Friday, January 29, 2021

Ultraguy's critical analysis of Danganronpa 3


I wanted to give my thoughts on Danganronpa 3 for a long time and I figured now would be a good chance since I'm getting back into the series. Originally it was just gonna be a general review of the anime. But I had trouble keeping a neutral focus, so it kind of devolved into more of a list of common narrative flaws and my thoughts regarding them. I hope it doesn’t come off as too negative since I know the fandom can be seen as toxic in a few places.

Anyway, I’m running under the assumption that most people reading this have probably played the first two games and have a passing idea of what DR3s plot covers. That said I’ll try to make sure to explain anything out of the ordinary. I’m also judging the anime mostly on the perception of how it expands on elements that were present in DR1, DR2, DR0, and DRIF.

Note: Also since I don’t normally post on Reddit. I will mention that I’m not sure if some of the links provided are allowed there, but the main point of the blog is the written content, and I needed an easy place to link to for quick references. I can potentially change out the links if needed though.

Note: Obviously spoilers for most of the series. I also make a small joke about the V3 mastermind.

My thoughts on Danganronpa 3 as a concept

Why didn’t Kodaka write it?

The main writer for the Danganronpa series, Kodaka, didn’t actually write Danganronpa 3. He only wrote a general outline and “supervised” its development. Not only that but while the anime was being produced, he was also writing Danganronpa V3. This means Danganronpa 3 likely wasn’t his top priority.

Now to be fair I don't think Kodaka is the only person who can write Danganronpa well. The light novels Danganronpa Kirigiri and Danganronpa IF were both written by separate authors and were both well received. But it seems like an odd decision that the “sequel” meant to end the main game's ongoing storyline doesn't have a single episode written by the person who conceptualized the franchise in the first place.

On that note Danganronpa 3 has too many writers

On the subject of authors, there are like 6 different people who wrote the entirety of Danganronpa 3. Apparently having multiple writers for anime isn’t unusual, but I can’t help but feel that having so many cooks in the pot is never a good thing. There’s also the fact that many of the credits of these writers seem to be random translations or misc episodes of anime series that don’t have many similarities to Danganronpa.

Splitting Danganronpa 3 into two intertwined series was a bad idea
Danganronpa 3 is split into two separate intertwining series called the despair arc and the future arc. The despair arc is supposed to tell you the story of how Junko caused the apocalypse and turned the DR2 cast into the ultimate despair. While the future arc features a “final” killing game with the DR1 cast/Future foundation and is kickstarted by a trial for DR1s protag Makoto. The idea is you’re supposed to watch one episode of each series in alternating orders to get a greater insight into the overarching plot. It’s a unique idea that sounds interesting on paper, but in practice, it doesn’t always work that well.

For one, splitting Danganronpa 3 into two separate anime series cuts its fairly generous 24 episode count in half. This means that each arc has a ridiculously short amount of time to tell its story, which is a problem since a mystery series like Danganronpa needs ample time to get its points across.

The intertwining nature of both series can also create an almost impossible balancing act. The future arc needs to tell a compelling killing game storyline that wraps up the plotlines of the original DR1 characters but also gives prominence to the new future foundation members. The despair arch needs to give a believable explanation for a complex multilayered plan Junko created to take over the world. As well as give a spotlight to the DR2 cast and build up characters/plots from the future arc. I don’t think most authors could pull this off well, let alone 6 who are only being supervised.

Danganronpa 3 would be better off as a game

It always struck me as odd that Danganronpa 3 was an anime and not a visual novel. Yeah, there’s probably a decent amount of overlap in terms of media consumption in the fanbase. But most of the fans come to Danganronpa for its mystery-solving and sim mechanics. It would be like if Halo 3 was a live-action movie instead of a video game.

Now to be fair the despair arc would be hard to adapt into a game since it's not centered around a traditional killing game. But the future arc feels like it could be re-tooled without too many issues(and that was seemingly the original plan for that matter). A game also has a much longer run time than an anime, allowing it to have extra time to flesh out mysteries and plot points. Characters in particular benefit a lot, since the games typically have free time events or side modes that can delve into characters that die early on. Making the future side an anime just doesn’t seem that beneficial to its narrative in the long run.


Why make it an anime, when anime is really difficult to make
Finally, I never understood why Spike Chunsoft would want to make Danganronpa 3 an anime from a financial standpoint. To my understanding, anime is really expensive to commission, incredibly easy to pirate(I say hypocritically), and notoriously hard to make. Now obviously Spike Chunsoft didn’t make the anime themselves, they went to an outside company called Lerch studios. But I don’t see how that degree of separation helps when this is an anime original project meant to end an entire storyline of a major franchise.

General criticisms and thoughts on the anime

The killing games general premise and execution 

"The guy in the hoodie is sus"
~Munakata

So they had to change the killing game rules this time around in order to facilitate the shorter episode count of the future arc. Essentially everyone wears a bangle that can inject them with a sleeping agent or a poison. Every few hours the characters are put to sleep and then one of them will awaken to become the “attacker” and kill one of the remaining members. It’s implied when the game starts that there’s only one attacker and that said attacker is a traitor. Each character also has a character-specific rule called a “forbidden action”. If you perform your forbidden action you get injected with the bangles poison and you die. For example, Makoto can’t run in the halls, Juzo can’t punch people, etc etc. The game is won if everyone gets through a single round without anyone being killed.

On a whole, I prefer the more traditional Danganronpa trial setup, but I think this rendition of the killing game works fine. It’s very reminiscent of Zero escape,(another series made by Spike Chunsoft) and puts the main protag Makoto out of his element since it basically devolves into a battle royal. The game also has an interesting plot twist in that it's revealed that there is no attacker.

Essentially every sleeping period the person closest to a TV monitor wakes up and is lured into watching a brainwashing video that invokes them to commit suicide. The ultimate detective Kyoko figures this out from a combination of the locations of bodies, the location of monitors and the fact all the fatal injuries are only in places the victim can easily reach. It's fairly well foreshadowed if you're paying attention to the same clues as Kyoko, although some of the positions characters end up in after dying come off as ridicules for self-mutilation(impaled n a chandelier, strung up in electrical cords, etc). The game eventually ends after the characters find a hidden room that controls the building's power, allowing them to shut off the monitors.
The main weaknesses of the killing game lay in how the characters react to it and how forbidden actions play into its ruleset. From the get-go, it's clear that this game isn’t as sanctioned by rules as the previous killing games in DR1 and DR2. The future foundation members are trapped in their “headquarters” by various cave-ins and blocked exits. But there are no rules that you can’t kill anyone you want, there aren't weapons set up to keep people out of certain areas, and Monokuma doesn’t have a physical robotic presence to keep people in line. By all accounts, the characters are free to their own devices.

But for some reason, the possibility of trying to find loopholes to escape the situation isn’t brought up until several episodes in. Not even by Kyoko, who was constantly experimenting with ways to break DR1s killing game. Granted the future foundation is seemingly more dysfunctional due to the stress of the apocalypse, but it still comes off as scatterbrained.
Next, the forbidden actions are a bit too convenient of a plot device. While several of the forbidden actions are subtly hinted at ahead of time, others are virtually unknowable unless the characters specifically reveal them. It kind of means the writers can just introduce them at any time to create a contrived roadblock or facilitate a cheap death.

The mastermind and his motives

“If you tell your audience there's a bomb under the table, and then your character gets stabbed by a killer clown, you don't win because your audience is going... what!?”
~Overly sarcastic productions

So the mastermind of the future arc killing game is Tengan, the chairman of the future foundations. Tengan spends most of the series coming off as this badass wise old mentor-type character. He makes it clear he’s upset the apocalypse happened and tries multiple times to talk down participants of the killing game. He’s a surprisingly agile fighter and protects a lot of the main cast members from danger. He’s generally a voice of reason the few times he shows up in the despair arc, trying to talk Hajime out of the Izuru project. Then he meets his end at the hands of Munakata when the latter goes on a  rampage. So naturally, when he’s revealed to be the mastermind it clashes a lot with his established motives, and the narrative has to try really hard to give an explanation as to why it makes sense.
Supposedly Tengan saw so many horrible things during the tragedy that it made him give up on humanity's ability to manage itself. He then found out that the ultimate animator Mitarai had been making a brainwashing video that could make people go into a catatonic, but functional “hope” state and set up the killing game as a way to coerce him into using it.
By capitalizing on the fact most of the future foundation leaders would be together in one place for Makoto’s trial, he was able to knock them all out at once. He then transported them to an exact replica of the future foundation base underneath of the original one. He also set explosives to destroy the original building, so the participants would be harder to rescue. Then constructed the killing game so it could function regardless of if he stayed alive or not. Finally, It’s explicitly stated the game isn’t being broadcast nation wide like the first two Danganronpa games, but Mitarai “finding out” would be enough to drive him to use the hope video. .
This explanation sounds ok at first. But when you start looking at the smaller details it's easy to notice there are numerous plot holes.
  1. It’s established that before the killing game started that all of the security teams in the original future foundation building were murdered. It’s never explained how this was accomplished or if Tengan somehow did it without getting caught.
  2. It can be assumed Tengan carried everyone underground and set the original building to explode himself. The amount of time it would have taken him to do this wouldn’t have been insignificant, even if the bombs were placed ahead of time. Makoto's meeting was supposed to be pretty important. So somebody should have noticed if there was a 30-60 minute interval of complete radio silence from one of their most important locations.
  3. Mitarai has no reason to be in the game at ALL. To be fair it’s stated that Tengan wasn’t expecting him to show up to Makoto’s trial(He just came anyway despite not being invited for some reason). But Tengan didn’t have to take him into the building underground when everyone else was knocked out. Since the entire point of the game is to force Mitarai into using the hope video, him dying would invalidate the plan.
    1. It’s implied Mitarai wasn’t supposed to be at the meeting about Makoto11:28 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-12
  4. On that note If Mitarai wasn’t supposed to be in the game, why wouldn’t Tengan broadcast the game or at least record footage of it. If the whole point was to break Mitarai’s spirit, allowing him to actually see footage would have had a much greater effect than being told after the fact.
  5. Additionally, if nobody was going to see what happened during the events of the killing game anyway, Tengan may as well have just killed all the participants when they were initially knocked out. Either that or just have shown them all the suicide video all at once. It really doesn’t matter how they die, and most of the participants kill themselves anyway.
  6. Why didn’t Tengan just “force” Mitarai to use the hope video or steal it from him? Munakata even points out stealing it would have been easier. Granted, the story tries to frame this as Tengan getting old and wanting somebody to willingly succeed him, but it's a pretty flimsy excuse.
    1. Munakata asks why Tengan didn’t steal the video. Apparently, he wanted to push Mitarai to be his successor 11:50 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-12
  7. How does the underground future foundation building even exist? It’s established multiple times that Munakata oversaw the building's construction and that it was originally meant to be an overseas campus. Even if Tengan is the foundation chairman, he shouldn’t have been able to make such major modifications without anyone knowing.
    1. It’s stated Monukata constructed the future foundation building himself 5:25 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-1
    2. Munukata is shown making the future foundation building 5:55 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-2
    3. It’s stated the future foundation building was repurposed from an overseas campus 6:18 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-3
    4. The future foundation building is stated to have been designed and built by Munakata 0:25 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-4
  8. Tengan gives himself a forbidden action that prevents him from lying. Why would he do that? If anyone asked him the right question about the killing game his role in setting it up could be revealed.
    1. Tengan’s forbidden action is Lying 18:32 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-5
  9. Tengan gave Mitarai a forbidden action that prevented him from using his “talent” as the ultimate animator. This is probably so he couldn’t use the hope video on his phone to brainwash the participants and avert the killing game. But Mitarai’s video was already complete by the time the killing game started. Even if Mitarai himself couldn’t use the video, couldn’t he just hand his phone to somebody else and tell them to use it.
    1. Mitarai’s forbidden action is stated to be using his animation talent 7:48 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-12
  10. For that matter because of the way the game is set up(with characters killing themselves via the suicide video). The only way to actually end it was to shut off the building's power, which was hidden in a secret room. What if the characters just never found this room? I’m sure statistically the game would still end eventually, but the longer the game goes on the greater the chance of Mitarai dying.
  11. How did Tengan even know Mitarai had a hope brainwashing video to begin with? Mitarai seemingly didn’t tell anyone about it and while Tengan was aware of other brainwashing videos, he was never directly told Mitarai was working on a new one.
  12. Kyoko figured out a decent amount of how the killing game worked partway through the animes runtime. If she alerted people to the fact the monitors were the problem early on, the game might not have even escalated.
  13. During his fight with Munakata, Tengan seemingly enraged him for no reason. Why do this when he’s the biggest danger to the rest of the group, including Mitarai.
  14. Why was this game even necessary? It was already established that the tragedy was winding down in both DR2 and Ultra Despair Girls. The future foundation was already winning without needing the hope video. Granted maybe Tengan thought peace wouldn’t last regardless, but it’s not well explained.
    1. It’s stated the tragedy was calming down in DR2 https://youtu.be/dsQ2Q_la4HA?t=7371
So yeah there’s a ton of issues with Tengan’s plan and as a result, he’s widely regarded as one of the weakest masterminds in Danganronpa. Even Kodaka himself didn’t seem to like the revelation all that much, which implies to me he may or may not have been originally planned for the role.
There are some attempted explanations for why his plans are so radical compared with his prior characterization. He was apparently given flash drives that had a despair brainwashing video and a suicide brainwashing video by the character Chisa. Then he supposedly watched the despair video without telling anyone and went crazy as a result(which is technically confirmed in the DR3 manga spin-off Killer Killer). This caused him to make the killing game plan based on a twisted version of his normal moral stance. Though obviously, this doesn’t explain his plans plot holes, or why he was stupid enough to watch such an obviously dangerous video in his normal mindset in the first place.
From an outside perspective it honestly just feels like they didn’t want the “mastermind” to be anyone too predictable, so they chose Tengan because he was a left-field choice. But it ends up being one of those situations where the attempt to subvert audience expectations backfires because the plot twist doesn’t make sense.

