YMMV / Danganronpa Class Swap

• Ass Pull: In the first Class Swap, the reveal of the poison vial from the Ultimate Princess Lab that ultimately proves Sonia's guilt in the second trial comes off as this as there's literally no foreshadowing whatsoever about its existence.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Given that Peko was the one who killed Mahiru in canon, there's something poetically satisfying about Mahiru exposing her as the culprit in the third trial of Class Swap.
  • For everyone annoyed with Togami's canon It's All About Me self-superior behavior, Mondo turning his "The Reason You Suck" Speech around back at him in Chapter 3 of Class Swap 2 comes off as extremely satisfying.
  • Considering how badly Syo ruined her life, Toko killing her and getting away with it is beyond satisfying.
• Common Knowledge: Several readers assumed that Teruteru's illness in Chapter 3 was meant to be the Despair Disease, despite the fact that this Killing Game was taking place in the real world and the Despair Diseases only existing in the canon SDR2 due to the Monokuma/Junko AI messing with the students' avatars in the Neo World Program.
• Complete Monster: Chiaki Nanami is revealed to be the mastermind who sets the entire plot into motion. As a result of being unable to feel any emotion other than despair, Chiaki feels driven to use her talent to share the feeling she enjoys with all of mankind. To this end, she manages to bring chaos to the entire world, eventually plunging it into a global societal collapse. Not satisfied with the horrific apocalypse she's caused, Chiaki goes even further by tormenting her friends and fellow members of Class 78 by stealing Ryota Mitarai's anime to brainwash her classmates into forgetting their time together at Hope's Peak, then injecting Ryota with torture drugs to make him forget after realizing he is immune to his own work. She then murders headmaster Jin Kirigiri in order to usurp his position and forces her classmates into a Killing Game where they are made to betray and murder each other, broadcasting it live to the entire world in order to crush the population's morale, and even kills her best friend after she manipulated them into committing murder with the promise of sparing them. Once exposed, Chiaki reveals in great detail how much she enjoys inflicting despair upon others, and, after being unable to break the will of the remaining survivors, decides she would rather kill herself than accept Mahiru's attempt to offer her redemption so she can experience the pleasure the despair of dying would bring her, then has an Artificial Intelligence she created uploaded into the Neo World Program so she can start another killing game even after her own death. A narcissistic, sadistic, and tyrannical monster who ruined the world for her own selfish desires, Chiaki well earns her title as the Ultimate Despair.
• Contested Sequel: Class Swap 2 is becoming one, due to the death order choices being... less than ideal, particularly Chapter 1's murder and Sakura Ogami as the first blackened being... controversial to say the least.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • How did Izuru figure out that the password for Jin Kirigiri's computer was Kyoko's full name? One, Kyoko was already attending Hope's Peak Academy in this continuity, so she definitely had to reveal her talent and her status as the Headmaster's daughter in order to get in, and two, Hajime had always admired Hope's Peak Academy, so it wouldn't be far-fetched for him to look up information about the students and come across the name "Kyoko Kirigiri", information that Izuru would definitely remember since he has all of Hajime's memories and is literally the Ultimate Talent.
  • As one reviewer points out, not only have the locations of the two casts been swapped, but also their respective games' themes of Trust vs Distrust and Past vs Future:
    • In the first Class Swap, Peko's decision not to tell Fuyuhiko the contents of her Motive Video drove a wedge of distrust between the two resulting in Fuyuhiko abandoning her to set up his Death Trap which in turn shattered Chiaki's trust in her classmates and caused her to kill Fuyuhiko in an attempt to graduate. Kazuichi's encouragement to Sonia inadvertently caused her to prioritize her own secret and abandon her bonding attempts with her classmates with her poisoning attempt, and Akane's betrayal and attempted murder of Nekomaru shatters the bond between them as opposed to Nekomaru sacrificing himself for Akane in the canon SDR2. And finally being distrusted by half of his remaining classmates caused Teruteru to contemplate ending his own life, and worst of all, he died trying to earn their trust back.
