🎍Happy New Year ⛩✨
Extra mode: Love Across the Universe healed my heart and saved my life T- T
I'm interested in your thoughts about why Komaeda is such an icon of a character? He's this very special status that's really hard to describe and he still trends on his birthday years after his game and even Kokichi who some people joke about being his successor couldn't reach his levels not really. But why, what does Komaeda appeal to that makes everyone like this about him?
hoo boy. I don’t know if I’m exactly the Right person to ask about this since I got into the series relatively later than most. I got into danganronpa a couple months after dr3 finished airing which was… 2016? I think? So I don’t have the Exact logistics of this but I can try my best from outside experience.
See Komaeda was a unique case. Almost what you can call the Perfect Storm of a character. Danganronpa had began to receive some traction thanks to niche tumblr communities discovering the Something Awful letsplay threads. An official English translation of the game had not yet been conceived so this was the only way people could view the series meaning tumblr was the Only True Way this content could be discussed. Danganronpa had started accumulating a following along with other games like OFF and more notably things like Homestuck. In all honesty, they weren’t That large. They were the same size as any other tumblr fandom would be. However, this all changed in 2012-2013 when Super Danganronpa 2 came out.
I’m sure you’ve read or heard of jokes about this, but tumblr tends to align themselves to a certain breed of character. If you were skinny, deceitful, and danced upon the line of gray morality, then chances were that tumblr had many fanbases targeted for people to get down on that character. It’s hard to describe, but it was like the website was a conglomerate and every couple months or so there would be a new “Tumblr Crush” that everyone would swoop in and obsess over. You had your Eridan Amporas and Gamzee Makaras and whatever the guys from supernatural were called and the Hannibals and the Lokis and… yeah you get the point. Tumblr had a thing for twinks needing redemption. It got so bad that tumblr even sexualized and completely fell head over heels for the Onceler from the Lorax of all things.
Now I hear you saying, “where does komaeda come in” and “hey this all happened 2013 and its 2019 now so… what gives?”
Komaeda came at the perfect moment and he was what everyone idolized. A perfectly justifiable attractive looking bastard. He got bonus points too for being canonically gay. Fans at this time primarily drew art of Him and Him alone. Whether it was komahina art or just casual headcanons or whatever, people were going Nuts for the maeda. At it’s height, (perhaps also mixed in with the absurdity of homestuck Pause culture), a variety of different shitposts began to arise with him. Not to mention, the danganronpa fandom in particular had a unique trend where they would write moodposts and powerpoints using character sprites. Most notably, Komaeda was usually at the front and center of these. Komaeda had a personality that was completely open to interpretation which people seemed to RUN with. It seemed like each person had their own version of Komaeda that extended beyond the reaches of Danganronpa. You could find pictures of komaeda doing Just about anything and it was a very strange mixture of “I’m sexually attracted to Komaeda Nagito and this is relatably funny to me” and “Komaeda Nagito is fucking Crazy and I could see him doing Anything” and “Komaeda was a sweet sweet misunderstood boy and he just wants to have fun”. MMDs of Komaeda arose with Komaeda dancing to whatever unrelated song was in the background, Komaeda was used as a standard for how popular other characters were, Komaeda was everyone’s kin and everyone seemed to BE Komaeda. It grew to such a point that Komaeda was no longer a danganronpa character. Komaeda was Komaeda. I like to believe this was mostly due to a tumblr blog by the name of komaedalovemail which created absurdist surreal shitpost jokes featuring Komaeda that even had its own ARG mystery that people bought into. They were the reason for some of Komaeda’s biggest jokes on tumblr. Komaeda symbolized tumblr humor and had almost nothing to do with his origins in danganronpa.
While never being into danganronpa at the time, I had an understanding of who Komaeda was just from tumblr alone. you could say the word Komaeda and immediately everyone would know you were talking about everyone’s sweet good boy Crazy Twink crush. Before Fingers In His Ass, Komaeda was the source of many shitposts and humor. Sometimes posts that had nothing to do with danganronpa would just be tagged with “Damn it komaeda” or something like that. Everyone Loved Him. All I could gather from all these posts was that he was a cheerful guy who was gay and Just Kinda There.
The reason he still stands as a cultural powerhouse today is that he Still stands as an absurd focal point. Nagito Komaeda is just a prettyboy anime guy that’s crazy and that’s enough for anyone to buy into. Fingers In His Ass proved to be a great resurgence of Komaeda Nagito content and a new age of tumblr only knows him as that. It’s shocking that people Don’t know his tumblr origins as just this… Thing. The only character, and I truly mean ONLY, character that has come close and managed to be on par with Komaeda Nagito in terms of elevated status has been Sans Undertale. No one else will ever reach their levels of tumblr peak (or at least they wont for a really long time). People know who Komaeda is but they have no clue who Nagito Komaeda, Ultimate Lucky Student, is. I said it before and I will say it again; Komaeda is not a danganronpa character. Komaeda is Komaeda.
One of my two full submissions for @zinestiria!! I hope everyone who bought a copy is enjoying it – thank you very much for your support, and I’m super grateful I could be part of this! I love you all my Zinestiria folks!
(also psst for those of you who’re itching for more Zesty gen content – we’re up to something @tozanniversary! End of ad.)
