Characters / Danganronpa — Kyoko Kirigiri

Danganronpa | Main Character Index
Monokuma
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc | Male Students (Makoto Naegi | Byakuya Togami) | Female Students (Kyoko Kirigiri | Toko Fukawa | Celestia Ludenberg | Junko Enoshima)
Danganronpa Zero
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair | Male Students (Hajime Hinata | Nagito Komaeda) | Female Students (Peko Pekoyama)
Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls
Killer Killer
Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School | Future Arc | Despair Arc
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony | Male Students (Kokichi Oma) | Female Students (Miu Iruma)

Kyoko Kirigiri

Warning: Unmarked spoilers for the whole Danganronpa series

(Ultimate Detective)

"If you spend all your time trying to avoid danger, you'll never move forward."

Voiced by: Yōko Hikasa (Japanese), Erika Harlacher (games), Caitlin Glass (anime - English)
Played by: Rei Okamoto (stage)

One of the deuteragonists of the Danganronpa franchise. Kyoko is the heir to a long line of detectives and the daughter of Hope's Peak Academy's headmaster, Jin Kirigiri. She was selected as a student of Hope's Peak Academy's 78th class, and given the title of the Ultimate Detective. She and her classmates become the victims of the Killing School Life and is forced to survive as her classmates collectively try to get away with murdering each other. The Mastermind wipes most of Kyoko's memories beforehand, including about her talent, to keep her from solving the mysteries of the Killing Game, though this proves for naught as Kyoko helps the protagonist Makoto defeat the mastermind in the end and escape Hope's Peak with four other classmates.

After escaping, Kyoko and her classmates join the Future Foundation, an organization dedicated to ending the Ultimate Despair and restoring the world to a peaceful state. Kyoko is appointed the leader of the 14th division, and helps orchestrate the rehabilitation of the Remnants of Despair along with Makoto.

