Danganronpa 3: Despair & Future Arc

I still like my idea that Tengan/the Steering Committee realized that their superhuman needed a challenge to pull him out of his fugue, and deliberately inflicted Junko and Mukuro on their students to that end, underestimating Junko and failing to understand the nature of what they'd created in Kamukura. It fits with Tengan's later insistence that Kamukura must be preserved at all costs ...

(Yasuke insisting on it makes for a convincing alternative, though.)

edited 30th Sep '16 7:38:46 PM by Gninnekrad

Well, Tengan was at least right in insisting with Hajime/Izuru since he saved the world from another brainwashing in the end.

And, hey, if he has all talents he is also an ultimate therapist. It will be good for the class to spend time with him.

Like others, I didn't like the use of mindhacking in the plot. However, some people have said, "How else would a teenage high school girl make people become obsessed with despair and cause the world to collapse?" That's a valid point, and it brought me full circle to what I thought back when I saw the ending of DR 1 years ago: "Is this twist really a good idea?"

DR 1 told us that the entire world had been horribly damaged by despair, then left it to follow up works (assuming there were any) to explain how. DR 2 largely avoided the question, and then added the new problem of how Junko turned normal students into crazy mass murderers. Ultra Despair Girls helped somewhat by showing how Junko got some of the equipment (even if that explanation strained credulity), but didn't make a ton of headway into people resigning themselves to despair. (The game also introduced helmets that could mind control kids, which in retrospect may have given Kodaka the idea that fans were fine with mindhacking.) DR 3 was simply when the bill for all this came due. Future could have elided these questions the same way that UDG did, but Despair had to explain it at least partially. That doesn't let it off the hook the ridiculousness of having a shut-in teenager figure out how to utterly mind control people with friggin anime, but it would have taken an insanely good explanation to effectively justify everything that had happened in the series.

The bottom line is that the tragedy was predicated on the absurd idea that a significant number of people based their own optimism about the world on the lives of high schoolers they'd never meet, and the series never came close to making it believable (in particular, why anyone outside of Japan would give a single shit about a Japanese high school went unnoted). The games repeatedly fell back on "seeing the paragons of hope fall to despair made the world despair too," which assumed that a significant portion of Japan / the world knew about this school, agreed that its students were paragons of hope, and therefore thought that if this wacky bunch of high schoolers went crazy and started killing everyone, they should go crazy too. I'll say it again; I really hope that DRV 3 ditches everything related to Junko and the tragedy. It was a dumb idea that was saved by the excellent characters and murder mysteries; take that away, and you get this anime.

edited 1st Oct '16 1:43:08 PM by Bionicman

Really want Hopes Peak 2 burnt to the ground.

Did we need to know how Junko accomplished this though? I mean, of all of the questions that I had about Junko following DR1 and DR2, how she brought everyone to despair was not at the forefront (I was more curious how she wiped two years from everyone's memories or how she summoned random spears out of nowhere). That feeling of the unknown was part of her appeal and I would have been completely satisfied without knowing the method.

Summoning spears doesn't seem like an interesting question to me.

I'd rather have Junko's methods in causing teenagers to fall into despair be explained because this idea that Junko is some mythical cult goddess that is so charismatic that she can get people to follow is way harder for me to believe than her mindhacking people.

I'd rather a "copout" than Junko just being...like the Ministry of Darkness-era Undertaker.

Never thought I'd compare Danganronpa and Wrestling (well...somebody already did) but the minute Danganronpa wanted to do some worldbuilding, I knew some things needed explanation and you can't just expect the audience to roll along with anything then (which of course wrestling can do).

edited 2nd Oct '16 12:58:26 AM by IceAnt573

Pretty much. As large a copout the brainwashing is, I don't believe the DR writers would have satisfactorily pulled off the admittedly far more interesting route of Junko's despair-charisma slowly driving the characters towards despair.

@Omega Radiance

Why? The people who turned the first Hope's Peak Academy into a corrupt cesspool (the Steering Committee, for example) were all murdered by the Despair Sisters or the Reserve Course students. Everyone in the world bore witness to the consequences of their decisions. Those mistakes will not be repeated, especially not with Makoto and Kirigiri in charge.

THE FUTURE HOPE:

So Tengan was the culprit. And he did all of this so that Ryota would be forced to play the Hope Video, which is the direct opposite of the Despair Video, meaning nothing would be really solved. Man, Tengan. I didn't think you were the type to give up on true hope.

Oh well, at least Hajime and pals swooped in and saved the day. As well as steal Makoto's thunder. Pretty neat sequence.

The Lucks finally met each other. Short, but funny fanboying on Nagito's part.

...Hm? So the Remnants decided to take the fall for the Killing Game. But...the Killing Game wasn't even broadcasted to the world at large, so no one would've called the legitimacy of the FF into question right? An unnecessary admittance, I think.

Kyoko survived as expected. Seiko can rest easy knowing she finally saved a life. And Kizakura won't have to worry about apologizing to Jin.

They're...reopening Hope's Peak? They better not make the same mistakes the Steering Committee made.

Overall, my anime of the summer.

edited 3rd Oct '16 8:06:41 PM by Diamite

Diamite: While the Final Killing Game wasn't broadcast to the world, the rest of the Future Foundation required some explanation as to why most of the Heads were suddenly dead. And if it came out that their leader was the one responsible for it...

