Danganronpa 3: Zetsubou Hen 09-11 [END]

10 minutes into Despair and chill and she gives you this look

The start of school hindered my anime watching abilities, but I’m finally here with the conclusion of Danganronpa! …Well, one of the arcs at least.

Well the last few episodes of Zetsubou were… rough. Seeing the characters (namely Yukizome’s class) act to try to defeat Despair and knowing how things were going to go was also pretty rough. The class’ group decision about saving Yukizome was probably the one time all of the viewers wanted everyone to listen to Komaeda and stay out of it. Though if they were in any other conventional anime, they might have stood a chance. The way they were all simultaneously brainwashed was a little generic (though what they were watching certainly wasn’t generic), since it might have been more interesting to see Junko get them all individually, but I feel like it worked for the anime since Junko also got the Reserve Course through similar methods, so it’s a method that obviously works within the series. At the end, it was interesting to see the class still acting the same, but now all Despair ridden. I guess they were all still close at the end, but just… Junko worshipping now.

In the end, Yukizome’s class was just kind of one unit for the entirety of the anime. I was interested in seeing other sides to the characters that wasn’t shown in the game, but pretty much everything that happened interaction-wise was already hinted at in Danganronpa 2. At least Mitarai and the Ultimate Imposter’s story was interesting though. As was seeing the Ultimate Imposter’s real face.

Despite the class kind of being lumped together for the majority of the series, seeing the other characters fall to Despair was interesting. First, there was Yukizome. There was always the chance of her boarding the Despair train since she was so close to Nanami’s class, and something bad had to have happened for her to be unable to protect them from Despair. It’s really sad that none of her personality change was her fault too. She was forced into Despair (again, her ability to pretend to be original Yukizome was terrifying), and was never saved from it since she died in Mirai. Yukizome just wanted to save her students, and it’s just very unfortunate that she was up against a force that she couldn’t defeat.

Then Mitarai was the one suffering, since his anime ended up doing very, very bad things. He had a bit more agency than Yukizome in helping Junko, seeing how he wasn’t brainwashed. But at the same time, Junko was probably very very likely to kill his classmates. Actually, given the clues left by imagery (like the Monokuma puzzle faces falling over the 77th class’ faces in pictures), Junko probably planned brainwashing the class into her minions for a while. Mitarai wouldn’t have known that though, and to be fair, Junko is terrifying. She ended up letting him go, but if she wanted to cause some despair in him, she certainly took the right steps. I feel like she let him run away because she knew how much he would suffer just knowing how his hope had turned into despair/ the apocalypse.

I never even considered that Sakakura could have had a thing for Yukizome. I guess the hints were there, with him seeming tense around Yukizome talking about how devoted she was to Munakata, but his loyalty always seemed to lie with Munakata first, as opposed to Yukizome first. It was Munakata’s orders he always followed, not Yukizome’s. Though maybe it would be interesting to go back and watch the past season with the mindset that Sakakura loved Yukizome. Maybe there were points I missed that were supposed to be tense because maybe Sakakura had the possibility of betraying Munakata or something. I guess it would have made Sakakura’s attempt of breaking out (in Mirai when he was fighting Andou) make more sense.

But regardless, Junko’s threat towards him was kind of… weak. So what if Munakata found out that his friend had a crush on him? It really seems like the kind of thing a younger teenager would be worried about, not a high school graduate. Though given Sakakura’s mentality about Munakata finding out and willingness to lie to keep it secret, Junko really used the right threat against him. Seeing how all of this happened to him, it really helps better explain why Sakakura hated Naegi for defeating Junko where he himself could not.

No waifu is safe

To make us feel even worse about the whole Yukizome thing, then Nanami had a really, really brutal death. The original Yukizome would have never done that to Nanami. Plus Nanami was obviously suffering through the whole thing, which made it really painful to watch. It’s not like Danganronpa is new to making characters suffer through executions, or leading characters on to think that there’s hope only to kill them off, but this execution was special, since the usual executions are generally stylized and pretty short. Plus through her death, her classmates went on to do awful things.

Nanami’s final words were really sad. But on the plus side, they seem to have done something for Kamukura. Where he was bored and seemed like he could be pulled to the Despair side before, at the end, he believes that Hope side holds potential. It appears that the events of Danganronpa 2 were orchestrated by him. Both the appearance of AI Nanami, and the AI Junko. This definitely explains why the AI Nanami was so faithful to her human counterpart, and why she was even there at all. And since Nanami kind of won (since in the end of the game, once again Junko is defeated by Hope), I suppose that means that Kamukura is more on Hope’s side of things now. Plus it’s really touching how through the events of Danganronpa 2, Nanami did get her final wish. In AI form, she did get to play with her classmates and Hinata more. It’s just too bad that she had to… die… again. Though if Kamukura made her once, he could surely do it again.

Maybe with this revelation, it also suggests that Kamukura didn’t do the Despair things that Yukizome’s class did. After all, pretty much every scene he’s been in is just him standing around and looking intimidating. Even during the killing game trial run, Kamukura didn’t really do anything, but was framed by Junko. Since Yukizome was in charge of keeping track of what the Ultimate Despairs were doing, she might have fabricated some information about Kamukura to make him seem like he was just as evil (for some reason).

Junko… she’s definitely less of a character and more like a force of nature in this series. Looking at Danganronpa as a whole, her personality and goals are really more of a plot device for everyone’s suffering. But anyways, pretty much everything she planned in this arc came to fruition keikaku doori. It’s also really interesting that her first interaction with Mitarai was just as good (for her at least) as she said it was. Pretty much everything bad that happened came about because of his brainwashing techniques. The Reserve Course’s revolt, Yukizome’s class’ fall into Despair, and even the events of Mirai. Ah, foreshadowing.

As I stated before, these episodes were rough to get through. All of the characters were suffering right after another and everything hurt. But overall, this anime was a really interesting addition to what we already knew from Danganronpa 1 and 2 regarding the fall of Kibougamine. Some Pretty much all of the events of Danganronpa Zero were skimmed over, but at least the big picture of how Junko ruined everything was pretty clear. The ending seemed kind of rushed in a sense since everything seemed to happen all at once, but I guess we still got the overall situation that the world ended and a ton of people died. I also wish that the 77th class could have been portrayed with a bit more individuality between the characters as opposed to the characters mostly showing up as a group, but I suppose that a lot of that had to do with time constraints. In the end, man did the anime ever live up to it’s “Despair” title. Every time I thought that the characters had suffered enough, something like Nanami dying would come up. It was entertaining, but really hard to watch on an emotional level.

Though Spike Chunsoft’s tweets during the show’s run were pretty funny

But hey, it seems like soon (really really soon because I’m kind of behind in posting this), the Hope part of the anime is going to start. Though maybe considering how the Mirai arc went in the last episode, maybe that’s not a good thing…

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.