Byakuya Togami

For the Byakuya incarnation that appears in Danganronpa 2, see: Byakuya Togami (Danganronpa 2).

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Byakuya Togami (十神 白夜) 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. His title is the Ultimate Affluent Progeny (超高校級の「御曹司」lit. Super High School Level Heir).

History
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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. Byakuya's butler, Aloysius, was captured by Ultimate Despair for this motive.

To Survive
As the Killing Game began, Byakuya was extremely cold and dismissive towards the other students, making his dislike to them known and stating that he would not cooperate with them. He did not trust any of the other students, assuming any of them could be plotting a murder. Like the battle he had faced with to earn his place in the Togami family, he decided to treat the Killing Game as the game is claimed to be, one he intended to win. His dismissive and derogatory attitude towards the others ultimately led to Mondo snapping and attempting to attack Byakuya. Makoto tried to intervene, but became the target for Mondo's attack instead, resulting in Mondo knocking him out in a fit of rage.

After the deaths of "Junko", Sayaka Maizono, and Leon Kuwata, Monokuma opened up a new floor, where Kyoko found an old, dusty letter which stated that Hope's Peak Academy had been forced to shut down. Byakuya suggested that the letter could be fake, but believed that if it was real, then the mastermind may have placed them in a different school, citing that the mastermind was powerful enough to build a trial ground and a place for execution.

The next day, instead of attending the regular morning meeting, he spent the morning reading in the library. When the other students came to look for him, he stated that he was trying to come up with something "original" for his plot, should he become a villain in the game. Mondo got angry at him again and threatened to kill him. Chihiro Fujisaki tried to mediate the argument because they do not like the idea of friends killing each other or fighting - but Byakuya shut Chihiro down by stating that they aren't friends. Mondo threatened to kill him again for picking on those who couldn't fight back but declared that he wouldn't simply cooperate with anyone anymore. Byakuya remained in the Library, refusing to talk to anyone. Later when Toko and Makoto went to see Byakuya, he told them to get out and told Toko to take a bath, commenting on her smell. This caused Toko to misinterpret it as him caring about her and she quickly developed feelings for him. Before Monokuma's second motive, Toko told Byakuya her secret: that she was Genocide Jack.

Blood Lust
Whilst at the library, before going back to his room, Byakuya noticed Mondo leaving the girl's changing room and had a look inside, noticing the dead body of Chihiro Fujisaki. He decided to stage the scene to make the killing game more interesting for himself, as well as to reveal Toko's identity as Genocide Jack. Using an extension cord which would lead the other students to deduce he could be a suspect, he crucified Chihiro's body on a weight bench frame and wrote Genocide Jack's calling card "Blood Lust" on the wall in Chihiro's blood.

The next morning, after the students received the announcement that someone had been murdered, Byakuya led Makoto and the others to the girl's changing room and agreed to co-operate with Makoto in the investigation, not revealing that he knew the true culprit. After investigating and finding a few more clues, Byakuya took Makoto to the library and showed him the Genocide Jack case file, where Makoto learned that Genocide Jack has a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Byakuya told him that all Genocide Jack killings had "Blood Lust" written beside them and top-secret information from police records stated that all victims were crucified. He then split up from Makoto.

During the Class Trial, he quickly exposed Toko as Genocide Jack, shocking the others. He explained that he knew because Toko had disclosed it to him, which made her faint and her Genocide Jack personality to emerge. The other students deduced that Genocide Jack couldn't have killed Chihiro, because Chihiro was a girl (Genocide Jack only kills boys), and that the murder weapon was a dumbbell rather than her signature Genoscissors. Suspicion quickly turned to Byakuya due to the extension cord the students had seen him using in the library, however, it was then revealed that Chihiro had actually been killed in the boy's locker room, and was actually born male; both facts Byakuya did not know, which determined Byakuya wasn't the killer. He admitted at this point to staging the crime scene; much to his classmates' disgust and anger. When asked about his motives, he called them irrelevant but said they should look for the real killer. Later Mondo was found as the killer and was executed.

