Headscratchers / Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

Danganronpa Main Headscratchers Page
Main installments: Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc | Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair | Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School | Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Spin-offs: Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

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Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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• How did Makoto and the Future Foundation round up the Remnants of Despair and place them into a simulation? After all, these are 15 dangerous criminals who would definitely kill anyone on-sight.
• In chapter 4, Monokuma keeps everyone in the funhouse against their will, and starves them, potentially until they're dead. Doesn't that count of as murder? Monokuma literally says in chapter 2 that anything other than dying of illness is considered murder, and when they were keeping Nagito chained up the other characters were concerned about him dying of starvation and that counting as murder. But the rules directly state that Monokuma can't do that, which in other moments forced Monokuma stop people dying in case it violated said rule. For some reason the game never brings this up or addresses it.
  • It's possible that Monokuma was bluffing; they were never actually in danger of dying because the whole thing takes place in a simulation, but none of them know that. He was banking on at least one of them getting desparate enough to kill before they realized that they weren't actually dying. In real life, it's possible to survive for at least a week or two without eating, as long as you have access to water, so he could've let them stew in their misery for quite a while before any of them caught on.
• If Monomi was never working for Monokuma then why does she conviently defeat a Monobeast everytime a class trial ends? I thought I had her figured out from the start. How do you create the most despair? By creating lots of hope first. And thus Monomi's role was to connect the other students to create hope for Monokuma to later dash to pieces. But then we come to the end of the game and it turns out she really was on your side and fighting against Monokuma from the start, but just didn't have the power to stop him. So if she was stronger than the Monobeasts why doesn't she defeat them earlier? And if she was weaker then how does she defeat them? More to the point, why does she randomly decide that after a class trial is the best time to fight them every time? It just seemed very convenient and more "proof" she was cooperating with Monokuma.
  • The same reason why a lot of Danganronpa's more dumb plot points happen: its part of the joke. The series routinely uses selfaware handwaves or outright meta dismissal of how stupid a lot of the plot points and happenstances are. It's just thow Danganronpa is, it's the series doing it's usual thing. The weird thing about this point in particular though is that for some reason they had Monomi present in the class trials, even though it would've been conveniant to use this as the excuse for why she defeats a Monobeast during each one, while the students are safe underground.
• So is there a reason for the Suspiciously Similar Substitute between the casts of the first two games? Kazuichi immediately reminded me of Leon in general appearance. Chiaki is the silver/gray haired girl who plays the smart role like Kyoko. Akane looks like an older version of Aoi with an ultimate talent having to do with sports. (Imposter) Byakuya is, well, Byakuya, but Fuyuhiko fills his role better as the jerkass guy who's part of a big organization that looks down on the rest of the crew before his character development. Nagito is a lucky ulimate like Makoto and also gave off an older version vibe in the beginning before his true colors come to light. Nekomaru is like Mondo, in that they both seem like gangsters with a heart of gold, while Fuyuhiko fits the sailor mouth portion of Mondo's personality. Mikan is a lot like Toko's regular personality, and while it's ultimate fake Peko fills in the role of the "alternate personality" of Genocice Jack when she claims she's really the serial killer Sparkling Justice. Basically every character is an Expy of someone from the first game, whether it be in appearance or personality. Until I got to the end I thought it was something deliberate, but Junko or anyone else doesn't mention anything about it, so is it just a coincidence?
  • In-universe it’s difficult to think of an explanation, because unlike V3, there isn’t any evidence of the mastermind messing with people’s personalities and such. But Junko did say that her goal was to make the survivors of THH watch a killing game similar to their own, because she wants them to turn up to try and stop her and thus fall into despair, yada yada. It’s possible that she chose the motives and given information carefully in order to encourage similar murder setups as in THH. Not much explanation for the character parallels that isn’t meta though — apart from that it’s possible Hope’s Peak purposely tries to get a mix of types of people in their classes each year (there’s always a sport talent, a music talent, some kind of other creativity [writing and photography]) anyway.
• So toward the end it is mentioned that people used various parts of Junko's body for various reasons, like one person transplanting Junko's eye into their head or Nagito attaching her hand to his own arm. But that shouldn't be possible at all. If her body was flattened during the Detention part of the execution, how was any part of her that salvageable?
  • It's possible they were too caught up in their obsession to CARE whether the parts were actually salvageable or not. Nagito mentions he can't actually MOVE his left hand...
  • I would think that the reason he couldn't move it was because the surgery to attach it wasn't done properly. Most likely, he actually cut off his own hand and just stitched hers onto the stump. Going by how crazy the Despair students are said to be, it wouldn't be surprising if they took her body parts and mutilated themselves to attach them without any medical help, because that just gives them more despair and shows how far off the rocker they are. And even if that's not the case, it still doesn't explain how there were parts of Junko still around when her body should have been pulverized to a pulp- literally. The Detention execution didn't dismember her, it squashed her! And going by how big the block was and how she was positioned, there should be nothing left of her that isn't flattened, let alone perfectly intact like her hand or eye. Of course, this is Dangan Ronpa so there probably is no reasonable explanation for how or why.
  • It's probably Mukuro's.
    • Even in that case, while her hand was salvageable, her eye probably was not. Of course, that might make it even MORE despair inducing.
    • Can't be Mukuro's. Nagito's "Junko Arm" has real long, red fingernails. Mukuro's were fake. And since Nagito says the arm is completely infunctional, wouldn't that also mean that the nails would no longer grow, even if it was attached to a living body? And even so, I doubt Nagito is the type to paint the nails red as a memento to Enoshima.
  • What are the chances that the corpse they used wasn't actually Junko's corpse? Is it possible that since they couldn't retrieve her body, they simply imposed her image onto an anonymous body, just so they can get some sort of satisfaction? There's nothing in-game to imply this, but it makes the most sense given the circumstances of both Junko and Mukuro's bodies.
  • Considering that Junko laughed off being pummeled with baseballs, forces strong enough to somehow turn a super tough guy into butter, being crushed under a firetruck, being repeatedly struck by a backhoe at jackhammer speeds, and being launched into and crashing from orbit right before that, it could be that her body was still relatively intact even despite all the blood that sprayed around after that last weight hit her.
  • It's also extremely possible (likely, even) that the punishments in the first game took a lot of artistic liberties as to what was ACTUALLY happening. Particularly with Junko's execution, it almost breaks suspension of disbelief to assume that she actually went through all the previous executions. Then it's also not too much of a stretch to assume that the final death by crushing was also an exaggeration, and the way that she (and perhaps, ALL of the victims) died was actually a lot less spectacular. Sure, it's fun in a horrifying way to take the executions at face value, but everyone's blood isn't pink, either. The executions are over the top on purpose for stylistic effect, and the only ones from the first game that are realistically plausible are Leon's and Makoto/Kyoko's. This doesn't really explain that she WASN'T crushed to death, but the fact that her corpse was interacted with in any meaningful way after her death would lead one to assume that the specific details of her death weren't exactly canon. It's a lot easier to believe that her death didn't play out EXACTLY as depicted than to try and explain the rest of the stuff taking the execution scene as gospel.
  • In truth, it's more likely than not that the executions are real. In Side:Despair, it's shown Junko was able to create hyper advanced and hard to engineer executions (such as Chiaki's) even before sinking the whole world into despair, which more than likely made things easier for her (what with having a mass of brainwashed followers to help her and what not). The executions really do happen, and they're not even close to the most unrealistic things in the series.
    • Which is pretty much confirmed in Ultra Despair Girls, where it's revealed Junko could have access to Towa Group's technology through Monaca. Towa City itself aside, all the technology dedicated to Ultimate Despair is testament to everything she had at her fingertips. Especially the brainwashing helmets, the ridiculous amount of Monokuma units made for the explicit purpose of murder, and even the custom units whose only apparent purpose was to hold Junko's AI so she could manipulate both the Warriors of Hope and the Resistance into annihilating each other. There is no particular reason why the executions we see would not be accurate representations of what happened.
  • Mikan's just a REALLY good nurse.
• Gundam's execution isn't an ironic death at all — it's exactly the kind of romantic death he claims he wants just before going to the execution. Why did Monokuma choose to do that instead of twisting the knife at the last moment like he usually does?
  • It's ironic because he's trampled by animals. On top of that, the magical circle he draws to protect himself does a grand total of jack shit — much like how all his posturing and grand declarations amounted to nothing. And the being lifted off to heaven by angel animals, assuming Monokuma's responsible for staging that part, mocks the Dark Overlord image he's built around himself.
    • Monokuma didn't seem to have control over the magic circle. That's ironic from a literary perspective, but not from an in-universe one. And while being carried off to Heaven may have subverted the dark overlord thing, the "lifted up to the skies to be immortalized in the stars" is the kind of thing he seemed to want in his pre-execution spiel. The whole thing is just very romantic and fantastical in tone, but seems absent of mockery like, say, Celes' was. Maybe the irony is supposed to be subtler than normal and I'm just not seeing it, I don't know.
    • No, he didn't. Gundam did. That's part of the irony — Gundam's using the powers he bragged so much about to try and protect himself... and they fail. Not because Monokuma interfered with them at all — they just flat didn't work.
    • This execution is clearly ironic in-universe since Monokuma is using animals to kill the ultimate animal breeder. Nothing subtle about the irony of turning one's talent against them by having them murdered by the most obvious aspect of said talent. If that isn't "ironic" enough then the execution is also about how Gundam's true talent (or true self if you prefer) renders all aspects of his "Evil overlord" routine pointless since being killed by animals (mostly accidents) is a very common cause of death for people who work with them a lot (i.e. an otherwise ordinary death for an individual who puts so much effort in being special), just like the point of Celes' execution.
  • The way it's seen, seeing that this was designed by Monokuma, the heavens part would probably also part of Monokuma's plan... probably as a homage of Dragon Ball Z: Gundam declared that he'll be waiting to see the students in Hell. Not only Monokuma dashed that desire, sending him to Heaven goes against his Dark Overlord persona, much like sending Darbura into Heaven instead Hell, so probably Monokuma was thinking to take away Gundam's overlord persona by 'converting' him into a peaceful dude by sending him to Heaven so he'd be more unrecognizable if the students went to afterlife.
  • Monokuma tried to make it ironic, but underestimated Gundam's personality, for whom this execution was not filled with despair, but actually allowed him to Face Death with Dignity and indulge in his delusions one last time, the most spectacular way possible and without risk of being called out.
    • I second this. The irony of the execution is straightforward: Gundham is trampled to death by wild animals. But unlike Celeste, Teruteru, and Mikan he never drops the act. He places his pets out of harm's way, casts a spell he knows doesn't do anything, and faces inevitability with dignity knowing his death has freed his friends. He's fully comfortable with and confident in the persona he has created for himself, and thus can't be denigrated by Monokuma's execution.
• In the second trial, why does Peko do that spiel about how the students should let her go free because she's Sparkling Justice and needs to do justice etc. if she wanted to get pinned as the culprit? If the students did as she asked, they most likely would have voted for Fuyuhiko instead (since he was the most suspicious next to her), which would have utterly ruined her plan.
  • That's all about staying in-character and convincing them she's really Sparkling Justice. She doesn't really expect them to listen to her; she's just playing her role to the hilt. Making it look good.
  • Beyond that, she needed to give them a motive for her actions to make sense (and she couldn't give her real one because that would risk that they'd conclude that Fuyuhiko was the real killer.) No sane person would believe that they'd actually let her off for the sake of justice, but by presenting herself as a delusional serial killer, she could "confess" to a motive while pretending to believe they'd listen, without having it seem weird that she would incriminate herself like that.