---

General Tropes

• Abusive Parents: While her relationship with Jin Kirigiri is too complicated to be called abusive or good, her relationship with her grandfather, Fuhito Kirigiri, is a lot more suspect. He considered her a throwaway child to the family and never particularly good enough to carry on the Kirigiri tradition due to her father choosing away, and generally put her through Training from Hell to get her to the rigor she is now. Nevermind how death was a common-place occurrence in her childhood, and after she burnt her hands, she went from there to try her best to hide her emotional weaknesses in fear of having them be exploited. This tactic works as it helped mold her into an extremely resilient young woman, but it's not perfect as per her irrationalities and paranoia make it apparent.
• The Ace: She dominates the class trials and is pretty much always right.
• Alliterative Name: Kyoko Kirigiri.
• Ancient Tradition: The Kirigiri family is implied to be this, though Kyoko claims that they take no sides in order to remain as neutral as possible, believing the truth has no bias. She says that the tradition started during a time when being a detective was a more sacred occupation.
• Batman Gambit: Her intellect and composure let her carry out some otherwise risky schemes with others.
  • A subtle but effective one in her third Free Time Event. Her entire exaggerated response to Makoto calling her smile cute (in the hopes of getting a reaction out of her) lets her demonstrate to him how easy to read he is, show him that she can in fact emote the same as anyone (on command at that) while also showing how slick she is to come up with a counter plan that plays on his fear of offending people. Needless to say, Makoto is left speechless as she walks away.
  • Played with in 3. Because she knew Makoto would do something reckless if he knew her NG code would kill her if he was alive in the fourth sleeping period, she never told him.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: She can occasionally act like a jerk, but Kyoko is otherwise a morally good person who does care for others, and is able to realize when she's done something wrong (compared to most other jerk characters in the series anyway). On occasion, she can also act like a Guile Hero. She also happens to be quite attractive in a rather elegant way, even for a detective.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't question her detective skills. She shows hints of anger when Byakuya says her information was wrong, and she gives Makoto the cold shoulder for two chapters after he couldn't trust her with a secret (which is pretty rich given how secretive she is in general). Considering how much effort Kyoko puts into her information gathering, the idea she's not good enough genuinely makes her mad.
  • Another Berserk Button is bringing up her father, the Headmaster of Hope's Peak. While normally composed even in extreme situations, Kyoko has difficulty hiding her emotions when she meets with her father. She even shouts at him at one point.
• Big Damn Heroes: A forte of hers.
  • She comes to Makoto's rescue when he is trapped in the the school's garbage dump, after he had been stuck there for days without food.
  • She, Makoto, and Byakuya come to rescue the Remnants of Despair from being brainwashed yet again by the Junko AI.
• Birds of a Feather: With Kirumi Tojo. Both are regarded as The Ace and The Reliable One in their respective groups and both have a strong desire to help people.
• Born Detective: The Kirigiri family is a clan of legendary detectives, and she herself is no different.
• Broken Bird: Life has been far from easy on her, between her complicated relationship with her father, surviving a killing game that left many of her friends dead, and then almost dying herself from poison. But that's positively why she comes off as one of the most focused characters; she refuses to quit.
• Brutal Honesty: When it comes time to speak up, she never wastes time getting to the point, even if that means speaking rudely. That said, her Brutal Honesty faces both ways. Despite Makoto wanting to rationalize it by the precarious position the Mastermind had placed her in during the last trial, she doesn't pull her punches on holding herself accountable for her actions, refusing to shift responsibility or allow any excuses. This leads to her apology being peppered with some uncharacteristic Self-Deprecation.
• The Cameo:
  • Pops up briefly in Chapter 6 of Killer Killer, much to Asano's delight.
  • In 2, she and Byakuya save Makoto and the former Ultimate Despair members from Junko AI.
• The Comically Serious: Her stoicism lends well to this sort of humor. Best exemplified by when she calmly rescues Makoto from their school's dump with a flipped container of cup noodles on her head, showing that even The Stoic isn't immune to moments of humor.
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Sort of. Kyoko admits that her horror to certain instances works normally; she's just very good at repressing it. As a detective, she's accustomed to handling gruesome imagery on a daily basis. Any prequel material she appears in has her witnessing more than her fair share of death. It gets referenced in the fourth investigation of Trigger-Happy Havoc where she says Makoto's reaction is normal and explains that by contrast she's had enough experience with dead bodies that they don't affect her anymore.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Has purple eyes to match her pale purple hair, which makes her seem even more mysterious.
• Cuteness Overload: In spite of her stoic characterization, she becomes defensive in School Mode over the notion that she's somehow not allowed to like cute things, after admiring a porcelain doll in the School Store.
• Deadpan Snarker: She has her moments. Becomes more prominent in the dubbed anime, as per the norm.
  Kyoko: [While Byakuya attempts to turn the laptop on] "Not that I believed we could Google our way out of this mess, but it did cross my mind."
• Defective Detective: Despite being the Ultimate Detective, Kyoko possesses a massive Inferiority Superiority Complex, has Parental Abandonment and paranoia issues, and admits she can be very turbulent and petty if she feels somebody's obstructing her work. Not that it's particularly unique in this franchise, but like many detectives in fiction, she has quite the laundry list of mental issues.
• Deuteragonist: The most competent investigator of the students besides Makoto, and his closest ally. Also, one particular moment during the second trial has the player actually make a deduction from Kyoko's point of view. She also serves a crucial role in 3 and eventually stars in her own series of novels.
• Disappeared Dad: Her reason for attending Hope's Peak Academy in the first place since the Headmaster is her father who abandoned her to be raised by his father instead. Needless to say it is a touchy subject.
• Does Not Like Spam: The "ramenhead" scene gets associated with her enough that a cup gets included as an accessory in all of her PVC figurines (while also popping up frequently in official art). Despite that, if you ask her about her feelings towards cup ramen in School Mode, she says the dish makes her feel ill just thinking about it.
• Emotionless Girl: Invoked. She mentions in a Free Time Event that all her emotions are working fine; she remains stoic because it makes her hard to read and gives others someone to mentally lean on.
  • Interestingly, one aspect of her character arc shows her frustrations at not being stoic enough. The one instance where she blushes outside a Free Time Event was while admitting to Makoto that she probably got more emotional than was necessary.
  • She shows inward disgust at feeling such an emotional response to a dead father whose shadow she was supposed to have stepped away from. Finally, in her and Makoto's conversation before the last class trial, she laughs solemnly at having to admit that her hatred for the Mastermind only intensified after learning how much her father suffered, and cynically declares that this haze of emotional confusion will probably never go away.
• Every Scar Has a Story: The story behind her burn scars somehow played a pivotal role in shaping who she is, but that story has yet to be explained, as her prequel novels are still ongoing. The cover of the first volume makes an effort to show her hands looking unscarred.
• Family Business: Detective work, and she's rather proud of it.
• Family Honor: She explains at the start of Chapter 6 of the first game that her Kirigiri pride motivates most of what she does, yet she also admits that she needed to give up some of that pride in making herself known to Hope's Peak. Going against the anonymity from where that pride is drawn reinforces how important breaking away from her father was to her. Yet based on her reaction to finding the family photo with her in it, Makoto doesn't quite believe the explanation to be fully true.
• Depending on the Artist: The number of studs on her gloves ranges from eight to twelve, depending on the scene in which she's drawn.
• Fair Cop: She's a detective who is also attractive in a rather elegant way and carries herself with fluidity in her investigations (most of the time), with even Makoto getting flustered around her.
• Family of Choice: She says in her last Free Time Event that her family are the only ones she'll take her gloves off in front of. Hence the popular interpretation of her decision to show her hands to the other students in the final trial being her way of accepting them as family (even if she had little choice at the time). If nothing else, the closeness displayed by the survivors in later installments implies they may have become something like this.
• Girls Love Chocolate: She enjoys taking chocolate with her coffee while working in part thanks to its fast-acting alertness (as brought up in School Mode's dining hall).
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Seemingly the intent behind making purple her theme color.
• Great Detective: Hence her Ultimate title. The Kirigiris have had a long line of detectives before her. Just to put things into perspective, she spent most of the first game solving more mysteries than anyone else on pure instinct, since she had her memory of being a detective forcibly wiped beforehand. This is especially notable in Chapter 3 and 5, where she manages to nearly put together the sequence of events before anyone else without actually being present for the incidents themselves.
• Guile Hero: At times. One example in the first game is when Makoto (asking for her trust) pleaded to know where she'd went in the third case. She gave him what he wanted, but didn't bother to mention that he'd probably be attacked while checking out the secret room on the second floor. Of course, this turned out to be a part of her plan to test the Mastermind's response to the room's existence.
• Hair Color Dissonance: Is described as silver, yet more often looks lavender or purple-tinted white, and is sometimes rendered lilac pink.
• Hime Cut: Fitting her aloof Ice Queen persona and the fact that she's the daughter of the school's Headmaster.
• Hyper-Awareness: She is able to notice the smallest details about the other students, such as Mondo's speech patterns.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Despite putting a lot of pride into her talents and trying to be an Emotionless Girl, her poor responses to people doubting her abilities as well as her crippling reaction to making mistakes shows a lot of that pride is held together by grit. It's best shown with her irrational reaction to Makoto and Togami doubting her at different points, and her genuine look of terror upon realizing she miscalculated with her impending execution in 1-5's Bad Ending. She has gotten better about it over time, but such a complex never really goes away.
• Implied Love Interest: She gets a lot of Ship Tease with Makoto Naegi. While it helps that several characters seem to support it, when alone they tend to refer to each other as friends. But if nothing else, they agree to work together solving the school's mysteries in her School Mode ending, and eventually hold hands. They get even more Ship Tease in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School and whilst it is still very vague as to whether or not they're together, she eventually becomes vice principal of the new Hope's Peak Academy alongside Makoto as the principal.
• Insufferable Genius: She's smug, mentally dominant over submissive people, and doesn't hesitate to insult the rest of the cast's lack of wit. Monokuma notes her attitude as "spoiled" once he can't tolerate her infiltration of his plan anymore. However, compared to Byakuya, she's not as careless about the other students' personalities, and she's able to exploit his competitive behaviour in Sakura's case by disproving Aoi's role as the culprit. She tends to get like this when her skills are questioned, which she feels is an insult; because Byakuya doubted her, Kirigiri felt she had to knock him down a peg.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Kyoko isn't the nicest person, though that can be justified as she has to be cold as part of her job and she's annoyed by her father's abandonment. However, she goes very far with it, adopting an I Work Alone attitude and constantly putting down other people in her search for the truth, and her necessary distrust leads to her being overly critical of others without seeing her own flaws. Despite all of this, she isn't an outright jerkass like Byakuya, as she tries to help others when necessary, and her attitude towards others mostly is in her search for the truth, which ends up being beneficial for others in the long run.
• Kid Detective: A certain yonkoma has Makoto picturing her years when she played this completely straight.
• Magic Skirt: Invoked in-game and in the art book for a series generally not afraid of the occasional Fanservice.
  Whether she's squatting to inspect a crime scene or climbing a ladder in search of evidence, she's safe...
• Meaningful Name: Kirigiri is written with the characters for "fog" and "cut".
• Nerves of Steel: Kyoko does not step away from danger, even in the face of death.
  • She's like this for most of the first game, but telling Monokuma This Is the Final Battle (when he could very well just execute both her and Makoto) at the start of the sixth (and final) chapter takes the cake. She says afterwards she hasn't been that nervous in a long while, and Makoto thinks she looked exactly the same.
  • Even when she's nearly killed by a desk or when she's confronted by the Madarai brothers. She also has the nerves to tell them that Enoshima has no idea about The Worst Incident in Hope's Peak Academy's History.
  • It's taken a step further in 3. Throughout, she has a mostly calm demeanor, focusing on investigating the deaths and solving the mysteries surrounding the game while knowing that her NG action was giving her the option of killing Makoto or dying herself. Even right before she knew she would die, she still kept calm and level headed.
• Not So Stoic:
  • In the worst possible way in the bad ending of the first game. The look of all-consuming fear on her face followed by her anguished expression of acceptance as she's slowly carried to her doom is an image that'll leave you wide-eyed.
  • If Makoto chooses to take the fall for her in the same trial, she also looks visibly horrified as she realized that she'd been treating a guy willing to die for her as a pawn.
  • When Makoto asks her what she saw on her motive DVD in the first chapter, and when the topic of the Headmaster is brought up, she looks furious.
  • She is visibly shocked when Alter Ego reveals that the school's Headmaster locked them in the school and might be the Mastermind. It is revealed that this was because the Headmaster was her father.
  • Much of the second half of the final trial has her in a state of a mix of shock, anger, and distress despite having otherwise been completely stoic in most of the prior trials. Considering what's revealed in the final trial, though, it makes sense that even she would be fazed.
  • While normally composed even in extreme situations, Kyoko has difficulty hiding her emotions when she has her meeting with her father. She even shouts at him at one point. When he visits her in the infirmary, his decision to withdraw her from the investigation makes her visibly upset.
  • In episode 8 of 3, she almost falls to her death and is saved by Kizakura at the cost of his own life. For a brief moment Kyoko reacts how most people would when something like this happens, breathing heavily and looking horrified at the turn of events - much like during her possible/non-canon death scene in the first game. Of course this being Kyoko, she goes right back to business a moment later. Compartmentalizing is something she does well.
• Only Sane Woman: Sort of, but not really. Her calm composure greatly contrasts the more out-there antics of her peers, and in 3, she is basically the only one investigating the attacker's identity while everybody else is dealing with their personal issues. However, she's also in possession of a lot of paranoia and a massive inferiority-superiority complex due to all the hell she went through to have her incredible competence at detective work, as well as, despite trying greatly, having a fear of failing her own skills.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Despite having her emotions work fine by her own admission, she suppresses her reactions as much as possible out of her fear of giving tells of weaknesses. So openly showing her emotional responses to something is a sign something went horribly wrong.
  • Kyoko is untypically emotional around the subject of her father. While it's true that her being an Emotionless Girl is a facade, it's very rare to see her being openly mad at someone, which establishes her complex feelings about her troublesome relationship with Jin.
  • Pretty much any time she raises her voice signals this trope (both her Japanese and English lines keep her very subdued).
  • In 3 when Makoto starts having doubts about himself, she takes one of her gloves off so she can put her hand on Makoto's hand to comfort him and give him support. The gloves she refuses to take off because they conceal hideous scars on her hand, that she once claimed she was only comfortable taking off around people she considers family.
• Out-of-Character Moment: One of the odd times she's seen with a legitimately cheerful smile in a non-canon piece of official art, Headmaster Kirigiri is losing badly in mahjong to two lucksters and a gambler (though perhaps her Implied Love Interest trouncing her father is just that hilarious).
• Opposites Attract: With Makoto. He's optimistic, friendly, and endlessly forgiving. Kyoko on the other hand is much more detached, professional, and indiscriminately scrutinizing. The two still care for each other deeply regardless.
• Parental Abandonment: Besides the obvious mention of her father, she believes her mother's death was the catalyst that Jin used as an excuse to leave. She says his abandonment has left a shadow over her life as the one Kirigiri that got "thrown away".
• Private Detective: The Kirigiri family associate with no one in order to maintain their neutrality, but they still apparently get hired by foreign governments.
• Raised by Grandparents: But she claims to be contented with this set-up, saying she couldn't have become a detective if her father had taken her with him.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: A pale, emotionally-distant girl with light purple hair and eyes and a connection to the original headmaster of the school. That can't be a coincidence. That said, she actually downplays a lot of the typical representation of the trope as she's not emotionless, and is actually quite dysfunctional.
• The Reliable One: Anytime Makoto finds himself stumped, Kyoko will most certainly be there to point him in the right direction. She also dedicates most of her free time diligently trying to uncover the secret of the school while most others are relaxing.
• Scars Are Forever: Her gloves conceal hideous scars on her hands that she got when she was an amateur detective.
• Sherlock Scan: Her specialty, but funnily enough, it only looks like that from watching her work. She actually finds the notion a little silly.
  Kyoko: "Detectives don't have superpowers. We can't just look at a crime and divine the truth right then and there."
• Ship Tease: Gets steadily-increasing amounts with Makoto, culminating in them eventually holding hands at the end of the first game. By 3 their relationship becomes a major plot point.
• The Smart Girl: Perhaps the smartest. She gets things done, but doesn't revel in the spotlight of leadership. In 3 her first instinct after dealing with Juzo is to go back and investigate the bodies to figure out who the killer is.
• Spider-Sense: She claims to be able to sense the footsteps of death approaching. How this works doesn't get elaborated on. In the first chapter of her prequel novel, she gives a short explanation of being exposed to enough death and danger through her training that she instinctively notices it faster than most people as a unique sense of foreboding, and that the specifics only become clearer in hindsight. Yui Samidare wonders if this could involve some advanced mathematical calculation of multiple variables or scenarios.
• The Spock: To Makoto's The Kirk (And Hina's The McCoy in 3).. She considers showing emotions to be an objective disadvantage in their current situation, but unlike Byakuya, she does acknowledge the importance of emotion at times.
• The Spook: Presumably a major motivation for why the Kirigiri family chooses to hide, and why her past remains so mysterious: she just wouldn't be as effective a detective otherwise.
• Stock Costume Traits: She has the Hardboiled suit-and-tie look down pat (minus the fedora). She also sometimes gets depicted with a magnifying glass by some artists (this happened once in a page spread in the manga).
• Story-Breaker Power: In a series largely revolving around solving murders and uncovering secrets, Kyoko's status as 'The Ultimate Detective' makes her incredibly useful. Acknowledged in-universe as Monokuma realizes this from the beginning, first erasing any memory of her past, including her Ultimate talent, and then trying to get her killed in Chapter 5 since even memory loss hardly hindered her deduction abilities at all.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: While she may seem rather cold and analytic to her classmates, she is actually a rather sweet and caring girl. In 3, she has nothing but good things to say about Makoto and is briefly seen smiling when she reunites with Asahina. When she's with anyone but them, though, she's very expressionless, reserved, and a bit sharp.
• The Stoic: Most of the time, which helps her seem reliable and rational. Even when watching a member of the Steering Committee get crushed with desks. her composure won't break.
• Thinking Tic: Holding a single hand to her chin is practically her signature pose, despite being used for only one sprite. She shares this quirk with Makoto.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Downplayed. Despite appearing aloof and not particularly feminine in behavior and actions, this changes the more she opens up. It's telling that her list of favorite presents and certain School Mode dialogue options reveal that she enjoys dolls, flowers, and perfumes.
• True Companions: With Makoto and the other survivors of the Killing Game. They go on to help save the world after defeating Junko.
• Tsurime Eyes: Complimenting her personality, Kyoko's eyes are always sharp and focused.
• Workaholic: This is made more obvious in School Mode, since she always has something to occupy her time within the main story. Here, it's revealed in her dialogue options that she has very few interests not relating to solving mysteries^note She doesn't read magazines or manga, her favorite books and music are how-to guides and anything calming without any specifics to genre, she's never tried karaoke, and she lacks the kind of childhood that would help her relate to anime or capsule vending machines. In fact, the insecurity Makoto can help her work through in her Trigger Happy Heart event is essentially her stressing over being in stasis and not making any progress solving the mystery.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

