The PC version of Danganronpa 1 seems to have a weird lag mechanic during the Closing Arguments cutscene of trials. I've summarized my findings below, but keep in mind that I'm still learning this game and have never attempted a run, so I may be missing something obvious.

Basically, the Closing Argument cutscene in Chapter 1 varies in length, and the culprit seems to be lag, rather than RNG or execution. The fastest cutscene (assuming Ctrl+S is held) is about 80 seconds, and the slowest is about 90. My testing most frequently had cutscenes in the range of 86-89 seconds, and I rarely got close to 80. Conversely, all of Smiley's published runs had cutscenes in the 80-84 range. Most published runs I could find on speedrun.com, Twitch and YouTube had a fast cutscene, but three were in the 86-89 range.

I have been unable to identify the variable that is causing the slower cutscene. I've tried basically every setting available in the "Video Options" screen, I've tried running the game with nothing in the background (including no Internet connection), and I've tried pressing various buttons during the cutscene in addition to Ctrl. However, whenever I get a certain cutscene length, I seem to be able to replicate that length (plus/minus 1.5 seconds) as many times as I want until I close the game. For example, I'll do 5 cutscenes at 87, 86, 87, 88 and 87, then close the game, then do something else for a while, then boot it up later and get 82, 83, 84, 83 and 83.

So where exactly does the lag occur during the cutscene? That too seems to vary. Even cutscenes of the same length have an unequal distribution of lag, as shown here: https://pastebin.com/UxjKmXPC

It's possible this is a computer issue, but I don't think that explains why I've been able to get the fast cutscene several times, or why the lag has unequal distribution. Maybe the game is just really laggy, but it's not noticeable during normal gameplay because most images are static? Maybe the Closing Arguments are particularly bad because the game is running a lot of code at once (text boxes, animations, checking to see if your panels are correct)?

I don't have the technical knowledge to make an intelligent guess at this point. But losing 5 seconds to lag during each trial -- more if this type of lag exists elsewhere -- is a pretty big deal. That's 30 seconds for the whole run, which is probably more time than you'll lose to execution errors and RNG (if you've practiced, anyway). And not knowing when/where you'll lose time isn't fun either.