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App Supplement - History Section
I'd like to start with an incredibly simplified summary, that being that the best way I can think of to describe Dangan Ronpa is "Battle Royale meets Ace Attorney in a dark alley and beats the crap out of it because it's decided it doesn't like the latter's face. Afterwards, Zero Escape comes along and mugs both of them."
The game involves fifteen high school kids, all with a special "talent" that's stated from the beginning - they're all called "Super High-School Level [x thing here]", a(n intentionally silly) title that most of them wave around with pride, indicating that they're of the highest caliber in their respective fields.
At the start of the game, all fifteen kids have just been invited to attend Hope's Peak Academy, an elite high school for the gifted; upon entering the school, however, they immediately fall unconscious, awakening in various different areas of the school. Said school has heavy iron plates over the windows, and massive steel bulkheads over the doors - there's no getting in or out. They all gather in the front hall, confused and varying levels of upset; they're shortly greeted by a robotic entity called Monobear (this thing), who seems to be directly tied to their captor and is more than willing to give them the rundown. During their meetings with Monobear, the students are made aware of what sort of situation they're in:
They're perfectly safe within the school itself, and they're welcome to stay as long as they want. They'll have food, water and supplies, so they won't die of starvation, thirst or neglect; they can live very comfortably for the rest of their lives. However, if they choose to stay, they'll never be allowed to leave the walls of the school itself.
On the other hand, they can try to "graduate." The rules of "graduation" are as follows: only a student who kills another student and gets away with their crime is allowed to leave the school.
So basically, they'll have to spend the rest of their lives in a cage, never seeing their family, their friends or the outdoors ever again...or they have to kill each other for a chance to escape. Fun! Ishimaru is quick to take on a leadership role among the other students once their situation is made clear, seeming to believe it to be his duty given his ranking and "talent" of Super High-School Level Hall Monitor, and the students are content to humor him at first, albeit snarkily in some cases; that changes after their captor gives them something they've been lacking up until now: a motive to commit murder.
All of the students are given a DVD with an incentive on it - Ishimaru's DVD is never shown, but we can infer the sort of thing that was on it from the two DVDs that we do see. First, the protagonist is shown a video of his mother, father and younger sister, all waving and expressing how proud of him they are for being selected to attend Hope's Peak; the video glitches out, and then cuts to a shot of the room that the family had been sitting in completely destroyed and in tatters, the family nowhere to be seen. One of the other students, a pop star, is shown a video of her happily performing with her JPop idol group, only for the video to cut to an empty stage (implying that the group fell apart without the character in question - the leader of the group - there to perform with them) followed by another brief "glitch-out", finally revealing the (either dead or deeply unconscious) bodies of the other members of the group strewn about haphazardly on the stage.
It isn't long after this that the first murder occurs, a girl is discovered stabbed to death in another student's shower, and the second stage of the game begins.
After a short period of time to investigate the body and the crime scene, the students are called to an elevator that brings them down to a courtroom in the basement. (Surely you didn't think that Ace Attorney reference was just for kicks earlier?) After all, the second stipulation for graduation is that the murderer has to get away with the crime; the students are made to have a trial/debate, in which they try to figure out who the culprit is by presenting evidence to each other, quite literally shooting down each other's arguments with "evidence bullets", and once in a while...uh, playing a rhythm game when somebody gets too heated and starts throwing insults around instead of logic. (It's just. That sort of game. Don't ask.) Once the students have reached a consensus through the power of logic and rhythmic tapping, they cast votes using buttons in front of them to indicate who they think the culprit is. If they guess incorrectly, the culprit "graduates" - meaning that all of the other students are executed for indicting the wrong person, while the culprit gets to leave the school scot-free. If they guess correctly, however, the culprit is executed in a manner that's appropriately ironic in relation to their personalities, and the rest of the students are sent back upstairs to continue living out their lives in the school until someone kills again.
So as far as Ishimaru goes, he's been around more death than any seventeen-year-old really deserves to be. He's seen and been made to investigate the dead body of the girl discovered in the shower, and he's witnessed two deaths personally: for the first, a student was killed early on to make an example of what happens when you defy Monobear's rules - they were stabbed to death with multiple spears being shot into their stomach from below, impaling the body clear through. He's also seen the execution of the culprit responsible for the first murder; they were tied down to the point of being unable to move or defend themselves and then beaten to death with fairly small but weighted projectiles shot at high velocity. The body was thoroughly mangled by the beating; the killing blow is implied to have crushed the student's head. Both deaths he witnessed himself were from a distance of about ten feet away, which is far closer to someone actively being killed than anyone deserves to be, much less twice; furthermore, in both instances, the bodies were not immediately removed from anyone's line of sight, but were rather left on display in front of the students until they were actively cleared out of the room.