The group's attitude continued to sour towards him after learning what he had done to Chihiro's body and potentially could have led to them failing the class trial and being executed, despite his claim that he would have revealed the truth if they had come close to doing so. This came due to a head after Sakura was revealed to be a mole within the group; Byakuya showed no respect to Sakura, which angered Aoi so much that she slapped him across the face.

After Sakura's death, Aoi fell into a deep state of depression and fury and attempted to manipulate the trial so that she would be the killer and lead to them all being killed. During the Class Trial, Byakuya became convinced that she killed Sakura, but when Makoto and Kyoko show evidence that showed that it wasn't her and was instead part of her plan, Byakuya became enraged that he had been so mislead in his deductions. Kyoko told that Byakuya that the reason he couldn't solve the case was because he was so dismissive of other peoples' feelings and does not understand that not everyone acts according to calculations and cost-benefit diagrams; much to Byakuya's shock.

Ultimate Despair
After the further deaths of their classmates, the students were forced into an investigation to identify the missing 16th student and ultimately deduced that the true mastermind of the killing game was Junko Enoshima. Byakuya 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. Byakuya was shocked when Junko illustrated his family's current situation - or, "lack of a situation", given that his family had apparently been "completely wiped out" - and was rendered completely speechless for the first time since the start of the Killing Game.

Byakuya and the other survivors began to fall to despair, only for Makoto to find his true self as the Ultimate Hope, and guide all of them back onto the path of hope. Makoto's speech to Byakuya helped him move past the initial shock of what Junko had revealed about his family, and he declared that as long as he were alive, the Togami Family would never truly die. He vowed to rebuild his family no matter what opposed him once he entered the outside world. Supporting Makoto, Byakuya and the remaining students voted for Hope - causing Junko to fall into one last episode of despair shortly before she executed herself in The Ultimate 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. Their torments were finally over, Byakuya remained arrogant to his peers, but also finally admitted that, without anyone's help, he wouldn't have survived through this gruesome journey. Byakuya repeated his vow to rebuild his family with his own hands and declared that it would be far greater than before. With that, Byakuya emerged from Hope's Peak Academy as one of the survivors at the end of the game.

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 Byakuya and the other survivors decided to join the organization, and the Future Foundation helped them to restore their lost school memories. Byakuya became a member of the 14th Branch of the Future Foundation, 14th Division, which was tasked with public relations; spreading news of Future Foundation's activities to the public. After leaving Hope's Peak Academy all students lose their ultimate title, and as a result Byakuya's new title became Former Ultimate Affluent Progeny.

Rescuing Komaru Naegi
Byakuya, as a Future Foundation, was tasked with attempting to locate and rescue the loved ones of his former classmates who had been captured and held captive during the first motive of the Killing School Life. While attempting to rescue Komaru Naegi, the younger sister of Makoto, the two of them were ambushed and nearly killed by a group of Monokuma Units, and he quickly deduced that he and his group had been lured to Komaru's location as a trap. Byakuya gave Komaru a Megaphone Hacking Gun to defend herself with and told her to escape the building, leaving him to deal with the Monokumas. He was then captured and taken as a hostage but was later released by Komaru and Toko after they defeated the Warriors of Hope. Komaru recorded a message to give to her brother Makoto, which he delivered to him. While talking to Makoto over a video call, the two of them vowed to try and end the war they were all stuck in with their own two hands, no matter the cost. Byakuya agrees to partner with Makoto in his "mission" to repay his debt to Komaru and Toko for saving his life, and reminded with a genuine smile of Makoto's words at the end of the Killing School Life's final trial: "hope keeps on going".

