Prequel

TV Series, 2016, 11 eps,5.65(1122),6.74(1131)

Sequel

TV Series, 2016, 12 eps,5.28(1188),6.60(1198)

TV Special, 2016, 1 ep,5.57(864),6.70(869)

OVA, 2017, 1 ep,5.10(504),6.49(509)

Classroom full of mystery and murderous intent.
Both have the same amount of character and a menacing teacher/guardian bear.
Each student has a dark background

Both anime involve a number of elaborated murder mystery cases among a class of students with eccentric personalities.

Stuck in a place, have to kill to survive while obeying rules, romance involved.

Danganronpa indeed took everything worst of Mirai Nikki...

A group of people have to kill each others for survive.
The hero team up with a girl that he wants to protect.

In both we see people locked up, having to face death and despair

In both, bunch of people are brought in a place where they are told to play a game of life and death by a stuffed animal.

Who's the killer, who's the fraud. Let's find out. Same type of mystery.

The protagonist need to solve a mordcase or he will die.

Similar setting (court trials) and same logic

Sort of same atmosphere (same director).
And the Danganronpa Monokuma character is very similar with P4 Kuma, especially the voice.

Same idea of how to deal with loss.

byJasontmn25 on2023-11-30 04:25

the anime doesn't make the game justice. just play the vn

byMakoSipper on2019-08-26 15:46

Recommended for those who played the first game and want to relive those nice moments. Since the content is exactly the same of the game, only rushed, make sure you play the game before you watch the anime, since the game is much better and watching it first will ruin the game experience.

bydantedmc on2018-11-10 22:11

As many other anime shows inspired by games, Danganronpa is lacking many good moments and deeper relationship between characters too. It could end much more worse then this, yet it's still so sadly short and empty. If you haven't play game. And you are fan of survival game theme and black humor. You will definitely love this anime. But I can not recoment this to fan of original game merchandies. But I believe it could create many new players.

bysammy321 on2016-01-09 16:38

This series was very solid in the beginning with mysteries, killings and solving the puzzles; however, this series got corny towards the last few episodes. The ending was open ended, so there could be a 2nd season, but overall, this series was solid until about half way, then fizzled out quickly after that.

byDreadoom on2015-10-21 19:00

I am a bit confused and not sure what i just watched so i will just say this anime is a mix of phoenix wright with death note/final destination(not anime)/saw(not anime), and one piece/fairy tail/soul eater.

Now don't let the art style fool u, this anime is very serious, and i don't think it is for people below age 18 because it talks a lot about killing people in the mask of a childish hunger games/maze runner(not animes) anime.

I gave it 7 because of the ~3 last episodes who are just childish, and on the same time it is a must see, because up until now i never encountered such anime.

byHelemar on2014-10-12 04:22

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this series. However, what I got out of it was a rather strange combination. The best word I can use to describe it? Gruesome.

There's a lot of critical thinking and mystery involved in this series. And at first, it's great. By about the tenth time, you want to break something.

This series makes the fatal flaw of beating something until it's dead. Then beating it some more. Then running it over with a car. Then blowing it up with dynamite. I think I made my point.

With that being said, aside from the annoying overly used phrasings and repetition, the series had some interesting merits to it. I won't spoil it, but the ending I did not see coming.

I'd say if you're bored and have little else to watch, give it a go. But don't expect too much.

bytauron on2014-07-31 13:34

I'll get straight to the point.

This anime stinks.

If one's the type to enjoy The Hunger Games, to loathe Battle Royale, to be unable to stand the sight of red pixels (blood is pink) and to enjoy Jar-jar Binks then it might be considered a mediocre watch to waste some life on.
To sum the anime up - it's a collection of below-garbage murder cases being solved by the protagonists, with almost no viewer interaction. Violence is non-existant. The main and only villain (yes, it's this type of anime - with good guys and villains) is also the main comic-relief character - yes, he's the Kuma version of Jar-jar (he's also the only attempt at humour in the show).

