General Tropes | Future Arc | Despair Arc | Hope Arc
- Anti-Villain: Lots of them. The only antagonist characters who aren't shown in a sympathetic light are Junko and the Hope's Peak Steering Committee. Even Tengan's sympathy depends on whether one can accept his actions, as his goal is still based on hope.
- Arc Welding: To insane degrees. Random incidents spread over the franchise are revealed to form a web that encompasses both main arcs.
- Art Evolution: The anime features a darker color palette more akin to the anime cutscenes in Ultra Despair Girls than the anime adaptation of the first game.
- Art-Shifted Sequel: The style of art used is drawn to look more mature than the previous incarnations. This gives the feeling that characters are taller and more mature even though Kazutaka Kodaka has stated they haven't actually grown taller as it is merely a style change.
- Back for the Finale: Lots of characters from across the franchise return for this final installment.
- Big Bad Ensemble: The entire show has Big Bads out the wazoo. In Side:Future, there's Munakata (who undergoes a Heel–Face Turn in episode 10) the attacker (who we find out isn't even a character, let alone a villain), the mastermind who's also Future Foundation's figurehead and Mitarai, while in Side:Despair, there's The Steering Committee, Junko and Chisa.
- Book Ends: Side:Despair starts with Chisa in a movie theater watching her death. Side:Future ends with Chisa, and this time Junko, in the movie theater again watching the events of the episode unfold.
- Black Blood: Averted. For the first time, the blood is very, very red. In Side:Future anyway; It's still pink in Side:Despair, even during the very messy and violent First Killing Game.
- Bloodier and Gorier: Oh very much yes. Not only has the Black Blood been averted for the first time in the franchise's history, but being a late night anime allows it to go much farther with the violence. To give an example, Sayaka was merely stabbed in the bathroom and the Imposter didn't have a visible wound and just a pool of blood. Yukizome, on the other hand, is graphically shown hung upside-down from a chandelier. Side:Despair, while still keeping the pink blood, is still very gruesome at points, particularly During the First Killing Game and the scene where Junko forces a reserve course student to cut off his own head with a hacksaw.
- Break the Cutie: Present in both Despair and Future. In Despair, we have the torture and Ultimate Despair-ification of Chisa, and the death of Chiaki being used to turn all of class 77 into Ultimate Despairs (with Mikan already being one at that point) and in Future we have Aoi and Makoto's reactions to the (apparent) death of Kyoko.
- The Cameo:
- Future Arc:
- Every dead member of the 78th class except Mukuro and Junko appear in Naegi's dream in episode 11.
- Despair Arc:
- Maizono is shown on a magazine that Nagito gives to Teruteru in episode 4.
- Yūto Kamishiro appears in episode 5. In the same episode, application papers with portraits of both Celestia Ludenberg and Kiyotaka Ishimaru also appear, and Makoto Naegi appears briefly, walking into the school building.
- Yasuke Matsuda appears briefly in episode 8, watching the "parade".
- Every character from DR1 is seen in Episode 11, locking themselves in the school.
- Future Arc:
- Casting Gag: Mostly a visual one, but Kenta Miyake's role as Great Gozu can be a gag from his role as Chief Bogo in the Japanese dub of Zootopia.
- While unconfirmed, the casting of Kanata Hongo (known for his acting and who has done virtually no voice acting) as Mitarai is most likely due to Hongo playing Makoto in the stage play adaptation of the first game. This makes his line about wanting to be more like Makoto more ironic.
- Toshiyuki Morikawa voicing Kyosuke Munakata might count as one if you realize that Morikawa has done another famous, well-known Kyosuke character... who's in a giant red robot and the last name is Nanbu... And gone Ax-Crazy post-Episode 5 like the aforementioned Kyosuke's alternate universe self (and largely because he didn't have his girlfriend around anymore). Munakata's appearance post-Episode 5 is also ironic considering Morikawa was also the original voice of one Charlie Nash.
- One of the first victims of the first Mutual Killing Game, Karen Kisaragi, was voiced by Honoka Inoue, kickstarting the killing game because she felt that her mother was in danger of being killed. Honoka Inoue is the only daughter of veteran seiyuu Kikuko Inoue (who later got casted as Kirumi Tojo), so casting her as Karen further boosts the feel of a desperate daughter whose mother is in extreme danger. This is reflected with Kirumi herself, who was driven to murder because she was the prime minister of Japan and she had to uphold her responsibilities no matter what, giving Inoue-san a feeling of desperation of her own.
- The English dub brings in members of the original game's English cast (who got replaced in the first anime's dub) such as Kaiji Tang and Erin Fitzgerald as Kizakura and Kimura to make up for their recastings. Notably Amanda Céline Miller voices the younger version of Kimura in Side: Future Episode 5 and like in the first game's dub, this isn't the first time she's shared the same character as Erin
.
