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

Episode 4

The Despair and Future arcs continue to intertwine in both goofier and grimmer ways as Danganronpa 3 barrels through one creative catastrophe after another. This week, we got a prequelized answer to a question posed in the finale just three days ago: why do Kimura and Ando hate each other so much? Like so many other unnecessary feuds and conflicts in Danganronpa, you can blame it all on Nagito Komaeda.

Nagito has always been a standout character in the franchise for the exact same reasons that his brother-in-anagram, Makoto Naegi, blends in so well. While Makoto's perfect hopefulness and unflappable resilience in the face of adversity is pretty standard passive protagonist territory, it's rare to see that subverted in a passive antagonist like Nagito. If Makoto is the proof that good will endure any trial without being broken, Nagito proves that evil can have the same infuriating potential. We all want to believe in the former, and most stories prefer to enforce that, so seeing the latter win out just as often is a jarring experience. Junko may be Makoto's opposite as a force of pure despair in contrast to pure hope, but Nagito represents an arguably more frightening force: Murphy's Law, especially as it applies to a world where horrifying conflict must exist, or else we would have no story! Nagito's specific brand of evil comes from living a life defined entirely by dramatic irony, which has driven him completely insane. By being born as the most (Un)Lucky person on the planet, he's fated to start conflict wherever he goes, ensuring that whether lucky or unlucky, his presence automatically brings an end to simplicity and harmony. Every time you find yourself shaking your fist at Nagito's uncanny ability to turn any peaceful situation into chaos, just think how Junko must feel about Makoto's power to do the opposite!

The Ultimate (Un)Lucky Student's plan starts innocently enough. The Academy's practical exams are fast approaching, but everyone's spirits are low following the double homicide of those girls in the Reserve Course. Nagito doesn't want to see his classmates perform at anything less than 100% capacity, so he asks their teacher to lobby for a postponement. When Chisa says the school isn't likely to honor that request, Nagito immediately takes matters into his own hands by deciding to force-close the exams with a bomb threat. Throw in Gundham's runaway puppy, a double-decker of unfortunate switcheroos, a super-serum, and one very powerful laxative, and you get a cartoony recipe for chaos that only Nagito's luck could have caused.

Most of this episode is colossally silly, but once you get past all the toilet humor and tongue-in-cheek references from Food Wars! to Haruhi Suzumiya, more pieces of the oncoming tragedy start falling into place. In a lesser anime, Ando and Kimura's feud would have come purely from the misunderstanding that Nagito's meddling caused, but Kodaka wisely decided to sow discontent into their relationship leading up to the catastrophe. These girls are already in an unhealthy and distrustful pseudo-friendship before the unfortunate switcheroo that gets them both expelled, and this episode was about much more than their ugly breakup. In the end, Hope's Peak administration isn't that stupid, and when Chisa refuses to let them expel Nagito for his potential involvement in the bombing, she's transferred away from Class 77-B to look after the Reserve Course instead.

With Chisa gone from their classroom, it's safe to assume that all the unity Class 77-B have struggled to build will begin to crumble, and I shudder to think who will take her place. (Will it really just be Junko in the guise of a teacher, or will they go a little more clever than that?) Of course, the greatest tragedy of all is that Chisa had to go down protecting Nagito, a mistake that too many others will repeat in the numerous tragedies to come. At the same time, her desperate attempt to rescue him from his misguided sense of martyrdom is touching. "You aren't trash! You're my precious student!" Unfortunately for the Ultimate Housekeeper, trying to save Nagito is like trying to corrupt Makoto: a mistake that will only lead to your own destruction. It's always the little babyfaced ones...

I've always respected Danganronpa's ability to convey truly powerful emotions through lowbrow absurdity, and even though this episode feels like more setup in the endless build-up to a climax rather than anything significant on its own, I remain incredibly pumped to see where all these entertaining twists and turns are taking us. Eight episodes in, and Danganronpa 3 still hasn't faltered once. Bravo!

P.S.: I just realized that Gundham's cockamamie story about defeating a great Hell Hound beast (that was actually just a pomeranian) was completely true. Danganronpa, man...

Rating: B

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Despair Arc is currently streaming on Funimation.

Jake has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.