Fake-out deaths and plot armor

Yeah, I don’t get this either. Pretty sure I died”
~An outtake the English dub forgot “to remove 

This is a common complaint about the future arc. None of the characters from the previous main games ever seem to be in any real danger. For example, early on the anime tries to make you think Aoi died, but then reveals it to be a fakeout prank from the character Monaca. Several characters outside the main building like Hagakure and Byakuya have some close calls, but always escape unscathed. Monaca outright states an original DR1 cast member is going to die, but the plot doesn’t follow through with it.

The worst example of this is probably Kyoko, the main supporting character in the first game. Kyoko’s character arc has to do with the fact she’s incredibly cold to everyone, and unwilling to trust anyone but herself to solve a given situation's mysteries. In the first game this mentality ends up putting herself in a situation where she nearly gets nailed by the mastermind, and she’s essentially saved because Makoto was willing to nearly sacrifice his life to get her out of it.

By the time the future arc comes around this scenario is reversed. Kyoko’s forbidden action is allowing Makoto to live past the 4th sleeping period of the game. Obviously, she doesn’t want to die, but she trusts her friends a lot more at this point. Because of this she’s willing to let her life be sacrificed and holds a firm belief Makoto can resolve the rest of the situation without her help. It’s a really touching moment that closes out her arc and brings some much-needed stakes to the killing game.
And then she just doesn’t die because of plot contrivances.

It gets revealed that the ultimate pharmacist Seiko somehow created a countering agent to the fairly unexamined poison in the bangles in the middle of the death game despite spending most of her time fighting with her former best Ruruka. Then Kyoko found this antidote on her body after she died and took it with her on the off chance it helped her before her bangle could activate. She then went into a coma for the rest of the show before being resuscitated by the DR2 cast member Mikan when the cast from that game shows up to save everyone near the end of the series.
To be fair this twist doesn’t come out of nowhere, as Seiko is shown holding the bottle at one point and you can see the same bottle for a split second on camera when Kyoko “dies”. But it doesn’t the cure's creation any less unrealistic and makes Kyoko seem a bit manipulative since she withheld information about the cure from everyone else.
It’s also blatant emotional manipulation on the side of the writers. Because they’re tricking people into having the emotional blowback of a major character's “death”, but aren't following through with the ramifications of that decision. Kyoko doesn’t even get a scar from the poison's partial effects, despite half her face turning black and bleeding out after the bangle activates.

The lack of exploration of what the Ultimate despairs did to the world
So at the end of Danganronpa 2, it was revealed the cast members were all villains who served the main antagonist Junko. I think a lot of people were interested in seeing what they actually did while under her control. But DR3 kind of just skips over showing this? You get a brief look at them in the first episode of future, as well as some mugshots, but virtually nothing else. It was honestly kind of a letdown.


The depiction of the Twilight murder syndrome case

The “twilight syndrome murders case” acts as the motive for the second chapter of DR2. Essentially Monokuma makes an arcade cabinet that depicts the events of a “real” murder that happened at hopes peak academy in the form of a visual novel. The characters in this game are meant to represent the DR2 female cast members Mikan, Soijin, Ibuki, Mahiru, along with two new girls named Sato and Natsumi.

Supposedly Mahiru was being bullied by Natsumi out of jealousy for her photography skills and Sato took offense to this due to being Mahiru’s best friend. Sato wanted to stand up to Natsumi on Mahiru’s behalf but was afraid to do so because Natsumi’s older brother was Fuyuhiko, the ultimate Yakuza. Regardless, Sato tried to talk to Natsumi anyway and ended up attacking her in a fit of rage after an argument. Sato then panicked and killed Natsumi because she feared the yakuza would retaliate against her. Mahiru and the rest of the female cast discover Natsumi’s body shortly after the murder happens, and while most aren't sure of the culprit, they decide against reporting it.
It’s later revealed that the Mahiru took pictures of the crime scene that would directly implicate Sato. However, instead of turning Sato into the police, Mahiru threw out the evidence and covered for her. Unfortunately, Fuyuhiko found the discarded evidence anyway and killed Sato as revenge. When Fuijihiko finds out Mahiru tried to cover for Sato in DR2 his subordinate Peko kills her for it.
It’s overall a really sad story, brought on by poorly thought out and morally grey decisions from almost the entire DR2 cast. The deaths of Natsumi, Mahiru, and latter Peko also serve as the catalyst for most of Fuyhiko’s character development in DR2. It's one of the more interesting cases in the series, and I think a lot of people were excited to see how DR3 would adapt it.

Unfortunately, DR3s depiction of these events doesn’t really live up to the hype and changes so many details that the case loses most of its moral complexity.

In DR3 none of the DR2 cast members discover the murder scene, so they’re all absolved of the morally grey decision of not reporting it. Mahiru also never takes any critical pictures of the crime scene and doesn’t know Sato committed the murder either. So she’s absolved of the morally grey decision of covering up a murder to protect her best friend. Fuyihiko apparently still finds out Sato was the culprit and kills her off-screen. But the story doesn’t really dwell on that plot point and is pretty vague as to exactly what happened.
The DR2 cast members are only really upset about the murders for a single episode and there’s not even any tension between Mahiru and Fuyuhiko. Natsumi herself doesn’t even get any scenes with her brother to establish their relationship. It’s overall a really watered-down version of what the game depicted.
Now to be fair some of the changes in the anime are handwaved with the explanation that Junko just “exaggerated” the story in DR2. But that retcon comes off as unnecessary and doesn’t fit with the details we were given about Natsumi in DR2 either.
In DR2 Natsumi was a year under the class of DR2 and was a main course hope's peak student. But in DR3 she’s been bumped up to the same year as them and was moved to the reserve course. DR3 then tries to portray her as having a complex about her lack of talent and that her acting out was due to wanting to be seen as special.
But like Fuyuhiko makes it abundantly clear during his FTEs that his little sister was actually better at being a yakuza than he was and had plenty of support to become the head of their family if she wanted to. A big reason why that didn’t happen is that she willingly turned down any support for the position. Her having a complex about not having a lack of talent doesn’t make sense.
Likewise, since she’s the “little sister” of Fuyuhiko, there has to be at least 9 months if not more between them. When you consider how classes work by age in school, her being in the same year as the DR2 cast is a statistical improbability. I think they just did this because they wanted to give Natsumi an excuse to have some screen time with Hajime, but it’s not necessary. In fact, the Natsumi probably spends more time interacting with Hajime than she does the characters the murder case is actually centered around.
I could also add that Fuyihiko did say she had the ultimate talent of a little sister in DR2, though the anime doesn’t treat that title as legitimate for some reason. She also apparently got tons of hand towel contracts which also really isn’t a normal person thing.

Hajime fusing with Izuru

End of DR2: "I will live on as Hajime Hinata"
DR3: 'Hinata or Kamukura, call me either idc'
~Reddit 

So when Hajime wakes up in DR3 after the events of DR2 his personality fuses with Izuru. This results in him having emotions/memories of Hajime, but still having access to all the talents of Izuru.

I initially didn’t have a problem with this, but the implications bothered me the more I thought about it. Hajime’s entire arc was centered around the fact that talent wasn’t everything and he was better off being himself, rather than becoming an inhuman demigod like Izuru. So making his reward for coming to that epiphany, to be having free access to all Izuru’s talents without any downside feels like a contradiction. Granted I guess it's not like Izuru “deserved” to be erased himself, but he’s not exactly a good guy.

This fusion also makes Hajime REALLY OP, to the point that you can justify him doing just about anything. He literally becomes a walking plot device that solves most of the series problems in the final 20 minutes. The only reason why Izuru never had this problem was that he was barely motivated to actually do anything because of his emotionlessness and lack of empathy. I feel like it would have been better for Hajime to either have lost his talents after awakening or having them diminished due to his own mind diluting Izuru’s influence.

Student council killing game

"Ah shit here we go again"
~Danganronpa players after multiple killing games

Yeah, so the student council killing game is a pretty big event in Danganronpa history and is depicted in ep 7 of the despair arc. Junko basically traps the members of Hope's peaks student council in a building and tells them to kill each or her sister Mukuro will slaughter them. To facilitate this goal she gets a ton of blackmail material on each student council member. The ball gets rolling when the student council members Karen breaks down after seeing her mother has been kidnapped and turns on the others
Overall the way the anime depicted this event was ok, though the student council turns on each other a bit too quickly for my taste. To be fair Mukuro does kill one of the students who try to stand up against them. But the fact they turn on each other rather than trying to fight back, collectively makes the class look like idiots. Junko and Mukuro also leave the room at one point to go to a data center that’s on a different floor of the building. Yet despite the doors seemingly not being substantially barred nobody tries to make a run for it. Yeah, Muruko probably would have caught them anyway, but it would have been a better idea than staying in a small room that was devolving into a bloodbath.

I guess I would also say that since we don't get to know the student council, their deaths have much of an impact outside of the sheer shock value of the violence on display. 


Monaca’s role in the plot 
Fuck this shit I’m out
~Monaca Towa probably

Monaca is the main villain in the spin-off Ultra Despair Girls. Her backstory is that she was an illegitimate child to the leader of this huge tech company called Towa corporation and that she was horribly abused/neglected because of it. Junko came into her life and essentially became a big sister-like figure to her. This resulted in Monaca blackmailing her father so Towa corporation could support Junko’s endeavors from the shadows. As well as aiding Junko in kidnapping the loved ones of the DR1 cast.

Anyway, when Makoto defeats Junko at the end of DR1, Monaca sets up a massive revenge plot. She tricks the future foundation into coming to rescue the DR1 captives, before ambushing them and kidnapping the character Byakuya. Then she intentionally allows Makoto’s sister Komaru to escape captivity while holding a weapon effective against her robot army. She spends most of the game steadily building up Komaru’s confidence to fight back against her, and then forces her to make a sadistic choice that could end the lives of thousands or start a new global war. Her ultimate goal was to break Komaru’s spirit and force her to become a successor to Junko. This ultimately doesn’t work, so Monaca decides to become Junko’s successor instead.

Throughout the entire game, Monaca establishes herself as one of the most vicious villains in the series. She manipulates her own allies, tortures people to death, kills thousands of people, lies about being crippled, etc. Her devotion to Junko is also so creepy and over the top, that her entire room has nothing but Junko pictures covering every inch of it. From her prior appearances, you would think she would play a massive role in DR3.

Unfortunately, her actual role is a lot triter

In DR3 Monaca murders, the wheelchair-bound character Miaya, and replaces them with a robot duplicate before the killing game even starts. She then proceeds to act as Makoto’s ally, while gathering information on the future foundation. Partway through the killing game the character Byakuya realizes Miaya is dead and has been replaced. He concludes that Monaca is probably the only villain with the resources to make a robotic duplicate and sends the ultra despair girls protags Toko and Komaru to confront her.
When the girls confront Monaca however she gives up without a fight and blows up her entire robot army on a whim. She states that the good guys always seem to win no matter what, and she doesn’t see a point in fighting back anymore. She also says that after spending time with the character Komaeda, she was turned off from the entire hope vs despair conflict due to his creepy obsession with it.
When asked about her role in the Killing game, Monaca says she's not affiliated with the mastermind and was just lurking on Makoto. Finally, Monaca decides that she’s going to spend the rest of her life as a NEET and flies into space in a truck filled with video games and snacks.

