Literature / Danganronpa Togami

Byakuya-sama is God

Released in late 2015, Danganronpa Togami is a three-part Light Novel set in the Danganronpa universe, written by Yuya Satou.

Living as the heir to the Togami Conglomerate, Byakuya Togami is suddenly attacked while on a trip to Prague with his biographer, a fellow student at Hope's Peak Academy referred to as "Blue Ink". Having his identity (and clothes) stolen from him, Byakuya listens as the imposter announces on live broadcast that, should the world not kill him in 24 hours, he will Take Over the World. As the world descends into chaos with the propagation of the mysterious "Despair Book", it's up to Byakuya and Blue Ink to escape assassins and uncover the truth.

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Danganronpa Togami provides examples of:

• Anyone Can Die: As is the norm for the franchise. Over the course of the first volume, the Mystery Club, the Director and (possibly) Hiroyuki all bite it, and Satomi nearly dies too. By the end of Volume 3, Hiroyuki and Yuika are dead for real, as is Suzuhiko.
• Ascended Extra: In the original game, Satomi Aoba was just a nameless member of Sayaka Maizono's idol group. This series has her as an important character.
• Asshole Victim: The majority of the Togami siblings in Volume 2, with the exception of Asagao and Ichirou, but most especially Eyumi, Hiru, Takaya and Kazuya.
• Author Appeal: Yuya Satou loves Czech culture, Japanese history and his native Hokkaido. You will be reminded of this.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In a sense. "Kazuya", or Orvin Elevator, is defeated, and the Impostor fails to gain mental superiority over Byakuya because he still maintains full conviction despite how terrible the choices given to him are. However, Ultimate Despair succeeds in manipulating Byakuya, removing the Kudan/Blue Ink from play, and handicapping Byakuya's talent.
• Battle Butler: Aloysius Pennyworth.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: We get to find up just how screwed up the Togami really are.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Needless to say, when this book gets violent, it gets absolutely brutal.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Basically anyone who reads the Despair Book.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Near the end of Volume 1, Yuya Satou breaks the fourth wall in order to brag to the reader about how his writing is going to change the way they view light novels forever.
• Brother–Sister Incest: An extremely messy case between Kazuya, Shinobu, and Suzuhiko.
  • Saburou comes on to the Creepy Twins Asa and Yoru, gushing over their looks and trying to invite them into his room, and twisting their insults like a come-on.
• Canon Welding: In the first game, Byakuya talked about competing with his 15 siblings, and in the second game, his Imposter talked about 108 siblings and a ranking system. The novel melds these together by stating that Kijou Togami had 108 children, but only 16 (counting Byakuya) were involved in the competition.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: Byakuya is less than impressed with Blue Ink's efforts to save him from the Hasegawa Institute.
• Continuity Nod: Tons, to the point of being basically Continuity Porn:
  • The Detective Library is explicitly mentioned by the The Mole in reference to Genocider evading them.
  • The Mystery Club's introduction explicitly names Hope's Peak Elementary in reference to affiliates of the Academy.
  • When talking about Aoba, the Mystery Club Vice-Prez mentions Ayaka Hayama, even noting her to be the least popular member of the group as her profile implied.
  • Junko references Matsuda while talking with Togami and Blue Ink.
  • Sakura's boyfriend Kenichiro is also given an explicit mention during her fight with Taeko.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Byakuya outright refuses to explain to Sakura what is going on when she first appears, leading to her falling for the Imposter's ruse. When she later learns the truth and asks why he didn't even try to explain, he brushes her off with further insults.
• Crapsack World: Not quite there yet, but the propagation of the Despair Book is certainly pushing it to that point.
• Creepy Twins: Togami Asa and Yoru, the SHSL Weather Forecasters.
• Crossover: With the Kagami Family Series of novels, which Satou also penned. Several of the characters and concepts, such as the Hasegawa Institute and the Kudan, are drawn directly from that series. This factors into the big twist of all these elements being questionably fictional within the DR world itself.
• Dark Secret: The Togami family has one, called the Worst, Most Despairing Incident in the History of the Togami Family.According to the chief of the Hasegawa Institute, it concerns all of the Togami siblings besides Byakuya and Shinobu being murdered, as well as the Kudan, a cow with a human face that can predict the future. Volume 2 serves as a Whole Episode Flashback to the event.
• Death of a Child: One of the victims of the Mystery Club's "handiwork" that the Mole and Satomi find is a baby cooked in a microwave. There were also child victims mentioned in the attack in Prague.
• Disguised in Drag: Volume 2 reveals this to be how Byakuya inflitrated the Competition.
• Doomed by Canon: Given that Byakuya is the only surviving Togami as of the main games (at least according to Junko), it's all but a given that his siblings get removed from the scene. Some of them, like Shinobu and Kazuya, receive more complicated endings than straight-up death though.
