Pregame Saihara - Blog Posts

I have drawn Pregame Shuichi wearing a beanie!!

I was bored and thought of this during choir after drawing circles over and over

your post about fanon vs canon pregame v3 characters has me curious, what are your thoughts on pregame shuichi and how he's perceived by the fandom? u mentioned u wanted to talk about him but didn't and now i rlly wanna know what u think hehe

Spoilers for V3 (again (just in case for anyone else lol))

I personally dislike how aggressive they make his love of Danganronpa in fanon. And from one pov I can kinda see it with him being like “I’ll plot the most gruesome murders” or something like that in the audition tape. But honestly he just kinda seems like… a guy? He’s a guy who really likes this show (that he’s somewhat grown up in his teens with probably if he’s been watching for years) and would do anything to be in it.

As I said in the other post, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s exaggerating so that they pick him (although his video seems more genuine in how big a fan he is so I feel like that’s just him in geek mode instead of exaggeration). He’s also just not as creepily obsessed as people portray. He’s not frothing at the mouth at the mention of it or even at the fact he’s auditioning. He’s not acting (for lack of a better word) lewd about it (I’ve seen people characterize that along with the obsession).

He’s just… a teenager who really likes this show. He’s watched it for years and has a chance to be on it! Sure, people die, but if it’s still on air it can’t be that bad!

Also in the prologue he acts very similar to the Shuichi we know (nervous, anxious, but still level headed enough to help lead Kaede away from an exisal). We even see that nervousness in the audition where he’s like “I wanna be a detective but it’s ok if I’m not I just really wanna be on this show” (paraphrase).

That’s not to say his fanon pregame self can’t be written well! I’ve read a fic where they tackled the idea of Shuichi after the game having to grapple with who he was, who he is now, and what he’s becoming going back into what he assumed were old danganronpa obsessed habits (it’s a rlly good fic with an unreliable narrator to boot!), I just think it’s overdone considering what we actually have to work with in game.

TL;DR While he definitely rlly liked danganronpa and was probably hyperfixating HARD (lol), it’s nowhere near as bad as fanon makes it out to be (imo).

(I felt like putting this here because it’s funny to me (and also shows that he isn’t a weird guy who wants to kill whoever he sees) LOL)