Danganronpa Discussion

My ideal setup for the best possible character development would be one in which we learn a bit about the character during the main story, but we get a more fleshed out version filled with details of their past coming in their Free Time Events. Take Gundham for example. I HATED this guy until chapter 4 when I felt he came slightly less despicable. Until that point he only talked about himself and hardly showed any empathy toward other people. I couldn’t stand him, but I loved his FTEs, hearing about his mother, his website, and his animals. It brought him a lot more down to earth and gave him more relatable qualities. This happened with all the DR2 characters I didn’t originally like, well except Teruteru. I didn’t like Teruteru because he started off quite unlikeable (in the same way as Gundham) but his FTEs didn’t add anything new to the table. Beforehand, we knew he grew up in his mom’s restaurant and he loves her, afterwards we literally only know the same things.

This exact issue is why I don’t like the V3 FTEs. My favorite character in V3 is Keebo, and some other characters I liked enough to do FTEs of include Maki, Himiko, and Kaede. LITERALLY ALL OF THESE ADD NOTHING NEW TO THEIR BACKSTORY EXCEPT HIMIKO. Yeah it isn’t a bad thing to reveal a lot about a character in the story, but these people still feel so much less fleshed out than Akane, Gundham, Nagito and most of the rest of the DR2 cast.

As far as DR1 goes it’s kinda in between. I only completed Mondo, Chihiro, and Aoi, and they were just ok. I was told to do Junko’s before I read Danganronpa IF but I... uh… didn’t, so if I’m missing something super important let me know.

Just wanted to add this, but is it just me or are the characters in DR2 genuinely more diverse than the characters in the other games? In DR1, Toko, Byakuya, and Celeste all seemed to be realists, Chihiro, Taka, Sayaka, Makoto, and Aoi all were optimists, etc. I think the same can be said for V3 too, Kirumi, Ryoma, and Kiyo all seem to be quite skeptical and pessimistic, Kaito, Kaede, Tenko, and Angie were optimists. But when it comes to DR2 you have a multitude of different people, Ibuki who is bouncing-off-the-walls-insane. Fuyuhiko who is trying to be a better person than he was in the past. Nagito and his insane motives. Gundham and his passion for the occult and animals, which is a bizarre-ass combination. It feels like the characters have less repeated tropes and more personality.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get to the story.

Three of the DR2 trials are stellar, two are pretty ok, and one is lacking. Chapter 2, 4, and 5 are great, 1 and 6 are ok (mostly because they are super straightforward), and 3 is bad due to the pointless repetition of concepts, this time with less unique qualities (wow this girl killed 2 girls with no gimmicks other than the filming of some irrelevant video and the order of the murders, concepts we saw in the first game)

The first one I like is Chapter 2. This plot device of having some characters know each other before the start of the killing game is genius and I never saw it coming, seeing as it’s the eighth of eighteen class trials and I was still getting accustomed to how insane the series already is. In my opinion, this is what truly showed how dynamic the class trial is and how much potential there is for stuff like this in the future, and they topped this trial multiple times too! I didn’t think it was possible but they did it. Spike Chunsoft made Fuyuhiko grow as a character in the best possible way: solely because he sees how cruel his sacrifice was, and it’s phenomenal presentation of this change if I’ve ever seen it. I’ve heard complaints that the trial is lengthy, and that it could be cut down a lot, but I didn’t feel this way in the slightest when I first played it. I’ve been meaning to play it again to see if I misjudged it, but I’m quite confident it’s as good as I remember.

Next awesome trial is the fourth one. Honestly at this point I still didn’t like Gundham and I was thinking “ok I’m glad he killed someone so none of these other people have to die yet,” but after letting it sit with me for a while, I think it’s pretty well done. Nekomaru and Gundham’s duel was all in spirit of saving the others, from what I can gather (iirc it wasn’t directly stated in the post-trial), which makes Gundham a lot more human than I realized. I know I was ranting about him earlier, but I did say he did become less despicable around this time. Also this trial is INTENSE. The concept of the secret to the fun house is quite smart and I didn’t see it coming. Too bad it could’ve been way easier if Nagito wasn’t a prick.

