[I felt as if reviving Kyoko was a bit much. Kind of expected a fight scene between the Despairs and the Future Foundation somewhere but apparently they were all in the VR even before the Future Arc had happened. Junko Enoshima the Second also disappointed me a lot, it broke cliche but... it kind of broke something else? Ahahah.]

With the Hope Arc.

As you can see, there's a lot of flaws with the ending. The fandom went crazy and it's a shitstorm, people either think it's super bad or super good. And I can understand where the both comes from, and honestly I lean more towards the good, but it's not perfect, so to say.

The elephant in the room is that Kirigiri mysteriously is back alive and kicking. This is the biggest problem in the ending. As Dagon said, this is a cop-out. Every since the series started, everyone who died, died. None came back to live. It's like they betrayed us. But honestly, it's a happy ending. I can't say much, after what just transpired, this is a good feeling to have.

The second problem is with the 77th class, everyone is alright. So much shitstorm over this, but I don't know why. The moment I saw Hajime was Izuru I knew it was coming. And it's, once again, a happy ending. So much joy seeing Fuyuhiko with Peko, Mioda being the rascal she is, Mikan being moe as fuck. It's good seeing all these characters back again.

The next is the state of the Future Foundation. Every major character deaths in the series had meaning, and it usually results in the survivors finding determination and (kek) hope to step on to a new world. Not here, nope. Every Future Foundation member that died here died in vain (except Kizakura, Gay-boxer and despair!Teacher). They're just... dead. The survivors never mentioned them again after the Killings ended. To be honest this is my biggest thing that I dislike, rather than Kirigiri living. Their deaths was wasted.

New characters that enters and then exits right after. You know, the Special Squad. I guess they were there to showcase the badassery of the 77th class eh?

This is all for my sorta-rant. I'm ending this with

Kirigiri can come back but Nanami can't? cmon man she died twice. ffs

Also @Error she never was meant to be Junko the 2nd. Naegi's sister, Komaru was the one who's supposed to be the 2nd coming of Junko.

Even tho Naegi's little sister was supposed to be the 2nd at the end cutscene it was mentioned that Komaeda would make Monoka the actual 2nd instead of Naegi's sis. Honestly I wasn't that disappointed with how they handled Monoka, she's still crazy af which I like. She actually went to space like what she did which I thought was pretty funny lol.

Despair Arc felt like instead of being a series that could've and should've stand alone was instead used as the answer key for the questions in future arc. There were a lot of things that were just disappoint in the way they handled it.
1. The focus wasn't the despair children, when it should've been. It's supposed to tell how they fell into despair.
2. Related to point one, how they fell to despair was a major cop out. We were made to believe Junko was an incredibly amazing and smart individual that could manipulate anything and everything to however she wants so we believed that she manipulated each of the 77th class one by one(or by clusters, like Fuyuhiko and kendo girl falling to despair at the same time, Mikan, dancing girl, and photo girl would fall into despair at the same time, etc.)
I guess those two are actually my main gripes with despair arc. Maybe i just expected too much out of it because of how good the story is for the sequels that I expected this to have amazing story too. I really liked the first two episodes of despair tho. It was nice seeing them all happy pre-DR 2

So a big thing about the Danganronpa series as a whole and what differentiates it from everything else is that it’s excessively over the top. The games never trick you into thinking that it won’t be: the setting from the start is already pretty ridiculous. So once you get past that, the over-the-top nature becomes harder to criticize as the show goes on, and it’s the same kind of perspective you’re expected to have as you’re going into the anime. Because of that, it seems stupid to really criticize DR3 in that regard since that’s partially what defined DR from the start. I’ll be pointing out in places where I think they went too far, but for the most part, I’ll mostly be ignoring that aspect of the show. If you didn’t like it already, then you wouldn’t have made it past the first two games.

What’s the rundown on DR3? Let me start from the beginning since that’s actually where most of the problems lie. Half of the appeal of DR are the characters. There’s a lot of care and detail that goes into each of them, and it’s what makes them endearing. Future arc had none of that. Maybe it seems unfair to criticize the Future arc for this since the majority of the DR1 cast was dead anyway, but I found it really hard to care about most of the Future cast since the anime wasn’t really able to flesh out any of these characters in the same way the games did. Some of them were fleshed out, but because it was so short term, a lot of these developments were cut short and really flimsy and cheesy ways (candy girl and blacksmith guy was one of them). It made it harder to take the Future arc seriously in any way, shape, or form. It made it especially hard to take it seriously when you realize why the fuck this whole thing happened in the first place. Tenga started this killing game just so he could use this brainwashing video? How fucking roundabout is that? It’s so painfully pointless and it kind of undermines the entire premise of the Future arc in general. It doesn’t help that Togami and Yasuhiro were completely absent for the majority of the show (Fukawa I don’t mind as much since she and Komaru practically had their own game, and while I would’ve preferred that they were more relevant in the story, I can’t complain that much since they were used to sort of wrap up the loose ends of Another Episode). Basically, the whole Future arc was kind of pointless and was mostly a way to artificially create conflict and extend the length of the conclusion of the series.

