Hello, anon! It’s no secret that I’m a really big fan of saiouma; it’s one of my favorite ships from anything ever by this point, and I absolutely love their dynamic and interactions with each other. Your question is a fun one, because the answer is somewhat twofold: so while saiouma is definitely not a “canon ship,” there is canon basis for some of it, at least in places.
In order to explain what I mean I’ll go into full detail about some of the original text of the game that got lost in translation (as I often do), as well as touch on some reasons why I just like the ship personally. As always, spoilers will be under the cut!
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To start with, the biggest reason why saiouma isn’t a canonical relationship is simply because there’s no explicit reciprocation between the two of them, and there’s never any point at which the two of them are in any sort of established relationship.
Romance is, after all, usually more of a bonus in any Danganronpa game rather than the central point of the story. Two characters explicitly confessing to each other and reciprocating each other’s feelings is already rare enough; established relationships are even rarer.
More often what we see is one character having explicit, canonically confirmed romantic feelings for someone else, while the question of how the other character feels or if they reciprocate is usually left open-ended. This is common even among ships that most people consider canon. Hinata thinks of Nanami as someone precious to him, but as she’s dead (both her real-life and AI versions), it’s impossible to know where that relationship might have led in canon. Maki confesses her romantic feelings for Momota, but since he’s about to die and doesn’t want to hurt her, he doesn’t give her a response.
Saihara too, pretty clearly has feelings for Kaede and clearly thinks of her as someone incredibly important to him. It’s implied heavily throughout the first chapter of ndrv3 that he’s crushing on her pretty hard, and her memory inspires him long after her death to become a better, braver person.
The localization tried to make Saihara’s feelings for Kaede more explicit than they ever actually were in the original version of the game, in fact, taking a line in the chapter 6 trial where he swears “on her kindness, and the memory of her death” to avenge her, and adding in the word “love”… even though he never actually says this in Japanese. This is a bit of an odd choice to make all things considered when the Japanese text lacks any mentions of “love” or similar words whatsoever, but there is canon reason that Saihara was at least crushing on her, so I suppose I won’t fault them too much.
Again, Kaede’s feelings here are left much more open-ended and ambiguous. It’s entirely possible that she felt the same way, but we don’t ever really know for sure once she’s dead. The two of them are undeniably close friends with each other, and she cares about him quite a lot as a friend, but she’s also quick to poke fun at him in other characters’ FTEs when he’s not around. In fact, she spends quite a lot of Amami’s FTEs even seeming a little fed up with Saihara at times. Her love hotel scene and later FTEs definitely paint things in a more romantic light, but considering salmon mode does this with nearly every character, it’s hard to say that this really makes things “explicitly canon.”
It’s pretty clear that Kodaka often likes to put the mysteries and story first, with romance second. He’s certainly not opposed to the idea and often likes to use one character’s feelings for another as a strong motivator for character development and bonding without confirming much beyond that. In fact, the only example of a pretty canonically confirmed ship that I can think of in the entire series is naegiri, and even then it’s never as though they kiss or confess directly on-screen. Things are much more often implied or hinted at, and in a series where more than half the characters are dead, that means canon confirmation of nearly any ship is pretty hard to come by.
Which brings us to the subject of Ouma and Saihara’s feelings for each other. And I would say that their relationship is a pretty textbook example of the same sort of dynamic as I touched on in all the other ships that I mentioned: Ouma’s feelings for Saihara are 100% canonically explicit, while Saihara’s are ambiguous and vague.
I’m aware a lot of people will fight me or disagree with me on the subject of Ouma canonically having feelings for Saihara, but I want to stress: I’m not here to convince anyone that they have to ship saiouma, or even like it. It’s totally fine to not like it, and I’m not here to change anyone’s mind if it’s not their cup of tea! The biggest thing I want to make clear is that Ouma’s feelings for Saihara are an unarguable, undeniable fact, not that Saihara necessarily reciprocates or anything of the sort.
