Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (spoilers)

Well, I'm inclined to be more lenient to people who have essentially spent their entire lives being indoctrinated into this way of thinking, and I do think that the game also wants them to be seen as victims. This has almost certainly been going on since before they were born - as far as they know, this is morally acceptable, and there's no reason to think otherwise.

Maybe the game views this differently (it doesn't really go deep into the implications of the outside world), but if it does, I'd respectfully disagree.

A monster even a tragic monster is still a monster.

Of course, all this assumes Tsumugi is even being truthful, which given all the reasons there are to doubt her is a bit of a stretch, but it is an interesting thing to consider nonetheless. ^_^

Still, regardless of your thoughts on the morality of the kids' actions, their fate at least seems rather tragic if you go by the interpretation that everything was true, since they all ended up essentially being killed and replaced with the game's cast by having their memories and personality erased and replaced. That's a rather awful way to go. x3

To be clear, the way things are is unacceptable. But the game certainly seems to believe that not all hope is lost for our surviving heroes - if they were monsters, they have learned not to be monsters.

Well, we don't know what happens to them afterwards - I personally envision them regaining their old memories and being a sort of amalgam of their old selves and their Danganronpa selves. The fact that people are supposed to survive would indicate that the process isn't supposed to be permanent.

edited 21st Mar '18 8:32:12 AM by KarkatTheDalek

Are they truly the same people as the ones who supposedly agreed to be part of the game though? Their memories and personalities are completely different. I don't think its that they "learned not to be monsters" so much as the original person was completely erased, whether they willingly agreed to be part of the game or not.

Well, I'll confess that I'm kind of getting into headcanon here, though to be fair, that's probably inevitable with this ending. I'm really just talking about how I envision things - others might view it differently.

edited 21st Mar '18 8:35:18 AM by KarkatTheDalek

Hm, personally, I'm under the impression that the majority of the stuff about the TV show and such was true, but Tsumugi was lying through her teeth about the cast signing up for the game willingly, with the original intro showing them as normal students who were kidnapped being what actually happened.

A fair point - I think for everyone who wants to write a fic where the cast signs up willingly, the prologue's kind of a major sticking point. I've seen some fics that have them quickly snatched up even after having signed up willingly, but that leaves the question of why they would do that.

My personal explanation for that flashback for the fanfiction I'm writing is that Kaede tried to back out at the last second, and her memories were pretty scrambled by the time of the prologue. It's not perfect, but I think I can make it work, and I think it could make for a great scene.

Someone brought this up in the main thread when we brought up the fact that there is true and false hope in the series. This leads me to my WMG

The founder of Team Danganronpa is none other than the person who embraces false hope the most, Nagito Komaeda.

Their ideology certainly seems to resemble Nagito's, which makes me wonder how they present his character in official media.

Personal theory: SDR 2 and DR 3 had some...edits made to them in later releases, to make things more compatible with what they're selling.

edited 21st Mar '18 8:55:41 AM by KarkatTheDalek

Hm, that'd be interesting. I apologize, I didn't mean to try and contradict your head canon, Karkat, just sort of presenting my own interpretation. ^^;;

It’s cool - it’s only natural that we have different points of view with this.

Hm... though your earlier mention of Kaede reminds me of something I'd been wondering about the twist. Do you think it may have been a bit more palatable if the shift from Kaede to Shuichi had happened a bit later in the game, so Kaede got at least a bit more time in the spotlight (perhaps with her actually having full sets of free time events with everyone as well)?

For example, let's say that in chapter one, instead of Kaede being revealed as the culprit and executed, Tsumugi either took credit for the kill at the last moment and escapes via the first blood perk (coming back to serve as the Big Bad later, or is found out and seemingly executed only for it to be revealed her death was faked (I think you mentioned an AU fanfic with a somewhat similar premise). Kaede then remains the protagonist until chapter 3, where she is either killed by Korekiyo or kills him in self-defense, causing the narrative to shift to Shuichi.

