The story is basically about a group of teens, with each of them unique in their own field, be it sports, from an outlaw biker gang leader to a swimmer and programmer. They get locked up in an elite school with no possible way to escape, except one: To kill a fellow student and avoid getting caught. That being said, Dangan ronpa is a good mystery genre anime, including other genres such as light comedy. It is a psychological and criminological anime and if you want to be the new sherlock holmes of 2013, watch this because after watching this, i am very aware that my detective skills have improved significantly, once in a boys locker room in school, a locker was broken and things inside were stolen, i found the culprit in less than a day thanks to this.
The deductive skills involved in the class trials were brilliantly portrayed, determining the culprit after someone was killed involved all the students to participate into a discussion of finding the culprit with a list of evidence and hence using those evidence to deduce the criminal/culprit. If they were agreed by the majority vote to be the culprit, they would be punished severely, and often die. The beginning of the show's class trials had bad pacing and was rushed as everyone had to speak, while people die off, the trials at the end had less people and so the pacing towards the end was actually good compared to the start. Many of the killings were performed nicely and involved a list of evidence that were found by the other students in order to determine the culprit, every time a person died, there will be a class trials, both the killings and the trials were really intriguing and they psychologically develop your investigation skills.
The art was decent, clear and neat, weird character designs for some of the characters, however it does manage to easily make us distinguish between who is who due to the colors and their design. The animation was fine and neatly done, it was really clear and smooth.
Another good thing were the executions, each punishment was unique and leaves us with sympathy in the end. However, the drama was not delivered really well and was a bit weak at the start. Don't worry Dangan ronpa won't give you tears.
One of its best qualities is the music. The soundtrack composed by Takada Masafumi is very catchy and addicting, it also matches well with the atmosphere and mood in the majority of the scenes. All of the openings and endings were very good and catchy, although the monobear opening was really random and weird. All the characters had decent voice acting, especially Monkuma/monobear, one of the most interesting and plot-prominent characters in the show, without his seiyuu, he would not give off the same effect for sure. Also, im glad Naegi was not shipped up with the idol girl at the start, as i thought he would since it was obvious.
Dangan ronpa is not predictable at all to be frank, it keeps you watching and interested, the mystery is so deep and psychologically, it digs into your brain.
On the other hand, there are qualities that ruined the potential of this anime, they were the rushed pacing at the start as mentioned before if you were reading, WOULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH better with 24-26 episodes. It would also give more time for developing the characters, one of the parts the anime lacked was character background and development. It would make us feel more sympathetic and empathetic if the drama was done properly by inputting development and relationships between the characters. Only about 3 were developed more than the rest, the three being Naegi, Togami and Kirigiri.
There are many plot twists and it made the show even better, twisting what we thought into what we never thought.
Although you might get pissed and beat up your screen, this anime is really worth watching, but remember the aim is to become the new badass detective of the century.
