danganronpa – Page 5 – i'm very gay. i'd like a few dollars.

jinjojess:

Oh.

Oh.

Okay, so I just read Zettai Zetsubou Kodaka for this week (May 26th, 2016) and…wow. It was really emotional, at least for me, especially given where I am now and how I’ve been feeling lately.

Basically, what happened is that Kodaka got permission to use hide’s “ever free” in the DR3 anime. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with a song that’s 18 years old, but as someone who grew up listening to X-Japan and hide’s solo stuff, this is more of the universe aligning in a delightful way for me.

Apparently, back when Kodaka was making the first Dangan Ronpa game, he listened to a lot of hide’s music, and made the game staff listen as well to give them an idea of what he was going for with the whole “psycho pop” theme. Even more than that though, he used to listen to “ever free” in particular all the time, like when riding his bike home in the middle of the night, to keep himself motivated. He’d listen and pump himself up thinking things like “it’ll be a hit that sells over 200,000 copies!” and “it’ll get a good review in Famitsu!” and “it’ll get an anime adaptation someday!”

The lines that particularly stand out to Kodaka are:

your dreams that everyone calls bullshit
they continue, still trembling within your breast
ever free, your story seems about to crumble
if you imagine it, would it be visible, your DReam?

(I’m sure someone at some point in the last nearly two decades has done a nicer job translating this song than I’m doing now, but you get the gist. Also, “DReam” with a capital D and R is legit part of the lyrics and just a happy accident in this case.)

Obviously success wasn’t as assured back then as it is at this point in the DR series, but “ever free” got Kodaka through all the nay-saying and the doubt, and he states that without “ever free”, there wouldn’t be Dangan Ronpa as we know it today. That’s why he wanted to use the song in DR3: The End of Kibougamine so badly.

And then he wrote this last paragraph, which speaks to me on a personal level:

And that’s my feelings on it. I guess this was a twist of fate. I hope that someday, just like I was influenced by hide-san, there will be someone in the next generation of creators who is influenced by my Dangan Ronpa series and gives birth to brand new art. If hide-san was still alive, I’d like to meet him, if only for a moment.

brb crying with DETERMINATION