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
Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.
- If Kyoko has information about the trial and/or straight-up know who the culprit is, why doesn’t she tell everyone instead of giving hints to Makoto? Doesn’t she know that her life is on the line if her classmates get it wrong? At least Byakuya does it to make things interesting.
- It’s a visual novel. It’d be boring if another character did everything.
- Yes, but what about an in-universe explanation?
- She does this to avoid having a target painted on her back.
- And yet, even with the breadcrumbs she provides for the player, the Mastermind still targets her.
- She was targetted because she was poking around an off-limits area, not because she was helping Makoto with the Trials.
- Still, no one tries to kill her at all even though they all know how smart she is. Can’t she just say who the killer is?
- Just because nobody does doesn't mean that nobody could. Byakuya, for example, had explicitly declared his intent to commit murder and has proven himself to be smart and a fairly competent planner, making it likely that he'd try to kill the person he judged as the biggest threat during trials, instead of the person he judged most likely to fall for a trap like Sayaka and Celestia.
- Even if someone could kill Kyoko, she’s too smart to die as she could probably figure out who wants her dead. Plus, as the motives strictly drive people to kill certain players (Sayaka specifically killing Leon for bait, Mondo killing Chihiro in a fit of jealous rage, Celeste targeting Taka and Hifumi since they’re the only one she could kill for her plan to work), wouldn’t she realize that as long as she doesn’t ruffle some feathers, she’d be safe, and that the cast isn’t smart enough to target people like her, Makoto, Byakuya, or Celestia?
- I've never gotten this idea that Kyoko goes into every class trial knowing exactly who the killer is. Likely as not she herself is still piecing it together as the trial is progressing. I would think she figures it out shortly before Makoto does. As for why she lets Makoto take the lead... there could be many reasons but I think the biggest one is that she just realizes Makoto is more charismatic than she herself is, more of a natural leader. She could lay down the facts, but Makoto can lay down the facts with feeling.
- Even if that is the case, no one’s going to be concerned about how affably someone relays information, but rather, what they’re saying and the evidence behind it. Even then, Kyoko isn’t mean or anything, so the cast wouldn’t mind listening to her, unlike Byakuya. Whether Makoto or Kyoko gives the cast a push in the right direction, they’ll listen.
- It’s a visual novel. It’d be boring if another character did everything.
- This is an extreme nitpick, but... Chapter 5's title bugs me. "100 Mile Dash! Pain of a Junk Food Junkie" makes it sound like this chapter is gonna focus on Aoi Asahina, and would've been more appropriate for the previous chapter where Asahina actually had a huge emotional involvement. Was there just a mix-up in production or was the title misleading on purpose?
- I always saw the chapter titles (and the images that accompany them, like Yasuhiro being in the image that shows up with chapter 2’s title) are incredibly nonsensical and likely purposely somewhat misleading, only being barely related to the contents of the chapter. But I always saw this one as foreshadowing the reveal with Junko. The Japanese chapter title name is “If You Want Donuts, Prepare for Despair”, which might just be their way of using Aoi’s love for donuts to say that if the remaining students want to survive, they will have to endure a lot of despair. But if I had to guess, the localization probably added the junk food thing to foreshadow Junko more.
- Why does everyone seemingly forget the motives for killing after a class trial concludes? Yeah, Monokuma doesn't bring up the "revealing your darkest secret" thing after the second trial, but it's certainly possible someone else might kill for money. And even if the money angle went off the table once someone snatched up the bait, there's still the very first one: seemingly all the loved one's of each person has been attacked, and Monokuma is holding the answer to their status upon graduation. "What happened to my family/loved ones" and ten million dollars could still be compelling reasons for a later murder. From a gameplay perspective it would be boring to have a new murder come from an old motive, but it does feel like it should at least be addressed somewhere.
- The motivations only worked on the specific people that ended up killing over it. No one else had a reason to kill people over the motive that was given, so they don't. That's supposed the game's logic on it anyhow. The first motive freaked out the others, but only Sayaka had a fear of abandonment and emotional dependence on outside persons that would drive her to murder. The Dark Secrets motive explicitly stated it wouldn't be a problem after someone killed (which ended up being Mondo). The money motive only worked on Celestia because a)she was utterly desperate to escape from the beginning and cracking further the longer she stayed (and it's possible her motive video would've contributed to her decision although she never said it), and b) she had a very specific desire she needed that money for; The others are either not interested in money (Kyoko, Sakura, Aoi, Kiyotaka), already rich enough for their own desires (Byakuya, Hifumi and Toko- the latter two are probably already independently wealthy from their artistic careers), or just can't be persuaded to kill (Jack, Yasuhiro, Makoto). Sakura's suicide was specifically meant to stop the fourth motive from ever working, and that's the last one Monokuma has.
- What if the killings didn't stop? I'm curious what would happen when it came down to two people, and then one of them killed the other. Would that be an automatic victory for the blackened, or would Monokuma invoke another class trial? I'm wondering what would be more despair inducing. "Graduating" and finding out it was all for nothing, or being put into a no-win situation in trial. If the blackened votes for someone else it's wrong and they'll be executed. If they vote for themselves and get it right they'll still be executed. Hmmm... I figured Junko would love a Morton's Fork of despair like that, but I don't know if it would work even if she did make a show of a final trial since her words were that if they get it wrong they'll punish everyone besides the blackened, so in that case the killer actually COULD get out it by voting the wrong culprit. Before I finished the game I THOUGHT that was the planned end game, where the final killer still loses as a final LOL against them.
- I'm not sure if it applies to the first, but later games state that the killing game ends when there are two people left. So you could kill the other person, but what then? You've just killed for no reason.
- Sooooo... what was Mukuro's plan when she attacked Monokuma? The whole concept was that she and Junko were working together to create despair, broadcasting the others struggles to the outside world. Attacking Monokuma does nothing to further their goals. In fact, it harms them. If her dying statement of saying it wasn't supposed to be this way or this wasn't supposed to happen was meant to show her believing her sister wouldn't kill her then it means that she expected to blatantly break a school rule in front of every single student and get away with it, thus undermining the authority and fear he's meant to bring about. I guess actions like that are why Junko said her twin wasn't up for the role of impersonating her.
- It was PART of the plan. The original plan was that Mukuro would attack Monokuma, and he would "capture" her and send her to a dungeon, and she would run around in the background.
- OP here. That still doesn't make sense to me. Even though at this time Monokuma hadn't even explained the "attack me and die" yet he was perfectly willing to let Mondo explode himself. If Kyoko hadn't figured it out in time and told him to chuck it away Mondo would have been the first to die. So it would have seemed suspicious that they would announce that rule, then go back and say they were just going to lock someone that attacked him up. It would still undermine his authority and possibly invite others to try attacking him to get answers.
- That Mukuro didn't think that through is excusable though, as up to the moment she had Monokuma pinned, everything had gone exactly to plan. Right before Monokuma started waddling at her (at least in the NISA translation), he says "I might... I dunno, throw you in a deep, dark, scary prison or something", keying Mukuro in that the plan was still on. Worse comes to worst, Junko could have said that since Monokuma made it physical and Mukuro's resistance was minimal (stepping on him to stop him as opposed to, say, punting him away or picking him up to throw him), the punishment was lessened. Since Junko's in control, there's no way that situation would ever happen again, and indeed, Monokuma never tries to start a fight like this again (Sakura's fight against him was almost definitely started by her).
- Note that IF establishes Mukuro as Super Gullible when it comes to Junko. The excuse doesn't have to be foolproof, especially not if Junko gets the idea of killing Mukuro before the confrontation itself happens; it just has to be good enough to make Mukuro think that Junko will spare her life, even if it'd be obvious to anyone else that she was going to be killed off. It's a bit like Celestia's plan; she admits that yes, her "You say you just barely survived and I go kill someone else" plot is a paper-thin lie and that if Hifumi had bothered to think it through he'd realize he was being set up to die, but he never questioned her because he trusted her implicitly. Mukuro is the same way; she's so subservient to Junko that she never really considers the 'Junko doesn't have my best interests at heart' angle.
- Another possibility is that the initial incident was simply supposed to help establish her "Junko" identity as an ally to the rest of the group against Monokuma by showing her butting heads with him, so as to make her inevitable betrayal that much more painful for the rest of the group. The fact that Monokuma technically attacked first would mean that the conflict could've plausibly ended with a warning and "Junko" backing off.
- It was PART of the plan. The original plan was that Mukuro would attack Monokuma, and he would "capture" her and send her to a dungeon, and she would run around in the background.
- According to Chapter 5, the rules apply to every student in the academic Colosseum, which means that Junko should abide by these rules as well. If that was the case, why didn't we get an announcement when Mukuro Ikusaba was stabbed by the Gungnir spears? After all, more than three people were present at the time and, according to the rules, a death announcement occurs when three or more students see a body from a person that was killed by another student.
- That's because she was killed for attacking Monokuma. It wasn't a murder, but an execution.
- In Chapter 3, Aoi leaves her room to get donuts after curfew. But, since it was nighttime, shouldn't the cafeteria have been locked? I know She didn't end up going there anyway, but why would she head there in the first place?
- The storeroom in the dormitory area had snacks available and opened up in chapter 2. While there was no guarantee of doughnuts, it still meant the students could get food there while the cafeteria was locked off.
- The warehouse has food in it as well, and one of Aoi's Free Time events has her specifically state that the warehouse has frozen donuts. She may not have had access to the dining room's microwave, but if she was desperate enough she could warm them with her hands or find another method to make them edible.
- Okay, that explains it for chapter 3. But what about the first time? One of the reasons it's eventually deduced in chapter 1 that Sayaka was the one who initially plotted to murder someone is because Aoi and Sakura were both in the dining hall in the middle of the night, since Aoi was having trouble sleeping (or something like that), went to get some tea while Sakura kept her company, and the both of them saw Sayaka come in. So how did any of the three of them get in if the doors to the dining hall were supposed to be locked at night?
- It's very likely Aoi and Sakura were in the dining hall shortly before the night-time announcement. The announcement happened when Sayaka was talking to Makoto just before they swapped rooms. It makes more sense for Sayaka to grab the kitchen knife before meeting with Makoto for a few reasons: 1. She would have to switch the nameplates of her and Makoto's rooms afterwards, meaning she would have to wait for Makoto to go to her room to avoid being caught by him; 2. Her note to Leon asks him to meet her shortly (within minutes) after receiving it. She writes it using the notepad in Makoto's room, which she can only do after the swap. She wouldn't have enough time to grab the knife after the announcement, so she did before it. The knife was taken when Aoi and Sakura were there and they both saw her. They likely returned to the dorms before Makoto left his room, since he didn't see anyone around when he did.
- Does this really take place After the End or did the Mastermind just fabricate everything in order to still throw the surviving students into despair?
- That's left open at the end. Much of the evidence seems to point to After The End, such as the video shown of the outside world, and the interviews where the students willingly confine themselves to the school to escape the outside world, as well as Genocider seeming to confirm their suspicions about the end of the world. Now, the first two, you might believe, could be fabricated, but there is seemingly no reason for Genocider to lie, especially to her precious Byakuya. Now, this troper has not played the sequel, which might answer your question with more certainty.
- It does happen, but it's a Class1 at the worst, even according to Monokuma, and it's still in progress. In the sequel, a concentrated effort to reverse the damage has begun.
- Why does Sayaka write Leon's name with the Latin alphabet instead of with Kana (or Kanji, though I can assume that she might not have known what Kanji it's written with)? That just feels like a random choice to me.
