Danganronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair

My favorite in V3 was Kaede.

...Yeah, I should have expected that.

>.< Yeesh, I don't know which of us has worse luck.

Before the reveal or because of it?

Before the reveal.

Ok, it might be a stretch, but the survivors of DR 2 are a bad boy (Fuyuhiko), a nerd (Kazuichi), an athlete, (Akane), a popular girl (Sonia), and a loner (Hajime/Izuru). Sound familiar?

I know Japan has this obsession when it comes to High School, but I don't know if that extends to American media, much less media made in the 80's.

Edited by Smasher on Dec 9th 2022 at 12:58:33 PM

That's definitely a coincidence.

Hajime's a loner? That's not a character trait I'd assign to him. A bit sharp-tongued, cynical, and blunt but not actively disdainful of other people's company.

Edited by fredhot16 on Dec 10th 2022 at 7:19:41 AM

I was thinking more of his portrayal in the 3 anime and the fact that he's a reserve course student and Izuru. I was also thinking closer to the lines of One Of Us Is Lying (where the "loner" is the co-mastermind) then the trope namer.

Like I said though, it's kind of a stretch. Still, 5 different cliques.

Edited by Smasher on Dec 10th 2022 at 11:56:08 AM

x2

Honestly I don't agree with any of the assigned character traits. Fuyuhiko's not a bad boy, he's wannabe. Nerd is not the term I'd use for Kazuichi nor is athlete for Akane or popular girl for Sonia. And yeah. Hajime is definitely not a loner.

How is Akane not an athlete, exactly?

Because she doesn't care about gymnastics much at all?

And how does this differ from someone like Leon?

Akane is what I would consider an “athlete” because of both her skill in being a gymnast and her burgeoning interest in fighting and being coached under the Ultimate Coach, Nekomaru.

That’s actually something very interesting about Akane and it makes her stand out the most among the other students: her Ultimate Talent is just a job to her. It’s not something she’s particularly passionate or interested in, it’s not something she’s been in love with since childhood like Asahina and swimming, Kaizuichi and engineering, or Kyoko and being a detective.

While everybody’s backstory does instill a strong interest in their Talent that gets them scouted by Hope Academy, Akane seems to be the only one who looks at being a gymnast as a paycheck, a way to make ends meet and support her dirt-poor family.

She’s not the Ultimate Gymnast because she loves acrobatics, she just needed a way to make money.

Edit: And wasn’t Leon really into baseball, got bored and switched interests into becoming a singer, but his Social Link does help him consider going back into baseball?

Edited by fredhot16 on Dec 11th 2022 at 2:04:29 AM

x4

Honestly? I haven't actually played the games (Except V3. Did play that one.) myself, only watched Let's Plays (More specifically Lucahjin's.) of them, and I forgot she was the Ultimate Gymnast. With all her talk about food and fighting she gave me more Tarzan/feral child vibes than athelete vibes.

Edited by Chariot on Dec 11th 2022 at 5:17:36 AM

Regardless, we're barking up the wrong tree here.

I mean, the feral part isn't inaccurate. Personality-wise, Akane is basically a female Son Goku. She has absolutely zero decorum and is kinda dim, while her passions are fighting strong opponents and eating everything in sight.

My favorites are Hagakure, Gundham, and Ryoma. As you can tell, my luck got infinitely worse as the series went.

If one of your favorites was Hagakure, you deserve your worsening bad luck.

Real thought, though: I’m not the only one here who’s been getting the strong suspicion that Hagakura is actually smarter then he comes off (though he is genuinely as stupid as he seems) but he’s also a con-artist with his predictions?

Hiro's kinda hard to read. By his own admission, his predictions are based on gut feeling rather than any traditional form of fortune-telling, and are only correct 30% of the time. This simultaneously feels like an awfully low number for something that purports to be clairvoyance, and yet simultaneously feels incredibly high for what is explicitly just impulsive guesswork.

I definitely get a certain vibe from him. He routinely tries to fast-talk Makoto into committing to a purchase without fully understanding the transaction. But he's also really up-front about his questionable method as well as his dismal accuracy rate, so I don't know if I'd really describe him as a con artist per se. Rather, I just get "Pushy Salesman" from him.

