[Spoilers for the entire Kill the Past series] Need clarification on most of the plot

[visualkarate]

Want to start off by saying it's a shame this game probably tanked because the plot is so obtuse that more people to discuss it with would be great. Anyway, what was the deal with Shiroyabu? He loses his mind (though it's apparent from whiteout he's never been quite all there to begin with) and "death-files" (whatever that is exactly), tries to kill the mayor, gains immense power, kills(maybe?) the protagonist and learns the game's interface was the main villain all along. He's also a son of (a) Kamui maybe? That's about the size of it right?

What was the deal with Sumio in digital man? Is he Mondo from FSR and the Kodai identity combined? How'd he get reinstated after his murders in Case#3 Parade from TSC, is he insane or actually still in the "dream state" that he was in during FSR? What's up with him shooting Jabroni in the head a week before the events in electride? Did Shiroyabu just get a spare body? Did he actually kill Uehara or was he mistaken if we take blackout into account (as much as it can be anyway)? Is Uehara supposed to be Akira from TSC? Did most of the cast (including characters like Nakane) die when the 25th Ward is annihilated at the end of Placebo? What happened to Erika from TSC? Is Slash a Remnant Psyche, a split personality, and to top it off, I thought Slash was supposed to be a woman, but Tokio refers to them as male? Why does Tokio not look the same in Matchmaker as he did in the Transmitter chapters from TSC (I thought Placebo was how he viewed himself, with Transmitter showing how he objectively looks like)?

Does any of this actually matter when we take into account that this is a remake/remaster of a possibly unfinished JP-only mobile game from the mid-2000s and Suda and co. probably don't take any of this all that seriously anyway. If they did, I doubt blackout and it's ludicrously lengthy road to the final message/ending would even be a thing.

[Deep_wolf]

/ is a friend of Turtleguy

[visualkarate]

So / is a different / from the one in The Silver Case (who was apparently killed in that game by the guy who was keeping tabs on Tokio)? It's just an identity multiple people use by the time period of The 25th Ward? What the heck was up with the Red Room in Placebo (aside from being a shoutout to Twin Peaks)?

[俄]

I don't know where you got the thing about the interface from, but I also felt that way while playing, I guess I'm not the only one! It's a very confusing game, specially correctness, so I should re-play it again to catch more of the story.

[Arale//Zero]

This is probably the most confusing KtP game to date and has a ton of completely un-followed-up loose ends, so there's a lot here we just don't have the answers to. That said, there's a hell of a lot to analyze regardless.

I'll try to ""answer"" (more like give some notes on) all your questions in a following post, but Slash is probably one of the least confusing parts, so I'll just explain that now.

You have to remember YAMI, the bonus Placebo report that was added to TSC... in it, Slash claimed that his mind was uploaded into the internet. Remember that remnant psyches and media/the internet are very much linked in these games, so if Slash was killed, Tokio continues to interact with his web-ghost-thing. (Or Slash might have not been killed in the first place, that could have been a lie on someone's part. But I think he was killed or avoided death by going into the net. Either way he loses his body.)

Since Slash/Tokio are even more linked with the Net in 25W than they were previously, I don't think there's any reason to think that it's not the same Slash. As for why Tokio calls him his alter ego... I don't think that's meant to be taken literally, as in "Slash is my split personality", rather that Slash's Remnant Psyche became a persona.

In MISOGI it's talked about by the mysterious doctors at the hospital in Tokio's past that Tokio is showing signs of multiple personalities. The way I saw this is that some of his psyches were manifesting as outright personae. (I don't think it's a coincidence that he sits in a wheelchair and is taken care of by a weird nurse at this time...)

The context in which Tokio calls Slash his alter ego is in comparison to Yuki, who also has an alter ego (possibly also a persona? ambiguous) she talks to on the net who it is implied she picked up from a pre-existing ghost. So for their situations to be comparable, I think that Slash did originate as just a guy Tokio knew on the Net, and later became his persona.

This seems like a lot of explanation but I think that Slash's story is pretty straightforward, I'm just explaining it all since a lot of people seemed to be confused by it.

