Hello and welcome, today I will be going over the events of the Danganronpa series and trying to discern the nature of the true ending of Danganronpa V3. There are a few clarifications I want to make before that though. Firstly, although the Danganronpa series is all about the mystery and the timeline of events, ultimately it is still rich thematically, sometimes to it's own detriment. So I want to say that the theme of Danganronpa V3 is that the world is what you make of it, regardless of the truth and lies that you fight with. I figured I'd just state that outright so everyone knows what the theme is before I start getting too deep into events and speculation.
Secondly, I'm going to be referencing events from the entirety of the Danganronpa series and while I acknowledge the statute of limitations on spoilers, this is a mystery series and because of that, a lot of the fun is solving events yourself without help from anyone else. As a result, I encourage you to go through every game before we proceed, particularly Trigger Happy Havoc, Goodbye Despair, and Killing Harmony, as those are the most vital. The Danganronpa 3 anime will be necessary for events pertaining to the first two games and Ultra Despair Girls covers events from around that time after the first game but is non-vital. Everything else seems to be non-canon, however.
Thirdly, I'm going to be making a lot of speculations to try to rationalize the ending of Danganronpa V3. For those of you who are already aware of it and think it's a bad ending, I get the distinct impression that the ending is trying to push us toward a certain thought and to keep thinking about these events to come to a truth. I'm not necessarily saying that it did it well, just that that is the intention. Because of that, I'm going to be using everything I know about this cast of characters to try to make sense of what happened with this game.
So firstly, what is this game trying to tell us? Well, the ending of Killing Harmony made it very clear that the mastermind crafted this game with both truth and lies. Much like Kokichi and Shuichi, much of the game is a lie but a lot of it is comprised of truth as well. Because of this, I believe Shuichi's final speculation that not everything the mastermind said in the ending credits is the truth. With this, I want to go over everything in the game one more time to see if I can make sense of everything that occurred, starting with the introductory sequence.
Introduction
Every Danganronpa game features elements of the core truth of the final ending right at its introduction and I don't believe V3 is any different. In Danganronpa 1, it went over Makoto entering Hope's Peak for the first time, going over how he got accepted, and then a twisting visual effect over the entrance to Makoto waking up inside of the academy as it was boarded up and trapped everyone inside. This makes it clear that something about Makoto's recollection is off but at this time, we're not entirely certain why.
In Danganronpa 2, we're introduced to Hajime Hinata and how he idolized Hope's Peak academy but laments that he was never able to get in as the visual fades like a burning cinema reel before entering what appears to be some sort of digital void. It suggests the whole game takes place in some sort of simulation, we're just not certain what that means at this time.
The thing about both these intros, is that though they didn't tell us the whole truth immediately, my speculations based on them turned out to be correct so I paid attention to V3's opening and am now going to go over it.
Danganronpa V3's intro shows our characters going by their proper names but not their characters escaping from the lockers they were locked in recalling how they were kidnapped by some mysterious people. They were all then chased down by the exisals and met up in the gym. Everybody noted how they were not particularly talented people before the monokubs put them in their ultimate wardrobe and then activated the flashback light.
Unlike the previous games, however, this intro is shown at the end of the game with some additions added on. Instead of the flashback light being used immediately, it shows the characters getting excited at the prospect of appearing in Danganronpa. This is interesting to me because of the way this extension is framed. Unlike other things in the series, including this game, where the mastermind and Monokuma have evidence for the things they're saying, this particular sequence is played more as a flashback, as if the extended portion is more what they want us to believe rather than something the mastermind has actual proof for. In other words, the extended portion may not have actually happened.
There are other things about this that bother me as well.
The Flashback Lights and the Original Identities
One thing that has bugged me about this whole thing are the flashback lights. It's revealed later in the game but suspected since the beginning that the flashback lights have something to do with memory. Now obviously the flashback lights are capable of restoring memories but not in the way you might think. The flashback lights don't reproduce old memories, they craft new ones. Basically, the flashback lights have encoded data that allow you to remember that data as if it were true.
The evidence that the mastermind demonstrated for everyone's current identities being false is shown in some of the videos where the characters seem to be auditioning for Danganronpa. Now the fact that it's on video means that the event has happened. What concerns me more is how they got to that point.
