YMMV / A New Hope (Danganronpa)

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Zigzagged with Tsumugi. While no one will miss her, they take no pleasure in her death. Then, of course, a flashback chapter reveals she was once a plain normal girl who was corrupted to Despair by Junko.
  • Hagakure, whose crime was that he (accidentally) killed Genocider Syo in self-defense, gives a heartfelt farewell to his friends and Angie (who he was in love with) and asks them to say goodbye to his mom for him.
  • In universe, Alice still feels bad that Ringo died, even if he was a paranoid nut (and worse).
• Archive Panic: Despite being unfinished, the entire Legacy of Despair has 7 mainline stories. All of them total over 2 million words, and while it is still unfinished, they are still engaging to read as well.
• Ass Pull: The revelation of Hayate's revival, along with the real implications of his talent as the Ultimate Anti-Hero, may slightly give fans the impression of this. Prior to the trial where he was executed, there was little foreshadowing to help fuel the entire "Hayate has superpowers" twist. All the foreshadowing prior, however, was made for "Hayate is Mr. Psycho", and him surviving the execution may come off as slightly off-putting.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sayaka Maizono, and her constant appearances. Sayaka has appeared in no less than five stories (A New Hope, Final Horizon, Isle of the Damned, Terror in the Skies, and the soon-to-begin Prisons of the Past. This has caused debate on whether or not she's being featured far too much in the series. It's harkened that she's similar to Jean Grey .
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Maki and Peko having sex after a sparring session. It is well over 30 chapters later before anyone speaks of it again, but in between that time, all parties involved carry on as if it never happened. Which may be what some readers prefer. After all, at the time that chapter was first published, Kaito/Maki and Peko/Fuyuhiko fans feared their ships would be sunk. In the end, it stayed a one night stand, they stayed Just Friends, and the only ship that got sunk (if it even was a ship to begin with for anyone) was Peko/Maki.
  • To a lesser extent, Tenko kissing Akane as a distraction during a spar. Like above, nothing comes of it nor is it mentioned outside of a later scene where Akane pulls the same move on Hajime. That happens sometime after Tenko's died.
• Broken Base: The decision in Final Horizon to have the fans decide who would die in the third case, ultimately leading to the death of the main character Hayate. Some of the readers didn't particularly enjoy this decision or its outcome. Not to mention the very idea of putting up a poll to determine a key event in the story would have upset many a reader, as it probably meant that the author didn't know how to move the story forward. On the other hand, since things like "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure" stories are a thing, then it would be a somewhat engaging thing to do had the author know the alternatives. The fact that he actually survived mitigates this, however, but it also leads to the issue below.
  • While Hayate's "resurrection" does elicit some positive reactions, some might even consider it much of an Ass Pull, as there's weak foreshadowing to display this. Some people might like the fact that the romance between Hayate and Alice would blossom, leading to a similar happy ending, but others would denounce such a decision, considering that it had little foreshadowing and broke Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Such an event would also mean that the Anyone Can Die clause would have its tragic part lessened, now that resurrection is a thing. This alone brought up some points of criticism among readers.
  • And then The author did it again with a completely random choice of how the penultimate trial would conclude. For more information, see They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot below.
  • In general, the Space arc is often the most divisive of the bunch, and not in a good way. While some considered it a good part of the series despite its lower points, others considered the arc the point when the series lost momentum.
  • The inclusion of expressly supernatural events in the story (ghosts, summoned creatures, etc.) might also be a subject of split opinions. While some would consider it a new factor added to the mostly realistic Danganronpa setting, others didn't like it for pulling in elements that weren't given that much attention earlier in the series. This also brings up a lowered Willing Suspension of Disbelief, since, now that resurrection is a thing, it will make future deaths "cheaper" as a result.
• Captain Obvious Reveal
  • Averted with Mastermind!Makoto. It is still an effective plot twist, but the clues have been strawnly laid out from the motivation of Monokuma to parts of his dialogue. And it still caught a good chunk of the readers off.
  • The way Dylan Rufheiser speaks, his choice of clothing, and him talking about how he'd usually blend in might give away his true talent as the Ultimate Psychopath.
  • Fee5h, who pointed out Yukiko's identity as the mastermind behind the Tranquility Station Killing Game, noted how she would have used her talent to manipulate events. Even taking into account her personality and the alibis she creates, it would be fair to say that she would be the mastermind. After all, her talent just screams Mastermind off the back.
