Peko Pekoyama

♙Peko Pekoyama (辺古山 ペコ Pekoyama Peko) is one of the characters featured in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. She has the title of Ultimate Swordswoman (超高校級の剣道家 chō kōkō-kyū no “kendō-ka”).

Appearance
Peko wears a black or dark turquoise schoolgirl uniform with a red tie or ascot. Her skirt is somewhat short, and wears dark tights underneath with white shoes. She has long, silver hair that she ties up into two braids on each side of her head with white ribbons holding each braid at the sides of her head, and two red ties hold each braid together at the bottom. Her eyes are also bright red. She is constantly seen carrying her shinai (bamboo sword) around with her in a dark turquoise sheath/wrap with a silver/white design on the back. At one point in the game, she admits that her appearance has been mistaken for cosplay before, and strange cameramen have tried to take pictures of her. Nekomaru also experienced this.

Personality
[Warning: Several spoilers follow this section!]

Peko comes off as a very serious and stern woman who shows little to no emotions. She speaks with an authoritative tone of voice, and she is mostly business. However, she is not antisocial or unwilling to stay around the other students, even agreeing to attend Byakuya's party in Chapter 1. In her first Free-Time Event, she reveals that she has a strong affinity for animals, though they themselves do not share the same feeling.

Near the end of Chapter 2, it is suddenly revealed that she is the personal bodyguard and hitman of Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, having been taken in and raised like so by the Kuzuryu family. She sees herself as not a human being, but rather as a tool, with her only purpose in living being to protect and follow the orders of Fuyuhiko.

History
[Warning: Several spoilers follow this section!]

Prior to the Tragedy
As a baby, Peko was given away by her own family and taken in by the Kuzuryu Family, a known yakuza group. From young, she was raised alongside the family's young son and eventual heir, Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu, and trained to be his personal hitman and bodyguard. She became extremely loyal to him, eventually viewing herself simply as a tool to follow her young master's orders.

Island Life of Mutual Killing
Initially, Peko and Fuyuhiko showed no signs of having known each other prior to coming to Dangan Island, on behalf of Fuyuhiko's orders. Despite that, when Fuyuhiko constantly refused to join the others and stayed a lone wolf, Peko was usually the one who went to give him messages or saw him around the most. She attended Byakuya's party in Chapter 1 and offered to stay in the surveillance room to keep an eye on the screens. However, as she later states, she left the surveillance room and locked herself in the restroom due to sudden stomach aches. This is confirmed by Nekomaru, who found the door to the restroom locked when he was suffering from indigestion during the party. Due to the power breaking having been in the surveillance room, Peko was initially suspected in the first trial for causing the blackout, though that accusation was quickly proven wrong.

Monokuma's motivation in Chapter 2, the Twilight Syndrome Murder Mystery, caused Peko to murder Mahiru Koizumi in order to save Fuyuhiko who had sought to avenge his younger sister. Fuyuhiko had been angered at Mahiru when he went to talk to her, but before he could do anything, Peko turned up and attacked Mahiru instead, killing her instantaneously by blunt force trauma to the head with a metal bat. Before she killed Mahiru, she brought Hiyoko to the crime scene then drugged her to frame her for killing Mahiru. After ushering Fuyuhiko away, she left the bat and a mask of a cartoon heroine at the scene, along with some red herrings to turn the suspicion to Hiyoko. Later, after removing Mahiru's corpse, her body become full of Mahiru's blood and forced to remove it by take a bath using the mineral water from the Beach House since the shower are broken. She returned to Sonia's party soaking wet, and told to the groups that she recently took a 3 hour swim. Despite that, at the Class Trial, Hajime singles out Peko as the murderer against Fuyuhiko's protests. She doesn't try to defend herself, but rather, suddenly 'reveals' herself as Kirakira-chan using Sunny Witch ♪  Esper Itou-chan mask, a serial killer who revolves around justice and murders criminals, which Sonia had mentioned. She goes on a long-winded (and somewhat comical) rant about how murder to preserve justice is justified, causing the students to hastily vote her out as the culprit. Too late, Sonia provides evidence as to why Peko couldn't possibly be Kirakira-chan as the serial killer was not Japanese in the first place.

