I played Trigger Happy Havoc three years ago. I liked it. It was Saw meets Ace Attorney with high schoolers and could have taken far more risks than it did but you know what I enjoyed it. I also played Goodbye Despair which I liked more than THH. It had the same amount of nonrisk taking but it had better characters and more variety in locations. I own Killing Harmony but before I play that I wanted to watch the animes. Will they be good? Nope. But Ill watch them anyway First up is Danganronpa: The Animation and wow this is a horribly rushed adaptation that is way too short and represents my problems with the constraints of anime length. The idea of adaptation is to translate a property from one medium into another. Danganronpa should be one of the easiest visual novels to make into an anime. Its not long for a visual novel its a very clearcut story with no branching paths multiple sequences are already animated. So what the fuck happened? A 13episode order thats what. Structuring this into 13 halfhours is what ultimately killed this adaptation. Does that mean I think it should have been 26 episodes? Well no. That would be too long. Anime series for TV have to be structured at either 1113 episodes or 2226 episodes. Of course anime can have more cours several have them all the time but the point is that if its 3 cours then it has to be 3639 episodes if its 4 cours then it has to be 4752 episodes and so forth. For an anime adaptation of Trigger Happy Havoc to truly work in the way this show WANTS it to work it needed like 1719 episodes. Or have the episodes be longer than 24 minutes hell the last episode is 34 minutes on the Bluray which I would have preferred if every episode was that long. But you cant have either of those in anime Not in 2013 at least. If it had to be 24 minutes per episode I think I honestly would have preferred if this was 22 episodes and had a shitload of filler. Because I like these characters I want to know about them from the anime. I had to pause after 4 minutes of the first episode because I couldnt stop laughing at how the characters were introduced. They shove EVERYONE RIGHT IN YOUR FACE and everything is shown lightningfast. I cant imagine someone who hasnt played the games to know who these characters are based on the anime. I should feel something when someone dies but I really dont because Im not allowed to get to know someone unless theyre about to die. In the game theres a WHOLE PORTION OF THE GAME dedicated to you going around and picking someone to talk to so you can learn about them. The anime does not allow you to breathe ITS TIME TO GO KILL SOMEONE ELSE After the first three episodes the pacing gets gradually better now that it doesnt have to introduce everything but its still too fast. I dont entirely blame Makoto Uezu for this structure I blame whoever only gave them 13 episodes but its still the worst part of this adaptation. The second worst part is the fear of change. In the process of adaptation it is expected that you change things so that they make sense in the medium that the adaptation will inhabit. For Danganronpa keeping the story identical is fine but what should have changed is the PRESENTATION of the story. The investigations are ignored so that they can get to the trials. But that means that when evidence is brought to the trial all I can think is WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM? Every discovered murder is handtraced from the game and presented identically it is not possible for me to stress how much the executions are the EXACT SAME with some slightly more fluid animation for character models. The trials reference things like the minigames which look stupid in the anime but even stupider is the truth bullets which should not have been anywhere near this adaptation. Since I figure people will want this Ill bring up some technical qualities about the show. The animation is fine but not exactly great. When its not copying the game it does the job well. The music is identical to the game but THATS common for visual novel adaptations so Ill let it slide. Danganronpa: The Animation is an amazing anime in that it is somehow exactly how you should NOT make an adaptation. The first few episodes are so bad its good levels of extremely rushed and I think I would have liked it more as an unintentional laugh riot had the pace been the same. Being forced to squish this story into 13 episodes makes it a rushed mess that people who havent played the visual novel probably wouldnt enjoy. It is far too much like the game and far too short to do the story justice. I recommend playing the game for Danganronpa. If you dont want to play the game then watch a walkthrough of the game instead. Its not funny how much of a disservice this anime does to a game THAT WASNT EVEN THAT GREAT BUT DAMN ITS A HELL OF A LOT BETTER THAN THIS.