Chapter Text
Well, this has been a long time coming, hasn’t it?
I’ve been talking about wanting to do this analysis for months now to various friends and acquaintances, but I’ve only had the motivation to do as such recently, after writing a short story that dived deeper into Gonta’s mindset over the Mercy Killing Plot he and Kokichi attempted to carry out. Regardless of that, however, Gonta has been one of my favorite characters for quite some time, and I really feel like his character arc and the unfortunate tragedy behind the unintentional mistreatment of Gonta via his classmates.
So without further adieu, let’s talk about that–about what happens when a genius is treated like a child.
Warning, this does discuss some rather unfortunate topics, such as ableism, depression/self loathing, and the concept of mercy killing. Viewer discretion is advised.
The first thing we need to elaborate on, is why I am calling Gonta a “genius.” Gonta has shown difficulty in understanding simple concepts, and struggles to follow along complicated plots, such as we see in his Salmon Mode Event where he mentions that he cannot follow the plot of high fantasy stories because they tend to be so complicated. He even refers to himself as not very smart, tragically enough.
However, not is all what it seems for Gonta, as his intellect is a matter of fact, and not just an analysis, and the game’s introduction of him opens up this fact to the player in a round about way that may or may not be so subtle.
Gonta admits here that he was a wild child, lost in the forest for ten years. While the logistics are… questionable, this is a work of fiction, thus I will suspend some disbelief. Gonta being lost in the forest for ten years means that he was probably about 5-8 years old when he was lost, depending on how old he is in the game.
Touching upon this briefly, studies of wild children, specifically referencing this case here, have an extremely hard time readjusting and learning to human language, customs, and interaction. The younger a child is upon becoming a wild child and the longer they are in the wild, the less likely they will be able to learn language and certain social behaviors and skills. While it is not impossible, the likelihood of Gonta being 15 or 16 in the game is very low, and even impossible once I elaborate, and we can safely assume that with the context of him being a wild child, he is probably at least 17 years old. So a safe assumption is that Gonta was lost in the forest when he was about 7.
(Note: I am very well aware of Gonta’s potential forest family not being wolves, and instead the reptites, but these creatures Gonta speaks of very well be his own imagination spiking from the isolation from humanity, or be something else entirely. Gonta makes several references to video game characters as well, claiming he met them in real life, so I consider it highly unlikely that “reptites” are an exception to this. Either way, it won’t matter if you believe otherwise, just that it may change certain aspects of what I’m about to say in regarding education and the sort.)
What’s the point of this elaboration? Well, quite a lot, once you remember that Gonta is the Ultimate Entomologist.
Firstly, there is the fact that Gonta is a high school student at all. Gonta was lost at a very young age–it would be impossible for him to be, since not only had he spent 10 years int he wild, but he also had to rejoin human society, relearn human language and customs, and then be put back into formal education. If Gonta is still a teenager and not over 21, then Gonta would have to cram in a decade’s worth of formal education into a few months, or a few years, at most.
This makes Gonta a literal prodigy.
Had Gonta not been isolated from humanity for a decade, Gonta would have been a child prodigy, a literal genius with an intellect that couldn’t be so easily matched. Having the capacity to learn advance mathematics, language (although in the English version, he is struggling with speak (speaking with the infamous “caveman” speech pattern) scientific methods, all of it within such a short amount of time proves that Gonta is, without a shred of doubt, a genius.
Even if you take the aforementioned reptites into account, it only makes Gonta’s accomplishments slightly less impressive, depending on your interpretation of what the reptites actually are. This is because Gonta still had to engage with formal education, and even in the best case scenario where the reptites were fully advanced beings with a civilization and education (which I quite doubt, if they were, then why not give Gonta back to the human race when he was still a child? Why not guide him back to his kind? Why keep him? Even if they were afraid of humanity, it would be far, far worse for the humans to find them while looking for their lost son… I digress.) Gonta still had to learn Japan’s education. Their history, their language, their social customs–and then, Gonta had to learn how to be an entomologist.
You need to go to college to be an entomologist.
According to this website here, the basic, bare bones higher education one needs in order to apply for certain positions related to entomology is a bachelor’s degree, with most positions and places requiring a doctoral decree. There are, of course, youth clubs for students under eighteen, but from my understanding, in order to be considered an entomologist, you need a college degree.
Gonta is a high school student.
For him to be considered an Ultimate Entomologist, Gonta would have to have taken college courses and gotten some kind of degree in order to be recognized as such. Thus, Gonta is still learning a higher education within a short period of time that is incredible for any human being his age, whether it be as drastic as him having no sort of education while living in the wild, or living with the reptites.
