Video Game / Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

Spoilers for all previous Danganronpa installments, as well as this game, will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Beyond hope lies absolute despair.

I won't give up anymore! I won't fall into despair!

— Komaru Naegi

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (Zettai Zetsubō Shōjo^literallyAbsolute Despair Girl(s): Danganronpa Another Episode in Japanese) is a side story in the Danganronpa franchise, released in Japan in September 2014 on the Play Station Vita.

Set between the events of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Ultra Despair Girls focuses on Komaru Naegi (younger sister to first game hero Makoto Naegi) as she struggles to survive in the post-apocalyptic world created by Ultimate Despair.

Forming an unlikely tag-team with Toko Fukawa (a survivor of the first game's killing school life), Komaru must out-gun a legion of deadly Monokuma robots and the fanatical "Monokuma Kids", who seek to turn Towa City into a "paradise for children" by murdering all of the adults with the mysterious group called the Warriors of Hope.

Unlike the main series games (which were visual novels), this is a Third-Person Shooter; Komaru wields a "megaphone hacking gun" that she can use to attack enemies, take control of them, and manipulate the environment. Since she's accompanied by Toko, she can temporarily switch her in and have her call upon her split personality Genocide Jack, effectively initiating a Super Mode in which Toko is temporarily invincible and can easily cut down hordes of Monokuma.

It was released on September 1, 2015 in North America, and September 4 in Europe, and was released on the PlayStation 4 and Steam on June 27, 2017. A potential sequel was hinted at in the form of an in-game poster in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, under the working title "Ultra Despair Girls 2", but no further news has come of this, and it may have ultimately been a joke.

---

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls provides examples of:

