I Would Like To Hear The Essay About How Hope Peak Is Bad!

Genius Invokation TCG across Teyvat 🎲

Why do you think Makoto using the NWP was the wrong thing to do? The despair states class 77-b were in was objectively bad and self destructive and removing them so they back to normal should be a good thing. Also I wouldn’t say what Makoto is doing with the NWP isn’t more brainwashing, it’s deprogramming.

I've talked a bit about my hatred for NWP and how it is used in DR2 here, but it really comes down to this:

Forcibly removing people's memories to make them better people is not the correct answer.

Forcibly removing people's memories and reverting them back to a previous state and then rewriting over those memories with new ones is not the right answer.

Especially when you take DR3 into account and that Makoto etc. didn't know about the brainwashing video or when the Remnants fell to despair, they're just making best guess scenarios and wiping out all of their time at Hope's Peak, which effectively means they are wiping out their memories of real Chiaki and replacing them with DR2!therapybot!Chiaki, which is NOT the correct answer, no matter how you slice it.

The end of DR3 is very good about this - you don't make people better by removing the bad thing. You don't make things better by removing the memories of your past, even if they're memories you regret or hate or don't want to ever address again ever. Those memories are still there. They're still important.

Removing memories is not an effective or even good way of deprogramming people who are brainwashed.

Makoto's luck kicked into full gear with all the stuff that happened in DR2 and the shutdown and getting the Remnants as we see them in DR3, which is not a result of them having their memories removed. They still have their memories and are able to recover.

And yeah. Brainwashing is maybe a stretch (it's Junko's word for it, after all) - but they are reaching into a group of people's heads and mucking around with their brains and making choices for who they want them to be and how they want them to be that way (no, no, you can't be Remnants, so we will remove everything that led to that development and make you into someone we want by meddling with your brain)....

Sounds a bit like brainwashing.

Not the way Junko did it, for sure.

Still sounds a bit like brainwashing.

Girl's got a point.

The finish pose✨️

I saw this and immediately thought of that one meme

Oh my god, you know what I just realised?

Makoto putting the Remnants of Despair inside the Neo World Program—as idealistic as his intentions were—indirectly makes him a Mastermind.

Re:Tozu

I just wanted to make a post detailing what I find the most interesting about this character.

In Danganronpa, there is always some form of screwing around with the agency of the contestants in a Killing Game. In DR1, Junko had to wipe the contestants' memories first because if they remembered their friendship and the state of the outside world they would not be able to kill one another for any reason. In DR2, AI Junko was able to take advantage of the nature of the Neo World Program (which included memory wiping and things that would appear supernatural in real life) to twist it against its original purpose. In DR3, brainwashing anime was used to make contestants aggressive and ultimately kill themselves. And in DRV3, the Flashback Lights completely fucked with the contestants' memories to the point of altering their very identities. In every case, sci-fi means are used to turn people into murderers.

But things appear to be different in Project: Eden's Garden. Tozu does not seem to have access to any such sci-fi means. Instead, he lives up to his thematic purpose by being incredibly Luciferian in how he operates: rather than interfere with a victim's agency, he prods and tempts; he makes insinuations and emotionally manipulates. His blackmail motive is similar to Monokuma's motive videos, especially the V3 version where everyone's are mixed up. The difference is that where the motive videos were explicit threats to get someone to act upon them, the blackmails are a lot more varied: several of them are so harmless that they are immediately shared, while others are so vaguely worded that a potential blackmailer may not even have enough to work with. So there's no direct threat to anyone...but there is paranoia, as contestants can think "What if my blackmail is something serious?" or "What if the person who has my blackmail is smart enough to figure out what the vague wording actually means?" or "We all agreed not to use the blackmails for murder, but what if...?"

Then there's how he deals with Eva. When she unlocks the traitor perk, he doesn't force her to choose to use it, only tempts her by playing off her negative emotional state regarding Wolfgang and how he humiliated her. Then once she does choose to use it, he tells her she has a limited time to make a kill with it or else she'll die. But what struck me is that he never said he would kill her, or that Mara would: he just said "she'll die". He allowed her to infer that without ever actually confirming it. She herself confirms he never even told her the number of days she had before dying. There is zero doubt in my mind that he was pulling a Rango; he meant "if you don't use it, you will die...someday, somehow, without ever having made good on its potential." He didn't lie, he just spoke in a way that ignited Eva's own fear and paranoia.