- Possibly because it was far easier to do it with the Latin alphabet from behind, whilst dying than it would be with the complex strokes of kana. Or to give it a more meta explanation, simply so that they could have a puzzle.
- Also because it would have been harder for Leon Kuwata, her murderer to notice her spelling it out. It would have been less obvious.
- Another question along these lines: given that there's no other sign of them being on a first-name basis in the original, why did she write "Leon" and not "Kuwata"?
- Most likely for same reason as for using Latin alphabet: Speed and ease. She was dying and in lot of pain. Writing 4 letters is faster then writing 6 letters and shorter message was easier to hide as well
- What did the Puppetmaster do to their bodies? Both Kyoko and (posthumously) Sakura accuse the Puppetmaster of having tampered with the bodies of all the participants, but this isn't mentioned or addressed again. Perhaps they were referring to their memories, but that doesn't really encompass their bodies per se.
- They were, in fact, referring to their altered memories. While the mastermind outright refused to explain how they managed that during the game, the Prequel Danganronpa Zero eventually sheds more light on their methods.
- It's also possible that Kyoko was referring to the two years of growth, which everyone should've noticed, really. Not noticing slight changes over the course of two years is understandable, but if you aged two years in one day due to amnesia, something about your reflection would be slightly but noticeably off. This is also why Sakura in particular notices it - for the others it would have been more minor (so only the hyper-observant Kyoko noticed), but Sakura became huge over those two years.
- When Mondo was executed, it's shown that he was, as i quote from the character page, "sent around an electrified cage at high speeds until he's little more than a fine paste. Which Monokuma apparently eats.". A few chapters later, when the students are investigating the latest case they come across a morgue, where the corpses of the dead students are being stored, with one exception that isn't Mondo. Isn't this just one giant contradiction? Was Mondo really turned into butter and eaten, is the butter being stored in the morgue for some reason, or is his actual body in there?
- It might be that just his body fat was drained and turned into butter, but the rest of his remains were stored away.
- There's no evidence saying that Monokuma didn't just take his body out before it was liquefied, and the butter is just a regular tub with Mondo's face slapped on it.
- There's also the possibility that the tub is in the morgue.
- In the "bad ending" why wasn't Kyouko saved in the same way Makoto was? Alter Ego arguably had a closer relationship with her than with him to begin with.
- From what I understand, the "bad ending" never really happened, and was a figment of Makoto's imagination. After the cutscene, it fades back to Makoto at the trial where he basically says "I can't let that happen!" He did not know that Alter Ego was still alive, which is why the execution didn't end the same way. Although, how in the world he imagined exactly what the execution was, I don't know...
- Makoto absorbed some of Sayaka's powers. The (possibly symbolic) clue is at the end of the first trial when he knows Kyoko wants to talk to him about Sayaka, and then says 'Of course. I'm an esper', 'I'm kidding. It was just a feeling, that's all'. Sayaka can read minds and get other people's thoughts, but maybe it works the other way round too, so that Sayaka left some of herself in Makoto after going into Makoto's mind. It's more than likely, given Makoto's ability to absorb powers from other students just by socializing with them - and the first person he socialized with was Sayaka! Junko was 'inside' Monokuma, so it had some of Junko's warped energies channeled into it, which Makoto read subconsciously.
- That's confusing though. How come we're seen a picture of the murder's ending and the group deciding to stay inside. If it's all a hallucination why think up of so many bad things that will happen and then change his mind?
- Even if he is an optimist, when things are going badly, you tend to think the worst things! Kyoko gets executed. Yasuhiro had already predicted that they would both father a child from the same woman, which Makoto violently denies every time Yasuhiro mentions it. So that appears. Toko dies for some reason. They stay inside the school forever. That's some pretty awful stuff! And as our designated protagonist, it was Makoto's job to fix that.
- With the localized PS Vita release and the bonus Dangan Academy sim, there is now solid support to this theory. Some of the character endings include using information that Makoto couldn't get from free time events like Celeste's dream of a luxurious life. More directly, Sayaka's ending has her mentioning a promise she knows Makoto didn't make. Makoto then gets a flashback of that promise from the main story after the first motive was given. Considering that Dangan Academy makes it clear that it takes place in an alternate universe where the killings didn't even have a chance to get started, the idea of Makoto getting psychic powers is suddenly not so ridiculous.
- That's because Kyouko doesn't have Super High School Luck.
- I read a theory somewhere that there's a possibility that in the Bad Ending, Alter Ego hadn't had time to fully infect the machine by the time Kyoko was executed. Makoto choosing not to call her out buys Alter Ego the time it needs to infect the machine.
- Unlikely: the bad ending route is one NSD longer than the good one.
- Then the opposite: Alter Ego gets found out and wiped from the machine in the bad ending.
- Since Kyoko being executed is in Makoto's mind, he had never considered the possibility that Alter Ego may still be alive.
- Actually, how does Makoto know what the punishment of the bad end is anyways before he experiences it first hand?
- From what I understand, the "bad ending" never really happened, and was a figment of Makoto's imagination. After the cutscene, it fades back to Makoto at the trial where he basically says "I can't let that happen!" He did not know that Alter Ego was still alive, which is why the execution didn't end the same way. Although, how in the world he imagined exactly what the execution was, I don't know...
- If the verdicts are determined by majority vote, what's the point of MTBs? There's no real point in forcing the culprit to shut up when it hurts their credibility to be so immature, and you've probably already convinced the majority of the other students by the point an MTB comes up anyway.
- MTBs are considered the game's equivalent of a Boss Battle and the culprit's last desperate act, so it makes sense that they are acting immature in a fit of desperation. Besides that, not all of them are versus the culprit, nor are they all at the end when the culprit has pretty much been decided.
- Chapter 2's MTB is against Kiyotaka, who does not want to believe Mondo is the culprit, so he defends him. Kiyotaka also does not vote for Mondo when the time comes.
- Chapter 4 has three MTBs mid-trial in succession, in the form of a Boss Rush, none of which are the versus culprit.
- Chapter 5's is also mid-trial and also not versus the "culprit".
- MTBs are considered the game's equivalent of a Boss Battle and the culprit's last desperate act, so it makes sense that they are acting immature in a fit of desperation. Besides that, not all of them are versus the culprit, nor are they all at the end when the culprit has pretty much been decided.
- If I may ask... what the heck is The Worst, Most Despair-inducing Incident in the History of Mankind? What the heck happened?
- They don't explain it in THIS game. The sequel, however...
- If all the students had Laser-Guided Amnesia, erasing the last two years of their lives at school and making them think they've just recently arrived, shouldn't they each have noticed something suddenly different about themselves? Teenagers grow and change a lot during that time, after all.
- Since it was guided amnesia (managing to remove people's memories at the exact moment they enter the school) it could have been designed not to such a person's mental self-image of themselves. So they lose the two years of memory, but the keep their memory and impression of what they should look like rather than what they looked like two years prior.
- Kyoko did. "What have you done with my body?"
- Sakura's real suicide note makes it clear that she also noticed the change to her body. Monokuma just stops reading before she could clarify.
- Aoi claims she's getting fat, and Sakura complains that she's wasting away. Neither are probable in the short time the game takes place, so it's possible that these are changes over that two years that they only noticed a few days later.
- If the water was shut off at night, and Leon had grabbed the sword sheath with both hands for self defense which was said to have the gold paint easily come off, how did Leon wash all the gold, glittery paint off of his hands with no water?
- One of three possibilities: either he wiped them off on his already-bloodied shirt to wash off or burn, or he simply waited for the morning to come so he could wash his hands in his sink, or both if he couldn't get all of it off with Option A. Waiting until morning to wash his hands could also play into his excuse for being late to breakfast the next morning.
- When/why did Hifumi find out Celeste's real name?
- It's implied that moments before his death he regained his original memories that he met the students before coming to Hope Peak Academy. In that original memory, he probably remembered Celeste as her original name instead of her stage name.
- Confirmed in the manga.
- It's implied that moments before his death he regained his original memories that he met the students before coming to Hope Peak Academy. In that original memory, he probably remembered Celeste as her original name instead of her stage name.
- In the pictures everyone got for the final trial, the strange thing was how Junko's face was always hidden. But was it intentional/significant that in every photo, Celeste was wearing the same thing, standing in the back, in the same exact pose? Because that seems pretty strange, when every other character at least changed outfits, or expressions, or positions.
- That could be marked up to two things: 1) Celeste purposely staying out of the athletic activities, and 2) cost cutting measures. Remember that for two of those pics, Sakura, Hifumi, and Kiyotaka were almost in the exact same poses, and much more up front in the picture as well.
- Ultimate Gambler. That look is her intentional default.
- A cut class photo in the gallery gives one very good reason from a development standpoint, Celeste looks almost unrecognisable and dangerously similar to Mukuro with her hair down and wearing a generic outfit.
- Celeste is very intent on projecting her preferred image of herself; she would absolutely insist on staying "in-character", even in class pictures.
- So Celeste is the Ultimate Gambler. However, most of the things she does are based on lying by self-inserting herself in those grand stories of gambling, and her nickname is "Queen of Liars". So why is she instead designated 'Ultimate Gambler'? 'Ultimate Liar' is sounding even more fitting than Ultimate Gambler at this rate...
- Easy. She lied about her talent when entering Hope's Peak Academy.
- While Ultimate Liar does sound cool, in this troper's mind, Gambler fits the theme better, because most other Ultimate titles are professions/specific activities (for instance: Writer, Fan Fic Creator, Swimmer, Wrestler). And while Celeste is the Queen of Liars, her lying is mostly attributed to gambling and gambling stories, as opposed to the many many things she could use a lying talent for. So I think her talent is lying, but she uses that talent to be a Ultimate Gambler.
- You mean to grandify herself and present herself like an Ultimate Gambler when in truth she wasn't even that skilled in an actual gambling? Or if we go by the manga, lying about how grand herself is when in truth, Taeko Yasuhiro is an extremely common and plain self? With how she executed the Celeste stage name stuffs, she could also pass up as Ultimate Roleplayer better than 'Gambler' since she probably has poor gambling skills and everything else was just made-up. Her free-time made it look like she's making a Self-Insert Fic and roleplays as an expert and her whole life was roleplaying the persona 'Celestia Ludenberg' she made up to escape her plain self... Roleplayer is also some sort of specific activity, right? (Definitely not a profession)
- It's quite possible, however, that despite cribbing stories in her free-time events, that she really IS skilled at Gambling, precisely because she's such a renowned liar. Keep in mind, the headmaster DID have in-depth profiles on the students, so it's still very likely that her title was earned, otherwise there's little reason why Monokuma WOULDN'T use this to rub salt in the wounds.
- The way she made several hiccups in her murder plot in Chapter 3 seems to hint that Celeste isn't really skilled at gambling or scheming, especially that if she really is the skilled gambler as stated, she knew not to make the hiccup or act more aggressive than usual, or pick something else as a mean to bluff people (but otherwise, the game would be rendered Unwinnable). This seems to point to the fact that Celeste probably never gambled against anyone, but being a skilled liar and having known many stories about gambling, she makes it look like she's this gambling Goddess, while in truth she really was just lying. There's a difference between actually having experienced gambling and only reading stories about a great gambler, and Celeste actions shows to leer to the latter. It is more probable that the in-depth profile of Celeste that the headmaster has would be her past as Taeko Yasuhiro, and if the manga is to go by, it's about her dirty secret of actually being a ostracized girl due to being The Generic Girl and that all of her Celeste escapades were lies.
