Junko Enoshima (Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School)

IMPORTANT NOTE: This article will ONLY focus on her version from Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, and not her incarnations from the previous installments in the Danganronpa series.

Junko Enoshima is the one of the secondary antagonists of the Danganronpa franchise, but this doesn't save her from being entirely flanderized in some parts of the series. As of Danganronpa 3, her character has become a bland, one-dimensional villain.

Why She's Junk

 * 1) In this series, she's changed from a complex and cunning, yet entertaining antagonist with a detailed motivation (she was born with a talent she hated into a society that held talent as well as hope, something she interpreted as boring due to said talent, above all else) and an interesting personality filled with opportunities to talk and speculate about her and turning her into an incompetent, one-note "I'm going to destroy civilization because I'm evil!" generic doomsday villain. Some examples include:
 * 2) * Brainwashing people such as Mikan Tsumiki and Chisa Yukizome into becoming her minions.
 * 3) * Using her older sister Mukuro Ikusaba as part of her plans for world domination.
 * 4) * Torturing Chiaki Nanami to death in order to turn Class 77-B into Ultimate Despairs (see WSSN #6.1).
 * 5) She has been completely flanderized, her personality having changed from a cynical teenager who wants to "corrupt" the world because she's bored and sees despair as the only exciting thing in life (due to her talent as the Ultimate Analyst causing her to interpret everything other than despair as boring after analyzing everything so deeply) to a one-dimensional villain whose plans only succeed through sheer luck and the heroes' incompetence with none of the original hamminess, threatening presence, craftiness, analytical prowess, or other attributes she had in the first two games and and anime adaptation that made her such a memorable antagonist.
 * 6) Her voice can get incredibly irritating after a while, to the point where you'll want to listen to the Bad Sheep's voice rather than listen to her talking for another second, especially in the English dub due to the fact that it gives her an extremely obnoxious and stereotypical Valley Girl voice. It also isn't helped by the fact that she never shuts up similar to Red Ball, Wild Woody and Bubsy.
 * 7) * And on top of just being annoying, her voice also drastically reduces her menacing presence. As it makes her sound less like an intimidating villain and more like a superficial, fashion-obsessed Mean Popular Girl stereotype (and while she was always a Mean Popular Girl, she managed to still be a threatening villain in the process, but having a Valley Girl voice like the one she has in the English dub makes it very hard to take her seriously). In the Japanese version, her voice was capable of coming off as shrill and high-pitched, but it could also become deep and intimidating in the right situations. The same can't really be said about her English dub voice.
 * 8) Speaking of the English dub, some of her dialogue in it ranges from cringeworthy, like when she tells Chiaki "Now there's the hope I wanna crush!" (after Chiaki tells her in a hopeful tone that her classmates will both rescue her from her punishment and defeat Junko), to downright laughable, like her infamous "KAMUKURA KAMUKURA YAS QUEEN!" (when she met Izuru Kamukura for the first time and became very excited after having done so), although the latter of which can actually be considered a redeeming quality due to arguably being so nonsensical that it comes off as hilarious and its meme status.
 * 9) She's also abusive towards Mukuro and Mikan, often slapping and verbally degrading them. What makes it truly unsettling is that they both seem to enjoy it, the former even taking pleasure in Junko trying to kill her.
 * 10) IDIOT MOVE: Episode 13 shows that she realized mh:greatcharacters:Makoto Naegi was a threat before the Killing Game even started, but instead of killing him, she kept him alive because of her despair fetish, even after Mukuro told her to have Makoto killed first. This proves that she also became a lot less intelligent here than she was in the games and Trigger Happy Havoc's anime adaptation.
 * 11) In some episodes, she is incredibly unlikable and intolerable to the extent that she makes Professor Pester look like the Joker in comparison.