So a lot of things here

  1. Monaca clearly hated Makoto A LOT because his actions led to Junko’s death. Literally, the entire plot in Despair Girls is stated to be revenge against him. Even if Monaca was tired of the hope/despair conflict, why wouldn’t she kill him when given so many chances to do so.
  2. Monaca not having any affiliation with the mastermind makes no sense. Right when the game starts she creates a video that’s directly synced to the killing game's introduction video. Where Monokuma exits said the introduction to attack the version of Usami in the control panel of Miaya's wheelchair. This scene cannot exist unless Monaca had prior knowledge about the killing game happening. She can’t even “ hack the system” to make a video on the spot either, because the Monokuma videos in the future arc are specifically stated to be pre-recorded.
    1. This moment where Monokuma and Miaya’s screen are linked 4:52 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-2 
  3. How long was Monaca posing as Miaya? She couldn’t have been posing as her very long since Byakuya finds out about the dead body without much issue and never has time to warn anyone. Isn’t it a huge coincidence that Monaca just happened to be present when the killing game started?
    1. Others in the foundation find Miaya dead 21:05 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-mirai-hen-dub-episode-6
  4. Why would Monaca just give up against the heroes so easily? The level of planning and extreme violence she displayed in ultra despair girls was outright insane even by Danganronpa standards. Given how important Junko was to her, just giving up because Komeda was annoying is ridiculous.
  5. If Monaca wasn't going to play any kind of major role in the anime at all, why even bother including her. I understand she serves as a potential red herring, but the future side only has like 12 episodes to tell its plot. Not only does she eat up a ton of this screen time despite not adding anything, but an entire episode is dedicated to confronting her.
Anyway, I think most people thought Monaca was pretty anti-climatic in the anime. Ultra Despair Girls essentially set her up as the next big bad of the franchise and DR3 just handwaves it out of existence.


Mitarai’s role in the plot and his effectiveness as an antagonist


Mitarai is the Ultimate animator. He can create complex animations that can invoke powerful emotional responses in his target audience via a combination of subliminal images and brain stimulation. He’s supposed to be a class member of the DR2 cast, but he’s so obsessed with his craft that he constantly skips class,  to work on his art instead. His love of anime is due to a lifetime of isolating himself after being bullied as a child.
In DR2 the Ultimate Imposter from DR2 finds out about him by coincidence and agrees to impersonate him at school. This results in a friendship between the two, as the Imposter keeps an eye on his health. He also ends up becoming friends with the DR2 character Mikan, as he gets sick at one point and needs her help.

In isolation, Mitarai works fine as a character. His skill set is fun, and his near self destructive tendencies provide an interesting conflict. The problem is he eventually meets the series villain Junko Enoshima, and his role in the plot starts to engulf the entire anime.

Essentially Junko bumps into Mitarai at random one day and decides to take interest in him on an impulse. He shows her his anime and she picks up on the fact it creates emotional responses that aren't normal. When Junko realizes this, she creates a plan to combine his techniques with footage of the student council game to create a video that makes people either love despair or kill themselves.
At first, Junko keeps this a secret and sets Mitarai up in a hidden bunker underneath a statue on the school's campus as a “present”. But eventually, Mitarai finds out about her agenda, and Junko just straight up kidnaps him. Junko eventually uses the videos to brainwash the reserve course into killing the main course and then committing suicide. She also brainwashes Chisa and the DR2 cast into being her servants. Mitarai escapes before the tragedy kicks off and joins the future foundation though. During the killing game, it's revealed Tengan got a copy of the brainwashing videos and went crazy as a result. The killing game also uses the suicide video to make the participants kill themselves.
At the end of the killing game, it's revealed Tengan wanted to coerce Mitarai into using a new brainwashing video that instills hope in people. Mitarai complies by basically turning a future foundation assault against his allies so he can upload his new video globally. Everything is stopped when the DR2 cast comes to save the day and Hajime talks Mitarai down. The series ends with Mitarai going to live with the DR2 cast on Jabberwock Island.
Sooooo

Mitarai has WAAAAAAY too much agency in the plot of the Danganronpa franchise as a whole because of his role in DR3. Almost everything bad that’s ever happened can be traced back to his actions.

Why do the reserve course students follow Junko and kill the main course:Mitarai

Why do the reserve course students kill themselves: Mitarai

Why does Chisa become evil: Mitarai

Why did Tengan become evil: Mitarai

Why were the ultimate despairs evil: Mitarai

Who’s tech makes the final killing game possible: Mitarai

Who does the final conflict center around: Mitarai

This is particularly problematic because he only meets Junko by chance, so this makes all the events that transpire from his work seem like dumb luck. It’s also unnecessary for him to be involved with Junko for as long as he was and incredibly stupid of him to not realize she was dangerous.

Junko was able to utilize DR1s memory-erasing tech developed by Matsuda after he died just based on his notes and her analysis ability. She also created her own version of alter Ego, a human-like AI, just because she knew the ultimate programmer. She reasonably should have been able to copy his animation techniques much more easily than the anime portrayed. Likewise, Junko in DR3 really isn’t that subtle. She legit beats Mukuro with a baseball bat, destroys Mitarai’s anime collection, and rambles on about despair right in front of him. But for some reason, Mitarai’s fine with going to this secluded location in a secret school bunker.

His role as the finale “antagonist” in the series also doesn’t work well because he’s too weak-willed to hold that position and there’s not enough time to explore the ramifications of his ideas.  He’s literally talked out of it in a few minutes by a person he barely even knows. It’s an anti-climatic showdown compared to the ends of the main Danganronpa games, where Junko or Monaca pulled out all the stops to win over the heroes.

Chiaki being real 
"How it started vs how it's going"
~Ultraguy

Chiaki was a character in DR2 who was later revealed to be an AI program. She’s a fan-favorite character due to her cute gamer girl design and having a fun dynamic with Hajime as his confidant for most of the game. She doesn’t really have a complex background, but most people excuse it because she’s intended to be part of a therapy program. The fact the cast might forget her if they get out of the neo world program is also played up for drama. Overall she was relatively well-received. Then Danganronpa 3 made her a real person, and that caused a lot of controversies.

Now personally I never had much of a problem with her being real. Most of the “human” Ai’s we had seen in the series up to that point were based on somebody from the real world. So the concept of Chiaki being a real person wasn’t unprecedented. I think the biggest problem is that she doesn’t have any character flaws or decent character development in DR3. Chiaki is initially established as this shy and socially awkward girl, who doesn’t have any friends. But this problem of social ineptitude just goes away in the same episode it's introduced. We don’t learn anything about her real-life family, or how she became the ultimate gamer either. Her character is just too “flat”.

In addition to her lack of character flaws, Chiaki also has an issue where too much of the cast's motivations ends up centering around her. Everyone in the DR2 cast loves her to an almost unconditional degree and her being executed by Junko is what brings them into despair. Her relationship with Hajime is outrageously strong despite them meeting by chance and only really playing video games together over a period of 6 months. Her death even drives Izuru to tears, despite his generally emotionless state. It feels artificial and forced.

On a final note, the explanation for why Chiki was in DR2 as an AI is kind of flimsy. Essentially her AI is meant to be modular and changes to form an authority figure based on the mentality of the people placed in the neo world program. Since everyone in the cast wanted to see her again, that’s why she shows up in DR2. But like if the AI was meant to be an authority figure, you can make a good case that it should the form of their teacher Chisa. Not to mention nobody in DR2 is nearly as obsessed with her as they were n DR3.

This modular AI explanation also directly conflicts with the info given about the Ai Chiaki in both DR2 and supplementary material. Chiaki had previously stated her personality came from her father and that she had a brother. This was clearly referencing the ultimate programer Chihiro and the alter ego program he made in DR1. Her name is also a partial anagram for Chihiro’s and her proto design was literally an Expy of him. It probably would have made more sense for Chiaki to just be Chihiro’s cousin or something.

Kodaka also implied in an interview that he didn’t think about the concept of Chiaki being real until after DR2 was either near completion or when he started DR3. So overall I get the feeling her being real was retroactively established, which is why she’s implemented so awkwardly into the plot.

Almost every decision the characters make when confronting Junko in the despair arc

Press X to not die
~Every action game ever

So near the end of the despair arc, the DR2 cast realizes that Mitarai and Mikan have been missing for a while. Komeada mentions having seen Mikan by chance and finds the entrance to Junko’s secret lair while searching for her with Chiaki. They find out that both Mikan and Mitarai are being held captive by Junko and Komeada pulls a gun on her. Izuru shows up, stops Komeada, and shoots him. At the same time, the DR2 character Peko fights Junko’s sister Mukuro right outside the base and loses. Mitarai flees the base during the confusion and runs into the DR2 cast's teacher Chisa. Chisa goes to rescue her students.

What follows is a series of really stupid decisions

Chisa runs right to Junko’s base without informing any other adults or allies what’s happening. She even has a phone on her with her head of security Juzo actively calling her and just doesn’t notice.
Chisa gets Chiaki and Komeada out of Junko’s base, but she’s immediately captured herself. The DR2 cast then debates what they should do next and instead of calling the police they decide to rescue her themselves. This is despite the fact Peko was already beaten by Mukuro and Komeada has been shot. Peko even states it’s not a good idea, but somehow Komdeada convinces them they should go via reverse phycology. They even drag Komaeda back into the base with them, despite it being mentioned he can’t help them that much while injured.
Naturally, everyone gets fucked. The DR2 cast and Chisa are both brainwashed, and Chiaki gets executed. Nobody outside of the cast even knows that this happened.

The revival of the DR2 cast and their lack of injuries
At the end of DR2 it is stated that any of the characters who died in neo world program virtual simulation are essentially braindead and the chances of them recovering are slim. At the end of DR3 they're all shown to be alive and well due to the talents of the Hajime/Izuru fusion.
It’s a controversial decision in the fanbase because it seemingly invalidates the weight of the deaths in DR2. Personally, I’m ok with it but would have preferred the cast's fate been left ambiguous. My larger issue is the fact the characters look exactly the same as they do in DR2, despite it being specifically stated many of their bodies were supposedly mutilated during their times as Ultimate despair. They also don’t really bother explaining how the cast feels towards each other after the killing game or the fact they’re all hated worldwide. When you combine all these facts it kind of just seems like the anime wanted a happy pandering ending for them. Which to be fair the writers did admit to so eh.
There is a short OVA called Danganronpa 2.5 that goes a bit into how Hajime recovered the students. He basically made an alter ego AI that recovered their mind data from the depths of the neo world program. Though why he couldn’t do the same for AI Chiaki I’m not sure.

Rebuilding hope's peak


“Danganronpa: Hopes Peak was a school drenched in corporate corruption. It’s stated the very reason it was made was as a research facility for talent, and had a class system. People were shaped by the schools system in how it was seen as the one true thing in the world to bring hope for the worse, from insecurities, to toxic mindsets. They would even recruit yakuza, and experimented on its own students! Junko Enoshima might have thrust the world into chaos, but Hopes Peak was what ruined the world.

Danganronpa 3: The protagonist rebuilds Hopes Peak! :) This is a happy ending! :)”

~Tumblr

At the end of the series, they rebuild Hope's peak academy and Makoto becomes the new headmaster. I don’t like this for a couple reasons.

For one Hope's peak fostered a massive class struggle between those with ultimate talents and those without them. They extorted tons of money from the reserve course to perform inhuman experiments. Then the result of that experiment Izuru Kamakura was co-opted by Junko to help start the apocalypse. Not to mention the fact they tried to cover up the deaths of tons of minors and several of its students are well known as mass terrorists by the time the series ends. It makes no sense that anyone would want the place rebuilt after all that.

I could still believe Makoto opening a new school and becoming its headmaster, but his new school should have been heavily delineated from the old one.

The overuse of hope and despair as a form of terminology
The words hope or despair are stated almost 30 times within the span of 4 episodes in DR2. It’s kind of overbearing and the meaning of the world kind of starts to get lost because of it. Hope vs despair was always a theme in the previous games, but I don’t think it was nearly so heavy-handed.


