My Makoto Naegi Angst Analisis Thing (Hc)

Messy BNHA x Sonic crossover comic sketches.

Because I can.

Thank you! Yeah, it's been bothering me for a while now that people in this fandom became so attached to the idea that the Remnants were all voluntary mass-murderers acting of their own free will. To start with, it basically means that Makoto and co. are complete assholes for trying to redeem such people through amnesia. To do that to terrorists who acted entirely of their own free will instead of putting them on trial would be an insult to all of their victims (both living and dead). Yet the writers were clearly wanting the players to sympathize with Makoto's cause, and don't treat what he's doing as reprehensible. And the very existence of the Neo-World Program implies that it's made with the intent to deprogram brainwashing. Then there's the fact that "someone preyed on my insecurities and made me depressed, so now I'm gonna blow up the world"...is just not a believable fucking heel turn at all. Human beings just don't work like that. I'm not saying that you couldn't tell a story where a moral person like say Mahiru Koizumi gradually becomes a complete monster. But it would take a hundred extra steps and need way more time. Class 77-B are all flawed people, but Jesus wept they're not THAT flawed. And something I forgot to bring up in the previous ask is another big logistical issue for Junko. They're not even in the same class. The SDR2 cast a year above her. Thus meaning the amount of time she could spend with them is even more limited. If anything it would have actually made more sense for her to pick Class 78 as her Remnants, since she at least has more time to work with them. One of the explanation I've heard is she did an evil variant of the FTEs during school lunch breaks or in the afternoon. Like...how even the fuck do you corrupt someone to that level over the course of a few private conversations? And to have it work perfectly with zero subjects acting conspicuously too early, or going on a bender, or just committing suicide? That is not a cunning manipulator you're writing. That is one of the worst examples of a Villain Sue I've ever seen, as you've just given her the most nonsensical winniest win that's ever been won.

LITERALLY. LIKEA CTUALLY. junko is a flat piece of cardboard to me

Wanted to draw the RPG look for them from Jataros artworks and decided to add Servant too for fun

The Hanger Reference pt. 3 (Final)

(they are still in love)

These people also pop up in the second arc with the batch of the pt.2 characters (not including Himiko)

Character Info:

-K.S. [agender (he/they/it/void) | bisexual | 5’7” | 25]

-Yumiko [trigender (she/fae/they) | demisexual | 4’11” | 26]

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.

The Post-Tragedy Horrors of Despair Time

Hello everyone, Mod Bubbles here!

This Halloween, I decided to do something a little different. Rather than a dedicated post or song parody, I've decided to share a worldbuilding analysis. A pretty fortuitous one, since we've recently completed Chapter 2 of Despair Time.

I'm sure it's no exaggeration to say that DT is a pretty dark fangan, especially within its own context. I wouldn't say it's as grimdark and nihilistic as some people are convinced it is, but there's some elements to it that I feel are worth analyzing going forward.

See, it's been established that DT is set within the Hope's Peak continuity. This would mean that the canon games sans V3 (and if you want to have fun with it, other fangans like the Another series) have all happened here.

According to a Q&A, DT is set around 70-80 years after the end of the Tragedy, so if you wanted to estimate based on in-universe dates (such as Makoto's Hope's Peak brochure saying 2010 in the earliest version of the game but 2014 in a re-release), that would put it sometime around 2080 to the mid-2090s. Veronika backs this up in Chapter 2, when she mentions the Tragedy happened "almost a century ago."

Why do I bring all this up? Because if you looked at DT, you'd probably never guess it was that deep in the future. I know I didn't at first. And this is all by design, but it goes beyond simple cosmetic details. Allow me to explain to you why this is probably the darkest timeline that could've happened after Class 78's victory over Ultimate Despair.

___________________________________________________

Modern Stagnancy

So if we look at the obvious, the world of DT looks pretty much identical to our own, which should be a good thing. When you consider that this is set after The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History- an event that saw societal collapse, wars happen for the sake of destruction, massive pollution, rampant murder, and countless killing games- then it almost seems utopian.

Cities have long since been rebuilt, the skies are clear, there are functional trains, movies, celebrities, schools, music, art, Ted-Talks, the internet, all the trappings of normality. And that's really the problem.

Once the recovery efforts were underway, the goal of those in power was to rebuild things exactly as they used to be. Bear in mind, the world looks like our modern day, yet this is set deep into the late 21st century. In that context, the world almost seems stunted in its growth or even that it's regressed, given that CDs and DVDs are used rather than USBs or digital downloads.

