I’ll give Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak High School (fucking hate that title, too easy to confuse it with Danganronpa V3, aka the THIRD GAME, what were they thinking) credit where credit is due - it has a strong opening moment. A woman we have no context or information about muses about the fact that she died, while watching her death on a silver screen, eating popcorn in a movie theater and contemplating on her life while the frames roll by, complete with film grain and the humming, familiar spin of old projectors. It’s a strong start, immediately setting DR3 up as a strange and almost otherworldly experience before the just-as-contemplative, mysterious, and effective OP hits, a splash of strong yet subdued colors set atop a breathy, ethereal and synth-driven track that strikes you as equal parts wistful, energetic, and dreary, all in one fascinating and undefinable mix…
…And then the actual episode hits and it becomes a breakneck blend of childish madness and absurdist 2010’s humor, more reminiscent of Cartoon Network-style mania with just enough Adult Swim bite and edge to solidify it as “mature content”. DR3’s first episode, “Hello Again, Hope’s Peak High School” (let’s just call it “Hello Again”), has the impossible task of comfortably yet briskly establishing all of its quirky, eccentric cast of characters in under 20 minutes… indeed, it can only afford to do so within this timeframe of this episode, and we’ve only got about eleven to work with. Not a lot of time to tell a story with this many characters, so DR3 has hit the ground running in the most optimal way possible. So how does DR3 decide to go about establishing its characters?
By making the first episode stupidly fucking fast, that’s how. The moment the ebullient, eager and girlish Chisa Yukizome (the woman in the opening theater, as it turns out) steps into Class 1-B to begin her new career as 1-B’s Homeroom Teacher, the episode completely throws its delusions of being a “contemplative and wistful” show into the trash and decides to go fucking psychotic.
Here’s a highlight reel.
Here’s a highlight reel.
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| -sigh- |
A clumsy bitch by the name of Mikan Tsumiki stumbles into class and then trips a second later, which lands her in a ridiculously revealing and provocative position, her backpack just *barely* covering her panties (pictured above). Chisa flamboyantly dons a housemaid’s apron before calling the five students in attendance rotten oranges (followed by a hentai-like shot of a censored, filthy orange) and throwing a knife down on the desk of Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, a young, flippant mafiosi. A big-ass werewolf-looking motherfucker, Nidai, takes a shit so enormous that he destroys the back of the school, causing Mikan to shout “Jurassic Park!” when she hears the tremors. An insane, earnest athlete by the name of Akane decides to jump off the roof of the fucking school the moment she gets a whiff of meat, and Chisa decides the best way to cushion the fall is to have Nidai shit so hard that he destroys the school courtyards (this works); Akane winds up being tied to a cross the moment she lands, and she remains tied to said cross for a good chunk of the episode. There’s a rockstar, Ibuki, with a guitar-flamethrower that she uses to cook meat, an incel simp loser named Soda (who is nowhere near as cool as his name) gets hit by a truck, the impact sending both and the truck itself on top of an actual soda machine at just the right angle to make a shit ton of (actual) soda to fall out, allowing the endlessly-lucky Komaeda Nagito to quench his thirst… and they have time for yet another shot of Mikan covered in…
… -sigh- Fucking cum, man.
Right away, we have a dichotomy… and right away, we have a problem. DR3 is a tonally confused mess. Is Home Again funny? Absolutely - the rapid-fire nature of the shotgun humor works really well in its favor, and there’s an over-the-top silliness associated with every character that sells their ultimately-flat characters much more than it should. If this wants to be a comedy series, then it’s off to a rolling start, with a colorful cast and a simple, flexible school environment… but nothing, absolutely nothing about this, matches pace with the initial tone set by the introduction and the OP. Chisa was contemplating the circumstances surrounding her death mere minutes before deciding to have her students crucify the gymnast girl, a bit that followed at least two (surprisingly decent) shit jokes in a row. Tonal disparity this obvious and this jarring… it has to be a joke, right? It has to be an intentional joke. But it becomes clear the further you advance into DR3 that, no, this is actually what the staff decided was the best course of action for a serious, honest dramedy.
And don’t give me that excuse of “well, dramedy is a mix of drama and comedy, so no shit it’ll be dark and then wacky”. You wouldn’t put raw fucking eggs and a gallon of milk into a bowl and expect a good cake out of it… and if you do, then you should never be a baker. It’s all about blending, mixing, an adequate and tasteful synthesis the various ingredients you need to make a good dish. If DR3 was a dish, it’d be a fucking Hot Pocket - hot and scalding one minute, then weirdly cold and uncooked the next. They either needed to commit to one particular genre, or needed to boil down a more mature blend of comedy and tragedy.
