Why Danganronpa V3 Is A Beautiful Mess

this is [Music] well we have waited long enough when I started the Danganronpa retrospective back in December of 2021 I didn't even know if the first video was going to perform well enough to justify continuing it I left all my hopes and despairs in the laps of my viewers and many of them replied resoundingly justifying the path that we've taken all the way up until now but even since the release of that first video I have been constantly and consistently asked the same question even when I often had an answer for it and that was whether or not I'd be making a video about Danganronpa V3 of course I will I said if this series of videos does well enough to continue it then it's a serious retrospective after all I wasn't going to skimp I was going to cover things like Ultra despair girls in the dr3 anime but when the time came V3 was going to get the in-depth analysis it deserved one way or another and now through trial through tribulation we've finally arrived at the final lap we've talked about what made the original game so special we've talked about what made its sequel arguably even better we've talked about what made its midquil interesting despite its Myriad of issues and we've even talked about the animated conclusion to the original plotline as difficult as it was at times for me there probably shouldn't be any more delays then right I know a lot of people have asked me if I plan to talk about more entries than just these a full retrospective of Danganronpa zero a look at Ultra despair hagakure kirigiri so Danganronpa s the killer killer manga the Danganronpa and other fan games and so many others and look I won't rule it out for the future I'm sure if these videos have been anything to go by I am very opinionated about this franchise but I've also been talking about it for close to 11 straight months or 11 game months if you prefer suffice it to say I need a break from the funny murder Bear game franchise I will conclude my contractual obligation I will put this Beast to rest by taming its final form but after that we are parting ways only to see each other again in the future when I've had enough time away from it not to hate seeing it you know what they say about the best of religious relationships sometimes you just need a little bit of space and absence makes the heart grow fonder or something like that but for now we need to go for it one more time let's talk about the biggest and perhaps final entry in the Danganronpa franchise an explosive creative and eternally controversial conclusion to not just a storyline but a series in general let's slap on those chains and finally break them for good let's say goodbye to Despair and hope a like let's talk about new Danganronpa V3 [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign killing Harmony or as it's known in its original release new Danganronpa V3 everyone's new semester of killing like I've said before even though a lot of people don't know this it was always intended to be separate from the previous games in terms of continuity and again that's not a spoiler as stated by series Creator kazutaka kodaka himself around the time V3 was coming out in Japan as you might be aware last year in Japan the anime came out and what the anime Danganronpa 3 is it's a completion of the story that started and continued through Danganronpa 1 and 2. and then in contrast to that you have the entirely new Danganronpa V3 and even from the really tiniest stages I had intended it to be as such yeah I can't get into the full significance of the original title right now we've got a few hours before we can get to that point but let me just say I'm really over the way NIS localizes these game's titles by just shaving off a few words and thinking it makes no difference please they're there for a reason and this is one of them the story of the original games had been brought to a close for better or worse with the Danganronpa 3 anime and new Danganronpa V3 was indeed entirely new unrelated to those previous installments though of course carrying an element of mystery entirely on its own because of that disconnect I feel like this renaming ironically causes a lot of confusion within the English-speaking fandom who may not be totally familiar with ultra despair girls or the dr3 anime who basically just played the first game than sdr2 and then skip right to this to many this would make it seem like V3 is a direct follow-up to the second installment but just so the record is clear this is not and was never intended to be the case I'm just throwing this out there for clarity's sake though I don't blame anyone for getting confused because uh an Isa sure didn't make it easy for them not to once again produced by yoshinori tarasawa and written by kazutaka kodaka V3 was developed alongside the production of the dr3 anime which I'm sure you can imagine was a bit difficult while keeping up with the veritable web of continuity would be a daunting task for those looking to iterate on those games V3 as something of a soft reboot was not Shackled to such chains retaining many of the same Concepts but similarly iterating upon them in their Styles the way sdr2 did for the first game and even took place in an entirely different School in fact the school setting was chosen specifically to mirror the first installment strengthening its roots as a fresh start for the franchise with a constrained time limit for production despite V3 being much larger than previous installments and kodaka's own admission that v3's first chapter took the longest to write compared to Prior first chapters he didn't write the Game entirely by himself kodaka was still the primary creative mind behind the plot and characters but received help from the author of The Danganronpa kirigiri light novels kitayama takakuni mirroring its rather polarizing reputation among fans even the game's team was divided about what direction the game should take a constant back and forth revolving around the idea of whether the game should be a direct sequel or something entirely new they wanted it to retain the series identity while also still managing to appear new in engaging even the main series mascot Monokuma was apparently planned not to appear in the game at all but was eventually added to the story alongside the mono Cubs for fear that without them the game would cease to feel enough like a Danganronpa game to even retain its title to shake up the typical tried and true themes of Hope and despair which had been gratuitously squeezed for all it was worth up until that point in the franchise kodaka decided a greater thematic emphasis should be placed on the concept of Truth and lies for this installment and we're definitely going to get into that topic as we go along both in narrative and in gameplay the game's existence was originally teased in September of 2013 alongside the announcement of ultra despair girls and was said to be in early development in March of 2015 a playable demo of The Game featuring characters from the original two Mainline installments was released on December 20th of 2016 and the full game finally released on January 12 2017. the game was then finally localized for English audiences and released on September 26 2017 by NIS America if you want it it's playable on PS Vita PS4 PS5 steam iOS Android and Nintendo switch via the Danganronpa decadence collection given that the other games are recently being ported to Xbox consoles one can only assume that it's soon to follow it actually came out before I finished this it received very favorable reviews amongst the Japanese game media it was awarded a pre-release rating of 37 out of 40 by famitsu and voted seventh best game of all time by the Magazine's readers it even won the Magazine's Excellence prize in their 2017 Awards the reception of the localization however was a tad less glowing retaining a Metacritic score of 81 which is generally favorable and certainly less mixed than that of ultra despair girls but let's be real more people probably played V3 than Ultra despair girls at the very least praise tended to universally land on masafumi takara's soundtrack for the game which I would dare to personally call the best soundtrack in the entire Series in my opinion many reviewers highlighted character design plot twists and particularly the game's climax as points of Praise some reviewers even revered V3 as their purse personal highlight of the entire series many others still criticized the game's formulaic nature though highlighting gameplay padding unsatisfactory middle chapters or comic relief that came at the expense of the plot itself many critics were also split on the longer run time of the story and in particular the class trials which were critiqued by several as seeming redundant at times and overstating plot points or dialogue too often interestingly enough it seems the reception of the game's final twist was much more often positively received by Japanese fans while it was received much more negatively by fans in the west we'll definitely be getting to that too just much later in the video the game sold a combined total of 116 172 units across both PS4 and Vita in its first week of release making it the second most popular game in the country that week as of July 29 2017 it had sold a total of 209 734 units making it the most successful launch year of a new Danganronpa title in its country of origin the game also reached over 50 000 units on Steam within its first six months of release in the U.S it definitely seemed pretty darn successful despite the hiccups but there are many many reasons why this game gets such a divided response when it comes to series fans safe to say I think this game is a lot more complex a beast than any previous title in the series when it comes to tackling its controversies and though I may not be in love with the game I certainly don't despise it either but what makes the game The Way It Is What Causes That division what was it trying to say and did it do so successfully well you know what I'm about to say there's only one way to find out we gotta start talking about the game itself now and this all begins with the prologue [Music] our prologue begins with best girl kaide akamatsu voiced by the late but extremely talented psychicanda of trust trick Fame stumbling fresh-faced out of a locker with no idea where she is what's going on and why the classroom she's standing in looks vaguely like that one Tron World from Kingdom Hearts very quickly she discovers an emo-hatted boy shuichi Sahara in the neighboring locker and the two discuss how they were kidnapped and brought to this mysterious place by the culprit from Detective Conan perhaps that joke comparison was more apt than I thought by the way because Sahara is repping both protagonists of dr1 and sdr2 in his voice actor selection that being the legendary megumi hayashibara you see while magumi yogata who played Nagi and komayra is arguably most well known for playing Shinji ikari in Evangelion and Minami takiyama who played Hinata is most well known for playing conanerogawa from Detective Conan hayashibara is well known as both Rey ayanami and Evangelion and I hibura and Detective Conan kind of a clever Choice before they can make much progress in their tentative plans for escape however they are bared down on by the intimidating frame of a giant machine being piloted by some mysteriously cartoony voice running to the gym they come across the full cast of this game looking oddly normally dressed apparently everyone here is just as confused as our protagonist and we're herded here by the robots one of them seems to take special note of the number being 16 students but before we can question that little bit of foreshadowing everyone is once again beset by the giant robots which we learn are called exosols from within the exocils emerge five multi-color Monokuma Cubs appropriately named the mono Cubs with the names of monotaro monosuke monofani monodam and mono kid interestingly enough while all of the monocubs have different voices in the English dub they are all voiced in Japanese by koichiya Madera best known for roles like Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop and ryoshikaji from Neon Genesis Evangelion and apparently he was chosen specifically because he's thought of as an expert at playing multiple characters at the same time another interesting tidbit about the Cubs is that in the localization they frequently refer to the students using the term you bastards which seems to be a nod of the head to the earliest days of Western Dr fandom seeing as in Oren Ronin something awful let's play of the first game monokuma's usage of omaira to refer to the students was always translated as such despite the fact that this translation Choice has never appeared in any prior officially localized Dr content gotta respect your elders sometimes this would probably be a good point to go ahead and mention by the way that v3's localization is easily the most Rife with issues when it comes to Faithfully carrying over intent from its original Japanese counterpart I've had my misgivings with some individual localization choices in past installments that it really becomes overwhelming sometimes here and some of these are going to be pretty unavoidable in discussion thus when you hear this noise that means we're going to have to talk about that for a little bit wherever it appears a lot of these things were usefully compiled and expounded upon by Tumblr user Oma kokichi whose original post I'll be linking in the description so I'd highly recommend giving that a read through not only because I won't be mentioning everything it covers in this video but it's just a very well put together Post in general so just put a mental pin in all that for the future anywho the monocubs quickly realize something's afoot when they ask about everyone's super high school level Talent only to realize everyone has forgotten them entirely giving everyone an air horn accompanied magical girl transformation into their properly over-the-top outfits they are beamed with a big old knowledge beam that seems to jog their memory and everything mysteriously restarts from the top all over again akamatsu exits the locker just as she did before but with no memory of the exact cycle of this she just performed with Sahara much the same this definitely raises some immediate flags that something about this game is way different than what's come before it the mono Cubs briefly appear to expose it that this place is called the ultimate Academy for gifted juveniles everyone hears a super high school level student of some kind and everyone should go around doing a meet and greet before they have a little activity later and thus We Begin the tried and true Danganronpa tradition of meeting and introducing ourselves to all of the characters starting with who seems to be our assistant shuichi saihara is the super high school level detective though his demeanor is a far cry from the icy stoicism of kerigiri asahura is more of the earnest type introverted and shy but still analytical and attuned to detail akamatsu herself meanwhile is fully clarified to be the super high school level pianist our first main character with a talent that isn't just lottery winner or not actually talented interestingly enough she seems to be way geekier about these Niche piano facts than her previous depiction pre-memory light seems to have been and this is yet another thing to consider about just how weird this whole introduction sequence seems you can't quite tell what it is of course but you know something's gotta be off about this aside from that baby CG of course oh that's horrifying after I shake off the brain Haze by ruthlessly beating all of the classroom equipment to death with a barrage of psychic slaps I exit into the hallway to begin Gathering all of my other gotcha characters first up is sumagi shiragane the super high school level cosplayer she seems to have her head in the clouds a bit failing to respond unless provoked to put it lightly but when it comes to the subject of Cosplay or even just Niche anime references she becomes a lot more excitable she kind of has a similar gimmick to Yamada going on but marginally less lurid marginally next up is number one Spencer's customer rontaro amami who is this game's designated triple question mark slot he seems pretty laid back and carefree but he also kind of carries that Vibe of like oh he's a little up so I think it's probably safe to say he's worth keeping an eye or three on tenko chibashira is the super high school level Aikido Master a Brash but seemingly somewhat naive martial artist who has a fierce distaste for who she labels degenerate men due to the teachings of her master aside from having extremely detailed disgust Sprites and a very overt interesting cute girls and chivasha Rick kind of strikes me at times as the type of quote unquote feminist character you would see a reactionary try to write to convey what they think feminists are like so while she has her moments her gimmick grates on me a bit her Crush of choice of course is one himiko yumeno the super high school level magician in addition to the giant witch hat and Perpetual curly lip she has she also carries a strong belief in her own magic and its legitimacy despite often describing average parlor tricks when trying to explain it she's also incredibly lethargic and seems often to want to take the path of least resistance executive dysfunction girl I get it next up is Miu irama the super high school level inventor a foul-mouthed blonde with what seems initially to be a raging superiority complex but which frequently mingles with that of inferiority anytime someone so much as Puffs their chest at her she seems to be pretty unfamiliar with actual social cues she is constantly leaning 150 percent of the way into the most overt innuendo and she cannot take what she dishes out well at least the Pervert character is finally a girl for once I guess gotta balance the scale somehow down in the library we find well let me just go ahead and call it now the best written character in the game Maki harukawa the super high school level child caregiver she's nearly just a stoic and secretive as kirigiri but seems more overtly unsociable and even outwardly abrasive against the idea of working with others or even really interacting with them we don't learn too much about her right now because she doesn't want us to but we will next up is Rio mahoshi the super high school level tennis player despite his cartoony design and short stature he has a smooth deep voice that is genuinely really nice to listen to and he's pretty level-headed despite his sometimes dramatic statements apparently he was in prison for a while after using his tennis talents to literally kill a man and he thinks pretty poorly of himself because of it warning people against getting too close to him less out of a sense of threatening them and more just a distaste for himself in general I really like this guy genuinely he might be one of my favorite cast members in this game in one of the classrooms we discover two students horsing around the first is kibo the super high school level robot oh boy we're really going there huh for the most part he seems a pretty well-meaning if somewhat literal fellow who's friendly enough despite his strange origins of apparently being built for the good of mankind by a professor like some kind of Mega Man I do find his whole gag about calling people robophobes a little grading however speaking of grading hey it's kokichioma it was a joke leave me alone the super high school level supreme leader who claims to head a mysteriously evil organization he's a well I think Gremlin is the only truly appropriate word to use here his disposition can flip on a dime depending on what exactly it seems will piss people off the most and he has a habit of constantly lying for what seems at the moment at least to be for the sole purpose of creating the most trouble he can in any given situation one can only imagine he's going to make it everyone's problem sooner or later kurikio shinguji is the super high school level Anthropologist a seemingly sensitive soul with a deep interest in all things related to humankind and their various habits folklore's and everything else about their life experiences he's constantly covering his face with his discount Ken kaneki cosplay mask and generally seems to poison the vibe here and there with his eccentricities we'll have a lot to talk about with him later unfortunately exiting the school to meet the rest of our quirky cast we also discovered that the entire school grounds are encased in what appears to be a giant bird cage it's a pretty striking and interesting visual which also provides a bit of variety in allowing us to technically roam outside the school building itself but it also provides some immediate Intrigue in that it provokes a lot of questions namely a why does nobody outside this place seem to care about the giant cage thanks to ponder next up we meet kaito momota the super high school level astronaut in all matters relating to demeanor he is your average Shonen protagonist he's Brash hot-headed stubborn and a little stupid but seemingly well-meaning and talks constantly about never giving up and always succeeding through perseverance there are some things I'd like to say about him related to his localization efforts but I feel like just as with a few others this topic will be better suited for a future moment in the video speaking of characters we'll have a bit to say about when regarding their localization gone to gokuhara he's the super high school level entomologist someone who appears on the surface to be imposingly strong but is as gentle and polite as they come he has a fascination with bugs and claims to have been Rey's Jungle Book Style by a pack of wolves but he's most determined to be seen as a gentleman Angie yoniga is the super high school level Art Club member a Carefree Cloud Cuckoo Lander who can only be concisely described as Quirky ever the dedicated acolyte to her Ambiguously defined religious order she often seems sort of out of touch with the severity of what happens around her and fears no death even seeming to encourage sacrifice within the context of her religious practices oh boys at that time already yeah might as well go ahead and nip this one in the bud now since it seems like a more appropriate time for this one isn't going to be singled out as specifically as some others let's talk a little bit about yonica's religion if you're playing the English localization you'll probably be pretty familiar with yonaga's God as a being she refers to as otua well would you believe that in the original Japanese release this isn't anywhere to be found indeed in the original version of the game she simply calls her God God or Kami with no real specification other than that in fact she relies on this vague imagery to frequently contradict herself when describing aspects of said God basically doing whatever she can to appeal most to whoever she's trying to rope into it her religion is originally written has no real direct similarity to a real world one as much as it is a big fictionalized mashup of cult Tendencies now let's be clear here this already isn't very tasteful yonica's got a heaping helping of exotic Savage stereotypes revolving around her and I think you can probably guess why that's in here apparently questionable that said at least kodaka didn't have the nerve to correlate all of this with the specific real world religion or location in the game's script the localizers did though because guess what otua the name the localizers used for yonaga's previously unnamed God yeah that's a real one that has a very specifically real significance to indigenous residents of Polynesia correlating that with yonaga's cult-like behavior blood rituals human sacrifice and Etc is both totally unnecessary and frankly super disrespectful it is callous misinformation at the very least yonica as originally written wasn't exactly the best look for the game anyway but this is one of several examples where I think Nisa took things even further south well at least I don't have any upsetting writing decisions to point out about who's up next kirami Tojo known as the super high school level made Tojo is defined by the word professional she constantly upkeeps a refined image speaks incredibly formally and is always willing to cooperate she has a strong sense of Duty to to work for others and devotes herself to that purpose though she dislikes being considered motherly thinking it ridiculous because of her age the well gets a bit deeper on her but I don't actually have that much to say about her right now she is a perfectly serviceable addition to the cast and in her own style I suppose that's appropriate and with that we've introduced everybody which means we can finally get to the inciting gym meeting which is bound to kick off our proceedings once and for all everyone gathers on command from the Cubs and are once again confronted by the existles again everyone reacts to them as though they've never seen them before sure that they're up to something amami goads them into explaining their objective but they end in a feud over who gets to explain themselves of course only one bear to end all bears can put a wrench in this Feud and it's who we're all expecting descending with angelic wings before the very students he intends to make realize he's a Devil in Disguise it's our favorite Kingpin of bastards himself Monokuma after a few Dragon Ball references to kick things into a more familiar gear he tells us exactly what we're expecting here everyone is trapped here you can only Escape by killing someone when you kill someone you have to get away with it by getting through a class trial and fooling everyone the tax couldn't get more brass if you tried but that's what we're here for Monokuma and his children begin cackling at their new sets of eclectically dressed and hyper-talented victims as they tremble in fear of what's to come and we Zoom slowly into akamatsu's eyes ending the prologue this one is a bit of an interesting case it feels like in comparison to previous prologues in the series not a lot happens here it essentially feels Abridged in many ways like we're sliding through the ever familiar setup to just get to the meat already but perhaps something about that haste is telling in itself we still don't quite know what was up with the first go round we saw before things seemed to actually get going why was everyone dressed like normies why couldn't they remember their talents and why because of this did the colorful mascot crew have to Kaleidoscope beam them back into their starting places like actors who had forgotten their lines before going on stage why when they returned to those places did they seemingly completely forget forget the rehearsal they just performed everything about this without even knowing the deal yet seems meta to an extent we haven't quite seen Danganronpa dabble in yet and it's this genre awareness of itself that makes what's to come all the more tantalizing to untangle I'd say this is on the weaker side of prologues for me in terms of pure substance but in terms of what it promises us it's a strong enough hook and if we're this many games deep into kodaka's neon pink trap that's probably all that matters it'll get us into chapter one [Music] after a brief rundown of the rules we're all familiar with chapter 1 kicks into gear as everyone gathers around a manhole in the back that they found while searching around earlier thinking this might be a viable route for escape they get gokuhara to show off the Goku in his name and descend into the sewer of course once they get down there there's a tunnel with a dubiously labeled exit sign meaning The Mastermind is pretty well aware that somebody's gonna try this and that doesn't bode well for everyone's chances still akamatsu insists that they try giving everyone a rousing speech which inspires them to do what they can this leads us into a 2d platformer-esque minigame Called Death Road of Despair which I can only liken to something like cat Mario in the sense that everything appears pretty simple at first only for you to realize within several horrifying seconds that everything can and will kill you until you inevitably get your ship rocked in under a minute yeah this thing is not designed to win it is technically possible to win however if you do you only get a cutscene where everyone is allowed to escape by Monaco only for them to exclaim and despair about the state of the outside world which is left ambiguous but suffice it to say not what they were hoping for of course when you lose not if Monokuma appears to basically cackle about how he totally knew you'd try it and he basically just put this here to make everyone miserable about the fact that an escape method is literally right next to them but they're going to exhaust themselves so much trying it and failing over and over that they will inevitably give up on it and decide to start killing each other there's something deliciously dark and twisted about this in a way that I always love from monokuma's character because not only is it horrible but it's done in such a way that it's supposed to kick the characters while they're down and expose them for what he thinks they truly are inside it's that ever present philosophy carried through sure you guys have an Escape right here if you worked hard enough for it you could probably even use it to get out of here and nobody would have to die but you won't do it because when it comes down to it you value your own life more and if it comes down to suffering through this for everyone's sake or just killing somebody for your own you'll choose murder because as impossible as you try to make it sound it clearly isn't this despair carries through even more intensely when they make you try the mini game again and while you may get a bit farther you are quickly made aware of how inevitable your loss will be once again though the game itself doesn't force you to carry on akamatsu's narration even clarifies that the group tries out it over and over again but the result is always the same and as she's about to try psyching everyone else up again Oma basically chews her out saying that trying to act the role of the positive leader in subjecting everyone to it is forcing them into a state of compliance where they're seen as the bad guy for not wanting to put up with this torture anymore while some like momita stay on akamatsu's side some Express their own frustration or lack of will to continue and akamatsu is burdened with feeling like she's done something horrible as everyone disappears back into their rooms having to finally accept that they're definitely stuck here the next morning everyone meets up in the cafeteria at which point Oma flips the scripts and acts like everyone else was getting on Matsu's case proving that he's still very much going to be on this crap for a while Monokuma set an appearance however kicks the plot right along before we have a chance to think things are slowing down he's got a motive for us as is his usual shtick he's here to announce the first Blood perk where the first murder that occurs will not have a class trial of any sort so long as a murder happens and the culprit fesses up to it they alone will be let out of the academy safe and sound and unlike The Irregular class trial etiquette this will not mean the execution of everyone else afterward it's a totally free kill in exchange for freedom of course nobody takes very kindly to this and momota tries to confront Monokuma directly but the mono Cubs step in to defend him only to accidentally crush him with an existle of course this gets some people thinking that Monokuma is just out of the game and that everything is over since he doesn't immediately pop back up but yeah could you do me a favor real quick uh yeah look at the time code on the video currently yeah so moving right along the next morning akamatsu goes to the library where she's been called by saira at which point he reveals something strange he's discovered to her behind a shifting Scooby-Doo bookshelf as a hidden door that has monokuma's coloring on it seeming very similar to the mastermind's control room from dr1 which Sahara speculates is very much something like that it even has a card reader for Access meaning not just anyone can get inside this leads saira to a certain speculation that being that one of the students might be in League with Monokuma because otherwise there's no need to hide this door for Access seeing as if it were only for monokuma's use he could just leave it out in the open and have an exit or two posted as guards or something so hatching a plan to confirm his suspicions he puts a bit of dust in the specific part of the reader itself so that if he checks it again later in the dust has fallen out of place or moved he'll be able to tell if someone has accessed it since then the next day everyone is disappointed by monokuma's inevitable reappearance where he seems to be referencing Yokai Watch or something I don't know I don't know anything about what the youth is into these days anywho he's here to put an addendum on the motive saying that if a murder doesn't occur by the time nighttime rolls around two days from now he'll just go ahead clean house and kill everyone full scorched Earth he's pretty focused on making sure that we the audience do not have to wait long to get our Danganronpa fix and much like a Visionary director who treats his actors like crap he's willing to get in there and apply some intense pressure to make things go his way it's a wonder he didn't do something like this before frankly this means everyone's really getting in their heads now and while some like Oma seem to be deliberately disturbing the piece others are trying desperately to cling onto it discussing possible plans to confront Monokuma and the existles at the last possible second preferring to die fighting if nothing else this leads akamatsu and Sahara to become more proactive checking their card reader scheme and seeing that the dust did indeed disappear overnight this combined with the Cubs previously stating that there's a machine somewhere in the school making monokumas makes saihara suspect that The Mastermind needed to come here to get Monokuma active again and he furthermore points out that monokuma's very specific phrasing in his motive was that everyone forced to participate would be killed meaning that perhaps there is a student 2 wasn't forced but is in fact here voluntarily meaning that under that specific wording they alone would survive with both determined to expose The Mastermind before the time limit is reached we are given our first opportunity for free time if you need a refresher from the last couple of games that weren't shooting spin-offs free time events are sections of each chapter where the plot pauses for a bit so you can hang out with the character of your choosing if you gift them something that they might like which you can acquire from the in-game mono mono machine you might get a scene with them which tends to reveal extra information about their personality backstory or other such things which may not be elaborated upon in the main game they work exactly the same way here as they did in previous installments and I've already talked a bit in both dr-1 and sdr2 about what I think makes them cool and potentially frustrating and how they're integrated into the game itself so I won't really reiterate those things for a third time here I decided to spend my available slots here with two characters the first I hung out with was Irma despite my better judgment because I was wondering if she she could really stay so Inseparable in a more personal setting this proved to be true as she spends her entire first event insulting akamatsu's boobs but then gets smacked when akamatsu proudly declares that she has great boobs and Irma tries to cop a feel further attempts to prod her proves at least something worth digging into it seems that she actually does want to interact with people and make friends but she's just barely gotten involved in social activities of the like because due to her genius she's never really been forced to interact with people properly akamatsu insists that because her inventions are needed by people Irma should try to talk to people more and she offers some backhanded praise for the pianist's trouble though she's still hopelessly bad at conversation she at least seems grateful that anyone attempted it with her which reveals some depths worth exploring I think with one day passed in mono kid drunk on honey we head into our next plot point before we can continue free time saihara has an idea for how they can catch the Mastermind in its rigging timed cameras with motion sensors in the library to get pictures of course mixing the motion sensor and Camera Tech together is going going to take a good brain for this sort of thing inside her is quick to admit he's no whiz in the field who could possibly do something like that I wonder well how about a great inventor who seems super into themselves and their abilities yeah there's a reason I hung with urima first obviously doing so doesn't affect the actual story here but it landed this moment a bit more weight as though she initially refuses to help akamatsu getting down on her knees to begurama as well as Sahara joining in causes her enough shy to rest at being asked so sincerely to finally concede and agree to help it's definitely a moment that in isolation is unexpectedly nice for Irma but with the added context of akamatsu trying in vain to be nice to her even when she's horrible at returning the favor and irama herself seemingly wanting companionship despite sucking and showing it I think this moment slightly blossoms a bit more it's not a huge thing but it enhanced The Narrative appropriately when I made the effort to engage with the game and I think that's cool if nothing else so the duo go to the storehouse to get their supplies with akamatsu marveling at all the crap stored in here from disposable cameras and sensors to heavy shot put balls it certainly isn't lacking that's for sure then they bring it all to the door of irama's lab oh right I should probably explain the labs huh yeah see apparently every student is supposed to have a lab of some kind dedicated to things revolving around their talent and being able to utilize it they get unlocked over the course of the game so naturally not everyone's going to live to get to see theirs but iruma is one of the lucky ones who gets hers opened up pretty early on which allows her to use it for this little job with all of this set into motion I opted to use the rest of my time to spend chatting with amami because you know he's pretty mysterious we chat a bit about who seems the quirkiest then about his talent that he can't remember which makes him Ponder whether akamatsu would still want to be his friend if his talent turned out to be something creepy or bad then they talk about how nice it would be once everyone escapes if they could all be friends and hang out together in what seems to be the most transparent attempt to make me preemptively sad and it works and with that our final day before the time limit arrives akamatsu kicks It Off by ringing Sahara's doorbell a few times and worrying herself sick that he might be be dead before he emerges and apologizes for being in the bathroom while she was doing so yonaga tells us there's some conflict going on in the cafeteria and when we arrive we find that Hoshi is volunteering for everyone to kill him since he doesn't really want to live anyway and somebody being allowed to escape may be able to bring help from the outside however amami chips in that such an action isn't necessary glowering that he has a plan to Outfox The Mastermind which makes Hoshi retract his suggestion Sahara retrieves the equipment from Irma and prepares to set it up while ensuring that he and akamatsu can have a good view of people going down to the basement if they camp out in this nearby classroom there is also an air vent which is connected to the basement Library which saira wants to keep an eye on because it's big enough for someone to sneak through setting up their equipment in the library akamatsu removes the vent grade and also decides to clean up the messy piles of books on top of the shelves hoping to apparently find better places to place the sensors as well as making it harder for someone to access the vent itself the CGS here are pretty rough the weird perspectives kind of show off how wonky some of v3s Anatomy can be in these scenes and while there are more Awkward ones to come that illustrate this point better I think this is a good time to point out that I definitely feel like a lot of these special scene artworks were done in a far more rushed work timeline than previous entries were there's just something about them that screams I did the line art really quick and there really wasn't time to go back and fix it before we needed to color it and get it done with their cameras and sensors placed it seems like everything is rigged so The Mastermind will inevitably be caught on camera no matter what entrance they come creeping through and with that Assurance the duo head to the classroom to wait while they wait akamatsu proud Sahara about his lack of confidence in himself at which point he reveals a bit more about his talent and his background you see apparently Sahara was given his title of the super high school level detective because he solved a murder he came across completely by chance however saira doesn't have any pride in solving this case as he later learned that the suspect he helped get caught had been taking revenge against the victim who had themselves been an abuser who drove the culprits relative to Suicide during the culprits app apprehension by police he stared with pure hatred in his eyes at saira making him fearful of eye contact which explains his fervent need to wear a hat and his active offense when irama made fun of him for it earlier this also underlies a very Central fact about Sahara's character which will become more important as we go along he's a lot like many of the main characters we've seen in Danganronpa before a person burdened with the responsibility of uncovering truths in his daily life however while many of those characters had a determination to carry this through despite how painful it might have been Sahara stands in stark contrast because of his situation he's been forced to consider whether exposing the truth is really something he should Aspire toward or not and in fact he's even afraid of exposing the truth thinking that it might just be worse in the long run in a mystery game series where revealing the Dark Truth is often the goal of the genre that supersedes all else that borders on somewhat thought-provoking and I do think it's legitimately very sweet when directly afterward akamatsu admits that as amazing as he thinks she is she being mess if he weren't by her side and helping her holding his hand to show him that she's shaking and imploring him to be more confident in himself because she trusts him he promises to try before we can dig into the substance of what will essentially become a Crux of the game's main theme however the countdown starts over the intercom warning the students by way of horrible anxiety-inducing music that nighttime is coming gokuhara momota harukawa chabashirai yonaga yumino and amami are all headed to the basement to prep their battle plans against the exos and sahere goes to check the basement while akamatsu remains in the classroom anxiously she begins to sweep in the corner as she waits and when Sahara comes back the receiver in his hand goes off dropping everything they Dash to the basement running into trabashira and momota on the way to the library who ask both to join their strategy meeting of course we've got more important things to attend to so they instead convinced both to join them while they run into the library though they expect to open the door and discover the Mastermind Beyond it they do indeed see the closing bookcase but next to it they find the bloody body of one runtero amami of course everyone present begins to completely lose it and slowly everyone not present begins to trickle in while doing the same at first akamatsu tries to convince herself that maybe amami was The Mastermind and that everything is over but we know better as the body Discovery announcement chimes in literally just after as if to dash her hopes instantaneously of course this is immediately followed by the appearance of Monokuma who spells it out completely and then goes about extending his offer to honor the first Blood perk of course this is Danganronpa so nobody ends up raising their hand and since Monokuma is going to remain stubbornly silent unless they do so he ultimately decides that if the prize isn't claimed a class trial will just have to be held because the culprit must prefer it and with that we've got an investigation to do so let's run down the usual roster of evidence shall we of course we get the Monokuma file to start us off specifying the time of death was 9 10 pm and then amami died from blunt force trauma likely due to the shot put ball next to his body monofani appears to offer to develop the film with the camera and though nobody trusts her with it she swears that she'll abide by the rules and won't remove any of the pictures produced in the process from there we discovered