Aoi Asahina

Aoi Asahina (朝日奈 葵), also known as Hina, is a student in Hope's Peak Academy's Class 78th, and a participant of the Killing School Life featured in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. Her title is the Ultimate Swimming Pro (超高校級の「スイマー」lit. Super High School Level Swimmer).

Early Life
Aoi was always an extremely sporty person who loved to exercise, and participated in many team sports during her school career, including track, basketball, softball, volleyball, tennis, and her favorite sport: competitive swimming. Since elementary school, she broke records in every swimming contest she entered, and was chosen to become an Olympic cadet. Her younger brother Yuta was also a competitive and talented swimmer, but not - by his own admission - as talented as Aoi.

Aoi attended Asanaro High School, and was later scouted by Hope's Peak Academy as part of Class 78th as the Ultimate Swimming Pro.

Killing School Life
During the Tragedy, Jin Kirigiri, the Headmaster of Hope's Peak Academy, planned to seal the school building and let the students live forever inside the Academy in order to protect them from the destruction. The class agreed to his plan, and they sealed the building together. The students lived peacefully inside the school building for a year without knowing that the Ultimate Despair members were already in their midst.

The students soon became forced into the killing game. As an incentive to murder in order to escape, the students were each given a DVD featuring a video from Monokuma which implied that their loved ones were in danger. Aoi's brother, Yuta, was captured by Ultimate Despair for this motive.

Aoi sometimes shared a dorm room with Sakura Ogami, because she was afraid of being alone at night after the Killing Game began, and appeared to spend the majority of her free time with her. Aoi and Sakura were key witnesses during the first trial, as they had seen Sayaka Maizono, the victim of the murder case, enter the kitchen while they were hanging out in the cafeteria. They helped Makoto deduce that Sayaka herself was the one who took the knife from the kitchen, not her killer.

Discovering Alter Ego
After the deaths of Chihiro and Mondo, Aoi's mental health began to decline, crying alone in her room and falling into a depression. She decided to go to the Cafeteria in search of donuts to soothe herself, but on the way there she heard strange sounds coming from the changing room near the bathhouse. Cautiously investigating the noise, she approached one of the changing room lockers, where she saw a ghostly green image of what appeared to be the recently deceased Chihiro. In fear, she screamed and fled back to her room.

Still shaken, Aoi did not attend the customary morning meeting under the guise of not feeling well. The other students, concerned about her, asked why she had been absent and she explained that she had seen Chihiro's 'spirit' wandering in the changing room. When they went to changing room to investigate Aoi's claim, they discovered that the 'spirit' Aoi had seen was in fact Alter Ego, an Artificial Intelligence program that was made by Chihiro. Alter Ego's discovery caused a rift between Hifumi and Kiyotaka which lasted several days, as both felt "ownership" over Alter Ego for various personal reasons.

A few days after Alter Ego's discovery, several students were missing from the morning meeting. After searching for some time, Aoi and the others found Hifumi and Kiyotaka's bodies in the art room. With the death of two more of her classmates compounding her depression further, Aoi put Hifumi's head in her lap and began to weep. To her surprise, Hifumi regained consciousness momentarily, just long enough speak the name "Yasuhiro" before succumbing to his head wounds and passing away.

Sakura's Confession
Shortly after Celestia Ludenberg was executed for the murders of Kiyotaka and Hifumi, Sakura, who had been forced to act as Monokuma's mole, decided that she had had enough of deceiving her friends and made up her mind to stop Monokuma's twisted games and confess to the others. Before Sakura could properly confess, however, Monokuma beat her to the punch by revealing her status as his mole. This revelation caused a major rift within the group dynamic, with most of the students pushing Sakura away, except for Aoi who tried desperately to protect Sakura from further slander. After Aoi was injured by Genocide Jack in a particularly heated confrontation, Sakura vowed to finally end things once and for all. She decided that the most unobtrusive way to go about fulfilling Monokuma's mutual killing instructions was to commit suicide; in doing so, she fulfilled his desire for a murder without harming any of her remaining friends.