- A lot of this seems like it's based on conjecture and the insistence that a skilled gambler would be able to put together a foolproof murder plot. Celeste understands game theory and explains aspects of it to the group. After her name is revealed and her plot fails and thus has no more reason to lie, she still maintains that she has amassed considerable winnings. Her scheme was tailor-made to exploit the investigative styles of Makoto and the others, including their obsession with minute details and their reliance on alibis. The game gives us every reason to believe Celeste is very good at what she does, regardless of whether or not her more impossible sounding exploits are true.
- The only real hiccup she made was the slip up about the number of people dead, it's kind of pointed out that her plan would fundamentally work if not for her choice in allies. The whole Justice Robo thing backfires because of all of Hifumi's blunders (leaving a trail with the trolley, leaving evidence on Kiyotaka, dumping far more blood on himself than necessary, etc.) and she was basically screwed by association (all the actions she could have found passable and plausible excuses for turn into damning evidence against her). Can't really talk about her gambling prowess based on this case since halfway through the trail for her it became completely unwinnable.
- Well, she's at least good enough at gambling games to beat Makoto when you spend time with her. So even though her stories are way too over-the-top to be true, she probably has had a reasonably successful "career" doing things like playing in poker tournaments and such.
- There's a link on her page to an essay that conjectures that the reason Celestia is so obsessed with game theory and lying is because her "ultimate gambler" talent is extremely passive; basically, the Random Number God is always in her favor and she'll never get a bad hand at any game no matter what she actually does. Celestia's Control Freak nature and Inferiority Superiority Complex means that she wants to have a talent that requires effort and establishes her as good at something, not something that happens to her outside her control. So she overcompensates in displaying skills that are related to gambling, like lying and understanding game theory, even if she doesn't really need them because of her luck.
- During the third case, why did they spend so much time establishing that Hifumi was still alive when they saw his "body" the first time when the answer seems so obvious? The second time they found him, he was definitely still alive enough to talk and finger "Yasuhiro," so he couldn't have been dead the first time! It seems they mostly established that he was still ambulatory enough to clean his glasses and climb the stairs.
- The game does frame it as dead vs. alive, but establishing that he was faking being dead was still an important turning point in the case. There's a big difference between "not dead, but badly injured enough to not do anything" vs. "not actually injured at all, and therefore able to do things that would have to have other explanations otherwise."
- You do realize that the second time they find him is directly after a corpse announcement (announcing him all but died), and Hifumi is only shown to be alive after Aoi tears fall upon his face in what was described in story as a once in a lifetime movie moment (someone's tears bringing a person back to life.) Also they didn't spend a lot of time establishing he was alive to begin with, the whole discussion was about Hifumi's involvement in the case, with his faking his death only being a part of that longer discussion.
- But the point of the scene was that tears don't work that way in this universe.
- Yes but the point was that the tears even waking him up (when he was again literally already pronounced died) was considered a fluke/miracle. And the point that you mentioned is made because Hifumi stayed died after that first fluke, so obviously reality doesn't work that way.
- If Monokuma managed to find Alter Ego during chapter 4, on what basis did Kyoko decide that the bath changing room was actually safe? I never understood why anybody thought this at all, really. How does a lack of cameras mean a lack of microphones?
- Also, they seem to alternate between being careful to avoid drawing attention and blithely talking about Alter Ego by name in rooms like the cafeteria that do have cameras.
- Did you miss the part where the laptop being used for Alter Ego was left there by Monokuma in the first place? He knew about it the whole time and was just letting them think he had no clue about it. He only decided to kill Alter Ego when it started to investigate deeper in to information that Monokuma wanted hidden
- Sorry? Monokuma knowing about Alter Ego has nothing to do with how the students act when they think he doesn't know.
- First the initial point is based on Monokuma founding out about Alter Ego, when he already knew about the laptop to begin with, so the security level of its hiding place is irrelevant., secondly the person who hid Alter Ego there to begin with was Chihiro and Kyoko herself is shown to occasionally look over the place and stand guard so this is made to sound like neither of them went over the area themselves to check over the place to be careful. And lastly on your point other than the occasional name drop (other than the time Kyoko was talking about it in the cafeteria) the kids seem far more busy keeping what Alter Ego was doing secret away from Monokuma. And considering if Monokuma didn't already have knowledge about it, he wouldn't really get anything from just the name Alter Ego anyway. Honestly considering the whole issue was of privacy, there really is nothing surprising about their behavior (other than over acting sometimes).
- To go back to the first question again, the reason they likely thought the changing room was safe was because likely because Chihiro seemed to be able to work on Alter Ego just fine while in there without Monokuma detecting anything. Kyoko likely just assumed that the room really didn't have any microphones as a result.
- Actually, Alter Ego was only found out after Makoto moved him to the hidden room behind the bathroom in order to allow him to hack the school's networks, because it had a network plug-in while the changing room didn't. Monokuma probably found out about the attempt and realized that because it wasn't on the cameras, it could only be in the hidden room.
- So considering the Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind, just how exactly did the mastermind get all Hope's Peak's food? Especially since it was intended for them to live on indefinitely, and a lot of it seemed fresh.
- The fruits and vegetables and eggs could come from the greenhouse and chicken coop on the fifth floor. But that doesn't account for the milk Celeste is so picky about, or Aoi's donuts (does the mastermind fry them by hand?).
- If Genocide Jill wasn't affected by amnesia, then how come she couldn't recognize who Junko was in the last trial?
- It's Genocide Jill, she probably feigned ignorance to make a joke. Or she just forgot. It's Jill after all.
- Toko and Jill don't share memories and I doubt that Jill ever woke up while Touko was in school since its unlikely that Touko saw blood (Jill's trigger) during class. If Jill never took Touko's place in class she obviously would have never met Junko as a student, and thus couldn't recognize them, since Junko was never a public figure during the most despairing event in history and Jill wouldn't pay much attention to the sort of magazine's that would feature her.
- If going by that, then how come Junko seemed to be the only person she didn't recognize? If I remember correctly, when she first appeared during the second trial, she didn't ask the others who they all were. Hell, she didn't even seem confused as to what was happening. You'd think that she'd at the very least be puzzled as to where she was and what she was doing in a trial with a bunch of people she didn't recognize.
- There's also the fact that one of the photos Junko gave out shows Jill being the dominant personality. Remember, the switch can also be triggered by either of them sneezing, and it's highly unlikely Toko went two whole years without sneezing.
- She thought Junko was dead (she would have heard as much from the other students, and never saw the Fake Junko to realize they were being deceived.) So her first reaction on seeing Real Junko would have been confusion. It's also possible that her actual confusion was over which sister she was talking to — they're different, but not necessarily different enough for Genocider to tell at a glance, especially since the fact that someone who looks like Junko was there could also mean it was now her twin sister pretending to be her. Since Genocider would have been told that Junko was dead, she might have been asking whether she was talking to a miraculously-alive Junko or to Mukuro Ikusaba pretending to be Junko.
- It's Genocide Jill, she probably feigned ignorance to make a joke. Or she just forgot. It's Jill after all.
- How did Genocide Jill even get the title of Ultimate Serial Killer, anyway? She's a serial killer, yes, but only students of Hope's Peak get those Ultimate titles. If she has one, then that means Hope's Peak knew who she was and that she was attending the school. Did Hope's Peak decide to give her the title and not have her arrested because of it's skewed priorities? Or maybe Genocider was aware of the academy and that Touko attended, and thus decided to jokingly give herself the title?
- Probably the latter.
- It's Hope's Peak. They brought in a biker gang leader, a Yakuza heir, an imposter they had no information on, a mad scientist who made incredible super drugs, and used mad science to create a superhuman. It seems fairly certain that Hope's Peak knew and just did not care. Hell, since the Izuru project involved putting every talent possible together, it's possible they were elated to have a serial killer. Plus, one of the photos Monokuma gives them has Jack out in class, and there's no possible way she was subtle. Hope's Peak was probably happy to have her, and her friends apparently handled it. Hope's Peak even had files linking Mukuro to Ultimate Despair and not only still brought her in, but proceeded to let her live in the bunker. It's said they lost two years of their memories, but Danganronpa 3 makes it clear that the world started falling apart at the end of their first year, their loved ones had been kidnapped six months prior to that according to Ultra Despair Girls, and the safehouse plan went into effect right after the mass suicide. Jin and Kyoko spent a year living right next to the Mastermind and her second in command who was known to be affiliated with Ultimate Despair and never did anything about her and her sister. Hope's Peak was run by morons. Plus, they indicate in Danganronpa 3 they were having a bit of trouble filling out the class. So, they probably knew and just did not care.
- All the executions were themed in advance. Leon, baseball. Mondo, bike. Celeste, witch burning. Alter Ego, smashed into a scrap metal ball. Makoto's was themed after being unlucky, detention. However, wasn't this supposed to be Kyoko's execution if Monokuma had his way? Shouldn't he have made one themed for Kyoko instead if that's who he was going for? Also, why the hatch at the end? None of the other punishments had a quick way to dispose of everything, in fact, they all stayed until everyone left. Also, bodies don't go to the trash, they go to the bio lab. How much of this was planned in advance?
- If you mean the whole School Life of Mutual Killing, then all of it was planned out from the beginning. If you mean Makoto's/Kyoko's execution then that was probably planned more recently since the entire point of the Fifth Trial was to frame and execute one of them. Also the execution was less about being themed toward Makoto/Kyoko and more themed toward giving discipline to the kids who disobeyed Monokuma. Also it's a conveyor belt with the hatch being apart of the whole contraption the led directly to the sealed basement, so the whole thing fits together.
- The "Detention" execution was themed towards the both of them, considering that Kyoko was the daughter of the Headmaster. They were the only two Monokuma seemed intent on punishing, so it makes sense that the execution would be something to match both of them.
- So Monokuma knew, in advance, that someone would need the detention punishment? That someone would take the key? Remember, all the punishments were shown in the final execution, and I don't think Junko would leave any possible executions out due to her fetish for despair, so I can only assume she planned every execution in advance... as well as the entire school life of mutual killing. That, and the time it would take to set up those punishments is too long to make just before the class trial, so they must have been made far in advance.
- First, Danganronpa 3 reveals that Enoshima was an excellent analyst who could predict any person's actions just from knowing them, which gives credibility to your first proposal. Second, I have a theory that there are 16 basements, each with a different courtroom and execution machine for each of the students, so whenever there's a trial, the elevator simply takes them to the floor corresponding to the murder's blackened.
- Goodbye Despair reveals that one of the Despairs was Ultimate Mechanic Kazuichi Soda, so it's entirely possible that he built execution machines for everyone in advance.
- Simple, that execution was meant solely for Kyoko. Makoto ending up in it was an unintentional turn of events when the trial went Off the Rails from what Monokuma intended. Other elements that make it clear that it was meant specifically for her is that Kyoko is always looking forward toward the truth, so naturally he forces her to face away from what will kill her, and the execution was mostly psychological, focused more on breaking the victim's composure than causing them physical pain, which would be much more appropriate for the stoic, intellectual Kyoko than the everyman Makoto.
- The school theme of the punishment is another clue towards it being intended for Kyoko; her father is the school's headmaster, and she holds a lot of resentment for leaving her family to take that job. Forcing her last moments to focus on that instead of the aspects of her life she truly values is exactly the kind of psychological torment Junko would want.