You saw it coming but the final stellar trial of DR2 is chapter 5’s. In fact I believe it’s the best trial of the series. You know why if you’ve seen it. If you haven’t then why are you reading this? This trial (and Danganronpa 3 anime) are what cemented Chiaki as my favorite character of the series. She’s just so perfect.

Now, allow me to do the same with V3. There are two or three stellar trials of this killing game, one or two decent trials, and two lacking trials. Chapter 1 and 4 are great, 5 is hard to determine, 2 is decent, and 3 and 6 sorta just fall flat. Chapter 1 and 2’s placements hopefully make sense to you, and I can explain 5 but just saying it felt dry at parts and had too many red herrings that had too much time spent on them, but I’ll explain the rest.

Chapter 3 is a clusterfuck. A very heartbreaking clusterfuck (for Himiko) but it’s still got some serious flaws. First of all Kiyo’s motive is fucking retarded, did they actually just create some fake and physically impossible stuff we’ve never even been hinted to before as a motive… 90% OF THE WAY THROUGH THE TRIAL? Why couldn’t they have just taken the moment Kiyo said “I didn’t know I wouldn’t get credit for murder during the investigation so I went through with Tenko’s murder” and used that to prove someone else as the culprit for Angie? That would’ve been unique, not just another shoehorned double-victim trial.

Chapter 4 is pretty great. We get to see lots of unique things we’ve never seen before, such as the killer not remembering their crime (doesn’t really apply to Nagito’s murder), and also the repeated trend from the second game of having to solve a different mystery about the mechanics of the location in order to solve the case. The thing is that this time the concept is repeated in a fresh way, as supposed to killing 2 victims for one trial in the 3rd game in a row.

Chapter 6 is uhhh.... Not what I expected going into it. I don’t really see why exactly the writing team wanted to go this direction with the ending, and there are so many loose ends where I want to know what happened. For example we know that Danganronpa is a fictional world inside a hit live TV show with fan interaction to Keebo. Ok. Does that imply it’s our world? Because I played through Danganronpa which is a game. It didn’t allow me to control Keebo, and there’s definitely not a worldwide phenomenon TV show with the same name of the game I just beat. It makes me wonder why they went the meta direction anyway, if it’s not even relating to our real world in the way games like OneShot do. Also we saw Kaede, Shuichi, and Kaito’s auditions. What does that mean then? How did they get transferred to this virtual world? What even IS the fictional world? Do they still have counterparts in the real world that have been watching this show too? If that’s true then what will happen once they enter the real world in the epilogue? I enjoy the meta themes and introduction of Tsumugi as the antagonist but it really starts to get weak in the latter half of the trial once these questions arise.

As far as in-trial minigames go I really do enjoy Psyche Taxi and Logic Dive. The 1v1 debates were quite unfun in the second game but fixed in V3, Scrum Debates are cool but way too short for being once per trial, Mind Mine is luck-based unless if you are a fucking god, Hangman’s Gambit is guessing until I get 2 letters, Closing Argument is always fun and easy, and Bullet Time Battle (or whatever you wanna call it) is easy but stupidly lengthy. Out-of-trial gameplay is basically the same in all 3 main games. The hardest trials of the series all come from Danganronpa 2 and that’s honestly neither good nor bad. Difficulty isn’t what mattered to me when playing these games but it was quite annoying to restart twice in 2-4 when I was only playing on Kind difficulty.

Nevermind the whole DR2 versus V3 debate, I think (excluding songs that appear in more than 1 game) that DR1 has the best selection. The MTB’s are great, Box 15 and 16 are flawless, I love all the executions songs because they don’t have lyrics yet, there’s one ambient song I can’t remember the name of that plays during mornings that’s beautiful, and Class Trial Solar Version is the best song to play in a trial throughout the series. To pick between DR2 and V3 is hard. I honestly am not sure yet because I haven’t listened to their OST in one sitting yet like DR1, but I’ve felt this way since before I did that, so there’s no bias in my beliefs.

All the games are good, but I think the best voice acting comes in the latter half of V3. Dunno how Kokichi’s (and Fuyuhiko’s lol) VA is so good at channeling genuine emotion into his voice but it’s pretty great. Gonta and Himiko are great too, as well as most of the rest of the V3 cast.