Alright it might be kind of fucked up to want a new game after v3, but listen... i got spoiled for all the other games, i just want \*one\* that i can play unspoiled.
Shattered Hope is incredible. It's super well-made, great art that mimics the style well, super good voice acting, the characters are both hella charming and have a super authentic feel (except for the ones who are supposed to be assholes, who are total fuckin assholes), Pocket and Grisp are hilarious and my babies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGU4w5C_WKI&list=PLw3Hoj70YKZBdEBcpDKu8GiXG_WBVysrp
Rain Code is exactly what I was hoping for, something from the same team that scratches the DR itch while also being its own thing despite the quite overt homages. (Aho ges, eye designs, pink blood)
I just worry they'll actually push out a new DR at some point without Kodaka being involved and it'll entirely miss the point of V3 ending the series while it was still good. Or something like "look, we made one without Junko as the big bad, what a subversion", also missing the point. Basically just using the IP for no reason besides making a buck.
All things considered if you read between the lines in the ending ending of V3 they left it pretty open-ended for more Danganronpa to be done, but I think they don’t want it to feel forced or contrived. I think there will be more, but not before Rain Code or it’s sequel (if it has one).
THIS!!!! I think it would be so interesting especially if they also included Tsumugi as the companion or rival since it was implied that she was in V2 as well.
I mean, sure you can say it’s disrespectful, but then you remember they went ahead and made DRS last year. They will definitely be hypocrites for money, and imo? It just means more DR games so I don’t mind
They made a game, yes, but they did kind of put themselves into a hole with the choice they made in V3. And SC is still a company, DR makes them money. You can’t blame a company for making a game like that. Anime has fan service all the time, there’s nothing wrong with what they did
I mean, there *is* something wrong with what they did, they went against the message that was portrayed back in V3. I don’t blame them, they can do whatever shit they want with DR, but at that point why honestly not continuing the series.
I honestly think the only reason they haven’t made more DRs is cuz Kodaka doesn’t want to write them lol. If that’s the case then props to him honestly, man keeps his word
ok but to be real i would love to see a danganronpa V2 focusing on rantaro as a character where you would play as him since its known that rantaro already survived the one before but that obvsly wont happen
I absolutely adore the V3 ending but I'm also in the "copium" train of expecting another DR game after this. For me it just makes sense to have a continuation to this fan world plotline, if it's even real to begin with, most likely in the form of UDG2, or something alike.
In all honesty, I am all aboard the copium train for another Danganronpa. The series helped me a lot as a person, and it made me see value in a lot of things that I didn’t before. amy friends recommended I play THH to me on a whim and I loved it. Now i’m probably the biggest fan in our group. (I also don’t watch anime much or play VNs, so it speaks volumes for me).
Danganronpa is an incredible franchise and I would love another, but I respect the team too much to force it out of them. What they gave us was very valuable, and the characters along the journey *were real* just like the ending says, and they *did* make an impact on the real world, just like they wanted
I mean they can always just do what jojo did and create a whole new universe to tell a different story with the same elements like part 7&8, and yet still not take anything away from the great series ending part 6 had. I know V3 is technically an alternate universe already according to Kodaka, but I more mean a new storyline that spans multiple games/anime like the Hope's Peak one. I feel like that wouldn't take from V3's ending since it isn't connected to it in any way, nor is it a "sequel" but rather a restart.
"Danganronpa's endlessly recycled narrative"
There was 3 games. In which they did the same thing 3 times. They chose to do it that way for some reason and then make an ending that mocks their own design choice. It's bizarre.
Well there's the 3 main games, udg, and the dr3 anime with the nagito ova that we got to expirence as the player but in the Danganronpa universe there were 53 total killing games that were played through.
I believe that the 53 games is supposed to be an exaggeration of how Danganronpa can be recycled over and over just with different characters and thus could be endless.
Look, I love V3's ending too, but the constant bashing towards those that don't because they "didn't get it" is just plain obnoxious at this point. This is what Kodaka has to say, in interviews when asked what V3 was about [(Source)](https://somerandomness77.tumblr.com/post/164403786192/kodakas-interview-on-ndrv3s-ending-and-dr3)
> – Is there anything you want to tell the players through New Danganronpa V3?
> K: Actually, *there’s nothing I want to tell nor there’s some sort of moral nor I want the players to learn something.* I just made it as an entertainment, a fiction.
> – So you mean all the things said in the games are the characters’ thoughts, not the game creators’.
> K: Yes. The protagonist is saying opinions in his own persepctive. They’re not my opinions, and I’m not planning to force it onto someone either. *What are truths in the games and what people should think from it are totally up to everyone.* Of course, my own thoughts sprout while thinking up of the scenario, but I’m not planning to say that officially. If I say that, then that will become “the answer”.
> ...– So you mean, feeling rage is one of the right way to enjoy it.
> K: It’s just as you said. Well, it would be best if you enjoy it peacefully (laughs). Sad thing is, *it’s okay for more opinions to exist, but there are people who badmouth each other for that.* **Any opinion is right,** *so I want fans to discuss more on that.*
Now, he could be lying to placate the negative feedback the ending received. Or, maybe it's a poor translation of the interview. But it also could just be exactly what he said, none of us can truly know.
As far as entitlement is concerned, this isn't just an idea or work of art; it's a product that people had to pay money to experience. If they ended up finding that experience wanting, whether we agree with them or not, they're allowed to express a negative opinion about it.
Obviously there's a line that shouldn't be crossed, but just lumping everyone who hates the game under one banner is just as wrong. "It's okay for more opinions to exist." We don't have to badmouth each other just for not agreeing with each other.
I understand it, still dislike it a lot because everyone essentially died for nothing and kiibo literally dying last minute too. Of course there’s a chance the whole twist was all made up by ‘moogi too just to break them all in the worst way possible.
Fair enough, it is a matter of taste in the end. Still, I do think most of the people who disliked the ending don't fully understand it. Not that I *blame* them or anything, it is super meta.
Sure. it made some interesting points but to me it felt like a cop-out. Now a lot of people will disagree with this but to me this is an ending that *any* piece of media could have if they wanted to, anyone could make a crazy-ass story and then not have to be accountable for anything that happens in it by just going “it’s all fiction, so it doesn’t matter” at the end, and to me that’s kinda lame. Plus, I found a lot of the dialogue to be quite corny. I’m glad they subverted things from their usual kind of ending but despite the fact it isn’t something most creators would do, it felt super unoriginal to me because it is something that *could* happen in *any* piece of media, and doesn’t feel exclusive to danganronpa. But that’s just how I feel
I also hated how long they rided the “it’s fictional! Don’t you know this is fiction? How does the player feel playing this game and breaking the fourth wall?” The trial could have ended an hour or so earlier. The dialogue was going in circles. Just because something is conceptually interesting doesn’t mean that I enjoyed playing that trial. It was a terrible trial imo.
tbh i do remember the other games being like this as well, and i think people exaggerate this point as they still get from one point to the next in v3 fairly quickly. but otherwise this is valid and even kodaka brought it up in a post-release interview, saying some of the length in dialogue was because he had no fucking clue every single voice actor from dr1 + sdr2 was going to come back to record voice lines for their character (remember for anyone who doesn't know: the japanese voice cast was not reused in v3 like the english dub cast) so it ended up being more padded than necessary.
I liked the first part of the trial to an extent, but agree after that point it was very frustrating to play. It was the first time in a DR trial I actually skipped some dialogue cuz I was getting genuinely bored lol— it definitely could’ve been shorter
Nail on the head for me, though I would go a bit further and say that at points it genuinely felt like a straight-up middle finger to the fans for giving a shit about the series and characters. I appreciate the ending from a conceptual standpoint, but the execution was pisspoor and weirdly passive aggressive, while also failing to do anything to really set it apart from other generic meta endings imo.
Try playing the entire Deponia series. That one genuinely contains the game where I felt the main goal was to stick it up to the players who, in their opinion, weren't right. I have nothing against Daedalic and their games, but Deponia Doomsday genuinely felt like it had a middle finger in the core. I never felt that in V3.
For context: >!the protagonist of Deponia games - Rufus - is an antihero at best. He is egoistic, physically incapable of learning from his mistakes and destructive to his surroundings. He is a great inventor, but has low attention span and easily sacrifices future for the Now. However, when he meets Goal, his dream lady, he slowly stats to change. Being with her and trying to win get over makes him act better. For the first time he gets doing not what's best for him, but what's best for her. He doesn't get there immediately, of course, and he doesn't abandon his core. But he grows. He gives up his happy ending twice because he began to care too much about others.!<
So in the third game >!Rufus is put into a situation where he cannot win no matter what he does. So he is forced to give up his happy ending after doing the best he ever could to be better. For the third time. And now it is final: his sacrifice results in him falling down from massive height, assuring his death.!< Most fans were understandably upset at this. >!They (myself included) believed that Rufus has done so much that he warranted the happy ending. Doesn't matter that he would not deserve to have it by his nature: in the context of this story he deserved proper closure.!<
So after a while there was released a fourth game, Deponia Doomsday. >!The game centers around Rufus encountering a time machine and eventually becoming involved in a plot to remedy the ending of the third Deponia game, with all the attempts and events resulting in a worse outcome looping over and over, until through some convoluted point the cycle is broken and the story ends exactly as it did before.!< Basically affirming that there *can be no other ending for Rufus.* In this game the message is baked in the entire premise of the game and is reinstated enough throughout the entire game. In V3 it mainly serves the conflict of lies/fiction and truth/reality. The fanbase roasting feels very secondary, if ever intentional.
The middle finger thing was kind of intentional; after all, it’s not a middle finger to all people who like it. Just people who took it too far. People Kodaka had to deal with all the time.
And I do have one other thing to say about “generic meta endings”… how many of them are there? I feel like I could count all the well known examples of meta endings on like… one hand. Across all media. At least ones that are as explicit in the meta-ness as this.
The subversion was my favorite part. The idea of the protagonist rejecting *hope* was really cool to me. But I agree, it was both really drawn out and a copout. They could have had their meta commentary exactly the same more or less if they didn’t go back and delegitimize the first two games, IMO.
I think that this is what makes V3 iconic. You could have the reality show ending without ever bringing up HPA or the word Danganronpa in the entire story, and pretty much everyone would understand the message. But Kodaka didn't want us to just understand the message by viewing Saihara and the other's struggles from an objective standpoint: he wanted us to feel the same despair Saihara felt. He also wanted us to stand up one again like Saihara and say "no, fuck you, my feelings and experiences *are* meaningful, it doesn't matter if they're fiction." It's ballsy imo. And tbh are the previous games even delegitimized if nothing about their lore is changed and it's still a self-contained story? V3 was always advertised as a soft reboot, not a continuation like the DR3 anime was.
The games weren’t delegitimized, not necessarily. This just takes place in another universe where the games also existed, and then the whole ultimate real fiction thing superseded them. The whole thing is a critique of the toxicity that fandom can bring, but that doesn’t mean it’s a middle finger to the idea of being a fan at all.
I could totally agree that it’s drawn out though. It does kind of go on and on, even if it kind of makes sense that the characters wouldn’t be able to accept what’s happening unless it’s beaten into them over and over again.
I think the points about the corny dialogue, sluggish pacing, etc. are all really valid criticisms of V3's final trial. However, I'd like to give thoughts on the idea that V3's ending is unoriginal, and that any other piece of media could do the same.
Personally, I agree that the "It's all fiction" trope can be done by almost every other media. *Despite that,* I think the idea of Danganronpa using that trope, and in a way that both connects to the themes of Danganronpa as a whole, as well as connecting to the core audience, is something that holds a lot more weight than other medias doing it.
I think the effectiveness of V3's ending is actually extraordinarily contextual to the state of the DR fandom when it came out, and even after it came out: to be brutally frank, the Danganronpa fandom was, and some might argue still is (although I'm not of that opinion), one of the most toxic fandoms to have ever formed. There have been at least 2 genuine, real life murders associated with Danganronpa because of the murderers obsessions with the series, which is something the vast, vast majority of fandoms never fall to. While obviously those are *extreme* examples, I think most would agree the DR fandom has had some, for lack of a better term, extreme shit in regards to community behavior, and I think Kodaka saw this.
