Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Future Arc

Episode 9

With three episodes left in the Future Arc and a rapidly accelerating body count, it seems like we finally have all the pieces necessary to solve the mystery of the Final Killing Game. If this was a visual novel, this climactic moment would probably mark the transition to the heart-throbbing final class trial, but since it's a TV series, we'll just have another week to hem and haw instead before Danganronpa 3 reveals all in its final fourth.

Before I submit my own final bingo card of guesses about the truth behind the Final Killing Game, I should at least run down a smattering of the wild twists this episode threw at us, starting with the reveal that apparently, murder is better down where it's wetter. As Sakakura wrenches open the secret entrance and Hiro staggers back from the Future Foundation Tower's collapse, we discover that the game's captives have been moved to an entirely different facility, deep under the ocean. Sakakura looks genuinely disheartened at this shocking twist, our first hint of many that he may not be the game's designated killer after all...

We don't have long to start doubting him before Sakakura reunites with a far less genial Munakata mid-murder rampage. (He's just taken out Gekkōgahara-bot, who was concealing a palm pilot with profiles on all the game's participants. Most notably, Chisa's forbidden action is listed as "Munakata dies in the game." Hmm...) The Ultimate Boxer does his best to connect with his bestie, but something about Munakata is different. Unnerved by the bloodthirsty mood in the air, Sakakura tells Munakata that there's something he has to confess, but Munakata gores him with his katana before his friend can spill the beans. When Sakakura begs to know why, Munakata simply responds, "You know why." But before we can assume that this means Sakakura was the killer all along, Ando turns up dead in the fourth round, far away from Sakakura's prone body. What the heck is going on?!

Before that, Ando gets a flashback to help justify her actions in the shaky previous episode, which I greatly appreciated. While her murder of Izayoi may have been stupid and reckless, Ando was never concerned with the logistics of surviving this killing game. The polar opposite of Kimura, she was more interested in protecting her emotions than her life, and just as her fear of intimacy destroyed Ando's friendship with Kimura, it also made a relationship with Izayoi impossible. Always jumping from one light and fluffy friendship to another, getting by on the approval and support of others while giving nothing of consequence in return, Ando couldn't bear the weight of trust and vulnerability she would have to bear by sharing her weakness with another person. Izayoi was the most trustworthy boyfriend Ando could ever have asked for, but her fragile heart wasn't ready to handle the sorrow if he betrayed her, no matter how miniscule those odds. This is also why Ando was willing to splinter the Future Foundation to form the head of her own group; she could only feel safe at a distance of admiration and subservience from others, never as an equal who had to rely on them emotionally. It's a futile way to try and connect with others, so it makes sense that her betrayal of Izayoi was equally futile. Her forbidden action couldn't be activated in an underwater facility, so all her friends died for the simple reason that Ando couldn't bring herself to trust them with her own life.

This was the kind of thoughtful yet concise character development I wanted to see Ando receive, since we got the same (equal and opposite) treatment for Kimura a few episodes ago. I'm glad the show managed to deliver before poor Izayoi's corpse got too cold, and this will doubtless play out better in a marathon viewing. Just like Kimura, Ando spends her last few moments in futility (albeit dreaming of a delusional future instead of regretting the past like her friend) before she becomes the fourth round victim of the Killing Game. But if Sakakura couldn't have killed her, then who did? With Makoto, Mitarai, Aoi, and Kyoko barricaded off in another part of the building, the only candidate remaining is Munakata, but something tells me the killer's identity can't be that simple.

With his hopes of being rescued dashed, Makoto has only a scarce few moments to formulate a new plan before it's nighty-night time again. Unfortunately, he awakens to find his partner-in-hope Kyoko poisoned to death with her forbidden action activated: "Make it to the 4th round with Makoto still alive." Munakata challenges him over the intercom to a final showdown, now that Kyoko has paid the ultimate price for his platitudinous version of hope, and Makoto accepts the challenge.

Heartbreaking as it is, this tragic death has been a long time coming. First, there was Makoto's prophetic stress nightmare. Then there was Monaka's warning to Makoto that he would cause the death of a dear friend, which had Kyoko's name written all over it. Finally, in a moment that's sure to have every Danganronpa fan melting in a puddle of their own "d'aww," Kyoko took off her gloves to hold Makoto's hand in this episode, telling him not to give up no matter what happened. Frankly, Kyoko probably has everything figured out already, and now it's up to Makoto and the audience to catch up. I say "has" instead of "had," because I'll be damned if Kyoko's really dead. If she's really figured out the mystery behind all this, she's also probably discovered a way out of this mess, but only her "death" can keep the game moving forward into its final stages where it can be destroyed. She's either found a way to fake her death, or more likely, she's trusting in Makoto to find a way to reverse the poison's effects. (This has also been foreshadowed multiple times as Kimura kept bringing up her imperfect "cure-all," but she died several episodes ago, so we're expected to have forgotten about it. I can't forget when Kyoko's life is at stake!)

