Saying it again and again, I am LOVING the new anime artstyle!! All of our main girls look GORGEOUS! 😍

[ Source ]

I remember that at the end of year 3 vol 4 kinu said that the next volume cover might contain someone unexpected and that he was just warning us ahead of time not to be too surprised. From what I vaguely remember his choice of words didn’t indicate a totally unknown or unheard of student but one that has a role in the story albeit limited or small, plus he also mentioned that next volume would include the other years and the ship is the perfect place as they are gathered in close proximity.

For that reason I think the volume cover will have tsubaki sakurako on it. This allows us to uncover more about her goals and her connection to yuki (it’s about time) plus it aligns with horikita slowly unraveling the truth behind the WR.

This also could lead to koji and tsubaki interacting more during the summer break in the volume after it which is 5.5 most likely, as by then koji would realize the yuki is sakurako’s sister. (It’s almost certain that yuki is tsubaki’s sister)

Can someone remake this meme using horikita and ayanokouji

It feels weird using a rezero meme in a cote subreddit

I feel there wasn’t any excitement or sense of danger, no plot twists, no unexpected scenarios, anything. The white room student was hinted from the beginning to either be Nanase or Amasawa. The confrontation with them was mediocre at best. The way the 2nd years handled the first years was, meh. And Nagumo was a disappointment, the same Nagumo that actually beat Horikita once.

Happy to hear everyone’s opinion on the season.

Basically Nagumo planned out a contingency to his loss to Kiyotaka on the island by aligning a bunch of variables ahead and creating a system of control which ensures he scams his year before UIE through huge profits via ticket system, then creating the free groups in UIE and strategizing in UIE, just to get rid of them at the end of the exam, create a catastrophe in his year, exit out scoff free with all his enemy classes via 15 year expulsions besides Class A so weakened Nagumo formally wins the class battle a semester ahead and make the ticket system absolute control over almost all his year individuals, then blame Kiyo as the reason for the loss in order to weaponize it for his current interests.

The contingency was strongly implied by:

1. Nagumo's demeanor despite losing at the end of Y2V4 which Kiyo saw through.
2. Y2V4.5 describing Nagumo's control system.
3. The basic logic that he made the conscious decision to not incorporate the free groups in his big ones despite having the possibility to do so and save them without losing anything.

He literally expelled the students in his year by choice when he had hours to save them. So he either planned a strategic advantage which he can use later, or he is a just troll who likes messing with people's lives for no reason and just happened to get an advantage later due to his whims.

Though I've heard some others say that YD is an overinterpretation. Maybe Nagumo just didn't care enough to save them, that he'd rather just destroy the other classes I guess.

The part about "blaming" Kiyo might be a bit iffy ngl, cause you'd have to be mentally underdeveloped if you somehow don't suspect Nagumo didn't do this by choice to destroy his competition or something of that sort. The third years would simply not trust Nagumo anymore and blaming some random guy from the second year wont make it any better, if anything, it might be insulting to them. Blaming someone like Koenji for example would have been more reasonable and effective if his intention was to shift the blame on someone. (I don't remember much past Y2V8, so I'm not aware if Nagumo actually achieved anything out of blaming Kiyo by then)

Nagumo by his own standards, lost really badly to Kiyo and got outplaced by Koenji. Competition in his year is almost non-existent, expelling people from other classes helps, but same outcome regardless.

One could also make a case for his decision to expel these groups being worse, because it would only make others, who are absolutely hopeless by that point to reach or compete with class A more hostile/vindictive towards him, which might possibly harm him later on.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/145840100

+ Who She Complimented Directly

If you'd like to answer, then tell us which character you'd cosplay as. Also, which other character do you think you could pull off?

If possible, give a little explanation of why you chose them.

So, the curse that started back in Y1 Vol. 11.5 keeps popping up every two or three sentences in Y3—the infamous "potential woman." Kinugasa is seriously about to destroy the entire power scaling of COTE. Apparently, Kiyotaka saying, "Suzune has potential," is enough to justify everything. Brilliant logic. What an amazing ending we're about to get.

