Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Despair Arc
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Marimo0
Posts: 186 |
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Watched some of DR2's sixth trial, around the point where Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya joined. I didn't remember the specifics before, but they did specifically say that their real bodies have just been brainwashed, and that even with the shutdown sequence the brainwashing would be undone. Just that they'd still have their real memories without their memories of the game's events, forgetting everything including AI Chiaki, and that they'd have to live with all the tragedies and horrors that they've committed.
So I guess in that context, it probably did have to be something to cause a permanent influence on them like a video to brainwash them that could be cleaned out. Them choosing to become Ultimate Despair of their own free will probably wasn't something that the Neo World Program could change on its own. Choosing would've been more emotionally impactful I think, but I think something like the video, even if Kodaka didn't think of the specifics of how it would've been executed at the time when writing DR2, was how he intended them to be corrupted. |
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Sloppy_Jimbo
 Posts: 98 |
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I haven't played any of the games so I've had to piece together what's what by the anime/s alone and the comments in these forums. Characters being slaughtered left and right left me shrugging or laughing to this point. But damn, mai waifu...and in the worst possible way. To respond indirectly to a previous poster, the very fact that I knew it was coming made it much worse. Like how the slowly building anticipation of a needle stick in your arm drives you to despair instead of a quick stealth jab while you're cheeking a lollypop. Ugh..the Beast has lost his Belle before the ball. R.I.P. Gamer Girl.
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wolf10
 Posts: 905 |
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It also helps that Seiji Kishi is one of the more queer-friendly directors in the anime industry. Even though he's never had a real chance to let things go past subtext, it's a pretty strong subtext in most of his work. (Ranpo Kitan, an original project of his, is essentially a queer adolescent love story framed inside the works of known-fudanshi Edogawa Ranpo). I only caught onto the earlier hints in DR3 it because I went in expecting it, but (in hindsight) it's pretty clear in Sakakura and Chisa's scenes together that she views him as a love rival and not a suitor, and that it hasn't impacted their relationship in the million negative ways that it could. So yeah, he's still the "tragic gay" for the time being, which is a terrible trope, but overall he's not portrayed as any more or less unusual for it than the rest of our oddball cast. Which I guess could still be a bad thing depending on your views. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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Just popping in to say that I have found both the Despair Arc and Future Arc episode reviews to be incredibly helpful. I saw Danganronpa the Animation when it first came out but I haven't played any of the games, so Jacob's guidance has been very illuminating. I still would have enjoyed the shows, but there is no question that certain things would have gone right over my head.
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Lostlorn Forest
 Posts: 544 Location: USA |
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Slightly off-topic but if it hasn't been pointed out already, I'd like to be the one to notice the similarities between Ultimate Imposter and Alolan Raticate:
 
I thought they looked similar even before he revealed his true face 
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2346 |
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Am I the only who found the spoiler[chiaki execution ] extremely disturbing and more then a little fucked up! I am serious it really messed me up for hours afterword!
To be fair she is one of my top 3 wifus (right next to holo from spice and wolf and naoto from persona 4) but that was one of the most viscous tortures/deaths I think I have seen in anime |
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Vannil
 Posts: 240 |
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relevant
Its also interesting that they would include the scene where Hajime and Chiaki AI first meet in danganronpa 2 with Izuru voicing over the scene about which is more unpredictable: hope or despair. |
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Marimo0
Posts: 186 |
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We can now confirm that memes will be the downfall of civilization as we know it.
I think it was to make the story come full circle. First episode of the Despair arc ended after the real Hajime and Chiaki met, and this last episode ends with Hajime's avatar meeting with the AI Chiaki. Plus it basically tells us that this story really has come to its conclusion, at least in this format as this particular thread is followed up in DR2. |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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Despite their statements, I don't really think that the DR2 characters think that they're doing the right thing. I think that, as Junko said, she has just altered their brains to be like hers, and get psychosexual pleasure from (only) despair, and the betrayal of all their hopes and dreams. So they're stating their true hopes, and betraying them themselves in order to feel despair. I'm not even convinced that Junko gave anyone any orders at all, just watched as each of them acted independently to create despair (both for themselves and the world) by destroying their own dearest hopes. Chisa loves Munakata, so her worst possible despair is to destroy him utterly. Chisa's voiceover narration is very clear to me that she knows what she's doing is a wrong act of despair. I suppose it's possible that the narration monologue is the real Chisa different from the despair version of the various characters, who are insane, but I lean more towards the knowing despair interpretation. Hence all the part about "tragedy born from hope." Chiaki Nanami helped all of the class realize their hopes and aspirations, which only gave them something more to betray in the end. That's part of why Junko found her interesting, and was amused at hope only being the basis for greater despair (the reverse of Komaeda's beliefs.) |
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Batknight94
Posts: 22 |
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Man the whole 'brainwashing is a retcon' thing is getting quite old. There are a ton of examples all throughout DR0 and DR2 that brainwashing was always going to Junko's main tool to bring about her plans. In DR0, which came out before DR2, shows the reserve course students being forced to watch the student council killing video and being brainwashed by it just like we see in DR3. In DR2 the neo world program was said to be specifically created to deal with brainwashing. Also, Makoto says in DR2 that everyone in the class has just been brainwashed and once they exit the program it will be undone. This was always the plan.