• Driven to Suicide: Several of the deaths at the conference appear to be suicides, though naturally it's unclear whether this is really the case at first.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: What the Worst Incident in the History of the Togami Family entails. Kazuya, driven insane from the pressure, murders Wasuke right as the competition is about to begin. Right afterwards, Asagao commits suicide in a bid to make her siblings get along. Both deaths, combined with Hiru and Takaya’s machinations, end up turning the competition into a slaughter that ends in everyone besides Shinobu, Suzuhiko, Byakuya and Pennyworth dead and the castle the competition was taking place in on fire.
• Expy: Several characters bear strong similarities to others who appear in later installments of the series:
  • The Mole is effectively a Spear Counterpart to Fukawa, complete with murderous alter ego.
  • The Mystery Club is a homicidal group of children associated with Hope’s Peak, just like the Warriors of Hope.
  • Most of the Togami siblings introduced in Volume 2 have loose counterparts in Byakuya's future classmates. Ichirou is straight-laced and tries to keep order like Ishimaru, Jirou favors brawn over brains like Owada, Saburou is a creepier Yamada, and so on.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • Anyone with knowledge on the franchise knows that, inevitably, Byakuya will end up with his classmates in Hope's Peak Academy, survive the School Life of Mutual Killing and join the Future Foundation. How he gets there and what else happens is another question entirely.
  • When the other Togami siblings are introduced in Volume 2, anyone who remembers Junko telling Byakuya that he’s the last Togami alive knows they won’t survive the inevitable Tragedy. Although them slaughtering each other probably wasn’t anyone’s guess for how things would go down.
• Gainax Ending: The end of Volume 2. Key points include the reveal that the Ketouins and the Hasegawa Institute aren't real and Kazuya suddenly showing up at the very end without explanation.
• Gone Horribly Right: According to the Mystery Club, the Despair Book was created by Hope's Peak to foster hope. Only it worked a bit too well and was then promptly stolen.
• Hate Plague: Anyone who reads the Despair Book comes down with "Despair Fever", a mental ailment that drives the victims insane. Except “Despair Fever” is revealed to be completely fake, and anyone who acted out because of the book was just using it as an excuse.
• Hikikomori: The Mole, having tried and failed to qualify for Hope’s Peak. Now he’s just bitterly jealous of everyone who successfully got in.
• Historical Domain Character: In Volume 3, Blue Ink encounters an old man named "K" who reveals the truth behind her Borges and explains the K2K System. "K" is implied to be real-world writer Milan Kundera, who is an alumni of Hope's Peak in this universe.
• Just Before the End: The story takes place in the opening days of the Tragedy, a time period only alluded to in other installments.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: As always. Here, the plot practically runs on readers knowing the plots of the first two games.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Constantly, much of it from Hiroyuki.
  • Of particular note is Hiroyuki's diatribe about censorship, in which he claims that his cigarettes would just be changed into lollipops in an anime adaptation, followed by him ranting about how CERO and other censors can't touch him right now and suggesting dirty things for Blue Ink to look up with Borges.
  • Near the end of Vol 1, it's revealed that Suzuhiko Ootsuki is so skilled at deception that they can completely fool the reader, and that everything we'd seen concerning the Mole's identity was a complete lie.
• Living Macguffin: The Kudan, a supposedly mythical entity with prophetic powers said to be the secret behind the Togami family's success. It's revealed that Blue Ink is the Kudan, although the involvement of the K2K System suggests that the actual Kudan itself may just refer to some particularly extraordinary abilities.
• Locked Room Mystery: The Mystery Club's entire shtick is murdering people in locked room cases based on those of actual mystery novels.
• Man Behind the Man: Byakuya learns that the Imposter and Sonia are acting on the behalf of a greater mastermind, who is a member of Byakuya’s class at Hope’s Peak. (It’s Junko.)
• Meaningful Name: As it turns out, The Mole was a far more literal nickname than most people would have imagined.
• Meaningful Rename: In Volume 2, Kazuya learns that Kijou changed his name, and trades away his own to Kudan. He then claims the name Byakuya.
• Medium Awareness: Blue Ink and Hiroyuki at least appear to be aware of the narrative at various points in the story.
• Mind Screwdriver: The book finally sits down and provides the answer to one the franchise's biggest questions, namely how the entire world fell into the despair that caused the Tragedy. And then revokes it: the Despair Book doesn't work that way.
• Mood Whiplash: Lots of it. The absurdity of many of the situations encountered makes the gruesome stuff all the more jarring.