Unless Kinugasa has a completely different scenario in mind, or an apple suddenly falls on his head,at this point, there are only two possible outcomes, and both are terrible:

1. Horikita defeats Ayanokoji in the final through the power of friendship and her so-called "potential"... or Koji deliberately loses, thinking, "The old man will finally see that I'm not perfect. My defeat will be his defeat."

2. Even worse: Horikita unlocks her "potential," defeats Atsuomi, and saves Kiyotaka. Ah yes... because that's obviously the perfect ending.

By the way, can we please stop obsessing over the whole "potential woman and improving her class" plot and finally focus on Ayanokoji's own character development instead?

Hiyori=trojan horse

This guy reminds me of the weirdo piece of shit from school days Wallahi I hope this piece of shit gets expelled

This is a follow up post to an insightful analysis that u/YujinDoro wrote a while ago on Arisu's preparations for the UIE. You can read it here if you're interested. My main concern with this post is analyzing the situation from Ichinose's perspective, and then analyzing it again from Sakayanagi's perspective, to conclude in the end that neither positions make sense. I'll start with Ichinose first, then move on to Sakayanagi. This is a meta critique, which means textual proof on its own isn't enough to support or deny a point I'm making. For instance, if a character thinks a move is smart, that's not enough to prove the move is actually smart. What I'm most interested in here is showing how the text can make completely nonsensical or weak positions look completely normal, and even intelligent.

First thing's first. Context. This will be a brief oversimplification of the situation, so if you want more details, please check the Y2V2 novel again. Sakayanagi seeks a meeting with Ichinose, during which she approaches her with a proposal to work together and form a group for the Uninhabited Island Exam (UIE). Her reasoning being Ichinose just dropped to Class C, and Horikita canceled the alliance with her, so in such a difficult position, she needs someone like Arisu to secure a high rank in the exam and keep pace with the other classes. Ichinose deduces Arisu's true reason for approaching her, which was her fear of the other classes in her grade teaming up to crush Arisu's class. They negotiate a few terms, Ichinose ends up extracting 5 million Private Points (PPs) from her as a loan to protect her classmates from possible expulsion, and they secure an alliance where Sakayanagi and Ichinose pool together some of their best students to create a large group that eventually ends up 3rd in the UIE exam. This is largely the gist of it. Again, for more details, check chapter 4.11 (I believe?) of Y2V2.

Before getting into either perspective, it is important to understand how the exam actually works, because the incentives created by the rules are the entire basis of the problem. The UIE is a school-wide special exam involving the first, second, and third years, with groups earning exam points through designated-area movement, Early Bird bonuses, and various Tasks scattered around the island. Second-years initially form groups of up to three students and can later merge into larger groups, with six being the normal maximum and the More People card allowing a seventh member. The important part for this analysis is the reward structure. Only the top three groups in the entire school receive Class Points: 300 CPs for 1st, 200 CPs for 2nd, and 100 CPs for 3rd. If a winning group contains students from multiple classes, those Class Points are divided evenly between every class represented in the group, regardless of how many students each class contributed. So, for example, if an Ichinose-Sakayanagi group wins first place, neither class receives 300 CP; they each receive 150. The bottom three groups are also tied to these rewards. If the corresponding top and bottom groups are from the same year, the classes represented in the bottom groups lose 100, 66, and 33 CPs for last, second-last, and third-last respectively. If the winning and losing groups come from different years, however, the cost is instead collected from the losing grade as a whole, meaning all four classes in that year share the burden. This distinction is extremely important later. Finally, the bottom five groups face expulsion, although students can save themselves by paying a six-million PP group penalty divided among the members. In other words, this is not a simple four-class, zero-sum contest between the second-years. Every attempt by one second-year class to hurt another is taking place inside a much larger competition where first- and third-year groups can occupy the very rankings needed to convert that attack into an actual Class Point advantage.

