Topic: Danganronpa

@PSVR_lover OK, so, disclaimer.

There are two anime series. One is an adaptation of the first game, and it's terrible. The other, Danganronpa 3, is the canon sequel to the first two games and Ultra Despair Girls.

Danganronpa 3 is composed of two separate arcs, Despair and Future, that tell different stories. But the episodes were meant to be watched in alternating order, like how crimsontadpoles describes.

You can technically watch the two halves of the series separately, but doing so ruins a lot of the foreshadowing and narrative parallelism throughout the show, and certain plot elements will be spoiled for you that way, as the two storylines share certain characters.

@crimsontadpoles I actually really liked the more slice of life pace in the early Despair episodes, since I consider DR2's cast to be the best in the series, and it provides an interesting contrast with the insane bloodbath that arc turns into later on.

Future arc, comparatively, felt like diet Zero Escape. I'm not sad I watched it, but, in retrospect, it was definitely my least favorite part of the series.

The show probably could have been better, but, IMO, watching the episodes with a friend who is also a Danganronpa fan as they released in Japan was a lot of fun, as we bounced off a lot of stupid fan theories over the course of the show's run.

Still not sure if I'm more annoyed or amused about the english dub, which I discovered months later almost feels like watching an abridged series at times.

I actually quite liked the Danganronpa anime (the first series). I think it's kinda good and it gets the tone right but the problem is that it needs like twice as many episodes and it needs to flesh the characters out and the events that are going on. The game unfolds slowly whereas the anime is like BAM BAM BAM with twists and turns and who is this guy again and why is this person doing this?

I’m sold, I’ll start watching them ASAP. They sound wonderful.

It's really interesting to read people's opinions on the Danganronpa games since they've been recently reviewed on NintendoLife, particularly V3. I knew the ending is controversial but there were a lot of people who apparently outright hated it. I personally thought the ending was phenomenal because it did something I didn't expect at all and it was very daring. In this day and age when the majority of games literally plays the same, has the same structure in story, the same type of ending and so on, it was super refreshing to actually experience a different kind of ending. I'll always commend developers for trying something different and in this case, they did something you never see in a video game and that's awesome. I'm just so tired of having the same kind of experiences, you know?

This made me think of another game that also received a lot of hate for its controversial choices, which is The Last of Us: Part II. I've kinda already had that game spoiled for me but now I'm really curious to see what I will think of it when I eventually play it in its entirety. Because when I was reading those comments on NL, they gave off the same kind of vibe I felt when I read the comments for TLOU Part 2, i.e. hating on the game because it did something unconventional. I honestly think now that I belong in the group of people who love unconventional choices in video games and if TLOU Part 2 is just as unconventional as Danganronpa V3, then I think I'm going to love that game as well (hopefully).

@LtSarge If you just took Nintendo Life comments’ word for it then you’d probably end up a sexist homophobe who thinks that every single game in the history of the world is copying Breath of The Wild. I wouldn’t read too much into it.

@nessisonett Well the thing is that I'm not only looking at NL comments. I remember when V3 came out in 2017 and I was discussing the game's ending with people here on PS and most agreed that the ending was good. So to now read the complete opposite a couple of years later is a good way of gaining a different perspective on the matter.

But I do also agree that NL probably doesn't offer the most well-reasoned opinions, lol.

@LtSarge A large chunk of the Danganronpa fan community has hated V3's ending since day one. You're going to get that with pretty much any franchise that actually bothers to interrogate or challenge the preferences and preconceptions of the fanbase, especially when it involves deconstructing the conceptual foundations of the property in the first place. It's very much The End of Evangelion of the Danganronpa series in that respect, complete with the sense one gets from both that the creator has mixed feelings about the legacy of his creation.

Although, reading people's comments, I do also think there are still misconceptions about its implications. Namely, people still think it's retroactively "ruining" the games that came before it by stating that the events of the Hope's Peak Academy arc never happened. The important context is, of course, that V3's universe is a different one entirely, so the revelation that V3 has no actual connection to the rest of the series is no more to the point than Danganronpa being fiction in our own reality as well. V3's ending does nothing to alter the established lore of the broader property, even if, on a meta-textual level, it still ends up being pretty devastating to what came before it.

