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This is the conclusion to the entire Hopes Peak Academy era. Where there is despair, there is always hope that will overcome your despair, no matter how long it takes, it will happen and you'll be a shining light in the future.

There will always be a slump in your life, but as long as you have hope towards your own future, everything will be alright. If you are backed into a corner in your life and you do something that you will regret for the rest of your life, that's when you should continue to have hope. Having hope could lead you to work hard, ... try your best. When in comparison, if you continue to sulk, feel regret and anger towards yourself and think about the past too much, you wont progress as much as you should. This is why there's always a light in the darkest of places.

What I'm trying to say is, hope will always overcome despair in the end and this is exactly what happened in the Danganronpa franchise. All of the characters suffered so much in this series, but in the end, they are standing strong, with hope towards their future. They have overcome their despair.

Now, if this isn't the perfect ending to this era of Danganronpa, then I don't know what is. This is a conclusion that shone brightly. People that expected something different, well I'm sorry but I don't know what you were expecting, a tragic ending perhaps? Well, I'd be lying if I said I never thought there will be a bad ending, in fact, I pushed that theory around a bit, but a few episodes ago, I was thinking, a tale about hope and despair should definitely end in hope, and it would be terrible for despair to win in the end. This is why I thought this episode was done brilliantly.

You can say it, not much happened in this episode and to be frank, that doesn't matter at all. It's because of this, that this episode was so good. This is just a great light-hearted conclusion to a series I hold very dear to my heart. It's everything I wanted to see, all of the characters I've come to adore being happy for once.

I am glad this is it's own entry and it doesn't mix with Side:Despair or Side:Future. Because of this I can give this entry a solid 10/10 and man am I glad.

Story: 10
Art: 8
Sound: 10
Character: 10
Enjoyment: 10
Overall: 10

I also have to note what fantastic voice actors are in this series. Brilliant, these are all top quality voice actors and I am damn proud of all of them. Props to Megumi Ogata for doing so much work for this anime, I salute you, voice acting 2 major characters, singing the ending song and for being so awesome in supporting this series. I hope to see such amazing voice actors in Danganronpa V3 - I can't wait for the announcement - We already got one and it's already a good start.

Thanks to all the animators, sound engineers, singers and script writers, directors, all of the staff and not just for the anime, but for the games too, thanks to all of you. You did it brilliantly.

Thank you Kodaka for writing this amazing series, you managed to make me laugh, cry, feel anger and just absolute shock. I was genuinely in despair myself sometime in this series because of what happened, but I overcame that despair. I will continue to support your series Kodaka, you absolutely deserve it, what a legend. To V3 we go! The western release can't come sooner, see you all next time!

This is a tale about Hope and Despair.
This is a tale about Hope overcoming Despair.
This is a tale about Hope winning magnificently in the end.

Third time's the charm.

Here it is, a third killing game. Monokuma managed to pull it off for the third time now, this time with 12 new characters in the killing game along with Naegi, Kirigiri and Hina. I was a little skeptic about this part after episode 3 but I'm glad it delivered near the end, as Danganronpa always does. This entry will launch off with a brand new killing game and it will be the (near) conclusion to the entire Danganronpa franchise of the Hopes Peak Academy era. We await the conclusion with Side:Hope.

If you're interested in watching this, you have to go back ... to the start of this series as this is the third entry from this series and watching this without knowledge of prior entries will confuse you and you wont get the full enjoyment out of this entry, not to mention it will also spoil the events of SDR1 and 2. If you have knowledge then the watch order would be episode 1 of Side:Future, then episode 1 of Side:Despair and continue that pattern with the finale being Side:Hope. Remember, this review will contain minor and major spoilers of SDR1 and 2 and also very minor spoilers of SDR3, you have been warned.