An enigmatic girl whose "Ultimate" talent is initially unknown. She radiates a cold and unfriendly attitude, and deflects any questions about her identity or past. Despite this, her insight and deductive abilities prove invaluable during the murder investigations. Her true identity is the estranged daughter of Jin Kirigiri, (former) Headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy. She is suffering from amnesia, which obscures this and her own talent as an "Ultimate Detective". When she begins to prove too meddlesome to Monokuma, he attempts to frame her for a fake murder so that she can be executed under the school rules. Along with Makoto, they work together to defeat Monokuma and lead the rest of the surviving students to freedom.

---

• Adaptational Jerkass: Her dubious actions in the fifth trial are done with far more clear regrets in the original game when compared to the anime, where she comes across as more callous and cold-blooded thanks in due part to how rushed the whole sequence is.
• Aloof Ally: Towards the group as a whole, but she becomes closer to Makoto as time goes on.
• Amnesia Danger: There's a good chance she could have gotten a lot more done with her detective training available (as opposed to simple instinct).
• Armor-Piercing Response: During the Chapter 2 class trial, after revealing a slip of the tongue the culprit made:
  Hifumi Yamada: Y-You noticed such a tiny detail?!
  Genocide Jill: Are you a witch?! She's a witch! You're positively frightful!
  Kyoko Kirigiri: No, I'm not the frightful one. Not nearly as frightful as someone capable of murdering a friend.
• The Atoner: When the mastermind's Frame-Up and her betrayal of Makoto leads to him getting tossed into the dump below the academy after narrowly avoiding an execution on false charges, she comes down to rescue him, apologizes, and tells him why she wandered around alone during her investigation, having found the true identity of the Ultimate Despair and, by proxy, the mastermind of the Killing School Life. She also demands a retrial from Monokuma so the trial can be done fairly.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Kyoko's second trait she displays to the class, with the first being the mystery surrounding her. This makes her Makoto's strongest ally, and she correctly identifies the crux of each case way ahead of the others, all without remembering herself as a detective. Per trial:
  • Once the first investigation begins, Kyoko immediately becomes the most proactive regarding evidence gathering, even using a classic detective trick to find Sayaka's summons, the key piece of evidence clearing Makoto.
  • During the second investigation, Kyoko sees past the crimescene setup and both notices Mondo refer to Chihiro as "dude" and discovers Chihiro's secret, two details unnoticed by everyone else. ^note  Her classmates comment on how "frightful" she is for this.
  • During the third incident, Kyoko was entirely not present from the start, yet instantly identified Celestia's plan to mask her killing behind a separate first killing, all from reviewing the crimescene and the evidence. ^note  Makoto himself notes how Kyoko is almost "too good" at this.
  • The fourth investigation has Kyoko guarding Sakura's body, and despite her constraints she still works out every single person's involvement, and uncovers the deceptions that even Byakuya fell for.
  • Finally, Kyoko only has minutes to conduct the fifth investigation, unravels the reasons behind all the evidence, and sees the trial as the trap it is. Thematically, Kyoko's analytic prowess is used against her here, and it is Makoto's compassionate sacrifice that foils Junko's trap and provides Kyoko time to remember her talent.
• Badass Boast: When asked if she's okay being put at risk:
  Kyoko: "Yes, there's a chance I could be killed. But... could any of you really kill me? I don't think I'll die that easily."
• Being Personal Isn't Professional: She explains her approach to a case being one that leaves personal attachment as far away as possible from clouding her judgement. Funnily, she'll only tell you this during a Free Time Event, where it becomes evident in previous events that she may be hiding a vaguely playful personality when the opportunity for leisure arrives. She's far more open in School Mode as a requirement of its Dating Sim format, and is somewhat more polite too. Likely because there isn't any immediate threat to the students’ safety.
• Blatant Lies: Claiming she's never been to the dojo despite that being the first place the player finds her while exploring the fifth floor is just another sign of how desperate she was becoming in the fifth trial.
• Bluffing the Murderer: She does this act in the second trial by asserting to Makoto that he should be able to deduce the identity of the case's culprit through evidence of the duffel bag Chihiro was carrying when alive and the colour of the tracksuit in the bag. This was done in order to tenderise the nervous system of the culprit and cause them to state the colour of the tracksuit (something Celestia never mentioned in the trial).
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: In Chapter 4, Kyoko accuses Makoto of not trusting her as a friend and spends a good deal of time giving him the cold shoulder. During this time, Makoto cannot hang out with Kyoko, but she eventually forgives him.
• Broken Ace: The first 3 chapters spend a lot of effort showing her to be cool-headed, hyper-competent, and full of life-experience. Chapters 4 and 5 then spend a subtle amount of effort poking holes in her thinking, exposing flaws or weaknesses in her world-view and generally making it clear that even the Ultimate Detective has a lot to learn.
• Broken Pedestal: Very Downplayed. She wasn't a big fan of her father, Hope's Peak's headmaster, from the get go due to his Parental Abandonment of her, but her impression seems to worsen when Alter Ego suggests that he may be the Mastermind.
• Calling the Old Man Out: This was her goal heading into Hope's Peak, saying she planned to cut off all ties with her father forever (before finding his remains in a box). Since she spent at least a year in the school he runs, she presumably did this at some point, and based on her pre-amnesia journal entry Makoto finds in Chapter 6, her relationship with him was still strained even leading up to the voluntary confinement inside the school.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': In Chapter 3, the students discover an AI that Chihiro had made before his death on a school laptop, known as Alter Ego, capable of decrypting the files on it. Kyoko is strict about the other students using Alter Ego for their own selfish reasons, and even goes as far as risking her life by leaving her door open all night to catch anyone attempting so. When Alter Ego finishes the decryption, it asks Kyoko and Makoto to connect it to the school network, with the plan risking Alter Ego being discovered by the mastermind. Kyoko decides to do the plan however, and the mastermind ends up discovering Alter Ego and destroying it. The trope is subverted however, when it turns out that Alter Ego did manage to partially connect to the school's network, and was able to save Makoto from execution.
• Conspicuous Gloves: The only one in the cast to wear them, and she even uses them to explain a point about the dangers of getting too close to others in her last Free Time Event. They're eventually revealed to cover up her burn scars.
• The Coroner: Her role along with being the Great Detective. She's the only one who doesn't Squick out when confronted with corpses and so can examine them closely.
• Crazy-Prepared: A softer example. She explains her methods to Makoto in the final investigation by telling him that she actually has several outcomes/variables/possibilities/situations/scenarios running through her head at any given time, and in turn will be slowly ticking those probabilities off her list as the facts pour in (always on the lookout for inferences she can use). Having a good idea on how a situation is going to progress across multiple separate turns probably explains how she remains so unflappable most of the time.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: In Chapter 5's bad end. Monokuma places Kyoko in a student's desk that's moving on a conveyor belt. Kyoko can't get up from her chair because her hands are pinned under the desk's top. Kyoko is forced to watch a puppet Monokuma teaching a lesson on the chalkboard (for extra unusual, the lesson is apparently on sex ed)... and eventually the conveyor belt moves Kyoko to be crushed to death by a huge block.
• Cryptically Unhelpful Answer: Pretty much any time she's asked to explain herself, if she gives an answer at all. At one point when Yasuhiro says only the worst things seem to happen at Hope's Peak, she asks if that statement is really true, implying she has some inkling that Everyone Went to School Together. While she was probably just testing to see if anyone else's memories were more complete than hers, saying it's unimportant after they all looked at her in confusion probably didn't help anyone (aside from perhaps the Mastermind).
• Cryptic Conversation: She has many with Makoto, mostly hinting at clues she is already aware of and helping Makoto piece them together.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Makoto attempts to suggest this regarding Headmaster Kirigiri (or at least give the man a posthumous Pet the Dog moment) after the two find the family photo in his office, but she cuts him off by saying no amount of deduction based on a single photo can change her feelings or her past. Incidentally, later material would confirm that he did; her grandfather Fuhito basically stole her from her father as a baby so he could raise her as a detective.
• Death Glare: One of the options Makoto can pick when listing her most distinctive traits is her piercing glare.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She warms up to Makoto both in her Free Time Events and in the game itself to an extent.
