Shirogane threw herself onto the gaudy couch, pulling the coffee table closer. She pushed Amami’s special monopad aside to make room for the CD player she’d had under her arm.
Shutting the lid of the player and hitting the play button, Shirogane leaned back and closed her eyes.
The melancholy piano notes and eerie whistling washed over her like a wave.
Of the entire cast, she’d spent the most time pre-season observing Akamatsu.
It made sense, of course, since she was slated to be the main focus of this season. There’d been Dangan Ronpa installments before with female leads, but they had always tended to end up with harsher reviews and more virulent feedback, even after adjustment to take 2chan into account. As a result, the gender distribution of protagonist characters had gotten extremely skewed. The last time they’d had a girl in the main role had been the second Real Fiction game, back in the late forties.
There had been serious modifications to Kiibo’s input system after that.
Akamatsu was special, though. It had taken a good deal of bargaining, but Shirogane had insisted that this time it would be different. The audience would love this leading lady, she’d told the producers, she’s perfect for the lie theme.
There’d been hesitation, even in light of the fact that every DR since Shirogane had taken over had managed to break viewership and rating records. She’d had to make so many concessions, stunt the season’s writing with so many cliches–yes, yes, love plot between Harukawa and Momota, okay, okay, double murder in the third case, fine, fine, rewrite Ouma’s character to appeal to fangirls, sure–but it had all been worth it when the producers had signed off on Akamatsu as the lead character.
Ah, to return to those halcyon days.