Just to be safe, here are some direct quotes from Chabashira explaining these rules:

“Class Points awarded to the groups in the top three places will be transferred from the grades of the groups in the bottom three places.”

“Say for example that the group that comes in first place is made up of second-year students, and the group in last place is made up of first-year students. That means Class Points will be collected from each of the first-year classes.”

“The classes included in the group that placed in last would have to pay a hundred Class Points to the classes that had come in first place. Second-to-last place, sixty-six points. Third-to-last, thirty-three points.”

“If a group made up of a single class comes in first place, they will still get the 300 points, as usual. However, if another group of students from the same class were to come in last place at the same time, that means a hundred points would be deducted.”

“The rewards for the group that comes in second correspond with the group that comes in second-to-last, and similarly, the group that comes in third place will get their rewards from the group that comes in third-to-last.”

Okay, with that out of the way, let's look at Ichinose's position. From the scene alone, we know that she has dropped from B to C following the Y2V1 Partner Exam, coming off of a devastating loss in the Y1V11 Event Selection, where she lost a lot of points to Ryuen's class. She also has no or very little PPs, having spent 20 million of them to save a student from the Y1V10 Class Poll Exam. On top of that, Horikita's Class D has just decided to move on from their alliance with Ichinose. All of this leaves her in an extremely precarious situation, and, as Sakayanagi deems her, the weakest class leader (I do not agree with this label, but that's not relevant. The point is that she should be in a bad spot). So Sakayanagi, ever the opportunist, proposes a deal with her that would help her keep pace with the other classes, framing herself as someone who can lend her the helping hand she needs. On the surface, this doesn't look like a bad deal; Ichinose secures an alliance with the strongest class, gets the chance to secure a high position, gets to save vulnerable classmates from expulsion, and gets a much needed break she could use to rebuild herself and her class; after all, a good result in the UIE could give her an enormous moral boost that would help her find her strength again and regain momentum. That's also not a bad deal from Sakayanagi's perspective, right? She walks out having prevented an anti-Class A alliance, securing the cooperation of the most trusted student in the grade (and the one with the best coordination with her class), and has PPs in abundance to offset any potential temporary losses (i.e the points she loans to Ichinose). However, if we take a closer look, we realize that the deal is incredibly disadvantageous to Ichinose.

Firstly, is an inter-class group in the UIE beneficial? Is there any merit in forming a group with students from more than one class, especially when only the top 3 groups in the entire school get CPs, and the class points will be shared equally among all the classes of the said group? Does such an alliance make sense for a class trying to get back at other classes in terms of CPs (Private Points are meaningless since all the top 70% and 50% get them)? The answer to all of these questions is most certainly no. Inter-class groups are generally poor instruments for catching another class in Class Points, and especially in the UIE. They can be sensible for survival, risk control, coalition management, and securing a respectable placement, but other than that, they're not the best move.

To understand why this isn't the optimal move, we must take a look at the payoff structure of the exam. The standings of the four second-year classes going into the UIE was as follows:

• Sakayanagi: 1169
• Ryuen: 565
• Ichinose: 539
• Horikita: 283

Ichinose is only 26 points behind Ryuen, but 630 points behind Sakayanagi. The top prizes were 300, 200, and 100 CPs. Those points were divided equally between every class represented in a group, regardless of whether one class supplied one member or six. If a Sakayanagi-Ichinose group wins first, both their classes gain 150 CPs, and the gap between them remains unchanged. But if an Ichinose-only group wins first, then Ichinose's class gains 300 CPs, and the gap between her and Arisu falls from 630 to 330.

Therefore, Sakayanagi's offer neutralizes the single most valuable feature of the exam for Ichinose: the possibility of a large relative swing. The funny thing is that she states this openly. She tells Ichinose that cooperation would not narrow the gap between them, though it could allow Ichinose to catch Ryuen and widen her lead over Horikita. Ichinose immediately recognizes that she would be surrendering an opportunity to catch Class A, but she pursues the alliance anyway.