Against Aoi's advice, Sakura had attempted to make peace with Yasuhiro Hagakure, Byakuya, and Toko - all of whom had turned against her when she was revealed as the mole - before she died. She had invited all of them to the Recreation Room to talk to her, which Toko and Yasuhiro accepted. However, Yasuhiro thought that she was going to kill him, leading him to injure her with a Monokuma bottle. Toko, shocked by the sight of a bloody and injured Sakura, fainted and switched to Genocide Jack, who also panicked and struck her with another Monokuma bottle. Aoi then came in the Rec Room and found a severely injured Sakura. Sakura then asked Aoi to make her a bottle of protein shake from the powder Sakura had left in the Chemistry Lab.

When she entered the Chemistry Lab Aoi immediately spotted the spilled poison on the floor, and ran back to the Rec Room as quickly as she could, realizing that Sakura was attempting to kill herself. Sadly, the door could not be opened because Sakura had jammed it with a door leaning against the door handle. From the outside, Aoi could see Sakura sitting on the chair, lifeless.

However, Sakura's sacrifice was severely complicated when Monokuma switched her suicide note for a fake he had written personally. When Aoi received the fake note, she was led to believe that Sakura had taken her life out of despair for the hostile situation in the academy. Infuriated and heartbroken by the "confession"; and at the end of her emotional tether, Aoi attempted to frame herself as Sakura's murderer in order to get everybody killed as revenge for pushing Sakura over the edge. Her plan was foiled however as the truth was eventually revealed and Sakura's dying wish was fulfilled. Disgusted by Monokuma's deception, the remaining students united against him, vowing to find the secrets of the academy and stop the mastermind. She briefly feared that the others would turn on her for nearly getting them all killed, but the students decided to reconcile and unite their strength in order to take down the Mastermind.

Ultimate Hope
After some investigation by the students, the true mastermind of the killing game was deduced to be Junko Enoshima. Aoi and the other remaining survivors were shocked to learn that the 'Junko Enoshima' they met was actually Junko's twin sister, Mukuro Ikusaba, and that the world outside their walls was in a state of collapse due to The Tragedy. In particular, Aoi was crippled by the knowledge that her fellow students were longtime friends before having their memories removed; coupled with the knowledge that they were essentially killing each other over nothing, which sent her to the brink of despair.

Aoi was motivated by Makoto's words that hope is still alive, causing her to pause and consider what Sakura would say if she were still alive: "You only get stronger by taking adversity by the horns! Confront that thorny path with enthusiasm!" Realizing that Sakura would want her to move on in memory of the fallen, she decided to believe in Makoto. Along with the rest of her friends, Aoi witnessed Makoto - the newly-minted "Ultimate Hope" - managing to defeat Junko, leading to her executing herself in a special punishment. With Junko dead, the School Killing Life was finally over, and the survivors found an escape switch that would allow them to leave the academy. Aoi left the school with Sakura still on her mind, wishing her goodbye as she parted through the escape hatch, but resolving that "If we gotta say goodbye, we may as well do it with a smile on our face!".

Joining the Future Foundation
At some point during or after The Tragedy drove the world to near-destruction, the Future Foundation was formed by alumni of Hope's Peak Academy to both defeat Ultimate Despair and undo the damage their actions had brought upon the world. The Future Foundation came to the assistance of the Hope's Peak Academy survivors following their victory over Junko Enoshima, and Aoi and the other survivors decided to join the organization, and the Future Foundation helped them to restore their lost school memories. Aoi became a member of the 13th Branch of the Future Foundation, which was tasked with front-line food and resource distribution. Because after leaving Hope's Peak Academy students lose their Ultimate title, Aoi's new title became Former Ultimate Swimming Pro.

Meanwhile, Aoi's bother Yuta, who had been previously been held captive after being kidnapped by the Ultimate Despair, escaped captivity, only to become a target of the Warriors of Hope. Yuta tried to escape Towa City by swimming away, but his Monokuma Bracelet exploded, killing him before he could reach the shore.

