Tear Jerker / Danganronpa Class Swap

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

---

Class Swap - Hope's Peak Academy

• Teruteru's whole situation in the killing game is just depressing. The first motive shows his mother in danger, and he attempts to kill Ryota to make sure that she's safe. Thanks to Akane, Teruteru's plan is foiled and he is locked in his room as a way to prevent him murdering anyone. The following chapter he is put under the supervision of all the students on a one-on-one basis, and when it's Hiyoko's turn with him, she locks him in the kitchen's freezer as one of her pranks, and was unable to let him out of it because she had just died of poison. Having spent so much time in the freezer caused him to fall ill and be bed-ridden for most of chapter 3. And finally in chapter 4, Monokuma reveals that Teruteru is his traitor, as he had threatened to have his family killed should he decline the position. This divides the surviving students on whether or not Teruteru is trustworthy. It doesn't get any better, as not only is Teruteru the victim of chapter 4, but it's also revealed that the killing game was too much for him and was planning on showing the other students that he was trustworthy by helping Izuru and Nagito with their respective schemes; getting a master key from the Headmaster's room and calling for help respectively, and ending his own life after he had achieved his goals. Nagito's plan results in him being injured by Monokuma and accidentally shocking himself to death with Kazuichi's radio.
• Hiyoko tells Mahiru in chapter 1 that she fears for her life. She knows that she is much more physically weak than her classmates and that is highly likely that someone will target her for murder. The worst part is that Mahiru wasn't able to save her; Hiyoko dies in the following chapter, and she wasn't even the killer's intended target.
  • It's no secret that Hiyoko's death hits Mahiru the hardest out of all the victims of the killing game, given how close they both were. Hiyoko, who had opened up to Mahiru, who had revealed all her fears to her, and who was willing to be nicer to others for her, is now lying dead in front of her and she was unable to protect her. Her death affects Mahiru so hard that she briefly shuts off in the following chapter. If that wasn't enough, during the final investigation Mahiru gets to see her cold, conservated lifeless body in the Bio Lab while Mikan was inspecting the bodies of the deceased students.
• Mikan's motive video takes a page from Ryoma Hoshi's in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, as Monokuma tells her that there is absolutely no one waiting for her outside the school, a reminder that Mikan was severely abused by both her classmates and family.
• Gundham loses both Sonia and Kazuichi to the killing game, the first, according to Ryota, being someone he loved and whom he was really close to, and the latter one being one of his best friends after they were set up for a fight and got over their rivalry for Sonia's affection. In the second trial, Gundham refuses to vote for Sonia as the killer, and in the fourth trial he refuses to believe that Kazuichi is the technical blackened, even having to be restrained by Ibuki and Ryota to prevent him from attacking Monokuma in a fit of rage after the execution. As if that wasn't enough, Gundham then learns that the hamsters he lost on the first day, the Four Dark Devas of Destruction, had died and were buried on the Sacred Grove of his Research Lab. While it's later revealed that they simply died of natural causes while Gundham was attending Hope's Peak, it's still heart wrenching to see Gundham so hurt about losing the Devas.
• The fact that Kazuichi was only declared the blackened behind Teuteru's death because of a technicality. He's completely blameless in what happened to Teruteru and yet Monokuma is going to execute him because of a stretch. Mahiru herself points it out, his death is completely unfair.
• Hajime not being able to accept that Chiaki murdered Fuyuhiko. He tries to defend her with everything he's got in the trial, but to no avail. The grief of watching Chiaki get executed was so big that it caused Izuru to manifest within Hajime again. Later chapters imply that he blames himself for not being able to stop her from murdering Fuyuhiko.
  • The reveal of Chiaki actually being the Ultimate Imposter in disguise and the real Chiaki Nanami being the Mastermind behind the killing game was definitely not something Hajime needed to hear: The moments he spent with his friend when the killing game first began were for nothing, since that was only an Imposter and the real Chiaki is a crazy maniac that made her classmates kill each other.
• When you think about it, the Ultimate Imposter is really just as much of a victim of Chiaki as everyone else is. Chiaki implies that the only reason they went along with everything she said was because she had promised to always be their friend and accept them for who they really are. All they ever wanted was a friend, and they apparently went ahead with Chiaki's plan as a way of maintaining that friendship.
  • Mahiru's narration during their execution in chapter 1 states that a complete look of horror overtook their face as they saw that the Monokuma Dragon was going to incinerate them alive. Outside of the fear of death they have realized something else: Chiaki, their friend, has betrayed them.
• The Tragedy of Peko and Fuyuhiko all starts with the first motive: because the person Peko cares the most about, Fuyuhiko, is already in the school with her, Monokuma instead offers her the possibility of graduating alongside Fuyuhiko should she get away with murder... on the condition that she doesn't tell anyone about it, not even Fuyuhiko. When Fuyuhiko demands Peko to tell him who was in her video, Peko refuses to tell him, creating distrust between them and causing Fuyuhiko to begin setting up the trap to murder someone and find out what happened to his sister, which leads to his demise. Peko then states that she felt like a complete failure, a tool that was unable to protect her young master. The only thing she believed she was good for at that point was to avenge Fuyuhiko by destroying whoever put him in the killing game that costed him his life, and attempts to do so by disabling the broadcaster Monokuma was using to jam any signal. This leads her to team up with Akane to kill Nekomaru, as Akane was planning on using Monokuma's money prize to help her family get out of poverty, and once Akane is unable to go through with her murder plan, Peko kills her and is also partially responsible for Nekomaru's death. Her desire to avenge Fuyuhiko and kill the Mastermind became so strong that she no longer cared about the consequences for causing the death of her classmates.
  Peko: I am my Young Master's left and right hands, his sword and his shield. But I failed to protect him, from others and from himself. And now I failed to even avenge him.
  • In her final moments, Peko tells the others that she never saw them as friends and that she only cared about Fuyuhiko. Without Fuyuhiko to tell her that he never considered her a tool but a loved one and that she does have people that care about her, Peko is only able to see herself as a useless failure. Nagito points it out perfectly:
    Nagito: You're right, Peko. Monokuma won't succeed in making you feel despair. After all... You've been in despair ever since Fuyuhiko's death, weren't you?
  • In spite of knowing that she caused the deaths of two people in cold blood and that she had no qualms about letting everyone else die for her revenge, Mahiru can't bring herself to feel any sort of satisfaction or sense of accomplishment after solving the case and sending Peko to her execution:
    Mahiru: We won, and Peko was punished. She didn't even care about any of us... But why did this victory still feel so empty?
• Akane fell for Monokuma's eleven-million-dollar motive. Why? Because she thought she could use that money to help her family so they would never have to live in poverty and misery ever again. In the end, she was unable to kill her would-be victim, was unable to give her family the money, and got killed herself.
  • In one final twist of the knife, even though Akane was unable to go through with killing Nekomaru, the fact that his death was caused by his struggles to free himself from the bed she chained him to after he saw her get killed causes Monokuma to posthumously label Akane as the blackened behind Nekomaru's death anyway.
  • Nekomaru's part of the story is just as sad. He was particularly close to Akane, so imagine his reaction upon seeing that Akane tried to kill him for money and also seeing Peko impaling Akane with a sword in front of his eyes, with her blood splattering on him. These were also the last things he saw before he died.
  • Ryota is just heartbroken by Akane's death. She prevented Teruteru from murdering him, she allowed him to sketch her in various poses to use for reference in his work, and Akane says that he gets along with him so well because he reminds her of one of her little siblings; physically weak, but with strong aspirations. Her death hits Ryota so hard that he actually begins collaborating with the group. The photos of the cast's school lives also imply that Akane and Ryota were pretty close, making Akane's demise even worse in Ryota's eyes.
• Mikan's mental breakdown when Teruteru's body pops up. At this point, she's already had to do autopsies on four different people and a fifth popping just breaks her. She never thought she would have to do this, and yet she holds out as long as she does simply because she wants to feel useful
• One of Jin Kirigiri's journal entries on his plan to make Hope's Peak Academy a shelter for the students that survived the Tragedy has him mentioning how he may have failed as a headmaster and father, but that he will not fail as a guardian for Class 78. Given what this story is about, the headmaster either thinks that Kyoko, his daughter, died during the Tragedy, or that he is aware of how she and her classmates became part of Ultimate Despair. Knowing that he left Kyoko under the care of her grandfather when she was little, and also knowing that something horrible must have happened to her while she was a student at his school, it's not hard to see why he would consider himself as a failure of a father and headmaster.