I personally had to watch the intro of Fallout 2 a million times, and make-believe it was the ending of this barf, in order to justify enduring 'till the very end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3PXiV95kwA&t=2m8s

If you suffered like I did, i humbly recommend doing the same. Minigun. Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw-Caw! Die-Die-Die-Die!

byThatAnimeSnob on2013-07-13 10:34

PREMISE

Another death game anime, where a bunch of people need to kill each other for some silly reason; in this case, the orchestrator being a psycho who loves murder. Yeah, it is shallow and stupid but HEY unlike the villain of SAO, at least he has a purpose. It would be more than enough if they left it as simple as that, but that is the thing with this show, it tries to be over-the-top in an attempt to keep things exciting, and ends up passing as completely retarded. I mean, the orchestrator doesn’t simply love murder, he is also a robotic talking bear with magic powers. And don’t try to tell me all that are technology, because they are so improbable, they become magic. And also don’t try to convince me that just because there is motive, the show makes sense, because 5 minutes after the series began I was wondering why is a talking bear the manager of a prestige school, or what drove it to become so sadistic, and I never got any answers.

CHARACTERS

The over-the-top nature of this anime does not stop at the bear, since most participants look like mutants, while the rest dress and behave in ways that make even Yu Gi Oh seem normal. How is it possible to feel sympathy for something so bizarre? They don’t even bleed like normal people; their blood is pink! Call it a form of censorship all you like; it still looks like their veins are full of strawberry juice.

Another excuse is that this is done deliberately as an artistic touch, so the characters will be more memorable. If they were normal-looking, they would blend in with characters from thousands of other shows and you would have a hard time remembering them. This expands to their personality, which is made simple and extreme, so it will be easily noticeable and memorable. This though, does not make them good characters, since all you see is external. They are defined by a silly voice, and a single personality quirk that is based on what they are good at. Technically, they are not even characters but caricatures of archetypes.

They are also not fleshed out much, since the show lasts only a dozen episodes, and half of the duration is spent on solving murder mysteries. When you have over a dozen characters and you kill them off one after another, you don’t give the viewer the time to get to like them. It also doesn’t help when all you see is teenagers in a school setting. For a show that tries to be creative with its visual presentation, it uses the most overused and unimaginative of all premises in recorded history.

Also, for a show that is supposed to be about people solving murder mysteries with super talents, there is very little actual usage of said talents. They are just there as a reminder of the personality quirk they have. Many of them are not even useful in a death game. How does being a model or an otaku can be considered equally important as someone who is good at martial arts or hacking computers?

The biggest offence is the protagonist, whose super amazing talent is being… average in everything. And since skills define personality in such a type of a series, he ends up having none. While everyone else easily stands out for that something he is good for, the protagonist is duller than a rusty hammer. He is a blank piece of paper, whose only feature is being nice and helpful to everybody, someone the audience is supposed to self insert, and imagine him acting as they do. For a show that tries to have eccentric behaviors, it left the very protagonist with the most basic and boring of all behaviors since the dawn of civilization.

PLOT

As I mentioned earlier, half the show is also supposed to be about gathering clues and questioning suspects. That’s supposed to be done in a serious and logical way, but imagine how well that will be done in a story about deformed clowns and magic bears. The clues they find in the murder scenes are usually pretty vague, and the protagonist figures out what they mean at the last moment, without ever showing us his train of thought. Meaning, the solution comes out of nowhere, and the interpretation of the clues could be done in many ways, making the outcome very arbitrary.

Adding to this, are the suspects who deliberately don’t reveal vital information up until the last second, making it impossible to figure out what happened on your own. Some go as far as deliberately changing the evidence to help the murderer get away, just because it is a fun thing to do, even if this way everybody but the killer dies. And on top of that, the clues and the deduction procedures don’t even matter, since the guilty person usually gets revealed by a slip of the tongue, or the victim writing down his name.

The only thing that is very predictable, is knowing who will die next. Since the show has very few episodes, it just goes for the laziest of methods, and fleshes out a character a few minutes before it kills him. And yes, I do know this is not so obvious in the source material because it doesn’t cover only the major events, but that doesn’t excuse the adaptation being so shitty, nor it makes it better just because you played the game.

EPILOGUE

Not even the ending attempts to wrap everything properly, since it simply goes for some random last moment plot twist that makes it feel like everything was caused by self-inflicted mass-amnesia. Yeah, that makes sense to use in a story running on logical thinking. It also neglects a lot of side stories, and leaves everything open for a sequel that can’t possibly link with said side stories because most characters are dead. So in all, it is a braindead show that tries to be attractive with a ridiculous artstyle, and fails miserably at being a detective story with characters you care about and mysteries that make sense.