Mukuro Ikusaba

Mukuro Ikusaba (戦刃 むくろ Ikusaba Mukuro) is one of the characters in Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair, but has a more prominent role in the prequel novel, Dangan Ronpa/Zero, and the other novel, Dangan Ronpa IF. She has the title Super High-School Level Soldier (超高校級の「軍人」Chō Kōkō Kyū no "Gunjin"). She is the mysterious "sixteenth student" and the older twin sister of Junko Enoshima.

Appearance
Ikusaba appears much like her sister Enoshima besides her short black bobbed hair, but there are some other differences. Ikusaba's eyes are less round than Enoshima's and her bust size is smaller. She also has freckles across the bridge of her nose.

Personality
Despite being an incredible soldier, Ikusaba is very out-of-touch with her own emotions and only knows how to take orders from Enoshima. She craves for her sister's praise and acceptance and will do nearly anything to get it. Because of this she allows herself to be put-down by Enoshima and sometimes even believes Enoshima's insults, which are meant to be manipulating.

She is self-admittedly poor at negotiating with people and devising tactics.

Pre-Despair Incident
Mukuro was involved in Fenrir before entering Hope's Peak Academy. She used to be homeless and lived in a very harsh environment. She was in the 78th class of it and became classmates with Makoto Naegi and some others. Around the events of Dangan Ronpa/Zero, she saved Naegi from Isshiki Madarai, and Naegi held her with high regard because he was saved by Ikusaba a lot; which parallels Naegi's kindness towards her in Dangan Ronpa IF. During that period, she spent a good percent of her time masquerading as Junko, while the real Junko's memories were wiped.

High School Life of Mutual Killing
Ikusaba (disguised as Enoshima) was executed by Monobear during Chapter 1, which led to the other students to believe that Enoshima was dead. Later, during Chapter 5, her dead body was reused by the mastermind to lead the other students into thinking that the unknown 16th student died. However, before they could take at closer look a the body, it exploded with a Monobear bomb and thus there wasn't much evidence left.

Junko Enoshima
Junko is Ikusaba's younger twin sister. Mukuro views Junko as far superior to her and would do anything to earn her praise, even going so far as to join Super High-School Level Despair and taking part in the School Life of Mutual Killing. She wants nothing more then for Junko to be happy and to be loved by her.

Naegi Makoto
While there is no real interaction between the two in the original series, their relationship is explored and elaborated on in the novel Dangan Ronpa IF. In Dangan Ronpa IF it is revealed that they were close friends and that Mukuro is in love with Naegi due to him being the first person to ever smile at her. Naegi treats her very kindly and puts his trust in her even after it is revealed she was partly responsible for what is happening.

In Other Media
Dangan Ronpa: IF She plays a more prominent role in this novel. In the novel, she maintains her guise as her younger sister until the scene when she would have normally been killed by the Spears of Gungnir. Naegi finally remembers her name at the last minute and calls out to her giving her enough of a warning to jump out of the way of the spears and survive.

However, Naegi is hit by one and almost fatally injured. Mukuro quickly runs to aid him while Junko switches her plans and pins everything on Naegi and Mukuro stating that they are the true culprits. After, causing Fukawa to switch to Genocider Syo and escaping from the gymnasium, Mukuro is finally able to take Naegi to the infirmary and treat his wounds. Here, she meets and is antagonized by Monokuma, who calls her useless and a disappointment.

After destroying the Monokuma robot, Junko appears on a screen and is unnaturally kind to Mukuro and tells her for the first time that she loves her as a way of severing their ties to each other. Mukuro then resolves to make everyone happy and bring about Junko's ultimate despair. Kirigiri comes to see her and Mukuro explains to Kirigiri her entire story and the truth. She then goes to confront Monokuma and demands she let them all go which leads into a spectacular battle against hundreds of Monokumas.

Mukuro is focused and able to fight till Junko uses Naegi's voice file to throw her off and defeat her. She is however quickly rescued by Mondo and taken to the cafeteria. After re-grouping Monokuma decides to give them one final chance at freedom. They must play take Monokuma's challenge and succeed which requires them to run through an entire wave of exploding Monokuma's and reach the escape switch in under 15 seconds. With help from Sakura,

Mukuro is able to win and collect the escape switch. Afterwards, she dons her Junko outfit again and is ready to face the punishments for her actions in the outside world. Naegi presses the escape switch and the doors open, thus ending the story and leaving Mukuro's fate past that point unknown.

Trivia

 * As a member of Fenrir, she passed through many battlefields but never got a single wound.
 * She has a Fenrir tattoo on her right hand.
 * The kanji characters that compose her name mean "War Blade Corpse."
 * When she was killed by the Monobear in the 1st chapter, she was killed by what Monobear called Spear of Gungnir, which Odin used to attack wolf Fenrir in Norse mythology.