#revisiting dr2

[tobiasdrake]

Hold up. That's... Huh. That's really interesting, actually. I don't think I've ever seen anyone talk about it but. Like. The relationship between Monokuma and Monomi is kinda revealing.

Okay. So. In Danganronpa 1, when Junko is first revealed as the Mastermind, the first topic of conversation is about killing Mukuro. It is what the trial's for, after all. And the fact that Mukuro's her sister, specifically Mukuro is the older twin, leaves everyone with questions.

Junko flies off the handle about how lovely despair is and how it was better for the plan to kill her and how Mukuro's despair must have been so sweet and how her own despair at killing Mukuro was so sweet and all of that Junko stuff.

But. Before she does that? She says this.

Hey. Uh. Hey, Junko? It sounds like you've got some bitterness here. Some deep-seated abandonment issues and resentment towards your older twin for signing on with Fenrir.

Which makes it very interesting when you later say that you quickly deduced Mukuro would be unfit to act convincingly in the role of Ultimate Fashionista Junko Enoshima. That you had to kill her or else she'd blow her cover because she's just not pretty and talented enough to be you.

It sounds to me like you murdered your sister because you've been holding a grudge against her for abandoning you.

...

AND THEN comes Danganronpa 2. And Junko's like, "I've remodeled Usami into MONOMI, and she's going to be MY little sister who I can mistreat and make miserable because that's how people act towards little sisters!"

Like. Junko? I think you might have some issues.

...

Some other issues, besides the whole serial-killing world-destroying despair-fiend thing.

[vi-enti]

how to be yourself (who is that, anyways?)

He didn’t deserve an ending just yet. There was too much to fix. / Nobody was healed and only more wounded were going to join them, but… they’d heal. They’d do it together. / Would peace be an option for all of them? / Nothing was right. / "We can make things right."

A story of survival after death, and how to forge something new after having destroyed the world. Where every awakening is a disaster waiting to happen, but not an irreparable one. Unlikely friendships, growing bonds, and some semblance of happiness; if they can bring themselves to believe they deserve it, anyways.

tldr; the remnants of despair becoming beacons of hope again, not for society, but for themselves.

how to be yourself (who is that, anyways?) - Chapter 2 - guravity - Dangan Ronpa Series [Archive of Our Own]

[oyasleepy]

hi guys. would you still love me if i got really into danganronpa 2 & realized komaeda is the exact type of character i go for. in the year 2023.

[windcarvedlyre]

While I'm talking about DR3 and its handling of themes, does anyone else feel like danganronpa's ideas of 'hope' and 'despair' became a bit flanderised sometimes?

I could be reaching- the series has always been incredibly hammy in how it uses the terms- but in DR1 they still felt somewhat grounded in the words' actual definitions and in DR2 Komaeda fixating on an abstracted conflict between 'hope' and 'despair' was presented as a bad thing. Thinking 'hope' is synonymous with 'talent' was part of the problem, but even without that he'd feel like an intentional twisted parody of Naegi. He takes the thematic conflict between hope and despair too literally; to him the concepts were less states of mind, more grand causes, and so no amount of suffering became unacceptable to him if it made for a more interesting narrative in the end.

But sometimes later additions to the series... kind of sound like him? Maybe I should revisit DR3 and give it more of a chance, but I felt like the entire narrative approached 'hope' and 'despair' in some of the ways Komaeda does. Like it kept throwing those words at me as a substitute for actual depth, because hey, it's Danganronpa, right? That's what you're here for, right? Especially considering how little interest the writers showed in non-Ultimates besides Hinata as people, making 'hope' feel genuinely associated with talent to some degree.

Similarly, in DRV3, what did it mean for the survivors to reject both hope and despair? Stripped of those words, their choice was to break out of the narrative's control, not let their reality being potentially fake get to them, and face the unknown together. Is that not 'hope'? Is that not emotionally identical to both previous games' endings? Does that not make the game's use of 'hope' completely divorced from its meaning?

If the themes were handled more coherently I could see that being done intentionally- exploring whether the series started with a good message and lost its way, and/or asking whether 'hope' is hollow if your struggles, your eventual triumph over them, everything was contrived for others' entertainment- but I feel like if that was the case the DRV3 characters should reclaim hope and reject false definitions or exploitation of it instead of rejecting hope itself. Because again, with feeling, what does that mean???