Not only that, but this extends to societal attitudes as well. Nico was the victim of bullying over their status as an enby by everyone who knew, including their own father. It's almost the 22nd century and anti-LGBTQ bigotry like this still exists.

In that context, it feels less like the world is recovering and more that it's been stuck in its pre-Tragedy status quo, right down to continuing the Ultimates program that contributed to The Tragedy in the first place. And who would be motivated to do that?

2. Hope's Peak And Their Kin Are Stronger Than Ever

Probably one of the most contentious aspects of DR3's ending is that, after everything the people in charge of it were responsible for- exploiting their students, covering up crimes, human experimentation- Hope's Peak Academy was rebuilt by the survivors, now with Makoto as headmaster.

Now, one could make the argument that Makoto is a better example of hope and thus better suited to lead the school to follow its stated ideals than the Steering Committee ever was. That very well may be true, but as they also proved, nobody stays in charge forever. And now, because of his decision, Hope's Peak isn't contained to Japan.

There now exist Hope's Peak branches in every major country on Earth, with two in the United States. Teruko and co. are students of the East Coast Division's 27th class, meaning that one opened almost thirty years ago. This would also mean that Japan's Hope's Peak would have seen over 150 classes since its inception.

I bring all this up because, as has been made very clear by canon, Hope's Peak is a terrible place even in concept. When you remove the idyllic aspect of fostering talent and guaranteeing its students are set for life, the truth is that ultimates are stunted in their development. They're only encouraged to excel in their particular field, whether they really want to or not.

In addition, Hope's Peak has always quietly held this belief that only people with talent hold any worth; those without talent are just "ticks" who leech off the success of their betters. Characters like Byakuya and Nagito echo those very same sentiments, this extreme elitism that encourages people to view the "99%" as inherently inferior.

Even if you wanted to say Makoto managed to undo that idea, can we really say this divide would never come up again? No matter how many years pass or how many divisions of Hope's Peak are set up across the world? That seems really far-fetched to me.

Consider Min's bonus video. As she explains, she was never scouted by the school. Instead, America's Hope's Peak announced something called the Ultimate Contest for Eminent Students, where eligible high school students would be allowed to take a test, the best of whom would be admitted to the school when they graduated. The catch is that they had 12 years to prepare. Min, who was only 5 at the time, wasn't initially going to participate, but then the founder of a company called XF-Ture Tech approached her family- who was quite poor- and wanted to sponsor her in exchange for her participation.

She spent her entire life preparing for that test. And when she passed, she realized it was all really just an experiment to create their ideal version of the Ultimate Student. She even doubted that she was the best in terms of raw score, just that she met their desired expectations by cutting out everything else in her life for that test.

It also extends beyond just Hope's Peak itself. Those with power and influence now hold a strangle hold over the most vulnerable people out there, as we can see with the Lacroix family.

Rose wanted to help her family out of their financial limitations using her painting skills and her photographic memory, which lead to her becoming an art forger. However, at 15, she was found out and her family faced tens of millions in fines. This would've been the end, but then they were bailed out by a billionaire named Richard Spurling, founder of the Spurling Foundation. In exchange for clearing her charges, Rose had to sign a contract that meant she doesn't own the rights to anything she paints.

She hates what her life has become, where she can only ever really paint things at the whims of the Foundation because it was the only way her family could survive that mountain of debt. The exploitation there is undeniable.

No matter where you look, there's still exploitation and experiment abound with the school, corporations and the wealthy. And if you think the Spurling Foundation sounds bad here, they're implied to be responsible for something much worse.

Which is also brings us to Xander. See, there's a curious detail when we first meet him in the prologue:

And I agree. Xander being the Ultimate Rebel really doesn't fit him, as he's better described as the "Ultimate Revolutionary." Except there's no chance Hope's Peak would call him that, instead paying lip service to the idea in a digestible format to still support the status quo.

Xander is an activist who works to oppose corruption, but the ones who benefit from corruption wouldn't want him to flaunt that. It's a subtle but very clever detail that shows those in power still maintain a hold even over their beloved Ultimates.

They probably had no issue throwing the obviously corrupt under the bus to save their own hides, and raised Xander up with a quasi-supportive title. It gives them a chance to look like they're supporting what he's doing while still tying an element of a "rebellious child" to his image with the name.

Had Xander survived, he had a good reason to want to bring them down, especially the Spurlings.