Remember, V3 is all about battling with both truth and lies, thus it's not entirely clear what is truth and what is a lie. For example, the Ultimate Cosplayer Tsumugi is stated to be the mastermind, and is shown to be able to cosplay as fictional characters but not real people. She shows this when she attempts to cosplay as Kaede, she breaks out in cospox. Now, that idea is stupid in and of itself but what I noticed about that in the ending sequence is that Tsumugi only cosplays as the characters from the first two games, nobody from the current cast. Why is that? If cospox were irrelevant in relation to fictional characters and everybody in this game is fictional, then surely Tsumugi could've driven that point home by cosplaying as one of the prior characters but that doesn't seem to occur.
In addition, Tsumugi states she's part of the staff that created Danganronpa but she also noted that she's just a replica of the original Junko Enoshima and ended up just like her. What could this possibly mean? For the ultimate cosplayer to even want to be Junko Enoshima there must have been some element of truth behind Junko existing in the real world.
Then there's the issue of Maki. Now, Maki's memories and backstory aren't really the issue here, it's more her athletic ability. Gonta you could accept is pretty strong because he looks like a bit of a body builder but we see Maki do 100 sit-ups, and pushups easily. She said that it's nothing because in her past she was made to do push-ups until she passed out. However, these two facts are at odds with each other.
What I mean by that is that, if Maki's past were purely a work of fiction, the flashback light wouldn't recreate her athletic performance or willingness to kill. It may make her think she was a former assassin but it wouldn't make her easily capable of 100 reps of any calisthenic workout. The flashback light is only data, it may encode you with memories but it doesn't seem capable of granting her skills. Granted, some skills, such as Anthropology, being the Maid, Magic Tricks, and Entomology are simply about memorization so those can slide. Likewise, skills like gathering evidence and working computers are simply a matter of remembering certain work flows, those can be encoded. However, athletic ability simply cannot. No matter how much you believe in the idea of mind over matter, it doesn't change the fact that if your arms break before you hit 100 push-ups you won't be able to continue. I could see Maki being naturally athletic but most athletes even in real life aren't able to do 100 push-ups. There are many that can, sure, but how many of them would be in high school? And how many of those high schoolers would not be well known athletes within their school? Do you see what I'm getting at? There's a discrepancy.
Then there are the motive videos. We only see a handful of these but these certainly could not have been easy to craft. Given what characters actually show up in them, it's doubtful that those people don't actually exist.
In addition the book about the recollection of Hope's Peak Academy. Now, two things of note here that I find interesting. Firstly, the book itself only contains information on the first two games. Although it does state that Hope's Peak was rebuilt, which is how Danganronpa 3 ended, it doesn't have any information about anything else. Not only that but this book is stated to be the most thorough research into Hope's Peak Academy that exists. One could argue that the staff of Danganronpa simply went through that research to create that prop but that doesn't make sense. Firstly, because it was in Kokichi's Ultimate Lab indicating that it was something his character was doing, not the staff. And secondly, why research a fake school? If Hope's Peak were truly a work of fiction within Danganronpa, then surely the Danganronpa staff wouldn't need to do research. Have a lorebook to keep their stories straight, maybe, but nothing that indicates that they had to research a fictional setting.
There's also the issue of Tsumugi as the ultimate cosplayer. Tsumugi may have cosplayed as characters from the prior games but as the ultimate cosplayer she'd be able to do this. Her cosplays become less frequent as she becomes more flustered, which seems to indicate that Tsumugi is her real identity. If she were Junko then that would've been her default setting. More to the point, if this all were a work of fiction, then surely having Junko be Tsumugi's real identity would've been easy enough but that's not what they went for. There has to be a reason for this.
Finally, is Rantaro. Now, yes, Rantaro did have the survivor's perk and yes he did record that video but something about it seems off. Although Rantaro appears to be the survivor of the previous killing game, indicating that Shuichi was correct that the one who wins continues into the next season, he was speaking as if it was more dire than that. Like he was doing it to survive and, more importantly, to end this cycle of madness. Rantaro could've recorded that video at any point, including right before the killing game with fake memories so the validity of any given video is in question. However, I don't think that this particular video is invalid because of that.
