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[rebut]

Out-of-Character Information

Name: Reina
Are you over 15?: Yes
Time Zone: PST (GMT-8)
Personal Journal: asterism
Reliable Method of Contact: AIM | rozeluxe, Plurk | hyperprinny
Other characters in the game: N/A
Link to slot request if 6th, 7th slot: N/A

Tegaki: N/A
Anything Else?: N/A

In-Character Information

Name: Makoto Naegi
Game/Series: Dangan Ronpa
Teacher/Student/Other: Student
Canon Point: Post-game
Age: 18
Grade Level/Class Taught/Job: Third Year High School Student
Dorm or Living Arrangement: Dorm

Personality:
Makoto Naegi, a textbook average Joe, doesn’t exactly look like he’d stand out in a crowd, unless you count his expressive hair antennae. He’s much too average for that, and for the most part, his appearance matches his personality well. Whether it comes to hobbies or skills, there’s nothing that really pops out about his life at the very beginning of Dangan Ronpa.

So how do you make a normal high school student like him look even more normal? If you answered, “stick him next to his new classmates at the famous Hope’s Peak Academy, who are all super-talented to the extreme in their area of expertise,” then yes, you are correct! Of course, he’s very much aware of just how typical a guy he is. Kinda hard for him not to, especially since he only entered Hope’s Peak Academy as a student with Super High School Level Good Luck. (How, you ask? Lottery.) However, compared to most of said classmates, he’s the very picture of sanity. After all, when you’re the regular dude in a group of eccentric gifted kids, you’re pretty much one of the saner ones by default!

While we’re on that subject, Naegi being one of the more stable kids in his class isn’t exaggeration. He’s remarkably well-adjusted and rational, able to think clearly and deduce even under pressure. And though this can be partly chalked up to the majority of his classmates being able to snap him in half in a moment, he’s not at all prone to violence against others. (Windows are another story.) He’s always willing to talk things out and choose the more pacifistic ways of dealing with problems. Which is too bad for him since he’s in a murder mystery, but hey, it’s the thought that counts?

On top of that, he’s sociable and friendly to anyone and everyone, including animals not named Monobear. Even when it comes to people who are unsociable and obstinate, he’ll smile and do his best to try to befriend them. Even being downright scary won’t stop him from spending time with someone in order to get to know them better. And when it comes to friends, Naegi’s one of the most loyal ones you could ever have. He’ll listen patiently to what others have to say, and if they need it, will give advice to the best of his abilities. Not only that, he’s also very willing to put himself in mortal danger for a friend’s sake, even if they’re not particularly close. In the alternate universe story Dangan Ronpa IF, he gets himself stabbed in someone else’s place so they wouldn’t get hurt. As for an example within this particular Naegi’s world, even when it could save him from execution, he’s willing to keep quiet about a friend’s lie simply because he trusts them (though that doesn’t make the experience any less heart-thumping, that’s for sure).

Because of his friendship mania, however, he has a dilemma upon being confronted with the idea of a mole against them in-game. Stay quiet and confront the supposed mole alone to confirm whether or not they are the mole? Or tell the others and confront the supposed mole with everyone? This information would easily break what little peace they have at the moment, and be particularly disastrous if he’s incorrect. Since Naegi really just wants everyone to get along (and not go around traumatizing everyone by dying bloody deaths), he doesn’t want to accuse someone (especially a friend) of something so treacherous without being completely sure he’s right on the money. This decision really ate at his mind to the point where he lied about it to a friend, despite otherwise being very honest.

Anyway, moving on back (slightly)! On the topic of his admission to Hope’s Peak Academy, he was admitted as Super High School Level Good Luck. Naegi himself doesn’t always see it that way. Sometimes he wonders if he’s really Super High School Level Bad Luck, what with all the terrible things happening around him after the game starts. But you know what they say, good luck comes after bad luck! (…Or something like that?) At any rate, while he does have his unlucky moments, they do pave the way for his good fortune and continued survival, so being called Super High School Level Good Luck isn’t as unfitting as it may seem at first glance.

Now we can move on! By his own admission, one of Naegi’s most notable features is being more optimistic than most people. In this sort of story, that means a lot. He’s always willing to believe in the best of people, and this idealism shapes a lot of what he does in-game. Even when faced with a ridiculous amount of despair, he never gives up on finding out the truth behind everything, or on hope itself. His determination to learn the truth and stay hopeful for the future allows him to encourage people to not fall into despair and help remind them what they still want to live for. This is actually key in the endgame, since it allows him to act as a spanner in the works to the Mastermind’s plan to have everyone in despair.