[znvade]

When I was still HUGE on making videos, I made this one series called Essence of Hope where the plot was pretty much that v3 were recruits for HPA students but never ended ip being able to attend because of the Tragedy

The character cast would’ve been survivors of DR1, the DR2 cast as despairs, and ofc v3

Thinking of revisiting it because it was genuinely very fun to center a plot around but it’s also highly self-indulgent so I’d have to see lol

[lilypadding]

can you tell us what tags you use on the regularly? can be for anything, stuff you align with, laugh at, find cool etc etc

THANK YOU FOR ASKING I AM SO HAPPY !!!! HUGS YOU HUGS YOU HUGS Y

okay so I'm pretty bad at tagging things/having a tagging system, I had a blog back in 2016 (middle school) and I was so efficient at tagging my reblogged supernatural gifs, dan and phil clips, and voltron posting but when I lost access to that blog and made this new one I told myself not to take it as seriously (and somehow thought it'd be cringey if i was ultra organized?? which doesn't make sense and I'm still upset at myself for,,) SO for the first half of this blog I didn't tag anything I reblogged at all, I'd just go to town and go through tags I liked (mainly danganronpa) and reblogged infinitely. and I LOVE text shit-posts so it was a mix of everything I enjoyed and found funny

recently though I decided I want to be more organized about things I reblog, at least the main stuff. nagito komaeda is a character that my loved ones will have to pry out of my cold dead hands when i decease so i tag most things about him/art of him with just #nagito, similar to #hajime because they're the 2 characters i blog about the most, and of course the ship between them as #komahina -- I scroll through that one whenever I need comfort lols so having posts that I already love tagged as them on here is helpful for that.

if i see any general danganronpa art that isnt mainly nagito and/or hajime, ill add the #danganronpa/#dr2 tag (though not always)

((unfortunately since I got into that habit of not tagging ANYTHING when this blog started, half the time, I don't add tags even though I should. it's really more a vibes feeling, if I'm in a tagging-mood things will be tagged, and if I'm not then I don't))

i tag #taylor swift in case any of my followers want to mute posts about her since my main thing is dangan, and I know a lot of people dont like her. i also tag general other interests like #persona 5 and #sims 2 (the lore in this game goes CRAZY i cant even WHATEVER U GET IT)

i tag #suggestive for anything mildly NSFW again to help filter that content out for anyone uncomfortable seeing that

my #lisa tag is for my partner, anything that reminds me of her. tags like #ref are usually for posts that I want to re-read later or revisit, or anything that will be useful to me one day. sometimes ill see something interesting but dont have time to read it then and there so i reblog in a rush. #reminders is a recent one, it's for the same thing except more personal/more for me. and if i ever use #for me, it's essentially for the same.

ive started trying to use #lilyyaps for any post that I'm directly writing/shit-posting because I've never had a personalized tag for me yapping and posting (i was allergic to it until recently)

but yeah that's the extent of any "system" i have, all vibes no thoughts. nothing strict or crazy as u can tell. THANK you for asking though I really really appreciate the opportunity you handed me to yap <3<3

[bratspike]

What do you think really happened to Ilsa in DR1?

i am 100% confident that she is alive!!!!!! first of all i just don’t truly believe that tom would want to finish part 2 without having rebecca involved. listen to the rogue nation commentary track to see what i mean (or just look for him talking about her literally anywhere) (or wait for my post on the topic).

second, ilsa is perfectly set up to be a Ghost and a Shadow (two terms that are repeated not only in dr but also throughout the series) in dr2. luther tells ethan that he’s going offline to try to figure out the entity, but the entity does know he’s still a player even if he’s not currently on the map.

ilsa. ilsa, though. by faking her death ilsa fulfills ethan’s ‘written’ fate of losing someone he cares about and gabriel and the entity will both believe their plan, their story, gets to continue on. but ilsa is still alive. ilsa is operating in the dark and she is going to be the key (hah) to everything in dr2. she is going to reappear and save the day and the entire theater is going to go apeshit

it’s genuinely just what makes the most sense and is the most in line with the story that tom and mcq are trying to tell. their refrain is “story is king!” they said it about rogue nation and they’re saying it about dead reckoning. this is a story about revisiting the past in order to move forward. we are being taken to the first movie yes, but also even further, to an ethan we’ve never seen before. ethan’s past is coming back to him but ilsa remains his future. she’s always been his future (come away with me), he just hasn’t been ready to see it.

dr1 was the entity’s movie — we were seeing what it wanted us to see, we were following its script, looking at its shots and editing decisions. ethan said we can’t trust anything outside of this conversation in venice and that was an instruction to us, too! ilsa guided the knife into her chest. every glance between ilsa and ethan in venice now seems like a goodbye (for now). a be safe (because i won’t be able to know where you are or if you’re still alive). he said run as FAR as you can. he wasn’t talking about venice.

luther and ilsa have always been aligned and now they are going to be their own team. they will return to save ethan and benjis asses and ethan will kill the entity and then. and then. they’ll get to choose what to do next. and ethan will say ‘i’m coming with you.’ and ilsa will say ‘i know.’

