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a-student-out-of-time · 2 years

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Chapter 3: The Worst of the Worst

Hello, everyone. Mod Bubbles here.

I have been asked by some friends of mine, following a few long rants about my least favorite element of this series: Chapter 3. Some of you may already know that these tend to be the weakest elements of any DR game, but it goes beyond just that.

I’m here to explain to you all why every Chapter 3 I’ve seen- DR1, SDR2, V3, DRA and SDRA2- is the worst. I’m also going to be ranking them, starting from the least bad, and explaining why, on every conceivable level, they don’t work.

First off, let me just start off by saying that, if you like these characters or sections of their respective games, more power to you. I am not judging you, I’m not attacking you and I’m glad you could get more enjoyment out of them than I did. This is simply me explaining why I don’t think they work, but why some work better than others. All of this is just my opinion.

Some of this will be me criticizing them for their objective writing problems, some of it will be personal taste reasons, but perhaps you’ll be interested in what I have to say. Without further ado, let’s get into it:

Least bad- SDR2 Chapter 3

Those of you who know who my favorite character is may be surprised to see this one as the least bad. To be clear, it’s still bad, but I think it’s probably the least bad out of them all.

The recurring problem with Chapter 3 is that every single one involves some degree of plot contrivance and character assassination. Someone inevitably gets turned into a parody of themselves or something stupid happens to make the plot possible. You have to take it with the territory when ranking them, as they all suffer from this problem.

The plot contrivance this time around is that of the Despair Disease, which causes anyone infected with it to radically shift personalities- Akane turns into a coward, Ibuki is gullible and Nagito is a liar and he almost fucking died to his disease. This is already ridiculous, but we could accept it as part of foreshadowing that they’re in a virtual world. But then it goes one step further.

MIkan takes it upon herself to help everyone who’s gotten sick, and in turn, she also contracts it. She doesn’t shift personalities, but inexplicably remembers everything about her past as an Ultimate Despair. Thus begins the character assassinations- literally and figuratively- of Mikan and Hiyoko.

As sad as it is to see Ibuki go, it at least serves the narrative, the trope being “Shoo out the clowns” for when things get serious. Her death is thematically appropriate, while Hiyoko is...barely an afterthought. Yeah, Mikan doesn’t even kill her for revenge, she’s literally just in the wrong place at the wrong time and just fucking dies.

As you may know, originally Fuyuhiko was supposed to die here, but the writers realized that it would’ve made Peko’s sacrifice pointless, so quickly rewrote it so that Hiyoko would die instead, a move that feels as cobbled-together as it sounds, especially with the lack of effort in finding her murder weapon. And all of those goes without saying, but it turns Mikan into a deranged lunatic, so why is this one the least bad?

Because, out of all the Chapter 3′s, this one is the most relevant to the story. While I don’t like the path they take with it, Mikan’s transformation is ultimately effective foreshadowing for the truth about Class 77 and why they’re in the simulation, as well as the horrifying levels of their devotion to Junko.

And unlike the others, Mikan wasn’t trying to escape. She was trying to carry on with the mission of resurrecting Junko and wanted to inflict despair on the others along the way. What makes this still a bad chapter is a single question: if the Despair Disease can make someone remember their past, why not use that as a way to make everyone remember?

The goal of the Ultimate Despairs in getting into the Neo World Program was to provide bodies for the Junko AI, so why not have them all remember and commit mass suicide? No handwave is given as to why they can’t, but either way, this one is at least the most relevant to the story. Let’s move on.

Bad- DRA Chapter 3

Again, this one is still bad, but it at least has a more sympathetic motivation. The culprit for this case, Kinji Uehara, is the Ultimate Priest and had a close bond with a large group of orphans under the care of the church. A pretty noble guy...who’s being exploited by the Mastermind to become a mole and to kill if there’s no murder, or else the kids get it.

Now, this is not a new development. We saw this with Sakura in DR1, but while she was noble enough to take her own life instead of sacrificing her dojo or her friends, Kinji unfortunately cracked under the pressure and chose to murder.

What makes this one worse that SDR2′s is how cruel Kinji’s actions are. See, Kinji is not a true Despair. Like I said, he’s just this game’s mole and has to feed info to the Mastermind, but in doing so, he’s trying to save a group of children he believes are in danger. That’s a questionable situation, but paints him in a sympathetic light.

