AYA SHIMEIMARU, the one unilaterally good thing that happened to Mahiru Koizumi in this entire game. Mahiru's early life is just so freaking lonely. Mrs. Koizumi was the photography inspiration but is overseas all the freaking time, leaving little Mahiru alone with her ailing unemployed dad. Even though she got seriously into photography by middle school, she was low on the social ladder because the local Kuzuryuu girl took it upon herself to make Mahiru's life a living hell. Mahiru never had a true peer in photography. But enough of all that sad stuff! High school is a time to make friends, right? Like dear sweet precious Hiyoko with her soapies... of course, in Dreamland Mahiru was separated from Hiyoko.
Aya just flew into her life head first and stole her heart. She's a good photographer and didn't dismiss Mahiru's work as boring or her aesthetic as "commoner not yakuza". Furthermore Aya was happy to hang out with her even in more casual contexts. On a superficial level Mahiru enjoyed her crow cosplayer antics.
She found Aya's geta particularly adorable. Fun fact: Hiyoko also wears geta, thanks to her upbringing as a hypertraditional nihon buyo artist. Considering that Mahiru is able to help Hiyoko tie her obi, I like to think that Mrs. Koizumi was around for some traditional type celebrations back in Mahiru's early years, such as her first shichi-go-san; Mahiru also demonstrates a general appreciation for traditional toys like bamboo copter. So though Mahiru is fairly modern in her day-to-day life and her types of anxieties, she likes traditional things. This also ties into her eventual suspectibility to soapies.
Anyway, Mahiru saw how tired Aya was after writing forty copies of the newspaper but everyone kept giving Aya crap for her journalism that was admittedly rather irresponsible. At the same time there were so many people that gave Mahiru props for her own pictures, which was new for her because like I said, she's not used to people thinking her cute smile photography is cool, and she felt rather helpless in the space of the game (hence her vulnerability to the buddy cops' reckless request). So she resolved to offer her assistance and Aya accepted her which made Mahiru very happy. They just got to have fun formatting this stuff and Mahiru felt like she was helping Aya and incorporating her own work into a more meaningful, proliferated context.
Mahiru has codependent tendencies given her desperation for attention and approval, but her agreement with Aya on basically everything comes from a fairly healthy place. Mahiru believes that murder is inherently wrong even as revenge, and only supports the death penalty in the context of mutual killing games because the innocent majority needs to survive. Aya managed to make neutrality look affable instead of apathetic. Inno or mafia, everyone gets an obituary. Mahiru wanted to be devoted to the overarching mystery, not the murders.
Mahiru's relationships with her classmates were strained by the circumstances; they wanted to function as a group that would attack others, innocent or not, to protect themselves (in other contexts I describe this pattern of behavior as "yakuza"). But Aya never wanted Mahiru to go into that emotional place for her. She just wanted her copies and her curry. This is why Mahiru's favorite place in the world to be was "alone with Aya". Without being completely removed from the unfortunate situation, Mahiru could be in a place with someone who valued her services as much as her self. I hesitate to label Aya's function in this regard as a "best friend"; she was more like a partner to Mahiru, because their relationship would typically be productive instead of recreational even outside of photography work.
Once Mahiru "died", she missed Aya the most. She was just so comfortable with her and would have proposed soapies even "while they were both alive" if there had been a good reason back then. Absolutely nobody else in the bunker could provide her that kind of emotional solace except arguably Sakaki later on. However, it became obvious that Aya was inno and Mahiru was hella relieved even though she didn't actually spill any government secrets like she did with Ibuki. Furthermore Aya wasn't going to go full yan stan as Mahiru feared Hiyoko might. I'm not gonna lie Mahiru had a brief yan moment herself when she was disappointed that Maya died and didn't bring Aya with her. Overall though Aya surviving and not getting hurt just made Mahiru so happy, like she said.
Seeing Aya again was the greatest though literally the best thing that ever happened to Mahiru in her whole entire life. Better than Mom coming home for New Year's. Way better than her birthday. (Mahiru wants people to throw a surprise birthday party for her but they never have.) Aya was happy too and she got her Kodak moment and Mahiru's so happy. In her penultimate social link she just hands her camera to the protagonist like "Yo. I keep taking all these pictures of other people but I don't have any of me. I want there to be one of me. Take a picture with my camera." So then Aya came up with basically the same idea on her own and she's just so so so happy that Aya anticipated this impulse, that they could communicate without speaking.