[Arale//Zero]

On death-filing:
At first this seems to be just a fancy way to say "awakens" with the caveat that the person who death-files loses all their hair in the process.
We don't really know *exactly* what it is, but I will say that the concept seems to exist in the original TSC, just going almost completely unnamed.
Remember when Chizuru's whole personality changed in kamuidrome? It was also noted that she was wearing a wig, and it was not followed up on why at all.
That and some other ancillary evidence suggests to me that people death-file when they are awakening to being Kamui/Ayame. The idea of what "Kamui" is is played fast and loose outside of TSC, though, so I can't say that that's the only cause for death-filing.

On being the son of Kamui:
In TSC's decoyman, we see three children of a "normal" Kamui and they aren't treated as incredibly special (although they do have a minor psychic connection). That's why it seems like Shiroyabu would have to be the son of Format Kamui for him to be special; that's just an idea though, could be contradicted by future information.

[Arale//Zero]

On Sumio:
My interpretation here is that, rather than the Mondo and Kodai personas being particularly separate, is that once Sumio "Mondo" was woken up to reality, it was all just Sumio again. Rather than insane, I think Sumio is just plain depressed.
I suppose it's up to you whether the weird ♥♥♥♥ Sumio sees when he's on his own is extradimensional stuff like Kurumizawa or just his own delusions. Maybe some of both.

On how he isn't in jail:
Kusabi isn't in jail either and he did some murders too (among other people). I think after most of the ward administrators (the mayor, the bat, nezu) and HCU higher-ups (Kotobuki, Naka) died at the end of TSC, nobody was really around to care if Sumio got off lightly (and Kusabi and co got off free).

Is Uehara Akira?:
I don't think so, but they look almost identical that there's definitely a connection there.
As you might have heard, Sakura says that Uehara "reminds [her] of [him]" in prototype, which is rather ambiguous but I'm not sure who else she could be talking about but Akira.
There's also the fact that Akira seems to be truly mute while Uehara seems to be just not talking. (Going off of the final message and his appearance in TSA.)

What happened to Erika?:
It is odd that she isn't mentioned anywhere at all, but I bet that Tokio just didn't remember her for most of the game so she never came up.

[visualkarate]

@wiregrind At the end of electride the interface icon turns into Kurumizawa and talks to Shiroyabu, so I view that as him literally being the way the player interacts with the video game (he's probably the running man in the chapter select screen too).

I have a feeling Erika might have been the bar owner, but I'm really unsure whether any of her interactions with Tokio even happened, what with the bar turning out to be abandoned. Was that supposed to be Tokio remembering a prior event? I dunno.

If Shiroyabu really is Format Kamui's son, wouldn't that make him Tokio and Chizuru's younger brother? Yet none of them ever interact.

Another thing that I don't think was ever cleared up is which version of the Silver Case's events is real: was the original Format Kamui an assassin, or was he just the son of the mayor of the 24th Ward's who was murdered for his silver eye? Kusabi gives both accounts but I'm not sure which one's real. If it's the latter, does that mean that Kamui is a wholly artifical personality created by the government and implanted into children, or just a synonym for the more primal criminal power? Kamui is so many things it's hard to keep track of.

Placebo was mostly disappointing to me, what with Tokio being amnesiac for almost the entire thing and most of the OG's supporting cast not making any substantial appearances, but YUKI was a great coda to the whole game, and much more enjoyable than blackout. And where the hell is Kusabi? It's not stated where the hell he is during digital man, but his appearance in whiteout was at least enjoyable.

[Arale//Zero]

"If Shiroyabu really is Format Kamui's son, wouldn't that make him Tokio and Chizuru's younger brother?" - No? Format Kamui wasn't a child of the Hachisukas. He came from Lospass Island. You might be confused thinking of Kaoru Hachisuka, Uminosuke Hachisuka's son and the true father of Tokio and Chizuru. Uminosuke killed Kamui - essentially a random outsider - for the eyes, and then killed and stole the identity of Kaoru Hachisuka.

"Where is Kusabi in digital man?" - This actually was stated, he is in America. I don't know what he's doing there.

[Danny Dataly]

Shiroyabu's mom is mentioned to be Ayame Shimohira's son though, and she was specifically mentioned to be pregnant in TSC. Shiroyabu seems to be a spiritual/memetic entity similar to Kamui & Ayame in that he manifests himself as multiple people through the game.
I don't think it's their literal phisical son, it's more like Ayame and Kamui's son as he exists within the information flow / spiritual plane

[Arale//Zero]

Originally posted by Uehara Kamui:

Shiroyabu is mentioned to be Ayame Shimohira's son though

No he isn't.

