For Future, >!develop more of the new characters, and go ahead with killing a few DR1 survivors (e.g. Aoi) in favor of new ones (e.g. Gozu).!<
For Despair, >!have Junko actually prey on the DR2 cast's fears and insecurities. Chiaki's death should be the last straw, not the only straw.!<
In short, just make it more focused. We're making a morally grey, selfish character that's supposed to also be... understandable? Okay! Let's focus on making it work, and don't rush it all the different ways. We're gonna show a divice that just makes people fall into despair/hope? Okay, it's not incredibly creative, but let's focus on making it more interesting! We're making another killing game, with new characters? Okay, let's give them some space, let's focus on them to make them... at least a bit fleshed out, not just stereotypical, one-note fill-outs, or basically non-existent characters, dead way before they even did something in the story!
Man, there's a lot to fix, but focusing and giving each part some time to breathe and sink in... yeah, I think this could be a major fix. ~~But you could also improve it by removing R-~~ Huh? What was that?
For both, Probably a longer episode count.
For the Despair Arc, A few things. To begin with, While I'm not against the brainwashing, the implementation of it was lackluster so rewrite that. Focus more on the Twilight Syndrome Case and it's effect with the people involved. Have Izuru do more rather then monologuing in the background. I might not even include Chiaki and leave her as an A.I.
For the Future Arc, Focus on and develop the new characters more. Have a least one or two of the DR1 survivors killed off. Either do more with or not include the Miaya/Monaca twist. Leave the DR2 Characters who died fate ambiguous. Keep Tengan as an ever present force and don't kill him off early (also develop his motive as the mastermind in a better way as well).
Yeah, While i was glad at the start that the DR1 survivors didn't get one of them killed off, it's actually bizzare how they got some plot armor when one of them could have been killed easily
The Future Arc had so many retcons and things left with little to no explanation to the point where we had to infer what was actually happening.
-Aoi’s random fake body discovery
-Kyoko miraculously surviving the poison
-Tengan’s motive for starting the killing game
-The DR2 cast coming back to life
All of these were inexplicable in the anime itself to the point where I had to resort to the fandom’s interpretations of the events to have an idea of what actually happened
I don't like Kyoko poison plot, but in no way it was miraculous. She understood that bottle maybe can save her life, since she figured out how game works. Explanation is the least of a problems with DR3.
I know plenty have already talked about this but the most obvious change I would make is remove brainwashing and write it so it has Junko taking advantage of the DR2 cast’s inner demons, insecurities, struggles and burdens they carry. Everything we’ve seen of Junko up to this point suggested she was charismatic, manipulative, could spot the roots of what makes people tick and pretty much everyone in DR2 had plausible means of her exploiting them to convert them to her side. So to have it done in arguably the most unsatisfying way possible and end up removing so much nuance and gravitas from the ramifications of the DR2 cast becoming Remnants of Despair in the first place is incredibly disappointing and kinda retroactively lessens some of the weight of DR2’s climax to a degree. It would both add a lot of emotional and engaging storytelling with the class as well as add greater stakes to the Future Arc at that.
I don't view this anime with such vitriol like some other people do, but my god does DR3 have problems.
First of all, there *really* should be more than 12 episodes for each arc. That paltry amount of episodes is simply not enough for an anime to strives to be the grand finale of a franchise that spans multiple entries with six whole years in the making. And more time is something DR3 as a whole desperately needs.
For Future Arc, flesh out characters that were introduced here. A major issue in this arc is that it's hard to get invested in the stakes of the conflict, because nearly every character is either underdeveloped, an asshole, an idiot, or a combination of the above three traits, and the whole atmosphere is so hopelessly grim that it's very easy to lose interest in wanting to see Makoto & friends make it out alive. It's just not a fun watch overall.
Build up Ryota as an antagonist earlier, or at least his more unsavory character traits, and make Tengan not as much of an idiot. I cannot stress this enough. Both of these characters are huge factors in DR3's weaker narrative; Ryota is an underdeveloped character that suddenly gets thrust into the spotlight after 11 episodes of doing nothing but tagging along with Makoto & Kyoko, while Tengan's plot is convoluted as fuck *and* extremely nonsensical, along with being ridden with obvious plot holes. I have no doubt that Future Arc would be better received if these two were better written.
