Ayanakoji's Rumour Strike Strategies

[u/CommonSence123]

This is an analysis of one of CotE's many hidden plots. This is one of my favourites and provides plenty of decent feats for koji's insane foresight, manipulation, EQ and SQ in how he perfectly engineers social situations and plays on peoples emotions to achieve his goals with flawless execution. This is still not one of his absolute best feats but a very interesting one. People like to act as if koji is just responding to things but no everything that happens is according to his plan.

Kiyo released the rumor that Ichinose is illegally gathering points to the whole of his year and marked it as from ryuenn. This one tactic is a testament to his efficiency as it serves several objectives which will be a running theme in these strategies.

>He wanted to see what the school will do in case of rumours. Arisu told him that she knows about the White room so what if she spreads rumours about it?

>He also wanted to distract Arisu's attention from him to Ichinose so she does not bother him or interfere with his X plan whilst he's working on Ryuenn. He accurately predicted that by exposing Arisu to the novelties of using rumours as offense and Ichinose as a target she would feel compelled to play with them

>He also wanted to see what kind of person Ichinose is. Is she truly good? By releasing this rumour he would also poke at her character so that her weaknesses could be revealed for ayanakoji to help fix and improve her or destroy her for his class transfer strategy

>By writing Ryueen's name on the paper Kiyo wanted to entice Ryueen to continue to his search for X by toying with him whilst also breaking ryuenns partnership with kanzaki as to weaken Ryuenns position in the overall X arc.

>Kiyo also wanted to make Kushida distracted so the answers could be more easily planted in her uniform for his paper shuffle strategy.

With one tactic koji progresses 5 different objectives. To do this he used a high level of emotional intelligence and foresight to figure out a creative move that would influence all of these characters to further his own goals.
[Fluid Reasoning Index] [Creative Thinking] [Cognitive Flexibility Index] [Information Processing Index] [Fluid Intelligence] [Interpersonal Intelligence] [Social/Emotional Understanding] [Social/Emotional Influence] [Indirect Manipulation] [Bluffing Deception] [Tactic Versatility] [Foresight] [Cold Reading]

Following up on this, Ayanakoji further manipulates sakayanagi into attacking Ichinose by preying on Sakayanagi's ego. Whilst talking to Sakayanagi he says "Can you really win against ichinose and the others" and basically goes on about the success of class B whilst Implying ichinose was a better leader and brings up Arisus father who was chairman of ANHS implying that she had a huge advantage with this fact. All of this together would influence sakayanagi to go super in on attacking Ichinose and start trying to destroy Ichinose to prove herself to Ayanakoji.
[Social/Emotional Understanding] [Social/Emotional Engagement] [Social/Emotional Awareness] [Social/Emotional Influence] [Direct Manipulation] [Verbal Deception]

This lead to sakayanagi using information from Nagumo to construct rumours with truth to mentally destroying Ichinose. Ayanakoji then white knights Ichinose and stops her from falling into Nagumo's clutches by offering the specific emotional support that would allow Ichinose by reading her personality so that she would open up and develop the strength to admit to her shoplifiting. This would stop her from going to Nagumo for help and thus preventing Nagumo from gaining a powerful pawn whilst also creating pawn for himself in Ichinose who now will feel a huge amount of gratitude debt and overall good will to koji for saving her.
[Social/Emotional Understanding] {Social/Emotional Engagement] [Social/Emotional Influence] [Social/Emotional Skills] [Foresight]

In the background of kiyo blocking Ichinose from Nagumo he is also blocking kushida from Nagumo. In order to stop the Nagumo and Kushida alliance, Kiyo approached Kushida and offered a very tantalising deal- one-time information in exchange for perpetual payment of private points. Kushida considers this too good to be true so is suspicious at first, but Kiyo manipulates her into taking the deal by allowing her to record the meeting, faking weakness (asking maybe if she could not target him anymore), feigning a strong interest in Ichinose and flattering her and appealing to her ego by going on about how he finds her such a troublesome enemy. The combination of all these factors influences kushida into giving koji the information that he needed to spread his own rumours.

