The Seven Deadly Sins: Prisoners of the Sky (2018)

"When shooting stars traverse the heavens in a cross, Britannia will be met with an enormous menace. It will signal the beginning of a trial, preordained since ancient times. And mark the onset of a holy war... between a guiding hand of light and the bloodline of darkness."
- An old Britannian poem found in Nanatsu no Taizai chapter 16

Nanatsu no Taizai (Seven Deadly Sins, 2012) by Nakaba Suzuki is a long-running shonen manga series, known for its Dragon Ball-esque fights right down to the introduction of power levels, that has taken the world by storm during its run as it has at times managed to become the second best selling (in yearly sales) manga series, only behind One Piece. The story of Nanatsu no Taizai takes place during an older era of Britannia, following a mysterious boy known as Dragon's Sin of Wrath "Meliodas," and the adventure to find the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins gang that were exiled and thought to have died. The story moves with heavy emphasis on medieval settings, and it deals heavily with past events, regrets (the main characters each have their own 'sins' which they have committed that they have to live with) and slight amounts of romance with most of the characters.

The franchise so far along with the manga has two animated seasones, both 24 episodes in length, each adapting their respective arcs that take about 100 chapters per, and it also has a short animated special season between seasons one and two, but it's not special at all in reality, and it consists mostly of mediocre anime original material.
In 2018 the series got its first animated film along with a special manga chapter leading to the movie -the chapter done by the author Nakaba - that deals with a canon event, a battle between Mael of the four archangels and Meliodas of the ten commandments fighting each other in the skies with some neat yin-yang themed artwork as well.

Absolutely baseless hype

The Prisoners of the Sky film itself deals with a human-like being with wings, a 'Celestial' Meliodas-lookalike named Solaad who arrived down from the heavens as Meliodas at the same time as Meliodas goes up to the sky islands with Hawk the pig. The first half to movie deals with mostly irrelevant stuff and the important parts are handled in a mediocre way. While the OST is great as always with the atmosphere it creates, the movie itself is incredibly slow and the animations are very rough to look at, especially in the first half. The movie is clearly mass production stock-grade stuff, created only to give fans of the anime series more content to watch. It's too bad that the content in the two hours of the film is still not enough for me to prefer it over getting more content from the weekly manga chapters.

The plot of the movie is kind of silly. There's a group of demons hailed to be comparable to the Ten Commandments, although they are much weaker than they are hyped to be when their feats are showcased, and their leader's motivation for doing evil deeds is because 3000 years ago Meliodas did not choose him as one of the Ten Commandments, even though he believes he'd surpassed them in power. It feels almost like a joke. The villains are terrible in this movie and most of the sins just get generic moments, Escanor one-shots one of the main six antagonists, Gowther uses illusions, King petrifies, Ban tanks bloody attacks with his immortality and Diane uses Heavy Metal to protect herself.

Man In Arms

Sad to say, however, is that from start to finish this movie is mostly awful. Everything is extremely mediocre so much so that it hurts. I've seen my fair share of animated films and this type of bad writing is what I hate the most and for some reason this type of lack of effort put into a cinematic work is the norm for shounen films. Terrible movie-only villains, really bad, generic and cliche usage of side characters and a laughable storyline that always ends the same way. So boring and bland that my head aches from thinking about it. The movie basically shined like Escanor with Cruel Sun with how bad it was. 3 out of 10 would be my rating due to Escanor getting two cool-looking scenes and Meliodas's short clash after he gets his sacred treasure sword 'Lostvayne' from Elizabeth.

While it's not a must-read or -watch, I've been following the series weekly for over four years now for my weekly dose of action. Last summer it has come to my attention that the series is actually reaching its conclusion soon, which was to be expected as the series seemingly has itself split into three main arcs between chapters 1 and 300. The manga has some inspirational moments to it when it comes to how I love an adventure shonen series to be written like - there's a time in the manga when Meliodas is in the pub and the text boxes from every random character fill up the screen. Those also contain foreshadowing about the famed King Arthur of Camelot. I think that the author Nakaba Suzuki did a really fine job setting that moment up - if the series was less battle-esque and more adventurous, it could be pretty fascinating to read, in my opinion. There was also a scene in the beginning of the story that's really beautifully presented. It's a scene in chapter 16 mentioning the enormous threat that is heading towards Britannia. You'll notice it as well immediately if you were to read the chapter. That scene is one of the most atmospheric ones I have ever seen from manga series with its beautiful art and aesthetics, as well as the differently presented dialogue that takes place during those panels.
I don't think I'll be reviewing other shounen like this on this mystery blog of mine, but right now this review exists because I want to say my respects to a dying series.

There's a lot to talk about the series, for sure, but about the movie, Nanatsu no Taizai: Prisoners of the Sky? Nothing. The movie was just a silly trashy money print that had no effort put into its storyboarding, animation, soundtrack or anything, really. Every single thing about it was awful.

Streets of Death #2 - Inger Johanne Vik series

"To write good history is the noblest work of man."
- John Dickson Carr

I digged a bit deeper as I wrote this post and learned that not only is she an attorney for graduating with a law degree and starting her own law business, but Anne Holt, the writer of these Inger Johanne Vik and Hanne Wilhelmsen books, both crime fiction series, has actually worked in Oslo PD (PD is short for Police Department) in the 90's, as a journalist and she also served as Minister of Justice. Anne Holt is thus pretty damn prolific when it comes to understanding the inner workings of the police and the justice system as a whole. Even though her books mostly showcase the police in more positive light than I believe they would be in reality (they do break laws but the cop characters feel like far too optimistic and good people). Anyway, now I finally understand why Anne Holt can describe anything to do with how the police works with such confidence in her books. Neat. 
Another thing I noticed on my /wikipedia/ search adventure about Anne Holt was that she lived in Lillestrøm and Tromsø according to my sources. Those places (and couple other places) in Norway are well described in the Inger Johanne Vik stories as well. 

This post will be talking about the second book in the Inger Johanne Vik crime novel series. The story is about an ex-profiler for FBI who gets caught up in murders in Norway as well as the superintendent cop Yngvar Stubo for KRIPOs. In the first blog post I talked about the book collection. The Streets of Death containing the first two books in the series. The first book review can be read here. This post will be the continuation and about the second book in the series.


