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FoolyCharged posted:DR1 case 2 has a big moment where after you figure out who done it you expect to need to hammer the point home against the killer given how long leon drug things out and then Mondo just goes silent and his friend is so in denial that the climax is convincing the friend to face the truth. Between that and the work they put into painting leon as a terrified kid they really tried to paint the early killers in a sympathetic light. Oh totally. The only characters in the game who really come across as messed up are Junko and Celeste. The others are decent people in an insanely lovely and stressful situation and some are going to snap under those extreme circumstances. I think it's one of the strengths of the game that they don't go too heavy on murderbots.
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Apr 27, 2019 00:32
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Solitair posted:And don't worry, I'm not gonna space it out so you only get one recap per week. The next one'll be up by Monday or Tuesday. Mukuro and her crush on Makoto are actually a really big part of the “Junko” free times in the first game, she manages to never reveal herself but she says a lot of things that on second look don’t add up to an Ultimate Fashionista. The MRE thing is the most obvious though. The funniest bit though is her as Junko promising to introduce Makoto to her sister (herself out of disguise), because they’d be a Herbivore Male and a Carnivore Female. It’s actually one of the more interesting Free Time Events and frankly half of why people ship Mukuro/Makoto. The other half being a canon AU fanfiction if the first game.
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Apr 27, 2019 00:48
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Anyone still have the original JUNKOS Hagakure pic from the orenronen thread? That was a trip and a half.
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Apr 27, 2019 02:25
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Lord_Magmar posted:Mukuro and her crush on Makoto are actually a really big part of the “Junko” free times in the first game, she manages to never reveal herself but she says a lot of things that on second look don’t add up to an Ultimate Fashionista. The MRE thing is the most obvious though. Man the bonus mode Mukuro conversations in that game are actually so good. The fact that she still maintains her Junko persona while interacting with you just adds a palpable amount of weight to the specific answers she chooses to give you, and the fact that she's strikingly blunt and self-assured when she lets the mask slip provides a really intriguing flavor to her character when juxtaposed with how she acts as her sister. I think it's really hard to write one character acting as another in-universe in an engaging, consistent, and character-revealing manner, and I think the team deserves kudos for pulling it off as well as they did. Man I thought I hated all the DR 1 characters, but I guess this recap post showed me otherwise. I forgot how many good moments of character psychology came from the OG. Blue Labrador fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Apr 27, 2019 |
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Apr 27, 2019 03:55
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I'm tempted to buy the rerelease of 1 and 2 just to look deeper into School and Island modes. None of the SA LPs went that deeply into them, and since V3's equivalent isn't as grindy, I'm going to be covering it in more depth when the time comes. [Future Solitair: This is a half-truth.] Solitair fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Aug 5, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2019 05:39
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Solitair posted:I'm tempted to buy the rerelease of 1 and 2 just to look deeper into School and Island modes. None of the SA LPs went that deeply into them, and since V3's equivalent isn't as grindy, I'm going to be covering it in more depth when the time comes. there really just there as a vehicle to finish all the free time events without having to replay the chapters and the excuse to not just hand them to you.
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Apr 27, 2019 06:06
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mateo360 posted:there really just there as a vehicle to finish all the free time events without having to replay the chapters and the excuse to not just hand them to you. Don't sell them short; they also offer you the opportunity to date Nagito Komaeda, i.e. everyone's dream. Dating Komaeda was incredibly frustrating because I was really bad at predicting how he'd respond to things. I would say something innocuous and he would react weirdly and the atmosphere would turn uncomfortable and nobody would have a good time. He kept expressing surprise at how disappointing a date I'd turned out to be. Eventually, I just gave up. He's the worst. I love him, but he's the worst. In other words, it was a perfect representation of what dating Komaeda would actually be like. I was sort of impressed.
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Apr 27, 2019 06:29
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Rarity posted:Oh totally. The only characters in the game who really come across as messed up are Junko and Celeste. Well, that depends on what you mean by "messed up", given that a number of the backstories tended to note how building their talent tended to have a cost, whether it was Chihiro's self-image or Sayaka being implied to do unsavory things to maintain her idol status. I'm assuming you mean  , but even then, I don't think I'd paint Celeste in the same light as Junko.Also, I'm kinda pissed that Byakuya never gets any comeuppance or expresses remorse for desecrating Chihiro's corpse. Lord_Magmar posted:Mukuro and her crush on Makoto are actually a really big part of the “Junko” free times in the first game, she manages to never reveal herself but she says a lot of things that on second look don’t add up to an Ultimate Fashionista. The MRE thing is the most obvious though. And then DR3's anime threw all of that out the window! Or at least implied that one year in Makoto's presence was enough to undo a lifetime of worshiping Junko. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Apr 27, 2019 |
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Apr 27, 2019 07:26
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Rarity posted:Oh totally. The only characters in the game who really come across as messed up are Junko and Celeste. Laughing now that I made this post and totally ignored the serial killer with multiple personalities.
