Bastion App

[amphibian]

Player name: Courtney
Age: 17
Contact: nidorina/needlekind 
Other characters: N/A

Character name: Aoi Asahina
Series: Dangan Ronpa
Canon point: After the end of chapter two but before chapter three begins properly; Aoi goes to bed after the second execution and wakes up in the Skyway.

Summary:

I've covered all of the spoilers with black bars! You can read them by highlighting them but I highly advise against it if you plan to read/watch/play DR at any point ever. I mean it! DR's twistiness is the best part of the game and you shouldn't ruin that.

Aoi is in quite the sticky situation right now. To be concise, she's locked up in Hope's Peak Academy—a high school for the absolute elite with enrollment permitted through invitation only, where she's been admitted under the title of "Super High School Level Swimmer" after a lifetime of dominating the competition. The doors and walls are all sealed with massive metal plates drilled into the walls, guns hang from the ceilings to keep her and her fourteen brand-new Super High School Level classmates in line, there isn't a speck of sunlight to be seen, and the school is completely deserted besides them and their captor. They've been presented with the following rules: in order to escape the school, they have to kill another classmate without being caught. If, at the class trial following the class investigation of a murder, the discussion led to the culprit being correctly voted upon by the class, they alone would be punished by being executed. If the class chose the wrong person, however, all of them would be killed, and the culprit would be allowed to leave the school.

By this point, five students have been killed: two murders, two executions, and a punishment by their captor.

Throughout the ordeal, Aoi has remained surprisingly perky. She's marked by her endless energy. Aoi is the type to throw herself whole-heartedly into all she does, greet everyone cheerfully, focus on the best of a poor situation, and run around with a bounce in her step and a grin on her face. In general, she's just a very bubbly person! The trait is one that lends itself well to social interactions; Aoi is a pro at going past first appearances and reaching out to befriend others. She immediately suggests that everybody introduce themselves to the last student to meet them in the main hll. Her first and best friend in the school is the Super High School Level Wrestler, Sakura, who stands at nearly six feet tall and is so muscular and scarred that many of her classmates are too intimidated to even approach her. Initially, Aoi makes an effort to reach out to Touko, even while she actively attempts to drive people away with her cruel comments, and bring her into her and Sakura's budding social circle, as Sakura is not very good socially herself. She invites teeny Chihiro to come train with them in the gym as soon as she expresses a desire to become stronger.

This endless energy of hers gets channeled into her iron willpower. Aoi is determined. It takes conviction to actively participate in six sports teams, after all! Even when her goals don't involve sports, she can't  be shaken from them: even needing a donut to fix her sadness becomes a great mission for her and she threatens to kick down her friend for standing in her way before sprinting off and hollering. All of her energy goes into her aspirations—so when she reaches them, she immediately moves onto something else. It's why she plays so many sports; the moment of uncertainty is the best part of a struggle to the top for her, and when she makes it, she plateaus, and can't stand the idleness. Being locked inside of the school, of course, is the worst kind of fate, and she's always trying to find an outlet for her energy and cabin fever.

Her determination only gets her so far, though. A lot of the time, she lacks the intelligence to back it up. Actually, she's kind of a ditz—she fails to spell the protagonist's simple name, struggles frequently to remember words for things, forgets the diet she'd cheated on moments after declaring it to the protagonist by their next conversation, and doesn't add much brainpower to the trials.

Aoi is aware of her shortcomings, though. During investigations, she usually chooses to help guard the crime scenes because she knows how little her powers of deduction are going to contribute. When one student goes missing, she takes the brute force approach of knocking continuously at his door while the others go out searching.

This lack of intelligence is a source of insecurity for her. She wishes she were smarter because she hates feeling like she can't help anyone or, worse, that she's holding them back. Another point of self-consciousness for her is how completely unfeminine she is: at one point she asks her male friend to be her "practice boyfriend" in hopes of bringing out her inner femininity so that she'll suddenly become appealing enough to have a real boyfriend so she won't die alone—sometimes she's a little unnecessarily intense. Of course, this "practice" goes miserably; Aoi first tries to act like a 50's housewife welcoming her husband home from work, and then a slighted lover acting out as if in a TV drama. Both of these points of insecurity are things she's been made fun of in the past, so she very quickly gets defensive and angry at anyone she thinks is insulting her.