After the first culprit's death, the rest of the students were sent upstairs to continue living out their lives in the school; as of Ishimaru's current canon point, they're wary of Monobear and what he might do to them next, but they're trying to move on as best they can and be as normal as possible. With every new trial, new areas of the school they're locked in are opened up for them to use; Ishimaru spends most of his time in the sauna and pool areas that have just been opened up, and otherwise he's still trying to run things as normally as possible - he's waking people up for breakfast, holding meetings, and still trying to gather as much information as he can and trying to encourage everyone to bond. He worries openly about two of the students who are no longer joining them for meetings in the morning; he's doing what he can to hold everyone together.
He also seems to have found himself a rival in Mondo Oowada, another student locked inside the school; though he initially finds the other kid to be stupid and boorish and is described as picking on and making fun of him, they eventually challenge each other to a...duel of sorts, that basically consists of seeing who can endure the heat in the sauna longer. (Because they're stupid teenaged boys, and this is the sort of thing they think up when they're feeling reluctant to beat the shit out of each other for obvious reasons relating to their situation.) They're apparently in there for a godawful long time, as the protagonist literally gives up on them and goes to bed, expressing the general sentiment that he just hopes they'll stop before somebody ends up seriously hurt or dead; the next morning they...seem to have bonded over their mutual bout of stupidity, refuse to divulge who won the competition, and seem to want to spend the rest of their time in the school slapping each other on the back, complimenting each other, calling each other "my brother" and generally just annoying the hell out of everyone with their bromance. Because, again, they're stupid teenaged boys. This particular bond is highly important to Ishimaru's storyline because Ishimaru is shown to have many social difficulties (as covered in the personality section); assuming that Ishimaru's free-time events have not been completed (and I am reasonably certain that Route's Naegi assumes they have not, which I am perfectly all right with and more than happy to accommodate), Oowada is literally the only friend Ishimaru has, and is the first person he's been able to bond with in such a way.
And that brings us clear up to Ishimaru's current canon point. No one knows what's going on in Hope's Peak, what Monobear even is, or who's doing this to them - basically, their lives are a tremendous cluster of "WHY THIS" and no answers seem to be forthcoming just yet. If you would like details about the events of chapter three and/or endgame, I would be more than willing to present those as well either in revisions or over AIM, though they aren't relevant to Ishimaru's portrayal in particular at the time being. (The events of chapter three do involve a major shift in Ishimaru's personality, but that would only be relevant if canon-updating is ever going to happen; at this point in time, I don't plan on updating him anywhere near that section of the game.)
The game involves fifteen high school kids, all with a special "talent" that's stated from the beginning - they're all called "Super High-School Level [x thing here]", a(n intentionally silly) title that most of them wave around with pride, indicating that they're of the highest caliber in their respective fields.
At the start of the game, all fifteen kids have just been invited to attend Hope's Peak Academy, an elite high school for the gifted; upon entering the school, however, they immediately fall unconscious, awakening in various different areas of the school. Said school has heavy iron plates over the windows, and massive steel bulkheads over the doors - there's no getting in or out. They all gather in the front hall, confused and varying levels of upset; they're shortly greeted by a robotic entity called Monobear (this thing), who seems to be directly tied to their captor and is more than willing to give them the rundown. During their meetings with Monobear, the students are made aware of what sort of situation they're in:
They're perfectly safe within the school itself, and they're welcome to stay as long as they want. They'll have food, water and supplies, so they won't die of starvation, thirst or neglect; they can live very comfortably for the rest of their lives. However, if they choose to stay, they'll never be allowed to leave the walls of the school itself.
On the other hand, they can try to "graduate." The rules of "graduation" are as follows: only a student who kills another student and gets away with their crime is allowed to leave the school.
So basically, they'll have to spend the rest of their lives in a cage, never seeing their family, their friends or the outdoors ever again...or they have to kill each other for a chance to escape. Fun! Ishimaru is quick to take on a leadership role among the other students once their situation is made clear, seeming to believe it to be his duty given his ranking and "talent" of Super High-School Level Hall Monitor, and the students are content to humor him at first, albeit snarkily in some cases; that changes after their captor gives them something they've been lacking up until now: a motive to commit murder.
All of the students are given a DVD with an incentive on it - Ishimaru's DVD is never shown, but we can infer the sort of thing that was on it from the two DVDs that we do see. First, the protagonist is shown a video of his mother, father and younger sister, all waving and expressing how proud of him they are for being selected to attend Hope's Peak; the video glitches out, and then cuts to a shot of the room that the family had been sitting in completely destroyed and in tatters, the family nowhere to be seen. One of the other students, a pop star, is shown a video of her happily performing with her JPop idol group, only for the video to cut to an empty stage (implying that the group fell apart without the character in question - the leader of the group - there to perform with them) followed by another brief "glitch-out", finally revealing the (either dead or deeply unconscious) bodies of the other members of the group strewn about haphazardly on the stage.