My general thoughts on Brainwashing


Junko “Despair Lmoa”
Everyone else “You son of a bitch I’m in”
~Ultraguy

So brainwashing is one of the most controversial aspects of Danganronpa 3. It’s pretty heavily utilized in both arcs by both the heroes and villains. Specifically, Junko utilizes brainwashing to control most of the reserve course students, uses brainwashing to make the reserve course students commit suicide, and uses brainwashing to turn the DR2 cast into her ultimate despair minions. Then in the future arc brainwashing is used again to make future foundation members kill themselves during the killing game. Mitarai also creates the “hope” brainwashing video, etc, etc.

Anyway, before getting into the specifics I think there’s a lot of misinformation about the subject that needs to be cleared up. So I’m going to step through a few points one at a time.


How does brainwashing work in DR3
So essentially in DR3 most of the brainwashing is based on techniques created by Mitarai. He utilizes animation with subliminal messages, color changes, sound, and other techniques to create an emotional response in his viewers. Junko imperfectly copies his techniques using her ultimate analysis ability and then kidnaps him to create videos for her directly. The result of their team-up is two videos known as the despair video and Monokuma’s gloomy Sunday. The former video brainwashes people into being obedient slaves that crave despair. The second forces the person watching to commit suicide. Mitarai also makes a “hope” video that essentially makes a person devoid of all negative emotion. For the most part in DR3 the perfected versions of these videos work after a single showing. It’s also outright stated that they rewire the brains of the victim and get rid of their free will.

Did DR2 firmly establish the DR2 students were brainwashed before they were put into the neo world program?

The answer to this is no. The game does not establish this fact in an ironclad way. It’s possible to interpret some lines as implying it, but it's vague enough that the writers could have gone in any direction.

Most of the information on the Remnants in DR2 comes from Monokuma and Junko. They say outright to both the player and in the handbook that Junko took advantage of DR2 casts weaknesses, grudges, etc to win them over to her side. Given you don’t have a reason to think Monokuma is lying(within the isolation of DR2), most people would probably take that information at face value.





Additionally, Mikan gets back her memories as an ultimate despair in case 2-3 and briefly alludes to her time as part of the group before being executed. She heavily implied that her reasons for becoming an despair were due to external mistreatment from the world itself and that she joined Junko out of loyalty or love.






The main contention generally comes from a statement from Makoto Neigi and a short description of the neo world program. Makoto states at one point during DR2s final trial that the cast bodies in the real world are just brainwashed. Likewise, the neo world program description states that it's good at counteracting brainwashing. These can both be taken as evidence that Monkuma is lying and that the characters were just mind haxed by Junko. This isn’t impossible since Junko has lied before in other games.




However, neither of these two statements are as ironclad as people would have you believe. The term “brainwashing” is often used as a term for psychological exploitation from cults, terrorist organizations,etc when they convert followers to a radical ideology. Given Junko was depicted up to that point as a charismatic and manipulative person, many people wouldn’t interpret the term “brainwashing” as literal.

There’s also the problem that the game itself establishes that Makoto doesn’t actually know why the DR2 cast joined Junko. He says this outright during DR2s final chapter with no hint of vagueness.




Even in the context of DR3, Makoto doesn’t find out about the existence of the brainwashing videos and the fact the 2 cast was subjected to them until Mitarai explicitly tells him near the end of the future arc.
Makoto is not some well-regarded source on the cast. In fact, almost nobody should be if you wanna take DR3 into account. The entire DR2 cast was presumed dead/missing when the tragedy started and almost nobody was present to see them get brainwashed. No one knew what happened.


Was brainwashing and mind control previously established as part of the series lore before DR3

Yes

Mind manipulation as a concept has been a major part of the series from the beginning. The first and second game only happen because the characters' memories of previous events are erased, making them act differently than they would otherwise. Ultra Despair Girls has the main villain Monaca place mind control helmets on children across Towa city. Toko mentions mind manipulation tech exists and just isn’t public knowledge yet in Ultra Despair Girls. Finally, Junko herself has her memories erased in DR0, which creates the alternate personality Ryouko personality.

The fact Junko brainwashed at least members of the reserve course was also already established as canon before DR3 came out. Danganronpa 0 outright had major character state Junko was brainwashing them using a video based on the student council killing game.
An excerpt of the entire killing game video being shown to people in DR0

“I fled to the other side of the hall, between the monobear heads who were still at their desks. They didn‘t even bother to glance at me. Their eyes were still plastered to the monitors in front of them. Just what is it they‘re so engrossed in? I knew it had nothing to do with me, but curiosity had taken over my otherwise calm appearance - so I looked back. ―Huh... ?‖ It was completely black. Every monitor was a pitch black, none had a single image projecting on it.

―It‘ll... start again soon... so...‖ the monobear heads sitting in front of me said in monotone. ―Phase one has just ended... Phase two is now beginning...‖

Interrupting the robotic words being spoken in unison, the monitors all lit up.

Hope‘s Peak Academy presents,Young people, test the true extent of your ̳hope‘ to win!

You‘ve all proved yourselves to be more talented than anyone else! For ̳your own hope‘ you must kill more than anyone else has! The final exam of mutual killing has now begun! (Phase two) 

It used a lot of flashing words, taking up the full screen, even the local television stations refused to use it to such an extent nowadays.What the heck? Such a question appeared in my head for a moment, but it was truly only for a moment. The image on the

screens changed, it changed to Red. It was almost like each monitor had been completely covered in bright red cellophane. I looked closely and in the red I saw something wriggle. What seemed to be a person, I suppose. In the room of red, the walls and floor were dyed crimson. I couldn‘t make out distinct features but a body covered in red rising from the ground, wriggling and writhing like a worm. The camera captured it all in birds eye view. At first I thought it was some sort of avant-garde dance or obscure video art but I soon realised that was not the case.

Immediately afterwards, the stumbling person wandered to both sides of the screen. The clothing he wore was almost completely covered in blood. Even so, I could tell it was a uniform from Hope‘s Peak Academy. As the man dragged a foldable chair loosely behind him, someone was begging on his hands and feet before him, the man passed the foldable chair to his other hand and swung it up. When it was over the top of his head, he swung it down and, huh? I couldn‘t grasp what had just happened, I just continued to stare at the monitor, dumbfounded. The foldable chair was swung down an innumerable amount of times. He continued to swing it down on the groveling man without hesitation. The camera‘s angle changed and showed the face of the man swinging the chair close up. He seemed to be shouting something over and over again.

―Ah, turn up.... the sound...‖

The Monobear Heads sitting in front of me turned up the volume on his monitor.

I could hear his yells emitted from the monitor. His voiced only grew louder and became heart wrenching screams.

―... I-I, DON‘T, WANT, TO, DIE!!‖

Apart from the anguished cries, I could hear another sound ringing out. Squelch. Splat.

It sounded like yoghurt and cartilage being mashed together, every time the man swung down the chair, a sound would ring out.

―I-I‘M!‖ Squish. ―... NOT BAD!!‖ Splat. ― IT‘S NOT, MY FAULT!!‖ Slosh. ―S-SO!‖ Squelsh. ―I‘M NOT, BAD!!‖ Sque-At that point the foldable chair broke.

But, the boy groveling in front of him was long past broken. His head was beyond recognition, instead looking like a squashed tomato someone had dropped, around it was a mixture of blood and brain fluid. I was beyond the ability to adequately communicate my level of horror. In the monitor the skull was split open and the corpse was spilling out it‘s fluids. I couldn‘t look away from the body, I couldn‘t even move at all. I stared at the monitor, stunned, and totally dumbfounded.

―... T-T-That‘s, enough,‖ the man in the monitor said to himself a he shook and trembled. ―I-I‘ve already killed those other two... that, s-should be, enou-‖

The boy‘s words were interrupted by the sound of thick glass breaking. Before he could come to his senses, another man stood behind him with a bottle in his hand. Without warning, the newcomer beat the first man down with a single blow aimed at his head.

―AAH... AAaaaaaaAAAAaaAAaaAAaaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHH!‖ As the man clutched desperately at his face with both hands, he roared out like a wounded animal. Suddenly, with some abruptness, he ran from the room, thrashing in agony.

―W... wait, WAIT!!‖ The ambusher tailed after him with unsteady steps.

The image on the screen once again changed. Instead, it now showed a corridor. In the corridor was a running man whose face was drenched in blood. Small pieces of glass had embedded themselves into his eyes and caused them to bleed.

―S-S-SAAAAAAAAVVENMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHH!!!‖

He screamed out in a slurred voice. Hismouth seemed to open and morph into the shape of a grin, but of course, that was not the case. His lips were torn open and he was not long able to close them. Standing in the front of him was a trembling girl.The girl stood alone in the gloomy corridor, holding a cleaver tightly in her hands. Her creepy appearance filled even me with fear, however, the man running didn‘t even see her. As he screamed in pain, he ran towards her. As the girl readied herself into a defensive position, she thrusted her cleaver up. At that moment, the boy swung down his head. Squelch.

The cleaver sunk into his skull on impact, the shards of glass stuck in his eyes were thrown out. The man continued to run forwards for a few steps before finally collapsing. As the girl‘s entire body shook and trembled violently, she patiently stared at the corpse.

―I-I d-d-don‘t... want t-to d-d-die...I ha-had to...‖ 

The volume on the monitor wavered with her trembling voice. Behind her, I could see the figure of another high school student with an iron pipe in his hand, sneaking towards her. I finally managed to look away. It was nothing but a movie made in bad taste - in ridiculously bad taste. This was some sort of video the reserve students had made, right? In that case, it really was scary. More than just scary-it was bursting with realism. The ̳dead‘ people were an image that could be associated with ̳cold‘ which in turn could be associated easily with the illusion of ̳death‘. The warm blood seeping from the bodies of those dead is incomparable to the heat emitted from their bodies during the time of their life, it fogged up the lens on the camera with the humidity. It was like an immense heat that followed death. But, just what on earth is going on, it‘s just so-

―Insignificant, isn‘t it... ?‖ 

Much to my surprise, one of the Monobear Heads sitting in front of me, still staring at a monitor asked me,

―... This is hope? This thing is hope?‖

The boy murmured, sounding honestly uninterested. He spoke, sounding completely immersed in despair.

―At some time in their life everyone will come to a point where they only think of themselves... and so, it‘s mutual killing... up until this point, people would say it‘s important to have hope... and so they‘ll do anything to protect it...people like us have abandoned that nasty habit... After all, it‘s just an insignificant little thing...‖ He seemed irritated at his own words. His irritation only became more apparent as he spoke, suddenly he began to breathe heavily.

Ryoko ―... Um, how long have you been watching this? Always?‖

―Not always. We‘ve only seen it 5818 times...‖

Did he say... 5818 times, huh? I felt sweat run down my already soaked back. No matter how many times someone could say this video was fake, it continued to replay through my head. Despite only watching it once, my brain seemed inclined to believe it was real.”


Was the concept of brainwashing executed well in DR3

I would say no.

While technically speaking DR3 HAD to involve some brainwashing elements because DR0 had already established it as part of the cannon. DR3 expands on a lot of the ideas present in 0 in the worst way possible and goes waaaaaaaaay overboard with it.

Danganronpa zero never established how Junko got the brainwashing tech and DR3 answers this question very anti-climactically. Junko just meeting the guy who had the technology by accident and hanging out with him on a hunch is a massive asspull.

Danganronpa Zero also never established how the brainwashing worked and or how powerful it was. Ryoko watched the video without going crazy and most of the “victims'' were already cult-like or had seen it thousands of times. It was never suggested to be so OP it could override a person's entire will on a single view and the suicide video was never explicitly mentioned to exist. Danganronpa 3 didn’t need to make the usage of such videos the cornerstone of the entire plot.

Danganronpa Zero didn’t explicitly establish that brainwashing was used to create the ultimate despair. While it’s certainly possible brainwashing could have theorized to be what happened, most people wouldn’t default to that because it's boring. By removing the DR2s casts agency over their decisions, you remove all moral ambiguity and nuance from the equation. None of them did anything wrong of their own free will so they’re basically absolved of their crimes.

Finally, Danganronpa Zero didn’t dictate that brainwashing had to be the gimmick around the final killing game, make Chisa and Tengan be subjected to it or make the final confrontation in the series be centered around Mitarai using it. Not only does having both antagonists being brainwashed mean neither of them has any actual motivations behind their actions, but by the time the ending came the entire brainwashing concept was heavily overdone.