- Cerebus Rollercoaster: Invoked, Side:Future begins to take a less grim and more action-packed tone around the same point in which things start going to hell in Side:Despair and Side:Hope has the most uplifting and hopeful tone of all the episodes.
- Darker and Edgier: Danganronpa 3 plays this viciously straight. No more funny antics and Black Comedy, this Deadly Game is a dead serious Ten Little Murder Victims scenario where people suffer and Bloodier and Gorier is the norm (with the iconic Black Blood gone completely), with the ever quirky Monokuma Demoted to Extra. And, despite initially looking Lighter and Softer, Side:Despair quickly becomes even worse, with scenes of violence that are legitimately horrific.
- Demoted to Extra: Pretty much all of the returning characters to varying degrees, with the exception of Naegi, Kirigiri, Asahina and Monomi in Side:Future and Hinata and Nanami in Side:Despair. This is especially notable of Monokuma and Komaeda, the Series Mascot and Breakout Character respectively, who here have much smaller roles.
- Doorstopper: A meta example. The material written by Kazutaka Kodaka is 200 pages in Microsoft Word. Bear in mind that this isn't the scripts.
- Evolving Credits: The Opening of Side: Future features the current survivor count, which naturally decreases with each death. The hypothetical deaths shown for each character also change between the first episode and the second onward: in the first episode, the characters are fully rendered with uncolored blood, while the later episodes feature silhouettes and garishly colored blood. Later episodes also feature slight changes in coloring and effects.
- In the first episode of Side: Despair, Chiaki appears in the opening as a silhouette. In the second episode, she is fully shown. Later, in episode 6, with Junko joining the school and Hajime turned into Izuru, the OP background went from white to purple and darker pastel colors were used, including showing class 77 with red eyes, as they had as Remnants of Despair. Not only that, but Izuru fully appears on the OP while Hajime has his image with lower opacity and interference.
- Eye Scream:
- In the first episode of Side:Future, Mikan Tsumiki (as a remnant of despair) is about to do this to some poor bastard, but Seiko Kimura manages to prevent it. In the fifth episode, a mutual attack between Tengan and Munakata results in Munakata slashing Tengan's throat open and Tengan forcing a metal bar through Munakata's right eye. At the end of the episode, he's seen with the ruined eye bandaged as part of an Evil Makeover that shows just how much he's losing it. The eleventh episode reveals that the Great Gozu stabbed his own eyes under the effects of the brainwash video.
- The sixth episode of Side:Despair has a very disturbing scene, where Junko Enoshima gouges out a trustee's eye (with a spoon no less) to bypass a retina scanner.
- Forced Orgasm: During the end of the Despair Arc Chisa's Brainwashing process involves Mukuro Ikusaba tempering with her brain with needles, affecting the pleasure center and forcing her to orgasm as she watches the Despair Video, thus equating her newfound pleasure into despair. It's very much played for horror, as we get close-up shots of Chisa's face, groin, and breasts as she vainly attempts to resist it.
- Fully Absorbed Finale: Being the Grand Finale, the anime in no way skirts on what to include. Everything, from the main games to obscure side-material gets included.
- Grand Finale: As the subtitle indicates, it is this to the Hope's Peak Saga.
- Heinousness Retcon: In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Junko announces that Izuru massacred the entire student council at Hope's Peak, leaving Hajime stunned. In The End of Hope's Peak High School, it's shown instead that Junko herself set up a killing game resulting in the student council murdering each other in a matter of hours, and proceeded to frame Izuru.
- Inconsistent Dub: Just like in the DR1 anime, Funimation chooses to stick with the original Japanese terms rather than the ones NISA uses in the games.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: To be expected, given its status as the Grand Finale to the Hope's Peak Saga:
- The teaser alone includes a mass of terms and images related to Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Danganronpa Zero and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, many of which are tied to spoilers from those installments. The first proper PV summarizes the entirety of the first two games.
- The main visual also spoils the fact that Makoto, Aoi, and Kyoko survive the first game.
- Monaka Towa's appearance at the end of Episode 4 is a major spoiler for Ultra Despair Girls. The other Warriors of Hope also appear in Episode 7, revealing that they survived their supposed executions in Absolute Despair Girls.
- Mukuro and Junko appearing in Side:Despair spoils a lot of the secrets in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.
- The fact that Side:Future and Side:Despair were being aired at the same time will spoil some moments in both arcs depending on what order you watch the arcs. Of course, both are supposed to be watched as such, and both ultimately lead into Side:Hope anyway.
- Love Hurts: Wouldn't be Danganronpa without this trope in play. For added fun, we have four couples this time.
- Nanami and Hinata: All Nanami's influence on Hinata ultimately does is add fuel to him becoming Kamukura. She then spends a year waiting for him until she finally meets him as Izuru, who personally states he doesn't remember her. He then watches her die, triggering some level of too-late recollection as he cries, and holds onto her hairpin in grief and memory.
