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ainaraoftime · 8 years ago

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hey so! @iamg1004 asked me about Danganronpa -what it is, any warnings, how long it is, how to get into it, etc etc- so here’s a very long answer under the cut

WHAT IS IT?

“ Danganronpa is a series of "high-speed mystery action adventure" visual novels created by Kazutaka Kodaka, and released by Spike (Now Spike Chunsoft) for the PSP, PS Vita and Steam. The games combine mystery-solving with elements of shooting and even rhythm gameplay.” -TVtropes

basically, the “main” danganronpa games (there’s 3 of them, i’ll get into the other stuff afterwards) are murder-mystery visual novels (i.e. videogames that are much heavier on dialog than gameplay) the premise is that there’s this academy: Hope’s Peak Academy/Kibougamine (the thing is that the game had fan translations before the official translations, so fans use different terms for stuff hah) that recruits high school students that are the best at one specific field. (the official translation is “ultimate”, but a lot of people, myself included, use SHSL, for the literal translation of Super High School Level). the SHSL Swimmer, the SHSL Programmer, etc etc (some of the titles are pretty... out there, but you gotta keep things interesting, i guess). the newest batch of Hope’s Peak students get trapped in the apparently deserted academy (~~plot~~), and are told that they’ll only be freed if they murder one of their classmates, and if they’re not caught. that is, after a murder happens, there’s a Class Trial (the most interactive aspect of the game- this is the part that is fully voice-acted), where you attempt to figure out who did it. at the end of a trial, people vote for a culprit, and the rules are: if the culprit gets the most votes, he/she gets executed. if people vote wrong, however, everyone except for the culprit will be executed, and the culprit will be allowed to leave freely. (i think the official translation of culprit is “blackened”, bc it’s a translation of a Japanese pun. idk). and of course there’s the mystery of solving who put them all in this situation

so! those are the premises of the main 3 games: Dangan Ronpa, Super Dangan Ronpa 2 (officially translated as danganronpa 2, but a lot of us still call it SDR2 after the original title), and New Dangan Ronpa V3. however (other than a ton of light novels, none of which i’ve read) there’s two other noteworthy things: Danganronpa: Another Episode (Absolute Despair Girls) (a videogame) and Danganronpa 3: The end of Hope’s Peak Academy (an anime). i guess DR:AE and DR3 are not necessary to understand NDRV3 (don’t take my word for it, though, i’m still only at chapter 2 of NDRV3). so there’s two choices:

Danganronpa > Danganronpa 2 > New Danganronpa V3 or:

Danganronpa > Danganronpa 2 > Danganronpa: Another Episode > Danganronpa 3 > New Danganronpa V3

Danganronpa: Another Episode is a videogame, but instead of a murder-mystery visual novel it’s kinda like... a shooter? starring the sister of the first game’s protagonist. so, if you want to understand the story, i guess you could find a Let’s Play, skip the gameplay and just watch the cutscenes :P (there’s plenty)

Danganronpa 3 is an anime with two parts: Side Future (mirai-hen) and Side Despair (zetsubou-hen). the order is like. Future Ep 1 > Despair Ep 1 > Future Ep 2 > Despair Ep 2, etc etc. and then one Side Hope at the end i think

basically, DR:AE fills in the gap between Danganronpa 1 and Danganronpa 2, while Danganronpa 3 tells you a little of what happened before both games (Side Despair) and after both games (Side Future). it also features a little of DR:AE’s characters. so i guess they’re only required watching if you become really attached to the DR1 and DR2 cast and wanna know what happened to them! :p

oh, one last thing: DR1 has an anime adaptation, but it’s generally agreed to be bad (you can’t satisfactorily cram 6 mysteries into 13 episodes...). if you wanna watch it, watch it afterwards, don’t spoil the game for yourself

ANY WARNING?

oomph, yeah. it’s very heavy on fanservice (the 1st game, not so much), especially at the expense of female characters. i personally shrug it off easily (it bothers me, but it’s not a dealbreaker), but it’s worth mentioning (also bad shit happens but that goes without saying, it’s a murder mystery). DR:AE, however, very heavily deals with child sexual abuse/sexualization as a main theme, and DR:AE became very divisive because a lot of people thought it was treated so flippantly that it crossed the line into uncomfortable “fanservice” sometimes. (i’m personally in the camp of “they seem to be criticizing it, but jfc do i have to put some big doses of good faith into it”). it also deals with child abuse in general. umm... some other minor stuff: at some point there’s a character that people can feel is a parody of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder. there’s also a character that caused a lot of heavy arguing about their gender, but that’s more of a fandom thing. oh, also this isn’t really a warning, but so it doesn’t catch you by surprise: the blood is hot pink, apparently because the age rating in Japan is lower if the blood isn’t red. shrugs