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GlassesMan
Posts: 217 |
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You know, as much as I love luck as an ability, if I ever wrote a story I don't think I would use it. It pretty much Deus ex Machina, the ability. Even a Ultimate Analyst (which is pretty much Kirigiri's Ultimate Detective skill on steroids), can't beat it. Honestly though, I like how Kodaka employs it. When Naegi beats Junko, the luck is only accessory. The hope is tha main point.
Also I wanna play V3!!!!!!!! |
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Batknight94
Posts: 22 |
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Well that's not technically the correct use of the term. It would be a Deus ex Machina if Makoto's ultimate luck had been reveled out of nowhere later on, but ultimate luck has been set up as a legitimate ability since the beginning of DR1. It acts more like, meta, self aware plot armor than anything. |
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justsomeaccount
 Posts: 471 |
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I think that's Nagito only since he's the Despair-hater and Hope-lover to an extreme that his mind can't take that contradiction, the rest I think it's assumed to be Junko lovers. The thing about their dreams I say the same as the users above, though it's true that if that was the intention, maybe showing that despair of betraying their dreams would have made the point come across. But anyway, I saw this from the previous episodes so can't say I was disappointed on this specific episode (same with Chisa). I'm not even a Junko fan yet I thought this episode was fine, it's just, you know, conclusive about the event and the related characters instead of giving more clues and connections aside of character tips we knew but still needed to be shown (mostly about the three main of DR3). Would have been cooler to see more (hello Mitarai?), but I get it, and I don't mind they fit the pieces to DR1 even if it doesn't contribute much to DR3 (many of these episodes didn't anyway), it solidifies the world, if they were missing the prequel would feel cut out or incomplete, with this or the Chiaki stuff it comes full circle. I agree though about the Reserve Course suicide being very shruggy, probably due to these two facts: 1-instead of being the big traumatic event it's treated just as the icing on the cake so it's not that shocking, and 2-we know nothing about them. The series has purposely ignored any reserve student except the outliers (they didn't even add one defined so we could feel pity when this moment came) and with such distance about how they feel or how they were brought into this chaos that you don't feel anything when they kill themselves, especially in an episode where everything and everybody is already fucked up so there's nobody we fear about. I guess I should wait before giving my opinion on this arc, but overall my biggest problem was it had so much stuff to focus on (the DR2 cast, the DR3 cast, Junko, Hajime/Izuru, Chiaki, Twilight murders, fanservice, continuity, etc. all while being very calmly paced) that it had to sacrifice a lot, leaving things too explicit yet not too deep, other events loosing their magic when they are told all the details, and others that were ignored noticiable when you see what they included; it's not very tight. However, I'll at least give that sometimes, even if writing-wise the idea or execution wasn't the strongest, they could get the creepy feeling they were looking at least visually even for this kind of limited animation (ep7 and 10), and there was still enjoyable humor and constant tension and suspense, so in the end I still liked it. I'll see though how it ends up fitting with Future and Hope Arc. P.S.: Thematically the whole link between AI Chiaki and real-life Chiaki will be pretty nice and all, but plot-wise, the show hasn't still answered how the hell was she turned into an AI! I guess they're hinting that Izuru may have something to do, but how and why? Wasn't this developed by other Ultimates and knowing exactly who Chiaki (and Usami) was and their purpose? I checked Chiaki's wikia to see if I was missing something, but according to the game's dialogues it seems to notice that Chiaki's father is Chihiro and her big brother Alter Ego, which we have no link of knowing each other, so what the hell! THIS is the biggest plothole out of all, the one question that pondered in my head since we knew real-life Chiaki and it's left unanswered. |
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Marimo0
Posts: 186 |
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My interpretation about that whole thing about class 77's dreams was that they were just treating the thing as a joke. They were treating and acting like this was some normal, even saccharine happy ending while knowing what was going to happen, and what they were actually going to do. Like Imposter saying that he could "be anyone he wants" is supposed to seem on the surface like he doesn't feel like he has to attach himself to his Ultimate Imposter talent and he can be his own person, when his real meaning is that he'll just embrace the imposter talent to impersonate anyone he wants. Specifically to bring about despair, especially if he's copying people like the President.
