Danganronpa

[tempestwheel]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danganronpa:_...ger_Happy_Havoc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danganronpa_2:_Goodbye_Despair

This is a series I got into the past year, a visual novel franchise based around students at a school named Hope's Peak Academy being trapped in a location (the academy itself in 1, a series of tropical resort islands in 2) and forced by an evil living teddy bear named Monokuma to commit a murder if they want to escape.

However, instead of simply one person simply massacring everyone else, any given culprit can only kill up to two people, and after each death there's an investigation and then a class trial where you have to determine the culprit. There's some elements of Ace Attorney here, but the series does have it's own unique elements.

All in all, this series turned out to be a pleasant surprise for me, filled with challenging mysteries, memorable characters, and big twists (Honestly, knowing which students survive, which die, and which end up being culprits is probably among the smaller spoilers you can give about the plot).