Review of Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Future Arc

LA is gonna change up the format for this review as well as Zetsubou-hen by making it a sorta of 3-parter due to the nature of how Danganronpa 3's animes were presented so if you wanted to see LA's take on Zetsubou-hen and Kibou-hen then this review won't be in it. Before LA talks about Zetsubou-hen, LA will say that both Mirai-hen and Zetsubou-hen anime are something of a companion piece with each other giving off clues or events that transpired that lead it to how or when it happened. The obvious companion piece both these anime have is "trying to find the traitor" and whysome of the founders are butting heads with each other in Mirai-hen and "how Danganronpa's franchise started" as well as some backstory on some of the newer characters in Mirai-hen for Zetsubou-hen and both arcs gives and feeds information to each other. For anime-episode order, you should/MUST watch by starting with Mirai-hen's episode then Zetsubou-hen episode then back and forth after that for "clarity". Once both Mirai-hen and Zetsubou-hen have finished finishing with Mirai-hen's final episode go to Kibou-hen for the finale

With that out of the way

Mirai-hen's "ultimate death game" by in large vastly different from the the original series' one, where there are NO trials, as well as forbidden actions you'll not allowed to do in the death game otherwise you'll die instantly and having the find the traitor within the Future Foundation, before the traitor picks hope out one by one, if not the Future Foundation are already going after each other already due to the previous backstories and lingering grudges that the newer characters has. (See Zetsubou-hen review). This as a precedent makes the game far more complicated and all the more bloody with clash of beliefs of the same thing, just differing ways in which the Future Foundation members especially Kyousuke Munakata voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa.

Due to the nature of the death game, it's expected that some of the Future Foundation members' screentime is rather limited from the Great Gozu voiced by Kenta Miyake and Daisaku Bandai voiced by Rie Kugimiya being more obvious ones, the only exception to this is Chisa Yukizome voiced by Mai Nakahara as her backstory goes full circle in Zetsubou-hen. Aside the from that, many of the other Future Foundation members do get some form of development such as the quarreling between Ruruka Andou voiced by Inori Minase and Seiko Kimura voiced by Saki Fujita with Sounosuke Izayoi voiced by Takuya Eguchi in the crossfire of it as well as Kazuo Tengan voiced by Hidekatsu Shibata the chairman of the Future Foundation believing in Makoto. With that, the rest of the Future Foundation (omitting the characters from the original like Kyouko and Aoi) all have their backstory in Zetsubou-hen. If there was much to say about the focus of the character development, it squarely likes to focus on the more immediate (as well as important least developed) characters and "dispose" of them once their done, just hopefully you've got invested in right characters before their untimely deaths because Mirai-hen does not care who dies here...very much like the death game itself. BUT just because character die doesn't mean that's it as sure they might have their time in Zetsubou-hen (maybe), BUT...this is Danganronpa after all...really what LA is trying to say is, even in this death game even beware of those who are already dead.

For what this ultimate death game gave LA, was a sense of paranoia to the point LA was both analyzing and being paranoia as to who's gonna die next as well as finding out who the "pawn" (if there even is one!), "traitor" (who's killing the future Foundation members) and "mastermind" (Junko died TWICE right...so who's controlling this Monokuma?) are in this complicated personal grudges and hope vs. hope death game and Mirai-hen is chock to the brim with red herring deaths or unexpected ones...it keeps you on your toes to the point your being suspicious of characters who might already be dead, yes even LA was suspicious of even the dead characters especially of Chisa considering she has a bigger role in Zetsubou-hen. If there was something that Mirai-hen did right was to bring in the atmosphere of despair and paranoia. Despair from the unexpected deaths, paranoia from who's gonna die next and speculating who the mastermind, traitor and pawn are.

Which will also bring up the unexpected plot twists concerning the ultimate death game, from the characters who will die PERMANENTLY to who the mastermind, traitor and pawns are and this is where the paranoia and despair ramps up the tension even further ohh and add in the expected unexpected red herrings and this death game has no mercy on their characters and none our your speculations. Another words...the plot twists are both amazing, confusing and paranoid-levels of "HOW IN THE HELL WHY!??!?!?!"

Ohh right...favourite character?...LA had two. Chisa Yukizome and Kyouko Kirigiri.

In terms of animation done once again by Lerche like from the original series, Lerche brought out the dull gray tones depicting rather bleak tones right for the death game and guess what those pink blood are GONE in Mirai-hen showing red blood this time, so it's telling their serious for this one. The color palette aside from the colorful cast are green and red tinge to gray and black backgrounds (this is considering the setting is in a massive tower...the color palette is acceptable). The action scenes were pretty decent overall going from decent tactical battles to wholesale crazy ones. Where the animation kind of went down was that it for the most part has more "talking than battles"...ironic since it is a death game, but the atmosphere and mood of the anime was a helpful disguise to mask it and really did it quite well so LA won't criticize it too much because of it.

In terms of voice acting, well we got an exceptional list of voice actors here and listing them would take soo long, overall LA would just say that the voice acting was top notch with some special mention to Aya Hirano as Monaka Touwa, Toshiyuki Morikawa as Munakata and probably the best playing against the type role of Saki Fujita as the mad chemist Seiko. Ohh right LA forgot about the change up in voice actors for Monokuma, due to Nobuyo Ooyama's dementia, they had gotten Tarako for Mirai-hen and really...Tarako did an ok job as Monokuma, LA couldn't say much about Monokuma considering that Monokuma HARDLY appears in Mirai-hen, nonetheless Tarako was "ok" for the most part as Monokuma. If LA had to really pick best voice actor in Mirai-hen...it goes to Toshiyuki Morikawa...without a doubt.

The ending if anything brought about a rather anti-climax, but will be hopefully taken up by Kibou-hen. But for Mirai-hen's ending, yes the "mastermind" was found out as well as the "traitor" and "pawns" in this death game, in terms of themes, it's kinda ironic how it leads, pitting despair and hope together, where throughout the anime despair formed into hope, but by the end, it seems that hope will morph into despair, there is ALWAYS despair and hope, one can't live without the other and eliminating either of them will cause unintentional or intentional chaos. If anything even when LA found out who the culprit was and a meta-textual Junko and Chisa outright how the events of Mirai-hen occurred to make all this happen...LA IS STILL SKEPTICAL that "that's it", it's not like Danganronpa to outright tell us information like this soo easily without hiding some red herrings to double dupe us. Well if this ending IS TRUE really LA calls it an anti-climax because LA thinks that the TRUE finale is in the finale of finale's Kibou-hen, this ending is just a taste of what's to come. LA is SOO HOPEFUL right now.

Mirai-hen being the finale of the entire series of Danganronpa does what it's meant to do, pit hope against hope to see which one will go on to the future and watching both Mirai-hen and Zetsubou-hen in conjunction with one another just made the mystery of the traitor, character development of the newer characters, not only was the 2 animes of Danganronpa within the same season something rather uniquely done and presented, but executed quite well and quite honestly seeing Danganronpa's final chapters was something both to praise about and weep for as it's finally ending in the most bloody ways possible with it bringing in near impossible murder mysteries and homicidal robot bears and zany and eccentric characters. LA was thankful that not only were there gonna be 2 animes of Danganronpa but that even Mirai-hen on it's own satisfying LA's craving for more Danganronpa and Mirai-hen took that expectations and easily exceeded LA's expectation for it (even with that rather anti-climax of an ending)...and even more once Hope arc arrives for the finale to end all finale's!!!