#-D

• Abnormal Ammo: Kotoko uses a gun that fires dentures. She justifies it by saying that her father was a dentist.
• Abusive Parents:
  • All of the Warriors of Hope have experienced abuse from their parents in some way, which explains why they're all so screwed up and want all adults to die.
  • The two women who raised Toko each believed that Toko was the other's child, and wanted nothing to do with her. Toko even comments that they used to lock Toko in a closet as punishment for minor things.
• Accidental Truth: Towa Group propaganda claims that Ultimate Despair created the Future Foundation, and also leads it to be intentionally dysfunctional in order to further drive the world into despair. This conspiracy theory is most likely just an excuse for Towa to refuse to cooperate with the Future Foundation so they wouldn't discover Towa's own role in the Tragedy. However, Danganronpa 3 reveals that Chisa Yukizome, an Ultimate Despair Manchurian Agent, manipulated the Foundation's de facto leader to drive him into the deepest despair.
• Adventure Duo: Komaru and Toko. The two play off each other, allowing for humorous exchanges and game-relevant hints.
• Advertised Extra:
  • The relatives of the original Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc cast Yuta Asahina, Taichi Fujisaki, and Hiroko Hagakure. All three were heavily advertised, with magazines showing their in-game models, screen shots, and even being featured in the official art. But unfortunately, both Yuta and Taichi are killed fairly early into the very chapters they are introduced, and Hiroko's primary role is to give the player information about certain characters, with her having very little actual involvement in the story. To add further insult to injury, Yuta and Taichi ended up being the only named characters in the game who died.
  • Makoto Naegi and Byakuya Togami also appeared prominently in previews, trailers and the official site, but both are Demoted to Extra in the actual game. Makoto appearing in two scenes total, once as Mr. Exposition in Chapter 3 and once at the end. Byakuya appears at the very beginning before being captured, spending the rest of the story as a Distressed Dude, only appearing sporadically in Toko's daydream sequences and briefly in the ending.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: You're forced to play as Genocide Jack after Komaru is captured and you finish the...uncomfortable minigame.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Ammo pickups will regularly spawn in boss fights so that you don't find yourself helpless.
• Art Evolution: Komaru's design is notably different from her appearance in the first game (evidently obvious when this game shows a picture from the first game of her and her family, where she doesn't sport the similar cowlick to her brother's thick one). In general, artist Rui Komatsuzaki has evolved considerably. This is particularly obvious with Toko, whose sprites have been redone from the ground up to make her appear older, closer to her canon age of around 18-20.
• Art Shift:
  • The game switches between the game graphics, anime-style cutscenes, and the gritty, classic DR-style cutscenes.
  • Toko's Fantasy Sequences of Byakuya are illustrated in a comically overdone 70s shojo style.
• Ascended Extra: In the first game, Komaru appeared for about thirty seconds in a video and by the end of the game it seemed likely that she was dead. The developers said that they didn’t originally have plans for her, but when planning the game, decided it would help to have a protagonist that players already knew about. Toko to a lesser extent is also this, going from prominent supporting character to main.
• Ascended Meme: One of the Kill List is a member of Sayaka's idol group known for her... odd facial expression in fandom.
• Asshole Victim: The parents of the Warriors of Hope, big time. All the abuse those rodents put their children through, up to and including using one as a guinea pig for science experiments, wishing they were dead to their face, and prostituting them to people in the entertainment industry is just inexcusably vile, and there's not a tear to shed for them when finding out the kids killed them.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Not only do each of the bosses have a weak point, but most of the rank-and-file Monokumas can be taken down in one hit if you shoot them in the eye.
• Barrier Change Boss: The final boss changes the color of its misshapen eye to indicate which ammo it's vulnerable to.
• Beat 'em Up: Jack's sections of the game are more so this as opposed to Komaru's. Jack can tear through enemies with ease, and doesn't even take damage.
• Big Bad: The Warriors of Hope seem to be set up as this. Specifically, it's Monaca.
• Bittersweet Ending: By the end of the game, much of Towa City has been destroyed, thousands are dead, and Nagito and Monaca escape, allowing Monaca to become Junko Enoshima's successor, although Danganronpa 3 reveals that Nagito and his rambling was so insane that he snapped Monaca out of it instead. On the other hand, the villains' plans were stopped, Byakuya is saved, Komaru finds her strength in the end, Toko finally has a real friend, and the other members of the Warriors of Hope all survive and pull a Heel–Face Turn. All in all, arguably the happiest ending in the franchise thus far.
• Black Blood: In traditional Danganronpa fashion, all of the blood in the game is bright pink. With the exception of the blood on Junk Monokumas, which is dark red thanks to it having dried.
• Blackout Basement: In the beginning of Chapter 3, the power in Towa Tower goes out, requiring you to navigate with only a glowstick's light and use the Detect ability to follow footprints.
• Bloodier and Gorier: While the blood is still pink, it can seem a bit jarring to see scenes of civilians violently massacred by Monokumas.
• Boss Subtitles: Each of the boss robots belonging to the Warriors of Hope have their name appear when they make their appearance.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: All of the members of Ultimate Despair to an extent. Special note goes to the "Monokuma Kids", who are literally brainwashed using the masks they wear.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: The Warriors of Hope note "Children's Paradise Commandments 2" says to wash your hands before eating, not play video games longer than 8 hours a day, and kill yourself if you feel like you're becoming a Demon.