• Catharsis Factor: Considering that Tsumugi got Kaede killed in canon, there is something satisfying about Kaede's speech being the final nail in Tsumugi's coffin.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Adohira Akazukin actual name is Adohira Sasamori: While he started as a meme thanks to the doll Akazukin(and the subsequent calling him 'Dollfucker'), he has since grown in popularity thanks to his snarky and sarcastic personality that has won many fans over.
  • Jacen Dawn: Much like Adohira, Jacen started as a meme. However, since his appearance in Central City, Jacen has grown with legitimate popularity thanks to the author's handling of him.
• First Installment Wins: Though A New Luck is still unfinished, it has yet to live up to A New Hope, and perhaps the first timeline before the reboot. Also within the original timeline, New Hope is the one that gets more attention than the sequels. Most of what made it appeal more were due to its impressive Character Development of the cast, more tragic death scenes, better pacing, and the fact that it was based off the canonical cast itself, whom the fandom knows more about compared to the latter series' OCs.
• Franchise Original Sin
  • A problem that's often overlooked is the pacing of the sequels, with Final Horizon and Sea of Tranquility being big offenders. Normally, the Killing Game goes for a balanced pace, allowing the audience to bond with the characters for a little while right before the first murder. With the faster pace, sometimes it's hard getting to know the characters. The murders happen a few chapters away from single scenes, and it is only then that most of their backstories are revealed. Turns out, they might have something compelling to tell, but couldn't due to the speed at which the audience learns. Not helping this is the preference to "tell" rather than "show", as characters sometimes exposit their backstory rather than lacing it throughout. The end result? A ton of cases of We Hardly Knew Ye and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character (see below), all of which hurt the experience. In A New Hope, this isn't that much of a problem since many of the characters are well-established in canon. But with OCs, this becomes even more of an issue which leads to them sometimes falling flat. There is some mitigation in the sequels, though the problem still persisted very well.
  • Shifting POVs and protagonists. Again, this only applied to A New Hope due to the readers' prior knowledge of the characters. But with the OCs, it's hard to determine who exactly we're rooting for. This wasn't a nominal problem in Final Horizon due to establishing Hayate and Alice well during the story, but it's evident in Sea of Tranquility, especially with its rushed introductions.
  • Flat characters. In a franchise with a wide range of three-dimensional characters each with its own stories, the characters in sequels sometimes feel hollow. Some of them have personalities that revolve around their talents, others are simply there with a certain character quirk placed on them. Not helping are the rushed introductions, all of which sputter out some lines and often feel as if they're scripted to introduce themselves. Overall, it hurts the immersion in the story and may leave fans out. The "quantity over quality" approach arguably makes the problem even more glaring.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the first non-canon omake for Isle of the Damned, Daisuke mentions to Akeno how he made the decision to stay on Hora Island so that Akeno could have Alexander back. No less than two days later, a House of Horrors chapter revealed that Alexander was a Serial Killer, and the one to kill Mackenzie, also revealing that he was only using Akeno to satiate his lust.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight
  • Chiaki surviving and bearing a child after the events of A New Hope becomes a bit more heartwarming when her English VA recently bore a child as well.
    • An Expy of Chiaki in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, Kurumi Wendy, bears similar traits to the fic's iteration and also makes it to the end of the story.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A Killing Game taking place in space and in the moon? While it's not exactly Danganronpa, there's a similar game with a similar premise and a similar setting.
  • A death happening before the first motive? It's been utilized by Danganronpa: Despair Time nearly two years after A New Hope is released.
  • An up-and-coming fangan, Danganronpa Redemption, bears quite the similarities with A New Hope, aside from utilizing some of the prior games' casts:
    • Mahiru is the first victim of both entries.
    • Both have Sayaka dying at the midpoints, though with different fates.
  • A New Hope is well-known for its pairing of Chihiro/Miu, but the ship itself would become this trope in the fangame scene. Fangame voice actress Lumisau is known for voicing young male characters in such games (Yuki Maeda in SDRA 2, Yukio Satou in Brave Danganronpa) who belong to Chihiro's character archetype. With the release of Project: Eden's Garden, she would later voice one of its characters (Ultimate Golfer Grace Madison), who is almost similar to Miu. To put it simply, she voiced the characters belonging to the fanfic's famous pairing.
  • Before Mukuro joins the primary harem of Makoto, Aoi and Sayaka were the primary runner-ups. It's later revealed that Aoi is pregnant with twins. Had it been Sayaka who was pregnant, the author pretty much predicted Oshi no Ko a couple of years early.