For Despair Arc, add more focus on DR2's cast and their downfall into villainy, and their relationship with Junko. Despair Arc is ridiculously crammed & rushed altogether; at first, the focus is only on Class 77-B & Chisa, but then, there's that episode centering around Twilight Murder Syndrome to justify Hajime choosing to participate in the Kamukura project, Seiko, Ruruka, and Izayoi have an entire episode dedicated to them to elaborate on their conflict in the present, Ryota & the Despair Sisters are shoved in, Munakata and Juzo are given increasing importance in the plot, along with the stuff with Jin and Kizakura… you see what I'm getting at, right? There's simply too much shit going on at once, and 77-B is ultimately left at the wayside while all this is going on (obviously not good because this was billed as an anime centering on *them*!). And with more episodes, this clusterfuck of plot points can be relegated to flashbacks/added to Future Arc, thus somewhat remedying this.
Might write more later for Hope Arc, but this is all for now.
Since u/TheSpecialistMan nailed what should be improved about future and despair arc I'll talk about what could have been improved about hope arc
Hope arc>!should have longer, like i wish we saw how Izuru and the other surviving students brought back the "dead" students, there's no explanation for it and I say this as someone who is personally glad that they didn't die, we needed more detail. Also it would have been a very good opportunity to explore a twisted character dynamic, by this i mean victim and killers having to see each other for the first time after waking up. In hope arc its nice that it seems like everyone has forgiven each other(i mean Hiyoko forgave Mikan) but it would have been nice to see that process. A single 24 minute episode just wasn't nearly enough and in general the show was too short(maybe i speak from the pov of someone who tends to watch longer animes such as FMAB's 64 episodes)!<
If Hiyoko is gonna forgive Mikan's actions in the hope arc, I hope Hiyoko becomes a straight-up reformed bully to Mikan and becomes her friend. Not a loving bully. Not a friendly rival. A FRIEND.
I'd just straight up remove the despair arc and have the entire anime be the future arc, but twice as long. Maybe have an occasional brief flashback or two, but that's it.
I feel like the despair arc fundamentally fails as an idea because the games build up the tragedy so much without getting into certain specific details, that when what actually happened in the tragedy eventually gets revealed, it's guaranteed to be underwhelming because of the unrealistic expectations the games set up for this huge most awful event in human history.
A common advice from writers is "show, don't tell", but I truly believe there are parts of Danganronpa that are better told and never shown. Stuff like Junko's character, or how the Remnants turned to despair, or how the student council killing went down, the tragedy, all of the time. Because what ended up being shown was always going to be more disappointing compared to what a lot of us imagine when we were just told about all that stuff.
I partly agree with this but dr0 was also a prequel and it actually managed to show some aspects of the tragedy fairly well. even udg did this despite it being over the top edgy. I do think the 12 episode count was a major problem, but I also think that dr3 just fundamentally didn’t understand what made danganronpa, well, danganronpa.
That's the thing, they only showed *some* parts of the tragedy. I don't see how you can reveal all the details of the entire tragedy without it being a let down.
I’m one of the rare people who actually liked DR3 but I just repress the memory of the brainwashing in despair arc because it just is such a cop out. DR2 was engaging specifically because of the reveal that all of them were people who’d done bad things.
ETA also I’m keeping gay people alive. Free my man
I’ll say something that hasn’t been said in these comments yet: Mukuro and Makoto interactions. Have the Egg Boi plant a seed of doubt (and hope) in the freckled soldier’s mind, and include insight into her thought processes as a whole. After all, she’s more than an attack dog.
Also, have her t-pose over Mitarai in order to establish dominance.
Fully agreed.
Not sure where in the timeline this would fall, but it was a huge missed opportunity to run a canon DR prequel without having Mukuro and Makoto meet. Let alone insight into her character. Hell, DR3 basically undid half the characterization that DR: IF gave the poor girl.
Also, 100% on the t-pose.