Overall brainwashing in Danganronpa 3 is a mixed bag, particularly compared to other entries of the series. In the main games “mind manipulation” either didn’t remove a characters' ability to make their own decisions or was never utilized to exert full control over people who had actual plot significance. Because of this the narrative decisions and hurdles of these characters still had weight.

For example in the DR1 Sayaka may have been missing her memories from the last 2 years, but she still chose to attempt to murder Leon. The fact she had to betray Makoto to do so only had an impact because she wasn't forced into doing it. In Ultra Despair Girls Monaca brainwashed the children in order to force Komuru into an ethical dilemma on if she should kill them to stop Towa cities destruction. The whole point is to put pressure on Komaru, not the kids. Brainwashing Komaru herself wouldn’t accomplish anything, because there’s no moral victory if she has no choice.

Making the brainwashing videos so powerful also creates a ton of plot holes for the games. The killing game in DR1 was intended to break the resistance of the people outside of the school. But if Junko just has the despair and suicide videos on hand, she could have just broadcast them at any time to make the people watching despair or kill themselves. She also could have dealt with Kyoko in DR1 by using these videos rather than creating the fake chapter 5 case.

It would have been much smarter to weaken the videos to the point of being more similar to real-world hypnosis and subliminal advertising. In that it only invokes a subconscious emotional response and opens the user up to suggestion, but can’t actually be used to force them to commit actions they don’t want to perform. This would have created a rapport where Junko still had to win people over to her side and drive them to despair on her own(Which to be honest is what a lot of people expected).


Where DR2 players wrong to believe the DR2 cast were won over via charisma rather than brainwashing

I would say no. Most of the evidence in DR2 just doesn’t point to them being brainwashed and most people tend to use Occam's razor when presented with that kind of information. The only people who would argue that it was adequately “foreshadowed” are people who already saw Danganronpa 3 and are looking back with hindsight to try to connect dots that are pretty ambiguous. I can assure you that most fans did not think this way before 2016 and there are tons of fan works or discussions that back up that notion.
But having Junko win over or manipulate people into her group is unrealistic 
I feel like this is oversimplifying the situation and underestimating Junko. Junko is supposed to be this supernaturally analytical person, who can easily break down all possible paths of reality to make the decisions that best benefit her. Her being able to come up with a plan to break the spirits of a few teenagers shouldn’t be “that'' far fetched, particularly if she’s willing to murder, blackmail, kidnap and extort literally anyone to accomplishing her goals.

The series also already had several plans of this magnitude. Junko gets the entire student council to turn on each other in minutes, causes 1000s of terrorist attacks worldwide at the same time, and manipulates the warriors of hope. Monaca formed an incredibly convoluted plan that brought an entire city to its knees despite being like 10. There’s also the fact characters in other series like the Joker do stuff like this all the time without complaint. A series like Danganronpa should easily be able to get away with it given its outlandish nature.

Anyway, I always imagined Junko’s followers would operate similar to a real-life cult. That she would approach people during times of crises or loneliness and shift their ideologies in more radical directions over time. Or that if a target was too “stable” she would manufacture a crisis to take advantage of them on the rebound.

Most of the reserve course and DR2 cast have tons of reasons to be vulnerable and susceptible to cult recruitment methods like this. Junko herself is even meant to be seen as charismatic, which is the exact kind of personality type that leads these kinds of organizations. So it makes sense to me. Danganronpa Zero even featured the reserve course acting cult-like in a secret society, but Danganronpa 3 never expanded on the idea.

Can you give examples of how they could be exploited?


“Human beings are social animals. They wish to belong to a group and be considered useful to the group. If someone doesn't feel like they belong to a group or bring value to a group, they feel marginalized and this causes stress. At that point, if you offer that person the opportunity to join a group and show appreciation for their participation and efforts in that group, they will cling to that group and the rules of the group like a drowning person will cling to anything that floats. They will literally kill or die for the group. This is how cults and terrorist groups get started. They're not filling their ranks with happy people.”

~Some random political chat

Yeah

Akane comes from an incredibly poor family that constantly has shifting parental figures and consistently had to go without food. Akane herself became a gymnast so she could run away from people easily and has seen tons of dead bodies all around her since childhood. She’s a constant target for perverts and has performed several unsavory jobs in the past because she has tons of half siblings to support. She also has an obsession with strength because she believes that people who are weak are prone to dying. You could probably twist that desire for strength into something sinister, like a Darwinist ideology.

Gundam was implied to be the offspring of two people who were not supposed to be married to each other. Has an extreme distrust of normal people, isolates himself behind an eccentric charade, and finds more solace in animals. Twist his view towards humanity into something malevolent, and he might want to exterminate them.

Ibuki is a talented artist but feels as if nobody likes the music she actually wants to make. She had a massive falling out with her bandmates and is probably struggling with her solo career. Make her dependent on the psychopathic audience who will actually give her the feedback she wants.

Sonia loves her country but feels conflicted about her commitment to serving it her entire life rather than being able to live as a normal girl. Her family has been subjected to terrorism for generations. She’s even been kidnapped before. Twist that love into something more xenophobic and have her lash out against the world in paranoia.

Hiyoko is treated like dirt by her entire family and acts aggressively towards others as a result. The only person she liked was her father who was seemingly forced out of her family, necessitating her to stay with her abusive grandmother instead. It's also heavily implied people perv on her due to her childlike appearance. Encourage her to strike back against her family and embrace her worst traits.

Mahiru allowed herself to be caught up in the events of a school murder and covered for the perpetrator because they’re her best friend. Then said best friend got murdered by one of the members of her class, who also has ties to the yakuza. Stroke the conflict even more and erode away at her sanity.

Teruteru tries to play up his cooking skills, but also comes from a poor background and started out working at a rundown diner run by his family. He has two younger siblings that work as prostitutes despite clearly being underage and he shows concern about their well being. That said he’s also somewhat resentful of his siblings because they make more money than he does. Play his family against each other until they have a falling out.

The ultimate Imposter is an orphan with no name or identity of his own. He’s incredibly lonely and desperately wants somebody to acknowledge his existence rather than only being able to live through other people. Manipulate his need to recognized and make him dependent on the ultimate despair group.

Fuyuhiko is supposed to be the next head of a yakuza family and has suffered a lot his entire life because of it. He’s been kidnapped, seen dead bodies since childhood, and has nearly died from being near the fights of his other family members. He also honestly isn’t ruthless enough of a person for the position he’s supposed to uptake. He hates the killing game in DR2, he doesn’t like drinking, and he has a clear sense of honor. His life has a ton of conflict and this is before his beloved sister gets killed during the twilight syndrome murders. Pressure him to become more ruthless in the wake of his sister's death and take revenge against hopes peak for covering up the murder.

Peko defines her entire life by being useful to Fuyuhiko. To the point where she literally considers herself a tool. She’ll literally just follow Fuyuhiko anywhere.

Kazuchi has an abusive dad who beat him and was betrayed by one of his best friends as a child. He tried to alter his appearance when he got older to redefine himself and is desperately in love with a person who doesn’t care for him. He’s another person who can probably be forced into a co-dependent situation.

Nekumaro has a heart condition that was supposed to kill him before he turned 20 years old. Because of this his entire childhood consisted of hospital visits and being picked on due to his isolation. He only found solace in teaching and building up others. Yeah, he’s the strongest mentally of the cast, but Junko could literally exterminate his favorite teammates and ruin his career/reputation. Then scope him up on the rebound.

The reserve course students are all depressed, feel like second class citizens, and hate those in power. This can have terrible results under normal circumstances, let alone with the student council killing game inflaming them. A charismatic leader coming in to exploit them is something that has many real-world parallels. Even the mass suicide isn’t unprecedented, as similar events have happened in real life. There’s generally just some element of fear or coercion involved for those who “don’t want” to participate, which Junko should be able to have given the weapons provider to her by Monica.

Finally, Mikan is likely the worst character in the cast. It’s implied she’s heavily abused both at school and at home. That she’s been sexually assaulted numerous times and outright tortured on accession. That her self esteem is so low she’ll even allow people to humiliate her for attention and can barely hold a conversation without breaking down. Her entire nursing talent is the result of her tending to her own wounds. She’s also grown to like taking care of sick people because they’re weaker than her and shows notable yandere-ish tendencies when Hajime actually begins to show her affection. Junko could make her co-dependent and drive her to kill very easily, to be honest.

Overall it’s not that hard to have an idea of how this kind of plot would be pulled off, and there are enough blank spaces in every character's background that you can expand on them if necessary.

The anime wasn’t long enough to portray a manipulation plot

Then the despair arch shouldn’t have been 11 episodes long. If the anime didn’t have enough time to actually portray these events properly, then it shouldn't have been attempted.

Major thoughts on characterization

Izuru Kamukura’s characterization



"Boring"
~Izuru

Izuru is ok in this anime. He’s really only interested in things that can excite him, so him just going along with Junko’s plans because he thought despair was interesting makes sense.

I know some people were disappointed Izuru didn’t kill the entire 13 student council members like Junko stated in DR2, but I understand why they didn’t do that. DR0 already made it clear he wasn’t nearly as bloodthirsty. The book outright shows a ton of the student council killed each other and states Junko wanted to blame the whole event on Izuru despite being the mastermind. That said I feel it would have been fine for Izuru to kill 1-2  students on his own, rather than just killing 1 in self-defense. Since he was looking for stimulation anyway and it's believable he might at least try it to see what killing is like before getting bored of it. Making him be so placid in the killing game kind of makes him feel like less of a villain.
Outside of that, I was pretty disappointed his spirit wasn’t “crushed” like it was stated in DR2. Junko’s intention to do this was stated in DR0 and if you’re aware of how “split personalities” work in Danganronpa they had a pretty decent way to do this setup. Essentially creating a separate personality in a person doesn’t prevent emotional bleed over if said emotions are strong enough. For example, Toko mentions both her personalities love Togami and Ryoko is still in love with Matsuda because Junko was. I figured Junko was probably going to utilize Hajime’s connection to Nanami to break his spirit if she got killed.
Now he does witness Chiaki dying and has a reaction over it, but he’s never super hampered by it. He’s kind of just impressed that Chiaki was still hopeful in death and decided to set up the DR2 killing game test whether hope or despair was stronger as a result. Setting up the game for that reason does conflict with the established motive as “revenge” that was shown in chapter 0 of DR2. As well as the fact DR2 implied he knew Junko would lose, but I’m not that hung on it.
I will add as a final note that Izuru does have some of his other negative traits dialed down. In chapter 0 of DR2, he’s pretty adamant about the fact that boring and talentless people are worthless. He also seems to have an almost Darwinistic view when it came to humanity's evolution. It contrasts in this anime he was much more neutral.

Nagito Komaeda

"The Komaeda I know wouldn't ask to postpone the fucking exams. He'd ask to move it up. He'd steal everyone's notes from their desks and fucking burn them. He'd buy a shitload of alarm clocks and set them up outside the houses of all his classmates and wake them up at 3 in the morning on the day of the exam. Because if they failed their practical exam after all that, then they weren't a worthwhile hope, to begin with."
~Youtube

Komeada’s negative attributes are substantially toned down in this series. In DR2 it's pretty clear that he’s legitimately insane even without Junko Enoshima’s influence. Like he intentionally provokes the first murder of the game and spends most of the trials making things harder for everyone else. He’s antagonistic, elitist when it comes to the nature of talent, has a creepy obsession with the concept of hope, and literally kills himself in one of the most gruesome cases in the series. Even some of the short stories mention the hopes peak staff doesn’t like him. All that combined with his luck and high intelligence tends to make him a huge wild card.
In this series, he’s kind of just benign most of the time. He never antagonizes his classmates in any way or says anything that might upset them. He’s also not really as intelligent in DR3 as he was in DR2either. Like he’ll kind of just bumble thought situations while relying on his luck to solve his problems. This is odd since DR2 established he can’t always control his luck and often made conscious choices to try to manipulate it in combination with more intellectually laid plans.

His major role in the anime is planning a school bombing and having a short confrontation with Junko.He plans the school bombing so he can move his classes' practical exams back when they’re too upset over the twilight syndrome murders to concentrate. His reasoning is that he wants the class to take the test while they’re at their best. But this desire to prevent the class from taking the test while in a period of weakness conflicts with his normal MO. Komeda typically makes situations harder for people to push them to be greater and makes light of any suffering they go through on the way. He frankly should have made taking the practical exams harder if he was written in character. Anyway he gets suspended for a time due to his role in the bombing, but his luck prevents him from taking complete blame, so he returns later without much issue.
His confrontation with Junko is interesting, but he kind of just bumbles his way into her secret base. He also acts surprisingly antagonistic towards her despite the fact he should have no idea who she is. It’s also revealed that during his suspension he got on a plane and got trapped on a desert island. This is again out of character because he has a phobia of planes due to how his parents died.

