Danganronpa (video game)



Dangan Ronpa : The Academy of Hope and the High School Students of Despair is a "high-speed mystery action adventure" released in Japan for the PSP back in 2010. As of yet, there's no localization, but a translated Let's Play of the game is in progress on the Something Awful forums. It combines mystery-solving with elements of shooting and even rhythm gameplay.

The story takes place at Hope's Peak Academy, an illustrious private school that only accepts "super" students: the best of the best of the best. The criteria extends to any niche, so in addition to super-geniuses and super-athletes, they take super-idols, gang leaders, and geeks. Makoto Naegi, the protagonist, is still baffled as to how he got in, as his only outstanding trait seems to be his super "good" luck - and that's only because he was randomly chosen to be accepted by the school. In fact, he hasn't even started his first day of school when he suddenly loses consciousness and wakes up in a creepy alternate version of the academy.

It's soon revealed that Naegi and fourteen other new students have all been abducted by a sadistic teddy bear named Monokuma, who refuses to let them leave. The only way out of the locked-down dark school is to graduate...by killing another student. Once a murder is committed, Monokuma holds a trial so that the class can try to figure out which one of them is the culprit, culminating in a vote. If they make the right choice, the murderer will be messily executed. Make the wrong choice, and not only does the murderer escape, but the rest of them will take the punishment in their place...

As Monokuma, hungry for a spectacle, introduces "motives" for them to kill, tension builds in the school, and it isn't long until the students begin to snap. It's up to Naegi to make sure that the culprit of each murder is found so that the rest of them can try to escape.

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""...This is where my flashback ends." "Who are you talking to?" "You wouldn't understand...""
 * 2½D: You can pan around the environment, but the characters and props are all paper cutouts.
 * Always Check Behind the Chair: Monokuma Coins, which can be exchanged for gifts for the other students, are often hidden behind objects in the background.
 * Big Brother Is Watching: Monokuma has cameras and gun turrets installed throughout the building (except for in the bathrooms, showers, and communal spa).
 * Black Blood: Or pink blood, in this case. Many murder scenes are liberally splattered in Pepto-Bismol, thanks to the intricacies of the Japanese game rating system.
 * Bribing Your Way to Victory: Monokuma abandons the stick for the third "motive" and instead gives a carrot of ten billion yen to any student who "graduates".
 * Chekhov's Gun: If you spend time with Chihiro, the topic of Artificial Intelligence comes up.
 * Most cases have important evidence that's introduced well before the murder actually takes place, or may still seem irrelevant until the trial is underway. An example of this is.
 * There is an empty seat in the trial room. When asked about it, Monobear says that the room was built with a capacity of sixteen people and that there's no further meaning to it.
 * Closed Circle: All of the doors and windows in the academy are covered with steel bulkheads.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death
 * Deadly Game
 * Deadly Graduation
 * Involuntary Battle to the Death
 * Win Your Freedom
 * Despair Event Horizon: Monobear's stated objective is to bring DESPAIR. If the students don't start killing each other, he'll just keep pressing buttons until someone's pushed past this point and murders someone.
 * Exact Words: Monokuma's rules all have loopholes in the wording. For instance, students aren't allowed to sleep anywhere but the dorm rooms - but they also don't have to sleep in their room specifically, and.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Electronic Student ID Card is called... the Electronic Student ID Card.
 * Gilded Cage: Hope's Peak Academy isn't half-bad. Unfortunately, nobody's allowed to leave unless they commit murder and get away with it.
 * I Have Your Wife: Monokuma's first "motive" - he gives everyone a DVD that implies horrible things will happen to the people they love (Makoto's family is attacked, Sayaka's friends forget about her, Mondo's gang breaks up).
 * Ironic Echo: Sayuka likes to say exactly what Makoto is thinking, then claim she can read minds, giving him time to react before saying it's just "good intuition". Later, makes the exact same joke.
 * Logical Fallacies: The "Machine-Gun Talk Battle" sections of a trial occur when a student starts using ad-hominem attacks instead of logical arguments.
 * Medium Awareness: This conversation between  during a Flash Back in Chapter 3:
 * Medium Awareness: This conversation between  during a Flash Back in Chapter 3:

"Monokuma: The murder we just had occured because you bastards want to get out, wasn't it!? It's you bastards, who can't let go of the outside world, who are the bad eyes here!!* Relationship Values: Makoto can hang out with the other students and give them presents. They'll reward him with skills to be used during trial scenes."
 * Medium Blending: The Climax Inferences are manga panels.
 * Mundane Made Awesome: The school trials are some of the flashiest debates you'll ever see-- you literally shoot down your opponents' arguments as they fly across the screen in text form.
 * Never Trust a Trailer: Promotional material showed  in trial scenes, and heavily implied that the latter would be Naegi's Love Interest (even appearing beside him in the start menu).
 * The demo
 * New Game+: You can replay chapters after completing them, letting you keep any skills you've gotten from the other characters. This is required to view all the scenes for certain characters who don't make it past the first chapter.
 * Ontological Mystery: None of the characters have any idea how the school was locked down (or even if they're still in the school). However, Monokuma explicitly permits the students to investigate what's going on, as long as they abide by his other rules.
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Monokuma loves to insist that the students are the real villains: according to his logic, if they just quietly lived out the rest of their lives in their Gilded Cage and didn't try to 'graduate', then nobody would get hurt. And when they solve the trials, aren't they only doing so to protect their own measly lives...?

"Monokuma: We aren't living in a Shounen manga story. There is no such thing as dying without dying. This is reality!!"
 * Sadistic Choice: Kill one of your classmates, or spend the rest of your life in captivity - and when it comes down to the trial, fess up and receive a gruesome punishment, or escape with the blood of everyone else on your hands.
 * Shout-Out: When Monokuma first breaks out the bear puns, Celes notes that it's been done already.
 * Hagakure, while praying to numerous deities for help, invokes King Kai.
 * And if Hifumi can get a manga/anime/video game reference in somewhere, he'll probably do it. On that note, his name is written as 1-2-3.
 * at one point uses the phrase "blacker than a moonless night".
 * While discussing a dying message left by, Kyouko references Ellery Queen.
 * The Mole:
 * This Is Reality: Spoken in Chapter 3. Monokuma also states this during Chapter 1:


 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: School trials can be broken down into Non-Stop Debates (literally shooting down contradictions), Machine-Gun Talk Battles (breaking through ad-hominem arguments in a Rhythm Game), Flashing Anagrams (filling in blanks), and Climax Inferences (assembling how the murder went down by placing events on a comic-style timeline).
 * Wham! Episode:
 * Let's start with Chapter 1 where, and shortly after that.
 * Then at the end of Chapter 2 it's revealed
 * The end of Chapter 3.
 * You All Meet in a Cell