Board 8 > Danganronpa Spoiler Topic for All Games (SPOILERS)

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KamikazePotato posted...

That defeats the point of 3-1. Its not just that there was a protagonist switch - it was set up specifically so that people would immediately attach to Kaede as the first female protagonist in the series who is outgoing and has a waifubait design. People don't attach to guy characters nearly as quickly, and people wouldn't have cared nearly as much if Shuichi - a reserved male protagonist - died first.

It was expertly designed to hurt the player. That's what V3 does best. It's why it's the best game in the series.

Nah that's why it's the worst.

You can be artsy all you want but I play videogames to feel good in the end.

V3 with the complete destruction of all character arcs and the blatant apology to suicide as a solution to escape real life is just a work of bad taste.

I'm surprised the media didn't go crazy at the game where you have to convince other characters to kill themselves with you for two hours straight. They went a lot harder against 13 Reasons Why and that show is actually speaking against suicide.

All of that to make a "clever" plot twist that is actually a rehash of Truman's Show. Except Truman actually succeeded at writing in a way that doesn't depress the viewer in the end.

DR's mistake is thinking each game needs to have a more surreal twist than the previous one for the series to stay fresh.

DR1's twist is just good enough. DR2 is too much. V3 is ridiculous to the point of retroactively ruining the series it is in.

I forget some of 1, but I think I ranked the last case last for each game. They were all terrible for many reasons to me

ZeldaTPLink posted...

It would actually improve it for me, I dislike how that twist made all of their characters meaningless.

I mean it really didn't do this
and if you think that was the point I think you may have not been listening to the last 3rd of the trial

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Yeah I'm uhh...not sure what to make about that take of 3-6.

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Hbthebattle posted...

I mean it really didn't do this
and if you think that was the point I think you may have not been listening to the last 3rd of the trial

It did.

So many things about the characters' pasts were made meaningless.

Gonta wanting to be a gentleman. Maki's regret for past deeds. Kaito wanting to be an astronaut. That tennis guy trying to find a reason to live.

Yeah maybe they get to live fresh lives now. But I do not care about those. They have no connection to everything I've seen so far anyway.

Hbthebattle posted...

I mean it really didn't do this
and if you think that was the point I think you may have not been listening to the last 3rd of the trial

Oh you mean where you get to roleplay as a leader of a suicide cult?

Maybe I was busy feeling utterly disgusted at what the game was making me do.

Honest to God I read a shit ton of V3 discussion and I've never once seen someone with this take, lol.

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You want to explain that you think my take is wrong or something?

I think making an apology to suicide is ethically offensive and there is no clever writing or plot twists that justify it. That's my take.

Not Eva, but their situation is a little unique. If they don't go through with it, all but one of them (two if you count Tsumugi as they had no way of knowing she would follow her word) will go through the killing game again with a new persona and their memory erased, possibly resulting in them killing someone. At least Shuichi's idea possibly takes Tsumugi down with them, which may or may not actually do anything.

It ain't (entirely) a moral or ethical standpoint but a practical one.

I agree about their past(s) being meaningless though. That never sat well with me.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

You want to explain that you think my take is wrong or something?

I think making an apology to suicide is ethically offensive and there is no clever writing or plot twists that justify it. That's my take.

Because "suicide bad murder good" doesn't make sense
Why would you be offended by "suicide" more than a murder? feels like this is your own problem rather than anything

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Nanis23 posted...

Because "suicide bad murder good" doesn't make sense
Why would you be offended by "suicide" more than a murder? feels like this is your own problem rather than anything

Yeah, I actually gotta agree with Nanis, here.

You're playing a game from a series where people are made to murder each other, so if you're already there, suicide seems like a weird thing to suddenly get disgusted by.

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I mean, I understand where he's coming from.

Murder IS bad in our society, and in the context of the games, its generally considered a terrible thing to do.

Whereas suicide is largely just considered generally bad, and in the context of the 3-6 ending, it's touted as a positive. "We need to kill ourselves for the greater good!"

In DR, murder isn't glorified as much, whereas all three games have a suicide that is painted as a heroic sacrifice, which is problematic when you consider suicide in the real world.

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Maybe so, but the alternative is... Murder. It's not just "HEY SUICIDE IS GREAT, LET'S KILL OURSELVES." It's "If we do this it'll stop the murdering."And DR is far, far from the only media to push the "heroic sacrifice" concept, so it feels weird to single it out.

EDIT: I understand the issue with how media kinda glorifies heroic sacrifice in general. I'm just saying it feels weird to be like "I can't believe everybody didn't go nuts over this game in particular" when heroic sacrifice is all over media.

