chrissi's corner

spoilers obviously

It would be too easy to write a whole dissertation about how the game is flawless and this and that (it is) but there are a few things (hardly issues, they solve themselves but I need something to "complain" about) that preside throughout the writing that ignoring them would just ruin any credibility about what I think is "good".

the cast

If we think of v3 like a season of a show (which we will for the majority of this) we can assume that certain characters share personality traits, motives, colour schemes and roles with "past" characters. In that case we'll never truly know who is a copy of a copy and who is original. It's Danganronpa! Are any of the characters past THH original?? But because of its identity as "separate from Danganronpa" our v3 cast exist in their own bubble, however from a player perspective it's just one out of a series meaning that comparisons between games are a given. v3 has the weakest ensemble cast. Even before the big reveal in Trial 6 there wasn't much connection between the characters outside of their inherent dynamics. Everyone had their own friend, and when their friend would die it would be a moment of growth (Tenko - Himiko, Kaede - Shuichi, Miu - Keebo, Kaito - Maki/Shuichi) so when the final 5 were investigating the school their warmth, and friendliness felt as though it came from a place of acceptance rather than hope. As a unit they don't have the natural chemistry that Goodbye Despair's survivors had and I think that's mainly due to the fact that v3's characters were written to be the culmination of everything that fans loved about the first two games, they were written to behave this way and have this character arc, unlike THH and GD, v3 while not fully scripted was not 100% natural.

2. the monokubs

I haven't played UDG and I don't intend to but I know what the main characters look like and design wise, it's clear v3 was trying to tie everything Danganronpa related up nicely which led to (at least visually) the Monokubs and their existence. To me they're the biggest case of "what does he even do" because outside of their one-liners and deaths they don't really get themselves involved. (except Monotaro, I'll get to him) And then Monokuma brings them back? If you cared about them, yay, if you didn't, also yay because he kills them all over again. The skepticism from a lot of the characters during Chapter 3 as to whether or not they really could bring back one of their friends is a point that really stuck out to me especially with Angie's explanation, that Kaede, Kirumi and Ryoma were all killers so the only option could be Rantaro. And then what? The potential of a resurrected classmate who could be very easily killed again throws logic out the window and focuses in on the social and moral aspect. The Monokubs haven't directly aided Monokuma in harming the students yet they all still died, but they weren't innocent by any means so to revive them would be a waste, even more so by resetting them to their factory settings, they're entirely a waste and that in itself makes Chapter 3 more interesting. Rantaro was essentially a factory reset anyway, even with the Survivor Perk he was operating on the same level as everyone else, if he was truly brought back, how would that benefit anybody if he's akin to the revived Monokubs?

Now what I completely loved.

EVERYTHING!!!!!

Tsumugi Shirogane is one of a kind despite her incessance that she's plain, and a wallflower and that people don't notice her, her almost pettiness towards being recognised as anything other than "plain" is what makes her so much more interesting to me than half of the cast because it's very common in fandom spaces for characters to be simplified to an adjective or a joke that it overshadows their symbolism and story and character arc but she fully accepts it. She doesn't consider herself to be a person anymore just a cast member of Danganronpa which makes it so difficult to attempt to reason with her. And all the implications that arise from her backstory!!! If she was in the previous killing game with Rantaro and the two survivor rule still applied that would mean only her and Rantaro were the survivors of that game, if her talent as Ultimate Cosplayer extends to REAL FICTION than she could've cosplayed as a "character" similarly to Junko/Ryoko which obfuscates just how many killing games she's actually been in. Which in that case her position as the mastermind might've been a complimentary role. This is my intrepretation.

According to @curiousreadmore 's death calendar. The killing games span over about a month. That isn't conducive to the time it would take to write characters, plot, talents, complete auditions, then callbacks then all the memory erasing and the set construction and execution mechanics. For a typical television season it would take roughly anywhere from 10-18 months. Danganronpa isn't typical though so we could probably shave a few months off to make productions 9 months. Assuming she had been working with Team Danganronpa for a while, long enough to be a writer as well as a cast member we can assume just roughly that she joined at around the 47th-48th season which would have taken place around 4ish years before v3. She would've been 14 or so at that time, perfect age for anyone to become entirely obsessed with a franchise. I doubt she would've been entrusted with entire characters this early on but it wouldn't be remiss of her to at least have come up with the Ultimate talents. By that point most talents would have been used, reused, tweaked and done to death and that's when the concept of ultimate talents that are reliant on their existence rather than a cultivated skill, ie. the Ultimate Robot, would’ve come into play. By the 49th-50th season she would have been on board as a more active writer and audience participation would've been a focal point of the games going onwards. Ultimate talents would be written in deliberately to funnel through to the audience a sense of self awareness. Ultimate's that no longer exist within the realm of bettering the world, rather as gags and jokes. Ultimate TV Host, Ultimate Cinematographer, Ultimate Screenwriter. Obviously with all these filler talents and the faux-meta commentary, viewership would go down but by this time Tsumugi would make her debut in Danganronpa as something completely unrelated as to go under the radar like...Ultimate Ghost Hunter or whatever. She'd survive and return to Team Danganronpa with the added insight of having been in the game, however the recipe of Danganronpa would remain relatively the same. She would take on a different name for the 52nd season and participate and survive with one other person: Rantaro Amami. Rantaro would keep his identity and become the first "official" Ultimate Survivor, Tsumugi would become "The Ultimate Cosplayer' and Keebo would be introduced. The reuse of Rantaro himself would be to cater to female fans who grew particularly attached to him and the introduction of the Ultimate Cosplayer would be, in part to act as a self insert for female audiences as well as ease of access for the Big Reveal. And then bla bla bla REAL FICTION, Team Danganronpa, Ultimate Annihilation all that stuff.