[makedamnsvre]

also why does this playthrough of dr2 have to be 32 hours. -_-

its so much. and thats not a bad thing outside of the fact that i want to revisit source material you know. but. its 32 freakeng hours....

[fagbearentertainment]

Hey does anybody know where to safely pirate dr2 and v3? I rly wanna revisit them but like. I’m not paying $50 for this 😭😭😭

[selfship-nyx]

4, 5, and 7 for gundham tanaka! for the meta ask game :3

Thank you sm for the ask!! I love getting to participate in these :3

4. who was your first favorite character when you initially got into your f/o’s source content? was it your f/o from the very beginning?

Kazuichi I think! My partner can attest to the fact that because I’m bad with names, about 20 minutes into starting the game I was going “where’s the hot mechanic. Where is he.” And honestly it took a really long time for me to warm up to gundham but he’s just so damn cute of course I ended up with him as an f/o

5. if your f/o is from a series, were you into the source content from the start or did you come in later? if you came in later, what was the most recent release when you got into it?

Ohh yeah I got into danganronpa wayy later than it’s peak popularity, I think I started watching my partner play the first game in like 2020

7. are there any specific scenes/chapters/moments of your f/o that you find yourself going back to revisit more often than any other?

I don’t think so, but admittedly gundham hasn’t been super on my mind lately so there might be if I was having a dr2 moment (but even then, there’s so much less content of him than like, Nagito, who is also an f/o of mine)

[aparticularbandit]

I have fortunately lucked out on not having to write Monokuma Theaters yet (the Technical Memory titles is my fun little reference to them because they fill that same niche in OAEI), but.

I may need to revisit them if/when I get further into the DR2 Ryoko + despair!Chiaki rewrite.

...and may need them for WYHT, although I don't know if Monokuma is part of that or not. Monaca's got a couple of Monokuma servants with her at all times. One of them could get reprogrammed. Hm.

there's a monokuma theater in the first game that, like, i'm thinking about very clearly.

(and like. there's so much in the monokuma theaters. like even just now, going back through them to find the one i'm looking for, like. junko and is your fate defined the moment you're born? is your ending as final as your beginning? and the entire conversation on lil as a prefix (-waves at the warriors of hope-) and the entire conversation about being a copy-paste character (-waves at hajime-) and If murder is evidence of abnormality, then all of history's greatest heroes must have been abnormal because all of history's greatest heroes have also been murderers and Sometimes the murders people forgive are far more abnormal than the ones they don't! like there's. there's so much, y'all. there's so much, and it's validating for me, but that's beside the point.)

the one i was thinking about. and really encapsulates how i'm writing her in the trilogy.

is the one about regret.

As long as you're human, there will always come a point where you wish you could do things differently.

Every human has regrets, has things they'd like to go back and change.

But I don't! Cuz I'm a bear.

like.

i think i've probably meta-ed about that bit before, but like.

i write junko with regret because i write ryoko with regret. and taking that in combination with the discussion on fate - which, like, junko's the ultimate analyst, so If all your yesterdays pile up to create your tomorrow... / Is your future as final as your past? / I just don't know.

there is such a wobbling there of. i had to do this. i regret doing this. maybe i didn't have to do this. that i don't think is necessarily canon but. but you see it, right?

ugh the monokuma theaters are a gold mine.

[tobiasdrake]

I need to take a moment to talk about the single grossest plot point in Danganronpa 2.

What's really interesting about the Remnants dissecting Junko's body and grafting her parts onto themselves (SO FUCKING GROSS) is that.

Like.

This sort of behavior implies that for the Remnants, it wasn't really about the ideology. If it was solely about thinking Despair is neato, they wouldn't need to do this. They wouldn't want to do this. It's so unnecessary.

This sort of behavior implies that Ultimate Despair was a cult of personality around Junko Enoshima herself. That they weren't acting out because they believed in her message as much as they just wanted the validation of Junko's approval. She was their messiah figure, until she became their martyr. And then they did some weird fucking shit with her martyrdom.

Historically, this is fairly common for charismatic monsters. Wherever a charismatic leader exists, it's not uncommon for there to be a mixture between True Believers, Personality Cultists, and ambitious grifters trying to ride the leader's coattails by offering a watered down version of the same.

