Board 8 > Zelda continues to play Danganronpa (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Granted one of the reasons she accomplished this is that DR3 went very heavy on the incompetence of the entre school staff other than Chisa.

I'm not very impressed by these two shows overall but I'm not frustrated either. It's a mediocre adaption of something that lost a lot of its charm when it changed format and didn't bother to replace that charm with something else. But both shows are entertaining enough.

That said, I absolutely love this song.

https://youtu.be/EF8lbBkfW8A
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ZeldaTPLink posted...

Early on she lampshaded that she doesn't know how to brainwash people, but she is so cunning, so resourceful and so insane that she created a crazy plan that in the end made it happen.

But the plan is literally 'find someone that can do it for her and then make them do it'

That's not smart. That's obvious.

Future 11

We start at the ending scene of DR1. Interesting.

The kids are startled that the sky is red. Makes sense, skies don't normally turn red just because evil things happened.

We see the DR3 cast watching them on the monitors. And... Chisa is still evil. Oh boy. So she is the mastermind? It's sad and yet makes sense. A suicidal mastermind, perhaps. Wonder how that fits with what Old Man said to VP.

Kyoko discovered that everyone commited suicide. lol wut?

Monitors are involved. And Mitarai doesn't seem happy that Makoto figured this out. Ha! Caught you.

I mean, the murder method already came from Mitarai to begin with. Add that to Chisa's credentials, and you have a functional mastermind, sort of.

The brainwashing video is Monokuma theater. I'm scared irl now.

Oh hey Sayaka! Long time no see.

Makoto's brainwashing involves having to face his dead waifus. Makes sense.

The DR1 cast appears for the first time in DR3, and I'm here wishing this show or Despair Arc had actually made use of them.

You know, this plan is pretty stupid if Makoto can just untie himself.

Makoto tries to kill himself... but Boxer-kun stops him. He lives! I'm somehow happy for that. He's a terrible character, but damn if this anime did not make me sympathize with him.

Heck, the cast is so terrible that Boxer-kun might actually end in the middle third of the ranking by the time this is over.

He cut his own left hand to remove the bracelet and become immune to this game's effects. Extreme, but actually sensible given this crazy gory setting where everyone dies. More intelligent than anything Munakata did since the first episode, at least.

Hmm... they didn't show Kyoko among the people killing themselves.

Yes, Boxer-kun, all the deaths so far were futile. Welcome to Danganronpa. Get on with the program.

For a moment I thought he was going to kill himself, but at least he doesn't lack tenacity.

So Boxer-kun actually gave in to Junko's blackmail. And he hated Makoto because unlike him, the later defeated Junko. And now he's admitting it. You know, the fact Boxer's terribleness is by design rather than bad writing makes me okay with the character.

So Old Man was Despair. Makes sense. Still a very cool character. But the fact the President of Future Foundation was Junko's lackey is pathetic.

Munakata already knew about Chisa. You know, I'm always impressed how Munakata is ahead of most people in knowledge, yet he makes the most idiotic decisions.

Boxer shut down the power in the building. Intelligent decisions: Boxer 2-0 VP.

VP is finally letting the power of "BELIEVE IN YOUR FRIENDS" get in. Nobody can resist it in the end. It's more powerful than brainwashing.

Credits song playing in the middle of the scene. It's how you know the friendship has gotten real.

And so, a beautiful friendship blossomed in the bottom of nowhere. Will those two together become more than the sum of their parts? Probably, the bar is not very high.

Eh I think Boxer is dead for real this time. That was anti-climatic.

Took 11 episodes, but the Makoto we know has finally resurfaced. He is using logic, and logic is pointing to New Kid aka Animator aka Mitarai. Thought this bland character facade would fool me? I read Agatha Christie, my friend.

New message from Tengan. President lives? Continues next episode.

tcaz2 posted...

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Early on she lampshaded that she doesn't know how to brainwash people, but she is so cunning, so resourceful and so insane that she created a crazy plan that in the end made it happen.