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Apr 27, 2019 07:29
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mateo360 posted:there really just there as a vehicle to finish all the free time events without having to replay the chapters and the excuse to not just hand them to you. You can’t actually date people outside School/Island more from memory, which are kind of unique story pieces and give you a special ending for DR1. Also they’re the only way for Makoto to collect the underwear of all his classmates and hecome the true champion of his school. Interestingly or not depending on your opinions, “Junko’s” when you collect it is made from knife and bullet resistant material, because she’s Mukuro. It is actually kind of impressive the amount of thought put into a character’s underwear for this game series. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Apr 27, 2019 |
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Apr 27, 2019 08:58
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Blue Labrador posted:Man I thought I hated all the DR 1 characters, but I guess this recap post showed me otherwise. I forgot how many good moments of character psychology came from the OG. Even Ishimaru?  I really wonder sometimes how horribly Ishimaru and Komaeda could've bounced off each other if they'd been in the same game. Can you just imagine Ishimaru's reaction to Komaeda's speech about how some people are just born with worth and talent and others aren't?
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Apr 27, 2019 09:00
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I will say, having recently discussed all 3 games with some people elsewhere I think i can say NDRV3 has the best overall cast because there are 0 worthless garbage characters like Teruteru, Leon or Hagakure.
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Apr 27, 2019 09:04
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Is Leon the flattest character in the series? I don't remember anything about him beyond "Man, I hate baseball. Oh, but thinking about it, I really love baseball." and maybe liking Sayaka because he wanted to do something in music like she was? I think the manga does, at least, try to convey his killing Sayaka as a genuine accident that occurred while he was trying to calm her down, but there's nothing else about him that really stands out.
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Apr 27, 2019 16:25
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:I think the manga does, at least, try to convey his killing Sayaka as a genuine accident that occurred while he was trying to calm her down, but there's nothing else about him that really stands out. Oh, huh, I didn't know that! I'm sort of glad that's not what the game went with; I think making it an accident actually makes him less interesting, and, as you say, there's not much of interest about him to start with. Killing Sayaka because he's imprisoned and scared and he's trying to justify it to himself by going 'well, she tried to kill me first' at least gives a little more definition to his character. I'll say this for Leon: he has the most incredible expressions. The character across the series I find least interesting is probably Hagakure, come to think of it. I know he's meant to be comic relief, but something about him really didn't work for me. 'Please note: Hagakure-kun's stuck outside because nobody likes him' was the best line in Danganronpa 3.
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Apr 27, 2019 16:49
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You'd have to work pretty hard to make either the murderer or the victim for the first chapter be memorable or important characters just because they're only here for a short amount of time. Nobody gives a poo poo about Sayaka or Leon.
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Apr 27, 2019 16:59
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Nah, people like Sayaka for roughly the reason you'd expect. She shows an amount of interest in Makoto and has a fascinating Dark Side. She's probably the third most common straight Makoto pairing and the fourth most common overall, behind Kyouko, Mukuro and Byakuya. Leon is literally 3 character traits: Hates his talent of Baseball, wants to play music, wants to pick up chicks (which the second is related to, and the first also is in the end). One of the more weird batshit parts of the setting is the reason Leon can't get girls using his Baseball talent is that his female younger cousin is his manager and has a major crush on him so she tries to isolate him from women when he's playing Baseball. If I remember correctly, a lot of the side stuff is only vague in my head. Hagakure is worse because he's got about the same level of depth but actually sticks around for the entire game and continues to contribute jack, and poo poo. Also, it's not like they had to make Leon this one-note in the translation, Aoi's sports facts are somewhat ad-libbed to increase the interest in her Report Card if I remember correctly, they could've done something similar for Leon but with him getting music facts wrong and baseball facts right. To tie into how at the end he actually doesn't mind playing Baseball and just hates that it's the only thing people want from him ever.