• In chapter 2, why did Peko choose such an absurd story for her alibi? People in the Let's Play thread were speculating that it couldn't possibly be her, because who in the world would make their alibi for murder "I went looking for the other islands and they just weren't there"? It's too unbelievable — it would place her under suspicion immediately. Why didn't she just say she went for a swim instead of also making up a story about nonexistent islands?
  • Because she wants to be caught. Getting the others to suspect and finger her for the murder is all part of her larger gambit to save Fuyuhiko. But offering no alibi whatsoever would look too suspicious, so instead she gives one that the others might accept on its face... until Fridge Logic kicks in and they look at it a little harder.
  • Althernatively, Peko's alibi was just that she had been swimming for a while, to explain why she was wet, as the class trial emphasises. The "—for three hours, to find other islands" part was just meant to be a bit of off-handed humour on the game's part.
• In the final trial, when Makoto, Kyouko and Byakuya enter the virtual reality, shouldn't their memories of being in the virtual reality have been erased when the forced shutdown commenced? They say so themselves that in the event of a forced shutdown, any memories they obtain within the virtual reality will be erased when they are brought back to the real world.
  • Perhaps this is proof that this wasn't true after all - for them or for the others.
  • Might be due to admin privileges. They didn't lose any of their memories going in; perhaps the "all memories acquired in the virtual reality" only applies to ones that are going to overwrite memories obtained in the real world (i.e. maybe the island memories for SHSL Despair are stored as data before being imprinted into the mind, but Makoto and co.'s memories aren't being affected by the program at all; the only thing the program does is create the world for them to experience). Also, we know that everything that was going on was being broadcasted to the outside world by Monokuma, so the Future Foundation agents on the outside probably recorded it and showed it to Makoto and co. after they got out.
• A crapload of things in chapter 3.
  • Mikan had to have taken the camera from the hospital to the club. If that's the case, then how did Fuyuhiko not notice that she had it on her?
    • She probably broke it at the hospital and then hid it in her apron pocket or under her clothes, then ran behind Fuyuhiko.
    • On a related note, why is Mikan able to break the cameras and leave them on the ground without suffering repercussions for littering?
    • The broken camera is most likely considered evidence by that point.
    • The precise boundaries of the "littering" rule are never made clear, but what is clear is that (despite his protests to the contrary) Monokuma is very selective when it comes to punishing minor rule violations, only doing so when it would make things more interesting. Otherwise, he would have summarily executed the entire class during Chapter 4 when none of them made it to Tai Chi.
    • It's also mentioned that the rule against littering is to protect nature, so I guess littering is fine inside, Owari would have built up quite a few citations should the rule have been enforced inside, as can be seen from the state of her room.
    • By the time Mikan met up with Fuyuhiko the camera was already at the club smashed to bits. The order of events are, 1. Making the video, 2. Taking the camera to the club, 3. Smashing it, 4. Meeting with Fuyuhiko.
    • Hard to see how Mikan had time to A. Clean up everything after the faked feed, B. Run to the club, C. Break the camera and do everything else she needed to do there, D. Run back to the club, E. Explain the situation to Fuyuhiko, and F. Fake-explore her half of the island looking for Ibuki so as to end up meeting with Hajime at the same time and place as Fuyuhiko, all in the time between faking the feed and meeting with Hajime. Also, even if this was the case, the game did a poor job of explaining it, as it very much makes it seem as though Mikan went off to the club after talking with Fuyuhiko.
    • She could simply have doubled back to the hospital to retrieve the camera during the "fake-search", which is also when I assume Mikan messed with the music venue. As long as they lost sight of each other somewhat near the hospital, this would have added almost no time at all to the time required for Mikan to do what she needed to.
  • If you look closely at the scene when Hajime first discovers Ibuki's dead body, you'll notice that the wiped bloodstain isn't there. But we later learn that it should be; it had been there since Hiyoko had died, which was long before Hajime first found Ibuki.
    • Even during the investigation you can’t see the bloodstain from that angle. You have to move Hajime to the stage, and even then Hajime can’t notice it on his own, you can’t select it until Chiaki points it out to you.
    • It is hard to see, but comparing the two wide shots of the club on Hajime's two visits does allow you to see a slight difference in the coloration of one part of the stage near where Hiyoko is. There's no reason for this discrepancy; even if you shouldn't be able to see the stain from that angle, then that should be true for both visits, not just the first.
  • Were they going to explain the reason why Ibuki's slippers had blood on them, yet didn't leave bloody footprints? Because they bring up the point that it's strange that she didn't leave any footprints despite there being blood on her slippers, yet they never give an explanation how that could be!
    • There are two options here. Option 1: Ibuki left footprints, but they were part of the little "bloody smear" that Mikan attempted but failed to clean up. Option 2: The last and second-to-last steps that Ibuki ever took were also her first two steps onto Hiyoko's blood, and came immediately before Mikan resumed strangling her.
    • This is practically WMG, but it answers your questions, so I put it here. That whole part with the blood stained shoes make more sense if you think about the murders in a different light. This theory will answer your fourth, seventh and eighth questions too. The scene of the crime makes more sense if Hiyoko arrives before Mikan and Ibuki do. Hiyoko goes to the storage room and fixes her kimono. This takes a while; it would have been hard, and probably dark. Meanwhile, Ibuki is obediently sitting down while Mikan strangles her. The plan is to strangle her and leave her there, with as little evidence and risk as possible, no fake hanging. Then Hiyoko exits. She sees Mikan and Ibuki on the stage, and goes up to yell at them to go back to the hospital. Her kimono was done herself, so it was tied in the front. Mikan sees her, panics, and cuts her throat with little hesitation. That’s why the bloodstain is on the stage, close to the storage room. When her throat is slit, blood splashes. It splatters on Ibuki’s slippers, since she was lying down, dead. (If she was stepping in it, not only would there be footprints, but also more blood on the slippers.) Now Mikan has two bodies. So she gets the idea to cover them up as copycat murders, and turn up the heat to obscure the time of death. That’s what makes the most sense. It could be that this is what happens, but the trial doesn't uncover the whole truth. There's a lot left unsaid.
    • I find it unlikely that this is what was intended, as the way the murder is portrayed is very different from your explanation. More concretely, I find it very unlikely that Hiyoko's blood would have splattered only onto Ibuki's slipper soles; at the very least, it should've also gone onto part of her legs. Additionally, there was a lot of preparation needed in order for her to pull off the copycat murders, particularly Ibuki's, mostly in order to fake the feed. I find it a little hard to believe that she not only came up with it on the spur of the moment but also had the time to procure all the necessary items, even if she had several hours to do so between killing both of them and waking up Hajime. Oh, and if she never intended to make Ibuki's death look like a hanging, then she wouldn't have had a ladder out when she killed them. In that case, how did Hiyoko's blood end up on the ladder?
    • There was blood on Ibuki's soles and the side of the stepladder, but there were no bloody footprints on the stepladder. This is because Hiyoko was killed first (splattering the ladder and the floor which Ibuki presumably stepped in), and then Ibuki was strangled and hoisted up onto the lighting rail. She didn't hang herself - and so she never actually walked up the stepladder, hence why there are no footprints.
  • If Hiyoko went to the club because she couldn't put on her clothes properly, then why was she fully dressed when on the pillar? Yeah, her clothes were in disarray, but they were on! Her obi was clearly tied, just not in the right place. Did Mikan take care to, not only clothe her, but do it improperly?
    • Hiyoko's clothes were on before she was killed, she just couldn't tie her obi properly. It's possible that her obi simply dangling around, and thus Hiyoko's clothes falling off, made it difficult to tape her to the pillar. So Mikan had to do a quick fix with the obi. Not to mention, Obi's are actually really difficult to put on since there are specific ways that you need to tie it. And unless you are familiarized with how traditional kimonos work, there's no way you can put it on without the entire attire falling apart. So it makes sense that when Mikan was setting Hiyoko's body up on the pillar that she would tie the obi wrong- how would someone like her know how to do it right?
    • Note that Hiyoko's obi is knotted in front. It looked like she was in the middle of tying the obi in front of her and planning to twist the knot around to her back afterwards and Mikan walked in on her.
    • Hiyoko's robes were very likely tied at the front as an intentional posthumous insult by Mikan. Even if Hiyoko didn't know how to tie it properly it's highly unlikely she would have intentionally tied her obi at the front herself. Doing so was the traditional way in which Japanese courtesans tied their obis, with the intent that clients could more easily untie them and undress them. Mikan - the target of so much bullying at Hiyoko's hands, and who remembers even more having reverted to her despair persona - is adding insult to injury by not only killing Hiyoko. She's calling her a whore.
  • How was Sonia able to get into Hiyoko's room before Hajime, when Hajime had the only key? The door was locked; did Hiyoko forget to lock her door, but was careful to hide the key deep in her clothes, and then Sonia go into her room later and lock the door while she was inside?
    • The only time Sonia was in Hiyoko’s room, Hiyoko was also there, and she had the key.
    • When Hajime first entered Hiyoko's room (during the investigation), Sonia was already inside. She even said, "Oh, it's you, Hajime." I don't see how that's possible.
    • This may be incorrect, but I remember it coming up that the motel keys were all the same. While this doesn't necessarily make sense from a "why would they be that way in the first place" standpoint, it doesn't break anything in the trial or the crime, since the only time the key is relevant is to settle the matter of how the door was LOCKED. Since it's never important how the door gets unlocked, all the keys being the same doesn't cause any problems. The one possible point, the theory that "the killer locked the door after abducting Hyoko", WOULD be possible if the keys were all the same, but since Mikan didn't have her own key, it's not really applicable anyway.
    • It's also possible that Sonia wasn't actually already inside, and just appears that way due to the game engine making it seem that way. She could have seen someone enter Hyoko's room, and followed in behind, at that point realizing that it was Hajime.
    • That it's a simulation, and not actual keys is probably enough to explain why they would all be the same.
  • How did Mikan cut off the video feed? She was on the ladder, reaching for the noose when Hajime suddenly couldn't see anything anymore. It's heavily implied that the candle did go out, and that the camera was destroyed once she got to the club, but either way, how was she able to ensure that Hajime's screen would go dark the instant she wanted it to?
    • There are plenty of ways to do that. The easiest way is that instead of using a candle for candle light, she used an oil lighter with a small string attached, so that when Mikan pulled on the string, the oil lighter tipped over, going out. Those things were likely available at the supermarket. They probably just didn't think it important enough to talk about.
  • Why would Mikan strangle Ibuki instead of just hanging her? It's implied (or, at least, the only explanation is) that, after strangling her, Mikan put the noose around Ibuki's neck, lowered the lighting rig, attached the other end of the rope to the rig, and then raised the rig back up again. But she could have easily just skipped the strangling part and hung her; then, the most decisive piece of evidence against her, the rope, wouldn't have proven anything, and she wouldn't have had to lie about Ibuki's cause of death!
    • The technical reason is that hanging a person takes longer than just out right strangling them. It can take about 10-20 minutes for a hanging victim to be completely dead, while strangling can kill someone in less than 5 minutes. There is also an emotional reason, the same reason why Junko puts so much effort into driving the students into killing each other instead of going for more direct methods. For the feeling of despair and the satisfaction it brings. Mikan's memories of being part of Ultimate Despair returned to her, and with them her desire for despair and twister love for Junko. So while she could have gone for a method that would hide the least evidence, she instead went with the one that would make her and Junko the happiest.
  • Mikan's original plan was to emulate the movie by having her victim be hanged. But, why? There's no reason why she would do a copycat murder if her original plan only called for one victim. Fortunately for her, a second one came along, and she was able to confuse the order of events, but why emulate the movie if it's just going to end up clearing the most immediately suspicious person (Hajime) as a suspect? Yeah, she might have assumed that everyone had seen the film, but all the same, there was no purpose to doing a copycat murder if it wouldn't have caused confusion in the case of there only being one victim, as she had planned!