Dangan Ronpa characters are just so lonely that in the space of a couple days of hardcore friendship they'll be pretty ready to spend their lives together if the circumstances allow. Mahiru hasn't really thought much about whether Aya is her friend or her coworker or (god forbid, given her severe internalized homophobia) a potential girlfriend, because as it is, the circumstances don't allow, barring a "long-term photojournalism assignment in Gensokyo" PSL.
no subject
Aya just flew into her life head first and stole her heart. She's a good photographer and didn't dismiss Mahiru's work as boring or her aesthetic as "commoner not yakuza". Furthermore Aya was happy to hang out with her even in more casual contexts. On a superficial level Mahiru enjoyed her crow cosplayer antics.
She found Aya's geta particularly adorable. Fun fact: Hiyoko also wears geta, thanks to her upbringing as a hypertraditional nihon buyo artist. Considering that Mahiru is able to help Hiyoko tie her obi, I like to think that Mrs. Koizumi was around for some traditional type celebrations back in Mahiru's early years, such as her first shichi-go-san; Mahiru also demonstrates a general appreciation for traditional toys like bamboo copter. So though Mahiru is fairly modern in her day-to-day life and her types of anxieties, she likes traditional things. This also ties into her eventual suspectibility to soapies.
Anyway, Mahiru saw how tired Aya was after writing forty copies of the newspaper but everyone kept giving Aya crap for her journalism that was admittedly rather irresponsible. At the same time there were so many people that gave Mahiru props for her own pictures, which was new for her because like I said, she's not used to people thinking her cute smile photography is cool, and she felt rather helpless in the space of the game (hence her vulnerability to the buddy cops' reckless request). So she resolved to offer her assistance and Aya accepted her which made Mahiru very happy. They just got to have fun formatting this stuff and Mahiru felt like she was helping Aya and incorporating her own work into a more meaningful, proliferated context.
Mahiru has codependent tendencies given her desperation for attention and approval, but her agreement with Aya on basically everything comes from a fairly healthy place. Mahiru believes that murder is inherently wrong even as revenge, and only supports the death penalty in the context of mutual killing games because the innocent majority needs to survive. Aya managed to make neutrality look affable instead of apathetic. Inno or mafia, everyone gets an obituary. Mahiru wanted to be devoted to the overarching mystery, not the murders.
Mahiru's relationships with her classmates were strained by the circumstances; they wanted to function as a group that would attack others, innocent or not, to protect themselves (in other contexts I describe this pattern of behavior as "yakuza"). But Aya never wanted Mahiru to go into that emotional place for her. She just wanted her copies and her curry. This is why Mahiru's favorite place in the world to be was "alone with Aya". Without being completely removed from the unfortunate situation, Mahiru could be in a place with someone who valued her services as much as her self. I hesitate to label Aya's function in this regard as a "best friend"; she was more like a partner to Mahiru, because their relationship would typically be productive instead of recreational even outside of photography work.
Once Mahiru "died", she missed Aya the most. She was just so comfortable with her and would have proposed soapies even "while they were both alive" if there had been a good reason back then. Absolutely nobody else in the bunker could provide her that kind of emotional solace except arguably Sakaki later on. However, it became obvious that Aya was inno and Mahiru was hella relieved even though she didn't actually spill any government secrets like she did with Ibuki. Furthermore Aya wasn't going to go full yan stan as Mahiru feared Hiyoko might. I'm not gonna lie Mahiru had a brief yan moment herself when she was disappointed that Maya died and didn't bring Aya with her. Overall though Aya surviving and not getting hurt just made Mahiru so happy, like she said.
Seeing Aya again was the greatest though literally the best thing that ever happened to Mahiru in her whole entire life. Better than Mom coming home for New Year's. Way better than her birthday. (Mahiru wants people to throw a surprise birthday party for her but they never have.) Aya was happy too and she got her Kodak moment and Mahiru's so happy. In her penultimate social link she just hands her camera to the protagonist like "Yo. I keep taking all these pictures of other people but I don't have any of me. I want there to be one of me. Take a picture with my camera." So then Aya came up with basically the same idea on her own and she's just so so so happy that Aya anticipated this impulse, that they could communicate without speaking.
Dangan Ronpa characters are just so lonely that in the space of a couple days of hardcore friendship they'll be pretty ready to spend their lives together if the circumstances allow. Mahiru hasn't really thought much about whether Aya is her friend or her coworker or (god forbid, given her severe internalized homophobia) a potential girlfriend, because as it is, the circumstances don't allow, barring a "long-term photojournalism assignment in Gensokyo" PSL.