10 Second Anime - Danganronpa - Episode 13 [END]

Danganronpa - Episode 13 [END]

Wow. Junko is crazy! All the mysteries inside the Hope's Peak Academy are revealed. But not the mysteries outside the academy. Hope may win at the end, but despair is contagious.

I counted 8 distinct personalities in that one mastermind. What the hell has been going on here? Well, two years earlier, the 16 kids we know about entered the school, and had a normal life for about a year. One year ago, some artificial calamity happened, and drove the entire world into despair. During the initial panic, all the kids but 16 were killed in the rioting and mayhem, and the principal decided to turn the school into an ark to protect the kids who were left. This explains the security measures locking them in, and even an air filtration system. Junko said that despair was contagious, so that may or may not mean something about the calamity.

After the security measures were all in place, the despair sisters struck, and hatched this elaborate plan to foster despair inside the school and have the students kill themselves in a macabre game that was broadcast to the external world gone crazy. We don't know how they caused the amnesia in the other kids, but I guess that's not really that important. They even checked these version of the facts with the serial killer personality inside Fukawa. Genocider Sho did not suffer amnesia, but since she's been trapped inside the school for a year, she only knows that something bad happened from the initial news broadcasts.

Like a crazy person, Junko insists on the game being played to the end, but she didn't count on Naegi being Super Duper Hope. Yup, nailed it. Junko had tried to use her knowledge of the other students lives to make them despair, sacrifice one of the students, and continue living trapped inside the school. But Naegi countered with his own knowledge of their personalities, and gave them hope. Junko lost, let herself get squashed, and the kids open the main vault door to whatever is actually going on outside.

Oh, but there's a teaser at the end. The mastermind might be dead, but Monokuma still functions. Perhaps Junko had created an AI to help with her plans, and it had gotten out of control. That might explain the bizarre pictures of the current anarchy with monokuma masks, huge monokuma robots, and armies of monokumas. I don't know. Supposedly there will be a sequel to the game this anime was based on, and they will introduce larger mysteries and more story.

Danganronpa The Animation was an interesting adaptation to the video games. They ported in the graphics from the game engine for the executions scenes, which was a nice directorial decision to show appreciation for the fans of the game. Those who liked the game may have been disappointed that the courtroom scenes did not match the mood or tension from the pacing of the game, but at least the graphics were included, like loading up ammo for objections from the clues that were collected. But this was an anime, not a video game, so that meant we got to spend more time with the back story and characters, instead of roaming the hallways looking for clues. I liked the character designs, and how they interacted with each other. Reaction gags were top notch. I'm glad I kept going with this strange mashup of Survivor and Ten Little Indians. I didn't know how apt that description was going to be until 10th episode with the reveal of the reality show broadcast. Some good mystery, some good twists, some rushed courtroom scenes, but fun all the way around.