All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!
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In general
Franchise-wide
- Junko in general, to an extent. There's no ambiguity on how heinous her actions are among the fanbase, but she's either a vile Hate Sink or an entertaining walking meme factory on par with the likes of the Joker or Dio Brando, with little or no middle ground. Not even her monstrous actions in Danganronpa 3's Despair Arc completely flips this.
- The escalating grit and edge factor with each successive game, and attendant attempts to play with the "hope overcomes despair" motif of the first game. Those who like them argue that these things deepen and enhance a clunky first title's relative simplicity and bring maturity and nuance to the issues they explore. Those who don't argue that these things are only "mature" in the most crass, tasteless way, resulting in a setting too hopeless and bleak to bother investing in anymore, and that attempts to play with the "hope versus despair" themes almost always result in an incoherent word-salad of esoteric concepts and Meaningless Meaningful Words. There's also a variety of sub-camps that disagree about which entry, exactly, went too far and caused the series to lose its way; that disagreement starts with basically every game and spin-off after the first.
Main installments
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
- There are a fair amount of people who were disappointed when it was revealed that Junko Enoshima was the mastermind. This might be partly because the JUNKOS meme became a Discredited Meme on Something Awful around the time that the Let's Play reached the last trial, and people had been arguing for and against its increasing credibility.
- The anime of the game is slowly causing this. Some fans find the adaptation disappointing since it has scenes that look like they came directly out of the game (such as executions and trial scenes) and there is nothing new, not to mention they cut down on many character-establishing scenes, while others enjoy it and are happy that it is so faithful and occasionally add up extra scenes that enhances the existing scenes (such as Leon's breakdown and desperate attempt to escape, or Kiyotaka's utter breakdown at Mondo being guilty and not defending himself).
- The Funimation dub takes it to a new level, mainly by replacing the main cast (bar Bryce Papenbrook) with their voice actors. The explanation as for why is that they hold the rights of the anime before the game was a success in the west. However, because Funimation didn't shy away of hiring the original voice actors from other adaptations (Neptunia, BlazBlue, Disgaea) that still makes people wonder why they didn't recast the original voice actors after the fact. This is not also helped that, with the exception of Jessie James Grelle as Byakuya and Felicia Angelle as Aoi, the replacement cast sounded like a goofy caricature of how they sounded in the game's english dub.
- This however, is explained further in the Blu-ray commentary track. Bryce Papenbrook was available to reprise his role by chance; he was already at Funimation to record for Attack on Titan, and therefore was available for the dub. However, the scheduling conflicts and cost of travel to bring every other voice actor would have resulted in the production going over-budget, so the decision was made to recast the entire dub sans Makoto.
- The fashion sense of the Big Bad! Some think Junko fully deserves the title of the Ultimate Fashionista, and find her very attractive. Others dislike her wardrobe and label her a Fashion-Victim Villain. It might have something to do with both a translation issue and a culture clash issue. Junko in the original Japanese wasn't a Fashionista so much as she was a Gyaru who was extremely popular. And since Gyaru is itself a subculture in Japan, it makes sense that it wouldn't be considered a popular look in mainstream American sensibilities.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF. Some people praise it for dwelling more on the relationship between Junko and Mukuro, as well as making the latter an Ascended Extra. Others accuse it of making Mukuro a Creator's Pet.
- The pink blood, especially in the anime. People who aren't familiar with the game thinks that it ruins the suspense and it's not as scary as real blood, while fans of the game (and the franchise in general) accept it and see it as stylistic choice for censorship.
- The various differences in each translation, between the Let's Play, the fan translation, and the official localization. It's nigh-impossible to find people agreeing on which is better.
- Hoo boy, to say Chihiro's gender is controversial among Western fans is an understatement! Like Naoto Shirogane before him, there are a group of fans who prefer to see Chihiro as a trans girl. Even considering how Chihiro's arc ties in to Japanese sexism and gender roles, fans still heavily disagree on whether such context translates well to Western ideas of gender, if it's even a valid explanation in the original game, or if there are really are implications of being a trans girl in Chihiro's arc. Most of the transphobia accusations stem from the Unsettling Gender-Reveal scene, which happens before we get context for why Chihiro is dressed as a girl and sees the entire class instantly switch to referring to Chihiro with male pronouns solely on the basis of his physical sex. This has lead to huge arguments among Western fans, not helped by the "Chihiro must be read as male per game text" side frequently glossing over the struggles of Japan's transgender population (if not outright erasing them) in an effort to prove their point. For this reason and others, Chihiro's gender identity remains a touchy subject even to this day.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
- The survivors. Unlike the other two main games, which push for a True Companions dynamic with the characters who survive the killing game that is developed over the course of game, the survivors here are for the most part never given much in a way of developing a strong dynamic or substantial focus, with the story instead focusing mostly on Hajime's internal struggle. While fans generally agree Fuyuhiko was a smart choice as a survivor, given his large amount of Character Development, if Sonia, Kazuichi and Akane deserved their position as survivors (and who might have been wiser options) in their place is something frequently debated with by them.
