Kazuichi Soda

Kazuichi Soda (左右田 和一 Sōda Kazuichi) is one of the characters featured in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. He has the title Ultimate Mechanic (超高校級の「メカニック」chō kōkō-kyū no  “ mekanikku ” ).

He managed to survive the final trial and escape back to the real world with the other survivors at the end of the game.

Appearance
Kazuichi, being a mechanic, wears a bright neon yellow jumper with a dark brown streak on both sides and several hot pink markings that goes down to his ankles. Kazuichi's shoes are also yellow, although they're a lighter shade than his jumpsuit, and seem to be Nike, but could easily be of another brand. His hair is dyed hot pink, and is somewhat badly layered. However, he covers said bad layering up with the gray beanie he wears. In addition to his punk rock appearance, he has thin eyes with hot pink prescription color contacts on them at all times. Above his eyes, his thin, pronounced eyebrows nearly touch his hairline. His teeth are sharp and resemble a shark's, giving him an intimidating grin.

Personality
Kazuichi is a highly emotional character, though he tries to play it smooth. People tend to note his scary appearance does not match his compulsive and rather timid personality. Kazuichi seems to be a very bad liar, leading him to be contradictory at times; such as when Nekomaru reveals they had tied Nagito up, or when trying to get into the all-girls beach party. Kazuichi has a tendency to neglect his need for a verbal filter, and blurts things he thinks out, such as when he was contemplating whether he liked Sonia's wetsuit or not. Kazuichi is normally trying to repair any broken items on the island with his ability and familiarity with mechanisms. He also has a great fear of dying on the island, which causes a lot of stress and panic for him. He tends to carry around a spanner/wrench. He is a very jumpy person, and tends to exaggerate his reactions. Kazuichi is also seen to have taken a liking to Sonia, to an extent of being a pervert and in constant jealously of Gundham.

Like Mikan, he's commonly Monokuma's and Hiyoko's target, and often ends up being the butt of their jokes.

Kazuichi is one of the few characters that seem to sympathize with the fallen. He doesn't let it get him down, but he neglects to simply let the death of his classmates be shaken off. Kazuichi even makes a small toy out of Nekomaru's robot remains for everyone in an effort to impress Sonia. Kazuichi even displays being a bit shaken up about Teruteru's death. He is stunned, but shoved into pushing away his shock because of Hiyoko's comments. Despite this, he seems to still be heavily affected for awhile. This pattern repeats itself for nearly every death.

History
[Warning: Several spoilers for this section!]

Prior to the Tragedy
Kazuichi's life before despair seemed to been fairly tougher than a normal child's. It is noted that he and his father ran his family's bike shop, but nothing was ever sold. The bike shop wasn't always inactive, however—many customers would ask for them to fix their bike tires or inflate them. Despite this, the family was still often low on money. In result, though, Kazuichi got plenty of practice with making and building things.

As a child, Kazuichi was very skittish, and easily picked on. He let other children step all over him, but before he entered Hope's Peak, he changed his appearance entirely. From changing his hair color, to losing his glasses, and presumably sharpening his teeth, so that he could fit in better with people around him. It seems as if it'd do the opposite, but that may just be how his mind works. At this point, he began to put up the "Tough punk" facade to avoid more bullying, which, to this day, continues to break almost constantly.

In addition to Kazuichi's rough childhood, with money and bullying problems, his Dad seems to have constantly beat him. In one of his free time events, he states that he had never been on a field trip, and spoke quite casually about his father beating him when he didn't attend school on those days. This confuses Hajime, but Kazuichi doesn't seem to register the severity of it. Such behavior suggests that he was a subject of excessive abuse.

Prologue - Welcome to Dangan ★ Island! Big Panic at the Heart-Thumping Field Trip ?
Hajime first seen Kazuichi hanging around in the airport along with Gundham Tanaka. He confirmed that all airplanes in the airport are unsuable, due the engines are missing.

Chapter 1 - Tropical Despair
In the beginning, after Monokuma announces that they must all kill each other to escape, he was terrified at the prospect, causing him to jump at shadows. He ever tried to escape the meeting once but ended in failure as Mahiru caught him. However, his focus soon shifts from constant fear of dying to trying to get Sonia to be his girlfriend.

Chapter 2 - Crime and Coconuts, Punishment and Pina Coladas
In the beginning of Chapter 2, he and Nekomaru punched and chained up Nagito in order to prevent him from causing more trouble. Kazuichi also plotted to crash Sonia's all girl beach party with Hajime by hanging out at the diner until the girls arrived. Because of this, he and Hajime bore witness to Hiyoko leaving the crime scene a short while after the murder took place and he was also able to testify that Hiyoko had no blood on her at the time. He was the third person to discover Mahiru's body, setting off the body discovery announcement.

Chapter 3 - Ocean Breeze Dead End
He moved to the motel along with Hiyoko, Chiaki, Sonia and Gundham in Chapter 3 while the students afflicted with despair fever were under quarantine. He also built the video transponder which allowed the motel group to communicate with the hospital.

