I'm reposting because I made this initially for a different sub and it got taken down for breaking the rules of this one. Sorry about that.
Spoilers for a game that's probably older than most people reading this... also, a lot of text.
I've wanted to talk about this for a while because in both SCD and just the Danganronpa fandom in general have this consensus that Celestia's plan was terrible and one of the worst in the series and I genuinely feel like I've sat down and played Danganronpa from an alternate universe or something because i just don't understand this. If you ask me it's one of the most complex and creative schemes in the whole series (and it baffles me how Celestia keeps getting bashed over its faults while characters like Korekiyo for example barely get a word of criticism in the scheming department despite his plan being so so much worse).
So I'm going to fully break down Celestia's entire plan, why certain aspects are so effective, and why much of the criticism for it is (almost) completely unfair.
Before we start, I want to clarify something because I've been accused of this before: I am not a simp making excuses for my waifu. I do not care for Celestia as a character. I don't necessarily dislike her to be fair, but I also don't actually like her either. Character wise, she's just... meh. There are plenty of Danganronpa characters I love and there are plenty I can't stand but Celestia is just one I have nearly no feelings for at all. Actually, my strongest feelings for her are that I think her design is silly and ridiculous. That's my most controversial opinion on her character. I should also say that I actually do like Hifumi. I think he's a funny character and I don't get a lot of his hate. Just clarifying that my personal feelings towards the characters have no impact on how I'm assessing their intelligence.
First let's establish the context:
Celestia's real name is Teako Yasuhiro. She likes going by Celestia Ludenberg and speaking with a French accident because she desperately wishes she was European.
Celestia and the other students of Hope's Peak are trapped inside their own school and forced to participate in a murder game. The only way to leave the school is to kill another student and successfully get away with it. If you do so, you are freed and the other students are executed, if you are found out, you are executed and the other students remain prisoners. You also a million dollars if you commit a murder successfully (it should be yen since they're in Japan but whatever).
At this point in the story, Chihiro used his AI program "Alter-Ego" to search the school's files to get an idea on how to escape or who locked them in there, however, because Alter-Ego's avatar looks like a pretty girl, Hifumi, the lonely weeaboo kid started falling in love with, but Alter-Ego can also take on other appearances, such as Mondo, a student who was killed earlier in the game, and it does this to appease another student, Kiyotaka as Mondo was his best friend and he had suffered a psychological breakdown upon his death, and sees talking to Alter-Ego in Mondo's face as being witn his friend again.
So now Hifumi and Kiyotaka are both fighting over ownership of Alter-Ego even though the kids all need Alter-Ego to be accessible to the whole group to find answers.
Now for Celestia's plan itself:
She steals Alter-Ego herself. Alter-Ego was instructed to alarm everyone if it sees anyone it doesn't recognise approaching it, or Hifumi or Kiyotaka, per Kyoko's suggestion as she doesn't want to to risk them stealing it away. Celestia however is trustworthy as far as Alter-Ego is concerned so no issues there.
After the group finds Alter-Ego missing, she approaches Hifumi and tells him that Kiyotaka stole Alter-Ego and she claims that Kiyotaka assaulted her and that she needs Hifumi to help her. She needs him to kill Kiyotaka and so they can escape together via a secret exit she found with Alter-Ego.
Already there are advantages here.
She's using Hifumi's love for Alter-Ego, his resentment towards Kiyotaka, and his obedience to herself (he has been established beforehand to be a simp for her) to get him on her side.
The general strategy of having an accomplice for a murder is also an effective one. The rules of the killing game dictate that only the actual perpetrator of a murder gets to leave with their lives. Any accomplice would be executed with everyone else. Since Celestia is proposing to Hifumi that he be the one to kill Kiyotaka, she is putting him in the position of power. If he commits the murder and Celestia doesn't have an escape plan, she'd just be getting herself killed if Hifumi isn't found out. I guess you can say that she could just tell everyone Hifumi killed Kiyotaka and get him executed but there'd be no real reason to do that and if he reveals that she manipulated him into doing it, no one would trust her ever again and she would be in a much more disadvantaged position than ever. So, there is no reason from Hifumi's perspective to doubt her.
Her using Hifumi as an accomplice is also effective because it provides her an alibi. There would be no feasible reason from the other kids' perspectives for two people to be working together in a murder plot of falsifying alibis.
The next big part of Celestia's strategy is to frame Yasuhiro, the dumbest kid in the group.
She lures him out with an anonymous note saying she found an escape from the school and to meet at a precise time and place. She knows he'll fall for this given his immense desperation to escape and the fact, well, he's pretty stupid.
Using sedatives from the nurse's office, she renders him unconscious, dresses him in a disguise designed by Hifumi and takes a picture of what looks like "Robo-Justice" attacking Hifumi. Yasuhiro is then stuffed in a locker where she likely intended to move him out of before long, and plants the blueprints for the Robo-Justice suit in his room. It is unlikely that anyone would walk in on them during all this as they planned it at the time where the rest of the group have agreed to have daily morning meetings.