Book 2 - What Never Happens (Det som aldri skjer, 2004, / Celebrity murders)

Four years have passed in the story since the first book. 

What Never Happens, which also goes by The Final Murder in English print, is the second Vik&Stubo story starring these two characters except this time in a much more intimate light. Inger Johanne Vik has given birth to a new child right before the story of What Never Happens starts. That baby's name is Ragnhild (sounds viking-ish for some reason). Ragnhild is a child who, much like most babies, poops and cries quite a lot every time they are focused on. This time Inger Johanne Vik's older daughter Kristiane gets less screentime as Ragnhild gets her fair share of scenes. There is more drama in this book than in the first one as the father of Ragnhild is the previous book's higher ranking police officer Yngvar Stubo himself. 

The story this time around is singular without sub-plots and it's about celebrities getting murdered. In Norway a famous talk show star Fiona Helle is found in her home, murdered. There is symbolism at play as Fiona Helle's tongue has been cleanly split in half and placed on top of a table for everyone to see. After Helle's death multiple other famous people meet their end one after another at the hands of a celebrity serial killer, and Norway is thus pushed under a wave of fear.

It all begins with a person [the killer] feeling confident at their art. We know from the beginning that the culprit is a female as well. While in style this story shares many similarities from how the culprit and the other characters and their thoughts are presented, the story of What Never Happens is definitely quite a bit different from What is Mine as it begins with Yngvar Stubo and his underling Sigmund already in the crime scene looking at Fiona Helle's body. However after getting no clues, Yngvar Stubo decides to ask her wife - the ex-profiler Inger Johanne Vik - some advice on what to do next. Inger Johanne is now off-work on maternity leave as her and Yngvar Stubo's child Ragnhild has recently born. Naturally due to the baby Inger Johanne tries to avoid the cases as much as she can but Yngvar talks her into it. Inger Johanne's profiling isn't that useful this time around either for the police but it is handled in a more interesting way for the reader when you reach the ending of this story and all things come together.

For the most part I felt that this story was about the same quality as the What is Mine, so not exactly something I like to read too much of, however there were no bad parts that would have felt too convenient unlike in the previous story. What Never Happens is a very solid story that still feels kind of lifeless and basic modern crime fiction however it does have a flair of professionalism in it. I could tell that Anne Holt really knows what she writes about. All the in-depth knowledge about life, police, writing etc. that she has gained throughout her life come together and shine in this book. There was only one noticeable problem I had with the story (aside from family drama that I didn't care for which took too many pages and which always went back to the plot in a sort of unnatural way) and it was about the first murder. In the end of the story they explain that the first murder is different from the rest but I just had to wonder then why was it pointed out that Fiona Helle's tongue was cut in a "clean and precise" manner fitting for a professional.

That aside, What Never Happens has two standout aspects about it. The first being the ending and the second being the main villain. The last 50 pages or so felt much more interesting than the previous book and this book together up until that point as the villain of this story appeared finally. While the culprit's existence and actions were hinted at throughout the story, it felt like this thing was truly progressing once the final parts of this story started and the culprit got active and got to the spotlight, quite literally in fact. Unlike in the first book where the villain was a letdown, in this one, while the villain appeared far too late into the story according to some complaints I've read, she had some real presence and affected the story in a very clever way. The ending of these celebrity murders had one of the better endings I've read so far in general and I wonder whether the culprit will become an overarching character, though I most likely won't be actively looking for the next installments in the series.

I can say that even thought the culprit's motivations at first felt kind of lazy, Anne Holt managed to make it much better by the end of it all as she went in-depth about who the villain was and how the story changed them so that the ending of the story itself also transformed along the way. I could understand the culprit and also be entertained by what type of character she was despite doing ruthless murders.

Last tidbits:   In the book's afterwords for What is Mine (book #1), Anne Holt explains that while she was in a restaurant during spring of year 2000 she had heard a story that had happened in 1938, a story about a man named Ingvald Hansen who was convicted to a lifetime in prison for raping a murdering a seven year old girl named Mary.
In the afterwords Holt says that from what she'd heard, it's more than likely that Hansen experienced what's called juridical murder, something that happens when people get sentenced despite clearly being innocent.
Juridical murders happen a lot in different ways and they affect anyone in various ways and are life-destroying events more often than not. It's not rare to lose a high position at work and never get work again for being sentenced for something, after all. A juridical murder will literally change your life to the worse with the snap of a finger.

In the afterwords Holt also explains that she investigated Ingvald Hansen more by reading a newspaper article written by Doctor of Jurisprudence Anders Bratholm (Tidsskrift for lov og rett, 2000, p. 443 ff, printed in 2000). Apparently the article goes over interesting facts about Hansen, one of them being that the man died couple of years after unexplainedly and suddenly getting released from prison. Hansen's case also mentions about a judge, Anna Louise Beer, who never forgot about the case and who knew that Hansen was innocent but couldn't at the time showcase the proof for it. In the 1990's Anna Louise Beer tried to track down the papers regarding Hansen's case, but they had all disappeared.

The story she had heard about Ingvald Hansen was what inspired Anne Holt to create Aksel Seier for What is Mine. It's interesting that the side character was what most likely kicked off the Inger Johanne Vik series. Seier's story resembles Hansen's in various ways and Judge Anna Louise Beer is thus the inspiration for What is Mine's Alvhild Sofienberg as well. Lastly, the 'perfect murder' used to kill the kidnapped victims in What is Mine was created by Anne Holt's brother, Even, who described a perfect murder method in his doctoral thesis.

I know this should be posted along with Streets of Death #1 blog post which was about What is Mine, but since it's a collection post I'll be adding this here because it shows how Anne Holt is rather knowledgeable when it comes to analyzing and prolifing real life stories. It's also OBVIOUS that the culprit in What Never Happens is based on Anne Holt herself so I thought this afterword for What is Mine fits with the ending of What Never Happens when trying to understand what interesting type of person this attorney-author Anne Holt truly is.


I'm glad I finally got these out and can move forward to hopefully better things. Right now I've set my goal to get to 50 posts on this blog for some reason so I'll try to post 3-4 more blog posts about something after this. I've been thinking of going through all the Detective Conan movies once more and rating them but I don't want to burn myself out (I already know which ones I prefer the most after all and don't want to ruin the fun of watching the next movie (23rd) about Makoto and Kaito Kid by potentially over exhausting myself from doing many rewatches! It seems that I should watch episodes instead, hmm...).

