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Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Despair Arc
Episode 8

by Jacob Chapman,

How would you rate episode 8 of
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Despair Arc ?
Community score: 4.3

The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History is nearing completion, and Junko couldn't be happier with the results. Unfortunately, not everyone is cooperating as well as her new footstool, Mikan Tsumiki. It looks like Mitarai the Ultimate Animator will need a little more gentle persuasion to join in Junko's scheme after he discovers the horrible truth prematurely. And by gentle persuasion, Junko means threatening to make all his precious classmates kill each other if he escapes.

Just as this week's Future Arc took a few stumbling steps forward while plowing headlong into its climax, the Despair Arc followed suit with an episode that made progress by introducing a few worrisome developments. First of all, there's Mikan. It makes sense that she would be the easiest student in Class 77-B to brainwash even without any powerful subliminal messaging tricks, but fans have been imagining what kind of catastrophe could have transformed these lovable kids into Remnants of Despair ever since Danganronpa 2 came out years ago, and this episode doesn't really deliver on the high hopes we've been riding for a little too long. (Of course, this was evident from the very first episode of Danganronpa 3, which offered some admittedly badass Despair-mode designs for the cast that nonetheless didn't quite match the too-gruesome-for-TV original descriptions from the visual novel.) It's easy to imagine how Junko could have corrupted Mikan, but it would have been nice to actually see the process, even if it was just a 30-second scene. I wanted to see something that exploited Mikan's character traits and revealed why she would fall in love with Junko while casting herself into Despair. For crying out loud, this is a girl who will eventually scrounge up a splattered Junko's remains and surgically implant the dead girl's uterus into her own stomach, give us a little more than "she just went insane offscreen."

If Mikan was seriously converted using just one snuff film and a little quality time under Junko's heels, this also bodes ill for the other Remnants of Despair. Ever since subliminal messaging was introduced as a power of Mitarai's several episodes ago, I've been slightly worried that this would be used as an excuse to simultaneously transform all of Class 77-B into Remnants of Despair, but I remained hopeful that this technology would just be used to cause the Reserve Course's mass suicide instead. The latter scenario (forcing one simple violent action across thousands of people) makes more sense as a consequence of powerful subliminal messaging in a video than the former (wild and complex shifts in personality and ideology across a dozen people). Maximizing the number of people who watch the video creates greater plot impact, making the consequence of viewing it more basic increases plausibility, and using a simple plot device like that on hordes of non-named characters is more emotionally satisfying than using it on a crew of beloved named cast members. Unfortunately, it's looking more and more likely that Mitarai's inevitable video will be used on his friends to turn them all into Junko's mind-slaves. I don't know what to say about this potential twist except that it would be so disappointing that I would probably try to pretend it didn't happen and come up with my own versions of how Junko despairified everyone instead. They deserve better than such a lazy plot device. Too bad they're all out in the rain looking for Mikan right now. When they find her, they're going to regret it for the rest of their lives...

In the aftermath, we get two unexpected character confrontations, one exciting and one awkward. When Nagito decides to go looking for the source of all this Despair so he can snuff it out, he persuades Peko to distract any assassins who might try to stop his mission. This leads to the completely unexpected yet totally awesome confrontation between the Ultimate Swordswoman and the Ultimate Soldier, as Peko and Mukuro engage in mortal combat to protect the people they love. You go, girls! I hope we get to see more of this fight next week. The more awkward confrontation comes when Nagito is stopped from executing Junko by her new guard dog, Izuru Kamukura. If you're a big fan of Danganronpa 2, this probably sent a couple dozen red flags bouncing up in your brain, because these two explicitly meet for the first time in Chapter 0 of that game, making crazypants small talk in the hold of a cargo ship. I can see writing around this a little, both because their War of Luck lasts about ten seconds and who knows what Despairification does to human memory, but it still feels like fanservice undercutting continuity at its core. Kodaka wanted to write a Luck-Off between these two, both to get Nagito out of the way once Chiaki and not-Hajime reunite, and probably just because he thought the concept was really cool, continuity be damned. Oh well.

Most of this episode is setup for the big bang next week, so I don't have much to add to all that cautious optimism tempered with mild disappointment, but I do have another crackpot prediction to re-introduce! (Jacob's crackpot predictions: not just for Future Arc reviews anymore!) I hypothesized several episodes ago that Chisa Yukizome would be the true mastermind behind the Final Killing Game, but I changed my mind when Munakata went back to her corpse to apologize before going out to kill the mastermind (and it became clear that Gekkōgahara's body had not been used as a replacement). Well, I've changed my mind again. If Chisa is not the mastermind, I'll eat my shoes.

As we see her descend the stairs to confront Junko and save her students, something deep in my gut tells me that the Chisa of Despair Arc's conclusion can't be the Chisa of Future Arc's start, who gave Makoto a gentle smile when he explained why he wanted to save her students. That hopeful woman whose optimism remained unaffected by all this just has to be a lie, and the "afterlife theater" where we see her chomping popcorn at the beginning of the Despair Arc? It's probably a literal room in the Future Foundation's tower. That's my crackpot theory, and I'm sticking to it, because no other mastermind identity seems thematically crushing enough except for Chisa Yukizome.

So how could this be the case? I don't know yet, it's just a feeling, but we have gotten a few hints. First of all, Munakata said "Ultimate Despair" when looking at Aoi Asahina (and Makoto, but him suspecting Aoi makes more sense). Secondly, Monaka knows that Makoto is being set up to kill one of his friends, even though she's not affiliated with the Killing Game's mastermind at all, so she must have seen something going on while everyone else was asleep. Thirdly—and I know this sounds insane and stupid but bear with me—Aoi and Chisa have the same physical build. Could they have swapped places at some point in the game? Did Monaka notice this because she hasn't been asleep? Has Munakata also figured it out? Does this mean Aoi is already dead and this will somehow lead to Kyoko's demise? (Or is Chisa's corpse just an elaborate dummy, which would be less depressing?) IT'S ALL COMPLETELY CRAZY, but so is Danganronpa, and I can't wait to see how both the past and future are going to wrap up in just eight more episodes.

Rating: B

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


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