I’m not simply talking about Ouma’s love hotel scene either, or even his FTEs. Certainly both flesh out the dynamic between them both even further, and give even more reason to want to see more of a potential relationship between the two of them, but there’s often heavy debate in the fandom about whether these things can even be considered canon. I myself am personally inclined to not consider the love hotel scenes as such, since they have no bearing on the actual plot and none of the other characters besides Saihara even remember them after the fact. With FTEs, I actually do lean more in favor of them being canon, particularly as they’re the only place we can even get information or backstory on some of the characters who die in the early chapters of each DR game (such as Hoshi, Amami, etc.), but I understand that some people prefer not to be too overly-reliant on FTEs alone.
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But even putting the love hotel scenes and FTEs aside, Ouma canonically does confess his feelings for Saihara. In chapter 4, Ouma offers Saihara a partnership of sorts, on the condition that he stop hanging out with Momota and be his friend instead. Understandably pissed off at this, Saihara storms off and exits the parlor in the VR world via the telephone, leaving Ouma completely alone in the room. It’s at this moment, with no one else around and simply talking to himself, that Ouma makes a dark comment foreshadowing Miu’s soon-to-be-discovered death—as well as describing Saihara explicitly, in no uncertain terms, as “the person I fell in love with” (suki ni natta hito / 好きになった人).
I have had people try to argue this point in the past, but there really is no denying it or interpreting it differently. “Suki” on its own is a word that is often used in casual love confessions between teenagers, but it also can be used in less romantic contexts; it can simply mean “like,” and many people use it in the context of hobbies or food or music that they enjoy, too, the same way we do in English. However, “suki ni natta hito” is an entirely different story. This particular phrasing is explicitly romantic, used commonly in shoujo manga and love ballads.
For anyone still unconvinced that this phrase is romantic, I would like to emphasize that this exact same phrase is used by Maki to describe her romantic feelings for Momota in chapter 5. Maki too describes Momota as “someone she fell in love with” when confessing directly to him. If you’re going to consider Maki’s romantic feelings canon (and they are, explicitly so), then you have to consider Ouma’s feelings equally so when the language is quite literally identical.
Of course, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the other times Ouma flirts with Saihara or expresses an unusual amount of interest in him. In addition to canonically calling Saihara “the person I fell in love with,” Ouma also refers to him multiple times as “my beloved Saihara-chan” (daisuki na Saihara-chan / 大好きな最原ちゃん), insists that Saihara is “his favorite person,” and in a brief scene between them in chapter 3, even says that he wouldn’t mind bringing Kaede back with the resurrection ritual because Saihara liked her. When Saihara asks him what he means and why he would do such a thing, Ouma simply replies that he’s “always thinking of Saihara,” which is why he’d be willing to do something that would make him happy.
Interestingly enough, Saihara’s picture is also one of the only ones set aside from the rest of the group on the whiteboard in his room. Kiibo’s is also set aside, but where the note next to Kiibo’s reads “weird,” the note beside Saihara’s picture is different. The localization translated this note as “trustworthy?”, which isn’t itself a bad way of capturing both Ouma’s interest in potentially teaming up with Saihara, but also his reluctance to fully open up to him or trust him. However, in the Japanese version of the game, the text actually says “yudan naranai / 油断ならない”: literally, “can’t figure him out?” or “can’t let my guard down around him?”
Ouma’s interest towards Saihara very clearly comes from Saihara’s unpredictability; the way that he’s constantly surpassing both the player’s and Ouma’s expectations as early as chapter 2 by slowly but surely becoming more confident and stepping away from his more anxious, timid shell. The fact that Saihara is singled out on Ouma’s whiteboard is supposed to be very noticeable, moreso when nearly the entire group is simply lumped together and written off as “suspicious.” Saihara is quite literally the only person Ouma really considered really, genuinely opening up to, even when he was completely making most of his decisions based off of immense paranoia.
