We’re being treated to a slate of news about the Danganronpa franchise, starting with the
announcement that the three main titles would be coming to mobile devices.
It’s unlikely that we’ll see a Danganronpa 4 since the franchise has ended, and the creator
has moved on from the company, but fans are hoping for a Switch release and perhaps more
novelisations to complement the world.
With it being the 10th anniversary of the original game, there’s never been a better
time to catch up.
Here are 5 things you need to know about Danganronpa.
While it has many different minigame elements, Danganronpa is technically still a visual
novel.
Initially launching on the PSP, there wasn’t much about it that screamed instant hit.
Instead, its popularity grew from the recommendations of popular writers.
People like Durarara’s Ryohgo Narita, Fate’s Kinoko Nasu and Madoka Magica’s Gen Urobuchi
talked up the game on Twitter, helping to give the game that extra push.
Later on, he gained even more fans from among the games industry, including Nier’s Yoko
Taro, Yokai Watch’s Akihiro Hino and Smash Bros.’s Masahiro Sakurai.
Danganronpa is a game loved by game creators.
It wasn’t just game creators that loved it either.
Yuji Higa, producer at Studio Lerche was a huge fan of it, and recommended it to everyone
at the studio while they were creating Carnival Phantasm.
He started referring to it as his next animation project.
When the studio proposed the anime to Spike Chunsoft, the developers were excited to see
what sort of new original story the anime team would make, but the anime director insisted
it be a faithful adaptation of the original.
This meant that the 12 episode anime is somewhat rushed in comparison to the 20 hour game time.
For Lerche’s next Danganronpa entry, Danganronpa 3, they created a new story from scratch that
fit the anime format.
One of the most signature parts of Dangronpa is its soundtrack, composed by the legendary
Masafumi Takada.
The instructions for Danganronpa was something punchy, and Takada used that to assemble tracks
like the trial music, which he describes as being like racing music, and kind of playful
tones to fit the personality of Momokuma, and make the disconnect even creepier.
However, the one track that everyone remembers is the main theme.
Which according to Takada, he actually wrote in about half an hour because he was busy
with something else.
The fact that he was able to get it done so quickly and so well, is the understanding
between Kodaka and Takada that has meant they’ve continued to work together ever since.
One of the trademark parts of Danganronpa is its executions.
For the first game, Kodaka wrote out each one of them and supervised their design.
But for Danganronpa 2, he only wrote the final one, the one fans consider to be a franchise-best.
Fans didn’t know Kodaka wasn’t involved, but they actually found those first few punishments
to be kind of lacking.
And Takada agreed that they weren’t really up to his standards.
So he worked to try and amp things up for V3 and give fans the classic gruesome punishments
they were hoping for.
Today, Kodaka isn’t at Spike Chunsoft anymore.
Instead, he now works at his own company Tookyo Games, which he started with composer Masafumi
Takada, Zero Escape writer Kotaro Uchikoshi and a group of other interesting creators.
Kodaka has two projects coming out this year.
One is an anime that will be releasing in October called Akudama Drive, and he also
has an FMV game titled Death Come True releasing in June.
A FMV game is something that hasn’t been a thing in a long while, it’s basically
a playable movie crossed with a visual novel.
Death Come True follows a guy who wakes up in a hotel room to find out that he’s supposedly
committed a murder that he doesn’t remember.
After Danganronpa V3, he felt he’d done all he could with text games and strove to
create some truly unique works at Tookyo Games.
This is proof of that.