Leon Kuwata

Leon Kuwata ( 桑田 怜恩 Kuwata Reon) is one of the characters featured in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. He has the title Ultimate Baseball Star (超高校級の「野球選手」chō kōkō kyū no "yakyū senshu"). He was an ace in his position as a fourth batter at his school. Despite having a talent as baseball player, Leon often slacked off from the training and had wanted to change his title to "Ultimate Musician".

He killed Sayaka Maizono in Makoto Naegi's shower room after her failed attempt to kill him. After the trial, Leon was executed by Monokuma.

Appearance
Leon has a punk rock appearance, with red spiked hair, a lot of piercings (especially on his ears) and a goatee. He has pale blue eyes and wears heavy accessories such as a chain necklace and belts. Leon wears a white shirt with a red grunge skull design on it. On top of that, he wears a white jacket with a popped collar. He wears black pants and white shoes with platform soles.

Personality
Leon is a passionate, hot-blooded young teenager. He often slacks off from studying and baseball practice; however, his baseball skills were never diminished due to his status as Ultimate Baseball Star. Leon is also very determined to change his current title to Ultimate Musician.

In his Free Time sequence, the reason for that determination is revealed: to win a heart of a girl that he happened to meet at the hair salon. Later, Leon himself states that he somewhat missed playing baseball; something that he used to do every day since he was young. He even invited Makoto to play baseball with him once they get out of their current situation.

History
[Warning: Several spoilers follow this section!]

Prior to the Tragedy
In the first image that is discovered of the Pre-Despair Incident school life, Leon is shown being in a sort of rough-housing-group-hug with Chihiro Fujisaki and Mondo Owada. In other pictures, he has his arm on Sayaka's chair, he splashes water in Junko Enoshima's face, he appears to be in third place in a race, he leans over and smiles widely, and he photobombs a group picture. During the Tragedy, he and the other 78th class students agreed to being locked inside the Hope's Peak Academy building, not knowing that the Ultimate Despair has already sneak in to their numbers.

High School Life of Mutual Killing
When introduced in the Prologue, Leon almost immediately exposed his dissatisfaction for baseball and got upset when the latter spoke about seeing a picture of him with shaved hair online. Leon then went on to tell Makoto about his dream of becoming a vocalist in a band and changing his title to Ultimate Musician. In (Ab)normal Days of Chapter 1, he also uttered this in front of Sayaka. After watching Monokuma's motivational DVDs, he became agitated and was quick to respond in abrasive manner toward Makoto.

On the same day, Leon received a letter from Sayaka that instructed him to meet her in her room at night. Unbeknownst to Leon, Sayaka switched room with another student and also secretly swapped the door plate in order to commence the plan to murder him. When he finally entered the room, Sayaka immediately attacked him with a kitchen knife. However, Leon managed to counter her assault with the imitation katana that happened to be inside the room, hitting Sayaka's wrist, breaking it and effectively disarming her in the process. With no place left to escape to, she went to the shower room and closed the door, knowing full well that the door was misaligned. Since Leon did not know about this, he thought that the door was locked and immediately used his toolset to destroy the handle, killing Sayaka inside. Afterwards, he cleaned the floor in the room with the lint roller in an attempt to clean the room of his hair (possibly due to him being the only one with red hair). Leon also tried to dispose his bloodied shirt by making use of the incinerator in the trash room. Despite the iron grates preventing him from approaching it, he managed to do the deed by throwing his shirt into the incinerator before using Yasuhiro Hagakure's glass ball to hit the incinerator's activation button. Unfortunately, One of the sleeves on his shirt did not burn and instead fell off to the floor of the trash room.

In the classroom trial, Makoto was able to point Leon as the culprit based on the dying message Sayaka left behind. And the method of disposing the evidence clearly suggested that he could be the only possible suspect, since throwing an object from a distance would require a skill that only Ultimate Baseball Star had. Makoto also forced Leon to show his boy's special tool, but he couldn't show it because he was already used it to break Makoto's bathroom door. As Leon was unable to accept that he was being accused, He went rampant, until Makoto asked him to show his toolset in order to indicate whether it was already used or not. This immediately stopped his deranged behavior and left him completely speechless. After the trial, he was sentenced for execution by Monokuma. Unable to accept the truth, he attempted to stop Monokuma from executing him by justifying his action of murdering Sayaka as an act of self-defense. However, Celestia Ludenberg pointed out that Leon could return to his room instead of breaking the shower room’s lock after Sayaka locked herself in. In the end, his plea was ignored by Monokuma and he was executed.

