I just had a really sad thought about Peko.

So in this last episode when everyone in the class was stating what they were going to do after graduation, it sort of mirrored their original goals, right? Mikan talked about medicine, Souda about pollution, Sonia about leading her country, so on and so forth.

Peko’s goal? Peko never wanted to kill another person. “We shall never kill again.” Which got me thinking about her and her life more than I already do.

Her job was being a yakuza hitwoman. Killing is sort of Peko’s thing. But if that line fits in with the rest of the lines in that scene, she never wanted to do it again. I already figured that she wouldn’t have exactly liked killing people (She never condoned violence for violence’s sake in the game and she killed Mahiru because if she didn’t, Fuyuhiko would and he would get executed), but it never struck me how much she must’ve hated it until now.

Peko Pekoyama was never really mean, not even to Komaeda who was the class punching bag. Peko loved animals. Before she died in the game, one of the last things she said was that she wanted the killings to stop. And when everyone was talking about their original goals, hers was to do no harm. She had no natural malice. No part of her wanted to kill before Junko’s influence.

And yet she killed, and probably often, because that was what she was ordered to do and she probably would’ve been killed herself if she disobeyed. Every human part of her rebelled against it, and yet she did it. How miserable do you think that must have made her? She probably developed her worldview of being a tool when she was very young, probably right after her first few kills, because how could a child with a kind and innocent nature deal with that? She had to make up a worldview that could let her live with killing or else she probably would’ve killed herself before she even entered middle school.

She just didn’t want to hurt people. Peko just didn’t want to kill again, but Junko sunk her claws into her and led her to become part of the worst terrorist organization the world had ever seen.

I think Peko would’ve made a hell of a doctor if life had been a little better to her. Even if the exact phrase doesn’t appear in the Hippocratic Oath, it’s the one thing a doctor can promise: First, do no harm.