Makoto, who had become increasingly sympathetic to the Remnants of Despair after seeing the effects of despair firsthand, hatched a plan to capture the Remnants of Despair and rehabilitate them using the Neo World Program, a therapeutic virtual reality program that would hopefully reverse the brainwashing done by Junko Enoshima. Unbeknownst to Makoto, the Neo World Program was infact infected by Alter Ego Junko which instigated the Killing School Trip. Ten out of fifteen Remnants of Despair remained comatose in the immediate aftermath, and the other five opted to stay on Jabberwock Island until they could find a way to help them. A "peacekeeping squad" was dispatched by Kyosuke Munakata to Jabberwock Island on behalf of the Future Foundation to kill the survivors, because they still believed them to be dangerous and under the influence of Despair, but Byakuya's own squad saved them and transported them off of the island. It's unknown how much Aoi was involved in the plot to rehabilitate the Remnants of Despair, but given the other survivors' sympathy towards them and her later defense of Makoto, it can be assumed she was involved or supportive of the process in some capacity.

The Final Killing Game
After returning from Jabberwock Island, Makoto was charged with the crime of treason for protecting the Remnants of Despair, and suspected he himself might be member of Ultimate Despair. Aoi attended the trial as the proxy for the 13th Branch leader, greeting Makoto with her peers Kyoko and Yasuhiro when he arrived at the off-shore Future Foundation facility. Aoi protested to Kyosuke Munakata about Makoto having to be handcuffed, trying to defend him from the physical abuse. Sonosuke Izayoi stopped her by throwing a in her direction, with Ruruka Ando threatening that next time she tries to defend Makoto, Sonosuke would not miss. Kyoko and Aoi were banned from seeing Makoto while he was under arrest due to the Future Foundation's suspicions that they were his accomplices. During a break in Makoto's trial, Aoi and Kyoko went to the bathroom near the meeting room. While in there, the building began quaking and Aoi grabbed the bathroom stall handle to try and balance herself. Inside the stall she found the bodies of three dead security guards. Horrified, she rushed to the boardroom to tell the other Future Foundation heads what she had found, but was overcome by sleeping gas.

The trial of Makoto had been interrupted by Monokuma and forced the Future Foundation into the Final Killing Game. Unlike previous killing games, this killing game had a different structure: every two hours, a sleeping drug would be administered though a special bracelet attached to their wrists, putting all but one of the participants to sleep. While the participants were told that at this stage one person would be kept awake and tasked with killing one other participant, infact the person who was closest to one of the red "Monokuma monitors" dotted around the facility would be awakened and forced to watch the Suicide Video that brainwashed that person to commit suicide. The bracelets on their wrists also displayed a personalized forbidden action called an NG Code; if the participant commits this forbidden action, or attempts to tamper or remove the bracelet, a lethal dose of poison would be administered. Aoi's NG Code forbid her to "be hit with a punch or kick".

The Final Killing Game was masterminded by Future Foundation chairman Kazuo Tengan, who intended the killing game to push Ryota Mitarai to broadcast his Hope brainwashing video to the world to try and eradicate Despair for good. Ryota was not originally intended to participate in the game, but his unexpected appearance at Makoto's trial meant that Kazuo had no choice but to continue with Ryota included. Little did he know, Ryota's NG Code "using your talent", prevented him from broadcasting the Hope video, because he - the Ultimate Animator - had animated it. Because of this, the killing game led to the deaths of seven members of the Future Foundation, including Kazuo himself, before Ryota could attempt to use the video.

Kill or Be Killed
Chisa Yukizome and Daisaku Bandai are very quickly the first two victims of the killing game: Chisa brainwashed to commit suicide, and Daisaku for breaking his NG Code of "witnessing violence by participants". After Daisaku's death, Kyoko managed to create a diversion which allowed Aoi, Great Gozu, and Miaya Gekkogahara to help Makoto escape from Juzo and Kyosuke, who suspected Makoto to be the traitor behind the killing game. Because Makoto's NG Code forbade Makoto from running in the hallway, Aoi carried him on her back. As they hit a dead end, Gozu smashed through the wall during a fight with Kyosuke. Aoi threw a broken fire extinguisher at Kyosuke which gave Gozu the opportunity to body slam Kyosuke into the ground, allowing Aoi, Makoto, Miaya, and Gozu to escape from Kyosuke. Gozu barricaded the door behind them, just in time for the bracelets to release the sleeping drug and start the next round of the killing game.

