Nagito Komaeda

Nagito Komaeda (狛枝 凪斗 Komaeda Nagito) is one of the characters featured in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. He has the title of Ultimate Lucky Student (超高校級の「幸運」Chō Kōkō Kyū no “Kōun”).

In Chapter 5, he tricked the traitor among the groups using his luck to accidentally murder him.

Appearance
Nagito has a long dark green coat that goes down past his knees. His coat has red squares on his right shoulder, and a red number '55'. He wears a plain white shirt with a strange red symbol on it. His pants are typical black jeans, and has a long chain that attached from the back to the front of them with a small skull charm attached to it. His shoes are brown, and they appear to be zipped up rather than being tied or using velcro. Nagito has messy shoulder-length white hair, light gray eyes, and he usually has a smile on his face.

Personality
Nagito first comes off a polite and kind boy, but during the first trial he has a breakdown. After showing his true colors, he begins to ramble on about how hope is the most important thing in the world, and that hope that is created from beating despair is the most amazing feeling that one could have. Nagito also doesn't really care for his own life, in fact he encourages the other students to kill him as long as someone feels hope from it. He also considers himself worthless when compared to the other Ultimate Students, claiming that his talent is pathetic and that he was born a talentless person who will never be considered anything special. Later, however, he finds his luck to be incredible and tells the other students to believe in themselves and Nagito's own luck.

He is speculated to be a parallel to Makoto Naegi; their names are alike, looks are slightly similar, and the same skill of Luck, even though Makoto's was changed to Hope.

Ironically, despite his absolute belief in the concept of ultimate hope, it's heavily implied that he has no hope of his own. He has no family or friends, drifted aimlessly through life before arriving at Hope's Peak, doesn't believe he could ever amount to anything, and any chance he might have at actual happiness would be cancelled out by his cycle of good and bad luck.

History
[Warning: Several spoilers follow this section!]

Prior to the Tragedy
Nagito's life has always been a turn between 'good luck' and 'bad luck'. The earliest known occurrence of this is when parents were killed before his very eyes after a meteor crashed into a hijacked airplane they had been on, letting him inherit all their fortune and become free to do whatever he wished, as he had no other relatives alive. After his parents' death, during middle school, Nagito was kidnapped by a serial killer; although he was released after the police found him (it was implied that the killer let him go after they found out nobody would pay the ransom), in the garbage bag the murderer kidnapped him in, Nagito had discovered a lottery ticket. It was a winning one for three million yen; in that situation, the lottery ticket was the only good luck received. He has stated that his cycle of good and bad luck had worn him down to the point where he drifted through life without purpose, waiting to die.

At some point before the events of Danganronpa 2, he presumably fell to despair along with everyone else.

Island Life of Mutual Killing
Nagito begins by acting polite and kind towards everyone, even willing to accompany Hajime to introduce himself to the other students. When Byakuya suggests to throw a party, Nagito sets up a lot to determine the party duties, and through his "Good Luck", ends up being the one who cleans the old lodge. He makes use of this opportunity to set up and ensure that someone would die during the party, but was eventually discovered by Teruteru, who had duties to prepare food for the party. His plan was to trip the circut breaker to cause a blackout. During this blackout, he used a lamp cord to lead himself to the table, under which he hid a knife covered in glowing paint. Just as he was about to grab the glowing knife, he gets grabbed and pushed out of the way by Byakuya, who brought night vision goggles in preperation. Byakuya gets stabbed by Teruteru, who was hiding under the floorboards intending to kill Nagito. He reveals his attempted plans during the trial when he has a breakdown, causing everyone to distrust him.

Nagito was not present to investigate the new Island in Chapter 2 because he was tied up by Kazuichi and Nekomaru to avoid another incident happening again. After the information was leaked out, people were assigned to provide him with his meals, as shown in the game where Mahiru wanted to deliver Nagito his meals.

During the events of Chapter 2, he convinces Hajime to play the Twilight Syndrome Murder Mystery and helps him figure out that everything that happened was based on events that took place at Hopes Peak. Nagito was able to deduce the owner of footprint that left on the beach, Hiyoko Saionji. The culprit's trap was also foiled by Nagito, when he stated that yellow gummy was deliberately abandoned by the culprit to frame Hiyoko. Hiyoko had never eaten yellow gummies, evidenced by the pack of gummies that Nagito found in Hiyoko's cottage. Because of this, Hajime, Nagito, and Chiaki are able to deduce that Peko Pekoyama killed Mahiru Koizumi.

The next morning at the beginning of Chapter 3, Nagito along with Gundham are came late to the Restaurant, which led to broke the cozy atmosphere. He was also attend Fuyuhiko welcoming party that was held by Ibuki. Later, he, Ibuki and Akane catch despair fever, the third chapter's motive, lost his consciousness from the begining. After Mikan treated him, he regain consciousness right when the third murder occured. He was the person who invited Hajime to watch the movie theater, and able to deduce how the culprit murdered Ibuki and Hiyoko.

Nagito has a major role in chapter 4. By finished the Final Dead Game in Final Dead Room, he got special prizes from Monokuma, the sequel of the first Future Foundation file when they got after ride the roller coaster, and Hajime Hinata's student profile.

He relies on his exceptional luck to orchestrate his own death in Chapter 5 in an effort to expose the group's traitor. However, this fails; after it was determined in the trial that there was no real way to determine who killed him, the remaining students voted off Chiaki, who had outed herself as the traitor, relying on Nagito's luck to save themselves.

