Execution (no pun intended) was absolutely everything to this chapter - in how it pulled almost everything that the narrative had already teased, demonstrating the absolute despair that the mastermind would completely embody, and conversely, expressing the fundamental message of hope in the face of adversity.
I actually thought that the beginning of the trial was a bit silly. To presume 'everyone is against me and is working together' off one photo that happens not to include you is... uh, I didn't quite follow. I mean, sure, Yasuhiro, I could totally get. You literally had to convince him Kyoko wasn't a ghost, so it's not like that sort of conclusion-jumping is beyond him, and even Aoi, I could see. She's kind-hearted and well-intentioned, but not quite the brightest bulb in the shed. It just got a bit silly when Byakuya was reaching those same conclusions. Like, dude, you're smarter than that. He probably figured it out sooner than the other two did, but really?
Still, that was little more than a speed-bump, because every answer to the mystery of Mukuro Ikusaba was just another... question. Like, jeez. It was weird for the picture to get clearer yet my understanding of the situation to pretty much dissolve. I'd already thought something was up, because of the whole situation with nine lights and ten murders (I'd counted myself, because I thought that the number of lights were more than the number of deaths, haha), and actually had a line of thought more or less the same as Toko's - that the mastermind (who I imagined was Mukuro at this time) had taken a random body and posed her own death since Kyoko wound up discovering her presence in the killing game.
And then I was really wrong. Somehow, things didn't crystallize quite until the game asked me who's corpse it would have been. If it had to be Mukuro who died, then... well, I put two and two together and put my finger on Junko. And then things spiraled out of control from them. Mukuro was always Junko but never was. MY MIND WAS BLOWN OUT THE WINDOW. Everything else came together from there: if Mukuro needed to die twice, if Mukuro had been posing as Junko, and if Mukuro had to die, there was really only one person who would benefit from it: Junko herself. And finally things began to click.
And then as soon as victory seems close at hand, the smoke clears and there stands Junko, hands on her hips and making a too-good-to-be-true offer (that I naturally refused) in as absurdly theatrical a voice as she could apparently manage. I cannot understate my confusion. Something that would only be compounded as she proceeded to pick up and throw away new identities like nothing. In the span of ten minutes, she went from a queen, to the bored runway model that she looked, to a foul-mouthed rocker, to a librarian, to... well, it was fucked up. It was weird trying to reconcile the part of me that found it absolutely hysterical and... kind of fucked up.
And this was just the beginning. Then the very final class trial started.
When the truth came out on the outside world, I'll admit that it didn't particularly surprise me by itself - it was already made out to be the most 'terrible event in human history' beforehand, and the devastation was plainly obvious in those places that had been left entirely as is. And it didn't take too much to understand that the videos of the 'first motives' had something to do with Still, as I mentioned, execution was what was really important here: the real discovery wasn't that the world had ended, not even, necessarily, the how - of which we only got a few vague hints and a couple of pictures, but the why. And that was absolute, total despair. It was all to prove a really twisted point.
Although I'm gonna run off on a tangent and say that I found Junko's rationale for increasing the, uh, potential despair rang a bit hollow for me. She talks a big game about how they were so desperate to lock themselves into the school and started killing each other to get out, but the irony of that doesn't really work when she entirely admitted to removing the context to make that ironic in the first place. For the whole plan to work she made a bunch of friends into a bunch of strangers, but I feel like she sort of made it the same difference as though it were a bunch of strangers. She invented reasons for everyone to try killing each other, which Makoto actually mentions.
But then that last Nonstop Discussion happened and everything just clicked. It was absolutely amazing. It took me a few knocks to figure out what I wanted - if there was a truth bullet in the evidence that could prove the value of hope, then I understood. And somehow it single-handedly justified the insanity of literally shooting statements at people beyond the central curiosity of the idea and possibly the greatest execution of the whole idea of harnessing the power of hope that there ever was or probably will be. Watching everyone find their resolve and push back against the despair that Junko was hoping to scare out of everyone was satisfaction to an untold degree.
I actually think that despite all my grievances with Byakuya, who - let's face it - was sort of a prick, that his moment after shooting him with THE POWER OF HOPE was perhaps my favourite out of all of them. Especially after all that Junko tried to do to really hammer in the fall of the Togami family. The tone of it was just great. Going 'as if', basically on the whole idea of despair, and moreover declaring how the Togami family wasn't dead as long as he was around, and all he would have to do was 'keep his promise' - that he would kill the mastermind, no matter what. God, I loved that. Huge kudos to Feep, on that point, for such great delivery.
And then everyone but Kyoko got some sense knocked into her, too, and the reprise of the opening happened and HOLY FUCK THAT WAS SO GOOD. I truly didn't expect anything like that at all, but it was the perfect capstone to the brilliance of Byakuya's moment - the music swelling before a robotic voice announces DANGAN RONPA and the rest of the music kicks in. I had the stupidest grin plastered on my face watching everyone speak out against despair, before finally shooting up Kyoko's statement and then:
"I think you came here for a different reason entirely... you came here to bring down the Ultimate Despair. You came here to confront despair without ever giving up. And if that's true, I think we could call you... the Ultimate Hope."
OH MY GOD
I ACTUALLY FIST-PUMPED
That was PERFECT.
I cannot think of a more perfect resolution to that moment, or a more perfect way to justify Makoto as a character. It was perfectly executed and perfectly earned. All that crock about despair that Junko was spouting, and everything that the remaining six suffered, it all came back around in the best way it could have. The feeling of finally turning the tables on Monokuma (or Junko, as it were) after five chapters of being forced to march to the beat of her drum, slamming her with her personal kryptonite was SO GOOD. Loved it when she dropped all her different personas and just started freaking out.
And I think what made Dangan Ronpa's fundamental message of hope so resonant to me, especially when on paper, something like 'the power of hope' sounds ludicrously saccharine (and indeed, it's rare that it doesn't come across that way in fiction) is that I think the message is tempered by the consequences and lasting effects of what had already happened that brought them to that point: at the end, they still hadn't reclaimed two years of lost memories that they might never get back. They're not even sure what the world outside looks like anymore, and most of their friends are still dead. It's not about how 'hope conquers all' and it doesn't presume that despair and hope aren't anything other than two sides of the same coin - rather, it acknowledges how important hope is amidst despair. It's not about pretending bad things never happen if you believe hard enough, it's about looking ahead no matter what, taking a step forward no matter how scary or miserable things may be. And that, I think, is a definition of hope that I can really get behind.
Which is all too many words to say that I really liked the kind of note that the game ended on.
In summary:
FUCK YOU MONOKUMA
FUCK YOU JUNKO
FUCK YOU DESPAIR
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH