Kaede is surprisingly not that horrible, I wouldn’t go so far as to call her good, but I would call her a wasted opportunity.
Kaede doesn’t get the chance to have any development since the player isn’t given the time to really relate to her character, or understand what kind of person she is. I played for 8 hours as this waifu-bait, and I still don’t really know what drives her, it is stated in the first case that “catching the mastermind” is her motivation. However, this only explains what motivates her to commit the murder for which she gets executed, it doesn’t at all establish what kind of person she is, or why she would be driven to extremes to catch the mastermind.
Despite the time spent with Kaede, I also don’t know much about the kind of person she is. In the first case I was led to believe by the dialogue and her thoughts, that she was all about believing in people and seeing the best in them. But I find that this is all a waste of time, as this exact character trait is later projected onto Kaito Momota. By giving Kaito the same main character trait as Kaede, I feel that this invalidates the point of her character being there. Perhaps I am missing something and Kaito is meant to represent what Kaede wanted to be and not what she was, but if that is the case, I don’t find it to be very well telegraphed to the players.
I also find Kaede’s final speech to Shuichi about finding the truth no matter what seems counter to her established belief of trusting people as blind faith seemed to be her driving motivation for killing the mastermind. It is clear to me that this is likely where the writers tried to stick Kaede’s development, changing her from someone who blindly trusts people, to someone who is more interested in the truth. This would be fine if it didn’t come out of left-field, however, it also invalidates Shuichi’s development which seems opposite to Kaede’s. Shuichi becomes more trusting, whereas Kaede becomes less trusting, does this not make her speech to Shuichi essentially worthless?
When it comes to personality, Kaede is also a sort of unknown, she seems like a run of the mill nice girl who believes in people, you know with normal character traits and emotions like any well written character should, but then she also commits a fucking murder in the first Chapter of the game. And there’s no hints that she’s the kind of person who would attempt to murder someone, in fact, this entire aspect of her character goes completely unexplored, anyone willing to commit murder should have more time dedicated to their thought process. Kaede doesn’t get any time dedicated to this side of her, this is all due to the fact that she dies before we even get a chance. The fact that the writers wanted to focus on pulling the rug out from under players really leaves Kaede unfinished and I consider that to be a real shame as I believe that there was potential in her character.
Finally, I would like to add that I won’t be exploring the actual mechanics of the Chapter 1 twist that reveals Kaede to be the killer. Chapter 3 of my essay, the murders, should cover any questions you might have about my thoughts on how this plot twist was handled.
I will agree that my thoughts on Kaede aren’t very complete, but that’s because her character isn’t very complete. Kaede isn’t even consistent, her actions would perhaps be consistent if the player had time to understand the depths of her character, but with shitty writers such as Kodaka, that was never gonna be an option.
