Ryoko Otonashi

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Character Name: Ryoko Otonashi
Series: Dangan Ronpa
Timeline: Book 2, end of chapter 12
Canon Resource Link: Ryoko's wiki page is pretty good! And like last time, I should probably include Junko's as well
Character History: When Ryoko Otonashi is first introduced, she's a happy high school student, skipping through campus on her way to meet the person she loves most, her neurologist, Yasuke Matsuda. She doesn't seem to have a care in the world skipping past other students, sometimes through crowds of them on her way to the biology building only to completely forget where she was going.

See, Ryoko has a very interesting problem. She suffers from some sort of mysterious amnesia, one that keeps her from retaining new memories, and leaves her reliant on Matsuda's treatments and a handy notebook for recording new information in order to basically keep functioning as a person. All her memories are contained in its pages, and they pretty much only focus on her and Matsuda. She doesn't attend classes and her notes specifically say not to bother interacting with the other students.

If you're thinking this sounds fishy, it's because it definitely is. Ryoko has a pretty dark secret under her mostly carefree exterior. She's actually Junko Enoshima, the series' big bad and all around absolutely terrible human being.

As Junko, she's completely obsessed with despair for reasons that have never been made clear (or possibly no reason). We're given little to no information about her early life or upbringing and what is given isn't entirely reliable (it's given by her sister who's pretending to be Junko and isn't exactly great at it). So let's talk about what we do for sure know.

Once upon a time, Junko and Matsuda met and became friends. But then Matsuda's mother fell ill, he and he stopped playing with her, so Junko spent an entire month building an incredibly complex sand castle, and then some horrible person destroyed it. Matsuda saw her crying, and scoured the neighborhood to find the culprit, only for Junko to reveal she did it. She did it so he would spend time with her. Because she loves him, and wants him to open up to her about his problems. And tells him that she loves him so much, she could never forget him and even if she did, she knows he'd be able to fix her.

Which is pretty convenient considering she does end up with amnesia, right? It's almost like even back then Junko was already weirdly warped and manipulating her childhood friend to come back to her and rely on her and bind the two of them closer together. But why?

For despair, of course. Even at this point, Junko was already the way she'll be for the rest of her life. Incredibly talented, incredibly calculating and incredibly obsessed with despair. Despair is her reason for being, it drives her, it brings life into a boring world. To pull her friend out of his grief and wrap her around her finger, making her the only person he ever cried in front of, making her someone he would do anything to help, making her a person he would kill to protect? What could be more hopeless than that?

So the two grow up offscreen, and fall in love with each other. It's a little bit of a love-hate relationship since Matusda is frequently driven up a wall by Junko's antics (not that we actually know what these are, but the sand castle stunt is described as typical of her, so there's that). And eventually they make it to high school!

Both are accepted to Hope's Peak Academy, a super fancy school that bestows the title of Super High School Level upon students who are recognized as the best in whatever field they excel in. For Matsuda, the Super High School Level Neurologist, he saw this as the chance to combat the disease that plagued his mother, and possibly a chance to fix his dear friend Junko's despair compulsion. For Junko Enoshima, the Super High School Level Gyaru (or Fashion Gal/Girl, Fashion Diva, Fashionista, etc. depending on the translation), it was a chance for Super High School Level Despair (a much more accurate title she bestowed upon herself) to create Super High School Level Despair (a movement), and create The Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event in Human History. Junko, believing in going big or going home, does not intend for this title to be hyperbole.

And Junko gets off to a start, committing at least one count of murder before getting to the school and just goes on from there. Not everything needs to be mentioned, but we need to draw attention to the fact that she forces the student council into killing each other via blackmail. This is recorded for future use and will be the thing that finally makes Ryoko Otonashi exist. But before we get to that, Junko uses said recording to start trouble between the Reserve Course (a sort of farm system for Hope's Peak, but really a scam for gathering money for the school) and the actual SHSL students. Reserves are told they could get in if there's a vacancy and look at all the vacancies she created but the school board isn't filling, so that leads to some serious unrest on the campus (no they don't care that a bunch of people got murdered, just that they want those slots).