But he loses sympathy points for the nature of the murders he commits: the deaths of Kanata and Kakeru. Not only are the two of them some of the nicest people in the cast, but the ways that he murders them are absolutely horrific- slitting Kakeru’s throat enough that he bleeds out, then electrocuting Kanata so badly that her internal organs were burned to a crisp.

Now, he’d explained that he targeted Kanata because she was always in the infirmary and thus she’d be an easy target. However, why did she need to die in such a needlessly cruel way? Why not give her an overdose of some kind of drug? Why did he feel the need to murder her with a giant blade at first, then place her into a situation that would guarantee an absolutely cruel and horrifying death? And after he’d already killed Kakeru?

What pushes it over the edge for me is the fact that Kinji had already fatally wounded Kakeru, and the man gave Kinji a dying request that he spare Kanata. What did Kinji have to say about it? That it was already too late. I’m sorry, but no. It was not too late. He went out of his way to continue with the murder plot he’d decided on because of the Sunk Cost Fallacy and doubled the body count for the sake of...I have no idea. Tradition?

Either way, he denied Kakeru his dying wish and still killed Kanata, despite already guaranteeing that he did as he was tasked to and killed someone.

And then he goes further and tries to attack both Rei and Tsurugi, just because they were out of their rooms at the time, and add them to the frame-up. Yet all this kind of thing does is leave more evidence for who the killer is every time it happens.

All of that is so utterly cruel and sadistic that it feels wildly out of character for someone like Kinji to do, even if he was under a lot of pressure at the time. It’s a worse level of character assassination, but one mitigated slightly by the fact that he does apologize and show genuine remorse by the end.

And I do have sympathy for him after it turns out the kids he was trying to save were dead all along. As horrific as his actions were, he at least had a noble ultimate goal...and that goal was ripped away from him long before he even realized. It’s tragic, cruel and unfair.

The same cannot be said for our next entry.

Very Bad- DR1 Chapter 3

This one is pretty infamous among the fandom and for good reason. Celeste engineers a complicated and frankly ridiculous plan that involves tricking Hifumi into killing Taka, creating the Robo-Justice suit to frame Hagakure and then killing Hifumi herself. All to claim the huge amount of reward money Monokuma had offered and live out her Goth Fantasy Life.

What sets it here is that the character assassination goes from unnecessary cruelty to outright stupidity. Celeste puts together this frankly ridiculous and elaborate plan, which would be bad enough given that she should be smarter than this, but it goes further. She does so much to push the narrative of the situation that it becomes blindingly obvious who the culprit is even before the first murder.

The Robo-Justice concept is just silly, and maybe that was the point, to be so shocking and baffling that it distracted everyone from all the other details, but Hina quickly points out that the suit is impossible to really move in. That immediately rules it out as even a red herring and turns it into more of a distraction.

Beyond that though, once again, another death is basically an afterthought. Because Taka and Hifumi are fighting over Alter Ego, she uses that as leverage to get Hifumi to help her, so he kills Taka and then she kills him, and Taka’s role in this chapter is so minimal that I can barely remember if he had any lines. And this was after the emotional gut-punch of Chapter 2, when he lost Mondo. Which leads to the other big problem with Chapter 3: sudden character development death syndrome, or SCDDS.

Likewise, this plan, like all Chapter 3′s, was far more elaborate and nonsensical than it needed to be, with so many moving parts and so many factors Celeste had to actively try and control that it became very obvious this was a conspiracy and thus no surprise that it was her.

Really, if she wanted to take advantage of their fight, why not kill one and frame the other? It would’ve been so much simpler, had less moving parts and been far more believable. She instead went with complexity over brevity and set a horrible standard the games could not break away from.

And why did she do it? She says it was to gain the money and live in a castle with vampire butlers. Nothing noble, just something flat-out selfish and stupid, if you take her words at face value. But if you don’t, there’s a lot of room to interpret what she says and she seems to show some degree of remorse or at least regret for what happened.

I hope you enjoyed that, because there’s no regret in the last two.

Terrible- V3 Chapter 3

And here’s a Chapter 3 so bad, it’s become a meme. I’ll admit, I was actually ready to name this one my favorite Chapter 3 of the series when I first saw it. I was impressed that they’d finally broken away from the formula and had to solve a single murder, in this case Angie in the locked art room. There was so much to explore there.

And then Tenko died and I realized this series really cannot break its own formula. Cue my disappointed sigh.

All of the same problems I had with the previous entry are here, but they’ve been ramped up to 11. Korekiyo pushes so hard to do the séance in a specific room, it’s hard not to suspect he’s up to something. Tenko’s sudden emotional speech to Himiko could not have telegraphed her death harder if the pinwheel ribbon tied to her head were replaced with a set of red flags. But now onto the murder plot itself.