• Breakout Character: Toko and Genocide Jack, going from supporting characters in the first game to playable Deuteragonists in this one.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Komaru and Toko have a bitter dispute in chapter 3, and are not on speaking terms for some time, but the two mend their relationship and become true friends by its end.
• Brick Joke: In chapter 2, Komaru states that she could see ghosts when she was young. Later in chapter 5, an actual ghost appears, and only Komaru can see it while Toko can't.
• Broken Aesop: The game really drops the ball with Kotoko's backstory of being a victim of sexual abuse, given the amount of fanservice in her chapter and her actions and her projection onto Komaru. There's a whole minigame dedicated to Kotoko trying to make Komaru orgasm, where similar themed minigames are notably absent with Jataro and Masaru. It's basically the game trying to have its cake and eat it too and failing at both.
• Broken Pedestal: Downplayed and Played for Laughs when Hiroko insists that all high school boys can survive a whole month on nothing but porn, fried chicken, and manga. Komaru, shocked, wonders whether this is true of Makoto as well.
• But Thou Must!: Played with extensively near the climax. Komaru is given the choice of breaking or not breaking the Monokuma controller, and breaking it leads to a short bad end sequence which then brings you back to the choice. Monaca, though, repeatedly attempts to convince you that not breaking it will loop the game, in an attempt to psyche out the player. It's eventually played straight, when the final decision has both choices be to break the controller, due to Komaru falling into a Heroic BSoD.
• Calling Your Attacks: Komaru often yells out the name of the Truth Bullets she fires, and the Warriors of Hope also do this during their boss fights.
• Can't Default to Murder: In order for Toko, and by extension, her, to be able to join the Future Foundation, Genocide Jack is doing her best to not kill anyone while helping Komaru through Towa City.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Kiss goodbye any chances of saving your game after entering the conference room during the second visit to the Resistance Base in Chapter 3, because you won't have opportunity to do so until you finish said Chapter, in spite of the large number of events that take place between the two.
• Child Abuse Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Warriors of Hope are revealed to act the way they do because their parents abused them, causing them to turn to Junko's influence instead, kickstarting their villainous actions. Monaca is included in this, but it's downplayed with her due to being evil to please Junko directly.
• Clothing Damage: Jack rips off Kotoko's clothes in the miniboss fight against her. Considering Kotoko's backstory, this isn't Played for Laughs or fanservice. When you fight her as Komaru, she rips off your clothes, and only when stripped down to her underwear will Komaru actually take damage.
• Cold Open: The opening credits sequence only plays after the tutorial battle, following the Warriors of Hope's TV announcement.
• Colorful Theme Naming: Shirokuma is an all-white Monokuma, while Kurokuma replaces the usual white half with a very dark gray.
• Continuity Nod: Plenty:
  • Komaru's clock seen in the opening is clearly Hifumi's favorite anime character, Princess Piggles.
  • The restaurant Komaru runs into after escaping the apartment building is called "Pig Boy". The pig on the sign is wearing Hanamura's clothes and hairstyle.
  • Toko says in her introduction the exact same line as her introduction in the first game. Likewise, Nagito's first lines mirror his first lines in the second.
  • Mikan Tsumiki can be seen on a notice in the hospital in Chapter 1.
  • The robot piloting the helpful UFO that gives you directions is none other than the tiny robotic Nekomaru Nidai toy, Minimaru.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Monokumas slaughter everything around them in seconds during cutscenes. For obvious reasons, they are at most one tenth as effective in gameplay.
• Cyberpunk: The game centers around Towa City, which has been destroyed in the Tragedy and is the stage of the Demon Hunting "game" hosted by the Warriors of Hope. It's subtle, but fittingly, much of the conflict is also driven by the machinations of a shady corporation, that being the Towa Group, who produced the Monokumas that are used in the first game and are also much of the cause of why Towa City itself is a Crapsack World, no thanks to Haiji's father.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to the main series games, Another Episode is much more violent and has much darker content, just starting with all the violence by and towards children.
• Dead Man Writing: Messages left behind by dead civilians are scattered all around the game. Most of them are depressing or downright tragic.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Invoked; one of the things Kotoko is curious about is "how enemies always become friends after a fight."
• Depending on the Artist: Minor example, but the art style shifts a bit due to different artists. More precisely, the sprites are done by the franchises main artist, the CGs are done by a new artist and the animated cutscenes are animated by the staff who did the anime adaptation of the first game.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • It's possible to make the boss robots dance with the Dance ammo. There's really no reason why you'd do this, but you can.
  • Firing a Paralyze Bullet while Toko is standing in water will cause her to spasm in midair.
• Difficulty Levels: As an acknowledgement that some fans of the franchise who want to experience the story may struggle with a Third-Person Shooter, there's a Genocide Mode that gives the player nearly unlimited access to the invincible Genocide Jack, who can destroy enemies much more easily. More information below under Story Difficulty Setting.
• Dirty Kid: In the shopping center area, there are two Monokuma kids seemingly looking up the skirt of a dead female citizen. A girl Monokuma kid can also be seen video taping.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The battle against Monaca and Kurokuma. It is played up as the final boss battle, only to be followed by a lengthy piece of exposition and the ACTUAL final boss fight.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The ending theme is performed by Megumi Ogata and Aya Uchida, who played Makoto and Komaru respectively.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Forceful Kiss Monaca gives Nagisa sounds a lot like something else entirely...