that the card reader still has dust on it irama gets to work making a Library floor plan with a drone and say hero wonders about why amami's body ended up in the place it did amami's belongings also produce no card key so he definitely couldn't have been The Mastermind if he came without one harukawa tells us a bit about the group meeting but she basically confirms that it was just Moma to spitballing about fighting without really coming to much of a conclusion she also confirms that at one point he went to the bathroom and gokuhara was in the AV room the entire time when asking him about it he swears that all he did was watch videos of bugs to inspire his will to fight but a few people are pretty suspicious of him because of the back door which is directly across from the back door to the library however looking at it proves that this likely doesn't add up to much since it's aligned improperly and barely opens correctly yonica and shabashira were together and can confirm their Alibis and shinguji was eating in the cafeteria with Irma nearby at the time as well with shirigani dipping out to go to the bathroom at some point kibo admits that he was alone in his room Oma doesn't offer an alibi at all preferring to treat the whole thing like a game that he'll get into once the trial starts and shiragane well okay so akamatsu kinda starts the line of questioning that she could disguise herself as someone because she's a cosplayer but then she drags akamatsu to the bathroom demands to wear her clothes and shows that when she tries to cosplay as a real person instead of a fictional character she gets a weird rash that she calls cosbox which proves that she couldn't have done it so yeah just roll with it anyway with the film finally developed the duo heads to the storehouse to get all of their photos and give them a look all they really seem to show however is everyone entering the library after the body is discovered a couple of accidental shots when Sahara was setting up the cameras and then just a bunch of shots of amami himself entering the library finding the bookcase entrance approaching the camera as if he noticed it and then that's it while akamatsu's stomach drops wondering why in the world there are no more pictures much less any of the Mastermind Monokuma calls everyone to assemble in the courtyard Shrine of judgment the class trial is ready to commence doing so we're treated to a lovely transition where the buff Monokuma statue within crushes his pouring goblet sinks into the water and reveals an elevator behind the large ornate waterfall revolutionary girl utena style nobody wants to get on the elevator of course but they have no choice akamatsu tries to inspire everyone once more telling them that they can all work together to overcome this and while some may proceed more reluctantly than others they all do so nonetheless as the elevator Falls Akama who tries to give Sahara one final speech to boost his confidence that everyone is scared of learning the truth sometimes but that you can only decide your fate once you've done so you need to know what's the truth and what's a lie otherwise you won't even know you're on a path to begin with imploring him to seek the truth even if it scares him she reiterates that the strength of others will always help when he's afraid because knowing that you're helping people will in turn strengthen you the same way that knowing people were brought Joy by her performances helped her when she was anxious before a concert but those wise words said we arrive at the trial grounds and the long-awaited class trial finally begins before we can even get into story stuff let's talk game Mechanics for a little bit it's been a little while since we've gotten to do that hasn't it for once we can even talk about the ability to equip skills in the court prep menu too because instead of being relegated to Simply specific skills you unlock from free time events the game has changed a bit here you can use points you acquire from free times to spend in this little in-game menu choosing which specific skills you'd like to buy and equipped with a limited number of slots to fill which you might increase in capacity over time it's an interesting way to broaden the potential build you put to use in a trial rather than simply gaining random skills you often can't predict from certain specific character free times I think this way of doing it is a lot more useful even if it means the skills themselves are less cheekily tailored to mirror specific characters you might acquire them from though you still get skills from completing a character's free times which are tailored to them so I guess it's got the best of both worlds here returning as always are non-stop debates which work exactly the same as they have in previous games with yellow statements presenting opportunities to fire a truth bullet that contradicts them and blue statements which return from sdr2 providing opportunities to concur with said statement and piggyback off someone else's point multiple choice answer sections and evidence presentation also returns and functions basically the same way albeit with a bit more streamlined UI in fact this would probably be a good time to state that the UI in this game is in general one of its best elements I feel I know these kinds of things things are often so understated in video game discussion that most barely even stopped to think about it but these presentational elements often sculpt the entire feel of a game and it's doing V3 a lot of favors by being pretty gorgeously stylish to look at it lends the entire game a sense of Mystique and aesthetic that makes it the most pleasingly Sleek Danganronpa game to look at for the most part and it gives a lot of these gameplay sections a really satisfying Edge because the visual and sound design alike just makes it feel good to play this carries right over into our first unique addition to the gameplay sections which is the mass panic debate mpds work basically the same way a regular non-stop debate does But it includes several people talking over each other at once you can hone your reticle in on one character to listen to them more closely but for the most part you're basically doing all the same leg work as usual just trying to weed out the most important statement of the bunch while everyone talks over each other it's eclectic chaotic and just as engaging as you'd expect it can get a little much but it's certainly not a terrible addition when it comes to spicing up the usual gameplay Loop speaking of spicing up the gameplay Loop rebuttal showdowns make a return from sdr2 as well and work just about the same way as they did there they're like one-on-one non-stop debates where you wait for your chance to strike against your opponent with the correct truth blade while defending from their regular statements this time the controls have changed a bit however as in sdr2 you would swipe automatically with the flick of the control stick but this time use the stick to line up your strike then have to press the button to actually slash it makes precise aiming a bit easier and it definitely helps with v3's new mechanic V counters where if you hit the statement at the exact right point you get more points overall at the end of the trial this is where things get really interesting for the debates however while sdr2 added the ability to agree with others iterating upon the regular disagreements V3 has added its own Quirk to the bag with the ability to lie during non-stop debates with the idea in mind that sometimes lying for the greater good is also a way we must reach an overall truth you have to hold down the button you use to shoot your truth bullets to turn said bullet into a live bullet a lie bullet is basically like a version of upset truth bullet which relays a falsehood about that piece of specific evidence rather than the truth about it looking for specific places and debates to use these lie bullets will help steer the conversation in theory away from something that appears to be leading everyone down the wrong track which should hopefully steer the discussion back in the correct direction if utilized appropriately sometimes these opportunities can even present themselves in optional backdoor routes which aren't specifically pointed out to the player and aren't necessary to utilize in order to progress these offer the opportunity to get slightly different discussions but they will inevitably rejoin the regular narrative at one point so this doesn't really affect the outcome per se lying will be mandatory at some points though and I honestly find this very interesting for reasons I'm sure we'll get more into later I just wish it was more heavily utilized because as it is in the final game I feel like the mechanic actually gets pretty underused despite its thematic relevance it pretty much only gets one major mandatory use per trial in fact which seems a bit silly considering how important the whole idea of Lies is supposed to be here which ironically I consider one of the bigger gameplay faults but oh well the next unique mini game we get is one of my favorites and that's the debate scrum this comes about when the class is split evenly on an issue and can't come to an agreement about it you'll basically have to listen to everyone on the opposing side statements and match them to a relevant statement from your team whittling them down until you've accounted for all of their individual objections in terms of gameplay it's not actually the most interesting minigame of the bunch but the presentation in absolutely banging music that goes along with it does more than enough to sell it as one of the better parts of v3's new gameplay editions for me I just wish they took a little longer and had a bit more meat to them but I will gladly play the OST track on Loop to myself whenever and now though there are more mini game types to cover we have to double back to the plot for now there are a couple more to mention in this trial but there's something specific we have to talk about before we can show those and any others are ones that don't appear until after chapter one so we'll mention them in the trials they become relevant in for now let's rewind and talk about what all the discussion Behind These mini games we've been showing off is shall we Because by the time we've gotten here we're already like halfway through it obviously the discussion of whether AMA me was The Mastermind ends pretty quickly since it's easy to prove he wasn't but akamatsu is still determined to use the trial to expose said mastermind's identity what we need to focus on firstly though and what ends up taking a lot of the trials real estate is the matter of how amami was killed if the culprit never showed up in any of those photos this leads to a line of questioning spanning several suspects starting with the one who made the cameras Irma who was accused by Alma thankfully for her we can already prove that she wasn't responsible as she has an alibi verifiable by both shinguji and shirogane and even though shirigani left at one point shinguji was with her the whole time Oma even admits after this that he knew the whole time that she had an alibi but basically let everyone on the conversational equivalent of a wild goose chase for the hell of it what a bastard the matter of shiragane disguising herself comes up but we already know why that can't work either everyone at the strategy meeting denies being involved but they do Point their suspicions back toward gokuhara for closing himself up in the AV room and having no excuses other than I wanted to watch a bug movie so I could punch better though it's quickly established that he couldn't leave through the back door because of how narrowly it opened Tojo argues that he could have possibly used the rolled up screen to stick through the crack open the library door and then throw the shot put ball from across the hall to kill amami with considering his superhuman strength it does seem technically plausible but there is a problem with this line of reasoning which stops it in its tracks in the pictures it's clear that amami had the hidden shelf open directly prior to his death and it only closed after he was actually dead meaning that if someone threw the ball from across the hall it would have hit the shelf and gotten blocked meaning this solution is a bus too yonaga argues the culprit could have hidden behind the hidden door but the dust being in the card reader already confirms that nobody used it they couldn't have used the vent either because the book pile would have collapsed if they tried to crawl on it at this point however Irma reveals that because of the nature of how the camera Auto rolls the camera can't take a new photo for 30 whole seconds after the shutter snaps the fact that Sahara completely neglected to mention this before casts a lot of Suspicion on him not to mention the fact that he's been acting awkward this whole time anyway this obviously gets everyone discussing whether or not he's the culprit which leads to the moment we have to lie in order to protect him akamatsu does this by claiming that the receiver was on her person rather than Cyrus and this visibly shocks Sahara who knows for a fact that this isn't the case this culminates in a debate scrum which ends with akamatsu imploring Sahara to speak his mind about what he's been withholding finally Sahara comments on how suspicious he thinks it is that amami noticed the camera at all with him concluding that he must have because the lighting in said photos clearly showed that the flash was on seemingly done to lure amami over to it seeing as Sahara was both very methodical about not wanting the flash to be on while setting up the cameras this bothers him and it makes it very clear despite how impossible it seems where our suspicions should be directed the only other person who knew about the plan beforehand who could have turned the flash on while nobody was the wiser was akamatsu herself lamenting to herself how saira has noticed the truth and that he has to pursue it no matter how painful it is we want watch as the UI goes colorless and flickers out around her with the internal monologue switching to saihara Zone and Reviving as he promises to expose the truth as she's entrusted him to do yes they just went there our supposed main character all along was an unreliable narrator who committed the murder herself and now we pivot the main character seat over to Sahara who must honor her final wishes by revealing the truth he was so terrified to acknowledge even when he had already begun to suspect it long ago the truth that was always too painful for him to want to expose he has no choice but to do so now and this decision is a little controversial for some but I'd rather wait to get into it and my thoughts about it until we reach the end of the trial where we can dig into my overall opinions of the chapter itself more broadly so tuck this one into your hat for now we'll definitely be getting to it later to test Sahara's dedication to his accusation akamatsu basically turns right around and starts insisting that she can't be the culprit in an attempt to see if he really has the strength to carry forward her exclusive choice is that she was in the classroom with Sahara as amami was killed and she wouldn't be strong enough to to throw the shot put ball but it becomes clear how she could have done this if you think about where she used it this leads us into the third and final version of Hangman's Gambit a Mini-Game that took until V3 to actually be remotely good you see the reason now why I put off talking about these last few mini games they show Sahara on them instead of akamatsu so I figured I'd wait for the reveal to pass anywho in this version of Hangman's Gambit you have a limited range to flash light on these otherwise gray indistinct bubbles which reveal what letters they are when you do so you can select them and add them to the anagram and complete the word to answer the question it's simple but effective but it's a bit more engaging than the piss easy one from dr1 and it's nowhere near as convoluted and horrible to play as the one from sdr2 it strikes a nice middle ground and that's all it really needed anyway the answer is the vent more specifically she took the ball out of her backpack which she had bundled up in a spare vest rolled it into the vent that connected to the library and then it came out and bludgeonedom of me how did it do this you may be asking well we can actually answer this thanks to the layout photos taken by irama's drone when akamatsu was clearing books earlier she actually made in a lab its slope behind the stacks which lead down and open up to make a perfect slide she even made sure the vent was open in the library beforehand to facilitate this then the camera's flash led amami to the spot where he'd need to be standing for the ball to hit him the reason the noise wasn't noticed by anyone is because of the blaring time limit music that Monokuma was playing at the time and she obviously could have gotten the shot put ball from the storehouse to put in her bag when they were retrieving the camera equipment however despite all of this sihara still believes in akamatsu's Good Intentions which she interprets as him still running from the truth but he's determined to prove to her that he isn't leading to the argument Armament this sort of resembles the btb and PTA from the previous two games it's a rhythm Mini-Game to finish off the culprit's argument it's still a little wonky but the focus is now on clearing individual statements with specific button presses at the right time rather than a constant beat and this works a bit better in my opinion it also includes cool Shadow Self art of the character in question that you're arguing against which is dismantled along the way again the final statement is delivered with specific words being assigned to each face button and and needing to order the statement correctly in this case we spell out akamatsu's intentions to get rid of The Mastermind she was convinced that the person coming to the library would be the Mastermind themselves after all and she made a drastic decision to try and end the killing game and free everyone Sagara is quick to reason that because he told all of his ideas and theories to her that his own detective work is to blame for this outcome but in tears she insists that nobody is to blame but her her final request is for saira to spell out the whole case to convince everyone who still has doubts and this leads to the end of trial staple the climax inference as with previous games we fill in the empty manga panels to spell out the sequence of events that comprise the crime's narrative like in sdr2 we get a limited stock of panels to work with at one time and unlock more when we've allocated them properly the presentation is very stylish but I find that it's a bit more difficult to see than an sdr2 with its bigger panels at the bottom of the screen I still think it's a bit more intuitive than dr1's climax inference sections but the presentation could be improved if there's one thing I have to hand these sections in V3 though it's this game's version of the climax inference theme music in previous entries it's been this sort of funky Lo-Fi song that feels like you're finally unraveling the truth in V3 it's almost Melancholy still keeping that familiar Pace but almost feeling resigned embodying the attitude of Sahara himself who desperately wishes none of this were true but must reluctantly peel back the sordid layers of Truth anyway [Music] foreign [Music] spelled out akamatsu confesses and everyone is dejected even so she still tries to convince Sahara to be brave to carry on her wishes and to protect everyone so that a killing doesn't happen again the vote rolls in and akamatsu is found guilty though a few people briefly tried to fight Monokuma and the Cubs to prevent them from dragging her away to her death they intervene with the exos and akamatsu begs them not to get themselves killed fighting on her behalf but to instead keep surviving and find a way to end all of this as everyone promises to do just that the execution begins akamatsu is dragged by the neck to a giant piano and dangled by her throw forced to play a Melody that rapidly increases in Pace by the tips of her dangling shoes as it chokes the life out of her the song Finally ends as she sways lifelessly the spiked back of the lid closing over and crushing her corpse into a bloody pulp while the frequently bullied monodam decides at that exact moment to push mono kid in the way also killing him along with her I really wish they had found a different way to kill off the Cubs though their deaths do factor into the plot to an extent I find it really jarring and tonally inappropriate to throw their deaths alongside the characters we are ostensibly supposed to actually care about akamatsu's death is horrifying grim and emotionally impactful and tossing mono kid into the mix in this nearly goofy slapstick manner really just seems to spoil the mood I'm sure this probably isn't as big of a deal to some people as it is to me but it really took me out of this otherwise effective scene and it kind of pisses me off a little bit well speaking of pissed off after the Cubs Disappear With monodam claiming to have done what he did for the rest of them momita punches Sahara and knocks him to the ground apparently he's pretty mad that while akamatsu passed her wishes on to him saira didn't say a thing to Monokuma and questions how he can call himself a man because of this wait your turn on the localization discussion train momota we will be getting to you as everyone leaves he calms down a bit and tells Sahara to visit akamatsu's lab thinking that the memories of her left there may be enough to console him when no one else can say her a heads there finding a CD of Claire de Lune a song she once mentioned to him as he stands silently listening to it he thinks back on all of her kind words and resolves himself to carry on fighting and facing the truth for everyone's sake and hers too a ghostly image of akamatsu appears playing the piano reiterating her trust in him and saying goodbye as chapter one comes to a close 14 surviving members of the class left this is certainly an interesting chapter I don't know if this is controversial to say but I honestly find it to be one of the most strongly written chapters of the game and certainly one of the strongest opening chapters in the series The foreshadowing is excellently planned chekhov's guns go off expertly and exactly when they need to and the characterization for the key players is mostly very strong the mystery is very intricate but still resists being too mechanically convoluted most of the difficulty in fact I would argue comes from the fact that players aren't necessarily going to expect that the character they're playing as would actually turn out to be the killer this has never been done before in Danganronpa after all so it certainly comes as a shock speaking of which let's talk about that twist a little that now that we have a moment specifically let's talk about why it really really bothers some people and what I think about this personally so if you didn't know this before akamatsu is practically all over this game's marketing especially leading up to its release her position as main character was made very clear in all of this material and when you look at it all cumulatively it's easy to see this as another example of the Dr team pulling a Mizuno where they got people adjusted to the expectation that a specific character would have a large role only to kill them off early as a source of shock to the player with Mizuno this wasn't seen as particularly egregious it was certainly shocking but Mizuno was not supposed to be the main character if anything people expected her to be the sort of my fa-esque assistant to the main character which made her status as first kill very surprising akamatsu however was a character many people were excited about before even knowing much about her and that's for one simple reason she's the first female protagonist in a Mainline entry of the series now sure we do have komaru and Ultra despair girls which is narratively important to the original story if you actually want to finish but many people didn't feel as though that really carried the same weight as dr1 or sdr2 since it was technically a totally different genre and wasn't labeled as a main entry I think as far as female protagonists go komaru is really excellent and even beyond that otanashi is also a female protagonist for the series in Danganronpa zero and I also find her excellent but I get what people are saying here they want a female protagonist in an entry of the series that is the same as the main two prior for that reason nakamatsu was an exciting prospect and she was also an excellent character in her own right very fresh compared to previous protagonists and with a very well fleshed out and likable personality and now here she is getting killed off in the first chapter to make way for yet another boy a lot of people will call this an example of fridging which if you don't know what that means I'll go ahead and summarize it right now this term refers to when a loved one typically a female character is hurt killed or traumatized to facilitate another character's motivation in the plot or move their story forward meaning they only served that purpose and weren't really given much opportunity to matter as a character on their own this was popularized by Gail Simone through her website women in refrigerators which compiled many instances of female comic book characters being used for just such a purpose and being named after an example in Green Lantern and New Dawn where Kyle's girlfriend is killed and stuffed into a fridge by the villain for him to find the Trope is often seen as very lazy serving to motivate the protagonist while disempowering and devaluing a female character for angst and that female character is often a love interest as well which makes this even more blatant in terms of whether or not I think this applies in V3 I'd say it's complicated akamatsu to me does seem pretty well fleshed out and individually is strongly characterized she has an understandable character which I don't think seems too much like an accessory to anyone and furthermore she has an arc with a beginning middle and end it's easy to follow it through and is internally consistent as well as impactful her death does motivate and sadden saira but it also serves more of a narrative purpose later on and also ties into the game's overall themes emphasizing them as the story moves forward for that reason I don't find it necessarily accurate to say that this is a straightly played example of fridging at least not in the literal sense but it doesn't have to be for me to understand why it still feels kind of shitty to some it's still true that she was marketed as a main character and that having a female main character for a main entry was a pretty big deal to people to have her die in chapter 1 and be replaced by yet another male main character must feel like a pretty obnoxious betrayal to those people who got excited for her and as a larger media Trend it's certainly very understandable why this would be frustrating that said given the Direction the Story takes with this in the future I do think it has relevance beyond what people are sometimes willing to give it credit for and furthermore I don't think that just because this decision was questionably handled that saira is a bad character we'll be getting more into what I think about him as we go but I actually like him quite a bit and I don't think his character's strengths should be ignored even if this transition is very much worth criticizing with that elephant in the room addressed I also do want to take a moment to compliment the way this twist was delivered annoying implications about it put aside for now like I said nothing like this has been done in Danganronpa before so all of your franchise savviness really Falls by the wayside when this sneaks up on you and it does an excellent job at blindsiding you and leaving you totally stunned when you realize that your POV character's perspective hasn't been entirely objective or truthful it's The Logical extreme of the Hinata twist in sdr2 delivered in so much more of a directly cruel and saddening way and it really sells the impact of the chapter's individual narrative to me my only other complaint would simply be that I don't think amami got as much characterization as he needed for me to really care about his death I know he is deliberately mysterious and this becomes relevant later as well but I think a bit more of a personal connection to him could have made this case reach even higher Heights and not doing so was a bit of a missed opportunity in my opinion that's the reason I did his three times in fact because I was hoping they would add a bit more depth of character but honestly it wasn't much and if you don't do his three times you get even less than that as he is in the final game amome just comes across as aloof and a little mysterious but he doesn't really make that strong of an impression on me and as the game's first victim this is a little disappointing overall I think this chapter certainly has aspects worth criticizing but it took a lot of risks and delivered pretty strongly regardless and for that reason I can't give it too much grief and have to say that it's probably one of the highlights of the game to me and puts a strong Flip forward as to whether or not the rest of the game can stack up to the example it presents well we'll see won't we [Music] as we start up this chapter we get a mysterious few people lamenting over what appears to be akamatsu's death attributing supposed to a group they don't specify much more about afterward we see gokuhara discover some mysterious writing on the ground that says the horse a I'm sorry give me a minute rejoining Cyrus POV we see that he answers the door for a badgering momita who invites him to the cafeteria for breakfast apologizing for punching him while he's at it once Sahara arrives we see that he's abandoned his hat no doubt spurred by akamatsu's death to be more confident in himself underneath lies the Danganronpa protagonist's typical design Quirk of a giant cowlick so he's basically cemented his transition into the role while Tojo makes and serves breakfast everyone tries to act normal but clearly they're all still shaken up gokuhara mentions the graffiti he found and says that he could swear he saw a bug too but people raised their doubts considering the closed environment before too much time can pass of course Monokuma has to show back up along with the Cubs they bring a mysterious array of items an ancient passport a Dragon Gem and Ocarina and a hexagonal Crank that they expect us to use somewhere throughout the school and pretty much leave it at that though it's clear to see that their Unity is getting shaky with monosuke now perpetually afraid that monodam is going to kill another one of them mean meanwhile monodam swears up and down that peace is secured and he should just chill out with that said we now have to roam around finding exactly where to use these things and while it may be a bit annoying their applications do lead to some interesting discoveries namely of more research Labs first from the passport we discover humanos which has a lot of magician supplies then from the Dragon Gem we find tojos which has a Victorian aesthetic and many appliances and tools for housekeeping beyond that we can also explore the Upper Floor a bit more and find gokuhara's lab full of bugs and a treasure chest with a mysterious flashlight looking device inside which yonaga quickly takes to try and figure out on her own on the third floor we find hoshi's lab which contains a full tennis court and some kind of pitching robot as well as a shower room that we can't quite enter yet down the hall is a mysterious pixelated door that appears to be painted on the wall as well as harakawa's lab which we can't really get a good look at because she refuses to let anyone enter it going outside we can use the Ocarina at a stone monument to clear leaves away from what turns out to be the pool building though the place is pretty nice the water is kept managed editorially shallow enough so that getting in and out of it would be slightly difficult and swimming is forbidden after night time regardless it does have Windows connected to the gym and some other mysterious place we're not aware of yet but aside from that it doesn't seem to have much Beyond a storage room that has the kind of stuff you'd likely expect to find in a pool nearest strange door outside by mamata we use the final item the crank to access the courtyard's night spot there we have two attractions to approach starting with the casino inside are a variety of games you can play done by exchanging monocoins for Casino coins any winnings you make can be used to exchange for prizes at the counter though if momotas rise in subsequent fall or anything to go by it's not as easy as it seems the two available games right off the bat are salmon fishing which is kind of like The Hangman's Gambit where you try to remember the correct colored fish instead of the letter you need and your average slot machine which is totally not addictive or anything just one more time once you finally peel yourself away from the slots you can also see that there's a love hotel which okay well let's just get this out of the way now so I don't have to talk about it later the love hotel is a place where you can get some optional scenes if you spend an absurd amount of Casino coins on a love key this gives you a randomized scene with one of the still living characters where both people mysteriously enter in a dream like State and the other character sees you the protagonist as their ideal person this tends to lend some character insight and while some scenes can be okay others are a not great for reasons of oh good more incest jokes and oh good more assault jokes among others I mostly hate this feature and I didn't bother with it on my replay of the game so moving right along when we exit yoniga arrives to say she's finally figured out the flashlight and calls Sahara with everyone else to the gym turns out she just asked Monokuma who explains that this is a flashback light meant to restore some of the cast's fuzzy memories though they do have some deliberation about it the choices ultimately made to take the light head-on which leads to ever everyone remembering more about the super high school level hunt that was mentioned before this was mentioned by anime before I can't actually remember if I put this in the script earlier but uh well it doesn't really matter anyway all he did was name drop it so uh there you go you're caught up apparently they were all being hunted for their talents but ran and chose to use experimental technology to abandon said talents by having their memories put to sleep they can't really remember why the hunt was happening though nor what happened afterward that got them into this situation but they speculate that those responsible for the hunt may also be responsible for the killing game to which Monokuma obviously won't say one way or the other in the mix Sahara also hears himself talking about how he doesn't want to live how he wants to die with everyone which understandably shakes him up quite a bit given that we have a bit of free time after this maybe it wouldn't hurt to hang out with somebody else who's seemingly having some trouble finding a reason to live maybe it'll do us both some good so I decided to use all of my slots for this chapter on everyone's favorite tennis player Ryo mahoshi though his backstory is a bit over the top entailing his exploits of trying to show up a rigged tennis game aimed that some mafia members are holding underground than getting all of his loved ones killed in retaliation for it then using those tennis skills to kill those mafia members in Revenge there is a certain grounded feeling to the emotions of it Hoshi has practically nothing left to live for anymore and he's used his talent for something he considers reprehensible which only further fuels that self-hatred only when Sahara genuinely asks him about his interests and tries to engage with him as a friend without using him for purely voyeuristic pleasure does he begin to actually open up he does briefly try to push saira away but once the cat's out of the bag about his past he starts to really appreciate the effort Sahara has put into understanding him which culminates in a fierce tennis match between the two where they both collapse on the court and chat aimlessly with one another Hoshi saying that once he gets out of here he'll pick everything he's abandoned back up Sahara literally having given him his will to live back for something as sweet as this is though the main plot chugs along everyone receiving a strange pad from the Cubs one morning which contains a motive video a motive video basically shows the the most important person in someone's life and throws out a terrifying what-if about their status similar to the videos from chapter one of the first game but it seems like everyone's gotten the wrong ones Sahara for example gets momentas showing his proud grandparents who just want him to live happily with Monokuma explaining that shortly after filming they got into some kind of accident which he won't disclose the details of everyone gathers in the cafeteria to discuss these weird things and there is a lot of disagreement about what to do with them this obviously isn't helped by Oma trying consistently to get everyone to look at them and many others arguing it will clearly only lead to another killing if they do so deciding not to watch them another day of free time passes at night momota asks Sahara to come out with him demanding that they both train their bodies to become stronger Sahara who is unused to it definitely struggles and struggles even more emotionally when momita says that this training is specifically because he wants to help Sahara become strong enough to carry akamatsu's wishes he asks if saira feels responsible for her death still and he admits what he's been struggling with every night since the execution that he does blame himself and there's obviously an undercurrent of self-loathing and even that same suicidal ideation poking through because of it momota can't quite wrap his head around the fear of exposing the truth but he does think training will help Sahara fortify himself and be able to get past it and in the end he admits that maybe he does need something like that right about now and sure enough when he returns to his room he's so exhausted from the training that he has no time at all to worry about the things that previously kept him up at night drifting easily to sleep right afterward this is honestly a really sweet scene though I wish momoto was as tactful about someone's depression when it came to say Hoshi who he basically calls a coward for it well anyway the next morning we've got other things to worry about namely that it seems like yonaga is strong-arming yumino into her religion and has announced a magic show that they're putting on for everyone as a result later on momota comes barging into Sahara's room to warn him about impending doom which turns out to be gokuhara going around and kidnapping everyone for some reason though Hoshi manages to get away saira's attempt is not quite so successful winding up in gokuhara's lab along with Oma it seems that along with we've been brought here because Oma tricked gokuhara into thinking everyone present hated bugs and needed to be shown how cool they were really what he wants is to sneak out during that time and steal everyone's motive videos and then hold a forcible viewing party before he can do so though kibo plays back a recording which he was able to make with his onboard tape deck to prove to gokuhara that omo was just using him in his rage everyone but Oma escapes and hears him being swarmed by bugs the next morning everyone gathers in the gym for the magic show where yumino is supposedly going to escape from a water tank behind a curtain before a bunch of piranhas are dropped inside with her everyone is very worried about this and they start to worry even more when a lot of the timer passes without her emerging not able to wait gokuhara jumps on the stage to see what's happening but the buzzer goes off and releases the Piranhas into the tank as everyone runs forward to open the curtains they unexpectedly see Hoshi handcuffed and floating in the water who is promptly eaten though yumino appears briefly after to announce her daring Escape she notices too late that behind her is a tank full of blood well this is certainly pretty screwed up huh I know I know understatement of the century but needless to say we've gotta figure out what happened here nothing is more important than hold on just a second come on come on come on damn it all right what were we talking about oh right so after tabashira and gokuhara literally toss kibo into the tank to break it we can finally start to clean up and get to investigating and there is quite a bit to cover here quite a few people are suspicious of humanos and she's the one who was doing the magic show in the first place but under the guidance of momita who insists that saira is now his sidekick we'll try to wrap our heads around what's really going on here the cause of death says drowning but the time is obscured apparently several people helped with preparations with momota kibo yumino and yonaga prepping the supplies and Tojo helping to sew curtains and arrange other things last minute the piranha tank is attached to the stage patterns and only the front side of it is glass with the others being wooden and there seemingly being no lid there's also a control panel for helping to lower and raise the batons getting the latter to check the upper Windows saira finds the window to the pool area is open and the frame has some strange abrasions near the tank itself yonica confides that she thought the Piranhas looked much more plentiful than before this morning but they obviously couldn't have multiplied overnight on the bottom of the tank there's a strange Square pane of glass as well as the handcuffs how she was wearing which have strain scratches on them when asking gokuhara what he saw he says he saw nothing was in the tank at all when he got up on the stage to the side of the stage there is also a staircase a rope and a puddle of water at the pool there's an inner tube floating in the water tied to a rope and a mysterious scrap of black cloth as well Monokuma also appears to reiterate that it's against the rules for anyone to have been swimming after nighttime and Sahara speculates because of this that maybe the tube couldn't be retrieved from the pool because of this in hoshi's room Sahara hopes to find the motive video he had speculating that he might have had the culprits but it can't be found anywhere which also definitely carries some implications along with it momota briefly Muses that maybe showing everyone each other's motive videos would have been for the best after all but is confused when Sahara brings up that that's what omo was trying to accomplish Unsure how to process that considering he clearly hates Oma in yumino's lab we get an alibi from Oma for the hour he was unaccountered it for during the insect meet and greet claiming to have been scolded then chased around by Tojo he also claims to have seen a girl wandering around in her underwear which when combined with irama's statements about how she escaped gokuhara's capture by using her secret woman weapon paints a pretty clear picture of where she was during all of this too in the room there's also a backup water tank similar to the one used during the performance which Sahara is able to investigate to find a secret escape hatch and deduce yumino's trick in hoshi's lab we finally investigate the shower room which is themed more after his status as a prisoner than a tennis player a set of handcuffs is missing and similar scratch marks that were found on the gym windowsill and pair of handcuffs how she was wearing are found on the sink we also figure out that the other window overlooking the pool is from the shower room with yet again scratches on the windowsill in the main lab sairat also notices the tennis net is down and the cable has been removed it's just about as long as the rope that was found in the gym finally near harakawa's lab Tojo is keeping an eye on her and confirms the last ho she was seen alive was around 8 PM when he escaped from gokuhara Furthermore harukawa establishes that she has no good Alibi because she was guarding off her lab the entire time like she already had been doing for a while now and with that we've gathered all the clues matakuma thinks we need which means that it's time for the ever-anticipated class trial reiterating his belief in Sahara momota States something that's pretty thematically Salient and for that reason I want to give special attention to it here because it's going to come back up why why do you trust me momotukun there's a chance that I'm the cult I believe in you because I want to do I need a reason other than that isn't that why you believed in akamatsu-san I mean sure I might get betrayed in the end but if I worry about that I won't be able to believe in the people I want to believe in should we cheat we're still young I can't die before I've