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

Episode 9

Well, it finally happened. Despair Arc's initial advantage over Future Arc, the key strength that won it so much fan favor up front, has now become a weakness. While putting the cast of Danganronpa 2 front and center was good for an initial hook, the show has spent so many episodes drifting further and further away from them to focus more on the new characters of Danganronpa 3 that the Remnants of Despair have been sent to their doom in a truly underwhelming fashion. Long story short: they're probably all going to be turned into mindslaves at once via brainwashing video, possibly offscreen just to add insult to injury. Frustration at this cheap plot device is understandable, I definitely feel the sting myself, but on the other hand, this betrayal of expectations for the "greater good" of making Danganronpa 3 its own story about its own cast across two separate timelines has a silver lining we've been reaping the benefits of throughout the Future Arc as well.

For example, the way the Twilight Syndrome Murder Case played out was very different from what fans might have been expecting, but not necessarily in a bad way. On the negative side, it didn't tell us anything about the gaggle of girls (and one yakuza boy) from 77-B who were infamously involved, but it did tell us a lot about Hajime Hinata, Hope's Peak Academy, and the cast of adults whose actions during the murder would echo deeper into the future. In retrospect, all these details were far more important, but when my mind turns to the feelings I had playing Danganronpa 2, I can't help but feel the sting of disappointment that the powderkeg "friendship" between those four girls and the fact that Fuyuhiko straight up murdered a girl won't factor into their fall from grace whatsoever. Just like their despair-brainwashing (which is associated very directly with some choice made of the group's own free will in the second game), it's likely that Kodaka originally wrote the Twilight Syndrome Murder Case to be foreshadowing of the dissent within the group that would lead to their collapse, but found he didn't have the time to develop that angle without sacrificing the focus on Danganronpa 3's cast, opting to choose one evil over the other.

So I get it, even if it sucks for those of us who loved Danganronpa 2 and its cast the most. I've grown fond enough of Danganronpa 3's cast over the course of this series to put them in an easy second place, so I can begrudgingly accept the sacrifice of Class 77-B's character arcs to expedite and strengthen the focus on Chisa and Mitarai, who both take center stage in this episode to powerful effect. I may have spent two paragraphs bitching about it, but the brainwashing video twist was literally the only thing I didn't love about this episode overall, and its potent cliffhanger already has me drooling for the next one. "Chisa Yukizome doesn't smile" indeed. At least she doesn't smile like that. Poor Chisa manages to rescue Mitarai and Chiaki with her act of sacrifice, but that just makes her the newest victim of Junko's new and improved brainwashing video, made possible by the very student Chisa was desperate to rescue.

Actually, for such a simplistic plot device, the brainwashing video's effects can be a little confusing, so I'll try to break it down as best I can to avoid confusion in the future. Technically, there are two videos, but there will likely be three total, with four overall effects on their victims. First, there was Brainwashing Video Beta, the one Junko made by herself and tested on Mikan. It has reasonably mild effects, because it didn't turn Mikan into a suicidal mindslave, just a particularly dopey masochist horndog desperate to please Junko in a non-violent way. Junko probably showed Mikan the video in conjunction with her own sadistic interrogations, forcing the Ultimate Nurse to imprint on her specifically, but if Junko's disappointed reaction to the whole thing is any indication, it probably only worked because Mikan is unusually weak-minded, poor thing. This leads us to Brainwashing Video 1.0, created by Mitarai out of fear for his life and to protect his classmates. This one does cause suicidal despair in its victims, but it requires some precise acupuncture lobotomizing to fully take hold in the brain, and Junko can't be bothered with that when Chisa unexpectedly barges in on her plans, so she leaves the job to Mukuro. Ever the karmic screwup, Mukuro doesn't really know what she's doing with those brain-poking needles, so Chisa comes out of the whole process a little bit..."wrong." We don't know exactly how yet, but she clearly came out of the oven a little half-baked compared to the drooling despair demons Junko created. Brainwashing Video 2.0 is probably the one Junko has prepared for Class 77-B, which is why she didn't have time to deal with Chisa personally. Before she can cook up a batch of Despair Remnants, however, she'll have to go through Sakakura.

Oh, and that whole brainwashing process is incredibly disturbing to watch, in case that wasn't clear. Jesus, Danganronpa! They put censor bars over bright pink bloodspray, but this is a-ok to traumatize us with? Madre de Dios.

Anyway. Once again, Class 77-B's role in all this is more in service of developing Chisa and Mitarai's characters than their own. If Chisa truly is the mastermind in the Future Arc, it's easy to see why she would loathe Makoto's platitudinous version of hope just as much as Munakata's pragmatic version of it. After all, those platitudes are soon going to be responsible for the destruction of her own students, as Chiaki uses the impossibly bright and optimistic "save everyone against all odds" words her teacher left her with to rile the class up for a rescue mission, ignoring Nagito's warning that pursuing Junko and Izuru will only lead to death and despair. Even if it isn't directly her fault, there's no doubt that Chisa will blame herself for the loss of her students if they're despairified because they tried to rescue her, leading to the additional loss of thousands of lives across the world when they serve as Junko's shock troops. And if Mitarai truly is an accomplice to the Future Arc's killing game, he likely holds those same regrets, resigning himself to the sad "truth" that his anime will only be used to hurt others because he is weak and not worth saving himself. I can see him using his powers to destroy the Future Foundation if he thinks he's already a lost cause, giving up everything to somehow save the lives of his fallen classmates. I'm not sure the Danganronpa franchise has ever reached these levels of despair before, but I still believe that some form of hope can manage to win the day at its end.

Just like Chisa, Chiaki's potential involvement in the Future Arc remains a mystery even this late into the game. In my favorite quiet little moment of a very explosive episode, Mikan regains some tiny semblance of sanity before dragging Chiaki down to her doom and admits that she was jealous of how much the Ultimate Gamer has grown over the year compared to her, someone who's so weak that she's about to betray all her friends. Maybe pushing Chiaki through that trapdoor is all part of Junko's plan, but I choose for the moment to believe that Mikan was trying to save the one girl who's shown her the most kindness over the year and acknowledge her own flaws before her second brainwashing destroys what little of her brain there was left. In a show that's been forced to diminish the individual traits of the Remnants of Despair, it was a surprising nugget of sympathy.

We'll see if Chiaki survives the ordeal to come next week, but right now she's in a clearly altered Chisa Yukizome's hands, which can't be good for either of them. Despair! These cliffhangers have left me in despair!

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.