woodrow34 - 2013-10-14 05:09:13

So, this review is aimed for the people who haven't played the game. So if you played the game, you will think differently then what I have to say, most likely.

Story:

The plot line is easy to understand. It is about 15 (Later 16) school students who are trapped in an academy where they must kill someone, and not get caught during the school trial that is held after a murder has taken place. If you get caught, you will go through an execution, killing you based on your talent that got you into the prestigious school. Simple, right? Well the story has more complicated plot twists near the end where you will think you aren't even watching the same episode anymore. So overall, the story has good potential and manages to provide a good story throughout, even though some moments will probably confuse you at first. 8/10

Animation:

I don't know about this studio, but the animation is well done and I haven't noticed many flaws while watching it. Some scenes are taken directly from the game which many people dislike and I can't think of a reason to dislike it. It looks better with the games kind of style with the execution than it would have by just making it from scratch. 9/10

Sound:

This is where Danganronpa starts to fail. Throughout the show, the music is very boring and seems like it goes on forever. Sometimes it matches the scene, but it isn't impactful and it often goes on unnoticed with me. 5/10

Character:

This is where the anime completely executes itself. The characters aren't developed at all in this anime, and it goes in a cycle of free time, murder, trial, and it repeats that cycle with NO episodes for development. The last few episodes actually progress something while the other 10 episodes are nothing really necessary to the story, other than knowing who dies. This is probably done because the creators of the anime adaptation most likely assumed that most of it's viewers would have already played the game, which actually developed the characters. 3/10

Enjoyment:

This anime may not be that good if you actually think about it's flaws, but I thought it was a fun and very enjoyable anime to watch. 8/10

Overall:

Danganronpa: The Animation has it's flaws, but it is still very enjoyable and worth the watch. However, if you expect development more than overall enjoyment, play the game first. 6/10

ziemann.kade - 2013-10-12 10:35:23

Danganropa: Trigger Happy Havoc now Available, please enjoy.

http://inanimeshadow.blogspot.pt/2013/10/danganronpa-trigger-happy-havoc-anime.html

skemmer - 2013-10-08 14:48:23

Almost every single season, there is this one Anime, that gets you hooked, just due to it’s Synopsis. It gets you hyped about just how much potential this show has and just how awesome it is going to be, but as soon as you start it, the doubts within you start to grow and you get more and more disappointed by how the show turned out to be, might that just be a main character that annoys the hell out of you, or a story that seems to be nothing but a huge pile of bullshit. The show just doesn’t reach your expectations and the more of it you watch, the worse it gets. For this season an Anime called Danganronpa holds it’s position as exactly this Anime with tons of potential in it, but failing at using it.

Story:Danganronpa is a Death-Game Anime centered around the students of “Hope’s Peak Academy”. For those who don’t know, a Death-Game is an organized game that’s sole purpose is to kill everyone except one, who ends up being the winner. A really popular example for this one being the movie “Hunger Games”. The rules for Danganronpa itself is rather simple. There are 15 students trapped within Hope’s Peak Academy, forced to live with the other students until they are allowed to get out. This allowance though is only given to those who commit a murder and are able to get away with this. For the sake of finding out who committed the murder, the students get a little bit of time to investigate the place of death and the whole school, before all getting together in a Class Trial to solve the mystery of who committed the crime. If the students are right and get the murderer, the culprit is taken away and gets “punished”, meaning he gets executed in a really weird way! (I’d love to show you a video of it, but that would only result in spoilers and you hating at me so I guess I better not do that!) If they are wrong though, the culprit is going to be free and every single other student is going to die instead. Sounds interesting doesn’t it?

The story of Danganronpa goes on in many archs normally consisting of 2-3 episodes. The archs are generally built the same way as they start with them leading a little bit of a normal life, a murder occurring, a little bit of investigating going on and then them coming together in a Class trial to solve the crime. Danganronpa’s story is equally centered around the murders and getting out of the school theme. While the first part of the shows has more focus on the Class Trials and culprits, the second part is more about the getting out of the Death-Game. Unfortunately, that has a huge influence on the quality on the story itself, as the murders in the first half of the show seem to have a lot more thoughts behind it than the ones closed to the end. On the other hand though, the story behind the whole death game is getting unveiled within the second half, which is getting more and more interesting. As we all learned from Glass Reflection’s Arkada though, the ending is Paramount and the ending that Danganronpa brought to us is nothing that would really help the show in total. I normally don’t really like talking about endings in a Review as it is hard to talk about without spoiling half the show, but let this be said: The ending for Danganronpa doesn’t seem to be well thought through. While everything makes sense and is completely plausible the problem that I had with it was that there were quite some points that I would’ve loved to get a little more background about since as they were left in the Anime, they seemed a little bit Asspool-ish. The plot in total though is rather solid and gets a quite good7.4/10

