Headscratchers / Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School

Danganronpa Main Headscratchers Page
Main installments: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc | Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair | Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School | Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Spin-offs: Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

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Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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Future Arc

• It's a plot point in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair that the Future Foundation initially took in the Remnants of Despair not knowing that they were evil, just thinking that they were survivors of Hope's Peak Academy. Why, then, do we see them engaging in all-out brawls with Foundation members during the exposition at the start of the first episode of Future-arc? Did the Foundation forget what the Despairs looked like, or are we already headed into Retcon territory?
  • This was information given by the false Makoto, so it could've been a case of Unreliable Narrator.
  • Or perhaps they didn't know what they looked like until later, and believed they WERE innocent Hope's Peak students
    • They made no attempt to hide their faces when they were fighting the Foundation. Hard to believe that they would've just forgotten what their enemies looked like, especially considering that they had photos of them from when they were still active (these ones; I don't see how those pictures would've been taken after they had been apprehended). And this goes double for the Remnants whose jobs were to be public leaders and faces of the Despairs, like Fuyuhiko, Sonia, Ibuki and Hiyoko.
    • Perhaps Makoto didn't show them who it was that he had captured? Thus, they wouldn't know that they were the Remnants of Despair.
    • In the third episode of Side: Future, Makoto claims he knew who the Remnants were when he took them in, but he took them in because, being the Wide-Eyed Idealist he is, he believed they could be reformed.
    • Taking into consideration the fact that it was Fake!Makoto who said that they didn't know at first and that he says he knew right away in episode 3, it seems as though Junko was lying/filling in the blanks incorrectly due to ignorance, and Makoto simply told the rest of the Foundation that he found some Hope's Peak survivors, and conveniently didn't mention which ones (which Foundation found out a little bit later, as evidenced by the email sent to him). Mystery solved.
    • Episode 11 made this even more confusing, as it was stated that the 77th Class faked their death.
    • Yeah, but they have met with them before, like it was shown on the very start of "Side:Future", so they would know that they could have faked their own death and know they were alive all along. Plus, Makoto might as well have never informed anything about the ones he rescued, he clearly intended to use the Neo World Program in secret, because he knew Future Foundation was against it.
• The Remnants of Despair, according to the end of Danganronpa 2, replaced their own body parts with those of Junko. It's heavily implied that all of them, except for probably Izuru, did at least a little of this (we, at the very least, know that Nagito and Fuyuhiko did). Why, then, is there next to no indication that Peko, Akane or Nekomaru did so? They were able to fight several Foundation members, and I fail to see how they could have if they had replaced their body parts with those of a corpse.
  • Recall that the false Makoto, planted by AI Junko, was the one giving the exposition at that point in the game. Unreliable Narrator becomes a significant possibility.
  • Not an unfounded suggestion. While the Ultimate Despairs have been responsible for a lot of horribly violent things, Junko could've exaggerated many of their activities just to induce more despair on the five survivors. Nagito and Fuyuhiko may have been the only ones to actually transplant Junko's body parts onto themselves. In fact, it's possible that some of things described by the fake Makoto, like the Remnants of Despair engaging in Necrophilia with Junko's corpse, may never have happened at all.
  • A distinct possibility, although the prospect of having to be in horribly mangled bodies was a major factor influencing their decision of what to do at the end of SDR2. If it was all (or even mostly) a lie, Real!Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya (who knew the truth of their bodies) would've called out Junko's lie for what it was.
  • It's possible the fight scene simply happened before Junko's death.
    • Unlikely, taking into account Fuyuhiko's eye.
  • Didn't he say some of them mutilated their own bodies and not all of them?
• In Future Episode 8 it's revealed that Kizakura's forbidden action is opening his left hand. So does that mean he had his hand closed the entire time even before he actually knew what his forbidden action was?
  • My best guess to that is that the forbidden actions didn't take effect until people could actually see them.
  • "Opening" your hand requires it to be closed first, so it's possible that it started out open, but once he'd closed it for whatever reason he wasn't allowed to open it again.
• What was the entire point of Kyoko not telling Makoto about her NG code? Did she just not want to "betray" him like she did during the killing game they were once in?