E-K

• Electrified Bathtub: The Paralyze truth bullet electrifies enemies. If the enemy is standing in water, it will hit everyone else in the water (including Komaru herself if you're not careful).
• The Ending Changes Everything: As mentioned under Wham Episode, the fact that Shirokuma and Kurokuma were both parts of Junko's AI and had been manipulating the adults and children to fight each other causes a lot of the story, particularly Shirokuma's role in it, to come off very differently.
• Enfant Terrible: All the Warriors of Hope are in elementary school, but are capable of heinous acts and want to massacre all adults in the city. Special mention goes to Monaca, who is both the sweetest of the kids, and the cruelest of them.
• Everyone Lives: Well, not quite everyone, but this is the first game in the franchise where every major character survives. Even the supposedly killed members of the Warriors of Hope are revealed to be alive in the credits.
• Evil Versus Evil: The Towa family conflict can be seen as this. Tokuichi and Haiji are abusive to Monaca, the former's illegitimate daughter, who pretends that their abuse crippled her. Monaca later manipulates her father and half-brother into helping build Monokumas and help further Junko's plans. They fell for it hook, line and sinker, since they were mainly concerned with profit and self-preservation.
• Explosive Leash: The Monokuma Bracelet is this, forcing its wearer to remain within the city (lest the bracelet explode), as poor Yuta demonstrates.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Toko's hair has come out of her usual pigtails and is all askew, including an Idiot Hair to show that she's been Promoted to Playable.
• Face Doodling: Servant spends most of Chapter 4 with his face covered in doodles, likely the Warriors of Hope's doing. Absolutely no one comments on this, even during a particularly dramatic plot reveal scene.
• Fan Disservice: A few moments like this occur, but there are two that primarily stand out. The first is the part of Chapter 3 where Kotoko captures Komaru, binds her, and then uses mechanical hands to try and touch her in inappropriate places. Thankfully, the player is given a chance to swat them away. It's even worse when you take into account how young Kotoko is, not to mention that she herself was a rape victim. The second one isn't nearly as disconcerting, but normally a kiss between two characters would be praised and adored by shippers. Instead, the kiss between Nagisa and Monaca was utterly revolting and met with shock, disgust, and fear for what will happen to Nagisa and his sanity.
• Fanservice: Brief: in the opening, you can see Komaru in her underwear as she changes into her uniform.
• Gaiden Game: The developers have said that this shouldn’t be thought of as the third game in the main series, and that the actual third game will be a visual novel like the first two.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Komaru's stance and body language are nervous and insecure for most of the game, but after she gives her big motivational speech on chapter 4, her poses and animations change accordingly to more "heroic", confident variants and even starts holding the Hacking Gun as if it were a real gun.
  • Genocide Jack is a Lightning Bruiser; she's not only invincible, but she can rip things apart with her scissors. The only caveat is that Jack is on a timer in the form of batteries. If the batteries run out, Jack switches back to Toko. And because she's trying not to kill anyone, Jack only rips apart the clothes of humans she fights against. All of this doesn't change when Komaru has to fight Jack as a Duel Boss. The only way to win is to avoid Jack's assault until her battery timer runs out.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: It's possible to have Toko inexplicably comment on something, even if you're playing as Jack at the time. Related to that, it's also possible to enter a cutscene as Jack, only for her to be Toko during the scene, and suddenly be Jack again after the scene ends.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: After accidentally triggering Kotoko, Monaca snaps her out of it... by repeatedly punching her in the face.
• Go for the Eye: The main weakness of the Monokuma enemy is its blood-red left eye. Hitting it there with a Break bullet causes the Monokuma to instantly explode.
• Gratuitous English: The logo on Yuta Asahina's jacket reads "dog can go like 3 cups rice dog oh love since 1981."