“Haha seesaw effect funny yada yada,” let’s get to the real meat of the issue here. Kiyo purposefully arranged for a set of rooms to become traps that he could use during the séance he’d been pushing for, but he did so right outside the room Angie was doing her own creepy rituals in. And when she came in looking for a candle, he clubbed her with a piece of wood, carried her back to her room, murdered her and locked the room behind him.

Do you know what this means? If he hadn’t killed Tenko, Kiyo would’ve won. I’m serious, there was no way the group would’ve been able to fully pinpoint that he was the one who managed to kill Angie and he would’ve not only been able to escape, but guaranteed everyone else would’ve died.

And he reveals his goal by the end was to kill a bunch of girls to send to his dead sister. The obvious conclusion to draw is that he believed that he had to kill a girl during a séance, but since he shanked Angie with the gold katana and sent he believes he sent her to be with his sister at the end of the trial, that means he doesn’t believe that a séance is necessary.

Which ultimately means he went through with the infamous seesaw trap purely because he’d spent so much time setting it up and he didn’t want it to go to waste. That is the only explanation for why he didn’t just call it quits with Angie and let the rest of the trial play out.

And all of that is without even getting into the really grotesque rationale behind his actions: his sister, whom he was apparently in an incestuous relationship with and whose spirit he believes lives on inside of him. His sister was very sick and thus never really had any friends, and it’s likely Kiyo was the only constant presence in her life. There are also very uncomfortable implications that she may have abused him as well, pressuring him to live the life that she wanted, and none of it is really addressed.

And so, when she died, Kiyo was left alone and believed he could send her 100 friends in the afterlife. Thus, he’d gone around killing at least 90 women, given that he says he was close to his goal, before ending up in the Killing Game. While he’s disappointed, he’s satisfied he at least got close and creepily promised to watch over everyone like a ghost.

Really, it’s how shockingly dumb Kiyo’s actions are that bring this one down so far, although the incestuous serial killer angle really doesn’t help. Speaking of which, there really is no reason for it beyond Tsumugi wanting to live out her fantasies.

But as bad as this one is, it still manages to avoid being the worst of them all.

What the fuck?- SDRA2 Chapter 3

How do you get worse than V3's Chapter 3? You try to emulate it.

That’s no exaggeration. LINUJ has stated that his ideas for this chapter of SDRA2 changed after he saw V3′s, which gave him the inspiration for this part of the game. And while I know plenty of people really enjoyed this one, even considering it the best, I have to disagree completely.

Not only is this the worst Chapter 3 out of them all, this is honestly one of the worst pieces of media in anything Danganronpa-related that I’ve ever seen. I mean that genuinely, not out of anger, but out of disgust and disappointment.

First of all, this trial is too long. I can accept that trials would need to go on for a while in these circumstances, but six hours? SIX HOURS?! And most of that time is spent with Kanade arguing with Syobai over small, petty details.

Second, perhaps the worst in terms of sheer, unmitigated plot contrivances. There is so much that goes on here that can only be explained with either heavy-handed exposition or handwaves of “Fuck you, she’s smart” or “fuck you, I’m lucky.” What do I mean by that? The biggest is the crux of why this trial famously has two blackeneds.

When Kanade and Hibiki (in her puppet state) murder Setsuka, they stab her with such synchronized timing, milliseconds apart, that Monocrow can’t even decide which happened first. And this was never addressed or shown at any point beforehand, just vaguely referenced here and there.

This is different from something like Nagito relying on his luck in Chapter 5. Nagito’s luck had been established countless times by then and he used it to his advantage to make Chiaki the blackened, with his goal being to kill the others and allow her to go free. If there had been similar scenes with Kanade and Hibiki demonstrating their synchronization, even just one or two, I would’ve been more willing to believe it.

Likewise, another element of Kanade’s murder plot is that she’s apparently good at throwing. I’m a bit more lenient toward this one, as I recall there might’ve been a scene where she was throwing darts and Hibiki was like “She’s the best at darts!” It’s not much, but it’s better.

My issue is that these are cases of tell, don’t show. You can’t expect me to believe a detail about character that hadn’t been demonstrated until that point simply because I’m informed and not shown how it works. Nagito’s luck at least has rules, while the synchronicity with the twins seems even more ridiculous by comparison.

