Hope and Despair. For as long as anyone could remember people had been divided into these two categories. If you were born a Hope you had a fountain pen symbol on the back of your left hand. Whereas, if you were born a Despair then your left hand was adorned with a weird curve that had two smaller curves below it all caving inwards. This symbol was known as the Monokuma Eye, while the hope symbol was known as the Fountain Pen. Being born a Hope or a Despair had no effect on who you were as a person and both groups lived in harmony most of the time. However, once everyone one hundred years, two people were chosen as the Ultimate Hope and the Ultimate Despair. The Ultimate Hope would receive a lily symbol on their body and the Ultimate Despair received a knife symbol. The symbols could appear at any time on any part of the body and once the two people were chosen they would face each other in a battle of wits. This battle would decide the fate of the worlds people. If the Ultimate Hope won then they could order the Ultimate Despairs of the world to do anything they wish and vice versa should the Ultimate Despair win. The order only stands for a year and the battle only occurs once everyone hundred years so for most of the time the two groups lived in peace. Of course there are the extremists who believe the world should belong to just one of the factions, but fortunately the majority of people in the world just wanted to live in peace and the army and police dealt with these extremists when they became violent. This meant the Hopes and Despairs of the world could live peacefully alongside each other until the time came for the battle between the Ultimate Hope and the Ultimate Despair.
Our story begins at a time when this battle is quickly approaching. The battle this time would be unlike any other in history and the outcome would shock the entire world, but before any of that can happen, the identity of the Ultimate Hope must be uncovered.
One summer day when she was just four years old, the symbol of a knife appeared on the right wrist of Junko Enoshima. She was thrilled to discover she was the Ultimate Despair, as were her parents and twin sister. Reporters came from all over the world seeking exclusive interviews with the girl who would someday fight to give Despair power over Hope. Being only four her parents were against this and tried to keep the publicity limited. As she grew up they became a bit more comfortable with the idea and allowed her to be interviewed more often. This was how people came to notice her incredible beauty. By the time she was seventeen she was on the cover of practically every magazine in Japan. Thanks to her looks and title of Ultimate Despair she was one of the biggest celebrities in the country. She was always getting stopped in the street for autographs and photos and at school she was by far the most popular person out of everyone there. She was also one of the meanest, most cruel bullies and enjoyed other people's failure as much as, if not more than, her own success.
While Enoshima may have been happy, many people in the world were not. For the Ultimate Hope had yet to be found. The Ultimate Despair was already seventeen and still no one in the world had found the mark of a lily on their body. Either that or the person was hiding it. That thought was quite scary, especially to the world's Hope population. Everyone hoped that the Ultimate Hope simply hadn't awakened their power yet and someday soon they would be found and the battle between Hope and Despair would begin…