Now that the Final Killing Game has reached peak death and dismay, most of the Danganronpa 3 viewing (and reviewing) experience at this point is running on the fumes of fan theories. Kazutaka Kodaka's powers of obfuscation are so tight and mighty that we don't really have any other choice but to float around on one theory before it sinks and then paddle over frantically to the next theory. That said, I'm putting all my money on one theory right here and now, based on four key facts that have been cemented by this episode. So here we go:

The Facts:

1. The Future Foundation is being held in a replica of their own facility underwater.
2. Chisa's forbidden action was for Munakata to be killed.
3. Sakakura cannot be the killer.
4. Kyoko has been preparing for her own death since the game began and goes to it peacefully, which means she's probably spent the whole series trying to gather out the full truth, but she's unwilling to share that information for unknown reasons that are probably related to a victory that relies on complete trust in Makoto in the endgame.

With all that in mind, this is what I think it means...

The Theories:

1. The Future Foundation has been transported underneath Jabberwock Island. Their fate now relies on the fates of the students Munakata was ready to execute. Since Munakata planned to have the Remnants of Despair exterminated regardless of the Tribunal's outcome, this points overwhelmingly to a mastermind with a vested interest in their survival. That means...
2. Either Mitarai is the mastermind, or Chisa is the mastermind with Mitarai as her accomplice. (For now, I'll assume that the latter is more likely, simply because Mitarai has been acting like a victim of blackmail just following orders up to this point.) Both have exhibited suspicious behavior (Chisa in the Despair Arc and Mitarai in the Future Arc), and both have a strong motive for betraying the Future Foundation to save the Remnants of Despair. In the previous Despair Arc review, I suggested that Aoi Asahina could be Chisa in disguise, but I'm aware that's pretty over-the-top, so there's another simpler solution that hadn't occurred to me until now: Chisa could be an A.I. She could have digitized her personality as Monokuma and then killed herself, leaving Tengan, Mitarai, and Sakakura, each involved in different ways, to carry out the rest of the plan. Regardless of Tengan and Sakakura's involvement, however, Mitarai is definitely working under the mastermind...because he's the "killer," just not directly.
3. The game was made to be impossible to win from the beginning, because the "killer" is each round's own victim. On numbers alone, there's simply no other option at this point, but that last shot of Ando's body spells it out completely. As she lies dead on the ground, a monitor above flickers red with the same distorted Monokuma eye we saw used to brainwash Mikan just one episode ago. So every round, the new victim is supplied with a knife and directed to look at the monitor for an explanation. The video they see is laced with subliminal messages, courtesy of Mitarai, compelling them to kill themselves. Great Gozu and Kimura's deaths were useful for implicating another person because they were hoisted up into the air, but when you think about it, both of them technically had the strength to do that themselves. And anyone can stab themselves in the heart with a dagger. This game was concocted to exterminate the Future Foundation on the mastermind's own terms, and it worked swimmingly.
4. Since this method ensures that each victim can be personally selected, the game was also geared to keep Makoto and Munakata alive until its conclusion. Everyone else is to various degrees expendable, putting them further and further on edge until they have each come to the conclusion that the other must be exterminated for their own reasons. My guess is that Chisa (or Mitarai) takes issue with both of their versions of hope and how their actions have helped destroy the world or the lives of Class 77-B. (Once again, I suspect Chisa more, this time because of her forbidden action; if she is still corporeal and playing by her own rules, Munakata's premature death would spell the failure of her plan, punishing herself with her own death. If he dies at Makoto's hands, she can still die with her plan complete, as it were.) The mastermind hopes to free the Remnants of Despair, take righteous vengeance on Munakata, and transform Makoto into the mastermind's ideal version of hope through the ensuing trauma. Chisa (or Mitarai) may be working in congress with Junko's A.I., or they may be working alone, but the ultimate goal would be an entirely different flavor of despair from what we've seen before.

Whew! That's a lot of words, but I think I've made peace with the direction Danganronpa 3 has taken as it sinks to its darkest depths yet. This was a real shocker of an episode, and I can't even begin how much grimmer it's going to get.

Rating: A

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Future Arc is currently streaming on Funimation.

Jake has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.