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Tag: nagito komaeda

IN CHARACTER
Name: Nagito Komaeda.
Canon: Dangan Ronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Canon Point: Chapter Four; after winning Russian roulette, but before entering the Octagon.
Age: Unknown, but he is in his third year of high school so there you go.

History: The wiki has a great summary of events.

Personality: Nagito Komaeda is a doozy of a character.

To understand him (impossible as it may seem), one must first look at the two concepts that form the basis of his morals, his personality, and virtually his entire life. These two concepts are A. 'hope', and B. 'luck'.

'Hope' is the center of Komaeda's universe, but it has many definitions. When someone is keeping calm in a stressful situation, that's hope. When someone is determined to fight for their goals, that's also hope. A combination of optimism and talent, that's hope too. In fact, most of Komaeda's nonsensical hope speeches during the trials make much more sense when one switches out the word 'hope' for the word 'motive'. In that way, he actually is trying to contribute to the discussion... it's just that he makes so little sense (and he's so creepy about it) that everyone else simply tells him to back off.

In Komaeda's mind, all motivations boil down to hope or despair, and he will always support the one with the most hope. For example, if a murderer is motivated enough to escape the Island of Mutual Killing, Komaeda will support them wholeheartedly… until the other students prove said murderer's guilt, therefore proving their hope is stronger. At this point Komaeda will start supporting the innocents.

'Luck', on the other hand, is easier to understand. Komaeda was accepted into Hope's Peak Academy as Super High School Level Luck, and he views that "talent" as more of a burden than anything else — but not for the reasons that one might assume. While it is true that he was admitted to Hope's Peak through a random lottery, Komaeda's luck is actually a documented and highly mercurial phenomenon. Whenever something bad happens to him, something good will happen shortly afterwards to even out the bad luck. Likewise, when something good happens to him, he expects equal bad luck to come his way as well. He can’t control this at all.

The students of Hope's Peak Academy are Komaeda's idols, without a doubt. He admires them for using their given talents to spread hope in mankind, and indeed seems to hold them on a pedestal. To Komaeda, there are two types of people in the world: those with talent and those without. The people with talent should use their power for good, and deserve to be respected... the people without talent, however, are never going to amount to anything. Komaeda sees himself in the latter category -- worthless garbage. Komaeda constantly makes references to the fact that he is pathetic, unworthy, incapable of anything even remotely important; "trash" is one of his favourite self-descriptive words. He also tends to assume that other people see him the same way, as if his unworthiness is obvious to anyone who looks at him. Despite this, he is typically a major player in class trials, where he proves himself to be one of the most observant and intelligent people on the island.

Because of his luck, Komaeda has learned to be on the lookout for potential disasters all the time. Most of the time in the main game, he isn't constantly worrying about what terrible things might happen to him, but that's only because he doesn't see himself as worth preserving. In the canon AU Dangan Island, after Komaeda's self-image starts to gradually improve, he begins explaining to Hinata about all the things that could possibly happen to him -- at one point, he seriously suggests that inspecting a statue might lead to them discovering a portal to Hell. His fears do have a basis: disasters really do happen to him at absolutely random times, and in unlikely ways. For example, in the plane incident where his parents died, the plane didn't just crash; a meteor ran into it. Komaeda's luck just draws truly unlikely events to him.

Komaeda's found a way to use his luck to his advantage, though. When making plans, he's able to trust in his luck completely; for example, when he was tasked with playing Russian roulette, Komaeda loaded five bullets into the gun instead of one. He still survived. At one point, during his ridiculously complex murder plot in Chapter Five, he counted on his luck to ensure that the traitor would be the one to kill him -- even though he didn't even know who the traitor was. And yes, it still worked.

It takes him a very long time to form relationships, for multiple reasons. He seems to be constantly waiting for others to judge him or berate him, and is genuinely surprised if they don't. Some part of him really does want people to care about him, it's just that he believes it'll never happen. Unfortunately, the assumption that others will dislike him is based in truth; after a while, most people do dislike him, and for very good reason.

For one thing, he has a serious problem with empathy; namely, that he has virtually none at all for those who get in the way of his "fowarding of hope". Komaeda can understand other people's feelings clear as day, and is actually quite good at reading them -- the only problem is, most of the time he just doesn't care. The SHSL students are a special case; he really does like them, but mostly because of the hope they represent. Once he learned about their pasts as harbingers of despair, he started treating them as the scum of the earth.

On Dangan Island, an AU where everything is happy and fun and murderless, Komaeda actually seems to be developing a fondness for Hinata (and not his hope)... but he always backs off at the last moment, or changes his wording to avoid the implications of serious interpersonal relationships. And this is in the best possible scenario. Given enough time and a Despair-free environment, it's not unreasonable to believe that Komaeda would continue to improve and learn how to socialize normally. If those conditions aren't met, his twisted view of others will only continue to get worse.