Despair arc was for many reasons better than the Future arc, but I can’t help but feel that it many of its core issues were mostly due to its reliance on it to begin with. For starters, the first two episodes were great. They perfectly encapsulated what the Despair arc should’ve been about, which were the characters. It established Chiaki as the centerpiece of the 77th class, which was great foreshadowing for the eventual finale (as obvious as it was). This is sort of where the Despair arc goes to shit, and the reason for this is that it starts to primarily focus on the Future arc characters which we once again don’t give a shit about. A lot of miscellaneous stupid shit happens in these episodes too. The most egregious part is where Sakakura kicks the shit out of Hinata and gives this long lecture to him, which is implied to be the cause of Hinata’s fall into despair. Basically, the whole reason why this entire shit goes down is because of Sakakura. Could’ve reported Junko, but didn’t. Could’ve not beat Hinata half to death, but didn’t. There’s a lot of things I could complain about, but I think I mostly covered that in the previous paragraph. It doesn’t start getting back into track until around episode 9 or 10ish, and by then it’s already a bit too late. Giving any of these characters more development with each other would’ve supported the conclusion and overall point of the Despair arc. Well, with that being said, I thought the Despair arc had an overall great ending to it, with Chiaki’s death actually being executed better than I expected. I can’t say that the whole brainwashing thing for all the other students was actually the most elegant way to do it, but it’s not a huge thing that bothered me. (If I were to nitpick more about the despair arc, I’m kind of disappointed that Hinata never actually had much contact with the original class of 77th. I suppose if we’re to assume that everyone retained their memories from DR2, this would make more sense. If not, it’s kind of weird that the class of 77 seems to warm him up as if he’s one of their own. Also that it was pretty stupid that the stock characters had blue faces, but what can you do). Despair arc was good, but it was hammered down by the Future arc, and it lacked a lot of details here and there that could’ve made the arc even better. Right now, it stands as just slightly above acceptable.

The Hope arc (or really the ending as a whole) deserves its own paragraph. There seems to be people who are split 50/50 with people thinking it was either horrible or fantastic. To be honest, I’m leaning more towards the fantastic side. (Let me just get this out of the way though, reviving Kirigiri was dumb. I thought it was nearly as dumb considering that Kirigiri was killed off in such a nonchalant way despite being given a pivotal role in the original DR1 game. I dunno, the future arc was stupid). In my opinion, the hope arc was in fact solid enough that it may have justified the atrociousness that was the Future arc. For starters, the actual premise of the Hope arc was actually well-thought out. If you ignore the moronic set-up, Hope arc poses a scenario questioning the morality of brainwashing, whether or not it’s for the greater good. Now I don’t want to sound generous and praise it for being brilliant or anything (because it’s not), but it’s much easier to take a story seriously when you’re presented with a legitimate moral ambiguity problem. The addendum connecting Mitarai back to the original class of 77 was also great as it meshed perfectly with his character development. In fact, Mitarai’s development as a character might actually justify the entire DR3 series since the ending was done so well. There’s the common criticism that the 77th class shouldn’t have all lived after the aftermath of DR2, but this was always a realistic possibility mentioned in its ending. None of the classmates were explicitly dead, so it was never out of the realm of possibility that all of them could have lived. It’s bittersweet in a way and it doesn’t seem forced at all. What would’ve been forced is reviving the entire 78th class (thank god they didn’t do that). Perhaps if you were more connected to the class of 78, then you probably thought you got dicked in this ending and I can’t really blame you. The hope arc in the end mainly focused on the despair arc characters and the class of 78 barely got any screen time. In the end, I don’t think it was a huge loss. I personally liked the dynamic of the 77th class better, not to mention I’d assume far more people like the cast of DR2 than those of DR1. Finally, the Hope arc actually gave a complete conclusion to the series. There are a few loose ends here and there, but for the most part it gave proper closure to the DR1 and DR2 arc. It didn’t seem too wishy washy, but it also didn’t overextend itself and force itself longer than it needed to be. All in all, the Hope arc was a great conclusion to the series as a whole. Maybe the series deserved better in the end, but the Hope arc is just about good enough.

As some extra notes: the DR1 OP was really corny and cheesy. Would rather not sit through that again. The Despair arc OP on the other hand, oh man. It was fucking amazing. The colors, symbolism, the different versions, the actual song, all of it was fantastic. I normally don’t sit and watch OPs all the way through, but I sat through every single fucking one for the Despair arc.
The animation was pretty garbage. It was especially noticeable in the Future arc since it was far more action-orientated.

The actual question of DR3 isn’t whether or not it’s good, but whether or not it’s actually worth it to watch after DR1 and DR2. The answer is a definite yes. If you had the patience to go through both games, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t watch DR3. Yes there are a lot of terrible, inexcusable things about the show, but there’s enough going for it that it’s almost necessary to watch for complete closure for the series.

To be perfectly honest though, what I got the most out of this series was a desire to play another DR game. Thankfully, a new one is coming out in January. I don’t think an English copy is too far away from us. I’m willing to bet we’ll get it by Summer.