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.

10 Second Anime - Danganronpa - Episode 12

Danganronpa - Episode 12

The students have amnesia. The school has a morgue. And one of the dead characters came back, sorta.

This story keeps giving us new twists, and interesting turns on the old mystery clichés. Some key clues let the kids figure out who the mastermind is, and Kirigiri gets an unhappy reunion with her father. A box of bones in his secret hideout is pretty disappointing. Kyoko figured he was dead already, from the clues Monokuma passed out that only 16 students entered the school alive, and was ready for the news.

Neat clues for the mastermind's identity came from finding the morgue, and how there were only 9 bodies, when there should have been 10, which means one of them was recycled. Eww. The wounds on Ikusaba included a whole bunch of stab wounds, which pointed to how someone else was killed, and whose body it was. Also, Monokuma was being very active in thwarting some of their investigations, plus trying to throw red herrings at the kids with pictures of their school life before the amnesia. Naegi and Kyoko found a video file with all the kids' interviews agreeing to attend the school, but Monokuma destroyed the disk before one of them started to speak. And in all the pictures of their previous school life, one of those students always had her face obscured.

The mastermind was Junko, who was supposedly the 2nd student killed when she destroyed a Monokuma robot. Now we know why there was an extra sense of surprise to her death. That Junko was actually Ikusaba pretending to be Junko, who was her own twin sister. However Ikusaba had grey eyes and freckles, but the Junko in the principal's video had blue eyes and no freckles. What would have made the switch obvious was the voice. The revealed Junko's voice is totally different than the one we heard earlier in the season.

At least one question for me has already been answered: are all the dead kids really dead? Yep, they are. Once the story reused the twin sister's body as a mystery corpse, there's really no way to get around that. So, what is going on with these twin Super Duper Despair students? Why would Junko kill her own sister? What was the point of this whole scenario? Answers, hopefully, will all be revealed next week in the last episode.

10 Second Anime - Danganronpa - Episode 11

Danganronpa - Episode 11

Kirigiri's gonna die! Oh, she's not going to die. Naegi's gonna die! Oh, no, he didn't die. The kids challenge Monokuma's authority.

All sorts of revelations on top of last week's revelations. One of the rules for the classroom trials has always been, if the kids choose the wrong person as the murderer, they all die. And with all the surveillance, the murderers could only try to hide guilt from the other students, but not from Monokuma. With the body of the 16th student laid out, and the clues that placed around the school, it seemed that someone was trying to frame Kirigiri. But halfway through the trial, Naegi started questioning the whole process, especially how they didn't even know who the victim was. Obviously Monokuma needed to shut someone up to keep the other kids docile.

As Naegi is about to get executed, Alter Ego, who was supposedly killed, had implanted a part of itself in the execution machinery, and Naegi was just dumped in the basement. Kirigiri eventually finds her way down there too, and with the key she found, they made their way back up to the school. Along the way, Kirigiri explains what happened and why. The broken bear was to provide an alibi for the other students, Ikusaba was supposed to kill Naegi, and Kirigiri was to be framed for it. Kirigiri reveals that her memory was altered because of her genius power, Super Duper Detective. Can't have someone like that running around the school where kids are being forced to kill each other, and she starts to regain her memory. But Kirigiri stopped the murder from happening, and Monokuma had to use another corpse to complete the framing of Kirigiri. Which means, the one remote controlling Monokuma had to get his/her hands dirty.

Other revelations by Kirigiri are that she infiltrated the school to find her father, who was listed as the principal, but whether he's involved in the plot, she doesn't know, and hopes not. Kirigiri and Naegi bargain with Monokuma for one last trial where they solve all the mysteries of the school, and what the true purpose of having the 16 students attend. Was it all just to make them despair and prove that hope could be broken? That may have been the case, except they didn't count on the average student Naegi having his own super genius power, Super Duper Hope. Well, it seems like that anyway.

And bonus gif: Super Duper Zoom!

10 Second Anime: Danganronpa Episode 10

Danganronpa Episode 10

Monokuma seems to be more unstable. The 16th student shows herself briefly. And Kirigiri finds more info.

About the worst thing you can tell a girl is that she has bad breath. Really, how rude.

