Kazuichi Soda

Kazuichi Soda (左右田 和一 Souda 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").

Appearance
Soda, 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. Soda'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
Soda 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. Soda seems to be a very bad liar, leading him to be contradictory at times; such as when Nidai reveals they had tied Komaeda up, or when trying to get into the all-girls beach party. Soda 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. Soda 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. Soda is also seen to have taken a liking to Sonia, to an extent of being a pervert and in constant jealously of Tanaka.

Soda 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. Soda even makes a small toy out of Nidai's robot remains for everyone in an effort to impress Sonia. Soda even displays being a bit shaken up about Hanamura's death. He is stunned, but shoved into pushing away his shock because of Saionji'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!]

Pre-Despair Incident
Soda'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, Soda got plenty of practice with making and building things.

As a child, Soda 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 assumedly 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 Soda'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 Hinata, but Soda doesn't seem to register the severity of it. Such behavior suggests that he was a subject of excessive abuse.

Island Life of Mutual Killing
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. However, his focus soon shifts from constant fear of dying to trying to get Sonia to be his girlfriend.

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

He moved to the motel along with Saionji, Nanami, Sonia and Tanaka 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.

In Chapter 4, he explored the Strawberry and Muscat houses with Komaeda since Sonia took off with Tanaka 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, Soda were awakes because of the strawberry house alarm clocks ringing, he then meet with Tanaka, and Kuzuryuu 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 Nidai's mechanical body. He also was able to verify the elevator turned 180 degrees with the help of Komaeda's compass.

Like Tsumiki, 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 Komaeda's threat.

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

Sonia Nevermind
From the moment Soda 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 Gundam'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 Kuzuyruu
At first, Soda and the Ultimate Gangster seem to be at each other's throats quite often. Soda makes comments towards Kuzuyruu such as "If you didn't have that big Yakuza family, you'd be nothing but a midget!" Which, of course, is returned by Kuzuyruu'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, Soda finds Komaeda to be a nutcase. He and Nidai are the ones who tie up Komaeda. When this happens, and everyone asks where Komaeda is, Soda seems extremely suspicious. He's almost immediately blamed for murder. Despite him having such thoughts about Komaeda in the beginning, Soda still turns to him when he 'breaks up' with Hinata.

Gundham Tanaka
Soda disliked Tanaka and 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. Soda disliked him even more when it became apparent that Sonia favored Tanaka, 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 Hinata. 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

 * Soda originally had black hair and wore glasses.
 * Suda's ElectroID states that he likes cola and hates anything that is sugar-free.
 * He appears to know how to read English, telling Hinata what a sign written in English meant.