(Warning: This blog mention major spoilers for Danganronpa Another and Super Danganronpa Another 2.)
When I first got into the Danganronpa series back in late 2016, I wasn’t aware of the many fan works of series as I was too busy hyperfocusing on the main games. However by early 2020, my Danganronpa special interest was starting to decline. It’s been three years since the last main game, Killing Harmony was released and the creator, Kazutaka Kodaka, left the Spike Chunsoft (the video game company that published the series) to make his own video game company.
This made me nervous as I don’t know where to go next as none of the current anime and video games that I was into at the time was catching my eyes. Then there was the fact that the Danganronpa series originally replaced my Total Drama special interest when the show got cancelled in late 2015 and I had spent the entire year clinging on my AU series with the characters!
But one night on this very day in 2020, I was browsing on the fan work section of Danganronpa TV Trope page and was looking at the fan games section. One of those fan games, called the Another series, caught my eye for some reason. Out of curiosity, I looked at the characters’ bios from the first game, Danganronpa Another (which back then, there was barely anything in it) and that’s when I devolved my special interest for the series!
For those who want to know, the Another series is a two, fully complete fan games, made by South Korean developer LINUJ. Like most Danganronpa fan games, its way darker and can get away putting in stuff that main series won’t touch. One of them include in chapter 3 of the second game, where a student was DISMEMBERD and was placed on a pentagram in a creepy room! I remembered their body discovery announcement got me real good to the point, I have stop watching the video for the day!
The first game Danganronpa Another, is similar to Trigger Happy Havoc as its’about 16 students who are trapped at Hope’s Peak Academy and have to kill each other in order to escape. While the first two chapters and the motives are similar, chapter 3 is when the difference took off where it got darker and sadder where by the end of the game, there were only three survivors compared to the six in the first main game. And the mastermind is the protagonist themselves! What a huge plot twist that is!
Not only that, it also turns out the Danganronpa Another took place right before Trigger Happy Havoc ITSELF as the students were basically guinea pigs to see what the Killing Game does and does not work before trying it out on the main cast of Trigger Happy Havoc!
The sequel, Super Danganronpa Another 2, is similar to Goodbye Despair as it took place on an island and 16 different students have to kill each other in order to escape once more. At first, it looked like it was a standalone game but by chapter 3, we found out there’s a connection between the two games.
Then just like Danganronpa Another, the game gets depressing real fast. So much that by the time we get to the end, where the plot twist is the protagonist is actually the traitor from the first game many complained that the game got too dark and bleak to the point they stop caring about the characters and the plot (which is never a good thing)!
But unlike most fan games, this one is actually completed, which is impressive as most of the fan games are abandoned due to time, lack of skills, poor writing, graphics and bad game play mechanics! It’s because of that, its’ one of the most well-known Danganronpa fan games that the fandom knows.
Despite reading the bio from the first game and became a fan on that fateful night, I end up attached the sequel, instead! Why? It was because it was the only game in the series where there’s an actual English translation of the game that’s both on YouTube and on the translated fan game! And that it the second game was more well-known compared to the first game. Oops.
After I discovered the Another series, I remember spending countless time looking up fan art of Super Danganronpa Another 2 on Instagram, reading the character bios and looking at their sprites on the Fanganronpa Wiki. And mind you, I never even watched a Let’s Play of the game when I did all that! Why would I do that knowing that I’m going to get spoiled? Don’t know; I blame my autism for that one.
In late June, I finally sat down and watched the translated Let’s Play of Super Danganronpa Another 2 on YouTube. I remembered binged watching the series in small sections so I won’t get overwhelmed on remembering the plot and characters. It stayed that way until I got to chapter 4, where that’s how far the English YouTube translation went. So, I decided to stop and wait until the translation finish the chapter completely, so I can watch it in one setting. They did late that year and it was one of the saddest chapters that I saw (yet).
But for chapter 5, I decided to watch it when it was released so I don’t have to wait anymore. Then I did again for chapter 6 and then they stopped posting videos, halfway through the final trial! Gah, I hate when people do that!
By then, I quickly abandoned the sequel and got attached to the first game instead as in mid-2021; someone finally made a full, English translation of Danganronpa Another on YouTube! That’s because prior to that, only the prologue and the first chapter were translated before the translator abandon the series. Now, another translator decided to finish the work that the first translator has left behind and by late September 2021, the first game is now fully translated into English!
Like always, before I officially watched the translated Let’s Play of the first game, I was looking at fan art and sprites of the characters on Instagram, which I shouldn’t be doing. Then I end up getting spoiled there thanks to looking at one of the posts where the remaining survivors were wearing formal outfits and not know it was from one of the chapters in the game! I got to stop doing that!
Around the same time I was browsing on Instagram and the wiki, I got real attached to some of the characters from the first game for some reason. With the official English translation finally coming out in 2021, it made me like them more.
But unfortunately, some of the downsides of me getting into the Another series (besides getting spoiled) is that I got into the series…on the day it ended! After releasing the last chapter of the second game, LINUJ announced that he’s done with the series and is going to move on to bigger and better things. Welp, talk about coming in at a bad time.
Another downside of getting into the series late is that after a year spending my time browsing the Another series on Instagram, the fandom there…kind of dried up. Like, there’s nothing left for them to post or say. Well, there’s some who are still there, posting fan art and putting them in AU series. But it’s not like when LINUJ was posting new chapters of the game. I kind of missed out on that one. That sucks…
Then last May, my Danganronpa Another special interest was starting to decline. With me finally watching the rest of the translated final chapter of Super Danganronpa Another 2 back in March (please, don’t ask why I waited that long!) and watched the English translation of the Free Time events with some of my favorite characters from Danganronpa Another earlier that year, I feel there is nothing for me to say and do with the series.
Well, there was that one spark I had with the series back in last February, where I developed an AU series of the first game where the victims and killers get switched around. And there was this one chapter where the remaining survivors eat this poisonous soup…
Then two weeks later, that spark was gone, poof. That sucked. I was going to write a long fanfic about it and such! Thank goodness I wrote those two one-shot fanfics instead as it was a way to test my writing skills and such.
Then one month later, Total Drama aired the new season with the new cast (aka, the 4th generation) and the show became my special interest again. Welp, it was nice while it lasted for the Another series.
I had it for four years and now it got replaced with the same special interest that the main Danganronpa series replaced, nearly eight years ago! Hmm, I noticing a pattern here and I don’t like it. So basically, I expect my Total Drama special interest to last me until 2028 then? Maybe.
Whatever the case there, I’m thankful that I got into the Another series as it kind of helped me get through the pandemic and when I was living in Germany, the second time, with my mom. Although I sometimes wished I can go back in time and watched not only blindly, but also when the game was coming out thought chapters. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed the series better that way.
Of course, I can download and play the translated game on my laptop to gain my own experience. But since the game is originally from South Korea, I have to change the location settings to Korean in order for it to work. And I have a 10 year-old laptop that like to take some time to upgrade to the point I don’t want to risk doing that.
Other than that, I think there’s nothing for me to do about that.
For now, I like to look back at the series that made me enjoy fan works better and hope that one day; I can get back into the series. At least I hear its creator, LINUJ, is doing well as he’s a game developer for a video game company in South Korea. So making fan content can get you far in life if you have to skills and patience to do so! That sounds like a dream that some want. Maybe that might be me one day…