I'm listening to music while making breakfast and The Hand by Annabelle Dinda came on and I can't help but feel like the song fits Ultra Despair Girls so unfortunately well. The other pieces of the Danganronpa franchise do perfectly well even if they have unfortunately poorly written or just downright uncomfortable bits in it: Teruteru's drugging and attempted assault on Hajime, Hifumi canonically being a lolicon, etc etc. And none of this is pointed out by the games to be bad, it's more seen as a silly quirk these characters have.
But people claim that UDG is the worst offender of inappropriate content. Haiji is canonically a pedophile, but the game goes out of it's way to condemn him for this and makes it very clear that his treatment of young girls- especially Monaca herself- is abhorrent; it's the whole message of the entire game, even. But I see so many people online claim that UDG is weird or bad because it has a pedophile in the game to begin with, regardless of the fact that he's meant to be a villain.
The second thing I see people hate on UDG for is the supposed fan service, but once again there are much worse offenders of this in other games: The girls' bath scene in THH, Mikan's multiple trips and blunders throughout SDR2, Miu's "maintenance" on K1B0 in V3. Yet despite all of this, the fanservice is a primary response from DR fans when asked why they dislike UDG so much.
Not to mention that the fanservice people talk about hardly feels like fanservice to me. Child abuse is at the core of UDG's message and story, and in Kotoko's case specifically with CSA. Most of the alleged fanservice happens in Kotoko's chapter, and to me it feels more like there's more to those uncomfortable scenes than "fanservice."
The way the scenes are set up really feels like it's supposed to make the viewer uncomfortable. Not to mention, but as someone in a system who also experienced CSA, it all feels like a grotesquely accurate representation as to how sexual assault makes a young child feel.
Kotoko building a machine to fondle and grope adults is very indicative to me of how she wants to traumatize them back after they traumatized her, to put grown-ups through what she had to endure herself as a form of revenge against her abusers. Obviously we know that Komaru isn't one of her abusers, but Kotoko was manipulated by Monaca into thinking that all adults are the same and thus deserving of that same revenge and punishment. It's meant to make the player uncomfortable because they're forced to watch the same trauma Kotoko went through, just put onto Komaru.
The scene of Toko/Syo cutting Kotoko's clothes off has always felt uncomfortable to be in the way that it's forcing Kotoko to relive some of her own trauma and putting you, the viewer/player, in the seat of her abusers and forcing you to reconcile with the fact that it's something she's gone through while so horribly young.
I will admit that the scene of Toko/Syo cutting off Komaru's clothes doesn't really have any deeper meaning than fanservice, but given that Komaru is at minimum 18 and at maximum 19 in UDG it's much more forgivable than elementary school-aged Kotoko.
I definitely won't defend the execution of these concepts and absolutely agree that while I appreciate the attempt at representation of something that isn't talked about nearly as much as it should be, they also could have done much better in trying to actually put those messages into play.
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that people rag on USG all the time for things that the other DR games do so much worse and with worse intention. People say they don't like that Haiji is a pedophile, but then I saw a whole post recently defending Hifumiand saying that people "write him off as a pervert without looking farther" but then guess what; looking farther into his character reveals that his entire Ultimate Talent revolves around drawing suggestive and possibly pornographic material of a middle schooler. People complain about the fanservice but then the image of a towel vacuum sealed to show Kirigiri's entire asscheeks is in the first game of the franchise.
But I think I know what the real problem is. UDG is the only game with female protagonists all the way through the game (RIP Kaede you could have been so good), and as I've previously discussed on this blog before the Danganronpa fandom has a GLARING misogyny issue; as do most fandoms unfortunately.
I've even seen MULTIPLE people claim that the only good part of UDG was seeing Servant and Izuru when the screentime of those characters COMBINED adds up to MAYBE 5 minutes. MAYBE.
I've seen people say that Komaru is an annoying protagonist because she's over emtoional or doesn't make the right decisions at times which 1) these are both textbook arguments that misogynists use to dodge the fact that they Just Don't Like female characters and 2) She's a FRESHLY young adult who has been locked up and imprisoned in an isolated apartment for about 2 years prior to being thrust into the midst of a literal apocalypse. I think she's allowed to be a little emotional and to make decisions in a panic that aren't optimal.
