Leon Kuwata

Leon Kuwata (桑田 怜恩 Kuwata Reon) is one of the characters featured in Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair. 'He has the title Super High-School Level 'Baseball Player (超高校級の「野球選手」Chō Kōkō Kyū no "Yakyūsenshu"). He was an ace in his position as a fourth batter at his school. Despite having a talent as baseball player, Kuwata often slacked off from the training and wanted to change his title to "Super High-School Level Musician". He killed Maizono in Naegi’s shower room after her attempt on his life and later was executed by Monobear.

Appearance
Kuwata has a punk rock appearance, with red spiked hair, a lot of piercings (especially on ears) and a goatee beard. He has pale blue eyes and wears heavy accessories such as a chain necklace and belts. Kuwata wears a white shirt with a red grunge skull design on it. On top of that, he wears a white jacket with a popped collar. He wears black pants and white shoes, which are platformers.

Personality
Kuwata is a passionate, hot-blooded young man. He often slacks off from studying and baseball training. However, he never encountered any problem with his attitude due to his status as Super High-School Level Baseball Player. Kuwata is also very determined to change his current title to ‘Super High-School Level Musician.’ In his Free Time sequence, the reason for that determination is revealed: to win a heart of a girl that he happened to meet at the hair salon. Later, Kuwata himself states that he somewhat missed playing baseball; something that he used to do every day since he was young. He even invites Naegi to play baseball with him once they get out of their current situation.

Pre-Despair Incident
In the first image that is discovered of the Pre-Despair Incident school life, Kuwata is shown being in a sort of rough-housing-group-hug with Fujisaki and Oowada. In other pictures, he has his arm on Maizono's chair, he splashes water in Enoshima's face, he appears to be in third place in a race, he leans over and smiles widely, and he photobombs a group picture.

High School Life of Mutual Killing
When introduced in Prologue, Kuwata almost immediately told about his dislike toward baseball to Naegi and got upset when the latter spoke about seeing a picture of him with shaved hair online. Kuwata then went on to tell Naegi about his dream of becoming a vocalist in a band and changing his title to ‘Super High-School Level Musician.’ In (Ab)normal Days of Chapter 1, he also uttered this in front of Maizono. After watching Monobear’s motivational DVDs, he became agitated and was quick to respond in abrasive manner toward Naegi.

At the same day, Kuwata received a letter from Maizono that instructed him to meet her in her room at night. Unbeknownst to Kuwata, Maizono switched room with another student and also secretly swapped the door plate in order to commence the plan to murder him. When he finally entered the room, Maizono immediately attacked him with a kitchen knife. However, Kuwata managed to counter her assault with the imitation katana that happened to be inside the room, hitting Maizono’s wrist and effectively disarmed her in process. With no place left to escape to, she went to the shower room and closed the door, knowing fully well that it can only be opened if one pushed the top of the door while twisting the handle. Since Kuwata did not know about this, he thought that the door was locked and immediately used his toolset to destroy the handle, killing Maizono inside. Afterwards, he cleaned the floor in the room with the roller in an attempt to clean the room of his hair (possibly due to him being the only one whose hair’s color is red). Kuwata also tried to dispose his bloodied shirt by making use of the incinerator in the trash room. Despite the iron grates preventing him to approach it, he managed to do the deed by throwing his shirt into the contraption before using Hagakure’s glass ball to hit the switch for activating the incinerator. Unfortunately, the sleeves of his shirt did not burn and instead fell off to the floor of the trash room.

In the classroom trial, Naegi was able to point Kuwata as the culprit based from the dying message Maizono left behind. Also because Leon is a nerd and can't read numbers. And the method of disposing the evidence clearly suggested him as the only possible suspect, since throwing an object from a distance would require a skill that only Super High-School Level Baseball Player had. Not accepting of being accused as the culprit, Kuwata went rampant, until Naegi asked him to show his toolset in order to indicate whether it was already used or not. This immediately stopped his deranged behavior and left him completely speechless. After the trial, he was sentenced for an execution by Monobear. Unable to accept the truth, he attempted to stop Monobear from executing him by justifying his action of murdering Maizono as an act of self-defense. However, Celes pointed out that Kuwata could return to his room instead of breaking the shower room’s lock after Maizono locked herself in. In the end, his plead was ignored by Monobear and he was executed.

Execution

 * Main Article: Million Fungoes

Relationships
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Quotes

 * “Yo! My name is Leon Kuwata! Nice to meet you!”
 * “That’s the worst, man. Totally the worst. And it was supposed to be such an awesome picture, you know! But it turned out so lame. Everyone on the team took a vote so I had no choice but to shave my head.”
 * “By the way, can I confess something to you!? See, I don’t like baseball at all. I’ve never went to practice even once. So, I decided to make joining this school an excuse to quit baseball!! I have my own dreams, y’know!”
 * “I’m going to be a musician! You can tell I have that rock star quality, right?”
 * “Isn’t it just so cool when you can chase your dreams?!”
 * “It was just after I entered the front hall. Suddenly I lost my consciousness, y’see. And then I found myself sleeping inside the school! That’s what happened to you too, right?”
 * “W…what did it say!? Kill each other? What the fuck…?”

Trivia

 * Kuwata has one sprite that is only used in MTB. It also appears in the game trailer.
 * His beta name was Kazuo Matsuzaki.
 * According to his in-game introduction, his current hair color is not natural.
 * Due to the brutality of the execution, it was censored in the animation.
 * The manga slightly changed Kuwata's circumstances of Maizono's murder. Instead of consciously murdering her, Kuwata attempted to calm her down until he accidentally stabbed Maizono with her knife.
 * The anime also slightly changed Kuwata's reaction of being sentenced. Once the decision was announced, Kuwata broke down in tears and desperately tried to get out of the trial room, screaming that he didn't want to die. This did not change the outcome of the trial.