Characters:

The characters in Danganronpa are pretty much what ruined the show for me. With people dying everywhere around them it is to be expected that there is at least a slight bit of despair creeping into their minds and with many people actually talking about despair itself, one would expect the characters to act that way too. The characters in Danganronpa though seem to be immune against any kind of these feelings. We have our main character Makoto Naegi, a pretty normal boy that had a lot of “luck” to get to the privileged school that is Peak’s Hope Academy. Just that this school didn’t turn out to be what it was in the end. Naegi is a levelheaded boy that always thinks rational and never loses his hope. More than once he is the one that gets everyone on the right way instead of accusing the wrong one. The other character worth mentioning is Monobear, who is the leader of the game. He literally is a bear and probably is supposed to be threatening. His problem: He isn’t! While at first he seems to be a little creepy, it turns out he never really anything people have to fear and his only reason to exist is due to him observing the game and then and when changing the rules. I am going to avoid further character descriptions, due to it probably going into spoilers as it would get obvious who is going to be surviving and who is not. The whole cast of people stuck in the school is pretty cliched, which is not a huge problem, if there was anything like character development Unfortunately though, the show doesn’t really bother concentrating on the characters and rather focuses on getting the story forward. There are a few characters that do get a little depth but they are rare and most of the characters remain uninteresting and undeveloped. I can see why it is that way though, as it is hard to develop characters in an environment that is supposed to leave the viewer in a suspense about who is going to die next. Character Development would have only made it more obvious who was going to stay longer.

Another huge fault that the show has, is it’s atmosphere, which is mostly provoked through the characters. Even though many people within the school (mostly Monobear), do talk about despair and even the Japanese name does include the Japanese word for it, the characters never seem to be afraid of what happens. Of course there is quite some sadness and even a tiny bit of despair after each execution, but outside of those scenes, the students seem to live their ordinary live and really don’t seem to care about the death game surrounding them. That is the reason, this Anime doesn’t feel threatening. It does not feel like an actual life-or-death game, but more like pure mystery Anime that only focuses on solving the murders and the mysteries surrounding the school. There are moments when the Death-Game theme is done well, but those scenes are way too rare and those are the only scenes the characters actually shine in. Heck even at the end of the shows, there are characters surviving that don’t even seem to have any sense except for we needed someone else to survive! This is where the show fails and this is why it’s whole potential is lost! 5.2/10

Animation:

Danganronpa has been done by the fairly new production Studio “Lerche”, who don’t really have any other works except Carnival Phantasm and has been directed by Seiji Kishi, the man responsible for shows like Angel Beats and Persona 4: The Animation. The Animation in Danganronpa really is for the most part nothing special, as it is quite decent but nothing outstanding. The only part where it really does something different are the classroomtrials, where it often keeps a bit of the style the game has and uses things that I didn’t expect to come and the execution as it only uses the censored cutscenes from the game. Everything else stays fairly standard and doesn’t really stand out from the masses of shows that are coming out every season. The character Designs that the show has, sometimes are really weird but to be honest, I rather liked those and am happy they kept them the way they were.5.9/10

Sound:The Soundtrack for Danganronpa is rather generic on it’s own and even in the Anime it didn’t seem to make a huge difference within the Anime either. I barely noticed it while watching the Anime, which is not really a good thing. It was composed by Masafumi Takada, who does not have any other works he has composed. The Opening was quite okay, but something you can easily skip, if you don’t want to see Monobear’s sexy dancing. The Animation for it is done in a visual Novel Style with every character getting introduced and a little bit of extra animation that isn’t to interesting (except Monobear’s dancing of course). The ending on the hand has some quite cool music and even though there is no animation at all and instead only shows the characters that already died, I couldn’t bring myself to skip it due to the cool song.5.2/10