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Danganronpa is kinda messed and fucked up...
I feel like the most fucked up is actually something from the anime that doesn't get enough credit - the first killing game from the Despair arc IIRC
It was so fucked up on so many levels

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The most fucked up thing in DR3 is the brain needles. Both in being fucked up and being stupid. Also the anime director tried to frame it as erotic so...yeah.

And yeah I'm late to it because I'm at work, but the idea that their suicide/sacrifice as being glorified as something grand and not just the lesser evil is the result of desensitization to murder in mass media versus suicide. Taking a moral high ground of it being inherently worse when the other options is dozens or hundreds of future murders doesn't fly with me as being based in logic at all.

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The cast of V3 were all going to die in the end regardless of what they did. Either they get punished for losing, or they get their memories erased and shoved into a new killing game, which is essentially a death of their current self. By refusing to play ball, they attacked the system that trapped them in that situation - which was the only real choice they could make that would have agency. Not once did I ever consider it suicide.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Not once did I ever consider it suicide.

I never did either, nor do I do so now, nor have I ever seen that once brought up in reference to the ending until now.

I'm not saying he's completely out of it for coming to that conclusion, but I certainly don't see it that way. I'm more trying to approach why it's still the wrong conclusion to come to even if that WAS how you took it.

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DR never portrays murder as a good thing, though. And it never asks the protagonist to kill someone or defend that. At most it's a tragedy that happened to another character who ended up becoming a killer, but that is not done as an apology.

As for suicide, in the first two games, they never specifically make the player contemplate suicide and show it as a good alternative. It is always learned after the fact and it's done by other characters.

In V3, the player is induced to come up with the suicide idea, rationalize it and convince other characters of it, then finally perform the act and only survive due to a deus ex machina. I'm afraid that if any person with suicidal thoughts played this, the game might encourage them to go through with it. That's why I think it's morally bankrupt.

But I understand that many people do not see that angle, since the fantastic situation of the game makes it feel so unique. But it made me feel very deppressed when I was playing it, and after I finished and had time to think, very disgusted about what the writers did here.

Put me in the camp that doesn't see 3-6 as suicide at all.

They were in a situation where they were going to die no matter what they did - that had already been decided for them. They just made a practical choice to throw up a giant middle finger to the system that put them in that position to start with, bring the chief instigator down with them and - potentially - stop any further deaths from happening.

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the choice was either: throw Keebo and Maki into a new killing game where they almost certainly eventually die, continuing the cycle of death; or stop the cycle of death and killing games completely

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I guess the analogy would be if you were someone with a terminal illness who had a week to live at best, BUT there was someone in critical condition who needed some vital organ transplants only you could provide. Would you consider it suicide for you to give up the rest of your remaining life to try and help others? I mean in this case it's partly 'help others' and partly a giant middle finger, but yeah.

On a side note:

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Nah that's why it's the worst.

You can be artsy all you want but I play videogames to feel good in the end.

Does Danganronpa in general really make you feel good at the end? Not a single game in the series has a happy ending (until the anime retconned some stuff, anyway). V3 is by far the best at making the player hurt out of all of them but it's not like the others weren't trying! They were just mediocre at it!

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I feel like V3 did the worst job just because almost all the characters are so bad anyways its a relief when they finally die

swordz9 posted...

I feel like V3 did the worst job just because almost all the characters are so bad anyways its a relief when they finally die

OK but as stated many times before you're in a very significant minority with that take, lol.

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Not reading any of this, but I just wanted to update everyone that I finally found where to turn off notifications for your topics.

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Yeah I think it's interesting that you play a series about high school kids being forced to kill each other to "feel good." Maybe you're really a member of V3's audience after all!

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The fact there is an in-universe, fantastic reason why it makes sense to commit suicide maybe makes it justifiable for the characters, but doesn't change that they ate killing themselves.

And the fact the player is made to rationalize and argue for it is what makes it feel worse, because the player themself is induced to feel good about suicide.

It's like the message here is "if you feel your situation has no possible solution, you should consider killing yourself".

The problem is that suicidal people irl will also feel their lives have no possible solution. That's why it is something that happens, it happens to hopeless people. It's easy for us to say the V3 characters had no other choice, but suicidal people irl think they have no other choice too.

While they are playing the game they won't think the game is realistic, but they may get the message that it's okay to suicide when life seems hopeless. And that is what should be avoided.

I don't expect to feel super great at the end of a dang rope but I also don't expect to be flipped off for having played it

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Okay but you're the first person I've ever seen conflate the V3 ending with suicide. I'm not saying it's a 100% impossible comparison to make but it's certainly a first from my perspective.

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swordz9 posted...

I feel like V3 did the worst job just because almost all the characters are so bad anyways its a relief when they finally die

How much you like a character definitely adds into how badly a story can hurt you, but that's subjective. Everyone is going to have different opinions on which game has the best cast (although it's usually not DR1). When look purely at the overall narrative, DR1/2 mostly attempt to pull the rug out from under the characters, while DRV3 attempts to pull the rug out from the characters and the player, if that makes sense.

