Komaeda Nagito

Nagito Komaeda (also known as Ultimate Lucky Student, and The Servant) is one of the main protagonists in the Danganronpa franchise.

An extremely intelligent yet mentally disturbed young adult, Nagito was blessed and/or cursed at birth with supernatural and superhuman luck. This has resulted in his life being a constant series of both positive and negative incredibly unlikely circumstances happening to him (such as when his airplane was struck by a meteor, only to find out after he was rescued that during the crash he had won the lottery.) The stress of this life has warped his worldview to where he believes that for the "chosen" (aka Hope's Peak's Ultimate's), all of life's despair, no matter how tragic, are ultimately good things because they are just "stepping stones" to a happy, hopeful ending.

Nagito is a tall and skinny young man in his early twenties, around 22 at youngest. In Danganronpa Another Episode, he is around 20 year old, while his virtual avatar in the Neo World Program appeared as around 17 year old. He has messy shoulder-length hair, light grey-green eyes, and sickly pale skin. His hair is described as resembling that of a corpse's, lacking highlights (that normally suggest a healthy luster) and appearing whiter as it gets closer to the scalp. He has mostly white hair, with some reddish/brown hair at the tips. By the events of Danganronpa Another Episode, which is several years later, his hair looked longer and messier. In Danganronpa 3 - Side: Hope, it appears to be neater.

Nagito wears a knee-length dark green zipper hoodie with a jagged-cut tail. His hoodie has red squares across the right shoulder, and a large red '55' on the back. Underneath, he wears a white scoop-neck t-shirt with a red design on the front. He wears plain black jeans, and a wallet chain with a skull charm. Each of his brown shoes has two zippers.

While attending Hope's Peak Academy, he wore a uniform with a red and green striped sweater vest.

In Danganronpa Another Episode, as the Servant and Ultimate Despair, he wears a cropped black jacket, with three white buttons on the right and one red button on the left. Underneath, he wears a dark-red and olive-green scoop-neck shirt, with long sleeves that are folded over the cuffs of the jacket. Under this is a long beige undershirt. He wears black jeans with black low heeled shoes, tied with red shoelaces. He has a striped mitten on his left hand, to hide Junko's hand with long, red nails, sewn in place of his real hand. He also has a collar around his neck, given to him by the Warriors of Hope, with a chain hanging down the front to his knees. The Servant is described to be constantly smiling, no matter what treatment he receives. He is also said to have "a rather attractive face", and Genocide Jack even calls him "a pretty boy". His skinny build is also mentioned when she calls him "a skinny white-haired guy".

After awaking from a coma on Jabberwock Island and his brainwashing is undone, he replaced his non-functional left hand from Junko's corpse with a robotic forearm and hand. The prosthetic is white on the outer side, and black on the underside. The palm is black, and the backs of his fingers are white. His thumb is white as well. The sleeve of his coat has been ripped where the new arm is.

Personality Nagito first comes off as a polite, friendly and easygoing man, yet somewhat insecure. Hajime Hinata even mentions that his bright smile is very comforting. He was the only one that stayed with Hajime while he was unconscious, and expressed concern for his well-being, even after Hajime told him to go away. Though friendly with everyone, he is mostly interested in spending time with Hajime, and can be quite clingy. Hajime considers him a little annoying and not the most reliable, but still a kind person. Nagito attempts to be the team's conflict mediator and a poster boy for optimism, often encouraging others to be hopeful and to cooperate. However, he isn't taken very seriously. Hiyoko Saionji makes fun of him, and considers his dramatic pep talks about hope and friendship embarrassing and tiresome. He is generally quite submissive and has a self-deprecating attitude, even agreeing with Hiyoko and the other's snide remarks.

Although he claims to be a pessimist, Nagito often appears unusually carefree. He lacks tact and occasionally says awkward, strange, and unsettling things without realizing it. At times he can also be more forceful he is quick to scold Hajime when he's being too pessimistic or when he thought he was bullying Mikan Tsumiki. He is also notably annoyed by Teruteru Hanamura's treatment of girls and decides to keep an eye on him to make sure he won't harass anyone. During the first Class Trial, Nagito is revealed to have a twisted obsession with hope. As a result, he often begins to ramble on about hope, sometimes rather abruptly just talking or hearing someone else talk about hope or in a hopeful manner can render him in a state of bliss, causing him to sweat, and hold himself in order to contain his excitement.

