Yume Hoshigumo - a shitty character analysis

"You don't consider me a friend... do you?"

A mysterious young woman with an even more mysterious talent, Yume Hoshigumo is a girl with no past and, like all people trapped on Jabberwock Island, probably no future. Charming despite her intense demeanor, personable despite her detachment from matters of life and death, Yume always seems to know more than she lets on, especially regarding her mysterious past.

Yume is enigmatic and detached. This largely stems from the fact that she considers herself an alien of sorts from society, and has had this ingrained into her psyche by her mother from a very early age (we'll get to that later). It's not that she doesn't care about the concerns and needs and wants and desires of humanity -- she takes a very keen interest in that sort of thing. But it's an interest, not an experience; it's the difference between watching a lot of Western movies and knowing their trivia and conventions inside and out, and actually being a cowboy from the Old West. Yume's separation from humanity leads to her priorities being different, though. Let's say you find a starving kitten. A human might take it in, nurture it, try to feed it, cling to the hope that the little guy can pull through. Yume would recognize the futility of its struggle and break the kitten's neck. Both are acts borne of kindness, but kindness coming from two entirely different places, and manifested in two entirely different ways.

Yume wants to understand us -- us, as in humanity. Still, Yume is willing to indulge this side of herself. It's done in her own inimitable way, though. She doesn't tailor her behavior to human social customs. She behaves as she is wont to behave (hence wearing no shirt). But when this elicits reactions -- and it usually does -- she seeks to understand WHY people are reaction. Why people do what they do. And she handles this task by approaching it in the most efficient and direct manner possible: he asks them. She grills them until they can't bear it anymore. She's an armchair psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysts seek to solve people's problems, though. Yume feels no such need, and no such responsibility.

Yume is especially drawn to the, shall we say, negative end of the emotional spectrum. She wants to understand pain and loneliness. This is unquestionably because at her core, she is driven by the need to reunite with society. And that is why Yume suffers from a walking existential crisis -- a sort of perpetual background state of breakdown that causes erratic decisions, such as the decision made by Yume to murder another student and reunite with society (self) by any means necessary. She's willing to bide her time. But she's only so willing.

The thing is, though, Yume is not a supervillain. Though she wants to reunite with human beings -- that's all she wants. But humanity isn't where she thinks it is. After all that hard work, all that sacrifice... Yume isn't the type to lash out, take it out on the world, swear revenge, etc. At her core she's like a son who longs to be reunited with his family (who is also him). She's a half that wants to become whole. She's a broken being in search of meaning, love, and peace, in a world that is prepared to give her none of these things.

Which is why she relates so strongly to Tomoki Shiki.

Yume's connection to Shiki is one of those mystical things that happen between two people. Except in this case it's a bit one-way-glass -- Yume is drawn to the boy, regardless of Shiki's own feelings. She wants to be Shiki's best friend. She wants to be so much more. In Shiki, Yume sees the epitome of the emotions and human experiences that she can most relate to (cough cough HAVING NO FRIENDS), and wishes to form a bond -- more than a bond -- with Shiki in order to understand herself. Being human -- and Yume is part human as long as she's a creature of human flesh -- is a foreign experience (that's what her mother tells her), and to a lonely being such as herself, companionship and understanding are necessary in order to function. As is acceptance. As is love.

Yume is, despite these perhaps sympathetic qualities, merciless. She's no supervillain, true, but she's no hero, either. She is ruthlessly self-centered. She has no empathy for things that she cannot relate to, and she has no sympathy for those whose problems are not connected to some interest or feeling of her own. Yume wants to understand people. That doesn't mean that she has an interest in problems that don't concern her. Sh will undoubtedly be the focus of many murder-centric questions in trials during RP. And yet, Yume will meet these questions with uniform indifference: "Who cares?" Because if SHE doesn't care about that dead corpse, what does it matter if anyone else does?

So, who is Yume?

Is Yume dependent upon her body (upon the pressure granted to her by her genetic code and, by extension, the destiny assigned to her by her mother)? Is Yume dependent upon others (upon the pressure granted to her by societal norms—heheh—and, by extension, the destiny assigned to her by humanity)? Or is she capable of calling fate’s bullshit, taking fate by the bull horns, and proceeding to become her own person? That’s the question that she has to struggle with over the course of her entire backstory.

To answer that, let’s take a look at the components that make up Yume, at least on a superficial basis. Akemi Hoshigumo: As a brilliant researcher in metaphysical biology and oneirology, she was in a position to understand far more than most of the population—and to manipulate the world under her thumb. Akemi carefully cultivated an idyllic image of herself as the perfect mother and wife in order to sway Yume's father Satoshi to her side and ensure that he would help carry out her dream. Even if her absolute sweet perfection may have been partially a show, she did do something incredible to Satoshi: She humanised him.

I think that a lot of you will understand what I mean when I say: Close your eyes. Imagine that one person to whom you could tell literally anything. Imagine that one person who makes you feel like you, who can calm you down from anything, who can bring you out of anything. That was Akemi for Satoshi.