And he totally got dumbed down for DG 3's Future Arc. DG 3 wasn't good for... any character, really. The anime sucks and is bad for a multitude of reasons: Flanderized characterizations, complete lack of regard for established continuity, and major overuse of Death Is Cheap in a franchise that prides itself on averting said trope. (Seriously, the anime unkills people on multiple separate occasions.)

It's hard to watch without seriously wondering if anyone involved with this product has even ever heard of Danganronpa before.

For Yasuhiro, that manifested as turning him into just... generic Butt-Monkey comic relief. He spends the entire anime just running around outside the plot, making noises and getting shot at for lulz.

Apparently the anime's takeaway for Hiro's character is that he's the guy that it's funny to see freaking out and panicking a lot. Which isn't inaccurate but it's an oversimplification of his actual role within DG 1.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 20th 2022 at 10:24:08 AM

One of the funniest things about Hagakure is that Makoto’s Social Link with him might be one of the only ones where Makoto come away disliking the person even more!

Not even Byakuya or Celestia get that sort of judgement from him! It’s Hagakure who gets “Wow, this was not worth the trouble. Don’t breathe near me anymore, ‘K”?

Edited by fredhot16 on Dec 20th 2022 at 10:12:25 AM

Which is, if anything, unfortunate. Makoto's going to have to warm to up Hiro eventually, given that the same person is going to be the mother for both of their kids. That practically makes them brothers.

Wicked Binge did a Good To Evil on the first game! (This also includes the actions of the survivors in future games and the anime, as well as School Mode)

She manipulated Makoto into unknowingly conspiring with her so that she could murder Leon and then frame Makoto for it.

The mitigating factor is that she didn't know all the students would be killed if she escaped; That hadn't been explained yet. But that still feels pretty fucking Grey Area territory to me.

If we're distinguishing Toko from Jack then I struggle to think of anything Toko or Byakuya did that makes them more sinister than taking advantage of Makoto's naivety to turn him into a fall guy for the murder Sayaka was plotting.

Also, Aoi Asahina (also in the Good category) attempted to mass-murder the entire class. Straight up tried to use the Killing Game as a weapon to exterminate Makoto, Kyoko, Byakuya, Toko, and Hiro in one fell swoop. Going for a full on TPK murder-suicide.

Both of these were done under extreme emotional duress. But, again, I struggle to think of anything Toko or Byakuya ever did that was more morally questionable than an attempted mass-slaughter of the entire class.

EDIT: Note that I don't disagree with Byakuya resting firmly in Grey Area territory. Dude did some fucked up shit and only turned against the Killing Game for logistical reasons, not moral ones. I just don't agree with putting actual attempted murderers above him.

(On that note, I'm also not sure what Yasuhiro Hagakure did that's worse than attempted murder?)

...wait, hold up, is that supposed to be a full-on scale? What did Kyoko do that's worse than attempted murder!? And how is Byakuya lower than Celestia "Murdered two people and tried to kill everyone so she can be rich and live in a castle" Ludenberg!?

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 28th 2023 at 12:59:50 PM

Hiro's attempted murder wasn't even really PLANNED, he just did it in the heat of the moment. He's definently better then Sayaka.

It's also kinda funny to me that Monokuma is listed separately from Junko. They're the same character.

Over the course of Danganronpa, there are three versions of Monokuma:

1. A remote-operated drone piloted and voiced by Junko herself, from a control room.
2. An Alter Ego AI of Junko Enoshima appearing in the form of her remote-operated drone.
3. A robot actor designed to play the part of the Monokuma from the Danganronpa franchise, whose connection to in-universe Junko is strongly indicated by shots of Tsumugi in-costume as Junko talking to Motherkuma, but the show got cancelled by actor fiat before that plot point was able to be properly introduced.

There are also mindless Monokuma drones controlled by the Warriors of Hope, but while those are technically Monokumas, they're not really Monokuma. And then there's Kurokuma and Shirokuma, two sentient Monokuma robots driven by - you guessed it - the aforementioned Alter Ego AI of Junko Enoshima.

Junko is Monokuma. He does not actually exist as a character; He's Junko's fursona.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 28th 2023 at 1:20:46 AM