All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!
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Main installments:
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
- While Fuyuhiko's redemption arc is the reason why he's so popular, quite a few fans feel that having him actually be the killer and having Peko remain alive and have to break out of her tool complex might have been more interesting, since it would open up some interesting interactions between Peko and the others.
- The motive of Chapter 3 is a disease that causes people to have altered personality traits. This could have led to a number of interesting character interactions, or creative symptoms that inflict karmic retribution to each character based on their mean-spirited or selfish qualities. But only four people catch the disease and only two people's symptoms have any hand in the story at all, and then the disease simply disappears with no lasting effect on anyone, making it come off as an unncessary twist specifically to kill off more of the cast.
- Mikan being the culprit of Chapter 3 has a few. For starters, she doesn't really comment much on killing Hiyoko, despite her spending most of her screentime bullying her. Another was how she killed Ibuki. Because Ibuki's Despair Disease made her gullible, she could have had Ibuki kill Hiyoko and then herself. It would have explained why in the fake suicide video, Mikan's bandages were missing. Not to mention, it would cause plenty of drama, with the case having to live with someone who is technically a murderer but wouldn't be executed since she never actually killed the victim.
- Chapter 4 has the entire theme park. It has a lot of interesting attractions and a bunch of creative locations that would have been awesome to see a murder take place in. But instead, once you go into the Monokuma Express, you're taken to the Funhouse. While the Funhouse did make for one of the most complex and tragic chapters in the series, the theme park could've achieved the same result if they expanded on it a bit more.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School
The entire anime has often been accused of being a tremendous theater troupe full of missed opportunities. Of particular note:
- The entire plot of Side:Despair, originally anticipated due to the possibility of seeing Class 77-B return and how they fell into despair, ended up turning off fans when the majority of the cast ended up Out of Focus and almost all were brainwashed in the space of a single episode. Add in inconsistent writing, massive pacing issues and various other aspects fans had problems with, and Side:Despair ended up irking quite a lot of fans.
- Despite the potential that comes with the setting, besides Yukizome and the Imposter/Mitarai/Mikan friendship, the DR2 cast sans Hinata rarely interact with any characters outside of the class. Between that and the generally static nature of their characters (with them receiving very little Character Development over more than a year in-universe), many have criticized the anime for playing things too safe and not doing anything new with the characters.
- The events of Twilight Syndrome are covered within a single episode and crammed within a period of less than a week, as the episode starts with Hajime musing about having a week to decide whether or not to accept the Steering Committee's offer, and ends with his answer. Doing the math means that Natsumi, at most, attended Hope's Peak for three days tops before her death. And the back end of the episode revolves more around Hajime's reaction to these events - and only his reaction, shoving Mahiru and Fuyuhiko (Natsumi's own brother) to the side. The way the event is presented in the anime also writes Hiyoko, Ibuki, and Mikan out of the narrative entirely, to the point many fans assume an outright Retcon is in play.
- The plot and characters of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls in general gets shafted by the narrative, to the point that prior to the anime airing there was debate on if it was going to be involved at all. While this might be justified by its Gaiden Game nature, it still underwhelmed some who were hoping it would play a larger role.
- Episode 7 of Side:Despair finally shows everyone what happened in the First School Life of Mutual Killing, but some fans were disappointed that it was introduced and resolved all in the span of six minutes, not helped by the Student Council going from being civil to suddenly freaking out and killing each other within a minute of the first kill being made, leading to more accusations of poor pacing.
- The events of Danganronpa Zero (which likely occurred between Episode 10 and 11 of Side:Despair) were noticeably skipped over in the anime. Unlike the events of Twilight Syndrome, we don't even get to the see the events unfold from another character's point of view.
- By the end of the series, only two of the twelve new characters introduced in Side:Future survived, while the rest remain dead and underdeveloped as characters. The biggest targets for this are Tengan and the 76th class trio. Firstly, Tengan was the mastermind of the final Killing Game, but their motives for starting the Killing Game come off as completely unexpected and unreasonable because of lack of explanation in the plot. More backstory or his survival could have avoided the problem entirely, such as showing Tengan's relationship with Mitarai, the horrors he faced in the Tragedy or even giving him another motive entirely. Secondly, the 76th class trio died in the game, making their story basically filler to the main plot and almost pointless, if not for Seiko's drug helping Kyoko survive the effects of the poison until Mikan fully cured her. Also, the fact that Ruruka's death meant literally nothing to the plot (never mind how she could have been kept alive without changing the overall plot at all) can be frustrating to some for this reasoning alone. Nobody even acknowledges the fact that she's dead.