• Determinator: She probably works harder than anyone else to solve the game's mystery. In their last conversation before the final class trial, Makoto thinks he can see "flames of determination" in her eyes as she swears to bring down the Mastermind. Within that final trial, she doesn't hesitate to take her gloves off in order to push the discussion ahead even knowing the whole world was watching. This despite describing them in her Free Time Events as a daily reminder of tremendous personal failure, keeping focused as Monokuma casually insults the scars hidden beneath them.
• Double Think: Resolves never to fall into the Mastermind's traps, and shows herself to be one of the most paranoid people in the group who refuses to work with others in accomplishing this (two traits the Mastermind loves to see used for despair). Not that this isn't justified most of the time. She's also one of the only students to openly claim to be solely looking out for herself during a random conversation before a Free Time Event, and yet she tries several times to keep the group safe and also is the only one willing to put herself at risk to stop the Mastermind.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite being somewhat cold and anti-social herself, even she's put off by how much of an unfeeling Jerkass Togami is, and takes an uncharacteristic amount of pleasure in breaking down his worldview at the end of the fourth trial.
• Fatal Flaw: I Work Alone. Yes, she's undeniably the most competent investigator and most of the others are some flavor of unhelpful, but the fact that she keeps wandering off alone without telling anyone anything (except occasionally Makoto) makes her come off as suspicious to the other students and plays right into the Mastermind's hands when her wandering leaves her open for a Frame-Up because she was away from her room (so the Mastermind could plant evidence) and she and Makoto were the only students who didn't have an alibi for the night. She cools off after the fifth trial made it very clear that she'd nearly dug her own grave and was only saved because Makoto trusted her even despite her mistreatment (using him as live bait and getting him concussed, bitching at him because he dared keep a secret from her, trying to throw guilt on him at the trial) of him. She then saves him and tells him everything she'd figured out thus far.
• Figure It Out Yourself: She regularly does this as a sort of Stealth Mentor deal.
• Fingertip Drug Analysis: She verifies the "poison" that apparently killed Sakura instead being protein powder in this fashion after Byakuya brazenly downs nearly the entire bottle.
• Fist of Rage: Her Not So Stoic sprite has her clenching her fist in the same position she usually holds to her chin as a Thinking Tic, as if she'’s trying her hardest to think clearly.
• The Gadfly: Some of her Free Time Events imply that she likes messing with Makoto just to see his reactions, or showing off how good she is at predicting those reactions. A good example would be the implied marriage proposal, where after Makoto gets flustered, she smiles lightly and gloats with "Got you again." Based on the conversation they have in the last event, it could also be interpreted as her way of scaring him off getting any closer to her.
• Good Is Not Nice: Offers one of the least pleasant introductions that Makoto receives, but later becomes his closest ally.
• Hates Small Talk: Implied throughout the main story, and one of her worst reactions in School Mode's Dining Hall is to being asked what she wants to talk about.
  Kyoko: Nothing comes to mind. Is it a problem if we just stay here in silence? It's annoying when people try to bury the silence with some absurd attempt at "small talk."
  • Interestingly, her second-best reaction to any given dialogue option has her admitting that small talk can be appealing... specifically because it's with Makoto.
  • If Makoto asks her to sit down and talk, Kyoko says she doesn't have anything to talk about, and asks Makoto to talk about himself instead. That choice ends up getting the best possible results.
• Heroic BSoD: The final trial. She holds out for a while, still trying to find a glimmer of hope in learning the truth like she always has, but finally reaches this point when Junko tells her that her father would've wanted her to stay in the school. Makoto helps her resolve that she didn't know her father well enough to decide that, and that if she understands anything about him, it's that he wouldn't want her to sacrifice Makoto to live (one of her only decisions in the course of the game made purely on emotion).
• Hoist by Her Own Petard: Monokuma's method of framing her is intended to invoke this regarding the Monokuma Key that she stole. Her using Makoto as a distraction to both steal it and use it would lead to him finding out from Monokuma himself what exactly was stolen, giving him all the inkling he would need to destroy her defense in the following case (even if she hadn't mentioned it at all). Makoto doesn't follow through on his end. There's also the matter of the anime dub's dialogue getting Byakuya to ask how it feels to be "hoist by your own petard" when she's being cornered with mounting evidence.
• Hypocrite: Arguably an effective way of humanizing her apparent infallibility at investigating.
  • Makoto refusing to tell her what he wanted to speak with Sakura about after the two promised to trust one another triggers her Berserk Button, but this happens because him voicing his suspicions before learning if Sakura really was The Mole would unfairly implicate her without proof (essentially forcing him over to Kyoko's way of thinking since her distrust in everyone makes it easier for her to throw blame around). This hostility towards Makoto continues into the next half of the chapter, despite her past history of withholding information from him (including sending him as live bait for the Mastermind).
  • She calls Makoto foolishly open in her Free Time Events, then says his honest nature suits him. During aforementioned Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario, she coldly shuns his clear attempts to reconnect with her, even though his obvious guilt should probably have tipped her off that maybe he has a good reason for keeping this particular secret.
  • Even after the secret comes out, she criticizes Byakuya for stepping over people's feelings despite spending most of the game brushing people off if they demand answers from her while largely acting neutrally on Sakura's situation (save for telling Aoi her anger plays into the Mastermind's hand).
  • The fifth trial marks a turning point in this attitude, because the extent of her failure there forces her to see the hypocrisies in her thinking (Naegi Taking the Heat for her frame-job showing which one deserved to be trusted, while showing how many truths she can miss out on by working alone). She ultimately apologizes in the trash dump for all of this, finally vowing to tell him everything. This goes a great length towards showcasing how susceptible to being emotional (and therefore illogical) she truly is, and learning to step down from the self-appointed pedestal of truth seeker by working with others ends up being some important Character Development for her.
• I Am Not Pretty: Invoked by her after Makoto tries to spark a reaction out of her by calling her cute. While she turns it around on Makoto, it's not a stretch to think that it might've been her genuine reaction (given her stoicism and mountain of insecurities) and simply played off her own reaction to catch Makoto off guard.
• Ice Queen: Before the fifth trial begins, Kyoko tells Monokuma that her deciding to investigate the crime so she doesn't enter the trial without knowledge isn't a violation of the rules, additionally questioning him of her own assumption's validity. Monokuma irritably responds by calling her explicitly "spoiled", which sounds sensible enough to describe her emotional instability. Apparently, she takes a Hand Wave with this adjective and doesn't further remark on it.
• Identity Amnesia: How much of her detective life was stolen from her is ambiguous. In one Free Time Event she's barely able to answer what school she last attended, leaving Makoto wondering why her answer sounded like a question. She also seems to have a good idea about where her burn scars came from, but is unable to determine how they might relate to working on a detective case. According to Ultra Despair Girls, she knows enough about her grandfather for him to serve as a motivation, but seemingly doesn't know about all the detective training he gave her. By the end of the game it isn't clear how many memories she's actually recovered and how much was put together through inference.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Subverted. She says to Makoto in the trash dump that she absolutely had to survive the fifth trial at all costs, before calling it a cowardly excuse a moment later.
• If I Do Not Return: She gives Makoto a letter to open if something happens to her.
• I'm Not Here to Make Friends: Her attitude is an alternative take on this from Byakuya's, since to her the condition for "winning" is a matter of solving the mystery. She makes it exceedingly clear from her aloofness and refusal to elaborate that she has no interest in being trusted so long as the truth comes out (partially because she can't ignore the chance that one of the other students might be the Mastermind).
  • Another example of an occurrence where she affirms that she's not bonding with anyone is when Makoto briefly asks her if there's any comment she has to make about Sakura's current status, and she brashly calls him "high-maintenance" over his request. This is done after he takes the risk to place Alter Ego, their most important asset, in a secret archive the Mastermind has access to.