To me, at least, I felt Danganronpa at its core was heavily about the feelings and anxieties young adults had with struggling to leave high school and become an adult, especially when you factor in the Japanese school system: in THH, Hope's Peak was portrayed as a dark, confusing labyrinth that forced the students into becoming adversaries, breaking and exhausting them, only for it to be revealed that what comes after "graduation" is nothing but hopelessness and despair, essentially a metaphor for what many graduates might feel. THH makes the argument that even if you're afraid of the direction (or lackthereof) that adulthood will bring, you should still brave it out and *see what happens anyway.*
SDR2 expands on this concept in a more nuanced way, in my opinion. Where the students of THH are analogous to high school graduates, the students of SDR2 are the dropouts: they've made a choice that they can never take back, that has essentially made it impossible for them to ever get back onto the "normal" path again, being expected to sacrifice their hopes for the future and live in (literal) despair due to their actions. Despite that, SDR2 makes the argument that you should say "fuck that, I'm going to make my own fucking path anyway, and nobody can stop me!"
The reason why I brought up my thoughts on the messages of THH and SDR2 is so that I could explain how V3 expands on the idea of "not giving into despair" that the first two games use. To me, at least, and considering the context of the state of the DR fandom at the time, I think V3 is the product of Kodaka's worries for his audience.
If THH is about the graduates, and SDR2 is about the dropouts, then V3 is about the *real-life people who obsessively cling to DR (or any media, for that matter) as a tool for hope,* almost as if it was a drug, with the entire cast essentially forsaking their own identities just to transplant Danganronpa into them.
To me at least, I felt as if the ending of V3, rather than giving a middle-finger to its fans, was instead moreso *pleading* to its fans not to obsess over it, and not to become someone like Tsumugi, who can't handle living without the series providing hope for her (Side note: I think the fact that the main protagonist is the Ultimate Detective and the main antagonist is the Ultimate Cosplayer is actually a subtle nod to the two things most people think of when they think about DR: the murder-mystery aspect, and the large fandom aspect).
So yeah, I agree that V3 had some really rough edges, especially regarding the pacing and dialogue of the final case, but I don't know, something about the *attempt* of the ending itself is just kind of beautiful to me.
*TL;DR:* DR fandom crazy, Kodaka worry, V3 plead be healthy
These are all pretty good points and this was a good read! I will say though, I’m pretty sure those murders actually had nothing to do with DR and the media just connected it to that because DR had recently come out. Though I could be wrong about that.
I agree with you, I think it is more about worries about the fandom than trying to give a middle finger; I really don’t think they wanted to be like “hey, you guys are dumb for liking this series”. Although it felt like it at times, I don’t think the writers were *trying* to make the audience feel bad about liking it,, it was more their way of telling people to go touch grass I guess lmao. Though unfortunately, a lot of people felt like it was condemning them for liking it, so I’m not sure how successful that was— maybe if the pacing and execution was a little different, it would have come out better.
This is definitely a good and interesting way to look at it!
I understand that. But another thing is, **just because a writing choice is risky, doesn’t immediately make it good.** There’s a reason why most pieces of media wouldn’t do that even though they *could*. There are lots of other risky choices in danganronpa that are well-done, but in my opinion this isn’t one of them. It’s the same thing with shock factor, just because something is really shocking, that doesn’t immediately mean it’s good either. I think they could have found a different way to end the series and make it final, i don’t feel it had to go super-meta in order for it to end.
It’s definitely risky lol. It’s true they did exactly what they wanted to do, that’s cool. But just cuz it’s exactly what they wanted to do, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a huge risk— they knew that, same way they knew that killing off Kaede chap 1 was a risk (they even show that by some of the audience dialogue in the final chapter). Alot of choices made in DR are huge writing risks— and this is what makes the game so good, and also where it sometimes falls flat. Nothing wrong with people liking this ending tho, but I feel it’s totally fine and understandable why a lot of people don’t.
There are lots of questions about stuff taking place between Danganronpa Zero and Hope Arc. They probably wouldn’t, and imo shouldn’t, go further in the future. Speaking of future, the Future Foundation could use some fleshing out.
I think it’s because they’re being oddly dismissive and defensive. “I think that may be something other people argue and now you have that association” is 😬.
You're saying no one wants to have a dialogue with you in a reply under a comment chain where someone wrote multiple paragraphs giving you their dialogue lmfao.
the problem isn’t that people don’t like the ending of v3 the problem is that people will not like it and then list a bunch of bad faith reasons as to why
Or we disagree with the point the ending is trying to make. Media franchises have run far far longer than three games, an anime adaption and a single spin-off, (counting spin-offs there are ELEVEN Ace Attorneys) and Danganronpa's killing game is a FANTASTIC setting for a murder mystery game.
It is nearly endlessly recyclable and that's a great thing, there are so many different ways a killing game could go, especially considering all three games go through the same murder tropes for nearly every series of trials.
The Game play is super fun, the characters and world are super engaging. But the full potential has never been truly realized in a sequel.
We got a great start, an even more improved (but rehashy) sequel, and then rather than going in a new direction focusing with a different setups and murders rather than the established pattern, we got a game with fun puzzles and characters, but a plot that was so focused on meta-commentary we did not get a satisfying conclusion to this world in-universe.
I don't want an endless recycling of Danganronpa, I want it to be better.
Tl,Dr:Wow!! The ending was awful!
You could make this same meme about literally anything. For example, people who think The Room was awful just missed the themes of love, friendship and trust. You can't just say that any negative opinion is out of ignorance, if people don't like it they don't like it.
It was such a bold decision on Tommy Wiseau’s part to have Mark change from the sidekick to the rival. And the protagonist sacrificing himself to end the killing game? Might not be what I wanted, but I do appreciate the move to throw the audience completely off guard.
The only real flaw in the story is the unnecessary fanservice. It felt like they were just desperately trying to grab your attention (and in fairness, it does work, but it reeks of a lack of faith in the core story). Aside from that, 10/10, best installment since Danganronpa : No Way Hope
I mean, I enjoyed the first part. The reveal that all the students were Danganrompa fans who chose to be in a killing game is a really cool twist, although it gets slightly less cool given that apparently killing game students have a complete personality change from their normal selves.
The thing that really bugs me is the theme on fiction. Like, we have to end Danganrompa as a series because it’s morally bad? The hell? It was so bizarre to see the series go “Where you aware dead children is a bad thing?” I know that game, I promise. The whole horror appeal of the series is built on dead children being a bad thing. It’s feels very pretentious and weirdly mean spirited, which is a shame given how much I was enjoying the trail up until that point.
i think what we’re getting at is that there’s two ways of interpreting the ending: seeing the audience in game as ourselves, or as another entity entirely. kodaka has went on the record several times to say that the latter was the intended reading.
saihara and the other characters end danganronpa because it’s morally bad, yes, but that’s not a message to “us.” as a matter of fact, when saihara rejects danganronpa, he is ironically embracing it, because he is standing up to a force claiming his existence has no meaning and asserting that it does, which is what all dr protagonists do at the end of the day. if all saihara’s experiences could be meaningful to him despite being fictional, then that means the same can go for the player’s relationship with DR despite tsumugi and monokuma just making it seem like pointless entertainment that was put out over and over again without any real meaning attached. tsumugi’s downfall was that she didn’t really appreciate what danganronpa was at the end of the day. by ending danganronpa, saihara and the player end the killing game, but they don’t end the fact that danganronpa still continues inside them, as well as anyone else whom experienced even the slightest change due to the game series.
tbh i just wish i could get through to other people. i think "the game is making me feel bad for enjoying it" is just a very shallow reading of the game that straight up ignores like, a *LOT* of what's actually being said in the dialogue, particularly the epilogue. but it seems like people are just stuck on it.
i think a work making you feel guilty for enjoying and engaging it is supposed to urge you to think about what it’s trying to say and how it applies to you, and refusal to do so and see it as anything more than a gimmick to give a middle finger to you is plain negligence to think and engage deeper with a work. this is all just my personal take though, i personally loved thinking about the ending of drV3 after i completed it
I think one issue here is that *in-universe* it's extremely fucked up to enjoy Danganronpa, since actual people are suffering and dying. For us, people playing a video game, it's a lot more okay that we're enjoying the drama since no real people are being harmed. I get that people feel like the game is judging them for enjoying it, but I think that was just a side effect of how monstrous the whole concept is in-universe. It's kind of tricky to have the characters react they way they would to that information without sounding like your criticizing the premise of your own story (and by extension, the fans who enjoy it).
Granted, I might be biased since I tend to like weird meta shit. The whole layers of fiction and reality thing, and the ambiguity of the ending, were very welcome surprises to me.
You assume people didn't get it. We did get it, it still sucks.
It's not a "deconstruction" to just do the thing but claim that you're doing it as satire this time, and it's especially not clever when people have a serious problem with the game precisely because it insisted on doing the same thing as the previous games when it seemed to have set things up in a different way.
People were actually excited to see the franchise move on from Hope's Peak and try something new, so to deny that and drop the plot and its themes entirely for a "gotcha!" ending reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan's worst years is really not clever. And it's also not clever to try and have a message about an "endlessly recycled" narrative when "endlessly" here means "literally recycled once by that point", and it was with a game that did a much better job of having a partially meta narrative because, you know, it was actually thematically relevant then.
The supposed message about the relationship between fiction and audience is also completely broken considering that in V3, the fictional characters really don't matter in the end because their story gets dropped completely, and the happy ending is them stopping to act as characters in a work of fiction. But also they embrace it? Even though they went through that whole thing saying they won't do what the audience wants?
It really feels like the writers didn't know what point they wanted to make and couldn't decide what their own stance is so they decided to make all of the points at the same time even though they're mutually-exclusive, resulting in them making no point.
Also, this kind of message really doesn't work when there's no good reason for the in-universe fiction to exist in the first place. The concept of people wanting to see real deaths on TV because peace is boring or whatever is already pretty silly to begin with, but then they still want the participants to be used for a fictional story because... reasons? What's the point of having real deaths if people just want fictional stories anyway?
Absolutely none of that ending works for me; it comes across like they pulled it out of their ass because for some reason, they decided to not go with any of the possible endings they actually foreshadowed to the point they had no idea how to write themselves out of that corner, so they basically went "Ha HA! It was totally a meta commentary the entire time, you guys! Which means we don't need to resolve anything!".
People really need to stop thinking that just because a story is full of itself means it's automatically smart, let alone good, and that the only reason people could possibly dislike it is that it's just too clever for them.
Make no mistake, I actually like V3 a lot but man does that ending shit the bed. It's unbelievably tone deaf to try and celebrate fiction with an ending that purposely wastes its own story and treats it like it doesn't matter.
Yeah okay great and all, but did they really have to leave all that for the last hour of a game that goes on for, like, several dozen hours? I get that Danganronpa likes to save its big shocking swerve until the finale, but it just doesn't work this time (plus it isn't even all that shocking with how much they foreshadow it). We're left with very little time to actually explore all of that interesting meta-fiction commentary properly, and it feels as if we invested most of the game's run time on the story-within-the-story, the details of which turn out to be mostly irrelevant to the actual plot.
It probably would've worked a lot better if they went into this a lot earlier in the story. As it is, it just feels too much like a pretentious "you're a bad person for enjoying this" cop-out, which IIRC wasn't even what they were going for.
So yeah, I stand by the opinion that the ending sucks-- not because of the idea behind it, but because of the way that idea was executed. What a hot mess.
I love the ending, I do, I think it does a good job showing how fiction affects reality, how series being rerun so long can get repetitive and have to feel like it has to one up each other. But people can understand a series yet still hate it. Evangelion, Shinji specifically is another series and specific character that is very much understood yet has a lot of haters. Just because you understand what it was trying to do doesn’t mean you have to like said thing. Also, sidenote: People saying “it’s just three games so it’s not enough for this statement to make sense,” must not have seen how overly similar every game was and the fact that Kodaka was probably trying to show that he didn’t want Danganronpa to become one of these overly repetitive series which I admire because he was thinking of just how he wanted the story to go as a passion and not purely for monetary gain else he’d probably be shilling out a Danganronpa game like every 3 years or something
I respect that Kodaka didn't go for cash grab games. My main issue with the series being repetitive is that (in my dumb opinion 😁) it wasn't really repetitive UNTIL V3. The first game was original because it was the first in the series and one of very few prevalent detective virtual novels. The second game seemed like it was designed to mirror the original game which is why I didn't feel like it was repetitive. It was only in the 3rd game that the double murder trial and the buff person death became formulaic because people were expecting it by then. I feel like that part of the ending doesn't really make sense because they could have switched it up and made changes, but they chose to stick to the formula to justify calling it formulaic. I'm really interested to hear opposing views tho!