    • Mikan doesn't explicitly say that she intended for the murder to be a copycat crime (most likely just doing it so they couldn't tell whether Ibuki had been murdered or committed suicide), and Chiaki concludes at one point that the culprit just happened to skillfully make the unplanned second killing part of the plan.
    • Alternatively, it could have originally been a simple case of inspiration, rather than imitation—Mikan simply got the idea of hanging someone from the movie, and built her murder plot around that inspiration once she reverted to her Despair self.
  • Why was Nekomaru excused from participating in the Class Trial? That was a blatant violation of the rules, regardless of his condition. The rules, which Monokuma holds as sacred, stated that attendance was mandatory, and it doesn't mention that those who aren't physically up to it are excused (unless you're dead, of course). Heck, they were able to meet the fully-functional Mechamaru immediately after the trial was over, so it's hard to see how he could have been fine after the trial, but not before. And even if he only did become functional during the trial, why didn't Monokuma just wait an extra hour before starting the trial? Now, obviously, it wouldn't have been near as dramatic to have had Nekomaru show up right before the trial, since we would have had to just ignore the fact that he's a robot while figuring out the murder, but all the same, it doesn't make any sense why Monokuma would excuse him from participating.
    • This is possibly because having someone in the trial who couldn't be accounted for at any point during the murder would have overly complicated things, and since he didn't see or do anything during this time, he can't contribute anything (although Akane does point out that she's more or less useless, since not only is she not very bright, but the Despair Fever incapacitated her).
    • Going by a weird outburst from Monokuma during the trial, it looked like Nekomaru was either monitoring the trial from a video feed or piggy-backing inside Monokuma at the time.
    • I honestly thought the outburst from Monokuma mentioned above was simply him fucking with everyone by pretending to be Nekomaru.
  • Nagito, unlike normal, was 100% against the culprit this time. The reason he gives is that these murders were done purely to create despair and not in the hope of getting out. But how did he know that? He wouldn't have any way of knowing what was going on through the culprit's head; there's no reason to assume that the culprit would have done anything different had they been acting out of hope rather than despair.
    • Nagito actually says that he suspected the culprit had gotten the Despair Fever.
      Nagito: I kept an eye on Mikan the whole time. Since she started nursing us. My consciousness did go back and forth, but the few times when I did see her expression... Despair that had lost its last pinch of hope... it was that kind of expression.
      Hajime: W, wait up...Mikan caught the despair disease?
  • If Hajime ran as fast as he could from the hospital to the club, then almost immediately left the club and ran to the motel, how did Mikan have time to do everything she did? Not only that, but the Climax Logic segment implies that she was hiding out behind the club when Hajime left for the motel. Even if she left immediately after Hajime, she still would have needed to get behind the building without him noticing, and he was only inside for... 15 seconds before heading for the motel? And, once again, that assumes that she sprinted to the club immediately after Hajime did; before she could've left, she needed to hide everything she used to fake the feed (ladder, rope, candle, hospital gown), meet up with and explain the situation to Fuyuhiko, then get to the club. The only conclusion I can come up with is that the Climax Logic segment was wrong and Mikan was still running to the club when Hajime left, but even then, it's hard to see how she had time. And that's not even going into how long it would have taken Fuyuhiko to get to the hospital from the first island, considering that he left after the morning announcement, when Hajime was already sprinting to the club, and he was walking. The timing of this incident makes no sense whatsoever!
    • Actually, the timing makes perfect sense. It may seem fast because it’s a game and the sense of scale is messed up, but Hajime says that he’s gone for ten minutes. This is probably broken down as 2 minutes to get to the hotel, 3 minutes to talk to everyone, 2 minutes to get back to the Music Venue and 3 minutes to meet up with Mikan and Fuyuhiko to start breaking down the door. Mikan probably got to the club around the 2 minute mark, since she could have been wearing the gown over her regular clothing, and the other stuff isn’t hard to get rid of quickly. Then two minutes to take off the wallpaper quickly, place a broken drumstick and glue the door. Then she just starts to act innocent and panicky until Fuyuhiko shows up. Then Hajime and Chiaki show up.
    • It still doesn't make sense to me because Fuyuhiko explicitly says he was searching several areas around the Third Island with Mikan before they ran into Hajime and Chiaki. They mentioned that they had time to at least search around Electric Ave. before all four of them rendezvoused. There's no way Mikan had time to sneakily tail Hajime out of the hospital, alter the music venue as Hajime was running to the motel and conversing with Gundam and Chiaki, then meet up with Fuyuhiko AND spend time searching the area for Ibuki. I just don't understand how it was possible for her to pull it all off.
    • Fuyuhiko specifically states that he and Mikan split up to search for Ibuki. We can extrapolate from the text and the "Fuyuhiko's Account" Truth Bullet that Fuyuhiko believed that he and Mikan were each searching exactly one location (the movie theater and Electric Ave). However, Mikan had no reason to actually BE searching her assigned location. Mikan could have easily spent this time retrieving the camera and tampering with the music venue, as all of her actions at the music venue were specifically set up so as to take very little time (no more time than doing a cursory search for Ibuki might). As for the Climax Logic panel indicating that Mikan was hiding in wait as Hajime left the music venue, I agree than said panel is implausible for mulitiple reasons, and chalk it up as a mistake.
• In chapter 6, a Makoto made by Junko to trick the students into picking "Graduation", appeared. The way to expose the Makoto as a fake is to ask him what the meaning of the password, 11037, means, which Fake!Makoto didn't know the answer to. However, he should know as he is controlled by Junko, who has seen Sayaka's trial and should know why Makoto chose the password, not to mention the fact that they spent time together pre-Despair Incident, so basically Junko knew Makoto for 2+ years, and still doesn't know why Makoto picked 11037 as his password.
  • Possibly due to Evil Cannot Comprehend Good, as Junko perhaps knows about the number, but didn't know that Makoto accepted Kyoko's theory that Sayaka wrote it to save him; from what he says, he doesn't seem fully convinced. Alternatively, somehow, the AI Junko doesn't have that memory. It should also be pointed out that the five remaining students are already suspicious of Fake!Makoto, since he had just told them they couldn't defy the Future Foundation in spite of the fact that the real Makoto disobeyed orders and got an angry e-mail from his superiors.
  • Didn't the Junko AI imply say that she was made as a backup just in case the real Junko's plan went wrong? That implies that she was made before the events of the first Dangan Ronpa, and thus would only have known about the events secondhand.
  • Didn't Monokuma say that Hajime reminded him of "him" (presumably meaning Makoto) at one point? That doesn't sound like something someone who never met Makoto firsthand would say.
  • Just because AI Junko was made before the killing game, doesn't mean she wouldn't have Junko's memories of Makoto during the two years that preceded it. (And Monokuma was talking about Nagito)
  • Junko's the ultimate analyst, but she doesn't have a photographic memory. That password was a minor plot point from the very first trial, years ago. To Makoto it's of deep emotional importance, but Junko might have complete forgotten it.
• During Chapter 4, when everybody was starving, did nobody bring up that Mechamaru had drink dispensers in the place of his tear ducts?
  • Because A) There had to be a limited amount of both the soda and tea, B) This limited amount would then need to be split amongst the 7 of them which may have lead to infighting, C) They needed to split up and this may have also lead to arguing about which side he should go with and put Nekomaru in a very awkward situation and most importantly D) It would not have helped their situation regardless, since this is about starvation, not dehydration. Soda and tea do not have the nutrients or amounts needed to have done these kids any good in the long run, just like the small amount of sunflower seeds (which is why no one complained about Gundam using them to feed his hamsters) or the Dark Lords of Destruction themselves (which is why no one other than Kazuichi brought it up).
  • To refine point D above, we can presume that Nekomaru's fountain features are why they were worried about dying of starvation instead of thirst, since death by starvation takes far longer than death by thirst.
  • I assumed they got water from the bathroom sinks.
• If Gundam wanted to kill someone to give everyone a fighting chance and eat again, why did he pick Nekomaru and not the far more dangerous and willing Nagito?
  • Because unlike Nagito, Nekomaru had a fighting spirit and a strong will to never give up and never surrender. If Gundam was going to go down as either a murderer or a victim, why would he settle for someone who is not only ill-minded but most likely wouldn't even take what he's doing seriously (Nagito), when he instead could battle someone who would not only put as much effort into the challenge as he would, but also understand his motivations (Nekomaru.)
  • There's also the fact that he points out that he could reset the alarm clocks, and thus lure out Nekomaru by himself, because of the always correct clock inside Nekomaru.
  • Nagito was slowly just becoming seen as a nuisance, up until he realized that everyone was the Ultimate Despair, and then started acting more hostile towards everyone.
    • I always thought Gundham picked Nekomaru because he knew that Nekomaru would agree to it, and because Nekomaru was a robot. Robots can't die of starvation, after all, so if everybody had died from lack of food, it would have just left Nekomaru alone, knowing that all his friends died a slow, painful death and he didn't do anything about it.
    • Robots might not be able to die of starvation, but Nekomaru mentions that he's similarly getting weaker because he left his charger in his cottage and is (paraphrased) "in a similar position".
  • There's also the meta-reason that Nagito is needed to advance the plot later on.
  • There's also Nagito's Ultimate Good Luck, which might interfere to keep Nagito alive even if Nagito's okay with it. Better to choose someone who you know is fighting on even level with you.
• Something that the series has constantly stated is that peoples feelings for a person survive even the loss of their memories, something that Danganronpa Zero was practically about. Despite this, absolutely no one bar Nagito reacts if you give them a portrait of Junko. Not even Mikan, who is all but stated to have been in love with her reacts. What.
  • This can be explained due to the characters not having lost their memories, but are simply avatars created from specific memories from the Ultimate Despair members. The point of the New World Program was to take the memories of what they had before they entered Hope's Peak and add new memories to replace the old ones that they had. Due to their memories of Ultimate Despair having never been given to their avatars, they would have no feelings for when they see Junko Enoshima.
  • That isn't actually how the New World Program works. The students aren't avatars, their the actual students, whose brains are connected to program. After all, everything points to the lost memories being an updated version of Matsuda's research that was used on the students from the first game. If they were avatars, then that would create a lot of holes, such as why Nagito still acts like he is suffering dementia and how Mikan and nearly Akane can recover their memories like how Hifumi did in the first game when he was dying.
  • Nagito still showed signs of his dementia because he was diagnosed before he attended Hope's Peak Academy, since he said it and his being accepted balanced each other out. Even if Nagito is a simulation only using data from the first day his state of mind can be explained by that or because his subconscious awareness of his condition is making it appear in avatar!Nagito. Mikan's memories only resurfaced due to the program itself, since obviously despair fever is a construct of AI Junko's, at which point it could simply be the Junko unloading data from Mikan's complete memories to corrupt Avatar!Mikan. After that point any recovered memories could still be the result of the memories being forcefully uploaded into the avatars instead of recalling them naturally like Hifumi did. Also not only was it explicitly stated that everyone was based on when they first arrived with goes with the first suggested theory more than the second (and Hiyoko's appearance in game vs. her real body proves this to be true) but there is very little chance of anyone improving or updating Matsuda's technique as he has been dead for at least 4 years, had no back-ups or understudies, and the work itself was likely lost in the destruction of the world.
  • From the top...
    • 1. Brain conditions do not work that way. Dementia couldn't be replicated, after all, it is the physical rotting of the brain. There is no way it could be replicated, not to the smallest details. Subconscious uploading doesn't work if the damage is physical.
    • 2. Monokuma did not do that. Actually it's actually impossible for him to do that. It is an important plot point that AI!Junko/Monokuma has the same restrictions that Usami had when she was in control, hence why she has to let Hajime and Chiaki into Nagito's cottage in Chapter 5, despite clearly not wanting to. Her being able to do something like that would suggest a much greater level of control, and the only thing despair fever is indicated to do is make the victims act nothing like how their supposed to.
