Last week I finished the Visual Novel DanganRonpa V3. As usual for the series, the ending left me with bittersweet feelings. Everything from the beginning to the memories of the characters made sense with the way the final chapter went. Let's talk about that today.
As this post is Spoiler-heavy, I'll assume you're familiar with DanganRonpa V3 and the previous games in the series. The anime DanganRonpa 3 is notably a totally different entry from the game I'm talking about today.
Like its predecessors, V3 pits 16 characters against each other in a Killing Game. It started strong in the first chapter by letting you navigate the story from the Criminal's perspective. Each chapter dropped more hints at the overarching mystery while bringing more motives to keep the Killing Game going.
I started noticing something weird starting the second chapter. The case was so specific to both the Criminal and the Victim that I could only assume the mastermind knew exactly how each character would act upon seeing the motive videos.
The third case was like that as well, though the Victims could be interchangeable in that one. The fourth and fifth cases hinted more about the world and how dystopian it was, but something still felt weird.
Then I reached the final chapter, and everything made sense!
Everything is Fiction!!!!
After finding out who the mastermind was, Shuichi deducted that the history of Hope's Peak Academy wasn't real. after pressing even further, it turned out that none of the memories of the 16 participants of the Killing Game were real. All of their memories and personalities were implanted in them. They were made to kill each other for the entertainment of the outside world.
In the world of DanganRonpa V3, the first two DanganRonpa games and other entries in the franchise exist as fictional works. Just like our real world. The series, however, was so popular it ran for many seasons. The first few of which are shown as logos in the game's opening. That was a nice case of subtle foreshadowing.
Even the title DanganRonpa V3 is a hint to the mystery. It's revealed that the "V" was a substitute for "5." The title is actually DanganRonpa 53, as it's the 53rd season of Danganronpa in-universe.
The thing is, something went terribly wrong in V3's real world...
The exciting Killing Games of Danganronpa got so popular, that people started to want to be part of those Killing Games. The 16 participants n V3's Killing Game were actually fans of the franchise who let their memories to be wiped out to take part in it. It's implied that there were many cases of people being chosen to play the Killing Game before them.
I felt as if Danganronpa's writer was trying to send us a message through this game. Hope is contagious, and seeing characters overcome despair is exciting. When characters die, you get sad but you want to continue moving on with the story anyway. You can't look away.
As much as we don't want to admit it. We want the DanganRonpa series to continue!
DanganRonpa V3 shows us a dark side of that desire. When the creators of a fictional work take it too far, and when the fans of such work's excitement blinds them from seeing the terrible implications, we get a Killing Game that's shown on TV as if it's something to be celebrated.
I don't think something like this will ever happen in real life, but I'm sure there are some creators and fans so obsessed with fiction they want to enact it in real life.
The ending of DanganRonpa V3 was open-ended. In its bittersweetness, it allowed me to question which parts of the story's final reveals were true and which weren't.
The prologue of V3 has some parts inconsistent with the end-game reveals. The characters remember being kidnapped, while the final chapter implies that they entered the Killing Game voluntarily. There are ways to make it consistent but I wanted to put my thoughts out there.
What do you think?
- All images are screenshots taken from DangaRonpa V3 by me. - The Supporters @eturnerx, @master-lamps and @ackza share 8% of this post's rewards.
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