Streets of Death #1 - Inger Johanne Vik series

It's been a while since I posted about novels because these two that I'll be posting about now have been have what I've been reading for the longest, but yesterday there was such an incredibly nice weather (today too) during late evening that I just went to sit at a quiet park and read the rest while absorbing the wind and remaining rays of light from the falling sun while the skies were clear and blue. It was beautiful. It became slightly chillier as the hours went on (because of the strong puffs of wind every now and then) but I was almost shaking from the feeling of freshness. Ah, summer. I loved that... That was such a great way to get myself to finish reading these. I suggest anyone to just go sit out there during evening when it's not too hot or cold if you want to feel something special. Hell, maybe you'll get motivated to work on projects that you've had in the back burner for far too long.

Anne Holt is an attorney and a Norwegian crime fiction write known for her two fictional series, the first being a series of stories about an officer named Hanne Wilhelmsen who drives a pink Harley Davidson, and the second series Holt is known for is her Inger Johanne Vik series. Last year I managed to cop two-in-one for a measly 3.50 euros for the first two Inger Johanne Vik books, a story about a profiler that we'll go further in-depth of in this post. It's good to finally post about these, eh.

The two-in-one collection (about 835 pages) is translated into Streets of Death (Kuoleman Kadut, 2016, Finnish collection) and I've been holding back on finishing these books for far too long of a time now. I'm glad I finally mustered through them. They weren't bad or anything, but I'll explain my thoughts on my lack of motivation for finishing them here for sure.

I read the Finnish version of these stories.


Book 1 - What is Mine (Det som er mitt, 2001, / Minkä taakseen jättää in Fin)

What is Mine is the first story in the Vik&Stubo series. In the English version I believe Stubo's first name is Adam, but in the Finnish and the original versions it's Yngvar. Adam is kind of lame of a name for Yngvar Stubo in my honest opinion as well because of the type of character he is. What is Mine introduces us to the main character, an ex-profiler for FBI, Inger Johanne Vik. Inger Johanne is a woman in her 20's that lives for profiling (as a human, not a job). We also get to learn about her family; her ex-husband Isak, her daughter Kristiane who suffers from some sort of autism, her parents and the normal life problems she has with them.
We also get to meet the deuteragonist (in a sense), higher ranking police officer Yngvar Stubo from KRIPOs (Fin version of the department). Yngvar Stubo, if I remember right, lost her previous wife daughter in a really ridicilous way, where one fell from stairs and the stairs onto the other and both died. We also meet Yngvar Stubo's trusted subordinate, the large-built Sigmund.

The story of What is Mine is simple. It starts with Emilie, a young girl, leaving the school. While Emilie usually walks home with her friends, this time she did not as her friends left somewhere on a trip. Emilie was left alone to walk home that day. As she decides to go a shortcut alleyway, that she usually takes to get home, a man appears and asks her: "Are you Emilie?" -  "You are Emilie Selbu, right?" Emilie quickly passes by the man and then the last thing she remembers is that the man had put something over her mouth. That is where the cruel child kidnappings - and murders - in Norway begin as What is Mine starts. Yngvar Stubo and Sigmund along with everyone else from KRIPOs start a hunt to find a child killer. In this all as the police don't find anything quickly enough, Yngvar Stubo decides to ... somewhat stalk... Inger Johanne Vik, whom Stubo claims he knows as a profiler. Inger Johanne however tends to push Stubo away and correct him: she was only a profiler student under the best profiler teacher in America. Inger Johanne does not spend time profiling anything too much in this story, she's what you could call all hype no bite.

However, that's not all as the story has another side to it. There's a sub-plot that takes half of the book that Inger Johanne Vik is motivated in figuring out (probably because she's a mystery solver at heart). In the sub-plot that also starts at the beginning of the story, Inger Johanne Vik visits a nursing home where a woman named Alvhild Sofienberg (who smells like disgustingly strong onion for some reason) asks Inger Johanne to find more about a decades-old mystery that has been haunting and attracting Alvhild for ages. What Alvhild wants Inger Johanne to investigate is about a man named Aksel Seier. Aksel Seier was imprisoned for 8 years for raping and murdering a child, and Seier never pleaded guilty. Alvhild Sofienberg explains that she believes that Seier was not guilty because Seier's sentence ended and he was all of a sudden released in silence and Seier moved out of Norway.

Now, my thoughts about this is that What is Mine has some decent dialogue here and there and is not bad, but it is a mediocre story all things considered. The best part about it in my honest opinion are couple small dialogues Inger Johanne Vik has about what type of person the culprit could be that reflect back to the name of the book very well. I think that people who like to have the name of a book to be able to be deciphered from the story will like this first story for that reason. The pacing is fine for the most part but it doesn't have much life to it. The story feels kind of manufactured, unrealistic. Like stock-grade crime fiction. I don't really care much for the characters either. There's some romantic tension between Inger Johanne Vik and Yngvar Stubo but it's all done in inner dialogue type of way which Anne Holt likes to use a lot. Doesn't really work for me personally but I can understand if someone else would like inner dialog being used. The drama in the story is kind of boring. The wrap-up of the story is the worst thing about What is Mine. The killer was handled sadly in a bad way (the culprit felt unimportant, had lack of depth, etc.) and the ending is convenient as the plot threads come together in the most unrealistic ways possible (Anne Holt probably thought it'd make the stories feel more important if they were connected to the main plot element) but it was just too much and I can't suspend my disbelief for something that huge. The ending of the story didn't do any favours whatsoever for the story or the characters.

Anne Holt's writing style is interesting in how she forces the reader to remember the names of overarching and important characters by hammering their full name in the pages every time the characters are mentioned in the text. I didn't dislike that part of the books, it was interesting. The names of most of the characters are pretty memorable in the first place though.


