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Danganronpa V3 — Female Students
(aka: New Dangan Ronpa V 3 Female Students)

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This is a partial character sheet for Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. Visit here for the main character index. Subjectives and audience reactions should go on the YMMV page.

Warning. All spoilers below are unmarked.

It's virtually impossible to list tropes for these characters without spoiling everything or creating Self-Fulfilling Spoilers because of many surprising reveals and murderer/victim exclusive tropes this game contains.

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    Kaede Akamatsu 
Kaede Akamatsu

Ultimate Pianist

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kaede_9.png
"I believe in you, so you should definitely believe in yourself!"

Voiced By: Sayaka Kanda (Japanese), Erika Harlacher (English)

The initial Player Character. A girl who started playing the piano at a young age, and eventually began winning so many recitals that she was crowned the Ultimate Pianist. She's cheerful, outgoing, and motivated, and directs these traits toward escaping Monokuma and his murderous game.

She is labelled as the culprit of Chapter 1, having modified Shuichi's trap to catch the mastermind by adding a death trap to it. After she is executed for the murder of Rantaro Amami, Shuichi becomes the protagonist from Chapter 2 onward. Near the end of the game, it's revealed that her death trap was actually a failure and that in reality she was framed by the mastermind - Tsumugi Shirogane - as Rantaro's murderer, due to Monokuma's Time Limit motive failing to produce a murder victim, making her the first and only Danganronpa character so far to have been successfully executed on a false charge, barring the first game's bad ending.


  • Accidental Truth: She states that the mastermind and Rantaro's killer were one and the same at the beginning of the first class trial, even though Kaede believed she herself was the killer. Fast forward to the final chapter, and it turns out she was right.
  • Acquitted Too Late: The heroes figure out she's only guilty of attempted murder... long after she's been falsely executed for Rantaro's demise.
  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When she asks Miu for her help, Kaede literally gets on her hands and knees and begs Miu for her assistance in setting up a trap for the mastermind. Comically, Kaede threatens to continue bowing to her once she sees that Miu is visibly uncomfortable with her gesture, resulting in Miu agreeing to Kaede's request.
  • All for Nothing: Had her plan for dealing with the mastermind succeeded, or had Tsumugi actually been found as the killer of Rantaro in the 1st Trial, the killing game would have still continued, just minus the mastermind, with Monokuma running it solo, as she was only Co-Dragons with Monokuma to Team Danganronpa.
  • All-Loving Heroine: Kaede dearly loves all her classmates and wants them to be free of the killing game. She tries to encourage them as much as possible, and given their various reactions to her execution, they all loved and respected her in return.
  • Alone with the Psycho: In her second Free Time with him, Korekiyo asks if she'd like to be "friends with my sister" after she said she'd like to be friends with all the students and she says "I'll definitely be your sister's friend!" after he talks about his sister. He then has a creepy laugh and says he'll have to come up with a good plan, which she ascribes to wanting to surprise his sister. Come Chapter 3 and post-Trial, Korekiyo explains that his sister is dead, so in order to send friends to his sister, they'd have to be dead, too, so he became a Serial Killer. So he had just asked Kaede if it was fine for him to murder her.
  • Amateur Sleuth: In her one chance at investigating, she proves competent, just like previous protagonists Hajime and Makoto. She has Shuichi as her helper, though he's at his least confident at this point, so he's not as huge a help as he would be later. In Shuichi's fourth Free Time with her, she decides to take up being a detective as a hobby after Shuichi says that was his hobby.
  • Ambiguously Bi: Kaede has a lot of Ship Tease with various characters - most obviously with Shuichi, but she's also seen gushing over how cute Tenko is in the prologue and a Free Time, comments that Tsumugi has a "sexy aura", also saying she must have people ogling her curves on a daily basis, with Shuichi noting she's starting to sound like a Dirty Old Man and in Ultimate Summer Camp, will say Tsumugi's "sexy AND cute" when first seeing her in a bikini. She also shows a lot of concern and unusual patience towards Miu, especially in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp and has a sleepover with her in Miu's "My Future" event. If Kaede gives Miu a gift that she loves, Miu would make the assumption that Kaede is in love with her. However on the other hand when Himiko asks her if she's "playing for the other team" she's completely confused so it could be a subversion.
  • Arc Villain: Downplayed. She becomes the "villain" of the first class trial once the focus of the trial shifts from "who's the mastermind" to "how was the trap set up". The rest of the trial is Shuichi figuring out how Kaede was able to set up the trap that "killed" Rantaro.
  • Bad Liar: The one time she has to lie during a Class Trial, she stutters when asked if she's really being truthful, and Kokichi and Korekiyo both immediately call her out for lying anyway.
  • Beneath Suspicion: Nobody suspects her during the trial (except Shuichi and he was too shocked and afraid to say anything), until she brings attention to herself.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: She's definitely a Nice Girl and likes and is liked by all her classmates, but she can be pretty scathing should someone annoy her, like Miu. Her love and concern for her classmates is a big reason of what fuels her to create a death trap against the mastermind.
  • Birds of a Feather:
    • She unsurprisingly gets along very well with fellow musicians Sayaka and Ibuki in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp. Though in the former, they remark that any band they ended up creating would probably be very short lived, because of the wildly differing musical styles, with Sayaka being a pop idol, Ibuki being into Death Metal and Kaede a classical pianist.
    • They only have a few interactions, but she gets along great with fellow female Protagonist Komaru Naegi in Ultimate Summer Camp, with Komaru saying of Kaede "When I talk to you... I feel like I have an older friend I get along with really well."
  • Borrowed Catchphrase: In Ultimate Summer Camp, she uses Ryoma's "still have a ways to go" in her Friendship Event with Kaito.
  • Breaking Old Trends: Many.
    • Kaede is the first female protagonist in the main games.
    • While Makoto is the Ultimate Lucky Student and Hajime is a Reserve Course Student, Kaede has an actual talent, that being the Ultimate Pianist.
    • While Makoto and Hajime are insecure about their lack of talent and they’re incredibly passive throughout the killing game, Kaede is much more confident and assertive, spending most of chapter 1 focused on defeating the mastermind and ending the killing game. She even attempts something neither protagonist would ever do: murder.
    • Unlike the other chapter 1 culprits, whose methods involve finding out about someone else's murder plan and reversing the situation on them, this time it's vice versa. Leon was Sayaka's chosen victim and turned the tables on her in order to defend himself and escape the school in her stead, Teruteru happened to see Nagito setting his trap in the dining hall while preparing for Byakuya's party, set a counter-trap to kill him instead and ended up killing the wrong person, while Kaede's attempt to kill the mastermind results in said mastermind turning the tables on her, stealing her plan and murdering someone else while falsely accusing her.
    • Unlike Leon and Teruteru, who panic and scream before they’re dragged to their executions, Kaede is calm and accepting of her fate.
    • Kaede breaks a trend for the entire series, being the first character to fail a murder attempt and be wrongly executed anyway.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: She's a competent, dependable leader, but is also quite eccentric, taking things too far and being a little absentminded.
  • Cathartic Chores: When Shuichi leaves the lookout classroom to check on the mastermind's hidden door in their plan to capture the true killing game mastermind (Tsumugi), Kaede decides to sweep the room for no reason whatsoever—or at least, that's what she says, because she's doing it out of anxiety.
  • Character Tics: Has a tendency to slap her own cheeks to focus herself.
  • Chekhov's Skill:
    • Much like Ibuki from Danganronpa 2, her talent as a musician means she is able to distinguish everyone's voices. This greatly helps her (and the player) in a game mechanic called Mass Panic Debate where multiple characters will simultaneously speak and freely say whatever they want, increasing the information levied onscreen and making finding contradicting statements even harder than it should be.
    • When Shuichi takes over as the protagonist, he is explicitly worse at performing in the Mass Panic Debate due to the fact that his hearing isn't nearly as good as hers.
  • Clear Their Name: In the Chapter 1 class trial, when Shuichi becomes the prime suspect due to being one of two people who know of the camera's 30-second delay, she gives him an alibi and clears him of suspicion. He returns the favor in Chapter 6 by proving that Kaede is not the true culprit of Rantaro's murder.
  • Color Motif: She has a pale purple palette as seen in her eyes, vest, tights, and skirt. This even plays a part in the final chapter, where her vest color actually helps clarify the nature of an important piece of evidence.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Makoto and Hajime were boys, were straight men, and were both rather passive and hesitantly thrust into leadership roles and Shuichi after her death is very similar to both previous male protagonists. Some of these traits also apply to Komaru, minus gender. The Naegi siblings were also quite idealistic, focusing on hope and honesty to get their way. Kaede, on the other hand, is a girl unlike the two main installment protagonists, is much more assertive than all three, actively took the leadership role and is more willing to lie and even kill if she thinks that it's necessary to achieve her goals.
  • Covert Pervert: Kaede does display some perverted behavior and thoughts throughout the game. She talks about Tsumugi's body in a perverse manner the first time they meet to the point where Shuichi says she sounds creepy, saying she sounded like a Dirty Old Man about Tsumugi. After climbing the ladder in the library to uncover the grate, she realizes that Shuichi can see up her skirt. He apologizes, but she does nothing to try and hide her "delicates", merely thinking "he can't un-see them". During the first investigation later on Kaede threatens to lift up Tsumugi's skirt and even began doing so. While she said she did it to get Tsumugi to talk, considering the enthusiasm she showed while doing it combined with her comments about Tsumugi from before, it is safe to say that Kaede was getting somewhat pleased by it.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Gets thrown onto a huge piano and is lifted up and down by the neck repeatedly, strangling her as her body is used to play a beginner's song by the Monokubs, all accompanied by a crowd of Monokumas booing whilst hurling rocks at Kaede. The way the execution is sped up suggests that she endured the strangulation and rocks for hours before finally dying. Finally, the execution concludes with the giant piano closing its spiked cover on Kaede's lifeless body, crushing her like an iron maiden.
  • The Cynic: The Kaede in the prologue was shown to be this. Before being given her talent, Kaede viewed the world as a cruel place, since no one came to her rescue when she was getting kidnapped. She even refers to herself as "a normal high-school student with no redeeming qualities". After being subjected to the "Flashback Light" at the beginning of the game, her personality was altered so that she would act more optimistic. The Kaede shown in the audition tape also states that she doesn't trust people and has no faith in humanity.
  • Deadpan Snarker: While she remains very friendly outwardly, her inner monologue can be fairly snarky towards her fellow students. It could be a remnant of her original personality that wasn't completely altered by her new memories.
  • Dead Star Walking: She was voiced by Sayaka Kanda, who was a famous singer and a part of the band TRUSTRICK, who also have contributed to the Danganronpa franchise before by providing theme songs for stage plays (where she also portrayed Junko Enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba) and the anime series.
  • Death by Irony:
    • During her execution, Monokuma uses Kaede to play Der Flohwalzer, which is actually a simple piano piece, and he plays it so badly the audience starts booing and throwing rocks while Kaede is being strangled. That's right, the Ultimate Pianist is forcibly botching a beginner's song until she literally chokes.
    • Before the class trial, she tells Shuichi that only those who are willing to find the truth can choose their destiny. Kaede assumed that she was the one who killed Rantaro, and died because she failed to search for the truth.
      Kaede: ...But the ones who are willing to find the truth are the ones who can decide their fate. If you never know the lies from the truth, then you can't choose a path. You won't even know you're on a path.
  • Decoy Protagonist:
    • While introduced as the protagonist, she ends up as the culprit of Chapter 1, which means, as per the rules of any killing game, she's a dead woman walking. After her death, Shuichi takes her place as the real hero of the game.
    • Spike Chunsoft tries to ensure that she's shown as the main protagonist in many promotional pictures depicting other previous protagonists, leaving Shuichi out of them all in any significant capacity.
  • Determinator: She uses her determination and energy to lead the group. Taken to an extreme when she insistently made the cast go through the semi-impossible Death Road of Despair over and over again.
  • Distaff Counterpart: She's got a lot of similarities to Kaito and they even get some Ship Tease in their chapter together. Both have purple eyes, are heroic and willing to take all blame for their friends on their shoulders. He notes he was thinking the same thing or planning on suggesting something similar when she makes suggestions for the group in the first Chapter. Both lead Shuichi in his efforts to become better and more confident. Both try to act as leaders to the students and both are specifically targeted by the mastermind for death, Kaede by framing for murder and Kaito by his illness.
  • Duet Bonding: Her Free Time Events with Shuichi during the latter's time in School Mode involve the two practicing the piano together.
  • Elegant Classical Musician: As per her talent as the Ultimate Pianist. It's said that she's won numerous competitions in the past too.
  • Everyone Can See It: It's pretty obvious to everyone else that Kaede meant a lot to Shuichi; she even gets referred to as his "girlfriend" more than once.
  • The Extremist Was Right: It takes five more chapters, but her attempted murder of Rantaro does eventually smoke out the mastermind.
  • Face Death with Dignity: Zigzagged. When it becomes clear she killed Rantaro, she lies and feigns resistance to make it easier for the others to accept her impending death, and also to make Shuichi trust in his own skills more. Once Shuichi makes certain of her guilt, she accepts her fate and soothes the others into accepting it, too.
  • Fatal Flaw: Her tendency to push forward with what she believes is right ends up being her downfall, and has caused problems for others too. Her Japanese VA describes her as someone who goes a bit crazy with her beliefs.
    • She uses her status as a leader to push the group into attempting to complete the Death Road of Despairnote , an obvious trap, to no avail. After hours of trying and failing, her pushy attitude ends up exhausting and even alienating her fellow students, especially the more difficult ones like Kokichi and Maki.
    • She comes up with a convoluted plan to kill the mastermind behind Shuichi and everyone else’s back, inadvertently starting the killing game. Her plan not only fails in more ways than one, but she refuses to take the First Blood Perk, despite knowing that her life is on the line and she could get away with “killing” Rantaro without sacrificing anyone else, all because she thinks the trial will help her weed out the mastermind. This backfires: the mastermind, Rantaro’s true killer, frames Kaede and hides important evidence that proves her innocence, forcing Shuichi to expose Kaede’s “crimes” using only details they’re both aware of, which credibly paints Kaede as Rantaro’s murderer and leads to the pianist’s brutal demise.
  • First-Person Smartass: Like Hajime before her and later Shuichi, her inner monologue is quite the snarker about the strange and quirky classmates around her.
  • Foreshadowing: In the prologue, Kaede wakes up and meets Shuichi in a classroom twice. The first time, she reacts harshly and tells him to shut up and stop panicking. The second time, she tells him she's scared as well and politely introduces herself. Later on, we find out that it's actually her former reaction that is likely the real Kaede's personality.
  • Futile Hand Reach: You can see her reaching out her hand towards Shuichi, just as she's being dragged off to her death.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: Her hearing is so good that doesn't have any issues trying to distinguish voices during a Mass Panic Debate. But when Shuichi takes the lead, he, of course, has issues due to not having as good hearing as Kaede does.
  • Genki Girl: She is described as cheerful and forward-looking.
  • Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Kaede likes stuffed animals as gifts. This can also be seen as an explanation for why she collects the Monokuma dolls she can find around the campus, as Shuichi is also implied to like them.
  • Go-Getter Girl: Described as "The type of person to take charge".
  • Gone Horribly Right: She forces the mastermind to come out of hiding as part of her (Tsumugi's) plot to keep the 53rd killing game going for the outside world's entertainment... at the expense of her own life and being deceived into thinking she murdered an innocent person. Kaede only partially accomplished the goal she had for the chapter she was alive in, as it's made clear she herself intended to make friends with the others after escaping.
  • Guile Hero: Can be very pragmatic about dealing with the killing game, easily resorting to a death trap to kill the ringleader, quickly setting up said trap with a nearby witness without arousing suspicion, and manipulating a Class Trial to try to figure out their identity.
  • Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Friendly, compassionate and sweet.
  • Hanging Around: She's executed by being slowly strangled to death and then her corpse is crushed by a spiked fallboard.
  • Heel–Face Brainwashing: From a girl who doesn't trust anyone to a leader who believes in her classmates.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: She willingly allowed herself to be outed as Rantaro's killer in order to save the others since she wasn't comfortable invoking the first blood perk. Later made more tragic by how, while she thought she really did kill him, her attempt actually failed, making her the only student executed on false charges in the series, excepting the bad ending of the first game.
  • Hidden Buxom:
  • History Repeats:
  • Honor Before Reason: She's the second character in the franchise after Fuyuhiko who could have walked out of the killing game but chose not to do so - in Kaede's case, she didn't take advantage of the first blood perk because she hoped she'd be able to smoke out the mastermind during the trial.
  • Idiot Hair: Similar to her predecessors, she has an ahoge, though it's way less angular than the others.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: After being strangled to death, her corpse is then crushed by a spiked fallboard.
  • Implied Love Interest: To Shuichi. This is best shown during her Love Suite event; Kaede admits she likes Shuichi for his defining personality trait (his passiveness) and ends with a very unambiguous Sexy Discretion Shot where Shuichi is actually willing to go through with it. In contrast, most other Love Suite scenarios tend to have Shuichi play more fantastical fetishistic roles (such as playing a loving master to Kirumi's adoring maid), and his reactions to sexual advances often range from morbid curiosity to outright repulsion.
  • In-Series Nickname: Called "piano idiot"/"piano freak" by her old friends before she got involved in this game's Mutual Killing Game for endlessly practicing the piano all the time. Miu frequently calls her "Kaediot" in English or "Bakamatsu"/"Ikamatsu" in Japanese.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Averted in regards to promotional material, as Spike Chunsoft avoids implying anything about her death. Despite her unfortunate fate, Kaede is still prominently shown alongside other Danganronpa protagonists instead of Shuichi taking the role as main protagonist. Even the Decadence boxart avoids showing Shuichi anywhere in favor of Kaede.
  • The Leader: She takes it upon herself to lead the others. Rantaro even labels her as such.
  • Leitmotif: "Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy.
  • The Lost Lenore: Like Sayaka before her, she ends up being this to the true main protagonist, Shuichi, once she is executed in Chapter 1. He states in every chapter that he will solve every mystery for her sake, and he stares at her portrait as he gets a Heroic BSoD in Chapter 6.
  • Loved by All: Kaede is liked by all the other students and when she's outed as the blackened, the class is devastated and a few even try to stop the execution by jumping between her and the Exisals. They only back off when she begs them not to throw their lives away for her sake. Her death has a big impact on everyone, particularly Shuichi, who vows to carry on and try to save everyone, and live up to his promise to her. This even applies to the In-Universe audience, who berate Shuichi in the final trial and tell him that he should have been killed instead of Kaede.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Though to a lesser extent to Maki, she's the Masculine Girl to Shuichi's Feminine Boy. Kaede is more assertive & forceful and quick to take on a leadership role while Shuichi is more shy, timid, and reserved.
  • Meaningful Appearance: Wears hairpins shaped like musical notes, fitting her talent as the Ultimate Pianist. Also, the pattern on her skirt consists of musical notes and staves, as if it were a music sheet.
  • Miscarriage of Justice: The recipient of the first instance where Monokuma successfully executes someone innocent of the murder they were convicted of.
  • Mistaken for Gay: During her 2nd Free Time Event with Himiko, Himiko asks Kaede if she's "playing for the other team", believing that Kaede wanted to hang out with her due to a possible attraction. However, since Kaede didn't understand what the metaphor meant, Himiko took it as a sign that Kaede wasn't attracted to girls in that manner. In another event, Miu comes to the assumption that Kaede is in love with her if Kaede gives Miu a gift that she really likes during their Free Time event.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Not so much in the actual game, partially due to her limited screen time. The official manga anthology on other hand takes full advantage of her good looks. During the Monokuma Gashapon short story, Monosuke convinces Shuichi to play "Monosuke Gashapon", a game that randomly gives one of the students a costume change (the clothes can't be removed unless another costume change is won), by revealing that the grand prize is Kaede in a bikini. Although Shuichi was unable to get the grand prize, he did manage to get Kaede to wear a playboy bunny outfit, before she and the other students beat up Shuichi and Monosuke for forcing them to go through several unwanted costume changes. And come Ultimate Summer Camp, she and everyone else get bikini or swim trunks sprites and Shuichi shyly compliments her bikini in her "With Swimsuits" event.
  • Murder by Mistake: She is framed for one, anyway. She was targeting the mastermind by luring them out the moment they entered the hidden door in the library, but accidentally killed Rantaro with her murder weapon instead. Of course, it turns out that Tsumugi, the game's Big Bad and the mastermind she was looking for the entire time, took advantage of her trap to frame her for the murder instead.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: When she thought she accidentally killed Rantaro, to the point she accepts her impending execution and calls herself "unforgivable" for causing his death. It gets even worse during the final trial when it's revealed that she was actually innocent.
  • Mythology Gag: She isn't the first musician in the series to be killed by strangulation with a rope and had her lifeless body left hanging. Additionally, her execution finishes with a Casting Gag as her body is crushed. It gets even better when it's revealed that like her predecessor protagonist, Makoto Naegi, she was sentenced to execution despite actually being innocent of her crime. But unlike Kaede's execution, Makoto's execution was foiled by Alter-Ego.
  • New Body, Old Abilities: She's hit the most with this, other than possibly Maki or Tenko, as playing piano is very reliant on muscle memory and simply having the knowledge of playing it wouldn't let you play it as well as a true player.
  • Nice Girl: She's one most of the time, but she's more than capable of making scathing remarks should someone insult or annoy her (e.g. Miu). Of course, she's remarkably patient with some of the more difficult characters in the cast; for example, in Ultimate Talent Development Plan, she responds to Toko calling her a "bitch" by politely saying she'd rather not be called that, but saying Miu has called her worse things.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: She tampered with the trap that Shuichi set in the library, causing it to become a murder device in order to kill the mastermind. Unfortunately, it didn't kill the mastermind, and in fact, gave them the perfect opportunity to kickstart the killing game by framing Kaede for a murder they subsequently committed for that express purpose.
  • Non-Action Protagonist: She's not a fighter and is as such actually rather vulnerable to being killed, so she often uses her charisma and charm to try to outthink problems. This comes back to bite her when she's falsely pegged by Tsumugi as the killer of Rantaro, earning her her execution.
  • Not Drawn to Scale: In the English version, for reasons unknown, NISA translated her original height, 167cm or about 5'6", as being 5'8"(~173cm) despite being obviously shorter than Shuichi (who's 5'7" or 170cm) in the game like seen here.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • With Izuru in Ultimate Talent Development Plan. She becomes the only person besides Chiaki to gain his interest and to ever get any real kindness from him. This continues in Ultimate Summer Camp, with her having more interactions with him than any other character (aside from Usami in her path). In his "My Future" event, she goes to him for his opinion with Ibuki on their performance they did together. After giving his technical thoughts, Kaede asks what his personal opinion was. He hesitates and then reveals he composed a song because of their performance. Naturally, Kaede and Ibuki are floored by this revelation. When he says that her and Ibuki performing was chaotic and unpredictable enough that it inspired him, they're naturally over the moon and very enthusiastic about wanting to hear him play the song he composed.
    • Also in UTDP and USC, she's friends with Maki who is about the opposite of her. But it also isn't surprising in a way, because Kaede is almost a female Kaito.
  • Only Friend: Of Miu in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp.
  • Only Sane Woman: Kaede is very vocal about not playing Monokuma's game and mistrusting the other students. She also usually lacks the weirdness of the other characters, to the point where she shares this role with Shuichi.
  • Out-Gambitted: Her booby trap is effortlessly exploited by the mastermind to kick-start the killing game and kill her off in one fell swoop.
  • The Paragon: She's very confident and positive-minded, and her role as a leader-figure amongst the group sees her encouraging others, especially Shuichi, to be the same.
  • Passing the Torch: She does this to Shuichi, trusting him to solve the mysteries of the academy.
  • Playboy Bunny: In the official manga anthology, she ends up wearing this outfit in "Monosuke Gashapon".
  • Player Character: Initially, she's the one directly controlled by the player as she investigates the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles. However, it's subverted when she is revealed to be the first blackened and the player assumes control of Shuichi from that point forward.
  • Plucky Girl: Responsible, upbeat and with fierce determination.
  • Pose of Supplication: She and Shuichi do this to Miu while begging for her help.
  • Posthumous Narration: As Makoto and Hajime from the previous games, she narrates the first chapter events in past tense... and then is executed for causing the murder of a fellow student (or at least that is what the mastermind made it look like). From there, Shuichi becomes the narrator, meaning that Kaede is a dead woman talking during Chapter 1.
  • The Power of Friendship: Similar to Makoto, she firmly believes this, stating that they can defeat the mastermind as long as they are together.
  • Properly Paranoid: Part of the reason for her attempt to eliminate the mastermind using her Rube Goldberg trap in Chapter 1 was because she thought the time limit would be set back in order to kill everyone participating in the killing game faster. This is understandable on her part, considering Monokuma has no restraint and is perfectly willing to do something like that. However, since Kaede follows through with this belief and kills 30 minutes prior to when the Total Party Kill was supposed to happen, it's unknown if the mastermind would've done this.
  • Reused Character Design: Her design is very similar to Natsumi Kuzuryu, the younger sister of Fuyuhiko, one of Danganronpa 2's main cast. Their similarities are even more apparent due to Natsumi being murdered near a piano. Because of their similarities, and that their birthdays are only a day apartnote , with Tsumugi claiming Kaede has a younger twin sister that was Separated at Birth, plus the fact that her original cynical personality would fit with the Kuzuryu siblings' personalities, there's a fan theory that they're twins. One conversation that she can have in Ultimate Summer Camp has Fuyuhiko talking about Natsumi (who is still alive in this timeline) with her.
  • Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: She forms this duo with Shuichi in Chapter One, with Shuichi making deductions about the hidden door in the library and Kaede taking a proactive approach by setting a trap for the mastermind.
  • Shades of Suffocation: She is executed by being hanged and having the rope lowered and raised to play the piano. As time goes on, her face turns purple and her eyes turn into swirls before she finally dies.
  • Ship Tease: With Shuichi. She had good chemistry with Shuichi in Chapter 1, it is also implied that the boy liked her and he is devastated by her death.
  • Signature Instrument: Her Piano, being the Ultimate Pianist.
  • Skirts and Ladders: In Chapter 1, she climbs to the top of a ladder to examine the top of a bookcase and realizes too late that Shuichi can see up her skirt. None of the three CGs of this scene show Shuichi looking away.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: Kaede was only alive to see the first chapter, but in that timespan, she managed to:
    • Come up with a plan to expose and hopefully kill the mastermind, officially starting the killing game.
    • Inspire and convince Shuichi to start believing in himself, leading to Shuichi posthumously honoring her by attempting to get over his fear of uncovering ugly truths.
    • Unintentionally (and posthumously) provide the damning piece of evidence that exposes Tsumugi as not only the mastermind but also the one responsible for both Rantaro and Kaede’s deaths.
    • Successfully unite the group into pursuing their common goal of ending the killing game, resulting in drastically different characters like Kaito and Kokichi being much more involved in the game in their own way. This being Danganronpa, it requires much more deaths and trials to overcome this goal, but the motivation is still there.
  • Statuesque Stunner: In the English version, she's 5'8", and Shuichi very obviously is interested in her, and Kaito also flirts with her. Averted in the Japanese version, where she's 167cm, or a little under 5'6".
  • Stepford Smiler: Implied in the last couple days. When other students greet her with "Good morning", she only says "Morning!" back to them, implying she's not too happy at the time.
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy: Kaede develops this dynamic with Miu, especially in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp, with Kaede being the straight man to Miu's zany wise guy.
  • Super-Senses: Similar to Ibuki in the previous game, her hearing is super developed to the point where she can distinguish between multiple people talking simultaneously, allowing her to hear all students talking during the Mass Panic Debates.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Her complicated Rube Goldberg device required precise timing and the victim to be in exactly the right place. Unsurprisingly, it missed, but nobody knew it until the Sixth Chapter when it's found out that it missed and Tsumugi simply clubbed Rantaro over the head with a different shotput ball.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
    • Like Sayaka Maizono from the first game Kaede is a very positive, charming and level headed young woman with a music based talent (and both love music because they can make others smile with it), they both befriend the nervous but sweet male protagonist of the game and become well liked in the group because of their sweet personality. Sadly they're also the first girls in their respective game to die after snapping under the pressure of losing their friends, in their final moments they tried doing the right thing (Sayaka writing the name of her killer, thus clearing Makoto and Kaede getting Shuichi to expose her as the killer) and left a massive impact on the protagonist despite dying early.
    • Kaede and Mahiru Koizumi from the second game are both very grounded and quite ordinary yet lovely people with an optimistic outlook on life and a desire to see others happy, yet despite their kindness, they aren't pushovers and are very sassy and willing to fight back insults as Fuyuhiko and Miu found out the hard way, they could on occasion be overly pushy but always meant well. Their Fatal Flaw was their headstrong and moral nature that the mastermind exploited by framing them for murder and their desire to make things right killed them, leaving their best friend in Hiyoko and Shuichi respectively utterly distraught. Despite being the first girl to die in their games, they left a legacy of kindness with Hiyoko/Fuyuhiko and Shuichi's arcs being in honour of their deaths.
  • Sweet Tooth: It doesn't come up much in the game, but most of the edible gifts Kaede likes are desserts and she eats cake with Rantaro in Bonus Mode.
  • Sympathetic Murderer: Her trap was intended to kill the mastermind; it just happened to be someone else who triggered it. She urges Shuichi to reveal she is the killer to the others and feigns resistance to make it more believable for them. Subverted later on when it turns out the ball missed, and it was the mastermind who actually killed Rantaro with an identical one afterwards.
  • Team Mom: She immediately wants to protect her classmates and takes it to heart when the other students criticize her for pushing them too much in the "Death Road of Despair", trying not to push them as much. This is also the only way she'd be driven to kill, to protect her newfound friends. She killed Rantaro, or so she thought, and felt terrible when she found out he wasn't the mastermind. She doesn't take the First Blood Perk, since she wants to try and find the Mastermind in the trial, but fails and ends up throwing herself under the bus when Shuichi ends up looking too much like a suspect.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: She’s the calm and optimistic girly girl to Miu’s brash and loud tomboy.
  • Too Good for This Sinful Earth: In the most literal way possible. Her uniting the students is what influences Monokuma to introduce the time limit as a motive alongside the First Blood Perk, which then influences Kaede's paranoia and belief that the mastermind will set the time limit forward to kill the students faster, which encourages her to tamper with Shuichi's camera trap to take a picture of the mastermind entering the library's hidden door, which ends up getting her framed and killed by Tsumugi for Rantaro's murder using her Rube Goldberg bookshelf setup.
  • Verbal Tic: She tends to say "Jeez" a lot, especially when exasperated or annoyed.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: She has this dynamic with Miu in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp. Kaede has to put up with Miu's zaniness and constant badmouthing, but she is willing to go along with her because Miu does not have any friends, and it reaches the point where she and Miu plan to have a sleepover together in Miu's "My Future" event.
  • Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about her without revealing the fact that she is a Decoy Protagonist and the one executed for the murder committed in Chapter 1.
  • Weakness Turns Her On: In her Love Suite event, she says that Shuichi's shyness is something she finds attractive. Incidentally, she's also trying to get him to be more assertive in the same scene, and early in the game says he would be a "pretty cool guy if he were more assertive".
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Instead of going through with Shuichi's plan to use cameras to capture a photo of the mastermind entering the hidden door in the library, Kaede conducted a Rube Goldberg trap to lure the mastermind over to it and kill them from the lookout classroom, making sure no one would notice it. Though it leads the mastermind to frame her, it ends up exposing said mastermind after all, because the trap failed, forcing the mastermind to come out and kill the victim themselves, then frame Kaede for the crime and gaslight her into thinking that she committed the murder herself.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: She puts her own life on the line to kill the mastermind at the start of the game. It doesn't work, thanks to the mastermind learning about the trick from Motherkuma and letting Rantaro fall victim when he attempted to use his Survivor Perk. On top of that, her mechanism ended up completely missing even her unintended victim, though that later becomes crucial for proving the game isn't legitimate as the mastermind killed Rantaro themselves and executed Kaede for it.

