Reasons why Haruka (MILGRAM) is innocent (real not clickbait!!!111!!11!!).

Firstly, who is Haruka?

Sakurai Haruka, also known as prisoner 001 is a character from a music project called MILGRAM, started by DECO*27. He is one of the prisoners (obviously) within MILGRAM, voiced by Horie Shun. All of the prisoners in MILGRAM are trialled for different murders they've committed, including Haruka (but he's so innocent and he did nothing wrong trust).

Okay, now that that's over, time to rant.

Why is he Innocent?

To understand why he is innocent (he is), you need to understand his character (not really but I like writing about him so I'm going to do it anyway). 

He's a very quiet and overall timid character at the beginning, in early interrogations, he would only ever answer Es (the prison guard) with minimal words, etc. Although, over time he became more talkative. He's an overall liked character among the other (10) prisoners Es, probably mostly due to his gentle and soft demeanour. 

He's just very likable (not biased I swear).

I would go more in-depth but it's 1 a.m., I have school tomorrow (or today I guess) and I need to get this done otherwise I will lose my sanity.

Moving onto the two songs that are currently released, since the 3rd trial song still isn't out. The first one clearly shows his low self-esteem as a child, which is something kind of shown across all of his appearances in the project, even in the song Undercover, any appearance of him shows him looking very timid and nervous. 

This low self-esteem was probably due to his mother, assuming so considering that both of his songs are about her to some degree. Even if she isn't the direct cause of his self-image issues, she's probably a contributor. It's safe to assume (given what's shown in the music videos, plus how Haruka acts at times) that his mother's treatment of him was far from nice.

The first problem I ran into whilst researching this properly is... who the fuck did he actually kill? At first, I thought it might have been his mother, most of his character seems to relate to his mother, and given how his personality can lean onto the more childish side (explained later), I assumed it was that. But, within the first MV, he's shown to be with a girl watching the fireworks when he was a child and when I looked more into that, I realised that there was a decently high chance that he could have killed that girl. This gets (kinda) further supported by the scenes later in the song, showing Haruka in a forest with bloodied hands, looking down at them (and probably at whoever the fuck he just killed).

So, It would make extremely high sense if he had trauma revolving around his childhood, specifically around his neglectful mother and whatever happened to that girl in his first MV since in Undercover, children's toys are on the floor of his room in one of the scenes he's in. This, and also his first trial song, Weakness, shows off a lot of his childhood, even the majority of the music video showed Haruka when he was a child, rather than the 17-year-old he is now. There's also the way he speaks (in both interrogations and his songs) which is similar to the way a child speaks, at least mindset-wise, which makes me think that his psychological development may've been (at least a little) stunted from the trauma he'd faced, which is the reason why he can be shown as acting childishly.

This leads to my point, Haruka did what he did because he wanted attention and to be loved, his mother didn't love him as much as he needed (or maybe even at all) and he was desperate for that approval and validation, which led him to do what he did. He even enjoys being in MILGRAM because it gives him attention, especially when most (if not all) of the others think relatively positively of him.

This would also make sense as to why his relationship with Muu (another prisoner) is so strong. He sees her as a mother figure, even going as far as to threaten to kill Es if they don't forgive Muu for her sins. She would give him attention and even give him gifts, such as the hairpins and clothes Haruka was wearing in season two.

This gets even further backed up by his second trial song, All-knowing and All-agony. The song is very clearly about a need for validation and attention, to be loved (especially since it literally says it in the lyrics) and how he'd do anything in order to get his mother to love him again. He acknowledges what he did was wrong, even saying in the song that if he could reset his life, he would.

Shit, it's 2am now, I gotta wrap this shit up. So, basically, in short, he's innocent (I said so). I think that at the time of the murder he committed, he wasn't thinking, he killed her (either the girl in the first MV or his mother... I'm still not too sure yet, although I'm leaning towards the girl since his mother is still shown in the second MV where it depicts Haruka where he's older). it would make sense, considering that the time he committed his crime (by the looks of it) was when he was a child. This poor boy needs a fucking therapist I swear to god.

Anyway, I would rant more but it's late and I need to sleep, byee.