Since this post turned out longer than what I intended it to be, the next book in this collection and the next half of this post will be talked about in the next blog post right after this one. I probably shouldn't split blog posts but I make too long ones too often so people lose interest. That's why I'll splitting the post out. Streets of Death collection has two different books in one anyway so it's the perfect time to try this split method out.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - The good, the bad and the average

Do you want to know what makes magic tricks so great to me? It's the mystery of the classic, hundreds of years old tricks pulled off in different ways on a small table with multiple people watching the trick happen at a close range. Making objects such as cards, coins and balls appear and disappear with the perfect use of sleight of hand and visual and verbal misdirection can intentionally create a story inside the audience's heads that actually did not ever even take place during the trick. The most impressive aspect of this is the fact that it's all tied to reality - if something impossible happens, I immediately think and watch it all through (not possible to do live!) again to see where the switcheroos could or could not have taken place, which is not as simple as it sounds as it requires basic knowledge on how magicians work. When it comes to these tricks, as a person I don't exactly want them to be something that is too grand that they just have to be unrealistically lazy and lame. Such as magnets, a rubik's cube that changes colors or other technological aspects of misdirection. You see, that takes away from the actual physical skill that the best magicians spent literally all of their lives to master...
So, what's left to think about? You have classic time-tested tricks that need to be pulled off perfectly to create the illusion, the magic. While thinking about what I had said earlier, what do you think happens when a group of amateurs tries to create legitimate time-proven magic, and the trick is pulled off perfectly? That means those amateur magicians cheated somehow. Let's use street magic for example. Those videos where you see a magician pull off a trick that completely fools the people on the streets. The thing is that more often than not, the magicians film dozens of videos with different, or sometimes even the same, audiences until they get the trick right. Then they post the successful 'street magic' clips on a video sharing site such as YouTube, and that's how the cheating is done.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012) by Spike Chunsoft is the second game in the famous murder mystery visual novel adventure game series.

 
The premise of the story is that a stuffed bunny named Usami who claims to be a teacher has apparently kidnapped a group of sixteen students and taken them to a tropical island with eternal summer. Usami tells the group of students that violence is prohibited and everyone should live there peacefully and enjoy the vacation. Then all of a sudden Monokuma, the villain from the first Danganronpa game, makes his appearance, beats Usami up, transforms her into 'the little sister of Monokuma' named Monomi and tells the 16 students that the killing school trip has started. Just like in the first game, Monokuma manipulates students to kill each other in order for them to have a chance of escaping. The rules are that the killer, the blackened, has to go through a trial. If the culprit gets caught, Monokuma kills them, however if the culprit does not get caught and they point the finger at a wrong person, then Monokuma kills everyone else but the culprit, and the culprit gets to escape the island and supposedly go back home.  You play as Hajime Hinata and adventure from island to island solving the cases of your murdered school mates and cracking the trials in order to get closer to the truth behind why the killing school trip has to happen, why are the students on a random island and who is the person controlling the scenes as Monokuma.

Danganronpa 2's greatest strength is that despite the fact that it copy/pastes a lot of ideas from the first game, like the amnesia plotpoint, and then just does something else with them to cheaply "surprise" the player, the  game definitely has some nice presentation that are not so easy to see through.
Murder mystery genre has a trope for a way of writing tension into every story. The trope is to write about people living peaceful lives, with happy-go-lucky soundtracks and a lot of bright colors in the background, and then after you get to know a bit of the cast characters, things go south very quickly as brutal murders happen and corpses go flying around the place. That is what Danganronpa 2 does with the beautiful Dangan/Jabberwock Island setting. The first Danganronpa game started with the characters already in the killing area with tension in the air, so there was not enough variety in the feel of the settings unlike in this game. However, Danganronpa 2 still ends up being too long and draggy for its own good, but atleast with more positives than before.

The story:

Hope's Peak Academy. An academy where you can get tp only by being scouted, and the only people able to attend the academy are those who are absolute best in the world, the "ultimate" at something that can bring hope to the world. Hajime Hinata, a person who's forgotten his "ultimate" trait, thinks that attending Hope's Peak Academy is like being a celebrity or a superhero. It's the place he admires, yet, now on this very day he has gotten the chance to attend the place. All of a sudden the world goes a bit blank for Hinata as he heads inside the school, towards a place where he "must" go, as if he was drawn towards a door in the academy. Then he suddenly appears in a classroom that has 16 desks and with 15 other students in there, and none of them remember ever getting into the classroom with a locked room.

Magical Miracle Girl * Usami, A.K.A. Usami, a white stuffed rabbit with wings and girly clothes claims to be the teacher and the leader of the "school trip" that the characters have got themselves into. When Usami wings her wand the school room rips itself open like a stage set, and reveals a blue sky, a beach, palms, the ocean... And then Usami claims that she prays for Hope to fill the student's hearts, and that on this "Dangan Island" everyone simply needs to spend peaceful days filled with hope; to collect Hope Fragments while on the island as if it's a game, that kind of life is now the students' school work. After all, Usami really hates violence and pain.

The fifteen other students are all ultimates in their fields ofcourse.
Nagito Komaeda, the "ultimate lucky student," is a boy with a rather neat anime design and he likes to talk cringeworthy teamwork and hope speeches. Nagito won the lottery to be chosen as a student in Hope's Peak Academy, similar to the MC of the first game.
Hiyoko Saionji, the "ultimate traditional dancer," very popular actor who looks and acts like a kid.
Akane Owari, the "ultimate gymnast." She has a rough personality and the body of an olympic tier athlete.
Mikan Tsumiki, the "ultimate nurse," she cries alot.
Ibuki Mioda, "ultimate musician," she has a rockstar personality.
Kazuichi Soda, the "ultimate mechanic," has a rough outlook but an average and nice personality.
Gundham Tanaka, "ultimate breeder," claims to be the person who will one day rule the world. He has hamsters under his scarf, an obsession with darkness and a bandaged arm.
Nekomaru Nidai, the "ultimate team manager" who has led people in multiple sports into nationals. He's a person with a strong build and a loud shout. He's a real morality booster.
Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, he's the "ultimate Yakuza." A heir to the Kuruyu clan; the largest criminal organization in the nation with over 30 000 members.
Mahiru Koizumi, "ultimate photographer."
Peko Pekoyama, the "ultimate swordsman." She's the type that pays a lot of attention to her surroundings.
Chiaki Nanami, the "ultimate gamer." She doesn't pay attention to her surroundings when she's playing games.
Teruteru Hanamura, the "ultimate cook," a weird looking guy with a lecherous attitude.
Sonia Neverminda, "ultimate princess." She's a foreign exchange student from a small European kingdom called Novoselic.
Byakuya Togami, the "ultimate affluent prodigy," an overweight guy next in line to become the leader of a massive financial conglomerate of his family; he's a guy with the exact same personality, history and name as the Byakuya from the first Danganronpa game.