• Insult Backfire: She tells Makoto his capacity for forgiveness makes him naïve when the two have a disagreement over the storage unit holding Mukuro's corpse, and whether it should be left open. Makoto wonders internally if her listening to him and closing the drawer means the same naivety applies to her. More charitably, you might also view it as her showing her respect for his wishes without necessarily having respect for Mukuro.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: In this yonkoma◊.
  Junko: That's it! Naegi alone will be cruelly punished! First, I'll make him Monokuma sized! Then I'll dress him in a Monokuma suit! (Naegi looks terrified)
  Kyoko: (that's cute...)
  Junko: I'll raise him as a pet for the rest of his life!
  Kyoko: Never! That's right! I'll never accept it! Monogi-kun should belong to everyone!
  Naegi: Monogi-kun?! Are you talking about me?!
• It's All My Fault: She uses this wording at the end of the fifth trial, as Makoto is about to be executed.
• It's Personal: She seems to head into the fifth trial believing that the mastermind sees her interferences this way; given her increasing suspicions that said mastermind is her father's killer, this might be the case on her end if nothing else. Makoto wonders why she used the singular "for me" to describe how crucial the trial was before the two stepped into the elevator, and during that trial she shows no guilt deflecting blame towards him since the entire incident was made to frame her, operating under the assumption that the Mastermind will never target anyone but her. She couldn't have been more wrong.
• I Warned You: She doesn't take well to her attempts at preserving the group's safety being ignored, such as telling everyone not to needlessly defy Monokuma or touch the laptop (two things done by 'Junko' and Makoto respectively). Her glaring at Hifumi for speaking to Alter Ego without permission is enough to make him think she's going to kill him.
• I Work Alone: Her attitude for basically the entire game. She cuts it out by the last chapter.
• Kick the Dog: Her treatment of Makoto in chapters 4 and 5 gets downright cruel; she tricks him into becoming bait for the mastermind (resulting in him being injured), she taunts him by telling him that thinking Monokuma didn't fake the pictures he found (because that would be too easy) means that he's disrespecting the memory of his dead friends, and attempts to frame him during the fifth trial. She realizes she's gone too far when he almost dies for supporting her.
• Jerkass Realization: A few softer examples;
  • In chapter 4, after spending the majority of it being hostile towards Makoto for his keeping Sakura's status as The Mole for the Mastermind, she doesn't apologize but she does concede that her overreaction only made the situation harder for both.
  • In chapter 5 she admits in the trash dump that asking Makoto to help her out as much as she did without telling him her intentions or giving him enough information to figure things out on his own probably left him incredibly confused and/or frustrated (though internally he's already accepted this as a quirk of hers no matter what frustration or confusion he may have felt).
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The reason why she refuses to reveal her talent is because she cannot remember it. At least, until the end of Chapter 5.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: The school's missing Headmaster is her father, whom the class at one point believes is the Mastermind.
• Male Gaze: If a certain easter egg is to be believed◊, Kyoko has Hartman Hips.
• Mathematician's Answer: She wasn't lying in her last Free Time Event while saying to Makoto that she can't tell him anything. We find out later that because of her amnesia she literally can't.
• Men Are Tough: She repeatedly remarks that Makoto should be fine doing rough things since he's a boy (such as prying paper from a dead person's hand, or being struck over the head from behind while looking into the secret room). Pretty damn insensitive, too, considering what happened to Chihiro.
  Makoto: [Internally] "What does she think a boy is?"^note The Project Zetsubou translation goes "Just what do you think guys are made of, exactly?" while the Something Awful translation is "'Man enough'... What does she even think that means?"
  • She may have shed this mentality regarding Makoto after their Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario, though.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: If you get the bad ending in Chapter 5. Averted in the main ending.
• Minored in Ass-Kicking: Her talent is not a combative one, but she was trained by grandfather on her mother's side, the master of a long-standing traditional dojo. In the above Badass Boast hints that she's more than capable of defending herself from the other students, one of which is the Ultimate Martial Artist.
• Mistaken for Undead: Yasuhiro spends quite a bit of time at the final trial insisting that Kyoko died and came back as a ghost, much to her and everyone else's baffled annoyance.
• Must Have Caffeine: Luwak Coffee is one of the best presents the player can give her, and she can engage Makoto in a long-discussion on coffee varieties during School Mode under the assumption that he's a coffee-drinker too^note and if he can impress her with his knowledge, she promises to brew him a cup of her own special mix.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Her lowest moment is probably framing Naegi because she believed that only she could uncover the school's mysteries. She realizes this when Naegi chooses to trust in her and not call her out and almost gets executed in the process, and later risks her own life to go save him and apologize.
• Mysterious Past: The one student whose talent and background is unknown to the others. Including herself, until the end of Chapter 5. Even then, most of her past is left a mystery by the end, something her prequel novels are addressing.
• Mysterious Purple: Kyoko Kirigiri is an enigmatic student, who has a cool, detached demeanor and evasively dodges questions about who she is and her past. Her ultimate as a Great Detective is not even known for most of the first game. This is later explained as she's had her memories wiped by The Mastermind before joining the game. Downplayed as her eye and hair color varies from pale purple and purple-tinted white to purplish-grey and silver, respectively, depending on how she is drawn in-universe.
• Mysterious Waif: Has unusual pale hair? Check. Solemn and reserved? Check. Targeted by the villain because her abilities are a threat? Check. Implied Love Interest of the hero? Checkmate.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Her willingness to get hands-on with dead bodies to acquire more information has some characters like Toko accuse her of having a fetish for them, though it's more likely she's just used to them due to being a detective.
• Note to Self: Makoto finds a hastily scribbled final entry in her hidden journal warning the reader "despair walks among us. And so, we survive. There is a second "despair"..."^note The Something Awful translation reads "Despair is among us... That's why we are still alive... There are two Despair..."
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: She ran into Makoto's room and confronted a knife-wielding attacker supposedly holding the title of Ultimate Soldier while he (the protagonist and therefore the viewer) slept through the entire thing. Even if Junko ran off after being spotted like the Climax Inference/Closing Statement page seems to imply, it was still a pretty ballsy move on her part.
• On Second Thought: She has a moment like this in School Mode where she tries to shoot down Makoto's offer to make flower garlands together in the garden.
  Kyoko: "[Glaring]... Is that a serious suggestion? What's the point of such an action? All we could do with them would be to give them to each other. [Hand Behind Head] B-But... I suppose... If you promise you would accept, then... I suppose I don't mind the idea."
• The Paranoiac: She always has some theory for why someone can or can't be trusted (coupled with the same kinds of trust issues typical of abandoned children). The amount of time she entertains these theories causes her to withhold quite a bit of information under fear of losing her only advantage against the Mastermind (though to be fair, with such a wide net of inference, it's inevitable that she’d end up being right most of the time). Ultimately the Mastermind did turn out to be one of the students like she thought: just not in a way anyone could have predicted.
• Phone-In Detective: She solves the bulk of the third case after hearing about it once, in which she'd mysteriously disappeared for the entire incident. She looked like she was going to pull off the same in the fifth trial, but that was a Hopeless Boss Fight in which none of the students had the information necessary to make it solvable.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • While she treats Makoto with a Figure It Out Yourself attitude, she's still entertaining the possibility that one of the other students could be the mastermind even into the final chapter (spending most of her time in the trials inferring without necessarily leading them in the right direction unless it becomes absolutely necessary). Even though she get suspected of being The Mole by nearly everyone except Makoto, this behavior doesn't become much of an issue until the fifth trial, where she maintains her usual level of vagueness by calling the trial "the mastermind's trap." Unfortunately, Makoto ends up being the only one to catch on to what kind of trap she means, which makes him just as much of a threat as she is, forcing the Mastermind's hand to have him executed. This leads to her My God, What Have I Done? moment.
