Kiyotaka Ishimaru

Kiyotaka "Taka" Ishimaru (石丸清多夏  Ishimaru Kiyotaka) is one of the characters featured in Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair. He has the title Ultimate Moral Compass. He was a model student in his middle school, known for participating in its disciplinary committee. He was murdered by Yamada in Chapter 3.

Appearance
Ishimaru has spiky black hair, red eyes, and large eyebrows. In one of his free time events with Naegi, he states that he wears his uniform year round, and has 10 of them. He also wears knee-high black boots. The kanji on his arm band (風紀) means "Public Morals", which fits his Ultimate title.

Personality
Befitting of a Ultimate Moral Compass, Ishimaru is righteous and values order above all else. He is also a hard worker, believing that one can achieve anything through it. In fact, he earned his title by the same means too. Due to his extreme dedication to studying and proper conduct, he has difficulties in making friends and could not even hold a "normal" conversation with another person. Ishimaru is very expressive and intense in his manner of speech. He can also be insensitive toward another at times, as evidenced in the beginning of Chapter 2, when he said that Naegi would not feel too comfortable sleeping in the same room with Maizono’s corpse. Above all things, he does not tolerate anyone running around in the school.

Pre-Despair Incident
Ishimaru's grandfather, Toranosuke Ishimaru, was once Prime Minister of Japan; a title Ishimaru believed he gained through his own natural genius rather than any hard work. After only a few months in office, the public opinion of his grandfather changed from high praise to widespread criticism due to a disastrous scandal, and he was forced to step down. After that, Toranosuke's business collapsed and the Ishimaru family was left in huge debts which Ishimaru has stated "Still have not been paid off, and continue to trouble my family to this day." and "My family is middle-class... No, we are below even that..." His family name shamed, Ishimaru's grandfather allegedly spent the last years of his life in shamed silence.

Upon hearing this story, Ishimaru gained a deep resentment for his grandfather and the label of "genius" that was associated with him. He swore to restore honor to his family name by gaining his success through hard work rather than natural talent, sacrificing hobbies of any sort for study sessions and good grades.

Later, Ishimaru enrolled into Hope's Peak Academy and was placed into Class 78. For two years, he experienced a normal school life until The Worst, Most Despair-Inducing Incident in the History of Mankind struck. In order to protect the students from any harm, Jin Kirigiri locked them inside the school as it was converted into a shelter. Unfortunately, his plan was foiled by Enoshima and Ikusaba, founding members of Ultimate Despair.

Afterwards, Enoshima wiped out Ishimaru's and his classmates' memories of their school life in Hope's Peak and commenced the mutual killing game.

High School Life of Mutual Killing
After Monokuma made his first appearance, Ishimaru unofficially assigned himself as a leader to the rest of the students. Every morning, he would wake the others up and urge them to go to the morning meeting at the Cafeteria. In Chapter 2, he got into an argument with Owada, leading to a duel where both of them sat inside the sauna in order to see which person that would manage to survive the longest. This duel was supervised by Naegi, though later he was told by two of them to return to his room. While what happened after Naegi left was left unclear in-game, the manga depicted them talking about their life, family, and dreams. It also showed that Ishimaru was the one who lost the competition. This conversation later turned them closer than ever next morning, freaking Asahina out.

When Monokuma threatened the students to tell their most embarrassing secrets to the world as a mean to give them motive for murder, Ishimaru immediately suggested that they should reveal each other’s secrets to prevent anything from happening. However, this suggestion was turned down by most of them and Fujisaki was the only one who openly consented to that.

In the trial of Fujisaki’s murder, Ishimaru became horrified when Owada was fingered as the culprit by Naegi. He refused to believe it and even came to Owada’s defense in MTB. However, all his effort was for naught, since Naegi managed to figure out the truth. When the students were asked to vote by Monokuma, Ishimaru was the only person who did not vote for Owada. He also promptly broke into tears afterwards, even as Monokuma revealed the reason behind Fujisaki’s murder.