- Was the surveillance network and the Monokumas created after the students were voluntarily locked away at the school? Or did Ultimate Despair somehow predict that would happen and set things up in advance?
- The were all made in advance, this whole School of Mutual Killing had been planned for a while.
- Junko Enoshima was capable of predicting the outcome nearly everything around her. That ability is what led her to create the game, out of boredom.
- Applies more to the game than the anime: the first hint of Toko's split personality is when she passes out at the sight of Chihiro's body and wakes up acting strangely. Her fear of blood is a plot point. So why didn't she pass out or change to Syo when she saw "Junko" being impaled or Leon being bludgeoned to a pulp? Not as much of a headscratcher in the anime because she does pass out in the first case.
- Going to correct you on the Chihiro case, since it was more Toko's surprise about seeing a supposed Genocider murder that caused her to pass out (which is probably what woke up Genocider in the first place now that I think about). In the case of Leon she seems to be trying to close her eyes and shake her head to get the image out. No clue about "Junko", though if you go by IF Toko may have just been averting her eyes away from "Junko" like when she avoided looking at the Makoto after he was wounded and bleeding.
- Good points, but another comment on the first thing: Toko also passed out in Chapter 3 after she saw Kiyotaka's body, so it's not just Genocider's MO that triggers her.
- I know, but the implication of the scene was that the cause was more her seeing Genocider's MO then specifically passing out at the sight of the body. Though every other instance after seeing a dead body directly she passes out (Kiyotaka, the Lab, "Junko's" Corspe") from the get go so even then it's probably just the first time had more plot relevance and therefore needing to have more in depth meaning than "She passed out due to her issues with blood"
- In the first case if you talk to her after "Junko's" death she's barely holding it together and is talking about not looking at the body, so she turned away when she got impaled and just avoided passing out.
- So did the Most Despair Inducing Event In The History Of Mankind happen worldwide or just in Japan?
- I'm guessing that if the images of Monokuma on the Statue of Liberty and other famous monuments are real, then worldwide.
- Definitely worldwide. A big deal is made of small areas that escaped the destruction in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair and Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (it's also specifically described as "worldwide" in these games).
- Why does everyone assume that Alter Ego made a Heroic Sacrifice and is now gone once he saves Makoto?
- Because the laptop containing Alter Ego's program was destroyed and purged from the school's system. Once it saves Makoto, Monokuma went through and purged the system again of the last trace that was left. That Alter Ego doesn't return again in the first game after that point reinforces that viewpoint.
- He's alive 'n kicking in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, though...
- Likely a different Alter Ego developed by Chihiro in his real school life. The Alter Ego featured in DR1 was a product of the memory-wiped Chihiro. Essentially Chihiro invents Alter Ego twice, but the one on the laptop was a primitive version of the software with no backup.
- Because the laptop containing Alter Ego's program was destroyed and purged from the school's system. Once it saves Makoto, Monokuma went through and purged the system again of the last trace that was left. That Alter Ego doesn't return again in the first game after that point reinforces that viewpoint.
- Regarding Sayaka's plan in Chapter 1: If she did carry out Leon's murder as intended, how did she plan on framing Makoto for it? Even if she switched the nameplates back, Makoto could clear up (or stir up) confusion very quickly by revealing the room swap. Furthermore, someone could have seen either of them leave their rooms in the morning and could have become an unintentional witness. Considering everyone's lives are on the line during class trials, the whole room swap thing would have been thoroughly investigated, probably even down to the hair in the rooms, courtesy of Kyoko.
- Byakuya and Toko put it best: Makoto's too nice to just throw her to the dogs like that, and even if he did, who would you believe, the nationally-loved idol or the unimpressive-looking nobody? Plus, she didn't know about the class trial part of Graduation.
- It became clear from Kyoko's approach to that trial that convincing Makoto that Sayaka betrayed him wouldn't be possible till all the evidence was handed to him at once. Her plan probably didn't end at the room-switch anyway; she could've washed the knife in one of the bathrooms, waited outside till morning, then put it back in the kitchen before anyone arrives.
- It's also very possible that she was panicked and simply didn't think everything through.
- In the second case, after it is revealed that Byakuya crucified Chihiro but did not move them to the girls changing room, one obvious question remains. Why was Byakuya entering the girl's changing room?
- Because he saw Mondo leaving the girl's locker room in secret. He says as much.
- Replaying the second chapter, Byakuya says that he is heading from the library to his room and sees Mondo coming out of the girl's locker room. However, the locker rooms are not connected to the main hallway, there is another room in between. Byakuya could have seen Mondo coming out of this room, but not the girl's locker room. There would be nothing particularly suspicious about this.
- If the door to the locker room lobby is open they still could have seen it. Since they explicitly say they saw Mondo coming out of the girl's locker room we can conclude that Chihiro had left the door to the hallway open and Byakuya saw the events he described that way. The closing statement also shows that the door to the girl's locker room was already open when Byakuya showed up, so maybe Mondo left it open.
- It's this troper's personal theory that Byakuya was testing out his Loophole Abuse theory about borrowing a dead student's e-handbook to get into the wrong gender's changing room, and happened to see Mondo at that time. There were two girls' e-handbooks in the main hall, so even if Mondo had already taken one, Byaukya could've used the other.
- Because he saw Mondo leaving the girl's locker room in secret. He says as much.
- The corpse from Chapter 5 has a bomb strapped to it, with the resulting explosion burning the corpse to make it impossible to identify it. As it turns out in Chapter 6, the corpse is, of course Mukuro Ikusaba's and the reason the explosion was done was so that nobody would realize she was actually the Junko Enoshima they met. This Troper just wonders why exactly the real Junko didn't just remove the wig or change the clothes of the corpse to hide the impostor part. After all, nobody recognized Mukuro's face when they saw her student file or the group photos. What made Junko think they would've realized it, had they found Mukuro's corpse - minus the Junko wig?
- A few reasons. First, the despair factor of them thinking it could have been Kyoko's corpse. It would be exposed later but Junko's all about the despair. Next, it's unlikely Mukuro's hair is a wig due to how impractical that would be (how many different ways could it have been knocked off in the first room alone?) and it's more likely that she just dyed and styled her hair to complete the disguise rather than take half measures. She was only going to be there for a few days before the plan meant she would taken out of their site (just not in the way she was expecting), and even if Junko shaved off all of her hair and removed the nails give Kyoko twenty minutes and she would be able to prove who she was and list every time she touched anyone. Nobody recognized her face in the photo, but they weren't focusing on her face constantly to figure out who her corpse belonged to. Plus, the body still had all the wounds which would have been a big identifier.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF says that it was indeed a wig, but that might not be canon since the light novel itself isn't canon.
- Her hair would have to grow over a foot in about a year for that plan to work.
- Taking elements of both, it could be a weave or some sort of hair extension that isn't Mukuro's actual hair, but is also more tightly attached to her head than a wig would be. It would prevent the possibility of it falling off, but might also mean that Junko wouldn't have enough time to remove it while preparing the body.
- True, but the only pictures they had of Mukuro's face were pretty small and she was usually facing away from the camera. If they were able to get a good close-up on her face, they might have recognized the facial features- like her freckles, which Makoto comments on in the prologue.
- A few reasons. First, the despair factor of them thinking it could have been Kyoko's corpse. It would be exposed later but Junko's all about the despair. Next, it's unlikely Mukuro's hair is a wig due to how impractical that would be (how many different ways could it have been knocked off in the first room alone?) and it's more likely that she just dyed and styled her hair to complete the disguise rather than take half measures. She was only going to be there for a few days before the plan meant she would taken out of their site (just not in the way she was expecting), and even if Junko shaved off all of her hair and removed the nails give Kyoko twenty minutes and she would be able to prove who she was and list every time she touched anyone. Nobody recognized her face in the photo, but they weren't focusing on her face constantly to figure out who her corpse belonged to. Plus, the body still had all the wounds which would have been a big identifier.
- Is it just me, or would Leon's plan have succeeded if he'd washed his shirt like he originally planned? There isn't any forensic equipment in the school, and as far as he knows, no one would be able to use it. That or he could've just hidden it, possibly under his bed like Kyoko did in Chapter 5 with Mukuro's profile. Up until his toolkit comes into the discussion, no one has any reason to search his room, yet going with the method requiring the one skill that could pin the crime on him seems like Complexity Addiction.
- It wouldn't have worked. The water is turned off at night, which if we take it at face value and not assume Monokuma is just referring to the water to the bathrooms means that Leon would have to wait until 7 am the next morning to start washing his shirt and run the risk of someone catching him in the act or the blood drying and not getting off in time. He might have lived if he hid the shirt under his bed, but he wasn't thinking clearly about the whole situation as it was and chose the best way to permanently get rid of the evidence.
- What was said above is true. However it's also important to remember that Leon didn't plan the murder and as such he didn't have the time or the right state of mind to think things through in a careful manner like Sayaka or Celeste. He could have done things very differently and get rid of evidence in a more efficient way but it's hard to be at your most rational under said circumstances.
- He might have theoretically been able to soak the knife in toilet water from the communal bathrooms, depending on whether they're western or Japanese-style toilets (which never gets addressed in the game). The dorms use western-style, which means he could have also used the one in his room, depending on if they drain at night for exactly this situation (forcing the students to use the communal bathrooms just to prevent the destruction of evidence seems like something Monokuma might do). Alternatively, if he was trying not to let the blood drip anywhere, it might have been possible to wipe it off on his already-bloody shirt or use the hanging laundry to do the same before washing them both (or stuffing either of them behind the line of machines if the blood doesn't come out). In any case, since she was able to plan far enough to switch the nameplates and sneak the knife away from the kitchen, Sayaka would've likely come up with a means of washing her murder weapon and putting it back in the kitchen the next morning (had she been successful, she probably would've switched the nameplates back, cleaned the knife, washed any of her clothes that have blood in them and then waited outside the dining hall until it opens up so that she can pretend as if she just woke up). Anyway, I still call Complexity Addiction because he was thinking clearly enough at the time that the idea to wash his shirt did cross his mind, and wanting to turn on a locked-off incinerator (which leaves a situation that's impossible to create for anyone but him) seems like a tremendous mental leap as opposed to the perfectly Mundane Solution of just washing/hiding the shirt.
- He'd still have several problems: Sayaka's corpse, the kitchen knife having been removed, the broken lock, and of course the smoking gun that Sayaka wrote down his name.
- Regarding the body count by Chapter 4, it had just been established in the previous trial that partnerships could be reached if both were to kill someone as each other's accomplice. At a remaining 7 students, what would stop two people from taking advantage of Monokuma's "serial killer angle" by killing at least two other people in a single trial? With the group brought down to 3, even if the innocent party witnessed the murder, the accomplices could vote against that person in order to force a "wrong" conclusion, leading to that person's execution and the accomplices' freedom as a pair of blackened. Seems like an oversight on Monokuma's part.
- Because of the remaining seven and a half students (counting Genocide Jill/Syo as half a separate entity), there was no one who was both willing to murder someone (everyone except for Byakuya and Jill/Syo) and who could have an accomplice (the former is above teamwork, leaving only the latter with no accomplice). Theoretically nothing was stopping it, but nobody would have gone through with it. Although there is always the possibility that Monokuma would have just pulled a fast one and state that there are two different crimes, therefore while you'd go free by being voted in as the blackened in the murder you did, you would be executed because you didn't convict the blackened in the other case. But in either case it's no oversight on Monokuma's part; he wants there to be more murders as part of his goal, if two people manage to get out (and as described he still has a perfectly good justification to execute at least one of the killers anyway) it still proves his point about hope and despair.
