Danganronpa 3: Despair Arc, Ep. 2 - "My Impurest Heart For You"

Because any episode that starts on this fucker's ugly mug is a special one.

DR3's Despair Arc had a few places that it could go after its manic, deranged first episode, "Hello Again, Hope's Peak High School". It could have chosen to double down on the erratic pacing and fully commit to being an insane spectacle of slapstick and hentai humor (the honest-to-god best option given that most of the first episode was committed to this), it could have chosen to instead focus on its more surreal and pensive moments that, while more emotionally engaging, would have felt like a slap in the face given how juvenile "Hello Again" was, or it could have just said 'fuck it' and become an entirely different show altogether (the most baffling of the three options).

Luckily for us, DR3 will actually do all of these things over the course of its 11-episode run... but we haven't hit the part where it becomes a completely different show just yet. Instead, "My Impurest Heart" is basically jokes and high-school hijinks from start to finish... which actually makes it probably the most consistent episode in the entire show. At least it commits to a fucking mood, man.

(Another miserable thing I learned about Funimation's website - sometimes, if you click on the audio player to change the volume, it won't disappear if you click anything else, you'll have to click on it directly to make it go away. Fuck man, Funimation's website is made by monkeys bro)

There isn't much to say in the way of 'plot' for Episode 2. Stuff happens, and the only connecting elements between "stuff that happens here" and "stuff that happens there" are the episode's timestamps. The episode starts with a duel between brawler-gymnasts Nidai and Akane, duking it out to prove who's the strongest. Why? Well... why not, man? Even the other students don't seem to understand why this is happening, which is why Chiaki steps out to take a breather, musing over the possibility that her gaming talent won't let her make any friends - however, Chisa acts like a good teacher and encourages her to seek friends through gaming as a social experience.

And Chiaki decides to do just that - Chisa leaves to attend to school business, and she returns to Chiaki having set up a virtual gaming club inside of Class 1-B, with everyone playing a stellar knockoff of Smash 64, a surprisingly apt carbon copy of Bomberman 64, a strangely linear clone of Mario Kart (it feels like the directors have never played Mario Kart... strangely enough), and a disturbing parody of Mario Party featuring some fatass pink fairy I think Danganronpa tried to sell as another mascot and failed miserably. Sorry, but her design kinda highkey sucks, especially compared to the timeless and endlessly-applicable Monokuma.

The wind-up toy is fucking busted, possible SS tier. He can infinitely chaingrab.

This is probably the best scene in the episode. DR3 is quick to reel you back in and remind you what you're really watching it for, though - the silly pervert chef Teruteru and the bratty loli Hiyoko arrive with some beef stew for the class (there's a great gag where Gundam Tanaka - my personal favorite male student - mistakes the quake-like rumbling of Akane's stomach for the second coming of Satan), and while Teruteru actually seemed to have genuinely good intentions in mind and just wanted to feed the class, Hiyoko secretly slipped in some Horny Juice into the beef stew, and it makes literally everyone as horny as fucking possible.

And the show plays it up for all it's worth - pink sparkles and rosey tints, beads of sweat, thick blush stickers, visible breath, thick and sexy hip-hop soul lingering in the background, the provocative removal of shirt buttons, Mikan stroking Peko Pekoyama's sword like a fucking dick... -sigh- Y'know, Danganronpa could've been a decent hentai if it wanted to. Hiyoko making the already uber-horny Teruteru consume aphrodisiacs was a monumentally stupid move that almost gets her comically raped, but luckily Chiaki steps in and punches Teruteru (causing him to say "Taylor Swift" as he's punched) before she and several others pass out from... idk, being too horny for their own good?

Chiaki is ultimately selected by Chisa as 1-B's Class Representative, to unanimous approval from the rest of the class. And that's where the episode ends... and let me tell you, it's a breath of fresh air. "My Impurest Heart" is fucking stupid, let's not kid ourselves here - this isn't brilliant writing by any stretch of the imagination. But Episode 2 is not only consistent, but there's something very sentimental and personal about it all beneath its core - a big point in Episode 2's favor is its decision to focus predominantly on Chiaki. It keeps the episode grounded, and it helps unveil the hidden friendly and cute aspects about Chiaki beyond her superficially appealing and precious qualities. It genuinely feels like she has an arc of sorts in this episode, and that's probably the best thing about it beyond the episode's strong sense of comedic timing and that great montage of the class playing games together. And I guess the horny scene was pretty good, too.

There's a couple things happening besides these vignettes of on-and-off importance - Chisa and her shockingly-bland-as-always love interest, Munakata, are looking the underbelly of Hope's Peak Academy, starting with pursuing the possibility that the school is taking the incredible amounts of money that Reserve Course students (like Hajime Hinata) pay for their classes and using it to fund the Main Course (Chisa's class). Potentially interesting, but I don't remember this going anywhere, so we'll see what happens. There's yet another scene of Hajime... sitting around and doing nothing. Chisa even calls him out for doing nothing, so the showrunners are at least subconsciously aware of how useless Hajime's been thus far... and yet they're doing nothing to change that. Even though some old guy approaches him and asks him if he's made his "final decision" on something cryptic, it doesn't feel like anything is happening due to Hajime's absolute lack of input on... fucking anything, man. Like, could he be more of a cardboard box if he tried?? Could he try? Hajime is interesting solely for sounding a lot like the immeasurably more interesting Shinji Ikari, even though he apparently isn't. This kid is a blank fucking slate otherwise.

Bold of you to assume that Hajime fears. Or feels in the first place.

But there really isn't much to judge about the episode beyond the supposed protagonist's lack of relevance to the ongoing events... once again. It's like I said - at least it commits to a consistent tone throughout, unlike the previous episode. Even when "My Impurest Heart" paused to be serious for a few moments, it did so in a way that it didn't detract from the lighthearted affairs that dominate the episode. It's an experience full of simple and shallow pleasures, but it's pleasurable nonetheless, and we have to admire that about DR3... because we won't have another chance to do so. The show is straight-up not going to be as good as this from this point on. Episode 2 is the calm before the storm, and this is an episode that has a pervy chef scream "Taylor Swift" as he's physically dissuaded from the attempted rape of a blonde Loli that made his friends horny with juice.

Danganronpa 3.

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