But the plan is literally 'find someone that can do it for her and then make them do it'

That's not smart. That's obvious.

It kind of is smart. She bumped into Mitarai out of nowhere and saw the potential to end the world in his eyes, then used a fucking dungeon that she found in nowhere, coupled with info she got by spying on every relevant character in the cast, to create a scenario so convoluted it caused the entire humanity to kill itself so efficiently not even Adolf Hitler could do it.

She didn't do the science of it, but she did all the managing.

Feels like Junko is more of the "adapt and do things on the fly" type of villain than the mastermind one.

She came to the school just thinking "imma end the world" and spent months spying and torturing people until she found a path. It's the perfect Chaotic Evil villain.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

You know, this plan is pretty stupid if Makoto can just untie himself.

That's the very rare instance of Makoto's Ultimate Luck being his detriment in the series.
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Finally we're getting close to the end of the anime series.
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Yeah it took a long time, but like I said before, I timed the anime with a busier time of my year so I could take this more slowly. Next week I should be more free.

Despair 11

Munakata's expansion project is being shut down with no explanation, as the school goes down in flames. Meanwhile, Boxer-kun is being a coward, and Chisa is now a robot. Just a normal day on DR3land.

Daaaw, Darth Hajime is still holding Chiaki's galaga hairpin.

Junko exploded a window to show her excitement. I can't relate, but it's cool.

Chisa and the DR2 crew are having a seemingly normal class. meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose outside. She talks about love and heart to her students while molotov cocktails fly on the window and students murder each other with picks. Ominous.

All the students are boasting about how they are gonna help the world. Except Nagito. He's boasting about how he's gonna turn into despair, so hope wins. Somehow I actually think he means it.

Hajime will erase his own mories so he can test whether despair or hope is stronger. Weird.

He's an interesting character, but one hell of a loose cannon. Junko is taking a huge risk by letting him roam free. Well, that's Chaotic Evil for you.

Hmm... was he the one who created Virtual Chiaki? Would make sense since he's the only one left who seems to care about her. Also explains why he inserted Virtual Junko into the program. He inserted both an avatar of Hope and one of Despair to see who wins. And what is interesting is that they both went to try to influence his non-Ultimate self, with Chiaki coming out victorious in the end.

Kyoko's father begins the plan to protect the surviving students. But the reason they survived was probably that Junko spared them, in order to put the DR1 plot in motion. You just can't win against her. Unless you are Makoto.

Recruiter-kun going on about how he's gonna protect Kyoko with his life. Except that she's dead. Meh.

Junko sends a message in her phone and hundreds of students jump out of windows. Civilization is over, you can go home now.

The DR1 works together to seal the school, while Celestia drinks tea. This is perfect.

Junko is scared of Makoto. A bit 4th wall breaking, but okay.

She tries to throw a wrench onto his head, but his magical luck makes him skill and dodge it. This is strange, DR1 never actually said Makoto had magical luck, unlike Nagito. But this actually makes more sense.

Okay, so Makoto's luck is different from Nagito. Less fluctuating and violent, but harder to understand. Junko decides to spare him, because losing to a puny kid like him would be very despairing. I guess we are supposed to interpret whether she wants that or not.

The world ended because Boxer was afraid to leave the closet. Tragic.

Yep, my theory is right. Virtual Chiaki was created and introduced into the system by Darth Hajime. A little weird how Monomi instantly adapted to it, but I guess he could just hack her or something.

Again, I like what this does to DR2's ending. Makes more sense now. Hajime just wasn't powering up out of no reason, that was the result of an experiment from his Darth self to test which side of him was stronger. And Hope won in the end. It also explains how he was able to just delete Virtual Junko out of nowhere. Well, she was put there by him, and if he designed Chiaki to be as powerful as Junko, then having Hope win means Chiaki was able to power him up to defeat Junko.

In the end, Junko in DR2 was playing on Darth Hajime's hand. Her despair was tested by him, and failed, so he executed the virtual copy that was supposed to be her backup.

