Mukuro Ikusaba

Mukuro Ikusaba (戦刃 むくろ Ikusaba Mukuro) is one of the characters in ''Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair. Ikusaba has a more prominent role in the prequel novel, Dangan Ronpa/Zero, and the alternate-ending novel, Dangan Ronpa IF''. Her title is Ultimate Soldier (超高校級の「軍人」Chō Kōkō Kyū no "Gunjin"). She is the mysterious sixteenth student, and is the older twin sister of Junko Enoshima.

Appearance
Ikusaba is similar in appearance to her sister Junko Enoshima, but there are some notable differences. Ikusaba's eyes are less round than Enoshima's, her bust is smaller, and she has freckles as well. She has short, bobbed black hair and freckles across the bridge of her nose. Ikusaba has a Fenrir tattoo on her right hand, which she covers up with foundation when disguised as Enoshima.

Personality
Despite being an incredible soldier, Ikusaba is very out-of-touch with her own emotions and only knows how to take orders from Enoshima. She craves her sister's praise and acceptance and will do nearly anything to get it. Because of this, Ikusaba allows herself to be constantly put down by Enoshima and takes her insults to heart.

She admits that she lacks skill in negotiating with others and planning tactics in advance, despite her renown as an excellent soldier.

Pre-Despair Incident
Mukuro was involved in Fenrir before entering Hope's Peak Academy. Like Enoshima, Ikusaba used to be homeless, and had lived in a very harsh environment as a child. She was in the 78th class, becoming classmates with Makoto Naegi and the cast of the first game. Around the events of Dangan Ronpa/Zero, she saved Naegi from Isshiki Madarai, and Naegi held her with high regard because he was saved by Ikusaba a lot, which explained Naegi's kindness toward her in Dangan Ronpa IF.

During that period, she spent a good amount of time masquerading as Junko, while the real Junko's memories were still missing.

High School Life of Mutual Killing
Ikusaba melded into the memory-wiped students of Class 78 as Junko Enoshima, but had to immediately fend off remarks from Naegi that she did not look like the supermodel he had known.

In the anime, Oogami told her during breakfast that she looked different from the magazines she supposedly saw. She then replied that the pictures were edited using a computer.

Shortly after the "first meeting", Ikusaba was brutally impaled by Monobear with numerous spears it dubbed "Spears of Gungnir", as a warning shot to the student body; Ikusaba, having memorized the scenario and had expected to set up a different outcome, was completely caught off guard, never expecting that her sister would kill her. This incident misled the other students into thinking that "Enoshima" was killed.

Later, her dead body was reused by Enoshima - at the time still known as "the mastermind" - to lead the other students into thinking that the unknown sixteenth student, whom they were told was "Mukuro Ikusaba", had died as a result of murder. However, before they could take at closer look at the body, it exploded due to a Monobear bomb, leaving little else other than the Fenrir mark on her hand and her numerous injury marks.

However, the contradiction of the admission reports for Ikusaba (which stated that she did not carry any scars of injuries), the fact that she was explicitly named Mukuro Ikusaba, and the wealth of information that her dead body carried, finally led the students to figure out that they had, in fact, met Ikusaba in disguise, not Enoshima.

Junko Enoshima
Junko was Ikusaba's younger twin sister. Mukuro viewed Junko as being far superior to her and would do anything to earn her praise, even going so far as to join Ultimate Despair and taking part in the School Life of Mutual Killing. She wanted nothing more than for Junko to be happy and to be loved by her, but was aware that she did not subscribe to the exact same notions of despair compared to her sister.

Naegi Makoto
While there were no real interactions between the two in the first game, their relationship is explored and elaborated on in the novel Dangan Ronpa IF.

It is revealed that they were close friends and that Mukuro is in love with Naegi due to him being the first person to ever smile at her. Naegi treated her very kindly and placed his trust in her, even after it was revealed she was partly responsible for what had happened to Hope's Peak Academy.

Quotes

 * "Yoohoo! My name's Junko Enoshima! Great to meet you!"
 * "Are you talking about my magazine cover shots?  Isn't it natural? They were modified by the editors, of course! Photoshopped, y'know? You've never heard of image editing? Hey, don't be so surprised - everyone is doing it. It's not like they had to do heavy modification in my case... These days, editing the photos in a magazine is just the way things are done! They're always making her eyes so big and her skin so ceramic, after all!"
 * "And while we’re at it, we should find whoever is controlling that stuffed toy and give him a good beating."
 * "Sorry, it took me a little while to put on my makeup today!"
 * "H...hey, wait just a minute!! What you’re saying... it’s all so demented!! What’s up with this... “school trial” thing?! I don’t wanna take part in anything like that...! Isn't it obvious...! Why do I have to try to figure out who the culprit is? Isn’t that all messed up?"
 * "Huh....? What....? Isn’t.... that....... strange.....? Why...... was.... I........?"
 * "Junko, you're all I have. So don't worry, little sis. I'm always looking at you, so... I swear I'm going to make you despair. I swear I'll make Naegi-kun and everyone else happy. So when you find joy in that despair, I'll trust in Naegi-kun's hope and bring my eyes back to you."
 * "All of this… for me? Junko is going so far, just for me. Junko… are you looking at me? Thank you, Junko."