- Munakata and Yukizome: Munakata losing Yukizome drives him insane. Then for added fun it's shown Yukizome was tortured into Despair during Side:Despair and has been spending the time between Side:Despair and Side:Future corrupting him into the man he is currently.
- Naegi and Kirigiri: Kirigiri willingly sacrifices herself, refusing to betray Naegi again leaving Naegi heartbroken. Subverted when it turns out at the end she didn't really die.
- Ruruka and Izayoi: Despite Izayoi's loyalty, Ruruka murders him so he can't betray her in the future. Izayoi still responds that he loves her, leaving Ruruka full of regret and self-loathing.
- Adding insult to injury, unrequited and platonic love are also used to the most hurtful degrees, such as Junko using Juzo's Unrequited Love for Munakata as a way to manipulate him and using the fact that Chiaki is the most loved person in the 77th Class to throw the rest of the class into despair.
- Non-Uniform Uniform: Of the 32 characters on both sides, only a handful (Naegi and Mitarai in Side:Future and Hinata, The Imposter, Nanami, Koizumi, Tsumiki and Sonia in Side:Despair) actually wear the proper uniform. Everyone else either wears the uniform customized or not at all.
- One Degree of Separation: Side:Despair reveals many of the new characters actually have connections to older ones; Yukizome was the homeroom teacher for Class-77-B, Mitarai was a member of Class-77-B and had his identity used by the Ultimate Imposter, Kizakura was best friends with Jin Kirigiri and so on.
- Psychic-Assisted Suicide: The "Gloomy Sunday" version of Monokuma Theater brainwashed its viewers to kill themselves. In Future Side, this is what actually caused all the killings by the "Attacker", with the victims being woken up during the sleep periods, and upon viewing the video on the monitor, the victims killed themselves. In Despair Side, this is revealed to be first sent by Junko herself to the Reserve Course students during The Parade, which caused all two thousand something students to kill themselves.
- Retcon:
- Hiyoko was shown in one of the Twilight Syndrome photos to be wearing the normal uniform. In the anime, she wears a kimono, and wears her hair differently. Additionally, the events of Twilight Syndrome play out much differently than in the game: (Sato never confesses her murdering Natsumi to Mahiru, Mahiru never helps her cover anything up, and Sato's body is found after three days instead of one). It's possible Monokuma lied like
Word of God says, but it's still a noticeable discrepancy. - Nagito explicitly states in Chapter 0 of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair that this is the first time he's ever met Izuru. Episode 8 of Side: Despair has Izuru confronting and shooting him, which needs the Hand Wave that Izuru just erased both their memories of the event.
- Episode 11 of Side: Future shows the events directly after the Gainax Ending of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, with what exactly the surviving members of the 78th class first saw upon leaving the school and the result of the Tragedy on the world. Toko in DR:AE and the emails in SDR2 of the 78th class Survivors becoming FF members implied that the Survivors were surviving in the hostile environment of post-Tragedy Earth for a while on their own before they finally were found and joined Future Foundation. However, according to this episode, Munakata and Tengan already had an FF Rescue Squad lined up to arrive at Hope's Peak the moment Naegi and the others opened the door, meaning they were picked up almost immediately upon them escaping, contradicting what other sources said prior.
- Hiyoko was shown in one of the Twilight Syndrome photos to be wearing the normal uniform. In the anime, she wears a kimono, and wears her hair differently. Additionally, the events of Twilight Syndrome play out much differently than in the game: (Sato never confesses her murdering Natsumi to Mahiru, Mahiru never helps her cover anything up, and Sato's body is found after three days instead of one). It's possible Monokuma lied like
- Rotating Protagonist: The main characters jump in and out of focus depending on the situation. Side:Future has Makoto, Kyoko and Munakata as main characters, while Side:Despair has Hinata, Junko, Nanami, Mitarai and Yukizome.
- Serial Escalation: In more ways than one. Most notably, prior DR instalments stuck to having about 2-3 main characters for brevity's sake. DR3 has eight main characters (Makoto, Kyoko, Munakata, Yukizome, Hajime/Izuru, Nanami, Junko and Mitarai), all of whom drop in and out of focus as it suits the narrative.
- To Be Continued: Both the Future and Despair sides end with the message "Continued on the hope side" following The Stinger.
- Torture Porn: The anime has quite a lot of disturbing scenes, especially in Side: Despair, with Nanami's execution taking the cake.
- True Companions: Naegi and the other surviving members of the 78th Class, the 74th class trio and, thanks to the influence of Yukizome and Nanami, Class 77-B.
- Two Guys and a Girl: The two guys are Munakata and Sakakura, and the girl is Yukizome. However, by all appearances, Munakata is the "girl" that the "guys" Yukizome and Sakakura have a rivalry over. Side:Despair Episode 6 reveals Sakakura's deal to be something else entirely.
