Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School is an anime that serves as the finale in the story that began with the three Danganronpa games so far: Trigger Happy Havoc, Goodbye Despair and Ultra Despair Girls. It is split into three "Arcs", the Future Arc, Despair Arc and the Hope Arc. There are twelve episodes within the Future Arc which closes off Makoto's storyline after the first two games. It takes place soon after the ending of Goodbye Despair and has Makoto being brought to the headquarters of Future Foundation on suspect of treason. Obviously, having played the three Danganronpa games is a must. While Ultra Despair Girls isn't nearly as integral to the background of the storyline, it is still highly recommended in order to understand the rest of the references and recognise a few characters. A unique element of this anime is that the episodes are designed to be watched alternately between Future Arc and Despair Arc in order to see the unfolding story and backstories.
Effectively, the current state of the world is due to a single class within the elite Hope's Peak High School executing a certain event. Future Arc does its job of explaining how the class (i.e. the cast from Goodbye Despair) fell into despair, finally shedding a mystery in the series. As can be expected from an anime that aims to close off all the plot threads, all the surviving characters from previous games will make at least an appearance. While there is a whole new cast of members, the already-established characters still take a fair chunk of screentime. While returning characters are cool to catch up on when they show up, the scenes they are in and the roles they play can feel shoehorned into the plot. The plot is actually a similar setup to the first two games, despite the developers of the game saying that the plot wasn't suited to be made into a game. Once Makoto arrives at the Future Foundation, despite all the organisation's security and high-tech gadgets, they are ambushed and the council is thrown into a mutual killing game.
There is a traitor amongst the party who will kill one person every round once the time limit is up. To facilitate this, each person wears a bracelet which will inject a sleeping drug. Upon waking up, they will find one of their associates dead. To spice things up, each person also has a "forbidden action", whereby if they perform the specified action, they will be injected with a fatal poison and die anyway. The anime then goes on with how the characters split up into teams, the dynamics involved in such a situation and how they try to uncover the traitor. It sounds cleverer than it is since this Future Arc has a convoluted plot that doesn't make much sense a lot of the time. Most of the new characters are stubborn with extreme personalities, hell bent on eliminating Makoto which is annoying and frustrating when it happens again and again throughout all the episodes.
Despite the characters being important Future Foundation council members, they all have significant flaws in their personalities and do not work well as a team, or in teams. Everyone is selfish and has their own agendas. This is a huge contrast to the Remnants of Despair group who seem to together really well to achieve their goals. Throughout the arc, it speaks a lot about hope and despair, so much to the point that the true meaning of those words are lost and takes on a whole other meaning. The reasoning behind each character's actions is convoluted and confusing. As it is a mutual killing game, there is more than its fair share of deaths. Even only just met the characters for a short period of time as a viewer, you will still feel sad when they die. There are multiple red herrings throughout the series and you will definitely be shocked at who dies.
Deaths are much more graphic. Blood is not the bright pink color and the deaths are not stylized. It is more violent and gory with plenty of action sequences. The final few episodes of the arc, once all differences are set aside and the backstories are told, is quite intense. The pacing improves dramatically and while it doesn't do much to answer many of the questions you have, it does clarify more than a few points to make it worthwhile. The scenes are emotional and you feel the pain of the characters. In terms of music, there are remixed of songs from the game which helps evoke the spirit of the game well, truly selling it as a sequel. The Future Arc ends on a cliffhanger and promises a resolution in the Hope Arc finale episode. Overall, Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Future Arc promises a lot but doesn't truly deliver it all. It still provides an engaging story which you must have played the games in order to fully understand. Being the finale of everything so far, of course you should watch this if you're a fan of Danganronpa.
-----------------------------------------
For other animation reviews, have a look at this page.