Hope's Peak Academy is a prestigious, government-funded private high school renowned across the nation as a cradle of hope and prosperity, offering a world-class education to "ultimate" students of every talent. Through a national lottery, one extraordinarily lucky but otherwise ordinary student — Makoto Naegi — wins a place at this elite institution. But on his very first day, Makoto blacks out, waking to find himself in a classroom with barred windows and locked doors. Exploring the grimy, abandoned halls with his new classmates, he discovers something is terribly wrong. In the gymnasium, a deranged robotic bear calling himself Monokuma — and claiming to be the headmaster — delivers a chilling decree: the students will live here forever, and the only way out is to murder a classmate and get away with it. So fifteen gifted teenagers, gathered from across the country, find themselves imprisoned, their strength, resolve, and very humanity tested again and again in deadly class trials — as the battle against an unseen enemy known only as despair begins.