And others like Teruteru are just being outright contradictory. Not only is he holding a bunch of what looks like junk food when he says that he'll feed the world a bunch of nutritious food, as a character I don't think that's something he would be concerned about or would naturally say at the conclusion of a character arc without Junko's influence. From what I remember from his free time events in DR2, the stuff about his food was never about things like nutrition, but more about him not using the facade of coming from some fancy 5 star restaurant from the city in order to seem good, and taking pride in his cooking coming from a diner in the country with food that tasted good cause how it tastes like a homemade meal. So I can't help but feel like his line in particular was just fabricated by himself as part of what they all probably considered to be a giant joke.
First off, you said turned into an AI. If you mean that in the same way Junko turned herself into an AI, I don't think that's what happened. I think AI Chiaki is separate from the real one and just based on her, kind of like what Alter Ego is to Chihiro, only AI Chiaki resembles her counterpart more in terms of personality. For why she was in the program at all, I don't think that's something meant to be answered by the show. I think the answer is still something you're supposed to look at DR2 and be able to fill in the blanks yourself. I believe the AI Chiaki is considered to be created by both Chihiro and Alter Ego. However, Alter Ego is considered her big brother, not a parent, plus I'm pretty sure Alter Ego was something Chihiro made up during the first game's events and not before the Tragedy. So what I interpret is this: AI Chiaki's base role, one of the observers, was created by Chihiro when developing the program. That makes Chihiro its father, but at that period it was only a base AI with no distinct or set character. Maybe consider it a yet to be born fetus or something. When the program was later used by Makoto and the others for helping the Remnants of Despair, Alter Ego was uploaded to help set it up, and part of setting it up required creating a character for the observer. They probably had to have some info on the class (Monokuma did have a class roster) so the observer AI was probably given the data on Chiaki by Alter Ego to give it a character, since the real Chiaki wasn't going to be part of the program so might as well take advantage of her absence. This would be when AI Chiaki would really be born as she was, so since Alter Ego had an established character beforehand that would make him in a way her big brother. Besides him not thinking he was an actual parent since he didn't help create her, just modified her, I think the game just didn't want to deal with the idea of programming incest where Chihiro and Alter Ego would both be considered parents to AI Chiaki when Alter Ego is also Chihiro's child and therefore AI Chiaki's sibling as well. And it probably didn't need to involve some actual connection or meeting between the real Chiaki and Chihiro, Gekkogahara, or Matsuda, since I don't think the character of Chiaki would've been used at all in their program on a normal basis. The Hope Restoration Program seemed like it was meant for general use, not for a specific group of people. They would've had no reason to use her in their program since the only people she had any connection with was class 77, and no one knew about 77 becoming despair until some time after the Tragedy, when Matsuda would've already been dead and Chihiro barricaded in the school building so they themselves wouldn't have been able to put in AI Chiaki. So she could've only been put in later on. |
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wolf10
Posts: 905 |
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Feel free to go over a giant checklist before you allow yourself to feel for characters at any given moment, but I disagree that the mass suicide lacked impact. They're the faceless many ground down by a system built for the twofold purpose of elevating the "gifted" and teaching the "ordinary" to know their place. Even as the world goes to hell in a handbasket, the school's only concern is ensuring that their precious "hope" is protected at all costs, even if that cost is countless thousands of ordinary people. Munakata didn't break himself, he learned from the best.
You aren't supposed to need a 32-page backstory and family history for each and every body on screen to understand that those things exist, their deaths are not okay, and are not treated as okay by the material itself. Then again, I have much more empathy than most, and tend to be hurt a lot more when "minor" character deaths are glossed over by "major" characters as if they don't matter. With Danganronpa, especially this series, that's a deliberately invoked irony, so it works for me. |
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