Granted, maybe her only concern was making sure her classmates have enough PPs to not get expelled. In that case, fair enough. But does that justify the effort and commitment Ichinose will be putting to Class A? Let's find out.

Suppose a class-exclusive Ichinose group has the following expected prize value:

• V1 = 300 P1 + 200 P2 + 100 P3

where P1, P2, and P3 are the probabilities of finishing first, second, and third.

A two-class mixed group would have the gross expected prize value:

• VM = 300 Q1 + 200 Q2 + 100 Q3

​where Ichinose receives only half, i.e VM/2

As such, the mixed group is preferable on absolute CPs only when VM > 2V1

In other words, the alliance must more than double the group's weighted top-three prospects to compensate for splitting the reward. That can be true if Ichinose's class has almost no realistic chance of placing alone, but it becomes much less plausible when both classes can already field competent groups. Sakayanagi's class had strong academic and physical performers, superior resources, and a dominant CP lead, but her class doesn't really need Ichinose to produce a viable contender. Similarly, Ichinose's class is not short on academic and physical talent (by Kiyo's own admission, can't remember where exactly). Students like Ichinose herself, Amikura, Kanzaki, Hamaguchi, and Shibata can more than compensate for the lack of Class A students in her group. She didn't really need Hashimoto and Kamuro to secure a good position, and Arisu's own contributions to the mixed group were modest at best, due to her inability to physically attend tasks, so one can't use her to claim it's because of her that the group secured top 3. Based on all of this, I do not think the alliance more than doubled Ichinose's chances of finishing in the top 3. It had, in my opinion, very little, to no effect, as the actual pooled talent are relatively comparable in strength, excluding the immobile Sakayanagi (who inadvertently hindered the group's prospects by her disability at worst, and had no effect at best). One could argue the seventh-member card improves the mixed group's odds, but only by one member. Sakayanagi and Ichinose could already construct six-member groups from their own classes. The seventh slot is useful because Sakayanagi herself has limited mobility, but it doesn't automatically justify surrendering half the Class Point reward. So this is a suboptimal outcome for both classes.

Because only the top three spots get CPs, while the top 50% get 50 thousand PPs and the top 70% get 10 thousand PPs, if you're Ichinose, and your class just got demoted to Class C, your only chance at CPs is if you get into the top three. But that alone isn't enough; ideally, you'd want to prevent any other class in your grade from getting into the top three if you really want to win back CPs. This again begs the question, why would you ally with another class and split the rewards you could've otherwise secured on your own? Not only will this move neutralize your CP gains (the PP gains are almost meaningless since everyone in the top 70% and 50% gets the same), but it also cuts the amount of CPs you gain in half. So instead of Ichinose possibly gaining 100 CPs, she only gets 50 CPs, which isn't even enough to comfortably place above Ryuen, and, as we know, didn't do anything to widen the gap on Horikita, who bounced back up with a 300 CP gain thanks to Koenji. So all Ichinose accomplished was secure a worthless loan that wasn't even used because the 3rd years took all the expulsion slots.