Either way, it is safe to say that Gonta is very intelligent, whether or not he is potentially a prodigy for it.
However, this has very unfortunate implications of the way Gonta is treated by his peers in the game.
Not only does Tsumugi here reinforce that idea in everyone else’s mind…
She blatantly tells Gonta that he was being manipulated and or “tricked” into abducting everyone…
When, in actuality, not only did Gonta know exactly what he was doing:
Kokichi even elaborated on his plans quite explicitly to Gonta:
And earlier on, the rest of the class had been treating him differently than they treat one another, sort of like he was a young child they needed to guide.
For example;
Kirumi assumes Gonta is not very aware that hitting someone with such an object is dangerous… despite him being a peer to his classmates and a young man.
And when Gonta has a pretty valid concern;
He is instructed against it and/or ignored on the subject:
Even Kaede slips up a little;
And during the investigation…
Himiko is 100% convinced here that Gonta is the culprit, to the point where she is trying to trick him with this kind of phrasing.
“Are you not, not the culprit?” equates to “Are you the culprit?”
“Are you not, not, not the culprit?” equates to… I believe it would be “Are you not the culprit?”
And that’s the thing:
Like how even I was confused and unsure about the triple ‘nots’ of Himiko’s statement, Gonta is too. Very reasonably so, actually–it’s extremely awkward phrasing purposefully meant to manipulate Gonta into saying he’s the culprit of Rantaro’s murder, and it takes Kaito and Himiko to realize that it was them causing the problem when Kaede called them out on such.
And again, after Gonta explains his actions during the murder, he gets very frustrated;
Already, we are seeing the effects piling up, leading to a frustrated, angry outburst.
And by far, one of the worst examples of this sort of unintentional ableism is this:
And Himiko even just… flat out does this:
By “dumbing down” the explanation of right and left, and not noticing that Gonta is left handed, she caused him to accidentally switch the wires on the headset, causing the memory error and making this entire trial all the more worse for him. By treating him like a child, like the theme of this trial, she only made things worse for him.
And that’s the problem.
Despite Gonta trying to tell everyone that he has no idea what they’re even talking about, everyone just assumes he “can’t understand the Virtual World” and brushes him off. Again and again, Gonta was treated like a child and brushed off, and this time, it came with a heavy consequence.
These instances of “guiding” Gonta are subtle, and on their own, aren’t much to address as anything more than suggestions or words of caution. However, there is a very clear theme of “we have to tell Gonta what he should do” that starts in Chapter 1 and continues on until the end of Chapter 4. They’re unintentionally telling him that Gonta needs to be guided and needs to be reminded of pretty obvious and basic knowledge, and worst of all, that he can’t be trusted to think for himself and thus needs someone to tell him how to think and feel.
If it was one or two times, that would be a whole other story. However, these instances pile up, higher and higher throughout the entire span of Gonta’s time in the Killing Game, and the majority of the class ends up dismissing or ignoring Gonta’s concerns.
This sparks a growing desire to prove himself, to prove that he can be useful during the trials. To prove to his peers that he can do something on his own, think for himself, decide for himself, except even until his final moments;
Even after Gonta’s Alter Ego telling himself and everyone explicitly that he was not tricked into killing Miu…
… No one listens.
Instead of listening to Gonta, over and over, they continue to brush him off and treat him like a child they had to care for, and yet no one stopped to consider that Gonta is a young man. An intelligent, young man who’s socially awkward, but never the less, a peer to them. Yet they didn’t treat him like a peer, and in the end…
Gonta died thinking he was an idiot. A child. A burden who made everything worse for everyone else. They all considered him as a child, and that’s how they saw him even in his final moments.
Gonta throughout the game constantly tries to prove himself, but no one is paying attention. When he learned of the Secret of the Outside World, Gonta didn’t even have anyone else to turn to for help or comfort. His feelings of uselessness compounded by the desperation to prove himself as an equal to everyone else drove him to agreeing to mercy kill the rest of the group… because how else was a stupid, burden of a child supposed to help anyone as he was? Even though he knew killing was wrong, with Kokichi’s plan, he was able to do something “for everyone,” and even that compounded into the ultimate failure.
It’s an unfortunate reality, because had the class treated him as a fellow classmate and peer, this might have been preventable.
Either way, what do you think? Was discussing the unintentional class ableism in depth towards Gonta a bit… too much? I do believe this is the first time I’ve ever done such an analysis, so you’ll have to forgive me.
I will say–please, do not use this analysis for any discourse regarding the ableism and what have you if you choose to agree with this interpretation. I do not want to see people harassing others over it, or using any of my analyses to harm another. I will not stand for it.
Either way, I hope you at least found this analysis to be food for thought. See you all next time.