Megumi Ogata
According to Kodaka, the first two games focus prominently on the ideas of "hope" and "despair". The cast from the first game suffers the later theme when being forced to kill each other in Monokuma's battle royale. Kodaka claims he the players "to portray the disparity faced when someone has killed another person while at the same time portraying the hope of one day achieving salvation." Although the game shares traits from the novel Koushun Takami's 1999 novel "Battle Royale", Kodaka aimed to provide different ideas when writing the script. Originally, the idea was to use adults as protagonists but he instead found high school characters as more potential leads due to their immaturity through the usage of character development and how would they react to a killing game. Voice actress Megumi Ogata who the voice of Makoto Naegi also commented on these themes; Ogata felt Makoto embodies the philosophy of hope as he brings this to the narrative and the setting.