, except that the suitcase has somehow disappeared.
  • In Halara’s “Raining Cats & Dog” DLC, the animation of them performing a Diving Kick on Arc Villain Jeryn has their glasses disappear from their model for a second.
• Spoiled by the Format: Or much rather, "by the number of signature characters." Halara, Desuhiko, Fubuki, and Vivia all count up to four, and sure, while it's impossible to predict which Peacekeepers will show up when, it's rather obvious that the player will be assisted once per chapter by each one of the four of them, and in that order (they're introduced to the player in that order, at that). However, it's especially clear that the whole plot is immediately spoiled for players when considering where the story has to go following Vivia's assistance, taking into account that he's obviously the fourth and final assistant, the only logical conclusion after him is "endgame" and "Yomi's defeat". The game does take advantage of this, though. A player will quickly notice they get a different partner for every chapter, and thus assume any Master Detective who hasn't been a partner yet has Plot Armor. This makes Yakou's death in Chapter 4 much more unexpected, and making matters worse, he's also that case's culprit.
• Spot the Victim: While it's still a surprise twist in the end, one can immediately expect Yakou Furio to die at some point in the story because he's so eccentric and makes himself too easy a target for the villain (expectedly the Obviously Evil Yomi) to manipulate to their whims, and he plays too important a role, that being leading the main detectives that the story revolves around. Eventually, he does, but not in the way you'd expect.
• Stock Footage Failure: The deduction minigames noticeably use Stock Footage to loop animations. Yuma can run while monologuing indefinitely regardless of the length of location shown prior. Near the end of Chapter 0, he runs after jumping between stone platforms despite there being nowhere to run. In Chapter 2, the desk Yuma jumps from will not match the one he's been standing on. In both of those cases Yuma jumps to the same spot he was before until the minigame is completed.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • In Chapter 3, though Icardi definitely should've just given the advice instead of causing reckless chaos and getting himself killed via Mystery Labyrinth, he is correct in saying that the Peacekeepers outnumber Kanai Ward's resolve. This has been observed both before and after his case, what with the Nocturnal Detective Agency being targeted repeatedly by the Peacekeepers and eventually ending up in Yomi's crosshairs (literally, at that, since he tries to gun them down after Icardi is exposed as the culprit) because they fought back.
  • Though it doesn't justify his deeds, Yomi is making a clear observation in Chapter 4 when he points out that Makoto is looking down on everyone in Kanai Ward as Amaterasu's CEO, which is also a literal observation since Makoto lives at the highest point in the city.
  • Yomi accuses Makoto of having some elaborate plot when he confronts him in Dr. Huesca's critical lab upon finding there to be no intruder. It turns out that plot was removing Yomi himself from power through both their plots to have Yakou kill Dr. Huesca.
• That One Level: Unless you think hard enough about it, Dr. Huesca's murder case, the last murder case, is difficult to work out with proof of the culprit's actual identity unless you make the connection that Yakou Furio's attack from Fink and the lethality of the doctor's gas are related to one another, concluding that Yakou used the assassin to cover his tracks after simply enduring the gas while riding on the Ama-Pal. Otherwise, the answer is hidden completely under the riddle of how the culprit managed to make it past a lethal security system without leaving behind any traces of their presence or any way to get in or out.
• That One Sidequest: Getting all of the Memory Shards is a pain due to most only appearing during specific points in specific chapters, and you can only start from the beginning of the chapter on replays. Halara's "Let's look at the microscopic world" especially stands out: despite Aetheria Academy's chemistry lab being accessible after Chapter 2, the Memory Shard under the microscope only appears during the part of Chapter 2's investigation where you disguise as Martina Electro, which is the last part of the investigation before the Mystery Labyrinth, necessitating replaying the entire first half of the chapter should you miss it the first time.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Dear lord, does Chapter 0 introduce us to a few. There are five Master Detectives aside from Yuma on the train, all of whom have colorful personalities and designs, interesting dynamics with each other (most jarringly Pucci gets a little Ship Tease with the protagonist), different approaches to solving a mystery, and unique abilities which could've been useful later in the game. They all end up killed in the same chapter, and one of them was a hitman who replaced the real Zilch, whom he had already killed before Yuma even entered the train. While it's definitely an intentional decision to hook the audience into the game, it's still a bummer all these unique designs weren't used for more.