  • Kyoko knew that, if she told him, he would try to kill himself to save her.
• Why didn't Bandai try closing his eyes when violence first broke out? I know he wanted to help the victims, but getting poisoned wouldn't have achieved that anyway.
  • Quite simply, he didn't have the time to. It happened fairly quickly, and he might not have been able to react quickly enough.
  • Even if he did close his eyes, there's a possibility that even hearing violence can also be considered witnessing it anyway.
• In the flashback of the trash heap scene from the first game, why does Naegi look exactly like his current DR3 self when at that point, he should look younger and have longer hair?
  • To be fair, the characters aren't actually that much older. It hasn't been too long since the first game as of Future Arc, and the only reason they appear significantly older is a stylistic change.
• When did Munakata find out that Sakakura was blackmailed by Junko?
  • He didn't. He just knew that Juzo lied to him about Junko being innocent. He didn't know why but, when put in the game after listening to Tengan, he assumed he was a despair and killed him as a result.

• So if the entire point of the killing game was to get Mitarai to broadcast his hope video, why was he even a participant in the first place? He could've been killed in any number of ways which would've prevented the video from being broadcast. They could've just taken him out of the building while everyone else was knocked out.
  • It seems like the intent was that Mitarai wouldn't arrive until after everyone had been knocked out and moved. Then presumably, he would have been made to watch the game from another location. Just because it isn't being broadcast worldwide doesn't mean it isn't being broadcast somewhere
  • Because Mitarai was never supposed to be present in the first place. The show clearly points out that Tengan was genuinely surprised and shocked to see that Mitarai attended the meeting, and at that point it was too late to stop the game.
  • The question is why Tengan never moved Ryota out of the building after the game started, and everyone was being moved underground. They never asked why Ryota was originally a participant, because he wasn't originally a participant.
  • Because if he did, most people's natural conclusion was that Ryota was the mastermind, and would have banded together to kill him rather than killing each other.
  • Even if they did jump to that conclusion, there'd be nothing they could do about it. Hard to kill someone who is outside of the cage you're locked in.
  • Yeah, but the point is they wouldn't be fighting each other since they "know" who the traitor/mastermind is. And this entire plan hinges on them killing each other to showcase Ryota the hopelessness of the Future Foundation.
• On the topic of Tengan, what the hell was his plan? His plan required a ton of variables to work, and it was INCREDIBLY risky. Unlike Komaeda, he doesn't have the luck to pull it off. For Tengan's plan to work, Ryota had to stay alive through the entirety of the game. He had to hope that Ryota wasn't too close to a monitor, never got lynched by any number of fanatics, and never tried using his video. And he had no idea when the game would end. That is a lot of needless risk when he probably could have just tried ASKING him to use the hope video! Plus, trying to kill EVERY member of the FF except for Ryota doesn't make sense. Why kill them all?
  • It seems that Tengan never intended for Ryota to be part of the game in the first place. Like above, the idea was probably that he would see the game, but never actually play it. Tengan just threw him in when he popped up at the last second, as making him vanish would be too suspicious. As for asking, Ryota might not have gone through with it without the despair. He had the video, but never used it until Tengan pushed him. Finally, this is the reason he was killing the FF, to push Ryota to the brink and make him decide that mass hope brainwashing was the way to go (and to prevent any survivors from interfering). After all, in a world of enforced hope, there isn't a need for a Future Foundation in the first place.
  • There's also the fact that Future Foundation itself is really problematic inside its walls. First of all, you have Munakata with Juzo and Chisa (even if she is Brainwashed and Crazy) where he starts questioning Tengan's motives and, more importantly, his authority. Add to that - Seiko also has Undying Loyalty towards Munakata. Next and most importantly, you have Ruruka who, along with Izayoi, were revealed to try and recruit younger members for their factions so they can separate and become an independent organization (as revealed by Kizakura in Episode 9 - there was even a supposed power play). Finally, Kizakura, Great Gozu and Bandai were willing to listen to Naegi who ultimately had a firm but different view to what Tengan had with Mitarai (which is cooperation and listening to others is what makes genuine hope rather than brainwashing). In the end, it became problematic for Tengan due to the stances everyone else took, so he ultimately pushed Mitarai to carry through with his plans. In a way, I do think Tengan's plan is actually a huge Xanatos Gambit: get rid of people who are problematic to him, get rid of an organization who would no longer be of any use for the future society, and make sure the world no longer succumbs to despair by being brainwashed. Though in all honesty, I wish they showed his motives much better and more clearly.