Mukuro Ikusaba

“Say the line!”
“Mukuro Ikusaba, the 16th Student, lying hidden somewhere in this school… the one they call the Ultimate Despair, Watch out for her.”


Mukuro is one of my favorite characters in Danganronpa and as a long-time fan, I can confidently say her portrayal in this anime was really bad. Going through some of these issues one by one.


Was Mukuro “in character” in DR3

I’m going to start off by saying that I don’t think Mukuro is some perfect cinnamon roll who never did anything wrong. She’s always been Junko’s right-hand man and even before Danganronpa 3 came out it was clear that she had killed a bunch of innocent people either as a mercenary or while getting Junko’s plans off the ground. Things she does in DR3 like killing a member of the student council, slaughtering middle schoolers(in Killer Killer), torturing Chisa, and just generally allowing Junko to harm those who don’t deserve it is very believable. Heck, she outright had to betray her closest friends for the first game to happen. I think a lot of the fanbase were just shocked because this was the first time we had seen her perform these kinds of acts on screen.
The problem with Danganronpa 3 is that a lot of Mukuro’s nuance “outside” of being Junko’s lapdog was never showcased. This made her come off as one-dimensional, and disappointed fans who knew she had more depth.

Before DR3 came out the major sources of information for Mukuro came from a combination of her free time events/school mode events in DR1, her appearances in Danganronpa 0, and the “what if '' scenario light novel Danganronpa If. There’s also technically the scrapped secret ending in Danganronpa 1 which while never released, is probably still in character.

For example, when Mukuro is disguised as Junko for most of the 1st game, she'll drop her act around the player character Makoto. From her conversations, you learn she has doubts about the direction her life is going in, that she was homeless at one point, that she’s probably dealt with sexual predators, and has been in many high-stress combat situations. The cut secret ending also pretty heavily implies that she didn’t enjoy her life after becoming a mercenary and that she felt inferior compared to Junko growing up.
She doesn’t show up much in DR0, but she’s still prominent enough to glean some information. The novel shows she’s willing to follow Junko’s instructions to the letter even when she’s not around and that she’ll kill people for her when asked. Some victims include the Hope Peak steering committee and the Madari brothers. That said DR0 also shows that she does care about her classmates, particularly the main character Makoto. She protects him and Kigiri from harm under her own violation at one point. She also isn’t needlessly violent, showing displeasure in having to kill people she didn’t plan on due to mistakes. She even outright states that Junko is a terrible sister and that her obsession with despair is nuts.
Danganronpa IF expands on her character A LOT and is probably the most popular media concerning her character since she’s not in” disguise” during most of it. From this novel, you learn that Mukuro doesn’t actually like despair and only helps out Junko due to her own personal attachment. She states she doesn’t feel much for her victims, but she isn’t actively malicious towards them either. It’s also noted that Mukuro was not aware that Junko was going to try to kill her in Danganronpa 1 and actively freaks out at the fact Junko would do this to her. This notion of self-preservation is pretty backed up by the 1st game since she also freaks out when she’s actually killed there as well.
Her relationship with Junko in DR IF is also depicted as kind of abusive. Mukuro just submissively takes insults from her and almost loses a fight when Junko uses her familial connection as leverage. DR IF also shows that Mukuro to have had a crush on Makoto and is willing to stand up to Junko for his sake. She's also implied to be attention-starved and relatively avoided by people while at school.
Finally, she’s shown to have some room for positive growth by the end of DR IF as she gets the entire class out of the school and is adamant about undoing the damage Junko has done to the world. Albeit some of that motivation is for wanting to bring Junko despair by ruining her plans.
Taking in her appearances as a whole you get a picture of a person who’s clearly committed monstrous actions but is probably also misguided due to their own social ineptitude and longtime codependent relationship with an evil person. A person who had a terrible childhood, no friends, and has extremely low self-esteem. A person whose ambivalence to the world around her has led to disaster via inaction, but who was starting to have serious doubts about the cause Junko was fighting for. A person who legit could have reformed under the right circumstances. It’s an interesting dynamic, which is why a lot of people who look into the character end up enjoying her despite her. The art books even back up this characterization, by noting she didn’t sleep the entire time she was alive for the killing game or eat with the other characters out of guilt.
Danganronpa 3 drops the ball because Muruko’s attachment to her class and Makoto isn’t highlighted at all. In fact, she even suggests killing Makoto and calls him a loser in the last episode of despair, which would be considered pretty out of character anywhere else. It also doesn’t highlight her doubts in her sister's plans or her lack of interest in despair as a whole. Without these positive traits to counterbalance the negative, Mukuro looks A LOT worse than any of her other appearances. This isn’t even something fans noticed, the writers themselves have acknowledged Mukuru had this side to her character, but they just never had time to showcase it.
What do you think about the weird “blushing”, the “masochistic stuff” and incest implications in DR3

Mukuro having this weird obsession with Junko and blushing in ecstasy while thinking about her was something that showed up in DR0. It was never stated to be because of romantic interest(and it wasn’t in DR3 either for that matter), but the subtext was technically there if you looked for it. She also gets excited while fighting her in IF, though this is more due to the adrenaline of a good fight. That said the anime implements this behavior in the worst possible contexts and makes it come off way creepier than it did in DR0.
The way the anime portray’s Mukuro’s obsession with Junko makes it seem like she actively gets off on being abused. Not only does it portray her as seemingly being happy Junko is trying to kill her multiple times. But she blushes a lot when being insulted, hit, or infamously stepped on.
While some of it was probably extrapolated from that one scene in DR0, using it within the context of those situations was really out of character. Danganronpa IF established Makuro was not a masochist who enjoyed getting off on pain. Danganronpa IF and the main DR1 game also made it clear Mukuro never expected Junko to make an attempt on her life and was upset by it. These prior appearances also never had Mukuro react with anything but child-like submission to Junko’s insults.By making it seem like Mukuro enjoyed this treatment, it creeped a lot of people out and made them disregard any sympathy they would have had for her otherwise.

Why are you using Danganronpa If so much for evidence when it isn’t canon?

“Even if you believe Danganronpa IF is nothing but Naekusaba Fanfic trash it was still better written than Danganronpa 3”
~Ultraguy probably

Danganronpa IF existed for years before Danganronpa 3 was made and was one of the only forms of media that delved into Mukuro’s character when not in disguise. It makes sense that people would expect it to serve as the basis of her portrayal in the anime.

Additionally, Danganronpa IF is a “what if'' scenario. It may not be part of the “main'' timeline, but its depictions of events are still supposed to have everyone “in character”. A good comparison would be how the island or school modes in the first two games aren't part of the main timeline, but still contain information about the characters that could be considered canonical. Plus DR0 and the writer's own interviews support Mukuro’s characterization in IF as being accurate.

Additionally, yeah Kodak didn’t write IF, but Kadoka also didn’t write Danganronpa 3 either. Not to mention given the abundance of problems with characterization for characters in 3, it's much more likely that Mukuro was just flanderdized.


Mikan’s characterization
Mikan was one of my favorite characters in DR2, and she’s not well represented here. She develops a bit of a friendship with the ultimate Imposter and Mitarai, which is fairly nice. But this is outweighed by how they approach her backstory and why she aligns herself with Enoshima.

I went over it a bit in an earlier section, but Mikan easily has the worst background of the entire DR2 cast. She’s bullied at school, abused at home, probably been sexually assaulted, and generally disregarded by everyone around her. As a result, she’s a barely functioning mess of a person who can barely hold a normal conversation without a tearful breakdown. But this aspect of her character is kind of just ignored in DR3. It’s as if all of this just happens off-screen and nobody says anything about it or tries to help her. It’s bizarre.

And yeah I covered the problems with brainwashing like 4 times already, but Mikan is the worst offender of this in the franchise. She was already desperate for attention and clearly had some unhinged tendencies in DR2. It would have been easy for somebody like Junko to manipulate her and even people who defend the brainwashing plot point will tell Junko probably didn’t need to resort to it to get Mikan on her side. But they still do it anyway, and then give Mikan this unsettling masochistic fanservicey personality as a result. It not fun to watch.

Junko Enoshima’s characterization

”What? No. Barf.” Junko glared “As if I would even think of having an army that I got just because I showed them a video. That’s not real proof of despair! We need them to truly fall in. After all, what’s more, despairing than a world bought to ruin by good people who became despair itself with just that little push? Can you imagine how lame it would be if they were just mind-controlled drones?
~Archive of our own

I feel like this anime nearly ruined Junko Enoshima as a character. In her prior appearances, we weren't given “that much” information about how she caused the apocalypse. But the information we were given kind of painted a picture of a person who was incredibly intelligent, manipulative, and charismatic. As well as a person who knew how to dig into the roots of human nature to bring out the worst in people. Combined with her flamboyant attitude and appearance, she came off like a  mix of Joker, Light Yagami, and Harley Quinn.

But when the anime came out it kind of screwed with the perception of what she was supposed to be and answered a lot of the questions regarding how she destroyed the planet in an unsatisfying way. 

Going through these issues one at a time

Her public “persona” for most of the anime

So Enoshima has this whole stick where she’ll switch between multiple different personalities and generally act like somewhat of a nutjob. You see this most often during the confrontations with her in the final trials of DR1 and DR2. This behavior works fine in the context of those games but it becomes really problematic within the setting of DR3. Junko’s entire plan is to invade Hope's peak from the inside out and bring it crashing down around her. In order to pull this off she would logically need to maintain a public persona that’s “normal”, or else she would draw unneeded suspicion on herself. But she’ll constantly do things that aren't just eccentric, but borderline psychotic.

For example, she'll literally throw grenades onto a busy highway or leave behind pocketbook bombs in cars just for shits and giggles. During one of her hang-out sessions with Mitarai she knocks out her sister Mukuro with a baseball bat right in front of him and destroys most of his anime collection in a manic fit. She even rambles on about despair in front of other people. It’s very hard to take seriously.

And the weird thing is that we know Junko is capable of maintaining a persona. She pretends to be Monokuma for the entirety of the first and second game. She acts as Shirokuma in Ultra Despair Girls, who’s an outwardly nice and pacifistic character. Heck, it’s a plot point that Mukuro was simply following a script Junko prepared when disguised as her in the first game. So that’s probably how she carries herself when she’s trying to stay on the DL. It’s almost as if the writers thought fans “expected” her to act a certain way because of how she was portrayed in the game's final trials but didn’t think about the implications of her being a nutjob in a vastly different setting.

Junko’s plan has a lot of plot holes and skips over a lot of explanations


Junko’s plan in DR3 doesn’t make that much sense when you really think about it that hard. She essentially wants to rile up the reserve course of hope's peak academy into fighting against the main course. To do this she frees Hope's peak’s human experimentation project Izuru and sets up a killing game with the hopes peak Academy student council. After Izuru kills one of the students during this game, she blames him for the entire incident. Then she sends information about the incident to the reserver course to fan them into a frenzy because most of their money supposedly went towards creating him. She then uses brainwashing videos created by Mitari to drive the reserve course into a murderous rage. She also kidnaps and brainwashes Mikan when she comes to check up on Mitari, along with the rest of her class and their teacher Chisa. Finally, she executes Chiaki while brainwashing the DR2 cast. She’s shown to have a ton of secret bunkers and massive underground lairs, part of which even connects to the trial grounds from the first game.

