Junko Enoshima
Junko Enoshima is a fictional character and the overarching antagonist of Spike Chunsoft's Danganronpa series. Featured as the mastermind in the series' first two games as the true identity of Monokuma, in the spin-off Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls in the guises of Shirokuma and Kurokuma, and in the prequel light novel Danganronpa Zero and anime Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School: Despair Arc, serving as the protagonist of Zero as the Ultimate Analyst, Ryōko Otonashi. Junko is a student of Hope's Peak Academy and is the Ultimate Fashionista, a charismatic and hyperintelligent model of gyaru fashion who, along with her fraternal twin sister and body double Mukuro Ikusaba, forms the Ultimate Despair, ultimately bringing about the end of civilization through a movement known as "The Tragedy". In Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Junko arranges a killing game between her former classmates to test their metrics for hope and despair, counting herself and Mukuro as participants, before having her consciousness converted into an artificial intelligence known as Alter Ego Junko on her death, left to Izuru Kamukura to continue her plans along with his own, in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.
The identity of Junko is also adopted by Mukuro in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Zero, by the Servant's intended successor in Ultra Despair Girls, and by the showrunners of the Danganronpa reality television series in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. The character has also appeared in manga and musical adaptations of the series.
Conception and creation
Junko was conceived by series' creator and scenario writer Kazutaka Kodaka originally as a "fully unsympathetic" villain, due to his at the time personal dislike for the popular trope of being a sympathetic villain. Kodaka later elaborated that Junko appears to have toxic love towards her classmates due to how rather than killing them, she forces them to kill each other as she believes that despair is the ultimate salvation for people.Kodaka later confirmed Junko's motives to be rooted in her obsession for the entirety of her classmates, seeking to induce more despair on someone and herself the more they meant to them, along with subtle hints of her past and sanity slippage. Early concept art for the character depicts her with smaller pigtails, a white skirt, and an overall golden color scheme with red and black highlights, elements of which were also adopted for the character's fraternal twin sister Mukuro Ikusaba. The character's resurrection in Goodbye Despair was left to the player's interpretation. Kodaka compared the theory of whether or not she is dead or alive to Western villains like the Joker who are continuously brought back to life. However, Kodaka claims Junko can be killed. In retrospective, he feels like Junko could be his strongest villain ever created. Due to how powerless Junko is in comparison to Izuru, the scenes involving how the former manipulates the latter were written to show Junko at her lowest since she could not defeat Izuru in combat, so the writers focused on psychology involving their passions.
Appearances
''Danganronpa'' video games
In the first game, Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Junko fakes her death by having Mukuro pose as her so she can kill her under her Monokuma guise, using the event to encourage her former classmates at Hope's Peak Academy to participate in a "killing game", both actions serving to feed her desire to fuel an "ultimate despair" within herself and them. Throughout the game, Junko provides various motives to turn the students against one another, overseeing the subsequent class trials and performing the various executions while broadcasting the events to the world at large, culminating in her presenting Mukuro's corpse in an attempt to frame the "Ultimate Detective" Kyoko Kirigiri without breaking the rules she set for herself for the "killing game", and ultimately agreeing to execute herself after being exposed as the mastermind.In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Junko is revealed to have used Chihiro's Alter Ego technology to transfer her consciousness into Monokuma at the moment of her death as an A.I., hijacking the Future Foundation's attempted removal of her followers' brainwashing by having the former "Ultimate Hope" Izuru Kamukura download her into their rehabilitation program "Neo World", where she places their younger virtual selves into another "killing game". In the game's climax, Junko's true plan is assumed to be to transfer her A.I self into the bodies of those of her followers whose virtual selves killed each other, their real selves having arranged their capture to allow Junko a chance to return in a physical body, and from there to the watching Future Foundation and the wider world at large, to be dubbed "Junkoland". Ultimately, after her still-living followers' virtual selves decide to remain in the program, Alter Ego Junko is deleted by a new manifestation of the program's former operator, Usami.