  • On a related note, how would Mitarai see the killing game if he wasn't there? And why did Tengan give him an NG code that forbade him from using his talent?
    • He's an idiot that didn't think his plan through in the slightest?
  • I suppose that the plan actually covered many things, but was also quite flawed. Tengan probably knew about the main threats to his plan, namely Munakata and Juzo threatening to kill Mitarai, Kirigiri and Naegi uncovering the whole thing, and also Chisa and The Reformed Remnants of Despair for their own reasons, and he took care of them, even if eventually he failed in most of it. We mustn't forget that Tengan was in control of the whole system behind the plan, so it´s not much of a stretch to think that he ensured that Mitarai's bracelet would still get him to sleep even if he was close to a screen, rendering him efectively inmune to the main cause of death of the whole game. Of course, that's mere speculation, but it would be the most logical solution. Also, while anyone else would probably remain looking at the screen as it plays the mind control suicide sequence just for the sake of curiosity (I suppose that it's hard to not watch a screen where someone approaches you and tells you that you are the killer), Mitarai would probably see it coming, as the video and the whole mind control animation was partly his own work in the first place. Tengan probably ensured that Chisa was the first victim to avoid having further problems (taking account that Chisa is a mole and the one that gave him the video in the first place), and also to ensure that Munakata and Juzo would react to the whole thing and threaten Naegi, bringing Tengan an excuse to disable/tie Juzo and fight against Munakata, and keep Naegi alive only for a while (all of this while Kirigiri slowly aproaches death). Probably, Tengan wanted to get Munakata to die with him, and probably expected Juzo to be unable to cope with both Munakata's and Chisa's death and give up after that (specially since Juzo had the option of heping Munakata, but instead followed Naegi under Munakata orders, making him probably feel guilty). Sadly for Tengan, Munakata survived and he died, but he (making usage of Munakata's dislike for Naegi and paranoia about Chisa and Juzo having betrayed him) made use of his last words to still ensure that Munakata would at least have a reason to pursuit Naegi for the rest of the game, and fight Juzo. Tengan also intended to get everyone to distrust Naegi, and ensure that either Naegi or Kirigiri would be dead by the 4th cycle (which worked, for a while, but Naegi still finally got to uncover how the whole thing worked using Kirigiri's information), while also attempting to get rid of the Reformed Remnants of Despair (hey, we got them once, getting them again will be a cakewalk, right?). Probably the plan of Tengan wasn't to kill all the Future Foundation, but instead having a sizable proportion of them killed so that by the time the whole thing is uncovered, the remaining ones would be so reduced or so broken that they would be unable to stop Mitarai, and that's what ended happening, as the only thing that finally stoped Mitarai were the Reformed Remnants of Despair reaching him and getting him to stop the countdown. Sure, it was a plan that had many flaws and got derailed in many ways, but it still only failed at the last moment due to only one factor.
  • I suppose it's possible the killing game was being recorded (hidden cameras in the monitors, maybe?) and would automatically be broadcast once it was over. It wasn't broadcast live so that the rest of the Future Foundation wouldn't know about it and mount a rescue mission. As for Ryota's NG code, if he could brainwash the participants to stop them from killing each other, it would kind of defeat the purpose of the killing game to convince him to broadcast it to the whole world.
• So what's the deal with the Survivor Count? It started out with 16 people, so we started out with an extra person from the beginnig. Episode 10 showed 6 people left on the counter: Juzo, Munakata, Asahina, Naegi, Mitarai, and the extra slot that has been there from the beginning of the game, so it couldn't have stood for Kirigiri. But if it didn't stand for Kirigiri, there would have had to be someone else in the building who we never got to see for some reason, and I think that's unlikely, because it'd be weird to leave any loose threads in the supposed Grand Finale, unless they'd somehow tie into Danganronpa V3. I also doubt it's Hagakure because it counted survivors and he wasn't part of the game, and therefore could not be surviving it. I'd buy an Unreliable Narrator explanation if we had ever been given any indication that there even was a narrator, but neither Monokuma, Junko, nor Chisa mention or draw any attention to any sort of survivor count. Did I miss anything, because otherwise I'm really confused.