His last name is Shimohira, but we don't actually know what that means. Although there haven't been mention of any other "Ayame Shimohira"s, we know that the name "Kamui Uehara" has been applied to all the Kamuis, so I don't think its a stretch for Ayame Shimohira to be applied to all the Ayames. Even if this isn't the case, though, that's still not confirmation; there are many possibilities for the origins of the name Shimohira.

Yuki's last name is also Shimohira, which could mean a number of things as well.

[Danny Dataly]

Originally posted by Arale//Zero:

Originally posted by Uehara Kamui:

Shiroyabu is mentioned to be Ayame Shimohira's son though

No he isn't.

His last name is Shimohira, but we don't actually know what that means. Although there haven't been mention of any other "Ayame Shimohira"s, we know that the name "Kamui Uehara" has been applied to all the Kamuis, so I don't think its a stretch for Ayame Shimohira to be applied to all the Ayames. Even if this isn't the case, though, that's still not confirmation; there are many possibilities for the origins of the name Shimohira.

Yuki's last name is also Shimohira, which could mean a number of things as well.

I would argue the twist of revealing an identical surname is completely meaningless other than revealing the characters involved to be belonging to the same family unit.
Maybe son is a stretch (though Shiroyabu does make quite a few references to an unseen mother, and one of the endings even describes her as a young woman) but I can't think of any other meaning to that reveal, and yes I would assume Yuki was part of the same lineage/clan due to her surname, just as I assumed the leader of the 25th ward project to be related to Ginji Nakane from the TRO/CCO alliance in the 70s due to them sharing the surname Nakane.

Of course I don't mean Shiroyabu is literally the phisical Ayame's baby, since the age would not match up. I took it more as an implication that Shiroyabu is a similar memetic lifeform as Kamui Uehara and Ayame Shimohira, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume it is their "son" considering that the idea of a "pureblood" pairing between Ayame & Kamui is discussed in the first game, and the phisical Ayame is even mentioned as being pregnant at the end of decoyman.

Interestingly enough, Yuki's age would match up to being the phisical Ayame's actual daughter (considering she is in highschool in 2017, and Ayame was pregnant with a baby in 1999), though pretty much everything in this game exists as speculation only so it's not like there's ever going to be any concrete answer

[Arale//Zero]

I mean, yes, that's what a shared last name would *usually* mean, like with Nakane, but the names "Uehara" and "Shimohira" are a completely different matter entirely. I do think that Shiroyabu is the child of Kamui and Ayame, absolutely, but I don't see a reason to point to that particular woman out of numerous Ayames; if it could be anyone, there would be tons of examples of Kamuis and Ayames having children in the ward. What would make Shiroyabu special?

Yuki's age doesn't match up either because Yuki was born in 2001.

I'm also unsure if Ayame's baby would even have been born, considering that she dies later that year. (I don't know how long Ayame was pregnant up till then.)

[Danny Dataly]

Oh I never meant it as in that one specific Ayame from TSC1 would be the mother of the one specific Shiroyabu from 25th Ward, I meant it as Ayame in a general sense. I brought up the fact that the phisical Ayame from TSC was mentioned as being pregnant more for its thematic relevance than anything else.
For all we know it could be an allusion to the fact that a new life form similar to Kamui & Ayame was going to be born eventually.
It is hard to discuss it clearly because "Ayame" could refer to a bunch of different things, so I can see why there was some confusion.
Where did you get the information that Yuki was born in 2001 by the way? Was it mentioned in the final Placebo chapter and I just missed it or forgot about it?
I did not actually assume she was the daughter of Ayame from Decoyman, I just thought it was interesting how the ages would line up but I guess I was wrong

[Arale//Zero]

Sorry for the misunderstanding then ^^;;;, I think you are right in that there is some thematic resonance there.
Yuki's birth date is on her ID card that you can check when you go down to the lockers, which is also the source of her last name.

[<flashmoZZg>]

@Arale//Zero, didn't want to create a whole ne thread for single question so hijaked this, but was connection between Tokio and GLG established anywhere prior to 25th ward (when it was mentioned in one of Meru's blog posts)?