Hajime Hinata

Hajime Hinata (日向 創 Hinata Hajime) is the protagonist of Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. He originally had no talent, entering Hope's Peak Academy as a reserve course student, but he eventually earned the title of Ultimate Hope after participating in Project Izuru Kamukura - a brain alteration/augmentation program named after the school's founder designed to "create a genius out of the ordinary" - in which his original memories were erased. During this time, he was known as Izuru Kamukura, taking the name of Hope's Peak Academy's founder.

At the end of the game, he and the other survivors managed to escape to the real world.

Appearance
Hinata has short, spiky brown hair and green eyes. He wore a simple white shirt with a green tie with a strange symbol at the bottom, and blue jeans with red-and-white sneakers.

Hinata's eyes have a straight line running across his pupil. While his eye colors were normally green, these eyes turned red and shaped like a target radar when he lived as Izuru Kamukura.

Personality
Hinata is a generally pleasant boy who easily exhibits kindness and thoughtfulness to others around him. He sometimes regrets exposing the murderers, such as when he singled out Mikan Tsumiki in Chapter 3.

He is also somewhat snarky, cynical, blunt, yet generally tolerant of others' quirks.

Pre-Despair Incident
Hinata enrolled into Hope's Peak Academy because of his adulation of the prestigious school. However, as a reserve course student, he was constantly bullied because he had no talent.

This resentment towards his reserve course status led to a strong desire to become a main course student, eventually culminating in his participation in Project Izuru Kamukura, undergoing numerous operations to enhance his abilities and erase his memories of his life up until that point.

Temporary Disappearance
What happened between the first mutual-killing game and his eventual participation in the New World Program is largely unknown, except that he was influenced greatly by Junko Enoshima; he subsequently became a member of Ultimate Despair.

After the despairingly-public failure of the Mutual Killing incident of Class 78, Hinata - still under his identity as Izuru - would go on to sneak an AI that contained data which could simulate Enoshima's behavior, and installing it onto the New World Program, thus leading to the events of the second game.

Island Life of Mutual Killing
Hinata, like everyone else whose memories of their time at Hope's Peak Academy and of being Ultimate Despair members were completely erased, first arrived in the classroom where they were greeted by Usami. They were then 'magically transported' to Dangan Island where he was greeted by Nagito Komaeda, who escorted him around the island.

Hinata eventually became friends with Komaeda, who accompanied him in his investigation of the first murder. However, after the First Trial, Hinata felt betrayed by Komaeda for his actions and ideology involving hope. As a result, he grew distant from Komaeda, and tended to avoid him. However, he still cared about Komaeda, relentlessly trying to comprehend his mindset during his free time events, and became the first person in Komaeda's life to take an interest in him.

Hinata, along with Chiaki Nanami, became a central figure to the School Trials, where he was credited for exposing most of the murderers, save for the last which implicated Nanami.

Returning to Hope's Peak Academy and confronting Junko Enoshima, the AI
After witnessing his friends fall one by one, Hinata vowed to stay alive.

Although he and the remnants of the still-unaware "former" members of Ultimate Despair were led through a series of verbal traps disguised as "truth exposes", that nearly played into AI Enoshima's hands, Hinata was eventually able to expose AI Enoshima with help arriving from unlikely sources.

At the conclusion of a finale which culminated in three former participants entering the fray to save the remaining students, Hinata and a regenerated Nanami - revealed to be a student observer, one of two AIs responsible for ensuring the smooth running of the New World Program - defeated AI Enoshima in a final Machinegun Talk Battle.

Convincing his fellow students to go along with Naegi's suggestion to initiate a forced shutdown of the Program, he was able to completely defeat AI Enoshima's influences, allowing Usami to emerge and land the finishing blow. However, the forced shutdown was destabalising enough that the entire program was depicted as beginning to glitch out, but he was able to clear his lingering regrets with Nanami before the glitching took its hold on the New World Program.

After the defeat of AI Enoshima, Hinata emerged from the New World Program as one of the few survivors. He opted to stay on the Jabberwock Islands, possibly in hopes that he could do something to help their comatose friends, acknowledging his heinous deeds but choosing to live on as Hajime Hinata.

Chiaki Nanami
Hinata is shown to be close to Nanami over the course of the story. She prevented Hinata from going to the Final Dead Room when he was stressed out because everyone suspected him to be the traitor, and also assisted him greatly during trials and investigations. It was briefly indicated before the all-girls beach party in Chapter 2 that he was attracted to Nanami in her swimsuit. During the final trial, he was the most devastated when he found out that Nanami was the traitor and was executed.

In Chapter 6, she was the one who guided him to see the reality that whether or not he had a talent was irrelevant. It was largely due to her support and encouragement that he was finally able to overcome despair. Before she ceased to exist entirely, he thanked her for her help and promised never to forget her.

Nagito Komaeda
Komaeda was the first student Hinata encountered on the island, as well as the one who escorted Hinata to introduce himself to the other students at the beginning of the game and the one who helped him during most investigations. Hinata also seemed to enjoy his company, placing his trust in him and regarding him as a friend, even commenting once that his smile was comforting. Hence, he refused to accept that Komaeda was the prime suspect during the first trial, since he believed that the kind, soft-spoken Komaeda would not kill someone else, let alone turn into such an impossibly hope-obsessed enigma. After learning about Komaeda's twisted way of thinking, Hinata felt betrayed and scorned; during his Free Time Events, however, Hinata would keep attempting to understand Komaeda's mindset. It was Hinata's understanding of Komaeda that ultimately thwarted his plan in Chapter 5.

According to Komaeda, Hinata was the first person in his life to take an actual interest in him. This is further proven by how he questions himself why he worries about someone like Komaeda during the despair fever of Chapter 3. It is implied in Komaeda's fifth free time event that Hinata was hurt and angry when Komaeda claimed that he had been lying about everything he had just stated. However, he still expressed his curiosity to see what Komaeda would do if he one day achieved the hope he was pining after, saying that he felt a 'strange connection' to him, though his confusion and uncertainty of him remain.

In the final Dangan Island event, when Komaeda hesitantly asked to be his friend, Hinata agreed without much consideration. However, the wording he chose seems to indicate that he was taken by surprise by Komaeda's question, probably because he had already considered him as a friend at this point.

Quotes

 * "Whoa!"
 * "You've got that wrong!"
 * "I'll cut that claim to pieces!"
 * "...What the hell is this?!"
 * "N...No! S...Stop hugging me!"
 * "That's great."
 * "Make something... up?"
 * "Even so... Even so!... Even so, I'm...!!"
 * "It won't be just hope... There's a lot of despair out there, too... And I don't know what kind of future it'll become... But our future is ours! We're not going to leave it in anyone else's hands anymore!"

Trivia

 * Hinata's ElectroID states that he likes kusamochi, but dislikes sakuramochi.
 * Hinata's alternate identity is foreshadowed during one of Gundam Tanaka's free time events, where Tanaka asks Hinata to reveal his "true name".
 * His first name, Hajime, means  "beginning", while his birthday is on January 1st, the start of a new year.
 * His Bloodtype is A