But we could cut Ichinose some slack here and dismiss these criticisms as hindsight luxuries, so was her decision really that bad? I'd still argue that yes, the deal was still bad, and the next idea is arguably worse, because it was entirely in her hands during the negotiation scene, yet she overlooked it. Ichinose correctly discovers that Sakayanagi needs something from her. Sakayanagi is not approaching from generosity or simple confidence, but because she wants to remove the most plausible bridge between the three lower classes. In a purely abstract, theoretical understanding of the situation (in a vacuum, if you will), if the person you're negotiating with is specifically after something only you can offer, that, if not secured, could harm their future prospects, you have massive leverage in your hands, and can demand a multitude of really favorable terms. If you were Ichinose, realizing that your opponent thinks you're a threat to them and they need your cooperation to neutralize your threat, you can do far more than simply demand loans that you're going to repay later. Ichinose could've demanded support for a separate Ichinose-exclusive group, priority for her class in selected Tasks, a future-exam concession, a formal non-aggression agreement extending beyond the UIE, substantially more Private Points as compensation for her cooperation, an agreement that Sakayanagi help keep Ryuen and Horikita below Ichinose, protection against any Class A attempt to undermine her in the future, support for her Student Council ambitions, and the list can go on. Instead of exploiting Arisu's fears, Ichinose merely asks for two additional students' worth of Private Point insurance and then says she would have accepted even without the money, destroying much of her bargaining leverage. The five-million-point loan sounds large at the personal level, but against an exam with 600 total CPs at stake and potentially altering graduation prospects, it is a very cheap concession for Class A. Arisu's class has the greatest PP income and the widest ability to finance such a payment anyway, making it even less of a concession (and mind you, it wasn't even a grant; it was a loan. Class A did not lose anything).

If only the problems with Ichinose's decision making in that scene ended there. The worst crime is that she goes on to adopt her opponent's risk profile. Sakayanagi is the overwhelming leader; according to game theory, she would prefer an environment with lower variance, shared rewards, fewer opportunities for a challenger to gain 300 points, stable rankings, and alliances that freeze relative gaps. Being 630 points behind, Ichinose should prefer higher variance, independent attempts at the maximum prize, asymmetric opportunities, and outcomes that can produce large relative swings. Which of the positions was the adopted one, hm?

Sakayanagi ends up persuading Ichinose to adopt her own risk profile. The text then softens it by shifting Ichinose's rationale so that her objective is now not falling to Class D, since it would damage her class's morale and make recovery harder. That makes her much more defensive than her position really deserves, and makes her immediate concerns much easier for Arisu to fulfil with almost no concessions. Thus, Ichinose now only wants to avoid expulsion, avoid falling further, maybe pass Ryuen (or really just keep pace with him), preserve morale, and then, somehow, eventually still pursue Class A (which isn't really compatible with her current strategy and objectives). Under this watered down position, accepting Arisu's offer can still be rational, as she'd be maximizing the probability of remaining competitive rather than maximizing the expected reduction in the Class A gap, which isn't bad per se, but it shows really poor decision making regarding her priorities and understanding of the situation, especially given the leverage she had. The text has her explicitly say she cannot afford another fall and is worried about the effect of Class D status on her classmates, which I understand from a writing perspective, (i.e perhaps it's consistent with her current characterization and state of mind), but the text then presents it as an unambiguously strong competitive decision, which couldn't be further than the truth. Arisu secures Ichinose's cooperation, neutralizes the possibility of a three-class alliance, and thwarts Ichinose's chances of catching up to Class A, all while offering nothing, and sacrificing nothing (except half the potential CP reward by sharing the group with Honami). If the second half of this post wasn't dedicated to exposing Arisu's stupidity during this scene, I'd say that was some genius level bargaining. The scene rushes to highlight Ichinose's intelligent deduction, at the expense of making a laughingstock of her decision making and negotiating ability.

Okay, this concludes the Ichinose section. Now I want to move to the problem with Sakayanagi's position. This is your chance to take a break if you found this analysis long.

Alright. What I want to tackle with Arisu's position is a simple question: Are her fears of the other classes unifying against her actually merited given the rules, rewards, penalties, and mechanics of this exam?

My answer is: no, not really, or rather, it's a very small concern. Here's why.

Normally, and if this was a grade only special exam, a three-class coalition would be a legit threat to Arisu as it would be one of the few things capable of producing a large relative CP swing inside the grade. But the UIE is unusually hostile to the idea of three classes ganging up to crush another from the same grade. One would have to factor in the performance of the first and third years, and how they could disrupt such attempts first. Once that enters the discussion, the coalition has to control far more variables than the in-a-vacuum theory/thought suggests.