Well, talk about a vote of no-confidence. As you noted, Tengan's actions imply that he'd completely given up on saving the world without 'Brainwashing for the Greater Good'. And he was killing off his fellow Heads, cutting down on the amount of obvious candidates to take over the organization... aside from Mitarai, anyway. Not that Mitarai made particularly good leadership material, but considering that he intended to see the whole world Mind Raped into subservience anyway...

At any rate, the rest of the Future Foundation deserved some explanation as to what the heck wiped out most of their leadership. And if they found out what Tengan and Mitarai did, well... obviously, that's not good for retaining membership.

So the Remnants decided to 'confess' and take the blame instead. Even though that meant sacrificing any chance they might have had at returning to society. Convincing the world at large that they'd been Brainwashed and Crazy likely would've been a tough sell anyway... Even if the Hope Video and Monokuma's Gloomy Sunday both stood as proof that being brainwashed into doing things against one's will is, in fact, totally possible.

...Personally, I can't say I'm a fan of the Book Ends involved here. The original Kibougamine fell because they engaged in cover-up after cover-up, and now the new Headmaster and staff of the rebuilt academy are covering up the truth behind the Final Killing Game? Yeah, that bodes well for the future...

There's gonna be a third game released very soon that possibly takes place after the anime with a brand-new killing event with good old Monobear freshly back once again at the reigns so something is gonna fucking happen.

Also what happened to Munakata?

edited 3rd Oct '16 6:39:47 PM by slimcoder

In fairness, the first academy engaged in coverup after coverup because they did thing after thing that needed covering up. Makoto and company haven't done anything other than survive schemes directed at them, so they're not covering up their own bad deeds, but rather those of people who are deceased and will not be committing any more bad deeds, or (in one case) have joined the world's most dangerous terrorists who are actually penitent scapegoats.

He walked away muttering under his breath about how he had to bear the burden of being a survivor.

edited 3rd Oct '16 8:23:28 PM by Gninnekrad

I've always been iffy about the trope Karma Houdini, it is like people playing judge towards characters because they feel that certain characters weren't punished enough for their crimes, it's getting like whining that certain characters didn't get the same fate. I mean yeah I admit that I might've thought like that before about Junko, but... I'm fine with how it is in the end. I still hate her tho.

So I found out that they added Junko AND the SDR 2 cast as Karma Houdini in the character pages. I swear I'm not the one who added the bullet in the first place. I mean... wow, I know some people may be unsatisfied with how Junko ends up... but really? I'm thinking the trope is suffering Trope Decay... It's getting used as a venting place for certain people that might feel a little too extremist.

The SD 2 class is quite honestly a very gray area. I mean they technically weren't responsible for any shit they pulled as Despair. Junko mentally tortured & brainwashed them to become monsters. I think such similar events are possible in real life but this is way to incomprehensible & insane to judge by real life terms. Cause while it honestly wasn't any of their fault through their hands they committed all sorts of atrocious inhumane crimes that you can't just shrug it off by saying "Oh they were brainwashed, their all innocent." I mean aside from actual criminals like Fuyuhiko who actually killed someone before Despair, its hard to judge really as its a fucked up situation honestly.

The 77th class understood that, which was why they scapegoated themselves. It was one of their ways to atone for the sins Enoshima thrusted upon them. Just because they (probably) made it back to Jabberwock Island, it didn't mean they were safe. If Munakata managed to get his hands on information pertaining to their location, then so could the rest of the Future Foundation. For all we know, they could have been vanquished off-screen during the months-long timeskip.

edited 5th Oct '16 1:55:24 PM by sleeping-in-bloom

maybe their should be a clean up for that trope?

edited 5th Oct '16 1:53:46 PM by snakeky-man

It's fitting that the dub for the episode where Kirigiri dies goes up on her birthday.

edited 10th Oct '16 5:08:37 PM by Smasher

Incidentally, the official release date of Side:Hope was my birthday, which I happened to share with Kizakura.

edited 11th Oct '16 10:02:44 AM by sleeping-in-bloom

And on Sonia's birthday, and the dub episode where She falls into despair thanks to Chiaki's death aired.

Ya knowing seeing all the wonderfully drawn & sweet fan-art of the D3 cast really makes me sad cause well most of them bit the dust. All that's left is a guy who almost went despair-murder crazy & is now left with absolutely nothing while the other guy nearly brainwashed the whole world out of a combinations of his own insecurities as well as his mentor's manipulations.

Honestly I wouldn't have minded if one or two of the original cast made their way to the after-life to allow a little more wiggle room for the newbies.

Either Asahina or Kirigiri should have died and stayed that way.

Actually, I'd say that the old characters shouldn't have been in it at all. Because while all of them surviving was kind of bullshit, it also would've been a bit bullshit if any of them had died.

Though, of course, not having any of the old character around would've made it a pretty lame conclusion to the story arc, and therefore also bullshit. So there's not really a good way out.

...

Actually, we should've had Naegi die around the time Asahina fake-died, if anyone.

We should have had the third game be the conclusion to the arc, have an entirely new cast of characters with endgame cameos from both returning casts ala DR2, have Monokuma actually be the villain, and not completely dismiss Despair Girls.

I am not bitter.

edited 15th Oct '16 7:28:39 PM by LordVatek

Well, there is Danganronpa 2.5 to look forward to in the future (the OVA that comes with V3)

edited 16th Oct '16 11:24:07 AM by Smasher

2.5?