9k:RD/ Stalin and Monokuma (Q40,36)

Main entry

Stalin is basically Monokuma
/ Trotskyites don't know the difference between Soviet history and Danganronpa -> an analogy I used in a historical fiction summary and now after digging up again cannot get over. the idea is that people think the Soviet Union was just one big trap where because people are in such fierce competition to exist until the country is properly built up, the government then just starts accusing people of things to preemptively get rid of them. almost exactly like Monokuma sets the students up to be in trouble for killing each other, blaming them for each other's graphic deaths over and over when really he started the whole thing
Stalin and Monokuma / Stalin's hunger games / Stalin and death games / Stalin's government carrying off arbitrary or incorrect selection of people to prison so remaining people will turn in all the actual criminals / Stalin's government supposedly or apparently putting pressure on all people to send each other to prison so the real criminals will confess -> Danganronpa isn't a big part of this concept, it's the general motif of the Stalin era being a death game (so you can bring up The Hunger Games, or any other death game) and people competing against each other to survive it.

pronounced ダンガンロンパ
[1] [2] [3] -> "dangan ronpa" is basically "refutation by bullet".

so you very nearly could have titled this game "Shots Fired" and got the meaning perfect
Monokuma -> best described as something like "a messed-up toy bear demon with a coloration of dark sharply clashing with light, to represent the clash between hope and despair". so, his design is cool in that it can express a verbose idea in a simple image, it's a very good use of visual language as foreshadowing, yet it's very obvious from a conceptual point of view and not all that deep. I still love the concept of a character visually depicting the whole concept of material contradictions though.
The Hunger Games (series)
Umineko / 『うみねこのなく頃に』 / (9k) -> I was only able to realize after I actually started reading this that Umineko is a vastly better example of this motif. ... [I can't go into it here because I've adopted a policy of putting every substantial "Umineko spoiler" only on the Umineko entry.]