    Kirumi Tojo 
Kirumi Tojo

Ultimate Maid

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tojo.png
"Please let me know if you require my services."

Voiced By: Kikuko Inoue (Japanese), Kira Buckland (English)

A girl with a sharp mind and an athletic body. Her day job is as a maid, but she is effective in a variety of roles, such as personal security. She was even apparently approached for a job that would "destroy a nation". Her personal motto is "duty before self", something that she continues to adhere to even in the prison school. She takes care of housekeeping and cooking for the other students.

It's revealed that her position as Ultimate Maid had the government scout her out and that she had been performing the duties of the Japanese Prime Minister before being forced into the killing game. She is the culprit of Chapter 2, drowning a suicidal Ryoma Hoshi and planting his corpse so it would be discovered in the middle of Himiko Yumeno's magic show.


  • The Ace: She takes her talent as a maid to its extreme, and is hypercompetent when it comes to basically any task in order to better serve her masters. She's shown to be good at cooking and cleaning, as would be expected from the Ultimate Maid. However, she also shows talent with writing advice, business acumen, political intrigue, espionage, stealth rescue missions, and athletics. Even Byakuya Togami, the Token Evil Teammate of the first game, acknowledges Kirumi's competence in the Ultimate Talent Development Plan mode. Deconstructed as it's because of Kirumi's talent at anything she tries she was given the dubious honor of being prime minister as a teenager, and Shuichi is able to pin her as the culprit because of how thorough and well-done the murder was, the few mistakes being relatively out of Kirumi's control.
    • Consider that Kirumi's murder of Ryoma is one of the most complex and complicated murders in the series, with Kirumi engineering a frameup of Himiko by staging the crimescene, a frameup of Maki by manipulating the timeline of events, a fabricated alibi for herself by relocating the crimescene, and in truth leaving no decisive evidence otherwise if not for Monokuma adding the pool rule that prevented her from collecting the smoking gun fabric scrap.
  • The Alibi: The very reason Shuichi names her the prime suspect of Ryoma's murder, like Mikan before her. Early in the trial, Kirumi establishes she was in the gym for five minutes, which cleared her of suspicion as it was too little time for both the murder and the setup. Then, after it is unveiled when and how Ryoma was transported to the gym, Kirumi putting herself at the scene of the crime becomes a window to partially set up the makeshift ropeway.
  • All for Nothing: Even if she had escaped through one means or another, there wouldn't have been a country for her to go back to. She killed Ryoma for nothing.
  • Almighty Janitor: She was so good at being the assistant to the prime minister of Japan that she ended up being the one actually doing the job. In fact, Kirumi seems to be good at anything she does, to the point that she's so competent that the few mistakes in her trial were things that were outside of her control.
  • Arachnid Appearance and Attire: She's missing the creepy aspect, but her clothing features a spiderweb motif, and she's definitely got the old-fashioned costume and stoicism down. That said, an iconic tool of any maid worth her salt is a feather duster, generally used to clear away spiderwebs, and her success is largely down to the extensive web of contacts she established. Her execution is also based on the Japanese morality tale "The Spider's Thread", where a sinner trapped in hell seeks his own salvation at the cost of others.
  • Arc Villain: She's the Chapter 2 culprit, murderer of Ryoma Hoshi.
  • Asshole Victim: Played with. Although she does have a very understandable motive for her actions, Kirumi was still extremely ruthless and even at times cruel throughout the second chapter. She murdered Ryoma in a needlessly brutal fashion and tried to use Kaede's wish to guilt trip the class into not voting for her and to the very end tried to sacrifice everyone. She certainly didn't deserve to die but nor did the kind hearted tennis player she drowned.
  • Berserk Button: She gets very annoyed when people ask her to be their mom or call her mom.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Kirumi is one of the most courteous characters in the series, due to being an incredibly devoted Meido girl who will do anything for her clients, as long as it's not indecent. Said devotion ends up driving her to also become one of the most strategic and near-successful culprits alongside that, nearly winning the trial in Chapter 2 if not for her distinctive black gloves tearing off due to rope burn and Kokichi's Insect Meet and Greet providing most of the students in the academy with an alibi, as part of her plan to escape into Japan at the expense of the other students' lives and return to her role as the supposed de facto Prime Minister of Japan.
  • Beware the Quiet Ones: She once rescued the daughter of a former master because he asked her to. Kirumi even took out the guards, one by one.
  • Birds of a Feather:
    • With Kyoko in bonus modes. Both are hard workers and are regarded as The Ace and The Reliable One in their respective groups.
    • With the aristocratic Byakuya and Sonia in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp. Byakuya respects her skills enough that, when she asks him to be a business advisor for a maid dispatch service she's wanting to start up, he accepts, without having seen a business plan. Sonia also respects her a lot and, paralleling her being the "maid" of the Prime Minister in the game, Sonia asks in the event Novoselic come under an "unprecedented threat", she wants to hire Kirumi to become her personal maid.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Played with during the second trial. Her kind personality, genuine care for the class and desire to serve others isn't an act at least until after she watches her motive video, however, she then betrays the class and murders Ryoma while pretending to still be a loyal member of the class, until she is voted as the killer she still retains her soft-hearted and maternal mask and says she would never betray the class all while in the process of betraying them.
  • Breaking Old Trends: Unlike the previous second-chapter killers, Mondo and Peko, Kirumi not only fights in her own Argument Armament, but also tries to escape her execution rather than accepting it out of remorse. In addition, Mondo and Peko are shown to be outright guilt-ridden over murdering Chihiro and Mahiru, whereas Kirumi seems somewhat indifferent towards murdering Ryoma, although not outright remorseless. Finally in Peko's case she ensured that Mahiru would die instantly from a single strike to the head with a baseball bat, which put her plan at risk by helping to clear Hiyoko. Kirumi in contrast drowned Ryoma causing him to spend his final moments in agony just to make her plan run a bit more smoothly.
  • The Butler Did It: Played straight in Chapter 2 where Kirumi, the maid, turns out to be the culprit.
  • Clothing Damage:
    • Kirumi damages one of her gloves while putting her murder case into action. This comes up in her trial.
    • Her Argument Armament damages her clothing more than anyone else's, so she has to use an armbra to cover her breasts and her lower butt is exposed.
    • In addition to the battle segment against her, the execution afterwards involves a heavy amount of this. Her clothes are torn apart as she climbs a rope made of thorns, tearing her gloves (and hands, for that matter) to shreds. Partway up, the rest of her clothes are shredded by buzzsaws.
  • Color Motifs: Grey. She has grey hair and it fits the gloomy vibe she gives off.
  • Complexity Addiction: She will always try to go the extra mile as part of her duties, such as preparing sandwiches along with tea. This ultimately works to her detriment, as she includes trying to frame Himiko in her plan to kill Ryoma, which was not only totally unnecessary (and fairly easy to disprove; if Himiko did it, why would she advertise her crime by having him killed as part of her public magic trick?), it resulted in the other students finding evidence implicating her. Had she just drowned Ryoma in the sink and left him there, very little evidence would point to her, leading the class most likely to suspect Maki, who was the last, other than Kirumi, to see him alive, and each also had the other's motive video, making Maki look even more guilty.
  • Consummate Professional: It's rather difficult to break her out of her maid role. Even during Free Time Events, Kaede and Shuichi have difficulty interacting with her because she never lets herself be free from her duties. This chronic professionalism is what kills her, since it allows the latter to deduce her as Chapter 2's culprit.
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: As much as the murderers are "antagonists" anyway. In comparison to the previous Chapter Two killers, she makes no attempt to Face Death with Dignity and is the only killer in the game who seems to vote for Shuichi out of spite as the others normally concede so the vote is almost always unanimous, and actually attempts to escape her execution on top of that. And for further contrast, while Peko and Mondo ended up killing somebody in the heat of a moment, Kirumi specifically planned her murder attempt in an attempt to win for herself. Also, all three are/were Number Two of a powerful organisation (Mondo was second-in-command of the Crazy Diamonds biker gang, Peko was Fuyuhiko's personal bodyguard and hitman as he was the heir of the Kuzuryu yakuza clan, and Kirumi was the brains behind a puppet prime minister).
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Possibly one of the most brutal executions in the series. Cornered by a lynch mob accusing her of being a failure, Kirumi is given a long vine covered in thorns that leads to an opening in the ceiling and salvation. Determined to escape, she climbs the vine, injuring her hands repeatedly on the many thorns. As she climbs higher, a gauntlet of automated saw blades assaults her, cutting and flaying her as she continues to ascend. Covered in injuries, Kirumi finally reaches the top of the vine, only to find her hole to freedom is fake. The vine breaks, sending her plummeting to her death, whereupon she lands on top of and destroys Monosuke. Kirumi dies on impact, knowing she failed as a prime minister and can't save her people from an unknown catastrophe.
  • Defiant to the End: She never ceases her resistance against everyone's accusations. After the trial has ended, she votes for Shuichi out of spite and tries to run away from her execution.
  • Democracy Is Bad: (By an archaic definition of 'democracy'.) She effectively enslaves herself to the greater good, the greater good being solely defined by numbers and prone to fluctuating. If she can save, say, 10 adults' lives by torturing 9 children to death, she will do it without an iota of regret and proudly murder anyone who gets in her way. And then she will kill the people she saved if they land on the wrong side of her calculations. There's no loyalty or personal affection in her.
  • Determinator:
    • After Kirumi is identified as the blackened, she launches a Nonstop Debate, followed by a Rebuttal Showdown, then an Argument Armament. The only other culprits to put up this much resistance note  are Gundam who has an identical gauntlet, Mikan with two Nonstop Debates and a Panic Talk Action, and Celeste with three Nonstop Debates.
    • Minigames aside, Kirumi is the first culprit in the series that tries to run away from her executionnote  and during her execution keeps on trying to escape despite her hands and body getting stabbed and slashed throughout the entire climb. Naturally, Monokuma uses Kirumi's determination against her.
  • Distaff Counterpart: His interaction with Byakuya in Ultimate Summer Camp shows her to be as close to this to Izuru Kamukura of all people as possible. Byakuya asks Izuru to work for him after graduation, but Izuru says he'd never be able to fully manage him and Byakuya would just become a parasite to him, much like the Prime Minister became to her. Like Izuru, she's skilled at everything she does, to the point of being The Ace. However, unlike Izuru, who is probably the least motivated person in the franchise, she is incredibly motivated. Her only interaction with him, though shows he's the Always Someone Better to her, in Ultimate Summer Camp, she notices either he or Chiaki (presumably Chiaki) drop their fork and by the time she moves to get another, Izuru's already picked it up and grabbed one from another table. He and Chiaki then request she play a game with them to get the best gear.
  • The Dog Was the Mastermind: Not of the game itself, but few people would think that a high school maid is the de facto Prime Minister of Japan.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: She's this to the Prime Minister of Japan. While she's ostensibly just a maid, Kirumi was so good at what she did, no matter the task, that all decisions of the Prime Minister effectively went through her.
  • The Dreaded: A majority of her class are scared of getting caught in lectures from her. This is especially shown during the Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp.
  • Elegant Gothic Lolita: Naturally, due to wearing classic Victorian-era maid attire to go with her position as a maid, though she's not a Lolita, being the most mature-looking of the girls.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • She was once asked to help destroy a rival nation, but she refused. Although she admits that it was more of a pragmatic decision, seeing as how she can't destroy a country all by herself. The fact that she was secretly the government of Japan also helped with this decision.
    • Despite claiming to have no opinions or preferences of her own, the Love Across the Universe bonus mode reveals that Kirumi refuses to do any sexual requests made of her. If you tell her to take her clothes off, Kirumi will respond "I am your maid, not your slave."
  • Extreme Doormat: She claims she has no opinions or preferences of her own, and only works to serve others. Her personal motto is "duty before self". It's played with in that she killed Ryoma and tried to convince the other students to let her go in order to escape, believing that the ends justified the means of killing someone to continue ruling Japan as her duty to her people. Also, in the Love Across the Universe mode, she refuses to do anything perverted, even if asked.
  • Fan Disservice: Gets most of her clothes torn off by saw blades during her execution, giving us a lovely view of her bra, her legs, and viciously cut-up skin.
  • Fatal Flaw: Her perfectionism. Her desire to go above and beyond to complete any task she is assigned is both the motive behind her murder (she couldn't be prime minister if she were shut up in the school, after all) and her plan's undoing; had she simply left the crime scene alone and allowed the others to come to their own conclusions about the culprit, it was very unlikely they'd be able to discover her, but she just had to add that final touch by implicating Himiko, where she screwed up and left some evidence behind. Thus, while she could never be proven as the killer, she could be proven as the one who disposed of the body, and there's no reason anyone who wasn't the killer would do that.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • She looks visibly nervous when Kokichi mentions he knows which students got each motive video - this is because Kirumi actually got her own and remembering her responsibilities is what prompted her to kill Ryoma.
    • Although during the Argument Armament in the second trial her Wardrobe Malfunction is much worse, and her injuries are much more minor than during her execution, the Fanservice moment mentioned above may be a foreshadowing of the Fan Disservice moment also mentioned above.
    • The game stated the government had 16 prisoners be sent to the school, yet Kirumi ended up being a prime minister. This could be a hint towards how the students are not exactly prisoners per se.
    • Kirumi states that she didn't remember her role as Prime Minister until Monokuma showed her the Motive Video, and later we find out that's not the only piece of technology he was using to plant false memories in the students...
  • Freak Out: When Monokuma announces it's time for her execution, the usually composed Kirumi utterly loses it, screaming that she won't die and trying to flee the school. She makes Leon and Teruteru's breakdowns look tame in comparison!
  • Freudian Slip: She blurts out during the trial that "everyone" is relying on her. Kaito points out it sounds like Kirumi is talking about someone not present at the trial - he turns out to be right.
  • Gamer Chick: Ultimate Summer Camp reveals that much like Chiaki, she's a pretty skilled gamer. Having worked for gamers, she's learned various video games when asked to join them and has often done gaming sessions with Chiaki
  • Hates Being Alone: In USC, Mahiru takes a photo of her, saying "This isn't a shot I can take every day" when she takes a photo of her alone, because normally she's at someone's side. Mahiru loves it and considers it the best photo she's taken that day, while Kirumi is embarrassed by it, despite saying it's a "masterful photo".
  • Hidden Depths: "I am a maid, after all." She's skilled at baking and cleaning, as is to be expected from the Ultimate Maid. But she also is keen on detective novels, business acumen, writing advice, and even political intrigue. What keeps her from just ruling everything with an iron fist by being the best there at everything is because she holds a motto of "duty before self".
  • Hoist by Her Own Petard: Her alibi for while she couldn't have murdered Ryoma in his Research Lab before nighttime was that she was in the gym setting up Himiko's magic trick with the tank for 5 minutes. Once it's revealed he was actually killed at nighttime and how the culprit was able to get his body to the gym, Shuichi uses her alibi against her, as in order to set up the transit, the tank and the rope in the gym had to be prepared beforehand, due to the nighttime rule. Since Kirumi had previously revealed she was the last person in the gym...
  • Hope Spot: Her execution. She gets past all of the death traps and reaches a hole to freedom... only to find the hole is just a crude sky drawing. The vine she was so desperately climbing breaks, sending her plummeting to her death.
  • Huge Girl, Tiny Guy: She's the huge girl to Ryoma's tiny guy, which made it very easy for Kirumi to subdue and kill him, Ryoma's suicidal mindset notwithstanding.
  • Huge Schoolgirl: She's 5'9" (176cm) tall and tied with Akane as the 2nd tallest girl in the franchise, after Sakura. The average adult height of Japanese women is 5'2" or 159cm and she's actually also taller than the average Japanese man's height, 5'7" or 171cm.
  • Humble Hero: Her introduction in the demo has Makoto praising her skills and stating that she can complete any task, but Kirumi states that "any task" is an overstatement.
  • Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Prior to the killing game, she was hired by the prime minister to be his assistant. She's so competent, she becomes the acting prime minister. This actually helps Shuichi to pinpoint Kirumi as the murderer, because it was so thorough and well-planned out (barring accidentally dropping the inner tube and piece of her glove in the pool) that only someone like Kirumi could have done it.
  • Hypocrite: In the second trial, she scolds Maki by calling her selfish for withholding important information, when she's guilty of exactly the same thing, since she's actually the culprit.
  • If We Survive This: In her final Free Time, she says she wants Shuichi to hire her to be his maid, as she sees a lot of potential in him.
  • Ironic Last Words: "I WILL NOT DIE!" This is shortly before her execution.
  • Irony:
    • The Ultimate Maid gets caught by not being able to clean up after her act.
    • Despite her gloves being a key part of evidence used to finger her as the culprit, they do nothing to stop the thorns from mutilating her hands as she attempts to escape execution.
    • She is killed by the same thing that helped to give her away as the culprit - a rope breaking.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • Though she had altruistic reasons to become the culprit of Chapter 2, there was no reason to murder Ryoma in such a slow and agonizing way by drowning him in the sink and then use his body to crash Himiko's magic trick, which was intended to cheer everybody up. The fact that she handcuffed him before taking him to the sink means she counted on the possibility of him waking up after being knocked out, and ironically just clubbing him to death and leaving his body behind would've prevented the risk of dropping evidence in the pool. In other words, not only was her cruelty unnecessary, it was borderline detrimental to her in the grand scheme of things.
    • When Shuichi begins cornering her as a suspect, Kirumi asks him to reconsider his deductions and specifically brings up Kaede, mentioning she wishes to honor her last request. She also flips and calls Shuichi a "self-righteous brat" when he continues with his questioning. In addition, the fact that she murders Ryoma in the slowest way possible when he pretty much let her murder him can be seen as this, he lived long enough to regret his decision and spent his final moments scratching the sink, making Kirumi come across as needlessly sadistic.
  • Look Behind You: After it is established that Ryoma was alive at nighttime, before the class could then clarify the murder scene, Kirumi cuts in to stall their progress and redirect the discussion back to a topic already discussed, the placement of the body in the piranha tank.
    Himiko: So we're right back where we started... what a pain.
    Keebo: However, it should be clear now that the crime occurred after nighttime began.
    Kirumi: But then when was Ryoma's body placed inside the piranha tank?
    [...]
    Shuichi: We were so caught up in where the body was found... when we should have been thinking about where the murder occurred!
    Kokichi: The murder scene would definitely have more clues about the culprit. Why didn't anyone realise this yet? Ha, that's strange.
    Korekiyo: Perhaps the culprit steered the conversation away from that topic.
  • Loophole Abuse: Monosuke accidentally reveals that bending the rules regarding being in the gym during nighttime was necessary for her murder plot considering she needed it to insert Ryoma's body into the piranha tank. As long as she only set her foot on the gym window and didn't use her whole body, she wasn't breaking any rules. This is how she safely accomplishes the task of inserting his body into the tank at all.
  • Luminescent Blush: One of her sprites has her shyly placing her finger on her chin and looking at you while her face turns slightly red.
  • Manipulative Bitch: When being accused in the second trial, she pretends to be pleading for the rest of the students' sake and says she just wants them to live; when that doesn't work, she tries to guilt-trip them into volunteering to be executed instead after the trial by relaying her motive. Kaito and Kokichi call her out on it.
    • Reflected in her Rebuttal Showdown wherein Kirumi has such an advantage, Shuichi begins in the danger zone, which shows how heavily the students were on Kirumi's side.
  • Meido: A woman with a frilled band in her hair, required by her employer to wear a housemaid dress outfit. Albeit, her outfit has a slight edge to it with a spider web pattern on the torso of her dress.
  • Moral Myopia: Her motive as a wholesale ties to The Needs of the Many with her being able to save Japan if she escapes, even if it's at the cost of the smaller group she's in as well as taking advantage of a fellow classmate's psychological issues. This is something that's flipped in on herself when the group catches her for killing Ryoma that she needs to be the one to die so everyone else can live. Kirumi's response? Not only vote for Shuichi in a last-ditch effort to take him down with her and try to weasel her way out and manipulate the others to taking the fall for herself, but when that fails, she's the only killer in the series so far to outright try to run away from her own Execution. Despite touting how much the greater group would benefit from it, Kirumi doesn't at all get why her death in that scenario would benefit the greater group on that scale.
  • Ms. Exposition: During their first class trial, she is the one who explains to everyone how they need to perform the class trials after Monokuma explains the rules to everyone and they were all still confused about where to start.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Kirumi can be read as "Slashing Beauty" or "Beheading Beauty", and she shares her family name with the World War II-era Japanese prime minister Hideki Tojo, who was a convicted war criminal.
  • Neat Freak: Her report card states that she likes cleaning. Makes sense, given that she's the Ultimate Maid.
  • The Needs of the Many: When Kirumi learned that all of Japan is facing a big calamity outside, she decided to murder Ryoma in order to escape, and for that cause tries throwing away the lives of the other students (who are still citizens she is also "responsible" for) in hopes of being able to help her nation through whatever this danger may be. She's charismatic enough to sway opinion towards her, to the point that several students are willing to die so Kirumi can live and help Japan for a short time. However, it ultimately doesn't work, and Kirumi still gets outed as the Blackened. As one last act of defiance, Kirumi attempts to run from her execution, citing that her dedication to her people is what will save her.
  • Nice Girl: At least prior to watching her motive video anyway, Kirumi is generally a very helpful, polite and good natured young woman who will do anything for the class if they ask her such as cooking meals no matter how unique (like Tenko's tripe) and cleaning up.
  • Ninja Maid: She was mentioned to be hired as a bodyguard for a head of a nation. In her third Free Time Event, she tells of how when her master's daughter was held for ransom, she used her knowledge of the criminals' base layout to separate them and take them out one by one, and then "persuaded" their leader to start a butler service. But from her Argument Armament's artwork, she's less of a ninja and more of a knight.
  • No Social Skills: Downplayed. It's not that she can't talk to people; it's that she can only seem to do it as a maid instead of a human being.
    • Her first Free Time event has Kirumi seemingly not understanding that Shuichi just wants to talk with her, rather than have him serve her as a maid. Even when he tells her to sit down after making him tea, Kirumi refuses to do it, because that would mean that she couldn't serve him as his maid. It takes a few more Free Time events before she seems to get what he wants, and even then, her dialogue is still very stoic and measured.
    • In the Ultimate Talent Development Plan mode, she breaks up an argument between Taka and Mondo, even getting them to reconcile. However, she only does this to get the noise level to go down, not for her own sake or theirs.
  • Not So Above It All: She pranks Shuichi in her final Free Time, saying her salary is $10,000 a day when he wants to hire her after she expresses worry about being a "stray maid". She then reveals it was a joke, after Shuichi agrees to it, that it's way too expensive and she's not worried about being a stray maid.
  • Not So Stoic:
    • After Shuichi fingers her as Ryoma's killer. Her facial expressions and voice lines get far more intense.
      Kirumi: While I do understand where you are coming from, I assure you this is just a part of your petty imagination! An empty theory created from nihilism!
    • She absolutely flips her lid when Monokuma announces it's punishment time. Kirumi runs away from her execution (the only Blackened to ever do that in the entire series), screaming at the top of her lungs that she refuses to die in a "hellhole" like the killing game, vowing to escape for her people. She doesn't make it, but the fact she got further than anyone else is proof positive that her stoicism has a limit.
    • In her Love Suite event, she breaks down crying after Shuichi says it's alright for her to have feelings for him and Shuichi hugs her and she asks to stand by his side forever before an implied Sexy Discretion Shot.
  • Overly Long Scream: Played for Drama when Kirumi lets out a TON of screams as she desperately tries to escape her executions, even lets out a painful scream when she gets cut like a slab of livestock by Monokuma's buzzsaws, and died falling to her death.
  • The Perfect Crime: Nearly, but ultimately subverted. Shuichi himself points out that her murder of Ryoma was this word-for-word. In light of the sheer amount of happpenstance that ruins her crime, it's no wonder she loses her composure and has to turn to deception in order to cover up the crime after being discovered.
    In the abstract, her plan really was perfect: the drowning was scheduled at nighttime when no one has an alibi, when there were no direct witnesses, and when Maki was the only one known to be out and about. Implicating Maki even more was the fact Ryoma had her motive video (and she his), something Kirumi would have known since she was requested by the students to clean their rooms. Then, to take it a step further and ensure victory, Kirumi also fabricated an alibi while simultaneously framing a second student, Himiko. By transporting the dead body to the gym, Kirumi could argue that she was confirmed to only be there for five minutes before the gym was locked and off-limits, leaving too little time for both the murder and setup as well as falsifying the time of death to before nighttime due to the supposed inaccessibility of the gym. Even if Himiko were to be cleared, the suspicion would then fall onto Maki, with Maki having no way to defend herself other than denial and with Kirumi still lacking opportunity in the eyes of the class.
    In practise however, relocating the corpse would become the flaw that catches her, as she caught her glove in the rope and dropped the inner tube, the vessel necessary for her ropeway, in the pool, which Monokuma himself had earlier decreed cannot be entered at night; even her frameups of Himiko and Maki fell apart due to random chance factors, as Gonta lept up onstage and him witnessing the empty magic tank disproved that Himiko swapped the bodies, and the night of the murder Ryoma actually met Maki before going to meet Kirumi, giving her the testimony necessary to destroy her faked alibi once Kaito and Shuichi chose to believe her (against the evidence). Even Kokichi had to actively contribute to taking her down, as his Insect Meet & Greet was, in part, intended to give the majority of the class alibis for before nighttime, leaving only four suspects once it is worked out that the culprit had to be in the gym before it was locked. Between Monokuma adding the pool rule, Kokichi's machinations to clear himself and eight other students, Ryoma choosing to meet Maki before Kirumi and not vice versa (something Kokichi points out), Gonta accidentally becoming a witness relevant to Himiko as the prime suspect, and Kaito willfully believing Maki once she is the prime suspect... yeah, A LOT had to go wrong all at once to pave the way to catch Kirumi.
  • The Perfectionist: If she does anything at all, it's to perfection, and she expects nothing less from herself. Her first Free Time event has Shuichi ask Kirumi to make tea, which she does. But it's not only the most delicious tea that Shuichi has ever tasted, she also made small sandwiches and cakes for him as well. This ends up being used against Kirumi and exposes her as the Blackened in her trial, as the murder was planned so flawlessly that it couldn't have been anyone but her. The few mistakes that led to Kirumi being found out were things that she had no control over.
  • Playing the Victim Card: Way more so than any of the other Blackened, Kirumi deliberately acts hurt by Shuichi's accusations and accuses him of trying to "warp the narrative" just because he wants to pin her as the culprit over "flimsy" evidence. Some of her classmates are swayed by this, but Kaito and Kokichi both call Kirumi out on it.
  • Proper Tights with a Skirt: Fitting with her talent and Meido aesthetic.
  • Recurring Element: Traditionally from the previous games, she's the third Chapter Two murderer to have The Reveal in the class trial. In her case, being a Prime Minister in her country.
  • The Reliable One: She's shown to cater to everyone's menial chores, from cleaning rooms to cooking dinner to aiding personal research. This also applies to her position as the acting prime minister to her country. So much so that she's willing to murder someone to check on their well-being. In the Ultimate Talent Development Plan mode, even Byakuya Togami, a Spoiled Brat of the first order, can tell that Kirumi's skills as a maid are exceptional. To this end, he briefly considers Kirumi's advice on a matter, which he never does for anyone else. Celeste also says that Kirumi's tea is the best she's ever tasted, but since Celeste wants to be waited on hand-and-foot by handsome men, she can't use Kirumi's services to their full extent. Sonia also relies on her a lot, and, in Ultimate Summer Camp, Sonia asks that, should Novoselic come under "unprecedented threat" that Kirumi become her personal maid, paralleling her being the "maid" of the Prime Minister of Japan.
  • Required Secondary Powers: She has a set of other skills non-related to being a maid, but they are all used to achieve finishing any task she is given as a maid. Up to and including running a country.
  • Sanity Slippage: Once she's marked as the culprit, does she ever. All traces of her dignity start to disintegrate up to her execution, Kira Buckland does a very convincing job of portraying how utterly terrified and determined Kirumi was to survive and save Japan, culminating in a final bone chilling scream of "I WILL NOT DIIIIIEEEEE!!!".
  • Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Attempts this when faced with execution. Monokuma gruesomely kills her regardless.
  • Shockingly Expensive Bill: Averted. In her last free time event, Kirumi offers to be Shuichi's personal maid for ten thousand dollars a day. Even attempting to negotiate a lower rate with her doesn't work. However, she reveals that the price tag was a joke not long after and that she'd serve him for free because of how much potential she sees in him.
  • Sickening "Crunch!": At the end of her execution, she falls to the ground and lands on top of Monosuke with a sickening crunch.
  • Significant Birth Date: Her birthday is May 10th, which is also known as Maid Day in Japan. It's also a possible date for Mother's Day in the USA, which coincides with her tendency to be the Team Mom (as much as she dislikes being called that).
  • Sore Loser: After being exposed as the culprit of Chapter 2, she spitefully votes for Shuichi.
  • Starter Villain: Retroactively, she is the first actual culprit of the killing game, as Kaede's defeat in Chapter 1 is meaningless since she never actually killed Rantaro and it was Tsumugi the entire time, who instead becomes the Final Boss when she's eventually accused of the murder in the final trial. Also, unlike Kaede, who only took the trial as a chance to expose the mastermind and never antagonizes anyone, she's a genuine antagonist towards the spotless participants and doesn't want her murder to be solved.
  • Statuesque Stunner: At 176cm (5'9"), she's the tallest female character in the game, fitting how more adult and "motherly" she's seen by the rest of the cast, and given clothing damage she's subjected to multiple times at least the showrunners in-universe think that she'd provide some good fanservice.
  • The Stoic: She rarely shows any sort of strong emotion in her Free Time Events or during the first trial. The worst she does is some light scolding. Come the second trial, especially after she's exposed as the killer, Kirumi's stoicism is shown to have a limit.
  • Subordinate Excuse: Her Love Suite scene involves being Shuichi's personal maid/bodyguard, and she feels like she's a burden to him because she believes her romantic feelings are only holding him back.
  • Sympathetic Murderer: She is a "civil servant" (read: Prime Minister in all but title) fighting against a great calamity, which she uses to justify her reason to be let off the guilty verdict. She practically exploits this trope and sways the others' opinions so much that despite Kaito and Kokichi calling her out on her The Needs of the Many utilitarianism, several of the students are still volunteering to be executed in her stead. Furthermore, many students encouraged her as she attempted to escape execution, suggesting they could fully understand her feelings over the matter. Finally at one point Shuichi notes that her sorrow and rage shown during the trial was genuine, suggesting that deep down she was genuinely remorseful for killing Ryoma and having to betray the class even if for her it's the only thing she could do to save Japan.
  • Team Mom: Her job as a maid makes her come off as a sort of motherly figure to the group. Early on in Chapter 2, Kokichi asks her to "become his mom", with Gonta doing the same seconds after. However, her Free Time Events reveal she dislikes when people of the same age call her a mother.
  • Tears of Joy: She gives these off in her Love Suite scene. Shuichi quickly deduces that what she wants is a master who treats her like an equal, and plays along to this end. Kirumi says she intends to leave the "mansion" because she has feelings for Shuichi, but he says that he wants her to stay. Kirumi begins to cry in response and gives an Anguished Declaration of Love immediately after.
  • Undignified Death: She throws all dignity out the window in her desperate attempt to escape execution, but after Monokuma catches her it doesn't get much better. A lynch mob surrounds her and signifies that she is a failure as a prime minister. She climbs up a thorny vine and through a gauntlet of saw blades that shred her skin and clothes. When she hits the ground, she is almost naked, and she dies knowing that she failed her people and there was no point in trying to escape. Although in another sense its admirable how to her final breath she refused to give up on her mission to save Japan.
  • Unreliable Expositor: Kirumi is so capable she even manipulates the player: during the flashback to her meeting with Ryoma, Kirumi cuts in halfway to begin personally narrating the rest of what supposedly happened. In contrast, Maki's flashback of meeting Ryoma at night plays out with no narration on Maki's behalf, subtly indicating that Maki was being factual while Kirumi was giving her version of the encounter.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Despite her unbelievable levels of competence in pretty much everything, she has a lot of trouble cooking with the konjac root.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The only reason she killed Ryoma was to escape the school for the sake of helping out more than just ~15 high school students while stuck in the killing game environment. Due to the rules, the deaths of the others was something she had to work around, and it's likely she would've left without resorting to murder had she not been forced to kill to be allowed to leave in the first place.
  • When She Smiles: Kirumi is generally seen with a natural expression but on occasion showcases a very warm and sweet looking smile that highlights the kind heart that lies beneath the hardworking maid.
  • Workaholic: She continues to act as a maid for her classmates during their time in the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles, and she hates standing by idly. In Love Across the Universe, she feels uncomfortable watching other people clean. Her profile also says the thing she hates more than anything else is taking a day off. She would only take a day off if someone ordered her to do so, and even then, she has to be constantly reminded to take the day off for once. She even admits to Leon that someone serving her instead of the other way around just feels off.
  • Yamato Nadeshiko: Very caring and nurturing.
  • Younger Than They Look: The combination of her height, stern face, hairstyle, and voice makes her appear more like a young adult than a teenager, but naturally she's supposed to be the same age as the other students making her around 16-18.

    Himiko Yumeno 
Himiko Yumeno

Ultimate Magician

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/himiko_6.png
“Should I just beat you to death with my deadly magic?"

Voiced By: Aimi Tanaka (Japanesse), Christine Marie Cabanos (English)

The Ultimate Magician, but she would prefer to call herself the Ultimate Mage. She claims to be the youngest person to win Magician of the Year, a prestigious award given out by the magician society Magician's Castle. However, since she insists that her tricks are actual magic, she alleges that she has been prevented from claiming the award because of a conspiracy to hide the existence of magic. She also claims to be flooded with booking requests from all over the world. Despite being at the top of her field, she is lazy to a fault.

While emotionally reserved, after Tenko's death, Himiko vows to honor Tenko's wish for her to be more open emotionally. In the final class trial, she abstains from voting along with Shuichi, Maki, Tsumugi and Keebo. She is spared from Keebo's sacrificial destruction of the academy and goes on to survive the killing game.