When they awoke, Makoto found blood on his hands and Aoi apparently dead with a knife lodged in her chest. However Aoi awoke and was not harmed at all: the knife was a toy, and the blood was tomato sauce. The scene had been staged by Monaca Towa, who was controlling Miaya. Instead, Gozu was dead. They were disturbed that someone had managed to get into the barricaded room. Aoi was saddened by Gozu's death, and covered his body with her jacket out of respect. Aoi, Makoto and Miaya sought out the building's intercom system. After finding it, Aoi heard someone nearby, and ran off to draw them away, followed by Miaya, and hid behind some rubble to listen to Makoto's speech over the intercom. Aoi and Miaya escaped from their hiding place after they heard an explosion. On the way, they met with Kazuo Tengan's group and Aoi gladly reunited with Kyoko. Kyosuke's voice comes from the intercom, and he explained that he had captured Makoto and is planning to execute him - Kyoko suspects this is a trap. Proceeding with a new plan, Aoi and Miaya escorted Kazuo to negotiate with Kyosuke.

Arriving at the scene, Kazuo tried to distract Kyosuke while Aoi untied the captive Makoto and helped him escape. Miaya noticed that someone has been following them and offered to stop them. Aoi didn't want her to go alone but eventually agreed to stay by Makoto's side, promising her to eat donuts together after everything came to an end. Some time later, Aoi and Makoto encountered Miaya, who had been knocked down by Juzo. Makoto insisted that Aoi should escape, but instead she grabbed a metal pipe to fight Juzo. Aoi mocked the former Ultimate Boxer for using a weapon to fight her instead of his bare fists. Aoi was in the middle of her fight with Juzo when Seiko Kimura and the reactivated Miaya interrupted it. Seeing that as a chance to escape, Aoi put Makoto on her back and fled from the scene with Miaya. The group learned that Kazuo was the third victim, killed by Kyosuke. Aoi felt increasingly frustrated that if not for her NG Code preventing her from fighting, she could try and stop the killing game. When Aoi overheard a conversation between Makoto and Komaru over Miaya's monitor, their relationship reminded Aoi of her own deceased brother.

Escaping through a hole in the wall, they encountered Kyosuke who is determined to kill them both because he still suspects Aoi and Makoto are both part of Ultimate Despair. Miaya immediately came to their aid, battling Kyosuke and giving them another chance to escape and go to find Kyoko. Aoi and Makoto reunite with Kyoko and Ryota, and the group barricades the door before the next round begins. They awake to find Kyoko dead, Kyoko having been poisoned by her bracelet for breaking her NG Code: "passing the fourth time limit with Makoto Naegi alive". Aoi breaks down in tears, with her sadness only worsening when Munakata transmits a message over the intercom proclaiming that Kyoko's death proved how useless Makoto's platitudes were. Makoto decided to go and speak to Kyosuke, and asked Ryota to stay with Aoi due to her being so distressed. Makoto tells Ryota that because Kyoko entrusted her hope to him, he has to stop Kyosuke. Aoi stopped crying after this statement, telling Makoto she believed in him.

Kyoko's Theory
Aoi found Kyoko's notebook hidden under her body, where Kyoko had concluded who has been killing the victims of the killing game: themselves, brainwashed into suicide by a video playing on the monitors. To test Kyoko's theory, Makoto instructed Kyosuke to tie him up facing one of the monitors - he believes he won't be susceptible, due to refusing to give up on hope, and his promise to go rescue Komaru when the killing game was over. Aoi and the other remaining participants are knocked out by the sleeping drug.

When they awoke, Makoto confirmed that the monitors broadcast a despair brainwashing video. Aoi shattered the monitor, finding a knife hidden behind it. Aoi and the others learn from Kyosuke that other than himself, Kazuo was the only other person with authority to install equipment in the building, leading her and the others to the conclusion that Kazuo was most likely the mastermind behind the Final Killing Game. Juzo then proceeded to the power room and turned off all switches, de-activating the bracelet and monitors, and free the surviving participants from the game.