Danganronpa Class Swap 2 - Jabberwock Island

• Aoi's mental health does nothing but decline with every chapter. In the first chapter she has to witness how Sakura, her best friend, tries to frame her for the murder of Yasuhiro, with Sakura stating that she only did it so she would die as an enemy in Aoi's eyes and she wouldn't have to mourn her loss. In the second chapter Sayaka, who had gotten close to Aoi and comforted her in regard to Sakura, takes her hostage at knifepoint in a desperate attempt to prevent Monokuma from executing her. Finally in the third trial Kyoko, who had saved her from Sayaka and whom she thought she could always rely on, committed a murder after getting infected with the Despair Disease and her last words to her were saying that she shouldn't have survived for so long and that she's surprised she has managed to not get herself murdered. Kyoko's words cause Hina to go into Heroic BSoD, falling into depression and refusing to interact with anyone else because she thinks they will just backstab her like Sakura, Sayaka and Kyoko did. By the time the group enters the Funhouse, she's reduced to a crying mess and refuses to come out of her assigned room. Monokuma locking her perk to prevent the group from eating doesn't help in the slightest. Aoi ends up dying of starvation and dehydration in her assinged room, and because she died of "natural" causes, no trial is held for her and Monokuma doesn't clean up her body until after the chapter's trial. To plunge the knife further, Monokuma insults her during the chapter's third Monokuma Theater segment for having depression and refusing to eat.
• Kiyotaka has it rough in chapter 2, being the target of verbal attacks from Mondo and Leon after the latter prevents them from having an endurance contest and bonding like they did in canon, being threatened by Celeste and having his cottage vandalized by her, losing Hifumi, whom he had bonded with, and then learning that his father was murdered by Genocider Syo during the time they all attended Hope's Peak Academy.
• The fact that Sayaka went from having a fun day at the beach to finding herself the culprit of the second murder. Notice how she keeps saying that "[she] didn't do anything wrong" but doesn't deny the fact that she accidentally caused Hifumi's death.
• Mukuro has it rough in the second half of Chapter 3 as Junko contracts the Despair Disease and will eventually die if no murder occurs. She even contemplates forcing Kyoko to kill herself by threatening Hina at knifepoint at one point, only abandoning this plan when imagining what would happen after, notably Makoto hating her and what Junko would say about this.
• Kyoko thought that the only way to prevent those infected with the Despair Disease from dying was to end her own life, at least she thought it before getting infected with the disease herself and reverting back to her Ultimate Despair self and killing Mondo instead. Her responsibility as The Leader and her resolve to prevent any more deaths led her to believe that the only way to stop the motive was to end her own life. Had she not gotten infected, she would have performed a Heroic Sacrifice.

---