Satoshi feels unloved. He’s certainly not used to such an outpouring of affection and dedicated that he receives from Akemi. (Huh? Huh? Sound familiar yet, Ced?) In fact, Satoshi gets into fights a lot, because in his own words, people don't particularly like him.

Satoshi's death completely devastates Akemi. Him getting into the car accident and thus ruining the chances of Akemi's dream of becoming the greatest medical professional alive unhinges her and sends her on a downwards spiral as she's willing to destroy all of humanity in order to gain those chances once more.

Yume is merely an extension of Satoshi, to Akemi, at least in the beginning. Which is why Akemi names her as she does. Yume means "dream".

Being dependent upon others for self-validation is terrifying.

On paper, Akemi gave birth to Yume to further her goals. By placing her own medical knowledge into a younger human vessel, Akemi ensured that she was capable of controlling her dream (ironic Yume represents free will, eh?). In reality, as I said, Akemi wished for Yume to essentially become a replacement for herself.

Yume is a promising young girl, with strange and consistent new medical knowledge and persistent studies in the field of oneirology. She studies dreams, and every free moment she has, she takes notes on every medical condition she can find.

So in order to keep Yume docile, in order to keep her from straying from the path of starting her medical career with the same fuck-all attitude she's given everything her entire life, the same way Akemi did even though her career is long over by now, she tells her she's not human.

(What the fuck, Akemi.)

She's a subhuman, and she isn't worth anything. Her sole purpose in life is to study the dreams of human beings, that are worth more than she is. Kind of like the girl from Another- she's like a piece of furniture; invisible but used as a tool either way. (By Akemi.)

So Yume grows up. Without friends. Without connections to anything except for her benefactor, Akemi. Akemi is indeed a piece of shit, but Yume is blind in a manner of speaking. Yume doesn’t know what relationships can be—what people can be. If all you’ve ever known is darkness, then you could never imagine the light. A bit like a certain Ayame Mikazuki, perhaps.

Yet Yume, unlike Ayame, isn’t actually emotionless at all. On the contrary: Yume has the whole of her personality. But more than that, Yume understands herself. And her situation. And how she feels about this?

It’s not exactly disgust. It’s not exactly anger. It’s this relentless combination of so many emotions and so much hurt and so much comprehension that it can best be described as the feeling after you realize that your abuser holds absolutely no sway over you and now you’re looking over the wreckage and the carnage that your abuser has wrought and you understand that you can’t move yet. You can’t act yet. But deep in your heart, you’re fucking free. And one day you’re going to be free externally, physically, truly free.

After all, Yume was meant to be a replacement for Akemi. But fuck that. Yume strips herself of the things that make her superficially similar to her mother that she replaced like her oddly, extremely sharp eyesight and her tied-back bangs. Yume is tired of being a replacement. Yume refuses to be a subservient, docile replacement anymore. Yume refuses, and so Yume handles the glasses on her nose with a fierce strength that makes her hate of Akemi Hoshigumo palpable enough to give one goosebumps.

Because even though she doesn’t know much about humans aside from the medical standpoint, she absolutely understands (to some extent) what has happened to her. She understands that she is nothing more than yet another replacement and that Akemi was perfectly willing to allow her father to die. For nothing. Because all Akemi cares about is her dream. Dream dream dream.

Well fine. Fuck Akemi.

Because this time, Yume has had enough. In the role of representing free will (see bonus section at the bottom of this analysis), Yume’s eyes have been opened to the truth. She is not a doll. She is not a robot.

And she is most certainly not Akemi’s tool.

I want you to imagine why Yume is so aloof about being a Hope's Peak Academy student. (It's because Akemi forced this upon her.) I want you to imagine why Yume is so aloof about dying. (It's because Akemi forced this upon her.) I want you to imagine why Yume doesn't mind giving her mother the metaphorical middle finger by waltzing into Hope's Peak Academy because it's not right, what's "proper" for a "medical professional".

It's because Akemi forced that upon her.

But while Yume is strong in this way, she is certainly being suffocated by her self-destructive apathetic depression. She wants nothing more than to return to nothingness, back to the void from which she came from. She's perfectly fine with dying, which is why she's so calm about being in the situation she finds herself in in CP RP, a DR RP, and basically any other situation that might put her life in danger. Why? Because Yume wants to escape all expectations placed upon her (FREEEEEEE WIIILLLLLLLLLL) by her mother Akemi, including having to live. She's a death seeker.

Yume is a sleeper agent for despair, and a sleeper agent for hope. But ultimately, she cares about herself. Her alliance with the others is one of convenience. Her fellow SHSL Despair are dead or doomed. She has no loyalty but to herself. And it is herself she seeks -- the missing pieces, those which Monokuma is keeping from her. And they'll pay. They'll all pay.

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Congratulations! You've reached the end of this shitty character analysis. Have a cookie. No wait, something even worse, a list pertaining to which of my OCs represent what:

1. Arisu - isolation/reality
2. Shinimi - devotion
3. Yume - free will
4. Shizuka - identity (or rather; the lack thereof)
5. Yui - the fear of the societal food chain
6. Meme - human connection/fantasy
7. Mine - chasing after intangible concepts (perfection)