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eyeswideopenPlayer: Sam
Contact: Aim: snowclawx, plurk: skyheron, email: dreamingofyoutonight@gmail.com
Age: 29
Current Characters: N/A
Character: Nagito Komaeda
Age: All the material says he's a highschooler, which places him roughly at 17-18. That's the best I can get until they flat out state his age.
Canon: Dangan Ronpa 2
Canon Point: Chaper 4, after discovering the secret of the funhouse but before opening the Hope's Peak file.
Background: For the sake of consistency, and working with cast-mates already in game, I'm using translations and terminology from the official Western release of the game. With so many fan translations—several for prior material (he appears in Dangan Ronpa Another Episode as well, which takes place before Dangan Ronpa 2)—sticking to one version makes for far less confusion.
Nagito Komaeda started his life out, as far as we can tell from all materials listed, fairly quietly with his family. It all changed when they went to take a trip somewhere and the plane was hijacked. A meteor crashed into the plane, taking out the hijackers, but at the same time his parents. He had no other family and was left to raise himself with the fortune he inherited. More incidents occurred from then on; first bad luck would hit, followed by a good luck that would override whatever the bad luck did. The second instance mentioned is when he was still a child and was kidnapped by a serial killer. He found a winning lottery ticket in the bag he was stuffed in.
Events like this continued, dominating and taking over his life. The most notable of these is when he was diagnosed with late stage lymphoma and progressed into frontotemporal lobe dementia. Shortly after this turn of terrible luck, he received the letter of acceptance to Hope's Peak Academy.
Within his attendance at the school, he was pulled into the despair that Junko fostered in many of her followers. It's never mentioned how it happened but like the rest of her surviving followers, he was captured and taken to an island where his memories of his years attending the school were erased. Thus starting the events of the second game.
Personality:
At a first glance, Nagito Komaeda comes off friendly and harmless. He's cheerful despite any situation presented to him and looks on the positive side. He easily engages with other people and picks up on small details. Within the opening of Dangan Ronpa 2, he's already introduced himself to the rest of his classmates. He recites their names and talents with ease. He makes a point of staying with Hinata, the protagonist, and making sure he's alright. It all looks so rosy on the surface.
Yet there's far more to his outgoing nature. In his eyes, one's luck can turn in an instant. In fact, he counts on this. Every bit of bad luck will always be followed by good luck that outweighs the bad. He can be excited no matter the occasion because the good will always triumph in the end. He doesn't do it out of a selfish want or need. He genuinely seeks to make the old saying 'good always wins' into a reality. Instead of rejecting Monokuma's declaration they should kill each other, he sees it as a chance for hope to be cultivated. There is very little choice in his eyes, because his luck will always dominate and control his life.
He loves hope and those that embody it, but has no sense of hope for himself. To him, he can't benefit others with his talent and is akin to a person without talent. He sees those who can't control their destiny by will or talent as trash or step ladders to be used. He frequently refers to himself as 'someone like me', and puts himself down. At one point he calls himself a bystander. His luck has had a significant influence on him to breed this way of thinking.
In the free time events and island mode (a mode of the game where the murders didn't happen) he mentions to the main character, Hajime Hinata, that he thinks the island will be where he dies. He never intended to survive the murders taking place in the series. At the time of his canon point, he believes he's content with being used and killed off for the others. Considering himself useless and without a true purpose, in his eyes it's fine to die. He's very comfortable with the idea of dying for a cause.
Part of his reasoning ties into the terminal illnesses he was diagnosed with prior to his admittance into Hope's Peak Academy. His lymphoma is physical, but the second of his illnesses is vastly important to discuss. Frontotemporal dementia causes the brain to rot and distorts a person's mind until they die. There are numerous symptoms, but the ones that can be matched to his behavior include delusions and compulsive behavior.
His delusional and fixated views of hope and despair persist in this tamer version of Nagito and get progressively worse, as seen in the despairing version in Despair girls. He willingly assists in turning a city into a bloodbath of adults vs. children, claiming it's for the sake of hope. Disfiguring himself, killing, or even dying are nothing so long as hope comes of it. In his last bit of dialogue, he expresses that if his actions lead to hope, to remember him and call him hope itself.
On the flip side of his obsession with hope is his hatred of despair. If someone plans to foster it, he will oppose them. He'll kill them if he gets the chance. When Nagito uncovered that Tsumiki fell into despair, he ruthlessly pursued the facts to lead to her conviction as a murderer. He treated his classmates like bothersome vermin when he found out they were former remnants of despair. The shift in behavior was so obvious that everyone noticed it. Considering he started insulting them at every turn and acting above them, that's hardly surprising.