  • The Peacekeeper officers fall into this. While they all have fun designs, both in the real world and as Mystery Phantoms, and fun personalities, the vast majority of them feel underused over the course of the game. With the exception of Yomi and Martina, none of the Peacekeeper officers faced are ever seen again after the chapter wherein their Mystery Phantom appears. Seth's defeat is at least used as an Establishing Character Moment for his boss, but Swank, Guillaume, and Dominic simply disappear after Yuma cracks their respective cases and are never so much as referenced again after outside of a small update to their bios. One can’t help but wonder why the devs created so many unique officers only to barely even use most of them to antagonize the cast.
  • Out of Chapter 1's unique cast, that being the four suspects, four victims, the man who was falsely accused of the crime and his son, only the latter two have actual names - even then, the boy's name is only given in loading screen Flavor Text and his father is never seen or interacted with outside of a photo. Personality traits and personal details are similarly sparse across these ten characters, some of which only comes about in later chapters (Nun and Servant). It's almost as if the entire chapter was designed to prevent any pesky characterization from getting in the way of the raw mechanics of the four locked-room mysteries, as the culprit has no personal connection to the victims and the true motive for each murder is impossible to determine^note the culprit killed them because someone nailed their name to a tree, and the game spends no time trying to determine who was behind each name and why they wanted them dead beyond brief explanations of unsavory behavior they were known for; the only possible exception is the third murder, but that's strictly the realm of Alternative Character Interpretation. It's quite the missed opportunity to have had so many murder-mystery story roles ("victim", "accused innocent") be filled by the purest definition of a Flat Character.
  • The Resistance characters. They first appear in Chapter 3, and their introduction seems to show an increase in tension against Amaterasu and its tyranny, with the Resistance as new supporting characters to help Yuma. But after Icardi kills Shachi, the leader of the Resistance, the Resistance quickly falls apart, and the other Resistance members who acted as suspects for Chapter 3 only appear in an optional sidequest in Chapter 4 and play no further role in the story.
  • A good few of the culprits (with exceptions like Yakou and Makoto) don't get a lot of time in the spotlight before entering the Mystery Labyrinth, and the reflections of them seen within sometimes do nothing but deny or obscure the truth, giving their character little time to shine and makes taking them down less cathartic or heart-wrenching to take down compared to culprits from similar series like Ace Attorney or even Danganronpa. Two of the worst offenders are Chapter 1's culprits, who are mostly Flat Characters that don't even get names, as noted above.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Halara Nightmare is often seen as non-binary, likely because Halara's profile using "they/them" and their illustration features what is often believed to be the signature pride flag colors (purple streaks with yellow interior; in-game, Halara's coat is fully black, and the yellow on Halara's clothing is actually closer to lime.). Further, while in-game it is several times brought up by Yuma and Shinigami if Halara is male or female, non-binary is never brought up.
