MLPFan Reviews: Danganronpa the Animation (Anime)

MLPFan Hi everyone, It's MLPFan and I'm gonna review the popular 2013 anime, Danganronpa: The Academy of Hope and The Highschool Students of Despair Animation! Honestly, I'm gonna get a lot of flames for reviewing this and many will be like "Wut? I though u liked this anime". I did, sure. But after rewatching It after I played the games, It became so disappointing. It shows the one and only mystery in animes based from games:
How do you make a vibrant and well detailed game into an overly rushed 13 episode anime? You don't. The results will suck.

Story
Like It's original source, It's about 15 kids who were trapped in an elite school and the only way out is to kill someone. Except unlike the games, the anime isn't as great at doing this. And later on, like in the games the survivors will try to catch the mastermind who trapped them in the school in the first place while solving many murders committed by their friends. Again, the anime isn't as great at doing this.
But the worst part is the class trials AND the Investigations!
In the games, the investigations were well detailed and we even get proper explanations. It felt like an actual murder investigation, while in the anime, It was rushed into 3 minutes longs and It made it look like that Naegi and Kirigiri got all of the evidence out of their a**es, a good example of this is the episode that adapts the Deadly school life part of chapter 2 (the murder of Chihiro), where they made Kyoko look like a mary sue who knows everything by making it look like that Kyoko just predicted that Chihiro is a boy and was right. While in the game, the trial was paused for a while and everyone took another check on Chihiro's body. It was Oogami who figured out that Chihiro was a boy because she was checking up on his corpse. While in the anime, this part wasn't shown to fit the episode duration.
And the trials weren't as well executed as in the games, where in chapter 1's trial, there were 13 people in the trial and they didn't fit the debates as good the game did.
Rated: -100 out of 10... Kidding! I'd just give it a 5 out of 10 because they did some stuff right but screwed up a lot.

Characters
LMAO. The only ones who got development were Togami, Kirigiri and sometimes, Naegi. No one else had development and they felt two dimensional. Most of the development happen by hanging out in FTEs. The anime skipped the FTEs and the result is that the other characters barely received development. They ruined Celeste, my favourite DR1 killer 😠
Rated: 4.5 out of 10

Art and Animation
It's decent. The art does look nice and fits the games smoothly. And for some reason, the art looks a lot better than the one in the DR3 animes to me (the Future arc art style was okayish but the despair arc artstyle didn't got my attention. It looked so weird. Just look at the images of the characters in the DR3-Despair art style. They looked weird af, unlike in the games where the franchise's art style are in It's best)
Rated: 7.5 out of 10

Music
The opening is a generic rap song, and I somehow find it cool (why?!). A lot of the soundtracks were from the game and they were great! The ending by Suzumu and Soraru was also cool, but I'd like an ending song or at least an insert song by Megumi Ogata. That'd be gold.
Rated: 8.0 out of 10

Conclusion
It really Is disappointing. It has some good moments and all, but It just sucks and failed to adapt something. The DanganRonpa games only (yeah right) have 6 chapters and only one (and two for one certain case, but I don't wanna give spoilers on who dies) murder case for each chapter, but it takes above 20 or 30 hours of gameplay to finish it. And It's about murder cases with a dash of social visual novels. It'd need more detail in cases, depth in characters by showing some FTEs animated and would need longer investigations and better execution in trials. You'd need like 26 episodes or so to get in better depth in It. It was disappointing I tell you, but the DanganRonpa animes were disappointing. I respect your opinion if you liked the DR animes, but I don't. For those who want to explore the DR series by watching and not playing, here's a better tip.
Watch various walkthroughs of people playing the DR games. It'd be more satisfying. DR1, SDR2 and DRAE:UDG already have official english versions but I haven't know much on V3, whether Spike Chunsoft already released an english version or not so If they haven't you need to wait or look for videos where people would also translate the texts into english. Yet, you can't escape the DR3 animes because they conclude the Hope's Peak Saga so be prepared for "Mary Sue Fanfiction" arc (Despair arc) and "2Edgy4me" arc (Future arc). Embrace the snooze fest while you're at It :v
To conclude Danganronpa: The Animation, It's disappointing and they should've made the anime longer to be more flexible in development and executing the cases. Again, you can't make a well detailed game into a rushed 13 episode anime. I repeat, you CAN'T make a well detailed game into a rushed 13 episode anime!
Final rating: 6.25

Comments

I HATE the opening theme for this one - visitor