  • A-Cup Angst: She seems to be self-conscious about her lack of bust. Miu and Kokichi use this to insult her, which she doesn't take well.
  • Always Someone Better: She never liked to admit how she eventually upstaged her master, culminating with her fixing a magic (trick) that he fumbled up on stage and forced him to disappear out of shame.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: She becomes briefly playable at the final class trial.
  • Antiquated Linguistics: A very pompous variant of it, reminiscent of the speech pattern of an old mage from a JRPG.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: After Tenko encourages Himiko to express herself more, Himiko smiles and says that Tenko went a bit too far, subtly expressing that she's no longer mad at Tenko for infiltrating Angie's student council.
  • Bait-and-Switch: It looks like something terrible is going to happen to Himiko during the magic show, but when the curtains part, Ryoma's dead body is found in the piranha tank and Himiko comes out of it unharmed.
  • Berserk Button:
  • Blush Sticker: Has perpetually rosy cheeks.
  • Borrowed Catchphrase: In the third Chapter, Himiko laments that her magic shows are supposed to bring happiness to people and instead it was used for Ryoma's murder. She then comments that as a mage, "I still got a ways to go".
  • Breaking Old Trends: Like Kiyotaka and Hiyoko before her, Himiko loses someone close to her and the following chapter gives her a build-up for Character Development. Unlike Kiyotaka and Hiyoko, Himiko doesn't get unceremoniously killed in the very next chapter and actually survives the Killing Game. Curiously though, she would have been killed off in Chapter 3 had Tenko not taken her place in the séance.
  • Break the Cutie:
  • Brilliant, but Lazy: She's an Ultimate, but she constantly complains about "not having enough MP" and her explanation for why she couldn't have killed Rantaro is that killing someone sounds like far too much work. Even relaxing is too taxing for her laziness. At least before her Character Development.
  • Butt-Monkey: In Chapters 2, 3 and 5, she's accused of murdering someone. People also tend to be implied to just be humoring her when she insists on her "magic".
  • Calling Your Bathroom Breaks: Without a hint of shame, at that. She even attempts to use this to her advantage at one point to excuse herself during Chapter 6's trial to look for more clues.
  • Character Development: Starting around the end of Chapter Three, she stops whining about how "tiresome" everything is and hiding her emotions, becomes more outspoken and optimistic, and uses "Nyeh" less.
  • Character Tics: When Himiko is nervous or uncomfortable, she pulls the brim of her hat down over her eyes.
  • Chuunibyou: Like Gundham, Himiko tends to live in her own little fantasy world and is considered incredibly odd by her classmates, though unlike Gundham she is backed into a corner and forced to admit how her trick works. This becomes vital to solving Ryoma's murder and, as her classmates point out, insisting it's "real magic" will get them all killed. Amusingly, Shuichi can play along and say that Himiko indeed used magic to escape the water tank, and Himiko will struggle to keep up the act. However, Maki and Angie will say Himiko would be more suspicious if that were the case and point out that she could have simply swapped places with Ryoma. This forces Himiko to break character and point out the actual contradiction in the Nonstop Debate. Tenko will then accuse Shuichi of manipulating her into telling the truth.
  • Clear My Name: She happened to be accused as a murderer twice in the game, being Chapter 2 and Chapter 3's prime suspect for the murders of Ryoma Hoshi and Tenko Chabashira at different points in the trial
  • Cold Ham: Can be quite hammy at times, such as when introducing herself or doing magic, but still retains the same bored tone of voice.
  • Commonality Connection:
    • Has a bonding moment with Fuyuhiko in USC, over the Character Development they underwent. He notes that seeing her used to piss him off because of how fidgety and jumpy she was, but that now she's got some spunk to her. She in turn notes that he was scary, prickly, standoffish, and #1 on the list of students that would cause her to pee herself if she bumped into them. But now, he's still a bit scary, but "also someone who comes early to help with preparations."
    • With fellow Chuunibyou Gundham, also in USC and in Ultimate Talent Development Plan, they bond over him acknowledging her as a "mage", with him calling her "Crimson Mage" and having animals in her act. She offers to show him her magic show and he enthusiastically agrees, but, with Gundham's ...unique way of talking, she has a hard time knowing what he's talking about.
  • Conspiracy Theorist: She believes there is a conspiracy to hide the existence of magic from the public.
  • Cute Witch: A Token Mini-Moe that dresses like a witch.
  • Damsel out of Distress: She got trapped in the hidden room in the library by the rubble in the last chapter. However, she found the secret passageway in that room, and she manages to find her own way out.
  • Deadpan Snarker: After her Character Development, Himiko becomes quite the sassmaster. This is what she has to say about Miu's murder, for example:
    Himiko: Killed by toilet paper... It was...a fitting end for her...
  • Doing In the Wizard: She is the first suspect of Chapter 2's class trial, and removing the suspicion from her involves everyone else figuring out how she vanished from the water tank in her magic show, much to Himiko's frustration, as she continually insists that she is using real magic, not tricks. Shuichi can say that Himiko really used magic to escape from the water tank, but Maki and Angie will point out that this would make Himiko more suspicious if that were true.
  • Embarrassing Damp Sheets: Implied. Early on, Himiko admits her fear to get up to pee at night and given her weak bladder, it’s not unlikely she gave Kirumi more laundry to do.
  • Everyone Has Standards: In the Ultimate Talent Development Plan, even though she's happy to finally meet someone else who believes in real magic, Gundham is so far down the chuuni rabbit hole that even she can't understand what the hell he's talking about.
  • Familiar: Refers to the pigeons and tiger from her shows as so, and her Love Suite fantasy involves Shuichi being a wolf given human form by her magic.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: She becomes this with Shuichi and Maki by the end. Maki even lets her call her "Maki Roll", the only person besides Kaito she extends that to (Shuichi possibly could, he just never tries).
  • Frame-Up: Happens to her twice. In the second chapter she looks suspicious because it was during her magic trick that Ryoma's body was found (and her stubborn refusal to explain the trick doesn't help) and the culprit in the third chapter tries to pin the blame for Tenko's death on Himiko because she suggested using the middle room for the séance. It's also noted she could have killed Angie because, as a member of the Student Council, she would have been able to persuade Angie to unlock the door.
  • Friendly Address Privileges: Maki lets her call her "Maki Roll" starting late in Chapter 5, which she only allows Kaito to do.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Early in Chapter Four, Himiko ended up stating that she will no longer call things tiresome. However, Himiko's first three free time events with Shuichi ended up having her call things tiresome and Shuichi will still be able to access those free time events after Chapter Four. Slightly justified by the fact that it would've been a huge case of Guide Dang It! if Shuichi was unable to access those free time events after Chapter Four.
  • Genre Savvy: Frequently points out when other characters set "Death Flags".
  • Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Much like Kaede, she also likes any stuffed animals you can give her. In her case, it's likely to play on how childlike she is.
  • Height Angst:
    • She mentions that she wishes her lab was on a higher floor, and Shuichi internally assumes it to be this.
    • In a "Potential of Talent" event, she confesses to "Junko", (actually Mukuro), that she's hoping to have a growth spurt like Hiyoko did.
  • Heroic BSoD: In the third trial, it's suggested that Himiko killed Tenko and Angie and she becomes so depressed she totally loses the will to defend herself and says she doesn't even care anymore if they vote for her, since her two best friends are dead. Shuichi sympathizes with Himiko and says he can relate to her after what he went through after identifying Kaede as the culprit. He reminds her of Tenko's final words and manages to pull Himiko from her despair.
  • Hidden Depths: A comment in Chapter Four suggests Himiko is really into soap operas.
  • Hypocrite: She states that she's against lying, but she constantly insists that she uses real magic, even when doing so in Chapter 2 made her even more suspicious in front of everybody. Not only that, but before her Character Development, she also lies about her emotions and tries to hide them before Kokichi calls her out for it.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • She comments Miu's death by toilet paper is a "fitting end" for her, which is a little rich coming from the girl who frequently tells everyone when she's going to the bathroom and even nonchalantly admits in Chapter 5 Kaito startled her enough to make her wet herself.
    • At one point, she of all people tells Keebo to stop whining, this coming from the girl who spent most of her time pre-Character Development constantly complaining about everything being "too tiring".
  • If We Survive This: In a tragic subversion, Himiko and Shuichi promise that he'll watch her and her master perform magic together in her final Free Time. While they do survive and make it out, their memories were completely fabricated, so they have no chance of doing that.
  • Inferiority Superiority Complex: Her final Free Time Event with Shuichi hints that she has this, as she has a hard time talking about how she ended up overcoming her master and being better at magic than they are, to the point that everybody wanted to see her at magic shows instead of her master.
  • Informed Flaw: Her report card says she doesn't like the ocean, but this never gets brought up in Ultimate Summer Camp, which takes place on an island, and she even goes into the ocean in her "My Future" event. In an interaction with Tenko, it's Tenko who hesitates to go into the ocean, due to only having swam in a pool before (Hina taught her how to swim).
  • Insistent Terminology: She prefers to be called a mage rather than a magician. She has a bonding moment with Teruteru in Ultimate Summer Camp, as he prefers being called "Ultimate Chef'', rather than "Cook". Himiko then annoys Celeste, bringing up that she prefers being called Celestia Ludenburg, rather than her real name of Taeko Yasuhiro.
  • Irony: In Chapter 3, Korekiyo rigs all three empty rooms that he could use for the séance used to kill Tenko. By asking everyone else to make a choice between the three, he implicates Himiko for Tenko's death when she selects the middle of the three. Having a volunteer make a choice that has no effect on the outcome is a simple trick known as ''The Magician's Choice''. Even more ironic is that allowing Himiko to coincidentally select the same room that Angie was attacked in is the one greatest factor that allows Shuichi to solve the mystery of Angie's murder. Strangely, she claims this is just a coincidence, rather than her magic after earning what seems like genuine praise from Kokichi during the trial for choosing it.
  • Japanese Pronouns: Uses Uchi on herself.
  • LARP: It appears to be what she's into.
  • Little Miss Snarker: A little before her Character Development, but really becomes one afterwards. In her interaction with fellow Little Miss Snarker Hiyoko in Ultimate Summer Camp, they naturally get into some Snark-to-Snark Combat.
  • "Magic A" Is "Magic A": She claims that magic is not universal, but instead has very specific uses. For example, she can't make people fly up and down, but she can guess cards and coins chosen by the audience and make doves appear afterwards. If she's being serious, she can cut a human being in half.
  • Magical Girl: What her motif seems to be based around, but she is equally offended by Hifumi considering her one of the typical anime variety instead of a more "classic" or traditional "Mage" in the Ultimate Talent Development Plan bonus mode. In Love Across the Universe, she admits enjoying watching them if you take her to the AV room.
  • Magician Detective: Notably Averted despite the series she's in; she tends to let the others do most of the logic work in the trials and her insistence that her magic is real keeps her from revealing too many tricks without heavy prompting.
  • Magicians Are Wizards: Claims that her performances are real magic rather than parlor tricks, though the only one seen does have a simple explanation behind it rather than a case of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane.
  • Mundane Utility: She has Izuru Kamukura help her carry supplies for her magic show in Ultimate Summer Camp. She even says she never expected to have him of all people carry supplies for her.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Gets hit with this hard in Chapter Three after Tenko dies and when it turns out that Tenko offering to be the conduit during the séance actually saved Himiko's life, and Himiko clearly regrets giving Tenko the cold shoulder beforehand.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: She's very loyal to her master and chooses to believe he didn't want to involve her in mage power struggles after he made mistakes and she had to cover for him in shows. In her final Free Time, Shuichi then says he thinks her master left to train and get better and says she should also work hard training for her shows.
  • Never Bareheaded: She's only seen wearing her witch's hat (though with the sprite when she throws her hat in the air, you can see the top of her head). Her bikini sprites in Ultimate Summer Camp also have her bare-headed.
  • Nice Girl: While she can be distant and lazy, and occasionally quite harsh, Himiko is a very sweet-natured girl who wants to make others smile with her magic, after her arc she actively tries to help others and even tries to cheer up Shuichi after his fight with Kaito.
  • The Not-Love Interest: She's the other female survivor, but Shuichi gets little to no Ship Tease with her in Free Time and Love Across the Universe, instead being more like a little sister to him. Ironically, her Love Suite Event has an unambiguous Sexy Discretion Shot at the end.
  • Not So Stoic: She doesn't express her feelings much because it was "too tiresome" to even do it at first. But just before Chapter 3 ended, Kokichi gave her a What the Hell, Hero? moment because she didn't actually express her emotions in the trial. She remembers Tenko's advice that it's not shameful to express them, and she finally shows her emotions by crying.
  • Odd Friendship: Has one with Akane in both UTDP and USC, where Akane recognizes her from doing a magic show that she took her younger siblings to in the former. In later interactions, and USC, she gives Akane free VIP tickets for her little brothers and sisters.
  • Oh, Crap!: Her reaction when the séance is complete and there is blood pooling underneath Tenko's cage...
  • Older Than She Looks: Yes, she is actually a high schooler.
  • One of the Kids: Her short stature and childishness, along with them being suitably impressed with her magic, leads to her being the only student besides Gonta to mostly have friendly interactions with the "Warriors of Hope" and Masaru offers to let her join their group in Ultimate Summer Camp.
  • Parental Abandonment: Not from her actual parents, but from the strong parental figure her master was.
  • Performance Anxiety: Gets very nervous before her magic show in the game, shaking like a leaf on a tree before the performance. She also was very nervous before shows in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp, with Hajime noting in the latter that she's pale and stiff.
  • Pet the Dog: A pre-Character Development Himiko agreed to do the magic show with Angie in order to lift everyone's spirits after Kaede's death, which is notable considering how "tiring" she found everything up to that point.
  • Potty Emergency: Constantly admits that she is having one. Even when Shuichi and she are investigating a bathroom, she has to kick Shuichi out.
  • Potty Failure: After 4 chapters of close calls, she finally wets herself in Chapter 5. Something she casually admits.
  • Proper Tights with a Skirt: Wears tights with her school uniform.
  • Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: Does this with Masaru in Ultimate Summer Camp with a dove and later a stick and in a later interaction, a flock of doves.
  • Recurring Element:
    • The Token Mini-Moe similar to Chihiro, and Hiyoko before her. Unlike them, however, she survives the game.
    • Also, like Byakuya and Sonia before her, she is followed around by an annoying but well-meaning Stalker with a Crush she isn't interested in. However, unlike Byakuya and Sonia, Himiko really regrets how she treated Tenko after the latter dies during the Killing Game, and Tenko's parting words kickstart her Character Development.
    • She also shares Yasuhiro and Kazuichi's status as a Butt-Monkey who comes out of the Killing Game alive after all the crap that gets thrown their way. Like Yasuhiro, she's the prime suspect in trials twice in a row, as well.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Inverted. She wears black clothes, has a black cape with red lining, and has red hair, but is an Endearingly Dorky Cute Witch who survives the killing game.
  • Revenge Before Reason: In the third trial, after proving that Korekiyo killed Tenko, she spearheads the efforts to vote for him on the spot even though Angie's death is the only one that matters and he hasn't been proven responsible for killing her. Even if she does turn out to be Right for the Wrong Reasons, it's still putting rage before brains.
  • Saw a Woman in Half: One of the tricks she can presumably perform, as there is a prop for it in her Ultimate Lab.
  • Say My Name: She yells Tenko's name when Tenko is killed during the séance. Later, after the third trial, she remembers Tenko's words about expressing her emotions and bawls for Tenko and Angie. In Japanese, that's the first time she's ever on First-Name Basis with her.
  • Shipper on Deck: She becomes very invested in the bizarre soap opera romance between Monotaro and Monophanie.
  • Shout-Out: Considering her witch motif, her given name references either the semi-legendary Himiko, a magic-using queen of ancient Japan or Himitsu no Akko-chan, while her surname matches up with one of the most famous anime/manga witches, Sally Yumeno.
  • Signature Headgear: Her witch's hat, which she's never seen without (except in her bikini sprites from Ultimate Summer Camp).
  • Signature Laugh: As befitting her Cute Witch appearance, she has a very witch-like cackle, at least in the English dub.
  • Skewed Priorities: In the second trial, she is absurdly stubborn about explaining how she got out of the piranha tank, even though if she doesn't, she'll likely get incorrectly voted as the blackened. Because keeping a magic trick secret is way more important than your life and the lives of your classmates.
  • The Slacker: Before her Character Development, she was very lazy to say the least.
  • Small Name, Big Ego: A Downplayed example, but pre-Character Development, Himiko had a tendency to take credit for things by insisting they happened because of her magic. She grows out of this over the course of the game.
  • Snark-to-Snark Combat: Her interactions with Hiyoko in bonus modes and Ultimate Summer Camp end up being this, usually. In her Winter event in the former, she can find Hiyoko feeling down and asks where her sass and smirk are and Hiyoko asks "who do you think I am?" with Himiko replying "a bully, pretty much..." and Hiyoko calls her delusional several times for her magic beliefs. In the latter, Hiyoko makes fun of her for apologizing to her head for getting an ice cream headache and then gets jealous when Mahiru dotes on Himiko. Hiyoko calls her a runt (she had her growth spurt, but her avatar is her short version because she couldn't get it updated because of dancing commitments) and Himiko points out they're practically the same size (she's even 9" taller than Hiyoko), with Hiyoko countering that she's still growing, but Himiko probably won't and Himiko says Hiyoko's heart has stopped growing. Mahiru tries to get them to stop, comparing them to sisters and pointing out their similar names. Hiyoko says Himiko should change the middle part of her name to "delusional loser" and Himiko retorts Hiyoko should change the middle part to "acts like a spoiled brat". Hiyoko says she's not acting like one, that's her natural state, while Himiko points out that that's worse and Mahiru gets them to stop quarreling.
  • Spanner in the Works: In Chapter Three, Himiko suggests that the group hold the séance in the middle empty room. Unbeknownst to her, Korekiyo previously knocked out Angie in that room using the detached floorboard, leaving behind blood smears, which proves vitally important to pinning Korekiyo to both Angie's death and Tenko's. Ironically, Korekiyo had someone else pick the room to divert suspicion away from himself and towards the person who picked the room. Instead, it becomes the final nail in the coffin for him.
  • Stage Magician: Her talent and her appearance in official artwork.
  • Stepford Smiler: Prior to her Character Development, she constantly bottled up her emotions before being called out on that by Tenko. In a downplayed example, after first Angie and then Tenko gets murdered, she's completely distraught and falls into a Heroic BSoD, not saying anything until in the third trial. She doesn't act extremely sad for the deaths of Angie and Tenko during their trial, instead mostly being, quite rightly, pissed as hell about it, even wanting to vote for Korekiyo after he gloats about having killed Tenko, despite Tenko's murder technically being irrelevant to the trial. It wasn't until after the trial and Kokichi gives a (surprisingly gentle) What the Hell, Hero? moment, and Himiko remembers Tenko's advice that it's not shameful to express them, that she finally shows Tears of Remorse, breaking down crying, with it being noted that everyone else also joins in.
  • Stronger Than They Look: Presumably caused by adrenaline, she has one moment of this in-game where, after it's clear something has gone terribly wrong with the séance, rushes to the cage Tenko is beneath and gets it off her (and it took both Shuichi and Kokichi to move it over in the first place). Unfortunately, it's already too late.
  • Suicide Pact: She agrees to go into Shuichi's at the end of the 6th Trial to end the Danganronpa show, once and for all, with Maki agreeing and Keebo (because of the audience voting in favor of Shuichi's argument) and Tsumugi (thinking that Keebo would vote for hope) also not voting, ending with all of them facing execution. ...Though Keebo successfully ensures Shuichi, Himiko and Maki survive.
  • Survivor Guilt: After Tenko dies in the 3rd chapter as the second victim, Himiko is guilt-ridden because she never decided to express her gratitude to Tenko in response to her sentiment and general treatment of Himiko. Kaito and Shuichi then bodaciously reminds her that finding out the identity of the culprit of her death is a greater form of gratitude, along with dedicating herself to her memory by "living facing forward", toward Tenko, and decides to participate in finding out their identity. This is lampshaded by Kokichi in the 3rd trial when he mentions that Himiko never cared about Tenko until she died.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
    • Both Himiko and Hiyoko Saionji from the second game are tiny girls with eccentric personalities who end up losing their much more outgoing closest friend (or in Himiko's case, friends) for a senseless reason, leaving them utterly broken and undergo Character Development as a result (although Himiko completed her arc whereas Hiyoko, sadly, did not). They're also Little Miss Snarkers and have elements of being a Stepford Smiler. Mahiru points out their similarities in Ultimate Summer Camp, saying that their names are very similar, "Hi-mi-ko" and "Hi-yo-ko", and says they're more like sisters than she is to them, which they deny, but start bickering like siblings.
    • Both Himiko and Chiaki Nanami also from the second game are stoic yet eccentric nice girls with very kind yet snarky personalities and plenty of adorable vocal tics, in addition, they're both voiced by Christine Marie Cabanos only adding to how cute they both are.
  • Thousand-Yard Stare: Himiko when discovering Tenko's corpse. She is nothing but shocked and muted. All the thoughts of her neglect toward Tenko must have played into her mind simultaneously once Himiko discovered her status as deceased.
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: After all the trauma she endures throughout the game (especially Chapter 3), Himiko leaves the Killing Game alive, like previous Butt-Monkey characters Yasuhiro and Kazuichi.
  • Token Mini-Moe: She has a quite short stature and a round face, giving her a young appearance a lot like Chihiro and Hiyoko from the previous Danganronpa games. However, unlike both of them, she manages to survive this game.
  • Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Following Chapter 3, Himiko has become more cheerful and emotionally open.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: At the same time, following Chapter 3, Himiko's destructive laziness/apathy instead turns into bitter sarcasm and constant accusation of others while keeping her own values unaccounted for, which is arguably worse than what she was before.
  • Too Much Alike: A Downplayed example with Hiyoko, a fellow short Little Miss Snarker in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp. They frequently snark and insult each other. In the former, Himiko persuades her (after snarking that Hiyoko's just a bully) to go to her magic show, while Hiyoko mocks her for being delusional. In the latter, Hiyoko gets jealous when Mahiru dotes on Himiko and the two bicker, with Himiko getting the last laugh both times in the "Friendship Event" and Mahiru compares them to siblings, which they object to.
  • Too Much Information: She's very open about whenever she goes to the bathroom, and she is perfectly willing to admit she wet herself when Kaito startled her, much to Tsumugi's discomfort.
  • Tranquil Fury: After being thrown by Tenko in her lab, Himiko threatens to change her into a frog...all the while keeping her bored tone and facial expression. In the 3rd Trial, she looks sad, but sounds absolutely livid when first asking about who killed Angie and Tenko.
  • Trauma Conga Line: Was "sent" to the Ultimate Academy for Gifted Juveniles, got her memories altered, was accused as Ryoma's killer in Chapter 2, found Angie and Tenko (her closest friend and someone who cared deeply for her, respectively) dead, witnessed Gonta's execution, and then realized that she was in a reality killing game show that she signed up for. All in the days of suffering in Danganronpa, and she was able to survive.
  • Two Girls and a Guy: In the finale, she and Maki are the two girls to Shuichi's guy.
  • Undying Loyalty: She will defend the idea that her master is the best, even if she has to undermine her own merits. She also completely denies the possibility her master can commit ordinary failures and believes she was abandoned for her own sake.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: When plugging cords in the virtual headsets to enter the virtual world in Chapter 4, Himiko helps Gonta tell the left port from the right port by telling him "right is the hand you hold your chopsticks in". Unbeknownst to her, Gonta holds his chopsticks in his left hand, causing him to mix up the consciousness and memory cords, which is suggested by Shuichi to corrupt his personality in the virtual world to the point where Kokichi was able to convince him to murder Miu (but denied by the Virtual World's Gonta himself).
  • Verbal Tic: "Nyeh..."
  • Was Too Hard on Him: Regrets her emotionally distant attitude towards Tenko during the trial after she's killed in the séance, wishing she'd try to connect with her more.
  • Weak-Willed: It's implied she starts parroting Angie's ramblings about Atua because letting Angie/Atua tell her what to think is easier than making her own decisions, much to Tenko's dismay.
  • Womanchild: In a bit of a different way from Tenko, who's more typically very gullible and high-strung, Himiko is a rare quiet example of this. She's a high-schooler most likely in her late teens but is extremely stubborn and insistent about her status as a mage and even casually says things characteristic of someone far younger, referring at points to things like her "mommy" and the bathroom as "potty".
  • You Are Too Late: She tries to help Tenko and get her out of the cage as fast as possible when it's clear something has gone terribly wrong with the séance, but unfortunately, Tenko is already dead by that point.

    Maki Harukawa 
Maki Harukawa

Ultimate Child Caregiver (Ultimate Assassin)

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/maki_2_0.png
"Leave me out of it."

Voiced By: Maaya Sakamoto (Japanesse), Erica Mendez (English)

A girl who grew up in an orphanage. She was made to help out while living there, and despite not being particularly good at the work and hating children, apparently the children liked her so much that she earned the title Ultimate Child Caregiver. She has an uncooperative attitude and speaks from the heart.

In reality, she is the Ultimate Assassin. She keeps her true talent hidden until the end of Chapter 2 when Kokichi Oma reveals it to everyone. After this Kaito encourages her to spend more time with him and Shuichi, turning the group into a team of three. As a result, she ends up becoming the second deuteragonist of the game and helps Shuichi infrequently with investigating.

After abstaining from voting in the final class trial along with Shuichi, Himiko, Tsumugi, and Keebo, she is spared from Keebo's sacrificial destruction of the academy and goes on to survive the killing game.