had my first drink or gone to space if you're not going to get yourself in gear now then when now's all you've got yeah Mama chicken I know yeah that's the expression I wanted to see that's my sidekick in the process he briefly flashes back to that confusing isolated statement I want to die with everyone and throws it away no Cyrus says I want to live and on that heartwarming note we head down to the shrine of judgment ready to face whatever Horrors May await down the elevator and amidst the trial grounds once again before we start the trial we have a couple of mini games to talk about that are only introduced in it the first New Edition is probably one of the most iconic in v3s Arsenal that being psyche taxi it's somewhat similar to the logic dive from sdr2 but instead of writing a mined snowboard you're driving a mind taxi I was never that good at Crazy Taxi but thankfully you don't have to be to succeed here you just have to floor it while collecting little Mario Kart item blocks that slowly fill in the blanks of a question and by slowly I do mean slowly this seriously takes freaking ages it's honestly why I kind of prefer logic dive well anyway once you've assembled the question you're then given some potential routes and a passenger that corresponds to each each one represents a specific answer to the question and to choose yours all you need to do is Ram into that answers respective passenger which flips them into your car instead of getting Sahara charged with vehicular manslaughter on the astral plane if you get it right the minigame proceeds until it ends pretty simple once you get past all the wacky set dressing but I feel like it's previous Incarnation handled things a bit better in terms of its pacing this by comparison kind of drags because of the part where you have to collect the blocks oh well at least it looks cool the next minigame type is mind mine which uh kind of like if Minesweeper had a love child with Tetris and a jigsaw puzzle it's not as complicated as it sounds really you just have to select blocks that are next to blocks of a similar color which will cause chain reactions and flip other blocks yada yada you do this to uncover the picture of the specific item that you need to point out and if you get stuck you can also break single blocks forcefully at the cost of time on your timer this one just kind of sucks to be honest I mean it's not like sdr2's Hangman's Gambit or anything it's pretty easy to wrap your head around but it just feels kind of like a waste of time and like the question I'm being asked could just as easily have been another multiple choice question so yeah it's probably my least favorite mini game of the bunch truth be told and with that out of the way on with the trial itself a lot of the start of the trial focuses around explaining yumino's magic tricks since she's obviously going to remain stubborn and refuse to call it anything aside from actual magic thankfully the hatch we found on the identical tank is more than enough to get the ball rolling because said hatch was perfectly aligned with the stairs on the side we can now see that yumino escaped into the staircase once the curtain obscured the tank from there there was an escape hatch facing away from the audience that she got out of explaining the puddle of water by the backstage area then all she had to do was dry her hair a bit change into a spare change of clothes and put her hat back on at that point nobody could really tell the difference however when it comes to explaining where hoshi's body was hidden the stairs are pretty much ruled out the space was too cramped for yumino and Hoshi to both be inside it and if she pulled it out at that moment gokuhara should have at least seen one of them when he got on stage but recall if you will gokuhara didn't actually see anyone so what's going on here well what if hoshi's body was actually in the piranha tank now this would be a bit difficult to explain given that they didn't eat him until afterward but we actually have a piece of evidence that can already explained this the single pane of square glass on the Tank's bottom or as we come to realize the lid of the piranha tank it was supposed to stay atop the tank but was laid inside at an angle both serving to separate the Hungry Fish from hoshi's already drowned corpse and to force them all to the front so that his corpse was obscured from view until the moment they all dropped this proves to be a bit tricky though considering that the time to do this is rather limited it seems like the murder and setup would have to have happened before night time the day prior because a siren will go off in the gym if you enter it after nighttime and hiding the body in the morning before the show would have been impossible as yonica and yumino were waiting in front of the gym for the morning announcement considering he was seen near the time of the insect meet and greet it's easy to say that he was alive around 8 o'clock so that would mean he'd have to die between then and 10 pm the only people not apprehended by gokuhara at that time were Tojo momenta iruma and harukawa Tojo was a alone in the gym for a bit but it was only for around 5 minutes till 9 pm we also know that she was scolding Oma and chasing him around from about 9pm to 10 so this gives her very little time to do anything irama can be easily eliminated from suspicion because it's pretty easy to figure out from Context Clues plus hers and almost testimonies that she was walking around half naked to prevent gokuhara from capturing her and indeed this worked out for her as he was too embarrassed to grab her while she was stripped down with this narrowing the pool down to harakawa and mamata Oma insists that both argue their own cases because only the innocent party can know who between the two is the murderer it's at this point we learn who took the Cubs pad from hoshi's room that's right it was Oma and this motive video happens to belong to harukawa in fact it's easy to tell considering Sahara had momotas and would know right away that it wasn't his because of this this casts a lot of Suspicion on harukawa herself but in a surprising turn momoto refuses to concede to almost logic refusing outright to suspect harukawa all purely because of a hunch he's excited to believe in her and because this reminds Sahara of his words of belief in the detective himself he decides to to side with harakawa this prompts how recover to speak up a bit more admitting that Hoshi had been tipped off about her having his video and coming to ask her about it of course Oma is the one who told him this and harakawa claims to have had no problems showing it to him of course not everybody's on board to believe this story since it can't really be corroborated and that gives us our mandatory lie of the chapter where we chime in with momita to insist that during a late nighttime workout session that never had the chance to happen they both heard harukawa talking with Hoshi and could therefore confirm the meeting even if only by sound momita seamlessly chips in to agree with this narrative but this seemingly proves that Hoshi was still alive after 10 pm which opens the possibilities back up for who killed him and how his body was placed in the piranha tank so how could his corpse make its way into the tank after night time if access to the gym was forbidden well how about through the window it's certainly possible but it would require a big setup and a lot of precision you couldn't just toss the body through the window and expect to get everything perfectly in place surely this will be easier to figure out though if we just stop to consider where and how the initial murder occurred obviously since it's past night time it was impossible to drown him in the pool because swimming after nighttime is against the rules so where does that leave well if you'll recall hoshi's cuffs share some distinct scratch marks that were seen on the sink in his lab's shower room this means he was probably drowned in the sink then transported afterward how did they transport him though simple through the window in the shower room which overlooked the pool judging by the rope in the gym the tennis net cable in hoshi's lab the scratches on both window sills in the inner tube in the middle of the pool perhaps the culprit made a makeshift ropeway to move the body once at the windowsill they could have stood on the side without entirely entering then carefully dropped Hoshi into place monosuke even accidentally reveals that this wouldn't count as entering the gym as he says that last time this was asked it was determined to not technically count which means yeah the culprit definitely asked to make sure that this was okay once the culprit was done all they had to do was untie one side descent then retrieve the rope from hoshi's lab then tossed the Rope into the gym window explaining why it was backstage when found the culprit made a mistake though not being able to get rid of the inner tube because once the Rope was untied it fell into the pool and the only way they'd be able to get it was by going inside which was against the rules since it was nighttime so who's the only person who could have set up such an incredibly detailed crime that was the only one with the dedication and force of will needed to carry it out how about the skilled and diligent kirami Tojo she seems pretty insistent that this isn't the case but more than a few things implicate her for example all of the prep work involving the tank partition and the Rope being tied to the gym window it could have been done in the brief time she was alone in the gym not everything could be done of course but when it comes to just these preparations it was certainly possible the roleplay plan isn't just speculative either as the markings on the Windows prove something was definitely weighing down on them like two whole human bodies in a tube she says that she can't let us make the wrong choice and it's for the sake of everyone but momenta cries foul it doesn't sound like she's talking about everyone here he says and Oma accuses her of having seen her own motive video she deflects appealing to everyone's emotions and insisting that she's looking out for them even dragging back out akamatsu's promise as a way to do so but Sahara obviously can't let himself be swayed by such obvious manipulation it's time to drag the damning final evidence that Tojo committed this murder out into the light as she breaks down calling him a self-righteous brat who can't save anyone he hits her where it really hurts the mysterious scrap of black cloth we found alongside the inner tube you see it's hard to imagine that someone could ZIP down a rope to move a body without building up some serious speed if she went flying when she hit the window it could have been bad so Tojo controlled the speed by gripping the Rope thankfully she didn't suffer Burns because she was wearing gloves but the friction would surely Shred the material in the process and leave it right back down in the pool where she couldn't get to it because everyone has multiple sets of uniforms in their closets she could just switch them out for spares later but when confronted with the possibility of having the scrap compared to her own gloves she's out of excuses the murderer is indeed Tojo talk about customer disservice with the whole thing wrapped up naturally it's time to learn about her sorted motives right well yes but they're probably not quite what you'd expect so Tojo did indeed see her own motive video in fact she got hers to begin with the mono Cubs mixed them up by complete accident and she just happened to get her own this reminded her of a mission she'd been given prior to being brought here namely being asked by the country's own prime minister to basically act in his stead to prevent a widespread crisis that would destroy the lives of every citizen in it apparently tojo's reputation preceded her and after doing many difficult tasks as well as plenty of direct consultation for other politicians the guy thought that this maid was the appropriate pick for a shadow president to lead the country out of Harm's Way when she remembered that she was the only person standing between the entire population in certain Doom she plotted to commit a murder so she could escape and save the country figuring that the lives of the many entrusted to her far outweighed the few that were trapped in their school by comparison basically a real-life trolley problem with Tojo given charge of the lever with her memories lost in only the vague notion of the super high school level hunt to go on she was trapped by her strong sense of Duty and Monica doesn't make this much easier for her by claiming that nothing is outside the realm of his power and that he's plenty capable of doing Terrible Things To The World At Large as for why Hoshi in particular was killed Tojo apparently talked to him about her motive video admiring that she had something to live for he mused silently to himself turning his back to her even when she clearly had the intent to kill for her goals Tojo interpreted this as a silent acceptance of his imminent death and though we don't know whether or not that was actually what he intended to communicate she knocked him out from behind and proceeded with the murder as we now know it to have happened afterward as for Hoshi himself he seems to have given up thinking he had a reason to live after his conversation with harakawa as he wanted to see his own video precisely because they contained people important to the viewers spurred on by their intent to kill by proving that they had something to live for and return home to when how she saw his own video though all he was met with was a depressing message from Monokuma that he couldn't find anything to motivate Hoshi because he had nothing to live for momota rejects the notion that life's value can be determined by numbers alone claiming that your life isn't just something that belongs to you but everyone that cares about you as well and that you have to keep living as long as you can instead of throwing it away because of this of course this applies to Tojo too who decides to do everything she can to live even if she has to act completely undignified in the process everyone cheers for her to run as fast as she can but we all know how this is going to end Monokuma has no intention of letting Tojo make any kind of exit dignified or not she Sprints out her path blocked by Effigies of protesters given a single exit a hatch in the ceiling she's made to climb a rope made of Vine covered in Thorns as she ascends she realizes she's surrounded on all sides by giant saw blades and as she tries to climb in pain she's assaulted by those blades from every angle finally when she thinks she's sees the light she realizes that all that lies at the top is a false opening doodled in crayon as she fully sinks into despair at the realization the Rope snaps and as monodam shoves monosuke to the pit Center tojo's tattered body comes crashing down crushing him as she splatters lifelessly against the pavement saying some cryptic words about how not even Monokuma can stop the monocubs from getting along monodam makes his exit and everyone else laments the death of Tojo everyone briefly speculates that the video may have had similar properties to a flashback light considering that tojos caused her to remember something she previously had no urgency about and as they all exit from The Trial grounds they are given one last surprise Oma claims that there's a worse liar than himself here and explains that Hoshi wasn't simply asking harukawa to see his own Moda video but was likely blackmailing her into being given it since he had hers and could reveal what was on it namely as Oma says her true identity moving so quickly that she appears to disappear harukawa grapples Oma by the throat holding him in midair as he chokes out his words you know this is an interesting turn of offense but would you really kill me in front of everyone hey harakawa what the hell is going on yeah you can probably snap my neck like a twig right now but that's not your style you would rather kill from the Shadows right in this super high school level assassin and with that we're down to 12 students and chapter 2 ends so right then this one is a little complicated and I don't just mean the murder itself for one thing while I do appreciate a lot of what's going on in the background like the continued character building between sairat and momota and harakawa becoming a bit more of a relevant figure I do have a few bones to pick with the narrative so far too surprisingly Oma is not one of them while I do maintain that he's a bit more irritating than he is compelling so far he is at least an active agent when it comes to shaking up the plot and so far he's doing a pretty decent job at it even if his information gathering skills do occasionally border on seeming a bit too narratively convenient now I've got more of a stick to shake at the entire direction of hoshi's character here now in previous games there were plenty of opportunities for free time events to sort of desync with the mood of the regular plot especially depending on when you did them it goes without saying that slightly more innocuous conversations with komida for example would stick out like a sore thumb if you were to complete them around the time in the plot where a wedge is being driven further between him and Hinata and he was on the verge of deciding to get everyone killed for Hoshi however this dissonance comes as part of the natural story experience if you even want to do his free time events at all akamatsu had her own free time slots while you're playing as Harry you see so when you pick things up as Sahara you're starting from scratch every character has five total free time events and there are only five opportunities for free time in this chapter before the murder occurs meaning that to complete hoshi's free times you literally have to start and end all of them in a row in this very chapter it then causes a bit of a tonal Whiplash to see hoshigo from determined to return to society into what he loves even if he's lost what previously motivated him because he has new friends two asserting that he has absolutely nothing worth living for and lying down to get drowned furthermore I know talks of potential in Danganronpa are often seen with a bit of deserved scrutiny seeing as dramatic irony as sword to the name of the game but I think it's just narratively a bit of a waste to resolve hoshi's Arc this way I mean aside from Sahara he's basically the feature character for the idea that wanting to die is unfortunately very common and depressingly easy to fall into and takes a lot of love support and understanding to move past and it may not ever fully leave you even on the best of days would it not then be much more powerful for a character who is determined to throw everything away to live until the end and in the process find some kind of motivating force to continue living I don't know it just rubs me the wrong way that this guy's narrative Arc is literally just he's suicidal then he dies and clearly they can tackle this subject with a bit better tact because they do exactly that with saira In This Very chapter even if perhaps a bit more subtly and I mean of course we can't really discuss this chapter thoroughly without addressing the big old elephant in the room tojo's motive is interesting I'm honestly not really sure even now if the game wants for me to take it entirely seriously I'll save my comments about how it ties into later reveals in the game story for when they become relevant but for now as it currently is presented at this point of the narrative this gives in two wildly different directions simultaneously on one hand it seems like the game wants me to take this entirely seriously Tojo is openly emotionally strained and filled with raw determination to fulfill her goals of saving the country and everyone genuinely laments that they might have made a mistake when she's convicted and her motive is explained everyone cries Tojo included and they're all desperate for her to escape until she is cruely executed in ways that twistedly mirror this very devotion and as an aside despite one complaint I will mention in a bit this execution is honestly really well done perfectly suited to her and just as ironically cruel as some of monokuma's previous best yet at the same time the premise is so obviously and upfrontally absurd that it's hard for me to fully immerse myself in it I mean sure if this were all real and I was given no choice but to accept that it was true and really happening then I'm sure I would feel for Tojo perhaps even cry myself but this situation as presented within the game's story and as a piece of fiction is so outlandishly unrelatable that it comes across as far more farcical to me than it does sympathetic furthermore it just begs a lot of questions like yes it's fun it's over the top and it's interesting sting but frankly it's just a bit too much it comes completely out of nowhere and doesn't really have very many convincing ties to tojo's character up until this point I don't think the game really communicates effectively what makes her so specifically suited for the role she's been given beyond the most abstract gesturing at oh well she's diligent she's competent she does a lot of things for people but cleaning a school making pancakes and setting up a magic show are far different from acting in the role of a country's leader hell I don't even think her reputation of being able to carry out whatever order she's given is a very convincing argument for hiring her for that anyway I mean I wouldn't really want someone who only follows orders to be the Prime Minister would you well it's not like the plot doesn't function at least that's not especially High Praise I realize but as much as I'm seemingly complaining about this I don't want it to seem like it's the worst thing ever it's perfectly functional don't get me wrong but functional and resonant are two different things and while the story functions well enough to get the job done it doesn't do so with enough consideration to really resonate with me if that makes sense it's inoffensive but it doesn't really stir my emotions very much and it certainly falls short of the prior chapter in my eyes because of this speaking of Tojo I know this is kind of like what did you expect kind of thing to comment on but was it really necessary to have shots leering at her underwear while she was getting cut up I mean I realized that realistically her clothes would be the first thing to go if she's being bared down on by saw blades but it feels a bit tonally inappropriate to be getting cheesecake shots of her body while she's literally in the process of being tortured to death just me I don't know let me go ahead and get my remaining complaints out of the way so I can be a bit more positive the difficulty curve in this chapter is a little bit weird to me too in my opinion the first chapter wasn't painfully easy but it was still easy enough to wrap your head around it had Nuance it had several moving Parts But ultimately it balanced these things well to create a case with the perfect amount of starting difficulty in my eyes this takes a sharp upturn with chapter 2 where the moving Parts become so numerous and complexly intertwined that it just seems to be jumping the gun A little I guess sdr2 also had a fairly complicated second case with the case within the case serving to make it all feel a bit more tangled up but at the end of the day I feel like the actual murder was pretty clear-cut once you got around onto it this on the flip side seems pretty simple when you explain it in short form but the process of uncovering all of its layers takes so long and is so round about that it not only starts to overstay its welcome but makes it feel all the more circuitous maybe brevity would have helped this case more than anything but I'm just speculating at this point at the very least I can complement this case for being inventive and really upping the stakes I would say one of the only issues the early game has is feeling like it kind of takes its time to become danganramba and now it feels like we're fully in the swing of things Monica Still gets pretty unfortunately limited use and the fact that he was a late inclusion in the writer's room has become pretty evident by this point but even despite that the familiarly wacky Vibes are here and difficulty Spike or Not The Eccentric nature of the crimes on display truly make me feel right at home I'm getting burned for daring to care about characters in this narrative and that's a familiarly sweet pain and I'm beginning to really enjoy Cyrus friendship with momita and become ever more curious about what harukawa's assassin Talent means both for herself and her burgeoning relation ship with the cast it's these threads and promise of a familiarly good time that compel me despite some of my misgivings to carry on into Indy rv3's third chapter and boy oh boy Danganronpa has never been good with threes has it [Music] We Begin this chapter with meteors yeah you heard me a news reporter talks of meteors raining from the sky and how it's definitely totally real and people need to evacuate before we can think much more about that though we cut back to the action with everyone surveying Haruka was definitely fit for an assassin-esque lab within a few moments of discussion however Monokuma bumbles on by to tell us we've earned a prize for surpassing the trial he tries to call on the Cubs to Dole it out but monodam is pretty vocal about calling the shots now that he's got a rebellious strike in him even going so far as to call him the exocils to basically tell Monokuma he's old news and that he can't tell them what to do Monokuma is so shocked by his kids going rogue that he starts balding and goes catatonic leaving monodam in charge of the chapter's mascot proceedings of course at this point the Cubs just hand over what they were told to anyway which are new items to unlock more labs and previously inaccessible areas this leads us back to the pixel door we found before which when broken apart leads to a new staircase and a new floor floor 4 is a hellish corpse party-esque miasma of Creek floorboards and wall textures that look like they were ripped straight out of Silent Hill 3. the vibe is immaculately creepy and easily one of the best things about this chapter honestly there are some spare rooms but aside from candles they're basically Barren and the only notable thing about them is that there are holes in certain parts of the floor and the fact that the floors have no Nails in them meaning that they're just big slabs Laying across cross pieces needless to say I wouldn't recommend jumping around in them aside from that and creepy statues though there's also some new labs to discover up here the first worth noting is the artist lab belonging to yonaga which has a lot of supplies including sculpting wax it also has a front and back door with a cylinder and sliding lock respectively there's only one key that works for the front door and monodam eats it to prevent it from being used in a mystery game-esque fashion which he reckons would lead to another murder which basically ensures it can only be locked from inside anyway we also get to see shinguji's lab complete with an ancient Gold Leaf Katana that rubs off on everything gee I wonder what that reminds me of and a mysterious old handwritten booklet about a seance Ritual from some cursed Village which I'm sure will not become relevant to the plot soon in any way back outside we also find a statue which when taking a scroll we get reveals chabashira's lab a dojo with a lot of interesting things in it which would be a perfect setting for a cool investigation frankly but guess what it's never going to be so get your disappointment out of the way now we do get a scene of her flipping saira flat on his back in yumino shortly afterward though so if you wanted to see that for some reason there you go as we try to leave and regain some sense of normalcy we also see iruma and kibo in her lab as she tries to clean dust out of him and they both treat it in the most sensual sounding way possible and a lot of the dialogue is you know what never mind what they do on their own time is their business and I'm not interested in involving myself with returning to the floor that looks like someone was already murdered on it because it feels safe by comparison we see bald Monokuma leading us somewhere and give Chase going to the end of the hall saira deduces it's worth trying the last item here the hammer and does so by tossing it at the wall revealing it was a false wall that was concealing a hidden passage behind said hidden passage is a massive futuristic looking computer room which looks like a kiosk for the first Xbox reveal monotara claims the computer can be used to create an entirely different world but the Cubs collectively derail and disappear before much about that statement can be clarified so Sahara decides to leave it alone besides there's a flashback light found here anyway which Alma immediately suggests we bring to the dining hall after doing so momota drags harakawa into the meeting vowing to help her get along with everyone of course everyone still acts fearful of her and she's quick to point out that that's exactly why she hid her Talent from them in the first place because it was bound to cause problems claiming that they should all just agree to avoid her and go about their own business separately she disappears and everyone uses the flashback light they see a conjoined funeral for all of them not unlike the one we saw for akamatsu at the start of chapter 2 and of course none of them can quite understand what it was for they have some theories about either faking their deaths or it being symbolic or worse yet that they might already be dead and in some sort of afterlife but needless to say it's shaking them up regardless with a bit of free time I try the new casino mini games that are available and they're just reskinned versions of psychi taxi in mind mine I'll stick to the slots thank you and I do not have a problem don't project on me I try to hang out with harakawa afterward but she's not really in the mood so I instead pivot my attention to uh the aroma I guess sure why not she spends a lot of her time showing Sahara weird inventions and half insulting half coming on to him it's a weird and uncomfortable experience for everyone involved including you and I'd recommend moving on from it as fast as possible at night as saihara is leaving to do his training with momita he also sees that yonaga is spreading her religious tendrils even further which worries him considering how that went with Uno before at training momota has dragged harakawa along and though she's still very cold about it she seems to humor it once momota asks what she's running from and says that she should know and face whatever enemy troubles her or else she'll remain pathetic and cowardly this boldness seems to sway her and she claims that it's only because he'll bother her even more later if she doesn't saihara and momota both stay pretty bad at their exercise while harakawa flawlessly outclasses them in a matter of minutes and is quickly able to dismiss herself from the meeting though momenta still demands she continued to show up for subsequent meetings regardless the next morning he even goes out of his way to help drag her to the gym for a mandatory meeting as called by the Cubs in the gym which is now spotless since hoshi's death monodama is here to talk about motive and it's a really strange one they're claiming everyone can revive one of the four students who have already died and have them transfer back in using instructions found in the Necronomicon before anyone can even process this absolutely absurd sounding claim it becomes pretty clear that yonaga has successfully converted some people to her cult namely kibo chabashirat yumino shiragane and gokuhara furthermore gokuhara discovered more strange graffiti where he found it before and everyone wonders if it was a message left by the Dead the atmosphere is getting pretty strained by the supposed student council that yonaga has formed and for some reason their reveal backdrop looks like the Touhou films logo strange choice not really sure what the significance is there anyway they seem pretty determined to use that Necronomicon even if everyone else has some serious doubts about whether or not it's a good idea and I decide to de-stress by using my free time to check and see if harakawa is ready to actually hang out now to my surprise she actually is and in the process of getting to know her we actually learn quite a bit namely we learned that she was raised in an orphanage where she took care of the children that were younger than her which naturally gravitated toward her despite her lack of interest in being a caregiver while she was being raised there she was forcibly scouted by a cult organization who used its religious exterior to mask its illegal activities namely that of scouting children to become assassins they were originally going to scout another girl who harakawa was close to who she claims to have done everything with including playing as a couple in games of house which okay bye as hell but though she had more potential harukawa voluntarily took her place knowing that the profession would be too much for her and would break her she endured torment and abuse for the sake of her training and eventually the girl died anyway protecting another child filed in an accident but she still carries around that girl's memory to inspire herself throughout all of the loneliness and torture she endured it's genuinely haunting stuff and the degree to which she's able to speak casually of it because of how ingrained into her it is speaks volumes to what kind of life she's LED and why she's ultimately so sympathetic despite her icy exterior she's not great at appearing friendly but she does clearly care in her own way and despite her rather harsh sounding verbal tick of asking do you want to die whenever she's annoyed at someone she's ultimately pretty amicable to those who don't put their foot in their mouth around her upon completing her events she even claims that if Sahara wants so badly to help her get away from the Assassin business that he should use his skills as a detective to reduce complications in the world that lead to a profession like hers even being sought after or necessary to begin with and she seems to show more than a little belief in the idea that he can do so it's genuinely very sweet and I think this goes a long way along with things we'll talk more about as we go along to show that she's a very layered and well-considered character who feels truly three-dimensional in all the ways that matter most speaking of harakawa at night she drags us to training where it's just her and Zahara because apparently momota claimed not to be feeling well when she asks him why he's doing this seeing as a detective probably doesn't need to say hero responds that it helps him not to fixate so much on things and that spending time with momita helps him not to worry about it harakawa claims to be jealous of how Carefree he is because of how rigorously she was made to abandon anything that wasn't essential for her profession and though saira tries to relate to her she resists buddying up too much though saira still says he'll see her the next day as she returns to her room she's swarmed by the student council who basically tell her that they're not going to allow anyone to walk around at nighttime anymore because the last murder occurred during the night she tells Sahara about it the next morning which really does prove that bonds can strengthen if you both have something to complain to each other about and then he heads to the cafeteria as is customary within everyone is arguing with the council about their decisions namely that they've decided to block the manhole outside because it tempts people who want to escape claiming that they should all just get along and agree to stay here forever to prevent further violence the Cubs show up to try to stabilize things and even offer a new flashback light to unify everyone but hits the fan when yonaga flattens it under her heel claiming that the student council has also decided not to allow further use of them that they'll only remind the students of the outside world and tempt them even further monafani claims it will be really bad for their plans if the students don't use them and the discussion spirals into disarray they're even continuing with their plans for the resurrection ceremony claiming that they want to bring back a mommy because he seemed to know things the others didn't as things Pitter out momita is looking pretty bad claiming to have chills and heads back to his room for the time being at night he still doesn't feel much better not having been able to sleep or eat very well and telling Sahara and harakawa to both go along without him or otherwise rescheduled due to the council Shenanigans harakawa says she'll excuse his absence but she doesn't want him changing the Meetup time momenta entrusts the training to saihara until he feels better and saira heads out to the Courtyard outside they're both seemingly confronted by chabasha but harakawa quickly realizes she's not here on behalf of the council No in fact tabashira has never been with them only having pretended to be on their side to look out for yumino and then she begs them both to help her foil the ceremony tonight because she fears what will happen if it succeeds they both agree and head to yoniga's lab and shabashira calls to her since she'll only answer the door for the council's members as they're invited in they all see ghoulish wax figures of the students who've perished so far clearly made by yonica herself they ask her to reconsider the ritual but she pretty much completely blows them off realizing in the process that shabashira has likely betrayed the council and ushers them out telling yumino as much as she comes by chabashira tries to get her to snap out of things and begs her to act on her own feelings but it doesn't seem to have much effect as a rift Rises between the two heading back the group laments their inability to do anything about the situation but hope that nothing will go wrong overnight trying to plan further action as they head to bed when morning comes harakawa comes by with momota to wake Sahara with the latter even giving her the nickname Maki roll which she seems to be a bit incense by momota claims all of his behavior has been because of his nerves regarding all this talk of ghosts and spirits but though Cyrus seems adequately convinced I'm not sure if I am they all head upstairs to see if they can take another shot at convincing yonaga not to go through with things but of course the door is locked and yumino is stationed outside when told to call for yonica though she claims she already has and has gotten no response which prompts everyone to understandably worry hearing the Ruckus Oma arrives offering to use his lock picking skills to open the door for everyone and they reluctantly ask for his assistance in the matter lending just that they're able to pop the door open but predictably they discover yoniga dead inside laying in a puddle of her own blood and surrounded by her own wax figures which are dangling upside down from the ceiling this is a chapter 3 however which has traditionally always been a double murder so we can't put our guards down yet of course everyone is as shocked as they usually are but we already know the song and dance momota leaves the investigating to sahira and harukawa which actually make for a pretty good team for this sort of thing with harakawa's assassination expertise actually proving pretty useful to interpreting the details of crime scenes which I find to be quite unexpectedly novel it just goes to show that detective stories can cleverly utilize plenty of different types of characters for these sorts of things in ways you wouldn't normally expect and I find that a real strength to the writing anyway the Monokuma file is quick to let us know that yonaga died at 2AM and was done in by a fatal stab wound to the back of the neck she also had some blunt force trauma atop her head but that doesn't seem to be what finished the deed so it definitely raises questions about what exactly happened to her at this point shinguji gets pretty insistent that they use the cage child Seance described in his creepy little book to contact yonica's spirit and find out what happened that way clearly not many people trust that this will work but yumino feeling depressed wants to give it a shot since it needs to be in the dark it can't be done in shinguji's lab so yumino suggests one of the empty rooms the middle one in particular and saihare gets to investigating with harakawa while they do so behind yonica's corpse they mysteriously find some bloody duct tape with her hair on it and beside her is the Necronomicon meant for the ritual the the instructions within involve making an effigy then burning the book itself to sprinkle its ashes on the Effigy once this is done the person performing the ritual is supposed to call the spirit's name three times and wait to be tapped on the shoulder this clearly doesn't seem to have anything to do with why the wax figures are hanging from the ceiling nor why the one of akamatsu has that Katana from shinguji's Lab inside of it but we might be able to get some hints about that through further examination of the lab itself first of all the katana's tip has blood on it so it's safe to say that it was probably used to deliver yonaga's fatal Stab Wound but why would it be in the wax figure when this wouldn't really adequately Hide It Well by the back door they see gold leaf rubbed off on the sliding log with further examination Sahara notices that it can be moved rather easily the room appears to have been locked from both sides during the murder but that just means that inevitably some sort of trick is afoot the blood beside yonaga also seems a bit dry and with this we need to head to shinguji's lab to look into details about the katana Alma is there to grab the sheath they need for the Seance as they've already gotten the iron cage and dog statue he gives a look at the pages is about the rituals so we can see for ourselves how it's supposed to look and be performed and Sahara agrees to go check out the Seance just in case switching out for kibo because everyone wonders if a robot really counts saira joins in and follows the instructions he's given to set up by shinguji of course shinguji needs a volunteer to take on the spirit and though yumino speaks up first it's actually tabashira who steps up to insist she do it telling yumino that she should Express her feelings honestly train her heart and push forward with everyone living her life to the fullest seeming to make up with her which yep death flag chapasha follows the instruction she's given going to the center of shinguji's Magic Salt Circle as everyone carefully arranges the pieces while trying not to disturb said Circle everyone stands in different Corners blows out the candles and sing the song as described in the ritual in the middle of the singing There's an odd crashing sound and when the song ends shinguji cannot get yonaga to answer from Beyond the Grave everyone begins to fear the worst and shinguji instructs them to briefly light the candles back up seemingly bothered that the ritual didn't succeed careful about doing things to the letter he also gets everyone to carefully remove the supplies in reverse order but when the blanket is lifted shibashira is still collapsed on the floor surrounded by blood yumino rushes to throw the cage off of her but it's too late chabashira is dead now too and let me just say before we get too much deeper into this that I'll at least give them one thing discovering another body in the middle of an investigation is pretty darn cool chapter 3 has always been the double feature in every previous Dr game but this shakes things up just slightly in a way that definitely makes you anticipate fearfully what's to come and given the context of the scene it definitely raises a lot of questions about what could possibly be going on everyone is predictably dumbfounded and shinguji asks the Cubs what the class should do if there are two murderers to be found in the class trial though monodam tries to keep his grip on control he actually has no idea which means they have to call back baldokuma and beg him to take back the Reigns Monokuma then does so revealing his mute bald counterpart to be a paid replacement he slotted in to get some vacation time which is actually pretty hilarious and answers that in this situation only the first murder will count and investigating the second crime will basically be a waste of time because he's not even going to bother Prosecuting it we will come back to what I think of this writing decision later the Monokuma file details a stabbed to the back of chabashira's neck which gets momita's hackles up about a potential curse and though he clings to her akala she shoves him a bit harshly which seems to injure him a bit more than you'd think it should and he leaves kivo lights up the room with his flashlight eyes which Irma installed for him and with this new visibility everyone is able to investigate more effectively they find some blood on the cage which seems to suggest that she