• Greater-Scope Villain: The epilogue reveals that Shirokuma and Kurokuma are both bodies for Alter Ego Junko, implying that Junko created both of the main groups in the game just so she could play them against each other when it would cause the most destruction, since while the real-life Junko made the Warriors of Hope by preventing their suicides, AI Junko (as Shirokuma) saved most of the adults who would become the resistance fighting against the child army those kids created in her name.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Ultra Despair Hagakure, where Yasuhiro, along with Leon's Yandere cousin Kanon, try to survive the crisis. Due to seeing the bridge leading outside Towa City being destroyed and Masaru being alive and in possession of his Mini-Mecha, the story all took place right before Komaru defeated Masaru.
• Hate Sink: Monaca intentionally presses the Trauma Button of several of the Warriors of Hope to control them, physically abuses them as well, manipulates Komaru and Toko, gets countless people killed, and wants to start a war that will see even more people die. And all of this because of an obsession with Junko Enoshima. The creators admitted that Monaca was intentionally designed so that the player would hate her, and even in-universe she actively pushes for Komaru to hate her so that she can succumb to despair.
• Heel–Face Turn: Nagisa and later Kotoko. A bonus CG in the credits implies that this is also the case for Masaru and Jataro.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The Future Foundation agent waiting in the café for Komaru during the prologue fights off multiple Monokumas to buy her time to escape.
• History Repeats: An emotionally stunted prodigy learns of the plan of the Big Bad, tries to betray them, fails when she exploits his love for her, and ends up having an immense emotional breakdown. Sound familiar?
• Hold the Line: The key to winning Genocide Jack's fight is to wait out her stun gun duration. She will regularly attempt to replenish its battery, so you will need to attack her to interrupt this process.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The game lets you pick from Genocider Mode (automatically replenishing battery gauge, letting you switch to Jack more often), Komaru Mode (bullets are easier to find), and Despair Mode (which does neither).
• Idiot Hair: Continuing the series tradition, both protagonists of this game sport an ahoge despite not having one in their previous appearances.
• Improbable Infant Survival: The Monokumas are programmed to target adults, not children, and the Monokuma Kids cannot be attacked by Komaru or Jack. However, the Warriors of Hope, who are in elementary school (which in Japan means that they are around 12 years old or younger), die just as horrible deaths as as the older characters, although we don't see their bodies. Ultimately played straight, as a bonus CG during the credits reveals that all of them survived.
• Improbable Weapon User: Komaru's Hacking Gun looks like a megaphone, but is actually capable of disrupting the Monokuma with various commands.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: Dead bodies sometimes block paths you've already explored. Toko mentions a fear of blood as to why she won't get any closer, but it's a Hand Wave.
• Involuntary Dance: The "Dance" ammo, as the name implies, causes Monokumas struck by it to drop what they're doing and dance, leaving them open to attack. If you use it on a Siren Monokuma, it will play a song that distracts and lures over all other Monokumas within earshot.
• Just a Flesh Wound: Jack at one point cuts open Servant's legs when he tried to get her to fight Komaru a second time. Though he falls to his knees at first, he doesn't seem to react much to his wounds. Later subverted, as he does remark that it hurts once Jack isn't threatening him anymore, and it takes some time until he's seen walking again.
• Kids Versus Adults: The center of the game's conflict. The Warriors of Hope, a group of kids who hate adults due to their Abusive Parents, attempt to stage a revolution in Towa City. This means slaughtering the entire adult populace of the city in order to create a peaceful paradise for children. Although, it turns out to just have been a fallacy by Monaca, who didn't really care about a children's paradise; she just wanted to reignite the Tragedy by starting a war between adults and children, and also to drive Komaru into despair with the news that the children killed her parents.
• Knight Templar:
  • All of the Warriors of Hope sans Monaca. Even their name fits the trope to a T. They are so thoroughly convinced that their actions are justified that they have not a single shred of remorse for filling the streets with mounds of corpses. In fact, they take glee from it, seeing it as poetic justice.
  • Nagisa to a lesser extent. As revealed in his Memoir, he always doubted the morality of the Warriors' actions, but suppressed those doubts as much as he could.