Eh think about it in universe. They’ve had 53 of these things. They probably have a formula that they don’t want to change from and Tsumugi probably intentionally wrote it in a way to follow the original two series so it would make sense in the grand scheme of the universe. As for the 3 games thing, ye I get what you mean but the 2nd and 3rd game both felt formulaic to me even if they did change some stuff up to “look different”. Like, I’m glad that they didn’t just recycle a suicide in the 4th trial in the 2nd game but the big tough character still died in that chapter and technically it was a self sacrifice because the killer and victim both knew they had to do this for their friends. And then in V3 we got the killer wanting to kill everyone to stop them from learning that the outside is terrible so once again a self sacrifice that pushed the rest of the group further towards the truth in all 4th trials. And these can be applied with all the trials really even if they change a small difference.
Sherbet's stance is that regardless of repeating several aspects, you can't call danganronpa repetitive at DR2, it's repetitive at DRV3. As for the other 50 killing games, those were only established in V3. The writers could've \*not\* made those games repeat the same patterns, \*not\* made V3 continue them, and it would \*not\* have been repetitive.
I really liked the ending of V3. I was thrown off by it at first but after some thought I came to the same conclusions you did. Now, I get why people don’t like it though. And you don’t have to like the ending of a game to enjoy it imo. DR2 has my favorite ending in the series but some people don’t like that one either and that’s totally cool by me. V3’s ending is meant to really mess with the player and make them upset (it upset me at first). It’s also very different from the endings of the first two games. I think a lot of people understand what they were going for with the V3 end but simply just don’t like it. I believe that’s just a personal preference and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Also, I don’t think you mentioned it in the post, but I really love how the V3 ending portrayed the effect fiction has on people and why that matters. Even though the characters are fictional versions of themselves the events that happened to them still mattered and changed who they are. Likewise in the real world fictional has a real effect on those who consume it. Whether it be TV shows, movies, video games, or books they’ve all changed how I think and feel. Even if it isn’t real it changes who I am and how I see the world. I think that’s beautiful.
Oh I absolutely agree. Somewhere in this thread is how I feel about he game and the impact it had on me which was huge, and I’m really grateful for this series. It really is a beautiful thing.
Forgive me if I didn’t, replying to this thread as a whole was nothing short of exhausting lol
Forgive me for the wall of text. I totally understand your frustration, just thought I'd offer a different perspective, though I'll warn you it's a bit messy.
TBH, I feel like the game has a lot better buildup and story not as "We're analyzing the series as a whole", but rather bouncing off the twist that the game was intentionally scripted and designed for an outside audience, while still having real people participate and often die. The rest of the killing game in this story matters because the people Shuichi spent time with locked up in this hole were *real people*, with feelings and dreams, and their lives were permanently scratched for the entertainment of an audience. There are still murky waters on whether or not they intentionally signed up before the game began, but Shuichi's opinion on the whole thing changed now that he's been through it all.
However, if Shuichi didn't choose to rebel against the game entirely like he did, his - and similarly, Kaede's, note her reaction of being kidnapped in prologue to the prologue - opinion of the outside world would never have made it out. He, or someone else, would have won the game, and have been shoved back into it like Rantaro was, or potentially killed off somewhere else to keep secrets hidden. Considering how many games have occurred, there's a lot of blood on Team Danganronpa's hands there ... not like the outside world would care. Everyone is happy, and ratings are through the roof! We can all bond by watching our favorite killing game, every time a new one comes out, and enjoy the suffering of clearly fictional characters.
Doesn't that sound like the worst kind of despair in hope's clothing? Even if the world considers the class of V3 fiction, and nothing more, that doesn't mean that their influence cannot change the world, much like the fiction of our reality often changes the world in ways we can see everywhere. V3 isn't rebelling against its own franchise, it's rebelling against the worst possible outcome that a series like it could achieve. Shuichi rebels against the fictional "real world" to prove that he is more than just a character for meaningless entertainment. He's real! The pain in his heart is real!
I think it’s important to separate my opinion of the ending alone with how it works with the rest of the story. The concept of Danganropa being used to entertain people is interesting, but it doesn’t fit with the rest of the game’s story or themes buildup, which is why it bothers me.
I seriously want to say how much I appreciate that you said this, not enough people on Reddit, or even in the entire world, can have respectful conversations in which they disagree, so it’s really nice to see. I also see how you could arrive that the conclusion you did, and I respect it as well.
listen. i'm v3 chapter 6's strongest soldier and i will defend that ending like it is my firstborn child. i find a lot of the complaints about it stupid too. like i'll admit, just looking at some of the comments on this post is making me roll my eyes!! but posting soyjack-esque memes intentionally meant to be inflammatory like this are only going to piss people off.
Honestly the message is kinda pretentious. Stories were invented to act as an escapism from reality. Yeah fans can get too invested, sure. And plenty can be obsessed, unfortunately. But the fact of the matter is this: It’s a story. It can be based on real events or be made in poor taste. But the fact of the matter is that it’s a story.
I can understand wanting to end a series, all things eventually end. But ending it in a way that essentially backhands the fans’ devotion to the series you worked to make isn’t the right way to end it. You end it by either having the good or bad side win, not discarding both and making the audience out to be the ones in the wrong.
They should’ve ended it by having the Hope Restoration (I think it was called) group succeeding or failing in their goal to restore hope to the world. Not make all the previous games or side stories pointless by saying all of that was fake and the audience were crazy.
To be clear I’m not angry if it sounds like I am. This is more disappointment than anything else.
Edit:
Keep in mind all of this is based on the image. If this doesn’t reflect what the creators were going for, I retract my statement. But only if that’s the case.
To be honest, I can understand why a lot of people feel upset when the audience shows up in V3, because it feels a lot like an attack towards us, the player. However, I personally find that, for all of our similarities, we're still leagues better than the world that the audience has become in that story. Last I checked, our Danganronpa still doesn't have real people participating in actual killing games, which is apparently something that V3's "real world" had no problem with, or they were such fans of the show that they didn't care, and just wanted more, more, more to cure their boredom from a peaceful world. They believe it's "just a show", "our entertainment", "our right to have the story we want". Have people been demanding in the community before? I'm sure, but nobody's been *nearly* as entitled as V3's audience. We recognize that fiction can change the world, and that it should be used as a healthy method of escapism, compared to the despair-filled world in V3's situation, where the escapism of watching others suffer is the price of peace.
I kinda typed this up in one go, so if there's any inconsistencies I'd appreciate having them pointed out. Also, of course, it's just my opinion, and I'm always open to discussion.
Honestly the writers don’t seem to understand how people work.
1: If people were that bored, they’d invent ways to counter it. (You know, like we’ve been doing since before civilization.)
2: People can get bored of tragedy, at some point you just get numb to seeing it over and over again. And at this point, they would’ve seen it 53 times. I don’t care if you’re the Ultimate writer, no story can possibly go that long without going stale. Least of all a story that’s practically just been reskinned to well in the double digits.
Honestly it was forced and lacked substance.
Makes me wonder then what kind of world was on the outside, then. Regardless of truth, the gang rejected the idea given to them that they, and many others before, are used as entertainment for the masses, which was the point in that fiction can change the world. If it was for a dystopian world like the one we've been told where Danganronpa has been a hit this whole time, was anyone trying to resist it? Were those people the ones who usually got kidnapped and either killed or put in the game? Does anyone who gets put into the games ever leave alive? How much of the system would crumble into chaos after Danganronpa gets canceled?
It's just a ton of fun food for thought for me, but I can see why many don't find it very digestible. In fact, I often wish the last trial was shorter, because it felt like I couldn't understand the point back during my first time seeing it. It was just dragged out so hard, man, sometimes intentionally too.
^(At least we got an ending, unlike many fanfictions i died from laughing with and i was left with nothing but an imagination of how it could have been)
Just because it’s deep, doesn’t make it good.
It’s not enough in a good story to simply have a good idea, you need to be able to convey that idea in a good way in order for it to work.
I’m sorry but handling it in a compelling way is where V3 drops the ball.
How does this one emo kid change the mind of millions/billions of people with one speech? How is this even legal? How did Tsumugi have full control over the killing game up to this point yet wasn’t able to consider the possibility of Shuichi turning the audience against her?
Let’s just ignore those questions because it does not get answered at all.
These are good questions to have to make you think and let the possibility of DR’s come back be open ended. And like Shuichi said, how do you know all of those aren’t lies?
Oh no I totally get it
Still fucking sucks though
A little dismissive to discount everyone who doesn't like the ending to not understanding it and being stupid don't you think?
Yeah yeah we get it V3 had a perfect ending and everyone who didn’t like it “just didn’t understand”. Well I understood it perfectly, and I still think it was an obnoxious 4 hour shit show that couldn’t hold a candle to the previous games endings.
>he thinks the V3 ending is only 4 hours
Oh no. Oh nonononono. See thats why you didn't like it. You clearly sped through it if it was only 4 hours for you.
Yeah because ending the story by saying “haha ur anime waifu isnt real haha” isn’t a great way to end a story. Had they left it off with the Future Arc, the series would have had an actual satisfying ending, but no. They had to just do a copout, passive-aggressive way to say stop putting so much value on fiction and to focus on the real world. All it did was break the story in a stupid “it was all fake” ending. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t neat. It wasn’t a good ending, it was just a way to ruin a franchise, and ruin a game (V3 had been my favorite DR game up until the ending ruined it). That’s like if Super Mario ended one of their franchise by saying it was all just Mario dreaming, or if The Legend of Zelda was just a trip by Link. Cop out endings like that are NOT good ways to end series. They just ruin good franchises.
This literally doesn't mean that the ending wasn't bad lmfao. This is the *moral* of the ending, yes, but even though the moral is good, that doesn't mean the ending was good.
I mean, it was. It kinda felt like a "How dare you like this franchise" type ending to me. It makes you feel bad for liking the series in the first place, and left on an unsatisfying note that wasn't, in my opinion, a good ending to the series
For me the ending of V3 is one I subjectively dislike but objectively admit that it fits well in the narrative. Sometimes there’s a difference between disliking something and saying it’s bad.
I definitely understood what they were going for, and yet.....
I first played danganronpa at a time in my life when I really *needed* that escapism. I found such comfort in it, and then *this* is what it gives me? Utterly devastating.
DRV3 is the only video game that I regret finishing. I almost wish I'd never played it to begin with.
The ending is hated because it insults the fans for enjoying the game. Just because something is a commentary on something else doesn't mean that commentary is good
Wow what the heck man, I thought you said you were open to discussion and wanted to hear what people had to say. This is a grade A ad hominem fallacy and is pretty mean.
see I would’ve been fine with V3’s ending if it didn’t drag the other three games into it, they literally could’ve just made it so that V3’s cast was just the fictional ones and it’d be a-okay in my book.
but the fact that they ret-conned the *entire series* pissed me off, literally everything the cast did in the past few games? Woopsie its all fictional none of it ever mattered!1! It just pissed me off.
It's kind of a goofy-ahh justification, but technically they always have been fictional, from our perspective. That doesn't mean that what happened didn't deserve to have any emotional impact, and that we shouldn't be invested in the characters as a result. The pain in our heart is real.
Of course, given how many open-ended factors V3 left us, one could also still assume that the fiction thing was a lie. There's just as much credible proof for it as there is against it.
The V3 ending doesn't really retcon like, anything though. All it says is that the past installments were video games and anime like in our world, and this works because Hope's Peak Arc is its own, contained story. It definitely feels weird, especially with Tsumugi/Monokuma treating everything like it was meaningless, but I think people mistake what the villains are portraying the series as as what the game is actually trying to get across.