Despair Arc is over, and so is the world. I'll talk about both anime when I'm done with Future and Hope.

Actually it might be a good idea to move to a new thread. @Zyxyz0, could you do your archiving magic? Thanks.

Future 12

In the past, Chisa gives the brainwash video and the suicide video to Tengan. I wonder how she made him actually watch it, though.

Mitarai receives a video from Tengan confessing to everything. Welp, I guess Mitarai was not the mastermind. He's just the poor guy whose anime skills keep being used to cause tragedies over and over. Sucks to be him.

Mitarai decides he will fight. Fuck yeah! The Makoto influence never fails.

Ooooh Mitarai made a Hope Video. Now we're talking.

I guess the fact Junko's brainwashing was revealed to be magical kind of opens the door for a magical undoing of it.

Makoto thinks people should overcome despair naturally. Damn, Makoto, shut up for a moment. The kid's plan is good.

That said I give it a 80% chance Unspoken Plan Guarantee will kick in and Mitarai's plan will backfire. Again.

Mitarai's bracelet restricted his talent, and now he's using brainwashing videos left and right. He was the villain of the anime in the end, but not how I was expecting.

Byakuya's troops FINALLY arrive. Took a long as time, didn't you.

Oh ok, so Mitarai's plan isn't specifically to reverse despair, but to erase negative emotions in all of humanity. That's basically the plot of Tales of Berseria. Or Code Geass. The kid has good itentions, but he's going to end humanity's individuality and potential, yada yada, so he must be stopped.

Munakata is just fucking done with all this shit.

Makoto figures out Tengan couldn't have watched the videos. There is fuckery at play.

Oh, so Tengan was never Despair. He was the one manipulating Mitarai to unleash the Hope Video. That's why this game wasn't broadcasted, it was just a message to Mitarai, not the whole world. But the plan almost failed because Mitarai ended up being in the game too.

Interesting how in the end, the Despair faction had nothing to do with the plot of this arc. Things just happened because of people's individual hope and despair clashing. Like a wise man would say, this too, is the will of causality.

Mitarai brainwashed all the troops, but they are still not enough versus Munakata's asskickery.

Hina is shot in the leg. Damnnit, DR3, stop harming best girls! At this rate I'm gonna have to call Toko a best girl at some point.

Mitarai commands the broadcast to start, but there is a 30 min counter. Apparently there are only dial up connections in the post-apocalyptical world. That, and we need the extra tension.

I know Munakata has anime-tier fighting skills, but having him rush into a stream of machine gun fire without getting hurt is a little too unrealistic even for anime.

In the Land Behind the Fourth Wall, Chisa and Junko are watching everything.

Junko exposes something that is true. Tengan is the same idiot who thought creating Darth Hajime was a good idea. Removing people's feelings NEVER works, old man.

She also exposes how much Makoto is an hypocrite for being against brainwashing when the thing he did in DR2 was attempt to brainwash the kids himself. Well, that's the point I was making above. Using magical anime to reverse Junko's despair isn't necessarily a bad idea, it's just that Mitarai is taking it to another level.

It's weird how this anime's writing has failures yet one of the characters, Junko, is aware of them.

The flashback of dead characters skipped Kyoko again...

Suddenly, Hiro shows up for the rescue, after being useless for a full game and 11 episodes.

Oh Byakuya is with him. Of course. Hiro would never pull off something heroic by himself. And I guess the previous soldiers weren't Byakuya's ones, just some random FF ones who were here just so Mitarai could have an army.

Hajime arrives. The end is nigh.

Hope Arc

Hajime is here. His character arc is complete. And apparently he brought EVERYBODY back. <Insert Smash meme here>.

It seems he still has some of his infite talent powers, and that's how he made such a miracle happen. His Darth self's plan came into fruiction by creating an Ultimate Hope.

Those brainwashed troops were apparently trained in the same place as the Imperial Stromtroopers.

Someone knocks a stone, which knocks another one, creating a domino effect that takes down the troops. Guess who... it's Nagito!

