In Danganronpa, how can a classroom trial be called if there are only 2 witnesses available?

Question

Unlike the games in Liar Game, the rules of a Danganronpa game are sometimes made up or stated midway, which for me kind of sucks but is tolerable so long as the rules are consistent.

In Liar Game, afaik, the dealers have always accounted for all possible situations so whenever there are changes in the game, they state it outright. For example, in games involving voting, the dealers have stated what happens in the event of a draw.

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Suppose in a Danganronpa game starting with 15 students,

1. all murders are committed by exactly one person (no collaborative murders during the act, but before or after the act is fine, assuming there would be some incentive) and to exactly one person (no multiple victims)

2. all murderers are successfully guessed and convicted (iirc, this is by majority vote) so long as there are more than 3 players

3. No one dies in a way other than being murdered. So, no one messes with Monokuma, dies of an accident, dies of health conditions (eg asthma) or naturally (eg old age), etc, but suicide is fine.

4. No murders will be hidden from the other students indefinitely, as in all corpses will be discovered or if the body is burned, then there will be enough evidence to say a murder has taken place and thus enough evidence for a classroom trial to be called.

Assuming the above situation is consistent internally and consistent with the initial set up of a Danganronpa game, such game will eventually come down to 3 students, whom I'm going to call Kotonoha, Yuno and Mion.

Assuming the game continues (so it's not declared a draw between the 3) and Yuno dies, then only Kotonoha and Mion will be able to see Yuno's corpse, if there would be one. So assuming there is a corpse (body is not burned or anything), and it is discovered, or there is no corpse, and the death is discovered in another way, how can a classroom trial be called?

Perhaps Monokuma will adjust the rules, and a classroom trial will be called anyway, but I would like to know what are the stated rules regarding this, if any, and from any media.

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If I made any logical errors either internally (inconsistent with itself) or externally (inconsistent with Danganronpa), please point them out.

PS I'm done with the anime. Go ahead and spoil other media. But please use spoiler tags for others.

PPS Re 'Kotonoha, Yuno and Mion'

Don't spoil please re 'Mion'.

Answer 1

Danganronpa V3 addresses this

Note: I am putting it as a spoiler even though it is presented to you before the first chapter.

In the most recent game, DRV3, A school regulation is created by Monokuma. stating:

#6: If innocent students (hereinafter referred to as "the spotless") continue to survive the class trials, the killing game will continue until only two students remain.

From this regulation, it seems the game will end immediately when only two students are alive. In the situation you presented, one of the final two will be the blackened. However, the regulation states "two students", not "two spotless students". This means that the game will end with two students, regardless of their blackened status.

Answer 2

As of this moment, in both Danganronpa games and the anime adaptation of the first game, in the case there are only two witnesses avaiable, being that one would be the murderer...

There are no rules about how such thing would be dealt with. No such scenario happens, and no person seems to ever plan to go to such lenghts and question Monokuma about the rules for such situations, leaving us only with speculation on how this specifc situation would be dealt with.

Answer 3

This is an answer to both these questions:

1. In danganronpa, what happens in a drawn vote?

2. In Danganronpa, how can a classroom trial be called if there are only 2 witnesses available?

Part I - Guess for the in general case

A drawn vote is the same as if there's a majority vote and it's not the killer: The killer is technically not majority voted. Therefore, the killer wins.

Consequently, this explains...

1 - why Monokuma didn't say anything about a drawn vote: There's no need to say this because it's already included.

The point is the killer has to be voted out. A drawn vote does not accomplish this. There's no need to say that killers have draw odds like chess / 9LX armageddon because it's implied.

Of course, it would've been nice for Monokuma to just say this to clarify / emphasise anyway.

Credit for guess: clueanalysis2596 from YouTube

2 - the difference with Liar Game's Minority Rule:

• In the event there are 2 remaining in Minority Rule, the 2 are symmetric. There's no reason to favour 1 over the other, but of course you could force a tiebreak by making them play poker or whatever.

• In Danganronpa, there's definitely an asymmetry between the killer and the non-killer. It's the same asymmetry that forms the basis for the principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Part II - Guess for when it comes down to 3 people:

Whoever kills someone 1st wins the whole game assuming a trial is called despite insufficient witnesses.

In the trial, each of the 2 remaining people just vote the other off. There's no majority against the killer, and that's that.

Part III - the assumptions

A big assumption here is the 1 murderer - 1 victim thing. If there were 4 people left, then maybe the next killer would likely kill 2 people instead of just 1 person.