Aaaand one more thing! In terms of intelligence, Naegi’s around above average at best. For the most part, he can keep up in conversations with his classmates as long as they don’t get too technical. This doesn’t stop him from being good at logical deductions (but not nearly as good as Kirigiri a certain mysterious student), especially since his open-mindedness lets him keep in mind even wild possibilities. He also avoids jumping onto bandwagons accusing other students. Definitely not a guy you want to play Mafia against. However, his train of logic can be lacking if he’s too emotional or biased at the moment (case in point, the first trial).

Also, he never wears the pants in a relationship. Ever.

Backstory:
For someone with the title of Super High School Level Good Luck, Makoto Naegi sure makes a habit out of inadvertently running into bouts of ridiculously bad luck. While he does have the good fortune of getting admitted to Hope’s Peak Academy, a highly prestigious school, by lottery, it’s balanced out (?) by the bad luck of getting trapped with his fellow fourteen classmates in a school headed by their new headmaster, a bear named Monobear, who really, really wants to see them kill each other FOR SCIENCE DESPAIR. The only way out of this gilded cage of a hellhole? To kill one of their own without the other students fingering them as the culprit even after a school trial, of course! And he’s totally willing to facilitate that by giving all of them motives to shank each other in the sneakiest way possible.

CHAPTER ONE START. The motive this time is a bunch of videos about the outside world. Naegi himself sees his family disappear with a ruined room in their place, and well, the other students see unsettling videos too. A girl he was in the same school with when they were younger, the Super High School Level Idol Sayaka Maizono, is no exception. In fact, she’s so unsettled that she sets off a plan to murder Super High School Level Baseball Player Leon Kuwata and pin it on Naegi, who would likely take the fall for her. What could go wrong? Aside from the part where Kuwata could kill Maizono instead, I mean. Which, in case you couldn’t guess, is what happened instead. Who’d have thought? And of course, Naegi is suspect number one thanks to Maizono trying to pin it on him beforehand. And to make things worse, Monobear kills Super High School Level Fashion Girl, Junko Enoshima, because she broke a school rule right before the trial starts. But thankfully for Naegi and the rest of the students, Kirigiri, badass detective ??? extraordinaire, helps push the trial in a non-massacre direction so that everyone else correctly votes Kuwata as the culprit behind Maizono’s murder. Then they watch him die by baseballs.

CHAPTER TWO START. This time the motive is Monobear blabbing everyone’s darkest secret to the world unless someone kills someone. Unsurprisingly, someone takes the bait. In the heat of the moment, but still, someone does. Super High School Level Gang Leader Mondo Oowada kills Super High School Level Hacker Programmer Chihiro Fujisaki, thanks to the current motive unscrewing a few of Oowada’s screws and Fujisaki accidentally stepping on a landmine. This isn’t helped by Super High School Level Jerk Heir Byakuya Togami doctoring the crime scene to look like Super High School Level Literary Girl Touko Fukawa, who also happens to be Super High School Level Serial Killer Genocider Syo, did it. After sifting through the bullshit, finding out Fujisaki’s a man, (baby, a man!) and breaking poor Super High School Level Hall Monitor Kiyotaka Ishimaru’s mind, they finally figure out Oowada is the culprit. Monobear proceeds to turn him into butter and eat it with pancakes (?).

CHAPTER THREE START. Before he died, Fujisaki somehow programmed an AI, Alter Ego, on an old laptop. Now Alter Ego is working with the students to decode information that could help them escape, but they have to hide the program from Monobear lest he do something unsavory. Anyway, Monobear tries to tempt the remaining students with cold, hard cash in exchange for dead bodies popping out of the woodworks. And pop out they do! After the kidnapping of Alter Ego, Super High School Level Hall Monitor Kiyotaka Ishimaru and Super High School Level Doujinshi Author Hifumi Yamada are found dead. Timing is key in this case, as well as figuring out that Yamada was in cahoots with the other culprit before he got stabbed whacked in the back. Eventually, the students find out that Super High School Level Gambler Celestia Ludenburg (real name Taeko Yasuhiro) is behind the case. Monobear executes her by burning her at the stak— nope, he kills her by crashing a fire truck onto her. Romanticized death averted thanks to douchebag Monobear! At least Alter Ego was returned at the end and Kirigiri found a secret non-monitored room in a bathroom? Except that’s also balanced by the part where Naegi is knocked out by Monoluchador when he goes there under her suggestion and then wakes up to see a confrontation between Super High School Level Wrestler Sakura Oogami and Monobear that implies Oogami is a mole. …Whoops?