Guess Nagito didn't expect to wake up again after the insanity that was 2-5, huh.

He has a mechanical arm, too. I guess he ditched the creepy Junko hand.

Imposter is now dressed as Munakata, and fighting with a sword. I dig it. He's probably better than the original.

Fuyu also ditched the weird mechanical eye. Now he looks like Roronoa Zoro.

This anime was worth watching just to see Gundham alive and kicking ass again.

Kazuichi built an army of mini Nekomaru bots. And Sonia finally gives him praise.

Teruteru: "Justin Bieber!". lol.

Mikanaves Hyoko and finally gets a "thank you" for it. Ah, the magic of character development.

She and Sonia are still useless in this setting, though but I guess this is better than trying to come up with a way to make them useful. Well, they did give an use to Mahiru's camera I guess.

I know Hajime is amazing but it kind of downplays Makoto that he fails to get to the final boss room before Hajime even though he started going there first.

lol everybody got there before Makoto. You suck, kid.

This whole dialogue is sooooo anime.

Mitarai gives in, and joins the party! And turns down the coutdown with 5 seconds left. Of course.

And Makoto didn't do anything in the end. Well, he did stop Munakata's rampage, so there's that.

Mikan wants to say something to Makoto but she is interrupted by Nagito, who wanted to fanboy about his his Ultimate Luck is greater than his. Lol.

Eh I hope they do something about his dementia, assuming it's possible to heal it with ultimate talents and whatever. Otherwise this ending won't be so happy.

The DR2 cast send a video taking tblame for everything that happened in Future Arc. So the world doesn't learn just how fucking awful the FF cast was. It is a necessary sacrifice.

Byakuya has a point, none of this would have happened if Makoto didn't put those kids in that simulation to begin with. His illogical act of compassion saved the world.

The DR2 cast will know be seem eating bone in the meat every other scene, to make up for the feast they didn't get to eat in 2-1. Imposter is happy with this development.

So Chiaki AI was supposed to be based on the class' collective thoughts, and it took the form of Chiaki because they all wanted to see her. A little forced, but whatever. I think I preferred my theory about Hajime inserting both AIs into the system.

Mitarai, don't throw your phone in the water like that. Smash it first. What if someone recovers it?

Kyoko lives! Hell yeah! This has asspull written all over it, but I don't mind it. The world has best girls again.

Makoto is now the director of HPA. He's not exactly qualified for the job, but let's be fair, it's not a very high bar given his predecessors.

And Danganronpa is finally over! Or is it?

Ok, let's talk about this anime.

First, Future Arc. It's the weaker one of the two. The big issue with it is the format: they decided to do another Killing Game, because that's what DR is about, right? But in the translation they lost the one thing that made DR great: the trials. Without trials, all you have is people locked in a building waiting for something to happen. So in order to create tension and stretch the plot, they took the laziest solution in storytelling: make the entire cast incredibly stupid.

I won't describe them individually now, but every new character in this show is either unremarkable, or stupid in such an agggressive way that at some point in this thread I was able to make social commentary on education from it. Meanwhile, characters like Makoto and Kyoko, whose strength came from their trial presence, lost a lot of their shine. Only Hina was still strong in this anime. Hiro was also wasted (though considering it's Hiro there's not much to be wasted) and I wish we had gotten more of Byakuya and Toko. I know they are in UDG, but meh.

They could have fixed this anime by either bringing trials back, or just ditching the killing game system and made a normal anime about the FF's efforts to fight against Despair. The later is what I thought I was going to watch, and while it was interesting to see another killing game, the execution made it not worth it. And it felt that later on, after realizing the terrible cast they had created, the show just killed them all off, except Munakata and Mitarai. It did give a redemption arc to Boxer, but the rest felt kind of wasted. Especially Baker, who seemed like she was getting an arc too. Meanwhile, it let all the DR1 characters live, even Kyoko, as if the anime was self-aware that its original characters were inferior.