- In that case, why not just hold two back-to-back trials and then proceed with any executions once both are finished? Since Monokuma never combines the body discovery announcements and instead treats two bodies being found together as separate events, it stands to reason he'd do the same with the trials. The previous case brought up this very notion, where Hifumi believed he and Celeste could escape together by acting as each other's accomplice, which Monokuma didn't confirm or deny the possibility of (giving the students who survived that case a reason to believe it might work). The question was touched upon in the sequel where Monokuma mentions that the opportunity to kill a lot of people
would essentially be an easy victory if it were possible. As for who could pull it off, Byakuya isn't above making Toko guard Alter Ego for him; he might consider using her to a similar end if killing everyone ever looked like a reasonable option for him.
- In that case, why not just hold two back-to-back trials and then proceed with any executions once both are finished? Since Monokuma never combines the body discovery announcements and instead treats two bodies being found together as separate events, it stands to reason he'd do the same with the trials. The previous case brought up this very notion, where Hifumi believed he and Celeste could escape together by acting as each other's accomplice, which Monokuma didn't confirm or deny the possibility of (giving the students who survived that case a reason to believe it might work). The question was touched upon in the sequel where Monokuma mentions that the opportunity to kill a lot of people
- Also, Genocider doesn't actually want to escape (she has her full memories, so she knows there's nothing outside to return to.)
- Because of the remaining seven and a half students (counting Genocide Jill/Syo as half a separate entity), there was no one who was both willing to murder someone (everyone except for Byakuya and Jill/Syo) and who could have an accomplice (the former is above teamwork, leaving only the latter with no accomplice). Theoretically nothing was stopping it, but nobody would have gone through with it. Although there is always the possibility that Monokuma would have just pulled a fast one and state that there are two different crimes, therefore while you'd go free by being voted in as the blackened in the murder you did, you would be executed because you didn't convict the blackened in the other case. But in either case it's no oversight on Monokuma's part; he wants there to be more murders as part of his goal, if two people manage to get out (and as described he still has a perfectly good justification to execute at least one of the killers anyway) it still proves his point about hope and despair.
- Why didn't anyone bother breaking the glass/windows in the cafeteria? Unless A) it wasn't able to be broken B) It was too obvious of a way to get out of the school or C) It was against the rules? Maybe I'm overthinking this?
- Looking through the glass it doesn't look like it actually goes anywhere, there's another wall not far outside that would also block escape (and when the academy was operating normally there'd probably be some walls on the other side to keep intruders away from the students). We don't get a clear shot of it in the game, but in the Anime you can see more metal plates on the other side of the glass. And since the whole point of the metal plates was to keep the students safe from the outside world it's highly unlikely they would overlook something so obvious.
- The existence of the walls just brings up another question: why did they bother planting trees if they know there won’t be any sunlight to keep them alive? (AND HOW HAVE THE TREES SURVIVED THAT LONG?!) Maybe this is just Junko fucking with us? I have so many questions…
- I might have just missed it, but was it ever explained what was up with the Crazy Diamonds pickaxe? Was it just a way to show that the students had been at the school for much longer than they suspected?
- You're spot on. It along with the photos were there to hint towards the truth.
- What happens in the event of tie between the real murderer and another person?
- It's doubtful the students would ever proceed with the vote if there was that much room for debate. Every trial usually starts with at least one prime suspect while that suspicion shifts around the group as the discussion moves along (even when there was no concrete proof that Makoto was the culprit in chapter 5, they still all voted for him because he looked the most likely).
- After she'd allowed the students to explore freely, what would Junko have done when her hideout in the data lab was exposed if someone other than Aoi and Makoto went in there? She was hiding in the hatch underneath the floor, but in most degrees, she was pretty helpless in that situation. Someone more clever could have controlled a Monokuma to walk into the room and then hit self-destruct while using the countdown to escape, or they could destroy the data lab's door so that it can't be locked again (she'd essentially given them access to deadly explosives stationed all around the school). With her control panel room getting blown up, she'd either have no sway over the students anymore, or she'd be trapped in the hatch under the collapsed remains of the ceiling. I'd understand if the Monokumas are incapable of entering that room for exactly this reason, but no such indication was made since we see one walking around the surveillance room to taunt the students about their being on live TV. note
- The Monokumas appear tied to specific rooms and never walk from one room to another so it's probable that they can't enter the control room. Destruction of school property is against the regulations so anyone trying to destroy the data lab's door would open themselves up for summary execution, and it's unlikely you'd find anyone stupid enough to try messing around with the self-destruct features to blow up the control panel since that would involve standing right next to the Monokuma they'd want to blow up and hope they get a timer rather than an instant self-destruct (Mondo got a timer because Junko wanted to show why the students shouldn't attack Monokuma, there's no guarantee the next time the Monokuma wouldn't instantly explode the same way the bomb on Mukuro did the second it was triggered).
- So, what WAS that mysterious "construction noise" Yasuhiro reported hearing? Monokuma likens it to an explosion or machine gun. The sound Alter Ego makes when Aoi finds him fits the description, and during the final trial Junko mentions the school having turret defenses to prevent people from rescuing the students, but it isn't ever directly explained or brought up again.
- In that trial, Junko says a lot of people died trying to rescue the students. I think we're supposed to assume it was the sound of another battle ending in failure.
- Scenes in the Danganronpa 3 anime confirm that there were attempts to rescue the students from the school, so it's safe to assume that this was one of them.
- What exactly was the deal with the secret room on the second floor? Was there a reason Enoshima needed to have all those student records and such just lying around if she was explicitly trying to prevent the students from finding out about their two years of lost memories? And moreover, since she managed to make them disappear by the end of the third chapter -presumably feeding them to the Monokuma plant or something- was there a reason she didn't just do that in the first place? She had lots of time to prepare the entire killing game, but somehow was unable to do anything about a vital clue like that. I also don't buy the Hope Spot argument used in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF in which she leaves a means of her own plans being dismantled as a chance to feel more despair, because she seemed to take that room seriously enough to expose herself (albeit in-costume) by leaving her hideout literally hours after it was discovered just to bash Makoto over the head, haul all those books elsewhere and make it back to her control room to battle Sakura as Monokuma (just imagine if Sakura had caught her while she was traipsing back and forth).
- Presumably, she used them to set up the incentives (and needed them there for reference in case she wanted to use the student's histories against them in response to something unexpected.)
- It's possible she never thought of the possibility that someone could find the secret room. Despite how much time she had to prepare, the game was not set up perfectly—several times she discovers loopholes that she has to cover by inventing new rules on the fly.
- She also might not have originally known about the room, as there are no cameras there and she has to go herself to attack Makoto and steal the records. She had a lot on her plate, so you can forgive the girl a few minor mistakes.
- Danganronpa 3 shows that she already had a feeling Makoto would be a thorn in her side, and she actively was anticipating the the despair she'd feel if he beat her. So, basically, she was intentionally self-handicapping, and If was right.
- So, through the images that Junko had littered throughout the school in the final (?) chapter, we discover that Jill has actually participated in class, and has even been infatuated with Byakuya (or, at least I believe it's being hinted at, anyways) as seen here. We know Jill wouldn't kill during the Events of Mutual Killing due to the circumstances of not being able to get away with it, but... why hadn't they killed Byakuya? They certainly do find Byakuya attractive, and they're not bound by the rules that they would later have to experience, so... why haven't they?
- She mentions in one of her free time events that Byakuya is the first guy she loves that she doesn't feel like killing. In fact, she's willing to stop murdering altogether if she can be together with him
- Is it just me, or was Byakuya's plan in the second trial incredibly stupid? It may have sounded cool at the time when the students pointed out how close he came to killing everyone and he coolly declared he wouldn't have let things reach that point as if he was in control the entire time. But were he to do that, wouldn't his defense have basically amounted to "I saw Mondo do it"? The majority of the evidence piled against Mondo came from Kyoko's efforts, and even she admitted her reasoning was weak after causing him to slip up. The linchpin ending up being the electronic ID that Byakuya described as unimportant during the investigation, which was linked to Mondo because of a sauna duel that only Makoto (and Kiyotaka, but he wouldn't have said anything) was privy to. Considering he didn’t even know about Chihiro's gender and by extension the room-switch, and required Makoto to put that information together, would his argument have even had a leg to stand on? He might have even thrown a wrench into Kyoko's plan to make Mondo say something incriminating by accusing him too early.
- Sure it's only Byakuya's word that Mondo did it, but Mondo is incredibly hot-headed and Byakuya easily sets him off. He was probably counting on being able to piss Mondo off enough to manipulate him into slipping up. Plus Byakuya's arrogant and believes that he can't fail.
- So I just watched the series, and read this page. I don't get how Junko is able to do all of this. Where did she get the resources to pull all of this off? How can she survive so much damage that would kill a normal person? Doesn't this technically make her a
Villain Sue or Invincible Villain? I just don't get any of this.- If by "surviving so much damage" you mean "surviving all the executions that murdered the other students up until Detention", then the answer is that the executions she went through were modified and not meant to kill, just to torture (it's there in the name). For example, in the first part that is meant to evoke Leon's execution, the baseballs only hit one part of her body and she wasn't tied up, plus it lasted only a fraction of the time. Regarding your question on how she got the resources to pull all of this off, it might be a bit of a spoiler for the franchise so I won't explain much, but the other games and novels such a Dangan Ronpa Zero, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair and Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls hint at, explain and show that it was due to a combination of brains and charisma to get people to be on her side.
- "Brains and charisma"? What "brains and charisma"? The only thing she has going for her is that she's an admittedly cute-looking design, but she just feels like a complete psychopath. I don't understand why anyone would follow her, or think that she has the right idea. Sure, she came up with this elaborate plan, but I could never see this being pulled off. These "brains and charisma" just seem like an Informed Attribute to me. Also, I don't care about spoilers, so if there's a way to explain all of this, lay it on me.
- She comes off as a complete psychopath because she is one, but also because you only interact with her when she has been revealed as the mastermind and has no reason to hide it. But the fact that everyone spent two years in close proximity with all the other students at Hope's Peak as well as it's faculty and literally nobody suspecting she was anything other than what she appeared to be on the surface. As for getting people to follow her, we don't see any scenes of her converting people, but the sequels show that she targets people who are already suffering from despair and preys on that (i.e. taking a group of kids who were seconds away from committing suicide and offering them the things they felt that they were missing and then slowly twisting their gratitude to further her own goals). As for getting the resources, that's explained by Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls - one of the kids she rescued was part of a company known for it's technology. Using them she was able to get her army of Monokumas, and then later blackmail the company into continuing to supply her by threatening to reveal the part they played in the tragedy.
- In real life it would probably be impossible for anyone to garner a substantial following and kick off a worldwide riot through endless screeds on the value of despair. Accepting that such a thing is possible in the heavy-handed moral universe of Danganronpa is the price of admission. Junko is intelligent and compelling by the standards set by the other characters and is supernaturally gifted when it comes to reading people, so if we accept that the Ultimate Despair's goal is possible within the world of Danganronpa then Junko makes an entirely plausible mastermind. In terms of *how* Junko is able to pull it off, she used threats and emotional manipulation to pressure a handful of people with remarkable abilities and resources (Monaca, Mukuro, Mitarai) to supply her with what she needed. Without them she wouldn't have been able to accomplish much of anything. Only a select cadre are truly loyal to Junko and her ideals. The rest are brainwashed by Mitarai's techniques or else are crazed anarchists caving into the new destructive zeitgeist.