In the climax of Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, set between the first and second games, the Monokuma variants Shirokuma and Kurokuma are both revealed to be under the control of Alter Ego Junko, before they are both destroyed by Izuru Kamukura so he can bring it with him to Jabberwock Island, setting up the events of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.
Junko appears in a cameo appearance in the third main series installment, Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, in the bonus minigame "Ultimate Talent Development Plan", with the game's main storyline, set in a world where-in a Dangaonronpa reality television show based on the fictional Danganronpa franchise has been hosted yearly for 53 years within an otherwise violence-free futuristic utopia, seeing the mantle of Junko be assumed by the series' showrunner each season.
''Danganronpa'' anime
In the "Despair Arc" of Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, set before the events of the first game, Junko is collected from the airport along with Mukuro to a limousine after she blows up her taxi. Junko explains that the pair have been scouted to attend Hope's Peak Academy, Mukuro as the "Ultimate Soldier", and Junko as both the "Ultimate Fashionista". At their entrance ceremony, Junko sketches a picture of Monokuma. Two years later, Junko and Mukuro slaughter their way to confront and destroy Hope's Peak Academy's "Ultimate Hope" Izuru Kamukura, intending to kill him, only for the pair to be easily defeated. After sharing Junkos love for despair with him and pitching that they join their cause, Izuru deduces Junko shares similar analytical abilities to himself, agreeing to join their cause, before knocking Junko out. Later, Junko manipulates the "Ultimate Animator" Ryota Mitarai, to develop a brainwashing anime to serve her cause, which she tests on the "Ultimate Nurse" Mikan Tsumiki, who pledges herself to Junko in the name of despair. Contacting Izuru once again, Junko arranges for their first "killing game" with the academy's student council, trapping them on a floor of the school and providing blackmail on their elite parents' various scandals, with Izuru partaking in the event and killing the final survivor. Junko subsequently uses Izuru's involvement in a recording which she sends along with a mass e-mail to the students of the Reserve Course exposing his existence along with the footage of her killing game and how their funding had been used for human experimentation which led to Izuru's creation, leading to a mass riot and protest dubbed "The Parade".Before said e-mail was sent out Junko created a new brainwashing video dubbed the "Despair Video" with the intent of sharing it with the entirety of the Reserve Course and pull in further support for "Ultimate Despair", afterwards, Nagito Komaeda and Chiaki Nanami, looking for their missing classmate Mikan Tsumiki. However, after their homeroom teacher Chisa Yukizome comes across the group and creates a diversion, the pair escape, leaving Chisa to be brainwashed and lobotomized by Junko and Mukuro, after firstly demonstrating the loyalty of their followers by having a Reserve Course student commit suicide at Junko's command.
Later, Junko addresses Chiaki via a monitor and traps her inside a test course for her "punishment" center, intended to induce the rest of Nagito's class to her cause via brainwashing. After the events of Danganronpa Zero we see her overlooking the city from the school's roof, along with Mukuro and Izuru, standing triumphant as her plan to "infect" the world with despair, before sending a mass video to the Reserve Course students, brainwashing them into committing mass suicide. Sending Izuru to lead her class in bringing despair to the world, Junko prepares for the coming apocalypse.
Several months later, shortly before the events of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Junko and Mukuro assist their class in converting the academy into a bunker to protect them from the chaos outside, while secretly preparing to have them detained to begin their killing game. After Makoto unknowingly displays his "ultimate luck", which Junko finds is hard to predict, she rejects the implication to kill him, seeing it as a challenge for her if someone as "ordinary" like Makoto could ever potentially defeat her, unknowingly setting up her own end, though poetically, it was not Makoto's luck that caused her undoing but his heart.
In the "Future and Hope Arc" of Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, set after the events of the second game, Junko makes a cameo appearance in the title sequence and in a flashback to her using blackmail to arrange to have her role in the fall of Hope's Peak Academy hidden from public knowledge. Later, a manifestation of Junko appears in Chisa's mind, talking with the spirit of Chisa while watching the events of the "final killing game."