    • 3. Going off the previous point, the idea that the other memories were forcefully uploaded is full of crap. Reread the scene in Chapter 5 where Akane tries to kill Nagito. The explicit implication was that Akane's rage nearly caused her to revert until Chiaki, who has even less control over the program than Junko, calmed her down. This is a lot like how Ryouko nearly regained her memories multiple times when she was put under pressure.
    • 4. Actually, there is a way they could have Matsuda's research. The infodump on the New World Program mentions the Ultimate Neurologist as one of the people who contributed to the project. Just because he was dead doesn't mean that they wouldn't have it on file.
  • Sorry but I still object:
    • 1. Okay you make a sound point with Nagito unless they only had enough of his info to fill in some of the blanks, and the fact that yes Nagito's brain is very damaged while making said Avatar is why it is still present but if they are only the actual students without any avatar or programming related help then have could Gundam have his hamsters with him? If he was an avatar having the hamsters be semi-dependent AI based around him and his avatar's actions would work but if it wasn't there is no way for these dead pets to be here and their presence would not have been a priority for all the excess work involved. The fact they vanish after his death means they can't just be like Chiaki or Usami, and being like them would make no sense.
    • 2. No this theory is not "Full of crap". Adding dangerous elements to the program is exactly what AI Junko/Monokuma can do and does do on a very regular basis, since Usami's rules are very flexible as the re-establishment of the mutual killing proves. Those weapons could not be there in this safe, ideal, school field trip simulation otherwise. If adding dangerous elements were not possible then there could be no executions, no easy access to weapons of any kind, and no way of inputting the information about their past selves. Comatose kids who are living in a simulation can't get physical illnesses from their pods (Especially not ones that can spread from kid to kid) so it must be Monokuma's handiwork on their in-game selves, making this an entirely data-based issue. If he can mess with their data to get them "sick" and has all this information at his disposal then why can't he do this? Getting them "Sick" by corrupting their data is not causing them damage directly as per the rule: "The supervising teacher will not interfere directly with student activities, unless any rules are broken." Just like how making the "student activities" the "game of mutual killing" and "Being trapped in the fun-house until a student kills another" were also valid actions Monokuma could take.
    • 3. I did re-read that section and I can safely say that you are using the word "explicit" wrong and explicit implication is an obvious oxymoron since implication means the information is implied, or hinted at, and explicit means it is clearly stated. No, it didn't seem like despair Akane was coming back, that was normal Akane going berserk which is very much in line with how she has always been when the lives of her friends or herself is in danger ("I will avenge Fuyuhiko" Even though he was not dead and nearly got them killed before comes to mind, and why she nearly got Nekomaru killed by attacking Monokuma). There was no Despair in Akane's actions only her Rage. The only one there that showed any signs of a despair obsession was Nagito, and while Akane's attack and Ryouko's had parallels they were not the same because Chiaki could snap her out of it.
    • 4. Then why would the kids from the previous game want to use something they have seen fail in such a high risk situation? Alter Ego is on their side, so him making avatar's would be easier, safer, and have a higher chance of succeeding (And allow Chiaki to blend in better since she is also an avatar) while Matsuda's would not only risk backfiring, if another Hifumi situation came up, but instead of overwriting the memories like they want the Ultimate Despair kids could have the bad memories returned to them at a later point like what happened with the survivors. Matsuda's help being mentioned does not mean it was based on that pet-project of his (which is what the makers knew most fans would assume after DR0), but in the ''many'' other brain-based aspects in this program.
    • tl;dr: Risk vs. Reward says Avatar's are the best plan overall and more likely than simple brain uploading with partial memory erasure. Also the point made about appearances was never addressed in your counter-points, which is very important in why they have to be avatars since if it was just their brains with minimal editing the would not view themselves like this enough to appear this way.
  • Actually here is the relevant quotes from the last trial with the information in question bolded:
  MONOKUMA: This world was created by a Future Foundation program called the “New World Program” …
  MONOKUMA: It acts directly on the user’s brain to create a virtual world.
  MONOKUMA: So your bodies currently exist in the “real world” as well.
  MONOKUMA: Of course … just like you’re in a dream, your mind is completely occupied with this game world.
  MONOKUMA: To put it simply, you’re … uh, what I’m saying is … no, not aviators …
  KAZUICHI: You mean “avatar”? The thing that represents you inside a game …
  HAJIME: But … we’re not just avatars, are we?
  MONOKUMA: Avatars who have been rebuilt after removing “something” from the real bodies … that’s what you lot are.
  FUYUHIKO: After r-removing … what?
  Removing “something” … of course … it must mean this.
  - our times with our families
  - our Super High School Level talents
  - our memories of our school lives
  - our memories of our lives before school
  HAJIME: That’s it!
  HAJIME: What got removed … was “our memories of our school lives,” right?
  KAZUICHI: S-so … We’re avatars made using just our memories from before we started school?
  SONIA: And that is why we have no memories of our experiences at Hope’s Peak Academy…?
  • So yes making digital avatars for all the students with absolutely no memories of their time at Hope's Peak, and thus none of their memories of being or becoming Ultimate Despair, is exactly and explicitly how this program worked. This process means none of the "Phantom memories" that people with Matsuda's technique often experienced are possible since the memories in question are not suppressed as they are non-existent in this state.
    • Wait, their memories are "not suppressed as they are non-existent"? Then how did Hajime have that vision of Nagito during the last trial? Wouldn't that imply a suppressed memory is resurfacing?
    • The whole scene about the vision feels very orchestrated. Hajime suddenly has that exact image flash for a moment, then fake!Makoto instantly asserts that he just remembered something, and in the next debate he brings up a topic related to that image. Take this along with the fact that what constitutes "directly interfering" was established to be a gray area with the despair disease, and it's highly plausible that Junko (who has everyone's data) recreated the memory and induced a vision.
• During Chapter Three, the reason for Mikan's murders is that she regained her memories due to the Despair Fever. However, if Monokuma had that power, why not simply do it to everyone so they could exit the program loyal to Junko?
  • The most simple explanation would most likely be that Monokuma wasn't aware that the Despair Fever would bring up that side effect. That, and Junko is so enamored with despair and causing it that even if there was a simpler solution to her scheme, she would rather choose the plan that would give her the most satisfaction.
  • On top of that, there's the likelihood that Monokuma has no control over what symptoms you get; he can infect them as many times as he wants, but would just be hoping that they'd get the same symptoms. The Despair Fever might also only give a particular person a single symptom (i.e. Akane would be a crybaby on repeated infections without fail), meaning that he wouldn't be able to do it no matter how many times he tried.
  • It should also be noted that AI Junko is trying to get revenge on Makoto, Byakuya, and Kyoko, and if they all gained the Remembering Disease, it's possible that they would have prevented the Graduation sequence from happening by disabling the machine.
• In chapter 4, why was Nekomaru's corpse in such a nasty state when an earlier scene shows that he can withstand a bazooka blast without a single scratch? I can understand how his head and limbs got detached since it's possible that these parts aren't as strong as the rest of his body, but why was his near-indestructible torso battered so badly from a simple fall?
  • It seems as though Monokuma's bazooka is weaker than a regular one; Nekomaru may be a mass of muscle, but that wouldn't prevent him from being torn limb from limb by a military-grade explosive launcher, so the mere fact that he survived the blast would imply that. Also, Monkomua's bazooka appears to be more energy based, which could possibly cause far more damage to flesh than to metal.
  • Think of it this way from what we've seen of Nekomaru's human body after it was shot by Monokuma, it looked like it severely burned him rather than, you know, actually tore him apart like an actual bazooka would. As the troper above pointed out, something like that wouldn't even scratch a strong enough metal surface. And the fall killed Nekomaru instead because he was both suspended from a great height and upside down. Unless he was made of the strongest metal possible, a fall like that can provide enough force to do damage to his robot body. And the fact that he was upside down meant that his head would make contact with the pillar first, and his head is the most vital part.
    • In short, the only things we have to gauge Mechamaru's durability are the bazooka and the fall. The bazooka, due to it being energy-based, is of indeterminate strength (might be calibrated to damage flesh but do piss-all to metal). Mechamaru may have been far more fragile than we were led to believe.
• So Byakuya isn't actually Byakuya but instead the Ultimate Impostor. If he's the Ultimate Impostor, why is his Byakuya disguise so weak? His personality is an almost complete 180 from 1. And no, he didn't meet Byakuya during the killing game in 1 but how likely is it that losing his memories made Byakuya turn into such an uptight condescending snob?
  • It's possible that the Ultimate Impostor wanted people to recognize him and see him as the good person he actually is, which is why he took advantage of the respect and power that came with becoming Byakuya. When you have the potential to become a leader and to be acknowledged as a great person, why waste it on being the Ultimate Jerk to everyone?
  • He seems to have some idea of how the real Byakuya acts, as he does occasionally throw around slightly condescending remarks about "commoners," although he doesn't imitate the real Byakuya's callousness and separation from the group.
  • This goes into WMG territory, but it could be that this was the Impostor insulting or "getting back" at Byakuya. Some fans like to think that the Impostor was one of Byakuya's fourteen estranged half-siblings who failed to earn the title of heir to the Togami empire, and were then exiled. Would make sense that such a person might turn to impersonating other people, and what better way to insult the person who brought you this low than to believably imitate them, but make slight alterations to appearance and personality to appear contrary and even silly at times? I doubt Byakuya was very amused by the Impostor while the Future Foundation was watching the events being broadcasted to them. Probably became the butt of a few jokes courtesy of Kyoko.
  • The game mentions that he's such a good impostor that he doesn't need to be overly physically similar to his target, and mentally is probably the same way. He can act mostly however he wants, as long as he throws in a few insults to those he sees below him, and people will think he's Byakuya.
  • None of the characters have ever met Byakuya before, so he doesn't need to trick them. He stays in-character because he doesn't have a personality of his own, but still tries to be heroic and a leader for the sake of survival.
  • Also, it's pretty obvious that losing his memories did make Byakuya more of a douchebag. They were all friends at Hope's Peak, enough so that Genocide Jack could sit in class and nobody cared, and he would actually spend time having fun with his friends. We also see at the end and especially in Danganronpa 3 that Byakuya does develop trust and respect for Makoto and Kyoko, and even acts more like the imposter as a leader in Future Foundation. So it's quite likely that the real Byakuya, when he has actually bonded with people, is closer to the imposter.
  • Keep in mind that he's the Ultimate Imposter, not the Ultimate Impersonator. This is an important distinction as his talent isn't to come up with convincing disguises but to make people believe he is someone else. He relies on people not knowing the real person and therefore only needs to be disguised well enough to fit some of the features the general public might be aware of (in this case: glasses, mid-long blonde hair, expensive suits, resting bitch face), and it's not like Byakuya seems particularly famous anyway. Either way, most of the work comes from acting with enough gusto that people don't see any reason to disbelieve you. If you look at famous stories involving impostors, they often have only a passing resemblance with the person they claimed to be, if that. But because they announced their identity with confidence and acted like they belonged where they were, nobody questioned it. Hell, in many cases, they didn't even impersonate anybody, they just spoke and acted boldly enough that people thought they'd be the weird ones for questioning what they were doing.
• In chapter 3, Chiaki digs around in the junk at the electronics store, saying she's pretty much desperate for something to hook up to her T.V. and play a game on. Why does she say this? If you go into her cottage at any time, even from the very first time you can do a free time event with her, she has many game consoles just lying there, in plain sight, hooked up to her T.V.
  • Probably the same reason you can give away an entire supermarket's worth of food gifts while doing Free Time events during chapter 4 and still have everyone be hungry, Gameplay and Story Segregation.