As the voting had already ended, it is revealed that Peko had actually known Fuyuhiko prior to the Island Life of Mutual Killing, being his personal hitman and bodyguard. She had everyone vote for her on purpose as in her scenario, she was only a tool and Fuyuhiko was the true culprit, and he was able to escape alive which was her sole goal from the beginning. However, Fuyuhiko refutes this and denies Peko's existence being a mere tool, instead saying he wanted her to stay as a true human being and his friend. Though seemingly somewhat disappointed, Peko expected that it would happen. Resigned to her fate, Peko is taken to her execution. Fuyuhiko was brought into the middle of the execution with accidentally attacked Fuyuhiko with her sword, blinding his right eye. She then shields his body in order to protect him from being killed in her execution.

Execution

 * Main Article: Rambunctious Girl

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu
It is revealed at the end of Chapter 2 that Peko was raised in the Kuzuryu household, and was assigned to be Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu's personal hitman and bodyguard, meaning she was always around him since young. She orchestrated Mahiru's murder in an attempt to save Fuyuhiko from the Island and send him back home. In the Dangan Island alternate ending, she has feelings for Fuyuhiko. In the main story, she's still very close to him, willing to protect him at all times and it proved in her execution when she immediately protect Fuyuhiko from the wooden warrior monster attack him. In the Sixth 'Trial', he heard her voice speaking to him to snap out of despair, similiar to Chiaki's voice that Hajime heard.

Quotes

 * “ I GOT IT ALL FIGURED OUT! ”
 * “Even with lost memories, the moves that the body has memorised cannot be forgotten so easily. ”
 * “ The order I received, as well as my reason for living, is to fulfill my role as the young master's 'posession'. ”
 * “ No matter what you all say about it, I am but a tool for the purpose of assassination. If the young master wishes to have a person erased, then it is only natural as my job as a tool to obey. ”


 * “ If you think humans cannot be tools, try telling that to all the men and women out there destined to only ever be means to an end. ”


 * “ Anyway, until now, I tried to think of myself as being just a tool. I thought it would be fine just as long as I was his tool. But now, I want to accompany him to his destination. I want to see the scenery he sees. Not as a tool… but as a comrade. ”
 * “So we don't get lost...? Is this island really so big?”

Trivia

 * Peko's first name (ペコ), is written in katakana (one of two Japanese syllabaries usually used to write loanwords and foreign names) and so doesn't have any special meaning.
 * Her last name, Pekoyama (辺古山), is composed of 辺 - "border" or "seashore", 古 - "old", and 山 - "mountain"; making the meaning of the name "Pekoyama" something along the lines of "old mountain border".
 * Peko's voice actress, Kotono Mitsuishi, also voiced Sailor Moon. She was one of the few voice actors specified by the creators to portray a specific character.
 * She also shares the same birthday as Sailor Moon, June 30.
 * The mask she claims to don in the second trial shares characteristics with one of Japan's most prominent mascots, Peko-chan of Fujiya Co., including the outward sticking tongue.
 * Peko's mask, known as Sunny Witch ♪ Esper Itou-chan, is blond and wears a golden tiara with aquamarine gems - making her somewhat similar in appearance to Sailor Moon.
 * She presumably learned about the serial killer Kirakira-chan from Sonia, since she heard Hajime and Sonia discuss about her in the library when the group investigated the second island for the first time.
 * “Pekopeko” can mean "obsequious" or "servile" - befitting the fact she was raised by the Kuzuryuu family to be Fuyuhiko's "tool".
 * She likes the color black and hates candy.
 * Her free time events reveal that despite her fondness for animals, they always seem to run away from her.
 * Her Bloodtype is O.