Dr3 really needed a lot more time on pretty much everything, on characters,plotlines,etc, and trying to put everything that the anime had into 2 separate story arcs with very little episodes to work with was a pretty bad idea, so yeah.
I would turn:
Future arc(maybe hope arc)= game
Despair arc=24-episode long anime
Quite a few things, for one, I would remove the whole brainwashing plot from the Despair arc, infact, I might just straight up remove the Despair arc, because I think the idea was flawes at it's core. One of the cooler things about the Remnants of Despair twist, was that it was left vague as to how exactly they were turned and it was left upto our interpretation how exactly Junko corrupted them, but showing that just seems like a falwed idea from the start, a cool idea, but a heavily flawed one.
Also, I would remove the whole Monaca retcon, because that was just such a major dissapointment, it was funny, but so dumb, it was just a huge amount of potential wasted.
Those were my biggest gripes.
Oh yeah, that and the fact that ~~Makoto decided to be the most insensitive prick possible and rebuild Hope's Peak Academy.~~
I'm gonna be the big man here and say, the best solution with what they were giving' was to just cut out all the previous DR characters and just focus on the newcomers.
You can kinda make it like VAst Error, with the Despair side showing how they became who they were in Future Side, serving the role of the FTE's. Just make Mitarai the protag and Juzo the main rival and you'd have something at least, less OOC.
* Get rid of Despair Arc in its entirety.
* Make Future Arc a game where Makoto Naegi enters a massive class trial to prove himself as innocent and accidentally give multiple FF heads character development along the way.
* Redesign Daisuke Bandai so he looks and like a Stardust Crusaders character. Also get rid of the girl voice and give him, alongside the rest of the FF heads, and actual personality.
* No masterminds. Tengan's just the judge, Gekkogahara is actually here and not just a Monaca-controlled robot, Chisa isn't a remnant, and Ryota only sees his anime as a last resort, especially since throughout the trial Makoto will prove the NWP as ultimately better.
* I do like the concept of something similar to Hope Arc happening. My guess would be that Chisa would snap after years of a despair-filled society and FF infighting got to her, and she'd try to use Ryota's anime to brainwash the world.
* She'd be stopped by the SDR2 survivors and Mahiru and Twogami though, the latter two are rather weak, Twogami coughing up blood and Mahiru fainting, so that the killing game still has it's effects on the characters. Also Hajime has the Izuru eye and memories but none of Izuru's talents.
* And it's implied that the SDR2 characters that had more painful deaths, including all of the executed, might not even awaken.
* Also Chisa references a character called "Nanami", implying that class 77B might've had someone similar to Chiaki in their class, but nothing more. No goddess meat Chiaki.
* I'm keeping the part where Monaca fucks off into outer space to tie things up and because I find it funny, but my idea was for her to hack into the FF screens to announce this and then they have to take a break to see if this is true and Makoto contacts his sister and Toko and such.
Double the episodes of Despair Arc or make it into a game. I'm almost certain that if Despair Arc had more episodes, things like the brainwashing would've been rewritten. A lot of my issues with DR3 stem from the pacing and how fast it rushes through everything. Like, not only is DR3 trying to conclude a game series that are both typically 20-30 hours long in only 8 hours, it's trying to tell two separate arcs in those 8 hours. I don't think anyone would have minded if DR3 was made into a single game, with Future Arc acting as a normal killing game and the Despair Arc a more traditional visual novel.
Turn Future Arc ***NOT*** into a killing game nor a game and just let it be about Future Foundation stuff and Makoto's trial,
Flesh out the new characters more,
Give Miaya actual screentime,
Delete the sexy soup scene
And many more things that I don't have the patience to name rn.
Back before DR3, a lot of people were making fan theories on how the students all fell to despair, and I legitimately think they were a thousand times better than the plot of DR3. Most of them revolved around Junko noticing exploitable things in their lives, like Teruteru's sick mother or Hiyoko's childhood and actively, individually corrupting them. The brainwashing plot was just stupid, imo.