might have been stabbed right when the cage was lifted and also realized the floorboard underneath her is loose the magic circle is in complete disarray of course so there's no way to see how it looked beforehand but shinguji claims he's got it memorized so it was doubtlessly perfect there's also a blood stain on the cloth but no holes through it that seem to have been stabbed through in the back of the room there's a small hole that can be dropped through and in doing so we find more blood a bloody sickle some dry blood stains a little farther away and under a floorboard a hole that leads into the next room over and we even realize that one of the crossbeams has been deliberately sawed short this being very close by the loose floorboard we found exiting the room it seems almost like we've discovered a third body in Oma but he's quick to spring up and say that we've been epically pranked bro the blood is real though because as he's quick to point out he tried to look into the neighboring room walked in and fell right through the floor because the cross piece was gone as he staggers weekly away due to his blood loss Monokuma calls the gang together for trial time buffer Monokuma shuffles us behind the waterfall the elevator drops and are we ready to get this mess out of the way yeah well part of me is and part of me isn't but honestly we might as well preserve as much of our precious sanity as we can you know why I've said before when I really hated a trial that I was going to work a little faster in summarizing them well I'm gonna do that again here last time I did this was with two three however I did get some complaints that it was a bit more difficult to follow so I'm gonna try to balance this a bit more but I really don't have it in me to follow this one B for B because it's going to be hard enough for me to talk earnestly about it in the first place so uh I hope this works for you guys if you are at all confused about the cases proceedings I invite you to please take comfort in the fact that even if I conveyed it all painfully slowly it would only make a marginal amount more sense shiragane starts the conversation Strong by doing her best haga Curry impression and insisting it was ghosts it wasn't moving on a lot of chattering is done about who could or couldn't enter yonaga's lab because of who was and wasn't a student council member Oma briefly trolls everyone by claiming to be the culprit even though he clearly isn't but he can't describe the locked room trick turns out the trick was the katana was used to hit the sliding lock after the culprit left but how was that done well simple they stuck the katana in one of the upside down mannequins spun it around and let the Rope unwind after they left so the FG nearest the door would spin around and the katana's hilt would smack the sliding lock you know perfectly reasonable thing to do easily replicable don't worry about it Oma admits he's not the culprit and was trying to lure out the real one so good job throwing him off jerks he also briefly slams yumino for not really caring about shabashiro while she was alive and acting like she cares now and momota tells her to face that death head on so she can make sense of her conflicting feelings so everyone officially decides to start talking about chabashira's death even if Monokuma claimed it was pointless to do so because they think it may help solve yonica's death too Source dude just trust me the various blood stains the weird noise the displaced floorboard and all the other weird anomalies at the scene are all taken into consideration to pull together the weirdest possible theory in history that the sickle was hidden under the sheet but over the cage and the culprit stomped on the floorboard after the Seance started to deliberately cause it to seesaw because of the solid cross piece below it this would then cause the board to lift chabashira into the air where her neck would instantly come into contact with the sickle and kill her shinguji is quick to accuse yumino because she seemed to flippantly pick the room where these rigged floor words were but with quick thinking we proved that all of the rooms were rigged regardless as proven by Oma's little slip and slide through the floor of the neighboring one seeing as this is an obvious ploy to blame whoever suggested a room it becomes pretty clear who did this but we still have to answer some questions like perhaps how a culprit could have kept everyone away from falling through the floor or done this in the pitch black while shinguji drew the magic circle and he insisted nobody disturb it and follow his instructions to the letter he could ensure that shabashira's placement was right at the center of the necessary floorboard too as for how he could operate in the dark though Cyrus says he could have easily done so by stooping to the floor and feeling along the trails of salt as a guide because as kibo points out with his handy dandy picture he took of the Seance circle before he was shoot out of the room there were additional lines running to the corners that were not part of the actual Circle as drawn in the ritual booklet I have some words to say about this and like many other things I will be saving them for now Sahara claims that shinguji threw the sickle under the floor when he was retrieving the sheet and immediately admits he did it surprisingly enough but he's pretty confident that he's in the clear because like Monokuma said the culprit of the second murder doesn't count and he still insistent that he didn't kill yonaga however the dried blood under the floor and in different spots have Sahara wondering if he's telling the whole truth about that you see yonago was actually killed in this room too because she came to get a candle for the ritual while shinguji Was preparing the room to use for this Seance plan later on obviously since she walked in he wouldn't be able to use this method later without her pointing the finger at him immediately so he decided to kill her on the spot by smacking her over the head with a loose floorboard as for the art lab the extra blood is from the killing blow when she was stabbed in the neck as the first blow only knocked her out shinguji starts to verifiably lose it and seemingly interrupts himself with a woman's voice oh goody oh boy everyone freaks out about this cartoonishly creepy behavior and we get some more Danganronpa patented thinly veiled transphobia for the road and if you think I'm reaching momento literally calls him a transphobic slur in the original Japanese script so don't even at me Sahara pins him down with the duct tape as decisive evidence claiming that he must have used it initially to stop yonica's head from bleeding while he moved her but neglected to get rid of it later when it fell behind her body shinguji breaks down while the other voice he's using tells him to calm down and pay his classmates no heed but when the dried blood on the floorboard is brought up to tie this whole thing together he breaks at this point he can't deny the truth any longer and confesses to his motive behind the crimes he admits that he had a unique relationship with his now deceased sister who he seems to have manifested some kind of traumatic interjective and claims to have been for a long time now killing girls he thought were worthy of being sent to the afterlife to be friends with her and keep her company in the most ham-fisted way imaginable the theme of the chapter is made to clearly be about how we respond to and confront death and this would be interesting if the everything hadn't just happened around it shinguji is tied up by the Cubs spun around to the point of sickness and dropped through a floor hatch into a Boiling Pot where he is burned alive seemingly at random monodam joins him in the flames and they go out together shinguji briefly Rises as a spirit from the pot to try to join his sister but both she and Monokuma toss cleansing salt on him to melt him into nothingness and they look on at the Moon together all the students are just as done with this as I am all my hammers in the game's themes a bit more by saying that lies aren't always a bad thing and yumino decides to stop repressing her emotions by crying a lot which makes everyone else cry too gokuhara carries her back when she Tuckers herself out and everyone walks on Moma took coughs hard into his hand revealing by way of a super bloody Palm that he's actually been acting weird because he has a vaguely defined disease of some sort that is slowly killing him which is revealed in a way I can only liken to how 99 of Hollywood films convey that someone has tuberculosis he claims that he's not going to die here the Survivor count drops to nine and chapter 3 finally ends okay where to even start perhaps since I know I'm going to be furious for quite a bit of this I should start with the positives because hey maybe that will help lighten the mood for just a little bit right let's hope so I think this chapter has quite a few similarities to Chapter 3 of sdr2 and that the daily life portion while not perfect is easily the best part of the chapter and contains quite a bit worth actually caring about the atmosphere of the new floor like I said is honestly pretty damn good and the tension that rises between everyone as a result of the creation of the student council is actually pretty decent at creating an unsettling tone in particular the scene where yonica stops on the flashback light is a real shocker and it genuinely goes a long way to raise your hackles about how much her influence has grown in a short amount of time and what kind of damage she could do in the long term if she's continuously allowed to do as she pleases by contrast this also lends a sense of genuine shock to it when she's the one who ends up dead later this is sort of telegraphed a bit too soon by yumino literally saying she can't get her to answer the door but it's still not who you'd probably have been expecting to bite it next so it does wonders to establish a fittingly mysterious tone to begin with the continued development of the training Trio as they would come to be known is extremely charming and I honestly really appreciate how they all bounce off one another I couldn't remember much to say about Sahara and harakawa together in particular before this but having redone her free times and seen how she worked with Sahara during this particular investigation segment I actually think the two have a lot of subtle friendly chemistry to appreciate it's not as overstated as some other friendships in the game so I think it's easy to miss but I enjoy seeing them talk with each other and this really helps considering that Sahara and momota already had a pretty good thing going and this helps integrate the three together all the more seamlessly I can take or leave the burgeoning romance between harakawa and momota themselves it's serviceable and certainly sweet of a bit plain but I just enjoy seeing any of these three together whether it's all of them at once or just a couple at a time while I also have plenty negative to say about the direction taken with the character Kenichi suzamura absolutely kills it no pun intended with his performance as shinguji in the latter half of this trial when he starts really explosively yelling and going all out you feel the layers peeling back on an otherwise very restrained but subtly Eerie performance and I think this does a lot for his reveal that while I don't think it saves the writing it certainly makes it a bit more tolerable simply because of the talent on display so that's saying quite a bit like I said before I don't really play the Danganronpa games dubbed so I can't really comment on the English portrayals much here but I mean no offense by excluding them they're all very talented people some of whom I've spoken to or even worked with my relationship with the series just predates the localizations as I've said so I tend to stick with what I hear first anyway that is unfortunately about all the good I have to say here because now I've got to start talking about the Myriad of issues that mire this chapter for me hang on tight I'll try to handle this as best as I can let's start small the student council now I said before that I kind of liked their presence here and you're going to hear me saying this a lot but I do in theory I find the idea of the student council and their role in this chapter a lot more tantalizing than what's more or less actually given to us my problem here is that they kind of just pop in and out of existence a little too quickly to leave the proper amount of impact instead of seeing yonica slowly but steadily convince people to join her we just kind of suddenly see yumino converted in Chapter 2 then suddenly see way more people converted in chapter 3. sure chabashira may be lying but everyone else barring gokuhara is talked into it off screen in what seems like a single night at which point they all become extremely loyal and militant in following yonica's order again I think this definitely could work but it needed to be built up more and this same problem carries forward into the group's dissolution too because as soon as the trial's over everyone basically just concludes that yonica's God nonsense was nothing more than hogwash and just gives up on it I'm not saying that Danganronpa needs to thoroughly cover cult deprogramming or anything because it hardly has the time but a gesture at even the idea that the process would take a hot minute would at least make this seem a bit less apropos of nothing if you get what I'm saying speaking of apropos of nothing why the hell does shinguji kill chabashira and no they don't just get to say because he's crazier because he wanted to send more girls to his sister the first claim is just the lazy writer's excuse for when they have no better explanation and the latter still doesn't make sense if you follow his own logic how is that well allow me to explain so when shinguji kills yonica it's actually a pretty clean crime the duct tape is what screws him ultimately but we'll get to that in a few other than that he's pretty much got everything worked out the locked room trick creates some decent confusion about the process the scene distracts a lot from the important details and most importantly the most damning evidence is hidden under the floorboards of an entirely different room from where the body is found if he had just left well enough alone he would have been home free but he's stupid enough to try his luck for a second kill and even allows it to take place in the exact same room if this second murder hadn't occurred there is no earthly reason anyone would have discovered the extra evidence that got him caught he literally plays himself in the most inconceivably stupid way imaginable his sister voice admonishes him for being too greedy and getting himself caught because he wanted to send more friends to her but this doesn't make any sense either think about it if he had left it all alone after the first kill and nobody was able to solve it in the trial they would all have been executed and he would get even more girls killed anyway it'd be a win-win as far as his goals are concerned so there's really no decent reason for him to screw himself like this oh except for the writers need it to be a double murder because this is Danganronpa and it's chapter 3. that is the only reason I can think of that he does this and it is purely because of adherence to the formula rather than a reason that actually makes sense for the character but wait that's not the only thing about his plan that bothers me there's also the fact that the logic just kind of sucks the sliding lock Katana thing was already goofy enough but whatever sure I can roll with it it's fine the entire Seance murder though this stuff is just kind of ridiculous I'm sorry I know your mileage may vary on some of these things so I'm not gonna make a huge deal about them detective fiction typically requires at least some suspension of disbelief after all but mine can only be strained so much before it starts to kind of take away from the actual mystery itself so for starters the sickle it's under the sheet but on top of the cage and shinguji can hide it because he's the one who puts the sheet on however when he's putting it on he's clearly Fanning it out now this leads to one of two problems for me either one you have to hold the sickle through the sheet and create a super obvious lump in the sheet that literally everyone can see which makes it clear that you've hidden something under it or two you just drop it and it clangs against the iron cage which is even more obvious I don't see how you could put the sickle where it's supposed to be without doing one of these two things now let's talk about the magic circle as I said before the salt is used as the explanation for how shinguji is able to move in the dark to the floorboard he needs to jump on to do the sea sock keep in mind that while he is doing this he is supposed to be singing loudly with everyone else for the Seance so do you mean to tell me that nobody can tell from his voice that he's ducking to the floor moving from the corner across the room and most of all that he's jumping on the floor I can maybe buy that since everyone's voices are together that they might be distracted enough not to notice his voice shifting directions but I cannot fathom that he would be able to jump slam his feet down on the floor like he is slaying a Goomba and nobody was able to gather from his voice that he was doing this try singing loudly while doing a huge midair jump Stomp I think you'll find it pretty difficult to mask that extremely obvious action while doing so I also just don't know what to think about the fact that he was able to do this without falling through the floor Wiley Coyote style you mean it just lifted back up I know the drop to below the floor isn't that steep but it's still deep enough that I don't think you'd just be able to step back out with ease I mean hell if om has anything to go by the drop literally made his head bleed I know shinguji is quite tall and Oma's Gremlin size but that says a lot about the distance of the drop and I find it difficult to imagine that you could just stomp with both feet on the floorboard especially with a sod cross piece below it and no Nails in said floorboards and not plummet below the floor in the process to top it all off the duct tape which does him in also doesn't really make sense to me supposedly he puts it on yoniga's head to prevent her headwind from bleeding while he transports her and he fails to notice it fall off behind her the climax inference even shows it pathetically waving off and behind her back but this is duct tape duct tape strong enough to prevent her head from bleeding for a hot minute there is absolutely no reason that the tape should be weak enough to casually fall off only a few minutes later especially if it was strong enough to rip off some of her hair in the process there's just no making sense of this no matter how I slice it the logic of this case is really flimsy and while I might could Overlook a couple of these issues in a vacuum they really stack up when they're all together like this and of course that's not to even mention the absolutely horrendous writing decisions made with shinguji's character toward the back half of this trial first of all let me poke this Hornet's Nest yet again and come back to what I said about genocider's show back in Danganronpa 1. now I already said before that the serial killer with the dissociative disorder Trope was super overdone and harmful at the best of times but I could at least give Sho some amount of credit and that she takes that Trope and subverts your expectations she shows up in the middle of the murder plot but she doesn't actually turn out to be the Killer and furthermore she doesn't even end up killing anyone in the entire game that was unexpected and while I take issue with the character stereotype she was conceived from I found the way she was utilized kind of funny in how it deliberately avoided some of that trope's typical trappings here however it is brought back in full force and not only is it played completely straight they had to add in these sibling relations angle for no other reason than cheap shock factor and for everyone else to stand around looking shocked for the gag of it all I've talked time and again about how Danganronpa has a serious problem with bringing up this particular subject for the sake of ill-conceived and painfully unfunny humor but they still haven't realized they should knock it off yet and by this point it's getting tiresome to put it mildly I can't even begin to express how frustrating this is especially when you consider the fact that when you really think about it from all the evidence shown shinguji is probably the one being victimized by his sister now we don't know this for certain and I'm not saying that he becomes an innocent character even if it's true he's still a self-admitted serial killer and that alone is enough to hate his guts but I find it a little contemptible that the game is clearly treating this subject extremely flippant when you consider that she seems older than him his free time events suggests that she was extremely Hands-On about directing his path in life she made his own clothes for him and all of the things his voice of Her says to him are concerning to put it mildly taking all of this into account it's not difficult to imagine that she was in a position of authority here which means that yeah their horrible interactions probably were not his idea to initiate and the person who should have taught him better than that took advantage of him like I said I could be wrong about this it just really gets under my skin considering what's in the text because it seems pretty obviously like Danganronpa is not only making light of extremely serious subject matter yet again but is even going the extra mile to paint victims of acts like these as grisly little weirdos who would surprise No One by turning into serial killers over it and I really resent that notion and to anyone who would insist that I give the more benefit of the doubt I would point you to the aforementioned slurs in the trial a full seven years after they had time to learn from the Chihiro Fiasco and the fact that they still can't write a good double murder case after this long of trying as adequate proof that I really have no obligation to believe that they're good at learning any kind of lesson again I must reiterate my practical catchphrase by this point but the writers could do whatever they wanted to explain shinguji's motives hell the fact that the writers could do whatever they want is probably as relevant as it ever has been in this game in particular and yet that sure is what they chose and even when you peel away the layers upon layers of uncomfortable you still get what basically amounts to he did it because he was crazy I guess which as a motive is practically a complete non-sequitur it means basically nothing other than well uh I we sure needed a murder to happen better make him insane and speaking of non-sequitur we can finally start to wrap this chapter discussion up because we're getting to the last couple of things I want to talk about first of all the Necronomicon pray tell why is it here functionally speak taking its only direct utility to the plot is that it gets yonaga to go out looking for a candle at night and it gives her a reason to have wax statues other than that it uh briefly creates some conflict in the group but the student council was pretty much doing that already so the ritual just adds another layer to it and I can't really think of any other practical use for it it doesn't even end up getting used at all and even Monokuma is like damn well I guess nobody cares about this thing and eats it into narrative irrelevance at the end of the chapter when nobody bothered to use it for its intended purpose so what was even the point of introducing it as a plot point at all and that leads me to my final question what is the deal with the rule about the two murders Monaco literally only mentions it after both murders have occurred so it literally can't factor into the killings themselves or how they were carried out in any way the only seeming use for this rule is so that there can be a surprising moment in the trial where shinguji casually admits to chabashira's murder but points out that it doesn't matter because it was committed second and only the first murder accounts but when you think about it this doesn't really make any sense there's no reason for him to do this other than gloating he seems to imply that because he admits to the second one that there's no way he could have done the first but that doesn't even track for a second and everyone basically sees straight through it the instant he even tries to claim it in fact having him confirm that he did shabasha's murder and even admitting that all of saira's deductions about the process were correct makes it even easier to expose him for yonica's murder in the long run if he was throwing it out there to try to save his skin he literally did the opposite of what would help him this rule has basically no purpose it might as well not even be here and not to get fan fictiony but you know what would have been way better what if the rule was part of the motive a sort of buy one get one free offer by Monokuma instead of the second murder not mattering have it be so that if one murder occurs that person can get off scot-free no strings attached if a second murder is committed by a different person I hate shinguji's motive but if the writers really wanted to stay married to it have him kill yonaga perform the Seance and then trick yumino into killing chibashira can you imagine how gut-wrenching it would be to not only realize that you have this guy red-handed but that you can't do a thing about it and then not only does someone far more likable pay the price for what he engineered but then you have to spend another entire chapter knowing this dude who has verifiably killed one of your classmates is just hanging around that would be absolutely horrifying and not to get ahead of myself but I think it would do a lot for the partnership between two certain characters in chapter four and it could even serve as a good excuse for the introduction of a certain program seeing as it's been used for rehabilitation purposes in the past and shinguji would seem like the perfect type of person to be put into something like that I'm just thinking out loud here I'm sure you could probably come up with other better ideas too but this is just one of many examples I think you could Envision assuming this rule was given even a smidge of plot significance in a way that didn't make it seem utterly pointless to bring up oh God how many words have I been going on for now probably plenty enough by this point chapter 3 is a mess plain and simple it is easily the worst in the game for me and even its most interesting ideas cannot come close to saving it it needed far more of what could have made it work and far less of everything else it is so petrified of Breaking Free of the typical chapter 3 formula that it ironically fails to innovate in the ways that might have finally given us a good third chapter for one of these games it fails spectacularly at being new and fresh and simultaneously fails to even be as good as the case as it's trying to imitate the structure of on every level it is a train wreck perhaps only top 10 levels of awfulness by Chapter 3 of ultra despair girls and that is a frighteningly low bar that it's somehow only barely clears and chapter 4 is lucky that it is so much better by comparison [Music] Our Story begins with a strange message said to be from a few days prior a video of one runtero amami Speaking directly into the camera evidently to himself as he hints unfortunately though he seems to be explaining some things we only get glimpses at it with the video skipping around at certain tantalizing points what we do gather is that the killing game will continue until only two survivors remain that this isn't his first something that anyone who finds out who he is will come after him and the most ominous statement of all you wanted this killing game so you have to win no matter what but of course no time to unpack all of that we've got to get to the dining hall it's not exactly a pleasant morning considering all the remaining characters seem to hate chapter 3 as much as I did but yumino at least seems to have taken her experiences to heart and is trying to become more energetic and hold her head high she's going through an adjustment phase so she's not perfect at it but it seems like she was at least inspired enough to take some action meanwhile Goku Hurricane's in to warn everyone that the mysterious horse text has been added to yet again still can't read it though Monokuma brings along some more items with the Cubs Two for opening more locations and one card key they claim is a motive of course that means Oma has to be a brat and steal it and momota chases after him Monokuma just waves it off and clarifies that another flashback light is also hanging out somewhere to be found monotaro seemingly has Amnesia and everyone gets to work looking around for what's new that brings us to place the Levee Stone on a platform near iruma's lab which opens up what seems to be kibo's right next to it it's a high-tech sci-fi-ish place but he evidently doesn't actually like it very much saying he'd prefers something a lot more down to earth with the Japanese theme back on the Silent Hill floor we can use the brush on the scroll to roll it up and reveal another staircase leading to floor 5. it seems to be chapel-like and has quite the colorful Monokuma statues we see shiragane's lab here where she makes saihara a stiff drink for his troubles and my screen glitches out hmm uh yeah I'm starting to see what people mean when they say the PC version of this game isn't very well optimized well I've already been seeing that considering the execution audio very often falls behind the actual video but I guess you can really only get this game to run decently on a PS4 huh anyway there's also Sahara's lab too it looks like your typical snooty sherlock-esque office with supplies tons of Case Files a fireplace and a Shelf full of dangerous chemicals I half expect Sahara to enter his mind palace here and discover the truth of the boomerang but thankfully that does not come to pass momota shows up though and even though he wasn't able to find and catch Oma he did find the flashback light which everyone gathers in the dining hall to see Oma even comes back for it but claims not to have found a place to use the card key which sus momota flips the light on when his bravery is challenged and everyone sees both the meteors and groups littering the streets who are basically doomers claiming that Humanity brought it on themselves and just deserved to be permanently nuked from existence momentum mentions a plan that evidently existed to save human vanity from the meteorites thought up by all countries which shiragane calls the Gopher project but Oma says he seems to remember it failing and harukawa concurs irama starts to go stir crazy and in the end everyone can't seem to connect all of the memories they've retrieved into one coherent narrative though Oma claims he thinks they only need a bit more to put the pieces together with a bit of free time on our hands I decided to finish off Irma's since I already started them and she basically confesses her love to saihara claiming that she should only have the courage to return the statement when he clarifies that he uh never said that she immediately clams up and stumbles out of the room while screaming her last event involves her basically just giving Sahara her garments by using a device to instantly zap them into his hands and makes him promise to go on a date with her when they get out this is the weirdest day of saira's life speaking of weird the nighttime and morning announcements go through some strange soap opera drama when monotaro and monofani become involved okay what did I just say about this kind of show oh and then he starts beating her because that's also totally a funny thing to make jokes about the absolute comedic Gauntlet of Danganronpa everybody jokes about sibling romance and domestic abuse this is really the stuff they were proud enough to leave in the final draft God help me at least we have another nice nighttime training scene though although uh this is just lending more Credence to my observation about the CGS being more rustier than previously what exactly is up with harukawa's arm here I I mean I know it's like perspective but there's not enough of a noticeable cut off for her elbow here just kind of seems to blend into the rest of her shirt which makes it look like she's got one regular sized arm and one extremely short arm well anyway speaking of harukawa she asks saihara quite suddenly while momita is going to the bathroom if he liked akamatsu as in the like liked sort of way and then wonders aloud if that would be too weird considering they've only been here for such a short amount of time and akamatsu's time with saira was even shorter she seems to be asking for her own reasons and ultimately decides it's not to too important but saira is understandably a bit thrown off by this thinking it's cruel to so casually bring something so personal like this up and then decides she doesn't really care about the answer momota shows up right on time to interrupt the tension and get silly again though so it works out in the morning gokuhara is demanding they finally fight Monokuma but everyone else has some obvious concerns well except for Oma he doesn't want to fight Monokuma either but he seems determined to actually participate in the game and win which earns him a punch in the face from momita who is getting increasingly fed up with him at this point Ira claims she has something in mind to save everyone and as we wonder about what she means we get a short cute scene where yumino trains herself together with Sahara and gokuhara and jabashira's lab when training rolls around in the evening momota decides to forego the exercise and just have everyone chat together while they do so harukawa confides more about herself and her upbringing to the both of them things we already discussed when talking about her free times but which are laid out a bit more explicitly here in some respects it definitely reiterates how closed off harakawa has been made to be through her experiences and why perhaps this unconventional Trio Dynamic which has forcibly dragged her out of her shell has meant a lot to her momota says that both she and Sahara are carrying too many burdens to handle alone and should always be more willing to carry those burdens with the help of other people which inspires them both to continue doing their best meanwhile elsewhere Oma calls out Monokuma to talk in private Monokuma asks if he's going to use that motive and he says he's come up with an idea for how to make things more interesting while doing so a certain someone is planning something interesting he says and proposes the motive to be used there Monokuma says he really is an evil bastard and seemingly agrees to which omo responds with an uncharacteristically ghoulish expression that he will drag the world into the pits of Terror this is definitely supposed to be a tone shift but I uh think this reveal Sprite could have gone through a bit more work perhaps uh kind of didn't hit me like I think they wanted it to because the art was so distracting well your mileage may vary in the morning Oma and irama don't show up to the cafeteria but at night we find out at least why the latter didn't she says she's got something ready in the computer lab and everyone is heading over and once we get there we learn exactly what she's been cooking up looks like bonatora wasn't blowing smoke when he said this computer could make another world because that's exactly what iruma claims to have done found a world within the computer where no killing game exists everyone is of course a bit reluctant to follow her lead especially when Monokuma claims to be the one who made it in the first place but she did beg and she claims to have scoured the program to delete everything dangerous from it that Monokuma initially planted Monokuma does claim to have hidden a secret about the in the inside world did I really script that Monokuma does claim to have hidden a secret about the outside world inside the game world too though which does mean that everyone is at least a little more invested in trying it out if only to see if they can find that valuable information with that in mind everyone sits around prepared to put on their brand new Oculus quests too when irama tells them to make sure to insert the colored chords in the proper two ports on the back for Consciousness and memory respectively to make sure everything goes right she doesn't know exactly what will happen if you do it wrong but she anticipates that it's nothing good yumino tries to remember which chord is which by talking about which hand she holds her Chopsticks in and everyone plugs themselves into the killing free metaverse when they do a boot up screen notifies them that they're being welcomed to what a shocker the Neo World program this program is not much like the one from sdr2 though it's practically in name only as the art style should clearly signify everyone is chibi the perspective is top down and they're all pretty disenchanted about it as everyone gets acclimated irama explains some of the rules like the fact that objects cannot be broken here that all avatars have equal strength and that to log out you need only go to the phone in the starting room and say your own name into it outside the room on the wall is a map of the virtual world which we can now see is a mansion in the middle of a snowy Wilderness and oh boy I'm sure that doesn't and call to mind any harrowing events and outside that apparently nothing exists the world just stops Oma goes off to search on his own and gokuhara offers to go along to keep an eye on him meanwhile Irma gives a tour around the place first at the mansion's roof which has a pair of binoculars in a Supply Closet which only holds a wooden lattice and a carpet down by the river iruma shows us the bridge doesn't go far enough to cross and tells Sahara to retrieve the broken signpost further Downstream to make a makeshift Bridge since it can't be broken when walked on it fits perfectly so everyone can move to the chapel across the way and Oma returns with gokuhara claiming to have found nothing when everyone passes the way they all temporarily black out and Irma clarifies that this is the loading zone where the game has to load the other half of the map meaning that for a brief moment you won't be able to see or hear anything while crossing and that sound from one side can't pass through to the other that doesn't sound threatening at all in the chapel there's a lot of crap to sort through so the team divides into groups to search around iruma and Oma whisper about something to each other and then she decides how to split every everyone up herself before momota can get a word in edgewise she sends him to the mansion roof Oma to the salon and just says three more people should search the mansion gokuhara and shiragane volunteer and momita asks Sahara to be the third to which he agrees everyone else is told to stick behind here at the chapel with irama as the Mansion group crosses the bridge irama runs out and knocks the signpost from the bridge into the river claiming that her hand slipped but being the most obvious liar in existence as the Mansion team searches all around for the secret of the outside world it seems nothing turns up and eventually shiragane comes to tell Sahara that while she didn't find anything she thinks she saw iruma through the dining hall window about 10 minutes prior both are confused since she should be on the chapel side but just as they begin to discuss this they hear a crash outside and even more mysteriously they hear keebo's voice running outside to check on things they spot gokuhara who claims not to have seen anything but heard the noise they head to the chapel and everyone on the other side suggests Sahara look for a replacement Bridge Oma shows up to point out that somehow the bridge has gotten stuck on a rock over by the Mansion side and they put it back in its rightful place when everyone crosses harikawa says they all need to log out to check on Irma and momita seems to be completely missing at this point everyone logs out one by one leaving just saira and Oma behind before Sahara can log out Oma stops him to say that he should be hanging out with momita and be friends with him instead to help save everyone saira pauses in angry silence before logging out not even dignifying the suggestion with the response Oma by himself claims he won't give up so easily as Sahara exits the Neo World program he pulls off his helmet and sees something horrifying awaiting him the suffocated corpse of Miu iruma between this and being given her underwear I'd say this just isn't sahira's best week ready for one of the shortest investigation segments in Danganronpa history well it seems like momita is as he seemingly rushed in to see what the commotion was after taking a nap he claims to have suddenly gotten logged out without realizing what was going on and just returned to his room afterward because it was laid in he didn't know if he should log back in or not after the body Discovery announcement woke him he came running obviously this Rouses some suspicion mainly from Alma who uses this as an opportunity to attempt brushing shoulders with saira and intentionally tells momita not to bother him despite saihara's own protests well we'll see how this pans out let's investigate the time of death is 6 30 a.m and no external wounds appear to be present kibo says he discovered her first after logging out first and seeing her with her helmet still on body contorted into an awful position hirakawa helped take the helmet off and in doing so they could see that she seemed to be grasping at her throat near Oma's seed a bottle of poison from saira's Lab is found but the label clarifies that someone it's used on will have bloodshot eyes due to a bursting blood vessel clearly ruling out its use here when Gathering testimony yumino clarifies that iruma herself volunteered to search outside the chapel when everyone heard the crashing noise they checked outside and found irama's Avatar face down in the snow unmoving and knew something must be wrong gokuhara meanwhile claims not to know a thing even seeming to think the virtual world in its entirety was some kind of dream at least that's how it sounds maybe he just isn't able to app is head around fantasy sci-fi computers well speaking of not being able to wrap your head around things momota gives his story that he was on the rooftop searching when a strange Circle appeared below him out of nowhere and he got locked out which Sahara notes is what it looks like when you do so harakawa is trying to search the program's text file for information finding that because this is in fact some facsimile of the Neo World program damage inflicted to the Avatar's body will be transferred to the real world body or at least the Sensation will be this means fatal damage will incur real death via shock and not a coma slash brain death slash Evangelion Paradise mind Palace episode yeah sure death by shock let's just go with it the consequences of death in this program have never been consistent hell this program down to its aesthetic and rules have never been consistent so I guess this is just another Tuesday as far as we're concerned omo raises concerned that info in the text could have potentially been changed or removed and monotar offers to analyze the data to help get to the bottom of that he's motivated by a weird motherly attachment to Irma that he brought up before listen it doesn't really matter it's just a strange ongoing gag that I didn't really feel like mentioning before and now I'm scared to anyway he finds that the text file appears not to have been changed but does find a record of when everyone logged in and out remember this for the test it will be important later he also comments that parts of the program itself were changed but he can only figure out what they were via careful examination which will take some time which means that we need to focus our investigation elsewhere while we wait on that where better to find more clues than this dinky little room where the actual crime took place though right yep we have to return to the virtual world to finish this investigation or at the very least everyone aside from harukawa Oma and gokuhara enter our first lovely Discovery is a roll of toilet paper outside the Mansion off to the side but we can only stall long enough where irum as Avatar lies is the wooden lattice a hammer and a cell phone which already raises some red flags first of all iruma claimed she deleted all dangerous objects and weapons from the game so why is the hammer here second of all in testing the cell phone sahira is able to log momita out of the game even though he's not in the salon which irama said you could only log out from yumino follows up her testimony about the noise saying she felt like something hit the chapel wall which stuns saira as he and shiragane clearly heard the noise too despite seemingly being on the other