• Naked People Are Funny:
  • Whoever stole Byakuya's identity at the start of the first novel also stole all his clothes, leaving him with just a pair of glasses. Blue Ink quickly gets him a towel to cover himself with, but he shows no particular inclination to find more clothes, and tells her that she's stepping out of line when she asks those helping them if they can spare any pants.
  • During the competition, Saburou offers up a bizarre alibi as to his whereabouts when a crime was being committed: he was busy dancing around his room in the buff.
• Nebulous Evil Organization: The Hasegawa Institute, a mysterious organization owned by American group Macguffin Computers who are rumored to be involved in spying and human experimentation. What exactly they want isn't clear, but it apparently involves the secrets of the Togami family.
• Nested Story Reveal: Everything before Volume 3's epilogue was actually written by the K2K System. The only confirmed details after its interference has finished is in said epilogue: Togami and his classmates went to Prague. High-ranking WHO official Orvin Elevator, pretending to be Togami, tried to take over the world using a "Despair Novel" but was stopped by Togami. Togami and his classmates had many of their memories stripped by Ultimate Despair, also leaving his talent handicapped, and returned to HPA shortly before the Parade. Togami still has Blue Ink's fountain pen and vague but fond memories, but he no longer remembers her.
• No Fourth Wall: Relentlessly, to the point where characters question if they're breaking the fourth wall too much.
• No Name Given: Many new characters lack names, including two of the main characters, who are only called "Blue Ink" and "the Mole" for most of Volume 1. The end of the volume reveals their names to be Shinobu Togami and Suzuhiko Ootsuki, respectively.
• Not Blood Siblings: Kazuya uses this to justify his decision to 'love' Shinobu.
• Not Helping Your Case: Byakuya's response when asked if he made the World Domination Declaration is "So what if I did? What would you do about it?" He also refuses to try concealing his identity or duck out of sight, defiantly sitting up straight and watching protestors.
• Odd Friendship: Celeste and Hifumi in Volume 2—apparently, the reason Hifumi's in Prague in the first place is because Celeste was going and he wanted to go too. Celeste doesn't seem to mind that much, and the two team up to help Byakuya out during their time in the story.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Taeko Kanai shares her first name with Celeste's real one, though the kanji used is different.
  • Volume 2 averts this to add to the Mind Screw through Kazuya renaming himself Byakuya.
• Out of Focus: Ironically enough, Byakuya himself. Especially during the Flashback to the Conference.
• Painting the Medium: The scenes presented as info from Borges are written in an alternate font.
• Placebotinum Effect: Near the end of the final volume, it's casually revealed that the Despair Book doesn't actually possess the power to drive anyone who reads it mad, openly mocking the idea that anyone could believe that to be the case.
• Plot Hole: In Volume 2, the candidates to become the next head of the Togami are met by guards upon their arrival and immediately escorted to the dining hall for a meeting, without being given any time to themselves. Later, we learn that a key part of the triplets' plans involved passing themselves off as the same pair of twins on both boats. It is never explained or even hinted how they dealt with the escort situation.
• Rape as Drama: While not stated, it is heavily implied in Volume 2 that Kazuya rapes Shinobu after she's been mutilated. It's also heavily implied that Shinobu was routinely molested by her older brother Suzuhiko for the first twelve years of her life.
• The Reveal:
  • At the end of Volume 1, it’s revealed that Blue Ink is actually Byakuya’s older half-sister, Shinobu.
  • Volume 3 contains an entire truckload’s worth of these:
    • The Ketouin twins and the Hasegawa Institute aren't what they appear to be, as Blue Ink's Borges is giving her misinformation that distorts her worldview. The Ketouins' actual identities are never revealed.
    • Blue Ink isn't Shinobu, she's the Kudan. Orvin Elevator isn't Kazuya, either, and Suzuhiko is actually Minoru Oe.
    • All three volumes of the novel, apart from the final coda, have been written by an In-Universe Unreliable Narrator and cannot be verified.
• Royally Screwed Up: Kazuya worries about the potential for this to befall the Togami family, as most of the candidates seem entirely concerned with their own petty desires. Eyumi even declares her desire to bring about The End of the World as We Know It. Granted, Kazuya isn't exactly one to talk.
• Sadistic Choice: Near the end of Volume 3, the Impostor reveals that Byakuya has been playing into Ultimate Despair's hands the whole time and gives him two options: one, take over the world just as Orvin Elevator had wanted, but they will murder Blue Ink. Two, end the World Domination Proclamation and return to Japan. Blue Ink will be spared, but everyone will be made to forget her and her personality will be rewritten into someone else. Byakuya chooses the latter, refusing to accept an outcome given to him by someone else and believing (correctly) that he will still be able to take down the mastermind even if his talent is handicapped.