Neo World Program
Makoto, who had become increasingly sympathetic to the Remnants of Despair after seeing the effects of despair firsthand, hatched a plan along with the fellow survivors of the Killing School Life 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. When they learned what had happened, they travelled to Jabberwock Island to try and save the group by activating the Forced Shutdown. The Forced Shutdown allowed Usami to emerge and eventually erase Alter Ego Junko from the Neo World Program, clearing the virus and shutting down the program. The surviving students awoke with the knowledge of what they had done, but with a determination to work towards a hopeful future. Byakuya, Kyoko, and Makoto all sailed away from Jabberwock Island, leaving Hajime and former Ultimate Despair members on the island to try and resuscitate their comatose friends.

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. A trial was set at a secret off-shore Future Foundation facility, where the heads of all the Future Foundation branches met to decide on Makoto's fate. Before the trial could be completed, the branch leaders and Makoto were all knocked out by sleeping gas and forced into a killing game - the "Final Killing Game" - a kill or be killed game of deduction. Byakuya, who was not in attendance, learned about the Killing Game after Makoto and Aoi managed to get in contact with him - Byakuya was shocked, because news of the Killing Game had not left the island. 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 dispatched his own squad who successfully rescued them and transported them off of the island.

Byakuya mobilized his troops to go with him to the Future Foundation's headquarters. Byakuya suspected that Monaca Towa was behind the killing game, and contacted Toko and Komaru, who are still in Towa City, to go after her, and sent some of his own men to go find her. Byakuya arrived at the Future Foundation's headquarters just in time to save Yasuhiro from being shot by a helicopter. After he landed, Byakuya had Hiro and his men planted explosives to blow open the sealed entrance. As Byakuya and his men investigated the lobby, they found the robot Miaya Gekkogahara, who triggered an alarm which caused the building to explode and be destroyed. Along with Hiro, Byakuya and his men managed to rescue Makoto and Aoi, and ordered his men to restrain a group of soldiers that had been brainwashed by Ryota Mitarai. Yasuhiro and Byakuya found and rescued Aoi, and tied fresh bandages around her injured leg before heading for a tent outside.

The Hopeful Future
Class 77-B - the former Remnants of Despair - had been the ones to fight off the brainwashed Future Foundation soldiers and Monobeasts to stop Ryota Mitarai from broadcasting his Hope Video. After doing so, they broadcast a fake message of despair to the world taking credit for the Final Killing Game so that the Future Foundation would still have a positive reputation to the outside world. Byakuya thanked Makoto for giving the Class 77-B the chance for redemption, expressing that hope was infectious even though it came at a heavy price.

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 Byakuya 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 Byakuya Togami 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 Byakuya's story within the Danganronpa series was real, or a fictional story written by Team Danganronpa and performed by an actor.

Creation and Development
Byakuya was intended to be a cool character from the beginning, but because character designer Rui Komatsuzaki was not confident in drawing bishoujo/bishounen characters he ended up being the character that had the most retakes. After reading the game plot, Rui imagined Byakuya as a cold-hearted anti-hero, "so I added some traits here and there, most relevantly my personal brand of high fashion, but still designing in a way he would be easily recognizable as an affluent heir". According to Kazutaka Kodaka, Togami is designed to be sexy, cold and stylish, but was actually the designated butt-monkey on the creative team. For example, when they started considering a light novel with Togami as the protagonist, the conversation got derailed into jokes like "It’d be nice to have a story where the Togami Conglomerate goes bankrupt and Togami lives in poverty", "Togami is a very proud man, so he would totally dress fancy to pretend he’s not broke".

In Japanese Kanji, his name is written as 十神 白夜. His given name Byakuya (白夜) means "white night", referring to the Midnight Sun experienced in the Arctic or Antarctic circles. His surname Togami (十神) means "Ten Gods", refering to the ten gods of the.