The culmination of the second trial traumatized him so much that he was rendered completely mute in Chapter 3, only responding with a small groan when spoken to. After he received news about Alter Ego (whom he mistook as Fujisaki’s ghost) from the other students, he immediately went to Naegi’s room and asked him to guide him to the ghost, since he wanted to apologize to Fujisaki for what Owada had done.

When they finally met, Alter Ego tried to console Ishimaru by mimicking Owada’s voice and changed the display to his face. This instead caused him to turn into "Ishida", a new personality, believed to have emerged due to Owada’s soul entering his body. Subsequently, he became overprotective of Alter Ego, whom he mistakenly thought to be Owada. Unfortunately, this formed a clash between him and Yamada, who had a crush on Alter Ego. This dispute was taken advantage of by Celeste, who would later manipulate Yamada into killing Ishimaru, before killing Yamada herself.

Execution
Prime Minister Kiyotaka Ishimaru's Inaugural Parade  - Ishimaru sits on a vehicle and answers people's cheers in the middle of a huge, gorgeous parade. The crowd has posters that say things such as "Hooray for Prime Minister Ishimaru". In the next moment, Monokuma pops up resembling Golgo 13 (an assassin) and kills him with a shot through the heart. This execution is shown in the Official Fanbook.

Mondo Owada
At the start of the School Life of Mutual Killing, Mondo and Ishimaru didn't like each other because their personalities clashed. They had a bitter rivalry up until the beginning of Chapter 2, where they decided to see who had more endurance by seeing who could stay in the sauna longer. It's not revealed in the game or anime, but the manga says after a while they started talking, and got on the subject of life goals and discovered they had a lot in common. They got extremely close after that, saying they "go together like black and white", and by the end of the whole ordeal they were calling each other brother.

Presents
Obtained from the MonoMono Machine.
 * Gloves of Tomorrow
 * Red Scarf
 * Treasured Reaction Comedy Compliation
 * Drill Chin

Choices
During free time conversations, the player will occationally be given a choice on how to respond to something that is said. These are the 'right' choices.
 * Conversation with friends
 * Disaster Hood
 * India

Skills
These will aid you, usually during Class Trials.
 * Remarkable Influence - Increases your Maximum Influence by 2.
 * Steel Endurance

Quotes

 * “My name is Kiyotaka Ishimaru! My motto in life is Simplicity and Fortitude! Let’s all work together and study hard!”
 * “There is no greater accomplishment in life than pushing yourself to the limit, always! Isn’t that so? That’s all there is to it!”
 * (In reply to Naegi asking who won the sauna contest) "Such a silly question! The fact that we competed against each other is what's important!"
 * “Introductions should be short and to the point! Conversations have their time and place, and now isn’t it!”
 * “The strangest thing isn’t the collective fainting, though. Did you all see the windows in the classrooms and corridors?”
 * “Weirdest of all is this very entrance hall! It looks like the entrance is blocked by this strange steel bulkhead… I don’t think it was around when I entered the school.”
 * “No, iceberg lettuces aren't cold! They're green!!”
 * “Forget-- Forget-- Forget Beam!!”
 * "I would not advice it, brother. Your body is a precious thing your parents gave to you."

Trivia

 * The kanji readings for his last name are: 石 (Ishi) - Stone and 丸 (Maru) - Bullet referenceres his strong sense of justice.
 * Ishimaru is interested in kendoka.


 * The name "Ishida" which he takes, after "fusing" with Owada's soul, comes from the first character from Ishimaru's name and last from Owada's - (石) ISHImaru+OwaDA (田).


 * Ishimaru believes that if two men show each other their naked bodies, they form a special bond.


 * Ishimaru never played video games or watched TV as a student. He would spend all his time studying.
 * In an interview with Kodaka, it is stated that they were originally going to put info on Ishimaru's middle school life but "it looked like it [was] going to turn dark, [so] we stopped".
 * Ishimaru was voted the third most popular character in the Japanese fandom.