CHAPTER FOUR START. Thanks to the stinger from last chapter, Naegi has a dilemma: to tell everyone what he heard or confront Oogami first! But since the plot requires it, he goes down the harder road of not saying something about his suspicions and pisses off Kirigiri in the process. In other news, Alter Ego has managed to decrypt the files and find out a few pieces of information. Namely that there’s a plan established by the school headmaster to keep the students (them) locked in the school (Hope’s Peak) for the rest of their lives, and the existence of something called the Worst, Most Despair-inducing Incident in the History of Mankind. Charming, no? Anyhow, before Naegi can confront Oogami, Monobear announces to everyone their new motive by giving them a new piece of information: Oogami is the mole! (You can see where he’s going with this, huh?) This, of course, leads to a schism within a group that pushes Oogami to do something that we’ll find out later. Before that, however, Naegi and Kirigiri make up, and afterwards, Alter Ego asks for access to the network. So Naegi and Kirigiri bring the AI to the secret room that Kirigiri found last chapter. This won’t show up again to either help them or bite them in the ass, nope... But enough about that. The next day, Joe Oogami is found dead, so investigation and trial start! After half the cast puts a wrench into court proceedings by proclaiming they killed Oogami, they finally find out the truth after poking holes through the logic of Oogami’s closest friend in the school, Super High School Level Swimmer Aoi Asahina, that she killed her. Turns out that Oogami committed suicide, and Asahina took the actions she did to try to get everyone killed in her grief after reading Oogami’s fake suicide letter. Yes, that’s right, fake. Monobear switched out the real one for one he wrote FOR DESPAIR. Unfortunately for him, this actually triggers everyone deciding to stay united against Monobear! On the flip side, fortunately for him, he still gets his execution by taking out Alter Ego’s computer. Trial end! But before we move on to the next chapter, have a scene of Kirigiri using Naegi as a distraction before she tells him about the existence of the sixteenth student, Super High School Level Despair Mukuro Ikusaba.

CHAPTER FIVE START. Short story: shit hits the fan. As for the longer version of the story, the students finally have access to the top floor of the school. After exploring places such as a bloody ruined classroom and a garden with chickens and a large flower, the rest of the students give a knife found to Naegi since they trust him the most with it. On another note, there’s drama thanks to Kirigiri staying so tightlipped about herself that she’s willing to give her room keys to Togami. (Though, as we learn later, she’s willing to do that because she stole the master key to everything in the school from Monobear.) Moving on, Naegi starts feeling more and more ill as time passes by, which culminates in a weird dream at night about he himself saying they can’t leave the school for the sake of hope. And then he wakes up to Monoluchador trying to stab him with the knife everyone gave him and later Kirigiri standing next to his bed. Confused yet? Anyway, while Naegi is having weird dreams and visitors in his room, the rest of the students minus Kirigiri were taking apart one of Monobear’s bodies (who’s strangely missing) in the gym and getting a bomb out of it. When Naegi meets them later, the students (again, minus Kirigiri) go to try to break into the headmaster’s office…only to learn that there’s a corpse in the garden. Could it be…Kirigiri!? Cue investigation time! Thanks to the knife in the corpse being the same as the one everyone gave Naegi, he’s suspect number one yet again. Anyway, investigation happens, the students find out this entire messed up life is being broadcasted the outside world, and then Naegi figures out the corpse is more likely to be Super High School Level Despair Mukuro Ikusaba (who also happens to be a Super High School Level Soldier), which is supported when Kirigiri shows up alive riiiiight before the trial starts (which is also where Naegi alone learns that she has the master key). As for the trial itself, the main suspects are the alibi-less Kirigiri and Naegi, and the trial’s spent trying to figure out which of the two killed. Stuff happens, and then Naegi gets the choice to reveal Kirigiri’s lying about not being able to enter the room. If he does, bad end where Kirigiri is executed and all the students are stuck in Hope’s Peak forever. If he doesn’t, the story goes on to show Naegi’s execution before he’s saved by the last moment by Alter Ego from getting crushed to death and further saved by Kirigiri from death by starvation/dehydration/who-knows-what after he fell down a garbage chute instead of dying. During Kirigiri’s rescue, he learns that Kirigiri’s father is the headmaster and that she’s (unsurprisingly) the Super High School Level Detective among other backstory details. As a bonus, he learns he would’ve been the victim in this case if Kirigiri didn’t stop Monoluchador from attacking him a knife. But hey, at least he’s not dead?