Since Tsumugi's oversights in preparation for v3 led to her inevitable downfall, it wouldn't be the biggest surprise in the world if her final go around and first time as Mastermind was a decision made less to thank her and more to quietly usher her out, the Ultimate Robot was a big investment and while it had it's successes, it ultimately relied too heavily on audiences who were familiar with Danganronpa leaving a lot of room for error. Anyway fanfiction aside.

I've kinda spent pretty much my entire playthrough experience detailing everything I thought, liked, hated and loved about v3, I may as well rebrand, but I cannot overstate how much I truly honestly loved v3. There's a genuine bittersweetness to it but an ending that ambitious and polarising and smart and insulting and heartwarming really amplified the game for me. I've said all I can about her, let's switch the focus back to Monotaro, if you think I forgot about him, it's because I did!

Out of all the Monokubs, his progression never felt like a forced tool for the audience to fall in love with. With Monophanie I got the feeling I "had" to like her even though she didn't really do anything, had she been swapped out for Monokid in Chapter 1 I doubt it would've changed the way I felt about either of them. Monotaro's development beyond mascot in Chapter 4 seemed like an error in writing where it wasn't fully decided whether or not he would be singled out but his involvement with the Neo World Progam to avenge Miu was sweet and even then with the back and forth with his memory loss and getting Monophanie pregnant (???) it still gave him something outside of being one of the Monokubs.

rapid fire opinions on all the characters

tsumugi: you already know

rantaro: interesting in concept, hard to tell what's of substance or not shame he died so early

kaede: a really compelling protagonist who was too determined for her own good

angie: a really smart character who would've been a fantastic antagonist

gonta: i like him and his glasses are cute

himiko: best character development in the game argue with a wall

keebo: such a fun personality he was so human and sarcastic and funny

kaito: incredibly grounded support, shuichi would've been compelled to kill himself 89 separate times if not for him

kirumi: i liked her a lot more when she tried to pity everyone into sacrificing themselves for her

kokichi: he wasn't boring + turned tsumugi's game on its head i can't hate him

korekiyo: token "weird" character but so much more than that, loved his design but the chapter 3 curse had to get someone

maki harukawa: her friendship with shuichi meant more to me than her thing with kaito

miu: gorgeous girl genius that nobody could handle, she would've figured out tsumugi was the mastermind

ryoma: i think he was really cool, real interesting concept for a danganronpa character to be passively suicidal

tenko: similarly with peko/fuyuhiko i don't think himiko would've developed if she hadn't died but i really liked her sprites

shuichi: i like his eyelashes and i liked how unapologetic he was in trial 6 he really proved himself both as a detective and protagonist

that's all!

EDIT:

me when i lie

ehhhhh

there's a lot that can be said about purposefully writing a character who is alluded to have been formerly abused and have the bulk of their interactions revolving around being humiliated or being put in compromising situations so it wouldn't be remiss to assume that people who didn't spend their free time with mikan would see her as the one-dimensional fanservice character. in a weird way, both she and the game are aware of this and while the game itself never sits down with this idea to expand off of it, during her outburst she does! exclaiming that everyone treats her badly, that it's everyone else's fault that she's turned out this way and they should just forgive her because they'd forgive themselves. the way she views her abuse as something she has to take so that her actions can be justified was super interesting on its own because it makes her someone that people can't brush off.

in chapter three she is both the most at risk to getting the disease and the highest authority as the only person with medical knowledge. in her second last free time event she confides in hajime with regards to how when people are sick or dying their dependence on her means everything, only when people are entirely reliant on her does any sort of self esteem of hers come out, her genuine worry when nagito seems to be getting worse doesn't imply that she'd be willing to harm others for the sake of feeling good about herself for a little longer which calls into this cycle in which she's a punching bag until she's pushed to the edge and begs for forgiveness because nobody would excuse her behaviour otherwise, in that way it's both understandable that she'd be pushed to murder but also that she'd use her position for malice which even then feels weird to blame her for. i appreciate when characters are difficult to pin down and mikan's writing is spread far enough that it's difficult to place if her existing dynamic with her peers is made worse by the killing game or better by the fact that junko is physically not there. her thing about her beloved being the only one to look at her with a modicum of decency when we know that isn't true makes the circumstances of sdr2 really sad. an attempt to rehabilitate a bunch of teens who were brainwashed into committing atrocious crimes by putting them in a simulation where everything is beautiful and nobody ever is hurt or challenged in a way is a really neat critique of how the 78 gang may have viewed their first year of isolation as something that acted as respite for them and in an attempt to foster an environment similar to that they ignore either intentionally or not that not everyone operates on the same basis. for the sake of the games at least, the token "more than meets the eye" character serves the chapter three double-murder scenario, but if not for monokuma, if not for the despair disease, had akane, nagito and ibuki or even anybody else - by some miracle - gotten sick, would mikan's resolve have stayed the same? does that mean she is incapable of healing? is she incapable of growing? i'm sure there's more that's touched on in the anime, (which i'll have to get to back to) but for the most part at least to me, her presence in the game'll be missed.