The Danganronpa games have a very distinct formula: a group of people, each with a specialised talent, find themselves trapped in an unfamiliar location together. They're told that the only way to escape is to kill one of their fellow captives and get away with it; if they succeed, the murderer will go free, but everyone else will be executed. Every chapter is its own little murder mystery: someone turns up dead, and the survivors have to escape execution by working out which of their friends is responsible.
It's a great formula! The murder mysteries are fun, and the fact that you get to know all the potential victims and killers in advance really heightens the emotional impact of the cases. If a beloved character is killed or, worse, turns out to be the murderer, it's genuinely devastating, both to the characters solving the mystery and to you as the player.
Because the Danganronpa formula is so distinctive, some ambitious people have taken it upon themselves to create Danganronpa-style stories of their own: fan Danganronpas, or Fanganronpas. And then I got into these fan projects, and here we are now!
I didn't originally plan to check out any Fanganronpa projects; I love the original games, but I wasn't sure fan replicas would scratch the same itch. But I became vaguely aware of one Fanganronpa in particular, the YouTube series Danganronpa: Despair Time, because I follow someone on Tumblr who's very passionate about Ace, a character from it. I was a little surprised to learn via his blog that this fanmade character had won a Danganronpa character poll on Tumblr, beating multiple well-liked canonical Danganronpa characters; was this fan project really that popular?
When the fanfiction site AO3 created a tag for Danganronpa: Despair Time fanfiction in mid-2025, meaning Despair Time fics were no longer folded into the general Danganronpa tag, I messaged the aforementioned Ace enthusiast to let him know. I was very surprised to learn, in the process, that Despair Time had over 1,400 works on AO3. Apparently people really liked this thing! Given my love of Danganronpa, and the fact that at the time I thought we'd probably never see another official Danganronpa release, maybe I should at least give it a try.
Anyway, that's how I ended up watching Danganronpa: Despair Time, and I promptly went insane about it. It had its rough edges here and there, but it absolutely nailed Danganronpa's tone and emotion, it had a lot of fun plot developments and twists, and I really enjoyed the characters. One character in particular is up there with my absolute favourites from the official Danganronpa games.
The other Fanganronpas I've investigated since then are Project: Eden's Garden and Danganronpa Another, the latter of which I'm still working through. I really enjoyed Eden's Garden; I don't think it gets the tone as well as Despair Time, but it's a stunningly polished achievement - it honestly looks better than the official Danganronpa games do - and I'm looking forward to seeing where it's going. I'm struggling more with Danganronpa Another, largely because of translation issues, but I'm finding it interesting as a historical curiosity - it's an early Fanganronpa project that had a big impact on the overall Fanganronpa scene - and I'm really enjoying Kinjo as a character.
As a side note, the large Despair Time AO3 work numbers that originally provoked my curiosity are actually a little misleading! It turns out there are four specific incredibly prolific authors who have, between them, written approximately 750 works for Danganronpa: Despair Time as of October 2025; the most prolific of the four has personally written over three hundred Despair Time fics. I have to admire the dedication that leads people to write literally hundreds of fics for a niche fan project; I've written a few myself, but I've got a long way to go before I can reach that level!