Note: This review is only covering the Despair Arc and not the Future Arc.

I never have written an anime review before nor did I ever plan to but after seeing no reviews for this show at the time I am writing this, I decided to give it a shot. So bear with me.

Danganronpa is a franchise that I am going through right now and I have been enjoying it. I played through the first and second games and decided to skip over Ultra Despair Girls because, well, for no reason in particular. As per the usual path, I decided to watch the animes after finishing DR2. Let me be extremely clear about this, you NEED to play the games to enjoy the animes at all. Since the setting of Danganronpa is so complex, reading a summary of the games will not do you justice. Furthermore, there will be jokes in the anime that will seem to make no sense or seem very odd if you have not played the games. Finally, the games are fun so you should try them. There will be SPOILERS for the first two games and the anime ahead.

Let me start with a quick synopsis. The Despair Arc details the events leading up to The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History. It explains how Junko Enoshima got control of Hope's Peak Academy by initiating The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy and causing the Reserve Course students to rise up. The transformation of Hajime Hinata into Izuru Kamukura is also explained.

I came into this anime with a lot of excitement as I had just finished DR2 so my expectations were quite high. I actually didn't expect the show to meet my expectation (and it never did) but the Despair Arc is still a decent show. Ignoring the anime-original characters and their plotlines for a moment, there wasn't anything that I didn't expect due to the fact the events leading up to The Tragedy were explained within DR1 and DR2. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed watching them take place rather than just reading about them. I loved watching interactions within the 77th Class and seeing how Junko slowly extended her control over the school. Despite this, I still have three major problems with this show.

1. The Twilight Murder Syndrome Case was extremely boring. This can probably be attributed to the fact that I already knew everything about the case and who killed who, so it ruined the mystery. Although I understand that it had to be included, it still was a boring arc.
2. The way that the Remnants of Despair were formed was terrible. Coming into this anime I was expecting that Junko would win the school over due to her charisma or some other method and not due to some brainwashing video. I was disappointed by this boring and unoriginal explanation.
3. My biggest gripe with this anime, was The Tragedy of Hope's Peak High School scene. Coming from a person who believes he is already desensitized with violence and gore, I was shocked by this scene. The grizzly way the people were killed was horrifying. I hate to go into detail about how the people were killed, but if you want to refresh your memory you can watch this Youtube video (at your own risk).▶

   I understand why this was included, but this was way too far. A simple before and after scene would have worked fine. I even think the way Chiaki died, which many already consider quite shocking, was not as half as bad as this.
   

With the anime-original characters, that were originally introduced in the Future Arc, seeing their history at the academy is interesting. I especially liked the fourth episode which told of the three students' expulsion from the academy as well as the twist where Chisa is shown to actually be a Remnant of Despair. Nothing really stood out to me as bad in the plotlines not explained in DR1 or DR2.

I have mixed feelings about the characters in this show. As I stated earlier, I loved seeing the interactions between the members of the 77th Class, but Nagito basically carries them. He is my favorite character from the first and second games so when the writers decided to remove him I was furious. I was even more furious when he came back after a supposedly long absence and have absolutely nothing change about him. What was even the point of removing him? Junko is even worse. At first, she's bearable but then she just gets outright annoying as her personality NEVER changes (I get that's kinda a paradox because her personality is that she has many personalities but you get what I mean). Her insanity isn't even close to being entertaining as Nagito's so it's very painful to watch. I understand that the writers couldn't change her personality because it was already established within the games, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have added something extra to make her character more enjoyable.

On the other hand, Chiaki proves to be a great character as well as Hajime, and seeing their friendship as well as Hajime's transformation was something that I always looked forward to watching. As for the anime-original characters, the dysfunctional relationship between the Ultimate Pharmacist and the Ultimate Confectioner and Ryota being manipulated by Junko were both very enjoyable.

As for the sound and animation, there isn't much to note other than that it was mediocre. Reusing the Danganronpa OST and keeping with the Danganronpa art style was to be expected.