On the Dangan Island you can move in a 2D way to the left or right to quickly get from place to place, and then click on a place to move there in order to investigate them and talk with the cast which is done in the more traditional Visual Novel manner. On the island there's a ranch; the Usami Corral, a hotel; Hotel Mirai, the Rocketpunch Market; a gigantic supermarket with no staff personnel, a beach ofcourse, an airport with airplanes that have had their engines completely removed; so they're just for show.
Then there's a bridge which leads to another island, the Central Island that contains the Jabberwock Park, a place with a mighty statue of a tiger, a large snake and a knight on a horse. The truth of this place, according to Byakuya, would be that the "Dangan Island" which they are on is actually the Jabberwock Island, a place with a central island surrounded by five different islands. In other words, the road to four more islands is still locked for some reason.

Usami even prepares the students a motive! Motive for everyone to get along, that is.

As everyone was ready to get into the fun which Usami promises, swimming at the beach that is, the sky turns dark and a rather familiar voice sounds through a screen near the beach telling the students to go to the Center Island. And then, Monokuma appears himself, the black/white machine teddybear from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc who loves Despair too much, Monokuma once again claims to be the true headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy. After a fight, Monokuma transforms Usami into Monomi whom he calls the "little sister" of Monokuma, and then he declares that the Killing School Trip will commence; want to leave the island? kill a friend. The rules are simple: the killer will be what is called Blackened, and the innocent ones are the Spotless. After a corpse has been found, there will be a period of time where you can investigate for the clues on whodunnit, then the school trial begins where you can figure out the truth behind the case, and then there will be the "Punishment Time" in which, if the player has figured out who the Blackened is, the True Culprit gets executed, however if they point a finger at an innocent, everyone else dies and the true culprit gets to leave the island.

The statues on the Center Island break apart and what Monokuma calls "Monobeasts" appears from the inside of them. They are basically transformers, massive robots. Monokuma uses the gatling rifle on one of them to take care of Monomi/Usami and the prologue ends.

In the personal e-Handbook that every student has, there are School Regulations added into there with multiple rules that the students have to follow:
-- Rules created by Usami
Rule 1: Extreme violence is prohibited on this island. Please live peaceful and relaxing lives with your fellow students.
Rule 2: Be considerate of each other and work together to obtain Hope Fragments.
Rule 3: Littering is not allowed. Let us coexist with this island's bountiful nature in "mutual prosperity".
Rule 4: The lead teacher cannot directly interfere with the students. An exception to this rule is made if any student violates a rule.
-- The rules get updated by Monokuma after the Prologue. The rules become the same as in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.
Rule 5: Once a murder takes place, a class trial will begin shortly thereafter. Participation is mandatory for all surviving students.
Rule 6: If the Blackened is exposed during the class trial, they alone will be executed.
Rule 7: If the blackened is not exposed, the remaining students will be executed.
Rule 8: As a reward, the surviving Blackened will be forgiven of their crime and allowed to leave the island.
Rule 9: The Body Discovery Announcement will play as soon as three of more people discover a body for the first time.
Rule 10: Destroying any property on this island without permission is expressly prohibited. This includes the surveillance cameras and monitors.
Rule 11: You are free to investigate this island at your own discretion. Your actions in this regard are not limited.
Rule 12: Additional school trip rules may be added at the headmaster's discretion.

Notes from me:
- Monocoins can be used to buy items and there are character levels in this game.
- Transformer monobeats, superficial differences? lol...
- The trials have been upgraded more interesting with the 1v1 Rebuttal Showdowns and common agreements.

The hotel grounds on the island contain a cottage for each of the students, places where they can spend their time during Nighttime, which starts at 10 p.m. every day along with a nighttime announcement from Monokuma.
In comparison to DR1, Danganronpa 2 is a game which pushes the player to spend more Free Time to getting know the other students.

Chapter 1. It gets revealed by Monokuma that Monomi stole the memories of each of the students, so they're not freshmen at Hope's Peak Academy at all. According to Monokuma that's a cliche'd twist so it won't drag onto the ending of the story. Monokuma can, however, return these stolen memories, if the students are willing to do a little work for them... That work being to kill each other. Also, there's a traitor amongst their midsts.
Byakuya had decided to make a party which will happen late at night after Monokuma's announcement, and everyone needs to attend. Magito, the ultimate lucky student, decides to make it so that whoever draws a stick with a red mark will have to go and clean up the place where Byakuya's party will be held, Magito himself is left with the red-marked stick.
During the party as the characters go in, they are bodychecked by Byakuya for all weapons, then inside the lights go out and Byakuya goes missing. At the end he's found murdered under a tablecloth with night goggles and a knife next to him.

The first investigation is somewhat interesting. There is definitely a deal more information to be handled in comparison to DR1's cases and it's hard to pinpoint just at a single culprit due to the better handling of information to create a more challenging trial. Although you do get a very clear idea on the potential culprits, the clues to figure out the only possible killer are sadly insufficient until the trial. There is sort of a neat misdirection to the trial and it really helps in fleshing out the characters in interesting ways but there are negatives to it as well. Anyway, I think it's definitely better than the cases in DR1, except maybe the second as the misdirections in both are similar. The Trial segment is pretty straightforward like in DR1 but it's made much more interesting with with the handling of the dialogue between the characters as well as the few new modes during the nonstop debates.
 I think the biggest problem with the case is the set-up to the crime; the misdirection makes sense in the story, but the true answer is pretty impossible to believe to have been planned to such lengths, and it does handle a deal of coincidences to get to the point of the murder; the game excuses it in the classic way as "the killer must have known beforehand" so that they could plan for the murder but the clues and logic behind how it plays out is really circumstantial and iffy - there is no way for the killer to have been able to do a certain act in time and there is no reason for them to plan it like this due to there being absolutely no logical reason to assume that the planned victim would do a certain act. It's basically a Forced Twist that is not really necessary to this case, but is necessary for the overarching story about Hope (in a similar way that the writers attempted to make Byakuya relevant in, and after, the second case of DR1 although his side plot never progressed after it). Also, the planning of the murder itself borders on impossible - I don't see how they could plan it and call it "logically sound," and time it perfectly even with knowledge.

