Danganronpa: When There’s Hope, There’s Despair.

I remembered a quote from Mission Impossible: Fallout by a villain, John Lark that plans to eliminate at least 1/3 of the human population: “The greater the suffering, the greater the peace.”

Danganronpa anime franchise that I’ve recently finished is an adaptation of a video game, which preys on this very idea to create despair. Except that, the villain inside doesn’t believe in neither peace nor hope. This villain rules the story world with pure despair, by taking away the symbol of hope that the society looked up to (much like ‘All Might’ in My Hero Academia). Adding some brainwashing, the locked madness inside the people are all unleashed. Be it greed, selfishness or the desire to protect something—all of these are turned into reasons for people to kill each other. And this spead across the world.

Despair is contagious; the villain was right.

But so is hope.

If words are that manipulative and destructive, then they can become just as constructive and are able to summon hope too. By understanding others and knowing that you are not alone in this chaotic world, hope can have a domino effects on people. One by one, a collection of hopes can be assembled; it’s a slow but a definite process.

One’s words and genuine action in caring about something are valuable. Emotions are born from them, feelings are evoked from them. They inspire people. Others can lend us a hand to pull us up from our despair anytime, but the strength inside us can only be mustered up by harvesting our own hopes: the hope to be rescued, and to rescue others.

This is because in the end, it’s an inevitable fact that hopes and despairs co-exist like yin and yang. Justice and injustice. Good and evil. Light and darkness. But if you are able to consume this despair and use it as a fuel, you can create a greater hope for yourself and everybody else. Like how after the night falls, the sun will always rise up. No matter how long it takes. Why?

It’s because when there’s despair, there’s hope.

So smile at despair, in the name of hope!