I've seen people say that Kotoko's trauma wasn't as bad as the other Warriors of Hope- which is both incredibly horrible to say after hearing that a ~10 year old girl was forced into prostitution by her own mother and raped for moneybut also incredibly horrible to even compare the Warriors of Hopes' traumas in the first place. Each and every single one of those kids faced unfathomable abuse at the hands of the adults that were supposed to protect them and to try and pin any one of them as having "more trauma" than the others completely disrespects and at least partially invalidates the trauma that the other children went through.
Obviously I'm not saying that all hate for Ultra Despair Girls is based in misogyny. People are allowed to dislike things for any multitude of reasons, including no reason! I dislike a lot of shit for no good reason and/or purely bc of vibes but I'm not going around making up reasons to justify my dislike and pretending I'm morally superior for not liking a piece of media.
My problem is with the hypocrisy and the misogyny. Do I think UDG is the best game in the entire franchise? No, I'm extremely biased and absolutely adore SDR2. But is it as bad as so many people say it is? I don't think so.
And this is how I loop it all back to The Hand.
Ultra Despair Girls is by far the Most hated installment of the Danganronpa storyline. Even with V3's dogshit ending, people have collectively agreed to see it as an in-universe AU and have learned to love it. But when it comes to UDG, which is a pretty good piece of the main storyline involving Toko, Syo, Byakuya, and Makoto's own family as well as giving more insight to Junko's insidious actions before the first killing game and just how far her influence had spread.
And yet, the fandom by and large either actively hates or dismisses the game. There are still fans of UDG, myself included, but they're so far and few between. And excuses people come up with the justify this hatred is hypocritical, it's the same things they either enjoy or are willing to forgive in the other games.
In The Hand, Annabelle Dinda talls about how she, as a woman and/or feminine aligned person (I don't know her personal so I can only assume) sings about how she and other women are hated, ridiculed, and belittled for the same things that men are praised for. When a man talks, it's a movie and something to listen to and indulge in; but when she speaks, it's just a loud noise that should be quited or silenced entirely. The lyrics "hoping I seem underwhelmed" pertain to how when women and feminine aligned people show emotion that it's weaponized against us to make us seem annoying, volatile, dramatic, or unstable.
This is seen in the case of UDG with both Kotoko and Komaru herself. Because Komaru cries and is upset at the overwhelming despair around her, she's seen as annoying and dramatic. Because Kotoko isn't the perfect victim, her trauma responses and how she attempts to cope with what happened to her is misconstrued as fanservice and she herself is villainizsd for it by the fandom in addition to having her abuse and trauma not taken as seriously as the just as valid and horrific traumas of her male peers; namely Nagisa and Masaru.
People will push aside the two main characters of the game itself in favor of Servant and Izuru, who barely show up in the game as cameos at best because the toxic yaoi is simply "more interesting" than multiple hours of gameplay, relevant plot, and character development from the female protagonists. Even disregarding those two, sometimes people will even overshadow Komaru, Toko, and Syo in favor of talking about how horrible Haiji is; which is fair considering he's despicable, but it again contributes to how the two female leads are pushed to the back burner to focus on a man- even if that focus is negative.
People would rather spend their energy hating a male villain than showing love for the female characters he hurts and exploits.
Again, no one has to like UDG after this and people are allowed to dislike it. I just see so much hate on it and wanted to come to its defense as a piece of media that I enjoy. Kotoko's story and the fact that she's not a perfect victim makes me feel so seen because I'm not a perfect victim either.
When I was younger, I wanted to traumatize my abusers back as well. I would go to bed at night fantasizing about hurting or killing them, or putting them in similar situations as they put me through. Obviously I don't anymore and I've healed a lot since then, but as an 11 year old victim it was really all I could do in such a helpless situation. Additionally, I became hypersexual because of my abuse instead of the typical image of a hyposexual victim. And I know so many other people who relate to Kotoko in very similar ways, and we hardly see ourselves represented.
I know that people disliking UDG as a game isn't a personal attack on my trauma, that's not what I'm trying to see. I'm just explaining why it means so much and why I wanted to make this post in the first place. You're free to form your own opinions about the game, but don't be a hypocrite about it and make sure to think a bit more about *why* you dislike it if you do.
