In Danganronpa, Hope Lies in the Next Generation

By Diego Nicolás Argüello | August 29, 2025 | 3:30pm

Video Games Features Danganronpa

In Danganronpa, Hope Lies in the Next Generation

It’s been 11 years since I graduated from high school. As a number, 11 doesn’t sound like much, right? Nowadays, I only realize how much time actually passed once I sit down to remember what it felt like to live in that period of my life. Five years in which I was a completely different person—reserved, naive, protected. High school is sort of a cocoon meant to keep you safe from the weight of the outside world and the responsibilities that come from adult life. A period in time where you can simply be, dream, and create goals for yourself. A time in which the future is a vast sea with seemingly endless directions.

Danganronpa has no shortage of reflections about the coming of age, which are funneled through a macabre way of breaking that cocoon open. The resolve of young classmates is tested time and time again, as they’re forced to participate in a killing game. They’re still inside a school, but the memories of their student years prior to this entrapment are erased. The premise of the game is that if somebody murders a fellow classmate and manages to avoid a guilty conviction during a class trial, they get to “graduate” and return to the outside world, while everybody else inside those walls are killed instead.

As time goes on, the titular mascot Monokuma presents motives—snippets of their past life showcasing family members and close friends, indicating that something horrible might have happened to them, scattered details about the state of the outside world, and the events that led to them becoming so-called Ultimates. This group is the embodiment of singular talent in specific professions or skillsets that are mostly hand-picked by a prestigious academy, the allure being that anyone who graduates from there can become part of the world elite.

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As fellow contributor Maddy Myers said earlier this week, Danganronpa is more of a murder mystery meets a dark comedy rather than riffing on the likes of Battle Royale. It clearly bears a reference to the Ace Attorney series with its class trials, as well as the dark tone of the Zero Escape series. Depending on which Danganronpa entry you’re playing—or watching, as there’s also an anime that significantly expands upon the ending of the second mainline game—the commentary and reflections are different. They touch on topics like talent and class by birthright, how people seek and enjoy the morbid curiosity that comes from watching others suffer, fandom obsession, and so much more. At the heart of it all, though, there’s a cheesy yet illuminating fight between hope and despair, a clash that is more pronounced when seen through the lens of students.

Danganronpa

Every student is broken mentally and physically, pushed to the brink in heinous ways. As the protagonist and one of the students, you’re constantly being deceived by others, or worse, struck by their sudden deaths. This is pronounced by a light mechanic where you spend your free time talking to other students and increasing your bonds. There’s always the chance that the person you’ve started to get to know more closely won’t make it through the following night. This violence against teenagers adds to the games’ blunt terror, and the further you’re in the series, the more graphic the killings and punishments become. The anime, which is divided into the Future and Despair arcs, elevates this in a way that’s hard to swallow, to the point of showing in detail how an entire class murders each other. The events that transpire lead to some characters becoming obsessed with the idea of eliminating despair completely.

While some argue that, at the end of the day, the act of crying, of suffering pain, is also part of being human, it’s hard not to feel crushed by all of these feelings and desperately seek a solution. Danganronpa takes its fictional scenarios to absurd heights, but getting through the series for the first time in 2025, it’s impossible not to see the parallel with the life I’m carrying now, and my perception of the world, compared to my high school self. It’s hard to notice how, as years pass, the naivety and hope in someone’s eyes begin to dim. We’re pushed to grow used to facing injustice and cruelty on a daily basis. Reading the news and seeing how the people in power erase human rights, promote and fund killings, and continue to line their pockets while poverty continues to increase. People who seem to be evil for the sake of it, with no remorse, and more often than not, no punishment. There are days when I feel cornered in a room with just one light that gets dimmer and dimmer.

Suffering is an inherent part of living. Danganronpa knows this too well and takes it to an extreme. Yet, Danganronpa‘s biggest trait is culminating in kindness. Despite everything that characters get to witness, they still cling to hope. It’s a hope manifested in believing in oneself, in borrowing strength from others and remembering that you’re not alone, in the responsibility of honoring those who have passed away, fighting for the future entrusted by the ones that came before, and leaving a version of this world that is, even in a small amount, kinder to future generations.

Growing up and facing the outside world constantly pushes our resolve. Depending on where you are in life, you might think that this is it, and there’s little you can do to change things. It’s embedded in your routine. But as hard as life gets, it’s important to push for hope, in any way we can. We’re not just living for ourselves, but we’ve also been entrusted with the future of the next generation. Others have fought for us, and it’s our responsibility to do the same for those to come. When hope starts to waver, we have to remember that a better world is possible—even if we won’t get to see it in our lifetime.

Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist from Argentina who has learned English thanks to videogames. You can read his work in places like Polygon, the New York Times, The Verge, and more. You can also find him on Bluesky.