We're almost at Ryoko, but not before Junko finds the time to kill another student, use that and the subliminal techniques learned from watching her friend to brainwash an entire class. Oh, and blackmail the head of security so that she can do pretty much whatever she wants without too much trouble. For at least a little while longer anyways. Because the remaining/new trustees are kind of tired of all these dead bodies popping up around her and decide to get the SHSL Neurologist to interrogate her.

...the one she's known since childhood, but they don't know that since the two of them didn't publically interact while at the academy. He clears Junko, and doesn't learn the whole truth, but decides that she needs to be protected from herself, so he makes a decision that's going to haunt him for the rest of his life (this is a trend with those who encounter Junko). And shortly after the interrogation Junko Enoshima forgets everything, and Ryoko Otonashi appears!

Now we're finally back to the start of DR0 after two pages of insight into someone who both is and isn't Ryoko. Fun! So Ryoko goes to see the love of her life who acts like a complete ass while she just sort of moons over him because even though he's a dick, he's so dreamy. Even when he's explaining her condition for the millionth time and calling her an idiot and throwing scalpels at her. A presumably normal day for a normal girl with amnesia until she finds a note slipped under her door claiming to have stolen all her notebooks.

And from here, Ryoko's life sure takes a turn as she's dragged into the chaos Junko Enoshima's caused. She finds a dead body, panics, runs back to Matsuda's room and meets Yuto Kamashiro, the SHSL Spy, runs back, freaking out off and on through all this while she forgets and then rereads her notes, re-encounters the corpse and also Junko Enoshima!

Back towards the start of this section, I mentioned Junko having a sister. And said sister is completely willing to participate in Junko's horrible schemes at this point. So throw a wig on her, call her Junko, and Ryoko's not gonna know the difference, right? She's never met Junko. And with similar hair and a similar outfit, anyone she describes "Junko" too will probably think it sounds like the genuine article.

So Junko's sister Mukuro does her best Junko impression while Ryoko freaks because Junko Enoshima is...something. Callous, bizarre, shoving her hands in Ryoko's mouth, Junko seems to have no boundaries at all and really doesn't care if Ryoko's put off or uncomfortable by her behavior. More importantly than not understanding the concept of personal space, she rattles off a number of key plot points that Ryoko really has no idea about but somehow find her way into her notebook for later. Things like that mass student council murder. Salvation finally comes in the form of the SHSL Bodyguard, Isshiki Madarai, showing up to capture Junko Enoshima and Junko bails, leaving Ryoko to deal with it.

Here we get to see Ryoko's talent on display as she evades him, using her notebook to record his movements and body language and predict his movements and attacks, completely evading and eluding him until she can trap him in a storage shed. The novel doesn't dwell too much on how this multitasking is happening, but it's certainly an impressive feat to flee this guy while reading and writing at the same time.

Unfortunately for Ryoko, Madarai somehow escapes the shed and gets the drop on her, but unfortunately for him, Junko shows up again, kills him and from the shock of seeing someone murdered in front of her, Ryoko passes out...and the real Junko wakes up. She takes a moment to survey the carnage, decides that everything is going perfect, almost despairingly perfect even, and heads to Matsuda's room since that's where Ryoko needs to be when they trade off again. This happens a few times throughout the novel, seemingly any act of major stress causes Junko's true personality and memory to resurface and then the switch is made again offscreen.

From here, Ryoko's life spirals into a complete mess as she has all the information needed to unwittingly start doing what she exists for and work at uncovering what's going on at Hope's Peak Academy. It's a super despair inducing journey as she tries to reconcile her belief that none of this has anything to do with her when she keeps finding herself thrown in the middle of it. She makes some progress, goes to sleep or passes out, Junko takes over and furthers her own aims, and when needed has her sister show up to keep things moving along. Such as by telling her, among other things, that she plans on killing Matsuda. Needless to say Ryoko doesn't take it well and finds even more resolve to stop this terrible insane mess of a person. She even bites Junko, responding with physical aggression, whereas with Madarai she mostly just ran for her life.

Unfortunately, none of this really goes against Junko's plans. Ryoko hating her and wanting to stop her is exactly what she wants. And it's not just her either. Everything keeps moving along schedule as Ryoko continues working, Matsuda begins to realize Junko's even further gone than he already thought, her sister Mukuro...exists (which honestly is more than Junko's doing most of the time right now). Things are racing towards a super despair inducing conclusion and things are coming together for her as much as they're falling apart for Ryoko.

