This review contains spoilers up to the second episode, and contains mild blood & violence (but if you were on this review in the first place, you should be aware Danganronpa is a death game)
I was aware of Danganronpa's existence; i knew it was a popular game and it had been adapted into an anime series. So I decided to start it with only the knowledge that its premise was basically reverse Assassination Classroom combined with Ace Attorney, and that there was a character in this series named Sayaka Maizono.
Before you all flame me for starting with the Anime when the games are so much better, hear me out. I had watched and played Ace Attorney in that order, and I found that this order gives the games so much more meaning, because you had a vague idea of where the plot was going, but you had no idea how to get there. So I decided to do that for this series, looking in hindsight, I probably should've watched the gameplay first. I'll be getting to that shortly
Plot
The premise is simple and relatively novel seeing as while I've seen battle royale death shows like Mirai Nikki, the confined setting compared to all of Tokyo in Mirai Nikki gives it a much more intimate style. The moment Monokuma popped out of the podium, my interest was piqued.
One characteristic of this show that simply cannot be avoided is the theme of Despair, it was mentioned by Monokuma multiple times and there will later be developments in the plot revolving around the exact same thing. But, this theme shows up as early as the CD tapes were shown and was reinforced in the entire series. To show this, I'll use the first murder of the series as an example.
Sayaka Maizono, the name I set out in search for when I started this series, was a popular Idol who was originally in the same class as protagonist Naegi. She was an unreachable flower, very popular and always vied for by others. But when they met, Sayaka not only recognized him immediately, but also took comfort in trusting him, another theme that would plague the series. Naegi promises he will get them out of the Academy, and they switch rooms to guarantee security... and then she was found dead.
This was undoubtedly a huge blow to Naegi, not only was Sayaka the only person he was remotely close to, he had also made a promise to protect her. What does he feel when he finds her bloodied body in his bathroom? Despair, just plain despair. After playing the game up to that point, I can certainly say her death was just as the series, anime and all, intended it to be—a catalyst. The anime did a fantastic job of showing that despair, even now I struggle to remove the vision from my head (really helps that I had to google the image to find the URL eh?). Not only is she arguably one of the most innocent people in that group, she was the closest to the protagonist, the only bond and ally we had to work with. Now that all that was taken away, our already abysmal advantage was thrown right out the window.
But, that's where the compliments end. As I mentioned in the intro, this game also involves detective and court skills, which means you gotta scout around for evidence. While in-game it felt like a case of Ace Attorney where I racked my brain looking for evidence, in the anime, we went from the immediate crime scene (like the knife lodged in Sayaka's stomach) to finding a Crystal Ball in front of the incinerator for no particular reason. It took me ages to find that, and the anime just straight up runs past that at mach 20 and doesn't care how we get there.
Then there's the courtroom part of the anime... Dear god where do I start. First of all, it becomes deftly obvious by the second court case that the three "ammunition" charges Naegi carries will all be aimed at the same person, second of all, the anime makes it blatantly clear of where the contradictions are by literally putting the text in front of your face, so you not only know which statement is a contradiction, but also exactly which words. This, when compared to the gameplay is very disappointing, its effective, yes, but at least don't shove the words in our face to prove that its a contradiction. We like figuring things out too.
Art and Music
I have to say, the animation certainly didn't fail in this area, as seen with the image I put above, it has a unique way of censoring blood, but other than that its graphics are also quite clean. The way the school is drawn makes it feel genuinely haunted, and each execution sequence was basically a carbon copy from the game, but enhanced. I also greatly enjoyed the mix of ideas, it was chaotic the first time, but when you see the slot machine go up, you know someone's 'bout to go down.
One minor thing that I noticed, though, is that all the characters lacked that reflection in their eyes, making them appear soulless, this is an odd detail that I only realized was a clever easter egg later, because in an anime character loses their eye glint for two reasons - either they're dead externally or dead internally, so this is a pretty sneaky touch.
The music, oh man that stuff hit the spot, the classroom trail music gives significant on-the-edge vibes, and each execution's music was an eerie upbeat techno riff, which shows Monokuma is just really enjoying his job
Characters
Oh boy... The reason why I don't like giving Battle Royale animes high points in character development is that often times they always give each character a motive, so whats really happening is that they're trying to develop all of them simultaneously. Danganronpa made the smart choice of killing off a few people early, but immediately after the problems started pouring in. You will basically be blind-guessing what made these character interactions so intimate most of the time because almost all of that content is locked behind the actual game, the anime makes it infuriating to guess why some characters would act the way they did, and that, is just dumb.
With that being said, this anime ultimately feels like a hypercondensed version of the original Danganronpa games, it takes you from point A to B, but they never tell you the process, and savvy road trippers can always vouch that its always the journey that matters. To end off, I'll leave a quote from the friend who recommended me this series, and the person who implanted Sayaka's name into my mind to haunt me of her unfortunate death: "Oh, you watched the anime? You're honestly better off watching gameplays on YouTube."