So: The case is good but the ending is somewhat lackluster. It's supposed to be a twist which throws the player out of the loop, but it's not foreshadowed well enough to impress in comparison to the foreshadowing of what happened before it; it's kind of a jumbled mess that does not work as well as the first answer the player comes to. But everything before that ending segment was handled well and the writers deserve props for trying, and being able to make a somewhat interesting apartment case.

Chapter 2 starts with one of Monokuma's Monobeasts disappearing. They're the gatekeepers to the other islands from the Central Island, so that means a bridge to one new uninhabited island is open, showing us just how much more massive this game is in comparison to the Hope's Peak Academy setting in the first game.

The Second island contains Ancient Ruins which looks like the Hope's Peak Academy, a diner, a drugstore, a library and ofcourse a beach with a luxurious beach house.

Monokuma has prepared an Arcade Game named Twilight Syndrome Murder Case: Investigation Edition, which will serve as a motive for the next set of killings. Students can avoid playing it, but if someone were to play it in secret, they'd have the upper hand and gain a pre-emptive strike, as the others wouldn't know the motive. The arcade game tells the story about "Girl A" (the player), B, C, D and E in a class room talking about the evening news. A body was found in a school, and the girls were the ones who found it first but never reported about it to the police. One of the girls had taken photos of the body and another girl rips them apart. Then a girl is seen being haunted by someone, and she was then killed by a baseball bat, then, Game Over.

The second case has to do with imitating a past event which the Arcade Game adapts. The ones who play the game can do the murder.
Kazuichi heard about the girls going to the beach second island together so he decides to get Hinata with him. As Hinata leaves the diner full of swimsuit-wearing girls, a Body Discovery Announcement happens. in the beach house. A baseball bat on the ground next to the corpse of Mahiru. There are more similarities with the Arcade Game; Kazuichi found the body which made the BDA ring, which means that two other people had found her body before that.

There are two types of serial killers mentioned in this game, the schoolgirl Genocide Jack, familiar from the first Danganronpa game, and the masked unknown person Sparkling Justice who wears an anime girl mask.
A group named World Enders who ended the world also gets a mention. Monokuma claims three things; that the World Enders are behind the students' getting transported on the island, that the W.E.'s have put a traitor into their midst as the 16th student and that the W.E.'s are the Final Boss of the island.

The case once more ends rather quickly after figuring out that one person aside from Kazuichi has definitely been in the cottage. As you can tell from TBD announcement that there must have been three more people at the body before Kazuichi; the murderer and 2 more witnesses, the second trial starts without knowing who these could have been. It's different compared to DR1 in the sense that you get insufficient information in the investigation periods to be able to answer all the mysteries, however, it makes the trials more worthwhile.
The trial of the 2nd case deals with the game in order to figure out how it fits with the case and the two other people (out of the three who need to see the body for TBD announcement) who were at the beach house after the murder. The problem with this case is that there is a lot of stalling and the pacing is off; there's still a nice amount of information that forms the mystery, but the killer this time is really easy to guess during the investigation period if you pay attention and know enough of the tropes of the genre. The writers use misdirections to lead the player astray but the identity of the true killer is obvious despite that. My critique for this sound any familiar? This case is about equal in all ways to the fourth case in DR1. So definitely a step-down from the first case of this game. One thing that really bugs me in this case is the method that the killer used to escape the crime scene; it's not fleshed out enough, seriously. The case loses points because of how slow the post-trial part progresses. After figuring out the culprit, it drags on for a long time.

Chapter 3 begins with Monomi defeating yet another Monobeast which of course means access to a new, 3rd island.
The third island contains a  Hospital, a Music Venue, a Motel, a Movie Theater and an Electric Ave.

The third case begins with Monokuma making everyone watch a boring film, Hajime decides to pay 1.5 million to not watch it though, and then an Invitation Ticket to the Electric Ave - there's a music band stage is inside - being is sent to everyone. The invitation claims that they will hold a party for Fuyuhiko due to a certain thing happening to him at the end of chapter 2.
During the party Ibuki, the student rock star, holds a concert with loud music. Then Monomi appears and tells that Akane, the ultimate gymnast, is battling Monokuma on the first island. When Monokuma tries to shoot Akane with a bazooka, Nekomaru jumps in to take the blow but still doesn't die, and just like Fuyuhiko from chapter 2, he gets hospitalized. The next day, three of the students act weirdly and Monokuma claims that they have caught something called the Despair Disease which is contagious and this disease is their next motive for killing.
The "infected" get quarantined in the hospital on the 3rd island which is the setting for the third case. There are two cameras and two screens between the "infected" at the Hospital and the "outside group" at the Music Ave through which information is shared. Two deaths and an investigation dealing heavily with the time of death. The investigation is a bit artificial this time, you get to investigate what happened but not what truly happened as the focus on those get revealed in the court, well, in this case it's tiring to point at a person logically but you can rule people out to come to an answer.
I feel like the writers thought that the third case would be more 'grand' than what it ended up being. The base idea about the despair disease is badly explained - it is crucial in this case to explain it and it was NOT, for the sole purpose of the disease just being bad 'foreshadowing' for the final chapter. Due to the type of case and type of information sharing, the trial part of the chapter felt reeeally draggy and boring. The storyboarding is as bad in this one as in the cases in DR1 with only sliiiightly better pacing due to there being a lot more small details to go through, but it's still a proper case nevertheless despite all of these flaws.
*I will explain the major problem in more detail at the end of the post.

The third case was a bad case. There is no way for the killer to be able to hang the victim which wasn't explained, there are multiple clues that are never explored enough - bloody shoes but no shoeprint, unisex clothes, despair disease.. -  despite the fact that, if you think about it, they hint at other "truths" MUCH stronger than the circumstantial evidence they talked about with the game's killer. What I'm saying is that these possible theories were never countered and there is no way to come "just" to the killer they give the player, in fact the "real killer's" identity seems rushed and lackluster, almost as if they forgot what the story for the third case was about. I seriously believe they took some kind of summer break between the investigation and trial segments and they lost their notes for the case and put up the superficially most obvious person as the culprit despite there being actual evidence that point at other characters (again - the evidence does not have to point at the other characters as they are theories, but they are never explored for you to believe that your theories might have been wrong. You just get the supposed real killer reveal). I thought the case had potential to be O.K. but after giving it a thought I don't think it exactly makes sense. The writers did not go through all the possibilities this time; The answer changes depending on how much you think about the evidence, of course, as it should be, but the writers did not think them through themselves! Everything about the despair syndrome could be theorized in order to come to completely different conclusions and the writers did not even notice that loophole. The disease is only a plot device for the last chapter. Disappointing.

