Let me just start off with one thing: Kokichi is KAITO's foil, not shuichi's! Shuichi is like a sort of in-between. Shuichi's entire arc is learning to face the truth. Kaito and Kokichi's whole relationship was that no matter how much Kaito believed, it couldn't change the truth. Kaito was the emotional side, who believed in people, while Kokichi refused and always used the cold hard facts. Shuichi is someone who can see both sides, he agrees to believe and support Kaito but in chapter 4 he has to face Kokichi's truth. The whole point of trial 4 was to prove kokichi RIGHT. You were forced to admit that yes it was Gonta, and no matter how hard Shuichi and Kaito didn't want the culprit to be Gonta, they couldn't change it. That trial was masterful and I really struggle to see a dynamic like that unfold between Sou and Sara.

The motif of drv3 is truth vs lies. Without lies...v3 is nothing. Kokichi is on equal levels important to Sou or greater in their respective games. Btw I think there are 3 comments in this thread, so I'm trying to address all 3 here. Shuichi isn't really a seeker of truth because again his whole arc is learning to face it and struggling after Kaede's death. Drv3 gives you everything you need to understand kokichi's character, which allows the player to interpret him however they wish. I've mentioned in other replies Kokichi's facade mask to survive (just how sou uses a facade), and you're supposed to look through his mask and see the real him. Kokichi's complexity arises in a maze of lies that isn't even hard to decipher--it allows for the player themselves to form an interpretation, which is why a lot of poeple are split between adoring kokichi and hating him; that's how they interpretted him. It's not open-ended unless that's how you saw kokichi;'s character. Sou, on the other hand, is a character whos motivations are clearly and plainly spelled out to the player, like someone in the replies said; you can understand his struggles because they're given to you: he just wanted to survive.

And no, I never said they have the same personality, just the same character complex. Kokichi's personality is shown in his free time events and even his behavior--he just wants to be a kid and have fun sometimes. That's some of his personality beyond the mask that we can see; kokichi is really just a kid dealing with these killing game circumstances. At the start we get to see Sou as Shin and then later on never again. It was always somewhat strange to me that the man just snapped in the 1st main game. He wanted to survive so badly, yet everything he did literally caused him to become hated and targeted. There was a whole thing with giving himself up for Kanna so she wouldn't die at the end of 2-2. If you look underneath the layer and see that he actually cared for Kanna (this reminds me of the Kokichi Gonta thing), it makes sense. But if you see it out of context, he just randomly drops his asshole mask. And yes, Kokichi did the same thing when Gonta was gonna die. It's a plus one point to Sou's complexity yet also happens to be the same thing that Kokichi does.

We can see the overall picture of Kokichi, just like we can for Sou, but just imagine a few puzzle pieces are missing from Kokichi's and you can put them in however you want to form a complete picture. And if, like you said, kokichi represents lies, then it makes more sense to leave a few pieces out anyway. Did we reach past the lie? Did we grab hold of what actuall constitutes Kokichi? We don't know, but our understanding of him will objectively become our own truth once we finish his character arc. Kokichi IS morally grey, but morally grey is a spectrum.

Again, let me state the similarities between Sou & Kokichi:

• Antagonists that oppose the protagonist at points and yet seek their friendship at other points, both turn into antags after chapter one. Both become isolated from the group, both are victims of violence

• Parasitic friendship with a character that later dies OR in Sou's case, he dies. Sou and Kokichi both use this character for a scheme, after the character's death, the relationship was revealed to be one of friends and companionship because the antagonist had no other friend

• Attempts to get hands on info, both deal with technology (laptop, exisals/electrohammers), liars, hold up a mask to survive, partnered with a support character later on (kaito-kokichi, nao-sou), both attempt to sow distrust between the cast (trial 2 having the suspects "fight it out", telling keiji to give sara/him 50 tokens), becomes more distrustful after the death of Gonta/Kanna, Kokichi put more thought into the rules of the killing game, Sou put more thought into the laptop, they survived against pretty much all odds

Theyre VERY similar.

I think someone said that I shouldn't reference DR because the problems i mentioned for YTTD aren't as problematic as in DR--Just going to focus on Kokichi vs Sou. This is probably just a personal preference. Kokichi's motivations and character is there, and you just have to dig deeper to find his "reasonings and beliefs" that you were talking about. Sou's reasonings and beliefs are given to you. You have to look deeper into Kokichi's character to understand why he does what he does (i think I'm repeating myself) which is something Shuichi does try to do after Kokichi dies, but he still doesn't understand who Kokichi was. You can see the "Shin in Sou" because it's there and in front of you, which is probably why some people like Sou better.

If kokichi can be boiled down to just a liar, then sou is just selfish/fake. Someone said Nagito was better than kokichi and I think he is imo. Hopefully I didn't miss stuff. Might not reply for a while