#I.... play a lot of danganronpa

[cookinguptales]

[GLASS ONION SPOILERS BELOW]

a story in three acts:

1.

2.

3.

[evercelle]

assorted doodles i haven't cross-posted here! to the anon that asked about what kind of deranged AUs i think about... here's your answer. lol

[kazuichikazuichi]

i've been browsing behind the scenes photos of the sdr2 stage thing on pinterest recently, and i found this?? 😭���😭 ice cream hair

[sleepinglionhearts]

Give you 3 guesses what fiancée is playing rn

[pcktknife]

Danganronpa/Another Episode.........TWO

[kedicatt-cotl]

“ I always thought Narinder was the God of Death, but actually it might be you ”

An old cranky man taking in a cute kid that is better than him at every aspect of his own job. Then they may or may not get up to some shenanigans. The kid is the one having to do most of the job, though.

[le-agent-egg]

idc what anyone says no matter what pokemon type he would main mondo would have a rockruff

LOOK AT HIM he would totally have one and name it chuck and it would be his best buddy

side note- what pokemon types would daiya and takemichi use? i’m personally leaning towards steel for daiya but idk about michi

fun fact w/ my previous statement: steel is super effective against rock… >:)

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

I have a lot of opinions on Shuichi Saihara as a protagonist like on one hand I really liked his arc and think he was a genuinely interesting character and on the other hand the twist in chapter 1 kneecapped a lot of what I thought made him a compelling detective character on top of playing into some sexist tropes but like who cares about that.

What I ACTUALLY want to talk about is the AMAZING energy this guy exudes. He has more eyeliner on than any scene kid from the early 2000's. He's as gaunt as a sheet of paper. He looks like a stiff breeze could knock him over. Probably because he canonically didn't eat breakfast before entering the killing game so somehow the murder teddy bear coliseum has actually IMPROVED his living habits.

Nearly every line of Saihara's dialogue in the Japanese dub makes him sound like he's 5 seconds away from bursting into tears. During some intense moments he does this sprite where he's supposed to be adjusting the brim of his hat in a cool way but after he ditches his hat it just looks like he's doing a really emo peace sign. His character arc is about realizing that he doesn't want to kill himself and the way he resolves the conflict at the end of the game is to turn to the audience and say "You guys all suck. We're going to kill ourselves."

In chapter 6, Shirogane literally says that the concept for his character was her going "Hey what if I made a detective who's just, like, the most pathetic. The most cripplingly depressed poor little meow meow in existence?" He isn't even a poor little meow meow at this point he's like. One of those blind orphans that get run over in those propaganda films from the 40's. He's like if Oliver Twist went through puberty.

All the protags yap a lot but all of Saihara's internal monologue in the Free Time Events makes him sound like a fucking Wattpad fic about getting sold to One Direction. He embodies Komaru Naegi's "uwu im just a normal teenage girl" schtick except unlike Komaru, he'd probably dislocate his ankle running from a Ball Monokuma. Babe at least Makoto Naegi is kind of an extrovert?

He's super smart and observant and when he genuinely makes the effort to investigate the school, he uncovers the mastermind's secret lair on like the second day. And the next time he makes the effort he figures out the mastermind's identity and all of her schemes. Every investigation he looks at the evidence and immediately makes 8 logical leaps and somehow figures out the seesaw zipline toilet paper murder of the week.

But between that he, like, alternates between curling up in a ball and sobbing in his room and curling up in a ball and sobbing in front of Momota and Harukawa so like, it takes him a while to get to it. Kirigiri was busting into boys' washrooms and sneaking into secret off-limits dorms and throwing herself down trash chutes. Meanwhile Saihara sees the girls' washroom and is like "Hhhhhhhh I can't go in there that's cooooooooties" and needs The Power Of Friendship to, like, push over rubble or smth.