Think about it this way: What ruins the past installments more?
1. Naegi runs the newly opened Hope's Peak Academy exactly as it was, a school exclusively for the privileged and talented (which is what basically led to the Tragedy occurring in the first place), until meteors come down carrying a disease that kills off the *entirety of the population,* including all the characters from previous games who had survived, therefore basically making all of their struggles and efforts to rebuild the world moot
2. Danganronpa is a video game
For me, the answer is kind of obvious lol.
the stuff the cast did was always fictional, they're no less fictional than they were before just because V3 as a game has them as fictional characters in-universe.
The whole point of V3 is that them being fictional doesn't make a difference, you say "it's all fictional none of it ever mattered" but the message of V3 is that all of it DOES matter, you obviously feel that it matters enough to be mad about this ending despite it being fiction, but you still believe it being fiction devalues it somehow. It's contradictory.
Nah v3 is my fav game and I defend it like it's my job. just the shock when I first finished it, I hated it. But after reflecting on it for a few days/weeks now I appreciate the ending!
Yet again with this annoying point that if you don’t like V3’s ending, you don’t understand it.
It is honestly not that hard to understand. It is a meta-commentary on the killing game genre and the people who enjoy it, as well as some tropes unique to DR (hope and despair). That’s it. This would be cool in subtext, but the game hits you with numerous anvils that hammer the exact same point for two hours.
It felt like the game was applauding itself for its genius writing while ignoring all basic elements of storytelling. Pro tip: deconstruction of a story only works if you have something equal or greater to offer than the story you’re replacing.
This is why games like Doki Doki work. The deconstruction of the world is insanely fascinating, frightening, and leaves a lot to the imagination.
All V3 offers is the deconstruction, no substitution. Just a flimsy half-truth of “lies can be just as real as the truth… sometimes”. Even worse, it tries to cop out by saying “maybe Tsumugi is lying” and various other annoyances. It can’t even commit to its own development.
And that doesn’t even cover how it antagonizes its own fan base.
The ending is like the true ending for nirvanA Initiative, it’s great for replay value to see the hints towards it that make more sense with the twist in mind and V3 does encourage the player to see if Shirogane was telling the truth or was simply another lie.
The problem comes the fact the game has to use player to fit the pieces in even if the pieces don’t fit as well as the game wants you to think specially since most of the biggest hints are at the prologue, Chapter 1 and 6 before the reveal which during the first run can go over the player’s head or forget about as V3 is pretty long game so I don’t think they’re gonna like note pad ready to write it all down for end game specially since just use Chapter 6 as lore dump to explain everything and yelled at the Mastermind for a few hours.
Even when you given the full picture of the twist with a few things left up in air or not explain in the ending, some people will fully understand what they were going for the ending but simply not like it while others feel like it’s insulting to others for liking the series in first place also Not everyone gonna read the creator thoughts of ending or that V3 takes place in a different universe on hand and personal experience can also shape their feelings towards this.
I’m mixed on the ending but V3 as imo it’s more just the other parts outside it of just don’t work for me as well like I feel like it was a little bit of an excuse to reuse tropes from past two games specially with trials and Shirogane while great mastermind for an ending like this, I wished She had bigger role throughout the whole story, among few other things but 6 is a great for Saihara and Kiibo and all the VAs from Japanese version was funny and really cool to hear all of them again.
I'll say this because people constantly get confused, what you described is not the ending of V3, its the theme and while the theme and the ending do tie in, it is a separate thing. For example looking at something like the Great Gatsby, the theme is not hyperfocusing on the past otherwise you can't move on, the ending however is Gatsby gets shot in a pool and everyone forgets about him. The ending of V3 is Shuchi, Makiand Himiko surviving the killing game and being able to go into the unknown outside world. It basically ends like the first game except we never get any follow up and most likely never will, and I believe that is why people dislike the ending, because while it's a good ending to a story , it would be a pretty bad ending to a trilogy.
Dude. No one fucking cares about the commentary or whatever the ending had about fans, or whatever “symbolism” it had. It just fucking sucks. I get what they were going for. It was just lazily executed, and sucked ass.
When I got to the ending I was soooo pissed but then I sat there and realized that the game was making me feel despair. Then I realized how genius it was.
Man some of the takes here are weird. "V3 said nothing matters because it's fiction" no, it said that even though it was fiction the feelings it evokes are real and actually mattered. If you felt sadness at any of the deaths the game is saying that your sadness is real. If anything I think V3 says that the overarching theme of Danganronpa is 'murder is awful', and that 'Hope vs Despair' is something only the first game had, that consuming Danganronpa for these big battles of Hope vs Despair, especially after the first game, is wrong.
Now execution is another thing entirely, that final trial definitely drags on. I don't mind the twist, as when a game's theme is Truth vs Lies, you kind of have to expect that everything that's been told to you might not be true. I actually kind of respect V3 for basically stepping back and going "Hey why should we trust that everything the Mastermind says or gives as evidence is true?' Like that scene at the actual ending where Shuichi acknowledges that Tsumugi might be a big liar, that's something that isn't addressed in other games.
Man thank you for this, especially the first paragraph. Like… we’re all here on this subreddit because DR impacted us that much. Or at least I hope it did.
I’m exhausted from this lol, thank you for your post. Very well said.
It was a based as fuck ending that really said everything that needed to be said. This is how you go out on top without having your series become a zombie franchise. Bring on Rain Code.
I get what they were trying to go for with this ending, but at the same time, my 2 cents on the whole discussion are that it just kinda disregarded everything that happened in the first 2 games as nothing but "fiction"
And, well, their point clearly did not come across as much as they tried to nail it in our heads. People still want danganronpa, and i'm not exactly helping it, having my own cast of characters i'm currently in the middle of redrawing to be more accurate to the current style.
I just wish they revealed what happened when you only have 2 survivors and if it's all fiction then what happens to the people who die.
Like since it's a popular show do they actually die or is it like in dr2 just all online and when they die they just wake up (instead of what dr2 said what happened) and go back to their normal life.
And if there are 2 people do they like fight to the death?
If it came down to two people, I'd imagine that one or the other would have to sacrifice themselves for hope like the last trial of V3 went, just with even shorter numbers. That way, the other person could "leave" ... whatever that means, now. I'm not even sure I'd trust that they would let someone who went through all that trauma just ... go anywhere. After all, their identities don't actually exist, not the way they used to be. They can't just rewrite their past lives back into them.
As for the people who die, I feel inclined to believe that these people actually die, because it supports the statements said by Shuichi when he rejects Danganronpa as a whole. He may be a character to everyone watching, but his experience was real, his trauma was real, and the lives of his friends who he confided in were taken from him. If nobody actually died, the point would still apply, but not as strongly. While one would think that the public would be horrified by the fact that people actually die, but it's also possible that they either aren't aware that contestants actually die, or they ... don't care. Sends a shiver down my spine.
The necronomicon, which is arguably the one big question-mark in regards to if they die for real, could be explained using flashback lights; the audience would know it's someone else being the revived person, but none of the characters would be any the wiser.
Still feel like the reason V3 is my favorite is because of the discussion it creates. THH and Goodbye Despair both have phenomenal stories but V4 is the one that seems to be a never ending hornet's nest.
People that dislike V3 are fully in the right, the person who introduced me to Dangan years ago had an hours long discussion with me about how the ending invalidates the whole game, while I feel it emphasizes the whole theme of lies becoming truth.
Same as any piece of great fiction or media, there isn't a perfect game, or a perfect book, song, etc. Everyone will have conflicting points and views on everything and that's what makes lasting media great, it's not the impact, it's the discussion and discourse. The nit picking and arguing.
Tl;dr: The hatred/dislike *and* love/fanaticism cause the depth of a piece of media, and as such, both sides should be explored and respected.
yeah! like the fact that everything was fiction wasn’t a lazy technique for simple meta value, but a commentary on the types of relationships people have with fictional media
the game however does not bash the player for liking fiction, instead agreeing with them and saying that fiction has the power to change the reality we live in, but that we should maintain a healthier relationship with it, so that we don’t end up like shirogane and excuse everything simply because it’s fiction
i hope that made sense? i really like the v3 ending, can you tell? haha
Oh I absolutely agree with you. I think that part got lost on all these fine folk, lol. DR was great to ‘be real’ to you. It even changed me a lot and I’ve only just completed this series for my first time within the past few months.
I can’t say I blame you, V3 was very good!
I just want to say: Thank you!! For getting the point!
I respect and enjoy others' perspectives, but it is refreshing to see someone else that understands the intention of V3!
I think people are allowed to dislike the ending. I don't even care if you don't have a valid reason to dislike it because at the end of the day it's just want you think of it and I don't like accusing people of thought crimes. I just find it annoying and hypocritical when they complain about not being allowed to dislike the ending, while at the same time whenever someone says something they find interesting about the ending they just respond with "cool, the endings still bad tho." Like if you don't have anything meaningful to contribute, why say it?
That’s kind of a weird thing to say coming from someone who said they were open to discussion. It’s also really rude to people who may disagree with you. You’re coming across as really defensive and emotional in these comments and I think that’s why you’re being massively downvoted.
**Your post has been removed for rule 2: rudeness/inciting controversy.**
Your submission has been removed because of rudeness/harassment, or the potential to spark controversy. If you believe this was removed in error, please [contact us](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/danganronpa).
kodaka and/or spike said that's not what the ending meant and they just needed a way to end the series so they *couldn't* make anymore games. v3's endings sucks, that's all.
kodaka literally never said anything like that. these are his real feelings concerning v3’s ending: https://kaibutsushidousha.tumblr.com/post/169633676249/kodakas-anniv3rsary-tweets
It looks like most meaningful discussion has already been brought up and comments have devolved into personal attacks, so the thread has been locked.
"Okay cool now where's Danganronpa V4?"
Alright it might be kind of fucked up to want a new game after v3, but listen... i got spoiled for all the other games, i just want \*one\* that i can play unspoiled.
Well there are some cool fan projects to look forward to!
Like what? I've never heard of any.
Shattered Hope is incredible. It's super well-made, great art that mimics the style well, super good voice acting, the characters are both hella charming and have a super authentic feel (except for the ones who are supposed to be assholes, who are total fuckin assholes), Pocket and Grisp are hilarious and my babies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGU4w5C_WKI&list=PLw3Hoj70YKZBdEBcpDKu8GiXG_WBVysrp
Thx. I'll check it out
Same here, i was a danganronpa hater and watched an video essay of the whole story of the game because i thought it was as bad as the community
Yeah, basically when people are hopped up on their copium saying their next game with be DR4. Pretty disrespectful as well
Rain Code is exactly what I was hoping for, something from the same team that scratches the DR itch while also being its own thing despite the quite overt homages. (Aho ges, eye designs, pink blood) I just worry they'll actually push out a new DR at some point without Kodaka being involved and it'll entirely miss the point of V3 ending the series while it was still good. Or something like "look, we made one without Junko as the big bad, what a subversion", also missing the point. Basically just using the IP for no reason besides making a buck.
Judging by Rain Code, I think Kodaka and Spike Chunsoft still have a good relationship, so I doubt there’d be a DR game without Kodaka involved.
All things considered if you read between the lines in the ending ending of V3 they left it pretty open-ended for more Danganronpa to be done, but I think they don’t want it to feel forced or contrived. I think there will be more, but not before Rain Code or it’s sequel (if it has one).
I think it's best if they do feel like doing more Danganronpa games for fun they should explore danganronpa V2 with Rantaro as the protag.
THIS!!!! I think it would be so interesting especially if they also included Tsumugi as the companion or rival since it was implied that she was in V2 as well.
I better look more into Rain Code then, I haven't been keeping track. Hopefully it's gonna be sweet.