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Apr 27, 2019 17:30
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ZeroCount posted:You'd have to work pretty hard to make either the murderer or the victim for the first chapter be memorable or important characters just because they're only here for a short amount of time. Nobody gives a poo poo about Sayaka or Leon. I thought they did surprisingly well with both of them, actually. While Sayaka might not be around for long, being the very first person to choose to attempt murder does inherently make her more interesting. Once the game has begun, it's even easier to rationalise that it's kill or be killed, and the idea of everyone just refusing to play is too naive. But she made the first move. And her reasons are well fleshed out, and her relation to Makoto adds more twists to the setup. There's one more significant moment Sayaka had too, after chapter 1, which always impressed me... when they find the videos of the students willingly agreeing to be locked in the school. Just seeing Sayaka's face at all after so much time gave me a really nostalgic feeling, to look back to the start of the game and how far everyone had come. But having Sayaka be the first one you see on the video also gave it a shitload of irony and really hammered home the weight of what they were agreeing to. If even Sayaka, the one who'd been so desperate to get out that she would begin the killing game and frame her friend for murder, even she was willingly agreeing to be locked in the school? That poo poo must be serious. As for Leon, his relative flatness as a character at least felt very natural and believable. He comes off as a fairly normal teenage guy too obsessed with looking cool and getting chicks. And that makes it all the more shocking for him to be punished as the first murderer, with the most brutally realistic and effective execution in the whole series. He didn't have any really outlandish backstory or motives driving him to murder, like some other characters. He was just thrust into a situation where someone was trying to murder him, and then he fought back. Notably, this happened before all the full class trial rules were explained, so Leon wouldn't have even known that he had to sentence all the others to death too to escape. I also thought the manga scenario of Sayaka's death being an accident was a huge copout and a worse story. I really liked the version originally implied in the game, where he has some justification for self-defense... but then once he gained the upper hand, he does have to more actively commit to going through with murder, to go and get the tools to get that door open. That scenario leaves him fascinatingly relatable while also being an actual killer. It's far more interesting than him being a total blameless victim. But yeah, I definitely give a poo poo about both Sayaka and Leon cause I think the game handled their stories so well.
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Apr 27, 2019 17:36
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Lord_Magmar posted:One of the more weird batshit parts of the setting is the reason Leon can't get girls using his Baseball talent is that his female younger cousin is his manager and has a major crush on him so she tries to isolate him from women when he's playing Baseball. Gross. Though that explains the girl from Dangan Hagakure.
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Apr 27, 2019 17:52
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Rith posted:The character across the series I find least interesting is probably Hagakure, come to think of it. I know he's meant to be comic relief, but something about him really didn't work for me. 'Please note: Hagakure-kun's stuck outside because nobody likes him' was the best line in Danganronpa 3. I think its that, honestly, Hagakure has very little going for him. Leon doesn't have much, but there is something at least. As Bifauxnen mentioned, he's probably the most normal of the cast even compared to Makoto. He just doesn't stand out much, but that's part of the point. Teruteru is the Ultimate Creep, but he also genuinely loves his mother and fondly remembers his family's restaurant. Contrast these two with Hagakure where every layer you peel back just reveals that no, really, Hagakure is an rear end in a top hat.
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Apr 27, 2019 18:33
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Is Leon the flattest character in the series? I read this whole post thinking you meant his chest size lmao
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Apr 27, 2019 19:51
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Gross. Though that explains the girl from Dangan Hagakure. Yup, that would be her if I remember correctly. She's also Leon's Captive for the Warriors of Hope Demon Killing Game. Mr. Steak posted:I read this whole post thinking you meant his chest size lmao On this note fun fact, one of the clues Mukuro is not Junko is that she is not as 'gifted' as her profile suggests if you look at the sprites, but real Junko is definitely bigger and fuller in that area. Also I'm pretty sure we have chest measurements for all the named characters with profiles and the smallest is Jotaro from the Warriors of Hope, biggest is Hifumi Yamada from DR1. Leon is actually middle of the road, alongside Mukuro and Celestia and Chihiro's dad. Basically this series is real weird and has a lot of strange unnecessary information about characters, chest sizes being one of them. Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Apr 28, 2019 |
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Apr 28, 2019 02:00
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Arcade Rabbit posted:Contrast these two with Hagakure where every layer you peel back just reveals that no, really, Hagakure is an rear end in a top hat. He gets slightly better in DR3 in that he's willing to jump in front of Naegi to protect him from armed guards, but he mostly exists as a gag in that so even then he's pretty flat.
