Misaimed Fandom / Danganronpa

Main installments:

In General

• The entire idea that "talent" is a meaningless concept, completely irrelevant to the big picture, and harmful to everyone involved seems lost on a portion of the fandom. "Talent" is decided by Hope's Peak only, a single school existing in one part of the world that has existed for less than 80 years. A major theme in Dangan Ronpa is that the creation of this Fantastic Caste System was damaging to people both inside and outside the main course school. Indeed, it is this caste system that allows for the Tragedy to take place. All of this, of course, is intentional on the school's part, as the school cares very much about its own prestige and its human test subjects. However, a lot of theories and observations in the fandom concerning what a person is and is not capable of seem to flow around the identity of a person's "ultimate talent". A lot of people start thinking like Nagito does: that being labeled an ultimate actually makes you the best at what you do, or that it makes you an objectively more skilled person. This is not the case in canon:
  • Peko is fought to a stalemate in a sword fight with Munakata, and later defeated by Mukuro.
  • Chiaki sucks at Dating sims, Asahina discusses losing plenty of swimming events.
  • Sakura has yet to defeat her boyfriend in a match.
• A person's "ultimate talent" also does not represent what actual skills or talents they have as a person, and is not an indication of their identity. This is played with again and again in the games. The most useful, most moral, and sometimes most dangerous people do not have "talents", even though they are objectively talented and skilled individuals.
  • Case in point: Komaru and Hajime. Since neither of them were actually main course students at Hope's Peak, neither has an official titled talent.
• Chiaki even gives a speech to Hajime about the downsides of it. It's not that having a talent is a bad thing, it's that being told that this talent is everything you are is restricting. Chiaki will never be allowed to do anything without the title of "Ultimate Gamer" hanging over her head. What if she wanted to be a doctor? Or a policewoman? Or literally anything else?
• Some characters tie themselves so much to their talents that it greatly hinders them as people.
  • Juzo, being a boxer, seems almost incapable of solving any problem he faces without the use of violence.
  • The only worth Ruruka sees in herself is making sweets, which ruined her friendship with Seiko when Seiko couldn't eat them.
  • And Mitarai's obsession with making a "hopeful anime" led to him becoming a hikikomori and even willing to resort to brainwashing in order to do so. And his "Hope Anime" is nothing more than a pretty animation that brainwashes people, which isn't really inspiring hope.
• This may be in part a product of the English dub of the game, due to the choice of words. The game's dub uses "Ultimate _____", which implies the student is the absolute best at their Talent, while the original Japanese and the Funimation dub uses "Super High-School Level _______" which implies that they're really good, especially for their age, but not necessarily the absolute best.
• Hope's Peak Academy might even be a critique on the school systems of Japan, where the title of your school matters far more than your actual education. This exists in the West, as well, but the metaphor might be lost on some audiences who are more interested in the characters, leading them to miss the point.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

• Some Western fans insist that Chihiro is a transgender girl, even though the game (especially in School Mode) clarifies that he's a cisgender boy who was bullied due to gender roles in Japan, and that crossdressing only worsened his issues.
• Mukuro is stated by fans to be anything besides an Anti-Villain on some occasions, since she was Junko's accomplice. This dismisses that, while Mukuro is Junko's accomplice, she does not share Junko's ideals and has the ability to care about people as people instead of pawns, as Junko is a legitimate psychopath whose behavior is Obviously Evil; her sister does not share this mindset, and this is in fact part of the reason that Junko takes advantage of her and has her killed off in Chapter 1 at all. On the Villains Wiki for Fandom Wikia, it is notable that Mukuro is labelled as a "Near Pure Evil", which not only misses the point that she's an Extreme Doormat to Junko, but also completely misses her true ideals and goals and puts her in the same category as Junko, who is definitively depicted as The Sociopath, and completely vilifies her. As well as this, Mukuro is a scapegoat like all of Junko's other victims. Junko is clearly incapable of caring for anyone else, so the only reason she has Mukuro around as an assistant is because she's too naive to see what Junko actually is. This allows her to shift the blame onto Mukuro, and unfortunately, anyone who states that Junko and Mukuro think the same miss that part completely.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