  • Honestly, the counter seems to be a Red Herring. That's the only logical explanation at this point.
  • It's Hagakure.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the count is shown in the show itself, only in the intro. As such, perhaps it doesn't exist in-universe, and is solely for the viewer's benefit. Therefore, the 16th slot could easily be for Hagakure, as the intro presents him as though he's part of the game even though he really isn't.
• Do we know exactly when Munakata searched Chisa's corpse and found the photos?
  • When he stabbed her.
• Why wasn't Togami with Kirigiri, Naegi, Asahina and Hagakure? I understand that Kirigiri is the head of the 14th branch and would need someone to run it while she was away, but shouldn't both her and Togami also be seen as traitors by the Future Foundation? They entered the Neo World program just as Naegi did.
  • They entered it at the end, but Naegi was the one to set the whole thing up. The council likely would consider them to be unwitting accomplices at most.
• How and why did Asahina have a fake knife and tomato juice on her to make it look like she died? Based on her confusion, she didn't do it herself, and considering how the monitors induce a very one-track mind towards suicide, it's unlikely Gozu did it while he was awake before killing himself. Not to mention, aside from creating a shocking cliffhanger for viewers, there doesn't seem to be any reason for anyone to have done it.
• Some of the forbidden actions seem strange. Lots of them are clearly just meant to make it more likely they'll die (like Makoto not running in the halls making it harder for him to escape attackers), induce paranoia and make them want to kill each other (like Ruruka not being allowed to let anyone leave), or just be something they might do accidentally and die as a result (like Kizakura not being able to open his left hand). But a couple of them feel downright arbitrary:
  • Izayoi can't put food in his mouth. Sure, this gives him a time limit of sorts, but why only him? Not to mention it wouldn't really start to cause him distress until long into the game - heck, everything we saw happened over only about twelve hours.
  • Seiko can't let anyone step on her shadow. This seems incredibly difficult to keep track of, even for the mastermind, and pretty much just incentivizes her to stay away from people. Ruruko only determined it by pure luck.
  • Ryota can't use his talent. His talent is Ultimate Animator. Under what circumstance would he, in the midst of a killing game at a secluded headquarters, start animating?
  • Chisa can't let Munakata die. Ignoring how she dies before anything with that can happen, why would the mastermind give a participant reason to prevent a killing?
• Izayoi didn't put food in his mouth - Ruruko did. Why did that count?

Despair Arc

• What exactly is the timeline of events for this? In the original game, Junko mentions that class 78 lost 2-years worth of memories, putting them back to when they entered Hope's Peak. DR Zero puts class 78 at their second year. Zero includes the events of Izuru Kamukura and the first Mutual Killing Game and Matsuda and Chiro helping build the Neo World Program. But the Despair Arc mentions briefly that class 78 hasn't been scouted out fully yet, implying that this is class 77's first year at Hope's Peak. Yet Hajime is already agreeing to the project and we're already expecting a lot of drama to go down.
  • I, uh, does anyone else understand this timeline better? I'm a little lost.
  • Here's a translation of the official timeline on the DR3 website. I hope it helps you with any doubts.
• In Despair Episode 5 we learn some things about the Ultimate Impostor, specifically how they became Mitarai. But now I'm wondering was the Impostor always part of class 77? Did no one notice they went from Togami to Mitarai because no one ever showed up for class? If so, what class were they originally apart of? Or, was Mitarai part of class 77 and the Impostor switched their class to better mimic Mitarai's schedule? We know from SDR2 that the official school paperwork shows them as the Impostor. Did Chisa know the Impostor was not Mitarai? So many questions...
  • Perhaps worth noting that there is an extra empty desk in their classroom.
