Penguinronpa is a Web Animation made by tofudemaru set in the universe of Club Penguin set after the game was shut down. It takes stylistic elements, music, themes, and the premise of Danganronpa.
14 penguins with special talents and a crab named Klutzy are alone on the island after everyone else has apparently been teleported away to somewhere else. They are told by their extremely powerful cyborg captor, formerly the polar bear named Herbert, that the only way off is to kill one of the other inhabitants and get away with it.
The series can be found here
or on Instagram here.
This series provides examples of:
- The Ace: Every penguin left on the island has an Ultimate Talent.
- A Day in the Limelight: In Chapter 4, Agent suffers a Heroic BSoD at the start of the murder investigation, leaving Dot to take over as POV character.
- After the End: Implied.
- Anyone Can Die: It doesn't matter how important you were in the original Club Penguin, you can still die. Case in point, the first victim is Aunt Arctic and their killer is Sensei. By the time of Chapter Six, only Agent, Dot, Rookie, Jet Pack Guy, and Amy are left.
- Arc Words: Inherits many from Danganronpa, such as "Hope", "despair", "talent", "killing", "traitor", and "Ultimate".
- Audience Surrogate: Sam and Amy, being non Agents, tend to be the ones asking about anything Spy related.
- Big Bad: Monobert AKA the new body of the Ultimate Protobot.
- Big Damn Heroes: Before Monobert could execute Agent via flamethrower, the Elite Puffles arrive and give him a good old Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Big "SHUT UP!": Monobert delivers one to Agent, as he's getting ready to execute them for trying to break into the locked PSA HQ.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Rookie comments it feels like they've been in the killing game for three years instead of three weeks, which is how long it's been since the story started.
- Character Death: Each Chapter so far has had both at least one victim and at least one executed killer.
- Chapter One features Aunt Arctic and Sensei biting the dust.
- Chapter Two is where the deaths of Rockhopper and Puffle Handler Paige occur.
- Chapter Three has Franky, Cadence, and Rory all die.
- Chapter Four involves the death of Klutzy.
- Chapter Five includes the deaths of Herbert, Gary and Shadow Guy.
- Cast of Snowflakes: All the characters are very visually distinct.
- Complexity Addiction: As with Danganronpa, the killers' plots tend to be quite elaborate.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: What else would you expect from a Danganronpa fanseries? The murders and the punishments are both gruesome.
- Sensei is punished by fatally losing a game of Card Jitsu.
- In a rare case of a victim suffering this, Rockhopper is killed in an explosion caused by a remote-controlled jet pack crashing into an ice rink while he's wearing it. His body remains mostly intact, despite being right where the explosion went off.
- Paige is punished via exploding robotic puffles.
- Rory is punished by being assaulted with jackhammers before being run over by a train.
- Another victim example. Klutzy is frozen to death and it's made worse by the fact he did it to himself.
- Shadow Guy is quite literally deleted from existence.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Herbert's transformation into Monobert has also seen him go from a gruff antisocial loner with a Morality Pet who wants to evict the penguins and build a tropical paradise, to a sadistic murderous psychopath who won't even spare his former sidekick Klutzy. That's not really the case, though...
- Darker and Edgier: Well, this is what happens when you combine a very dark visual novel like Danganronpa with a very child friendly game like Club Penguin, though it portrays the light-hearted nature of the latter series in between grisly murders, at least early on.
- Death Is the Only Option: The Ultimates' only hope of escape given to them is through murder.
- Deadly Game: All executions so far are deadly versions of the minigames in the original Club Penguin.
- Deuteragonist: Dot the Disguise Gal, who serves as the primary assistant throughout the trials, being the Kirigiri to Agent's Naegi.
- Driven to Suicide: In Chapter 4, Klutzy kills himself to exploit an error in Monobert's code.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Everyone refers to Agent as Agent. Justified, as Agent doesn't remember what their true name is.
- Everyone Went to School Together: A great deal of the cast have at least a passing familiarity with each other.
- The Executioner: Monobert is an example of a psychopath executioner.
- Faceless Masses: The citizens in visions.
- Five Stages of Grief: Agent goes through this following Klutzy's suicide. First, they're in Denial when Dot points out the possibility of Klutzy's death being a suicide. They enter Anger after Herbert's message and tries to enter the HQ against their usual common sense. When they experience the VR training missions with Sam and Amy, they enters Bargaining thinking the VR world would let them meet Klutzy again. This plan ultimately fails since the Real Klutzy and Virtual Klutzy are different crabs, and Agent immediately enters Depression. Once Amy and Sam snap Agent out of it, they make it to Acceptance and leave the VR mission.
- Flashback Cut: Frequently during trials.
- Forced Sleep: In Chapter 2, the penguins find a mysterious piano that causes anyone who listens to it fall asleep. This is used by Paige to kill Rockhopper.
- Heroic BSoD:
- Agent falls into it after Klutzy becomes the victim of Chapter 4.
- In chapter 6, Amy barely speaks after what Sam was killed last Chapter.
- Humans Are Bastards: Penguins, rather. Generally averted, the murderers almost all have a far more sympathetic motive than just their selfish motivations.
- Humble Hero: Agent.
- Idiot Ball: Most of the penguins tend to revert to their idyllic way of life when given the opportunity, abandoning caution in the process.
- Kill It with Ice: Klutzy gets frozen to death.
- Kill the Cutie: Klutzy bites it on Chapter 4.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The cast seem to have forgotten just how they got in this mess.
- In Agent's case, they've forgotten just about everything about themself, including their own name.