• I Knew It!: Reviewer Fee5h correctly deduces Yukiko and Dylan's complete involvement in the Sea of Tranquility killing game.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Jacen Dawn^Explanation  A hilariously bad submission for Central City of Despair. Known to be completely obsesed with Mikan. Has actually gained genuine popularity since his acceptance to the story.
  • Dylan Yeetheiser^{Explanation(spoilers)} Dylan Rufheiser, the Ultimate Diplomat/Psychopath stated this phrase in a chatfic, which consisted of class 80-A and 80-B
  • what if Patrick sexed Otto?^Explanation Literally the random thoughts of someone on the discord. Had expaned to "What if x(usually a killer) sexed y(usually their target).
  • Sierra is the mastermind^Explaination An oft repeated crack theory by one of the readers.
  • Dollfucker^Explanation A nickname that Sabankuma gave Adohira in Railway of Despair, and it caught on with the discord.
• Moral Event Horizon: The second Mastermind of A New Hope (Makoto Naegi after a Face–Heel Turn) continuing to run the Killing Game against the trapped students of Class 77-B, 78 and 79 (the latter of whom had nothing to do with him), forcing best friends to kill each other no matter how innocent they were. To say nothing of when he stabbed his clone for trying to help him and attempted to bury everyone under the collapsing Hope's Peak.
  • Junko Enoshima, who along with everything else she'd done, was responsible for breaking and corrupting the Hope Bringer Makoto into despair in the first place.
  • Munakata officially crosses it somewhere between killing Ryota Mitarai and killing Ryoko in front of the rest of the survivors, while planning to subject the rest of them (and probably their hostages as well) to a firing squad.
  • In Final Horizon, Hiyoko crossed it in Chapter 28 when she remorselessly detonates Sayaka's bomb to kill her for the (currently) last time even after Sayaka was trying to redeem her and asking her what Kirumi would think. Hiyoko reasons that she did it because Sayaka was a "square peg in a round hole" and she had already fulfilled her purpose. There's also her torture and abuse of Jun, a two year old.
  • In Chapter 19 of Sea of Tranquility, Choko reveals that the aforementioned Jibo Momota probably crossed it before he even joined Despair.
  Choko: It was due to one of my cases. This guy was like a grade a nut job. When things started to go south for Hope's Peak, things started to spiral out of control quickly. He was never arraigned but prosecutors wanted to charge him with multiple accounts of child endangerment, unpaid child support, and countless charges for his unethical research. Bodies started turning up left and right in dingy facilities all around Tokyo. Most of these were kids who were desperate and thought he could give them talent. Heck, the guy was like a ghost though. We couldn't even figure out where he lived, let alone what hole he crawled into. I guess this explains why though.
  • Dylan crossed it by murdering Mallory just because he was there and apparently giving her a Glasgow Grin because "she was just so pretty", as well as tricking everyone with his Mask of Sanity. The worst thing he did was shown in Chapter 28: he murdered most of the animals in the ranch (their last major food source!) and left the surviving animals to eat the dead students whose corpses he'd strung up on scarecrows. It's implied this act was what finally provoked the rest of the survivors to decide to just outright kill him.
  • Yukiko crosses it without anyone knowing, and kept crossing further and further. Poisoning Mikhail while framing Rene, setting Amare up to kill, masterminding no less than four deaths across two cases, it's a toss-up really. However, her most heinous act was her treatment towards fellow monster Dylan like a mere attack dog and then killing him not because she thought he deserved to die, but because he was no longer useful to her and he needed to be "put down".
  • The ones running Kuma-Kuma Land crossed it at the very beginning by trapping one hundred potential students on a roller coaster and ejecting them out of their seats, at random, to their deaths. They were responsible for the deaths of eighty people, and had no qualms with trying to eject Annabelle, a nine-year old girl!
    • Nagito's clone follows suit by trying to outright shoot her.
  • Jana in House of Horrors crashes through the event horizon without looking back when she kills Kitai (a seven year old boy) without remorse, and that was after trying to kill a couple of students within hours of waking up on the island. Her justification? So she could escape and be worshipped as a goddess for her item-creation powers back home.
• Nausea Fuel: A LOT of the executions. There's a bit too many to count, but the fact that a lot of them involve straight-up dismemberment would definitely be added.
• Sequelitis: Post-A New Hope entries have been slightly gaining fewer favorites and follows as time goes by. Even when it's rebooted into A New Luck, some fans are quite reluctant to transition into the reboot timeline.