Hope Video
Ryota revealed that Junko had been using his anime technique to spread Despair with brainwashing videos, but was interrupted by a message from the deceased Kazuo before he could elaborate. The group learned that Kazuo may have been a Remnant of Despair as he admitted to setting up the Final Killing Game. Ryota collapsed to the floor, in anguish over being betrayed but Aoi tried to be optimistic, saying the wristbands are removed so they are free of the game, now they can look to the future. Ryota expressed that he couldn't run away, not as he did back when Junko used him for his techniques to create the Despair Video. This time, he had to fight by showing everyone the opposite video of Despair Video, the Hope Video. As he began to walk away, Aoi rushed in front of him, convincing him to reconsider his choices, as Makoto and she felt that a hope video would only force people to believe in hope rather than changing their attitude by themselves.

Ryota showed Aoi his Hope Video, brainwashing her to follow his command. He told her to restrain Makoto and she did as commanded; to Makoto's anger, Ryota was able to get away. The Future Foundation's rescue squad, who had also been put into a brainwashed state under Ryota's control, found Aoi and Makoto and attempt to fire at them. Makoto pleaded with Aoi to run, but she was still under Ryota's influence and continued to restrain him. They were rescued by Kyosuke, who knocked the soldiers to the ground. Aoi was finally able to break free of her brainwashed state, and the three hatched a plan to stop Ryota. Kyosuke drew the rescue squad's attention while Aoi and Makoto ran through the halls to find Ryota, but Aoi was shot in the leg, forcing Aoi and Makoto to hide. Makoto helped to bandage Aoi's wounded leg and then reluctantly leaves her to try and stop Ryota. He is cornered by the Future Foundation's rescue squad, only to be rescued by Yasuhiro and Byakuya.

Rescue and The Future
Yasuhiro and Byakuya come to Aoi's aid, tying fresh bandages around her leg, and Aoi learns that they were saved by Class 77-B, the former Remnants of Despair. Makoto later met up with the group in a tent, and Byakuya explained that Class 77-B had broadcast a fake message of despair to the world taking credit for the Final Killing Game so that the Future Foundation will still have a positive reputation to the outside world. The Class 77-B set off for Jabberwock island by boat, and Aoi and Yasuhiro both waved them off warmly. Several months after the Final Killing Game was over, Makoto became the principal of a newly re-built Hope's Peak Academy, which he was assisted in setting up by Aoi and the other survivors.

Real Fiction
In Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, it is alleged by the mastermind Tsumugi Shirogane that the entire Danganronpa franchise is fictional in-universe; a series of games, anime, and later live-action dramas performed actors. In particular, Tsumugi, who is the Ultimate Cosplayer, claims she is only able to cosplay fictional characters (breaking out into a bright pink rash whenever she tries to cosplay a real person), and the fact she is able to cosplay as the whole cast of Danganronpa characters including Aoi Asahina is used as evidence to support her claim that all of the cast are fictional. However, due to a number of holes in Tsumugi's story which make her an unreliable narrator, whether or not she was telling the truth is deliberately left up to the player's interpretation; as a result, it is up to the player whether they believe Aoi's story within the Danganronpa series was real, or a fictional story written by Team Danganronpa and performed by an actor.

Creation and Development
Aoi was originally designed to be a much younger looking character, a "younger sister" type, until it was decided to change her base concept to that of a "dark-skinned sports girl" to differentiate her from Chihiro. As a generally positive character with a cheerful outlook and deep sense of loyalty to her friends, her role in the cast was intended to be a type of tranquilizer or source of comfort and cheer during difficult situations for the other characters.

Despite her title of swimmer, Aoi is talented at all kinds of sports, which is why her outfit doesn't reflect her title specifically but rather that she's a generally athletic person. Aoi is notably the only student in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc whose outfit doesn't reflect their previous school's uniform; instead her shoes and shorts show the Monokuma eye symbol present on the Hope's Peak Academy school crest. Aoi's design was strongly influenced by the personal tastes of producer Yoshinori Terasawa, who kept requesting alterations to her design, such as making her curvaceous. Her initial clothing design included her wearing a skirt, but this was changed to hotpants at the personal request of Terasawa, making Aoi the only female character in the Danganronpa games series who does not wear a skirt.

In the original Japanese, Aoi's full name is written as 朝日奈葵. 葵, the kanji for her given name, is the kanji for the flower but is also a homonym for the Japanese word for the color blue, 青い (aoi), representing her love of swimming. Her family name Asahina is written as 朝日奈, comprising of the kanji for "morning" (朝), "sun" (日) and 奈, a kanji most associated with the word 奈落 (naraka), meaning hell, or rock bottom. Thus her surname can be read to mean "the sunny morning even in the worst circumstances".