side of the loading zone akibo also recalls irama and Omas whispering and relays that they were actually talking about meeting on the rooftop alone at some point naturally this means saira has to check the rooftop out for himself oh hi momita predictably the lattice is now missing from the closet it was once in and Sahara begins to feel like something is off about the world's loading point no other Clues seem to be present although he does notice there's a lock on the outside of the rooftop store just then harakawa arrives to let them know that the analysis of the program that monotaro was doing is done but keeps saira behind for a second I'm not trying to sound like momita but I don't think you should carry all the burden alone she says Yoshi saihara before you're a detective don't ever forget that and I really love this line it's probably one of my favorites in the chapter and it's not even a big important plot thing it's just a moment of consideration and concern from a friend who's acclimating to the fact that she genuinely cares about someone she's recently decided to spend her time with it's nice once we're out we get a bit more testimony from Oma claiming that he never met with yiruma on the rooftop because the door was locked monotara claims that Irma tampered with the program in some ways which is no shocker and she started with deleting many objects like she said she did however leave the hammer and seemingly on purpose the cell phone is also clarified to be an original feature of the game that she didn't add herself which means she was hiding it intentionally for some reason monotaro says that all iruma added were the maps and tampered with certain parameters for example each thing in the program is assigned to the marker of human or a non-human object with the former replying to Avatar bodies and the latter to most everything else for some reason iruma changed her Avatar to have the latter classification but since this is only for identification purposes it didn't seem to change anything about her Avatar itself however she did add a wall to the program which allows non-human objects through it Oma specifically had his Avatar changed as well given a setting where if iruma were to touch him he would be paralyzed and unable to move lastly some sort of Avatar user error occurred after everyone first logged in but monotaro has no idea what it could have been caused by or what effect it actually had at that exact moment Monokuma who is seemingly super down in the dumps and far from energized calls the class trial into session and we have no choice but to head down to the shrine of judgment just as we usually do the trio do their best to connect with each other despite their difficulties before the trial starts but as buff Monokuma once again crushes his infinitely respawning goblet we are ushered into the ever-shrinking crowd of the elevator the truth we seek however is not going to be so easy to stomach so we get to it right off the bat with Oma accusing momita of poisoning iruma but of course we know the poison is irrelevant because of the bloodshot eyes thing so if the poison wasn't used in the murder what did Kill Irma obviously she was killed in the virtual world it pretty much goes without saying whatever killed her also seems to have involved some kind of asphyxiation given the state of her body but in that case what could she have been killed with well perhaps the toilet paper it might seem a bit unconventional if you're thinking in terms of what's possible in the real world sure but we have to remember that no items in the virtual world can be broken so even if the paper was stretched to its limits it wouldn't tear like normal real-life toilet paper with that in mind it could just be used like a rope and used as a murder weapon just the same I don't see why toilet paper would be present now that I think about it considering they wouldn't need to use the bathroom in a virtual world but whatever it is irimo we're talking about here we don't know what she wanted to include or for what reasons speaking of which uh why'd she leave that lone hammer in the program by the way well I think it should be pretty obvious by this point that she was planning to use it for something or rather someone she invited Oma to the roof alone which made it pretty clear along with the way she manipulated his Avatar settings to be weak to her touch that she was planning to kill him damn alright girl live your worst life and then die I guess this would also explain the poison on his seat in the real world because Irma who logged in after everyone else would have plenty of time to plant it near him for the express purpose of making it look as though it were related to a murder that took place on the outside rather than one perpetuated by her on the inside granted I'm not sure this would have done her much good as I don't think Oma's potential virtual Hammer death would have left his eyes bloodshot either but despite being something of a genius she's not exactly a genius so this about track now we have enough pieces to speculate about why she would hide a cell phone in her possession to intentionally log out momita she would do this to intentionally frame him for the crime which is also why she sent him to the roof in front of everyone so when Oma's Avatar was discovered there it would only seem to make sense that the guy investigating there who conveniently logged out before everyone else is the one who killed him it makes sense that she was so bold though she was literally controlling the parameters of the whole place it's why she was was so insistent about getting everyone inside of it if however Oma couldn't get to the roof because it was locked and momita was logged out then this seems to imply she was there but how'd she get from the Chapel to the mansion's roof if the bridge was soaking up some waves in the river where she dropped it well that's the real meat here and it's going to answer a lot of questions for us we know she went to the mansion shirogane's testimony confirms this much but it's just a matter of figuring out how she did that well how about the special wall she made that allowed objects to pass through it well it seems like momita has some issues with that statement considering he's not privy to how she changed her Avatar this Marks One of several occasions throughout this trial where unfortunately we have to explicitly tear down arguments offered by momenta which we haven't really had to do before this combined with how Oma is clearly steering the conversation and acting as though momota is getting in the way is going to slowly build a wedge between the two over the course of this trial as momota becomes both more insecure about Sahara growing out of his shadow and incredulous about the idea that Oma could ever speak the truth about something it's genuinely really tense and creates a feeling of discomfort through gameplay that I haven't really experienced much in this series before gameplay mechanics in Danganronpa rarely tangibly tie into character relationships in a way as direct feeling as this and I kind of have to applaud that well anyway back on point yeah she classified herself as an object so she could indeed pass through the wall to figure this out we first need to recall the inciting moment of panic in this incident the slamming sound now sairat and shiragane both heard this but the others claimed this slam was on the outside of the chapel wall despite being evidently separated by a loading zone saira and shirogane both heard this as well as kibo's voice even though he was on the whole other side of the map with everyone else at the chapel so what does this mean well maybe we can deduce that by thinking about something else strange like the Mirai Hills sign that was used as a makeshift Bridge the sign was dropped in the river by irama but when it was found later it was up against the rocks on the Mansion side the flow of the river should have swept it down by the chapel so how did it end up there well what if up and downs stream connect like in an old Atari game where if you exit the right side of the screen you end up at the far left side and pop back out from it the sign washed down into the right wall then popped back out through the left one the only way this would work however is if the Walls by the chapel in the Mansion are the same wall and the only way that would be possible is if the map is actually entirely different than we first suspected though we initially thought of the loading point as the middle of the map it was actually the edges the map shown To Us by irama was set up entirely for the purpose of tricking us as to what the true nature of the map actually was now that we seemingly know what it actually looks like Oma says we're finally in the home stretch having seemingly led us all along this whole time like he already knows the answers planning to say she was near the chapel the whole time and the bridge was down Irma utilized her exploits across from the chapel side to the mansion side once there she went to the roof to meet with Alma having used the cell phone to log out momita then she apparently was killed on the roof by whoever the culprit was who then moved her body afterward how'd they do that though well the status of her Avatar when it was found should tell us a bit about that Oma even points out the handrails and slanted roof to prod us toward the answer which makes it even more obvious the culprit put her body on the wooden lattice along with her hammer and cell phone and used the friction of the roof slope to slide her off where she then crashed into the chapel wall as she passed through the side of the map Monokuma Likens this to Sonic hitting an enemy and dropping all of his Rings oh look guys we've come full circle on my YouTube career anyway Sahara asks why Oma would lie about never going to the roof even for the meeting if he could describe how things on the roof looked he tries to excuse this by saying that yumino said something about it but we've got to perjure our way back on track to get him to stop wrangling unluckily for saira this involves lying to the biggest liar on the planet which means he's obviously going to be figured out up until this point saihara has never had to lie about something involving Oma and we'll talk about why this was a big mistake in a bit nevertheless he says that despite Oma's claims of being in the salon sairo went to check on him and didn't see him there this didn't happen but he's hoping it will force Oma to squeal about what he's hiding all this actually does is help Oma to realize that despite how everyone gets on his ass for lying all the time the hero of this story is also lying at times and everyone's eating it up purely because it's not Oma doing it as you can tell this pisses Oma right off because he immediately goes from playfully leading everyone on a breadcrumb trail to pulling his most devilish Antics yet and what he says as he leads into them is something I think really needs special highlighting because as I often say it's going to become very important moving forward why do you guys hate lies that much there's only one truth but endless possibilities for lies you know and some of them are only wild lies or lies to be kind to people If you deny all of that just because it's a lie then that means you guys are just terrible at being lied to seriously the worst now he does slightly undercut himself with that last second jokey joke tone but I think it's worth paying attention to the substance of his words here especially as it pertains to the rest of this trial it's at this point that he fully gives up on leading everyone along saying he's just gonna throw the tree truth out despite Sahara for lying though he initially seems to be confessing to the murder himself and even admits to working with Monokuma to plant the secret of the outside world in the simulator he unceremoniously drops on our laps that the culprit is gokuhara this is a heart-sinking moment if I've ever seen one it's so left field given the information we have at present and it's so not something you want to believe and even gokuhara himself seems incredibly confused but Oma swears his statement's legitimacy saying that he and gokuhara formed a coalition the killing game buster is to end this game for good momota tries to rev up the good old Shonen protagonist speech machine to advocate for gokuhara's innocence but we can already see the writing on the wall Oma is not going to let us believe in a convenient lie just because we want to avoid a harsh truth when we've spent this whole game beating his ass in the quote retweets for not telling the truth Oma couldn't kill irama she would have paralyzed him at the slightest touch so to defend himself since he had already deduced she would be trying to kill him he would need someone to do his dirty work and because as of this sairat isn't content just to blindly believe in gokuhara like he's done for others in the past this sours momita especially because it seems like he's believing Oma over everyone else gokuhara meanwhile is completely visibly distraught at the idea that he could ever have committed a murder and that makes things all the more difficult as Oma Badgers and berates gokuhara into defending himself yumino tells him to stop bullying him and Oma simply responds that that's what everyone does in this game gangs up on each other distrusts each other and momenta through clinched teeth declares he'd rather die getting a wrong answer than being correct and stooping to the same level as Oma it's here where his most admirable traits become more clearly flaws his sentiments are truly sweet it's clear he cares about the people in his life more than anything but it's also true like any other class trial that if they get the wrong answers they will all die and Sahara can't just stop now he can't give up on the promise he made or the people he wants to protect even if in the end they end up hating him for it moment is well within his right to be pissed off at Oma but the outcome of this trial is bigger than that as gokuhara continues to claim he knows nothing Syrah puts the pieces together the Avatar user error monotara mentioned what was it it's that gokuhara plugged the helmet's chords in wrong when he heard yumino talk about what hand she holds her Chopsticks in he incorrectly inserted them because he holds his chopsticks with his left hand this means he could have absolutely killed irima in the virtual world and had no memory of it afterward Oma runs down the list and rules out everyone from being able to do it with evidence aside from gokuhara himself just to drill it in that much harder for those who don't want to believe this is the truth you've all been searching for he says this is the truth you wanted so badly momota tries one last time to save the day saying that gokuhara was seen by saira and shirogane as they ran out and he wouldn't have had time to descend if that's right after they heard the crash but while that would be wonderful if it were true we can't turn away from the truth just because we don't like ticket why was the toilet paper used for the murder casually found by the side of the Mansion well the culprit hung it around the binoculars descended but then before it could be properly disposed of ran into those two and could only quickly toss it aside Oma tries to slam gokuhara again but Sahara stops him as gokuhara weeps bitterly wondering how he could ever do something like this wondering why this is happening scared and frail Sahara speaks peacefully affectionately and soothingly I'm going to look back at this whole case one more time okay when you're convinced you just let me know all right let's end this together God this moment just destroys me this right here while it isn't the only reason this is why I actually really really like say her as a protagonist every Danganronpa protagonist has been nice has been considerate but Sahara is just uniquely emotionally vulnerable in a way I find extremely refreshing for the type of role he's in you don't often see lead detective main characters especially boys who are allowed to wear their emotions so outwardly on their sleeves who are allowed to prioritize gentle kindness over appearing as Ultra badass cool guys there's nothing inherently wrong with the latter of course it more or less just depends on the quality of the writing itself but in a sea of his contemporaries I think Sahara stands out for this reason and in a way that really makes me appreciate him he doesn't want any of this he takes no pleasure in exposing a truth that will inevitably hurt people but he'll do whatever he can to make that process more bearable whether through the catharsis of Truth or the Saving Grace of a little white lie laying out the case one more time this long and winding road finally comes to an end gokuhara still doesn't understand but he concedes that he trusts everyone's judgment he just wonders why in the world he would do it and God his voice actor really breaks my heart here the vote is tallied and the trial is over now all that's left is to extract that information in the only way we possibly have left what is that anyway well Monokuma notes that gokuhara's virtual memories are still in the computer so he makes an alter ego version of him within the computer to clarify things for us as if the one virtual callback wasn't enough for one chapter the truth turns out to be even more horrifying than we could have possibly imagined that while he was searching around with Oma showed him the secret of the outside world turns out Oma actually did find what the key card was for and it was seeing the outside world the state of it and its true nature it was around this time that irama was starting to get the program ready so he decided that to save everyone as he puts it he worked with Monokuma to combine the two this allowed the motive to be reused and for gokuhara to be shown a flashback light hidden in the virtual world which contained the same site that Oma saw which he also says are part of their missing memories when gokuhara saw that flashback light he remembered the secret of the outside world and it was so hellish that he came to the conclusion that everyone would be better off dead he saw that the academy was hell but thought the outside world was even worse and that everyone would be better off being put into a trial misled and killed at once so that they'd never have to find out the truth even to the end gokuhara refuses to tell them what it is that he saw in a flashback we see Irma isn't even surprised that Oma knows she's going to kill him and she even seems apologetic about it before she snuck up on and killed by gokuhara who only apologizes profusely as he does so Oma even seems to become emotional claiming he would have done everything himself if he could and even begging Monokuma to be a part of the execution of course gokuhara tells him this isn't necessary and just pleads that everyone get along after his death he apologizes one last time for being stupid before he's strapped to a pole and okay listen this really sucks like the chapter's been pretty okay but this is just okay so gokuhara is strapped up with Alter Ego gokuhara Monokuma shoots robot bees at him monofani has her weird expansion pregnancy deliver into a giant horrific wasp monster that kills both her and monotaro then stabs gokuhara and the laptop through before Monokuma flamethrowers them both to death yeah the less I say about this one the better frankly anyway with gokuhara and all of the Cubs gone Monokuma disappears and everyone begins to mourn their losses harukawa demands Oma at least tell them the outside world secret and though he briefly appears emotional uttering that he doesn't want to softly he immediately turns on a dime with a crazed expression and calls them all idiots fully embracing his role as the villain he says all of his crying was fake insults gokuhara and says he did all of this to liven up the game he says he loves and wants to enjoy the game and boy that CG is really not doing this moment any favors he even whips out the claim that nothing pleases him more than inflicting pain on others which this line will be become interesting in the future momita tries to lay another Smackdown but Oma effortlessly Dodges knocking him to the floor and claiming that he seems out of Swords harakawa panics rushing to his Aid more livid than she's ever looked and sairat tells Oma that this is why no one wants to be around him claiming that he will be the winner of the game he leaves but the moment hasn't quite calmed yet momentum finally cracks coughing up a sizable amount of blood in front of everyone and his excuses as to why are flimsy at best saira tries to volunteer to help him but he's too bitter too hurt and too betrayed feeling to go with him sire elements that he fought so damn hard for the truth but this is all he gets for it as Oma walks into the dark smirking he says that it's finally about time for him to put an end to the killing game the horse text evolves into its final form revealing it to have been written by Oma all along into the phrase The World Is Mine kokichioma our number of survivors drops to a measly seven and chapter 4 ends boy oh boy oh boy do we have a lot to talk about here first of all let me say the that this chapter is a huge improvement over chapter 3. I know the bar was kind of on the floor so it goes without saying and it obviously has several problems of its own which we'll get to but this is already such a visible and Market Improvement that I will honestly take whatever I can get I think what helps is that this chapter also has quite a bit of thematic focus and is genuinely pretty emotionally grueling not just because you feel sorry for the culprit like in many other Danganronpa cases but because the very structure of the case itself toys around with you and makes you uncomfortable purely to emphasize the emotional state of the characters themselves but okay let's not get ahead of myself here let me get my bitching out of the way first so that we can have all the negatives set aside when I go to talk about what I really like about this chapter first of all I think more emphasis should have been placed on the program itself it's the main fixture of the chapter but it shows up very late the area is quite small and you're only in it for what feels like a blink before the murder occurs after that you get to investigate it for like 15 minutes before you leave it again and that's it I realized that this probably was a bit much to develop but it seems underwhelming as both a reference to the Neo World program from sdr2 and also just as a setting for the murder of this chapter we spent like 80 percent of the daily life just doing stuff in the school before we even get to see this place could we not get a little more time to at least let it sink in speaking of the program I realize this is more of a mileage may vary issue than anything but I just think it's really ugly the weird Chibi art style and sterile low budget 3D environments just do not do it for me it looks like the App Store remaster of an SNES game that we never got to see the original version of I feel like this was for convenience to distinguish the events in and out of the game so it would be easier to follow narratively but I just wish they had chosen a different look oh yeah okay there's also that okay I've waited long enough to talk about the issues with Goku hara's specific localization problems but now that he's uh dead and this chapter revolved pretty centrally around him his actions and his mindset I think it's about time we really peel that back because this is genuinely one of the biggest problems in the translation for me so for those of you who have only played these games with the official localization in dubs let's get one thing clear right out of the gate that might kind of startle you gokuhara does not do his caveman speak in the original Japanese script the only thing he struggles with are computers or other technology because he was raised in the wilderness he does refer to himself in the third person still but what's important to note is that this is a really common occurrence in Japanese speech both chabashira and yonega did this in the Japanese script as well yet in the localization they mostly use first person pronouns while gokuhara does not I wonder why that is he's pretty damn knowledgeable actually he's one of the first people to understand tojo's trick in Chapter 2 and while I don't think this particular change would be the worst thing in the world had it just been left at that I think it has led to some problems in term of wider fan perception of the character and his Arc you see what's so absolutely cruel about chapter 4 of V3 isn't that gokuhara doesn't know what he's doing or has been completely misled into doing what he did solely because of Oma's instructions because tragically even though he was definitely manipulated into picking up the flashbacklight he made this decision for himself he's a lot smarter of a guy than a lot of people including himself really gives him credit for and it's this lack of confidence in himself and insistence on constantly downplaying his own abilities that's why he genuinely can't fathom having killed irimo once he forgets about it Beyond just thinking this is horrible he doesn't even conceive of the notion that he's capable the idea that he isn't is the comforting lie that everyone leans on when the truth becomes too much to bear but as Oma painstakingly went to the trouble of making clear to us the truth is much more harsh gokuhara was smart enough to do this and not only that he chose to try to get everyone killed he's saw the outside world and he really did think that maybe it was worth letting everyone die if it meant they'd never find out about it he may be naive but he's not an idiot and I think this one specific decision of the localization has led so many more English-speaking fans into thinking he didn't know what he was doing which I think consequently totally undermines his Arc and what it means both for his character and the story at large and to be clear this is not a dunk on these fans it's not me saying I know better or that they just didn't see what was obvious or whatever I'm just complaining that the localization did not make this clear enough and that I can't blame anyone for missing this because of it it just shouldn't have happened is my point the localization issues made clearer in this chapter don't stop there we can't fully cover the scope of the issues with Oma quite yet because we need to reach further developments in the plot to do so but his big villain heel turn here I think is severely undercut when the original script which has him cackle and call everyone idiots he is localized as him calling everyone stupid heads this is kind of a constant issue with him throughout the localization actually there are a lot of lines in the English version of the game which have him screaming acting silly and with tons of exclamation points tacked on that originally had much more subdued vocal delivery and ended with question marks or ellipses it seems like there's a concentrated effort to just make him an overall sillier character there are so many lines which just outright swerve from their original meanings to make him seem goofier and I just don't agree with these changes at all it ends up making him feel like a completely different character between both versions sometimes at least in terms of tone and this especially holds true for this scene which should have been the one moment above all moments that Oma drops all theatrics and becomes deathly serious the moment is supposed to be intense it's supposed to be a whiplash when you realize that this cackling little brat you've been annoyed at for hours is actually way more seemingly Wicked than you ever thought possible throwing the silly speak into it is just the definition of dude this is really not the time for that oh and uh just reiterating that the entire monocots soap opera plot was terrible and I cringed back into myself every time it was brought up stop that okay now let's talk about the good shall we while I definitely think the murder could have been a bit more intricate or interesting I do think this is a step in the right direction it was certainly possible to figure out but the swerves while inventive seemed a bit less left field to me than those in chapter 2. in the logic while you could certainly point out the goofiness of it in places was much more understandably malleable due to the virtual world setting and its established rules and those established rules are followed very well so there was no point at which I was left scratching my head having to wonder how the Canon solution could even be the case the evidence itself is pretty well telegraphed there are a couple of decent red herrings even if I think momota is pretty obviously not the culprit from the get-go and while I do think that a lot of time is spent outside the game where more focus should have been put on it the character interactions we get during this time and the few we get in the investigation are for the most part really nice Oma I think really comes into his own as a character in this trial I still don't think in terms of the wild card character slot that I like him as much as komida but he certainly begins to show debts here that I can at least appreciate when it is made clear how those things relate to the game's overall thematic aims I genuinely find him a lot more compelling here when he becomes actively angry and begins to press everyone's buttons over whether the truth they seek is really so inherently good when they immediately deny it when it turns out to be anything other than what they wanted he takes it so obviously personally that they could criticize him for lying when they are both leaning on lies for comfort and their main guy is doing a spicy little lie in every trial that moment where he looks at saira with recognition in his eyes and says something about him using underhanded tricks too that bit freezes my blood it's really good and now let's talk a bit about gokuhara himself I basically already said what I liked about his Arc and what made it so effective when I was complaining about how the localization did him dirty but I do want to reiterate just how legitimately heartbreaking it is to watch him SOB on the stand like this you know he's not like other culprits in the past who have put on a show to deflect blame you know he legitimately means it and it may makes it all the more hurtful when you realize that he's just as capable of going down that path as anyone else we're put in a unique position because of his memory loss seeing him able to interrogate the sight of himself that already fell prey to his worst impulses from the Viewpoint of someone who at least to his own knowledge hasn't done so or at least can't comprehend why he would it underlines a duality in people that I think is so universally terrifying to all of us that in the right set of circumstances we too could do terrible things we wouldn't normally ever imagine ourselves doing it's an emotional gut punch that between Alma's harsh words and the growing wedge between Sahara and momota becomes a Cornerstone of pain in this chapter which does not let up it's brutal in all the ways that make narratives like these powerful and I can't applaud that enough this is what I'm looking for in a compelling Danganronpa motive we didn't even need to know what he saw but because we could still understand the character's feelings and struggles that went along with it we could become invested in the explanation and that explanation felt far more personable and human to me than Jojo shows did and of course it was an actual motive that wasn't just uh go crazy go stupid so it's better than shinguji's by default be closest to being as good as the first in my eyes and in some respects even if definitely not all I think it surpasses it this is definitely an upward Ascent for the game after it hits Rock Bottom with many of the gears finally beginning to turn in a way that makes things feel more and more appropriately climactic I'm actually pretty excited to head into chapter 5 and if I know anything about the chapter fives of this series it's that good or bad shit's about to get crazy [Music] beginning with Monokuma grieving for his now wiped out Cubs he quickly comes to the conclusion that he's not really sure what purpose they serve to him to begin with seeing as the Cubs were last minute additions to this story just as much as Monokuma himself was that's probably a decent question to ask in the cafeteria momota continues to claim he's fine but the awkward tension between himself and Sahara Still Remains everyone is still talking about not having any leads on how to escape and Oma is of course nowhere to be seen still doesn't mean we have no troublemakers around though because obviously Monokuma has to show up to give us our prizes the last real key and the real last key respectively the last real key goes to the mysterious checkerboarded door near the gym which we've been passing a lot but never been able to access until now it leads up to a huge spiral staircase to momita's lab where we find some pretty interesting stuff namely a document about the Gopher project which mentions boys and girls of exceptional Talent being the seeds of Hope for the future of humanity the rest of the data is Thoroughly redacted but harakawa speculates that this was a Noah's archetype situation which would make sense because the Arc was built with gopher wood deciding to search around for the flashback light to see if they can get more information everyone departs which brings us to the fifth floor to use the real last key after using the key the doorway explodes revealing a hidden lab that can't be accessed Monaco was quick to show his face to explain that it was actually a mommy's lab but it will never be opened because he died before it could be properly revealed upon exiting the courtyard which is more cleaned up than ever shirogane speculates whether following monokuma's pattern is actually leading to worse outcomes for everyone and kibo ushers us toward a strange cybernetic door near iruma's lab which was previously inaccessible using the real last key again those doors open giving us access to the Cyber Courtyard a strange maze-like place which ends at a huge shutter guarded by an electronic barrier while trying to get in kibo trips an alarm which Monokuma explains is attached to a motion sensor the keypad has an incredibly long code to turn it all off but he doesn't really mind mentioning it because as he puts it this place used to be important to guard but is now useless that's because inside is the exit hanger but it's pointless now that the mono cups are gone there's also a washing machine for the exos a bathroom which seems out of place if only robots came in here and a hydraulic press which can be operated with a control panel though apparently a security sensor will stop the Press if a person is detected on it kibo wants to try it on himself just to see if it will think of him as a person and though he's reluctant to try it Sahara agrees if only to State his curiosity since he promises to move if there's danger the Press comes almost all the way down on him before he rolls out prompting him to become depressed you sure you're all right there buddy at that time yumino shows up to tell us that shiragane has suddenly found the flashback light and everyone gathers in the cafeteria to see it Well turns out yumino was wrong because what shirigani tells us about is actually the world is mine message left by Oma though they briefly speculate about what it could mean they come to no definitive answer which leaves us with a bit of free time afterward as seeing as this chapter is probably going to be important I think we should spend some time actually doing momentous free times now which oh he doesn't want want to talk to me well I guess people would be mad if I didn't do Omas either so I should where the hell is he okay you know what fine I'll look them up on YouTube I guess thanks just one gamer you were a lifesaver so Mama tells are about what you'd expect honestly they entail him talking about his Astronaut training and crazy Adventures where he conquered the sea and land during his summer vacation which Sahara finds somewhat suspect at the end of it all saira finally confides in him about the case that started his anxiety about revealing the truth which he's predictably a bit flippant about he says that if the guy hadn't been foiled he'd have eventually carried the guilt of his actions around with him which Sahara prevented by catching him in the act and that if he holds a grudge he'll just have to get over it because momota will always believe in saira no matter what well that hurts a little bit right now but I'm sure things will turn out okay eventually right almost on the other hand are a little bit complicated he basically spends the entire time screwing with Sahara telling him things about his organization which you can never be sure of the validity of and then repeatedly demanding keep partake in strange games which will determine with a limited number of meetings whether he'll kill Sahara or not in their final meeting he challenges Sahara to the knife game where you stand between your splayed fingers on a table Oma goes first and manages to Nick himself at which point Sahara performs first aid and ties up the wound Oma says he was lying from the beginning about wanting to kill Sahara and instead wanted this to occupy his mind the whole time since he suspected that Sahara was worried about what he would do and even came to his Aid when he was hurt this means he concludes that Sahara will never forget about him for the rest of his life so either way he's had his heart stolen Cyra concludes that in the end he could never really understand Oma because no matter how many times he tried to genuinely communicate with him or reach out his hand Oma would never actually come down to his level and take it upkeeping his theatricisms and never taking his mask down the entire time I wonder how that's gonna pan out seeing as neither of these two would actually hang out with me I instead decided to spend my free time with chiragane because she's pretty much one of the only people left I can hang out with most of her events pretty much just revolve around her complex of being plain and unnoticeable and how she really only finds passion in her cosplay work which she thinks should be more about embodying a character you're passionate about rather than seeking cloud or popularity from your peers it eventually concludes with her asking if sairat will go to a con with her when they escape during which saira promises to try cross play which I promise I will not make an egg joke and that's pretty much it for that I'm definitely sure no aspects of this will become relevant in the future don't be silly anyway at Night harukawa comes to invite Sahara to her lab since she says momita had asked to see it obviously trying to covertly create an opportunity for the two to talk and resolve the tension between them this doesn't entirely work out while momita is able to casually ask her about some weapons even learning how to assemble a crossbow from her he still doesn't really communicate with Sahara and in fact actively avoids doing So eventually he excuses himself by saying he doesn't feel good and harakawa calls saira out for not trying harder asira thanks her for looking out for the both of them anyway though which she seems to appreciate even if she doesn't say as much can't end on too happy of a note though obviously we have to show moments of crying about his illness getting even worse and how he doesn't want to die here yay fun chapter the next morning momita finally discloses what he was looking in for weapons for namely that he wants to fight Monokuma now that the Cubs are inactive the exos aren't usable and it's their best opportunity to do so though there is a tiny bit of reluctance everyone agrees that it's their best shot at doing so but that they'll need a little bit of time to prepare though it can't be too much because they can't give him too much time to respond to their provocations it might be a bit too late for that though because when nighttime comes Monokuma is nowhere to be seen on the announcement still everyone gathers in the gym anyway but before they can completely forget him who else but Oma finally shows up with him he has some strange Hammers and a bomb though he doesn't drop said bomb he's more than willing to give us a few tidbits of info that sure feel like some apparently these things were invented by irama who have been secretly working with him for a while up until this point he'd gotten her help to make plenty of inventions for the sole purpose of hijacking and stopping the game but she eventually became too paranoid to continue working with him once the flashback light pushed her far enough to want to kill this casts a lot more of a nuanced light on everything that happened last time considering Oma showed an awareness of him as intent to kill him and she herself seemed reluctant to do so and not at all surprised when he asked if that's what she was planning the dissolution of their partnership was largely out of Oma's hands and though he knew what she was planning to do she had every bit of control in the virtual world and there's no chance the rest of the group would have believed him if he went to them about it if he had stayed out of the virtual world entirely she might have used her plan on someone else which would be against his interests if he truly wanted to stop the game itself and this would even explain why he did what he did with gokuhara if so because if he truly believed only he could stop the game he would need somehow to stop irama without dirtying his own hands well it's at least Food For Thought to chew on for now anyway Oma suggests that using the Hammers and the one bomb both of which can knock out electronic signals with the latter being able to do so within a 50-foot radius that they should tackle the death Road of Despair once again but actually get out this time they will need to be careful though since the Hammers need to be charged for 24 hours once they run out of juice he also denies knowing anything about the message outside which prompts harukawa to go Chokehold mode again when momita gets her to drop him he leaves but everyone doesn't really have any better ideas and momota says this might be the only chance they have to try it anyway so they reluctantly he'd almost advise and head to the manhole ready to fulfill his promise to akamatsu Sahara leads the charge into the tunnel and with our spam hammers in tow we can finally make it through the tunnel while avoiding all of the traps at the end is an electronic barrier covering a large hatch-like door which resembles the one from the first Danganronpa of course using the electro hammer on the security pad the barrier drops and the door begins to open however this can't go like it did last time of course when the door opens what the gang sees outside is a hellish scorched Earth billowing with Crimson smog that is so intoxicatingly awful that it not only makes them dead silent but it even prevents them from being able to breathe as they all pass out they awaken with the door closing back and Oma arriving to congratulate them as well as to tell them what they've just seen this is apparently the truth of the outside world a crumbling desolate world that was destroyed by meteors initially the Gopher project was formed to ushero talented students into space to escape it and prevent the complete Extinction of mankind by salvaging a Chosen Few and letting them expand elsewhere initially discontent with this though they fled from the project and were sought by the super high school level hunt a contingent of doomers who were convinced the world had it coming the organization behind the project spread misinformation of the students deaths to cover for them and eventually convince them to rejoin and leave Earth in a space station which is itself the academy we have been inside this whole time after a period of stasis the students were awoken but hiding in their ranks was the controller of Monokuma someone who was part of an evil organization who steered the craft back to the ruined Earth and began this killing game on board the ship among the last vestiges of humanity that we're supposed to work together and rebuild and who is that cult's leader well Oma claims it to be himself he takes full credit for masterminding the killing game and even though everyone is skeptical he takes out a remote which seemingly lets him control the existles which seems to seal the deal with the electro hammers thoroughly drained of energy Oma uses the exos to beat down and kidnap the resistant momita and though an infuriated harakawa tries to confront him saira holds her back to prevent her from getting killed Oma claims that this is the end that he's gotten bored of the game he created and that everything will now come to a delightfully despairing standstill where they live out the rest of their days in the school's barrier and wait to die everyone breaks down they can't take it anymore they don't have the strength to take one more step saira concludes that they all should have died a long time ago and hazely returns to his room for days he languishes doing absolutely nothing as he once again begins to contemplate giving up