Welcome to Part 1 of my Top 85 Danganronpa Characters!

As explained in my introduction post, I am ranking down my personal top 85 Danganronpa characters with my own personal preference. You can find the rules in the introduction post. One more reminder, BEWARE OF SPOILERS, SKIP BY ENTRIES AS YOU SEE FIT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Let’s get the Hope and Despair started!

Number 85 – Haiji Towa

Ugh….That’s all I can say about this guy. Ugh. There has to be a least favorite character and I can honestly say this is the only character I cannot find a single redeeming quality for. At first, I thought he’d be an interesting character, being the leader of the survivors in Towa City, he must be good if he’s the leader. But wow, as the game goes on, do his true colours show.

He is always aggressive towards the Komaru and Toko, has a very unlikable arrogance and the cruelness of the end decision. He knows exactly what will happen if you destroy the controller, and he doesn’t even care! He just wants to win and the casualties it causes aren’t even a thought in his head. Ugh…Such a disgusting guy.

I was tempted to leave this as a Top 84, just because of how dislikable he is. Man, it must suck to be the bottom of the list of great characters but because it’s Haiji, I find it funny.

Number 84 – Kurokuma





Ugh…ish? Okay, so he doesn’t do anything horrendous, hell I wouldn’t put him in the same room as Haiji. But Kurokuma is just too annoying. His personality has that same unlikable arrogance as Haiji but also failed comic relief. I admit I’m a dub player, but even I couldn’t stand his voice as a dub, I had to skip any dialogue he had.

The main reason he’s this low down, is because he just doesn’t seem to contribute to the overall plot. His existence just seems to serve as a Observer for both sides of the conflict, yet while Shirokuma does help, Kurokuma does nothing! The reason he’s above Haiji, the reveal at the end was pretty good I admit, but also I do find his outfit to be pretty amusing. Other than that, meh.

Number 83 – Tsumugi Shirogane

I know it’s easy to hate on Tsumugi. I wanted to give her a fairer chance for this, and I did….but oh my god is she boring. Throughout the majority of the game, she’s this existence who has no contribution to the game (Don’t you dare bring up Cospox) and is honestly really dull to even hang out with. I was so disappointed for the majority of the game because of how boring she was. And then the ending happened.

Look. You can either love this reveal or hate it. Wow, did I hate it. The whole twist at the end really annoyed me, but other than that, while Tsumugi looked to be very interesting (Not just Junko Enoshima), she soon started to fall back to boring, with the constant reminder of HOPE, DESPAIR, HOPE, DESPAIR, HOPE, DES- you get it. Props to the cosplay swaps at the end though. That was pretty amazing to watch and it was so cool to get the majority of VAs back. Other than that, she just didn’t engage with me, little contribution and pretty bland.

Number 82 – Monphanie

Another Monobear in the bottom 10? Yep, but don’t expect this to be the last. The Monokubs were….quirky additions to Danganronpa. They all had their own charm and character to them. However, I really feel Monophanie just hit cliche marks. I think she is poorly written and doesn’t have as much character to her as the others have. Her main identity is just being the female one, which is such a shame.

I did find her puke gimmick to be funny at how it would change colour. She does have a few funny lines too. However I just feel she was much weaker to the other Monokubs, especially when they make her so feeble sounding. I felt pretty annoyed to see them do this for the female one, but maybe I’m just overthinking it. In any case, she was amusing, but didn’t have enough amusement to make it any higher.

Number 81 – Yasuke Matsuda

Our first Zero character, we have Yasuke Matsuda….Man, this guy was a jerk. And a pretty big ass. And kind of evil. Yeah there isn’t a lot of redeeming things about him. Being the Ultimate Neurologist, he had a part in Junko’s Despair plan, being the person who allowed her to interfere and mess with people’s memory. Discovering this actually made him intriguing. However, his attitude and personality is just too damn sour.

He is the kind of person who tries to act cool by doing nothing and being rude, but it just fails….a lot. His relationship with Ryōko is pretty one sided and sad. He ends up turning out to be some despair filled guy and obsessed with Junko, which is kind of a thing you’ll learn I dislike from this list. Because he does have a lot of character to him, he does make it ahead of the others, but he’s too sour. Bleugh.