  • Action Girl: After her true talent as the Ultimate Assassin is revealed, it is plainly stated and shown that Maki is not only one of the most physically powerful of the characters but also extremely deadly if she chooses to be. Kokichi learns this the hard way more than once.
  • Adaptational Heroism: A Downplayed example. While the English dub made her have the same personality that labels her as an Anti-Hero as it did in the Japanese version, her situation with Ryoma has changed. In the Japanese dub of the game, Kokichi suggested that Maki gave him his video because of how he knows about her talent, and she wanted him to not have a reason to live. However, in the English dub of the game, Kokichi suggested that Ryoma actually blackmailed her into showing his video. It's heavily implied that Kokichi is doing this to get a rise out of Maki, however, so that he could expose her true talent when she reacts.
  • Affably Evil: Not exactly evil, but she's still an assassin, while initially hostile she becomes genuinely charming after her Character Development and was willing to die in the 6th trial to save Shuichi and Himiko. Even after her character development, she's still unapologetic about the fact that she's an assassin. In Love Across The Universe, she wants Shuichi to solve the crimes and other reasons that lead to assassinations, so she doesn't have to be one, but is otherwise not going to stop being an assassin.
  • Affectionate Nickname: Kaito calls her "Harumaki" in the Japanese version, or "Maki Roll" in the English dub. She doesn't like it at first, and her acceptance of it helps show how she's learning to open up to others more.
  • Agent Scully: She's definitely not a believer in seances and is very dismissive of Korekiyo when he talks about seances, outright saying "You sound ridiculous" and that "I don't want to hear about your stupid delusions."
  • All for Nothing:
    • In Free Time, she reveals she became an assassin in a friend's place, because she didn't think her friend would survive the training she would be put through since her friend was too kind-hearted. In her final Free Time, she reveals the friend passed away after being hit by a car saving a child's life before Maki even finished training.
    • Her attempt to save Kaito ends badly, as not only does her poisoning of Kokichi force Kaito to kill Kokichi to save her from execution, but he was suffering a fatal illness, meaning he was already doomed from the start.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She's distant towards the others and is someone who self-admittedly doesn't get along well with other people. Her first line in one of the trailers (see her quote above) reinforces this trope further.
  • Always Save the Girl: Maki has a tendency to put Kaito's well-being over everyone else's, culminating in her trying to murder Kokichi in Chapter Five and then keeping quiet about it until Shuichi figures out she's lying because she thought Kokichi had survived and was hoping to finally kill him if everyone incorrectly voted for him as the Blackened.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: She briefly becomes playable at the final class trial.
  • Angry Cheek Puff: Despite being a cold, Aloof Dark-Haired Girl Maki has the habit of pouting when she gets embarrassed (usually due to Kaito), comically puffing her cheeks to show she's Not So Stoic.
  • Anguished Declaration of Love: To Kaito at the end of the Fifth trial, admitting she has indeed fallen for him and begging him not to die.
    Maki: I've never felt this way before! I've always fought to kill, but... this is the first time I've fought to protect someone! And... I've never... been given a nickname like "Maki Roll" before, either. And I've never... met someone as stubborn as you before... [starts to cry] And... I've never... fallen for someone before.
  • Anti-Hero: Sympathetic as she may be, Maki is still a ruthless assassin willing to kill anyone if she deems it necessary. This is especially prevalent in Chapter 5, where she deliberately tries to kill Kokichi under the mistaken assumption he's the mastermind. Which cumulates in...
  • Anti-Villain: At the first part of the Chapter 5 trial, she tries to cover up her actions and pins "Kaito's" murder on "Kokichi" to force the others to condemn him (and by extension everyone else) to death under the assumption he's the mastermind, even though she believes she was the one who killed "Kaito".
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Her assassin background allows Maki to perform harsh acts that even Shuichi would be hesitant to do, such as crudely stabbing a sword back into a doll to preserve a crime scene. (Granted, the fact it was the Kaede doll might have had something to do with his hesitation.)
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: Her feelings for Kaito begin to develop because he's the only student who consistently reaches out to her and gets her involved in group activities, even after her real talent is revealed and the other students shun her for it for a while.
  • Becoming the Mask: Maki's talent as "Ultimate Child Caregiver" is a front to cover up that her real talent is "Ultimate Assassin". However, in her ending in Love Across the Universe, Maki explains that underlying complications are why she is the Ultimate Assassin in the first place. When Shuichi vows to prevent those complications so that she will not be the Ultimate Assassin anymore, Maki replies that she will find another job just in case, even considering becoming the Ultimate Child Caregiver for real.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Unless you are someone she's on good terms with, do not call her "Maki Roll". Kokichi calls her this several times, much to her anger. Himiko calls her this a few times, with Maki giving her a Death Glare in return and Himiko backing down in fright. She later becomes alright with Himiko calling her "Maki Roll", the only person besides Kaito to receive that privilege.
    • Any perversion usually sets her off. When Shuichi emerges from the girl's bathroom, she looks ready to kill him for it. It gets even worse when Himiko emerges shortly after. Choosing perverted dialogue options around her is always the worst possible choice.
    • Hurting Kaito is a major one for her, as she forgoes her usual stotic anger and goes straight into Unstoppable Rage.
    • Kokichi Oma eventually becomes a one-man Berserk Button for her after the events of Chapter 4, treating him with much more hostility whenever he appears. Notably, her Expressive Hair sprite first appears after he punched out Kaito.
  • Birds of a Feather: With fellow stoic martial artist Sakura in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp. Sakura can tell she's a person of some skill, but tactfully doesn't breach the subject with her, since Maki prefers to hide her actual Ultimate talent. Akane wants to spar with both of them in UTDP, but Maki refuses in their Friendship Event, as she doesn't like fighting. She goes to Sakura for advice in USC over how she can use her power and they have several interactions where they show or express mutual respect. In Sakura's "My Future" event, she goes to watch one of Maki, Kaito and Shuichi's training sessions and remarks that them strengthening themselves and their friendships at once is refreshing to her and opens her up to new training methods.
  • Blunt "Yes": In Ultimate Talent Development Plan, after Hiyoko asks if Maki's treating her like a child, Maki simply tells her: "Well, you are a kid. And I'm not talking about your age or your physical stature."
  • Broken Bird: Her torturous backstory has made her cynical in her outlook, as well as her great strength. She does get better as the game progresses, though.
  • Brutal Honesty: She's the type to say things clearly and without beating around the bush.
  • Bystander Syndrome: At first, Maki is fine with standing back and letting other people do the legwork during the investigations and trials, but midway through the second trial when it turns out she was the last person to see Ryoma alive, she comments that she "can't afford not to get involved anymore" and after that becomes a much more active participant, even being Shuichi's Number Two, particularly in the third chapter.
  • Cannot Tell a Joke: As she gets closer with Shuichi, she sometimes attempts to apply humor, though it always comes across as insults or threats.
  • Catchphrase:
    • "Do you want to die?" Usually said either as a threat or a macabre way of reminding Shuichi what's at stake — their lives.
    • "This is stupid." comes up frequently.
  • Character Development: She introduces herself as someone who doesn't get along with people and would rather avoid them. However, over time, she builds a friendship with Kaito and Shuichi and even begs Kaito to stop when he announces himself as Kokichi's killer and was about to be executed.
  • Character Tics: When Maki is feeling flustered, she plays with one of her twin-tails. She also bites her thumb when thinking.
  • Child Hater: Despite her initial talent and being supposedly well-liked by children, she claims to hate children and only took care of them because the older kids had to help take care of the younger ones at the orphanage. Kaito believes this not to be the case.
  • Childhood Friend Romance: One of the two who has this as their Love Suite fantasy, the other being Miu.
  • Color Motif: Red.
  • Commonality Connection: Has a bonding moment with Chihiro (whose big secret also gets revealed in Chapter 2 of his game) in Ultimate Talent Development Plan over keeping secrets. Maki's surprised that someone like Chihiro has secrets and he asks if she's confided in anyone her secret and when she says she has told someone (Kaito and Shuichi), he's glad and mentions it's a lot easier when you have someone to talk to about it (he had confided in Mondo his secret). In Ultimate Summer Camp, in Maki's "My Future" event, which is after he had revealed he was a boy to everyone, she talks about how strong, yet cowardly he is, since he's suddenly openly talking about his secret. She says she couldn't do that and asks what it felt like to reveal his secret to everyone. Maki praises his strength after he explains and says he's the exact opposite of her and he notes he had friends who knew his secret and she notes she has two people to confide in. She worries about deceiving everyone, with him noting there are infinite reasons to keep secrets and she backs down and notes her desire to be honest could be dangerous to everyone, as her secret is much worse than his. He offers to be a consultant and she doesn't have to reveal her secret and thinks that Kaito and Shuichi may be better at that, with her asking if that's what she said, with Chihiro nervously saying that was implied because she gets along so well with them, and her admitting he was correct.
  • The Coroner: She acts like this in a similar way to Mikan because of the experience with dead bodies and causes of death she has. She was able to tell that Tenko's death wouldn't have been instant, but she later went along with Shuichi's lie that it was so the group would believe his lie, much to the frustration of the murderer (who was also very experienced with killing) as they were relying on that delayed reaction to help make this look like a suicide. In Miu's case, she could also tell from how the body was positioned that Miu was strangled to death, not poisoned.
  • Cosmic Plaything: Let's see... Grew up in an orphanage, trained to become a professional assassin and had her sense of self erased in the process, forced into a killing game where she suffers multiple other students' deaths, is avoided by others due to her assassin status, and during the killing game, has to deal with Kokichi and ends up losing Kaito, someone she falls in love with due to being the only one to treat her with any compassion. Then she finds out that she's just a fictional character for a game show and none of it was real in the first place, and has to deal with the pain of seeing the deaths of multiple people who weren't real from the start? It's no wonder Maki's lost all of her willpower.
  • Cult: Subverted, the Holy Salvation Society, the organization she works for, is nominally a religious cult, but this is only a front for their status as an assassination organization. None of their members actually believe in religion.
  • Cute Bruiser: Her aloof demeanor notwithstanding, Maki is quite adorable, and deep down, is quite a sensitive person, though she doesn't show it openly. However, she's quite physically strong, and is very irritable, making her threatening to those who dare to cross her, like, for example, Kokichi Oma.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Her life was not pleasant, to be blunt. Raised in an orphanage as an assassin who's forced to kill friends and lived in deplorable conditions. Or at least that's what Team Danganronpa had for her backstory.
  • Dark Secret: She's actually the Ultimate Assassin, which she tries to hide, until it gets revealed at the end of the Second Chapter. In Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp, the only two who are stated to know are Shuichi and Kaito, with Sonia possibly also learning it in the former after Maki saves her and Shuichi from assassins while in Novoselic.
  • Death Glare: She's prone to giving these every time she's pressured, which is a lot.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Much like Fuyuhiko from Danganronpa 2 (and Kyoko from the original game to a lesser extent) she is initially withdrawn, often threatening and rejects anyone's approaches, but after the reveal of her being the Ultimate Assassin and being encouraged by Kaito to train with him and Shuichi, she warms up to become more proactive. Due to the experiences with them both, she ends up falling in love with Kaito who ends up becoming The Lost Lenore to her, similar to how Peko becomes one to Fuyuhiko.
  • The Determinator: Her character introduction states her to be rather resolute.
  • Detrimental Determination: Her drive to kill Kokichi after the Flashback Light in Chapter 5 becomes this in two different ways:
    • Her attempted murder of Kokichi when she broke into the mech bay derails Kaito's plan to escape, the group's own plan to break in and save Kaito, and Kokichi's plan to prevent the killing game from continuing. In the end, Kaito has to kill a dying Kokichi with the hydraulic press in order to prevent Maki from being executed.
    • She attempts to finger Kokichi as the culprit during the first half of the trial in an attempt to get him executed. As it turns out, since she believed she killed Kaito due to poison, she was relying on the rest of the group voting wrongly and getting executed as collateral damage, just to kill Kokichi. It takes Shuichi revealing that he made up with Kaito to convince her to stop and tell everyone the truth.
  • Deuteragonist: After forming a trio with Shuichi and fellow deuteragonist Kaito. Maki would take on Kaito's role as Shuichi's "assistant" whenever Kaito is indisposed, namely whenever Kaito's chronic illness gets too severe. She fully ascends to the role halfway into Chapter 5 once Kaito is captured, and she stays in the role permanently since he dies soon afterwards.
  • Devious Daggers: Maki seems to prefer knives as her weapon of choice, she's even holding one in one of her angry sprites, probably because they're easy to carry and conceal on her person.
  • Diving Save: Does this to Shuichi, tackling him him out of the way as the giant Monodam Castle tries to punch Shuichi in the Monodam's Hope Fragment event in Ultimate Summer Camp.
  • The Dreaded: After she is outed as the Ultimate Assassin, the other students are fearful of Maki and paranoid she may try to kill them, even though Maki says she has no intention of doing so unless defending herself. In the fifth trial, there's a lot of confusion over who exactly is in the Exisal and, when the person inside is claiming to be Kokichi, he says he can't leave the Exisal because Maki will kill him. (When the person is acting as Kaito, he says it's because he's too injured to leave the Exisal and stand at his podium).
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Maki has this look to her to accentuate her intimidating aura, complete with a pair of red eyes.
  • Embarrassing Nickname: She doesn't like being referred to as "Maki Roll" initially. However, later on, as she grows used to it, this becomes more Friendly Address Privileges.
  • Emotionless Girl: Because of her background as an assassin. She even exposits at length how the painful process of turning her into an Emotionless Girl went. She gets better as the game goes on, though.
  • Expressive Hair: Piss Maki off enough, and her long ponytails will split into two, making them look like four spiky tentacles coming out of her head.
  • Fan Disservice: She's one of the least sexualized characters in the game and suffers Clothing Damage when defeated in the Argument Armament, including a Panty Shot, but it's not sexy at all, as Kaito's facing execution soon after.
  • Fighting Your Friend: She becomes the secondary antagonist for the first part of Trial 5 due to her willingness to sacrifice everyone else just to get Kokichi executed, even clashing with Shuichi in both Rebuttal Showdowns. She's also the Trial 5 PTA opponent in a desperate attempt to prevent Kaito from being fingered as the culprit.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: While she initially keeps her distance due to the nature of the killing game, she develops a bond of trust and friendship with Kaito and Shuichi. To a lesser extent, she also cares for Himiko, letting her also call her "Maki Roll" and being willing to die so that Himiko and Shuichi can graduate in the final Trial.
  • Foreshadowing: There are lots of hints towards her true talent in Chapters 1 and 2.
    • She pretty much forbids anybody from entering her lab when it opens up in the second chapter. The reason for that is that it would have given away her true talent, as it's loaded with weapons.
    • Kaito puts her in the strategy meeting in the first chapter simply because he feels like she is the type of person that can fight. An assassin seems way more capable of fighting than a caretaker.
    • Also from the first chapter, Kokichi stated that Maki seems like the type of person who's killed someone.
  • Friendly Address Privileges: While she warms up to Kaito's affectionate nickname "Maki Roll" and realizes she loves the fact that he calls her that, she responds with extreme prejudice when Kokichi uses it and gives Himiko a Death Glare the first few times she uses it. Eventually, she also lets Himiko call her that too, showing how much she's defrosted.
  • Friend to All Children: Her talent. She is naturally that, even though she has No Social Skills and she is actually a Child Hater, kids actually seem to completely adore her. Even though it turns out that her true talent is actually the Ultimate Assassin, she wasn't lying about having to care for children at an orphanage. Ultimate Summer Camp shows her acting as the Ultimate Child Caregiver, with the "Warriors of Hope" being around. She's her usual gruff self, but is understanding and caring for them. She talks with Kotoko about having grown up in an orphanage. Kotoko lets some of her trauma out, before trying to cover it with a "Just Joking" Justification and Maki sees right through the lie and says that orphanages can be quite rough, too. Kotoko complains, before Maki then offers to let her visit her orphanage to potentially make friends with some of them and she agrees. When they rough up Monomi and steal Monomi's swimsuit, Maki cleans her off and straightens her back because "They're my responsibility". She also gives Nagisa good advice when he asks for it in his "My Future" event, telling him to cherish his newfound ideals, even if they're currently out of reach and conflict with his old ones.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: In a couple CGs where she's looking especially malevolent, the one where she's doing a Neck Lift to Kokichi in Chapter 5 and where she's aiming a crossbow at him later, about to kill him with it, as well as well as the two non-knife-wielding jagged-hair sprites, her red eyes seem to be glowing.
  • Hair Color Dissonance: Maki's hair is fairly consistently brown, but the CGs and promotional artwork have some variation. Most noticeable is the image of her helping Kaito assemble a crossbow, where her hair appears to be a dark blue-green.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: So much so that Shuichi's scared of her because of her foul temper, and also Played for Drama when it ends up being the direct cause of her decision to try to kill Kokichi in Chapter 5. Being a trained assassin with a Dark and Troubled Past, it's incredibly easy to tick her off if anyone dares to mistreat her or put her through more suffering than she already has been.
  • The Hecate Sisters: A combination of maiden (her feelings for Kaito), mother (her skills with children), and crone (being an assassin with hermit tendencies).
  • Hidden Eyes: Her eyes get covered with a shadow when she tearfully confesses her feelings for Kaito.
  • Irony: As Maki herself lampshades, she's the Ultimate Child Caregiver and children love her, but she hates children. Fitting, as that isn't her real talent. In a more legitimate example of irony, she's the Ultimate Assassin but does not kill anyone in the game.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Maki can be quite cold with others without provocation, and is often uncooperative. She gets better later on due to her friendship with Kaito and Shuichi, and even volunteers to die in the final trial so that Shuichi and Himiko can escape with their lives.