his life a Monokuma theater segment discusses the many trivial things that people find themselves living for saying if you say Danganronpa is your reason to live I couldn't be happier it's been a real pleasure doing business with you gee I'm sure that's not going to become relevant in the future before cyhere can completely destroy himself though he's visited by harakawa who tells him to go shower and meet with her and everyone else in the dining hall apparently when she came here earlier she found a flashback light just sitting out on the table and she convinces everyone to at least try to look at it when they do they are reminded of the events of every pass Danganronpa game of Hope's Peak Academy the biggest most tragic event in human history the killing game of class 78 junko and Oshima the remnants of Despair the Future Foundation everything that led up to the meteorites the Gopher project was then started by hope speak Academy Itself by Makoto naegi who entrusted the future of the world to these students who were attending the academy apparently they were the very few who had somehow managed to be immune to a terrible virus spreading from the meteorites which was killing off humanity and that's why they were selected this seemingly motivates everyone as they come to the conclusion that Oma must have been a remnant of Despair carrying on the will of jinko and Oshima and that he must be stopped in the name of Hope now you may remember me saying before that kodaka said V3 was its own self-contained thing and that the story of Hope speak Academy had concluded given that you might imagine that anyone playing this game for the first time with that information in mind would be very suspicious of this development and you absolutely should be more on that later however because now that everyone is inspired to live on and create hope like any good Danganronpa protagonists are hirokawa points out that she saw Oma in the hangar and everyone resolves to somehow form a plan to rescue momita from there tomorrow morning with the electro Hammers and an unused bomb at night Sahara goes to scout the area and sees the four existles patrolling around Monokuma while they're distracted he runs to the hangar and is able to communicate with momita through the window of the bathroom saira tells him about the plan to rescue him and tries to finally speak up to resolve the conflict between them both before he can apologize though momota interrupts him entrusting everything to him and though he doesn't say so outright basically tells him not to worry about it anymore in his own way he says that is incredible and will surely be able to take care of everyone concluding with you might not only reach the truth something even Beyond it and don't forget you're not alone don't try to do everything yourself it's only going to wear you out when times are hard gotta rely on your friends grateful for his words and glad to have finally resolved their conflict Sahara returns to his room for the night when morning finally arrives he grabs his Electro hammer and goes to the dining hall everyone is seemingly prepared though harakawa has resolved to bring a knife for herself instead kibo also claims to have witnessed a few things on his own including the green exist entering the hangar alone which didn't prompt a reaction from the alarm going there Sahara sees three inactive exosols and no Monokuma in sight and when they arrive they use the electro bomb to turn off the alarm saira goes to the pad and noticing that it's all scratched up but uses the hammer anyway allowing them all to enter however when they do they are met with the grisly sight of blood seeping from underneath the hydraulic press with momenta's sleeves sticking out the body discover every announcement rings out with Monokuma finally returning to his seat and the investigation is now a foot before we catastrophize I suppose it's part of our due diligence at this point to investigate right and you may be thinking well Oba said he was The Mastermind so why should there be a class trial well there are six chapters in this game and it's called Danganronpa so you know that there's plenty of crap to be pulled before we can be certain of just about anything Clues and time are of the essence here even if everyone is doing poorly to say the least the Monokuma file won't even identify the body and there's pretty much no details beyond what we can see with our own eyes harakawa responds that you can't simply fight despair with belief and outright refuses to investigate with Sahara or anyone else which as cynical as it may be to say is probably just as well now that there's so few people left solo investigations are probably a safer bet and a better way to cover ground although perhaps that itself isn't quite necessary either as this investigation is even shorter than chapter fours hell it's barely even that much longer than the investigation for chapter 1 of the first game and I really don't know if that's worth making a judgment call about right this second seeing as it doesn't determine anything about the case's quality on a surface level but it's still certainly very surprising for the semi-final chapter of this game looking around one of the first things to notice is an exit with attach open which can only be disabled by the monocubs unless it could be electronically bypassed says Monokuma certainly worth keeping in mind determined to see whose body they're dealing with saira tries to use the control panel to lift the Press but no luck the panel isn't working and that's because the power cord is cut whoever used this thing made sure the Press wouldn't be lifted again once whoever was underneath was smashed flat into a pink paste and despite the fact that the sensor should reasonably have prevented it from doing so that's clearly not the case for some reason well we should probably also look into the long smearing blood stain that was dragged from the bathroom huh it leads where you'd expect but it also gives us a look at some interesting evidence namely three discarded crossbow arrows with blood on them a bottle of poison a crossbow and one of the large black bags that the crossbows from harakawa's Lab were stored in there's also the matter of the sleeve sticking out from the press it sure looks like momates but it has a tiny hole in it which may be worth keeping in mind at this point we need to step out to look elsewhere for Clues which leads us to get kibo's testimony about what he mentioned seeing earlier namely that he saw yumino headed towards the hangar last night with a large black bag which does seem awfully suspicious there's also the matter of the strange scratches on the shutter control panel down by the inactive exercise a discarded Electro Hammer which seems to be all out of juice and recalls their strange formation from before where they were seemingly protecting Monokuma the bear himself then appears to say he was totally aware of Sahara's surveillance but claims the existles wouldn't have attacked him regardless because they were set on a sort of limited autopilot to survey him specifically at the time he says the person who shared this info with him didn't seem interested in sharing with everyone else but he has to make things fair by disclosing the necessary details for the trial then he disappears in herukawa's lab Cyrus confirms the weapons moment I took for the other day are all gone and one of the black crossbow bags is missing as well in his own lab he notices less liquid in the bottle of strike 9 poison and also several antidotes on the table but no antidote for strike 9 itself returning to the crime scene he's roped back to the bathroom by a frantic kibo who claims to have discovered something that something is almost close which seemed to have been flushed down the toilet kibo only noticed this because it was clogged in there and didn't appear to be able to flush properly there's a small hole in the back and on the sleeve similar to the one in the sleeve of momita's coat and of course there's blood on it too despite all of this investigating there's still no sign of oma and it seems Monokuma doesn't even care because he calls for the trial to begin while disclaiming that everyone needs to be there despite being sure that they'll have to see the victim once they arrive everyone heads to the shrine of judgment and is met with no more of an answer than they started with descending the elevator hoping that their worst fears may be proven wrong they pile into the trial room which looks extremely similar to the aesthetic of the first trial from the very first game a pretty sweet visual callback for being honest Monaco must wears to reveal the Survivor once the trial begins and with that I think it's about time we finally do just that as we do Monokuma ushers us ahead saying that due to special circumstances the Survivor can't be revealed at this time so the status of both Oma and momota will be treated as unknown hirakawa is pretty insistent that momota must be the victim but Sahara again wants to be 150 sure before he Dooms them all to making that consensus Oma's clothes in the toilet certainly gives reason to be suspicious about this of course and the fact that only momita's sleeve was sticking out from the Press is cause for suspicion as well while they're arguing over this Monokuma declares the Survivor will now emerge but that leads to an exit coming out at first momita's voice is coming from it which shocks harukawa but moments later it begins speaking with Oma's voice instead and he's got something shocking to put forth for the record a video camera containing alleged footage of the victim's last moments the footage seems pretty clear-cut showing momita on the press the Press slamming down and a splash of blood washing over the scene at that point it would seem pretty cut and dry especially because the exocil claims the footage hasn't been doctored in any way Monokuma even corroborates this saying the footage can't be found on any computers here Sahara isn't totally convinced though wondering what Alma would have to gain by killing momita since he already revealed himself as The Mastermind to add to the confusion when harakawa mentions how Oma won't be able to replicate the game his beloved jinko and Oshima love so much he seems not to know who she's even talking about giving it some second thought though it shouldn't take much to suspect something's wrong with the video the Press had a safety function which would have stopped if a human was lying down on it after all and the evidence from the bathroom points to the possibility that the victim was killed before even being put on the press to begin with when you take this into account the similar holes in momita's sleeve and Oma's sleeve are also very suspect this seems to agitate yumino and the reason should be obvious the hole was probably made with the crossbow which was in one of the bags that kibo saw her carrying to the hangar now this doesn't necessarily mean she was the a culprit though of course the crossbow could only fit into the bag if it were disassembled and yumino was never taught how to put it together this means she was probably only bringing it to someone and indeed she confirms she was asked by momota to do so presumably to use it to fight Oma once he got his hands on it it's easy to suspect that he shot Oma but harukawa argues it doesn't matter because they already know the final result Monokuma begs to differ though and the person in the exit once again speaks like momita confirming that the mech has a voice synthesizer making it truly impossible to tell who's riding inside what we have here essentially is Schrodinger's culprit the exocil contains either a living momita or Oma but until you open it up you can't truly be sure one way or the other of who it is and that makes it impossible to deny the life or death status of either God V3 really does feel like it's trying to do its best umineko impression sometimes needless to say this leads to a pretty healthy split of opinions especially when Sahara becomes just as convinced as harukawa that momota is in truth already dead then again there's still a problem here yumino claims she only brought a single Arrow to be used but there were three on the ground at the scene there is no reason for Oma to keep crossbow arrows on hand if he didn't even have one with him so where did the extra two come from they would have to come from a third party right that begs the question of how they got inside though and given the evidence we have it seems like only one thing could be possible they could steal one of the patrolling accesses by using an electro hammer on it and the only person who was unable to use their Electro hammer in the morning was harukawa despite admitting to sneaking in she still fiercely argues against being labeled as the culprit saying the wounds made by the crossbow would be in no way fatal that's where the poison comes in though if you had soaked the tips of the arrows in it you could definitely kill someone with them she's talked about making sacrifices to take down the remnants of Despair lately and if the sacrifice is everyone's lives that would work out quite well for her saira wants to reach Beyond even this truth however he thinks there's something more to it and he even relays momita's words of encouragement to harakawa herself she seems glad that they were actually able to reconcile with each other and softens deciding to testify as to what happened from her perspective everything was as expected but when she broke into the hangar momita and Oma were fighting when they froze in shock she shot Oma with an arrow in the back that was coated with poison she tried to make him confess to everything but as she was about to shoot him with the second poison arrow something unexpected happened not wanting harikawa to become a killer again to return to her life of hardship and endure the pressure of the killing game in return momota jumped in the way getting poisoned himself she panicked running from the hangar to grab the appropriate antidote but when she returned the hangar was closed she went to the bathroom window to hand it over instead but witnessed Oma steal the antidote and seemingly drink it she tried to break back in badgering her knife against a security Pad but nothing worked having been convinced that momita's death was her fault she decided to mislead everyone so they could exchange their lives to take down Oma for good sairo once again isn't fully convinced though too many details have slipped through the cracks this way after all the alarm should have gone off when hurricane got near the shutter and if it didn't there must be a reason for that so what if Oma used the electro bomb in his possession but why would he do that well perhaps to disable the safety sensor on the hydraulic press since it doesn't quite seem possible to tell who got smushed and Monokuma seems suspiciously nervous about this fact that's when it becomes clear even Monokuma doesn't know who the culprit is and that's the point Oma wanted to craft a murder that Monokuma couldn't figure out and though Cyrus still doesn't know what specifically is being used to do so he suspects that with all Monokuma seems to know about the murders regularly that he must have some sort of method of surveillance in place the electro bomb would scramble said surveillance and the axisal circling Monokuma were not aiding him they were watching him to ensure that he couldn't interfere or find out what was going on but why would this be necessary well put simply Oma lied yet again about being The Mastermind and this whole thing has been a setup to prevent Monokuma from being able to run a fair trial to undermine the killing game itself Monokuma himself even confirms flat out that Oma is not the one in control of him and that though his story about the outside world was very close he was only speculating and the remote he used to control the exos was actually created by irama for the purpose of hijacking them this allowed Oma to slide into the Mastermind seed and derail the proceedings and Monokuma seems to be getting a bit squirmy about this now as the person in the exit declares that Monokuma will now be forced to participate himself he also declares that this is a challenge to deceive Monokuma to the end and defeat the game trying to appeal to the kid's search for the truth Monokuma talks them up and starts leading the conversation for a bit this leads to some questioning about the motive behind filming the crime video to begin with and this could only have been done for the sake of convincing everyone to think the wrong victim was killed how could this be done though if the video wasn't doctored well it's much simpler than a fancy editing trick it's literally just a pause button the hydraulic press has a four-stop button and if someone were to let the Press lower press that and the camera's pause button at the same time then swap out the victim you could rather seamless mostly make this look like it was the case this also explains why there was a strange pause in the video before the Press fully went down as this is where the pause in the footage occurred the strange camera angle is covered by this too since it would have to be within reach of the control panel the idea that a previously killed body could be used again gee I wonder where that comes from is briefly entertained but Monokuma confirms that this would never have been done and even if it were it's likely he would have noticed much sooner more crucially it's important to realize all of this coordination would mean the Killer and the victim were in cahoots to make this happen the victim had to have been willing especially if the goal was ultimately to confuse Monokuma this would leave only momita as the true culprit but even so harukawa isn't convinced that this is the case because she saw Oma drink the antidote or at the very least she's trying to protect momota but when you really think about it how could harakawa confirm this from the narrow window view that that's what actually happened no Alma didn't drink the antidote he only pretended to it was all part of the trick and harukawa made a good witness for for it pretending to drink it and then giving it to momota afterward was the perfect leverage Oma would need to get momota to cooperate with his plan since it's difficult to imagine he would willingly do so otherwise and not complying would end with his death in harakawa's conviction this is where it all starts to come together with support coerced from momita almost set his plan into motion swapped out with momota when the Press was lowered and then finished his master plan to bamboozle Monokuma by letting momita squash him like a bug under the Press afterward momita pulled the power plug flushed Oma's clothes and climbed inside of the de-powered exosol to hide successfully putting a lid on this crime's cat box but trusting in momenta's judgment saira throws one last curveball by lying to Monokuma he claims that he saw Oma during the investigation and was threatened to be silent or else everyone would be killed and he urges everyone to vote for Oma Monokuma calls his bluff saying that everyone will still be killed if they get the answer wrong but momota won't let them throw it for his sake he finally emerges from the exosol content to let the trial end as the votes reluctantly roll in for momota he begins to tell all just as suspected Oma gave Moma to the antidote and while still poisoned himself used the situation as leverage to get him to go along with the plan he even tells momita that the garden message and the way he screwed over gokuhara were all ways he had prepped them to accept his claim that he was The Mastermind but as much as he would have liked that to be the ultimate derailment of the game it didn't turn out that way when momenta asks Oma why he did all of this he confesses with an uncharacteristically grim and serious expression that he wanted to end this game all along and that the reason it started back up he's certain is because the Mastermind instigated it did something to influence harikawa's actions she claims she did so because she remembered Hope's Peak Academy in the remnants of Despair which she thought Oma was a part of and Sahara claims that perhaps that's precisely what the Mastermind wanted from her though momota didn't totally understand the plan he saw Oma's determination and uncharacteristic honesty in him that had never compelled momota to believe him before and so he decided to go along but he had to ask why would Monokuma care if he messed up the ruling by Oma's estimation it's because he's such a stickler for the rules but more importantly it's that this adherence to the rules even to his own disadvantage implies something about the killing game itself which is that someone has to be watching it without an audience Monokuma wouldn't care about playing by the rules which also implies something must be wrong about the story they've been fed about the apocalypse and being all that's left of humanity a death game is made to be watched so who's the audience the other reason momita agreed to this is because if it actually ruined the game it would be his only option left by his own admission he's out of time as he finally fesses up to the illness that's been plaguing him which he sure is just a short bit shy of killing him seeing as even talking like this is pushing him to the brink of his energy he says that in his memories he was fine during the medical exam for his training so this doesn't add up and though Monokuma tries to briefly spin something about how the meteorite virus may have been dormant during his induction into the Gopher project object something about that seems awfully convenient not that it matters right now he's still going to die either way saying he knew Sahara would figure out the plan regardless he Praises him for his skills and says that even if this didn't end up working out as planned it still must have revealed some hidden truth that will become important so it can't have gone to waste and speaking of Hidden Truths he offers up one last explanation for Oma's actions that being that at the very end he claimed that he never enjoyed this game he lied about that too he lied to himself to survive and keep himself upright and make it to this moment where he could ruin it for the person in charge and for the people taking pleasure in it momota wonders too if this was a lie but kibo responds that he isn't sure would Oma have a reason to lie right at the end of his life even though at the very end I don't really understand omakan said saira but maybe that's what lying is all about the truth is in the eye of the beholder huh omakan was the very embodiment of a lie in the spirit of such honesty momota finally apologizes outright to Sahara as well to be honest I was jealous of you jealous because you were always saving us you know your detective skills kept us alive you were just way too cool and I got frustrated so that's why I was so harsh on you my bad hey no mama taken that's not true I was only so confident because you were there for me mama when you made me your Sidekick you said that you'd take the responsibility and that that's why I can do all this before their heartfelt conversation can continue though death is catching up to momita in two ways as his disease tears at him his execution also looms large and as Monokuma opines about how everyone would be filled with hope if life could be recycled he brings back all of the mono Cubs or well at least replaced monocobs who have no continuity of memory from earlier in the game this also means the exosols are back in play and the students can't oppose the execution harukawa still tries though beginning to cry as she seethes with anger admitting that she's never been given a nickname before she's never met someone so stubborn before she's never fallen in love before and she's not ready to go back to living without that but momota won't let her throw her life away too hey makiro I asked you before what's your enemy before you hated yourself so much you didn't even like yourself a little and wasn't that the reason you tried to distance yourself from others you decided that you didn't deserve to have any friends didn't you that was your enemy not anymore huh you're all right now fell for a guy like me now you can learn to like yourself as harakawa weeps bitterly momita asks everyone to send him off with a smile and Promises himself to go out with a bang don't forget he says the impossible is possible all you gotta do is make it so the punishment begins and it's a huge visual callback to the very first one of the series that of Jin cure Yuri from the intro of Danganronpa one it's a brilliant replication which sends the rocket drilling below ground just to pop back out on the other side of the earth flying back through the sky then falling back down through the hole as fanciful as Monokuma would like his execution to be though momota gains one last victory his illness kills him first as the execution fails the rocket plummets back through knocking off kibo's cowlick as he jumps to everyone's defense and as the rocket Falls to its side and exposes the body Monokuma seeds with anger as kaito momita though dead managed to get away God this is honestly a really awesome moment as kibo stays strangely silent his eyes static saira vows to end the killing game once and for all but Monokuma claims that a mere participant is never going to be capable flashing a surprise flashback light in everyone's eyes which seems to briefly throw them off balance it doesn't seem to bring anything back to them immediately but Monaco simply says they'll remember soon the despair is the only choice they have claiming that the killing game will never end he flees and as everyone trods back to their room we are left with one final visual a mysterious Mother Brain like Monokuma in a glass Dome hooked to many wires A mysterious voice claims that the killing game will continue forever and a familiarly fashionable silhouette stands in the dark to concur as long as it's fun we have to keep doing it that's just simple supply and demand despair outside Sahara tries to apologize to harakawa but she doesn't admonish him she just asks if he feels lonely and when he admits that he feels lonely and lost she says she feels the same but that she's also grateful to momota and would prefer to move forward with that feeling instead to show her gratitude and Sahara can agree yumino and shiragane exit asking if they can join training with the two as well and they all group together sairat thinking momita as he remembers their brief time together and vows to live alongside his friends for the memory of the dead as well seeing kibo somewhere alone he talks to himself about how he can no longer hear his inner voice that guides his decisions promising to end everything he augments himself with upgrades from his lab flies into the air and begins to destroy the academy down to five survivors chapter 5 ends so chapter five huh this is a pretty big one and it's a big highlight of the game for most people I can certainly see why and I appreciate a lot of what it has going for it that said I don't think it's entirely without its flaws and we should probably go ahead and talk about some of those to get them out of the way this is also very much going to contain some localization discussion so let's get my complaints that are focused on the actual game out of the way first before touching on things that are only faults in an adaptational sense so to start us off I honestly am a little underwhelmed with most of the trial itself here and don't get me wrong the actual setup itself the character drama weaved throughout it and especially a lot of the momita and Oma content here chef's kiss great stuff but the actual mystery itself felt a little bit lacking to me I think this is sort of a double-edged sword in a way because it's not entirely fair to expect them to do something way more complicated given that both of them were on a poisonous time limit and had to be able to carry this out in a way that would definitely trip up Monokuma but that said purely from a fun to play standpoint I feel like this case could have stood to be a bit less straightforward the trial itself certainly goes through many swerves but the content feels stretched just a bit too thin if that makes sense I'm also not really certain that I'm happy with the attempt to reach around and tie all of this back to the previous game's storyline here I know I previously established that V3 is its own thing and that this reveal should be sending some red flags our way about the true nature of this plot so I can't give it too much Flack but it does seem a little fan servicey I guess in a way that makes me roll my eyes just a tad like yes I like Danganronpa you are now showing me images of characters and moments that I liked from those previous games but it all just feels a little left field at no point before this was I ever led to suspect that this plot had pretty much anything to do with hopes Peak Academy and I didn't really think it needed to I was perfectly content with this just existing totally outside that context and doing something new while just so happening to have Monokuma there and I guess this will be different for everyone but for me I just don't think it worked quite as well as intended it feels like it was supposed to be kind of a hype moment but to me it was just kind of like oh okay uh yeah sure I guess we can do that it's kind of like seeing all that cool new art Direction in Five Nights at Freddy's security breach and then springtrap is there at the end and it's like why as for actual complaints though that's pretty much all I've got I don't think they're totally in substantial complaints to have but I also don't think they're really all that deal breaking and that's a pretty good sign however we do need to talk about some elephants who've been patiently waiting in the room for a while now so first let's start with something that's a bit more chapter specific that Nisa botched in this chapter they introduced several fixes to CGS present in the original version of the game in an attempt to make certain things about the case clearer in most cases this is done fairly well this was done to Telegraph Oma's bleeding from his crossbow injuries which yeah would be pretty important this however was also fixed in the CG of the moment of death video and something else was changed in the process of this fix namely the position of momita's arm here is the original CG and here's the Nisa one now props to give Nisa did add the blood and hole in the sleeve Good fixes the position of the arm though that shouldn't have been done the whole point of the plan is that when the Press lowered enough it would completely cover his body so he shouldn't be sticking it out like that this begs the question of how the two could have even switched if momita's arm was visible the whole time before the video was paused because I did Oma line his arm up per perfectly for the shot did his arm suddenly grow to be as long as mometas was for that purpose that just isn't possible Chief also almost clothes were flushed so he wasn't wearing a shirt anyway if his arm were visible under the Press you'd just see a naked arm not a clothed one again it was a nice gesture they wanted to fix a continuity issue to make the case more easy to follow for players but this actually makes things way worse and way harder to figure out and this is present in all English versions of the game so it's not even like it's an optional thing that you can change out somehow but now we gotta pull out the big guns the localization demons that have really been looming in the background let's talk about momita for a second now let me go ahead and get my basic opinion of the guy out of the way first I think kaito momota is a pretty good character he's stubborn and hot-headed off into a fault but he's got a kind-hearted attitude and unwavering belief sometimes to his own detriment true but admirably firm nonetheless and he genuinely does care a lot about the people he so chooses he's surprisingly straightforward and a refreshingly honest way and while he can sometimes put his foot in his mouth because of this he often uses it to get to the root of what troubles people and inspires them to become better his romance plot with harakawa like I said is a bit milk toast for me but he still genuinely is lovely to her and I can honestly see why she would care for him so much the fact that they successfully convinced me of that in such a short time that they had together is proof enough that there is something to his character that I'm not just imagining at least to my own sentiments barring his haircut though there are a couple of problems here that have gone unaddressed and that is because the game's localization largely chooses to ignore it so I'm gonna come out and say it momenta is like really homophobic in the game's original script he reacts with abject Terror and disgust to the mere idea of guys liking guys in one of the extra mode scenes he becomes terrified of saiharev for even the momentary suspicion that he could swing that way quote unquote and as I previously established he uses a specific slur in chapter 3 which is consistently used in Japan to demean both gay men and trans women this is not great but while that would be plenty enough to complain about on its own there's also the complicated factor of how Nisa handles this which is to say they mostly don't a lot of momita's more sharp dialogue of this variety including other instances of him being pretty damn misogynistic are softened up for the localization and made more palatable his line about swinging that way in the extra mode is kept largely the same but many other examples of this kind of thing are all but erased by way of making them sound far less incendiary and I know what you may be thinking right now isn't that a good thing like you wouldn't want him to be homophobic or saying slurs right and no I would not I am perfectly fine with not hearing slurs from characters that I'm supposed to like but I do think that softening those edges without looking for any way to replace them with something at least similarly obnoxious is going to inevitably create a different impression of the character when you have people in your English-speaking audience actively confused as to why anyone would think momota has flaws Beyond just being stubborn turn this to me creates a bit of a rose tinted look at the character he comes off way more idealized in one version of the game than another and while obviously individual people will have differences of opinion I think if these changes result in the character giving off a way different impression to one specific audience at large that something has been missed along the way it's for this reason that I'm honestly really mixed on momita and I hate that localization momota is a way nicer guy but I'm here to evaluate these games on the merits of their original intents and scripts and so to me momita is a guy who has a lot of very likable qualities and several that make him someone I'd never want to hang out with and there's something a little sad about that but I'll let you parse those feelings as you wish now as for Oma I'd really like to unpack him a little bit more here too but there's one important piece of context we're still missing right now which will be addressed pretty shortly into chapter 6. this also happens to coincide with another localization error so fun stuff but let's save that for when it comes up I know I've been teasing you all a lot when it comes to my full opinions on all Oma but I promise we are very nearly there and I won't make you wait until the end of chapter six to go on that ramble it will happen when our evidence comes together just as the final clue is all it takes to get Monokuma off that damn phone and convene a class trial now let's talk about the good here oh my goodness this chapter's atmosphere is great it starts a little slow admittedly but once it gets going it really does not let up the formulation of the plan omo reappearing in the gym The Siege on the death Road of Despair those are all great the latter in particular feels like a really smart and cathartic reincorporation of previous game mechanics as we can feel the growth of our characters and the weight of their efforts when we're able to take this platforming nightmare to task I want to be the guy no I have surpassed the guy and that just makes it all the more of a total gut punch when you reach that hatch realize you're here too soon for this to make sense and then get blasted by the reveal of it being an airlock the outside world presumably is hellish and everyone's reactions to it are damn near bone chilling I still think some of the more dramatic Sprite work in V3 can be a little messy at the best of times but these downright horrified Expressions really sell the absolute emotional Devastation that the cast is being put through to the point that I was actually surprised when they were able to pick themselves back up I don't think I was ever truly as convinced by Oma's Mastermind act as the rest of the cast was because it would have been way too obvious and too early for that to be the case but nevertheless he makes a pretty damn good final performance here he's still enough of a total slime ball that at his worst he's affably evil and fun to hate but then he has to go and make things Complicated by having some Nuance toward the end again we'll get more into this later but I think choosing to make Oma's final moments just slightly less ambiguous than most of his previous actions was the right call it adds depth to its character to imagine that in reality he really was trying as best as he could to stop the killing in any way possible his methods are disagreeable to put it very lightly but Danganronpa has always and eternally sought to find the light in the dark with these types of things and if we can understand the motives of so many others maybe we can understand Omas too even if we may may not necessarily like him for it at this point of the narrative Alma is his own cat box of sorts a liar to the end whose honest feelings are difficult to parse from his tricks and that is partly the entire point that I think he embodies when Oma asked earlier whether lies were a completely good or bad thing I think that's a question really worth considering the answer to seriously after all telling a child that Santa Claus is real is a lie but what does that lie service if it was meant to cruelly sweep the rug out from under them and ridicule them then I suppose that lie would be tasteless but if it were meant to add magic to their life and make it better even if for a short while would that be wrong we all lie sometimes what are your lies in service of do they hurt people or do they help them well I guess it's something worth thinking about anyway and of course as much Flack as I just had to give him momita pulls out a pretty excellent show at the end here his early death as a final middle finger to Monokuma is easily one of my favorite moments in this entire game and that will always bear repeating the culmination of both the conflict and genuine love between Sahara momota and harukawa is as heartwarming as it is devastating and it reminds me of how much I genuinely care about this Trio their relationships are sort of the emotional core of the game to me and while I know that this isn't the send-off they'd probably prefer wear it up to them I think it is a fitting one what is a star if not something that shines overhead and provides light to those who previously wandered in complete darkness they'll find their way momita already knew that he ensured it and of course let's comment on junko and Oshima oh my God junko freaking enoshima yet again I honestly rolled my eyes pretty hard at this obviously there's more going on here than meets the eye at first glance but seriously I love junko andoshima as a character in Danganronpa 1 and sdr2 but by that point she had already been done to death she was wholly unnecessary in Danganronpa 3 and her presence in Ultra despair girls was made better for the fact that she was only a looming element of backstory rather than having any actual involvement in the plot we were seeing on screen Beyond her lingering info influence she does not need to be trotted back out she is officially worn out I am sick of her we need to see other people this relationship is a sham as for kibo's big explodey event horizon well no need to speculate about it when we're already so close to talking about it anyway right chapter five is not actually the strongest in the game in my opinion but what is strong about it is incredibly so I think it kind of overstays its welcome in the end and the actual mystery aspect of the chapter is Far and Away its weakest aspect for me in terms of what it brings to the table with emotional weight catharsis and character drama though it is pretty damn top-notch the idea of a cat box murder to bamboozle Monokuma is incredibly inventive and even if the plan itself wasn't the most interesting to me I find the concept to be at least worth commanding the characters were pushed to some extreme places here which I found deeply compelling and the surrounding context of what they were up against more than sold it even if it could have been rounded out a bit more it is certainly not the perfect chapter and I do generally prefer the chapter fives of the previous games over this one but that does not make it a bad chapter by any means and its highlights really shine this is a pretty decent note to lead us into the final stretch of the game and who buddy if you're looking for the brakes you're not gonna find him kodaka is going full throttle and we're in the back seat and whether we gloriously pass the finish line or slam into a wall and explode we're just gonna have to buckle up and find out [Music] We Begin the end with a boy named Makoto no not that one who's a painfully average kid who probably wishes he shared more than a haircut with mob his life kinda sucks but there's something on his damn phone that apparently gives him strength inspiration and something to obsess over before we can figure out what that is though we have to get back to everyone screaming in Terror while kibo blows everything to Smithereens they run out to the middle of the courtyard to try to flag him down and fortunately this works but he's still pretty straight-faced this is apparently his way of ending the killing game but considering the danger saira pleads that there should be a way for them to figure out the secrets of the academy and end the game a different way while not blowing themselves up kibo is skeptical of that possibility given everything that they've learned but he decides to give everyone until dawn to find the proof that they need why Don though well because Monokuma isn't exactly happy about this blowing up the school business and is called in the existles to fight the newly improved kibo themselves the robot can Stave them off for a while without nuking everything but he can only do so for so long so we're on a timer and when I say a timer I do mean that quite literally there is an actual timer counting down on top of the screen during the investigation and while this does seem to pause during dialogue you really can't afford to waste time looking at crap that isn't important you need to get a move on so yeah I got you I'll be there in just a second considering a giant hole has been made in the floor of the main room this is probably as good an opportunity to get started as any right running into the tunnel we also see debris with numbers on it you can use the smack function to move it away so long as you have enough bonding points with your friends which you'll acquire over the course of helping each other during the investigation which helps you figure out what areas you should tackle in which order inside the tunnel is almost unopened lab which has a crack in the door from all the damage inside we find a lot of silly prank items childish set pieces which might resemble what a kid would think an evil leader should have and even a complete history of Hope's Peak Academy while looking at it though Sahara feels like something is wrong and when when harakawa enters the room he asks her to walk and talk with him about everything she remembers concerning Hope's Peak doing so she pretty much briefly Recaps what we all know attributing the entire tragedy to jinko and Oshima and describing the first killing game and her subsequent defeat she also mentions the following war between the remnants and the Future Foundation the rebuilt School their scouting of students and other such things saira is perplexed noting that something about the book he read is inconsistent with his and harikawa's own memories at that moment they are both hit with the late lingering effects of the last flashback light they were shown and in Cyrus he sees a boy approaching him as he sits alone on a bench the boy asks if he's one of the members of the Gopher project and he denies it all talking about how the members died and how the Earth can't be saved the child says that they're all heroes who will save the world and though saira seems to want to tell him the true nature of the project he can't bring himself to explain harukawa says she remembered something very similar and both of them had to find more clues in Oma's dorm room there there's tons of files blueprints for inventions