In total, Danganronpa is an original and pretty cool concept that fails in it’s execution. Nonetheless it was quite entertaining to me, not for what it tried to be, but for what it was and the Classroom trials were a lot of fun to watch while they were going on. Otherwise it failed at delivering the decent story it had and had the wrong feeling to it, due to the illogical actions of the characters.
Now as I calculated the scores I gave Danganronpa (Story, Characters, Animation, Sound and my personal enjoyment), I came to an average score of 6.16/10. It fails to deliver what it wants to be, but still is at least entertaining for what it is. As it stands now, Danganronpa has been licensed by FUNimation, but has not been published yet, as it is rather new! It is available for streaming on both Crunchyroll and FUNimation’s webpage though.
With that, I hope I was able to help you out and see you next time!

blake09 - 2013-10-08 10:26:03

As a writer, one thing I really don't like to see is a good idea fail to meet its potential, or go to waste. Danganronpa, yet another series with a huge name that I'm not willing to type out, neatly slots into the "misused potential" category of narrative.

A murder-mystery death-game pitting 15 elite high school students trapped inside a large, prominent academy, against one another in a battle of wits and deception? Sounds pretty good to me (and that's why I watched it).

A game where, the only way to escape the prison these high-schoolers find themselves in, is to murder someone, and get away with it? Sounds awesome!

The game is presided over by a mysterious and rather odd bear named Monokuma. He is just one of the show’s weirder aspects (there are a few).

Okay, so the premise is cool, but let’s take a look at where the series starts to lose points.

First, the story itself. Beyond the premise, the plot is...alright. It follows the rules it lays down from the outset; the students are forced to live eternally in the academy, unless someone gets away with a murder. Should a murder occur, the students are given time to investigate, then a trial is held to determine who the culprit was. Should the culprit be identified successfully, they are executed and life goes on (for everyone but them, obviously). But should the true culprit not be deduced, they walk free, while everyone else is executed.

As you might expect, people die in this anime. It is Monokuma's goal to spread despair among the students by showing them that hope has no place in Hope's Peak Academy (ironic right?). But for a show that throws the word despair around a lot, it really isn't that despair-inducing. And this leads into the characters, but I'm not totally done with story yet.

The murders that take place are mostly plausible, with a fair amount of arbitrary complication thrown in to make it difficult to determine the culprit. However, if you pay enough attention, or just think for a bit, save for one, all of the murders can be solved by the viewer. The problem is that the show moves too quickly to give you time for this thinking.

The typical structure of the series goes: Normal Life -> Murder -> Investigation -> Trial. It repeats this cycle with very little else in between.

The problem I have is that this show moves too quickly for you to get attached to the characters, who begin to drop left and right pretty early on. I would have actually liked some fillers or content not directly related to a murder, to give me time to get to know the characters better.

Towards the end, things begin to unravel and the show starts to stumble, spurting out exposition dumps to quickly wrap up the mystery and bring the story to a close. Let’s just say I was not satisfied. There are some plot holes, unexplained and unrealistic events, and other problems that detracted from the series as a whole.

So, the characters. I mentioned above that the anime is all about despair, but the characters really fail to deliver that sense. As soon as they’ve sorted out who murdered who, they forget the bleak and dire nature of their imprisonment and just go on like they are all friends, and no one has died. Only towards the end do their spirits start to decline.

For the most part, the characters are pretty underdeveloped. I took a liking to a couple, namely Ishimaru (the Super-Duper High School Prefect/Hall Monitor) and Togami (the Super-Duper High School Scion/Heir).

Another thing I disliked about the series was that the character motivations are mostly completely unrealistic or unjustified, or just plain stupid. Like, seriously…the second murder. Ugh. So dumb.

That’s my biggest problem with the series, I think. It wasn’t serious enough. It was silly. But then, should I have expected something serious after seeing Monokuma? I dunno.

Anyway, the sound and animation are both alright. Nothing special. The opening is somewhat odd. Didn’t really care for it. The voice actors are good (and it’s always cool when you can get the whole cast from the source material for an adaptation, so I liked that).

Overall, Danganronpa fails to deliver on most fronts. The story is interesting enough up until the end, where it gets silly. The silliness holds it back.

Still, check it out if you want something a little different. Because, it is different. Odd, and not that great, but different. I’m tempted to write my own death-game now. It wouldn’t come off as unoriginal, would it?

german25 - 2013-10-06 16:16:04

This is not going to be a long review. I will not be going in depth to Story, Animation, Sound, and all that.

The best description for this would be a Reaction Review.

Let’s begin, shall we?