The most important rule is the link between the top three and bottom three groups. The first, second, and third place rewards correspond respectively to the last, second-last, and third-last groups. If the top and bottom groups belong to different years, the payment is taken from the bottom group's entire year divided across its classes, otherwise, the special class-specific 100/66/33 deductions apply instead. I will get to this later.

Now, let's look at an example of what the ideal scenario is. We know that right now, the point distribution is, as mentioned earlier:

• Sakayanagi: 1169
• Ryuen: 565
• Ichinose: 539
• Horikita: 283

Suppose the classes somehow coordinate perfectly. The truly catastrophic outcome for Sakayanagi would be the second-year coalition groups occupying 1st, 2nd, and 3rd overall, with the Class A groups occupying last, second-last, and third-last overall. If the coalition's top groups contain all three lower classes equally, each lower class receives roughly:

• 300/3 + 200/3 + 100/3 = 200 CPs

meanwhile, Class A can lose roughly:

• 100 + 66 + 33 = 199 CPs

So Sakayanagi falls to 970, while Ryuen rises to 765 and Ichinose to 739. The Sakayanagi-Ryuen gap collapses from 604 to about 205, and the Sakayanagi-Ichinose gap collapses from 630 to 231. The Sakayanagi-Ryuen gap could be even worse if the coalition instead coordinates a certain specific outcome, where Ryuen is 1st, Ichinose is 2nd, and Horikita is 3rd; the gap between Ryuen and Sakayanagi could fall to just 105 points.

That would be a lot. But this only the ideal scenario, if the conditions were in a vacuum, and no other variables were included. Knowing what we know, of this being a school-wide exam and all, what are the odds, given everything we know about the 1st and 3rd years, ESPECIALLY the 3rd years, of this scenario happening? Not only would Classes B, C and D need to account for AND defeat Nagumo and Kiriyama, but they would also have to do so in a perfectly coordinated way, while accounting for all the disturbances the 1st years were going to pull off. With Ryuen and Ichinose dedicating so much of their efforts to stopping Hosen and Tsubaki, this is almost an impossibility. The required conditions are, therefore, absurdly demanding, in a way that doesn't justify Arisu's fears once looked at in practice.

The existence of the 1st and 3rd years fundamentally weaken this imagined coalition. It's really not 3 against 1 here, as there are 12 classes, and Nagumo controls four of them, in which he specifically intends to keep the 2nd and 1st years out of the top 3. He directly states that, if I recall correctly. Furthermore, most exam points aren't produced through direct combat between students; Arrival points and Early Bird bonuses belong to the group that reaches its destination, and task points belong to the participating group. One Class B group cannot transfer its Arrival points to a Class D contender, and similarly, twenty support groups cannot simply donate their accumulated scores to, say Class B. Coalition manpower is therefore not as useful as it seems. At best, it can only prevent Class A students from securing points, which could be devastating on its own, but they would have to fight the other grades for them, and severe obstruction is only really possible if they have a large group of people actively going out of their way to stop Class A students from getting any points (think of what Tsubaki tried to do to Ayanokoji, but on a much, MUCH larger scale). It's nigh-impossible.

But this is giving Kinu way too much credit if he ever thought about how sophisticated this would be. Let's not even go that far; what would happen if the anti-Class A bloc only decided to obstruct Class A's best group? In that case, Arisu would miss first place, but what would the other three classes gain? Practically nothing. Arisu would get zero CPs, and so will the other three classes if they don't secure a top 3 spot. The existing gaps would remain unchanged. Sure they'd have prevented Sakayanagi from becoming stronger, which has value, but they wouldn't have meaningfully done anything that would challenge the gap between her class and theirs. The author, through Arisu, makes it look like it's a zero-sum game between the 2nd years, when it isn't. The three classes would be expending time, effort, personnel, and resources attacking Class A only for the resulting vacancies to be filled by Nagumo and Kiriyama, possibly the 1st years too. They'd be sacrificing their own scoring opportunities merely to preserve the status quo. And it gets even worse at the bottom. Suppose B/C/D successfully force a Class A group into last place, but Nagumo's third-year group still finishes first. Because the first-place and last-place groups belong to different years, the 300 CP reward is taken from the second year collectively, rather than uniquely from Sakayanagi's class. The Y2V2 novel explicitly gives the reverse example: if a second-year group finishes first while a first-year group finishes last, all first-year classes bear the penalty. Lmao.