• Senseless Sacrifice: During the Competition, Asagao commits suicide out of the belief that this will make their siblings stop fighting. By this point, Kazuya has already killed Wasuke, and all their attempt accomplishes is instigating the incident further.
• Shown Their Work: Evidently, Yuya Satou researched Prague extensively going in, given the numerous bits of trivia given about the country. Case in point, that tower with the babies on it is actually real.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Blue Ink usually speaks and narrates in a formal tone, but plenty of curses slip into her vocabulary.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: As of Volume 2, the title of the novel seems to be more a case of Exact Words, with most of the page time going to Shinobu, Kazuya and Suzuhiko, who all happen to be Togamis.
• Take Over the World: What Byakuya's imposter declares he'll do should the world not kill him or the "pitiful cow" elsewhere. At the end of Volume 1, Byakuya decides to do the same himself.
• Teens Are Monsters: Hiru, Takaya and Kazuya are among the youngest Togamis and easily some of the most psychotic.
• Theme Naming: Some of the Togami siblings follow the model of celestial concepts. Byakuya can be read as "midnight sun", Asa, Hiru, and Yoru mean "morning", "day", and "night" respectively, and the "-ya" in Kazuya means night. The -rou siblings, meanwhile, follow the naming convention of 'first son', 'second son', 'third son' and so on.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In the climax, Shinobu discovers that she's none other than the Kudan - the real Togami Shinobu died during the Incident.
• Tomato Surprise: Shinobu Togami's perception of the world is heavily distorted thanks to the nature of the K2K System, making her unable to distinguish fiction from reality. All the other characters are aware of this, and Byakuya and Gundham attempt to hint at it to her (albeit with vastly different approaches), but she remains oblivious to thanks to Borges' censoring of information that would otherwise clash with her worldview.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Byakuya manages to be even more arrogant here than in the main series.
• Twin Switch: Used by Asu, Hiru and Yoru to considerable effect during the Competition.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The story alternates between Byakuya, Blue Ink and the Kenhouin's adventure in Prague and what the Mole and Satomi get up to in Japan.
• Unexpected Successor: Byakuya has bragged about his status as this before. In Volume 2, it's revealed that this is because he wasn't even an official candidate.
• Unreliable Narrator: In spades.
  • Blue Ink is not exactly an unbiased observer when it comes to Byakuya. In addition, Volume 3 reveals that her entire worldview had been distorted by the K2K system, a story-writing AI that controls Borges.
  • The Mole isn't entirely reliable, either: his entire character is a facade hiding his true identity from the audience.
  • In Volume 2, Kazuya turns out to be the culprit behind several of the murders.
  • In Volume 3, ”Kazuya”/Orvin is revealed to be a cyborg whose prosthetic eyes have the K2K System installed, making him just as delusional as Blue Ink.
  • At the end of Volume 3, it’s revealed that all three volumes of the novel were written by the K2K System, so every detail outside of Volume 3’s epilogue is potentially false.
  • It’s also revealed in Volume 3’s third chapter that the person speaking through notes and intermissions between volumes, who was assumed to be Yuya Satou by the audience, is actually the K2K System/Borges.
• Villainous Rescue:
  • Suzuhiko arrives Just in Time to eliminate two agents of the Hasegawa Institute, saving Shinobu and Byakuya in the process.
  • During the Whole Episode Flashback to the Worst Incident in the History of the Togami Family,Suzuhiko arrives and starts fighting Jirou.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite being major characters in Volume 1, Suzuhiko and Satomi vanish completely from the main story in Volume 2. The former does return in Volume 3, however.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Most of Volume 2 flashes back in time to explore the Worst, Most Despairing Incident in the History of the Togami Family.
• Written by the Winners:
  • The Togami Conglomerate frequently engages in this, such as covering up what caused the Kuchinashi Village Fire.
  • Volume 2 reveals this to be why Byakuya wants Blue Ink to write his biography: so he can cover up the true circumstances behind his inheritance. Namely, the fact that he wasn't meant to participate at all, and exploited the Incident by letting his half-siblings slaughter each other so he could win.
• Unperson: The fate of Blue Ink, who Ultimate Despair deemed too dangerous to their plans to continue existing. Her identity is erased and she gets a new one implanted to replace it, and everyone who knew her has their memories of her erased. Byakuya is left with just her blue fountain pen and a vague feeling that it means something to him.
• The Unreveal: In Volume 3, Hiroyuki reveals he is not Hiroyuki, but is someone else important to Blue Ink's journey. He gets unceremoniously shot in the head before he can tell her who he is.
• You Are Fat: Whenever any of the heftier characters like the Imposter or Hifumi show up, Blue Ink's narration breaks down into her repeatedly railing at how disgusting their weight is. Saburou receives similar treatment during the Togami Competition arc.

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