The story starts off almost right after the events of SDR2, Naegi's "betrayal" by siding with the Remnants of Despair. Que all the leading members of the Future Foundation along with some of the cast of SDR1 and boom, you have your brand new killing game, quite exciting isn't it? Here there is a new concept called NG codes - With NG codes, every participant has an action they can't do and the bangles are stuck on their wrists, if they end up doing said action then they get infected with poison, a neat concept for Danganronpa and it spices up this killing game. Also, every 2 hours they get infected with sleeping gas, then the traitor/killer wakes up and kills someone, if the traitor/killer kills someone then the game goes on, if no one dies then everyone wins the game. There is no class trials in this one. It's a rather slow start, but it later picks up and it gets very interesting, overall I thought it was a well written story, with plot twists, cliffhangers leaving you wanting more and overall nice direction, unfortunately we were left not with a conclusion yet as there will be one more episode in Side:Hope, therefore the last episode doesn't feel as satisfactory as it could have been.
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Story - 9
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Ah, the characters, do they live up to the amazing casts of SDR1 and SDR2? No, unfortunately they don't, but wait, that doesn't mean they were bad at all. There were 12 brand new characters introduced to us, all of them were former Hopes Peak Academy students or staff. Two of the characters weren't really developed at all and felt very flat. Other two characters didn't feel interesting enough even though they were developed, they even got lots of screen time in the beginning so I was thoroughly disappointed in the begin. I'm glad they did get development though, otherwise it would've been bad. All the other 8 characters were fair game and I really enjoyed seeing the Vice-President in this anime, a great character to come out of this one. Thanks to Side:Despair we got to learn more about most of these characters too, which was nice.
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Characters: 8
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The art, just like Side:Despair, wasn't anything amazing. They did a few animation faults too, like covering what was supposed to be a hallway with a wall, constant changes in the characters positions after they wake up from the sleeping gas compared to how they were when they fell asleep. It wasn't necessarily bad, but I found it quite disappointing, but I guess it's understandable with how much work the animators are probably doing at the same time - Side:Future, Side:Despair and SDRV3 - still doesn't excuse it though.
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Art & Animation: 6
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Naturally, the sound is amazing. With new voice actors, they all did wonderful. Danganronpa never fails to amaze me when it comes to selecting the voice actors. The soundtrack is really good too. I have no issues with the sound at all.
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Sound: 10
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Except for the rather boring start, this was a blast to me, I really enjoyed seeing the returning characters again and I loved the direction of the story, A great sequel to SDR2 I might say, hopefully the conclusion to the series wont be bad, that would just be fairly disappointing after all the fun I've had with both sides.
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Enjoyment: 10
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While this show does have a few faults, I still think it was really good, a great anime that I recommend to any fan of the Danganronpa franchise, it's a must watch and I'll remember this one for a while just like the previous entries in this franchise.
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Overall: 9
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"This is a tale of hope that ends in despair"

These are the words that were spoken in the very beginning of this entry. A tale about the bright and talented students of Hopes Peak Academy's 77th Class. This entry explains what happened to SDR2's cast and everything about the Biggest, Most Atrocious Despair-Inducing Incident in Human History. A great prequel to the Danganronpa series.

If you're interested in watching this, you have to go back to the start of this series as this is the third entry from this series and watching this without knowledge of prior entries will confuse you and you wont get the ... full enjoyment out of this entry, not to mention it will also spoil the events of SDR1 and 2. If you have knowledge then the watch order would be episode 1 of Side:Future, then episode 1 of Side:Despair and continue that pattern with the finale being Side:Hope. Remember, this review will contain minor and major spoilers of SDR1 and 2, you have been warned.

The story starts off with the 77th Class of Hopes Peak Academy and re-introduces them to us, it starts off fairly light and there's lots of comedic moments you can enjoy with your favorite characters from SDR2 while it foreshadows future events that you already know of. The story elegantly ties in with Side:Future as it gives us backstories of the cast from Side:Future as well. I thought every detail was explained well and even if certain things weren't explained at all, it still happened without visual presentation. I wont call it a plot hole as this is not the case. Unfortunately the show loves to go either with a slow pace or a very fast pace which is a minor setback. There were lots of controversies on how the 77th Class (and reserve course) fell into despair but I found it was the only reasonable explanation. So in conclusion I thought it explained the Biggest, Most Atrocious Despair-Inducing Incident in Human History quite well and we saw how everything happened, the first killing game was handled brilliantly, the events leading up to the major ones was done great. All in all the story tied in every entry in this series.
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Story - 9
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From the first episode we are introduced to a certain likable character from SDR2 and many were surprised about it because of the events of SDR2. This character is Chiaki Nanami and she's a bit different from SDR2, certain traits were kept but a few things were different about this character which makes sense if you know the whole story about her. Here this character is more perfect than the game version, but more human than in the game which is ironic since she was an AI. All the other characters are the same but the designs are slightly different, but they are all still excellent. We also get to see how Junko plays with Hopes Peak Academy and how she did everything, it's quite nice to see her in action as it really gives me more feeling to her character. Mukuro and Izuru are also present and you can see the love the former has for Junko and despair while the latter is a great written character who is quite tragic in my eyes. I will cover Side:Future's characters in Side:Future's review.
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Characters: 8
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The art isn't anything amazing or mind-blowing nor is the animation, it's well done, but nothing overly bad or overly good, there were some scenes which were really well done in the animation and art department but other than that it wasn't anything special.
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Art & Animation: 6
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The sound is simply amazing, as per usual in the Danganronpa franchise, they played the right tracks at the right time and it was just amazing. The voice acting was high tier as well, how can the voice acting go wrong when you have that many talented actors for the characters? (Ah ultimate students get ultimate actors)
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Sound: 10
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Being a Danganronpa fan, this has obviously been a blast to me, there were one or two boring parts but other than that it was one hell of a ride and I wouldn't mind re-watching this in the years to come, it showed me scenes that I really wanted to see ever since the games told me about them and I'm very satisfied about this series.
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Enjoyment: 10
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While this show does have a few faults, I still think it was really good, a great anime that I recommend to any fan of the Danganronpa franchise, it's a must watch and I'll remember this one for a while just like the previous entries in this franchise.
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Overall: 9
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