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Apr 28, 2019 08:45
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 So while they were translating Danganronpa 2, orenronen also took a crack at Danganronpa Zero, a light novel depicting events before Junko's Tragedy overtakes the world. It was never translated into English, so for the .3 of you who have been waiting to hear how that story ends, here's a quick summary:  Ryoko Otonashi possesses the talent of Ultimate Analysis (my best guess for how her talent would translate), but also suffers from retrograde and anterograde amnesia. She can only stay at Hope's Peak because of her doctor, Yasuke Matsuda, the Ultimate Neurologist, giving her treatments. She and Kyoko both pursue independent investigations of the deaths of the student council, the gradual murder of the Hope's Peak steering committee, and Izuru Kamukura, a person of interest whose existence has been covered up, who also happens to be the lead suspect in the student council's death. The following people are also involved: -Yuto Kamishiro, the Ultimate Secret Agent. He offers to help Ryoko out in exchange for a James-Bond-esque happy ending with her. Yasuke kills him when he gets too close to the truth. -Isshiki Madarai, the Ultimate Bodyguard. Out for revenge on the student council's behalf, he gets into fights with Junko and pursues Ryoko when she gets involved, too. He dies multiple times during the story, only to seemingly reappear, because the truth is that he has seven brothers, and together they make the Ultimate Octuplets. Not that it does them any good, since Junko kills them all.-Junko Enoshima, obviously. Or rather, Mukuro disguised as Junko, which explains why she can take all comers in the fights that happen in the book.  It turns out that Yasuke is on Junko's side, since the two of them were friends since grade school and Junko manipulated him into being dependent on her. His talent is the source of Junko's ability to erase memories, and he's been using Ryoko as a guinea pig to test the procedure. Because of his conflicted feelings about Junko, he attempts to kill Ryoko, who is instrumental to Junko's plan. Instead, Ryoko regains her memories, revealing herself to be a cover persona for the real Junko Enoshima, and kills Yasuke instead. Kyoko's investigation hits a dead end, and the Tragedy proceeds as scheduled.(The events of DRZero happen concurrently with the latter third of DR3: Despair. I think you can see Yasuke through a window in episode 8 at some point, as well as one or two other cameos I'm forgetting.) Now that that's out of the way...  The Teacher   Usami, a bunny mascot with magical girl powers, has taken sixteen Ultimate students on a vacation to the tropical Jabberwock Island before they can start their Hope's Peak curriculum. The ostensible goal of the vacation is so that all of the students can form strong, lasting bonds with each other, though Usami acts cagey about it. Regardless, Monokuma arrives soon after and hijacks her plans, taking her power and turning her into his bediapered sister, Monomi. The only thing she does well is unlock other islands and take Monokuma's abuse; she's ineffectual and annoying otherwise.The Protagonist  Hajime Hinata has always admired and adored Hope's Peak Academy, and getting in was his lifelong dream. When he finally does get in, though, he can't remember why; his Ultimate Talent is a mystery to him. As Monokuma's new killing game gets underway, he finds himself making the majority of the deductions in class trials. Before the fourth case, he finds out the disappointing truth: he has no Talent, and is just a member of the Hope's Peak Reserve Course, opened as a revenue source for the cash-strapped Academy. Thankfully, nobody takes this reveal too badly except Nagito and Hajime himself.Case #1 The Motive Instead of keeping it a secret like last time, Monokuma immediately reveals that the students had their memories of attending Hope's Peak excised by Monomi. They can only find out what's up in the outside world if one of them starts killing. The Victim  Byakuya Togami, the Ultimate Affluent Progeny. Large and in charge, Byakuya retains his arrogance but tempers it with an obligation to shepherd his peers and protect them from the killing game. He takes several precautions to keep anyone from harm at a party people throw, but after a blackout, Hajime finds him dead from multiple stab wounds under a table. Much later Hajime finds out that he's not the real Byakuya, but the Ultimate Impostor, though if you do enough of his Free Time Events he'll drop a hint to this effect anyway. Lacking a name and identity of his own, the Impostor borrows them from other people, the only constant to his life being his weight-gaining hobby.The Culprit  Teruteru Hanamura, the Ultimate Cook, though he prefers to be called Ultimate Chef. A man torn between carnal appetites, like food and sexually harassing other students, be they male or female; and his desire to appear upscale, urban and sophisticated, hiding his country origins and accent. During the setup to the party, Teruteru stumbles upon Nagito's preparations for murder, and hears Nagito's gleeful confession. He decides to beat Nagito to the punch, crawling under the floor in the dark and skewering him, so that he can find out what happened to his Mom's diner, though he ended up killing Byakuya by mistake. Monokuma fries him, tempura style, in an active volcano.Case #2 The Motive Monokuma sets up an arcade cab of Twilight Syndrome Murder Mystery, a simplistic adventure game depicting the murder of a high school student and the classmates who cover it up. There's a trick to seeing the whole thing, and the first person to figure it out gets photographic evidence that the game is based on a true story. And that person is...  Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, the Ultimate Yakuza. A short-tempered, and short, heir to a massive crime organization, Fuyuhiko spends the earliest parts of the killing game unwilling to socialize with most of his fellow students. Things turn personal for him when he finishes Twilight Syndrome and discovers that the first victim depicted within is his sister, Natsuki, and thus she's dead in real life. His avatar in-game is implied to have finished off the murderer already, but one other student helped cover up her crime, and Fuyuhiko wants answers from her.The Victim  Mahiru Koizumi, the Ultimate Photographer. Though she's easily one of the most grounded and realistic characters on the island, Mahiru holds boys to a higher standard than girls and isn't shy about letting them know when they fall short of those standards. It might have something to do with her home life; she greatly prefers her mother's company to her father's, especially since she learned the art of photography from her mom. She's understandably unnerved from learning her involvement in the Twilight Syndrome case, and tries to talk things out with Fuyuhiko the night after. It doesn't work; she takes a baseball bat to the head, not from Fuyukiho but from...The Culprit  Peko Pekoyama, the Ultimate Swordswoman. She alternates between acting intense and awkward, clearly more used to studying the blade than social graces. Hajime has to teach her how to smile, and her battle aura makes fluffy animals run away before she can pet them. That's only to be expected, since she was raised from birth to be Fuyuhiko's personal servant, bodyguard and assassin. She kills Mahiru on his behalf before he can bloody his hands, and hatches a plan to have Fuyuhiko win the killing game by convincing Monokuma that Fuyuhiko's the culprit after everybody already voted for her. In her logic, she's a dispassionate extension of his will, but since she clearly has her own feelings about him, Monokuma doesn't buy it. He sets a battalion of samurai robots on her, and though she fares well at first, she loses focus protecting Fuyuhiko from dying with her; he survives, minus one eye, one friend, and one bad attitude.Who saw through her ruse?  Sonia Nevermind, the Ultimate Princess. Hailing from a micronation in the Grunge Mountain region with more quaint traditions than you can shake a makango at, Sonia is a charming, charismatic young lady with a good command of outdated slang. Her hobbies include Japanese soap operas from at least one generation before hers, the occult, Freemasonry, and serial killers. When Peko's decoy motive involves posing as Sparkling Justice, who only kills other criminals, Sonia points out that Sparkling Justice operates in Spain and thus it makes no sense that Peko would be that person. Case #3 The Motive Monokuma spreads what he refers to as Despair Disease, dramatically altering the personalities of the infected. For instance, Nagito becomes a pathological liar, and Akane a coward. The students' attempts to quarantine the infected unfortunately make the next murder that much easier to commit. This quarantine brought to you in part by:  Kazuichi Soda, the Ultimate Mechanic. Despite what his appearance might indicate, Kazuichi is a highly emotional and skittish boy, though not beyond what you might expect from normal high-schoolers. He decided to start looking like a punk because a friend ratted him out in middle school, he got fed up with everything, and he wanted to see if getting rid of his appearance would get rid of his acquaintances as well. (It did.) On Jabberwock Island, he fixates on and fantasizes about Sonia, and fixes gadgets, most notably the two-way video system that showed Hajime an apparent suicide in progress.The Victim:  Ibuki Mioda, the Ultimate Musician. The queen of the non sequitur, Ibuki is highly energetic and always raring to go. A member of a band in her former high school, she left due to creative differences, a.k.a. her shift to highly abrasive death metal, which she inflicts on her fellow killing game participants. Sadly, she's struck with the Despair Disease, which makes her extremely gullible and a dead woman walking. Hajime watches what looks like her approaching a noose with a bag over her head on the video feed, and despite his best efforts to stop it, he finds her corpse hanging from it.The Other Victim:  Hiyoko Saionji, the Ultimate Traditional Dancer. Though she may appear to be an innocent child at first, Hiyoko quickly reveals herself to be a spiteful, sadistic bully who manipulates people to get what she wants and picks on her vulnerable classmates. Mahiru is the only person she actually likes, because Mahiru helped her dress her complicated kimono, and she was upset to see Mahiru die and get framed for her murder. Just as she was maybe, possibly, kind of sort of thinking of becoming a functional human being, she ran in on Ibuki getting killed and got her throat slit.The Culprit  Mikan Tsumiki, the Ultimate Nurse. Boy is this girl uncomfortable to watch. Thanks to some serious abuse in her past, she's timid, panicky, and paranoid, always assuming that people hate her and willing to drastically degrade herself to get them not to, very rarely letting slip a morbid, vengeful side. This isn't helped by her being Hiyoko's favorite target, either. Her killing Hiyoko isn't motivated by revenge, surprisingly, but by the Despair Disease restoring her memories and a radical personality shift she underwent at Hope's Peak. During the trial, she reveals herself as much more willing to do harm at the behest of a nebulous "beloved." Monokuma gives her a lethal injection, I think, visualized as her flying off on an arm rocket, I guess.Case #4 The Motive While the students explore a new island, Monokuma traps them in a pair of funhouses with no way out and no food or water, giving them another time limit to kill. He also forces the students to exercise daily, and leaves some of them in substandard sleeping conditions. The Victim  Nekomaru Nidai, the Ultimate Team Manager! He's boisterous, loud and constipated, and loves nothing more than bringing out everybody else's peak physical potential, with the help of his legendary massage technique! Early on in the killing game, he takes a shine to Akane, insisting on helping her even if they have to beat each other up a little to do it! When she violates one of Monokuma's rules, he takes a rocket to the chest for her, and after a trial's worth of tension on whether he survived, it turns out that Monokuma had to turn him into a robot! Mechamaru didn't have much time to make an impression, though, as one morning when the students prepared for their tai chi death march, they found him in a pile of mangled scrap, bludgeoned by a nearby pillar!He is survived by...  