That then brings us to the murderess herself, Kanade, who manages to be both a ridiculous genius and completely incompetent at the same time. She describes herself as a perfectionist and makes sure to think about every detail of her plan beforehand, from timetables to which handbooks they need, every shot she needs to make, every tool they need, etc.

And yet she leaves behind a bottle of antibiotics. One that proves to be a crucial piece of evidence in incriminating her. If she were really meticulous, she could’ve taken stock of everything she’d brought her medical kit beforehand and then checked to see if she had it all before they left. But she didn’t, and it’s even acknowledged that it was a stupid mistake.

Add to that the pins that they needed that also got them incriminated. Where did they come from? The bags Hibiki stuffed into her shirt to pad her chest and make herself look like Kanade, which contained Setsuka’s disembodied hands. Which...yeah, let’s get this out of the way too.

This chapter also relies far, far too much on shock value. Setsuka’s death is absolutely horrifying and works in the moment, but things like Kanade’s reveal of being a serial killer, while foreshadowed decently, are only really effective on a first viewing. The more you think about it, the less it actually makes sense and the more it hurts both her image and the logic of her plot.

And I’m going to be genuine about this: this chapter is also guilty of serial killer glorification. It doesn’t matter if it frames her in a negative light or paints it as horrific, this was LINUJ trying to make her as shocking and horrific as possible, but also making her into a genius who gets everything she wants at the expense of all the people she’d hurt. The narration goes out of its way to refer to Kanade as a genius multiple times. And the fact that she was the second most popular character in a poll really shows what I’m talking about.

To be clear, I don’t like how much focus Genocider Syo gets in the canon games, especially with how they’re played for comic relief more than anything. However, the difference is that Toko actually has a character that grows and develops beyond Syo, Syo doesn’t actually kill any of the main characters (still highly questionable but given how desperate the Tragedy is, I can accept that) and it’s made pretty clear in UDG that even she has some humanity in her. Syo has a sense of decency and compassion, shared with Toko, that grants her some humanity. That is not the case with Kanade, who is a monster through and through.

Toko and Syo are capable of unconditional love toward Byakuya, one that I can be certain would not turn murderous or cruel, even if Byakuya is not the kind of guy to go for. Kanade, by contrast, is not capable of unconditional love; she’s an incestuous, manipulative, stalking, psychopathic control-freak.

Additionally, Kanade’s death isn’t true justice, it’s her getting to die with a smile on her face knowing that she ruined countless lives and has her sister die with her too. Which then brings me to my biggest point of contention and the conclusion of the objective section of this analysis. I will now start shouting, so prepare yourself.

Fuck this chapter and what it did to Hibiki. She was the biggest victim in all of this, even worse than Setsuka. At least Setsuka wasn’t aware of what was happening and died before she was chopped into pieces. Meanwhile, Hibiki not only learns that she’s partially responsible for it, she gets next to no sympathy from the rest of the cast for what happened, then learns her serial killer sister has been killing and torturing people her whole life to isolate her. And then gets to learn Kanade killed their parents before being dragged off to their double execution, screaming for help the whole time.

And this was after a ton of character growth and development I was far more interested in and impressed with. When I saw this chapter play out, I didn’t see a tragedy with her or an engaging villain, I saw a frustrating shock-baity twist that left me disgusted, confused and annoyed. Two great characters died to glorify another shitty repetition of the serial killer plot beat, and somehow Kanade is the one who gets all the attention and all the popularity.

And let’s get something clear here: Kanade, this amazing mega super genius who killed 60 people and never got caught? She left crucial evidence behind, evidence that she brought herself and didn’t bother to fully clean up. Do you know who didn’t accidentally leave evidence behind in his first ever murder? Leon. He was smart enough to use a lint roller to clean up any traces of his hair and threw his bloody shirt in the furnace. He only got caught because Sayaka wrote his name where she couldn’t see it and the shirt arm burned off in a way he couldn’t control.

Let me repeat that: IN HIS FIRST EVER MURDER, FREAKING LEON WAS SMARTER AND MORE CAREFUL THAN KANADE, A *SERIAL KILLER.*

Even Kirumi’s situation, where she lost a piece of her glove that proved vital in incriminating her, she lost it in the pool at a time she couldn’t get to it. That was bad luck. With Kanade, it was sheer incompetence.

I wouldn’t be making such a big deal about this if it wasn’t one of the key pieces of evidence that got her found out. And to make matters worse, she was actually planning on framing Iroha. Iroha. A girl whose only real method of attack is crying and pushing someone off a balcony. Did she seriously think anyone would buy that she not only killed Setsuka, but dismembered her and set her body up in a weird way?