Free Time Events & Bonus Mode Guides
The links below are full transcripts and indepth guides for Aoi Asahina's relationship routes in Free Time Events, School Mode, and Ultimate Talent Development Plan including her MonoMono Machine Present preferences and most effective dialogue options.

School Mode and Ultimate Talent Development Plan exist in two separate alternate universes where Aoi still attends Hope's Peak Academy, but no students are in peril. As they are alternate universes, these events are non-canonical, but because Aoi's personality in unchanged, backstory information shared by her in these events is considered questionably or dubiously canonical rather than fully non-canonical.

Free Time Events are also considered somewhat questionably canonical due to the nature of how Free Time Events are accessed (in that some characters' Free Time Events cannot be fully completed during the course of the canon game storyline due to limitations on the number of interactions you can have with them during one playthrough, and thus can only be accessed after they have canonically died either through a second playthrough or via School Mode). However, due to Free Time Events being largely experienced during the canon game storyline, Free Time Events are more grounded in canon than School Mode and Ultimate Talent Development Plan and are largely considered canon by the majority of players.

Bad End
During Chapter 5 of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, if the player chooses to call out Kyoko Kirigiri's lie, it triggers a non-canonical bad ending in which Kyoko is executed. After Kyoko's execution, there is "never a single murder at Hope's Peak Academy ever again". The remaining survivors: Aoi, Byakuya, Makoto and Yasuhiro live peacefully inside the school for the rest of their days, with Aoi having the children of Byakuya, Makoto and Yasuhiro.

Unused Execution
In the Danganronpa Visual Fanbook, there is a description of executions for all of the characters who did not have one. Aoi's execution is called Water Illusion Show and described as the following:


 * "Asahina is put into a water tank. Above the tank, Monokuma appears dressed as a magician and waves his staff. A curtain falls, then raises again with a drum roll. Sharks appear in the tank, surrounding Asahina. Monokuma waves his staff once again, and the curtain falls. As the drum rolls and the curtain rises, Asahina has disappeared - she has been eaten by the sharks."

This unused execution seems to have inspired or parallel the murder of Ryoma Hoshi in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, who was eaten by piranhas on the stage of Himiko Yumeno's magic show.

Other Alternate Fates
The Danganronpa 3 box set included a feature detailing an alternate ending of Danganronpa called Danganronpa Another End which ultimately never made it out of the development phase. In this ending, all of the students escape, at the cost of giving up their talent forever. In Aoi's ending, she decides to open up a donut shop called "Asahina Donuts".

Aoi also escapes Hope's Peak in the novel Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF, but in this version all her classmates survived.

Appearance
At the beginning of the Killing School Life in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Aoi appears to be young high school-aged teenager, but due to the memory loss she is two years older than she believed, closer to her late teens or early 20s.

Aoi is 5'3" (160cm in the Japanese version) and around 50kg with a lean but curvaceous build. She has brown skin, blue eyes, and wears her brown hair in a very high curled ponytail accessorized with a paperclip-style . She wears Hope's Peak Academy-branded blue hotpants and green sneakers, a white tank top, and a red tracksuit jacket with white piping and her previous high school's logo on the chest. She wears knee-length white socks, a red knee brace over her right knee, a band-aid on her left knee. While swimming, she wears a typical  with her last name in kanji on the front.

After leaving Hope's Peak Academy and joining the Future Foundation, Aoi wears a modified version of the Foundation's standard female business suit uniform, wearing a green tie and shorts instead of a skirt. Under her suit jacket and dress shirt, she wears a white tank top. She still wears her hair in a ponytail, but it is considerably longer indicating her hair has grown over the years.