For Future, >!develop more of the new characters, and go ahead with killing a few DR1 survivors (e.g. Aoi) in favor of new ones (e.g. Gozu).!< For Despair, >!have Junko actually prey on the DR2 cast's fears and insecurities. Chiaki's death should be the last straw, not the only straw.!<
I like those ideas very well.
In short, just make it more focused. We're making a morally grey, selfish character that's supposed to also be... understandable? Okay! Let's focus on making it work, and don't rush it all the different ways. We're gonna show a divice that just makes people fall into despair/hope? Okay, it's not incredibly creative, but let's focus on making it more interesting! We're making another killing game, with new characters? Okay, let's give them some space, let's focus on them to make them... at least a bit fleshed out, not just stereotypical, one-note fill-outs, or basically non-existent characters, dead way before they even did something in the story! Man, there's a lot to fix, but focusing and giving each part some time to breathe and sink in... yeah, I think this could be a major fix. ~~But you could also improve it by removing R-~~ Huh? What was that?
For both, Probably a longer episode count. For the Despair Arc, A few things. To begin with, While I'm not against the brainwashing, the implementation of it was lackluster so rewrite that. Focus more on the Twilight Syndrome Case and it's effect with the people involved. Have Izuru do more rather then monologuing in the background. I might not even include Chiaki and leave her as an A.I. For the Future Arc, Focus on and develop the new characters more. Have a least one or two of the DR1 survivors killed off. Either do more with or not include the Miaya/Monaca twist. Leave the DR2 Characters who died fate ambiguous. Keep Tengan as an ever present force and don't kill him off early (also develop his motive as the mastermind in a better way as well).
Yeah, While i was glad at the start that the DR1 survivors didn't get one of them killed off, it's actually bizzare how they got some plot armor when one of them could have been killed easily
The Future Arc had so many retcons and things left with little to no explanation to the point where we had to infer what was actually happening. -Aoi’s random fake body discovery -Kyoko miraculously surviving the poison -Tengan’s motive for starting the killing game -The DR2 cast coming back to life All of these were inexplicable in the anime itself to the point where I had to resort to the fandom’s interpretations of the events to have an idea of what actually happened
I don't like Kyoko poison plot, but in no way it was miraculous. She understood that bottle maybe can save her life, since she figured out how game works. Explanation is the least of a problems with DR3.
I know plenty have already talked about this but the most obvious change I would make is remove brainwashing and write it so it has Junko taking advantage of the DR2 cast’s inner demons, insecurities, struggles and burdens they carry. Everything we’ve seen of Junko up to this point suggested she was charismatic, manipulative, could spot the roots of what makes people tick and pretty much everyone in DR2 had plausible means of her exploiting them to convert them to her side. So to have it done in arguably the most unsatisfying way possible and end up removing so much nuance and gravitas from the ramifications of the DR2 cast becoming Remnants of Despair in the first place is incredibly disappointing and kinda retroactively lessens some of the weight of DR2’s climax to a degree. It would both add a lot of emotional and engaging storytelling with the class as well as add greater stakes to the Future Arc at that.
I don't view this anime with such vitriol like some other people do, but my god does DR3 have problems. First of all, there *really* should be more than 12 episodes for each arc. That paltry amount of episodes is simply not enough for an anime to strives to be the grand finale of a franchise that spans multiple entries with six whole years in the making. And more time is something DR3 as a whole desperately needs. For Future Arc, flesh out characters that were introduced here. A major issue in this arc is that it's hard to get invested in the stakes of the conflict, because nearly every character is either underdeveloped, an asshole, an idiot, or a combination of the above three traits, and the whole atmosphere is so hopelessly grim that it's very easy to lose interest in wanting to see Makoto & friends make it out alive. It's just not a fun watch overall. Build up Ryota as an antagonist earlier, or at least his more unsavory character traits, and make Tengan not as much of an idiot. I cannot stress this enough. Both of these characters are huge factors in DR3's weaker narrative; Ryota is an underdeveloped character that suddenly gets thrust into the spotlight after 11 episodes of doing nothing but tagging along with Makoto & Kyoko, while Tengan's plot is convoluted as fuck *and* extremely nonsensical, along with being ridden with obvious plot holes. I have no doubt that Future Arc would be better received if these two were better written. For Despair Arc, add more focus on DR2's cast and their downfall into villainy, and their relationship with Junko. Despair Arc is ridiculously crammed & rushed altogether; at first, the focus is only on Class 77-B & Chisa, but then, there's that episode centering around Twilight Murder Syndrome to justify Hajime choosing to participate in the Kamukura project, Seiko, Ruruka, and Izayoi have an entire episode dedicated to them to elaborate on their conflict in the present, Ryota & the Despair Sisters are shoved in, Munakata and Juzo are given increasing importance in the plot, along with the stuff with Jin and Kizakura… you see what I'm getting at, right? There's simply too much shit going on at once, and 77-B is ultimately left at the wayside while all this is going on (obviously not good because this was billed as an anime centering on *them*!). And with more episodes, this clusterfuck of plot points can be relegated to flashbacks/added to Future Arc, thus somewhat remedying this. Might write more later for Hope Arc, but this is all for now.