Story - 7/10
So the story is pretty simple. Murder-mystery in a locked-down school run by a demon bear named Monokuma. If you can kill someone without being
caught, you can leave.

Simple, right? Well, honestly, it was pretty simple. The show followed a pretty regular path of a “Monster of the Day”-theme but more of a “Murder
of the Arc”-theme. Each murder is investigated and debated in the Classroom Trials.

Oh, I forgot to mention. During the trials, if the wrong person is convicted guilty, everyone but the murderer dies and the murderer wins. They need
to pick the right person.

So beyond that, simple. It has twists and turn and all that fun stuff.

My only problem with the entire show is that the end felt like the writers just pulled every cliche out of the cesspools of their imagination. It got
a little too awful.

Characters - 8.5/10

The characters were fun. You never really saw any development (at all) but they were fun. You had the “Super Duper High School (Insert Thing Here)”
from every background and it was a clash of geniuses, one could say.

The hero was a cheesy, not quite useless, but pitiful main. He still got the job done though.

The outstanding, and often weirder, role was Monokuma, the evil black/white bear. He really introduced a comical feel to the whole “Despair shall be
yours” thing.

**Everything Else - Pretty Good. So for everything else, i’m going to be brief.

Animation - Great. It got very creative during execution scenes and always stayed to a comical and whimsical feel even when people died. It was good.

Sound - Not Too Sure. i loved the opening though because it was different. it wasn’t J-Pop, it was like a mix of Rap and some Alt. Rock-ish singing.
I liked it, ‘nuff said. The rest of the soundtrack and sound effects were all well placed but not too memorable.

Anyways, have a good day and i hoped you enjoyed my review of Danganronpa: Kibou no Gakuen to Zetsubou no Koukousei The Animation

asa84 - 2013-09-28 17:23:43

Danganronpa is a semi-thriller/mystery series based on a video game of the same name. Although it is an adaptation (and thus loses its originality/thrill to fans of the game), the series does a good job retelling the bare necessities of the story. Fifteen students are trapped in a highly secure school and in order to graduate (escape) they must commit and get away with the murder of a fellow student. Class trials are held to determine the culprit. If the students guess correctly, then the culprit is punished by death for disrupting order within the school. However, if the students guess wrong, then the culprit runs free and everyone else is punished by death.

Story:

Danganronpa the Animation is a retelling, so it loses points in originality and having to deal with time constraints. However, disregarding the latter the series does a good job at retelling the story. It gets the story and plot done in thirteen episodes, which is incredibility difficult to do. They left out some minor details that made the story structure strong, but still keep the foundation alive and intact. In the eyes of newcomers, Danganronpa thrusts the viewer into its world and tribulations almost immediately. The first class trial is quite unpredictable and immediately puts the main character up against the wall. As the story continues, the tension builds up and the mysteries keep piling up. Although it is fast paced, everything is eventually solved (to a certain extent).

Animation:

Each character has their own unique physical traits that represents who they are on the inside. It is a very unique and cartoony way of doing things for being a murder mystery thriller. Beyond this there isn't really anything spectacular in the animation. One thing that viewers will notice is that the animators used the exact same in game execution animation. People can take this as either an homage to the series, or laziness of the animators to make easy money.

Sound:

Nothing really great or terrible out of the sound department. The opening and ending song was fun to listen to, but other than that nothing sound related seems to pique in Danganronpa.

Character:

Each of the fifteen students has a title representing who they are and what their unique talent is (example: Super Duper High School Level Luckster). It is a lot of fun to watch the ensemble act as a whole. The main protagonist Naigi doesn't really have that many uplifting qualities except for his incredibly positive attitude. However, Naigi himself admits this countless times and yet still tries to make the best out of his situation. What Danganronpa succeeds in the most is introducing and decieving the viewer with these seemingly two dimensional characters. In fact, the students are much more three dimensional and round. There is much more than what is represented on the surface.

Enjoyment:

Newcomers will certainly enjoy the creativity and uniqueness of Danganronpa, while fans of the game will be indifferent with the adaptation. It's still fun to watch, but the thrill and mystery will not exist.