So breaking this down

  1. A lot of Junko’s plan hinges on the brainwashing tech created by Mitarai, but Junko doesn’t meet Mitari intentionally. She just bumped into him by coincidence and hung out with him on an impulse. What exactly was her plan if she hadn’t met him? She mentions multiple times that she was planning to cause the tragedy even before she entered Hope's peak, so she must have had something in mind.
    1. Junko talks about ending the world despite not really having a plan in store 20:20 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-5
    2. Junko meets Mitarai by accident 21:49 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-6
  2. Why does Junko just have access to massive underground complexes and secret bunkers? Were they part of the location Izuru was held? Did she somehow have them built without anyone noticing? How in the world did she build Chiaki’s execution room? That had to be specifically designed from scratch.
    1. 3 students note its odd for junko to have a secret base under that statue of the hopes peak founder 20:15 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-9
    2. Junko’s operating in an entire underground complex 0:13 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-10
    3. Junko’s underground complex has an elevator and complex execution ring. It’s also connected to the trial location from the first game 9:23,10:47 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-10
  3. How did she find out Izuru existed and break into his holding facility so easily? Izuru also knocks Junko out when they first meet, but Mukuro gets both of them away and somehow cleans up most of the evidence before security arrives. They also go back to the same facility a second time despite security supposedly being beefed up after the first break-in.
    1. Junko knows about Izuru and where he was being held. Along with the fact she needed a trustee's eyeball to open his holding cell. 12:15 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-6
    2. Mukuro kills a bunch of guards and Junko just tells her to make it look like they committed suicide. Even though a lot of them have huge slashes across their bodies 12:25 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-6
    3. Mukuro somehow gets them out of the Izuru’s room without getting caught 20:09 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-6
    4. Junko gets back into kamukura’s cell despite security going up 11:04 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-7
  4. What exactly was Junko planning to do when meeting Izuru for the first time? She initially tries to kill him, but instantly loses the fight. She only gets him to back off by getting him interested in ultimate despair. Was she expecting him to take the bait so easily despite having never met him?
    1. Junko tries to kill Izuru and losses, then apparently just knows she can bait him with the promise of despair 13:42, 18:32 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-6
  5. How was Junko planning to lure the 2 cast and Chiaki in the right locations for their brainwashing/execution? Komeada and Chiaki only find out about her secret base because Komeada got lucky. The other students only come to the base after Chisa gets trapped there from saving Chiaki. 
  6. When and how did Junko get all the blackmail on the student council.
    1. Junko gets tons of info on the student council off screen. Also gets all of them together in a single building late at night 13:10 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-7
  7. It’s mentioned that on the same day hope peak falls 1000s of terrorist attacks happen across the world at the same time. It's implied to be because of Junko, but they never explain how she set that up. How many people does she have working for her?
    1. It’s stated there’s been simultaneous terrorist attacks worldwide 11:28 https://gogoanime.so/danganronpa-3-the-end-of-kibougamine-gakuen-zetsubou-hen-dub-episode-11
  8. Where’s Monaca? It’s a huge plot point that Junko contacted her to get resources around the time the tragedy started in Ultra Despair Girls.
To be fair DR0 seemingly answers some of these questions at least partially. It’s stated Junko found out about Izuru by torturing info out of a committee member and that some of the guards at Hope's peak were actually working for her. But you’d never know this from how the anime presents the events. Even then there are huge chunks of information seemingly missing.

A lack of meaningful confrontation 

Pretty much nobody stands in Junko’s way when she performs any of her plans. Juzo and Chisa only really catch onto her when her plan is near its final stages, and both get nailed before they can do anything due to making stupid decisions. Munakata suspects her but never acts on it due to Juzo and Chisa misleading him. The security for Hope's peak is so incompetent they can't catch the twin at all, despite tons of murders and disappearances. Finally, Kyoko is nowhere to be found and Komeada never has a confrontation with Junko until nearly the last episode of the despair arc.
It's cool to see the villain dominate the competition from time to time, but you can’t just do that the entire time or the story gets boring. Take Death Note for example. The protag Light Yagami is an intelligent mastermind who nearly topples nations using the power of the titular Death Note, but every step of the way he has to outmaneuver the world-renown detective L. Because L can match Light intellectually, Light is forced to push his own intellect in strange directions he would not have to otherwise. That cat and mouse dynamic is what makes the show worth watching.

In contrast, Junko’s lack of competent opponents and apparent dumb luck doesn’t give you the same rush. Junko comes off as less like a criminal mastermind and more like a dumbass who stumbles through everything by chance.

And like the weird thing is again DR0 showed some elements of a conflict that could have been expanded on. Kyoko did try to investigate some of the events of hope's peak, though her father largely tried to prevent her from getting involved for her own safety. The entire plot of DR0 is essentially an incredibly convoluted amnesia gambit, where Junko erased her own memories to hide under a false identity to avoid being captured for her role in the student council killing game. Chisa, Juzo, or Komeada also could have confronted her earlier on and put more pressure on her to think outside of the box.

Junko’s general MO compared to DR3

I touched on this a lot already, but Junko just “brainwashing” so many people into servitude is a bit of a letdown. Particularly when they’re named characters, with more distinct backgrounds. Not only does it make her look like a weaker villain since she can’t get almost anyone to work for her willingly, but it doesn’t live up to the expectations of how she had been portrayed up to that point. IE a character who uses charisma and exploits weaknesses in people or society as a whole to topple things over. The constant explanation that “she was just lying” to ret-con previous appearances is also really really lazy.

While Junko had occasionally lied in the main games, she generally played most of her motives straight and adhered to her rules 90% of the time. Even in situations where giving her opponents a fair chance could lead to her own death. This was because if the characters don’t “break” of their own free will, then she hasn’t really proven to anyone that her ideology of despair is actually correct. It’s why when she does get caught cheating during the 5th trial of the first game, Kyoko is able to force her to do a re-trial. Kyoko understands Makoto being proven innocent meant she wasn’t upholding her ideals and would make her message of despair meaningless to the people watching. If Junko didn’t care about her message she could honestly “win” by killing the entire cast at any time, particularly in the first game. She has almost absolute power in both of her appearances.

By removing the agency of almost all of her followers and main subordinates with brainwashing, it makes her ideology come off as unsubstantiated. Despair and chaos aren't things humanity is naturally predisposed to, you just need to watch an anime video. It’s particularly annoying since cultist figures like Junko do exist in real life and her concept can certainly work if written well. 

Heck DR0 seemed like it was setting up an idea of Junko starting a cult-like collection of people. Because the reserve course students watching her despair videos were depicted as part of a secret society. But that plot point is basically ignored here.


Misc thoughts on other Characterization

Makoto Naegi

“Hope

No

Hope

Ok”

~Ultraguy

Makoto is pretty ok as the lead in the future arc. He’s always been somewhat of a vanilla protagonist but given the eccentric setting of the Danganronpa series that was intentional. I think his biggest weakness here is probably his lack of agency in the plot. The fact the cast was originally gathered for his trial regarding saving the ultimate despairs isn’t dwelled on too much, outside of throwing suspicion on Makoto early on. Most of the mystery about the killing game is solved by Kyoko. Then Mitarai is talked down by Hajime when he goes crazy. Makoto honestly just spends most of the game being protected by his friends and been lugged around due to his forbidden action.

He does have an interesting conflict with Munakata, but it doesn’t exactly go anywhere. Munukata has a very blunt and occasionally cynical“I do what I have to do” attitude. While Makoto has a more optimistic “I believe in everyone even when I shouldn’t” attitude. The narrative initially tries to portray both of them as having approaches that are “imperfect” and that they need to meet in the middle. But the anime makes that comparison go off the rails because Munakata acts like a psychotic nutjob for most of the killing game, and all of Makoto’s fairly morally grey choices end up having no downsides. In particular, saving the ultimate despairs is retroactively shown to be the right thing to do since they were just brainwashed. Makoto also has a moment where he talks Munakata down from a psychotic rage by bonding with him over the fact Kyoko“died”. But that becomes Kind of mute since Kyoko survives anyway.

Kyosuke Munakata 

Corporate needs you to tell the difference between these two photos
~Ultraguy

Munakata is probably the most prominent new character introduced in DR3. He’s the vice leader of the future foundation and acts a foil to Makoto’s more idealistic mentality. He’s also a surprisingly good sword fighter despite just being a former student councilman.

As previously mentioned a lot of the dynamic he has with Makoto isn’t super well fleshed out, because he spends most of the game acting like a paranoid nutjob. His girlfriend Chisa is the first victim of the game and he has immediate concerns that Makoto is a traitor due to his role in saving the ultimate despair. He tells Makoto to kill himself to prove his innocence, and he spends most of the game trying to kill him himself when he doesn't. Eventually, his paranoia unhinges him to the point where he turns on pretty much everyone and even mortally wounds his best friend Juzo. He’s ultimately talked down by Makoto and goes off to become a ronin at the end of the series. Overall he’s kind of interesting, but hard to take seriously since the anime only portrays him acting like an extremist.


Aoi Asahina
Aoi is one of the returning characters from DR1 and she’s a pretty middle ground character in this anime. Long-time fans will enjoy seeing her again but outside of that she basically just plays a support role. Typically lugging Makoto around in dangerous situations due to his forbidden action preventing him from running.


Miaya Gekkogahara
Miaya is a non-character in this anime. She gets killed before the story even starts, and replaced by a robot double from Monaca so you don’t get to see what she’s like. Given she was one of the people who helped develop the new world program in DR2, her lack of presence is disappointing.

Daisaku Bandai 
Bandai is another underdeveloped character. He essentially just dies as soon as the final killing game starts because his forbidden action is almost impossible to avoid setting off(its seeing any violence). He doesn’t show up in the despair arc either, so you don’t learn anything about him.
Great Gozu
Another character you don’t really get to know. He seems friendly enough and does go out of the way to protect Makoto from danger. But he’s the second character to die, so his character development is cut short.


Yasuhiro Hagukura
Another one of the survivors from DR1. He’s not really that important in this anime and gets locked out of the future foundation building before the killing game starts. He gets some moments outside as comic relief, but he really isn’t plot-relevant.

Toko and Komaru

Toko and Komaru are the protags of the despair girls spin-off. They’re mostly just in the anime to help tie up plot threads from that game and don’t really have much of a role other than confronting Monaca(who gives up without a fight anyway). Through their interactions with each other are fun at least.

That said they have some really odd moments where they’re concerned about Monoca’s safety and her ability to live by herself in space. Which doesn’t make sense given Kamaru made it pretty clear she hatedMonaca due to her killing tons of people and possibly even her parents in her own game.


Warriors of hope 
The warriors of hope are the antagonists that worked with Monaca in ultra despair girls. In this anime, they don’t really have much of a role outside of a short cameo giving intel to Komaru. Though they tell Komaru to go easy on Monica when confronting her, which again is pretty out of character since it was established most of them hated her by the time despair girls ended. 

Kyoko Kirigiri
Kyoko is the ultimate detective and a returning character from the first game. Her role in this anime is decent. I mentioned it earlier but she essentially started the series being cold and untrusting, and by the end of this anime she’s lightened up a bit and trusts her friends enough to “potentially” lay down her life for them. She’s also pretty much the only person to actually examine her surroundings and figures out most of how most of the killing game works on her own. The only problem is that her big life-giving sacrifice doesn’t stick and it kind of clashes with her character arc. She also probably could have told her friends some of her discoveries before “dying” rather than making them rely on her notebook.

Byakuya Togami
Tell em Ultra
~Ultraguy

The final survivor from DR1s killing game. He’s not directly involved in the game itself, but he acts as part of the assault team that tries to rescue the future foundation members from their situation. He doesn’t have an arc per say, but he’s def undergone character development since his previous appearances. In DR1 he was kind of an asshole who was really only out for himself, while in this appearance he shows a lot more concern for his classmates and actually respects their abilities.

Koichi Kizakura
This is actually one of the few unambiguously nice and fairly fun new characters. He’s a prior teacher and friend of Kirigi’s father Jin. He spends most of the killing game looking out for Kyoko and apparently also tried to rescue the original cast when Junko was holding them hostage in the 1st game. Unfortunately, he dies while protecting Kyoko, so we aren't able to explore him much before he exits the series.

Juzo Sakakura
“The whole world fell into despair because one guy didn’t wanna admit he was gay.”
~Reddit

I find Juzo to be a polarizing character.  He worked under Munakata and found out Junko was behind all the murders on campus in the despair arc. But he ended up hiding that info because Junko blackmailed him with a picture implying that he was in love with Munakata. Because of this inaction, Junko ultimately destroyed the world, and even after she was beaten he developed resentment against Makoto because he wanted to be the one to take her down. He spends most of both arcs being really aggressive for no reason and tries to settle most of his problem with violence. He does have an arc where he eventually takes responsibility for his actions and shuts down the killing game before dying. But it's still hard to rationalize his choices even with that character growth.

To be frank, letting Junko get away with killing so many people just because he didn’t want to come out of the closet was pretty ridiculous. Not to mention he lets the entire cast of DR1 live with her in the Hopes peak for a year, despite knowing how dangerous she was at that point. Given he could have averted the entire series just by having common sense, it's kind of hard to forgive him.

Ruruka Ando
"My Ultimate talent is being the worst"
~Ruruka probably

I think Ruruka is probably the worst character in Danganronpa by a fairly large margin. She has almost no redeeming qualities and her appearances in both arcs of the anime don’t really give her much depth.