  • Katana Superiority: Subverted and Parodied. She once planned to murder an otaku mark with a katana, but while searching for him, got caught up in an anime convention because she looked like a cosplayer. Ever since this mishap, Maki has refused to use swords for assassination missions.
  • Love Hurts: While Kaito is facing execution in the fifth trial, she tearfully admits to him that she ended up falling in love with him throughout the course of the game. This comes back to bite even harder in the final trial when Tsumugi reveals to her that those emotions were intentionally implanted to help boost the show's ratings. She also shows Kaito's audition video from before everyone was brainwashed, revealing that Kaito was actually a Jerkass who joined the Killing Game because he wanted to kill people for fame and money.
  • Love Interest: For Kaito. Unfortunately, Kaito dies of his illness during his execution.
  • Love Makes You Crazy: She has a rather big lapse in judgement in Chapter 5 when trying to rescue Kaito and interrogate Kokichi about Junko and being a Remnant of Despair and then attempting to get the class to vote wrongly to kill everyone due to wanting to do that to kill Kokichi when she thinks he killed Kaito.
  • Luminescent Blush: In Chapter Three, while the group are deciding on where to do a séance to speak to the dead students, Kaito gets so freaked out he panics and grabs the nearest person to him, much to Maki's embarrassment when he traps her in a Bear Hug.
  • Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: She's the masculine girl to Shuichi's feminine boy. Maki is an aloof and cynical Action Girl who is one of the most physically powerful characters in the cast and is willing to resort to violence, while Shuichi is a shy and considerate Nice Guy who prefers to use his intellect a lot more than violence.
  • Meaningful Name: Her first name's kanji, 魔姫, means "demon princess". Her last name's kanji, 春川, is "spring (as in springtime) river". This shows she's both a scary assassin, but after she comes out of her shell, she's a surprisingly normal girl.
  • Metaphorically True: She is an Ultimate and had to take care of children while in the orphanage, making her a caregiver. However, she was not actually the Ultimate Child Caregiver.
  • Murder, Inc.: She's an assassin of the Holy Salvation Society, a front for an assassination company.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: Maki is depicted as looking like an average, slim girl, but she reveals herself to be more than strong enough to hoist Kokichi's 97 lbs weight with a single arm (with herself only weighing 97 lbs, as well), and can do hundreds of pushups without breaking a sweat due to her assassin training.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: She has this reaction when Kaito takes the second poisoned arrow she shot to prevent her from getting executed. More subtly, she's horrified when she reacts to the news that both her feelings for Kaito and her belief that Kokichi was part of Ultimate Despair had been implanted in her, meaning that she'd been an Unwitting Pawn to Team Danganronpa, especially in the days leading up to Kokichi's death.
  • Mythology Gag: She looks suspiciously similar to one of Komaru Naegi's early designs.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Maki is written with kanji meaning "demon princess".
  • Neck Lift: Does this to Kokichi just before he outs her true talent. She does this again in Chapter 5 when he tries to encourage the remaining students to join him, even choking him for good measure.
  • Nerves of Steel: Presumably due to her true talent, she is rarely fazed by anything, similarly to previous female deuteragonists Kyoko and Chiaki.
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: A non-killer example. If Shuichi uses one of his lie bullets in Chapter Five, she states that the Exisal's hatch has an electric lock in it. That is information that only Shuichi could have known about, causing him to believe that Maki was lying about something.
  • New Body, Old Abilities: Gets hit pretty hard with this, as wielding and being proficient with the vast number of weapons she is capable of using and knowing martial arts requires extensive use of muscle memory, which normally isn't imparted with just gaining memories, plus her ability to exercise far better than Shuichi and Kaito.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Given her early status as one of the more antagonistic classmates. Her giving Ryoma his empty video led Kokichi to assume she did it because Ryoma knew too much, be suspicious of her, and then manage to have her talent of "Ultimate Assassin" be outed to everybody.
  • Nightmare Face: In Chapter 5's trial, Maki gives an impressive Death Glare with glowing red eyes, along with hair so expressive that it turns into a jagged mess.
  • No Sense of Humor: Nearly all of Kaito and Shuichi's attempts at cracking jokes with her fail to get through, as Maki either doesn't understand they are joking, or she simply responds with annoyance.
  • No Social Skills: She is not very sociable and doesn't really like people in general. Children still seem to like her though. Through her friendship with Kaito and Shuichi, she gets a lot better at socializing.
  • The Not-Love Interest: To Shuichi. She becomes the main girl after Kaede's death, becomes close with Shuichi, and survives with him at the end. Therefore, one would expect Ship Tease, much like with Makoto & Kyoko. However, the two's bond is shown as platonic instead of romantic. Maki falls in love with Kaito instead while Shuichi still holds Kaede deep in his heart.
  • Not So Above It All:
    Shuichi: Kiyo said it was about 175 pounds. That's about the weight of two girls...
    Maki: ...What do *you* know about girls? Have you even touched a woman besides your mother?
    • In her "With Swimsuits" scene in Ultimate Summer Camp, she and Chiaki come across Kaito and Himiko buried up to their necks in sand. She then wonders who to save and says she only has time to save one of them, since the tide is coming in. Rather heartwarmingly, Kaito and Himiko each say to save the other, before Maki reveals she was screwing with them and has Chiaki (who Himiko and Kaito didn't see) dig out Himiko, while she gets Kaito and he remarks how far she's come and she notes "consider it part of your training."
  • Not So Stoic:
    • She normally doesn't express much emotion apart from annoyance, but when Kaito is found guilty in the fifth trial, she loses it and angrily threatens to kill Monokuma until Kaito convinces her not to. She starts crying afterwards, both before and after his execution.
    • Before that, she looks genuinely touched when Shuichi reveals that he and Kaito patched up their differences in their supposed final conversation. This action encourages her to abandon her original plan to frame Kokichi and admit the truth of what happened in the Exisal hanger, knowing that it could lead to her execution.
    • Her Not So Stoic behavior starts at the end of Chapter 4. After Gonta's execution, when the game comes back to the courtroom, she's notably more distraught compared to her previous reactions to earlier executions. When Kokichi punches Kaito a moment later, she's outright furious at him, to the point she pulls off a Nightmare Face when he calls her Maki Roll. And when she finds out Kaito's vomiting blood, she's horrified.
  • NPC Roadblock: After her laboratory becomes available in Chapter 2, she stands guard outside and refuses to let anyone enter because if they saw the inside, her real talent would be revealed.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • The Ultimate Assassin becomes best friends with the Ultimate Detective Shuichi by the end of the game.
    • With Chiaki in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp, who she games and hangs out regularly with.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In Ultimate Talent Development Plan, she goes with Shuichi and Sonia to Novoselic to investigate "The Case of the Missing Makangos" about large scale thefts of prized Makangos (animals native to Novoselic) that he and Sonia talk about in a Friendship event. She saves Shuichi and Sonia from assassins, and Shuichi has his own moment when he's able to solve the case. This presumably means Sonia also knows now about Maki's talent, other than Shuichi and Kaito.
  • Opposites Attract: The stoic, reserved and nigh Emotionless Girl with the friendly, hammy and very emotive Kaito.
  • Orphanage of Fear: Downplayed, in that Maki seems to have mostly fond memories of her time at her orphanage before becoming an assassin, but it was also a cover for an organization that turned some of them into assassins.
  • Orphan's Ordeal: Was raised in an orphanage that was secretly a place that turned some of the children into assassins.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: What her job as an assassin entails. She also invokes this by saying she won't kill the other students unless they try to kill her first. This is also her reason for trying to kill Kokichi in Chapter 5, firmly believing him to be the true mastermind and trying to force him to release Kaito as his hostage.
  • Perpetual Frowner: Rare are the moments where she isn't scowling.
  • Pet the Dog: Despite her ruthless behavior in Chapter 5 during the first half of the trial, she clears Himiko's name when Himiko is considered a suspect for having brought a crossbow into the hanger by saying Himiko couldn't have known how to assemble it.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: What she and Shuichi become post-game and potentially in her Love Across The Universe ending, depending on how you interpret it.
  • Poison and Cure Gambit: During Chapter 5, Maki steals a slow-acting poison from Shuichi's Study Center and uses it on Kokichi to interrogate him after he claims to be the mastermind. She later admits that she never intended to give him an antidote. However, when she accidentally poisons Kaito, she is forced to run away from the crime scene to fetch it.
  • Precision F-Strike: While she doesn't usually swear, at one point in Chapter 5, she, under the impression that the person in the Exisal is Kokichi, does this to him.
    Maki: You... fuckin' asshole!
  • Professional Killer: Her true talent, to the point she can act somewhat like The Coroner during investigations due to her familiarity with various causes of death.
  • Recurring Element: A character with a hidden ultimate talent involving murder, like Toko Fukawa/Genocide Jill, the Ultimate Writing Prodigy & Ultimate Murderous Fiend, and Peko Pekoyama, the Ultimate Swordswoman, and a trained mafia hitman/bodyguard. Like the others, her identity is revealed during Chapter 2, but unlike those before her, it was only after the trial rather than during it. Similar to Mukuro, she's also got a deadly talent that she hides behind a much more mundane one, though Mukuro dies before the first trial, while Maki survives the game.
  • Red and Black and Evil All Over: Downplayed. She's an assassin who has killed more people than she can count, but she isn't quite devoid of empathy and she makes it out of the killing game with her head on her shoulders.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: She is an assassin with red eyes. Her eyes seem to glow in a couple CG's in Chapter 5, when doing a Neck Lift to Kokichi and her aiming the crossbow from Kokichi's PoV and the two angriest looking sprites with jagged hair.
  • Revenge Before Reason: Chapter 5 is this by a mile. Trying to kill Kokichi, whom she believes is the mastermind, in order to save Kaito from his grasp when he traps them both in the Exisal hangar basically instigates the conflict in Chapter 5. She completely disregards any sort of rationality just so she can have her revenge, even being willing to sacrifice herself and the remaining students, and her chronic decision to do this forces Kaito to take one of her two poison arrows so she doesn't get executed as the culprit of Kokichi's murder. Eventually, it leads to Kokichi being able to take advantage of Kaito by blackmailing him with her life into his unsolvable murder plan and faking Kaito's death while hiding his own.
  • Safety in Indifference: Her initial attitude towards the rest of the students and the killing game is to isolate herself and keep her distance, to prevent people from targeting her for being a threat. It doesn't work, as Kokichi exposes her talent at the end of Chapter 2 and the rest single her out for it at the start of Chapter 3.
  • Sailor Fuku: She wears a red uniform with a silver tie and a black skirt.
  • Smarter Than You Look: Though Maki is a violent assassin with a Hair-Trigger Temper (and made one severe lapse in judgment during Chapter 5), she is among the sharpest students in the cast and is able to make social deductions regarding the others much quicker than even Korekiyo can. She's already distrustful of others, so she's learnt not to take things at face value. As an example, she is the first to outright call Kiyo's séance for Angie in Chapter 3 a sham (and she turns out to have been Right for the Wrong Reasons in that regard). In Ultimate Talent Development Plan, she notices Kyoko looking at her at the Sports Festival and asks if she's cautious of her and Kyoko apologizes, but Maki just says it felt like she was and Kyoko notes that Maki's sharp.
  • Somber Backstory Revelation: Tells Kaito and Shuichi about how she was raised in an orphanage and was forced to become an assassin when she was a child. She tells Shuichi more about her past in Free Time, like how she had to kill a friend from school that was set as a target for assassination, was beaten to be able to withstand torture and that she did it for her best friend at the orphanage, who would have been chosen in Maki's place, but wouldn't have survived the training. The friend ended up dying anyway before Maki completed her training, being hit by a car when saving a child.
  • Stern Teacher: In a way, as she occasionally scolds Shuichi about his hesitation, but she also compliments him when he does well.
  • The Stoic: Her emotional range seems to be rather limited, with the most being contained annoyance, up until her breakdown at the end of the fifth trial. Might have something to do with being the Ultimate Assassin.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: She mentions in Free Time she's used bombs for assassinations, before, including once turning a 5 story building into a 4 story building.
  • Suicide Pact: She agrees to go into Shuichi's at the end of the 6th Trial to end the Danganronpa show, once and for all, with Himiko agreeing and Keebo (because of the audience voting in favor of Shuichi's argument) and Tsumugi (thinking that Keebo would vote for hope) also not voting, ending with all of them facing execution. ...Though Keebo successfully ensures Shuichi, Himiko and Maki survive.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Mukuro Ikusaba from THH. Both are thin-looking girls with innocuous talents, "Ultimate Fashionista" for Mukuro (when posing as Junko) and "Ultimate Child Caregiver" that hid the fact that they are the Ultimate Soldier and Ultimate Assassin, respectively. Both weigh 97lbs and are Waif-Fu practitioners. Surprisingly, they never meet in Ultimate Talent Development Plan or Ultimate Summer Camp. Subverted in that their personalities and moralities could not be more different, with Mukuro being The Dragon to Junko and Maki being Shuichi's Number Two. Though, as noted below in Virtuous Character Copy, it makes her similar to Mukuro in other Spike Chunsoft works that give Mukuro Character Development.
  • Take Me Instead:
    • The reason Maki became an assassin was so that her childhood friend wouldn't be chosen to become one instead, wanting to keep her friend untainted.
    • In the final chapter, Maki even offers to die with Keebo so that Shuichi and Himiko can escape the killing game.
  • Temporarily a Villain: She becomes an antagonist in the first half of the Chapter 5 trial due to the combination her determination to have Kokichi executed by the rules of the the killing game and her guilt in the assumed murder of Kaito. Shuichi's resolve to believe in Maki and his reconciliation with Kaito convinces her to give up on the plan and tell the truth.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: As part of her Character Development. In every chapter she opens up more and more towards Kaito and Shuichi, eventually becoming one of the group's most helpful and reliable allies as of Chapter 6.
  • Training from Hell: Was given this to train her to be an assassin. She can easily reach 100 sit-ups or pushups well before Kaito or Shuichi.
  • Tsundere: She shows hints of this towards Kaito from the second chapter onward, referring to him as "that idiot" but generally allowing him to drag her into various activities. She even drops this classic Tsundere line in the second trial:
    Maki: It's not like I owe that idiot a favor for defending me... but that hopeless idiot may have encouraged me a bit.
  • Turn the Other Cheek: None of the characters seems to have a problem with Maki attempting to kill everybody in the fifth Trial so she could win and survive like Kaito asked her to do, thinking she was the blackened. Even her attempts at attacking/killing Kokichi (regardless of how justified she thought it was) or the fact she's completely willing to go on with her job as an assassin if she gets out hardly gets a mention from anyone else beyond her Free Time events.
  • Two Girls and a Guy: In the finale, she and Himiko are the two girls to Shuichi's guy.
  • Two Guys and a Girl: Her dynamic with Shuichi and Kaito, for a while. She even attempts to get them to mend their friendship when Kaito starts giving Shuichi the cold shoulder after the fourth trial.
  • Tyke-Bomb: She's still a teen, but was trained from around 10-years-old to be an assassin.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Her talent and her enmity with Kokichi makes her a perfect pawn in the actual mastermind's plan to continue the killing game by killing Kokichi. By placing a Flashback Light framing Kokichi as a Remnant of Despair, the mastermind ensures Maki would be motivated to kill Kokichi to stop the killing game. It was ultimately successful, though Maki did not actually deal the fatal blow.
  • Violently Protective Girlfriend: Harm Kaito and heaven help you. Maki is actually Deconstructed Character Archetype of this trope, as all her attempts to protect Kaito in Chapter Five actually make everything worse and it turns out that it was all futile anyway because Kaito was Secretly Dying the entire time.
  • Virgin-Shaming: When Shuichi says the 175lb "dog god" statue is about the weight of two girls, she rudely tells him "...What do you know about girls? Have you even touched a woman besides your mother?" and tries to say she was just joking, though Shuichi doesn't think she was.
  • Virtuous Character Copy: While she's still a deadly and unapologetic assassin, ultimately, she's more moral than Mukuro Ikusaba, the character she seems to be a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of. While Mukuro was working with Junko from the beginning and acted as her Dragon in 1 and DR3, Maki isn't working for anyone during the killing game and in fact gravitates towards Kaito and Shuichi to help them during Chapter 3. This makes her more like Mukuro in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF, where she survives Junko's betrayal and ends up helping the other students, or Ultimate Summer Camp, where she's away from Junko's Toxic Friend Influence and ends up turning against her.
  • Waif-Fu: Despite being a thin, small girl, Maki has absolutely no problem kicking ass and in fact, she regularly outdoes both Shuichi and Kaito in their training sessions without even breaking a sweat.
  • Walking Spoiler: To an extent. Her role in the story changes once her true talent is revealed and a large part of her backstory has to deal with that said talent.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: She tries to kill Kokichi on her own during Chapter 5 in order to protect Kaito when the Flashback Light (provided by Tsumugi) tells her that he's an Ultimate Despair member. The end result is Kokichi trying to trick the mastermind with an unsolvable murder. Both of them appear to fail their goals in the end considering Kaito dies from an illness (that was apparently "written" as part of his character In-Universe) as well as having to be executed due to Kokichi blackmailing him into becoming the blackened (though he uses said illness to avoid giving Monokuma the satisfaction of killing him), and Kokichi's trick ends up being completely useless since Shuichi accidentally helps Monokuma in finding the truth.
  • When She Smiles: Maki only has two sprites where she's smiling. They're never seen throughout the first half of the game, and she only starts smiling infrequently after she's developed her friendship with Kaito and Shuichi. However, throughout Trial 6's investigation she's shown smiling far more frequently and during the ending is shown to be smiling at her ordeal finally being over.
  • Would Hurt a Child: She mentions she killed a friend who was the illegitimate daughter of a yakuza leader who she was ordered to kill, when she was younger.