Number 80 – Monosuke

Last Monobear for this post, I promise. Monosuke does have more character than Monophanie, which is good. What isn’t good is his character. He’s a rude, ignorant and arrogant character that does not have any charm to him. He basically replaces Monokid as being the bully of the group and doesn’t have the humor that the others have. I will admit, I do like his design a lot. I don’t know, something about the animal print and glasses is almost Hipster-esque.

I love whenever you line up three of him in the Mono Slot Machines. Go play it and you’ll see what I mean. Also, seeing how Monodam was reacting to him in the second chapter, I knew what was coming and it was pretty amusing to see him go. Being such a rude guy without the charm or humor, I’m afraid this is how far he’s getting.

Number 79 – Leon Kuwata

Okay. Don’t kill me yet. There’s still plenty of triggered anger to go through. Leon was pretty damn cold. I know the stakes were high and anyone could have snapped, but Leon had a choice and he made the wrong one. I even read the Hagakure Short Story for his sake, but that just made me dislike him more. Even outside of the killing game, he seemed like a jerk, leading on Kanon so much and also returning to his family just to get his present, that’s pretty selfish.

Look, I do like his design, it’s pretty damn cool and trendy. I definitely prefer the rockstar style over the baseball style. His Bullet Time Battle and Execution were also very memorable, giving him a lot more memorability than the other characters here. But his cold and rude nature just put him down this far. He’s ahead of others for how much character he did have in such a little amount of time…So please don’t kill me for putting him down this far.

Number 78 – Taichi Fujisaki

Taichi was the captive for Chihiro and became one of the main targets for the Warriors of Hope. Being the father of Chihiro, he does have a good knowledge on computers and also takes his kind but quiet nature, similar to Chihiro. He also helps Komaru and Toko and sadly is killed while helping them, but it also helped act as a motivation to them both to keep going. Being really kind, helpful and isn’t actually a bad character.

What could be wrong? He probably has the least screen time out of every character on the list. Because of that, we know the least about him and it really isn’t fair to have him any further than this. It’s such a shame, I do really like this guy, but he just didn’t get enough screentime. Still, I’m sure Chihiro would be proud and visa versa.

Number 77 – Isshiki Madarai

Isshiki Madarai! Some of you may not know this guy, but he was the bodyguard for the Student Council (Fine job he did). Isshiki had an interesting Ultimate Talent, being the “Super High School Level Multiple Birth Siblings”. Him and his 7 brothers all acted as bodyguard for the Student Council and possessed supernatural strength. His selfless devotion to the Student Council is incredible. You can see he truly cared about their well-being and wanted them to survive, but after failing, he takes it upon himself to track down who was responsible and to try and kill them. He’s so ruthless, he would have easily targeted Ryōko and killed her, since she was just suspicious to him.

My problem with this guy is we get little to no information about him, which is a shame because he seemed so interesting. He appears, gets beaten, appears as one of his brothers, gets beaten, appears as many brothers, gets beaten, and that’s it. We know he’s devoted to protecting the Student Council, but nothing else. I really am unnerved by his design. It just is too creepy and really isn’t all that creative or appealing. I don’t know why Kamakura hair is used so much but it just doesn’t appeal to me. Still, I do like this character, but I still have a fair amount of problems with him.

Number 76 – Yuta Asahina

Let’s get the cons out of the way. Too little screentime, too little information on him, tied having as little screen time as Taichi probably. Those cons are pretty heavy and sadly I can’t overlook them.

However, we can still look at the positives. Yuta was Hina’s brother and her closest person to her. He takes a lot from his sister, being extremely athletic, carefree personality and extremely kind and wanting to help out others. Even in the dangerous situation he was in, he wanted to look out for others and kept optimistic about trying to survive.

If you loved Hina, you’ll probably like Yuta. All his qualities are so similar to her. Even his design looks extraordinary similar to her (I know their siblings but Makoto and Komaru didn’t look that similar). He even shares the whole remember someone’s name by writing it on your hand three times.

Seeing him group up with Komaru and Toko was pretty great. I was looking forward to seeing the three work together to try get out. His optimism was what they really needed and it felt like a strong hope for the player….and then the game decided that the players and characters didn’t deserve that, so they killed him. And not even in a honorable way, he literally explodes. It was pretty hard to watch.

Still, despite the lack of screentime and information, we can still love him for being the adorable younger sibling for Hina.

And that is the end of Part 1! I hope you are all looking forward to the next part! If you have any queries, questions, comments, insults, please direct them to me in comments, I would love to discuss about any issues you have! In the meantime, have a hopeful day!