  • In Chapter 5 she complains that the box of Monokuma CD's you find weren't game discs. It's possible she just likes the aesthetic of her room being littered with consoles yet doesn't have anything to actually play on them.
  • If Chiaki is the Ultimate Gamer, it would stand to reason she is also a collector of various consoles, handhelds and video games. She was likely digging through the junk on the off chance someone dumped a game system she didn't have in her room.
• Why exactly did Nagito join Ultimate Despair in the first place, if, even in Chapter 0, before he lost his memories, he calls Junko his enemy and attached her arm to himself out of hatred for her? And why did people like Nekomaru, Ibuki and Sonia, relatively kindhearted people with no apparent reason to lose hope, join Ultimate Despair?
  • The reasons are never stated outright for any of the characters, sans Izuru, so it's really hard to give a definite answer. Most likely Nagito became part of the Ultimate Despair because Junko twisted his love for Hope into a need to give himself more Despair, or broke him enough that he could no longer tell the difference. And what if after Junko's death, he and the rest of the Ultimate Despair realized how much Junko screwed up their lives and the entire world? It was all her manipulating that turned them into these supposed monsters, after all, and if it wasn't for her and whatever she had to do to get them to join, they would have turned out fine. Or maybe hatred is the Ultimate Despair's own twisted version of adoration.
  • In the case of why Nekomaru, Ibuki, and Sonia eventually joined, I have no good answer for Nekomaru but I think I have one for Ibuki and Sonia.
    • Ibuki said she left her former group due to creative differences, and tried to go solo. This choice may not have ended well for her in reality, and she ended up becoming extremely lonely because she not only lost her fans, but she also lost her bandmates. Her sense of loneliness is also hinted in her Free Time Events.
    • This interpretation has received a fan-animation
    • Possibly, she also fell into despair because everyone around her did (Hiyoko, Mahiru, Mikan). Not to go with the flow, but because it was very depressing.
    • For Sonia, she is a foreign exchange student and a high-class one with a rather decent, albeit outdated, grasp of the Japanese language and culture. It's very possible that she was a target of slander by her fellow classmates due to being very different and beautiful. Add all that in with the pressure of having to be the Ultimate Princess for both the school and her country, and the trauma that being a princess has brought her (such as being kidnapped twice) and you can probably see why she would start having a break down.
    • For Nekomaru, maybe he couldn't handle the pressure of managing the sports teams at Hope's Peak? Apparently what makes Nekomaru the Ultimate Team Manager is that he can take even the worst sports team and make them into champions. But you can't do that at Hope's Peak because every player on the team are Ultimates, they're already champions. So they don't necessarily need Nekomaru's training and encouraging. So maybe over time, he realized that his skills are actually worthless to the school, and that's when Junko came into the picture.
    • This one seems unlikely, due to Nekomaru's interactions with Akane. Just because the school is bursting with Ultimate Athletes doesn't mean they have nothing to work on. Sure, he might only be able to incrementally help them develop their primary talent, but some might just be coasting along on talent alone and unwilling to work (like Akane), or they might not be a team player. Nekomaru's there to develop them socially and ethically just as much as physically, so he was likely very useful at the school.
    • For Nagito, his justification for becoming an Ultimate Despair in Chapter 0 was that he was trying to cause enough suffering that the Ultimate Hope would come about in response, though it was implied that he may have fallen in love with Junko without realizing it, much to his apparent horror when Izuru Kamukura pointed it out to him. Also his brain had been rotting for years by that point and his life expectancy should have run out around the middle of his freshman year, so there's those too.
    • Turns out, the answer is brainwashing. Junko forcibly made them love despair like her using Ryota's anime.
• Sorry for the big chunk of text but this troper is really confused about Komaeda and might have missed the obvious. My overall question is how much exactly did Nagito know in Chapter 1, and post-4/5? He said he didn't know who the traitor was but, according to the wikia and possibly Chapter 6, he found out the whole history of the Ultimate Despair that everyone is from. Then Chiaki's information shouldn't really be in it, since she was never existed before then. Someone also mentioned elsewhere (Youtube to be specific) that Nagito knew the traitor was at least a girl because he said "Traitor-san" and he uses "-san" for girls (though this is lost in the English localization). Even if Monokuma placed fake information in the reward for FDR, at the beginning of the game, Nagito said he researched everyone before coming here (which is probably why Nagito knew Monokuma placed a fake profile). Then he should have noticed that Chiaki wasn't an actual student and that Hajime is a reserve student. This was evident since when he introduces Chiaki and even Hajime, he doesn't give the extra information about them like he did for the rest of the students. So my questions are:
  • 1. Did Nagito really not know who the traitor was and if so, why?
  • 2. Did Nagito know if Hajime was a reserve course student from the start?
  • 3. If he knew the traitor was Chiaki, why didn't it set up the card reader to deactivate with Chiaki's card? What was the whole point of the card reader thing if he was just planning to kill himself?
  • 4. Why did we go this far to weed out the traitor if he knows who she is? For the last question, it was mentioned in the game he wanted to kill everyone except the traitor which that brings to another question:
  • 5. If he knew everyone except her was Ultimate Despair, then he should know or at least figure out that that the reason why they're are here is to recover, especially since they were not acting anything like their despair selves. So why kill them? Not giving them a chance feels completely towards despair, not hope, which goes against his principles (and ironically, helping the person he hates the most, who he should know at this point).
    • Just going to leave this here... Chiaki WAS in the same class as Ultimate Despair. The Despair Arc of the Danganronpa 3 anime proves it. The card isn't faked...
• 1.With the clues Nagito had, and his obvious intelligence, he could have figured out who the traitor was. If his thought process was “the traitor is likely Hajime or Chiaki, since they weren’t mentioned on the website, and the journal explicitly mentions helping Hajime, so it’s likely to be Chiaki”, or even that the student profiles held a clue of who the traitor was, then he could figure it out. However, he still would have killed Chiaki the same way. He wanted the students to vote for him committing suicide, and barring that, he especially had to make sure no one found out it was Chiaki who killed him. Otherwise, they would vote for her. So he committed his crime in a way that it would rely on his luck, so the inadvertent killer will leave no evidence. So he might have known, but it wouldn’t change his actions.
  • 2.No. This is proven in Chapter 4. In Chapter 4, we see Nagito’s thoughts, meaning he can’t lie. In them he wonders what Hajime’s talent is. Nagito always had a gut feeling though. In Chapter 1, he claims that Hajime and himself give off the same “talentless aura”.

  • 3.Reasons for the card reader. One, it helped provide Chiaki with a solid “alibi” of sorts. Chiaki knew the bombs were fake so she didn’t hesitate to be the first one to put her card on it. This gave the others a feeling of “if Chiaki were the traitor she wouldn’t have done that”. The second reason was to buy time for Nagito to torture himself. The third reason is to keep them in the room with the bombs instead of running for cover. If they ran for cover from the bombs, they wouldn’t have seen the message. If they didn’t see the message, they wouldn’t have gone to the storeroom. If they hadn’t gone to the storeroom, then Nagito could have bled to death before Chiaki killed him, which would make everything for nothing.

  • 4.Firstly, even if he thought Chiaki was the traitor, there’a always the possibility he’s wrong. Nagito trusted his luck far more than his own reasoning. This was a failsafe. Secondly, he did it for the aforementioned reason of preventing the worst-case scenario of someone finding out about the plan. Lastly, he went so far in order to make his own death look more planned out. The original plan was to make it look like someone else tortured him to death, just so that they would reason there was more to it and find about the “suicide”. He knew they expected a plan under the plan (So he made a plan under the plan under the plan. Planception!).

  • 5.(You asked a question that has a very long answer, but here’s the summarized version.) Nagito considers certain people “worthless”; people without talent, and people with a worthless talent. (Ex; Hajime is in the first category, Nagito is in the second.) Those who are “worthless” must become stepping stones for those who have “worth” (ie; talent) so that person can reach the Ultimate Hope. The other students used to have “worth”, because of their talents. However, when he found out they were Ultimate Despair, they became part of the second category. When he realized they were “worthless”, they had to become stepping stones for the only person left with hope. The traitor. Nagito, just like he doesn't believe he can be saved from his worthlessness, doesn't think the others can either.
  • As for the Junko thing, Nagito likely believes her to be dead. Some think that he is referencing her in his dying message, but it’s more likely he’s referring to Makoto. He uses similar terminology to refer to both the person who’s watching them and to the person who wrote 11037. Both times he uses “to someone” in highlighted yellow. Nagito knew nothing of the Junko AI plan, so he likely didn't take it into account.
  • Nagito referring to the traitor as "Traitor-san" doesn't exactly mean he knew they were female. -san is a general honorific that is used when one doesn't know a person well enough. It's also a gender neutral honorific to begin with. Nagito is most likely using Japanese etiquette.
• So, there's something that's been bugging me for a while about the Ultimate Despair, or more specifically about the 77th batch at Hope's Peak, why? Well correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't somewhere in the first game mentions something about each batch of Ultimate students being of 16? Which is kind of plot point about the missing 16th student? If that's the case then, not counting Chiaki and Hajime for obvious reasons, aren't there 2 missing students from the 77th batch? I'll take a shot and guess that Satou from the Twilight Syndrome Murder was one of them but that still lefts one missing student. I haven't read the novels so I don't know if maybe Matsuda was one of them too, or any other character in the books so there's that. Any theories or answers on this one?
  • There are only three confirmed students part of the 77th batch. Dangan Ronpa Zero says explicitly that Matsuda and Kamishiro are part of it, and the Makoto short story confirms that Nagito was the Ultimate Lucky Student that came before Makoto, making him part of the 77th batch as well. I personally think not all of the Super Dangan Ronpa 2 students are part of the same class, but come from both the 76th and 77th batches (I say only these two because Hope's Peak lasts three years, and the Ultimate Despair had to be in contact with Junko Enoshima, who joined with the 78th batch that we all know). For example, Fuyuhiko and Peko have to be from the 76th batch, because Fuyuhiko's younger sister was studying in Hope's Peak at the same time they were and it wouldn't make sense for the three of them to be in the same class considering there had to be at least a year of difference. That'd mean Fuyuhiko's sister was from the 77th batch, probably alongside Ibuki, Mahiru, Mikan, Hiyoko and Satou. I don't think there's more clues that can help us place the other students, though.
  • Actually there is. In the Twilight Syndrome photo Mikan and Hiyoko have different neck ties, which in Japan can indicate the student's year. This means Mikan would likely have been in the 76th, not 77th like Hiyoko as Hiyoko is still in her pre-growth spurt state implying she is a year younger.
  • Promotional materials for the Danganronpa 3 anime has confirmed that all of the SDR2 cast were from the 77th class.
  • The anime revealed that the other students are the real Chiaki Nanami that the AI took the form of, and Ryota Mitarai, the Ultimate Animator.
• At the end of chapter 3, was the Nekomaru that returns as a robot the real Nekomaru? Or had he died/been killed and it was Junko pretending to be him?
  • It really was Nekomaru, altered by Monokuma through the use of some dubious medical skills. Even though everything was a simulation, Nekomaru's injuries were too severe to be realistically healed, so Monokuma had to take some drastic measures to patch him up. Junko didn't have anything to gain from taking over the avatars in the game anyway; her real goal was to hijack the students' physical bodies.
    • Adding to this, unlike the first game where Junko could play fast and loose with the rules (e.g. staging Mukuro's body as a fresh kill to set a trap), DR2 makes a point of the fact that she can't violate Usami's rules, only add her own ones on top. So if it wasn't the real Nekomaru, there could be no class trial and no execution for the killer. Safe to say it's him.
