YMMV / An Encore From My Crying Heart

• Adorkable: Kiibo, Gonta, Himiko and Angie.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: All over the place, both in-universe and out. Specifically, the fic involves a mystery where no one knows whom to trust. A few characters who seemed trustworthy turned out to be traitors; a few characters who seemed like traitors turned out to be trustworthy; other characters flip-flop between the two. The motivations of most characters remain unclear, as do the extends of someone's involvement in their particular conspiracy- if they actually are involved. Many people have lied about their identities and personal histories for a number of different reasons; other people have been lied to and don't really understand what's going on. And we're only scratching the surface of either conspiracy.
  • And then when we find out that there's a third conspiracy involving actual traitors in chapter 2, it just adds another layer of second-guessing to everyone's motivations.
  • As mentioned below in the Shocking Moments section, Rantaro being brought back to life in Chapter 3 allows the audience to see some screentime and character development from someone who was once wasted as Chapter 1's victim.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Danganronpa has a complex network of conspiracies, hidden agendas within hidden agendas, a fair number of Walking Spoilers, and a plot that progresses at break-neck speeds. Skipping any chapters may mean missing a crucial plot twist, or even several of them. Also, many of the characters are not what they seem, so you have to pay close attention their Hidden Depths and Character Development to understand their actions. Encore emulates this way of foreshadowing and way of incorporating twists into written form really well.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Miu's characterization in this story is extremely popular among readers, as is Korekiyo's, with some readers preferring their portrayals in Encore to that of the canon game.
  • Rantaro is also well-liked, but this may be because in the canon game, he is killed off extremely early on, and demoted to nothing more than a Post Humous Character for the rest of the game.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Some moments are seriously dark when you already know what happened in the original game.
  • Remember how in the original game, the in-universe's Danganronpa fan base commented how Shuichi should have died instead of Kaede in Chapter 1? In Encore's first chapter, Shuichi ends up 'graduating' the Killing Game in order to save Kaede from her execution.
  • In chapter 4, Kaito reassures Kaede that he wouldn't kill Kokichi, no matter how much he hates the lying supreme lord. He says this while staring at the Red Exisal... the same Exisal he sits in during the canonical chapter 5 trial after killing Kokichi.
  • Upon finding out that Kirumi is the Japanese Prime Minister, Miu believes that Kirumi wouldn't be above using Kiibo to destroy the school and killing everyone in order to escape. Miu is definitely overreacting... until you remember what happened in the original game's Chapter II and Chapter VI.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The gruesome state they find Gonta's body in at the end of chapter 6.
  • Tenko's brutal execution in chapter 11.
• Paranoia Fuel: Where to begin? If the original New Danganronpa V3 game wasn't bad enough, with 16 students being thrown into a prison-like Academy with missing memories and a group of animatronic bears forcing them to kill one another, Encore just adds to that paranoia, especially when you consider that this isn't the first time the group have been in this killing-game, as some of the cast appear to remember the events of V3, albeit very faintly.
• Shocking Moments: Let's face it, considering this is suppose to be a fanfiction where Kaede lives as protagonist while Shuichi gets kicked out of the game, nobody would have considered the possibility that Rantaro would actually be brought back, from the dead no less, as a character in Chapter 3.
• The Woobie:
  • Himiko seriously got the short end of the stick starting from the Class Trial in Chapter II. She was forced to prove the horrible truth that her best friend as the killer... by her best friend herself, she futilely tried to rescue her best friend from execution, she got involved and nearly died in said execution.. Additionally, in Chapter III, Angie, her other close friend turns out to be the blackened of Kiibo and since the mastermind sets it up so that Kiibo's body is found before Kirumi's, Angie is executed at the end of the trial in chapter 22.
  • Miu ends up receiving one of, if not the most powerful motive videos of the group (Kirumi's) in chapter 4. Her closest friend (Kiibo) ends up becoming infatuated with Kirumi. In Chapter III, Kiibo moves from Kirumi to mindlessly following Angie, subsequently joining her Student Council, and just as the pair quite literally kiss and make up, Kiibo gets killed, and Miu's the one to first find his corpse. And paralleling Himiko in the canon game, Miu becomes the prime suspect for both the Chapter II and Chapter III cases.