Of course, these aren’t the only things showing how blatantly Ouma feels about Saihara. If you do take scenes like the love hotel, FTEs, and salmon mode into account, this just adds more and more reasons that are pretty hard to ignore when you look at them altogether. Ouma of course says in his final FTE with Saihara that “he stole Saihara’s heart,” so now he has no need to steal his life. Their love hotel together is the one notable exception where neither of them are roleplaying as different people; Saihara even notes this internally as something odd. Ouma’s “ideal romantic scenario” involves Saihara, explicitly, with the two of them playing a game of cat-and-mouse as detective and phantom thief respectively.
In his salmon mode events, Ouma just comes right out and suggests that “maybe they were lovers in a past life.” At another point, he even suggests that Saihara understands him so well that “maybe he was born into this world just to meet Saihara.” I really do not think it’s a coincidence that Kodaka just so happened to reference one of the most well-known mlm ships in the history of anime with this line, but draw your own conclusions as you will.
With all of this evidence, particularly the fact that Ouma does canonically describe Saihara as “the person I fell in love with” in language that is completely and utterly identical to Maki’s confession about Momota, I think it’s more understandable now why I say Ouma’s feelings for Saihara are about as explicit as it gets. So, let’s talk about Saihara now.
Does Saihara reciprocate these feelings, canonically? Uh, no. Not only is Ouma, y’know, dead by the end of the game, but he also does several horrible and manipulative things before that point that leave most of the survivors more than a little conflicted about how to feel towards him, even after his death. Even if it was in order to try and end the killing game, several of the things Ouma did were simply inexcusable from an outside perspective, particularly when he spent so much time embracing the fake villain role and even boasting about getting Miu and Gonta killed.
Saihara does not want to be around him once Ouma really and truly crosses the line, and rightfully so in my opinion. When he tells Ouma at the end of his little villain speech in the post-trial for chapter 4 that he’s “meant to end up alone,” this is essentially the first real moment we get to see of him putting his foot down. And I love it, because Ouma absolutely deserves it for the shit he’s pulled and the things he’s saying. Saihara is not obligated to have to continue putting up with Ouma’s bullshit or being around him when he’s being a complete and utter asshole. Having good intentions, even life-saving intentions in the end, doesn’t excuse Ouma from having repercussions for his actions.
This is one of the last few bits of interaction we get between Saihara and Ouma before Ouma’s reveal about “the truth of the outside world” in chapter 5 and subsequent death soon after, so many people take Saihara’s harsh words in chapter 4 to also mean that he completely hates Ouma and would never want anything to do with him, even if the situation were different. But this… is simply not true.
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Saihara is angry at Ouma following the events of chapter 4, and later in chapter 5 he falls hook, line, and sinker for Tsumugi’s flashback light that sets Ouma up to be a Remnant of Despair, and even believes him to be Junko’s successor. However, as more and more information about Ouma and the secrets he was hiding comes to light in chapter 6, this image of him slowly begins to change after his death.
Even at the end of chapter 5, it’s made very clear in canon that, despite his conflicted feelings, Saihara does not hate Ouma. The localization once again changed this line for whatever unknown reason, but in the very last parts of the trial, Saihara describes the loss of both Momota and Ouma from their group, and describes both of them as “friends,” explicitly using the word “nakama / 仲間.”
To quote him directly, he says that they lost ‘the friend they could trust the most, and the friend they could trust the least,” but nonetheless most definitely refers to the two of them as “friends” together. In the localization, this was simply changed to “the person we could trust the most, and the person we could trust the least.” Again, I’m not really sure of their reasoning for this, as I believe it gave English-speaking players of the game a drastically different impression of Saihara’s feelings towards Ouma than the original version of the game did.
Therefore, even before Saihara knew that Ouma wasn’t a Remnant of Despair, or that he was simply a prank-loving kid at heart with deep convictions against murder and violence, he still didn’t hate him. This is the firmest indicator I can think of that Saihara’s feelings towards Ouma are not set in stone: he doesn’t despise Ouma, and he doesn’t reciprocate either. His feelings towards Ouma in the killing game are ambivalent at best.
