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Danganronpa
Unintentionally Unsympathetic in this series. open/close all folders
Main installments:
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
- Hifumi. The end of the third Class Trial attempts to give him sympathy for being easily manipulated by Celeste into killing Kiyotaka, when Kiyotaka had done nothing to deserve it. But this ignores the fact that he killed Kiyotaka without even asking him about Celeste's accusations first. Also, he was plotting to escape with Alter Ego and Celeste (who even told him that she was going to commit a murder), leaving his innocent classmates to be executed by Monokuma. The fact that the lie Celeste told him is rather obvious to see through doesn't help Hifumi's case very much, with Celeste herself even all but saying she chose him as an accomplice because nobody else would be stupid enough to believe that lie.
- Kyoko in Chapter 5 - when the trial for who murdered Mukuro begins, she goes out of her way to implicate Makoto, then relies on him not to expose an obvious lie she told so that no one will suspect her. Her motivation was likely to keep the trial going until she could expose the Mastermind, but when Monokuma declares the trial over it comes across as though she was willing to throw Makoto under the bus, knowing he wouldn't do it to her in return, because she believed only she was capable of unveiling the mysteries of the school. If it hadn't been for Alter Ego's intervention, her actions would have led directly to Makoto's death at the hands of the mastermind, making her actions a more sympathetic mirror to Sayaka counting on Makoto to take the fall for her in chapter 1. This is far worse in the anime adaptation, where an alteration made causes Kyoko to look completely callous, whereas she was at least visibly distraught and remorseful in the game.
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
- Peko Pekoyama is revealed to be Fuyuhiko's Bodyguard Babe and the killer of Chapter Two, killing Mahiru when Fuyuhiko was about to do the same. That way, Peko could take the fall for Fuyuhiko and let him escape the island. Though Peko was raised to believe herself to be nothing but a tool of Fuyuhiko's, she's willing to condemn all of her innocent classmates to death for the sake of a mobster, even admitting she faked being their friend all along. Also, Peko has little purpose in the story besides her connection to Fuyuhiko. This can make it hard to feel that sorry for her when she gets executed, especially when she had the option of trying to prevent Fuyuhiko from killing Mahiru instead of doing it herself. The cast being fairly forgiving towards Peko despite her deliberately trying to get them to vote for the wrong person only fuels this.
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School
- Jin Kirigiri dips into this. While the franchise has thus far attempted to portray him as a reasonable, well-meaning man with a love for talent, Episode 4 of Side:Despair kinda destroys that for many as he chooses to expel Andou, Kimura and Izayoi (who's expelled seemingly just on the basis of being Andou's boyfriend) over something none of them planned, while choosing to keep Komaeda, the actual instigator of the incident, unharmed purely so he can try to prove that Good Luck is a legitimate talent to the Steering Committee, along with transferring Yukizome for good measure despite her being the one teacher who actually cared about her work. This has caused many to label Jin as an insufferable idiot.
- Natsumi Kuzuryu, since she wanted to get a talent similar to her brother, but due to her bullying her classmates, many fans can't forgive her due to her actions, especially since she apparently considered killing Mahiru just to get her place as an Ultimate.
- In the third episode of Side:Despair, Sakakura's attempt to dissuade Hajime from investigating the Twilight Syndrome incident to protect him from getting killed by the committee ended up being this, because the Breaking Speech and Sakakura overpowering him rubbed the fans the wrong way into thinking that Sakakura was purely being a Jerk Jock bully.
- Andou's gotten this after the fifth episode. Her grievances against Seiko are intercut with Seiko's against her, making it seem like their feelings are supposed to regarded equally. However, one of Andou's reasons for hating Seiko is that the other girl won't eat her candy, as she believes getting others to enjoy her sweets is all that she's good for—even though Seiko told her one of the medications she's on renders her unable to eat sugar as she would die from it. Andou wants her friend to put her life at risk just for her own self-worth. Add that to the All Take and No Give nature of their relationship and what is supposed to be a mutual, tragic falling out between friends looks more like a victim finally standing up to her bully. There's also the fact that she was trying to make a selfish power-play before the game began.
- The manga anthology makes this worse by having her accidentally poison a cat by feeding it a chocolate sweet and when Seiko explained to her that chocolate is poisonous to cats, she thinks the cat hates her and just leaves it with Seiko. It also shows she's aware that her sweets can kill Seiko, but still wants her to be put in harms way.
- While the first Mutual Killing was tragic for everyone involved, some fans felt certain members were less sympathetic than others.