CHAPTER SIX START. Final battle is imminent! Anyhow, since Naegi escaped death, they decide to go see Monobear because it’s only a matter of time before he figures out Naegi isn’t dying at the moment. Kirigiri takes advantage of Monobear’s want to see despair triumph over hope, so now it’s the students vs. Monobear. They win and can leave the school if they solve the previous case’s murder plus the school’s remaining mysteries, but will all be executed if they can’t. To facilitate this, he unlocks all the rooms in the school. Cue investigation! They check out important places like the headmaster’s office, the Monobear control room, and the biology lab (a.k.a morgue) for clues before the trial starts. In the meantime, wacky things like finding Kirigiri and Hagakure’s possessions (that imply there’s a missing time they can’t remember) in a formerly sealed area, Ikusaba’s corpse disappearing from the garden and Monobear handing out photos of the students living normal school lives like candy happen. In the photos, everyone but the person who Monobear handed the photo to is pictured (in order to foster distrust). Also, Kirigiri hands Naegi a video of all the students agreeing to live in the school for the rest of their lives if necessary, which he watches partly up to the point where Monobear cockblocks him with a power outage and announcement that the trial’s about to start. And start it does. Monobear takes the sixteenth student’s seat, and eventually the truth starts coming out. The mastermind of the entire game is Junko Enoshima; the Junko Enoshima killed way back in Chapter One by Monobear is her twin sister, Mukuro Ikusaba. Each and every one of them, including Enoshima and Ikusaba, spent two years together in the same class at Hope’s Peak up until the Despair Incident happened one year ago, upon which the headmaster eventually got their permission to lock them into the school for their own protection. That’s when Enoshima killed the headmaster and took over. The students’ memories (minus Enoshima and Ikusaba) were then messed around with, Kirigiri’s especially, in order to facilitate Enoshima-Monobear’s game. Anyhow, the world outside is in shambles and despair, and Enoshima says they can execute her and leave…or they can execute Naegi and stay in the school, safe from the outside world. Naegi manages to not fall into despair and verbally slaps hope into everyone’s minds, keeping them united against Enoshima in the end. Finally, they vote against Enoshima, and she executes herself, letting them leave the school to face the world. THE END (FOR NOW).

Oh, and after they leave the school, the students get a tip that there might be a clue about the rebellion for hope at Smash Academy they should be aware of, and send Naegi to be their guinea pig. Or something like that. THE END (FOR NOW).

Anything Else?:
He looks like this! At 160 cm, he’s among the top three shortest of the Dangan Ronpa cast and including the cast of the sequel, he’s only taller than five students. So yeah, he's rather shrimpy.

In-Character 1st person sample:
A regular guy walks into a no-fourth-wall club fair...

In-Character 3rd person sample:
Your character is having their first lunch at the Smash Academy cafeteria. Write their reaction to being served their food by Nancy, the lunch Ursaring.

After everything Naegi’s seen with his own eyes at Hope’s Peak Academy, he still can’t help but involuntarily react at the sight of a large, walking bear. Sure, he likes bears (alongside most other animals) and all, but considering he spent nearly a month with a deadly bear of a self-proclaimed headmaster, the sight of the bear still shocked him enough to do a double take. Then he quickly but awkwardly moved his line of sight elsewhere, hoping the bear didn’t notice his reaction. Bear or not, now that the initial shock has worn off, he can’t help but think he acted rather rudely just then. Still, he found it hard not to feel intimidated. It didn’t help matters that said bear nearby towered over him by more than a foot and had the weight to go with it. Good luck likely wouldn’t save him if the bear decided a Naegi-snack was in order…

On the other hand, considering he hasn’t heard anyone screaming “BEAR IN THE CAFETERIA” and running like hell, the bear probably isn’t hostile! …Unless someone aggravated the bear maybe. But he’s not about to go try to test that theory out. After all, he’d rather return to everyone in one piece. He wouldn’t be much help to anyone in a bear’s stomach, that’s for sure. In any case, it’s likely safe to say that the bear wouldn’t be rampaging or going “upupupu” anytime soon. So he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Which turned out to be a good idea, as it calmed his mind down in short order. Since the bear’s non-hostile, all he had to do was act normally. He could do that. It’s not like he didn’t have experience with animals.

Then again, bears weren’t exactly on the list of animals he dealt with during his time as an animal-rearing club member. But hey, at least he knew the universal rule when it comes to animals: for the love of limbs and life, don’t provoke them. And this bear should be easier to interact with since he (or she?) seems used to all the people around. So he’ll be juuuust fine. There’s absolutely no reason why he should end up as a smear in the wall before the hour’s up. Yup, that sounds logical enough.

With his mental preparation and justification (mostly) done, Naegi nodded to himself and started to walk towards the bear. On the way, he considered what he should say, besides anything that would offend. Putting aside the bear thing, he (or she; he really should figure this out soon) fit the description of the cafeteria worker that a student gave him a few minutes ago, which means that they’re part of the school staff. That in turn means that, as a new student, he should properly introduce himself. Maybe he should do so with a gift? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have honey on hand, except for the part where he didn’t even have his stash of gifts, much less honey on him. So it’s best to abandon that plan for now and just focus on a normal introduction.

…Now that he thinks about it, perhaps he should be more worried that he’s more or less casually thinking about how he’s going to properly introduce himself to a huge bear.

Why is his life so weird now…