- Let's be honest, in real life, would it really be such a stretch for a beautiful "fashionista" like Junko to be able to garner a sizable following, whether or not she also happens to have a batty, psychotic ideology? Obviously the scale from in-game would be unrealistic, but let's not forget, Junko is not only an attractive, mature-figured girl, she's also fairly famous as a fashion/beauty icon. Comparably to a more "real" scenario, if like Junko just, one day, uploaded a video to their social media where they said "hey, guys, you know what I love? Murder, death, and despair. Go out and murder as many people as you can, for little old me, and I'll love you forever", it's hardly a stretch to imagine there'd be some minority of people who'd legit go out and try and hurt people, just because she 'asked them' to, and that that single video would cause a pretty significant social shockwave. I mean, sure, the amount of people who'd be turned away from her by her doing that (not to mention the obvious legal and social ramification) would far outweigh any "positive" outcome. No one in their right mind would do something that dumb and self-defeating, but you know. It's important to remember how genuinely depraved and desperate people can legit get in real life, particularly when a cute school girl is involved. Incidentally, what I outlined there is actually the exact plot of the Hatred comic book.
- Side: Despair and Another Episode reveal how she did it:
- Monaca Towa supplied her with muscle in the form of hordes of Monokuma robots, which Monaca got from her family's robotics company.
- She and Mukuro were admitted to the school directly by the Steering Committee for their pet mad science project, bypassing the people who would've had enough sense to deny her entry for being a crazy terrorist.
- Said Steering Committee also covered up her atrocities, allowing her to plan an incident that destroyed Hope's Peak and started riots throughout Japan (creating chaos that she could easily exploit) by exploiting the resentment between the Main and Reserve Courses.
- She gained most of her followers by brainwashing them with the videos she stole from Ryota Mitarai. Said followers include people like Sonia (princess of a militaristic country) and Fuyuhiko (yakuza boss in training) with serious influence in the greater world, along with the Ultimate Impostor, who could pretend to be anyone with great influence and subvert their organizations to despair.
- She manipulated several powerful people close to her into clearing up loose ends; Mukuro was her bodyguard and protected her along with coming up with a lot of the Tragedy plans, Zero is basically Junko manipulating Matsuda (who was also the one to provide her with the means to wipe memories) into protecting her from people investigating the Student Council's murders, and she gets Izuru Kamukura (the Ultimate Story-Breaker Power) to allow her to continue her plans and to stop Nagito from coming after her.
- If by "surviving so much damage" you mean "surviving all the executions that murdered the other students up until Detention", then the answer is that the executions she went through were modified and not meant to kill, just to torture (it's there in the name). For example, in the first part that is meant to evoke Leon's execution, the baseballs only hit one part of her body and she wasn't tied up, plus it lasted only a fraction of the time. Regarding your question on how she got the resources to pull all of this off, it might be a bit of a spoiler for the franchise so I won't explain much, but the other games and novels such a Dangan Ronpa Zero, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair and Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls hint at, explain and show that it was due to a combination of brains and charisma to get people to be on her side.
- Why didn't anyone ask where Junko slept? Sleeping anywhere but the dorms would have broken her own rules. Obviously she had to break that rule (anything else would have risked giving up the entire game by abandoning Monokuma's controls and the surveillance room for an extended period of time), but why didn't any of the other characters point this out, given that she kept claiming she was being fair? That rule seemed to sharply limit the activities and placement of a sixteenth student, and she violated it constantly and extensively, right from the start, in a way that made it much harder for anyone to solve the underlying mysteries of the school.
- She could have just ruled that the sleeping area she was staying in was also part of the dorms and that she never slept anywhere else.
- On a related note, why are there only 15 dorm rooms on the first floor when there are 16 students in the class?
- The game hints at this, but Danganronpa 3 makes the explanation easy to puzzle out. Mukuro gets incredibly flustered whenever Junko insults or attacks her, Junko slaps her on the ass at one point and then basically gives her a footjob through her skirt with the heel of her boot. They were sharing a room, and a bed.
- She very easily could have been sleeping on the second floor of the dorms. That would still very much count. In fact, there even is a room on the second floor dorms you can enter that your are never required to (I think) that could exist just to answer this question. On the subject of sleep though,
- Everyone except Makoti should be pretty wrecked by Chapter 6. They stayed up the entire night in Chapter 5 when Monokuma stopped working, then did a class trial and then summerly started searching the school for any changes and Makoto shows up and they learn about the second trial which investigation phase begins when it's already night time and goes pretty much throughout the night as the ending seem to suggest they leave at dawn. That's like 48 hours without sleep. Even if they had a quick power nap after Makoto's execution before searching the school they still should be exhausted during the second trial.
- So Genocider Syo becomes Genocide Jack in the English version. While I get it's to obscure her gender, it's extremely awkward once we realize who they are, and they subsequently become Genocider Jill. Why not go with a more gender-neutral, but otherwise male-leaving name? Sam's good - it even starts with an S, to match the Japanese name.
- The media was the one who came up with the name Genocide Jack, so from a story perspective them choosing a gender-neutral name for somebody everyone assumed was a man doesn't make too much sense. As for Jack, it's a common English name (right up there with John) and probably more to the point the Serial Killer that most get compared to is Jack the Ripper, which is probably what the translators were going for.
- "Genocide Jill" was an error and the dialog and the other games completely drop it.
- I wouldn't really call it an "error", nor does the Jill name replace Genocide Jack. Genocide Jill was just a "joke" name that got thrown around as a "har har Jack was a girl ain't that weird" in-joke between the cast in the first game. That reveal doesn't matter in latter games so the joke name gets dropped. It's really that simple.
- The hatch in the Monokuma room found by Aoi and Makoto. Why did we have to leave the room when we were quite obviously standing on top of the mastermind's head? I know it was meant to avoid finding out early, but there is no good reason to leave. The only reason we're leaving is because Asahina says we should leave, cause we heard a sound outside the room. A sound. Not an explosion, earthquake or anything that sounded so drastic, that it required immediate checking out. If they really wanted us to not ask why the game is being stupid and forcing us to not look in the super-obvious-hiding-spot, couldn't they at least make the reason for leaving a bit more... dramatic? A sound. Asahina heard a sound. Which tells us nothing, it could be someone else entering the computer room. No need to leave and not take the two seconds it would require to open the hatch and find out.
- The hatch was locked, so staying there wouldn't have accomplished anything. They could've pulled and banged and pounded on it for as long as they wanted to, and it wouldn't have done them any good. And even if they did manage to break open the hatch, they would've gotten executed for breaking the "no breaking down locked doors" rule.
- It was a while since I read it, but I think the thing was that Asahina wanted to mess with Makoto, by controlling Monokuma, and afterwards, when she leaves the room, the door locks behind her.
- I'm so very confused about the whole amnesia thing. What I don't get is, if Makoto and the others were subjected to memory loss 2 years before the game started, why did they already faint the very first day they came to the academy (2 years ago)? If anything, Makoto and the others shouldn't have fainted, and gone on to have a school life for 2 whole years. And THEN after those 2 years is when they should faint, lose their memories, and wake up after some time just like Makoto did in the classroom. So the point is, why did they faint much, much earlier? That bothers me so much .
- They didn't actually faint. They believed they did, but that was the point when their memories were cut off.
- Why did the people who founded Hope's Peak Academy think that they'd be able to use their research into various talents to create a master-of-all-talents super-genius? As far as I can tell from the game's timeline, it was founded around 1932, and I don't think that the knowledge of neurology and psychology back then would lead anyone to think that such a thing was possible.
- Rome wasn't built in a day. They were just that intent upon getting their wish that they were willing to work at it even when it was firmly in the realms of science fiction.
- Imperial Japan in 1932. Hope's Peak was probably affiliated with Unit 731.
- Why did the people who founded Hope's Peak Academy think that a master-of-all-talents super-genius would be the hope for humanity? If they wanted to unite humanity, shouldn't they have been working towards an Ultimate Politician or Ultimate Peacemaker? Did they think that a master-of-all-talents super-genius would act as a "symbol of hope" which would inspire humanity to new heights?
- Maybe that was their original goal, but then time passed and later versions of the Steering Committee came up with the 'Ultimate Ultimate' idea when it became more plausible.
- We're talking about Hope's Peak, who, in all their years of operation, couldn't find a single "Ultimate Psychiatrist" to ensure the mental health of their students.
- They actually did; Miaya the Ultimate Therapist.
- Hope's Peak was founded in the early 1930s in Imperial Japan with the express mission of mad science. I think it's fairly certain that the original Izuru Kamukura was involved in something akin to, if not specifically, Unit 731. Long story short, Hope's Peak was founded by mad scientist war criminals, and the Board of Trustees by the point everything went down was probably 90%~ the sons of Japanese mad scientist war criminals.
- Why does everyone assume the body found in Chapter 5 was Mukuro rather than Junko? Since Junko and Mukuro have the exact same measurements (as far as the party know, to judge from the report and Junko's report card) the only thing that identifies the body as Mukuro out of the two is the tat too, which could have been added after the fact. Wouldn't Mukuro being the mastermind have seemed a more likely theory since we know she was abducted by and eventually joined Fenrir, a mysterious band of killers who could well have indoctrinated and set her up as a mole? Is the only reason the group believes the body is Mukuro because Monokuma says so?
- Because everyone had seen "Junko" die long before, and the idea of reusing a body was never considered.
- More to the point, they don't gain access to the bio lab until chapter 6, so they'd have no way of knowing that any bodies could be stored for that long. They probably assumed that "Junko's" body had been disposed of shortly after her death.
- They're saying that when it's revealed that the body found was the same person impaled with spears, why were they so certain that this person was Mukuro and not Junko? Aside from the tattoo (which wouldn't be hard to fake) it's entirely logical that Junko was a regular student killed and then had her body reused by the mastermind Mukuro. The logical leap to the fact that the Junko they met was actually Mukuro is a bit stretched and depends entirely on evidence that isn't all that solid.
- How much of the academy's operations is automated/set up in advance and how much is Junko? Things like locking doors and punishment machines could have been set up in advance, but what about setting out food or cleaning up the crime scenes? Was she doing this via the Monokumas? Wasn't monitoring cameras and running the school too big a job for one person, even if they'd had plenty of time to set things up in advance?
- According to Danganronpa Zero, her talent isn't actually the Ultimate Fashionista, she uses this as a cover. Her real talent is Ultimate Analyst. In Danganronpa 3, we see her in action learning how to create brainwashing videos from watching one and paying close attention. Most people couldn't monitor the entire school at once, but she's got the observation powers of Shawn Spencer and Sherlock Holmes combined.
- Goodbye Despair also reveals that she created an AI version of herself before her death, so Alter Ego Junko was probably helping her.
- In Mondo's execution, his body is completely destroyed, so how is there any reason to be surprised that there are only 9 filled compartments in the Bio Lab?
- Because his body wasn't actually turned into butter. Either the executions are not exactly what we see, or Monokuma took out Mondo before he liquefied and just slapped his face on a tub of butter. Considering nobody questioned how he turned into butter originally, they likely know that he DIDN'T.
- At the end of Chapter 3, we learn that Celestia put the stolen laptop into one of the other lockers in the bath area. She even gives the key to that locker to Kirigiri. Problem: even after the laptop is stolen, all of the lockers still have their keys (except for the one where the laptop was originally kept). This could've been an ingenious bit of Foreshadowing for eagle-eyed players, but as it stands, it's a plot hole.