Like, oh man, he's a great character and he does get marginally more confident but, like, I think this dude runs on nothing but coffee and anxiety. He probably doesn't get more than 3 hours of sleep a night between Momota's midnight hangouts and whatever the hell the love hotels and the Monokuma theatres are all about. Say what you want about his role in the game but he's definitely a unique protagonist because I didn't think someone like him could narrate for a chapter without having a seizure. He looks like he has tuberculosis. MORE than the guy in the game who actually has tuberculosis.

[hikirain]

She’s your support

[azzuriium]

mhm mhm let me not forget my trigger happy havoc

[moopermoment]

when there’s another danganronpa idk

[thelyingjoke]

something i’ve always found confusing is the way some people will criticize kokichi by saying “well if he REALLY hates murder why did he cause two deaths” when like…aren’t half the culprits in dr people who would’ve otherwise considered murder bad???

i think some people blow the significance of DICE’s no murder rule way out of proportion. it wasn’t a “oh kokichi would never in a million years ever consider murder, he’d be a strict pacifist 100% of the time no matter the situation, he wouldn’t ever hurt another person. this will never fail”. it was used to show that he wasn’t a remnant of despair—that despite everything, he wasn’t a mega evil person. he wasn’t a senseless killer, he had morals. normal morals, like killing is bad.

i don’t know if i’m really explaining this right, but for example let’s compare him with kaede. kaede, outside of the killing game, would’ve never even thought about murdering another person. when they’re first told about the game, she swears that she’d never participate in something like that. and yet she’s the first one to do so, because she feels like it’s the only thing she can do. and there are tons of examples of this aside from her—gonta, sayaka, teruteru, etc. the killing game takes good people and puts them in a horrible situation where they feel like they have to sacrifice their morals and do something they’d otherwise never do. (i’d also write a whole thing about kokichi/kaede parallels but that’d be getting sidetracked…if someone wants to hear about it i will)

and it’s kinda strange to me that people expect kokichi to be a special case? i mean, for the record, he did do his absolute best not to give into monokuma, and only caused miu’s death because she was going to kill him and he didn’t have many other options. gonta also has agency in this situation and was the one who agreed to kill miu. kokichi also felt so guilty about it he made himself the next victim. but only looking at the point that i mentioned at first, somehow to those people having a specific rule for his organization that murder isn’t allowed somehow means he’s supposed to stand by that more than other people that condemn murder? it makes sense why it’d be a rule—he runs a petty crime prankster group, and it’d be good to have regulations in place so that no one gets carried away. not liking murder is normal people behavior and he’s just as prone to emotional turmoil as everyone else

[kazuichikazuichi]

the most people ive ever drawn in one picture before :) tap for better quality if it's blurry!! also stage play ref photo below:

[funishment-time]

potentially unpopular opinion: UDG is my favorite Danganronpa game hands-down. the Gameplay is mid, but the themes and story make it the perfect cap-off to the Hope's Peak Arc. (i know timeline-wise it takes place smack dab in the middle, but i'm talking symbolically/release dates.)

there is just something about the idea of two characters coming out of a Danganronpa game Perfectly Okay and Together. there's something about Toko, world's worst AO3 Critic, finding happiness and growth with Komaru, who was a Footnote in her brother's story

[asktheahogesandblondes]

Hey Shuichi what’s your personal favorite and least favorite sonic game?

Miu:I think he answered this one already.

Shuichi:Yeah, my favorite is Advance 3, with Generations as a close second. As for least favorite...I rather not say it.

