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EP. REVIEW: Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Despair Arc

Simply put, if Chiaki is somehow alive in the Future arc there is no way to save the ending.

Renasviel wrote:

Simply put, if Chiaki is somehow alive in the Future arc there is no way to save the ending.

I completely disagree. From the moment we found out that Chiaki was more than just an AI created by Chihiro, the idea that Chiaki was somehow still alive has always existed as a possibility to me. Personally, I think a scene where future Hajime and Chiaki meet could be very well executed.

Then again, I absolutely loved the latter half of Akuma no Riddle, so my tolerance of happy ending plot twists is clearly higher than that of most anime fans.

"Chiaki must die in order for this to have a satisfying ending."

Just... no. Let the man work.

That you think killing her in this episode would have been ideal means you haven't been paying attention at all. We had no reason to believe she ever existed, so the payoff for that will have to come at the very end of the series. Her fate (death or not) will be the turning point for class 77 as a whole, not just the audience's opinion of Izuru!Hajime.

Personally, I'm wondering if she does/did actually exist, or if Despair Arc is actually a rerun of the New World program overseen by Chisa, and not a prequel at all.

If you are disappointed by the lack of Chiaki's participation in the The...Tragedy, t is your own fault for jumping in on the "sheis part of the student council" bandwagon.

Since when do class reps (i.e. people who assist their homeroom teachers, manage cleaning duty and such) means student council member (i.e. people who manage the entire student body, plan school-wide events and manage the budget)? Chiaki is basically Ishimaru of the class 77B. It was a long shot to begin with.

I admit, I'm also not entirely happy that she is a real person. But I am sure she will meet her eventual demise soon. Or she might be a secret mastermind. I'm sure it is going to be a satisfying conclusion, in any case, as DR rarely disappoints in that regard.

Ejem, to all the people saying that Chiaki wasn't intended to be real and she only is here because of fanservice, no. The game implied heavily that she was a real person before, after all:

1-Nagito informed himself before the game of every single student of the class so he could tell Hajime about them when he goes talking with them, and Chiaki is also one of them. The only one he didn't know about was Hajime for obvious reasons. And no, the Neo World Program doesn't imply in any way that they can create memories, only erase them.
2-Nagito read the extended school reports where he discovers they are the Remnants of Despair, and yet he still doesn't know who the traitor is (that's why he decides to put this plan and let his luck decide). That means that Chiaki's information was also detailed enough as a real person, yet not a factor to determine she wasn't a Remnant.

So yeah, that Chiaki is a real person makes perfect sense (that she has a previous relationship with Hajime could be perfectly considered 100% fanservice though).

The other thing that revisiting these points brings (in case the author also remembers and it's not an incoherence he lets pass) is the 2nd one, which could mean that Chiaki becomes/pretends to become a Remnant or something. Either way, she also has to meet Chihiro in order for him to program her as an AI anyway, so honestly it was our wrong to assume she would be killed in the School First Tragedy only because she was the delegate of her class, in fact, now I can drop that assumption and being honestly concerned and unsure about what her future will be, whether she lives, dies or what.

I have mixed feelings for the killing part, because honestly, Mukuro's pretentiously poetic and ironic song was clearly supposed to be funny, it's a kind of ridiculous you see in other series played totally straight and here it's hilarious how Junko forces it. Yet, at the same time, I guess the schoolers killing each other was still supposed to be played straight, and in that regard is absolutely silly how easily they turn into relentless killers (the gore though made me laugh because Kodaka talked about the prototype of the first game like "it was too bloody and brutal, that's too sick, we decided not to do that so we soften it"). But honestly, as someone who doesn't think this series is the best written, I was expecting that it wouldn't be particulary on point when it wants to be explicit and direct about these events instead of just imply them like the games did, that's what I thought of the Twilight Murders or the Warriors of Hope anyway, so this doesn't come as a surprise to me and I sort of accept that's the weakest part of the writing.

I disagree here actually. I don't believe Chiaki was originally designed with Kodaka intended her to be a real person at all. I need to refresh my mind for the first point, because it's been a while since I've played too, but do we know for a fact that Nagito checked up on Chiaki before the game?