• Unconvincingly Unpopular Character: Halara Nightmare carries themselves with dignity in their every word and action, possesses admirable physical capabilities, and is an expert detective in a renowned Non-Governmental Organization. They also happen to live in the shadows and their popularity is essentially zilch as a result of that job, which of course, they take advantage of to be someone they aren't, and they nearly die way too many times throughout the events of the present day story.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Yakou Furio comes off this way, despite the game trying to make him out as sympathetic in Chapter 4. He has so little resolve as a result of his constant misfortune in Kanai Ward that he’s willing to hold back the Master Detectives that aren’t even involved in his personal issues, that being Halara, Desuhiko, Fubuki, and Vivia, almost blatantly projecting those issues onto them in a way, and especially Yuma, who refuses his orders to avoid the Peacekeepers because he actually wants to save people. This comes to a head in Chapter 4 where he gets even worse, as he’s also willing to manipulate and sacrifice his agency in order to get Dr. Huesca killed, without even telling anyone else about it, solely because he believed something that came from Yomi, whom he knows can’t be trusted^note Granted, he was given the trigger letter to him under the form of "Anonymous", but he still should've put two and two together when it came to who would know about his wife's killer and who'd use it against him to give him a motive to kill someone., and decided to enact revenge under that false pretense. Him getting the most sympathetic send-off of any culprit, and being the only one Yuma goes into a Heroic BSoD over accusing, despite Chapter 2's culprits fitting the Sympathetic Murderer trope just as much if not more (and still getting "boom-killed" in spite of their young age), can feel like a case of Protagonist-Centered Morality, especially when Yuma's reluctance to accept Yakou's death following his murder even extends to the other NDA members, with Halara also joining Yuma in having an emotional breakdown, and Desuhiko and Fubuki crying in Yakou's unambiguous death scene following the chapter's Mystery Labyrinth, even though he never once explicitly cared for what they wanted throughout the story until his death.
• Values Dissonance: Shinigami reaping the culprit's souls in the Mystery Labyrinth, and a certain plot point in Chapter 5 (namely: that Kanai Ward's meat buns are made from criminals who were slated for execution anyway, which is meant to soften a case of Necessarily Evil) may come across a lot less sympathetically to those living in countries without the death penalty.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Halara, obviously, though it was likely Kodaka's intention. Audiences are unable to decide if Halara is male or female, or something else entirely, especially with the English dub refraining from using pronouns. Albeit, many players, at least in English (perhaps due to how feminine their voice actress sounds), assume Halara is female until reading their bio or seeing the scenes where the uncertainty is pointed out.
• Viewers in Mourning: The audience has not taken the death of Yakou Furio in Chapter 4 well, though they also dismiss that he's an immortal with resurrection powers and helps Yuma with significant information in Chapter 5, so it's more like a temporary death. At the time, to the Master Detectives, it was not.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • The overall message of the game can be interpreted as a commentary on Corporate Conspiracy that happens in the real world, in the context of the ever-known conspiracy that "humans are artificial and corporations are trying to hide us from this fact" in accordance with the Big Bad being a CEO and his motive being to pretend that artificial homunculi are real humans. While this is a possible interpretation of an alternate message, it's really a Murder Mystery game where the message more revolves around independence, what with Number One adopting an I Work Alone attitude driving the main conflict, and the main antagonist causing destruction in his plot to hide Kanai Ward's truth on his own as his clone, with there being no indication of it revolving around real-life conspiracy theories.
  • Kodaka has gone on record that Halara having an ambiguous gender was done for no reason other than to make them more mysterious. ^note  https://dengekionline.com/articles/195383/
• The Woobie: Poor Yuma gets faced with all sorts of death and trauma throughout the game, especially after he has to kill the culprits in the Mystery Labyrinth.
• Writer Cop Out: The game's epilogue somewhat ruins the story set up by the fifth chapter. Makoto makes a massive deal in the final episode about how the homunculi population of Kanai Ward are unable to integrate into normal society, with the unending rain, human flesh meat buns, and inescapability of Kanai Ward being presented as necessary evils for their safety and wellbeing. The story could have left it at that and presented the wellbeing of homunculi versus humans as a tragedy with no solution that will leave everyone happy, but in the epilogue, Kurumi's efforts to prepare for a journey outside Kanai Ward — obtaining supplies as simple as a sunproof coat, sun protection lotion, and instant ramen rations that homunculi can eat instead of human meat — significantly undermine all of Makoto's extreme measures to keep Kanai Ward's population safe and sound, which makes him seem less competent than he should. Though it could be argued that this is the point Yuma was getting at by telling Makoto to rely on others to solve Kanai Ward’s mysteries. That for all his brilliance as a clone for Number One, there are some things he couldn’t think of or come up with all his own, such as the ramen, which was created by the real Yuma Kokohead to provide an ethical replacement for the meat buns.

---