• A lot of fans continually give Chiaki the "traitor" label, a narrative of which was first constructed by Monokuma (Junko Enoshima's AI) in the first place. This is forgetting that she's a creation from the Future Foundation and is supposed to be observing the students during the Killing School Trip, or much rather, during their rehabilitation as Ultimate Despair in the Neo World Program. Monokuma actually did that so the students would distrust each other, meaning that Chiaki was actually their only real ally, especially since she canonically was designed to have Incorruptible Pure Pureness and the only murder she ends up instigating was a part of the victim's scheme, and not her own.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

• Some fans came to the conclusion that Kokichi Oma was a Nazi. While his character art definitely has elements of Putting on the Reich, the game makes it very clear that he's really anything but. He isn't even so much a supreme leader as he is a leader of a comedy troupe dedicated to committing "laughable crimes".
• Several fans have latched on to the idea that this game is actually an open letter from Kodaka and the Danganronpa writing team to the fanbase about how much they hate the franchise they created and how much they want it to end already, which lead to them making the ending purposefully disappointing just so they could finally break away from the franchise and do something else. It's...dubious that they actually meant it that way, considering how much work went into improving the gameplay and overall presentation, and there's several other ways to interpret the ending in a meta-textual sense, especially when the franchise is known for meta-jokes regarding video games and deconstructions, but regardless, it's clear that some fans think Kodaka and his team are rather ungrateful for how popular the series has become.
  • This post show a translation of some of what Kodaka said about the ending. Which includes that the scenario was intended to put the player on the ground level and use the theme of lies born from truths, and that the development team actually got worried about the negative feedback they were getting, meaning that was never intended.
  • On top of this, this video has Kodaka explain that the In-Universe audience was not meant to represent the real-life fans of Danganronpa. They may spout the same opinions as the fandom, but the player is meant to feel a disconnect between themselves and the audience (for one, Danganronpa is extremely popular in that world, while it's still relatively niche in reality), and ultimately, side with Shuichi on ending Danganronpa once and for all by disappointing them.
• To this day, there are still fans claiming Himiko is canonically a lesbian. This was due to initial mistranslations and fake spoilers claiming she and Tenko were a couple, which is a misinterpretation of their actual relationship. In the game proper, Tenko more-or-less stalks and annoys Himiko, and Himiko in turn is appropriately dismayed and dismissive, similar to how Kazuichi obsesses over Sonia in the second game. She acts this way up until Tenko's speech in Chapter 2 and only started cultivating their friendship in chapter 3. When Tenko dies, Himiko feels intense regret and guilt that she pushed away someone who genuinely cared about her, and begins to idolize her somewhat after she's gone. Despite this, their feelings for each other were never on the same level, as Kokichi points out. More to the point, there is a mountain of evidence explicitly stating Himiko is attracted to men: Her image of God is a handsome man, she calls Ryoma attractive in Chapter 2, blushes and becomes extremely flustered when Kokichi says he loves her in Chapter 5 and clumsily attempts to flirt with Shuichi in Chapter 4 (Even asking to pet him and becoming embarrassed when Tsumugi suggests Shuichi should be the one petting her).
• A lot of fans thought that Miu was somebody who's meant to be hated by the fans. However, Kodaka stated that he enjoyed her humor, and he only expected Miu to be unpopular with the fans. Speaking of Miu, some Kokichi fans went on to state she was a Generic Doomsday Villain who only attempted to kill him just so that he could act in self-defense. This basically ignores how the game stated she wanted to get out to save the world with her inventions.
• Kokichi's Consummate Liar personality and tendency to be a scheming bastard is supposed to invoke Ambiguously Evil as part of the game's theme of truth and lies, but his actions are frequently taken as being fully evil because everyone believes the things he does that cater to the "evil" part, which is missing the point completely. The only times he doesn't offer up lies via an Ambiguous Situation are when he's using Brutal Honesty, which he actually does much more often, ironically enough.

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