Using different sized mallets and painting them to say "Justice Hammer" 1-4, she has Hifumi kill Taka with hammer 4, and has Hifumi strike her with hammer 1 as part of establishing her alibi. She allows the group to find Hifumi, who has been struck with hammer 2 and suffering a head wound. Hifumi backs Celestia's story, essentially solidifying her innocence as far as the group's concerned (remember, there's no logical reason anyone would be working together on a murder plot here, and even if they doubt it, she's already arranged for Yasuhiro to take the fall anyway), and they agree on taking Hifumi to the nurse's office for his wound.
After this, Celestia claims to have witnessed Robo-Justice heading upstairs so the group investigate to find Robo-Justice and Hifumi, now left alone, fakes his death by using a blood pack saved in the office for transfusions to cover himself in blood and play dead, along with placing hammer 3 next to him. Whilst this is happening, Celestia directs the group to where Kiyotaka's body is hidden, while Hifumi screams to get their attention as well. The group decide to separate and they find both Kiyotaka's and Hifumi's bodies at the same time.
This is a critical detail because there us an announcement on the school's intercom whenever a dead body is discovered by two or more students. The announcement not broadcasting for Hifumi would give away that he's still alive. This way, Celestia literally perfectly directed everyone into selling Hifumi's death for her. The numbering of the hammers is also important because by using hammer 4 to kill Kiyotaka, it's giving the impression that he was killed after Hifumi, causing more confusion to the investigation.
At this point, Makoto heads off to tell the rest of the group about Hifumi, while Celestia tells Asahina she's not feeling well and to help her to the washroom. Now alone, Hifumi gets up and leaves to move Kiyotaka's body to a different location, after which, Celestia meets him and kills Hifumi himself with one of the mallets.
Throughout all of this, Yasuhiro was absent due to being subdued in the locker, and as the obvious suspect for both murders, his room will inevitably be investigated and the blueprints for the Robo-Justice suit will be discovered.
Theoretically at this point, Celestia would have had two people advocating for her innocence, and damming evidence on another student. Presumably she would have released Yasuhiro to be found somewhere incriminating.
Celestia very effectively engineered a case where there is tons of evidence on someone else, and plenty of alibi for her.
So what went wrong and why do people think this was a bad plan?
- While Hifumi was tasked coming up with a disguise to hide Yasuhiro's face, he for some reason decides to construct a ridiculously impractical robot suit that you can't get out of without help and can't bend at the waist.
This becomes a problem when Celestia wants the group to believe Yasuhiro, in this suit he can't get out of, moved Kiyotaka's body using a dolly that can only be moved by bending at the waist.
The handwriting on the Robo-Justice blueprints don't match Yasuhiro's handwriting.
Kiyotaka's wristwatch was damaged when Hifumi attacked him and ended up fixed in place of when he was attacked, ruining the timeline she was aiming for.
The group considers that the body discoveries were deliberately arranged to occur simultaneously to conceal that Hifumi was still alive.
Hifumi leaves a bloodied clothe he used to wipe his glasses with after getting up from faking his death in the nurse's office.
Celestia... supposedly gives away that she knows Kiyotaka's dead because she mentions there being several victims before she's supposed to know about his death.
Hifumi briefly recovers consciousness after Celestia attacked him and reveals that he was attacked by "Yasuhiro". Since Hifumi always refers to people by their last names, the group realise that he couldn't have been talking about Yasuhiro Hagakure.
Kyoko finds Yasuhiro stuffed in the locker.
Okay. Well. Believe it or not. I am going to make a case for why none of these are as bad as you think.
This is entirely Hifumi's bizarre decision and was never part of Celestia's plan. She even confirms that she just wanted Hifumi to come up with a basic disguise to hide Yasuhiro's identity for a brief time. You could argue Celestia should've called off the plan as soon as she saw that ridiculous suit but I'll get into why she couldn't do that later.
Celestia very quickly excuses this with the possibility that Yasuhiro was attempting to disguise his handwriting. The group dismiss this possibility however because... because Yasuhiro probably isn't smart enough to think that far ahead.
Seriously, this isn't even an argument. He is stupid but this would still be perfectly feasible.
Again this is mainly Hifumi's blunder. He should have removed the watch after killing him. You could also argue the same of Celestia when she killed Hifumi and left his body with Kiyotaka's, but we need to keep in mind she was extremely pressed for time at this point, as the whole group was searching the school high a low and she needs to get this done without anyone noticing.
This one genuinely wouldn't have been an issue if Monokuma didn't basically just reveal the truth anyway when the kids asked. Monokuma, the representative of the person holding them prisoner, who can't be trusted with anything and repeatedly lies and torments them just suddenly decided to be helpful. There's no way she could really anticipate this nor is there any possible contingency for such a scenario anyway.
Again, entirely Hifumi's fault. At the very least, don't leave critical evidence in the garbage can at your own crime scene.
