Let me rephrase: why the FUCK are you not playing Dangan Ronpa?
Dangan Ronpa is the best damn game you've never played. It was released in Japan a few years back, and the first Dangan Ronpa is coming to the US on February 11th. Trust me, you need this shit in your life. Husbando~ refuses to touch anything Japanese. I think he actually throws up in the presence of Pokemon games? But he eats Dangan Ronpa with a spoon, that's how good Dangan Ronpa is.
("Hey, Bean, you live in the US, how the hell are you familiar with Dangan Ronpa?" We'll get there, patience.)
"Dangan Ronpa" is an ancient Japanese phrase that means "Dangit Ron Paul." The US release is getting called Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, which, as I understand it, is the closest thing Dangan Ronpa actually translates to.
Are you familiar with the idea of a Japanese visual novel? You're probably more familiar with it than you think: the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney games are visual novels. So is 999 and Virtue's Last Reward. Those last two were developed by Spike Chunsoft, who are the masterminds behind Dangan Ronpa, also a visual novel.
("Hey, Bean, isn't Spike Chunsoft also the company who gave us Conception?" Ain't nobody perfect.)
Anyway, DR1 stars our protagonist, Naegi Makoto:
... oh my God, do you know what I like about Mass Effect? I can draw the hair in Mass Effect. I can draw the hair in North American Games.
Naegi, by the way, is voiced by the same person who voiced the original Shinji Ikari, and if you think that's hilarious we could totally party.
Naegi finds out that he's accepted into Hope's Peak Academy, a special high school where they only accept kids who perform the best in their field. In the game, it's called being a Super High School Level person. Each year, Hope's Peak holds a drawing to let one regular schmuck in. Thus, Naegi finds himself with Super High School Level Luck, and trots right the fuck on up to Hope's Peak.
Then, Naegi gets knocked out.
When he wakes up, he, um.
Hi, everyone, meet Monobear, my favorite Dangan Ronpa character!
Monobear is a tiny half-black half-white teddy bear who's evil as fuck. Seriously, he shows up, kills three people, and you're still all like, "YAY YOU GUYS IT'S MONOBEAR!" I can't explain it. He's rad.
Monobear explains to Naegi and the other 14 Hope's Peak freshmen that he's locked them in the school. They can get themselves out, but only if they kill someone and deceive the others into thinking that they didn't do the do. Or, if you will, they can be released if they literally get away with murder.
So anyway, that's Dangan Ronpa, it's a murder mystery on weed and steroids and teddy bears. The other Super High School Characters are a lot of fun, and don't lie, you've read down this far to see if I'm going to draw more anime hair anyway, so let's go. These are just a few:
There's Maizano, a Super High School Level Idol. (In Japan, that's kind of like a singing/dancing girl.) Her and Naegi make fast friends, and she becomes his murder mystery helper.
From left to right, we've also got Chihiro, a Super High School Level Hacker, Togami, a Super High School Level Heir, Kirigiri, who's forgotten what her Super High School Level Thing is, Leon, a Super High School Level Baseball player and Yamata, a Super High School Level MSPixel Artist.
Kirigiri might be my favorite human character in DR1, but Aoi (shsl swimmer) and Yamata might be runners up, not to mention a Super High School Level Spoiler Character. My favorite human is in DR2, though.
But legit, you need to get into some Dangan Ronpa. It'll be coming out for Vita on --
Hmm? Oh, no worries, I don't have a Vita either. I want one, though! Naw, but legit, this is how you can get your Dangan Ronpa fix without a Vita or knowledge of the Japanese language:
- The Something Awful forums had a wonderful Let's Play of DR, you can read the whole thing here for free. No account required. This is how I originally read it.
- Funimation made a 13 episode of DR, you can stream the whole thing, again for free. From what I've seen of it, the Let's Play translation is better, but if you totally have to have everything animated, it's not awful.
One last thing: promise me promise me promise me that you WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GOOGLE DANGAN RONPA and sure as hell don't search it on Tumblr! There is one massive endgame spoiler that I promise you'll run face first into if you run any sort of Dangan Ronpa search on any site. I found spoilers on eBay once, no joke. Just use my links, it'll all be good.
No comments:
Post a Comment