For those of you who don’t know what danganronpa is i’ll do my best to explain.
It’s like if you took a visual novel, a point and click adventure, and phoenix wright,
mashed them together added first person tank controls, took a ton of acid, and then gave
it a pop-art harajuku makeover and an M rating.
That’s what the game is like at least.
There’s also an anime that’s super important to the story.
It’s all weird, it’s very japanese and its… meaningful.
Essentially each Danganronpa game boils down to your protagonist character and a group
of other kids being stuck in a killing game.
The way to win is to kill and get away with it, which means being found innocent in a
class trial.
If the murderer is found innocent they win and everyone else dies, if they’re found
guilty they die.
Danganronpa is a convoluted tale, one that exposes our darkest capabilities in the struggle
for survival, but also reveals the magic of the human conscience, and what we’re capable
of in the name of civility.
It’s a constant duality, if you will.
This struggle is not unlike our own world, which hangs in a balance.
The existence of society is held up by elected principles invented by an intelligent, group-oriented
species.
Don’t steal, obey the law, do not kill.
The foundation of society hinges on the mutual agreement upon those principles to keep it
together.
This concept, this way of living: this culture has been in development for thousands of years.
One could say society is alive in it’s own way.
It grows, changes, gives birth to new factions and off shoots of itself… and one day it
will inevitably die.
For all things will one day cease to exist.
Cells divide and die.
Humans are born and pass away.
The sun rises and sets, stars condense and burn out and eventually, the universe itself
will meet it’s inevitable end.
Therefore the inventions and constructs of human consciousness are not permanent.
With our passing, our ideas of standard time, love, longing, and family will disappear too.
As well as our society.
Does this bring you despair?
Or does this bring you hope?
Will you simply give it up for naught or will you focus on a way to extend our species past
the brink?
Will you live life in nihilistic abandon or will you dream of humans leaving earth for
new horizons elsewhere in the galaxy before the sun goes all red-giant and consumes our
galactic home?
Or does your despair bring you the hope of something more?
Or do your hopes leave you with despair for fear of them never coming true?
Duality: the idea that all things have an equal and exact opposite is a constant human
predicament.
While our brains work to box things into logical puzzle pieces, reality dictates that there
are two sides to every coin and without both sides that coin could not possibly exist.
Even matter itself has its flipside.
Antimatter or whatever.
However this inescapable reality leads back to the ultimate question.
A question that ties all of Danganronpa together: if there are two sides to everything, and
everything is equal, what really matters and why?
If you can’t have a coin without both sides then how can we say hope is better than despair?
WORRY NOT CHITLINS!
FOR TREESICLE HAS THE ANSWER!
So prepare yourself for an allegory of the fragility of the world we live in, for a yarn
about how fast everything can simply fall apart, for a tragedy… the biggest, most
awful, most tragic event in human history…for the worst, most despair inducing incident
in the history of mankind… and waifu’s, murder, panties and a little more than a dash
of necrophilia!
This is the story of Danganronpa, the story, you never knew.
Perhaps you thought that intro was long winded?
Well I cut it down from 5 pages ya dingleberries!
Turns out when you are discussing the dynamics between hope and despair and the relationship
between them, it takes a hot minute.
So let’s start from the start.
The despair arc of the danganronpa anime: the end of hope’s peak academy.
Hope’s peak is a school for the absolute best of the best, masters of their individual
crafts, a breeding ground for future leaders in everything from science to fashion to culinary
to yakuza to serial killer.
Yeah.
Naturally this school was the most coveted in the world for anyone hoping to be something.
A year before the time of class 77-B, a reserve course was opened up, allowing normal kids
(whose parents were able to spend an insane amount of tuition money) to attend hope's
peak for the prestige.
I’d like to make a quick note here about the talented and the wealthy.
Anyone from any walk of life can be born with any degree of talent.
Call it a miracle or whatever but there are people with special gifts born everyday in
the wealthiest and the seediest places in the world.
Its unbiased, however much like politics generally the wealthy have the ability to worm their
way into anything by buying it.
This can lead to corruption and dissent between classes, causing societal cracks, or something
worse.
Just look at the fall of Rome.
Just a note.
Moving on.
One of these kids was a boy named Hajime Hinata, who was an admirer of hope’s peak and what
it stood for: hope for the future.
However, there’s an issue with something like hope’s peak academy.
There is always an elite, it’s just the way things are, however they will always be
the minority.
A look into history shows that no matter how great an individual power may be it can always
be crushed by the masses, just look into any pre 21st century war with russia or the French
Revolution.
But to gather the world elite into one place and put them on a pedestal shifts public perspective,making
them seem like they’re more than what they are.
This can inflate superiority complexes and worse, cause disdain amongst the majority.