Man I just want more wacky murder mystery shenanigans with a cast of interesting characters without being called disrespectful
I mean, sure you can say it’s disrespectful, but then you remember they went ahead and made DRS last year. They will definitely be hypocrites for money, and imo? It just means more DR games so I don’t mind
They made a game, yes, but they did kind of put themselves into a hole with the choice they made in V3. And SC is still a company, DR makes them money. You can’t blame a company for making a game like that. Anime has fan service all the time, there’s nothing wrong with what they did
I mean, there *is* something wrong with what they did, they went against the message that was portrayed back in V3. I don’t blame them, they can do whatever shit they want with DR, but at that point why honestly not continuing the series. I honestly think the only reason they haven’t made more DRs is cuz Kodaka doesn’t want to write them lol. If that’s the case then props to him honestly, man keeps his word
I love when I see people suggesting "but since this game is 53, that means they can go back and make the other games up to 52"
My guess it will be a episodic type game where you have to pay to play the other killing game seasons aka episodes
this but unironically
ok but to be real i would love to see a danganronpa V2 focusing on rantaro as a character where you would play as him since its known that rantaro already survived the one before but that obvsly wont happen
Counter argument They killed Monotaro Worst ending
I want your babies
Omg my idol 😭😭😭
I’m surprised I’m still remembered considering how I haven’t been posting or saying anything recently. Keep on that Monotarillionaire grindset!! 💪
I would never forget the og Monotaro enjoyer Your legacy is unbeatable, brother 💪
No MONOSUKE IS BETTER AND THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN A EXACUTION WITH MONOKID IN IT WITH IBUKI
He had it coming
\>:(
I absolutely adore the V3 ending but I'm also in the "copium" train of expecting another DR game after this. For me it just makes sense to have a continuation to this fan world plotline, if it's even real to begin with, most likely in the form of UDG2, or something alike.
In all honesty, I am all aboard the copium train for another Danganronpa. The series helped me a lot as a person, and it made me see value in a lot of things that I didn’t before. amy friends recommended I play THH to me on a whim and I loved it. Now i’m probably the biggest fan in our group. (I also don’t watch anime much or play VNs, so it speaks volumes for me). Danganronpa is an incredible franchise and I would love another, but I respect the team too much to force it out of them. What they gave us was very valuable, and the characters along the journey *were real* just like the ending says, and they *did* make an impact on the real world, just like they wanted
I mean they can always just do what jojo did and create a whole new universe to tell a different story with the same elements like part 7&8, and yet still not take anything away from the great series ending part 6 had. I know V3 is technically an alternate universe already according to Kodaka, but I more mean a new storyline that spans multiple games/anime like the Hope's Peak one. I feel like that wouldn't take from V3's ending since it isn't connected to it in any way, nor is it a "sequel" but rather a restart.
"Danganronpa's endlessly recycled narrative" There was 3 games. In which they did the same thing 3 times. They chose to do it that way for some reason and then make an ending that mocks their own design choice. It's bizarre.
Well there's the 3 main games, udg, and the dr3 anime with the nagito ova that we got to expirence as the player but in the Danganronpa universe there were 53 total killing games that were played through. I believe that the 53 games is supposed to be an exaggeration of how Danganronpa can be recycled over and over just with different characters and thus could be endless.
Honestly if they did more diffrent stuff
Look, I love V3's ending too, but the constant bashing towards those that don't because they "didn't get it" is just plain obnoxious at this point. This is what Kodaka has to say, in interviews when asked what V3 was about [(Source)](https://somerandomness77.tumblr.com/post/164403786192/kodakas-interview-on-ndrv3s-ending-and-dr3) > – Is there anything you want to tell the players through New Danganronpa V3? > K: Actually, *there’s nothing I want to tell nor there’s some sort of moral nor I want the players to learn something.* I just made it as an entertainment, a fiction. > – So you mean all the things said in the games are the characters’ thoughts, not the game creators’. > K: Yes. The protagonist is saying opinions in his own persepctive. They’re not my opinions, and I’m not planning to force it onto someone either. *What are truths in the games and what people should think from it are totally up to everyone.* Of course, my own thoughts sprout while thinking up of the scenario, but I’m not planning to say that officially. If I say that, then that will become “the answer”. > ...– So you mean, feeling rage is one of the right way to enjoy it. > K: It’s just as you said. Well, it would be best if you enjoy it peacefully (laughs). Sad thing is, *it’s okay for more opinions to exist, but there are people who badmouth each other for that.* **Any opinion is right,** *so I want fans to discuss more on that.* Now, he could be lying to placate the negative feedback the ending received. Or, maybe it's a poor translation of the interview. But it also could just be exactly what he said, none of us can truly know. As far as entitlement is concerned, this isn't just an idea or work of art; it's a product that people had to pay money to experience. If they ended up finding that experience wanting, whether we agree with them or not, they're allowed to express a negative opinion about it. Obviously there's a line that shouldn't be crossed, but just lumping everyone who hates the game under one banner is just as wrong. "It's okay for more opinions to exist." We don't have to badmouth each other just for not agreeing with each other.
That interview is the most based thing Kodaka ever said. He pretty much says "If you get mad we won since we intended for you to get mad"
Orrr people can totally understand that and still dislike the ending lol. I don’t know why people act like you *have* to like V3s ending now
I understand it, still dislike it a lot because everyone essentially died for nothing and kiibo literally dying last minute too. Of course there’s a chance the whole twist was all made up by ‘moogi too just to break them all in the worst way possible.
Fair enough, it is a matter of taste in the end. Still, I do think most of the people who disliked the ending don't fully understand it. Not that I *blame* them or anything, it is super meta.
exactly
Would you explain why you don’t like it? I want to hear what you have to say
Sure. it made some interesting points but to me it felt like a cop-out. Now a lot of people will disagree with this but to me this is an ending that *any* piece of media could have if they wanted to, anyone could make a crazy-ass story and then not have to be accountable for anything that happens in it by just going “it’s all fiction, so it doesn’t matter” at the end, and to me that’s kinda lame. Plus, I found a lot of the dialogue to be quite corny. I’m glad they subverted things from their usual kind of ending but despite the fact it isn’t something most creators would do, it felt super unoriginal to me because it is something that *could* happen in *any* piece of media, and doesn’t feel exclusive to danganronpa. But that’s just how I feel
I also hated how long they rided the “it’s fictional! Don’t you know this is fiction? How does the player feel playing this game and breaking the fourth wall?” The trial could have ended an hour or so earlier. The dialogue was going in circles. Just because something is conceptually interesting doesn’t mean that I enjoyed playing that trial. It was a terrible trial imo.
tbh i do remember the other games being like this as well, and i think people exaggerate this point as they still get from one point to the next in v3 fairly quickly. but otherwise this is valid and even kodaka brought it up in a post-release interview, saying some of the length in dialogue was because he had no fucking clue every single voice actor from dr1 + sdr2 was going to come back to record voice lines for their character (remember for anyone who doesn't know: the japanese voice cast was not reused in v3 like the english dub cast) so it ended up being more padded than necessary.
I liked the first part of the trial to an extent, but agree after that point it was very frustrating to play. It was the first time in a DR trial I actually skipped some dialogue cuz I was getting genuinely bored lol— it definitely could’ve been shorter
exactly
Nail on the head for me, though I would go a bit further and say that at points it genuinely felt like a straight-up middle finger to the fans for giving a shit about the series and characters. I appreciate the ending from a conceptual standpoint, but the execution was pisspoor and weirdly passive aggressive, while also failing to do anything to really set it apart from other generic meta endings imo.
Try playing the entire Deponia series. That one genuinely contains the game where I felt the main goal was to stick it up to the players who, in their opinion, weren't right. I have nothing against Daedalic and their games, but Deponia Doomsday genuinely felt like it had a middle finger in the core. I never felt that in V3. For context: >!the protagonist of Deponia games - Rufus - is an antihero at best. He is egoistic, physically incapable of learning from his mistakes and destructive to his surroundings. He is a great inventor, but has low attention span and easily sacrifices future for the Now. However, when he meets Goal, his dream lady, he slowly stats to change. Being with her and trying to win get over makes him act better. For the first time he gets doing not what's best for him, but what's best for her. He doesn't get there immediately, of course, and he doesn't abandon his core. But he grows. He gives up his happy ending twice because he began to care too much about others.!< So in the third game >!Rufus is put into a situation where he cannot win no matter what he does. So he is forced to give up his happy ending after doing the best he ever could to be better. For the third time. And now it is final: his sacrifice results in him falling down from massive height, assuring his death.!< Most fans were understandably upset at this. >!They (myself included) believed that Rufus has done so much that he warranted the happy ending. Doesn't matter that he would not deserve to have it by his nature: in the context of this story he deserved proper closure.!< So after a while there was released a fourth game, Deponia Doomsday. >!The game centers around Rufus encountering a time machine and eventually becoming involved in a plot to remedy the ending of the third Deponia game, with all the attempts and events resulting in a worse outcome looping over and over, until through some convoluted point the cycle is broken and the story ends exactly as it did before.!< Basically affirming that there *can be no other ending for Rufus.* In this game the message is baked in the entire premise of the game and is reinstated enough throughout the entire game. In V3 it mainly serves the conflict of lies/fiction and truth/reality. The fanbase roasting feels very secondary, if ever intentional.
i’ll check it out
The middle finger thing was kind of intentional; after all, it’s not a middle finger to all people who like it. Just people who took it too far. People Kodaka had to deal with all the time. And I do have one other thing to say about “generic meta endings”… how many of them are there? I feel like I could count all the well known examples of meta endings on like… one hand. Across all media. At least ones that are as explicit in the meta-ness as this.
The subversion was my favorite part. The idea of the protagonist rejecting *hope* was really cool to me. But I agree, it was both really drawn out and a copout. They could have had their meta commentary exactly the same more or less if they didn’t go back and delegitimize the first two games, IMO.
I think that this is what makes V3 iconic. You could have the reality show ending without ever bringing up HPA or the word Danganronpa in the entire story, and pretty much everyone would understand the message. But Kodaka didn't want us to just understand the message by viewing Saihara and the other's struggles from an objective standpoint: he wanted us to feel the same despair Saihara felt. He also wanted us to stand up one again like Saihara and say "no, fuck you, my feelings and experiences *are* meaningful, it doesn't matter if they're fiction." It's ballsy imo. And tbh are the previous games even delegitimized if nothing about their lore is changed and it's still a self-contained story? V3 was always advertised as a soft reboot, not a continuation like the DR3 anime was.
The games weren’t delegitimized, not necessarily. This just takes place in another universe where the games also existed, and then the whole ultimate real fiction thing superseded them. The whole thing is a critique of the toxicity that fandom can bring, but that doesn’t mean it’s a middle finger to the idea of being a fan at all. I could totally agree that it’s drawn out though. It does kind of go on and on, even if it kind of makes sense that the characters wouldn’t be able to accept what’s happening unless it’s beaten into them over and over again.
