Seiko Kimura

Seiko Kimura (忌村 静子 Kimura Seiko) is a character featured in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy and a participant in the Final Killing Game.

Seiko is a member of Future Foundation and is the leader of the 4th Division. Her responsibility is to aid in the development of new medicine and medical treatments.

During her time at Hope's Peak Academy's Class 76th, her title was Ultimate Pharmacist (超高校級の「薬剤師」chō kōkō kyū no "yakuzaishi") until she was expelled after she got involved in a bombing incident.

Seiko is the third victim of the brainwashing video and forced to commit suicide in the Final Killing Game, becoming the fifth victim overall.

Appearance
Seiko is a short woman with purple eyes and a sickly complexion. She has a pale grey hair and a respirator mask covering her mouth. She wears a dark-colored jacket with the Future Foundation ID pinned to the lapel, a white dress shirt, a dark miniskirt held by a purple belt, long black stockings, and purple Mary Janes. Under her respirator mask, she wears braces. She also wears purple gloves with a single white stripe in the middle. Her eyes give her a frightening look.

After consuming some of her drugs, her appearance changes drastically in a very short amount of time. Her eyes turn darker shade of purple with symbols resembling flames. Her body tenses, her hair turns very long, and her nails and teeth grow long and sharp. In this form, she appears much stronger and faster and she runs on all fours.

During her high school years, she wore the uniform of Hope's Peak Academy with a purple vest and a brown belt. She wore the same stockings, gloves and mask.

Personality
Seiko has a reserved personality and stilted way of speaking. As a pharmacist, she has an extensive knowledge of medicine and drugs. She created many different kinds of drugs, including ones that can drastically change one's physical appearance and make them much faster and stronger.

Much like Kyoko Kirigiri, she is conscious of how easy it is for people to guess what she is thinking through her facial expressions, so she hides her face behind a mask. She gets startled easily and appears quite anxious, and during her time in high school she was shown to be quite shy too. She is very meticulous while dealing with medicine.

Seiko is shown to be one of the more compassionate members of Future Foundation, as she shows remorse over both Chisa Yukizome and Daisaku Bandai's deaths, and angry with herself for not being able to save them. During her high school years, Seiko was described as soft-hearted, and she often took requests from other students such as Teruteru Hanamura, Nagito Komaeda and Ruruka Ando. She also loves animals, providing care for an injured animal at no charge, as well as producing a number of medicines specially formulated for use on animals.

Because of her soft nature, Seiko (similar to Mikan Tsumiki) is very loyal and forgiving to people who are friendly or helpful towards her. Because she is unable to eat Ruruka's sweets due to her medicine, she felt guilty and tried to compensate by helping her whenever she needed it. When Ruruka attempted to get her to kill Kyosuke Munakata, Seiko refused (and ultimately attacked Ruruka out of anger) because Kyosuke had helped her after she had been expelled from Hope's Peak Academy.

Ultimate Pharmacist
Seiko garnered much attention from within the pharmaceutical industry because she had found new uses for already existing medicine. Vying for her talent, many pharmaceutical companies had reached out to her, claiming they want to offer her their extensive assistance, but she only accepted the minimum help with her research.

Seiko can create just about kind of medicine for something common like laxatives and cold medication to more ludicrous concoctions such as strength enhancers and super healing medication. She is trusted by the Future Foundation to distribute medicine to victims of the Tragedy. Seiko even created Cure W, which saved Kyoko Kirigiri's life even after she had violated her NG Code and been poisoned as a result.

Combat Ability
Seiko has some experience in fighting, or at least when she consumes one of her strength enhancer concoctions. She is able to defend herself against Sonosuke Izayoi, someone who has much experience in fighting.

Prior to the Tragedy
Seiko had gone to the same school with Ruruka and Sonosuke all through elementary, middle and high school. The three of them first met when Seiko failed to save a dog from a car accident. Ruruka and Sonosuke were amazed at how effective her medicine was and Ruruka took a liking to her. It was revealed after Ruruka tried to share her sweets with Seiko that she was unable to eat them, due to the dangerous side effects that sugar causes when mixed with her medicine. Because of this, and because Ruruka claimed Seiko as a friend, Seiko offered to help Ruruka in any other way that she could.

As a teenager, Seiko was scouted to attend Hope's Peak as part of the 76th Class as the Ultimate Pharmacist, and was classmates with Ruruka and Sonosuke. Because of an event that happened during their Practical Exam in their 2nd or 3rd year, all three of them were expelled.

