Danganronpa: The Animation ~ The first 4 episodes impression

Danganronpa is a video game franchise which currently consists of 3 main titles (with one upcoming title) and had also spawned manga series, novels and of course, anime adaptation, in which I will review now based off the first four episodes that I had watched. Danganronpa: The Animation had been aired in Japan beginning of July in 2013 but it had just premiered on Animax Asia last Monday on 16th November 2015. It's kind of sad to see that it only got released on the channel more than 2 years later but I guess it's better late than never.

I've never heard about this series before and I was just lucky to have seen TV ads for it a few days before its premiere. So what is it about? It's about several people trapped in a building and the only way for them to get out is to kill someone but they have to make sure they don't get caught doing it. Sounds dark, creepy and interesting, right? The ads just showed this simple premise but that definitely caught my attention straight away.

The anime starts off with the main protagonist (Makoto Naegi), a regular, normal, "extremely lucky" student walking into Hope's Peak Academy, an elite academy that only accepts the best of the best of students. But once he step his foot into the academy territory, he passed out and next thing he knew, he was trapped in the academy's building along with 14 other "accepted" students of the academy. As they assembled at the assembly hall, they were introduced to an evil-talking-stuffed bear named Monokuma and were told that they were to stay in the academy forever and if they want to get out from there, they have to kill someone but they cannot let themselves get caught by the others for doing it...and so the story begins.

So far, after watching the first four episodes in the series, I'm loving this anime...a lot! At first I wanted to say that this anime has a unique story, but then I realized the story reminds me of the murder mystery type of anime like the Kindaichi Case Files and Detective Conan, and also the student-trapped-in-the-academy situation reminds me of the manga Aphorism, so the story isn't that unique after all. But what I can say is definitely unique about this anime is the way the story was told with its video-game like visuals, sounds and music, it is truly refreshing. Fifteen characters aside from the sadistic stuffed-toy bear Monokuma is definitely a lot to remember but each character has a unique design so I managed to recognize them quite fast.

The story is kind of dark but the way the visuals were shown was not that gory or violent. For example when a student was "executed" when he/she was caught guilty by the others for murdering someone, the character that was executed was shown in a silhouette, and there are close-up images of the character's face or the machine that was used for the execution, and the visuals also cut to show the horror expressions of the other students, so the horrific nature of the execution wasn't fully-shown to the viewers eventhough when you think about it that was a pretty terrible way to die. The colour of the blood in the anime were also shown in pink instead of red, which again helps to pull back reality from this otherwise horrific nature of the situation the student's were in. Having said that, the anime do has its light moments, with students making fun of each other or making funny remarks, although from this four episodes, those moments are far and few in between.

I also love the small little things the studio add to the anime that relates to the character's fate as each episodes continue; like the timer with character's silhouette that counting down with each character's death; the charater's icon during the end credits that will be crossed when that particular character died; and even the picture during the end credits that showed the main protagonist, Makoto, with the other characters but only after a character is dead that the image of that character will show up in that picture. It is quite sad to see the picture in the end credits with the characters smiling and happy when the truth is all of them aside from the main protagonist are actually dead. But I guess that just give the anime more impact and it makes me appreciate the anime even more.

I will definitely keep on watching this anime as the story so far is good and the visual is surprisingly refreshing to watch. I kind of nervous to find out the fate of the other characters as I'm starting to like a few of them. I hope it ends well for some of the characters.

Danganronpa: The Animation is currently aired on Animax Asia (Channel 715 for Astro Malaysia), every Monday and Tuesday at 10 pm for Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, and 9 pm for Jakarta and Bangkok. It's a back-to-back double-episode segment so make sure you stay tune after the first episode aired for the subsequent episode.

For more info, you can check out the Animax Asia website.