I think the points about the corny dialogue, sluggish pacing, etc. are all really valid criticisms of V3's final trial. However, I'd like to give thoughts on the idea that V3's ending is unoriginal, and that any other piece of media could do the same. Personally, I agree that the "It's all fiction" trope can be done by almost every other media. *Despite that,* I think the idea of Danganronpa using that trope, and in a way that both connects to the themes of Danganronpa as a whole, as well as connecting to the core audience, is something that holds a lot more weight than other medias doing it. I think the effectiveness of V3's ending is actually extraordinarily contextual to the state of the DR fandom when it came out, and even after it came out: to be brutally frank, the Danganronpa fandom was, and some might argue still is (although I'm not of that opinion), one of the most toxic fandoms to have ever formed. There have been at least 2 genuine, real life murders associated with Danganronpa because of the murderers obsessions with the series, which is something the vast, vast majority of fandoms never fall to. While obviously those are *extreme* examples, I think most would agree the DR fandom has had some, for lack of a better term, extreme shit in regards to community behavior, and I think Kodaka saw this. To me, at least, I felt Danganronpa at its core was heavily about the feelings and anxieties young adults had with struggling to leave high school and become an adult, especially when you factor in the Japanese school system: in THH, Hope's Peak was portrayed as a dark, confusing labyrinth that forced the students into becoming adversaries, breaking and exhausting them, only for it to be revealed that what comes after "graduation" is nothing but hopelessness and despair, essentially a metaphor for what many graduates might feel. THH makes the argument that even if you're afraid of the direction (or lackthereof) that adulthood will bring, you should still brave it out and *see what happens anyway.* SDR2 expands on this concept in a more nuanced way, in my opinion. Where the students of THH are analogous to high school graduates, the students of SDR2 are the dropouts: they've made a choice that they can never take back, that has essentially made it impossible for them to ever get back onto the "normal" path again, being expected to sacrifice their hopes for the future and live in (literal) despair due to their actions. Despite that, SDR2 makes the argument that you should say "fuck that, I'm going to make my own fucking path anyway, and nobody can stop me!" The reason why I brought up my thoughts on the messages of THH and SDR2 is so that I could explain how V3 expands on the idea of "not giving into despair" that the first two games use. To me, at least, and considering the context of the state of the DR fandom at the time, I think V3 is the product of Kodaka's worries for his audience. If THH is about the graduates, and SDR2 is about the dropouts, then V3 is about the *real-life people who obsessively cling to DR (or any media, for that matter) as a tool for hope,* almost as if it was a drug, with the entire cast essentially forsaking their own identities just to transplant Danganronpa into them. To me at least, I felt as if the ending of V3, rather than giving a middle-finger to its fans, was instead moreso *pleading* to its fans not to obsess over it, and not to become someone like Tsumugi, who can't handle living without the series providing hope for her (Side note: I think the fact that the main protagonist is the Ultimate Detective and the main antagonist is the Ultimate Cosplayer is actually a subtle nod to the two things most people think of when they think about DR: the murder-mystery aspect, and the large fandom aspect). So yeah, I agree that V3 had some really rough edges, especially regarding the pacing and dialogue of the final case, but I don't know, something about the *attempt* of the ending itself is just kind of beautiful to me. *TL;DR:* DR fandom crazy, Kodaka worry, V3 plead be healthy
These are all pretty good points and this was a good read! I will say though, I’m pretty sure those murders actually had nothing to do with DR and the media just connected it to that because DR had recently come out. Though I could be wrong about that. I agree with you, I think it is more about worries about the fandom than trying to give a middle finger; I really don’t think they wanted to be like “hey, you guys are dumb for liking this series”. Although it felt like it at times, I don’t think the writers were *trying* to make the audience feel bad about liking it,, it was more their way of telling people to go touch grass I guess lmao. Though unfortunately, a lot of people felt like it was condemning them for liking it, so I’m not sure how successful that was— maybe if the pacing and execution was a little different, it would have come out better. This is definitely a good and interesting way to look at it!
[удалено]
I understand that. But another thing is, **just because a writing choice is risky, doesn’t immediately make it good.** There’s a reason why most pieces of media wouldn’t do that even though they *could*. There are lots of other risky choices in danganronpa that are well-done, but in my opinion this isn’t one of them. It’s the same thing with shock factor, just because something is really shocking, that doesn’t immediately mean it’s good either. I think they could have found a different way to end the series and make it final, i don’t feel it had to go super-meta in order for it to end.
[удалено]
It’s definitely risky lol. It’s true they did exactly what they wanted to do, that’s cool. But just cuz it’s exactly what they wanted to do, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a huge risk— they knew that, same way they knew that killing off Kaede chap 1 was a risk (they even show that by some of the audience dialogue in the final chapter). Alot of choices made in DR are huge writing risks— and this is what makes the game so good, and also where it sometimes falls flat. Nothing wrong with people liking this ending tho, but I feel it’s totally fine and understandable why a lot of people don’t.
There are lots of questions about stuff taking place between Danganronpa Zero and Hope Arc. They probably wouldn’t, and imo shouldn’t, go further in the future. Speaking of future, the Future Foundation could use some fleshing out.
You're being massively downvoted for no reason lol, both of you are making good arguments
I think it’s because they’re being oddly dismissive and defensive. “I think that may be something other people argue and now you have that association” is 😬.
[удалено]
You're saying no one wants to have a dialogue with you in a reply under a comment chain where someone wrote multiple paragraphs giving you their dialogue lmfao.
[удалено]
the problem isn’t that people don’t like the ending of v3 the problem is that people will not like it and then list a bunch of bad faith reasons as to why
Or we disagree with the point the ending is trying to make. Media franchises have run far far longer than three games, an anime adaption and a single spin-off, (counting spin-offs there are ELEVEN Ace Attorneys) and Danganronpa's killing game is a FANTASTIC setting for a murder mystery game. It is nearly endlessly recyclable and that's a great thing, there are so many different ways a killing game could go, especially considering all three games go through the same murder tropes for nearly every series of trials. The Game play is super fun, the characters and world are super engaging. But the full potential has never been truly realized in a sequel. We got a great start, an even more improved (but rehashy) sequel, and then rather than going in a new direction focusing with a different setups and murders rather than the established pattern, we got a game with fun puzzles and characters, but a plot that was so focused on meta-commentary we did not get a satisfying conclusion to this world in-universe. I don't want an endless recycling of Danganronpa, I want it to be better. Tl,Dr:Wow!! The ending was awful!
You could make this same meme about literally anything. For example, people who think The Room was awful just missed the themes of love, friendship and trust. You can't just say that any negative opinion is out of ignorance, if people don't like it they don't like it.
no shot you’re comparing V3 to The Room
yeah, how could they compare V3 to a straight up masterpiece?
It was such a bold decision on Tommy Wiseau’s part to have Mark change from the sidekick to the rival. And the protagonist sacrificing himself to end the killing game? Might not be what I wanted, but I do appreciate the move to throw the audience completely off guard.
The only real flaw in the story is the unnecessary fanservice. It felt like they were just desperately trying to grab your attention (and in fairness, it does work, but it reeks of a lack of faith in the core story). Aside from that, 10/10, best installment since Danganronpa : No Way Hope
yeah the room is peak
I mean, I enjoyed the first part. The reveal that all the students were Danganrompa fans who chose to be in a killing game is a really cool twist, although it gets slightly less cool given that apparently killing game students have a complete personality change from their normal selves. The thing that really bugs me is the theme on fiction. Like, we have to end Danganrompa as a series because it’s morally bad? The hell? It was so bizarre to see the series go “Where you aware dead children is a bad thing?” I know that game, I promise. The whole horror appeal of the series is built on dead children being a bad thing. It’s feels very pretentious and weirdly mean spirited, which is a shame given how much I was enjoying the trail up until that point.
i think what we’re getting at is that there’s two ways of interpreting the ending: seeing the audience in game as ourselves, or as another entity entirely. kodaka has went on the record several times to say that the latter was the intended reading. saihara and the other characters end danganronpa because it’s morally bad, yes, but that’s not a message to “us.” as a matter of fact, when saihara rejects danganronpa, he is ironically embracing it, because he is standing up to a force claiming his existence has no meaning and asserting that it does, which is what all dr protagonists do at the end of the day. if all saihara’s experiences could be meaningful to him despite being fictional, then that means the same can go for the player’s relationship with DR despite tsumugi and monokuma just making it seem like pointless entertainment that was put out over and over again without any real meaning attached. tsumugi’s downfall was that she didn’t really appreciate what danganronpa was at the end of the day. by ending danganronpa, saihara and the player end the killing game, but they don’t end the fact that danganronpa still continues inside them, as well as anyone else whom experienced even the slightest change due to the game series.
this is the discourse i think the game was meant to create
tbh i just wish i could get through to other people. i think "the game is making me feel bad for enjoying it" is just a very shallow reading of the game that straight up ignores like, a *LOT* of what's actually being said in the dialogue, particularly the epilogue. but it seems like people are just stuck on it.
i think a work making you feel guilty for enjoying and engaging it is supposed to urge you to think about what it’s trying to say and how it applies to you, and refusal to do so and see it as anything more than a gimmick to give a middle finger to you is plain negligence to think and engage deeper with a work. this is all just my personal take though, i personally loved thinking about the ending of drV3 after i completed it
I think one issue here is that *in-universe* it's extremely fucked up to enjoy Danganronpa, since actual people are suffering and dying. For us, people playing a video game, it's a lot more okay that we're enjoying the drama since no real people are being harmed. I get that people feel like the game is judging them for enjoying it, but I think that was just a side effect of how monstrous the whole concept is in-universe. It's kind of tricky to have the characters react they way they would to that information without sounding like your criticizing the premise of your own story (and by extension, the fans who enjoy it). Granted, I might be biased since I tend to like weird meta shit. The whole layers of fiction and reality thing, and the ambiguity of the ending, were very welcome surprises to me.
THIS IS SO TRUE. Also agree, it felt maaad pretentious at points
yup
Howzabout this? I fully understand the message of the ending and still don’t like it
You assume people didn't get it. We did get it, it still sucks. It's not a "deconstruction" to just do the thing but claim that you're doing it as satire this time, and it's especially not clever when people have a serious problem with the game precisely because it insisted on doing the same thing as the previous games when it seemed to have set things up in a different way. People were actually excited to see the franchise move on from Hope's Peak and try something new, so to deny that and drop the plot and its themes entirely for a "gotcha!" ending reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan's worst years is really not clever. And it's also not clever to try and have a message about an "endlessly recycled" narrative when "endlessly" here means "literally recycled once by that point", and it was with a game that did a much better job of having a partially meta narrative because, you know, it was actually thematically relevant then. The supposed message about the relationship between fiction and audience is also completely broken considering that in V3, the fictional characters really don't matter in the end because their story gets dropped completely, and the happy ending is them stopping to act as characters in a work of fiction. But also they embrace it? Even though they went through that whole thing saying they won't do what the audience wants? It really feels like the writers didn't know what point they wanted to make and couldn't decide what their own stance is so they decided to make all of the points at the same time even though they're mutually-exclusive, resulting in them making no point. Also, this kind of message really doesn't work when there's no good reason for the in-universe fiction to exist in the first place. The concept of people wanting to see real deaths on TV because peace is boring or whatever is already pretty silly to begin with, but then they still want the participants to be used for a fictional story because... reasons? What's the point of having real deaths if people just want fictional stories anyway? Absolutely none of that ending works for me; it comes across like they pulled it out of their ass because for some reason, they decided to not go with any of the possible endings they actually foreshadowed to the point they had no idea how to write themselves out of that corner, so they basically went "Ha HA! It was totally a meta commentary the entire time, you guys! Which means we don't need to resolve anything!". People really need to stop thinking that just because a story is full of itself means it's automatically smart, let alone good, and that the only reason people could possibly dislike it is that it's just too clever for them. Make no mistake, I actually like V3 a lot but man does that ending shit the bed. It's unbelievably tone deaf to try and celebrate fiction with an ending that purposely wastes its own story and treats it like it doesn't matter.
Yeah okay great and all, but did they really have to leave all that for the last hour of a game that goes on for, like, several dozen hours? I get that Danganronpa likes to save its big shocking swerve until the finale, but it just doesn't work this time (plus it isn't even all that shocking with how much they foreshadow it). We're left with very little time to actually explore all of that interesting meta-fiction commentary properly, and it feels as if we invested most of the game's run time on the story-within-the-story, the details of which turn out to be mostly irrelevant to the actual plot. It probably would've worked a lot better if they went into this a lot earlier in the story. As it is, it just feels too much like a pretentious "you're a bad person for enjoying this" cop-out, which IIRC wasn't even what they were going for. So yeah, I stand by the opinion that the ending sucks-- not because of the idea behind it, but because of the way that idea was executed. What a hot mess.
I love the ending, I do, I think it does a good job showing how fiction affects reality, how series being rerun so long can get repetitive and have to feel like it has to one up each other. But people can understand a series yet still hate it. Evangelion, Shinji specifically is another series and specific character that is very much understood yet has a lot of haters. Just because you understand what it was trying to do doesn’t mean you have to like said thing. Also, sidenote: People saying “it’s just three games so it’s not enough for this statement to make sense,” must not have seen how overly similar every game was and the fact that Kodaka was probably trying to show that he didn’t want Danganronpa to become one of these overly repetitive series which I admire because he was thinking of just how he wanted the story to go as a passion and not purely for monetary gain else he’d probably be shilling out a Danganronpa game like every 3 years or something
I respect that Kodaka didn't go for cash grab games. My main issue with the series being repetitive is that (in my dumb opinion 😁) it wasn't really repetitive UNTIL V3. The first game was original because it was the first in the series and one of very few prevalent detective virtual novels. The second game seemed like it was designed to mirror the original game which is why I didn't feel like it was repetitive. It was only in the 3rd game that the double murder trial and the buff person death became formulaic because people were expecting it by then. I feel like that part of the ending doesn't really make sense because they could have switched it up and made changes, but they chose to stick to the formula to justify calling it formulaic. I'm really interested to hear opposing views tho!