Once he begins to uncover the truth about Ouma, and starts piecing together what he was truly like bit by bit, he becomes even more conflicted towards Ouma. Clearly, the things Ouma said and did were inexcusable and terrible. But knowing his reasons for doing these things, including that he was trying to save as many lives as possible in each trial, as well as the fact that he did not enjoy seeing people suffer or die the way he claimed to in chapter 4, leaves Saihara wondering more and more about Ouma, and what the “real him” might have been like.
The best part of the dynamic between saiouma, in my opinion, is this curiosity and desire to know more about each other that they both have. Saihara doesn’t reciprocate Ouma’s feelings, or even truly understand everything about him in canon: because Ouma never let him in, and because Saihara decided he was fed up and done with him once Ouma started putting on the most despicable façade he could manage. But in other scenarios, outside of the killing game? That hypothetical is absolutely left open-ended for the player to explore.
In Ouma’s FTEs, Saihara feels as if he’s mostly being strung along. The biggest thing holding him back from taking anything Ouma says at face value is the fact that Ouma is, by his own admission, a liar. Without knowing how much of what Ouma says is true or not, Saihara doesn’t even know if he can trust anyof it at all. But it’s pretty clear that he at least wants to know the truth. Despite the fact that Ouma keeps taunting him and claiming he’ll kill him in the end, Saihara keeps coming back for more, putting his life on the line (or so he thinks) to try and find out even a little more information, about whether Ouma’s organization is real, if he’s telling the truth about his talent, if anything at all about him is trustworthy.
Ouma is the one who shuts down this attempt to get to know him, not Saihara. Saihara is a detective at heart, with all the curiosity that the job entails. He wants to know more about Ouma because Ouma is a huge mystery through and through, and every lie that comes out of his mouth just makes him even more mysterious. As Saihara puts it, even when he tries to reach out his hand to Ouma, Ouma won’t accept it or let him in. And this makes it impossible for Saihara to find out the answers to the questions he has, despite wanting to know pretty badly.
In Ouma’s salmon mode ending, by contrast, the two of them are much closer without the threat of a killing game looming over them. Despite still lying all the time, Ouma’s lies lack their malice or hostility, and Saihara seems much more comfortable around him, if still a little bewildered by him at times. When Ouma points out at the end that Saihara still doesn’t really know much about him yet, teasing that he must want to get to know him better, Saihara even blushes and thinks to himself that he can’t deny that.
This theme of wanting to know Ouma more and feeling deeply curious about him comes up again even in Ouma’s love hotel. After pushing Saihara down on the bed and spilling an entire, blank-faced speech about how he’d “let Saihara do anything to him” and “loves him the most,” Ouma instantly tries to make a run for it in true phantom thief fashion. The moment he bolts, Saihara has the infamous line where he catches himself “wishing that Ouma would stay” for just an instant.
Again, Saihara really wants to know the truth about Ouma: what he’s really like, what he’s really thinking, and what he’s really feeling. This doesn’t necessarily equate to Saihara canonically having a crush on Ouma or anything like that. All it means is that Saihara definitely doesn’t hate Ouma, and that there is potentially room for the relationship between the two of them to grow outside of the killing game, both in fan-works and even in extra material within the game itself like salmon mode.
This has gotten pretty long by now, so to summarize: no, saiouma isn’t canon. Yes, Ouma’s romantic feelings for Saihara are canon, whether they’re one-sided or not. No, Saihara having a crush on Ouma or reciprocating is not canon, but it’s also a fact that he does not hate Ouma and that he does express curiosity and interest towards him repeatedly, and even still thinks of him as a friend despite everything that happened in the killing game.
Thank you again for the question anon, and for giving me the chance to talk about Saihara and Ouma’s interactions again! I hope I could answer your question well enough; this was a really fun piece to write!
Source: https://t-tees.com
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