Chapter 4 - Do Ultimate Androids Dream of Electric Clocks?
In Chapter 4, he explored the Strawberry and Muscat houses with Nagito since Sonia took off with Gundham before he could ask her. Having ended up with one of the poor rooms in the Strawberry House, he was able to hear the alarm and the rumbling sound. At third day in the morning, Kazuichi were awakes because of the strawberry house alarm clocks ringing, he then meet with Gundham, and Fuyuhiko who busy to turn it off. He contributed to the murder investigation by fixing the elevator and the Strawberry Tower door button, as well as performing the equivalent of an autopsy on Nekomaru's mechanical body. He also was able to verify the elevator turned 180 degrees with the help of Nagito's compass.

Chapter 5 - You Smile at Hope They Call Despair
Like Mikan, he's commonly Monokuma's and Saionji's target, and often ends up being the butt of their jokes. In Chapter 5, he flat out gets blown across the room by an explosion, and he's the most flustered person who afraid of Nagito's threat.

Hajime Hinata
Hajime is a close friend of Kazuichi's. Kazuichi latches onto Hajime, calling him his "soul friend". Throughout their friendship, a brief break up ensues when he blames Hajime for "leading them" into Monokuma's trap and ends up turning to Nagito instead.

Sonia Nevermind
From the moment Kazuichi first speaks to Sonia, he bows down to her. Sonia is the only one he uses an honorific for, calling her "Sonia-san." In addition, she is the only one he refers to on a first-name basis. Despite the amount of "respect" he gives her, he's constantly making comments about her body and appearance, in a rather gross fashion. At first it is unclear whether he is simply objectifying her, or truly cares about her and does not know how to go about expressing that. However, it becomes apparent that he does objectify her, considering he treats her as if she cannot do things for herself because she is a princess. He also stated that he always wanted a beautiful blonde for a girlfriend, which fits Sonia's exterior looks. Sonia dislikes his advances to the point of actively avoiding him and being disappointed that he was not the culprit of the fourth trial. After Gundham's death he made a speech on how the team must prevail and move forward. Though the speech seemed to move others, it is shown that he made the speech solely to impress Sonia, which she ignored.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu
At first, Kazuichi and the Ultimate Yakuza seem to be at each other's throats quite often. Kazuichi makes comments towards Fuyuhiko such as "If you didn't have that big Yakuza family, you'd be nothing but a midget!" Which, of course, is returned by Fuyuhiko's own sharp tongue. As time passes, though, their disagreement with each other seems to dissipate, and they become tolerant of one another. This may or may not be because of the stress of being on the island.

Nagito Komaeda
After trial one, Kazuichi finds Nagito to be a nutcase. He and Nekomaru are the ones who tie up Nagito. When this happens, and everyone asks where Nagito is, Kazuichi seems extremely suspicious. He's almost immediately blamed for murder. Despite him having such thoughts about Nagito in the beginning, Kazuichi still turns to him when he 'breaks up' with Hajime.

Gundham Tanaka
Kazuichi disliked Gundham refused to invite him to the beach party. They had a brief childish spat during the 3rd Class Trial where they threatened to kill each other. Kazuichi disliked him even more when it became apparent that Sonia favored Gundham, resorting to name-calling ("Hamster-chan") and failed attempts to one up him during the 4th Class Trial.

Quotes

 * “ Name's Kazuichi Soda, "Ultimate Mechanic." Atcha service! ”
 * “ Ah well. This ain't natural, but I guess it's nothing we can't handle, right? ”
 * “ Those things're goin' nowhere. I mean...they're not broken - if they were just broken, we'd be flying already, y'know? ”
 * “ Killing each other, huh... K...KILLING EACH OTHER?! ”
 * “ GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!...Oh, S'only you Hajime. Don't surprise me like that. ”
 * “ Sonia-san!  May I call you Sonia-san? I'm gonna call you Sonia-san! ”
 * “ Oi, oi... don't say things like that! You’re gonna ruin my mood! ”
 * “ Y...You can't scare me with your threats! ”
 * “ Yawn... Ah... Woke up late. S’not like me at all... ”
 * “ W...What the hell?! You trying to give me a heart attack?! I'm just a tiny bit late! ”
 * “ I-I'll make you look back at me! I'll work hard and make you absolutely look back at me, alright! ”  (to Sonia Nevermind)
 * “ STEP ASIDE! ”
 * “ I'LL FIGURE IT OUT FOR YA! ”

Trivia

 * Kazuichi originally had black hair and wore glasses.
 * Kazuichi's e-Handbook states that he likes cola and hates anything that is sugar-free.
 * He appears to know how to read English, telling Hajime what a sign written in English meant.
 * The kanji for "Kazuichi" (和一) simply mean "Peaceful One", while his surname (左右田) translates as "Rice Field of Dominance" (左右 sō being an expression literally meaning "Left & Right").