- It's revealed that everyone's memories were erased from anything that happened after 2010.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: Agent does most of the trial's legwork, with a few other key contributors.
- The Many Deaths of You: Every Chapter's murders is different, and every punishment is tailored to the perpetrator. In addition, the names of the executions thus far have been adapted from the names of mini-games from Club Penguin.
- Meaningful Appearance: Every one of the Ultimates has an outfit that hints at their abilities and personality. Also, Herbert's tranformation into Monobert.
- Mood Whiplash: The tone change between the 'Daily Life' segments and 'Deadly Life' segments is usually drastic.
- Mythology Gag: When Dot takes over as POV character, she has a traditional ahoge from bed head, like the original Danganronpa protagonists had in their series.
- Name Amnesia: Agent doesn't remember what their name is, so they go by their title instead.
- Orgy of Evidence: Every murder seems to be heralded by a number of changes to the environment.
- Recurring Element: Inherits many of these from Danganronpa.
- Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: In Chapter 4, Klutzy is killed in a very roundabout way, in which he is put in a bucket of water, which is then frozen in a machine that the killer activates by putting a life preserver over a button and aiming popcorn at it. This is because he had no other way of killing himself.
- Sanity Slippage: Paige, big time, after she's outed as Chapter 2's culprit. Due to being put to sleep by a piece of music being played, she's subjected to a nightmare about watching countless Puffles being slaughtered. After she explains her motive to save the Puffles in the "new world", she well and truly loses it, descending into crazed laughter before she's executed.
- Schmuck Bait: The motives.
- Slasher Smile: Protobot, the real identity of Monobert, is prone to making these, complete with his eyes being widened to give him a more Ax-Crazy look.
- Slept Through the Apocalypse: The main characters, aside from Klutzy and the traitor, Shadow Guy. By virtue of memory erasure.
- Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: Flips from side to side.
- The Speechless: Klutzy is a crab and cannot speak. He can't really make any sounds aside from clicking his claws.
- Suddenly Obvious Fakery: Dot's disguises look just like the real thing when she's wearing them, but they appear to be cheap costumes once removed.
- Subverted Kids' Show: Has the trappings of one - Cartoony penguins dying in all sorts of gruesome ways.
- Sympathetic Murderer: Almost all of them.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": Monobert's reactions to deaths in general.
- Took a Level in Cynic: Dot becomes less trustful in chapter 3 due to Paige becoming the last culprit.
- Two Dun It: In at least one case. In Case 3, Cadence had killed Franky, and Rory had walked in and killed her out of panic she would kill him. Meanwhile, in Case 5, Sam and Amy both killed Herbert and Gary via their lightning bolts by combining their powers, with the second hero who added their powers being called the killer for each death.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: As a murder mystery series, this should come as no surprise.
- Wham Episode: The fourth and fifth chapters, respectively.
- Chapter 4 ends with a video message that turns the story up on it's head: Monobert is not the real Herbert, but just a robot copy. The real Herbert is trapped inside his underground base thanks to the force fields, and has been communicating secretly with Klutzy to help the surviving penguins escape. Monobert is revealed to be programmed to make up information that would make sense, meaning he could be lying about everything, and that he can't respond to things he doesn't expect to happen. So, Klutzy made a plan to do something completely unexpected to send out the video message and something else... which is by killing himself.
- Chapter 5 is an even bigger one. The chapter starts with Monobert being shut off after Agent's failed execution, and then Shadow Guy revealing himself as the traitor to the audience. It also has Sam and Amy become the heroes...and one of their missions is hijacked by the Test Bots, who then stay dormant..Until Herbert's dead body is discovered by Agent, Rookie, Jet Pack Guy, and Dot, and they are reactivated, beginning the killing game once again. However, the Heroes and Gary are missing, which seems normal..until Agent opens the door to the Gadget Room, and Gary's body is discovered, with the Heroes nowhere to be found. After the four vow to solve the mystery and the rest of the investigation occurs, it is revealed through Gary's machine that they were in a virtual world all along, and then as soon as they enter the trial room, they discover that Monobert was actually Protobot the entire time...and then Sam and Amy reveal themselves as Gary and Herbert's killers by accident. As well, Protobot kills the Test Bots due to them serving no more purpose. However, soon afterwards, Agent reveals that Sam was the traitor, and then Sam and Amy insist on voting for themselves so the other does not die, before Agent decides to not vote..and then it is revealed that in a lack of votes, Protobot himself would vote..for the wrong killer, Amy, and everyone besides Sam seemingly is about to be executed..before Sam sacrifices himself and is deleted by Protobot from the game. Soon afterwards, as Protobot is about to kill the rest of the cast, the Test Bots return with their original programming, saving everyone, along with a message from Gary in his modern design, about having returned everyone to the past with a gadget to make a code to restore everything to what it once was, and playing a video of the last party in Club Penguin, showing Agent in their modern design with a vow to protect the island, and then cutting to the Participants Remaining screen. Holy shit.
- Wham Line:
- Chapter 5's opening has one from the traitor.
Sam: ...You wanted a traitor? Then you shouldn't have picked a hero.- Chapter 5 has some serious ones when the heroes enter the EPF hideout. They discover some case files that claim everything that happened after Mission 11 in the original game did... and it's apparently 2017 instead of 2012 like they all remember.
- At the beginning the Chapter 5 trial, Protobot tells the group that they need to find the killers of both Gary and Herbert, only for Sam to drop some surprising news on the group.
Sam: ...Herbert and Gary died because of us. W-We [him and Amy] killed them!
