Recap: The Life of Mutual Killing begins.

As I hoped, Danganronpa wastes no time moving on to the meat of the story. One of the biggest was its subversion of normal tropes in the writing of its story. Maizono’s character was built as the most cliche heroine. She’s cute, likeable, and has a personal history with the protagonist that would indicate they’d take care of each other. That idea is quickly squashed as she becomes the first to fall victim to Mutual Killing. With her gone, there’s a big void to fill for the position of Naegi’s confidant, but the story gives you a pretty good guess who that will be.

If I had anything to take out of this episode, is that the one thing that I think is keeping this show from being great is what I was feeling in the first episode. This show is simply too faithful to its source material. Music has been changing pretty much exactly in key with the VN, the voice acting sounds much the same, and hell they even kept in the pink blood for who knows what reason. An anime is supposed to enhance on an existing medium by putting it in fluid motion, but the only part where I see a benefit from this is watching the unsettling way Monobear moves around.

If there’s one thing I’m liking so far, it’s that the pacing is going along quite nicely. Indeed, this is the first case, so there is less evidence to be found, but its good to see us getting to the Class Trial so quickly. I have to wonder if we’ll see the truth of this case by the end of the next episode. Considering this show seems to only be slated for 13 episodes, it’ll be good to have this done quickly, but it honestly makes me worried for how they’ll be able to fit in the rest of the game in 10 episodes, when that section is far longer than the trial covered in these initial three. There are little subtleties that are easier to pick up on in this animated form as to who the culprit is. I do have the gift of foresight in reading the VN, but even then things I didn’t see before are now a whole lot clearer. Hopefully the show can keep my attention that way in the trial to come.