Kazutaka Kodaka has a very good reason for avoiding games inspired by Danganronpa, and it has nothing to do with ego.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy director sat down with Denfaminicogamer to mark the first anniversary of TooKyo Games’ debut release. In the interview, Kodaka reflected on where the visual novel genre was headed, argued that developers could only beat professional novelists by leaning into what games do that books can’t, and then dropped something unexpectedly charming about his relationship with his own legacy.
Why Kodaka Won’t Touch the Games Danganronpa Inspired
Danganronpa‘s influence spawned an entire community of fan-made killing game visual novels, known collectively as Fanganronpas, with dozens of titles built in the series’ image.
Kodaka told Denfaminicogamer he was glad his flagship title remained relevant fifteen years after release, but admitted he made a deliberate point of not playing any of them. His reason wasn’t protectiveness or disdain. If he actually played them, he said, he’d want to comment, and he didn’t want to become, in his own words, “a grumbly old man.”
It’s a rare and genuinely self-aware move from a creator who could easily position himself as an authority on his own genre. Instead, Kodaka chose strategic ignorance, the same instinct that has always made his games feel like they were written by someone with something to prove rather than someone protecting a throne.
In the same interview, he argued the visual novel genre was stagnating “systemically” in terms of game design, and that the only path forward was to use mechanics the way page-turning itself is a mechanic: intentionally. He named Return of the Obra Dinn and No Case Should Remain Unsolved as the kind of formal invention he hoped Japanese developers would pursue next.
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