Jealousy and desire are dangerous forms of kindling, but inflated ego is just as flammable.
Hajime was by all rights a normal person with big aspirations, he wanted to be in the standard
classes of hope’s peak so bad he agreed to take part in the top secret and highly
illegal izuru kamukura project.
This was conducted by a faction within hope's peak, originally hajime thought he would be
given talent, but in truth his memories were erased, his body and mind augmented and his
existence overwritten.
Hajime hinata was officially expelled, his body and mind tortured through horrible and
inhumane human experimentation.
He was transformed into izuru kamukura the ultimate hope, a person whose talent was talent
itself..
The ability to be perfect at everything.
In a world with the best and brightest on display its not hard to believe that someone
ordinary would offer themselves up for a chance to join the stars, but was it for hope?
Or because of despair?
And in the end, how can we say it mattered?
Around the same time twin sisters junko enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba were scouted by the steering
committee of hope’s peak.
Junko enrolled as the ultimate fashionista and her sister as the ultimate soldier; they
were placed into class 78 a year after hajime’s transformation.
Junko however, had additional skills which separated her from her peers, particularly
a knack for analysis, allowing her to always be a step ahead like batman, but with a bigger
chest.
However because of this talent she became bored.
Being able to predict the outcome of any situation left her with a desire for chaos, and for
her, the ultimate chaos was despair.
You see, unlike other emotions despair and it’s counterpart hope are like a disease.
They can spread and infect other people, they say in war morale is the most important weapon;
to succumb to despair is to be defeated before you lose.
Junko’s desire to build the greatest despair ever known started with hopes peak: the greatest
hope ever known.
After her induction junko proceeds to scoop out the eye of a hope’s peak trustee with
a spoon covered in curry, and then use that eye to gain access to the room Izuru (formally
hajime) was being held in.
during the brief encounter junko manages to manipulate Izuru into becoming interested
in her plans for despair.
Shortly after she runs into Ryota Mitarai (the ultimate animator) of class 77-B. Ryota
had developed a technique using light flashes to implant emotion and experience into his
viewers minds, something Junko took great interest in.
With her discovery of izuru and Ryota’s animation skills Junko put her first plan
into action: show Izuru how awesome despair can be.
Junko gathered the student council and Izuru together in the old hope's peak academy building,
locked them in with weapons and showed them all individual threatening or blackmailing
videos.
The idea being, that if they all killed each other, the last one standing would be able
to hide their individual scandal.
The student council rejected the game until Karen Kisaragi opened her folder to find a
picture of her mother in danger, driven insane by despair brought on by fear for her mother’s
safety, she killed another council member setting off a killing frenzy.
During the confrontation Izuru was grazed by a bullet which shocked him for the first
time.
Like junko, izuru was also bored from being perfect.
The surprise and pain showed him how truly exciting despair can be.
Izuru then killed the student who shot at him.
With Her plan complete, Junko sent out an email to the reserve course students, revealing
the student council murders and Izuru’s existence.
She pins the murders on Izuru and reveals he was created with the insane amount of tuition
money from the reserve course, resulting in a riot.
This was the first killing game, the beginning of the end, and the tragedy of hope’s peak
academy.
Shortly after, junko used the footage of the killing game she taped and ryota’s animation
methods to develop a brainwashing technique.
She achieved her goal of completing the despair tape by blackmailing ryota, she then tested
it on a reserve course student, forcing them to commit suicide.
The rest of the reserve course students then created a secret society where they watched
the footage of the student council killing game, some of them over 5,000 times.
That’s hot.
In the meantime junko moved forward with her plans for 77-B. She captured their class rep
Chiaki and forced the rest of the 77-B students to watch remotely as she was forced through
a gauntlet.
Though determined to make it through, chiaki was killed.
The death of their friend and class rep drove 77-B so far into despair they eventually became
the ultimate foot soldiers of junko: the ultimate despairs.
Around the same time the brainwashed reserve students stormed hope’s peak academy murdering
every student except the members of class 78 who, with the help of junko, barricaded
themselves inside the school building.
junko contacted the reserve course students commanding them all to commit suicide as the
riots spread further and further, eventually leading to world wars and the complete collapse
of society.
During this time junko prepared for her next killing game inside the halls of the fortified
hope’s peak academy with the last remaining survivors class 78.
This is where the Danganronpa games START.
With class 78’s memories erased they wake up locked inside hope’s peak under the impression
it’s their first day of school.
That is until monokuma shows up and explains to them the killing game.
From there, the battle of hope and despair rages.
The object of the killing game is to back an individual into a corner.
Either take away everything and leave them with nothing to lose, or to give them an offer
so good they can’t refuse.