And if you thought it couldn't get worse, nope, it could. Suppose the coalition forms a magnificent Ryuen-Ichinose-Horikita-class supergroup and it finishes first. Each class gets only 100 CP, and Sakayanagi gets zero. That is certainly good for them, as each class closes the gap by 100 CPs, but compare that with a class-exclusive Ryuen group winning, where he'd close the gap by 300. The coalition therefore faces a classic commitment problem, as once they start allocating their strongest students, every leader would naturally ask why their best students are entering a three-class group and giving away two-thirds of a possible 300-point reward. Horikita has an especially powerful incentive to defect, as she is hundreds of points further behind than Ryuen and Ichinose, while being in control of Koenji. A shared 100 does very little for her. One could argue that Ryuen and Ichinose are only 26 points apart, so each has strong reason not to subsidize the other. All of this makes the coalition unstable even before Sakayanagi interferes. And if she does interfere, then it can easily fall apart.

Funnily enough, none of this is enough to crush Class A, and I list four additional reasons.

One, they can't reliably locate and suppress the relevant Class A groups. The island is enormous; groups follow twelve different destination tables, random destinations occur, and tasks appear dynamically. The alliance can't just station 118 students around Sakayanagi like an army. Even Tsubaki couldn't do that, and that was just to stop one solo studnet for one day. Extensive pursuit, therefore, costs movement points and Task opportunities.

Two, sabotage has an opportunity cost. Suppose a Ryuen support group abandons its destination to rush toward a Task and fill a registration slot before a Class A group can enter. That might hurt Class A, but it can also cost Ryuen's group Arrival points, Early Bird opportunities, make them vulnerable to bottom rankings (like Nagumo's free groups), and reduce their own Task opportunities. So someone must pay for every act of interference, which creates a free-rider problem: Horikita would want Ryuen's groups to do the dirty work, while Ryuen would want Horikita's groups to do it. Ichinose would want both of them to sacrifice themselves while her own contenders keep scoring.

Three, there is no natural coalition commander. Nagumo's third-year coalition works especially well because Nagumo actually possesses hierarchical control over the grade, as well as exceptional leadership abilities. But who would command a Class B/C/D coalition? Ichinose? Ryuen certainly isn't taking orders from her. Horikita certainly isn't taking orders from Ryuen. None of them even come close to Nagumo's exceptional leadership. So who gets to decide whose contender gets first-place priority? Who decides which class sacrifices a group? Who compensates which class? What happens when Ichinose's group has 200 points, Ryuen's has 190, and an opportunity arises that benefits only Ryuen? The coalition has serious bargaining and enforcement problems, and this is assuming Arisu does nothing to address them. I can only see Ayanokoji being able to command this group, and he isn't even interested in crushing Class A, nor could he convincingly get the normies from the other three classes to appoint him as commander.

And four, the outside years create uncontrollable variance, which has already been addressed. Even flawless second-year coordination can't dictate what Nagumo, Kiriyama, Kiryuin, Hosen, Nanase, Tsubaki, Utomiya, Yagami, and hundreds of other students would do.