• So there's a big thing that's been bugging me for a very long time about how Chapter 4 progresses. During the period time in which the player controls Nagito, we see him clear the Final Dead Room, reach the Octagon, and receive his prizes for doing so from Monokuma. One of those prizes is the register for the Hope's Peak Students, and this information is what leads Nagito to learn that the students are all members of Ultimate Despair. So here's a question: why the hell didn't Gundham do anything with this information? He cleared the Final Dead Room before Nagito; by all accounts, he should've gotten the same information but even earlier. Even after the trial is over and he's slated to be executed, he says absolutely nothing about it. Really? I understand he's eccentric, but information this critical probably would've worn on him at least a little, don't you think?
  • Because Gundam only won the right to use the Octagon. Monokuma said the files were a special prize that could only earned by winning against 1/6 odds of survival on the Russian roulette section, which only Nagito was capable of thanks to his natural luck and Death Seeker tendencies as no one else here would be desperate enough to try. Gundam likely played Russian roulette the way it was intended which is why he never saw any of the files and everything about the Ultimate Despair was still there for Nagito to discover.
  • Part of this gets Lost in Translation; in the original Japanese version Gundham explicitly says that he played the Life-Threatening Game with normal odds and thus didn't receive the prizes Nagito did, while the English version doesn't explain this.
  • There's also the fact that this prize was given at Monokuma's discretion. The register would have meant very little to Gundam, but it totally sent Nagito off the deep end. Finding a way to give Nagito that information without it seeming like a blatant attempt at manipulation played to his goals.
• Another question about Nagito. Why is he able to get away with blatantly destroying property (including at least two monitors and cameras) with his initial bomb in the hotel/restaurant? Not a single mention of this damage is made, even though it is a blatant violation of at least two regulations (littering and property damage). This is especially jarring since the "no littering" rule was a huge plot point in trial 2. They even discuss the rules later, but only in the context of Nagito claiming to destroy the entire island (Monokuma states that it is not possible to punish a student for merely THREATENING to destroy property....but he clearly already has inflicted significant damage!)
  • From what I can remember, the rule only states that destruction of the environment is against the rules, not destruction of property. This could be taking things a bit too literal, but in this case "environment" is referring to the nature of the island. Since only the hotel itself was damaged, it doesn't count as damaging the environment. This also doesn't break the "no littering" rule as nothing is being littered. Blowing something up doesn't mean discarding it and throwing it away. The rules being brought up in the conversation is only because Nagito's using a loophole saying that he can't be punished for killing more than two students if he and the others are already dead, so him blowing up the island wouldn't matter if he can't be punished for it. It also seems like Monokuma's rules usurp Monomi's rules, as her first rule states that no violence is allowed which contradicts Monokuma's killing game. So even if Nagito was breaking the littering and damaging the environment rule, Monokuma doesn't care enough to do anything about it. So technically, Nagito didn't break a single rule.
  • You remember incorrectly: the rule is phrased specifically in terms of property, and even more specifically concerning monitors and cameras. However, the possible loophole is that destruction of property is only forbidden if done "without permission". It is possible that Monokuma gave his permission offscreen for the first bombing, which would mean Nagito didn't violate a rule. This could explain other apparent violations of this rule, such as Mikan's destruction of the monitors and cameras in Chapter 3.
• How come in chapter 5, no one brings up the possibility that the traitor could be one of the already dead students? Ok, it turns out not to be the case, but Nagito had no way of knowing that, and it would have explained why they didn't come forward.
  • Monokuma says several times that the traitor is still alive, and even Hajime agrees that Monokuma is usually honest at times like this. While Monomi denies it, she's such a Bad Liar all it does is reinforce their theory that the traitor is alive.
• All of the messages of the dead the player can receive outside the cottages in Chapter 5 generally make sense except for Gundam's. The first bit ("Tremblewithfear!") makes sense sure, but as for "Iwilldie2wiceee", that sounds like it would be much more appropriate for Nekomaru?
  • Maybe it's foreshadowing for a future game?
  • Considering Danganronpa 3 reveals the students got revived from their comatose state, he will indeed die twice: once in the Neo World Program, and when he eventually dies in real life.
• What the HELL was up with Mikan's execution? It made sense at first - her in a hospital bed with Nurse Monokuma coming to impale her - but then it just turned... random!
  • There are some interpretations to that scene. One is that it was crazy because Mikan was crazy. Another is that it was Junko "rewarding" Mikan for her loyalty and sacrifice by responding to her love, with a ride on Junko's big phallus-like object to heaven. With all of the innuendo implied. Or it could be something else entirely. Mikan's execution is one of the more confusing ones.
  • Another interpretation is that its an extended metaphor for a lethal injection. As the Ultimate Nurse, it would make sense for her death to involve something like that. The needle that lit the rocket was injected into the "arm", starting the process. Afterwords, Mikan didn't resist, and also didn't explode on her rocket; instead it vanished into space, leaving her to suffocate in the atmosphere, like how the chemicals in the injection would eventually have consciousness fade away.
• Full disclosure; it's been a long time since I played this so I'm not entirely sure on the details. Why are the killed students put in a coma? It doesn't make sense from either perspective. From the Future Foundation's, it means you're potentially crippling the very people you want to save. From AI Junko's perspective, you're potentially crippling bodies you want to download yourself into.
  • The dead students end up in comas because Your Mind Makes It Real. This wasn't part of the Future Foundation's plan to begin with; the simulation was intended to be completely peaceful and safe. As far as Junko was concerned, a comatose body was just a convenient Empty Shell, and the only thing keeping it from waking up was the lack of a functioning mind/consciousness to control it.
  • For that matter, why do the dead people remain in a coma in the event of both for a shutdown and for a graduation? If the simulation is happening in their physical brains (allowing it to kill them if you accept Your Mind Makes It Real), then a shutdown should result in the living students keeping their memories. If the simulation is just happening to avatars that are copied over their physical brains during graduation (which is what the game implies when it indicates that a shutdown will erase everything that happens), then a shutdown should result in the dead students being fine, since nothing that happened to the "avatar" affects the original unless it's copied over. The game seems to want it both ways - in the case of a shutdown, avatars affect the original if killed (implying that the original actually experiences death as it happens), but not in any other way (because everything else gets erased in a shutdown.) That doesn't make sense.
  • It could be that for some reason, whenever a person dies their memory is reloaded back to their bodies immediately. It might have been a failsafe put into the original program (where it wasn't expected that anyone would die, but there could conceivably have been a bug that deleted an avatar prematurely or something), or it might have been an alteration by Junko so that her plan could work in the first place.
• So, Komaeda points out that the murders in this game echo the murders in the first game by way of: (I think) an unexpected/unintended victim, the involvement of a serial killer, a succession of murders, and sacrifice/suicide... Then, in the last chapter, this is explained to be Junko attempting to attract the attention of DR's survivors. But all of these imitating elements were due to this game's murderers, weren't they? How could Junko have driven this game's murderers to follow the pattern of the last game's murderers? The motive in Chapter 4 lends itself to sacrifice, but how could Junko have made the Chapter 1 killer murder an unexpected person, and made the Chapter 2 killer take the guise of a serial killer, and made the Chapter 3 killer murder two people in a row?
  • She's already something of a Social Expert, and she probably had a very good idea on their insecurities and how they'd act on the circumstances provided (remember, this girl brought about the end of the world purely through manipulation).
  • I thought she was just talking about the fact that it's a similar killing game in general, not the specific details. Those are just for the player's benefit. Komaeda's being a Meta Guy.
  • It's implied very heavily in Danganronpa Zero that her talent is actually the Ultimate Analyst, which she hid by using it to act as the Ultimate Fashionista. She can look at information on a situation, or a person, and accurately predict how it will react to specific stimulus. She already manipulated every member of the group into becoming Ultimate Despair. Doing something as simple as prodding them into murdering along some basic themes would be easy for her.
    • This is supported in Danganronpa 3. When speaking with Kamakura, Enoshima tells him she views life as completely predictable and boring, and that the only thing that has been able to provide her with any sort of "excitement" is despair, since it makes people unpredictable. If what she says is completely accurate, there would only be two murders where she didn't have full control: Tsumiki's double murder due to her Despair Fever making her revert to Ultimate Despair, and Komaeda's murder/suicide due to him relying 100% on luck.
• What the hell is going on in Novoselic to require military strategy classes in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL?!
  • Country name is vaguely Slavic, she mentions castle (read: not East of Europe) and that the country is very small. Most likely a jab at Yugoslav wars.
• Nagito is suffering from a terminal illness and a degenerative brain condition, and he fully expects his condition to kill him. Yet he's in the same school, possibly even the same class, as the Ultimate Neurologist. It also seems likely that there'd be an Ultimate Surgeon/Doctor in the Academy's alumni, if not its current roster, and the Ultimates can supposedly make the impossible happen. Yet you would think that Nagito would have mentioned that even the Academy's best can't save him, if they'd made any attempt to. Did Hope's Peak make any attempt to cure him? Did they not care, given his reputation as a troublemaker with no family and a lower-status talent? Or did they let his diseases run their course to see how far his luck would protect him? Is there anything in the extended universe that explains what was going on with him?
  • Well for one, Komeada's dementia can't be treated. As for his terminal cancer, I've got a few ideas. 1) Hope's Peak did nothing because they're terrible 2) Komeada declined treatment by any Ultimate Doctors because he has a death wish since he wants to escape his luck or 3) Komeada's cancer was treated and it allowed him to survive until the events of the game. Take your pick which one you like the best.
  • In-game Nagito has no memories of being at Hope's Peak. It's possible that he could have received Ultimate-level treatment at Hope's Peak, and just isn't aware of it. Consider his desire to be a "stepping stone": if he believed that allowing the Ultimates to study and treat his conditions would have advanced their talents, he would undoubtably have allowed it, death wish or no death wish. Dementia is a physical condition, so his brain should have severely deteriorated between his entry to Hope's Peak and the start of the simulation, but he doesn't note any sudden cognitive decline. He might not be cured, but he might have been given a few extra years of coherence at the very least.
• One of the regulations (in fact, the first one) states that "Extreme violence is prohibited". It's stated several times that AI Junko and therefore Monokuma is bound to the rules even more so than in the first game. So how can executions be allowed? Surely they all count as "extreme violence".
  • I bet there'll be consequences for people who break the rules so the executions are a punishment for breaking the rules and are therefore allowed in some kind of contradicting way.
• When and why did Chihiro create Chiaki and Usami?
  • In a free time event Chihiro mentioned her "father" liked programming and when he was stuck on a game he made a program to help with it. The implication appears to be that Chiaki was another AI he designed, originally to help with games (hence her interest and Ultimate Gamer designation). As for Usami, we're told Chiaki was involved in the Neo World program's creation, so Usami was presumably designed specifically to act as overseer for test programs and the like.
    • I didn't realize it before I read this, but what if the they are based on Alter Ego, and the game he was 'stuck on' was in fact the killing school life?
  • Maybe they're both just copies of Alter Ego's core programming? We know it can mimic other people, given it did so for Mondo, and they were fortunate that the student they were replacing had excuses for being a bit weird and robotic.
• A Glitch in the Matrix: Dead people appearing, snow falling from a clear sky, stuff floating in mid-air, the walls and ceiling turning transparent and glitchy... And NO ONE NOTICES ANY OF IT! WHY!?!? The only things Hajime notices: doors leading to the wrong rooms, and the hallway turning upside-down. Yeah, and DEAD PEOPLE ARE LITERALLY TALKING TO YOU, but I guess nobody's gonna comment on that. Can anyone explain?
  • When the dead people are appearing, his (and everyone else's, provided the scene didn't just play out in his head) perception has clearly been skewed somehow. They disappear as he comes to his senses, well before they enter the academy. He later explicitly mentions that he's just not going to comment on how everything's glitched out and focus on the task, and when a door breaks conventional logic he just sort of points it out in a "so it can do that too huh" way.