L-R

• Last Chance Hit Point: Despair Time. If any melee-only Monokuma (Normal, Shield, Junk, or Beast) or manages to remove that last heart, you enter into a quicktime event. If you fail, the Monokuma eats you, but if you succeed, Toko jumps in with her stun-gun and paralyses the enemy, and you're brought back up. However, dying in any other way (a ranged attack, or one of the bosses) will give you no chance whatsoever. This also happens with the Final Boss, except instead of being eaten, he just crushes you.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Describing the game’s plot without spoiling the first game’s main plot is pretty much impossible. Despite taking place before the second game, it also includes some spoilers for that, including the true nature of the Future Foundation. Also, since some of the characters from this game appear in Danganronpa 2, they must logically survive the events of Ultra Despair Girls.
• Lazy Artist: The recap of the first game partway through reuses the CGs from the first game, which can get a bit jarring thanks to Art Evolution and the CGs having a different illustrator. They are, however, at least in slightly higher quality than the original CGs.
• Mad Bomber: The Bomber Monokuma throws bombs as its attack. Defeating it will cause it to explode and damage any nearby Monokuma units.
• Marathon Level: Starting from your second visit to the Resistance Base in Chapter 3, you have to listen to a long talk between the adults inside the conference room, then battle a lot of Monokumas who manage to infiltrate said base. Next there's a very long cutscene with the girls being imprisoned, Kotoko freeing Komaru from her cell and Genocide Jack talking with some Monokuma Kids. Then you have a minigame involving Komaru and... a strange machine (which is fairly short, but still consumes time). Then there's an action sequence with Jack mowing a lot more of Monokumas in her way inside a train which culminates in a mini-boss fight against Kotoko. And finally there's a full boss fight against Kotoko and her Mini-Mecha. All of this can take up to an hour and a half. The worst part? You can't save the game at all until finishing the Chapter, your last chance being before the adults' conference.
• Mascot Mook: What Monokuma is in this game.
• Meaningful Name: The main characters are both girls, and they're dealing with the effects of Despair. Also, Monaca is the disciple of Junko, and her objective is to push Komaru past the Despair Event Horizon and into becoming "the Second Junko Enoshima".
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Masaru, Jataro, and Nagisa each get a Disney Death, while Kotoko and Monaca are spared from such a fate by Genocide Jack and Komaeda, respectively. The only other two characters who actually die onscreen- Yuta Asahina and Taichi Fujisaki- are both male.
• Mini-Mecha: Each of the Warriors of Hope uses one for their boss fights. The Final Boss, however, is far from mini.
• Mocking the Mourner: In the epilogue, while Izuru brings Shirokuma's and Kurokuma's heads with him for his plans, Alter Ego Junko converses to herself through the heads, eventually littering Chiaki's Verbal Tic "Hey, hey" into every line of her conversation. This causes Izuru to stop and directly pull out the A.I. chips he needed from the heads to get them to shut up. In her last lines, she mockingly questions if the loss of Chiaki actually triggered some Amnesiac Resonance feelings within him despite his Death of Personality as Hajime.
• Mook Debut Cutscene: Most of the Monokuma types have one of these. The Normal type is one of the few whose name doesn't appear when it first appears.
• More Expendable Than You: Many Future Foundation agents give their lives to ensure Komaru's safety.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The rocket that killed the Hope's Peak High headmaster reappears at the very beginning of the game on a picture of the Earth in Komaru's room, with the rocket crash-landed on the moon.
  • A statue of Monokuma eating a fish can be seen multiple times. The fish eating was something he did in the anime adaptation of the first game.
  • At least one Monokuma type can shoot garbage at Komaru, and if it hits her, she ends up with a cup of noodles on her head, just like Kyoko did once in the first game.
  • Shooting Shirokuma with Dance has him do the dance that Monokuma does in The Animation.
• Nature Adores a Virgin: Toko at one point brings up the notion that a woman's power is tied with her virginity.
• No Ending: The ending of Ultra Despair Hagakure is...abrupt, to say the least. After Yasuhiro reveals to Kanon that she was Leon's captive and what that means, Kanon leaves to go back to Towa City, saying she's going to try to get revenge on the Future Foundation (though whether she actually does is left somewhat vague). Yasuhiro starts walking away, only to come running back, saying to Kanon that he needs her to get him out of his debt, and the story ends right after she gives a vague response.
• Non-Dubbed Grunts: The Monokumas keep their Japanese voices in pre-rendered cutscenes even when playing with English voices, which is most noticeable in the units' introduction scenes.
• Non-Standard Game Over: If Monaca's controller is destroyed, the Monokuma helmets will explode and kill all the children, and the result pushes Komaru across the Despair Event Horizon.
• Patrolling Mook: Siren Monokumas will activate the siren on its head to assemble other Monokuma units if it spots Komaru.
• Permanently Missable Content: There are tons of hidden things to find throughout the game, and not getting them before going past certain points in the game will lock you out of the collectibles until New Game Plus, either because of a Point of No Return or the item disappearing entirely.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Hapless Towa City citizens are represented simply by colored silhouettes. Typically, the men are blue and the women are pink.
• The Power of Friendship: A major theme of the game; Word of God states that the game is mainly about Komaru and Toko's deepening friendship. In the end, their friendship and trust in one another allows them to destroy the rampaging Big Bang Monokuma.
• Practically Different Generations: Haiji and Monaca Towa are half-siblings. Haiji is an adult while Monaca is in elementary school.
• Press X to Not Die: If Komaru's health drops too low, she enters Despair Time the player has to press buttons at the right times or a Monokuma will eat her.
• Prolonged Prologue: The game continues the Danganronpa tradition of long prologues. After the introductory cutscene, a Monokuma chases Komaru out of her apartment, she runs into Byakuya who gives her a Hacking Gun. Then she fights Monokumas in a restaurant across the street before getting captured while trying to escape via helicopter. There's a brief sneaking section on the Warriors of Hope's airship, and they introduce themselves before dropping Komaru onto a hospital roof, where Chapter 1 finally begins.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The game's skies are almost continuously red. During the 2-D sidescroller segment in the prologue, red actually wipes across the screen as the city starts going to hell.
• Remember the New Guy?: Several of the new characters are people related to the first game's students in some way, many of which weren't explicitly mentioned before.
• Replacement Goldfish: The intention of the Big Bad was to force so much despair on Komaru that she would become a successor to Junko Enoshima. When this fails, Monaca uses herself as a back-up.
• La Résistance: The Adult Resistance in the game is led by Haiji Towa. In reality, he doesn't want to fight against the children for the adults' cause, being too cowardly to do so, but once he does, he's revealed to be a violent maniac who wants to kill all children by using his Big Bang Monokuma unit. And he believes he's in the right throughout the whole thing.

