"What would you do if you had a second chance?"
“YOU’RE ALL FILTHY MURDERERS!!! YEEEAHH… Y-Y-YOU KILLED SOMEONE!! ALL OF YOU!!!! KILLEERRRS… YOU WERE EXECUTED!!! YOU ALL REMEMBER, YOU ALL REMEMBER WHAT YOU’VE DONE!!!! HORRIBLE DIRTY ROTTEN KILLERS!!!!”
— Monten-cchi, Super High School Level Glitchy Mascot.
Revival Of The Fittest
is a Tumblr Roleplay Group based on the Danganronpa series of visual novels. Many years after the events at Hope’s Peak Academy occurred, a team of elite, highly trained scientists finally created something previously deemed impossible. The result of nearly a decade of research: A chemical that brings people back to life. Its name? Chemical MO1315. Rather than releasing this discovery to the public, the scientists collaborated with what was left of Hope’s Peak to gather the remains of 16 SHSL students, all previously executed, and enroll them into a new school. The scientists plan to observe the events of the semester, to research how the known killers would interact with each other, and whether they would resort to murder yet again. Welcome to Atarajimeru Academy, kiddos — can you make the most of your second chance at life? Once a killer, always a killer, right...?
What's unique about this roleplay is that each student has been part of a school of mutual killing prior, has successfully murdered another student, and have been previously executed for it. The first class of ex-murderers was revived on October 18th, 2016 (found here) and the roleplay is currently into their fourth chapter.
Revival Of The Fittest includes these Tropes:
- Amateur Sleuth: Downplayed in most of the students, who have previously been in a Mutual Killing Game of their own, and thus, are likely to have been exposed to the whole murder business at least once before. Averted by Rinkaku in particular, as the Super High School Level Cold Case Detective.
- Ambiguous Gender: As Monten-cchi is a robot, they do not have a particular gender, but are rather feminine in presentation.
- Anyone Can Die: In fact, all of them have died once, prior to this game. And not everyone's going to live through the rest of their unlife...
- Back for the Dead: Those who aren't able to appreciate their second chance at life will fall victim to this trope.
- Back from the Dead: The main premise of the story is to find out which students are able to appreciate being this way.
- Big Brother Is Watching: There is an abundance of cameras in Atarajimeru Academy - probably for the benefit of the scientists studying them, though no one knows this in-character.
- Black Blood: Like the original series, everyone bleeds pink.
- Body of the Week: Every chapter results in at least one death that the remaining students have to investigate.
- Clear My Name: Happens whenever somebody is accused of the crime and fights the charges, or when their friends do their best to help them. Of course, the question of whether or not they're actually guilty is very real...
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The new and improved executions. While bringing up a reminder of their previous execution was bad enough, and broadcasting its juicy details to the other students was worse, the condemned student is forced back into the pod they woke up in the first place, before proceeding to have the MO1315 serum extracted from their body. Doesn't sound that bad? The serum is the only thing keeping their bodies alive in the first place, meaning that the extraction of said serum is more akin to that of extracting their life force. This is physically represented by the student apparently melting, to the point where nothing is left of them except a sliver of dust and whatever accessories they had on them at the moment. Brutal.
- Death by Irony: These students were revived in the first place to avoid dying by execution again.
- Developing Doomed Characters: That's most of the characters. Good luck figuring out which ones they are before they die. They currently consist of:
- Hoku Kurahara, Super High School Level Bootlegger, Chapter 1 Victim
- Mika Tomimoto, Super High School Level FX Makeup Artist, Chapter 1 Killer
- Shinobu Kanamori, Super High School Level Welder, Chapter 2 Victim
- Salem Crowley a.k.a Itsuki Suzuki, Super High School Level Horror Novelist, Chapter 2 Killer
- Viktor Asimov, Super High School Level Roboticist, Chapter 3 Victim
- Huang Zhu a.k.a Huang Xiaozhu, Super High School Level Reality TV Show Host, Chapter 3 Killer
- Dysfunction Junction: With sixteen different characters, it's to be expected that something like this would happen. To what extent depends on the character in question...and the person playing them.
- Everyone Is a Suspect: The objective of each trial is to find out who is the most suspicious.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Often, relationships, both platonic and possibly romantic, are formed due to the stress everyone is put under and the bonds created thusly.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Considering its premise and the fact that it's a roleplay, the characters are not above poking fun at the supposed absurdity of their circumstances.
- Mystery of the Week: There's a new murder every two-three weeks in real life, and every half a week or so in the Academy.
- Naked on Revival: Thankfully averted. Whoever placed them in their tanks had the common sense to dress them in their preferred outfits.
- Red Herring: Par for the course in a murder mystery. There's usually one or two big ones every case.
- Shout-Out: Overdosed on this with references to other games that the muns have been in and the characters' past games in which they died.
- Stepford Smiler: The fact that some of them can still remain smiling after being through the grind of a first Mutual Killing Game and subsequent painful execution is to be marveled at.
- Teen Genius: All the students to some extent. They were initially accepted into Hope's Peak for being the best in their age bracket at what they do, and they were chosen to be revived for some particular reason.
- Tonight, Someone Dies: Specifically, every couple of weeks, someone dies. It may even happen outside of the norm, should anyone make the mistake of breaking a rule.
- Translation Convention: All characters are presumed to be speaking Japanese unless otherwise noted, even though the game is written in English.
- Unwanted Revival: Some of the characters, like Mari and Kris, think of their fates this way at first.
- Win Your Freedom: The students win by identifying the mastermind. A killer wins by getting away with a murder, something they failed to do in their first life. The mastermind's current victory condition is unknown, though it is likely 'never be identified'.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Justified as the game takes place in some unspecified time in the future, meaning most if not all of the students' friends, loved ones and homes are long-gone by now.