So Ruruka is the ultimate confectioner and the prior best friend of the other future foundation member Seiko, the ultimate pharmacist. They bonded as kids, but over the years Ruruka started to take advantage of their friendship. She would do things like asking for drugs, misc objects, school work favors, etc on a near-constant basis. She also grew to have a passive-aggressive attitude towards Ruruka because she refuses to eat any of her sweets.

Their relationship came to a head when Ruruka coerced her into giving her an energizing drug but ended up getting a laxative by mistake. She then used these drugs during a major Hope's Peak cooking showcase and got in trouble for it. Both girls also ended up getting blamed for Komeada’s school bombing due to a misunderstanding and were expelled. Because of this pre-existing tension, the two spend most of the killing game fighting each other..

Anyway, the narrative tries to play off Ruruka constantly taking advantage of Seiko as being a misunderstanding. Ruruka claims she only relied on Seiko so much because she looked up to her and thought she was so reliable. But this reasoning comes off as flimsy because Ruruka is outright depicted as being dismissive of Seiko's feelings in several scenes.

Ruruka holding a grudge against Seiko for not eating her sweets also really stupid. Seiko explains to her several times that she takes medication that can’t be mixed with high amounts of sugar and that she could die if she did. So Ruruka doesn’t have a legitimate reason to be angry about it.

Ruruka is also pretty antagonistic to other members of the cast. She tries to kill Kyoko and her allies at one point. She kills her own boyfriend in cold blood due to paranoia of him possibly betraying her. She’s stated to be trying to build a splinter faction of the future foundation and actively wants the others to kill Munakata so she can take control of the organization.

She's overall just a terrible person and not in a fun way. She also dies around the time she seems to be epiphany about her behavior, so the plot never gets to do anything with her anyway.


Sonosuke Izayoi
Izayoi is the ultimate blacksmith and Ruruka’s boyfriend. He doesn’t really have any character traits outside of that. He spends most of his appearances in both arcs either aiding Ruruka or protecting her. But the narrative never goes out of its way to explain how they met and why he’s so loyal to her despite her objectively terrible personality. He finds a secret door to the killing games power room in the future arch. But he ironically dies before anyone sees what’s in it because Ruruka exploits his forbidden action(eating anything) to kill him. So overall there's really nothing interesting about him.
Seiko Kimura
Seiko is the ultimate pharmacist and she’s pretty sympathetic in this show, but still a bit one-note. As mentioned before Ruruka was her previous best friend, but constantly took advantage of her kindness. They had a falling out after a misunderstanding got them both expelled from Hope's peak and she spends most of the killing game either angry at Ruruka or trying to kill her. Honestly, I don’t blame her for wanting to do this. She dies around the middle of the episode count, so her development doesn’t get to come to fruition. But she makes the drug that keeps Kyouko from dying.


Ultimate Imposter
One of the things DR3 actually does fairly well is give more characterization to the Ultimate Imposter. He essentially takes on the identity of Mitari so he doesn’t have to come to class, and actually grows to care about his well being a pretty decent amount. He’ll bring him food, water, and even brought Mikan to his aid when it was clear he was sick. He mentions early on how he doesn’t have an identity outside the ones he takes, though how he found himself in such a situation isn’t explored.
The only thing I’m kind of confused about is he’s still using the Bakugya disguise when he first meets Mitarai, but doesn’t explain why. But that’s not super important I guess.

Hajime Hinata
This would make a good death battle, just saying
~Ultraguy

The main protag of DR2. Hajime has massive insecurities about his lack of talent and plans to sign up for the Izuru Kamakura project to artificially implant himself with talent because of that. He also ends up becoming good friends with Chiaki over the first few months he attends Hope's peak. His ideology was explored pretty well in DR2, but DR3 doesn't do a great job of expanding on that material.

Why Hajime is obsessed with talent and Hope's Peak isn’t well established. He seemingly doesn't deal with any social pressure for being normal before he comes to school and you aren't given flashbacks to his childhood or anything. His status as "normal" is also undercut somewhat by him forming a surprisingly large amount of relationships with important characters at Hope's Peak. Some like Tengan or Natsumi are justified since Tengan talks to him about the Izuru project and Natsumi has retconned into the reserve course herself. But he meets Chiaki basically by accident and later establishes a relationship with her teacher Chisa the same way.

The anime also presents wanting to impress Chiaki and having a physical altercation with Juzo as the tipping point that makes him decide to go through with the Izuru project. But it comes off as a bit shallow, because pretty much everyone in the cast who talks to him either says not to do it or that they don’t care if he's talented (including Chiaki herself).

Chiasa
Photo's taken seconds before disaster
~Ultraguy

Chisa is probably the last major character added in Danganronpa 3. She acts as the teacher of the DR2 cast and shares a friendship with Munakata and Juzo. During the despair arc, she helps Munakata investigate Hope's Peak academy. She ends up confronting Junko at the end of the despair arc, gets captured, and is literally lobotomized into being a member of Ultimate Despair. She then acts as a double agent in the future foundation, before ending up the first victim of the killing game.

Overall she’s ok. Pre-brainwashing she’s honestly just a loving teacher without any notable flaws or character growth. She almost gets an interesting conflict where she gets transferred to the reserve course for 6 months due to Nagito’s role in the school bombing, but the story doesn’t do anything with that plot point. This is disappointing since being a teacher for both the main and reserve course could have given Chisa an interesting perspective on the conflict between the two.

Post-brainwashing Chisa’s role also is pretty unexplored and negligible. Obviously being brainwashed means she doesn't have any real motives behind her actions and she dies before anyone can confront her anyway. So it ultimately doesn't matter much outside her death making Munakata go off the deep end.

The rest of the DR2 cast
Yeah despite half the anime being dedicated to DR2, most of the cast from that game don’t have actual roles in the plot. They’re basically reduced down to one, not jokes or flanderdized depictions of themselves.

Misc opinions

Misc plot holes 

Why doesn’t Kyoko know about Izuru?
It’s a small nitpick, but in DR2 Kyoko makes it clear she could never find real evidence that Izuru Kamukura existed. But DR3 shows a pretty decent amount of the future foundation was aware of his existence and that the entire reserve course was given a video that had him on camera. I don’t get why she wouldn’t have figured anything out even if her father tried to block her investigation.

Danganronpa zero being not being localized(or adapted in the anime)
“Because the best way to do your worldbuilding is to ignore it the first time around and then give you viewers homework”
~Jelloapocalypse 

I’m gonna be honest I think a lot of the problems with DR3 stem from the fact Danganronpa 0 was never formally localized in English or skipped over in this anime adaption. There’s a lot of stuff in that Light novel that was relevant to 3, including the brainwashing of the reserve course, the role of the steering committee, several explanations for Junko's plans, and why Kyoko never finished investigating the school. The fact that most English fans don't know about these plot points probably contributed to some of the backlash.

Just the overall usage of the cast
Yeah just being blunt. Almost every new character introduced in the future arc dies before you get any meaningful development out of them. Nearly the entire DR2 cast is also benched from the story or reduced to a caricature of themselves. Anyone else is probably either written badly or out of character. It's a bad usage of the cast all around.

The lazy nature of the ret-cons
Dangnaronpa 3 retcons a lot of events from prior games with the explanation of “Junko lied”. It gets annoying very quickly, and most of the changes don't make the story better.

Voice acting in the dub
I know it can’t be expected to get all the voice talent from the original games back, but some of the new voice actors in the English dub of this anime really don’t fit the characters. The voices of Junko, Monokuma, and Togami, in particular, are pretty jarring.

The art direction

It's like if the Lord of the Rings trilogy took place in an office complex
.~reddit

Danganronpa has a very unique art style, and this anime kind of just looks generic. The environments of the future foundation killing game are also a bit lacking in comparison to the school and island environments of the first two games. It’s overall not a huge deal, but it is a step-down.


The unanswered questions
  • It’s never revealed if Makoto’s parents were alive or not.
  • It’s never explained if the kids in Towa city were saved or not
  • The fates of the Ultra Despair Girls extended cast and hostages is never revealed
  • The director of the 13th branch of the future foundation was never revealed
  • Why the neo world program was created is never explain
  • Wouldn’t the future foundation be crippled for life after having almost all of its main members killed?
  • Was it ever explained to Kyoko how warped her perspective of her father was, due to her asshole of a grandfather?

The lack of sacrifice in the ending
It doesn’t really feel like the cast had to make any hard choices or sacrifices in this anime. No one important died and the ending kind of just implies the world is rebuilding fine. The DR2 cast takes the blame for the final killing game, but they were already hated by the world anyway, so nothing changed. Mitarai also doesn’t really get punished for trying to take over the world and apparently his hope video may have helped counteract despair worldwide due to being shown for a limited amount of time. Which kind of muddles the message the story was sending about the ethics of using it.

The apparent lack of planning in the series as a whole
Looking at interviews I kind of get the feeling the series is written more by the seat of its pants than people would like to admit. Kodaka has pretty much said that he didn’t think about the scenarios of DR2 and 3 until after the previous entries were already completed. His comments about deciding to make  Chiaki “real” after nearing completion of DR2 or starting DR3 also implies a lot of plot points involving her were made on the spot(Remember Izuru, the brainwashing, hope peaks fall, and many DR3 concepts predate DR2 in DR0). It may even explain why she seems so awkwardly integrated for that matter.

Honestly, my guess is that a lot of the world-building aspects regarding the tragedy only been thought about in broad strokes, which is why the attempt to explain it was so messy.

The inability to let the DR2 cast do anything wrong

Backdown: The Backdownening: The Game
~Reset era

I noticed that DR3 has a tendency to smooth over the rough edges of the DR2 cast and ignore aspects of the plot that would make them suffer too much. It's almost as if the writers are afraid to make the viewer dislike them in any way.

They aren't shown doing anything bad as ultimate despairs and becoming ultimate despairs was due to brainwashing. Most of the twilight syndrome murder case was changed to remove accountability from the DR2 cast. The DR2 cast as a whole doesn’t have long-lasting tension due to the syndrome murders either. Komeada’s insanity is toned down and Izuru isn’t as Darwinistic. The fucked up parts of various characters' backstories aren’t acknowledged. Everyone lives and nobody is disfigured upon being revived. Finally, the implications of them killing their own families and being hated by the world isn’t explored. I even think Kodoka mentioned he didn’t want people to think characters like mikan were too villainous.

Like again it feels like pandering. It’s like a fanfic that’s specifically intended to just be a happy romp, but doesn’t work as an official property because it clashes with the tone of the series.

A lack of learning from the issues from the original Danganronpa anime
Danganronpa already had an anime adaptation for the first game and it similarly ran into narrative issues due to only having 12 episodes of runtime. I’m surprised they made the mistake of cutting their time slots in half given that.

Thoughts on the 2.5 ova
I actually thought the 2.5 ok was pretty good. It explains a bit about how Hajime revived the DR2 cast and involves an alter ego of him entering a mental world projected from Komeada within the Neo world program. The DR2 cast plays a decent role in the form of mental projections of Komaeda and the episode has some actual tension to it. The fact it fell outside the main anime and was actually written by Kodaka is probably a big reason it was better received.

Summary


Danganronpa and wasted potential go together like milk and honey.

~Reddit


Yeah, I’m gonna be honest I don’t think Danganronpa 3 is very good. It has tons of plot holes, bad characterization, bad pacing, and misses a ton of narrative opportunities for no reason. Even people who will argue I’m wrong about one or two of my complaints will probably agree that a large majority of my issues are fairly reasonable.

And I think a lot of the reasons for this are pretty apparent. The series just bites off way more than it can chew and suffers because it can’t cram so many storylines into the time allocated. The lack of direct writing from Kodaka and the excessive need to pander to the fans also contributes to its faults. They honestly should have just focused on one storyline or heck just made an anime adaption of Zero.

I will also say that obviously hype or destroyed headcanons can make backlash worse. But I don’t think people who argue DR3 gets a bad rap just because it didn’t up to those things have a solid argument. Expecting writing and characterization to be in line with previous entries of a series is fairly reasonable. Likewise, I consider “headcanon” to be things along the lines of “Chiaki’s favorite game is splatoon” or “Komeada likes blueberry waffles”. Something like many people coming to similar conclusions on how the Ultimate Despairs were formed, based on the given information in the game, only for the anime to do something completely different. Likely just means the writing was just rushed, poorly thought out or was written in a way that got the point across well.

But that’s just me. I’ve probably spent way too much time talking about this




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