IS IT TIME CONSUMING

eehh.... well, i guess that depends on how much time you have on your hands. each of the main games has 6 chapters, and let’s say each of them is 5 hours long. that’s about 30 hours for danganronpa (ofc it varies on how completionist you are), another 30 for danganronpa 2, another 30 for new danganronpa v3. let’s say 20 hours for Another Episode (though a good chunk of it is shooter gameplay). and Danganronpa 3 is 24/25? anime episodes, which are 25 minutes each or so. so, there’s certainly quite a lot of it, but i wouldn’t call it, say, homestuck levels of daunting

IS IT GOOD

well that’s just personal opinion isn’t it :p of course, i personally do like them, but i understand they’re not for everyone. i think danganronpa is very good at creating interesting characters but often falls short in developing them, which, i guess at least is fitting for the story since 70% of the cast gets killed off in the span of a few days. but there’s a lot of meat there if you enjoy fan content and analysis, that’s for sure

RESOURCES

as i said, danganronpa is a series of videogames BUT i personally haven’t played em! and actually... every friend i know that is into danganronpa got into it through let’s plays instead of playing it themselves. that’s the benefit of a visual novel, i guess, that watching it is very close to playing it. the only real change is that if you play you get to solve the mysteries yourself i guess, but you can still do that with videos if you wanna :p so, if you wanna get into it through playing, then all i can say is “buy it”, but if you wanna get into it through LPs like the rest of us heathens, I’M YOUR WOMAN (these are all silent LPs, if you’re the kinda person who enjoys commentary, shrugs. i think NicoB is the most popular danganronpa Let’s Player, but I found him kind of annoying haha. nothing against him, he’s just not my style)

Danganronpa 1

Fan translation: English subs, Japanese Audio (this patch is how most people got into it before the official translation, hah)

NISAmerica’s translation: English subs, Japanese Audio (for some reason this person put the profiles of the characters at the beginning of the first video, shrugs. skip to 4 minutes in if you wanna)

NISAmerica’s translation: English subs, English Audio

another one with the official translation and Japanese voice acting. i think this one might be better than the 2nd link

1. at the end of the day, it’s up to you whether you prefer the japanese or the english voice actors

2. an important thing! Danganronpa games have free time events, which basically means “spending time with a character”. each let’s player chooses different characters to have FTEs with, but of course there’s compilations fof each character.

Free Time Events (English dub)

Free Time Events (Fan Translation, Japanese dubs)

3. there’s also the bonus mode School Mode, which is kind of... a dating sim, really. for after you beat the game and whatnot. i’ve never been into most of them, but i guess they’re useful if there’s a character you really like and you want to see more dialog with them, so here’s a compilation of some School Mode stuff

(Super) Danganronpa 2

MY FAVORITE ONE (unless NVDR3 takes the throne). same gist, except that, unlike with DR1, the official translation came out before there was any solid fan-translated patch. but there’s still the dub choice. also, Island Mode instead of school mode

NISAmerica’s translation (English subs, Japanese audio)

NISAmerica’s translation (English subs, English audio)

i think the English voice actors are very good, but i can’t help but feel kinda bitter about it, since my favorite danganronpa character had a great voice that p much made up half of his characterization, and his english voice acting pretty much gives off the opposite characterization. but don’t listen to my bias X)

NISAmerica’s translation of Free Time Events

Playlist of a ton of Island Mode stuff

Another Episode: Absolute Despair Girls

again, this is partly a third person shooter so there’s scenes you can probably skip

NISAmerica’s translation (Japanese Audio)

NISAmerica’s translation (English Audio) this is the best video i could find and instead of splitting it into parts this person went ahead and did a 11-hours-long video jesus christ. there’s timestamps in the comments

Danganronpa 3

it’s an anime translated by Crunchyroll, you can find it from a free source with some googling like you’d find any other anime, i don’t want the FBI to find me :p again, remember, Mirai-hen episode 1 > Zetsubou-hen episode 1 > Mirai-hen episode 2, etc etc. and then “kibou-hen” (or “side hope”) as an epilogue

New Danganronpa V3

okay, here’s the thing: this game came out about a month ago, and it’ll be translated by NISAmerica in September 20-something. any fan translation of the game is still ongoing. i mean... if you start getting into danganronpa now, by the time you’ve gotten into ndrv3, either the NISAmerica translation will be very close, or fan translations will be very advanced, so i wouldn’t worry about it just yet. but just in case, the two best i’ve found

Jess is bilingual, living in Japan, and she translates everything very good and very fast as she plays. She’s the one I’m currently watching (also i have fun using twitch instead of youtube and watching the chat’s reactions :P)

For a silent, subbed-instead-of-spoken translation, this person’s- but I don’t personally watch it, so I can’t tell you whether the translation is as good as Jess’s

AND THAT’S IT, i’ll edit this afterwards if there’s something i remember. thaaank you for your interest, and if at some point you need the feel to scream at someone about danganronpa, by all means you’re welcome into my inbox. i love people’s reactions

OH OF COURSE, to block spoilers. #dr spoilers for the first game, #sdr2 spoilers for the second one, #drae spoilers for DR:AE, #dr3 spoilers for the DR3 anime, #ndrv3 spoilers for the newest game. if you wanna avoid spoilers, blacklist those!

#ainara rambles

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