But that ain’t what we got. What I just described was most of the episode - all that’s left is for Chisa to collect the remaining two classmates (because apparently attendance isn’t mandatory, insane logic for a literal High School). She comically nabs this animator kid, Mitarai, which leaves her to collect… Chiaki Nanami, a quiet, demure, but wide-eyed and earnest gamer girl that owns a cat hoodie and often gets lost in her games. But it’s not Chisa that runs into him first… it’s Hajime Hinata, a regular “Reserve Course” student that seemingly doesn’t have a Talent necessary to get into the Super Special 1-B class that Chisa teaches. You can think of the Reserve Course like… a general studies class set aside in a tech or private school.
 |
| *crickets* |
-sigh- I have a lot to say about this kid, but his first interaction with Chiaki is honestly good. Hajime recognizes the archaic game she’s playing, which surprises and delights her greatly; they bond over it for a bit before Hajime muses over his lack of a talent… but Chiaki tells him that talent isn’t the end-all be-all for a good life. She even points out that he has a lot of possibilities ahead of him, whereas she will always be defined by games. Chisa finally arrives to drag her away; they say their goodbyes. This is about the only time the episode finds time to shut up and just let the scene speak for itself - it’s the closest it gets to matching the tone of the beginning. In that sense, Hajime and Chiaki’s scene is good… but it’s been such a considerable stretch of time since the beginning that this quieter scene feels jarring compared to the ten-fifteen solid minutes of anarchy beforehand. DR3 can’t really win. This is why structure is crucial to the emotional coherency of any narrative, no matter what. There needs to be a flow to what's going on, otherwise it's just noise.
With the class finally collected and established, Chisa calls her shockingly-bland love interest and fellow graduate Kyosuke Munakata to inform him about her day while he’s overseas on school business… and then it’s over. The episode moves fast, not really allotting the viewer with a moment to breathe or think - and while there’s a certain fun, bombastic rush to the hilarious and shallow pleasures of seeing stupid teenagers act like braindead morons, it makes the show’s attempted dips into more serious territory feel disingenuous. Did I enjoy the more quiet and contemplative aspects of the episode? Yes. Did I enjoy the wacky shit? Yes. So, theoretically, this should be a perfect beginning, since I liked both of its separate identities… but the problem is that these identities don’t connect. They belong on separate planes of existence. Zany High-School Danganronpa 3 and Moody, Sentimental Danganronpa 3 are not the same show - you cannot convince me otherwise. And it’s a problem the show will never move past.
(As you can see from these screencaps, I watched this on Funimation. Bro, fuck Funimation's streaming service. It's the fucking worst. The ads will pause if you open a new tab, it's a whole sack of fucking trash. If you swap the audio track from JP to ENG, ads will play again. The ads repeat, frequently, sometimes the exact same ad three times in a row with differing audio quality. Funimation makes Crunchyroll look appealing... and if your streaming service makes fucking Crunchyroll look solid by comparison, that's when you know you have fucked up, bro. Diatribe over.)
The only two characters I really felt a strong pull towards in this episode were Chisa and Chiaki. Chisa is a wild, eccentric addition to the cast… but for an anime-exclusive character, she acquits herself into the cast with a shocking amount of ease and naturalism. Her cute and spunky energy matches her students’ perfectly - couple that with an insanely pretty design and it almost feels like she was always meant to be their teacher. And Chiaki is almost the perfect blend of serious and silly - she has her obvious quirks and she gushes over old games, but neither of these are excessive enough that they subtract from her sweet, quiet personality. She almost feels like a complete package in the little time we get to know her - Chiaki could possibly have two dimensions compared to her lively-yet-clearly-flat classmates.
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| Also - Game Girl Advance? Cute as fuck. |
Nobody else works quite as well beyond their capacity for making you laugh. For a supposed protagonist, Hajime is quite forgettable - and even if that’s the point, the fact remains that I had completely forgotten he was even in the opening episode before rewatching it for this review. Being forgettable is a major enough problem for any main character… but being forgettable in fucking Danganronpa?? That’s a cardinal sin. He needs more than what he has now if he wants to make an impact of any kind. The adults, besides Chisa and one slightly-appealing alcoholic teacher, made no impact on me whatsoever - Munakata and Principal Kirigiri feel like they share identical personalities, and Munakata’s work overseas doesn’t feel interesting enough to warrant dedicating a scene around it (it’s clearly just setup for the Future Arc, anyway).
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| Soda's lame as fuck. I got a sadistic kick out of watching everyone roast this simp. |
Inconsistency has already begun to plague DR3 to its very core… and yet, it’s so weirdly spastic and enjoyable that it’s hard to judge it too harshly. In the heat of the moment, with your brain turned off, it’s a lightning-quick and entertaining twenty or so minutes out of your day, with some strong character designs (probably the series’ best-looking cast is here on display, minus a few losers like Soda… and even his blue jumpsuit works a lot better than the piss-yellow rendition of it in the games) and an undeniable amount of energy and passion. That’s almost enough to forgive it… but not quite. DR3 isn't strong or sentimental enough to overcome its numerous shortcomings.
We’re just getting started.
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