The rules and laws, the moral codes of society work because they’re built into you.
From birth you’re taught right from wrong, virtually GIVEN a conscience.
In nature it’s simply survival of the fittest, no conscience, you do what you must to preserve
your own life.
However, people found (what most consider) a better way to live.
One where we work together to achieve our goals.
In order for the killing game to work those morals must be literally stripped from a contestant
through either hope, or despair.
The secret to hope and despair is simple, it’s desire.
There is no such thing as “content,” human beings were not designed to be content, if
you think about it.
If humans were able to be content we probably would’ve gone extinct a long time ago from
some disease or famine.
Human’s need to work, we need to strive for more, we need to hope.
We naturally desire more.
But desire also leads to despair, wanting that which you cant have.
Ironically this is one of the fundamental pieces of buddhist philosophy, relinquishing
desires.
Another is the understanding of duality, so let me point you one last time towards monokuma.
This robobear is junko’s killing game avatar and represents the struggle within the competitors
of the killing game.
It’s no coincidence, he resembles a yin yang.
One side is white and cute, the other is black and demonic, light and dark, hope and despair,
the two motivations for murder.
For example in the first part of danganronpa 1 the killing game contestants are given motivational
DVD’s depicting their loved one’s in peril, possibly dead.
This traumatized a girl named Sayaka (sci-ah-cuh), leading her to construct a plot to commit
murder and pin it on another.
This was an attempt to get through the class trial without being caught so she could save
her friends at the expense of all the other contestants lives.
Sounds pretty crazy right?
Something you would never do, right?
Before you get all high and mighty about how you “would never kill no matter what,”
let me ask you a philosophical question: if murdering an innocent child would bring world
peace, end hunger and sadness for everyone, would you do it?
Would it be for hope?
Hope that the world’s pain would end?
Or would it be for despair?
The sadness of the state of things?
What would you do?
The times we live in are scary.
There’s cyber threats to national security every day.
America is continually degrading its foreign relations.
The economy has been hanging in the balance for years, wall street is constantly under
risk of crash.
On a broader level there are people without homes, refugees begging for sanctuary, starving
children, disease, famine, crime…
Even our planet seems to be rebelling against our species from what we’ve done to our
own atmosphere out of ignorance, laziness and greed.
Does it make you despair?
Do you get lost in it?
Does a tweet ruin your day?
Can you not think about how much you enjoy your bed when you know that out there millions
of people are dying painfully?
Or do you hope?
Do you see the good in people, the charities run off of selfless donations that are curing
children of disease?
The people working to bring back our planet from the brink, the fire fighters and just
law enforcers who risk their lives to save others.
The independent scientists working to find ways for the blind to see and the deaf to
hear, to allow people the ability to walk again.
The friends you made all over the world because of a video game you liked.
What do you desire the most?
If you had it would you actually be happy?
How far would you go to get what you want?
Under the surface of a game filled with fanservice and lude jokes is a moral quandary that has
spanned the entire existence of the human species.
Hope and despair, the children of desire, the ultimate motivation to achieve, or destroy.
One can simply not exist without the other, for without despair there is no hope, and
without hope despair can’t grow.
It’s what you desire that can corrupt your hope into despair, and while it’s impossible
to rid yourself of all desire the understanding of your wants can mean the difference between
life and death.
What we have here comes down to choice.
We have hope and despair, and desire feeds them both.
All of these are natural instincts, yet society exists against the fundamentals of natural
instinct.
The instinct to take, the instinct to destroy anything in our way.
So what if someone realized that?
What if they already have?
Manipulating societal ideals to exploit natural instinct, motivating you to hope for your
desires to be fulfilled which can easily result in catastrophe if that hope is directed by
someone filled with despair.
It can bring who you thought you were to their knees and reveal exactly what you were capable
of all along.
Possibly the biggest, most awful, most tragic event in human history…
That’s the story of danganronpa, the story you never knew.
Grant: okay David krane producer of the hit 90s sitcom friends, i've done what you wanted,
I made danganronpa the story you never knew.
Can I go?
DC: welll….Seeing as your stupid Jewish friend sicked Jesus on my ass I have no choice
but to let you go.
But I have to say after multiple years spamming you with requests for danganronpa the story
you never knew, you didn't even touch the games!
Grant: well if you want more danganronpa I suggest smashing that Like button, subscribing
and hitting that bell so I know to do more, how else am I supposed to know what you want?
DC: maybe read the comments?
Grant: I mean..
DC: Why?
It’s mostly cancer anyway.
Goodbye, Grant Ball from Treesicle
Ryan: Oh!
You’re back!
How was Utah?
Grant:
Ryan: Oh!
Go drink some coffee, we’re streaming in 5