- How is it a plot hole? It was just a locked locker and none of the characters thought it was strange so they ignored it.
- Celeste went to grab the key before going to the red door, most likely, just in case she did lose.
- How on earth was it possible to for Alter Ego to run on an ancient laptop from years ago? There's no way a laptop of the kind displayed would have enough memory to contain all the code to create and run an AI, or to store all the all personality information it collected. And that's not even getting into how the laptop managed to avoid running out of power while being stuck in a locker with no power supply for days on end.
- Alter Ego was written by the "Ultimate Programmer" Chihiro Fujisaki.
- That's not an answer. No matter how much Fujisaki fixed the laptop, without other parts she could never improve its capabilities. I say, though, that the laptop was never described as “an ancient laptop from years ago” — Enoshima or anyone else could have left it lying there at any moment of the two years they spent at the academy. That, and the fact that we don't have a clue (as far as I know, no spoilers for Another Episode or DR3 please) of what time period the story takes place at, so “ancient laptop from years ago” could still mean a computer far more advance that our normal ones.
- Computers' internal software can be modified and upgraded even how old it is. And in the hands of someone labeled as the "Ultimate Programmer," it is certainly possible. This is a series where someone with the title of "Ultimate Mechanic" (referencing the second game btw) who is said to fix up freaking airplanes easily. I don't see how someone being able to fix-up/modify an old laptop is crazy.
- During the rare occasion where the player sees the inside of another student's room, they're shown to have much more tools and such related to their ultimate talent than the player character. So it's not far fetched that the "Ultimate Programmer" would have pc parts in their room.
- Why is it that people blame Kirigiri for "endangering" the group? Unless you believe she's obligated to babysit people her own age 24/7, you're giving her way too much credit if you think she was ever in a position to prevent any of the murders: her greatest feats that somehow put her ahead of the other students were the first floor map, the second floor hidden room, and stealing the Monokey; none of which could have done jack to protect anyone. This whole willful blindness (because that's the only word for it) completely disregards all the times she tried to encourage caution and somebody died (or nearly died) for ignoring her, such as telling everyone not to defy Monokuma, not to go talking to Alter Ego recklessly, and not to jump to conclusions so easily. And if you consider that she was the only one taking an active role towards stopping The Mastermind, really she was the sole student doing anything to keep the group safe with the others mainly looking out for themselves, even going so far as to put herself in danger to protect Alter Ego while some, like Togami and Asahina, actually did intentionally endanger the group at points. Honestly, if you’re going to hold her responsible for all the deaths that happened, why not put some blame on everyone else for, ya know, actually killing each other?
- When did ANYONE blame Kirigiri for "endangering the group"?
- I take it that it was because Kyoto was the most "mysterious" of the group. At the time, Kyoto didn't even know what her "Ultimate" title was and she was being pretty damn secretive about herself in general. Byakuya, in particular, saw her as very distrustful due to her not wanting to tell him or the others anything and the others tend to agree with him (especially Monokuma loves to build tension and distrust toward others). Even if Kyoto is arguably the most helpful of the group when it came to investigations and Class Trials, she was still keeping to herself for the most part. Hell, even Makoto himself stated how scary it was on how good Kyoto.
- No one considered Kyoko to be "endangering the group", the considered her suspicious and a likely candidate for the mastermind's sockpuppet. As mentioned above, this is because she was mysterious, no one knew hardly anything about her, and she kept disappearing for extended periods of time without even attempting to offer explanation as to where she was or what she was up to. Of course they'd be suspicious of her.
- What was the point of having Mukuro pose as Junko in the first place? Both of them were part of the class of 77 so Junko wouldn't even have needed to change the photo clues she gave everyone, and whether Mukuro appeared as Junko or as herself they'd have an inside man either way (and having her appear as herself wouldn't have stopped Junko killing her). We're told Junko decided to kill her sister because of her bad performance and because it amused her, but that doesn't explain why she felt the need for the deception in the first place.
- For someone as narcissistic and easily bored as Junko, it probably was fun and interesting to watch someone else impersonating herself. However, she probably got bored of the farce pretty quickly, as she apparently did with most things; her boredom may have contributed to her decision to kill Mukuro, since killing her was an interesting deviation from the plan.
- There was no mention of Mukuro on the HPA forum Makoto looked at. Junko, on the other hand, was a famous model who the students, if they'd done any research, would be far more likely to notice as missing from their class. If she had been missing, the students would have suspected she was the mastermind sooner, and face it, who's going to suspect someone who's "dead"?
- Junko said that her status as the Ultimate Soldier would have drawn too much suspicion.
- As she said in the final chapter, because she didn't want the appeal of "Ultimate Fashionista" to go to waste, but she thought Mukuro was too incompetent to pull off working behind the scenes.
- She's also aware that the 'Ultimate Soldier' is always going to be suspicious and someone the others would be watching very closely. The 'Ultimate Fashionista' on the other hand sounds like a joke, which Junko has likely used in her favor before.
- Why is Chapter 5 titled "100 Mile Dash; Pain of a Junk Food Junkie"? All the other chapter titles are at least tangentially related to what happens in the chapter, but I beat the game and still have no idea what this is supposed to mean. It sounds like it could be related to Aoi, but she doesn't play a very big role in that chapter.
- I believe it's a subtle hint that the Mastermind's identity is Junko, hence, the double use of the word "Junk".
- OP here: it's apparently a reference to the title of a light novel series. Still not sure where the "junk food" part comes from, though.
- "Junk Food Junkie" is likely meant to be a reference to the song Junk Food Junkie by Larry Gorce. The song is about a "healthy man" who leads a double life as a guy who eats junk food at night. I believe this is meant to be subtle foreshadowing to a number of plot revelations in both this and the following chapter. It's likely also meant to refer to the two sides of Kyoko. The side she presents to others, and the side that rejects her father, and the deeper side that exists within her with her more complicated feelings towards him.
- So how in the world did Kirigiri get her scars? During her last FTE she says they are a reminder of "the last time I was foolish enough to show my feelings for someone", while in Case 6 she says they are from a accident when she started working as a detective; I don't think they match.
- The accident was her showing her feelings for someone. Also, she's more cautious / vague about her wording in Case 6 because she's talking to the entire class and doesn't trust them quite as much as Makoto.
- Even before the 5th trial, there are few instances of people clearly breaking the rules and everyone else, including Junko, ignoring it. 1) Why wasn't there a trial for killing Taka? The murderer is not Celeste, the body was found way before Hifumi's, and, as seen in Sakura's trial, it's totally okay to have a trial with the blackened already dead. It seems Junko just randomly decided to help Celeste by hiding the fact that she had an accomplice. 2) Shouldn't Hiro have been executed after he was drugged by third trial culprits and went to sleep? It's hard to believe Junko slept at the dorms every night since the game started, either. 3) Shouldn't Junko have come to the trials and voted? 4) Shouldn't she have punished Sakura for dueling her?
- 1) Monokuma said, iirc, that he was waiting because he thought more things would have happened. Also, the third trial was for the plan as a whole, there was no point holding a second trial when the blackened for the first murder was already dead. Monokuma knows everything, and it's not the first or last time that he's withheld important information about the case. Giving them that information would make it unfair, the students have to figure that out themselves. 2) No because Monokuma said at one point that drugging is fine. It's only if you willingly and knowingly fall asleep that you're breaking the rules. 3) Probably, but that doesn't matter than much anyway because she's running the whole shebang in secret. There are of course going to have to be exceptions, and there's no rule in the e-handbook that says you have to vote. 4) That fight was in secret anyway and Junko figured that she could use it as an easy motive. She either saw the fight itself as an attempted failed execution, or she saw the inevitable murder of Sakura to be the execution.
- I think every student had to participate in each trial. Junko was participating in the trials, as judge.
- Junko doesn't have to play 100% fair; she only has to play fair enough to convince the audience. That means that Rule of Cool applies in-universe and that she can freely bend the rules as long as it doesn't seem like she's blatantly undermining the core message she's trying to send (about how easily the supposed hopes of the world can be made to kill each other.)
- Probably mixed with Fridge Horror: if there are no cameras in the baths, then, in case someone committed suicide/died/was killed there, even Monokuma wouldn't know what exactly happened and who was to blame? How would the trial proceed then?
- Monokuma would probably change the rules to state that nobody can graduate by committing a murder where there are no cameras. There might end up being no trial at all, with the victim just being treated as an extra death like Mukuro. Either that, or there could be a trial, but whoever is voted the killer is executed, whether or not it was actually the case.
- Even if there are no cameras in the baths, there are cameras in the halls outside the baths. Monokuma could easily deduce who the killer is by reviewing other security footage. Presumably the killer would need to perform other acts outside of the baths to commit any kind of crime, such as procuring a murder weapon or hiding other evidence. This would all still be caught on tape, and anything elaborate that completely avoided security cameras would probably take enough time to set up that Monokuma would catch it before it occurred.
- The mastermind doesn't actually care about justice, just about sending a specific message (after all, they were willing to blatantly break the rules and accept a verdict against both Makoto and Kyoko for a murder they knew they didn't commit.) So that situation wouldn't create a huge problem (Monokuma could just let Kyoko or whoever solve the case and declare them correct without regard for whether this was true) unless the trial ended and a student could then prove Monokuma got it wrong.
- Why did none of the students question why their dorm rooms (besides Makoto, Sayaka, and Kyoko's) were decorated to their tastes? If they moved their belongings into the dorms before the school year started, it's highly unlikely none of them would come across each other, and it's stated that none of the students met before first attending Hope's Peak except Makoto and Sayaka in elementary school and obviously Junko and Mukuro. The other possibility is that they decorated their rooms during the killing game, which raises the question of where all the stuff came from.
- If the problem with Makoto's bathroom door is that it doesn't fit in the doorframe, how did Leon breaking the doorknob allow him to get into the bathroom?
- It didn't directly, at some point when taking it off he must have jostled it in just the right way to get it to align and swing. Closing argument even points out that the killer was likely confused when it happened.
- Jack keeps a tally of her kills on her/Toko's shared leg as pointed out in an artbook and visible in UDG. In the track group photo in Chapter 6 of THH she's wearing the girls' extra short shorts uniform. Shouldn't the scars have been visible? Did she cover them with makeup or something?
- The trial is set to happen some time after the body is discovered by three or more people. In that case, what would happen if the killer managed to completely dispose of the body in some manner. As an example, the incinerator does seem like it could fit a human body, so if the killer was the one on trash duty, and they incinerated the corpse, then what would happen then? It’s not like the other survivors wouldn’t notice the apparent disappearance of their peer, and it seems unlikely that Junko would pass up on the chance to hold a trial, but the body literally can’t be discovered, as it effectively doesn’t exist now. (And on that note, would they still be given a spot in the bio lab? While being reduced to butter certainly didn’t exclude Mondo, there was at least something left of him, while the incinerator would basically destroy everything)
- It seems that the most likely explanation is that a class trial wouldn't happen in the first place in that case. Junko states during the final class trial that 'dying of old age is boring as shit,' and that 'the audience at home wouldn't like that at all,' so she clearly wants her audience to be entertained in one way or another. If a class trial happened without a body to examine, that would severely cut down on the surviving students' ability to find the culprit and make things less interesting to the audience, since there would be much less tension and the advantage would be firmly with the killer. In order for a trial to happen and be fair to both parties, the body has to be available. It forces the killer to take some kind of risk by allowing the other students to examine it, since otherwise, they won't get to leave.