  • School Mode implies that this is just a general habit of hers with or without a Deadly Game to justify the paranoia, where she tends to dodge questions that would require her to talk in-depth about herself. In her School Mode ending, she asks Makoto if he's alright working with her despite her caginess, to which he says yes.
• The Profiler: She can usually be counted on to announce the culprit's more sympathetic motivations at the end of the trials based on what she knows, though it's not always clear if she does this through astute profiling or if she's a lot more attuned to people's emotions than she lets on (perhaps a combination of the two). In any case, she infers that Sayaka was protecting Makoto from suspicion, Mondo was protecting Chihiro's secret and Sakura was protecting the group from Monokuma's plot, which not even Kiyotaka or Aoi were able to figure from their friends' behavior (though the two lacked vital information to be completely fair). Celeste's actions are the only ones she isn't able to rationalize, because of those particular motivations being selfish enough to lack any sympathetic angles, although ironically Celeste herself almost confesses to there being a sympathetic angle when speaking to her only to stop short and say it's not important anyway.
• Pull the Thread: She does this to Mondo in the second trial.
• The Quiet One: She's not really one for idle talk, and early interactions with her are filled with awkward silences.
• Red Herring Mole: Her odd behavior and habit of wandering off on her own causes the others (especially Byakuya) to suspect her once the laptop goes missing in Chapter 3.
• Refuge in Audacity: Makoto, who's worried about being caught by the mastermind and executed again, finds it a little crazy to hear her suggest that they should go up and ask Monokuma directly if there's anything wrong with it (since they have nowhere to hide anyway). Keep in mind she had no solid proof that either her or Makoto would survive the encounter (she later called this play a bet that she thankfully got right).
• Remember That You Trust Me: She pulls this on Makoto in the fourth chapter, since at the end of the previous chapter they both agreed to trust one another, even going so far as to accuse him of hypocrisy. The exact issue with this is detailed in her own hypocrite entry (above).
• Safety in Indifference: She suggests to Makoto early on to let go of his attachment to his dead friends lest he cause himself even more pain, and says in her final Free-Time Event that she payed the price of getting too close to others during a case. Her moments of hinted compassion suggest she doesn't fully subscribe to this thought-process, despite what she says or wants to believe.
• Seeker Archetype: In her School Mode Ending, after everyone else is happy to leave the Gilded Cage, she plans on coming back, dissatisfied with not knowing why they had been confined there in the first place.
• Single-Issue Wonk: Around the time she explains her past to Makoto, she doesn't waste a single opportunity to call her father down (even after they find his bones in a box). She keeps doing it when the family photo that he kept comes up, asking if there could be a worse possible father who would leave such a thing behind and die before she has a chance to cut him out of her life (said using her Not So Stoic sprite at that, a sprite normally reserved for when she's struggling to keep her emotions in check).
• Skewed Priorities:
  • She apparently thinks digging through Hifumi's socks would be worse than digging through his pants.
  • In the same chapter, we learn that she'd rather explore the secret room on the second floor instead of search for her missing friends who may or may not be dead. Yet at the same time, this ended up working to the benefit of avenging the two who were killed, since even though she had to have the incidents explained to her, that fact allowed her to approach the case from a much more neutral stance than anyone else. Her priorities may be strange, but her heart is in the right place.
• Skirts and Ladders: There is a prolonged upskirt shot of her as she climbs the ladder behind Makoto in Chapter 6.
• Smart People Play Chess: In School Mode, she laments the lack of a chess board in the Rec Room after looking at the Monokuma bottles.
• Stealth Mentor: If you accept the interpretation that she's molding Makoto into an ally, this could be one explanation for her actions in the fifth trial that put him on the firing line of suspicion (trusting he'll be able to take care of himself while she hunts down the truth). Even when the two are on opposing sides, they work together remarkably well to fill out the holes in the investigation. From the way things were developing, the two may very well have cornered the mastermind if Monokuma hadn't said "time's up."
• Stunned Silence: Her silence is generally a sign that she's either actively choosing not to speak or deep in thought, and she'll often have a rebuttal for anything that's said to her. Yet with a few words Junko demonstrates that at no point closing in on the truth was she ever "winning" when all the things she'd learned were ultimately meaningless and only offered despair at their most basic level (negating any confidence she may have taken from it all). Having a big part of her world-view thrown into her face makes her reaction of horrified silence that much more understandable.
• Take a Third Option: One yonkoma◊ has her figuring to catch and disable a number of Monokumas, pile them at the door, then have a stronger character toss one with enough force to trigger the motion-sensitive explosive planted in all of them at once. The final panel has her holding a butterfly net and seemingly hunting a Monokuma.
  Monokuma: A demon! She's a demon! [running away] You're too cruel!
• Tempting Fate:
  • Chapter 5 has her tripping death flags left and right, such as giving a letter to Makoto in case something happens to her, with Byakuya going so far as to deduce that the most recent corpse is hers because of her being the only student not present. In the bad ending, this is played straight as she is executed for Mukuro's murder, but otherwise it's subverted since she survives in the good ending.
  • She says in her last Free Time Event that she's sure no one will see her hands uncovered anytime soon. Naturally, she had to show them to everyone in the final case to prove she wasn't Makoto's nighttime attacker.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She gives one to Byakuya in Chapter 4 when he finds himself unable to comprehend how he failed to figure out the mystery.
  Kyoko: "You still haven't realized? We don't all act according to calculations and cost-benefit diagrams. That's what makes us so complicated. That's what you don't understand, and that's why you couldn't solve this case. [Byakuya is left speechless] See? Didn't I tell you? When you dismiss other people's feelings, it'll always come back to bite you in the end."
• This Is Unforgivable!: She declares to Makoto before the final trial that there's no room in her heart to forgive the Mastermind's actions.
• Trying Not to Cry: Implied in the Headmaster's secret room, where she asks Makoto to leave so she can "sort out her feelings."
• Tsundere: Hifumi pegs her as this in her character analysis page seen in the art book (where the students give their opinions on each other). Monokuma (and by extension, Junko) thinks the same on her profile page. Whether she qualifies is another question entirely.
• The Unfettered: Of The Stoic variety (type 4). Her resolve to solve the mystery and bring down the mastermind causes her to shamelessly ignore a lot of social norms, like searching the boy's bathroom on the second floor and running autopsies without hesitation.
  • More negatively, this also gives her a tendency to speak very bluntly in conversation, and causes her to take the most direct method to solving problems (such as kicking Yasuhiro to wake him up in the third case). It culminates in her putting herself in danger to explore the second floor dorms in the fifth chapter, and later putting Makoto in danger too during that chapter's trial.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Potentially in the 5th chapter; Kyoko is the catalyst of the Mastermind's scheme to frame Kyoko for murder because she stole the master key from the Headmaster's room. Because there was no specific rule to punish her for it, the Mastermind resorted to this. This trial can actually result in the bad ending of the game where if Makoto reveals that Kyoko had the key, she will be executed and the others will remain locked in the school.
• Unwitting Pawn: We find out in the final trial that The Mastermind actually wanted the Awful Truth to come out in order to heap as much despair as possible on the students. This revelation essentially reduces her obsession with solving mysteries from a thorn in The Mastermind's side (like she believed) to a calculated factor in their grand scheme. Needless to say, she doesn’t take this very well.
• What the Hell Are You?: She uses this sort of wording after Junko lays out her logistically impossible plan in the final trial. She demands to know if there's some other organization backing her, and isn't exactly satisfied with the answer about despair simply being contagious.
• Xanatos Gambit: At the end of the fourth trial she calls Makoto awake and sends him off to the data center, to which he finds nothing of interest while she made her way to the headmaster's office. Taking Sakura's last words about fighting The Mastermind at face value, in this situation either she or Naegi would be able to steal their way into an important location, or they'd find out if The Mastermind is able to operate multiple Monokumas should the plan "fail." It won her the literal key to said Mastermind's downfall.
• You Never Asked: A partial explanation behind why she never mentioned her own amnesia suspicions, saying she didn't think anyone would believe her anyway.
• You're Not My Father: She claims she sought out her father just to cut ties with him. Thanks to his death, she's never able to.