He also has some very twisted morals compared to other people. He can see that other people get mad at him when they find out they're being manipulated, but he continues to try and manipulate people anyway, because as long as everything goes according to plan, those people will be happier in the long run. So it's totally okay, right?

In addition to this, Komaeda is an alarmingly good manipulator. On several occasions, he comes up with a plan that will ultimately lead to the forwarding of hope. Whether it’s 'goad a bunch of students to come to the same place so he can interrogate them' or 'set up a disaster while convincing everyone else he is doing nothing wrong', Komaeda will happily lie to people all day long if it's for a good cause. Related to this: he is typically the first one to figure out the details of a given murder, but does not share the information immediately. Instead, he withholds information/lies/drops cryptic hints until the other students realize he's fucking with them, at which point he decides their "hope" is strong enough for him to actually help them win the trial. Whenever someone calls him out (and can prove he’s lying), he will openly admit to deceiving them, and applauds the other person for their skills.

Worth noting: the thing Komaeda hates most in the world is despair, obviously, but by the time of the game's events, he is already falling into despair himself. His 'maniacal sprites', which show up as early as the first trial, have a blue tint on his face and swirls in his eyes -- both of these traits are Dangan Ronpa visual shorthand for 'falling into despair', as seen with Mikan. Later, we learn that almost the entire cast of SDR2 were actually members of SHSL Despair whose memories of Hope's Peak were wiped, and that Mikan was beginning to relapse back into her despair -- therefore, it's not at all difficult to theorize that Komaeda has been having despair relapses as well. However, it's unclear whether Komaeda was gaining the despair because of relapse into his 'real self', or because he was already halfway into despair before coming to Hope's Peak.

The despair also explains why he is so keen on painting himself as nothing but a stepping-stone for others; he states time after time that he would never be capable of single-handedly bringing the world hope, because in some capacity, he knows he has already fallen into despair. And no, he’s not concerned about this; it’s just a fact of life. The sky is blue, the grass is green, Nagito Komaeda has been tainted by despair and will never recover enough to become a true harbinger of hope like his classmates. There’s simply no reason for him to try and do something he knows is already factually impossible.
Contracts: Komaeda’s very used to ridiculous things happening to him; he figures that this must be the “bad luck” to make up for the “good luck” of winning Russian roulette. He’s concerned for the well-being of everyone back in canon, but figures that they can probably get through even without someone like him – and besides, he’ll be going back home anyway. He happily signs the contract.

Abilities/Skills: Nothing beyond human. I mean, sure, there's the whole 'luck' thing, but it's not something that he consciously controls and honestly I think just existing in the game will make enough good/bad things happen to him.

Strengths/Weaknesses: + Logic. He’s actually very clever and a quick thinker. He picks up new tasks and concepts quickly.
+ Cat herder. Komaeda is surprisingly good at encouraging cooperation, particularly during trials. He is able to defuse arguments and bring people back to the main point... when he wants to.
+ Great at cleaning. He says at one point that it’s “the only thing he’s good at,” which is amazing considering he tends to downplay his skills.

— Questionable tactics. Komaeda is a firm believer in "the end justifies the means."
— Empathy problems. Related to the above, Komaeda doesn’t seem to care much for people’s thoughts or feelings. Not recommended for therapy or counseling work.
— Frailty. Komaeda is in very bad shape due to chronic illness, and can’t do a lot of manual labour.
Items: All clothing visible here; this knife, originally belonging to Mukuro (the girl in the picture) and given to him by Hinata

SAMPLES
Network Sample: Network post from a game I played him at previously.

Prose/Action Sample: [Ever since he got here, Komaeda has been feeling the distinct impression that he missed a lot.]

[Granted, everything about this… spaceship is new and unusual to him. He’s never actually been on a spaceship before, much less an intergalactic spaceship that looks like it was modeled after the world of Tron or something. But he’s heard mutterings from other workers on the ship, something about glass and death? It makes no sense to him, but then again, he never asked them for clarification. Everyone who has spoken to him has been nice, despite the clouds of sadness and despair that hang over all of them.]

[Yes, even though he doesn’t know exactly what, it’s clear that these people have been through something truly despair-inducing. And yet, here they are, still going about their business, rebuilding the things that were apparently broken, drawing upon their inner stores of hope – and they even found it in their hearts to welcome someone like him, an interloper, who wandered in amidst the rubble asking things of the people who had already given so much.]

[Komaeda has decided that he likes these people. And he wants to help them however he can. Unfortunately, he arrived a little bit too late to really be of use with the cleaning and repairs – a pity, because cleaning up after other people is something that he both enjoys doing and is moderately skilled at. It doesn’t put a lot of strain on his frail and mostly-useless body, so long as he takes things slow.]

[He wishes he could go faster. Be better. And he tries to do that. But if anything major happens in his life, if he miraculously becomes as strong as an ox and fast as a cheetah, it’s because the inexplicable force called Luck made it so.]

[He’s always powerless compared to a force like that.]