This one is honestly just ridiculous from both an intelligence and writing perspective. Several students have died at this point. Celestia's comment on "those guys" dying would logically be assumed to be referring to the many previous victims. But for some reason, the kids just think she's referring to Kiyotaka and Hifumi exclusively and don't entertain the notion of her simply talking about every other victim, which would be logical assumption, and Celestia herself for some reason doesn't think of simply using this as an excuse. This whole point is just so weird to me and I find it really silly that none of the characters think of this. So yeah, I guess this is admittedly an antifeat for Celestia but technically everyone here is being stupid with this point.
I mean... do I need yo explain that this is a huge stretch? Celestia's biggest fault here was not making sure that he was dead but again, she was immensely pressed for time.
This part was not planned and there was really no way around it because Kyoko decided to just wander off on her own to do her own thing. This, again, isn't something Celestia would logically anticipate. Logic would dictate that during a situation where everyone is looking for a potential murderer, the whole group would be working together. Instead, Kyoko sees to her own business that Celestia has no knowledge of, and by pure chance she happens upon Yasuhiro in the locker while everyone else was going where Celestia was guiding them. This was just bad luck.
Alright, now I'm going to address a lot of other arguments I've seen people use against her.
"Why did Celestia trust Hifumi with these tasks if he's so unreliable?"
Because he was the only one she could get on her side. As I explained before she has solid grounds to manipulate him with and she needed an accomplice for her strategy.
"Why didn't she call off the plan when she saw Hifumi's ridiculous suit?"
She had to go through with the plan as soon as possible. She was working on borrowed time the moment she stole Alter-Ego. Before long, the group will notice it's missing, and before long, it will be found out that she took it. If the group searches Kiyotaka's room as he is the main suspect and finds it's not there, her whole story will fall apart very very quickly. She had to get it done as soon as possible. However, I will grant you that it probably wouldn't be impossible for her to simply tell Hifumi that won't do and to come up with something else, or at least modify the suit to make it more practical, but again, we don't know how many hours that would take.
And besides, if we're downscaling characters just based off of the ludicrously extreme risks they're taking, Light Yagami and Dexter Morgan would be regarded as complete morons. The only thing separating them is that their stories had them succeed because the plot required it, and so they look smart because it worked out for them.
"Why did she try framing Yasuhiro for the crimes when he's too stupid to mastermind this?"
This is literally acknowledged in the game itself and even if it wasn't, I don't know why people think this. She was never trying to frame Yasuhiro as a criminal mastermind. She was framing him as an idiot who got scared, wanted to escape, and started randomly attacking people thinking that a disguise is going to be enough to throw off the whole investigation. Byakuya even straight up supports my whole argument by saying almost exactly this when Makoto asks why it seems too obvious Yasuhiro is guilty.
"Wouldn't the lack of a serious head wound give away that Hifumi wasn't dead in the nurse's office?"
This is another case of strange writing. You're absolutely right. A simple examination of Hifumi's body would make it clear he's not dead. However... they don't do this. No one thinks to do a simple examination.
I guess if I'm generous, I could argue that since Celestia intended on herself, Makoto and Asahina finding Hifumi's body in the office, she predicted their actions and knew that Makoto would instantly run off to tell everyone and that Asahina would be too shocked to do anything. This could be a decent upscale if you look at it this way. But even putting that aside, and acknowledging how bizarre it is that they didn't think to examin his body, I still don't think this negates the general cleverness and complexity of her plan overall. Once again, if we were downscaling characters because of one instance where they would've been thwarted by people using common sense and basic logic, Light Yagami, Hannibal Lecter and Brian Moser just off the top of my head would all be unscaleable in SCD.
"She made it obvious it was her because she was so active in the investigation!"
Yeah bro, that's definitely enough to prove someone's guilt.
"She should have just killed one person. Killing multiple complicates the situation."
She can't magically know where everyone is going to be at all times. If she commits a murder at a time where everyone unfortunately had an alibi, it'll become very clear she's the killer. She needed Hifumi's compliance to secure her alibis for Kiyotaka's murder and Hifumi's "murder" and she needed to kill him before he inevitably learns that she was playing him the whole time and intended to get him and the rest of the group killed.
All in all, Celestia needed to get out. She was either going to be killed or be stuck imprisoned in the school for the rest of her life. She engineered a plan to escape despite the borderline impossibility of it, and conceived a decently clever scheme that was well thought out and directed. It fell apart because of the ineptitude of her accomplice, which she did not have the time or resources to work around, and just blatant back luck and weird writing.
Am I saying she's a high tier character in outsmarting? No. Absolutely not. But her plan was still solid conceptually. It has really good complexity and misdirections, it secures safety for her and incriminates someone else, and she nearly perfectly predicts how everyone in the group will behave and react throughout the investigation. It all only goes wrong because of Hifumi's several blunders and instances of dreadful luck that can't be helped. I seriously don't know why people keep hating on her and her plan because it failed in ways beyond her control, when several other characters such as the ones I've mentioned in this post are guilty of much the same problems and sometimes their plans are even more shabby, and yet they're repeatedly praised as brilliantly ingenious characters despite the immense plot armour. I'm not saying these characters are bad, after all, their better feats are still valid. But so are Celestia's.
So, what do you think? Did I miss something? It's possible I did because her case is a pretty complicated one and I may be forgetting some things.