Hajime Hinata
From the start, Nagito noticed that he and Hajime were similar somehow, as if they were both bystanders in something that didn't concern them. Prior to the chapter 1 trial, Hajime was the closest thing Nagito had to a friend—though his amiability may have been false, the connection he felt to him wasn't. After revealing the part he played in the case, Hajime felt betrayed and terrified by Nagito, whom he had previously trusted and thought to be a good friend. Nagito remained fixated on Hajime even after he was revealed to be a talentless reserve course student, especially evidenced in his dialogue directly preceding the chapter 4 trial. In chapter 5, Hajime's understanding of Nagito is what thwarted his plan.

It's implied that Nagito's feelings for Hajime are romantic in nature. Several times throughout the story, it's shown that Nagito feels a genuine closeness to Hajime, such as when he claimed he doesn't like being around him when under the influence of the despair disease in Chapter 3. It's indicated that the reason he feels this way is because that despite knowing what kind of person he is, Hajime still tried to understand him. In his fifth freetime event, he poured his heart out to Hajime, then quickly slammed the door on their relationship by falsely dismissing what he had just stated as lies. Due to the wording in Japanese, Nagito's last line in particular is heavily implied to be the beginning of a love confession that he decided to rephrase at the last second. His usage of “ai shiteru” also reflects this notion, as it's an incredibly strong phrase that even some married couples are hesitant to use.

It also should be noted that in the final Dangan lsland event, Nagito had a very hard time asking Hajime to be his friend, to which the latter agreed to.

Quotes

 * “Hey...Can you hear me? Hey, are you alright? ... You sure look exhausted. I am too, you know, we are all. I mean.. with all the crazy stuff that happened...Hey, are you listening?..” (to Hajime Hinata)


 * “Pleased to meet you. My name is Nagito Komaeda. ”
 * “My ability is nothing more than having good luck... If it's not the result of one's effort, than it can't be used to accomplish something amazing, either. With or without it, the fact that i'm unremarkable being doesn't change. Ahah, it's different from all of you. ”
 * “Causing you to lose sight of your nature because of trivial doubts and suspicion directed towards me is not my intention at all. After all... All i wish for is to see all of you embody hope! ”
 * “Despair is... Like what i am compared to all of you, something miniscule, trivial and worthless! ”
 * “All of you posses the qualities needed to be able to embody it (hope)... Do you understand? Hope, in other words, is a proactive will and talent... It's an absolute "good" that's brought forth by that! That's why, as long as there exist seeds of hope, I'll gladly kill a person... and gladly die myself. Since right now, my reason for living like this is hope itself! ”
 * “In my case, it always leads to such outcomes. However great the misfortune that i experience at first may be... The good luck that i will visit me later is grand enough to make up for all of it! That's the talent i possess... The reason i'm called “Ultimate Lucky Student”. ”


 * “NO, THAT'S WRONG! ” (to Hajime Hinata at the beginning of their Rebuttal Showdown)


 * “The Ultimates stand together and rise against the despair of the death of their friend! Ahhh.. such a magnificient... beautiful sight! ”
 * “'Meaningless'... No other word is more despair-inducing than that. But you musn't give up! you must face forward with hope in your hearts, and do your best! You are the symbols of hope, because you can recover and rise up, again and again! ”
 * “That's the first time someone's complimented me for my appearance! Even my mother never praised me for anything! ” (to Mikan Tsumiki)
 * “ Now then, Hajime. Will you battle against me? ” (to Hajime Hinata before commencing their Rebuttal Showdown)
 * “After being on the verge of death, i finally understood. All i ever wished for was “someone's love”. ”
 * “Please don't ever forget... That I love... I love the hope sleeping within you from the bottom of my heart.” (to Hajime Hinata)

Trivia

 * Nagito's e-Handbook states that he likes “beautiful things” and dislikes noisy places.
 * Nagito (凪斗) as a name means "Calm Below the Dipper", as in the big dipper constellation, while Komaeda (狛枝) translates as "Lion-Dog Tree Branches". Lion-Dogs are statues that protect and guard shrines in Shintoism. The kanji used are rather old and classical, which may allude to an old family line or an upper class background.
 * His name in an anagram for “Na-e-gi Ma-ko-to da”, which translates to “I am Makoto Naegi”. This was stated to be unintentional.
 * After the death of Junko Enoshima, he cut off his left hand and attached hers in its place, though it cannot act as a functional hand.
 * Nagito's Free-Time Events reveal that he was diagnosed with late stage lymphoma and progressed frontotemporal lobe dementia.
 * According to Super Dangan Ronpa 2's official artbook, the second draft of Nagito's beta design is based on an “absolute rival” concept, while the third draft is based on imagination of a darker version of Makoto.
 * He shares the same voice actor with Makoto Naegi in both Japanese and English. In addition, both characters' titles are the “Ultimate Lucky Student”, and they both wear a similar jacket.
 * This makes Nagito one of twelve characters who share their voice actor with another character in the Japanese version (the others being Makoto Naegi, Junko Enoshima and Mukuro Ikusaba, Byakuya Togami and The Ultimate Imposter, Chihiro Fujisaki and Alter Ego, Toko Fukawa/Genocide Jill, Hifumi Yamada and Jin Kirigiri).
 * He is also one of eleven characters who share their voice actor with another character in the English version (alongside Makoto, Junko and Mukuro, Sayaka, Chihiro and Alter Ego, Toko/Jill, Byakuya and his imposter).