A painful experience highlighting the background of Hope's Peak

Spoiler Warning: This review will spoil the entirety of Danganronpa Season 1, or Trigger Happy Havoc, the game. Additionally, it will contain spoilers for the entire novel.

Danganronpa has had quite a few light novels by now. Excluding Hagakure and IF, the Kirigiri and Togami novels are both interesting reads on their own. To summarize briefly, if you enjoyed the Kirgiri/Togami/Hagakure volumes, you will probably enjoy this one. However, don't come into this expecting the same quality as 'IF' or the mainline series.

Firstly, the characters. The main characters of this novel are Ryouko Otonashi and Matsuda Yasuke. Additionally, there are several side characters including the perverted spy Kamishiro, our beloved detective Kirigiri, the sixteenth student Mukuro and the famous antagonist Junko Enoshima. There's actually another 9, the Madarai brothers, and the crazy thing is that despite having nine to work with, absolutely none of them are interesting to read about in any capacity. Junko is her usual self in the novel, but felt blander than the games, while Mukuro's prominence is greatly reduced from 'IF' and fails to flesh her character out in any new or interesting way. The Kirigiri side plot is boring and goes nowhere, although I'll give it some credit for expanding a little on the dynamics between Kyoko and Jin. Kamishiro is a classic 'anime pervert' character, and is about as cringeworthy to read as you might expect. Despite that, he had one scene I did enjoy about him confronting his 'invisible presence' and deciding to own his talent rather than feel ashamed of it. It was actually surprisingly mature and well-written considering the rest of the novel. Ultimately, the side characters are bland and uninspired while actively desecrating the fun I got from them in the original series.

The main characters should, therefore, attempt to compensate by being fun to root for or read about. Ryoko is decidedly not. It's an absolute pain to read things from her perspective, as she's a one-dimensional character with few traits besides 'This has nothing to do with me!' and 'Where's my love Matsuda-kun'. Absolutely boring to read. In comparison, Matsuda is actually pretty enjoyable to read about. He's clearly a twisted figure with a rough past, but I genuinely felt he was pretty convincing as a character despite how outlandish the plot was, and the final scene really did make me empathise with him. I think he was the main reason I managed to reach the ending of the novels.

Next, the art. As a light novel, it had very little art, but I did like the illustrations of Kamichiro and the Kirigiris. Small note, but it was pretty cool.

Moving on, the writing style and plot. I can't really distinguish these two categories because ultimately both felt equally incoherent. For a good chunk of the novel, it was blatantly obvious Ryoko was Junko and so experiencing 60 or so more pages of nonsensical boredom to get there was annoying. Especially when it came to events such as the numerous Madarai fights, which each had uninspired choreography and low stakes because we knew the Madarais would always lose. The plot twist was, like I said, predictable, and the final moment involved killing all the remotely enjoyable characters. Again, this is not necessarily the fault of the novel as these characters don't appear in later games, but seriously, RIP Matsuda.

Overall, I would not recommend this novel. Although I am definitely a Danganronpa fan and will continue to be one til the day I die, this just was not it. If you want to read a Danganronpa LN with actual character developments and enjoyable moments, read 'IF' which you can find translated easily enough online. Thank you for reading.