Overall:

I give Danganronpa the Animation a 7/10. Don't expect anything spectacular, but keep an open mind to this well done adaptation. I encourage those who have not played the game to definitely give this a shot, or even give the game a shot first. This series lives up to its potential without going overboard. Keep on eye out for the next adaptation: Super Danganronpa 2 the Animation.

blick.liza - 2013-09-03 22:18:35

Let me start this off by saying that I am a huge fan of the Dangan Ronpa game. It was a nice twist on the battle royale genre and more over a very good story with some pretty fantastic characters. When I found out about an anime in the works, I had my doubts about it, since I wasn't entirely sure how such an adaption would work with a game like Dangan Ronpa. But I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The plot of the Dangan Ronpa anime is the same as the original in every way. The thing is though, with a 13 episode anime that deals with source material that would take quite a few hours of gameplay to complete (I can't remember the specifics but it was at least a day), you are stuck with an anime which loses all of the thrill and suspense that it should have as a murder mystery series.

The pacing of the show also cuts out significant amounts of character development leaving what was an interesting and well fleshed out cast of characters with little more than a trope to their name and a few seconds of screen time before they get killed off.

The animation is pretty crappy too. It looks fine up close but as you pull farther away the art begins to look shabbier and shabbier. Not to mention there are times when the animators forget to animate character movements and they end up floating into a scene, which is just plain lazy. Not to mention the execution scenes in the anime are completely rehashed from the game

The only thing I can give a solid rating to is the sound which is honestly just ripped from the game, which in my opinion had a pretty solid soundtrack. Still it was lazily copy and pasted into the series and hardly does a thing to save it.

If you are a Dangan Ronpa fan please avoid this series because it is not a proper representation of the series. If you were thinking of watching this anime to get into Dangan Ronpa, save your breath and go play the game or read an LP of it online. It's a far more enjoyable experience than sitting through this horribly paced adaption.

keara.lehner - 2013-08-13 20:06:31

6/10

Will write a detailed review once I have time. For now, a brief opinion will do.

I haven't played the game yet, but most of the times, when anime is made based on visual novel, games or light novel, the anime tends to rush things very quickly and it is the same for this one. It was too rushed in my opinion, storyline is great though. The blood effect... well can't blame the animation since it is also in green color in the game (I did a quick research on the game). Unfortunately for me, I don't have a PSP, if I do, I would buy the game and played it first before watching this anime.

jparker - 2013-08-10 00:04:06

Just saw the 6th episode.

The story is a mix between detective conan and saw. 15 pupils in one school. You must kill one of them without letting the other pupils knowing that you are the murder to get free. Every time some one dies, there is a class trial to decide who the murder is.

So many twists and not solved mysterys. The atmosphere is kind of dangerous because you dont know who might is planning to kill or not. Furthermore the many diffrent characters are making this anime very many-sided.

The anime is mad, but not dark. No demons or sick monsters. The sound is awesome fitting to this anime and always kind of ironically funny. It is very grotesque. I allways laugh a lot watching this anime. The charackters are the reason. There are all so unique compared to each other and so amusing.

This anime is very enjoyable!

Finally I have to say I love that mad bear of madness, who want everyone to dispair. Allways laughing because of him. For example when he dance like a slut in the opening.

Now I watched the last Episode and I must say the ending is very disappointing. It started to become fishy at the moment the "laptop-person-programm" was introduced, but the two last episodes were just nonesense. They tried to make a twist on a twisting twist ending and it turned out to a very awkward ending. They had to make an unexpectedly ending, but they went to far with this twin sister of dispairness and living in a world of dispairing madness o.0.

They really succesed creating a nice anime and animecharacters who are very entertaining and amusing. But they also succesed to make and dispairingly bad ending.

blanda.tobin - 2013-07-27 04:05:55

How to ruin a great experience ?

Streamline it and do the barely minimum amount of work possible ...

And you get dangan ronpa the animation.

The story is great , but it's a shame they gloss over the important bit and they even either skip or rewrite important points just because.

In fact anyone viewing this anime without playing the game first would be left totally bored.

You have no time to guess who murdered who . you have no time to care about some characters being dead because , you don't spend nearly enough time with them for the viewer to care . This is nothing but a rushed job , unable to reproduce the magic of the game because they didn't even try.

No they didn't try , they used the SAME movies from the psp game and they even ceonsored them.

They didn't even bother to animate the climax battle , no they choose to show the viewer the SAME COMIC from the game.

This is a disgrace

If you wish to understand why this serie got popular , just , play the game first. the anime failed to capture the spirit of the game and will leave you bored , confused and it's a shame because the characters are excellent and the work the voice actors did in japanese top-tier.

I cannot recommand this anime. it's horrible