    Tenko Chabashira 
Tenko Chabashira

Ultimate Aikido Master

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tenko.png
"Master told me that strength must always be aimed in the proper direction!"

Voiced By: Sora Tokui (Japanese), Julie Ann Taylor (English)

A user of "Neo-Aikido", a school of martial arts developed by her and her master. She has a cheery, energetic demeanor, and tends to make kiai yells in normal conversation. She enjoys the company of other women, but despises men—not only will she reject compliments from men, but she'll also even reflexively throw any man who touches her.

She forms some kind of friendship (built off of one-sided romantic attraction) with Himiko early on in the game, which begins to fall apart when Himiko starts to find more comfort around Angie. When Angie forms a student council, Tenko reluctantly joins in the hopes of salvaging her waning friendship with Himiko. She is the second victim of Chapter 3, stabbed in the neck while participating in Korekiyo Shinguji's séance, which was a death trap in disguise.


  • Abhorrent Admirer: She has an obviously one-sided attraction to Himiko, who makes it clear that her advances aren’t welcome. However, in spite of her jealousy towards Himiko preferring Angie’s company over hers, Tenko becomes genuinely concerned for the former when she becomes more dependent on Angie’s Atua, viewing it as Himiko giving up on thinking for herself.
  • Action Girl: She's one badass Aikido Master. She even states she's confident she can defeat any other student in battle, save for Gonta. This would probably have also included Maki, but she didn't know of Maki's other talent at the time and she later admits she's afraid of Maki.
  • Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Despite Shuichi being a "degenerate male" and previously having misgivings about Maki thanks to her talent, Tenko is still willing to put all that aside and beg them for their help in convincing Angie not to do the resurrection ritual.
  • Alcoholic Parent: Tenko mentions having an alcoholic father, which probably explains a lot of her issues with men.
    Tenko: You're as annoying as my drunk father's complaints!
  • All Men Are Perverts: Tenko expresses this clearly in any moment involving a boy being in accusation of something that would make him an enemy of the group, as she specifically uses the word "degenerate" to describe boys. Whenever a boy tries to defend himself, she ignores his actual reasoning and assumes he's trying to save face. Her discord between males and their pervertedness is hypocritical (a factor she decides not to control) and ironic (a factor the producers forced): she acts extremely perverted toward Himiko, and excuses Miu's behaviour because she's female. The irony behind this trait of hers is that she has two scenes featuring her in a state of public indecency in a swimsuit and then completely nude. Doubly ironic is how they both happen at the pool area, the place where she stated that girls in swimsuits trigger a man's perverted tendencies more than girls who are naked and where she also revealed that she's inexperienced with swimming.
  • Always Save the Girl: During the second trial, Tenko continuously defends Himiko when she's being questioned, as it was during her magic show that Ryoma's body was found and thus she looks the most suspicious. When Angie points out that if Himiko is the blackened and they don't correctly vote for her, then everyone will die, Tenko responds that she's fine with that because she'd rather be dead than not believe in Himiko. Unsurprisingly, she's supportive of Kaito when he does the same for Maki later in the trial.
  • Amazon Chaser: It's pretty clear in the Bonus Modes and Ultimate Summer Camp she has a crush on Sakura due to her strength, and can barely contain herself when she compliments her.
  • Ambiguously Bi: Tenko is a rare case of the ambiguity being on the heterosexual side. She very clearly likes girls, but in her Love Suite Event with Shuichi, Tenko sees him as a fellow Neo-Aikido practitioner who has defeated her in a Best Her to Bed Her duel, so she tries to coax him into doing whatever he wants to her as a result. When Shuichi hesitates to take up the offer, Tenko gets frustrated and then admits that she challenged him because she is in love with him, and she gets giddy after confessing. This suggests that Tenko is at least more willing to tolerate boys who take up Neo-Aikido, if not that she has a romantic attraction to boys that is repressed because of what her master taught her. In Love Across The Universe, after a date where Shuichi chooses the best option, she says it made her "feel all fluttery", as well and asks him to spend more time with her. Her ending for that mode also says that if Shuichi and other men master Neo-Aikido, they'd no longer be degenerates, though she still says she'd prefer if they got sex changes.
  • I Am Not Pretty: Despite being attractive, Tenko seems to have low-self esteem. When Kaede complements her appearance in their support, Tenko will just retort with a self-deprecating comment:
    • Compliment her smile:
    Kaede: Your smile is charming!
    Tenko: My smile is crude and vulgar! And when I laugh, my mouth takes up my whole face!
    • Compliment her body:
    Kaede: You have a great body!
    Tenko: What are you talking about!? I've got stubby limbs and a long torso like a weiner dog!
    Kaede: ...Someone who hears that might think you're being sarcastic, and get offended...
  • Anger Born of Worry: At one point, Tenko actually becomes frustrated enough with Himiko blindly following Angie that she actually yells at her, saying that if she can't see that she's being brainwashed by Angie, then she's not a real mage at all. She feels terrible about this, of course, but it's implied her words do get through to Himiko somewhat and they mend their friendship for a little while before Tenko is killed not long afterwards.
  • Anime Hair: Her twin tails are in some sort of loop.
  • Anything but That!: During the Ultimate Summer Camp, she admits she'd rather be dealing with a degenerate male then listen to a lecture from Kirumi when the Imposter Byakuya threatens her with that when she goes to him and Makoto to help her with her hatred of men to further Neo-Aikido.
  • Appearance Angst: If Kaede chooses to compliment her body during her Free Time, Tenko denies it and shows a lack of confidence in her form by insulting it. This is also a case of I Am Not Pretty, what with it being a denial of her own beauty.
    Kaede: You have a great body.
    Tenko: What are you talking about!? I've got stubby limbs and a long torso like a weiner dog!
  • Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: During her Love Suite event, Tenko tries to get Shuichi to "do whatever he wants to her", and is frustrated when he states that he doesn't want to do anything to her.
  • Bad Liar: Not quite on par with Kaede or Miu, but Tenko is a straightforward person and is very unconvincing when she joins Angie's cult - Korekiyo even comments that he could tell Tenko was lying, but he admired her for infiltrating the group to protect Himiko.
  • Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: She's got a bare midriff, but is still feminine, albeit a tomboyish girl and she's the only girl in the franchise with a bared midriff.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: In contrast to likes of other girls like Angie and Miu, who are beautiful but are strongly hostile to others, Tenko's beauty is not superficial in spite of her flaws. She is actually friendly and caring despite her many severe flaws and is far more compassionate towards other people than the other cast members credit her for, and she also doesn't like Angie for being controlling or Kokichi for being a troll, showing that her biases are a result of being Innocently Insensitive than actual malice.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    • Thanks to her jealousy over the bond between Himiko and Angie, Tenko confesses that she's wanted Angie gone for some time, but she's horrified when that comes true and Angie dies shortly after she admits her feelings to Shuichi and Maki.
    • She also states she'd rather die than see Himiko get killed. Guess what happens to her.
  • Best Her to Bed Her: Her Love Suite fantasy, which goes both ways. If Shuichi defeats her, he can do whatever he wants to her, and the inverse applies if Tenko beats him. The fantasy begins after her defeat, and she's frustrated with Shuichi's unwillingness to do anything to her, which then leads to her admitting that she challenged him because she is in love with him.
  • Big Ol' Eyebrows: Has noticeably thicker eyebrows than most of the other characters in the game.
  • Big Sister Worship: During the Ultimate Summer Camp, she comes to truly idolize Hiroko. Something Hiroko isn't particularly comfortable about.
  • Blasphemous Boast: When Angie says Atua will get angry if he is not praised:
    Tenko: Screw Atua! That guy's got nothing on me!
  • Blood Knight: In a downplayed case, she doesn't actively seek fights with Sakura and Akane, but accepts sparring or training with them, nonetheless, in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp.
  • Brainless Beauty: While she's attractive enough for Kaede to call her cute in her introduction, Tenko's thoughts are disorganized and she knows that they are, but doesn't know how to solve her problem with thinking despite being an Aikido Master. However, in spite of the secondary clause, Tenko explains that her Aikido training allows her a mental fortitude mighty enough to allow her to not succumb to Angie's cult.
  • Breaking Old Trends:
    • Tenko would really like to be in the "female friends who quickly form a powerful bond over the course of the game" character set with Himiko, like Aoi and Sakura or Mahiru and Hiyoko from previous games, but Himiko's having none of it. Even though Tenko's last words and death do motivate Himiko to express herself more and try harder, the two still weren't nearly as close as the previous examples, making this "relationship" seem far more off-balanced.
    • The previous two Stalker with a Crush characters (Toko and Kazuichi) survived their respective games. Tenko is not so lucky.
  • Brutal Honesty: A given. Even outside of her prejudicial statements, she's generally got a very sharp tongue, and she's not afraid to use it.
  • Buxom Beauty Standard: She has a buxom figure, and Kaede even compliments her for having a great body. Ironically, Himiko is also shown to be envious of her figure, which means Tenko's large breasts are actually a negative point when it comes to her wanting to get closer to Himiko.
  • Catchphrase Insult: "Degenerate male."
  • Chivalrous Pervert: She is shown to have a perverted side towards other women, yet has the desire to protect them from harm.
  • Clear My Name: When Himiko is the prime suspect for Chapter Two's murder, Tenko is her staunchest supporter and passionately declares she cannot believe Himiko would do something like that, something that Himiko seems rather touched by. Later, Himiko returns the favor in Chapter Three when it's speculated Tenko killed Angie and then herself out of shame.
    Himiko: Tenko's not that kind of person!
  • Comically Missing the Point: Very much so during her interaction with Chihiro and Mondo during Ultimate Summer Camp. She goes off at Mondo for "harassing" Chihiro. But once Chihiro steps in and leaves subtle clues about his true gender to her before they leave, her final conclusion was that Chihiro is actually a tomboy.
  • Commonality Connection: Has some bonding moments with fellow Genki Girl Ibuki in Ultimate Summer Camp, who also happens to be voiced by Julie Ann Taylor. She invites Tenko to help paint a billboard for her concert and they both yell their hearts out while painting. In Ultimate Talent Development Plan, Ibuki remarks that Tenko's full of energy, but decides to build up her energy more by being a cheerleader for her and they both got so hyped, they started yelling and ended up being yelled at by others to shut up.
  • Compliment Backfire: She gushes a lot about how small and cute Himiko is, but Himiko is implied to be self-conscious of her childlike figure and gets annoyed with Tenko drawing attention to it.
  • Cool Big Sis: She acts this way whenever she can keep her mind out of the gutter while she's with Himiko.
  • Covert Pervert: She blushes a lot when Kaito mentions that he passed out in the girl's bathroom and is disappointed that Shuichi doesn't take her up on her offer to do whatever he wants to her in their Love Suite scene. This isn't even touching on her behavior with Himiko either, though in that case it's implied Tenko is downright oblivious to the nature of her feelings.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Despite being quite tomboyish, Tenko still loves cute things and gushes over anything cute she sees, particularly Himiko.
  • Death by Irony: Her Catchphrase Insult is "degenerate male", and yet she dies because, for Himiko's sake, she puts her trust in a male who, as it turns out, can be deemed a legitimate "degenerate".
  • Declaration of Protection: Repeatedly declares this for Himiko. Tragically, she technically succeeds, as her taking Himiko's place in the séance after Angie dies ends up saving Himiko's life at the cost of her own. Himiko even survives the killing game.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Progressively warms up to Shuichi in her Free Time Events as she assumes he is interested in learning Neo-Aikido, and by the end of her Free Time Events, considers him a "brother-in-arms". She still refuses to shake his hand though.
  • Determinator: Tenko herself notes that she has a low pain tolerance and freaks out at the notion of inflicting Cold-Blooded Torture on suspects... but when she's stabbed in the neck during the séance, she doesn't make any sound during it, because Korekiyo told her it would interfere with Angie's spirit entering her body. Though it also could have been because the wound may have been deep enough it punctured her trachea, leaving her unable to talk and the loud singing making the others not able to hear any dying sounds she made...
  • Does Not Like Men: Her defining quirk. She even refers to the boys as "degenerate males" note . Her Free Time Events make her come to terms with the fact that good males do exist, although she claims she would still only trust those that devote themselves to Neo-Aikido. That being said even if she does think Shuichi could apply for that exception she still freaks out and demands he get a sex change in order for her to feel comfortable with shaking his hand.
    • During the Ultimate Summer Camp, she shows signs that she is developing respect for Nekomaru, acknowledging that he's a good manager and surprisingly humble, but still refuses to team up with him since he is a male. By the time of Masaru's "My Future" event it shows that she respects him enough that she sometimes trains under him, albeit with it probably being helped and/or alleviated that she's training alongside Sakura and Akane and sometimes Peko, though she is still uncomfortable about it.
    • Also in USC, she goes to the Imposter Byakuya and Makoto to help her get over her hatred of men to further Neo-Aikido, because Byakuya is reasonable and Makoto's small and harmless. By the Campfire scene, she can talk to Byakuya without being disdainful because she got an earful from Kirumi because Byakuya had her lecture Tenko. Byakuya notes that Tenko is better, but hasn't fully changed.
  • Driven to Suicide: This is brought up as a possible cause of her death by Maki during the third trial, with Kokichi going on to theorize she killed Angie and couldn't handle the guilt. Turns out to be false, however.
  • Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: One of her upset sprites has such, combined with Tranquil Fury and Death Glare mixed altogether.
  • Dumb Muscle: She's powerful in physical terms with her Neo-Aikido, but is quite gullible, believing everything her master told her about Neo-Aikido's weaknesses, such as eating too much candy, keeping her room dirty, getting too excited about holidays, and coming in contact with males (the kicker being that her master is a male! And it is suggested that her master was even joking around when saying this!)
  • Emotional Bruiser: She's a martial artist who wears her feelings on her sleeve, and is quick to sympathize or cry with the deaths of the killing game. This is perhaps most notably demonstrated in how she's one of the students who jumped in to fight the Exisals in order to stop them from dragging Kaede to her execution. She sympathizes easily with suspects, victims and culprits alike, which puts her in an interesting situation in Chapter 2 where she's saddened by Ryoma's death, staunchly believes that Himiko is not the killer and blindly defends her to the point of becoming one of the case's biggest oppositions, and yet also encourages Kirumi to run away from her punishment because she was swayed by her words all in the same case. This trait is so strong with Tenko that she's somehow combined the "Emotional" and "Bruiser" into a martial arts technique in and of itself - as shown in Chapter 3, she's able to get a read on people's emotions and even insecurities from tossing them, which she does with both Shuichi and Himiko and follows with giving them support and advice.
  • The Empath: Uniquely, Tenko seems to be able to read people's feelings by throwing them with Neo-Aikido, as shown when she throws Himiko and Shuichi in Chapter 3.
  • Entertainingly Wrong: In Ultimate Summer Camp, she insults Mondo, who is hanging out with Chihiro on the beach. Chihiro admits to Mondo he feels bad about deceiving Tenko (he hasn't told anyone but Mondo that he's not a girl). Tenko then comes back into the conversation and accuses Mondo of forcing Chihiro to hang out with him, with Chihiro angrily interjecting and says she shouldn't talk like that, while hinting about his true gender and leaving with Mondo. She comes to the conclusion "she's" a tomboy.
  • Establishing Character Moment: She has one when you speak to her as Kaede, with Tenko enthusiastically yelling to build up her energy, before introducing herself as the Ultimate Aikido Master. She blushes when complimented by Kaede, but when Shuichi agrees with her that Tenko is cute, her face turns to one of absolute disgust and she says she doesn't like being praised by degenerate males.
  • Everyone Can See It: Oddly, though several characters note her crush on Himiko and it's even brought up as a possible motive if she killed Angie, Tenko requests of Kaede in their Free Time events that she does not tell Himiko about it.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • Despite her distaste for "degenerate males", she's as upset and shocked at Rantaro and Ryoma's deaths as everyone else.
    • Though she wants to protect her fellow females and always prioritizes them over the boys, she's pretty distrustful of Maki for a while after she's outed by Kokichi as the Ultimate Assassin. She's also willing to work with Shuichi to stop Angie's cult.
    • Though she has a crush on Himiko and tends to back Himiko up whether she's in the right or wrong, even Tenko is willing to call Himiko out when she gets frustrated with Himiko bottling up her emotions and blindly following Angie.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Tenko developed her misandry because of what her master taught her about making contact with boys, without even recognising that her master is male.
  • Fatal Flaw: Her protectiveness of Himiko directly results in her death, but Tenko herself makes a heated statement in the second trial she's okay with dying if it meant Himiko could live through the Killing Game, to the point she also would be alright with condemning all of them to death had Himiko ever been a culprit. After she cools down the next day she harshly condemns her own weak will for saying that, but it's still a very dangerous thing she said.
  • Flanderization: Her misandry is much harsher in the Love Across the Universe bonus mode than it is in the story proper, to the point where she sincerely wishes for the genocide of all males on Earth. This is in stark contrast to the main story, where she's upset at her male classmates' deaths and is staunchly against the murder of anyone for any reason.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: Downplayed. Tenko isn't particularly hated by her classmates and they are willing to work alongside her, but to say they respect her on equal grounds is pushing it. Considering how she often acts like a jerk (one who has good intentions, that is) and is incredibly biased in how she behaves around her friends, this is an understandable response on their part.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: She gives her panties to Shuichi in her final Free Time, despite her dislike of men and unwillingness to even shake hands with him. Why did she do that? Because every other student in the franchise does so, when Free Time is completed (even when it would be out of character for them to do so, or go against what happened in the final Free Time).
  • Genki Girl: She has an upbeat demeanor most of the time and a lot of energetic-looking sprites. When she was a child, she was so hyperactive and her tantrums were so severe that her parents ended up moving her into a Buddhist temple; they were afraid that she wouldn't be able to interact with people normally if she didn't learn to calm her mind.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Parodied in her fourth Free Time Event with Shuichi, where Shuichi points out that her master - who is suggested to be joking when saying that a boy touching Tenko makes her weaker, thus instilling her dislike for "degenerate males" - is a male himself. Tenko, having failed to realize this up until now, freaks out and runs away screaming.
  • Good Parents: In her second Free Time Event with Shuichi, she briefly mentions having loving parents who were very concerned about her lack of self-control, and sent her to a Buddhist temple to learn to calm down.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Tenko is visibly jealous when Himiko starts preferring the company of Angie over her, though her jealousy does take something of a backseat to Tenko's legitimate concerns that Himiko is becoming more and more detached from reality the more she gets involved with Angie and her sermons about Atua.
  • Hair Color Dissonance: Her hair is pretty consistently black, but it looks green in a couple of scenes, such as the 'Insect Meet and Greet', 'The Amazing Himko's Magic Show', and 'Everywhere Parasol' CGs in Chapter Two, with the 'Man's Fantasy' CGs in Chapter Three.
  • Hair-Trigger Temper: In her Free Time Event with Shuichi, she confesses she has had anger issues since she was a child and would go on anger tantrums on a whim. Her parents sent her to a temple in order to help her "discipline" her mind. While she claims she's now "calm and composed" she clearly still have anger issues that come forth whenever "degenerate males" come up.
  • Hate at First Sight: As would be expected, she really doesn't like Teruteru in Ultimate Summer Camp and throws him regularly, though he's fine with that, since he ends up getting nursed by Mikan afterwards.
  • Hero Ball: Tenko, who typically uses false judgment to determine which males are and aren't trustworthy from the start, decides to trust the Obviously Evil male Korekiyo Shinguji who is constantly openly suspicious, of whom she already knows is suspicious, in a séance ceremony, and even completely entrusts herself to him to the point of following his every instruction and getting trapped underneath the cage as a result. This sudden case of idiotic trust on her part is practically what ends up killing her since she left herself wide open for Korekiyo to target.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: She manages to pull this off accidentally. During the séance, Korekiyo announces he needs a conduit for Angie's spirit to enter. Himiko volunteers, but Tenko takes her place so that Himiko will be able to say goodbye to her, inadvertently getting into the death trap Kiyo had set.
  • Hypocrite: She has a massive case of Double Standards between her and the other girls and the guys around her, which naturally results in this sort of behavior. While she's quick to treat the guys as all being dangerous she is the most overtly violent member of the cast to act with very little warning or provocation, unlike say Kaito or Maki, as best seen during her very first Free Time event. Not to mention the issue of her accusing the men of all being perverts, even though she and Miu (whom she doesn't complain about) are both much more obviously guilty of acting with their minds in the gutter and making others uncomfortable as a result of this, particularly where Himiko is involved.
