Junko Enoshima

**Junko Enoshima** (江ノ島 盾子), is a student in Hope's Peak Academy's Class 78th, and a participant of the Killing School Life featured in *Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc*. Her title is the **Ultimate Fashionista** (超高校級の「ギャル」 lit. *Super High School Level Gyaru*).

At The end of the Killing School Life in *Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc*, Junko appears to be a young high school-aged teenager, but due to her causing her classmate's memory loss she is two years older than they all believed her and themselves to be. She has a tall, dramatic hourglass figure, light blue eyes, and long, thick, bleached strawberry-blonde hair tied in two twin pigtails. Due to her fake talent, she wears heavy make-up along with fake long red nails.

Due to being related, Junko and her older twin sister Mukuro Ikusaba share several physical characteristics. However, Junko has a considerably larger chest than Mukuro and weighs two pounds more than her. Junko's eyes are more round and larger and are blue with her contacts or naturally red compared to Mukuro's light purple eyes. Junko also lacks freckles.

Junko's usual outfit includes a black cardigan over a white dress shirt, with both left open to the third button to expose the top of her black-and-red bra, a red pleated miniskirt that is cut extremely short, and mid-sized black boots with platform heels and red laces. Her cardigan is accented with white symbols of her Former High School. She accessories with a long tie that hangs loosely around her neck with a design alternates between pure white (*Danganronpa 3*) and as half black and white with a prohibition sign on it (*Danganronpa 1*) that hangs loosely around her neck, a thin black choker, a red bow above her left breast, and two buttons on her right side.

Her most notable accessory is her signature twin bear hair clips that are based on Monokuma's two sides. The right clip is a completely white bear with dot eyes and a neutral expression, while the left is a black bear with a white muzzle, jagged red eyes, and a wicked smile. During her time at Hope's Peak Academy, she instead wore a set of hair clips of a cute bunny and a large red and white bow. This is the outfit her sister Mukuro wore when masquerading during the Killing School Life.

Due to her constantly-shifting personalities, Junko's appearance shifts slightly with her mood. Her "royal" personality dons a small gold and red crown with encrusted jewels, her "intellectual" personality wears glasses and styles her hair in a ponytail, her "depressed" personality sports a few multicolored mushrooms on top of her head with a blueish forehead with no pupils, her "cute" personality simplifies her entire appearance to appear more cartoonish, including smoother pigtails, large, bright eyes, and a small smile, her "rockstar" personality is similar to Genocide Jack, as her eyes are insane-looking, she has a reddish forehead, and she talks with her tongue out, along with having messier pigtails and doing the hand-horn gesture, her "stoicism" personality (possibly) involves her having a serious-like face with her doing a pose that covers part of her face, and her Monokuma personality involves her having Monokuma in front of her.

In *Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School*, she temporarily wore a cheetah-print dress with a pale yellow fur collar and cuffs, a thick black belt with a sliver buckle, a thigh band which is quite simliar to her choker, and black shoes with heels. She accessories with a brown sunglasses with deep pink lenses and the same set of hair clips when Mukuro posed as Junko, a cute white bunny and a large red and white bow

Most of time in Despair Arc, she wore a very simliar outfit like in *Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc* but, her tie is changed from Monokuma patterned to pure white and her hair clips changed. She also seen with the *Hope's Peak Academy'*s uniform. She wore a bleached brown cardigan over a white dress shirt, unbuttoned to expose her half of her bra, a pure white tie tied loosely, a navy blue pleated skirt, and mid-sized black boots with platform heels and red laces. Her cardigan is accented with buttons of her Former High School.

In *Danganronpa Zero*, it is stated that she looks much more average without her make-up. It is also shown that her natural hair and eye color is red, considering her she doesn't remember being "Junko Enoshima" while assuming her alternative identity: Ryoko Otonashi.

In (chronologically) earlier installments of the series, such as *Danganronpa Zero* and Monaca Towa's flashbacks in *Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls*, Junko is seen in the third variation of her Hope's Peak Academy outfit. Her cardigan has been removed, and her dress shirt is buttoned up to hide her bra. Her red bow tie is pinned on the left side of her dress shirt, and her right pigtail is held by a black bunny clip with red eyes. She also wears a black miniskirt and a new tie that lacks the circled X and has a different balance of white and black; the collar and knot are white, while the rest is black. Junko's nails are still painted red, but they are much shorter than in her other appearances.

As a young fashionista, Junko Enoshima is described as simply "not fake", charismatic and eager to try new things. During her first appearances, she comes across slightly air-headed and hot-tempered. In the official artbook, she is described as a person who "drips with dissatisfaction the moment she opens her mouth" and tends to be in trouble with her classmates. She is also mentioned to be a bit too talkative with an overly carefree attitude.