Not that it matters, since her attempt at framing Iroha- knocking her out with spiked coffee- failed because she doesn’t even like coffee. This girl is not as meticulous or careful as she thinks she is.

And no, I’m not going to say that all of this is retroactively justified by Sora having Divine Luck and that’s why all of this happened. That reveal coming at the end does not justify any of this by any means. Please do not use “Fuck you, I’m lucky” in place of “Fuck you, I’m smart.” Nagito playing Russian Roulette with 5 bullets and winning is not the same as Kanade being incompetent and Sora having a gut feeling that it’s not over yet.

If you want to showcase a character being clever, you show them getting around difficult situations or fooling someone within the confines of established rules. You don’t just let them get away with whatever’s convenient for the moment.

But do you want to know what the worst aspect of this Chapter 3 is? I could maybe overlook all the other details- all of them- if this weren’t the case.

It’s how completely irrelevant this chapter is in the greater story.

Say what you will about the others, at least they feel like they’re part of a larger narrative- DR1′s was another motive, SDR2′s was as well and foreshadowed the Ultimate Despair twist, V3 was part of a reality show and was written by a creep with an incest fetish, and even DRA’s felt more in line with the story. But SDRA2′s? It feels like a completely separate story shoved in the middle of the existing one.

Kanade has no connection to the Voids or Mikado, not to Utsuro, not to the Despairs, not to any outside groups, not to Hope’s Peak, not even the Tragedy itself plays any role in her character. All she wants is to control Hibiki, and she only did all this because she was losing that control.

When you peel away all the shock value, Kanade is ultimately, like every serial killer out there, a painfully flat and boring character with shitty motivations to be a shitty human being. Her entire personality revolves around her creepy obsession with Hibiki; there is nothing deeper there, and LINUJ has even said that Kanade would’ve killed herself if Hibiki died. I don’t find someone like that very appealing nor interesting.

I don’t think I would mind all of this as much if she didn’t feel so completely disconnected from everything else in SDRA2, but she is and it is very apparent when you actually look at the story as a whole. Not even Mikado knew she was a serial killer and brought her in just because she had a vague connection to Tsurugi.

And what happens after the reveal of his girl who’s committed 60 murders? Who brutally butchered their friend, burned her letter and dragged another off to a horrible, unfair end with her and got everything she really wanted? Not much.

I can name about three things: Hibiki’s puppet state foreshadowing Yuki’s transformation, the implication that more time had passed than they’d realized and her burning Setsuka’s note. The latter is the only piece of the story that actually feels like it connects this chapter to the others. But after Kanade and Hibiki are gone, they’re barely even mentioned and it’s clear how little impact they had.

There’s also Iroha being revealed as a Void at the end of the Chapter, but that has nothing to do with Kanade and it really could’ve been placed anywhere, or even just left out entirely. Again, I question what the purpose of its inclusion is, especially since Chapter 4 could’ve done it much better.

Now, one could argue that the relevance of this scene has more to do with themes about trust and sowing mistrust among the group. However, I feel that that’s more of an overarching narrative of any DR story, and one that Chapter 4 does substantially better with its exploration of Nikei as a major player, especially in the wake of Setsuka helping him, and us knowing Iroha is a void and wanting her to admit it so the group can work together.

The problem with this argument is that, for the most part, the concrete events of Chapter 3 are not followed-up on or carry over in a significant way like the reveal of the Voids or the virtual world. Kanade being a serial killer, in and of itself, feels largely like a tacked-on addition to the story, since, you know, it is.

What this means is that this is the only chapter 3 where you can skip it and miss basically nothing. Think about that: 1/6th of SDRA2- a full 16%- is completely irrelevant to the overarching story, all for the sake of emulating the worst part of V3. Granted, I don’t know how much better LINUJ’s original plan would’ve been, but I have my doubts it could be worse.

Ultimately, that’s why I find this chapter 3 to be the worst of them all: all the existing issues, but with the addition of too much shock value, serial killer glorification, Hibiki’s absolutely horrific SCDDS for the sake of a double execution, and just the fact that you can skip this entire chapter and miss nothing vital. I can’t even say that last part about any of the others, and that is unforgivable.

To anyone who genuinely wants to write anything DR-related, all I ask is that we retire the tropes of Chapter 3. Maybe then we can have some that are genuinely good.

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