Danganronpa Zero

Ultimate Detective

The estranged daughter of Headmaster Jin Kirigiri and descendant to a famous line of detectives, Kyoko is hired by her father to investigate The Worst Incident in Hope's Peak Academy's History.

---

• Action Girl: Subverted. She's not portrayed as a fighter, and the five Madarai brothers decide that they leave her to Rosshiki since she lacks combat skills and experience, while the other four are ganging up on Ryoko Otonashi and Ikusaba. The last time she appears in Zero is when she wakes up in the infirmary, implying that she was beaten by Rosshiki Madarai.
• Adaptational Wimp: Downplayed. Her Talent isn't a combative one, but she was trained by her maternal grandfather, who owned a long-standing dojo and knew seven Japanese martial arts, and was confident enough in her skills to claim that none of the other students, one of which is the Ultimate Martial Artist, would be able to kill her. Here though, she's cited as a Non-Action Girl, and is Implied to have suffered a Curb-Stomp Battle from Rosshiki Madarai.
• Failed a Spot Check: Played with. Despite being the Ultimate Detective, it first appears that Kyoko fails to realize that Ryōko has the same face as Enoshima, but in the end, it's revealed that Kyoko was fully aware of her. The readers are led to believe that Kyoko doesn't recognize her due to the Hey, You! trope used on Ryoko Otonashi. On the other hand, Kyoko is unaware of Enoshima's connection to The Worst Incident in Hope's Peak Academy's History mostly because she's focused on investigating the Steering Committee, Kamukura, and Matsuda.
• First-Name Basis: Contrary to how she is usually referred by Japanese media, Kyoko is referred to by her first name by the narration because her last name is already used to refer her father, who was introduced much earlier in Zero.
• Hero of Another Story: She is the Deuteragonist of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and The Heroine of Danganronpa Kirigiri.
• Saved by Canon: As the Deuteragonist of Trigger Happy Havoc, she survives Zero.
• She Knows Too Much: Nearly becomes victim to this, as she witnesses the death of one of the Steering Committee's members at first hand.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Gal: While she wants to appear to be indifferent of her father's decision to withdraw her from the case, Kyoko doesn't want to admit that she's upset about it.
• Wham Line: She tells Ryoko that Matsuda is involved with the murder of the Steering Committee members and the most likely perpetrator of Murasame's murderer, causing the other girl to snap.
• Your Head A-Splode: Ryoko tries to do this to Kyoko because the former mistakenly believes she awakened hidden Psychic Powers. Of course, nothing happens.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair

One of the members of the Future Foundation. She is a returning character from the previous game, and the daughter of the (original) headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy. She joined the Future Foundation after escaping from the second "School Life of Mutual Killing" and is now working to save the students from the clutches of Alter Ego Junko.

---

• Exposition Beam: Has her memories returned thanks to the Future Foundation off-screen.
• Walking Spoiler: Like Makoto, her presence involves spoiling several massive reveals through the course of the game.

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School

Future Foundation 14th Branch Leader, (Former) Ultimate Detective

Voiced by: Yōko Hikasa (Japanese), Caitlin Glass (English)

The Ultimate Detective and daughter of deceased Hope's Peak headmaster Jin Kirigiri. Currently heads the 14th branch. Seemingly the tenth death in the Killing Game, killed automatically at the end of the fourth Sleeping Phase for violating her Forbidden Action. However, it is revealed in the epilogue that she survived, having fallen into a near-death state thanks to Kimura's antidote.

Her Forbidden Action during Monokuma Hunter is: "passing the fourth Sleeping Phase with Makoto Naegi still alive".

---

• Always with You: Tells Makoto that no matter what, she'll always be with him right before her supposed death in Episode 9. Thanks to a combination of Seiko's medicine slowing the spread of the poison and Mikan fully curing Kyoko in Side:Hope, this takes on a more literal meaning.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted, the fact that the facial scaring on Kirigiri's face is much less severe than prior cases is a clue that she isn't really dead.
• Call-Back: When she starts sharing the results of her investigations in episode 8, the songs used in the first game's Class Trials play again.
• Character Narrator: She narrates the introduction in Episode 1.
• A Day in the Limelight: After spending several episodes Out of Focus, episode 8 focuses on her and the group investigating the bodies.
• Declaration of Protection: Towards Makoto, according to this relationship chart.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Friendlier to her classmates compared to her Danganronpa 1 characterization.
• Fake Kill Scare: Twice, once in a Nightmare Sequence, then when she seemingly dies activating her bracelet to save Makoto, only to survive thanks to Kimura and Mikan.
• Fling a Light into the Future: She left all of her notes on the Final Killing Game out for her friends to find, which include the attacker's identity, before seemingly dying from her NG Code.
• Four Is Death: Her Forbidden Action, which triggers in Episode 9, embodies this. Subverted as she survives.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: It's now worn is a ponytail and without the braid.
• Go Out with a Smile: Before her bangle puts her to sleep in Episode 9, she looks at Makoto and smiles one last time before her inevitable poisoning.
• Happily Ever After: Heavily implied with Makoto, especially in the official artbook.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Her Forbidden Action gives her the choice between killing Makoto and dying herself. Naturally, she chooses the latter.
• Hope Spot: And an extremely cruel one at that. At the late stages of Episode 9, there are heavy implications that either she or Ruruka will be killed by the traitor. After the countdown ends, we see Ruruka's dead body horribly mauled by the killer, giving hope that Kirigiri is still alive, only for it to turn out that she has been killed by her NG code. However, when they all rush over to Kirigiri's body, just before they check her NG code, if you watch the lower right side of the screen, you can see something that looks remarkably like Seiko's Cure W rolling away... and it turns out it was right to hope! Kyoko ends up being alive.
• Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: At the end of episode 8, she tosses off her business jacket and her Future Foundation pin with it.
• The Leader: Of the 14th branch.
• Love Interest: Upgraded to this for Makoto from the first game: they remain very close, have a lot of Ship Tease, and Episode 10 confirms Makoto is indeed in love with her. The epilogue and the official artbook heavily implies Happily Ever After for the two of them.
• Ms. Fanservice: Not so much in the actual show, but certain promotional artworks like to show off her "assets".
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Her notebook held the identity of the attacker, meaning she solved the mystery of the Final Killing Game right before her supposed death; the reason she didn't mention it was probably that she suspected Ryota and trusted her friends to find the information.
• Only Mostly Dead: Turns out she managed to take Seiko's antidote before the poison took effect, which kept her alive long enough for Mikan to find and revive her.
• Out of Focus: She has been gaining minimal screen time compared to Makoto and Asahina, due to being away, investigating the corpses while they are in the middle of the action. She starts getting more screen time later on.
• Sadistic Choice: Kill Makoto before the 4th time limit, or die herself. She chooses the latter. However, no matter how slim her chances might've been she took the "Antagonist" serum before dying in the hope she'd be able to Take a Third Option.
• Secret-Keeper: Besides her own NG code, she apparently knew who the attacker was.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Makoto, as her NG code ensures one of them will have to die. The opening seems to lampshade this by having them reach for each other as she falls away from him. This is later subverted when it's revealed that she survived.
• Took a Level in Kindness: She's a lot less stoic and a lot more trusting around her friends, even showing them physical affection like hugging or even taking off her glove to hold Makoto's hand. That, and deliberately sacrificing herself to her NG code (although she does take Seiko's medicine beforehand) to save Makoto is a far cry from trial 5 Kyoko who threw him under the bus to save herself.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She asks Juzo how he can call himself an agent of the Future Foundation after he assaults a handcuffed Makoto.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • In an instance of Kirigiri being too smart for her own good, she walks out of the library as Juzo is opening the hidden door, having already deduced there is no exit behind it. While this is true, had she stayed just to make sure, she would have found the means to shut the entire game down and saved quite a few lives. Said means being "guarded" by nothing but a closed door.
  • She came to the conclusion that Munakata was the mastermind before her "death," albeit admitting he did seem a bit too Obviously Evil. It apparently didn't occur to her that the one who put everyone in this situation was already dead, or that Munakata was just really easy to manipulate.

---