This is the review of someone who, by seeing the anime, got to know the game, thinking the anime was so great. And to my surprise when I played the game and came back to the animation, I felt fairly dissapointed.
The anime has some hits and misses and here's what I want to point out:
1)DANGAN RONPA HAS SUCH AN AMAZING SETTING It's a story about 15 greatly gifted students that made it to the most prestigious institutes. Thanks to their talents, they are "the hope" of our next generation. After entering the school, they find out they have been locked in there and the only way to get out is to kill somebody forced by "motives" that the headmaster gives them.
And I think this was ONE OF THE HITS of the anime, since they can explain the premise really well and work with it. Making it into a great mistery/detective anime.
2) THE CHARACTERS: While playing the game, you get to know each one of the characters when they introduce themselves, getting a bit of their personalities and their motives and aspirations, which makes you undersstand their actions later in the game.
Each charater is so unique and with a total different personality, making it my favorite part of Dangan Ronpa.
The animeDOES NOT DO THIS, every introduction is rushed, and you only get to see the superficial part of them. So later in the anime their actions can seem pretty dull.
3)SO MUCH STORY SO LITTLE TIME:
The game is pretty exptensive, since in them you got your epiloge, six chapters and the ending. Every chapter has three really well done parts to it.
You do a pretty exptensive investigation, get to know the characters in different situations. And a deductive part of it.
The anime, having only 13 episodes makes the plot-line of the story hard to understand at a time, cause a lot of details are omitted and it gets rushed, and I rememeber getting lost at some point.
I think that, a anime of 25 episodes would have been more aproppiate.
4) ARTSTYLE, ANIMATION AND SOUNDTRACK:
Dangan Ronpa has such a peculiar artstyle to it, gorgeous colors and the cutscene animations are stunning to see. The music of the game is pretty average and "backgroundish" but enjoyable.
THE ANIME DID SO GOOD ADAPTATING THIS: Since the artsyle is left the same as the game, it's not a piece of art, but it's so peculiar, different, colorful and refreshing.
I can say that the soundtrack of the anime is way better and a little bit more remarkable than the one in the game.
OVERALL:
Dangan Ronpa is a great mistery/murder series, that is close to my heart. The setting and the plot of it leaves you by the edge of your seat and it's a great door for a more deep plot to it (that I hope it gets reflected on Dangan Ronpa 3)
But the anime was a rushed mess of a good story, that takes a lot of good writting and details out of it.
Hope you find this helpful!
(sorry for the grammar mistakes ^^)
