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

Episode 4

Let it be known on this, the 3rd of August in the Year of Our Lord 2016 that I called it, I Called It So Hard You Guys.

Of course, I'll also be the first to admit that Helen Keller could have seen this one coming. Gekkōgahara's connection to Monaca, the lingering villain of Ultra Despair Girls, was so painfully obvious that it had to be either true or a deliberate misdirection. In the end, it turns out the cigar was just a cigar, and the "Ultimate Therapist" was just a replacement android body with movable digits being controlled by Little Miss Junko 2.0 herself. On the one hand, it's a shock to see this twist revealed so early in the series, but on the other hand, it's a hallmark of good suspense to reveal key twists right at the moment when most of your audience will guess them, tripping a careful balance between "predictable" (too late) and "random" (too early) to land safely on "satisfying." This definitely isn't the end of the conspiracy behind the Final Killing Game. When you stop and think about the implications of Monaca's position within the group, you start to realize that this is only the beginning.

So yeah, now that I've won my hand at gambling once, I think I'm going to succumb to the bug and go all in on predictions for the rest of the series! Feel free to cheer and jeer appropriately as each one I make comes up either true or laughably false, but I think I have enough information at this point to make some solid educated guesses, and episode 4 is basically nothing but more clues and setup from start to finish. After all, just because this Final Killing Game isn't in interactive video game form anymore doesn't mean we can't turn it into a game! Draw up your bingo cards at home while you have the chance and let your wild assumptions fly free!

So here's my Biggest Most Awful Most Tragic Prediction! Monokuma's assertion that there is one responsible traitor who must be killed to end the game is a total lie meant to ensure the success of a completely different plan. There is no traitor committing these killings, but instead multiple traitors within the group who knew ahead of time that this game was going to happen. The real goal is to get the remaining members of the Future Foundation to kill each other, while the traitor-group repeatedly protects Makoto to ensure that he puts his trust in them by the end. When only Makoto and the traitor-group survive the game, they will ostensibly have him in the palm of their hand. Here's my evidence:

• Gekkōgahara was a robot being piloted by Monaca, which means basically everything Usami has said could be a lie. Her forbidden action is a lie not only because we never saw it on her bracelet, but also because poison wouldn't kill a robot. More importantly, however, Monaca/Usami is the one who told the group that they were hacked from the inside without her knowledge. This point is now completely moot, because the hack was probably committed by Monaca, enabling her to say whatever she pleased through the trusted voice of Usami. At the same time, the barely-functional Gekkōgahara could not have committed any of the killings we've seen so far! That means there is not one traitor, and "killing" Gekkōgahara clearly would not end the game.
• After kidnapping Makoto, Munakata poses a hypothesis that is probably inaccurate, but also hints at the likelihood of my prediction. Munakata thinks that the traitor is actually pulling off a plan more similar to the one enacted in Danganronpa 2, whittling the group's numbers down until they are sufficiently small and manageable before ceasing the killings entirely, making it look like whoever last died was the traitor and winning the dwindled group's trust. Munakata has actually captured Makoto not because he thinks he's the traitor (which gives us all a little more faith in his intelligence though not his methods), but because he thinks Makoto is the only one who can't be the traitor, so he should be used as bait to draw out the real baddie. It's a smart guess with a bad plan attached to it, since Munakata doesn't care about the cost of life at stake, having become a bitter pragmatist in the aftermath of The Tragedy. Long story short, because Munakata is wrongheaded in so many other ways, his hypothesis about the villain's true plan cannot be accurate. So the show basically told us what the twist isn't, while also admitting that there will be a twist to contradict Monokuma's supposed original rules.
• The most volatile members of the group are Munakata and Sakakura by a country mile, who started resorting to violence basically the second the killing game was announced. What drove them over the edge? The identity of the first victim: their best friend and possible love interest Chisa. It's almost like she was picked specifically to drive them to violence, which Bandai would then witness, and then a third victim could appear wearing a mask to muddy their identity. (Perhaps Great Gozu was another robot?)
• Tengan's behavior has become more suspicious. He's really sticking his neck out to protect Makoto and win the audience's trust by espousing hopeful values while still kicking a metric ton of butt. (Gekkōgahara was also behaving this way before her villainous reveal.) More importantly, he seems to know several people's forbidden actions with no explanation. My guess is that Sakakura is not allowed to punch anyone in the face, because Tengan manages to smoke him in a fight by confidently putting his own face in the line of fire, which completely disables the Ultimate Boxer. He might be on death's door by the end of the episode, but he's not quite dead yet, so he's still high on my list of dubious dudes. I'm going to at least assume at this point that Tengan wrote everyone's forbidden actions himself, whether he's the ringleader of this killing game or just a pawn. But he's not the only suspicious pawn around...
• Poor Mitarai. The mousy little animator is clearly going through a self-actualization arc of some kind as he gets pushed around and disregarded by everyone else, with brief moments of hope shining through when Kyoko encourages him to stand up for himself. Unfortunately, his self-actualization will probably have to come in the form of hardcore redemption, because almost everything he does suggests he's working for the bad guys. He vocally supports Makoto even when it puts him in danger. He gets a little too nosy about everyone's forbidden actions. He asks Kyoko (who he seems to be smitten with) what she thinks of the traitor behind all this. My guess is that Mitarai was suckered into supporting the baddies behind this game, and his own forbidden action is trying to tell anyone that they've got him hostage to their plan. Hang in there, Mitarai! Good or bad or somewhere in-between, I believe you can fight this one out!
• And then we've got Kimura and Ando, whose bad blood is probably not as directly related to the bigger picture as everyone else's, but could still be the catalyst for more senseless murder. Each one is progressively pushing the other into a murderous rage at mutual accusations of being the traitor, with poor Izayoi caught in the middle. They both suspect the other for the same silly reason that will probably be addressed at some point in the Despair prequel: each one got the other expelled from Hope's Peak. It's hard to say what Izayoi's part in all this was, but whether he's actually responsible for both expulsions or just a helpless bystander, he does seem to know the full truth behind what happened to them, while being unwilling to share it.
• Kizakura is still a complete cipher. If I had to throw out a guess about him, I'd say he's either the head of the traitor group or he knows what's going on and is acting as a double agent for the side of good. If the latter is the case, he'll probably die right before the climax.

Whew! That's a lot of info to sift through, but since episode 4 was more setup on top of setup, all we can really do is guess at what will happen next. When all this setup finally turns into payoff, maybe we can get finally some Grade-A episodes in the Future arc, but I'm still enjoying the tension as we slowly churn our way to the top of this Danganronpa 3 rollercoaster.

Rating: B

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Future Arc is currently streaming on Funimation.

Jake has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.