What the fuck is Dangan Ronpa? (An introduction and resources post)

needlekind:

(long post ahead; remember that you can skip using the ‘j’ button on your keyboard!)

ok i’ve done a few posts like these with all the links but never a rebloggable one, but they always get a lot of ‘like’s so I guess this’d be useful? so allow me to tell you

WHAT THE FUCK IS DANGAN RONPA?

Dangan Ronpa is the name of an archaic ritual designed for the sole purpose of extracting your emotions to give them a solid form and beating them repeatedly into hard surfaces without relent.

Hahahah no I’m just kidding, but that’s not that far off.

Dangan Ronpa is a Japanese video game for the PSP that is probably never going to receive a localization, but does have an English LP up on the SA forums. The premise is that fifteen high school students who are at the top of their fields (“Super High School Level Swimmer/Baseball Player/Idol/Gang Leader/Wrestler/etc.”) are all sent to attend Hope’s Peak Academy, a very prestigious school from which all graduates are guaranteed success in their futures, only to be told that they are going to be locked in there for the rest of their lives, never to see the outside world again, unless they “graduate” by killing another student another without being caught after a “school trial” with the others.

My friend Rebbe has described it as “Ace Attorney meets Battle Royale meets Persona,” and I have seen nothing that nullifies that description.

Yeah okay, but why should I care?
Because Dangan Ronpa is AWESOME! What, you don’t believe me?

• The characters are great. As mentioned, there are a lot of them, but none of them are flat throwaways. Certainly they’re not all of equal importance, but every single character in the story is developed and has some level of bearing on the plot. It’s a really diverse cast so you’re guaranteed to have one you can fall in love with right off the bat, they all matter, and they’re all super interesting!
• They also are all integrated really well into their setting. Despite being a very different bunch, they’re all written like a single cohesive cast.
• The plot is really interesting and full of more twists than a slinky. A good slinky, though; we’re talking solid-gold children’s toys here, not some 90’s crap you pulled all knotted and broken out of your attic. The pacing is done phenomenally and it’s not just a whole bunch of piling stuff on for ~teh dramaz~; it’s very well-written.
• One guy’s hamburger gets stolen by aliens, and Celestia Ludenberg is carrying your baby.
• But really, it’s a very interesting emotional roller coaster driven by a lot of fantastic characters and full of plot twists and pain. You should try it!

Sounds cool, but is there anything else I should know beforehand?
Dangan Ronpa is not for everybody! Side effects may include:

• There is a lot of death and blood and gross in this game. Obviously corpses are to be expected and the scenes are super gory! The blood is all bright neon pink, though, because Japanese rating systems are weird.
• It’s gonna RUIN YOUR LIFE. You’re gonna cry a lot and get really upset about these fictional characters, I guarantee it.
• There’s some tricky debate as to whether or not a certain character is trans* or not (and if this post turns into a discussion about that I’m gonna clock somebody), but people who read said character as trans* generally also agree on it being miserably handled. We won’t get into that here; that’s up to you to interpret.
• If you’ve seen any promotional material, you might’ve been misled—one of my friends, for example, came to me as I was liveblogging and said she’d assumed the game was a lot of sexualization of women killing/being killed before, but that’s actually not the case at all! I dunno how much of that there is out there but the promo stuff is probably not the best thing to judge by if that much is true.
• Everything is a spoiler. If you’re getting into this, don’t go looking up fanart until you’re done, or else you will be spoiled, and it will suck. The tags used for spoilers are generally “dr spoi lers”, “dangan ronpa spoi lers”, and sometimes just “spoilers” (spaces added so that this doesn’t catch anyone’s tumblr saviors).
• Also, every now and again, the SA forums (the only place the LP is hosted right now) puts up a “paywall” that prevents anyone who is not a member from looking at things to decrease the huge amount of traffic they get and encourage sign-ups. Accounts cost $10, but if that’s not an investment you can/will make, suck it up and give it a week or so (it is not permanent) and it’ll be right back up for public viewing.