3. Illness and Poverty

Xander's bonus video clued us in on what I believe is one of the most important parts of DT's continuity: the fate of the town of Chariton, implied to be where he lived. It seemed to be a small town, home to a couple hundred or a couple thousand people, where the only hospital for miles was "dinky, understaffed" and barely able to handle a minor flu outbreak. They were completely unprepared for what became known as the Chariton Incident.

When he was around 14, the town was hit by a disease that caused those infected to decay from the outside in; their limbs would stop working before their organs did, meaning they would just lay there and feel themselves slowly dying. So many died that nobody was left to move the bodies, so they were left where they fell, rotting in the summer heat.

The cause of this outbreak? A contaminated river that served as the town's water source. Chariton was an impoverished community, where people had no money to treat their water, get medicine from a nearby city or to even move out. It's also implied, based on Xander's anger, that Duke Spurling was partially responsible and that he got off the hook, which may be what drove Xander to become the Ultimate Rebel. Especially when you consider he's the only surviving member of his family.

Duke Spurling is, as the named implies and Dev has confirmed, the younger brother of Richard Spurling. The money and influence needed to get his brother off the hook is the very same that has the Lacroix family under his thumb.

So as we can see, Chariton was a major event in DT's canon. Not only does it showcase corruption, it also showcases understated but still prominent problems in the post-Tragedy U.S. If you pay attention, you'll also notice Teruko, Min, and Rose mention poverty playing a role in their lives.

As we can see, poverty plays a major role in their lives, and that extends beyond a personal level. Chariton's poverty is why the incident happened at all, and a big reason is because it's also an example of a medical desert.

"Medical desert" is a term used to describe regions whose population has inadequate access to healthcare. This can be all healthcare in general or in specialties such as dental care or pharmaceuticals. This is an especially prominent problem in rural areas, but it can affect urban ones too.

If that sounds implausible to you, today it's believed that around 30 million Americans- over 1% of the population- live over an hour from a hospital. Can you imagine how bad the problem is in a world after The Tragedy? All the damage to infrastructure, established institutions, the economy, and the population? I doubt Chariton was the first to see something this bad.

Ace's execution gives us more clues. In the Death By Illness section, there are several newspaper clippings on the wall, most of which are readable. One flashes on screen saying "Unexplained Illness Kills Thousands," which I believe is another reference to Chariton (why else would it flash on screen?), but there's more as well:

"More people are dying of cancer than ever before"

"Flu season claims thousands of lives"

"Falling rates of survival for hospitalized patients"

"Antibiotic-resistant infections a growing threat in this hospital"

One is harder to read, but I believe it mentions Chronic Kidney Disease being tied to an early death

Now, the interesting thing is that most of these are modern headlines, and they can be pretty misleading. The cancer one is actually based on the fact that more people are living longer lives, thus are reaching ages where they develop cancer due to their cell infrastructure breaking down naturally. It doesn't mean there's more cancer cases overall across all ages.

The only one that's not true is the falling rates one. Which suggests that not only was it Chariton, but healthcare infrastructure in general after the Tragedy seems to be a mess.

See, I was assuming that these articles are identical to what we see today. But it's also possible that the cancer one is now literally true, and it could be because The Tragedy was rife with this kind of horror. We know that terrorism, coups and wars happened for no reason other than to spread despair across the world.

Could you imagine how many nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological weapons were used? How many diseases and hazardous materials were seeded into the environment? If it's unsafe to drink tap water after a serious hurricane or earthquake, how bad is the problem when contamination is the goal?

And this doesn't even touch on how disturbingly easy it would be to spread long-term illnesses such as HIV or CJD in contaminated food and medical supplies. Some diseases have latency periods that last decades, meaning they could still be killing people even by the time DRDT is set.

Antibiotic resistance is also a very real and serious problem. Even today, some strains have become immune to even the strongest antibiotics available. This has given rise to Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci or VREs, which are immune to basically every medication we can throw at them.

Now, it's still possible to deal with them, such as with naturally antimicrobial metals or experimental treatments such as CRISPR and Phage Therapy, but in a world that saw such a massive hit to everything? I'm certain antibiotic-resistance bacteria have become much more serious, potentially resulting in epidemics over the years.

And when these things happen, it's always the poor who suffer the most.

4. Lethal Repetition

Now we come to the most obvious example, something highlighted by the same reveal that DT is set nearly a century into the future:

Veronika, who provided us with information on the effects the Tragedy still has, apparently has never heard about The Killing School Life.