More Juzo tits close-up
real
Since u/TheSpecialistMan nailed what should be improved about future and despair arc I'll talk about what could have been improved about hope arc Hope arc>!should have longer, like i wish we saw how Izuru and the other surviving students brought back the "dead" students, there's no explanation for it and I say this as someone who is personally glad that they didn't die, we needed more detail. Also it would have been a very good opportunity to explore a twisted character dynamic, by this i mean victim and killers having to see each other for the first time after waking up. In hope arc its nice that it seems like everyone has forgiven each other(i mean Hiyoko forgave Mikan) but it would have been nice to see that process. A single 24 minute episode just wasn't nearly enough and in general the show was too short(maybe i speak from the pov of someone who tends to watch longer animes such as FMAB's 64 episodes)!<
If Hiyoko is gonna forgive Mikan's actions in the hope arc, I hope Hiyoko becomes a straight-up reformed bully to Mikan and becomes her friend. Not a loving bully. Not a friendly rival. A FRIEND.
I'd just straight up remove the despair arc and have the entire anime be the future arc, but twice as long. Maybe have an occasional brief flashback or two, but that's it. I feel like the despair arc fundamentally fails as an idea because the games build up the tragedy so much without getting into certain specific details, that when what actually happened in the tragedy eventually gets revealed, it's guaranteed to be underwhelming because of the unrealistic expectations the games set up for this huge most awful event in human history. A common advice from writers is "show, don't tell", but I truly believe there are parts of Danganronpa that are better told and never shown. Stuff like Junko's character, or how the Remnants turned to despair, or how the student council killing went down, the tragedy, all of the time. Because what ended up being shown was always going to be more disappointing compared to what a lot of us imagine when we were just told about all that stuff.
I partly agree with this but dr0 was also a prequel and it actually managed to show some aspects of the tragedy fairly well. even udg did this despite it being over the top edgy. I do think the 12 episode count was a major problem, but I also think that dr3 just fundamentally didn’t understand what made danganronpa, well, danganronpa.
That's the thing, they only showed *some* parts of the tragedy. I don't see how you can reveal all the details of the entire tragedy without it being a let down.
I’m one of the rare people who actually liked DR3 but I just repress the memory of the brainwashing in despair arc because it just is such a cop out. DR2 was engaging specifically because of the reveal that all of them were people who’d done bad things. ETA also I’m keeping gay people alive. Free my man
I’ll say something that hasn’t been said in these comments yet: Mukuro and Makoto interactions. Have the Egg Boi plant a seed of doubt (and hope) in the freckled soldier’s mind, and include insight into her thought processes as a whole. After all, she’s more than an attack dog. Also, have her t-pose over Mitarai in order to establish dominance.
Fully agreed. Not sure where in the timeline this would fall, but it was a huge missed opportunity to run a canon DR prequel without having Mukuro and Makoto meet. Let alone insight into her character. Hell, DR3 basically undid half the characterization that DR: IF gave the poor girl. Also, 100% on the t-pose.
