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

Episode 7

There is still happiness to be found in the Despair Arc. We get a few fleeting moments with Class 77-B as Teruteru makes dumb food-sex jokes that get cockblocked by Gundham's pet bear, and Hiyoko puts a remembrance lily on Nagito's desk despite her classmates' protests that being suspended is not the same thing as being dead. (To the contrary, Nagito seems to be the only survivor of an unlucky plane crash, enjoying a lucky impromptu vacation on a beautiful tropical island. It can't be Jabberwock Island, can it?) There's also Mitarai's hilarious Ghibli mashup posters, from a Howl's Moving Castle in the Sky where Pazu gets an old lady instead of a young girl from the heavens to a Princess Pom Poko that I desperately want to see animated, they all tickled me pink.

But speaking of pink, the Benadryl Blood Flood has finally come crashing down on the Despair Arc, and while Danganronpa's knack for making light of the most gruesome subject matter remains one-of-a-kind, episode 7 mostly continues this prequel's inevitable plunge into hell for Hope's Peak Academy. We finally get to see the mysterious massacre of Class 5-C, which was introduced and left dangling way back in the very first game, animated in all its horrifying glory. It's a disturbing seven minutes or so, not only because its length can't even begin to justify its severity, but because it all somehow works anyway!

Danganronpa has a long history of shunting concrete worldbuilding to the side in favor of big emotions and thematic resonance, even using its genre-aware villainess herself to call out the trend. ("If I said it was hypnotism, would you believe me? Or we opened up your skulls and messed with your brains? How it happened doesn't matter right now!" Junko's refusal to flesh out details in favor of focusing on what things mean to the characters emotionally reflects the author's own priorities.) Heck, the first game ended without even making it clear if The Tragedy itself was real or just another lie, because choosing "Hope" means that the answer doesn't matter either way. As the franchise expands, we get more and more details about the world to feed the growing story, but when each new installment closes off old ambiguities, they also introduce new ones, always with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor to ease us through the awkwardness and put emphasis on the emotion of the moment.

The Hope's Peak student council's massacre, "Killing Game Zero" you might call it, is no exception. The detail-oriented parts of our brains may rebel at its abrupt hyperviolence being treated as a disposable plot point, but even if it seems a little cheap that the student council would turn on each other so quickly, as a turning point for all the more important characters caught in its aftermath, this bloodbath is perfection. Maybe the student council could have banded together and escaped the building without getting killed by Mukuro (lest we forget: the Ultimate Soldier), but maybe they couldn't have. The important thing is that they didn't get that far, because the Ultimate Analyst Junko had already surmised that they were weak enough for this plan to work, as a little gift of tribute to Izuru Kamukura to kick off the end of the world. As Junko might say, "it happened because it had to happen, and now that it's happened, why does the "why" matter anymore? Just enjoy the fireworks!"

"Killing Game Zero" may be a slightly rushed handwave overall, but Danganronpa always seems to get away with its most vulgar choices by lampshading them with humor. Underscoring the student council's destruction with a mockingly sappy rendition of the classic Japanese "graduation" folk song (foreshadowed by a reference to the Red Bull slogan of all things) was an inspired choice. And even though we don't get the full picture behind why each student would have targeted the others, we do get wicked little glimpses that add flavor and character to what could have been a bland series of executions. One redheaded student is forced to spear a girl in self-defense before confessing that he was in love with her, and a few moments later, it's no surprise when we see him interrupt a requited couple trying to off each other painlessly together, skewering them both and screaming "Shut up!" in bitterness and grief. Censor bars run wild in the ensuing chaos, but Junko's proved her point to Kamukura: there's no predicting how Despair will take root in people's hearts. So after pinning Killing Game Zero on Izuru and exposing his identity as a human experiment by the school board, driving the entire student body to riot, Junko is ready to target the Reserve Course with a little help from Mitarai and his freshly kidnapped Ultimate Nurse.

It's the end of the world as we know it. Let the games begin!

Note: This episode's portrayal of Killing Game Zero does open up one plothole from way back in the first game. Monokuma originally says Class 5-C was "like this when I got here," which was only further reinforced by the second game's assertion that Izuru Kamukura killed the student council members. However, now that Danganronpa 3 has revealed that Junko WAS involved, that makes Monokuma's assertion that he was uninvolved a complete lie. Lies aren't the same thing as plotholes of course, but the franchise has been so thorough in establishing the difference between lying-Monokuma and truthful-Monokuma that it's pretty obvious that line was originally written to be sincere. Oops!

Rating: A

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.