• Shocking Moments: Kuma-Kuma Land begins with eighty innocent people dying in a murderous roller coaster ride. And that's just getting to the park itself.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Several of the least popular Danganronpa characters have been killed off, such as Teruteru, Hagakure and especially Korekiyo.
  • After Leon is found guilty, Monokuma has his cousin Kanon executed as she's no longer useful as a hostage.
  • Ruruka Andou is revealed to be a member of Ultimate Despair, after being knocked out by Hiroko Hagakure. Chapter 83 sees her face caved in by Chisa for allowing Hiroko, Kenshiro and Akane's siblings to escape.
  • Hiroki and Saki turn the tables on their would-be killer, who is implied to be Yuto Kamishiro.
  • Haiji Towa being tortured (probably to death) by Monaca.
• Unexpected Character: It was less than expected to suddenly cut to Komaru and Yuta being held hostage in chapter 67.
  • And it was really unexpected, bordering on Wham moment considering the timeline implications, when Natsumi turned up, alive, in chapter 70 as Fuyuhiko's hostage. She gets along well with Chihiro's dad, it seems.
  • Sato is revealed to be alive as well.
  • Soshun Murasame is alive and a member of Ultimate Despair (as well as the rest of the Student Council), as is Yasuke Matsuda, who was horrendously scarred by Junko instead of killed by her.^*  technically, the truth proves more complicated
  • Topping all of that, however, is Sayaka's ghost. Himiko's pops up later to ferry off a recently deceased Tenko.
  • Sayaka again in the spin-off, Final Horizon. Only this time she's alive again.
  • An offscreen example in the epilogue: Nagito Komaeda's Despaired Clone survived Hope's Peak's destruction and is on the loose.
• The Un-Twist: In the second case of Final Horizon, most people expected Nico to die, since her guessing skills are too useful.(the submitter of Nico even joked About Rei doing it before it happened.)On top of that she showed clear distrust towards Nico because of her guessing skills. However, most of them didn't expect Raef to die early on. Still, most People also figured out that Rei was the culprit
  • The first case of Sea of Tranquility plays out pretty much exactly like the hypothetical example from the Untwist trope page. The hostile untrustworthy guy who in most Danganronpa fics would stick around as a source of tension and conflict for most of the story ... is found guilty and executed in the first trial. Meanwhile the Nice Girl who's broken up about the murders and had unexplained blood on her hands is found to be innocent, having injured her hands trying to help the victims. Though the untrustworthy guy, at least, might've been innocent. And Mallory probably was too, but was later murdered.
  • In House of Horrors, Hikyou being the Ultimate Loser wasn’t a total shock, since a few people had already figured it out.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While it isn't that evident in A New Hope, as most of them have some established backstory in canon enough for the readers to know, the OCs in succeeding stories somehow suffer from this. As it's prevalent, it now has it's own page.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Early on Mikan is strangled to death (counting towards the number of victims in the case), but is resuscitated in time. This established that temporary deaths like that still counted as case-worthy, and set up the possibility that other victims could be saved in a similar manner. The author^* presumably not wanting to cheapen things by using that too often then proceeded to never bring that up or use it again for the rest of the story, not even at the end as a callback or twist (not counting Kokichi being left temporarily comatose after a killing in the virtual world, as that harkened back more to Class 77-B’s state in Danganronpa 2).
  • Sea of Tranquility's voted ending. The voted ending, Luck, ended with the most survivors, the closest there is to downplayed Everybody Lives. The other endings were a little bit tacky, but were interesting in their merit; Despair had the death of the "mastermind" Yukiko as the Despair Virus is released, which would make for a jaw-dropping bad ending. On the other hand, Hope had the death of Tae Min, sacrificing himself in order to get Shiori to survive; it fits the Danganronpa mold better. Not only that, but the survivors would also go for one last challenge, which might have revealed many other things, such as the worldbuilding and characterization, but all of it was skimmed over in the Luck ending. It would also be a bit more in line with how the tone of the canonical Danganronpa series is somehow mirrored into it (see Fridge Brilliance).
  • Railway of Despair and its setting. It's a Wham Episode for the series, but it was only done with a small cast and a short game. However, the entire train setting could have been utilized even more, as shown with films such as Snowpiercer.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Final Horizon and Sea Of Tranquility have been somewhat noted for this, but the costuming gets better later on. In particular, however, the looks of the characters didn't match up to their canonical predecessors, who all wore distinct outfits otherwise.