"Deep Cover" by Yuzuriha Kotoko

"Deep Cover" Album Cover

Batman is back. After Kotoko was voted innocent in the first trial, she also took on a role of a deputy warden, after the audience agreed for her to have this authority. Kotoko very much sees herself as a authority figure, even before she was "promoted" this position by the audience.

Between the first and second trial, as I mentioned in my last post, she severely beat a few of the other prisoners, and that kind of energy was kept in her second trial.

In the video, Kotoko wears a very similar outfit to the guard, mirroring her own authority she has given herself, along with the actual authority she's been given by the audience. What is also very interesting is that the guard has their own song, called "Undercover" which I will most likely cover later on, so not only is the title of Kotoko's second trial a callback to this song, but it opens up with the rhythm as their song, and even similar themes.

The guard, Es, has their song start with "UNDER" and then speaks about the prisoners one by one, about their personality and their murder. In Kotoko's song, she starts with the same "UNDER", but instead of speaking about who the prisoners are or what they did, it's own her perception of them, calling them names, and talking about how they are really nothing but evil people who deserve to be punished. It's interesting to me how Es, who is the the guard and technically supposed to be un-biased (which he was before the audience started to have involvement), and Kotoko, who is clearly very biased in her judgements of these other prisoners.

What's also interesting is how she mentions an 11th prisoner, calling them "Inept 011 Guard". She's implying that the guard, Es, is also a prisoner, but has been put into this position by MILGRAM for whatever reason. Kotoko doesn't think Es is fit for the job, and thinks the really only one who can dispense justice because she knows what evil is and how to get rid of it.

This video somewhat moves away from her essentially hunting down the evil people in the real world, and also shows her taking in a young girl that she saved from presumably human traffickers. However, while that is a very nice thing to do, it does seem like she uses this young girl as bait to find other "evil" people. She's exhausted her leads she's created to find the human traffickers, and had to resort to using a young girl who was kidnapped and tied up as bait to find her next target/victim.

The other parts of the video shows Kotoko in her guard outfit, with chess pieces representing the other prisoners by their color scheme. She even breaks the red piece, symbolizing how she severely beat the third prisoner, Fuuta, who's whole color scheme is red, as well as the piece symbolizing Mahiru, with it being broken in half.

This video kind of made me think of Kotoko as kind of a, I don't want to say loser but, a loser? She has this sense of self-righteousness that in the first trial worked for me, because we saw her process of finding these people, and with translations of all of the material she had, it seemed legit. She was actually doing good things (besides beating the man to death, but that is debatable). In this trial, as well as between the first and second one, she becomes almost a different person to me. She beat the other prisoners, and then had half of her second trial be about these prisoners and how they are all beneath her even though she's locked up right alongside them. Also with her using this little girl who was just kidnapped and watched Kotoko beat this man to death (we see Kotoko standing over the body before coming over to the camera and lifting it up, then we shift to Kotoko's PoV and see the little girl), as bait to find someone who might be 'evil' by her definition. It changed how I saw her.

There is one part in this video that has made me and my friends think about what happened in Kotoko's past. There is a young girl who is bound, and we only see for one frame, but my friends and I have theorized that it's a flashback to Kotoko in her youth. This is very much a "tin-foil hat theory" but I think it's interesting to think about. It would add to her motivation to do what she does, as well as why her moral compass might be a bit skewed when it comes to justice.

I think I like Kotoko--I really like her songs, and I understand her motivation for doing what she's doing, but I like some of the other prisoners more, notably Mahiru (who was beat the worst :( ). She's responsible for her death, but not nearly as much as the audience is because of what they did to Amane, but I've yapped about that enough as is.

Kotoko's sense of judgement trumps everything else for her, she thinks she must be the one to dispense justice and is the only one who actually has a sense of accurate judgement. She literally says that she "wants a reason for judgement execution", so she's almost like an attack dog in that sense. Which would also make sense given all of the wolf motifs that she's shown to have throughout both trials.

She's a very interesting character and I think she's very fun to have in this project because of her way of thinking and judgement.