However, Junko's real personality, revealed at the conclusion of the Killing School Life, is notably different: very apathetic and easily bored to an unhealthy and abnormal degree. Because of this, her behavior and mannerisms tended to be extremely erratic and unstable by her own autonomous design; keeping up one "appearance" for too long bores her, which causes her to often switch between different personas. However, she is capable of maintaining one persona for extended periods of time when necessary, such as when she was overseeing the students through Monokuma. Junko's "moods" included (but were not limited to) her Monokuma persona, sickening cuteness, severe depression, clinical sophistication, boisterous vulgarity, eerie stoicism, and haughty superiority. She switched between "moods" regularly, often imitating other students' expressions, which made for a highly unsettling conversation with the survivors. While entering the Hope's Peak Academy as one of Class 78's students, she often talked as if narrating a story, writing down her thoughts in a notebook.

Above all, Junko was deeply obsessed with despair, having found despair to be the most (and possibly the *only*) enjoyable emotion for her, whether it be inflicting despair unto others, or suffering from despair wholeheartedly. This made her extremely dangerous, as she wished to make *the whole world* feel absolute despair. However, this also often proved to be her biggest weakness, as she gave her opponents a "fair" chance to defeat her in order to make their despair all the greater if they fail, and happily welcomed her own despair if her plans failed.

Both Junko herself and the game's creators have confirmed that she truly has no reason to do the things she does other than despair itself, which makes her all the more dangerous and unable to be reasoned with. However it is hinted at in the anime that her analytical talent was what caused her to turn to despair, and that hopes peak was her first target because they see talent as hope, and use that talent for their own benefit, which drove Junko to take the talent they loved so much and use it for evil, which shows her in a more understandable light. It's also shown that under her amnesiac state, Junko doesn't show a thirst for despair or particularly strong hatred of boredom, implying that her constant case of forgetfulness had spared her from embracing despair again. However, the return of her memories reverted her to her former ways.

As the mastermind and leader of Ultimate Despair, Junko was shown to be highly intelligent, cunning, somewhat impulsive, extremely manipulative, and violent and cruel without remorse. She was a highly toxic individual, being both physically and mentally abusive to everyone around her. She manipulated people into falling madly in love with her and used their weaknesses, their *despair*, against them. Things like hope, peace, and happiness disgusted her, but she sometimes gave hope to others, only to turn it into greater despair later. She often manipulated people into doing bad things instead of directly doing them herself and then had a habit of blaming these manipulated people and claiming it wasn't her fault, as a part of proving her point that despair exists in everyone and that hope will naturally lose to that despair. While she is very skilled, Junko can also lie and cheat to further her own goals, even if it's hypocritical and goes against her beliefs. It should be noted that even though she claims despair is the great unknown, in the end, the road of despair went exactly the way she had planned.

Despite that she can be cruel and abusive to some, Junko is actually capable of feeling love to those she's close with, however due to how far despair has driven her, she kills them anyways to cause herself to feel large amounts of despair.

According to Kodaka and Junko's voice actress, her personality in *Despair Arc* is a more natural version of her, closer to her true self and more neutral, before she started changing her personalities regularly. This seems to imply that her behavior in the first game is a result of decreasing mental health and deeper sinking into despair, explaining her more jaded and apathetic personality. This also implies that even the Tragedy was beginning to bore her, as the seemingly chaotic event went just like she planned.

Junko's initial talent and the one she is famous for. She is very popular among people and students in Hope's Peak Academy; even the Steering Committee guaranteed her talent. She often appeared in magazines as the cover model. She uses her Super High School Level Analytical Prowess talent to her advantage in order to simulate and make it look like this is her main talent, as she can predict trends.

#### Super High School Level Gyaru

In the original Japanese, Junko's title is Super High School Level Gyaru (超高校級の「ギャル」). The term gyaru refers to a Japanese street fashion subculture. Gyaru fashion is typically characterized by having heavily bleached or dyed hair (mostly shades from dark brown to blonde), highly decorated nails, and dramatic makeup. Since Junko is still a high school student, she is technically a コギャル "kogyaru" (an abbreviation of 高校生ギャル *kōkōsei gyaru* or "high school gyaru"). Kogyaru are known for altering their school uniforms (e.g. by shortening the skirt) and their fondness of platform boots - two visible features of Junko's attire. Decorating one's cell phone extensively (as well as constantly handling it) is a signature gyaru habit, which explains Alter Ego Junko's choice of an over-adorned cell phone as her courtroom avatar for the final trial of *Danganronpa 2*. Gyaru, in general, are also fond of bleaching their hair and wearing colored contact lenses - making it highly probable that Junko has neither naturally strawberry blond hair nor naturally blue eyes. Bearing this fact in mind, it is very much possible that Junko's natural hair and eye colors are those of her temporary identity, Ryoko Otonashi.