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
- The Motivation Machine Mini-Game. Its defenders see it as a quite sobering look into Kotoko's mindset, warped by her frequent child sexual abuse. Its detractors see it as an utterly tasteless sequence that essentially treats a girl sexually assaulting another girl as a joke. Needless to say, bring it up at your own risk.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School
- Mitarai's brainwashing techniques. Either it's an effective Mind Screwdriver to a number of old plot points, or it's a lazy cop-out explanation that diminishes the power of the Big Bad, makes the 77th Class' feelings and backstories feel meaningless and contradicts previously established canon
◊, albeit canon that was said by Junko, a known liar. Those who dislike them argue that prior to their introduction, it was stated that Junko used More than Mind Control to convert people to despair, and making it so she merely uses brainwashing absolves the Remnants of Despair from guilt, deteriorating their characters and cheapening the message that the game established, as well as making Junko less of a charismatic villain. The rest point out that even for someone as powerful as Junko, it would have been unrealistic for her to personally break the minds of thousands or millions of people through simple rhetoric or terrorism (although there are others who, while they agree that brainwashing would be necessary for the masses, think it shouldn't have factored into Class 77); more Doylist-minded commentators point out that effectively portraying the gradual fall into despair of fifteen separate students would have been impossible in just eleven episodes. Others have noted that the previous games have outright stated that the Remnants were indeed brainwashed through unknown means until now, as this post shows here. That it basically takes a plot point from Danganronpa Togami (a much hated spin-off) doesn't help. - There are two views on Side:Hope among the fanbase: either it was a good way to keep the fans happy, or a bad example of Pandering to the Base that came across as a cheesy fanfic, thanks to many divisive decisions such as Class 77 (excluding Chiaki) being resurrected (defenders of this idea point out the ending of the second game had already set this up, with the survivors staying on the island to work on restoring their friends who died in the simulation back to life), with the cast having stayed on the island to work on , Kyoko's death revealed as just having been yet another fake-out, and Hope's Peak Academy being re-opened, either creating a Broken Aesop or offering the school a chance at redemption. A third camp also feels that if Kodaka was going to go for a Happy Ending, he should have gone all the way and brought back Chiaki and the Future Foundation branch leaders as well, since reviving only Kyoko and the Remnants of Despair gave only Makoto and Mitarai a happy ending while screwing Munakata over completely. Bringing up Side:Hope in general is a good way to start a very heated debate.
- The English dub is also a source of heated arguments over fans. While the general consensus is more positive than the first game's anime, a major contenptation point was how they brought back the surviving cast of the first game (sans Jason Wishnov and Erika Harlacher) and not have them reprise the role they do in the game when that's exactly what they did with the majority of the cast of Goodbye Despair and Ultra Despair Girls, only darrining those who can't come back one way or another (Cherami Leigh was considering coming back as Komaru, but couldn't due to schedule issues). While some people gave Funimation some slack because they at least remember that they were in the game and that Kaiji Tang and Erin Fitzgerald are playing some major roles as their original characters, other wonder why they aren't returning as the characters they were playing in their 20+ hours game (and in Touko's case, being in two games).
Spin-offs
Danganronpa Zero
- The book split fans pretty evenly. Plenty of fans like the book, seeing it as a well written entry in the franchise that clears up certain plot points from the first game and opening later plot threads for the franchise while focusing on one of the most complex relationships in the franchise. Others hate the book, citing the unlikable characters, relentlessly bleak tone and the massive plot holes.
Danganronpa Togami
- The book has received a very mixed reception among Japanese fans. Some like it due to providing an interesting perspective of an alluded to event, introducing a variety of interesting new characters and providing an exhilarating story to boot. Others have been less favorable, common complaints being Yuya Satou Running the Asylum, his infamous Small Name, Big Ego attitude towards the work, the work being very different to Kodaka and Kitagawa's writing styles, Byakuya being Out of Focus in a story supposed to be about him, the retconning of several established elements and the Cliffhanger to the first volume being giving no actual payoff to many plot points and characters.