- Karen Kisaragi was motivated by her desire to save her mother, but her quickly Jumping Off the Slippery Slope by killing off Ryota Someya, whose first reaction was to turn his weapon on Junko and Mukuro, did not endear her to fans.
- Sosuke Ichino also gets criticized. While he lost his crush, Kiriko Nishizawa, when he had to defend himself, his brutal murder of Taro Kurosaki and Tsubasa Kamii, sweethearts who just wanted to die together peacefully, did not get him any sympathizers.
- Mitarai's gotten this as of Side:Hope. While few can deny the horrible Trauma Conga Line he went through, his entire reason for ultimately not going through with the Hope Video is the promise that Class 77-B would let him be part of their group. Combined with his complete lack of ethical qualms about the brainwashing itself and his willingness to have the remaining survivors killed should they get in his way, this has led many to label him as a self-centered Jerkass who cares more for his self-acknowledgement than morality and who was Easily Forgiven by the narrative.
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
- Kaito during the aftermath of Gonta's trial. Throughout Chapter 5, he becomes upset at Shuichi, refuses to look him in the eye, and he refuses to hang out with him during the Ultimate Detective's FTEs all because he revealed the truth of Gonta committing murder. While anybody can understand him being upset over the results of the trial, his treatment towards Shuichi made it seem like he's throwing a petty hissy fit over things not going his way. Also, Kaito had made it a point throughout the game to support Shuichi in his efforts to find the truth. The fact that Kaito goes back on his word the second the result is upsetting for him personally makes him look like a total hypocrite who never really meant what he said, and he ultimately never owns up to this.
- Maki Harukawa can come across as this in the fifth trial. While Maki believes that Kokichi is the mastermind due to how he confessed to being it, and he is far from a saint, a lot of fans felt that wanting to have everybody get executed while she was thought she was the blackened for that trial all for the sake to have Kokichi be killed is going a bit too far. Especially jarring because, as he lampshades himself numerous times, Kokichi is a liar. Maki made a pretty big leap to assume he was telling the truth, which, of course, he wasn't, and she assumes he's lying when he said he has no idea what Ultimate Despair is, making it seem like Maki chose to believe he's the Mastermind because it justified her attempted murder.
- The culprit of the second trial, Kirumi Tojo, is this in the eyes of many Western players. She's actually the acting Prime Minister of Japan, and as such, the welfare of an entire nation depends on her. In response, Kirumi kills Ryoma and plans on letting the rest of the class die so that she can graduate and escape to continue running Japan. She even goes so far as to try to manipulate Shuichi into letting her go by claiming that she's trying to fulfill a promise made to Kaede (the girl Shuichi loved, and the previous culprit). As a result, Kirumi comes off as less of a person motivated by The Needs of the Many and more of a Dirty Coward willing to sacrifice others to save her own skin.
Spin-offs:
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
- The Warriors of Hope, while villains, are quite clearly meant to be sympathized with once their backstories are revealed. Some fans have trouble doing this, as while the abuse they experienced is awful, it doesn't change the fact they are unrepentant mass murderers whose victims likely include child abuse victims as well, or that they knowingly brainwashed other children into killing their parents regardless of whether they were abusive. Masaru's case is particularly jarring, as his past is implied immediately after he shows off a pile of adult corpses he was responsible for killing. The scene is framed in a way that clearly assumes the audience will feel bad for him, but it seems rather inappropriate and almost insensitive considering the glee on his face when unveiling his kills. It doesn't help that they survive the game relatively unscathed despite the fact that only one of them (Kotoko) has anything resembling a proper Heel–Face Turn.
- Komaru falls into this in chapter 3. After Toko's argument with Haiji, Komaru tells Toko that she doesn't understand the feelings of the weak at all... even though she recently found out from Makoto that he, Toko, and the rest of their classmates were trapped for two years in school by Junko Enoshima and forced into a killing game and Toko even said that Komaru was similar to how she was in the past, making her come off as self-centered. There's also how she kept saying she was just a normal girl in order to empathize with Haiji, but at that point, Komaru had been fighting killer robots almost immediately after being freed from captivity and had defeated Masaru and Jataro's giant robots, so her insistence of being "just a normal girl" was not only annoying, but unbelievable given what she had accomplished.
Danganronpa Togami
- The story clearly wishes for Kazuya to be seen as a Sympathetic Murderer, driven by the pressure of the family combined with his position as an adopted child and his lust for his step-sister into murdering his siblings. Needless to say, this falls flat for most thanks to his rape of Shinobu, and ultimately he's a completely selfish Hypocrite who's no different from the others.
