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

Episodes 1-2

Reviewer's Note: These writeups will contain spoilers for the first three Danganronpa games (D1, D2, and Ultra Despair Girls), because Danganronpa 3 assumes familiarity with these games. While I think it's technically possible to understand what's going on in Danganronpa 3 if you've only seen the first anime, I wouldn't recommend it myself based on the fanservice-and-continuity-heavy events thus far. I also wouldn't recommend trying to only watch "Future Arc" or "Despair Arc" on their own, as the first episodes of both have made it clear that this unique "prequel/finale" will be interlocking the two in interesting ways, meant to be watched together. However, I would absolutely recommend playing through Danganronpa 2 on PS Vita or Steam for yourself! It's not only a sequel that tops the original, it's one of my favorite visual novels of all time, so give it a shot! Also, since I already covered episode one of this series in the summer preview guide, this review will mostly discuss episode two.

For all its wacky irreverence and colorful pop art aesthetic, sometimes it's easy to forget that Danganronpa is a painfully cruel series. When Hope comes crashing down victoriously at the end of every installment, fans want to stand up and cheer all the more because we had to wade through fifty miles of despair just to get that ever-compromised victory. So while the Despair Arc of this series acts as a curious mirror to the status quo—partying it up every week only to prepare Class 77-B for their horrifying fall—the Future Arc is back to business as usual, jumpstarting horror and distrust amongst an eclectic cast of talented hopefuls doomed to slaughter each other.

However, the rules are a little different this time. In the interest of brevity for this one-cour conclusion, Monokuma has changed his trial-based free-for-all killing game into a fast-paced round of Mafia (or Werewolf for y'all millennials) instead. There is only one traitor amidst the Future Foundation, who will kill one person every time the other players are tranquilized (via handcuff-bracelets that were totally not snatched from the Zero Escape series, written by Kazutaka Kodaka's good friend Kotaro Uchikoshi) at the end of a preset countdown time. The game will end when these one-by-one killings stop, which means the only way out is for everyone else to decide on the guilty party and execute them as a group. If they're right, the game will end next time they wake up and find everyone else alive. If they're wrong, they just made the game go a little faster for the real traitor.

Of course, all eyes immediately turn to Makoto Naegi, and as contrived as their suspicion may be, I can't really blame these stooges this time. Sure, the viewers know why he risked everything to save the Remnants of Despair, but in the Future Foundation's eyes, Makoto went behind their backs to save the psychos responsible for the deaths of millions of people worldwide, and then this killing game started happening at a tribunal where he was 99.9% sure to be found guilty. Unfortunately, when the Future Foundation's spirited members start exchanging blows over his guilt or innocence, the game goes from bad to worse.

To speed the game along even further, each player's bracelet carries a "forbidden action" that its wearer cannot break on pain of death, which is where our second victim tragically bites the dust. It seems Daisaku Bandai was just too beautiful for this heartless world, and after his own forbidden action gets triggered (witnessing an act of violence), he gets taken out like Danganronpa 1's Junko, as this killing game's "example" that these rules are absolutely serious. Of course, even making that comparison draws some suspicion, because Junko's death was nothing but a red herring meant to hide her identity as the true mastermind. Bandai's outlandish uniqueness makes me want to believe he can't really be dead so soon, and Kimura's rush to pour a strange liquid into his mouth at the moment of death also raises some eyebrows, but my gut ultimately tells me that Kodaka is not pulling the same trick twice this time. Bandai was a lovable standout in the lineup precisely because he was going to eat it early, and we'll just have to bid a sorrowful sayonara to the big black burly Rie Kugimiya we could have had. Good night, sweet prince...

But I have to stop tiptoeing around the real reason this episode is such a bleak heartbreaker: a death much worse than Daisaku Bandai's. Future Arc is already hell-bent on making sure we know that nothing is sacred, and I started whispering "oh no" to myself pretty early on when Ultimate Swimmer Aoi Asahina kept getting just a little too much dialogue compared to everyone else. By the time she whisked Makoto away to hide him from the other antagonistic players, her fate was completely sealed. Of course the traitor would target the person closest to Makoto to make him look even more suspicious and drive him closer to despair. I'm just genuinely shocked that it actually happened. There's a horrible feeling of betrayal in seeing a beloved character who already fought for and won their survival just getting killed in the game anyway a few years later, and I hope Danganronpa 3 can eventually make this sacrifice worth it. At least it definitely has our attention.

Frankly, the story needs to be top-shelf intense to hold our attention this time, because D3's gunmetal-gray-n'-green color palette with lackluster animation isn't going to keep us on the edge of our seats. If it wasn't for Danganronpa's captivating character designs and the occasional blip of color from hot-pink Usami, this series would be as un-fun to look at as possible. Not even the hyperviolent histrionics of Great Gozu can breathe life into this unbelievably flat production, so I'm glad the plot and characters are already firing on all cylinders and demanding my engagement as a fan with fairly high expectations. Aoi's death upsets me, but I still trust Kodaka to use it for good in the end. On a heartless pragmatic level, poor Aoi had pretty much served her whole purpose in this story, so there really wasn't much left for her to do but join her bestie Sakura in that olympic-sized gym in the sky.

All that's left at this point is to throw out guesses about the identity of the traitor. There's not much to go on yet, but I know two people it's almost certainly not: the yin-yang twins. For either Munakata (white) or Sakakura (black) to be the killer would be almost painfully obvious, and they seem to have a very different relationship to both this Future Arc and the Despair Arc of the past that will probably be more layered than a simple good/evil switcheroo. No, the most likely culprits at this point are the two most normal participants with the most unassuming but potent levels of power: Kizakura and Tengan. Kizakura was the original teacher of Class 77-B who gave up on them for unknown reasons, and he's been awfully chill throughout this process so far. Of course, the more cliché choice is Tengan, who threw up triple red flags by being a kindly old man, the head of the Future Foundation, and mentioning his support and sympathy for Makoto's traitorous decision. These are the two most likely suspects, but I should also probably pick a weirder one just to shake things up. And since this is Danganronpa, I don't trust the girl in the wheelchair one bit.

Gekkogahara may or may not be the traitor, but she definitely isn't all she appears to be. First of all, the idea of Usami's "voice" eventually turning into a voice for despair is potent imagery that could be awfully tempting to a twisted writer like Kodaka. Fans of Danganronpa 2 now trust this adorable bunny with all their hearts and souls, which made it a little too easy to just take her word for it when she says they were hacked from the inside without her knowledge. But there's a person beyond Usami's every word this time, and Gekkogahara's lack of speaking voice, familiar hairstyle, oversized clothes, and wheelchair restriction make me think of Monaca, the villain of Ultra Despair Girls. She should still be alive, so we can't rule out the possibility that the Ultimate Therapist has been replaced by Lil' Ultimate Homeroom herself. It's so stupidly obvious that it just might be true! If not, it's just a diabolical red herring. There's also a distinct possibility that there is no traitor, or even more than one!

Whatever the case may be, Monokuma seems pretty sure that this will be the last killing game, so there's definitely a lot going on here that we don't know about yet. Its production values may be less than exciting, but Danganronpa 3 is starting off just as engrossing as its predecessors, at a much faster pace.

Rating: B

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.