- Class 77-B never comes to terms with their actions as Ultimate Despair as a whole. The show attempts to Hand Wave this by saying that going into hiding and living the rest of their days in isolation on Jabberwock Island is their way of redeeming themselves, but they don't seem very broken up over their numerous crimes, or show any concern toward the countless innocents they've killed...
- As Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair reveals, the Ultimate Despair still carries out Junko's will long after her death in the first game (even with many of its members committing suicide in the wake of her execution). In spite of the wealth of plot potential that could come with showing the audience what they've been up to since then, we're never given any information or scenes with the group as a whole. What members outside of the Remnants of Despair are there? Who takes up the mantle of leadership after Junko is executed? What have they been hoping to accomplish all of this time? Who knows?
- Actually, were there any members of Ultimate Despair left besides Class 77-B? Aside from Chisa and Ted Chikatilo, we never hear of any other Despairs outside of the brainwashed masses still causing chaos (and the Hope Video might have snapped them out of it; would explain how the world could recover so quickly following the Hope Arc).
- A lot of people favored the idea behind Junko personally breaking each member of Class 77-B individually, aiming for their weak points and destroying them through manipulation and blackmail to get them to work for her and enact her will on the world. Many were disappointed when Episode 10 of Side:Despair revealed that Junko used Chiaki's death and Mitarai's brainwashing anime as catalysts for their fall into despair so that she could break them all at once.
- Some fans were hoping that Chiaki and Chihiro would interact somehow due to Chihiro being the "father" of Chiaki's AI form. This never happened thanks to the fact that Class 77 and Class 78 are never once shown interacting on-screen (itself an odd story decision). Likewise, Chihiro working with Miaya and Yasuke to create the Neo World Program is never brought up, nor are they ever seen working on it, leaving its development process a big fat question mark to fans who were at least expecting a hint as to its creation.
Spin-offs:
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
- Given that the game takes place before Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, a lot of people were expecting the DR2 students to appear as Ultimate Despair members. In the actual game, only Nagito and Izuru (the latter in a cameo) appear, with the focus instead being on the Warriors of Hope and Monokuma Kids. While the Warriors of Hope were well-loved by the fanbase, it still disappointed a lot of people that an interesting concept was never used. It doesn't help that Ultimate Despair Nagito is more or less the same as we've already known him from DR2, obsessed with bringing despair so hope can shine brighter than ever. Granted, this is intentional and noted by Monaca, but it makes The Corruption come off as an Informed Attribute to some, despite both Mikan and Mukuro displaying massive personality changes due to Junko's direct influence in earlier installments, making Nagito's case seem more of an irregularity so far; but as we have only seen four "active" members of Junko's cult, the point still stands.
Danganronpa S: Ultimate Summer Camp
- Much like the side mode it was based on, Mukuro is once again in her "Junko" outfit, meaning that once again her classmates only know her as Junko, rather than her getting to be herself. This is particularly frustrating because unlike V3 (where only Makoto got new sprites, with everyone else's being reused and just touched up with a filter), here every single character- including Mukuro- gets a new set of sprites, meaning there's no reason Spike Chunsoft couldn't have just redrawn Mukuro's to show her in her own outfit and without the Junko wig.
- This is mitigated somewhat by its in-universe justification and the fact that Mukuro seems to be talking less from a script and more from the heart, but that does little to avail fans that believe that as a member of an officially 16 student class Mukuro should've just been accepted as, and by extension looked like, herself rather than be treated as an extension/replacement for her sister again as no one comments on Mukuro's absence either.
- Some could see losing the pixel cameos of the Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School cast that the previous side mode had as this since Ryota Mitarai was the actual 16th member of Chiaki's class, leaving it odd that if he was still in school with them that Impostor wouldn't be using his persona over Togami's and drawing more attention to how treating Hajime as if he "belongs" with said cast doesn't make much sense.
