The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy

The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy or Hope's Peak Academy's biggest, most awful event (希望ヶ峰学園史上最大最悪の事件, Kibōgamine Gakuen shijō saidai saiaku no jiken) is the name given to the very first Mutual Killing game featured in Danganronpa Zero and Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Despair Arc. It was caused by Junko Enoshima. Unlike the other killing games, it is directly hosted by both Junko and Mukuro Ikusaba.

The Tragedy of Hope's Peak was also mentioned and referenced various times during the events of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.

It is not to be confused with The Tragedy, the world-wide event that happened later on, which was triggered by The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy. The Tragedy Of Hope's Peak Academy was caused in order to create the Parade and Despair Video, leading to the bigger Tragedy.

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Despair Arc
Junko, in her desire to create the Despair Video and cause a riot, forced the Student Council of Hope's Peak Academy into the first known mutual killing game, which killed all the participants except Izuru Kamukura and the heavily wounded student council president Sōshun Murasame. At first, they refused to kill each other, but Junko provided motive for Karen Kisaragi and a few others to kick off the killing spree. Izuru killed off the assumed sole survivor in self-defense, and a security camera caught him.

Following the Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy, Junko sent out e-mails revealing Hope's Peak Academy's Izuru Kamukura Project, which included conducting illegal human experiments, and used security footage of the mutual killing to make it look like Hope's Peak had created a murderer. The events were broadcasted to the Reserve Course, greatly upsetting them - in their view, the academy had apparently spent the exorbitant fees they had paid to create "murderers".

The Reserve Course rebelled and protested, beginning the Parade, not knowing that they were being led and agitated from the shadows by Junko and her organization, Ultimate Despair. Junko created the Despair Video using Ryota Mitarai's techniques and the footage of the school's Tragedy.

Danganronpa Zero
The Steering Committee attempted to hide the incident, claiming that the Student Council were suddenly called to an overseas facility to study abroad. The Reserve Course were brainwashed by the Despair Video in secrecy, forming a secret society loyal to Ultimate Despair.

A month after the incident, Jin Kirigiri and the Steering Committee asked Yasuke Matsuda to extract information from mentally unstable and supposedly comatose Sōshun, in order to gain more information. However, Yasuke murdered Sōshun in an attempt to protect Junko, who hid from suspicion by creating amnesiac alternative identity with his memory altering techniques.

The Steering Committee were soon murdered by Junko's supporters. Kyoko Kirigiri begun to investigate Izuru Kamukura and the incident, though she was soon ordered to give up for the sake of her safety. The Madarai Brothers also investigated the incident and were after Junko, but they were all murdered by Mukuro Ikusaba. Eventually, Yūto Kamishiro was murdered as well, after he investigated and managed to find out that Izuru was likely blamed and Junko could be the real culprit. In the end, Junko regained her memories and murdered Yasuke, thus making her and Izuru the only people aware of what truly happened.

Junko then began to prepare The Tragedy and Killing School Life.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Social unrest soon became a movement that spread outside the academy's walls, with people everywhere protesting against the wealthy and talented. The movement soon engulfed the world, becoming more violent by the day, eventually creating the major event known as The Tragedy.

During the Killing School Life, the location of The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy, Classroom 5-C, could be entered on the fifth floor of the academy. It was covered in blood and body chalk lines.

According to Monokuma, the room had been abandoned and was left exactly how it was. Byakuya Togami mentions that the blood was "considerably old", and had dried as well as changed color.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy was only shown through a manga created by Monokuma where he explained about the Izuru Kamukura Project and how Hope's Peak created lzuru as the Ultimate Hope. Izuru was also framed about the thirteen members of the student council that were brutally murdered. After the Reserve Department students found out about The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy the students began The Parade and provoked anger against the academy.

Results and Aftermath
The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy ended with the Mastermind's victory, as the Killing Game went smoothly, resulting in Izuru and Sōshun being left as the sole survivors, with Sōshun suffering a severe head injury. Even though Izuru technically was never an actual participant, he was framed by Junko and he was blamed as the mastermind and the killer of the Student Council. This created the cause célèbre among the Reserve Course and led to The Parade, just like Junko had planned. Junko gained several followers from the Reserve Course, brainwashing them with a Despair Video, which was created using the footage of the Tragedy.

As a result of the incident, The Steering Committee tried to hide it by claiming that the Student Council were suddenly called to an overseas facility to study abroad. In order to protect Junko, several people with information and the ones investigating the incident were murdered by her supporters. The victims included the survivor Sōshun, the whole Steering Committee, the Madarai Brothers, Yūto Kamishiro and Yasuke Matsuda. Junko also made sure that Kyosuke Munakata's investigation would end in failure and manipulated his helpers to claim her innocent. Thus, Junko was completely free from suspicion and ready to continue her next plan.

In the end, The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy was extremely important for Junko, creating the beginnings of the world-wide Tragedy and resulting in her gaining many followers. However, she felt that the forced mutual killing was too psychotic and too stiff, thus missing excitement for her. She decided to use Yasuke's memory erasing technology. Furthermore, she determined that a mascot is necessary as well - not even a host dressed in a sort of a cartoon character outfit would do. Therefore, she modified her next planned mutual killing into motives in order to make things more dramatic, resulting in the Killing School Life; it was to be hosted by a robotic bear known as Monokuma.

Junko continued to blame Izuru as the culprit, claiming during the Killing School Trip that Izuru was the mastermind who killed the whole Student Council in cold blood.

Trivia

 * The Tragedy of Hope's Peak Academy contains some similarities to ; both works involve a defiant student being shot by one of the organizers, and a couple attempting mutual suicide to escape the carnage.
 * This killing game is so far the only one in the history of the franchise to include guns as a possible weapon.
 * This killing game is the only one to be hosted by the mastermind themselves, as the idea to use Monokuma has not been developed yet.
 * In Danganronpa Zero, Daiki mentions he killed two other people before killing Shōji. For some reason this does not match with the killing order seen in Danganronpa 3. This could be explained if he was the one to incapacitate Sōshun (likely from behind as Sōshun believed that Izuru was responsible for all the deaths) and one other. In his panicked emotional state, he could have believed he had really killed them.
 * During the whole incident as shown in the anime, Mukuro sang a well-known Japanese folk song, in the background after Junko handed her a sheet music book. This gave the atmosphere an ironic twist since the song lyrics talk about hopes and dreams while an event of death and despair was happening in real time.

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