  • Hypocrite Has a Point: While she seems to be mainly saying it out of jealousy and her own tendencies towards Himiko are somewhat invasive, Tenko's right when she points out that Himiko's friendship with Angie is unhealthy because Himiko simply goes along with everything Angie says because she's too apathetic to think for herself.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • Tenko is very quick to accuse "degenerate males" of being perverts, even though Tenko is quite clearly a Covert Pervert herself.
    • In Chapter 2, she criticizes the other students for always ordering Kirumi around and giving her too much work to do... then immediately orders Kirumi to make tripe hot pot for herself and Himiko.
    • She asks Kaede during their first Free Time Event how she can be so naïve for her reasonable assertion that Shuichi most likely isn't a pervert, when Tenko is one of the most gullible characters in the entire game.
  • If It's You, It's Okay: Probably. Given her misandry and her one-sided fondness for Himiko, it is clear that Tenko likes women. However, her fifth Free Time Event suggests that she is at least more willing to tolerate boys if they take up Neo-Aikido, but even so, she is still uncomfortable with them touching her. Her Love Suite Event also suggests that she might have some romantic attraction to boys, but she heavily represses it because her master told her that a boy touching her would make her moves weaker. It is also suggested that her master, a male, was joking around when he said this, and Tenko just convinced herself to take this at face value.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Often comes up with her prejudice against males. For instance, in Chapter Three, Shuichi greets her in the morning and Tenko says good morning... to Maki. When Kaito asks why she's ignoring Shuichi, she claims it's good manners to greet girls before degenerate males, even though Maki didn't even speak to her.
  • Irony:
    • She makes a show of hating men and suspecting them of all kinds of wrongdoing, but the only trials she participated in had female perpetrators who murdered male victims; on top of that, her eventual killer has a female tulpa, and wants to send only female friends to his sister's ghost. And even the mastermind of the killing game is a woman as well.
    • Despite being a Neo-Aikido practitioner, she claims during the first trial when Korekiyo suggests inflicting Cold-Blooded Torture on the suspects that her pain tolerance is actually really low.
    • She clashes with Angie several times over the course of the game, but they are both killed in the same chapter by the same person in a very similar way, a stab wound to the neck from inside a Locked Room Mystery.
    • Despite considering them "degenerate males", out of all the characters, Tenko is the most similar personality-wise to Gonta and Kaito.
    • Interestingly enough, despite her contempt for males, in the Japanese version, she addresses them with the same level of respect as her female classmates, using last names and the "-san" honorific (by comparison, even some of the polite classmates, like Kaede and Shuichi, use "-kun" on boys and "-san" on girls).
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Tenko says a lot of bad things about the "degenerate males", going as far as to suggest snapping Shuichi's spine (as a "pre-emptive strike") in her first Free Time Event with Kaede, and in her first Free Time Event with Shuichi, she knocks him out cold over making contact with her, though she does at least carry him back to his room afterwards. That said, she's also very empathetic, incredibly supportive towards her fellow girls, tries to give good advice, and sticks up for Himiko and Shuichi multiple times, and as said under Pretend Prejudice, she's still generally capable of caring about and getting along with boys in spite of all her sexist talk. Underneath the cartoonish misandry (the result of taking at face value her master's tongue-in-cheek teaching that allowing a boy to touch her would weaken her fighting abilities), Tenko is less a genuinely hateful person as much as she is a sweet girl with some childlike misguided ideas her own actions often seem to belie.
  • Knight Templar: Tenko genuinely wants to protect other girls, but she becomes a fanatical misandrist to do so because she believes it's her only option.
  • Lesbian Jock: Her ultimate talent is one of athleticism, and she makes it very clear throughout the game that she is only attracted to women.
  • Lights Off, Somebody Dies: She is killed in the company of multiple people while they are all participating in a séance in a pitch-black room.
  • Locked Room Mystery: She is somehow stabbed to death while crouching down inside a cage that was pinned down by a heavy statue and covered in a sheet, all while the lights in the room were blown out and leaving no visibility. The culprit tampered with the floorboards and used the one Tenko was sitting on as a see-saw to launch her upwards into the blade that was planted in the cage, reaching the spot in the dark by tracing salt left on the ground for a ritual.
  • Loving Bully: At one point, she tells Himiko that she isn't a real mage in an attempt to anger her into expressing herself and break out of her emotional shell.
  • Luminescent Blush: When Kaede compliments her cuteness, Tenko blushes really hard.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Tenko can be read as "rolling child", referring to her talent, as Aikido includes various rolling techniques.
    • "Chabashira" is a Japanese superstition that says if you find a stalk standing upright on your teacup, you will have luck if you take it off and don't let anyone know you have it. Our Chabashira, however, is completely against hiding her expression and dies right after stating it.
  • The Mole: Downplayed. She joins Angie's cult in Chapter 3 because she worries about Himiko's state of mind. She never actually buys into the religion of Atua. Angie finds out after Tenko tries to convince her to not resurrect the dead using the Necronomicon, and Angie's only response is to express mild regret and hope that Tenko reconsiders her loyalty.
  • Morality Pet: She shows a more compassionate side towards Shuichi despite her dislike of men. As shown after Kaede's execution, she encourages him not to be too hard on himself for her death and even stands up for him when the others are being insensitive about it. This is played again in Chapter 2 when he joins everyone for breakfast for the first time, she tells off Kaito and Kokichi for being insensitive towards him. This is further demonstrated during the free time events where she says he's different from the other males during their positive interactions.
  • Moral Myopia: She accuses everyone of "picking on" Himiko when they start pressuring her about how her magic show worked, but it doesn't seem to occur to Tenko how selfish Himiko is being by refusing to co-operate, since they could very well die if they don't figure it out.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Ironically, Tenko is another female source of appeal for the male fans of the game. Doubly ironic, her expressive distrust for males is somewhat serviceable for females who share the same mindset. Additionally, she's shown without upper clothing in Toplessness from the Back angles to the viewer in two graphics, and the Sideboob exposed gives a very clear view of the rather impressive size of her breasts.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Averted - it's theorized during Chapter Three's trial that Tenko could've murdered Angie over her jealousy over Himiko, then committed suicide in the cage out of shame, but eventually it's ruled as impossible because if Tenko killed herself, the weapon would still be inside the cage since, much to Korekiyo's frustration, Maki lied and told them her death would've been too quick to toss it away.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: Despite her being a master martial artist and shown to be fairly athletic and strong, she has very little muscle mass. She is still strong, as she aikido throws Shuichi when she's in her Ultimate Lab for the first time and multiple times in her first Free Time and also throws Himiko. She also carried Shuichi, who weighs more than she does, back to his room after she knocked him out.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: When she argues with Himiko about going along with everything Angie says and refusing to think for herself, she's immediately remorseful for yelling at her, but Shuichi and Maki tell Tenko that Himiko probably needed to hear it.
  • New Body, Old Abilities: Like Kaede and Maki, she gets hit with this, as knowing martial arts requires extensive use of muscle memory, something that isn't gained just by just gaining knowledge of it.
  • Noble Bigot: Despite her vocal hatred toward men, she is still a good person. And then there are her occasional Pet the Dog moments toward Shuichi, even though she admits he never really becomes a true "exception" for her like her master is.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Like Ishimaru and Ibuki before her, Tenko ultimately gets killed because of her altruism - when she decides to put aside her jealousy and volunteers to become the conduit so that Himiko can say goodbye to Angie, she unwittingly gets into a death trap set for Himiko. At least her death isn't completely pointless, as Himiko goes on to survive the game.
  • No-Sell: Tenko claims her Neo-Aikido training means that she has the mental fortitude to resist any brainwashing, meaning that she was always simply faking believing in Atua. Of course, Tenko is unaware that she and everyone else have already been brainwashed from the beginning...
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • During her free time, she reacts this way when Shuichi reminds her that her master is male.
    • Played for laughs during Ultimate Summer Camp, but she reacts this way whenever Kirumi is mentioned, being scared of getting one of her lectures.
  • Opposites Attract: The energetic, outspoken, Neo-Aikido practitioner Tenko is attracted to the apathetic, deadpan magician Himiko. Perhaps as something of a Deconstruction of this trope, Himiko doesn't reciprocate Tenko's feelings and only starts to regret ignoring her once Tenko is dead.
  • Parasol of Prettiness: She uses one in the "Faux Celebrity" event to, as the title suggests, pretend to be a celebrity in the academy's pool area more effectively. She only gets that parasol thanks to Shuichi finding it via the Monomono Machine himself, not that she shows much gratitude herself, of course, directing it to Kirumi instead.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • After Kaede's execution in the first trial, Shuichi enters a serious Heroic BSoD and asks that the others leave him alone in the courtroom for a while. Tenko offers Shuichi some encouraging words and tells him not to blame himself for her death.
    • Shortly after that, Tenko chides Kaito and Kokichi for making a big deal about Shuichi not wearing his hat after Kaede's death and tells them to back off and leave him to grieve.
    • After reading Shuichi's emotions after throwing him, she comments that Shuichi is still lacking in self-esteem and offers to train with him in order to help him believe in himself.
    • Despite fighting with Angie over Himiko throughout the second chapter onward and not believing in séances, she still volunteers to be the conduit so that Himiko and the other students can say goodbye to her. Unfortunately, this act of kindness results in Tenko's death.
    • In Ultimate Summer Camp, she's conflicted and saddened when Chihiro reveals that he's actually a boy. She says that he was such a kind-hearted Nice Guy that she can't even bring herself to wish he was a girl after he explained himself. Maki says she's pretty kind-hearted and suggests telling Chihiro how she feels and Maki thinks he'd be overjoyed. The whole interaction is quite heartwarming.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: Part of her personality is her constant prejudice towards men.
  • Pretend Prejudice: For all her talk about hating males, it's noticeable that when push comes to shove her actions really don't back it up. She readily co-operates with Kaito and Gonta in Chapter 1, is just as distraught over the male deaths as anyone else, shows concern and even defensiveness toward Shuichi at numerous points, as well as quickly telling him trusted information in her Free Time Events and generally having a fair amount of scenes where she gets along with him just fine. It makes complete sense, given that Tenko's misandrist talk doesn't come from any kind of actual trauma like Mahiru's attitude with boys did, it's more just an absurd idea she's convinced herself she needs to believe because her master said so. She is still very genuinely uncomfortable with making contact with them, but at the end of the day Tenko's disdain for boys is more an idea she's forced herself to believe than something born of genuine dislike, and she spends much of her last Free Time Event with Shuichi making excuses for liking males such as him or her master that still fit within her Insane Troll Logic. Her Love Suite Event also suggests that she may have some romantic attraction to boys (or at least those who practice Neo-Aikido), but she heavily represses it because of what her master told her.
  • Recurring Element:
    • Actually continues the tradition of Kiyotaka and Hiyoko from the previous two games, being a character who's shaken by a previous death and seems to be headed for Character Development, but is killed off in Chapter 3. She's even the second to have her body discovered, like the aforementioned two although in this case, it's clear that Tenko died second.
    • She serves as the token "character with an unrequited crush that leads them to stalking the obviously uninterested party" character like Toko and Kazuichi, much to her frustration and sadness. The target of her affections is shown to like her more than in the previous cases though, but only after Tenko's dead.
    • Just like Mahiru from the previous main installment, she becomes a very severe source of unwavering regret in the memory of a surviving participant, similarly to the Lost Lenore of Shuichi, Kaede. In Tenko's case, the similarity is even higher, since she's very notable for her harsh attitude towards boys and the survivor she's connected to is notable for their childish appearance.
    • After Sakura and Peko, she is the third person to die for the sake of another (Sakura for Aoi, Peko for Fuyuhiko) who ultimately survives the killing game.
  • Rummage Sale Reject: Tenko's outfit is described as a "fashion disaster" in her profile and that she added the extra frills to her skirt to try and look more attractive to girls, as well as wearing several hair accessories at the same time, a collar with a bell on it and socks with her waraji.
  • Screaming Warrior: She screams and shouts a lot when practicing or using her Aikido.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: This girl has zero problems flaunting her body, despite her dislike for men, who'd be most attracted to that sort of behavior. Considering this, she probably does it to drawn in girls instead of guys, to have a... particular effect.
  • Shipping Torpedo: In a Downplayed way, but in her Free Time with Kaede, she tries to warn the girl to be careful around Shuichi as he's a degenerate male. However, after the trial she comes to realize just how much Kaede meant to him and is one of the most understanding students when he is grieving her loss, and mentions Kaede's wish to Shuichi when he becomes uncertain of himself.
  • Shy Finger-Twiddling: Downplayed as Tenko isn't remotely "shy", but she often does this gesture in her 'nervous' sprite, complete with an awkward smile.
  • Signature Headgear: A pink headband with a star design, and a green shuriken with many different symbols painted onto it.
  • Soft Martial Arts Style: Tenko is a comical subversion of many of the associated themes. She's an aikido practitioner, but she practices her own personalized form of "Neo Aikido," that was designed specifically to help her with her hyperactivity and anger issues. Despite this, she's still extremely energetic and temperamental anyway.
  • Stalker with a Crush: For Himiko. She's constantly following Himiko around (even in the map), often bugging her for attention, and stares closely at her face all the time. Himiko is clearly unnerved by all this.
  • Super Drowning Skills: The moment the pool area is unlocked, she reveals that she is unable to swim, something she seems to consider very shameful. During the Ultimate Talent Development Plan, she takes swimming lessons from Hina.
  • Super Gullible: She will believe anything that was said by her master, even if it is in jest, such as that her Neo-Aikido powers can get weakened by getting too excited for holidays, eating more than three sweets per day, or touching men. Note that the last thing is what ended up contributing to her disdain for men despite her mentor also being male, and she was still gullible enough to not notice that contradiction. In Ultimate Summer Camp, Kaito walks in on Leon and her in the hot springs arguing, with her accusing Leon of peeping, and Kaito says it's the boys' time to be there. However, she says it's the girls' time to be there, now, because of a new schedule. That Kokichi gave her. She ends up having to apologize, much to her chagrin.
  • Suspect Existence Failure: Tsumugi suspects her to be the culprit of Angie's murder, doing so to stop her from hogging Himiko all to herself. Then she ends up dying as the case's second victim.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
    • Tenko is very alike to Ibuki Mioda from the second game. Just like Ibuki, Tenko is a very excitable Genki Girl with a very eccentric and loud personality and is always upbeat and flirts with the other girls of the game, she's also voiced by Julie Ann Taylor and tragically dies in chapter 3 at the hands of a creepy but intelligent goth for an utterly senseless reason.
    • There's also Mahiru Koizumi from the second game. Both Mahiru and Tenko don't like men (although in Mahiru's case, to a much lesser extent) and can be hypocritical but are ultimately very good-natured girls who always try to help others out and form a notable bond with a tiny adorable girl (Hiyoko and Himiko respectively). Both also die at the hands of a grieving brother who cited their sister as their motive (granted, Fuyuhiko didn't kill Mahiru directly) but leave a legacy of kindness by having an impact on Fuyuhiko's/Hiyoko's and Himiko's arc respectively.
  • Taking the Bullet: Played With. Ultimately, offering herself as a vessel for Korekiyo's séance instead of Himiko is what leads to her death, since it was nothing more than a trap so Korekiyo could kill someone. She saved Himiko's life without even knowing it.
  • Third-Person Person: In the Japanese version, she speaks this way, denoting a childish/playful side.
  • Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She’s a skilled aikido practitioner with a tendency to be aggressive and loud, but she loves cute things and tries to make herself more appealing to girls by adding extra frills to her skirt.
  • Trademark Favourite Food: Tripe hot pot, which gives her lots of energy.
  • Tranquil Fury: In Love Across the Universe, she has an eerily calm reaction to some of the more perverted options, which give the worst possible result ("Damn, this is awkward"). If, for example, you choose "Getting horny after a meal," she says the following with this expression on her face.
    Tenko: ... How would you like to die, Shuichi? You must know already, since you've chosen to aggravate me.
  • Tsundere: Somewhat turns into one of these towards Shuichi later in their Free Time Events, once she starts coming to terms with the fact that some boys can be good people; some of her dialogue is downright stereotypical of a classic tsundere. She shows signs of this as well in the Salmon Mode bonus content, although she can relapse a bit if you pick an option that angers her on dates. Notably, Kokichi describes Tenko as one, clearly meaning to provide Schmuck Bait, but given these, he might be on to something.
    Tenko: Not just him...I think you're a good person too.
    Shuichi: You do?
    Tenko: [blushing] *gasp*!? Don't start fantasizing about anything weird now! This is not a mushy moment where I start thinking you're special or anything like that! Don't get it wrong! Just because I called you a good person...doesn't make you special!
  • Unskilled, but Strong: Downplayed. While the only person in the game that could beat her in a fight by her own admission in the game itself is Gonta, (Maki also possibly could, because Tenko didn't know her other talent at the time) in the Ultimate Talent Development Plan bonus mode, Nekomaru calls her out on having little grasp for technique despite her skill. He specifically compares her to Akane, as both need to work more on their fundamentals.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Outside of her dislike towards men, the Ultimate Summer Camp reveals she's also scared of the ocean due to her lack of swimming skills. Hina has been helping her to gradually overcome her fear and previously taught her how to swim in Ultimate Talent Development Plan.
  • I Wished You Were Dead: On the night of Angie's and before Tenko's deaths, Tenko admits to Maki and Shuichi that she had been wanting Angie to disappear for a while.
    [Tenko explains what makes Angie so dangerous]
    Maki: And that's why you want me to kill her?
    Shuichi: Huh?!
    Maki: Asking someone like me for a 'favor' can only mean one thing.
    Tenko: ...I ...won't deny that. I've wanted her gone even before all this happened... And I think everyone has wanted someone to die at least once in their life... But going through with it is a different thing! It's wrong to commit murder! It doesn't matter what the reason is!
    Maki: Do you... realize who you're talking to?
    Tenko: Oh! I'm so sorry! That's not what I meant...
  • Womanchild: Tenko is a rather gullible, immature person who believes everything her Master tells her (even when he is joking around) and she has a tendency to let her heart rule over her head. In the Japanese version, she also refers to herself in the third person, which tends to denote a quirky or childish nature.
  • Worthy Opponent: Regards Sakura as this in Ultimate Summer Camp and the feeling is mutual and Sakura thanks her for training with her, Akane, Peko and Nekomaru and Tenko likewise thanks her for training with her.
  • Wouldn't Hurt a Child: She would never use her Neo-Aikido on children, even if they are boys. Masaru takes advantage of this in Ultimate Summer Camp by flipping up her skirt, which really pisses her off.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: Just as it seems that Tenko and Himiko have patched things up after Angie's death and are moving towards a healthier friendship, Tenko is killed almost immediately afterwards during the séance.

    Tsumugi Shirogane 

    Angie Yonaga 
Angie Yonaga

Ultimate Artist

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/angie_yonaga_57.png
"But Atua's the one who makes the art. I merely offer my body as His vessel. Nyahahaha! How divine!"

Voiced By: Minori Suzuki (Japanese), Cassandra Lee Morris (English)

An accomplished artist and a foreigner from an island nation. Angie considers herself a conduit of the god of her island, Atua, believing him to always be by her side. She claims that her art is not created by her, but by Atua simply using her body. The particulars of Angie's country are unclear; Angie seems to have a fascination in blood sacrifice, for instance. Despite the creepy details, Angie is rather cheerful and energetic.

After the deaths of Ryoma and Kirumi in Chapter 2, Angie forms and leads a student council to regulate everyone's day-to-day behavior in order to prevent anyone from killing or looking for an escape. Her influence ends up creating a sharp divide between the entire class and puts a strain on Himiko and Tenko's friendship. She is the first victim of Chapter 3. Angie is knocked unconscious and stabbed in the neck by Korekiyo Shinguji after walking in on him setting up a death trap.