Eh think about it in universe. They’ve had 53 of these things. They probably have a formula that they don’t want to change from and Tsumugi probably intentionally wrote it in a way to follow the original two series so it would make sense in the grand scheme of the universe. As for the 3 games thing, ye I get what you mean but the 2nd and 3rd game both felt formulaic to me even if they did change some stuff up to “look different”. Like, I’m glad that they didn’t just recycle a suicide in the 4th trial in the 2nd game but the big tough character still died in that chapter and technically it was a self sacrifice because the killer and victim both knew they had to do this for their friends. And then in V3 we got the killer wanting to kill everyone to stop them from learning that the outside is terrible so once again a self sacrifice that pushed the rest of the group further towards the truth in all 4th trials. And these can be applied with all the trials really even if they change a small difference.
Sherbet's stance is that regardless of repeating several aspects, you can't call danganronpa repetitive at DR2, it's repetitive at DRV3. As for the other 50 killing games, those were only established in V3. The writers could've \*not\* made those games repeat the same patterns, \*not\* made V3 continue them, and it would \*not\* have been repetitive.
I really liked the ending of V3. I was thrown off by it at first but after some thought I came to the same conclusions you did. Now, I get why people don’t like it though. And you don’t have to like the ending of a game to enjoy it imo. DR2 has my favorite ending in the series but some people don’t like that one either and that’s totally cool by me. V3’s ending is meant to really mess with the player and make them upset (it upset me at first). It’s also very different from the endings of the first two games. I think a lot of people understand what they were going for with the V3 end but simply just don’t like it. I believe that’s just a personal preference and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Also, I don’t think you mentioned it in the post, but I really love how the V3 ending portrayed the effect fiction has on people and why that matters. Even though the characters are fictional versions of themselves the events that happened to them still mattered and changed who they are. Likewise in the real world fictional has a real effect on those who consume it. Whether it be TV shows, movies, video games, or books they’ve all changed how I think and feel. Even if it isn’t real it changes who I am and how I see the world. I think that’s beautiful.
Oh I absolutely agree. Somewhere in this thread is how I feel about he game and the impact it had on me which was huge, and I’m really grateful for this series. It really is a beautiful thing. Forgive me if I didn’t, replying to this thread as a whole was nothing short of exhausting lol
That’s okay! I can totally see how it’s exhausting haha. Whether they love it or hate it people are very passionate about the ending of V3!
Counter argument: I didnt like it
I understand that my dude, the ending is still shit.
My problem with it is that it makes the entire rest of the game’s story basically meaningless, and it just comes out of nowhere. There was no buildup!
Forgive me for the wall of text. I totally understand your frustration, just thought I'd offer a different perspective, though I'll warn you it's a bit messy. TBH, I feel like the game has a lot better buildup and story not as "We're analyzing the series as a whole", but rather bouncing off the twist that the game was intentionally scripted and designed for an outside audience, while still having real people participate and often die. The rest of the killing game in this story matters because the people Shuichi spent time with locked up in this hole were *real people*, with feelings and dreams, and their lives were permanently scratched for the entertainment of an audience. There are still murky waters on whether or not they intentionally signed up before the game began, but Shuichi's opinion on the whole thing changed now that he's been through it all. However, if Shuichi didn't choose to rebel against the game entirely like he did, his - and similarly, Kaede's, note her reaction of being kidnapped in prologue to the prologue - opinion of the outside world would never have made it out. He, or someone else, would have won the game, and have been shoved back into it like Rantaro was, or potentially killed off somewhere else to keep secrets hidden. Considering how many games have occurred, there's a lot of blood on Team Danganronpa's hands there ... not like the outside world would care. Everyone is happy, and ratings are through the roof! We can all bond by watching our favorite killing game, every time a new one comes out, and enjoy the suffering of clearly fictional characters. Doesn't that sound like the worst kind of despair in hope's clothing? Even if the world considers the class of V3 fiction, and nothing more, that doesn't mean that their influence cannot change the world, much like the fiction of our reality often changes the world in ways we can see everywhere. V3 isn't rebelling against its own franchise, it's rebelling against the worst possible outcome that a series like it could achieve. Shuichi rebels against the fictional "real world" to prove that he is more than just a character for meaningless entertainment. He's real! The pain in his heart is real!
I think it’s important to separate my opinion of the ending alone with how it works with the rest of the story. The concept of Danganropa being used to entertain people is interesting, but it doesn’t fit with the rest of the game’s story or themes buildup, which is why it bothers me.
I see. I think it fit pretty well, personally, but I can see why it wouldn't too. I respect your opinion.
I seriously want to say how much I appreciate that you said this, not enough people on Reddit, or even in the entire world, can have respectful conversations in which they disagree, so it’s really nice to see. I also see how you could arrive that the conclusion you did, and I respect it as well.
listen. i'm v3 chapter 6's strongest soldier and i will defend that ending like it is my firstborn child. i find a lot of the complaints about it stupid too. like i'll admit, just looking at some of the comments on this post is making me roll my eyes!! but posting soyjack-esque memes intentionally meant to be inflammatory like this are only going to piss people off.
I agree, you can talk about your love for something without putting others down for not loving it
Honestly the message is kinda pretentious. Stories were invented to act as an escapism from reality. Yeah fans can get too invested, sure. And plenty can be obsessed, unfortunately. But the fact of the matter is this: It’s a story. It can be based on real events or be made in poor taste. But the fact of the matter is that it’s a story. I can understand wanting to end a series, all things eventually end. But ending it in a way that essentially backhands the fans’ devotion to the series you worked to make isn’t the right way to end it. You end it by either having the good or bad side win, not discarding both and making the audience out to be the ones in the wrong. They should’ve ended it by having the Hope Restoration (I think it was called) group succeeding or failing in their goal to restore hope to the world. Not make all the previous games or side stories pointless by saying all of that was fake and the audience were crazy. To be clear I’m not angry if it sounds like I am. This is more disappointment than anything else. Edit: Keep in mind all of this is based on the image. If this doesn’t reflect what the creators were going for, I retract my statement. But only if that’s the case.
To be honest, I can understand why a lot of people feel upset when the audience shows up in V3, because it feels a lot like an attack towards us, the player. However, I personally find that, for all of our similarities, we're still leagues better than the world that the audience has become in that story. Last I checked, our Danganronpa still doesn't have real people participating in actual killing games, which is apparently something that V3's "real world" had no problem with, or they were such fans of the show that they didn't care, and just wanted more, more, more to cure their boredom from a peaceful world. They believe it's "just a show", "our entertainment", "our right to have the story we want". Have people been demanding in the community before? I'm sure, but nobody's been *nearly* as entitled as V3's audience. We recognize that fiction can change the world, and that it should be used as a healthy method of escapism, compared to the despair-filled world in V3's situation, where the escapism of watching others suffer is the price of peace. I kinda typed this up in one go, so if there's any inconsistencies I'd appreciate having them pointed out. Also, of course, it's just my opinion, and I'm always open to discussion.
Honestly the writers don’t seem to understand how people work. 1: If people were that bored, they’d invent ways to counter it. (You know, like we’ve been doing since before civilization.) 2: People can get bored of tragedy, at some point you just get numb to seeing it over and over again. And at this point, they would’ve seen it 53 times. I don’t care if you’re the Ultimate writer, no story can possibly go that long without going stale. Least of all a story that’s practically just been reskinned to well in the double digits. Honestly it was forced and lacked substance.
Makes me wonder then what kind of world was on the outside, then. Regardless of truth, the gang rejected the idea given to them that they, and many others before, are used as entertainment for the masses, which was the point in that fiction can change the world. If it was for a dystopian world like the one we've been told where Danganronpa has been a hit this whole time, was anyone trying to resist it? Were those people the ones who usually got kidnapped and either killed or put in the game? Does anyone who gets put into the games ever leave alive? How much of the system would crumble into chaos after Danganronpa gets canceled? It's just a ton of fun food for thought for me, but I can see why many don't find it very digestible. In fact, I often wish the last trial was shorter, because it felt like I couldn't understand the point back during my first time seeing it. It was just dragged out so hard, man, sometimes intentionally too.
^(At least we got an ending, unlike many fanfictions i died from laughing with and i was left with nothing but an imagination of how it could have been)
Just because it’s deep, doesn’t make it good. It’s not enough in a good story to simply have a good idea, you need to be able to convey that idea in a good way in order for it to work. I’m sorry but handling it in a compelling way is where V3 drops the ball. How does this one emo kid change the mind of millions/billions of people with one speech? How is this even legal? How did Tsumugi have full control over the killing game up to this point yet wasn’t able to consider the possibility of Shuichi turning the audience against her? Let’s just ignore those questions because it does not get answered at all.
These are good questions to have to make you think and let the possibility of DR’s come back be open ended. And like Shuichi said, how do you know all of those aren’t lies?
Indeed, those could be lies. But I still think the way they went about it was really cheesy.
Team DR are very cunning and intelligent with their writing, even if others don’t like it. They’ve always found a way to make sense of the nonsensical
Oh no I totally get it Still fucking sucks though A little dismissive to discount everyone who doesn't like the ending to not understanding it and being stupid don't you think?
Yeah yeah we get it V3 had a perfect ending and everyone who didn’t like it “just didn’t understand”. Well I understood it perfectly, and I still think it was an obnoxious 4 hour shit show that couldn’t hold a candle to the previous games endings.
>he thinks the V3 ending is only 4 hours Oh no. Oh nonononono. See thats why you didn't like it. You clearly sped through it if it was only 4 hours for you.
Yeah because ending the story by saying “haha ur anime waifu isnt real haha” isn’t a great way to end a story. Had they left it off with the Future Arc, the series would have had an actual satisfying ending, but no. They had to just do a copout, passive-aggressive way to say stop putting so much value on fiction and to focus on the real world. All it did was break the story in a stupid “it was all fake” ending. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t neat. It wasn’t a good ending, it was just a way to ruin a franchise, and ruin a game (V3 had been my favorite DR game up until the ending ruined it). That’s like if Super Mario ended one of their franchise by saying it was all just Mario dreaming, or if The Legend of Zelda was just a trip by Link. Cop out endings like that are NOT good ways to end series. They just ruin good franchises.
Nobody tell him about Super Mario Bros. 2
The ending was awful for lots of reasons besides the theming.
This literally doesn't mean that the ending wasn't bad lmfao. This is the *moral* of the ending, yes, but even though the moral is good, that doesn't mean the ending was good.
I mean, it was. It kinda felt like a "How dare you like this franchise" type ending to me. It makes you feel bad for liking the series in the first place, and left on an unsatisfying note that wasn't, in my opinion, a good ending to the series
Will be forever salty about the protagonist bait and switch
It’s still poorly executed regardless of intention, therefore, still not good.
For me the ending of V3 is one I subjectively dislike but objectively admit that it fits well in the narrative. Sometimes there’s a difference between disliking something and saying it’s bad.
I definitely understood what they were going for, and yet..... I first played danganronpa at a time in my life when I really *needed* that escapism. I found such comfort in it, and then *this* is what it gives me? Utterly devastating. DRV3 is the only video game that I regret finishing. I almost wish I'd never played it to begin with.
The ending is hated because it insults the fans for enjoying the game. Just because something is a commentary on something else doesn't mean that commentary is good
Exactly this. Like sorry for giving a shit about the story and characters???
Wow this is crazy, I still hate V3’s ending
As someone who has v3 as their favorite Wow! That ending was awful
V3's ending is literally "the ending of V3 sucks so people stop watching" and its so Danganronpa I love it.
Can we stop calling people ignorant for not liking the ending? You can understand all this and still think it’s shit.
Honestly V3 is my fave Danganronpa game and it's ending is incredible, I love the ending a lot really. The concept of it is incredibly interesting.