The main plot is good, though. Yeah the stuff with Mitarai in the end was kind of crazy, but this is Danganronpa, I've seen crazier. It was fun guessing what was going on. After Kyoko's fake death, the plot picks up and it's a fun watch until the end. The final episode with the DR2 cast screams fanservice, but it didn't piss me off because this series is so dark that bringing 10 or so characters back is still not enough to ruin the tension.

Overall, 4/10. A lot of fails, but not irredeemable.

Now, Despair Arc, the divisive one.

I already talked a bit about the stuff with the brainwashing videos, but here's my two cents. Yes, I was hyped to see Junko manipilating all 15 students one by one. Yes, I think there was a missed potential here. But I still liked what we got instead. It showed Junko's character and talents in a lot of ways, and made me like the character more. No, she can't drive people into becoming copies of her just by talking to them. But she has godlike analytical skills, is very good at adapting on the fly, is still great at manipulating people to do what she wants (even if she can't outright overwrite their personalities) and is completely unhinged in a way that is both cool and creepy.

We also got an explanation on why she is full of despair: she is so overwhelmed with her analytical skills, that the world has become boring, and the only thing that makes her happy is pure chaos.

And I'm not sure if the brainwashing thing contradicts canon at all. Looking around I found a blog post with a screencap saying DR2 did mention brainwashing, so yeah. I guess it was more about how DR2 set high expectations and didn't meet them. Another issue is how I'm not sure if they could have portrayed 15 different descents into madness in 11 episodes. It's kind of unrealistic for Junko to have that ability to begin with, so it would need a lot of screentime to look realistic enough. Granted, we got a lot of filler of sorts, but this filler served to developed characters like Chiaki and Chisa.

Hajime's usage here was kind of weird. I'm still not sure if I like how he turned to be Ultimate Boredom rather than a psychopath at Junko's service. But in the end, the bored guy turned out to be interesting in his own way.

I guess my main gripe here is how they failed to get an interesting usage of the DR2 cast overall. Except for Imposter and Chiaki, they are all just one-dimensional. They never get any development, and some of them (I'm looking at you, Mahiru) somehow got even flatter. If the anime had kept the brainwashing thing but had the kids participate more on its developments it could have worked. Instead, Junko's plot goes in parallel, being much more interesting than the stuff we are seeing with the kids. And we get a lot of backstory for Future Arc characters, which is well told, but not very interesting since those people suck. Well, I liked Chisa I guess.

The highlight are all the events involving the Tragedy. It starts with Junko torturing a guy and it's a wild ride from there. We already know what will happen, but we can't stop watching as the madness unfolds. Kudos to the episode about the student council killing each other while Mukuro sang. That was incredible.

Overall, 6/10. It was a fun watch, even if it had a lot of missed potential.

And that makes it 5/10 for the anime as a whole. Final rating: meh.

Been waiting weeks to be able to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqcWHLxRk4w

E: posted a longer video that contains more of the ridiculous over-the-top lines from the English dub.

For the record, that last Kyoko line was actually in the anime for a while before they realized the voice actors put it in there. Even they knew that was super bullshit.
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I was waiting the whole time to post that Kyoko line and I get beat to it.
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MrSmartGuy posted...

For the record, that last Kyoko line was actually in the anime for a while before they realized the voice actors put it in there. Even they knew that was super bullshit.

lmao

Better not to think too much.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Better not to think too much.

Danganronpa in a nutshell, tbf

Downloading V3.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Downloading V3.

So hyped!

Also, my favorite DR main character.
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New thread.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78195743

Missed all the updates yesterday. Im with you that I didnt mind that Junko didnt personally bring each person to despair. The way she went about it was fine.

Also, Chiakis death in DR3 is probably the saddest moment in the entire series for me. Her dying in itself wasnt horribly bad, but the fact that she was essentially tortured as a means of dying... Most characters are put into terrifying or comical predicaments that result in their deaths, but the deaths are quick. Hers was drawn out, and she wasnt part of some long term game where she knew she was going to die. It had to have been both physically & mentally horrifying.
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