Regardless, Aoi is very emotionally perceptive even if she lacks logical intelligence. She teases the antagonist for his implied crush on the female main character, and assures him that girls like her are surprisingly easy to win over. Sakura commits suicide late in the game, and Aoi not only mentions her initial suspicions but manages to analyze all of Sakura's motives (though eventually her major source is proved false—we'll revisit that later). Though she may not be good with facts, she's good with people.

Aoi's not just emotionally perceptive, she's just flat-out emotional. She makes no attempts to hold back her feelings. If she is upset, outraged, thrilled, or worried, everyone is going to know it; she's going to cry, scream, skip, and fuss openly. She'll yell and laugh and sob entirely unabashedly. This isn't presented as a weakness, though. Aoi is emotional, but strong; her emotions don't hinder her, as forceful as they are.

All of these traits make her a perfect fit for a supportive role. From the very beginning of their situation, Aoi works to encourage everyone else and keep them from losing hope. She assures everyone that the police will be there soon, and that in the meantime they'll be fine, and they'll get out if they work as a team! Even as things get worse and people start dying, Aoi is always ready with a pep talk. She wants to believe in the goodness of everyone: although most of her concern goes towards the victims, the murderers don't get an ill word spoken towards them.

The following events described take place after Aoi's canon point, but they're fairly important to understanding her character and what she's capable of, so I'm going to go over them briefly!

Later on she's pushed towards a breaking point: their captor's bribe of money manages to motivate someone to murder, and it is the first entirely premeditated killing in the game. Aoi is beside herself; this can't be dismissed as an accident or something in the heat of the moment, and it fiercely challenges her hope that everyone is good. She holds the victim's head in her lap and bawls despite only ever being disgusted by him, and she's so angry that for the first time, she's quick to dogpile the framed culprit and accuse him of murder. When the real secret lets out, even still she weeps indignant tears for the killer, demanding to know why she's not scared of her impending execution, and still caring for her.

But the anger's not gone and ends up capitalized on when it's revealed that her best friend and rock has been a mole for the mastermind behind their captivity the whole time. The rest of the group turns on her, and Aoi, still adamantly believing in Sakura's righteousness above the doubt she's experiencing in light of the last trial, is outraged enough to slap another classmate across the face despite her usually pacifistic get-along nature and even tell him he deserves to die when he says the same of Sakura. When Sakura is found dead and Aoi discovers a suicide note saying she's fallen into complete despair and can't wait around to die, things get worse.

Aoi tampers with the crime scene to make it appear as though she killed Sakura. She gets caught, but she explains her reasoning after: she wanted to be wrongly voted on so that everyone would be killed. She feels that everyone (herself inlcluded) is responsible for driving Sakura into despair and, therefore, killing her, and they all need to atone for their sin. Aoi believes with absolutely all of her heart that this is what is right, and she's willing to die for that.

Aaaaand then Aoi is proven wrong. The suicide note, as mentioned, is a fake—the real one, read right after the vote is made, reveals that Sakura killed herself to fulfill a deal with the mastermind and as part of a ploy to help everyone who's left. In reality, she died full of hope for the survivors. Aoi is devastated, and immensely guilty for what she's done.

But the most important thing that happens after Sakura's death is that Aoi bounces back. She's upset, insecure about her previous perceived reliance on Sakura and inability to contribute on her own, and overwhelmingly guilty (and for a while, constantly apologizing). But she goes back to encouraging others, trying to do absolutely everything she can to contribute (even if it just means running around as fast as she can to spread the news; it's something and that cheers her up considerably), and being her peppy and determined self.

The big ideas behind this: first, her loyalty to the people important to her—strong enough to kill and die. Aoi is so loyal to the person who most matters to her that she attacks someone for condemning her, and is ready to kill everyone for doing the same. Second, her dedication to what she believes is just, whether or not it really is right. And third, the fact that she's a fighter; she isn't one to give into despair and can and will spring back from whatever misery is thrown at her.

At the very end, her strength proves triumphant: Sakura's words remind her that sacrificing her freedom is not worth her safety, and she goes out into the world she's just learned is in an apocalyptic state, declaring that she'll have her favorite donuts out there; if there's no store, then she'll just make her own; if there's no dough, then even wheat will be enough for her to get to her goal.

 

Powers: For all intents and purposes, Aoi is a normal human being! She does have notable (within the realm of normal human beings) physical strength, though; spending so long playing so many sports sure does build up muscle.
Entry: I'd like for someone else to help Aoi off the Skyway!