### Super High School Level Analytical Prowess

Junko's true talent allows her to quickly analyze her surroundings with near superhuman speed, detailed thinking and memorization. This ability also allows her to learn and understand new skills and talents by just seeing/studying it once, seeing as how she was able to learn all the necessary techniques of how to create a brainwashing video from observing Ryota Mitarai, learn how to create her own A.I from studying Chihiro Fujisaki's work, and later figured out and perfected a method to selectively erase a specific set of someone's memory perfectly after stealing Yasuke Matsuda's research and her having also possibly obtained other talents/skills during her time studying in Hope's Peak.

This ability is also what gave Junko her title as the "Ultimate Fashionista" due to her being able to predict trends, allowing Junko to literally predict what would become popular with society. With this specific ability having been vital in her setting off The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy, predict and manipulate the reactions of the Reserve Course Students that lead to the "The Parade" and set off and manipulate the events that lead to "The Tragedy" into becoming a full blown Global event/movement.

This talent gives her an excellent ability to make very detailed plans in a short amount of time. She is also excellent at reading and thus manipulating others. She can often predict what a person is going to do before they do it - an ability she can use to defeat opponents much stronger than her. It is also this ability that threw her into boredom since she was able to accurately guess how events would play out; this fueled her love of despair as an "unknown".

### Ultimate Despair

Junko has the ability to cause nearly anyone to fall into despair, and she revels in the despair felt by herself and others. Using her talent as the Super High School Level Analytical Prowess, she could detect everyone's weaknesses and use this information to manipulate or even exploit people around her to do her bidding.

This was demonstrated by how she could prevent the Warriors of Hope from committing suicide and persuaded them to join her in spreading despair by killing adults. It's also been shown that she has severely abused her sister and made her very dependent of her. However, it should be noted that she usually takes the more personal approach only with people she is genuinely interested in. She tends to literally brainwash masses, using videos created with Ryota Mitarai's animation brainwashing technique and her own talent of despair.

The only person she could never get to was Makoto, who could be considered the true Ultimate Hope in the same way Junko is considered the true Ultimate Despair. In the case of Izuru, the original Ultimate Hope, he was never truly loyal to her and his despair was caused solely by his own boredom.

Similar to Nagito Komaeda, Junko seems to have a strange ability to sense hope and despair in other people, which doesn't seem to be related to her analytical skill. This is seen in *Danganronpa Zero*, when she can sense the incredible strength hidden inside Makoto even while currently having the amnesiac persona of Ryoko. This is also seen in *Danganronpa 3*, when she similarly senses Makoto's hope potential and when crossing paths with Mitarai Ryota she feels his potential.

Much of Junko's early life is unknown. As children, Junko and her twin sister Mukuro lived in abject conditions and were even homeless at one point. As she puts it, she regretted the moment of her own birth, feeling that her birth into the world was a mistake. Due to her analytical skills allowing her to predict the outcome of events, she became bored with the world. Because of that, she took an interest in despair, which she believes is unpredictable and exciting, at a very young age.

As a child, she was close with Yasuke Matsuda, as they didn't have any other friends. One particular moment between the two when they were elementary school students was when Junko spent a month building a sand sculpture modeled after the Sagrada Familia church at the public park, and she even used very advanced techniques for her age. The sculpture got closer to completion and many people from around the neighborhood came over just to watch her work.

One day, the sandcastle was found destroyed just before it was completed. Junko cried continuously for almost an entire day and Yasuke went around angrily looking for the perpetrator. Not being able to find out anything useful discouraged Yasuke. While he was sitting on a bench in front of the remains of the sand sculpture, Junko ran up to him with a large smile and whispered in his ear that she was the culprit who destroyed the sculpture all along, asking him to keep it a secret. When asked for a reason, she replied that she did so by accident. Truthfully, she had done this to get Yasuke out of his house, upset that his mother's condition had led him to become more withdrawn than usual.

In the years following the death of Yasuke's mother, Junko became the person that Yasuke felt he could always lean on. She promised to always be there for him, which helped develop his stronger feelings towards her. She said she'll never forget Yasuke even if she forgets everything else, and they'll always be together. For the first time in his life, Yasuke cried in front of another person, after making her promise she won't make fun of him, won't tell anyone and won't try to console him. Junko had romantic feelings for Yasuke, referring to them as "lovers", though Yasuke denied this.

Junko had a strong desire to "paint the world in despair" and planned to start The Tragedy, the worst, most despair-inducing incident in the history of mankind. She called herself and her sister the Despair Sisters AKA the Ultimate Despair.