Execution

 * Main Article: The 1,000 Blows

Sayaka Maizono
In the manga version of the game, it is shown that Leon was quite close with Sayaka, due to their similaries with music, as Sayaka was an idol, and Leon wanted to change his title to Ultimate Musician. It is also implied that during the first murder, Leon just wanted to calm Sayaka down when she locked herself in the shower. Leon had never thought of murdering someone else, so he tried to reason with her. When he broke into the shower, however, he accidentally stabbed Sayaka in the stomach, which resulted in her death.

Makoto Naegi
During his free-time events, he shared a lot of things with Makoto and even invited him for a baseball match after they escaped the academy. However, it never came true as Leon was executed at the end of the first trial. Makoto himself didn't hold a grudge against Leon for killing Sayaka, because he felt that the one at fault was Monokuma.

Kanon Nakajima
Leon is Kanon's older cousin by two years. He viewed Kanon as his little sister and the two seemed to have a rather close relationship. She constanly confessed her feelings to him, to which he always responded that it was impossible, and he just didn't like her that way. It did not seem her never-ending confessions affect his view of her, but he cared for her and comforted her whenever he rejected her. He also has a lot of belief in her, believing that she could throw a 160 meters per hour ball, despite the fact that the Japanese record for women was 140. By the time of the School Life of Mutual Killing, Kanon was chosen as his hostage, being his most important person.

Presents
Obtained from the MonoMono Machine.
 * Eternal Friendship Bracelet
 * Blueberry Perfume
 * Yasu Shishido T-Shirt
 * Project Zombie

Choices
During free time conversations, the player will occasionally be given a choice on how to respond to something that is said. These are the 'right' choices.
 * Punk Rock

Skills
These will aid you, usually during Class Trials.
 * Pitcher's Rubber Arm- Increases the speed of Word Bullets when fired
 * Dynamic Vision

Quotes

 * “Yo! My name is Leon Kuwata!”


 * “That's the worst, man. Totally the worst. And it was supposed to be such an awesome picture, you know! But it turned out so lame. Everyone on the team took a vote so I had no choice but to shave my head.”


 * “By the way, can I confess something to you!? See, I don't like baseball at all. I've never went to practice even once. So, I decided to make joining this school an excuse to quit baseball!! I have my own dreams, y'know!”


 * “I'm going to be a musician! You can tell I have that rockstar quality, right?”


 * “Isn't it just so cool when you can chase your dreams?!”


 * “It was just after I entered the front hall. Suddenly I lost my consciousness, y'see. And then I found myself sleeping inside the school! That's what happened to you too, right?”


 * “W…what did it say!? Kill each other? What the fuck…?”

Machine Talk Battle/Bullet Talk Battle Statements

 * “Where's your proof!?”
 * “You kiddin' me!?”
 * “Not a chance!”
 * “It wasn't me!”
 * “Stupid!”
 * “You lie!”
 * “Stop talking!”
 * “Shut up!”
 * “Without evidence, it's all bullshit! It's bullshit and I refuse to acknowledge it!” (Final Argument)

Trivia

 * Leon is spelt as 怜恩 in Japanese, which can mean "Cunning Kindness", while Kuwata (桑田) simply means "Mulberry Field".
 * His beta name is Kazuo Matsuzaki.
 * According to his in-game introduction, his current hair color is not natural. He is actually red-haired.
 * Due to the brutality of Leon's execution, it was censored in the anime adaptation.
 * The manga slightly changed the circumstances of Sayaka's murder. Instead of consciously murdering her, Leon attempted to calm her down until he accidentally stabbed Maizono with her knife.
 * The anime slightly changed Leon's reaction to being sentenced. Once the decision was announced, Leon broke down in tears and desperately tried to get out of the trial room, screaming that he didn't want to die. This did not change the outcome of the trial.
 * He strongly dislikes studying.
 * He initially states that he dislikes baseball, but continues to play for the attention it gets him from women. After not playing baseball for a while, Leon states that he misses it and wants to continue it in the future.
 * His dream is to use his renown as a baseball player to begin a career as a musician.
 * In Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, it is strongly suggested that Nekomaru Nidai used to train Leon.