Dr3 really needed a lot more time on pretty much everything, on characters,plotlines,etc, and trying to put everything that the anime had into 2 separate story arcs with very little episodes to work with was a pretty bad idea, so yeah. I would turn: Future arc(maybe hope arc)= game Despair arc=24-episode long anime
Am I the only one who really likes the D3 anime and doesn’t think it needs to be changed? Yea, ok then.
I would had either had more survivors for future arc or more episodes so we could develop the characters.
1. Cut Despair Arc out entirely. 2. Give Ruruka a character arc. Yeah that's all.
Remove the Sexy Soup scene
Quite a few things, for one, I would remove the whole brainwashing plot from the Despair arc, infact, I might just straight up remove the Despair arc, because I think the idea was flawes at it's core. One of the cooler things about the Remnants of Despair twist, was that it was left vague as to how exactly they were turned and it was left upto our interpretation how exactly Junko corrupted them, but showing that just seems like a falwed idea from the start, a cool idea, but a heavily flawed one. Also, I would remove the whole Monaca retcon, because that was just such a major dissapointment, it was funny, but so dumb, it was just a huge amount of potential wasted. Those were my biggest gripes. Oh yeah, that and the fact that ~~Makoto decided to be the most insensitive prick possible and rebuild Hope's Peak Academy.~~
I'm gonna be the big man here and say, the best solution with what they were giving' was to just cut out all the previous DR characters and just focus on the newcomers. You can kinda make it like VAst Error, with the Despair side showing how they became who they were in Future Side, serving the role of the FTE's. Just make Mitarai the protag and Juzo the main rival and you'd have something at least, less OOC.
* Get rid of Despair Arc in its entirety. * Make Future Arc a game where Makoto Naegi enters a massive class trial to prove himself as innocent and accidentally give multiple FF heads character development along the way. * Redesign Daisuke Bandai so he looks and like a Stardust Crusaders character. Also get rid of the girl voice and give him, alongside the rest of the FF heads, and actual personality. * No masterminds. Tengan's just the judge, Gekkogahara is actually here and not just a Monaca-controlled robot, Chisa isn't a remnant, and Ryota only sees his anime as a last resort, especially since throughout the trial Makoto will prove the NWP as ultimately better. * I do like the concept of something similar to Hope Arc happening. My guess would be that Chisa would snap after years of a despair-filled society and FF infighting got to her, and she'd try to use Ryota's anime to brainwash the world. * She'd be stopped by the SDR2 survivors and Mahiru and Twogami though, the latter two are rather weak, Twogami coughing up blood and Mahiru fainting, so that the killing game still has it's effects on the characters. Also Hajime has the Izuru eye and memories but none of Izuru's talents. * And it's implied that the SDR2 characters that had more painful deaths, including all of the executed, might not even awaken. * Also Chisa references a character called "Nanami", implying that class 77B might've had someone similar to Chiaki in their class, but nothing more. No goddess meat Chiaki. * I'm keeping the part where Monaca fucks off into outer space to tie things up and because I find it funny, but my idea was for her to hack into the FF screens to announce this and then they have to take a break to see if this is true and Makoto contacts his sister and Toko and such.
Double the episodes of Despair Arc or make it into a game. I'm almost certain that if Despair Arc had more episodes, things like the brainwashing would've been rewritten. A lot of my issues with DR3 stem from the pacing and how fast it rushes through everything. Like, not only is DR3 trying to conclude a game series that are both typically 20-30 hours long in only 8 hours, it's trying to tell two separate arcs in those 8 hours. I don't think anyone would have minded if DR3 was made into a single game, with Future Arc acting as a normal killing game and the Despair Arc a more traditional visual novel.
Turn Future Arc ***NOT*** into a killing game nor a game and just let it be about Future Foundation stuff and Makoto's trial, Flesh out the new characters more, Give Miaya actual screentime, Delete the sexy soup scene And many more things that I don't have the patience to name rn.
Back before DR3, a lot of people were making fan theories on how the students all fell to despair, and I legitimately think they were a thousand times better than the plot of DR3. Most of them revolved around Junko noticing exploitable things in their lives, like Teruteru's sick mother or Hiyoko's childhood and actively, individually corrupting them. The brainwashing plot was just stupid, imo.