#and i played udg dubbed so

[aparticularbandit]

...in the Japanese, are the Warriors of Hope just referring to Junko as Junko Oneesan (or Oneechan)?

And that's why it gets translated as Big Sis Junko?

[eggs-can-draw]

tell me more about the izuru kokichi family au im so curious about it !!

hee hee hah hah tee-hee this got a bit long whoopsie. listen to Never Love An Anchor by the crane wives for full effect.

OK GAMER BEFORE I GET INTO THIS CAN OF WORMS I GOTTA ESTABLISH SOMETHING. This takes place in a larger au that I usually either call "The AU" or in select cases, "The Naegamigiri Au". The concept is pretty simple (v3 kids are the kids of the thh survivors and sdr2 cast) but I ended up playing with a few elements as well. (like v3 plot integration) The big important detail for Kokichi and Kamukura: The tragedy (specifically the gap of time between udg and sdr2) is longer by a few years. This is because of one simple single thing. A little guy. Kokichi. BACKSTORY through a convoluted course of events that are honestly as Up To Interpretation as I'm legally allowed, Kamukura and the trans woman of all time (and cowgirl), lovingly dubbed Kokichi MoM (who only exists because I wanted her to be a mysterious 3rd party entity, who she is is completely up to interpretation but the cowgirl part is important) did that thing consenting adults do and suddenly Kamukura has a child. So it's the lovely dynamic of "oh god I actually have something I CARE about can I really go through with this" and "hi I am five years old". Kid who has spent his entire life on the run and loves his dad very very much. He believes its selfish because he loves kokichi but doesn't really understand that he loves kokichi, so he sees his own attachment as irrational and therefore bad for both himself and Kokichi. Every childcare talent he has is telling him he can't provide a good life for this kid in their current situation but despite that he stalls because fuck he loves this kid he wants to keep this kid. He's so conflicted but decides maybe fixing the lobotomy could put this kid in better hands. and then we have hajime who has only been out of the nwp for maybe a week or two and suddenly there's a child on his doorstep who is supposedly his. (but a part of him already knew that) so yeah. it makes me a little insane.

[tobiasdrake]

Alright, I'm gonna whine about DR3 some more.

I've complained a lot about Danganronpa 3 having red blood. Like. I realize that it's a pretty minor thing to be upset about. Big deal, the blood is correctly colored.

But the red blood is a microcosm of a larger problem, which is that DR3's Final Killing Game is creatively uninspired. That comes through in a lot of ways, but one of them is its visual aesthetic. Danganronpa is a series where even walking through a sewer looks like this.

It's so pretty!

Danganronpa has a unique aesthetic, dubbed "psychopop" by series creator Kazutaka Kodaka. It's gruesome, macabre, and gritty... but with a splash of color and fun! This is the whole reason why the blood is pink; It's often mistakenly credited as an attempt to get past censorship, but it's not. It's like that by choice.

The blood is pink so that when you find a body, it looks like this.

This is psychopop. The juxtaposition of gruesome and macabre but also pretty and fun.

Danganronpa 3's Future Arc has some fun character designs. But it doesn't have the imagery. The psychopop is missing.

Now, that's obviously a deliberate choice. As much as I hate the way Despair Arc handles the whole concept of "Real Chiaki", they still went all-out with the psychopop in Despair Arc.

Its exclusion from Future Arc isn't an accident. It's a choice, made on purpose. Why leave it out?

Well, the obvious reason is because Future Arc's "Final Killing Game" is the only big murder plot in the series that Junko isn't involved in. DR1 was Junko, DR2 was Junko 2.0, UDG was Junko's aspiring protégé, and DRV3 is Junko as a fictional concept.

Future Arc was the only time when Junko genuinely wasn't a part of it. Tengan co-opted her imagery to fabricate a false-flag attack on the Future Foundation. (Which would be a really interesting concept if the conclusion of it wasn't, "So he could use the Magic Mind Control Video to magically mind control the world." But that's a whole other thing.)

That's why the blood isn't red. Because the wacky fun macabre villain isn't here. The aesthetic is bland because this is a fake Danganronpa. It's this guy trying to be as cool as a bloodthirsty supermodel ultra-genius with an army of hilariously deranged teddy bear robots who plays complex psychological torture games for funsies.

That was never going to happen. He was screwed from the get-go.

The drab visual aesthetic is ultimately minor next to the larger problem with V3's various choices surrounding its characters, rules, reveals, and story direction. But it speaks to a larger issue of creative philosophy that affects many of the problems the show has.

That is: Danganronpa 3 removes a lot of the elements that make Danganronpa fun and interesting to engage with. But it has nothing fun or interesting to replace those things with, so the result feels like a much lesser product.

We lose the psychopop aesthetic and we replace it with drab hallways. We lose the wacky and personable teddy bear villain and replace him with an angry fascist who wants to hit everyone with a sword. We lose the compelling Whodunit mysteries and replace them with "Periodically a character just dies at random for no reason." We lose the large, interesting cast of complex characters any one of whom could be a killer or victim, and replace them with three obvious (and obviously immortal) main characters and a bunch of dead bodies waiting to happen.

The problem is, and this will also be a talking point for parts of V3: If a story is bad, disappointing, or underwhelming on purpose, you've still delivered a story that is bad, disappointing, or underwhelming. There is a reason why Future Arc is a long, boring, obnoxious slog. But that does little to mitigate the fact that Future Arc is a long, boring, obnoxious slog.

[hugepolecat3298]

dude my fucking science teacher just put on cells at work

[spiralhigh]

Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the only one who has issues with Komaedas eng voice. I know some people like it, but Bryce's performance is like 70% responsible for most mischaracterizations of Ko's character imo? It's almost like he's trying to voice a completely different character with a completely different personality, and that personality basically just boils down to "haha I'm trying to be annoying and crazey by coming across as the weird guy™ (by which I mean the weird neurodivergent kind of guy), while also playing up the sarcasm so that every genuine comment sounds like I'm actually insincere and intentionally rude!" and yeah I do not like that for... multiple reasons adghkl

Anyway I hope it's alright to send you this, I genuinely apologize if it comes across as too vent-ish! If so, please feel free to ignore this!

YES YES YES EXACTLY bryce injects komaeda's voice with a lot of sarcasm and bite that just isn't there in the original dub. bryce makes him sound like a fuckboy surfer sometimes and like an overacted ~insane~ guy others... while he does a lot better of a job in udg, his voice for komaeda in sdr2 is WAY off-base and leads to a lot of really awful mischaracterization in the fandom.

komaeda as originally written is genuine! off-kilter, sometimes catty, often playful and coy, but fundamentally honest! that's why his despair disease was the liar's disease!! he's not sarcastic or condescending :(

thank you for sending this!!!!