After being expelled, Seiko was implied to have been homeless and without a place to go when Kyosuke, Chisa, and Juzo Sakakura stepped in to offer her help.

Episode 04 - The Melancholy, Surprise, and Disappearance of Nagito Komaeda
During their practical exam in their second year, an incident involving Nagito's plot to stop the exam caused Seiko's super-laxative drug to be mixed into Ruruka's pastry, instead of a strength drug. This, combined with Seiko, unfortunately receiving Nagito's bomb switch (which was later triggered, resulting in an explosion), resulted in Seiko, Ruruka, and Sonosuke expelled from Hope's Peak Academy. Seiko and Ruruka both felt betrayed by one another in some way, placing the blame of expulsion upon each other, causing a rift in their friendship.

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak Academy - Side: Future
At some point in time after getting recruited by Koichi Kizakura for the Future Foundation, she became the head of the 4th Division. Her responsibility as the 4th Division leader is to aid in the development of new medicine and medical treatments.

Episode 01 - Third Time's the Charm
During a flashback at the beginning of the episode, Seiko is shown stopping Mikan Tsumiki from jabbing a needle into a patient's eye, quickly smacking it away. This leads to Mikan's capture.

Seiko attended Makoto's trial along with the other ten Division leaders of Future Foundation. At some point during the discussion, Seiko agreed with Juzo's statement to execute Makoto for protecting the Remnants of Despair, as they needed to be exterminated. Soon after his arrival, Makoto was injured by Juzo and Kyosuke agreed to postpone the trial.

Seiko remained inside the boardroom until an attack was launched by an unknown enemy. Seiko suspected that among their groups, someone had already told their location to the enemy. When a strange little ball with Monokuma's design was suddenly thrown inside the room, she was the first one to notice that it was actually filled with sleeping gas. However, she and the others were quickly rendered to sleep before they could contact to the HQ.

After she woke up, Seiko and the others found a Monokuma bracelet had been set up on their wrists. Monokuma, who had been resurrected, announced the Final Killing Game featuring the Division leaders of Future Foundation. This started when Chisa's body fell from the ceiling.

Episode 02 - Hang the Witch
After Monokuma announced the rules of the Final Killing Game, Seiko showed her anger towards the Remnants of Despair. When she waited for everyone's vote for the attacker, Seiko witnessed Daisaku dying after he accidentally violated his NG Code. She immediately poured a substance to Daisaku and confirmed his death.

In a vote to determine who each of the remaining members individually thought was the attacker, Seiko pointed to Ruruka, but mistakenly pointed to Makoto by Kyosuke.

Episode 03 - Cruel Violence and Hollow Words
Seiko is seen walking around the halls, out of breath and tired. She saw Aoi Asahina and Miaya Gekkogahara and gave chase to them. Later, she ran into Ruruka and Sonosuke and ends up getting into a heated argument with the former. She took her mask off, revealing that she wore braces. Seiko then ate some sort of green pills that she invented, causing her to go into a berserk-like state. Her eyes turned purple, her hair grew longer, and her body became more muscular.

Sonosuke threw a knife at her as he and Ruruka began to flee, but Seiko caught it in her mouth and broke it before running after them.

Episode 04 - Who is a Liar
Still on her pursuit, Seiko tried to catch both Sonosuke and Ruruka. All of the traps that have been set by Sonosuke were easily thwarted by her immunity given from her green pills. She chased them down until her movement was halted by Sonosuke.

When Sonosuke let Ruruka escape alone, she tried to calm Seiko down and reminded her that they used to be friends. However, Seiko didn't accept her excuse, revealing her hatred toward both of them and saying that because of them she was expelled from Hope's Peak Academy. Seiko managed to destroy the door and continue her pursuit.

Episode 05 - Dreams of Distant Days
It starts with showing the backstory of how Seiko met Ruruka and Sonosuke and how she got to befriend them at a young age. Seiko wondered how their friendship could led them to their current situation.

In an open area showered with stage lamp, Seiko saw Sonosuke and attacked him immediately. It turned out as a trap set by the former Ultimate Blacksmith and injured Seiko's right hand. She quickly recovered her right hand using a substance injected to his right shoulder. Seiko is then shown fighting Sonosuke, but smelled Ruruka and decided to go after her instead. Ruruka was afraid, but then learned Seiko's forbidden action, which is letting someone step on her shadow. Seiko responded by breaking all of the lights in the room before Ruruka can walk on her shadow, and proceeded to break the window that was keeping the two apart.