And based on their actions, it would seem like the Remnants of Despair fall firmly into that middle category. The only reason they would dissect her body and graft her parts onto themselves is to be closer to their martyr. That is strictly the behavior of a Personality Cultist.

They were just here for Junko. They were addicted to the way she made them feel about themselves and the world around them. Which was despairful, but it wasn't the despair itself they were after.

Though Izuru Kamukura himself, who did not participate in the grafting, does give me the vibe of a True Believer instead. Someone who has genuinely bought into Junko's ideology, rather than being overly concerned with Junko herself. Even going so far as to accept effectively deleting himself from existence with Neo World for the sake of infecting the Hope Restoration Project with Junko's despair.

...and if you think about it, you can kinda put Tsumugi in the grifter category. Huh.

[thewildwilds]

It's about time for an Addams Family redux!

Happy Halloween!

[chisatowo]

You know, sometimes I think wow Im kind of harsh towards Shuichi huh? But then I actually try watching a scene from v3 and go oh no wait that's right he deserves it.

[flawedhxpe]

I Want To Be Confident || Hajime Hinata

      ooc: Hajime--- may come off as a strong person--- but he’s far from the perfect human being. 

   Stemming back from high school insecurities and not being the person he wanted to be... self-esteem is not his strong suit. He can be critical of other people but is the harshest on himself due to not having a talent to call his own. Wanting to be a person that was confident in themself, the passion he held for Hope’s Peak and what it stood for only brought more negative attention to him. 

   Hajime was by no means a special snowflake--- bland in every sense of the word but students that would point out those insecurities affected him greatly. It would start small like pointing out his normalities but escalate into fights where others like him weren’t accepted however he was blessed to attend. He never once felt he was blessed to attend the way he did and was soon sectioned off in his school until his transfer. 

     He was alone and more so when attending Hope’s Peak. 

   Having past experience with people betraying his trust, Hajime didn’t put a lot of faith or trust in the Reserve Course Students that were deemed his “classmates”. He kept to himself--- rarely talked and didn’t participate in events (if the student body gave them a chance to). Hajime fell into a routine and a ditch of depression that probably led up to his choice of signing his life away to the Kamukura Project. Though he didn’t know exactly what would happen to him during the project, Hajime, at that point, didn’t care one way or another what happened to him--- as long as he got that confidence to become the person other people saw him as. 

[hajihiko]

heya! i’ve been following ur blog for a little while now, and i just wanna first say how pretty it is!! <333 (i especially love the way u draw kazuichi and sonia but that’s because i’m biased lol-)

anyway, i wanted to ask u, what r ur thoughts on the dr1 survivors?? i personally really love them, it seems kinda like how much u seem to really like the dr2 survivors :)

double anyway, i hope you have a great day!!! :D

Hi sorry this is super old but thank you!

It's been a while since I revisited ca on DR1 stuff but:

(Warning! Some disproving opinions)

Makoto: precious, reminds me of Sora, cant help but love him, very much would not survive without a little help from his friends (this is a compliment think it's a huge part of his character). Like him more after the anime. Hajimes little-big brother.

Kyoko: never been a huge fan of Reserved Fancy Clever girl type, but I think she won me over a bit more in the anime? Like, im glad she lived.... but I think her death would have been very in-character and character building at the same time.

Aoi: my fuckingfhfh GIRL I love her I'm biased as fuck. Did she ever use her talent much? No. Did she like, do a whole lot? I dont think so. But do I adore her?? Yeah I do. Wlw girl and also her "oooh!!" offended soundbyte is so cute also she was ready to take everyone down for the girl she loved that is so peak wlw shes Got It. Didnt she hit Byakuya?? Go girl.

Yasuhiro: stupid idiot man that I nonetheless enjoy. His design is the best of the survivors (not from any standpoint but my own as I simply really like the way he looks, clothes n all), fun shapes, gives good idea of character) . Most fun/gimmicky talent that was underutilised. Someone give him the connection he craves and like a hamburger

Toko: Not a huge fan tbh. Voice acting was rly good but she makes me uncomfortable (this is a me thing, I'm just super not comfy with any master-servant sexy thing).

Syo: More fun but most of what I remember from watching the playthrough is 'that's not how DID works.....' I think Syo and Toko both get way more development in that other game tho this is just what I remember. Also never been a fan of the whole, serial killer thing, it's not cool to me I dont like it.

Byakuya: apparently he got redeemed a little but I only remember fuckinggggg hating his character lmao. Again this was a few years ago and I was much less invested than I am now! But, rich tall asshole boy who just kinda snidely says things?? noooooo taste my blade.