    • As for Class Swap 2, Yasuhiro's words about Sakura giving in to the motive cause her to realize that it might be her chance to learn what happened to her family and boyfriend during the two years worth of memories that she's missing, so she decides to kill him in the heat of the moment. Hifumi tried to murder Genocider Syo because he had learned that she was responsible for the death of Kiyotaka's father and tried to get Revenge on his behalf. Kyoko decided to murder Mondo after regaining her memories of her time as a Remnant of Despair whereas Toko killed Genocider Syo once she saw her chance of getting away with murder because Syo, being her Serial Killer Split Personality, had negatively affected Toko all her life. Hina decides she no longer wants anything to do with the rest of the group because of all the things the culprits did to her at the class trials (Sakura betrayed her, Sayaka threatened her with a knife, and Kyoko outright told her she shouldn't be alive), believing that any effort to escape or get along with her classmates is hopeless because she thinks she will just end up getting emotionally hurt again.
• Fridge Horror:
  • In Class Swap 2, before Sakura is executed, Monokuma decides to throw them a bone by revealing what happened to her boyfriend Kenichirō and much to her horror, she realizes he's dead. Now he clearly could have died from his sickness, but seeing as the DR1 cast are the Remnants of Despair in this timeline, who's to say she didn't kill him herself? Same goes for everyone's else's loved ones or hostages.
    • With this in mind, Makoto telling Junko and Mukuro that his sister Komaru might just be his best friend becomes rather morbid when you remember that Makoto was shown alive in Towa City at the end of the first Class Swap, meaning that he's definitely not the A.I. created by Future Foundation and that the possibility that he might have murdered Komaru himself during his time as a Remnant of Despair is not far-fetched.
    • Chapter 2 reveals that, for better or for worse, Kiyotaka didn't kill his own father back when he was part of Ultimate Despair... because Genocider Syo killed him herself in order to prevent him from exposing her before the Tragedy even happened.
  • The Ultimate Imposter's portrayal of Chiaki heavily implies that she behaved just like her canon self during their time together at Hope's Peak, and it's shown that Hajime had already begun to develop a crush on "Chiaki" due to her kind personality. Which could potentially indicate that Class 78 could have had the same view of Chiaki that their canon selves did, and that Hajime could have decided to become Izuru to feel worthy of her just like in canon, making it even more heartbreaking and horrifying with the reveal of Swap!Chiaki's true nature.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • At the beginning of Part Four of Chapter 2's Daily Life, Kazuichi, in response to Nagito's theory that Izuru might be Hajime's ultimate talent, states that a birth trait can't be someone's ultimate talent, only to do some Verbal Backpedaling when he realizes Sonia's standing right there. The aftermath of that chapter's Class Trial reveals that Sonia's family are actually illegitimate heirs to the Novoselian throne, which is her reason for becoming the blackened of the chapter in an attempt to keep Monokuma from revealing it.
  • The Running Gag in Chapter 2 of Hiyoko stealing Kazuichi's food becomes this once you realize doing that after Sonia poisoned Kazuichi's orange juice is what got her killed.
  • The close bond between Hajime and Chiaki that forms in Chapter 1, as well as the guilt he feels about not being able to prevent her from killing Fuyuhiko becomes this with the revelation that Chiaki was really the Ultimate Imposter in disguise, and the real Chiaki is a Card-Carrying Villain who made her classmates kill each other.
  • In Chapter 2 of Class Swap 2 Genocider Syo tells Mondo that he'd look great as one of her victims. In the very next chapter, Mondo is found dead in the same way as all of Genocider Syo's victims, except he wasn't killed by her, but by a Despair Disease-infected Kyoko.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This is not the first DR fanfic where Peko is executed by getting cut in half. A New Hope (Danganronpa) did it first.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: For Class Swap, it would have made an interesting character arc for Peko to try to bond with the other students and become her own person outside of being a Kuzuryu assassin in addition to her already-stated goal to get revenge on the mastermind for Fuyuhiko's death. Instead, she once again ends up being executed as a blackened, this time even going to her death without Fuyuhiko around to assure her that she's more than just a tool.
• The Woobie: Aoi gets it rough throughout all of Class Swap 2's Class Trials. First the best friend she makes not long after arriving on Jabberwock not only turns out to be the culprit behind the first murder, but, in an attempt to spare Aoi any pain from her execution, tries to pin the blame for the murder on her. Then, following the second trial, Aoi ends up getting taken hostage at knifepoint by Sayaka in an attempt to prevent Monokuma from executing her. During the third chapter, she is used by Kyoko as one of her scapegoats, and when the detective is about to be executed, she proceeds to insult Aoi, saying she shouldn't have survived so far. It says a lot when Aoi wants nothing to do with the group at the start of Chapter 4, as she thinks that the other students will eventually turn on her, eventually resulting in her having lost all hope of surviving the killing game and eventually dying to Monokuma's starvation motive.