Akane Owari, the Ultimate Gymnast. She's one of the most feral Danganronpa characters, given how much she's motivated by food and has a mercurial, short-sighted temperament. Though she grew up in a destitute, abusive home, she doesn't seem bothered by it because she remains ignorant of just how abnormal her treatment as a child was, though she knows enough to cover up for any weakness she sees in herself. Though she initially blows off the self-improvement regimen Nekomaru forces on her, she respects him enough to call him Coach, and mourns him more than anyone. At least she enjoys the Minimaru doll Kazuichi gave her, built from Mechamaru's remains.The Culprit  Gundham Tanaka, the Ultimate (Animal) Breeder. As the ur-chuunibyou, Gundham filters his life through the lens of being an over-the-top shonen anime villain. About the only time he talks straightforwardly is when giving advice on raising and caring for animals, whom he trusts more than people because they can't lie to him. When he and the other students are trapped in the funhouse, and everyone else appears resigned to starvation, Gundham gets fed up with them and challenges Nekomaru to a duel. Upon winning thanks to interference from his hamsters, Gundham sets a lethal trap for Nekomaru. Gundham had figured out that the two funhouses were actually stacked atop each other, and determined the means and location to have Nekomaru fall to his death from there. Though he plays the villain to the end, his classmates choose to believe that he meant to sacrifice himself so that everybody else can live. Before Monokuma makes a herd of cattle trample him to death, he entrusts his hamsters to Sonia, who had grown fond of him to Kazuichi's chagrin.Case #5 The Motive Long before the events of this case played out, Monokuma had dropped hints about the organization that originally imprisoned the students on Jabberwock Island: Future Foundation. Instead of focusing on why they did it, he loves talking about the traitor among the students working on the Foundation's behalf. By now, one student in particular is hellbent on finding out who that is. The Victim  Nagito Komaeda, the Ultimate Lucky Student. Though he seems like a chill, helpful bro at first, Nagito reveals himself to be a delusional psychopath during the first trial. His talent has resulted in a miserable life for him, subjecting him alternately to absurd fortune and misfortune, though only misfortune seems to splash onto the people around him. His parents died during an airplane hijacking, he found a winning lottery ticket while abducted by a serial killer, and he was diagnosed with terminal dementia just before he got accepted to Hope's Peak Academy. Because of this, he's dead set on proving that hope can overcome any despair, to the extent that he's willing to steelman despair and cause so, so much trouble for the other students. His cloying, obsequious attitude toward them evaporates, however, when he uses his luck to find dirt on them during the previous investigation. Afterward, he arranges an elaborate faux-suicide involving a hanging spear, self-mutilation, and a poisoned fire grenade, counting on his luck to make the Future Foundation traitor deliver the final blow against him.The Culprit  Chiaki Nanami, the Ultimate Gamer. A spacey, sleepy girl who thinks about video games 24/7, Chiaki is surprisingly helpful during investigations and forms a strong bond with Hajime over the course of the game. Nagito's death and subsequent trial force her to hint that she's the traitor, since she's physically unable to reveal it herself. Though Nagito's intention was to save her life through an unsolvable mystery, Chiaki instead sacrifices herself for everybody else. Monokuma subjects her and Monomi to being trapped in real-life versions of classic video games, finally crushing them with a Tetris line block.Case #6 The Motive After Chiaki's death, reality begins to break apart, and various glitches manifest for Hajime, including the brief presence of those who died as if nothing had happened. Nagito leaves behind the password to access the final area of the island, ruins that resemble Hope's Peak Academy on the outside and a virtual version of environments from the first Danganronpa on the inside. During the final investigation, Hajime finds out that the entire Jabberwock Island environment was a virtual reality program; that Chiaki and Monomi were AI designed to facilitate a rehabilitation program; that the program is necessary because all the other students in it are Remnants of Despair, the willing, fanatical servants of Junko Enoshima; that there's a schism in Future Foundation about whether or not they should be rehabilitated; and that Chihiro's Alter Ego can barely make contact with Hajime thanks to a malicious AI that's taken over the whole program. Said AI is an Alter Ego of Junko herself, implanted into the Neo World Program thanks to... The Mastermind, kind of  Izuru Kamukura, the Ultimate Hope. Though Hajime was only able to enter Hope's Peak as part of the Reserve Course, the steering committee