Eva still made a choice to kill Wolfgang and frame Diana. Wolfgang still made a choice to listen to the letter he received and bring a knife. Diana still made a choice to listen to the letter she received and not help a drugged Wolfgang out of the water. All without their memories or state of being having been forcibly altered in any way...only their emotions being manipulated by Tozu's machinations, done with nothing but words and suggestions.

In that sense, Tozu is an even more sinister Mastermind than Junko Enoshima ever was!

bad dream

bonus trauma ishi

I’m not sure if you already seen this, but I already made a post detailing how DR3 missed an opportunity to explore Chisa Yukizome spreading her despairing influence all across Future Foundation, and the same with Kyosuke Munakata spreading his hopeful influence across the agency as well.

https://emmanueljmoreno.tumblr.com/post/621579421446537216/yukizome-and-munakata-or-a-missed-opportunity-in

submitted by @emmanueljmoreno  

———————————————————————————————————–

I did not see this! So thank you for sending it to me. I think you make some excellent points. I also very strongly believe that Yukizome and Munakata had all the elements to be one of the most compelling characters in the danganronpa series, Munakata especially. Like you said, it’s a bit odd that Yukizome wasn’t the main antagonist. Narratively speaking it makes the most sense. We connect with her in the beginning of future where they establish her connection to Munakata and how she also has a similar talent of Hope to Naegi. And in despair she is the one we learn more about and bond with. We see her struggle and her fall and her happiness and her sadness. We don’t get that for Tengan however, which makes us not connect well with him being the mastermind. Although, you could argue that she DOES as you propose, since she tricked Tengan into watching the despair video which led up to the events of dr3 future, but I think it was poorly executed, and that Yukizome should have shown more villaney.

As for Munakata I have always headcanons that he approves of immoral experimentation on individuals with despair in the name of hope. You can find a lot of parallels between HPA and the FF, both of which are incredibly corrupt in the name of “hope”. Munakata should’ve been a grey villian in the sense that we understand he is in the wrong but we also understand why he thinks this way. Such as thinking Naegi is dangerous and a threat. And these sort of experiments could lend to that. At first it started with antidepressants, then brainwashing, then torture. Nothing seems to work. This is why in Munakata’s eyes, who has bared witness to years of this testing, believes the only way to get rid of despair is to kill everyone with it. This lends into his corruption (his form of despair is more so “corrupted hope”, hence his eyes not being swirls). It also explains why he’d be so against Naegi’s own unethical (altho more “peaceful”) experiment on the remnants

There’s quite a lot of room to develop these characters in a compelling way, hence why I think dr3 future SHOULD have been a game and I’ll always be upset that it wasn’t

honkee star rail

not sure how much it counts as controversial, but the bit at the end of DR3 where the Remnants take the blame for the killing game has always rubbed me the wrong way. Not just because of personal beliefs about information, but also because in that very same anime, we see Junko blackmailing people and HPA trying to cover up their mistakes. If anyone finds out the truth about the kg, they’re screwed. Felt like it went against the theme a bit.

Yeah actually I would say this is the opposite of controversial simply because I don't think I've ever met or seen a danganronpa fan who thinks dr3 was incredible. I don't hate dr3 nearly as much as I've seen other hate it, but I have a very strong love-hate relationship with it. Especially for Future.

But I can totally understand having beef with that particular ending. (In fact I have issues with most of the Hope arc) All three of the main games, even the pessimistic one, have a theme of facing the truth no matter how awful. So it is a bit strange for danganronpa to hide the truth when the core theme has always been to expose it. I can understand the world not being ready but...it felt unnecessary. Because The Future Foundation needs to be completely rebuilt anyway. All but three leaders of the FF are dead, and one of them just kinda walked away to do who knows what. The FF is also incredibly corrupt and terribly built. There IS no need to save it by taking the blame because it's already dead by the end of the anime.