Let's not forget his poor sense of social awareness. Frequently he comes up with something completely inappropriate to say, like when he casually dismissed Tsumiki's death. She was despair; why should he care? She got what she deserved, according to his thoughts. At times, when bodies were discovered, he'd go right back to talking about how it should have been him who died. There's a discord between his thoughts in his head and what he says sometimes, like when he meant to express concern and sympathy for Fuyuhiko and ended up sounded like he was calling him a cry baby. I say "poor" because he's well aware he says the wrong thing, but doesn't have much ability to control it. He sees it as his ideals pushing others away.
Nagito tells himself he's content with his lot in life, but the reality is he's very lonely. As he tells Hajime in the final free-time event and in his final message, he wants to be noticed and loved by someone. This is supported by his recorded will at the end of chapter 5. In both bits of dialogue he speaks about not wanting to die and to be cared for.
While we're on the subject, his relationship with Hajime is important to go over. At first they got along fairly well, back before Nagito's true colors were revealed. On his side nothing changed, but he expected Hajime to want nothing to do with him. What happened was quite the opposite. No matter what he did, he still got to talk to him, and even if Hajime was mad at him, it was some attention. In island mode of the game, where no killings happen, he worries over making a mistake that will make Hajime hate him. It's very clear he values his friendship and companionship.
Some of it even he doesn't understand. After he discovered their past, he still had interest in Hajime and tried to tell him what he found out. He never chased after him and the fact Hajime kept talking to him was a puzzle he didn't know how to solve. It's very likely that Nagito himself didnn't quite understand what he felt about Hajime and that's how I plan to play it.
Despite his flaws, he is incredibly intelligent. He picks out the details and little things that lead to convictions and the execution of the students who commit murder. His thoughts on everyone being better than him lead him to taking a point position and guiding his friends to the conclusions. Yet most of the cases are solved by the information and questions he presents. In trial 3, Hajime even turns to him and asks for help. Even his own plan to be murdered was so carefully thought out and planned, his intellect and knowledge of his peers shows through. It's only how close Hajime is to Nagito that helped them to survive.
Nagito's smarts can be very deadly, especially when paired with his strong ambition and ability to understand others. His scheming and manipulations are what trapped the class in the cycle of murder. It's important to look at how he subtlety goaded both the victim and the murderer into acting. His murder plans are also the most meticulous.
Let's return to island mode. While Nagito's speech is similar to his game canon self, there's a softer edge to it. Naegi hints that if there is nothing dangerous to a situation, he's a harmless individual and that much is fairly supported by this mode. He prefers hanging out in libraries and napping under trees to anything adventurous. It's when he has a purpose that his harmless behaviors transform. For good or ill, Nagito can in an instant become a very dangerous element to any situation.
Abilities:
Nagito is called Ultimate Luck for a very good reason. In any situation were luck is involved, he can turn it to his advantage. In a game of Russian Roulette, with five bullets in the chamber and one sixth of a chance of survival... he survived. However, this doesn't mean his luck is always good. From his early life to the present, when luck visits him it starts out with bad. His parents were killed by the meteor that saved his life from hijackers. He was hit by a truck before he met a cute nurse. Even important moments in canon that impact his life, his diagnosis with terminal illness before being accepted into Hope's Peak academy.
Let's look at this as a math problem, using the canon event he will be taken from. For the purpose of explaining, I'll include the whole event and note where he will be taken from in the equation.
Trapped in the fun house (bad) + Survived Russian Roulette in the Final Dead room (good) + Obtained Hope's Peak file on his class (BAD) *this is where he's from = Nagito decides to set up a means to expose the traitor to their group and kill everyone else.
All of it stems from his wildly swinging luck. If you want to nerf this ,I'm down for it but he'll notice it missing very quickly.
Alignment:
Peromei
Hope is something Nagito will do anything to achieve. He fosters it in others, and believes there are those chosen to embody it. If he needs to die to make someone's hope brighter, he'll do it.
Hand in hand with that, he will cultivate despair so that a shining and powerful hope will overcome it. In order to rip out all seeds of despair he believes it has to be out in the open. For it's only when you face the abyss that you can truly destroy despair.
Other:
Sample:
Sample thread from the test drive.
Questions: None so far!