[aparticularbandit]

so.

i actually think, final thoughts, i really liked udg.

and this gets long (and talks about some, ah, sensitive topics), so it's under a cut.

there are two themes it was trying to tackle, and both of those themes are pretty big themes, and in trying to tackle both of them, they hit one harder and did a better job which left them lacking on the other.

udg did a fantastic job (for a video game, and especially for a danganronpa game, i think) of talking about how two sides of a conflict can be radicalized to hate each other, to see each other as less than human, to get to a point where they're no longer just wanting to protect themselves and those they love but where they want to destroy the other side entirely.

like. to an extent, udg is taking on genocide. it never uses that word, but that's what it's hitting.

the warriors of hope are trying to kill all adults because they believe that adults are hurting kids and all adults are bad and the only way to take care of kids is to kill all the adults and just have a safe place for kids to be kids. they are attempting genocide on the adults of towa city.

the adults who shirokuma save steadily grow more radicalized to the point where they want to kill all of the kids in towa city for the mass murder that the children have been doing on the adults (not realizing that the kids are being mind controlled - literally - by the warriors of hope). by the time they find out what's happening (and that the only way to stop the monokumas is to literally explode the heads of all the kids being mind controlled), they don't care. they want all the kids dead. they are literally chanting kill! kill! kill! to that end, they want genocide on the kids of towa city.

(and udg probably never uses that word because it is a very heavy word with a lot of weight and consequences to it. but that is very much what both sides want to do to the other.)

and it does a very, very good job of showing how people who are being attacked and who have these actions taken against them can become radicalized back to a point where it's no longer just stop the pain but also kill them all, they need to all die.

and the game calls them demons.

it has the warriors of hope call adults demons, and it has monaca call the adults who are fine with killing the kids demons, too. says that they've become that. (and part of the process of the adults getting to that point was when they said the kids were demons.)

udg does such a good job with this. and of course, it can't end with hope or despair but somewhere in between because there's not a pat answer there. but it ends with komaru wanting to save both - to save both sides - to find a way to reconcile and save and not fall into the radicalization and staying so that she can try to do that. and that's beautiful.

....

and then also it tries to tackle various forms of child abuse and does not do a very good job of that because it wasn't the main theme. it was backstory theme to support the main theme. it was, hey, the kids also have a good reason for hating adults, it's a lot more complicated than people want it to be, neither side starts with let's kill everyone, they get there from being radicalized through a lot of trauma.

so because it's not the main focus - it's just there to support the main focus - udg does a relatively poor job of addressing it. there's very shallow attempts to talk about each of the different forms in the different chapters, sometimes barely talked about at all before the boss fight (looking at you, chapter one), and some of its attempts are paired with a lot of discomfort, which i'm willing to hope was intentional because it should be uncomfortable and not glossed over, but also is uncomfortable.

worse still, a lot of that theme gets completely shoved under the rug when you get to monaca and yes, she also got abused, to the point that she faked a disability to get people to be nicer to her, and the people who abused her apparently hurt her so bad that they believed they hurt her THAT BAD, which is saying something. but that gets avoid in monaca's exposition because that's not the point; monaca being evil and starting a war is the point - which, again, is the main theme. so the other tough theme gets a not great treatment because it's not the point.

which is unfortunate because they did such a good job with what was the main point that i think maybe they could have actually done a good job with the rest of it if they'd treated it with the same care and consideration they did with the other.

i think this is easily the most coherent of the danganronpa games (so far). it hits its theme, and it does have...ending pacing issues, which seems to be a running issue with the series, but they aren't as bad, i think, as they are in the other games. the ending was basically how much worse can we make monaca, which. wasn't necessary. but it served its main theme well, so.

I didn't feel hit over the head with a lot of things i could not have figured out over the course of the game. i didn't feel like i couldn't have figured that stuff out. i had moments of ah, i was close, but this is the actual thing and oh, i see, that makes sense instead of i don't know how i was supposed to figure this out.

and it did such a good job with the relationship between toko and komaru. that is probably the best relationship that's been written in the series up to this point, and maybe it's because komaru isn't going around trying to make besties with everybody and they can just hone in on this is your friend, we can just develop this and have it mean something.

like.

this may not be a good danganronpa game (given how radically different it is from the main games), but it is a good game.

...albeit sometimes a bit danganronpa gross about its subject matter.