  • It's likely that the two of them first met before class started. It's not very likely that the two of them could have switched or have one of them simply show up (without either of them attending before) without someone noticing, especially given Mahiru and Fuyuhiko's attitude. The paperwork from SDR2 was for the Remnants (and apparently Chiaki) specifically, so Ryota's wouldn't be there. As for Chisa knowing... That's still up in the air. Although the only logical options are that she didn't know about the imposter and was duped with the rest of the class, or that she knew but wanted him to tell them on his own, we have no indication which, if either, is fact.
• It's one thing to be able to program various talents into a person as a lot of talents have similar baseline attributes (A good student council president, gang leader, and yakuza boss all require good leadership skills and charisma, for example). It's another to be able to program something as irrational and uncontrollable as luck. So how did Steering Committee manage to program the Lucky Student talent into Izuru?
  • It's never quite explained exactly how "talents" work, nor how exactly they were implanted into Izuru.
  • Komaeda's luck itself doesn't make any sense - it's mainly to show that he's a foil to Naegi, in that Naegi didn't have good luck normally or anything, he was just some kid, while Komaeda was chosen because he actually had luck as a talent. In other words, it's mainly symbolic. Izuru is also a very symbolic character, because he represents the ideals of Hope's Peak. It's been implied that "talent" isn't something that actually exists, and it's merely part of Hope's Peak's system. After all, the FF branch heads are considered "former" ultimates, and many times it's been shown that ultimates aren't actually literally the best at what they do, they're just good enough for the school to take notice. So this is all dealing with very nebulous and symbolic things - it can't really be explained literally. If you consider that Danganronpa deals a lot with the clashing of different ideals, it doesn't really need to be explained literally.
  • Old laptops do not have enough processing power to fit an AI as advanced as Alter Ego. Seeing the future also isn't real. Nobody has gotten three Michelin stars in their teens. You can't kill the yakuza with tennis balls. Preteens do not make good soldiers or assassins. Nobody would let a teenager become Prime Minister. Most of Miu's inventions are impossible, et cetera. It's an anime guys. It's not realistic, so just relax.
• Yukizome got corrupted long before the first killing game, and clearly had no problem with murdering people to spread despair...so why didn't she kill Munakata before now? It can't have been that she was waiting to take out the entire FF in one stroke, because she couldn't have foreseen (at that time) the circumstances under which they would all be gathered together in the tower.
  • Why would she? She could get a lot more out of manipulating him. It might be her fault that he's such an extremist, for example, and there could be any number of other advantages to keeping him around.
    • In addition to that, it might have been to keep him around to see his despair when he realizes what was really going on. The photos were pretty dangerous to keep around if that wasn't the reason.
    • More or less confirmed by episode 11, in that Chisa proposed Munakata to form Future Foundation so that he can fall into deepest despair.
• Junko suggests the reason she's obsessed with despair is because her analytical abilities make life boring, while despair is something that's unpredictable. But what's so unpredictable about despair? If someone suffers a setback, crisis, or trauma and has their means of alleviation cut off, they feel despair. That's basically all Junko does to people. If anything Junko should feel excitement when people rally in the face of impossible odds, since that's far less certain.
  • Therein lies the point of Naegi's speech at the end of DR1 and why it drove her to kill herself: she realized pretty quickly that even hope cannot be predicted like she expected. When Kodaka isn't writing her like a Saturday morning cartoon villain, it's pretty clear to see how tragic she really is. She's just a kid that is incredibly intelligent and has deluded herself (likely because of mental illness) that the only enjoyment she can get out of life being so smart is to torture and massacre people. She's likely afraid of being complacent, afraid of being happy, afraid of opening up to people.
  • She is addicted to emotional self-harm, and projects it on others both to continue the self-sabotage (note that she reserves the worst fate for her classmates and sister) and to prove that, to quote Batman, "deep down, everyone's as ugly as you." It also must be remembered that part of what makes her worldview interesting to her is the Insane Troll Logic of it all; hoping for despair, hurting the people she genuinely cares for, and sabotaging her own plans while still wanting them to succeed. An ideology based on hope is completely reasonable; you believe things can be better and you try to make that happen. Despair-obsessed Junko can't predict herself, which makes living day-to-day easier for her.