While visiting Matsuda's lab, a giant mess ensues where Ryoko and one of Junko's classmates are menaced by Madarai again only to be saved by Mukuro. An incredibly awkward conversation ensues as Junko's sister talks to amnesiac Junko in front of Junko's classmate. It doesn't entirely matter since Ryoko forgets the conversation soon after, but it won't be the last time she sees Mukuro. And seeing Mukuro as Mukuro, not Junko will be important to the despair inducing conclusion Junko has planned.

From here, things only get worse because of course they do, as when reviewing the case with Yuto, Ryoko and the spy piece together that there's a connection between Matsuda and Junko. Once again, Ryoko takes this poorly. Matsuda means the world to her, and Junko wants to kill him! How could they be connected? She thinks about this one until she can't and tries to bury it. Unfortunately that sense of stress or anxiety or something along those lines triggers Junko's resurgence, and she takes advantage of her time to oonfuse and irritate Matsuda before putting Ryoko somewhere entirely new.

Ryoko comes to in a weird underground area attended to by a maid in a bear mask. Junko's video seems to have bolstered some of the Reserves into forming some sort of cult and Ryoko gets to witness firsthand how bad things have gotten. Not content to just let things simmer, Junko also added subliminal messaging and other brainwashing techniques to the video of the student council making the Reserves want to watch it over and over heightening their despair and their urges to act out against the establishment.

Witnessing weird bear people watching brutal murder videos and seeing their torture victims is way way too much for Ryoko. She's already seen how awful Junko is but this is a whole other level of awful. It's almost more than she can take. She does manage to learn that the key to what Junko wants is in the old school building, which has been closed since the student council massacre, but she blacks out again before she can escape the underground area.

Besides presumably murdering the person who gave her that information, we don't know what Junko does here. Ryoko wakes up again in the neurology lab, meeting yet another of Junko's classmates, Kyoko Kirigiri, the SHSL Detective. Kirigiri relates to Ryoko that Matsuda most likely killed the student council president (a survivor of Junko's killing game), meaning he's involved with the awful happenings at Hope's Peak and Ryoko doesn't take that very well. But it's okay Madarai shows up to derail everything and Ryoko finds out he's actually a set of octuplets which explains how the bodyguard keeps popping up after dying.

Mukuro shows up again and saves her and reveals a few things to Ryoko that we already know from this section, but it's news to her. Everything that's happened has been just according to Junko's plan. And that Mukuro and Junko are sisters. All of this weirds Ryoko out because at this point she's viewed Junko as some sort of evil calamity and those typically don't have families. It doesn't humanize Junko to her at all though, it's just strange. And as Mukuro continues going on and on, Ryoko falls back on her old standby, writes this off as having nothing to do with her and goes to leave, but Mukuro tells her that she knows Matsuda's location and is supposed to give it to her in exchange for Ryoko murdering the surviving octuplets.

Prior to this we haven't seen too much violence from her. She bit Junko, and thinks about killing her, but actually killing people's a big deal. Especially since according to Mukuro, it's what Junko wants her to do. And she sure thinks about it, picturing herself stabbing them repeatedly, but ultimately can't do it and collapses on the ground begging Matsuda to help her. Mukuro at a loss for how to handle this decides to just tell her where he is and Ryoko runs off to the old school building to see him. But as she's leaving, she notices something isn't quite right with the scene, something's missing but she has no idea what and it probably doesn't have anything to do with her (the knife she was supposed to kill the Madarais with has disappeared, oh no).

After getting there, Ryoko explores the building, finds nothing of note, runs into Yuto again who begins outlining what he's deduced about the case while Ryoko thinks about Matsuda. Ryoko learns that the student council massacre happened in this building and that the student council president survived, as did Izuru Kamukura (a human experiment created by the school board attempting to instill all possible talents in one being). This explains the cover up as if it got out that the academy experimented on someone, that would be bad. If it turned out that experiment was involved in a killing game that would be even worse. So none of those vacancies can be filled because the public can't learn what happened (and for whatever reason, let's say brainwashing, the Reserves don't make the video public outside of their own underground cult).

She also learns from Yuto that Junko Enoshima somehow learned of all this and planned to use it overthrow the Academy. Which isn't entirely accurate, but that's close enough. As is Yuto's deduction that Junko is at the center of all the murders and chaos at the Academy. After putting all this together, he leads Ryoko to a hidden elevator and the two head for the basement, where presumably Matsuda and any other answers are waiting.

