Danganronpa – 07

Let’s all take a moment to admire(?) the fact that Kirigiri had the courage to search Yamada so thoroughly. 

This is my 200th post here! And it’s terribly late. Yaaayy. Anyways, this was a bit different than the episodes since it started with the evidence gathering before the trial. Danganronpa is really breaking the boundaries with this one.

Most of you thought this from the start, but Haragakure was a red herring. Celes and Yamada chose to frame him on purpose with Yamada creating both the mallets and the costume (due to his experience with figures and garage kits and etc. …Since he’s a super otaku). …Is it really that surprising that Yamada wasn’t dead when they first found his body? I mean, he woke up after ‘death’ and had that speech before he died. This show throws some weird things into the plot, but coming alive again after the person is supposed to be long gone seems like a bit much. There’s not much to add about his character that we haven’t already seen, but underneath his, uh, unusual personality, he was actually a pretty nice guy. He was angry over Alter Ego, but I’d say part of the reason he went with Celes’ plan was because she said that Ishimaru was rough with her. …Which is where Ishimaru’s new personality becomes plot relevant. The old Ishimaru was obsessed with following rules, but what about his more wild side? I don’t think Yamada would have been so hostile if not for the personality change (…plus Ishimaru wouldn’t have even wanted the laptop in the first place if he hadn’t changed).

How could you say “no” to a face like this?

There was another part to the trial where Naegi figured out that it was Celes (and not Haragakure) by the fact that Yamada always called the characters by their last names, but I understand why they’d skip that. This conclusion seems less like a guess and more like Naegi actually thought this through. It certainly is convenient that Celes’ real name shared a name with Haragakure’s character, but it certainly made the trial more interesting. I don’t mean the fact that Celes chose to frame Haragakure, because she probably figured the shared name into her plans, but I mean the fact that they shared a name in the first place.

So Celes was orchestrating the entire thing. Though you probably figured that out with how suspicious she was acting in the last episode. There were so many times ‘Justice Robo’ could have killed her, and the part about the hammers going up in size made no sense other than being smoke and mirrors. Also, she kind of let herself go a lot in this episode with her, uh, violent outbursts. People do interesting things when they’re cornered, I guess. You have to admit that she was an interesting character though. She tried so hard to be elegant and collected through changing her name and such, but she had a different part of her personality in there too. Plus the fact that she came from a rural town isn’t something that can really be changed. Celes left out the part where she specifically wanted to live in the mansion with a collection of vampire butlers, but I think her point came out pretty clearly. So was that a lie too? Just how much of her personality was made up? I guess we’ll never find out.(Though I don’t doubt the fact that she was a great gambler like her title proclaimed; her poker face would have been excellent and she knew when to take risks). On the plus side though, Monokuma brought out another wonderfully ironic punishment this time. Celes strived to remain elegant until the very end and was okay with her punishment. I doubt that she was okay with the firetruck at the end crushing her and the mood.

Finally, we’re at the point where Naegi notices that Kirigiri is kind of suspicious. She’s been a pretty big part of the trials, but she dislikes socializing with the others, seems to know a lot, and spent a lot of the last episode missing. Naegi doesn’t suspect her of being anything, and the way she acted this episode, she seems (kind of sort of) safe to trust. But that’s not saying that the other characters will trust her like Naegi does. Of course, all of this becomes a bigger issue soonish, but this was like the first step hinting towards that. Right now, there’s a more pressing issue.

….That part with the masked person at the end scared the crap out of me in the original game, and the anime managed to replicate that with me. It was always my fear in wandering the hallways that there was going to be a chase scene or a jump scare or something, and this was (kind of) like that for me. Which brings up the question as to if the masked person was Kirigiri or not. Kirigiri was the only person who knew that Naegi was going there. But on the other hand, why would she tell him to explore the place if she was going to knock him out and take everything? It’s kind of odd that in a school of potential murderers, Naegi came out fairly unharmed. Of course, there’s always the possibility of it being the 16th person. If there’s one room without the video cameras, there are possibly others where the 16th person could be hiding. And then there’s the scene with Oogami and Monokuma at the end of the episode~.

Ah, it’s embarrassing to admit, but Celes reminds me a lot of myself back when I was in my chuunibyou days. Though I mostly blame that on my obsession with Rozen Maiden at the time (this is like the season of painful memories I’d like to forget about and pretend never happened OTL). Maybe it’s because I played this trial a bit more recently than the previous ones (or maybe because I was paying more attention to the dialogue exchanges), but I really noticed the conversations and debates that they took out this time. Not that it took anything away from the end conclusion, but it makes me wonder what else they’re going to take out in the future. Oh well. As an end note, I don’t even know if this show knows what it’s going for with it’s OP. My theory about it changing every single time was crushed with this episode. OTL Watch them throw in another weird, completely unrelated OP the next episode just to throw everyone off again.

You have to admit though, Celes had great priorities.