  • Aerith and Bob: "Angie" is one of the most western-sounding given names in the franchise, after Leon from the first game and Sonia from the second.
  • Affably Evil: While her religious beliefs make her a Token Evil Teammate, she still has some Pet the Dog moments before she really goes off the deep end, and she does seem to legitimately want to protect the others.
  • Ambiguously Bi: While she shows a hidden perverted side to Shuichi in her Love Suite and Love Across the Universe events, she is just as willing to hug the girls in her "Student Council" during Chapter 3 as she is with Gonta, and she shows a particular... "interest" in Tsumugi's chest in the "Gun of Man's Passion" event.
  • Ambiguously Brown: Her dark skin, non-Japanese name, and her official art (see above) imply that she is Polynesian. The English translation adds more evidence by naming the god Atua, a Polynesian term. Her ethnicity is never actually stated outright, but Shuichi does point out her foreign-sounding name and asks whether she's from Japan. It could also be she's of mixed Polynesian-Japanese ancestry as evidenced by her Japanese surname, complete with kanji (夜長).
  • Anti-Villain: A Type III, assuming her intentions are true which the game suggests. She comforts those traumatized by the deaths by saying that everyone can start living in harmony inside their confinement. This causes tension between those who agree with her and those who don't, especially once Angie (rather strategically, mind you) secures Gonta and then enforces an inconsistent approach to the killing game (not using flashback lights and enforcing a curfew, yet using a motive and personally breaking said curfew). The tension makes the members of the student council (her cult) hostile toward Shuichi during Free Time.
  • Arc Villain: She functions as this in the Daily Life part of Chapter 3, with her leadership of the Student Council. Notably, any threat from the Student Council ends with her murder.
  • Berserk Button: Insulting Atua is a quick way to piss her off. When Jataro suggests Atua is a pedophile, she is quite angered and claimed Atua was going to curse his family.
  • Birds of a Feather: With Sonia Nevermind in Ultimate Summer Camp. Both are foreign exchange students with odd tastes to say the least. They even have a casual conversation about human and animal sacrifices.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's cheerful and polite, but beneath her bubbly personality she is quite manipulative and is willing to go to extremes out of good intentions.
  • Blush Sticker: Seems to have perpetually rosy cheeks.
  • Breaking Old Trends:
    • While the previous "dark-skinned odd high energy girl" characters Aoi and Akane managed to survive their respective killing games, Angie is killed off in Chapter 3.
    • Also, while Aoi and Akane all have a very close relationship with The Big Guy of their respective games (aka Sakura and Nekomaru respectively), Angie has no such close relationship with Gonta. While Gonta did join Angie's student council, their relationship was nowhere near as close as the relationship between Aoi/Sakura, and Akane/Nekomaru.
    • Also, while Aoi and Akane both have athletic talents, being a swimmer and gymnast respectively, Angie has no such athletic talent.
    • Aoi and Akane were also cheerful and positive characters that frequently served as the endgame's Plucky Comic Relief. While Angie is not truly evil, being more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist than anything else, she is a much darker and morally ambiguous character than either of them, to the point where she acts as the first half of the game's Arc Villain.
  • Brown Note: Her third free time event has her knock Shuichi out cold by showing him one of her paintings. The ones that can withstand it are "chosen" by Atua.
  • Cassandra Truth: Threefold, all via Atua, and note they are all motivated by Angie's virtue of benevolence:
    • Chapter 1 - Angie says that the culprit killed Rantaro and returned to the hidden room. It's denied in the first trial because the back route to the hidden room had not been discovered and Shuichi planted a trap that would tell if the hidden door had been used. Much later, it's revealed that this is exactly what the culprit did, rather using a secret passageway that none of the other students knew existed to leave without disturbing Shuichi's trap.
    • Chapter 2 - Angie announces that the students have nothing to do with the outside world and that they must make their lives within the school a paradise. This is revealed to be horrifyingly true, as each of the students is a fabricated person with no life beyond the academy. Adding to Angie's credibility is her astute observation that Kirumi's motive video was like a flashback light.
    • Chapter 3 - Angie destroys a flashback light after snatching it from the Monokubs, declaring it a danger and no longer necessary, as it reminds the students of life outside the academy. The aforementioned fabrication is implemented by the flashback lights, which implant false memories. No more flashback lights make it much harder for the Mastermind to manipulate the students to their liking; indeed, Maki outright confirms in Trial 5 that the flashback light became the motive.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: According to this post, one of the producers believes that she is the quirkiest character of the franchise to the point where they nicknamed her "Strange-chan".
    • She can have a "conversation" with fellow Cloudcuckoolanders Hifumi and Gundham in Ultimate Summer Camp that is incredibly disjointed since all three are in their own little worlds.
  • Color Motif: Yellow.
  • Covert Pervert: She makes it known that she's perfectly aware of the insinuations Shuichi might innocently give as an option to their dates.
  • The Cuckoolander Was Right: By virtue of her three Cassandra Truth moments in the three chapters she's alive in. Furthermore, Angie is the only student, even posthumously, to always be on the correct side of the scrum debates, a trait not even applicable to Shuichi, the protagonist!
    • Is Shuichi the culprit? Angie is on the side that argues no.
    • When was the body moved? Angie is on the side that argues nighttime.
    • Vote for Korekiyo? Angie's podium is on the side that argues yes.
    • Could Gonta have killed? Angie's podium is on the side that argues no; note that although Gonta did in fact commit the murder, the Gonta in-trial did not retain the memories from the flashback light and therefore genuinely lacked any and all motive to kill.
    • Who is dead? Angie's podium is on the side that argues Kokichi.
  • Cuddle Bug: Whenever she starts feeling friendly towards other students, she likes to hug them. She even has three separate scenes showing this - first with Himiko, then Gonta, and then Tsumugi. Not coincidentally, all these people join her cult in Chapter Three. She and Shuichi also hug in her Love Across the Universe ending and her Love Suite Event.
  • Easy Evangelism: She starts a small cult in Chapter 3 by playing on everyone's despair and fear. Her cult includes Himiko, Keebo, Tsumugi, Gonta, and Tenko (who has ulterior motives), and they all take over the school together with the intention of forcing the remaining survivors to accept living in the academy for the remainder of their lives. Korekiyo notes that in times of fear and danger, people want to look to a higher power for guidance and protection.
  • Establishing Character Moment: She cheerfully greets Kaede and Shuichi at the Altar of Judgement and tells them about Atua and how her artwork is an offering. She then asks Kaede to donate some of her blood to Atua, to which Kaede politely declines.
  • The Extremist Was Right: Later revelations in the game indicate she was right to destroy the Flashback Lights, as they were actually implanting false memories in the heroes. If her cult had gotten her way in Chapter 3, she might also have been able to bring the 53rd season of Danganronpa to a premature end by refusing to play their game.
  • Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Downplayed. She certainly appears cute with her cute gestures, face, and voice, but on top of her outright refusal of any other faiths and creepy requests for "blood sacrifices" in a school with no visible health facilities unlike the previous games, she turns out to be quite manipulative and manages to brainwash half of the remaining students into her cult while imposing strict rules onto everyone who isn't a part of it. Her attempt at control was made primarily for the sake of the students' safety, though.
  • Fair-Weather Friend: Tenko accuses Angie of being this to Himiko, as after the magic show, Himiko is a prime suspect for the murder because Ryoma's body was discovered during it and Angie herself points out Himiko is suspicious and joins the other students in interrogating her, even though the show was her idea. Angie retorts they have to question Himiko to get to the bottom of the case and blindly trusting in her could get everyone killed. She's also pretty quick to turn on Kirumi when she's outed as the blackened and asks if she only took care of everyone to gain their trust, even though Kirumi was only driven to kill after seeing her motive video and had been the Team Mom before then.
  • First-Name Basis: On both ends in the Japanese version. She calls everyone by their first names, and almost everyone calls her Angie, not Yonaga.
  • Foil:
    • Tenko: Where Angie can be almost coldly logical at times, such as accusing Himiko when she is objectively suspicious or planning to resurrect a student in case another time limit motive is presented, Tenko is willing to bet her life on Himiko's innocence without evidence and outright states murder is always wrong. Where Angie has a nearly unflappable, nearly unchanging demeanour of constant cheeriness, Tenko rapidly and easily expresses the full range of emotions she feels. Where Angie's actions work to unify Himiko and Tenko under the Student Council, Tenko feels a consistent rivalry with Angie over Himiko. Where Angie pulls Himiko away from reality for the sake of a happy life, Tenko pushes Himiko to be honest and face herself even if it hurts. Even their designs foil one another, with Angie having white hair and Tenko having black hair — and, interestingly, with Himiko having red hair, completing the trifect of Monokuma's white-black-red colour scheme.
    • Miu: Both are very lively, quirky, energetic and secretly lonely girls with a perverted streak. However, Angie is very religious and sees herself as a vessel for Atua, while Miu dismisses the supernatural as "unscientific bullshit" and wants nothing to do with Angie's religionnote . Angie's perversions are only alluded to and revealed in the "Gun of Man's Passion" bonus event and her Love Suite Event, while Miu wears her perversions on her sleeve, while her Love Suite Event is a wholesome yet sad Childhood Friend Romance fantasy, contrary to what Shuichi expected. Angie also would rather her classmates stay in the academy to prevent anyone from killing and trying to escape, while Miu wants to get the heck out of dodge. Angie is much more personable in her energetic liveliness, while Miu tends to be much more abrasive and prickly.
    • Celestia: Celestia has a near monochrome colour scheme complete with red eyes, was conning her classmates from day one, was perhaps the most desirious of escape, and became the Chapter Three culprit; Angie in contrast has a bright and vibrant multi-colour design complete with blue eyes, was totally straightforward about her intentions and goals, was the most accepting of the class's potential fate of being entrapped in the Ultimate Academy, and became the first Chapter Three victim. Illustrating this dynamic most clearly was Celestia constantly lying about the class's best course of action to be embracement of their life in Hope's Peak, while Angie expressed the exact same sentiment but was genuine.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: A Downplayed example, but while Himiko grew close to Angie during the second and third chapters, it's Tenko that she mourns and mentions frequently after they both die in the third chapter.
  • Fourth-Date Marriage: Or Fifth Free Time Marriage, but she asks Shuichi to marry her in her final Free Time. It's averted, however, as unlike Sonia and Hajime, Shuichi doesn't outright agree or disagree to marry her, instead saying they should get to know each other better, first and he's more open to marriage in her Love Across The Universe ending, but still wants to get to know her better before he agrees.
  • The Fundamentalist: Very much so; not only is she personally religious, but she genuinely believes everything she does is actually Atua using her body as His vessel, and is committed to evangelizing all the other students and using the Killing Game situation to get Atua more devotees. She's a lot less successful in getting converts in Ultimate Talent Development Plan and Ultimate Summer Camp, due to there being no danger. She only is able to convert Yasuhiro, with Hiyoko, Toko and Mondo all refusing her outright.
  • Genki Girl: She's very upbeat and energetic.
  • The Glomp: She tackles Shuichi with one onto the bed in her Love Suite Event.
  • He's Just Hiding: In-Universe. Theorizes that the "resurrection" ritual can bring students back because they weren't really dead and the students were just tricked into believing they were killed.
  • Hidden Depths:
    • Her last two Free Time Events with Shuichi have him realize that deep down, Angie is very lonely; part of the reason she's so pushy about being "Atua's oracle" is because she wants people to socialize with her, and on her island, claiming it was Atua's will was reason enough.
    • While her logic is somewhat more screwy, she has the right idea of how things should go. When Tenko accuses her of throwing Himiko under the bus in the second case, she retorts with asking whether Tenko is ready to accept if Himiko turns out to be the culprit and is betraying Tenko's trust while also implying that she indeed believes that Himiko is innocent but needs to clear up any suspicion against her.
    • She is also quite a keen contestant of the killing game who displays a consistent trend of learning as the game progresses. Not only does Angie instigate an absolute rejection of the flashback lights after observing that Kirumi's motive video had a similar memory triggering mechanism, she also takes advantage of Gonta to enforce her will after witnessing how easily Kokichi manipulated him to enforce his will, and she snatches the flashback light from the Monokubs after witnessing how easily Monodam snatched the Art Lab key from the other two. Underestimating Angie due to her childish appearance, zany personality, and irrational Atua talk really is what enabled her to get the drop on the rest of the class (and potentially even the player) once she takes over the school with her Student Council.
    Korekiyo: Kehehe... Angie has spread her influence before we'd even realized.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Tiny Girl to Korekiyo's Huge Guy, which made it very easy for him to knock her out and move her to her laboratory to finish her off.
  • Hypocrite:
    • She destroys a Flashback Light and says that since Monokuma wants the students to use them, they're dangerous, which is true. However, she has no problem with using the Necronomicon later on to conduct a ritual to resurrect Rantaro, despite it being another motive given to them by Monokuma.
    • She and the other student council members begin policing everyone's activities and telling them not to go out at night, because Kirumi's murder plan happened at night. However, she doesn't obey this rule herself and becomes the victim of a nearly unsolvable murder because of it.
  • Innocent Blue Eyes: She certainly appears "innocent" in the sense she is very childlike and good-natured. On the other hand, her manipulative qualities can raise the question of how much of this might be an act to get others to listen to her.
  • In-Series Nickname: In Ultimate Talent Development Plan, Toko and Hiyoko both call her "Psychoelectric girl"
  • Irony: She was killed at night time, after spending most of the chapter scolding the other students for being out of their rooms past curfew.
    • She's the resident dark-skinned girl, but unlike Aoi and Akane, she doesn't have a physical talent - instead, that went to Tenko, the character who clashes the most frequently with her in-game.
    • She's Polynesian or from some Pacific island, but her profile states she hates humidity.
  • It's All About Me: Kaito and Tenko note during the third chapter that Angie tends to do whatever she wants without consulting anyone else on their opinion because she thinks she's under Atua's protection. Though Angie does genuinely believe she's doing Atua's bidding, it's notable that what Atua wants and what Angie wants are almost always the same thing and Angie never stops to consider whether her actions are wrong or not.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Angie's typical behavior is incredibly condescending and controlling, and she usually doesn't think about anyone or anything except herself. In her first meeting with Kaede, she attempts a blood extraction for a ritual and Kaede has to trick her into thinking she's anemic because Angie won't listen to her, to make it clear how ruthless she is underneath her cheerful demeanor. However, she does have everyone's best interests at heart and she tries to get everyone to accept living in the academy to try and prevent anyone from killing to escape the academy.
  • Karmic Overkill: As noted above, Angie can be a bit of a Hypocrite when she does not allow the other students to go out at night without obeying this rule herself. During her death, she ran into Korekiyo setting up a murder trap at nighttime and kills her since She Knows Too Much in which that would not have happened if she actually obeys her own rules, but while being a hypocrite is bad, getting murdered for it is definitely excessive.
  • Kick the Dog: When discussing who she intends to resurrect for the séance, she picks Rantaro and callously writes off Kaede, Kirumi and Ryoma as "murderers" who don't deserve to be brought back, (conveniently ignoring that Kaede was trying to save everyone and seemingly killed Rantaro by accident) much to Shuichi's discomfort.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Though she prays for Kaede's soul after she is executed, Angie nonetheless callously refers to her, Ryoma and Kirumi as murderers who don't deserve to be resurrected. In an excessive case of this, she is punished for this by making her the first murder victim of Chapter Three and a couple of the students are even pleased she's gone so they don't have to listen to her religious babble anymore. Although Tenko, her main enemy in the class is genuinely saddened by her fate and says she never wanted Angie to die even if she disliked her.
  • A Lighter Shade of Black: She's the lightest of the 'antagonist' characters. Sure, Angie is a manipulative cult leader, but unlike Korekiyo, Kokichi, and Tsumugi, she never kills anyone, directly or indirectly.
  • I Love You Because I Can't Control You: Downplayed. She tells Shuichi in her final Free Time Event that she likes him so much because he's the first person who actually yelled at her.
  • Manipulative Bitch: Angie has an uncanny aptitude for finding other people's weaknesses and pushing their buttons, such as telling Himiko and Gonta that Atua appears as a "handsome god" or a "nice grandmother", respectively, something both of them respond positively to. She also bluntly informs Himiko that Tenko "betrayed" the student council, further driving a wedge between them.
    • In the Ultimate Talent Development Plan bonus mode, she has this to say after being rejected by Mondo Owada:
      Angie: "No matter what you say, Atua is always watching over you, like a macho, reliable older brother."
      Mondo: "Tch, get out of here!"
      Angie: "Nyahahahaha! If you ever wanna know what Atua is saying... you can visit me anytime."
      Narrator: "You [Mondo] cooked some more yakisoba to clear your mind of Angie's words..."
    • Also from the Ultimate Talent Development Plan, Izuru Kamukura tells Angie to her face that all her talk of Atua is really just something she does to get what she wants from other people. Much to her and Atua(?)'s thinly veiled anger.
    • If you interpret Angie as a Nice Girl who cares for the other students and manipulates them to protect them, she could be seen as a Deconstruction of this trope, showing that one can be "Manipulative" without being a "Bitch", or alternatively, it doesn't matter how well-intentioned you are, other people will not trust or like you if you blatantly toy with their feelings to get what you want, which ironically is also something Kokichi repeatedly fails to grasp.
  • Marshmallow Hell: In her Love Suite Event, she glomps Shuichi onto the bed, then straddles his thighs and then after a bit, she hugs him again, which Shuichi notes leaves his face buried in her chest.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: When she speaks on behalf of Atua. It's not confirmed if she actually is some sort of oracle or if she is just delusional with rather keen instincts, since "Atua's" conclusions that the Mastermind came out of the secret room to kill Rantaro and the dangers of the flashback lights turned out a lot more accurate than initially believed. We also don't know what would have happened if she was allowed to finish the ritual meant to resurrect the dead classmates, and if it could work if that would have had more to do with actual magic or be more connected to the "Truman Show" Plot reveal. Ultimate Summer Camp keeps this up, with things like her saying to Shirokuma could never have a flower bloom in his heart.
  • Meaningful Name: The kanji of her surname, 夜長, means "long night", and she certainly ends up having a long night of the night of her murder.
  • Mythology Gag: Like Hiyoko before her, she is killed because she stumbles in on the killer setting up a trap for murder and gets a blade to her neck so she can't tell anyone, and they're both the first ones to die in Chapter Three. And like both Hiyoko and Hifumi, they were both killed so they couldn't reveal what they knew.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Searching for a candle to finish the Necronomicon ritual to resurrect Rantaro and confronting Korekiyo in one of the empty rooms on the fourth floor while he was setting up the seesaw traps allowed Korekiyo to kill her and make his murder of her unsolvable. If she never let her enthusiasm regarding the ritual consume her, he would've been easily identified for Tenko's murder instead.
  • No Ontological Inertia: After Angie's death, the cult she made earlier that chapter disbands as they can't believe in Atua anymore, given everything that happened.
  • No Sense of Personal Space: Part of the reason she's a Cuddle Bug, is that she likes to get physically close to others as shown in her fourth Free Time, with Shuichi repeatedly has to tell her. She and he both note they got "physically and emotionally closer".
  • Obliviously Evil: She's ultimately more of a Spoiled Brat than an actual villain and has sincerely good intentions but can't recognize that her way of pursuing them is wrong. Lampshaded by Maki, who points out that she can do cruel things so innocently.
  • Occult Blue Eyes: At first they appear to be Innocent Blue Eyes, but don't let her outward kindness fool you. She's a Manipulative Bitch who's shown to be quite hypocritical, and establishes a strict cult come Chapter 3. Said cult is also hell-bent on making sure everyone lives their lives at the academy in peace- the very same thing the Bad Ending in the original game portrays!
  • Older Than She Looks: Not as bad as Himiko, but she looks fairly young for her age.
  • Pals with Jesus: Atua is speaking with her all the time, according to her.
  • Perpetual Smiler: Almost all of her sprites show her smiling, and even when she isn't happy she always tries to hide that. Only 3 of her 26 sprites don't have a smile.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • She helps Himiko organize her magic show to lift everyones' spirits.
    • She makes statues for all of the deceased students in Chapter 3, even though she supposedly only needed to make Rantaro's for the resurrection ritual.
    • She has another significant one in Chapter 3 when she learns that Tenko was only spying on her student council; instead of getting angry or trying to manipulate Tenko into joining for real, Angie just smiles, says she's disappointed and calls her misguided, and leaves her in peace.
  • Playful Cat Smile: Has a cat smile in the sprite where she's "meditating", giving her a playful aura, and her happiest sprite has a small one, as well.
  • Preacher Man: Most of her lines of dialogue have her talking about "Kami-sama" rather than a god from an existing religion. This is translated as "Atua" in the English version, originating from Pacific Mythology, to stress she has no connection to the Christian preacher stereotype. Her religious preaches go on into a cultist conversion; by chapter 3, she convinced half of the surviving students to worship Atua.
  • Properly Paranoid: She destroys one of the Flashback Lights believing that they only serve to sow discord among the group. Once it's revealed that they have been implanting false memories all along, her decision comes off as rather prescient.
  • Recurring Element:
    • Like Aoi and Akane from the past two games, Angie is the resident dark-skinned girl of the group and has a bubbly personality like Aoi. Unlike them, she does not survive.
    • She's also the third student in the franchise along with Leon and Sonia who has a distinctly non-Japanese name.
  • Scam Religion: The exact details of her religion's beliefs and practices are vague, but from what Angie says quite a few signs point to this, with there being various levels of "membership", and low-ranking members having "points deducted" if they do not keep those above them entertained.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: Says that rituals on her island were frequently done in the nude, so she has no problem with being naked. Because of this, she tries to strip Shuichi in her third Free Time, which causes him to yell at her. This causes her to fall in love with him after he at first thinks she's angry at him for him yelling at her to stop.
  • She Knows Too Much: She walks in on the third case's killer setting up the trap that they later use to kill another student, and is killed to keep her from telling anyone else, much like Hiyoko before her.
  • Signature Laugh: She has a sprightly "Nyahahaha"!
  • Skewed Priorities: In Chapter Two, she seems to care more about Gonta interrupting the magic show than she does about Himiko possibly getting seriously hurt if she bungles the trick.
  • Skinship Grope: Angie makes an offer to do this to Tsumugi in the girls' locker room during the event triggered by the "Gun of Man's Passion" present when seeing her topless chest, completely interested because of how big they are. Whether or not Tsumugi actually allows her to do it is left unknown as the cosplayer's only response is "What? I mean...it's embarrassing if you touch them..."
  • Slain in Their Sleep: She is knocked unconscious with a blow to the head, moved to another room, and then killed by a stab wound to her neck.
  • Spoiled Brat: She is worshipped back on her island, which leads to her believing that everything she does is right. As she reveals in Free Time Events, Shuichi is the first person to ever yell at her.
  • Spoiled Sweet: While she is spoiled, she also tends to do things that are in the group's best interests
  • Tareme Eyes: Angie has round blue eyes, and they emphasize her cheerful and optimistic personality.
  • Tautological Templar: As long as she follows Atua's guidance, she can do no wrong.
  • Third-Person Person: Only in the Japanese version, to add to her quirky, overly joyful personality.
  • Token Evil Teammate: Not intentionally, (possibly), but she's the most apparently "evil" of the girls, as the establishment of the "Student Council" makes her come across as more of a threat than even Maki. She's nowhere near as bad as Tsumugi, though, given how she does at least genuinely care about her classmates.
  • Token Religious Teammate: She's actually the first in the main game series.
  • Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Played With. Her portrait during the class trials doesn't have an X on it like every other dead person, it instead has a red halo and red angel wings, but Angie herself is not a wholly sympathetic character. Notably, the trial spends far more time focusing on Tenko's death than hers.
  • Toxic Friend Influence: Perhaps not maliciously, but Angie is this to Himiko, as the more involved Himiko becomes with Angie/Atua, the more she starts to detach from reality and goes along with Angie's will instead of her own, much to Tenko's dismay. To a lesser extent, she could be seen as this to the whole student council (barring Tenko and Tsumugi, who were both faking it), as for a brief period in Chapter Three they begin enforcing Angie's will, causing a rift between those on the student council and the remaining students, and making it impossible for Shuichi to do any of their Free Time Events during that time. After Angie dies, the council disbands almost immediately.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Her report card states that she likes avocados.
  • True Art Is Incomprehensible: Enough so that it knocks Shuichi out in her third Free Time event and in her final Free Time, she draws a portrait of Shuichi that doesn't even look human, though he doesn't get knocked out. Hiyoko is one of the few that really "get" her art, in Ultimate Talent Development Plan, saying "it felt like I was struck by lightning..." It doesn't mean they get along, as she still finds Angie weird and annoying, despite viewing Angie's art when she can.
  • Verbal Tic:
    • She tends to say certain words or phrases twice, such as "But, but", "C'mon, c'mon", "No, no", "Hmm, hmm" and "I see, I see".
    • She also mentions Atua in her speech pretty much constantly. She rarely goes more than a few sentences without bringing him up.
  • Wacky Marriage Proposal: At the end of Angie's Free Time events and "Love Across The Universe", she asks Shuichi to become her husband and live with her forever, much to his shock. Unlike with Sonia and Hajime, the only other time in the series that one of the students proposes to the other in Free Time, Shuichi's a lot more hesitant about marriage to her. Shuichi doesn't say no, he just wants them to get to know each other more before he becomes engaged to her.
  • Walking Swimsuit Scene: Her outfit consist of only an open yellow coat, a blue skirt and a bikini. Notably, her swimsuit sprites from Ultimate Summer Camp are just her normal ones without her jacket.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: When she sets up her "Student Council" she ends up splitting the class in half and comes across as a tyrant, but she did it in an attempt to stop the killing game in a "peaceful" way. However, she can come across as a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist instead if you see her tyranny as primarily an attempt to regain the sense of control she had on her people back home due to her status as "the voice of Atua", not unlike why Celeste made the nighttime rule in the first game.

    Miu Iruma 

Alternative Title(s): New Dangan Ronpa V 3 Female Students

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