Personality
Aoi is a warm, cheerful, upbeat, and outgoing girl who is friendly and welcoming towards everyone she meets, trying to make friends with everybody and include them in her activities. Aoi can be quite air-headed and forgetful, relying on the memory trick of writing peoples' names three times on her hand in order to remember them - a trick she also taught to her brother, Yuta. Due to being quite air-headed she can be easily manipulated by others and jump to conclusions or take them at face value, often being one of the few to fall for killers' tricks and misdirection during Class Trials. Aoi is an extremely athletic person and considers it an absolutely fundamental part of herself, using it as an important coping mechanism in her daily life and feeling like she "might die" if she can't exercise. Although Aoi is a star athlete in the running to become an Olympic swimmer, Aoi is insecure that being athletic, which is seen as quite a masculine activity, makes her undesirable to others and might lead to her never finding love. She's also concerned that her extreme sweet tooth, particularly her love of eating donuts, is going to make her fat.

Her positive attitude is truly challenged by the events of the Killing Game, and it fundamentally changes her outlook on the world and her relationships. She is extremely loyal to her friends to such a degree that when they are harmed it shatters her ability to emotionally cope. She very nearly falls into despair during the events of the Killing School Life, as the emotional snowball of the continuous deaths compounded her sadness exponentially, crying alone in her room in the evenings and frequently comfort eating. This came to a breaking point after the death of Sakura Ogami, where she felt so hopeless that she was willing to get herself and the other survivors killed to avenge the death of her closest friend who had been shunned by the rest of the group. It took the support of her other classmates and learning that Sakura had sacrificed herself to try and save the others for path to recovery to begin.

Aoi very quickly gravitated towards Sakura as a fellow athlete, and the two formed a very strong bond, spending the majority of their free time together and becoming very protective towards each other. She also became extremely close to Makoto Naegi, whose ability as the Ultimate Hope was vital in her path to recovery both during the Killing School Life and when she was emotionally tested once more by being thrown into the Final Killing Game. Aoi was very effected by Makoto's strong and unwavering belief in the power of hope and friendship, and in her darkest moments during both the Killing School Life and Final Killing Game he was able to bring her back from the brink and believe that the future was worth living for to honor the memory of the friends they lost along the way.

Ultimate Swimming Pro
Aoi's athleticism is a core aspect of her personality and sense of self, and she participates in multiple sports including track, basketball, softball, volleyball, tennis, and her favorite sport: competitive swimming. Aoi is a young Olympic cadet who aims to win a Gold Medal for swimming at a future Olympic games. Her younger brother Yuta, also a very strong swimmer, admits that Aoi is a better swimmer than him. By her own admission Aoi spends nearly all of her time training and trying to improve her fitness in some way, including wearing shorts all year round - even in winter - to build up her resistance to sickness, and practising the self-healing technique known as.

For Aoi, her love of sports doesn't come from her desire to win, but for the love of competing and striving to be better herself. In her own words: "What I really love about sports isn't winning, ya know? It's having to fight and struggle and give it all you got to reach the top. It's that excitement, that fear that you might suffer a heartbreaking loss. When you finally reach that goal, it's just...lonely. It's lonely at the top, ya know? So that's why I want to push myself as hard as possible when it comes to swimming. I want to aim for the very highest mountaintop!"

Due to her fitness and athleticism, Aoi is capable of holding her own in a fight if necessary, as was shown when she engaged in a fight with Juzo Sakakura. She was able to dodge most of his attacks despite being unarmed, and even pinned his weapon to the ground. She is also much stronger than her small frame suggests, able to run at top speed for long periods of time while carrying the 52kg weight of Makoto Naegi on her back during the Final Killing Game. She was also able to move a large piece of furniture that both Makoto and Ryota Mitarai could not budge even with their combined strength.

Quotes

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Trivia

 * In both the game and anime English localizations, Aoi is given the nickname "Hina".
 * She shares the same birth date with Mahiru Koizumi.
 * Along with Makoto, Kyoko and Hajime Hinata, Aoi is one of four people to have survived multiple killing games, surviving the Killing School Life and the Final Killing Game.
 * Danganronpa Another Episode Asahina Vending Machine.png Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls, there is an "Asahina" branded vending machine with a silhouette of Aoi's head on it. This is a pun on the beer and soft drink brand,.
 * Aoi's English voice actress in the game, Cassandra Lee Morris, also voices Aiko Umesawa in Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School.
 * According to Kazutaka Kodaka, Aoi is one of the series' characters with the strongest resistance towards heat.

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