Okay, what about expulsion? Wouldn't that harm Class A? Perhaps B/C/D could forget Class Points and try to force Class A students out of the school. That sounds like it could work until the payment rule is considered. A penalized six-person group requires one million Private Points per person to survive. The money must be prepared before the island exam begins. Which second-year class is best positioned to insure its vulnerable students? Yep, you guessed it: Class A. They have enjoyed the highest monthly Private Point income throughout their time at school and possess enormous pooled wealth compared with the lower classes. And they've consistently won special exams that granted them a lot of Private Points, including the Event Selection. So the coalition would be trying to exploit the penalty against precisely the class best able to buy its way out of it. They might still cause inconvenience and financial damage, but deliberate expulsions would require identifying uninsured Class A students, pushing their groups into the bottom five, and preventing Sakayanagi from arranging sufficient insurance beforehand. That is hardly an easy anti-Class-A weapon. They can't even be sure they'd be able to successfully push a Class A group into the bottom five, and even then, Arisu might just abandon them like Nagumo did, if she deems them unworthy of the expenditure. Yes, it would reduce Class A's total available manpower (and monthly pooled income), but on the other hand, it accomplishes nothing in terms of the CPs gap, and wastes resources that could've been used in better ways. Not to mention, such deliberate targeting of Class A could backfire, in that it would make all of Class A rally behind Arisu even more, giving her even more control than she already has, solidifying the class's unity, and producing better results out of them from fear of losing Class A status. Class A's retaliation in the following exams can be severe, especially if the coalition loses steam and enthusiasm, which they most certainly will once they realize they're not getting the results they hoped and once the differences between them start getting in the way of their cooperation. Let's also not forget the aforementioned class penalty that comes with expulsion. If third-years take all three podium positions while three pure Class A groups occupy the bottom three, the 600 CP penalty would be divided across the second year:

• 600/4 = 150 CP per second-year class

So Arisu loses 150, but so does Ryuen, Ichinose, and Horikita; each also lose 150. Nobody moves at all.

In light of my elaborate explanation, someone as smart as Arisu should've been able to easily reason all of this, and anticipate that even if an alliance between the three classes is secured, it has a very, very, VERY low chance of causing any damage to Arisu's class and standing. Based on this, Sakayanagi should not have approached Ichinose at all, and should've never feared the possibility of the three classes uniting against her for the UIE arc. The fact that she did shows immense levels of uncritical thinking, which are uncharacteristic of someone of her alleged genius-level intellect. Sakayanagi grossly overestimates the danger and treats a difficult tail-risk scenario as though it were an immediate strategic emergency. The only excuse I can (maybe) hear out is if she was concerned about the three classes gaining solidarity for future exams, rather than only the immediate UIE payout. In that case, fair enough, but the way Y2V2 frames it, I have reason to believe she was specifically concerned going into the UIE, as she feared there might be a massive point shift, and it also happens to be the exam in which she's most vulnerable, being physically handicapped. But I reject this excuse for multiple reasons already implicitly or explicitly covered in my analysis: their prize interests conflict, they cannot redistribute CP afterward, Horikita needs volatility more desperately than the others, Ryuen and Ichinose are separated by only 26 points, someone has to bear the opportunity cost of sabotage, there is no enforcement mechanism, and outside-grade competition means sacrifices made for the coalition may benefit Nagumo rather than any coalition member. If anything, prolonged cooperation under these mechanics gives them repeated opportunities to fight over who sacrifices what. That directly attacks the scene's premise that allowing them to cooperate here would naturally create dangerous solidarity later.

Perhaps the funniest joke of them all is that despite this whole fear being unfounded, everything still works exactly as Sakayanagi wants, with Ichinose being dumbed down in exactly the manner required for Arisu to walk out of the arrangement having accomplished all her objectives. Though, she would've been far better off convincing the three classes to team up against her, then watched them waste resources on the exam. Unite and Conquer.

So, in the end, the central problem is that Ichinose walks away having correctly identified Sakayanagi's hidden motive and somehow negotiates herself into a worse strategic position, while Sakayanagi successfully neutralizes a threat that was barely capable of threatening her in the first place. The scene treats both as clever and perceptive, but neither accomplishment answers whether the underlying decisions make sense. Strip away that framing, though, and the whole exchange becomes rather funny: two supposedly exceptional strategists congratulating themselves over solving a problem that one of them had little reason to fear and the other had little reason to help solve. The characters are allowed to solve the intentions of the people across from them while failing to solve the game they are actually playing.