Fourth chapter and a fourth island, which is a giant amusement park. The fourth island contains a horror house, a mouse-themed Nezumi Castle, Rollercoaster and a Funhouse that you can get to by riding a train, only if every person on the island is there does the train move though. Nekomaru also got turned into a robot after tanking a missile in the earlier chapters. He has a sleep-mode button on the back which puts him to sleep, a radio-signal clock in his chest to always be able tell accurately what time is and he can shoot soda out of his eyes.
The fourth chapter has to do with learning small bits and pieces about the truth behind the World Ender organisation and learning the fact that Byakuya had been part of a killing game before; in the first Danganronpa game.

The case of the fourth chapter has to do with a Trick Building and Trick Rooms; trapped within closed rooms with no windows to see outside, it also has to do with traveling across two buildings with a certain trick on how you can do it, and manipulating the clock's time. Due to how the Funhouse's built-in tricks and the set-up of the case work, it's not hard to guess that the case is pretty impossible to completely deduce. Monokuma traps the remaining students in the Funhouse which contains a Strawberry and a Grape house. Monokuma tells them that they can leave only after the next killing has happened, and the motive for killing? starvation. No food while trapped in the Funhouse.

As there are no Monokuma announcements and windows, Hinata wakes up in the grape house and looks at the clock telling 6:55 AM. The group is to gather at grape tower at 7. As he opens the door, which instantly opened, the 'body' of metal of Nekomaru is found in pieces in the tower. Someone somehow was capable of destroying his steel body which was capable of tanking nukes and Fuyuhiko saw Nekomaru go downstairs the strawberry house at 5 am.
The tricks of this case contain a little bit of complexity to think about. A ringing clock at 5:30 AM, the 'ultimate weapon' gained from the dangerous dead-end room, the strawberry building's door locked from inside the grape tower and the strawberry building's door mechanism which leads to the tower was destroyed so it can't be opened. And the elevator which goes between the strawberry and the grape buildings was broken, the elevator left at the grape side meaning that whoever used it must have left at the grape side.
Although there are not that many strong clues, you can come to the right conclusion about the identity of the killer with process of elimination even if you miss the most important hint.
Puzzle houses, trick rooms etc. are popular in mystery series, I'm sure you can imagine something like a building which has some kind of a mechanic on the bottom and is able to move as a popular type of trick, there are also buildings with a well-explained layout for the reader to get a clear view on who can possibly be the suspect. The layout is well done here, but the fourth case's trick is sadly just elementary.

After pointing out the killer's identity the pacing of the trial segment of the fourth chapter slows down to a goddamn crawl. . .

Chapter 5 starts up with Monomi defeating the final Monobeast and opening up the road to the final island. The last island is a sci-fi type massive city and the island consists of a Vendor Street, a

Plushie Factory which creates human-sized Monakuma plushies and a Military base.
Nagito arrives and tells the remaining students that he has not figured out the identity of the Traitor (as there is a 'traitor' of Monomi among them) but will try to figure it out soon. He also tells them that Monokuma does not need to give a motive this time and that the next killing will most likely be the last one.
The students come up with a plan to capture Nagito in order to stop him from potentially killing someone.

The fifth chapter deals with bombs and adventure. Nagito had set up a timer to a number of bombs that will go off after two days. He claims that it's all for the sake of finding out the identity of the traitor who is among the remaining group of students. If the traitor won't come and speak up, the explosion will be so massive that it will destroy the whole Jabberwock Island.
After dealing with Nagito's "bomb" threat, he claims to be in a warehouse nearby the Factory, and when the squad goes to the warehouse where the door is blocked by something. After entering the door, the warehouse sets on fire.
After the sprinklers put the fire out, behind a curtain a body brutally tortured to death was visible.

The fifth case feels different from all the other cases in the game and frankly feels like a breath of fresh air. As a murder case it's not that much different but the way of presentation and lack of clues really help brush away the tiring and monotonous cases that there have been so far. The gears of the actual story, about the Central Island's Countdown and the truth behind what's going on have finally started moving. The case has the most important victim in the game.
Sadly the potential for what could have been done with the victim while he was alive had much more promise to than what the fifth case and trial offered. The truth behind the killer is quickly figured out and there's not that much going on in this case, it feels sort of bare-bones, however it does have a 'true answer' second act to it which is expected of the victim. I think the problem with the second act is the fact that the real culprit really should be the only culprit, if that makes sense. The game's and Monokuma's logic to present the trick as something ingenious is not really logic at all, but it does work out to make the game more interesting as it leads up to a reveal of the Traitor send to infiltrate the students by the Future Foundation.
All things considered it's very weird how the identity of the culprit is just about luck, and it's weird how the characters acted like the Traitor is some kind of liar despite the traitor's actions.

After waking up the next day post-trial, the game sort of... "breaks." Characters who have died appear to be talking, every single one of them. The students have found another message left by Nagito which contains incompehensible talk and the code to the Ruins on the second island.
As the Timer on the Countdown of Monokuma reaches zero, the world seems to collapse.

Chapter 0 is written as in-between for chapter 5'sand 6's transition. It contains Nagito, a person who claims to hate the Ultimate Despair, talking with another student who claims to have been manipulated by her. The student claims that they are loved by talent as well (Nagito is the Ultimate Lucky Student), and they claim that the world, and everyone in it, bores him/her. . . Chapter 0 is supposed to foreshadow twists in the final chapter but sadly it ends up feeling really forced.