Furthermore, he sometimes has sudden outbursts in which his eyes darken and start to swirl (Hajime describes the look as "a crude mix of hope and despair") while he rambles even more enthusiastically, but he usually snaps out of it fairly quickly and seemingly isn't aware of what happened. He believes hope is absolute good, and any deed done in the name of hope is righteous, even murder. He feels no guilt for hurting others in the name of hope, as he believes that hope will always win in the end and justify the means. He believes there are constant clashes between two or more hopes, and that "strong hope" will devour "weak hope" (adoringly, he calls this process "poetry in motion"). Ordinary untalented people, despair, and weak hope are just stepladders for creating stronger hope. He considers these things necessary, while simultaneously having aversion to them. Nagito believes that the Ultimates are chosen at birth, and are capable of strengthening their own hopes by facing and defeating despair, instead of being broken by it like weaker, ordinary people. Like Hope's Peak Academy, Nagito strongly associates hope with talent and talent with worth. Nagito is also one of the most intelligent characters of the second game, being very cunning and smart. He often solves a case long before the others, but he doesn't want credit for this. Instead, he often acts ignorant during the trials, manipulates the conversation by giving (often unnoticed) hints and then praises the others as if they're the ones who figured it all out. He does this because he considers himself too unimportant to take a more openly active role, wants to see the other Ultimates figure things out by themselves, and he wishes to remain neutral until he can determine which side has the stronger hope. Overall, Nagito appears to be somewhat out of touch with his own feelings. He tries to be polite, but he can be overly harsh and insensitive, often without realizing it. He has a lack of social awareness and insight into his own behavior. Because of this, he has problems understanding how his own behavior can affect other people and he may not understand or pick up on social hints. He struggles with expressing himself in a socially appropriate manner and this often leads to people misunderstanding what he's trying to say, and vice versa.

During Chapter 1's additional dialogue, Nagito explains that he says dubious thing without meaning to, and that he realizes this, but can't stop it from happening. However, he also adds that he always sincerely means what he says. In Chapter 4 of Danganronpa 2, he accidentally offended both Kazuichi and Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu in Fuyuhiko's case, he understood that he said something wrong and quickly apologized, but remained quite confused, and misunderstood what he said wrong. For Kazuichi, he was completely oblivious and only noticed that Kazuichi seemed angry for some reason. Other examples of this type of behavior include his odd and awkward sense of humor, often making jokes at inappropriate times, like soon after someone's death. He usually backs off if the others explain to him that his behavior is rude or he tells them he wasn't being serious. Similarly, when he tries to compliment someone, it can come across as an insult. His gauge of sarcasm is quite poor, too, as he sometimes mistakes mean comments for compliments. He also doesn't understand why the others are paranoid, angry and afraid of him. He's often confused by the others' behavior, thinking that they're strange for acting so suspicious of him, to the point that he sometimes worries about their mental health. He thinks that the others hate him because he's a lower human being.

In his final free-time event, Nagito claims to have Frontotemporal Dementia, a neurodegenerative disease that affects personality and social cognition, and thus may account for some of his strange behavior. He claims he was lying immediately afterward and it is unknown whether this was a lie or not. Nevertheless, it is clear that he has some type of psychological disorder. Given Nagito's consistent severity of symptoms (declining cognition is a defining factor of dementias), and his early age of onset, he may instead have a developmental disorder, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder. It should be noted that Nagito's strange luck affects his condition as well, seemingly allowing him to live much longer than he should have, and likely giving him unusual symptoms. In Island Mode, Nagito is calmer without a Killing School Trip to set him off. Though he looks forward to such a situation, he doesn't do anything dangerous. Instead, he genuinely wants to entertain Hajime and spend time with him.

He is often quite nervous due to his inexperience in many social situations, for example, sitting and talking in the park with someone. He's afraid he will bore or say something weird to Hajime, and worries that might cause Hajime to hate him, which is something he really doesn't want to happen. He is also constantly paranoid and has a habit of listing bad things that might happen (in a disturbingly personal manner), as he fears that his bad luck might harm or even kill Hajime. However, despite all this, he also mentions that he feels much more peaceful and relaxed on the island. In the end, he still appears depressed, but his way of thinking began to change after spending time with Hajime and realizing that he's been clinging to false hope, and that the true hope has been within him from the very beginning.

In Danganronpa Another Episode, as the Servant and Ultimate Despair, Nagito is even harder to read and rarely lets his true intentions and emotions show. The official limited art book describes him as "quiet, soft-spoken and effeminate". Despite being Ultimate Despair, he doesn't seem directly dangerous and appears non-violent, rather he manipulates and works behind the scenes. He is also mentioned to be in rather high spirits despite being essentially a slave, smiling most of the time and having a carefree, sometimes disturbing laugh. He receives the mistreatment from the Warriors of Hope with a smile and sometimes even seems to enjoy it (his official profile states that he might be a masochist). In general, he appears unusually calm to the point of being apathetic, and is rather unfazed by the disturbing things happening around him (however, he does appear to feel uncomfortable when Monaca Towa forcibly kisses Nagisa Shingetsu). He is generally polite and collected, but he may appear insensitive at times or lose his composure when talking about hope. He has a habit of forgetting how he is supposed to act as a servant and he seems to misunderstand orders quite a lot, though these may be passive-aggressive acts done on purpose. All the food he makes is inedible with very nonsensical ingredients (for example, in 2014's Christmas tweet, he is asked to make Bûche de Noël, but instead he makes some sort of cake out of nothing but whipped cream and pinecones).

The Servant calls the story's situation a game several times, such as calling Komaru a "generic game protagonist" and mentioning game-balancing and defeating of the final boss. This may seem like breaking the fourth wall, but it actually refers to the Demon Hunting, which according to the Servant is also a game to incite Komaru's growth. Unlike his past self, the Servant believes in the potential of the talentless, because such "weak" people succeeding and rising up from despair would create even more hope. It's possible that his opinion changed after Makoto, a "mere" Ultimate Lucky Student, defeated the true Ultimate Despair and became Ultimate Hope.