I have no idea whether that'd work any better, especially since you kind of lose the gut-punch of her dying in the beginning, but its at least a somewhat interesting thing to consider. ^_^

I don't know how to feel about the "playable culprit" happening but being inconsequential, nor about the mastermind being revealed in chapter 1. But then again, I think chapter is the best chapter in the franchise the way it is, so this discussion was not for me to begin with.

I do like the idea of "Mastermind is revealed early, but the game goes on", though I'd save it for something like Chapter 4, with the following chapters being a collective Wham Episode stemming from that.

edited 21st Mar '18 12:21:02 PM by KarkatTheDalek

As I said, the approach I proposed is definitely not without its flaws, the two you pointed out being among them. Its just an interesting alternate thing to consider, given how controversial the chapter 1 plot twist was. I stand by it being a brilliant idea that was somewhat hampered by a questionable execution personally, but meh.

The audience is not immoral, it is amoral. It is incapable of making moral decisions.

Or Tsumugi is full of shit, either or.

Based on Kodaka's Comments about playing the prologue again after finishing chapter 6, its very likely that Tsumugi is indeed full of shit.

Hm... a thought occurs actually, thinking about that. How genuine do you think the trials actually were in Danganronpa: the reality show, and do you think there were often trials that were basically rigged like chapter 1's? Like, I imagine Team Danganronpa probably would've been pretty pissed if the students in one season completely missed everything and all died one trial in, so...

Difficult to say.

To be certain, the whole thing isn’t 100% scripted, otherwise Chapters 5 and 6 wouldn’t have occurred the way they did.

Other than that, hard to say. My headcanon is that they figure out who’d be inclined to kill someone (and perhaps who’d be particularly likely to die), and let it go from there.

Oh yeah, I'm sure things as a whole aren't scripted. I just am wondering whether they might "nudge" things a certain way in the investigations and trials to make sure the game doesn't suddenly end by people voting for the wrong person as the culprit. That's part of what made the situation in Chapter 5 such a disaster, since Kokichi and Kaito had rigged things in such a way that even if Tsumugi did try to manipulate the trial, the whole thing would immediately be blown up by Kaito exiting the Exisal and revealing he was the culprit instead of Kokichi.

Just played the game for the first time. Quite an experience. I loved the ending, the first case twist was cool but came at the cost of killing off the only female protagonist of the series, blah blah blah.

But want I really wanted to say is that I felt so much sympathy for the murderers this time. No, not because I thought they had a good reason to kill anyone, but because of all the freaking work they had to do to set up their "perfect crime." All of which ends up creating a chain of evidence that only contributes to your downfall.

Like, imagine being Tojo Kirumi. First, you've got to kill the guy, which I'd imagine is at least a little mentally exhausting, especially since she had to like hold the guy underwater while he drowns. Then she has to walk back and forth between the lab and the pool like 5 times setting up her dumb ropeway, and then she has to carry the corpse across and place it in a tank filled with fucking piranhas. And in the meantime her glove ripped and all this important evidence was just sitting there in the pool out of reach, and she's already done the rest of the plan so it's too late to go back on it, but she can't even clean up for herself and then oh wait actually she still has to go back and untie the rope and pull it up in the lab and put it back in the tennis net and...

It's like, screw this. That's exhausting just thinking about. I mean, yeah, she's a super maid but even she has to have her mental limits. Which probably explains why she didn't even bother with the last part.

Shinguuji created a locked room by making it so that a katana hilt hit a very small slide lock with enough strenght to close, a feat clearly stated to have only worked because if he failed he could just keep trying again until it worked. This could have taken hours, maybe even the whole night.

And it didn't even help him all that much. He could've just left the door unlocked and there'd be even less evidence against him.

I mean Kirumi only lost because she tried to dispose of the body. If she hadn't, she would have gotten away easily since everything linking her to the crime came about as a result of that. Had she just drowned him and left his body to be found, there wouldn't have been anything linking her to the crime.