As expected, with these last few students deciding not to do any more killing, some other victim has to come from somewhere, and the 16th student, Mukuro Ikusaba, was the one. However, her mask was booby-trapped, and the students briefly suspected it was Kirigiri, since she was not there with them. But no, she was off gathering clues in another walled-off section of the school.

Lots of weird hints being tossed around this week too. A broken Monokuma lying around, instead of just being replaced by another one. Kirigiri saying she doesn't remember who she was before entering the school. Naegi dreaming of the masked 16th student taking the knife from his desk, that was used to kill her, and Kirigiri trying to wake him up. A stray comment by Monokuma, after the kids found the key to the Data Processing room with the corpse, that "of course I've changed, it's been about two years," as if the personality of the broken Monokuma had been exchanged.

In a show with a lot of big reveals, one of that standouts was how the cameras were not just for surveillance and security of the students, but being used for broadcast of a reality show. This really was a mashup of Survivor and Ten Little Indians.

10 Second Anime: Danganronpa Episode 9

Danganronpa Episode 9

Lots of red herrings thrown into the locked room mystery. This was almost the last episode for Aoi, whew! Glad that it wasn't. And now the secret 16th student must make an entrance.

For a second, I thought this was the last episode mai waifu Aoi was going to be in, but she was also one of the red herrings. Sakura committed suicide after all, and Aoi's actions after the fact almost got the rest of the students executed as well. The missing clue was that Aoi had talked with Sakura after she had been hit over the head twice by other students, and Sakura drank poison after sending Aoi for a protein sports drink. It was Aoi's quick thinking to switch around the poison bottle and protein drink to make it look like she was the culprit, if the other two students weren't judged to be the killers. The rules of the classroom court say that if the vote for the killer is wrong, all the students die, which was Aoi's intent after seeing Sakura take her own life. Thanks to Naegi and Kirigiri, they were able to solve the crime correctly. And the students forgave Aoi for being emotional after her best friend died.

Now that the mole is gone, Monokuma is at a disadvantage if the students decide to stop killing each other. To show them he's still in charge, he executes the AI who was decrypting the files containing information about the origins of this crazy premise. And now, he must bring in the 16th secret student to stir things up.

10 Second Anime - Danganronpa - Episode 8

Danganronpa - Episode 8

Sakura is the mole, but she doesn't want to work for Monokuma anymore. She ends up being the next victim in a classic locked room murder mystery, even though her job was to do the killing if the murders stopped.

This Monokuma guy is pretty smart. After the mole, whose role is to commit murders if the kids stop killing each other, decides to stop working, Monokuma just outs her, to rile up the remaining students. Either they kill Sakura, because they don't trust her word that she stopped working for the mastermind, or they kill each other over their alliances. Nice.

Meanwhile, more backstory gets revealed. The origin of this plot to have these talented kids live, and if need be, confined to the school, came from the school they're locked up in. Some crisis happened, Hope's Peak Academy went bankrupt, but the plot went ahead anyway, but with this perverse Survivor game added on to it. Is Monokuma related to this calamity that caused the closure of the school? Plus, among the files detailing this original plan are more pictures of the recently dead students playing together as if they knew each other in the past, even though they were all strangers at the start of the story.

Then we get our next victim, Sakura the mole, murdered in the classic room locked from the inside mystery. Somehow, I think finding that poison in nurse's office will play a role in figuring out whodunit.

10 Second Anime - Danganronpa - Episode 7

Danganronpa - Episode 7

Two more dead bodies, and the trial uncovers a convoluted scheme to win the prize money. And a bear dances with a plate of pancakes.

So, Celestia the gambler really wanted that 10 billion yen to build a castle and hire butlers. Oookaay. Everyone needs a dream, I suppose. Now we're down to 7 people out of the original 15. One is a mole (maybe), and another is hiding in the wings (also maybe; could be someone who has already "died"). At this point in the season, I expect the back story and origins of this whole competition to start being revealed. Fine with me.

10 Second Anime - Danganronpa - Episode 6

Danganronpa - Episode 6

An AI ghost gets kidnapped, 2 more people die, and Aoi has a sad.

You want plot summary for this confusing mashup of Survivor and Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians? Um, you're on your own. Things to note are the kidnapped AI version of Fujisaki who died 2 episodes ago was decrypting the contents of an old laptop and found hints that the strangers in this high school game of sudden death aren't really strangers. Ooh, back story...