• In the Danganronpa, the blackened was the mastermind of a murderer. When queried about accomplices, Monokuma specifically states, that if someone manipulates or cons someone else into a murder, that person is the blackened as they are the instigator. So how is Nagito not the guilty one? Everything that happened was orchestrated by him, and the "killer" wasnt even aware they were killing someone. By his own rules, Chiaki is an accomplice, and an unknowing one at that.
  • In Danganronpa 1 the rule was that if there were murders with an accomplice, the murderer themself would be executed if found, and if the murderer "graduated" the accomplice would still be executed along with everyone else. Even though it was Komaeda who came up with the plan, it was technically Chiaki that killed him. Accidental murders still count. However, my personal belief is that it really was impossible to find an exact murderer, and the reason Chiaki was executed was because she was the mole with Monomi.
  • I do believe Monokuma could tell who threw what. It was a simulation after all, meaning that Monokuma could literally trace every poison particle.
  • Monokuma likely also had footage of who grabbed which grenade. Though, it's also possible that even if Chiaki wasn't the actual culprit, he would have gone along with it anyway.
• I buy that Chiaki was Nagito's murderer because she was tricked into throwing poison. However, if that's the case why wasn't Nekomaru's death ruled a suicide? Gundham didn't kill him, rather he set a trap where Nekomaru would kill himself by freaking out.
  • It's probably due to the technicality that Nanami picked up and threw the fire extinguisher of her own volition (it was just her own bad luck, or more accurately, Komaeda's good luck, that it happened to contain poison). Nidai, on the other hand, had no part in stringing himself up.
  • Also, because Monokuma finds it more interesting. He'll do whatever is more interesting and will cause more despair so long as he doesn't directly break the rules.
• Did the Remnants of Despair consent to being put into the Neo World Program? Nagito didn't seem aware of what was about to happen in the flashback which suggests not, but if that's the case isn't Makoto massively violating their free will, effectively erasing the person they've become and replacing them with someone with very different values? Remember it's not the original but the avatar, effectively a different person, that decides whether to graduate, meaning the original has no say once the program starts.
  • At least according to Junko, resurrecting her inside the simulation was their plan all along (to the point where the murders that lead to them getting rounded up were all part of the plan.) So presumably, yes, they did consent at some point. Nagito is suffering from dementia and is clearly confused about a large number of things in that flashback, which is part of why Izuru dismisses him - he may not have fully understood what he was agreeing to, or may have forgotten it at some point.
  • Who cares if they consented? At that point in time, they were mentally fucked individuals who have likely murdered countless people. Makoto saw an opportunity to change them back to how they were before then, so he took it. Their consent is irrelevant because they would decline anyway, and continue murdering people.
  • From Makoto's perspective, their free will had already been compromised by Junko's brainwashing; the goal of the program was to revert them back to their natural state, free of Junko's influence. In a strict sense, yes, their free will is being violated if they didn't consent to being mindwiped, but their free will was already violated when Junko turned them into the Remnants of Despair in the first place, so if anything the ultimate goal of the program was to put the choice of whether to follow Junko back into their hands. Also worth noting is the fact that if they weren't put in the Neo World Program, the Future Foundation would've killed them all anyway, so Makoto probably feels that at least giving them a shot at reforming is ethically preferable to immediate execution.

• In both the flashback to her fatal argument with Fuyuhiko and the closing argument(though that is Hajime's imagination) Mahiru is seen with her iconic camera across her waste, when her body was discovered her camera is nowhere to be found until Hajime enters her cottage and its on a desk, s
  • so who moved it, Peko, Fuyuhiko both of who had nowhere to hide it on their bodies and more importantly why, did she take a pic of Fuyuhiko prior to him ruthless trying to kill her or maybe it was out of Peko's remorse due to her past friendship with Mahiru and her admiration for her photos and felt bad for leaving a precious part of Mahiru's life on her blood covered body, regardless the reason is never stated by anyone and highlights 2-2s drawbacks in terms of giving Mahiru and Kuzupeko an equal handling despite her being a far more innocent victim in the case than either of them

• What weapon was used to kill Hiyoko in Chapter 3? The killer didn't expect to kill her, meaning that it would have had to have been something they had on-hand, and they would have had to have disposed of it afterwards without violating the littering rule (which does apply to evidence and makes it hard to dispose of it, as mentioned in Chapter 2.) Even if there's an explanation for all this, why does nobody - at any point, either the investigation or the trial - even discuss this? Usually murder weapons take up a big part of the trial (and the rope was a huge deal); for Hiyoko, they just mention that she was killed with a "sharp object" and it's never mentioned or considered again at any point.
  • It's still strange that the creators completely forgot about it, but in the end it wasn't needed to point out the culprit. Mikan probably just threw the weapon away at one point while she was running from point A to B. Who knows if she was hiding a knife somewhere in case her plan to strangle Ibuki didn't go as planned.
  • After deducing that the murders were committed the previous night several hours before the bodies were found and that the killer had total freedom of movement during that time, presumably everyone (even Kazuichi) realized that the weapon could easily have been cleaned and returned to its original location, meaning that it could have been literally any sharp object on the island (a knife from the kitchen, for example). The game doesn't go into it because it's unnecessary, unsolvable, and (unlike in the previous chapter's Twilight Syndrome case) Monokuma doesn't order the group to figure it out for his own personal reasons.
  • Mikan had access to a hospital. She's got a whole assortment of stain and rust proof cutting tools, and a sterilizer, laundry room, and likely an incinerator as well. Ironically she did a pretty poor job cleaning up evidence, but the actual murder weapon would have been trivially easy to dispose of.

• More generally, why doesn't Chapter 3's Climax Inference segment cover any part of the actual murders? There's a huge number of questions unanswered (eg. the murder weapon used to kill Hiyoko, how the blood actually got onto Ibuki's slippers); what's the point of doing a summary of the case if you're not actually going to touch on the murders themselves?
  • Because the murder was more focused on 'who' instead of 'how', I think. Monokuma didn't force them to figure out HOW the murder took place, and if you just find out who did it in general, does it really matter HOW they did it?

• In Chapter 4, during the investigation after Kazuichi fixes the elevator, the door to Grape Tower is closed, and Hajime has to open it by pressing the button. How is this possible when Akane and Sonia are still inside at the time?

• In chapter 2, Usami says that you're not allowed to change your clothes in the beach house, yet there is a shower there. Now, the shower was out of order, but if it wasn't out of order then were you supposed to go there naked and take a shower? How would that work? Are you allowed to put on different clothes AFTER you shower or...? I'm a little confused.
  • People could use the shower after having swum in the sea. Or to shower before going to swim in the sea. Not naked, but simply with their swimsuits/trunks on.
  • And to clear the sand from the beach, nobody likes sand in their shoes when walking.

• In Chapter 2, when Hajime brings food to Nagito, he mentions Twilight Syndrome Murder Case, and implies that he goaded Mahiru into playing it. But how did Nagito learn of that game's existence in the first place? It seems quite doubtful that any of the students told him, and he had no way of checking for himself due to being tied up.
  • Either Monokuma or Mahiru told him.
  • or Monomi told him.

• During Chapter 1, even if Nagito had been able to retrieve the knife taped to the underside of that table without either Twogami/Ultimate Impostor or Teruteru interfering, who was his planned victim? Even with a weapon, he was still in a pitch-black room due to the blackout.
  • While Nagito may have made out to Teruteru that he was going to commit murder, it is apparent from his gloom at Imposter dying, his longing for death and to be a stepping stone for others, as well as the blasé manner he reveals the entire set-up to Teruteru, that Nagito actually intended to be the first victim. To what extent Teruteru became the first murderer due to luck or Nagito's considerable intelligence (as Teruteru had shown himself to be one of the easiest to rattle and Nagito must have expected him to be hanging around if the party took place) is unclear, but Nagito must have suspected something was going to happen by how Teruteru continued to pretend everything was normal in front of the other students. On top of that, though Nagito would have wanted in this scenario to be proved as the murderer, he still wants to provide a challenge. There would have been no way for Nagito to find someone in the dark and violently stab them to death without getting any blood on himself or his clothes, thus ending the trial within minutes.
  • Nagito being Nagito, he'd probably depend on his luck to bail him out; the plan was probably "stab at someone randomly and avoid getting any blood on me by pure happenstance."
• In the library when Sonia talks about serial killers, Hajime and Sonia seemed to know beforehand from their pre-Hope Peak Academy memories that Genocide Jack is female, and Sonia even knows that Genocide Jack is specifically a middle or high school girl wearing a sailor uniform. How do they know this? Everyone (Aside from possibly Byakuya) in Trigger Happy Havoc were under the impression that Jack was male. It'd be possible for the future foundation to implant memories about Genocide Jack being someone resembling Toko, but that wouldn't serve any purpose whatsoever.
  • Sonia is a serial killer enthusiast. She might have stumbled across some clue or bit of trivia that the first cast (save possibly Byakuya) didn't know, which led to her realizing Jack is female. Hajime I'm more stumped on, but Sonia says Genocide Jack has a reputation on the Internet...maybe he read an In-Universe WMG about her being female?
  • My own theory is this is simply a translation error—maybe the original Japanese used a gender-neutral pronoun but the English translators decided to translate it as "she" without thinking about the internal logic of the situation? Tho that wouldn't explain how they know about the uniform.
    • The original Japanese name for Jack/Jill is Genocider Shou, a gender-neutral name. Moreover, Japanese is known to avoid pronouns whenever possible, so her actual gender is easily obscured in casual conversation. IIRC, at least the Japanese DR1's reveal of Shou was centered around her being specifically Toko, as opposed to a girl (since the Jack/Jill issue doesn't exist). When translating to English, which does have liberal usage of pronouns, it's reasonable to assume the guys just missed that Shou's gender was supposed to be unknown to the public, and used "she" as they themselves knew Shou was a her. The part of Sonia knowing Shou was specifically a sailor fuku-clad girl does come from left field, though, since the only possible time they could have learned that is between Ultra Despair Girls and just before DR2.
• So Island Mode is what happens had AI Junko's virus been deleted by the system and Naegi's plan goes down without a hitch. So far so good, everyone is working on getting along and resocialising. As we all know, our main character can get involved in a number of romantic scenarios. One of which involves Chiaki Nanami, one half of the AI overseers. Now the prize question is: what exactly made the guy responsible for Nanami's ability to respond positively to romantic affection think that's a good idea? I mean, the idea is challenging enough. "Hey, guys, you were the Absolute Despair and the majority of the planet wants you dead," is a tough sell as it is. If you add on "Furthermore, that girl you fell in love with is an AI, the real one died years ago to help brainwash you into despair," it can become outright despair-inducing.
• Why did the Ultimate Impostor not realize something was off? They were disguised as Byakuya because of their role in the Tragedy, but if their last memory was of before Hope's Peak, when they would have had 0 reasons for being Byakuya, then it should have been a red flag.
  • Maybe he was impersonating Byakuya before entering Hope's Peak? He expresses considerable respect for him during his free time events, so he at least knows of Byakuya. He likely switched to Ryota Mitarai after entering Hope's Peak because it would be impossible to impersonate a guy who you have a good chance of being in the same physical location as, and then switched back as an ultimate despair.
  • The Danganronpa 3 anime more or less confirms this theory, with an extra explanation: UI was "Byakuya Togami" when he first entered Hope's Peak, but then he met up with the real Ryota Mitarai struggling with his health and made the deal to impersonate Ryota so Ryota could continue working on his anime and UI could actually attend classes at the same time as the real Byakuya.
• Who is Nagito talking to at the start of Chapter 2? All of his classmates? Or just Nekomaru and Kazuichi as they're tying him up?