It isn't long after this that the first murder occurs, a girl is discovered stabbed to death in another student's shower, and the second stage of the game begins.
After a short period of time to investigate the body and the crime scene, the students are called to an elevator that brings them down to a courtroom in the basement. (Surely you didn't think that Ace Attorney reference was just for kicks earlier?) After all, the second stipulation for graduation is that the murderer has to get away with the crime; the students are made to have a trial/debate, in which they try to figure out who the culprit is by presenting evidence to each other, quite literally shooting down each other's arguments with "evidence bullets", and once in a while...uh, playing a rhythm game when somebody gets too heated and starts throwing insults around instead of logic. (It's just. That sort of game. Don't ask.) Once the students have reached a consensus through the power of logic and rhythmic tapping, they cast votes using buttons in front of them to indicate who they think the culprit is. If they guess incorrectly, the culprit "graduates" - meaning that all of the other students are executed for indicting the wrong person, while the culprit gets to leave the school scot-free. If they guess correctly, however, the culprit is executed in a manner that's appropriately ironic in relation to their personalities, and the rest of the students are sent back upstairs to continue living out their lives in the school until someone kills again.
So as far as Ishimaru goes, he's been around more death than any seventeen-year-old really deserves to be. He's seen and been made to investigate the dead body of the girl discovered in the shower, and he's witnessed two deaths personally: for the first, a student was killed early on to make an example of what happens when you defy Monobear's rules - they were stabbed to death with multiple spears being shot into their stomach from below, impaling the body clear through. He's also seen the execution of the culprit responsible for the first murder; they were tied down to the point of being unable to move or defend themselves and then beaten to death with fairly small but weighted projectiles shot at high velocity. The body was thoroughly mangled by the beating; the killing blow is implied to have crushed the student's head. Both deaths he witnessed himself were from a distance of about ten feet away, which is far closer to someone actively being killed than anyone deserves to be, much less twice; furthermore, in both instances, the bodies were not immediately removed from anyone's line of sight, but were rather left on display in front of the students until they were actively cleared out of the room.
After the first culprit's death, the rest of the students were sent upstairs to continue living out their lives in the school; as of Ishimaru's current canon point, they're wary of Monobear and what he might do to them next, but they're trying to move on as best they can and be as normal as possible. With every new trial, new areas of the school they're locked in are opened up for them to use; Ishimaru spends most of his time in the sauna and pool areas that have just been opened up, and otherwise he's still trying to run things as normally as possible - he's waking people up for breakfast, holding meetings, and still trying to gather as much information as he can and trying to encourage everyone to bond. He worries openly about two of the students who are no longer joining them for meetings in the morning; he's doing what he can to hold everyone together.
He also seems to have found himself a rival in Mondo Oowada, another student locked inside the school; though he initially finds the other kid to be stupid and boorish and is described as picking on and making fun of him, they eventually challenge each other to a...duel of sorts, that basically consists of seeing who can endure the heat in the sauna longer. (Because they're stupid teenaged boys, and this is the sort of thing they think up when they're feeling reluctant to beat the shit out of each other for obvious reasons relating to their situation.) They're apparently in there for a godawful long time, as the protagonist literally gives up on them and goes to bed, expressing the general sentiment that he just hopes they'll stop before somebody ends up seriously hurt or dead; the next morning they...seem to have bonded over their mutual bout of stupidity, refuse to divulge who won the competition, and seem to want to spend the rest of their time in the school slapping each other on the back, complimenting each other, calling each other "my brother" and generally just annoying the hell out of everyone with their bromance. Because, again, they're stupid teenaged boys. This particular bond is highly important to Ishimaru's storyline because Ishimaru is shown to have many social difficulties (as covered in the personality section); assuming that Ishimaru's free-time events have not been completed (and I am reasonably certain that Route's Naegi assumes they have not, which I am perfectly all right with and more than happy to accommodate), Oowada is literally the only friend Ishimaru has, and is the first person he's been able to bond with in such a way.
And that brings us clear up to Ishimaru's current canon point. No one knows what's going on in Hope's Peak, what Monobear even is, or who's doing this to them - basically, their lives are a tremendous cluster of "WHY THIS" and no answers seem to be forthcoming just yet. If you would like details about the events of chapter three and/or endgame, I would be more than willing to present those as well either in revisions or over AIM, though they aren't relevant to Ishimaru's portrayal in particular at the time being. (The events of chapter three do involve a major shift in Ishimaru's personality, but that would only be relevant if canon-updating is ever going to happen; at this point in time, I don't plan on updating him anywhere near that section of the game.)