found in him the perfect guinea pig for their experiments on human talent. Through invasive brain surgery, they peaked his capacity for mastering various talents in exchange for obliterating his personality and ability to feel passion. Now named for the Academy's founder, Izuru excels at anything he tries on a reflexive level, but feels no joy from his accomplishments, and is listless, bored and dismissive of everything in life until Junko convinces him to get involved in the cause of despair. Despite this, he was never truly absorbed into her worldview, and decides to upload her Alter Ego into the Neo World Program behind the back of the people trying to reform him, to perform an experiment that he would never see the results of himself.Junko has hijacked the program's normal graduation routine, and presented the surviving students with a choice: either graduate, and allow the comatose bodies of those who lost the killing game to reanimate with Junko's personality implanted in them, or repeat the year and stay in the virtual world indefinitely. The intrusion of Makoto, Kyoko and the real Byakuya, the people behind reforming the Remnants of Despair in defiance of Future Foundation superiors' orders, offer a third choice: force quit the program and destroy Junko at the cost of reverting to their memories prior to entering the program. The prospect of drastically changing their personalities, especially in Hajime's case, causes the students to freeze up, and Hajime to hallucinate an eternal life with everyone on the island. However, Chiaki breaks through to him one last time and encourages him to face the future without fear or regrets, and he convinces everybody else to do likewise, a solution framed as neither hope nor despair. Usami reappears to delete Junko once and for all, and Hajime, Fuyuhiko, Sonia, Kazuichi, Akane, Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya initiate the force quit. In the real world, Makoto, Kyoko and Byakuya prepare to face the music on the mainland, leaving Hajime to care for his comatose friends on the off chance he can restore their minds. Despite everything, Hajime is still himself, perhaps because of Izuru's preparations before the killing game began. Solitair fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Aug 5, 2023 |
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Apr 30, 2019 19:51
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Case 2 continues the tradition of being a real dick punch 
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Apr 30, 2019 20:10
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Solitair posted:The Culprit I don't think Gundam's motives are QUITE as selfless as his classmates infer. Gundam basically says after the trial that once they were in a starvation scenario, it was life or death and that it was pathetic how quickly the others had given up. As The Ultimate Breeder, he's latched onto philosophy of survival at all costs. He DOES go about this as nobly as possible I guess. I suspect he challenged Nekomaru to a duel for several reasons: Nekomaru immediately understands the sacrifice angle, Nekomaru would likely immediately turn himself as the culprit if Gundam died, and Nekomaru is a worthy opponent. If Gundam's goal was to get everyone out, he could have just as easily had the duel and then turned himself in, but he let it drag out (And maybe that's just because he's so theatrical? I'm not sure I buy that). Then where it was clear he wouldn't get away with it, he DID confess so the others would live. His plan is for himself, Gundam Tanaka, to survive, but he also accepts that the other result is "If I fail, they'll live and that's fine too."
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Apr 30, 2019 21:51
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You forgot to mention Gundam being the best character in the series.
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Apr 30, 2019 22:06
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Deadmeat5150 posted:You forgot to mention Gundam being the best character in the series. That's a funny way of spelling Ibuki
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Apr 30, 2019 22:14
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MillennialVulcan posted:I don't think Gundam's motives are QUITE as selfless as his classmates infer. Gundam basically says after the trial that once they were in a starvation scenario, it was life or death and that it was pathetic how quickly the others had given up. As The Ultimate Breeder, he's latched onto philosophy of survival at all costs. He DOES go about this as nobly as possible I guess. I suspect he challenged Nekomaru to a duel for several reasons: Nekomaru immediately understands the sacrifice angle, Nekomaru would likely immediately turn himself as the culprit if Gundam died, and Nekomaru is a worthy opponent. If Gundam's goal was to get everyone out, he could have just as easily had the duel and then turned himself in, but he let it drag out (And maybe that's just because he's so theatrical? I'm not sure I buy that). Then where it was clear he wouldn't get away with it, he DID confess so the others would live. His plan is for himself, Gundam Tanaka, to survive, but he also accepts that the other result is "If I fail, they'll live and that's fine too." Fair enough. I'll make note of it.
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Apr 30, 2019 22:48
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Yuto walks by in the background of one episode of DR3, yeah.
Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Apr 30, 2019 |
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Apr 30, 2019 23:16
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Solitair posted:Fair enough. I'll make note of it. Oh, I wasn't trying to debunk or correct your post or anything, just sharing my thoughts on that trial.
