Team Danganronpa

Team Danganronpa (チームダンガンロンパ) is an organization in the Danganronpa series, introduced in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. They created the Danganronpa reality show, which is currently on its 53rd season - as such, they are effectively the true masterminds and main antagonists of the game.

Description
Team Danganronpa is the group responsible for creating the Danganronpa television show, and with it, the real-life killing games. They are shown to be a technologically adept group, being responsible for the creation of the EXISAL units seen in game and K1-B0, the Ultimate Robot. They also have advanced memory manipulation at their disposal, allowing them to mold their "contestants" as needed to make their personalities more appealing for the show, including making people think Kokichi Oma is a Remnant of Despair and giving Kaito Momota a chronic disease. In each season of Danganronpa, the company kidnapped sixteen normal high school students to participate in the Killing Game. After the audition, they fabricated all of the students' past memories, personalities, and they also give each of them an Ultimate talent.

Currently, the only known people under their employ are Tsumugi Shirogane, K1-B0 (unknowingly), Monokuma and his children that take a role in the 53rd Killing Game Season.

After learning about the game's true nature, Shuichi Saihara and the other survivors of the Killing Game Semester stop playing along, boring the audience. In the end, K1-B0 sacrifices himself to finally end Danganronpa, killing Tsumugi, and destroying the set where the game was held. His self-destruction also creates a massive hole, literally breaking the fourth wall, ultimately destroying the whole Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles. Shuichi, Maki Harukawa and Himiko Yumeno are the only survivors and while they are not sure what is true and what is lies, they appear to have a positive outlook and wonder that the world of Danganronpa could still be continuing somewhere. Team Danganronpa is implied to be still active.

Seasons
There have been 53 past seasons of the Danganronpa-inspired Mutual Killing Games. The first 3 seasons were Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, and Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School, despite being considered fictional in the universe of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. Not much is known about a majority of the seasons or its participants excluding a few, but it's assumed they follow the same rules as the Killing Game Semester. It is heavily implied that Team Danganronpa has only recently started using real people for the Killing Game seasons.

In Chapter 4 of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, if the bookcase in the Ultimate Detective's Study Center is investigated, files are revealed. These files showing previous seasons and only new files have photos, with older files having illustrations.

52nd Season
Some details of the 52nd Season of Danganronpa TV show come to light in Chapter 6 of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony when Shuichi Saihara and Himiko Yumeno investigated Rantaro Amami's Study Center. During the investigation, they discover a disc that contained a recording made by Rantaro himself. In the recording he revealed he was in a previous Mutual Killing Game and was the only known survivor. He explained that in the previous killing game, he was "executed" and forced to participate the next killing game, the 53rd Season, and had his talent of Super High School Level Adventurer be replaced with Super High School Level Survivor because of it.

53rd Season
Following on from the 52nd Season, another 16 high school students are kidnapped by Team Danganronpa and forced to participate in the Killing Game Semester at the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles.

The Gopher Plan
To increase the intrigue for the 53rd season, Team Danganronpa created the story of "The Gopher Plan" and implanted it into the memories of the participants. This story revolved around multiple meteor collisions with the Earth and the governments of the world deciding to send 16 Ultimates away before the planet was destroyed. The students themselves rejected this plan, but soon afterwards an extremist cult came into power around the world determined to stop the Gopher Plan. To this end, they began hunting the Ultimates. The previous governments and those left not overrun by the cult began spreading the rumor that the Ultimates had died, leading them to success in the Gopher Plan and launching their spacecraft with the 16 Ultimates on board. They were unaware, however, that Monokuma had also been snuck on board. This spacecraft supposedly became the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles. Once the students were in deep sleep, Monokuma turned the ship around, landing on Earth after its destruction and setting up the Killing Game Semester. The story of this was gradually revealed through "Remembering Light" throughout the game, with the story being completely revealed in Chapter 5.