On their way down, Ryoko decides to show interest in people who aren't Matsuda and asks Yuto if he's scared about what they might find. He reveals that he is, but has to keep on because spying and getting involved in other people's business is what he's good at. Ryoko doesn't even pretend to understand this and understands even less when Yuto explains that he'd also be rescuing Kamukura and exposing the real culprit behind everything.

Unfortunately, that reveal will have to wait as her canonpoint's right after the elevator stops. So Ryoko won't get to hear Yuto's theories on who the culprit is or see her own story reach its super despair inducing conclusion. Because everything is still going exactly how Junko wants it to, and she'll be taking the spotlight back soon in a super despair inducing fashion and reintroducing that missing knife as only she can.

CRAU: N/A

Abilities/Special Powers: Ryoko Otonashi's only major ability is that of the Super High School Analyst. She's capable of analyzing things and manipulating the data from it to achieve the results she wants. Given her condition, she usually does have to write it in her notebook, but once it's there, it could give her the ability to escape an attacker by memorizing and predicting their attack patterns. Or the ability to solve a seemingly unsolvable mystery by connecting the dots. There's no real upper limit depicted in canon for the ability, but we do know that if the wrong person where to possess it, they could seemingly bring about a societal collapse by knowing which buttons to push and which dominoes to topple. Or to remove themselves from the world through some incredibly convoluted means then have everything play out they way they want to so they reemerge at the worst possible time in the worst possible way.

Additionally there's that whole memory issue. Her ability to store new memories is messed up, so she's reliant on her notebook to keep track of people, places, events, that sort of thing. She can learn new skills and remember how to do them, but she won't know why she knows these things or that she even knows them until they're needed.

Third-Person Sample: Like she does every day, Ryoko's taking the time to review her notes. And like every day, she looks up from her notebook marveling that anything described in here could've happened to anyone, let alone her. It's all so incredibly strange. Mysterious terrible people, dead bodies, all this impending doom and then suddenly whisked away to Wonderland? She's pretty sure things like that don't normally happen.

“This shouldn't have anything to do with me.”

After speaking up, she goes back to her notebook reading about Wonderland and it's general craziness. If it was strange before, it's downright bizarre hearing about all of this. Things like what was in her notebook before almost certainly don't happen to normal people, but she's sure this stuff happens even less if at all.

“Um, excuse me?”

She finally looks up from her notebook deciding to ask anyone who's around about what she's read. She can accept the preWonderland stuff, she has to, and she can accept some of the Wonderland parts too, She's clearly in a mansion, it's not Hope's Peak Academy, but...

“Can I ask you a few questions about Wonderland? I trust my notes, but this all seems kind of um...impossible.”

She thinks that's a good word for it.

First-Person Sample: Hi Wonderland!

[The face on the screen looks bright and happy like she's having a great day. Which she is as far as she knows. If she shouldn't be, she doesn't remember why.]

If we haven't met, my name's Ryoko Otonashi. And if we have, I'm sorry, I don't remember introducing myself before.

[This is probably not the first time this introduction has played out over the network.]

I was wondering if...if..um..

[She looks down, away from the camera as she checks her notebook to see what she was going to ask.]

Oh, I remember now! Um, I wanted to find out if anyone's seen this person in Wonderland.

[She picks up her notebook and shows a sketch of this guy. It's not great, but clearly has had a decent amount of time put into it.]

If you have, please let me know. It's very important! He's very important! It's not life or death or anything like that, it's just um...did I say important? If I didn't, it's important!

Eway return: Yes she's coming back from a previous stay, and yes I'd like to have her keep her memories! I know that's kind of a mess because of her condition but I figure this way if the opportunity to use it
Lost memory: Ryoko (and Junko) will lose the memory of talking to the guy who told her about the old school building. Ryoko finds him while trying to escape from the weird underground area and is horrified to see what the Reserves did to him. They have a short conversation that points her towards the old school building before Junko's persona reasserts itself and presumably kills the guy (It's a little up in the air, like I hinted at in the history page. But the scene gets kind of hard to follow as Ryoko blacks out, but she mentions standing in a puddle of red water so that doesn't bode well for the guy she was talking to).