Chapter 6, the final chapter
The remaining few students appear inside the Hope's Peak Academy. Monokuma claims that it is time for their graduation exam, and they have two choices: Leave the Jabberwock Island or Stay. And before they can make their choice they have to go investigate what's happening in the outer world as they wait for someone to arrive.
In the Hope's Peak Academy, it seems as if the hallways change, the screen seems like as if the game has been hacked and doors have mysterious borders on them almost as if they have been blocked by magic. The investigation of the final chapter contains about investigating for information on the Killing School Life from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, and everything related to it.
The final trial is the "grandest" out of any trial in the series so far and it has to deal with figuring out whether or not the remaining students want to 'graduate.' There are multiple shocking revelations mostly about Nagito, the Traitor, the world itself, the Future Foundation, the Killing School Life from DR1 and so on. It's all somewhat entertaining but there are some problems with cliches, reused ideas (Monokuma talks through the 4th wall about them as a joke sometimes) etc. and the dragged out and sometimes cringeworthy dialogue between the twists somewhat hinders the pacing of the final trial.
The last group of students to survive I feel is the most boring out of the bunch. The final big twist did not really shock me at all and lacked alot of build up, the identity of the villain was disappointing to say the least and the ending was about as lackluster as DR1's. These games really need longer epilogues due to how long the chapters are. They just end and the hopeful future is just open to guess.

Seriously I want you to think about the truth behind the world and the main character for a bit. It's just too much. It's not even that special, it's just too much. I stopped playing the game for 3 weeks after I reached the trial portion of the final chapter. It just could not keep my interest with the ridicilousness, and it was not even that well weaved into the story in the first place. No big complaints but there should have been more content if they decided to make things so over the top. And by the way, the final villain.. There should have been foreshadowing for some things about that person but there was not, in fact it was a pretty dumb move to make that person the villain of this game as there should have been a mention of certain actions they made in the First Dangangonpa game, but there was not.
There is a rather cheap element of shock factor in the final trial of the game which they try to play off as if it was being planned but the stuff that "foreshadows" to it pretty clearly got added afterwards into the game such as the flashback right before the final chapter. The third case also "foreshadows" the final chapter but it was written in so iffy ways (the motive of the culprit) that you can tell that they did not even have any idea about the last chapter at that point.

Let's go over my thoughts of each case in quick succession:

Case 1: Case is well written for an apartment case. Neat investigation and a decent cast of characters. True ending was disappointing due to lack of foreshadowing and it was clearly written just to throw the player off, simply too unnatural type of writing.
Case 2: Mediocre. It's as okay as the 4th case in DR1 but the potential from the first case makes it worse.
Case 3: Bad case. Could have been mediocre but the writers somehow forgot the plot that they were writing. You can tell that they were bored with the case.
Case 4: Average case. You can come to the right conclusion with the process of elimination if you're too tired to think of the clues. The trial segment slows down to a goddamn crawl.
Case 5: Interesting case due to being different than the rest in a sense. It's not that special in fact it's a bit bare-bones, but it brings much needed variety to this tiring series. Sadly the potential for what could have been done with the victim while he was alive had much more promise to than what the fifth case and trial offered. Well, atleast the trial has another side to it by revealing the Traitor.
Case 6: "Leave the island or stay." Meh. It's far too grand for its own good, and the identity of Monokuma was trash as well. It's not a case that interests me, it just reveals the "overarching story" behind what's going on with the Hope's Peak Academy survivors from the first game, and so on.. Too bad this game series does not have a "good" or well written overarching storyline, if you can even call it that.

Notes:
- There's an interesting wildcard in this game in the form of Nagito. He plays the same role as Byakuya in DR1 would have played had the game progressed its plot any. The russian roulette part of DR2 with Nagito is probably the best moment in the game when you consider what it lead up to.
- The Trial game mode's "Hangman's Gambit's" were made harder in this game by not adding any letters into them; the first game's HG's were insultingly simple, however, they take far, far too much time this time around. They should have been thrown in the trash can honestly as they serve no good purpose.
- There is a reveal about Byakuya in the fifth chapter but it seems almost as though it's an idea they just had to brush quickly aside because they couldn't manage to integrate it into the story.
- The fact that you get insufficient information to finish the cases in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair is kind of lackluster, however it also has positive sides to it due to the Trial segments of the story being far more worthwhile. In DR1 they frankly felt like a waste of time.
- Game had a pretty repetitive structure to it again for how long the chapters are. = A new chapter->New island->investigate->talk with others->case->investigation->trial->post-trial&re-do->repeat.

"drag-man's gambit"

- My biggest problems with the final chapter are that the entire premise to this "killing school life" the truth revealed at the end of DR1 which is also gone over again to reach the truth in the end of DR2 for a more grand scale finale, well, it was not that well written in the first place. I think it was stupid and does not really work to do anything positive to this series other than stop the monotonous cases that came before it and replace them with something completely different.
+Most of the cast of characters are better humanized in DR2 undoubtedly but they're still not impressive by any stretch of the imagination.
-The soundtrack for the game is again mediocre, perhaps even worse than in the first game, and it gets very repetitive listening to the same monotonous tunes chapter after chapter. Sure, there are a lot of tunes to listen to but it's still the same autotune junk as it was in the first game.

So, this is the last part of the post that I mentioned. The major problem with the better structured cases of Danganronpa, most prominent in Case 1,3,4,5 in DR1 and Case 2 and 3 in DR2, is the absolute lack of direction with how the characters figure out the truth in comparison to the player. The clues can instantly lead the player to the truth and know of the twists beforehand, even before the investigation starts (DR1 is very offensive in this aspect) and almost always before the trial starts. The game however plays it in a way that the writers think the characters follow the logical patterns of the player which feels very artificial; the "questions" brought up in the trial segments leave out specific parts of the story until the end 'twist,' and since you as a player, even if you don't like to think much about the cases, can figure out what is happening due to what the clues are supposed to present. The characters keep yapping on about what this particular clue and this and this and this particular clue could mean, when the player has it all figured out to the far future already; why..? Bad writing, that's why. The writers believe that this mechanical "proper clueing" that leads to answers is a way to create real fair-play mysteries - they believe that this type of writing style presents the genre, which is not true and they do not understand this. Continuing on with what I was talking about a bit earlier: Understanding what the clues are from a trope-standpoint makes a vast majority of the stories in these cases very easy to guess in how they will play out. And that's a problem because there's 16 students on the island and you are still able to immediately point at the right people just from understanding that " 'this is an obvious clue' smells all over what's happens in this segment of the chapter." Talking about artificial plotting, in a chapter there is always the build-up segment, the investigation segment and the trial segment (in DR2 the trials are better handled in the middle, but the beginning and the end of the trials feel awfully dragged out).