"THE META DESPAIR"

 I'm a bit agitated right now and will disclose to you what might be the reason sooner or later on this post. If you know me at all, you'll know I usually stick with one fandom and basically milk it for all its worth. Only when I run out of material do I begin allowing myself to partake in other activities of interest. That changed a bit lately.

Though I've not been gaming too often aside from the occasional Hopeless Masquerade match, there are plenty of things I began to watch or read. RWBY is one if you've noticed the last few posts and the latest episode has just been released. (Once there was a post about episode six here, but it was scrapped...had around three or four fairly long paragraphs too!) Not too much to talk about on that one as it releases weekly and often in very short increments, so while we could speculate all day about the possible foreshadowing in every nook and cranny of its frames, speculation could also come about misconceptions, which would bring about false expectations and then finally skewed sense of the creator's intentions. I could always talk about Blake's hesitation near the end of the episode or the common sight of people being thrown into the air, or the symbolism of the relics or the frustrations of the characters of Weiss and Ruby, but I shall hold for now. 

Another thing a friend recommended to me was Video Game High School, done by a Youtube celebrity I had vaguely heard of. I tend to trust this friend's sense of quality, since they literally hate pretty much everything, so anything they could like would most likely be pretty damn good. Unfortunately I didn't find myself especially enthralled with VGHS. A high-budget TV-length webseries it surely is, but in terms of the type of story they are trying to tell and with the characters they have, I've found it not really compelling. I suppose the biggest flaw is that it's too cheesy. This is coming from the person who enjoys ponies mind you, but its attempt at humour and the way it prolongs or progresses the story isn't really to my liking. I can pretty much pin down the webseries as "a high school drama with video games" and that is really all you can say about it. Maybe normally people are not interested in high school dramas due to its contents, so if one were all about video games and you truly enjoyed the references it made, it would be a great show to watch. But this is also coming from a person who enjoys various Nickelodeon sitcoms and those are as cheesy and shallow as they can be, but they tend to be filmed inside studios with much less budget. Basically they're a cheap laugh for me to enjoy once a week or so, but largely I never expect anything else from such shows. VGHS has this huge budget but yet the plot...is again, a high school drama. I guess that's the part that's underwhelming for me, the mere premise itself.

I could easily contrast that statement or argument with RWBY, which is trying to tell a very large story with a very extravagant universe with a tiny budget...while VGHS is depicting something small, despite it being a very elaborate school, with a large budget. Most of the money probably goes to the live-action video game moments anyway, and watching them is quite fun. So I guess the reason to watch VGHS if you don't enjoy story/characters is the same reason you'd watch RWBY if you don't enjoy the story/characters, for the flashy action shots! Small or large budget aside, if you have good choreography or directing these moments will always be entertaining and ultimately worth the watch. 

But the final thing isn't a show at all. Oh no, unless the horribly rushed bad anime adaptation counts, it's a visual novel series akin to Phoenix Wright except with murder children. And because there are murder children the series is way darker and potentially more heart-breaking, what with various characters you become attached to dropping like flies. I think the very essence of how Dangan Ronpa is, particularly to foreigners who do not have the privilege of owning the game (as it has not been localized until recently) and understanding its native language, is the very thing that instils despair. Despair...despair is what I feel when I accidentally run into spoilers, one after another, most of them about a character I like accidentally exposed to my unyielding eyes! Even when I've learned after a few spoilers that delving into the fandom is obviously just asking to be spoiled, the spoilers keep coming in all other parts of the internet due to the ever-growing popularity of the series and the large amount of trolls that exist on the internet. Truly, I cannot find solace in this fandom, not at all!

I'd like nothing more to pour my feelings about Dangan Ronpa on this blog, but after experiencing the first game and being spoiled so very severely of the second, of its translation that is not yet complete, I cannot in any sense of sanity speak about any part of this series on here. I cannot in my right mind spoil a single thing, even if it were placed under a cut in the small chance that those who read this decide to check out the game itself, and learn all the twists and carnage that exists. I do not want to be like those absolute assholes, trolling or not, that spoil blissfully aware of their consequences to others of a story so powerful and shocking that it must be experienced vanilla for the full front of it. I can only say one line and hope it does not give you an inch of idea what the series is about.

Chihiro Fujisaki is my hero.