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

School Mode and Ultimate Talent Development Plan exist in two separate alternate universes where Byakuya still attends Hope's Peak Academy, but no students are in peril. As they are alternate universes, these events are non-canonical, but because Byakuya's personality in unchanged, backstory information shared by him 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. Byakuya's execution is called Human★Disqualification and described as the following:


 * "Togami would have been dropped in a garbage can which would fall into a place that looks like Hell. Monokuma, dressed like an elementary student, would appear and throw stones at him for looking like a dirty hobo. Togami would try to escape, but he would come out into a cold and snowy place. He would eventually die from his wounds and hypothermia."

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 alive, at the cost of giving up their talent forever. In Byakuya's ending, he decides he will "go travelling for a time" because "It wouldn’t be a bad thing to see that world first hand".

Byakuya also escapes Hope's Peak in the novel Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc IF with all the classmates alive.

Appearance
Byakuya is 6'1" (185cm in the Japanese version) and around 68kg, with a tall, slender build and strikingly long legs. He has pale skin, blue eyes, and has chin-length dirty-blonde hair. He wears a black suit jacket over a white shirt and green crossover tie. He also wears black dress pants accessorized with a black belt, and black dress shoes with a slight heel. He has a silver pocket watch in his suit breast pocket and had the pin of his former highschool on his lapel.

After he joined the Future Foundation, the only noticeable changes to his appearance are that he wears a dark green necktie and no longer has his pocket watch or Former High School pin.

Personality
Byakuya is a cold and self-centered person who is very reserved. He is not interested in co-operating with others due to his own sense of self-superiority, and his opinion that others are, on the whole, lesser than him. This sense of superiority and black-and-white worldview comes as a result of his upbringing; Byakuya had to prove his worth in battle against his siblings in order to earn his role in the family as heir-apparent, whereas all his other siblings who lost the battle were effectively ex-communicated from the family and cut off financially, deemed "unfit for the name of Togami". Because Byakuya was raised in such a highly competitive environment of "haves" and "have-nots", he thinks all people only think about themselves and he dismisses emotional ties as petty and unimportant, in his own words:


 * "You're not about to claim she wouldn't kill a close friend, are you? You still don't get it, do you? The game we're playing here isn't so kind. Honeyed words like friendship don't matter here. What matters is outwitting the opponent, defeating them... Not a person alive would sacrifice themselves for another. In the end, we're all in it for ourselves."

Due to his lack of emotional ties with the other students, Byakuya was able to emotionally distance himself from the horrors of the Killing School Life, and thus proved to be one of the most competent and insightful investigators in the group due to his high level of intelligence. His compulsive competitiveness caused him to treat the Killing School Life as simply a game, and one he fully intended to win, just as he had won his battle to become the head of the Togami family - much to the disgust of the other students. An extreme example of this occured after the death of Chihiro Fujisaki, where he posed Chihiro's corpse to frame Toko Fukawa and "make things more interesting", and perceiving the dead body of Chihiro as simply "an object".

However, Byakuya's emotional detachment and lack of empathy towards the others sometimes made it very difficult for him to understand the reasoning for why people would behave altruistically or based on pure emotion; this came to a head during the case of Sakura Ogami's death, where he could not understand why someone would be willing to give her life to save their friends, or why Aoi Asahina would be willing to sacrifice herself and the others' lives purely to avenge Sakura's memory. This detachment would thus sometimes make him zero in on red-herring suspects and aggressively pursue them simply because he could not imagine an emotionally-driven motive. Sakura's case acted as a real turning point in Byakuya's approach to the Killing School Life, going from treating the other students as his enemies in the game, to focusing his energy on identifying and destroying the Mastermind:


 * "Sakura and Hina were both willing to sacrifice their own lives to deny the reality of the game. Thanks to them, it would appear the others have cast aside their fear for this game. There's no point in participating in a game which has lost that sense of excitement. Which is why I will no longer be participating in it. Now I have only one thing to look forward to. And that is to heap the harshest possible punishment onto the one who thinks they can control me!"