Now, it's important to keep in mind that most of the Killing Games in DR were pretty secluded and motivated. SDR2 was only broadcast to Future Foundation with the goal to allow Junko to escape into the real world, for example. However, DR1's Killing School Life was broadcast globally as a means to break humanity's hope by showing the Ultimates slaughtering each other. Instead, Makoto and co. managed to reinvigorate the world's hope and played a pivotal role in ending the Tragedy.

...And yet Veronika apparently hasn't heard any of it.

Now, there's two possibilities here, neither of which are good:

One is that the Mastermind has removed their knowledge of previous killing games, specifically. Now, I actually consider this an unlikely explanation because, not only does Teruko seem to vaguely remember the Killing School Life happened, but what's the goal in doing so for the participants?

The canon games all had solid reasons why the other masterminds erased the participants' memories: the revelation that they'd been killing their friends, the fact that their past identities were supposed to be undone to save them, even the fact that they weren't even who they were supposed to be in V3.

But what's the purpose of suppressing the memories of the Killing School Life in the participants themselves? Especially since this game is also apparently being broadcast to the outside world, although we only have MonoTV's word on that. Is it to undermine everything the survivors achieved or to get the participants not to consider the same strategies?

The other, more plausible explanation to me is that the mastermind isn't the one who erased their memories. The outside world did.

It's possible that, in the decades since the Tragedy and the drive to return things to the status quo, knowledge of the Killing School Life has been suppressed. It would be so easy to blame Makoto's decision to rebuild the school, but it's just as plausible that his attempts to genuinely reform the school were undone over the years.

Corporations and those that came after had a vested reason to improve their own reputations, and why would they allow their connection to the Tragedy to remain public knowledge? The entire thing began as a revolution of lower classes against the rich before it became a whirlwind of mindless violence.

So what does this mean for DT? This is more hypothesizing on my part, but I'd say this could tell us a lot about the potential motivations for this very killing game. Could it be someone trying to remind the world about this event and how we got here? Is it more retribution against the wealthy? Is it someone who was inspired by Junko to slaughter her friends? Or is it something else entirely? And what role does Teruko have if someone involved is so hellbent on trying to kill her?

For now, we can only speculate. But I can tell you that, based on what we've seen here, DT is probably the darkest future we could've gotten out of the canon series.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Danganronpa AU idea: Ultra Hopeless Rockstars

A while ago, a game by the name of No Straight Roads (That you should play BTW) kept me thinking about a what if scenario. What if Leo Kuwata gets away with his murder and wins the killing game, causing the other students to be killed in the process and then kicked into a world ravaged by kids and despair?

Something important to point out is that on his travel on Towa city, Leo encounters none other than the Ultimate Despair Ibuki Kyoda who was performing one of her despair-inducing concerts live at Towa city. Somehow, Leo manages to free Ibuki from the brainwash and they become partners on to know what the hell is happening.

For their luck, the Future Foundation finds the 2 which surprises them and rather than providing them with Megaphone Hacking Guns, they gave the 2 Electric Guitars capable of hacking. But unfortunately, both of them got wrapped up by the Warriors of Hope’s Demon Hunting. Now is up to them to stop the Ultimate Despairs and Warriors of Hope and return Hope to Towa city with the power of rock and roll!

Important things to point out:

*Leon will carry a giant trauma over the death of his other classmates due to his fault and thus whenever he meets one of the other “demons”, he will get PTSD whenever they ask him about if he knows any of the other students. but through Ibuki’s help, he will overcome such despair.

*Komaru Naegi will still be there, but she will be most of a supporting character

*Since Leon won the Killing Game, Junko Enoshima will still be alive, thus preventing the mass suicide of Ultimate Despairs. Things will get darker with her around.

*Leon and Ibuki won’t be that much affiliated toward the resistance

The killing game was televised.

Can you imagine being a survivor involved with the Kamakura project.

Seeing Makoto.

Who is exactly what the project wanted to create.

The Ultimate Hope.

An "average" talentless boy possessing the ability to bring people up in a way no one has ever seen before.

Junko knew about the Kamakura project.

And I bet she was smiling to herself because those who worked on the project were killed.

If not killed barely surviving and in danger at every turn.

Lest their monster comes for them.

And seeing that they not only failed but their solution was right their in the year below.

Someone they never considered because he was talentless and pathetic, the irony.

Is everything they wanted to create and they can't control him.

HOLY FUCK!!

Jesus! It took us 6 games and 78 spin-offs for Sora to be in Smash Bros! But then again, considering how many loopholes Sakurai made to convince Disney to use Sora was quite respectable.

What version of the game are you playing in your timeline? In mine this exact scene plays out, but with Mario handing the envelope to Terra Branford.

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!