Major Speculations and Timeline of Events
Okay, so I'm now going to take the time to organize a timeline of events that makes sense to me. I will make reference to things that are not referenced within the series itself but that can be assumed based on Occaim's Razor. If I can form reasonable assumptions based on context, I should be able to identify the difference between the truth and the lies.
So first, Danganronapa 1-3 did all happen. Hope's Peak was infiltrated by the ultimate despairs, taken down, and the remaining survivors of the 78th Class Escaped the Killing Game, removed the ultimate despair, rehabilitated the ones they could, and the fighting came to an end.
However, I could see a TV show being made about these characters, a sort of cinematic retelling of events that took some liberties and represented the characters in a fictional way. This would allow Tsumugi to cosplay as real life people but only as fictional interpretations of them. This would bypass the cospox rule.
Following this, there was a cosplayer, a woman by the name of Tsumugi Shirogane who was interested in the idea of the killing games and was unable or unwilling to separate reality from fiction. She and her classmates were accepted into the rebuilt Hope's Peak and Tsumugi likely set up the research on Hope's Peak during this time. The book about the previous 3 entries would support this and the fact that Tsumugi has it means that she or someone associated with her did the research as thoroughly as they could. The memory of the Dean of Hope's Peak appearing to be Makoto Naegi from the end of Danganronpa 3 would also indicate this. Without going there herself, she'd have no way of knowing.
Next, Tsumugi worked with the tech department of the Academy to build the flashback lights. If we assume someone like Miu Iruma built them and the technology associated with them, this can handwave some of the impossibilities compared to Tsumugi being the one to do so.
Finally, Tsumugi began some operations. Operations to stage a killing game. Or rather, several. She would stage every single one as if they were all fiction so that nobody would catch onto her scheme and used the flashback lights on the respective students she captured to make them think they were ordinary people so she could set up their audition videos. With the flashback lights, this would've been easy enough, since she could craft pretty much any memory she wanted. Sure the characters' identities in the game might be false but the original identities could be equally false given the flashback lights. And because of the athletic ability of Maki, Tenko, and Gonta, it's very unlikely that their physicality was manufactured. Thus, I'm inclined to believe that it's actually the audition videos that were falsified. Especially since she'd only need to craft so much for the audition videos to be created properly, easy enough to do so within those limits.
Finally, Tsumugi went through all the killing games up until the one in this game, where she made a miscalculation. That miscalculation was including information about her scheme that contradicts the memories she manufactured. Remember, these characters might have lost their true memories but the flashback lights wouldn't restore those, they would just create new ones. She wouldn't be able to restore them if she didn't have access to them. That means, biological information like Gonta's vision, Kaito's health, and Kaede's twin would've been easy enough to gather but personal information would've been far more difficult to manufacture again. Thus they may never know the truth.
Regardless, Tsumugi did this all in an effort to recreate the fiction that she believed was her whole life. To live in a fantasy world where she could be the fictional characters she always idolized. Noting that the viewer ship actually exist within Danganronpa, it's plausible that Shuichi convincing K1-B0 not to vote at the end was less about him convincing them that fiction has meaning and more about convincing them that they're the villains for putting these people through this. They all wanted to cheer for hope but they didn't want to be the villains, that's what escapism is all about. So they refused to vote, knowing that continuing the killing game would only make them just as bad as that psychopath.
And thus, the killing game came to an end.
Final Thoughts
I want to say that this is the interpretation I came to because it fits the events as well as I could manage and also fits the theme of the story. If the characters are irreparably damaged to the point that they no longer know what's truth and fiction, their idea that they'll live with what they do know fits the theme of the truth is what you make of it.
In addition, I want to say that this is not me asserting my opinion of anything onto anyone. I simply want to see if I can spark anyone to have any thoughts about this that might get them thinking in a new way. After all, thinking and putting things together is what mystery series are all about.
So, see if you can come up with any theories that hold more water than mine. I don't doubt they exist, I just want to see if we can come to a much greater conclusion.
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