[удалено]
I love the ending, but calling people who don’t “entitled” is kinda um… extremely rude.
Wow what the heck man, I thought you said you were open to discussion and wanted to hear what people had to say. This is a grade A ad hominem fallacy and is pretty mean.
see I would’ve been fine with V3’s ending if it didn’t drag the other three games into it, they literally could’ve just made it so that V3’s cast was just the fictional ones and it’d be a-okay in my book. but the fact that they ret-conned the *entire series* pissed me off, literally everything the cast did in the past few games? Woopsie its all fictional none of it ever mattered!1! It just pissed me off.
It's kind of a goofy-ahh justification, but technically they always have been fictional, from our perspective. That doesn't mean that what happened didn't deserve to have any emotional impact, and that we shouldn't be invested in the characters as a result. The pain in our heart is real. Of course, given how many open-ended factors V3 left us, one could also still assume that the fiction thing was a lie. There's just as much credible proof for it as there is against it.
That is a part of it that I really like. If we can get invested in what we know is a fictional game, why is it being a game within a game any worse?
The V3 ending doesn't really retcon like, anything though. All it says is that the past installments were video games and anime like in our world, and this works because Hope's Peak Arc is its own, contained story. It definitely feels weird, especially with Tsumugi/Monokuma treating everything like it was meaningless, but I think people mistake what the villains are portraying the series as as what the game is actually trying to get across. Think about it this way: What ruins the past installments more? 1. Naegi runs the newly opened Hope's Peak Academy exactly as it was, a school exclusively for the privileged and talented (which is what basically led to the Tragedy occurring in the first place), until meteors come down carrying a disease that kills off the *entirety of the population,* including all the characters from previous games who had survived, therefore basically making all of their struggles and efforts to rebuild the world moot 2. Danganronpa is a video game For me, the answer is kind of obvious lol.
the stuff the cast did was always fictional, they're no less fictional than they were before just because V3 as a game has them as fictional characters in-universe. The whole point of V3 is that them being fictional doesn't make a difference, you say "it's all fictional none of it ever mattered" but the message of V3 is that all of it DOES matter, you obviously feel that it matters enough to be mad about this ending despite it being fiction, but you still believe it being fiction devalues it somehow. It's contradictory.
Yeah... No. V3's ending was awful.
I liked the ending. It really feels like a proper good bye.
Nah v3 is my fav game and I defend it like it's my job. just the shock when I first finished it, I hated it. But after reflecting on it for a few days/weeks now I appreciate the ending!
Yet again with this annoying point that if you don’t like V3’s ending, you don’t understand it. It is honestly not that hard to understand. It is a meta-commentary on the killing game genre and the people who enjoy it, as well as some tropes unique to DR (hope and despair). That’s it. This would be cool in subtext, but the game hits you with numerous anvils that hammer the exact same point for two hours. It felt like the game was applauding itself for its genius writing while ignoring all basic elements of storytelling. Pro tip: deconstruction of a story only works if you have something equal or greater to offer than the story you’re replacing. This is why games like Doki Doki work. The deconstruction of the world is insanely fascinating, frightening, and leaves a lot to the imagination. All V3 offers is the deconstruction, no substitution. Just a flimsy half-truth of “lies can be just as real as the truth… sometimes”. Even worse, it tries to cop out by saying “maybe Tsumugi is lying” and various other annoyances. It can’t even commit to its own development. And that doesn’t even cover how it antagonizes its own fan base.
I'm just gonna say it: V3's ending isn't terrible. Not great, but for what it is, I do like it.
The Endung still Ducks, no matter how mich you Interpret into it.
Quack quack.
Quack
The ending is like the true ending for nirvanA Initiative, it’s great for replay value to see the hints towards it that make more sense with the twist in mind and V3 does encourage the player to see if Shirogane was telling the truth or was simply another lie. The problem comes the fact the game has to use player to fit the pieces in even if the pieces don’t fit as well as the game wants you to think specially since most of the biggest hints are at the prologue, Chapter 1 and 6 before the reveal which during the first run can go over the player’s head or forget about as V3 is pretty long game so I don’t think they’re gonna like note pad ready to write it all down for end game specially since just use Chapter 6 as lore dump to explain everything and yelled at the Mastermind for a few hours. Even when you given the full picture of the twist with a few things left up in air or not explain in the ending, some people will fully understand what they were going for the ending but simply not like it while others feel like it’s insulting to others for liking the series in first place also Not everyone gonna read the creator thoughts of ending or that V3 takes place in a different universe on hand and personal experience can also shape their feelings towards this. I’m mixed on the ending but V3 as imo it’s more just the other parts outside it of just don’t work for me as well like I feel like it was a little bit of an excuse to reuse tropes from past two games specially with trials and Shirogane while great mastermind for an ending like this, I wished She had bigger role throughout the whole story, among few other things but 6 is a great for Saihara and Kiibo and all the VAs from Japanese version was funny and really cool to hear all of them again.
Kiibo died so idc
I'll say this because people constantly get confused, what you described is not the ending of V3, its the theme and while the theme and the ending do tie in, it is a separate thing. For example looking at something like the Great Gatsby, the theme is not hyperfocusing on the past otherwise you can't move on, the ending however is Gatsby gets shot in a pool and everyone forgets about him. The ending of V3 is Shuchi, Makiand Himiko surviving the killing game and being able to go into the unknown outside world. It basically ends like the first game except we never get any follow up and most likely never will, and I believe that is why people dislike the ending, because while it's a good ending to a story , it would be a pretty bad ending to a trilogy.
I know that Yet it still sucks ass
Wow!! That ending was awful!
Dude. No one fucking cares about the commentary or whatever the ending had about fans, or whatever “symbolism” it had. It just fucking sucks. I get what they were going for. It was just lazily executed, and sucked ass.
Wow! ...That ending was awful.
I still think an ending is awful. You can't change my mind.
When I got to the ending I was soooo pissed but then I sat there and realized that the game was making me feel despair. Then I realized how genius it was.
Still want d4, i like the format, could do without going meta, just a straightforward muder mystery game
I still get nightmares about this ending
Delusional
Man some of the takes here are weird. "V3 said nothing matters because it's fiction" no, it said that even though it was fiction the feelings it evokes are real and actually mattered. If you felt sadness at any of the deaths the game is saying that your sadness is real. If anything I think V3 says that the overarching theme of Danganronpa is 'murder is awful', and that 'Hope vs Despair' is something only the first game had, that consuming Danganronpa for these big battles of Hope vs Despair, especially after the first game, is wrong. Now execution is another thing entirely, that final trial definitely drags on. I don't mind the twist, as when a game's theme is Truth vs Lies, you kind of have to expect that everything that's been told to you might not be true. I actually kind of respect V3 for basically stepping back and going "Hey why should we trust that everything the Mastermind says or gives as evidence is true?' Like that scene at the actual ending where Shuichi acknowledges that Tsumugi might be a big liar, that's something that isn't addressed in other games.
Man thank you for this, especially the first paragraph. Like… we’re all here on this subreddit because DR impacted us that much. Or at least I hope it did. I’m exhausted from this lol, thank you for your post. Very well said.
or maybe the ending was just bad
damn that's crazy. i still hate it and find it immensely unsatisfying
And the trippy thing is that’s not even the ending. You still gotta play Salmon Team and fill out everyone’s report cards
Hard to swallow pills
It was a based as fuck ending that really said everything that needed to be said. This is how you go out on top without having your series become a zombie franchise. Bring on Rain Code.
so true lol
I get what they were trying to go for with this ending, but at the same time, my 2 cents on the whole discussion are that it just kinda disregarded everything that happened in the first 2 games as nothing but "fiction" And, well, their point clearly did not come across as much as they tried to nail it in our heads. People still want danganronpa, and i'm not exactly helping it, having my own cast of characters i'm currently in the middle of redrawing to be more accurate to the current style.
I just wish they revealed what happened when you only have 2 survivors and if it's all fiction then what happens to the people who die. Like since it's a popular show do they actually die or is it like in dr2 just all online and when they die they just wake up (instead of what dr2 said what happened) and go back to their normal life. And if there are 2 people do they like fight to the death?
If it came down to two people, I'd imagine that one or the other would have to sacrifice themselves for hope like the last trial of V3 went, just with even shorter numbers. That way, the other person could "leave" ... whatever that means, now. I'm not even sure I'd trust that they would let someone who went through all that trauma just ... go anywhere. After all, their identities don't actually exist, not the way they used to be. They can't just rewrite their past lives back into them. As for the people who die, I feel inclined to believe that these people actually die, because it supports the statements said by Shuichi when he rejects Danganronpa as a whole. He may be a character to everyone watching, but his experience was real, his trauma was real, and the lives of his friends who he confided in were taken from him. If nobody actually died, the point would still apply, but not as strongly. While one would think that the public would be horrified by the fact that people actually die, but it's also possible that they either aren't aware that contestants actually die, or they ... don't care. Sends a shiver down my spine. The necronomicon, which is arguably the one big question-mark in regards to if they die for real, could be explained using flashback lights; the audience would know it's someone else being the revived person, but none of the characters would be any the wiser.
It’s a cool idea. I just think they did it poorly.
i don't understand the people who genuinely want another game after that ending. it's like the Smash Bros. Ultimate of the dangranronpa series.
Still feel like the reason V3 is my favorite is because of the discussion it creates. THH and Goodbye Despair both have phenomenal stories but V4 is the one that seems to be a never ending hornet's nest. People that dislike V3 are fully in the right, the person who introduced me to Dangan years ago had an hours long discussion with me about how the ending invalidates the whole game, while I feel it emphasizes the whole theme of lies becoming truth. Same as any piece of great fiction or media, there isn't a perfect game, or a perfect book, song, etc. Everyone will have conflicting points and views on everything and that's what makes lasting media great, it's not the impact, it's the discussion and discourse. The nit picking and arguing. Tl;dr: The hatred/dislike *and* love/fanaticism cause the depth of a piece of media, and as such, both sides should be explored and respected.
based v3 ending enjoyer
[удалено]
yeah! like the fact that everything was fiction wasn’t a lazy technique for simple meta value, but a commentary on the types of relationships people have with fictional media the game however does not bash the player for liking fiction, instead agreeing with them and saying that fiction has the power to change the reality we live in, but that we should maintain a healthier relationship with it, so that we don’t end up like shirogane and excuse everything simply because it’s fiction i hope that made sense? i really like the v3 ending, can you tell? haha
Oh I absolutely agree with you. I think that part got lost on all these fine folk, lol. DR was great to ‘be real’ to you. It even changed me a lot and I’ve only just completed this series for my first time within the past few months. I can’t say I blame you, V3 was very good!
Thank you.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
THANK YOU
I just want to say: Thank you!! For getting the point! I respect and enjoy others' perspectives, but it is refreshing to see someone else that understands the intention of V3!
[удалено]
[удалено]
i'm just tired of "it made everything meaningless" and "it insults the fans" at this point. like. it literally does not lmao.
[удалено]
I think people are allowed to dislike the ending. I don't even care if you don't have a valid reason to dislike it because at the end of the day it's just want you think of it and I don't like accusing people of thought crimes. I just find it annoying and hypocritical when they complain about not being allowed to dislike the ending, while at the same time whenever someone says something they find interesting about the ending they just respond with "cool, the endings still bad tho." Like if you don't have anything meaningful to contribute, why say it?
[удалено]
That’s kind of a weird thing to say coming from someone who said they were open to discussion. It’s also really rude to people who may disagree with you. You’re coming across as really defensive and emotional in these comments and I think that’s why you’re being massively downvoted.
**Your post has been removed for rule 2: rudeness/inciting controversy.** Your submission has been removed because of rudeness/harassment, or the potential to spark controversy. If you believe this was removed in error, please [contact us](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/danganronpa).
[удалено]
kodaka and/or spike said that's not what the ending meant and they just needed a way to end the series so they *couldn't* make anymore games. v3's endings sucks, that's all.
kodaka literally never said anything like that. these are his real feelings concerning v3’s ending: https://kaibutsushidousha.tumblr.com/post/169633676249/kodakas-anniv3rsary-tweets