Anime Club: Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak Academy (Future)
Hello everybody! For the next couple weeks we will be analyzing multiple parts of perhaps my favorite modern anime series Danganronpa. As the third season was split into essentially three arcs (2 seasons and a finale) each one will get their own special review. Why don’t we look into the Future?
DANGANRONPA 3: THE END OF HOPE’S PEAK ACADEMY: FUTURE ARC
CREATED BY: Seiji Kishi, Daisei Fukuoka
NO. OF EPISODES: 12 Episodes
GENRE: Action, Horror, Mystery, Psychological
YEAR: 2016
COUNTRY: Japan
The series serves as a conclusion to the storyline of Hope’s Peak Academy, the elite school where the Ultimate Despair, Junko Enoshima, played hostess to a “killing school life” among its students under the guise of the evil bear Monokuma. The story is split up into two chapters: Future Arc and Despair Arc.
Future Arc takes place after the events of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. Makoto Naegi, the Ultimate Hope who defeated the Ultimate Despair, Junko Enoshima, is under suspicion of treason against the Future Foundation for harboring the Remnants of Despair who carried on her will. As top members of the Future Foundation, including Makoto’s former classmates Kyoko Kirigiri, Aoi Asahina, and Yasuhiro Hagakure, are brought together to decide on Makoto’s punishment, they are all imprisoned by Monokuma, the bear avatar of Junko who was thought to have been dead. Monokuma forces everyone to participate in a final killing game, in which they must try and determine a traitor amongst their ranks who will kill them in their sleep, while also trying to avoid being poisoned to death by personalised forbidden actions. Thrust into a game where no one can trust each other, Makoto’s ideals of hope are pushed to their very limits.
“If you weren’t expecting a climactic trilogy conclusion from this new series, that means you’re probably only familiar with the first anime from 2013. As a video game series (which I highly recommend now that it’s available on Steam for non-Vita havers!), Danganronpa‘s story has only ramped up in the years following, withDanganronpa 2 and a Danganronpa 1.5 midquel called “Ultra Despair Girls.” Unlike the first game in the series, they were never adapted to animation, but this Danganronpa 3 anime is basically pretending that they were, which is really weird and unconventional and I don’t blame anybody for feeling confused. Sadly, you’ll have to play Danganronpa 2 and maybe also Ultra Despair Girls to understand anything that’s happening in this show. I hope the decision to end his story in anime form instead of game form doesn’t marginalize Danganronpa‘s audience too much, because it looks like creator Kazutaka Kodaka is ramping up to an insane finale, using the events of this “Future Arc” to mirror the simultaneously airing prequel “Despair Arc” and make a final statement on the fate of Junko’s followers alongside our Hope’s Peak graduates.
Of course, if you are enough of a Danganronpa superfan to have all your continuity straight, you are watching this for the plot and doing your best to ignore the barrel-bottom visual execution. Danganronpa has always had fantastically unique music and voice acting, but the show’s direction and animation are as workmanlike and uninspired as it gets, becoming somehow inferior in presentation to the more artfully presented visual novel. It’s a weird emotion to feel as a fan, being both elated to see the “Despair Versions” of Danganronpa 2’s cast for the first time, but disappointed that they’re so flat and stiff-looking as anime models compared to the game’s more captivating illustrations.”
PROS:
- Fantastic storytelling.
- Old and fresh faces.
- Amazing character study.
- Clash of ideologies.
- Plenty of violence.
CONS:
- Lack-luster color design and animation.
SCORE: 9.5 / 10
If you have any suggestions for films/TV/Games/Music/Anime for me to review, drop me a comment!
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