 * 12) * She solidifies herself as a "complete monster" in episode 10 of the Despair Arc, where she, Mikan and Chisa lure Chiaki Nanami into a maze filled with booby traps where she is slowly tortured to death, with Junko personally delivering the final blow by impaling Chiaki with a bunch of spears (as mentioned in WSIJN #1.3), all the while the rest of her classmates are forced to watch the entire thing through monitors that don't allow them to move or look away. To add insult to injury, Chiaki's execution goes on for almost the whole episode and is shown in graphic detail. And it isn't being stabbed by the spears or any of the traps that kill her, but instead a slow and agonizing death of bleeding out after said impalement. And not only that, but by the end, the brainwashing effects combined with the despair of watching their friend and beloved class rep being brutally tortured to death turns the rest of Class 77-B into the Remnants of Despair. Junko doesn't even face any repercussions for her actions and completely gets away with not only this, but also the other deplorable actions that she committed (although she is later defeated in Trigger Happy Havoc and Goodbye Despair by Makoto Naegi/Hajime Hinata and the other surviving students, but even then, she enjoys it). That means that she is a Karma Houdini.
 * 13) ** Speaking of her brainwashing, there are two implications as to how it works:
 * 14) *** The first one is that those who are brainwashed into despair have no idea that they're actually committing atrocities and believe they're bringing people happiness. And if it really is the case, it really shows how much Class 77-B wanted to make the world a better place, only for Junko to corrupt them into her lackeys and force them to do the opposites, using their good intentions against them.
 * 15) *** The second one is that they actually are aware of what they're doing, but are unable to do anything to stop it, and that they're in despair knowing that they're not making people happier like they desired. All the while they're completely helpless to stop themselves from doing the opposites of what they truly want to do.
 * 16) *** Needless to say, both interpretations are absolutely terrifying, and nothing short of psychological horror, and only succeed in painting Junko as even more of a horrific psychopath since she's the one who did this to these kids.
 * 17) **** To add icing on the cake, after Class 77-B escape from the Neo World Program in the Hope Arc, they all have to live with the fact that all of humanity holds them responsible for "The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind", which forces them to fake their own deaths and go into exile for the rest of their lives. Ouch.
 * 18) She's also homophobic, as she publicly humiliated Juzo Sakakura in front of the Reserve Course students because he was in love with Kyosuke Munakata and uses it to blackmail him into telling Munakata that she's innocent, in the exact same episode as the one previously mentioned. To add salt to the wound, she claims that she "isn't devoid of compassion" as she threatens to kill Munakata if Juzo doesn't keep him from finding out about what she was about to do. After he and Chisa lie to him about Junko's innocence in the following episode, Juzo goes into the bathroom and punches the wall until his fists bleed, making it obvious how torn up he was over what Junko forced him to do.
 * 19) * It's also worth noting that this incident is what drove Juzo to despise Junko to the point that he grew to also hate Makoto for being the one to defeat her, something he was determined to do after what she did to him.
 * 20) She blackmails people into doing what she wants, pretty much knows what her opponents' weak spots are and uses them to her advantage (as shown with Sakakura as mentioned above), which is rather uncanny and makes her look like a joke in general.
 * 21) * Speaking of blackmail, her worst and most prominent example was when she forced Ryota Mitarai to create the "Despair Video" to brainwash Chisa and Class 77-B into Ultimate Despairs against their will (as well as Ryota's own). And after breaking him during her final conversation with him, she lets him escape Hope's Peak Academy so that he could now live with the knowledge that his anime was responsible for causing "The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind". The series makes it abundantly clear just how badly he was affected by being forced to take part in this, and that it ultimately led to him going along with Kazuo Tengan's evil plan of brainwashing everyone on Earth into an eternal state of hope, unaware that it would allow the remaining members of Ultimate Despair to take over the world.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Her character design is, like always, rather cute to look at.
 * 2) Her appearance in Danganronpa: The Animation and the other previous installments are far better, as her original personality is intact.
 * 3) At least she isn't as bad as some of the other bad characters in the Danganronpa franchise (e.g. Hifumi Yamada, Hiyoko Saionji, Yuto Kamishiro, Kazuo Tengan, Ryota Mitarai, Haiji Towa, Angie Yonaga and Tsumugi Shirogane).