Anyway, we were clearly led to believe Chiaki was an AI. That was part of the twist. Nagito used his luck, yes, but we don't know that he read detailed information on all of them. He simply could have seen a mention that all of Class 77 had fell into despair and became Remnants. His luck pointed towards Chiaki being the odd one out, and she was, because she was an AI. As I said above, if she wasn't a Remnant, why not, and if she was, why was she not with the rest of them? What was the point in having Chiaki be an AI if she's still alive and well in the current timeline?

wolf10 wrote:

"Chiaki must die in order for this to have a satisfying ending." Just... no. Let the man work.

I'm not allowed to give my personal thoughts on it now? Just shut up and take what I get? Come on, what's the point of a discussion thread where you're not allowed to share your thoughts?

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I disagree here actually. I don't believe Chiaki was originally designed with Kodaka intended her to be a real person at all. I need to refresh my mind for the first point, because it's been a while since I've played too, but do we know for a fact that Nagito checked up on Chiaki before the game? Anyway, we were clearly led to believe Chiaki was an AI. That was part of the twist. Nagito used his luck, yes, but we don't know that he read detailed information on all of them. He simply could have seen a mention that all of Class 77 had fell into despair and became Remnants. His luck pointed towards Chiaki being the odd one out, and she was, because she was an AI. As I said above, if she wasn't a Remnant, why not, and if she was, why was she not with the rest of them? What was the point in having Chiaki be an AI if she's still alive and well in the current timeline?

There you go. And yes, Nagito read about all of them in the detailed informs because he was desperate to find out the traitor, but the point is Chiaki also has a profile there, so no matter how much information it has about her, the fact that it exists and doesn't confuse Nagito proves Chiaki existed and it's not in this series forced by fanservice or something.

Anyway, there's 5 episodes left and Chiaki is still a focus character of this arc and there's still a lot of possibilites (for example, being mortally wounded but asking Chihiro and the others who created the Neo World Program to use her for that program and save her comrades, or even if she is alive though wounded/fucked up/etc. she's not the same person as the Chiaki Hajime knew in the game so they could also play with that, etc.), so at this point we're just left to wait and see. I'm not watching this series for its gripping profound writing or structure, I'm aware from both the games and these chapters what strengths and flaws I find on this franchise, for me it still has the same strengths and flaws as before, so honestly if it continues in the same direction as this episode I won't think "trainwreck", I will just think "eh/okay/fine". Which is kind of what I think of both animes so far: "Fine for the game's fans".

Renasviel wrote:

wolf10 wrote: "Chiaki must die in order for this to have a satisfying ending." Just... no. Let the man work. I'm not allowed to give my personal thoughts on it now? Just shut up and take what I get? Come on, what's the point of a discussion thread where you're not allowed to share your thoughts?

Not telling you to shut up, per se, but if you decide in advance that you'll be disappointed by anything other than the specific outcome you specifically want, where's the fun? You're dooming yourself to disappointment before the show is even over.

Personally, I love being proven wrong by shows like this, provided the outcome is also based on clues left earlier in the series and not just filled in with a bunch of information deliberately kept from the audience for the sake of a last-minute "twist." "Junko"'s B-W-H measurements in DR1's character profiles being a standout example of the former. Though UDG pissed me off for other reasons, I do think Kodaka has a pretty strong overall track record.

Though technically he's just series planning, and the writing is being done by Normitsu Kaiho of Nitroplus.

Underscoring the student council's destruction with a mockingly sappy slice-of-life insert song (based on the Red Bull slogan, as if to highlight how meaningless and lazy such songs usually are) was an inspired choice.

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Underscoring the student council's destruction with a mockingly sappy slice-of-life insert song (based on the Red Bull slogan, as if to highlight how meaningless and lazy such songs usually are) was an inspired choice.

Ah, no. They foreshadowed it with the Red Bull slogan (I can believe that was intentional), but "Tsubasa wo Kudasai" is a very well-known Japanese children's song (used for graduations as noted below), notably featured in the climax of Evangelion 2.0, which had a penchant for playing children's songs during violent and dramatic moments. It was also covered once by Hokago Tea Time, among others.

Kind of like having Monokuma voiced (formerly) by the woman who voiced Doraemon, it's a deliberate choice to play/prey upon the audience's pre-existing associations.