- It should also be noted that completely incinerating a body isn't that easy. A quick google indicates that it takes two to three hours to fully burn a body, and that's in a purpose-built crematorium, and even then the remains still need to be crushed down. It's very likely that the school's trash incinerator simply isn't up to the task of burning a body quickly enough to be a viable disposal method. There would be way too much of a chance that the body just smoulders, at which point people would probably notice the smoke and whoever was on trash duty has basically screwed themselves over. It's possible that they could try to get around it by dismembering the body first, but that would probably just create an even bigger mess elsewhere. In short, trying to fully dispose of the body in the incinerator is probably way more risky than simply leaving the body intact and trying to hide your involvement, especially since there's alway the chance of Monokuma interfering in order to have a trial regardless.
- Regarding a situation where the body is disposed of completely: Once it became evident that the body is impossible to find, Monokuma would probably make an announcement that one of their classmates is dead, but since you can't have a trial without any body, oh well! Have fun knowing that one of your friends is a murderer! Not to mention that the person who pulled off the murder now has to deal with the despair of having killed someone and accomplished nothing aside from making everyone paranoid.
- Isn't Monokuma/the mastermind's administration of the school counterproductive to their goal of spreading despair through the killing game? They provide unlimited food, clean water, privacy, sanitation, and plumbing. They enforce a curfew and provide lockpick-proof doors. They keep the sexes separated, lessening the threat of harassment or assault. They even clean up the dead bodies, sparing the students of the trauma of doing it themselves. All of this taken together would significantly reduce the toll imprisonment takes on the students, prolonging the amount of time they're willing to endure their situation. It's a lot more work for the mastermind just to accomplish the opposite of what they set everything up for in the first place.
- Maybe they're more interested in juicier motives than killing out of desperation, since that would be more entertaining to the in-universe audience?
- Junko's whole plan is to bring the world to despair by showing the symbols of hope killing each other. For it to work, the students must be able to simply live peacefully, but choose to commit murder. It wouldn't have the same effect if the students were living in a hellhole and forced to kill. And the fact that students are giving up the relative comfort of the school to escape to the ruined outside world makes it even more depair-inducing for the viewers.
- This is a pretty minor thing, but in case 2, why does Hina question about whether the killer using the dead student's handbook breaks the "students can't loan handbooks" regulation? And why does Monokuma then give his weird "well I don't consider dead students to be actual students" Handwave? By that point they had firmly established already that the regulation has the loophole in it's wording regarding "loaning"; that you cannot 'loan' a handbook, but you can take someone's handbook within them giving it to you. And hell, that was established a little bit earlier in the same trial. The forced handwave from Monokuma to 'get around' the regulation seemed like a strange thing to include given how unnecessary it was.
- Presumably, because getting your handbook forcibly taken would count as a loan and mean the victim of the theft would have to be punished. Using a dead person's handbook means nobody broke the rules since dead people can't be punished.
- Why do none of the blackened try to kill themselves to avoid Monokuma's punishment? They're going into it knowing that if they lose, they'll be killed in some absurdly horrific way. Why not, say, sneak a knife into the trial and if, at the end, it is obvious you're about to be found out, stab yourself in the throat. You die, on your own terms, in a much less painful way than whatever Monokuma has planned.
- Would a suicide really be a better way to go out, from an emotional point-of-view? Either way, this only works for the killers after Leon (no one knew how bizarre and inhumane the executions were until seeing Leon's), and excluding Junko (as she wanted to be punished). So basically, only Celeste and Mondo. Mondo really doesn't seem like the type who'd ever kill himself, especially given his complex over his weakness. As for Celeste, I suppose she could've done this, but again, she doesn't seem like the type who could ever bring herself to commit suicide. Even if she could've, sneaking a knife into the trial is the type of thing that the students would expect Monokuma to definitely pick up on. And imagine if he did, or if one of the other students found out. It'd scream of suspicion, and paint them as the blackened, for sure. It's more risky than it's worth.
- How exactly did the crime scenes get cleaned up so quickly? Immediately after the class trials are over, the bodies have been removed, and the crime scenes basically reset to being more or less pristine. The problem is that Junko is the only person who could conceivably do the cleanup, and she has basically no time to do so. They do note at one point that it presumeably gets cleaned up while all the students are occupied with the Class Trials, except Junko has to be presiding over them as Monokuma. Furthermore, during the second case, they actually have a recess where they return to the scene to examine Chihiro's body, and obviously no cleanup had started yet, which implies that the murder scenes don't get cleaned up until the trial's conclusion. This leaves very little time for Junko to clean up the crime scenes, repair any damage, and move the body to the Bio Lab before the rest of the kids would be able to interrupt her.
- Maybe she uses a bunch of Monokuma's backups? With a lot of them, she could probably work faster.
- Are there more schools like Hope's Peak or Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles in Japan? If there are, where the hell are they? Is the concept of SHSL/Ultimate talents a Japanese thing, or do these schools exist in other countries? Sonia came to Hope's Peak to study as the Ultimate Princess, so either A) This kind of school doesn't exist in her home country, or B) Hope's Peak is just a really good ultimate academy. Why the hell does DRV3 take place in a school, anyway? Couldn't it have been filmed in a different facility? Where did the other 51 killing games take place? Why are the killing game contestants ALWAYS ultimate?
- While whether or not there are other schools like Hope's Peak (or, at the very least, were other schools like Hope's Peak) isn't as easy to answer, the reason why all the killing games happen in a school or school-like setting and why the contestants are all Ultimates, its likely for the same reason most series don't majorly shake up their format outside of a reboot. The high school setting and the Ultimate students are key parts of Danganronpa's brand and, in the case of the cast of Ultimates especially, they're part of what draws people to the series. In real life, the way Ultimates draw people into the entire concept is usually through letting them imagine what special talent their OC would have and how it would relate to their place in a death game. In V3's world, the way it draws people in (particularly the teenagers watching along at home) would be through letting them imagine what their Ultimate talent would be and how they would act in the show, that's specifically something the characters in V3 are shown to expression in their auditions.
- To answer most of these questions: There is no mention of any other Hope's Peak-like academy, though there may have been imitators. Sonia's country is mentioned to have a Foreign Culture Fetish for Japan, which is why she's there to study (and probably why she's the Ultimate Princess; most other monarchial countries wouldn't have their royals educated in Japan, so she's the only princess who would attend Hope's Peak). Hope's Peak is generally portrayed as a very good academy, if more so for the Ultimates than the Reserve Course students. We don't know anything about v3's 'Danganronpa' show, or even how much the Mastermind was telling the truth about it, which includes what the other seasons were like; they may not have all been at schools (v3 takes place at specifically a "prison school" so there's some variation, even if only at the surface level). Contestants are presumably always ultimates because the original, fictional Danganronpa had them that way, so it's tradition. It also could 'spice up' the killing game with how the contestants used their talents, and if it's true that the cast's personalities were built from the ground up, it provides a shortcut for Team Danganronpa to build their characters around.
- Junko's general characterisation is so generally inconsistent it makes my head hurt. If Junko has a despair fetish, to the point where she actually gets off (pardon the expression) on her own plan failing and leading to her own death, why does she bother executing her plans as flawlessly as she does at all? Why does she put effort into them, and why does she act genuinely pissed off when they get smashed to pieces? Does she WANT her plans to succeed, or doesn't she? Her plan that got foiled was the plan to spread despair, via Makoto being the Ultimate Hope. But apparently the despair being destroyed by hope was despairful enough itself to trigger Junko's despair lust? So is Junko a threat who is actually trying to spread despair and doesn't want to be stopped, or is she an insane mascohist who is, ironically, hoping for hope to succeed as a personal despair? I know they emphasises pretty strongly that Junko's ideology is illogical and born from insanity, so maybe the game understands this, but even so they never really bother addressing it to the point where it feels like a conscious part of the writing, it more feels like Junko's character has no proper framing for her motivations beyond "I love despair".
- Well, for one, Junko knows that a large part of her despair at failing is tied up in her plan's massive scope; it's one thing to screw up and fail at some sideshow, and another to completely fail the Ultimate Evil World Domination Scheme. So she has to make sure that she gets her entire idea off the ground for it to be meaningful to her if it fails.
- For another, she usually plans out her grand Hope Crusher actions well in advance, while her self-destructive ones are more spur of the moment. She usually genuinely wants to win, but if she sees an opportunity for emotional self-flagellation, she can't help but take it. Her 'If I win I revel in your despair, if I lose I revel in my despair' attitude is probably why she never tries to stop indulging herself in this way, but it's not something she includes in her planning.
- For a vast majority of the game, the students communicate via Alter Ego through typing on the keyboard, implying that Alter Ego has no sense of hearing. This is also built upon by some of his dialogue, which makes it seem like he's clueless to what is being said if it isn't typed on the keyboard. This is even further proved by Makoto's narration, which makes it perfectly clear that when someone says something, another person types it. However, when Makoto hides Alter Ego under his shirt and instructs him to remain silent, After Ego responds with "Understood. Your command has been implemented." The laptop was closed, so Makoto couldn't have typed it. In short: can Alter Ego hear what's going on or not?
- How did Genocide Jack never get found out? She always leaves scissors she uses to butcher her victims at the scene of the crime as a Calling Card, and she admitted in the second class trial that she only uses a special, ornate kind of scissors. Surely the police investigating the crime scenes would have thought to trace the unique scissors back to whomever is apparently buying them in bulk… unless, of course, Monokuma was telling the truth when he said cops in this world are just cannon fodder for bad guys and are ill-equipped to actually deal with threats.
- Genocide Jack makes her own scissors, hence why there's nothing for the police to track.
- From a writing standpoint, why does pursuing the truth regarding Kyoko lead to a bad ending when that’s what she encourages Makoto to do for the whole game?
- Well, for one thing, none of the options in the 5th trial are the truth, since the whole thing was staged. Secondly, aside from Kyoko lying, a major theme of the killing game is friendships being betrayed. When that happens, the game progresses as normal, and when it doesn't, the game breaks, as shown by the aftermath of Sakura's suicide. Makoto is probably the closest think Kyoko has to a friend and she did save his life, so by allowing her to be framed he plays into Junko's hands. By doing what Junko doesn't expect and sacrificing himself to save her, he forces things Off the Rails.
- We know all the details of the chapter 5 murder by the end of the game, but there are two very obvious points of investigation that the characters just seems to not consider at all. The first is Toko/Genocide Jack as a suspect. She goes off alone and returns saying she found the body, but it seems entirely possible she could have either killed the victim or arranged the body when she was discovering it. I mean, she didn't, but not a single character suspects her even though she literally is a serial killer. This could have easily been remedied by having another character go with her. The other potential suspect that is entirely logical is Byakuya. He was the only one with the key to Kyoko's room where the damning evidence for her is found (and he had it a full day before the murder). Even with the reveal that Kyoko has a key that can open any door that doesn't mean Byakuya couldn't have tried to set her up. He seems to be way more suspicious than Makoto by the sudden end of the trial. And if he was accused at this point it actually would have added to the chaotic and uncertain end of that trial.
- So what would've happened if no one murdered anyone else? Was that option even possible?
- Monokuma claims that if no one commits murder, then all of them can just live in the school with their basic needs taken care of.
- That is true but since the game is broadcasted and Monokuma doesn't want the game to be boring, he'll probably continue to ramp up the motives until something happens.
- Monokuma claims that if no one commits murder, then all of them can just live in the school with their basic needs taken care of.