Killing Game Semester
Team Danganronpa's memory manipulation had once again succeeded, and the students had been killing each other with the culprits being correctly identified and executed each time. However, the final 5 students decided to reopen the first case, wherein Kaede Akamatsu had supposedly killed Rantaro Amami, after new evidence came to light. Once Shuichi Saihara revealed Rantaro's talent as the Ultimate Survivor, and proved that Kaede did in fact not murder him and was executed unjustly, he realized that the mastermind has to be one of them. By double-checking everyone's alibis during Rantaro's murder, Shuichi hones in on Tsumugi Shirogane as the true culprit and mastermind of the Killing Game Semester.

Tsumugi denied the claim vehemently where-as the other survivors are confused and shocked that the Ultimate Cosplayer could have gone through with such a plan. Shuichi however, made it very clear that Tsumugi was the only person who could have murdered Rantaro by using a hidden passageway in the girls bathroom, which also led into a hidden room that connected to the library. Realizing that she had been cornered, Tsumugi breaks and reveal herself as "Junko Enoshima the 53rd".

Tsumugi, now cosplaying as Junko, went on to reveal the truth of Team Danganronpa's memory manipulation and the broadcasting of the Danganronpa reality series. After proving her talent fully as the Ultimate Cosplayer by cosplaying as some of the characters from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, Tsumugi revealed that everything has been broadcasted to a very peaceful world that have been enjoying watching the students of Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles kill each other.

While the other survivors were quick to oppose Tsumugi and Monokuma, they both reveal that the participants of the Killing Game Semester are also "fictional characters", whose memory, personality, feelings, and talent were all fabricated in order to provide an exciting setting for the killing game. Tsumugi reveals herself as working for Team Danganronpa and went a step further and shows Shuichi's, Kaede's, and Kaito's, audition videos for the killing game, showing what sort of people they were prior to participating.

K1-B0 however, after hearing what "the voice inside of him" has to say, reassured everyone to not lose hope. Tsumugi corrected him and says that the voice K1-B0 hears is the voice of the people watching this killing game and that he is nothing more than an interactive communication device and camera for the viewers to interact and participate in the game themselves. Despite this however, K1-B0 refused to give up on hope and stated that the people in the outside world don't want despair. Tsumugi meanwhile refused to give up on despair and stated that a world that enjoys killings could not possibly desire hope. In true Danganronpa fashion, they decide to settle this with one final, special vote where K1-B0 represents hope and Tsumugi represents despair.

Shuichi however, saw through the charade and cuts in, saying that neither choice is correct and that choosing hope would do nothing but cause the killing game to continue. Because of this, he decided to stop playing along and abandons his vote, hoping to end Danganronpa once and for all, much to Tsumugi's and Monokuma's chagrin. Eventually, Shuichi convinces everyone else to abandon their vote as well but K1-B0, in a last ditch effort to keep Danganronpa going, is hacked by the audience. Tsumugi is proud to show that the audience does not wish for Danganronpa to end and explained that they supposedly deleted K1-B0's personality that kept getting in the way. Despite Tsumugi telling them that what they're doing is pointless, Shuichi refused to give up, still exclaiming that he will end Danganronpa and that their lives are not just show-things for people's amusement.

Confident that his voice reached the outside world through K1-B0, Shuichi and everyone else abandoned their vote. Tsumugi however, bends the rules one last time and abandons her too, which she revealed after everyone else did. Tsumugi stated that if they're going to risk their lives to end Danganronpa, then she will risk her life to make it continue. Tsumugi is confident that Danganronpa will continue after abandoning her vote, meaning only K1-B0's vote will have any power as he is still being hacked.

When Monokuma displayed the results of the final voting, Tsumugi was shocked to discover that no one had voted, proving that the audience does not want Danganronpa to continue. Tsumugi panicked and tried to make everyone reconsider, but it is no use as the monitors all turn off, the audience no longer showing any interest. Tsumugi, upon realizing that Danganronpa was indeed over and done with, promptly loses all of her hope in living as she denied a world without Danganronpa.

K1-B0 does not hesitate and proceeds to execute everything, sparing everyone but Monokuma and Tsumugi, ending Danganronpa for good. Although she did not survive the final execution, her final words of being a mere imitator rang in Shuichi's head. He believed that perhaps Hope's Peak Academy and the Remnants of Despair did in fact exist much to the other's shock, though this is nothing more than speculation on his part based on Tsumugi's final words.