S-Z

• Sadistic Choice: Komaru is given the opportunity to destroy the device controlling the Monokuma Robots and the brainwashed Monokuma Kids. This would eliminate every robot, but it would also explode the masks worn by the Monokuma Kids and kill them. While this would put an end to their atrocities in Towa City, killing the children would be an unforgivable act in the eyes of the Future Foundation and likely lead to harsh repercussions. However, leaving the device intact would change nothing and lead to further escalation of the war within Towa City, possibly resulting in a greater number of casualties.
  • Monaca also tries this on Toko, offering her the key to Byakuya's cell in exchange for Komaru and the Monokuma controller. Toko pretty much goes "screw that" and decides to take both Komaru and Byakuya home with her and refuses to hand over the controller.
• Saved by Canon:
  • Toko is mentioned indirectly in the epilogue of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair as still being alive and waiting for Byakuya. This ends up granting her Plot Armor for this game, as Ultra Despair Girls takes place before Danganronpa 2, so Toko must logically survive the events of this game.
  • This game takes place before Danganronpa 2, so anyone who appeared in that game is guaranteed to survive (Makoto, Kyoko, Byakuya, and any of the second game's students).
• Save Point: Komaru saves her progress by sitting on potty training seats shaped like Monokuma ducks. She finds them calming.
• Self-Made Orphan: The Warriors of Hope all murdered their own parents. You can't really blame them, especially after reading some of the journals they left behind.
• Sequel Hook: A few major ones: Monaca has shed all pretense and has turned herself into the direct successor of Junko Enoshima, the other Warriors of Hope are still alive and have turned against her, and Izuru Kamukura retrieves two copies of the Junko Enoshima AI at the end; both of which were merged together as one and then uploaded into the Neo World Program, leading to the events of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: Komaru and her Hacking Microphone is the long-range fighter. Jack, using her scissors, is the short-range fighter.
• Slapstick: Toko is regularly made the target of various physically painful misfortunes.
• Standard FPS Guns: Break (handgun), Burn (submachine gun), Paralyze (grenade launcher), Knockback (spread shot/shotgun, but doesn't directly do damage), Dance, and Link (both Gimmick Guns). Move can only be used to indirectly destroy enemies by ramming objects into them, and Detect can't be used as a weapon at all.
• Stealth Pun: "Komaru" can mean "be troubled," with the Japanese difficulty "Komaru/Trouble Mode" being a play on that.
• Story Branch Favoritism: A minor one. Since it's impossible to clear all the Free-Time Events in the amount of time given in the first game, Toko claiming Komaru is her first true friend at least allows fans to declare her event path non-canon, where the last event sees her instead giving this distinction to Makoto after reading him her poetry.
• Story Difficulty Setting: The game has an Easier Than Easy mode designed for players who just want to see the story, due to worries about it being a genre departure from the franchise's usual Visual Novel/Adventure Game style.
• Super-Deformed: Komaru and Toko have chibi forms in the menu.
• Super Move Portrait Attack:
  • Jack gets one when Toko uses her taser, as she's seen putting it to her head.
  • After defeating the Final Boss, Komaru and Toko's Finishing Move is to yell "Hope lives on!" while firing a "Hope" bullet. This has their portraits flash on-screen in a manner reminiscent of countering an argument with a Truth Bullet from the original Danganronpa.
• Take a Third Option: Destroying the controller will kill all the children in the city, while not destroying it will perpetuate the civil war between kids and adults. Komaru elects to remain in the city to keep everyone from going off the deep end until Makoto and Future Foundation can stop the Tragedy and find a way to remove the bomb helmets for good.
  • Shortly before Komaru declares her resolve to save both the children and the adults, Toko is offered the key to Byakuya's cell in exchange for letting Komaru destroy the controller like she is meant to by the mastermind. Toko pauses just a moment, then demands to be given the key while vehemently refusing to surrender the controller. She brushes off any attempt to force her to make a choice, stating she doesn't give a damn about the the 'rules' of the game and declaring that Byakuya and Komaru are equally important to her and that she would never choose one if it meant leaving the other behind.
• Take Your Time: Komaru and Toko take plenty of breaks from escaping the city to banter about whatever reading material they stumble upon.
• A Taste of Power:
  • In her first battle with the Hacking Gun, Komaru has full access to all of the Hacking Gun's powers with infinite ammo. Shortly afterwards, she's captured by the Warriors of Hope and the gun is modified to "balance it," so that Komaru has to find and reinstall all of its abilities. And even after she regains all of the gun's functions, she never regains infinite ammo.
  • The first time the player gets to control Genocide Jack in a tutorial, she has infinite battery time for just that one sequence. This allows the player to get a feel for how Jack controls without having to worry about the timer.
