Pandora Espère

**Pandora Espère**GallerySprites

* Illustration
* Sprite

**Pandora Espère** is a character featured in the English fangame *Danganronpa: Lapse* created by Mythridate.

She is known as the **Ultimate Baker**.

## Galleries

📷 For more images of Pandora, see: Danganronpa: Lapse/Image Gallery and Pandora Espère/Sprite Gallery.
## Appearance

Pandora is a 165cm tall (5'5") young woman of medium height and a slim build. She has yellow eyes and reddish-brown hair, which she wears in a low ponytail over one shoulder, tied with a yellow ribbon. She has a distinctive mole on her left collarbone. Pandora wears a cream-colored peasant blouse with elbow-length sleeves tied with orange ribbon. She wears leggings that have one pastel green leg and one pastel orange leg with an argyle pattern. Over her shirt and leggings, she wears a blue apron with dark orange ties and her school's logo on the front pocket. She wears cream-colored flat shoes.

## Personality

Pandora is a kind and gentle person with a very positive outlook on life. She is quick to comfort her peers when she senses they are worried about something and does her best to boost people's spirits, often with her baked goods. She encourages her peers to "keep faith and live one moment at a time".

Pandora is very encouraging towards Echo about them not knowing if they have a talent; while she encourages them to explore different types of skills to see if they can identify what they might be good at, she also repeatedly reassures Echo that even if they truly do not have an Ultimate talent, it doesn't mean they are any less important than the others.

## History

### Early Life

Pandora was homeschooled and raised by two mothers—one a teacher and the other a prolific baker—along with her twin sister Gaea Espère. Her mothers taught her everything she knew about baking, and she learned to cherish the enjoyment people felt when tasting what she had made, which made her fall in love with baking. Pandora comes from a French family and is bilingual, occasionally slipping French phrases into conversation.

### Preservation Project

Pandora, as the Ultimate Baker, was among a group of other Ultimate students who volunteered to participate in the Preservation Project, a scheme by the government in which students could go to a specially engineered safehouse where they would be protected from a series of Earth-shattering earthquakes that had been tearing through the planet. Unbeknownst to the volunteers, the Preservation Project was instead a front being used to run an experimental 7-day-long killing game in which students were tasked with murdering one of their fellow students without getting caught. Cyrus Suryc, the Ultimate Confidential Informant working on behalf of the Preservation Project, had been observing each of the students for a long time and knew everything about them, particularly looking for information that could be exploited to provoke them to commit murder or be a weakness that could be used to harm them, such as a mental illness or allergy. All of the students involved in the Project were violently abducted by a "capture group" of Ultimate students, hit hard on the back of the head until they were knocked out, and transported to the Project building unconscious.

Upon their entrance into the mansion and discovery of their captivity, Pandora was quick to access the kitchen facilities, baking pastries and breads in order to raise her fellow students' spirits. She became close friends with a number of students who she hung out with frequently, especially Echo Pine and Ashley Westbridge.

### First Motive

On their third day of captivity, the students were given the Forced Motive Question, "Are your talents a true representation of who you are? Who are you beyond your talent?", and stated that if nobody died by the end of the day, they would all be killed. After discussing what their talents mean to them, the group split up, and Pandora found a note featuring the two symbols of the mansion's announcers, followed by, "If you recognize one of the symbols depicted, then you have finally found me and are safe. Please do not speak of this note's existence; trust no one but yourself". Despite the note's instructions, she confided in Echo that she had found the note. Neither understood the note's meaning but suspected that it might mean there was a spy among the group.

Pandora then left Echo and spent some time relaxing in the spa, where she met with Art Campopiano. Pandora showed Art the note she had found, and their conversation made him suspect her of being the puzzlemaster who had trapped them there. The pair then had a brief discussion about what their talents meant to them. Pandora said that her talent was deeply intrinsic to who she was as a person and that having an Ultimate talent is a blessing because it can be used to influence positive change among others. Art, on the other hand, once deeply loved golf until he was forced to play it professionally by powerful business people in order to influence their business deals, and subsequently, he had grown to hate his talent because he hadn't had any opportunity to explore who he was beyond the scope of his talent. After their discussion, Pandora fell asleep. Since Art suspected Pandora of being the puzzlemaster and the conversation brought up his feelings of resentment towards his talent, he snapped and strangled Pandora to death with a towel. Art was identified as her killer in the class trial and executed by being hit over the head with a golf club.

## Talent

Pandora is the Ultimate Baker, skilled in baking of all kinds. She learned to bake from her mothers, of whom one was a professional baker herself. She enjoyed the reactions of others when they ate what she had made, noting that "The look on people's faces when they eat something delectable, the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you eat your favorite food—such a feeling is priceless."

When presented with the Forced Motive Question, "Are your talents a true representation of who you are? Who are you beyond your talent?", Pandora felt that she wouldn't be anything without baking and believes that even in another life she would always find her way back to baking because it's in her soul, because "It truly represents all that I care for in life, the simplicity in sharing good food with friends". She feels that Ultimate talents are fundamental parts of a person's personality and characteristics because their talents are born from their innate passion. She believes that without that specific passion, a person would be entirely different.

## Trivia

* Pandora's surname, Espère, is from the French "espérer", which means "hope".
* Creator Mythridate has stated that Pandora is their favorite out of the Danganronpa: Lapse cast.
* Creator Mythridate has stated that they imagined the voice for Pandora sounding the same as Mercedes Colomar from Grim Fandango.
* Pandora has interesting parallels with Marie Filliet from the fan game *Hyper! Danganronpa H20*. Both characters excelled at baking and used it to try to unite their respective groups of survivors; they both have French names; both were quick to befriend the protagonists of their games; and both were the first victims in their respective games.
* Creator Mythridate has assigned a Pokémon type to all of the Lapse characters, and Pandora's type is normal type - where other students have schools based on their assigned type, because Pandora is normal type, she is homeschooled instead.
* Each member of the Danganronpa: Lapse cast has an associated flower, Pandora's being the daisy, which is said to represent innocence, purity, and cheer, befitting Pandora's demeanor.
* Pandora is an asexual lesbian.

## References

1. ↑ **Mythridate's Website**: Post Chapter 2 Q&A (January 14, 2020)
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 **Mythridate's Website**: Extra Character Info (October 18, 2019)
3. ↑ **Mythridate's Website**: Post-Chapter 1, Pre-Chapter 2 Q&A (December 22, 2019)