[Social Intelligence] [Interpersonal Intelligence] [Social/Emotional Management] [Social/Emotional Understanding] [Social/Emotional Awareness] [Social/Emotional Influence] [Indirect Manipulation] [Selective Disclosure Manipulation] [Flattery Manipulation] [Bluffing Deception]

Kiyo receives info from Kushida. Then he posts rumours on the school forum with the help of Kiriyama. This helped him achieved several objectives whilst furthering several of his concurrently running plans

>This allowed koji to assess kushida's social network and give him proof of kushida's real nature so he could take later actions to remove her from the class. He later uses the transaction record of him paying Kushida monthly as a weapon to destroy Kushida's reputation in class. (Y2V5) (Traitor Expulsion Plan) (Class Transfer Strategy)

>Strengthen Ichinose and help her overcome her trauma thus making her a better leader. By helping her he also made her fall further in love with him whilst gaining a huge amount of good will from her. This would turn her into a perfect pawn for him giving koji access to the most powerful social network in his year (Class Transfer Strategy)

>Sour the opinion of Yamauchi so that he would be seen distastefully koji purposefully did not include any about Yamauchi and knowing his fake alliance with sakayanagi he could easily read that his confidence was massively overblown. This combined with kojis analysis of his overall nature would allow koji to predict that he when the rumours were revealed Yamauchi would antagonise his classmates. He did this because he predicted sakayanagi would expel him due to seeing him knock her down and analysing her response. This meant that when he was expelled his expulsion would not affect the overall class unity as they would already dislike him. (Class Transfer Strategy)

>Kiyo knew that Kiriyama was weak and when Nagumo confronted him he would tell him everything. Kiyo used kushida's network in an obvious way so that Nagumo would be distrustful of Kushida preventing them from allying with each other because he thought that Kushida was sent by Kiyo. This prevented a potential Nagumo-kushida alliance without them even knowing he pushed them apart. (Nagumo Negation Plan) (Traitor Expulsion Plan)

>Ayanakoji uses the opportunity to spread a personal rumour about him liking kei to deflect suspicion of himself. This also implanted the idea into kei's mind so that she would be further infatuated by him. (Engineered Love Plan)

>As koji predicted flooding the school with tons of false rumours would cause the school to step in to deal with the massive amount unrest and chaos created. The school then banned the spreading of rumours. Thus koji created his own defence against rumours as it was now impossible for whiteroom rumours to be spread or ryuenn for expose to him via rumours.

>Kiyo overall prevented Nagumo from getting any foothold or power in the social network of year 1 by preventing him the two people with the most powerful social networks. Kiyo managed to win against Nagumo and Nagumo does not even know it. He thinks that Kiyo did all this because of Ichinose. This would gain him a huge amount of favour with Elder Horikita who asked for his help in stopping Nagumo.

[Long-Term Planning] [Planning Coverage] [Planning Deception] [Strategy Versatility] [Strategy Deception] [Information Control] [Fluid Intelligence]

He managed to use rumours to set himself up to kill every bird with a few stones and make everything fell into place. I'd say this is crazy strategy efficiency in how he manages to integrate so many strategies and objectives into such few moves whilst perfectly using his surroundings to move everyone where he needed to achieve his goals and goes to show just how smart koji really is.

[u/CommonSence123]

Still relatively new to this scaling stuff so feel free to give any feedback on anything you think I could do better

[u/FondantFlaky4997]

There is a lot more to it in terms of payoffs, actually. It’s an overlooked feat.

[u/CommonSence123 → u/FondantFlaky4997]

Really do u mean the rest of the class transfer strategy

[u/FondantFlaky4997 → u/CommonSence123]

It affects the later volumes, yeah. But these are actions in V9. Like letting the implication flow that he claims Kei for himself or using the ploy also destabilize Ichinose if necessary. Other aspects within that chaos are the analysis of Ichinose’s classmates, Kiriyama and rendering similar tactics from Nagumo and Arisu useless for the future

[u/CommonSence123 → u/FondantFlaky4997]

You're right good points koji was really cooking

[u/SixxHate]

This is a really great analysis I was working on making analysis on this but you beat me to it also don’t let the koji hater on this sub Reddit get they are infamous for hating on classroom of the elite

[u/CommonSence123 → u/SixxHate]

Thank you I hope I manage to sway some koji haters 🙏

[u/FitExternal2012]

I would have added a few points, such as the double misdirection by Koenji/Hirata, but it's a very good analysis.

[u/No_Sound_1920]

very good btw did you mention when kiyo released the rumor he indirectly proved ryuen to be liar/not reliable source so when y1v7 came ryuen would give the information about kei being bullied in the past to the school nobody would trust ryuen

[u/[deleted]]

Yes W

[u/Alidokadri]

Yeah Rumor Strike is hella underrated.