Dangan Ronpa IF
She played a more prominent role in this novel. In the novel, she maintained her guise as her younger sister until the scene when she would have normally been killed by the Spears of Gungnir. Naegi, who had been electrically shocked into recovering his memories, finally remembered Ikusaba's name at the last minute, calling out to Ikusaba, giving her enough of a warning to jump out of the way of the spears and survive. However, in the process of trying to save her, Naegi is hit by one of the spears and was gravely injured.

Ikusaba attempted to aid Naegi while Enoshima quickly changed her plans; she pretended to have had the Monobear unit be 'taken over' by "Besshiki Madarai, Ultimate Hacker", alleging that Ikusaba and Naegi were the true culprits behind the students' strange circumstance. Oogami stepped in to interfere, apparently taken in by "Besshiki"'s words, and in preventing Ikusaba from getting away, she ended up fighting to a draw against the ex-mercernary.

As a last resort in order to get to treat Naegi, Mukuro forcibly triggered Genocider Syo's appearance, using the ensuing chaos of Fukawa's drastic personality change to her advantage. She managed to escape from the gymnasium with Naegi, dashing to the infirmary to treat his wounds. Here, she met and was antagonized by Junko in another Monobear unit, who promptly called her useless and a disappointment.

After destroying the Monobear unit, Enoshima appeared on a TV screen and, in an unnaturally kind tone, told Ikusaba that she loves her. While normally touching, Ikusaba was all too aware that that was Junko's way of severing their ties to each other. Although Junko's words momentarily threatened to bring Mukuro to despair, she then resolved to make everyone happy and bring about Junko's ultimate despair.

Soon, Kirigiri and several others arrived at the infirmary to search for Naegi and Ikusaba, most of whom were convinced of Naegi and Ikusaba's supposed treachery. While most of the other students failed, Kirigiri was sharp enough to detect Ikusaba's presence. Yet, true to her well-honed instincts, Kirigiri decided to not raise an alarm, sending most of the remaining party off. Kirigiri had Fujisaki record Ikusaba's testimony, allowing Ikusaba to explain to Kirigiri the truth of the students' current circumstances. Mukuro then resolves to show Junko true despair and leaves the infirmary.

Shortly after that, Mukuro confronts Monobear and demands that Junko open the gates so they can all leave together - leading into a spectacular battle against hundreds of Monobear units.

Despite the grave threat, Mukuro was focused and able to fend off the attacks until Junko used Naegi's voice file - to be precise, at the moment when Naegi screamed for her to get out of the way - to throw her off and defeat her. She was however quickly rescued by Mondo in his motorbike, and was then taken to the cafeteria.

After the entire group learned of the truth of the circumstances from Naegi, Monobear decided to "give them one final chance at freedom". The students of Class 78 took on Monobear's challenge, only to discover that they had to succeed in running past an entire corridor full of exploding Monobear units and reach the escape switch in under 15 seconds. While the situation seemed impossible, with help from Oogami, Ikusaba was able to dash past the exploding Monobear units, and succeeded in retrieving the escape switch from the final Monobear unit before it exploded.

Afterwards, she donned her Junko disguise again, ready to face persecution from all sides for causing the grave worldwide incident. Mirroring the events of the first game, Naegi was given the escape switch, which he pressed to open the doors, thus ending the story in the exact same fashion as in the game, leaving Ikusaba's fate past that point unknown.

Trivia

 * As a member of Fenrir, she passed through many battlefields but never got a single wound.
 * There is a considerable amount of foreshadowing that Mukuro was a soldier while disguised as Junko. One of her favorite free time gifts is field rations and she described her early life as "living in a warzone".
 * The kanji characters that compose her name mean "War Blade Corpse". Her last name can also be translated as "battlefield".
 * When she was killed by the Monobear in the 1st chapter, she was killed by what Monobear called Spear of Gungnir, which Odin used to attack wolf Fenrir in Norse mythology.
 * She has had an interest in military weapons and strategies ever since she was a child.