All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!
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Main installments:
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
- Do you understand that having hope is good and having despair is bad yet? If you don't, the game will be sure to spell it out for you dozens of times. During the last trial, the Big Bad even spells out the theme of each chapter in excruciating detail, just to get it across to the idiots in the back row.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
- "Bullying is bad."
- A running theme about the pasts of the new cast is how badly being bullied has messed them up or those around them.
- Hiyoko, the resident bully is A) a victim of bullying herself by her family which caused her father to go mad and B) ends up going through a major case of Break the Haughty due to Losing her Morality Pet, being framed for the death of said dear friend, and then ends up being killed by her favorite victim before she has a chance to atone in any way (for seeing said victim commit murder, not as revenge for Hiyoko's actions).
- The "video game" motive is about how Fuyuhiko's sister was killed because of how she bullied her peers.
- All these victims of bullying fell into despair and subsequently destroyed the world. Although, Danganronpa 3 reveals that the reason how they fell into despair was a different one.
- "Believing that some people are just born superior is bad, as is trying to make an Übermensch."
- Hajime's entire transformation into Izuru is the result of him wanting to be "talented", making himself a test subject just out of self-hate.
- Nagito's madness comes from his complete idolization of the concept of talent and the natural superiority of the talented over the talentless.
- Talent is shown as a box which traps those who have it as well, making them unable to do anything else but that with their lives.
- The attempt by Hope's Peak to use mad science to create a superior human who has all the talents instead created an apathetic demigod who allowed the world to end on what was essentially a bet with Junko because having all the talents was as boring as just having her Analyst talent and he wasn't sure if Hope or Despair would be less boring. He could have saved billions of lives with minimal effort, but he just didn't care.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School
- While it's been a Central Theme since the second game, the anime really, really hammers in how damaging a mindset overemphasizing talent creates:
- It starts as early as the first episode of Side:Despair (which, for reference, is the second episode in viewing order), where Nanami delivers to Hajime a speech basically unpacking one of the basic problems with the mindset: that all talent does is restrict one's life.
- In Side:Despair Episode 2, both Tengan and Yukizome tell Hajime to not devalue himself over his lack of talent.
- The entire Twilight Syndrome incident is revealed to have been caused by a combination of Natsumi's severe inferiority complex surrounding herself and her brother along with Sato's obsession with keeping her best friend's position afloat.
- Despite having a genuinely loving relationship with Nanami, Hajime has such a severe complex that he turns his own feelings into a reason to become Kamukura, feeling that he can't stand with her without talent.
- Andou's severe Inferiority Superiority Complex and Hero Worship towards her best friend Kimura is what ultimately destroyed their friendship. Also, she completely took the ideals of talent from Hope's Peak: there was nothing she could offer to the world but her talent, so when Kimura wouldn't eat her sweets, she took it as if there was nothing she could offer to her.
- Mitarai was relentlessly bullied as a child and found solace in anime. Despite getting in to Hope's Peak as an Animator, it's shown that animating has consumed his life to the point that he has to rely on his Only Friend to not starve to death.
- The Ultimate Impostor has nothing but his talent. He only exists by stealing identities, and outside of this talent, he does not have family, name, place or his own identity.
- Junko Enoshima's real talent is Awesomeness by Analysis taken to its horrifying conclusion. With it, she's capable of recognizing every single option and taking the most advantageous one... only this leaves her so bored with life she clings to despair because it's the only thing that can still interest her. Danganronpa Zero itself confirms that, when she's reset to a state prior to her familiarity with her talent, she's an eccentric but benign girl.
- Mukuro's talent as the Ultimate Soldier means the only thing she's ever good for is fighting and killing, which is partly why she latches onto Junko, who gives her a purpose, even when Junko constantly insults her and makes regular and blatant attempts on her life.
- Sakakura's talent as Boxer is shown to be basically what fills much of his issues. Despite constantly attempting to do good, he constantly fails due to his short temper and belief that violence can solve his problems.
- Izuru has nothing but talent, and as a result is completely miserable, bored, and alone. His talent makes his life so tedious he wants anything that could liven it up, which causes him to passively observe chaos when he's perfectly capable of stopping it.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
- Chapter 3 can come off as almost aggressively atheistic. The chapter's major conflicts are based on religion and the occult, with Monokuma handing out the most supernatural motive for the killing games to date. The one actively religious character, Angie, is a manipulative, if perhaps well-meaning extremist who forms an increasingly despotic cult among some of the students, while the staunchly atheistic characters like Tenko and Kaito are depicted as heroes. After Angie's death, none of the former cult members can continue to believe in her god. To top it off, the chapter's murderer is the mythology and folklore-focused Korekiyo, a man who is a Serial Killer because his spiritual beliefs (and mental instability that is portrayed as being closely connected to them) allow him to feel justified in committing murder.
- The reveal that the killing game is taking place in a popular reality TV show is a pretty obvious commentary on how fanatical fanbases can be. Shuichi explicitly criticizes the fact that people's perverse obsession with fiction can be taken to such life-ruining degrees and points out that entertainment at the expense of people's lives is wrong. The game then has you go through an Argument Armament sequence where you literally argue against the toxic demands of an entitled audience, including many of them accusing Shuichi of being overly preachy. Unsurprisingly, despite the game itself lampshading it, this hasn't stopped the fanbase from being any more split over this particular element of the game.