for Irma make a conspiracy board and pieces of evidence from past trials that he's stolen most importantly though is his motive video and that is exactly the last puzzle piece I was waiting to collect before I could fully talk about him because it is pretty crucial in understanding Oma's whole deal in it we learned that the organization he was a part of was not in fact the remnants of Despair but dice an organization that he ran the organization itself was only guilty of petty non-violent crimes and harmless pranks and their ranks were also very thin and here we go again this is kind of a huge localization issue which not only really harms this reveal but also makes a bit of the trial later much more difficult in the original script of the game they specify here that the act of murder specifically was a taboo act for dice something that they never allowed and hated more than anything and Oma made those rules himself this is not explicitly mentioned at all in the English script for whatever reason and I feel like this is a pretty crucial distinction to bring up because it finally allows us to start unpacking a lot of what his deal has been if omo remained a mystery in chapter 5 he has been cracked wide open here it's still difficult to tell which of his individual statements were truthful or not a lot of the time but his core and driving motivations are now Crystal Clear he really did want to end the killing game his claim of loving people suffering in the game itself back in chapter 4 it was all a huge Bluff and honestly that really does make me question whether or not he really didn't truly care about gokuhara's death for that matter it was better for his plan at that point to pretend he didn't either way to sell his image as The Mastermind and again while his actions during the chapter itself are far from good or excusable it's easy to see the circumstances he created for himself creeping up around him and forcing him to do what he did to avoid getting his own hands dirty directly so that he could survive and continue trying to stop The Mastermind in this respect the finale of his free time events becomes a lot more poignant in retrospect Sahara says Oma would never allow himself to be reached would never hold out his hand this was his biggest downfall there's no doubt that if he had communicated sooner he probably would have lost a lot of tactical Edge Against The Mastermind hell even if irama had stayed totally calm and made all the inventions he could want they'd still inevitably run into the snag of The Mastermind sabotage when trying to pitch it all to the group but as much as Irma's own paranoia backfired on her and caused a rift in her working relationship with Oma's own paranoia and lack of trust in the others is what necessitated his roundabout methods which so many came to despise him for to the end he was a liar who made enemies but though he posed himself as their greatest foe he was trying to be their greatest asset and I do find that a bit complicated I don't know that I'm his biggest fan or anything I do honestly find him more interesting on paper than I do when he's actually around because he gets on my nerves way more when he's actually on screen but he's entertaining motivated and not necessarily easy to sort into one camp or the other in terms of good or bad he persistently avoids categorization by making himself as inscrutable to the notion as possible and I think in that respect I can see why people take such a strong interest in him he really was never what he appeared to be at almost any given time for better or worse before we can leave his room though we also find an envelope labeled this isn't a will which when opened reads the second message is on the wall next to the boiler in the rear Garden seems we know exactly where to head next then huh there just where Oma's note specified is something written where some grass used to be and it says twins B which should look somewhat familiar if we consider some other writing Oma has admitted to making before we can ponder that too much though we get another flashback blank showing us Sahara agreeing to re-enter the Gopher project to Headmaster naegi he asks what the point of surviving to preserve humanity is and Nike says that finding that point that hope is what they'll do just then kibo crashes in through the ceiling still mid-fight with the exos having seen a blink of a similar sort himself Cyrus says he still needs to enter some blocked off areas like amami's lab and kibo tells him to meet with him on the respective floor to open it up it's at this point we get the kibo gauge mechanic where we can spam the a button when we are caught by an axisal to fill it up and have kibo come to our rescue to clear the way getting his help as promised to finally access amami's lab we enter and find quite a few strange things with yumino in tow there's two giant Vault doors with astrological signs on the dials whose combinations should be obvious by now horse a twins B opening it gives us access to a thumb drive which when inserted into the empty laptop on the table gives us the mysterious video of amami we saw earlier in the game though this time it's not cut up from the full video we learned that amami was in fact the super high school level Survivor someone who apparently participated in another killing game and made it to the end that had his memory of this erased gaining access to this video was one of the perks he would have gotten for this while the other is something he supposedly received at the start if you go in they wipe your memories and you start killing he says that's the way it is unable to relay What's significant about the fact that only two survive drivers can remain interrupted by a buzzer amami ends his message by saying to himself that he wanted this killing game so he has to win it hit with another blink Cyrus sees his old classmates encouraging him before the Gopher project start talking about how they look up to him and are proud of him exiting the room shirigani appears to ask Sahara to come with her to momota's lab where apparently the destruction has caused a strange room to be revealed and uh indeed it has this weird sterile room with pods is proven by another blank to be the chamber they were all put into their sleep from and where they would eventually wake from later on the desk in the center of the room is a participant list for the project which shirigani notes houses a strange secret on it it says that akamatsu had a twin and chiragane wonders if this may be foreboding of something bad considering junko and Oshima herself had a twin that helped her pull a mastermind reveal Color Me skeptical about that little note though and allow me to head back out from here to the basement in the library we meet up once again with harakawa and she notes something that's been bothering her and it's extremely detailed blueprint among the pile Oma had which seems to be for sucking up bugs which she seems worried about considering gokuhara once noted possibly seeing bugs having headed to irama's lab afterwards she actually found a functional prototype of this machine which she turns on to try to see if it does anything it doesn't seem to suck anything up of course but it might be worth keeping in mind if Oma found it so apparently important deciding to ask for kibo's help in opening the mastermind's door everyone is confronted by an exit which is promptly stopped by kibo with the door destroyed everyone is finally able to enter the hidden door behind the bookshelf and finds a strangely decorated space with a strange curtain laid over a domed surface when they remove it they find the jar brain Monokuma which reveals its name to be mother Kuma the mother Kuma's Consciousness is connected to all spares of Monokuma and provides its overall Ai and personality Only The Mastermind can get it to make spares however and though everyone tells it to give birth save for shirogane who phrases it a bit more delicately it won't budge deciding to ignore it and its insistence that The Killing game will never end they look around for other Clues one of them is a monopad which claims to be the survivor's perk a complete map of the school which reveals the presence of the hidden door it also has a hint to end the killing game left from amemi to himself it predicts that he'll remember the super high school level hunt and also says that the Mastermind is hiding within the academy your best chance of exposing them is when Monokuma needs a spare it says at that time The Mastermind will go to the library's hidden room seems someone was becoming a bit more inconvenient to the proceedings than he might have initially let on huh the pad is covered in a strangely shaped blood stain and even more Curious than this there's a shot put ball in the trash can it has no blood on it but it does have several pink fibers Sahara pauses clutches his chest he knows how to end this killing game now before they leave mother Kuma says that the Mastermind won't be found hiding no matter how much they search but that that person does come to this room quite often as a last defining statement it says hit doesn't matter what you do the killing game will absolutely positively never end the killing game is a symbol of Despair how can something so fun just end another blink arrives just in time to show a Cyrus POV as Monokuma appeared to him after waking from his stasis horrified he tries to ask what's happening but Monokuma tells him exactly what's about to go down and refuses to elaborate because his memory is about to be wiped anyway saying that he plans to shove them all into lockers once they're unconscious he beams a blackout light into cyhara's eyes and that's his final missing memory Don inches ever closer and yumino Promises to stay behind and look here a bit more on the way out though the fight's destruction traps her in the room with rubble and the Gang has no choice but to continue searching given their time limit back in the classroom where this all began Sahara finds a strange stack of desks that kibo claimed to have seen something strange near when flying by it earlier by digging underneath all of the desks saira finds what that is a weird terminal that seems to be for the sake of setting up flashback backlights something is strange about it though as it gives multiple prompts relating to bits of backstory which seem to contradict each other when all of the memories are chosen it seems to automatically write something up based on the prompt and spits a flashback light out into the nearby Locker when yumino enters the room the classroom automatically reverts to normal seemingly to obscure its true purpose wait how did she get here exactly she was just trapped well she clarifies that she found something strange that helped her Escape which is related to the first floor girls bathroom they head there and out damn it and though reluctantly saira enters along with her turns out the Mastermind just can't help their Danganronpa one references because in the Supply Closet of the bathroom there's a false wall leading to a secret passageway which isn't even on the survivor's perk map following it down leads all the way from the bathroom to the hidden bookshelf room and the damage in the school causes the mother Kuma to topple and break giving one last hint that it will only make spares when the designated person says the word birth to it outside the bathroom harakawa gives us the evil eye for even being in there but delivers the old pictures of amami for Sahara to look at and what it reveals should be pretty obvious by now satisfied that he has everything he needs saira exits into the courtyard to call off the fighting between kibo and the exos sairat demands that Monokuma give them one last trial which is not being called by him but by the class promising that the class trial will end the killing game saira stares Monokuma down vowing to reveal the whole truth Monokuma seemingly bored of fighting concedes finding the idea very interesting but he does clarify that if the trial doesn't go sire his way everyone will be executed in retaliation though they're nervous everyone solidifies their resolve harika was smiling and saying she'll just kill Sahara before Monokuma can if everything goes wrong kibo takes off his armaments at monokuma's request trusting Sahara's resolve although he is kept back for a moment for that purpose while everyone else goes on ahead as they arrive at The Shrine of judgment they are soon followed by kibo who mysteriously has his cowlick back he seems more level-headed and seems to feel like his inner voice is back too asking what the device hirokawa has is he gets the scoop and decides he'll use his magnified Vision to see if there are truly no bugs in the device which gives us our last clue there actually are tiny nanoscopic monokumas with wings that are holding cameras asking what they are at the threat of squishing them kibo hears that they are called nanokumas a hive mind who serve as monokuma's academy-wide surveillance by transmitting footage to him and therefore assisting The Mastermind this explains why the electro bomb in chapter 5 would have prevented Monokuma from seeing who the true culprit of that case was as the damaged buff Monokuma sinks sadly into the ground with no more water everyone boards the elevator deciding that he too will participate in the end Monokuma cackles with all of the revived monocubs by his side who he also forces to participate in what he calls a pivotal role he claims that they have to remain interesting and help out or he'll use the death controller to blow them all up one by one which is actually pretty funny and the final class trial to expose the truth of everything begins oh boy do we have one doozy of a Time ahead of us so the first question that's on everyone's mind first and foremost is probably what the purpose of this trial is going to be how is Sahara going to get the show on the road well this might be a bit of a surprise since we've never done something like this before but this is a matter of relitigating a previous case that case being the very first of this game wherein run through amami was killed the Cubs and Monokuma are both pretty adamant that there's no point to this as the decision was already made but Sahara has a counter argument there is new evidence to present which wasn't available at the time which may point to a different conclusion and also screw you which would mean that if Monokuma had accepted a false premise before the entire validity of the killing game itself would be thrown into question such a bold declaration has the bear certain that regardless of the result this line of inquiry will prove interesting so he gives it a shot with the new knowledge of amami's talent as well as his survivor's perk Cyra is able to deduce several things about his actions as well as the condition that several things were left in having used his perk to head to the library at the time The Mastermind would likely be going to the hidden room everything tracks so far but whereas we were previously convinced that he was alone there his Survivor perk monopad proves differently the blood stain on it is shaped very much like a hand and the photos taken of him clearly prove why this is he had it on his person obviously and was holding it in a similar way however when his body was later searched the pad was not on his person meaning The Mastermind had to have oh monokids gaunt meaning The Mastermind had to have taken it right into the hidden room which was closing as everyone arrived to the library monodam argues that the cameras would have prevented this from working but kibo is quick to offer the camera's intervals as a possible exploit for this purpose and sahira backs this up saying that the nanokumas would have been able to provide a constant feat of the library to The Mastermind which would have given them the information they needed to time their plan and carry it out without being caught in the picture Monokuma finally concedes to having taken the monopad but not the murder claiming that since the perk was For amami's Eyes Only it was necessary for him to take it so that it couldn't just be exploited by anyone afterward but Sahara fires back the pad also specified that a mastermind was somewhere in the academy and that in particular was info he couldn't let leak out because it would have encouraged everyone to cooperate and now whether he likes it or not we know that his controller took it this leads to the big accusation that akamatsu was never guilty in the first place and that the Mastermind killed amami themself this can be proven through the shot put ball at the scene of the crime as sairat found another one in the hidden room's trash can the reason it had pink fiber on it is because it was the one akamatsu was planning to use the one she had stored in her bag wrapped up in her spare vest if the ball she had prepared really had killed amami it shouldn't have been there and it should have been covered in blood this means that it missed its Target and that the ball was used for the Murder by someone else extrapolating from here it's obvious that the spare ball was taken into the hidden room precisely because the Mastermind was behind everything they had to take akamatsu's ball to swap in their own and make it look as as though akamatsu herself was guilty oh there goes matadon so then why did this happen well recall that the time limit which dictated that if no one was killed everyone forced to participate would be annihilated was fast approaching if the ball missed this would mean that nobody was killed and everyone would be wiped out the Mastermind wanting to ensure that a killing game would happen no matter what would have wanted a contingency waiting in the wings in case of an emergency like this and what better way to frame someone save their own skin and in the process guarantee the game would continue that's right their own self-imposed time limit made The Mastermind desperate not to bore whoever it is their intent on showing this game to and they fudged the rules for that sole purpose given that akamatsu was then executed for the crime she didn't commit and Monica allowed it with no intervention Sahara argues that the game is patently unfair and has no legs of legitimacy left to stand on so who is The Mastermind well shirigani once again brings up the akamatsu's twin Theory but like I said before there's something pretty fishy about this an additional person in the academy would face a lot of risk when going to and from places yet the mother Kuma claimed that The Mastermind quote comes to this room very often meaning they'd be out of it just as much if they really were hiding and yeah if they were a twin of akamatsu's they'd really have to be hiding she died in the first chapter after all then this would be an unnecessary amount of risk The Mastermind is much more likely someone who is already a part of the group who would have very little trouble blending in this is also supported by the flashback Lightroom being set up in a totally normal classroom and set up automatically to camouflage itself if someone walks into it yumino is hesitant to believe that one of their precious friends could really be the Mastermind and kibo offers that maybe one of the Dead students could have had their death faked again calling Echoes of mukuroikusava to mind saira has a much better method of narrowing things down though going back through everyone's Alibis for amami's murder at the time of the first trial many of these things would have seemed fairly solid or otherwise mundane but with the extended knowledge we have now would something else jump out at us well yumino was in the game room as was harakawa and multiple others were there as well kibo reiterates that his Alibi is weak since he was alone in his dorm room but claims he's not responsible regardless that leads us back to shiragane who was in the dining hall with shinguji and Irma but briefly stepped away to go to the girl's bathroom wait wait a second wait a damn second oh my God yeah what exactly is in that bathroom huh what did we find in there what would make it awfully convenient for you to be able to travel to the library through it and perhaps return completely without incident yes it would be entirely possible for shiragane to be the one who utilized the hidden passage which wouldn't just make her the culprit behind amami's murder but the Mastermind of the entire game while she tries briefly to throw either kibo or Hoshi under the bus as well Sahara coldly responds that she never mentions seeing them near or in the bathroom before and she can't just change her story now when it suits her the tension becomes palpable yumino falling silent harikawa demanding that shirigani speak to properly defend herself the Cubs desperate not to be blown to Smithereens throw their full weight behind the argument while begging sairata back down but how many plays have they ignored until now though they try to argue that there's no proof we are once again brought back to Mother Kuma who told us that a spare could only be created aided when The Mastermind tells it to give birth everyone present in the room told it to give birth in those exact words before but shiragane specifically avoided using those words when urging the same thing she knew that if she said the same words it would have followed her orders even saira is now pleading with shiragane to prove herself innocent if she really can oh bye monosuke anyway with one last review of The Facts it seems ever more certain that she's constructed her own coffin around her like the bars of a bird cage chipped away and exposing the hellish vacuum of reality Beyond its perimeter all she even has to say for herself is that it's always junko and Oshima who turned out to be the Mastermind so even if she's dead why shouldn't it be again why shouldn't it be again with the remaining Cubs exploding with the fog rolling in she arrives junko and Oshima the 53rd arrives and this is where everything goes completely off the rails sumagi shirigane was nothing more than a construct a cover for The Mastermind or at least that's what she claims the 53rd definitely implies something strange and seeing as she calls herself a perfect reproduction of junko it's easy to see that all is not right here what exactly does this reveal imply what uncomfortable truths are we now poised to stop overlooking well certainly this ridiculous narrative about apocalypse meteors and especially being the last human beings alive this is no retread for the sake of reproduction like shirogane seems to want to claim because we already have pretty reliable proof that things haven't been as they seemed for a while now first of all there's the history of Hope's Peak that Sahara found which is incongruent with how everyone remembers the past everyone seems to agree on the idea that jinko and Oshima was single-handedly responsible for the tragedy and only recall her followers coming into the picture later when their war with the Future Foundation began but recall we already know that this isn't the case we know a very influential set of characters who were involved in helping junko bring the world to its knees so calling her the sole culprit of the tragedy would be seriously exaggerating wouldn't it this is the truth that the book presents which was enough to get Sahara to challenge what he remembered furthermore though everyone remembers jungko trapping class 78 for the first killing game the book recalls what shirogane neglected to scrounge the wiki for that the class locked themselves in but just had their memories of doing so erased and of course everyone remembers applying to Hope's Peak but Hope's Peak only ever scouted their students this is where things get really weird why would amami call himself a participant of a previous killing game if he wasn't in the previous ones that we know of why would shirigani insist that Oma is a remnant of Despair when we know for a fact that he was a member of dice a group that was adamantly against committing murder you can see white leaving that detail out in the English script May makes it a little weird when Sahara claims this later why would all of these mixed memory surface only after seeing the flashback lights well what if the flashback lights were wrong they were alleged to recover people's memories but the classroom for constructing them makes it pretty clear with a little consideration what they were actually being used for the lights implant false memories create them for the sake of creating a narrative remember how Oma said before that somehow The Mastermind was able to nudge harakawa in the direction of killing him remember why she did that because she remembered he was a remnant of Despair even if it wasn't true and who was able to coincidentally find things during the investigation who would have been able to coincidentally leave a new flashback light on the dining room table that morning before the incident shiragane could it would have been far too easy so this is the final Domino tip everything everyone was made to remember was false they were lies none of them were even Hope's Peak students to begin with motivation drives a story says shiragane that's the only reason any of these things existed in the first place these memories set the structure for how those characters would act would think would behave so then who is shirigane really if this really has nothing to do with Hope's Peak with junko's Will with the Future Foundation or remnants of Despair then who is she and why is she doing all of this she then begins to outline what might be the biggest twist in any of these games to date and she does so by cosplaying as pretty much every character across the casts of both Danganronpa 1 and 2. it certainly comes as a shock I mean every few sentences she changes her voice and appearance I can imagine to some that this might seem a bit disorienting and maybe the cameos might seem a little cheap but it is pretty fun when you consider all the build up that brought us here still dealing with this for another hour seems like it would be a bit tiring it's a good thing we don't have to do something like that in this video right what it should become pretty obvious what this flurry of Cosplay implies though and no it's not just that shirigani doesn't care about Ultra despair girls or dr3 seriously not a single cosplay if one of those characters transparent much no it's that superbly convenient specification we received about her cosplay all those chapters ago she only has the ability to cosplay fictional characters you remember how I've kept stressing over and over again that V3 is in a separate continuity than those prior games well this is why because in the world of V3 the entire Danganronpa series prior to this was a fictional story presented to the masses in the exact same way it was presented to people in our the audience's reality and boy yo boy was this twist divisive I'll get more into my thoughts and feelings about it individually in the post-trial of course but I do think right off the bat that this twist was bound to upset a lot more of the English audience simply because of nisa's failure to convey this delineation between this game and the main series particularly with how the title was changed this is why I think the new was really important to maintain because it makes it clear even without kodaka here to make clarifying statements that this game was something different could it have stood to be a bit more transparent sure but I feel like a lot of people react very strongly to this in that they assume it's invalidating the entire story of the franchise as a whole in one Fell Swoop that's not the case though within the stories of Danganronpa 1 2 0 Ultra despair girls and even the dr3 anime the hopes Peak Saga as it were were all contained in one narrative that existed in the same continuity and in that continuity those events were true in the continuity V3 takes place in a completely alternate World Danganronpa is a series that people enjoy and some people were made to believe for a time that it was real when in reality it was not therefore it was a lie these two things can however coexist because they don't cross over with each other they don't exist in the same continuity so while the events are made up in one instance this doesn't hold true for the other I hope this can uh clear up some confusion and get some people to stop panicking still that doesn't mean everything here is all sunshine and rainbows far from it there are still a lot of implications to tackle here namely that everyone here has been forced to inhabit this fiction for the sake of entertainment it's true that there are people watching and where there is audience there needs to be story The Killing game itself the players involved their personalities their histories the backstory everything was a construct nothing was real not even the ruined World revealed to be an elaborate set not even down to the talents that have defined our colorful cast of characters and carried them this far not even the homes histories and friends that they remember when they entered the academy new Danganronpa V3 became their reality even if none of it was ever real in the first place and now we know who the true Mastermind is sumagi shirigane is but one small piece of the puzzle she's just the messenger she represents the will of the outside world of the audience who craves more Danganronpa to watch according to her the outside world is actually so peaceful and boring that they've become addicted to watching this never-ending killing game to experiencing the highs and lows of love and betrayal of Hope and despair and through the mouth of the series most beloved girl shiragane spells the original title flat out this killing game is for everyone everyone's new semester of killing this even explains the title that's why it's V3 and not just three why do you think it's junko and Oshima the 53rd it's a Roman numeral it's the 53rd season of Danganronpa I just want to interject here for a second by the way and say this is like why it's a huge pet peeve of mine when I see people called the first two games Danganronpa V1 or Danganronpa V2 or whatever like sir it's harmless do whatever you want but come on the v in V3 is a five those games aren't Danganronpa 51 or 52 you know this don't call them that stop it the series continued in this world all the way down the line and with each successive title the immersion just wasn't strong enough it went from a series of games started on the PSP to anime to becoming a reality show with live participants it has a whole team backing it team Danganronpa whose logo appears every time you boot up the game whose building of operations can always be seen eerily looming on the title screen Sahara tries to argue that he and his classmates aren't fictional even if everything else is and shiragane cuts him off they're just normal people that not only had all of their histories and personalities manufactured for the sake of being characters in The Killing game via use of the flashback lights but they were also completely willing participants they like everyone watching were rapidly devoted Danganronpa fans who auditioned for the opportunity to be in the show who were then chosen to join we even see Sahara's audition tape and it's not flattering saira himself talks about wanting to be a detective in a Danganronpa story who would be an extremely effective murderer who would surprise people because it had never been done before shiragana even claims that during the first run of the prologue that everyone realized they were selected and were happy about it so of course this naturally means the Beats of the plot were LED and planned by shirigani too after all she helped to create these characters and their inclinations right so it's only natural she had some degree of knowledge as to where these things might head she knew chabashira would feel a kinship with yumino she knew saira would be inspired by akamatsu's personality a fact which has made all the more tragic by the real akamatsu whose audition tape has her uttering the words I'm perfect for a killing game I don't have any faith in humanity she even knew harakawa had the disposition necessary to be attracted to and fall in love with momita and yet yet again this is made all the worst by his audition tape where he claims he'll kill everybody win and then lays around with his Fame and Fortune why did I even survive this long this is fiction there is no greater meaning no greater meaning to death a greater meaning to life it's all fiction there's no meaning to be found in any of it well it's so gross I could just barf well I guess it makes sense you wouldn't believe all this stuff how about that you in despair yet and she hopes they are considering that's what the audience always keeps coming back for everyone sinks they break how can they stop the killing game when it's what the whole world wants how could they ever pull the plug on something so impossibly popular that it eternally drives its own demand how can Sahara fight for a lie after all as we reach the bad end we hear a voice is this the end please tell me I'm asking you whenever I was in trouble my inner voice would always guide me that guidance is what brought me here I don't believe that's a mistake so I will trust it please tell me tell me what I should do please tell me your decision a safe prompt appears asking if we want to save this situation no it changes do we want to remedy this situation yes we temporarily come into control of kibo whose cowlick stands tall enough to offer him protagonist privileges for a second I guess it sure seems like it since he's suddenly talking about overcoming despair with hope the outside world wants hope too he says but here comes shiragane to clarify yes what he's hearing is the voices of the outside world itself he's got an antenna he's the audience survey he's been acting upon their whims for a while now with audience participation being a current season gimmick not only that but his eyes are the audience's camera too broadcasting everything to them from his perspective sirigani tries to make this seem like her bid to make the audience and the World At Large fall into despair just like junku and Oshima would and this pretty conveniently sets up a typical Danganronpa finale complete with the main theme beginning to play while Kevo talks about broadcasting hope and everything they even call him the super high school level hope robot and add hope to his truth bullets for crying out loud but even though shiragane seems determined to end this with a final vote between herself and kibo between hope and despair can we really let it end like this just just like the first game can we really after all this bring things right back around to the beginning according to shiragane we'd better because if kibo was punished the killing game will continue until only two survivors are left as per the rules though it's likely nothing would happen since the whole curtain's been discarded and everyone sees the tricks for what they are however if they vote for her and Escape everything's fake so they have nowhere to return and the world is populated by people who wanted this for them all in the first place they can't even regain their original personalities or memories and the rules pretty much guarantee that only two of them will be able to survive in this event anyway which is a choice they'll be forced to make if they want to go there even though kibo volunteers to be one of those sacrifices that leaves another left and of course harakawa is quick to offer to throw away her own life yet again if it means she gets a single chance to strike back at shirigane in the process but for Sahara that's enough as the ever familiar Claire de Lune begins to play in the background he raises his objection it's because of hope that this is even happening he says the audience of Danganronpa doesn't just want despair they want despair to be defeated by hope like it always is they want to be inspired they want to be told that everything will be okay and they always want another killing game to do that with that's what fiction can do but for sairat there's no excuse for that fiction to continue once it has started to harm real people is any story really worth ending so many lives furthermore he's pieced it together this is why there's a vote this explains a mommy's role the punishment is continuing on and playing another killing game meaning that he was probably standing in this exact same position in the previous season he sacrificed himself and was made to play again and this means that if hope is chosen here shirigani will be the Mastermind kibo will play audience surrogate and harukawa will be the super high school level Survivor the killing game persists When Hope wins when the story reaches its natural conclusion so must another sequel come along to capitalize on the audience's never-ending investment the only winning move here is simply not to play and Sahara is tired of playing when it means that so many real people get hurt in the process and that's what it's all about huh even if everything is fake even if their backgrounds their balance and the basis of their relationships are all fake it still felt real it so meant something to them this is the true culmination of Sahara's Arc his ability to search for the truth and the truth inside kind lies because the friends he cares about the pain in his heart that he feels when losing them those aren't fake and to Simply deny them as yet another lie would be absurd even if they're not based in truth they are still true aren't they and they're worth caring about they're worth fighting for the sake of and that's why he refuses to vote he won't give them what they want shooting hope right from the mouth of Makoto naigi himself with a lie bullet that represents despair kibo stops listening to his inner voice yumino and harukawa both have come to their own decisions with even the UI switching to allow us to peer into their thoughts to watch as they themselves become the heroes of their own stories and make the decision to stand with saira against the will of the outside world shirigani argues that they can never change the audience's mind that fiction cannot affect reality but she could never understand she doesn't understand how everyone's feelings are real how a lie could become the truth and she doesn't understand the power that fiction wields to communicate a real message and a real wish if Danganronpa itself has always told us to hold on to hope to cherish our bonds and to hold our heads High then if we carry that advice with us aren't we living proof that it does and honestly this next bit is really cool you literally have to refrain from participating a Non-Stop debate begins you let the timer run out shiragane becomes desperate to get you to play a hangman's Gambit begins you let the timer run out psyche taxi begins you let the timer run out a multiple choice question begs you to choose hope you let the timer run out Sahara refuses to entertain people while he is fighting for his life tells them to go ahead and stop watching if they like and the audience starts to get bored but there's one last swerve kibo's will is Stripped Away his personality erased as the audience takes control to literally have a say in the discussion and ensure it goes one way or the other in the last words he can manage before he's completely taken over he apologizes for not being able to stick it out with everyone and tells them that their choice isn't wrong begging them to use him and help change the world that would demand this from them in the first place our friends who died gave us their love Cyrus says and we changed because of that if we can Inspire change in others then that love will live on that love will tear down the wall between in fiction and reality and it will live on forever that's why I'm going to change the world as long as I have their love I will change it even if this whole story is a lie I will use that lie to change the world as the final argument Armament starts we Face Down with kibo in what I can only describe as him being used as a conduit for saira and the others to defeat Twitter as he swears that they will end Danganronpa by their own hands kibo acquiesces even though shiragane is so confident that the series will continue she herself didn't vote if you needed any further proof that she wanted hope to win since that would have left only kibo's vote she doesn't get what she wants though nobody voted not even the audience she was totally off Mark when she said that there was no point to fiction that it couldn't affect reality because it successfully changed their minds Sahara's plan worked his pleas were heard and the world was changed the audience has had enough of Danganronpa and they all start tuning out to signal that decision your words can't reach them anymore with that shirigane finally concedes to the end convinced that to end this without any punishment at all would be half-assed she leaves kibo to wrap the proceedings to destroy this fictional world and the killing game along with it I worked hard to keep this going for 53 seasons and now it's all over she says well that's fine if this is a world without killing games now I don't want to be a part of it I have no interest in a world without Danganronpa as she laments that her plan was such a perfect copy that it failed at the end kibo raises into the sky he begins to fire indiscriminately reigning Hellfire on the school below as shiragane waves from the courtyard with Monokuma crushed by the falling Rubble as the academy Falls kibo flies into the top of the birdcage of fiction surrounding them blowing himself to Smithereens as the veil shatters and the credits roll all the while a new banging song from agumi Agata called Dan kasari break plays but only in the Japanese version of the game apparently there were some licensing issues or something the series medley remix we get in the American version is pretty good but if you've never heard the original song I encourage you to look it up because it's probably my favorite credit song in the series anyway this still isn't the end of e3 now we've got a whole epilogue scene left but this is the end of chapter six and since I tend to reserve my final thoughts on the game itself for the very end and chapter 6 has so much worth talking about on its own I feel like we need to stop and hold back for a moment here and discuss it before we can really start wrapping things up there are a lot of elephants in the room right now but first let's start small and let's take things in order the investigation section is certainly one of the most unique final investigations of the series it's the only one that doesn't take place in Hope speak Academy fact simile or otherwise and as a startling amount of last minute mechanics tossed in too I honestly think the timer is pretty weird if you run it out it just shows the school blowing up and then gives you more time anyway so it seems a little pointless the kibo gauge is fine though it seems a little incidental but I guess it makes the whole thing a bit more tense since you can actually be expected to run into the exos during the proceedings because of it it does raise a couple of practical questions though I do like the reframing of Oma's character here like I said before but the fact that he was able to give hints about the password to Amy's hidden room is more than a little odd I know that Alma has like mad lock picking skills and he probably did know more than he tended to let on but you saw how some of those lab hats were opened it has always bugged me how he even got in there in the first place or how he at least knew about the Vault if he didn't I'm sure it could be explained away somehow so it's not the biggest plot disturbance in the world to me but I feel like it goes pretty largely under addressed for something that could so easily be construed as a gap in the story's logic and that does bother me I guess if shiragane really wanted everyone to discover the truth and despair she could have made sure he had a memory of it but that would probably raise a lot of questions of convenience for Oma anyway and she was already having problems with how nosy he was seems like that'd be way too risky speaking of shirogane oh boy do we want to talk about her for a second well well first of all I'd like to say that the start of the trial is actually really cool to me the idea of doing a retrial and catching the Mastermind in a lie is very interesting and it comes as a huge shock to tie everything back around like that even if it ends in yet another jungle reveal shiragane herself though I'm a little mixed I've had people accuse me of praising junco's character too much or pretending she's deeper than she actually is which I mean these videos are about me explaining my personal takes so that is a little confusing to me but like I said before I'm honestly glad she wasn't the True Villain again she had long since worn out her welcome and a new original Mastermind was the way to go in my opinion however that being said I still think shirigane at her best isn't as good as junko at her best this is of course just my opinion though and that isn't to say that I think shiragane is a bad Mastermind at all either far from it in fact I think she can be rather brilliant at times though underwhelming in others allow me to explain so shirigani has what I'd call The double-edged Sword of intrigue where she is conceptually