  • I guess? Maybe he was monolonging and those two happened to be there. Remember after that speech and tying Nagito up, Nekomaru and Kazuichi were acting very suspecious and cautious around the others with Hajime himself not knowing what was going on with them. So it's safe to say Nagito wasn't talking to everyone.
• What the hell is with Izuru's hair? It would take around 7-10 years at least to grow such a length, but in the year prior to his operation he's short-haired, like his Island avatar. Or is it just a wig?
  • Maybe the scientists were really into long-haired pretty boys?
    • A long head of hair would not only cover up any scars from the procedure, but would also diguise Kamakura's previous identity.
  • The question is not why, but how - it's impossible to grow such a length in that amount of time. So, is it a wig or what?
  • Either some mad science growth magic or just Rule of Cool.
• In Chapter 4, they deal with the 'secret of the Funhouse', but I don't understand how they didn't figure out the tower was an elevator to begin with. They state the Strawberry and Grape Houses were actually positioned on top of each other, with the tower moving up and down between them to act as different rooms. However, it's important that only the floor moves, which is how Nekomaru broke one of the pillars when he fell. But, that means there wouldn't be a ceiling, so if the characters looked up, they'd see the doors at the top and find that they were in an elevator. I could be forgetting something, but I went over the trial several times...
  • Another part to the difference in the Tower’s two forms is the lights on the floor and wall. If one looks up, the lights cut off, and only blackness appears above. It’s definitely plausible that the Tower is actually that dark without the lights, and as such, when in Grape Tower, you can’t actually see three storeys above you, the lights strategically cutting off before they would illuminate the doors.
• Junko's plan all along, as revealed in the final trial, was to upload her AI into the bodies of the students who died during the Killing Game, so that she could use them to take over the Future Foundation and spread despair to the world. This is presented as a massive threat, preventing the characters from running the Graduation program. The problem is... all of the characters are asleep in capsules, Matrix-style, inside of a heavily-guarded Future Foundation facility on a remote island. How much harm could ten unarmed people do in that situation, especially since they'd all be groggy from VR sleep. What's stopping the Future Foundation (or Makoto's rogue branch of it, anyway) from letting the living students graduate, while having the Junko-fied students captured or killed before they've even stepped out of the pods?
  • I don't know if it's ever established how much security detail the Jabberwock facility has. It's possible—albeit not especially believable or particularly plausible—that Makoto and gang were the only ones on the island.
  • I'd argue it's entirely plausible - the emails in chapter 6 reveal that Makoto's use of the Neo World Program to rehabilitate the members of Ultimate Despair was against the wishes of the rest of the Future Foundation. It would make sense for Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya to be the only ones on the island - the Future Foundation can't find out where they're putting the Neo World Program to use, lest they forcibly come by to kill the members of Ultimate Despair, so a small group would be better for this scenario.
  • One possible plan is that Junko would fake the students' original personalities so they don't know who's contaminated, or that it's a test run before she does it en masse.
• On a similar note to the last point, Junko's plan is to upload her mind into the bodies of the dead students. So...is there a reason Makoto, Kyoko, and Byakuya can't just unplug the dead students from the Neo World Program? Sure, in hindsight we know that may have prevented them from being brought Back from the Dead in Danganronpa 3, but at the time no one had any reason to believe that was possible, so why didn't they do that instead of sending themselves into VR and thus putting themselves under Junko's power?
  • It's never addressed in the game, but it's possible that Makoto believed that would kill his bargaining power. If Junko had a way to tell if the comatose students were dead (which seems entirely reasonable), she would not only take graduation off the table but inform the remaining students that the Future Foundation had just murdered their defenseless friends. It was an emotionally drought situation and the Future Foundation desperately needed the Hajime et al to know they were on their side.
• What constitutes having an "ultimate" talent? In the previous game it seemed to imply being the best of the best in one's field, and both Hajime and Nahito's veneration of ultimates seem to indicate that being an ultimate requires being more than gifted or even very gifted. But some of the students don't seem like the best, or even uniquely remarkable. It's mentioned that most swordsmen don't stand a chance against Peko, with the underlying implication being that there are men who *can* match her. What's more, there doesn't seem to be much evidence to suggest Fuyuhiko, Mahiru, or Mikan are anything more than very accomplished for their age. It's debatable whether or not Ibuki is even a good musician.
  • The Japanese equivalent of the title being "Super High School Level" does seem to imply that they're simply very accomplished for their age. It's less about being the best of the best in the world, and more so being the best of the best among high school students. Sakura from the first game, for instance, mentions in a free time event that she doesn't consider herself the world's strongest person because she's still unable to beat her boyfriend in a fight, and Aoi and Leon being scouted for the Olympics and major league teams respectively doesn't automatically make them the winners. I think it's moreso that everybody with a talent is a prodigy, and Hope's Peak is meant to cultivate this until they ultimately do become the best of the best in their field.
• We learn in the end that Junko's plan was for everyone on the island to die so she could essentially take over their bodies. She, and therefore Monokuma, couldn't just kill everyone directly due to the rules and restrictions in place, which even Monokuma couldn't circumvent. In chapter 4, however, Monokuma sends the survivors to the Funhouse, and leaves them without food, so they'll starve to death unless they commit murder. If this was an option the whole time, why didn't Monokuma just send them there and deny them food from the start? And for that matter, why didn't he just leave them to starve to death even if they killed someone? Then everyone would have died for sure, and it clearly didn't break the rules to do so, otherwise he couldn't have done it in chapter 4 for as long as he did.
  • The fact that it apparently didn't break the rules is what's most bizarre. They showed way too much evidence to the contrary in previous chapters for that to be remotely feasible. What Monokuma did should've definitely counted as murder and a very blatant rule violation, given the stress put on any death that isn't of natural causes being considered a murder.
  • It's probably a variant of the loophole Monokuma used to avoid punishing Nagito for threatening to blow up the island. He threatened them with murder, and he made them miserable, but he never actually killed anyone. It's possible the whole setup was a bluff and Monokuma was just hoping that one of them would crack under the stress and murder someone before his programming limitations forced him to step in and save them.
  • Junko needed at least some of the students alive, or else Makoto would have just pulled the plug on the program and trapped her AI inside. She also needed to make sure that less than half were alive, or else they would have voted to cancel the program and keep her from possessing the bodies. In that context the fun house was probably an act of minor desperation, as she was closing in on her goal.She also needed to ensure there were enough students remaining that Makoto could put himself in danger to help secure a majority vote, so repeated hardball tactics may have proven too risky.
• In chapter 3, Akane attacks Monokuma, which is a rule violation, and is set to be blasted by a bazooka as punishment. Nekomaru jumps in the way, and takes the blow, but survives, with Monokuma specifically having to let him live as he hadn’t broken any rules. And then Akane gets to walk free? The interception doesn’t change that she went against the rules, so shouldn’t she still be punished? The rules don’t seem to have any clauses that allow an execution to be cancelled. What’s stopping Monokuma from then just firing a second shot at Akane, or even trying a different execution that’s less liable to interference?
  • I'd chalk that up to the joy of despair. Sure, Monokuma COULD just kill Akane, but Akane knows that she was directly responsible for his injuries by not listening, leaving her with incredible guilt. It's just a great source of despair for everyone else too. I think that's why he said they'd just call it even. He was put in a good mood by everyone else's bad moods.
    • It also seems like Monokuma usually lets people go if his execution doesn't quite succeed the first time. (Memorable example being Mondo in THE when he fought with Monokuma just like Akane did, and despite not being blown up by the bomb, Monokuma lets him off.)
• In the first chapter, how did Byakuya get stabbed 10 times without making a single exclamation of pain, let alone any screaming? I guess you could explain it by saying that the first stab caused instantaneous death and he didn't have time to get anything out, but given how the case puts a lot of stress onto the point that Teruteru couldn't actually see above the flooring and was using the glow as a guide for where to stab at, that handwave seems pretty dumb. The main point that I find weird though is that no one brings this up, and that the game never bothers explaining it at all, not even with the above mentioned handwave. It seems especially strange, too, given that the game puts so much empathise onto what could be heard during the blackout, including Ibuki picking up on the "ow!" from when Byakuya fought with Nagito.
  • It's probably Nagito's luck. It was his plan after all, and he was lucky that "Byakuya" died without making a sound.
• Why did Mikan feel the need to disguise the time of Ibuki and Hiyoko's deaths with the AC? The info in the Monokuma files clearly aren't gleamed from actual autopsies, but rather from Monokuma/the mastermind's knowledge of the crime, given that they're instantly given out while the bodies are still fresh. That said, the only reason she'd need to do that is to fool the other students, but Mikan is the nurse & the team's makeshift coroner up to that point. She just had to lie and pretend she worked out when they died; since both Ibuki and Hiyoko had been dead for some time, there'd be little noticable difference in body tempeture between the two, not enough for an amature to notice. For that matter, all her trick with the AC did was make everyone immediately suspicious of the order of deaths. It'd have made more sense for her to have just lied, rather then throwing people off to something only she'd know have claim to be able to definitely know anyway.
  • If the rest of the class was able to determine that Mikan was lying about the times of death it would have immediately cast suspicion on her. Telling them that she can't determine the time of death and having a good reason for it would be much less damning. It's also wiser to assume you can't plan for every possible contingency and aim to minimize the damage of mistakes made rather than risk everything on bigger lies.
• If Ibuki was in a state where she would listen to anything that anybody says, couldn’t Mikan have just told her to kill herself? The thing that makes this a point of contention is who would become the Blackened. Sakura’s death is the only other suicide case and she was the blackened in that scenario, although she wasn’t told by anyone else to kill herself. If Ibuki would become the Blackened, that wouldn’t help Mikan since she was attempting to become the Blackened to kill everybody else and escape to the real world, but if it made Mikan the blackened, then if things went smoothly and nobody witnessed it, it would basically be a perfect murder with nobody able to prove who told Ibuki to kill herself. Hell, they might never even come to the conclusion that she was influenced, but they knew what state she was in so they would probably find out. Unless Mikan seriously messes up, the only way for her to get found out is Nagito’s luck, and that would’ve just made for an interesting case that built up Nagito’s abilities before they became super plot relevant. If it led to neither of them being the blackened, it could still be taken advantage of by Mikan to thin out the remaining students a bit before committing an actual murder, and Ibuki’s death could throw people off. Once again, we don’t know what would happen if Mikan told Ibuki to kill herself, but she could’ve just privately asked Monokuma for clarification regarding the rules.
• (FULL SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST 2 GAMES) Why are there suddenly 16 students as a normal part of the killing game? 15 is a pretty clean number and the presence of the 16th student in Danganronpa 1 was a big deal, so it’s odd that there just are 16 of them in this one. It’s especially strange since this game’s cast was largely filler, only having 3 important characters while there’s still a double murder chapter and several filler characters as survivors, so it’s not like they needed all those characters. Danganronpa 2 did play with and purposefully trivialize plot elements from the first game, like how Monokuma casually revealed in chapter 1 that everybody’s memories of 2 years were erased as if it’s a joke when that same twist is one of the most important reveals in the first game, but they never make light of the 16th student’s presence. While the Ultimate Imposter was an oddball member of the cast, he ultimately didn’t have much plot relevance so it likely isn’t him. My guess is that it’s either Hajime since he was a reserve course student and doubles as Izuru Kamakura, or Chiaki since she’s a future foundation spy and the only real non A.I., but it’s really hard to tell which. The same can be said about V3’s cast where there are 4 oddball characters: Tsumugi, the mastermind, Rantaro, the Ultimate Survivor, Kokichi, the Remant of Despair who snuck Monokuma onto the ship, and K1-B0, the audience surrogate and only non-actor, but I won’t get too into that on the Danganronpa 2 page.