@Ralizah Yeah, it’s a pretty clear and obvious line being drawn between the audience in V3 and the fandom’s thirst for more games/more dead children. I didn’t think it was possible for that to go over players’ heads tbh

@nessisonett ...to some extent, sure. And that's probably also part of the reason a large chunk of the fandom hates it. But it's important to remember that, in V3's universe, Danganronpa has become a decades-old media institution that has taken to involving real actors (there's a bit of a fun dystopian flavor to it, since the outside world is directly stated to be perfectly peaceful, thus motivating the move toward incorporating actual actors to sate the boredom of the public). IMO, the audience is less what the developer thinks of his own fanbase, and more a satire of what he's afraid it'll become if Danganronpa keeps going on. Especially considering the strong send-up of capitalistic media excess in this game, which is reflected in elements of V3's own design, which intentionally included elements associated with long-running media franchises that are running out of ideas and past their prime. Thus the title itself, the absurd list of sequels, the ridiculous monocubs (they're sort of like the child characters often included in dying tv shows that are intended to reignite interest in the audience), and the sense that every 'season' runs on an unchanging formula.

@Ralizah @nessisonett Yeah I mean, I don't know if those people over at NL realise this but video games aren't actually real, lol. Just because the game itself is telling you that it's fiction doesn't make it any less fictional. Like when I got to the part where the old Danganronpa characters started showing up, it didn't ruin my experiences of the previous games at all because they still happened in the fictional world. V3 also happened. That doesn't change just because the game tells me it's fictional because I already know that. At that point you might as well just say that no story-based games that have ever existed actually happened.

@LtSarge Admittedly, I also initially thought it was retroactively nullifying the lore of the older games. It's easy to misread the ending as saying: "Hey, Danganronpa fan, the stuff you thought happened in this fictional universe? It was bogus all along. Also, you're a monster for wanting to play games where children are murdered!" Especially if others prime you to expect the worst.

It’s a great twist, actually. All three games are very shocking, why would v3 be any different?

@PSVR_lover ?

I'm discussing the context of the twist, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at, tbh.

I am SO glad u are enjoying it. I just loved v3, got it day one purchase. I loved all the trials, I liked the 5th the best by far.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Trial 4 is really creative, and Trial 5 is probably my favorite one in the entire series. With that said, none of them hit with the emotional force of a nuke like Trial 1 did. Literally stopped playing the game for a few days when that first happened.

Second and third chapters are easily the low points of the game for me, and that goes for their respective trials as well. They're still better than anything in the first game, though.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Interesting thoughts and I enjoy reviving my memories of the game through your eyes. I remember quite liking the sharp turn of setting in Ch. 4. The series definitely has no shortages of creative ideas. 😄

Seems like you’re making good progress now and I look forward to hearing your impressions of the upcoming chapters and events.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy

V3 is a bit of a marmite game, and that wild final chapter is a big part of it. Especially since it's so easy for some people to read it in a less than charitable manner that, IMO, doesn't reflect the actual intent of the developer toward his audience.

Thematically, I've grown to appreciate it a lot over time, especially in comparison to earlier games in the series. DR2 is the funnest game in the series (and has the best cast), but V3 works the best for me as an actual piece of art that's being used a medium to communicate themes to an audience.

Are you going to work through the absolutely massive suite of optional post-game content in the meantime? This game takes WAY longer to platinum than the older ones.

@Foxy-Goddess-Scotchy Congrats, Foxy! I agree with @Ralizah in that the game is probably not quite as fun as 1 or 2 but has the most ambitious narrative. There are several levels you can interpret from the ending and it really did blow me away.

I hear V3 took much longer to write than the first 2, they said it was difficult to come up with new ideas for the series.

All three are the best games, I’m replaying Dangaronpa 1 on my iPad and it’s still an amazing game.

I've been playing Danganronpa V3, and finished the first trial. The trials certainly have come a long way from that first trial in the original Danganronpa, in regards to depth and plot twists. The various mini-games in the trial are all pretty fun as well.

In terms of the crew, I do really like most of the characters. The only two I've disliked so far are Kokichi and Tenko.