quite awesome and part of that depth comes from the fact that she is so shallow but that also leads to her being quite boring sometimes I mean it's all a lie it's all fiction certainly hasn't become as ubiquitously beaten to the ground as hope or despair have by this point so they're not quite so memetically annoying but at a certain point it does also become about all she can really say for herself because shirogane like I said is more of the harbinger than she is the true Central villain and for that reason she's more of an interesting concept than she's allowed to be an individually interesting character by her own admission she's rather plain and her most defining trait before this point is her constant need to make reference humor about things she's a fan of I think this is kind of the entire point though she's the orchestrator for her audience's sake and though she's puppeteering the current installment to her whim she's also just as much of a Danganronpa Super Fan as the audience she cosplays all the characters she remembers their catchphrases and famous lines she can even perfectly replicate their voices shout out to the original cast cameos by the way that was sweet and this too is why I think it's so revealing that she has the line toward the end about not wanting to live in a world without Danganronpa it echoes the Monokuma theater segment in chapter 5 about Danganronpa being someone's reason to live to which Monokuma responds that it was pleasure doing business with them her entire identity is wrapped up in the media she consumes and all that is to the people in charge is an eternal transaction I'd argue this is the reason she is otherwise so plain because she cannot conceive of an identity Beyond her status as a fan of something she is her fandom she embodies it and she is not content in any other moment to Simply Be herself when she reveals her Grandeur and her plans she can't even hardly stand to do so while looking like herself while denying the power and impact of fiction on people's lives she ironically becomes so embroiled within it that she can't even imagine living outside of it what use is a world to her where she can't watch her favorite blorbos kill each other the culmination of her Arc is quite literally everyone telling her to go touch grass and her saying no and I think this largely ties into the point V3 is really driving at but more on that in a bit before we confront the point about the audience in the story I want to talk about the fiction angle because it's a word that gets thrown around a lot in this trial and it's something a lot of people have some complicated feelings about I already talked a bit about how this doesn't by my estimation invalidate anything about the prior installments insofar as their canonicity to themselves and all that in Universe stuff but I want to talk a bit about how it does pertain to this story and why that still May disappoint a lot of people the events of the games plot are undeniably fictional this has thrown at us pretty clearly as a central part of the Twist and though there are some open ambiguous questions tossed in our faces toward the very end of the game the characters being willful participants with Rewritten personalities and fake backstories is made almost undeniably apparent to many this would then crumble the foundation of the story itself and what it even existed for these games are long and heavy on emotional investment after all doesn't it feel feel a bit cheap to have played something for a week weeks or maybe even months depending on your free time to get attached to the characters to want to solve the mystery only to be told that there was never any point that none of it was even real in the first place all for the sake of a big shocking twist I can't admit yeah it does feel a bit rash it feels a bit uncouth even it almost feels like the writers are laughing at you for even caring at all and while I may have initially felt that way when playing the game like so many others I did want to take a step back and evaluate that carefully is that what the writers were doing I've come across many examples of media I love that have received similar accusations and never once have I felt that that was the case in those instances in fact in many of those instances I felt like the mere suggestion was one that failed to recognize the actual intent of the story whether or not it was executed upon perfectly and so this forced me to analyze things here a bit more closely what was V3 trying to do with this if not to cause some simple shock well I think it plays its hand pretty heavily in it's talking about the power fiction holds what do I mean by this though well consider for a moment the term suspension of disbelief it's one we all know but what does it mean well it's when we the audience come into a story we know to be Fantastical or otherwise unreal and allow ourselves to engage with it on its own terms after all stories like this are fictional but while we know that we also let the part of our brain that is constantly scrutinizing its fictional status Falls silent for a time while we slip into it we become a part of that world in order to feel something about it remember what I said before about the theme of lies in this game about whether lies were always a bad thing or could be used to kind ends remember the whole thing Oma's Arc revolves around fiction is itself a lie but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's bad right because we know it isn't true we literally knew that from the very beginning before you even played Danganronpa for the first time you knew that it was just some video game just some story that never happened I think this twist is less about forcing us into shock about some cheap revelation and more intended to ask a question why now after all this time would being told that this is a lie hurt you why now when you've always known and just because it is a lie does that mean that it means nothing I'd say that judging by saira's words that no it does mean something I mean clearly if you've gotten invested in the story at all then it means something to you and those feelings whether influenced by something real or something artificial are in and of themselves true that's the value they hold and the value of the lie that influenced them to begin with and of course I'd never accuse anyone of missing the point quote unquote for solely disliking how this twist was presented or handled I think you can very well understand this and still not be a fan and even to me I still have some annoyances with it for example I feel like this in retrospect does make sense of some other things like the monocubs or corporate colorful mascots to spruce up the tired old reboot for example at tojo's ridiculous backstory that I said I thought was a bit much was itself probably exaggerated specifically to emphasize how they're running out of ideas and while this now makes a lot more sense I do still think that this only goes so far when retroactively managing to patch over things that I found initially dissatisfying like yes I guess it does make more sense now as to why that backstory was so absurd but that still doesn't change the fact that that's how I felt about it in Chapter 2 when I played it and dragged down the case itself a bit for me you know all this to say it's not perfect I can say as many flowery words as I want to and trust me I will never stop you can't make me but that doesn't mean everyone's gonna like it even for the reasons it's going for still I just wanted to give credit to what the gesture was attempting to accomplish in my opinion and say that the sentiment does ring very true to me this is also the reason why I don't really worry about things like harukawa's crush on momota being made up or other such beats being invalidated there's no real effective way shirigani could have controlled everyone's moment to moment actions for the entire game and if she could that would both make her really stupid considering she screws herself over and also it would just render the entire plot utterly meaningless because it would then be over a dozen shiriganes effectively talking to herself I think she gave them the potential for these things I think she gave harakawa the type of feelings that under the circumstances would blossom into an attraction toward momota but that in and of itself cannot make their plot play out the exact way that it did it can only steer her in a general direction while she carries the rest out like the opening line of a writing prompt the feelings she continued to have and things she did as a result were all still her choices and so they held just as much meaning as anything else in my opinion shirigani has more of a dungeon master with a group that has been gaslighted into thinking that they're real Wizards then she is God writing their actions onto a page if you catch my meaning but that still leaves a final Behemoth to face up against in terms of piping hot takes and that is the matter of the audience in the world of Danganronpa V3 now I think it's probably best to lead with the fact that kodaka has said in interviews that he was actually surprised that some people felt a bit told off by the game here because yes that is a predominant negative stigma towards this aspect of the story that a lot of people feel as though the game is scolding them for enjoying Danganronpa and uh well it's not exactly difficult to see why Cyrus phrasing is super accusatory and given the role of the audience in V3 it's also very easy to see them as a parallel for the real-life audience buying and playing the games their chat messages are superbly reminiscent of things actual fans would say and I've seen many more claim that those chat messages made them feel uncomfortable precisely because they rang so true when compared to their own comments kodaka however spins a different story saying that he felt previous finales aired too close to having the audience be essentially cheerleaders for the protagonists who could only encourage them from the sidelines as opposed to feeling like they were with them at Ground Zero this finale he says was his attempt to get the audience to feel like they and the characters were firmly at the same level and and would feel just as much despair as them when confronted with what they were up against and for that reason would feel as though they were fighting together with them and was hoping that saira's words would be encouraging ones that they could get behind furthermore he says that the idea that the audience is reflective of the real one comes across weirdly to him because in V3 Danganronpa is the most popular thing on Earth that everyone is addicted to and in real life it's fairly Niche and even the mere suggestion that it could come back gets them ratioed on Twitter I don't know how much I want to believe this though I don't want to call kodaka a liar obviously I'm sure there is a lot of truth to this but I also think he's maybe trying to save face just a little bit since he said this when he had already gotten a lot of flack I mean sure I absolutely see where people are coming from when they say that this bugs the piss out of them and I myself think that kodaka is maybe not looking hard enough if he says that he really can't see why people would feel a bit attacked by some of this dialogue but at the same time I almost feel like if this isn't meant to be a critique of some sort it becomes really boring like what then is the message exactly well death of the author and all that allow me to try keyword being try to explain the more interesting angle of the story here which I think is emphasized by the audience and their role in it and that's one of franchise stagnation and the death of creativity we've already pointed out that this is installment number 53 that there are tryhard baby mascots that put Poof from The Fairly Odd Parents to shame and an increasing ramp up of ridiculous audience hooks that exist solely to milk the series dry from an in-universe perspective hell it's even got the lazy reboot thing going on because it's billed as a direct sequel to The Story of Danganronpa 3. keep in mind that the Hope's Peak Saga still ended there in v3's world but then they went on and kept soft rebooting for dozens of more sequels this then is a return to form for team Danganronpa shiragane calls it the long-awaited sequel this is the first time that the Hope speak storyline has been brought to their real fiction reality show setup and they intend to squeeze it for all it's worth repeating tired tropes walking the same lines they have over and over again having endless references to previously famous cases and even bringing back characters from those previous games how many beloved film television or even video game franchises have you seen do this how much more rarely do you see companies actually put money and time into original properties that don't have a convenient branding name to give it a boost how often have you seen things that barely seem like they even need to be attached to the name of the series they're supposedly rebooting only to learn that the team behind them was basically just told to slap the name on what they were already making precisely because it would make more money that way and how often do you see people eat that up I don't think V3 is necessarily criticizing its audience for enjoying violence or anything I think this is as much of a misunderstanding as it is when people accuse undertale of being solely about that too and more than that I think kodaka would have very little reason to preach that message if so given that he made the other Danganronpa games now I think this has more to do with creative death and what I mean by that is the endless grind that demands art to become a commodity for nothing but teen Eternal consumption it's shiragane and her jinko costume that says at the end of chapter 5 that if it's fun we have to keep doing it it's her that says the fans would never accept Danganronpa suddenly ending because they feel owed more for supporting it and it's she who is defined solely by the fandom that she likes who refuses to even continue living if the series is over something kodaka also said in interviews around this time is that even back with dr1 he was never sure if it would get a sequel and he didn't write it with a continuation in mind that with sdr2 being finished he wasn't even sure where to take the series that with dr3 the storyline was over and that with V3 he wondered at a certain point whether it even should be Danganronpa with his team he later reiterated that with V3 he said all he needed to say and that he had very little interest in ever returning to the series and that if Spike chunsoft continued it it would be without him though he has since walked this back slightly saying he might would return if asked and it was his decision to have v3's epilogue more on that in a bit and with a title card that declared the end of Danganronpa itself and yeah I mean Beyond spin-off material it hasn't V3 really did cement itself for now at least as the final entry and I think that's incredibly purposeful at least from kodaka's own perspective at the time because this is what I think it's all about we're not actually causing real deaths by being fans of Danganronpa I don't think we can reliably be held to account for that and I don't think it would be super interesting if that's all the game had to say or imply for itself what I do think that the game is asking us to think about however is whether we really need more Danganronpa the deaths are just a weighty way of getting us to recognize this there are personal Stakes to the characters within the fiction who are attempting to create real feelings within us the audience but the Crux of this plea is a simple one Danganronpa has been exhausted to its limit in v3's world there's practically no more stories to even tell stories Inspire feelings in us but when those feelings are repeated wholesale for their own sake they become a formula and unless that formula has anything unique left to say they become set dressing just an excuse to have more Bloody Murder Mysteries and by a certain point especially if they're getting so bored of the regular format that they have to start killing real people for it then yeah that's all it is anymore if you think hope and despair were tired phrases by five installments in can you imagine listening to them for 53 no neither can I really all stories have an ending some of the best art in the world is the kind that gets to leave us on its own terms without being forced by a production committee to drag itself out and become a carcass of what it once was Gravity Falls ended after two seasons it was short it was sweet it was perfect that way and that's exactly how the Creator said he wanted it we never got exposed to it for long enough that it became just another soulless product being sold for money Danganronpa V3 asks us the question of why we love what we love and if at a certain point for the sake of its integrity and the lasting memories it gives us if it would be better to set those things free v3's world is the way it is precisely because even if in a cartoonishly exaggerated rated way its populace could not let go of Danganronpa they like shirigani defined themselves by it crowded around it and became so obsessed with it that it devoured every aspect of their lives fiction should be able to make you feel things but you know all things in moderation and whatnot this was a world ruined by its attachment able to excuse atrocities for another dopamine hit another product to buy and sell while grinding its Integrity just a bit more under heal and please don't misconstrue me I don't think the Deliverance of this point is nearly perfect and I again don't want to make it seem like I'm accusing anyone of either not understanding it or being rightfully scolded and needing to take the message to heart I do not reckon myself so presumptuous to know the internal lives of all Danganronpa fans nor would I want to if you think this message is a bit arrogant or misguided I wouldn't blame you and I can't force you to see it any other way nor would I try believe it or not I think the discussion surrounding this game is way more interesting because of how split it is and I'm not even necessarily saying what I think about whether this narrative is good or Not by trying to outline what I think it's even about and even then I could still be wrong kodaka could post nezami VA is full of on Twitter tomorrow and I'd have to be like yeah okay fair enough but I don't know that's what I got out of it and that's why even if I think it's far from perfect it is still conceptually quite engaging and if there's one thing I do think kodaka succeeded at with this decision it's that he made me feel like I was right there with them me and the characters were on the same level seeing eye to eye I think there's something commendable about that that all said chapter 6 is one of the most compelling mixed bags I've ever come across the investigation is cool but weird the trial is long and often feels like it's putting its foot in its mouth but it also has some decently interesting Concepts to explore that I would rather it try than back away sheepishly from I think in all ways that make art beautiful and messy it is both and like the truth and a kind lie perhaps those things should be able to co-exist for the betterment of the whole I think it could certainly be improved in many ways part of me thinks it would be far more interesting if instead of allowing shirigani to get her junko send off they forced her to live in the real world for example that might would have been pretty biting and sold her character Arc even better I also think kibo's role would have hit a bit harder if I was more attached to kibo sorry kibo fans I just found them a little average for most of this game I wasn't super into him yamano's here too I guess but overall I think that for as many problems as it has chapter 6 certainly has a lot of strengths and if it were between something like this and playing things safe and formulaic for its own sake I think I'd have preferred this approach if you really want your own series to end when you set out to conclude it the least you can do is make it so chaotic that half your audience would prefer it stay over right now then how'd they stick The Landing [Music] after what appears to be a fake out back to the title screen we cut to a reveal though shirigani and kibo have gone with the smoke Sahara harukawa and yumino have survived to see the light the three stare wordlessly at the real world Beyond The Birdcage they suffered within and tried to decide what to do next at any rate they can't stay and Sahara speculates that maybe things will be okay because if kibo ensured their survival he might have done so because that's what the outside world itself wished for they wanted this lie to become the truth speaking of Lies shirigani's last words about her plan being a Flawless copy have them speculating on whether or not she was even telling the truth about the world being fiction or the way they Embrace their roles upon arriving he can't believe that they would seemingly willingly participate in this game even if they were fans of the series but he has no basis for his speculation it's just a hunch this world is yet another cat box and once the characters leave it to see how it really is it will be beyond our grasp we won't be able to tell one way or the other other and so those truths and lies can also coexist depending on what we want to believe Sahara wraps it with basically the thesis statement of the game yeah but I feel like there's not too much meaning in truth and lies yeah what do you mean I mean that even if something is a lie even if it's fiction if it has the power to change the world then it must contain some kind of Truth aren't we proof of that in this fictional world we overcame all these fictional struggles but those things changed us and we were able to change the world so it doesn't really matter where the truth ends and where the lies begin if lies can change the world just as well as the truth can then lies just another way of telling the truth some lies can lead the world to hope some truths can lead the world to despair so I don't think anyone can really say which is more right in the end I guess it's not important whether it's a truth or a lie just what it leads to yeah that's what I believe vowing to see how the outside world may or may not have changed they all leave the fiction behind promising to take their experiences from it with them the story lives on Sahara says I'm sure even now even on the other side it lives on there as well and thus the story lives on was this lie able to change something is this lie able to change someone was this lie able to change the world if it was able to change even the smallest thing then the story isn't over and with that new Danganronpa V3 and thus Danganronpa itself ends and I've got some mixed feelings about this I think the ambiguity is purposeful and fair enough to emphasize but I think they probably shouldn't have leaned so hard on the maybe Hope's Peak was real after all implications because I just think the game's far less interesting that way but that's just my personal view my speculation leads me to believe a certain way and I suppose that's probably what kodaka intended the game in general when looking back on it all is such a mixed experience for me there are some parts I absolutely love some parts I think were full of potential but didn't live fully up to that and some I just downright abhor at its best it reaches some of the series Heights at its worst I struggle to see it any more highly than the lows of ultra despair girls it's a game which even more than any other I feel like I feel totally different about depending on the day and what chunks of it I'm even evaluating like an evasive statement like a lie that masquerades as truth it is very difficult to pin Danganronpa V3 down it's hard to get it to dedicate okay to being one way or the other and I think that is sort of part and parcel of its identity when you take this many risks it's difficult to imagine that you'll come out the other end executing all your ideas perfectly and it's impossible to please everyone that way there are just as many people who adore this game as there are those who hate it and I don't really know that I think I belong to either Camp I think I stand firmly in the Middle with one foot on either side of appreciation of annoyance Shades of Gray and all that v3s issues are egregious and that's because they show off what Danganronpa is like at its absolute worst but at the same time it also contains some of what I think to be the best the series has ever been it may not be contained in every character or every narrative or even in its art but at the end of the day V3 both Revels in and reviles being Danganronpa it is a series wide simulacrum and so in that respect while I may not have needed Danganronpa V3 I think it deserves to exist and could it have stood to have a few less of its glaring issues well sure I think it has its place here nonetheless though and I wouldn't take that away from it I'm glad I got the chance to play it again and I'm glad I got the chance to share it with all of you well I guess I should just be saying all of that in general huh this journey has been long talking about this entire series all over again revisiting memories long forgotten and things I've held close to my chest for years now it feels good to finally get it all out there because as much Flack as I've given the series over time I hope that the amount of work I've put into this retrospective makes one thing clearer than all else I really do like Danganronpa it is flawed as hell dear God believe me when I say I know that but it's given me a lot of memories a lot of inspiration and it's the reason I've met several people I care about I think it's collectively done more good than harm even if that does not negate the understandable criticisms people have of it or the fundamental flaws in some of its characters and Concepts even just talking about it is the reason why so many of you are here and I just cannot say enough how grateful I am for that when I set out to make this retrospective I didn't just want to shout my opinions into a void and leave it at that though I wanted to be able to say goodbye to something that doesn't mean I'm leaving Danganronpa behind or anything I'll probably still run my mouth about it again at some point and it will always be on my radar but for the story that meant so much to me in high school that kick-started something creative in me that hasn't died since I felt it was owed my final correspondence says to have its last rites read out before I finally let it rest in my heart and moved on to better things this past year of my life has been dedicated to an autopsy and now I think I'm finally done regardless of what the future has in store for this series for now I can let go besides I've talked plenty today and for a while and this isn't even my favorite visual novel series that honor belongs to umineka which I've mentioned a lot and used a lot of music from in this retrospective in fact if some of v3's Concepts appeal to you but you two think that they could have been done better uh maybe watch my recommendation video about it and see if it'd be up your alley I highly recommend it just you know make sure the laundry list of triggers in it won't screw you up anyway as for wrapping our thoughts on Danganronpa well maybe you guys should take over for a bit what do you think I found out about Danganronpa back during 2013 2014 tumblr and at first I loved it because you know I was a teenager at the time and of course as a teenager typically does I liked how dark and eccentric the premise and visuals are you know it's very eye-catching it was cool and most importantly back then it was it was Niche because a lot of people didn't really know about dangan rapper at the time because it was it wasn't localized of course nowadays as in adult edgy humor isn't really my thing but I stuck around for the characters in relationships like I care about them a lot and how even though they seem impossibly talented unique in out of this world they were still at the end of the day people with their own struggles outside of the killing games like with identity contributing to society and uncertainty for the future to give a gist of it it's I think it's something that a lot of teenagers can really relate to even nowadays and I think that's why a lot of people really adore this series both back then and now I initially discovered Danganronpa through a voice active let's play of the series and from then I decided to buy and play the games myself I think what's kept interested all this time is the characters ever since I've experienced these games the characters have always stuck with me despite some grievances I have with the stories overall characters like Kyoko fuyuhiko and shuichi who have these long form arcs in particular are ones that I really admire seeing them go from closed off people to caring about others means a lot to me personally and I look up to them for that I remember being introduced to the series by my best friend a few years back who took me through one of her favorite Let's Plays of the original trigger happy havoc followed shortly thereafter by goodbye despair now I'm really not all that big a fan of visual novels and at first glance that's all it looked like to me albeit one with an interesting gimmick before too terribly long though I started seeing actual game mechanics at work cool ones and that helped me get progressively more and more invested there were definitely a handful of story elements and details of characterization that rubbed me the wrong way between the first two games games but push come to shove I love a good mystery I love seeing characters pushed to their developmental limits by forces beyond their control I love puzzles and interactive storytelling and despite hating most killing game scenarios like Battle Royale or Hunger Games or squid game I love the potential of Danganronpa so what's funny is that initially I had no real interest in ever checking Danganronpa out it was my brother who had picked up trigger happy havoc and with one look at the box art I had assumed that it was just the type of anime game that I just wouldn't be into what I didn't know was just how much I would come to care for the series and how it would really influence a ton of the relationships I would form over the course of the next few years to the point where I probably wouldn't have gotten to know my partner if it wasn't for the discussions we had on the first game but beyond the sentimental value it holds for me what keeps me coming back to Danganronpa even now after it's concluded is the love I have for these characters I relate and empathize way too much with the struggles of characters like shahiro Hina Hajime I could go on for hours and hours about just how much the series means to me and any series that can elicit that kind of emotion and manage that is one that I will forever cherish even in spite of the faults I first discovered Danganronpa in I believe 2014 through my school's Anime Club they only showed the first three episodes so I ended up watching the rest of home then I found it was based off a game and that there's two of them at the time at least I think what kept me intrigued with Danganronpa was both my love for the mystery genre as well as there being some actually really cool and interestingly written characters also ryoma's best V3 character fight me you don't have to include that last part I actually only got into Danganronpa recently during the pandemic I was on a murder mystery kick after playing Phoenix Wright so I watched a playthrough of I the somnium files and after that I was still hungry for more so I thought well I'd insomnium files is made by Spike tune soft maybe I should finally give Danganronpa a chance and boy am I glad that I did this series really helped me through the pandemic I think overall the message that I got from it that helped me the most was no matter how bad things seem instead of giving into despair you might as well try to keep moving moving forward anyway that really resonated with me during such a stressful time and now that I've finished playing all the games I get to see all the amazing art that the fans make I can tell that Danganronpa means a lot to its fans it's very obvious to see and that too adds to my own enjoyment Duncan rocker is a series that I was kind of skeptical about first mainly due to knowing nothing about it but enough my friend suggested I try it and I'm glad that I have what really got me invested in the series was partially the non-stop debate gameplay but also surprisingly the dub voice acting sometimes because it recognize the voices such as asahina or Hinata and others from how enjoyable they were to listen to the likes of myoda nidai and promoter and show in particular highlights from there I've seen so much of what this Series has to offer the games if the anime adaptations even the demos that I didn't know existed until about three months ago the town within this fandom is immense and I would love to see more of it this series will always hold a place in my heart and all I hope for is that the despair doesn't end anytime soon I found out about Danganronpa when nezmi yourself told me it existed we got really into it we even wrote an overly ambitious Abridged Series of the first game's anime adaptation with a giant plot reveal at the end of the entire thing was just a show when everyone's personalities were overwritten to be more entertaining we ultimately scrapped it because the workload was gigantic and the twist felt like it wouldn't make sense some of the betray fans a few years later I played dangaramp of A3 and there was a giant plot reveal at the end that the entire thing was just a show and everyone's personalities were overwritten to be more entertaining turns out I could have gotten that job I found Danganronpa in a very roundabout way I came across a video on YouTube of Leon's execution not knowing what I was in for with no context for what was going on and here is based on what I saw in the thumbnail I gave a watch the brutality of the execution followed by the hollow horrified atmosphere befitting such a cruel death hooked me immediately no not because I'm into violence but because I'm a fan of horror that feeling of your heart sinking into your gut that clip gave me that feeling and I needed to know the context from there I found to be something awful text-based let's play like most people did back in the day and got pulled deep into the rabbit hole as corny as the games get as much as it can hit you over the head with its messaging there's a core of heart that speaks to me the world can be brutal and empty but there is always hope to find even in the darkest of times there is great evil but it can bring out the greater good the fact that it chose children to Bear the sins of mankind is even more poignant and I'll never forget that first time my heart plunged into my gut when that ball rolled towards the camera revealing A bloodstain as a relatively new fan of the Danganronpa series first discovering the games through game grumps's playthroughs of the first and second game I never could have discovered it at a better time than now as a college student trudging through mountains of schoolwork to start my career goodbye despair will always hold a special place in my heart as my personal favorite game in the main Trilogy I absolutely love and cherish the sequels character roster except for territory but that's just common knowledge at this point the charm of this Series has enraptured me in a welcoming Chokehold full of brutality and heart I spend what sliver of free time I have making content for the Duncan Romper Community because it brings me great enjoyment in times of stress I hope that other newer fans like me find joy in these games as well as despite its faults it deserves all the love it receives and for the years to come also Gundam Tanaka's best boy my experience with Danganronpa starts with middle school I think some friends were into it and I tried to get into it by watching the animation but it didn't really click with me at the time and then Flash Forward to late 2020 I was stuck in my house as were so many other people and I decided hey wouldn't it be funny if I played the game with the funny guy now you took himaida from the fingers in his last name and so I installed Danganronpa too on my computer and started streaming it with some friends and from then I just fell in love with the characters really I saw the problems and I struggled with it uh I started a lot with it got those mini games suck but I really loved the characters especially uh tsumiki sumiki's my favorite character I see a lot of myself in her badly reflected via VIA poor writing but it like I see some of my own struggles within our I keep interacting with this franchise because of the characters a few months before the beginning of the pandemic one of my friends recommended the second game to me yes the second game after I finished like playing the series on my own I started playing from the beginning with some other friends of mine and through which I became closer to uh two people who are now my best friends like some of my best friends um also my favorite character is unfortunately nagito so like a lot of people I discovered movie something awful let's play and the Tumblr fan of the sprung up from it but didn't give it much thought after until 2014 when my friend actually got me a Vita with the first two games for my birthday very generous gift that I hold dear to this day and really kick-started my love for the series what I really love about it is the dichotomy between hope and despair it's almost an ideological hellish naivete going up against cynical practicalism and the naivete winning out every time it's something that I love and a lot of media the like magical girl shows or tent pull sci-fi things like that it's a Danganronpa when I was 14 back in 2012 when it was at its humble beginnings and something awful forums and having been with this game series for that long and seeing how the Western fandom went from what felt like a handful of people to booming at the scale that it's at now it still baffles me I remember when I first got into the series Super Danganronpa 2 had only been released in Japan for maybe a couple of months and hadn't been translated by anyone outside of a few Snippets of prologue by some passionate fans so my first run through of the game was actually a friend of mine streaming it as she translated for myself and a couple of other people and it had me hooked instantly there aren't many fandoms that I can call myself an early bird or a boomer for but I'm really grateful that Danganronpa is one of them it's what inspired me to take interest in other media like it going forward that now have become even more important to me like uminako and Zero Escape and I'm sure I'm not alone it's come a long way since it fell into my lap and I'm really happy that it's over the top story and it's goofy characters are more accessible than ever and I hope that it can move people in the same way that it moved me back then I first found Danganronpa through the let's play thread where the English fandom began and two dash ran Ultra despair girls but then in 2019 I remembered oh yeah there's a third game I hadn't played yet or really heard anything about so I went into three three cut off from the fandom and without any preconceived expectations and it was absolutely Blown Away not only is V3 the best game in the series something I've complete confidence this video will agree with me on it somehow reignited my passion for Danganronpa to the point where it still consumes me just like sumugi I tried to make a short video ranking with characters and Clayton all my feelings on them but that just made the problem worse so I guess now this is just a part of my brain set aside for thinking about these fictional teenage dips like umineko another game that scratches a similar itch v3's ending provoked a lot of backlash from people on the internet who are wrong but I think there and actually lies one of its biggest appeals because Danganronpa is a series about conflicting perspectives earned everything about these games good or bad is written ambitiously in a way that provokes discussion I start out by saying boy numpty the morning cups are sick which I do sincerely believe we both deploy our mutually disingenuous arguments like truth bullets and have a great time going at it in doing so we find ever more New Perspectives to analyze learn from and love both these games and each other forming Connections in an endless non-stop debate and what better way to put it the story is never over the debate Never Dies so long as we got something from the series it will always live on in us it will always carry some significance that we transfer into our real lives and our experiences and that's not even to mention the wealth of fan content that exists out there it may be fiction it may be a lie but it's one that we all agreed to care about when we sat down to play it I think there's something pretty special about that so thank you Danganronpa and well no I won't say goodbye I'll say [Music] see you later hi this is editing Marcy so originally a song cover slash credit sequence for the entire retrospective was supposed to go here with a chorus of viewers like you being included it was super cool but YouTube copyright claimed the melody and would have disabled my monetization over it I think it was really special though so I don't want it to go to waste I'll be linking it in the description so please give it a watch after this it's just a couple more minutes all right now for the Stinger stuff um hi so uh yeah I guess it's all over now that's surreal obviously I mean the retrospective though I'm not going anywhere I'm gonna be making plenty of other stuff in the future so you know look out for that but if you survive it all the way to the end of this Triathlon then I just really want to thank you sincerely for sticking around it's been a crazy ride making all of these videos and I sincerely appreciate all of the love and support that has been thrown my wife now as for what I'm planning next obviously I'm Gonna Keep some of that a secret I want to get one more video done by the end of this year but we'll see how it goes I'd like to be able to put out a late Halloween special because uh well first of all October was taken up by this and second of all you know how much I love late Halloween videos nezmi trademark but also my plans are probably to do a stream sometime in November on this channel um probably on the 12th but we'll see how it goes basically it's going to be sort of a q a wrap-up stream for the Danganronpa retrospective so you can come on by and if you've gotten the other questions about like Danganronpa stuff that I haven't expressed my opinions about that you'd be curious about like what do you think of a boogie Miota or do you think Monokuma and Eggman should kiss then you know show up and maybe I'll answer those questions while I'm doing it I'm going to be playing Danganronpa s for the very first time because I've never played it before mostly because it came out while I was doing this retrospective and since I was doing so much Danganronpa related work for the retrospective my idea of relaxing fun time was not exactly doing more Danganronpa stuff I've only really seen out of context screenshots from Danganronpa s so I don't really know that much about it so you know hopefully that'll be a fun time if you're interested in that obviously I should thank my patrons as usual for uh helping me make my content if it weren't for them I probably wouldn't be able to keep this going in particular I want to thank Serena Midori Shogun DX friend of Dracula Ali Oliver and Claire me Boone also uh you might notice channel members listed on the patreon list now that's because YouTube lets me have those if you pay a dollar you can get access to any exclusive Community posts that I make and also so you get cool little emojis to use in the chats that's neat one time support can go to Kofi down below as well if that's something you're more comfortable with and I also have like other links and stuff down there that you can check out obviously I have social media you can catch up with me on if you go to twitter.comva.tumblr.com you'd be a huge favor to me if you could comment on this video like it subscribe to the video and perhaps ring the videos Bell you know gotta get all that feel out but it genuinely really does help so you know if you feel the Temptation I would appreciate it greatly and um if you excuse me I am tired so I have to go now but one way or the other you'll be seeing me again before the year's out and uh hopefully you'll be seeing me in 2023 too I got a lot of cool stuff planned and I hope you'll enjoy it so until we next meet bayonara peace [Music]

Channel: NezumiVA

Views: 295,488

Keywords: dangan ronpa, danganronpa, nezumiva danganronpa, nezumiva dangan ronpa, danganronpa v3, dangan ronpa v3, drv3, danganronpa v3 retrospective, nezumiva danganronpa v3, danganronpa v3 review, drv3 review, dangan ronpa v3 review, nezumiva, ndrv3, new danganronpa v3

Id: kpUe4cqIFdM

Length: 315min 47sec (18947 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 29 2022