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i loved the danganronpa games when i was a preteen/young teenager. the second one is by far my favorite, so when i heard that the characters first introduced in it were going to be the center of a brand new anime i was BEYOND ecstatic. i remember quite literally shaking with excitement seeing the first promo images, and the first trailer.
i waited patiently until it aired all the way through like i always do. i avoided spoilers like the plague, unlike what i had done for the games. i was so pumped, until i actually sat down to watch it.
it hurt to look at anything other than the subtitles (the dub is horrendous by the way). the way certain characters were deformed to look nothing like they used to completely takes away from the experience if you're a series veteran. my favorite character, nekomaru, is one of the most egregious examples of this; his head looks like someone squished it inwards and his once-characteristic color palette is muddy and ugly. his proportions are also even more exaggerated than they previously were, somehow managing to make him look less like a high school student than the in game sprites did.
actually, the muddy and ugly color palette can be seen everywhere, not just on the characters. what made the second game in the original danganronpa series so great was how vibrant it always was regardless of the situations the characters got into. the intro movie has upbeat, catchy music and very cliché-yet-cute camera angles and visual effects. seeing the characters from such a visually pleasing series be reduced to depressing shells of their former selves is jarring to say the least.
i can't say much about the story without spoiling anything. just know that, in my opinion, the pacing isn't the greatest and the "new" characters (new to the setting, not the series) that stick around until the end range from being mediocre to hatebait.
if you've played the second danganronpa game and enjoyed everything about it as much as i did, steer clear. this is a major disappointment.