• Technicolor Fire: Flames are rendered in this fashion with cartoonishly thick lines compared to everything else.
• Tempting Fate: The characters prove time after time how vocally admitting to having hope invites very bad things to happen in this series. In one specific example, Komaru expresses hope that champion swimmer Yuta can outswim anything that the Warriors of Hope throw at him in the water. It looks like he's going to make it, but then the wristband on Yuta's arm explodes, killing him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Komaru Naegi is in the middle of breakfast when she gets attacked by the Monokuma at the start of the game, and forgets about it in all the excitement of her subsequent escape.
• Third-Person Shooter: The main genre of gameplay, albeit with a megaphone rather than a pistol or rifle.
• Time Skip: Six months after the events of the first game is when the story of this game picks up. Komaru has been Locked Out of the Loop thanks to being imprisoned, so she needs to be brought up to speed.
• To Absent Friends: The Warriors of Hope hold a service ceremony for Masaru, but the mourning seems superficial rather than genuine.
• Torn Apart by the Mob: Following the loss of their boss fights, Masaru and Jataro are torn apart by the crowd of Monokuma Kids, with the only thing left of the former being his headset. It turns out that they are actually fine, and the whole thing was a show.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Partial, but one of the trailers prominently show Komaru reacting to Yuta's death.
  • Also, the game's trailer and opening shows the boss fight with Nagisa about to begin, so when Nagisa makes a Heel–Face Turn without a fight, you just know something going to happen.
• Trick Bullet: The various Truth Bullets the Megaphone Hacking Gun can fire, such as Move and Dance.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The "Warriors of Hope" leading the slaughter of the city's residents are five kids from Hope's Peak elementary school. Their followers are all children themselves, out to kill the "demonic" adults with their own hands.
  • Several of the male Monokuma kids are seen doing pelvic thrusts over their victims.
  • One big part of Kotoko's chapter was her strapping Komaru to a machine intended to sexually assault her with numerous mechanical hands, laughing and making fun of her all the while.
  • When asserting her authority over Nagisa, Monaca intimidates him by kissing him twice, the second time with tongue. Not helped by her implying she's willing to do sexual favors for him as well in exchange for his obedience while calling him a pervert. Nagisa is understandably freaked out and ends up seemingly broken by the whole event.
• Unnervingly Heartwarming: The epilogue shows that Nagito rescued Monaca from death. Any other time, saving a little girl would be seen as heroic and adorable, but given that both are manipulative bastards planning on turning Monaca into the next Junko Enoshima, it comes off as extremely creepy.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: That fact the hacking gun employed against Monokuma by the Future Foundation is shaped like a megaphone is almost never commented on.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The "Warriors of Hope" and the Monokuma Kids are out to turn Towa City into a "peaceful, kids-only paradise"... by murdering all the adults. One of the commandments for the "Children's Paradise" written by the Warriors of Hope is to kill yourself if you feel you are becoming a demon.
• Villainous Gold Tooth: As a part of his gangster image, the Warriors of Hope's Evil Mentor Kurokuma has a whole mouthful of gold teeth.
• Vocal Evolution: At the start of the game, Komaru's voice sounds like that of a young child, indicating her innocence and vulnerable state, but as her innocence is tainted and her confidence is developed over the course of the game due to all of the traumatic events she is put through, thus developing her character, her voice becomes deeper and sounds older, representing her journey of maturity.
• Waxing Lyrical: Monaca quotes the lyrics to the old children's song "My Grandfather's Clock" during Masaru's "funeral."
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Yuta and Taichi don't even get to live past 15 minutes when they're introduced.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The credits and bonus menu have a couple of bonus CGs showing the fates of the major characters. Most notably they confirm that Nagisa, Masaru and Jataro all survived.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: Monaca's attempt at an ultimate trump card against Komaru in the climax. She reveals that she had her and Naegi's parents tortured and hung to death, as revenge for him defeating Junko. She tries to use this to push Komaru into giving into her anger and hatred, and play into her Xanatos Gambit. After everything is said and done, it is left ambigious if they are really dead. Komaru points out that, in hindsight, the video recording that Monaca claimed was of her parents' corpses actually included no conclusive evidence that it was them (the victims' faces were notably obscured), so it is possible that Monaca was lying and faked the whole thing.

---