Despite still maintaining his cold and dismissive demenour towards others, the Killing School Life did appear to alter his worldview and make him more respectful and co-operative with others, though still denies that they are his friends. After initially being drawn towards Despair when Junko told him of the whole Togami family and corporation being destroyed, he seemed particularly effected by Makoto's relentless pursuit of hope and a brighter future for everyone, though he denied it to Makoto's face. He gave a rare genuine smile in Danganronpa: Another Episode when he was reminded of Makoto in the final trial asserting that "hope keeps on going", and agreed that the two of them would work together towards the common goal of ending the war of Despair vs Hope. From that point onwards, he used his wealth and power largely to support Makoto in their shared goal, particularly in helping to rescue and rehabilitate the Remnants of Despair, as despite their terroristic actions he and the other survivors of the Killing School Life were uniquely able to relate to their experience of being under the influence of Despair. He was also instrumental during the Final Killing Game, coming to Makoto's rescue and saving his life, as well as bringing his own men to aid in the survivors' defense. These considerate and generous acts at the risk of his reputation - something he holds as an intrinsic core value - would have been out of character for him before the events of the Killing Game, but show how much of an effect the events he has experienced and the people he has met have had on him.

His newly developed sense of respect for others did not appear to ever extend towards Toko Fukawa, however. Toko, and her alter ego Genocide Jack, developed an extremely unhealthy obsession and attraction Byakuya not long after meeting him, and she began stalking him and calling him her "Master". Her feelings were entirely unreciprocated - in fact, Byakuya was disgusted by her, particularly the fact that she rarely bathed. Byakuya normally distanced himself from others by insulting them, but this trait actually attracted Toko even more, openly inviting him to debase and degrade her and perceiving it as simply a "lover's quarrel", which made him unable to shake her off. His attitude towards Toko highlighted his manipulative streak, taking advantage of Toko's obsession in order to make her do menial tasks for him, while having so little respect for her that he outed her identity as Genocide Jack to Makoto and the others almost as soon as she revealed her secret to him in confidence. Unlike with the other survivors, his opinion of her did not soften after the Killing School Life ended, although he did appear increasingly more apathetic towards her rather than combative. Even after Toko helped to rescue Byakuya from being held captive by the Warriors of Hope during the Demon Hunting game, when she tells Komaru that "Master and I are rock solid. Even if we're far apart, our feelings towards each other will never change" he counters her delusion by saying "Yes, that's correct. It's true what you said. Even if we're apart, my feelings of disgust towards you will never change". However, while later discussing the events with Makoto, he accepts that he owes a debt to Toko and Komaru for saving him.

Ultimate Affluent Progeny
Byakuya's talent offered him a range of different skills. He is incredibly intelligent, as he was the first one to deduce that one of the group members had been betrayed. He also beat out all of his siblings and ran multiple branches of the Togami Empire, as well as acquiring a massive fortune for himself.

His talent helped him in his role as a high ranking member of the Future Foundation's 14th branch. Despite serving under Kyoko Kirigiri, Byakuya was always ready to take the lead when the situation called for it, and used his considerable wealth and power to assist in the war of Hope vs Despair, noteably in the rescue of the surviving Remnants of Despair from the Future Foundation and in trying to locate and rescue his classmates' loved ones who were either captive or on the run from the Warriors of Hope in Towa City.

In other languages
Byakuya's talent as it appears in official translations of Danganronpa material.

Quotes

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Trivia

 * Byakuya and Makoto are the only characters to appear in every canon game and anime of the Hope's Peak Series.
 * He appears to be fluent in French, as he was easily able to read Mukuro's Fenrir Mercenary Corps profile that was written entirely in French, and he also knows how to play all the standard instruments, both skills he likely acquired as part of a standard Togami education.
 * He enjoys reading, watching movies, and pool games.
 * Byakuya's former high school, Green Hills High School, is a reference to Green Hill Zone, a level in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
 * Byakuya appears as a guest character in .
 * Byakuya's voice actor, Jason Wishnov, also provides the voice for the Ultimate Imposter in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair and Monodam in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony.

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