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Apr 30, 2019 23:23
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Given these recaps, I would like to draw the attention of people to whom all this was new to The Pattern, which players of DR2 began to notice. Ch1: The Statement of Intent, in which the game attempts to ward off any appearance of anyone having plot armour. Both chapters hinge on the realization that a character was very much not who we thought they were. Ch2: The Gutpunch, in which a relatively straightforward murder is complicated significantly by tragic circumstances and muddled further by obfuscation. Also, both Ch2s were arguably accidents. Both chapters also involve the presence of a serial killer and hinge on the technicalities of Monokuma's body discovery announcement. Ch3: The Double, in which, well, two people die, notably in the course of a needlessly convoluted scheme whose sheer scope is the undoing of the culprit. Both chapters hinge on misunderstandings about the order of the killings. Ch4: The Pressure Cooker, in which the characters begin to fray, and allegiances are called sharply into question, until someone makes a sacrifice for the sake of the group's survival. Both chapters hinge on the physical layout of a space. Ch5: The Curveball, in which an attempted decisive action leads to the shocking discovery of a body right at the climactic moment. The ensuing investigation only seems to multiply the mystery count. Both cases hinge on a dramatic leap of faith on the part of the protagonist, and lead to twists in their final moments. Ch6: The Reveal, in which no new murder occurs, but the protagonist is tasked with unravelling the central mystery of the setting, and proving it in a final trial showdown. Both cases hinge on the mid-trial reappearance of Junko Enoshima. I bring this up not to really attempt to guide speculation, but so that any readers who are coming in completely blind might have some idea of the levels of 4D Mind Chess players were attempting to engage in while making predictions back in 2017.
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May 1, 2019 00:03
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Deadmeat5150 posted:You forgot to mention Gundam being the best character in the series. Rarity posted:That's a funny way of spelling Ibuki It's a funnier way of spelling Gundham
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May 1, 2019 00:43
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Captain Walker posted:It's a funnier way of spelling Gundham lol owned
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May 1, 2019 02:42
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To be fair, the name was usually Romanized as Gundam before NISA announced the Vita port; the H was added in the English localization. I assume the change was primarily made to distinguish Gundham Tanaka, Ultimate Breeder, from Mobile Suit Gundam, wildly popular franchise about giant mechs. The D-H combination also add a touch of Indian flavor to his hilarious villainy, which they lean into with names like “Four Dark Devas” that could have come right out of Asura’s Wrath.
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May 1, 2019 03:07
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Captain Walker posted:It's a funnier way of spelling Gundham 
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May 1, 2019 04:33
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Fedule posted:Ch1: The Statement of Intent, in which the game attempts to ward off any appearance of anyone having plot armour. Both chapters hinge on the realization that a character was very much not who we thought they were. I would go a step further and say that they both involve attempted-but-not-successful murder by the person set up to be your Investigation Buddy.
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May 1, 2019 05:14
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Fedule posted:Given these recaps, I would like to draw the attention of people to whom all this was new to The Pattern, which players of DR2 began to notice. I want people to revisit this post at least once during the course of this LP.
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May 1, 2019 09:33
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hit reply instead of edit again, dammit
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May 1, 2019 18:53
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Fedule posted:Given these recaps, I would like to draw the attention of people to whom all this was new to The Pattern, which players of DR2 began to notice. Not just the players, mind you, when the characters in DR2 find out about the events of DR1 in chapter 4 they immediately spot the pattern too, ruling out the possibility it was unintentional on the writers' part.
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May 2, 2019 07:44
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| # ? Jun 3, 2024 00:09 |
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I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the Dead Pool and see how the V3 characters' chances are currently looking. (The numbers below are 'votes for survival:votes for death', followed by their predicted probability of survival to the nearest 5%.) Predicted to survive: Monobear (13:1, 95% chance of survival) Kaede (10:4, 70%) Shuichi (9:5, 65%) Maki, Rantaro, Kokichi (8:6, 55%) Even odds: Himiko, Monodam (7:7, 50%) Predicted to die: Tsumugi (6:8, 45%) Miu, Monosuke (5:9, 35%) Tenko, Angie, Ryoma, Monotaro, Monophanie, Monokid (4:10, 30%) Kirumi, Kaito, Kiyo, Keebo (3:11, 20%) Gonta (2:12, 15%) Predicted to survive: the protagonist, the 'assistant', the slightly mysterious characters, and Kokichi and Monobear, who I suppose we could categorise as 'the troublemakers'. Predicted to die: the characters who haven't really shown us much potential for depth yet, the characters with strange designs, and the Monokubs, apart from Monodam; maybe having a strange design and being a Monokub cancel each other out? Also, if your name begins with a K, you're probably in the '20% chance of survival' bracket.
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May 2, 2019 10:41
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