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Xiahou Shake posted...

Yeah I think it's interesting that you play a series about high school kids being forced to kill each other to "feel good." Maybe you're really a member of V3's audience after all!

The DR1 ending felt quit satisfying even though it wasn't perfect and it had a strong message about hope.

And DR2 basically solves everything by giving the main char a massive DBZ-like power up so yeah it's easy to feel good about it.

I'm fine with bittersweet endings. V3 is much, much worse than that.

And it's hypocritical to you to criticize me personally for enjoying the game when every person here played at least one DR game and enjoyed it. If it wasn't for a happy ending it was for some reason.

KamikazePotato posted...

Okay but you're the first person I've ever seen conflate the V3 ending with suicide. I'm not saying it's a 100% impossible comparison to make but it's certainly a first from my perspective.

Well I've already explained why I hated 3-6, I won't fight to make everyone agree with my side.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

OK but as stated many times before you're in a very significant minority with that take, lol.

I guess so. I just cant fathom how anyone liked most of those characters. By the end of chapter 2 the best characters were dead

Kaito, Maki, Shuichi, Kokichi, and Kaede were all great.
A few others were pretty good.

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Shinguji is my lowest rated V3 character...and I still like Shinguji.

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My lowest rated was Tsumugi. I should probably fix my rankings though since Im not happy where I put some characters.

Hbthebattle posted...

the choice was either: throw Keebo and Maki into a new killing game where they almost certainly eventually die, continuing the cycle of death; or stop the cycle of death and killing games completely

Incidentally, I don't think their actions would've stopped the killing games at all. The audience would've loved to see what they did, and the producers would just keep making more games.
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https://youtu.be/HNmXq85Tm2Q

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About DR3 Future
I dunno, I enjoyed wondering who is the mastermind, who is the next to die, who killed who and what everyone forbidden actions are
Reading theories on /a/ (like the one with Kirigiri Cure bottle) was the most fun I had in that shithole ever since Code Geass ended

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

https://youtu.be/HNmXq85Tm2Q

Oh god the "pretty sure I died" was 10/10

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Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday but while we're discussing bottom-tier characters...

Angie is atrocious, her wasted potential and showing as a villain does absolutely nothing to make her even 1% better. I don't think I've ever been happier about a character death in any media ever than I was about hers.

See, here's the deal, and it's why I've turned around on Angie so much.

I don't consider her to be a villain or have any villainous intentions whatsoever.

She's set up as an antagonistic force, and as the player character you're doing everything you can to push against her, and obviously she makes some poor decisions. I truly beleive her intentions and her purpose in the story where meant to be completely genuine though. She's not some plotting dibolocal act, she truly thinks she's helping everyone and seesnShuichi and co as the villainous force.

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Wish she'd just use "God" instead of "Atua"...

UshiromiyaEva posted...

She's set up as an antagonistic force, and as the player character you're doing everything you can to push against her, and obviously she makes some poor decisions. I truly beleive her intentions and her purpose in the story where meant to be completely genuine though. She's not some plotting dibolocal act, she truly thinks she's helping everyone and seesnShuichi and co as the villainous force.

That's part of what makes villains so evil...
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Isn't part of her backstory that she literally took over her island and made them do stuff for her? She's certainly not meant to be completely genuine, and is at the least very manipulative.

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Naw, see, that argument can apply to a lot of situations, but I don't think it does here. Her actions weren't ACTUALLY hurting anyone or causing harm, it just wasn't what was needed to progress towards "escape".

Ironically, in retrospect, her mind set of just not playing the game or moving forwards is kind of what the group ultimately ends up striving towards at the end.

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Like, she may genuinely believe in Atua or whatever, but she absolutely uses it for selfish means and manipulates people into doing what she wants, and opposes people who don't fall for it.

That's pretty villainous.

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StealThisSheen posted...

Isn't part of her backstory that she literally took over her island and made them do stuff for her? She's certainly not meant to be completely genuine, and is at the least very manipulative.

It depends on whether you buy that her belief in her God is real.

She's a troubled individual. I don't think she's evil.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

It depends on whether you buy that her belief in her God is real.

She's a troubled individual. I don't think she's evil.

Whether her belief is real or not, it heavily implies that she uses it to trick people into doing what she wants regardless, though, and if you don't go along with it, you're suddenly the enemy.

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I mean, lots of racists honestly believe people of other races are inferior, including those that kill people of other races. That doesn't make them not evil.
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I'm still not on board with a comparison like that, because Angie never once actually used her influence to attack the people that opposed her or anything remotely close.

Destroying the flashback light was her most heinous act which in retrospect wasn't even the wrong move.

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