After breaking open the window, Seiko chased after Ruruka before stopping and catching her breath where she meets Makoto, Juzo and Hina. Miaya then appeared and tried to fight back against Juzo by sending missiles towards him, which Seiko is hit by.

Later, Seiko is shown walking by herself, thinking about how all she wanted was to be Ruruka's friend again. She also regretted that she couldn't prevent her comrades' demise. The timer on her bracelet goes off and she goes to sleep for the final time. While she was asleep, she was brainwashed into killing herself. At the end of the episode, Seiko is shown being hung up on a wall, with a knife stabbed into her heart.

Episode 06 - No Man is an island
Seiko's body is discovered by Koichi. The knife that had been used to kill her had been removed by Ruruka to hide the true cause of Sonosuke's death.

Episode 11 - All Good Things
Seiko is seen in a flashback, revealing that she was brainwashed into committing suicide. She is seen slamming herself against the wall over and over again, breaking the wall and causing the water to leak inside the building.

Side: Hope - The Academy of Hope and Students of Despair
It is later discovered that during the Final Killing Game, Seiko had developed an antagonist called Cure W to counteract the effects of the bracelet's poison. Kyoko had discovered this after her death, and took the medicine before her NG code was triggered from Makoto surviving past the fourth time limit, saving her life.

Ruruka Ando
Ruruka is Seiko's childhood friend and fellow member of Class 76th. Ruruka always relied on Seiko to do jobs for her, something that led Seiko to mistakenly believe Ruruka was taking advantage of her. Despite that, the two considered each other as close friends. However, because of Nagito Komaeda, Seiko, Ruruka, and Sonosuke unknowingly got involved in a school bombing and were expelled due to this. These events led Seiko and Ruruka to hate and distrust one another, each believing the other to be a traitor.

However, the two have shown to be regretful of what happened in their past. While Seiko engages Ruruka and Sonosuke in a fight-to-the-death battle, Seiko remembers wanting Ruruka to be her friend, and wonders when everything went wrong. Seiko did not know that Ruruka felt the same way, and was not using her, but just felt glad to have someone she could depend on. In her final moments before being being brainwashed into committing suicide, Seiko's last thought is of Ruruka and how she just wanted to be friends with her.

Sonosuke Izayoi
Sonosuke was an acquaintance of Seiko's and a fellow member of the 76th Class. The two were on good terms, both being good friends of Ruruka until the three were unknowingly involved in a school bombing because of Nagito. This led to them being expelled, and Sonosuke distrusts Seiko now because he believes she was responsible for the event. Seiko, in turn, distrusts Sonosuke, merely because he is Ruruka's partner.

Teruteru Hanamura
While the two are never seen interacting, it's known that they sometimes mixed concoctions together like the doping corn syrup. It is possible that Seiko created the drugs Teruteru sometimes uses for his food. It's unclear if they were friends, or if Seiko just helped him similarly to how she helped other people. Nevertheless, they became enemies after he joined Ultimate Despair and she joined Future Foundation.

Kyosuke Munakata, Chisa Yukizome, and Juzo Sakakura
After being expelled from Hope's Peak Academy, Kyosuke, Chisa, and Juzo helped Seiko get back on her feet, and were the ones who invited her to join the Future Foundation. Seiko is especially thankful to Kyosuke, which is shown when she refused Ruruka's deal which involved getting him killed, although it is implied that Kyosuke would've killed her if given the chance. Seiko also shows regret over not being able to help Chisa, and thinks about not being able to save her from death in her final moments before being murdered herself. Juzo seems to be a bit upset about Seiko's demise after learning of it from Kyoko Kirigiri.

Quotes

 * "If that's it, I should have prepared a truth drug." (talking about Makoto Naegi's betrayal)
 * "You need to throw out the rotten parts, or the whole thing will get rotten."
 * "Why did it have to turn out this way?" (talking about her relationship with Ruruka Ando)

Trivia

 * Her character profile in the Blu-Ray book states that she likes mixing medicines and dislikes loud noises.
 * Her given name, Seiko (静子), means "peaceful child", while her last name, Kimura (忌村), means "mourning village".
 * Seiko's English voice actress, Erin Fitzgerald, also voices Junko Enoshima, Genocide Jack, and Kurokuma.
 * She loves animals, especially cats and dogs.