Okay, sign me up! Where do I go now?
Ah yes, the useful part of this post—the great link list!

• The Dangan Ronpa LP! Hosted on Somethingawful and translated by the fabulous orenoren. I highly recommend using the table of contents in the first post to navigate instead of scrolling through and dealing with people’s comments; there are some spoilers as speculation and it’s much more fun to just come up with your own theories anyway!
  And when you’re done with that… 
• A project to translate DR1 as a game. Right now it’s very much a work in progress, but as of posting this, they have a fully-translated version of the original Japanese demo up under “downloads” that you can get and play if you’ve got a PSP!
• Super Dangan Ronpa 2, the in-progress LP of Dangan Ronpa’s sequel.
• Alternatively, Super Dangan Ronpa 2 summaries: these are completed summaries of SDR2 but they are not the translated game. It’s up to you whether you’d rather wait and enjoy SDR2 as a written story or absorb all the plot in a summed-up form (I can’t vouch personally for this, being someone who’s keeping up with the LP instead, but friends I have who’ve read this instead seem to have liked it well enough!).
• SDR2 summaries again, by someone else. These are incomplete but there are a bunch of free time events in this one and they seem to be longer (as mentioned, I can’t vouch for one over the other; I skimmed through to see what they were like but I’m keeping up with the full translation) (thanks, Shay!).
• Dangan Island, translations of a lighthearted minigame obtained after beating SDR2 about “what would have happened if the game didn’t start off the way it did.” As far as I can tell, they’re sort of like free time events (without being the free time events); chances to get to know SDR2 characters better.
• Dangan Ronpa 0, a prequel to DR1 that is also in the progress of being translated in the same place as SDR2.
• @did_dr2_update, an unofficial Twitter account that keeps up with all of the updates of Orenoren’s translations of SDR2 and DR0.
• Dangan Ronpa IF, a spin-off/alternate continuity of DR1 where everyone is happy and nobody dies. This is not a full game or anything, just a written story. You’ll be able to read it within the day, no doubt.
• The DR1 manga, also an in-progress translation! This is meant to be a supplement to the game; it gives you some more deets about less important characters. I’d recommend reading the entire game before going to the manga, but you could also finish an entire game chapter and then download and read the associated manga chapters after (just watch how far you scroll; the covers allude to spoilers or at least make them easy to guess).

Anything else?
Well, lemme get you some bonus links, just ‘cause I like you.

• DOWNLOADS POST! Contains sprite rips, OSTs, and other goodies taken from the two games. Spoilers are separated.
• Alternate OST download (thanks, Rebbe!).
• DR1 full body sprites.
• Fan-made sprites of a certain walking DR1 spoiler, done in the DR sprite style (very well, I might add) to complete your collection.
• SDR2 animated mini pixels. They’re adorable (and a little bit flashy—they’re very tiny and it’s only a little bit but there are also a lot of them, so be careful).
• DR1 characters in SDR2’s sprite style.
• SDR2 characters in DR1’s “game over” sprite style (this is someone’s pixel family and I would like to sincerely apologize to them for not having a proper downloads post to link to instead).
• Execution plans from the visual fanbook for the characters who weren’t murderers (don’t even click this if you haven’t finished DR1!).
• Super High School Level Good Luck and Despair chapters one and two, untranslated. This is some manga about Komaeda or something, I have no idea. Like I said, untranslated, but it’d be good for making icons (for RP purposes or otherwise), reading if you’re able, or translating if you’re feeling ambitious.
• Dangan Ronpa Pixiv tags for your searching pleasure.
• danganronpa, a general Dangan Ronpa blog (mostly fanart; has spoilers but they’re all tagged and they have a #no spoilers tag for your browsing pleasure).
• danganisland, a general SDR2 blog (not spoiler free).
• A Softer Despair, a blog for Dangan Ronpa edits of the A Softer World comic, because having one of these is a rite of fandom passage.
• A Dangan Ronpa fan community on Dreamwidth. A lot of content is members-locked (and there are some good downloads) but membership is open, so make sure to join it!